Jonah Hex in Wild Wild West

Did you see the Jonah Hex movie? Neither did I.
Oh wait, I did. I watched it as a free download on my Shaw on Demand cable box deal. It’s so good, they’re giving it away for free, and I was still undecided about watching it. If you don’t know, (and chances are you don’t): Jonah Hex is one of the least recognizable DC comic book characters. He’s not the oddest choice for a DC character to make it to the silver screen (Constantine, Steel, etc.), and cost-wise it’s easier to make a cowboy western movie that a big budget super hero flick. Only, someone forgot this was supposed to be a movie about the ol’ West.
If you’ve played Red Dead Redemption, you’d know that cowboys are making a comeback as of late. That seems to happen with fictional franchises (think pirates, vampires, etc.). They’ll go away for decades then come back in a huge way.
On the outside, Jonah Hex seems like a standard western about a bounty hunter with a fucked up face, but even if you watch the trailer you’ll see a lot more stuff blowing up than has any right to be.

Apparently, people in the ol’ West built their houses out of dynamite. Then there’s a scene where Jonah has a twin Gatling guns strapped to the sides of a horse, which is pretty awesome, but also pretty retarded. Wouldn’t that kind of weapon overload a horse, which if you watch the full scene is also pulling three dead bodies behind in “fag drag” style? Plus, if I was a horse, I’d be pretty freaked out by having not one, but two giant guns firing a hundred bullets a minute past my shoulders like I’m War Machine in Iron Man. This horse is a stone cold professional, though, and not only does he go with it, he fucking strafes his targets in what can only be describes as,  “overkill.” If the whole movie was about a horse with Gatling guns bringing law and order to the ol’ West, then this would have made a far superior movie. Sadly, this wasn’t the case.
A lot of shit in this movie makes no sense in any capacity. Plus the opening scenes have shitty comic-book animation. Like every movie involving someone shooting someone else, it’s driven by a revenge plot. Jonah has his family barbequed, so he’s out to get the people responsible. Only, at the end of the opening sequence, it tells us in narration that the guy Jonah’s after died in a fire. So… the movie’s over, right? WRONG! Megan Fox hasn’t even showed up yet, so we’ve got to kill the next hour or so somehow. Tunrbull, the bad guy, who’s played by the slumming actor, John Malkovich, comes back to life. How? I don’t know. I got up to make popcorn. He might be a vampire, or zombie, or a pirate ghost, I don’t know, but the movie has a supernatural element to it that really doesn’t belong. There’s a whole scene where Jonah digs up a grave and talks to an old friend who’s also some kind of zombie-thing. Up until that point, things were going somewhat normally, save for the Gatling gun horse, then it turns all Buffy.
Why did the movie need vampires/zombies/Irish stereotypes who primarily use guns? Who the fuck knows. That’s not even the worst element. The worst is: this movie is a sequel/remake of Wild Wild West.

Yes, that Wild Wild West.
Now, it’s not literally related to Wild Wild West, but it has all the same elements. You’ll understand what I mean when Turnbull pulls out the Steampunk WMD. You know the giant steam-driven robo-spider in Wild Wild West? This movie has something less ridiculous, but still ridiculous. It involves glowing balls. It even has the same U.S. President trying not to be assassinated by said weapon by employing a person of questionable professionalism instead of using his vast army. Westerns, by definition, should not be set on the Eastern Seaboard near Washington D.C..
Speaking of glowing: Megan Fox. You know how in old movies they’d always white-wash the starlet with that weird glowing-effect? They’d use a special lens to make the actress more blurry, and hence: less fugly. They do that to Megan with digital touch-ups, which is confusing. She’s not the decaying corpse of Elizabeth Taylor: she’s a twenty-something actress wearing out the last fifteen minutes of her fame in a corset. Megan plays a whore (insert joke here), who’s fucking the shit out of Jonah off-camera. Remember: Jonah lost his wife in a fire, and we’re supposed to sympathize with him and his pain. He drowns his pain in Megan Fox’s cooch, though, so… yeah…. it’s kind of hard to feel sorry for him. In fact, you kind of want to punch him in the good side of his face.
There’s more weird shit going on too: like a crow jumps out of Jonah’s mouth at one point with constant flash-backs to his family getting torched, and a Snake Man pit fighter who drools acid. Then there’s a scene where Jonah blows up a whole house with a gun. Then there’s a scene stolen from Van Helsing where Jonah gets a Steampunk crossbow that shoots exploding arrow-missile like he’s Rambo. Then the final fight scene happens on two levels. Jonah fights his foe in reality (Malkovich doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d take that much effort to put down, but Jonah has a hell of a time), and in a dream sequence, and it cuts back and forth. I don’t know if this is supposed to be clever and artsy, but it’s not.
Really, this movie fucks up. All it had to do was show Jonah being a bounty hunting cowboy, but you can’t edit this movie enough to bring it back to that purist level. Jonah Hex as a comic book has about zero fans, so it doesn’t matter if it pisses them off, but instead it chose to piss everyone off. It had a okay cast too, giving terrible performances. The make-up job they did on Jonah’s signature face was poorly done. Pretty much everything was wrong. It’s like if someone wanted to rape an entire movie genres non-satirically.

