• Flipping through the air always gets you further and faster than running


• The guy with the most pathetic weapon always kicks the most ass. Guns < Swords < Poles < Everyday furniture < fans < chopsticks < long sleeves.


• Sound effects make all the difference.


• Always read any raggedy-ass pamphlets with stick figures doing kung-fu on them. Especially if said pamphlet is found at the bottom of wells or in deep dark caves.


• Never kick the funny-looking drunk guy. Trust me, you'll regret it.


• The more ridiculous the name for a certain move, the more likely it is to cave in someone's skull. (ie, Drunk monkey bakes lucky bread = tear someone's head off the spit down his neck)


• White people are never to be trusted


• If you ever gain the power to shoot beams of death from your eyes/hands/fingers, for some reason it will never actually hit the big boss and you'll have to beat him to death with your fists anyway.

If you have any suggestions, feel free to comment and I'll add them to the list.


When I was a kid, my mom used to record kung-fu soap operas onto long-play VHS cassettes. I'm not exactly sure what the heck she recorded them from, but I can only assume we must've picked up at least one chinese channel on tv at the time. I still remember watching one of those soap operas and I've decided to try to track it down. I know my mom likely still has the original tapes somewhere, but I'm sort of curious if any of it has made the formate jump to dvd.

It was a great show from what I recall. You just have to fast forward past all of the sappy love story bits and then there were people running around shooting death beams from their hands and crap. I still remember spending a not insignificant chunk of time trying to get a single death beam to come out of my fingers. No luck yet, but I'm confident I'll work out the means one day.

I think I've found the most deadly kung-fu attack.

Here's a video courtesy of lucystrawberry, selling out some of her leftist peeps for my enjoyment.



Now, I know what you're thinking. Well, if you're a sane person you're first thinking that these people are crazy whackjobs who could use a psychological exam. The second thing you're thinking is, 'Is this video a fake?'. I mean, people like this couldn't actually exist, right? It must be some sort of mockumentary.

Well, if you search on google for the woman named in the video, Syndee L'ome Grace, you do get a bunch of hits associated with hippie causes and leftist bullshit. Of course, anyone making such a parody could have just borrowed her name. I searched a bit further and found that the woman usually uses an alias for most of her activist work. She usually goes under Syndee L'ome Eartheart. Google that and you can get an image of her to come up.



It looks like an exact match to the woman in the clip. That means that at the very least the interview is real and it makes it far more likely that these crazy nutjobs do exist. Truth is stranger than fiction.

Writing these recaps is like working on the railroad. No matter how many planks and rivets you hammer into place, the horizon stretches on infinitely. I still have to figure out a way to somehow get my gencon pictures off of the damn camera and onto the laptop. Most of them are still stuck there because of the compatibility issues with Vista. It's going to be a pain in the ass no matter how I resolve it.

( Clip-Clop, Clip-Clop, Clip-Clop..... )

Before I get to the day's recap, I'd just like to say that it's been two weeks since I caught the gamer plague and I'm still coughing away. The other symptoms have more or less gone away but any exertion still brings on coughing that's hard to suppress. I fucking hate summer colds. They take forever to go away.

Anyway, on to the countdown.

( Read more... )

My second day in Chicago started with a tradition that's been around for 3 years. At some point during these visits, John, Melissa, and I, always make a trip down to Hot Doug's. As you might recall from past recaps, it's not your average hot dog joint. It makes a point of serving some of the more unusual meats, things that often don't make it to your dinner table. If you take a look at their menu for this week, for example, you'll see that kangaroo made the list. That wasn't one of the choices I had to pick from when we went, and I have to admit I'm a little disappointed. I am a little curious what Kanga tastes like. In addition to the slightly exotic in terms of meat offerings, Hot Doug's also has Duck Fries on Friday's and Saturday's. These are normal french fries but cooked in duck fat instead of vegetable oil.

