Retro

For the fourth part of Gaming Week we will be discussing the wonders of Retro Gaming.
Anything older than N64/PS-One is generally considered to be a Retro Game.
As some of you might know, I have access to the following platforms:
Spectrum ZX, Commodore 64, N64, GC, Xbox, Old PC and New PC. Yes, Old and New need capitals. The Old one had such a small amount of memory that whenever I felt like playing Tyrian instead of Doom, I had to uninstall one to make room for the other. Happy days. I also used to have an old Amstrad (gave it to a friend) and an Electron (died).

There are some big differences between old and new games, and not just the graphics. Retro games are in many ways just as good as new games. The picture below is of Exolon, one of my favourites. For unexplored reasons you were a little guy with a suit who could fire either a machine gun or missiles. The game - especially the later stages - was an incredible test of finger speed as you had to dodge/shoot down bullets lightning-fast.

But the big difference was difficulty. They were Bloody Hard. Modern games are not just a walk in the park by comparison, but they're lying on a floating bed which gently drifts through the Hanging Gardens. While being fanned. Retro games were so damned hard! Some I never got further than around 10% on, but that was still after ages of tough gameplay. But they were enjoyable, and you got more of a sense of satisfaction from doing something right than you do when playing some modern games.

The best series of Retro games I ever played were made by the company Ultimate, and I had them all on my Spectrum ZX. They were Underwurlde, Sabrewulf (below) and Alien 8. Despite being so old they were on tapes rather than CDs (yes, that old), these had massive maps.

I still remember the noise that old games made when loading. For those who don't know, when it was reading off the tape, a series of flickering bars would appear on screen. These would either be red/light blue or a thinner set of dark blue/yellow. As long as the flickering of these was consistent with the horrible churning noise coming out of the speakers (listen to Particia Hewitt for an idea) then the game was loading correctly. We never thought that things could load any faster - and then I got a PC. With C&C 95. Oh how things changed. That's also still a fantastic game, but like many Retro games it was Bloody Hard. After around the fourth level you were getting owned unless you were incredibly quick.
Oh, and there was also a Hobbit game. Fantastic, wasn't it Miles?
Finally, no-one has yet answered the question about why buttering toast is so loud.

Purple

Well, after weeks of carefully planned procrastination, I have finally got round to purchasing Half-life 2 : Episode One off evil smelly Steam.


One word review : Wow.
One sentence review : Better than Half-life 2.
Long spoiler-filled review :
Half-life 2 ended with the Citadel’s reactor blowing up. Just as it does, your companion Alyx is thrown backwards in the explosion. Time freezes, the G-man appears, says some weird stuff and returns you to stasis. At the start of Episode 1, you see Alyx being rescued from frozen-time by a group of purple vortigaunts (somehow). They then hold-back the G-man (somehow) and rescue you too. You soon find out the Citadel hasn’t quite blown up yet (somehow) but it shortly will, and you embark on a mission to slow its destruction (somehow), allow more civilians to evacuate (somehow), and get out of the city yourself (somehow). It’s a rather vague opening, but that's no bad thing.
The first two levels are Gravity-Gun centric, but they give you a lot of new tricks to do that weren’t in Half-life 2. There are quite a few new things to be found, and you can now modify rollermines so they aid you. Pretty cool. These levels are good fun, but nothing outstanding.
Then the third level rears its outstanding head, “Lowlife”. This is set below the city in maintenance tunnels and disused car parks. Now that the Combine defence field is gone, ant-lions and other nasty creatures are flooding into City 17. Also, Combine are now being zombified since they lost much of their defence with the destruction of the Citadel. “Zombine,” as they are known, make a fantastic new enemy. Quite speedy, tough to kill, and sometimes they pull out grenades and stumble towards you.
This level also contains lots of battles between the combine, zombies and ant-lions. There is one particularly good sequence where you need to locate and move three wrecked cars with the Gravity Gun to block up three ant-lion nests to give you time to open the painfully slow-moving gate. Alyx’s help here is invaluable, mainly because she is close to invincible. Not quite though, as I found out when I allowed a gantry to fall on her head. I thought it was part of a scripted scene. Not my most shining moment.
The fourth level, back on the surface, starts with a long and interesting speech over the public broadcast system the rebels have now taken over. It is actually worth listening to, and also quite amusing. This level has lots more great urban combat, including one of my favourite sequences. You’re inside a fully-destructible ruined building with a gunship overhead. You have to fire through the rafters while it’s destroying the building to try and take it down. Eventually, it crashed inches away, smashing through the weak wooden roof. Very cinematic.
One fantastic point is the sub-titles. I say this because whenever Alyx starts battling the enemy, it says [Fighting Sounds] in big letters at the bottom of the screen. Stunning! Even when she kneed a Zombine in the groin, it said [Fighting Sounds] rather than “Ohhhh goddddd myyyy crotttttchhhhh!”, as one might expect.
Possibly my favourite section was the final fight at the end, where you have to take on a Strider in a train-depot without any rockets. There’s a maze of crates and ladders to be negotiated while avoiding the tripod bastard to finally make your way to the rockets which you don't know are there until you fall upon them.
Various other things to mention : the sound-track for the game is fantastic with some excellent tracks. The levels never get boring either, and there are some excellent puzzles, which, unlike Tomb Raider games, don’t feel like they are purposely puzzles.
The Poison headcrabs are back again, reasserting their position as the most annoying in-game enemy ever. You hear the hissss and spin around, disgorging all your ammunition in the hope you might just hit the bloody thing before it jumps on you. Also, the final sequence with the Citadel actually exploding while your train rushes out of the city is amazing.
There’s plenty of in-game dialog to be heard, which I think is always a good thing. Alyx, unlike the rebel NPCs in HL2, doesn’t actually obstruct you. All too often in the other game, a grenade would land at your feet. You’d turn to try and flee and find some rebels blocking your way, calmly smiling. Then the grenade would explode, and kill you. Stupid rebels! If you’re their savior they should get the hell out of your way.
I have one big complaint though. At the end of the game you have to transport groups of rebels across open Combine-controlled ground into a train station. I think you have to do this 5 or 6 times. 3 or 4 were more than enough. True, each time you head back new enemies spawn, but there wasn’t enough done to keep it fresh. The Strider battle straight after made up for it though, and the end sequence. Now we just wait until Winter for Episode 2.
Oh, and I took all these pictures myself, mainly because some things are random (like the gunship crashing right next to me) and were just too damned cool to pass up. I want Episode 2!

Second

We now come to the second part of the FPS extravamawavaganza, and for your sophisticated perusal today we have the best three Pistols, "Things that do the most damage in the least time", and Heavy Weapons.

The Pistols

Pistol - Halo
This is a pistol that was removed from Halo 2, simply for being so amazing as far as I can see. Given a choice between this and the rifle, for taking down the tougher enemies, the pistol triumphed. It wasn't so much a pistol rather than a one-handed rifle. It packed such a punch that in multiplayer only a couple of headshots killed. It could take down tanks and Banshees if you had the required skill, and yet it was the default weapon so often. This gets the award simply for being so bloody powerful.


Phoenix - Perfect Dark
Another wonderful Maian weapon, this could fire two kinds of bullets. "Normal" green bullets which did a fair amount of damage, or a feature that was unique at that point in FPS history - exploding bullets. These normally resulted in charred corpses and could even be used to destroy enemy spawn-points in singleplayer (an unexpected consequence I feel). Add to that it's cool looking, duel-wield-able, and fairly fast-firing for the damage it dealt out, and you've got a winner.