Technorati Tags: movies

The Crown

LiveJournal Tags: writing,super hero,comics

    I was familiar with Captain Victory’s reputation before we met. How could I not? The man was a legend and the subject of numerous films and merchandising, none of which he’d agreed to. It would be impossible for him to refuse this unwanted profiteering off of his likeness, however, since he’d become so ingrained in the culture. It’d be like trying to stop people from making bad movies about Dracula. No one was certain what his reaction to it all would be: the kids with light-up Captain Victory sneakers; the prequels to the trilogies raking in box office gold; and the hundreds of comic books lined up in cardboard boxes. No one had ever asked him. Sure, they’d walk up to him and say, “I liked your new movie,” but he wouldn’t acknowledge them. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t. No one knew which.
    For nearly twenty-years, he’d remained rooted to the spot, as still as a statue, kneeling before nothing, with a look of absolute defeat frozen to his face.
    It all happened after his last battle with the Stalanites, the terrorist cell from the former U.S.S.R.. No one ever took them seriously enough to chase after them behind the Iron Curtain, but they had a habit of cropping up within larger conflicts. They’d supplied arms to the Vietcong and North Korea, and were believed to be involved with the Cuban Missile Crisis. No one knew their numbers, and their own government labelled them as rogues agents, a splinter cell from the K.G.B.. More than anything, they were Soviet Boogiemen used to justify things like the McCarthy Act in the good ol’ U.S.A.
    That changed during the closing days of the Cold War. When it became apparent that the U.S.S.R. was on the brink of collapse, they made a  final push. They targeted their own government and wrestled control away for a few weeks until they were brought down by the remains of the Red Army. Meanwhile, they launched an attack against the U.S.. For years, they had sleeper agents living amongst regular Americas, building connections and gathering resources for a  sneak attack. The attack took place in the Main Square in Heron City. They tried to seize control of the city and use it as a base of operations. Police stations were firebombed, and bridges were sabotaged. Millions of people were trapped inside the city with no way of getting to the mainland. Nuclear subs were used to discourage an aquatic assault to take back the island city, and the government wasn’t willing to risk hurting the native citizens in an air raid. It was a stalemate for three days.
    Then the heroes came.
    Military photographers and local news crews caught most of the action, giving historians a fairly clear picture of what happened.
    Captain Victory led the charge with the Union. Regan had lifted the ban on the vigilante group only a day earlier, and they were hastily reassembled and airlifted to the site in the dead of night.
    Which was exactly what the Stalanites were expecting. To them, the once-though defunct Union was the only obstacle in their conquest of the United States. No sooner had Captain Victory set foot in Heron City then they released the Dreadnaught, a doomsday weapon  the U.S.S.R. had seized from Germany forty-years earlier and kept under lock and key. It was a mobile suit built from ten-inch thick steel lined with lead and powered by it’s own atomic reactor. Where it should have hands, it had channels that vented off radiation, burning everything in it’s path. Captain Victory had faced it once before, and nearly lost his life. The Stalanites had  renamed it, “Scorched Earth,” and added a few improvements. It was now nuclear, not only in it’s reactor core, but with twin missiles strapped to it’s back. General Trotsky, having faked his own storied death years earlier, went underground and oversaw it’s upgrades. He now helmed the metal beast, facing off against the heroes.
    In Middle Square, the two factions clashed. A handful of super heroes against a forty-foot tall behemoth. The Cube was the first to fall. A sniper was hidden in the skyscraper behind Scorched Earth. He fell, lifeless, and in the confusion caused  the metal construct unleashed it’s nuclear fire. Athena protected the others with her Aegis shield, but the strain was obvious. Captain Victory and the others flanked the machine. He was familiar with it’s weak spots, but these had been strengthened by the Stalanites. It was only vulnerable to a rear-assault, but it was being protected by a turret guns mounted in the surrounding buildings.
`    Fleet-Foot, as the fastest of the group, used her super-speed to clear out the buildings, but  the Stalanites had rigged one of the turrets to explode via remote. The entire building collapsed around her, but her remains were never found.
    Captain Victory gained purchase on the machine’s back while Trotsky was distracted by Skirmish, the acrobatic crime-fighter. As he leapt about, he was suddenly incinerated by the hand cannon. Only ashes remained, blowing in the harsh wind.
    Captain Victory had found the vents on the machine’s shoulders, which opened between blasts to vent off excess steam. He put his hands inside and pried off the cover, only to be knocked off by a R.P.G. from the rear guard.  Trotsky caught him mid-air with his claw hand and slammed him four-feet into the ground. Useless in the main fight Dragono and the Fisher pursued the scattered groups of soldiers , but was never seen again.
    Back-up arrived in the form of Apache helicopters, which rained down on Scorched Earth now that Captain Victory was clear. Steam billowed up from the machine’s shoulder, and Trotsky realised he couldn’t activate the cannon with the vent pulled open. He took this as his cue to launch the nukes.
    Athena caught the sudden flare of the rockets and erected her shield across the Square. It was her last act. The square was left a smouldering craters, contain within a shimmering bubble that  lasted three days. As a mysterious effect of Aegis shield, the radiation surrounding the area dissipated, leaving it safe. Athena was gone, however, leaving people to wonder if she had been the true Goddess. No one knew how many had died in the conflict. It was as if everything whine the dome had been erased, leaving a perfectly smooth pit  about a kilometre wide.
    In the middle of that pit, they found Captain Victory, frozen in the same pose he had now. His hands were upturned, as if he had been holding something. His clothes had been burned away, along with his hair, but already the stubble was growing in. The military Haz-Mat team sent to investigate the area threw a reflective blanket around him to cover his nakedness and tried to revive him. Medics were brought in to check him, as he neither blinked, nor reacted to their presence. His skin was too hard to get a pulse off of, but a stethoscope was held up to his chest. His heart was still beating, slowly but surely. Hundreds of medical experts would come to the site to diagnose him, but no one could explain his inanimate state. No one even knew what he was. He couldn’t be pried from the spot, even by crane. It was as if he was subtly resisting them. Since they couldn’t take him to a facility, they brought whatever equipment they needed to study him. X-Rays came back blurry and indistinct, leaving his inner-working as mystery. In the end, they simply accepted that something inside him had broken, and he was now a shell of a man.
    Over the years, as they rebuilt the Square, they designed the streets circles around him. Everything sloped down towards Captain Victory, whose hair had grown longer as his beard as he remained immobile. Drains were installed under him to keep the area from becoming a lake. Statues went up  around him to commemorate the heroes who had given their lives. They’d put the statues across from him in the Square, in case he would ever care to look up and remember his friends. Buildings and businesses went up. Life returned to normal. Captain Victory became one of the world’s biggest attractions. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions visited the site to look at a real life super-hero and thank him. Guards were posted to keep his dignity intact. They’d build a shelter above him to keep him dry and sewed clothes onto him. People would come and lay flowers at his monument. Under careful watch, people were allowed to come up and talk to him. Most were children, though many were adults. Some would break down crying and turn away.
    One day, though, an old enemy came. No one recognized Prospero until his was standing directly in front of Captain Victory with a smug look upon his face and his head held high in disregard. The security cameras picked up the monologue given that day. “Look at you,” he smirked at his old nemesis. “Sitting here, wallowing in self-pity. Oh, this is grand to see you here upon your knees. It’s appropriate, after the way you left me. Twenty long years. That’s what you took from me, you monster,” he gripped his bony fists before the hero.
    “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step back,” one of the blue uniformed guards stepped forward to confront the man. He was immediately flung back by what was suspected to be Prospero’s force belt. The other guard brought out his truncheon, but Prospero brought out his ray gun.
    “Try it, you rent-a-pig,” Prospero told him coldly. “I’ve been putting down demigods since before you were born. Do you think you can stop me with a stick? Ask him,” he waved his gun towards Captain Victory. “Ask him what I’ve done to people like you.. Remember?” he asked Victory. “That time in Texas, with the State Trooper? There we were, having it out, and he butts in and tries to arrest me. Me! The audacity of it. I melted his legs off. Remember him lying there, screaming for you to help him? But would you put him out of his misery? No, you took him to a hospital where he could spend the next four hours in the worst agony of his life before he died. You could have ended it all right then and there and given that man some peace, but you didn’t. You couldn’t. You were weak then, and you’re weak now.
    “I’m here because I know a thing or two about pain, Vic, and I’m here to share it with you. Twenty years I wasted away in a cell, because of you.. Trapped. That’s real pain. All I could think about was getting back at you, and then this,” he waved to encompass the Square, “this happened, and I realized I could never top this. You’re broken. You’re just a thing now. An empty shell. There’s nothing left for me to hurt, is there?
    “Or is there?” Going into the crowd, Prospero snatched away a young girl and dragged her towards Captain Victory. The crowd tried to stop him, but they were pushed back by his force belt. “Maybe this is all just an act? Maybe there’s enough of a man in you left to stop me from doing this,” he put the gun against the girl’s head and squeezed his finger on the trigger. “Say goodbye to your fan here, Vic.”
    A gasp went out from the crowd, but nothing happened. “You think I’m joking? You know what I am, Vic. I will kill this girl, right here before you, these people and their misguided God. Then they’ll see you for the worthless pile of garbage you really are, and that’s what really scares you, isn’t it, Vic? Losing their love. You’re pathetic, Vic.” His fingered tightened again, but still he hesitated. “What…?” his eyes darted between Captain Victory and the girl, who was reduced to sobbing tears. “What’s wrong with you?” he licked his lips nervously. “Why won’t you stop me? Are you scared? Is that it? Are you finally willing to admit you’re scared of me, Vic? Well you’re right to be. You were always right. Now watch her die!” Again, he  flexed his finger, but Captain Victory didn’t move.
    “You!” Prospero screamed as he flung the girl away. “You’re mocking me, aren’t you? You!” he fired several shots in rapid succession. The rays blinded the cameras, but when the afterimage disappeared, Captain Victory was still kneeling in the same position, his clothes burned away by the rays. “You! Why won’t you die? Die, die, die!” Prospero fired again and again, but his ray gun could have been a squirt gun for all it did. “No! You can’t deny me this. I’ve waited years. Years! This…” he fell down, crying. The guards tried to apprehend him again, but he raised his gun and fired a final shot.
    Prospero’s headless body fell limp, his blood pooling beneath Captain Victory’s knees and dripping down the drains. Captain Victory hadn’t moved.

