Rampant Exclamations

Created by Strip Generator, embued with Auto-Heal by The Dark Elf Pants of Blinding Radiance.

I was having a conversation with a lady about her daughter, and that first panel up there is verbatim what I replied to her when she said she wished she’d never grow up. Clearly my experience with parenthood is nil, but when presented with an opportunity to comment on the subject I didn’t hesitate to fall back on my good friend Video Game Analogy for some “helpful” advice.

And I’ve noticed I do that a lot, and have for a long time. When I first started driving, my mother asked me how I was so calm moving in and out of traffic, getting on the highway, things most new drivers are terrified of. I informed her it was probably from playing driving video games, specifically Gran Turismo, which requires you to pass several actual driving tests before you can even do any of the damn races. (By the way, when trying to assuage your mother’s anxiety about your driving, telling her you learned how to do it from video games does not, repeat, DOES NOT, make her feel better. Especially after you just passed two cars on either side of you. On a 2-lane street. I blame Top Gear for that.)

Do you ever find yourself equating everything to video games? You ever wait for the dough to “level up” on your pizza? Have you told someone to “pause” a conversation so you can go to the bathroom? Or maybe you’re not into video games, and do it with whatever hobby or business you’re into most. Maybe you make a “career assessment” of your milk to determine if it still “qualifies”. Perhaps you “buffed the chassis” on that “hoopty” knowing full well she was a “rental”. Who knows! You probably pepper your conversations with Oregon Trail references and don’t even know it.

Hey guys! Who’s up for a road trip to Toronto? I just found out that one of a handful of Street Fighter IV arcade machines is in Toronto, Ontario, Camaro, Eugene, Methusalah, Onomatopoeia, Canada, and it might be fun to take a 6+ hour road trip to another country for such a stupid purpose. Plus, maybe we can catch a curling match. Is it curling season? Do they even have seasons? Or is it just a joke sport they only play during the Winter Olympics or when they run out of episodes of World’s Strongest Man on ESPN2?

Slightly relevant to this is an article I just read that suggests playing video games makes people better surgeons. There have been recent studies conducted showing that surgeons who were also identified as “gamers” were 27% faster at advanced surgical procedures, and made 37% fewer mistakes, compared to non-gamers. (They also said violent games make kids more desensitized and prone to use violence to solve problems) BUT HEY VIDEO GAMES MAKE YOU SMARTER IT’S PROVEN EVERYONE LOOK OVER HERE!!! Now we have an even better reason to visit Canada for some gamin’: education!

Sign #2,477: You’re scrolling through your music and think, “Huh, I don’t know where that album came from. And I’ve never listened to it.”

This was what happened to me just recently, as I noticed that apparently I have the entire An End Has a Start album by Editors, and I have absolutely no idea where it came from. I’m glad I randomly decided to listen to it, though; it kind of sounds like what might happen if Interpol and The Bravery loved each other very, very much, hugged each other in that very special way that a mommy band and a daddy band do, and had a baby band.

I’d love to show you the video for my favorite song on the album (the title track, “An End Has a Start”) but for some reason, every copy of it on YouTube has embedding disabled. FAIL. So, here’s a link to the video.

Here’s a few items from the WTF? pile I happened to stumble upon this week.  And no, I didn’t actually use StumbleUpon, I do my own internet detective work thank you very much.  With a little help from Watson, of course.  This week I’ve decided to stick with the theme of completely idiotic things I read about, instead of the normal doses of Awesome. 

