Indolence And Intolerance

Challenges in Gaming

2012-02-15T17:05:00.000-08:00

Appropriate challenge is something many game developers try their hand at, and fail harder than a DVD rewinder.

There are two kinds of challenging gameplay. There's the kind where after completion you take a minute to bask in the knowledge that your superior skill and reflexes helped you triumph through the section, and then there's the kind where after countless attempts, being foiled not only by bad design but by bugs and glitches as well, you finally manage through sheer fucking repetition and luck, and take a moment to go online and find the bastard that was responsible for the section, and then entertain thoughts of doing something terrible to them.

It had been a while since I experienced this kind of frustration, as it seems to be less common in the good games of this gen than the good games of last gen. But while playing through the Jak collection this weekend I came face to face with the second example. Jak II's vehicle section are among some of the worst in gaming history. If you aren't playing against an AI that simply doesn't have to follow the same rules as you do, then you're getting stuck on the world geometry, or having your vehicle blow up because you ran into a fly, or the game just flat out refuses to accept your victory. The vehicles in this game have all the structural integrity of plastic beer cup, and all the handling and finesse of a bicycle with two inch handle bars.

Not only is the racing in this game atrocious, but they decided to make it the main focus of the gameplay, which is like making a celibate monk director for your porn flick. All but 3 races in the entire game take place in the city streets, which happen to be populated by droves of mindless pedestrians on the ground, and the hover zone is full of the aforementioned flying plastic beer cups. But that's only half of it. The ground is also littered with Krimson (Because Mortal Kombat has shown us that cool people replace Cs with Ks) Guards, which will enter high alert if they so much as feel the breeze coming off your car as you pass by. You then get to contend not only with the mobile obstacle course that is the pedestrians, but also an entire fleet of hover bikes with mounted guns, hover APCs with mounted guns, and foot soldiers carrying assault blasters and guns that shoot arcing electricity.

Jak 3 slightly improves upon this issue by giving you slightly better ground based vehicles and dumping you in the middle of the desert. But Naughty dog immediately fucks that up by making sure you can't drive for two seconds without 5 bandit vehicles spawning all around you, and this continues for as long as you're in your dune buggie.

You know, for a games with such tight platforming it seems that they got the rest of their ideas for gameplay for the inebriated, spliffed up rejects of Insomniac and Rockstar. Admittedly the gunplay isn't nearly as bad as the driving, but that's like saying that your amputated arm doesn't bother you as much as your terminal bowl cancer...

Valentines Day

2012-02-14T13:26:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentines Day, tossers. If you're with that special someone today, be sure to treat them well, and after you get them blind drunk, remember, there's only one sure way to avoid pregnancy, and that's anal sex;)

Just out of curiosity ...

2012-02-06T15:58:00.000-08:00

Does anyone actually fucking read this blog? I know I don't exactly offer much except bitterness and rants, but sometimes I wonder if the only hits I get are from people who are still being directed to this site while looking for anime and shit. I suppose I just want to know if I'm only spinning my wheels, or if anyone walks away from a post here feeling even slightly enlightened or trolled. (inb4 blogging is at its core spinning your wheels)

There should be a poll directly above this post, so vote if you are so inclined.

Also, 8008 hits. Symmetry at its finest.

Morons

2012-02-02T08:58:00.000-08:00

Morons. We know they are all around us. But sometimes they poke their heads out of their basements just long enough to make a complete ass of them selves before returning to languish in their subterranean hovels.

This is an post made by some dumb fuck called Skeletal-Minion, who was the focus of this week's "Speak Up" column on Kotaku. He writes:

I'm so sick of seeing people who buy used games bitching, most recently about Kingdoms of Amalur providing some extra content for people who buy a new copy.

You don't like Online Passes? You want the "choice" to be able to buy the game used (and I can't even believe I'm actually saying that, as if the option to buy used was completely removed, when it obviously hasn't)?
Fine then. DON'T FUCKING BUY IT, you entitled, self-centered pricks. 38 Studios and every other company who implements an online pass don't have to listen to a fucking word of your whining. When you decide to be cheap and save a few dollars by buying used—and yes, it boils down to you being CHEAP, since if you can't afford to skip one fucking value meal to make up the $5 difference between a new and used copy, you obviously don't have the extra money to waste on the game period and shouldn't be buying it in the first place—those same developers and publishers you're crying a river to are making $0 off you. To paraphrase Penny Arcade, "You are no longer their customer, you're a customer of Gamestop."

I know you people who are actually upset over this think the gaming industry should be a magical fantasy land where everything is sold below cost, all DLC is free, and games are supported indefinitely, but guess what? You know those people making all the great games you've enjoyed since you discovered the hobby? This is their JOB. That's right, MAKING GAMES is what they do to put bread on the table. People look at big names in the industry like Bobby Kotick and assume anyone and everyone remotely related to gaming is some greedy bastard who's already filthy rich, and end up thinking the following: "They could easily afford to lower the price on this DLC/include that extra mode they cut/keep updating the game forever, they just don't want to!" Newsflash: big names in the industry are rich BECAUSE THEY'RE BIG NAMES.

Bobby Kotick is a damn CEO, of course he's rolling in cash. But while you were making that moronic assumption, THOUSANDS of programmers, artists, writers, modelers, musicians, etc. were making a fraction of what someone like Kotick makes while absolutely working their asses off making the games you enjoy (and they do work VERY hard, just look at what they have to put up with during the "crunch time" right before a title's release). Since the gaming industry is a business, guess what happens when a game doesn't turn a profit? Layoffs. Layoffs that impact the families and lives of all those people I just mentioned (Kotaku just posted a huge list of recently shut down studios if you want evidence of this). There are several things that can cause a game to not be profitable: poor release climate, poor marketing, over budgeting, poor strategic decisions (e.g., releasing a clearly multiplayer focused title with no online play or releasing a game on a system with a different demographic than your target), piracy, or even the game being flat out bad.

Regardless of how badly you want to penny pinch, the used games market is one of those causes. If online passes can help eliminate that and keep the developers I like around to make more of the games I like, I'm all for it.

"WAAAAAAH, EVEN THOUGH I STILL HAVE THE OPTIONS TO, I DON'T WANT TO BUY IT USED SINCE I'LL MISS OUT ON SOME CONTENT! :(" Bitch, baby, bitch. What are you going to do, not give them your money TWICE?

Being the kind of person I am, I just couldn't resist ridiculing this twat, if not actually educating him. I wrote:

Wow. There is so much bullshit in that post I don't even know where to start. But I'll just address the bit I read right before I got sick of listening to you pander on about shit you clearly don't understand.

"Since the gaming industry is a business, guess what happens when a game doesn't turn a profit?"

You know which games generally don't turn a profit? Shitty ones. You do know that developers are paid as they work, right? This means that they can put "bread on the table" as they work. It's not like they work for free for the entire fucking development cycle and only get paid if the game turns a profit. The "Profit" is the amount of revenue generated after all the bills have been paid. Even in the event of breaking even everyone still gets paid.

Also, lol at your assumption that trying to get the lowest price makes you a bad person or something. And your quoting of Penny arced is flat out retarded, as is the original material. We are never a customers of developers. Publishers pay devs to make games, and publishers sell games at a significantly lower cost than we buy them from the retail outlets that we shop at. So essentially the price is getting jacked up twice. Ones by the publishers, who aren't satisfied with breaking even, and once by the retailers who run their business by buying things cheap and selling them at a significant markup. BY buying a game you are not helping someone feed their family, your helping to make someone rich, and those people are almost NEVER the actual people who make the games.

Man, and they call ME Fucked Logic...

Of course I don't even know why I bother explaining these things to people like you. You obviously have your head jammed so far up your own ass you could give yourself a colonic irrigation by spitting.

Dreams

2012-01-28T07:20:00.000-08:00

Have you ever woken up from a dream so real, so utterly vivid, that you spend the next five minutes inspecting your room to make sure nothing followed you back? Or find yourself in your front yard at 2:00am burying your keys so your roomate can't take your car out for a joy ride with a trunk full of cocaine and end up plowing it through the front of the local police department?

Maybe it's just me...

Feds Shut Down Megaupload

2012-01-19T13:34:00.000-08:00

It seems that SOPA and PIPA aren't even needed, since today the DoJ went to New Zealand and arrested Kim Schlitz, founder of the Megaupload service. He is now either in the process of being extradited to America to face trial or already has been.

So what does this mean aside from the fact that one of the best, most accessible, and least tedious to use file hosts has been removed from the internet? Well, it means that at any time, for any number of reasons, American governmental agencies can waltz into a country on the other side of the world in which they have no jurisdiction, carrying torches and pitchforks and proceed to drag people off whilst branding them "Pirates", like the term is the intellectual property equivalent of a kiddy porn ring. They will later go on to release a statement stating that (Insert multi-billion dollar organization's name here) lost 500 million dollars due to piracy, and every good little brainwashed citizen out there will think "Good riddance! How is (Insert filthy rich band's name here) supposed to afford that third diamond studded Olympic swimming pool if these "pirates" are out there giving away their songs for free?".

That last paragraph got me thinking, why the fuck are people who acquire content and share it with others free of charge called pirates? Doesn't traditional piracy usually involve murdering the original owners and selling the property on the black market? This seems a lot more like taking from the absurdly wealthy and giving to those who would otherwise be getting gouged by companies who own a monopoly on the item they're selling. I deem from this day fourth people who share files free of charge should be called Robin Hoods.

Compared to other file hosts I've encountered in the last few years, MU seemed rather vigilant when taking down something that could even be considered illegal or copyright material. It's more than a little disturbing that even with that being the case, the feds snapped their fingers and made a site with over a 150 million members disappear overnight, and jailed their founder and several other employees.

It seems all too clear that anti-piracy is going to become the new golden ticket that the American government will use to invade other countries and drag their citizens off to face trial in the land of the fre... fre... sorry, I just can't bring myself to type that word today.

Arrow To The Knee

2011-12-31T16:37:00.000-08:00

Merry Fucking Christmas

2011-12-25T12:28:00.000-08:00

Ol' Saint Nick's got burban breath
It's so cold you could catch your death
A cop sold me some crystal meth
It's a Merry Fucking Christmas

Everything's so Chritmassy
The streets are twinkling with frozen pee
My priest just sat on santa's knee
It's a Merry Fucking Christmas

All the kids go to bed each night to dream what santa brings 'em (brings 'em)
Unless they're jewish or muslim or some other gyp religion
Crappy toys flying off the shelves
Midgets dressed up to look like elves
Spread good cheer or burn in hell
It's a Merry Fucking Christmas

All the kids go to bed each night to dream what santa brings 'em
Unless they're jewish or muslim or some other gyp religion
Cracklin' fires to keep me warm
And my collection of asian porn
Cradle my bells and work my horn
It's a keep on truckin', last year suckin', midget chuckin', slap the puckin', how much wood could a wood chuck chuckin', Merry Fucking Christmas

Oh Denis Leary, you're twice as cynical on Christmas so I can get away with only being half as cynical.

