Henchman Publishing

9:40PM - And Deadpool IS Green Lantern

If you were hoping that Ryan Reynolds was going to play "The Merc with the Mouth," he's ditching the red tights for green ones with a jewelry accessory. I'll be interested to see how they handle GL's quite long and oft-retconned story in film, and more interested to see if it in any way ties in with the Superman franchise, even though said Kryptonian just made it through another court battle, and Warner Bros. has stated there isn't another Superman film currently in the works.

But touching on my earlier post, "Torchwood" did very well this week. I've still got a few lingering questions about this 5-parter (like, aren't there other branches of Torchwood out there?), and while the problem, conflict, and solution could have been presented in a single hour-long episode (definitely in two), they heightened the dramatic tension and revealed quite a lot about the cast. The miniseries also leaves you wondering what next season will bring, along with perhaps some intervention from the Doctor before Tennant regenerates?

I also caught the season premiere of SyFy's "Eureka." Before I get to that, SyFy wanted to make sure I knew I was watching something different by showing me a music video to the song "Happiness" by "Goldfrapp." It was suitably weird, though they could have used the original video and gotten a bit more genuinely trippy visuals. Anyway, "Eureka" was a decent enough time, and ties up the loose threads from the previous season finale while setting up what might be the beginning of a new arc. I PVR'ed their new offering, "Warehouse 13," and I'm worried it won't be as interesting as I'm hoping. Reviews have been so-so, it has to compete with my love for the incredible SCP Foundation*, and this is "SyFy," which proudly announced the premiere of the original movie, "Sand Serpents."

* My current favorite line of SCP text comes from SCP-804: "No one wants to turn this thing on with the obvious exception of some of our D-Class sociopaths who would respond similarly to a large red button labeled EVERYTHING DIES."

San Diego is fast approaching, and I hope everyone who wanted to go found lodging! I'll be signing at both the Adventure Retail booth and most likely doing a stint at the Wildstorm booth (schedules to be posted somewhere 'round these parts). Granted, I told them that "Alan" was spelled "Aaron" and that "Moore" is just a derivative of the original Gaelic surname "Williams," but it's too late for them to change it. Also, I'm looking forward to securing a pair of light saber chopsticks, though I don't think translucent plastic would endure well after too many stir-fry dishes. Best to stick to sushi, I think.

And speaking of food...

- I'm not the world's biggest sports fan, but I gotta say that our snacking technological superiority owes much to Sunday afternoons.
- A Loyola U. professor managed to get a lot of capes ruffled in City of Heroes as part of a cultural behavior project. Anyone ever meet the infamous "Twixt?"
- In addition to Star Wars chopsticks, there's a unbelievably detailed Dark Knight action figure. The design of the eyes is intriguing, if not a little creepy. Don't let grandma dust your collectibles...
- I love that video game trailers are practically movies in and of themselves nowadays. So even if you only remember the role-playing game (or the C-64 software), there's a new Mechwarrior on the way.
- The internet has found its own way to uniquely celebrate the pinnacle of Michael Jackson's appeal: the Eternal Moonwalk.
- With MJ gone, a new King of Pop must arise. "Needcoffee.com" had a brilliant candidate: Don Music. Yep, the Muppet.
- But now some of the ol' cartoony video game violence with Fragger. Aim and launch your grenades carefully to detonate every target before you run out of explosives.
- Last week's post about the revival of "Red Circle Comics" got me thinking about other semi-obscure heroes that could use some revivin'. Everyone can make their own versions of these characters, as they've all fallen into the public domain. You could combine several and form the next "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." It could happen...
- Friday was Nicola Tesla's birthday, and Studio 360 did a pretty amazing show on the guy. As one segment description reads, when describing the reporting of a novelist who fictionalized Tesla, "despite the outlandish biographical details all through the book, there was very little she had to make up." If you're still not tempted to click, the final segment is called "Death Ray."
- And we finish with medieval strategy in Archerland. It's a pretty decent "tower defense" game with one really big tower.

4:36AM - Late night-- er, early morning posting...

It's been quite a week with no letup in sight, and then half the internet disappears on me, including my own tenuous connection. Things seem to be stabilizing, but if there is, indeed, a government responsible for depriving the internet of 4chan (if you've never seen it, don't go looking), I wouldn't want to be said government's servers in the coming weeks.

Torchwood is back (at least, that's what I'd say if I were in the UK, which I'm not, so how could I have possibly seen it? Are we good? Cool) and it's better than ever. That's not to say it's perfect; it's still got that air of "how do these people manage to accomplish anything when their organization is run like a clubhouse for amorous nerds," but when you see the wringer Jack gets put through in the first two episodes (i09's spoiler-filled review of them is here...

Did I mention this is a 5-part tale over 5 consecutive days? How great is that? Well, that depends. Right now, the story makes sense for the most part (in that "Doctor Who" kind of way where you just accept a lot of stuff on faith), but I've seen this sort of thing before: Good setup, poor follow-through, especially if it involves a huge Deus Ex Machina with a nice big reset button. Its got two episodes left to disappoint, and it's got a pretty huge setup to explain.

As a side note, we do get a little insight into Jack's life in previous decades. Is official "Who" cannon (that big pile of papers and video cassettes in the corner, there) going with the idea that the time war changed everything, or can we look forward to a flashback where a CGI Jon Pertwee has a minor roll in the hay with Mr. Harkness?

And have you heard of NBC's show "Day One?" This page has a trailer for it, and while it starts out looking like the second cousin to "Deep Impact," it looks like things take a sharp turn at the weird pretty quickly. Aside from the groan-inducing tagline "every ending has a beginning," it looks like something that could wash the taste of "Jericho" out of my brain. Plus, it's from the same guy who gave us "The Middleman", so I'm on board for the pilot. Comparisons to "Lost" are a tad worrisome, not because I don't watch and enjoy "Lost," but I wish they hadn't said they were making it up as they went along. J. Michael Straczynski so spoiled me with his tightly-woven plots...

...and now he impresses me as a comic book writer who knows no fear. He's reviving the "Red Circle Heroes," a group of costumed do-gooders from the pages of old "Archie" comics. What amazes me is that they're being revived at all, given their histories (which are to be re-tooled, I'm sure). I only heard about them from the website, "Gone and Forgotten: The Worst Comics Ever," when they were featured in at least one unflattering review. The newly updated versions of the heroes can be seen here, and I think "The Web" got the best costume upgrade out of the deal. "The Web" did pen an open letter to JMS a while back, so since he made the cut, I can only presume that his nagging wife will meet a gruesome end.

The sun is coming up on me and I still have miles to go before I sleep, so here's a breakfast of distractions:

- Just because I dig Q.I.'s Stephen Fry, I thought I'd share the weirdness of seeing him on a quiz show when he was in his 20's.
- Roland Emmerich's "2012" may seem rather familiar to people of a certain age, or those who rented a lot of disaster films from the 70's."
- In the same vein as the incredibly entertaining blog, "Cakewrecks," we've got (slight NSFW warning, as some of the projects appear to have been inspired by naughty bits) "Craftastrophe," a blog devoted to the output from people who probably shouldn't ever be allowed in a JoAnn's ever again.
- You are an orc-looking thing. You have a slingshot. You live to break vases. Good thing for you the Vase Breaker game exists. And breaking stuff is good for your blood pressure.
- The Russians have gained a strategic edge on the rest of the world in the area of Fallout 3 cosplay. It also looks like a good way to repurpose any old suits of armor you might have lying around.
- Witch wanted, position to pay 50,000 pounds per year. Hogwart's diploma not necessary, but could be helpful.
- We only have the plans for the station thus far, but if it ever becomes operational, cookies will crumble. Many Bothans died to bring us these plans...
- Here's a stimulus idea for all you budding horror writers out there: They're burying Michael Jackson without his brain. If the ASIMO robot learns a lot of new dance moves all of a sudden, I think we'll know what they did with it...
- A halfway-decent Super Mario clone (with quite a lot of kwai) is to be had in Swordless Ninja. Jump, smush, and toss things while collecting coins and rescuing the princess.

9:53PM - It's hit dead trees, y'all!

My absolutely brilliant editor for "North 40," Scott Peterson (left, who for some reason thinks Fiona, the most excellent artist for the comic, based Sheriff Morgan on his likeness), taunted me with photos of him holding the first issue. His heartlessness aside, that means they'll be available at the San Diego Comicon in the Wildstorm booth, as well as in other locations where 32-page comic books are sold (I dunno if we'll have a supply at the Adventure Retail booth, but I'll find out)! And looking at that photo... how can he bend the spines like that? Doesn't he know that his fingerprints alone drop the book by one grade?! :)

I finally got the latest add-on to "Fallout 3," entitled "Point Lookout," to install, and what follows is a spoiler-free review of some random musings in no particular order:

1. Thank goodness there's only one more installment to go (I think), available later this month, where we get to adventure on an alien spacecraft. If Bethesda kept cranking these out, I'd never get anything done. It says something when it's fun and challenging to play, even at level 30. If nothing else, I just want to see everything.

2. So far, "Point Lookout" is my favorite overall add-on. "Broken Steel" had a bunch of new weapons and massive fights and all, but I think my fandom for the old game (language warning) "Redneck Rampage" got the better of me. Plus, it's a pretty much all-new environment, and one of the bad guys appeals to my post-apocalyptic aesthetics.

3. Bonus points to the designers for making one possible way to complete the mission require a trip back to the Capitol Wasteland. It just seemed to tie it back to the core game.

4. There were some issues. There's a holotape that I can pick up that doesn't appear in my inventory, and a few ammo cases/objects don't register when I try to interact with them. And it may be just me, but some objects seemed to have a greater habit of "vanishing" when I dropped them in this area than in other zones.

5. It's too short. But of course I'd say that, as I'd like there to always be another mission to find or some creative use of the game engine, etc. :)

6. All of the non-human humanoids look the same. I dig how the Raiders and other people in "Fallout 3" are pretty unique-looking, as they're generated with the character designer and equipped with the various weapons and armor the games have. In "Point Lookout," much as in "Redneck Rampage," nearly all of the inbred mutant baddies look like caricatures from an Ozarks postcard, without any bits that differ from guy to guy (and they're all male, which makes me wonder if they undergo some kind of Schmoo-like reproductive process). "Redneck Rampage" had to deal with low computer resources and explained away the sameness of the hillbillies you fought to them being clones of your neighbors, created by the alien menace you ultimately face off against.

7. There's a lot of stuff. And by that I mean "objects." If there's anything you're lacking back in the Capitol Wasteland for building something or if you just like finding new things to stuff in the Rock-It Launcher, you'll be in heaven.

