YouTube Billboard

11/11 Wow, I Thought Channing Lair Was Hopeless
This has been floating around the YouTube for sometime, now I'm not sure if it is real, my guts says yes because some people are just that conceited. In 1984 Stanley Kubrick was casting for his soon-to-be famous war epic Full Metal Jacket and was looking for nobodies who will work cheap and will be easily abused, ie fresh new faces and asked for audition tapes and this was one of them. I'm not sure if it is funny or immensely sad, my money is on funny it makes me grin and chuckle the nth time I have watched it. Yes basically this website is going to be featuring more and more YouTube junk now that I know my website can handle them.

11/13 Just Beat My Nintendo DS Game
I just beat my first Nintendo DS Game, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrows. It took me a little bit, kept getting my ass kicked on the final boss until I tried something new and totally mopped the floor with him. It was rather embarrassing that I had so much trouble before I tried that. I am very enamored with my DS there is just something so fun and pleasant about playing games on that. They give you that pleasant feeling you use to get when playing video games or at least I do. The DS at least to me is more about game play than gimmicks, like New Super Mario or Castlevania you don't have much in the way of gimmicks a little with the touch screen but you have to have game play. I really liked Dawn of Sorrows, it reminded me of Symphony of the Night. I'm still a fan of side scrollers probably because they don't exist anymore. Another cool thing about my DS is I can start playing all the Gameboy Advanced Games I wanted to play but never had a Gameboy Advanced to play them with, my DS is backward compatible.

11/13 Star Wars Mania
For the past two days now Cinemax has been playing nothing but Star Wars, all six movies over and over. I am currently watching Star War IV, which in my opinion is still the first Star Wars movie for the third time in two days. It is rather good to rewatch those old movies after a rather long spell. By the time that Star Wars Episode II came around I had all but given up on all the movies and the fact that they never put them out on DVD in any reasonable format. Rewatching them is rather pleasant, I've even watched a few minutes of the prequel movies, in my old age I'm mellowing out apparently. I'll slap on one of my favorite Robot Chicken

11/16 Fuck
This ain't my usual thing but fucking hell man this is hardcore. Below if you have a high speed connection you get to see the UCLA campus cops tasering the fuck out of a student whose horrible crime was not producing id in a library. My favorite thing is the affirmation is that all university campus cops everywhere are totally douche bags. My other favorite thing is that the two sides are screaming like mad at each other. You have the right who believe whole heartly in a police state think this hippie liberal got what was coming to him, and continued to get what was coming to him the third and fourth time the cops taser him. Then you have the left that are horrified by the police's rather brutal response to the crime of not having id. I agree the cops went way the fuck overboard, nobody can convince me that you need to taser a guy four or five times over something like this. I did think back to Rodney King. This also shows how fluid information is now, the cops can't get away with shit anymore because everybody has a camera phone and anybody can capture them fucking up people.

11/17 YouTube Billboard
This is becoming a YouTube Billboard apparently, true I was only planning on two but the whole tasering student thing needs to be posted. Well next week is Thanksgiving better get ready to do some eating.

Cheers.

Joys of Decorating

11/18 Rage For the Machine
I knew there was a reason I didn't want to run out and immediately buy a PS3, oh yah I didn't want my ass stabbed, shot, trampled or otherwise fucked. I survived launch day for the PS2, just barely, this shit is out of fucking hand. I mean lordly lord this is probably a sign of impending doom for civilization all together.

11/19 Happiness Is A Mosin Nagant Loaded With Tranquilizers
I am back playing Metal Gear Solid 3 and this time I managed to defeat a certain boss which gave me a Mosin Nagant that is loaded with tranquilizer darts which of course makes knocking out bad guys so much easier now that I can do it from miles away. Metal Gear Solid 3 is a great game, I think the originality in all forms makes the game so much fun, the camo, the weapons, the boss battles. Now if only an American game could do one thing that Metal Gear Solid does right we'd have something.

11/19 X-Mas
It has begun again what I am certain is going to become an annual year end tradition, the war over Christmas, the pious vs the evil vile atheist horde. In the last couple of days I keep seeing this magnetic bumper stick that proclaims: Keep Christ in Christmas, which is pretty much standard for this time of year, Christian are convinced the rest of the world is out to destroy them. My feeling is, let's X Christ out of Christmas and simply call it X-Mas, it is close enough to X-Man that we can get the nerds on board and in reality once enough nerds start to squawk on the Internet you can make something happen. If I manages to keep Scarlett Johansen and Jessica Alba in movie roles it could work for this hair brained scheme. So everybody call it X-Mas just to annoy the fundamentalists and give them something to piss and moan about.

11/23 Thanksgiving - Bullshit = Fun
In recent years Thanksgiving has been trimmed down to a very neat, slim running little holiday. Basically all the extra family that use to come over no longer do which makes everything really just run smoother. I'm not one for family, people who know me know my rather lack of real family, true these people share genetic markers and we share a common ancestry but in reality they are basically strangers to me. Thanksgiving use to me a massive affair in Colorado, and I mean massive it was like feeding an army, and I fully know those days will never come back, they are gone and that is life and for some years I rather look at Thanksgiving with some disregard, it was an annoyance holiday too much cleaning, too much prep for very little reward, the food is plenty good but do we really need to leap through all the flaming hoops for it? Not really, this year we had a much more trimmed down guest list and everything went swimmingly, so when you cut the bullshit out of holidays they can actually be rather enjoyable.

11/25 Black Friday, Thoughts at 5:30 am
Yes it really is 5:30 in the morning while I am writing this, for the sake of a really cheap leather jacket I got up at the crack of dawn and went to our local Kohl's store. I was not at all prepared for the mass of humanity that was standing in line to get in, I mean holy bloody fuck there were hundreds of people trying to bum rush the doors at the same time trying to get into a suburban clothing retalier, this wasn't for PS3s this wasn't for Super Bowl Tickets it was for stuff that is usually 60 percent off but this morning it is 70 percent off. Another thing that amused me was the store lay-out, you can tell these stores are designed with either the West Coast or the East Coast in mind, my money is on the West Coast but in any case they are designed for slender fit people, something people the Midwest aren't. In the middle of the isles in the store they setup displays of the stuff they really wanted to go first but these displays take up 50 percent of the isle leaving a little 25 percent on either side for people to move through. I am a rather slender fellow and had no difficulty moving through, mainly because I took round-about routes through the clothes at breakneck speeds to get in and get out, my theory of shopping is akin to a commando raid, but the rather shall we say portly shoppers found it increasingly impossible to move because you stack enough fat people in a tight space soon nobody is moving and patience is wearing thin. I was body checked several times by let's just say it fat women who were hell bent on getting these deals and had no qualms about me or my personal safety. In the end I got my jacket, and what a nice jacket it is but more importantly I got to witness something I had never seen before, I can only relate it to what it must be like in a supermarket the day before a hurricane hit, all in all rather surreal.

11/25 Beginning of Bi-Weekly Rants
It is X-Mas Time, that means the entire house has to be decorated within a week and a half in preparation for the month of Christmas Party Saturdays which apparently we are going to be hosting now until X-Mas Eve. So I have very little time and usually even less energy to do these entries so until the 5th Annual MadGSC awards on New Year's Eve this will be bi-weekly, he-he bi.

11/26 Oh My I Remember This
I have very vivid memories of this commercial, somehow somebody thought it was a good idea to use to sell games rather than advertise for a local dance school, or maybe it was both...

12/01 Masters of Horror Season 2
I finally saw nudity in one of the episodes. Last season nudity was fairly common and in some places rather shoehorned in but until episode 6 of the second season there was nary a boob to be seen, in its place was CG gore which in most cases looks a bit cheap and rough around the edges. I'm all for both but I think this season has been trying too hard to cover up nudity and instead sate the horror fan's hunger with lots and lots of gore. All in all I'm not entirely pleased with this season but it still has a ways to go so I will not write it off entirely just yet.

12/01 Rocket Slime
Other than decorating Christmas trees and doing the Christmas decorating in general, I have been playing Rocket Slime on my DS, which is a great deal of fun. My favorite part is without a doubt the tank vs tank combat, that is a lot of fun and something I have never seen in any other game anywhere else. Now I just need to get somebody else to buy a DS and this game so I can put my tank head to head with another living person to see if my strategy is really this dominate or I am just this lucky.

12/01 Its Christmas
Yup, it is Christmas I know this because I am spending ten hours a day breaking my ass decorating. This is why I have absolutely nothing for this week, it is all Christmas all the time here. I have spent at least 60 hours of nothing but decorating since last Friday, I'm betting it is probably closer to 75 but there it is. But thankfully most of it is done and now I can go into lazy ass mode until Christmas.

Cheers.

Tonight is Halloween, Halloween!!

10/31 Top Thirteen Horror Movies of 2006 Now I must make a little aside here, none of these movies were actually made in 2006, but I first saw them in 2006 so they are new to me even if they are old. I am totally copping out here because I am putting them in no particular order. The only order found here is the order in which I came up with them in the first place.
Dead and Breakfast: A very different take on the zombie movie, while technically not zombies but rather corpses possessed by evil spirits they are technically the dead who have returned to torment the living and therefore fall under the zombie umbrella of films. What makes this movie different is the long stretch of really black humor, the interesting mix of characters, and the rockabilly crooner who helps narrate the plot in very catchy songs. Stay for the credits my favorite song in the entire movie runs during the credits. This movie also has an interesting place in this list, it is the only movie recommended to me that actually turned out to be good. The rest of the time when I am told about a movie being so fabulous at best it turns out to be a lot of wishful thinking but at other times it turns out to be nothing but a sea of hot flaming shit that melts yours shoes clean off when you step into it. Dead and Breakfast won me over from the beginning, excellent characters, a quirky yet fabulous story, yes I know those two words, quirky and fabulous, rarely go together but this is one of those exceptions, and plenty of gore and laughs to go around. If you don't like zombie movies this is a good way to ease your way into them, this also works for those who don't like horror movies in general too.
Hex: The first 2/3s of this movie are a Shaw Brothers interpretation of Les Diabloque which is infinitely better than that Sharon Stone US Remake but really when was the last time the US ever remade anything that didn't just suck so hard the movie actually starts to draw things from across your living room towards it vortex of unending suck. The movie is excellent but then the last 20 minutes catapult it into classic. It is the entire naked exorcism that really won me over, I had really liked this movie up to that point but when the busty Asian chick starts flailing around trying to exorcize the demons and the other chick gets painted head to toe in Chinese characters only to meet a rather painful fate I realized I was watching something insane and great. It is another amazing Shaw Brothers' Black Magic film, something I hadn't heard of until this year. This wacky sub-genre really helped invigorate me and now I got about recommending this film to everyone, it isn't so bizarre than it will drive away normal people, most of the other Shaw Brothers' Black Magic movies do that enough, this one is free of live bug eating which makes it easier for normies to watch.
Sars Wars: This movie holds the distinction of actually being the closest movie to 2006, made in 2005 this Thai movie is about zombies, zombies snakes, bumbling kidnappers, chicks in black latex, dudes with big swords, dudes with even bigger guns, and did I say zombie? Yah I thought I did. Thailand is fast becoming another port offering refuge for American horror fan who have become disenchanted with Hollywood remake bullshit. They've spent the last few years steadily developing a good reputation for horror movies and have earned a place at the Asian Horror Movie table along side Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea. This movie really won my heart with its animated sequences that really just kicked ass, just goes to show we really need to bow to our Asian masters.
Demons: The Italian entry in this list of 13, Demons is all about dripping, oozing, squirting, splattering gore made in the 80s when Italy was still making the goriest movie around. The movie is set in a movie theatre about an evil movie that turns people in hideous bucktoothed monsters who of course run amok. Gooey, and fun.
Call of Cthulhu: The most unusual of this lot, Call of Cthulhu is a silent movie that was made in 2004. It isn't like Mel Brook's Noise Off which was a silent movie made in a modern style, this is a silent movie made like a silent movie with all the crazy art-deco sets, flickering lights, and actors over-acting. Evil Aliens: British entry in this set, a higher budget take on Bad Taste with lots and lots of really great gore and Emily Booth who is both hot and has that hot British Accent. This one like Dead and Breakfast had a lot of positive buzz around it, but it was never recommended to me rather I went and searched it out because the premise sounded like fun. It delivers the gore and the laughs although some of the laughs are very British and without any understanding of other cultures at which our society excels they will go over your head.
Dead End: Despite being very predictable and running like a long Twilight Zone episode the movie really wins with excellent acting because 99 percent of the movie takes place in a Jeep on a deserted road and if this was done with standard low budget actors or the latest run of reality TV stars no good writing or good directing could have saved it from stinking movie hell. But solid acting really makes you feel like you are riding along with a family on the verge of completely imploding with amazing reality.
Boxer's Omen: Another fabulous Shaw Brothers Black Magic movie that never sits still for a second, it goes and goes like crazy from bug eating, to dirty kickboxing, to glowing Buddha looking guy who talks like a Chinese Obi-Wan Kenobi. Crazy and totally unbelievable, if you have the stomach for it, you'll love this wacky little treat.
Astro Zombies: The oldest movie here, hailing from the long forgotten age of 1965 this movie is more spy thriller but there is a mad scientist making evil creations so it does double duty as a spy thriller and horror movie. It also has Tura Satana the original sexy Eur-Asian babe.
Haunted Copshop: Buddy Cop Movie with Hopping Vampires, Hot Captains, and cooking police dogs, in one word Hilarious. It is the ultimate buddy cop movie made anywhere.
Versus: Kung-Fu Samurai Gangster Zombie movie, you can tell I like when they mix all kinds of wacky genres together and add lots of flying limbs and squirting human juices. Excellent movie with very little dialogue to get in the way of the action.
Black Magic: I found that I love Shaw Brothers Black Magic movies, the bizarre combination of crazy Chinese Black Magic, bug eating, hot naked chicks, and zany characters, especially those who are using the black magic. This one involves a love potion that requires blood, and hair from the victim, breast milk, and corpse ooze. Wonder if something like that is covered by medical insurance?
Mr Vampire: Although I have only seen it this year, it already is one of my favorite all time movies. It is just perfect, there is nothing else than can be said, the kung-fu is great, the hopping vampire is fabulous, the comedy is great. This is the first of the Hopping Vampire Sub-Genre and without a doubt the very best.

10/31 Thoughts on Horror Movies
I really like horror movies, not exactly sure why. Possibly it is because of my upbringing in the 80s a mixture of Disney Halloween Specials and then later slasher movies or maybe when I was born the stars had aligned themselves in such a way that I was pre-determined to like horror movies. Nobody every got me into horror movies, I can't think of any of my friends who were ever really that into them aside from a chance to see some naked breasts, when you're 13 you would watch 4 hours of French art house movies for the chance to see one naked breast don't lie. I'm not exactly sure, but it will never go away, no matter how disapproving our increasing moralistic society becomes of them or how few titles come out, I will stay true to horror movies. I know this because it ebbs and flows with me, there are times that I watch a lot of really crappy movies in a row, I get discouraged but then I'll find something and it will re-light the spark in my soul and off I go again back into another heaping pile of crappy direct to video horror movies. This is a problem which I must bear alone, I am the only person I know who has any taste at all, which at times it really sucks. When you are so far ahead of everyone you know when it comes to something you get to unearth gems nobody else knows about but you have to dig through miles of shit in the hopes of finding it. I would like one friend who watches horror movies not with the same gusto I have, but with a 1/3 of it in the hopes that I could get an idea of where to dig for horror gold but alas nobody is available to do that. I can't trust the Internet, the people on that are either delusional or are so full of either shit or a never-ending tide of contempt for horror movies that they are totally useless. What I really need to do is clone myself, I need another me to split the work load up I'll never stop watching horror movies but it would help once and a vast while to have somebody point you to a rich vein of horror goodness. Another reason I like horror movies although not a big one but it does exist is how our society is so hostile to horror movies. As our society increasingly marches down the long path to turning us into a Christian Theocracy we watch horror movies become thorough castrated and reviled. I understand people are afraid of being afraid, it is silly at times shows how stupid society really is and to not be apart of that parade of sheep is something to take pride in. I'm proud that I watch horror movies, they don't scare me, I don't think anything really can anymore not even life, rather I enjoy them because they are a window into the psyche also if it is a chose between a bad horror movie and some mindless comedy staring Will Ferrell, or another pointless action movie in which twenty times the number of people die give me horror at least that has a chance at entertaining me. Horror has been with us as long as man could communicate, it is primal it is instinctive and feeding it isn't a bad thing it is a good thing, to know your fears is to know yourself.

10/31 Cool Idea
As I continually to chew on our Halloween candy which is suppose to be for the trick or treaters tonight I realized that the ultimate thing for me would be if somebody cobbled together all the disparate candies, the snickers, the whoppers, the nerds, the dots, all the stuff, maybe even thrown in a few pennies or those weird hard candies covered in powdered sugar and then stuff it all into a plastic orange pumpkin and sell it to people like me who really miss that giant mass of candy you use to get on Halloween. Buying a single bag just doesn't do it because it is all fairly similar, it all has to be made by the same company to be packaged together. Somebody needs to do this or maybe I should just do it and sell them online.

10/31 Deconstructing the Slasher Movie
I just finished watching Going to Pieces a documentary about slasher movies and it go me thinking. Slasher movies are fairly reviled by most people, even people in the genre will be quicker to pour scorn over these movies than say a vampire movie. Slasher movies are really at the bottom of the barrel for a myriad of reasons, 1 there are a lot of them, there are probably more slasher movies than any other sub-genre with the exception of haunted house stories or ghost stories. When you makes lots and lots and with low budgets you will have a lot of bad movies which it makes it easy to pick out a handful and say look they're all shit, it must be all shit. But more than that they attack the fabric of our society, the social structure and socio-economic structure of the country. Michael Myers, Freddy these guys attack the suburbs, they attack the very heart of what this country wants you to aspire to, status conscious upwardly mobile white America, you are suppose to live in an identical box and have a well manicured yard, two cars, 2.3 kids, a dog and a healthy contempt for all other races, classes, and creeds. Michael Myers with his knife is the embodiment of faceless evil that is coming to destroy the suburbs. I can extrapolate even further and show that Michael Myers wears a workman's jumpsuit, he could be the meter man, the plumber, any of these faceless workmen that come in your house, one of them could snap for no apparent reason and just kill everybody. That freaks people out more because it is on a more personal level, zombies, attacking aliens, those are global dangers that can be easily pushed away as fantasy, but the slasher is a personal kind of danger he is an evil that can get any of us.

11/01 Post Halloween Greatest Costume Idea
Ultimate Costume, it must have taken a lot of time to figure that out but even I have to admit that it is one really cool costume.

11/01 Doing Something Different
I am putting a horror movie on probation. When I first started doing these reviews I was a movie snob, let's face it you start reviewing movies even if nobody ever reads them you can feel kind important, and it always goes to your head. Now that I am 700+ into the horror movies there are a couple of horror movies I think I judged too harshly, I judge under a microscope. Now I'll be damned if I am going to re-review them all but there are a few movies that I've gotten more positive reviews from other sources and I am unsure if I watched the movie fairly, there are times when I am on a really bad roll and I get snippy and maybe I need to rewatch them. I won't do this for all, stuff like Scream would get savaged something awful by me in the current mood I'm in.

11/01 Addendum
I re-watched the movie and was blown away, it was actually good. Lord knows what I was smoking or more importantly what I wasn't smoking when I originally wrote that review. The movie was a slasher movie but it was well made. I think I may have to review a few more because now after watching a raft of DTV slasher movies made in the last few years even the worst Classic 80s slasher may have new legs.

11/02 Dia De Los Muertos
Yes today is my birthday, 26th to be exact. In order not to talk about my ever advancing age I am going to talk about my present, my Nintendo DS. Yup I got one, technically I was going to buy one a few weeks ago but my parents nearly beat me to death because last year they were going to buy me a TiVo but I went out and bought one right before they did which screwed up their chance to buy me a birthday present so they bought me a DS, hey I ain't complaining saves me money and I still get the thing. It Rocks, there are no other words for it, maybe Wow, or oh holy shit this is the reason I was born with opposable thumbs. Needless to say it is really cool, there currently all I have is New Super Mario Brothers but with the main game, and the 30+ mini games I will have plenty to keep my thumbs occupied for now although I am going out tomorrow and buying a couple more games, that one little game box looks so lonely all by itself. This is exactly what I needed to keep me away from the PS3, I don't want to buy 700 bucks worth of system while there are only a couple of decent games for it. By the end of 2007 I will have a PS3 but not yet, I'm smart I'm going to wait until all this dies down. I learned my lesson with the PS2, god that was a monkey show if there ever was one. I bought my PS2 the day it came out, smart enough to put money down, and I managed to actually get one on that day but it was such a madhouse I swore I'd never do it again, and so far so good. But also today I got my latest Kindaichi, no it wasn't planned it was suppose to arrive yesterday but it spent all day yesterday sitting in the UPS warehouse in Eagan, maybe they knew it was my birthday today and waited to send it to me. But now I am torn between Super Mario and Kindaichi, so many choices. I also don't like that this is the last Kindaichi for 6 months I am trying to ration it out the best I can. Huh, wow I turned an entry that I was worried would turn negative halfway through into one that was entirely positive, wow I guess a DS and a new Kindaichi can cure just about anything. Good Stuff.

11/02 VH-1 the Train Wreck of TV
Everybody admit it, you have watched at least two of those multi-part VH-1 specials, I Love The or the Blank Greatest Blank, admit you have seen one of those before, probably more. I just watched the last hour of 100 Greatest Songs of the 80s and argued with most of the choices, especially anything hair metal or Bon Jovi, but the biggest problem is they have like 6 commercials which you will see 6 million fucking times, they need a little variety in their commercials, I can only see the same Pizza Hut commercial like 60 times before I start to go a little crazy myself. I know what you are going to say if you don't like the commercials don't watch the shows but VH-1 makes such bad programming it is good, I mean okay 1 I Love the 80s may not be enough but what are they up to the 4th one now? VH-1 makes train wreck TV, you shouldn't be looking but if you stumble across it one night while channel surfing you can't look away.

11/03 All Done
I have not 1, or 2, or even 3 stories to add this week but 4. Two chapters of Twilight Shadows, one short story and one novella, which until the start of October was two novellas I pushed into one. Final Girl was something I had been kicking around for awhile, as a fan of slasher movies I think about and I came up with this idea of a chick who survived a slasher who goes and hunts slashers. For the longest time I rolled the idea around and then I started working on it in August. The start of October I combined the first two stories and ran with it. 30 pages later it is done, and boy is it gruesome, I mean gruesome I really let my sick side run wild. Now I just have to get it all put together for the website, which may take a little while but I plan to have it all done by the end of tonight.

Cheers.

The End of The World As We Know It and I Feel Fine

11/04 Post Halloween Blues I don't like the days immediately after Halloween, throwing away the pumpkins the annual stomach ache from too much Halloween candy, and the realization that it is an entire year until Halloween again. I always hate tossing the pumpkins not because they get all oozy and weird but because I don't get to carve them for another year. I mean we really need a Halloween in like August, we can celebrate the Chinese Festival of the Hungry Ghosts or something. I've always wanted to celebrate Halloween in like July just to fuck with my neighbors, I've also wanted to build a giant Wicker Man in my backyard for the exact same reason. Man it just sucks, no Halloween and it is time for the Christmas Blitz and I guarantee there is going to be another absurd battle over Happy Holidays vs Merry Christmas again. That is why I love Halloween, it is the ultimate rebel holiday. It is the only non-federal non-Christian holiday, it is totally against everything that our Christian country stands for. Yes people deny this but it is true a country founded by religious fanatics is still tied hand and foot to Christianity, Halloween it 100 percent pagan and it makes it so much fun, it is fun to be pagan, join us all you wide eyed Midwestern children, honestly Christianity's only surviving bastion in the next generation, the coast kids are all atheist, drug using, leftist commie queers, it is more fun on the dark side.

11/08 THE SKY IS FALLING!!!! THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!!! One day after the country gave the Republican Party a big fat vote of no confidence and handed them a collective pink slip the Internet has become so infinitely fun. All you have to do is find one Rightwing Blog out there and read the hundreds of way the left is going to completely, utterly, and totally destroy this country, the entire thing is going to be destroyed within weeks, I mean these people are filling up their bunkers with machine gun ammo and copies of the Gideon Bible ready to fight off the unending horde of leftist commie queers that are going to start kicking down rightwinger doors to steal their guns, their white daughters, and their bibles. This shit is just so much fun to read, I mean these people are deadly serious they are so brainwashed, okay not brainwashed it is like running the washing machine empty and saying your washing clothes, if they had brains they'd be brainwashed into believing the entire source of all knowledge, and experience lays within the sacred hands of their Republican party. I love this kind of stuff, I just love how no matter how old (weird sidebar I typed hold nine times instead of old, actually make it ten, fuck I really need to stop doing this at 2 in the morning, my brain and my hands are currently at war) you can still act like you are 5. I'm always happy when everything I think is going to happen does and does exactly like I was expecting. But from all of this my favorite quote I found, and this is a real and exact quote I am not paraphrasing or using hyperbole, somebody wrote this with all deadly ernst To Vote Democrat Is An Act Of Treason and I was worried that the right wouldn't be a good sport when they lost.

11/09 The Awesome Mullet Action of Channing Lair
I've never tried this before but for something as insane as this, I have to so post it. This made me cry I was laughing so hard so here it is... Channing Lair, the Greatest Action Mullet.

11/09 Captain N Coming to DVD
I was recently thinking back to the 80s and Captain N, part of the Nintendo licensing blitz, and I remembered liking it but I haven't seen it in ages upon ages. Well I went to see if there was any information and lo and behold, in February they are putting the entire series out on DVD. Wow now that is getting what you are asking for even without really asking for it.

11/10 This Is Why I Love David Lynch
Famous Hollywood Intersection + Cow = Totally David Lynch

Cheers.

End of Venture, Repent Now

10/15 End of Venture Season 2, Season 3 2008??
Tonight the Venture Bros concluded Season 2, which only took two years to make. Excellent season, had one episode I didn't too much care for but the rest were some of the best stuff on television. I only hope it doesn't take another two years to see the next season, that is so ridiculously long, I mean even shows like the Sopranos that were dogged by coke addiction and pretentious starts managed to puke out a few shows every year. But this also had a new problem for me, tonight the Broncos are on Sunday night football so I had to miss a half an hour of the game to watch the Venture Brothers, why does the 4th quarter have to be so late in the evening? I'm rather certain I am the only person that had that conflict, I really doubt the football crowd and the Venture Brothers crowd are the same kind of people, maybe I'm wrong but I really doubt it.

10/16 I Have Strange Thoughts
Last night I was laying in bed letting my mind run totally free and I don't know where from or why for I had this thought but my brain liked it and ran with it. I pondered what if I was a girl, not like in the whole sex change thing, but if I had been born a girl and followed the same path in life. My brain really liked it, I know this because it is still bouncing around in my head the next morning. My brain didn't concentrate so much on the physical aspects, I know I would look hot as hell, but rather my personality, and what I would be doing. My first train of thought ended up with me being a total goth, I mean 100 percent off the chart goth, which makes some sense, the whole goth thing works on some level, I just don't have the time, patience or inclination to go through all the bullshit to get the wardrobe right, but if was a chick I would have more range, and besides goth chicks are hot, goth dudes are all really, really sad looking unless you're in Depeche Mode and you've made like a billion dollars off it. The whole goth thing came about because in high school I was an absolute mess, I mean looking back on it, wow was I depressed and instead of the path I went down I probably would have gone goth if I had boobs and didn't care. But then I took another step back and looked at the most defining event in my life, my moving from Colorado to the lowest bowel of hell, Minnesota, and I realized if I was a girl maybe there would have been other avenues available for me, or maybe I wouldn't have been so willing to be hauled along for the ride, maybe I would have found someway to stay in Colorado and if I did I would have been an entirely different person, this is true if I had done this in reality I am quiet convinced I would be a similar person but infinitely happier, and infinitely less cynical, most of who I am was laid in Colorado, living in Minnesota just poisoned it and turned it in its current bent direction. If I hadn't moved I would have probably been a pleasant and popular, things would have been good for my girl-self, that word alone makes me laugh, I think I would probably still be into many of the things I'm into, the anime and manga would have probably come a lot later because I wouldn't have had Josh as my best friend who introduced it to be 13 years ago but I think the way I am I would have been drawn to it irregardless. Horror movies probably would have followed the same course, growing up in the 80s it was rather hard to avoid slasher movies. All in all it is an excellent mental activity, it is an Iron Man for the brain.

10/17 Mexican Soap Operas
A large portion of my day has been spent sitting waiting for the sprinkler guy to come and flush out the sprinklers so they don't freeze. First off why the fuck do they even bother giving you that time window, ours said 7-11 which it being well afternoon really fucks up that time window don't it. I mean it isn't like any of these guys whether it is cable guy, appliance guy or now sprinkler guy ever really adheres to that, they really need to cut the bullshit and simply say fuck you little cocksucking homeowner I will get there when my fat lazy drunk ass gets good and ready, you sit at home and wait for my ill-educated ass to come over, it will be between now and go fuck yourself. In any case I am spending the morning watching Mexican Soap Operas on Univision. I can undestand about one out of 15 words, which isn't too bad seeing I haven't had a Spanish class in about 13 years. But man these are hilarious even if you don't understand a thing, I think they are funnier because the words don't get in the way. The one I just finished watching had these people going into a cemetery led by a Mexican Goth, which in all honest Mexican and Goth are two things that while do work, don't work to full efficiency, it is like White and Hip-Hop. They get scared and go running around, I mean all it needed was the Benny Hill Music to make it funnier. Then we get to met a whole bunch of Mexican Goths, again while it does work, some of the pieces don't fit right, being naturally tan and trying to look pale ends up looking really odd. It isn't so much the situations as it is the insane over-acting, I mean eyes bug out of heads, people howl like insane chimps when they are talking, everything is done so far over the top you can't see the ground. While one of the channels are trying to pull off the Mexican style soap, called a Novella, it is as crazy and over the top, it is too boringly normal, you need to go crazy with it, I mean totally crazy.

10/19 Cats Are Funny
Kitties Are Funny Looking, this is one of the things that cats can do that dogs can't, dogs always have the same empty look, like they don't know if they are coming or going, cats on the other hand look like they are planning your painful and gruesome demise every second of everyday.

10/20 Friday the 20th
Grunt, that is the most intelligent thing rolling around in my head right now. Two weeks of relatives and all the extra stuff that entails has worn me out.

10/20 CatBlue Dynamite
This looks cool, it is a cat girl, always like them, in a 70s exploitation CG anime, so far nothing sounds bad. You can watch the trailer, which is in English, which is super nice because I actually understand what is going on, which really is a change from normal. Cat Girls are always cool, there needs to be more of them, especially the ones that can use their tails to fire guns.

10/20 Culling the Season Pass Herd
I'm terrible when it comes to my TiVo, I am a total packrat. Earlier I finally went through and cleaned up by Season Pass Manager, which I took 40 Season Passes and reduced them to 25 a lot of them are stuff that isn't on TV anymore or was a limited run. I added a few new ones, but I managed to take about 18 off. I really need to keep up with my Season Passes more.

10/20 Boy Scouts Tool of the MPAA
In their righteous crusade to snuff out all illegal downloading terrorist cells, Hollywood's version of the Department of Homeland Security, the MPAA, has enlisted the Boy Scouts of America to crush piracy by offering a copyright merit badge. Yes this is entire true, you are having the exact same what the holy fuck moment that I had when I first read this but it is all true, the MPAA is joining with the Boy Scouts to indoctrinate those little kids in the tan shirts about the evils of piracy. My opinions about the Boy Scouts are rather coloured by my experiences in the Cub Scouts, and later revelations about control of the Boy Scouts by the Mormon Church. This pairing of movie nazis and the US's very own version of the Hitler Youth really makes sense, but it really is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, because the average Boy Scout isn't probably going to be downloading much illegal stuff.

Cheers.