MagSec 4 - Perfect Dark
Yes, another PD weapon. The reasons for this one may seem rather vague, but basically it fired bursts of three. There's nothing particularly amazing about this, but since you could hold two and they reloaded in a rather cool way, it earns its place here. Too vague? Play Perfect Dark and you'll see why it's here. It could also snipe rather well for some inexplicable reason.

The Weapons That Do The Most Damage In The Least Time

Shotgun - F.E.A.R.
This category was originally called "Shotguns", but upon realising that nothing even comes very, very slightly close to beginning to come near a fraction of the brilliance of the FEAR shotgun, it was renamed. Anyway. This shotgun rocks. It's powerful, loud, and surprisingly good over range. But more importantly, it can do some of the most gory things to target. They can lose their legs/arms/heads if shot in the right place with this thing, have their bodies torn in half, or simply explode in a cloud of blood. Fantastic, as a friend of mine would say.


BFG - Doom
The "Big Fucking Gun", as it is nicely known. I could have included a picture of the original, but it was small and lo-res, like John Reid's face. This is the most devastating weapon in the Doom series, able to wipe out a whole room of most enemies in a single shot. Possibly the most powerful weapon ever made in an FPS - can anyone think of a stronger weapon? This gets in simply on account of the levels of devastation it can offer. Fun.


Dispersion Gun - Timesplitters Future Perfect
Note : This gun is not red. It's just the lighting. Also, it does not fire the missile you can see. I couldn't find a shot of it firing.
This fires charged-up blue blasts of energy, which warp space a little around them (a nice F.E.A.R-like effect) and send people flying backwards. It had a nice quick reload speed, but the best thing was using it against multiple enemies. You could send them all flying into the walls and the floor within seconds.

The Heavy Weapons

Slayer - Perfect Dark
A better picture, a better picture, my kingdom for a better picture. Still, you get the idea. It is a rocket launcher. You have two modes to choose from : traditional rocket, or "Fly-By-Wire". This fires a rocket, with a camera in the nose, and you can guide the rocket wherever you want! Such fun to chase people around or blast them when they least expect it. The only rocket launcher that can go round corners.

Repeating Cannon - F.E.A.R
F.E.A.R's graphics are not in-fact that poor, but this screenshot was captured using slow-mo, which changes and warps the graphics a little. It normally looks ubercool.
The Repeating Cannon does what it says on the box, fires shells at a rapid speed. Again, it can make people explode, has a nice space-warping effect, and generally destroys everything in sight. It comes with a nice supply of ammo, and looks good to boot.


Particle Weapon - F.E.A.R
The gun is the dark thing on the right, by the way. It fires a purple beam of energy which rips through everything (with cool, fractal-like graphics) and turns the enemy into nothing more than charred skeletons. What more could you ask for? Nothing, that's what.
It's an instant kill on most enemies, an excellent sniper weapon, doesn't come too late in the game for you to have fun with it, and has a fairly good supply of ammo. Oh, I forgot to mention. The charred corpses also then crackle with electricity.



And there you have it! The top 18 FPS weapons ever! However, a few came close but just failed to make the cut. These will be mentioned soon.
Tomorrow : Half-life 2 Episode 1 review.
Also, there are now two HIDDEN taglines to find, and each has a different method for finding it. Good luck!

First

Even though I've spent much of today trying to cut a Post-It cube EXACTLY in half, leaving 50% of the Post-Its on either side (harder than it sounds), I have found time to begin GAMING WEEK!
Yes, just like we had a week of hotly-debated discussion about why the USA is doing more to destroy the world in a multitude of ways than any other country has ever managed, we will now have a week about gaming. Today and tomorrow we will cover the Top 18 FPS weapons ever created (yes, this number keeps rising).
Today, we have the Top 3 SMGs, Rifles and Odd weapons. Each top three isn't in any particular order, since that would be just too hard to decide and may result in total cranial meltdown. Also, depending on how soon you read this, we may have 5 new taglines for you to find, some of which may only make sense to a very small number of people.

The SMGs

CMP 150 - Perfect Dark

You will shortly notice a pattern that most of my top weapons come from Perfect Dark, but we begin with the CMP. For starters, it looks cool, you can duel-wield them, and it has an excellent rate of fire. But more importantly, in secondary-mode it's bullets locked onto the enemy. How useful is that? Though realistically, it would make war rather boring. The two armies sit at home and spray bullets in the general direction of the enemy country, and wait for them to home in. In-game, however, it still rocks. Nice reload anim too (yes, I do care about things like that. On a side-note, the BEST reload anim ever in my opinion goes to the AK from XIII).

MP5 - Half-life

Ah the ubiquitous Mp5. Weapon of Bond-Villain-Henchmen everywhere. Why don't they ever carry anything more accurate? Surely they get annoyed when all the bullets ping harmlessly off the floor and wall inches away from their target agent?

Anyway. I like this gun for several reasons. It was useful all through the game, able to take down most enemies and even do fair damage to the bosses. The grenade launcher attachment was a welcome addition too. Plus it looked cool and had a nice firing sound, if there is such a thing.

One shame - this gun was ruined in Half-life 2. It was weak, in-accurate, poorly-designed and the grenade attachment was awful. There were also so few grenades avaliable for it you treasured them like somekind of holy relic.

Uzi - BLACK
Oooh. Look at the high-res on that. Apart from measuring at 74 on the coolness index (between Poker and the Ultimate Showdown), there was something satisfying about being able to silence an Uzi. Especially one with so much damned ammo to fire about. Loud, powerful, fun, and needlessly violent.

The Rifles

Penetrator - FEAR
I'm sure lots of people remember the half-life crossbows. Yes, it was undoubtably fun to nail people to walls and other objects with a big red-hot bolt sticking through them. But FEAR took this one step further. While the HL2 crossbow can only hold a small number of shots, the Penetrator is rapid-fire and does the exact same job. Using this and slow-mo is incredibly fun and certainly puts the enjoyment back in DIY, nailing clone troopers to any avaliable object. Even a sweep across the room would leave people dangling within seconds.


Farsight XR-20 - Perfect Dark
The Farsight is one of the Maian weapons from Perfect Dark, an alien species who like all things blue (maybe they vote Conservative?). All featured the cool reload of picking up this weird blue orb which was then absorbed into the gun. Very freaky.
This gun earns its place here because the scope allowed you to see through walls and lock onto your enemies. A good shooter could then land an instant-kill shot on opponents weaving through the corridors anywhere on the map. If you used the All-Weapons cheat, this also allowed you to shoot at the characters being stored for cutscenes in single-player. Amusement all round.

Laptop Gun - Perfect Dark
Yes, another weapon off Perfect Dark, famed here for all-time because of its originality. In gun form, in the main picture, it fired high-pitched shots at a good speed. Nothing too remarkable there. But for a secondary-mode you could hurl it on a wall and it would deploy into your own sentry gun! The perfect thing for helping you camp on multiplayer - just stick it somewhere, hide behind its fire, and snipe/rocket at your leisure without the risk of retaliation. It was also vital in higher campaign difficulties, and it was just such a damned cool idea.

Odd Weapons

Super Gravity Gun - Half-life 2
Yes, it's true. I'm not including the regular gravity gun. Shocked? I'm sorry, it's a great idea and all but hurling paper bags at Combine soldiers does start to wear. And it is simply not an effective tactic to deploy a radiator as a bullet shield then hurl it at someone - USE YOUR DOUBLE-BARRELED SHOTGUN! But the Super one is hilarious. As-well as being able to manually rip-apart Striders, pretty much, it can grab people, instantly kill them, and allow you to fling their corpses about. Add on the fact that almost anything can now be picked up, and you have a great weapon that defies most categories.