So I guess, in conclusion, it's worth the download, I'll see everyone on the mothership in a few weeks, and I want "Fallout: New Vegas" completed by Christmas.

I also got to "game with the guys" for the first time in weeks, as the holiday weekend gave most of us Friday off, so we could roll dice into the wee hours on Thursday. It was a vast disappointment, because we did well. Sure, my wizard almost died again (hot pokers will do that to a guy), but we didn't have one of our usual catastrophic failures where the DM is visibly holding back a scream where he tells us where we missed the obvious thing that would have saved us a lot of time and two resurrections. We almost went up another level, found some magic items, and even rolled a few crits. I'm going to really have to work at it come up with anything FFN-worthy if this keeps up, unless I can get some loaded dice that roll in the negatives.

But doing some searches for games got us the lead-off in this post's linkdump:

- Why didn't I think of this? You can make your own boardgame pieces really easily (and they look cool) out of Shrinky-Dinks and binder clips.
- Rocket-powered knights make up your army in Castle Corp. It's kind of like "Lemmings" only with more explosions and vectors.
- The price is steep, but I can see the "fisherman" look coming back if these solar-powered vests catch on.
- Are you ready for the zombie horde? Be sure to buy your Zombocalypse Survival Kit.
- You knew it was going to happen: "Thriller" by Michael Jackson is headed for Broadway. I guess I'll take my zombies any way I can get 'em, even in Lego...
- A few weeks ago, I posted about an idea for a model railroad setup. I can guarantee it won't be a fraction of this one.
- The webcomic "Abstruse Goose" decided to try and figure out what star systems are seeing which old TV shows right now. Does this mean they're going to come invade when the analog signals stop reaching their Imperial Homeworld?
- It's the 4th of July weekend! Have some candy fireworks!
- And here's a platforming game with a few twists: Push. Try to reach the golden block by moving and using the mouse to create a "push" field to move the environment. Careful not to get squashed when they come back together...

10:44PM - Back from the wilderness...

Back home! For those who weren't vacationing with me or taking a quick business trip to Seattle, I've been away from the ol' desk too long for comfort. So now I'm cramming to get as much done for San Diego as I can before the Deadline Hammer falls on my head.

The place I went to and discovered that tethering one's laptop through a cell phone is a neato thing to be able to do (if you can get a signal) is called "Bunker Hill," and is a resort for members of the Missouri State Teachers Association. The cabins are nice (with showers and toilets), you have access to tennis courts, playground, and a fish-filled river (though they are on the tiny side). Three rib-sticking meals a day top off a very decent place to visit with the family who probably thought you had died years ago for all the visits and phone calls you don't-- er, right. So anyway, its only drawback was having our time there scheduled opposite Origins (the nominees and winners of the Origins Awards can be seen here. And while I'd love to have been in Columbus, choosing a convention over this would have probably not been healthy for yours truly, with the wife standing first in line with a baseball bat.

Speaking of Origins, in days past, the Origins Awards was a ceremonial affair that (the times I saw it) were hosted by James Ernest and other convention luminaries (I understand this tradition has been revived, which is jolly good news). I got to see John Rhys-Davies announce "Settlers of Catan" winning game of the year. I saw the "Chainmail" miniatures game win a statuette the same year it was canceled. But most importantly, I saw that the proceedings included a very large video camera pointed at the stage. What happened to those tapes? Gaming history needs some YouTube'n.

But anyway, one of the other experiments I undertook while on the road was using Gmail for the first time. It's convenient and can go with me everywhere now (provided I remember to set up all of my forwards correctly), but I just want to know one thing: How can I turn off the razza-frazzin' "conversations" feature? I really dislike how Gmail wants to sort e-mails into what it thinks are convenient piles for me. I'd just like to get them in some kind of sequential order no matter who replied to what. I really hope there's a setting I'm missing, because its also annoying the wife when she uses it (and did I mention she has a baseball bat?)

Onto something that sounds cool and involves the SciFi/SyFy channel (now, now): It looks like we're getting more Alien Nation. It's supposed to take place in the 2020's, with several million Newcomers populating the Earth. As long as they don't bring back that blue drug as the focus of the series, I think it sounds intriguing. I liked the movie a lot and most of the resulting TV series (though I kinda wished the TV Sikes had been a gruff old cop like he was in the film), so hopefully this will follow in Galactica's footsteps and be more than a re-hash of an old series.

I also wanted to be able to report on how much fun "Point Lookout" was for "Fallout 3," but the Games for Windows Live Marketplace only recently woke up from its over 72-hour slumber. Not that I didn't have other things I should have been doing; it's the principle of the thing... :)

And those other things I should have been doing were most certainly not these:

- With all of the celebrity deaths lately, it's hard to figure out who is part of a "Death Trilogy." Thankfully, we have the Death Commissioner to turn to for guidance.
- Here's a flash game that's mostly fun (I never was able to beat the last guy, and finding the "hidden wormhole" is nigh impossible without reading the coordinates from the comments), Starcom. It's a top-down space-shooter game with RPG elements, a pretty good story, and rather high frustration curve on that final mission.
- For all of us who try to solve problems by perverting hardware, tools, and unguarded objects, there's the There, I Fixed It blog. Artistic and engineering inspiration ahoy!
- Speaking of tools, I've always wanted a bandsaw. Now I want one even more.
- This dictionary of awesomeness may not always be in the best taste, but it does live up to the "awesomeness" more often than not. Currently on "R."
- There's a contest to design some D&D themed shoes. Phil and Kaja Foglio should do this. And win.
- Here's a nifty Flickr photo set of 1970's Doctor Who annual. A more modern bit of Who-via is seen in this manga-inspired item, the Doctor Who Girls (click on the image to enlarge). Leela looks particularly well-done.
- And another set featuring a few Starfleet business cards.
- Vector Effect is a game for those who like shootin', 'splodin', and lots of particle effects.
- Finally, one for the Q.I. fans. It starts with the classic bit from the "C" series where Alan sings the song, "Peter Cushing Lives in Whitstable," and then goes into a music video using voice samples from Alan and the rest of the panel. Behold this viral vid for the DvDs that won't work on an un-hacked American DvD player.

7:49PM - Reporting live from Mirkwood about the death of the 80's...

It's summer, and so I'm on a bit of a "back to nature" event with my family for a bit. I'll have some details (I hope) and few injuries (I hope) when next I blog. In the meantime, I'll say that the heat is oppressive, and the Edge cell phone connection to the internet is an insult to anything with a SIM card in it, unless it's a very clever art project to make younger generations know what dial-up was like.

The "King of Pop" has passed away. And since, while listening to CNN out of the corner of my ear this morning, I heard that Britney Spears released a statement about it, I figure that more than qualifies me to list off a few things Michael Jackson meant to me as I grew up in the 80's:

- He was part of that cartoon show they put on the St. Louis TV channels some Sunday mornings when they weren't airing the one based on the Beatles.
- He was supposedly an occultist, though if this is what a servant of dark forces does with his time when not being a zombie, then I don't think we're in any danger (though I still love this take on the Wizard of Oz, especially the flying monkey motorcycle gang). I do think that this was where the notion that rock music led to Satanism started to seem silly even to the ones who believed it.
- Nobody remembers what happened to the people at school who managed to get their parents to buy them a "Thriller" jacket. I think they've been detained by the NSA somewhere.
- I managed to get my folks to let me stay up and watch the television premiere of "Thriller." I came away glad I knew who Vincent Price was, or else I don't think I would have liked it as much.
- "Thriller" (wikipedia trivia-filled entry here) also screened at my local roller rink, via a projector out on the skate floor. I never got a clear look at it, because they always turned on the disco ball, and I'd eventually fall victim to the optical illusion that the lights zipping past me mean my skates had achieved Warp Factor 1.
- I seem to remember some schoolyard legend about Vincent Price's voice over on the song being grounds for a lawsuit of some kind, but I couldn't locate details. The lawsuits over the video continued through this year, with one in January from the director.
- The whole cast of the cartoon show went on tour. They made special Pepsi cans.
- We can thank MJ for working out the kinks in CGI morphing technology so "Terminator 2" could be as cool as it was.
- I think he was the first adult I was aware of whose hair had caught fire.
- And most importantly, without Michael, Weird Al would be minus this and this, which would be a loss to human civilization.

Speaking of Al, he was recently blogged upon at NPR as a "Stealth Pop Musicologist." His parody powers extend beyond lyrics to being able to poke fun at whole genres of music (as his latest ditty, "Craigslist," shows a pretty decent take on "The Doors," thanks in no small part to getting their keyboardist to lend a few hands). With the fragmenting of music making individual songs have less mass recognition, it's a pretty smart strategy.

I didn't get much pop culture out of Farrah, who also left the Matrix this week, beyond the famous poster and a few "Charlie's Angels" trading cards passed around class as if it were the ultimate forbidden object and talisman of power (+5 vs. male hormones). Ed McMahon's passing reminded me that the most memorable contribution to my own databank of "Hayooo" was a rather disturbing rendition he did of the song, "Thank Heaven for Little Girls." Sadly, I couldn't find a clip of this little gem, so for a musical send-off to Ed, we turn once again to the bard, Al Yankovic.

But why dwell on past sorrows when new ones are to be had?

- This next clip is an ad for condoms. However, it does it in a quite clever way using (don't run away!) a mime. Kind of. If you don't know what's going on, then your innocence is preserved. Anyway, it was amusing enough that the wife called me into the living room to see it in HD.
- How far is San Jose from San Diego? There's a rather intriguing themed restaurant I'd like to try. Maybe they can beam me there?
- How to Raise a Dragon is an interesting RPG-time-waster. Choose your dragon's destiny, from being a kind guardian to the subject of the next Tolkien film.
- Unsatisfied with how the TV series, "The Middleman" ended? Some of the principal actors will do a live reading of the script for the final episode and hawk the graphic novel of the events therein at the San Diego Comicon.
- Via Superpunch, we get this Gizmodo.com gallery of ancient video games. Man, I remember "Grand Theft Horse." They said I'd wind up on the gallows if I kept playing that...
- In case you want to engage your fellow geeks in a real-life duel to the death, here are (language warning) ten geek arguments that we all surely hold passionate opinions about.
- Finally, Orbitz has nothing to do with discount travel, aside from jumping from planet to planet gathering stars. Watch out for enemies, hazardous worlds, and air fares too good to believe.

1:30AM - Mad Hattery and other light subjects...

At first, I wasn't too excited about Tim Burton's upcoming "Alice In Wonderland" movie. I mean, yeah, you've got Johnny Depp as "The Mad Hatter," but Johnny Depp is in everything Burton makes, right? Well, I got a look at the IMDB entry and I think I need to see this film. Alan Rickman is the Caterpillar, Stephen Fry is the Cheshire Cat, and Christopher Lee is the Jabberwock.

