Already Dead

It wasn't that long ago that I was complaining that there was no one to talk to online about TMNT: Smash Up. Now that I've seen both major communities devoted to the game, I want to go back to being alone. This is how my standards work.

I can't sleep because it's too hot in here. I have two fans on and a window cracked open and I'm still too hot. This is the downside of summer.

The upside of summer: I'm not too cold.

Just now I'm reading the comments to this, and it got me a-thinkin', about the omnipresent concept of 'dumb fun'.

Dumb fun does, in fact, exist, and it is completely alright. The problem, especially today (and especially considering the material discussed in the post, IE modern superhero comic events), is that they're almost uniformly all dumb and no fun. Postmodern audience awareness has made it so that silliness is now a detriment, and unfortunately that also has a negative effect on creativity. Plus, everyone now thinks they're a genius, and especially in the case of mainstream superhero comics, they are serious writers writing serious literature, even if that serious literature involves zombie Green Lanterns.
So, really, dumb fun is dead, or at least in hiding. In its place is dumb plodding self-aggrandizing tedium.

ANIMALS...?

You know what I love? The sudden appearance of unidentified black goo. Take that, Alaska!

Also, just for fun: The amazing lizard that swims in sand. Lizards have a good track record for being neat, it seems.

That's Not Me

A narcissistic aside: My message board alter ego is mentioned on this lovely 1UP.com podcast featuring lovely 1UP people (that's 6/22/2009), at about 25 minutes in (but you can wait while the good folks talk about other things, surely?). The ribbing I got I will take like a man.

So, with death in the news recently, I really must ask: when it comes to well-known people biting it, which was a better: this month, or this time last year?

June 2009 leads in sheer volume: David Carradine kills himself while jerking off to start off the summer, and then Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and now Billy Mays (why is he mentioned alongside everyone else? Fuck if I know) all expire within days of each other. There really is no competition here.

But what about in quality? This designation is a bit more contentious. June 2008 had the deaths of three giants: Bo Diddley, George Carlin, and Stan Winston (he is a major figure for nerds, you see). The major ones, BD and Carlin, I'd say at least come close to equaling the entirety of this month's stiffs, they being examples of superior human beings. Sure, a lot more people are probably sad to see Jackson or McMahon go (and not to diminish the work of either, although Jackson was far far far far far far past his prime), but my personal bias (and objective fact) say that last year's stiffs can edge 'em out. Note: Billy Mays is a non-factor.

How about the shock factor? This also gives the edge to this month, because the thing about last year was that, while losing those people was incredibly sad, they were all old, and its not like we don't think anyone past 70 isn't as good as dead (Winston is the exception). So, while McMahon falls under this, the rest of them were still unexpected. Bonus points for Carradine's bizarre wanking death in Bangkok, of all places.

My decision? Well, most of the facts point to this month being the better of the two months worth of deaths, but my own personal opinions still point me in favour of last year. Surely, that is what will determine it for most people. Who can stay objective in a field such as this?

Mutilated Lips

I find this amusing.

This may also be a challenge to my friends, BTW.

Animals!

Old Animal! news is still Animal! news.

New fossils up north discovered. It's a seal! It's an otter! It's both!

It's an animal that is right up my alley!

Kids are (going to be) dumb

Okay, taking off the goofy bastard gloves for a minute...

Alberta is trying to pass a new law that allows parents to opt their kids out of certain classes in public school.

This is wrong on many levels.

Just because you decided to trust your favourite holy book (or, in the worst case scenario, white supremacist literature) instead of reality doesn't mean you get special treatment in public school. Want your kid to grow up just like you? Don't send 'em to public school. Public school is where they are exposed to public education, remember. If you decide your kid would be better off not knowing the basics of the world, you have other options. This whole thing is unnecessary and idiotic.

Plus, I mean, how many kids are going to use this just to get out of class? If they're both lazy AND smart, they're going to exploit the hell out of this. Them kids are tricksy.

I also don't like the fact that this was hidden in a bill that also (finally) adds sexual orientation to their human rights statute. That's just cheating tactics, and I've been noticing it a lot lately in new bills in Canada. This is the same way the feds got that bill that lets them decide which film projects 'contribute to Canadian culture' (Read: dumbed down shit) and get vital funding.

So yeah, my hopes are Albertans realize what a bad idea this is and force their reps to drop it before it causes out the wazoo.

