The cake is a lie.

The Original 150 Pokemon

2011-06-25T11:52:00.000-07:00

According to someone who can't remember the names. Click to zoom, Turtlesaurus is a favourite.

Via Geekologie.

How I dance.

2011-04-25T05:47:00.001-07:00

Hope you all had a wonderful Easter!

Snake Transformer

2011-03-22T05:53:00.000-07:00

@jamessutherland tweets:

"I used to work at Gremlin Graphics. Sometimes, people would send us game ideas. This is one of them:"

Hello? Is it me you're looking for?

2011-03-09T03:58:00.000-08:00

Dance Hero means more plastic instruments...

2011-03-08T06:55:00.001-08:00

Activision have announced that they are releasing a new Dance Hero game.

They do like to sell us plastic instruments with buttons on, my wardrobe is packed with drums, microphones and guitars already. This has prompted me to pre-empt their plans so that I can throw away the right amount of important family heirlooms to make room for more button-adorned goodies.

The Majorette Baton.
The Morris Dancer Stick.
The Jaegerbomb.
The Leg Warmers.
The Box Of Rohypnol.
The Stripper Pole.
The Tapdancing Shoes.
The Glowsticks.
The Running Man Shoes
The Michael Flatley.
The Condom Machine.
The Kylie Minogue Hotpants.
The Essex Stilettos.
The Lap.
The Sacrificial Blade.
The Dance Mat. (It's Different This Time, Honest)
The Hunky Blow-Up Man To Dance The Tango With.
The Stetson.
The MC Hammer Trousers (Thanks for that one Andsy!)

There are so many objects out there that different cultures incorporate into their dancing rituals, let's hope that Activision don't miss a trick!

We've seen that Lady Gaga video before...

2011-02-28T09:18:00.000-08:00

Lister: I am Tarka Doll, an ambassador of the great Vindaloovian empire.
Simulant Captain: Our scanners detected humans on your vessel. Is this so?
Lister: Humans? Yeugh. The Vindaloovians despise all humans. They are the vermin of the universe! Is that not right, Bhindi Bhaji?
Cat: You bet! We hate 'em! Scum, scum, scum, scum, scum! Pftftt.
Lister: The Vindaloovian empire has pledged to exterminate them all! [sticks out tongue]

Tokyo Levitation Diary

2011-02-24T01:22:00.001-08:00

Happy Thursday! Don't we all wish we could float through life like this?

See more of Natsumi Hayashi's self portraits here.

How To Ruin Star Wars With Three Images

2011-02-13T09:52:00.000-08:00

Greedo wears some sexy heels.

[Source: Cracked]

Wolverine, Or Batman Squared?

2011-02-08T07:55:00.000-08:00

Detroit Mayor Says No To RoboCop Statue

2011-02-08T07:35:00.000-08:00

...Aww.

Philadelphia apparently has a statue of Rocky, after its museum featured him running up some steps there. Taking them as inspiration, Twitter user @MT decided that Detroit is missing an ode to RoboCop, and decided to ask Mayor Dave Bing.

The idea got shot down quicker than a criminal in RoboCop's way.

I personally think that Robocop deserves a statue, I mean, he's been protecting the innocent since 1987.

[Source: Jalopnik]

Man Creates Lifesize Model Kit Of Himself In The Name Of Art

2011-01-12T08:40:00.001-08:00

Pretty creepy, isn't it? It's called "And When I'm A Man" by Wayne Chisnall, and it's part of the 'States of Reverie' exhibition at the Scream Gallery in Mayfair, London. It brings back memories of my Warhammer days.

There is also a piece called Magnet, in reference to the children and collectors who can't help but take away a piece of the art to put in their own collections.

To be honest, it just looks like my bedroom in a wheelbarrow.

To see the rest of the works, head over to the artist's Blogger page.

I am in lesbians with this girl.

2011-01-04T10:54:00.000-08:00

[/ScottPilgrim]

Please excuse me for this lewd picture, I've censored it to provide some kind of decency, but I had to share.

This girl has the freaking MYTHBUSTERS tattooed on her thigh, and a cheat code above her unlockables.

God damn, I'm in love. Or as close to love as pure admiration can amount to.

[Update: I've since been corrected, it's actually a DDR input tattoo. Nearly as cool as a cheat code. ;D]

Tron cat.

2011-01-04T10:13:00.001-08:00

'Nuff said.

Happy new year!

Christian Bale sings the Powerpuff Girls Theme Song

2010-12-15T10:41:00.001-08:00

With Marky Mark Wahlberg beatboxing by his side. Awwww.

Julian Assange's OKCupid Dating Profile

2010-12-13T12:16:00.000-08:00

Why hello ladies. Even the most infamous freedom fighter needs some loving. Here's the human behind what governments are making out to be a Bond supervillain. This is apparently legit. Apparently.

I love the use of "I am not the droid you are looking for".

MY SELF-SUMMARY:

WARNING: Want a regular, down to earth guy? Keep moving. I am not the droid you're looking for. Save us both while you still can.

Passionate, and often pig headed activist intellectual seeks siren for love affair, children and occasional criminal conspiracy.

Such a woman should spirited and playful, of high intelligence, though not necessarily formally educated, have spunk, class & inner strength and be able to think strategically about the world and the people she cares about.

I like women from countries that have sustained political turmoil. Western culture seems to forge women that are valueless and inane. OK. Not only women!

Although I am pretty intellectually and physically pugnacious I am very protective of women and children.

I am DANGER, ACHTUNG, and ??????????????!

WHAT I'M DOING WITH MY LIFE:

Directing a consuming, dangerous human rights project which is, as you might expect, male dominated. Variously professionally involved in international journalism/books, documentaries, cryptography, intelligence agencies, civil rights, political activism, white collar crime and the internet. Formal background in neuroscience, mathematics, physics and philosophy.

I'M REALLY GOOD AT:
A gentleman never tells. THE FIRST THINGS PEOPLE USUALLY NOTICE ABOUT ME:
Height. Nordic appearance. Unusual presense. Often carrying mystery brown paper packages tied up with strings; these are a few of my first things.
MY FAVORITE BOOKS, MOVIES, MUSIC AND FOOD:
Russian. (D) anything but Russian!
THE SIX THINGS I COULD NEVER DO WITHOUT:
I could adapt to anything except the loss of female company and carbon.
I SPEND A LOT OF TIME THINKING ABOUT:
Changing the world through passion, inspiration and trickery. Travel (33 countries). Structure of reality. Birth and death of the universe (physics background) Ontology. Chopping up human brains (neuroscience background)
ON A TYPICAL FRIDAY NIGHT I AM:
Working, or in wilderness, which I retain an undying love for. Parties with good friends are glue, otherwise entertainment is less entertaining than working!
THE MOST PRIVATE THING I'M WILLING TO ADMIT:
I have asian teengirl stalkers. Hello.
I'M LOOKING FOR:

Everybody
Ages 22-46
Located anywhere
Who are single
For new friends

YOU SHOULD MESSAGE ME IF:
You are a spirited, erotic, non-confomist. Non-conformity is not the adoption of some pre-existing alternative subculture. I seek innate perceptiveness and spunk.

Do not write to me if you are timid. I am too busy. Write to me if you are brave.

ATTN: Doctor Who Fans...

2010-12-02T07:50:00.000-08:00

... This'll brighten up your day.

Probably going to be deleted soon because of breach of copyright over Orbital's music, so get it while it's hot!

Boba Font and Sanstrooper

2010-12-02T01:57:00.000-08:00

If you're a fan of nerdy graphic design, check out Lishoff's Flickr page. His Minimalism Villains is particularly good too, but I have Star Wars bias.

The Top Ten Science Fiction Computer Games: 10-6

2010-11-15T14:21:00.000-08:00

"It’s all well and good, kicking back in front of the telly and observing other worlds, other places in time, and science far beyond our current means, but what if you want to become a part of the story yourself and interact with these places? Well, my nerdy friend, that’s where video games come in.

"Gamers" tend to have an even worse stereotype than sci-fi nerds, at least Comic Book Guy had some concept of humour, most ‘gamers’ that come to mind are mindless dorks with a tribble for a brain because all of the nutrients they consume through Pot Noodles seep straight into their multi-limbed thumbs.

This is a shame, as the gaming industry has been around for decades, and some seminal works have already been produced.

As Andy Serkis (also known as Gollum, King Kong, and various game characters) said to the Guardian recently, “Every age has its storytelling form, and video gaming is a huge part of our culture, you can ignore or embrace video games and imbue them with the best artistic quality. People are enthralled with video games in the same way as other people love the cinema or theatre. Over time, I think perceptions will change.”

Best get ahead then eh? Here are my top ten compelling sci-fi games that you can get stuck into right now.

Games that can make you laugh, cry and feel in awe.

Games that will make you throw your controller across the room.

Games that you’ll miss when they’ve ended.

No elitist, obscure games here, just culturally-relevant games on recent consoles that anyone can get into right now and feel totally immersed in."

Check out the first part of my article on the brilliant ScyFiLove.com blog {shamelessselfpromotion} here. {/shamelessselfpromotion}

Boba Fett's Invoice

2010-11-08T04:47:00.000-08:00

Flickr user LaserBread has come across the invoice given to Jabba's Palace concerning the capture of Han Solo. As we can see, Fett is a stingy bugger, charging carbonite wall hangers as a separate item.

See it here.

Day jobs.

2010-09-05T10:08:00.000-07:00

Check out this brilliant piece of graphic design by Fro Design Company. Ever wondered what Batman's business cards looked like? Dharma Initiative? Duff Breweries?

Wonder no more!

You know how it works, click to zoom.

Intimidating Wiimote Sex Aids = Inevitable and Incoming

2010-08-31T09:44:00.000-07:00

(Also posted at Thumb Culture, where I now write, woohoo!)

The family-friendly console just got a lot less family-friendly. Yeah, we all knew this would, er, come eventually. New Mojowijo attachments “transform your Nintendo Wii remote control into a next generation body stimulation device”. In other words, sex toy.

This can be used either over the internet, with someone who’s in the same room, or when you’re on your own. Versatile.

Beta testing is being carried out on the Mojowijo site where you can receive a prototype of the attachment for free, but I’d say you’d have to be pretty brave to let something that is untested so near places where you wouldn’t want untested things to be.

Cripes.

The Geek Solar System

2010-08-13T13:14:00.000-07:00

School tells you nothing. Clicky zoom!

100000 visitors!

2010-08-04T09:13:00.000-07:00

Yep, 100000 people have been tricked by Google into visiting this here sparcely-updated blog. Most of those were looking for strategy game reviews or stumbled here after searching for Essex girls. There were also a few Belgians searching for unholy acts between game characters.

I'm sure this site turned them right off what they were doing, and I hope to carry on the honest work of being a cold shower of words to another 80000's impulsive sins.

My Little Wolverine.

2010-07-20T10:41:00.000-07:00

It's quite the piece of art, reflecting that in society, both the tough and the pink and fluffy need to come together to become one in order to become more powerful as a unified being so we can stomp and slice anything that comes into our path.

You just wait until I show you the picture of his tattoo of a Batman having a naked tea party with a Polly Pocket on his bum cheek.

New Harry Potter Game Announced

2010-06-01T05:49:00.000-07:00

No, not Harry Potter Lego, EA have announced today that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows™ - Part 1 will be the next game in the series, and it's a third-person shooter. Interesting. Developed by EA Bright Light, Guildford, UK, it is set to be released this fall. Something tells me that we can probably be sure that there's going to be a Part 2 too.

The action takes place outside of Hogwarts for the very first time, Harry is on the run from all things magic and creepy from the books and movies, such as Death Eaters and Snatchers, as he prepares for the final battle with You-Know-Who.

"The final Harry Potter adventure has given us the opportunity to make a darker and more action-oriented game than we have before," says Jonathan Bunney, VP, Head of Production at EA Bright Light. "We believe we are creating a Harry Potter game that the HD console gaming generation will appreciate and enjoy. We have built new technology specifically to allow us to prove that magic is a truly potent force and, in this game, players will need to use all their skills if they want to survive."

The game will be available on Playstation 3, Xbox360, Wii, Nintendo DS, and mobile devices.

Source: Press Release

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Comes to iPhone

2010-05-31T13:36:00.000-07:00

Not being content with already being available on the Game Boy Advance, DS and Wii, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is also now available on iTunes for the iPhone and iPod Touch for...

HOLD IT!

...The mere pittance of $5, a steal compared to the DS version.

You are Phoenix Wright, a rookie defense attorney with a raw talent for finding flaws in testimonies, attracting weirdos and SHOUTING. Your job is to defend the seemingly undefendable in court by gathering evidence and cross-examining testimonies.

A puzzle RPG that takes place in a courtroom is the most boring premise for a game ever, right?

OBJECTION!

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is a classic game with many fans. It's lovable, surprisingly witty and has that special Japanese brand of insanity running through it. If you enjoy puzzles, point and click adventures, or even just a bargain, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is worth picking up.

Awesome Star Wars Climbing Frame

2010-05-11T13:39:00.000-07:00

Via i09

Suddenly my Swingball pales in comparison. As awesome as it is, I'm not sure that even this would compensate for my parents giving me the awful pudding bowl haircut of the kid on the top right though. Or the dead pet dog.

Review: Breath of Death VII: The Beginning

2010-05-09T04:22:00.001-07:00

ESRB: Unrated
Platform: Xbox Live Indie Games
Genre: RPG
Number of Players: 1
Developer: Zeboyd Games (Robert Boyd and William Stiernberg)
Cost: $1 (80 MSP)

BUY

It's a simple fact that a lot of gamers don't venture into the daunting world of Xbox Live Indie Games because, let's face it, Xbox Live Indie games are not quality regulated, and it's pot luck as to whether you have a brilliant experience, or a terrible one. A myriad of controller 'massage' games do not exactly help to encourage the timid but avid gamer into XBLIG, meaning that some games get ignored. Breath of Death VII: The Beginning doesn't deserve to be ignored.

Breath of Death VII: The Beginning describes itself as a "retro parody RPG". It certainly feels retro with its 8-bit NES looks, music and play style which do a great job of conjuring up nostalgia for 'the good ol' days'. The parody comes from the fact that the game is essentially a homage to RPG games in general, and that it references games such as The Legend of Zelda, Castlevania, Final Fantasy, and even Mass Effect, with a smile and a wink. Even the title is a hybrid of Final Fantasy 7 and Breath of Fire.

In 20XX, mankind destroys itself with nuclear weapons. The undead restart the planet's civilization from scratch and everything goes smoothly until evil invades. You play as an adventuring skeleton knight hero called Dem, and your quest is to explore the world, discovering new places and unearthing lost artifacts that will help you to fight back the evil hordes. You start off alone, but as you progress through the game you pick up different companions that follow you around like you're picking up people for a conga line of death. You can then use these companions in each battle you fight, and each character has their own unique skills such as healing, or brute strength.

As with a lot of JRPGs, battles are triggered randomly as you walk around a level, and the battles are turn based, which makes it all feel very much like a Pokémon game. If I was going to do great injustice to this game and describe it in a few words, it's an intelligent, funny, Pokémon game with zombie puke. There is some very intelligent game design involved, such as characters which perfectly complement each other, which can't have been an easy feat when you fight with multiple characters each turn. I loved the fact that each time a character levels up, you get a choice of two skills or stat improvements to choose between, which allows you to customize your characters based on how you'd like to play. You also regain full health after each battle, which is something that should occur more in games where random battles occur.

However, for all the brilliance, there are a few annoyances, such as repetitiveness when the same easy opponent triggers a battle every few steps when you're just trying to get to a cave. I often found myself just spamming one button to get through to the end of fights I didn't want to trigger. This resulted in another complaint of mine about early NES games, death is a harsh thing. At one point, I'd button bashed my way through a fight, to see at the end that I had died, and had to respawn further back in the game than I had liked as save points are a little bit too infrequent for someone that wants to have light-hearted fun. I can't complain too much, as it was my fault that I wasn't playing the game as it was intended, and it's not a difficult game at all.

You can't stay angry at this game for too long though, the victory music is the most heart-warmingly cute chip tune you've ever heard. It makes you feel like you are on a stroll with cotton candy in one arm, and a soft, purring kitten in the other. The victory music is my favorite, but the music throughout the game, sourced by the developers from indie music composers at indiegamemusic.com, is all comprised of gorgeous chip tunes that make you smile. Breath of Death VII: The Beginning has some of the best music I've heard in a game for a while, and I'd pay a dollar just for that.

The writing is also spot-on; this game is genuinely funny for all the right reasons, in a Phoenix Wright kind of way. The dialog between the characters is full of subtle humor and jokes, as is the environment, which includes tombstones that are inscribed with witty quips.

The art style is very cute and very indie too; there are a lot of different themes to prevent you from getting bored of the same background. The evil opponents are weird, wonderful, and sometimes unfortunate, such as the 'Whompillow', a living tree with a root in a place it probably shouldn't have been drawn.

Breath of Death VII: The Beginning is a game you should buy if you enjoy RPGs in any form, even if you're scared of Xbox Live Indie Games. I've not seen a full game with this sort of value for money in a while; you get 4-6 hours of funny, intelligent, lovingly put together game, all for one US dollar.

Who Wants To Live Forever?

2010-05-08T08:46:00.000-07:00

I was trawling through the internet today, and saw that there is a diet that aims to make people live past 120, and nearer 140. The Calorie Restriction (original, eh?) diet basically consists of steamed vegetables, fish, and nuts. Yummy.

They do not cook anything using 'extreme heat'. Sounds like nothing is extreme in your life, love.

"We think about every single morsel of food we put in our bodies,’ explains Elvira. ‘We’ve been following the programme for two-and-a-half years.

‘We do not eat wheat, gluten, dairy, sugar, meat or even drink tap water. I take nutrient supplements and I go to the gym at least three times a week and run nearly every day."

Look at their dead, dead eyes. Even their plates are sombre.

I'm all for trying to eat healthily, but there are some things I don't understand. Surely the amount of time you'll spend a day chopping vegetables, and then chewing those vegetables, worrying about how many calories a stick of celery has, going to the gym that much, and then inevitably spending a long time on the toilet after all those vegetables, will cancel out those years you've gained?

Also, who wants to live until 140 anyway? I doubt the lack of meat will improve brain function, so really, you'll be coasting along like a vegetable yourself after the age of 90.

And a life without going out for dinner, or going on holiday? Yeah, that sounds like a whale of a time.

The worst thing is, they are living a life that doesn't have steak, coffee, pizza or chocolate! That is not a life that is worth prolonging.

Bloody pass me a Double Down.

Downing Street Fighter

2010-04-30T05:48:00.000-07:00

If you weren't interested in the UK elections, you will be after kicking the shit out of Gordie Brown in this fun, politically-themed spoof of the Street Fighter games.

http://www.downingstreetfighter.com/

The Blair Witch is insanely difficult to put down for good, which about says it all.

Enjoy!

Wonderpod Episode 16 appearance

2010-04-25T13:04:00.000-07:00

Yep. I'm on the Wonderpod podcast this week.

It's all about games, and it was recorded in the very early hours. I say 'y'know' far too much.

Also, why didn't anyone tell me I have a bloody weird voice?!

"We add our two cents to the pile regarding Roger Ebert and the, are games art dialogue.

A moron CEO floats the worst idea ever and one that will probably happen.

Ubisoft kills off manuals, those bastards.

Blizzard bans a shit ton of Battle Net accounts and we wonder the causes.

Bonus tangent on annoying people connected to the Blizzard discussion.

Gamer dick stays in house and we learn not to say LOL at Rachel."

VVVVVV - Review

2010-04-07T04:15:00.000-07:00

Review: VVVVVV

ESRB: E
Genre: 2D puzzle platformer
Platform: PC / Mac
Number of Players: One
Developer: Terry Cavanagh
Release Date: January 11, 2010

VVVVVV.The title is an illustration of my blood pressure throughout playing this game.

In this charming but relentless indie platformer you are the heroic-sounding Captain Viridian, a little 8-bit naked blue man, a mini, pixellated Dr Manhattan, with the kind of smile that only a naked man could have.

You're cruising along quite happily in space with your crew, until there's a massive disturbance. Somehow, yourself and all your crew get transported to different parts of a space station, and you're all lost. One member, Violet (all of the six crew members have names beginning with V, and they're all named after colours -- clever!), manages to contact you to tell you that you need to activate teleporters to retrieve all of the crew and plonk them back on your own ship.

It would be nice if all of the teleporters were quite handily in front of you while you spoke to Violet, but oh no, instead they are scattered around the space station in many different rooms in many distant places, in between all kinds of spikes and obstacles. A Metroidvania style map is given for reference, but most of the routes are laid out in front of you in the form of a path that won't kill you. Unfortunately for us (and him, actually), the poor captain doesn't have knees, therefore he can't go up the steps in the levels. Instead there is only the option to go left, right, and to reverse gravity.