I'm trying to imagine these actors in the same room just talking about stuff and my brain can't handle the awesome. It'd be like an episode of Q.I. that has the same effect as opening the Lost Ark, but with a studio audience (that isn't made up of Nazi soldiers) and everyone dies laughing. And Alan Davis ends with -50 points as usual.

Speaking of British actors, there are rumors that we're going to get eleven Doctors for the BBC's "Children in Need" fund raiser this year. The article cites possible use of archive footage to stand in for deceased Doctors. I do hope they get someone to cleverly re-edit the footage, or it might be painful.

I think I finally got the e-mail issues ironed out, so I'm back to being behind on everything as per usual. :) I'm in a race to see if I can get some new trades ready for San Diego, and it's going to be a photo finish. If nothing else, someone somewhere should have copies of "North 40" at the show, and I couldn't be more excited! It's shaping up to be a pretty cool book, thanks in large part to the work of Fiona Staples, artist and nightmare renderer extraordinaire. I can't wait to see what she does with a very special gun that comes into play near the latter half of the tale...

Time for a little pixilated nostalgia: A favorite old video game of mine was M.U.L.E. It was an economic strategy game I had on my old Commodore 64, and it had one of the most clever auction systems I've ever seen. There are almost always talks of reviving the game on one of our many consoles or portable devices, but this is the first concept art I've run across for such an endeavor that looks way cool. Make the theme contain some homage to the original four voice opening music and I'll have my credit card ready! In the meantime, there's a site offering the original with online 4-player capability, though I've not yet given it a whirl. Lockheed-Martin's attempt to make a new version seems impressive, but impractical for most households. Next, I'd like "Atari Adventure," the MMO, please.

While we all dream of taking up an arrow-shaped cluster of squares against duck-dragons, let's look at these:

- Even if you've never heard of "Team Fortress 2," I think we can all agree that video game sound bytes are funnier than Bob Saget when played over humorous home movie clips of people injuring themselves.
- A site that's been making the rounds lately containing photographs of abandoned places. A lot of them almost look like they were part of the Dharma Initiative from "Lost."
- Last time, I talked about the upcoming "2012" film by Roland Emmerich. There is some talk (language warning on the clip embedded in this page) that it might be a remake of another film. And even the bits in that clip seem funnier than the whole of "Disaster Movie."
- I passed yet another gas station offering to fill my tires with pure nitrogen. I wondered at this, thinking that our air is mostly nitrogen, and turned to the Straight Dope for their take on this concept.
- Breakdown is pretty much the opposite of all those "stacking" games, as you want to collapse the Tetris-like block column with as few cannonballs as possible.
- I've never Rickrolled anyone, but I have to share this Rick Astley mashup video. If you dig the song, the MP3 is available here.
- Do you have a bundle of joy on the way and you want to be sure they're raised as a true Klingon? You'll need the proper furnishings.
- Time to build up a plague on mankind again with Phage Wars 2. It's a real-time-strategy game where your goal is to infect everything and evolve to defeat competing viruses.

12:22AM - Leo-nard-bern-STEIN!

I must admit, I never got a chance to see "The Day After Tomorrow," but if what happens in it is as visually interesting as what appears in the trailer for Roland Emmerich's next "world goes higgeldy piggeldy" film, 2012, I might have to rent it just for the juicy bits.

Disaster films are usually fun. What kid hasn't ever fantasized about what would happen if nearly everything exploded, burned down, or was a prop in a Michael Bay movie (though not in a "let's get a can of gas and test this fantasy out on the school" way)? There's something thrilling in seeing familiar landmarks go up in smoke or get uprooted. Here's a small run of favorites I ran across:

- The destruction of New York in a clip from a 1933 film called Deluge. The effects are pretty impressive, especially the miniatures work.
- And this is some of the footage from "Deluge" compared with the aforementioned 'Day After Tomorrow.' I don't know if Roland's version was an homage or not, but I'd hesitate to say he lifted it. I mean, if you send a tsunami at the Big Apple, Lady Liberty isn't going to have a good day no matter who the director is.
- New York also gets asteroid'ed in 'Armageddon', and 'Deep Impact' took out the city, too, but even-handedly included a few other global metropoli in the fun.
- And my first "disaster clip" I can remember seeing: Los Angeles going kaboom in the 1953 version of "War of the Worlds."

I'd also include some bits from "Independence Day," "Cloverfield," and "The Day After," the latter film I mention sans clip because it still kinda gives me the creeps (and I live in KC now, which means if I ever see John Lithgow roaming the streets here, I'm heading for Iowa at twice the speed limit).

There's a kind of romance in seeing any civilization blown to bits. Part of it, I think, comes from the idea that things might be better (on a personal level, usually) if everything rebooted and we could continue our lives with MasterCard and our mortgage bank sharing the same crater.* I think another part comes from seeing the ruins of lost civilizations and thinking about what it would take to reduce modern society to museum exhibits, like the Ancient Greeks or Egyptians. Then there's just the bit of us that likes a good fireball and cars flying everywhere (insert complementary evil grin).
* though I note that there's not much written/filmed about having to rebuild something resembling a society after such an event, since that's most likely an un-fun activity.

I've been thinking about this aspect of fiction for a few projects I'm hoping to propel forward. One is a concept that's being considered by the same fine folks who will be publishing "North 40" starting next month for at least a 6-issue run. The new title, if approved, will also be a sort of "big thing that resets the world," but not in a way I've seen previously. I've also got some stuff I'm noodling around for a side project to be done on my lonesome. If I turn out to be the volunteer to man the art supplies, the images will be significantly different than the style I currently put forth; it'll be quicker and simpler, resembling what I'd do if I worked for Hanna-Barbera, and it looks like it might be done entirely in pencil with some coloration/cleanup in Photoshop. This self-done project will be kid-friendly, have quite a lot of humor, and show us what the world will look like in several thousand years... just as soon as I decide what that'll be. I've described the idea to Cristi, and she really wants me to do it, so rest assured that if it seems like it's taking too long to get going, someone is at home pushing me to keep at it. :)

Though we all should take a break from "keeping at it," which results in:

- Last entry, we were alerted to the "Pac Man" energy drink. I wonder how it would taste compared to an 'Ultraman Soda?'
- Upgrade Complete is a game in which you have to purchase upgrades for the game itself.
- I think Wii Bowling is one of the best time Wii-ster games out there, but I apparently need a new controller to fully appreciate the experience.
- Dinosaurs just want to say 'hey!'
- White vans often herald trouble. This one heralds cake... maybe.
- Bring anime-style jump-smash attacks on foes (and coins) in Sparks and Dust. It's a side-scroller kick-em-up that looks very pretty, if nothing else.
- There are more toy-based films on the way by a variety of directors, so hide your childhoods now. :)
- For the tabletop wargamer who likes to find new vehicles to kit-bash, the old Soviet Union had a lot of interesting ideas.
- It's like "Ghostbusters" met "Fallout 3" and produced an ad together.
- We finish with a platform puzzler (that has a link to a walkthrough, thank goodness) called Use Boxmen. Jump, run, and create clones of yourself to reach the floating box at the end of each level.

10:25PM - I blame all technical difficulties on a problem with the containment grid...

Sorry about the outage, folks. I missed the e-mail from LJ saying my account was about to lose it's ability to embed because some spammers took it into their heads to use ps238.com as a domain for their spoofed e-mails. I neglected to turn off my "catch all" e-mail address for that domain, which funnels everything from a misspelling of my name to a string of gibberish along to my primary ISP address, which is handled by Time-Warner. Apparently, enough of these e-mails went to me to set off their alarm bells that everything from ps238.com was spam and had to be halted. I wondered why it was so quiet, and I started getting messages on my cell phone from people asking where I'd gone. After a few days of panic and frantic phone calls to several data centers, I'm told that the problem has been fixed, but that it'll take until tomorrow sometime for the changes to cement themselves in Time-Warner's servers. So if you need me (or sent me something important this week), wait until after lunch tomorrow and give it another try. :)

But on to the big release for this week: "Ghostbusters: The Video Game." Keeping in mind that the last game I played based on the Ghostbusters movie looked like this (I did play the arcade game based on "The Real Ghostbusters," but that doesn't count), the new game starring (and written by) the original cast is an incredible leap forward. Before I delve into any nitpicking on this title, let me preface by saying I love playing this game: The voice acting is great, there are a few jokes and sight gags that amuse, and getting to wrangle ghosts into a trap with a proton stream is great fun! The music is all straight from the movie, the characters of Janine and Peck are voiced by the original actors, and (naturally) you have Slimer and the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man, and their appearances mostly make sense, continuity-wise. The ghosts themselves are very reminiscent of the movie and the animated cartoon, often being as whimsical as they are scary.

I have the version for the PC, and the "complaints," I have are mostly technical in nature. I decided to list 'em as they kind of make "Ghostbusters" fall into the category that "Smash Bros Brawl" did: would this game be as much fun to play if it was the same game mechanics, but without the characters we love from other games/media present? Maybe, maybe not. So what irritates about the game is as follows:

1. Loading time. When you die and have to reset an area, or you're entering a new zone/chapter, load times are the longest I've seen since I had to swap disks on the original "Wasteland." Granted, there's a lot to load (voices, music, models, incredible background effects like animated street scenes outside of the firehouse windows, etc.), but it does make having to re-do an area something to avoid, unless you need to go to the bathroom.
2. Mapping and movement. I get hung up on nearly everything, including fellow Ghostbusters. I also have a hard time climbing over obstacles, such as, say, a couple of bricks. You can't jump over anything, leap across anything, or just brush up against something; you just stop cold, pretty much. It also has the "Silent Hill" tradition of small barriers (velvet rope type stuff) that you, a man armed with a nuclear accelerator, can't blast or step over to bypass.
3. Voice acting sync. There are some strange pauses here and there, as the voice tracks and animation don't quite keep up pace with what's going on, but that's either an easy downloadable fix or something you just ignore while you wait for your PKE meter to go off.
4. The point of view. When playing the "Rookie" Ghostbuster, you're always in the mid-right-lower part of the screen with a targeting reticule in the center. If you like being able to zoom out to a 3rd-person overview or zoom into a true first-person view, you're out of luck. This can make running or looking around for a ghost that's shooting at you quite difficult. However, I do understand why it was done this way: All of the things that normally appear on-screen as a HUD (health, ammo, powerups, etc.) are all displayed as part of your proton pack. This makes for a much less cluttered view, but the odd perspective can take some getting used to.

