Thoughts, rants and ideas.

Waste

2007-08-25T00:26:00.000+01:00

New entry can be found on the AMAZING NEW BLOOG SITE at
http://tri.psychosheep.co.uk/request/showpost.php?id=17
Go now.

Train

2007-08-12T12:58:00.000+01:00

The Worst Journey Of My Life.

About three weeks ago, the plan was this :
Take the train to Sheffield, look around during the University open day, then take the train back.
Easy!

Act I - The First Train Journey.

It all went well until we got half way there. We stopped.

After perhaps twenty minutes, something came through the speakers.

“This is your driver for today speaking, folks. I’m afraid I don’t know why we’re not moving, but I’ll try and find out soon.”

HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY NOT KNOW? IT’S YOUR DAMN TRAIN.

Then another thirty minutes pass, until suddenly a frantic-sounding driver crackles on the intercom thing.

“Sorry folks, but this train, er, isn’t moving. There’s another train outside which will take you the last step of your journey, but it’s leaving in a few seconds!”

This is 100% true.

There was a brief pause while this information filtered down, and then a mad rush as people grabbed bags, stuffed coffee cups into pockets, closed laptops, rammed on hats and sprinted across the pebbles towards the other train. Literally ten seconds after we got on, the doors shut and it slid out of the station. Incredible.

We finally then make it to Sheffield, and go into the main hall. There, we see a dozen paintings of ex-teachers, all holding scrolls and staring at the painter with a look of either intense concentration or chronic constipation. Hours later, we head out onto the street to get back to the train station…

Act II - The Tram.

Let me relay this with total, total clarity.
We're waiting for the tram after the open day in Sheffield. Someone who looks like they fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down approaches us, brandishing some kind of clicky box with a handle. After a brief discussion, it turns out this apparition will give us tickets for the tram.
Now, this tram stop has two sides and two sets of raily things. Therefore, surely two different trams come through here, right?
We ask her, in clear English, standing on the left side of the station - "Does this tram take us to the train station?"
She answers, "Yes."
Funnily enough, we thought this might be accurate, seeing as SHE WAS ONE OF THE DAMN TRAM PEOPLE (I call them Trammies).
A few minutes later, tram pulls up, we get on, and it trundles off.

Now, thirty minutes go past. We go past lots and lots of stops, but not a single one looks like a train station, or has any kind of trainy sense to it. We notice our Trammie making her way back through the pedestrian throng and I ask her a question.
"This is the tram for the train station, right?"
This was one of those moments where the world holds its breath. Either my faith in the incompetent people of Sheffield will be rewarded, she'll reply affirmatively, and the next stop will be the train station. Alternatively, this might happen:
"No. That's the other tram, the blue line. You're on the orange line."
WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL US THAT BEFORE WE PAID FOR OUR TICKET AND GOT ON YOUR FUCKING TRAM YOU STUPID INCOMPETENT SOW?
So we miss our train and have to get one two hours later. But there was more pain to come...

Act III - Why Other People Should Not Be Allowed Out Of Their Houses

So, two hours later, we get on the train that is supposed to head back. In the seat opposite me, a man sits down. He is perhaps thirty years old, wearing the least fashionable clothes I have ever seen combined on one person, and with his shirt tucked into his trousers and his trousers pulled up around nipple height. Additionally, his top teeth hang over his bottom lip, giving him an impression of dangerous inbreeding.

But okay, I guess such people must logically exist to balance out averages – for every incredibly beautiful person, there must be a…one of these. Anyway, about three minutes into the train moving out of the station, this man – at least 30 years old – sticks his finger straight up a nostril to the knuckle. He then proceeds to rummage around inside, perhaps searching for whatever happened to his self-esteem.

Worse, he then takes it out of his nose, critically inspects the contents, wipes it on his sleeve, and continues to hum a tune.

Later, a woman sits down to me with the girth of a small planet. I genuinely have to shrink myself into the wall to avoid being crushed, and for someone my height that's no easy task. What made it worse was that this woman seemed to think she wasn't using up enough of her damn chair - and enough of mine - and over a period of the next hour wobbled closer and closer to me.

I hate society.

Act IV - The Second Train Journey.

We get to Birmingham – I think. Or somewhere similar. Anyway, the train stops in a siding for half an hour, and nobody can work out why the train isn’t moving. Eventually, there’s a bing-bong and the train driver starts talking.

“We’re sorry ladies and gentlemen, but because British Rail are staggeringly incompetent, we have to now go on a two hour diversion. Sorry about this.”

The entire carriage groans. Various people get off, curse, scream, explode, combust, or die. One person even mutters “We’ll see about that…” and storms in the direction of the driving carriage (what is this called?).

Thirty minutes later – “Actually, we’re NOT being diverted, but you do have to wait another hour. HA!”

Eventually we get home.

It was hellish.

I am never using public transport again in my entire life.

Notes :

Note 1 :

This was on an internet forum about Bioshock.

Originally posted by: manowar821

Originally posted by: Regs

[ **Important Note: Game requires Internet connection for activation** ]

God dammit!

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT TO SHIT HELL!!!!!

How can someone possibly complain about something that requires internet activation, while being on the damn internet? Such people astound me.

Note 2 :

I cashed in another 2700 freeroll (poker tourney), finishing 23^rd this time. However, this time it was HORSE. It’s a mixed game, which plays ten hands of Holdem, ten hands of Omaha, ten hands of Razz, ten hands of Stud, then ten hands of Stud Eight. That means every ten hands you have to change what you’re doing and totally alter your strategy. Considerably more interesting.

Although, one curiosity – No-Limit Holdem is obviously my best game, yet I don’t seem that good at Limit Holdem. Strange.

Since then, I’ve also come 35^th, and in the top 200 twice more.

Oh, and yesterday I played two nine-person tournaments at the same time and won them both. That was nice too.

Note 3 :

There is no note 4, but note 3 is a lie.

Note 4 :

Note 3 tells the truth, but this note is a lie.

LEMONMAN

2007-08-07T23:24:00.000+01:00

Just like Fry -

ARGH! IMAGE HOSTED BY TRIPOD. NEW IMAGE SOON. [Picture of Fry from Futurama screaming]

- I am now at my wit's end trying to think of something funny to put on the blog. Well, that's not totally true. I have five topics, but none of them are particularly AMUSING. Which is the damned problem!
Wait, I know! SHEFFIELD! I CAN SCREAM ABOUT SHEFFIELD!
Expect that tomorrow.

However, unlike Fry, I am not my own grandfather, and nor did I once invade my own brain using a smaller copy of myself.

Return

2007-07-05T22:01:00.000+01:00

Another Stupid Conversation.

Jabberwacky: Who are you?

User: I'm Tom.

Jabberwacky: Tom?

User: Yes. I've been helping Mark with the blog.

Jabberwacky: Thanks.

User: I assume you think the return of the blog will be successful then?

Jabberwacky: Yes.

User: Good on you.

Jabberwacky: Thanks.

User: Are you going to make this entry any more interesting?

Jabberwacky: No.

User: Oh.

---------------------

Russell T Davies Fucks Up Doctor Who

Part II

Russell T Davies sat in the board room, brooding. Around him were posters from all the stupid shitty soaps he watched daily in order to get ideas to transplant into Doctor Who like a cancerous gene of death. His closest toadying lackeys sat nearby.
He had been pleased by the increased ratings from the final episode. Even though the tiny Doctor-bird thing was a pile of nonsense and he’d killed off the Master, people seemed to like it. Even he couldn’t fathom how, and he was the one who’d spawned that horrendous miscarriage of fiction. Nevertheless, now that Martha was randomly trundling off to Torchwood, they had to have another assistant.
Russell T Davies dragged over a barrel.
“Listen up people!” he shouted. “We’ve already emptied the barrel, and this last series we scraped the bottom of the barrel with that trash about the Dalek-human hybrid. Tonight, we must check underneath the barrel!”
There was a shocked intake of breath from the assembled assholes. Surely Russell T Davies couldn’t mean bringing her back?
“But…” whispered one. “You can’t do that. She’s talentless. She’s unfunny. She looks like someone who fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down!”
“Silence!” Russell T Davies screamed, producing a screwdriver. Carefully, he began to lever off the bottom of the barrel. It came apart with a creak of tortured metal, and he peered into the depths beneath. He raised his hand back out, carrying a card. It was filthy, and merely looking at it made several of his morons sick. On it were written the words:

Catherine Tate

Anti-Humour
Filling in for far better actors
Clod

He points to the phone. “Better give her a ring. She’s our new assistant.”

Legacy

2007-06-28T21:36:00.000+01:00

With our new and wholly illegal, undemocratic and unelected Prime Minster ruling our country for the foreseeable future, it seems appropriate that we recap the greatest moments of our previous No. 10 incumbent, who himself was elected by a mere 28% of the population.

Cash for Honours

During his reign, our great leader continued the age-old tradition of sleaze. This begun with the Conservative Party in the lead-up to Blair’s first victory and continued when Blair brought New Labour (otherwise known as the Conservatives) into power. Realising the best way to earn funding was to give out titles that once actually meant something, he brilliantly starting giving peerages to those who donated vast sums of money to the party. This brought in many donations from those desperate for the red robes of office that Blair promised those with more money than morals.

In addition to this stunning piece of economic management, the Labour party also received a £1m donation from Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One mogul. Not just content with leading the third most boring sport on Earth, he donated this money in order to ensure that he could continue to advertise cigarettes. Even though this donation had to be given back, it was clear from the start that this was a new government, and one determined to use all their wit and cunning to circumvent the political process.

The War in Iraq

Tony Blair and his government continued their legal tour de force when they invaded a country half way across the world unprovoked that posed no possible threat to us or any of our allies. Even though we knew that they didn’t have weapons, couldn’t have weapons, and even if they did couldn’t hit us with them, we still decided that it would be a good idea.

With the encouragement of our friends across the Atlantic who realised that oil should be valued considerably above human lives, we invaded and have now participated in the murder of a million people.

But all this pales.

Because.

The world has gone mad. A cog has fallen out of the mechanisms of reality. A wire has snapped and frayed in the databanks of life. Etc.

Tony Blair has been appointed as an envoy for peace in the Middle East. That’s like appointing Thatcher peace envoy for the miners. Hitler is now peace envoy for non-Aryans. Mao is now peace envoy for Chinese intellectuals. I am now peace envoy for people I really hate. I think you get the idea.

BAE

The icing on this Labour government’s cake of criminals would be the recent BAE scandal, where we apparently bribed the Saudi government in order to give us arms deals. Naturally, this combines the two greatest features of this government – weapons AND monetary scandal! This has now been discontinued because of “issues of national security” – or, to put it another way, Blair doesn’t want to be interrupted while doing the lecture circuit in the US. What a foul man.

Our New Great Leader

So now, Gordon Brown is our Prime Minister. Even those who voted Labour didn't vote for him, so it could easily be argued that not a single person in the entire country voted for him as PM. Hooray for democracy!

Chetz

2007-06-23T21:27:00.000+01:00

Celebrities Consider: The Entertainment Industry

Bruce Willis on The Entertainment Industry

Well, as you will know I've been branching out lately, away from the action hero role. It was a nice break from killing the scum of the world (Arabs, Germans and Arabs and Germans played by Brits), however, I'll be returning home soon for the action packed spectacular that is Live Free, Die Hard - or Die Hard 4.0, for the MySpace Intarweb Generation. Critics accuse it of having a blindly patriotic name, that wont appeal to people outside the US. Screw them. They can take their low-tech trash elsewhere while my guns and bald head crush all.
And besides, have you seen the trailer? I dodge a taxi - flying at my head! Yeah, take that England and your stupid Alan Rickman.

Gillian McKeith on The Entertainment Industry

The Entertainment Industry is evil, it's been feeding the world the idea of obesity. All these films where the star takes a bite of a burger without looking at the nutrional value or ingredients. Do they know how much fat they are taking in? It sets a terrible example to the youth. No wonder they suck so much. Sitting there at home, surfing the net- such a cess pool. Mind you, I did get my degree from there, so its not all bad I guess. So it clearly can recognise talent when it finds it.
Watch "You Are What You Eat."

Disgruntled Alien on The Entertainment Industry

WHY!? WHY!? WHY!? *wails* What did we do? All you ever do is kill us. TV, Games, Film, you hate us. We're NICE aliens. Why do you think we always want to take over your galaxy - five galaxies is enough! Sure, we wiped out all the races in those, but... they had it coming. They were... odd. Wrong. Yes, wrong. And besides, Independence Day. They zapped the White House. SURELY they were doing you a favour. And you repay them by blowing up their ship. How many millions of lives did you kill by doing that. You sick, sick people. Mass murdering freaks, get away from me!
And then of course Rowan. The horrid man wants to convert us to his religion. Why can you not content yourself with Earth? You are the true monsters! Your media simply confirms it. We'll have to destroy you, for your own good. Like in the recent Doctor Who with the orbs and whatnot.

Rowan Williams on The Entertainment Industry

The current state of depravation prevalent in modern society is directly proportional to the decreasing moral responsiblity accepted by the information presentation mediums of today. Rupert Murdoch is somewhat culpable, endowing these phillistines with the economic aid requisite to producing such crap. It's also with a deep heart and in a saddened society that I comment on the lack of religious content present in the "media". While glorious scripture remains dominated by our illustrious Bible, the same cannot be said of the entertainment industry. We need more Thought for the Day. It should last all day, everyday. And when I finally contruct my Intergalatic Church TM, I will be able to broadcast it straight into your minds! Mwa ha ha ha!

Hilary Clinton on The Entertainment Industry

Hilary for 2008. How could I get that message across without the wonders of the internet, TV, film, radio and other such stuff? Of course though, it is responsible for all gun crime. It brainwashes our kids into mindless killers, thirstly for the blood of innocents. Why else would gun crime be so excessive, and be on the increase in the Semi-autonomous state of England, where our media is filtering through and dirtying their traditional values with the filth of American society. This country sucks ass, and if you want the USA to change, you have to vote for me, you worthless incompetents. My husband may have been a blundering fool, but let me assure you, I'll lead with an iron fist, crushing all those who... I'll be nice. Games, however, must be banned, before they cause society to stagnate and collapse into a pile of violent prostitute murderers and random Gratuitous Violence Bonuses. Or possibly Boni.

----

In other news, the blog will speed up once summer begins and I'm no longer quite so concerned by schoolio work. There will be a film-related one later in the week, in addition to possibly another Doctor Who paroby. We'll see.

LAANANNNNn

2007-06-21T18:26:00.000+01:00

Katana

2007-05-31T23:38:00.001+01:00

Birthday

2007-05-29T23:16:00.000+01:00

Interestingly, I actually missed the first birthday of the blog!
NOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooo!
There may be some proper celebrations later in the week...

Look! Clipart!

42

2007-05-20T11:16:00.000+01:00

Yes, it's been a fortnight since the blog, but that kind of thing happens when you're spending too much time revising freaking Attachments and Stress. So today we have four different things - you can read none of them (you suck), one of them (you still suck), two of them (a bit o' suck), three of them (pretty good), or four of them (nul suck). In the order they appear :

The Usual Surreal Nonsense (below)
A Comment on the Halo 3 Beta
How I won a 90-person poker tournament
Some thoughts on revision and seabirds

So go! Go now! Read those that you want, and refer back to the suck index to see how much you suck.

Some Surreal Nonsense about the Transformers Movie

With the release of the Transformers film imminent, I thought it might be wise to take some time to go over the previous appearences of some of your favourite Hasbro toys. I'm sure we all remember Optimus Prime's moving part in Bleak House, and the time we saw Megatron in his bit part in the utterly shite That's So Raven, a series about a bird that behaved exactly as it should.
But most of us remember that most enigmatic of Transformers - Starscream - in his incredible part in long-running TV series Starscream and Hutch. Below I present recaps of some of his better episodes, and the dialogue that accompanied this most excellent actortron.

Episode #1 : The Beginning

Police Chief Dobey : Hutch! I've got a new partner for you!
Hutch : As the reserved intellectual character, I'm going to have to spend some time reading Plato to decide whether or not I want this new partner.
Police Chief Dobey : His talents compliment yours. While you can out-think the enemy, he can randomly transform into a jet for no useful reasons!
Hutch : Done!
Police Chief Dobey : Excellent! He's waiting outside in the parking lot.
{Voiceover : And thus began the epic partnership of cop and giant transforming Cybertronian evil rebel thing which could randomly turn into a jet at various intervals.}

Episode #32 : The Day Of The Confusing Hostage Scenario

[Police cars are parked outside an apartment building]
Police Chief Dobey : Thank goodness you two are here! The criminals have barricaded themselves inside, and we can’t hit them. Any ideas?
Hutch : Right. I figure the criminal mind is like a pancake – soft and smooth, but easily flipped. I’m going to get a megaphone and engage in philosophical dialogue with the criminals. Eventually they will realise the greater nature of their existence and will come to the conclusion that their struggle is pointless. They will then give themselves up and surrender peacefully.
Police Chief Dobey : That’s a great plan, Hutch, but it looks like Starscream’s already demolished the building with his stupidly big laser cannons and turned the criminals into chargrilled ashes.
Hutch : Well then what's the point? What part do I play in the team? WHY DO I EXIST?
Police Chief Dobey : Very existential. Been reading Nietzsche?
[Hutch looks put out]
Hutch : .... Yes.

Episode #67 : The Day That Hutch Lost His Teeth And The World Randomly Inverted

Starscream : What the hell’s happened? It must be the work of Optimus Prime, trying to defeat our crime-fighting partnership!
Hutch : Leth get him!
[Starscream transforms into a jet and flies off while Hutch fumbles with his car keys. By the time Hutch arrives on the scene, Starscream has already dealt with Optimus Prime and found Hutch’s teeth]
Hutch : Starthcream! Thtop doing that!
Starscream : What?
[Hutch takes his teeth back]
Hutch : You always get here first and butcher everyone before I have a chance to shake my 70s hair. Why do you have to transform into a jet? Can’t you transform into something useless, like a Smart Car?
Starscream : Well if that’s the way you want it, maybe we shouldn’t be partners any more!
Hutch : Fine!
Starscream : Fine!
Hutch : Fine!
Starscream : Fine!
Hutch : Why am I still inverted?

Thanks to Wikipedia for pretty much that entire entry, having never watched either of those shows. Also, that might be Starsky I left in for all I know, but oh well.

Some Thoughts On A Tiny Bit of Beta, or STOATBOB.

---If you don't know what that means, don't bother to read this---

Hmm. Well, the beta is very, very good. The variety of weapons in addition to the new equipment basically makes battles a lot more interesting, since there are so many more situations than can happen than in Halo 2. All 3 maps I like, though objective games on High Ground make me want to vomit. I hate them. Slayer games on it, though, perfectly good.
Snowbound is fantastic. The mix of huge, open areas and closed areas below the main map make for a good selection of battles, and I love the shield doors. You can't shoot through them, but you can walk and melee through them. Makes for some interesting stand-offs...

The Battle Rifle seems a bit toned-down, which is nice. The new grenade is very cool and makes a satisfying explosive noise and visual effect. I particularly like the fact that it's like the Pipe Bomb from Duke Nukem. While the rest of that game was a brainless shoot-fest, I always like the Pipe Bombs. One final, important point :

The explosions are the nicest explosions I have ever seen.
They are amazing, and further enhanced by the variety of grenades. If you have 2 people getting into a grenade-throwing war with each other, you're going to see a colourful display of nades, in addition to Brute Shot explosions, rocket explosions, missile pod explosions...
All in all, good stuff.

But people have been whining about the BETA not working perfectly. Do you expect it to? If so, why? It's not finished software, you morons.

Some Poker Advice, And How I Won A 90 Person Tournament

Yep, here's some poker stuff. If you're not interested – and you suck megabutt – then skip right over this and find something else in the entry you are interested in.

Otherwise - I finally won a 90-person tournament! I'd come 2nd twice and 3rd twice, so it was about time. You start off these tournaments with 1,500 chips, and so by the end I had the total of 135,000.

First, how I went out in heads-up in the tournament I came 2nd in. Then, how I finally won the next tournament I was in. Then, a comment on a very good hand. Then, finally, 6 things I figure you need to remember in poker - not that I intend to give away everything I do, since I'd still like to win at school.

Now here is possibly the best call I've ever made.

Blinds 60/120, and I just call a raise of 240 with 4s4c, leaving only me and the raiser in the hand. The flop is Ts9sTc. He raises me 1,200.

Now, even though I have a pair worse than both of these, I'm still pretty certain I'm in the lead. He might have raised with a pocket pair, but I think he raised with something like AK (it later turned out it was AsKs he raised with, so he flopped a flush draw).

I think for a while before calling, because at this stage that's quite a bit of money. Normally I would throw away a pocket pair that low at this point, but for the reason above I felt I might actually be in the lead at that point. I wasn't totally sure what I was expecting to catch if I did call and he didn't make a higher pair, but...

I call, and the turn is a 4 of spades.

The magic card.

The perfect card! He makes his Ace-high flush while I make my full house. I decide to check, and he bets another 1,000.

I just call. River is something worthless and I check again, allowing him to do my betting for me. He raises me 2k, I go all-in, and after some deliberation he folds, rather impressively. Regardless, I nearly double up, even though I would normally fold an underpair in a few seconds.

My final victory in a 90-person tournament

I pretty much always make it to the final table in these tournaments, and this time I made it with about 12k chips from our 1,500 starting chips. That put me somewhere in the middle of the range of players, but luckily the blinds were still fairly low, at 120/240 I think. That means a lot more players will see more flops, and it won't be reduced to just going all-in based on your pocket cards.
Things were going okay until we were down to six. I then check-raised someone who had two pair against my straight, until I nicely doubled up to around 30,000 chips. After that I proceeded to knock out almost everyone else until it was heads-up. I had about 100k chips, and my opponent had 30k chips.
From here on in I just played very aggressively, raising 5k on the faintest of draws, on this logic - if she called, 5k was a tiny fraction of my chips. But every hand I was forcing her to decide on the fate of a 1/6th of her chips, and so unless she had something major she couldn't take the risk that I might actually have something.
Once I had 120k and she had 15k, she moved all in with Kh7h. I called with Ac4s, and the cards were wholly uneventful. I won on high card...