Smarter people talk about it.

Animals!

You know what I like? Animals!

Especially ones like this.

More on this order!

I remember back when I used to post a lot about monkeys or people with swords. I think I'm going to post more about Animals!

The Big List of Real Funny Names

Using this, you can search up the names of dead people. Naturally, one would want to exploit this for all it's worth, looking up whatever humorous names one could find. This post will be used to list all the good finds:

DARK ANDERSON
ISADORE ANUS
HALO BAER
SHADOW R BERGER
PIRATE BLACK
HANS BLOB
George W Boner
HORACE D BOOB 
JOSI BOOGER
BURR CROWS BREAST
PUNCH BRIGGS
SPACE BUCK
ELECTRIC BUTTRAM
CHOCOLATE CHAN
FAT CHEW
Chin Chink
DALLAS CHIPS
HYMAN CHUD
ENOCH COCK 
DOUCHE COLES
COOL JOE COOL
INGEBORG A CUM
THEODORE DERP
LOUIE GHOST DOG
PHILLIP DOG TAKING DOG
VIVA DORKS
CHAR P DOUCHE
FURRY FANNIE
DIXIE FIGHT
AMERICA FIST
BEN FRANKENSTEIN
LOL FUGIT
SMILE GAMES
IMA R GAY
UBIQUITOUS P GOD 
HARRY GOOBER
ROBERT T WOLF GUTS
BONER HAMMERS
HAY HAY
O HAP HENRY
SLIMER HILL
YODA HOLMES
VIRGIL CHARLES DOG WITH HORNS
BEN HURR
SAD J JACKSON
DOCTOR D JAY
THICK JEW
CRAZY JIM
HITLER JOHNSON
CHASTITY N JUSTUS
FRED E KRUEGER
BUS LIVENGOOD
MARY A LOBSTER
SMILE LOVE
MANLY MANN
LESTER MEAT
TARD MIX
IWANNA MOORE
WHALE MUSE
FATHALLA NAKED
ISSA NAZI  
NUDE NOBLES
OLEY NOES
Captain Outrageous
THE OWL
TOAST PATTON
ELEUTERIO PENIS
HANDSOME PEEPLES
MISTER PERSON
PAUL PIZZ  
YODEL POLIWODA
EBONY PONCE
Jesus Poo
Z Mahboobi Poo
Chauncey MC Queer
Abraham Rape
BUNK RAPE
LOTTA RAPE
SOR REAM
JOE ROBOT
OLD SALT
SIMONE PIE L SANTANA
OMER SEX
WILLIE SEX
OCIE SHITE
BOLESLAW SLAM
IMA SMELLY
SAMUEL SPAZ
MERCY SPOONER
UNKNOWN STORM
B TARD
ALVIN E TARD
MOG THOMPSON
HEDWIG TITZ 
IRON ROSCOE TOOTLE
MAJESTIC UNDERWOOD
Urban Wanker
DER WAT
OLD WHISKERS
CHEESE WILLIAMS
MURDER WILLIAMS
BONES WILSON
SAUCY WILSON
FUK YU

An Unknown Substance Called...the mass

First things first, and then there were none.
Vs. System provided me many hours of Internet fun, and I applaud it for that. There may never again be something where Superman and Howard the Duck can stand side by side and both be effective Parademon deterrents.
********************************************************************************

But enough with the weepy stuff, now onto the strange.

Reading this review of some obscure cartoon whose existence means nothing to anyone, I came across the following passage, which interested me:

"Some things, apparently, resist anthropomorphization and as a result can be neither understood nor managed; I cannot, for the life of me, attribute any distinctly human characteristics to the people who made The Adventures of the American Rabbit. Any human being, no matter how mentally incapacitated, would be cognitively developed enough (by the very fact of their humanity) to never produce a film like this. Perhaps it is the work of amoebas."

Now, I think this a lot actually, when I see movies or TV shows of a certain kind (kids stuff, mainly). What I see, I just cannot imagine a human being, an actual modern, normal person, creating it. Most of the time, I don't even care, and thus the questions do not arise. But when I do, its...jarring, to say the least. Who made this? How did they make this? What possessed them to make it? It'd be far more comforting if the things were a product of robots, like Archie comics are.