Pre-Halloween

10/25 In The Days When We Were Kings
In these twilight hours as I roll onward towards my birthday I find myself looking back at my youth, to those hallowed days of yore. I now realize that I am old because I am looking at the current generation and finding myself saying 'Kids These Days' truly a sign of age. Kids these days live lives at warp speed and I doubt they even know what is going on let alone actually appreciating or enjoying any of it. I look back at my childhood and realize that I truly had it good, nay great. I often wonder about why I had it so perfect, I seem to be zeroing in closer and closer to an answer. It is a complicated answer, there is no one factor that can be enlightened to say this, this is the reason why I had it so damn good. First off the town had a great deal to do with it, Pueblo Colorado was one the very threshold of the trade-off between big city excitement and small town boredom, we had entertainment and there were enough people to keep things lively but yet it wasn't so all consuming it thought for us, we still had to us our imaginations to keep us occupied too. The city's larger population meant that there were a more diverse group of people, yet you didn't really see the clique system forming like it does in larger places were there are enough people to create huge differential gaps, I was friends with geeks, freak, and jocks all together and oddly it all worked and worked rather well. Another factor was we all for the most part came from upper middle class families so we didn't lack for much but yet didn't have too much to keep us shut in. Again there is a threshold between having enough and too much which we found ourselves sitting perfectly on. Another is the town was small enough to be safe, true there were gangs but they were always found on the other side of town, this safety let us stay outside long, long after dark, as long as we were in a group there was no sense of danger at all. The time in which we lived too played a part, the 80s was a good time to be a kid, you had ample TV entertainment, and you didn't have so much that could completely consume you. I think this if nothing else is the biggest factor in reducing child of this day and age to fat lazy dull witted morons not worth wasting your time over. They have the Internet, Instant Messaging, MySpace, video games with intense life-like graphics and Internet multiplayer, kids these days don't need to think because someone else has taken the liberty to do it for them also kids don't need to leave the couch anymore, it removes a key factor of true human interaction. All in all there is simply too much that can completely consume all of your attention and leave you a fat isolated half-wit watching reality TV and never realizing you've pissed your childhood away and you've simply become another drone of the increasingly strict Big Brother Society where you conform without ever really knowing it. I could also blame hip-hop music but we had that back in the day. Our society has seemed to have lost that spark it once had in my day, I'm no Luddite but we are turning our children into mindless vegetables who know nothing but to suckle at the teat of our increasingly manufactured entertainment industry. My childhood was so much different, we watched TV, movies, played video games but never to the all consuming extent that is done these days. We went outside, we went to each other homes, we did things that were imaginary but in a way infinitely more real than anything TV or video games can produce. My memories of my childhood are such a precious commodity to me that two seconds of my memory could not be bought for all the money in the world. One of my biggest fears is that one day all of them will be nothing but greyed crumbling pictures in the deepest corner of my mind and I will never remember those days. I often wonder if I will be able to go back to those days when I have slipped my mortal coil, I hope so I genuinely hope that I can return to those days, to relive the closest to paradise I ever came.

10/25 Okay Now For Something Less Heavy
I'm wound up like a cheap watch at the moment, my experiments with mixing tea while turned out successful have wound me up like nothing else, I mean wow I can feel it coursing through my system like rocket fuel. When I get wound up I get incredibly philosophical and stuff like the above can be produced. But it also makes me thoroughly creative and I came up with another idea for another game. It could be a massive online multiplayer or it could be a single player game as well. The idea came from watching the horse and character ride in Shadow of the Colossus. The game would be a vampire hunting game that of course involves horses and horse riding. A lot of the emphasis in the game will be stalking your prospective kill and doing it without getting your ass killed. An interesting twist for the online version would be the ability to play as a vampire going about your daily rituals of hunting and avoiding being hunted. There would be several different types of hunter, rifleman, bowman, swordsman, axeman, alchemist, seductress, you would have several different way of taking your foe out. Plus there would be different types of vampires to hunt, each would have different weaknesses like extra sensitivity to garlic or running water. You're skills would grow as you kill more and more vampires and as the vampires age and feed on more and more victims. The older or more proficient you get you unlock better skills, vampires could absorb the strengths of a person or a hunter could sense a vampire's trail long before they actually see it. There would be other monsters to hunt to build up your hunting abilities like werewolves and other things that go bump in the night. You could even fight other hunters or other vampires to gain wealth and fame. I rather like this idea, it would make for a fun game. But it would have to be all dark and gothic, like a Hammer movie, not loud and stupid like a PC game.

10/27 New Masters of Horror
Masters of Horror Season 2 has arrived, this time actually in time for Halloween, very strange indeed. It wasn't bad, it was very rushed. It set up well and then ran as fast as it could to make the conclusion and the conclusion was a giant mud monster which while interesting, wasn't exactly the world's best pay-off but it starts off better than the first season, hopefully it is a good sign of things to come.

10/27 Next Week's Halloween Extravaganza
Wow, I spelled Extravaganza right on the first attempt, not bad at all there. Yes next week is Halloween, which means I am going to gut and carve pumpkins. The problem is the digital camera is broke and the only digital camera we have left is my phone so I hope to post some of the pumpkins but not all because 9 is a rather large number to be sticking on a rant. So til next week.

Cheers.

Horror Porn

10/01 The 31 Days of Halloween
This begins my favorite time of the year. The more I think back on it and look at it, I truly realize that I like Halloween over Christmas, for one thing it is certainly less work, those who have seen the lengths my mother goes to in decorating this house can understand that statement, but also there is no obligatory family functions, nobody gets together with family they barely speak to the other 364 days a year during Halloween, Halloween is for fun and friends. I have very little family to speak of so Halloween is always much better because I have nothing in common with my family, especially my dad's family and getting together with them always means an afternoon of awkwardness sitting in a living room wondering when I can escape. Halloween is perfect and now my favorite holiday. For the rest of the month I am going to filling these entries will all manner of Halloween stuff, I have a few special entries ready for Halloween so off we go.

10/01 666 Mark of the Beast
I've been so busy lately that I didn't notice that I passed the half way point on the road to watching 1313 horror movies, but I was really close to 666 which is very appropriate number when you are dealing with horror movies so I decided to wait for that. For 666 I decided on something a little radical, horror spoof porn in the form of Camp Cuddly Pines: The Powertool Massacre which was loaned to me sometime ago and I had been kicking the idea around in my head for sometime on whether or not to include it, it is horror related, they spoof the Ring, Halloween, Friday the 13th and so on and so forth but it is porn. Finally I decided that it was good enough to be included because damn if it's the most professional, polished and pretty porn I have seen and what else would fit so wonderfully into the position of 666. I wonder is 666 a lucky sign when you are dealing with horror movies? Dunno, no bolts of lighting, swarms of locust, or fire and brimestone haven't befallen me so it seems lucky enough.

10/01 Hilarious Venture Brothers
Tonight's Venture Brother's episode was an absolute riot especially the knock-off Scooby Doo gang complete with Son of Sam Talking Dog, okay that is a bit of an oblique reference but if you have ever seen the Summer of Sam there is a part in the movie were a dog talks to the Son of Sam telling him to kill which is without a doubt of the most unintentionally funny moments ever in a movie. In any case I loved it, and I loved the beginning when you get to see the world through the eyes of one of the Monarch's men as they attack the Venture Compound and you get to see Brock killing a guy with a lawn mower.

10/03 Mountains of Porn
I made a little mistake today, I mentioned I liked a movie a friend of mine loaned to me so he decided if I liked that one, I need 8 more. Now these movies aren't the ones you show the kiddies, these are the ones you find in a store that has lots of beads and is poorly lit. Yes these are pornos, some rather clever sounding pornos but pornos nonetheless. He was generous enough to loan them to me I should be at least kind enough to add the ones that fit into my Horror Review category, I did one, why not do about six more? I'm not the biggest fan of porn, laugh away, but until recently almost all of my experience with porn comes from the 70s and the 80s, you know the classics. Doesn't that sound funny or what? Porn is okay, but sometimes it is kinda creepy, the guy are all kind weird looking shaved nutsack, thong tan line, and they ain't exactly the romantic type. I am working my way through the first disc right now, I watch these movies for fifteen twenty stretches before I either begin to wonder what the hell am I doing or start to giggle like a schoolgirl as the guy lets off another round of fuck yahs and suck it bitch. I am rather impressed that these movies at least have a plot, and with this one and Camp Cuddly Pines, they aren't half bad. I keep striking out with more conventional unconventional films, maybe it is time I start to watch more wacky porn to satiate my strange movie fix?

10/04 4 Days and 7 Movies
I am very far ahead of schedule of 31 horror movies in 31 days but I am still on a losing streak, I haven't seen anything that really wowed me in a while, in fact I have been seeing a lot of movies that really just suck. I keep having this strange fear that I have run out of good horror movies to watch, true almost every horror movie made in this country in the last 5 years sucks but I keep watching because every once and awhile there comes a really good one that sorta makes it all worthwhile. But as with anything it is subject to the law of diminishing returns and the gap between good movies grows with each time. Oh well next week I am digging into a big pile of Asian horror movies I am fairly certain I will find salvation there.

10/06 Pumpkin Madness
I have finally got my last pattern book in the mail, it is a fancy book which this provincial backwater simply didn't have so I had to order it from the manufacturer. It looks really cool, this is the first year in several that I am not using old patterns everything this year will be 100 percent brand new from my 3 new pattern books. I am planning on doing 8 pumpkins this year, a bit of a steep hill to climb but none of them are that insanely detailed, the only hard one is going to involve finding two perfectly sized pumpkins. I truly enjoy making these, although just for 1 night and I can't think of a single person I personally know who gives a flying shit but this is more for me than anyone else, most of what I do is strictly for my own amusement.

10/06 The Downside of Halloween
Halloween is also the time of year when I have to pontificate on all the things that may have been in my life. It really is not secret moving to Minnesota destroyed my life and most likely ruined me a person for life. It seems to be my annual habit of spending one night sometime during October. I think added to the rather unpleasantness of cleaning this entire house in a state of near panic all week has made my pontifications all the more sour and grim. I really hate doing this but it is hard to deny, I really wouldn't wish it on the worst human ever. There are times I swear I must have been Hitler, Attila the Hun and the guy who invented the blow comb in previous lives, there is no sense that I would have this much horrible karma to work off from just my life alone. Man it would have been totally different, totally. God I am more pissed than I was when I started this, shit I swear there are times I have nothing but vile loathing for the last ten years of my life, oh how it could have been so very different, actually positive and constructive, not wallowing in shit living in a frozen provincial hellhole surrounded by the most dull people. The best fucking years of my life were wasted living here, they're fucking gone, who the fuck is going to repay me? How do I get credit so something for taking up the ass for an entire fucking decade? Take my advice to anyone who can hear me if your chose is being sent to Minnesota or the deepest pit filled with the most vile tortures all ten Chinese Hells can invent, take the later, at least there you'll know what your in for.

Cheers.

Oh Fun Friday the 13th

10/07 Finally Broke the Streak
I finally broke my bad horror movie streak, it took awhile but finally I watched something I liked, Eight Legged Freaks, which is a satire of all the old 50s giant radioactive monster movies like Them or Deadly Mantis. It was solid, good cast, good acting, and funny. The odd thing is about ten minutes into the movie I knew it was going to be good. I am getting really good at this, I basically can make up my mind in the first ten minutes of any film whether or not it is going to be good and so far I have not been mistaken, there are some movies that I want to like and just implode like Hostel but if I know a movie is going to stink, it always does. Which is kinda sad, I can't be surprised anymore, probably because I've just seen all the good horror movies. Sucks don't it.

10/08 Ecchi the Wookie
Funny idea for a Star Wars spoof, Ecchi is a pervert Wookie, he is into all manner and form of perversion, mostly with himself, nobody likes getting freaky with 7 feet worth of walking shag carpeting. Ecchi likes to spy on women but his massive size makes it nearly impossible for him to get away with it. In desperation he travels to furthest corner of the galaxy to seek out Hoda, the greatest pervert in the galaxy, he looks just like Yoda but he likes looking up girl's skirts. Under the tutelage of Hoda Ecchi learns to be a successful pervert and after his last trial, a full body wax truly the most painful and rigorous test imaginable Ecchi is ready to spread his perversion across the galaxy as the world's tallest pimp. Now don't ask where this came from, my mind spends every waking minute and most of the time while I am asleep screaming out things to me. Some of it would probably get me arrested in most states, except Nevada, if I ever uttered them let alone acted upon them. I'm fairly good at just cataloguing the random insanity and storing it away soon to be recycled into other obscene thoughts. But for some reason when my mind screamed Ecchi the Wookie, my brain took it and ran with it. I doubt I will make anything of this, but it was funny nonetheless.

10/08 Survival Horror RPG
Last night I watched Stay Alive, which wasn't all that bad, wasn't all that good but the first 40 minutes or so actually had me intrigued, then of course it all fell apart after that but it had a good thing going at first. One good thing it did was get me thinking, in the past I have often complained that I would like to see a Survival Horror RPG, frankly I want to see more Survival Horror in video games period. Last night while watching I started formulating an idea for a Survival Horror RPG, I don't really have a title for it, you know me and titles, it is like pulling teeth but I started getting ideas for it. First the setting, creepy gothic castle, set where ever, Europe would make the most scene but you can stick a creepy castle anywhere just put in the original owner was a multi-billionaire eccentric who liked creepy castles. Now you only get one party member to accompany you, it is just you and the second person who have to go explore this weird castle where many have gone before and none have ever come out. You go in a non-believer, a typical punk kid, but as you go along you become more and more of a believer and this raises your experience and opens up your skill tree as you unlock the inner psychic within. You will meet others, documentary crew, other explorers, researchers, crazy bums who have been hiding out here for sometime, and you can rotate your one companion in exchange for someone else based on what your needs are. If you die in the game, you are dead, finito, toast, you don't get to come back. I think that last part would make the game extra scary or insanely frustrating if you are Sunshine. It would be a good idea I think but no way would it ever get made or if it did it would turn into some shitty Halo knock-off with a Proton-Pack and you go around shooting ghosts.

10/09 3rd Horror Porno
I recently watched my third horror porno, Grub Girl, and rather enjoyed it. It was messed up but messed up in just the right way that I found it entertaining. I think I have been so run down by dull standard horror that I need to go to the next level and start watching twisted horror porno, thankfully I have a friend who seems to belong to the Columbia House of porno. I'm not going to watch them all in one streak, I am going to spread them out, keep them in case I hit another long drought of good movies.

10/11 Drunks At the Midnight Hour
It is 1:45 in the morning and I got one of those phone calls that I swear takes at least a full year off my life. When the phone rings after midnight you immediately think it has to be something horrible, somebody is dead, something is on the fire, the nukes are in the air. This time it was a drunk, and apparently with him drunk also equals deaf because by the sixth time I am almost screaming at the tops of my lungs that he had the wrong number and I get a drunk incomprehensible grunt I hung up. I use to get these on my cell phone so when my cell rings in the middle of the night I am always expecting somebody corked out of their mind trying to stumble their way through some sort of conversation but this was the house phone which I'm always convinced something is terribly wrong but it almost always ends up being somebody who is drunk dialing and then confused and somewhat belligerent that they didn't get the right number.

10/12 Wow, Things People Get Away With
I finally watched most of the Island, the movie with Ewan McGregor and Scarlet Johansen, aside from the fact it felt like I was watching a 2 hour long commercial there was so much gratuitous product placement, at one point was more than ready and willing to accept them pausing the entire movie to say 'This Pointless Action Sequence Is Brought To Buy Schmekle Brothers Fine Moustache Combs, If There Is A Moustache Out There, We Can Comb It.' But what really blew my mind was how this movie was nothing but a remake of a 1970s sci-fi crap fest called Clonus or Parts: A Clonus Horror. I'm utterly shocked they didn't get sued into next week for so blatantly stealing the idea from that movie. I'm pretty sure when they did this they were expecting that nobody remembered Clonus at all and would be able to make themselves looking cutting edge and hip by stealing this idea but they didn't recon on Mystery Science Theatre 3000 which did an episode base on the movie, that is how I saw it. It sucked but it wasn't as stupid as this one, I mean the hour and changed worth of it I watched before I just couldn't watch anymore there isn't five minutes were there isn't a car chase, an explosion or Scarlet Johansen looking all vampy, that was basically the entire movie, car chase, explosion, oooh look how hot Scarlet Johansen is and wow she can't act. While I'm on that, yes, yes Scarlet Johansen is pretty I don't think anybody can really say she isn't. She isn't my type but she is pretty, but she can't act I mean she is barely able to mutter out the lines and bat her eyelashes but yet everybody gets really defensive about her acting. I'm not saying she is a bad person, I'm just saying she can't act, I'm hideous and I can't act doesn't mean I'm a bad person, well maybe, but she doesn't excel in her chose profession, she should maybe attempt to change that, acting classes, becoming a hand model something. She, Jessica Alba, and of course Natalie Portman really have their careers thanks to the legions of nerds on the Internet that worship these women, the first two are pretty but all three simply can't act. This of course would get me skinned alive by their legions of devotees that think that praising them like they do will somehow get them that much closer to fucking them.

10/13 Friday the 13th
Today is Friday the 13th and aside from a sizable handful of incredibly mishaps today, everything is fine. I had planned to watch Friday the 13th movies today, but each little mishap keeps eating up all my time. I barely was able to sneak the first Friday the 13th in edgewise. They really are fun movies, the only thing I would have changed was I would have kept Crazy Ralph, he would have been a good recurring character but they had to kill him off in the second movie. I would like to see more Friday the 13th, it is simply enjoyable horror.

10/13 Going To Be Late
I've hit the final snafu of the day, my laptop got a piece of spyware on it that I have spent most of the day trying to nail down and expel so the rant will be a touch late. This really has been one fabulous Friday the 13th.

Cheers.

Pillage A Village, Arrrr

09/16 Lightning Up The Room
Just a few moments ago my entire room lit up brighter than a sunny day from a bolt of lightning which must have hit fairly close in the neighborhood. The closest that ever hit around here that I saw hit a neighbor's wooden swing set and charred the living hell out of it, that created a weird blue light this was just a rather white light but the thunder rattled the windows and even made ripples in my half full cup of tea. Yes it is 12:23 in the morning and I am still drinking tea but it doesn't keep me up, it just keeps me going.

09/16 Interesting Profession
I have come up with the ultimate job that would be awkward to describe to anyone, Writer of Hallmark Greeting Cards that apologize for giving people STDs or cheating or doing weird shit while drunk. Wouldn't it make it so much easier to tell somebody that they have the herp through a cheery looking Hallmark greeting card? It would be a little tricky to write but those greeting card writing people aren't human I swear.

09/17 Denver Will Drive Me Insane
It is football season and that means Denver Broncos Football. I like the Broncos, they've been my team now 20 years since the 1986 Super Bowl. I love watching them, but they can also drive me bloody nuts. Today they were playing Kansas City and while their defense was great, their offense stunk and it looked like were going to lose until they managed to wake up. They finally won in overtime which is all good but damn if the previous 3 hours didn't make me squirm like mad.

09/19 International Talk Like A Pirate Day
Didn't No Either Didja, Arrrrr, shiver me timbers and the such. Or possible I should talk like this: 1 $h05#P b3 74#|{1n9 #1|{3 7h1$, 7h3 #4n95493 0 7h3 n3w p1r473$, $0 4rrrrrr. This gives me a moment to discuss leet, I hate it, it is obnoxious as fuck. I didn't write the above, I went on the internet and found a translator. I hate trying to struggle my way through that shit, and for the sake of the weakened vessel in my brain that is just screaming aneurism I won't go into all the weird abbreviations in chat-speek like pwn. Leet wouldn't have bothered me that much if it wasn't used in Gantz which really forced me to confront it, normally I see it write it all off as nerds trying to act cool, which is much like a quadriplegic acting like an gymnast it is really sad to watch and after a few moments your humanity makes you look away. So in hon'r o' today, I shall speak like a pirate, arr me matey drink some grog and s' pillage a village.

09/20 Netflix From Hawaii
I've gotten Netflix from some pretty weird places but I have to admit that Hawaii is the weirdest of them all. The disc was two days late and I was getting ready to complain when it arrived and I fully understood why, it came from almost the other side of the world, now that is some long distance travel.

09/21 Universal Plug
I had to replace my USB Network adapter for my TiVo, mainly because I abuse the tar out of the thing, it transfers a great deal of data back and forth because I am a TiVo pack rat. While monkeying with it I realized that computers need one universal plug, a plug for everything, it would make life so much easier, this is also my number 1 complaint about my iPod, that goofy long plug that only comes from Apple, I have only one of them and when I go places I seem to forget the thing about 50 percent of the time which is rather sticky especially if I actually am anywhere for any length of time and my iPod runs out of power. Would it have killed them to just use the standard USB plug, it works for my cell phone, why not my iPod.

09/21 I May Have to Get an X-Box 360
There is a new Tenchu game for the 360, now I don't know if it will show up on the PS3, it does look nice, the characters look a little generic, it is a cross between Ayame and Rikamaru but you can do some really cool things, like stabbing people through doors or hiding in bushes, granted it looks a bit unstealthy, it is for the 360 after all, most 360 owners have just learned how to use opposable thumbs but the game does look cool. Hopefully it will be ported to the PS3 because I don't really have the room for another console unless I completely change everything.

09/22 Jackass the Movie 2
I have to admit that Jackass is a guilty pleasure of mine. I shouldn't be a fan of this, but I have to agree there is something incredibly funny about watching these guys beat the living shit out of themselves. There is something so incredibly surreal about it, these aren't camera tricks they are actually trying to maim themselves for your enjoyment that I find entertaining. I know I am only taking part in the devolution of society and I should be railing against it but what is society without the clowns? So yes I like Jackass, I've liked Jackass since the beginning. But liking and supporting Jackass has a positive value, I am helping legions of retard children to go out and try this on their own, it is Darwin at work. I am helping to cull the herd, I say more Jackass and no warning labels, I want more idiots to kill themselves trying dumber and dumber stunt, I am helping us move to a higher plain by taking all the idiots out the gene pool. See I am not furthering devolution, I am promoting evolution.

Cheers.

Two For The Price of One

09/02 I Like Weird Animals
I just finished watching a special about Hippos on Animal Planet. Hippos are one of my favorite animals, mainly because they look so totally strange. My favorite animal is the Koala, cute but yet singular, nothing else looks like a Koala. I like Walruses, Duck Bill Platypi, the stranger the animal looks the more I like it. Maybe there is something to be said for uniqueness but whatever it is I do like odd animals.

09/04 Slasher Victim Style
I had one of those slasher victim moments a few minutes ago. I heard this strange sound under our deck, at first I thought one of the neighborhood dogs was running through our rocks. I decided to go have a look. About halfway downstairs I realized this is exactly slasher victim behavior but I went anyways rather amused by the thought.

09/06 Getting Stabbed At Dinner
I got attacked by a falling knife at my mother's birthday dinner. It really didn't do any damage because it was a butter knife, thankfully it was a steak knife or I'd be writing this in a hospital bed. I was sitting there and one of the busboys who was clearing up dropped this knife from about four feet and it hit me square in the chest. Aside from scaring the shit out of me it didn't really do anything else. It was a first for me, not use to be attacked by flying dinnerware.

09/07 Touch Detective, No It Isn't Porn
I saw an ad for a new game that I must try when I get my DS. It is called Touch Detective and no it isn't porn although it does sound like it. You play a spooky looking Village of the Damned girl with huge eyes who has to solve mysteries. The Nintendo DS is going to be my favorite gaming device in 2007, it is the last beseiged fortress of truly inventive and clever gaming, assaulted on all sides by the constant bombardment of domestic commercial gaming with its incessant need for dumber and dumber first person shooters. I even have my fears over the PS3, with a few exceptions the games that are coming out for it look rather weak and dull. I have no plans to buy one straight away, I want to wait to invest 700 bucks in a system until I am positive the games are up to snuff and at 60 dollars a piece the 30 and 40 dollar DS games look a great deal more appealing and especially seeing how clever and inventive they all look. Now the only question that is left is when I get my DS should it be traditional silver or pink?

Touch Me, Touch Me

09/07 Red Garden and the Perils of Translating
There is a new murder mystery anime series coming soon called Red Garden which looks good and mysterious. I went to the website and of course it is all in Japanese so I used the Babel Fish to translate for me. Let's just say while I can translate Spanish language Lucha Libre sites quiet well there is still quiet a gap to be bridged between English and Japanese. While it translates the words there is no thought to grammar which turns each sentence into its own little mystery that must be solved but it could always be worse, you should try to translate a Chinese website or Chinese subtitles sometimes, and you think Japanese is hard language to understand grammar in, wow Chinese is even worse.

09/07 Hurrah for Grimlock Day
Didn't know they had a Grimlock Day did you, well neither did I until today. So Happy Grimlock Day.

09/08 Suburban War Drums
It is 1:35 am in the morning and I am laying in bed hearing the distant thump of a car's stereo system thumping away. It is rather interesting because it is just so dead silent out right now, you can probably hear this bass thump twenty miles away. I won't go into the logic behind having bass loud enough that I can feel it far away but it is just something interesting, the war drums of idle suburbia are chanting.

09/09 No Week Rant
It isn't so much lazy as it is chemically induced lazy. My allergies are so out of control I have to take the anti-allergy medicine and that stuff really makes me lazy. It doesn't put me to sleep, it just makes me not want to do anything. I feel like I am walking through a fog and I really don't want to dick with a website when I can barely type properly.

09/10 Finally the E-Bay Curse is Broken
I am officially declaring victory over my E-Bay Affliction. No I'm still utterly addicted but I have finally won 5 auctions in a row, I have broken the E-Bay Curse which has for so long hung over my head like some evil black cloud. The E-Bay Curse is simple, I lose more auctions than I win, usually the ones I lose are the ones I really, really want. But after I won my Kindaichi Extras in a vicious bidding war things started to turn around. I have since won another Kindaichi auction, an auction for Hell Money, an auction for Time Crisis with Guncon, and now with my Headless Horseman comics I am feeling very cleansed. It is good to have that monkey off my back, for a while there it was infinitely annoying to try and fail every time to win anything on E-Bay. Now only if I could sell stuff with the same results.

09/10 A New Favorite Manga
I have a new favorite manga, Osen, it is a very unusual manga with a very unusual topic, culinary arts. No not martial arts, culinary arts, it is about cooking. Osen is the owner/head chef of a traditional Japanese restaurant and you follow all the wacky adventures found therein. Osen was one of those series I downloaded from Kotonoha because I download most of what they scanalate. I read the first one and immediately liked it. It is very atypical, the action mainly involves cooking, the comedy is quirky but very funny. The only problem is it is a scanalation, and each chapter is long, longer than your average manga chapter which means it takes for-bloody-ever for each chapter to come out. It is the universal trap, scanalations are free but the ones you really like really take a long time to come out. I'm not sure if I recommend Osen, I love it but then again I am so singular that I don't think other people will get the same level of enjoyment from it that I get, but it is free to download so give it a whirl.

09/11 50 Days Til Halloween, Halloween
There are 50 days til Halloween and today is an excellent fall day. It is a little gloomy what with all the clouds but the weather is cool but not cold and really does feel like Fall all around. As you all know Halloween really is my favorite time of year, and we really are at the start of being able to get into the Halloween spirit. I am getting ready to watch more and more horror movies. I went through and started to organize more and more horror movies to be sent to me. Lately I have been wandering through the genres like some tourist picking a little here and a little there but now with fall coming on in full force it is time to get serious and get back to watching lots of horror movies. I will start to do more and more Halloween and horror related entries in the future and I have big plans for my Halloween entry that is going to have the top ten horror movies of 2006, ones that I have watched this year there weren't 10 good horror movies the entire year, some horror awards and lots of fond remembrance of Halloween.

09/12 Starting It Off Right
I have started watching a new anime series called Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni, which is just perfect for Halloween it is a horror murder mystery series. One of the things I really like about it is the fact that each story spans 4 episodes. I have only seen one episode so far but wow do I like it. I need to set aside some more time but I have two Netflix movies I have to watch tonight so hopefully I can watch through the rest of this first story tomorrow.

09/12 Coming Up Cats
Today is a very good day for me, not only do I get to start an exciting new horror anime series I find out that on February 7th of 2007 my favorite manga company Dark Horse is putting out the first Gunsmith Cats Omnibus which is the Japanese style collection of my 2nd favorite manga series Gunsmith Cats which includes extra material never seen in the US. I like Dark Horse, I use to be less than favorable with them over the unpleasantness with Berserk and its oft delays and high price but I can buy them from Amazon for cheaper than I get most other manga and lets face it Dark Horse is more committed to quality manga than other companies whose sole goal is to license as much crap as humanly possible and hurl it at the public in the hopes a few hit the target and become a success coughTokyopopcough.

09/13 Bacon + Shake'n Bake
Maybe I am the first one to think of this but why hasn't somebody combine Shake'n Bake with bacon, call it Shake'n Bacon.

09/15 Chris Hewitt's Love Letter to Josh Harnett
I do have a certain sense of glee whenever another Josh Harnett crapfest comes out, why you ask? I know I have never said a good thing about Josh Harnett but I do look forward to his movies for one reason only... to read the movie review from so-called film critic Chris Hewitt. They are nothing but dripping love letters to him. Chris Hewitt has never said a bad thing about Josh Harnett and lavishes much unearned praise upon him. When you read his reviews of his films from the decent (Black Hawk Dawn) to the incredibly bad (40 Days and 40 Nights) what I pick up is an admiration that is nothing short of devotion. He really loves Josh Harnett and I will concede that he is 'dreamy' and could be seen as a 'heart throb'. Now I am not saying Chris Hewitt is gay or that being gay is bad, I honestly don't care he could be into penguins if that rubs Buddha's belly for him, but it clearly affects his work because it skews any review he does. I have read a total of 12 reviews for Black Dahlia, of 12 only 1 praises Josh Harnett and lavishes praise on him, no prizes for guessing who. He also gave the movie 3 and ½ stars out of 4 which is on average a star and ½ higher than any other reviewer. I always like it when people are reliable, even if it is bad they are reliable.

09/15 Lots Of Writing
I have been pretty consistent with my writing for the past couple of weeks, despite having my ass kicked by my allergies I have managed to keep up the writing. Very pleased with progress, very pleased with product.

Cheers.

Felching Phonics

08/19 This Is My Midnight Confession
I am sitting here and I just came up with a funny end of the world idea that I want to commit to writing just in case I forget this idea after I go to sleep. Okay lots of doomsday soothsayers tell us that the world is going to end on Midnight whenever, whether it is New Years Eve, the aligning of the 7 moons in the sixth house whatever. So this is the idea a group of people have to continually flee from one time zone to the next as the world ends at midnight all across the world, so it starts in the Eastern time zone so they have to flee to Central, then to Mountain, then to Pacific and their goal is to escape all the way to the International Date Line where this giant black death cloud can't cross. It is a great idea, at least to me at 2 in the morning.

08/20 Sickness Nothing More Than Sickness
I feel like the horse's ass, I have felt like the horse's ass since last Thursday, but today hopefully is the crescendo. Currently I can't breath, and I have a headache that while isn't a migraine, is really fucking close. Oh man does it suck, I really can't do anything but lay around in a state of half away and half asleep. I wish I could be really sick, not this half sick half okay crap.

08/20 Hunk of Burning Love
I had a funny idea for a roleplaying game. You're character is a bard, a hunk of burning love. The kingdom's hottest, prettiest, bustiest princess has been kidnapped and you are filled with zeal to chase after the woman you have a huge crush on. Yes it sounds rather straight forward but here is the catch. You gain party characters by wooing women, the stronger your sexual prowess the stronger the women that join your team. You can even woo female enemy bosses if your woo is strong enough. It is half RPG half dating sim, it could never be made in this country but this is precisely something the Japanese would love. I love the idea, it would be more Disgaea or Dragon Quest rather than Final Fantasy, much more tongue in cheek than Final Fantasy, no end of the world plotline, it is about a bard gathering a harem of chicks to help him defeat evil and save the hottest princess in the land. I for one would love to play it, doesn't it sound like fun?

08/20 Living Dead Girl
I just finished watching Tim Burton's Corpse Bride and I really liked it. It is Tim Burton at his best, haunting, gothic, everything a little eschew. Alice in Wonderland gone bad, but at its heart is a rather touching love story along with a lot of singing dancing skeletons.

08/21 All Right
Well all it needed was about 11 hours worth of sleep to fix me. I went to bed at 11 last night and woke up woke up this morning after 10 and viola I feel better. True I am starting to get my fall allergies but that is status quo. Sleep fixes everything.

08/21 It's Good To Be The King
You know you are on top of the world when you have somebody to wipe your ass, and you know you really are on top of the world when it is a member of your country's nobility. During Henry VIII's reign there was a position called Groom of the Stool which yes stool comes from the fact that toilet's use to be covered stools. That is some wild stuff.