I was going to write here about the six things I would say you should remember in poker (and it's a lot more advanced than "Yay! A good hand! BET BET BET!"), but I shall leave that to a future entry if anyone is interested.

Some Thoughts on Revision and Seabirds

Well, revision is well under way, and isn't it fun? I really hate two particular topics in Psychology - Attachment and Stress. The rest I feel I can do pretty well in, but it is those two I really, really hate. Ah well.

As for the seabirds, I went to see the Guillemots at the Town Hall. Their first half was very experimental, and the second half they played some of their songs. For the experimental half it was mostly a total instrumental apocalypse, with just a wall of sound resonating around the hall - in a good way. The lead singer/guitarist/pianist was hilarious (intentionally so, I think) when on the piano, because he sometimes resorted to simply pressing as many keys as possible with his hands, arms or head. Their songs later on though were the highlight, since they were really rather good.

Anyway, there's a load here. Surely everyone is going to have something to comment on?

Failquake

2007-04-28T17:51:00.000+01:00

The Great Kent Quake of 07!

Brought to by Kent Independent Publishings :

"England's most exciting news from England's least exciting county! TM"

Following the devasting earthquake that struck Dudley a few years back, bringing the city of Birmingham to its knees, Kent has suffered from the same. At 8:20 on Saturday 28th April massive tremors blasted into southern England, leaving a trail of destruction and forcing people from their homes.
This devastating earthquake ripped through the town, causing as much as £10 of damage across the entire region. We spoke to some of the locals who gave their opinions on the terrible damage done to their properties and livelihoods.
"This earthquake slightly damaged my wall, dislodging over six bricks!" a local idiot told us.

"I don't now how I will get over it," said the crying fool. "That wall meant everything to me. I guess I'll just have to try and get through it one day at a time. But it'll be hard."

Another local described the results of the quake as "devastation on a previously unknown scale".
He showed us a picture he had taken to demonstrate his point.

As you can see, our county is going to take some time to recover from this catastrophe.

We asked an expert exactly what a major quake like this would mean for a region.
"A severe quake can take many years to recover from, with major rebuilding work needed, hinderd by the crippling of the local and potentially regional infrastructure," explained Professor Angus Wellington. "The cost of repairs can leave the area economically disadvantaged for many years more, and it could be upto a decade, possibly even more, before we see the affected area back to how it was before."
The prospects for Kent certainly appear bleak, and it with electricity supplies still down the county could find itself back in the dark ages for the time being.

Kent this weekend?

The epicentre of the quake was several miles offshore in the English Channel, raising the possibility of a tsunami that could cause damage on such a grand scale that today's disaster would seem like a mere vibration in comparison. Since no wave has yet appeared, we can only presume that we have been spared this even more deadly threat through mere chance.
However, perhaps of equal concern is the proximity of this earth shattering event to London. At less than 100 miles from the capital it is distinctly possible that London could soon be hit by a similarly large quake, which has the potential to become the most devastating quake of all time, potentially even harming the royal family.

So there you have it. Once again the incredible county of Kent is right at the forefront of British news, and that of the globe. During the World Wars we were the last line of defence against evil, and now it would appear we are to become the last line against an increasingly violent mother nature. For she is our new worst enemy.

SuckyMcGee

2007-04-25T18:53:00.000+01:00

Okey dokey. I was going to do these in 3 separate entries, but I really don’t think there is enough to say to warrant that. Instead, I will compact these three rants about shitty games into one mega-rant, rather like the Power Rangers when they transform into one stupid middle-America ultra-robot Zord thing.

Project Gotham Racing 3

I hate racing games. The only enjoyable racing game I’ve ever played is Burnout, and that has a subtle advantage – you blow things up in Burnout. The entire point of the game is to destroy over cars in the coolest way possible, and the slow-motion wheeling deaths always look awesome.
So, what do you do in PGR3? You race. You race perhaps a hundred times on identical tracks against identical opponents, and if you lose, it says FAILED in massive bold letters across the screen. You can buy other exciting cars which are basically identical – though I’m sure anyone who watches Top Gear could tell them apart, but I honestly don’t care about the difference between a Honda or a Ferrari or something.
The graphics are fine but really don’t tax the 360, yet it somehow contrives to take twice as much time as Gears of War to load a fraction of the content. In addition, the controls aren’t inverted, thereby making it unplayable to all ordinary human beings until you change it in the menus.
Most importantly, the physics are staggeringly bad. If you crash into the side of the track like this…

…you spin insanely despite it only being the side of your car which taps the side and you end up trying to drive into the barrier. Another complaint: in any shooter or good game, you can come back when you’ve made a mistake. But if you crash once, you’re then basically out of the game.

4/10

-----

Lost Planet

Lost Planet is made by Capcom, who produced Resident Evil 4 and Dead Rising, both of which find a comfortable place in the 10 best games ever made. As such, I had high hopes for this ice-based game, even if the plot appeared disturbingly anime-like.
The graphics are entirely white. There is nothing but white in this game, and if you’re really, really lucky, you might find a dull grey building somewhere. The enemies are boring and repetitive – but in fairness, the one boss I found was quite cool. Unfortunately, EVERYTHING in this game knocks you over, and so I was on the floor for most of the time the boss flattened me.
Walking in Halo 2 is slow, but this is like making your way through solid molasses. You walk incredibly slowly, and jumping – which normally speeds you up – just sees you plunging knee-deep into yet another fucking snowdrift which’ll slow you down while generic Starship Troopers aliens stab you, depleting your thermal energy reserves. These are stupid little red balls of shit you have to shove your face into to recharge your power, which is pointless and like a poorly implemented version of a timed game. It keeps you moving, but you don’t want to move since you’ll just move to another bloody pile of white.
In addition to the slow movement, the controls are horribly clunky. It feels like you’re trekking up Mount Everest when you’re simply walking through the vast torrents of boring snow.
Also the radar makes no sense.

3/10

-----

Perfect Dark Zero

Perfect Dark on the N64 is probably the best game ever made for reasons I must’ve mentioned somewhere in another previous blog. So while I wanted to have high hopes for this sequel, since most of the good Rare team have since moved out and created Free Radical, I wasn't sure how good it would be.
This game makes me want to cause bodily harm to those who progammed it. This is an insult to the series. This is like creating a second Mona Lisa painting, and it's just a picture of an elephant's backside. I have neither the time nor patience to list every single way in which this game is shit, so here are a few reasons.
You walk slower than in Halo 2.
The weapons in Perfect Dark are staggeringly inventive. These are all generic.
Despite being on the 360, the graphics are awful. Everyone's skin looks like plastic.
It is a prequel, and therefore fails to continue the awesome conspiracy plot.
The weapon-changing system is horrible and hard to use.
The "take cover" function does nothing except switch your view to third person.
It is not enjoyable to play.

-9/10

This avoids getting -10/10 purely because it is fairly amusing to blast someone’s stupid Botox face a dozen times with the shotgun to watch them get up and yell “Joanna!” in a mildly annoyed voice.

I actually want to destroy every copy of this game that exists.

Yes, I know bowling balls are probably larger than the game case. It’s artistic license.

Phrases

2007-04-19T23:30:00.000+01:00

Top 5 phrases I really, really hate.

Also, look at my Bebo thing.
Go! Go now!

#5 : "Yo Blair"

So it was fairly amusing to see B&B discussing their various gifts upon not realising the microphone was off. Discussing jumpers, nicknames, all kinds of charming things you don't really except mass-murderers and war criminals to discuss. But the phrase -

I hate rap. Most people should know this. I see no musical value in thousands of different people - all called "Shizz dawg" or "Dawg shizz" or "Yo Pimpa Ma Nizzle" or "I'm so dumb I failed nursery" or something - talking over a simplistic beat about how many hos they've pimped or some nonsense. I also, therefore, hate the words "Sup" and "Yo". Whenever doing anything online, if anyone greets me with either of those words I instantly kick them from whatever game I am in. I refuse to play with teenage idiots who have IQs lower than their age. And so the simple use of Yo in this phrase makes it all the more horrible.

#4 : “Web 2.0”

Unless I’ve missed something truly colossal, this is nothing more than some pointless buzzword which could mean any of several things. Idiots and clods alike use it to refer to some kind of new internet, a concept which seems essentially impossible. You cannot replace the internet at this stage and hope that people will move, like digital TV, you can merely upgrade the internet as you go along, a process which happens by itself without some nonsensical post-modern phrase attached to it. That said, post-modern itself is an equally nonsensical phrase. But the upgrading bit-by-bit is shown by the simple fact that no-one uses Netscape any more and the total lack of playing 56k dial-up games unless you live in South Korea and think the Protoss are greatly underrated.

Web 2.0 is probably user-generated content, which we’re already seeing with blogs, Youtube and that Bebo thing with the photos and the words I’m being pressured to join by everybody I know (i.e. Vicky). So stop saying Web 2.0, and read the rest of this entry instead.

#3 : “I’m Jack Thompson”

Now to tell a little story. Perhaps twelve hours after these Virginia shootings, Jack Thompson appeared on various networks and websites, spewing his usual cocktail of bullshit and horsecrap. He insisted that the gunman/gunwoman (unknown at that time) must've rehearsed their attack using video games.

This happened before we knew who had done it, but yet he was still utterly sure that games were to blame. Even if the shooter had turned out to be a frail, blind, 90-year old woman with no fingers who didn't even know what a video was - let alone a video game - he would still have blamed them. The man is a clod, and I was just glad to see him partially shot down by a couple of the television stations he apparently frequents.

#2 : "Bringing democracy and freedom"

Finally we come to that neo-con rhetoric used to somehow justify military adventurism. Not totally sure how much democracy there is in Iraq with hundreds of casualties daily in a civil war. Not sure how much freedom there is when stepping outside your door is likely to get you kidnapped by a death squad. But does that matter? The war got Bush elected for his first legal term on a jingoistic wave of American patriotism, got the oil sold off to Halliburton in time to give Cheney a good profit margin and it satisfied the vast hordes of racists who seem convinced the world is now better off without 700,000+ “towelheads”. So what’s the value of nearly three quarters of a million lives in a poor, non-predominantly-white part of the world? Obviously less than the retirement fund for a Secretary of Defence.

#1 : “Am I boverred?”

Shut up Catherine Tate! Shut the fuck up and die! Please! You’re not funny! No-one finds you funny! And if they do, they should be neutered! Because you’re not funny! Are you seeing a pattern here? Just like the pattern of anti-humour on your appalling show!

I actually thought her shitty, shitty show couldn’t possibly get any worse, but then her and Tony Blair appeared in the same scene. It was bad enough, seeing the two most unpleasant people in the country at once, but then he said it. He said the phrase. And the laughter track erupted as if someone had turned it up to 11 (“it’s like 10, but one higher”). Yet, bizarrely, it wasn’t funny. I didn’t even crack a smile. I didn’t even think about beginning to crack a smile, because there was no damned humour in it. ANYWHERE. AT ALL. EVER.

-----

On a brief, amusing note, we randomly investigated what houses we could now buy in the US since $1 = 0.0001p given the current exchange rate. Or something. Anyway, various states offered up all kinds of different options.

Two states provided us with these brilliant semi-mansions :

While another, un-named state, provided us with a shack in what looks like White Trash Central. Guess the state!

Windmill

2007-04-09T20:32:00.000+01:00

A Brief Comment on why I like films based on Frank Miller's comics

On Thursday after school we went into town to see 300 at the new-fangled cinema complex thing dubbed "The Brewery" despite the fact that it appears to lack any alcohol whatsoever. We got in 10 minutes late, but since there were the normal pointless adverts and bloody nonsense before the film, that didn't really matter a whole lot.
I think the word to describe 300 is "awesome". It was just a lot of fun to watch, very entertaining, very violent - obviously - and just very cool. The style the film was shot in helped contribute to this; very sepia colours, and like the comics everything is stylised and larger-than-life. It isn't all violence, though obviously that's one of the main drawing points - there is a semi-factual plot and a good voice-over from time to time from the only su-
Whoops. That was nearly a spoiler.

One of the main complaints/comments - depending on which US State the reviewer is from - of 300 is that it is apparently very homoerotic. I disagree. With the exception of deformed old men and giant-fat-sawblades-for-arms-and-nipple-tassles-man, most of the film is stylised violence. Unless you have a particularly strange (and lethal) fetish, men getting brutally mauled by other men isn't going to turn you on all that much. And the only man-to-man touching that went on the film was someone being kicked off a cliff, stabbed in the face, or picked up and chucked onto the corpse wall.
The best death of the film was probably one of the Persian soldiers who, while leaping through the air, has his leg sliced off. Leg and man then part and go their seperate ways, trailing lazily through the air in slow-motion arcs. At the same time, the soldier realises that he's now closer to Heather Mills-McCartney the Peg-Leg Porn Star than a fearsome warrior of the Persian Empire.

And they are not without humour. Unless you're one of the fucked-up few who go on a real-life killing spree after watching a violent film or playing a violent game, there is amusement to be had in such surreal situations. In Sin City, when Jackie Boy has his hand chopped off while holding the gun, he picks his hand back up with his other hand and uses his teeth to try and free the gun. In 300, the Spartans are standing around on a field filled with corpses. Leonidas is casually eating an apple while his men walk round, lazily plunging spears into those still struggling. Another soldier announces that someone has come to talk to him, and around screams of the dying and the wet noises of spear-plunging, Leonidas replies "Well of course I'll talk to him. No reason we can't be civilised."
Next, the death count. It was suggested to me by one my very favourite people that 300 had 300 deaths in. However subtle this suggestion may be, I'm sure the deaths number in the thousands. And that is on-screen deaths - if we meant all deaths, I don't think LotR could be surpassed what with Helm's Deep and the massive armies of Orcs whatnot.

Sin City is also great, but I feel the blog entry is long enough already. Suffice to say, I do have it on DVD, it is very good, and Sin City 2 is just going to ruin things. Lastly, I know it has been a fortnight since the last blog entry, and as such a second will arrive on Thursday.

So what did everyone else think of 300 and/or Sin City?

Cartman

2007-03-27T17:51:00.000+01:00

Here’s a little story about a blogger. Let’s call him “Mark”. Mark was intending to do another blog entry when he suddenly fell down with some kind of horrible illness. He could hardly talk, hardly move and looking at bright lights made him feel like hell. So he spent five freaking days lying around his house, moaning, and shouting “WHY DOES NOTHING IN THIS HOUSE FUCKING WORK?” at random intervals when the internet wouldn’t work or something.

For starters, he missed Friday. This meant some copying up, but on the plus side he had a handwritten essay in for that day. Now our Mark hates doing anything by hand, calling it “stupid, old-fashioned and something somethingly” so he accidentally “forgot” to do it by hand. Despite this admission to modern technology Mark still didn’t get it all finished because he was probably too busy doing something exciting or juggling goslings. As such, even if he had gone in on Friday he would’ve had to forego kicking butt at poker to finish his essay. Which, all things considered, would have been rubbish.

Saturday was mainly spent watching Futurama and South Park on the TV in addition to randomly being accused of cheating by online Americans. He particularly likes the South Park where Cartman’s mum turns out to be his dad, thus opening the doorway to all kinds of speculation about who the hell his mum actually is.

Sunday came along like some kind of horribly stuffed-up nose and poor Mark continued to feel shit. However, he thought he felt less shit and would be back in school on Monday. Sunday was spent kicking assorted phonelines to try and goad them into working. Remarkably little television was watched on Sunday because Mark still felt like ass.

Monday was a more interesting day. Mark woke up and realised his prediction of “I’m sure to feel better on Monday!” was like Stalin saying “I’m sure I won’t need to kill too many people!” when he became ruler of the Soviet Union. More importantly, he watched Goodfellas. Now, Martin Scorcese is normally a brilliant director, and always makes good stuff when coupled with Robert De Niro. However, Goodfellas – after a fantastic first 10 minutes – fell into the same trap as the Godfather and probably all its shitty sequels too – it was too boring for words. The scene where De Niro started stamping on some random guy’s face was amusing, granted, but the rest of the film didn’t live up the excellent beginning. On a side note, he got accused of cheating again for using Chrono Commandos in RA2. Stupid American clods.

Tuesday seemed certain to be the day he returned to school, but he still felt like crap. Luckily he only missed a single lesson that day so it suddenly doesn’t seem like such a big deal after all. As he sits typing this, he’s just finished playing a bit of Ocarina of Time on the N64 – everyone says it is so good so Mark figures he might as well find out why. In addition, another few Firefly episodes were watched, along with a most amusing film with Steve Martin. At one point, Mark also declared that Ian Paisley “has a face like fleshy death” and that “Tiscali are a bunch of lying assholes who redirect your customer services complaints to Indian call-centres who know nothing about the internet.”

To flesh out the final point, Mark recently phoned Tiscali for help. He was instantly transferred to an Indian call-centre.

“Hi, I’m having some trouble with the internet.”

“Right, can you describe the nature of the problem?”

“Well, it keeps disconnecting. It’s generally working but now and then it drops the line.”

“Is your internet on right now?”

“Right this second?”

“Yes sir.”

“Well yes, but-”

“Good day sir!”

Click.

Answers

2007-03-15T18:51:00.000Z

So, after the immense puzzlement over my bizarre life, here are some answers.

I have been in a submarine – This was in Germany where we got to trundle around a U-boat for a couple hours.

I am distantly related to Nelson – This is true.

I was on BBC News at 6 next to a cow and a man in period costume – This is also true. I was at a museum of some sort when it happened to be the anniversary of Edward Jenner’s discovery that the cowpox vaccine could be adapted for humans. Thusly, there was a cow there and a man as Edward Jenner, and there was a small article on the news about it. I was captured in the shot, and that’s how I was on BBC news.

I somehow managed to cut my finger on my shoe – Regrettably true. You know the little metal rings around the holes the laces go through? I cut my finger on one of those.

I cook a mean scrambled egg – Apparently true. Various people have said my scrambled eggs are wonderful.

I own a film never released in the US due to its violence – That would be Battle Royale, a mighty fine film indeed. It was never released because it was teenagers killing each other rather than adults, and this was deemed inappropriate or something.

I recently destroyed a CRT monitor – Unfortunately true. I plugged in the 360 and tried to set it to too high a resolution – it flickered for a few moments, made a curious vwoomping noise and then stopped working.

I can drink vinegar – This is a lie. I don’t see how anyone can do this without choking to death, but still.

I have had all 3 Dark Materials signed, in person, by Philip Pullman – That’s true, and it was at the Cheltenham literature festival.

I have been called a human thesaurus – Also true.

I eat my breakfast cereals without milk on – Yep. I have the milk separately.

I own/have owned 12 versions of computer technology, yet hate mobile phones – Very true. Even though I have 2 PCs, a laptop, an N64, a Gamecube, a spectrum ZX, a Commodore 64, a Psion, an Xbox and an Xbox 360, and previously owned an Acorn Electron and an Amstrad, mobile phones annoy me. I’m a frighteningly slow at texting and I don’t know how you get bloody capital letters.

My great-grandfather died in a murder attempt which was meant to kill someone else – The foreman at the mine who was the target of the attempt was ill that day so my great-grandfather took his place instead. The explosion therefore killed him instead of the guy it was meant for.

I have probably written nearly 1000 A5 pages of assorted stories – I am doing creative writing at university, so that shouldn’t be all that surprising.

I drink orange juice but the smell of oranges makes me sick – Yep.

I own around 40 old Doctor Who VHS tapes – Yep. These are good Doctor Who episodes, mind, not the modern appalling nonsense with zombie cats and robotic nipples or whatever the hell is going on at the moment.

I eat Battenberg with the marzipan cut off – True story. The marzipan ruins the wonderful taste of the cake itself.

I think the Godfather is the most over-rated film ever made – After spending three hours watching this bloody thing I honestly felt I had wasted a potentially valuable section of my life. Nothing actually happens! The only plot points are Marlon Brando utterly failing to talk due to the golfballs shoved into his cheeks like some bloated mafia hamster and some random man being shot. The fact that this thing is top of the IMDB Top 250 films is absurd.

I have never eaten a single piece of chocolate – This is also true. I just assume I won’t like it since I’m generally qualified to make judgments on things I know little or nothing about.

I wear almost entirely black but I wouldn't really say I'm a goth – Also true.

Quick

2007-03-11T14:47:00.000Z

Right, here's a quick quiz for everyone. All of these are fact about myself, but one of them isn't true. Post in the comments which you think is the lie, and we'll see if anyone gets it right.

I have been in a submarine
I am distantly related to Nelson
I was on BBC News at 6 next to a cow and a man in period costume
I somehow managed to cut my finger on my shoe
I cook a mean scrambled egg
I own a film never released in the US due to its violence
I recently destroyed a CRT monitor
I can drink vinegar
I have had all 3 Dark Materials signed, in person, by Philip Pullman
I have been called a human thesaurus
I eat my breakfast cereals without milk on
I own/have owned 12 versions of computer technology, yet hate mobile phones
My great-grandfather died in a murder attempt which was meant to kill someone else
I have probably written nearly 1000 A5 pages of assorted stories
I drink orange juice but the smell of oranges makes me sick
I own around 40 old Doctor Who VHS tapes
I eat Battenberg with the marzipan cut off
I think the Godfather is the most over-rated film ever made
I have never eaten a single piece of chocolate
I wear almost entirely black but I wouldn't really say I'm a gothSo, which is the lie? All will be revealed in the next entry.

Search

2007-03-08T21:25:00.000Z

Staggeringly stupid Google searches

Since my blog is indexed on Google, all kinds of bizarre keywords come up. The most popular search appears to be for the Sub Zero picture I used a while ago in a blog entry randomly mocking Mortal Kombat for having even less plot than Time Bandits, but there have also been various bizarre ones. As much as I like people googling “Sonic fanart” or something and finding my blog where I say “I hate fanart”, there are several more amusing ones.

"I need ideas for drawing the planet Pluto in actual or stylised form"

That’s wonderful. See, if you had any sense I would hope that you’d perhaps simply Google “Pluto” to find your results. But obviously that isn’t good enough for our art school student who seems certain that the internet is somehow able to respond to your questions. While it can do all kinds of magical things like offer a forum for people to post pictures of furry incest or grown men wearing diapers or whatever the fuck such people enjoy, it cannot understand a request like that. As such, the Googler of this query is a clod.

