Tales of interest

This one's for Kevin:

Comic Book Resources is reporting that they're making a movie based on Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life.

With all the excitement about Kung Fu Hustle, I totally forgot to mention Appleseed. It has robots that are giant, robots that are fighting, and yes oh yes, giant fighting robots. I only have the first volume of the series, so I'm not terribly sure if this is a conglomeration of all of them, or sort of a hybrid like Ghost in the Shell. Still, it looks good.

Sunday night blahs

How sad are we as a species when the best that can be said about an election is that not as many peopled died during it as previously predicted? I guess I missed the thousands of people springing to life now that maybe 40% of the population didn't get turned into hamburger while filling out a Scan-Tron form? HOORAY! Hooray for Captain Spalding! Talk about moving the goalposts--we are witnessing true masters in action.

Spent a quiet day reading a ton of Achewood and laughing at the adventures of Ray, Philippe, Liar-Bot, Todd, and the gang. (I really laughed at Todd's van. A lot.) One thing that confuses me a bit--you can get all of Achewood in book form, all of Goats on book form, but just the one wee Penny Arcade book? And it's out of print. You'd think a couple of guys who can sell out lithographs at $500/pop two days would have their work in print. Perhaps their thought is with it being online, people wouldn't pay for it, but that seems just silly. I am online a lot, but not all the time.

Cartoon Network is playing with people's minds--they've announced a Venture Brothers DVD, but they're still jerking people around as to whether they're going to order another season. I just do not get that reasoning at all. A show that makes Tom of Finland AND Easy Rider references is OK by me.

Time travel makes me itch

Well, usually it does. The two-parter time travel "cliffhanger" from Star Trek: TNG, for example. Which went on to star young Guinan and Mark Twain and made Data's head a couple hundred years older than the rest of his body. Or whatever.

But the last Justice League Unlimited this season did a pretty good job with their two-parter. The last half aired this evening.

Terry: Careful! Things have changed out there from what you're used to.
Batman: Are criminals still superstitious and cowardly?
Bruce Wayne: Yup.
Batman: Good enough for me.

Spent part of the day babysitting, and now I feel a little off. Hope neither of the kids infected me with anything.

Best. LART. Ever.

My pal Devil suggests I use this as a LART. I agree. It would be satisfying on multiple levels. And it comes in multiple colors!

Pure classy

Cheney shows how well he cleans up for formal events. How sad is it that the only criticism of these goofballs is in the style section?



I particularly like how you can almost see the mittens attached to his coat from string. Sooner or later he's going to be triple-dog-dared into licking a flagpole.

The Bizzaro #1 preview fills me with great joy--I loved the first book. The Green Lantern Reserve Corps and the Batman/Superman jealousy strips were hilarious and every library needs a book with a cover where somebody is smoking a bubble pipe.

Busy fighting off mutant attack squirrels again, so talk amongst yourselves. Will you be watching the Super Ads Bowl?

The Evil Team is unstoppable!

Stephen Chow has a new film coming to the states--Kung Fu Hustle.

Words don't really do it justice, and the trailer doesn't really attempt to explain the plot all that much anyway. So far it looks like it has ghosts, kung fu, production dance numbers, and a bunch of familiar faces.

Stephen Chow is not as well known as Chow Yun-Fat or Jet Li or Jackie Chan, though his films do amazing business in Hong Kong. I'm particularly fond of Shaolin Soccer. Didn't see it? Don't remember it? I'm not surprised--Miramax treated it pretty poorly. First they bought the rights and they were going to release it over summer. Then it was fall, but recut. Then it was spring but dubbed and without the awesome opening sequence. Then they decided to release just the original version but just in select cities.

One of the things that I like the most about Shaolin Soccer is that they do not have a failure of imagination. The Wachowski brothers, as brilliant as the first Matrix is, pretty much focused on shooting crap and half-baked philosophy. Chow creates a world where kung fu and soccer change the world for the better, in addition to featuring a kick so powerful, it strips the very turf from the stadium. In the words of Jamie Hyneman, he rejects our reality and replaces it with one of his own, only better.

There are a couple of films that made me think, "I want to live in that world." Sky Captain was one of them--Shaolin Soccer was another.

It Came From the Longbox

Finally! A use for Spam!(The e-mail kind, not the Hormel kind.) Spamusement. Read it. Particularly this one or this one or this one. We have been laughing about it all evening. And it's done by one of the founders of Panic, which means a lot to Mac geeks like me.

Sorry--distracted by Alton Brown making Bananas Foster. His website has some really nice-looking knives, though I'm not sure anything can replace our Global chef knife. It's quite possibly the best knife I've ever used. Plus, I love the way these look.