08/22 Silent Hill
I watched the Silent Hill movie this evening, good, could have been better. The biggest flaw with the movie was the writing, too much was given to satiate the Hollywood types and robbed the movie of what made the game so perfect that ever present sense of ominous dread.

08/24 Poor Pluto
Today Pluto got demoted from planet to floating space rock, that is so mean. I mean Pluto must have feelings and you are so hurting them. It is kinda funny at the same time other astronomers wants to add three new planets but they want to first demote Pluto. I think we should probably first actually visit the planet to see whether or not it actually is a planet in the first place.

08/24 Minnesotans are Booze Hounds
Forbes Magazine rated Minneapolis/St. Paul as the second drunkest city in the country behind only Milwaukee. Of course everyone in the state is up in indignant arms over this but it really shouldn't be that big of a surprise, what else do you have to do in this state, it isn't like there is tons of shit to do. I for one totally agree with that, Minnesotans are a hard drinking bunch but what I find more amusing is that Minnesota is ready to have praise heaped upon it with absolutely no shame what so ever, they love to point out all the good things about the state, number 1 in this or that but if you dare say Minnesota has a flaw, even the most insignificant flaw watch out Minnesotans are above all petty and insecure, if you dare say anything they will attack you in droves.

08/24 Weather Alert! Weather Alert! Shit Your Pants Now
We are in the middle of some rather unsettled weather, of course this means our weather personalities are currently on all the TV channels trying to panic the entire state into believing there are tornadoes are bearing down on us at any moment and they will destroy us all. This is something that in my experience is unique to Minnesota where during primetime TV you can pre-empt everything for hours just so your weather personalities and can say the exact same shit ten thousand times. Yes I know there is a tornado is some godforsaken part of this state yes I know which way it is fucking moving and yes I know what the fuck to do when it comes my way. I don't need to know every road or bumfuck little town it is passing through, the six people that live in those little bumfuck towns don't need to hear you say the tornado is coming there way. Why? Because the fucking tornado is right in front of them, it is really fucking hard to miss a wall of swirling black air that is barreling towards you. Why this can go in this state is because people have nothing else, Minnesota is the back of beyond and all you have is weather, you have lots of weather, weather everyday and it gives you something to obsess over, it gives you something to talk about, it fills that empty fucking void in you that if you lived someplace that wasn't the back of fucking beyond you would fill with hobbies, activities and a fucking life. God if I have to sit through another dinner of half an hour of nonstop weather I am going to scream.

08/24 Felch Michigan
Yes there really is a town called Felch in western central Michigan, population 200. I'm pretty sure they'd get more people to live there if they changed their name. This ranks up there with Fucking Austria, at least they have an excuse because it doesn't mean the same thing in German but Felch? In America of all places. I wonder if that is a town of ultra kinky people and they intended for it to be named Felch.

08/25 What The Hell...
What the hell happened to Hook on Phonics? You don't see any infomercials for it anymore, true it was proved to be an utter failure when the children who used Hook on Phonics tried to actually spell anything because the system teaches you to read phonetically which is horrible when it comes time to spell but why does that effect sales, so much of his country is based on false promises, every weight loss diet drug, the breast growth pills, all those makes millions by working at home schemes, all those are utter and absolute lies yet I can't watch an hour of History International or the Biography Channel without seeing two or three of those phony ass ads.

Cheers.

Saucy Jack

08/27 The Many Loves of the Bard
Last week I talked about my idea for a novel RPG game where you play the character of the Bard, a guy who has to save the princess from the evil witch and to do so he has to gather a party of heroes. But the twist is to gather the party you have to seduce women, basically it is an RPG meets Dating Sim. Since thinking this up I have thought up a few more ideas, like the title which you see in bold above. The other ideas were the final boss battle, if you are good enough you can skip the entire boss battle entirely by simply seducing the evil witch who has the princess held captive. Another idea is that in sequels to the game you are able to import your character and party from the last game to continue on your quest. In the game I would have lots and lots of unlockable extras and mini-games because I really hate games where all you have is a linear game with no reward for going through it, which translate out to I dislike every first person shooter ever made. The mini-games would be everything from rolling dice in a back alley, to clothes shopping to keep your party members happy. There would be a happiness bar, like all girlfriends should have that shows you how pleased they are to be part of your adventure harem each class of character will have different wants and needs to stay apart of your party. This game of course can not be taken in a serious tone, I want colourful cell shaded animation that makes this into a wild and weird cartoon world. I really am starting to like this idea and probably I will toss a few more ideas into this as time goes by.

08/27 Survival Horror RPG
Japan makes the best survival horror games and Japan also makes the best RPGs my question is why aren't there more of these. I can think of a few but they were never really true horror RPGs, all RPGs have an element or two of horror but I want an honest straight up survival horror RPG, I want creepy and gothic on both sides. A group of pale faced gothic children go into a castle to make battle upon the pale faced gothic adults therein. Something like that, but a good creepy horror RPG wouldn't go amiss.

08/28 Why People Drive Me Nuts
Last week it was decided Pluto wasn't technically a planet, it is a mini-planet much like a mini-doughnut may looks like a doughnut but eating a dozen doughnuts makes you sick while eating a dozen mini-doughnuts is okay, but now this is an issue for the right wing loonies to scream that this is another attempt by the rest of the world to destroy the US. First off go fuck yourself, you and your idiot ideas are dragging this country into the darkest place it has been since the end of the 29 depression. Second it was an International organization which means stupid liberal evil gay Americans agreed on this so we are just as at fault as those subversives that speak other languages or god forbid different races. I know everyone is allowed their opinions but I think we as a society stop pretending like these nut cases are really worth listening to. This urge to pretend like what falls from their mouths are nothing but pearls only give them more reasons to continue to open their mouths. If we stop giving a shit about all the numbskullery that people spout and stop giving them the time of day they will shut the fuck up. Please let's stop pretending like stupid people really aren't stupid, they are stupid and we should treat them like it from the President on down, stop listening to them and they will all go away.

08/28 Gimme, Gimme, Gimme
I must own one of these, I simply must. I never will be able to own a full sized one but this will be an excellent substitute. I know the only way I will end up getting one is buying it off E-Bay for a small fortune.

08/29 More Kindaichi
I just won another auction on E-Bay I keep this up I may actually break that curse, knock on wood. I won the last two Kindaichi Extra manga, I already had the first five and I heard there was a 6th but I had no idea there was a 7th. Now I have the entire set, they may be in Japanese but the more Kindaichi the merrier.

08/29 Allergies On A Rampage
My allergies are on an absolute tear, if anybody is looking for good stock, by stock in Kleenex if I keep this trend up for another day or two you will see their stock skyrocket. I swear I probably have gone through a box of Kleenex today it is ridiculous. I hate having allergies it is the one thing that makes fall suck that and the fact that fall lasts for about two weeks up here that sucks too.

08/31 Jack the Ripper
Today is the 118th anniversary of the death of Polly Nichols, the first of the canonical 5 victims of the Jack Ripper. This entry isn't a glorification of Jack the Ripper but rather thoughts on my interest in this infamous historical figure. I got interested in Jack the Ripper 18 years ago when I saw the Michael Caine, Jack the Ripper mini-series on TV. At the time it was probably the longest I had actually sat in front of the TV without roaming about or doing something else. What got me truly interested in Jack the Ripper was the fact that to this day we still don't know who he is. My interest was further fired by watching the A&E Biography on Jack the Ripper and it has been strong ever since. I don't exactly know what really draws me to this, I think it is a combination of factors, the time and place couldn't be any more dramatic, the fact that he was never caught and there is something undeniable about the mystery behind it.

09/01 Writing Makes Busy
I am busy writing right now, many zombies, masked wrestlers, WWI soldiers, and living dead girls, lots of things are racing through my head and I must write them all down

Cheers.

08/07 New Kindaichi
I'm reading, well not sure if reading is the right word, let's just say I am looking at the pictures in my new Kindaichi short story books. I love them, the first story Miyuki gets loaded and tries to do some Girls Gone Wild flashing. The stories are great but the more I keep looking at it the greater my hatred for Tokyopop grows. I love Kindaichi so much and to know that there is so much more Kindaichi out there but to know that Tokyopop is doing everything in their power to drag their feet with releasing the series. I have only to wait 8 fucking years to actually see the end of the first series and then I have to wait until they develop a way to implant computer chips into my brain so I can read Japanese to see the rest of the series. This really is what hell must be like, something so wonderful but yet so out of reach. I wish Dark Horse or another competent manga company would take over Kindaichi, somebody who would actually do a decent enough job to actually put out more than 2 a year and then piss and moan about it doesn't sell as well as they want. Tokyopop is just pissed that they didn't license Naruto and because all their manga doesn't sell like Naruto it means they must license even more and abuse the titles they already have. But hey at least Kindaichi is going to be put out, unlike Slayers which they have canceled 6 books into an 15 book series. Oh well such is life.

08/08 Tremors
I rented Tremors from Netflix and watched it this evening. It is a great movie but one thing that kinda surprised me, all the swearing. I saw it in the theatre 16 years ago, wow that is terrifying, but since then I have seen it on basic cable about two million times and on basic cable it still has the old early 90s censorship of the language where even damn is too much for it. So for the longest time I hadn't heard any of the swearing and when I watched it again I was rather surprised for a PG-13 movie it has a lot of salty dialogue, it is well placed salty dialogue but it was almost like watching a different movie. Today those dirty words would probably make the movie a hard R or maybe an NC-17. Remember, you can never have too many guns when living in the middle of the desert.

08/08 Ready For Fall
Fall is my favorite time of year, not just because my birthday and Halloween are during that time of the year but because it is the perfect weather. It isn't too hot and it isn't too cold it is just right. I am getting a little tired of being sweaty at night and am ready for a little cooler weather so I can really sleep well. The only problem with fall, especially in Minnesota, it is way too short, we have like three weeks of fall before winter sets in and I start getting cold. I loved fall in Colorado, it was actually 3 months, sometime 4 months long, the weather was just right. I remember going outside on one of those crisp fall days to rake leaves and smelling the smell of wood burning fires filling the air. I could do with a really mild winter, just cold enough to let me bury myself in blankets and pleasantly sleep but not too cold that my fingers and toes are cold for six months. You just know it is going to the worst winter on record, cows will freeze standing up, birds will turn into fly ice cubes and it will snow so much that the only way out of your house will be from the second floor windows. I fully understand that if I want a mild winter I am going to get hell in a hamster ball but I can wish.

08/09 Solution to Our National Debt
I have come up with a novel way of solving our nation debt, it is simple, we auction off the rights to be on the 100 dollar bill for 10 years. We could get ego maniac psychos like Oprah and Tom Cruise to pay vast fortunes to have their pictures on the 100 bill. We could finally make some use of these parasites in our society, yes all you Oprah-ism disciples and Scientologist can send me all the death threats you want, you people are nothing but sheep.

08/10 Kung-Fu Hustle
I just finished watching Kung-Fu Hustle again, I really like that movie, it is so very live action Looney Tunes. But what I think really makes that movie is the music, this being at least the 9th time I've seen a majority of it I have really begun to appreciate the incredibly operatic feel of the music. It is also one of those movie that every time I see it I hate Quentin Tarantino just a little bit more. I'm not sure if I hate him in so much as I hate how our society treats him like the only creative force that ever existed. It smacks of such incredibly xenophobia that the only Asian movies this country will entertain are the ones that have Tarantino's stamp of approval on them. I'm not sure if it is of his doing or just the general cultural backwardness of our entire society that requires we have some sort of Movie Deity to show us the what to watch.

08/11 Suburban Omega Man
I went to the dentist today, that is a trauma in its own right but the weird stuff happened when I got home it was ridiculously quiet, I mean ridiculously quiet. I live by two fairly large roads and we are over a fly-over zone for the local airport but it was dead silent. I start to look around and I realized as far as I could see I couldn't see a single parked car outside of any of the homes and I got this weird feeling of being absolutely alone. I felt like the Suburban Omega Man. It is creepy that I can live in the middle of suburbia and still feel like the last man on earth.

08/11 Oddly Prolific Week
I have been on an unholy tear this week when it comes to writing, a conservative estimate of how much I have written this week is 35 pages which is really good but I have nothing to show for it, it was 5 pages here, 10 pages there, so nothing is complete but I advanced along on several fronts. It was insane how much I was able to do and all of it is quality work to boot. Now let's see if I can manage to make two weeks like that and I should have my next Suburban Scary done and my next Bethany and the Curiosity Shop nearly done.

Cheers.

Slayers 7 and 8

08/13 Tokyopop Attempts Reconciliation
This is the manga version of flowers and love letters after you are caught pounding your girlfriend's thinner, bustier roommate, you know the one, the one with the navel ring, the sexy blues eyes. Today Tokyopop announced it is going to release Slayers novels 7 and 8 after they canceled the series last year. I still strongly dislike Tokyopop, they license everything under the sun and give none of it a proper shake. Now if they actually would put three Kindaichi out a year instead of two I might start to like them again, maybe.

08/14 An Unending Well of Abuse
I don't know why I do it, I think it is because I really enjoy making myself seethe with rage but I do stupid things like watch the Black Dahlia trailer. Basically listening to Josh Hartnett mumble out the narration felt like I was taking a tack hammer to each one of my toes and smashing them into pulp one after another. He sounds so incredibly bored reading the lines, I mean I bet Keanu Reeves could cough out a more lively narration, shit I could give that exact same script to a man with severe mental injuries and I could get a better reading out of him. If you think I am full of shit watch any film noir movie from the 40s and listen to how Humphrey Bogart or James Cagey or Lawrence Tierney read their lines and then have the balls to tell me I am full of shit. I know I will end up watching the Black Dahlia, I am first going to drink a quart of paint thinner before so I am in a proper frame of mind to withstand the assault that movie will be to me. One of my all time favorite books gets made with one of my least favorite actors and directors, the universe loves to fuck me hard and dry every time.

08/15 Legend of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda: Link To The Past is over twelve years old a little less than half my lifetime ago did I first play this and yet I still find myself playing it still. I don't know what it is, the simple easy to use game play or the complex game full of hidden secrets, both or none at all that keeps me bringing myself back to play this game.

08/16 This Stuff Will Kill Ya
I knew it, this stuff I am drinking will be the end of me, I knew it. Death By Caffeine

08/17 Death By Fatal Frame
Technically it is 12:42 Friday morning but who cares. I love Fatal Frame because it is the final frontier of scaring me. I was playing the game earlier in the evening and I walked into a room and I hear these creepy children's voices echoing throughout my room. I completely freaked out, I actually paused the game and started looking around because I swore the voices were coming from my room. This is probably because I have my surround sound on while playing it which makes the game just so much more fun to play. Then if the creepy kid voices were enough I run into kid ghosts which are half the size of the normal ghosts and go charging at you. The first time this happened I let out a fairly good yelp of profanity and nearly leapt into the ceiling. It is a wonderful feeling, so little truly scares me anymore, politics and religion aside, that having a good safe scare that actually works is just so much fun. I wish they'd make more games like Fatal Frame, give me more survival horror. Gimme, gimme, gimme.

08/18 Big Ol Update
Wow I updated almost is a little short all of my pages, this comes from not actually doing it for about a month. I added 36 new reviews that is why the rant this week.

Cheers.

Grumpy Week

07/22 I Have Finally Done It
I have finally done it, I have leapt off the sanity cliff into the ocean of madness. Today while wandering around E-Bay I found something, something so evil that I leapt all over it despite the fact that it is so evil. I am bidding on the 6 New Kindaichi Case Files, the 6 cases that came after the first 27. The catch, it is all in Japanese, but it isn't deterring me it is actually getting me interested in learning to translate Japanese or at least try. It is cheap that is one of the biggest selling points for me, even if I never actually figure out how to translate Japanese I may actually consider having them done professionally this is my passion of Kindaichi.

07/22 Fleet Farm
Every year it seems I end up going to Mills Fleet Farm out in Lakeville usually in the quest for bird seed. Each time I go I wonder who has more fun, me or the rednecks who stare at me like I just parked by pimped out UFO in the parking lot straight off the Proxima Centauri expressway. When I mean stare I am not kidding, I had more than a few people look at me like I was from another planet. Now people who know me know I dressed differently than most people, especially when you are around people who dress off the rack at Wal-Mart. Years ago it would have bothered me but now I almost relish in this, I really enjoy making the hicks wonder what kind of monster I am.

07/23 Uwe Boll vs M Night Shyamalan
There are two of the least talented directors of our time, the only difference is one has a PR machine that makes him look like a genius, while the other can't catch a break. I like Uwe Boll more than Shyamalan, Uwe may make bad movies but they can at least be enjoyed and laughed at. Shyamalan's movies are pretentious, acting like they are big time movies when in fact they are horribly written and ineptly directed. I'd much rather watch an Uwe Boll movie, I know it will suck but at least I can laugh at them, I can't even laugh at M Night Shyamalan's movies because they aren't funny.

07/23 Guess The Internet Has Some Good Points Too
I just finished reading an article from AO Scott, one of the more famous film critics if that term can be applied to someone as useless as a film critic. He is decrying the fact that people think he is fully of Grade A shit, didn't think the FDA graded shit, well they do. A few weeks back a Duke University sociologist looked at the top ten film critics in the country and found they give good scores to something like 15 percent of the movies they review and most of those movies are small strictly art-house fare which of course made all the film critics like Roger Ebert scream foul. Face it all your film critics who write for newspapers or drag your ugly mugs on TV are nothing but colossal failures in life, you were so terrible at making movies or writing movies or sucking off the grips, that you ended up writing reviews because you couldn't do anything else. Nobody stands up on career day in the 6th grade and says that they want to be a professional movie critic, fuck no you fall into a shitty profession like that and you bring all your angry self righteous baggage with you like a fat chick at a bus station coming home to your momma's trailer. You look at all these movie makers and actors who did something you could never accomplish, actually make a movie and you seethe with jealousy at them, you boil in your jealous juices and it creates nothing but a soup of contempt. The worst part was for many years you jackasses were actually listened to, for years you were the only source on whether or not to go see a movie and you got your egos stroked like a hooker strokes a fat man's nut sack. But now there is an Internet were people get to put their own opinions forth about films and you cocksuckers are finding that people aren't listening to you, they are even starting to see through your pretentious front and are starting to see that you really are full of nothing but shit. So go watch your art house films and pour nothing but contempt on every other film that makes three bucks, and complain about the stupidity of the bourgeois people who if they were just as enlightened and godlike as you fuckers would understand that you are the only true experts of film because you write about in a newspaper. You know what you can do with your newspapers, roll them up nice and tight and see how far you can shove it up your ass you did all this to yourselves.

07/24 Customer Service A Dead Art
I dislike asking for help in a store, mainly because the brain dead people who work there know less about the store than you do. Today I had to mail a package that had to be at its location tomorrow so I go to the FedEx Kinkos that is by my house. I have never mailed jackshit from a FedEx I have absolutely no idea what to do. I have been to UPS before but I wasn't sure if there was a UPS store close so I went to FedEx. At UPS you hand them your package and pay they do the rest well it is totally different at FedEx. I stupidly asked a question of one of the steely eyed women that was working there. She answered my question but in a way that made me convinced this was the hardest thing she'd ever done after answering the first question she goes into the back and starts going through the copy paper totally ignoring me when I asked a question. I was three seconds away from unleashing a storm of profanity when the other woman who worked there finally realized there was a customer and walked over. I got plenty of pissed off attitude from her too. I fully understand you hate your job, not my fucking problem, you hate dealing with people then fucking quit, if you can't quit kill yourself, do us all a big colossal favor and kill yourself, I don't want your fucking attitude when I am trying to ship a fucking package. I think what raises my hackles even more is all the bullshit you see on TV of happy smiling people who work at these places, people who want to help you with your problem when the reality is the people that work there hate to see you and are going to do nothing but heap attitude on you. I guess it could be worse, has anyone ever found a remotely competent employee at a Menards or Home Depot? If you're lucky you find a stoned 16 year old who can barely articulate a sentence let alone know anything about Peat Moss or fucking power tools. I understand these jobs pay for shit, hey I have been there but being paid shit doesn't give you the green light to be a fucking cock on wheels. I honestly don't give a shit, I just want to get in and get the fuck out and you are making my life that much harder by glaring at me and acting as if I just walked into your living room and began to demand answers to question in a foreign language. I just want to ship a fucking package not have to deal with your miserable wasted white trash life.

07/27 Fighting the E-Bay Curse
I often think I am cursed when it comes to E-Bay, I often lose really good auctions at the last minute or they become so ridiculously expensive that I can't bring myself to spend that kind of money on it. For a period of almost eight months I lost every auction I attempted and then gave up E-Bay is disgust for awhile. But now I am back and I've managed to at least win a draw with my E-Bay curse. I won 2 of the 4 auctions I bid on. I didn't win my first Kindaichi auction, I won a second after a mild bidding war and won the 5 Kindaichi Short Story Collections, of course they are all in Japanese but there is no fucking chance in all eighteen Chinese hells that they will ever be put out in this country, especially if Tokyopop has anything to do about it. I've always wanted to try and learn Japanese, this is a really good way to motivate me into doing it.

07/27 Forced Trailers
A few years ago there was a great scare over rumors that companies could now force you to watch trailers on the beginning of your DVDs and you would be unable to skip through them. This never really materialized and all the scream, hair pulling, and general shit flinging that took place was for not but every once and awhile you do run across one. Tonight I was watching Kairo and they forced you not just to watch two trailers for two incredibly shitty movies but then a TV had for HD.net TV service and I have to admit I was rather dismayed but I found a way around it, I hit mute and went to get a snack. I can't figure out if this is a clever marketing strategy or just the most cynical ploy in history.

07/28 I Now Know Why...
I now know why every other country hates us, it is shit like this and shit like this. After watching these two ads which are not parodies they are real ads made by real people for the company in question I have this strange urge to go torch some Hummers. The really sad part is that is exactly how people who own those rolling pieces of obnoxious shit really think.

07/28 The No Shit Statement of the Year
Oil Companies Are Possibly Committing Price Gouging, nice to know that our government is looking out for the people's best interests.

Cheers.

Fatal Frame The Addiction

07/29 Gonna Be Positive, Gonna Be Positive
I realized last week was a lot of crabbing, it was a trying week and I was in a foul mood, but I am going to be more positive, I will be more positive I promise.

07/29 Half Life 2: Episode 1
I played a half an hour of Half Life 2: Episode 1 and I really didn't like it. It is an obstacle course with the typical Half Life style of giving you fucking idea of what you are suppose to do or where you're suppose to go. I am all for open ended games but just give me a hint, just a tiny little itty-bitty hint on what the fuck I am suppose to do to move the narrative along. This is why I never finished Half Life 2 they give you no fucking clue how to actually beat the final boss you are just suppose to do it over and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over until by stupid fucking luck or reading it off a strategy guide you figure out how to do it.

07/30 Satoshi Kon Rides Again
Preview Of Satoshi Kon's Newest Mind Bender, Paprika which looks as awesome as everything else he has done. For those who aren't massive enough geeks to know who Satoshi Kon is, he is the twisted mind behind Perfect Blue, and Paranoia Agent. The trailer is just filled to the brim with all kinds of Satoshi Kon goodness, crazy scenes, and bizarre happenings. But the best part is... It Is Coming Here First!! It will premiere in Japan in 2007 but Sony is releasing it on DVD in the US in the fall. This is definitely a first, something I really want to see being sent here on the fast track rather than the slow pony. This is very cool and I am very excited to be seeing it, true I would much rather see it like I did Perfect Blue in the theatres but I will take it anyway I can get it.

08/01 I Am Old School
This is something I keep returning to, but it is so incredibly true. Case in point, laser gun games, no not laser tag although I played that too, but video games that come with that gun, you pull the trigger at the screen and shoot things. It started out with Duck Hunt for the Nintendo, everyone in my generation played Duck Hunt at least once. The Super Nintendo had a few that involved a much larger and incredibly ungainly laser gun that looked more like a rocket launcher. But it was in the Arcade there they were really shined, games like Lethal Enforcer, House of the Dead, Time Crisis and Crisis Zone. Well a few of them made it to the Playstation 2 and I recently won one on E-Bay, Crisis Zone. I have been playing it and it is a lot of fun, it is a very linear first person shooter but you are actually going the shooting, you aren't just moving a mouse you are pulling the trigger on the big orange gun that comes with it. I remember when Lethal Enforcer came out for the Genesis a million years ago, it was the first game to get the NA-17 rating, this was the early days of rating games, because the gun looked like a real gun, you could paint it black and go hold up 7-11s. The laser gun games are a very niche market but I am part of the niche market, I really love these games, I'm not sure if it is the massive destruction in the game or the frantic action but those games have always been a favorite of mine. One of these days I will end up owning one of those actual arcade machines, all I need is 5 grand or so.

08/02 Neat Little Rumor
There was a thread going around that had a sneak preview of the game that are going to be showcased at the Tokyo Game Show this September for the PS3, one of them was Fatal Frame 4, yes kids Fatal Frame in high def. I am really hopeful for this, Fatal Frame is my second favorite game series, behind only the venerable Legend of Zelda series. There never was any doubt that I would own a Playstation 3 this just makes me more excited for it coming out. I love Fatal Frame, and I will love it more in the sweetness of high def.

08/02 Forgot to Mention Kindaichi
I got my 5 Japanese Kindaichi short story volumes yesterday, I have only thumbed through one, all in Japanese but I am clever enough to figure out what is going on by looking at the pictures. I wish there was some way I could just scan these into a computer and the computer would be able to translate for me, it wouldn't have to be perfect just a decent enough, I may try and peddle this to a scanlation group do a lot of begging and maybe get a fan translation for myself. The last story was a short one that is really funny, it involves the class president who has insane hair and how he looks like morning.

08/02 My Mouse Is Possessed
My mouse is acting really weird, today for some reason on every 4th click it double clicks which is starting to annoy me. There is nothing wrong with it that I can see but it keeps doing it and it is pissing me off. I need to slap a talisman on it to exorcise this mouse demon to the Ten Chinese Hells.

08/04 Fatal Frame
I have been playing a good amount of Fatal Frame lately and I really love the game, so much so that it has inspired me to go ghost hunting. True Minnesota is rather light on good haunted sights but I have come up with a couple I am planning to go to explore. It is all still in the planning phase but in the near future you may see a special couple of rants that involve me going ghost hunting. And it is all because of Fatal Frame.

Cheers.

Ranting Restrictions, Only Rant between 8:00 pm and 6:00 am

07/09 Sick iPod
After seven months of worry free iPod ownership I finally hit a little snag which scared the shit out of me. I let the battery run way too much down and it somehow locked up on me. The problem with the iPod really is the fact that there are 5 buttons on the entire thing and none of them say reset. So I go digging for the instruction book which thankfully I left in the box which is small enough for me to keep in my desk. I thankfully reset the thing and it works fine now but damn I was freaking myself out that it was busted for good there, my iPod is incredibly vital to me, I would die without the thing and don't want to buy a brand new one seven months after getting the first one.

07/09 Teepee In Your Trunks
Basically this is going to be a regular Venture of my rants for awhile, Venture Brothers did it again, there is a line in there that made me cry I was laughing so hard. That is one of the best written shows on TV today. Ghost Apaches, Russian hitwomen, Brock Sampson's mysterious past revealed.

07/10 When It Works It Really Works
It is currently 3:15 in the morning and I finally got the monkey off my back. I have been writing my first Suburbia Scary story and I finally managed to figure out how to end it. I had written an ending but the ending wasn't all that great, it was rather bland but I could not for the life of me figure out anything better. I tried to go to bed but I just couldn't even relax because I was so twisted over it so I got up and wandered around a bit until a unique ending hit me. I really hate when this happens to me, but the ending is always satisfying because now I can go to bed. I am very happy not because I can sleep but because I came up with a clever ending. I wound up deleting three entire pages worth of work but managed to replace it with one page and plenty of ideas.

07/11 Shut Up
I am sick and fucking tired of everyone in this country lining up to announce how the Playstation 3 is going to fail. Basically any half ass wannabe magazine or journalist who wants to get himself some quick publicity just make up shit about the Playstation 3 or how Sony is going to fail and you get assholes lining up around the block to not only believe it but pass it on as if it was cold hard fact. Last week I saw a pair of articles from tiny little magazines that said the Blu-Ray would fail and the PS3 would barely be able to come in third place behind the 360 and the Wii and now this week in the newspaper they trot out the ancient technology that Sony patented many years ago that made it impossible to play rented or borrowed games and now are reporting all these fears that the PS3 will not allow you to play rented or borrowed games. Where was all this shit when the 360 came out? Nobody was shouting about that 20 percent of all 360s have been returned because they are defective or that it hasn't reached any of its sales goals or that all the Japanese game makers that were planning to make 360 games have pulled out because of dismal sales in Japan. I wonder why, could be because this country is the post child for xenophobia. We have Microsoft a good virtuous proud American company versus the evil, non-American, non-white, Japanese company. I honestly wouldn't be surprised that a lot of these so-called news articles are being peddled by Microsoft because they know they can't compete with the Playstation 3 when it comes out because the Playstation 3 has superior graphics, superior storage capability, 3rd party support that Microsoft can only dream of, and face it the 360 is the Sega Saturn of this generation. Microsoft should leave the console gaming market to people who know what they are doing and stop trying to make Microsoft life because a company that makes crappy software isn't going to dominate anything.

07/11 There Are Times...
There are times that people really disturb me, there is a lack of understanding for other people no empathy that would be like waiting for water to turn to wine but even the most remote understanding that other people are real. I just watched a very good documentary called Grizzly Man which isn't about bears, lets get that out of the way with first off, it is about a man who championed himself as the protector of grizzlies in Katmai National Park in Alaksa whose 13 year quest came to an abrupt violent end when he was eaten by a grizzly. I liked the documentary, it shows wonderfully how one man ran away from civilization to try and find himself among bears in the woods not so much for the bears but for his own sake. I read several commentaries about the movie, reviews isn't a good word they are simply making comments, and when you filter out people who understood the movie you are left with two angry groups, right wingers who think that is how all environmentalists should end up, these are people who want to pave the entire world in asphalt and then people who were genuinely pissed the movie wasn't about bears and somehow they were lied to personally like this movie was made strictly for them and hand delivered by Werner Hertzog to their doorstep and in these jeering choruses of angry small minded people there came these disturbing comments that they wanted to hear the actual tape of the man and his girlfriend being killed by the bear. Why you'd want to hear some being viciously killed is disturbing and really drives home the idea that people no longer view other people as human beings, we're all TV characters on the most elaborate reality TV show of all time.

07/12 Smoking In Space
I watched Alien tonight, which really is the only good movie of all four Alien films, but in the movie two characters smoke and smoke a lot. For some reason this amused me to no end, in an era were a general ban on indoor smoking nation wide is only a year or two away it strikes me as funny that they are smoking inside a spaceship, the ultimate enclosed environment. But then again they would die from the alien long before they'd die of second hand smoke.

07/13 Anal Retentive Life
I am mildly anal about little things but they are things that are under my direct control, things that are other people's problems can go completely into a tailspin that is their business. One of the great examples is the rugs on our hardwood floor, every once and a great while we have to clean them. This involves removing all the rugs and then putting them back and then I spent two weeks moving a rug a couple of inches one way, then an inch back and so on and so forth until I get them just right.

07/14 The Enjoyable Taste of Disillusionment
Gamers are now feeling the sting of political scrutiny and are now learning just how corrupt, useless, and less interested in freedom than they are keeping their jobs so they can keep gathering their kickbacks and graff. Gamers really are the last great frontier for political scapegoating. Heavy Metal is old hat, Rap too they have their sticker which really has never deterred a single person for buying in any case, attacking TV doesn't seem to have any affect, but video games and their large particular insular population are rip for assault. It is rather amusing to hear the outrage and anger the gamers are spraying as politicians are moving in on them, gamers can be a very isolated type of person and they are just learning how useless our government really is and how angry they are getting because of it. Now everybody the but the Amish are being fucked with by the government, those bearded bastards better watch their asses, soon some fucked up congressman is going to start saying those buggies they tool around in are positively un-American because they don't guzzle gas and politicians need those oil company payoffs to stay in power.

07/14 Somewhat Useless Week
I didn't get much done this week, I don't know why exactly but while I did do some things but I don't feel like I got anything accomplished. What a bother, maybe next week I can finally finished up the first Suburbia Scary story which is already a week late.

Cheers.