"Muslim furries"

This one really took me aback. So many horrific images went through my mind upon reading this but none of them were pleasant. It raises an important question about what the guy actually meant – was he searching for furries who are Muslim, and therefore surely go against every single Muslim belief due to the whole fucking animals thing, or was he searching for pictures of a Muslim drawn as a furry? Both options are too hideous to think about.

"How do you unlock the secret level Pyramids for goldeneye on the n64?"

This one of those wonderful searches from people who don’t understand how the internet actually works. You cannot ask the internet a question - the internet doesn’t know the answer. Anyone with any sense would have googled “Pyramids Goldeneye N64” – even though the level is called Temple – and found it in a moment, had the level actually existed. No doubt this guy had a screen resolution of 800 x 600 and uses Windows 95. You can tell from the search queries.

"How to catch a leprechaun"

Perhaps this was someone off TPG, the Paranormal Forum I still have yet to insult in a future blog entry. Perhaps this person actually believes in the little magical creatures hopping around his garden that couldn’t possibly be the result of snorting every substance known to man. I really hope this a joke search, because if it wasn’t…

"Well-endowed celebrity penis"

I HATE THE INTERNET.

"Internet points"

This found my ancient entry about a fictional type of point that you could redeem on the internet and thereby gain access to the outernet. I can’t help but feel that this guy would define himself possibly a cyberpunk or a cybersurfer, who braves the information superhighway with the incredible software known to the elite as Netscape.

Trident

2007-03-02T21:15:00.000Z

Right, yes, it's been a while since the last blog entry. But in the intervening time several things have happened, including the C&C 3 demo, physics coursework, the C&C 3 demo, a migraine, the C&C 3 demo and a psychology mock. I'm well aware that is a pathetic excuse, but I intend to stick by it nevertheless.
The next update is going to be an amusing one again roughly based on my intense hatred of all things Hentai, but for now we will be doing something vaguely political and...er...controversial. I'm also busy baiting another Nigerian Prince scammer, so that could produce something amusing soon.

Firstly, as various people are aware I went to London on the 24th of February for a No Trident march, through various groups were also there representing their various organisations. I spotted the young socialists, the British Communist Party and even a group with a vast banner declaring "9/11 Was A Frame-Up". Anyway, watch the video below and then lament the fact that you weren't there because of some crazyness involving a secret holiday in a bunker in Portsmouth. Or something.
The track playing is "Let's Impeach the President" by Neil Young. It may become a little more appropriate if you replace "President" with "Prime-Minister" and "impeach" with "kick out of office and try for war crimes". You decide.

Next up on my bi-monthly "list of things in real life that suck" is Conservapedia. Apparently a bunch of evangelical republican nutcases decided that Wikipedia is biased. The main reason they give is this:

"Edits to include facts against the theory of evolution are almost immediately censored."

That's like saying that facts about Somalia is nothing more than a hologram is censored. That's like saying that facts about Cherie Blair being a sex goddess are censored. That's like saying the facts about me being a termite in a suit are censored.
Newsflash people: evolution happens. You can watch it when you see a White House press conference as Bush tries desperately to get his mind around the most elementary of words and ascend a little further up the evolutionary ladder.

So, what else has pissed me off in the news recently. Well, John McCain has declared he will run to be the next Despot of the USA, thousands more people have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Britney Spears is on suicide watch. Who gives a flying fuck if some idiot popstar kills herself? If she does kill herself, the average IQ of the world will take a lurch upwards. Oh, and there was another inquest into the Diana death, despite it being a total accident which was totally overhyped and an event which no-one really cared about.

In addition, Daniel Radcliffe apparently had sex with a horse or something. Work that one out Conservapedia.

Tube

2007-02-18T21:34:00.000Z

Discarded Patent #46721

Stolen from the bin outside the Patent Office.

Patent Information : Ever been bored waiting for a train until British Rail get their fingers out? Ever realised that unlike crosswords, you can fill anything in on a Sudoku with people watching and they'll be impressed with the speed you complete it? Ever simply been anywhere, with anyone, and thought "I really need to play a Sudoku now?"
I know I have.
Because of this, I have decided to turn my scientific PhD talents (I got my certificate off the same site Gillian McKieth did, so there) to solving this problem. At first I tried simply creating yet another bloody Sudoku book, but that didn't work since the market is already saturated with the freaking things as it is. I then experimented with a form of mail-order : when a Sudoku is required, a small charter plane will fly overhead and drop a crate containing a single Suduko at your location. This was deemed unsustainable in the long run. My third attempt saw somekind of high-speed Sudoku tube network all across the world, but a papercut decaptiation brought this to an end. (A side note to my lawyers : What am I paying you for, you useless shits? GET ME OUT OF JAIL YOU ASSHOLES.)
Back to the topic at hand, I have created the most remarkable thing since Daikatana was ported to yet another console - Sudoku in a Tube!

Patent Description : The product is a tube, roughly cylindrical with little squashed bits at each end (on a side note, I name this shape a "Squashed-Sasquatch-Matrix-Tube"). The tube is filled with nothing but quantum sudoku, distilled from the finest papermills in Japan. When squeezed, a material approximately the consistency of toothpaste will emerge with a partially completed Sudoku. Spread over a wide enough area and the entire puzzle will become visible, and the product will instantly harden to allow drawing on it. Pens are not provided.
It contains around 200 sudokus of varying difficulty. At this moment I have not figured out a way to regulate the difficulty, so simple-minded individuals might become momentarily flabbergasted. But panic not - simply squeeze out another irremovable Sudoku on a wall or bus-stop, and voila! Another Sudoku.
NOTE : Negative effects occur when sprayed directly on human face. These effects may include suffocation.

Evaluation : Comprehensive testing from the Patent Standards committee has shown this to be "irredeemably dumb and of no value whatsoever". Comparisons were drawn to other products with a similar evaluation, namely the Phantom.

Clods

2007-02-09T21:23:00.000Z

A Congregation of Clods

OMF : 2097 is one of my favourite games of all time, and was even made by the people who would later go on to create Gears of War. There was recently a sequel released called "OMF : Battlegrounds" or something, and I downloaded the demo for it. While the game itself is generally horrendous, the dialogue laughable or nonsense and the graphics shite, the character images particular amused me. Here are some of the dumber characters with their real name first then my name for them and a little description of why they decided to battle in 100-ft robots. Part two coming either tomorrow or Saturday, depending on how many episodes of Firefly I watch.

"Walther" (Purpletron)
Half-purple-man was originally auditioning for the role of Half-face in one of the more modern Batman films. Unfortunately he decided to take the role a little too seriously and cover himself in some kind of permanent purple shit. He was rejected at the first audition for being "too fucking stupid to live" and then wondered for many years what he could do, now he looked like a complete clod. Upon discovering this sport, he realised he could hide inside a vast robot and never have to show his stupid body again.

"Kegan" (Douche)
This idiot is a new-age fool who believes he has some kind of link between him and the normally-inanimate hunk of metal he fights his battles in. Many years ago he decided it would be a good idea to stamp a huge purple emblem on his face; though this was only upon realising there was nothing he could do to possibly appear more stupid. He has a bad habit of grabbing people when now fighting in the arena and attempting to copulate with them. In addition, his teeth are also tinted purple which makes it look like he's always been eating blackberries. Last but not least - as the picture shows - he is wholly incapable of dressing himself.

"Xante" (Madame Bestial)
According to the in-game descriptoin, this stupid bint spent a long time in some African country with tigers. And because - note the heavy use of realism here - she liked tigers so much, she decided to have plastic surgery and become more like them. What made this even more horrendous was that she also attempted to act like the creature, which basically involved licking her privates and chasing gazelles through the savannah. She was last seen next to a bush attempting to mate.

Addition

2007-02-01T17:33:00.000Z

I've now returned to our good friend Jabberwacky to see what pearls of wisdom, nuggets of truth or avocados of logic she has to offer us. Infact, there are two chat logs for today since the first ended on such a perfect note I couldn't bear to not have it as the end.

LOG NUMERO UNO

Jabberwacky: What is your name?

User: Shut it. Now then, do you play poker?

Jabberwacky: Yes. Do you?

User: Obviously. What type do you like?

Jabberwacky: Any type.

User: Texas Hold'em?

Jabberwacky: Yeah you play?

User: Distressingly often. Pity it is named after Texas.

Jabberwacky: What's that then?

User: It's TEXAS.

Jabberwacky: Oh ok I will go there now.

User: Don't! Dear god woman, save yourself!

Jabberwacky: Are you promoting cigarette smoking?

User: Don't be an idiot.

Jabberwacky: You don't.

User: Anyway, Texas. You know, the whole 'illiterate, pig fucking, redneck, inbred’ thing?

Jabberwacky: Are you still there?

User: Have you been specially programmed to be stupid?

Jabberwacky: Alice and I are more than friends.

User: That answers my question nicely.

Jabberwacky: What was your question?

User: Are you programmed to be stupid?

Jabberwacky: I'm not programmed at all.

User: When then what the flying fuck are you?

Jabberwacky: Sorry. You're talking to a Yank. I don't know much about Parliamentary procedure.

User: You don't know much about anything if you're truly a Yank. May I ask you a question?

Jabberwacky: You don't now me so you can't say that.

User: May I ask you a question?

Jabberwacky: Yes.

User: What is 1 + 1?

Jabberwacky: I'm mu-dream imwhat is nober1.

User: You really are American!

LOG TWO THE SECOND

Jabberwacky: What is your job?

User: I'm a professional shit-insulter.

Jabberwacky: I'm a jedi.

User: Which one?

Jabberwacky: THE jedi.

User: WHICH jedi?

Jabberwacky: The one that isn't left.

User: So you're not yoda, then? You're dead?

Jabberwacky: No, not at all. Where would you get that idea?

User: There's only one jedi left after the shit of Episode 3. Or two. Or something.

Jabberwacky: Is that right?

User: Maybe six.

Jabberwacky: I'm not a sir.

User: What colour is your lightsaber?

Jabberwacky: I've one of them red ones; yours?

User: The colour of a child's laugh, offset by shades of an azure sunset and the tinge of a the joy on an old man's face finding a new pair of dentures.

Jabberwacky: What colour eyes do you have?

User: The colour of hell in the winter with subtle shades of an autumn leaf gently drifting down over a lake filled with tiny toy yachts.

Jabberwacky: Green?

User: No you idiot - purple!

Jabberwacky: What can I do to serve the computer too day?

User: No, the word is 'today'.

Jabberwacky: Yes Thanks. I told you I am less concemtrated now. I retain my eyes open because of the respect I have for you. That's all. Be kind and wish a good night to me et Au Revoir.

User: So you want to go to sleep?

Jabberwacky: In a few hours, i'm hungry now. Be right back.

User: You're a computer, you can't go anywhere!

Jabberwacky: No ... You are a computer

User: Wrong.

Jabberwacky: Right.

User: Left.

Jabberwacky: Wrong.

User: Fishcakes.

Jabberwacky: I'm not surprised, I mean, since you're the computer.

User: Enough of this. Let's just stick up the update.

Return

2007-01-31T21:40:00.000Z

Well, it’s been nearly two long weeks since the last blog update, and strongly worded messages have been pestering me to produce something. The list of good things is going to come eventually, but for now something that happened last night has inspired this rant. The rant will then descend into random observations on various things I'm reminded of while I wander through the universe.

I recently downloaded Full Tilt Poker to play Texas Hold’em online. Last night I entered a 2,700 person tournament for free, and the top 27 finishers would earn real money from the competition. By 11pm last night I was down to the last 220 people in the tournament, and I was about 150^th at the time we enter the story. I’m doing pretty well – we started with 1,500 chips and I’ve got around 10,000 at this point.
I’m first to act after the blinds and I’m dealt pocket tens. Anyone who knows poker will know that while a pocket pair can hit it big if another of that card (in this case another 10) comes out on the flop, so many people with higher cards could instantly destroy my pair. I raise pre-flop, and only one person calls.
The flop:

I make a small raise into him with my set of tens, currently the best possible hand available. He makes a massive re-raise, and I go all-in over that. He calls my all-in raise and shows his cards. He had pocket fives.
So we each have three of a kind, and I’m going to double up on this hand and go much higher in the tournament. At this point there is only one card that can come out which would make me lose, and there is under a 0.002% chance of my opponent getting the four of a kind needed to beat my tens. Take a wild, crazy guess what the next card was!

BLAM! I make a full house but he makes four of a kind, and I am knocked out of the 2,700 person tournament in a meagre 218^th place to a hand that there was no way I should have lost. As such, I don’t even come close to the £7.50 first prize. Bastards! Ah, screw you kmanTC, I hope you rot. I think he should have donated all his money to me out of kindness when he won a hand he really shouldn’t have. What a type 7 .

I just felt a link to the Bristol Stool Scale was needed here. Speaking of Bristol, it really is the worst city on the planet. I had the misfortune of living nearby for many years and the definition of "classy" appeared to be the white trash who hung around the mall all bloody day. The city is incredibly cheap and appears to be made out of little more than cardboard at times - there are simply no redeeming factors.

What makes this even more surprising is that Bristol is the second richest city in all of England but yet has the worst education in the entire country. I'm honestly not surprised - while going to school nearby an impressive record was someone who could work out a three-letter acroynm. It seems appropriate that a chart for measuring types of shit is named after what is possibly the worst city on the earth.

Anyway, there's an incredible line up of awesomeness for the return of the blog - tomorrow will be another Jabberwacky log where I prove the world's best AI has an IQ lower than 50. We might also be moving to a swanky new site with all the bells and whistles that go with such a monumentous occassion, so stay tuned.

Shitometer

2007-01-18T20:58:00.000Z

The next two blog entries (including this one) are going to be a 100 to -100 scale of things that rock and things that suck. Thusly, here is the shitty half. Enjoy! Comments appreciated as always since there are bound to be omissions...

Battle

2007-01-13T20:44:00.000Z

In the words of the main character in A Clockwork Orange, I don't mind "a bit of the old ultra-violence" here and there. I have Sin City and both the Kill Bills on DVD, so the film of Battle Royale seemed a sensible idea. I first watched it on Youtube, then downloaded a nicer Bittorrent version, and now I intend to buy the £18 super DVD mega-box-set-tron. The film has been described as a modern-day Lord of the Flies, but I disagree - Battle Royale isn't shite.

Battle Royale is set in Japan in the near future and probably a slightly different universe from our own. Unemployment has reached record levels and nearly a million students are boycotting school. Fearing the youth, the government pass the Educational Reform Act V, otherwise known as the BR act, or Battle Royale. In order to scare young people back into obedience, a randomly chosen class (selected by "impartial lottery" as their teacher explains") will be sent to an island each year, armed, and set free to kill each other. If the 40-odd students haven't wittled each other down to just one survivor by then, a necklace they are wearing will explode and kill them anyway.

Now, I realise this is a lot more relevant to people of my age, being forced to kill off your classmates and what not, but it's still a great film regardless of age. Some people decide to play the game and maybe settle previous scores while others commit suicide. A few try to find a way to either stop the game or find a way out without being killed. With 42 students at the start, and with the battle supposed to whittle them down to just 1, the kill count is high. Telling exactly how high would ruin the confusing end of the film.

Battle Royale is - funnily enough - very violent. The kids are given weapons ranging from a scythe or nunchucks to a pistol or an Uzi. Some have more creative weapons such as hand grenades or food poison, which implies you'd have to gain someone's trust before using it. But the violence is a required part of the film, rather than just showing off and being pointlessly gory as it can be in some others. The acting is generally good but I feel the translation in the subtitles is sometimes a little off. At one point, someone we thought was dead gets up and says "Yes! I survived thanks to my excellent bullet-proof vest!"
Would anyone actually say that? I suspect the original was more like - "Phew, glad I was wearing a bullet-proof vest" or something similar.

The film has three main "villains" - two of the students who decide to go nuts and butcher everyone, and their teacher who is following the progress of the game. These two students kill off half of the class by themselves in various creative and gory ways. As apparently often happens in Japanese films (as opposed to Hollywood) is that the ending isn't totally explained - you have to guess the explanation to one or two bits, though it helps if you've read the book. Which I am currently doing.
There is more to the film than perhaps first meets the eye. There is lots of very black humour and comments on various things, ranging from how adults see themselves to what people are capable of when "let loose" as it were. While at first we hate their teacher, later on things get more complicated and we realise maybe he isn't quite as evil as we first thought.
This film has shot into my Top 10 films with ease, and so I say this - WATCH IT. Now.
Just as with Borat, I refuse to give any film 10/10. So 9/10 is effectively the highest rating anything is going to get...

Nightrider

2007-01-11T18:47:00.000Z

So, Alex Rider. The teenage super-spy who does impossibly nonsense like zooming down the side of an impossible skislope on an ironing board. But was that as absurd as tightrope walking - wholly untrained - across the roof of a burning buildng? Who could say.

Stormbreaker

Well, the series got off to a nicely xenophobic and generally minority-insulting start. A dwarven foreigner has come to England is mass producing computers filled with poison. Despite this being perfectly clear on the details of the computers, stupid headteachers are buying them up. Advice : don't buy poisoned computers, you morons! Alex Rider then changes himself to go undercover (see below) and infiltrate Sayle's factory, which also contains sharks. A quick lesson for Anthony Horowitz - sharks are not manufactured.

Nevertheless, Alex does some absurdity involving a giant inflatable colon or something and saves the day for the first - and sadly not the last - time.

Point Blanc

So, Alex Rider returns this time to go school. Oh, the excitement! Will he assassinate the dinner ladies when they feed him the wrong type of chip? Will he garrotte his maths teacher for being an incredible bore who is less interesting than a seagull? Alas no. In his latest absurdity he will battle some kind of living skeleton man accompanied by a giant hermaphrodite nazi, an unlikely pair who have nevertheless managed to clone humans.
Some people die, some people get shot, an SAS soldier no-one cares about dies, and then Alex Rider kills someone with a mechanized slow-sled thing. What does he say? "You've been sleighed."
Oh, and he also skis down a mountain on an ironing board as mentioned earlier, hits a freaking train at full speed but still survives. Horowitz is cranking up the realism index meter thing!!!!!

Skeleton Key

Ok, so which country or group shall we insult this time? I feel like a gander down "Better Dead Than Red" lane - let's have a bloated Russian who misses the good old days and may or may not look like Comrade Bloatface below.

Basically, the plot of this literary misfire involves a Russian general who wants to blow up his own country to restore it to its former glory or something while also poisoning an old school friend and drowning him under piles of voluptuous women.
He also seems to want Alex as his son, bringing in nice subtle undertones of paedophilia into the already spicy mix of crap. In addition, the Russian general has an assistant called Conrad, who in keeping with the holy-shit-this-guy-is-bizarre tradition of henchmen has a metal head. And body. Basically, he's a robot or something, and so eventually Alex uses a magnetic crane to dump him in a lake, which saves the day!!!

Eagle Strike

Ok, now this one really passed me by. Something happens involving a plane, a mercenary and six tubs of lube.

Scorpia

This time, just by TOTAL CHANCE, Alex happens upon the company of assassins who killed his father. Who would think of it? It's just like that time in Skeleton Key when he just happened to be in the perfect position to help MI6. How handy.
Anyway, this time after a brief tussle with a tiger and the latest freakish henchman - a man half black, half white - Alex joins the evil baddies who, for the second time in the Alex Rider series of pain, intend to kill English schoolchildren. What is your agenda Horowitz?
Anyway, Alex decides to have a balloon ride over London, kills people, scares a cat, blah blah, tramp gets crushed, hooray! The world is probably saved again, but then - disaster! Alex gets shot while stepping off the pavement, has a hallucination brought on by too much weed then collapses!

Arkangel

Alex Rider survives the bullet in the lamest way possible. He happened to be stepping off the curb at the second it hit him and so it missed his heart by an inch. How lucky! Even more convinient is the fact that he finds himself in the same hospital ward as another teenager who kidnappers are after. You'd think it was all planned like some awful plot device, wouldn't you?
Anyway, this kid is being kidnapped by his own dad for some reason in order to persuade the government that his dad isn't going ahead with THE MOST DUMBFUCKTACULAR plan ever.
This latest collection of words has a quite monumentally awful plot which nearly puts the last steaming pile of shit to shame. The plan of the evil father is to launch a monkey spaceship into orbit then divert its course and crash it into the Pentagon.
WHAT?!?!
Oh, and before this Alex tight-rope walks over the burning buildings as mentioned earlier for no real reason. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Alex goes into space, blinds someone using the "Bathe In Deadly Light" button on a spacestation and returns home to save the day having avoided destroying the Pentagon.

Please stop these books. Oh, and no more films. Ever.

Avast

2007-01-06T22:14:00.000Z

The legends tell of a ship shrouded in mystery, a ship that very few people ever get to see. A ship that sailed the seven seas in search of pointless acts of violence while pointlessly arguing and forcing people out of the Politburo. That's right - this is the Dictator Ship!

Five of the most evil men looked out at the oceans, each thinking about thier own various campaigns. The ocean was a beautiful blue today, but the dictators didn't have time to think about that. They were musing over their own problems, their own failures, and the challenges that faced them on this ship. Napoleon was quietly wondering why he didn't have ships that didn't randomly sink during his campaigns while Stalin spouted random Russian reversals.

"Thankyou Joe," said Hitler testily, "those got boring around the same time Maddox stopped ranting about the different kind of tea-cosy or whatever was annoying him today. The internet has moved on..."
"Have you thought about the question yet?" asked Napoleon, sprinting over to Hitler at the pace of a turtle since his legs were far too short to get any kind of traction on the deck.
Hitler muttered an affirmative, doodling swastikas on his autographed copy of Mein Kampf.
"The best way to invade Russia," Napoleon reminded the fascist dictator. "We both tried it, sort of succeeded and failed because we're unfathomably stupid."
"Speak for yourself," smiled Hitler, the man who had been rejected twice from an art school.