So, anyway, that morning John and I swung around in the rental and picked up Melissa from her place and headed on over. The line at Hot Doug's was out the door. This is not an uncommon sight. In fact, it'd be far more startling to not see a line pouring out the front. On this particular day, the line was a good 30 feet long and seemed to be growing at a good clip. We spent most of the time on the line discussing musicals as I recall. I also somehow managed to offend some feminazi standing in front of us at one point. I don't remember exactly the circumstances so maybe john will chime in and add his two cents but the basic lowdown is I made some offhanded remark about how chick flicks were stupid or something and the cow was offended. She glared for a while and then made some angry mooing noises. Frankly, the statement was so mild considering what could have popped out of my mouth in the course of normal conversation that I couldn't figure out what she had even gotten upset about at first.

The line dragged on and on and on. I wasn't having the best of days. It was swap day for the fentanyl patch and I was having some pain management problems, so the standing around was less fun than it would normally be. We finally made it into the door though and made our orders. I decided to go with one exotic item and a couple of traditional favorites. I got the duck sausage with foie gras, a couple of corndogs, and an order of tatter tots. John and Melissa picked up some of the other exotic entries and then we went to snag a table.



Here's John showing off the Dick's Deli sign that he contributed to the decor of the place. You can see it fits right in along with all the rest of the hotdog and sausage memorabilia.

While at the table, I took the opportunity to shoot some video with the flip.





Here's a closeup shot of the hotdog. It looks a bit extra scary thanks to the whiteout from the flash. I guess my main problem is that I never thought of foie gras as something that should be served in disks like it came out of a giant tube of toothpaste. That sort of gave me the willies.

In the end, it didn't taste all that bad. It wasn't exactly great either, which is sort of disappointing. The duck sausage was fine, but I was just expecting more from the foie gras itself. I mean, this is something that people get into fights over and is supposed to be all fru-fru. I just thought it should taste...well...better. Then again, it cost $7 and was on a fucking glorified hotdog. God knows what the hell I'm bitching about anyway.

Oh, and in case you didn't get the fine comment from the video, Chicago's city counsel banned the serving for foie gras a while back. It was deemed to be cruel and inhuman treatment to the ducks which are force fed in order to produce it. Hell, that doesn't sound all that bad to me. Anyway, the hippies won that round and restaurant owners threw a fit. A lot of them ignored the ban at first and then tried sneaky means to get around it when the city made grumbly noises. Some restaurants would 'give away' the foie gras, so that they weren't technically selling it with a meal. Others served it as a free amuse bush. Doug was the only person who ended up ever getting fined for breaking the ordinance, presumably for the duck sausage combo I tried. His customers took up a collection to pay the fine for him and eventually the entire ban was reversed anyway.

After lunch, we dropped Melissa off and John wanted to run a few errands. One of the stops took us to Paulina Meat Market.



Here you can see their innovative numbered ticket dispensing system. I've never actually been to any place with a real butcher before. I'm sure the supermarkets I visit have people who chop up meat and the like, but it's not exactly the same as having a real butcher who can hack you off a chunk of whatever you happen to want. At first, I was sorted tempted to just buy a quart of pig's blood. I had no real use for it in mind, but I figured that with a vat of pig's blood, the possibilities would be endless. Here was my first run through the place.



I ended up buying a couple different types of smoked cheeses. They didn't have gouda which is good-a, but there were a few others. John also picked up some meat sliced thinly that looked a lot like prosciutto. I also snagged a little plastic container full of multi-colored gummy butterflies.

After the errands, we went back to John's place for a while before it was time to head off to see Melissa again. She was going to cook dinner and we were just going to loaf at her place for the night. When we got there we broke out the earlier purchases.



Here is a plate of those smoked cheeses and meat and crackers.




I have no clue what point I'm trying to make here but it might be something like, stay away from my food. At least that seems like it could be what I was trying to express. Who knows.




Here's John playing with his food.




And of course once he started, I more or less had to follow suit.


All this time, of course, Melissa is busy churning away in the kitchen as we goof off out in the living room. At one point I noticed through her open bedroom door that she had a bra hanging on her bedpost. This, of course, immediately became a photo moment.



Here's John giving the ol' thumbs up at the discovery.