Kero, Kero, Kero

07/15 My Darkest Desire
My darkest desire, the one that I keep hidden deep in my black soul is that I have always wanted to be able to draw and because I really want to I can't even draw stickmen properly. I have a rather visual imagination and some of the stuff I could never write properly which always bugs me because I could be a good artist if I was only able to just pour the thoughts from my ear onto the page and watch them take shape. It is rather maddening to me, I even took an art class once in the hopes that I could be taught to draw, let's just say artist I am not. Oh well it sucks but that is the way life is.

07/15 Airports
I like airports for some reason, I always have their interesting places that are the gateway to a thousand different places, none of which I will ever see, but I still like airports. I went to pick up one of my relatives today, which gave me the opportunity to go to the local international airport. Everything was peachy until I went to go find her at the baggage claim, why did it suddenly become peachy-free? Simple, 6 flights, 1 baggage carousel and everybody wanted their bags first. Just a tip for Northwest don't put 6 flights at the same baggage carousel it turns everything into sheers pandemonium. People get a little testy waiting for baggage and the testier they become the more likely they are to not just bump into you but push you with surprising force. I was trying to find my great aunt in this rather insane confusion and made the massive mistake to stop for a moment to try and see if I could look around to locate her and, no joke, an old lady pushed me aside with enough force that I almost fell over, you gotta be careful of them old ladies. But then it got funnier, one of the six flights was a tour group of middle schoolers you were all wearing identical maroon polo shirts and when you get 30 middle schoolers together they move like a buffalo herd, a buffalo herd with 30 different high pitched voices shouting at once but still a buffalo herd none the less. The Minneapolis airport is okay, I think it was poorly designed but it was designed 25 years ago and if I compared it to DIA it wouldn't be fair. It was still rather fun to be trampled, pushed, and lost because I had this done to me in a place I normally don't get to go.

07/15 The Pain of Ten Thousand Needles
I am not routinely bothered by bugs, for whatever reason I am not the kind of person who gets attacked by any manner or form of bug but today I broke that lovely streak when a bee stung me. I haven't been stung by a bee in some time and had forgotten how nasty it hurts and to make damn sure I know how badly it hurts it stung me on the side of my nose. Now half of my nose is red and the front of my right nostril is swollen which really, really sucks because you have absolutely no idea how much you make your nose flexes until your nose is swollen.

10:22 pm 07/16 Its Done
I finished the hardest part of writing, well technically the second, the hardest thing is getting anyone to actually read it but that doesn't really count. I have finished my first installment of Suburbia Scary. This began a few weeks ago, borne out of frustration and exasperation about the neighborhood in which I live. The original idea for this series is coming up but this is the story I had the best vibe for in the beginning. I really like this story, it really had a great flow to it and I especially liked the ending I came up with at 2 in the morning last week. I am working on the sequel but it is in 4th place currently behind another Bethany and the Curiosity Shop, Sword and the Moon, and a Lupin fan fiction that I really got jazzed about by listening to my Lupin OSTs all week in the car. I am very pleased with the final result, it is going to take a few days for me to actually get it posted, I am planning for Friday, I still need to do one last proof-read and then go through the process of formatting it for the website, something I am not jazzed about doing.

07/17 Finally Did It
After an entire year of procrastinating I finally did it, I finally bought a cast iron Chinese tea cup from Teavana. I go there once a month or so and spend at least 25 bucks on tea and every time I go to the store I always look at the cast iron tea cups but always come up with an excuse, well until today. I went to buy some tea to fill out a shortage in my Mrs Earl Grey and there they were and this time I just said, why not. Now I am currently drinking some peach white tea from my cast iron tea cup while I putter about. Now I just need to get three more, the tea top, and a bamboo tray to complete my collection.

07/18 Grumbling Of The Political Kind
I try not to fill this rant with politics, there is enough politics being bantered about on the internet, but there are times that our current regime does things that are so beyond common sense that they really belong in the mind of a dark ages serf not the leader of our country. Of course I am talking about his vetoing of the proposed increase in stem cell research. Our president really is a foe of science from promoting intelligent design to leaning on the FDA to make sure the morning after pill doesn't get to be over the counter it is really when our president gets to interact with science decisions that he really shows what a colossal hypocrite he really is. He vetoed because in his word 'it will lead to a slippery slope'. Really does he think before he talks or does he just say the first thing that comes to mind just hop out of his mouth? I would love to see the reasoning behind this, if any, what if we allow stem cell research this will lead to a slippery slope were eventually scientists will prowl neighbors killing school kids and harvesting their organs. Our president should stay out of the business of science, it is clear he has absolutely no idea what is going on, they are doing stuff that goes well over his head and when he does or says anything science related he comes across as a backwards hick and really just highlights what an abject failure of a president he is. We really should follow our brave and glorious president's example and burn all the books and go back to believing the world is flat.

07/21 A Few Lesson On Being Famous
Yesterday has been child star Haley Joel Osment crashed his car in Hollywood while he survived with only mild injuries he is an excellent example of what not to do when famous. A) When you are quasi-famous or once famous try to look the part, our Haley Joel crashed a Saturn Station Wagon which screams penniless wannabe soccer mom louder than it does failed child star. B) Don't have your agent make excuses, it appears he wasn't wearing his seatbelt which really isn't a big deal but when your agent starts making statements that you were it becomes an issue and ensure you won't get that big Click or Ticket commercial you've been auditioning for. C) The injuries in the crash will be nothing compared to the deathblow it serves to your career, better to die in the accident at least you will be fondly remembered. D) Don't have a name that is too complicated for me to write on the first attempt because I don't like retyping your name over and over. So in summary if you are famous do not get in accidents in grocery getters especially if you are barely quasi-famous because everybody on the Internet takes a great deal of joy in making fun of your peril.

07/21 And On the 5th Day It was Done
After much arduous work I can proudly announce that both the first installment of Suburbia Scary and the newest chapter of Sword and the Moon are up. It took plenty of work now hopefully somebody will read it.

07/21 Sergeant Frog
I've started watching a new anime series called Keroro Gunso, or Sergeant Frog which is absolutely hilarious. An advanced alien squad arrives to prepare Earth for invasion, the only problem their squad leader, Sergeant Frog is captured by a schoolgirl who lives with her mother and brother, the mother may or may not have a crush on Sergeant Frog, she works for a manga company that is looking for the next big thing, which is good because she usually cooks the pets they bring home, yes cook. They live in a nice house in Japan but they aren't rich, in the basement a psycho 'killed' a girl and her ghost haunted the room that becomes Sergeant Frog's place. The series I really funny, I've only seen four episodes so far but I find myself laughing out loud a lot. It is too Japanese to be licensed, in the second episode one of the funnier bits involves a girl who can't say Fuyuki's (the brother) name and it comes out a bunch of funny words in Japanese, floating, winter, etc which won't translate very well and the series is fairly busy when it comes to Japanese all over the screen. I love it truly one of the funnier series out there and you should give it a try if you like frogs with ambitions to conquer the world.

Cheers.

Week 14

06/25 VENTURE!! Fucking Venture Brothers!!
I just finished watching the first episode of Venture Brothers Season Two. I have been waiting for this for 18 months, 18 fucking months for this. Thank god it was fabulous, if they half assed this I would have finally fucking lost it. Adult Swim took way too fucking long to give these guys another season, it isn't like they have lots of really great stuff anymore, sure Moral Orel is funny at times for being so blasphemous and they have Family Guy but the rest off the stuff they have out these days licks sweaty hairy cocksack, Boondocks, Tom Goes to the Mayor, Stroker and Hoop, 12 oz Mouse, I could go on but in short it all sucks. True Korgath has a lot of promise but that was one episode it will take over a year to see any more. I have to say I am so glad that the season premiere didn't suck if it had sucked I would have just died.

06/27 Venture Brothers Continued
I have been watching the Venture Brothers Season 1 DVD and listening to the commentary tracks on a few episodes, which is both a blessing and curse because I love the two guys but they didn't do commentaries on every episode which is so evil.

06/30 I'm Horrible
I have all but forgot my rants this week, I have been doing other things and totally forgot about it. There were a couple of wanted to do but I will save them for the extra special rant next week. Wow, I totally forgot about this, ooops.

Cheers.

Ultimate Halloween Costume, Porn Star

07/01 Friends in Porn
I had a friend, I haven't talked to her in some time but she is still considered a friend, although a distant one in my book. A couple of years ago I heard from another friend of mine that she had dropped out of college and was doing porn. I put very little stock into it, but didn't dismiss it, that was until this week when I finally saw her in porn. It was one of those things were I looked at it, at first said, 'No Can't Be' and then said, 'Well, Maybe' and then realized, 'Oh Holy Fuck It Is Her.' The face is still the same, the body has matured since I knew her, and she certainly has more tattoos but yep it is her. It is kinda surreal, certainly makes porn more real, porn to me always was kinda a nebulous quasi-reality, it existed but I always put it in the realm of fantasy, like a world were orcs and elves live, and make porn, which is really weird and I am getting off subject. But seeing her, true she isn't using her real name, suddenly made it real, I know somebody who makes cheap 'reality' porn. I am going to keep most of the other details hush-hush for the sake of civilians who don't know, I don't want to be the Paul Reverie of this tale who rides through cyberspace announcing to every middlesex, village, and farm that somebody I knew it a porn chick. Would you tell your parents you're doing porn? It would make for really awkward Thanksgivings coming home and sitting around the table with all the relatives and somebody asks you how work is going and you start rambling about butt plugs, cumshots, the annual STD check-up, Hairy Larry whose dork is the size of your forearm and your creepy director who always insists that Hairy Larry plows your backdoor despite the fact that it hurts like mad or that you are planning to make the switch from the Bitches Gone Bananas website to the Cum Dumpster Sluts website. That would make for a fun Thanksgiving sure enough, Thanksgiving is awkward enough without out your cousins snickering because they saw you getting plowed by two creepy looking guys with shaved nuts and thong-back tan lines.

07/01 Pot Doesn't Lead to Other Drugs, It Leads to Grave Robbery
Funny News Story From Vermont in broad strokes a guy stole a human head from a tomb to fashion into a bong which is both the funniest and the saddest thing I have ever heard. The news story felt like it was written by the people from the 1890s who have never heard of either goths or bongs. I would love to know how he was planning on turning the skull into a bong, would you load the pot into the skull and firing it up from the nose and sucking the smoke out of the eyes sockets? Irregardless it is really nice to know the world is full of complete loonies with way too much time on their hands.

07/02 More Venture Brothers
The Venture Brothers is really one of the few shows I get excited about watching. This week's episode proved by very funny and entertaining as hell. This is one of those times I am glad I have TiVo, because in a couple of places I found myself laughing so hard I missed lines of dialogue but I have the miracle of TiVo which allowed me to go back and listen to the lines I missed, plus I recorded the episode and watched it another time tonight. The only problem I have is now that I know Hank and Dean can die, I want them to, and in really horrible ways. I know it sounds awful but they are clones, we should be able to really abuse clones. But at the rate they are abusing Doc Venture I think they'll need a clone for him before too long, he almost lost an eye this week which was good and gory.

07/02 Clones in Modern Society
I am for cloning, I think it can serve mankind in many positive ways. I know the reasons against it but all but a few are based entirely in religious and moral grounds which are about as scientific as saying the world was created in 6 days. I think we should look into cloning for organ transplant, tens of thousands of people die every year because their kidney's fail, leukemia, liver damage, lung damage, and an assortment of other diseases that require organ transplantation and if we could find a way to grow organs for an ill person from cells it would save many lives. But aside from rational reasons we can also have some fun, reality TV taken to the next level, we could have gladiator matches televised and we could use clones, we could have extreme sports with no helmets and pads, in movies we could use clones for real stunts. Hey they're just clones.

07/03 A Wash
I hate days like this. I can't seem to get anything accomplished or get the energy necessary to accomplish anything. I really hate not being able to accomplish anything, it drive me so thoroughly nuts. There is nothing that aggravates me more than not being able to do something because unlike the rest of life's little aggravations this is something that I directly influence. Creativity is truly feast or famine, I wish I could bottle half of my creativity on truly creative days to save for later because I must lose at least a 1/3 of my creative ideas on days when my cup runs over. What a bother.

07/04 4th of July
There are 2 holidays for me that have a massive amount of sentimental importance to me, Halloween is the first and 4th of July is second. When I was younger and living in Colorado 4th of July was the coolest time ever because I would buy a crate full of fireworks and would have the most fun with them. It ran the gamut of stuff from Jumping Jacks and Flashing Signals, to Tanks and Aircraft Carriers, to Saturn Missile Batteries and Tube Rockets, to Mortar Shells and Finales. The most fun I personally had wasn't with the big stuff that shot up into the air and made a splashy boom but the little stuff, stuff I could monkey with. My all time favorite were Tanks, tanks were simple it was a green box with cheap ass plastic wheels that a small rocket in the rear would push it along as it shot sparks and flames from the turret and the two guns in front. On the surface not that spectacular but you could put two tanks facing each other and have a tank duel or four tanks facing a center point and have a melee and then you have fire crackers or sparkling bombs or flashing signals that you could put inside the tank because there was a lot of room inside the tank. These allowed the tank to explode when lit on fire or when its guns went off which made the tank duels much more exciting. There were also helicopters which had a spinner on top which made the thing rise up into the air. It took some serious experimentation for me to get it just right so I could get the helicopter to raise up in the and explode in mid-air, that took Black Cats and extra fuse and a lot figuring out how to get the fuse to be long enough to allow the thing to get airborne. 4th of July was a great time for me, I would get up at the crack of dawn and start preparing for that night while eating peaches from the tree in our backyard, to this day I associate peaches with fireworks. Then in the afternoon I would start lighting stuff off, Black Cats, Mighty Mites, and Thunder Bombs with some bottle rockets mostly, usually involving those cheap ass Wal-Mart GI Joe knock-offs Corps figures. We'd blow those guys into little pieces in the prairie behind our house. We'd dig trenches and stage mock battles complete with explosions. Usually somebody would end it by planting a Silver Salute or M-90 in the ground and blow the guys into orbit, which is funny until they fall back to earth on top of you all molten plastic and hot. Then it was dinner, usually barbeque, not just because it is American but because it is good. Then came the long wait, I swear they put 4th of July as close to the longest day of the year just to fuck with kids who want to shoot off fireworks. When it finally got dark enough you hauled out all the goodies. In our immediate neighborhood there were 4 big displays, ours, the Jensens' and the Roots', the Davis', and then one in the Greenbelt. It was such a blast we'd shoot from 9:30 until the box ran out which was around 2 in the morning, it was so much fun. I think that is one of the reasons the universe decided I needed to be fucked hard, I was having too much fun in my life it was just too good. If you aren't incredibly miserable then you will never appreciate how good you once had it. The last 4th of July I lived in Pueblo we went all out, and it was fabulous. The two summers I went back I did shoot off more fireworks but some of the magic was lost, and the year I shot fireworks off in this state it wasn't the same at all, it felt like I was trying to light a fire under water, I was going through the motions but it wasn't happening right. These days I can't even seem to do anything on the 4th of July, my family isn't exactly a sociable bunch, those we do have normal family relations with usually it is done on Sunday so when 4th of July is any other day nothing happens. I can't watch fireworks, never made any sense to me just to watch them. Living all those years in Colorado ruined mediocre 4th of July bullshit for me. These days this is just another day, a shame but Minnesota can do that to you.

07/04 About Time
This week Bandai announced they are going to release the 2 re-cap movies to Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 1st and 2nd Gig. That is good, I like as much Ghost in the Shell as possible.

07/04 I Need To Have A Costume Party
I don't know why but all day I have been thinking of really cool Halloween costumes to wear, I have not donned a Halloween costume in 9 years ever since the last costume party I attended with my first girlfriend. I have thought of at least a dozen cool or unusual costumes to wear, first Hopping Vampire, that is one I would really like to do, basically you wear formal Manchu Dynasty clothes and put a piece of yellow paper in front of your face and hop about, lots of fun and will confuse the hell out of everyone. Second Lupin III, recently I saw a green sport jacket in a thrift store and if I was a 52 large I would have bought it just to have it but the thing looked like a circus tent and smelled like a cat box. Three Gialli Killer, basically you dress up in a black trench coat and fedora and put a blank white stocking over your face and presto gialli killer, you can spend the night stalking the pretty girls and wait for them to take their clothes off so you can strike. Four Pervert Clown, basically you don't shave for a few days before Halloween and then you apply the make-up then you get a clown costume and get it dirty, not filthy but dirty and then sprinkle the cheapest booze you can find in the liquor store on it and carry the rest in your back pocket, spend the evening asking kids if they want to see some puppies in your van. Five Half a Horse, while I don't really believe those two person horse costumes exist I think it would be funny as hell to walk around as half a horse. Six Conspiracy Survivalist Nut, basically combat helmet, combat boots, gas mask, armed to the teeth, spend your evening talking about conspiracies, use words like 7 Jewish Bankers, Illuminati, Free Masons, the Cult of Oprah you get the idea, yes this is a ready made costume for Pat. Seven He-Man, while I personally wouldn't do this I would cheer on the guy who has stones big enough to go to a costume party wearing nothing but a furry loin cloth and five pounds of body oil, extra points for cutting the furry loin cloth out of your mother's fur coat. Eight Accident Magician, basically you dress up as a turn of the century magician, none of this pussy David Blaine horseshit that man is a big enough cocksucker the Martians can see him from their front doors, and then get a cut-away saw and put it over your stomach with enough fake blood, you can also dress up as the magicians assistant and do the same gag if you are a female. Nine, Scooby Doo villain, basically get the cheapest ghost costume you can find that involves a plastic mask or toss a white sheet over you and cut two eyeholes in it and spend the evening trying to scare everyone away from the chips because you believe buried Spanish Doubloons are at the bottom. Ten Florida Plastic Surgeon, first cover your entire body in a gallon of tanning cream, the cheapest shit you can find so that your skin is orange then find as many fake gold chains as possible and a pinky ring or three as well. Then put on your scrubs soak your hair in gel and wear rank cologne, not this part is optional depending on if you are okay being called a racist, speak in a Spanish accent and explain your medical degree is from Ecuador and then spend the rest of the night handing out home made coupons for buy one get one free breast implants and other plastic surgery options. Eleven Jason motivational speaker, you wear a suit and a hockey mask and hand out cards that say you are a motivational speaker, then just breath heavily and stare or straight up Jason, I've always wanted to put on the greasy jumpsuit and the hockey mask and carry a machete around. Twelve is my favorite, I'd just wear my normal clothes, and when anybody asks I tell them I escaped from the set of Magnum PI, its twenty years later and they won't let us go. I really need to have a costume party but then again it would turn into a total disaster.

07/04 Great Panty Scavenger Hunt
Pantsu Getta, Japan's newest odd hobby, we are too lazy of a society we just look at some internet porn and work one out, in Japan they go hunting for panties, sounds kind of fun in a weird sort of way.

07/06 These Damn Holiday Weeks
I have a touchy internal clock, things can throw it and it will fuck with me for several days. This week has been one of the biggest skull fucks for my internal clock. I am exactly 24 hours behind, when I start thinking I am a day behind and I can't tell myself that I am wrong. It is so damn disorienting.

0707 Good Bad Ideas
You ever have one of those ideas that you think of merely as a joke but then on second thought you go, well maybe. I had one of those thoughts last night, I wrote it off entirely as a joke but the more I think of it the more I actually am thinking about doing it. I had recently heard a fan commentary for the Castle of Cagliostro, it isn't half bad and last night while watching one of my favorite slasher movies, the Slumber Party Massacre, I began to kick around the idea in my head of doing a fan commentary for it. Nobody ever gives this movie the respect it deserves, they simply write it off as another pointless slasher but it is one of the best slashers made in the golden age of slasher movies. Now I just have to actually find the stuff I need to do it. It is so weird that I am seriously considering doing this, I hate the sound of my voice I can't actually stand to hear it on the answering machine but yet I am considering doing a 90 minute commentary of which I will have to listen to it but I think it will be fun enough to actually do it that I am willing to do it and post it on the Internet to let everyone listen to it.

07/07 War on Drugs
Last week I saw a special on VH-1, probably the first last and only program on the entire channel that actually added anything to our society of any worth, it was about our Drug Culture from the 20s to today. It was very interesting because it really didn't pull any punches and raised several very interesting questions. Then as if to prod me in my ass all week I keep running across all these anti-drug commercials which is very unusual because I watch almost no TV that isn't added by TiVo. This got me thinking about the War on Drugs and can we win it? My answer is no not in the current state of affairs. There is absolutely no chance to win the war on drugs unless we change the rules of the game, we can't just look at them all as evil, many of them are less addictive and less harmful than tobacco and alcohol. The best sign that the war on drugs is being lost is my generation. Look at my generation, I was born in 1980 and have spent the last 25+ years on the frontlines of the war on drugs' advertising campaign, from Just Say No, This Is Your Brain, My Anti-Drug, to now Above the Influence and all the studies show that drug usage among teenagers while may fluctuate never shows any major reduction in numbers, I also have certain distrust of these numbers unless they are gathered by medical or psychiatric groups who aren't invested in anti-drug policy. We really need to re-assess how we are going to fight this war on drugs and do it in a rational unemotional way which of course we can never do, this country is too easily swayed by extremists. In the beginning we spent 17 million dollars on this war, this year we will spend 30 billion in just over 30 years and what do we have to show for it? Exactly.

07/07 Big Week
It has been a very big week here, lots to say and lots to do. Unfortunately I have become insanely lazy in many other places. I have two new chapters of Sword and the Moon done but haven't gotten around to posting them and what is more frustrating is that I haven't yet finished my first Suburbia Scary, which I really want to do but have had a couple of off days and have spent the rest busy with other things 4th of July really wasn't a help either. Hopefully I will have some time this weekend and into next week to hopefully finish up that story because I have a couple of other ideas rolling about I would like to work on but am really waiting to finish Suburbia Scary before throwing myself on them. But before I go I want to add a cute little picture that I made and want to put on a T-shirt.

Cheers.

Looking For My Clock Tower

06/12 Mexican Idol
Currently our house is being painted and because this is labor it is being done by Mexicans and this means they have the radio on. I haven't heard this much Mexican music since I lived in Colorado, it is rather pleasant the stuff is undeniably catchy. But to add to the interesting events at my house about half of the guys working here really like singing to the music so not only are they painting my house they are trying out for Mexican Idol. I'm pretty sure they do this to screw this the white people whose homes they normally work at, while I don't speak much Spanish, I still know just enough to figure out what is going on. I'm just happy they are here to paint the house I didn't get to go to Colorado because of this so I want it done.

06/12 Mexican Radio
We really need a construction radio station, of this means in Spanish but all the adds should be geared towards construction, there could be construction based DJs. These guys build our world we need to pat them on the head once and awhile.

06/12 I Like Andy Sidaris
I rather like Andy Sidaris, his idea of making tongue and cheek spy movies with busty Playboy Playmates in Hawaii was true genius. If you had cable in the 80s or early 90s you have seen one of his movies. They really were wonderful hyperbole of the 80s action movie, it has more guns, more explosions, and more DDs than any other action movie, and they knew it and exploited it for all it was worth. I like these movies, they aren't serious, rather they wallow in their shallowness. Most people write them off as cheap 80s crap but these movies were not meant to win Oscars but then again the movies that win Oscars are usually arty crap. I would love to see more Andy Sidaris movies, there is definitely a direct to video market for this stuff and people like me would love to see more of it. So come on Andy let's get to making some more films here.

You Know Why These Movies Are Great

06/12 Little Miracles
I have been having a less than positive day here, but at least I have a spark here and there of good news. Firstly, Toykopop has announced Kindaichi 14, it doesn't come until November but still it is coming out. The other is GITS Sac 2nd Gig is coming out a month early in August which is also good. Also my massive box from Deep Discount shipped today, I do feel rather sorry for the postman that box plus the one my mother ordered are going to force him to leave his little white truck and walk up to my house to drop it on the steps. At least he doesn't have to haul all the Amazon boxes the UPS guy does, if he did he'd probably start hurling them through the windows in disgust. I do get a lot of boxes from Amazon, usually only containing one or two manga in an order of four or five.

06/13 Pretty
She is really hot, have a look see, Look Here. She is my kind of hot, can't exactly explain it but I do like her. Yummy, Yum Yum

06/14 Roses
My roses are blooming nicely, and they smell so nice. I like my roses, they are a handful to deal with but they are definitely worth it.

Not the best pictures but they were taken by my cell phone

06/14 Cheating Netflix
I love it when I can cheat Netflix just a bit. It really isn't cheating exactly but I have 502 movies in my queue which is 2 more than they normally allow. How this happens is sometimes movies become to rare to rent and they go into a saved column which is separate from your queue, when this happens for a little while it opens a gap between the two queues and if you get there at the right moment you can put more movies into your queue than the allotted 500. It isn't much but when I have a notebook of movies that need to go into the queue above and beyond the 500 it is always nice to get a couple more in sideways.

06/14 Siren Call of the PSP
I don't want to own a PSP but there are more than a few games I'd really like and want to play. Now they are going to release a new Tenchu game for the PSP and a new GTA Vice City game. Add to that the fact that the PSP will work with the PS3 and I keep getting this itching feeling that I am going to end up with one, a used one of course but I will still buy one in the end.

06/15 Not Happy
I understand hermits, I know I could be one but man do I understand them. I had one of those days were in retrospect it would have been better if I had stayed in bed, or maybe under the bed, maybe in a bunker cleaning guns preparing for the apocalypse.

06/16 Lazy Bones
That is all for this week, on Sunday I am updating the Webnovels section because it is the website 4th birthday, can't believe it myself.

Cheers.

Happy 4th Birthday

06/18 Websites' 4th Birthday
I have been doing this for 4 years now, wow that is rather shocking to me. I am rather amazed I am still doing this but I still am. This week I'm going to yammer about things I like rather than things that drive me nuts. I am starting a new story in my Webnovels section so look for that.

06/18 The Man Called Sunshine
Everybody needs a friend like my friend Pat, or as I like to call him Sunshine. He keeps life interesting, extremely interesting and extremely funny. The picture below is one of those moments. He normally doesn't dress like that, well yes he does but doesn't wear the gas mask outside, my neighbors think I am weird enough. In an area where everyone else is mediocre it is good to be around at least one person who is thoroughly insane, makes me feel so much more sane.

06/19 Now This Is A Name
Why can't I have a name like this Vittorio Emanuele Alberto Carlo Teodoro Umberto Bonifacio Amadeo Damiano Bernardino Gennaro Maria of Savoy, and yes that is a real person's name, he is the last heir to the Italian throne.

06/19 Wikipedia Has Neat Stuff
Wikipedia is full of neat stuff, stuff like the Beast of Gevaudan. Wikipedia is a wonderful time waster.

06/20 Human Hyena
Every once and awhile I get hungry late at night but am too tired to actually make anything so I end up foraging like a kitchen hyena this is where I'll eat strange combinations of food. Tonight I wound up eating beef jerky, Dove chocolates, chocolate mint cookies, handful of tortilla chips and orange juice which when combined is rather odd.

06/20 ????
135 Million?, if you this kind of money to waste on a single painting maybe you should think about all those starving kids in the world. This kind of stuff confuses the hell out of me, maybe it is because I don't have this kind of money but shit it is a painting, it doesn't even change the channels on the TV. There is a really nice island in Brazil you could buy and build a gothic castle on and live in luxury the rest of your days for probably half of that, but instead you buy a painting, and it isn't even that nice. People have strange values and buy strange shit. Image what a real person could do with 135 million dollars, imagine how 1350 low income families could benefit from that money. Oh well those who have this kind of money rarely give a shit about anybody else.

06/21 Won the 2nd Kindaichi Movie
First off I didn't know there was a second Kindaichi animated movie, but there it was on E-Bay as big as day so I had to bid for it. The shipping was a bit steep but I won the bid at a grand total of 1.04.

06/22 I Hate My Life
This morning I got up and checked my e-mail among the junk mail, newsletters, and Netflix stuff I found a message from the guy I won the Kindaichi auction off last night. He explains to me that the Kindaichi movie I won last night doesn't have English subtitles like he said in the auction, it has only Chinese subtitles which seeing that I speak no Chinese really do me no good. At least he had the decency to tell me now instead of letting me learn in a few days when I try the DVD for the first time and find out on my own that it has no English subtitles. I really hate when this shit happens it really makes me wish I could learn Japanese and bypass all this fucking nonsense and just watch the stuff from Japan.

06/22 Superman Returns
I may get deported to some secret CIA torture prison for this but I hate Superman, I know this probably makes me thoroughly un-American but I never understood the big deal about him. He flies, can not be harmed by anything save for Krypton, and is a giant spandex wearing Boy Scout. I never understood the appeal of a superhero you can only hurt on a technicality who is always right and always true and pure. I understand that 70 years ago when they came up with him it was a novel idea but now big deal. This goes over to the Superman Returns movie that they are advertising to death on TV, I don't care to see it, even on DVD. In the end I'll catch part of it on HBO in a year or something and go so what. Am I alone in not caring about Superman or am I some sort of sick twisted deviant who is so un-American that I can't see that Superman is the greatest thing since we invented existence? You know back in my comic book reading days I never once read a Superman comic, I thumbed through a friend's copy of the Death of Superman, which lasted all of 6 seconds, but never read one.

06/23 Lovely Haircut
Serves me right for paying 11 bucks for a haircut, I have no hair left. I hadn't had a haircut in some time and it was getting just long enough to begin to bother me so I decided it was time so I went and told them to take an inch and a half off, I like having hair. Well apparently she heard leave an inch and a half because that is all that is left. I hate having no hair, it feels so weird, especially after having some much before. Oh well it will grow back, hopefully.

Cheers.

Kites, Cats, and Nipples, These Are A Few of My Favorite Things

05/28 New Kite OVA
This weekend at Anime Boston, Media Blasters announced they are co-producing a second Kite OVA that should be out sometime in 2007. Of course there is no additional information because that would be too easy. But hey they are making it, that is something.

05/29 Reviving My Faith In Games
All the recent news about the upcoming Playstation 3 and its array of new games has gotten me interested in games again. There was a stretch there of considerable time, I'd say the last game I was really excited about was Resident Evil 4 that I honestly didn't care about games. The biggest problem I have with the Xbox 360 is that all the games look the same, they are sports games which of course are going to be very similar because you can't reinvent the game of football but the other games are all first person shooters. The Xbox people have made a massive mistake of standing too heavy on one leg. Yes you had a hit with Halo, which really is the most overrated thing since sliced bread, but variety is the spice of life lest you become boring. I really blame the 360 for making me pathetic or even disinterested about games because since it has come out there has been a blitz to show off all their new games and everyone of them looked the same just different pretty pictures slapped on top. But now with the PS3 on the horizon they are starting to show off their wares and thankfully they aren't as horribly dull as the 360 games. With the PS3 you actually get RPGs, action adventures, survival horror, not just first person shooter and sports game like you get with the 360. So thanks to Resident Evil 5, Metal Gear Solid 4, and especially to Assassin's Creed, Monster Madness, and a possible Fear Effect 3 I am again starting to get interested in new games instead of replaying old games wondering where the fuck did gaming go wrong.

05/30 Officially Summer
It is now officially summer because I have dug into my dresser and found my shorts. Usually I don't start wearing shorts until July or sometimes not at all but the recent heat has convinced me to put them on in place of my normal jeans. I don't know if it is because of my cold blooded nature or because I really know what heat is but I rarely wear shorts in this state. But this weekend it was hot enough that I had to finally breakdown and put on shorts to work outside. And to pour gas on the grease fire that is humid vs no-humid there is a significant difference between 90 and 60 percent humidity and 90 and 15 percent humidity. There are those, especially from this swamp that say it is 90 either way but you don't take into effect the fact that 60 percent humidity makes you feel like you're wearing a wet fur coat outside where 15 is much easier to tolerate.

05/30 New Cagliostro
One of the earliest DVDs I ever bought was the Castle of Cagliostro, I think it was the 4th or 5th DVD I actually bought. Now in August Manga is finally putting out an updated collector's edition of it. So far they have been rather mum on the details, which is fine, I'd buy it even if it was nothing but the movie. As silly as it sounds I was always worried I'd wear out my ancient Cagliostro DVD and never be able to find a new one. Now with a fancy new one coming out I can finally alay my fears of wearing out my Cagliostro DVD which I've owned for 8 years.