---

It Came From the Longbox
Pulling an issue from random from my collection of comics, I find... ROM #5.

(I dunno why I have a fascination with ROM, other than the pathos of the whole "must encase body on metal armor to fight Dire Wraiths" deal. Or the fact I never got to get the toy. Of course, I never got a Big Trak after asking for one for years, and I'm not obsessed by that.)

In this issue, ROM is yet another misunderstood hero in the Marvel universe, wanted by the cops after blowing away one of Dire Wraith enemies in broad daylight. He's pining for his lost love on Galador while hanging around a pair of local hu-mans. There's also a guest appearance by Doctor Strange! Because no hero can go that many issues without running into somebody else in the Marvel roster.

In addition to a Hostess ad featuring The Human Torch, there's the Hubba Bubba ad demonstrating how to blow a bubble, pleas to sell Grit (how many of these smiling kids are dead now, I wonder?), a big spread on how much dough you can make selling seeds, and tons of house ads.

This issue is a bit of a bridge between the previous arc, where ROM shows up on Earth and gets misunderstood, and the next. Which if memory serves, is fighting the guy he fought in issue 4. Anyway, ROM breaks out all three of his three accessories (the Energy Analyzer, the Neutralizer, and the Translator) in an effort to fight a demon Dr. Strange banished. The weird part is, the only time we see Dr. Strange is in a vision or a flashback to an issue of Strange Tales, so Stan and friends are lying just a wee bit on the cover.

ROM, like Shogun Warriors, was a comic tie-in to a merchandising property. Though the story in this particular is kinda iffy--ROM's main battle in this issue other than the demon is against a chair of all things--I do like how it grows beyond the cheap tie-in. And because this is the age of the internets, somebody's compiled more information about ROM than you can wiggle a corn dog at.

Infrequent transmissions

I have been busier than a Keebler elf trying to fend off mutant, chocoholic, attack squirrels from invading the hollow tree where they make the Fudge Stripes.

Which I think is pretty busy. I'm working on a feature I am calling It Came From My Longbox, but I haven't finished it yet.

(I will note that all the Dems voted no on pro-torture Gonzales. Why anyone would vote for this guy as the chief architect of the land is beyond me. Was Ashcroft not insane enough for you?)

Fun with math

This comment on Pandagon make me smile:

War Funding Crisis!

Crap. We've run out of money. Bush asks for $80 bn for Iraq, Afghanistan. The Terror War is costing us more this year than it will gernerate in oil revenues, donor contributions, opium smuggling, and taxes! We've run the Iraq War Trust Fund dry - how will we ever pay for it all?

Maybe we need to create Private Personal Combat Accounts. Every soldier's family can set aside a three of four (dozen) percent of their income, and invest it tax free. The proceeds can then be used to purchase body armor, tanks, med-evacs, water, or whatever it is they need.

This makes as much sense as not including the cost of your war in the long-term budget forecast, then claiming that Social Security is going broke because someday, some time, we might not be able to pay for it. 40 years down the line. When right now, we have a trillion dollar deficit.

There is no crisis. They continue to redefine chutzpah. "We bankrupted the country, then cut programs because we couldn't pay for them!"

Strange adventures

I was poking around online, looking for some software to test this loaner machine at work. (Long story.) One of the things I find is a game that has really caught my fancy: Strange Adventures in Infinite Space. I really like the design and execution of this game. It feels a little bit like a pared-down, streamlined version of Spacefarers of Cataan or Escape Velocity. Only instead of taking forever to play, you can explore the universe in 20 minutes and not feel cheated.

One can get the game through Cheapass games in the Boiler Plate Special. Check it out--you might dig it. (I do think it's a bit too dependent on ship combat, at least in the demo. I have a couple of ideas about how that might be fixed. Better intelligence on star systems, for example. More durable starships. Still, if you die in the game, it's not like you've committed hours of effort...)

The answer is:

One of the highlights I had growing up as a young robot was staying up late to watch the Tonight show. Back when the host did fun sketches such as Karnak the Great (not this Karnak) and Floyd R. Turbo, American.

Sadly, Johnny Carson's shoes shall never be filled, particularly now that he's gone. The reports say emphysema, which given his history of smoking, is sadly not that surprising. Of course, most people think of Leno as the host of the Tonight Show, which is a damn shame. It used to be worth watching.

Fun with eBay

Found this feedback listing on eBay courtesy of Sadly No.

My favorite so far?
Roses are red, violets are blue, Tandy makes sucky computers, I sell them to you

Go look. You'll be glad you did. Also look at the feedback he's received, too.