Eventually, Melissa's new boyfriend also popped over. I won't say that he's a kill joy exactly, but some of the general merriment seemed to go out of the room. After all, I don't know the guy, and he certainly doesn't know me. Add the fact that he doesn't seem to be the most outgoing of individuals and things certainly slowed down a bit. Also, after days of little sleep, I was also quite tired. At one point, I just sprawled out on the floor in front of the chair I had been sitting in and made like it was hibernation time. I ended up sleeping through the meal and the post-dinner tv watching as well. It wasn't until it was time to go that I got poked awake and John and I made our way back to his place.

Despite the difficulties I'm still having, I can at least pop up the pictures and video from the first few days. Everything else is just stalled silly and I'm getting nothing but error messages. Hopefully it'll pan itself out in a day or so.'

( And here we go )

I haven't forgotten about the chicago/gencon recaps. I'm still working on uploading the videos and I'm having huge technical difficulties. For some inexplicable reason, I can't log into google's file uploader program. It's just not letting me do it. That means I can't have it auto-upload files in a giant queue. Instead, I have to use the web based interface and basically enter each file individually and then twiddle my thumbs until it's done. Since these are huge ass files, it can take 10's of minutes for it to finish. Even worse, at least half of my attempts error out after a while and I have to try again. The whole thing is taking forever and I can't figure out a faster way to do things right now.

I decided to give tv another try and was channel flipping when I ran across something insane. It's a show called Man vs Beast where they had Kobayashi, the Japanese hotdog eating guy, challenge a fucking bear in a hot dog eating contest. Do you believe this shit? Since it's an Alaskan Kodiak bear, they even hang a US flag behind him while Kobayashi gets a Japanese one.

In case you were wondering, the bear wasted Kobayashi. In 2 minutes and 35 seconds, the 1089 pound bear finished his 50 hotdogs. In the same amount of time, Kobayashi was only able to finish 31 and a half dogs.

Next up? A tug-of-war between a sumo wrestler and an orangutan. Tv has gotten pretty fucked up since I've been away.

Hell, there's even a video clip of the fucking show.

This is probably why you shouldn't try to lick someone's balls without permission.

Multiculturalism is important. It helps to expand your horizons when you experience the entertainment options of other cultures. With that in mind, I present to you the Spanish Soap Opera, Boarding School for Misbehaving Girls.



I'm only going to directly link to the first episode. There's too many of them to embed each one so Here's a link where you can find the rest. I highly recommend it.

---

Now this kicks ass. If only spanish soap operas were really this cool.

Favorite quote thus far: I don't go to where you work and knock the donkey dick out of your mouth.

---

The more episodes I see of this, the more I like it. From a quick scan, it looks like at least 20 of them were put out and uploaded to you tube. So far, #5 is my favorite. Donkeys ftw.

I'm surprised this guy could get the shirts on after a while. It must've been just about impossible to move his arms.

I just finished Final Fantasy Crisis Core for the PSP and it was pretty spiffy. Definitely a departure from most of the FF games I've ever played. It was strange only controlling one character the entire time. With most of the others, you usually have a whole group of people you can use and customize. Overall, the best part of Crisis Core were the FMV's. The videos were really stunning in parts, almost like watching a cgi movie. It was also nice that it managed to fill in the storyline bits that were missing from FFVII. I still have very fond memories of FFVII. It was the game that finally convinced me to buy a playstation. I still remember spending God only knows how many hours trying to make sure that I found every single last materia and achieved every secret goal. More than any other game, it probably shaped my idea of what a modern RPG should be.

After finishing Crisis Core, I decided to move right on to God of War. I've never actually played any of the previous titles since they came out after I had stopped using my playstation 2. It's gotten a lot of positive hype though and the gameplay has been fun so far. I stumbled over one interesting bit and decided to capture it on video with the flip ultra.



Amazing, eh? It's like do it yourself video game porn of sorts. I can just imagine someone coming up with an entire game worth of this sort of thing. Anyway, I was sort of surprised to find this as part of the game. I hadn't quite realized things had gotten this risque.

I stumbled across the following video while watching youtube videos about taping cats. For some reason, just through following the related video suggestions taping cats => goat licking electric fence => dogs barking at invisible fence => humans being shocked by invisible fence => people using cattleprods on themselves => this video. It's got everything. Morons in pain, tasers, half nekkid girls, etc. You really do have to wonder about these women though. It's one thing for guys to get together and electrocute one another. You have to wonder about the sanity of women who agree to strip down to their underwear and also be tasered.