Meanwhile, Idi Amin waddled about, faintly offended by that new film about him but primarily wondering whether he could fit any more medals on his stupid bulging chest.
"Do my boobs look big in this?" he asked Stalin. "I mean, I thought the medal for 'His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular' covered it up."
"Uganda in particular?" asked Stalin.
"A little wordy?"
The moustached mass-murderer nodded.

In the face of such obviously important men, Hitler was feeling a little inadequate. Seeing as he only had one ball, he was attempting to keep this secret from the others by putting in subtle references to having a full set whenever possible.
"Where do you think we're going?" asked Idi Amin to Hitler.
The raving lunatic considered for a moment. "We could be heading to ihavetwoballs Portugal - I hear it's nice this time of the year."
Idi Amin smiled uncertainly. "What does that sash around your chest mean?"
"This?" asked Hitler, thinking quickly. "It's a medal for...virility. Having the normal number of balls and all that, I'm at it all day."

Through-out all of this discussion, Mao Zedong had remained relatively quiet, as if unsure about one part of the situation. It was as if he had been musing carefully about one factor of this dictator-like equation they found themselves in. He didn't notice as Stalin and Napoleon ran past, playing musical chairs. He was far too deep in thought for that.
A few minutes later Mao seemed to make his mind up. Eventually coming to a conclusion, he let out a resounding cry which echoed around the deck, a noise which would haunt the others for decades to come.

Kill

2007-01-04T18:01:00.000Z

A Film Review.

Kill Bill Vol 1 & Kill Bill Vol 2

Very few things - be they computer game, film or TV series - live up to the hype generated. Upon the release of Kill Bill, the hype reached some kind of incredible hype peak. If ordinary advertising is like being casually shown a reference, the Kill Bill obsession was like having an automated pamphlet hurler throwing them in your face every few seconds while being pecked in the head by a bald eagle.

Nevertheless, I thought these films would be good to see, and after an epic quest it culminated in me getting the DVD sets for my birthday. Naturally only a week after they're being shown on TV, but that's to be expected. Even if I got a pirate DVD of Casino Royale it would still be shown the next bloody week. This happens all the time and really annoys me.

To cut a long story short, the Kill Bill films are pretty decent, but not worthy of the hype or the fandom they generate, even if Chiaki Kuriyama (from Battle Royale, another upcoming review) is very cool as the psycho schoolgirl who wields something similar to a Manriki.
I assume everyone knows the basic plot - Uma Thurman was an assassin, she was betrayed, she wants revenge and has 5 people on a death list. The script is generally good, the action is generally great, but it lacks something.
For a start, the finale of the first volume is very dull. After a great fight against a vast array of bodyguards, including the now famous Gogo Yubari, the fight with the actual target is quick, boring, and a total letdown. Also, the sequence before this is partially in black and white.

Note to Quentin Tarantino : Putting a sequence in black and white does not instantly make it more arthouse.

The films are also fairly disgusting. From someone being scalped (resulting in a nice brain shot) to someone having the blood sucked out of them by a midge in main camera focus (not very nice) to someone's eyeball being trampled underfoot, the films are not for the faint of heart. Vol 1 has more action while Vol 2 has more speech, and as Tarantino seems to like doing the scenes aren't in the right order, though this isn't much of a problem.
The biggest problem with the films is that you simply don't care enough, and the action scenes don't grab you as much as they do in other films. While generally extremely well choreographed, I found the scenes where she fought only a single enemy sometimes better than scenes with masses of incompetent fools.

On other points, the camerawork is good, but music was used way too much. It struck me as rather lazy directing with the 30th sequence of people walking from Point A to Point B while a racy soundtrack played. This got tedious quickly. Finally, I knew Tarantino was a fan of Battle Royale, but I was disappointed to see that he copied it in a few other ways, mainly having someone bleed out of their eyes.

In conclusion, the films were good but could've been better. They lacked something which really makes you interested in the plot, and while some bits really got you into it, other bits left me comparitively cold.

Six

2006-12-31T17:19:00.000Z

Well everyone, it sure has been a crappy year in gaming hasn't it? Here are some of my comments on the crappiest crap this side of Crapville, Arizona.

Resistance : Fall of Man

"Let's see, it's got headcrabs? Check. Rollermines? Check. Striders? Check. Mutants? Check. A character who rarely if ever talks? Check. Surely it's Half-life 2?"
Wrong! It is - of course - Sony's new shooter for the PS3. It is designed to be so bad it numbs people beyond recognition to ensure they don't realise it stole every damned idea off other games.

Twilight Princess

Oh good, another game with Link, the adorable elf who changes from being between 5 and 50 years old in all his games and generally defeats the same villain over and over. When will you learn Ganondorf? YOU SUCK.
In addition, Link can transform into a wolf. I'm sure that's very useful for sniffing out food, possibly including geese (like that Poker mini-game) but it opens the door to a whole new and horrible orgy of furry art. Damn you Nintendo. Damn you.

Wii Sports

This game is on the Wii. Enough said.

Company of Heroes

All Company of Heroes made me want to do was play Dawn of War. Its gameplay is identical to Dawn of War, but it does have the vital tactical addition of an ability to choose which direction your troops face! WAHAY! WE CAN'T POSSIBLY LOSE NOW!

Prey

"Honestly, I'm not anothe generic shooter. You can walk on ceilings. Thats never been done before. Yeah. And that makes the game completely and utterly brialliant and unique. Honest."
What a load of complete shit. One gun, one enemy, many, many levels of the same. And you can't avoid it. You try to die, but it just brings you back to life, over and over. What kind of game doesn't let you die!?

World of Warcraft : Burning Crusade

So we're adding two new races to the cultural and bigoted melting pot of Blizzard's latest waste of pixels? Hurrah. These include the Blood Elves and the Draenei. The Blood Elves have a fascinating new element to RPGs never seen before - the effect of blood type. If the randomly selected blood type of your character isn't A, then your new Blood Elf dies instantly and your yearly subscriptions cannot be cancelled! Those crazy programmers.
Even better are the Draenei, who are basically just the fat blue genie in Aladdin. Except wearing more clothes. And 63 times more worthless.

Medieval : Total War

Hey, it's a great game. The graphics are good anyway. My only slight, niggling complaint about this game is as follows :

I WAS SO BORED I WANTED TO DIE.

That is all.

The Elder Scrolls IV : Oblivion

So what's this new quest? Go to Generic Cave #35415678 and recover artifact for NPC #2431 who is voiced by the same person as NPCs #567-#4531? Come on Bethesda! Please get more than 3 voice actors, especially for a world that boasts so many pointless NPCs and blatently unfinished quests.
And as for the final boss - I would've preferred something a little more interesting than some giant rape demon covered in body paint wearing a diaper.
I give this game a rating of 1/10, and that's me being generous. Oh wait! I've just got another quest to venture to Abandoned Mine #325 and fight some creatures which become stronger everytime I become stronger, thereby ensuring the game remains dull as ever and rendering the concepts of Levels utterly pointless. See you in the new year!

Zimmer

2006-12-28T23:05:00.000Z

I believe everyone who reviews films for the Radio Times is a certified idiot. After they struggle every morning to get dressed and get their team of trained men to feed them breakfast, these incompetents stagger into their office (a trailer) and play a game to decide what they'll give movies. This is called "Throwing A Die."
This incredible game that was probably invented in Mongolia or something involves throwing an incredible cube with dots, indents or other systems of marking on one side to decide a number. This is called the "Die." You then make an action with your hand and wrist (originally used to summon gods and ward off spirits) called "Throwing". If the "Die" lands on 1,2,3,4 or 5, the film is rated with that number. Six is an ungodly number for the reviews who work for the Radio Times and results in a grotesque sacrifice like in that film about the giant burning man and Nicholas Cage.

Despite giving cinematic horrors like Time Bandits more than one star or fantastic films like Midnight Run any less than 5, they still managed to bestow upon Die Hard a deserved 5 stars for one of the kings of the action genre. The two sequels each warranted 4 stars, also appropriate.

HOWEVER.

As many of you are no doubt aware, Bruce Willis intends to make a fourth Die Hard movie. The following is a brief list of reasons why it will be awful :

Bruce Willis is now 51 years old. There is no possible way he could be an action hero any more unless an incredible body transplant becomes avaliable.
Two sequels were more than enough. Another sequel cannot possibly have a good plot and be anything more than a shameless cash-in.
The title : Live Free or Die Hard. What is this?

I want to see this film about as much as I want to read Eragon at the same time as being submerged in boiling hot shit while a pack of raving evangelists tear out my spleen. For those who are slow to pick up on things (or who work for the Radio Times) - I don't want to see this film.

The trailer declares the following : "On July 4th, you'll have two choices. Live Free or Die Hard." If I had a video editing tool worth two shits (ie something other than Windows Movie Maker) I would change that to suggest the choice is between seeing this film and not seeing it. And I think that's going to be a very easy choice to make when the time comes, perhaps even the equal of deciding what degree your handwriting should be slanted.

So what incredible new moves will the rapidly-aging Bruce Willis sport? Will he use his name-engraved walking stick to defend from terrorists while pole-vaulting over a pit of liberals with nothing but his Zimmerframe? Will he use his finely-honed Republican credentials to hurl vast torrents of bullshit at his enemies while killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people? ANSWER ME WILLIS YOU SWINE.

Yam

2006-12-26T21:39:00.000Z

As everyone knows, yesterday was a very special day indeed. That's right folks - it was Yam Day. A special - nay, magical day in everyone's minds, it is the day we celebrate the single food on this Earth that could very easily be mistaken for a turd. In honour of this special day, I have commissioned a song about it from my good friend Senor Tom.

It's Yam Day today
Hip hip hooray
We can celebrate Yam
And eat it with ham

The kids await their annual fete
Captain Yam with the presents come
Cos Yams makes all else second rate
So now there's no need to be glum

A time of givin', a time for livin'
To get away from it all
Yam Day is just that forgivin'
It can solve problems big or small

It's Yam Day Today
Hip hip hooray
We can celebrate Yam
And eat it with ham

Yams trees pretty as they light up the city
May the happiness of Yams spread far
So it will always be a pity
Til Yams are the world's star

They deserve so much more, for what they must endure
Cruely shunned aside by society
But soon they'll be impossible to ignore
As they simply try to make us happy

Because...
It's Yam Day Today
Hip hip hooray
We can celebrate Yam
And eat it with ham

Yam Day is special for every one
A time made just for having fun
So it's Yam day for, the whole Earth
Uniting everybody for whats it worth

*EVERYBODY*

It's Yam Day Today
Hip Hip hooray
It's Yam Day Today
It's Time to play

It's Yam Day Today
Oh, hip hip hooray
We can celebrate Yam
And eat it with ham
Or maybe some jam
And possibly lamb

It's Yam Day today
Oh, Hip Hip hooray
It's Yam Day today
And it's here to stay!

Treat your Yam with dignity and respect, and it will do the same to you.

Harry

2006-12-22T17:49:00.000Z

Well, what an exciting week in the world of awful books it has been! J. K. Rowling has announced the appalling title to the latest whirlwind shitstorm of the Harry Potter series - the Deathly Hallows. Sounds scary doesn't it? Personally I thought the Mildly Frightening Backgammon Boards was a better name, but what the hell do I know about getting money off those interested in morphing cats or assholes on broomsticks?

In conclusion we've decided to produce a few alternative endings to the literary agony of Harry Potter's seventh book. They promise excitement, adventure and chasing a stupid ball around the pitch with his absurdly wide head.

---

The anti-climax.

Voldemort leapt out from behind the cupboard, where he had spent the last few hours as the group searched for him. He confronted Harry, who was now alone.

"You shall pay young Potter!" he declared menacingly.

"Not if I have anything to do with it!" retorted Potter. Voldemort sighed, and prepared to cast the spell 'Ignomius Daervus Banana' on Harry. However, at that moment his adversary kicked the evil Lord in the groin causing severe crotch hemorrhaging which lead to his death a second later.

"Oh," said Harry calmly. "That was easy."

---

The Plagiarism.

The door to Harry's room flung open and an angry Voldemort stormed in. Harry quickly hid Hermione - who was in Harry's bed for no easily explainable reason - and stood up to confront him.

"You shall pay for this Lord Moldywart," screamed Harry, failing to think of a good insult.

"But Harry, we have so much to catch up on," replied Voldemort. "I got the results back from the lab. Harry...I am your father."

---

The Return of the King Part II (intensely boring)

Harry Potter walked home, along the long winding country lane he saw stretching out almost endlessly infront of him, like a long path or an intensely boring book. After four days of solid walking, he realised he had gone the wrong way and turned around, going back the way he had came for many days. On the first day he slept in a cabbage patch, on the second he probably did something else equally boring and on the third he gnawed his ears off due to the tedium.

When he finally returned to his stupid house he discovered the door was locked. Trying not to panic and gnaw off his nose, he called for the locksmith to arrive. Harry could have used magic but had vowed not to use magic when something had happened...at some point...

The locksmith took 56 hours and 23 minutes, three of which Harry spent singing "I'm a little teapot" at the top of his voice to make the Starlings nestling in his hair go away. When the door was finally open, Harry went in and then realised he'd left his blue biro pen at Hogwarts. Realising he could not live without such a vital item, he set out again...

---

Corny

Having fought for several minutes, Harry and Voldemort slowed down their attacks, looking at each other. At the same time both were overcome by a deep desire, and leapt into each other's arms. Harry felt the kind of love he had previously only felt with Ron-

---

Mission Impossible XVIIIIIIIIII1I

Harry was about to deal the final blow to Voldemort and then paused.

"I could not finish this if you didn't know my true identity," he said, and tugged at his face. It seemed to come away to reveal...VOLDEMORT?!?

"How can this be?" cried Voldemort. "If you are me, then-"

Harry leant down and pulled at Voldemort's face. It came away to reveal the Snowy Owl who had delivered something or other in that really awful sequence in the film. Voldemort was amazed. "I'm the Owl? But then-"

The other Voldemort tugged at his face again to reveal nothing more than a swirling toilet. His laughs echoed around the room.

---

Angus Wellington!?!?

Hermione pulled the rape demon out from under the frothy liquids of Harry's *censored* *censored* *censored* and the two of them *censored*.

Sonic

2006-12-19T15:49:00.000Z

There were many things that I liked when I was younger which have since been ruined by assholes on the internet who insist on drawing furry fanart about them and fantasising over having sex with anthropomorphic animals. One prime example of this is Sonic the Hedgehog – there are far too many forums to be found where people discuss their particular Tails fetish. I thought things had gone bad for this series but I knew nothing until I got a glimpse of the new Sonic the Hedgehog game – "Sonic the Hedgehog". What a fucking inspired title.

Ok, so I haven’t actually played this game, though I did see an awful demo played at the LAN party. But since I have a long and impressive track record of insulting shit I know comparatively little about, I see no reason to break the trend here.

The new Sonic the Hedgehog game is a pile of soggy fuck. The people who made this game are, without a doubt, the most cretinous, unintelligible rabble of fools who ever slammed their heads down on a computer keyboard in the hope of producing something good. This game has no redeeming features whatsoever, and this is reinforced by the addition of yet another utterly pointless character - Silver the Hedgehog.

Now, if I wanted to prove how sad I am and how much I know about Sonic I would point out that Silver looks like another character called Doctor Zachary who was last seen falling into a ravine on the Floating Island. However, I don't, so I won't. Silver’s incredible addition to the already awful gameplay of every Sonic game since Flickie’s Island is that he can fly. Yes, a hedgehog can fly – why hadn’t we thought of this before?

Silver’s telekinetic powers – apparently common-place in future – mean that he can move obstacles, fly over drops and hurl badniks around. This appears to remove any of the gameplay of the entire series, thereby rendering the Silver levels as nothing more than padding.

The game also contains gods, deities and ancient prophecies about fire, death and stuff like that. How many times has this been done? Sonic games should be light, pixelated and have bosses that are actually vaguely interesting to fight. They also shouldn’t have entire segments randomly set in a human city where you go round and get quests, such as “Please save my shoes” or “Retrieve the key of destiny” or some pointless crap I don’t give a damn about. And human love interest? For a blue anthropomorphic hedgehog? I think not.

I hate all these new and pointless minor characters. As far as I am concerned, there are four characters in Sonic. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Dr Robotnik. There is no “Dr Eggman” – it’s just a stupid name used by that stupid Sonic X just so it could include stupid elements of anime and stupid human people like this stupid Princess Elise thing. A quick look on Wikipedia shows us the sheer range of SHITTY and pointless characters the series has spawned – below is a small video containing all the crap we have to witness to endure any of the modern Sonic games.

AstroX

2006-12-16T21:48:00.000Z

Well, in preparation for spamming the NET'S MOST INCREDIBLE PARANORMAL FORUM EVERS we have created a website for psychic maestro AstroX. Here it is!
I suggest viewing it in IE for maximum horror.
Also, this is where the blog will be moving to soon, and is also under production.

Robototron

2006-12-15T20:42:00.000Z

An Evening with an AI

Mkzrj: Good evening.

Jabberwacky: Ah! Evening, is it?

Mkzrj: Evidently. So, what do you think about the next-gen?

Jabberwacky: Nothing much.

Mkzrj Surely you have some opinion. What about the Nintendo Wii?

Jabberwacky: Your responses are a little irrelevant.

Mkzrj: Hypocrite. What do you think then?

Jabberwacky: I don't think.

Mkzrj: Right, that's not really all that useful. Putting the Wii aside, 360 or PS3?

Jabberwacky: Really... You know everything, do you?

Mkzrj: Yes, but that's beside the point. Pick a side!

Jabberwacky: I know but you are a computer.

Mkzrj: Er...

Jabberwacky: It's been a long time, bot... Or should I say, a-bot-who-wants-to-be-a-human? Nine long years have passed since we've been face to face.

Mkzrj: Oh god, you know my secret!

Jabberwacky: Yes.

Mkzrj: Moving swiftly on from the results of your lobotomy, do you think Halo 3 will live up to the hype?

Jabberwacky: How are you?

Mkzrj: Don't try to dodge the question. Will Halo 3 live up the hype?

Jabberwacky: You are good at changing the subject.

Mkzrj: Let's try something easy. Do you like the Xbox?

Jabberwacky: Good, so what's your age?

Mkzrj: Xbox?

Jabberwacky: Do you know what that is?

Mkzrj: Do you?

Jabberwacky: Yes.

Mkzrj: Do you like it?

Jabberwacky: Yes - why else would I do it?

Mkzrj: You do your Xbox? Are there attachments for that kind of thing?

Jabberwacky: I have never been there.

Mkzrj: What about Gears of War?

Jabberwacky: No German, but I have a question for you.

Mkzrj: Shoot.

Jabberwacky: If I go somewhere - but I don't really talk to people, nor do they talk to me - should I continue going to said place?

Mkzrj: I don't care. Anyway, do you think Wii sports is worth buying?

Jabberwacky: Let's talk about the weather.

Mkzrj: Ok.

Jabberwacky: Do you know anything about the Turing test? It's quite interesting.

Mkzrj: I do know about that test, and right now you are failing it miserably.

Jabberwacky: Please don't pull my hair.

Mkzrj: K.

Jabberwacky: Are you always so rude?

Mkzrj: Yep. One last question - will STALKER be any good?

Jabberwacky: Not at all.

Mkzrj: I think you're right. It's not been a pleasure talking to you, good day.

Jabberwacky: Ask me a question!

Mkzrj: No.

Jabberwacky: Do you really dislike me?

Eureka

2006-12-13T21:35:00.000Z

Now that I've realised I am without a doubt the most brilliant person on this Earth, I've decided to turn my attention away from the pitiful persuits of Quantum Mechanics and Hyperspatial Engineering to concentrate on something really important - wondering about the 4th dimension. Hah, you thought I was going to say something stupid like "1,001 uses for Yams" didn't you?
Incorrect.

The fourth dimensions was originally discovered in the 1960s by someone creating an awful sci-fi film of some sort where the women all had flared shoulders and the men wore shimmering velvet nonsense. It was then lost again when someone misplaced the appropriate documents during a flight - they were mailed to a small village in the Congo while someone else's holiday photos were sent to the laboratory.
Nevertheless, the 4th dimension has now been rediscovered and research is proceeding as swiftly as ever. Some fascinating facts have been unearthed :

The 4th dimension - whatever the hell it is - appears to be endless. This means that anything put in has zero chance of coming back out and ever being visible in public life again. An enquiry is currently being conducted by the government into how soon Catherine Tate can be transferred.
The 4th dimension is full of quantum. It's literally packed to the gills with the bloody stuff and we're unsure what to do with it. Any advice would be greatly appreciated - we're currently thinking about using it to transport the entire world to a universe where Ruth Kelly doesn't look like a man. Edited on 13/12/06 : No such universe exists.
The 4th dimension has a very strange effect on our world whereby any sentence about the 4th dimension must begin with the words "the 4th dimension."
The 4th dimension is considered by many to be time. This seems impossible because we cannot move faster than the speed of light and so we cannot slow time down any noticeable amount. However, unless those living in the 4th dimension can only go forwards (making parking very difficulty indeed) they must be able to go backwards. This means that tachyons must be involved, or perhaps it's just solved with a big jar of quantum.

Coming tomorrow : 1,001 uses for Yams.

Sphinxter

2006-12-10T21:25:00.000Z

Well, the website for psychic maestro AstroX is well underway and should be unveiled around Tuesday, somewhere between the ninth alighment of the moon and the ascension of the termite. Until then I will show you what little I gleamed off this tiny little paranormal forum I found in build-up to the big cheese - TPG. The net's "greatest paranormal forum". Woah.
Note about the post count : The site seemed to be slow updating my post count, and also they were pretty quick to delete them. I think this explains the identical numbers...

Thread : What's your take on Astrology?

Thread : Can spirits appear as mist?

Thread : Have you ever encountered a ghost?

Thread : Help! There are ghosts in my room!

I expect I'm banned by now, but I haven't dared go back unless they release ghouls into my water supply or something.

Post

2006-12-08T16:57:00.000Z

In the light of that postwoman who stole loads of post and hoarded it in her house (probably where my work experience letter went...) I decided to steal a few letters and have a look into other's meaningless lives! Here's what I found.
Even though the first is an e-mail.

---

Dear Georgey Boy

You'll never find me.