• In California, a man driving a motorcycle on the highway was carrying a laptop bag full of cash for an unspecified reason.  So, of course, the bag flew open and spilled cash all over the highway, causing cars to stop in the middle of traffic as the people grabbed at the lost bills.  Good citizens they were, they all fled when the police arrived.  I have no idea why this moron carried a laptop bag full of cash and hung it loosely on the side of his motorcycle hoping nothing bad would happen to it, but I just assume this was karma’s way of punishing him for knocking over that convenience store two towns over.
• Want a new and exciting way to get fired that will have the Internet buzzing by sundown?  Have cybersex on the company dime!  And as an online video game GM, no less.  Apparently patrolling Conan’s new game for reported offenses wasn’t enough of a thrill for this guy, so he accepted an offer to cybersex with one of the players.  A couple things to note: 1) The GM was a straight male; 2) The player was playing a male avatar, but said she was a girl in real life, but turned out to be fucking with him and was really a dude; 3) The guy was SO FIRED with the quickness.  I know you’re thinking it, so I’ll just say it: that GM was confused by a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude.  Oh Tropic Thunder, I haven’t even seen you and I know I love you.
• This last one was supposed to be about how screwed up China is for giving the world fakeass CGI fireworks during the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics, but I just don’t know anymore.  On first read it seems like China was trying to trick everyone into thinking their city wasn’t a barren smoggy wasteland where even the brightest explosions couldn’t penetrate its thick pollution membrane, and I was perfectly content with that assessment and should have left it at that.  Alas, I broke all Internet blogging protocols and actually researched it at different sources for 5 minutes, and now it seems they just did it on SOME of the shots they wouldn’t be able to get because it’s a No-Fly Zone so no helicopters would be able to get the angles they wanted.  I no longer know whether to be outraged or just not care.  Did any of you watch the Opening Ceremonies?  Does this make you feel lied to and manipulated?  Is this prom night at your uncle’s cabin all over again?

PHEW!  I was scared I was going to go through the entire week without finding something that simply made me exclaim, breathlessly…awesome.  But the day is saved, and not thanks to the PowerPuff Girls, but to this hilarious clip brought to us by those modern day chucklesmiths at CollegeHumor.com.  Truly great in its deconstruction of Bowser’s madness, and how his minions must realize by now that they should very easily be able to kill that son of a bitch Mario between the lot of ‘em.

Greetings!  I’ve been playing a fun new game the last few months, and I want to share the fun with the world!  It’s called That’s So Racist!, and it’s a phenomenon that’s sweeping the nation!  How you play is simple: you hear/read/see/experience/infer/intuit/dream/make up ANYTHING, then figure out how that is racist!  A minute to learn, a lifetime to master!  In fact, I’m gonna play this game right now, and whenever I come up with new ones I’ll share. 

First, go to this article link from the Wall Street Journal.  It’s an editorial about the fitness of past Presidents, and how Barack Obama having no body fat and eating well makes him look elitist.  It has such illuminating dialogue as, “I won’t vote for any beanpole guy,”, a statement from a Clinton supporter, and, “Only celebrities like Barack Obama go to the gym three times a day,” a statement from McCain campaign manager Rick Davis.  Now although those lines, along with the bulk of the article, qualifies this as stupid, it’s not necessarily racist.  Until, however, you look at the picture that goes along with the article.  (Make sure to click “See Enlarged Image” for the whole pic.)  Still haven’t clicked the link?  Please do so, I’ll wait.

…

It’s a lineup of past and future Presidents, showing their weights and heights.  It’s got Taft on there, an ASTOUNDINGLY small George Washington (5′4″, 98 pounds??), McCain and George Bush in nice suits, and then…Barack Obama, 6′1″, 170lbs, in a warmup outfit, palming a basketball!  Do you see?!  THAT’S SO RACIST!!  Sure, put the black man in his basketball uniform, cuz that’s all he’s good for!  Barack can’t run the country, he’s too busy scoring double-doubles for the Atlanta Hawks right?  I’m old and confused and Negroes with basketballs scare me!  Way to go, Wall Street Journal, for setting our race back another…I don’t, what do you think?  3 months?  Sounds about right.

And yes, you could point out that they also have Bill Clinton in a tshirt and Umbro shorts, but everyone knows he’s blacker than Obama anyway.

MAY CONTAIN THE DARK KNIGHT SPOILERS!  IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT, MAYBE DON’T READ THIS!  ALSO, GET YOUR HINEY TO YOUR LOCAL THEATER AND SEE IT!  JACKASS!

Here’s my review of The Dark Knight: PERFECTION.  It is everything I want, it is everything I need, it is everything inside of me that I wish I could be.  It says all the right things, at exactly the right time…ok enough with the song lyrics, the point is that I absolutely loved it and defy anyone to tell me they didn’t love it as well.  I’ve seen it twice already, once in IMAX (which has now ruined me for big action movies on “regular” screens); methinks I’ll see it many times more before I’m through.  Anyone who hasn’t seen it and wants to go, I will go with you.  As I’ve said before, this movie is my Titanic, and I am a small girl with disposable income.

