Halfway in Debt

An update for those of you who still occassionally look at this blog - I am reading the Graeber tome (speaking of being late to the party).  No time to blog*, and yet I can find time to wade through a pound and a half of anthropology, history and anarchist ranting.  Well, in teh words of someone who's already neatly summed up teh situation and then moved on to something after goatse, I blame Twitter.

I'm on Chapter 6 which is halfway to teh Controversial Chapter of Bombing and Doom.  Maybe it's confirmation bias, but things are looking pretty bad (at least from my perspective) for teh Graeber h8rs.  d00d may have been a complete ass and jerk - and it's not like Henry Farrell is dum or what (that guy's whipcrack sharp).  But unless Chapter 12 breaks out Fluoridation is an Ebil Conspiracy, it's looking bad for teh CT crowd.  Especially bad because despite teh ridiculously offensive "a Reply" that Graeber crapped out, I totally see where he was coming from.  Teh childish SAT/GRE insults are totally about turning teh "de-legitimization" argument around on its head to show how ridiculous it is.  And despite Gabriel Rossman's very helpful and productive responses in teh Thread of teh Unpleasantness, it is very hard to see how Graeber wasn't justified in lashing out***.  That is, unless you value convivial non-shrill pleasantries over substance in arguments.

Anyways, I should have moar to report when I finally get to Chapter Graeber's Full of Shit Despite all teh Nodding and Agreeing I've Been Doing for the Past Three Hundred Pages.  And depending on when Rathian Plate drops for a hammer user, it could be any day now.

* Everyone has their excuses.  Too busy with work, or fambly, or whatnot.  I gots nothing other than pure carp laziness.  Heck, I've only just cleared Rathian** and Monster Hunter Tri will have been out for two years on Friday.  I can't even keep current with dicking off!

** Barroth is a cheap bastard and can suck my hammer.  Fuck you Barroth.

*** Although in the context he was replying in, a more artful response would have been moar effective and knowing your audience is something that's considered a good thing in a writer.

Sky-waggle Sword

Just an update in case anyone's wondering where I've been. in the world of Skyward Sword. New Game+ (unlocked after finishing the game normally) is called Hero Mode and I'm about a quarter way through. Here's my review:

TLDR version - 9/10. Zelda-riffic, but waggle haters can go blow themselves until teh next CoD:MW installment.

This isn't really meant to be a review, but rather a rebuttal to teh various complaints about teh game. There are some big flaws in teh game, but teh ones most folks whine about aren't them.

Firstly, teh waggle haters. Teh Wii is five years old. In that time, Nintendo mostly used teh motion controls for shovelware and party game compilations. The sort of stuff Kinect and Move owners are now seeing. There were a couple of attempts at making use of teh motion controls with core franchises - Super Mario Kart Wii, Super Mario Galaxy and sequel, Metroid Prime 3. Waggle haters please note that these are some of teh best games made in recent years.

Skyward Sword is even moar motion control focused. If you hate teh waggle, skip this game. It plays like an argument for why this console generation's first motion control is teh best. And it's a pretty persuasive argument.

It really does feel liek you're holding teh hilt of teh Master Sword and swinging that bugger around. There's lotsa complaints that it doesn't work - but I suspect that this is teh voice of hurt pride talking. Yes, this requires moar co-ordination than remembering where triangle and circle are located. Actually swinging teh remote is moar difficult than just pushing a button. But lotsa folks get by just fine, totes able to swing in all eight directions. Sure if you twist teh Wiimote before swinging it borks up your attack, but guess what? Feature not a bug. Swinging an actual sword with teh blade on an angle is gonna bork things up too. Plus, it's not supposed to be childishly simple, just pretty easy. Like your mom. A small exception - sometimes when you slash to vigorously, Link follows up with a thrust - probably due to centripetal force on teh controller or teh sensor reacting to teh sudden stop at teh end of your swing or wev. Just bear in mind that you don't need to flail teh Wiimote like you're chopping down a tree.

Teh controls work awesome. Flying teh loftwing, skydiving, swimming and teh beetle are excellently done. Basically, all teh various gadgets work great with teh motion controls. There are many points in teh game where different motion control bits are required. If you are unwilling to try something different, something other than dual analog sticks, well then wev. Enjoy your tiny little box of gaming experience. OMG! Console games aren't teh same unless played on cathode ray tubes!

Another common complaint - backtracking. Uh, d00ds - it's a Legend of Zelda game. That means backtracking. Also too SPOILERS, almost all of teh backtracking isn't really backtracking at all. Revisiting Faron Woods to do teh Spirit Trial in teh Spirit World is totes different. Teh next revisiting occurs after teh entire region is flooded and underwater. It may be teh same locale with teh same landmarks, but this is not backtracking. Running Eldin Volcano during teh eruption phase - not backtracking.