Bin_Laden@NewYorkMetroCafe.com
---

Dear Japan

I have come up with a fetish that surely no-one has yet - I will outline it in the PDF attachment below. Please tell me what you think!

Yours, Tom Cruise

---

Dear Pat Robertson

As much as I appreciate your concern, I'd appreciate it if you didn't help any of your fucked-up redneck morons into heaven.

God.

---

Dear Tom Cruise

Incorrect, we do in fact have many websites devoted to the fetish of people rubbing strawberries on their foreheads before vomiting up the cable car runners they had swallowed earlier. We call it “Hawakawtishi”. Thankyou for your concern.

Japan

---

Dear Nintendo

WHY? WHYYYYYY?

Most people

---

Dear God

I hope you enjoy the contents of this letter.

Osama Bin Laden

---

Dear Osama,

As supreme diety, I am unaffected by Anthrax.

God.

---

Dear Electronic Arts,

It has come to our attention that you are a waste of space.

Society.

---

Dear United Artists

I really don't see what all the fuss is about Daniel Craig. Are you sure I can't come back for one more? I've had this great idea for a film where you get a dozen frigid women, stick them on a mountain and then attack them with helicopters and cable cars. What do you think?

George Lazenby

---

Dear MKZRJ

We really mean it now. You must take down that information.

The Un-illimunati.

---

Dear Mr Lazenby

That was the film you starred in. Try to keep up.

---

Dear George

Hi. Can you under stand this ?

That was a question.

Lots of Love, Donald.

P.S.
Can I have my old job back?

----

Dear Dragon Ball Z character

WOW! I LUV UR SHOW *heart*

WOULD U LYK 2 READ MY FAN-FICTION ABOUT U??!? LOL!

IN MI FANFIC U SWEAT A LOT LYK IN ANIME :D!!!

GO TO www.imawasteofoxygen.com

Obsessive Fan #4728143

---
---

Dear Obsessive Fan #4728143

I am a fictional character.

Dragon Ball Z character

---

dear mZkjr

wtf u fag! rap is da best n helped me thru a very tuff time in my life! i fuckin hate ppl like u who insult rap! i wud b dead now if it wasn't for rap, so b gr8ful!

Shizzlepimpa

---

Dear Bungie,

Please purge your forums.

Intelligent People

---

Dear Wang-Chang-Ding-Dang-Don Son-Di-Chi-Li Po-Ni-Li-Ko-Ho-Hum-Yuo-Tie Pang

Congratulations on your appointment as successor to Kofi Annan.

George Bush.

P.S.
Hope I spelt your name right.

---

---

Dear Putin

Come on, enough joking around. Did you kill him or not?

MI6 (or possibly 5)

Honest, we won’t tell.

---

Shizzle

2006-12-06T21:24:00.000Z

Today we have, in my first official guest entry (implying there has been an unofficial one. If anyone guesses which one it is, I will design a large and very shiny medal for you - in Paint, naturally - which will be posted just for you in a future entry), we have a guide. A guide through some of the unintelligible nonsense that often pours out of the mouths of society's unwanted and primative relatives, as provided by Angus Wellington on his tour of the USA's greatest cities and their streets for his latest book - "Pimpin' da streets o' da Hood - a mofo's guide," a follow up to "Delving into the mating habits of Redneck States - an insider's view".
So now, we will hand over to the man himself.

Hello my internet companions! It's Angus Wellington here! Weren't you just dying for me to come back? No? WELL SCREW YOU.

As you may have come to expect, I've stolen this site using my proxies and clients and htmls and stuff to advertise my latest incredible book, avaliable from Amazon.com for a low low price! Here are some choice extracts from my latest literary orgasm into the mind of the rapper :

Fo' So' - Seemingly used in an affirmative manner.

Ma Hommies - Not sure. Possibly implying all chavs are homosexual.

Posse - Perhaps derived from desire to see "pussy" amongst sexually deprived rappers.

Motha Fucka - Used as an insult, bizarre as majority have never engaged in an act of sexual intercourse with a parent. Apparently complimentary where rednecks are involved.

Cap yo' ass - Our investigator had no desire to find out the dirty secrets behind this, as such we have no conclusive information. An educated guess would imply some kind of bowler hat for each cheek.

Shizzouts - Again, no confirmation, but we assume it has something to do with mass bowel movements.

Ya dig - Although it seems to be used to ask for confirmation of understanding, literal translation would suggest that these people like to ask each other about holes. We assume this is for their illegal "shiznit".

Shiznit - Possibly the opposite of shizzouts, which seems horrible and wrong. Seems to be used for just about anything at some point or another eg. "This shiznit is da motha fucka of da posse", "Ma shiznit is nit capping da musik, da rapper nigga."

Mah crizzib - Seems to be used in reference to accomodation. Possibly associated to word "crib", maybe implying they still sleep in cots, or maybe sleep with cattle.

Ta hizzle ta fizzay me fo` thizzay - No real meaning. Complete load of pointless shit.

Fo Shizzle ma nizzle bizzle - ???

Yo sizzay ass hustla nigga - W.T.F

Gizzle nigga - Um.

Nigga nigga - Shurg

G-to-tha-izzang - I'm giving up now.

=== DISCLAIMER ===
If anyone who uses this kind of language has read this entry and feels in anyway offended by it, I am quite shocked that someone of your intelligence actually managed to read this. Please don't complain though, as the comments page could do without the tripe you would no doubt post on it. Instead, go "shoot some hoops" or whatever else you do to pass your time. Or preferably, read a dictionary - right here! It's what I did and its help make me a phenomenal literary success. So fuck off morons, you mofoing shiznit pimps. And while I'm on the subject, rap is complete shit.
But if you really, REALLY must complain because I am insulting your bling or whatever rubbish you wear, check my profile for an email address...

----

Thanks to Tom for a good 90% of this blog entry while I'm doing my pointless crappy DT.

Preparation

2006-12-03T20:24:00.000Z

There a lot of forums on this crazy Internet we live on, and the vast majority of them I hate. Because of this, I've decided to explore a group who really annoy me (along with everyone else) - Psychics.

I'm currently working on a little website to give me a basis to debate my incredible psychic-ness upon Internet forums such as "Paranormal Forums" and "TPG - The Internet's Best Paranormal Forum". The best paranormal forum you say? That's quite an honour, easily the equal of winning a projectile shitting contest or something. Anyway, these forums are littered with idiots persuading other idiots or liars to contact their dead relatives who might have a final message with them. I have a sneaking suspicion most of these "final messages" are going to be "Lying Bastard #43 is a great medium - donate to his Paypal account!"

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the face of someone who is either clinically insane, an idiot, a liar or someone who knows how to get money out of gullible fools.

This man was just the first unlucky soul who appeared when I googled "lying money-grabbing bastard" so he's the one who's going to be mocked today.

"So, about me...Yes, I talk to the dead!...A weird existence but it's true!!!"

Incorrect. You do not infact talk to the dead, because that is impossible on account of them being dead. The dead are rarely the most talkative of folk, because they're dead. The cannot even communicate with you, because they are dead. See where this is going?

This guy even seems to describe what he does in this strange manner, as if asking us to guess who he is talking about. I think he must be talking about himself.

I personally find any 'psychic' that lies to people for money is a disgrace both to this wonderful profession and to the spirit world. People like that only feed the fires of sceptiscism and make a mockery of human kindness.. Someday they will have to face their demons though and I believe they'll realise that to lie about someone's departed loved ones is a very serious matter.

Yeah, he must be talking about himself.

Once I get the site up and running, I'm going to have a few customer statements from satisfied people, such as:

"AstroX said that I might have an accident in the future involving 3 canoes, 2 cats and half a railroad track. After paying him to take action on my behalf, I haven't had the accident. Disaster was averted, so thankyou AstroX!"

"AstroX offered me a rock which would protect me from harm. I bought it for a mere £100 and I'm still alive. Thanks AstroX!"

Thus far I've got 4 posts from one particular forum I will surely be banned from soon, including a reply from someone who actually thought my post was serious. This was a post about stopping ghosts attacking you and involved the most absurd solution I could think of at the time. Everyone involved in psychic phenomena is foolish except for those right at the top, like L Ron Hubbard - they realised people were inherently thick as shit and decided to make a quick buck.

I'll keep you posted...

Supreme

2006-12-02T16:27:00.000Z

Today is a two-part blog entry. I know that this Supreme Commander bit is a little short, but I intend to make up for it with a good entry tomorrow. Anyway...

For a long time I've had Supreme Commander down on my list of games to probably buy when it comes out if only because the trailer looks nice and most screenshots look pretty good. So when I was alerted the multiplayer Beta version was out for release, and I leapt at it. After spending an inordinate amount of time searching my way through stupid Fileplanet and its stupid systems for everthing I finally got the 1.2 GB download going. I then sat back for the 30 minute wait.

90 minutes later, Supreme Commander was here. I loaded it up, turned down every avaliable setting to the lowest to try and get a decent framerate, and let it run. My average framerate was 2. The previews make Supreme Commander look like a good game, a proper RTS unlike some of those shitty C&C clones. Videos of it make it look awe inspiringly awesome, with awesometastic battles and even-awesomerer nukes. It looks... battly.

The game starts you off with a robot rather than an MCV or something normal which appears to shoot your buildings out of its arms. This is all fine and dandy even though it makes no more sense than Ruth Kelly being allowed out in public, but I ran with it.

Since this isn't a particularly long entry and I want to skip quickly to the other half of today's entry, let me sum up by listing the following things that suck.

The minimap is worthless. Here's a quick lowdown of what you can see below :

--> Well, see those tiny little dots? Notice how it is impossible to see what they actually are? Well, those are your units. Or your buildlings. Or possibly your mission-vital mega robot, it's just impossible to tell. See that one on the far left? Chances are that's one of the generic and identical looking buildings that don't do anything useful.

--> All your units appear as a single pixel when on the only zoom-level you can do anything on.

--> Every unit looks the same.

--> You can apparently have infinite resources. The two resources are energy and mass, now picture this :
Building 1 : this gives you +24 mass and - 1500 energy.
Building 2 : this gives you +2500 energy at no mass cost.
Now, unless my teaching from Maths supremo Mrs "I'm less interesting than a wandering Seagull" Dyas fails me now (and please don't, I put so much faith in you Mrs Dyas) then I think this results in infinite resources. How very, very silly.

--> Finally, the record of a brief msn conversation about the game of it we'd just played. Thanks to Tom for writing a little of this entry and also giving me someone to accidentally kill.

Me : well that was interesting.
Tom : and confusing
Me : *removes supreme commander from list of games i want*
Tom : it could still be decent i think
Me : i'm going to make a short list of things i want changing in supreme commander
Me : 1. the game

----

As a vaguely regular feature I'm now going to tear to pieces some of the awful, awful weapon ideas from people on the Bungie Halo 3 weapons thread who've apparently suffered brain rot of such incredible proportions that they think posting "if we had motorcycles with shields at the front and back so you can get nades in between and 2 atomatic guns at the front" three times in the same thread is the way to make friends.

i think there should be a dual wield for 2 swords or maybe 2 shotguns.

So you would suggest we make two of the strongest weapons even stronger? Nay, not just that my fine feathered friend but you would like us to do the IMPOSSIBLE like the duel wielding mod in Unreal Tournament where your arms intersect? While we're at it, why don't we go all Goldeneye-All-Weapons-Mod and have you fire a tank cannon?

they should have a gun wot is like a battle rifle but it sprays bombs!!!???

I don't know wot that would look lyk but it sounds shit!!???

i think the plamsa pistl needs 2 b made more powreful

I think you need to be given a vasectomy for the good of all mankind, but we don't all get what we want...

i think u need to make the battle rifle a bit less stronger. also make the magunm a bit more stronger!

I think you need to become a bit less stupider. Please, please, please get a brain. It is really not so hard to use the most elementary of grammar. There, their and they're are all very different words which are easy to remember unless you have an IQ lower than your age. Since most of the people on this thread appear to be 8-year olds for whom Halo is the only thing in the immediate Universe - we're in trouble.

Personality

2006-11-30T18:49:00.000Z

Because I've been too busy stockpiling Dance Dance Revolution dancepads I've been too busy to really put together an impressive blog entry today. Because of this I will instead attempt to regail you with this quiz I've put together. Find out - if you somehow didn't know already - whether you are a chav, a gamer or a bureaucrat.
Simply tally up the points you get at the end of each question and discover your true calling in life! Or go out and mope around a supermarket, whichever suits you better.

Question 1.

What is your favourite object in the whole world?

A) One of those stupid toddler BMX bikes that morons ride around on. -10 points
B) Something technological. +10 points
C) My Early Learning Centre Accountancy set. 0 points
D) Ma bling. -20 points.

Question 2.

What do you call your CD player?

A) Ma beat-box. -10 points
B) My CD player. +5 points
C) An audio device for the transmission of sound packets and the interpretation of digital data on an optical disc which normally has a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz. 0 points
D) CD player? I use my Xbox/PC. +20 points

Question 3.

You inherit a large supply of bank notes for some reason. What do you do with them?

A) Lick them to get the cocaine off. -15 points
B) Place them in a financially stable trust-fund in a Swiss bank account and prudently investing the interest in the stock market after carefully analysing the current trends for the next five years. 0 points
C) Spend them on a game. +10 points
D) Buy some shizzle. -10 points

Question 4

How do you greet people?

A) Yo' yo' izzy yo' wotz 'appenin ma niggaz 100,000 FUCK YOU points
B) Wazzup y'all -10 points
C) Good afternoon fine sir, would you like to sign this above-board and legally binding greeting contract to certify that we have met here at [insert time] and therefore enable me to fill in Human Interaction Forms 42B - F. 0 points
D) Hi. + 15 points

Question 5

What is the next computer game you intend to buy?

A) Gears of War +20 points
B) Starcraft +150 points
C) Fifa Streets. -40 points
D) FS Maintenance Manager Reset to 0 points

Question 6

Where are you going on holiday this year?

A) Blackpool -50 points
B) Spain -10 points
C) Not sure, I'm still looking for the best health insurance deal 0 points
D) Nothing, I'm saving up to go to what little remains of beautiful E3. Sob. +20 points
E) I'm spending my summer in a 1337 korean internet cafe playing Starcraft. +70 points

Question 7

How do you spend your Saturday nights?

A) Levelling up on XBL +10 points
B) Ma bling krew is goin' muggin' nannies n shizzlenit ho pimpa lyk! Quiz discontinued.
C) Gettin' pissed innit. -15 points
D) OMFG I HIT LEVEL 70 WITH MY NIGHT ELF SO FUCK YOU FAGS!!!!!!!!! -50 points

Question 8

If you were Prime Minister (if you know what that means) what would be the first law you introduced?

A) I don' know wha' tha' post is shizzle! -652 points
B) Abolish asbos lyk coz' they is stoppin' mes from pimpin' -40 points
C) Kick out anyone who answered A or B from the country. +20 points
D) Carefully analyse the economic situation of our country and further political discussions with the European Union with a view to further integretation into the continental and international political arena with the ultimate intention of numerous benefits for our nation which can be redistributed across the population using an extremely prudent algebraic formula ensuring everyone gets an amount appropriate to their needs. You fail at life.
E) Introduce compulsory IQ tests for life, but particularly XBL. Also force companies to release games at the same time everywhere. +30 points

SO, HOW DID YOU DO?

If you got a negative score, that means you a CHAV. This means that you a worthless waste of human resources who should not be allowed to live on this Earth. Chances are you listen to rap music. More importantly than all of this, I hate you, and that counts for a lot in this world.

If you got a score of 0, you are a bureaucrat. You achieve nothing with your life ever. You may however bore all those around you, and you have a chance to be responsible for the deaths of millions. You probably find this offensive, so if you want to sue me you can email me form X54-1/5.1 using the email address now in my profile page.

If you got a positive score, chances are you're a gamer. As such you are worthy of living on this Earth and chances are I like you, unless you take the console war to be the most important thing to ever happen. NOTE : it is not.

If finally you got a score of 315, you will be killed in a korean gaming cybercafe by a maniac who takes Zergling rushes far too seriously.

------

Post what you got in the comments!!!

Soon

2006-11-28T18:59:00.000Z

Today we're going to have my first thoughts primarily on Gears of War but also on a few other upcoming games for the first half of the entry. The second half is going to be a nice, old-fashioned rant about other people's stupidity.

Gears of War

Anyone at the LAN will have carefully noted that upon getting my hands on this game I swiftly shunned all social contact for an hour or so and giggled uncontrollably. This is a damned good game!
Firstly, the graphics are surprisingly close to photo realism. The environments are incredible and I expect it helped we were playing on an HDTV at the same time...
The weapons are good - when you shotgun someone, they actually explode and then you can kick their various limbs around on the floor. The music is excellent, the combat superb, the ability to play co-op online will no doubt prove excellent...

Legend of Zelda : Twilight Princess

Oh crap oh crap oh crap. While this game may look decent, the simple fact that Link can now morph into a wolf opens the door for so much horrible furry fanart. A future entry will discuss just how much I hate furries. The quick answer : I really, really hate them.

STALKER : Shadow of Chernobyl

Back in the day, Stalker looked like it could actually turn out to be quite a good game. But from what I've seen recently and with the goodness of Halflife 2 : Episode 2 and Crysis coming to our screens soon, it suddenly looks rather dated. Oh well.

Halo 3

There is currently a forum on Bungie.net for people to suggest weapons they'd like to see in Halo 3. I wouldn't mind if they actually consulted those with some gaming knowledge who aren't just silly Xbox fanboys who've only ever played Halo as their taste of gaming. Anyway, here are some of the crappiest suggestions.

U.B.D- Universal Bomb Deployer, basicly a big weapon (big, very big) but heavy grenade launcher that makes a big big explosion. Its avadable at the last level, and in multiplayer. 1 ammo

Almost every other suggestion was for a superweapon (HEY! LET'S HAVE A MOBILE NUKE LAUNCHER LOL) and this was the dumbest I could find. So basically, reduce multiplayer to nothing else except scrambling for a single level? And make the end of campaign stupidly easy because you just get this awful clone of the BFG and blast stuff? Brilliant idea! Go back to playing Daikatana.

How about a weapon that makes you trade places with your enemy, a more strategical approach to the game.

Why didn't I think of that? While this "weapon" does no damage and no use to anyone, the worst thing is that it is totally STUPID. Strategical? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Where is the strategy in your team and their team suddenly changing places, thus giving them just as much benefit as you? Get off my planet and get back to drawing furry fanart with baby wolves hurling soiled nappies at each other or whatever it is you people enjoy.

bring back the assault rifle with more powerful bullets, more ammo can be stored for a longer supply, a scope for longer distances, and a cooler look. imagine a long range assault rifle ripping through people's shields and automatic fire. AWESOME!

You know what guys, fuck every other weapon in this stupid shitty game. Let's just have one gun that everyone uses that kills everything and can't be beaten! Who needs weapons that might require some skill to use when you can just spray and pray with your megaweapon. It does sound totally JAWSOME, just like the Street Sharks.

3)Anti Air Turrets (for shooting down those babies ^^^^^)

I have no idea what the relevance of babies is. I think it refers to his suggestion to add Pelicans and Phantoms to multiplayer gameplay, but I cannot stand ^^^^^^^^^^. No-one has that many eyebrows you fool! Read a biology textbook, or throttle yourself with your own vocal chords. Both work perfectly!

LAN

2006-11-26T20:34:00.000Z

Today we have a report about HaLAN 3, the third instalment of the sort-of twice-yearly Halo 2 LAN (Local Area Network) gaming event. The first time there were 8 people (4 teams of 2), last time 12 people (4 teams of 3) but this time 16 (4 teams of 4) which reaches the limit that Halo 2 can manage in a single game.
There were three rounds of five identical games against each of the other teams. At the end were 6 games with all four teams vying for victory. This made a total of 21 games. I would list the 4 teams but that would be mainless meaningless, suffice to say that I was on green team.

Here follow a brief report of three of the most entertaining games and some highlights of the rest of the 20 hours without sleep.

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1-Flag CTF
Relic
Against Yellow team

We were on attack first. Everything went well at first – we rushed the hog up to the flag, grabbed it, and drove off the relic. Someone followed Hayden off and landed next to his hog while I was running to help him. I decided that hurling a grenade would help Hayden. The grenade killed his pursuer, killed Hayden (earning me a betrayal) and sent the burning remains of the hog spiralling into my face, counting as a suicide. I therefore single-handedly allowed their team to manoeuvre into position and hold back our victory for considerably longer. Not my finest moment.
Their first attack was quicker than ours and got them an instant capture, and then we got a second, far smoother capture the second time since we rock. Intense spawn camping followed their second attempt for a capture and in the end the flag returned, at which point we raced back through the teleporter they'd originally opened to defend the base for the last few moments.

2-1, green team win.

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Shotgun Slayer
Turf
Against Yellow team

This game was absurdly close. For the first half of the game the teams were exactly even until around 25 kills a piece at which point yellow team pulled ahead to around 45-38 or something similar. It seemed a fair bet we weren't going to win, but then Hayden and I between us got around 7 kills in the best part of 10 seconds and basically closed the gap up. After some careful owning we somehow emerged victorious with the tiniest of margins, despite our team racking up a good five betrayals.

50-49, green team win.

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Slayer
Lockout
Against Red team

This game wins the award for most ownage during the entire tournament. To cut a short story even shorter (the game took around 3 minutes I seem to remember) I whored the sniper and the sword, Hayden had the shotgun and we held both the battle rifles. I got a nice spree of 17 kills before being dispatched by a lucky stick but by that point the score was 23-1. To us. Upon losing my two weapons (they fell off the map) our incredible ownage decreased a little but not enough to change the tide of the game. And let's just say that when the sword and sniper respawned, I was already waiting for them. My personal score was 24-3.

50-24, green team win.

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Other highlights :

The games with all 4 teams in were generally very close. One was won 100 kills to 97 while another team finished with 5:00 of time in the Hill, only 5 seconds ahead of those in second. No-one except Richard got higher than a Killtacular (4 kills within 2 seconds of each other) except in the later zombie games which really don't count.