05/31 Wonderful Things
If Dark Horse keeps this stuff up they are going to be chiseled in the stone of time for their greatness. First the flipped Gunsmith Cats will have 80 pages of previously unreleased material which is a boon but then they dropped another massive bomb shell, the kind of bomb shell that blows up the Moon in the Bugs Bunny cartoons, Kenichi Sonada is doing new Gunsmith Cats, called Gunsmith Cats BURST and Dark Horse has licensed it, the first volume will be released in 2007. I am giddy with joy, giddy I tell you, this is fabulous news, not only do I get 80 new pages of Gunsmith Cats I get at least 4 new volumes (that is the current volume count in Japan) of totally new Gunsmith Cats. There was a point in time when I didn't like Dark Horse, their often delayed titles, the extra money they charge for each volume but in the last year they have picked world class manga to release, it has been on time, in excellently made volumes, and keep getting the stuff that makes me giddy with joy. At the same time Tokyopop has done nothing but bungle. It is strange how things can change so drastically and so fast. So here's to Dark Horse, truly living up to its name once again, you guys kick serious ass.

06/01 Nipples = Downfall of Society
It took a month longer than I was hoping but I finally got my first Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex novel. True while it did come from Dark Horse, they aren't to blame for the printing snafu, nipples are. Dark Horse found out if they wanted to sell the book in any actual bookstore they couldn't show the two puffy nipples on Motoko. Now I am big fan of nipples, I'm a big fan of breasts in general so it didn't bother me, and their original intent was to put one of those yellow warning stickers over the offending nipples (really that must be an oxymoron) but in so doing they wouldn't be able to sell them in bookstores because it would make it an 'adult' book. What the fuck? Is this how low our society has fallen that even the concept of nipples is deemed so offensive that we have to hide them at all costs. I swear why don't we just elect Christian leaders to run this country, they will run it into the ground faster than those in charge are doing now.

Nipples Will Destroy Western Christian Society

06/02 The Terrors of Suburbia
In the last ten years I have been living in Minnesota I have gone from being fascinated by suburbia and all its intricate rituals to loathing as I loathe little else. So in order not to have an aneurism I have decided to do something creative with my feelings towards suburbia, make a dark comedy about them being killed by all manner of supernatural creatures and their only hope are 4 teenagers who do battle against them. It really is a product of way too much Zombies Ate My Neighbors, which was one of my favorite games back in the day. I've had a lot of fun putting together the most idyllic names for the places in the story, everything should sound pleasant, it makes the chainsaw killing much funnier. I compiled the look of Waterlily Estates from five separate neighborhoods in Colorado, I was originally going to model the entire thing after my neighborhood in Minnesota but god I just couldn't do that, you have to have some creativity and I just couldn't write about boring cookie cutter homes. The five neighborhoods are; my old neighborhood University Park, mainly for the street names, Cherry Creek, a very exclusive neighborhood in Denver which had some really cool gardens I wanted to steal from, the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs for the look of the homes and the large shady trees, and finally to another University Park this one also in Colorado Springs for having a large natural park, which is a Colorado invention of making parks but simply leaving the ground untouched. I take the attitudes and class of my neighborhood in Minnesota but give them the benefit of actually being upper middle class rather than pretending to be. I'm busy working on my first novella for it, which is called Werewolves of Suburbia. I don't think it will be done for next week I am hoping the week after.

06/02 Notes on Housekeeping
I'm once again running out of space, I have eight manga reviews, and three anime reviews done but no space for them. Hopefully I can think of something, because I can't stop reading or watching anime. Sometimes being a cheapskate is troubling.

Cheers.

06.06.06

06/04 Korgoth of Barbaria Review
Last night on Adult Swim premiered Korgoth of Barbaria, in their words a parody of Conan the Barbarian. Which is somewhat true but more honestly it is a homage to all the fantasy works in Heavy Metal magazine. I doubt kids these days remember the movie version of Heavy Metal, but in my day it was one of the coolest things. Several parts of the story take place in a fantasy style world with lots of violence, spraying blood, naked chicks and the hero is voiced by John Candy (No I am not kidding), this is what Korgoth attempted to replicate, down to the particular style of animation used. The blood and guts were very well done, the naked chicks had to have the standard Tarzan bikini because this is TV but all in all they accomplished their goal. The show itself almost worked, it could be a decent series, assuming they actually pick it up. I am not going to say it is great or sucks until I see a little more, it could easily go either way. All in all I would give it a B+, Korgoth needs to be less like Brock Sampson.

06/05 Grand Theft Auto 4
Last night I had a very productive night creatively I came up with a lot of ideas and a lot was accomplished. One of things I ended up thinking about was Grand Theft Auto 4 and how to make it cool. Let's face facts here, the best Grand Theft Auto was Vice City, while the controls were still a little touchy they were a million times better than Grand Theft Auto 3 but more importantly is that it recreated a time and place perfectly. While San Andreas had better controls it fell into the trap that it was just another ghetto hip hop style gansta game that made it just like all the others. The key to success for number 4 is to take the zeigesit of Vice City and tweak the controls of San Andreas, especially the god awful targeting system. I was thinking about a setting, the 80s have been done, the 90s were done, albeit poorly, now either we need to go into the future which would be no end of stupid or back to the 60s. I thought 1968 would be the best year, very important year in world history. I also thought to set it in one of three cities, Tokyo, London, or Paris, three cities I am very sure they will never have the game in. Why those three cities you ask? Well in 1968 those three cities saw massive student protests and in Tokyo and Paris there were large scale riots and those would be a good back drop to set the game against. I don't think this would be done, first it is too ambitious, Grand Theft Auto has gotten into a rut and they are more than happy to stay here, second they won't do it if it is to be set in Europe or Asia because America isn't part of the world, third they won't make it during the 60s because there is still a lot of backlash against it and moving to glorify it at all will be met with criticism and in a time of increasing hostility to game makers I doubt they want to take that chance. Personally I'd really like that, you could have all kinds of crazy 60s European cars, the music of the 60s, the crazy fashions, the crazy times, if done with the care of Vice City it could create an excellent zeitgeist that Grand Theft Auto should have. If Grand Theft Auto 4 ends up being what I think it is, either a hip-hop gansta game or a by the numbers tepid Sopranos style game I doubt I am going to waste my money on it, I've been there and I've done that.

06/05 Of Being Un-American
This morning I read an article in the paper about the International Baccalaureate (wow now that is a word) program and now some schools are looking into introducing it to schools. This is a program that has been around as long as I have been in school, I remember some talk in Pueblo years upon years ago of trying to get federal grant money to sponsor it in my schools but those were the 80s and Reagan was never one to spend any money on education so it went nowhere. In any case it is meeting resistance by Republican leaders who are claiming it is Un-American because the program has a world view to its curriculum rather than a myopic American first view. It really reminded me of a quote from Futurama where they are talking about the election for the world president, one character says 'Who cares about that we live in America', another character corrects him that 'America is part of the world' where he replies 'Man I have been gone a long time'. Now it seems that even wanting to learn about other lands and cultures is Un-American, well I guess you can count me among the Un-American because if we honestly think our way is the best way we are sorely mistaken. Our educational system is a ruin, there are third world nations that have stronger and more robust educational systems than us. We need to stop thinking that we are number 1 and realize we need to fix our broken educational system, if this is a way to start doing it then we should pursue it even if it means toppling the imaginary ivory tower of America in the eyes of our children.

06/05 Wacky World of Turkish Pop Cinema
With each passing year true cult movies become harder and harder to discover. Ten years ago it was J-Horror, now J-Horror is being remade left right and center as fast as Hollywood can shit them out. Gialli was cult, but that now too is being released at an ever increasing pace. True explorers of the strange and unusual like myself are running out of new lands to explore. True there will always be a few cult genres, not because nobody has seen them but rather they are very repulsive and will never go beyond their niche market, things like German Splatter, and Docu-Horror (the Faces of Death stuff). But one of the newer avenues of cinema exploration available is Turkish Pop Cinema. Turkish Cinema like many other countries experienced a cinema explosion in the mid 60s but Turkey's was a little more extreme. One year they made 300 films where before they had made around 40 a year. But it also crashed much harder, by the late 70s Turkish Pop Cinema was all but gone. With the death of Turkish Pop Cinema most of the distributors and studios lost or destroyed large amounts of their films and the few that remained were consigned to dusty vaults to rot needless to say it didn't do well. Now they are starting to make their way slowly back to the world, usually from ancient VHS copies or pieced together from remaining copies. The quality isn't so great but the movies are wild and wacky, they really remind me a lot of Hong Kong cinema that packs in a little bit of everything into their movies and they aren't half bad, at least the two I've seen thus far. This also brings me to another point about movies, DVD quality, the Turkish Pop Cinema stuff is usually fairly rough but it never bothers me, I am use to watching movies in all sorts of quality, but other people seem to disregard a movie just because it isn't in crystal clear HD quality. People are too spoiled and become intolerant too easy these days.

06/05 Zombie Halloween
Today Rob Zombie announced that he is going to be making the next Halloween film. He is taking the movie back to its roots and giving us a little history on Michael Myers. This is the first really good slasher news in years, especially after the ever growing debacle surrounding the next Friday the 13th movie which looks likely to be stuck in development hell for some time to come. At least I know Rob won't screw up Halloween by playing by the PG-13 rules now lets see if Dimension doesn't micromanage this movie straight into the ground.

06/06/06 Ooooh Scary
Well it is now technically it is 06/07 I didn't want to write this post until I was totally sure the world didn't come to an end and I would be standing at the Pearly Gates meeting St Peter and he would give me shit for making fun of 6/6/06 but now it is totally the 7th and gee the day of the beast was rather mundane. The sky wasn't even red or the ground was cracking open and legions of zombies began to shamble about. Personally wouldn't have the world come to an end in the year 666? A funnier joke is that the Number of the Beast is 616 which meant the world should have ended the first of the month in the US and the 6th of January in the rest of the world. People need to find meaning in random things and then have this bad habit of holding on them too hard for their own good. But alas the world didn't end now I have to wait until 2012 to see if the Mayan Calendar apocalypse theory is real.

06/07 More of a Disaster Than Yesterday
Yesterday was supposed to be the apocalypse yet I got more accomplished yesterday than today. I hate these days were I can't get nothing done, it is just so frustrating.

06/08 WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!?!?
WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!?!?. In the past shit has come around that confuses me, befuddles me, gives me a fucking headache as I try to wrap my head around it, but this, this tops it all. I really think it is high time we take to the street with our torches and pitchforks and clean Hollywood out. In truth now that the initial shock has worn off this will end up like Lupin, Akira, Dragonball Z, Evangelion, Kite, and all the other anime live action movies, it ends up rotting on a shelf. But what the fuck are they thinking? They can't actually show this movie in this country due to the insane cuts required by the MPAA but yet they are going to make an American version of a movie they can't show. They should turn it into a teen sex comedy like American Pie or better a musical. It is a sad state of affairs when the only original ideas from Hollywood are actually somebody else's.

06/09 Heavy Metal
Heavy Metal is one of my favorite animated features, it really is part of the long lost art of domestic adult animation. Heavy Metal was the peak of the art form that rose in the late 70s and had played itself out in the mid 80s. For many years the excellent rock soundtrack that accompanied this film kept it from being properly released. The first time I saw it was on a bootleg tape. I have always liked it, it is dirty, violent, and animated three things that when done right make an excellent movie. My favorite segment is the B-17, it really is the best enclosed horror setting and it takes a lot of imagination to come up with it. The truest horror is being trapped in an enclosed location with certain death, think being trapped in a tool shed with Jason Voorhees. It is how Alien worked so well, you were trapped in a space ship with the living embodiment of unnatural violent death, you can't pull the space ship over to the side of the road and get out. My second favorite is Dar just because it is John Candy, or at least his voice, and he is having wild kinky sex. This really is a lost genre that should be resurrected, especially with the popularity of anime these days, but if they do they can't just remake anime titles like the domestic manga which is nothing but cheap knock-offs of manga stories it has to be all natural.

Cheers.

Avenge Me Boys! Avenge Me!!

05/13 'Educational' Films
I love those ridiculous 50s and 60s educational films that peddled that closed minded Leave It to Beaver World that people still cling to believing this is the way the US should be. The latest classic gem is Perversion for Profit a charming little documentary that makes the most outlandish claims including porno leads to moral decay which leads to communism, and 16 of the 19 great civilizations fell because of porno. My biggest wish would be to grab the guy in the documentary in a time machine and bring him to the 21st century and show him the Internet. I'm not sure if he would have a stroke or his head would simply explode but man would it be fun.

You just know this guy is a real closet freak

05/14 Just For My Crowing
After beating Resident Evil 4 on Professional 3 times I had amassed a grand total of 4,187,190 Pestas, that is a lot of money.

05/15 Quest For the Strongest Genes
I am a true mongrel when it comes to ethic heritage, I am Irish, Scottish, English, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, German, Czech, and Hungarian. If you break down the German I would end up a little Polish too because part of my family came from Prussia which is now part of Germany and part of Poland. My goal in life is to marry a woman that can add to my ethic diversity and then when we have children I am going to create a big board with all our collected nationalities on it and tell them they have to find a partner that has something that isn't on the list, be it Asian, Pacific Islander, Latin American, Eastern European, Africa, whatever and then to pass this list on to their children. My goal is within three generations have the strongest genes ever, genes that are so robust and diverse that they would laugh off space plague. Because it is breeding outside your race that is the key to a strong healthy society, you inner-bred long enough you'll bred yourself right into the arms of plagues that will wipe you out because it is easy to kill off people with the same general genetic type. Inner-breeding is the key to keeping the human race alive long enough for us to be killed off when the goes changes to a red dwarf in a few million years. Yes I understand that my advocating breeding with the mud people is offensive to the white power folks but they are a wonderful example of my argument, you inner-breed long enough you end up dumb as the white power folk.

05/16 I Have Nothing Against...
This little statement really drives me fucking nuts, if you don't like Brokeback Mountain just say it, don't start off by quantifying that you don't have anything against gays, cowboys, space aliens, rapists, Nazis, chainsaw child killers, Bigfoot. Just say it, grow a pair and say it. Who cares if somebody calls you homophobic who fucking cares, don't pussy around.

05/17 Thoughts Upon A Red Dawn
For those who didn't grow up in the 1980s will not have the same reaction to this film as those who did, like myself, the movie itself is rather funny for it hasn't aged well at all. The movie for those who haven't seen it basically Communists drop into rural Colorado as part of the invasion of the US. The fate the area, nay the world rest on the shoulders of the local high schoolers. The movie is just so much Reagan era propaganda, and I am fairly certain it is shown at every NRA meeting in the country. The biggest problem I had with the movie was the total lack of geography in the movie, all those who are not from Colorado will have no idea what I am talking about but who cares. First the town is supposedly someplace near Raton Pass which is exactly on the border between New Mexico and Colorado, which if you intend to invade the state you have to take that pass and hold it because you can't drive tanks through the mountains. Okay that is all fine and dandy but when they go run into the mountains they hide out in Arapaho National Forest which is outside of Denver which is only a distance of about 400 miles apart so either they sprouted wings or teleported there. That was the biggest problem I had with the movie. The rest I just found funny, the blatant NRA propaganda involving the dangers of registering your guns, the logic errors of how a group of dumb-ass teenagers can suddenly become a group of highly trained guerrilla warriors in under a month with no training or instruction, or how until the third act the Russians and Cubans are so totally clueless that they can't manage to even hurt one of the Wolverines. In short this movie is an excellent historical document but an awful movie. You get to have a lens on Reagan propaganda and their fear mongering about the dreaded communist and all the weak willed leftists and environmentalists.

05/17 Quest for Quest From Reagan era propaganda, to Kennedy era propaganda, my Netflix selections this week really run the spectrum. I like Jonny Quest, it is hokey but the animation is solid and it is fairly entertaining. It was made in the early 60s when science was the vogue and believed that scientists were hot stuff. I was watching one of the episodes on the second disc and Dr Benton Quest basically invented LSD to keep astronauts calm and placid during extremely long rides in space. I don't think LSD and all them flashing lights on a space ship would be a great combination.

With Hadji the Streetwise Hindu Boy

05/18 Could It Be True??
From E3 there came some great rumors about resurrection of Fear Effect for the PS3 in connection to a movie that thankfully isn't being made by Uwe Boll but rather Stanley Tong, who has worked for a long time with Jackie Chan in Hong Kong. I love this series, it was a great survival horror series with a solid cyber-punk setting that never really got the love it deserved. Fear Effect: Inferno was the third game that was completed but Edios refused to give the company making the game any more money forcing them to declare bankruptcy and the game never came out. Then my fears grew a few months back when Uwe Boll was talking about making a Fear Effect movie but now a competent Hong Kong director is helming the movie and Edios is not saying anything about the game which is basically a big green light on making a Fear Effect game for the PS3 makes me a very happy guy. Sometimes good things happen.

A Peek Behind the Curtain
I have completed a new story this week, it is by far my most intense, graphic, and definitely not for children. I basically wrote it because I just wanted to do something a little more graphic and wanted to see how far I could push myself before I ended up writing porn. This is pretty violent, it is fairly graphic, I like to keep my writing different, if I wound up writing the same thing over and over it would get boring. On average I get 5 to 6 new ideas a day, of those 2 are actually useful, the other 4 are usually are either too silly, or way too fucked up. Every once and awhile I get a really good idea for something that doesn't seem to fit anywhere but it is too good to forget. I have had one of those ideas recently that I really, really like but have no idea where to put it. This is how it goes: It is at night there are two men digging a hole somewhere out in the desert with a third man watching standing next to a body wrapped in black trash bags and duct tape. The two men finishing digging the whole and climb out of the hole and pick up the body. The third man watches as the lower the body into the hole. As they lower the body into the hole the third man produces a small pistol and shoots them both, their bodies dropping into the hole with the body in black plastic. The third man starts to bury all three as the body in the black plastic begins to struggle against his hefty bag death shroud, his face pushing against it as he screamed for help.
It is a great idea but I don't where to get it stick, knowing my luck before I get to use it Quentin Tarantino or some other low talent hack will steal it.

05/19 My Favorite Director: David Lynch
This week I want to talk about my favorite director, David Lynch. Most people have no idea who he is but everyone will recognize him from his most famous creation, Twin Peaks. David Lynch is one of a tiny handle of directors whose style is so singular nobody else can imitate it or even comes close to it. His movies are totally unforgettable, you can watch any of his movies and you will always find something new and probably crazy. His movies are a surreal nightmare through lands which we travel every day. I first found out about David Lynch when I watched Twin Peaks on ABC, yes I saw the original run of the show fifteen years ago. Since then I have seen everything he has made, from Blue Velvet with Dennis Hooper and his ether induced madness to Mulholland Drive, the one were Naomi Watts tries women and everything in between. I love his work because he never whores out to the mainstream, he stays true to his genius. He is truly a genius, many other filmmakers could try to make a David Lynch style movie but would fail but he always succeeds. Nobody makes films like David Lynch, nobody has the ability and the sheer grip on madness to do so.

Coming Soon Inland Empire

Cheers.

Week 9

05/20 Starting a Punk Band
I have no musical talent whatsoever, I couldn't play a kazoo without fucking it up this more or less excludes me from ever starting a band but it doesn't keep from sharing my collection of quality Punk Band names:
Douching the Sex Robot.
Free Beer
All Nude Tonight
Switchblade Pussycat
Killing Kermit
Monkey War Machine
Closed For Repairs (Okay this is a really bad name but hey it would memorable)

05/23 Funny Anime Idea
I have this funny idea for a spy style anime story, it won't work as story because it is a lot of visual jokes. The story is about a well meaning but inept female spy with large breasts. The gadget maker makes gadgets for the specific purpose of looking up, through, down, between her clothes. She always manages to win the day due to the fact that the villains are equally dumb but not nearly as busty.

05/24 I Feel Sorry For Some People
I really do, there are some people that I believe are totally unable to really enjoy themselves because they wrap themselves up in such silly shit and truly feel the need to yammer about it even though nobody really gives a flying shit. For example a Netflix user review for a Japanese movie called Neighbor No 13 (which by the way is really, really good) posted this as his review of the movie: Today I viewed the film "The Neighbor No. Thirteen", a Japanese import directed by Shido Nakamura (2005). In the film I was shocked to see the character played by Hirofumi Arai wearing a "Chief Wahoo" Cleveland Indians tee shirt. What was shocking to me is not the fact that baseball has been adopted so thoroughly into the Japanese culture, but that the negative aspects of the sport, the racist mascots which remain to plague its current nature have been able to slip, unfiltered, into the Japanese cultural pallet without regard for its underlying racist connotations and moral destructiveness. Certainly the responsibility for the creation and continuation of these racist mascots are placed mainly upon the shoulders of those who have the power to change them (namely those within the sport). Nevertheless, it is the duty of people within the arts and media (actors, directors, and writers) to set the tone of acceptability within a culture. Therefore, by openly promoting racist images, such as Chief Wahoo, Hirofumi Arai disgraced himself and the Japanese film industry. His use of the image, though possibly motivated by ignorance, has assisted in the continuation of negative stereotypes on a global scale. In our modern era, when pursuing creative endeavors it is one's responsibility to strive for positive ends. Without accepting such responsibility one can only succeed at creating marginal art that has no real voice or influence within a progressive global society. Therefore, to those in the global sphere, in the future do not openly and blindly accept pop culture as a positive standard - especially if it is coming out of the United States. For doing so only tends to globally popularize ignorance. I had to put the entire thing in because the whole thing is both funny and incredibly sad. Funny, because he is being serious and sad, because he is being serious. There are as so many truly bad things happening the world today to obsesses over something as trivial as this really shows you need to get some therapy because if you get this angry over trivial matters when it comes to really important shit your fucking head will explode.

05/24 Da Vinci Stay Dead
I really wanted to keep silent about this silliness but I can't seem to escape everybody talking about it. First off I don't really care if Da Vinci had a code or if he was full of shit, it is fiction no more no less but the god damn Christian have found something that lets them play their favorite game, we are the persecuted minority oh woe is us. First off Christian take a real long hard look at yourselves you guys are the kings of intolerance so you demanding to be treated kindly and with respect is a bit hypocritical, just a bit. I saw the Passion of the Christ, most violent and un-redeeming two hours and twelve minutes of my life but you guys are all for that, I didn't start writing letters saying you guys made the Romans or the Jews look bad I just said okay that is their perspective and went on my merry way, try that first. My opinion of if Jesus took off with Mary Magdeline, well if she looked anything like Monica Bellucci who played her in the Passion of the Christ, I not only understand, he deserves a high five for it. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, the problem is we have no information, we have almost no information about him at all outside the bible which isn't a primary source, maybe he was just human after all. What really set this off was a column in the Star Tribune that the liberal, leftist, commie, California, queer media is ignoring the protests of the poor, horribly treated, Christian majority of this country. They covered the riots over the pictures in the Danish newspapers that angered the Muslims but they aren't being as sensitive and worrisome over the Da Vinci Code. Christians have found that not only can they play the victim but they like it, guess what you assholes are still running this country, you aren't being fed to fucking lions in the Coliseum anymore. IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE MOTHERFUCKING COCKSUCKING DA VINCI CODE, JAM YOU DAMN FINGERS IN YOUR FUCKING EARS AND HUM REAL LOUD UNTIL IT IS OVER AND SHUT THE FUCK UP. Guess what we don't want to fucking hear your pissing and moaning anymore, just shut up and let right thinking people get on with their lives. Sorry for all of that, I read one more thing about the Da Vinci Code or hear another History Channel spot about uncovering the truth behind the lies of the Da Vinci Code I will be rather tempted to go dig Da Vinci up and do something really profane to his bones.

What Would You Chose, Her or being flogged and nailed to a pair of 2x4s?

05/24 Ultimate Resident Evil
I have been going old school lately playing my old Playstation games on my Playstation 2 and I have been doing some thinking. While I really did love Resident Evil 4 but there was something abstract about the setting, the village, the castle, the crazy para-military island were all great but there is something instantly recognizable with the city like in Resident Evil 2 or 3. I also liked the gloomy imposing gothic structures like the police station and the clock tower from those games. I'd like a game with lots of zombies to shoot at and a wider range of weapons, more pistols, submachine guns, rifles, crossbows, psychotic kittens a little more spice in the weaponry. I'd also like a little more carrying capacity, this is always a problem in Resident Evil because I am a total packrat, I'd like to have pockets, an optional backpack, and a keyring where you save your keys on instead of taking up space in your inventory. Something else I'd like, an insane mode, a mode with a ridiculous, nay, comical amount of zombies coming at you at once. I really need to be allowed to make my own Resident Evil, because from what I have seen Resident Evil 5 is going to have a very Blackhawk Down (their words not mine) look to it and while I really do like Middle Eastern architecture this is Resident Evil, I want gloomy and gothic, not bright, hot and sandy. Hopefully number 6 will return us to the roots of gloomy and gothic zombie killing and will star Ada Wong because she is my favorite, he-he.

05/25 Cool News
Today Turner Classic Movies announced that in October they are going to begin a weekly showcase of bizarre cult movies and it will be hosted by Rob Zombie. Now that is the kind of stuff I like to hear, I also thank god it isn't involving Quentin Tarantino is some way. Rob Zombie is not only a great rocker but he really knows his horror movies. He is also a very personable guy, despite the rather intense appearance. I am really looking forward to see what his picks are for the movies and hope it is just for October because my own list is probably 50 to 100 movies long, true some you can't play on basic cable but others you could.

Rob Zombie Undead Rocker

05/25 Having Fun At the Regime's Expense
There has been a lot of talk lately about the fact that the NSA has been listening to phone calls, while this really shouldn't be that big of a surprise to us anymore, but it seems to be. I believe that they are listening in and are gathering intelligence, so my theory is have a little fun with it. Saying things like Allah Akbar is too predictable, saying things like pipe bomb or eco-terrorism is too serious, what you need to say every time you pick up the phone is simple, simply say Hilary Clinton for President. Now if I can get enough people to do this repeatedly I am sure I can make the government shit itself and you will find my corpse in a ditch somewhere with a bullet in my skull that the government will write off as a suicide but it will be worth it to screw with this government just a little, a nice fuck you to them all for 3 dollar a gallon gas.

05/26 Two Playstation 3 Titles
For those that haven't guessed yet I am getting a PS3. This week I saw two original titles for it that really has me excited. There a bunch of reliable titles, of course Resident Evil 5 and Metal Gear Solid 4, and Devil May Cry 4. The two original titles are Assassin's Creed and Monster Mansion. Assassin's Creed puts you in the place of a Muslim Assassin, the originators of the word as well as the practice, during the 3rd Crusade. You're goal is to assassinate several people in order to accomplish a goal. Now this game looks really amazing, the game takes place in busy towns were you have to blend in with the crowds and get your job done without stirring up a hornets' nest. Now this is a title that will do nothing but tweak the noses of the Christian right, it is both violent and lets you play as a Muslim two things that they won't like. I frankly don't care about the politics, those are for narrowed minded little people, I like how nice the game looks, now open ended the game looks, and how original the game is. The other game is Monster Mansion which is being touted as a new Zombies At My Neighbors, an old school classic and favorite among the old school gamers. I love old school games, and if they do it right this will be a great game.

05/26 Funny Picture
With Teeth like that you'd never lose an argument.

I don't really want to get this close to a tiger in real life

05/26 More Web Novel Stuff
I have some more Web Novel stuff, I have finished my first Sword and the Moon web novel. I really wasn't all that happy with that one, I had some great idea but it didn't light my fire so to speak but the next one I really am outlining and working hard on it so I will like it more, it will be about rage zombies, snow beasts, tattooed exorcist kung-fu chick, and lots of fun. So look for that in the near future.

Cheers.

Happy Birthday to Buddha, 2569 Years Really Old

04/30 Death Metal Disco
These two musical forms when combined together will bring about the song that ends the world. Originally the joke was Death Pop which was a lethal combination of J-Pop, the ultra kawai and genki stuff, and Vemon and the other seriously heavy death metal bands but it is much funnier when you think of a death metal band covering a Bee Gee's song, and thus Death Metal Disco was born.

Through Wicked Alchemy I Shall Meld These Together to Bring About the End of All Things!!

04/30 Man, There Is Shit I Don't Need To Know
Okay let's face it Wikipedia is evil, pure and simple. I went looking for information about Yellowstone out of boredom and it really took a bad turn when I clicked on Bear because from there I ended up Here (Not for the squeamish). Lord all mighty there is shit I can get through life without knowing but due to my particular personality of looking into things that are disturbing I read the entire entry on Bears. It struck me as very, very weird, but that ain't my thing. The best part was at the bottom when you get all the bear terminology, it was very hilarious. It does make sense, I am particular to boobs, very particular to boobs, gay guys have their own likes, fur never struck me as sexy but then again not gay. Man I wonder if Smokey the Bear is like a sex symbol to these guys, you know he probably is.

I will never see Yogi Bear the same way ever again

05/02 Upgrading Netflix
It has taken 2 year and 10 months to finally succumb to the temptation of 4 movies at once. But can you really beat 1.92 a month for a 4th movie at a time, if I am good I could watch 8 movies a week 9 if I am really good. I really like more movies, it allows me to watch stranger stuff without worrying about wasting a disc a week on it.

05/02 Great White Minnesota
Nothing amuses me more than reading the editorial section of the paper, it is always fun to read how Minnesota has so much to say about immigrants. There are two opinions, send every immigrant back to where they came from and live and let live. The fiercest voices to send every non-white back to where ever they came from always seems to come from the suburbs or out state the kind of places that are just seas of white people. Minnesota really doesn't get a say in immigration policy for the simple fact that the state is 89 percent white you morons have no clue what a Mexican looks like in real life let alone ever have dealt with them or really have to worry about the flawless whiteness being invaded by the unwashed mud people horde. I have more hands-on real life working knowledge of Mexicans and Mexican culture than all of you combine, I came from a town that was 2/3s Mexican. I knew more Mexicans when I lived in Pueblo than all the Mexicans that currently live in the state so all you angry white men in the state all need to cool the fuck out the mud people won't destroy your precious white world anytime soon no matter if we ship them all back to where they came from or not. The sad truth is I am more attached to my Mexican brethren than I am to wannabe elitist white trash that populates this state.

05/03 Mystical Dwarves
Filipino Judge got himself in trouble, the store is here. This story is funny by itself, I really don't need to say anything else.

05/03 NEW KINDAICHI!!
Every time a new Kindaichi Case File comes out it is like Christmas to me, but this Christmas comes twice a year (I won't spoil this happy entry by calling Tokyopop a bunch of half-asses). I have a cup of tea and sit down to read the manga all the way through. I do not let anything interrupt me, when I start the volume I will do nothing else until I finish it. I do stop at the end of each chapter to work out my logic behind who I think is the killer and then stop to do a little victory dance when I found out I was right in guessing the killer. I guessed the killer in this volume which is my version of winning the Super Bowl. I am currently 6 for 12, .500, in guessing the killer which fills me with a lot of pride. I was just happy that it wasn't the butler, if it was the butler I was going to cry. I savor these books especially now that they are coming out only every 6 months. I really love this manga, it is far and away my favorite manga, even more than Lupin and Ghost in the Shell, I want everyone to read this manga it is just perfect.

05/03 30 Second Bunny Theatre
In our fast paced society people don't have time to watch the classics so there is this great little website that compresses an entire movie into 30 seconds with bunnies. 30 Second Bunny Theatre it is bunnies and movies, and most importantly it is rather funny.

A Shark With Bunny Ears, Now That Is Weird

05/04 Okay Maybe Lucas Hasn't Completely Lost His Mind
Around the time I first saw the 'new' Star Wars versions on the DVD I had come to the conclusion that George Lucas was totally out of his mind but this news maybe shows that Lucas isn't totally batshit just yet. He has finally seen the light, oh fuck that, he has seen the fucking dollar signs to put out the actual original theatrical versions of the three movies that changed how movies were made. Nevermind the prequel horseshit that stuff will go in history as three prime examples that lightning never strikes twice. Nevertheless it is a good day because I didn't buy the first DVD set because we'll lets face it those movies weren't the Star Wars movies you remember when you were a kid, they are a strange mixture of today's computer generated technology with little bits of the original movie still in there.

05/04 Back Story Is Much Needed
This is funny but it needs a setup in the worst way. Why did this guy stop playing paintball to do his impression of Gollum jerking off? Why did he decide to do it in the first place? It is funny, but wow it is mighty weird.