Teh Camera. 3D third-person action games always solicit complaints about teh camera. Here, there's no player control over teh camera except z-targetting and going into first-person look around mode. But really, that's all you need - a way of re-focusing teh camera quickly with a single button tap for time-sensitive situations and a way to leisurely take in teh surroundings and assess teh environment for clues. Moar control of teh camera would probs be less helpful in teh majority of circumstances.

Teh complaint that Fi sucks. Well, Fi does suck. She's no Midna, let me tell you. I got nothing here - considering teh dozens of hours you spend with her as a guide, it would have been nice to have a bettar companion. All I got is - at least she skates around real purdy,

So basically, teh misdirected gripes and complaints about Skyward Sword are about gameplay. That's messed up. Teh gameplay in Skyward Sword is amazing. Some new mechanics mixed into Legend of Zelda's already winning collection - well executed too. Pacing is a little slow at the beginning, but what with teh new control scheme, maybe warranted. Espscially considering all teh waggle haters who can't get past a Bokoblin's guard. Level design is sensational. Lanaryu and teh Timeshift stuff especially.

My problem with Skyward Sword is moar fundamental - teh storytelling. There's a huge fricking hole in teh overall narrative that sucks teh life out of it. Teh issue is that I have great difficulty caring about what happens. As is typical of teh genre, our hero has to rescue all of existence from teh Big Bad - but as you play through, there's a nagging feeling that develops about why you would bother. It's a good thing teh gameplay is so engaging because if you stop to think about it, you notice teh surface world isn't really worth saving. I mean, sure it's pretty and filled with exciting and complicated puzzles - but it's also almost totally devoid of characters which evoke any real sympathy whatsoever.

MOAR SPOILERS FOLLOW

Teh first region has teh Kikwis. There's five of them and you barely interact with any of them. All they do is hide. Later there are also teh underwater umbrella d00ds. There seem to be a number of these guys, but they are even less interesting than teh Kikwis. It's looked after by teh Water Dragon who is a condescending and annoying bitch.

Region 2 has Mogmas. These guys have a moar prominent role in teh game, comic relief. They are poorly sketched out and their only defining characteristic is that they are acquisitive greedy little bastards (if that can be considered a single characteristic). Teh guardian of this zone is teh Fire Dragon who is a loud and insensitive buffoon.

Region 3 has teh little robot d00ds who are genuinely interesting, unforteunately, they went extinct a thousand years previous to teh start of teh game (you interact with them through regions affected by Timeshift Stones which put you into teh distant past). IOW, they are already gone by teh time you can do buggerall about them. Teh Thunder Dragon (not Bhutan this time) is teh least offensive of teh regional guardians, but he's basically dying when you meet him. This entire zone, teh only one that might have been worth saving, is filled with folks who are already dead or well on their way.

There are also a few Gorons that are pleasant enough d00ds, and also archaeologists too! That's pretty cool - but is it enough to warrant teh wholesale slaughter of all those Bokoblins and Moblins? There are way moar enemies on teh surface than anything else. So wouldn't teh democratic thing be to let teh baddies take over? wev. I'm struggling through Hero Mode because teh game is genuinely a blast to play. With a marginally less annoying NPC population, this game would be perfect.

Viva Les Resolutions!

It's yet another Doomsday Year. Also too, election season for teh USA. Gonna be fun times.

So I missed 100 posts. But in doing so, I lurned a bit about meself. I'm not a blogger. I'm a commenter. Generally, when I write, I assume teh reader already has a lot of teh context and background. This is great when it's a reply comment in a thread headed up with a well written post - but it makes for shoddy original posts.

What does this mean? Basically nothing. I kinda knew all along and really, this blog hasn't affected my cavorting around in S,N! threads. Teh reason I started blogging in teh first place was because occasionally I need to vent in a longer format then is appropriate for a thread comment. Also too, serves as a way to get teh voices in my head out. Meaning that teh disconnected and highly unpolished nature of my posting is feature not bug. Which kinda sucks for teh two or three folks looking forward to descriptions of how I boned their moms - but teh muse only comes when you use teh up on teh downstroke technique she does.

So, yet another rambling streamofconsciousness intro. And here's teh funneh part - having lurned a bit about myself in failing to hit a hundred posts, Imma see if I can lurn something new for next year. So without further ado,

Staircase Twit Resolutions 2011

1. A hundred posts.
2. Be AWESOME.
3. Finally get a blogroll up,,, well that one was easy.
4. Moar doggerel. Not necessarily about your mom.
5. Rationalize teh tag mess.

Happy Election Year guys.

