Big in Japan.

Just click the link. You won't thank me, but hey, I don't care.

And whilst we're on the output of that peculiar country, I grabbed Rez from Xbox live arcade today. One of the notable things about it's release on PS2 (I nearly said 'original release, but my inner Dreamcast fanboy punched me in the duodenum) was that, in Japan at least, you could acquire something called a 'trance vibrator'. Yeah.

This was a small piece of black plastic that you were to put in the small of your back. It pulsed in time with certain beats in the game, and the pad would vibrate in time with others. Since Rez is sort of, kind of, a music game (amongst many other possible descriptions, many of which would require me to invent adjectives on the fly) this apparently did add something to the game, though not always as the manufacturer intended. I would say that the article linked is not safe for work, but frankly, no-one reading this really has a job. If there is any chance you might be reading at work, don't click. Just repeat the words 'logical conclusion' over a few times. It's essentially the same effect.

So now it's out on the 360, with a rather neat addition. Any spare pads you have lying around can take on the function of the trance vibrator. It's intended function, that is. It's unwieldy enough having one of those things wedged in the small of your back, I can assure you. So that's how I spent the first couple of hours of this morning. One pad jammed in my back (not completely unpleasant, but definitely not working the knots out of my aching muscles), one balanced on my feet. About an hour of wierd, trancy, shooty, fly-y, schlorpy (told you) gaming, with pulsing Xbox pads strapped to me.

It can only get less odd from here.

Oh God! Oh Jesus Christ!

Wicker Man remake. More for my sake than anyone's, I need a chronicle of this.

2.48. Rural. Cage seems pensive. His wig is not the best.

4.18. A huge truck hits a car full of creepy people. The overall effect is comical. Cage is coming to the rescue, but I sense failure is on the cards. I see it written on his stupid face.

9.45. A joke is made about a lack of plot. It sucks.

13.34. Cage charms an old man into flying him out to Summersisle. Edward Woodward could fly his own plane, and he didn't need no stinking thirteen minutes of exposition.

16.44. Bags can be mysterious and funny.

17.50. Modern-day Willow appears. She's annoying too. She appears smitten with Cage, usually a symptom of being struck about the head and neck with a large rock.

19.28. Bees!

24.08. The Wicker Man is mentioned. The Wicker Man is never mentioned in the original. Cage loses his self-help tapes.

28.43. Cage falls through some rotten wood. Overly-dramatic music fails to fuck off.

35.00. This film is profoundly boring. I think one of my kidneys just shut down.

37.15. Big fucking crows! Just. Big. Fucking. Crows.

47.56. There's a dead kid in the water! But it's just a dream! Or is it? Yes! Cage has more forehead than before. Also: The Radio is dead!

54.00. I have never felt the absence of folk music so keenly.

56.35. Bees! Anaphylaxis! Epinephrine!

1.02.35. Misuse of the word 'Celtic'. It is correctly pronounced though. This is the highest praise I can muster so far.

1.05.39. I'm starting to hallucinate. Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee are micturating upon Cage. An endless stream, yet he never quite drowns.

1.10.19. Bees. Cage is also hallucinating. Mine's funnier.

1.11.37. "How'd it get burned!? Howdiditgeburned!? HOWDAGABUAHRRNED!"

1.13.03 Bearded lady. But the beard is all made of bees! Whatever will happen next?

1.16.15. Cage is just attacking children now. I knew this day would come. Also, somebody killed the pilot. Cage's wig is giving up. He's more forehead now than man. Fuck this.

1.20.02. Really, fuck this.

1.22.04. Cage is in a bear suit. He's abducting a child. He's knocked out three women so far. Fuck this.

1.28.20. The worst acting I have ever seen from Nicolas Cage. Con Air and Face/Off included.

1.33.00. They burnt him. The film is dedicated to Johnny Ramone. I can't imagine he'd have been pleased.

The Bull.

OK, so this at the rumour stage at the moment, but Guillermo Del Toro directing The Hobbit is about the only good thing that could come out of Peter Jackson not directing The Hobbit.

In no particular order, some reasons why Guillermo Del Toro is fucking great:

• He can work with Wesley Snipes and still come out smelling of roses.


• He's made two of the least sucky superhero movies to date.


• He fills his movies with gigantic clockwork howdads - for no particular reason I can discern.


• He's obsessed with using the same pallette Goya used in his 'crazed and yelling' days.


• His name translates as 'William The Bull'. William the fucking Bull! It's the best name ever!

Novelty Stationery Items

Clearing away the straggly remains of Christmas from my place of employ today, I found myself at the mercy of a small but insistent voice at the back of my head.

"Now you can really get a good run-up.", it said, apropos of nothing.

"I wonder what that means?" Said one of the more actively-conscious chunks of my psyche. "It couldn't be... oh. Oh, God."

It turns out my subconscious wants me to play Assassins Creed with the customers. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this novel form of digital violence (I can think of one person likely to read this who hasn't at some point sat and watched me play this, so this is for you) it essentially involves you running around, and climbing over, various ancient and allegedly holy places in an effort to find Bad Men and stab them in the throat with the pointy end of the stabby thing.

Now, whilst I couldn't do all the climbing, I can run pretty damn fast. I don't do this very often, because of various complex and intertwined factors (my size, a lack of any desire to). One of the ways in which you introduce Bad Men to Mr. Stabby is by running at them, jumping, placing a knee on their spine or stomach (dependant on angle of approach), and driving Mr. Stabby into their neck. I (on the suggestion of my apparently deeply impressionable subconscious) feel that this is an area in which I can truly excel.

They never should have given me a pen.

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

Usually I can't really stand this webcomic, but today I demand that you pay attention.

Obvious Fact of the Day.

No shit.

My morning espresso, on the other hand, has made me the adonis you see today.

Oliaginous Transportation.

On my way home from work, I saw the morbidly obese man who sits in the window of Clowns cafe cycling. It was like The Third Policeman as filmed by David Cronenberg.

In case that's not clear, I could only see about a third of the bike. Try to guess where the rest was. How it was still functioning as a mode of transport, I haven't the first idea.

Shiny.