Something to pick up at the shop

A new, corrected edition of Kirby Unleashed. Mark Evanier gives the skinny on the changes made for this edition--sounds like a must-have. Kirby never really drew giant robots, but he did do Galactus. (Speaking of which, a Google image search for Galactus pulls up some really weird crap. I wish my French was better so I could figure out just what this meant.)

I've been re-reading the Alias trades in an effort to remember why I should still care about The Pulse. OK, I remember why Jessica Jones was a compelling character, when she has a personality and something to do. Alias has some really nice storylines, great art, and some real drama to it. The new book just feels weird, though. The last issue felt like Jessica was doing a Julie-Andrews-in-the-Alps-singing impression, only instead of the sound of music, it was how she didn't understand the events of Secret War.

And judging by the huge stack of unsold Secret War issues in my shop, she's not the only one.

Deedle deedle dee

Wubba wubba wubba.

-- That's about all I hear whenever W talks anymore. Nothing he says makes a lick of sense. Their actions however, speak louder than any focus-grouped words. Spending $50 million dollars on an inauguration and 10 (ten!) balls while the military is looking at high school band camp chocolate sales with envy? You don't need a flight-suit-to-English dictionary for that one.

Contest results:

We went around on this, but I had to go with an entry that had a surprising (though undoubtedly unintentional) bit of nostalgia for me.

Don't worry Doug-bot help is at hand, because for only two thousand dollars I will fix you up with a lobotomy and a shotgun. Book now and receive a stylish trucker cap to hide any scars, still not convinced? Just read the testimonies taken from two previously sane Americans after they had the treatment:

I voted for George W Bush because the Democrats spent all their time attacking the President, and not telling the country how they would do anything different. Bush has turned the recession into a growing economy, and is keeping us safe from terrorism. That's worth my vote any day.
Joe Brassard, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

I voted for Bush because he is an honourable man who makes decisions based on principles, not polls and a man who can be taken at his word. Unfortunately, this seems to be a rarity among politicians.
Cathy Jones, Bayonet Point, Florida

So don't delay have your brain removed today.

Tom Smith, you are a winner! Our mail robot will be e-mailing you shortly.

But why would any robot have nostalgia for lobotomies, you ask? Well, let this giant robot tell you a story...

It was seventh grade, and I was a young robot in programming class. Our teacher, Mr. Daniel, was instructing us on the history of computers using an AppleBASIC program he'd written for the Apple ][. This program asked a series of questions and gave a response based on how many you got right.

My two passions as a child were LEGO and computers, and so after finishing the test I started poking through the source code. One value caught my eye--the message for what would happen if you got less than 3 of 20 correct. It urged you to study harder.

What's the fun of looking at code unless you change something to see if it works? I edited that phrase. The new version?

You need help because you're a moron.

I saved the changes and returned the disk to its holder. (Ah, 5 1/4" floppies, how we miss you so.)

The next class, Mr. Daniel is slowly turning an exacto knife in his hands, talking about what a frontal lobotomy is, what it does, and how if anybody ever did a thing like he'd done the last class, he'd get one right across the forehead. (The girl right after me in that class did, in fact, get my message right off the bat.)

So a fun story as the clock winds down on the Bush presidency. We're in a new Gilded Age, only without the drinking and jazz.

Enjoy the coronation while it lasts

So Bush is spending $50 million dollars of our money to re-crown himself. DC has been told to take money they were supposed to spend on emergency planning and spend it on extra security, all to protect King Dork from noticing that nobody likes him.

I shall be reviewing the entries for the America (The Book) contest later today--right now I'm running around at work trying to remember how GeekLog works.

There are a couple of things to think about--how this looks to our friends across the pond, this fair and balanced coverage by Faux, and the total insanity of the right wing, who (having been taken for a ride by ShrubCo) are now reduced to demonizing SpongeBob.

And these asshats expect to be taken seriously when they claim there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (there weren't--we gave up looking last month) or Social Security is in crisis (it isn't--there is no crisis)? They're afraid of cartoons!

More later. I am off to watch 20 bicycle cops menace the 3 protestors on campus.

Reminders...

There is no crisis.

The America (The Book) contest ends at midnight tonight, with a winner announced tomorrow. Send in those suggestions while there's still time! Together we can do this thing.

I am feeling like crap and so I am going to shut down and let my self-repair systems take over for a while.

Book report

I think To Kill a Mockingbird would be even better if it followed this script. It has giant robots and pirates and flaming lightsabers and everything. (Link courtesy of Michael.)

4 ever? I don't think so...

The new Fantastic Four trailer is out (thanks to Mike Sterling for the heads-up), and I have mixed feelings. The music is kinda grating, and while some of the imagery looks OK, it mostly feels a bit like the first X-Men movie. Lotsa big dumbness, not much else.