N-Bomb - Perfect Dark

This weapon is so odd and rare I couldn't find a better picture. My apologies. Basically, it was a grenade that created a big black cloud, both making your opponent's vision blur (a bastard in multiplayer) and it forced you to drop your weapons in confusion. Again, a fantastic concept, but the N64 frame-rate didn't like it. One to use sparingly.


Crowbar - The Half-life series
The old classic - I can't belief Valve replaced it with a wrench in Opposing Force. Anyway, it can break stuff, hit stuff and generally beat stuff. Personally I preferred it in Half-life 1 because it was used both more often and more realistically there for breaking air-vents and smashing glass so you can crawl through windows. I don't remember this once in HL2. In a similar vein to the Chainsaw from the older shooters, weapons that don't shoot are always a nice change.




So there you have it, that's part 1. Please leave comments about whether you agree, disagree, or weapons you think have been omitted here. Tomorrow : The Pistols, Explosives, and "Things that do the most damage in the least time".
Also, thanks to Tom for various discussions relating to this.

Thanks to the Perfect Dark mod for a few pictures, and any other sites I stole these off. Nothing here except my writing is copyright me, but it probably is copyright to someone else. Please don't sue me.

Green

As some of you may know, the internet at my dad's house has been unreliable at best, and wholly unusable at worst. Our internet provider Zen say nothing is wrong, and until now so have BT.Last week we finally got a BT engineer in. He opened up the main socket downstairs, said "Ah yes, I see what the problem is," before shuffling off to have tea and crumpets like all Brits do. He even charged us for this afterwards, £6.99 + VAT.
He then got the net working perfectly at the downstairs socket, but with the slight inconvinience that the phones stopped working, and the net couldn't be accessed anywhere else. BT considered the problem "fixed." Tell me BT - if I was to take a single car off the roads, would that instantly fix the problem of global warming?
Then yesterday we have a Mr Greenaway. Who rocks.
He apparently found three problems with our cabling, each more horrendous than the last.
Firstly, one of the cables was connected to something twice. Not too bad, but it might have messed up the signal a bit. No great disaster there.
Secondly, there was a telephone wire with a staple going right through it. Now that's pretty bad. I tried to find out who originally fitted our house but he seems to have fled the country.
Thirdly, and worst of all, two cables were frayed at the ends and simply stuck together with tape. I wonder if that could POSSIBLY be the problem?
Still, everything now appears to be working tip-top, spick-and-span, ship-shape and generally good.
On a random note, does anyone know why buttering toast is so damned loud?

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I've just discovered you can have a little sub-title majigger beneath the big "Thoughts, Rants and Ideas" title. I'm now considering having a little random/amusing tagline which I change each day. A good idea?
Tomorrow : The top 10 FPS weapons ever. Suggestions welcome.

Options

-Note : Only Halo PC fans will get the first joke-

Well. Since the blog has recieved critical acclaim from such well-regarded speakers such as New001 - "lyk omg j00r blog pwnz" - I've been thinking what can be done to improve it. I've already added picture which I think certainly brighten up the area, and also offer me (and others) opportunity for image editing. Always a good thing.
I had in fact planned out today's blog entry, but since it may not be appropriate I have delayed it until tomorrow to check if the crazed celebrations are justified. So, I was intending to ask the following questions.
What would you like to see added?
For a future blog entry I already have several videos planned in addition to reviews of this and that, once I actually get HL2 : E1 and see what all this purple vortigaunt business is all about.

But it was recently brought to my attention the option of GUEST SPEAKERS. Naturally I would link to their site and them to mine, thus increasing the webernet traffic which is always good for business. I'd need an assurance you were going to talk about something worthwhile, be able to include a picture, have the grammatical skill and panache that evades a lot of people these days, and generally not ramble on. At all.
So if you want to apply for that most previleged of positions, talk to me on msn. If you're not on msn and you're one of the people who has found this blog through other means...post a message. I'll get back to you.

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On the Half-Life note, I do a very good G-man impression.

Double

The hypocracy of some of these people is beyond belief. If being a raging hypocrite was an Olympic event, the American government would win every time. Hands down. No-one else has even a leg to stand on when it comes to double standards and general spraying of bullshit (insert mental image here if you want).
"The people of this region, Israeli, Lebanese, indeed Palestinian have lived too long in fear and in terror and in violence," said "Condi" Rice recently. Let's just dissect this a little.
Israel has NEVER lived in terror. Israel invented terror. Saying "Indeed" Palestine is almost like they are hardly worth mentioning. It's like "Well, I guess you could say" Palestine has been crushed and bullied ever since the Israelis originally illegally stole their land, persecuted their people, arrested thousands of innocents (many under 16) and bulldozed their land and homes.
"Israel is acting with tremendous restraint, were they targeting civilian populations there would be thousands upon thousands dead," said some moron on the BBC boards whose name I have erased from my memory for more important things like how to clean toilet cisterns. Yes, because they're so "restrained" that they are purposely targetting the infrastructure of Lebanon, killing civilians instead of the Hezbollah fighters (I guess people who don't fight back are easier...)
And the final great act of double-standards : Israel kill/kidnap people from Palestine daily, and in the past have done the same during their occupation of Lebanon. But two Israelis? Unacceptable.
Lastly, Ehud Olmert said he was "very conscious" of the humanitarian needs of Lebanon's civilians, but insisted Israel was defending itself against terrorism. Define "humanitarian" would you? People need power, water, food and shelter, you know. The four things you seem to be trying your hardest to destroy.
Sorry about rapidly changing fonts, all should be back to normal tomorrow.

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And finally, we have a poorly edited picture which will only make sense to one person. Shock and awe optional.

*tyrannosaurus scream*

Moral

As Ford Prefect's nutritional analogy once went - "I'm deficient in moral fibre."
I've seen far too many people who seem to follow this. A couple of examples : I use wikipedia lots. There is a hoard of fascinating information there for anyone to access and add to if you happen to be a particular experts on the eating habits of the mayfly, for example. But I recently read that people are now purposely putting false information there, though I never saw an example of this until the other day.What is the point? Is there some satisfaction in annoying people you don't know who've never done anything to you? All it does is piss people off, give those people who aren't total assholes extra work, and possibly have a greater effect because people are using inaccurate facts.
More than this, I am pissed off by anyone who cheats in games. Cheating against the computer - fine. The only people to suffer are the military/aliens/rebels/mutants invading your planet/city/research lab. And who cares what they think?
However, cheating in online games is just pathetic. It gives you a rank/level/victory that you don't in any way deserve, it proves that you must really SUCK to have to resort to such a pathetic thing, and it ruins the game for everyone else.
And yes, because I uploaded this one today, there will come a second entry later which is actually TODAY'S entry, as long as my USELESS INTERNET holds up.
Also, since Shitrag was just an easy way out of having to come up with a worthwhile topic one day a week, it is now gone. Vanished. Lost in the ether...

Showdown

I would really like it if someone could make the Wasps wage war against the Nettles, and with any luck they'd wipe each other out and the Earth would be rid of its two most twattish species. I say this because, in addition to a general all-round HATRED of aforementioned species, they were also the two most annoying obstacles in airsofting. Under enemy fire? Fine. Some buzzing shit flying around your visor/accidentally taking cover in a freaking nettle patch? Bad.
I hate wasps. Ever since one landed on my neck during autumn - "A leaf just fell on my neck - OW! SHIT SHIT SHIT!" (wasps are crinkly to the touch) - I have dispised the fucking things. All they do is fly around all day with their Darth Vader insectoid faces and sting things.
Why? Only the American Military compares in terms of attacking innocent people. Atleast the benign bumblebee (see below) only attacks when its life is in danger, since its sting kills itself too.