But my gushing is not the point of this post, I can do that anytime, and have.  No, it’s to posit this query among the masses of readers who frequent accidentally click on this awesome serviceable website place where thoughts come to die: who should be the villain(s) for Batman 3?  We were talking about this on the car ride back from my first viewing, and there are a couple of articles on IGN and MSNBC that give their opinions on the matter, but who cares what they think?  If you did you’d be there now instead of here, and since you’ve made that grave error I will now subject you to my two cents (now worth only one cent thanks to the weakening American dollar.)

Now because of Christopher Nolan’s reimagining of the franchise in a more grounded-in-reality Gotham City, several of Batman’s more…colorful…rogues are probably not a good fit.  Like the guy who only steals pennies, or the guy who’s a giant mutant bat, or the guy who’s a shapeshifting pile of clay.  But I think a few of them would still work well, like…

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Here’s something new! Every week I’m going to put up the single most full-of-awesome thing right here in this new segment, Greg’s Awesome Thing Of The Week!  This week I’ve pluralized it because I meant to start this a couple weeks ago but, of course, didn’t get around to it until now.  So!  Awesome Thing #1 is:

• For those of you who thought Nintendo was abandoning the “hardcore” gamer, bite your tongues because a third party has stepped up to the plate and given you a way to make your Wiimotes into sex toys.  Finally, yes, FINALLY, you’ll be able to control Link as he gets his “reward” from Princess Zelda, and you’ll realize why he keeps saving her ass despite her idiotic penchant for getting kidnapped.  No guy on Earth or Hyrule would put up with that hassle for so long if he wasn’t waxin’ that.  We can only hope the good people at Oioo offer a Magnum version.

Awesome Thing #2: 

• A fully functional auto-turret.  (Sorry about the link, I would just embed it but I seem to F’in suck at that.)  It only shoots paintball rounds right now…but that could easily be rectified.

Awesome Thing #3:

• Miracle Whip now comes in plastic 32oz Wide-Mouth jars.  I’d don’t care if this doesn’t impress you, but I think it’s awesome!  For too long I’ve had to resort to a long handled spoon to get to the tangy zip whenever the jar got down past half full!  Too many times I’ve had to lick my fingers clean after getting it all over them, the consequence of trying to scrape the jar’s bottom to finish off a sandwich!  Well those dark days are over, and at last, I am free from sticky fingers (from Miracle Whip)!  When I opened the jar today, and saw there would be plenty of room for my giant hands to get to the bottom without having to clean them afterwards…I shed a tear.

Well this is intriguing, and so so so bought when I get home: Square Enix just released a turn-based RPG for iPod.  It’s called Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes, and here’s why I think this has such potential for awesomeness: your allies are created by your iPod song library.  Essentially what you do is upload a song into the game, it reads it, and creates an ally based on what the song is, with powers and stats determined by, I don’t know, how hard it rocks or if the programmers like Creed or whatever.  And it’s on the cheap too; $4.99 has never left my wallet so fast.

I’m so excited about this because it reminds me of one of my favorite games for the PS1, Monster Rancher.  (Yes, the one with the really stupid cartoon I shudder to even mention.)  In that game you created pet monsters by inserting ANY compact disc into the PS1, having it read the data, then it gave you a monster based on whatever the hell it was looking for and you trained them to fight and what have you.  There were even some super rare monsters you could only get by uploading the exact CD it was looking for, like Nevermind or Songs in the Key of G.  I hope this game has stuff like that, and predict that the buying of random iTunes songs from yesteryear will increase five-fold.

This. Is. Awesome. Only for Metal Gear fans of course, but an interesting point of view on Snake’s epic badassery (the original snake eating Snake, too.)

Metal Gear Solid: Cold Blooded from TheDuoGroup on Vimeo.

Hope you’re ready to sit still for a while: MGS4 reportedly has cutscenes, some up to 90 minutes long. Get the popcorn, dim the lights, and settle in for a little Solid Snakin’.