The 30 things about 2008

I know people like shit like this, so I decided to do this too. Not only that, it feels good to get this stuff all out in the open before year's end.

Eight Things I Liked in 2008

Crossover Fighting Games

My waiting for Smash Bros. Brawl finally came to end this year, and lo I was happy. The last month of speculation was both fun and frustrating (with dumbasses wailing about the things they wanted but didn't get), but very memorable in any case.
And when the days of Smash Bros. excitement had ceased, I was given another thing to get giddy about: a new Capcom VS. game! Tatsunoko vs Capcom kept me busy for the rest of the year, and I loved every minute of it. Thank you Nintendo and Capcom for your gifts to me!

Old Albums

I barely bought any new CDs this year...just the new Beck, Brian Wilson, and Sloan albums (I liked all three of them). However, I totally made up for it by buying and downloading a ton of older albums. Lots and lots of Bowie, some Beck, Pet Sounds...and others. It's been a good year for discovering music that I missed. I just recently added Ween's The Mollusk to that list, and it yet another excellent album. Thank you, learning how to use torrents properly!

Webcomics

Some people hate webcomics. I hate the bad ones (most of which can be seen skewered here), but found quite a few great ones this year. The major ones: This one and this one. Oh c'mon, I'm not going to tell you what they are...go read 'em, ya lazy jerk! I guarantee a million laughs, or your money back. And since I get paid nothing for this, you would get nothing back! Hahahahahahaha!

Ordering Online

Man, now that I can do this, I can get so many things. I bought comics I had only dreamed about! I imported a videogame all the way from Hong Kong! It's so fun and requires very little effort on my part.

Venture Bros.

My favourite show on TV. No other cartoon, and maybe even not-cartoon, has been able to combine loving geek references, great dialogue, and intricate storytelling like this one. Season 3 wasn't as strong as season 2, but it still had many brilliant moments throughout: the return of Henry Killinger, the Victorian superteam with Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde fighting Nichola Tezla in a blimp, the whole creepy climax in the Dr. Qym episode, pretty much everything to do with Sergeant Hatred, and the final two episodes with their awesome, bombastic action sequences.
I can't believe I have wait another year for another season. Le sigh.

Final Fantasy on XBox

Not that I actually care about FF anymore, but the E3 announcement of Numero 13 being on the 360 and the fanboy explosion was easily one of the funniest things ever. If only Metal Gear ended up on XBox instead of the fucking iPhone, oh the laughs we could have had!

Companies Remaking Games I Like

They remade two of my favourite games ever, Chrono Trigger and Kirby Super Star, for the DS. So now they can be the favourite games of everyone who didn't get to play them on the SNES....OR ELSE. Me? I didn't buy them. I have the originals, I don't need to waste money on that.

Downloadable Games

Lots of video game stuff this year! With games like Braid and Castle Crashers, and now Street Fighter II Remix, downloadable games have been getting a lot of publicity recently. And really, it's a good thing: a lot of games that would have never got off the ground are getting a better chance, and some genres long since extinct (like my beloved beat 'em ups) have the chance to be revived without people complaining about prices for arcade-type games. Plus, it means for simple to get into fun for us all. I am looking forward to the new age of the downloadable games!

Well, this is what I feel like doing today. Sometime soon..HATRED!

Technical Junk

Schoolwork is goin' A-OK, for the most part.

I'm adding some new links on the sidebar, because I can:

http://whenwillthehurtingstop.blogspot.com/ - A site that has and will explain, in multiple parts, how comics imploded in the 90s. Fascinating stuff.

Sore Thumbs - Former EGM/1Up editors Dan "Shoe" Hsu and Crispin Boyer explore facets of game journalism. With more companies being caught in the act of stupid crap in recent years, it's really interesting to hear how this kind of thing has been going down for years.

Also, Warren Ellis betrayed my trust, letting me go back to his blog and enjoy, and then not even putting his disgusting pictures behind a link this time! For shame.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Even considering all the political hullabaloo this week, this may be the stupidest thing I'll read all week. The article itself speaks of terrible things, but the comments make the whole thing even worse.

And I guess I go back to school now. Joyous occasions.

My Promethean Past Haunts Me Still

CRAZY INTERNET USING MY LIST WRONG AGAIN!

"Krystal remains the third most requested character that did not make it into the final roster (behind Geno and Ridley). No-one really knows why she wasn’t made a playable character, since less popular characters were selected over her."