Pluto vs. Bluto

With all the talk of illegal-immigration today, it’s easy to forget about another kind of alien. Namely: ALIENS.

My step-son received a book on space for his birthday. In it, the book claims that there’s only eight planets in our solar system, and that Pluto doesn’t count for shit. Of course, I read all about scientists giving Pluto the finger years back, but to see it actually implemented in educational books is like living in 1980 (the book/movie, not the year). The reasoning behind the decision to de-label Pluto as a planet is sound, but that’s only according to scientists. If you ask me, it’s total bullshit. When I grew up not so long ago, there were nine fucking planets, and Pluto was the Tito Jackson, but it was still fucking there. If your system of classification for a planet doesn’t include Pluto, you don’t need to re-label Pluto, you need to change your fucking system, ‘cause it’s broke.

Pluto = Planet.

But who are the people behind this decision? Who would benefit the most from this re-classifcation? Who else but: ALIENS.

Yes: aliens. The Plutonians want us to forget they exist, to make their sneak attack on this planet that much sneakier. They’ve carefully infiltrated the scientific community and brought about this change to ready us for the slaughter. No other explanation makes sense.

The same basic strategy was used during the Cold War. The the K.G.B. put their sleeper agents inside the American education system and took away any reference to the U.S.S.R. from every Atlas, globe and map. Look at any map made after 1989 and try to find the U.S.S.R. Hint: IT’S NOT FUCKING THERE. Instead, they have, “Russia,” in it’s place, land of milk and honey (assuming that by, “milk,” you mean, “vodka,” and by, “honey,” you also mean, “vodka.”). Believe me, though, the U.S.S.R. is still there, just like Pluto: lying in wait for the perfect moment to strike. (Other instances of this happening include Constantinople, the Ottoman-Hungarian Empire, and Troy.)