05/05 Cinco de Mayo
Today is Cinco de Mayo the 5th of May a day that celebrates the Mexicans defeating the French in the 1860s. This really means nothing to most people, not even to most Mexicans in Mexico but if you come from the Southwest you know it is a big deal. Think of it like Mexican Pride Day. I for one am all for it, mainly because I got the day off from school when I lived in Pueblo that kind of thing makes a holiday really stick. But today also happens to be Buddha's Birthday, his 2569th birthday to be exact if you take the modern date for his birth or it is his 2629th birthday if you follow a more tradition interpretation. Either way he is really, really old. So today to honor both Mexicans and Buddha meditate over the concept of Midget Lucha therein lies the truth of all things

Ponder Upon This, If A Luchadore Falls From The Ring And Nobody Is There to Hear Him, Does He Still Swear?

05/05 Laguna Beach Invasion!!
By the end of the weekend, I'm hoping to get it started tonight. I will have posted my last novella (not a short story but shorter than a novel), the first of many in the series, Bethany and the Curiosity Shop, called Laguna Beach Invasion. I am very happy with this one, it is more comedy than horror, but there are zombies, there is magic, flying implants, and Halloween Hi-jinks. The idea for this story came about one night while flipping around channels between watching an episode of One Piece I stumbled across the disaster that was Laguna Beach on MTV which followed the lives of a group of shallow brainless blonde California kids as they love and fight in sunny perfect Laguna Beach. I came up with the idea of the only way to spoil their happy sunny lives was if an army of soggy zombies rose up to attack them one night and thus the Laguna Beach Invasion was born. This is a rough draft, if anyone who reads it thinks I can expand in places please feel free to tell me, also maybe possibly tell me a part of two you liked. I worked in a different story telling medium this time, it is more conversational more like telling a story to someone rather than writing it out. I liked it a little more, added a little more humor here and there. I am very pleased with the result, and also am rather pleased I got it done, I have had a couple of serious bouts with writer's block recently so to see anything done is a big accomplishment for me. So read away and give me some feedback.

Cheers.

Androids and Resident Evil

05/06 Wrong Number
We get a rather steep number of wrong numbers at my house but the real conundrum is it is never the same number twice, we have wrong numbers from all across the board. Back in Colorado we use to get wrong numbers from one place, the Gold Dust Saloon which was downtown, their phone number was one digit from ours so we played host to all manner of strange late night wrong numbers and I mean late night, 2 or 3 in the morning late night. Any-hoo I got a wrong number today that really made me laugh. I get this call and the lady on the other end says Hi, how you doing? I didn't recognize the voice but it was casual and friendly enough that I thought I should recognize the voice. So I immediately start trying to figure out who it is all the while trying to make small talk to buy time. She finally asks for Amy and I realize it was a wrong number. It was extremely funny to me, I was so convinced I knew the voice but it fact it was a wrong number. People really need to say their name or something when you answer the phone, stuff like this won't happen and I won't give myself a migraine trying to figure out who you are when I have never met you before.

05/07 Sin Against the Golf Gods
Yesterday I went to hit some golf balls, I relish getting out and hitting a buck of balls even when I really suck it up it is a good way to get outside and clear your head. Well I did something yesterday I had never seen before, heard of before, or done before. I took the head off a golf club, the head came clean off the golf club. I was hitting one of those oversized titanium drivers and hit a very good shot when I hit the ball I felt something really strange. The head of the club came off and went 75 yards, the ball went about 200 for those who are interested it was an excellent shot. It totally blew my mind, I didn't even touch the tee. I am fairly certain that is a sin of the highest order in golf, my game will never be the same again. We may have figured out why it happened. The shaft is fiber glass and it spent the winter in the garage so it was more than likely weakened by Minnesota ever so shitty cold and that is why it went to pieces on me, I'm not exactly the hardest hitter ever to play golf.

05/08 My Lilacs are Coming
My lilacs should be in full bloom this week. No, this isn't some weird metaphor my actual lilac bushes are blooming. I love gardening, this is something I picked up in college, gardening is in itself the most challenging and most rewarding of things. You have to bust your ass, especially in this state but after busting your ass you do get something very pretty for your effort. Despite it being hard work there is something rather calming about the entire thing. I want to plant certain things but I have this annoying little problem, I live in Minnesota, which is too cold for fruit trees, so no peaches for me, true there are hybrid peach trees but everyone says the fruit is small and very bland which is rather anti-climatic especially when you realize our peach tree in Colorado produced fruit the size of baseballs that were to die for they were so good. I also can't plant a lot of the more exotic plans, I really want to play Egyptian or Blue Lotuses, Belladonna, and Mandrake but none of them can grow here due to the short growing season and the rather severity of the winter climate. Plus both Belladonna and Mandrake are seen a natural high so it is impossible to find any rational information about them. Eventually I am going to grow a Mandrake plant in a pot and see if I can make it go.

05/09 Gunsmith Flipped
At a recent anime convention, Dark Horse, who is steadily achieving not only a positive reputation in my eyes but a glowing reputation, is going to re-release Gunsmith Cats in an unflipped format. When it was originally released many years ago it was printed in a comic book format and printed in reverse from how it was originally printed in Japan. This led to a few minor whoops in the manga that certain people (P-Chan) complained about, it was mainly position of pedals in Rally's Shelby GT. Those problems are going to be fixed when the manga is put back in its original format. Also to Dark Horse's credit they are putting them out in four larger volumes, there are 8 Gunsmith Cats adventures so they will be packed two together which is a rather good idea. Of course I am buying them, it is Gunsmith Cats.

05/09 Korean 7-11s
While watching a Korean horror movie I noticed that in South Korea they have 7-11s which made me ask two important questions. Question 1: They have 7-11s on the other side of the world yet they can't get one in Minnesota. Question 2: Are all 7-11s in Korea run by White Americans? Sorta like a 7-11 exchange program.

You would not believe how hard it is to find a big enough picture of this

05/10 The Signal of the End Times
While listening to the radio today I stumbled across the most perplexing song in the world. Somebody has done a cover of the Golden Girl's theme. Most of you young kids these days won't remember the song but when I heard it almost had to pull over it totally scrambled my mind. What the hell is next? Gilligan's Island the hip hop version? The easy listening theme of Dark Shadows? My brain still throbs trying to understand this.

5/11 Attack of the Mormons
Ah Mormons, Mormons are the reason I will never move to Utah. This afternoon I was cleaning up downstairs for company on Sunday when somebody rings the doorbell. Stupid me I went to answer it, it is not exactly a common occurrence. I open the door and much to my disappointment what do I see but a white shirt and black tie, yes ladies and gentlemen it is a Mormon. I cut this dipshit to the quick and said thank you but no thank you and closed the door. This guy has balls big enough to ring my doorbell again. I had to hear this, a guy with balls this big deserves at least to be heard. He gave me the usual pitch and said I was incredibly rude and going to hell. Trust me if closing the door in a Mormon's face is enough to send me to hell, I got myself neck deep in it a long time ago. I lived in Colorado for 15 years never once did the Mormons come to the door, not once, never saw them on the street, in the air, or ten feet under the ground. Maybe the Mormons don't consider Colorado far enough way to do their mission, or maybe it is because Pueblo is Mexican Catholic hardcore and you can't peddle your nonsense to them, the world is full of mysteries.

05/11 Beware Geeking Below
I am going to geek pretty hard here so if you can't take it get out now while you still have a chance. Okay while playing Resident Evil 4 for the millionth time I started to roll around ideas in my head that would make Resident Evil 5 cooler than number 4 which is a pretty tall mountain to climb but I have faith they can do it. First off I want more Ada, because of 4 she became my favorite character, she is just so cool and mysterious. They need to bring her back in a very big way in Resident Evil 5, if I had my way she would be the main character of the entire game but I doubt that is going to happen. Another I'd like to see is a little more hand to hand combat, after watching Hunk snap the necks of the Grandos in 4 I really want to see more hand to hand combat, also to go easy on the ammo for those sole enemies you encounter. I'd like to see them bring back the defense weapon that they had only in the Resident Evil remake for the Gamecube, those were super cool. For those that didn't play the Gamecube remake the defense weapons were knives, a taser or hand grenade that you would use when the zombie grabbed you, you had the option to use the weapon on the zombie. The best was the grenade which gets jammed into the mouth and it would blow the zombie's head off. But this really cool idea was used for only that one game and they never brought it back. In Resident Evil 4 Leon and Ada carry knives they could be used when the Grandos grab you. The most important thing I would like from Resident Evil 5 is for it to come out now along with my Playstation 3, I want them NOW!

Ada Wong, Hottest Babe of the Resident Evil World

05/11 Little Haunting Fun
For many years I have been rather convinced the house in which I live is haunted. I have had enough really bizarre stuff happen in this house to make me rather convinced we have at least 1 ghost roaming about, my belief is furthered by family lore that a certain member of the family always said she would come back and haunt the kids. We have the largest portion of her remaining belongs so if there is a possibility of possessions being possessed it could explain the strange goings-on in the house. Tonight around midnight I heard a thump that was really weird which got me thinking about all of this. It wasn't the normal crap falling off a shelf thump but a thump that came from everywhere and nowhere. It wasn't the most concrete haunting phenomenon but it was just another of those strange happenings that makes living in this house at least interesting.

05/12 Body Works
Body Works has finally made it up to Minnesota and the controversy has followed it. For those that have no idea what it is, Wikipedia does an excellent job of rolling it all together in one place, Here. I find this rather interesting, the human body is such a mystery to most people. But of course you can't do anything with a human body without the religious nuts streaming out of the woodwork to scream this is evil. Why do we listen to these people? You really think they contribute anything to the advancement of society? I was reading an editorial in the paper and they printed lies that the bodies on display were taken from mental patients from Kyrgyzstan which the California Science Center disproved but it doesn't stop people from peddling it. Does it really matter? They are dead, you know what dead means it means they don't give a shit about their bodies anymore because they aren't there. According to your logic we can't show meat in the butcher shop anymore because it is wrong to showing dead bodies of cows and pigs. When you are dead guess what, you rot at least the people in display serve a purpose. What this really boils down to is the religious right wants to do everything in their power to keep people from realizing that we are biological creatures, physically we share many of the same traits with cows, but that can't be we are perfect likenesses of the big invisible guy in the sky we can't be biological. This takes their beliefs and shows them to only be so many castles in the sky and that is the worst thing possible. Too bad this isn't three hundred years ago the guy who did this could have been burned at the stake and his discoveries could have been repressed forever.

05/12 A Little More Geeking
While laying in bed last night before going to bed I started rolling an idea around in my head, my dream game would be a Resident Evil Collection game for the Playstation 3. The PS3 will have the Blu-Ray which will have insane storage which would allow you to put several of the games on a single disc and maybe they could polish up the graphics a bit, or maybe remake Resident Evil 2 (which is my favorite behind Resident Evil 4). It would give the people who never had the chance to play the early ones and get caught up on the storyline that goes all the way back to the original for Resident Evil 5 which if the rumors are true will be about Chris Renfield and Albert Wesker and their final showdown. That would be so nice to have all my Resident Evil games in one place on one system.

05/12 Really Interesting and Really Weird
I'm always fascinated by this kind of stuff, the idea of making real androids has always been in the realm of science fiction but those wacky Asians are intent on making it a reality. I first saw only a picture and thought she was a real, rather hot Asian chick when I read she is an android. I doubt if we will ever actual see Androids enter into everyday life in this country, in Asia and Europe it seems much more likely. Androids will never fly because the religious elements of this society will collectively shit themselves and begin to raise holy hell. They can't come to terms with stem cells let alone actually creating humanoid life. It is very fascinating that we can do this kind of stuff, or well Asians can do this kind of stuff. I'm all for androids and the like, the human body is so frail and easily broken, where as an android can be built tough enough to take stuff a human can't. We just have to make sure they feel loved and appreciated or we will have the whole revolt of the robots thing on our hands.

Androids Will Rule The World

Cheers.

Passion of the Porno Paradox

04/16 The Passion of the Christ
I TiVoed Mel Gibson's little film last night and I watched it today. In short, the movie is 2 hours of a guy getting the shit kicked out of him. The movie is just violent, there is no uplifting message, or real point to it. The plot is paper thin, unless you have a good knowledge of the story of Jesus going in you are going to be totally lost, I have a rough understanding of the story and even I found myself confused frequently in the movie. Really they didn't want any story to get in the way of the excessive gory violence. There is no message, there seems almost to be no point to the movie other than to show man's general inhumanity towards man. There is enough ugliness in the world without inflaming people on this issue. I somehow doubt this is how Jesus wants to be thought of.

04/16 DBZ on Robot Chicken
Currently the funniest new series on Adult Swim is Robot Chicken, which takes all manner of cherished toys, games, and situations from the 80s and fucks with them in their alchemy pot of doom and the hearty broth that is produced is really fucking hilarious. Tonight they had the Very Violent Dragonball Z Christmas, a 5 minute short were Goku and his kid have to save Christmas from The Little Drummer Boy, whose drum conjures up demons, the Nutcracker, who knows 180 different testicle attacks, and hybrid, Santa/Frosty the Snowman. While this was very funny it was wildly inaccurate, as any good nitpicker I will list the ways in which they were wrong, and then promptly hang myself when I realize what a colossal fucking nerd I have become.
1. They manage to fight 4 villains in the span of 5 minutes, this is totally impossible to fight 4 villains it would take at least 30 to 40 episodes.
2. The Villains they fight stay dead, I don't think any DBZ villain stay dead longer than a few episodes, they are like Marvel comic villains they never really die because there are a million alternate dimensions to produce new ones.
3. There was no beginning recap or ending preview, who can this be DBZ without an equal amount of time recaping the old episodes and showing the future episodes that are spent on the actual episode.
4. No ridiculously long powering up, this can't be DBZ without an entire episode of powering up, lots of yelling and a single colour background. 5. I actually sat through the entire episode, I have never done that with DBZ so it can't be really DBZ. It was really funny though.

04/17 Wacky World of Shaw Brothers
The Shaw Brothers carried the kung-fu genre for nearly twenty years between the death of Bruce Lee and the rises of Jackie Chan. Their kung-fu movies filled the grindhouses and late night TV of the country for years but since the advent of DVD fans of the Shaw Brothers have only had the scant barebones to pick at waiting ever so patiently for the most inventive, wacky, and cool Shaw Brothers movies to come out. Well thankfully the good people at Image Entertainment is putting out some of the wackiest and best Shaw Brothers kung-fu spectaculars including Inmate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan, Black Magic, and Boxer's Omen three fabulous Shaw Brothers movies that are filled with wackiness, black magic and kung-fu. It is about time more Shaw Brothers movies actually come to this country in something other than Nth generation VHS bootlegs or Region 3.

04/18 Worst 3 Words To Hear From a Doctor
Burning Viscous Discharge.

04/19 Another Online Game Idea
A spy game, a game were being clever is more important than spending your entire life playing the game. The game would be divided into two different mission types, spy vs spy and espionage (where you sneak into buildings, steal plans, bug phones, hack computers, etc, etc). While you could do nothing but espionage missions the more you do the higher your target rating goes up, the higher the rating the bigger the bounty on your head which will make more of the opponent spies go gunning for you. You can choose to join a group, we'll make up country names so not to piss anybody off, or be a freelancer, working for the highest bidder, but you may have to carry a giant lance around if you are a freelancer for historical accuracy. You won't level up in the game, experience points won't matter a lick, what will matter is aptitude in skills. The more you do skills the better you will be at them. The game will be more about stealth and guile than brainless smash and trash. I keep finding that games much like all entertainment is dumbed down to such a level that is really no longer entertains but rather it distracts. Somehow the concept of Bread and Circuses came to mind, but our government would never do anything like that, what do they have to hide?

04/19 Philosoful
While yammering on today instead of saying philosophic I came out with Philosoful which I will turn into the next big food crazy, it is deep thinking falafel.

04/19 Porno Paradox
As a man I have seen a porno movie or two, I'll admit that sin yes I have seen porno but I usually see it as porno, not movies therefore don't get reviews but there has been a couple of recent porno movies that are rather paradoxical, they have a plot, actual plots. Since when do they allow porn movies to have plot? This isn't the 70s, porn movies don't have plot. But after watching Camp Cuddly Pines Powertool Massacre I found myself very confused, it had a plot, it was porno but there was a plot and some rather funny satire too. The best scene involves a very funny Ring parody, can't give any of it away but it was very amusing. This led me to question whether or not I could actually add this movie to my list of 1313 horror movies. It is still up in the air but I am finding myself more and more convinced that I should add them, they are horror movies, just with lots of naked people in them.

04/21 Funny Star Wars Parody
It is an established fact that the Star Wars prequels sucked, and sucked hard but this Star Wars parody movie makes episode 3 funny rather than incredibly sad.

04/21 Final Thoughts
Shit this title sounds so fucking ridiculous but I just could think of anything better. Another week is done, little shorter than last week, I have been busy and really tired, just can't find the energy to do much writing. Oh fuck it there is always next week. Cheers.

Wii, Need I Say More?

04/22 Promise More Pictures
I just realized that I didn't post a single picture in last weeks rant. I rather like the pictures in my rants, they make them a little more lively. So this week I will double down on my pictures, I need to really dry up all that remaining room on my website even faster. So to start this week off right, a picture

I pray this poor bastard's owner is a light sleeper or else he'll wake up without a nose

04/25 Shit Like This Never Seems Real
This is a link to Ain't It Cool New's report about the live action Michael Bay directed Transformers movie. Every time I hear things like this my rational mind laughs and says nobody is this stupid to try and pull this off, there is no way to making it look anything other than ridiculously cheap. I'd never go this movie in a theatre, but I would definitely see it two months after it is released in theatres when it hits DVD just to laugh at it and shake my head. I don't like Michael Bay, I was never sucked in by his big budget ridiculous movies of the late 90s that were really nothing but softcore gay porn films. You think I'm nuts, watch any Michael Bay movie and count the number of times there are several male characters without their shirts on walking in slow motion all oiled up like they are in a gay beefcake calendar. I'm not exactly sure how Bay is going to work that into this movie, Transformers are made of metal and don't have shirts to take off, but I suspect there will be some humans around the Transformers to get all oiled up and strut their stuff for the camera.

04/25 Nothing Like Disappointment
For over a year I have patiently waited for Camp Daze to finally come to DVD and holy shit this movie is horrible I mean these movie makers should be taken to the Hague to stand trial for this crime against humanity. It sucks even more because I have waited for over a year as this movie made its way through the festival circuit making absolutely sure to stay as far away from this state as possible and had heard lots of good things about the movie. It does have a good concept, modern kids transported back to 1981 to live out a slasher movie. The movie steals so much from Friday the 13th they should have just called it Friday the 13th XII (or Friday the 13th XI if you don't consider Freddy vs Jason a Friday the 13th Movie) the Special Ed Edition. But the execution is so flawed and awful I found myself grinding my teeth for most of the movie. To think of this, imagine it is Christmas morning and you run downstairs to find the one thing you wanted more than anything else from Santa laying under the tree, smashed into a million pieces, shit upon, and set on fire and to top it all off Santa sodomized your dog. Okay maybe it wasn't that bad but while watching it certainly felt like it. One of the things that struck me in the movie was the massive amount of underlying homoeroticism between the large amount of guys who try to spend as much of the movie shirtless as possible staring longingly at each other. There is a lot of that in the movie, a lot of guys staring at each other shirtless or in those horrible 80s belly shirts. So if you are touchy about subtle guy on guy love you will definitely not like this movie. It didn't matter to me, true it did get in the way of the flow of the story but on a list of problems that was somewhere in the mid 20s there was a lot more in front of it to ruin the movie.

The cinematic war crime of the year

04/25 Gays on the Mind
In the previous post I was discussing homoeroticism in the movie Camp Daze and how it will affect certain potential audience members. Some people will say it is homophobia, that all straight men are homophobes but there is some physiological rational behind it. When men are placed into a Functional MRI and shown pictures of gay erotic their brains register a threat response. Now no one is quiet sure what it all means exactly, this is still a very new technology but there is some evidence that male homophobia is biologically based. Women don't have this problem, doesn't even flicker a bit, again what does this mean? We ain't sure, possibly the female brain is more evolved than the males we don't know. On a minor note, when 99 percent of my readers click on the link from Wikipedia above it will all go sailing way above their head but hey I want to at least show some outside information to what I am talking about. Any who, so remember when you are watching Camp Daze or Brokeback Mountain as a man and you start to feel uncomfortable watching guys in belly shirts or cowboys staring longingly at each other you aren't some horrible homophobe, you are just a caveman.

04/25 The Male Belly Shirt
The male belly shirt, which was a fashion trend of the early 80s, is a total mystery to me. Why guys wear a shirt that stops a few inches below the nipples, wouldn't it be easier just not to wear a shirt at all? I have never worn one, I have never known anyone who worn one and I don't understand who thought this would be a good idea. I tried really hard to find a picture to illustrate my point but I was unable to find a picture anywhere on the vastness of the Internet so if you don't know what one looks like then consider yourself lucky. I love to think what would happen in a million years when Alien archeologists are sifting through the wreckage of human civilization and they run across the male belly shirt what they hell will they think of that?

04/26 My New Phone
Six months ago my old cell phone, which I had owned for almost 7 years broke, the problem was the bottom half of the screen was blank which is really a problem because all the incoming calls, missed calls, dialed calls, I couldn't see anything accept for the clock. So after six months of dithering about it last week I finally bought myself a new cell phone. It arrived today a Motorola RAZR V3, and its colour is silver. I was honestly thinking about getting one of the Pink ones for the express purpose of fucking with everyone that sees me with it. A cell phone like everything else should be an extension of your personality, it should tell those around you who you are. I wanted to royally screw with people, a pink cell phone would accomplish that task very well, and it would go well with my rather unique wardrobe. But I went with Silver, silver matches my pocket watch and for the simple reason that it was cheaper than the Pink one. The Pink one must be newer because it cost about thirty bucks more than the Silver one and while I am all for making people confused, I am not willing to do it for 30 bucks when it comes to cell phones. My biggest question is will this cell phone last me as long as my previous one did? I have good instincts when it comes to technology, I can find stuff that will last for a long time and am retro enough to be pleased with it long after people have moved on. My DVD player for instance, it is 8 nearly 9 years old, I pick the stuff that lasts. Now the only question remains what to do with my phone? Can't give it away, no SIM card, don't want to just throw it away. Am thinking about letting P-Chan shoot the thing, you know give it a little blindfold and line it up firing squad style, only problem is the phone doesn't have a mouth to put a cigarette into.

04/26 Hostel DVD
I have spoken about my disappointment over the movie Hostel in the past but I still went forward and rented the DVD from Netflix because I wanted to listen to the commentaries. It got even sadder for me after listening to the commentary tracks but Eli Roth, the guy who directed the movie really sounds like my kind of guy, the guy I could easily gang with. It would be assuming if we ever did meet because either of us would ever shut up we would talk horror movies until we were blue in the face. The DVD is fairly packed, it has 4 commentary tracks, of which I made it through 2, one had Quentin Tarantino on it who tried his damnedest to monopolize the commentary, somebody should have tapped Quentin on the shoulder and reminded him that it isn't his movie although while watching it there were several spots of the film that had the stink of him all over it. I don't know, I still didn't like the film even after hearing about them talk about it. The biggest problem is the two main characters are so unlikable you don't care what happens, you simply watch it and the other problem is so what, I have seen everything in this movie before in either Animal House or Audition (which I have to say are on opposite ends of the spectrum but fit the two halves of the movie fairly well) what Eli Roth should have done was tried something new, don't just make an American version of a Japanese horror movie but that didn't happen. Oh well, in life nothing is ever fair.

04/27 Life is like a Reese's
Life is like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, there are good days, when the Reese's is perfectly chilled and firm. Then there are bad days, when the Reese's has been near Ami-Chan too long or in the car and the only thing keeping the chocolate in one place is the paper cup it is comes in, eating those are just a disaster and it is best to do it fast so you don't end up a mess. And then they are days were you only get 1 cup in the package, those are days when your neighbor tries to kill you with a chainsaw and eats your dog in front of you. Then there are days when you slap a big spoonful of Kool-Whip on it, those are the really good days, that also clog your arteries and shorten your life by at least ten years, because the only truly good things in life also shorten it.

Zen and the Art of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

04/27 Poo Man Group
I don't know where this came from but I have finally figured out the ultimate in experimental artist group, a trio of guys dressed in brown like UPS uniforms who fling poo back and forth to new age techno music. I wish I knew how my brain works at times, it seems to make the strangest connections out of thin air.

04/28 Wii?
In the annals of video games there has never been something like this, something so thoroughly bizarre that it really belongs in an April Fool's Day Joke. For those out there in Internet land who haven't heard, Nintendo has renamed their next-gen console the Wii. It is pronounced We, or Wee depending on who you talk to. Now this is either the most bold move a company has ever undertaken or somebody at Nintendo has been drinking too much blue toilet water. Will I buy a Wii? If it has Zelda yes I will buy a Wii, I bought a Gamecube simply because it had Resident Evil on it.

The Scourge of Blue Toilet Water Strikes Again

Cheers.

Broomrape, Panda Porn, World of Warcraft

04/02 A Realtor's Nightmare
There is a street called Broomrape in Lake Havasu Arizona. Yes I'll let that sink in for a moment, the street is called Broomrape, named after the act of raping someone with a broom, I would assume it is the handle of the broom, the bristle end would be rather tricky, unless she was the world's most used truck stop whore, then you could probably walk in there carrying the broom. Any-hoo I really hope this street is in an industrial area, because trying to sell houses on this street would be a hair the other side of impossible.

Yup That Is Real.

04/03 World of Warcraft Part 1
I've been playing WOW (no way am I typing the entire title) for two days now. It is okay, the biggest problem I am having is probably indicative of all of these massive online multiplayer games, you can't make a good enough story that will fit into the game format. The missions also have a problem that if you have one creature you have to kill somebody always seems to have killed it before you got there so you have to sit and wait for it to respawn. Other than that the game is okay, a bit much for me to be willing to spend 15 dollars a month on but maybe if I play more I will find something that makes the game truly great, aside from the neverending Chuck Norris jokes, really people that was funny but it is now time to move on.

04/04 Funny Stuff
There is something rather amusing about 50 'educational' films. They are goofy, and full of misinformation, but there are a few, like the featured Boys Beware, that are down right hilarious. In short this is an educational film about the dangers of homosexuality (gee I wish I could have sound effects for this, while reading when you reach the word 'homosexuality' think of it being spoke by the guy who advertises monster truck rallies that is the way I think the word should be spoke in this context). The movie is pure 50s propaganda but it is even more amusing that there is a large segment of the population that still believe this is true today. Remember kids gay = small pox.

04/05 Good Awful News
Today I read that today in Weekly Shounen Magazine they are starting a brand new Kindaichi Mystery, the Murdering Case of Gokumonjyuku, and before you ask I have absolutely no idea what that is and I can't find the word anywhere online. This is great that Kindaichi is still going strong in Japan but it is awful because I have a better chance of being hit squarely between the eyes from a bolt that fell off a flying saucer after it falls from outer space, smashes through my roof and hits me now as I write this. Tokyopop hates Kindaichi but they have already licensed the series and aren't willing to cancel the series. At the rate they are going now we will see a new Kindaichi every 6 months so to get the rest of the first series which is 15 volumes will take 8 years. I am really beginning to hate Tokyopop because they are intent on licensing everything they possibly can and they can't do a good job of putting out the stuff they have now. I really want Tokyopop either to do a decent job with Kindaichi or drop it and let somebody else do a better job or let a scanlation group do a fabulous job. They excuse is that they don't sell enough, sorry it doesn't sell like Naruto, but if you don't fucking advertise then how the fuck does anybody get to know about the series? For all my vemon I have expelled towards Dark Horse over the years, at least they are consistent when it comes to almost all of their series. I have this strange feeling that eventually I am going to be importing my Kindaichi case files and having them translated at my own expense, but for Kindaichi I will do it very willingly.

04/05 Horror Movies = Fun
I have to admit I am rather envious of people who get scared easily, I'm such a burned out cynic of life that scaring me is a task that is worthy of song and statues in that person's honor. By scared I mean invoking fear, not invoking worry. The state of our public school system is scary but it doesn't make me fear for my safety it makes we worry. This is the same for our society's outlook on evolution, abortion, the morning after pill, religion, so on an so forth, these are things that make me worry, not things that make me fear. Fear is one of the 3 visceral emotions, emotions that are from our earliest days when we still had tails and were still learning to walk upright. The three visceral emotions are hunger, fear, and lust, these are emotions that aren't tied to abstract thoughts, love, envy, pride, all these things are tied to how other people view us, you don't see animals in the wild fretting whether or not the other animals think their cool, no they worry about eating, avoiding being eaten, and fucking that is it. Fear is the least appreciated of the three in my opinion and it is the one that you can't handle on your own. Hunger, go eat a sandwich, lust, go jerk off, but you can't scare yourself. Wearing a Halloween mask and jumping up at a mirror and yelling boo just doesn't work. You need something to scare you, for most people horror movies do the trick, I take a certain amount of glee in watching people be scared, think of it as a vicarious thrill but to scare me is impossible short of putting a gun to my head and pulling the trigger. I think I love fear so much because it is something that doesn't come easy for me so when it really happens I really savor it. I need to find more horror movies that really scare me. The last one really to get me was Audition and that was a while ago. I would really like to be able to go to a neurologist have get a fresh piece of my frontal lobe put in because the fear center of my brain is really burned out.

04/07 Panda Porn
I love pandas, don't you. The only animal in the world that is so incredibly lazy they don't even screw. But what I believe is that pandas are a lot smarter than you think, they know you want them to screw and they'll be damned if they are going to do it for you. The best is when the zoo in Washington DC made panda porn to give their pandas inspiration to mate. There is just something so infinitely funny about the concept of panda porn. Just to piss the zookeeper off the panda probably pulls out before he is done or suggest to the female panda they just have some light oral (oh good lord what the hell happened to me?). Now you really know that these aren't real pandas, they are communist Chinese spies disguised as pandas as part of a plot to make the decadent westerns lose their minds over the lack of dirty hardcore panda sex in their zoos. In China they have these massive underground facilities that are nothing but pandas stacked floor to ceiling having nothing but non-stop panda sex. Those Chinese just can't be trusted. Wow when I write stuff at 3 in the morning I get really strange.

Panda Style, the newest position the hip kids are doing these days. I may be sick for posting this picture but I am not nearly as sick as the guy who shot this movie.

04/07 Spring Wardrobe
Its spring, or at least that is what they tell us, 45 and sunny doesn't make spring it just makes a clear winter's day. In any case spring means new clothes, and that even includes me. I have added four new Hawaiian shirts to my collection and two Ghost in the Shell T-Shirts. The Ghost in the Shell T-Shirts arrived this week from Right Stuf and so did my Hawaiian shirts. I really love my Hawaiian shirts, they exemplify me so perfectly (how do you like them big words huh), I dare even say it is part of 'my look' (yup I said that, what are you going to do about it?). My saga of the Hawaiian shirt began ten years ago when somebody bought me one as a gag gift assuming nobody would ever dare wear something like that. You know doing that is like pouring gasoline on a grease fire with me and I wore it. I soon found I really like wearing it and had to buy more. The collection now stands 28, yes that is 28 Hawaiian shirts. I love them Hawaiian shirts.

04/07 World of Warcraft Part II
World of Warcraft has some very cool environments, I really like the Night Elves forest, and the islands of the Trolls that is after waiting ten to fifteen minutes for me to be able to log onto the game. I understand the game is popular and the internet can handle only so much but why do I always seem to get the short end of the stick. Every time I have logged onto World of Warcraft it takes at least ten minutes of Authenticating and Handshaking for me to be able to get in to the game and then it always seems that if I play for more than 45 minutes I have this annoying problem of being disconnected which leads to another 10 minutes of waiting. Now I know this isn't all Blizzard's fault, Charter and it wonderfully inconsistent cable modem service is also at fault here. I don't know if it is my geographical location or I just had really shitty luck, probably a little of both. Again the Chuck Norris shit has to end, it isn't funny, it isn't even close anymore. I fought my first duel recently, guy was being a colossal cock and poaching my fucking sand crabs so we threw down. But I didn't get to kill him, the duel ended when he had almost no life points left but was still alive. What the fuck is that shit? I wanted to kill the cocksucker. The fucking sack of shit isn't going to learn his lesson unless I kill him, steal his goods, fuck his pet and take a steam shit right into the mouth of his corpse, the best I could do was dance after beating him, but that just isn't the same, I didn't even get a single copper for my troubles. I'm currently leaning towards letting my 10 trial run out, it was a good experience and I am glad I tried it but I don't have the temperament for consistently play a game enough every month for me to get over the 15 dollar a month price. Maybe when the expansion comes out I may go back and give it another try.