Although the set of controls are simple, the game itself is not simple at all. When you reverse gravity you are instantly catapulted to the ceiling or floor at quite a speed, and Captain Viridian doesn't really enjoy being hurled at spikes. I like him, he's a logical kind of guy. Naked + spikes = bad. If you don't manage to find a safe place to find your footing, you instantly die. You die, die, and die again. You can literally die multiple times a second, and I'm certain I did. However, this is not to say that the game is brutal, it's actually quite forgiving when it comes to cold, hard, death. Checkpoints in the form of pixellated 'C's are placed at strategic points in each level, usually before everything goes a little bit mental, and if you die, you instantly respawn and snap back to that checkpoint, meaning you can retry what you've just utterly failed at over and over again until you've got the feel of what you need to do at what time, or until you completely fluke it. A victory is a victory, whatever.

Luckily, once you've got past a bit, you never have to do it again. If this wasn't the case, and the checkpoints weren't right, VVVVVV could have been a really bad game, but Mr Cavanagh obviously knows what he's doing. This game is a perpetual cycle of frustration, more frustration, a feeling of hopelessness and wanting to quit, then pure unbridled joy and smugness when you've completed the room, especially if you've collected one of the twenty trinkets in the game that are in the most difficult of them. Then it starts all over again.

If you don't mind a bit of masochism once in a while, VVVVVV is easily forgivable, it oozes charm. The graphics are certainly not cutting-edge, the game looks like it should be on an Atari, but it's lovingly crafted. Plus, the way Captain Veridian still smiles his pastel blue grin at you even when he's whizzing through the air into the face of multiple, painful deaths is just so cute.

As for the soundtrack, all I can say is that it's excellent, it consists of an album of chiptunes created by one Magnus Pålsson, and it does a good job of calming you down. At one point I caught myself singing along, blipping and blooping through a level.

As for the bad points, there aren't many.

People who get frustrated easily might find VVVVVV a little bit too much at times. There are some harsh difficulty spikes that occur seemingly randomly, even quite near the beginning of the game. I fear that this might make a lot of people quit right there and then, and never want to play it again. Sadly, they won't know what they're missing.

The other sore point is the price tag. Call me stingy, but £10 seems like a little bit too much for a few hours of game. I don't mind, as I love it and think it's worth every penny. However, if you're one of those people that might only play this for a few minutes and then go cry in a corner because LIFE IS SO UNFAIR, it's obviously not going to be worth it.

Overall, if you're a gamer that welcomes quality gameplay and finds a good challenge refreshing, then buy this game. If you're not, I suggest you try the free demo anyway, it's a win-win situation. You're either going to love it or hate it, and if you love it, it's easy enough to take a step up and buy it. What have you got to lose? Apart from your sanity, of course.

A to Z of Awesomeness

2010-03-31T04:29:00.000-07:00

By Neill Cameron:

Admire all his alphabetical artwork at: http://www.neillcameron.com/A_to_Z/A.html

The Top Ten Strategy Games For People That Hate Strategy Games.

2010-03-17T15:24:00.000-07:00

It's a good time for strategy game sequels. Starcraft 2, Napoleon: Total War, Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising, Command and Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight, Supreme Commander 2 and Civilization 5 are all on the radar, and they're kind of a big deal. Unfortunately RTS (real-time strategy) and TBS (turn-based strategy) games have had a hard time from people that assume strategy games equal building a massive army and throwing your huge mass against the nearest group of things with a different coloured shirt on to yourself. I'm here to either prove you wrong, or be someone to punch in the face for even suggesting that strategy games can be epic.

Whether you're the type of person who doesn't think clicking strategically sounds like their idea of a thrilling time but wants to give them a chance, or whether you're a big RTS fan that didn't get an invite to the Starcraft 2 beta who doesn't want to idly wallow in self-pity, there's a must-play, cheap, classic strategy game out there for you to strengthen your mind-to-click capability!

The Beginner
Viva Piñata - Trouble in Paradise

Platform: Xbox 360
Developer: Rare Ltd
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Release: September 2008

This game is an RTS with a friendly face, but don't let that put you off if its cuteness doesn't penetrate your fortress of a heart. You own a garden in which you can grow plants and place structures, the aim of the game is to make your garden a crowd-pleaser to the native Piñatas so that they'll stay and breed. Then you can sell your least favourite Piñata children, you know, the ones that pin up Jonas Brothers posters and kiss them every night, to buy seeds and equipment to lure in cooler and rarer Piñatas.

This family-friendly game might not conjure up the usual thoughts when you think of an RTS, but it has a lot of the traits of the genre, you have a base (your garden), resources to look after (seeds and plants), and units (the Piñatas). It's an inoffensive, gentle paced game which shouldn't scare too many people away.

It’s also a game where you can whack creatures in the face with a spade, which is an added bonus.

What?

Yeah, they look cute now, but you'll want to squeeze their tiny necks when they start fighting each other.

The FPS Freak
Company of Heroes

Platform: PC
Developer: Relic Entertainment
Publisher: THQ
Release: September 2006

So what if it's set in the flogged dead horse of World War 2, it's still one of the best RTS games out there. If you like your games full of tanks, the gritty greyness of war, and loud gunshots, this might be the RTS to ease you into the genre like a well-oiled knife into a man’s leg.

Unlike with some of the other games on this list, the game is less focused on amassing an effective army over time, and more about focusing on tactics in order to capture points on a map. These points provide the resources, which are fuel, manpower, and munitions, there's no chopping of trees or collecting weird alien crystals to build your units, a refreshing change. For once, the infantry units aren't just decoys or meatshields. Each man counts, infantry within a squad will be picked off one by one, but you can order one man to go back to base and reinforce if he's not turning out to be Chuck Norris, which is just the way it should be. There might not be any epic headshots here, but this is a fast-paced, satisfying game.

Start off in easy mode though, or you might find your keyboard suddenly broken on the other side of the room.

See, just like Modern Warfare 2. But with thinking. Yes, I went there.

The Chess Geek
Starcraft

Platform: PC/Mac
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment/Sierra Entertainment
Release: March 1998 (PC)

Obviously if you're looking forward to Starcraft 2, this is the one to play. Starcraft is widely regarded to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, RTS of all time. There's not many games that have become a national sport, as Starcraft has in South Korea, let alone one that still remains its hype after ten years.

There's a space war going on between three mean looking races, the human Terrans, humans that have been exiled from Earth who mainly rely on machinery and explosions, the insectoid Zerg who basically want to infest the planet and genetically alter anything that stands in their path to their likeness, and the Protoss, a cultured race who really just want to keep their advanced technology intact. They all play really differently, so it is inevitable that there will be one race that you grow more attached to than another, but it won't be because one is overpowered in any way. I like Protoss because they're pretty and they sparkle.

The three races are very different to play, and yet the game remains as balanced as a game of chess. It's definitely a case of easy to pick up, difficult to master. No superstar Starcraft player in South Korea plays the same way, there are creative players, aggressive players, cautious players, which is testament to how well-balanced it is. So what if the graphics are outdated, Starcraft is all about gameplay, and it delivers this in spades in both the campaigns and the multiplayer. No one complains about the graphics in Tetris.

Mm, carpet made of brains.

The RPG Fan
Dawn of War 2

Platform: PC
Developer: Relic Entertainment
Publisher: THQ
Release: February 2009

If you're not a big fan of the usual RTS formula, Dawn of War 2 is a game that mixes it up a bit. You play as the Space Marines, a force of surgically and mentally enhanced humans covered in heaving armour that pour liquid steroids over their cereal in the morning.

It's not a feminine game, you play big beefed up space soldiers, but the well written dialogue between the squads in between the campaign can be surprisingly touching at times. There are no bases or units to dither with, and you don't have to juggle mining resources as there aren't any. You are given a choice of small squads, each containing a few men, and you can only take a maximum of four into each mission including your Force Commander, which acts a little bit like a hero unit. Each squad has its own skills, such as stealth, big guns, or teleporters, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Commanding four squads at a time feels a bit like handling a tank, a DPS, and a healer in an MMORPG, but all at once! The combat performs very much like the average RTS, but you are given an inventory to kit out your guys.

Why an inventory? Because you get loot! Greens, blues, purples, they're all here, and they can skew the game to how you like to play, depending on whether you equip a squad with healing items, a bubble shield, or just a plain big fat rocket launcher. Anything you loot that you don't need can be converted into experience points to supplement the experience you get elsewhere, and as you gain experience the squads you're using gain levels. These levels give you points to spend in a skill tree system that is pretty much identical to that of the original Mass Effect's. The social element is covered by a cooperative campaign mode, and if you're a fan of achievements, these are given out fairly liberally throughout the campaign through Games for Windows Live.

This is my very own Cyrus. Stats don't matter, he has a massive gun.

The Fantasy Nerd
Warcraft III

Platform: PC/Mac
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment/Sierra Entertainment/Capcom
Release: July 2002

I was considering pitching Warcraft III to World of Warcraft fans, but this game is just too good to be limited to them. Obviously, WoW players past and present will get a lot out of this game, as the lore in Warcraft III directly relates to it. Many familiar faces and places are present, and seeing them in a different game is fascinating if you're familiar with them.

If you're a Warcraft noob though, you don't need to worry. Although perhaps a little cliched (although what fantasy story isn't?), the single player campaigns are an engaging experience. The lore is enthralling from mission to mission, and the cut-scenes are so gorgeous I often found myself looking forward to them. Although the graphics aren't anywhere near cutting-edge, Blizzard know how to animate, everything has such charm. As for the sound, I guarantee you'll find yourself clicking units over again, just to squeeze a "zug zug!" out of an orc grunt or a "I never say ni" out of a knight.

Warcraft III is a genuinely entertaining and funny single player game, but you'll need that sense of good humour for the multiplayer. It's brilliantly balanced as you'd expect from Blizzard, but there's a lot of people who have been playing it far too often, never play a Blizzard RTS multiplayer online with strangers if you're a bad loser. If you're feeling very brave, DotA (defense of the ancients) game modes are pure genius, many decent full games like Demigod and League of Legends have been unashamedly based on them.

Dr00dz!

The Megalomaniac
Civilization 4

Platform: PC/Mac
Developer: Firaxis Games
Publisher: 2K Games/Aspyr
Release: October 2005

Ever wanted to take over the world? This one might be your game, as the focus is world domination .This turn-based strategy game plays a lot like a padded-out, electronic version of Risk. In Civilisation 4 you are put in charge of the nation of your choice, and it is your job as Caesar, Gengis Khan, Queen Elizabeth I, or whoever you want to be, to guide your people from being an ancient civilisation to being able to colonise in space. Yes, world leaders are immortal. Conspiracy! How quickly you progress on your journey from spears to space rockets depends on how far ahead of the competition your nation is in terms of economic status, cultural status, diplomacy, your technology research, or simply, how quickly you kill off your competition.

This variety of ways to win means that this is a game with so much replayability it's unreal. The AI seems surprisingly intelligent and adapts well to whatever route you're going whatever difficulty you're playing in, and multiplayer gets mysteriously addictive when you begin to feel the urge to get revenge on someone that's messing up your favourite city. Also, Leonard Nimoy does the narration, which is a geeky bonus.

By the way, don't let Gandhi fool you, he's really a massive jerk.

Gandhi actually loves war. Here he is demonstrating what he'll do to you when you're not looking.

The Natural Leader
Rome: Total War

Platform: PC/Mac
Developer: The Creative Assembly
Publisher: Activision/Sega
Release: September 2004

There's not really any word to describe this game other than "epic". If you fancy leading a truly massive legion of soldiers and catapults, this game will send you on the power trip you've been waiting for. Rome: Total War is a TBS, but with massive real time battles. The fact that you can zoom in to see your large mass of perfectly regimented soldiers, but can zoom out to see an overview of the lands you occupy, gives a grand sense of scale. It's quite frankly awe-inspiring at times. Especially when you zoom in on your fleeing elephant units turning all human matter in front of them into a big squishy mess on the grass. They make me so proud.

The use of animals in this game is inspired. Where else can you play a game in which you cover a pig with tar, set it alight, and then send it squealing into the opposition, just like the Romans did? Mmm. Bacon. The dogs are fierce, the elephants are sturdy, the horses are skittish, the pigs are on fire, and they all react how you'd expect them to.

There's a game mode for everyone, there's short battles, which you can set up yourself. It's inevitable that you'll try to make a dogs versus peasants battle. There's also more authentic battles in the form of actual historical battles. As for the campaign, there's short campaigns which will please casual gamers, and more involved campaigns which can take a very long time.

This isn't just one of the best strategy games of all time, it's one of the best games of all time. You should give it a try before it looks completely dated.

This beats elephants.

The Joker
Red Alert 2

Platform: PC
Developer: Westwood Pacific
Publisher: EA Games
Release: October 2000

Red Alert 2 is basically an RTS set in a Cold War that's set in a dream of someone that's eaten a lot of cheese before bedtime. This is a light-hearted, fast-paced game, which doesn't really leave any moment to get bored. It's Soviets vs Allies as you might expect, and each has it's own campaign to work through. Even the cut scenes, where you might usually zone out a little bit, are a blast as they consist of live action cut-scenes, acted out by real actors. They're bad. Really bad. However, the game is fully aware that they're cheesy, and therefore a lot of it comes across very much tongue-in-cheek which makes them lovable and laughable. Actually, it's quite a bit funnier when the actors do take themselves seriously.
There aren't really any ground-breaking ideas within the gameplay which makes this game vividly unique, but what it does, it does well. All of the units are balanced, and there's very much a feeling of rock-paper-scissors, it's easy to pick up which units will beat and be beaten by others. Apart from the nuke. That'll beat everything.

If you're the kind of person that rolls their eyes at Adam Sandler films, or if you cringe when heavy metal music is used to emphasise masculinity, this might not be the game for you. If you're the kind of person that can forgive a game for not being edgy, and just switch your brain off for a while, then this is a thoroughly enjoyable, hilarious game. I hate using this word, but it's wacky.

...

The Misanthrope
Defense Grid: The Awakening

Platform: PC/XBLA
Developer: Hidden Path Entertainment
Publisher: Aspyr Media
Release: December 08/September 09

Humans are dead, hooray! In this game, it's just you and a friendly AI with a voice made that sounds as comforting as a favourite grandad, and you're fighting aliens together.

If you know what a tower defense game is, then you'll know exactly the type of gameplay that is offered here. You have a range of towers that are available to you as the game progresses, and they all do different things. The aim of the game is to place these towers strategically in a way that means that the enemies cannot make it from one side of the map to the other.
In each level, there can be anything from 5 to 30 waves of aliens, or even 99 if you choose to do the grinder modes. This may sound like a large amount for a level, but the game has incorporated an ingenious fast forward mode and a checkpoint rewind function. This means the game can take whatever pace you like, and that you can rewind to a sensible spot if you really weren't prepared for what was about to come.

The levels really force you to think, it's not rare to have to sit and think for a good few minutes at the beginning of one.

There's a very well written story, and the AI character really evolves as you progress through the game. This non-creepy, robotic Santa-Claus sounding, friend of yours becomes one of the real hooks of the game, it's nice to have an added endearing side to a game that could potentially become very repetitive. He's even lovable when he won't stop talking about raspberries.

Lasers + aliens = <3!

The One Who Thinks Outside The Box
Homeworld

Platform: PC/Mac
Developer: Relic Entertainment
Publisher: Sierra Entertainment
Release: September 1999

I'm not going to lie, this game has not kept its youthful looks, but its heart is still beautiful.

You play as the Kharakid, and your race is not feeling like it's at home on its homeworld. You're different to all of the native species on Kharak, and you're constantly fleeing the sun as the desert is spreading. Eventually, everything begins to make sense, as a strange ship is discovered, and it turns out that the Kharakid really aren't native to their planet. This ship contains a lot of unknown technology, which provides your race an escape route to get off Kharak, and back to their true homeworld. However, it turns out that your race are a bit naive as to what's out there in space.

In Homeworld, you control your fleet of ships, you build them upgrade them, move them. This being space, you can move anywhere you want, it's not confined to a 2d plane. This can be confusing at first, but when you get the hang of the controls, it's totally liberating. This is not an easy game, but there's always a reason in the story for the parts that get a bit difficult, so it never really ends up being needlessly frustrating.

The story is amazing. If you're the type of person that'll shed a tear in a movie, I can guarantee you'll be moved by certain parts of the brilliantly written story. Well, I can guarantee it if you cried at The Lion King and Bambi, like I did. The storyline is reinforced by some of the best sound found in an RTS, it really is phenomenal. The voice acting is touching and superbly executed, and the music, well. Let's just say the third mission has one of the best uses for Adagio for Strings ever. You'll need to dab your eyes. The cutscenes are animated, and could be released on their own. If you're a sucker for a good, arty animation, they don't get much better than these. The in-game graphics are honestly a bit rubbish now as they're very dated, but if you have a good imagination, this game is pure art. You will be gripped, and you will be moved.

Forget Heavy Rain, this game was way before its time in challenging film as a medium.

You may punch me now.

Review over at Gaming Angels!

2010-02-18T23:33:00.000-08:00

My Muscle March review has been published over at GamingAngels, it's basically the same as the one over here, but I had to replace Bruce Forsyth with Arnie Schwarzenegger. Sad times.

http://www.gamingangels.com/2010/02/guest-review-muscle-march/

Muscle March review: Protein shakes and polar bears.

2010-01-28T12:57:00.000-08:00

This one's for the ladies.

You know that feeling you get when you've been spinning around really really fast, and you feel confused, exhilarated, and a little bit pukey? That's what you get when you play Muscle March on the Wii.

The confusion started when my boyfriend was a little too eager to download easily the most camp game I've ever seen, a game mainly comprised of oiled up, 'roided men in speedos that leave nothing to the imagination. It continued when we were greeted with this.

You play as a chain of body builders. No single entities here, oh no. You're quite happy pumping iron at the local gym, with your gym buddies that seem to share your stylist, and your face. Even Brenda (far left) carries the gene mutation. As to why the only muscle woman in the game is said to be British, I'm not sure, I don't know whether to be proud or mildly offended. I can only assume the polar bear has only just started his gym membership, he has a bit of a beer belly going on.

Being so buff doesn't come naturally, so, naturally, you employ a bit of help in the form of protein (most likely with extra special illegal ingredients). Unfortunately, other people and things are after your special stuff, they steal it and run off with it. The only thing to do is chase them down through the streets and off buildings in an orderly queue.

Unfortunately, the people/aliens you are chasing have had a munch on your protein powder, and you guys haven't had your fix. This means that despite your ultimate figure, they can run through walls, and you can't. The aim of the game is to basically YMCA your way through the shapes of the holes on the walls with the Wii remote and nunchuck like a Bruce Forsyth with ADHD, whilst ogling your current character's wiggling derriere.

I think I'm in love.

The greatest thing about this game is that it's rubbish, and that it knows it's rubbish. It completely revels in it, from the cheesy Japanese pop to the baby chick suffocating in one of the character's afros. The controls are unresponsive for a game that's centred around quick reactions, you can't even see what graphics there are because your eyeballs are too busy bleeding, and the gameplay quickly becomes repetitive. There is only so long you can play this game before the shame and awkwardness kicks in. Unless you're drunk and surrounded by similarly drunk friends, in which case this may be the most awesome thing you've seen since watching a bar of soap expand in the microwave until it turned into the Stay Puft man (don't try this at home, kids - watch it on Youtube).

However short-lived the game may be, you're only paying 500 Wii points, which is about three quid (five dollars) for a really fun party game, or a really fun single player which you play with the curtains closed.

Overall, Muscle March is a game worth buying just to have your mind blown, then rearranged back together upside-down.

7/10

COMING soon...

2010-01-26T13:02:00.000-08:00

Warning: This blog post is very sexually charged. I can't help it, I'm just too turned on by all of this.

Have you ever felt that you just really need to bury your preferred wrist in some boobs, but felt the urge wasn't strong enough for you to leave your computer?

Don't worry, we all have. But worry no more, as Aksys Games has come up with the solution. The Xbox 360 exclusive "Really Naughty Limited Edition" comes with:

26″ x 20″ Yearning Ellis pillowcase (pillow not included)
8½” x 10½” Sensual Vira-Lor mouse pad
Record of the Agarest War Soundtrack
Naughty Collector’s Box to protect your girls

It may just the best special edition ever likely to exist. If you're these guys.

I can imagine why the pillow isn't included, but why is there a sexy hentai lady printed on the CD? Surely that's asking for trouble, I predict many an embarassing emergency room visit in which wire cutters are the only cure. It makes the hoodie, poster and art book that I recently splashed out on for Tekken 6 seem rather mundane. Then again, at least I sold the bits I didn't want afterwards, something tells me noone will want this special edition to come second-hand.