Teh End of Teh "Teh" Era

So there's been another Pennis infection at teh Mothership.  I mention this because it has highlighted to me how offensively annoying it is for an outsider to stink up a joint by ignoring all teh basic rules of civil behaviour.  Each place has its own conventions and standards of acceptable behaviour, and while some things may not edge over into completely unacceptable offenses (okay, not talking about Pennis now) they can still be totes annoying to folks who have moar vested in teh joint.

And on that note, I will now be spellchecking before I comment at Crooked Timber.

OTOH, I kann spele as crappily as I wont heer.  Moar worserest then evar befoar.

Also too, Teh Teh:

AFK

Glad I finally got that long post up. Time was running short as I will be offline for teh next week or so. Not that you'd notice based on my output here, but if anyone at teh Mothership's wondering why I'm being so quiet - I'm in your mom's bedroom at an undisclosed location.

Is It Getting Hot In Here? Your Mom Says Yes.

So I noticed that some of my posts are getting to be on teh extremely rambly long side. Imma provide a shortcut for all y'all by opening with TLDR versions when teh post starts looking a bit long.

TLDR version: Even fraud demonstrates that there is growing scientific consensus on global warming.

So over at teh Mothership, there's a discussion of conservatives and their anti-science positions. Notably, the OISM petition got brought up. Anyways, now that that petition has a bit of history - there's some interesting observations that can be made about it.

The original petition circulated in '97 and by '99 had garnered over 17,000 signatures with an interesting scam cover letter/"article" attached. Scientific American took a look at a random sampled of climate-science related Ph.D. signatories in 2001. Some they couldn't identify, some had died, some had no recollection of the petition at all.
Eleven of thirty would sign again, six would not. Those six still count in OISM's numbers. SciAm's rough guess was that the petition had about 200 climate researchers signed on.

The population of denialists is not monolithic, although that is the way they are evolving. My point about the original petition is that about 20% of denialists with doctorates in some climate science related field had changed their minds in two years. Science requires that theories match the data. As moar data is collected and moar certainty is provided, even teh reality-challenged start being won over. And the past decade, decade and a half has seen a lot of new data being added to the body of knowledge.

This is reflected in the overall attitudes of the scientific community towards climate change. Certainly the design of surveys is important and flawed surveys will give you flawed results - but you can still glean information so long as the flawed surveys are consistently fraudulent.

Example: Bray and Von Storch conducted dubious surveys in '96 and '03. Comparing the two shows a slight increase in the certainty that antropogenic global warming (AGW) is occuring. A third survey conducted in '08 shows an large increase in certainty on the point. Newer surveys of scientists tend towards a range of 90% to 98% agreement - older surveys vary much moar with much greater levels of both uncertainty and disagreement.

Back to OISM. They ran a new petition campaign in 2007 in response to algore is fat. It's hard to tell how many new signatories they got, because they've been collecting non-stop since '97. BUT the total number now, 31K, is less than double what it was after their first petition campaign. Thus, despite having this established presence, despite the increased ease teh Intarspoor has given to spreading crackpot ideas, despite the supposed "widespread skepticism about climate change in the scientific community" they garnered fewer new signatures in 2007 than they did ten years earlier. Because there is scientific consensus regarding AGW and their fraud is harder to perpetrate.

The field of study has gotten more attention, more work, more research and more data since 1997 and as a result the attitudes of climate researchers is increasing certainty of man-made global warming. Even the rare dissenting groups (such as economic geologists who's entire field of study is dedicated to finding oil deposits) have moderated their dissent.

At this point, global warming is an observed fact. The "theory" that human activity is the cause of the majority of the warming is generally accepted by the scientific community. Meaning that a scientific consensus about anthropogenic global warming is an observed fact.

There is still, as has always been the case, an avenue by which denialists can challenge AGW. By using the mountains of established data and proposing their own theory as to what's happening. But denying the data or denying that there is widespread agreement amongst scientists that man-made global warming is occurring is just make-believe fantasy. And while make-believe fantasy has its place (i.e. your mom's bedroom) that place sure as heck ain't where teh denialists are trying to raise it.

edit: grammar fixes.

Obama and Democracy

So, this month has marked some excursions from my ususal commenting grounds. My first comments at Balloon Juice and Lawyers, Guns and Money. Prompted by the shit sandwich that is debt ceiling Super Congress cutty Mc cut cut bullshit deficit OMG deficit - it's not like we're skirting around a fucking double dip recession or worse here. Anywho, what with all that, it's been a pretty Obama-bashing gay old time. And it's probably way too late at this point to clarify my position on Obama for folks who have only seen my nym for teh first time on some HE SOLD US OUT rant, but thinking about itand getting it down into words has been an intersting learning experience for me, so wev.