There's a big feast in a few hours, I've got a brand new iPod touch in my hands, a new processor and video card in my computer, and with any luck, I'll be hitting something six years younger than me tonight, and I'm not talking about the bottle of Canadian Club I got in my stocking...

Merry Fucking Christmas Everyone!

SOPA

2011-12-16T12:55:00.000-08:00

So I've been lurking the seediest places I go online in an attempt to soak up as much lulz, porn, and pirated content as humanly possible before the Stop Online Piracy Act comes into play and rapes the internet with the hot iron stick or corporate wanking.

This shit seems not to be going in favor of a free internet, and I suspect that by this time next year we'll all be scouring the deep web just to get the stuff that used to freely available on the surface. It's a shame, but I really doubt this will be used to fight piracy as much as it will be used to smite anyone with the gall to discuss games, movies, books or post any content related to them, especially if it's in a negative light. Viacom and other copyright holders already smack youtube with DMCA take down notices if someone so much as mentions one of they client's properties without writen permission in triplicate, so I suspect it'll be getting worse if anything.

Of course I imagine they'll either try and appear benevolent at first, claiming they're just fighting the good fight against the pirates so the copyright holders can amass more income than the fucking church, or they'll ease us into the situation the same way you can boil a frog alive if you start it off in room temperature water and increase the heat.

The courts will be filled with cases of Joe Average V.S Corporate Whoreism, because no one wants to just bend over and take it without at least attempting to exercise their right of the acceptable use policy, but that policy won't exist anymore, because SOPA will override it.

If you're American, I urge you to contact your senator and make a huge fucking fuss about this, because unless you stand up, this bill is going to shit all over your back yard.

Being Canadian, this won't effect me directly, but I'm sure we'll suffer the trickle down form of it, in as much as the Canadian government has always been America's little bitch, and will happily comply with any policy your government so much as suggests in the hope that you'll start buying our lumber again.

FML, and yours too...

hey hey from my droid

2011-12-14T00:27:00.000-08:00

This is just a quick qigong update, I dont have internet at the moment. On the bright side i am getting some airplay on mactunes radio. you can go to mactunes.org to check it out or facebook.com/shankatsu if youre an impatient motherfucker

also, skyrim and arkham city fucking pwn, but if youre reading this you probably dont need me to tell you that.

The Land of Skyrim

2011-11-17T19:34:00.000-08:00

Welp, I finally got my copy of Skyrim, after Puralator fucked up and it spent 6 days in a shipping depot for no reason. After I called them up and raged, I think they got a little embarrassed and drove it about 800km in one day.

So I fired up the game (Uninstalled thanks to Beth's glorious 360 texture bug), and the first thing I notice (apart from the fact that running games uninstalled sounds like a fucking jet engine) was that the shadows look like someone threw lego in a blender then painted it black. Seriously, these are the worst shadows I've seen this console generation. Aside from that I'm fairly pleased so far, but have some nagging thought in the back of my head that I should have just got it for the PC, steam requirements be damned.

I think I may upgrade my video card this week, cause this shit sure as hell won't run on a GTS 8600.

Equal opportunity to be discriminated against.

2011-11-16T19:27:00.000-08:00

I'm sure you're wondering what set me off today. Well, it was when reading an article on Kotaku that was written by someone I can only describe as a naive bint named Leigh Alexander. She said, and this is an accurate quote not even slightly taken out of context, "You aren't ever entitled to discriminate against anybody for any reason.", which is of course the opinion of an ignorant twat that has likely been brainwashed by living in a country where political correctness and tolerance are passed off as being part of some sort of neo religion where everyone is equal, even the ones who obviously aren't. One where you are led to believe that not only is everyone is equal, but that the rights given to you are given by GOD, and not by the ruling party of your government.

So here is a list of things I openly and proudly discriminate against:

Gays (Who won't shut up about being gay)

Blacks (Who steal my things and shank my friends)

Indians (Who ask me for money for food then proceed to run off to their drug dealers)

Japanese (Who shut themselves off from the world and hate everything they'll never experience)

And above all...

People of any subgroup or race including my own (That do all of the above things that I don't care for and even some unlisted ones )

You see, I may be discriminatory, but there's equality in my discrimination.

Oh yeah. and remember that today is American Censorship day. Be sure to sign the letter that the pop up direct you to.

Bundles of Sticks

2011-11-07T13:49:00.000-08:00

You know, I've always found it funny how gays scream from the rooftops how they "Deserve our respect" and how "Everyone should accept them" (When tolerate would be closer to the mark), and continue to do so until even the people who have accepted them are thinking "What is that fucking queer on about now?".

Now I don't exactly like gay people, but I'm not about to get my leather gloves and piano wire and start removing them from socitey either. To each their own, and live and let live, but for fucks's sake, sing a different tune every now and then!

I mean, by the very definition of the word these people are supposed to be happy, but they usually don't seem content unless they're rubbing their lifestyle in your face. And that is exactly the issue. I don't care what or who's hole you're sticking it in, as long as it's far away from me and I don't need to hear about it every time I walk outside or turn on my T.V. But no; they're never content with being gay, everything must have something gay in it. Games must have gay characters, open world games must allow gay marriage, and there must be a 50/50 ratio of gay to straight content. I just finished reading a post on the Bethesda forums by some guy who wants Beth to make 10% of the characters in Skyrim gay. These are the kinds of things that make me teeter on the edge between not giving a shit what they do with their lives, and outright despising every last one of them.

You know what the cause of this ongoing bitching is? Acceptance. Think about it. You don't hear NAMBLA or date rapists going on about wanting equal treatment and opportunity for advancement, because we're still in a day and age where we'd find them before they managed to organize their first pride rally and beat them to death with fisher price toys and novelty roofie pills respectively. But who knows, maybe that will all change in the next 50 years. It wasn't long ago that the same could be said about gay people, but then along came acceptance and suddenly we have to hear about it all the time.

This is where free speech can go so very wrong. Sure everyone is entitled to their opinion (It's why blogspot exists), but they shouldn't be entitled to bombard everyone about it all the time, because that's when it stops being an opinion, and starts being an unsubtle (super liminal) brainwashing attempt , or maybe just bringing everyone to the point of such utter frustration that they say "Fine, we accept you, just enough with the fucking pride parades already!".

I think all groups who are constantly going on about their treatment in society should get a new label; they should all be called RWs, or relentless whiners. Just because you don't like your lot in life doesn't mean everyone else should have to hear about it, and if we do want to hear about it, we don't want to hear about it all the fucking time. I have a thing or two I could drone on about endlessly, but try to keep my rants as fresh and as unrepetetive as possible so as to avoid being like these hopeless fucks. Keep in mind I'm not just talking about gays, I'm talking about any group of people that have a chip on their shoulder the size of a sheet of drywall and decide that we constantly need to hear how they feel about their issues.

Here are a few simple pieces of advice to the would be RWs: Such is life. Don't sweat the small stuff. If you don't want to be singled out for being what you are, stop telling people about it. Walk softly and carry a big fucking stick.

/what I'm sure will be viewed as "Hate speech".

Amateurs

2011-10-28T05:18:00.000-07:00

So I was checking out the Beth Blog for new info on Skyrim today and saw them touting a new preview by G4 TV, so after clicking the link and discovering I needed to disable Adblock+ in order to view the content, I was then bombarded by a retarded promotional video telling me to preorder the upcoming assassin's creed game, after that I was bombarded by adds telling me to save Africa. After ignoring all these pleas for my hard earned money, I finally was graced by the glorious content I had been waiting for; at least that's what I would have said if the video hadn't stuttered to shit due to amateur encoding, if they hadn't reused stock footage like someone had hit the endless replay button, and if they hadn't gotten two filthy, gas huffing street urchins to take the place of the two people who were supposed to preview the game.

The commentary for this video was like baby's first pod cast. Inane ramblings from two people who sound like they're either high or have the mental maturity of a 14 year old kid who was locked in a closet until recently. I didn't even mind that they didn't know the terminology about this particular game, it's that they seem to be totally oblivious to anything but what seems like a fleeting experience with games in general. These two come off as the kind of people that played a N64 game for 15 minutes one time and now consider themselves experts on the subject.

I would continue by saying that this is what it would be like if I got my non gaming father to comment on a 3 hour preview, but I give my father more credit than that, and even if he just sat there in silent awe of this game's depth and scope for 11 minutes and then proceeded to utter the single word "wow" under his breath, it would be vastly better than what I just listened to.

I can only assume that Bethesda sent an invitation to G4 for the preview, but everyone was too busy or high on ether to go themselves, so they selected two interns or parking attendees, gave them the address, and then shoved them out the door with bus fare and a couple of bagged lunches.

The link is below in case you loath your ears and want to punish them.

View at your own risk

Business is getting too serious

2011-10-04T13:01:00.000-07:00

It seems no one online has a sense of humor any more. I just got a 45 day suspension from gfaqs for having the words "Gfaq mods are small bundles of sticks." in my signature. Well, it was there for about two months before I got slammed into purgatory for it, so I guess that speaks to the level of intelligence most mods over there have. But as they say, all good things come to an end, and it appears someone with a brain figured out what it meant.

Another time someone was whining about homophobia in games and was asking if Saints Row 3 would have the same level of "homophobia" as the other entries in the series. Now lets set aside the fact that just because a game does not endorse the bumbing lifestyle does not mean it's homophobic, it just doesn't cater to faggots, and focus on the fact that I was banned for responding "One can only hope". It seems it doesn't matter what you actually say these days, just so long as someone can interpret it as offensive.

I'd go into details about how other gaming sites are more up tight and sensitive than a constipated person simultaneously suffering from chronic hemorrhoids, but I already ranted about the Escapist a month or so back, so that's been covered. I'm pretty sure the only gaming related place I haven't been suspended or banned from for speaking my mind is Kotaku, so go figure.

This really reaffirms my opinion that the only easy going sites on the net are ones related to or accepting of porn, because it seems most gamers are way too up tight to just live and let live.

Why "Dead Island" blows.

2011-10-03T09:15:00.001-07:00

The quickest answer to this question is that it's boring after the first 20 minutes.

After beating the game in single player, and with my roommate in co-op lan, I have some minor observations.

For one thing the interface is fucking clunky. Sometimes navigating the menus is more difficult then playing the actual game.

Weapon durability blows. It always has blown, and it always will blow. nothing is more flat out ridiculous when you start out, have 12 variants of ye olde wooden stick, and they all end up breaking in the middle of a fight, surrounding you with 12 infected which tend to run a little bit faster then you can.

Moving is like driving a tank. Which is ridiculous considering you're on foot. And then oddly the driving is done fairly well. Until you get the tank. Half the time I can't see out of that thing. There may be a button to get a third person view on the vehicles. I'm not sure. I still have a bad habit of running into shit. Although i'll admit that i'm not the best at any driving be it RL or in game.

The weapon selection is invariably poor. As aforementioned, in the beginning I found myself running around with 12-15 variants of a broomstick. You can get "Recipies" to upgrade these weapons but none of the good ones really pop up until much later in the game, and even then they're not that great of upgrades. (I found the shock based ones worked the best) I realize they wanted to make it somewhat realistic, but no. It's a zombie game. I don't want to know how well i'd actually do in a real life zombie based combat situation. I want to believe that with nothing but a Katana and a Handgun i'd be invincible.