In all seriousness, well done to Aksys for keeping it all unashamedly tongue-in-cheek. They certainly know their audience, and who doesn't love mousemats and/or boobs. To combine the two is a stroke of genius. I'm only mildly offended that we Xbox 360 owners are seen as being in more of a hormonal haze than our Playstation 3 counterparts.

You are forgiven though, as you had the sense to get involved with one of my favourite beat'em up game franchises, BlazBlue, and because the Aksys website (see below), wins the internet.

Toyota unveils "8-bit" car.

2010-01-13T05:52:00.000-08:00

Sources: Kotaku, Toyota blog

Toyota recently unveiled a new hybrid concept car, the FT-CH, at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), in Detroit. Its styling is targeted at "the 8-bit generation", apparently.

"Today, 8-bit is considered a specific retro-style that is embraced by such things as 8-bit genre music and 8-bit inspired art.

The direct reference to the 8-bit generation is meant to be fun and innovative, colorful and stylish, with strong appeal to young buyers. Lighter in weight and even more fuel efficient than Prius, the concept specifically targets a lower price point than Prius, thus appealing to a younger, less-affluent buyer demographic."

I'm not sure that the 8-bit generation that were amazed by the graphics of the original Super Mario Brothers would be my first thought when the words, "younger, less-affluent buyer demographic" are mentioned. They must all be in around their mid-30's by now, surely they still don't sleep in Sonic the Hedgehog pyjamas (not that that would be a bad thing of course).

When I think of young, less-affluent buyers, I tend to think of the boys that ride around my local McDonalds car park in their pimped-out but clapped-out Vauxhall Corsas, in which they can barely see over the steering wheel. I'm sure they're not going to fork out for a new car, leaving them with no money left for blue neons and a different colour bonnet to the rest of the car.

Regardless of who it's made for, I quite like it actually. I'm not sure that my bottom would like those seats, the square pixel-like vents in the front are surely just a place for squares of dirt to gather, and the wheels are a bit ugly no matter how 8-bit they are, but who can argue with a funky retro car that will cost barely anything to run, and that might be filled with hydrogen fuel cells by 2015. Whoaaa, it's like, from the future, maaan.

As for being an 8-bit styled car, the general spirit is there, simple lines, no frills, colours that make your eyes and soul bleed. Some people are saying that that's only hints of 8-bit, but we should feel lucky that there is even a concept car being 8-bit styled in the first place. It's not exactly the first styling I'd think of first if I wanted to make a car that will appeal to the masses. Okay, it's not actually MADE of pixels, but if you're going to be that fussy, the closest you'll get to that in real life is a car made of Lego. Have fun with that.

Happy Christmas!

2009-12-24T08:54:00.001-08:00

Would just like to say "Happy Christmas", "Happy Holidays", or "Happy Jewmass" (to AcidicPlague), to everyone that reads this!

2009 has been a struggle for a lot of people, myself included, I raise my Bud to everyone that made it out of there alive! Here's to making the most of 2010.

Have a great one guys and guyettes, stay safe.

Don't B Nervous Talking 2 Girls

2009-12-11T13:34:00.000-08:00

Hello, Jessicuuh. Isn't she cute when she's smiling.

No, really, don't. There's no need to any more, what with the dating simulator on Xbox 360 Indie Games everyone's talking about, called "Don't B Nervous Talking 2 Girls". How convenient.

Seeing that I was enjoying indie game Miner Dig Deep so much, Chopemon suggested that I might enjoy Don't B Nervous Talking 2 Girls, as it also just happened to be an indie game too. Even though I am a straight female, therefore not in need of any dating tips regarding women on the receiving end, and that I don't get nervous talking to girls, I thought it was a very thoughtful thing for him to suggest. Me being the positive, optimistic person I am, I thought, "why not". Believing that my insider knowledge of the female psyche might be a great advantage which could push me into the upper levels of the leaderboards of a game for once, rather than wallowing in the sewers on any game that doesn't involve building things, I thought I'd give it a go.

On entry into the game, you are greeted by this charming blonde, who, y'knoooow, speaks like, a bit like thiihss? Like, y'know, like, she's perpetually asking a question all the time? Y'know, she's like, named Jessicuhh?

Anyway, the point of the game is to 'get her "numberrrr". If you fail, she'll "bloow you offff". I'm not entirely sure if that's a threat or not.

Level one. You meet her in a library, she's stuck with her homework and needs help. You offer up your services as you're a whiz at math, apparently. Okay. Fingers flexed, let's take this badboy on, I'd hate to get blown off.

"Wellll math whiz, what's the answer to this? 4+7 - 1x7 = ? "

Wow. Okay. She looks at least twenty, and she's stuck on this? Oh well, not to worry, easy brownie points with a hot bird. If she's really secondary school jailbait I can bail later on, but no point in throwing it all away if I'm unsure now.

We then meet in a coffee shop. My damsel in distress needs my help again.

"What's the birthstone for May?"

It's Emerald. Do I admit I know this? I am trying to pretend to be a man here, surely only men that were born in May would actually know the answer to this one. Most girls wouldn't even know, after all, she dosn't know. Does this mean I'm a nerd? Are my muscles not big enough? Eek, panic. I can always pretend I was born in May later. Or maybe I just have a good friend that's a bit more lame than I am. Yeah, that's it.

"I have a friend that knew it was in May".

Oh, that's lucky for the both of us then."

Damn right it is. That was a close one. Two multiple choice answers really can be difficult to choose between.

Next level. Oh, there she is, in the park on a bench. Better go and say hi. It would be rude to ignore her after how much we've been bumping into each other recently.

"Lovely day, isn't it?

"Back off, I have bear spray."

Whoooa there lady. Time of the month? Do I say that? I can't say that, what do I say?! No leaderboard in history is worth bear spray. What even is bear spray? Is it lethal? It sounds kind of cute. Teddybear spray? Maybe she's saying hairspray, but she has a really weird cold. Oh god, I quit.

Apparently the correct answer was, "you're sitting in my seat".

End game.

All in all, very immersive gameplay, I felt genuinely baffled in parts, which is how I imagine blokes must feel at a certain age when they try to speak to college girls who are only interested in lipbalm and making boys suffer painfully for saying they have nice hair. All in all, this is a very realistic game, and there are a lot of valuable lessons to be learnt, mainly that girls that flick their hair like their life depends on it can't do simple mathematics even when in a library surrounded by books on mathematics, and that women make no sense.

I learnt valuable life lessons (for instance that I NEVER EVER want to be a man, and that women have dangerous moodswings), and can 100% guarantee that the strategies taught will work on this particular fictional girlwoman, which is more than can be said for most self-help books. Thus, I conclude that this is the best 80 Microsoft points (60p ish) that anyone will ever spend.

Game over.

Tekken 6: Mini Review

2009-11-11T13:01:00.000-08:00

Lars and Alisa. Alisa's abs are so tough, Lars broke an ironing board on them.

Tekken. Where else can you play as a tree with mammary glands, a panda that feels more like you’re playing a balloon, or, new to Tekken 6, as someone that can throw their own face? This installment includes over 40 astonishingly well-balanced fighters, but Tekken 6 is surprisingly simple to pick up and play.

If you’re already a fan, most of your favourites are present, as well as six new characters including Zafina, an attractive cultist who moves like something out of the Exorcist, the aforementioned face-thrower, Alisa, a cute robot with deadly chainsaw arms that I inexplicably want to hug, and relatively bland rebel soldier Lars, for some unknown reason the character chosen to be the star of the new Scenario mode.

Essentially an expanded Tekken Force mode, in Scenario mode you work your way through the levels punching generic hoodlums until you get to the boss at the end. Needless to say, this gets repetitive, especially as there is no co-op option. You can play this mode as any character you’ve unlocked, but frustratingly the lengthy cut scenes between the levels still think you’re playing as dull-as-dishwater Lars. However, you’re rewarded with customization options that you can use in the other modes of play, such as the wonderful Arcade, Versus and Ghost Battle modes.

Ghost Battle is extremely clever, this mode stores the fighting styles of real players and pits you against an AI version of them offline. Versus mode is a joy as ever, with its wonderful animation and welcoming gameplay.

Overall as a game, Tekken 6 doesn’t disappoint. It is an enjoyable game packed with content for beat’em up fans, and it’s easy to jump into for newcomers to the genre. It’s full of nonsensical fun and has lot of charm, but ultimately needs polish.

8.2

Warhammer: Dawn of War 2 Uncut Review

2009-11-11T12:36:00.001-08:00

Warhammer. Chess for the nerds that are too nerdy to stop at chess. Everyone knows of it, at least of the pallid beings who dwell in the mysterious Games Workshop shops in the city centre, whatever they are. You build your miniature soldiers, paint them, then send them into war. I say war, I mean you place them on a long table behind some polystyrene rocks and send them off across the other side of the table to the other lot of plastic miniatures. For some inexplicable reason it’s a great deal of fun. Apart from when you’re playing Space Hulk for the first time and you choose to be the Spacemarine with the arm that keeps falling off as you assume he’s the runt of the litter and therefore will be perfectly unimportant, but then you find looks can be deceiving and you are punished for being such a shallow individual because he is actually the one character that needs to be alive to win the game.

Ouch.

I felt much more at home playing the Warhammer 40000 : Dawn of War 2 PC game than I was with the tabletop version. Noone cares apart from your poor, abused keyboard if you mess up.

Dawn of War II is very different from its older brother. In the original, and in most RTS (real time strategy) games in fact, you choose an army, build your base, build your army and then go fight. This game is different because you start off with your Force Commander only, and pick up squads along the way as you progress through the campaign. In the missions you can only use 4 squads at a time, including your Force Commander.

Brave move perhaps, for Relic Entertainment and THQ to take on all the RTS purist fanboys, but the result is rewarding. There is less faffing about with bases, so everything feels more fast-paced and exciting. Most of the cover is destructible, which you can strategically use to your advantage. Unfortunately in single player everything is so fast-paced that you never get to really play with it, but the multiplayer allows this opportunity.

Only being able to use four squads at a time could all be too simple and boring, but in this game the squad gets to loot er, loot. Equippable loot, like rally flags for your Force Commander that allows him to boost and heal the squad's stats just he should be able to do. Teleport packs. Bubble shields. Cool stuff. The variety of the items you pick up along the way, and the squads you choose to bring along means you can tailor your squads to the way you like to play your RTS games. You also gain levels yourself, your rank and title as a Force Commander goes up depending on how many bases you defend, and how many attacks you successfully perform. This and the level system for individual squads brings an MMORPG element into the game which I personally really enjoyed, being a reformed MMO recluse and everything. Prepare to do a little pee of joy when you get your first set of Terminator armour and start smashing your way through walls with your nipples.

In the campaign you have no option but to play as the Space Marines, a force of surgically and mentally enhanced humans covered in heaving armour that pour liquid steroids over their Coco Pops in the morning. Think Terran. Your enemies are the elitist, technologically advanced, xenophobic Eldar. Think Protoss. The fugly, all talons, tongues and teeth Tyranids. Think Zerg. The dumb but lovable green barbarians that are the Orcs (think, uh, orks) also make an appearance. I'm sorry, I don't mean that, but I'd be very surprised if the development team wasn't a fan of Blizzard games. Yes, I know Warhammer came first, but the combination of races and the fact the loot is colour-coded white, green and blue based on how 'special' it is just as in a certain Blizzard MMO has me reminiscing. Even the combat feels a bit Diablo-esque, not that that's a bad thing.

Without spoiling too much, the general plot is that a Tyranid infestation is munching their way through multiple planets. You, being the honourable Space Marines, are attempting to cull these overgrown lobsters. Three planets are playable, Calderis, Typhon Primaris, and Meridian. The aim of the game is to stop these planets being overwhelmed, flitting from planet to planet to keep them under control. The constant stream of enemies to fight in this non-linear campaign gives a fun element of panic and chaos when everything gets overwhelming, but after a while it just feels like you are juggling everything until you get to the next milestone mission with a bit of story that is something out of the ordinary. Juggling would have been more fun if there was more variety, but it just gets old when you fly to the other end of the universe to fight a small pocket of Tyranids. Again.

One of the reasons to stick with the game is the story and the character development. For once the marines aren’t all just cigar chomping meatheads that crush beer cans on their foreheads. Well, maybe Thaddeus. Yee-haw and all that. There are real, human conversations about fear, the meaning of life, and views on why chainswords are better at killing people than anything with ammunition. Yeah, that might have been Thaddeus. There is a real sense that these guys aren’t completely numbed by war, that they are brothers in arms. Cyrus being the emo little brother with the floppy hairstyle and too many sad questions. You can just imagine him writing poetry to himself with black crayon in candlelight. The writing in the dialogues is a really nice touch, it adds a lot of charm to the game. It made me smile a great deal, which is an achievement in itself.

Speaking of achievements, Warhammer: Dawn of War 2 has the magic "Games for Windows - Live" on the box. Cue boos and hisses from certain parts of the gamer community, but I had a really positive experience with it. The achievement points were welcome as a boost to my paltry gamerscore, and being able to access Xbox Live and talk to my friends through my PC was fun. The only thing that irked me was that only the host receives achievement points if you’re doing co-operative campaign. I’m just as special as them, damnit.

In multiplayer you can choose to be any of the races and take on each other with whatever units you decide to warp in. The maps centre around capturing strategic points, which works well with the limited units you get. I did worry about the lack of variation of units interfering with the opportunity for really good players to truly shine, but there are enough unique skills available to gain an advantage over someone that’s not using them well. I miss building hordes of units to go and swarm the enemy, but this is a feature of Dawn of War 2 I’m sure a lot of players are happy about. My main complaint was that the maps were too open, especially when cover was destroyed. It would have been fun to have corridors a squad could defend, but maybe I’m just being picky.

Unfortunately, by the end of the campaign I found myself using the same loot over and over again, just because the fights were all really similar. There were a few missions in which I needed to equip anti-vehicle weapons, but altogether a combination of lots of healing items, the armour with the best averaged stats and the highest DPS weapons were the most efficient plan. I found myself utilising Cyrus a lot, just for the reason that he is the unit with the most varied skill set, stealth, support, and DPS. The boss fights were very repetitive, particularly on 'defend' missions. There was a very nice use of the destructible scenery for one skittish Tyranid boss, but my enthusiasm was dampened when it was recycled again and again. This is not to say the game isn't fun, it is, and is strangely addictive. Sometimes it just feels like it was rushed, as in the final mission, which I didn't even realise was the final mission until I got half way through. By the time I realized new things were happening the credits rolled and it was definitely the end of the game. Mildly disappointing for a final level, I thought, but sometimes the journey is more important than the destination.

8.7/10

The Last Stand Mini Review

The Last Stand is the first game mode to be released for Warhammer: Dawn of War 2 via means of downloadable content. Firstly, it was free. Good start.

With this mode you are dumped into an arena with two other players and waves of enemies of in increasing toughness are thrown at you. You can choose from three classes, the Eldar farseer (the nuker), Ork Mekboy (support), and Space Marine Captain (tank). As with the campaign, you acquire more gear and experience as you defeat more games. The first problem I found with this, is that it is an online mode. When you are level 1 with only a loincloth covering the essentials, people inevitably call you shit, or tell you to leave. Not fun.

As we all know, survival modes are the new hula-hoop, Rubik’s cube, Pogs, whatever. They are being implemented left, right and centre, but I’m not complaining, when done well, they are fun. This mode is done fairly well, the mobs seem to increase in difficulty in fair increments on the whole.

I would have liked to have a choice of more than three units to lessen the chance of getting an all-Farseer group, but apparently my gaming prayers have been answered and Tyranid and Chaos heroes are on the way, perhaps with the upcoming expansion, “Chaos Rising”. As for having three players in the ring, at first I thought this was too small a number, but it really does make you stop and think about what skills you need to use depending on how the other players play. There’s not many people to pick up the pieces of a mistake someone makes, which makes for an intense experience.

Overall, The Last Stand is a nicely thought-out game mode, and is a welcome addition to an already brilliant game.

Megalomaniac.

2009-08-26T09:43:00.000-07:00

My baby.

This week I've been trying to rule the world. Not in real life, oh no. I'm too lame, shy and perpetually beered-up for that. ONLIIIIINEEE. I've put down the Xbox this week and been making use of the PC I built. It came from me. It's part Borg, part Matrix, and it's cost me about a grand now over the years. Shit. I patch up it's boo-boos quicker than I would for any child, I love it.

I have been playing The Sims 3, Dawn of War 2, and Demigod. I was going to write a little something about all of them here, but that would mean a much bigger read than my already gargantuan blogs.

I'm not entirely sure why I feel dirty when I admit I've been playing a Sims game. Maybe because it has to be admitted rather than said. It's a well known fact that only teenage girls are allowed to say they've been playing with their Sims. The logical conclusion I came to to overcome this blanket of shame that seeped into my pores was not to name my Sims Casey, Lori, Amber and Josh, and to instead name them Mistah J, TwoFace, Harley, PoisonIvy and Zatanna, in anticipation of the new REAL game, Batman: Arkham Asylum.

\,,/.

I figured I'd leave Batman out of it because I decided terrorising the Sims' town would be more fun and make me sound cooler than if I had to write about the good-natured Batman emptying the bins and cleaning up dirty plates all the time, making sure the house was comfortable for everyone. In this household he is instead a goldfish.

The first thing I enjoyed about the new Sims was setting their personality traits and life goals. You begin with setting five personality traits, their favourite music, food and colour, and then a life goal.

Poison Ivy's traits were:

Flirty
Loves the Outdoors
Great Kisser
Perfectionist
Hot headed.

Sure enough, true to Ivy, she likes to try and chat up the next door neighbour even though she already has her fingers in many pies, Zatanna's and Harley's to be exact. Her life goal was to be the girlfriend of the whole neighbourhood at the same time. I, for one, was rather happy about this, as it actually gave me an excuse for her to take multiple people of all sexes and age to bed for some 'Woohoo'. Oh come on, we all do it. For some reason, she also derives fun out of wiping the counter tops clean. Harley's traits means she enjoys pulling faces in the mirror and fishing in swimming pools. The Joker enjoys seeing people suffer, and stealing candy from a baby. Literally. He actually found a baby in the city and stole its lolly. Awesome. Two Face for some reason like to put eggs in his pockets and has a nervous breakdown everytime he sees a dirty bathtub. Oh boo hoo. Grow up, you're supposed to be a supervillain. I always knew he was the crap one.

Nutjob much?

The great thing about this installment of the Sims is that it's not confined to one house, you can roam anywhere. You can let your Sim run down to the gym in order to get fit for when the real Batman decides to strike, or go to the park to dance with strangers until they hate you and your wiggling buttocks. There is much more freedom, I took Two-Face for a jog all around the city just to see what was in there, but it was so large I forgot about all the other Sims. I half expected the Grim Reaper to be there ready and waiting for poor little Zatanna, but she was looking after herself very well, and had even fed little Batman as well as making pancakes without burning the house down. Keeping the autonomy level high-ish means these Sims have ideas of their own and seem to cope quite adequately without the player, which is nice. They can look after their own bladders just fine without pissing all over the floor and crying with shame, but they don't seem to do very well in the career stakes unless they get a kick up the bum from God. That's me, by the way.

Yeah, you can watch the Joker have an evil poo. Damn right that's not hygienic nor social.

You can now colour customise everything in the house, even the shitty beds. There is a fair selection of house items to get by on, but it seems that most of the extra items have to be acquired online. The only problem with that is we aren't talking with paying Simoleans for them anymore, we're talking pounds, dollars, shekels. That makes me a little disgruntled. There's nothing wrong with trying to make money from a game, but The Sims surely already has enough from shitty expansions to add in more free items for it's new installment and not get off on the wrong foot with a reputation as a cash cow. I'd be less angry if I could have a decent purple carpet and a better choice of high-end WOW, WHY DOES THIS 500000 SIMOLEAN TV HAVE LASERS COMING FROM IT items.

And how come you can go into the gym just fine, but the restaurants and shops are off-limits? It would be great to wander around a supermarket and pick up the items you want, rather than picking from a floating list.

I suppose I could go food shopping in real life, but this isn't the point. I am god, I should be able to make men buy tampons if I want.

In some respects it feels like a half-finished game, all they've really done is taken the previous games and added bits on here and there wherever they felt like it. Yes, you can name your fish. No, you can't have a bloody dog. Yes, you can go inside the gym. No, you can't build a functional roof without a load of hassle. Yes, you can go for a wander in the park. No, you can't have any kind of interactive worklife at all (bar selecting whether they work hard or slack off), even though it takes up most of their life.

It is fun to play, but nothing groundbreaking. Controlling a horde of Batman villains was good, and I applaud the makers for letting you have that freedom to customise, but I think that's where half of my fun came from. If you like The Sims, you'll like it. If you don't, it's basically the other Sims games with a sparkly bow tie on, shiny on the outside, but flawed in the brain to wear one.

Conventions.

2009-08-06T13:19:00.000-07:00

Corfu was nice.