Firstly - yes, what some anonymous foul-mouthed d00d in Canuckistani land thinks about teh preznit? Who fucking cares? Well, I do. And it's my blog and I'll cry if I want to. Okay, here we go:

Item: As I said over at fish's

I am still very relieved that it's him and not Bomb Iran in teh Oval Office. Or, IPU forbid - Grifter McQuitsalot.

Even if you gone on the assumption that Obama is a corporatist tool, and nothing more, he is still way preferable over JiSM3. And for all you Obamapologists with your President Bachmann ooga-booga-boo! this is what we call "grading on a curve". And it is a crazy curve that yields nothing informative or enlightening. Like when folks tell you that whatever you're being forced to settle for is "better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick". Great, thanks. When someone offer to trade me for said eye poking, I'll now know to pass.

Item: I'm not a PUMA. This isn't about Hillary being teh better choice. Ask anyone who knew me from back when I switched to this nym in ought eight. And I'm glad that we've got Barry instead if Hillary, notwithstanding that we'll never really know for sure how Hillary would have done things. LG&M moved onto this question after I decided to write this post but well before I finished it. Anyways, here's what I think about Obama v Hillary.

I'm pretty bullish about Obama on gay rights. Sure he moved really slowly on it, but I really don't know if Hillary would have been better. On DADT, I think she'd have been worse - and not because of Bill, but because she seems even more deferential to teh military than Obama does (IMO - can't be arsed to find back-up). This covers too, Iraq and Afghanistan. It's hard to imagine, but I believe that Obama is the least hawkish of anyone who had a reasonable shot at 2008.

I think HRC might well have pushed harder for HCR. It's hard to imagine someone pushing less than Obama did. Actively berating the people supporting what was then the strongest bit of leverage he had. Even if he was set on flushing teh robust public option, he could have let teh Leftsies rant and rave and shift the Overton and gotten a better price for killing the most effective cost control method being debated at the time.

Ugh, sorry for the Obama bashing diversion - where was I? Right, I think Hillary would have fought harder for HCR, but I also think that with Hillary pushing, the opposition would have fought harder as well. I think we'd probably have ended up with a dead reform bill. Although this isn't necessarily a bad thing. I believe I'm on record as a Kill Bill during HCR Shit Sandwich - not strongly but my feeling was there was too much graft. I seem to recall that my final position was pass the thing anyways, not on its own merits, but to add momentum going into Fin Reg. Yeah, that worked out fan-fucking-tastic. Still, my feelings about the HCR that passed, I'd have to say is it woulda wash if we had Hills instead.

In Hillary's defense, I would say that I'd have been less disappointed by Hillary if we ended up in the same Debt Ceiling Austerity Growth Dada play we're in. Not to say that I didn't expect much from her - for sure her election would have been historic - and coming out of the dark years that marked teh beginning of teh new millenium, anything would have seemed glorious. But not like Barack. d00d just has so much charisma and he so captured the imaginations of not only America, but teh whole world.

Okay, battle with ancient history done with - what's my beef with Obama? There's a bunch of specific things, but I think there's a separate common item to it all. I think teh word for it is establishmentarianism. A strong bias towards those already in power.

Here's teh thing - democracies are only as strong as their institutions, otherwise it's just mob rule. This is why, for example, plebiscites on minority rights are seen as uncouth. "Minority rights" is an institution that is respected in functional democracies. The problem with teh US is that some of those institutions have gained outsized importance - those being the usual suspects - Wall Street, The Military-Industrial Complex, &c..

And my problem with Obama is his whole hearted embrace of that paradigm. Hence the lack of accountability for war crimes. The campaign against whistleblowers. The continued record high deployment fractions of the armed forces. The financial bailouts that favour giant mega corporations over families with tough mortgages. Everything he does now is in this protect-the-hierarchy-and-expand-its-reach mode. HCR favours teh insurance industry and hospitals more than it does the uninsured. The outrage against entitlement program cuts only seem to want to protect Social Security and Medicare, neither of which are means tested (note that I am most definitely NOT endorsing means testing these programs). Medicaid, which is for helping the neediest is fine for chopping.

Even his approach to doing things is different. OFA, that grassroots machine that helped him get elected - practically sat out the first fight and then got mothballed. Everything is decided by small groups of appointees working in the back rooms. He received his transparency in government award in one of those back rooms. But it's this working group or that special Presidential Commission or its Super Congress - twice the authority and about 2% of the membership! Super!

That's the complaint really. What happened to the community organizer? To small donations? To the wide base of motivated volunteers? To listening to the people that worked their assess off three years ago instead of teh Republicans?