Though really, most superhero movies get to tell an origin story and that's about it. At least in the first outing. I was a lot happier with the second X-Men film than the first, since they didn't have to waste a ton of time on exposition.

On the other hand, it will probably be better than Elektra or Daredevil, neither of which I will see. Well, were MST3K still around, both would be bot fodder.

I had this weird dream

Digby remembers a Clinton speech about MLK that is quite interesting. Martin Luther King's dream about the content of their character--we've still got a ways to go. My dream last night involved a group of terrorists kidnapping a horse and a meter for madness on the wall of a plane. Danger level was when everybody was screaming. What this has to do with racial equality? Probably nothing.

I've been quiet in reporting as of late as we had deathstorm and a visit from Kevin. Much beer was consumed, not much bourbon. I also had a flat tire yesterday, so I had to load the TireChange subroutine. I wil mention that while dining at the Doug Fir, I learned the glory that is Tabasco Smoked Chipotle sauce.

There are still two more days in the America (The Book) contest! How will you deal? How can I? Send your answer to giantfightingbot -at- gmail.com. Thanks! Winners will be announced Coronation Day.

Advice from a random stranger

(Seen on the door of a room at the Jupiter Hotel, Portland, Oregon)

Meme o' the day

As seen on Pandagon, open up iTunes (or the music player of your choice), press shuffle play and list the first ten songs.

My list:

1. "Oh Streetcar!" The Musical -- Songs in the Key of Springfield
2. Everywhere With Helicopter -- Guided by Voices
3. Paninaro '95 -- Pet Shop Boys
4. Veronique -- Pink Martini
5. Blue Mountain Session #2: Push Downstairs -- Underworld
6. Shoot the Moon -- Norah Jones
7. Penis Song (Not the Noel Coward Song) -- Monty Python
8. Inside -- Moby
9. Anthem -- Gus Gus
10. Tank! -- Seatbelts (Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack)

I'm not sure what this says about me.

Still iced in--the new thing this year is that I notice the newscasters keep telling viewers to not call 911 if they have a question about the roads or their power goes out. That seems to be totally unneeded advice, but I guess it's not.

Like any rule, it shows up because somebody ruined it for everybody. Sorta like how on the trains in Denver, there's a dire warning to not gamble. I didn't want to until I saw that warning, and then I totally did.

Whole mess of flooring!

Freezing rain today, resulting in about a quarter inch of ice on the roads. Two of the seven bridges that cross the river are closed, most of the freeways are closed, and everybody is recommending chains. In a city. Yet people still go out, I guess because they have 4-wheel drive. So more prone to tipping over, and icy. An awesome combination.

I'm guessing that this is making LiveJournal's outage even more fun.



Watched Real Genius this morning. Fun film, and the guy playing the enigmatic Lazlo is also in Napleon Dynamite.

When to stop spelling banananananana...

News from the solar system
Huygens landed on Titan today. Two hours of transmissions, including some interesting photos. NASA also launched a comet impact probe this week, which is almost as ambitious as Stardust. Actually, more so since they're going to actually hit the thing. (Stardust will return a year from tomorrow, looks like.)

A little closer to home
Lunch this afternoon was at Hannah Bea's, which I've spoken about before. The banana pudding was fresh, with notes of cream and Nilla Wafer. A slight bite to the banana, and a lovely contrast of texture between the fruit and the pudding. Good stuff.

Went to the comic shop today and grabbed a haul that included:

• Love Fights Vol 2
• Queen and Country
• Noble Causes
• The Pulse
• JLA: Rock of Ages
• JLA Classified
• And the first Scott Pilgrim issue.

I turned down the pristine copy of Turok #1, which was in the best condition I've ever seen of a comic from that era. Not quite sure of how it survived intact. (Kevin struck out on finding any Sugar and Spike, which did not surprise me. )

More on these later when I get a chance to read them--I've been distracted by a feline emergency in our house. Oh, also reading JLA/Avengers, which has been kinda fun.

They're predicting snow and freezing rain tomorrow for here. Probably not much by most standards, but people here do not deal well with ice. While I am not concerned about my ability to drive in this, but other folks? Ugh.

Antitdote to shitty morning

The Rude Pundit makes me laugh.