I don't know what this is yet, but it's from Team Ico, so I know that whenever it's on the shelves I'll be buying it and a PS3.

Dear America...

Please do at least try to elect Barack Obama. Your only other option is to walk, collectively, over to that writhing burlap sack marked 'Other Candidates'. I can assure you, though you probably will not listen, that it is chock fucking full of rabid wolverines. Stick your hands in, grip on firmly, and pull out whatever takes your pick.

Just don't come crying to me over your wolverine injuries.

Red in Tooth and Claw.

What a rich and productive day it's been. I put the finishing touches to the Weather Machine, made vague, supercilious threats to the leaders of several developed nations, and got some washing done.

What else was there? Oh yes, - I went feral.

Nah, na-na, nah-na, na-nah...

If this doesn't make you smile, you are dead inside.

Better Than Ghost Rider, That's For Sure.

Having just finished Mass Effect (hereafter referred to as 'That Sex Game'), a few thoughts are in order.

Thought number one: Mass Effect is fucking great.

Thought number two: 2007 was a very, very good year for storytelling in games. Despite the best attempts of the scriptwriter on Assassins Creed, there has been a definite shift forward in what can be done, and what the effective minimum standards are for scripting, digital 'acting', and voiceover.

On Pornography.

So, I just played through the 'highly controversial' scenes in Mass Effect. I guess it's news to precisely no-one reading this, but the hysteria surrounding this from certain quarters is entirely bogus. Any kid who wants to sit through the seventeen hours of sci-fi tropes with the hope of seeing a pixelated nipple is going to be sorely dissapointed.

That kid is probably entirely imaginary. Still, he must be protected from all the dreaful things that are out there.

Espresso count: 10. I will soon find a religion, or found one. Whatever suits. Either way, know this: you are all fucking heathens.

A Spotters Guide.

A brief, and by no means complete, list of the types of people who shop in bookstores after the hours of darkness.

• Public Masturbators. The proud sort, not the furtive sort. The sort that believe a lifestyle magazine for public masturbators is just around the corner.


• The Mentally Unsound. It's as if someone drives a care in the community ambulance up to the front door, tips out the shrieking, urine-soaked contents, and drives off.


• The Savagely Foreign. Like the charming lady who tried to watch a DVD in one of our computers this evening.


• The Genuinely Lonely. For some reason, there are always two people who come in every evening, who are completely unconnected to one another. They sit, doing very little, until the time comes to leave. They do so, quietly and without a fuss. But I'm sure the thought must be nagging at the back of their minds: "Maybe I should just say hi. We could get a coffee."


• Thieves. Obvious really, but can't be ignored.


• Cottagers. One became a regular for a while, to the extent that he would always say hello if he saw one of our staff, even though we had to throw him out because he was going to be violently sodomised by a middle-aged man in our toilets.


• Normal People. Simply shopping for quality, intelligent books.

So, have I missed any really obvious ones?

Practical Advice.

When typing a URL, endeavour to use all of the required letters, and do so in the correct order. This will save you from a quarter of an hour as fruitless as the one I just spent.

And again, and again, and again...

I'm getting a bit of a theme today.

Just for the record, this is not what Mass Effect is about. This is a spectacularly idiotic right-wing knee-jerk response to the very idea that a form of legitimate media has (whisper it) sex in it.

Sadly, people will listen to this sort of nonsense. Oh sure, they'll forget the specifics, but they'll be left with some vague notion that games are bad, an' stuff.

My Knee Is Twitching.

Apparently the way we are to deal with violent crime in our society is to stop characters in games carrying knives.

I'm about old enough to remember the banning of the word 'ninja' from any media. This strikes me as just as well thought-out and practical.

Japan? This is Dave...

...and I'd like a word. specifically, I'd like to know why you did this:



As if the pun wasn't bad enough, here are the contents:



It contains, apart from the obvious, something called a 'Rotor'. I can only assume that this is a small outboard motor, and not... Oh no, wait, I got it.

Must Try Harder.

It has been a long day. You might even call it challenging, if you were prone to melodrama. The last few days have seen the customers in the store give off such an unnerving and constant buzz of inadequacy that this sort of thing comes as little surprise.

Shocking (with all apologies).

Synergy, taken to its logical extreme.

Evil...

Watching The Omega Man. It's a pretty dreadful film, and I would like you to know this:

Big Chuck Heston's bingo wings will destroy us all.

The Future of Warfare.

I need a lot of money, quickly, in order to set up a restaurant. After much deliberation, I've decided the best way to set about this is to establish a Privatised Military Company (PMC) with the others who may be in this deal.

As with malicious blogging, I assume anonymity is crucial in this sort of venture. Therefore, my name will not be involved at all with the proceedings. Instead, the company will be known as Shitheel McGee and His Travelling Banditos (PLC).

In order to deliniate ourselves from other PMCs, other than in the fact that we do not know how to fight, and have never, in fact, held guns, we will offer ourselves as the environmentally friendly mercenary corporation you can trust. We will be the 'green' solution for all your 'black ops' needs.

This basically shakes out as us only ever travelling by ferry. We can actually only afford to travel by ferry.

Basically, if you've got a foreign government to overthrow, and you don't need it done with any particular haste or competence, look us up. We will be very cheap indeed.

Back.

Back now. Exceptionally tired, having been in and out of airports all day on three hours sleep.

Give me a moment or two to snooze, and I will once again be available on the usual channels - phone, email, cryptic trail on facebook, and a good, old-fashioned smack in the chops.

Saints and Scholars (I am Neither).

I'm off to Ireland, and so will be incommunicado for a few days.

I Don't Learn.

A big part of Christmas for me, at least in recent years, is discovering just how horrible the Doctor Who Christmas special is. Every time I assume that this will be the year that they don't royally fuck up their most expensive episode, and every year I'm disappointed.

This year's was particularly vile. Amongst the offences:

• Every other line was an in-joke.


• A seemingly endless shot of The Doctor walking towards camera.


• Twee 'Magic of Christmas' bullshit.


• A huge, melodramatic "I'm the Doctor" speech.


• A need to come up with at least 8 deus ex machinas for when a sonic screwdriver just will not cut it.


• The whole script.

