There can Only Be One: Court Edition!

In Harrisburg, Illinois a man was arrested Thursday for carrying a concealed sword into the Saline County Courthouse.

Winnipeg: More than just a Crimehole

It's apparently home to the world's largest fanbase to Brian De Palma's 1974 rock opera/horror/parody film The Phantom of the Paradise.

In fact, today is the second Phantompalooza, where the Peg's fans freak around with eachother and some of the actors.

I just found this bizarre.

Damemall2hell

Rant time:

I really hate those kids who wear rollerblade shoes. I don't really know why, they just piss them off. I guess they're just like the scooter fad a few years back (*shudder*).

I first encountered them one night while working. I looked behind and saw a kid seemingly sliding across the floor. I had no idea how he was doing this, but in a few moments it sunk in: He had wheels hidden in his shoes! I thought that was reserved for secret agents and robots? Now I see kids 12 and under wearing them all over!

Back in my day, we walked to places, and if we wanted wheels for our feet, we had to get painful surgery! These kids these days I tells ya, always so...*falls asleep*

I turn my back for five seconds...

...and the Hardy Boys solve the mystery of the Flying Rods.

Not that they were the most exciting cryptids, but I guess Ill miss them.


How could this happen to meeeeeeeeee....

Was that really necessary?

The grand majority of things I do aren't necessary.

Did I really need to make a trailer out the 'movie' my friends and I made last summer?

Do I really need to spend my valuable braintime thinking up worthless new characters and various media to portray them?

Do I really need to attempt to write songs that clearly ape Beck, R.E.M., and David Bowie?

Do I really need to think about organizing a bizarre cover band, despite my lack of actual music knowledge and skill?

Do I really need to imagine crossovers between various cartoons, comics, games, etc. that really have no business meeting?

Do I really need to go back to those damn fanart sites over and over again?

Do I really need to prattle on and on and on about things I don't need to do?

I'm quite talented at wasting everyone's time, am I not?

Day In, Day Out

The new season of Doctor Who started a few weeks ago on BBC. The last episode featured kung-fu monks and werewolves in Victorian Scotland. CBC can't get this fast enough.

Yesterday I played the online demo of Sabretooth Game's Universal Fighting System card game. I actually liked wht I saw and played, plus it currently has three cool licenses (Street Fighter, Soul Calibur, and Penny Arcade. Yes, that Penny Arcade), and I think they've been used quite well. My only real beef with it is that some of the SF/SC art is really quite awful, but maybe I've just been spoiled by VS System and all it's Bachalo-ness, and Allred-ness, and McGuiness-ness...well, you get the point.

Funky Junk

Because I'm feeling lazy, here's a dumbass musing I made a while back:

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Sometimes, when my mind is not occupied by anything of any importance to me or others (especially at night, before I go to sleep), it wanders around and makes some very strange concepts and asks some quite odd questions. It relates specific words to a ‘matching’ food, and seasons to music artists. I notice that the dinosaurs existed for a very, very long time, and that humans have hardly even come close to matching their existence record. I ask rudimentary, answerable questions like ‘Why do we hiccup?’, and much deeper ones like ‘How can the universe exist? All theories state that something just created it suddenly from nothing. If God created the universe, how did God come to exist? How long did he/she/it wait in the void before deciding to create something? And if the universe was created by a Big Bang, where did the bang come from?’ and even ‘Can plants feel? Do they have any sort of consciousness?’ Answers to these questions aren’t really important. In fact, I’d probably enjoy life more if they are never answered.
I speculate what it would be like to live in the woods, what it would be my dog for a day, or to fly. I try to figure out where would be a better place to live: a flying city, a city in the middle of the ocean, or an underground city. I cringe at every thing I perceive I did wrong in my interactions with others up until that point. I think about what I want to do with my life, figure it out, and then dismiss my idea as delusions of grandeur, sending me back to square one. I put myself in a scenario where I have to spend $1,000,000 in one day, and then decide upon my strategies for succeeding in such an event. I wonder if there is a universe out there that was spawned from my thoughts, or the thoughts of others. I theorize about what ghosts really are. All this and more in a night of aimless thinking.

As I am writing this, I think to myself ‘In all the time I wasted thinking up such useless junk, could I have brainstormed something useful? Like a cure for cancer? Or the solution to world hunger? Maybe an efficient, renewable fuel source? Or maybe even something really beneficial to myself? What could I have done during all those hours?’ The world may never know.

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The best movie you never saw is now on DVD

You know you're bored...

...When you decide to make a role-playing game. With all the rules, sourcebooks, and scenarios.

Really, that's what I'm doing.

And I'll probably continue doing it until E3, when I get to see the new damn Smash Bros.

I have nothing to say at the moment, feel free to talk amongst yourselves

Answer! Answer!

Happy Dead Jesus Bunny Chocolate Day

Easter candy has been available since January. I would complain about the logic of that, but I love Easter candy. It's easily the most delicious candy of the entire year.