And Nettles. Piles of crap! Atleast thorns don't give you big bubbly things on your fingers where you may or may not have decided to take cover in a nettle patch. There weren't that many nettles. Besides, all the ferns hid the nettles and so I didn't discover it until I'd leapt into cover - "Shit! There's fucking nettles everywhere!"
So that is my suggestion. Have the battlelines drawn against the two worst and more gratuitously violent species on the planet, and let them wipe each other out. I'm sure some pesticides/insect repellent can clean up the survivors.

Boss

Recently I read about someone who really hates boss fights. I can't remember who it was, or where I read it, but I was sickened. I think it might have been in PC Gamer on a review of the game Prey - alternatively, it might not. I had a lot of my mind that day since I was trying to construct a fort out of glasses cases.
I've always thought boss fights are often some of the best parts of games, when done well. There is a fine balance to be struck between making the fight exciting and long enough so you want to keep playing it, but dull and too long so you want it to be over quickly. Too many times does the boss fall into the trap of just doing the same attack over and over. The worst I can think of off-hand would be Alec in the Goldeneye game - his entire programming was to sprint about twice as fast as you could around the satellite dish and shoot at you whenever he stopped at pre-determined points. That was all he did. True, in a game based on a James Bond he was unlikely to sprout claws, but it would've made things more interesting.
The Zelda series is famous for great bosses and Wind Waker (the only one I have, embarassingly) certainly lives up to that. It has eight main bosses, four of whom you fight twice in different ways, and dozens of mini-bosses. Resident Evil 4 (again, I really want to play the older ones. Can anyone help out?) also has great bosses, albeit slightly more gory ones. Resi 4 isn't cell-shaded after all.
Some other bosses of note :
> Nihilanth. The final fight of otherwise-stunning Half-life. The fight isn't too bad, but why battle a giant floating baby with what appears to be a crane hanging from its anal aperture? Surely a huge Vortigaunt would be better? Or just make Gonarch the final boss and move him 2 levels forward.
> Quadraxis. One of my personal favourites from the otherwise not-amazing Metroid Prime 2. Lots of different stages to fight through, lots of different weapons/visors required (Normal, X-Ray and Thermal are all used I seem to remember) and he has a nice variety of attacks.
> Verdugo. I'm aware that some people don't like this Resi 4 boss, but I do. You COULD kill him instantly using the liquid nitrogen and rocketing him, but that takes all the fun out of it. Have a chase through the corridors! Use your magnum, all the nitrogen, and your shotgun. Then, if timed correctly, by the final barrel of liquid nitrogen he'll have the right amount of health to die from a single mine for a stylish finish.
> Tartarus. Last boss of Halo 2 - while not fantastic by himself, atleast he's not another giant spider thing. Makes a nice change.
And while the fight with this particular boss is good but not top-level (since it is the first boss in Wind Waker), I just like the artwork and wanted to put it here. So cool.

"Holy crap! My depth perception sucks!"

Translation

I recently watched the 2005 movie of Doom. For those of you who haven't heard of Doom, it was a genre-defining FPS long before the days of Goldeneye, the far-superior Perfect Dark, and Half-life. The plot is pretty simple, in the game : Hellgates have opened in a research facility on Mars, go and close them, while also killing everything that gets in your way.
The film had a rather more complex plot. Those working on Mars had been examining a species which had lived there before them, who apparently had a 24th chromosome, making them super-human (conviniently). However, they died out. I won't spoil the ending for anyone who watches it, but there are a fair few twists and turns including a rather good - if surprising - final fight.
But how well do most games translate from games to films? There haven't been films from many of the most lucrative franchises - we don't see adverts for someone to play Gordon Freeman do we? Although, if John Prescott does get dismissed, I think he would be perfect for the role.
Despite what the stupid Radio Times may think (they gave it 1 star) I don't think the first Tomb Raider film is TOO bad. Not too good either, but certainly not worthy of such a shockingly poor rating.
And now we have the Halo movie coming up, made by legendary Peter Jackson of "Jack Brown Genius" fame (rated 4.5/10, about a flying monk). Surely that can't be bad, but in the interview with him he seems wildly unenthausiastic about. Despite praising the Halo series and the world Bungie has created, he sounds like he'd be more interested watching lily pads float. Will it be good? I hope so. Denzel Washington wants to play the Master Chief I hear. Fine, as long as Steve Downes still does the voice.
But that's another problem. We must keep the same voices (especially Sgt Johnson) but what if the actors who play them don't look right for the role, or aren't that great at physical acting? For all we know, the guy who plays Sgt Johnson (a tall black marine Sgt who provides amusing relief, for those who don't know) might be white, only 2ft tall, and have a vast green afro with a purple mohawk in the middle, and he refuses to change his hairstyle for religious reasons. THEN WHAT DO WE DO?
Finally we have a picture of normally amiable Peter Jackson looking rather lustful.

Power

It's the question on everybody's lips! If they happened to be talking about it at the time, that is.
WHAT is the power of the future? Where do you stand on the debate?
The two biggest things France has got right are these.
1 ) Anti-war. The French were opposed to the Iraq/Afghanistan war (and the latest Israeli attack), and although I might not be Jacques Chirac's biggest fan, he is very anti-war. Good.
2 ) The nuclear option. Around 80% of France's power is generated by nuclear power.
Personally, I think nuclear power is the best option. Think about it this way - using fossil fuels, we are constantly destroying the planet. Even though Dubya may not believe in global warming, it is a fact just we breath air, the sky is above us, and Equilibrium is a rip-off of the Matrix. While renewable energy is a good option, it's wholly un-cost-effective (if there is such a word) and often can only produce meagre amounts of electricity, with some caviat - e.g. sun, wind, waves etc.
Yes, nuclear has the chance for a catastrophe. But think about this - nuclear power is literally millions of times more effective per gram of uranium/coal/oil than coal and oil power. Constant burning of fossil fuels destroy the environment much more than a potential nuclear disaster ever could.
Thus, the upshot of all this, go nuclear.

Coming tomorrow : Something more amusing. Sorry for the short entry, my net has reached new levels of awfulness and I've been lucky to get this on before being disconnected again.

----

On a brief side note, they say it takes all sorts to make the world. That may be, but I'm pretty certain this is illegal.

Fan

Praise the person who invented the fan! What a brilliant invention.
For those of you who don't know, today is one of the hottest days in British history apparently. This is made even worse by high humidity levels (it wasn't so bad earlier in the week - it was hot but not wet, so much more bearable) and a second fact. For those from a certain country who may not know what humidity is, clickie. Anyway, Cheltenham is also apparently a heat sink, meaning that because of the hills and the valleys, or something, we are even hotter than the rest of the country. Add to that the fact that the South is the hottest in the country, so we're the hottest of the hot. As it were.
And we were rated as one of the best places in the country to live. Why was this? Just take a look around Cheltenham and really show me something that is outstanding here.
I used to have a nice white fan but I think we left it behind when we moved house. Damn its eyes. I've contrived to drink more water today than possibly ever before - except maybe the great drought of '63, and the time I spent in New York/DC - and I've also been fanning myself with game manuals. Vice City has currently brought itself to the forefront of cooling technology.
I wish I had a fan. Mail me one.

----

It has now been a fortnight since "anonymous" bet me an Oxford English Dictionary (full, not that concise crap) that this blog would not exist today. It quite distinctly does. I haven't recieved it in the post yet. SEE TO IT NOW.
If you can't find a site, check here. It's only £850.00, surely someone of your poor-bashing position can afford this.


On second thoughts "anonymous", I'll settle for the crappy concise cheapo shit version as long as it comes with a fan. A good fan. And not some crappy spherical cheapo shit from a dubious site like this. I'd much rather some absurdly expensive luxury ceiling-mounted quality fannage (with built in lights) like this.