Recipies are Bullshit : In Dead Rising 2 (The game this game gets invariably compared to) When you combine cool shit, to make even cooler shit, (With the handyman's secret weapon no less) you can fuck around and pull shit out of your ass, without earning any of the trading cards that show you how to do it. Which gives a bit more of a "Surprise" feature to it, plus you don't have to hunt for all the cool shit. For half the game I had all of the shit to make shock based bladed weapons, but I couldn't actually do so until I had already found a katana or two.

Guns are boring as shit. There's roughly your 4 types, Pistols / Shotguns / Semi Auto/Burst Rifles / Full Auto Rifles. Each one gets itself a subcatagory of "Types" but the differences aren't really all that great, and I find them relatively useless, especially considering how little ammo there is.

All in all, save your money folks. If you really want to play dead island, just play Borderlands again and pretend the enemies are zombies. you'll most likely have more fun with that.

QiGong Animu Recommendations

2011-09-23T12:02:00.000-07:00

In case anyone's bored as fuck, and still reading this.

Sekirei, and High School of the Dead were pretty fucking good. Especially if you like titties.

Both are available on Netflix as well as Hulu in the states, otherwise I'm sure you know how to work a torrent tracker.

Also, I <3 Titties.

Kangen Water

2011-09-12T13:51:00.000-07:00

This scam has actually been going on for a while, but has really picked up steam in the last year or so. Kangen water is a Japanese device said to purify, ionize, break down and alkalize water. Now aside from the purification part, why would anyone want to do these things? Well, information is being spread around saying that the more alkaline water you drink, the healthier you will be. The fact is, one cannot change their body PH by ingesting anything. If by some chance you did manage to change your body PH to what these people would have you believe is best, you'd suffer from metabolic alkalosis and likely die. Your body PH is strictly regulated in a number of ways, the most obvious being the venting of carbon dioxide by exhelation. Not only that, but the second you consume alkaline water, it is nutralized by the acid in your stomach.

Ionization through the process of electrolysis is the next thing this device claims to do, but there has been no scientific evidence that this will do anything beneficial for the people who use it. From air ionizers to water ionizers, it's the get well buzz word of the past five years, and like all these other claims, is based on utter horse shit.

Another feature in the long list of things this device claims to do is break up water cluster to "improve cellular hydration". The thing is, your body actually has a mechanistic that already does this. This device claims that the ingestion of clustered water leads to dehydration, due to the fact(lie) that your body cannot properly absorb clustered water.

Here's the real kicker, this device has a price tag of around $4300 USD. Why you ask? Surely the parts must be really expensive. Nope. You could likely build this yourself for around $400. Then it must be the tech, right? Nope. Since this machine is just an over priced filtering device, the tech is not very expensive, and has been around for ages. The real reason this device sells for the price of a used car is because it has its roots in MLM. That's right, the minion selling this to you is at the bottom of a pile of useless, greedy fucks who get a commission every time their subordinates sell one of these false hope machines.

Another thing they flaunt about like a badge of honor is that the machine is fully endorsed by the Japanese government. These claims that "water ionizers are approved for use in Japanese hospitals" are misleading: these "approvals" merely attest to the machines' safety — that they will not electrocute you! My understanding is that the Japanese Health Ministry is highly critical of therapeutic claims made for alkaline water.

Here are a few facts I dug up that blow almost all the claims of this device out of the water (No pun intended):

"Ionized water" is nothing more than sales fiction; the term is meaningless to anyone who actually knows what they're talking about.
Pure water (that is, water containing no dissolved ions) is too unconductive to undergo significant electrolysis by "water ionizer" devices.
Pure water can never be alkaline or acidic, nor can it be made so by electrolysis. Alkaline water must contain metallic ions of some kind — most commonly, sodium, calcium or magnesium.
The idea that one must consume alkaline water to neutralize the effects of acidic foods is ridiculous; we get rid of excess acid by exhaling carbon dioxide.
If you do drink alkaline water, its alkalinity is quickly removed by the highly acidic gastric fluid in the stomach.
Uptake of water occurs mainly in the intestine, not in the stomach. But when stomach contents enter the intestine, they are neutralized and made alkaline by the pancreatic secretions — so all the water you drink eventually becomes alkaline anyway.
The claims about the health benefits of drinking alkaline water are not supported by credible scientific evidence.
"Ionized"/alkaline water is falsely claimed to be an anti-oxidant. It is actually an oxidizing agent, as can be seen by its ability to decolorize iodine.
There is nothing wrong with drinking slightly acidic waters such as rainwater. "Body pH" is a meaningless concept; different parts of the body (and even of individual cells) can have widely different pH values. The pH of drinking water has zero effect on that of the blood or of the body's cells.
If you really want to de-acidify your stomach (at the possible cost of interfering with protein digestion), why spend hundreds of dollars for an electrolysis device when you can take calcium-magnesium pills, Alka-Seltzer or Milk of Magnesia?
Electrolysis devices are generally worthless for treating water for health enhancement, removal of common impurities, disinfection, and scale control. Claims that "ionized" waters are antioxidants are untrue; hypochlorites (present in most such waters) are in fact oxidizing agents.

It seems likely that these machines actually add substances to the water in order to make it either alkaline or acidic, because as one of the facts above points out, "pure" water can only be neutral.

A friend of mine tried to turn me on to this contraption a month or so back. I tried it out for a while and wasn't too thrilled. I discovered all this information about the scam through hunting around online, but only after wading though heaps of propaganda, blind testimonies, and endorsements by their brainwashed patrons.

She showed me a DVD full of retardedly absurd claims. One couple claimed the water cured their son of Autism (and in only two days). Another person claimed it cured his terminal cancer. The funny thing about these claims is that they are not made by the company, they just publish the testimonies of their "enlightened" customers, which leaves it protected under free speech.

I saw my friend earlier tonight, and asked if she had read the information I sent her to warn her of her impending loss of money. She said that she was really enjoying her device, and had already decided to buy one of the top models and recommend it to all her friends. I told her about what the info I found boiled down to, but she said she didn't want to hear it, which essentially translates to "I don't want facts to get in the way of my ignorance".

If you think game console fanboys are bad, be thankful you've never encountered one of these tools. These fuckers come out of the woodwork and hiss and spit and claim you're a heretic for not accepting this miracle. Most of the sites I visited were laden with comments by these true believers. Logic really doesn't seem to be prevalent in these people.

I realize that everyone needs a little hope, especially the sick, but false hope does nothing, and when it's false hope at the price of a small fortune, then I say tar and feather these motherfuckers!

Will drinking this water make you feel better? Probably. The placebo effect is quite strong in the ignorant, even more so when trying to justify their purchase of a $4000 water filter.

Sources:
Chem1
Skeptic Blog
Skeptoid
Chem1
CommonSense

(HUD) Heads Up Display

2011-09-09T17:07:00.000-07:00

Static HUDs and fixed control schemes, yee fucking haw...

It's 2011. Games look good enough that I don't want to be forcibly pulled out of the immersion because 1/4 of my screen is the hud. What I'd really like is being able to decide which icons show up on the hud and the individual placements of said icons. Fallout 3 and NV came pretty close to this, as you could change color and opacity of the hud, if not move individual pieces around independently of each other.

Some games move hud elements about 10% closer to the center of the screen than they need to be to compensate for overscan. Divinity II: DKS is a good example of how shit huds can be if not designed properly. The developers of this game, or at least the team in charge of the console port, were either too fucking stupid, or too fucking lazy to bother making a hud that works for both widescreen and full screen displays. What we get is all the hud elements crammed towards the center of the screen like they thought we were all using T.Vs from the 90s. Notice how the PC screen shot doesn't look like a compulsive neat freak tried to put everything in the same spot.

While some hud elements are handy and perhaps even necessary, I don't need a bright blue static health meter for games like Ninga Gaiden 2, which caused burn in on my old plasma display. How hard can it possibly be to make a fading or customizable hud, when even Fable fucking 1 had the option to change opacity? This archaic practice is almost as absurd as fixed control schemes with no alternatives. The recent Deus Ex: Human Revolution is another good example of both of these practices. These were both great games, brought down by niggling aesthetic problems.

MLP & Dear God, Why?

2011-09-02T22:40:00.000-07:00

As some people may have noticed by now, there's a new phenomenon sweeping through the internets. Morons who are calling themselves "Bronies" and spend their time watching the new My Little Pony cartoon on CN. And let me just say folks, Vishnuu in his multi-armed form as he becomes death, the destroyer of worlds doesn't have enough hands to fucking facepalm.

I can understand some of the furfags who are getting into it. I can live with that. If they want to dress up and pretend to be magical unicorns, so fucking be it. But even people who have the utmost intolerance of "furdom" have been caught looking at the porn. And as an adult I kind of find it embarassing.

I realize the show creator, Laura Faust (sp?) Is in fact a channer, and I do realize this has alot to do with it. But c'mon folks. Guns 'n Roses did a cover of one of Ted Bundy's songs but that doesn't mean everyone should go out and become a homicidal loon.

The show is for little girls. It's *really* not amusing anymore. Grow the fuck up.

Deus Ex and Racisim

2011-09-02T15:47:00.000-07:00

Reading gaming blogs this week, I noticed a number of articles whining about the character Letitia and how they felt her character was a racist stereotype. To that, I have this to say: Get the fuck over it.

This is not racism, and even if it was, who gives a shit? The people who wrote these articles are primarily white, so then why do they have to be some uncalled for white knight and blow this totally out of proportion? Is it because it's their job? Is it because they're too uncreative to come up with something other than the "OMG, they're being racist" card? This is like that RE5 situation all over again.

You want more to whine about? Go to 4chan and see the word "nigger" dropped 50 times in a single thread, and even that doesn't matter. So much is defined as racism these days just so people with too much time on their hands and a savior complex have something to cry about and defend.

When someone gets burnt alive while tied to a cross because they're black, that's racism. When someone gets run out of town because they're black, that's racism. When someone gets denied a job they're well qualified for because they're black, that's racism. These are all decent examples of racism in the past and in our current world. Making a video game character based on a stereotype that's accurate for the location of the level they're found in isn't.

This is almost as bad as when John Walker from rockpapershotgun spent an entire article crying about how women were being objectified in the game and during the marketing campaign.

Human Revolution Irony

2011-08-27T20:23:00.000-07:00

As a Canadian gamer, I'm constantly bombarded with French on my game cases. It's rather annoying, like if every game in America had Spanish all over the case. It's plastered all over the back in addition to the English. It's redundant since there is only one province in this country that actually uses French, and most of them speak English anyway. The end result leaves things looking sloppy, cluttered, and foreign.

Imaging my surprise then, when my copy of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a game developed by a French developer based in Quebec, comes in the mail with only English on the case. It was a welcome change from the usual crappy looking cases we get, but what was really nice is that despite not listing a preorder bonus, BestBuy included the tactical enhancement pack with my order, which is the only way to acquire a silenced sniper rifle in the game.

Human Revolution is out now for the 360, PS3, and PC, and is getting high scores across the board. I suggest you check it out.