It's been pretty bad for the last two years , but this one was pretty much a crime. There. It's out of my system now.

False Advertising.

I've recently succumbed to some vague notions of modern male grooming. This is not to say that I am not some sort of grunting, hairy ape-boy, because I am. I just happen to be one that owns moisturiser. What I will say to those following my pioneering trail is this: dermatising microgranules is just a fancy term for very small grit. Do not be fooled.

In other news, I am occasionally stroking my signed His Dark Materials boxset (number 999 out of 1000, I'm sure that means something), and making little purring noises. My family are beginning to get used to the idea.

Work Haiku.

I have had enough
Boy, activate the device
They will soon know fear

Ghost Rider - Update 2.

Ghost Rider is not as bad as X-Men 3.

Ghost Rider - Update.

Do not watch Ghost Rider.

When Stunts Go Bad.

I'm watching Ghost Rider. I think it might be one of the worst films ever made. It barely makes sense, which is an achievement, given that it's a dumb action movie about a flaming skeleton chasing down the kid from American Beauty and his three emo friends.

It makes Daredevil look like a masterpiece. More when it's over.

I'm Doing Science.

Hello there, internets. I am not dead. In other news...

The War on Dumb.

Worst. Terrorist. Ever.



Wanted man. Caught at a checkpoint. In a wedding dress. How did anyone think that was a disguise?

The Welsh are Coming.

Jeff Minter is upset. This doesn't happen often, as he's a happy-go-lucky scamp. He spends his days frolicking in the Welsh hills, popping home every now and then to tend to his llamas, ingest mind-fucking quantities of mind-fucking psychotropic drugs, and program unplayable videogames.

Says Jeff:

"OK, we get the message. All you want on that channel is remakes of old, ***** arcade games and crap you vaguely remember playing on your Amiga. We'll shut up trying to do anything new then. Sorry for even trying."

Jeff's upset because an old, ***** arcade game, Frogger outsold his latest game, Space Giraffe by 10 to 1 last week. Jeff thinks it's unreasonable that no-one wanted his nice 'new' game. Jeff's new game is essentially another remake of Tempest, an old, ***** arcade game, but with different enemies and a more complicated scoring system.

It seems churlish to point out that people may have bought Frogger because they weighed up their options, and went for a game that doesn't make your brain slough away and trickle through your nose in fleshy chunks. But I did it anyway.

***** means shite, by the way.

That's Good Newsing! We Done News!

For some reason, I feel myself compelled to read pretty much any time I possibly can. This means that if I'm left alone for more than two minutes, I fire up the web browser on my phone and start reading the news. Unfortunately, there are only certain sites you can access for free on my tarriff, so I'm pretty much restricted to reading the ITN news portal for mobile browsers.

As you might expect, this is some pretty lousy news. I'll use the first story I read today as an illustration (apologies for lack of linkage, but I've no idea where to find it in a standard browser, and can't be bothered looking). The headline is 'Beowulf Premiere Hits London', and these are the edited highlights, with translation:

Quote: "Beowulf battles three enemies, Grandel (Newcomer Crispin Glover)..."

Translation: Despite having 45 screen credits, including the Back to the Future trilogy, The Doors, Wild at Heart, and the Charlies Goddamn Angels movies, as well as 2 directing credits, none of our staff have heard of Crispin Glover, who started his acting career in 1981.

Quote: "The image has been digitally enhanced using the latest animation techninques, giving Jolie's natural curves a bit of a boost."

Translation: The film is entirely CGI.

This is where I get most of my information about the world from. Explains a lot.

Speaking of Duality...

New competition. I now want song titles that are really fucking good song titles, but genuinely appalling names for porn films. And when I say appalling, I mean that they will, like medication bought from unsolicited emails, induce vomiting. I'll get the ball rolling, with the first track from The Wombats album:

Tales of Girls, Boys and Marsupials.

The gauntlet is down, folks. It is down.

Stealth Atheists - Secular Ninjas.

So, this December the His dark Materials trilogy is getting a movie. From what I've seen of the trailers, I'm not optimistic. But then, I'm never optimistic. I'm a grumpy old man. But that is beside the point.

The books have been perceived as anti-religious, and that's certainly one way of reading them. I take that with a pinch of salt, as I say worse things about religion before my first cup of coffee, then faster and more perceptively after. What they are is humanist - they promote a shared humanity that is far more important than any text. The 'villains' of the piece are those who lose sight of that - those who would harm people for their own ends. Sometimes those ends are religious, but the forces seeking to end religion (which has a palpable presence in the world of the books) also do terrible things to acheive their ends.

What the movie has done is reignited the supposed controversy over the books. From the IMDB, on the Catholic League:

League president William Donohue tells America's Entertainment Weekly magazine, "Parents might be inclined to say, 'Hey, our kid really enjoyed the movie, why don't we buy him His Dark Materials for Christmas?' (It) introduces the kid to atheism. (It's) a stealth campaign."

Excuse me, but how in the name of living fuck do you introduce a child to atheism? I'm sorry, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that a child is born an atheist. The water you sprinkle on it's head doesn't change that for a moment. A child is basically programmed to believe whatever it's parents say. A child also has an inherently dualist mentality - it's very hard for a child to realise that the voice it hears when it thinks is generated by a couple of pounds of electrically charged tissue. So religious notions fit very straightfordly into a child's worldview. I think if you raised someone to 18, with a normal education but no word of God, then presented them a bible, you'd still have an atheist.

Apologies for the stunningly obvious nature of this argument (to most), but the idea that there's a stealth atheist agenda makes me very, very angry, quite amused, and with a peculiar itch to start one.

Vital Information.

For those of you who have an interest in the American political process, or more specifically just how painful it is to watch it from within, then may I direct you to the mighty Gin and Tacos. Funny and savage, it's well worth a read. Observe:

"... I would like to recommend one of my favorite pieces of public opinion research, one that goes a long way toward understanding why our national political discourse is one step above a throng of retards slap-fighting in a mud puddle."

I've learnt some important things today, myself. One is that the new Wombats album is pretty fucking good. It has all the handclaps, la la la's and closed harmonies I expect from pop-leaning indie, along with some spiky guitars and amusing lyrics about doing stupid things and getting dumped for it. I proclaim it to be delightful.