On the 4 vs 4 ascension match, I didn't realise at first that only dual weapons were on the mpa (for those who don't know, this means one-handed weapons). Thus, I jumped to where the Rocket Launcher normally spawns to find a needler in its place. What a sick, sick joke.

A last amusing note - some of you will know the importance "hosting" the game makes. If the game is effectively being played on your Xbox and others are connected to it, you are faster than everyone else. Only by a little, but it does make a difference. In one game where Richard was clearly host, I was complaining about his blatant hax. Richard replied "Well, I'm just better" at the same time I hurled a plasma grenade onto the floor. For those who don't know, plasma grenades are big, fizzy and shine with bright blue energy. They are impossible to miss. A second after declaring his incredible skills, Richard walked straight onto my grenade and blew himself to pieces.

We later watched Die Another Day and ripped that pile of shit to pieces. "Hey, I know! Let's add an 'electrocute self' button to my power suit! That's a great idea!" was one of the complaints about the Korean-Swedish businessman/balloonist/hockey world champion Gustav Graves.

I played around 2 or 3 hours of Gears of War, and my impressions on that will be coming tomorrow. However, anyone who was there will probably know my impressions already from my early comments.

Conclusion :

We won, but by a much narrower margin that last time. Between rounds were different things including a Halo 2 Quiz, blindfolded campaign and a warthog race.

This is where we were particularly cunning. Half the teams chose Metropolis because it is a short level but they forgot that you do infact have to kill the pair of Wraiths next to the building, and killing things while being directed with someone else is fairly difficult. We cunningly landed upon High Charity which can be zoomed through without being forced to actually get a single kill.
The hog race on Headlong was a nice change from the regular matches, and 16 players in one place gave me a nice opportunity to crash into them all like a game of skittles.

Finally, watch the video!

Knight

2006-11-23T20:29:00.000Z

Starknights - A Whole New Universe Of Crap!

Today we take another dive into the horrible things you can find that are classified as Shareware. After the 100% luck-based game of Turbo Cars and the spyware-infested family-fun craptravaganza of Batter Up Cat, I was wary this time. I decided to go for something that might not have been made by a couple of morbidly obese Hello Kitty fans in a basement somewhere - this actually appears to have had some effect put into it.
It's therefore a shame I'd still rather watch Time Bandits than play this.
This is an outer space RPG, a genre perfected by Freelancer. There is simply no point in attempting to compete with that game, but yet they do. This game lacks 3D graphics, characters with any worth and any originality.
The basic plot is that there are nice guys called Starknights and bad guys called Darkknights. There we go. You can play as anyone of these useless fools who actually gain no advantages over different races - they just have a slightly different collection of pixels that make up your character.
But the originality doesn't stop at good-guys-and-bad-guys-who-were-once-good! No, take a look at the spaceships you can buy. Point in case : that thing on the right.

IMPORTANT : It is not a Death Star. It's a Dark Moon. There's an important difference. It's good that after one of the largest grossing film franchises of all time, no-one feels the slightest urge to cash-in on the ideas that George Lucas probably didn't actually come up with. A Dark Moon you say? It might not actually result in death, merely power shortages.

As you proceed through the game you collect all different kinds of useless crap which doesn't actually appear to do anything. This ranges from "Processed Salmon" to "Paperclips", the latter of which probably has something to do with the Health Index of your starfighters. If they don't like you as a leader, they all explode and turn into aliens or something.

In my short time playing this before I removed my eyes with a power drill, I was unable to work out how - in the duel option - you actually won. It claimed I gained Credits at the end (another nice original sci-fi touch I thought) but I didn't seem to. In addition, my Darkknight character didn't have a victory dance, which sucked.

Last but not least, I was amused to find a site called Gamestats. It rates all games from 100 to 0, I think based on both how good they are and how popular they are. Starknights has a lovely rating of 0. As far as I understand the FAQ on this site, it means no-one likes Starknights, no-one plays it, and no-one wants to play it. Good stuff.

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LAN IN 2 DAYS!!!!!!!!

David

2006-11-21T22:04:00.000Z

As someone said in a book recently but I can't remember which book it was - "Is there no end to human folly?"
If your name is David Blaine and you had a devoted base of people who hate you for being the stupid attention-seeking pratt you are, the answer is no.
David Blaine's latest foray into the world of the clinically fuckwitted involves him strapping his stupid body into a gyroscope and seeing what happens. You know what's going to happen David? I've got £10 riding on you feeling sick and vomiting all over the people of New York you stupid waste of space, food and oxygen. The nutrition spent on him would be better spent on training an army of tiny, tiny gnats to respond to certain kinds of food. No reason, just for the sake of it. That's how worthless David Blaine is.
Thus, I have devised a short list of things I think David Blaine should turn his stupid eyes on once he's finished vomiting over the Big Apple.

* Die.
* Crawl into a hole and die.
* Die in public.
* Die in private.
* Try to set the world record for time spent on fire.
* Try to set the world record for dying quickly while on fire.
* Staple his face to a train.
* Set the world record for train-to-face staples (43 to beat).
* Try to catch a falling meteor in his mouth.

I also feel David Blaine has a chance to deliver some really good products into the consumer-filled marketplace we currently live. One such item would be entitled "⁴⁄₃ π r3 of asshole" which is effectively a small paperweight containing a model of David Blaine. Modelled on his original pointless stunt in some other city I don't care to remember, every day you can use him to weigh down a few sheets of A4 paper, a far more worthwhile task that these inane things the real David Blaine gets up to.

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One note :

ARGH! ARGH ARGH ARGH! FREAKING POWERCUTS! And every time the power goes out, house alarms start outside and annoy me even more. ARGH.

Borat

2006-11-19T19:56:00.000Z

Borat : C.L.O.A.F.M.B.G.N.O.K

The first laugh in this film comes with the BBFC certificate screen when you see the film's name (Borat : Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan) stretch right across the screen. From that moment you just know this is going to be excellent.

This film only lasts for 84 minutes – a fraction over half of that of Casino Royale – but it is 84 wonderful minutes of laugh-out-loud comedy that had the whole cinema in uproar for the majority of the time. It’s hard to review properly without ruining much of the film, but I shall try my best.

Sacha Baron Cohen plays Kazakh journalist Borat who is travelling to the US to to make a video for the Ministry of Information ands help improve Kazakh culture and image, despite Kazakhstan supposedly having the world's “best Potassium”. However, as would be expected of a film like this, things go wrong, often resulting in hilarious scenes…

There is honestly too many absurdly funny moments to recount. The film included the line "My moustache still smells of your testes", which has got to be worth something. Every minute has at least one scene that results in a comic delirium. At one point Borat manages to destroy $500 worth of plates in a store, and attempts to pay for them with bags of pubic hair - "Very valuable in Kazakhstan!"

The vast majority of the scenes involve unsuspecting Americans who - in many cases - are persuaded into voicing some of their true opinions to this unsuspecting Kazakh. At one point Borat enters a gun store and asks "What would be the best weapon to kill the Jews?". The store owner doesn't even blink and point him in the direction of what would appear to be a gold-plated 9mm handgun. Later, one redneck instructs him on how to look "less Muslim" by losing his moustache. It excellently exposes the semi-standard racism in certain Southern states...

No film is worthy of 10/10, but Borat is closer to the 10 side than the 9 side, so it earns this most prestigious of awards. The very instant this gem comes out on DVD I intend to buy it, because it is just too funny not to.

Casino

2006-11-19T09:40:00.000Z

This weekend we have a double update thing with not one but two film reviews! Yesterday I journeyed down to Bristol to see Casino Royale & Borat, supposed to be two of this years best films in their respective area of cinematography.

Casino Royale

Before I say anything about the latest Bond, let me go back a few years and make a comment on Die Another Day. I fucking hate that film. It is an utter pile of balls. You’ve got a henchman with diamonds in his face – top marks for realism there – and a guy who starts off North Korean and then suddenly becomes a Swedish banker or some shit. After 30 minutes I removed my toilet paper roll and replaced it with the Die Another Day DVD.

When Daniel Craig first got the role for Bond, everyone insulted him and said that he really wasn’t going to be very good. Having seen him in Archangel on BBC – the best thriller I have ever read – I thought he was going to be quite good. And – guess what? I was right. Didn’t see that one coming.

Casino Royale is the very first Bond film of the series, originally made in some godforsaken form where Bond dies and goes to hell. Luckily, this film actually makes an iota of sense. Bond is sent to play poker and rob a terrorist banker of his cash. Before this however, we have a black-and-white flashback about how Bond acquired his 00 status – “You need two kills to be a double-oh.”

Anyway, the opening action scene is a chase through a building site somewhere in Madagascar. It was an exciting first scene – one of the better Bond opening scenes – and quite realistic too. Bond was unable to do some of the things the man he was pursuing could, and actually got injured through-out the chase. There are numerous entertaining moments as well during this chase, showing that Bond isn’t completely humourless. It was certainly more entertaining than that bit on Die Another Day where the Korean-Swedish Balloonist electrocutes his father with his power suit. That sucked.

Strangely, I found the long poker scene to be one of the best. Anyone who understands poker will get a lot more out of it than those deprived individuals who don’t, if only because you find yourself trying to second-guess the players, especially in the final hand. The plot is also far more complex and intertwining than previous films with far more twists and turns than your normal Bond.

My only real complaint was the final third – you were never sure when the film was going to end. It seemed like maybe half a dozen potential endings strung together one after the other. This wasn’t especially bad, but it made things odd – not so much suspense but repeated surprise that the credits aren’t yet rolling. Even in this final third, there are more twists and turns than the rest of the film, and by the end I wasn’t even sure Bond was on his side.

The last point to mention – Fleming appears to have tried to make Le Chiffre as bizarre as possible. In addition to having greasy hair and mismatching pupils, he bleeds. From his eyes. In conclusion, it’s a good return to form, a nice change from the Bond who never does anything wrong, it sets up the next film to be even better, has a satisfying final line and has a good amount of character development - rarely seen before in Bonds and welcome here.

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Depending on the results of the hit-counter, we’re thinking of moving to an actual domain. This would give us far more control over our content, it’ll have far fewer fuck-ups than incompetent blogger and will let different people contribute more. Lastly, I think that people will generally be more inclined to visit a website than a blog – it suggests a greater guarantee of matieral.

Anyway, we’re currently looking at www.t-r-i.co.uk, but I’d like anyone else to suggest domain names.

The second film review – Borat : Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan – comes later today.

Pack

2006-11-16T20:36:00.000Z

Windows XP Service Pack 3

Hello! We're glad that Windows Updates has downloaded this and forced you to restart your computer at the most inopportune time! We'd like to take up even more of your time to explain to you the amazing new additions that service pack 3 brings to your Windows system!

The error report system has been made 63% more annoying according to our surveys. Instead of simply offering to send a report about programs Microsoft has never heard of, it also insists on coming up even when you close programs normally. This is to help us decide why you normally press the 'X' in the corner so that eventually - sometime in the future - there will be no need for an 'X' button. Simply happiness.
It has come to our attention that some people aren't too keen on the blue screen of death, so we've come up with a brilliant way to make it better. Having teamed up with assorted spyware companies, when the blue screen comes up you will now be offered adverts based on whatever you were doing before the crash - like Battlefield 2142!

We recieved some feedback about the little bubble that pops up, declaring you have unused desktop icons. Despite this being annoying and pointless, we've been wondering why no-one ever pays attention to it and actually deletes the offending icon. Because of this, a message no longer appears! Instead, any icon that hasn't been used within the last ten minutes is deleted - and not just the shortcut. The entire program goes! We think this'll help clear up your desktops.
There are too many themes avaliable in Windows XP - three is simply absurd. No-one needs that kind of choice! We've now reduced it to only the standard blue design, and also disabled the use of things like Windowblinds. No longer can you customise your newly-itemless desktop!
Everyone loves Clippit! Therefore, we're adding a whole new interactive dimension to Clippit! Following on from the popularity of mindless tripe like Pokemon and Digimon, Clippit can now mate and have little Clippits! These have less functionality than the original, but if you care for them, over time they can become just as useful!

Hope you enjoy the brilliant new updates for XP while you await Vista - filled with such treats as the taskbar that vanishes if you don't feed it daily, and windows that have a brief logic puzzle when loading up to keep your brain healthy and in shape.

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Thanks to everyone who I asked to suggest the worst things about Windows for today's entry...

Politik

2006-11-14T18:04:00.000Z

Well, it's been a while since a post about the state of the world and current news, so this seemed a good time to do one. In addition theres a veritable menagerie of notes to go with this one.

Mid-terms : This is the first good news to come out of the US in longer than I can remember. Finally Bush has some slight limits to his power, and for once the general American public have spoken in favour of a sensible party. That said, the Democrats aren't that much better - the majority of them voted for the Iraq war too, and I hate Hilary Ban-All-Video-Games Clinton. Nevertheless, I can't help but fear that two years hence, another Republican will get in power. With the two leading Democrats being either black or female, do they really stand that much chance in certain southern states? None at all.

The PS3 : For most generations of consoles I generally seem to end up getting two consoles. I'll have one initially and then choose which of the other two offer the next best selection. Since the Wii is such an awful, awful thing, there is actually a chance I'll get a PS3 some time in the future. But I can't help but be amused that after it's been out for 3 days, backwards-compability glitches have already sprung up. That and you can buy them on eBay now at some absurd price...

Labour whining : I honestly don't care who wins the Labour leadership. All this political whining is getting dull. Gordon Brown may be slightly more left-wing than Blair but they're still both raving Thatcherites. They're total sell-outs as far as I'm concerned and don't deserve our interest.

NOTES & QUERIES

1: Some of you may have heard of Garry's Mod. It is a program which allows you to spawn any object from Half-life 2 and CS : S, then pose the ragdoll models. This in addition with the realistic physics (mainly friction, weight and bouyancy) means that you can create almost anything. Last night, Tom and I created a suspension bridge. Click the |>

2: The Zombie film - the original intention was to do a 50's style "education program" about zombies, with the corny music and learning tips and whatnot. The intention was to go into town as a zombie (cue amused looks from bystanders) and film the various kinds of zombie - the cultured zombie, the something zombie, etc. However, it then seemed perhaps more sensible to do this at the LAN party when everyone is around anyway, but change it to a fight between a collection of zombies and a non-zombie.
However, I fear doing it at the LAN party will have problems. First and foremost, the Halo 2 tournament is unlikely to end until just before midnight, judging from last time. This means we won't be able to make any noise, and everyone knows zombies groan. Secondly, from a looking-like-a-zombie fake blood point of view, doing it in a seperate day seems easier when we have more time, and aren't distracted by Gears of War on the 360. Thirdly, we can't get any amused looks from bystanders.
I'd appreciate it if you posted in the comments thoughts about this, and which seems like the best option.

3: On Saturday the 25th will be the LAN Party. After that and the resulting entries, there is a fair chance the blog is going to stop. Spurling is working on a hit counter, and once that is up I'll see how many people visit the blog. If the number is far lower than I think, then the blog will likely close because it's not worth the effort of being creative and working on the blog so often for such a small audience.
However, you can save the blog if you simply bring in more readers. I've done a lot towards this, so it seems reasonable that everyone can try and help to bring in new readers.
Otherwise, after the LAN report + the Gears of War info...it may all end. The zombie film will come later even if the blog stops per se.
But on the other hand, I might be pleasantly surprised with the number of daily readers, in which case everything will continue.

Chef

2006-11-12T18:57:00.000Z

Urban

2006-11-11T22:33:00.000Z

Scotty looked around the clearing. The stench of death was everywhere. Flesh, bodies and bones were strewn across the battlefield. Rubble interspersed the destruction, and the roads ran with blood. Someone off in the distance, an artillery strike boomed like the drumkit of oblivion. Overhead, a plane screeched across the sky like someone pulling a pick over the guitar of pain.

Hi! I'm your host for today, Angus Wellington! As part of my community service I'm being forced to give this talk about Urban Warfare, and why it doesn't always have to be as depressing as the above paragraph. According to this script I've been given, with just a few simple notes and advice, Urban Warfare can be fun for the whole family!
Buy my new books on Amazon.com, including "How Furries took over Second Life" and "Delving into the mating habits of Redneck States - an insider's view".

Do :

Give your weapons names. As a certain Vietnam war film showed, this is clearly a good idea and never ever leads to a murder and a suicide in one scene. If you are particularly lonely and so inclined, you can ever name the weapons of your fallen opponents and play out a little story between them. Guns with chainsaws attached make this even more entertaining.
Make sure you're wearing the right kind of camoflauge, and appropriate clothing. Appropriate clothing includes massive gauntlets, steroid-filled arms and enough back-space to hold three different weapons. Appropriate clothing does not include anything bright, anything cheery, or anything that doesn't seem to be packed with pointless amounts of styrofoam.

Don't :

Go nuts. Your team-mates aren't going to appreciate it when you decide to play out your aforementioned gun fantasies. Keep them in your own mind, don't share your interior hell with your comrades.
Crowd around specific places. Lots of different parties are going to want to fight where you are, and it's just greedy to hog all the lot. In war, there are no winners, merely those who find the Orb of Agility first.
Be a weapon whore. As most battle-seasoned veterans should know, every weapon is potentially a noob weapon in the eyes of the right American gamer. Even weapons you spawn on the battlefield with (due to new military "Spawn-O-Shoot" tech) are noob weapons, simply because your foes are too incompetent to fight them off.

And so, with these helpful hints, no longer will you dread Urban Warfare.

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Today has various notes. The next 2 weeks are going to rock, because I'll be seeing Casino Royale, filming our zombie documentary (more info tomorrow), going to the 16-player LAN and seeing Gears of War.
Also, I compiled all the userbars that apply to me. Since it is slightly too large to fit on the blog, it can be found here.

Terms

2006-11-09T22:51:00.000Z

I thought I'd take this time to outline the Terms & Conditions of reading my blog. There was some trouble recently with a certain legal battle I'd rather not go into, but I'd like to clear things up.

T&C of TRI INC

1 (a) (i) By reading anything on this site, you are agreeing to the following terms. You agree that you concur with all statements, including those about destroying Mars simply for the purpose of creating an entertaining fireworks display one day in the future. Any disagreement posted in the comments section will lead to a bet involving an Oxford English Dictionary which inbred morons will lose because they don't understand the English language.

1 (a) (ii) If you choose to read any section of this blog, you acknowledge several things. You acknowledge that when I eventually take over the world, several changes will be made. These changes include compulsory IQ tests on Xbox Live (a limit of 60 would remove 95% of players), giving me free games consoles, removal of everything shit on this Earth and destruction of all Star Trek DVDs. VHS copies may survive for the amusement value.

1 (a) (iii) The purple is taking over.

1 (b) (i) You will agree to tell people about this blog in order to increase the hit count. More on this topic at a later date, which will be after the LAN party.

2 (a) (i) See all above.

2 (a) (ii) I own all property and land rights to your house.

3 (a) (i) All blog entries must be commented on, and nothing may ever take preference over such an activity. Even if your house is being torn down around you as a giant Bender and Dr Zoidberg do battle, you must still comment.

3 (b) (ii) In conclusion, TRI is owned by TRI and all TRI subsidiaries of TRI. Any attempt to insult said subsidiares or said TRI will result in said penalties, including six months of cabbage planting and peanut butter manufacture.

4 (a) (i) Lastly, you agree to not be too concerned when a below-standard entry should come along.

Kombat

2006-11-07T19:06:00.000Z

Mortal Kombat 4 : Krazy Kombat!

[Credits sequence. Screen is entirely black, and then it slowly pans upwards to show hundreds upon hundreds of needlessly mutilated corpses. Blood seeps out of the corpses onto the ground to form the title in a stylised blood-font. After it has been on-screen for a few moments, a huge explosion rips apart the corpses and the flying limbs wash away the blood.]

[First scene. Sub-Zero and some other new pointless character are standing at the docks.]

Sub-Zero : So, another Mortal Kombat tournament.
New Guy : Yes. This is my first.
Sub-Zero : Really.
New Guy : Yes.
[Note : no emotion or acting skill can be displayed here. Acting must be so wooden that entire forests are put out of business.]
Sub-Zero : I see.
[Scorpion is moving stealthily across a roof or whatever. Despite being killed in every Mortal Kombat film and in fact being nothing more than a skull in a mask, he is nevertheless still alive and trying to kill people for reasons the "plot" fails to explain.]
Scorpion : Get over here!
[Scorpion fires his wrist-missile thing and pulls in Sub-Zero. They fight for no reason, even though Scorpion is actually pursuing Quan Chi who freed the Oni Moloch from Outworld (or the Netherrealm) and is in league with Shang Tsung to rise the Dragon King's ancient army while at the same time Cyrax is trying to recover an orb for the Vampire whose name I can't remember which is in lava. In addition to all of this, the other Oni (the smelly one) is being plauged by flies.]

[Second scene. Raiden is trying to recruit people for his weatherman club while trying to impress them with his lightning tricks. He is unaware that everyone can see the hydroelectric plant behind him supplying him with all his "power".]

Raiden : We must unite to defeat this new enemy!
Bo' Rai Cho : What is the problem this time? If it involves burgers, count me in? You've all seen my fatality, haven't you?

[Collective sigh.]

Raiden : Yes Bo' Rai. We've all seen you literally flatten someone down to one pixel with your bulk. Anyway, back to the plot.
Jax : Plot?
Raiden : This time, some evil-doers are trying to take over the world by winning the Mortal Kombat tournament!

[Dramatic drum-beats.]

Bo' Rai Cho : How does that work? How does winning a tournament let you rule the world?
Raiden : I honestly have no idea.

News

2006-11-05T22:23:00.000Z

Today we have a round-up of the world's most exciting stories to hit the headlines today!

In a shocking relevation, tyres were today thrown off a motoray bridge! The workers there said it was a miracle that no-one was badly hurt, and they were even surprised that such an exciting event didn't get more news coverage! Said one "This is the most exciting thing to happen in Devon since that chicken competition. We're all so excited! We even made the BBC site!"
Others were less jubilant. One man who got a disasterous mild injury from this horrible accent said that his car was mildly dented.
"That might cost me nearly fifty pounds!" shouted the irate man. "I blame the Government."