So what happens to our schools now? Is the word, “Pluto,” going to be crossed out with black felt marker like a government document from the Bush administration? Are dioramas of the solar system going to be burned because they include Pluto? Are kids going to fail their tests because they incorrectly answered that our solar system has nine planets?

FUCK THAT SHIT. I say it’s time to take back Pluto, both figuratively, and literally. We need to forget about a manned mission to Mars and focus on Pluto instead… with  laser cannons. When I was a kid, they said this era in history would be called the Space Age. They were fucking wrong. We need to use that idea, and get all 1950’s idealized future on Pluto’s ass. I want Master Chief on Pluto, tea-bagging defenceless Plutonians by tea-time.

Remember, if someone tells you that Pluto isn’t a planet, they’re not one of us, and they’re Plutonians oppressing your rights as a human being. It’s EXACTLY like the Pope telling Galileo that the stars revolve around the Earth, except it won’t be the Pope, but a Plutonian terrorist in disguise.

Is Kanye West a Time-Traveler?

LiveJournal Tags: Kanye West,time travel,music

The answer: yes.

Consider his outlandish garb and tell me those shades aren’t from the future, or from a Wolworth’s store circa 1987.

 

They are!

Consider his message at the VMAs. “Beyonce has one of the best videos of all time.” Of all time. General douche-baggery, or a warning from the future?

Did Dropout Bear dropout of college, or time?

The answer: time.

Movies and Music are Pissing me off.

Music:

Eminem:

You’re pissing me off. You’re still going on about being a good father to your daughter. It’s been like ten years. Your daughter’s probably old enough to be in college and hanging out with the Kardashians. You’re going to be a grandfather soon. Deal with change.

This whole album of yours, “Recovery.” What the hell are you recovering from? Sleeping pills? That’s a wussy thing to be addicted to. Go talk to rock stars like Scott Weiland and ask him about addiction. They’re more addiction than man, and they put out better albums because of it. This whole album is like a sleeping pill, because it’s putting me to sleep.

Also, your lyrics haven’t gotten any better. Here’s a sample from, “Love the Way You Lie”:

Now you get to watch her leave
Out the window
Guess that's why they call it window pane

NO. That’s not why they call it, “window pane.”

Also: Rhianna isn’t Dido.

Go retire again, and dye your hair blond.

Britney Spears:

While we’re on the subject of terrible, misguided lyrics, nobody wants to, “F-U-C-K,” you. Go do a duet with Eminem and trade pills.

Aerosmith:

“Deuces Are Wild,” is the worst song ever written by man, assuming Steven Tyler is a man. Here’s a sample:

slammed the door so hard I fell out of bed, screamin’ momma’s little baby loves shortnin’ bread.

No one has ever screamed that out of surprise, or pain. It’s not something that gets screamed.

The song also contains numerous references to fecalphilia:

I love to look into your big brown eye

‘Cause deuces are wild

Not to mention pedophilia:

I’ve been lovin’ you since you were a child

Go trade some pills with Britney and Eminem.

Movies:

Chris Brown:

He beats the living shit out of Rhianna and now he gets to make a movie? Because why? How does that work? He’s not even an actor. Like there wasn’t enough black actors out there, or rappers who could take the job (assumingly because they were all cast in “Lottery Ticket”)? Why is he being rewarded like this? No one even bought his last album. Fuck you. Now go beat the shit out of Steven Tyler, Eminem, and Britney.

Movie Theatres:

I’ve just realized how awesome it would be if they served alcohol at movies. Why don’t they? They do it at concerts, sporting events, and everywhere else. Why not the movies? What’s the worst that could happen? Someone smashes a bottle over the back of someone’s head for talking during the movie. THAT SHOULD HAPPEN. Or maybe someone throws up in the aisles. The floor’s already sticky.

Harry Potter:

Every Harry Potter movie begins with him being horribly abused by his family. All his friends and teachers knows this shit is going on, and they don’t do a fucking thing. So basically, after each movie ends, there’s a a scene like this:

“Thank you, Harry Potter, for saving the school. Now off to your overweight uncle who will whip you and lock you in a closet over your summer vacation.”

LiveJournal Tags: movies,music

Predator-Z

See this shit? This is Adrian Brody covered in twelve or so Predator laser scope beams, about to be taken the fuck out. How’s he going to get out of this sticky situation? Maybe he’ll deflect their shots with his huge schnozolla. Who the fuck knows, because it sure as shit wasn’t in the movie.
This scene had been altered for the trailers. It’s not in the movie, and it isn’t going to be in the DVD Special Edition bonus features either. There’s only one beam on him, on his forehead. For some reason, once he realizes someone’s gunning for his head, he stops still, like a deer in the headlights. That kind of shit makes it really easy for someone to take your head off. The proper thing to do once you notice someone’s laser scope is on you? Ducking. He plays a mercenary big-shot know-it-all for the whole movie, but fails this one test.
You want to know the total number of Predators in Predators? Four.
That’s not a lot of Predators. Alien vs. Predator had more Predators, and interspecies love. Remember in Aliens how many Aliens there were? A lot, and it was awesome.
Somehow, someone got to editing this trailer, and realized how much more awesome it would be if there were more Predators. More is better. They could have then gone back to the movie and edited in some more Predators, thereby making it more awesome. They didn’t. The audience is left with just four stinking Predators. Anyone can fight off four Predators. Danny Glover even managed to kill one.
The deception behind the whole movie is that they’re on Predator Planet. They’re not. It’s a game reserve planet. Predators just go there for vacation. There’s some other aliens in the movie, but there’s nothing special about them. They’re just there to get blown apart.
For a race of super-strong aliens who have devoted all of their culture to the sport of hunting, they sure do suck at it. There’s literally no excuse for any Predator to ever be taken down by the likes of Arnie. They can turn invisible; they can see heat signatures; they have plasma cannons moulded to their shoulder pads; they have interstellar space ships; and they have those spinning Xena: Warrior Princess discs. Even without all that technology, they’re still eight-feet tall.
The movie also eludes to the fact that the Predators are carefully monitoring everything that goes on in Earth. Just like Santa Claus: they know when you’ve been bad or good. They know what you’re doing and where at any given time. They can swoop in, catch you, and drop you off in an alien world in a flash. Still: they can’t stop Adrian Brody: the least likely action hero ever filmed.
No wonder it’s been like 20 years since their last movie.