Explorer

There are many, many reasons why Internet Explorer sucks. Here are just four of them.
1 ) It is made by Microsoft. Since they own a total monopoly over everything I try not to use their products. There's a good reason they're being fined millions of US dollars every day because they don't give anyone else a chance to do anything. Except Apple, but they're more comedy relief than computer company.
B ) Internet Explorer is far move vulnerable to attack than wonderful Firefox. There are so many security leaks it would make Thames Water jealous. If they were a computer company. Which they're not. Anyway, Microsoft have tried to sort this out with all their various patches and updates (don't you just HATE that damned thing that forces you to restart your comp?) but to little success.
1/2 of 6 ) Firefox is simply faster than Internet Explorer. Various surveys have ranged from "a little faster" to "zomg @ speed!!!111". Fiddling around with the configuration can increase its speed even more and cancel out the "memory leakage," the only really annoying thing about firefox. After a few hours it starts to eat up your virtual memory. That's a cunning fox if ever I saw one.
IV) Internet Explorer lacks many of the facilities Firefox has. As well as various useful downloadable upgrades for Firefox like "NoScript" which disables Java thus stopping some nasty bits of malicious code (a picture opportunity in this phrase I feel), it also has the fantastic tabs system, which has two advantages. Firstly you can have lots of pages open in one window, clearing up the taskbar, and secondly teachers never think to look at the top of the screen to check for games.

I've heard many poor excuses for why people don't use Firefox, but the most common seems to be that their family can't understand that there could be more than one way to access the internet. Someone (I've forgotten who - please comment and remind me) cunningly downloaded Firefox, deleted Internet Explorer and renamed Firefox "Internet Explorer." Clever.
Finally, a selection of paving stones which get the MKZRJ seal of approval (I may do a picture of this too...)


----

And just a brief, amusing note :
"The Smith & Jones Wild Horses Centre in Amsterdam, which specialises in the treatment of alcohol, drug and gambling addictions, is offering a two month residential treatment for gaming addiction. According to its dramatic sales pitch, 'Gaming can be a series addiction and can even lead to death. Gamers are often addictied to stimulants, including speed and eventually even cocaine.' "
Damn! Someone's onto us!

Poofabric

This week's winner of the much sought-after and coveted

is Lord Levy.
But why I hear you cry! Why would you give such a wonderful man with a name like a brand of Jeans such an award? Well listen up shitrag fans, because this is why.
Well, firstly he is a raving Zionist and therefore a supporter of the illegal state of Israel. That alone is enough bad reasons. But, perhaps more importantly, he is Tony Blair's chief advisor for the Middle East.
Whatever happened to having impartial advisors? A Zionist is someone who feels Israel should exist, and since he has been described as "a leading Zionist" I wonder who's side he will take? Israel or the other countries they are oppressing and destroying? That's a tough one.
Recently he has been implicated in the "Cash for peerages" scandal - just another example of the corruption of leading western governments. For those of you who have been living under a rock on Mars with your eyes closed and your fingers in your eyes shouting very loudly for the past year, apparently the labour party accepted "loans" in exchange for giving those who loaned them the money honours. What scum.
Anyway, another person who thinks all the non-Jews in the Middle East can go to hell as long as Israel survives. Let's hope he gets arrested.

"Come on...give us a kiss."

Crisis

Tonight we take a gander down politics lane for some calm and controlled comments on the obscene things that Israel is doing in the Middle East - and they have been doing since their creation.
For starters, Israel is the instigator of modern terrorism. They took land of Palestine using nothing but terrorist tactics to establish their own (illegal) state. One charming example : after raiding a military camp and taking all the soldiers hostage, they killed them. But ofcourse, this wasn't enough. They filled their bodies full of explosives and hung them. When their companions came to take their bodies home for burial, the corpses exploded. And what group did this? The group which hopefully-soon-to-be-dead-but-currently-vegetable nonentity Ariel Sharon once belonged to.
Now Israel claim Lebanon is the aggressor. Let's look at history shall we? Israel occupied Palestine and kicked out the Palestinian people - they occupied Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, the latter for over 20 years. UN resolutions were passed against Israel and ignored. The latest resolution to make them retreat has - guess what - been vetoed by the USA.
So I support Lebanon, and Iran and Syria should they give their backing. This should be a call to arms. Maybe this war could stop Israel?
Ofcourse not. Israel can't really lose. America and their allies can get away with anything. Palestinians are still killed every day by Israel. The world doesn't bat an eyelid. But three Israeli soldiers - HOLY FUCK! Mount the guns! Israel have one of the largest armies in the world, the highest soldier/civilian ratio in the world. They spend the most money per capita on the military in the world. Palestine - thanks to the Israeli war machine - has more asylum seekers than any other country. Add the fact that they're financed by the USA, and there's no way they'll lose.
Oh well.

----

I was looking through old Radio Times from a few weeks ago to try and find a particular article, and I came across a badly-worded reference to Spring Watch, which honestly read : "Today we get a better view at Kate Humble's great tits."
Well done.

Golden

Hard to believe but this is the 50th blog entry! Incredible isn't it? So I thought we'd take a look at where the blog comes from. Now, living in two houses as I do makes this a little challenging, since half come from each house. However, I happened to be at this house when I decided to do this entry, so from this house come the photos.
So, for starters this is my computer station. As you can see it is very neat with not a single Hula Hoops packet or glass of liquid in sight. The wires trailing into the bin are intentional. You can see a fragment of the Xbox at the bottom of the screen. Some other items of interest :
> There is a pen by the monitor. I use it to write things.
> There is a keyboard interface machine. I use it to interface with my computer.
> If anyone can identify the CD on the CPU, you get a medal.


Next we can see what it looks like outside the window in the wonderful Orwellian society in which we live. The gunships make a bit of noise but that's nothing compared to when the Citadel's on full alert - as a beer-drinking security guard once remarked. The Citadel does sometimes block out the sun which can be a little annoying at times.

So there you have it. That is where this blog comes from. Also, anyone figure why the title is Golden? It's really not too hard. See you next week, window fans!

By week I mean day.

i.e. tomorrow.

Realism

I just suddenly realised that games and films are incredibly unrealistic. I mean this in two ways - firstly, you never see the essential things that have to happen in life, and secondly people do some of the most incredibly unlikely things.
In films, people do the most outrageous things. Not just James Bond jumping off a cliff in a motorbike and then somehow finding his way in mid-air into a falling plane, but just generally. People keep fighting for a huge amount of time in fist-fights despite having 64 different kinds of crap beaten out of them.
But more importantly, you never see people doing those menial things in life. You see people eating, sure, but it might be a vital scene where the main character proposes marraige/has a shoot-out/simply eats. Anyhoo. Sometimes you'll see people sleeping, but normally this is just a prerequisite to a burglar or one of the couple sneaking out - perhaps to eat flowers? You never see people going to the toilet (not literally the act, just heading to the bathroom).
But San Andreas takes the biscuit. Firstly because CJ can drive and fire a tank at the same time, secondly because on full health he can survive a fall from the tallest building, but most importantly because CJ NEVER goes to the toilet. You have to eat, you have to exercise, you have to sleep (when you go over the disk, I assume), but CJ never goes to the toilet. There are even toilets in some of the safe houses but there's no "Press Enter to use toilet" when you get close to them.
So, has CJ ever had a shit? I think not. And since the game is supposed to take place over - what? A few weeks? A few months? Certainly not a day or so - CJ must be suffering from constipation of collosal proportions and the mass must create the gravitational pull of a small planet. It's a surprise that at some time during the game his backside doesn't just explode in a fountain of crapola.
Perhaps he's embarassed about doing it in front of the player? Well, he's paying a rough price if that's the case.
Thanks go to Tom for creating the charming picture you see below of CJ having a shit while maintaining his dignity. I was busy at the time doing something for blog entry #50.