04/07 What A Update on Friday?!?
Yes with this new system I have decided to update the rant on Fridays instead of Sunday. Dunno why, just seems like a good time to do it. So until next Friday, Cheers.

Victoria's Secret For Guys

04/08 Thank God For Britain
I am so thoroughly glad Britain and the US share a common language if not I probably would have waited over a year to finally get my hands on Miike Takashi's 13th episode of Master of the Horror, the evil episode. It aired in Britain last night, uncut and uncensored, and someone was nice enough to post a TV Rip online. Now most of our out there in Internet Land probably have absolutely no idea why this episode is so important and why I am so excited to have it. It is because this is the episode Showtime banned from being aired on their premium pay cable channel, they deemed it too intense and hardcore, they are a premium network, they so softcore porn and movies that may star Tom Cruise and a horror show is too much for their delicate sensibilities? Well I have seen it and I loved it, this was the best Master of Horror episode of the entire lot. It was visceral, brutal, and intriguing and masterfully done. Miike Takahashi really earned his stripes in this one by doing it his way. I can see why Showtime decided to puss out but I still think Showtime should be ashamed of being such world class pussies over it. This series is called Master of HORROR, this isn't the Happy Bunny Fun Hour. I think it is a critical indictment of the miserable state of horror and entertainment in general that anything inventive or intense the gunshy weak willed people in charge of Hollywood are too nervous of offending anyone they run away as fast as possible. Thankfully the rest of the world isn't as ridiculous as this country and thankfully Britain and this country share a common language or I would be royally screwed.

04//09 Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig Volume 5 Special Edition Toy Prediction
I was right, Togusa is the third and final toy which completes the Laughing Man base started in Volume 3. I had guessed this already but I still have a little trouble letting my instincts take over. Instincts have evolved for millions or years were logic is fairly new in the scheme of things. You need to let your gut do your thinking, especially when you find that it is right almost all the time.

04/10 I Knew There Was A Reason I Liked The Japanese
This Is My Kind Of Funny

04/10 Victoria's Secret for Guys
First off let me clarify, this is not a lingerie store for men so they can buy frilly silky and lacy underwear, it is a store for guys to go to buy lingerie for their girlfriends without feeling like a total absolute pervert. I found myself at the Mall of America today buying tea because I had none (very good reason to go and buy things I think) and while walking back to the side of the mall I parked on I passed the massive Victoria's Secret they had there. There are a dozen display windows with mannequins in sexy underwear and like all men I had a natural urge to look. It was nothing more than a fleeting glance but when I looked back I passed two old ladies that were giving me totally dirty looks and shaking their heads. In that instant, bang, I was transported back to being 17 all over again and buying lingerie for my first girlfriend for her birthday. You feel like the world's ultimate freak pervert when as a man you walk into a Victoria's Secret alone, and it only gets worse from there because then you have to go through the underwear looking for her size, the act of pawing through underwear on hangars is a sensation that is totally unique in the world, nothing else feels like it, it feels weird, especially when you feel ten sets of eyes burning holes in the back of your head as you do it. Then the ultimate, the walk to the counter, man if that isn't the longest walk in history I don't know what is. Chicks that work at Victoria's Secret are almost always hot, and guys don't want hot chicks thinking their weird closet drag queens or something even worse so you have to start qualifying your purchase, I fully remember my conversation, a 17 year old doofus trying to explain this is for your girlfriend is always a sight to behold. You can look back at it and laugh like a maniac, but at the time you are sweating bullets, the flight or fight response is clicking away in your brain and I just know my voice cracked a few times while I was talking. This is why guys die a good ten years before women, we have to go through shit like this. To correct this I want a Victoria Secret for guys to go to, it is nothing but a room, a few Victoria Secret catalogues for some last minute brain storming but other than that it is a window where a guy clerk is waiting to take your order. The trick is your girlfriend goes to the frilly, white and red store with all the underwear on hangars and finds what she wants, writes it down on a card, with her real sizes and then gives it to you. You give this card to the guy in the window and he goes into the back finds it, wrapped in grey plastic so his greasy fingers aren't all over it and puts it in a plain white bag because the staring and humiliation doesn't end when you leave the store, oh no, you have to carry that bag around with you at least until you get to your car and there is no other bag like a Victoria's Secret bag. Wouldn't that just be easier? Or this is part of the world conspiracy by women to make sure we all die early so they can marry again and again to amass the biggest fortune possible? (Feminists send your hate letters)

04/11 Newspaper Boxes?
Lately I have been noticing Newspaper boxes in the strangest of locations, case in point one is by the front door of a restaurant which is in fact behind the restaurant itself so the only people who would ever see the box would be those going into the restaurant and it is a BBQ place so I really doubt you are going to be eating ribs and reading the newspaper at the same time and it isn't like there is a lot of foot traffic in Apple Valley. Is there a plan with these boxes or are they just tossed randomly out of the back of a truck? I would love to know the rhyme and reason for those things but somehow I just know it won't be satisfying to learn.

04/12 World of Warcarft - The Finale
My ten day trial to World of Warcraft has ended and I have decided not to pay 15 dollars a month to continue to play it. To put it simply I don't want to pay 15 dollars a month just to play a game that isn't the greatest game in history. I was really unhappy with the quality of service for the game, 10 to 15 minutes to log on was the norm and after those 10 or 15 minutes I was already doing something else and really didn't want to play anymore, then there were days were I simply couldn't log on to the game at all, now if you are charging me 15 bucks a month I better be able to play whenever I want to, that simply never happened. Another problem was lag, or as I put it, the magic teleporting game, the lag especially in the big cities could get so bad I would be at one end of the city before the lag stopped my screen and then on the other when I could play again. The game itself was rather vanilla, you had three mission types, gather, transport, kill, it never changed, I want to do something more than find things, carry things and kill things. Then there was the fact that to find these missions more often than not required incredibly luck, or simply remembering where you blundered into before and got your ass kicked. The missions were very vague about where to go, I have been told the only way really to accomplish these missions without spending hours searching is to go to websites that will tell you, gee that sounds a lot like cheating me. Now I am all for strategy when you are up against some unkillable boss or searching for the last hidden object but not to be able to finish even the simplest of missions. There were a few bright spots, I really found it rather fun to simply go exploring, to see what the world of warcraft looked like, but the best truly was the people, the social cripples that populate these types of games can be extremely funny when they are safely hidden behind their computers. The general chat which runs down the side of the screen while playing was hilarious, the topics ranged from fucking people's mothers, to anti-feminism rants, to looking to buy a negro slave for 2 silvers, no I am not kidding there was a long running chat from a guy who wanted to buy a negro slave for 2 silvers and all the high minded outrage that followed. Now I assume the game gets better if you are willing to put hours upon hours of work into it but I really don't want to play a game for three months for it to get good. I can see why some people would get into it, but it really wasn't my thing. I am glad I tried it, I am always open to new things, it is just not everything new I try is going to be fun.

04/12 Zombie The Massive Online Multiplayer
Okay now that I have said I don't care all that much for WOW, the question is what would I like? Well I came up with a fairly cool idea. A Resident Evil/Dawn of the Dead style game. You get a character, you customize it with a series of options and you can pick several broad archetypes that have a few skills to start off with, things like nurse, mechanic, nerd, hot chick, I mean really broad. Then you start the game in the city center, in a crappy apartment and your goal is to survive. Outside the buildings are the zombie horde, and you are just one little person so wading outside to maul the horde simply won't be an answer, you will have to use your smarts and team up with other people to navigate through the city center trying to avoid becoming zombie chow. Along the way you gather stuff you need to survive, weapons, tools, and food. I want to have a hunger meter that if you don't eat you slowly die, make eating a priority another good way to crank up the fear. Make the buildings dark and spooky so flashlights, torches, any light source will be a must. No one person can accomplish all the missions on their own so people will have to team up and try to keep each other alive, teamwork is something I found really lacking in World of Warcraft, you could on your own accomplish any mission you wanted if you worked at it long enough. Making the missions really varied, have a few missions that alter the landscape of the city your characters are in, like blowing up a building or creating a huge whole in a street, nothing world shattering like detonating a nuke, but something that will make people take notice and give more personality to the landscape. Another interesting feature, when you die, your spirit isn't transported to a graveyard so you can come back from the dead, when you die in this game, you become a zombie and your character joins the horde of undead. This will make you very cautious and keeps you from just going postal on zombies and will keep the fear level up. You gain experience not by killing zombies, although that does help but rather by accomplishing tasks, finding items, and moving from place to place without ending up dead. Once you escape from the city center the game really kicks into high gear because now you encounter the other groups. In the city there are varying groups, think of them as ready made guilds that occupy certain areas of town and they are hostile to one another or friendly to one another as logic would dictate. Now you choose to join a group or continue with your little band of people as a neutral. The groups will have strongholds, places they have fortified where trade goes on, here you can sell the stuff you gathered for stuff you need. At the same time there are roving bands of outlaws that are out to loot and steal, I want this game to be realistic. The other roving band of people you have to watch out for are the government, seeing that they were the ones to accidentally let the mutagenic weapon loose they want to clean it up, by cleaning up everybody. You constantly have to be on the look out for the black combat armour clad government troops in the gas masks who want to kill you just as much as they want to kill the zombies. Eventually you will reach a high level, 20, 30, 40, whatever and then you will be able to piece together a running automobile and leave the crazy city behind for the even more crazy suburban and rural areas of your game map and even possibly other cities that may or may not have been infected. You will have two sets of skills, one are the skills you start off with, and the others are skills you learn along the way. You will have a set number of skills slots so use wisely but they won't be as complicated and prone to over micro-management as WOW. There will be some rather adult skills, women can use seduction to get what they need from men or women, of course the more attractive the women is the more she can squeeze from her target. I want this to be real, and in a real situation like this, trust me the chicks with the biggest tits will survive because the guys will fall over one another to protect her. I also want a myriad of ways to customize the character, everything from hair color and style, to tattoos and underwear choices. I want the game to have the opinion of being gory and disturbing, a level of gory and disturbing that is reserved for Japanese filmmakers but also the opinion to turn it off, essentially hide the dirty aspects of the game from the little kids so the parents and the Christian don't shit themselves over it. I want to make a game that is scary, open ended so that violence isn't the only way to solve problem, have sex not war that sort of idea, but most importantly I want the game to be original.

04/14 Cool Stuff
I like the Internet, there is really neat stuff out there. This Website is one of those great examples. It is a collection of 10 abandoned sites in Japan somebody traveled to and took a whole bunch of pictures. The entire site is in Japanese and I have yet to find a really good Japanese website translator so whatever one you use will probably literally translate the site and wow literal translations are really weird but you can get the general idea. The pictures are really cool and you can spend a lot of time looking at the cool pictures.

04/14 Boy Scouts = Mormon Scouts
I caught Penn and Teller's Bullshit on Showtime last night and learned a very interesting little tidbit of information. The Boy Scouts of American is actually run by the Mormon Church. I was never a Boy Scout, honestly you think I'd put up with that overbearing Christian nonsense for a minute. But I was a Cub Scout, mainly because most of my male friends were. I was a Cub Scout for 3 years, I know this because I took part in three Pinewood Derbies but when it came to jumping through all the bullshit hoops to become a Boy Scout I promptly said 'Fuck it' and never looked back. I do find it horribly amusing that a bunch of guys who dress up in neckerchiefs and short-shorts and spend their weekends in the woods with just other guys are the ones who ban gays from their organization, you ever meet anyone straight who wears a neckerchief? I didn't think so. It was rather amusing that the Boy Scouts use to be a very all encompassing group until the 80s when the Mormons took over and suddenly they started molding the organization into the Hitler Youth of today with the Bible replacing Mein Kampf. Just goes to show you when you let hardcore religion into a good organization is magically goes bad.

Abortion, Abortion, Abortion
I have spoken about my qualms about banning abortion from the country in the past but today I was driving through St Paul and I blundered into a big anti-abortion rally in front of the St Paul Planned Parenthood in Highland. That was a total mess and I got stuck in the middle of a traffic snarl because the cops closed off three blocks on either side of the Planned Parenthood for the protestors and traffic came to a dead stop because everybody had to look at them. This gave me plenty of time to sit and think about my stance on abortion. First off I am pro-choice for the simple reason that abortion should be available to any woman that wants on, nobody is putting a gun to the head of a woman and forcing her into the clinic to have it done, and I find it rather amusing that the people who are really against abortion are always white men, they never have to face this choice so their strong stance against it is really moot. Secondly I am pro-choice because that thing inside a woman isn't anymore alive than your kidneys, when you have the child before it is ready, it is called a miscarriage because it isn't alive. But we all know the truth, people who are against abortion really aren't against abortion, they are just pro-bitching, they need something to bitch about to validate their empty useless lives.

04/14 Bunny Controversy
In St Paul they are having controversy over displaying a picture of an Easter bunny in a state building. Our society puts way too much effort into non-sense garbage when our society is falling apart. The whole controversy over the Easter bunny reminds of me rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. And Besides, there is only one bunny.

Happy Easter From MadGSC

Cheers

Return to Ranting

Wow that was an incredibly short respite from ranting a whole week. I had planned not to do another rant for awhile but there is a large list of things I really want to talk about. It really runs the gambit of things so without further ado.

I finally saw Hostel and I am really disappointed, I have it a C for good cinematography, good locations, a few good ideas and for handling the torture scenes as well as they did. The problems come from terrible characters, a poor story that doesn't give us any reason to care about the characters, and the fact that I have seen Asian films that cover the same stuff and do it ten times better, case in point Audition. I have been looking online at people's reactions to the film and I have found that most people fall into two totally separate camps, those that thought the movie was greatest thing of all time, and those that hated the movie because of the torture scenes. It doesn't really amaze me that I totally disagree with both camps, I long ago stopped being impressed by the stupidity of most people. This of course raises a whole host of questions in my mind. The people who hated this movie because it was gory, what the fuck did you expect? This is a horror movie, this isn't happy princess tea party movie. I blame Hollywood and the MPAA for this, we have seen nothing but sanitized sterilized PG-13 horror for five years, they do everything in their power to tame horror, to make it as none frightening as possible, so when a real horror movie comes along nobody is ready for it. I was a little amused by how people were screaming this was the most graphic movie ever made, there is an entire world of more graphic movies out there, but 99 percent of the country only watches what the major studios show them, independent or god-forbid foreign they never see. I do understand the haters a little more than those that thought this movie was the all time greatest. I guess today's hero is a self absorbed, spoiled rich white kid who spends college drinking, smoking pot, and trying to fuck anything with tits and legs. The two main characters were so obnoxious to me that I alternated between not caring about them and believing they were going to deserve whatever they get. That really isn't the secret to making a good horror movie, you should care about the characters. I also smelled lots of Quentin Tarantino in the dialogue, he may not have a writing credit but some pieces of the dialogue were totally his. Eli Roth did do a good job of showing the standard American tourist in Europe, both characters have massive entitlement chips on their shoulders and within ten minutes render themselves obnoxious and arrogant, the only thing missing from their characters was yelling at Europeans the US saved them in World War 2. If audiences can easily relate to the two main characters and even put them up as heroes then I really understand why the rest of the world hates the US. All in all I was very disappointed with the movie, I highly doubt this is going to lead to any major changes in how American horror is made we are way too into censoring movie, the only reason this movie was release at all was Quentin Tarantino slapped his name on it.

Next up V For Vendetta, the newest comic nerd fantasy. This movie poses some interesting questions, the long and short of the movie is, terrorism is okay as long as you agree with it. Now this would never work if the main character in the movie was wearing a turban and doing this for Allah, Jack Bauer would appear and kick his ass, but because he is white, based on a 17th century religious fanatic and white, it is okay, we should root for him. I would worry a little more that this would send the wrong message to people but then I realized this movie is watched exclusively by comic book nerds, people who will never reproduce so we don't have to worry about them spreading these ideas to their children. I read a review about this movie that said there will be a great deal of debate between people like Doom_luv74 and Comic_Nerd130 which is so true, go to the IMDb forums and looks at the V for Vendetta section, wow when you are hiding safely behind your computer, people have some very interesting ideas.

Okay Ghost in the Shell Time, Solid State Society is in the works, Production IG announced it on Friday. This is the stand alone, Stand Alone Complex movie they had announced around the same time they announced 2nd Gig. They have made two other films, the Laughing Man and the Individual Eleven which cover the main plotlines for both seasons. They are still working on 3rd Gig, I would suspect around the time Solid State Society comes out in theatres they will announce 3rd Gig. More Ghost in the Shell is never a bad thing, not at all. If you google Solid State Society you can find a trailer but unless you have watched all of 2nd Gig I wouldn't suggest watching it because the first 45 seconds seem to be taken from the last four or five episodes of 2nd Gig, why do all recaps have to be the key episodes? It gives it all away.

I have finally found a manga which defies any easy explanation and that I really, really dig. It is called Tokyo Akazukin and any attempt to explain any of it because explaining it will make people think weird things about. Yes it is weird, yes it is violent, very violent, yes it is dirty but it is still very good.

I just realized that my Web Novel's 2nd Birthday is in two days, it completely slipped my mind and I have nothing to celebrate it with at least for now. I hope to have something by the end of the week, I am in the middle of working on large scale stuff at the moment and none of it is done yet.

Well I'm back in the saddle of ranting, next week I am going to start on a different style of ranting, hopefully doing it the new way will be easy for me to do it instead of trying to do it all on Sunday. So for now, Cheers.

New Direction

03/27 I Went to College To Be This Smart
To start my new ranting style with two things that will probably reappear over and over in these little rants, Ghost in the Shell and my stupidity. On Friday I got Volume 04 of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig and of course I bought the Special Edition because it comes with stuff and I am a big fan of stuff that comes with anime DVDs, I have shelves that need to be filled with stuff. In any case it came with three figures, most importantly a Batou figure. I eagerly put all three together, since I first started getting these figures two years ago I have become very proficient at putting them together. So I put them up on the shelf and was rather happy with myself. It took me two solid days of admiring the figures to realized that Batou and Motoko from the 3rd Volume were supposed to go together because their bases upon which they stand fit together. Now I am going insane because I really want to know who is going to be the 3rd figure to complete the Laughing Man base. I am pretty sure it will be Togusa but I really want to see Aramaki or maybe even Seito or Paz. Yes I am a total Ghost in the Shell fanatic.

03/28 Little Victories
I scored a small victory today, I actually got 1, 2, and 3 from my Netflix Queue, and they were all delivered in one day and all arrived in one piece. I was really happy that I got all three, they were 3 gialli films that came out today. It is kinda sad that I consider actually getting 3 discs on time and in one piece but I need victories whenever and where ever I can get them. Unfortunately the 3 gialli movies were all less than stellar. Oh well my continuing goal to remain karmic neutral continues on.

03/29 The Trials of Dishwashers
Our dishwasher broke, a lot of things broke last week actually, after ten years this house is going to pieces at an amazing rate, but the most significant thing that broke was the dishwasher. You really don't realize how badly you need one of those until you are washing everything by hand. A new dishwasher was purchased and we got the package deal that included home installation, and removal of the old one, which was rather nice, I didn't want to have to haul our old dishwasher anywhere. But then came the home installation, they called to setup their appointment, which I knew was going to be trouble when they said between in setting up the time. They claimed they would arrive between 8 and 11 in the morning. So I waited, and waited, and around 1 in the afternoon realized they were going to miss their estimated (what a wonderful cure all word for lazy fuckwit businesses) time. I wasn't all that shocked, and finally they arrived at almost 4. So the guy gets to work and lo and behold the 8 inch piece of plastic tubing that connects the dishwasher to the water under the sink isn't big enough for the new dishwasher so he has to put a new one in, what a shock, and it costs 25 bucks. At this point I was contemplating strangling the ass with that piece of plastic tubing. 25 bucks, shit go to the hardware store it probably is under a buck. Why is it that every time they come to do work you pay for it always costs more. I'd find it less offensive if they just performed a home invasion on me, kicked my front door down, beat me within an inch of my life, then installed the dishwasher and then stole the TV for their troubles. At least I know where they stood. Well the dishwasher is in and I guess that is good enough.

03/29 Oh How People Spend Their Time
Yup Wikipedia as it all, even this. Or even Stuff On My Cat, I like this website, there is just something funny about piling odds and ends upon a cat. Dogs it just wouldn't work, but cats it does work but you know they are just humoring you, when the stuff comes off the cat is going to claw your eyelids off.

03/29 End of All Things
This is a terrible black omen, a Dark Horse manga title has come out almost a month ahead of schedule. Lady Snowblood volume 3 came out and it isn't suppose to come out until late April, this is a sign, the end is nigh.

03/29 End of Battle Royale
Today I received my final volume of Battle Royale, this brings to an end a three year journey within the pages of Battle Royale. I am very wistful at the moment, I am very happy to have the final volume but in a way also rather sad, there will be no more Battle Royale, I have all 15 and there will be no more. I started this series like every other series, by looking at it and being curious about it. Nobody ever recommends manga to me, really the bitch of being totally ahead of my time. This series really shocked me, shocked? Nah kicked me squarely in the stomach and kneed me in the teeth. This comes from several pages that involves our favorite sexual psycho Mitsuko using a kama to cut a girl's throat and it goes on for about eight pages. Mind you that was three years ago and I was not at all ready for it, because nobody had ever told me squat about this series and to see that blew my mind. But it isn't just the rather blunt and graphic violence of the series that endeared me to it, it is how the characters are so real it is almost like they are really living breathing people who area getting killed. This series could never be made in the US, the level of reality that accompanies the violence is just too real for American censors to deal with. This is why we translate and import.

03/31 Tanuki
This evening I was down making tea when I thought I saw something weird on the deck. In the darkness it looked like a ball was sitting on the deck. I flipped the deck lights on and lo and behold there was a raccoon on the deck eating from one of the bird feeders. He was holding the bird feeder and eating out of the holes. It was great, I grabbed the camera and took pictures of him.

Mr Tanuki

04/02 Lack of April Foolery
I decided not to make any April Fools jokes on my loyal readers. This brings to a close the first week of my new ranting style. So far I rather like it, it was much easier to do than trying to cram it all in on Sunday. The only problem is that I am totally behind on updating the rest of the website. I have a few reviews that have yet to be written so everything is behind. That should clear up this week, assuming all my time isn't spent on Worlds of Warcraft. Cheers.

500 Horror Movie Spectacular

Mood: Busy
Last Episode of Anime Watched: Zatch Bell 04 - The Great Mamodo Battle!
Currently Playing in iPod: Wedding - Castle of Cagliostro OST
Game Currently in My Playstation 2: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

It is done, all 500 horror movies are now done. It took three weeks of rather insane rigor of watching several horror movies per day which now that it is done I am so thoroughly burned out that I am not going to watch another horror movie all month. It was a great deal of effort, I watched some really, really bad movies but thankfully a few really good ones. One probably wants to know, how can I manage to watch 75 movies roughly in the span of three weeks? It isn't impossible but you have to really dedicate yourself to it. I watched three horror movies a day, even more on Sundays, usually from 7 to past midnight during the week I watched horror movies, watched them while running on the treadmill, which if it has subtitles gets really tricky with all the bouncing and blood draining from my skull into my feet. I watched them while playing video games, something I found I am very able to do because I am really good at multi-tasking. Plus a little secret just between us, I used a few movies I had seen several times in the past that I had never reviewed in the past. In the end I did realize I pushed myself way, way too hard and I won't do that again.

After three tries I managed to tally all 500 movies and distributed them. Thankfully I have seen 4 times the numbers of As than I have of the Fs, but I am starting to see a natural Bell Curve, eventually if I watch enough horror movies you will see a true Bell Curve with Cs being the highest. Below is the distribution of all 500 movies, you can add them up and see that it took three separate times but I finally got it to add up to 500.

A: 121
B: 128
C: 129
D: 92
F: 30

Top Fifteen
Jaws- Its Jaws what do you expect.
Evil Aliens- This is a brand new British Alien horror-comedy, it is very gory and funny. If you have ever seen Bad Taste, think of this movie as Bad Taste with a good sized budget and a very hot star, Emily Booth.
Call of Cthulhu- The first honest silent horror movie made in over 80 years and it is very good. I like when odd ball movies turn out to be good, it makes watching all of these horror movies worthwhile.
Dead and Breakfast- When I saw this movie the box proclaimed it was the 'American Answer to Shaun of the Dead', when the so-called horror experts proclaim things that like are almost every time totally wrong. I said almost because this was one of the few times that they were actually right, a winning combination of zombies, comedy, and rockabilly.
Puppet Master- A little movie that involved stop motion puppets killing people in a hotel. This movie is here mainly for sentimental reasons I remember these movies from the early 90s when Full Moon was the only company making horror movies and these were their best.
Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires- Hammer Studios and the Shaw Brothers join forces to bring you a story of vampires and kung-fu and it works really, really well.
Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind- Sammo Hung Kam Bo plays his best role style, the clown kung-fu and is pitted against all manner of undead critters, including his hand when it turns evil, not going to say Evil Dead stole the idea, at least Sammo didn't have to cut his own hand off.
Shikoku- Sometimes horror movies don't have to be about vampires or zombies or have lots of blood and gore. Sometimes they can be quietly little films about ghosts and personal demons.
Masters of Horror: Cigarette Burns- John Carpenter's return to horror was a very spectacular way. His episode was one of the chief stand-outs in the rather mediocre Masters of Horror series.
Undead/Shaun of the Dead/28 Days Later- These three films have revolutionized the way we see zombie movies, George Romero started us on this path with Night of the Living Dead but yet it seems that no one in this country is able to pick up the mantel it is up to the rest of the world to make clever zombie movies and then have the US copy them.
Venus in Furs- A film from the legendary sleaze auteur Jesus Franco that is actually very good, it is haunting and has an excellent jazz soundtrack. It is a really good movie that really is against type for Jesus Franco.
Demons- Splatter and gore done right, Evil Dead in a movie theatre with plenty of dribbling ooze and spraying viscera.
Bloody Mallory- A rather fun movie about killing monsters intent on killing the pope. A French Buffy the Vampire Slayer minus all the bullshit angst.
Beyond Re-Animator- Jeffrey Combs is back as Dr Herbert West making them slobbering crazed zombie with his day glow green ooze. You can't go wrong with Re-Animator.
Dead End- Interesting tale about a family on the brink of a meltdown are taking a back road to grandma's for Christmas. Things go wrong, but there are some good laughs along the way, if you ever have been in a car with people that don't like each other you will relate to this movie.

Ten Worst
Death Tunnel- I have seen a lot of movies, I've seen a lot of bad movies but without a doubt the worst horror movie I have ever seen. Eyes of the Werewolf- Cheap werewolves and crappy storylines make for crappy movies.
Werewolf- Not even the mighty Joe Estevez can save this movie from being a ridiculous pile of crap.
Silent Night, Deadly Night 2- Not totally sure if this one even counts as a movie at least 1/3 of the movie is simply taken from the original Silent Night, Deadly Night.
Murder Set Pieces/Kill the Scream Queen- A small but growing sub-genre that almost celebrates the serial killer as an American rebel. These movies are full of over the top gore, ridiculous misogyny, naked women, and really creepy guys. These movies are for people who are starting careers in serial killing.
A Night to Dismember- This movie proves the point that movies are symphonies, if they are unfinished they suck. This movie is rather famous for being Doris Wishman's lost movie, a movie that was made but the final finished print was lost. It was later pieced together from working prints, this movie is a turkey probably the reason why it was lost in the first place.
Snapped- There is really nothing worse than artists who think they're work is the most important thing in the world and then they make a movie about it.
Tomb of the Werewolf- I have really bad luck with werewolf movies.
Zombie Campout- You know there is going to be trouble when the same guy appears 25 times in the, as writer, director, star, producer, cinematographer, composer, stunt coordinator, and on and on until the movie is being made by one guy who really has no clue what he is doing.
Head Cheerleader Dead Cheerleader- There is a reason why South Carolina isn't a hot bed for horror movies.

I have learned a few things from this, I've learned Troma movies suck, every one I watch turns out to be a horrible festering pile of monkey shit. I've learned I really ought to stay away from werewolf movies, they always end up being really, really bad. But in turn I have learned that movies involving zombies and space aliens from Britain are a wonderful source of entertainment as are supernatural kung-fu movies and even the remake obsessed American film industry every once and a great while is still able to produce a good movie or two. How long till I crossed the fabled half way line, that line being 656, it will be awhile, my Netflix queue is currently crammed with all the other genres I had to neglect to get to 500 horror movies. For this month at least I am concentrating on action movies, kung-fu flicks, gialli, anime, and all other non-horror arenas because I really don't want to watch another horror movie for awhile. I don't want to become a one trick pony. In addition to all that, I am starting to write again, that really took some serious neglect while I spent all my time watching horror movies. Cheers.

World's Shortest Rant

Mood: Hectic
Last Episode of Anime Watched: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig 01 - Reembody
Currently Playing in iPod: Tornado: Jigen's Theme - Lupin III OST
Game Currently in My Playstation 2: Resident Evil 4

DVD of the Week: The Batman I love this series, I loved the original Batman the Animated Series too, but one of the big selling points for me is that comic book nerds hate this series with a burning passion. They go out of their way to hate this series and anything people like that hate, I always seem to love. Ain't life funny that way.

Website of the Week: HK Flix The ultimate place to find Asian Cinema on DVD. It has stuff that you've never heard of and will love to watch.

Okay I am in a hurry today, it seems everything is running ten minutes behind and I really, really want to take the evening off so this is going to be a short rant, think of it like an outline to a rant.

Live Action Lupin = Great, goofy, not for white people.

Nearing completion on not one but two web novels, Sword and Moon and Nick Fairfax, Sword and Moon should be done this week, just need to proofread and put on website.

Xaolin Showdown is a funny kung-fu cartoon series on Cartoon Network.

This is the 9th day I have not watched a horror movie, am fairly confidant that I will be able to get back on the horror movie horse this week and continue my quest to 1313.

Several new ideas, new short stories, lots of stuff outlined and being to develop, I seem to get a new idea everyday now I just need the time to get it all down.

Tired, something to do with weather I assume, need warm weather, need more sun. Believe I am part plant, need photosynthesis.

Mr Vampire = Kung-fu hoping vampire classic, must watch if you like kung-fu.

Rant over, I feel like my brain is in a blender, inside a dryer in a tornado. Cheers.

It's Just A Little Airborne, Its Still Good

Mood: Busy
Last Episode of Anime Watched: Slayers 02- Bad! Mummy Men Are My Type
Currently Playing in iPod: Annabel Lee - Tiger Army
Game Currently in My Playstation 2: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

DVD of the Week: Demons
This is a horror movie within a horror movie which is an Italian version of Evil Dead. The story is fairly basic, group of people get trapped in a movie theatre as several of the movie go-ers become gooey slimy demons who are out to eat everybody else. This is a fun movie, especially if you like spraying fluids and dangling viscera. The movie is fun, don't expect this to revolutionize the world of horror, but it is really fun to watch. It is possible that when I watched this I had been on a losing streak when it came to horror movies and this was the first horror movie that I really had fun watching.

Website of the Week: Snowblood Apple
This is a good site for Japanese horror reviews, they are a bit long and a bit self aggrandizing but they more often than not at least get Japanese horror, something I have been increasingly finding that most don't get it. They review some less common titles which is good because I have seen enough Ringu reviews to sink a ship.

This week I have had a rather unhealthy avalanche of ideas which basically I spent my free time fleshing out and got no real writing done. The main idea I have been working on is a comedy fantasy story basically taking the D&D characters and making them funny, lesbian elves, gay barbarians, clerics who are also necromancers, goblyns, orcs, ogres, vampire kings, and fat princesses, it really is amusing me and that is important. I am working on two more comedy style story ideas, a serious and gory alien idea, couple of horror stories, and a few other things that keep my attention.

Where these ideas are coming from are horror movies, basically when I watch a good horror movie I get at least 5 ideas and usually I can make around 3 of those ideas work. I've been lucky and have seen a few really quality horror movies lately, which really is a change from the usual run of crap I had hit a month or so ago. As long as the good horror movies keep running the so will the ideas, here's to more good horror.

Speaking of horror, I keep hearing more and more about the next Friday the 13th movie. Now it isn't going to be a remake of the first, or at least the one they are making for October 13th, which happens to be a Friday. It is supposedly going to cover Jason's early years, those who know the series well, it is Jason wearing the white sack over his head. I think this will work, if and only if, they don't go the PG-13 route, if they do it will be ruined. Friday the 13th gave birth to all the slasher stereotypes, sex, drugs, and gory death, they can't change that, you wouldn't rewrite the bible and leave Jesus out would you? But trust me, this is Hollywood, the next Friday the 13th is going to be PG-13, I just know it.