The Building Next to Mine

As I drive in and out of my underground parking garage, I can see the building next to my own. For about four months, I noticed one window had an air conditioner in it, with an extension cord running down to the floor below, looping through the patio railings of two other apartments, and up a floor to an outlet on the patio of a third apartment. This, to me, was ballsy. Obviously, anyone venturing onto the patios of the two apartments below could see this cord. The apartment the cord was plugged into seemed deserted, but even then, anyone surveying the apartment for rental would likely come across this cord. If it was deserted, wouldn’t that mean that the power should be disconnected? Was someone away for an extended period of time? Why were they still paying their electric bill? Had someone actually agreed to this arrangement? From my experiences living in Abbotsford apartment buildings, I can tell you that 70% of the people living in them are Japanese exchange students who treat the building like a dorm. They constantly wander from apartment to apartment building like gypsies in a confined space. Could a similar situation be happening there?
I’ve seen people out on their patios in the two lower apartments. Obviously, they saw what was going on. They did nothing
A week ago I saw the cord had become unplugged. A few days ago I saw the air conditioner had been removed, which is strange because it’s now the summer. The cord had been left in place for the winter and spring months where one traditionally does not need an air conditioner. The whole scene followed some type of Bizaro logic that I can’t follow.

Iron Man 2: A Taste or Irony

I went and saw Iron Man 2 last night, being Sunday night, at the local theatre with my family. The place was nearly empty, but of course you still have to stand in line for popcorn. I think half the people there are just shills trying to make it seem like popcorn is this big fucking deal. You see these guys and think, “Wow, if everyone else is paying $13 for stale popcorn, I should too!” The same concept applies to any and all Starbucks.
We were the only ones in the screening room for the 9:30 showing, but for some reason, after looking at my ticket, I noticed the seller had given me tickets to the later 10:00 showing, in Digital. We shrugged and decided to stay. It’s not every day you have a whole auditorium to yourself. You can laugh as loud as you want and at inappropriate times, you can crinkle your candy wrappers loudly, leave your cell phone on, and make as many wise-ass comments as you like and THERE’S NO ONE THERE TO MAKE BITCHY REMARKS ABOUT YOUR BEHAVIOUR. Heaven is probably a lot like that, only they bring the popcorn to you, and give you free refills. It’s like watching TV at home only you’re outside in the real world. I was half-expecting some lardass to come in and plop down next to me despite there being eighty other empty seats, and he would of course have to budge past me with his polyester sweat pants in my face instead of taking the other route. This didn’t happen.
Long before the movie was released, I heard rumour about Mickey Rourke trying to get bird into movie to be his character’s drinking buddy. I thought about how bad that idea must seem to any director, and assumed it would never make the final print. But that bird is in like 10% of the movie. It was a pretty easy role for Mickey. All he had to do was act like a prick and pick up a paycheque, but he went a little farther, giving the character two sides. On one side he’s this fallen brilliant scientist wracked with grief over his father’s death, and on the other he’s this ex-con who thinks it’s a good idea to walk onto the race track in Monte Carlo with electro-whips. Somehow, it gets from A to B, and you just accept it.
I thought this movie would delve into Tony Stark’s alcoholism, and despite having four good friends around watching him with a drink glued to his hand like Ricky from the Trailer Park Boys, no one comes out and says, “You’re an alcoholic!” Which kept it clean for the kids. I thought the was a few times I’d have to use the earmuffs on my step-son, but phrases like, “Drop your socks and grab your…” ended with, “kroks.”
Tony does get blind, stinking drunk at a party, with D.J. A.M., and I was like, “Whoa, that’s D.J. A.M.! I only know about him because he died!” Which is true. Sadly, as he danced around in the Iron Man suit, he did not do the Robot. I think it would be one the suit’s pre-programmed responses, right next to tea-bagging.
A lot of the movie builds up to The Avengers movie, coming sometime in the unforseeable future. There’s a lot of scenes with Tony and Nick Fury talking business, a half-made Captain America shield, and Thor supposedly makes a cameo at the end of the credits, but I didn’t stay that long. They’ve been leading to The Avengers since the first Iron Man and the second Hulk reboot, and if Robert Downey Jr. wasn’t on board it’d probably be a total disappointment.
Iron Man’s weird in that he doesn’t have any good, or recognizable bad-guys to fight, but somehow the movies are better than Spider-Man, where he’s fighting three villains at once. It’s a lot like Spider-Man 2 in a way, in that both movies are about super-heroes overcoming illness and a loss of their powers while everyone around them suddenly decides they hate them. Plus: red-heads.
At this point I’m fairly certain he’ll never fight the Mandarin, which is something we can all be thankful for. In the two TV animated cartoons he’s had, every episode has been about Iron Man fighting the incredibly racist stereo-type that is the Mandarin. It’s like how He-Man fought Skeletor every episode, only with a Fu-Man-Chu. Hammer looks like he’s been set up to be the bad guy in the third Iron Man, plus some anonymous second-stringer, like… I can’t name any Iron Man villains, and I’ve read like fifty Iron Man comics, in which he fights villains. I think there’s a dude with cold powers, a chick, another dude, and then some robot suit dude. Interesting side-note: you don’t want to be a ice-using villain coming onto the scene today. Every ice-related name has been used: Ice Man, Killer Frost, Mr.Freeze, Blizzard, Captain Cold, Ice-T. The worst? Icicle, sometimes spelt Ici-kill.
The film in the theatre began flickering, and the projectionist came in and told us we’d be better off going down the hall to the Digital version of the movie, which was fifteen minutes behind our showing. After moving over, I couldn’t tell what was so great about the Digital version. It looked only a little crisper, but the screen was smaller, and the audio was quieter. The transition from screen to screen was like an Intermission, without the ol’-timey placard and bad music. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the only movie I can think of with this insert still in it in our modern Digital Age.
All in all, I’d say Iron Man really lives up to the original. Don Cheadle’s War Machine even apologizes for not being the same black guy from the first movie when he first appears. Ever notice how white most super hero movies are? The only black guys you see are usually street thugs. Was there even one black guy in all five Superman movies that wasn’t Richard Pyror, or a pimp with one line? Iron Man has two black dudes, both of whom are super heroes, even though one of them is white in the comics. They didn’t even need a black guy, and they put Samuel L. Jackson, because he’s so damn black.