Quick Link

2011-08-19T14:04:00.000-07:00

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-guy-whos-fixing-your-computer-hates-you/

This shit is truer then the ultimate truth.

A new face/voice/typist

2011-08-16T00:12:00.000-07:00

I've decided to invite someone I've known for pretty much as long as I've been online to post on the blog from now on. With any luck his posts will be filled with as much bile, intolerance and amusing anecdotes as my own, if not more.

Without further adieu, here is QiGong. Please show him the same support you've show me by showing up in small numbers and hardly ever commenting...

Edit: It looks like he actually posted about 3 minutes before I did, so if you want to check out his first post just expand the August tab on the right of this post.

Cigarettes

2011-08-16T00:02:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd take a second to introduce myself. I'll be contributing some content here every now and then.

I'll be going by "QiGong". I'm a pack-a-day smoker, and I fucking love it. Smoking is one of my favourite vices. I've spent the last few months working as a Money grabber for the largest organized crime syndicate in fucking existence. It's called the Vatican and I'm more then sure that some people will be familiar with this group.

There's nothing more fucking fun then talking to a 93 year old woman and asking her to donate a little more then she did last year even though she's been on a fixed income for the last 13 years. I'm not talking "Hey, we saw you donated 10$ last year, how about 15$ this year?" We're more in the ballpark of "We saw you had a nice donation of 25$ last year, would you like to consider a "Very Generous" (This line right here is the lube for the incoming anal rape) gift of $250?". And then when they almost have a heart attack and die we have to ask another two fucking times. God damn cocksuckers.

So yeah, after a soul sucking day of that, I like to slowly poison myself to make amends for the shit I have to put people through under the guise of making $7.50/hr. You know what also helps with that? The motherfucking' Ganj son. It numbs the mind to all that shit.

But don't you cocksuckers get the wrong idea here. I'm not all "Depressed and Emo" an all that shit. I live a good life, I'm happy, and I have a fucking hex core processor in my rig. Just waiting on some cash to get a SLI mobo and to throw a couple 560 TI's in it. I tell you sometimes just thinking about that makes my dick hard.

Oh I have a woman too. She's great. Likes it in the bum too so no complaints there. Now if you excuse me I'm going to slap together a few rollies, and watch Denis Leary try to act like he's 25.

Too many fucking people

2011-07-11T13:07:00.000-07:00

Pun intended.

I think it's time we (North America) implement a "one child per family rule", or require parents to get legal permission to bring a child into this world. Unfortunately, this likely won't happen until we reach a global population of around 9 billion, because people are too fucking greedy and stupid to realize we can't maintain this level of consumption for much longer. Governments and corporations also maintain that we need to breed more because, with the current level of technology, population growth is needed to maintain our luxurious way of life. Many people are clearly just not capable of raising a child. I'm frequently hearing about parents beating their kids to death because they deleted a game save, or leaving them to starve while playing WoW and farmville.

Selective breeding would be a good choice, since it seems to be the poor people who are genetically predisposed to being complete fucking morons that can't bring themselves to pull out or use a fucking condom, and as a result have a family of 13 by age 32. This would help alleviate the population problem, and might actually get some people entering the workforce in the next 20 years that aren't destined to flip burgers or pump gas.

When I hear that the birth rate is declining, I think "Good. It's about fucking time". This is a huge issue, and it's only going to get worse in the next decade unless some restrictions are put in place. I mean, for Christ's sake, since 1960 the population has gone up 4 billion, 4 fucking BILLION!

Today was a first

2011-07-06T13:37:00.000-07:00

I got punched in the face by a dog today... I was coming home from work when I saw someone I knew taking their dog for a walk, so I stopped for a chat. It seems the dog was glad to seem me, as it jumped up to lick my face. The problem was it was a great dane weighing in at around 65kg. The dog leapt up, and just as its feet were about to hit my chest, its owner pulled back on the leash, so instead of paws on the chest and a lick on the cheek I received a full force nose punt right in the face.

Casebook - Patient: Alice

2011-06-27T16:04:00.000-07:00

Here's another Alice related post. This was an extra in the original release of American Mcgee's Alice, however, EA did not see fit to digitize it and include it in the release of Alice: Madness Returns. This was transcribed by Lsnake/Engelen for his faq. It basically reads like a journal by Alice's doctor when she was in the asylum. Enjoy the read, it adds a good deal of depth to the story.

---------------
4 November 1864
---------------

Received Confirmation from the superintendent that I will be given
the opportunity to treat a very troubled and difficult patient. Dubious Honor!
Her name is Alice, and her prognosis is not promising. After looking at her
file, I'm astonished she has survived this long. She has been nearly comatose
for a year.

"Would I have admitted her had I known then what I know now?" -3/10/73

----------------
11 November 1864
----------------

Mute on a stretcher, with her head curiously bandaged, Alice seems to cling
precariously to life. Her burns have healed remarkably in the year since the
fire, but she languishes in a deep trance-like dementia. It's as if the blaze
consumed her senses wholesale. Deaf, dumb and blind to all stimulation, she's
a fair match for the infirmary's gloom.
In a frenzied instant, a cankered feline pounced on Alice while she was about
to be carried inside. Startled by the cat's yowl, the bearers lost their grip
and dropped the wretched girl to the ground. Most curious to behold, the cat
stood atop Alice as if claiming territorial right, or as if defending a rodent
captured in the day's hunt from other hungry predators. Only when an orderly
threatened it with a stick did the creature scamper into a nearby hedge. Even
then the cat crouched beneath the shrubbery. With eyes agape, it fixed on
Alice as if it had some vital interest in our proceedings.

"It pays to heed the feline--something I've learned over the years." -21/10/73

----------------
14 November 1864
----------------

Her one possession is a toy--a sooty, stuffed rabbit whose single button-eye
dangles from a loose thread. Plaything from her time of innocence, and her only
link to life before the fire, the rabbit is now sentinel to Alice's deepening
Dementia.

"The rabbit may prove a valuable instrument for shock terapy. I should have
noticed it sooner" -21/10/73

----------------
8 December 1864
----------------

When I hold a flame to her eye, nothing in her vacuous gaze berrays the
faintest glimmer of response. I clap a pair of blocks at her ear. Nothing.
Neither her sight nor her hearing appear to be damage, still she registers
nothing at all. The rumor (passed on by Reverend Mottle amongst others)
alleges that she feels nothing--not pain, or fear or other torments--is neither
credible nor kind. Still, she is far, far gone, this one.

----------------
10 December 1864
----------------

Though she appears weak, she must have a strong constitution to have survived
until now. Her fever persists, her breathing heaves violently at times and,
even after more than a year of healing, burns so massive commonly cause great
discomfort. You'd never imagine she's in any distress, though, the way lies
there, as lifeless as a British Museum mummy. I daresay, however, that I'll
stir her from her dreamery, even if the response is involuntary.
I'll begin tomorrow with a steady treatment of cold plasters and bloodletting.
The bleeding might cause some relief to her dementia. I also have a new shock
apparatus that I'd like to try on her. I'm curious to see how she reacts to
this treatment.

----------------
6 January 1865
----------------

Another patient died in the night. I'd been treating her with the same potion
I intend for Alice. I had been quite certain she was improving with each
subsequent vial, so this development is quite vexing. Perhaps the stronger
mixture was too much for her chronically weak chest. A little more
experimentation is in order before I feed this serum to Alice.

"A little less laudanum and a little more camphor might have
spared her" -13/12/73

----------------
23 February 1865
----------------

Through the windows of my laboratory, I can glimpse the garden ward. Nurse D-
is leading a group of children to the airing room. I listen to great shuffling
of feet on the pebble path. Will Alice, I wonder, ever stroll the grounds with
the others? Will she ever regain her senses? Or, for the rest of her days will
she remain cloistered behind these thick, gray walls? Based on her progress
so far, it seems futile to hold out much hope for a cure.

"Little could I have imagined her mind would eventually gambol in
unimaginable forests and gardens" -27/1/74

----------------
23 March 1865
----------------

Nothing seems to aggravate the girl. I've tried restraint--handcuffs, leg-locks
and straitjackets. I've tried solitary confinement. On the other hand, I've
allowed her to smell freedom, leaving her for hours at a time unattended in
the garden. Yet nothing stirs her. I still have a number of methods, some of
which I haven't engaged in since the old days, but I'm beginning to doubt
anything can bring about a change in this one.

----------------
1 April 1865
----------------

Each year on this peculiar day I pause--exactly at noon according to my pocket-
watch--to ponder the absurdity of such a day. Is it not ironic that we here
should celebrate a holiday dedicated to fools?
The girl has shut down completely. If it were possible, I'd say Alice has
retreated even further into what the European practitioners of psychiatry call
her "psyche". I'll keep trying different methods, but unless there's some sort
of marked improvement, there's no reason to hope. I'll document progress...if
indeed there ever is any progress.

----------------
7 September 1873
----------------

After years of slumber, she chooses to speak to use with a picture, a drawing
of some sort of cat. Really, though, it's nothing like any cat I've ever seen.

"Even a drawing so bizarre couldn't foreshadow the imaginings to come"
-29/3/74

----------------
10 September 1873
----------------

While Alice napped following her afternoon sedation, Nurse D- took it upon to
replace the rabbit's missing eye. Even after living so many years in an infirm
population, it can still surprise me when a seemingly trivial act can trigger
such a remarkable reaction.
Alice woke from her nap and began to sob hysterically.
"Tell me, child, what's wrong?" pleaded Nurse D-.
"What is it, dear?"
In an instant of semi-awareness, Alice spoke a sort of poetry.

"Into the hole again, we hurried along our way
Into a once-glorious garden now seepd in dark decay"

She continued to cry, and it was only when Nurse D- plucked the newly stitched
eye from the rabbit's face that Alice fell back into her customary state.

"With such behavior, maybe it was a mistake to stir these waters and
awaken her" -29/3/74

I don't know whether to cheer at this response--any response--or grow alarmed
over the intensity of her emotional outburst. At least we discovered one thing:
She can speak.

----------------
11 September 1873
----------------

When she is so inclined, Alice can draw. This morning I was greeted by another
of Alice's artistic phantasmagorias. What is it she's rendering? I can only
think it's a depiction of her nightmare of Hell.

----------------
15 October 1873
----------------

Approaching Alice's room, I heard the muffled sounds of laughter. A pair of
orderlies were cursing at her and threatening her with leather straps. It's
easy to see that this pair was weaned from the same teat.
Alice didn't respond to their tomfoolery; and the orderlies were not impressed
by my reprimand. Good help is so hard to find.

----------------
18 October 1873
----------------

The Superintendent paid a visit. The smell of his perfumed handshake is still
in my nostrils. He doesn't visit often, but when he does he arrives unannounced
and remains overlong. Typically, he flounces through the infirmary pretending
to be interested in this case or that. This time, he requested to see Alice and
asked for the leeches. When she refused to stir, the Superintendent stretched
wide his mouth in a yawn of infinite boredom.
When I displayed some of her recent artwork, the Superintendent's attention
was caught again as if someone jabbed his fatty palm with a hot poker.