"Hold on, hold on, here it comes-"
*faecal tsunami*

So what do you all think? Is realism in games and films something we need, or would it just simply spoil some of the fun? It would be a bit annoying if you had to go to Los Santos and recruit a gang member every time to wanted a gunner in your tank...

Amnesia

Just a short blog entry today on the topic of Amnesia.
There are too many films that use Amnesia as the main point. The three that initially come to mind are Memento, Bourne Identity and Long Kiss Goodnight.
Long Kiss Goodnight was made first with the premise of an ex-CIA agent (Geena Davis) waking up somewhere, no doubt, discovering she has immense butt-kicking skills and proceeding to kick butt with aformentioned skills. Same as the Bourne Identity, though the BI is considerably better I think.
But Memento did something very differemt. The main character has short-term amnesia and so tattoos himself with vital information to help him track down his wife's killer. The end is left deliberately vague - maybe he killed her himself but just forgot, and made up a load of facts to draw himself off the track. Memento is a must-see film. In addition to the plot itself being confusing, the entire story is shown backwards. Not the speaking sections, obviously, because otherwise it just sounds bizarre and mangled, like one of vacuous moron George Bush's speeches.
Anyway. That particular mental condition is used far too much I think. Much better if some other condition could be used, like cronic incontinence. Wouldn't that make a great thriller? Every two minutes the main character stops with something trickling down their leg.
Perhaps these days with so many tens of thousands of films it's hard to be completely original. But after three above-average films using amnesia, that's enough. Besides, they always forget who they are but not basic skills like eating and going to the toilet. Again, a lot of missed opportunities I feel.
And finally here's one of the posters for the Long Kiss Goodnight, on which we can see Geena Davis looking surprised everything is exploding despite apparently holding what looks like an petrol can.

Stalker

Coming out soon is the game Stalker : Shadow of Chernobyl. You don't play a sexual pervert running around one of the world's greatest nuclear disasters - instead, you play someone who after a vaguely altered Chernobyl disaster has to go in and kill all the mutants inside. Am I the only one who thinks this isn't in good taste?
So, because of this, I've taken the liberty of coming up with four games in the worse possible taste I can possibly think of. How I love black humour.

AIDS 2006

Play as the killer virus sweeping the world! Evolve from little more than a third-rate bacterium to become the top predator in the food chain! Earn bonus points for evading condoms and killing entire families! Unlock bonus upgrades such as the dirty syringe!

Gulag Killer

Innocent people are trying to escape the Soviet gulags and you're the only one who can stop them! Grab your cattle prod and various other torture devices, get out there and stop them! Make them confess to harming the motherland in great show trials! Rack up a torture combo for extra points! But be careful, if a single person escapes despite being found guilty of "sabotage", it's game over!

Suicide Bomber

Change your friends from normal people to devoted fanatical suicide bombers! Co-ordinate your attacks using a whole new inventory system to deliver a crushing attack! But be careful - if they don't go off in perfectly synchronized time, you won't show the stupid British and American governments that their foreign policy is shit! And even if you get it right, they won't listen.

RapeMan

In this fantastic new game from EA, you play a serial rapist out to rape as many people as possible before being arrested in one of the more inbred states and sentenced to the electric chair! For some reason you are yellow and circular. Make sure to check your Thrust-O-Meter and Grab-O-Meter to deliver the appropriate action in addition to ensuring your catch doesn't escape! Fun for all the family!


Got ideas for any others?

Flamingo

This is a song about the Flamingo.

A wonderful bird's the Flamingo,
But very few speak all the lingo,
Some say it looks like a Dingo,
But it never plays music like Ringo.

Almost all Flamingos have legs,
From Flamingo elites to the dregs,
While a Flamingo may never lay eggs,
They drink beer in entire kegs.

Flamingos are really very pink,
And luckily they don't always stink.
I once saw a Flamingo wink,
But I don't think they're into kink.

Their legs are extraordinarily thin,
So much they could fit in a bin,
But in doing that what would they win?
An accolade, or maybe a chin?

I need to think of more rhymes,
But what else does apart from slimes?
Another good one could be grimes,
But that doesn't make sense.

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To go completely offtopic, for those interested, I have a picture here of a Coil pistol (like a small coilgun). From now on, anything under ---- is just random notes about something or other, maybe relating to previous entries like this one.

Crapcloth

This week's

award goes to none other than Rupert Murdoch, for a wide assortment of reasons.
He is basically a more media-friendly version of George Bush. Everything the moronic President says, Murdoch agrees with for the most part. Since he seems to own all of the civilized world to some extent, his filthy talons seem to be in everything (see below).


He owns Fox Media - the legendarily unbiased channel, apparently - and uses it to send to America all his suitably right-wing agendas. He also owns the Sun newspaper, and apparently the Page 3 girls recently said wildly unconvincing statements in support of the Iraq War. Do I sense someone telling them what to say? Hah. Don't be silly. He also owns MySpace, Sky TV, anything else that is both going to pull in the largest number of people, and has some say over their opinions and whatnot.
Obviously there is nothing wrong with being a good business man, but there certainly is if you abuse your power to forward your moronic agendas. He recently married again to a woman 37 years younger than him. Why do the phrases "Gold digger" and "Trophy wife" present themselves?
Thus, Mr Murdoch - aka Secret Twat Ninja #74 - wins this week's award for someone the world would undoubtably be better without. I wonder if one day, people will invent a time machine, and decide to get rid of Rupert Murdoch. So they go back, remove him, but then there would be no reason for them to have gone back to remove him, so they wouldn't go back. If they hadn't gone back though he would still be able, and so they would go back, and so he wouldn't exist, and so...

Atlantic

It is suprisingly hard to explain the simplest concepts to some Americans who play online games. Anyone with sense will see the following : If an American player is hosting the game, then everyone not in the US is going to lag a little. If a British player is host, then the Americans are going to lag a little.
This seemed wholly incomprehensible. Playing a game where an American was host (and so our American ally wasn't lagging at all) he was wondering why he got more kills than us. After carefully explaining to him why while also helping him with some of the tougher letters, he still seemed unable to understand this simple concept. We then even started a custom game, and when he still couldn't get it, one of us shouted "It's because of a little thing called the Atlantic Ocean!". See below.


Yes, funny that a mere 323,600,000 cubic kilometres of dihydrogen monoxide would do such a dastardly thing isn't it? It is annoying that so much in games hinges on both which team has host and where that host is, but it's one of the faults with online games. Unless we could suddenly develop instant communications (perhaps a series of hypersonic carrier pigeons are the answer?) this is always going to happen.
Also, on a side note, my blog has now been indexed by google. Search for "Mkzrj" or "Thoughts, rants and ideas" and I come up top. For some reason only the "Lies" post comes up top, so I've quickly edited it to reflect this.