Final Fantasy XIII: Chapter Twelve

LiveJournal Tags: Final Fantasy XIII,games

Hating on Final Fantasy XIII is my new favourite hobby. That’s because Final Fantasy XIII is awash with nonsensical gibberish and exceedingly long cutscenes that do nothing to further the plot.
Case in point: The big baddie in Final Fantasy XIII’s master plan is to destroy the world of Cocoon in order to resurrect some ancient god. His complicated plan to achieve this goal is to turn his worst enemies into living weapons. Yes, he gave his enemies super-powers, then told them to go and blow up their home: the place where all their stuff is. They of course attack him instead, but he behaves as if this is all part of his plan. The entire time while they’re becoming more powerful: he’s trying to kill them. Like straight up murder them before they can do what he wants them to do.
…
The fact he’s a triple-agent/magic space-alien monster doesn’t help make his plans any less confusing. He wants to destroy Cocoon, but he’s it’s leader. He’s gone to great lengths to protect his identity as a giant monster, then he drops his disguise and kills his lieutenant, who’s helping him with his evil plan. As president, he was also responsible for seeking out and killing his own kind, who are also helping him with his evil plan. He also secretly controls a faction that’s trying to kill him. When the leader of this faction goes rogue and dies, he brings him back to life and gives him his old job as president.
The guy’s fucking bi-polar as hell.
At the beginning of Chapter Twelve, there’s a long cutscene where the gang drops in on a flying motorcycle race after they crash their ship for the sixth time. They proceed to fucking wreck the race and start messing people up. Now bear in mind: they’re trying to save the world, but they decide to just start killing people at random. The whole scene looks cool, but it makes no logistical sense with no semblance of story.
I’ve also apparently made it through the best part of the game: which is this semi-open world filled with mini-quests which equate to: Go here, kill this. Plus you’re given these very clear map markers showing you where to go, so there’s no sense of mystery, or exploration, really.

Final Fantasy XIII: Crash That Bird

LiveJournal Tags: Final Fantasy,games

Okay, so I’ve just reached Chapter 11 in Final Fantasy, and I can tell you this much about the game’s plot so far: they’ve crashed three to four airships so far. Every time one, or several of the character jump onto a flying vehicle, they proceed to crash that vehicle. Snow crashed his flying bike, Hope crashed his, and Sazh has crashed three consecutive airships. The average flight time is about two minutes before crashing. Once, during the middle of the game, they crashed their airship through the planet itself into a hidden underground city. That’s what I call an Epic Fail: crashing so badly you find a secret world. Yet, no one in the game has yet realized they shouldn’t really be flying. They say that any landing you can walk away from is a good one. Those people should talk to the F.A.A.

The worst is that every time I get on a ship I hope that it’s going to lead to me being able to physically fly that ship with my controller, instead of watching an exceedingly long cutscene. No such luck. I think I’ve reached a more open area of the game, however. The sight of a 500’ tall lava monster eating a 30’ tall turtle monster whole was pretty promising.

Every achievement in the game so far has been progressed based. There’s about 20 or so achievements you can’t unlock except by reaching the latest stages of the game. I unlocked one 80 point Achievement for Loremaster, basically by using the spell Libra on a 100 different enemies. I was surprised to learn that I had fought 100 different monster types so far. A lot of them are just different coloured versions of the same monster, so it’s a lot like Pokemon in that regard. For getting the Loremaster achievement, I also unlocked a Sazh’s profile picture, which I’m down with. Now I can have more people call me a “nigger,” when I play GTA IV online.

Final Fantasy XIII: Smack My Bitch Up

I’ve reached disc three in Final Fantasy XIII. Shortly before this came to fruition, I was given the option of picking and choosing my own team of three players. Yes, it takes 2/3rds of the game before you can assign your own group. That’s 20 hours and 11 GB of gameplay. I’m reading now that things improve after Chapter 11 of the game. In fact, some people in forums are saying you can’t even rate the game properly until Chapter 11. There’s only thirteen Chapters in the game. You are therefore expected to base your assessment on the game based on 3/13ths of it.

At the end of disc two, I had to fight this guy:

Yes, he’s wearing a veil. Yes, he’s the big baddie in the game.

*SIGH*

He was actually a bitch to beat. It took me about three tries, fifteen minutes each. He transforms into some kind of dragon with multiple faces which each use a different spell. Once you get him down on the ropes, he pulls out this devastating attack that can wipe out your whole party if you’re under-levelled. I had to upgrade a bit and get the timing down before I could win. At the end of every battle, however, you’re rated on how much damage you do, how fast your were, etc., and you’re given a star rating out of five. I got 0 out of 5. I took fifteen minutes and I was supposed to beat him in nine.

Seriously, Japan, fuck you. I don’t need your shit.