"He was in a very agitated state when he departed" -7/4/74

----------------
24 October 1873
----------------

Nurse D- has been listening from outside the door. Alice, it seems, has been
muttering inarticulately. Though no one can understand her, it's likely she's
addressing the one-eyed hare.

----------------
26 October 1873
----------------

Her case is not overly remarkable...at least not when compared to the countless
other patients who live within these walls. I am not minimizing her tragedy--
the undeniable strain is enough to set anyone's mind askew. Imagine the horror
of hearing the piteous cries of your entire family--trapped in their burning
bedrooms--and being unable to help. Alice certainly heard such screams. I
imagine she's been hearing them for ten years.

"Looking back, I retract this statement. Her case IS most remarkable" -7/4/74

----------------
3 November 1873
----------------

I hear the clock ticking onward, past midnight, and then I'm suddenly aware of
other sounds. In the barren pit of the night, the most disturbed minds are
alive throughout the asylum. Alice isn't stirring, so I listen to the blood-
curdling shrieks, the haunting clank of shackles, the insane groaning,
insufferable babble and lunatic mutterings.
After the initial convulsions, Alice's body again appears lifeless. If it
weren't for the for the sporadic utterances in her sleep, I'd hold the mirror
to her mouth. It's impossible to comprehend what she says. It sounds like
"too glum" or "through him" or "boo-jum". Nonsense really. Is it a person's
name? A place? Or simply some conjuring of this raving delirium? I yell the
utterance into her ear and prick her shoulder with a needle--she gasps, but
her speech does not become any clearer.

"Boojum! But how does she construct such fantasies?" -11//4/74

The potion courses through her blood. Sitting in this cold room reminds me
of the last treatment here. The shredded padding recalls to my mind the patient
who believed rats spoke to him--they lived in the padding, he said. Indeed,
he believed the spirits of his ancestors spoke to him through the rats. After
the trepanation, he stopped having such delusions and was removed to the
Dormitory.
Alice remains quiet.

----------------
21 November 1873
----------------

Once again, the orderlies were up to their usual pranks. Weary of prying open
Alice's mouth, the orderlies started "feeding" Alice's toy rabbit, spooning
porridge onto the stuffed toy.

"My suspicions are confirmed. Those oafish orderlies are the Superintendent's
misbegotten nephews" -13/4/74

While engaged in this feeding, the orderlies learned an essential lesson in
asylum protocol--never turn your back on a patient...no matter how docile she
seems. From information I've gathered, Alice woke from her comatose state and
attacked the orderlies. Quite venomous in her outburst, she pursued one of the
twins with a spoon. Even in her condition, she was able to deliver quite a
gash. She clutched the spoon like it was a butcher knife, gouging into his
fleshy cheek. Ceasing in mid-attack, she turned the spoon on herself, digging
it into her wrists, trying to open up her veins. I stitched her wounds and
tended to the orderly. Alice shouldn't suffer any permanent physical scars,
it's too early to say the same about the orderly.

"An outburst such as this shouldn't have surprised me" -13/4/74

She has returned to her dormant state. Nothing I say or do can entice her to
relive her early morning animation.

----------------
7 December 1873
----------------

Here's been a slight change. Her mouth is now relaxed, and we can feed her
without force. When it's time for her elixir, she seems to part her lips
slightly as if she's inviting the new potion into her belly.
Hardly a cure, but any change symbols progress.

----------------
8 December 1873
----------------

A mangy cat was licking at Alice's cheek. It hissed when I entered, and pounced
onto the windowsill--it must be flesh and bones only to squeeze through the
grate. I could almost perceive a smile on its scabbed face. It's curious how
an animal's countenance can appear almost human.
There are so many feral cats on the grounds. I wouldn't be surprised if they
outnumber the patients.

"It reminds me of the cat that pounced on Alice when she arrived here. More
emaciated though." -26/4/74

----------------
13 December 1873
----------------

Something in the outdoor air may have stirred he imagination. On her return
she produced an intriguing sketch. Once again she proves she is capable of
doing something other than staring at the yellowed paint on the ceiling.

"At times there's talent in her madness" -26/4/74

----------------
15 December 1873
----------------

It's been three days since I removed the rabbit from her room. We can hear her
screams growing louder through the closed door.

----------------
25 December 1873
----------------

She has returned to her trance-like state, with one notable exception--her
mouth stretches very wide whenever anyone enters the room. Whether it's for
the potion or for the food, she's definitely inviting more.

"What she means by repeatedly whispering "Eat me" and "Drink me" still
eludes me" -23/7/74

----------------
17 April 1874
----------------

Months pass and still nothing.
Nurse D-, having lost patience with my treatments, insists on trying a "cure"
of her own. She stiched the rabbit together and tucked it into bed with Alice.

----------------
18 April 1874
----------------

Interesting development! Alice has returned the gift, presenting Nurse D- with
a drawing of a rabbit, though it's quite different from her toy.

"My watch?" -10/5/74

----------------
1 June, 1874
----------------

Out of nowhere, and as shocking as a bolt of lightning across a sky of purest
azure, Alice greeted me with a strange grin. And then, lightning bolt upon
lightning bolt, she began to converse quite freely as if we'd been speaking to
each other like this for decades. I'll include just a smattering of remarks
as evidence, not that the burden of proof is with me in this foul courtroom.
"Beware the Snark's poisonous spit...roll the Demon Dice wisely or the game
turns on you...note the Centipede has a tender underbelly...I enjoy the taste
of mushrooms, but not the ones that bite back."

Regrettably, I cannot regard this maniacal outpouring as an improvement in
her condition.

----------------
2 June, 1874
----------------

It's a world of sheer, chaotic terror and unmitigated bloodshed--that's the
world she inhabits. So severe are her delusions, so fantastical and absurd,
that at times it's difficult for me to listen. She speaks of a nightmare realm
where everything seems bent on her destruction. Gigantic Bayonet-toting ants
and flesh rending flowers. Carnivorous fish and fire-spewing abominations.
The range of hellish creatures populating her world is dizzying. They are, on
balance, more deranged than the most demonic triptych Hieronymus Bosch ever
painted.
It's as if I have been waiting and waiting for water to pour from a spigot.
Now, the water has finally started pouring, and I cannot staunch the flow, nor
discover its poisoned source.

----------------
7 June, 1874
----------------

More and more, she confides in me. She drones on and on. I think the elixir
is at the proper dosage now. At times, she seems to fear and loathe my
presence, yet she speaks as if she can't help herself.

----------------
8 June, 1874
----------------

She spent the afternoon telling of a grisly siege between life-size chess
pieces. Having been hounded by a cyclopic pawn, it seems she dispatched the
one-eyed monster only to be chased mercilessly over the living chessboard by
a pair of renegade rooks. as usual, her description was vivid beyond
comprehension, a story decidedly more compelling than anything in Froissart's
chronicles.

----------------
11 June 1874
----------------

Dozing off for a few minutes only, I woke to the sight of Alice's freed hands
tugging at my watch fob. Shackles might be required for future sessions--at
least until she behaves. I'm taking her pencils as well. Let's see if this
punishment provokes a response.

----------------
12 June 1874
----------------

I should have predicted this. without pencil, she turns to poetry.

"Mange-ridden to the core, he leads me through the fray
With the toss of a Jackbomb, I clear abominations from our way"

I asked her to describe a "Jackbomb". Cunning and clever girl, she
asked me to return her pencil.

----------------
15 June 1874
----------------

Her conversation contains flashes of lucidity. Certain powerful words, however,
cause her to dip back into her fantasy world. And a word like "fire" can, for
obvious reasons, set her tumbling into an abyss of sadness.

"Her conversations can be clear, but her drawings show no such progress."
-20/7/74

----------------
17 June 1874
----------------

Alice hurled the teapot across the room.
"How many times must I tell you? I only take tea with friends!"

----------------
18 June 1874
----------------

At times, she can be quite civil, and sometimes disgustingly vile. As an
experiment, I've decided to suspend all medication, except for a heavy dose of
laudanum when she's in the foulest of tempers.

----------------
25 June 1874
----------------

Perhaps more cold saltwater treatments will cleanse some of the chaotic
thinking from her mind. She has been ranting. In particular, she's been
spouting violently against someone she refers to as the Red Queen.

"Though the Queen dominates much conversation, Alice refuses to describe or
draw the monarch. Her anger, though, knows no limit when she talks about
what she'd like to do to the Queen." -20/7/74

----------------
19 July 1874
----------------

In her most disturbing outburst in quite some time, Alice attacked one of the
nurses while being bathed. Called her "Duchess".

----------------
22 July 1874
----------------

From a recent conversation with Alice:
"What have you been doing, Alice?"
"Attending the tea party of course."
"Was it a grand party?"
"Oh most grand, dear doctor. I fear nothing and soon the Keep will be in
reach."

----------------
25 July 1874
----------------

Her sleep is very restless one night, and then calm as an infant's the next.
She's become consistently unpredictable.

----------------
27 July 1874
----------------

Alice delivered another verse to her puzzling rhyme.
"They taunt me about the burning as if I were to blame,
I clear them from my conscious with the eloquence of my blade"

----------------
28 July 1874
----------------

She spoke at length of a place called the Fungiferous Forest. It's a place
filled with mushrooms the size or large trees; fungus and foliage that grabs
those who trample it; cavernous wastes filled with creatures who are as
disturbed as any I've ever heard of.

"She's drawn a picture of a place like this, I seem to recall." -2/8/74

----------------
10 August 1874
----------------

It's difficult for me to connect the massively passive Alice to the
aggressively assertive, powerful person she describes in her dreams. Her
exploits with the knife conjure images of a musketeer's swashbuckling panache;
her acts of courage those of a selfless hero. These are not "delusions of
Grandeur". This is no simple madness. But what?

"How does she really see herself then?" -24/8/74

----------------
12 August 1874
----------------

"Off with her head!"
Those were her only words today. She wouldn't explain what this meant, though
her face betrayed the violent anger that is usually associated with her tales
of the Queen of Hearts.

"What does it say about me that I've grown accustomed to such outbursts?"
-11/9/74

----------------
13 August 1874
----------------

Everything I can think of, I have done. Treatments, remedies, disciplines and
pleasures--nothing makes a difference. Alice speaks when and about what she
wants, recites poetry on a seeming whim, draws pictures at her own pleasure.
She does nothing at my command, instruction, entreaty or request.
She's become very willful, and nothing I do or say makes a difference.
I truly do, however, become immersed in her fantastic tales of Wonderland. I
wait for the day when she claims victory over the Red Queen and her minions,
when Wonderland will be restored. Perhaps by this Alice will cure herself,
regain her balance and leave this place of her own volition.
Sometimes she appears to be so close, but at other times I'm certain it'll
never happen and she'll spend the rest of her life housed behind Rutledge's
gaunt brown walls...with me.

----------------
24 August 1874
----------------

"If it's my keen invention you'd like to destroy
I'll withstand your best shot; I've got the right toy"

Of Alice and Alcohol

2011-06-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

This is an excerpt from an amusing post I found on an Alice:Madness Returns forum. Originally posted by Justcallme_York.