Pokemon

Pokemon is possibly the worst thing to come out of Japan except that insatiable hoard of bizarre porn movies that seemed to have coated the earth in a fine film of perversion. But Pokemon - apart from the repeated frames to show moment, the fact that everyone has arrows for eyes whenever anything of any consequence happens and the whole "10,000 exciting species to learn about" thing, it bugs me. I'm sure it bugs most people and that is no doubt why millions of "Kill Jigglypuff" etc games have arrived. What the hell kind of name is Jigglypuff anyway? It conjours up disturbing images I'm not going to go into any further.
Digimon, for some strange reason, I find less annoying. Even though that has "Mega Rex Skeletron combines Ultra Turbo Killatron 6000" and all that stuff, it's not as bad. Also, at every possible turn the strongest-monster-possible turns into the even-stronger-monster because it got a virtual memory upgrade or something. These are digital monsters after all.
Anyway. Back to Pokemon. There doesn't seem to be any plot other than some random creatures need to be captured and enslaved, and random people to be defeated.
What kind of a sick world fights animals against each other? Several people have been gorged during these stupid bullfights in Spain and cockfighting etc is outlawed everywhere, but this isn't much better. So much for animal rights, let's equip them with Lightning +4 or whatever and let them kill each other.
And the actual creatures. I mean, I seriously doubt that evolution on any planet or bizarre offshoot of reality has produced something that looks like a heavy blue turd with a plant on its back. Firstly, because we currently believe such a creature to be biologically impossible, and secondly before it looks damned stupid. People are more likely to laugh than run away when it powers up for Gas Attack +8.
Finally, show me a single creature in the animal kingdom that levels up and evolves unless you hammer the B button.

"Yay! Bestiality +6!"

Musical

Today we have some more moaning about adverts. Firstly a little thing about cliches in adverts, and then those bloody MUSICAL adverts.
You know the black and white adverts where everything is dull and dreary? Then you plug in those stupid little aromatic things and suddenly the room lights up. There are so many of these you could make "Black and white adverts for odour thing" an Olypmic event. Believe it or not guys, the best smell a room can have is fresh air, not :
"We've toiled long and hard to bring you this divine fragrance. Created by picking only the most exquisite and perfect jewels from the African diamond mines, we then mix these with the best roses the entire world has to offer and add a delicate touch of rare Neptunian Lavender, only found on one of Neptune's rings. Between this is creates the most exotic-"
IT'S A SMELL. It shares a property with dog shit.
Anyway. Recently two awful musical videos were brought to my attention, those for "Carcraft" and the latest Frosties abomination. There isn't much to say about the Frosties advert apart from the fact that it's horrific. The kid is annoying, sings like he's being strangle and burnt at the same time (not a bad idea) and a few lesser points :
A. Why is there a man in a crate? Yes, maybe he enjoys Frosties, but the only possible reason for him to be eating them in a CRATE is some strange crate-cereal fetish. And I thought ant sex was weird.
B. Why does the kid fly at the end? And why does Tony the TIGER - Tigers being a traditionally land-based creatures - join him? In the AIR.
C. It's a pirate, not PIRE-ATE. It had nothing to do with eating funerals. Oh, what a subtle joke that was.
D. Who puts on trainers the instant they get out of bed? Not I.
Anyway, the "Carcraft" advert. Now, apart from the song which is the worst thing to sneak into our universe from some foul temporal break since "Sheila's Wheels", the song lyrics themselves are painfully annoying. I would give you a link but I fear it would destabilise the world. Anyway, after musing over this name I realised an excellent new marketing strategy for these people. It's certainly better than assholes in suits dancing round a forklift truck. Or something.

Model shown is the Moron v245. Price from £15,299, £45,699 with seats included. Ogres and minotaurs optional.

Zwinky

"Today's entry is about the Zwinky."
"The what?"
"Exactly."
So went a conversation on MSN earlier while I was discussing today's blog entry. Because this poses the question that has haunted man since he first walked the Earth - what is a Zwinky?
It's like a Weemee but with a few subtle differences.
1. Check out google images. Not a single Zwinky actually comes up, apart from some weird images that have nothing to do with this shitty thing.
2. The Weemee doesn't require you to download any software. As it turns out, the Zwinky does but I decided not to, which is just a good thing. Apparently it adds just to the Systray and has all kinds of spyware nastiness. It's strange that I didn't trust a site that contains cartoon characters stripping and exchanges clothes on the front page.
3. The Zwinky is evidently shit in comparison, as shown below. On the left you can see the glorious Weemee in all its interwebular glory, and on the right the paltry Zwinky.

As you can see from these two highly-realistic and undoctored pictures, the Zwinky is completely rubbish and is trying to fit into the world without success. In conclusion, if you want an amusing little cartoon which apparently looks something like you despite having a distinctly poor choice of hairstyles and clothes, go with the Weemee. Many thanks go to dj chainz for using Photoshop on the first picture while my useless PC is being de-buggered. It should be back tomorrow though!

Orange

Anyone in the range of nationalist/facist/racist is, by default, a lower form of life than the common tapeworm. The BNP, aka British Nazi Party fall nicely into this. I still can't believe their leader was cleared of racist charges - what kind of a shit BNP leader doesn't hate everyone who isn't white?
Anyway, today we're going to discuss Robert Kilroy Silk, the orange man with the IQ of tupperware and founder of the wonderful Veritas, like the BNP watered down through several stages of rock to produce natural pure git. He seems to be making his rounds of the narrow-minded idiot parties, starting off with UKIP and then - maybe they weren't cretinous enough for his tastes - forming his own party Veritas, which caused much amusement when people realised the word "ass" is part of it. How we laughed.
I must confess this man has annoyed me for quite some time. Hes's not quite worthy of our new weekly supplement "Shitrag of the Day" but he certainly comes into the git-o-meter somewhere between Ruth Kelly - Boy Wonder - and bloody monopolistic raving lunatic Rupert Murdoch, aka Mupert Rurdoch, aka Secret Twat Ninja #74.
It's reassuring that Kilroy is one of this country's most hated personalities. For those of you lucky enough to have never received retinal burns from viewing this fiend, here is a charming picture of him, presumably after he's been apple bobbing in his own shit. Or something. There are so many things wrong with this picture I don't know where to start.

Insults

Today we have a brief section detailing the 3 worst ways I have ever been insulted. There is a certain art to coming up with the right insult, and as has been proven many times, Americans simply cannot do it.
Apart from the ubiquitous classic "You fuckin' British faggot", here are the three most bizarre and hilarious insults ever.

In 3rd place : "You long-necked British faggot." Oh, it's true. The British are all Quermians.
This insult makes so little sense we just set about laughing. What the hell it has to do with tea and crumpets remains to be seen.

In 2nd place : "Why don't you go sing on Broadway you British faggot?". Oh, stunning. Whatever the hell this means has totally escaped me. Because, of course, everyone from Britain sings on Broadway. Morons.

In stunning 1st place, someone once called me "Logarithmic."
Oh! How it burns! They've finally discovered my one weakness! Whenever I am called a mathmatical function I get all wobbly at the knees and fall over. Idiots.
Also, I've decided to try and include pictures wherever possible from now on to make things more pleasing to the eyeballs.

Shitrag

I hate a lot of people, and a lot of things. I also like many things but this list is probably dwarfed by those things I despise. Thus I have created a new feature which I will no doubt forget as soon as something more interesting happens to me like noticing a squirrel. I call it : Shitrag Of The Day.

And there is my banner, in all it's standard-template glory. Today's coveted prize of being randomly insulted for several paragraphs goes to That Stupid Old Bag Who Got San Andreas Banned In The US. Or, in brief, TSOBWGSABITUS. I like acronyms. From here on in she will be referred to therefore as TSOBWGSABITUS to make things briefer, easier to understand, and less aneurysm-inducing.
TSOBWGSABITUS no doubt supports those US senators who want to get all video games banned. I hate people like this who seem utterly convinced that they know best about what would benefit the youth of the nation. Take your pick : We take out aggression killing videogames characters (often in amusing ways) or go on gun rampages. 80 people a day in the US apparently choose incorrectly.
For those of you who don't know, she bought San Andreas (an 18 game) for her 13-year-old son, no doubt a moron if being A Stupid Old Bag Who Gets Fun Things Banned For No Good Reason (or ASOBWGFTBFNGR for short) runs in the family. Anyway, she realised it had 18 content, complained, and got the game banned. She's both ruined sales of what is, to be fair, a stunning game, and also denied loads of people from playing such a fun experience.
The weird thing is that it got banned because of the sexual content and the Hot Coffee Mod, NOT the violence. Again, it seems people would rather their citizens go round killing people than having sex. Am I the only one who sees some totally fucked up logic here?
So, TSOBWGSABITUS wins today's Shitrag of the Day Award. She can collect her prize in hell.