Well I am almost at 475 in the horror movies, I have only about ten or so left before I get there. My goal, albeit it seems impossible, is to be at the halfway point of 656 by June which will probably only get harder as the weather gets nice, true it still has a long, long, long way to go before the weather is nicer.

For those that don't know, I hate the cold, I know snicker and laugh yes I live in Minnesota, I understand the irony. There are two kinds of cold, nuance cold which is Minnesota from October to April, and then there is inhuman cold, the kind of cold that kills Eskimos, and we are in the middle of that right now. I did learn something from this Eskimo-Killing cold, there is a big difference when it comes to humidity. Normally you only associate humidity with heat but after discussing it with people who live in drier climes that have winter I really realized there is a difference, humidity makes cold more biting, more brutal where dry cold is cold but it doesn't eat at your very soul. I am eagerly counting the days until late April when the weather becomes human again.

That is enough for this week, I keep putting this rant off to work on other stuff so I am going to end it early and get back to the other stuff. Cheers.

Very Little To Say

Mood: Chilly
Last Episode of Anime Watched: Naruto 24- First Chunin Exam
Currently Playing in iPod: Were Cat - Tiger Army
Game Currently in My Playstation 2: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

DVD of the Week: Slashes
This is a clever little horror movie about a Japanese game show, of course, pits contestants against slashers in several different environments and the contestants have to survive in order to win. It is a very novel idea that only suffered from the very low budget of the project.

Website of the Week: Friday the 13th: The Website
With a new Friday the 13th movie coming at the end of the year it seems a good time to show off the ultimate Friday the 13th website that is full of information, everything from body counts to references of Friday the 13th in popular culture. It is a really good website that has the best information about the classic slasher franchise.

As I sat down today to write this week's rant and I realized I really have almost nothing to say this week, so it is going to be rather short.

While assisting P-Chan with Special Olympics 4 as he so quaintly put it, in truth it is Resident Evil 4, over the phone I remembered the 1-900 help number that Nintendo and Sierra had many, many years ago to give you hints. I never called that, I didn't know anyone who ever called it but they were around for well over ten years so they had to have customers but I never met anyone who had ever called them. This also works for all those collect numbers, the 10-10 numbers which were heavily advertised several years ago, again I never actually knew anybody who had ever used one of those but they had enough money to advertise them so they had to be used by somebody. Those hint line numbers would never work anymore with the Internet, all you have to do is go to GameFAQs or something like that and there are all the answers waiting for you for free.

I have crossed the 475 line in my horror movie reviews and have 500 in my sights. I don't think I will cross 500 by the end of this week, but rather next week. So there will be one more regular rant next week but the week after you will see a 500th review spectacular.

I have been writing on several projects lately, zombie comedy, fantasy adventure comedy, alien horror story, zombie sci-fi horror story and others. I have many pots cooking lately and I should have something done, or nearly done by the end of the week so look out for that. Cheers.

Ranting and Its Big Words

Mood: Damned Cold
Last Episode of Anime Watched: Miami Guns 08 - The Sea! Bikinis! Ghosts!
Currently Playing in iPod: Fog Surrounds - Tiger Army
Game Currently in My Playstation 2: Dragon Quest VIII

DVD of the Week: The Beast that Killed Women/Monster of Camp Sunshine Double Feature
There are two kinds of people in the world of movies, those that understand camp and those that hate anything made longer than five years ago. I can proudly say that not only do I understand camp, I thoroughly enjoy camp. Camp is weird movies that are silly, strange, and all around wacky that were made many years ago trying to be serious to some degree but over the years have become silly. These are not always cult movies although the pair intersect very often, cult movies can be funny for the sake of funny, Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail is cult but intended to be funny where as the above two features were meant to be serious yet turned out to be funny. One of the funnier items about both movies they are shot on location at nudist camps. Yes you read that right, nudist camps. The whole reason behind that is rather simple, before 1967 showing nudity in a movie was illegal, again yes you read that right, illegal. But a few rather clever filmmakers found a loophole in the moral law that if they shot the movie entirely on location at a nudist camp you could show nudity because you are making a documentary about life on a nudist camp. Yes it sounds silly but so was the law. The movies were rather fun, they are silly but there is an enjoyment in being silly. I doubt most will like these two movies but I did because I understood these movies and didn't look at them strictly through the lens of modern day.

Website of the Week: Amazon
This is strictly because of their Amazon Prime which is a membership you buy for 78 dollars for one year and you get free 2 Day Shipping on anything you buy. Basically if you buy 12 things from Amazon in one year it pays for itself, it is now February and already it has almost paid for itself. I love the 2 Day Shipping because my number one complaint about buying things online is the waiting for it to arrive, this cuts down that annoyance greatly and stuff arrives at my doorstep in a prompt manner. It is Amazon Prime that finally allowed me to stop slumming at the local comic book shop to get my manga. For freeing me of the uncomfortable stares of the comic book nerds who run the store as week after week when I arrive at their little strip mall abode to buy strictly manga I than Amazon and give it the nod as website of the week.

This week I want to talk manga, mainly because I got several new manga this week from Amazon including the much awaited Bambi and her Pink Gun volume 2. Yes I finally got Bambi and her Pink Gun which I preordered on October 19th 2005. I really like Bambi and her Pink Gun, it really is the best example of a nihilistic hero there is. I hate when people find a word and start labeling everything with it in an attempt to look intelligent, nihilistic is one of those words. It gets so thoroughly overused the word becomes meaningless. Nihilism is breaking totally with normal ideals or conventions, if everybody becomes nihilistic then does the nihilistic behavior become the norm? It is even funnier when I hear on the radio or late night TV somebody out there offering tapes to teach you big words so you sound less stupid in conversation. Guess what using big words doesn't make you smart, people who use big words and then surround them with little words only makes them look more stupid not more intelligent.

The other new manga I really like are Reiko the Zombie Shop that is a person, not a store. Yes I understand I was confused too, even characters in the manga are confused by the name. It is a good horror manga that was put out with basically no fanfare my Dark Horse who really seem to be championing the entire horror manga genre. As much as I dislike Dark Horse for their many flaws I do have to give them credit for really being first in bringing manga to this country and for really putting out some really quality titles.

I passed my 425th horror movie review this week, we are nearing 500 a lot faster than I was expecting. I passed 250 in June and it took 4 years to review the first 250 and 9 months or so to do the next 250. At this rate my goal of watching 1313 horror movies is not all that impossible. I chose 1313 because it is a cool number, 1000 really doesn't say anything but 1313 really says spooky stuff. I still don't know what my 500th movie is going to be, I am hoping to find something special for that one, much like Haute Tension was for 250 but I still haven't really run across anything yet that screams cool like Haute Tension. Hopefully as I near 500 something will pop up, I really don't want 500 to be something like Death Tunnel.

Ah yes Death Tunnel, it took 301 movies for me to finally find something I hate more than My Little Eye. I watched this movie earlier in the week and had been lead into a false sense of security by good reviews I had seen online, man was I in for an unpleasant shock when I watched this golden turd. The movie was cliché ridden, horrible made, horribly acted, the only thing about this movie that kept me from totally loosing my mind was the asylum they shot at was really creepy looking but a good set with lots of promise only made me more angry with this halfassed movie. This leads me to talk about the Internet, Death Tunnel is a terrible movie but the filmmakers were smart enough to get their friends and others to fill every movie site with glowing reviews, I mean so glowing that I got a bit of an inkling something really was up, they were all too positive, too ready to proclaim this the greatest movie ever. The Internet has the great trap that you can't see who is writing this stuff, it makes anything said on it immediately suspect and people like the filmmakers of Death Tunnel only make it worse. My standing opinion of any review written online is immediately suspect unless there is a long pedigree of previous material, like 425 other horror movie reviews.

Onto the PS3, which is now becoming almost over the top, I was reading what the PS3 is going to have on from a leaked magazine article. It was a lot of techno babble, video this, CPU that, blah-blah-blah, but then one of the last features was DVR. Yes ladies and gentlemen the PS3 is going to have a TiVo style DVR in it. The only thing this machine won't do is make you breakfast but that is only because Sony hasn't figured out how to make the PS3 walk all the way to the kitchen without an insanely long power cord. I don't totally believe the DVR will be a standard feature, it will probably be an add-on you can buy to it, but if it does come standard I will have two DVRs in my room and they will be right next to one another. Also on that front the possible date of the 1st of October as a launch date for the PS3 is being bounded about in cyberspace, while I'm not totally sure you can bank on it, it does make sense so Sony can have it out in time for the Christmas rush.

Well that is it for the week, a new week and a new Web Novel feature, check it out. Cheers.

Tarring With a Wide Brush

Mood: Stuffed Up
Last Episode of Anime Watched: Miami Guns 08 - The Sea! Bikinis! Ghosts! (Two Weeks In a Row)
Currently Playing in iPod: Annabel Lee - Tiger Army
Game Currently in My Playstation 2: Dragon Quest VIII

DVD of the Week: Teen Titans Season 1
This is one of my favorite domestic cartoons but Cartoon Network had long bungled the DVDs by putting out three episodes every year or so. It took the canceling of the show for them to finally put out the first season on DVD. It is a great show and if enough people buy the DVD, the upcoming CCG, and the video game hopefully the show will come back. Why they canceled the show is beyond me, it probably has something to do with the spectacular failure of IGPX which is the most expensive show Cartoon Network had ever made. Hopefully this great show will come back, but if not at least Cartoon Network has at least started to put the DVD out right.

Website of the Week: Fast Loose & Lovely Pulp Covers
I love the 50s and 60s style of pulp novel covers, they really had a distinct and stylish look that we have really lost in the last forty years. This is a good collection that is continuing to grow. I have my own small collection of these books, mainly James Bond novels, and Mickey Spillane novels but I do have a little collection of my own and if I had lots of money just laying about I would love to make it grow. But for now I just collect the pictures of them if not the books themselves.

This week I have watched a lot of horror movies, 24 to be exact over 6 days. The last was my 450th horror movie review, I have only 206 left until I reach the halfway point to 1313. It is a bit of a way to go but it doesn't seem that difficult because last June I had past my 250th. I also could pad this total by adding bits and pieces of the other review sections, like the gialli movies which really are slasher movies, a few sci-fi movies which have heavy horror themes, and even a few western movies, kung-fu movies, dramas, action movies, and even a few anime titles which could possibly bring the number to 500 if not more. So the goal of 1313 isn't as insane as even I thought when I came up with.

I have found that my drive to watch horror movies waxes and wanes, sometimes the only thing that keeps me watching horror movies is my goal to reach 1313. That is partially why I have never alphabetized my horror movie reviews I like to look at the trends. There are spots were I watch a lot of just plain shitty movies and it is at those times I really have to force myself to continue watching, you can look at the more recent reviews as you'll see a span of 26 movies between the two As, there are a couple of Bs even a couple of B+s but it really is the As that I derive my ability to continue on my quest. I am a strange kind of superhero, I am Horror Movie Man, my powers are the ability to digest insane amounts of movie cheese and movie turkey. I get my powers from the movies I give As to, my foes are the Ds and Fs. The Bs are my allies, the Cs are shifty motherfuckers you can't trust. I do keep track of all these and until recently I had given more As than any other grade but as time passes, I am seeing more and more parabolic distribution of my grades, now the Bs are 1st, the Cs are 2nd and the As are 3rd, thankfully both the Ds and the Fs are lagging behind.

Speaking of horror movies on Friday there was some interesting news put out by Fangoria about the remake of Friday the 13th which is going to be directed by Sean S Cunningham himself. Now I am generally against remaking movies, especially these days when 9 out of 10 horror movies are remakes or rather re-imaginings which totally screw up the movie. But Friday the 13th is one of those movies that could be remade and actually work. Now I still am extremely leery of the idea, they could re-imagine Jason right out of the entire series but with Sean S Cunningham on board I don't think they will royally screw it up. Friday the 13th is really straight up horror, the formula is really simple it is like boiling water it takes a world class dumbass to screw up boiling water, the same goes for Friday the 13th, it is one part summer camp, one part sexy teens, and one part psychotic killer. If I was remaking Friday the 13th I'd add a few more characters, up the gore, up the nudity, up the body count, because if you are going to remake Friday the 13th you really should play it to the hilt, really piss off those uppity self righteous family groups. If they are going to accuse you of making violent porno give them something to bitch about. Now the one thing about the plan I don't believe is that it is going to come out on Friday October 13, I think that is just too ambitious to make work. But you never know this maybe one of the best in this hallowed series.

Another horror item, Grind House, the movie being made by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, is going to be one half zombie movie (Robert Rodriguez's half) and one part 'slasher opus' (Tarantino's half). Each movie is going to be an hour long with some phony trailers inbetween the two to give the real Grindhouse experience. I am very excited for Robert Rodriguez's zombie movie that sounds good but Quentin Tarantino's slasher movie I have my doubts about. His skill is stealing from a number of genres and mixing them all together, if he aims for a slasher movie he has only so-much to steal from. The more and more I watch of exploitation movies from the 70s, the more and more I loose respect for Quentin Tarantino, his only original idea ever was to pillage all the old exploitation movies for ideas at a time when most people had forgotten about exploitation cinema altogether. I am looking forward to this movie because it is very interesting sounding and even if Quentin Tarantino just steals from slasher movies hopefully he'll steal the good parts and make it interesting.

Minnesotans have learned a new trick when it comes to driving, yes even morons can add new tricks to their repertoire of incompetence. In the past they never used their turn signals, they'd just brake and make their turn. But now they have discovered what that odd lever on the left side of the steering wheel actually does, it makes a little light appear on the dash. Now they use turn signals like they are a guessing game. On several occasions over the last couple of weeks I have found myself behind somebody who has the turn signal on for two or three blocks before they turn, of course in those two or three blocks there are about half a dozen places they could turn into. So now you get to play the newest game that is sweeping across American, When Am I Going To Turn? Guessing correctly you don't rear end them or get rear ended by the guy behind you, guessing wrong and you just became an accident statistic. But don't fell bad about becoming a statistic, you join a great big club of accident victims in Minnesota because Minnesota leads the nation in accidents per capita, and this isn't my statement it was the 2004 report by the NTSB. In short if you are going to use your turn signal, use it just before you turn, not two miles before you do, I don't like playing trivia games while driving.

I'm running really far behind so this is the end of the rant. I wanted too many horror movies this week so there is no new web novel stuff. So until next week, Cheers.

How To Get Behind

Mood: Busy
Last Episode of Anime Watched: Miami Guns 04 - Miami Mountain Pass, Go Go Go
Currently Playing in iPod: Into Too Deep - Genesis
Game Currently in My Playstation 2: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

DVD of the Week: Pinky Violence
The greatest Sukeban box set to be released in this country so far. Now I know none of you have any idea what Sukeban is so I will give you a nutshell description, it is primarily 70s Japanese Exploitation movies that involve girls with gun, or swords dealing out death and justice and usually showing some skin. Sukeban is also known as Pink Cinema, hence the title of the DVD, Pinky Violence. The most known, thanks to uber-hack Quentin Tarantino, is Lady Snowblood which has all the characteristics of Sukeban, a strong female lead, bloody spraying violence, swords and guns, and women get naked. I really have gotten into exploitation movies lately and I think it is because it doesn't bog itself down in trying to be arty or give a significant and moving message about life, it is meant to entertain and it goes all out to entertain and in the end actually can be both arty and worldly even without trying.

Website of the Week: Manga News
This is my latest addiction, scan-lated manga. It is Japanese manga that has been scanned and translated, basically fan-subbed manga. You get a much wider range of titles, stuff like Korishiya Ichi, or Ichi the Killer and you can also get sappy, really goofy super Japanese comedy. I think it serves more the former than the latter, there are several really good manga that are simply too intense to be licensed over there, they were be immediately labeled as too intense for anybody under the age of 18 and probably anybody over the age of 18 too, stuff like Ichi the Killer, Gantz, MPD Psycho, and Freesia that are really good but are very intense and as a society we simply aren't ready to accept the brutal facts of reality on the whole. So visit the site and find your manga niche.

Okay I am behind on just about everything now, I have three manga reviews that are partially finished, an anime review I have yet to start, two web novel items that need to be proof-read and put on the website, and I have barely started this rant at all.

I am very ashamed to admit that I actually watched Into the Blue, yes I know the movie is ridiculous but after watching Havoc I realized that I have absolutely no shame when it comes to movies. Besides it came from Netflix so it really wasn't as humiliating as going to a video store and actually renting it. Yes I do equate this movie with renting porno, it has many similarities to porno, bad dialogue, bad acting, cute butts and skimpy clothing. The movie is ridiculously clichéd to a point where it became laughable about twenty minutes into the film but the movie is totally review proof, the reason why you ask? Simple Jessica Alba, she is the Nerd Aphrodite and when you put her in a bikini with most of the movie taking place as she undulates under the water like a sexy little otter and you have a movie these damaged little boys will worship like a gift from heaven.

Now for those that don't know I have a love and hate relationship with Showtime's new horror series Masters of Horror. Several of the episodes have been less than spectacular episodes but there have been 3 that really stood up to the title masters of horror. The last one I was eagerly awaiting the season finale, Imprint by the Japanese master Takashi Miike. But they pulled the episode because it was too intense for Showtime. Yes that is too intense for premium cable now that is the kind of stuff I want to see. We discussed this last night and among my friends I am the only one that appears to be totally immune to horror movies and I enjoy them more than anyone else. I'm not sure if it is because I have seen it all already or that I know it is just a movie and that piece of knowledge is my talisman from really getting freaked out. I think it is probably a combination of the two that when I watch a horror movie I am more interested in the flow of the story and the mechanics of the gore rather than thinking that these are real people being carved up. It doesn't detract from my enjoyment of the films, I think it actually enhances it. I really think horror is the most important and yet most vilified genre in movies today any idiot can make some overly dramatic talking movie about deep issues and any idiot can make stuff explode while muscular action heroes crack one liners but it really takes a master to make a movie scary.

I have found myself again playing a lot of Super Nintendo recently. I seem to get a great nostalgia for the Super Nintendo every couple of months, this time it has been a little stronger than usual but I have Aeon Flux to blame for that, watching Aeon Flux last week on DVD really made me think about the early 90s before the wheels fell of the American entertainment cart and of course when you think of the early 90s you should think of the Super Nintendo. I love my Super Nintendo, even now 15 years later I still go back to playing the games of the days of yore. I have been recently playing Duck Dodgers which is a lot of fun with some great humor. I just know in twenty years I will probably be still playing Super Nintendo in an era were games are downloaded into your brain.

Okay I have decided everything except the rant is going to be done later this week. I should have the web novel stuff done by Monday, and it will be all three pieces I had planned for not just the two that are finished.

Oh Glorious Day

Mood: Cold
Last Episode of Anime Watched: Requiem From The Darkness 07 - Katabira Crossroads
Currently Playing in iPod: Fog Surrounds - Tiger Army
Game Currently in My Playstation 2: Disgaea

DVD of the Week: Miami Guns
This anime series is a total hoot, it has the insane wackiness of Excel Saga with the cop comedy of You're Under Arrest with tons of in-jokes and references not just to anime but to all manner of pop culture. One of the best jokes in the Evangelion gag they run through the series. In Evangelion one of the principle characters has a habit of putting his hands in front of his mouth while talking, which really reduces on that animation budget. It became rather comical in Evangelion as they use more and more inventive ways of hiding the mouth, at point having a character hold up a crossword puzzle book to cover his mouth. I think this series is actually more hilariously warped than Excel Saga, yes that is possible. This is my kind of comedy, totally off the wall stuff.

Website of the Week: Yellow Menace
This is a great site that has lots of stuff about not just anime but Asian culture in general. Some of you may have known it by it original name, Destroy All Monsters, but there was a licensing problem with the American company that holds the license to the film of the same name. The film of course it one of the best Godzilla movies ever made because it brings together all the giant monsters, Godzilla, Rodan and pals together for one big slam dance of a movie. Yellow Menace also has the best Ghost in the Shell Episode Guide you can find that is full of trivia and great episode descriptions.

This week Tokyopop announced the next Kindaichi Case File, the House of Wax. This has made me very, very, very, very happy because it came out the same day as the 6th volume of Lupin III: World's Most Wanted. I was so worried a href=" http://www.tokyopop.com/">Tokyopop was going to cancel the series because it isn't a massive explosive hit. But Tokyopop has vowed to complete every series they start. This is very good news, Kindaichi is far and away my favorite series and I really hope they will put out all 27 volumes and maybe put out the second series, the aptly titled New Kindaichi Case Files too but if they are dragging their feet putting the first series out I doubt the second will make it.

I just started reading the first Slayers book, yes that is right, not a manga but an actual book that is made up of words not pictures. It is great, I loved the anime Slayers and this is even better. You get a lot of what is going on in Lina's head. The initial meeting between her and the mountain bandits at the beginning of the first season is really funny in the book because she thinks all these great little jokes. The first two pages of the book are just a riot where she is talking to the reader about why she is running from the mountain bandits in the first place. I love the book and am looking forward to reading all 14 more in this series.

Okay seeing that this entire rant is about things I like I shall keep this trend going. In the past I have lamented that modern music simply just sucks. Well I am amending that statement, there is music that is being made today that is really good but you have to know where to look for it. It isn't mainstream it doesn't get a lot of radio air play, it will never be shown on MTV but if you know where to look you can find some truly hidden gems. First up the new punk movement, I love old punk music like the Clash, Sex Pistols, the Ramones, Black Flag, and X so it is easy to get into the new punk movement. My favorite new punk band is AFI which is a straight up punk band with great lyrics on the level of the Clash or Black Flag. Branching off from the new punk movement is a sub-genre called Psychobilly. Okay Psychobilly is one part Rockabilly, one part Rob Zombie style horror metal, and one part punk rock which creates and infectious catchy sound. Of course the best band for Psychobilly today is the band Tiger Army. Now to change spectrum totally and travel halfway across the world to three distinct countries, Japan, Russia, and France, each offering new and catchy music. Japan of course has J-Pop, Puffy Amiyumi, Maya Sakamoto, and Ayumi Hamasaki, but they also have great jazz, fronted by legendary Jazz Pianist Yuji Ohno, probably best know to anime fans as the man who composes all the Lupin soundtracks, and some great modern rock stuff from bands like Asian Kung-Fu Generation and L'Arc~en~Ciel. France has my newest favorite in the pop world, Alizee, a very cute popstar whose songs are sung a little slower and with a better melody than anything found in this country. Yes it is pop music but it isn't manufactured blonde ultraslut like US pop music. In Russia you have Tatu, the Russian bisexual duo, that never really made it in this country despite their being bisexual before the US bisexual revolution. All that aside they do make very good music, it is electronic and dark much like Prodigy use to be, their latest album Dangerous and Moving has some really great songs. Now that I have gone through my recently listening pleasures I can all but guarantee that you have not heard of more than 2 bands from the entire rant and this is the problem, great bands like this don't get the exposure that the mainstream crap gets and therefore ruins the reputation of modern music.

I am somewhat assumed by entertainment types disbelief that Brokeback Mountain is such a hit in the middle of the country. Yes the unwashed homophobic horde apparently is watching this movie as well as the cultured well washed coasters. I have to admit that eventually I will see it as well, not in the theatres mind you but I will rent it from Netflix. I don't care about gay cowboys but when everyone says how good this movie is I get a little interested to see if they are or aren't full of shit. In the past stuff that everybody touts as being the greatest fill in the blank off all time has turned out to be crap but I'm going to reserve my opinion until I actually watch it. I also am eagerly waiting for Eli Roth's newest film Hostel to come out on DVD. That probably is the only movie I want to see in the theatres but my rule of never going alone to a movie ensures I won't be able to see it because none of my friends are willing to see it because it is a horror movie. Oh well maybe this year I can actually keep myself out of the theatre entirely.

I have two new web novel stories up, one is a little different than the others. It is called Devil's Castle and it is a horror/fantasy collection of stories. I have this pile of story ideas that won't fit anywhere else so I decided to compile them all under one umbrella. The stories will not involve the same characters, in fact most characters will be lucky to survive one story but there will be a few reoccurring characters here and there. The real main character is the cursed castle where all the evil pours from. There was going to be a third story but it is turning out to be longer than I was expecting, a lot longer actually so it isn't ready just yet.

Web novels, ready 'em while their hot. Cheers.

A Rant of the Future

Mood: Fair
Last Episode of Anime Watched: One Piece 05 - Meme
Currently Playing in iPod: Power of Love - Huey Lewis and the News
Game Currently in My Playstation 2: God of War

For Christmas I received the second greatest piece of technology in the universe, I got an iPod Nano. Needless to say I love the little stinker, and little it is. I got the smaller 2 gig version over the 4 gig and I am standing by my decision, anything bigger and I would put too much on there to be able to really listen to. I also like how it has lots of little extra features, including games. Games, you really need games on an iPod? The funniest thing is solitaire which is really tricky to play because all you have is the spinning thingie and the center button. But I didn't buy an iPod for the games, in fact I didn't buy the thing at all but in any case I wanted the thing to play music not games.

I finally watched Perfect Hair Forever, it is basically making fun of anime but instead of Asian accents you get ghetto styling. Lord I watched a single episode and my IQ dropped 5 points. It is nice to know that while we can't compete with the Japanese when it comes to animation, we can mock them like nobody else.

I have found the invention that could make me a very wealthy man. The biggest problem of strip clubs is when the guys run out of money and guys don't want to run to the ATM and lose their precious spot on the edge of the stage. So this is what we do, we make a g-string with a credit card reader. It is perfect, now all guys have to do is swipe the card and it is an extra thrill because there is only one place on a g-string with enough material to allow a credit card reader to be placed, and you know where that is, wink-wink.

This week I read Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence: After the Long Goodbye it is about Batou looking for his lost basset hound Gabriel and the strange places it takes him. I liked the book, especially the middle part about Mao Mantou, basically Chinese McDonalds that was very funny. I wasn't all that pleased with how they made Batou so helpless in the beginning of the book, he almost seemed like a whimp. In Stand Alone Complex and even in the movies Batou is Section 9's resident ass kicker and to have him so easily hacked and nearly killed in a car accident seems rather against character for him. He also bemoans his life a lot in the book again something I don't think Batou would do outside the book. The theme of the book is what makes us human and lots of people queue up to say it delivers this message better than the movie, which is true except Ghost in the Shell 2 wasn't about what makes us human, it is about our societal fascination about dolls and to want lengths are we will to make dolls more human. Our society has very poor critical thinking skills, if things are delivered to us in easy to understand bite sized pieces we get totally confused and scream that stuff sucks.

I often have the feeling that I am from another planet and I am just observing human behavior. I love watching Dr 90210 which is a plastic surgery show. The most recent episode I was watching involved a woman who tore her labia on one side during birth and a sizeable piece had to be removed in order to stop the pain. Okay they don't have the camera over the doctor's shoulder as he removes the piece but when they remove it, they blur it out. Now this is were TiVo becomes my friend because I can pause it and really soak in the ramification of blurring it out the piece of the labia after it was removed. I mean sure I understand blurring it out when it is attached but when it is five feet away it stops being the labia and it comes a piece of meat. Under this brilliant logic if you had a steakhouse and wanted to advertise your prime cuts of meat you would have to blur it out because for all the FCC knows that is cow labia and we can't take that chance. I mean for the love of sanity we are so fastidious about censorship that despite the fact that it was removed, and is now five feet from the body it is still from the sexual forbidden zone and we must blur it out. This is a great shining example of how stupid the FCC is, the piece of the labia that was removed was the labia minora and that is from inside the body, techincally not inside the body but outside while it is still physically in the body. But it is part of the woman's forbidden zone, that strange mysterious region of pure evil. Honestly if you just showed a shot of the removed labia on the table to every person in the world without the context you would have no fucking clue what it is, most people would probably think it was uncooked filet minion rather a piece of a woman. This is where a get truly confused, we can show beheadings during the dinner hour on the news but at 10 at night we can not show a piece of the labia after it has been removed and place five feet from where it once resided because that it once came from between a woman's legs. I would really love to have someone explain that to me in rational terms that don't involve made up shit like family values or corrupting our children. Killing, murder, torture, and all the other flavors of violence is not just okay but socially acceptable, but sex the thing that makes life possible is the dirtiest most forbidden thing in the world.

This week marks the 3rd week with a new short story. I have a plan to have a new story every week this year so far so good. I don't like New Years Resolutions so I won't call it that but it did land at the same time, so I guess it could be called a New Years Resolution but unlike most I don't plan to let this one slip. So give it a read or may baboons eat your eyeballs and fling their poo at you. Cheers.

The Past

Mood: Dead
Last Episode of Anime Watched: One Piece 10 - Who Gets the Last Laugh
Currently Playing in iPod: Cosmos - Tatu
Game Currently in My Playstation 2: Suikoden IV

This Tuesday marks the 10th anniversary of my moving from my home of Pueblo Colorado into exile here in the frozen hell of Minnesota. This rant originally started off as a depressing dirge about the last ten years and the hard truths I have learned but that is depressing and if I had the choice between laughing and crying I would rather laugh. So without further ado...

I am adding yet more weekly features to my rant in the form of DVD of the Week and Website of the Week.

DVD of the Week: Aeon Flux
Now to understand this series you have to go way, way, way back to the early 90s back when MTV was more than a parody of itself back when it was riding the cutting edge of popular culture and it was setting the trends. Back in the day when MTV was still primarily playing Music Videos, shocking I know but bear with me here, there were a few cutting edge programs that only MTV would have produced. One of them was Liquid Television a show that showcased a lot of edgy and inventive animated shorts, of them three became famous or infamous depending on how you look at it, one was Office Space which would be turned into the cult movie Office Space, another was Beavis and Butthead, the last was Aeon Flux. Set in a futuristic 1984 style Utopia world Aeon Flux brought violence, frank sexuality including lesbianism, S&M, and bondage to American Animation. It was this, Sam Keith's the Maxx, which these days is the definition of obscure, and HBO's Spawn that made American cartoons cool. Of course these days, Japan so thoroughly and totally dominates the mature animation market and American television not exactly being the fount of creativity it is unlikely stuff like this will ever be seen on TV again. This series is a little odd, the animation is extremely singular, Peter Chung's animation style can be seen ten miles away which may not be to everyone's taste, but the action is good, the story is solid, and there is enough kinky stuff to keep anybody grinning. I personally like this series, it may be strictly sentimental but it is still a great series. The DVDs are chalked full of extra like the Liquid Television shorts, commentaries, making ofs, and the original pilot. It is an excellent series that should appeal to fans of anime or fans of early 90s nostalgia.

Website of the Week: Nanaca Crash
What you are supposed to do his crash your bike into Taichi and see how far you can fling him, hitting your friends will give you bonuses. Funny stuff, my record is 2596.81 metres.

Okay with the two new features finished I can get to the meat of the rant. Like Blood, not the red stuff in your veins, I mean the Japanese anime/manga/and now book series. I am reading the Blood book which was written by Mamoru Oshii. I'm not all that far in the book so far but what I have read I have liked. The book doesn't follow Saya but rather a high school student named Kei who is involved with the demonstrations against the Vietnam War. The first chapter does a great job of explaining even the smallest minutia of the goings-on during a student demonstration. Mamoru Oshii was probably involved in those, both this book and Jin-Roh have very vivid demonstration scenes. I have high hopes for this book after my indifference towards the first Ghost in the Shell book.

Three cheers for my Denver Broncos, six cheers actually. Not only did they beat my least favorite team in the entire NFL last night, the New England Patriots, but their perennial play-off monkey, the Indianapolis Colts are off their backs with their lost to Pittsburg. This is doubly good because not only does Denver not have to play the team that beat them the last two years in the play-offs but Pittsburg has to play in Denver a place that Denver hasn't lost a game all season. I am really pulling for a Denver Seattle Super Bowl this year. I am still amazed that the older I get the more interested in football I become, very odd event.

I have started to play Suikoden IV, the series of 108 stars. The game hasn't grabbed me like Dragon Quest 8, but I think I may have set the bar too high for this game. I haven't gotten to the big naval battles yet, that is something I really think would be fun. My biggest complaint, aside from figuring out how to control my ship is how the main character runs, he runs like he just shit himself and is trying to make it to the bathroom before it rolls down one pant leg.

I had some other stuff I wanted to yammer about but I have forgotten it, this is what happens when you totally change your entire rant at the very last second. Oh well it will come to me eventually and I will put them in next weeks rant. So until then, Cheers.