But again, I do like this game a lot and don't regret the purchase in the slightest. There are even some pretty genuinely creepy moments in the game (the kids section of the library, especially). If you're a fan of the movie, you'll probably want to have it on your console or PC. I'm hoping they can do some "Fallout 3" style add-ons, but I'm guessing that if they do, the voice work is either already recorded and waiting to go, or it just won't happen. But even if it doesn't, the next Fallout 3 add-on will be out in a few days, so I'm still quite doomed. :)

Amongst all the recent entertainment news I read this past week (including rumors of yet another Punisher movie in 2012 when Marvel gets the film rights back and a dreaded fifth Indiana Jones film), I saw that Christopher Lee had been knighted! I wouldn't mind seeing him on "Quite Interesting," especially if he remembers working with Stephen Fry.

Though news that we might see an "authentic" Deadpool movie cheers me greatly. I kind of figure the hardest movies to get actors to agree to are ones where their faces won't be clearly seen in most of the film, which bodes ill for a lot of vigilantes out there (unless they get to walk around as their secret identities, a la Peter Parker). If Ryan Reynolds is willing to don a mask and hideous face-scar makeup, he's my hero.

But onto the latest links, forged in binary with the heat of a thousand servers:

- Some appropriate music. While looking for Ghostbusters-related stuff, I came across this remix of the theme with the NIN song, "The Hand that Feeds."
- I'm not familiar with the UK show "Space Pirates," but remixing their theme with the one from Ghostbusters is pretty nifty.
- And Weird Al has a new "Doors"-themed song out about Craigslist.
- If you're thinking of opening up your own Ghost-busting franchise, you might want to re-think the business plan.
- For the programmers out there with roommates, this note left on a dishwasher should be familiar.
- The last physics-based "carry stuff in a vehicle" game didn't do so well, so here's another: Symphonic Bus Tour. Catch instruments in your rooftop carrier and try to get them over the finish line, assuming you can keep the bus upright.
- Here's a collection of humorous tip jars.
- A North Carolina student was arrested for re-purposing orange barrels in a way that I wish all highway construction would adopt.
- It's time to Learn to Fly. Launch your penguin, keep him level, and earn money for upgrades.
- If you're planning for your future, you'll need to know how far off the future you want is. I'm thinking I'll need to work on that time machine if I ever want to taste a Rum-n-Spice Melange.
- I so need this item: I'd never have to buy any other stamps or printed greeting cards again! :)
- Why not end with a bang? Polygonal Fury is a strategic detonation game. Try to start a chain reaction to clear the field by triggering different types of destructive polygons. Powerups and "insane" levels available, too.

1:54AM - Rejected title for the volume: "I Think I'm A Clone Now."

And at last, we've got a cover for the next ps238 trade! Look for it later this summer. It's been a long time coming, and I apologize for the wait; the office re-arranging took more work (and excavation) than I realized. I mean, I found tax forms from when I was in high school. I also came across my old file of rejected cartoons from Dragon Magazine, back when I thought a Bic Pilot flair-tipped pen on typing paper was how one properly drew cartoons (which eventually worked, I suppose, with the right editors). I also discovered that I really need to sell a bunch of stuff on eBay, like this item that I found in a file drawer, next to some old "Lazer Tag" guns.

In my continuing effort to seek out new horror writers who aren't Stephen King (since he can't write as fast as I read), I came across "The Strain" by Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan. While it's pretty obvious that this could be turned into a movie (it had some pretty cliche setups for the protagonist's personal life and never left him completely bereft of the chance for female company to either pursue, protect, or grieve for) I give it props for portraying vampires as actual monsters, something you wouldn't want to be, given the choice. It'll also please the medical thriller fans in the audience, as our hero works for the CDC. If you decide to pick it up, I give you fair warning that this is supposed to be a trilogy, so while the ending satisfies and isn't too big of a cliffhanger, it's by no means over at the last page.

From the "things that may herald the end of the world" department, John Stamos wants to bring his sitcom, "Full House," to the big screen. I must say, there are few things on TV that I'd rather see less get two hours at my local cineplex. You may ask why I should care, since I'm not going to see it. I don't watch the Home Shopping Network, either, but I know that at this very second, a large waste of human potential that could have been building a warp engine or a flying car instead was wasted on a hunk of metal and hydrocarbons that will break in five months for only $19.95 a month. I seem to have strayed a bit, but in brief, I think we need to have safety drills in our schools, just in case this gets greenlit.

Nerds behaving badly is the next topic. I know my geekological studies sometimes fall short, getting a critical detail wrong here or forgetting a pop culture reference there, but there are times when nerds should know better. The ones working at "Cracked" (language warning on this link) did a list of 15 Dungeons and Dragons monsters that they deemed 'most retarded.' I own a lot of the books these came from, and if they'd just put the word 'looking' after 'retarded,' I'd let it go. But they put a demi-lich on the list and claimed "It just kind of floats around, waiting for a party of heroes to smack it out of the air like a pinata." I'm sorry, but that thing was put in the Tomb of Horrors to compensate for anyone that had actually managed to avoid every "no saving throw" event and make the other players feel better by killing the ones who had managed to make it to the end. And yeah, I kind of realize the weird position I'm in of "berating a comedy website for not being dorky enough," but if you're doing anything comedic on the internet without someone at least familiar with second edition D&D, you'd better have a "help wanted +2" sign in your window.

We can still laugh at "The Flumph" while we take in some other points of interest:

- Game theory is applied to the question of does the Joker have any advantage in teaming up with someone to kill Batman?
- Pirate Launch is another one of those "propel an object to earn money for upgrades" game, but it's got pirates!
- Previously, we linked to some "Science Scout" badges. The makers have improved their website and added a few new scientific accolades.
- I just found out there's something tooling around San Diego that I wouldn't mind taking for a spin.
- Can you run an alien invasion on the cheap? In Budget Invasion, you're stuck with just a tractor beam with which you hurl hapless humans at others of matching color to make them vanish before the mob overruns your spaceship.
- If you work in an office (with a good sense of humor), you might find these communication forms useful, hilarious, or both.
- "Woman's Day" (I was kind of surprised, too) brings us 10 'Crazy' Collections. However, I'd like to point out that the collections of Star Wars figures and dice are not crazy, and the Coke can one could just have happened naturally at any computer desk over a prolonged period of time.
- Further compounding a first for the link dump, we have something with Martha Stewart in it: Two M.I.T. students and their 'Automato' robotic ketchup dispenser. There are also outtakes from what I'm assuming was the 'testing' phase.
- And this might not be the greatest game ever, but I loved being a slime monster that could bounce people into the air, then into my waiting maw: Slimey's Lunchtime may just bring a smile to your face, especially if you're eating animal crackers or Gummi bears.

11:02PM - I'll be working on the rail road...

After the successful transformation of a pump organ into a set of bookshelves, Cristi and I have been looking around for the next project to have underway in the basement for the odd free hour here and there where we want to play with power tools. Finding an abundance of cheap cast-off antique wood furniture (naturally, not in the best of shape or working order) at garage/estate sales, we've started eyeing the stuff as a springboard for making "heirloom geek pieces."

By the way, the bookshelf's light was successfully installed, consisting of an old lamp from eBay and a glass shade from an architectural salvage place in downtown KC. Protip: When you go to antique stores asking for an old glass lampshade, they will (1) assume you're crazy to try to buy such an expensive item, (2) tell you the ones at Home Depot are just as good, and (3) not understand that this is for art! :)

Anyway, after cleaning out several closets, we came across some old model railroad bits from my childhood, and thought a uniquely displayed train set would be a fun thing to try integrating into an item of furniture. When we went to our local hobby store, we were told by the man running it that he thought it sounded like a cool idea, but not to be surprised when the concept was met with scorn from the model railroad community. Apparently, if you say you're going to do something fun and off-spec (meaning "not real") when it comes to your train set, it's akin to going to a Civil War Reenactment and suggesting the whole thing would get more people involved if they swapped out the horses for motorcycles, used paintball guns, and had the winning side do an SCA-judged battle with a horde of vikings.

What this means for our project is that there's not a lot of help out there for things like "how steep a grade can a train manage," because most of those putting these tracks together won't build them steeper than about a 2% grade, because that's considered "mountainous." I'm actually kind of amazed that there hasn't been more interest in messing with model trains from the "Make" community, as they've got little motors, have LED lights, and lend themselves to kitbashing pretty easily. Heck, I would have figured that there would be a steampunk train set out there, but this was the only one I could find (with only 5 minutes effort, granted, but that's years in internet time), and it's a tad big for the office. I also found a steampunked Monopoly game, which includes a train set, so I think that can count as a sign of hope.

But this brings me to why this hobby might have trouble attracting new adherents:
1. It's expensive. HO train sets can be found for pretty cheap at Wal-Mart or on eBay, but the more home-friendly N Scale stuff can set you back anywhere from 30 bucks to over $300 for the snazzier trains, and that's before you've set up the track. It's kind of like trying to get into "Warhammer," actually.
2. It takes up space. The realistic layout is neat, until you realize that it takes a large real estate commitment. Cristi and I are hoping to hack together some ideas to make some setups that don't displace whole rooms, and I'm toying with a few mechanical ideas for how to make the trains more space-friendly.
3. Where are the fun sets? Yeah, we've got Christmas trains out there, but when I was a wee lad, you could get an Army train or a Moonbase train, or any other number of "gimmick" sets. Why doesn't Blizzard have a "World of Warcraft" train? I bet a Horde engine would look TOTALLY awesome!

So we'll be slowly putting something together (we hope) over the summer and reporting back on how it's going whenever we make some significant progress. If it works out, I've got a nifty idea on a superhero-themed layout, but first I need to figure out how to sculpt and/or cast my own N-Scale sized figures...

Speaking of superheroes, the villain for Iron Man 2 (and the actor playing him) has been revealed. Naturally, he doesn't look a lot like he did in the comics (where, admittedly, he looks a bit on the goofy side, especially for an assassin). Further, his movie persona looks like he's sporting one of Tony Stark's power generators. I'm hoping that's something he gets towards the end of the film, as it would make the second villain in a row that goes out and grabs one of those things to put the smack down on ol' shell-head. Since this baddie seems to have only met up with Iron Man in the course of being hired to take out Tony Stark, I'm guessing there's another villain at work behind the scenes. I've heard "Kingpin" rumors, but that's all they are, at the moment.

A quick cooking item to wrap things up with. This treat looks especially yummy (if you like coconut), but it does have one small worry: raw egg yolk. To avoid salmonella poisoning, I have seen procedures to pasteurize yolks without cooking them solid, but I'd fear the lemon juice in the method I linked to would change the flavor. I'm theorizing that the yolk is used in this frozen bar as an emulsifier and thickener, helping to suspend the coconut in the mixture as it freezes so it doesn't all settle to the bottom. If so, do any chefs out there have some substitutes or suggestions for a replacement? The wife and I were thinking that the "Egg Beaters" stuff in the carton might work, but I've never tried it before (and it's supposed to be yolk and whites, right?). We also want to try using fresh coconut in the recipe. If you've never opened a coconut before, then the internet helpfully provides us with www.howtoopenacoconut.com. I admire the site owner for sticking to his theme without deviating for so long.