Post Pexton

So anyways, I read Pexton's Ombudscolumn from Sunday. I figured that after anonymous journalist spills catty gossip about Michelle Obama, the whole Rubin fiasco and then a plea for a balanced impartial neither left nor right Washongton Post (BWaaAHAhAHHAaHAHahA) - he's shown consistency for being totes mockworthiness. He did not disappoint. Or rather he did disappoint, in all the ways he was expected to. I was working about a pretty good head of steam on it too, but then I figured - what's the point. The Wash Post is so pitiably pathetic now - teh humour in giving it teh well deserved kick it needs is gone. Looking at Pexton's past four columns, he's worse than Deborah Howell. But at the same time, with Ferd teh Turd still not fired-for-cause, who really cares?

At this point in time, poking fun at teh Wash Post is like pointing at all teh pennants with teh 60's dates on them at Leafs games.

Okay, here's a Shorter Patrick B. Pexton:

Conservatives complained about this, conservatives complained about that. These complaints were ludicrous and unfounded, so naturally we took them seriously. But as it turns out, the staff at the Washington Post are never wrong. Unlike teh conservatives in this case. And liberals too. I don't have any reason to mention liberals here since I studiously ignore their complaints - but trust me when I say that they are also wrong. And that's what we in teh bidness call Journalism.

That out of the way, here are a coupla videos:
For Science!


For teh long lost Goddamn Batman:

On The Road Again

Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the wee hours of the morning.  Other than being with my babby girl and her mom.

Anywho, thanks vs for teh shoutout and opening to revel in trite rhymes and bad meter.  Or you can blame SMcGILF (totes heterosexually, of course).

Some snippets:

Poetry, like your mom
Is easy.
Like the storm before the calm,
She rides me.
Your mom is easy.
And we're fornicating.
She is easy.
Easy like Sunday Morning-cating.

Left here for some reason
Perhaps your mom to be pleasin'
Left here for some rhyme
Your dad's ass is sublime,
But what's moar
Yer mom's the whore.

Your father's ass is a popular destination

For sex tourists with a love of degradation.
For the truly depraved, there can be no other,
Except for the whore that's your mother.

Anyways, thanks for the distraction.  I guess this round of insomnia is related to being conditioned to wake at around midnight - but I've a plane to catch in six hours, so I really must sleep.

UPDATE: Why I've Been So Quiet

Today was our due date, so I've been kinda busy getting things organized - both at home and at work. That plus I am making a concerted effort to not think about anything at all, so it's been a lot of mindless distractions for me. On a related note, I now have my Solomon's Keep Hardcore Demigod achievement (Flame Lash, with no +all skills items).

Anyways, it looks like Ultra Ninja is going to be later than expected, so anxiety and pins and needles and so forth for the next few days &c. I've got some ideas buzzing around my head re: the Ryan budget that I'm starting to have trouble ignoring, so maybe I'll get to committing them to blog post. It'll depend on whether 'Lil Ultra interrupts sooner or later.

Blogroll Amnesty Day 2011

I don't even have a blogroll yet and I'm two hours late. Did I mention that I'm lazy?

Here's the rules. Five blogs with less traffic than yours, no jokes about how there are no blogs smaller than yours.

Firstly, yes this is a small blog, but I actually have no idea how small. So I don't know if what I'm linking qualifies as smaller than l'idiot l'escalier. In fact I'm certain that some of them aren't. It's quite probable that none of them are. Spirit of the thing is to promote stuff that is under-appreciated or not something your readers would know about, so I'm going with that as my criteria.

1. Consider the Source. I'm pretty sure he gets more hits than I do, and that's as it should be. His stuff is way more substantial. Even now that his update schedule has become more sporadic than mine (congratz on the job mikey) swinging by to check in over there makes more sense than finding out whose mom it is that I'm claiming to fuck this week.

2. Whatever it is that Sharkey is calling this thing. Sharkey probably gets orders of magnitude more pageviews than I do, but since his subject matter is different from my subject matter, it may actually be new to people reading this post. And funnier than a barrel of monkeys in a rubber chicken factory during a freak peanut-butter related meteorological event. Bonus - his current post is about getting raped by bears. How can that not be funny?

3. Also in the much-bigger-than-my-blog category, Steve Munro is Toronto's go-to guy on transit issues. Also smart as hell and absolutely passionate about transit.

4. This one's just to get a certain large and non-hirsute individual to update The Five Thousand Year Creep. Geez, I poked it in the comments with a sexy red-headed Russian spy posing in lingerie and nothing happened. The panther is beyond teasing, it needs medical intervention.

5. Acoustic! Kitty! is new (as in the past few hours new) and most of the folks who would be reading this post have already read the entirety of everything that T&U's posted. I'm linking because the proprietor there seemed kinda ambivalent about the whole blogging thing in teh days leading up to the first post and I want to add my bit of encouragement. That's what blogroll amnesty day's about, right?