Got to Corfu airport, I say airport, it was more like a domestic garage, to pick up our car. I say car, it was more like a robot's discarded chewing gum, all crumpled up and shit. We tried our best to drive to our villa. I say villa, we took a wrong turning within literally five minutes into a port. It was lovely, a policeman tapped his gun on our window and pointed angrily to the way out. Behind him were other police with guns, and a lot of immigrants lined up in a row, one on his stomach with his face in the dirt. Welcome to Corfu everyone!

Oh, look at me being a negative nadface. It was actually very lovely, we stayed in the posh bit away from all the riff-raff, there was a tortoise in our garden that I named Raphael, there was an awesome view, and it was hot. It is my fault, and my fault alone, that I fail at sunbathing, which made me grumpy throughout the rest of the holiday. I was in the sun for 45 minutes, but in that time managed to slow-roast my legs, and fell asleep on the lounger while not laying on a towel, bursting some blood vessels on my cheekbone where there was no flesh to act as padding which created a perfect red fine lattice on my face. It didn't go away all week. I am not used to sun, being both English and a semi-recluse I have no idea how to deal with it. I have a network of brown, red and white lines on my legs from where I had tried and failed to put sunscreen on every inch of skin, leaving finger streaks of white. I look like neopolitan icecream dropped on crazy paving. It was worth every second of seething pain however, as I got some sun and everyone left behind didn't.

Nyaaah.

Back into reality I came, and slipped right back into the cushioned world of nerddom again as soon as I switched on the pc.

Geek season is well underway, what with San Diego Comic Con (aka Whatevermediawantstoshowatyourconnotnecessarilyhavinganythingtodowithcomics Con), having been and gone, Blizzcon on the way, and plenty more in between.

I love it when big groups of geeks get together, the atmosphere is electric. I've been bullied for my love of lightsabers, you've been pushed into puddles because you fancy Pikachu a little bit. We're all on the same level, let's make friends. I've been to a few conventions, and each time come away with a few more friends to watch episodes of Spaced with. Nerds are great when they get together, it's like a whole other world. For instance, at Defcon recently, criminals tried to run an ATM scam. I don't think they realised it was a hacking conference full of genius geeks that are mainly computer security professionals and probably perform much more sophisticated scams than that all the time. The plan was foiled quicker than a Christmas turkey that you thought only had to be cooked for three hours, but in fact had to be cooked for five. Only one thing to say. Owned.

The cosplayers are always a highlight.

Cosplayers definition : People that never had a dressing-up box in their room as a kiddywink, and are now making up for that loss and their boring monotonous adult lives by dressing up as their favourite characters in media rather than taking psychotherapy.

Before you start, I'm one of them. I own a Star Wars X-Wing Pilot costume, and also a rather embarrassing Star Wars "Twi'Lek Sith" costume which involves the use of latex tentacles. He who is without sin cast the first stone, and all that. I was unfortunate enough to have to catch a tube in London fully clad in tentacles and functional lightsabers at the last major geek convention I went to. I tried my hardest to pretend to look out of the window, but unfortunately this just thrust the back of my orange-penised head further into the drunk 'cool' gang's vision. After much leering and jeering I turned around to politely tell them to shut the FUCKING HELL UP, I was met with stunned silence.

"Wow, it's a chick".

Turns out that there are closest nerds within even the chavviest of us. They were actually really nice, apologised for being pricks, said they wouldn't have done it if they knew I wasn't a man (charming), said they loved my saber and thought it was really cool that a girl dressed up in Star Wars stuff, and wished me on my way.

Unfortunately, we were also followed by some less friendly chavs with knives back to our hotel. Fortunately we hurried back to our hotel, and watched as a gang of Jedi screamed at the top of lungs and chased them away with their blue lightsabers glowing in the dark. Freaking awesome. Cosplay brings out the best in people, cosplayer + cosplayer = automatic friends, and whoever does it is a very brave person.

Which is why I am about to thoroughly take the piss out of the following brave people that appeared at San Diego Comic Con this year.

There are certain types of cosplayers at conventions. Let me enlighten you to the breeds.

(Picture Documentation by http://uk.rottentomatoes.com/m/comic_con_2009_costume_gallery/pictures/slideshow/ )

The True Fan -

A fan that genuinely loves a character so much, that they will spend the ten dollars they had saved for lunch at the show on fabric to make their own costume. Geeks find them endearing (and quirkily cute in the case of the Dalek). Outsiders find them worrying when they pass them on their way to work.

The Self-Aware -

A fan that wants to show their appreciation, but does so by going mildly comedic, therefore avoiding any potential threats or dents to their self-esteem by having the get-out clause, "I was only doing it for a laugh." They then sob into their Pokemon pillow.

The "I know I look good. Who am I again?"s -

These are the cosplayers that everyone stops and gawks at. Usually dressed as Princess Leia, Powergirl, or Cammy, these are the girls that every other tomboy girl is mildly jealous of. Said tomboy girl has no need to worry, because these girls are either paid to be there, or have no idea who they are dressed up as because someone just told them to do it, reassuring them they'll look cool. Suicide Girls dressed as coming from Star Trek? Paid. Psylocke and Elektra over there? Damn. What on earth are they doing at a comic convention when they should be modelling. Evil girl wouldn't really read comics to you at bedtime, she'd rip you apart. Stick to the girlies dressed up as Ghostbusters, boys.

The Epic Win -

The cosplayers that have spent approximately 11.4% of their entire life making this costume. The envy of many. The ones that get out-loud "Whoa"s, and know at that moment that it was worth every sleepless night, broke weekends, and blood, sweat and tears.

Unfortunately, not all people at conventions can be cosplayers, let alone Epic Wins, let's face it, the small minority always take it too far. The ones that argue with the comic publishers about why their favourite character shouldn't have died. The ones that openly grope the Leia's bums. The ones that pick out flaws in a cosplayer's costume, as it is not 'historically accurate to the timeline'. The ones like this kid.

A boy recently drank gasoline because he thought it would make him a valiant fighter like Optimus Prime from Transformers.

"We were shocked when one day we found out the boy drank half a bottle of gasoline from our motorcycle," the father said.

"Since my son started drink gasoline, his intelligence dropped sharply.

"Before that, he was a very smart boy, and he could even repair the television. But now he does not know the answer of seven plus 17."

Riiiiight. He was very smart before he started to drink the gasoline? So, at what point when he was smart, did he take the decision to drink gasoline? It defies all logic, unless of course, the first tasting happened solely because a freak accident took place where he was eating his Weetabix or whatever smart people eat for breakfast, and he was late for school, and the car jumped through the window and leaked into his mouth because it was that disgusted at his tardiness.

Maybe he was slowly driven insane because he was forced into fixing the god damn television, having to stare daytime tv in the grimy face one too many times.

"Doctors said the boy had mental disorders and a strong "gasoline dependence".

Damn right he does, he's been turned into motherfucking Optimus Prime now, because of all this pressure of adding, multiplication, television fixing and Weetabix eating on demand. Jeez. Some people never take the blame.

Don't overnerd it, kids.

Goodnight.

Magic.

2009-07-13T04:54:00.001-07:00

Mild spoilers within.

Why hello there. This'll be a quick one as I write this with various shoes and shirts strewn around my feet, for this afternoon I will be off to Corfu. Ooh. Get me. I haven't written much recently as I've been out and about recently much more than is digestible for a pale, seething misanthrope whose only form of tan is a retinal tan from her computer monitor. This is in part due to the fact that I recently had my 22nd birthday, and apparently celebrating it is the done thing. I've been dragged all kinds of places. Never mind that it was my 21st last year and I did NOTHING. Hm, maybe that's why.

I've been in London to see Derren Brown live. I actually instigated this, which shows how good he is. Derren Brown. Pulls hermits out of the moss.

I can't decide whether or not I love or hate London. There's so much to do there, much more than just laughing at mobility scooters going by with rollcages on as you have to do in my home town. There's an arcade underground in Piccadilly (the Trocadero) which I completely didn't know until my man showed me.

You kinda go in thinking it's going to be a scummy pierside arcade with small annoying children hogging the 2p machines, but it turned out to be pretty epic. The best escalators you have ever seen. A HMV with a LAN arena. A Japanese shop that makes you want to scream KAWAAIIII. Small annoying children hogging the Guitar Hero and Street Fighter 4 machines. Actually, that's probably for the best, as freaking out big style in public and smashing the machine because I've lost to Rufus again might get me locked away.

London is full of surprises. I had Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper there. WHAT!? Surely a sensory overloading taste sensation with so many flavours packed into one drink, and yet it actually tasted milder. Amazing. It wasn't fun having my face in someone's armpit in a tube carriage in 45 degrees, but it was a small price to pay. Unlike paying 30p to go to the toilet in Liverpool Street station. Come on now, in Essex I got paid 10 pounds worth of Odeon vouchers in the doctors for a small vial of my pee. London is a rip off.

Derren Brown: Enigma wasn't a rip off though. Through a mild cock up due to my non-existant organisational skills I ended up seeing it twice and it was worth every penny. In case you're not aware of his work, his television shows begin with the statement that he achieves his results using a combination of "magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship", these results being anything from mind reading, mind control, playing russian roulette on live television, performing a séance, a bank robbery, you know, normal things like that.

As you may well know I include magic and hypnotism within my hobbies, but seeing Mr Brown made me want to quit. I'll never even come close to what he can do, the furthest I've gone is hypnotising someone to get their hands stuck on a table. After the initial 'oh shit, it worked', the fear of triggering an epileptic fit or a court case followed. I love card tricks, but my banana fingers would never allow me to be as graceful and smooth with cards as Derren Brown. I don't think anyone I know of in the UK comes close to him in terms of finesse, which is another reason people should go and see him.

Firstly, his poster for the show is creepily cool, has an air of Terminator about it. Good on him. The poster art hails back to a time when magician posters were always a bit scary. They always used to be hand painted, and portrayed something inhuman to prepare you for the fact that you weren't about to see something that was run of the mill. Sorry magicians, a picture of you with nothing but a paedosmile and a fan of cards and/or a crystal ball just doesn't cut it anymore.

I don't really want to give anything away about the show as it's still going on. What I will say is that it was a lot more segmented and choppy than some of his other live performances. We were delighted to see that the method of randomly picking people to come up on stage was still the method of decapitating frisbee throws. The first half mainly consisted of tried and tested 'tricks' rather than the more convoluted performances he is known for, but that's not to say they were any less enjoyable. A game of 'Guess Whom' (he admits that he even called it that back then in the playground, his main rival of the game being someone that now works in Curry's, while he now has a Bafta) using pictures of members of the audience played just through Derren apparently reading body language, was good fun. It's not about what he does, it's how he does it. The tricks may be old and worn, but Brown performs them in such a way that they are truly an experience for the audience. He nearly brought the whole room to tears with a certain truly touching effect involving a deceased grandparent.

The second half was certainly much darker and applied to my taste perfectly. An attempt to put the whole room into a sleepwalking trance went almost too well. I decided to not attempt to succumb to the trance both times to watch what happened, and I'm sure that I got a better show than everyone else. Watching people slump into their seats and then rise like something in a zombie film filled me with awe. Not only is he brilliant with cards, he is a brilliant hypnotist too, and as my friend put it, "a seriously underrated comedian". Aside from the show, he's also a brilliant artist. What a bastard. Observing a girl under the trance wandering around the audience in an old-fashioned smock, hair draped over her face, was like being in a real life nightmare. Very surreal. Especially when on the second date the cutest Asian girl ever woke up from her trip around the audience not knowing where she was. She then proceeded to be amazed and proclaimed 'hello everybody' about ten million times, then asked Derren for a hug. She'd turned from the scariest thing to the cutest thing within a split second I think even Mr Brown was touched. Aside from all this fluffiness, there were also effects involving a spirit cabinet, and children's spirits too, which put everyone around me on edge.

Unfortunately for me, having more than a fleeting interest in magic could have spoilt the show for me completely. All the way through I was watching intently, attempting to silently figure out how everything was done. The first time, nothing. I had no idea what had just happened, the show was flawless, and I shared in the amazement. The second night however seemed to be a frustratingly unfortunate night for Mr Brown and seeing a few slip-ups and what was the same and what was different on both nights did allow me to figure a few things out. Far from respecting him less, it made me respect him more, as he has the finesse, charm, cheekiness and pure balls to turn the most simple lies into something very special. He looked after anyone who came on stage really well and in the most charming manner to make them feel at ease. He reminded me of a stern but kind teacher I used to have at secondary school when people started giggling at a hypnotised girl on stage flopping over constantly. "Is something amusing over there? Sorry, just thought I might be missing out on something." He made everyone feel at home, yet controlled the room perfectly. He was stern but friendly, performed what were portrayed to be inhuman feats yet stayed real and self-depreciating. A lovely, genuine man despite the hype that surrounds him. Excellent stuff to see.

Good on him, and on his team, I don't have a bad word to say about it apart from the god damn expensive bottles of drink, but that really wasn't their fault.

In fact, I'd like to thank him and his team for what a girly friend called 'the best night ever', and for putting them into a gobsmacked state of awe. There's not many things that can demand that state of wonder anymore, bar travelling thousands of miles to see one of the seven wonders or something. This was much cheaper. Congratulations on putting on such a classy show. I'll definitely go next year if you come back despite all the haters that loved exclaiming how everything was done all the way through and how they could do it better. Gits.

I actually felt intense jealousy that my girl friends believed everything that they saw, and didn't even question how it happened. To them it was pure magic. What an amazing experience to have.

All I can say is sorry for gushing, and that the show is on for a couple more weeks I believe, go and see it if you can. You know me, if I'm not complaining it has to be good. Take as many laymen as possible as having a whole crowd of amazed people around you that you've brought along to have this experience is a great feeling. They couldn't thank me enough. Leave your cynicism at the door and just enjoy it how it's meant to be enjoyed. The finale is a cracker.

Do it.

See you in a couple of weeks!

Tattoos.

2009-06-17T11:58:00.000-07:00

I've always wanted a tattoo of some sort. I envy people that have the balls to just get one if they want one. Some people are just cool enough to not worry that their portrait of a loved one will turn into Droopy Dog when time finally catches up with their toned youthful body, or that that meaningful message written in an exotic language that probably just reads 'stupid foreign cock' will someday be lost within the contours of their plump stomach one day. They are permanent. How scary is that?!

Not so scary to a lot of people, apparently. My favourite gay crush Brody Dalle just didn't care that one day when she's a sweet old pensioner, her wrinkly, frail arm will be screaming 'FUCK OFF' at the nice young man helping her across the road with her Bag for Life stuffed full with semolina.

Then again, that's the whole point of a tattoo. Isn't half the reason of getting one to mark yourself away from the mainstream population and rebel, to be non-conformist, through your looks? That's all well and good, but according to the rock-solid, infallible source that is Wikipedia, 36% of Americans ages 18–25, 40% of those 26-40 and 10% of those 41-64 have a tattoo. That's a lot of people. Surely I have a good excuse to not rebel, because rebelling seems to not be rebelling anymore. Being different is actually being the same, therefore to get a tattoo that doesn't mean anything just for the sake of getting a tattoo is pointless.

I still want one.

I'd go for it big time. Even if it makes me look like a dyke. Proper women's prison tattoos so that people either think I'm a Suicide Girl wannabe or someone that is teetering on the brink on sanity. Someone you wouldn't jump in front of in a queue at Tescos in case she shoves the bottle of whatever insane bottle of alcohol she is carrying right up your bum-bum.

You either do it or you don't, no faffing about with a small picture of a grain of sand in between my toes, not even a tramp stamp that's hidden all the time, I'd go full whack. Which is why I haven't got them.

I'm quite glad I'm a wimp really.

This one's for you Kara. You recently said that people with face tattoos are the ones that clean our streets, but I think you might want to rethink that. I'm not sure if the girl below is capable of cleaning her ears.

A Belgian teenager is attempting to sue a tattoo artist, because she now has 56 stars tattooed on her face after only asking for three.

I went to Belgium once. This story doesn't surprise me, I stayed in a youth hostel where there were wasps nesting next to what they called a bed, which was actually a ancient tiny bunkbed where instead of slats lay broken wire mesh so everytime my mate sat her bottom down on the top, she would sink all the way through and leave me with sharp shiny metal stuff near my face. Friendly. Even the girl next door's complementary coach chocolate had maggots in. Every day we went out and wandered around in the rain in the muddy trenches where all the dysentery happened and went to see how many gravestones there were for people that had died for us. Lovely place.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/5551636/Girl-has-56-stars-tattooed-on-face-after-falling-asleep.html

To cut a long and hilarious story short, she said her dad urged her to get a tattoo, as everyone in her family had one and it was part of tradition. So she logically decided to get stars on her face while her dad waited outside eating an icecream. She asked for three, fell asleep in the chair, woke up looking like the Australian flag after a breakout of acne. All apparently because the tattoo artist couldn't speak French fluently and got muddled up between 3 and 56.

There are a few fundamental flaws here.

1. Trying to look like Kat Von D is all well and good, but only Kat Von D can pull it off. It's no use realising this after a permanent tattoo and blaming the tattooist, who considering the tattoo, actually did a half-decent job. Kat Von D, Maori people, and the Zabrak race from Star Wars are the only beings that are allowed to have facial tats.

2. Why would someone fall asleep while having three tiny stars drawn on their face, surely you'd only get half an hour's worth of sleep at most. I'd rather sacrifice that half an hour to stay awake while someone was shoving needles in my face.

3. How can you sleep when someone is shoving needles in your face. Is she one of those types that can fall asleep standing in the shower?

4. How can you get 3 and 56 confused. I'd understand 3 and 53... Surely noone is that stupid.

5. That must have been a big fucking icecream.

6. Why would a successful tattooist want to bring career suicide upon himself and waste ink, resources and time by tattooing 53 extra stars on someone's face just for shits and giggles? I feel sorry for the bloke.

7. Surely there's disclaimers on some kind of form you sign for this kind of thing?!

All in all, it's probably more likely that her parents freaked out when they actually saw what tattoo she had chosen, and she tried to pass the buck onto the tattooist, or she realised she had been a stupid twat, and her self-preservation defence mechanisms kicked into gear.

Idiot.

However, the prize for the funniest segment of the story goes to the psychologist the media talked to about what kind of mental instability the girl will have in future, you know, the life-wrecking stuff that papers love. Get ready for this, I actually lol'd.

"Jules Clocher, a Belgian psychologist, said: 'The trauma this girl must be feeling is indescribable. She feels like a circus freak - and no wonder, because she looks like one.' "

I think that deserves a golf clap.
*Cue golf clap*

Good game, Mr Psychologist. You're really doing your job well mate, keep up the good work.

On a side note :

You know how I missed a big chunk of Star Trek because I really badly needed to pee? I will fear missing the destruction of Vulcan no longer!

Runpee.com is a site which tells you the optimal time within the film to go release that bucket of Fanta you shouldn't have had without missing too much. It even gives you a cue of a line someone says, just so you don't miss the minute when you're supposed to go.

I presume it says that all of The Matrix Revolutions is optimal peeing quality time, apart from that one bit when Neo looks particularly cool, but I'm too scared to look in case I burst into floods of salty tears because of what might have been.

Text messages and taxidermy.

2009-06-10T11:22:00.000-07:00

Happy families.

It's Wednesday, in case you hadn't noticed.

For me, this usually means a day off, copious amounts of tea, oodles of procrastination, and until this week, The Apprentice. I have a bit more respect for Sir Alan Sugar now. I know you guys don't like him, I have people land on my page through searching keywords such as 'alan sugar is a fucking gimp', and you know he grates on me. There was just a beautiful moment in the semi-final where he actually shed a tear when firing the hilarious and lovely James 'I'm really hurt you said that, it's like my cat died' McQuillan. Wait, James 'The spine's open so the baby can jump out' McQuillan. No, we can do better than that. James 'don't suggestively lick the ice-cream lads, we're not making a porno' McQuillan. There was a true bromance going on there, but at the end of the day, who wants someone working for them who believes that 'I can bring ignorance to the table' is a good thing to say in a job interview.

More respect to Siralan for picking Yasmina to win in the end, even if she does look a little bit like a potential member of that GOD AWFUL double denim wearing, poop eating, back in the day, Irish pop band B*witched. They even have a bleeding star in their name to make them seem even more Irish and twinkly. I've got news for you loves, anyone that rapes my eardrums is no friend of mine, even if you are Irish. Despite that horrific handicap, Yasmina was an awesome, gorgeous girl, and clearly the person with the coolest scar there with her Omar from the Wire-style forehead cut. All cool people have scars. Kudos, Sugarman.

I'm sad to see it go, but not sad to see the way they used their phones go. What. The. Fuck. Could you hold a phone in a more pretentious way if you tried? They all did it too. Weirdos.