Before we pasteurize, let these past your eyes:

- Just to show that you never know what will happen to what you post on the internet, an American mother from a family of four discovered that a snapshot of her clan was lifted and used in an ad campaign in the Czech Republic.
- In "Star Wars," (at least in the movies) the Empire seemed sadly deficient in the realm of female personnel. Granted, they could have just realized that being near a super-weapon with an obvious mechanical flaw wasn't the best place to work, but (borderline NSFW "tight outfit" warning) I can't help wondering what they would have been like.
- The creator of the electronica-remix of Disney's Alice in Wonderland has done it again to Mary Poppins with a track called Expialidocious. There's a link to download the MP3 in the "info" section.
- Dammit, Jim, I'm a Doctor with a Twitter feed, not an engineer!
- Here's an odd "cheating" service: Corrupted Files dot com will take a phony paper you have due for class, corrupt it, and then you can send it on to your prof who (supposedly) won't read it for days, letting you write the real paper in the time it takes for him/her to request another copy.
- Here's a fun (if a cartoonishly bloody) side-scroller called The Secret of Steel. Play a plucky little barbarian as he Conans his way through orcs, archers, and skeletons.
- I'm not much for dog shows, but I would tune in to see this sort of pet run through its paces.
- I'm not quite sure what to make of this USB peripheral. And the date on the article doesn't say April 1st, so I think it might be for real...
- "Spreadsheets with Lasers." "It's not a game, it's a job." All that and more is said about EvE Online, and it might be true, but the trailers sure look pretty.
- A second link from the Daily Mail? Well, I have to when a TARDIS coffin is involved.
- A while back I discovered plans to make tabletop "dice towers." How about one made out of dice?
- Here's a challenging physics/engineering/volatile substance game, Nitrohaul. Design a hauler, then try to make it to the finish line as fast as you can without bumping your cargo too heavily and causing it to explode.
- Finally, in case you've ever wondered what it would sound like if Tori Amos covered the song, "Still Alive" from the "Portal" video game, here's what I'm guessing it would sound like.

10:46PM - Can we build it? Yes we can!

Okay, so I finally took a crack at City of Heroes' "Architect" feature. Overall, it's pretty fun, though it took a few tries to figure out a some key things:

1. If you're making a multi-chapter story and you want to test the third act, re-locate it to be the first act so you don't play through the whole thing just to see that you misspelled a bunch of stuff and managed to create three instances of the boss villain by mistake.
2. If you want to have specific mobs in specific areas of the story, you should probably have several custom groups. My "sewer guys" wound up being with my "warehouse guys" before I figured out what was wrong.
3. "Autosave" is nice, unless you've saved your mission under a new name and think that the autosave function is putting your changes under said new name. I noticed this after my fourth debugging attempt on act 3 (and before learning #1).

My first mission ("Captain Zero: The Legend Begins," with apologies to anyone suffering hair loss. I just went with a theme and it kind of became the villain group's key feature) looked pretty good until I really started checking out the top-rated missions. I really enjoyed one about disproving the "Butterfly Effect." It showed off how a good setup can make you forget that the game still consists largely of clicking stuff, toggling attacks, and not dying.

That's not to say I didn't encounter a few bugs (and these could just be my computer, I'll grant). For one, animations on these Architect missions seemed a little messed up. I saw lots of enemies running in slo-mo for some reason, and mobs that I know I selected a starting animation for (i.e. being amused, dancing to a boom box, etc.) just went to the default fist-slam or parade rest stance. Also, I had a few instances were the Architect module wouldn't display all of the custom enemy groups I'd made until I hit the "edit group" button, closed the edit window, and re-selected the drop-down menu.

I also wouldn't mind seeing what I'd call an "insta-kill test mode." That is, you'd get to run through the mission, one-hit killing all of the mobs, just to make sure everything is working okay without a long slog. It'll also seem limiting to all of the budding storytellers out there that you can only "publish" (make public) three architect stories at a time. You can generate many others, but they remain "local," available only to you and your teammates. I'm sure their servers would crash if they put all of the adventures out there, but only three? My epic re-telling of the Iliad needs at least ten to do it justice! :)

Continuing on the subject of crime-fighters, there's been some news about the next season of "Heroes" over at i09.com (spoilers ahoy, though it's mostly new cast members and some descriptions of powers). While these additions include a man more known for his martial arts work in film, I'm thinking that the last thing "Heroes" needed was more heroes. I say this for two reasons: 1. They can barely give enough screen time to the ones they have, resulting in plots that seem thrown-together and lack direction and 2. the show has a very bad habit of making any person with powers who speaks more than three lines have some connection to other cast members that would embarrass Charles Dickens. I believe I read somewhere that Claire will just happen to get a roommate who just happens to have powers, too. I'm beginning to think people with abilities are going to outnumber those without in about three episodes. If the fourth season of the show gets any sillier, I really hope that other genre TV can take its place.

But moving on to what seems an hourly event, another remake is in the works: Short Circuit is getting a new coat of paint. The writer, Dan Milano, has done work for "Robot Chicken," so there's a possibility that this could be subversively good. For one, I wouldn't mind Johnny 5 having much the same personality that the "Nextwave" comic attached to Machine Man.

I have no beer for his robot brain, but I do have the next best mind-numbing experiences:

- From the "ghost of video games past" comes a quite nostalgic (and enjoyable) side-scroller called 'Doom 2D'. All your favorite sprite graphics are back, this time with run-n-gun platforming!
- I think even the G.I. Joe movie doesn't think those "accelerator suits" are all that cool since only one of the action figures appears to be wearing one. Now those costumes look decently "Joe."
- This almost sounds like an adventure hook for a modern-day role-playing game: Apparently, our government has secret lines of fiber-optic cable in D.C. that aren't on any map, so if you accidentally dig one up, expect an instant visit from men in black SUVs.
- I've seen a few blog posts about really badly-crafted novelty ice cream treats, but I stumbled upon something that makes me think that frozen delights can be a tad TOO real for comfort.
- I don't know how he does it, but this is a pretty cool water-slide trick.
- Test your cannon-firing skills with Roly-Poly Cannon 2.
- Stephen Fry and the cast of Q.I. help educate us Yanks about the difference between a cake and a biscuit.
- It's the weekend, and I know I'm wrong for posting this, especially since it needs a big ol' language warning and religious humor warning, but these letters from Satan are a scream, especially the one to Steven Segal and the one to Brown Recluse spiders.
- Lastly, here's one "for science," and I don't recommend you try it at home without adult supervision, a smoke alarm, and insurance, but... if this isn't bogus, it's kind of cool.

9:08PM - E3, or "At the Movies with your favorite platform."

Thanks to the internet, you don't have to go to E3 to see what's on tap for video games this year. And even if you don't play them (or have time to play even a handful, like m'self), the trailers and other video offerings can still be fun and interesting to watch.

First, from the "games as movies" category, we've got the cinematic trailer for the upcoming "Star Wars: The Old Republic" MMO. I wouldn't mind if this was the setup for a new movie, even an all-CGI one. On a side note, regarding Star Wars, is it me, or did technological innovation end for this particular galaxy a long time ago? I mean, other than new coats of paint or slight design modifications, nothing ever changes. Spaceships, droids, blasters, holograms, and medical devices to replace bits cut off by lightsabers look different, but for the most part, things haven't changed in thousands of years. You'd think they'd have JediPods by now or something...

Then there's the Beatles: Rock Band cinematic. I could see this being used at Beatles conventions all by itself, actually. It also makes me kind of wish there was a Pink Floyd version as well as a Weird Al version.

The ever-popular "yes, I'm addicted to Fallout 3" category brings us news and a trailer (scroll down) about the next downloadable adventure for the game. I'm doomed.

Then there's the "it looks very cool, I'll probably never get the chance to play it, and/or I wish this was a movie" trailer pile, which includes:
- The Edge of Twilight, a very steampunky-looking affair.
- (Undead violence warning) Left 4 Dead 2, which I'll probably still pick up, because I can't pass up a game with a chain saw.
- Space Marine, so you can see what life is like for all those Games Workshop minis we abuse.

Then there's the upcoming Microsoft project, Natal. I'm almost worried I'll be able to claim my XBox as a dependent if I run that demonstration program. On the one hand, this looks VERY cool, but on the other, it looks like the lead-in to some horror film where the child-program AI starts a murderous rampage by taking over the kitchen appliances and household power tools after someone rebuffs its affections. Our only hope of warning the populace is to have someone remake the film Electric Dreams.

And speaking of movies, it looks like Brian Blessed will play "Odin" in the upcoming "Thor" movie. After seeing him on "Have I Got News For You" as well as in his films, you could replace "Odin" with "someone" and "Thor" with "I forget the title" and I'd still want to see it, just to watch him chew the scenery.

And now I'm off to comfort the wife who was tapped for jury duty and actually got picked! When she can finally tell me about her experiences, I might have to have one of the FFN guys attempt to game while attending a trial. :)

The links flow heavily:

- As always, beware what you taunt.
- Since we touched on "Star Wars" earlier, this is a good place for the opening credits for Han Solo, P.I.
- I finally saw the new "Star Trek" film (good fun, any complaints are few and mostly technical) which puts me in the right frame of mind to try constructing this small, lit-up Enterprise.
- And now a sentence I never thought I'd type: 7-11 will be promoting Domo-Kun. I asked my local Sevvy-Levvy if they knew anything about it, but they said every promotion was a surprise to them when the stock arrived, so I received no confirmation with my Big Gulp.
- The good news? I found a deal where you can get a free 16 gig iPod Touch. The bad news? You have to purchase a Ferrari to get it.
- Touching on a recent post about "They Might Be Giants" and their song, "Why Does the Sun Shine?": You can download and cut out a mass of incandescent gas model.
- This is more a time-waster than a game (mostly), but Click Play has some fairly puzzling levels. Your goal is to reveal the "play" button in each mini-game and click it to advance.
- Our second mash-up is Henson's 11, where the muppets pull off the con of the century!
- It looks like it's only available in Europe, but they now make decals for your garage doors. I'm thinking these would make awesome practical joke items for victims who live in neighborhoods with restrictive homeowners' associations.
- And now, some light music. It's getting rarer and rarer for me to come across a voice that makes me pause, and Hayley Westenra is just such a voice. I've found three fairly accessible tunes from her repertoire (all covers, I don't know if she writes her own stuff): Wuthering Heights, Shenandoah, and Both Sides Now. I'd like to say, for the record, that I also listen to lots of very manly music with references to fire and explosions. Really.
- Speaking of explosions, here's Rocket Rodeo, where you control a dude playing "chicken" with incoming missiles. I won't say "it's a blast," because that would be too obvious and pedestrian. :)

10:23PM - Oh, no, Joe...