"Please don't invite Alice to anymore parties.

Look, Louis, I like you. I really do. Now, I like seeing you around, and I hope what I'm about to say won't ruin our friendship, but your crazy girlfriend isn't allowed near any of our social events anymore. You're still cool, but Alice is out. Sorry, pal.

Last night's kegger was a disaster. We were all having a really great time up until you both arrived, which is sad for me to say. It all went to Hell the moment you put a beer in that girl's hand.

Now, I know some girls have their quirks, Hell, most of them are crazy. But Alice is legitimately psychotic.

The moment you gave her a cup of beer, she pounded the damn thing back in about half a second. Then she swiped a few more cups from some of the other guests and chugged about five more beers until she said "Finally! I feel myself getting so very small! No bigger than a mouse!" She then ran around giggling for a good five minutes, occasionally crawling under a table or chair. Eventually she ran into the kitchen where there was a poker game going on. She immediately flipped out and started screaming "YOU'LL NEVER CATCH ME, CARD GUARDS!" and started waving a kitchen knife at everybody while screaming "GET BACK, OR I SHALL SMITE YOU WITH MY MIGHTY VORPAL BLADE! SNICKETY-SNACK!"

We tried to get her under control. At this point everybody in the house was now in the kitchen, watching your girlfriend's little episode unfold. A couple guys tried to calm her down at one point, but then she pointed a pepper shaker at them and made machine-gun noises with her mouth while grinding wasted pepper all over the floor. She then threw a full teapot at Frank's head (he's in the hopsital with a concussion and scalds all over his face). After that she somehow managed to lock herself in my pantry.

It took almost two hours for the cops and firemen to get her out.

Your girlfriend's a freak. Please don't bring her over ever again."

If you haven't heard of it yet, Alice: Madness Returns is the much anticipated sequel to the cult classic American McGee's Alice. The first game came out in 2000, and was until now a PC exclusive. As a nice little bonus, EA has included the original title as a free download available on PSN and XBL to those who buy the game new. The series is a dark twist on the world of Wonderland and Alice's involvement in it, or to be more accurate, its involvement in her. If you're looking for something removed from the slew of shooters and other generic titles, I urge you to check out Alice: Madness Returns, which is available now on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

Various Screen Shots

Escapist Magazine

2011-06-22T13:29:00.000-07:00

Escapist Magazine is a great site, really it is. It has great content, is home to Zero Punctuation's Yahtzee Croshaw, and even has reliable gaming news, but sweet fucking Jesus, are their mods ever a bunch of overzealous draconian cock suckers!

Post an on topic picture, get a warning, answer a question with too few words, get a warning, disagree that it isn't the "best gaeming site evar", get permanently banned. I've seen some pricks flaunting power in my time on the web, but until I started posting on the Escapist I thought that gfaq mods took the cake.

It wouldn't be too bad if they had enough brains to take things on a case to case basis, but infracting someone because the rules told you to just shows what a mindless fucking robot you are.

Here's an excerpt from an email I got today after disputing a mod decision.

Pulled directly from our code of conduct:
"Low Content Posts
This could be anything from *answering a question* to posting LOL. These forums are used for discussion and low content posts halts discussion."

If you had discussed it at all, or opened it up so that other people could, it would have been fine. 

This might have been acceptable had the argument held even a drop of water, but 94 people posted directly after me, and some of their posts were only two words longer than mine.  Halting discussion my ass...

Next time you trundle through their forums, take a moment to look for the greyed out posts.  These are posts made by users that are currently on suspension, banned, or posts that have been deleted.  You can follow the link at the bottom to see why they were banned or suspended in the first place.  Chances are it was some totally absurd reason or just some mod gunning for someone he didn't like.  Oh yeah, and mentioning software like noscript or adblockplus is an instant suspension.  If you mention piracy in anything but a negative light you can kiss your account, no matter how well behaved you've been, goodbye.

You know that whole "With absolute power com es absolute corruption." thing? Well, it holds true even in the lowliest of mod positions. People tend to lord whatever power they posses over whatever people they view as lower than themselves. Remember what your teachers were like back in school, or a boss that had it in for you for some totally arbitrary reason? Same thing here.

You can almost see them sitting there shouting "Bow before me, you lowly fucking peasants!" from the comfort of their lazyboy recliner, trying not to rage too hard, lest they stand up and let all the Cheeto crumbs fall from their stained pokemon t-shirt.

Of course there is a percentage, a very small percentage, of mods who use their power responsibly, it's just that jading comes on prematurely when you're dealing with complete morons day in and day out.

PSN Welcome Back Is Online

2011-06-12T17:49:00.000-07:00

The Welcome Back package is finally online, though I had to wait a week for the servers to stop smoking before I could actually download anything from them. Nothing says welcome back like giving your members free versions of games they probably already own. This annoying detail aside, I took their offer and sold my physical copies of Little Big Planet and Infamous. Of course I got less than $20 dollars for both of them, but hey, what can you expect from games that are nearly 3 years old. What eats me is that the second I'm out the door they get put on the shelf for twice to three times that amount. Corporate greed at its best.

I didn't walk away completely empty handed from Sony's plea for forgiveness though. Since I had my standard account, plus one for the EU store and one for the JP store, I actually got six games out of this deal, 2 months of PS Plus added to my main account and a free month for both the EU account and JP account. It's just a shame that my Credit Card and personal detail had to be plundered from Sony's servers to receive this deal. Makes me wonder what Sony would give me if my PS3 gained awareness and tried to strangle me in my sleep. Probably a free PSN mini...

PSN is back and fully functional...No, for reals this time!

2011-06-02T02:01:00.000-07:00

It's been well over a month since the hacker and corporate negligence caused outage began, and PSN is finally back and fully functional. With the return of the PSN we finally get our promised two free games and complimentary PSN+ subscription as part of the Welcome Back prog... Wait, you mean we're not getting them yet?

Oddly enough, the meaning of the term Welcome Back seems to have been entirely lost on Sony. I blame the language barrier. I realize that Sony is inherently a Japanese company, and that things are often lost in translation, but in this case they weren't just lost, they must have been abducted, shot in the back of the head and burried in an unmarked grave on the outskirts of town. Perhaps they should think of a new name for this program. Maybe they should use the one I came up with in my last blog post. It's certainly more accurate if nothing else.

PSN is back

2011-05-16T17:58:00.001-07:00

PSN is finally back.

So the PSN is finally back online, and soon Sony will be rolling out the "Welcome Back" program, though I personally think it should be called the "We're really sorry we stored your personal information on an unfirewalled and unencrypted rented server, and that it got broken into and spread all over the dark net" program, but I guess that's a bit long for a bullshit title.

PR departments make me sick. Backpedaling motherfuckers always trying to put a positive spin on their massive fuckups. It's like if after the recent disaster in their country the Japanese started touting Japan as periodically having the "Best surfing in the world! Come now and receive free unlimited chemo therapy!".

Oldfags and Sony

2011-05-02T16:17:00.000-07:00

These days, wherever I go online, I'm constantly witness to an ongoing battle between old fags and new fags. One thing the old fags tend to do relentlessly is attempt to belittle the new fags by saying that they're greedy kids, and expect everything to be given to them on a silver platter free of charge. This pathetic argument usually rears its head on gaming sites, when people who spend $60 on software expect it to include what it was advertised by the development team as including. This is where the old fags come in swinging their dusty nuts and saying things like "When I was your age we payed $100 for an 8-bit game that was 2 hours long, and we liked it just fine!". The entire spectacle reminds me very much of that old Weird Al song where he goes on for several minutes about how rough shit was when he was your age.

This timeless, classic argument usually coincides with the new fags getting bitter over on disc dlc, or features that were advertised, then quietly removed before release only to be added in at a later date for a "small" fee. Though this "small fee" is generally 10% of the value of the "full" product. It pretty much all boils down to our old friend fanboyism. People standing up on their soapbox with their "I love big business" sandwich board and crying at the top of their lungs about how the greedy consumers are killing developers and console giants by demanding too much for their money. It's shocking the kind of things some of these people will attempt to defend. Just this week I saw someone on Kotaku telling everyone to calm down, because gosh darnit, Sony is really trying their best to fess up and make amends for having security that is akin to a piece of swiss cheese. When a company like Sony fucks up bad enough that someone gains access to their "secure" systems, resulting in the theft of over 77 million peoples personal information, and the best they can do is a halfhearted apology where the heads of the company bow for a few seconds, trying to defend their incompetence just makes you look like the corporate scrotum cleaner you are. I mean really, the heads of this company are Japanese, getting them to bow is about as difficult as getting a fast food attendant to ask if you want fries with that. Though to be realistic, it's likely that 20 million or so of those accounts were using fake info.

Lately, during this security clusterfuck, I've even seen some people that think all the fuss is about not having online access to their games for over two weeks. These people are likely mentally incapacitated, or twelve, and don't realize the gravity of having nearly all your personal information short of your sin card and picture ID stolen. In all fairness, though, Sony is offering all basic PSN customers a free month of PS+, and they might even grease their palms with a free PSN mini! This totally makes up for having to get your credit card replaced, and the knowledge that no matter what you do, some pale, malicious fuck out there has your full name/date of birth/country/city/street address/zip code and PSN ID.

Hmm, I seem to have gone off on a bit of a tangent there. Where was I? Oh yeah, old fags should shut the fuck up.

The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile

2011-04-09T04:40:00.000-07:00

You'd smile too if you were this awesome.

Sequel to the hit 2009 Xbox Live arcade game, Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, Vampire Smile follows the blood trail of Yuki, the Dishwasher's sister. Without spoiling too much of the story, I'll just say that it's an atmospheric mind fuck of a game, with grungy, dark visuals and epic guitar riffs throughout. The combat is smooth like platelet laden blood, and will take a good deal of mastery to make it past even the default difficulty. While it's not as brutally unforgiving as the first game, it will test your reflexes and determination from start to finish. The game has some light RPG elements, and you will find unique "Beads" that will endow you with certain handy abilities. The weapons are far more balanced this time around, and switching between them for combos works well. One thing I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear is that this game is damn easy on the wallet, being one of the few games on XBL that goes for 800 points these days, and boy is it ever worth it. Screen shots really don't do this style justice, so check out a vid or two on youtube to see if it's up your alley. After the intro you can either continue the story as Yuki, or the Dishwasher, and each has a 3-4 hour story. In addition to the story mode, there are 50 arcade style challenges to complete. Oh, and it has full co-op, if you're into that sort of thing. Also, remember that all demos are free on XBL, and it's only 125MB, so you owe it to yourself to at least try it out, unless you're a pussy. You're not, are you?

So what the fuck are you waiting for? Grab your blade and straw hat and get to chopping!

Mortal Kombat 9

2011-04-08T15:09:00.000-07:00

You know, I swear some games use subliminal advertising or something. At first I was completely underwhelmed by Mortal Kombat 2011. Even after watching a few trailers I thought the fighting looked stiff and unnatural. But now, after visiting some MK sites and playing the demo I have caved and even accepted the absurd $69.99 price tag. I preordered this very day from BestBuy.