I just bought this exact same phone completely by accident, and yet I don't feel the urge to lay it down and eat it out at every opportunity. Gah, don't hide your erection with a telephone book, Howard. It's good, but it's not that good. It was cheap. Buy buy buy. Nice to see the BBC don't put their hands in our pockets too much when it comes to mobile technology.

It might have been cheap, but it's got enough shit to be confusing. I love technology, but I was skint for so long that I hadn't changed my phone in years. My previous phone could basically text and phone people. If you were lucky. It couldn't even send a picture message, even though it could take photos.

Now all of a sudden I have picture messages, internet, mp3 player, a camera nearly as good as my actual camera, games that aren't Tetris (not that there's anything wrong with Tetris), and wireless connectivity. It even makes a good torch because the screen is so fucking huge. How's that for versatility. There's no doubt that putting it in your pocket means this probably comes with a fried pancreas too, but hey, it's worth it for MyTwitFace on the move. It's not like it would fry your heart or anything important like that.

It even had the foresight to bring me this to cheer me up whilst unclogging my washing machine:

http://thesquirrelshole.com/custom_squirrels.html

I'm sorry if this image is disturbing to you Red Squirrel, but I'd of course pick a grey one, and surely the more grey squirrels I have on my walls, the better?

Don't judge me for wanting an item of taxidermy, I'm not some weird necrophiliac uber goth that likes to have sex on gravestones and that would probably lick this ornament before going to bed. Your bum would get cold, and your tongue would get fluffy.

It is bloody awesome though, right?

...Right?

Are friends electric?

2009-06-02T15:03:00.000-07:00

'Sup noobs.

I would like to say, "hello my lovely guys and guyesses" instead, and ask you how you all are, but I've been suffering with a nasty case of man flu and anything disyllabic and above with any plosive apart from /b/ is automatically transformed into a monosyllabic grunt with extra /b/s. You know, man flu. Worse than normal flu, average woman flu, or even swine flu. Simple Strepsils and a cup of Earl Grey can't cure this one. The type of flu that suddenly takes you over, seizes your body, and suddenly turns someone who's usually quite independent and loathing of whiners into a snivelling sympathy hoover. A week later, and I still have more unshiftable bodily fluids than can be found during the duration of a european porno containing moustaches clogging my nose and throat. It doesn't help that I had to take massive pills as well, so they got lodged in the tubes somewhere, I probably sneezed them out, I don't know.

All I do know is that I sound like that weird little redheaded kid with the purple glasses from Rugrats.

Isn't it truly awesome when illnesses wait to strike until your first two-day weekend in ages, and one that actually seems to have a beautiful weather forecast. They just wait for when you let out that relieved TGIF sigh, then BAM, a 'muhahaha', and instantly you're in bed all weekend in your nightie on the Xbox all weekend listening to angry music.

It was quite nice to support Mr Gates indirectly by playing on his beautiful machines. I've really not been as into the 360 as I was before I had to return it to Microsoft and/or Game on six separate occasions (it's okay Billy, I forgive you). It was a bit like having a brilliant lover that slapped you after every peck on the cheek. Gave you a little glimpse of fun, but then snatched it away each time and left you dumbfounded and not wanting to bother anymore. Bitch. I just could not be arsed with it.

For a while now, I've only been bothered with sequels I trust, such as Halo, Star Wars (shut up), Street Fighter. The game I have been most excited about recently is the Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection. A collection of games from the early 90's, when the word 'mega' was still acceptable. The time when you could probably make your own consoles from bottle caps, pipe cleaners and a Weetos box, imported to now. How boring.

Come on though. Sonic the Hedgehog. Alex the Kidd. Streets of Rage. Ecco the Dolphin. Other titles with far too many adjectives and determiners. I fear I peaked too early.

E3 is here though, and I am insanely jealous of all who managed to get to be there at the moment. I have been keeping my eyes open for once this year, and actually feel like I might be semi up to date on a platform other than the PC for the first time in years (this is partially because of Chopemon's relentless enthusiasm for 360 games that has rubbed off on me a bit, and the fact that the new Star Wars game will possibly be on 360). I might actually buy a game when it's released for once, rather than waiting until about ten different people have bollocked me for being so slow and not having the new best game in the world. For those non-geeks amongst you (why do you visit this page again you insane people? *heart*), E3 basically stands for Electronic Entertainment Expo, a place where all the newest technology, games in particular, get shown off. The massive companies such as Microsoft all give sneak previews of what's going on, the geeks have geekasms. It's still all going on, but I'm sure I'll pick out what I liked when I've completely caught up, and share what's worth sharing.

For now, I leave you with this creepy video of an interactive game using a Wii-style face recognition and motion sensor controller for my beloved Xbox360.

Link to BBC article and creepy video.

"Lionhead Studios' Peter Molyneux has shown off a game character that recognises and responds to a player's mood. The human interaction system is possible with Natal, a system being developed for the Xbox 360. It monitors and reacts precisely to the player's movements and the way they talk.

Microsoft demonstrated Natal at the start of the E3 gaming conference in Los Angeles. "

Yep, a virtual friend. Mildly disturbing that the prototype is a little boy called Milo, and that the only user for this I can think of is one of those stereotypical older men in their mother's basements that only have human interaction with the local pizza boy. There is apparently a dog version though, which is slightly less worrying. And one where you punch dinosaurs or something which appeals to me. It's no surprise that Spielberg's been involved in this project really, is it.

Eurogamer article:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/e3-project-natal-hands-on?page=1

It is very interesting to see how people actually try and communicate with Project Natal's Milo rather than simply react to him, but it all feels a bit weird. Gah. I called it a 'him'. It knows if you're in a good mood, it knows if you're completely pissed off with the world. It seems to delve into the emotional side of things, and maybe this is because I'm about as emotional as a robotic cheese sandwich (the only emotion I experience being fear that something might actually prise an emotion from me someday), it just seems a bit wrong. Like those realistic robots with boobs.

All in all, I just wanted to pop by and let you all know that I'm not dead yet, although donations of chicken soup and friendly hugs are warmly welcomed with a 'thang yuuu' and a big, sloppy, infectious, killer kiss.

Gah, don't back off, you're such a crap friend. Milo would appreciate it, wouldn't you Milo.

Star Trek - BIG FAT spoilers within.

2009-05-19T15:55:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Earthlings.

I finally saw the Star Trek film on Sunday, cue the Hallelujah Chorus. I think I was the second from last person to see it, the last man standing probably being William Shatner.
I'm not even exaggerating, the cinema was full, despite the fact it's been out a while. And it wasn't even wholly full with TrekkERS (not Trekkies, damnit). There were ladies, kiddies, all kinds of normal people.

Without trying to spoil it completely, but let's be honest, I did warn you about spoilers so if you read on it's all your fault anyway, It all opens with a scene in the past where the Romulans kill off the captain of the Enterprise, and daddy Kirk is promoted to Captain while the ship is being blasted to bits. He orders the whole ship to be evacuated, including his wife, who is in labour with their child. The autopilot breaks, and Kirk senior chooses to go down with his ship despite only being captain for about five minutes, to fight the enemy and make sure everyone else gets out alive. The noble hero sends his wife away in a shuttle, we get a vagina shot, and the Kirk we know and love pops out and is all like, I'M HERE, BITCH.

I meanwhile, am blubbing like a baby, but pretending I have something in my eye. This is just the opener. Hell yes. Epic.

The film carries on as it started, at break-neck speed. Unfortunately, ol' muggins here was the one that was left to get the popcorn and ridiculously watered down Coke whilst everyone else ran to the toilets before the film started, so inevitably a piss break was needed. This is the first crap bit of the film, there is literally no moment where you can go and have a wee. I waited until I actually thought I was going to explode, sprinted down the stairs to much tutting like a damned fool, peed like I've never peed before, did one of those fake hand washes where you just pass your hands through the water that you do when you're in a hurry but have to do out of courtesy in case there's hidden cameras in the loos, galloped back, and still managed to miss Spock's mother and the whole of the planet Vulcan being destroyed. Shit.

Actually, I didn't really notice that Spock's mummy was gone to be honest, she didn't make much of an impact. What the hell was Winona Ryder doing? I was excited to see her play Spock's mother, but I think I would have noticed her more if she'd been wearing a dull beige, reading the local news aloud in a monotone voice while nibbling tentatively at a spoonful of wallpaper paste fashioned into gruel.

Apart from that exception, the main spark of brilliance about the film was the strength of the characters, the jaded Bones and conflicted Spock especially, in my humble opinion. All extremely intelligent people with their own special shortcomings, but they all push themselves to be the best that they can be and end up the better for it, just as they should. I haven't seen that done well in a film in a while. Fuck the plot, I mean, there wasn't really one, was there? Some Romulan dude can travel in time, he wants to stop his planet from being blown up by some supernova, but instead of going back in time to save his home, he goes back to blame it all on Spock and blows up Vulcan so Spock can watch. HMM. Still, what can you expect from JJ Abrams - the creator of Lost and Cloverfield - he creates things that are awesome and gorgeous eye candy out of components that make as much sense as a polar bear with tampons up his nose.

The characters were simply delightful and were really brought to life. The cocky, but not irritatingly so, Kirk. The emotionally constipated Spock. The quiet but instantly commanding Romulan, Nero. The adorable token Russian, Chekov, whom even the ship's computer can't translate. The sassy and intelligent Uhura. Bones, the hypochondriac, alcohol-abusing doctor. Scotty, the Scottish comic relief played by our very own Simon Pegg.That green nymphomaniac chick that looked kinda like Poison Ivy. Sulu... I'm not sure why Sulu didn't have more to do, but he did fence like a bad motherfucker, so all was forgiven.

Since 2008 I've been doubtful I'd be able to shed all traces of Zachary Quinto's Sylar in Spock. That sexy neanderthal brow and 'I am going to scare the shit out of you and you are going to like it' stare would surely be carried over to any character he portrays. I'm not ashamed to say I have been cracking Sypock and Spocklar jokes, but the only time it was mentioned by anyone during the film was when Spock pinned down Kirk, and my brother raised his finger and mimed the Sylar head slicing, to much guffawing. However, that was just more due to us behaving like dicks, not because of any monotone performance, I was very impressed.

The relationship between Kirk and Spock was full of sexual tension and homosexyness, needless to say when I googled 'nerve pinch' a piece of fan fiction turned up where Spock wasn't exactly using the pinch on Kirk's neck. There were no great written lines between them that are truly memorable and spring to mind like the one in the original series, such as when Kirk last tried to get Spock angry with a 'yo mama' joke and ended up calling him a devil eared weirdo whose mother was an encyclopedia and father a computer, but the relationship seems to work really well, and I'm not sure how. Any film that uses the chat-up line 'I'll be monitoring your frequency' is either really lacking in dialogue, or quietly genius.

The beauty of this film is that you don't need to be a Star Trek nut to appreciate it, it just makes it that little bit richer if you are. The fact that Sulu was once again fencing gave me a nerdgasm. The Leonard Nimoy extended cameo. Absolutely gorgeous arty shots of the Enterprise, and if that doesn't fry your sausage, of space. The bit where Kirk sat in the captain's chair before he was made captain, and gave it a bit of a Shatner pose, enough to make the whole cinema laugh. The mention of Captain Archer (of the Enterprise series) hating Scotty's guts, due to him having an unfortunate incident with his beloved pet dog. We saw the silhouettes of distinctive characters from the old series in the background. There were references to the fictional drink, Slusho, which put me into tin foil hat mode once again (granted, it only takes the fact that my toothbrush has been moved to get into that mode). Someone that is far too clever and attentive let me know that the first person to die was someone in a red shirt. Some things never change.

I'm sorry, this blog has strayed from the usual rant, hasn't it. It's hard to slate a film that delivers eye candy and strong characters to the masses and the cliques. Okay, here goes. The only thing I really hated about the experience was the extortion that happened at the popcorn stand, and the trailers. The brilliant Christopher Eccleston reduced to wobbling his cheeks in order to sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger as Destro in the G.I Joe trailer?! Felt like I had just caught him, pants down, savouring Furby porn. Ohh, disappointment.

That's about as good as I can do.

No wonder we're all fat.

2009-05-10T11:11:00.000-07:00

I wish I was this baby. Damn myself for only being one month premature.
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5275424/Baby-eats-20000-calorie-mountain-of-food-every-week.html)

No wonder we're all fat.

I lost quite a nice amount of weight over this past fortnight, solely due to exercising religiously and vigorously for a couple of hours a day. I'm not sure where this sudden willpower has come from, but it's arrived, and I'm making the most of it. I don't think I've ever done this well before, so don't think I'm boasting, I'm just genuinely amazed. I have a little bit of extra baggage that has arisen from what is commonly known as spinsteritus, and the comfort that comes with not having someone that touches your belly on a regular basis. I'm not the smallest girl in the world, not the biggest either, I have my hump, my lovely lady lumps, check'em ouuuuut. Sorry, that was the boxing overdose coming out there. There's been some weird side-effects, such as not having wobbly arms, not getting out of breath from multiple staircases, and being able to crush Coke cans with my sinewy crotch, Madonna-style.
I've still been eating crap though. Why not go the whole hog and try eating better too, I thought. Why not kick the pizza and icecream out of the way, I'll be at my goal within half the time. Well, that’s what I thought.

Usually my breakfast and lunch are perfectly healthy, there’s not much I could change there, it’s the dinner that probably gets me. I usually have some frozen vegetables accompanied with mystery meat, hidden in a pie, breadcrumbs, sauce, or minced until it doesn't resemble anything like eyelids or trotters anymore.

Usually Asian-style meals magically appear through a telephone, accompanied with a nice, smiley chap who embarrassingly, knows all of us on a first-name basis. Said smiley blokes even gave my brother a lift back home after ordering while out on a bike ride and joking about how he was going to balance it on his handlebars. Who wants to cook when you have a brilliant group of Asian dudes who even cook a cracking pizza if you want one? Not me certainly, but I gave it a go.

First off, I underestimated the water chestnuts. I swear a Holy Grail that's been swallowed by a unicorn named Flo would be easier to find in a supermarket. I thought they came in a tin, but couldn't find it there in the supermarket. Fresh? Surely not. I dunno. I didn't find them, but did manage to find a tin of bamboo shoots. Same difference. I thought the fresh ginger and raw prawns were going to be a problem, considering last week the supermarket didn't have any normal bread so I had to live off bagels, but to my amazement I found both. No milk left though. We even found sesame seeds in the end for the toast, even though I nearly died of exhaustion. The place had recalled it's own brand sesame seeds for some unknown reason. "What abaht linseeds?" No mum. "What abaaht, pumpkin seeds!" No mum. "What abaaaaaaaaht, sunflower seeds?" NO MUM. Jesus. Luckily I found some extortionately priced gold plated, diamond encrusted, organic sesame seeds in the end before I freaked out and threw myself to writhe amongst the pastries.

Grating ginger is a bitch, especially when you have eczema, the juice stings like a motherfucker. After a while all feeling in my fingers gave way to an encompassing stinging tingle, so much so, that I hadn't realised I'd grated off a chunk of my knuckle until I looked down and saw blood. I don't THINK any of it went into the food, but you never know. Bon appetit, cannibals. Making a sweet and sour sauce was surprisingly easy, all it is is sugar, salt, vinegar and tomato puree. Sorted. That is, until I lose count of how many spoons of sugar I've put into the bowl and tip it all back into the sugar packet, forgetting that I'd already done the salt. What a tool. If you're coming round for tea at mine, I suggest you don't ask for sugar. In the end I just fumbled my way through, adding loads of each until it tasted about right, but ending up with triple the amount of sauce I'm supposed to. It seems that as soon as I hit the kitchen, my brain melts and I lose all control of my fingers to the point where I just fumble about a lot, spasm with fear, and look mildly retarded, always ending up with flour on my jumper even if I hadn't used the stuff.

After initial wonderment and discussion over Facebook on whether or not the prawns for the prawn toast would get stuck in the toaster, I took the plunge. Mashed up raw prawns look like brains, but when you spread them on toast with some egg and cover them with sesame seeds before putting them in a frying pan, they are delicious! All in all, despite the knuckle drama, it was successful, and I decided to make a lasagna the next day.

I turned to Jamie Oliver for this one. A nice local boy, I thought, he'll realise that in the depths of Essex we don't have fois gras, dauphinoise, or hundred year old eggs. None of that Nigella shit. Why does she always go down to the fridge in the middle of the night after every episode to eat whatever she's just cooked? Is she sleepwalking, or does she really just get a perverse sexual pleasure out of food? From all the finger licking, 'mm' sounds, and smearing creme fraiche all over her naked breasts every episode, I'm guessing it's the latter. Gordon Ramsay? Never trust a man that has a face that looks like it's been shrunk in the wash. Hugh Double-Barrel-Whittingsomething? I can't understand his name, let alone his recipes. I love Heston Blumenthal and his raw insanity, but I couldn't find water chestnuts, I don't think I'll be about to find liquid nitrogen or solidified hope in the average supermarket.

The most complicated thing on his recipe was "1 butternut squash, halved, deseeded, and roughly chopped." I realised I'd never eaten or even seen a butternut squash before. It turned out to look like Thing's manhood, but that was okay as I always preferred Hulk anyway. Do you peel them or what? I opted for the approach of, if in doubt, do nothing, and left the skin on. I'm still not sure if that was the right option, but I do know that the inside of a butternut squash looks like it could have been used as a prop in the Alien films, so I was more worried about some of that slipping in there.

Rub your butternut squash slices with olive oil, and roast. What the fuck, Mr Jamie Oliver, what the fuck. You told me to 'roughly chop' them, so I have massive cubes rather than slices. If you're going to bloody boss me around at least make it clear what you want me to do, don't complain if you haven't, and then I get it wrong. Wanker.

I then realise that I don't have enough shelves in the oven to put everything in. Cue me, standing there with my oven gloves with little ducks on, holding a very hot tray, screaming for help on moving shit about in the oven, as there was nowhere to put the tray in the bombsite I'd created. My brother ended up playing musical chairs with oven trays, and I ended up burning myself. What a surprise.

Everyone did say it was a really good meal, but the fact that I nearly lost both my hands and that I ate out for the next two nights might be saying something. Cooking is hard work when you don't take any shortcuts, and according to the Nazi-foodies, shortcuts are fattening, unhealthy, and eating them, especially if they aren't organic, is worse than flashing in a church. I'll go get my trenchcoat.

On the plus side, 'noob' is apparently in the running to become the millionth word in the English dictionary, which I think is great. Although it does open up a problem. Newbie is already in the dictionary, and noob is derived from it. Does this mean that all the words derived from 'noob' will have to be in there too?

noob - idiot; see nublar, n00b, nub, newb, nooblet, nooblar, noobsauce, nib, nubling, n3w8, noobtastic, cry more noob, nubbercakes, th3 n00binator, nubnub, noobzilla, sir nubbington.

Hm.

An extra mini-blog on 'alter ego'.

2009-05-04T05:38:00.001-07:00

I realise I posted a blog just one sleep ago, but I just had to share this here as I thought it was really interesting and actually quite beautiful in a melancholy way. Think of this as a special Bank Holiday edition. Sorry for spamming your feeds.

The very talented comic artist Jamie McKelvie posted up this on his Twitter, and I'm glad he shared.

"Gamers & their avatars http://www.robbiecooper.org/ Click simulations then alter ego. Interesting, and with #4, sort of magical."

I was familiar with Robbie Cooper's 'Immersion' set, which captured children's facial expressions when playing games (to see those, simply clock on 'immersion' rather than alter ego when browsing his site), but 'Alter ego' struck a chord with me as I've been playing MMOs for years.

Here's my input. This picture was taken a while ago when I was sadly fully immersed in the same game as Mr #4 in 'Alter Ego', hence the monitor tan, and the not yet pink hair. I think you can tell. Excuse the face.

It's a little bit weird noticing how I projected my personality onto my evil alter ego's avatar and into her completely customisable player houses (libraries, museums, torture chambers) without realising it. Even when we all used to do storytelling and roleplaying, a creative writing habit I've always enjoyed, she was always the character I logged onto first. I've played many characters over the years, but she was the only one that really 'stuck'. Stuck for 5 years almost religiously. I think I know why now. She always said what I wanted to say, always cracked the joke I wanted to crack, and did whatever she wanted without any consequences to worry about.

Here's more slightly scary self-analysis with my main avatar, for nostalgia's sake. You non-gamers don't know what you're missing.

I'd love to see other people's real life to avatar comparisons, don't be shy, email me, link me, or post here.

(Thanks, have some mails already, really cool stuff.)

You give me fever...

2009-05-03T16:55:00.000-07:00

Benny Hill + Mario = Berlusconi?!