Okay, that out of the way - a few words about this blog, specifically regarding size. The reason given for the "no bad jokes about no blogs having less traffic" rule is that it's unfunny and whiny. Well, I think you can milk funneh out of anything - so there's gotta be a worthwhile bad joke in there somewhere. Moar importantly though, I want to address the issue of whiny.

This is a small blog - and that's hte way I like it. I don't spend an awful lot of time formatting layout or crafting posts. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I'm kinda lazy. Also, I enjoy the freedom of being read by only a small group of folks. They are the best folks anyways. Except fish. Damn you fish.

So why bother? Well, samiply because I want to. Sometimes there's stuff that gets under my skin and I just have to yell about it. Sometimes I think I've come up with something totally hilarious and just have to say it out loud. And sometimes I just want to have some place to state my opinion of whatnot in a kinda of official fashion (at least as aofficial as can be done under a pseudonym).

So when I acknowledge my low traffic status - I'm not trying to be whiny about it. SRSLY, the attention-whore in me gets its fix in comment threads at Teh Mothership, this blog isn't here for that reason. Note that I'm not saying that adulation and praise are unwarranted unwelcome, just that it is unrelated to why I blog.

That's also why this place is so haphazard and sporadically updated. That plus I'm lazy.

Rules

This probably isn't necessary, but wev. Anyways, I was thinking a bit about rules and such and realized that I haven't any for this little corner of the blogosphere that I call my own. Well, I guess it's long past time to correct that oversight.

Copyright.

Some people make their living on writing, some people make their careers on their creative output. I'm not one of those people. So, my position on any rights I retain to my stuff on this blog are as follows:
1. Don't pass my stuff off as someone else's, especially your own.

That's it. You want to use anything I've written? Fine, just do not claim that it's yours. You've somehow managed to figure out a way of converting one of my ideas into cash? That's awesome. Drop me a line, maybe I can think up some other potentially profitable ideas. Or don't. I won't be sending you a C&D letter or a demand for "my cut", unless you are trying to pass my stuff off as your own. Even then, it's likely I won't be arsed to do anything - but I do reserve that right, in case I get the urge to.

You don't even have to credit me. I'm fine with "some guy on the web" as an attribution. Or "something I saw somewhere". Just don't credit anyone else for my stuff.

This applies whether or not I agree with what you are using my words for. If you happen to represent a movement or cause that I personally find abhorrent and use something I wrote here to further your goals - fine. Just be aware that if I do find out, I will make the effort to mock and ridicule you. Either that or I will stop having sex with your mom, and then she'll get all cranky and mean - plus she'll have lots of extra free time to check in on how you are doing.

Exceptions - if a post is excepted from this rule, I will make a note of it in the post.

Corollary - don't attribute stuff I'm not responsible for to me.

Comments.

Your comments are your own. I'm not going to raise a ruckus if someone steals one of your comments off of this blog.

I reserve the right to do whatever I want with comments submitted here, but to be honest, I haven't been bothered to find out what that consists of or how I'd go about doing it. Basically my comment policy is to remain such a small and insignificant blog that I never have to worry about spam or truly offensive trolleries.

These policies are subject to change whenever I'm motivated enough to do something about them. Like institute a totalitarian comment moderation scheme that disallows any criticism of myself or Patti Ann Browne. But Groundhog Day 2011 is not the first day of that regime.

Sunday Audition: Official Hiatus

I know these faux op-eds have gotten rarer and rarer. My original intention was to have some sort of regular post thing that would keep me from ignoring teh blog for too long. That didn't work out all that well.

More to the point, Abe Foxman's pathetic condemnation of Sarah Palin has killed it for me. I am incapable of satire in light of the ADL statement. I mean, I suppose I could have come up with a more outrageous and hypocritical bit of justification (although it would have taken some serious effort) but I never could have matched the sheer obscene ridiculousness of it in context.

So I'm giving it up. At least for now. Some day I may come back to trying to match George Will's dishonesty or Richard Cohen's hilariousness, but I don't see that day coming soon.

My Second Photoshop

At the rate I'm going, it'll be Raptor Jesus before spring! Anyways, my tribute to Mickey Mantle (yes, I know the bottle has feet).

Confession Time - Look How Nicely It Fits In My Hand

I guess folks who have been following my assorted rantings at Teh Mothership probably have a good idea of who I am, but I thought that perhaps I'd unload a bit more about who I actually am.

First, this is my glass - see how nice it fits in my hand!