There's a little footage from the upcoming G.I. Joe movie on MTV.com (you have to endure an ad first, and if your region doesn't let you view MTV stuff, the clip is on YouTube, but every time I loaded it, the sound was a few seconds off). Looking at the Joes, I can safely say that, if this is in any way a good movie, it's not going to be a good G.I. Joe movie. The Joes now look like they're kitted out for some futuristic sporting event on pay-per-view, and they move as if someone used Peter Parker to construct Robocop. I don't get why the villains managed to come across as halfway resembling live action versions of the cartoons/comic books/action figures, yet "XFL by way of Cyberdyne" was the orders to wardrobe for the heroes. It's gotten to where I'm wondering why they bothered licensing the property. They probably could have gotten the rights to the old E-S.W.A.T. arcade game for a fraction of the cost and made the same film.

In Doctor Who news, the new Doc's companion has been chosen. Okay, picking an Alt-U version of The Cure's Robert Smith to play the Doctor might have not been to do with attracting a younger audience, but with the addition of this quite fresh face, I'm almost ready to predict Doctor Who moving to the CW Network with the theme re-recorded with electric guitars and piano. I just hope they're decent actors and that the writers aren't going to outfit either one of them with a bullwhip and machine gun or something...

If I sound a tad off tonight (and for the next few days), it may be due to windows. No, not Windows, but the ones Cristi and I just had installed in our house. They're thermo-UV-shamwow-something that get you a tax break, and the ones they replaced were single-pane models which either (1) have never been openable since I bought the place over a decade ago or (2) only stay shut thanks to strategic wood screws. Anyway, these old windows used weights to ease opening and closing (when they worked). The cavities in the walls where these weights reside (they were left behind) were filled with spray-foam insulation. This filled the rest of the house with a quite heady chemical smell which is diminishing but persisting. Which brings me to a photo of where some of the insulation escaped the sill (the installers are coming back Monday to trim it up): Am I suffering from oxygen deprivation or does this glob of foam really look kind of like "Rex" from "Toy Story?"

Anyway, while I take advantage of the chemical forces in the air (don't do drugs, kids) to try to come up with some new comic book ideas (I already have one about a time-traveling talking orangutan. Really, I do), let's check out some other things that I bookmarked before my brain cells started falling over while singing Irish drinking songs:

- From the "Huh, that's still around?" file, The Matrix: Online, the MMO based on the movie trilogy, will end at the close of July.
- Economics. Comic books. At last, they combine to form Econcomicatron... or Devastator... I think.
- If you happen to have about $2.3 million lying around, you could own Cameron's house from 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I presume they've fixed the broken window by now.
- And speaking of wasting money on something cool, the custom USB drives just keep getting pricier and more appealing: 2gb in a Ninja Throwing Star for around $110. But they toss in extra chi for free.
- Last entry's "Deadpool" clip inspires me to share a list of 10 great Deadpool 'moments' from his comic books.
- "Hex Empire" is a nifty little strategy flash board game that kind of reminds me of "Risk," but not quite.
- Fans of the campy "Flash Gordon" will recall Klytus' famous death scene (fast-forward to 7:15 for the entirety of his demise). Now, there's an action figure commemorating the event.
- People who are much smarter than me have created (and will soon have kits for builders to purchase) the "Candyfab 6000," a device that can fabricate 3D models and objects from sugar.
- And let's close with a little magic act: Abracadabra is a bit like a chain-reaction Mah-Jongg game. Link as many matching objects as you can to clear the board.

8:31PM - More remakes, a fan trailer, and a film option that blows... bubbles?

Disney is going to re-make "Flight of the Navigator," a film from an era when CGI was still pretty new and where trailers were seemingly designed to make people think movies were boring. This is one of those films that I should have not re-watched as an adult if I wanted it to remain "totally awesome" in my memory. It's still got some good stuff going on (the controls for the ship were neat, and I liked the computer's reply of "COMPLIANCE" whenever it executed a command) and the ship was one of the ones I wanted in my "fleet" if I ever got to command one.

The kid-star of the film, Joey Cramer, went on to only a few roles after 'Navigator, the last being in 1996. Those wondering where he wound up might find the answer here, if that is, indeed, Joey.

And as has been shouted all over the 'net, they're remaking "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," without (at the moment) Joss Whedon. Other than the obvious response, some are asking everyone to hold off on torching 20th Century Fox as they haven't made a final decision on the writer yet.

What links these two films is Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Rubens. Not only did he play Amilyn, the (eventually) one-armed vampire in Buffy, but he was also the voice of Max, the ship's computer, in 'Navigator. If they decide to re-make "Moonwalker," I'm calling a conspiracy... and questioning some studio head's grasp on what the market wants. :)

Speaking of questioning sanity, someone has greenlit a script for a movie based on Bazooka Joe. My own memories of Joe consist of wondering what happened to his eye, chewing Bazooka gum until it was the consistency of road tar in December, and getting totally shafted when I turned in the requisite number of wrappers to get a trick lighter that had a snake jump out of it and instead received a "magic card trick" from a box of Captain Crunch. The card trick (with two cards. That was all) came with a letter telling me that the lighter had been deemed unsafe and that this was a substitute. Anyway, the source material for this film can be seen here. Unless they're making Joe a cursed pirate, doomed to walk the Earth as an immortal teenager, forever working a creaking jaw on a wad of ancient gum, I'm not sure what they're going to do with it. I suppose the sequel could have him duke it out with Double Bubble's Pud.

Another thing making the rounds is this very well-done fan trailer for a hypothetical Green Lantern movie. I can't argue with the casting of Nathan Fillion as Hal Jordan, and while I recognize several of the movie clips this was spliced together from, I can't imagine a cooler Green Lantern film.

In the arena of video games, it's been a while since I dusted off the ol' Wiimote. The Wii is an odd duck, lacking the next-gen graphics of the more robust consoles while managing to at least initially storm the marketplace on more casual fare, it appears to still be in search of an identity. The few FPS-style games on the system seem a little lackluster when compared to the other two in the console trinity, so it really can't compete there. But then I saw something that just might help Nintendo find the niche its latest gaming system is trying to find: games that are totally insane. The previous link is for a game called "Muscle March." You are one of a large crowd of shiny, speedo-wearing muscle-guys, whose canister of protein powder has been stolen by a football player. You have to run after him, striking the same pose as he does when he creates holes in walls as he runs. Here's a clip of six minutes of the game, with loads more Katamari-style wackiness to try to comprehend. It's disturbing, funny, mind-blowing, and that's what the Wii needs to stand out: "Games That Should Not Be." You know they'd be standard dorm equipment in colleges the world over, at the very least.

Oh, and we're getting a bit more Tennant as Doctor Who than we thought this year, and it looks like a Doctor Who movie is in the works! I wonder if it will please this segment of the audience?

But now, it's linktime. Everyone pretend to be working!

- It's now possible to calculate a thousand d6's worth of damage using real dice. Thank you, science!
- Spider-Man sold his marriage to the Devil (or at least, Mephisto) to reboot his comic book. However, the newspaper comic strip refuses to reboot, giving us yet another alternate universe for the next mega-crossover event to originate from.
- Just how big is J.J. Abrams' Enterprise compared to the old one?
- I didn't realize that George Lucas took six whacks at the script for "Star Wars" before it was made. They're linked to here, and the first draft is compared with the final one.
- Squirrels are slowly gaining intelligence and must be stopped before they learn how to use katanas and shiruken.
- Shoot-'em-upgrade is the name of the game in Heavy Weapons, a spaceship-based game that has a "Robotron" feel to it.
- Is there drama happening near your computer? Be sure to accompany it properly.
- Beware the tiny yet overwhelming cuteness of the Pygmy Jerboa.
- Alert reader Tony (a different one than the last one) sends us a page about the Vasquez Rocks, also known as "The Wilhelm Scream of Hollywood Scenery."
- Shooting and tower defense? Core Defense gets two great tastes in one.
- And we close on hilarity: the "I'm a Marvel, I'm a DC" guy gives us the best reason I can think of as to why there should be a Deadpool movie.

2:56AM - And Cristi's birthday week wraps up with two Johns...

Before they go on to play the KC Jiggle Jam tomorrow (Saturday), "They Might Be Giants" held a concert in Kansas City's Beaumont Club, and when I read that it would feature a complete live session of the album "Flood," I just couldn't resist. If you're like me and "Flood" was one of the first CDs you owned, try not to think about the fact it's almost 20 years old.

Songs from "Flood" have graced "Tiny Toon Adventures" (twice in one show), and "Birdhouse in Your Soul" is still one of my favorite tracks of all time. In my searching for the original, I happened upon the literal version and a live cover from Jonathan Coulton and Paul & Strom.

But before the "Flood," Mr. Flansburgh, Mr. Linnel and their band played a few other songs, including "Why Does the Sun Shine?." This was followed by the announcement that they're going to have an upcoming science album, filled with fact-based songs. They had a scientist review all of the lyrics of every track to make sure they were correct, and everything was good... except for the opening line from the aforementioned sun-song: "The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas." Luckily, the line "The Sun is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma" is correct, so the band recorded a song responding to previous one, correcting the misconception.

I just hope all of the information I've memorized about James K. Polk are correct. :)

I saw that Hollywood is adapting an older sci-fi program for film, a Gerry Anderson production called 'UFO.' I was given tapes of this show to watch, and I think it was one of those "you had to be there" programs. To my modern (and even my 70's Star Trek-lovin') eyes, the program had a healthy dose of cheese. It included a space station run by two women with purple hair and silver jumpsuits. But it's also notable for Gerry Anderson's model work (he's probably most famous for "Thunderbirds"), and it did try to be a "serious" show about defending Earth from aliens. I'm a bit fuzzy, but I don't think they ever established what the aliens were up to beyond harvesting people, and the view of what the 1980s would be like from the point of view of the 1970s included some interesting car designs. This is one of those film ideas that's either going to camp it up (keeping the "original look" of the show and poking fun) or it's probably going to bear little visual resemblance to the series, with many of the show's ideas put aside due to their conflicts with modern times and events. Though somehow, I suspect that there will be someone in the movie with purple hair...