This week has been such a slow week for news. I know that I got my wish from last week's blog when I said I was so sick of bad news, but I didn't exactly want a lack of news altogether, just some nice story about peace somewhere would be good, or something about ducklings. Noooooo. Swine flu, swine flu, swine flu. Everywhere. With every pollen-induced sneeze from my nose, "HURR HURR, SWINE FLU". Shut up, or I'll rub raw bacon in your face until you start worrying about salmonella instead. There's nothing we can do but stop inhaling people's spittle. I was going to blog on Wednesday, but there was nothing but bloody flu to talk about, so I took a rebellious stand and went and sunned myself with a book in hand instead. I'm going to make that stand void by talking about swine flu. Swine flu. There is still nothing else but swine flu.
Look, I know it's terrible and everything, but how many people has malaria killed this week? Shit, what about good ol' reliable average flu. The one that culls masses of the elderly and asthmatics in this country every winter.
Oh no, that's right, this is a new spangly, shiny new flu that happened to come along on a slow news week. Bravo. Such a slow news week that I have barely anything to write about except this:

"An oddly shaped space boulder appears to show eye sockets and a nose leading to speculation it might be a Martian skull.

Internet forums are full of chatter about the picture, taken by a panoramic NASA camera known as Spirit.

One alien-spotter speculated: "The skull is 15 cm with binocular eyes 5 cm apart. The cranial capacity is approximately 1400 cc.

"There appears to be a narrow pointed small mouth, so this creature most likely is a carnivore."

Another joked: "The coronal ridge shows ample structure to support the musculature of antennae, although none are visible in this view."

It's a fucking rock.

Even the bowel cancer awareness advert on the side is more interesting than the news. A worthy cause to be shouting about, but an arse clock? That's not bowel cancer, that's a freak accident in an Early Learning Centre.

Since pig fever has overtaken the news, I've had nothing to do but be beaten to a pulp on MyBrute. MyBrute is a fun little game that you don't even play. You simply create an avatar which always ends up looking like an anime version of Captain Caveman or Betty Rubble on steroids, then go watch them beat the shit out of another 'brute'.

Want a fair way to sort out who's doing the washing up tonight without giving your housemate a chinese burn? Want to watch something on telly but someone else has other ideas? Just want to see what happens when you set a bear onto someone you hate but don't have the knackers to do it in real life? As Harry Hill puts it, there's only one way to find out... FIGHT!
One tip though, don't fight Joyless Prole, his brute uses a rusty cheeseknife that gives you a mutant form of tetanus which kills you with one stab.

MyBrute and Carry On films. That's all I've been doing today apart from the odd stint of drawing that is a given nowadays. By all rights I should hate the Carry On films, being mildly racist with all it's talk of 'duskies', misogynistic and anti-fat-chicks, but really they're just a bit of good fun. The women don't seduce the men just by getting their baps out, there's cheeky, witty banter and an air that the women give as good as they get. Even the 'fat chicks' get the upper hand. It's all meant in good fun, and that's what makes them likeable. That and Barbara Windsor's hilariously evil cackle.

You hear that Berlusconi? It's only funny when it's not real, and all meant in good humour. Not when a world leader that is the bastard love child of Mario and Benny Hill takes advantage of his wife and country's good nature over and over again. Even the Queen got visibly pissed off with him at the G20 summit when he wouldn't stop talking, which was one of the funniest things I've ever seen on the news apart from the time a weather reporter got hit in the face by a massive wave on the local live news.

Let's recap shall we? Shamelessly stolen from a brilliant section in The Guardian this week, Berlusconi's blunders.

"We would need as many soldiers as there are beautiful girls in Italy - which we will never manage." - On a series of rapes in his country.

"He's young, handsome, and even has a good tan." - On Obama. "He said that those who were offended by his comment were "imbeciles", that the Italian left "lacked a sense of humour" and that his comment was meant to be a "compliment"."

"I'd go with you anywhere." - To a dancer at an awards dinner.

"Take a look at her! I'd marry her if I weren't married already." - To a topless model at the same dinner.

"We have a rule inside Forza Italia, the rule of ius primae noctis" - (the Latin term for the old right of a feudal lord to take the virginity of the young women on his estate on her first night of marriage).

"The left has no taste, even when it comes to women." - After making a stunning woman minister for equal opportunities. Equal as long as you have a pert bum, nice boobs, and a pretty face.

"I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I am a patient victim, I put up with everyone, I sacrifice myself for everyone." He also said that any Italian who didn't vote for him would be "a dickhead". He lost.

Good on his long-suffering wife and mother of his children for getting a divorce.

( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/5268433/Berlusconi-faces-divorce-battle-over-4.5bn-fortune.html )

"She has betrayed a somewhat bleak sense of humour about it. "Your husband is a busy man, do you get to see him or speak to him often?" asked a journalist who accosted her at the theatre one day (she is a frequent theatregoer, often attending plays that satirise Berlusconi's government). "Yes," she replied, 'I not only speak to him on the telephone, sometimes I even see him on television.'"

I'm almost glad that Gordon Brown is our leader, even with that smile that makes small children pee themselves. And as for Boris Johnson, well, I'd take his wrongly-buttoned shirts and foppish blonde hair over Silvio "I wouldn't mind being resuscitated by you" Berlusconi anyday.

P.S. I'm not sorry about the sudden obsession with bums on my blog. It's my blog, I can have as many arse epidemics as I want.

Console Wars

2009-04-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of the console wars I was forced to make a choice. Sony Playstation 3, XBox360, Wii. At the time all I knew is that I didn't want a Wii. Why? Their target audience was the dreaded 'casual gamer', someone that I never wanted to be, and was frankly sickened by.

The graphics were backward. The games all looked like they had been drawn with a three-metre high, morbidly obese wax crayon by someone that had only just heard of MS Paint. Even the Miis - customisable characters that you can make to look like yourself, your friends, or Hitler - were simply people made of balloons that you drew a smiley face on to look vaguely like whatever you're trying to make it look like, if you were to stand behind frosted glass and squint. The motion sensor controller was novel, but I was used to WASD and holding X to pick up things, not virtually wanking an inflatable woman across a badly drawn finish line. It just wasn't for me. There were no first person shooter games compared to the other two, just games for children, hippies, and soppy fluffy happy families that don't punch each other on a regular basis. It did have Mario games, but that wasn't enough to tip the scales, no matter how much I love his little 70's pornstar womb-broomed face.

In the end I went for the Xbox, staying loyal to my lover Bill Gates. The Playstation was pretentious with it's Blu Ray player and expensive price tag, the Wii, well, it's named after piss for Christ's sake. Shouldn't that say it all? The game that came with it - Wii Sports - sounded like something that should be played with nipple clamps and a gimp mask. All in all, spending my two hundred and fifty quid on that little white box instead of the Xbox sounded about as fun as a bouncy castle made of nails.

I don't know what changed, but I am now looking at one sitting next to the Xbox. I feel dirty. When I close my eyes, all I see is Bill Gates shaking his head at me.

Actually, I do know what changed. The first time I plucked up the courage to touch the odd sex-toy like, rubbery condom covered controller, was needless to say, after copious amounts of wine. Wait I lie, it was probably after three glasses, but I get postively wankered after one, so copious for me. I was at the point where one more would have forced me onto the floor, rolling about thinking I was on the ceiling while singing the theme tune to Sesame Street. I was with some of my best friends, and we were all bowling in the middle of a living room. I was positively crap and came last, but didn't care as it was amazing that my beautiful, girly, pink-loving friends were playing on a games console with me for once and were actually kicking my arse. One of them now plays the decidedly non-pink and fluffy Call of Duty and beats all the boys into the floor. The Wii was the cannabis to the Xbox360's crystal meth, if you'll excuse the metaphor. Maybe they're not so bad.

My workmates all had a Wii, and wouldn't shut up about them. They started talking about the Rainbow Road map on Mario, I joined in thinking they were talking about an older game, but no, I was out of the loop. It was a Mario Kart game where you actually have a steering wheel. How much their legs ached after a session of Wii Fit the previous night was the main centre of conversation at work, and I was left out. To add insult to injury, a good friend started to lose weight steadily from it when nothing else was getting him motivated. Previously, he was my burger buddy. I sympathised with him. I am a firm believer that you can't be rock without some roll, or at least that's what I've told myself when seeing a good steak, chips and peas on a menu.

That's all well and good, but I'm not the type to be able to sit on an exercise bike in the gym knowing full well there had been a thousand sweaty crotches engulfing the seat before my sacred area had the opportunity. Jogging in spandex down the road? I'd rather chew my thighs away. Sports? I do enjoy some, but I'm afraid only martial arts have been able to prise me away from my pencils, books, and games where I get to be an undead prince with an army of dragons, and I can't find a teacher that I can have an inch of respect for. My last teacher spent his time flirting with the new female members, waving his pole around. The only one I ever respected taught me Wado-Ryu karate for as long as I could stay with him until I went to college. He scared the living fuck out of me to start off with, and made us all run around barefoot on gravel until our feet were numb while screaming at us to answer questions about Yoda, but that's always the best way. He once said to me, "Ratchet (weirdest nickname I ever had), if you ever find you need to use what I'm teaching, don't bloody use it. Just poke them in the eyes, then kick them in the bollocks. Sorted." What a guy.

There won't be anyone else like him, so I'm not even going to try. I do need to exercise though as there's only so many curves that my clothes can take. Exercise in games = toned tummy. Toned tummy > 300 quid in my bank account, even though with my attention span I'll probably be bored of the damn thing in a month and will try to flog it on Feebay. If I don't get bored, it works, and I lose the weight I want to, then my boobs will probably disappear and I'd be paying for the privilege, but I am a woman. My logic is flawed.

It's been worth it so far though. The interface was endearing from day one, it looked like that television screen Marty McFly has in Back to the Future with all the different TV stations. The controller and balance board especially were astonishingly easy to use, but the board was complex in the way it could tell exactly how your posture was, just from standing on it.

The 'tree' pose in the yoga section lived up to it's name from the word go. Seeing my 6"3 brother stand on one leg, reach his arms up, start to wobble, then stiffen straight as a board as he leaned to far to the left and fell like a hairy lumberjack had taken a chainsaw to his ankle was pretty fucking hilarious. The rest of the family ganged up on me for laughing at him when my Wii age came up as being 45 (I'm 21) because I thought I was being funny pretending to ski when it was measuring my balance. My dad was measured to be his own age, and he began boasting at every opportunity. They also thought it was funny when I stopped mucking around and it said my weight was more firmly in the overweight section than I had thought and began to have a mild freak-out, vowing to spend at least an hour a day on the 'Wii machine', as my technophobe mum calls it. She still has a go on Step though, and she keeps fricking beating my high score. This is the woman that has to have her desktop icon images as different types of trees so she can differentiate between them. She doesn't even see them half the time though, as she can barely switch a PC on.

The Wii then brought about one of the nicest moments I've had in ages, so I can't completely hate it for eating up my wages. My brothers saw I was still a bit down the day after my weigh-in. Even though they'd had a much shittier day than I'd had, they brought home my favourite pizza and said I'm really fine the way I am. Aww. Shit, we're in the "soppy fluffy happy family that don't punch each other on a regular basis" category, aren't we. I'm almost ashamed.

Steak tartare.

2009-04-22T15:43:00.000-07:00

Ahh, days off work. Mine are Wednesdays and Sundays. There is nothing better than waking up at 6 and being able to go straight back to sleep again, get out of bed whenever the hell you feel like it, stroll down the stairs, chuck some bread flippantly in the toaster, go put some seed out in the garden for the cute, tweeting birds that are waiting for you, sit down and open whatever newspaper happens to be around, and see a picture of a lovely elderly lady with her eyesocket caved in, a mashed face and tubes coming out of her mouth because she's been beaten to an inch of her life with her own walking stick, accompanied with the words, “he wondered what it would be like to kill”.

Turn the page.

Jade Goody’s poor, young, innocent, orphan boys in more emotional turmoil after their great grandfather commits suicide.

Turn the page.

Electrical storm could hit in 2012, rendering all electricity useless because all of our infrastructure has melted, meaning no civilisation, no communication, no sewage plants, no farming, no food, no water, and more importantly no internet.

Turn the page. Walk to the toaster. Take toast out, throw on floor, toast doesn’t matter anymore. Shove hands in toaster, toast. Ahh, relief.

I was walking around WHSmith in the lovely Cambridge over the weekend. I started off in the DVD section, passed through the ‘biographies’ section, then stumbled with horror into the ‘Tragic Life Stories’ section. I’m not sure if it’s just a Cambridge thing, but we’ve never had a ‘Tragic Life Stories’ section where I live. Maybe I should be worried we don’t need them here. Either way, a whole section about poverty, death and child abuse? Someone wants to read about a child getting raped by a priest when they get a free moment of their precious spare time? Three separate Jade Goody books, including an obituary with an awful cover that looks like it's been cut and pasted together by a small child, obviously slapped together to get as much money as possible, quickly? It obviously works, people must buy into the whole sadness and gloom thing. They must like being sad. Hand them over to me, I’ll produce the same effect on them sharpish with my Marvin the Paranoid Android tone, and no kiddies will have to be beaten with a shoe by a drunk father even once for the sake of entertainment.

Seeing a human being looking like steak tartare is a bit much over the breakfast table, it’s no horror film, it’s real. I can’t just say over and over again in my head that’s it’s all pretend and that I don’t need to be scared, like I can when watching some mank slashfest film or Scooby Doo. Anyone that gets a kick out of that is a bit sick. Let the poor woman recover without taking away her dignity and my breakfast. When I was at school one of the boys got expelled and had the psychiatrist pay him a visit because he was watching a real execution in the IT room on a sick site that I’m not going to endorse. Now it’s excitedly forced down my throat as a nice surprise when making a cup of tea, while the media masturbate furiously over how fucking ‘gritty’ they are. Am I just a big oversensitive scaredy-cat? Probably, but I still remember vividly seeing a crazy man driving a tank being shot in the back of the head at point blank range on the news quite a while back, I can’t remember the story, just the bullet and brains, and I think that says a lot about how pointless that is. I wasn’t prepared for that at all. If you want to squeeze an emotion out of me, why don’t you just get Alan Sugar and Chris DeBurgh to present the news together, that’ll get me outraged, effing and blinding and/or puking with terror within two milliseconds.

Just don’t watch it, I hear you say. Well, if I did that, you'd all accuse me of being an ignoramus. Aside from that, I wouldn’t be able to see the bulletins that tell me that piracy in games and music - not the YARRRR type, that’s another blood soaked theme that’s been happening a lot recently - isn’t as bad as the music and games industry make out. Glad someone said it, you don’t see sales of The Orange Box, Grand Theft Auto, or Call of Duty being next to nothing, it's only shit games that cry about sales being cut by piracy. I wonder why. Someone’s just got to accept that piracy will happen, and that copy protection has to be implemented if they care that much. It cost me seeing two murders and an accidental railway death to get to that snippet of tech news. I'm not sure if it was worth it.

Noone complains about real moments of death and pieces of grey matter being splattered over a lens, they only whine when a bad taste cartoon is published in the Metro regarding Stephen Hawking being ill.

It raised a guilty chuckle when I saw it, so that means I’m evil now? Bad taste humour is great, especially if it outrages hippy types who freak out and faint when someone uses the word ‘brainstorm’. I wonder if Hawking himself would laugh. I imagine he has a wicked sense of humour, most brilliant people do. I hope he gets well soon, I heard he’s on the mend which is great.

I’m sounding like an old bitter cat lady again aren’t I? I’ll go retreat into my little sci-fi fantasy world now, it’s happier. I can run around beating weird looking humanoids to death with a lightsaber and there’s no blood, just swishing sound effects, and a plop when it flops over. That’s proof in itself that gaming can’t cause real life violence, the last time I killed a fly I nearly cried. I’ve been playing more games than ever recently even though I told myself I’d do something more worthwhile, I think it’s my self-defence mechanism against the real world. If I was to make a graph, the correlation between how jarred off I get with the real world (at the moment not being able to find a better job and a man of any description at all that doesn’t reprimand me for having an icecream when we go out as it goes right to the hips, then ends up practically curled up in a ball crying after I’ve had my say and eaten him alive, as I do) and the amount of time spent gaming in a virtual one would be very strong indeed. It would be as straight an upward line as Chris DeDurgh’s manhood when he sees himself in a mirror.

There’s only so much I can distract myself in ‘real life’ with wondering whether or not ‘napkin rash’ on a pot of Sudocrem is a typo of nappy rash, or whether it’s a real ailment for posh people that dine out too often. I’m back to wasting hours being a grunting orc bossing grunts about on Warcraft III. Not too dissimilar to real life, actually. I need to get laid. I'm a grumpy orc. I'm a grumpy orc because I creak when I walk. It's a vicious cycle.

At least Star Trek is out soon, I'm very very very excited. That'll do.

I need to stop watching so much telly.

2009-04-16T16:27:00.000-07:00

I hate reality shows. Hate, hate, hate, that’s all you ever do Rach. Yes. Shut up.

All that seems to happen is that attention-seeking people with god complexes trade in their soul and dignity for their 15 minutes of fame. They’re just too hard not to watch. All that is right in me (which admittedly, probably isn’t much, but I try, damnit), screams at me to switch off the TV and go do something that won’t eat away at my soul, but they are just too hard not to watch. People losing their dignity and/or sanity is too interesting. Christian Bale, Britney Spears, Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise, that one bloke off that American news station that dropped the f-bombs.

Big Brother seemed to be the culprit of most of the ‘oh my god, did that just happen’, and ‘fuck me, why am I still watching this again?’ moments. Ever since I saw Kinga (‘the minger’, apparently) shove and wiggle a wine bottle up her cavernous manhood gobbler live on television I was hooked. It’s depraved, but I can’t help myself.

The newest instalment to car crash television is Britain’s Got Talent. I don’t watch it, but there has been enough in the news about it to get me interested. One was about a burlesque dancer who stripped to her bare arse, swinging her Union Jack-covered mammary glands around.

Basically, the show should have a name change to avoid confusion. Britain’s Got Talent? Britain’s got crazies. Britain’s got a group of girls with perfectly spherical tits, gloopy, lacquered lips, and legs made from bendy straws dipped in fake tan.

Britain’s got a dog that can conga with it’s worryingly devoted owner and most probably, sexual partner. Britain’s got a cute child that sings like an angel but has worryingly vacant eyes and will probably end up as a crack whore due to the bitch which is life and pushy parents. Britain’s got an ugly, yet loveable underdog that everyone drops a guilty vote onto.

In these shows, women can only fit into three categories, gorgeous, slim women that are good at what they have entered in for, gorgeous, slim women that aren’t quite so good at what they have entered in for, and ugly, unkempt, deluded women, usually perceived to be of incestuous origin, that are purely there to be laughed at.

That is until Susan Boyle came along this week and single-handedly shattered this boring categorisation.

Susan Boyle

She appeared to be following the crazy template. Even her name is slightly unfortunate. A 46 year old religious woman, never been kissed, that lives only with her cat, Pebbles, stumbled onto the stage with no makeup or slutty dress, only her personality. Crazy, and deluded, right? The deluded woman role seemed concrete when she circled her pelvis at the glazed ham that is Simon Cowell. “That’s only one side of me”, she laughed. She laughed. She was essentially taking the piss out of him. Pelvic thrust humour and a self-effacing wit? I like her already. Half of the audience had a sick expression, like their grandparents had just come onto them through means of a Werthers Original, the other half were trying to suppress giggles.

They were all getting ready to slate her, it’s terrible. The bullies, all crowding together in the changing room, sniggering, ready to pounce on the girl that hadn’t begun to shave yet, the one that still wore a vest rather than a bra. Sick to the stomach.

The so-called ugly duckling transformed into a swan as soon as she opened her mouth and sang ‘I dreamed a dream’ from Les Miserables beautifully and with heart, not when she had squeezed herself into a spangly boob tube and straightened her hair. Piers Morgan visibly swallowed the words he was getting ready to spill, to his credit. The audience swiftly forgot their preconceptions and admired her on pure talent and personality alone. That’s how it should be. Bloody good on her. She now has millions and millions of YouTube hits. I swear, if she gets any sort of ‘makeover’ in that show, or if she starts getting attention simply because people see her as someone that should be a failure, but hasn't failed, or something equally sinister, I’ll be dishing out slappings. She’s fricking awesome how she is.

Piers Morgan. Look, you can actually see the words backfiring in his throat, he wasn't expecting that one.

Meanwhile, my favourite show of the moment that I’ve been watching of my own accord is Hell’s Kitchen. Marco Pierre-White has to be one of the most intimidating people of any profession, anywhere. It’s always more terrifying when you know they aren’t actually being an arsehole because they know exactly what they are talking about and therefore have full authority to say what they want, and when you can’t help but respect them. Respecting him when he is making someone visibly piss their pants with terror rather unhygienically in a kitchen full of food for Christ’s sake? How does that work?! Charisma, I guess, and walking the fine line through brilliance and craziness. He is so interesting to watch, he has piercing, wolfish, feral eyes, and seems to really enjoy knives in a slightly too sexual way, always pointing them at people and throwing and catching them like they are a fuzzy pom-pom. It’s wrong that I mildly fancy him right, even though his kitchen bandanna thingy is probably frayed because he chewed through it himself?