The other thing I've learnt, and will pass on in case it's any use to anyone is this: if you've split your middle finger in two with a blunt knife, it can't hurt to lower your typing speed. It doesn't make you any less of a man. Knocking bloody chunks out of your hand though, quite literally, does.

Movie Time.

Despite a late entry from Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang with:

Shot In The Shoulder / Narration / Black Comedy / Corpse / Breasts

the great 'dumbass keywords' debate was never going to be won by such half-arsed attempts. So, ladies, gentlemen, may I present:

Toupee / Group Vomit / One Night / Lifting Person In Air / Blender

Goonies = for teh win!

The Right to Bear Arms.

This man is a true American hero.

No, Really. Horribly Wrong

It's like joy, wrapped in more joy, dipped in chocolate, and given a dusting of yet more joy. No, actually, it's extremely fucking daft.

If the scriptures are turning out to be too hard to understand, I'm willing to lend elements of my own, admittedly controversial, philosophy to these needy pastors. It goes something like this:

Don't be a cunt.

You'll probably find it works better than sermons on ancient Middle-Eastern tax law.

How Much Cretin does $11 Million Buy?

You've got to feel sorry for Fred Phelps. Just because he and his followers gatecrash hundreds of funerals every year to spread their vile, idiotic, hate-filled message, they've left themselves open to a little spot of litigation.

No, hang on a second, you don't have to feel sorry for him at all. He's one of the worst human beings on the face of the planet, and every second he's not on fire is a second we're not correctly using all this oxygen we have knocking about the place.

Glad that's cleared up.

The Correct Use of Astrophysics.

This is totally unfair. I've killed several large ruminants this year, and no-one thinks I'm that valuable. Some people seem to actively disapprove.

Hallelujah!

I have always said that if I was presented with convincing evidence for some sort of higher power, I would recant my naughty atheism.

That day is here.

Web 2.Ohforfuckssakepeoplearecretins

The IMDB is a tremendous resource. For the nerd who simply must know every little tiny bit of movie trivia, it is indispensable. It recently added a new user-generated feature, however, that is hurting me in the soul and a few other places.

You can now nominate plot keywords for movies, so that people can browse for things they like to see in movies. Here's an example:

1990s / Vomit Scene / Civil War / Border Crossing / Jeep.

Wow. Because I'm betting the guy who searched for '1990's' and 'Vomit Scene' was of course looking for Three Kings, a fairly harrowing black comedy about the first Gulf War, and definitely not looking for really weird porn.

Let's try another:

Mustache / Corpse / Limousine / Split Personality / Fashion

Give up? It is, of course, Batman Begins. Those are the five words that most adequately sum up that film.

So here it is folks. Audience participation time again. I want you to look the single most preposterous set of keywords for any movie on the IMDB. A pat on the back for the winner. Not an actual one, but an internet one. Which is better.

It's Hard to Overstate My Satisfaction.

I have spent a genuinely terrifying amount of time with the various components of The Orange Box, and it's been great fun. I want to go into Portal in greater depth at some point soon. I haven't even touched Team Fortress yet, as I've been plowing through the four singleplayer components. They're all pretty great. The Source engine doesn't really look too great these days, but it features wonderful physics, and must be forgiven.

The mention of this brings me onto a soon-to-be-released game Bionic Commando. A sequel to/remake of the original arcade/NES game of the same name, it looks to be running heavily with the Havok physics as well. Anyone who's ever had the misfortune to have to watch me playing videogames, or listen to me talk about them, or really spend any time near me at all, will know that I am obsessed with physics in games. Utterly obsessed. I've been playing the things for over 20 years, and I'm pretty tired of shooting things and jumping on their heads. What I'm about these days is crushing them with bits of the environment, throwing them into walls, and generally being cruel and unusual.

What you probably didn't know is the original Bionic Commando is responsible for this. It was the first game I ever played that featured interesting physics. You shot out your bionic arm like a grappling hook, grabbed a platform, and swung across. To my 6-year-old self, this was like crack. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. I could never get past the second level of the damn thing, but it didn't matter, because I just loved making the little guy swing around shooting bigger guys with beards.

I knew that this was in development, but it wasn't until I saw the video, and more importantly, heard an orchestral version of the them song I know so well as a four-channel midi, that my inner child had a joy-seizure (I blame the sherbet dib-dabs myself), and I felt compelled to get this all out.

I think a worrying amount of my psyche may be hinged around this game. If this remake blows, I think the whole house of cards may come tumbling down. Woe betide those in my way.

Unnecessary.

Spam On!

Today's spam entry is a different format to those previous. It's not the subject bar, but the body text I shall be detailing. I hope I don't lose anyone with this radical overhaul. With that fully in mind, cautiously onwards we go:

If you are looking for information concerning in which manner you are able tospan some more mass for your reproduction organ, get what's gonna help.

blind olaf grimm birgit ahead wattle vat ! we're we'll.
icicle.

A work of astonishing power and insight, I'm sure you'll agree.

Inappropriate Touching.

This made me laugh harder than anything in the last few days, and I watched a guy kicking a puppy.

You've got to admire his dedication to the job, but when your company has to issue a statement explaining how he "handled the truffles innapropriately", you know you've taken it too far.

The Shame of it All.

Most people, when they find themselves in a position to stare bleary-eyed around a room upon waking and think "What did I do last night?" will be looking at discarded tequila bottles, a cowboy hat, maybe a dead hooker or two. Not me. I look at my DVD shelf, and spy both The Fantastic 4 and Casshern.

In the depths of the foulest mood yet to come upon me this year, which is really saying something, I decided I needed to watch some fairly trashy movies. Now, Blockbuster's 2 DVD's for £10 has previously supplied me with some fairly decent movies (also the Nicolas Cage version of The Wicker Man, but that's for a bet). Last night it provided me with those two.

The Fantastic 4 is nowhere near as bad as people make out. It's a kid's film, based on a comic book that has never really gone for any particular depth, and working purely on those terms it succceeds. It's fun, no-one really lets themselves down too badly (except Julian McMahon, who is the least threatening villain ever, although his previous ouevre has been so shit that I don't really think this represents a significant drop for him). It's also remarkably smutty in places, which I always get a laugh out of in a kids flick.