It's quite obvious that this statement was based on my damned tally from all those years ago. It was based on the number of letters chosen by the developers (based on their tastes, not on who was most popular). We don't actually know who was requested the most or not (aside from Sonic.)

Grrrrr, two years later and the improper use of my one and only actual effect on the minds of others still lives.

And no, I don't think this post should have gone on the Smash Blawg. This is my personal bullshit, so it makes more sense to put it on my personal blog. Besides, I'd rather not waste a post there when I could not post a strategy for three weeks!

Oh it doesn't matter anymore

http://wordle.net/gallery/This_is_what's_on_my_blog___

Vitrolic About the News

First, superhero comic-related antics:

Marvel to introduce new villain for Spider-Man

Marvel displays their knack for underestimating the intelligence of the human race.

(Although to be fair...the design isn't THAT bad.)

Guess who's back among the living to start off Final Crisis?

IT'S GRANT MORRISON, THERE MUST BE A CATCH!

OH GOD IT'S GEOFF JOHNS, THERE IS NO CATCH!

And now, news that matters:

Here's the plan: Kill myself by blowing up my high school, and then when I get to heaven, kill Jesus. It's perfect!

Why couldn't have I thought of something like this? Real life is full of much more creativity than one would imagine!

Don't Know what They're Missing

Videogame industry afraid to ask Grant Morrison for assistance.

Highlight from this story from a year ago that I have just read:

"A few years ago, he was given a chance to make an impact on video games. He was asked to write a script for the 2003 Xbox game "Battlestar Galactica." Morrison dove in to provide some depth to the tale of war between humans and enemy Cylons. "I had come up with whole storylines and was trying to do more emotional stuff," he said. "The missions were more weird. You had to find an [alien] brain and feed it sugar so it would come alive and tell you where to go next."

"I wrote this huge thing breaking down the whole game into segments and levels. The idea was to create a city that was really immersive. You could go into places and really unusual things might happen if you go into certain stores. You go into one place and you can learn voodoo from the proprietor of the store, and then have to go on missions involving that. The vehicles you could actually get were more interesting, like UFOs, flying saucers and boots that would allow you to bounce around over skyscrapers."

Anger and Hate

Unless you haven't been paying attention, I've changed my Simply Smashing blog to Chamber of Dread. My initial posts give a really poor example of what it's about, unfortunately. It's pretty much just a place to write down my creative process, where I spawn a bunch of half-assed ideas that will abandoned in the neat future. Okay, that's not entirely true. Some of them will go all the way to some poor publisher who will burn them as an effigy to some loser's lack of talent. So, they will still be half-assed ideas, just fully-realized half-assed ideas. Also, instead of here, I will post all the inane videos over there, and maybe links to my published works (because some are desperate enough to publish them). It might be fun to subject people to it, I don't know.

Here is an article by Devin Faraci, attempting to distinguish himself from the the annoying uber nerds. Whether or not you find his article successful, it's a subject all us nerds need to take to heart. I may be a loser, but I'm a loser with standards! I refuse to associate myself with cosplayers and people who get mad when Beast man is voiced by a black man or something stupid like that.

Sadness and Anger

Good God, I've found some Garfield strips funny. Namely, this one and this one. They are certainly the oddest I've seen in a while. Maybe Jim Davis is overworking his robots, and this is the result. I'm guessing Jon is going through some mood swings - the depression in the first leading to the anger in the second. Or...something.

A Potpourri of Potpourrian Potpourris

Visit my friend's blog. He is a good person, despite his apparent lack of hotlinking knowledge.

YES I love it.


"I am Banoctopus!"

YES YES YES WANT WANT WANT NOW NOW NOW HARD HARD HARD

NO LONGAZ

COLUMNZ ON WEBSITEZ

Okay, he does make the point that videogames do not promote illiteracy, which is about the easiest point in the world to make. But I the other issue here is that kids aren't reading enough books, and he doesn't address that really all that well...

"So if English children are not so much interested in picking up a paperback, maybe that says more about the quality of books currently being foisted upon them than it does about the evils of digital entertainment. Children are, after all, quite discriminating. If someone writes a new Harry Potter, they'll curl up with it for days. If not, there's always the games console."

Because no books existed before Harry Potter.