The Goat Fucker Strategem: Let's tell the joke again, for those who have joined the brigade of rudeness only recently: A man is sitting at a bar, drinking, and he says to no one in particular, "A man can spend his life building bridges. Do they call him John the Bridge Builder? No. A man can spend his life raising crops. Do they call him John the Farmer? No. But you fuck one goat . . ." Applied to politics and culture, it means this: someone can do something so fucked up wrong that it taints that person for the rest of his or her life, no matter what else that person may do. Oh, the many goatfuckers in our midst: Woody Allen, Bill Clinton, and, of course, George W. Bush. Once you state clearly and unambiguously that Iraq has WMDs and that we're gonna find them, when we don't, then you, sir, have fucked the goat.

There is one easy way to defeat Bush on anything, and that means any fucking thing. You have to keep reminding people that Bush is a goat fucker. Once you've fucked a goat, you've lost all credibility. Easy ad: "George Bush said we would find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In December 2004, the search ended and no weapons were found. George Bush has said there is a crisis in Social Security that can only be solved with privatization. Tell your member of Congress that you can't trust George Bush with your retirement income." And, if this were a perfect world, there'd be a giant image of George Bush fucking the shit out of a goat, its beard flappin' from the fuckin', inside a red circle with a slash through it: no goat fuckers.

Off to the vet's office and then possibly the comic shop. There are rumors of a Deathstorm 2005 approaching Oregon, too.

The memory hole

Statements by the Bush administration about WMD. Remind me again why these people still have jobs?

Why didn't I have courses like this?

Introduction to Object Oriented Programming through Interactive Fiction

Two great tastes that taste great together.

OK, so while I did stuff like this in college I never got actual credit for it! Unless you count the time I made a MUD with a killer whelk in it.

Look out. There might be a whelk.

Tomorrow I'll be going into work for a bit and then we'll be hanging out with Kevin for the rest of the weekend. (He's visiting from Boston and he's confirmed my worst fears. My temperature gauges have been acclimated to Portland weather as the current temp of 34 feels cold to me. He said it's balmy. Dammit. There's 15" of snow at my mom's house, too.)

Of course, they don't have WMD either

Listening to NPR this morning (when will I learn?), there was some asshat who said that protestors shouldn't be allowed at the inauguration because "they have allied themselves with the terrorists and Saddam Hussein."

This is exactly the kind if insane shit I expect to hear at 5 am, only usually it's when I'm asleep and having a nightmare.

A friend of mine pointed me to One Damn Dime Day. I'm not sure this actually does anything useful, but hey, it's a good reason to stay home and read.

Poking through The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker. The book itself is impressive--about the equivalent weight of an unabridged dictionary, and then it comes with two CD-ROMs that contain digital copies of the cartoons. Those are stored in an Acrobat file, but I haven't checked to see if they disabled printing.

The older cartoons are interesting, but I have to admit that I didn't laugh at a single one until the 50s or so. (The book collects some recent ones, including this favorite from last year.)

Lonely Rolling Star

Found this evening: A preview of Katamari Damacy 2. And there are some bigger pictures, too.

Is the Prince of All Cosmos wearing a giraffe head?

Do earwigs make chutney?

Watching Eddie Izzard: Unrepeatable in an effort to decompress after a trip to the vet. (One of our cats decided to test our loyalty with nonspecific but worrying symptoms. I guess we passed.

We're giving up looking for WMDs in Iraq. Not that they were ever there in the first place. You know, a lot of us said this a couple hundred thousand lives ago. Any bets on when the 101st Fighting Keyboarders will apologize? Hah!

On a lighter note, look what's coming out on March 2! Essential Luke Cage. This would probably go quite well with the Essential Iron Fist trade in my bag. (I originally typed that as Iron Fish, which would be a very different story.)

You were Danny Rand. Now you are like unto a trout of iron. You are IRON FISH!

The final countdown

Watching a lot of Arrested Development lately, and one of things that always gets me is GOB's magic act. As far as I can tell, it mostly consists of him playing with scarves to the tune of Europe's The Final Countdown.

We're heading for Venus (Venus)
And still we stand tall
Cause maybe they've seen us
And welcome us all (yeah)
With so many light years to go
And things to be found (to be found)
I'm sure that we'll all miss her so
It's the final countdown...
The final countdown
The final countdown (the final countdown)
Ooh ooh oh
(interlude)

It seems to me that there was a weird time travel movie of the same name, but I don't remember if this was the title track or not. (It had Kirk Douglas as the commander of a modern aircraft carrier that jumps back in time to December 7, 1941. Do they stop the Japanese from attacking Pearl Harbor? Why are they there? Who cares?)

Contest-o-rama
Speaking of final countdowns, I'm still holding my contest! The prize is a copy of America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction. All you have to do is:

• Come up with the best way to deal with another four years of a Bush administration


• Mail it to me at giantfightingbot @ gmail.com by midnight, January 19.


• Have your entry chosen by me and Mrs. GFR


• Enjoy one of the funniest books I've read in years!