One thing that is still eating away at me, though, is the way Amazon.ca is handling the preorders. While Bestbuy is offering the Sub Zero Klassic skin and fatality, Amazon.ca has claimed that the preorder bonus available through Amazon.com is exclusive to them, and Amazon.ca can't offer it. Not only that, but despite the Canadian dollar currently being higher than the American, we still get to pay $10 more than the Yanks and we also miss out on the $10 off your next game purchase bonus. Thing is, I don't even want the Sub Zero Klassic skin, since his updated one is much better. Reptile, on the other hand, looks like shit in his updated skin and his Klassic skin is only available through Amazon.com. See the issue? Also, Amazon.com will not ship the game to me since I live in Canada. I'm not sure if this goes for all games, or just Mortal Kombat due to the controversy revolving around its copious use of violence, but it's still a pain in the ass.

Well, maybe I should say a little something about the game instead of the annoying process of trying to preorder and not get ripped off.

This is the 9th Mortal Kombat game, and unlike the last 3 has done away with the 3D fighting and side stepping combat. The game now controls solely on a 2D plane, the same as the first 3 games. The game is rendered in 3D and uses the Unreal 3 engine. The most notable addition to the combat would be the X-ray moves. These brutal finishers are a type of super move that can only be preformed when your special gauge is full, and involve the character preforming a combination of hits that rupture organs and shatter bones. As the name suggests, you can see the damage happening inside with a X-ray like view. There are three section of the special bar. When the first bar is filled (and with every subsequent bar), you can preform an EX variation of one of your special moves. These usually make the move cause more damage, or add follow up hits. And while the X-rays are incredibly brutal and fun to watch, seeing Sub Zero's move makes me skeptical about the research put into the accuracy of the X-rays by the Devs. When Sub Zero starts his move, the first thing he does is reach inside you, grab an organ, freeze it, then crush it. Some have called it "The Liver Crush", but that's not the liver. It's in the center and not on the right. The spleen is on the left, so that really only leaves the possibility of the bladder, or on the female characters, maybe the womb. One might argue that it could be the Dantian, the "center" in yoga and martial arts, but the Dantian isn't an actual physical organ, so I'm just gonna go ahead and say Nether Realms Studios knows sweet fuck all about anatomy.

With an April 19th release date for North America, this is shaping up to be one brutal game. Replay value seems to be through the roof, with the return of the Krypt, a 300 mission challenge tower, and a robust story mode that seems to cover the events of the first three games, along with some twists as this is one of those convoluted "Travel back in time to change history" kind of plots. There is also a fatality training mode for those that can't pull them off consistently. Oh, and there is also tag combat now.

Things are looking up for the Mortal Kombat franchise, and after the pile of steaming excrement that was Mortal Kombat V.S DC Universe, it surely needs it.

Fuck You, Mozilla

2011-04-05T06:14:00.000-07:00

Funny how the new Firefox 4 "upgrade" is in all actuality a downgrade.

Upon checking for updates this evening, I was promised greater stability, increased performance and speed, and an intuitive new layout with Firefox 4. What could go wrong, right? Well, for starters I had to download no less than 5 new add-ons just so it would be half ways usable for me. If you go to the Mozilla forums to state such an opinion the faggots come right out of the woodwork like they were laying in wait and tell you that with progress comes change, and that you should get used to it in a few hours. Guess fucking what. 6 years of hard wiring my brain to open tabs by right clicking and going to the second option cannot be undone by spending a few hours with a shitty new rendition of a good browser. Aside from this, the progress bar has been changed into an epilepsy sufferers worst nightmare. Instead of being able to monitor it constantly, it flashes information at you when it feels like it, which is more than a little distracting. Buttons have been arbitrarily moved around due to what can only be described as developer cranial trauma, and the options menu seems to have been stripped down so as to not intimidate the idiots they are hoping to snare with this glittery, substancless update.

What fucks me off the most about all this is that I like to be up to date on security and shit for obvious reasons, but this is just way too aggravating. Of course Mozilla will be supporting 3.6 (Which I have already switched back to) for a "while", but whether this will be months or mere weeks remains to be seen.

In short, yiff in hell, Mozilla, you cock gobbling retards.

The Masks We Wear

2011-04-04T00:51:00.000-07:00

All the hate for anonymous makes me sick. You stand up for peoples rights in the real world and you're a hero (Or a martyr, depending on how things turn out). You stand up for peoples rights online while making good use of internet anonymity and actually take the offenders down a peg, and you're labeled an internet terrorist. What a fucking world we live in. Case in point, anon's recent "attack" on Sony. Anonymous steps in and suddenly everyone forgets any instance of Sony treating it's users like shit because of their inherent disdain for anon.

To the intelligent, the internet provides instant access to a wealth of information. To the idiot, the internet is just another convenient tool for media to brainwash you with. Grasp a sharp blade and give yourself a big pat on the back. You're whats wrong with the world.

Never try and apply logic to the English language, as it contains none.

2011-03-27T13:21:00.000-07:00

Not mine, but so true I felt compelled to post it.

"English Language Lunacy

We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

Let’s face it – English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;
Neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren’t invented in England.

We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes,
we find that quicksand can work slowly,
boxing rings are square,
and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing,
Grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?
If teachers taught, why don’t preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

Sometimes I think that all the folks who
grew up speaking English should be
committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.
In what other language do people:
Recite at a play and play at a recital?
We ship by truck but send cargo by ship.
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,
while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
in which your house can burn up as it burns down,
in which you fill in a form by filling it out,
and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

And, in closing, if Father is Pop, how come Mother’s not Mop?"

inFAMOUS 2's Moral Choice Blunder

2011-02-25T14:58:00.000-08:00

The first inFAMOUS had it's flaws, but was a good freeroam superpower sandbox game with an above average story. The moral choice system, however, was shallow and flawed. Well, inFAMOUS 2 has decided to change that, but whether it's for better or worse remains to be seen, but after watching this video, I'm betting it's the latter.

Okay, you've seen it, now let me chime in with this week's rant.

This is the first I've seen of the moral choice characters introduced for inFAMOUS 2, and I'm not impressed. The choice of good and evil won't even feel like a choice to me, because the black chick is so incredible stereotypical that I'll be forced to side with the white chick just so I don't have to listen to her.

Now I'm sure some moral fag is going to jump on this post and go on about how I'm racist and discriminatory and need to be more tolerant of ethnicities other than my own, but fuck that. Discrimination is simply the act of liking one thing over another, and if you're given a choice between siding with a woman who is bland, and one who makes you cringe every time she opens her fucking mouth, of course you're going to choose the former, no matter how overwhelmingly bland she is.

As has been asked in other threads, posts, tweets, and various forms of internet communication, why does evil now equate to a Haitian person with dreads and excessive amounts of tribal tattoos who looks like they practice voodoo?

This seems to be something that is all too common these days, developers adding token black people to movies, games and T.V shows so no one calls them racist for having an all white cast of characters. If this isn't the reason for the character's addition, then kindly forgive my paranoid assumptions, but she's still unbearably fucking grating to my eyes and ears, and probably sense of touch as well since this is a PS3 exclusive and you just know Sony is going to cram that shitty motion control gimmick of theirs in somewhere so they can justify the existence of the Sixaxis and Move tech.

I swear to god, if at any point during the story she waggles her finger back and fourth while moving her head from side to side and says "No you didn't", I will personally travel to Sucker Punch headquarters and smother the character designer responsible with a moist towelette soaked in Tabasco.

(Disclaimer: I have no intention of traveling anywhere or doing anything to any member Sucker Punch or anyone else on this planet. This message has been written to appease the Coalition of Uppity Naive Tossers, or C.U.N.Ts as they are more commonly known.)

Where are all the Dutch women at?

2011-02-14T21:52:00.000-08:00

Okay, the title may be a little misleading, but still.

I received an email the other day asking the reason behind my sometimes sporadic updates. Well, sometimes I just calm the fuck down and can't find anything entertaining to rant about, and sometimes shit comes down all at once, leaving me with a lingering sense of inspiration to fly off the handle. In this case, it's more of a "holy shit, this is awesome" kind of inspiration, instead of the usual, "die you miserable pig fucker", kind of inspiration.

Knotrust is an Austrian crossover band, meaning they know a few different languages and use them all in their music, which is surprisingly awesome.

I first heard of Kontrust when Hentai Palm went down about a year ago. Hentai Guru Numbus posted the video to Knotrust's hit single, Bomba, as a place holder . At first I just loled, but then found myself going back to the downtime page again and again just to listen to it. After a while I tracked down a couple more of their songs and came to the conclusion that this is a band I would actually be willing to pay money to listen to, so I digitally cantered on over to itunes and bought Time to Tango, which is their latest album. After listening to that for a while I started to crave more, so I went and bought their previous album Welcome Home. While not as awesome as Time to Tango, it was still pretty good. I then tracked down their first album, Make me Blind, through other methods as I couldn't find it for sale anywhere, which is probably a good thing as it was shit by my standards and appears to have come out before they got that hot female lead they currently have.

Here is a link to their official video for Bomba. If you don't get a lol or three out of this there is probably something wrong with you. If you find it strangely compelling as I did, I suggest you find some place to squander your money and get yourself a copy, be it digital or physical.

Kontrust on itunes

On Ignorance and Slander

2011-02-10T14:59:00.000-08:00

Oh boy, here we go.

Recently, Fox News aired a segment on Bulletstorm, giving it the title "Is Bulletstorm the Worst Video Game in the World?" due to its copious amount of severed limbs and skill shots named after sexual slang. In this segment, they massacred comments made by Scott Steinberg, CEO of TechSavvy Global, and M2 Research’s Billy Pidgeon. Their unaltered comments can be read here and here along with some more back story on this media clusterfuck.

The fuss seems to revolve around the fact that many of these "skill shots" have been humorously named after sexual acts and slang. Rear entry is when you lovingly give your enemy a lead enema. Topless is when you not so delicately remove the top half from the bottom half of your enemy. And Gang Bang is when you wrap a flail grenade around your enemy, then proceed to kick him full force into his companions, detonating the explosives when the moment is just right.

Let me start by saying I'm not posting this rant in defense of Bulletstorm, since Bulletstorm doesn't require defending. In case you missed my earlier post about it, Bulletstorm is a balls to the wall, over the top FPS developed by People Can Fly, a polish developer currently under the employment of Epic studios. They are best known for their 2004 balls to the wall, over the top FPS: Painkiller.

It's already been established that Fox News is shit, and is entirely staffed by scaremongering cockbags who constantly falsify information to make entire mountain ranges out of mole hills, and that they are known for altering quotes from the interviewees that actually have the intelligence to not just tell them exactly what they want to hear. However, they do often find people with such incredibly uninformed opinions that they are akin to sparkly diamond mines in the eyes of Fox. One such person is Dr. Carole Lieberman, who provided Fox with deliciously slanderous statements about upcoming game Bulletstorm.

Dr. Lieberman is a known criticizer of violence and sexuality in video games, stating that "Video games have increasingly, and more brazenly, connected sex and violence in images, actions and words. This has the psychological impact of doubling the excitement, stimulation and incitement to copycat acts. The increase in rapes can be attributed, in large part, to the playing out of such scenes in video games.". This is of course, a baseless statement and complete and utter bullshit, but that doesn't stop her from spinning her wheels while referencing studies that never occurred.