Casshern is a movie I've seen before, and I have no particular idea why I bought it. It's a bizzarre CG/live-action blend from Japan. It's about a guy who gets reanimated (also, superpowers) shoved in a spiffy white suit of armour, and heads off to kick the shit out of giant robots. The bits in which he does this are some of the most inventive and outright fun fight scenes in any film. Unfortunately, they are bookended by two hours of torturous and nonsensical exposition. You can really get more fun by watching the trailer over and over for a couple of hours. Still, it is full of giant robots. And I does love me some giant robots.

In other news, I seem to spend most of my gaming time not getting called 'a gaywad' by American teeenagers on Halo 3, but instead playing Probotector 2: a 20 year-old NES game. Peculiar behaviour, even by my standards, but the game holds a special place in my heart. For one thing, it was one of the games on an old Playchoice 10 cabinet in my local leisure centre, and the story of it's release in the west amuses me. Originally the series was called Contra. A couple of things got changed in translation. The human main characters and enemies all got changed into robots, so our sensitive European tastes would not be offended by all the violence. Also, and more obviously, the name got changed from Contra to something that sounds like a sci-fi themed sex aid, presumably so no parent would have to endure a conversation along the lines of:

"Mummy, what's a Contra?"

"Why, they're South American guerrilla fighters, Jeremy. The US government funds them to fight communists with money they illegally gained by selling weapons to Iran, a sworn enemy of the state. Don't trust whitey, Jeremy, whatever you do, don't trust whitey."

Or so I imagine. Thanks, Konami, for your enduring sensitivity.

The Late Review.

Seriously, I fucking know. This is not news.

I Have a Hard Time Finding the Dignity in This.

This wasn't going to be my next post. I had a lovely post lined up, about truth, and beauty, and art. But of course, religion had to go and rear it's ugly head.

This whole thing, which most people found amusing for a while, ceased to be even that a while back. But now, seemingly purely for publicity's sake, the Dean of Manchester Cathedral is once more shaking off the binding chains of clear and rational thought, is digging out his soapbox, and he's yelling to the three people that will listen. And yes, I've lapped it up. And yes, I'm transmitting it (albeit to a very small number of people). But really? "Sacred digital rights"?

How daft do we have to be here? We are talking about a game that depicts a war between man and alien in an alternative 1950's in which WW2 never ended. If you were exceptionally sensitive, and I guess some folks are, I can see this causing a problem. But, if you are that sensitive, you have bigger problems, such as the acquisition of truly epic amounts of rubber sheeting.

Sacred. Digital. Rights. You heard it here first. Pesky freedom of expression pales next to 'em.

Truly harrowing.

Who could do such a thing to a book? Sacrilege.

Meanwhile, in Videogames...

Been a while since I wrote about games. Good for those of you who skip these, bad for me, because it means I've been doing things like socialising, reading, even smiling. In short, all the things I do when I'm between meds.

First things first: Halo 3 is really quite good indeed. It would be a churlish man who decided it to be less than splendid.

Now my main point. Xbox Live Arcade has been up and running for two years, but has somehow only this week managed to get a version of Tetris. I even have Tetris on my phone, for Ben & Jerry's sake. I like Tetris. Two years should be plenty of time to put together a game that bears some passing resemblance to Tetris.

Oh God. It's so profoundly horrible. The one thing I genuinely do not need, absolutely have no use for, is a tutorial in how to play Tetris. But this seems to start itself whenever you load the game. This, to my mind, is villainy. No less. I could also do without the breathy voice of a day-release mental patient panting 'single' and 'double' when you clear lines. It doesn't help.

Here's the thing. It's Tetris. Anything you try to add inevitably detracts. Please stop fucking about. It was fine in 1987, it would still be fine now if you didn't need a handheld the size of a small family saloon to play it on.

Manicure.

Work can be genuinely peculiar.

Time Wasting.

I have been trying to write, which is a difficult thing to do when you have fuck all by means of inspiration and an internet connection. Procrastination is the order of the day, which leads me indirectly to this.

For most people reading, this will be the single most pointless thing they've ever seen, but I want you to know a couple of things.

• I'm really procrastinating quite hard.


• Batman-logo peanut sweets are looking like being the high point of my life to date.

If you could properly capture a sigh in text, this one would be both drawn-out and world-weary. It would also smell like the quite excellent Islay malt I bought for 'inspiration'.

Proof, if Proof Were Needed.

Swearing is both big and clever. Because when someone like, say, CNN comes out with a headline like, say "F-Word Bush Editorial Splits Students" they sound like a simpering idiot child, trying to get away with saying what they actually want to say in front of a stern parent.

For the record, the word in question is fuck, and not only is it a word that you can say without being struck by lightning or getting boils in sensitive places, it's flat-out hilarious most of the time.

200 Posts.

As the title would suggest, this is my 200th post on this blog. A time for reflection, I think, a time to ruminate and think about what the last year of spilling bilious HTML has been about.

Well, reading back through the posts, it seems I have spent the last year very angry indeed. This is of very little surprise to anyone, as I have some crazy ideas about how the world should be (here's a hint, it'd be nice if everyone stopped fucking each other over for spare change), and a very, very low tolerance for stupidity.

I don't feel too bad about that, truth be told. The fact that I'm angry about these things simply suggests that my brain is still working, despite it's advancing years and chemical impediments. On reflection, I would also seem to be quite intolerant. But then, there are plenty of things just not worth tolerating.

I also made some gags about genitalia. There has to be a balance. Here's to the next 200 posts.

Cock.

Loathsome Goons.

So, apparently Blackwater Security are going to have their staff taken to trial for killing Iraqi civilians. All well and good, you might think, people who kill folk should probably have that sort of thing happen to them, but this is fairly major news. It shows a couple of very pertinent things:

• That the Iraqi Security Council has finally developed enough of a spine to stand up to the US Governement.
  
  
• That the days of providing money for the GOP being rewarded with a blank chequebook might be drawing to a close.


• Finally, that if this does end up embarassing the US as much as it should, they may start to regard these lunatic mercenaries as just that, rather than a prudent investment.