While we wonder why nobody on the ISS has purple hair, we've got this:

- What do you do if you have a load of Lego Mindstorms and are amazing at using them? build a pirate movie, of course.
- In case the robots in "Terminator: Salvation" didn't seem real enough, here's what might be chasing us through the ruins instead.
- Because it needed to be done: 21 movie posters recreated with Lego.
- The label for Top Gear t-shirts seems to capture both Jeremy Clarkson's view on animals (I'm thinking of the story he told on Q.I. involving foxes, Russian night-vision goggles, a shotgun, and a bottle of Merlot) yet remain quite funny to all. :)
- Fans of the classic "Lemmings" games will find something to like in Meeblings 2, a game where you use special Meeblings to propel the others to the exit.
- One dog, 77 balloons, 100 seconds, oh, the humanity.
- The Redstar Fall game is back, this time with 20 more levels in Redstar Fall Pro. Try to get the red star to land safely on the designated platforms.
- And one for those who look for experimental militaria to add to their wargames (and like a challenge), here are 7 'WTF' military vehicles that were actually built and why they weren't built again.

8:31PM - New uses for one's organ...

Happy Birthday (last weekend) to my lovely wife, Cristi, who once again turns 29 for the first time. What you're seeing to the left is my gift to her (click to embiggen): A bookshelf made from a disassembled (and non-functional, in case there are any musicians in the house) antique pump organ. I'd been tinkering with this project for months, and finally got around to finishing it up when we embarked upon the "great basement purging of 2009," so I didn't methodically take pictures of the process. I found the organ at a garage sale, looking similar to this one, but in much better shape. After removing nearly every screw, I used the tallest bits for the lower parts of the shelf uprights. The upper half is made from several pieces of wood that originally adorned the front of the organ, cut in half and affixed to the lower part with wooden pegs. Those columns used to support the keyboard and stop knob console. The only parts that aren't original to the organ are the shelves (except for the one made from the keys) and the plywood back. I still want to try fitting an old gooseneck lamp to the top, putting the neck through the central hole as a bit of an accent to the piece. Cristi said she loves it, and now I have to figure out what I'm going to do to top it next year...

Some movie stuff, the first item going pretty far into the "crazy yet possibly awesome" range on the ol' "so bad it's good" movie meter: Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. To be fair, this is from a studio whose entire catalog consists of rip-offs of other films (like the now-"Sci-Fi Original" movie, Alien Vs. Hunter). This one seems to be possibly inspired by "Cloverfield" by way of the Discovery Channel. It's got cheesy CGI, a giant shark jumping out of the water to bite a commercial airliner, and Debbie Gibson. Yes, that Debbie Gibson. She's definitely no slouch, doing a lot of theater work as she relates in this interview, along with answering questions about the "Mega Shark" movie (fast-forward to 3:00 to skip a replay of the trailer). I also noticed the movie's font was "Vulgar Display of Power," a freeware font I've found useful in the past. :)

There's also a new "Sherlock Holmes" movie afoot, and the trailer has Robert Downey Jr. playing what appears to be Holmes by way of James Bond (given the massive lockpick collection, the sleeve-gun, and what appears to be a tazer/cattle prod). Not much to say on this one, except that I'll always think of Holmes as Basil Rathbone or Tom Baker.

On television, "Terminator" is gone, "Dollhouse" got a second season, and "Chuck" will return, albeit with a unprecedented level of product placement to ensure its survival. I'm curious to know what terms were negotiated with the writers insofar as potential mockery of the product and/or screen time is concerned. "Subway" is a pretty innocuous food vendor, lacking the links to french fries and teenaged minimum-wage "I'll have to ask my manager" types, so they could be an unobtrusive presence. I do kind of wonder what it would have been like if they'd partnered with Burger King.

I also have a book recommendation, though I'm only halfway through it, called "Bloodsucking Fiends." It's a kind of "hip" vampire novel with some decent humor and a good set of "rules" for the undead themselves. It's a tad dated, being pre-economic meltdown, though I give it points for having a character called "The Emperor of San Francisco" referring to the people working in the financial sector as "lost souls" who cling to what they were told would make them happy, and believe it so long as they all agree to believe it. If you enjoy it, a sequel called "You Suck: A Love Story" was published only two years ago.

Lastly, back to TV: "V" is coming back. There have already been a few clips released to the public that give us an updated version of the aliens' first contact with our world (flaunting their superior big screen TV technology right off the bat). The actress on the belly of the ship should be familiar to fans of "Firefly" as Inarra, played by Morena Baccarin. Details are still sparse, though gathering water still seems to be in the cards. They make reference to a "mineral" in the water, which I hope explains why they wouldn't just go harvest ice from Saturn's rings or some other place where you aren't fighting gravity. I've also heard questions as to whether the new "V" will involve creating a tyrannical occupation like the previous series, or if they're going for something more subtle. In any case, I can't imagine how they could top the miniseries theme music which still gives me chills.

To help put images of Diana eating a guinea pig out of your mind, here's some fun:

- In spite of its title, the clip called Whack-A-Kitty contains no cruelty and 1000% of your daily requirement of cute. May cause cavities.
- Here's a neat project if you're a garage sale hound like m'self and happen upon a lot of old camera and radio equipment: How to build a raygun from disused technology.
- A mini-game time waster with a bit of a dark theme: When the Bomb Goes Off. Each mini-game has a task to accomplish 5 seconds before a nuclear bomb lays waste to civilization. A red mushroom cloud means you failed, a green one means you succeeded... kind of.
- I have finally found a USB drive that I'm willing to be gouged for. Now if only it would fit inside of the Soundwave MP3 player, I'd be set.
- Cosmic Cannon is another simple time-killer game, where the object is to keep one of your numbered balls in the air as long as possible by hitting it with other cannonballs.
- Some of us are officially old. Many of our fondest toys and tools have already fossilized.
- It says it's a "study ball," but I think I'd like to try it as a keep the artist from raiding the fridge for at least an hour ball.
- One more game: Bloony Wheel, where you control what appears to be a unicycle affixed to a helium balloon. Learn to use the strengths of each part to get through the puzzling levels.
- A language warning on this final link: A list of the best comments found in computer source code. What I know about programming could probably fit on the back of a cereal box, but I understand the humorous nature of written frustration just fine. :)

11:21PM - What, exactly, IS the plan, Stan?

Thank goodness I made my new FFN cover before I discovered that Stan Bush had been busy "working" in the studio. Before we delve any further, some wallpapers based on the cover (sized 1024 by 768 and 1600 by 1200) are available.

Anyway, back to Stan. Most remember his 80's Transformers hit, "The Touch." Even today, I can listen to it, though I find it a bit embarrassing to be caught actively rocking out to it. But even more horrifying is this new version Stan has wrought, which can be seen by clicking on this text of your own free will. Great Unicron, what was he thinking? It's like he took out all of the stuff that made the first version enjoyable, stuffed in cliches from every music genre since 1988, and then recorded it on equipment forged from broken dreams and shattered hopes.

Okay, so maybe it's not that bad, but it's like hearing Paul McCartney try to redo "Band on the Run" in the style of Marilyn Manson. And the rapping just needs to go.

But onto happier things: As if I didn't have enough reason to pre-order the "Ghostbusters" video game, they've released some multiplayer footage. How can you not love a game where you can fight the ghosts of what appear to be fishermen, complete with rods & reels? The modding community is going to have a field day with this one. M'self, I'd like to see a package where you take on either all of the dead United States presidents, or a gaggle of dead rock stars (though the music rights would probably be prohibitive) with Elvis as the "boss monster."

It looks like the movie adaptation of "The Road" is back on track to be released, as evidenced by the release of this trailer. While it looks like we get the same general storyline, they appear to be putting a greater emphasis on action, giving the wife a larger role, and being a lot more specific about what caused the apocalypse (there is an oblique reference in the book, but "The Day After Tomorrow" environmental stuff wasn't a part of it). I thought the non-specificity of certain parts of "The Road" gave it a unique tone, putting the focus on the Man and the Boy and how they were striving to survive. I hope they aren't "Mad Max"ing the tale up to try and increase ticket sales... though if the movie is as good as the book, I don't think "The Road" will get much repeat business (did I mention the book is pretty bleakity-bleak-bleak?).

But until the apocalypse, enjoy the internet while the electrons still flow:

- Though many might argue with what "sucks" on this or what doesn't, here's a handy guide to which Star Trek movie you might be watching.
- It has begun, the baconing of non-pigs. Alert reader Tony gives us duck bacon.
- Here's a nice time-waster, Magnetic Defense. Use your magnet to pick up junk and drop it on enemies or use it to power up your base.
- A slight language warning on this page of Science Scout badges for service to science above and beyond that of one with average physique.
- Here's a debatable topic: Was 1971 the perfect year to be born a geek?
- I wish I'd thought of these clever futuristic warning signs for t-shirts.
- Love it or hate it, they're still autotuning the news with a third installment. Ron Paul's got quite a set of pipes!
- And here's a Robotron-esque shooter with power-ups for your pleasure called Bunny Charm. You're a bunny with an eyepatch shooting up what appear to be jumping thumbs on a desktop maze. Yeah, just go with it...

11:31PM - They have a highly visible touch, yeah...

How's that for some cover art? It's for the next FFN trade, and I'm likin' how it turned out. I'll be setting the title ("You got the Touch! You got the Powaaahh!") for solicitation tomorrow, bright 'n' early. And we're also reprinting Volume I, with "Epic Fail" page duplication and all (though it'll be "commented on" by the FFN guys, including a mention of the collectibility of the first printing). I'll post those pages online for printing/insertion in the first printing, for any completists in the audience.

Let me start this next section by establishing that I haven't seen the new "Star Trek" film, but all accounts say it's anywhere from good to "Wrath of Khan" awesome. So no spoilers from me are really possible, but I do have a few things about the film to pass along:

1. Burger King's toys are "meh," but the glasses they're selling are pretty cool (toys and glasses can be seen here). They glassware is quite retro-looking, hearkening back to the days of the "Star Wars" and "Smurf" glasses I once had from various fast food dispenseries. If the artwork slowly fades to white in the dishwasher, then the experience will be complete. Also, if you're like me (and I know I am), you might want to see if the people behind the counter will sell you some unused french fry boxes for possible celebrity autographing purposes. The ones I snagged for "Generations" are a nice geek chic addition to the office, though I wouldn't mind some new additions if our paths happen to cross during con season.

2. It's rumored that Zachary Quinto had to glue his fingers together to make the Vulcan "live long and prosper" salute in the movie. I thought these guys had personal trainers! If he doesn't get some physical therapy, it's really going to bite him in the Katra at any fan gatherings.

3. Here's some starship eye-candy for us Trekkies: the opening animation for Fedcon 2009.

4. Star Trek conventions have been around for quite a long time. Much as we have old yearbooks with which we can embarrass our parents, there's a chance that there's an old photo of them in "Spock" ears floating around.