Cadbury Mini-Eggs are easily the most addicting candy to exist. They take the concept of Smarties and M&M's, and amplifies it by infinibijillion, which I think is a number I just made up. Cadbury also produces the ever-lovable Creme Eggs, which now come in a billion varieties, including peanut butter, Caramilk, and Wunderbar(still one of the strangest names I have ever heard.)It's really too bad you can only get them during one period in a year.

Well, atleast it's been a choco-tastic season. Goodbye, choco-tastic season. I'll miss you.

Orca: He gonna Get Ya Big Free Willy Style

I consider myself somewhat of a terrible movie scholar. Not that I've intentionally gone out to the local Mom 'N Pop video stores (and that horrible abomination, Blockbuster) and rented the cream of the crap just to experience the sheer hilarity and self-abuse that ensued. No, I just like reading reviews of bad movies and, every once in a while, browse the various sections of the video store and observe the covers that stand out. I may actually get to see one of these failures of film every once in a while (the one closest to me is Blue Monkey, an obscure 80s giant bug flick with an amazingly misleading title that I once caught on late night TV. The sheer awfulness of that piece work pretty much justifies a write-up of it's own).
Tonight, while sitting around with two friends browsing the television after viewing a clown propose to his girlfriend on Howie Mandell's terrible gameshow on NBC, and after viewing the first act of the classic Rugrats Passover Special (I'm sure Jews everywhere appreciate Nickelodeon recreating one of their most important backstories with a bunch of babies obsessed with diaper humor), we turned it to the Aboriginal Network(yes, we up here in Canada get an entire channel targeting the Native populace, although the programming they choose to do so can be quite...different, as you will see). And what happens to be on? Why, legendary B-Movie Jaws knockoff, Orca.
Now, you may be wondering, what does Orca have to do with Aboriginal peoples? Well...uhhh...there's the generic Wise old Native...er, and some sort of Nature theme...well, atleast it has alot more to do with the Network's market than Batman & Robin, which also appears on it quite regularly. But, back onto the shitty movie at hand.
If you've been scanning sites featuring bad movie reviews, you've probably encountered Orca a few times. Released in 1977, the film is, as mentioned before, a transparent knockoff of Jaws. It even mimics some scenes and characters verbatim (alright, not verbatim. Replace 'Boat' with 'Cabin' for one scene.) The one thing this Killer Whale has over his shark nemesis? Instead of killing stuff for no reason, HE'S WITH A VENGEANCE. Yep, this whale is knocking people off left and right trying to get revenge on the sailor who killed his gal and baby(who just tears out it's mother's hanging corpse and is blown off deck with a hose. How dramatic.)
The rest of the movie sees Orca tearing shit up like a twister. He sinks ships, breaks cabins, bites off legs, and even causes HALF THE TOWN TO EXPLODE. All the while partaking in some of the absolute worst death scenes I've ever seen. We don't get a chance to see him actually pull people in, the camera pans so fast as to trick us, but it doesn't work in the slightest. Even worse, he mainly kills off characters that haven't even had time to become 1-Dimensional. All the while, the main hunter who killed Orca's girl watches the madness around him, and some marine biologist woman watches him watch the madness(Earlier in the film, she told some sort of class that Orca's probably thought human speech was retarded. Arrogant assholes.)
The hunter decides he must face the whale in final combat. I thought this meant a boxing match, but nope, it means the only characters with any development plus some guy who looked like the Fonz were taking the boat and going after the whale. Fonz-guy is killed off early and without fanfare, which makes sense considering I didn't know who he was or why he was there (maybe I wasn't paying attention...). They follow the whale to the frozen north, where the bearded guy tries to make it out in a lifeboat and is chomped by our whaley friend. We then see Orca pushing a damn iceberg into their ship, causing ice rocks to crush Wise Old Native(wait...that's never happened before!) and causing hunter and marine biologist lady to flee onto the iceflow. Orca then separates the two, plays a short game of dodge bullet with the hunter, gets him to fall in the water and then does an amazing underwater tail slap that sends the guy flying against the iceflow in the most hilariously cartoony fashion a supposed suspense film could muster. The movie ends with Orca swimming off, finally getting the revenge he sought, and the one survivor, marine biologist lady, being rescued by a helicopter.
It's been a while since I've laughed so hard at a movie. It is so ridiculously dumb, with all the scenes mentioned above and the addition of the R2-D2-dying-while-being-raped-anally sounds the hurt whales emit. And, of course, the best part of all: the intro, where a whale breaks a fake-looking great white shark like a graham cracker, meaning to lampoon the movie that is much, much, much, much, much, much better than this is.
If you and you're friends desire to make your own Mystery Science Theatre 3000, this is a prime target for your jokes. Leave Blue Monkey for seconds....

Immortalism

I made it into Electronic Gaming Monthly, via their message boards. Observe:


Booyagah!

Amusing Obscure Comic Characters: Congo Bill

Haven't done one of these in a while.



From AdamArnold.net:
At first merely an adventurer and soldier of fortune, the man known only as Congo Bill soon came to appreciate the native beauty of Africa and her creatures, becoming a noted naturalist and trapper, and refusing to kill any animal unless left no other choice. His honesty, integrity, and courage made Congo Bill a legend and the African authorities, and there was almost nowhere he was not welcome.

