Right now Stephen Chow is kicking ass

And I am in the bead shop. OK, when I say "bead shop," I am really talking about "work." Speaking of bead shops, one could bid on this eBay lot and never have to buy beads again. (Link courtesy of the lovely and talented Lunesse.)

As I waited for my coffee to brew this morning, played through the first level or two of Sly Cooper. The game does give me a little furry vibe that is slightly creepy, but it is very well-done. The animation on Sly is well-executed (little details like Sly grabbing his all-purpose cane in his mouth while climbing a ladder, for example) and really brings life to his character. The voice acting is also good, only slightly awkward in the "here's how to do this thing with the controls" moments.

I could do without the animation in the cut scenes--it feels a little like an animatic that got spiffed up in place of a pre-rendered thing. We're not talking Clutch-Cargo-or-70s-Hanna-Barbara-bad animation, but the colors are a little too garish and the art style is just different enough that it's noticeable.

I'm also less fond of the one-hit kills, though it does make the game more realistic. If a game about a thieving raccoon who's wandering the world to avenge the theft of his family's heirloom book that will teach him to be a Master Thief while avoiding a French police inspector Fox and whose best friends are a talking hippo and an asthmatic turtle "realistic."

Speaking of realistic, Ron Moore's blog about Battlestar Galactica raises some interesting issues about some events in the series.

Galactica is both mirror and prism through which to view our world. It attempts to mirror the complexities of our lives and our society in turbulent times, while at the same time reflecting and bending that view in order to allow us to extrapolate on notions present in contemporary society but which have not yet come to pass, i.e. a true artificial intelligence becoming self-aware and the existential questions it raises. Our goal is to examine contemporary culture and society, to challenge (and sometimes provoke) our audience, but not to provide easy answers to complex problems.

I'm not entirely comfortable with a lot of the actions taken by the characters. (Neither is Moore.) Each of the interrogation scenes reminds me a lot of Guantonomo or Abu Ghraib. Granted, these folks are really fucked up in the head since almost everybody they know is dead and their mortal enemies can look exactly like them.

There's a lot in the commentary track on the miniseries about 9/11 and how the show is kind of a reaction to that--so much so that it's a drinking game for next time I watch it, I think. So it's quite realistic in that respect. There are some fairly goofy bits. For example, folks on TV Tome and Television Without Pity have poked fun at the overwhelming gaggle of reporters on the show--just how many media people do you need with 49,700 people left in the world? Why does nobody call Baltar on his insane behavior? I'll accept for story purposes the existence of FTL drives and extra-solar humans. But man, they gotta find some more attractive liquor. Every time they show the Galactica crew drinking, I'm reminded of NyQuil.