Ruined

Why do they do this? Why do the producers of games start off with a stunning, genre-defining game and then go and ruin it all by releasing a sequal better used as cat litter?
I have 2 examples in mind. Firstly, the game One Must Fall 2097 by Epic Megagames (at that time a 3-person company, now making Gears of War for the 360). Although no game where you control 100ft robots and beat seven kinds of crap out of each other can be bad, it was a superb game. Loads of moves, secrets to unlock, different levels, and you could even create your own tournament with a minimum of programming knowledge. Good for me then.
Anyway, a newly released sequel is called OMF : Battlegrounds. I downloaded a demo...and it is bad. Really bad.
It's what I call "Clunky 3D". It's 3D, but the edges are incredibly rough, things move jerkily, you can see where the different character polygons intersect even if you knew nothing about computer games. The dialogue is appalling, the plot painfully cliched, and the gameplaye totally and utterly shit.
Secondly, Perfect Dark. The original Perfect Dark beats Goldeneye in every aspect, and I still think it is the best FPS ever, with the Half-lifes and the Halos coming in a very close second. But Perfect Dark Zero is an awful affair. They made it a prequel instead of a sequel, and the original left so much that could be have been built on for a sequel. Plus the gameplay sucks and the graphics aren't great.
They have ruined the good names of these games. Any other examples?

Lies

Edit : If you've come here from google, click here to go to the main page.

Hoo-wheee. This is a long entry. In the e-mail I sent myself with notes in this has over twice as many notes as anything else. Why? Because it seems those in power in America seem to want to lie about EVERYTHING.
Firstly, the brilliant Uncyclopedia defines the USA as "The Fourth Reich". For those who don't know what this is a reference to, please go and research the largest and most devastating war ever to hit this earth. The United States are more and more like an empire than merely a country. Like Nazi Germany (and Stalinist Russia and Mao's China) - seeing a pattern here of evil regimes? - the American people are constantly bombarded with propaganda. The USA also has one of the world's lowest press freedoms. Despite apparently having an amendment for "freedom of speech", anyone can be tried for libel and slander at a moment's notice. There is even a US governmental directive where, if anyone speaks out or tries to tell the world anything the government doesn't want out, the offending person will either be discredited so people believe he is lying, or simply killed. Newspapers are closely monitored and it's harder than you might think to speak out. Some of it is just pure propaganda.
Next, the 600 secret prisons. I mentioned these briefly in another blog. One of the hundreds of things the American government neglects to tell its citizens about are the "unactivated" prisons around the country. These are set up in case of a full-scale revolt. No other country fears its own people so much in this day and age to have such a countermeasure. As far as I can see, the government knows it is pushing the boundaries of what an illegally-elected administration can do.
No-one is told the extent of American weapons. Theories range from nothing more advanced than the Aurora to some who believe they have harnessed anti-gravity technology, mind-control (the theory behind this is sound, see the HAARP project) and cloaking devices. A United States General recently said "If the public knew how far in advance American weapons technology is, they wouldn't believe it."
Antigravity - evidence exists that they may have something along these lines. People were experimenting back in the 1930s and some even came close. One theory about the Tunguska explosion (a MASSIVE blast in northern Russia in 1908, destroying everything in 2000 square kilometres) was a failed experiment of this sort.
Mindcontrol - the theory is sound. Low-frequency waves can project certain moods into people - happiness, angry, et al. Logically, finding the exact frequency for "rampaging needlessly-butchering gun-obsessed innocent-killing inbred lunatic/American infantry soldier" could be used as a weapon. No evidence currently exists that the appropriate frequency has been found.
Cloaking Devices - again, some evidence of things being test-flown before "vanishing". Some suggest the Philadelphia Experiment (hyped-up by conspiracy theorists) was "merely" trying to cloak a battleship, albeit with unfortunate results (most of the crew died). But most likely a load of rubbish.
Moving on from hidden/suppressed technology, the USA has extensive influence in other countries. As I already mentioned they seem to believe they can control South America, and plans are even being suggested for the assassination of brilliant Hugo Chavez, simply for being left-wing and not a total oil-guzzling fascist. Assorted plans were drawn up to kill Fidel Castro, and after his death the USA is planning to move into Cuba quickly and re-assert their authority. Can't have a liberal country so close to the Fourth Reich now can they?
Similar to press freedoms, the USA's isolationism is increasing. Just like after the first world war when they refused to be part of the potentially-useful League of Nations, America apparently wants little to do with the outside world unless it involves oil. Most people seem to think Europe is just one big country (The United States of Europe perhaps?).
The two big American conspiracies are the JFK assassination and the moon landings. Firstly, JFK. I can't stand these people that go "He was killed when his car was in a triangle of roads. A triangle looks slightly like a pyramid viewed sideways-on, and since the symbol of the Illuminati may be a pyramid (if they even exist) the Illuminati were involved! And since their symbol has an eye on top of the pyramid, and meercats have eyes - OMG! The meercat Illuminati killed JFK! And since he was killed in a car, Rolls Royce must have been involved! And since both words in their name start with an 'R', they are all Reptilian! This explains everything! Reptilian Illuminati disguised as Meercats killed JFK!"
What a load of poop. The only slightly odd thing is the guy who shot him being shot himself, but I really don't have any other theories to offer, apart from personally believing it was the ferrets, not the meercats. I don't see how a meercat could operate a rifle but I hear ferrets have longer fingers.
But the moon landing is something else entirely. I'll just quickly zoom through why it may have been faked :
No blast crater beneath the lander.
Flag blowing in wind, but no wind on the moon.
Multiple shadows like in football stadiums - a studio?
Height of the cold war, they had to do something to beat Russia.
Perhaps most interestingly of all, the 9 or 10 astronauts from the first few missions where they "walked on the moon" - all of whom are Christian - were asked to swear on the Bible that they had been. All of them refused to.
Do I really think the moon landing was faked? I'm not certain, but it's a hell of a lot more likely than JFK being some grand conspiracy.
Psy-ops means "Psychological Operations", carried out by Black Ops soldiers. These are intended to give a certain effect on the person/people involved, such as the previously-mentioned Operation Northwoods to convince the American people (not a hard thing to do) that Cuba had attacked them. Some people say the Twin Towers and the London Bombings were just these. Twin Towers - no way. London Bombings - slightly more likely. I wouldn't put anything past the actual Axis of Evil. That is our Prime Minister and their illegally-elected President. In "V for Vendetta", the British government poison the water supply and kill 100,000 people to win a land-slide victory and put the British people behind new, Orwellian reforms. Did "7/7" improve feelings for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan? Temporarily. So maybe it worked...
Last but not least, Guantanamo. Ignore the official press-package, almost no-one there has been tried and a high percentage don't even have any proven links to terror groups. One man there this week named some people who had evidence that would prove he was innocent. The US government said it "could not find them" but it took the Guardian newspaper just three days to track them all down. None of the witnesses said the American government had contacted them in any way.
So there you have it. Some food for thought, as it were. After all these, if you are not totally convinced that the United States has more wrong with it than a Big Brother house full of Evangelists all singing James Blunt while frantically inbreeding, then you're a lost cause.