Video game nostalgia
Suikoden IV came out last week. I still haven't played the third one, didn't really get into the second one. But the first game? Loved it.

One of the things that I liked is the developers didn't turn down any ideas. Some folks do one thing and they turn it up to 11, like Bomberman. (Note, Saturn Bomberman is the one true Bomberman--I have no idea why they insist on making any more games when they could just port that one...) But Suikoden? It's got castle building, roleplaying, weapon smithing, item collecting, puzzle solving, character collecting, joint attacks, one-on-one battles, party fighting, army battles, etc... Collecting all 108 Stars of Destiny is no easy chore. Anyway, I was mostly thinking of this today as I was trying to resync my iPod with a bunch of new songs and I was wondering where I hid that CD. Plus, does anybody know if there's a good Saturn emulator? Looking at eBay, trying to recreate my Saturn collection is going to be expensive.

Small is big.

Lots of news from MacWorld SF today.

First, there are a bunch of new pieces of software. iLife has been upgraded, and now they're trying to kill Office with iWork. I'm not 100% sure this is going to work, but as they say, what new feature of Office do you use the most? Actually, what new feature have you used at all? In some ways, I'd rather be running Word 5.1 since it would be way faster than Office X.

Then there's the Mini, which may be the simplest computer ever. Put a Happy Hacker and a mini LCD on there, you've got a portable workstation you can take with you. Granted, it's not upgradable at all, but it can do something my TiBook cannot, and that's play World of WarCraft.

Actually, wait. What video card does it have? ATI Radeon 9200 with 32 MB of RAM. Well, it might play it, but don't expect much shiny stuff out of it.

Haven't purchased comics lately--I've mostly been waiting for a visit from Kevin so we can go and he can get outrageous deals at my shop that they never think of offering me. (It's a fact--every time I take people to Excalibur, they get offered some mighty fine bargains.)

NiGHTs Into Dreams

You know a game design team has done its job when just hearing the soundtrack can bring up the experience of playing the game. In 1997, Sonic Team built a wacked-out game for the Saturn called NiGHTs Into Dreams.

Listening to the soundtrack, I can see the little purple NiGHTs guy flying around in loops, drill-attacking the bad guys, etc. I really do miss the Saturn now and again. The character and world have made cameos in later games (I'm thinking of Phantasy Star Online and the Sega Eye Toy games in particular), but they've never come out and made a direct sequel. Which is a bit too bad. It was tons of fun.

What kind of world do we live in where Megaman gets 4000 sequels, and NiGHTs not a one? I'm not even going to go into the countless Army Men games. I was hoping when 3DO went bankrupt, that would be the end of that, but nope...

Today is the last day to donate for Steve Gilliard's pledge drive. This weekend he got invaded by trolls from NRO, I think, and it was pretty damn sad. I'm a little sad the Fighting 101st Keyboarders are spending their time trolling blogs when they could be putting their money where their mouths are and enlisting in the Army.

Vroom.

Spent a lot of time yesterday playing with the new vacuum cleaner. You know, there's a bit of hype behind this machine, but damn is this thing nice. I think we managed to suck up enough pet hair to create a fleet of cats.

Contest Announcement
Since next week is the second inauguration of El Presidente Busho, I need to find some coping mechanisms for the next four years. And since Mike and Kevin had so much fun with theirs, I am holding a contest of my own! Winner will receive their very own copy of America: The Book.

• Think of some way to deal with the next four years. It would help if it were less than 200 words.


• E-mail that very thing to giantfightingbot @ gmail.com .


• Entries must be in by midnight PST on January 19 and I will announce it on Inauguration Day.
  

Contest void where prohibited. Winners will be decided solely by me and Mrs. Giant Fighting Robot. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball. Have fun.

Pinot noir are more fragile

Yesterday, after a particularly brutal day at work, we went out with friends for drinks and a movie. Life seems a little more manageable after a Manhattan. Particularly when they don't skimp on the bourbon.

The film,Sideways, was a lot of fun. Paul Giamatti was fantastic in American Splendor and does a great job countering the madness of Thomas Hayden Church. (How he can elevate being a complete jerk into a likeable character is fascinating.) Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh are even more intoxicating than the wine that serves as one of the driving forces behind the plot. Plus there are some truly laugh-out-loud moments, a bunch of touching moments, loads of sex, and almost as many shots of wine as there are images of The Ring in the Lord of the Rings.