Truly captivating to watch, everyone treats him as if he’s a ticking time bomb. Plus, it’s really really fun to see irritating arsehole celebrities being put in their place and actually being humble for once in their lives. That, and to see Adrian Edmondson steal pasta from a world-class pasta chef and pass it off as his own despite potential punishment of death from Marco. He got away with it, but there was a real danger he might have had his balls lopped off. Real danger.

Maitre D' Nick is also loveable, he and Marco are like an old married couple who really get on each other’s tits, but at the end of the day go and have a cuddle and a peck on the cheek and know everything is okay. No matter how much fucking Chris de Fucking fuckface Burgh brings a fucking guitar into a fucking restaurant and sings his pervy little smug smackable face out to his only brain-molesting ‘hit’, Lady In Red, to a woman who is wearing red (you fucking genius, you win at life so much for singing lady in red to a lady in red, HAHAHAHAH), Marco Pierre White is still the star of the show. you’re never sure whether he’s slightly insane or a true genius, but I don’t think one can exist without the other. He also had our own crazy scientist Heston Blumenthal under his wing in his restaurant at one point.

True master.

Sorry to my American friends for my very anglophile and probably unintelligible blogs, but anglophile television is about all I've had in my very anglophile life this week. I’m off to cavort and cause mischief in Cambridge for the weekend, don’t wreck the place.

The geek shall inherit the earth.

2009-04-10T09:06:00.000-07:00

The original Spock turns up at the recent Star Trek world premiere.

I love being a geek. Love it.

We are the ones that set up your new Nintendo Wii, we are the ones that tell you how to reformat your hard drive after you've clicked on too many counterfeit viagra ads. We are the ones that tell you fifty times a day to stop fricking using that damn liquid washing soap and putting those liquitabs in the soap drawer instead of the drum if you don't want your washing machine to corrode and smell, or that even though it sounds fucking weird and you won't believe me, unplugging your Freeview box from the wall for an hour then plugging it in again will work (Just me? Okay).

The sisterhood doesn't exist, just bitchiness, but geekhood does. I'm at home. If you had to pigeonhole me, smush me up into a big pink gloopy mess and shove me in a labelled wastebin, it would be the one saying 'geek'. It's weird that it's seen as a bad thing.

My twenty-one year old, socially inept, misanthropic self visits dating sites from time to time when a geeky book just won't do, where you are forced to demean yourself in letting your fellow ladies, gentlemen and psychopaths know what 'you're all about', or something similarly patronising and overly simplistic. Geek is usually one of the words used, in case you hadn't guessed. I would have thought that most people on these abominations of the intarwebs would be geeks. We're the ones that are sat at home at most given moments, the ones that really don't enjoy being rammed into a club, and instead prefer to be on the computer ingesting the contents of the internet, or pretending we're not really looking at porn.

I was horrified to see that most people on these sites don't even own up to owning a games console, saying they like to read, or admitting that they quite fancy Jean Luc Picard in a slightly wrong way. Don't kid yourself any longer, admit that you wouldn't mind him reading you a bedtime story, the smooth operator.

Most men instead pretended that their top three were football, sex, and beer, not necessarily in that order, and would send me a message saying something similar to, 'wow, you're really brave saying you like Star Wars, I like it too but didn't wanna say!'. I understand beer. I understand sex. But football? I have a theory, the amount of people that like watching football on TV does NOT make sense. Playing Subbeteo makes more sense, as at least there you are actively involved and exercising your pointing or swearing finger, both very important fingers. Most people that say they like football surely have something that they subsititute football for in their mind that they're ashamed of, like XboxLive, Dungeons and Dragons, or flashing.

For instance, I know that my dad feels an obligation to watch football. I tried to do the good, daughterly thing recently and watch the match with him, so I prised myself away from World of Warcraft and plonked myself down on the sofa.

(Trying to make idle conversation) "What's the score then?"

"Huh? Oh. Nil nil."

"It's not, it says on the screen it's 1-1"

"Oh, I fell asleep."

"The first goal was in the fourth minute, dad."

I admit I have it easy, being female it's not seen as such a 'loser' thing, more of a 'weirdo' thing, and I have enough weirdo points already for another one not to matter. I appreciate that. Maybe if more of you embraced your geek, waved it about a bit more, maybe brandished it and waggled it around at random passers by, then you might have a better chance of attracting the right girl honestly, and NOT LIVING A DIRTY LIE.

Geeks can be scary.

In May 2007, I was fortunate enough to be one of them that came across a letter on the internet.

Some of the gamers managed to find their way to darkdaysarecoming.com, it being an anagram of each line. There, we were confronted with another puzzle to solve, an image of London, New York, or Tokyo, depending on your IP. It caused a small frenzy, when it turned out to be a creepy puzzle to solve, an alternate reality game (ARG) not too dissimilar to the infamous Halo 3 ARG ilovebees. A few French emblems, one Vitruvian Man, and a bit of using your noggin to fit this puzzle together later, you were treated to an image of London, New York or Tokyo, whatever you were closest to, burning to the ground, taken over by vegetation of epic proportions, or being blown to pieces by tornadoes.

We were then treated to some concept art and access to the forums for a new MMORPG in production by Funcom (you know I love me some MMOs), lead by the brilliant Ragnar Tørnquist (Dreamfall, The Longest Journey). It's called The Secret World. This forum lead to more puzzles about what exactly Admundsen found underneath the ice, a trail that led all through mythology, history, maths, and the internet in general. There were letters from 'A friend' that to this day we're not sure if they are a friend (+tinfoilhat+), angry statements from Admundsen's niece pleading us to stop as we don't know what we're letting ourselves in for, curious deletion of useful facts, lots of mentions of 2012 and a countdown timer, trekking across Google Maps to find geographical coordinates, fibbonacci numbers, ancient gods, etc. You get the point. It's like The DaVinci Code, but interactive, not full of crap, and the people that witness it are never weird enough to actually believe it.

"The unraveling of clues that lead up to this game's reveal is impressive, but not as impressive as the fact that The Secret World's community is comprised of some of the most intelligent gamers you'll find this side of EVE. We have games that are hardcore for strategists, games that are hardcore for economists, games that are hardcore for the combat-savvy, but with The Secret World, we will finally get an MMO that was made for the hardcore conspiracy theorists, history buffs and puzzle solvers out there."

http://www.virginworlds.com/reader.php?solo=85214

I completely agree.

I am ashamed to say the only puzzle within the latter part of the most recent installment I managed to solve alone, was one with the answer of Kronos, that only being because it happened to end in 'Whose time is it?', to which I frittered away all prospect of respect for myself in my head by answering, 'Stop... Kronos' time!', then humming MC Hammer.

Either way, the brain power of a hundred geeks, conspiracy nuts, mathematicians, students, etc, was quite frankly terrifying. At times we all ventured past the answer and beyond, without even realising that it had happened, started unravelling things we didn't need to at an alarming speed. Where are all these people? They need to be in our government offices, or become our world leaders. At a time when I was fully immersed in the ARG, I stayed up all night in my tin-foil hat with the aid of very strong coffee and heavy metal music, then skipped my Phonology class the next day to be obsessive about Sherpas in Antartica, and what they had to do with the whole ordeal. It proved to be a red herring, but I don't care, it was fun.

All I can say is I thought I was no longer a gamer. I quit MMOs for a while as I was fed up with all the 'LOLPVP' and all the cybersex, all the repetitive levelling and the same shit over and over again, repackaged in different games. World of Warcraft got boring, Star Wars Galaxies got boring. The only thing that kept me in those games were the great people, but soon the people I couldn't stand outnumbered the people I liked, as they were all sick of the game too and left. The community for The Secret World has been brilliant so far, and I can't wait to solve puzzles and fight all kind of abominations in this online game beside them. The recent puzzle has been picked up upon heavily my game websites, so the LOLPVPers have started flooding the forums, but it's really satisfying to see that the older members are giving them a helping hand and getting them into the spirit, and to play along and conduct themselves more suitably along with the mood of the game.

I thought I had quit MMOs for good, but I think it was temporary boredom. The community of The Secret World and their tenacity, enthusiasm, intelligence, wit, relentless determination and plain craziness has reawakened my faith.

Whoever said 'the geek shall inherit the earth' was probably right.

They Are Coming Back from ApisSOS on Vimeo.

The Secret World links:

The new and improved www.darkdaysarecoming.com.
A newbies guide to the puzzles so far.
A fan video on The Secret World conspiracy.
The Sanctuary of Secrets Puzzle.
Funcom reveals The Secret World - May 2007.
Ragnar Tørnquist's blog.

Comebacks.

2009-04-05T08:44:00.000-07:00

Now that April Fools' Day is over, Zombie Jesus Weekend is nearly here, hurrah! I'm not the religious type, bet you didn't guess, but who can argue with a four day weekend accompanied with an excuse to commit gluttony with a truckload of cheap chocolate (it's the boxes that are expensive), and sloth via chocolate poisoning and Easter TV?

Resurrections and TV.

The good: Red Dwarf and Doctor Who. Sci-Fi bliss.
The bad: 90210, I don't even want to entertain the thought of watching it. Why would anyone drag that out of the grave. I'd love to be pleasantly surprised, but it's not worth the risk of having a nervous breakdown while testing the water and running full pelt into the TV head first.
The ugly: Gladiators. The appallingly named Battleaxe being a favourite. Weird, S&M superheroes. Noone in their right mind would want to see sculptured spam being swung around in a pair of lycra tights, but that's visually not far off from what you see.

I'm guessing I'm not the only one that's noticed that comebacks are the new flavour of the month, not that that's a bad thing. In fact, I know I'm not. The Agrophobic Journeyman got there first in one of his recent blogs.

"I cannot be alone with my confusion over modern music. Such is the state of the scene at the moment that we are seeing the industry encouraging the strange phenomena of bands that split up with artistic differences years ago (see Note 1) to reform and undertake huge arena tours. Even Michael Jackson is currently undergoing a 45 000 mile service with his cosmetic surgeon ready to moonwalk onto stage for a few intimate gigs at the O2 arena."

The first I remember of this trend was being incredibly excited that Pixies were reforming, a band a bit before my time, but one I'd always loved. Went to see them, all was good. Then came the rest, the Spice Girls, Michael Jackson the monkey king, Led Zeppelin... Shit, I can't even remember any more, they all merge into one. I'm almost glad that John Squire recently said 'HELL NO' to the Stone Roses reforming, I think they accomplished all they needed to. Good on him.

Let's hope that Red Dwarf's comeback will be more memorable, hopefully for all the right reasons. Despite my cynicism about comebacks, I'm glad it's coming back. I don't think it accomplished all it needed to, it never really got wrapped up. This could either be a great day in geekery, or a terrific letdown, Red Dwarf is easily in my top three TV shows of all time. No pressure. There was always a feeling that it was unfinished though, due to, quite frankly, series 7 and 8 being shite. Red Dwarf was always at it's best when only the core was present, nothing to do but discuss whether or not they'd rather fuck Wilma Flintstone or Betty Rubble.

Cat: Betty Rubble? Well, I would go with Betty... but I'd be thinking of Wilma.
Lister: This is crazy. Why are we talking about going to bed with Wilma Flintstone?
Cat: You're right. We're nuts. This is an insane conversation.
Lister: She'll never leave Fred, and we know it.

If I had to choose, I'd choose Betty. Wilma. Pssh. Tragic.

At risk of sounding anti-feminist, as soon as a girl (with sexual interest, female Holly was brilliant) gets thrown into the mix, the episode is spoiled. The only truly memorable episode with Kochanski I can remember is the one where Kryten throws a period party for Kochanski due to a prank by Lister, I admit that handing her a tampon with one of those shiny ribbons wrapped around it was pure comedic genius. It's the personal, touching, tragic banter between the men, that for me at least, created the real gems within the episodes. As soon as female interest enters the mix, the balance seems to topple. Probably just me.

Rimmer: "Get out Rachel and the puncture repair kit! I'm alive!"
Aw, I'm touched, but keep that thing away from me, that's not a puncture.

Sophie Winkleman is set to appear in the new series as Katerina Bartikovsky, a hologram. She's a great comedy actress, but I don't envy her position at all. She's very brave to take the place of Holly, who won't be present this Easter. There's a lot of nerds with bated breath ready to be unleashed, we can be obsessive and possessive types. As a new member, she's either going to get a lot of love or a lot of hate. I hope it's love.

There's a uneasy feeling that the loss of Holly might not be worth the gag that due to Lister leaving a tap on, Holly is offline due to water damage. Holly, the super computer with an IQ of 6000, "the same IQ as 6000 PE teachers".

Holly: What's happening, dudes?
Lister: Bog all.
Holly: Wait a minute. I've forgotten what I was gonna say.
Rimmer: Well, it can't have been that important then, can it?

*BAM*

Holly: Yeah. That's it."Look out, a meteor is about to hit the ship". I knew it'd come back to me.
The Cat: Thanks for the warning.

I'll miss him/her. Fuck the tap gag.

Despite being overly cautious and pessimistic, I genuinely hope the new episode is cracking. If not, I suppose that there is always the consolation that Doctor Who will be as great as ever, it never fails.

In the meantime, here's a few other things to bring back:

Crystal Maze - Preferably with Richard O'Brien, the futuristic Willy Wonka. We need more insane television that locks real people up in cells for not performing intellectual and physical tasks correctly. Whether or not they are deemed useful enough dictates if they get released.

Takeshi's Castle - We could also use more insane television that bashes people in the face in exchange for being on TV. Big Brother, eat your heart out. Failing that, we could substitute the contestants for whoever we are blaming in the news at that precise moment, whether it's bankers, politicians, or whatever. Just chuck some very hungry piranhas into some of the water pools as a fresh, new direction, and we're set.

Morning post - Whatever happened to it? I lurk but never post on the talkmagic forums because I always come across as a twat on forums, but I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that gets their post whenever the Royal Mail damn feels like it, despite paying for something called 'first class'. Then I go to the depot to go pick up whatever I've bought in my lunchbreak, and find that it's shut by 1pm, when the post didn't even arrive till 2. Wankers.

Certainty - Fed up of hearing that everything is getting worse, I'm never going to get a career in this economic climate, morals are disappearing, we all suck, we're all going to die through (delete as appropriate) nuclear war, global warming, mass panic, alien invasions, natural selection, world hunger. Just let me stop worrying for two seconds, please.

Scold's bridles - Alarmingly, as seen on the surreal Bargain Hunt this week, accompanied with Tim Wonnacott's pervy slap'n'tickle grin down the camera lens. The older ladies love it, but as a 21 year old, I feel like prey. A metal mask with a tongue slot to inhibit talking or nagging. "Some have claimed that convicted common scolds had to wear such a device as a preventive or punitive measure." - Wiki. We can make slightly bigger male versions, just to stop them being sexist. They should be mandatory on Prince Philip, Jeffery Archer, and that voice woman on the Marks and Spencer food adverts. I'd say Alan Sugar too, but he's too much fun to hate.

Dinosaurs - That'll shit up the fox that makes disturbing infant-like wails when mating/fighting outside my window every night.

Big fuck-off moustaches - Nietzsche style. What happened to those over time? Just plain awesome.

I need to stop rambling inanely and covering fifty topics a blog, don't I.
Sorry.

April Fools!

2009-04-01T16:14:00.000-07:00

I hate April Fools. Nothing exciting ever happens, anything that might have been exciting is automatically made an enormous effort because I immediately question the validity of everything from the moment I wake up.

Instead of going into London on my day off to support the G20 Financial Fools protesters or do something equally useful, I decided to get up at 10.30 and prepare myself for my day of going to pick up some shelving from B&Q to house my book and DVD addictions, colouring things and sprawling out on the sofa watching recorded episodes of The Wire. I'm actually glad that I didn't go along to support them, because although I am happy that people are voicing their opinions and could go and leave it at that, Russell Brand on Sky News looked a bit of a rabbit in the headlights when asked why he was there. Cringeworthy. Sky News is unintentionally hilarious, especially when stating that so many ground police are needed because the ground protesters are mainly "stocky and well built".

Within the few hours between 10.30 and 12 (you're not supposed to pull pranks after noon apparently, maybe I should get up earlier), I had suspected sabotage on an empty toothpaste tube but realised I'd picked up an old empty noone had bothered to throw away, and picked out two possible April Fools stories out of a Daily Mail I found over the very sophisticated breakfast that is Ready Brek, only to find the challenge was made void because it was yesterday's paper left over from my mum's lunchbreak. Ouch.

I didn't even manage to find Google's April Fool this year like I usually do, which filled me with self-loathing. Last year's was a YouTube video including Richard Branson talking about chartered Google/Virgin flights to Mars if I remember correctly. This year I had to Google it, it's a search engine for your brain. Try it.

http://www.google.com/mobile/m/brainsearch/intro_android.html

The April Fools I was most interested in seeing fold out didn't even bother. The media was doom-mongering over the Conficker virus yesterday, a worm with a countdown to an update planned for the 1st April. They didn't know what it was planning to do, but it had infiltrated government systems, leaving a back door wide open or something like that.

I was actually quite excited to see if it would work. After all, government harddrives are left on buses all the time, it wouldn't make much difference to national security, might just offer a few penis enlargements to the female staff now and again. Nothing more than what happens in most homes. It didn't seem quite as sinister as the lovebug virus I remember from many years ago, which preyed on the human desire to be loved. An email titled 'I LOVE YOU' would be sent, a love letter inside would be opened, and wham, bam, thankyou ma'am. The Conficker virus is mildly ironic, which is quite endearing. It could have destroyed government computers, or just blown a big raspberry, exclaiming "APRIL FOOOOOLS!". The countdown to April Fool's Day was either laughed off, or taken as some kind of weird, V for Vendetta-type uprising, and that mystery was fun to a weird angry loner with a warped sense of humour and grating opinions who could get a geekasm out of it, like myself. The fact it didn't even bother to pull it's pants down and bend over was a bit 'meh'. It's probably more likely that the creators are waiting until the heat has died down before they do anything, but I wanted something to happen on April Fools, damnit. By noon, I was almost disappointed that noone had stretched cling film over the toilet seat.

It was all an anti-climax, just like the Millennium Bug, or the Hadron Collider. The only one I have left is 2012, and that was the most tenuous of the lot, unless London implodes from over-use of the Underground, but I doubt the Mayans would have been bothered about something like that. At least today's London G20 riot provided me with a little bit of doom, the four horses of the apocalypse, dead canaries on stretchers being paraded to the Bank of England, and the Royal Bank of Scotland's windows being smashed in while blood trickled down protester's faces.

...Maybe too much doom.

I could quite happily watch the whole of the news through Charlie Brooker's very funny Newswipe. At least he gives you a tutorial on what is ridiculous and what isn't, after your brains are so numb from constant media that you just don't know the difference anymore. He is a brave man, taking one for the team.

As for Alan Sugar and his face made of felt, I still despise the man. He points like an English tourist lost in France trying to get an ice-cream. I really don't know why I watch the Apprentice, all it does is make me tense and shout a lot. I suppose hearing the phrase "I'm hurt you said that, it feels like my cat died", and "you're being taken off the pitch in a black cab", more than makes up for seeing a man in a toga serving vol-au-vents at a party of posh lawyers in expensive designer suits in the midst of a deep recession.

On another note, The Wire makes me happy in the pants, even if I have to pause and rewind a lot because I have no idea what the hell that one bloke just said. Everyone should watch it.

MyTwitFace

2009-03-25T16:23:00.000-07:00

I've been violated by the internet.

Browsing through Blogger, I have found that most people don't use their real names on their blogs. Oops. Sucks to be me. Especially as I haven't got a name like John Smith or something. Damn my impure ancestry. Most people that blog frequently aren't real people like one might believe when signing up to Blogger. Most of the wonderful beings I keep a close eye on are apes, dogs, squirrels, magicians. They're alright, they can go hide in a tree or something in the Lake District if someone disagrees. Humans don't tend to be as stupid as me.

However, I'm not that worried. Noone has any privacy anymore. We're all linked up on Facebook, MySpace, and the newest edition to the soul-sucking menagerie, Twitter. I don't know why I distinguished them from one another, they're all the same now anyway since MySpace tried to become Facebook, and Facebook tried to become Twitter. MyTwitFace. Seriously, who needs CCTV when everyone taps away their intimate details and life story in a small 140 character box.

I liked Facebook before it tried to become Twitter. Facebook was entertaining and novel at the time. It was sufficient to mention the significant moments, to say how lost you are feeling within the downward spiral which is your pitiful life, or how you want to stab yourself in the knee because your dog isn't paying enough attention to you, and so on.
With Twitter, people have taken more of a 'what I am doing' angle. This is fun of course for the first five minutes, but you quickly realise that really you couldn't give a flying fuck about how many cups of chocamochaspressolatte or whatever your so-called mate has had today.