I think I want to borrow someone's cat. I'm not quite sure how you would usually go about something like that. It's not exactly like going next door and asking if you could have a cup of sugar or borrow a ladder. Still, I think it's absolutely vital that I manage to acquire myself a cat and a giant roll of masking tape. I ran across this video last night and I'm really anxious to give it a try.



You've just gotta love the japanese. They come up with some of the most interesting things. I'm curious to find out if you wrap the cat's entire body with tape, does it implode.

Sunday started earlier than I might have wished. I was hoping to sleep right up until I had to leave for the con, but stabbing pain had other plans. The real irritation is once up, the pain always gets worse and all you can do at that point is wake up, pop pills, and hope they eventually kick in. Since it takes up to 2 hours for that process to work itself out there was no opportunity to get any more sleep. Since I was up anyway, I headed over to the con early. To my complete lack of surprise, there weren't many people up and about. Certainly there were no games running and I spent my time playing old D&D games on the emulator until it was time for the Peggle championship.

As I recall, Lori had actually gotten the slot of first alternate for the competition but she hadn't been feeling well the day before and decided to skip Sunday altogether. Karen filled in for her and it was a Peggle duel to the death. I vanquished her in round 1 without too many problems but found myself behind early in the finals round. I managed to get lucky a few times and pulled it out. Here's a video of how Peggle works and a part of another game I played with last year's champion:



By coming out victorious, I won the grand prize. I never really was clear what the grand prize was, but I think it included a bunch of their game software. I guess I'll find out one of these days whenever they get around to mailing it to me.

If you think you'd like to give Peggle a whirl, here's a free version of it at Pop Cap Games. After a quick google search it seems that Peggle is pretty damn popular. It's made a number of most addictive/best internet game lists and has been ported to quite a few consoles. There's even a DS version set to come out soon from what I'm reading. Anyway, give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

After winning the Peggle championship, it was time to go back to running games. I taught and watched over a game of Dead Man's Treasure while simultaneously thumping Karen and Bernie at Ingenious. For my 'leet skillz, I was given a gift certificate for a 1 month membership to Board Game King in Bayonne. A bunch of us had made a trip there once to check it out but it's too far and I'm too adverse to going anywhere for it to be useful. Ideally, I'll be able to find someone to hock it to who might actually get some benefit out of it. Anyone willing to pay $20 for it? Retail price is $40. Anyone?

In addition to the Playroom games, I had also signed up to run a couple from Smirk and Dagger. The way the schedule worked out, they were placed back to back on Sunday with Hex-Hex first. I <3 Hex-Hex. It's one of those games that's quick and entertaining, requiring no real effort or thought. It's one game where I don't really mind the effect of luck and I personally think it's a lot more strategic than many people give it credit for. I took some video of the event:



Right after I turned off the camera, the guy who had held his cards in front of his face the entire time said 'some people think it's rude to take video or pictures of people without asking their permission' to which I responded, 'Luckily, I don't give a crap.' 10 to 1 he's probably some child molester on a FBI watch list. If any of you out there recognize him based on his forehead and hands, feel free to dial 9-1-1.

The game of Cutthroat Caverns didn't go nearly as smoothly as Hex-Hex. It ended up degenerating at some point into a pissing match between a few of the players. That seems to be a common phenomenon since so many of the cards end up being of the 'screw you' variety. Everyone starts politicin' trying to form cabals and convince people to hit others with the cards. If you let it go on, it usually degenerates into a mess. While I can usually sit in and play hex-hex while running it, I prefer to not play along with Cutthroat as long as I'm the one in charge. It makes it easier to push on with the game, establishing time limits and keeping the chaos at a minimum. In the end, the entire party perished by the time the last monster rolled around. I'm not sure they ever really got a handle on the whole teamwork aspect of the game, but they mastered backstabbing in spades.

By this point the con was winding down. There were only a couple games left on the schedule to be run and I decided to join in on a game of Pow Wow. This is one of the games I own whose box got crushed a couple of weeks ago.