I’ve been trying to find a guide online for things like their upgrade system, and how best to go about it, and all I’ve discovered is that 90% of the drops in the game are vendor trash. You’re supposed to combine items to upgrade your weapons. It takes about 100% of every item you find in the game x4 to max out a single weapon. You need to do this six times to get a complete weapon for each of your characters.

Fuck that shit.

I realized after seventeen hours that two of the characters in the game are equipped with weapons they pull out in every fight, but never use. They can’t. I was confused, because they actively used them during their first battles, but the game’s auto-system denies you the ability to pick your attacks, or even select “Attack.” They’re locked into this magic-using system you have to switch between, so all they can do during battle is use spells. If you’re trying to buff a character with shields, you have to use a specific command. They’ll keep buffing your characters until every one in the party has every spell you can muster. Then they’ll do nothing. They won’t attack, they won’t re-buff. They’ll just stand there, taking hits, until you switch your “pagadrims” again. Meanwhile, they’ll be holding a boomerang or a staff in their hands, which they refuse to use.

Pussies.

Another thing: The three main female characters are wearing the shortest skirts imaginable. Like Ally McBeal short. If Harrison Ford ever found his way to Cocoon there with Chewie and the Millenium Falcon, or a nuclear explosion propelled refridgerator, he’d be all over that. But no matter how they jump or leap about, you never quite see panties. Instead, there’s this unfathomable dark void where there crotches should be, which is far more distrurbing, in my estimation.

Final Fantasy XIII: Snow Job

LiveJournal Tags: Final Fantasy,games

I was all excited about the prospect of playing as Snow again after he’d been taken away from me for about ten hours of gameplay as part of the storyline, but then I saw how they brought him back. Immediately after his exceedingly long, but awesome cutscene I was thrust into a battle against four enemy soldiers and one way-overpowered robot. I was forced to fight them all single-handedly, but the battle starts in the Summon monster Gestalt mode. Snow’s riding his twin ice-bitches motorcycle. At this point, I had yet to use his Shiva Summon monster in combat, and had only used Lightning’s Summon monster, Odin once before. There’s a dial and you have to use various listed button inputs as the dial goes down. I did all this, but when everything was said and done and the points used for the Summon were used up, the enemy still had half of it’s energy. It was Staggered, but it’s Stagger gauge immediately disappeared once returning to normal combat. I tried to battle him free-style, but died. Snow hadn’t levelled up his Crystarium, or whatever the hell it was called since he disappeared several Chapters ago, and was underpowered. I died and had to retry the stage, but was allowed to level up my character in the menu in the meantime. I tried a second time, and still died under the same circumstances. I tried a third time, and this time I did Auto every time instead of picking and choosing my own attacks. This time I wiped the floor with the enemy in one go.

So: the moral is to use Auto on everything, every time. Having any input into the game at all is going to leave you disappointed. It’s typically the only way to achieve the 5-Star rating in battle as well. This isn’t an RPG, or even a PG, or a G. It’s movie. All you’re doing is clicking through scenes.

Seriously, I’ve played every Final Fantasy game except XII, and I’m ready to call this the worst Final Fantasy ever. Only Chocobo’s Dungeon II is worse. It’s obvious they’ve put years of effort into the production, but it’s not a solid product. There’s no Role-Playing involved, or even real strategy.

Ol’ School

Ten years have passed, making the PS2 officially an “ol’ school” gaming platform. In related news, I finally found the power cord to my PS2. It had been lying behind my Xbox 360, in a massive tangle of wires.

Naturally, I immediately drew out my PS2, dusted it off, and turned it on. Inside, was white gold: my missing copy of Simpsons Season Eight Disc One. You know how you know something is somewhere in your apartment, but you just can’t find it, and it drives you crazy? You imagine someone stole it, or it was mistakenly thrown out, but it’s there, waiting for you.

Now: I traded in nearly every game I had to buy my 360, but there were three titles they wouldn’t take: Final Fantasy VII, Finaly Fantasy VIII and GTA: San Andreas. I still have them. Meaning: instead of playing Final Fantasy XIII, I could be playing Final Fantasy VII. Why would I chose between the two? Because it’s the same difference between watching Robocop and watching Robocop 3.

I finally got to the point in Final Fantasy XIII where I can play as Snow again, which is awesome. He’s the most interesting hero by far in the game. Case in point: early in the game, he makes a mad lunge for a gun. It was one of those situations where the dude jumps, does a roll on the ground, and ends up with a gun in his hand, which he then uses to blow the back of someone’s brains out. Only: he misses. He does the whole act, but doesn’t pick up the gun. To me, that’s awesome. More awesome, however, is the fact he rides around on a motorcycle made up of two half-naked babe Espers. That’s right: two. And he rides them. Between his legs. Then they transform into two ice-powered bitches and kill shit for him. Moreover: he’s the only one who can block.