Dr. Lieberman has admitted to never playing video games, so its a little hard to understand how she might feel that she is qualified to say anything about them aside from that they come in a plastic case and might include instruction booklets.

I don't deny that there are individuals out there that may take what they see in any medium, and act it out in real life, but these are individuals with inherent mental defects that would act on these ideas no matter where they saw or heard of them, including their own delusional fantasies. Such individuals are often in the spotlight when it comes to reports on video games, because news about calm, collected adults who enjoy video games in privacy of their own homes don't get the same kind of reactions as stories about terrorists that use outdated games as a unrealistic ground for training. Likewise, psychiatrists see the worst of the worst, since mentally healthy individuals do not seek out help for such issues. If you search for news about violent offenders who have at some point in their lives played violent games, you are almost certain to find such examples, and if you are pigheaded enough you will probably disregard any evidence you find that sits contrary to your beliefs.

Half the comments against her and her book are so saturated in sarcasm they're dripping. The rest likely come from people who are at a loss for words due to the anger they are feeling. She states that she would need to look through her records and check online for something to back up her claims, which makes it seem that she has really been winging it the entire time and if someone is going to put her on the spot and question her ideals she would like to have the opportunity to do some actual research.

It seems to me that if you've been bombarded with angry people emailing you, and reporters questioning your statements, you may just want to get your shit together so you can defend yourself. If after this amount of time you don't have your shit together, it becomes undeniably evident that you didn't know what the fuck your were talking about in the first place.

Video games are of course the media punching bag of the new millennium, though the baseless criticism started about a decade earlier, it has done nothing but escalate these last 11 years. It does seems rather ironic then that politicians and the like use video games as a target, when their own country constantly glorifies war and military service, and often carries out operations that are an absurd waste of taxpayer money in an attempt to hold back the unwashed hoards of dirty foreigners that allegedly attempt to attack this hypocritical nation of fat, uneducated cannon fodder who haven't yet been drafted by their local military recruitment center. And to think I was listed as being patriotic after completing one of those online tests...

Cage The Elephant:Thank You, Happy Birthday

2011-02-02T21:49:00.000-08:00

So I bought Cage the Elephant's new album today, thinking "Fuck yeah! These guys were awesome in their debut album". Well, I was right on one aspect. They were awesome....

These songs fit together about as well as a square into a circular hole. I was honestly taken aback by how bad most of them were. It litterally assaulted all my senses. I felt as though I had been touched by a roofie slinging date rapist, who invited you out for dinner and dancing but then took you to a run down car park and violated you against a concrete barricade covered in fresh hobo piss. The album art assulted my eyes around the time I returned to the download page thinking I had somehow got the wrong files. With all the screaming that proceeded to fill my home (His, not mine) I thought the lead singer had been taking pointers from Jonathan Davis. The bad smell might have been attributed to a burning disc had I not purchased the album from itunes. And the entire ordeal left a bitter taste in my mouth.

All in all, listening to this album was a lot like bad sex. It left me feeling drained, pissed off, used, and a little guilty, like I had just went home with the fat chick at the party after an entire 26oz of Smirnoff Blue Label.

If you're like me, and discovered this band through their stellar opening song used in the intro to Borderlands, I can almost guarantee you will hate all but 4 songs on this album. You won't like the 4 songs either, you'll merely be able to tolerate them, as though someone had been stabbing you in the eye with a piece of splintered wood soaked in lemon juice and vindaloo sauce, then switched to something slightly more bearable, like a rusty icepick...

Call of Duty: Bullets and Loathing

2011-02-02T06:13:00.000-08:00

I've never been an online gamer. I first got online in 2006 on a pathetic dial-up connection, which was the only option at the time. By 2007 I was on a semi highspeed connection with a tremendous amount of lag, and still am to this day. It's because of this that I can take an objective standpoint and muse about the Call of Duty series and all the famboyism and hatred surrounding it, and do so with little bias.

To me it's never been more than a semi-realistic, though admittedly rather short, polished single player FPS. The gaming sites that I frequent often have members spouting such idiotic things like "Well, it can't possibly be worse than Black Ops" or "Iron sites have ruined the FPS scene". Now let's get one thing stright, there's no way on this polluted, used up little planet of ours that iron sites can "ruin" an entire genre of games. Things can always be implemented poorly of course, but that can be said for any feature in any game ever. The CoD series has done it particularly well in fact, and it is always left as an option. As for things being worse then Black Ops, well sure they could. Granted, I wasn't as blown away by Black Ops as I was by Modern Warfare, but at the end of the day it was still much better than most of the disposable shooters of the last ten years.

When you have a popular, highly functional franchise like the CoD series, one must start to wonder why it attracts so much disdain. I mean, why would you hate something that at the best of times could be considered one of the most accessible shooters of this console generation, and at the worst of times an abysmally short single player game where your avatar can soak up more lead than the clay hill behind the local firing range and still continue fighting? Well, if you take a standpoint where you are neither willing to sell the rights to your first born child for a copy of the next iteration, nor march on your local government office demanding that a bylaw be made making it punishable by death to make another entry to the series, you may start to notice that much of the hatred is unexplained and maybe even unwarranted.

As one anon said, "Haters gonna hate", but that still doesn't really answer the question. Were the hater's mothers once violated before their very eyes by a service-man holding a rifle snugly to his shoulder? It's unlikely, though knowing our country's military record, not impossible. I can then only come to the conclusion that perhaps it's not the game, nor the mechanics of the game that draw so much hatred, but the apparently rabid online community, allegedly filled with foul mouthed 12 year olds with absurdly over developed fast twitch muscles and hand eye coordination, or perhaps the hackers and cheaters that plague the game's servers. It's not too far fetched to assume that maybe some people just don't like to be one upped by others, or just can't get into the game.

Perhaps we'll know the answer to these questions for certain some day. Right now, though, my money is on the stupidly vulgar people that infest an otherwise ordinary competitive community of gamers to such an extent that they spill out onto the rest of the internet allowing anyone with a functioning pair of eyes to see their seething hatred for what it is: the knowledge that no matter how hard they try in life, they will never create something as awesome as Nestle Flips.

Bulletstorm

2011-01-31T01:26:00.000-08:00

I wasn't particularly interested in this game when it first reared it's head at last year's E3, but after realizing it came from the same guys who made Painkiller, my interest was sparked.

You play as Greyson Hunt, a space pirate that wears combat armor made from recycled Fords and old biker jackets and carries enough firepower to reduce the entire city of Detroit to smoldering rubble... more so than it already is I mean.

I do find myself wondering why he says he's a "Space Pirate", though. Do pirates on earth say they are "Sea Pirates"? Does he pirate space itself, and if so, who is he pirating it from? Maybe those people who have shelled out thousands of dollars for a square km of the moon...

Anyhow, the game's primary feature is the ability to "Kill with skill", which means that you are constantly reducing the enemies in the game to mangles giblets using the aforementioned excessive fire power and your time displacing gravity tether. Using the tools at your disposal and your trusty boot, you and your ragtag team of mercs traverse the ruined world of Stigia, which if I recall correctly is an abandon vacation planet inhabited solely by psychotic cannibals. The only way I can think to describe the gameplay is by saying that you are essentially the roided up relative of Neo from the first Matrix movie, only lacking the ability to shut the fuck up while killing people. Honestly, the one thing that bugs me about this game is the absolutely childish one liners that are spouted by Greyson. It makes Duke Nukem's one liners seem like nitrous oxide infused gold. As far as voices and dialogue go, I would rather have had someone of Baird's caliber from Gears of War and his cynical sense of humor than Steve Blum going on about poop chutes and dicks, but I suppose you can't win them all.

At this point I'm pretty sure the demo is available for download from XBL for both gold and free members, but if not I know for a fact that anyone on PSN can grab it. The demo shows a mode called Echoes, which allows you to play thorugh a timed section of the game while attempting to rack up as many skill points as possible. I strongly suggest you check it out and see the carnage for yourself. Oh, and if you preorder now you get into the Gears of War 3 beta, if you're into that sort of thing.

There are also leaderboards for the demo and I'm currently ranked at 284 out of over 80,000 with 18165 points. See if you can beat my score ;).

And we're back...

2011-01-30T23:11:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm back. You may have noticed things have changed around here. It has come to my attention that the best way to get the wrong kind of attention from the wrong kind of people, i.e people with more money and better lawyers that you, is to have an anime blog that supplies links to projects they allegedly have purchased the rights to. So from now on this blog will be used to host the amusing thoughts and ramblings that usually manifest themselves around the time I'm trying to get some fucking sleep. First up, the plight that is recent anime.

You know, the more I watch anime and frequent sites like Sankaku Complex the more I grow to hate the Japanese and everything in their current culture. Every single thing they churn out is a fucking cliche; the fact that keywords on sites like anidb lead to thousands of different shows is evidence of that. Every show inevitably has a sudden girlfriend or harem, and every male lead will act like a socially inept tosser who shoots blood from his nose if a girl so much as rubs up against him, which of course will get him beaten nearly to death by the twinkly eyed cock wallet of the moment. Remember kids, violence against women is wrong, but they can beat you and stab you and sell your possessions to spite you because that is what equality is all about. The Orwellian future is now, only it's feminists and equality that are imposing their control on us, not government (Will save the rest of that rant for the next time I let my inner misogynist out).

Some may say I take these things too seriously, and that it's just anime. But what of the select few shows where people react to these events in the way you'd expect someone with a functioning brain to react, you ask? Or shows like Mushishi or Saraiya Goyou in which the events just don't take place? Well of course the shut-ins that compose 50% (Made up figure) of Japan's population refuse to watch it and it gets canceled or receives one short season and then fades into obscurity because there weren't 15 excessively naive virgin girls fighting over some skinny androgynous teen who develops a fatal bleeding condition the second he looks at a girl. Of course if it isn't hotties and idiots, it's robots and children, or teenagers and superpowers, or one of the other redundant things the Japanese can't seem to free their creativity from. Though at the same time western entertainment is no better, it just has a different heap of samey bullshit it grinds up and pours into a new mold every time the drug bucket starts to get low.

Another thing I just can't wrap my mind around is how idols and celebrities are treated in Japan. People getting fired from news anchor positions because they were holding a box of condoms while fully clothed in a photograph that was somehow uploaded to the web, or voice actresses and idols receiving death threats because they "betrayed" their fanbase by having sex with their partner of 3 years. It's enough to make one facepalm hard enough to break bones.

The only thing in current Japanese culture that doesn't seem tainted at this point is porn. Because let's face it, the story takes a distant back seat to it's essential purpose: getting your rocks off.

Perhaps I'm just inherently jaded, but I feel it best to abandon this sinking ship that is mainstream anime before the rats start clawing at your ankles in an attempt to escape the rising water that is generic moe and bullshit.

Stay tuned for my next rant when I tear into whatever it is that is currently eating at me like a starved anteater, or perhaps I'll just make a calm observation about something interesting in life.