I didn't end up winning, getting knocked out fairly early. I didn't have much to do after that so I wandered around twiddling my thumbs. As I was strolling past a table, someone offered me a white castle cheeseburger. Never one to turn free food, I of course accepted and in so doing picked up some unusual video.



And that was more or less it. Karen, Bernie, and I went to get something to eat at Harold's after that. I ordered a pastrami sandwich and an order of cheese fries, most of which I packed up and took home with me. Around halfway through the meal, I started to feel ill for some unknown reason. I broke out into a sweat and was having some stomach ache problems. I dunno what was causing it but I decided to cut the meal short and head out after that. Upon going to pick up my things, I found that some of my games had accidentally been packed up with the rest of the Ubercon stuff, though hopefully that'll be resolved at some point. At the time, I really couldn't spare the time to go into it.

And thus ends another Ubercon. It wasn't a total disaster, and in general went pretty well. I'll update at some point as to what I got for winning the Peggle championship and also if I ever get my games back from Ubercon.

Since I hadn't gone to bed and I wasn't doing much of anything anyway, I decided to head over to the con early on Saturday. The earliest thing on the schedule was a game of Oregon, a game I had never heard of before but was willing to try given the lack of other options. This was pretty much what I found when I got there:



Luckily, there were a few other early risers about and I spent most of my time chatting with June. That is, until I found out they had The Simpsons arcade game on the emulator. I then proceeded to play the game until I finally defeated Mr Burns and rescued Maggie. It turns out they also had the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game on there too, another one of my favorites, but I never found the time to go and give it a whirl. I used to love arcade games that would allow 4 or more players at once.

While sitting around and chatting with June and another person whose name I never got, they were describing the size of the pancakes at Harold's, the deli restaurant in the hotel. I was telling them confidently that I thought I could eat the whole thing, a claim that they expressed great disbelief in. I had never actually seen an order of pancakes from Harold's but everything there is super sized. I figured that I was hungry enough that I could at least put a significant dent in a short stack. I was wrong:



I knew I was in trouble the minute they handed me my order. The pancakes, as you can see, were beyond ridiculously sized but what I hadn't counted on was the thickness. They were around a inch thick in the middle. There was no conceivable way I was going to be able to eat the whole thing but I figured I would at least give it a go and see how far I could get. I took a few bites but then put it aside to join in a game of Key Largo.



The game was simple and fun, and the production value was high. There were actually little cardboard divers with lengths of hose that you could buy and attach to the top of their helmets. I thought I had actually won the game, making a gigantic score near the end, but Gil managed to pull it out with his slow but steady strategy. Well, either that or he was stealing money from the bank.

After the game I reapplied myself to the pancakes from hell. I tried, I really did, but was unable to finish even one of them. The attempt alone was enough to make me nauseous and I ended up having to have a lie down in the corner for around a half hour before I started to feel better. All I know for sure is that I won't be buying pancakes again anytime soon. It's officially on my Do Not Eat list for the foreseeable future.

After I had recovered enough so that the chances of puking all over myself were minimal, I decided to join in on wanderingasian's game of Illuminati. I'm not a huge fan of the game, but it's fun as long as you disable the cheating rules. It's probably the only game in existence where the rules explicitly state that it's not cheating unless you get caught. This has lead to a variety of ingenious ways to thwart the system include pocketfuls of spare money chits and incredibly fuzzy math. I'm pretty sure that I'd be a good cheater, but I just don't have the will or inclination to watch other people like a hawk to make sure they aren't doing the same. The simple fact of it is, I just don't give a damn.

For those of you who have never played Illuminati, the basic idea is that there are secretive and powerful cabals (read: Jews/stone masons, etc) who are striving to control the world by dominating diverse groups and organizations. You job is to control more groups than the other cabals (read: other Jews/stone masons, etc) or to accomplish your group's goal. Illuminati almost always devolves into a pissing match at some point. Luckily, as soon as one started, I was able to grab the flip ultra.



Murph ended up being right so far as the game ended before wanderingasian got another turn to go. Victory wasn't as certain as he thought though. The next two people both failed to snatch it and I ended up winning. As I recall, I also won the last Illuminati game that wanderingasian ran at Ubercon IX. Despite my general ambivalence about the game, I've now struck gold twice. Not bad considering I only play it at Ubercon which means twice a year tops.