The Great Experiment Has Failed.

Thanks for your two responses. You two may live (except you Dave, I know that was you outside my window last night).

I'm afraid to say I went against the tide of popular opinion. Somewhere at the back of my head a little voice told me to stay the course. The reason being, she might realise that my sole reason to cross the road would be to get away from her crazy arythmical jerking, upsetting her endlessly, and impinging upon her fundamental rights to be a crazy dancing lady.

That and i thought she had a knife. No-one wants to be stalked by a crazy dancing lady with a knife.

Audience Participation Time.

OK folks, I know you're reading this, but it's time to get over your fear of the comments field, because we face the greatest moral conundrum of our time, and we're going to have to put our heads together if we're to get anything like a working model.

My question, based on a real-life encounter (as in, I'm not making this up, not 'it didn't occur in World of Warcraft'), is this:

Is it OK to cross the road to avoid a middle-aged women in cut-off jeans who is singing along to whatever is on her discman (yes, discman) and is fucking dancing?

I want to know what you folks think. I'll let you scribble it down and then I'll tell you what I did. I judge you first. That's how this works.

Just So We're on the Same Page...

The new Go! Team album is utterly fucking great.

That is all.

Declining Standards.

You've decided you want to establish a neo-nazi group, for whatever reasons you see fit *cough* repressed *cough* retarded *cough*. And you think to yourself, I'm leaving my home country anyway, where would really benefit from my fresh take on an age-old irrational prejudice? Where could I find an awful lot of Jews?

And then it strikes you. It seems so simple. I will form a neo-nazi organisation in Israel!

Seriously, how stupid is that. Were I so inclined towards irrational prejudice (mine are well thought-out, thankyou and goodnight), I would hope that I would not be so dumb as to form an antisemitic organisation somewhere that is chock fucking full of Mossad.

Wasting Yet More Time.

I and others have a new work-related blog, an illuminating set of examples of human inadequacy in practice. I realise it's been done before, but fuck it, we're pretty funny, and have a staggering concentration of idiot in our daily lives. You will read. You will enjoy.

It is here.

Pills.

Going by my intermittent rantings on these here internets, you could easily confuse me for someone who is currently healthy, or at the very least, cogent. Why, I almost did myself about an hour ago, when I set out into the unknown on a bold and noble quest for soup and ibuprofen.

The first thing I noticed was that my sense of balance is shot to all hell. I was kind of aware of this before, but it's a whole different matter when you are no longer surrounded by furniture and other soft things to fall on, but instead giant spiders and serial killers. Nonetheless, I needed a tin of ol' Muligatawny, and continued on to Asda. It's at about this point that everything started to break down. As far as I can tell, I spent the best part of five minutes wandering around, trying to find ibuprofen, all the while mumbling "pills" as loud as one can mumble.*

Long story short, I had to spend some intimate time with a burly security guard named Barry**, who was as much of a gentleman as one can expect, given the circumstances. When I returned home, I found someone had managed to get into my ebay account, tried to buy some otaku shit, cancelled the order, and got me banned.

One suspects the dread hand of the cosplayer at work. Who else would want a "Harajuku Juicy Cute Girl Panda Carry Tote Bag"?

*True.
**Not even slightly true.

Oh, Those Priests

Just how much Child Abuse does $200 million buy you? I'm assuming that as it's for religious purposes, it's tax-exempt.

Amma sore un da headpipes

About a month ago, Michael Bay took a pretty good stab at retrospectively ruining my childhood. He almost succeeded. After a brief convalesence at a top secret location where my head was scrubbed inside and out with bleach, I felt that I was ready to step back into the world again. That I was cleansed, and no more harm could come to me, or to the flimsy structures shoring up my mind. I was so very, very wrong:



Know this, cosplayers, you will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

Update:I've just realised that is a branch of Waterstones the manshecreature is standing in. There's a possibility it's in this very town. I'm going down as soon as I'm mobile again to check the layout. Heads will roll.

Huzzahs!

I am currently feeling like pounded crap. No matter, because help is at hand. I mean, that's pretty much the definition of good news.

Michael Behe just peed a little.

Whilst it's been common knowledge for a long time that viruses and bacteria may pass on DNA to their host species (the Human Y chromosome is little more than a short stretch of DNA that roughly transcribes to 'hairy, with a cock' strapped onto a whole bunch of parasitic DNA), this is the first time the whole genome of a parasite has been found in it's host.

Obviously, this could allow for large, rapid evolutionary movements for the host. It could become immune to the parasite, freeing up resources and giving it a competitive advantage. It could develop new atrributes. Or it could just die. It'll definitely be interesting to see where this goes.

Don't Look Behind the Curtain, Dorothy.

According to a new book, President Bush does a lot of crying behind closed doors at The White House. It goes on to reveal the top causes of Presidential Temper Tantrums:

• When Dick Cheney stood next to him in the big boys bathroom.


• Not being allowed ice cream for breakfast


• Unable to find Mr Snuffles (toy Scotty dog)


• Not being allowed to stay up late to watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre on cable.

I would hope, though very much against hope, that he might have shed a tear when his administration ignored warning services for a full 24 hours and allowed the levees to break in New Orleans, reclassifying the disaster from a federal emergency into an 'act of God', and passing the buck onto insurance companies, that he might have shed the odd tear then. After all, they cost the lives of thousands of US citizens as a cost saving measure. Might just tug at the ol' heart strings, give perhaps a twinge of guilt?

Somehow I doubt it.

A Troubling Development

There is a shower of grotesque bastards pulling up the road outside my house. I am not best pleased at this. I have two options.

• 1. Go out. Sit and drink coffee very slowly. Read. Remain sane.


• 2. Stay here and make a primitive napalm analogue from swarfega, creme de menthe and cat hair.

We'll see what transpires.

Hot Druid Action - Oh My!

OK folks, this is a little exercise in what we call 'logical fallacy'. This man claims that he won the lottery because he is a Wiccan. His new age book store somehow gave him the power (maybe winning lottery numbers spring forth from ley lines) to discern that particular weeks winning numbers. I might be wrong on this, but I had thought that lotteries had been won by at least several non-Wiccans in the past.