5. I've not had a chance to get a webcam out to see if this works as advertised, but if you print out the downloadable image and point your cam at it, you'll see a 3-D Enterprise you can "interact" with.

But the biggest fan-epiphany about 'Trek that I've had came from (go with me on this one) playing "Fallout 3." In F3, the world isn't our own. It's a stylized "Popular Mechanics imagines the year 2000 from 1954" kind of place, but with nukes dropped on it. That allows me to get into the setting and gives me some footing for my suspension of disbelief. With "Star Trek," the retro-weird bridge and the mini-skirts threatened to knock me right out of identifying with the movie, because I grew up with Trek being a "possible future" for the world I lived in. As technology advanced in our own reality far beyond some of the simpler gizmos on the Enterprise, it started to bug me to the point of thinking "this just isn't realistic enough." This was ironic, given that I had no problem with warp drive, transporters, spaceships with no seat belts, etc. But lately I've come to think of the Star Trek universe as the future seen through the lens of cold war era sci-fi writers. It's idealistic with lots of "big science" gadgetry, weird aliens, and pulp-novel heroes. Once I started seeing the universe as a kind of Isaac Asimov's "Doc Savage" with a phaser, it makes for a more enjoyable ride.

And now, what makes "Star Trek" completely unrealistic; nobody forwards links to anyone:

- Any artists in the audience who feel like they've worked with every tool since cave-paint? See how many of these vintage items you've handled (thanks to alert reader Tony).
- Combining the "sleevefacing" trend with the classic "evolution of dance," we present Sleeveface Dance.
- I think we have a new Olympic sport in the making... along with a lot of neck injuries.
- This is an amazing AT-AT cake. See some of the construction in this Flickr set.
- After he's done with "Transformers," Michael Bay may be setting his sights on ponies.
- Here's one for afficionados of the old "Gauntlet" game: Medieval Rampage is a top-down shoot-everything-that-moves distraction.
- Passing along a new-ish internet meme (language warning on a few of the clips on this page): 'play him off, keyboard cat.' It consists of taking this popular footage of a cat and his Casio and attaching it as an ending to any video containing some measure of failure.
- As of this posting, there's a Woot-Off in progress. There goes any desire for sleep, darn them...
- Here's a kinda-dumb-but-still-fun cartoony jousting game: Heads and Hearts. Test your jousting skill by pressing the spacebar valiantly!
- And let's finish up with a little tribute to the H5N1 virus with the gross (yet semi-educational) game, Sneeze. It's a chain-reaction game where you get one "ah-choo" to infect enough people to pass to the next level. 'Snot too hard at first...

10:40PM - It's the worst sci-fi shows ever! We're doomed!

Bad genre TV has been with us for all of our nerdy lives, but it wasn't until I tried looking up an old medieval mess called "Wizards and Warriors" that I noticed just how many Zarquon-awful sci-fi and fantasy TV shows I grew up with (and, sadly, digested). Much like how generations after us will feel shame for having been totally into "Power Rangers," here's some of the worst shows I once loved and dare not watch again, as I fear for what's left of my mental health.

1. The aforementioned Wizards and Warriors, a show that was trying to play off of the popularity of some game that was garnering a lot of interest back then. I forget what it was called, something like Mazes and Monsters, perhaps. But anyway, this was typical cheese-TV with the dashing hero and comic relief sidekick. I also recall an episode with an "invisible dragon," which I think meant they had blown the FX budget getting swords and costumes at the local Ren Faire.

2. Spider-Man. No, not the CGI or animated web-head, the live-action version. 70's funk theme-song aside, we watched it because outside of Saturday morning TV, this was the best superhero production out there that didn't have Lou Ferigno or Lynda Carter in it. And they even did a clone episode, probably inspired by the 1973 Spider-clone that appeared in the comic, yet it taught nothing to those who came up with the "Clone Saga" run in 1994.

2a. Okay, a lot of the superhero offerings have, for many, gone from being awesome childhood shows, through being gawd-awful, and then come back out the other side into "Retrocamptastic" territory, and I guess "Shazam" can qualify. Also in this category you might find Isis, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, and Automan.

3. Anyone remember this show? "The Highwayman" was a Mad Max/Knight Rider mashup that seemed to star Sam "Flash Gordon" Jones and other familiar names from future sci-fi shows, but it really starred a futuristic-looking truck. I had to do some Google-fu to find the intro, though I had the commercials featuring co-star Jacko Jackson shilling for Energizer permanently etched into my cerebral cortex. If you can't get enough Jacko, he had a number one hit on Australia's single charts for a while.

4. "Starman" meets 80's new-age mysticism in The Phoenix. This show was almost a good idea, but it was typical 80's "hunted hero" stuff with the usual "save the ranch" type of storylines. Still, the lead did go on to help Khan almost defeat Admiral Kirk.

I know I'm leaving a ton out ("Manimal" leaps to mind), but those are the ones that floated to the top of the trivia-laden cesspool I call my brain (grin). I wasn't able to find and inflict a show I seem to remember called "Space Rangers," but I did find the intro to the equally bad, if not worse, Space Precinct (not to be confused with the much better, and much more British Star Cops).

Now it's back to the drawing board for me. I'm almost done with the cover for the second FFN volume, and I think it'll make a nifty wallpaper when I'm done. It's got a theme to it borne of 80's animated entertainment. Here's what I was watching when the idea struck. :)

Let's see what's on the interwebs today:

- David Mitchell is a British comedian, radio program host, and commonly-seen quiz show panelist (especially on Q.I.). He's recently attached himself to some brand of personal grooming products, which gives us his "Soapbox" sketches on the topics of spelling, rudeness, consensus, being unusually smart, beer, and flowers. Whew!
- Now that Duke Nukem is so dead that not even "Miracle Max" thinks he can revive him, here's a list of things that happened during the aborted development of 'Duke Nukem Forever' (it's mostly video-game related at the start, but scroll down to "Fun Facts" for actual real-world events).
- Time for a cuteness break: It's a kitten vs. a fan.
- The Empire has very strict regulations about bothering whales, so they decided to give those Federation yahoos a 'final warning' they won't soon forget.
- If the aforementioned event had happened to your starship, you would have done well to keep this handy page of Star Trek 'failures' and 'solutions' handy.
- This flash game, Castle Clout seems like a more primitive version of one posted last entry, but it's a bit more challenging, at least after the first couple of levels (or until you start getting heavier weights).
- But for a real trebuchet challenge, try this Japanese game. It has similar controls (click to start the arm moving, click to release), but you're trying to land furniture in an old woman's house without wrecking it. I hope you have better luck flinging than I did...
- The world is coming to an end. The latest sign is that Gizmodo really likes Windows 7. Caveat: I use Vista, and I have neither troubles with it nor passion for it, and I'll probably upgrade to 7 soon.
- And finally, if you miss the Nukem era of video games, here's three classics you can play in your browser: Doom, Heretic and Hexen.

8:37PM - More fallout from Fallout....

"Broken Steel" was the latest module downloadable content for the "Fallout 3" RPG video game. Naturally, things didn't get off to a great start as the add-on went out living up to the "broken" in its name. Things eventually got ironed out and I've gotten my character, "Mylar" up a few levels beyond 20. If you dig "Fallout 3," you'll dig "Broken Steel." There's loads to see and do, and it puts the level cap up to 30. I like this form of role-playing game, where you get the core rules basic game and, if it's well received, more content is made for it. Of course, the complexity of the Fallout 3 world makes it hard to integrate events into things the further you go along (which is why I could see how the new settings meshed with some choices characters might make at the end of the original central plot). I'm beginning to see the wisdom in setting "Fallout 4" in Las Vegas, away from the first game. It eliminates most of the plot details having to be addressed, and it prevents my level 30 guy with more than half his skills maxed from walking in and lobbing mini-nukes at anything that moves.

This isn't to say the game lacks problems, mostly of a technical nature (so no spoilers). There's a new flavor of ghoul you could run into, and I don't know if it's my particular install, but he moved like The Flash having a seizure. And the game was taking its flailing into account, I think, because whenever I killed one, it would shoot off like a bullet, the momentum of its rapid jerks propelling it hard enough to make other objects it collided with go airborne. Some turrets also exhibited this "shaking" behavior. The only other "seam" I could see is that I think Scribe Rothchild either had another voice-artist doing his lines, or they didn't rectify the audio settings on a few of his tracks. But since the time I got to try it out flew by, I think, in spite of the glitches, "Fallout 3" remains one of my favorite computer/console role-playing games. Though the upcoming Borderlands post-apocalyptic game looks pretty good.

But if tabletop post-apoc is more your style, this page has some pretty sweet custom minis based on the Fallout universe (just click on any link marked "picture"). Of note is this replica of Liberty Prime. I will gladly forgive Bethesda for its wretched PipBoy3000 clock if it produces an articulated Liberty Prime 12" action figure that says all the lines from the game and has a light-up blasto-visor-thing in its head.

And more video game stuff everyone who's a Star Wars fan can enjoy, a preview video of the upcoming Star Wars MMO, focusing especially on designing the planets players can visit.

In TV offerings, I'm digging what "Lost" is serving up, though I have to say in the latest episode, that was the worst CGI submarine I've seen in a long while.

Finally, after getting the office re-designed and more efficiently set up, I'm glad to announce that in a few weeks, Nodwick will make his first appearance in ps238! Here's a little sneak preview of what's in store! I'm also putting together the second "Full Frontal Nerdity" collection, and I think I've settled on a title, and depending on the layout, I might have a small color section included.

Fresh from the Wasteland that is my browsing history:

- How to get yourself thrown out of comicon: Cosplay with working Wolverine claws. Warning: Cardboard box cruelty.
- You + NewMath = ha-ha.
- I know a lot of these were from the RPG.net "Motivational Poster" thread, but this page has a pretty good 'best of' haul, arranged by category.
- I'd watch Formula 1 racing if it actually looked like this. There are even more videos in this vein. This needs to be the basis for the next "Burnout: Paradise" game.
- It's a bit slow to start, but has an interesting steampunk vibe: The Arrow of Time is a "defend your airborne castle" with an upgradable drag-n-click bow-n-arrow mechanic.
- Okay, one more "Fallout" related link: This gospel song, 'Atomic Power' really should go into an upcoming Fallout release.
- From the "places you'll never get my wife to even set foot" files comes plans to put glass ledges on the Sears Tower. I would install easy drainage on those, were I in charge...
- How about some medieval castle-mashing? In Crush the Castle, you've got to knock over enough castle walls to smush the nobles living behind and under them. Addictive, with a "Monty Python" feel to it.