The thing is, I'm not much of a wine person. I'm far more into beer. So raving about what Wine Spectator ranked something, buying a case to rack up for years, arguing over what vintage from a winery was better, etc., are not that interesting to me. Yet I did like the film even without caring that X vintage was $150 a bottle (though I did get a running commentary about just that kind of thing from the wine snobs in our group). It's worth a look even if you like Franzia or Gallo. If it was just a wine wankfest, it wouldn't have such a huge rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Oh, and before I forget, the only trailer I remember was for Schultze Gets the Blues, which I totally need to see.

Watching the film reminded me of one of the best days I've ever had, where we drove through Napa Valley in a '65 Mustang convertible, sampling wine and seeing friends we don't see enough of. (Obligatory rant about time and geography goes... right about here.)

Finished volume one of The New Frontier this morning. I held off on buying this in single issues since it was like $8/pop, but now I'm wishing I had them, as DC's decision to split this into two trades means I have to wait for the second half.

Found something on BoingBoing I hadn't thought of: Microsoft has released a new anti-spyware tool. For who, other than the makers of the least secure OS on the planet, would be best qualified to put a tiny bandage on the gaping arterial spray that is spyware today? But anyway, Ed Foster notes that by removing spyware, Bill and pals could be hoist by their own EULA petard:

So it seemed to me that this poses something of a quandary for Microsoft. After all, the software EULA as we know it today is basically a Microsoft invention, and no other company has been as big a supporter of UCITA and other legal efforts to make sneakwrap licenses completely binding. So Microsoft isn't going to want to go around violating any other company's EULA, not even those of companies of whom they might not completely approve.

I'll be sticking to SpyBot and Ad-Aware at work, but that's just me. At home, it's OS X all the time. Until I get that gaming rig built for World of WarCraft and/or City of Heroes.

Woll you up

This enterprising Canadian knitter just picked up a ton of cash for her handmade Katamari Damacy hat.

Oh, and speaking of one of my favorite games of last year, X-Play announced a sequel for it is in the works. Most excellent.

I think we might be nerds

DougBot: Somebody posted about Byrne kicking off on my blog today, actually. But who would people bitch about? Millar? Sim?

BeaucoupKevin: Josh asked me who should write ALL-STAR WONDER WOMAN and I responded with Dave Sim.

BeaucoupKevin: I am a bad person.

DougBot: DUDE. I think I just felt something in my brain pop.

Her best work was in The Professional when she was 12

One of the first things I read this morning is this story at postmodernbarney about a new V for Vendetta movie. Starring NATALIE PORTMAN.

This about like the rumor I kept hearing about a "funny" Green Lantern film starring Adam Sandler. Only they've got a poster.

In lighter news, I got to hear Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden grill the hell out of Gonzales this morning, so that was kinda fun. OK, it's not lighter news since I'm not terribly sure a guy who sees no problems with torture is a good candidate for pet store owner, let alone the lawyer for all of the United States.

World in a minute

When I was a kid in the Midwest, the local news would run a segment they called "World in a Minute," where five stories boiled down to 12 seconds each explained everything you needed to know about current events. You know, so you could get to the important things in the program: the weather and high school sports. (Seriously, high school sports took up three times the amount of any national sport coverage, since the local interpretation of national sports was... the Cubs. Maybe the Bears.)

Anyway, here's the world in a couple hundred words, I guess.

Online stuff
There's a quiz, courtesy of Mr. Piggs and Michael. What's your D&D alignment? I turned out to be True Neutral, which surprised me a little. I was thinking Chaotic Good for some reason. I guess I want my enemies to suffer too much.

Delicious Library
There are rumors of an impending point release Real Soon Now, but I've not seen it yet. I'm hoping it speeds the program up a little--our computer isn't exactly jam-packed with RAM and so every once in a while I have to sit and watch it spool tons of crap to disk. Also, there are two HTML exporters, Delicious Exporter and DeliciWeb. They both suck rocks. The former made a Web site that would take up... 42 MB of space. The latter never actually worked for me, crashing after taking about ten minutes to analyze my library (I assume that's what the thrashing of the hard drive and the progress bar were for). Avoid them and wait for internal exports. Ideally an RSS feed.

Politics
Everything Digby writes about today is worth reading. The Rude Pundit is also worth your time. However, don't combine that with this Ornicus piece, or you'll be reminded of the quote that the American facism will call itself anti-fascism. At least Tucker Carlson is sorta kinda going to stop hurting America now. Well, he's still got his show on PBS, who remind you that they do not need your money now that they are part of the Lying Conservative Media.

Other things to watch for include the GOP trying to destroy Social Security (because it shows how much they lie--it's a big government program that works and helps people, therefore it must be stopped), the Gonzalez hearings, etc. What, you don't want an attorney general who inspires Get Your War On?