I mean, just look at him. Doesn't he look like the luckiest guy you've ever seen? He's stood in front of a magical fucking twig, for God's sake. What I wouldn't give to have his glamourous life.

Grindingly Inevitable.

Dear Australia,

You are no longer to be considered a developed nation by the rest of the world. Whilst we realise that your contributions to any overall world culture were slight at best, please do not consider this an outright snub. We will be sending anthropologists in due course. In the meantime, might we suggest you pass the time by killing and eating a few of your insufferable soap stars? Just a thought.

Yours sincerely,

Everyone Else.

Yep.

Good. Now that's out of the way, we just need a working theory as to how anyone could ever believe the 'Celtic Faerie Tarot' could allow them deep insight into anything other than their own inadequacy and lack of financial prudence, and we can pretty much put this whole thing to bed.

Express Ex Mortis

Sad news today, as the headline on CNN.com, 'Diana Recalled as Princes' Guardian, Friend' was not, as I had hoped, a spot of Daily Express-sponsored necromancy, but was merely another example of the atrocity heaped upon the English language by those that consider themselves to be journalists.

A great shame, on so many levels.

No pictures.

*A note before we begin. Arachnophobes, do not click on the link. You will never sleep again.*

Wow. I'm slightly baffled by this. Behavioural ecology is kind of my thing (it passes the time, but is so much tidier than casual violence), so I will be pretty interested to see what people think is going on here.

Barbarians at the Gate.

At work today, I was approached by a gentleman with an apparantly keen interest in Evelyn Waugh. The conversation went roughly like this:

Gent: 'Er, yeah, so you don't have what I'm looking for, and I know there's a Waterstones, but I'm from Lincoln.'

Me: 'It's pretty much right outside our front door. We have almost everything by Waugh, what was it you wanted?'

Gent: 'I don't know. I'll know it when I see it. I'm from Lincoln.'

Me: 'OK. Did you actually look at the bookshelves?'

Gent: 'Yeah. You don't have any books by Evelyn Waugh. I'm from Lincoln. Where's Waterstones?'

Sometimes I Get Angry

I really can't stress enough how much I hate Asda supermarkets. Huge, hanger-like buildings filled with the lowest possible quality goods, harsh lighting, and endless false-cheery anouncements about delightful special offers (something my own workplace is sadly eager to imitate). I occasionally have to venture in to the one behind my house when I forget to pick up everything I need from the much better supermarket near where I work, or if I simply need booze. I could, if I felt the need, go in there whenever I felt the need to see a wondrous, stereoscopic display of how not to raise a child - to be in an Asda store is to be surrounded by a hundred screaming kids, being ignored by a hundred disinterested parents as they shovel sugary processed crap onto a conveyer belt, finishing chemically what their behavioural cues have started.

This isn't really going anywhere, I just felt the need to get it off my chest. The one ray of light in the shitstorm that is this hive of modern commerce is that today i found a marvellous product. Or rather, the packaging was marvellous.

"Pork Scratchings - Low in Carbs!"

Marketing genius.

One thing that doesn't depress me is Bioshock. I've been playing it for every spare minute of the last three days, and would seem to be only about halfway through. The sheer amount of content is incredible - it's so incredibly detailed, and the amazing thing is that virtually nothing in it has a real-life counterpart. Virtually every surface, machine, item of clothing has been designed from scratch. OK, it's drawn from a twisted revivalist art deco style, but that doesn't really diminish what's been created.

So, It's pretty much all I wanted. Huzzah. It's a pity it launched the same day as Blue Dragon, as I was planning on using that as my jumping-off point back into the creepy and obsessive world of Japanese RPGs. It shall have to wait.

I Grow Discouraged by the Tone.

If I were a less civilised man, I'd embed a midi file of 'Ride of the Valkyries' to go with this.



Go, Bill, Go!

Kicking My Heels and Waiting for Bioshock

I'd warned the people of Japan to pay more attention to their limbs, but apparently they they just did not listen. If they're going to refuse my help, there's very little I can do about events such as these.

In gaming news, the latest game from ruminant-bothering Welshman Jeff Minter hit Live Arcade today. Space Giraffe (yeah, that's right) is kind of like Tempest, but seems like it's been put together by a drug-addled Llama farmer in his mum's cottage. And with very good reason. I think I like it, but it's so odd that I can't be sure. I'm almost certain that it's the sort of game that has quite a degree of hidden complexity. I'm also certain that it's the sort of game in which the closest thing there is to a cheat mode is guzzling peyote and spinning round in a big fucking circle.

Also investigated EA's challenge to the Tony Hawk franchise, the irritatingly lower-case skate. Difficult to control, but all the more satisfying for it, there's a chance that EA will steal the top spot in yet another genre. Peculiar thing is, this time they might deserve it. A few other demoes have appeared in recent days. Fatal inertia is some sort of futuristic racing game; also abomination. Blazing Angels 2 is very similar to Blazing Angels 1, insofar as it is wilfully, Earth-shatteringly shite.

Buzz buzz buzz

Sometimes , there are just no words. And sometimes there are the words "Dude, you held up a betting shop with a dildo, what the fuck did you expect?"

Bees!

Bees! Everywhere!

Much worse than that chicken...

It's a good day when you click on a headline like Beijing's Penis Emporium and it's not just a story about Second Life.

My Sentiments Exactly.

A Certain Degree of Abomination.

Apologies for the orientation of the picture. I am not yet fully back up and running with all my technologies, and so am reliant on sending things from my phone to add pictures. What I will not apologise for, however, and what you can clearly see is what I spent last night doing, is ramming a beer can up a chicken and setting it upon a barbecue.

This is not something I did purely for comedy value, or from a desire to shock, though it is very, very funny (particularly the jaunty angle on the wing -steppin' out!). It's a classic (insomuch that something can be in this context) piece of redneck cookery, and I felt compelled to try it. It works really well. Lovely juicy meat from being steamed with beer, nice charred skin. It was definitely the tastiest abomination of recent days.

In other news, it would really please me if the people of Japan would pay more attention to their limbs. They're useful for all sorts of things.