While working for a time as a special investigator and troubleshooter for the World-wide Insurance Company, Congo Bill came into contact with Janu, the Jungle Boy, actually the orphaned son of a famous guide, now living wild in the jungle.

For the next several years Congo Bill served as guardian and father-figure to young Janu, until the boy left for America to receive a proper education.

Sometime later Congo Bill attempted to save the life of Chief Kawolo, an old friend and tribal witch doctor, who had fallen off a cliff. Despite Bill's best efforts, the old man knew he was dying and bequeathed Bill a final gift–an ornate ring carved with the image of a gorilla. By rubbing the ring, the dying man explained, Bill would be able to trade identities for one hour with Kawolo's tribal god, a golden gorilla. To humor the old man, Bill accepted the ring, believing the story to be silly superstition, until an avalanche trapped him in a cave and he has no other hope of freeing himself except to rub the ring. Instantly, Bill found his mind in the body of the golden gorilla, while the gorilla's mind inhabited his body. Now a unique hybrid of man and beast, Bill freed his body from the cave and carved a new legend across Africa over the next several years as the remarkable man-ape called Congorilla.

Finally, Janu, now college-educated, returned to Africa and convinced Congo Bill that industry was the hope of Africa's future. Retiring from the brush, Bill and Janu opened a small industrial firm that soon became a large conglomerate with Bill as its president and Janu as vice-president.

Though financially successful, Bill found little satisfaction in the world of business, and when the world was threatened with extinction, Bill once more became Congorilla, joining a number of other Forgotten Heroes (see the Forgotten Heroes) and Superman to save humanity from destruction.

Edit: The Gorilla has a rail gun. Maybe not as good a find as a Small Pox Green Lantern, but, hey, the gorilla has a rail gun.

Batman is such an asshole

There seems to be a group of people who think Batman is too much of a jerk in modern comics. Well, at the very least, he hasn't crossed this line again:

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Three things I noticed:
1. Batman looks an awful lot like Space Ghost in the second and last panels.
2. The one guy's expression in the last panel. It looks like his eyes are exploding out of his head.
3. Why does Batman have purple gloves?

And it is also to be noted that later on, Bats shoots a guy.

Legendary Search for the Legendary Master: The Failure

Three Singaporeans were found safe on Thursday after getting lost on what they said was a mission to find a legendary karate expert on a snowy mountainside in Japan.

"Japan looked so small on the world map that we thought we would be able to find him straight away," one of the group, aged between 25 and 50, was quoted as saying.

Grade School Geography FTW.

Dingy!

I have become convinced that the two Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi games have the best battle systems of any RPG. The realization came over me gradually, and when it came it sunk in and is now an embedded part of my psyche. My reasoning is clear:

There are two types of battle system that are the most prevalent in RPGs: Turn-based and Action, both of which can be completely serviceable to the game itself, but both have flaws. Turn-based systems provide opportunity for strategy, but are usually slow and boring (the best of these games usually have something to make these battles more exciting, like FF6/3's character abilities or the character building of FFV). Action systems are certainly more interactive, fast and enjoyable, but in the end they usually consist of pressing the same button over and over and over again.

PM and M&L combine the best of both systems: the strategy of turn-based games with the interactivity of action-based games. They even sidestep the mashing problem in Action RPGs by making the attacks as varied as possible. It really does make you WANT to fight, instead of avoiding them like the plague in every case but perquisite leveling up. The ante was raised once again in Paper Mario & The Thousand Year Door by adding those insane super attacks.

The two series do the have their own differences, though. M&L has more defensive options, but fewer variable offensive ones. PM is the opposite, with very few defensive techniques but gobs of offensive stuff. In the end, though, both are awesome and are my top recommendations for someone tired of Final Fantasy and it's spawn.

Speaking of FF spawn: no, I haven't played Kingdom Hearts II yet, but I will...eventually.

Battlin' 'Bots

Awesome.

Greetings from Spaceland

Today was the 1st of April. I didn't feel like celebrating. Call me a grumpy gus if you like, I don't care. Since I'm not going to write anything special, I'll update you on a few things:

*Two weeks ago I bought Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (I felt like completing this one before moving onto the DS sequel) and Drill Dozer. I've been plowing through M&L so I can soon join in on the Tetris DS bliss. But the game itself is great, albeit it sometimes gets annoying how I just get past a certain set of annoying enemies, only to move onto the next area and find AN EVEN MORE ANNOYING set of enemies. If you haven't played Mario & Luigi, I say you should go out and do it, for Fawful's dialogue alone.
Drill Dozer has also been fairly enjoyable. It is a classical platformer using the shoulder buttons in a very neat way. Not as good as some of the other platformers on the GBA (like Astro Boy: Omega Factor, which I WILL find some day.), but still worth a look. I may give these games a larger overview in the future

-A bought one of those fancy iPod's a week ago. I guess I'm one of the cool kids now.