After the game I couldn't find anything interesting on the schedule so I mostly just lounged around while running the remainder of my Playroom schedule. It wasn't all that bad, though I thought I was going to have some major problems for the Killer Bunnies game. Of the four people who wanted to play, two of them had never played before. Considering that I had all the expansions with me, I was pretty sure it was going to be a nightmare. In the end, they didn't seem to have any real problems. I had to be around to answer lotsa rules questions, but the game kept moving for the most part.

By this point, it was getting on to early evening and I was dragging. The lack of sleep the night before had finally kicked in and I had to resist the urge to just lie down in a corner somewhere and go to bed. The really obnoxious part of it was that there were no games on the schedule worth playing. I just ended up sitting around twiddling my thumbs, well, up until someone from the neighboring LAN setup asked if anyone wanted to join some sort of video game championship. Normally, I wouldn't touch something like that with a 10' pole because I have no interest in repeatedly being headshot and having no clue wtf is going on. The game he described though was like the old Price is Right game, Plinko. I <3 Plinko. Actually, I don't think I know a single person who doesn't love Plinko. It was a game that gave you money and required absolutely no effort on your part. It was like a slot machine that you were almost certain would pay out.

The reason he was trying to drum up players is that only 2 people had shown up and it would be a pretty crappy qualifier round if they advanced without even having to play. In the end, Lori, Karen, and I all decided to give it a whirl. I got a buy in the first round so ended up sitting around practicing. The game is simple enough. All you have to do is hit all the orange blocks with a limited number of balls. The green ones active a special ability, the purple ones give you bonus points, and the blue ones are just the peons. There's also a bucket floating around at the bottom of the screen and if your ball falls in, it means even more bonus points.

I don't remember the order of it all, but I beat Lori at some point and ended up advancing to the finals the next day. By then, I could barely keep my eyes open. As I staggered my way to my car, I seriously wondered if I would wreck before getting home. Luckily, it's only a 10 minute drive or so and I made it without any problems. I stuffed the leftover pancakes into the fridge, took a shower and then passed out.

There are a bunch of other things I should be making entries about but I got distracted earlier by seeing a Full Metal Jacket quote somewhere. I'm just reminded again about how much I love that movie. Gunnery Sergeant R. Lee Ermey is my hero. I absolutely <3 his character in the movie and I get this warm fuzzy feeling every time I see this clip.


It rules so much. Even seeing just a clip of the film makes me want to go out and try to buy myself a m-14.

Remember the tale of Ceiling Cat from a couple of weeks ago? I ran across an update to the story but haven't gotten around to posting it until now. It turns out that the furry menace was not just content to sit around and drive down property values through the stench of its corpse. It's since goaded the poor human residents to tear down a ceiling and knock holes in walls to pull it out.



Barring one of those crazy-ass cats that glow in the dark, this might be one of the most expensive satanic furball in existence. They should have just fumagated the place with something noxious and deadly and then pulled the corpse out with a bill hook. He'd never watch anyone masturbate again, that's for sure.

Don't you hate it when you want to order something from Amazon but it's not costly enough to qualify for the free super saver shipping? You don't want to just throw anything else into the shopping cart because it would sort of defeat the point of free shipping if you end up buying something you don't even want. So instead you sit around day after day and wait, and wait, and wait, hoping that Amazon will actually have something else on sale that you actually want to purchase.

I've been waiting for over a week now to buy Patapon for the PSP. I played the demo and absolutely fell in love with it. I'm not usually a big fan of rhythm games, mostly because I have no rhythm and thus suck at them, but this one has managed to worm its way into my skull and won't let go. I find myself repeating the drumming beats to myself at random times during the day. It's horribly addictive that way. Don't believe me? Take a look at the trailer.



It makes me want to round up my own little army and march them on to glory. If I ever become a despot, I'm going to make all of you my little patapons and make you march and fight for my pleasure. It will be wonderful.

Anyway, the game costs $20 and I can't find anything else I want on the damn site. There haven't been any good deals lately for anything I want. I've already played through the demo twice and I want to play the full game damnit. Why can't Amazon just put something else I want on sale so I can order it along with this and get free shipping?