Secondly, like a lot of other bloggers, I have a pet. A red eared slider that I wanted to name Little A'Tuin or Pin Hole Gamera, but he already had a name when I met him. This is Max:

He's ready for his close-up now.

Okay, maybe not.

Anyone still here? Well if you've been paying close attention, you'll know that I got married about nine and a half months ago. Your exciting new fact is that my wife's pregnant. We're probably going to beat vaccuumslayer to the delivery room by five or six weeks.

Finally, my first totally n00bish step on the road to lurning Photoshop has been taken. Here's a window to my soul:

Happy New Years!

Resolutions:
1. Now that 2010 is over, I've got my first calendar year tally of posts. Ninety-two. So for 2011, I resolve to post marginally more often. I'm going to break 100 for 2011.
2. Generally, be AWESOME.
3. Lurn Photoshop, but only at an incredibly basic level. Enough to start pasting sammiches into images of random conservative bloggers and pundits. Considering how lazy I am, expect to see my first work of vandalism in December.
4. Do your mom.
5. Pull "I'm With Alison" off before Candace starts her gig. I'm still with Alison but there really ought to be a limit to WATB-antics. And Candace already has a steep enough uphill road to travel. Plus it's probably what Alison would want anyways, she's so classy and professional. BUT ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT ALISON WAS ROBBED.

100th

I was going to post a neüphemism from last night's dabbling of witches, but then I found out that this is going to be Post 100.  After missing the anniversary, I figure I ought to do something to mark this momentous occasion.  How about some random indy Canuckistani music?

We'll start with something French, so you'll know it's really Canoodle-ite and then just roll on from there.








Oh and BTW, LEAFS SUCK's municipal elections are in less than two weeks and things are looking pretty grim, notably on the transit front.  So in order to pay respects to the LEAFS SUCK Transit Commission, here's an old classic.

That's So Gay, Totes Heterosexually Of Course.

So just a few days ago, there was this discussion at teh Mothership about using "gay" as an insult.  Joe Max mentioned this Wanda Sykes ad which totally defines the issue (except for the fact that the chef in question was totes gay, as in faggy faggy fag gay).

Later, I checked out some vids on the It Gets Better Project.  I'm not going to lie to you, so I won't say that I wasn't on the verge of tears watching some of those vids.

See the thing about privilege, about entitlement, is that you are unaware of the advantages - that you take for granted your position of not being discriminated against.

Speaking of Dan Savage, this is reminiscent of the time he had to stop making fun of Trig.  Leotarded.  That was the word he switched to.  For a guy who is normally adept at the words and their usingness in sentences - for meaning conveyability maximization - leotarded is pretty weak shit.

Anyways, what I'm getting to is that, yeah - I| use "gay" as an insult.  And so do a lot of others.  And gay people have way more on their plates to deal with than the frivilous use of "gay" to mean dumb or stupid or wevs.  But just because that's the way things are, doesn't mean that it's the way things ought to be.

So I am going to make the effort to stop calling things gay - except if those things actually are gay.  Gay as in homosexual or as in stereotypically campy homosexual (like the chef from the Sykes ad).

On a related note - I'm not going to use the word "cocksucker" as an insult.  SRSLY, this world needs more cocksuckers.  If more cocks got sucked, there'd probably be a whole lot less unhappiness.

I think you can guess where I stand on "motherfucker".  This one's easier since "motherfucker" has become much less an insult since it got so intimately associated with the adjective "badass".

I'm going to stop now because I don't want to talk myself out of the other half of my entire vocabulary.

Other M-nivesaries

<sotto voce> Sure has been a while. Be warned that the following post jumps around all over the place like a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.</sotto voce>

Well here we are on the anniversary of the day that everything changed. Hard to believe that it's been nine years already. Almost a full decade since America went stone cold cuckoo.

This post was going to be about that bugfuck crazee Koran burning cult, but then I realized that that guy was so nutso-whoohoo-ooga-booga-boo that even the Pammycakes thinks it's a dumb idea. Anyways, d00d's totally chickened out.

So the whole thing got me to thinking about anniversaries. Tomorrow this blog will be one year and one week old - meaning I'm late in acknowledging my own blog's birthday.

What was I doing Sept. 5, 2010 instead of some Cookie 4 Me self-congratulatory wanking? I could have lorded my big scoop over teh Mendacious one and acted like an arrogant jerk in the face of his gracious acknowledgement of my pot-smoking bear following skillz. A full week after the fact...

What could I have possibly been doing that was more important than patting myself on the back?

I was playing Metroid. Actually, on the fifth I was finishing the story mode of Metroid: Other M.

How is it? Well, I'd give it about an 80% - same as Metacritic. Why am I talking about it? Well, I'm actually using it as a launching pad for a discussion about gender - mostly with respect to this review (also the video version which is basically the same - but with Morgan Webb's voice).