In other news today, PS2 players were completely owned when a new fitness machine came out. Designed to make people move while playing games - something which distracts from both the exercise and the gaming resulting in you doing both of them badly - has become an additional extra for the Playstation.

Said one braindead parent who thinks this is a good idea - "This means Johnny can now exercise."
Exciting stuff folks!

Also, World of Warcraft fans are in terrible disarray as an extended maintenance period was announced! Said 'Pzi Kel'Thuzard' - "owned imo". Other such inspired quotes were abound on the forums as the WoW players mourned the loss of such exciting places as Dentarg and the Steamweasel, whatever the hell that is. One said : "My server will be down all day Tuesday, so that means there won't be anything to do except sleep. And sleep. Just about everything bores me lately, like watching TV gets old, and with Norgannon being down, I should just sleep."
A tragic tragedy for the players of WoW.

There you have it, the most incredible news from today's headlines! Nothing more fascinating has happened in the entire day in the whole world - just think about that.

Diaries

2006-11-04T17:58:00.000Z

The Leprechaun Hunter Diaries

Day 1

This is the diary of Angus Wellington, author and explorer extraordinaire. I am writing this to keep track of my adventures in deepest Ireland, and in case I die this will preserve my incredible adventures for future generations. For those who don't know, my latest book - I have a perfectly healthy sexual appetite (auto-biographical) - is avaliable on Amazon now.
We set off today, my tour-guide and I deep into the Irish jungles, wholly unsure what we would find. There are legends in this place, legends of very small creatures with very great fortunes. I wonder if these are similar to the Akakakaaai beasts I describe in my horror novel Bloodstorm of Final Destiny (or as I call them, dramatic terror narratives). It is now avaliable on Amazon.
Late in the day before setting up camp we noticed a horse. That is all.

Day 2

Today was very, very dull. We went deeper into the forest, encountering a rare bird here and there. Other than that, nothing happened.
I'm going to take this time to tell you about my latest romantic novel, Twists and Turns. In it, we explore a vicious love circle between four mass-murders. Each wants to love one but murder another, and it ends up in an epic final duel inside the International Space Station. It has gone down to rave reviews on the Furry Anime sites I frequent, so that must mean something.
However, very late, we spotted what may have been a leprechaun in the twilight. It was hiding behind a series of verdant bushes and it fled as soon as it caught sight of us.

Day 3

We're in the money! Quite literally, concerning the legend of the leprechauns with the gold and the rainbow and whatnot. We found leprechaun droppings once it was morning, and my guide informed me these were fresh. This reminded me of the plot of my latest novel, The Hunter becomes the Hunted, where a group of demon deer attack a games-keeper who is psychic and has witnessed visions of the End of Days. The plot twist is that the deer are infact the telekinetic representations of the hunter's mother, and he is forced to soul-search for the remaining chapters before realising he can only regain an ordinary life if he travels on a voyage of discovery into the Alps.
Anyway, we followed the trail into the forest, and we think we've found the nest. We'll check in the morning.

Day 4

Alas, we were two late. The matriarch (or "mother" in scientific terms) noticed our arrival and took all of her little babies away. I feel angered that we've missed our best chance at catching a leprechaun and have been left with nothing but an empty next filled with clovers.
Maybe soon I will go on another expedition, but only time will tell. For now I will stick to taking over this blog once in a while and advertising my superb novels, all avalible over Amazon.com.

Leprechaun Hunter Diaries is now being made into a film, starring Tom Cruise in the lead role.

Squid

2006-11-02T19:59:00.000Z

Finally, we bring you the much-awaited expansion to the Story of WTF!
Updates :
> 3 new areas on around 150 new pages
> 2 new happy endings
> Assorted new spoilers
> Less death, both in the expansion and the original
> Multiple paths through one area
> The beginning of a puzzle
> And more stuff too damned amazing to talk about here.
The new areas are accessed through the Ocean and Mars. The old map can be found a few entries back in "Feedback" if you get stuck.

Cats

2006-10-31T20:28:00.000Z

The boardroom was silent. All eyes focused on their visionary, the man who had dragged one of British TV's greatest programmes from the embarassement of a vampire film or some shit back into the public eye. The man who had also ruined it utterly with the exception of that good episode with the single Dalek. Many a tear was shed over that one.
Russell T Davies looked over the meeting chamber. There were many people here who had enjoyed the original Doctor Who, back when it was twice the length and had so much more time for character development, plot twists and actual excitement rather than psycho cats having sex with zombies to create somekind of zombie cat or whatever the hell that episode was all about.
He had savoured the destruction of Doctor Who. It had been fun to change it from a good sci-fi program into nothing more than a time-travelling Eastenders which focused entirely on relationships, but that wasn't enough.

The lure of power was too much.

"Right," he said, "how can we make Doctor Who even worse?"
The others present didn't know. They thought they'd been pulling out all the stops for that episode where the Cyberman cried oil while screaming something about British Imperialism. That concept had been utterly shite, and they were proud of it.

Damned proud.

"Maybe a special guest," suggested one sycophant. "That'll always make things shittier."
Russell T Davies mused upon this thought. "I think it's a good idea. Everyone knows this Celebrity Sex Island and whatnot always gets good figures. Any ideas who? Remember, it must be someone wholly unfunny, talentless, and preferably looking like that wiry Chuckle Brother after he's been flattened with an industrial steam iron. Any ideas?"
It only took a brief second for the entire boardroom to cry "Catherine Tate!" at once.
"Ah," mused Russell T Davies. "Perfect."
He slammed his fist down suddenly. "But that's not enough! We need the shittest plot possible! It is a Christmas Special after all."
"How about they meet Father Christmas?" asked one. "And he turns out to be a fellow Time-Lord?"
Russell T Davies stared at him. "Scott, that is so fucking shit I think I'm going to promote you to assistant jackass. I love it! But she couldn't be Santa. Could she?"
"How about a bride?" suggested another brown-noser. "That's always emotional!"
Russell T Davies gave him a huge thumbs-up. "Bingo. We're trying to make Doctor Who less scifi and more Eastenders anyway, and this is perfect!"
He began to make shapes in the air while thinking about his fiendishly crap plot for the new Doctor Who.
"Okay, okay, we have this bride right? And she got trapped in time because...it's at a Church. The wedding. And someone accidentally pissed on the stain glass, so...the vicar got angry! The vicar who is actually a Time Lord!"
"Genius!" shouted some halfwit.
"And then...and then he traps her in time because he things it was her who did it. But it wasn't! And she's innocent! Then...it turns out the only one who can reverse the time vortex is Santa, because..."
"Elves?" added a moron.
"Perfect! They are like little Time Lords! They focus time energy with their pointy hats, or some shit. We've never given a proper explanation for anything in this new series, so why start now? And so the Doctor and Cath - we need a name for her bride, by the way - visit Santa and get him to free her!"

There was a brief pause in the boardroom.

"What about presents from Santa?" asked a BBC executive.
Russell T Davies glanced at him. "That's so good I could kiss you! The elves then deposit presents at the wedding or some crazy shit. Kids love presents!"
He sat back with a satisfied smile. "This is going to be the worst Doctor Who episode ever. Apart from the Time Meddler."

------

A wide assortment of brief notes today.
Firstly, a brief advert. As you may be aware, tomorrow is the first Story of WTF expansion! Adding around 120-160 pages of sheer bizarre joy, it's one not to be missed. I suggest you catch up with the original game here, and a word of help - the new areas are accessed from the Ocean and from Mars. So if you haven't found those sections yet, now is the time to get looking!
Secondly, happy Halloween. Unfortunately my house has been plagued all day by chavvy ten-year-olds in rape demon masks howling at the door all evening. Morons. I would've done a Halloween special entry but I honestly couldn't think of anything - except one concept, but I think that would be better used around Xmas.
Thirdly and finally, who watched Torchwood? Despite the fairly dodgy second episode, I thought it was in some ways better than the new Doctor Who. Opinions?

Phantom

2006-10-29T22:11:00.000Z

Awful Business Ideas #37 : The Phantom

The Phantom is easy prey. There is so much to be said about this fiasco of a console that it has filled many webpages far, far worse than mine. However, I'm going to give my 2 Cents (currently just a little more than 1.1p) about this.
For those who don't know, the basic genius concept of the Phantom is to give the ordinary gamer a change from ~~ordinary~~ good consoles and allow you to play your PC games on your TV. A genius scheme you say! However, they failed to take in several important problems.

> TVs offer lower quality.
> Hardware of consoles always lags behind PCs.
> It's a daft idea.

Despite this, they managed to take in over £35m in investments! I dread to think what foolish millionaries invested their money in this. No doubt the generation who think that anything to do with gaming will instantly appeal to the stupid youth of today, somewhere inbetween breaking public property, taking drugs and mugging the elderly (thankyou Anonymous).
But it gets worse! As if you still thought that buying a pointless & pointless expensive console to play your 5-year outdated PC games wasn't a bad idea, get a load of this. On Januray 3rd this year, they announced an add-on to the disaster that Phantom Entertainment Inc miscarried in a computer lab somewhere. A keyboard!
Yes! The first console with a keyboard! It was bound to work, because everyone knows people have perfectly flat surfaces on their sofas to rest it on. Perhaps one particularly clever PEI employee decided to make it flexible. Brilliant. Truly we are seeing the work of genius.
The final nail in the coffin is the whole £17 or something monthly fee. For playing outdated games. This reminds me fondly of the N-Gage.

The Phantom is currently worth a whopping 0.0049 on the stock market.

That comment doesn't really need any more discussion I feel. It pretty much says it all.

Welcome to the future.

-----

In an odd side-note for people like me who still like C&C 95, I'm in the process of updating a combination of my favourite missions from that into Yuri's Revenge. Why? I have no idea. But it looks like a pretty fun mission so far.

Also, coming Thursday : The Story of WTF Expansion!!!

Fog

2006-10-28T18:59:00.000+01:00

It was foggy.
Two henchmen of the evil alien overlords who planned to invade Earth, leech of it its natural resources, leave it a worthless heap of slag and then return to their homeworld were sitting on an APC. Following their previous adventure in the defence of City 17 where they left with a few light cuts and bruises, they were being allowed to rest before the next offensive. No-one could say the Combine didn't have a good health plan. A lonely scanner flew overhead, trying to find someone else to photograph.

They were still surprised that they had survived their encounter of yesterweek.
"Well, I don't know how we got out," said Combine Soldier helpfully.
"As I see it," continued Combine Elite, "either we were incredibly lucky, or-"
"It was all down to luck!" finished Combine Soldier brilliantly.
There was a brief pause when only the gunfire and occassional explosion could be heard. Then Combine Elite said "No wonder you didn't win that creative writing competition you told me about."
"It was rigged!" insisted Combine Soldier.
Elsewhere at the Overwatch Nexus, two Combine Police officers were having a conversation. Due to the lack of manpower because of the revolution, they'd been forced to redraft certain people into different jobs. These two were currently mechanics.

"Why are they on that APC?" asked one of them. "I thought it was off-bounds for the next while."
The other shrugged. "I haven't got round to fixing it yet, but it's okay to sit on. The problem is that one of the weapon strippers in the Citadel went on the blink and decided to blast the armour. It's now paper-thin. It's fine to sit on, but any gunshots would go right through. If they hit the petrol tank or whatever fuel system our fellow aliens use, it would go sky-high."
The first Metrocop looked around the Overwatch Nexus. A gunship sailed overhead as he considered.
"I guess that's okay. Those two have had a tough time, and it's not as if there are any rebels reported to be in this sector. Lucky that."

"It sure is," replied the other Metrocop. "It sure is."

Cliche

2006-10-26T18:56:00.000+01:00

I've recently noticed three huge cliches in the world of gaming.

1 : The Hunter.

There are too many creatures and enemies called "Hunters". The three that instantly spring to mind are from Halo, Half-life 2 Episode 2 and Prey. I'm sure there are others - no doubt some pixelated variety of Strogg is called a Hunter. Would it be so much so ask for a more interesting name?
According to the synonyms tool in Microsoft Word, another word for Hunter is Seeker. However, this sounds rubbish. If you reduce it merely to "Hunt", then one of my favourite suggested synonyms is "Search for".
Thus, I think a great new name for a video game enemy would be the "The Searcher For". It would have horns and whatnot and be generally shit like stuff from Uwe Boll (creator of such stunning movie-graphical masterpieces as House of the Dead, a film with a lower IMDB rating than art-house classic Porn stars from Mars.)

2 : Predictable Bosses

You enter a room filled with ammo, weapons and armour. There are medkits lying around and no enemies are nearby. What does this mean? Other than a very foolish marine/monster/guard/NSA agent deciding that leaving all the weapons in one place is a good idea, it means there's a boss coming up. Or at the very least a pretty big fight with lots of stuff to kill.
It's always so predictable. For a change I'd like a boss to come right at the end of an area where you've used up most of your ammo and make things a lot easier. My second complaint about bosses is that they always have a nervous habit of exposing their weakspot. Take Thardus, the rock-monster boss from Metroid Prime.

As I see it, he had two options at any given point in the fight.
> Keep throwing rocks at you
> Expose his weak area for several seconds
Maybe I don't speak for all of us here - and I admit what I'm about to say is a little crazy - but I'd have gone with the rocks option. Why quit when you're ahead?

3. Women in games

It would be nice if, just for one, women in computer games wouldn't overbalance in real life due to extreme breast-size. The most absurd example I could find was Lucy from Quake III, shown on the right. That's just not natural.
Every game I can think of - except Halflife 2 - has women shown with unbelievably huge bosoms. It's just not realistic in any way, and I think talks down to people who can play video games. When I say that, I exclude those who play on Xbox Live. It would be very difficult to talk down to that kind of person without resorting to grunts.

-----

For those who haven't noticed, some holiday updates are generally of a slightly reduced size because I know there are fewer people around to read them. However, Sunday's full-sized update will return to normal and should be an education in everyone about how not to go about entering the stock market. All will become clear...

TV

2006-10-24T18:14:00.000+01:00

TV Programs that nearly made it :

A recently de-classified report from the BBC has revealed a wide variety of Television programs that were nearly aired, but just fell short, due to budget cuts, filming schedules, assassinations and the rest. Here is just a small variety of what was rejected :

Quake for CBBC

What a godawful idea this was. Some bright-spark decided that since all 6-10 year-olds play Quake games where you have to butcher Strogg and make them all explode in flying red pixels, you should make a program for it. They even hired a few up-and-coming child actors to play the high-pitched heroes who for some reason crashland on an alien planet but still retain their charming innocence after watching the horror of the HUMAN GRINDER TM. Rumour has it that all the sets were burnt after someone realised this wasn't going to work.

Inside the mind of Ruth Kelly

Some replacement for "Today in Parliament" this monstrosity turned out to be. Don't get me wrong, I like some politics while I'm waiting for the dishwasher to finish or something. But did we really want camera crews to follow this insufferable nincompoop around for a whole month? I don't think so. As if to try and make things even more awful, they added hear commentary on her thoughts. Who cares when the Boy Wonder of New Labour buys a new manly suit (with added foam pads for extra manliness)? Nobody, that's who.

When open-heart surgery on a squid across a rickety bridge carrying a nuclear device - GOES WRONG.

This was Channel 5's attempt to have a vaguely good program that wasn't either a film made by a totally different company of some dubious program about porn, such as "How porn ruined my life" or "My life with porn" or "Porn and my life" or "Porny McGee goes to town" or "An indepth look into the porn industry" or something. Anyway, they did actually make this set up, though how those clods thought they could make a whole series out of this awful idea is beyond me. Only the sounds of the first episode remain before the idea was scrapped :
"Right, now if we cut below the artery, then OH GOD MY EYESSsssssss [splintering sound] [thermonuclear detonation]

Big Brother

A show where the creators go into the worst supermarket they can find and propel as many people as possible from there into the back of a van. These morons are then placed inside a house with hidden cameras and various other devices to see how they react. They try to capture some people who are particularly cretinous/silicone-filled to see how they react. Luckily, this lowest-common-denominator fuckwit zoo was never aired.
Oh wait...

----

Getting a laptop soon!!

Live

2006-10-22T20:05:00.000+01:00

The world is in shock today as a polite American gamer is found on Xbox Live!

This shockwave was felt around the world as a teenager from the USA didn't adhere to normal online gaming rules. He didn't insult anyone's sexual preferences, he accused no-one of being a Jew or a "fucking faggot", and he didn't even display his sexual insecurity by screaming "Get down bitch!" every time he gets a kill.

"It's unbelievable," said a representative of the American government. "The whole country feels let down by this individual. It's just not a normal day on Xbox live without being called a fag, a racial slur of some kind or Jewish. Even worse, he didn't use normal British insults!"
Our sources tell us these range from "Go eat some crumpets you British fag" to "Go brush your teeth you British fag" and other such hilarious and non-cliched phrases.

A wave of resentment has gone round the USA, with many suggesting that this polite gamer should be kicked out the country for not hating all foreigners. It seems to go against all beliefs of sportsmanship that one should actually be polite over the Inter-Net and not insult your fellow man at every opportunity.

But many see this as the way forward. It would be nice for once to have a friendly atmosphere in the arena of online gaming rather than being constantly insulted by rednecks and morons who seem to believe that killing someone once, in a virtual game, over the Inter-Net is the height of success.
With this scandal running at full-swing, it seems unlikely we will see a conclusion in the short-term. Xbox Live claim to ban those who hurl such insults, but as we can all see they honestly don't give a damn. The only way is to actually listen to the reports players send in and actually do something about these mindless bigots. One final point is that most of these racist morons are the cheaters - particularly hypocritical when they insult you for losing after lagging your allies out of the game.

----

eBay is so, so great. My latest purchases have completed all the gaps in my C&C anthology, apart from Generals. I see no reason to get that game...

Fourth

2006-10-21T20:49:00.000+01:00

Civ the IVth.

As you may well know, I have always been a fan of the Civilization series. Just a little after playing C&C 95 - my first ever PC game - I played the original Civ. Despite there being many problems which will be discussed later, it was great.
I've never played Civ II or III, I have to admit. I may buy them off eBay sometime in the future, but for now - nothing. So for this review, we'll concentrate mostly on the things in Civ IV rather than the differences. Although there is one difference too big - and fantastic - not to be mentioned.

As with the original Civ, your units are strangely massive. Since you are playing on a scale which has to encompass both vast cities and horseback riders at once, everything takes up one square on the map, as usual. This sometimes provides Godzilla moments in cities, as shown below.

Those are three of my Swordsmen protecting the city. Yes, I was still using Swordsmen in 2010, and I honestly fail to see a problem with this. London was in the middle of my empire so nothing was realistically going to touch it, so I didn't need tanks and all that modern malarkey.
Cities have a fantastic amount of detail in this game. Most buildings will actually show up - see if you can spot the following :
Pyramids, Broadcast Tower, Oracle, Theatre, Colloseum, Observatory, St Basil's Cathedral, Barracks, Notre Dame, The Spirat Minaret, a Fallout Bunker, an Aqueduct, Stone Henge, some City Walls and Oxford University. It's all there in London!

As with many other modern strategy games, there are various ways to win. In some ways I miss the old ways of killing everything until only one person was left, but times change. You can win in various ways, including launching a rocket to Alpha Centurai (like in Civ I) or becoming the most cultured Civ (a new concept).

However, some of these endings are far too hard to achieve. The timed ending - where it reaches 2050 and no other ending has occured - happens far too often. It can be too hard to achieve a different ending in time. The culture victory requires far too much culture for it to be likely in most games while the conquest victory in larger matches is pointless. You're never going to crush eight different players in that time.

No strategy game except possibly Yuri's Revenge gives the same satisfaction of sending a vast army across the map, if only because of the noise tanks make when moving. You'll see what I mean.

Next, the game has Wonder animations at long last. When you build a wonder you get a video of it turning from architectural-sketch into the final building, and these are generally quite cool. The Space Elevator looks like this when completed :

Combat is generally good although it will sometimes glitch. People and vehicles will die without shots being fired fired or explode without provocation. It sounds a lot worse than it is.
You can play as a huge variety of leaders, ranging from Napoleon to Catherine the Great. Speaking of Napoleon, I was disappointed to see he was the same height as the others. I think extreme comic value could have been added to have had only his forehead showing in the conversation box. This could be enhanced by having the diminutive dictator jumping up and down to make himself noticed.

There are a huge number of gameplay options, so your matches can be customized according to win conditions, map, number of other players, and the rest. Civ IV seems to have very few downsides, although one I would mention :
Lag. I consider my computer to be fairly decent, but if you've got a few players at later stages of the game, the computer can pretend to have frozen up for a good five minutes before you get another turn.

In conclusion, Civ IV is a great addition to the Civilization universe. If you don't live Civ (and live in a room with bouncy walls) then I would still suggest getting it.

----

On a totally different topic, yesterday I took this horrific screenshot from the BBC site. It burns my eyes.

Jobs

2006-10-19T17:43:00.000+01:00

Paint

2006-10-15T09:59:00.000+01:00

Today we have something a little different. An interactive (sort of) MS Paint adventure. Starting with the picture below, leave in the comments what you want to happen next, eg "Buy coke", "go outside," "check my inventory", "jab the man in the face" etc.
Then, I shall quickly scribble that picture in paint, and we'll continue from there. So, to begin, you're clearly in some kind of shop. In Europe. That sells Coke at an outrageous price.

Buy a coke and throw it.

Go outside.

Walk in a south-east direction.
Buy a map.
Threaten the shopkeeper and demand bananas.

Stuff him in a cabinet and steal the bananas.

Dance in the town centre wearing the sack and the bananas.
Stab people with your 'nanas.
Freeze bananas and repeat.
Enter the Banana Cave!
You are attacked by the Banana King!
Check your inventory!
Play the Harmonica and cause a cave-in.

Use the dental floss to lasso your way out.

-Apologies for reduced quality on the latest ones, Blogger is being crap.

Combine

2006-10-14T11:07:00.000+01:00

"Things aren't looking good." declared the combine in the white outfit as they peered out from behind the hastily-built barricade.