Of Giant Drills, and Whether You Kill Things

So, Bioshock then. The demo finally downloaded, a full 12 hours after I started it. Were hopes and dreams fulfilled? Shattered, shat on?

Mostly fulfilled, as it happens. You're never going to get the best (by which I mean the open ended moral and economic choices of the best RPGs) that you get in this sort of game from a short demo.

What you do get from this demo is the impression that this is a game that has been designed with genuine care and intelligence. It was fun, a bit more shooty than I was expecting perhaps, but good. The only real mis-step, to my mind, is having a main character called Atlas.

We got it.

A plea for Moderation

It turns out that, should you be a bit daft, it is possible to overdose on caffeine.

To give perspective, this girl drank fourteen espressos. I am 6' 2", 17 stone, and a coffee whore. I could only drink that much coffee in a full day if I really pushed myself. After the first 4-6 I start to feel paranoid and quite unwell. How you push yourself past that point, especially over such a short period of time, I really do not know.

I like the fact that she's dedicating herself to stopping others doing the same profoundly stupid thing that no-one in their right mind would do in the first place. The denial-laced comments from the father are a joy as well. You don't have to peer to hard between the lines to see a broken man muttering "She's a cretin. A fucking cretin." over and over to himself.

Ponderous

There's a demo of Bioshock on Xbox Live Marketplace. A progress bar has never moved so slowly. I needs me some art-deco-Randian-ultra-leftist-social-engineering-gone-wrong-in-a-fucked-up-undersea-world action. Needs it bad.

A spot of bother.

People more moderate than I have said that religion should be tolerated, in spite of the incredible damage it does to society, because of the joy it brings to individuals. Normally I would dismiss this as piffle, and strike them soundly about the skull with whatever came to hand, but today religion has brought me a certain happiness.

Let's assume for a moment that we are evolved from some sort of precursor species. One that perhaps did not have all of mankind's intelligence and capacity for self-delusion. That creature would behave much like every other animal demonstrably does - that is, attempt to find food and breed. Maybe the males would help look after their offspring, though that would depend on whether the food available and the level of danger in the environment would make it a better bet to father and abandon many children, or protect and nurture one to developmental maturity.

Assuming the latter is the case, which seems likely as this is how humans tend to behave, males should show a preference for partners they think to be loyal, reducing the chances of their wasting time and resources to raising another male's child. This brings me, in a roundabout way to my point.

One of the most obvious ways of assuring a female was, if only to begin with, faithful, would be if she was a virgin. Therefore males that actively selected for this (I'm assuming this precursor to be social because of overwhelming evidence that I'm not listing here) should have more luck reproductively, and a greater chance of passing their genes on.

The huge, belly-laugh inducing irony therefore is that one of the traits of the major religions (no sex before marriage) held up as an example of how humans are somehow inherently different from other species, that they possess some spark of the divine, is simply a ritualised form of a demonstrably evolutionary trait.

I'll be chuckling under my breath for weeks.

Sometimes, the world makes me very tired.

I was aware that various loons were pushing for the re-establishment of a Muslim caliphate, but I wasn't aware that so many women were keen on it. Not to worry though, if you're feeling like your fundamental rights as a human being are not being infringed upon enough, the fine, fine folk at Hitz Ut-Tahrir can help. Not feeling enough as you're being treated enough like property? You know who to call.

There's a reason that Muslim law is not embraced the world over. It is because it is insane.

Trouble in the Colonies

Earlier today, I had written a little piece on gun control, on how it's good, I like it. It was focusing on how countries in which you can't buy a gun have lower crime rates than those in which you can. However, I decided to spare you all that, as it's pretty much common sense, providing you don't live here.

I couldn't let the day end without bringing up this little gem. Seriously. Why are they keeping up the pretence any longer? If someone's buying a gun, it's not for self defence. They either want to rob you, or shoot their fucking cat. Pure and simple. The sad fact is, as long as sales tax is paid on guns, they remain vital for the protection of freedom. If sales tax on guns was dropped tomorrow, I think the US government might start to consider the possibility that they have a role in violent crime.

A minor discovery

This is a work of pure fucking genius, and it allowed me to create this:



I'm petitioning these guys to produce the same thing for NES carts as soon as possible.

Semantics

There comes a time in a young man's life where he must ask himself a very important question.

Not "Is my vacuum cleaner on fire?" - that much should be obvious, there are flames coming out of it, after all - but rather "Is my vacuum cleaner on too much fire? Could I not get that big spiderweb out of the corner before being consumed by the uncaring inferno?"

Hmmm...

Good news for Cillian Murphy, bad news for almost everyone else.

The study points at features like curved eyebrows being a deciding factor, but unfortunately for me neglects to mention what your chances are if you have a single, gargantuan eyebrow straddling your face like Brian Blessed on his birthday.

Dear Thailand...

Because nothing says 'vicious military coup' more than anthropomorphic cats.

Hahahahahahahahafuckyou!

A human skull with neanderthal features? Why, that would seem to be one of those things the religious have been so very worried we might find. What's it called? A missing...

It's on the tip of my tongue.

F'n Metal!

The lead singer of Whitesnake fought a bear and won!

Seriously, terrible band. But he fought a bear.

No, we are just King.

Anyone who knows me has seen the powerful love I hold for Katamari Damacy. It's one of the few things that warms the cockles of my usually joyless black heart.

Ouch.

Oh God.

Actually, whilst I can't pretend that this bit of news doesn't upset me, it's easy to remain philosophical. A year in which I can still look forward to Assassins Creed, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Halo 3, Haze, Super Mario Galaxy, Call of Duty 4, The Club, Zack and Wiki, Half Life 2: Orange Box, Left 4 Dead, Burnout Paradise, Rock Band, Metroid Prime 3 and Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is not a year that needs a Grand Theft Auto game, per se.

Bringing Me Some of That Good News.

Coffee apparently helps prevent cancer these days. I am fucking invincible. Ignore the bit about exercise, I'm sure it's not important. And anyhow, Wii counts.

And They Have a Plan.

I have now been up for almost 24 hours. Most of this involved lifting heavy objects. A small amount involved playing Monkey Ball. This is a balance I intend to redress.