SPOILERS AHEAD

When, the spoilers aren't immediately ahead - but they'll be following and I felt that I ought to give fair warning.

Maybe it's that, as a guy - I just don't get it. That's the whole thing about privilege - you don't realize you're wallowing in it because it's just a part of who you are. But SRSLY - WTF. I mean, it's not like these reviewers are reviewing their first ever video game. It's not like they raised Abbie Heppe in some sort of cultural vaccuum before letting her at Metroid. It's not like G4 didn't nominate a game where offing prostitutes rewards the player with cash and health for Game of the Year.

So let's get to the point - G4 didn't like Other M because apparently Samus Aran is a whiny crybaby. ORLY? Wot game were they playing? Because I don't think it was Metroid.

Firstly, and this is their own first big sticking point - in all Metroid games Samus gains powers as the game progresses, meaning that she needs to not have them at the beginning. In Other M, she starts off with all of them, but opts to not use them. Presumably in order to keep the guys in the Galactic Federation squad she's hooked up with happy. You know, this seems a helluva lot more "Gender Issues Progressive" than the usual approach of having her stripped of her powers by some outside force. Here she chooses not to bust out the Plasma or Ice Beam or Missiles or whatever. It's something Samus decides to do on her own.

But wait - the only reason she's doing it is to make some guy happy. Except of course - that "some guy" happens to be the commanding officer of a military squad. I guess expecting Samus to co-operate with anyone - despite the fact that she has done so throughout the series of games - is too much of a stretch. I guess that having your main character decide to voluntarily limit her behaviour when working with representatives of the military is some variety of bad writing.

Of course that "some guy" also happens to be Samus' surrogate father figure - and the lady has some serious daddy issues. Clearly writing a female main character with daddy issues is some sort of sexist insult to women everywhere. I mean it's not like she's Starkiller or Kratos or Solid Snake or Fox McCloud. SRSLY G4, if you have a problem with Samus having "daddy issues", then your problem isn't with Other M - it's with action entertainment in general. Wait - there's also the Prince from Katamari, so it's not limited to just folks who kill the ever loving crap outta people (although the Prince does kill a lot of people). And it's not like she has daddy issues because her father would only lavish her with material gifts instead of actual approval - it's because she was violently orphaned as a child. SRSLY, Space Pirates killed her parents and she's gotten revenge on them in every Metroid game including completely destroying a couple of planets in oprder to do it - and NOW you have a problem with her "daddy issues"? W. T. F.

Okay, any of you still with me? Especially those of you of the BOOBIES gender? Here's the part where I show off either how smart I are, or how unthinkably out of touch I am.

So the difference between Samus and those other icons of unresolved issues with their fathers is that Samus recognizes it. In one of the cutscenes she acknowledges the difficulties she has with Adam and how they are related to her daddy issues. And herein, I think, is the part that makes Metroid: Other M one of those post-feminist whatchamacallits. That there are differences between men and women, including things like women generally being in touch with their own motivations outside of immediate gratification (although that's not to say that women aren't into immediate gratification as well - as your mom has shown me on oh so many occassions).

One of the criticisms about Samus Aran being some sort of feminist symbol is that it didn't matter whether a man or woman was inside the Powersuit - that her gender was nothing more than a gimmick. Maybe so, but that's the feminist argument - that gender shouldn't make a difference.

But of course, gender does make a difference. Gender is part of our identity - and self-identification is one of those important things that we're all supposed to respect now. And maybe I'm totally off-base here, but isn't that what Other M has actually accomplished? A totally kick-ass action hero that has feminine qualities other than on her chest.

Then again, maybe the problem isn't that she's at least marginally emotionally self-aware, it's with how she acknowledges it - the use of the words "Confession Time". Well here's a newsflash for Abbie Heppe and Morgan Webb and all the other Samus h8rs - there's at least one very manly man that uses the phrase Confession Time with some regularity. And if you doubt my manliness - well just ask your mom.

Confession Time - the reason I'm partial to this phrase is probably related to some sexual fantasy I have involving your mom and a confessional.

Unlike Prop Hate, I'm Not Dead

Too many people beg off updating because they're too busy with their real lives. Well not me, no siree - I blame Obama DQIX. If I had sunk half the time into this blog as I did into farming Grubby Bandages off of Mummy Boys, there woulda been a masterwork of genius on this page every fricking day since July 21.

So anywho, here's your update:

SUCK IT HATERS!!!one!

Or to quote teh old white d00d appointed by Republican Bush teh Elder:

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license...the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

Enjoy. I'll be outta town teh next coupla days - not that anyone other than the folks at Questers Rest are going to notice.