Personal
Moved very much by Bob Harris' writing about Australia and the tsunami victims. I'm thinking I may need to donate more, particularly now that I've found another matching source. (Mrs. GFR's workplace will match donations, it turns out. Hooray for the private sector.) Back to work now, and I am just running ragged. My own projects are burying me, so this extra stuff that other folks want to throw at me is gonna have to wait on a back burner for a while. Rumors are flying around. Mostly I'd like to eat lunch at a normal time tomorrow--waited until 2 today and that is Not Getting It Done, as Busta says.

Reading a lot of Essential Marvel Team-Up in the evenings. This one panel of Spider-Man waterskiing while being towed by Sub-Mariner? PRICELESS. Totally makes up for the lame story about Spider-Man and the Werewolf, which looked briefly like it was going to contain Daredevil but did not. Probably for the best, though, since Daredevil has a pretty lame gallery of rogues. The Owl? STILT-MAN?!?!

Liquid Toll House

It's a particularly sweet morning so far.

Stumptown is fairly cold this morning, but at least I didn't have to scrape ice off the windshield. They are predicting some possible snow this weekend, which will shut this place down. Not like DEATHSTORM 2004 did last year, I hope.

Went with some coworkers to Starbucks, where they're pimping a new beverage: Chantico. Imagine drinking some warm, melted chocolate chips, and that's about what it's like. They also want you to buy a cookie to go with it, which sounds like a recipe for insulin shock. I guess they're branching out into non-coffee drinks more.

And the best news of all is that I was a winner in the Swamp Thing contest! Woo!

*sigh*

First Freas, now Eisner. This is not a good year for older artists.

Time to do what I normally do in this situation. Google image searches for puppies and kittens.

One Earth year

Spirit touched down a year ago today. Opportunity not long after. 66,000 pictures later, they're still going strong, both way past their projected 90-day lifespan.

Now that's some serious engineering there. Spirit has one wheel that's a little dodgy, and I guess now it has a rock in its shoe, so to speak. (There's a rock wedged in one of the treads, what ya gonna do?)

In another part of the solar system Huygens is on its way to touchdown on Titan.

Didn't Shrub announce a manned Mars mission a while back? Are we on Mars yet? Or is it another thing he announced and never funded, like Afghanistan or No Child Left Unscarred or whatever? It's been almost a year, the shuttles are still grounded, Hubble is going to burn up in the atmosphere, but hey... um... at least the GOP has its priorities in order. As seen on Atrios:

So, the House Republicans support a rule change which will let them:

*Take bribes!

*Fix parking tickets!

*Have sex with House pages!

Words and pictures

It's quite around here right now--I'm trying to psyche myself up for a return to work after a week+ off.

If you're like me (and I know I am), you like The Annotated Mantooth. I think the clear successor to it has been found: Sharknife.

"Ceasar Hallelujia is your typical busboy working at a typical restaraunt. Typical, it seems, until a half-cuban/half-japanese gangster by the name of Ombra Ravenga pollutes the walls of said restaraunt with the demon seeds of barbarous beasts! Now, when the monsters get too big for the walls to contain, Ceasar must radically transform into the monster-fighting hero SHARKNIFE to protect the restaraunt, it's patrons, it's food, and most importantly, the cute cute Chieko Momuza!"

Looks like it could be fun.

Peets Coffee is now matching any donation you make to Tsunami relief. And hell, pick up some beans from them while you're at it.

We took a few home ourselves. One of my goals this year is to wean myself off the Starbucks tax every day, even though I like most of the baristas at the shops near me. It just... really adds up over time. (Of course, it will help once the light starts coming back. This dark at 4:30 stuff was old a month ago.)

Oh yeah, and there's a new Gone and Forgotten, which has some Jimmy Olsen in it, but NOT the issue of Amazing Spider-Man where Spidey grows four more arms.

I was thinking of doing a year-end review for comics, gaming, and politics, but I think everyone is as sick of 2004 as I am. Though I often curse time and geography, at least time has the tendency to move forward.

Glad to see tact is alive and well

So the folks at Delicious Monster post that they're working on a new version of the product. Right away, people post how they hate the idea. Nice, people.

At least there are some nice folks. The Mercy Corps group just had an update as to their progress helping the Boxing Day Tsunami victims. (I also note this Atrios post about the Lying Media and how Bush has upped the chocolate rations.)

Spent a good chunk of the day watching The Return of the King. Even longer than the theatrical release, I still cannot figure out why Jackson chose to cut the sequence with Saruman in favor of more hobbit slash fodder. (Speaking of which, DO NOT miss the hidden bit on disc. Go to the scene select, click the last screen, and move your cursor down until you see a ring appear.)