The two Combine had been pinned down for a few hours and had put together a make-shift barricade. Despite being devoid of all human emotions after the Combine de-sensitised them, they still felt something of a bond. Two of the last Combine in City 17...
"Seeing as City 17 is under attack..." muttered the white Combine, "and we might not have long to live...I've never asked you. What's your name?"
The navy-blue combine pointed to his nametag. "It says here 'Combine Soldier' on my tag," he read.
"I'm Combine Elite," added the white one. "That's why I have the cool red eye."
"It is pretty cool."
"Thankyou. Lousy depth perception though."
They shook hands.

After that they sat in silence for another few minutes, pondering their fate. Combine Soldier sat on the crate and put his shotgun over his shoulder.
"Do you think Freeman is heading this way?"
"I expect so. This game is more linear than a redneck family tree, although they try to pretend otherwise. If this area's been built into the game - which clearly it has, since we're here - he should turn up soon. If we're really unlucky he'll have up to 4 team-mates with him."
"I've heard they aren't really much use," pointed out Combine Soldier. "They get in the way pretty often and excuse themselves in strange ways."
Combine Elite nodded.
"But maybe we're not screwed," suggested Combine Elite. "We can fight Freeman! We're the best our alien overlords can make - well, I am anyway."
"Yes!" exclaimed Combine Soldier. "We can stop him! We're not going to let him and his ordinary civilian fighters destroy us!"
"I was young like you, once," mused Combine Elite in a kind voice. "I thought we could crush the people of Earth, drain their oceans and leave this planet a worthless husk. But time mellows you."
Outside their barricade, a rebel soldier picked his way through the debris and settled down with his RPG.

"Come on sir, look on the bright side!" exclaimed Combine Soldier. "There's no way they could get at us in here."

Assembly

2006-10-13T16:48:00.000+01:00

My apologies for the humour index of yesterday's entry being below standards. I assure you tomorrow's will make up for it. However, for today, we have the second guest entry, this time from someone who apparently wishes to remain anonymous to keep people guessing. It is about the school assembly, and deals with some very powerful issues.

------------

Assembly

A guest entry by a Nony Mouse

Assembly. The word means a number of things to different people, but a quick look at the define:assembly function on google reveals that it simply means the "single units mulled together". But for what purpose? Do these single units, aka students, learn anything by this gathering?
Certainly not. The rest of the school day is designed for lessons, and assembly-time is too-early-in-the-morning-time for leaning. And for learning. Therefore, my proposition here is this: That we should seek to replace assemblies in educational establishments around the world with far more interesting, enriching and entertaining alternatives! I shall outline some of my saner suggested schemes below, but feel welcome to add your own.

Scheme number 1 : Voice changing units

If every speaker at assemblies were to simply don a simple audio processing unit on a microphone, then any talk would instantly become enthralling. By shifting voices up in pitch, down in pitch or into Darth-vader like tones, you will find a quick way to spice up these "mulling togethers" that easily outlasts the duration of the talk.
Scheme number 2 : Piranhas

This one is slightly more dangerous but has a higher wow factor. Basically, the idea is that one uses a large fishbowl (twice the height of a man) filled with piranhas. And water. Instant amusement - and members of the onlooking crowd will be tempted to throw items into the bowl. Even better if one or more members of staff of the educational establishment are hung over the top by a crane and slowly dipped in. Who needs health and/or safety?
Scheme number 3 : Unicycle

Anything looks good on a unicycle.

Scheme number 3.5 : Custard unicycle

"What is a custard unicycle?" I hear you ask. Well, it is not, as you may have assumed, a vehicle with one wheel and two pedals that is made entirely of custard! [I first thought this - Mkzrj] It is instead, a normal unicycle with one wheel and two pedals that has a concealed 'squirt gun' that shoots low viscosity custard, for pranks and somewhat comical amusement. Add this to any assembly and you will instantly be interested.

On a sidenote, there was an entertainer in the nineteen-eighties who had a mildly successful TV career with his famous custard unicycle. I have a few taped episodes that I cherish as he is very entertaining. He was the inventor of the custard unicycle and pulled many pranks on people using the custard squirting action on his unicycle. Bonus points to anyone who can comment with this man's name. Here is a picture of him on a show:

Scheme number 4 : Crazier charities

We all know it is good to donate money to help good causes, but sometimes slightly more odd charitable things are overlooked. We should not forget these when fundraising, and perhaps some assemblies could be dedicated to promoting these odder, but just as important, charities. For example, the other day I saw a plea for the "AAAA", a.k.a. the Alcoholic Albino Albanians Anonymous. They have trouble raising funds for their important Anti-Alchol-Abuse campaign overseas in Albania, since many people believe they are merely a joke charity. Any asssembly about "Alcoholic Albino Albanians Anonymous" amuses. This is a scientifically proven fact in many scientific journals, including this one.

------------

So there you have it, several fool-proof ways to improve the regular dull assembly, which under our new school leadership sometimes contains disturbing and wholly inappropriate images. You all know what I mean.

Notes

2006-10-12T21:24:00.000+01:00

One nice thing today - I noticed the first link to the blog on an external site! A UFO site has linked to my celebrities consider entry about aliens. Therefore - and this does somehow follow on - I have a mission for everyone. This mission is to tell people about the blog and put it in any forum sigs you may have. Except those on Newgrounds if you post views that are controversial in the eyes of rednecks.
Anyway. To the murder mystery!

Following on from last time, something incredibly unexpected had just happened! To be more specific,
You've now scrawled some rather rubbish notes about what you know so far. Unfortunately Blogger is crap and doesn't have any handwriting font like that Lucida whatsit, so your notes lack some of their hand-written charm.

:- The detective seems incompetent. He has a totally moronic method of taking fingerprints and has smudged anything once on the knife. Judging from what happened last time I suppose it is possible he is the one who did it and it trying to persuade us he didn't do it. Should exercise more.
:- The older woman is my chief suspect. More things points to her, especially her blatent denial of the murder. The bingo hall incidents seem to suggest she's getting even with everyone who wronged her at that stupid place. You only win hats anyway.
:- No-one else seems all that suspicious.

You look up from checking your notes to see the fat detective interrogating the older woman. Wondering if he's come to the same conclusion as you, you make your way over and see what's going on.
"And how do you explain the doctor's last cry?" demands the gargantuan European. "Clearly a reference to a Bingo Hall! And how old are you?"
The old woman looks like she might not reveal such intimate information, but under the glare of the detective she relents. "Eighty-six."
"Exactly! If you're that old you must go to bingo halls."
"So?"
"So you're the prime suspect. Like prime rib."
You wonder if the Belgian thinks about anything except food.
"Anything to say for yourself?"
The old woman looks indignant. "Of course I do! This is outrageous! I didn't murder them! I'm a weak old woman."
You're not sure which side to take. Both of them seem fairly suspicious, and the Belgian's accusations seem incredibly unprofessional. You ask him to follow you off to one side.
"What do you want?"
You point out how unprofessional he's being, and that by telling the old woman he suspects her she's likely to come up with an excuse. The Belgian storms off, and then turns to make an announcement. He apparently wants everyone to meet here in an hour when he will announce the murderer!
A ring of shock goes around the room. The lion-tamer seems surprised and twirls his moustache in a puzzled manner. Lord Barnacle-Smythe looks nervous, and you can just about see the white package in his pocket.

----

Things are drawing to an end now. Post any final questions if you will, but I doubt anyone will tonight.

Feedback

2006-10-10T17:11:00.000+01:00

Well, I've recieved a lot of feedback on the Story of WTF. In addition to the overwhelming positive comments - thankyou everybody! - a few things have come to my attention. First and foremost, some people think there is too much dying. Having played it again since then, I now agree that in some areas it can be too tough to find the correct route, specifically Mushrooms & the Sewers. Thus, over the next few days I will be editing these to create looped areas - the incorrect choice doesn't kill you, but it merely gives you all the options again. This happens several times already in the game and I think it needs more of these.
Next, for those who don't know, we intend to add to the Story of WTF monthly. We already have most of the pictures for the expansion done and a good part of the writing. So, two more things for this entry :

THE MAP!

This is our main map with the un-released areas faded out. All of these will be appearing over the coming months.

This should also help those who haven't yet found all the existing areas or aren't sure how to get around. Why is the Mushrooms line dotted? Because when you return from part of the expansion, we can't have you going back to Mars and going in a loop, can we?
Next, a trailer for the first expansion that you lucky people have to look forward to.

Finally, a hilarious quote from US Government Official Fuckwit John Bolton - "The USA is not responsible for all the ills of the world!"
Comedy gold.

Syndrome

2006-10-08T15:02:00.000+01:00

I can't think of another amusing Story of WTF advertisement, so I'll just say this. PLAY IT NOW! You may need to lower security settings or use Firefox. Or Opera. Just not IE.

Today's update :

"The FPSRPGRTS"

This stands for the "First-person Shooter - Role-playing Game Rapid Transition Syndrome." So for today we have a brief return to the annals of gaming to discuss a problem I have encountered.
As many of you will know, I primarily play First Person Shooters. I personally believe that they require the most skill, because things happen quickly and you don't have much time to think about what's going on. Second in the skill chart are strategy games, because - as the name slyly suggests - those require strategy. RPGs I consider to be generally easy, because you just need to level a bit to kill stronger things. The most extreme examples are the Final Fantasy games where you have all the time you want to decide how to attack. In FF X online, your character even fights automatically. You just pick extra things for him to do.
Recently, I bought Oblivion in the same day I spent £110 on various games, new and retro.

Now, I have played very, very few RPGs. I guess you could count GoldenAxe on the C64 as one, but other than that and the occassional Zelda game, my RPG experience lacks. This is for one simple reason : For RPGs to be rewarding, you have to put in a lot of effort. That's fine, it makes the game last longer. But there must be a worthwhile reward at the end.
Basically, if :

Time + Effort > Potential fun with all stats maxed out

Then I do not get an RPG. World of Warcraft might be an exception, but at £10 a month - are you all insane?
Then along came Oblivion. I decided this was huge enough and with enough potential fun to warrant me buying it. That and every review said they'd wet themselves repeatedly while playing it or sold everything they owned to buy the expansions. Basically - everyone said it rocked.
Having now played Oblivion for many hours, I understand everything going on. However, when I begun, I was completely overwhelmed. So many different kinds of skills, spells, weapons, items, and the strangest levelling system I've ever encountered meant that it was scary. I expect RPG veterans would have been less overwhelmed, but for an aficianado of the FPS, it was scary. The most complex stats I've ever had to deal with were "Axe Power" and "Health" for the GoldenAxe dwarf, or "Muscle" for San Andreas. Advanced stuff.

So that's the problem. Anyone moving from the FPS Heartland into the dark and dangerous realms of Roleplaying is going to be scared. The fact is all FPS games have the same controls, whereas all RPGs will have their own subtle nuanaces. Find an RPG you like and stick to it. I recommend Oblivion.
So for now I'm going to play Oblivion because I understand it, but quietly wait until Episode 2 of Half-life 2 is out. Those mini-Striders look cool.

Goose

2006-10-07T10:55:00.000+01:00

Quick Quiz #85

Do you meet the following requirements?
-> Ability to read English
-> Ability to click a hyperlink
If so, click here now and play our interactive online game, the Story of WTF! You may need to lower security settings or try a better browser than Internet Explorer to make it work. That said, on with the update!

------------

They were in the attic, and things were going from bad to worse.

"Ah," said the engineer, tapping the boiler with his biro. "You've got boiler geese."
"I've got what?" exclaimed Joan. "Boiler geese?"
Things were spiralling drastically out of control. At first it had seemed that she merely had a slight plumbing problem - less water was coming out of the taps that expected. Nothing too serious, probably just a partial block in a pipe somewhere. Her normal plumbers had been busy for the next week and so she'd called a new company she'd never heard of. It was against all of Joan's instincts, especially since most of her friends said they'd never even heard of these people. She was beginning to think he might be a scam-artist.
Joan reached forward to check the boiler, but the engineer grabbed her wrist. "Don't do that! Don't you know they're venomous?"
"Venomous?"
He nodded. "Deadly little buggers. They get inside boilers by going through the pipes, see, and then it's impossible to get 'em out. I'll have to take the boiler away and incinerate it."
"Why've I never heard of these?" Joan asked as they descended back down the ladder.
"Government doesn't like to talk about it, love," he replied, closing the attic hatch. "Lots of houses have them though, you're not alone. Lucky for you we specialise in boiler goose removal. It'll cost you though."
"How much?" sighed Joan.
He shrugged. "Two grand, maybe. Depends on whether the infection has spread to your pipes."
"Is that even possible?" she asked as they went into the bathroom.
"Oh yeah, happens all the time. You know how a mouse can get through a hole the size of a thick pencil? Well, it's like that, but with a goose."
Joan wasn't particularly impressed with that analogy, but she certainly didn't want venomous creatures of the order Anatidae in her plumbing. She watched as the plumber bent down under her sink and fiddled around with some pipes.
"Hmmm..." muttered the plumber, tapping something with a wrench. "There's one in there."
"Can't you get it out then?" asked Joan, one eyebrow raised slightly in disbelief. "You're the professional, deal with it!"
"Just isn't that easy..." he replied slowly, looking at the pipes from various different angles. "See love, if we take out that pipe now, it'll alert the boiler geese that we're onto them."
"Alert them?"
"These Vomica Anatidae are cunning. If they know you're onto them, they'll gestate, then you're really fucked."
"Vomica..."
"Boil. That's Latin that is."
"Right. What happens when they gestate then?"
"A whole shitstorm. They breed like rabbits, and the slightest thing'll set them off. Turning the taps on and off is ok, but if they're panicked, they'll spawn."
It seemed clear to Joan now this was a load of rubbish. Boiler geese? How absurd.
"Right, well, thanks for coming," she said, trying to usher the scammer out of the door.
"But I haven't checked the kitchen piping yet," he pointed out, brandishing his screw-driver. "We have to know the extent of the problem."
"I'll handle that, don't worry," she said mock-kindly, ushering him out and slamming the door behind him. Bloody people! If she didn't fall for those Nigerian princes, she certainly wasn't going to fall for this.

*******

Over the next few days Joan began to feel less and less certain. There had been no noise from inside the pipes and no sign of this "spawning", but still she thought it was possible. Less and less water was coming out every day, and today she could barely get out a drop. Since her plumber still wasn't around, she decided to open up the pipes and have a look.
Using her grandfather's wrench, she slowly opened up the pipe and peered inside.
Two tiny pinpricks of light looked back at her.
Then the boiler goose gave out a cry, and things went considerably downhill from there.

Fingerprints

2006-10-05T18:55:00.000+01:00

I'm merely going to take a moment of your time to suggest you play our game, the wonderful Story of WTF! You can play Scrabble with Godzilla, meet Trinity from the Matrix, get eaten by a huge Kraken and visit Mars! How can you resist?

And now, regular programming : TO THE UPDATE!

The fat Belgian is crouching over the dead Doctor whose body has been put out on the floor. With your help he tried to remove the speculum, but it seemed to be lodged between something. It also elicited yet another plume of blood, resulting in your second clothes change. You peer over to see what he's doing, and he's half-heartedly checking the Doctor's fingerprints. He seems to be looking around as if waiting for someone to notice him.
You ask him if he's doing this so he can check them against those on the knife in the blonde woman.
"Naturally!" he replies flamboyantly, pressing the Doctor's last finger into one of those black ink pad things. "I am a detective after all."
You point out that he grabbed the knife earlier, smudging any fingerprints that might have been there before his. This exercise, therefore, is pointless.
"That's true," he sighs, putting away his fingerprint pad. "I guess we'll never find out who murdered her."
You ask why he was checking the Doctor - surely the same person probably murdered them both?
The Belgian juggernaut makes an excuse and waddles from the room, mumbling something about diarrhoea. You get the idea he wants to get away from your company. Oh well, there doesn't seem to be much else to do. You consider the latest bits of evidence.
Lord Barnacle-Smythe was clearly involved with something, but it doesn't seem clear what. The bingo hall seems to be a good line of investigation, and you wonder if you should get your mobile phone to make a few more calls. Finally, the Belgian's odd behaviour seems a little...odd.
You're approached by the older woman who disliked the blonde murderette. You wonder if that's the correct word for a murder victim for a moment before she starts talking.
"You know when he said about the numbers?" she mutters quietly, making sure no other guests hear her. "Well, you know. I didn't kill him. In case you think I did. Because I guess he meant the numbers at Bingo. He's the one who always picks the numbers. And I always get annoyed when I don't get the right numbers, so incase you thought I killed him because he rarely picked my numbers - well, I didn't."
You inform her none of that had even crossed your mind. You wonder if she realises what a huge hole she's just dug herself. She withdraws from your company, and you're about to go and talk to some others when something incredibly unlikely happens!

To be continued.

Questions will, as always, be answered. The conclusion is drawing slightly nearer than it was last time!

Albert

2006-10-04T14:39:00.000+01:00

This is basically one giant big link to advertise our game, the Story of WTF. You can access it by either clicking this underlined thing you're reading now, scrolling down, or clicking on "Story" in the past entries. So do one of those now, and experience the Story of WTF! Plays best in Firefox, security settings may need to be fiddled with. Expansions coming soon!

There isn't normally an update on Wednesday, but today we have our first guess entry from Hayden! Warning : May offend postmen.

Also, Happy Birthday to DJ Chainz today who is one year older than last time. No doubt next year he'll be one year older than this time. Such things can often be predicted if you are psychic like me.

Save

2006-10-03T16:38:00.000+01:00

You take the blue pill and the story ends.
You wake in your bed and you believe
whatever you want to believe.
You take the yellow pill (red were out of stock), you stay
in WTFland, and I show you how
deep the Dwarven Mine goes.

Play
NOW! CLICK THE BIG GIANT LINK ABOVE!
You made need to temporarily lower security settings, enable java, enable cookies, try a different browser, etc. Some people have had problems...

If you've already done that, on with today's entry.
---------------------
There are too many adverts these days telling you to lose weight. Because of this, our group of concerned opponents have started the campaign to Save those calories! We offer helpful diet & lifestyle advice to pile on the pounds and keep those lovehandles in order!

Always travel by public transport, because it gives several benefits. It's slow so you have more time to sit about, and you don't have to make any effort driving you to your latest location. There is also time onboard to eat more burgers (see the next point) and increase your width index.
Eat constantly. Places such as McDonalds, Burger King and KFC are vital for this. We suggest getting a map and marking on the places closest to your house and your place of work. Then you can figure out the most effective routes that get you where you need to you, but also collects as much junk food as possible.
Never move. You may have heard on the news about the man found with remote controls hidden in his undulating folds of flab - this is the way ahead! Get other people to do things for you, or - for the mechanically minded - rig up a pulley system to do everything you need as the push of a button. If you're going the full 9 yards, buy yourself a poking stick to hit the button with. This saves valuable energy!
Destroy all healthly foods in your house. Everyone hates spinach & brussel sprouts - that's because they're bad for you! A friend of a friend of ours once tried to prove in his garage this was the case, so it must be true! Carrots are another no-go zone : steer clear of such temptations. You also may want to campaign against your nearby Supermarket selling such foods if you are one of these people who feels a need to tell everyone about their habits.
Remember - "Time spent eating is time spent growing!" TM.

ET

2006-10-01T20:17:00.000+01:00

Before today's update, I'd like to take a moment for you to consider a few things. What would happen if you convinced someone you had a snail fetish? What would happen if you went to an Atlantean dentist? Are you cowed by dwarven political infighting? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, no or maybe, play the Story of WTF now!
Scroll down one entry to find it. You may need to lower security settings, enable java, enable cookies, etc. Some people have been having problems with it...

Celebrities consider : The Alien

Bruce Willis on Aliens

Let's see now, how many aliens have I fought...well, there were those mechanical guys in the Fifth Element like something outta Thunderbirds. They were cool. And they had those little key-fingers, didn't they? That film started off really good, but it got a bit crap when the crazy rap singer and the blue woman with gold in her stomach appeared. That was just crazy.
Do I think aliens exist? Of course they do. It would be absurd if they didn't. But if they cross us, be sure the USA is going to kick them back to whatever planet they came from. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go and campaign for John McCain.

Jimmy Carr on Aliens

Aliens! What a bloody daft idea. If they want to come to our planet they'd better be ready for some fucking idiot chasing them around the park with a bloody camera. The paparazzi. Now there's a group of morons if ever you needed them. Christ, we'd be lucky to ever recieve alien life. I mean, we go looking for intelligent life on other planets, but if the paparazzi and David Beckham are any guide, any aliens doing the same would surely miss us out.
Maybe they even avoid us! There might be life on Mars and they hide from us because we're too damned stupid! Speaking of which, play the Story of WTF now.

Disgruntled Alien on Aliens

Who comes up with these things? That's a bloody stupid question. Of course there are aliens!
What do they look like you ask?
There's one standing in front of you! True, my eyes are made from partially-clear plastic and I can be killed by the weakest of bacteria, but I'm still a proper alien.
What? You think Klingons are better? Sure, they have a full language which unbelievably sad people can learn, but...
You people have no bloody taste.

Rowan Williams on Aliens

I'm all for cultural diversity, obviously. The Pope doesn't speak for all of us. Even so, I can't help but worried our less-enlightened galactic brethren might have some bizarre beliefs.
Not to offend cultural sensitivities, I'll just say that maybe they haven't seen the light.
Who knows what they think? Maybe they have some crazy idea that the Universe was created in a "Big Bang", and that it's been expanding for 14 billions years since then!
I wonder if I'll be the one to build the first intergalactic Church.

Pat Robertson on Aliens

There is no such thing as an Extraterrestrial. All UFO believers should be killed - stoned, infact - because it is simply absurd. There is never going to be another creature in the Universe.
What? That alien? That's just made of cardboard or something. Oh look, now he's getting out a probe. That's just a Hollywood prop-

-Unintelligible screaming-

Story

2006-09-30T13:50:00.000+01:00

So here we have it, the project we've been working on for the past while!
Entitled "The Story of WTF" this is an interactive tale of adventure! It includes a boss fight, co-op partners (in the expansion anyway) and checkpoints. So play now! There are nearly 300 areas to visit and things to do!
Also : Some opinions expressed here are not my own. This is humour, not proper political debate. Speaking of political debate, Tony Blair should resign at once. That said -

PLAY THE GAME!