I still do it though, MyTwitface. I just can't help myself. When there's a new technological fad (bar anything Apple or Ipod related), I feel myself being sucked towards it and embracing it. The final push is the added bonus of leaving your mark behind on the internet. Comforting to your unyielding fear that you are not the most important person in the universe, and one day you will be forgotten.

One 'friend' found this blog through the aforementioned process of googling my name, and proceeded to take the Michael out of me for blogging. I don't see how it's any worse than them telling me that you're having a chicken sandwich (no mayo!). Oooh, no mayo, you're living the dream there mate. This is the stuff our ancestors fought for! (...Love you really.)

It's also interesting to know that you're not the only one suffering a wilted social life because you're Twittering away all day. It happens to the beautiful people too. Jennifer Aniston recently broke up with some pretty boy I've never heard of (John Meyer, apparently) because he was on Twitter all the time.

I feel an affinity with that man, internet addiction is a real thing, it's not just me. I'd like to think that anyway, rather than he's just not that interested in ol' Jen and was trying to phase her out without making the dreaded break-up call.

On a lighter note, through Twitter we have found out that Jonathan Ross has a ceiling covered in lights in his house that he can change to an image of Mario or Luigi at will.

Awesome.
This on top of the news that Jane Goldman (who has an excellent choice in hairdye might I add!) plays a level 80 Night Elf with an incredibly rare Spectral Tiger on World of Warcraft puts the Ross household higher up on my cool list.

Then again, it's not all quite down-to-earth reality and geekery. Ashton Kutcher recently updated his Twitter with this.

"shhh don't tell wifey"

Demi Moore steaming your suit in a bikini?!
Unreal. Stuff of dreams. I'd buy a suit for that. Surely that makes Twitter worth it.

Shit, that couple is so A-List that they don't even use an ironing board, they roll it out onto the incredibly expensive floor and replace it all after every use.

Back to anonymity for me. No Demi Moore semi-naked in a very expensive house, all I get is a cup of tea and The Apprentice.

I still have a slow-burning hatred for Alan Sugar. Did anyone else watch it? I had never seen it before, but my reaction was more amplified than I could ever have thought. I don't know how I managed to sit through an hour of S'ralan, the weird man-child OAP hybrid pointing his stubby fingers about and expelling the most tenuous metaphors you've ever heard. Fucking bongos. That and the pure unabashed egos and bitchiness of the contestants had me screaming at the telly like I was watching a footy match after downing eleven pints of Stella in a wifebeater vest. The sad thing is that I know I'll be addicted now. I'm a masochist, plus it's good telly, however much I pretend otherwise.

"I know all the words to Candle in the Wind, but that don't make me Elton John". Yeah, well you can spew metaphors, but it don't make you a poet. Pillock.

My Twitface Update: I'm off to go put my face in a wood-chipper to ease that hour of pain before bedtime. Toodles.

I wasn't kidding.

2009-03-21T06:59:00.000-07:00

Monkey wrong-doings in the media just keep on coming. They've had enough. Yeah, you didn't take me seriously about the ape uprising, did you. Actually, I lie. I posted that blog on Deviantart too and had a fair few weird private messages that took it a liiiiiiittle too seriously. Others had a good ol' laugh, others played along.

For those of you that took an unhealthy interest in my last blog, here's some food for thought.

"Seemed lovable". The words of a victim.

"The animal threw the missile from the top of a tree after becoming frustrated with his tiring labour, according to reports.

Leilit Janchoom, 48, had employed the monkey to pick coconuts which he could then sell for around 4p each.

The animal – named Brother Kwan – found the work tedious and strenuous but Mr Janchoom refused to let him rest, dishing out beatings if he refused to climb trees.

It is believed that the monkey eventually snapped, and targeted his owner from a high branch with one of the hard-skinned fruits.

Mr Janchoom, from the province of Nakorn Sri Thammarat in Thailand, died on the spot after being struck by the coconut, according to reports in a local newspaper.

The dead man's wife said that the monkey had "seemed lovable" when they bought him for £130."

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/4970905/Monkey-kills-cruel-owner-with-coconut-thrown-from-tree.html)

Hah, just a case of karma, you might think. A singular attack. No real threat to humanity, just to monkey owners that take advantage of our primate chums.

Wrong.

It wasn't enough to use their knowledge of tools to floss their teeth with human hair, and to hurl rocks at us. Now they are killing our bees with weapons.

Less bees, less pollination. Less pollination, less food. They're slowly starving us.

Scheming little bastards.

Planet of the Apes

2009-03-14T09:57:00.000-07:00

Greetings, my fellow homo sapiens.

The two of you that read this blog may have noticed that I haven't been blogging about games and nerdy stuff as much as usual. This is because I haven't played any games in a month, apart from logging in to Star Wars Galaxies on a friend's character just to check that the libraries I created are still there. Humour me. SWG was a brilliant game before it got wrecked by over-zealous developers, and I miss it very much. It allowed you to own houses, anything from small huts to massive mansions, and fill them with anything you wanted to. I made a lot of money in that game as I was incredibly sad and played it from the start, and frequently. The libraries are full of bookshelves, labyrinths and puzzles leading to masses of extremely rare and now non-existent items. I relish the fact that people can visit those houses and see millions upon millions of in-game currency just sitting there, rotting and taunting people, it could disappear at any moment when the maintenance fee I put in before I left reaches zero. That Nightsister Melee Armguard hanging on an unused wall, now worth 1 billion credits. I love it. Love. It. I'd hate to see them be destroyed, and yet I do nothing with them, when they are of more use to people that play.

However, apart from that self-indulgent, egocentric slip-up, I have been preparing for an ape uprising. Tin foil hats and cans of beans, ahoy. It's no secret that I've been watching and reading all the stuff about Darwin recently, especially the brilliant Andrew Marr's 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea' documentaries. The moment I realised we are facing an ape uprising was a life-changing moment. Just like the day I realised I didn't know how many ribs I have, simply because I had never counted them. A moment like I offer to you, as I did my colleagues when I announced the earth-shattering revelation that there are various ways to wipe your bottom. Yes folks, in case you didn't realise, some people stand to wipe, some people sit. It caused a heated debate accompanied with blushes and outrage. Each of the opposite groups cannot comprehend how or why the other group does it the way they do, and insist that their way is best. Sitting you say? Isn't it unhygienic to put your hand in the bowl? Standing? Surely the halves meet when you stand? Some of the peacemakers insist they squat and hover, but we all know that they are lying to keep everyone sweet, two-faced, conniving little twits.

I digress, as usual.

Ape behaviour has been well documented recently. The little quirks are becoming more frequent, it's clear they're preparing to take over.

A chimp encased in a Swedish zoo called Santino was recently found to be 'planning for the future'. You mean he's opened up an ISA? No, you silly thing. He's been making piles of ammunition before opening hours, ready for when the strange human things start gurning at him, their piggish noses squished up against the glass, leaving terribly unhygienic smears. Planning for the future and utilising tools were once thought to be a unique skill known only to humans, a show of intelligence and of various levels of consciousness. Santino could have used our power of toolmaking wisely with his free will to create a nutcracker to open the inevitable tough nut you can never crack with your hands, but no. He made weapons. Stone weapons. He wants to make our faces concave. Squishy, even. Smashy smashy.

What did we do in response? We chopped his bits off to make him less aggressive. Less aggressive?! What male do we know that would be positively delighted that we had lopped off his knackers? Bad move. That's enough reason to start a conflict in the first place, I wouldn't blame them if they did.

Speaking of squishy faces, a celebrity chimpanzee recently ripped a woman's face off. An act of peace? Hardly. A stark warning to humans? Probably.

Another example of recent monkey intelligence in the papers today involves mother monkeys teaching their baby monkeys how to floss. Aww, isn't that cute. No. It isn't cute. They are teaching them how to floss with human hair. Sinister, sinister, sinister. Not cute.

Menacing.

Another study set out to test altruism in chimps - and found they were often willing to help others even when there was no blatant reward for themselves.

“Chimpanzees spontaneously help both humans and each other in carefully controlled tests,” said de Waal.

Other researchers, said de Waal, have found the same qualities in capuchin monkeys, which also show “spontaneous prosocial tendencies”, meaning they are keen to share food and other gifts with other monkeys, for the pleasure of giving.

“Everything else being equal, they prefer to reward a companion together with themselves rather than just themselves,” he said. “The research suggests that giving is self-rewarding for monkeys.”

Related research found primates can remember individuals who have done them a favour and will make an effort to repay them."

Oh dear. They can use tools and work together. They can be altrustic, which as you can tell by my odd hoarding of items out of spite in a virtual world, is a lot more than I can do, and probably more than most human beings who always give themselves the nicest looking roast potato when dishing up dinner. Survival of the fittest? It won't be me. I'll be kicked aside along with the American couple that recently experimented with their sex life by combining an existing sex toy with a saw (needless to say, it didn't end happily ever after), and all the people that have ever won a Darwin award.

To top it all off, the beautiful anthropological ape Mr Gorilla Bananas, who recently linked to me in his blog and pushed my blog viewers up from one weird ex-pirate stalker that smells of Werther's Originals, to two normal people and one weird ex-pirate stalker that smells of Werther's Originals, which I very much appreciate, posted a blog last night that caused me much alarm (and giggles as usual, but the alarm is a new thing).

"Many humans don’t realise that their species was once close to extinction. Aeons ago, on the African plains, it was your relative Homo Erectus that stood proud, while the newly-evolved Sapiens breed teetered on the brink. We gorillas thought you were done for and collected your artefacts as remnants of a doomed culture. Then came the great Wanga-weed infestation. Your hominid relatives smoked the herb addictively and got so high that they lost interest in procreating. The men of Erectus lost their erections and the species quickly died out, allowing humans to move into their tastefully decorated caves.

And so, my hairless primate cousins, the path of Life on Earth is crooked, contorted and capricious. A lucky break can rescue a species from the gaping abyss of doom, and propel it onto the pouting pinnacle of prosperity, before it is finally sucked into the swirling vortex of oblivion. Enjoy the ride."

We've got to watch our step, humans and humanettes, we're not on top anymore. Especially now the apes are keeping us in check by employing monkey spies like Michael Jackson to procure vast sums of money to fund their defences against human gurning in zoos. With a few thousand pounds, the weapons can turn from piles of stones to something more serious. Come on, twenty grand for two tickets to go see Michael Jackson in concert on Ebay? We can see through that, surely.

Fame.

2009-03-02T12:25:00.000-08:00

This isn't breaking news to some, but for hermits like me it was disturbing to see it was suggested that Sir Alan Sugar might be in the running for London Mayor. Thank goodness nothing has been confirmed, and therefore is more than likely to be just a rumour and nothing more, but imagine if it did turn out to be true. Let's exercise some imaginary outrage.

So, now the credentials needed to become mayor are simply to be famous? Maybe Labour is thinking that 'star power' or whatever is what made Boris Johnson successful, but let's be honest, as much as I like Boris, I think it was more of a case that he wasn't Ken Livingstone, therefore he would have won by default even if he had pencils up his nose and had buttoned up his shirt the wrong way. I like Boris and think he's doing okay, but you have to admit that isn't too far off from reality. Hiring someone by name alone would be terrifying, like saying, "ooh, Harold Shipman. I've heard of him, he must be a brilliant doctor!" I realise that my opinions, as always, are opinions, and are usually completely wrong and stubborn (hence the reason I am still single), but you don't need to tell anyone in advertising or psychology that people like a good name, so maybe Labour are onto something.

Sir Alan Sugar. This is the man that once came to my grandad's shop - the business is still running, admittedly not raking in quite as much as Alan Sugar wipes his very rich bottom with every morning - in a clapped out old van, asking him to sell cheaply made Amstrad combined tape decks and record players, which were apparently all the rage at the time.

"I'm not selling those", my grandad said, "they're shit."

"You can't say that to me!"

"I can and I will. They're shit. Your stuff is shit."

And off he went in a huff, to make himself a multi-millionaire, selling crap stuff, the usual make it cheap, sell it at an extortionate price, but trade on the name and let people be comforted that they'd never be charged so much for something that's rubbish. *Cough* Dyson. *splutter* Sony televisions. Excuse me. They used to make good stuff, but now it's no better than anything else, especially if the competitor is German.

Sorry, tangent. I read Charlie Brooker's column as I always do on a Monday, and coincidence gave me this, I think it all sums it up. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/02/charlie-brooker-politicians . We are the normal people stood there, saying that we don't want all this, it's all shit. Their stuff is shit. They don't care, as long as they get what they want. Maybe he would be a fitting candidate after all.

Maybe my inherited resistance to the man and the memories of my grandad becoming highly animated, swearing and jumping up and down in his chair doing his hilarious cockney impression of him even when seriously ill gives me a slightly skewed bias, but does the idea seem slightly ridiculous to anyone else? I still can't look at Arnold Schwarzegger delivering a highly serious speech without thinking, "GET TO ZE CHOPPA. AWLGHLLGOOALLLGHOALL". Imagine how long it is going to take to get rid of the, "Boris, you're fired", if he did run, and won.

Scary. Thank Gawd and Jeebus it's all make-believe, but it is scary how far one person with a handful of lies, too much confidence, and pure cheek can influence others and how they think. Let's have someone that knows what they are doing, someone with a soul for once.

Speaking of lies, confidence and pure cheek, I also heard Simon Cowell was joking about investing in having his body cryogenically frozen when he dies. That's quite a shame actually. I was relishing the thought that he might be defrosted in his jewel-encrusted pants to see a futuristic General in a dystopian 4016 shoving a twig in his hand and screaming at him and the other egocentric idiots to get a move on because there's a galaxy war to be fought. Oh how the tables will turn.

WHO IS YOUR DADDY AND WHAT DOES HE DO.
AWLGHLLGOOALLLGHOALL.

Social networking MyTwitface style status update thingy:

Went on a walk today to the post depot to pick up a magic book that hadn't been delivered, only to find it had an 18 quid customs charge slapped on it. Spent the rest of the day in a Daily Mail style outrage. OUTRAAGGGEE. It took three weeks to be delivered, if you see postmen pulling rabbits out of hats, you know why.

A cheerful blog.

2009-02-22T12:59:00.000-08:00

I was going to write this blog a few days ago, but decided I didn't care enough about it to think it would make a particularly interesting rant. Nothing more significant came along, so here we go.

The end of the world.

We came close to it the other day, when the hilariously ironically named French nuclear submarine Le Triomphant crashed into the HMS Vanguard. Both ships held around 16 nuclear missiles each.

"France's defence ministry said in a brief statement on 6 February that the Triomphant had struck "a submerged object (probably a container)" during a return journey from a patrol, damaging the sonar dome on the front of the submarine."
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/16/nuclear-submarines-collide)

Am I the only one that finds it worrying that the people controlling nuclear submarines don't know what a nuclear submarine looks like? Apparently, their stealth modes were so good they didn't see each other. If that isn't a facepalm moment, I don't know what is. Oh wait, there it is.

(Daily Mail)

All that is needed is massive bumpers on all ships, non?

"The collision of two submarines, both with nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons onboard, could have released vast amounts of radiation and scattered scores of nuclear warheads across the seabed.

"This is the most severe incident involving a nuclear submarine since the sinking of the Kursk and the first time since the Cold War that two nuclear-armed subs are known to have collided."

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/4640673/British-and-French-nuclear-submarine-collision-as-serious-as-sinking-of-Kursk.html)

Nice.

What are the chances of two submarines hitting each other in the Atlantic?
Evidently, not zero. I'd at first guess it would be pretty low, the Atlantic is pretty big, and the submarines are pretty small. But it happened. That's my point. The ocean is big, but the submarines are constantly moving. It would surely be very likely that it would happen at some point eventually.

A freak accident could technically happen at any moment. Like now. Nope. Now? No.

...Now?

Safe.

It could have happened yesterday, when I was on the train sitting next to a lady (if you can call her that) munching away on her Wotsit sandwiches. Imagine going like that, your last moments gagging on cheese fumes.

Tip: Wotsits may taste brilliant, but they are only to be eaten alone, in your own home, with a window open, whilst wearing nothing but old underwear and a satisfied smirk.

Speaking of chance, last week I accidentally knocked off a knob cover from a Roberts radio at work while dusting it. After the usual ritual of turning the air blue, then whining to the manager that I've made yet another cock-up, I decided to reduce the price of the bugger for aesthetic reasons, but tried to superglue it back together as I had nothing to lose. This turned out to be a bad idea, because the superglue gel shit ended up discolouring the knob altogether. Unfixable.
I shit you not, ten minutes later a lady came in and begun to ask me about Roberts radios, as she said she wanted one for her blind mother. You can guess what radio we ended up taking to the till.

What are the chances of that? Most would say it would be extremely unlikely. What are the chances of the lady that now has the radio reading this? Thankfully, zero.

Ugh, pang of morals. Bad joke, bad. *slaps wrist* This is why I am an atheist, religion holds no comfort for me, I am secretly hoping it's all an unfortunate lie, otherwise I'm screwed because I'm going straight to Hell for selling blind people soiled radios. I love science more than religion because it stays firmly within this universe, which my puny brain can handle and reason with. It is friendly, helpful, and unthreatening. There I go again, another notch on the way to the eternal barbeque. Not everyone shares the same view, a few months ago it was the Hadron collider that had everyone going. I vaguely remember a scientist saying that it is extremely unlikely that it will cause a black hole big enough to do any damage.

Unlikely, not impossible.

Nothing like a bit of scaremongering to end the weekend. I actually love the idea of the Hadron collider, and hope that it finds what it is looking for, the little scamp. Don't look at me like that, cheer up already. Just live your life, for all we know, the world could end if the new Cadbury's advert came on after a particularly popular programme. Imagine it, everyone in the country waggling their eyebrows furiously in unison, causing particles in the air to shoot around more vigorously than usual, causing enough friction to start millions of fires.

Unlikely, but not impossible. Actually, I lie, that is a theory with major scientific flaws, but you get my point. Silly me. No television programme nowadays is good enough to attract more than three people to one of a million stations at the same time.

It seems very strange that the end of the world hasn't happened already (although some would argue that it has), given that the Earth has been around for so long and that there have been so many near-misses. There are buttons that could be pushed right now; (safe!) that could bring it all about sharpish, but it hasn't happened yet. Maybe the Mayans are right, maybe it is holding out to end or change in 2012, which is why nothing remotely interesting has happened yet. 2012. When everyone is crammed onto the tube trying to get to and from the London Olympics and too many people eating Wotsit sandwiches are present, people start suffocating and dropping like flies, causing mass hysteria. The mass hysteria causes mass hysteria and ultimately chains of heart attacks occur as the horror unfolds, everyone dies, the Earth implodes.

Cheer up.

Either way, I hope I am doing something pretty fucking amazing and non-Wotsit related when the time comes.

A small note - Am I the only one that is annoyed that so much hate is being directed at a certain female University Challenge participant (that I am not going to name as I am quite happy with only three readers, thankyou very much)? Come on guys and gals, she's more intelligent than you, that's all you need to know. Admire her knowledge. Don't dumb it all down by solely focusing on how sexy or bitchy you think she is. I'm not exactly a hardcore feminist, there are too many benefits for thinking otherwise, such as enjoying men holding doors open for you or letting you have the first taxi, but I can appreciate when sexism is taken too far by both sides, if she were male there would be nowhere near as much venom. Why do we as a nation see intelligence as a bad thing?

"Malaria is spread by mosquitoes. I brought some!!"

2009-02-05T11:38:00.000-08:00

I can no longer contain my love for Bill Gates. By rights I should hate him, as he's infinitely richer, more intelligent, driven and selfless than I can ever hope to be.

Oh, and fucking insane.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1136463/Theres-reason-poor-people-malaria-The-moment-Bill-Gates-released-jar-mosquitoes-packed-conference.html

Thanks to Grant for giving me this link.

‘Malaria is spread by mosquitoes,’ the Microsoft founder yelled at a well-heeled crowd at a technology conference in California.

’I brought some,’ he added. ‘Here, I’ll let them roam around – there is no reason only poor people should be infected.’

Hahahahhhhhh! The thought of hundreds of fat cats cacking themselves at the thought of being bled dry after they've done it to us all these years has me positively glowing.
Unfortunately, the mosquitoes were malaria-free. Bor-ing.

Feebay founder, I mean, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar said, ‘That’s it. I am not sitting up front anymore.'

Brilliant.

Gates then went on to state that more funding has been spent on baldness cures than on malaria prevention.
That about says it all really, I bet they all fucking sprinted for the door to their hybrid cars, screaming for DDT through their polished veneered teeth.

Bill Gates, the closest thing to a real-life crazed scientist comic villain we have, I salute you.

You can just about see the MUHAHAHAHAHHAAAAAA.