Final Fantasy XIII: The Letdown

LiveJournal Tags: games,Final Fantasy

I’m about 18 hours into Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox 360, and I’m convinced I’ll never be allowed to explore a free city, enter a shop, stay at an inn, or fly an airship around. I did get to ride a mecha for about two minutes before reaching a pre-determined finish line. The game is on rails. You don’t so much explore as you go down narrow corridors with few, if any nooks and crannies. Treasures are so obviously hidden you don’t even have to look for them. Their treasure chests themselves fucking float and bob in the air, as if to say, “Hey there, I’m a treasure chest.” There hasn’t been a single mini-game yet, except for the mecha thing, which sucked, and the only chocobo so far is the one living in the black dude’s fro. One of the girls in the game has to be about fourteen to fifteen, and she’s completely over-sexualized in a Japanese anime pedo kind of way. The only shops are in the menu at save points, so you don’t walk up to clerks. The items offered at the shops only appear after you’ve already found the item in a treasure chest or off a monster. So why bother trying to buy one? They’re overpriced anyway. I’ve obtained the maximum about of gil I can at this point in the game, as it doesn’t drop off enemies, and you only find it in chests. Still, I can’t afford anything, as it’s always priced higher. I can’t fast scroll through cutscenes without skipping the entire cutscene. There’s one five minute cutscene for every ten minutes of play it seems. I have to sit and watch a girlish-boy called, “Hope,” whine about his dead mother and how he’s going to get his revenge on, “Snow,” who isn’t guilty in the slightest, every half-hour on average. I can’t level up my characters: ever. Instead I have to level up their “crystals,” giving them new stats and abilities. Only the crystals only expand so far until you reach a point in the game. So your crystal can be maxed out, and you’ll have points left over to spend. So you can never over-power your characters and mow through repetitive fight scenes with minor monster characters. Weapons have to be levelled up as well, but this uses vedor junk items, and you have a limited supply. So you never know what weapon you should chose to level, as a new one could be right around the corner. You could be maxing out a weaker weapon only to find there’s a stronger weapon out there that should have received that treatment instead. There is no armour: only accessories. Your teams is constantly being split-up by the plot, and you can’t pick and chose who you want on your team at any given moment. So my only tank: Snow, is up on an airship somewhere having constant flash-backs while I’m stuck paired up with the fucking kids, who are only good for status effect spells and healing.

I died about ten times fighting Odin, because I didn’t switch between pre-set, pre-determined battle attack modes quick enough, or often enough for the game’s liking. It’s been the only challenge so far, and it pissed me right the fuck off. I was trying to see if the cutscene beforehand gave me a clue about how to win Odin’s favour, since I was suppose to fill up his “Gestalt” bar, whatever the fuck that was. The scene mentioned protecting Hope, so I tried that. Didn’t work. I of course was supposed to use double Ravager, and only healing when needed, like every other fight so far.

Having Odin is completely useless too, as you only really need him for the boss battles. Only, I was in a boss battle, and I didn’t have enough TP points, because I was using them on Libra. That meant I couldn’t use Odin, and hence the fight lasted an annoyingly long time.

There’s more complaints, to be sure, but I’m tired now.

Final Fantasy XXXIII

So I began playing Final Fantasy XIII yesterday for the Xbox 360. After opening it, I was instantly disappointed by how it was packaged. The game includes three discs. I had been expecting these discs to be set in different tabs, but instead they were all piled on top of one another, in the wrong order. I had to check for scratches just to make sure they hadn’t been damaged by the way they were set. I also realized I had no idea how many discs there were supposed to be. I couldn’t find where it was written on the package, so I had to check online. The game includes three discs, apparently, but previously I had heard four. Maybe that was for the PS3 version. It also came with the promise of a “free item” if I registered my game at members/square-enix.com/na. The site itself was lagging to death, and I was kicked several times trying to register, or rather re-register. I had already registered at their site years ago, but apparently that wasn’t good enough. I had to register with a second site of the same name, then link my two accounts.  This caused numerous 401 errors. I was trying to play while dicking around with their shitty site, so I eventually gave up and went back to the game. I came back a few hours later and it was closed for repairs. Fifteen minutes later, I finally re-re-registered and got my gift: male and female Avatar soldier uniforms. The uniforms themselves look gay as humanly possible, and don’t include the helmet the soldiers in the game wear. They also look completely different. Not even the most desperate Cosplayer would dress like this. I was also informed I couldn’t download the female outfit because my Avatar wasn’t female. So here I now held the code for an item I owned, and I couldn’t use it. I gave it to my fiancee’s Avatar, without her consent, because I wasn’t going to let it go to waste.

The intro movie for Final Fantasy XIII looks exactly like Avatar, the movie, where they’re flying around on those fucking alien bird things, and I mean EXACTLY. It’s just another in a long line of things Avatar completely resembles without actually infringing on anyone’s copyrights. Getting into the gameplay, I found there wasn’t much to be had. Final Fantasy has always been a “Step One: Select Attack. Step Two: Wait. Step Three: Repeat,” affair, but this game has something called, “Auto-Attack.” Meaning you only ever have to select the one option, and maybe throw in a potion or two. Seriously, every battle so far involved no strategy whatsoever. As for equipment, you only ever control one character out of three at any time, called the leader, and they only have the option of equipping a weapon and an accessory. No armour, no materia, nothing else. The game is about 80% cut scenes, and 15% walking along a straight path. I’ve had battles that laster 2 seconds, and I know that because it shows you the time.

It’s really more movie than game, and in terms of drama, they already killed off someone’s mom in slo-mo during the first hour of play. Then immediately went into a scene with everyone laughing and high-fiving each other. Way to ruin the mood, Final Fantasy.

Also: the game’s sole black man used the phrase, “I’m getting to old for this,” during the first fifteen minutes.

Also: the heroine’s name is Lighting, and she uses lightning magic. Clever. At least Black Lightning added the “Black” to his name to show you he wasn’t a one-trick pony.

Game On

LiveJournal Tags: games

I’ve been playing Modern Warfare 2 so much that it’s started to mess with my dreams, so I went out and rented Bayonetta, and Fairy Tale Fights.

Both games are similar hack’n’slash platformers. In fact, there’s a lot of similarities between the two. They’re both rated M17, they were both released around the same time. In terms of game play, in both you walk around a sort of a rail, where it’s not immediately clear what objects you can interact with, or what obstacles are unscalable. You pick up weapons and coins/halos as you kills enemies, and you have auto-aim. Both games are bat-shit insane.

Putting Bayonetta into the tray and starting it up, you’re immediately flung into a battle with angels and some crazy-ass double-headed winged dragon thing with a giant, upside-down cherub statue face for a body on top of a falling clock tower. The plot does not get any clearer as the game progresses. You’re a witch who dresses in S&M outfits and shoots bullets out her high heels as you do cartwheels. Your hair turns into a killer dragon head that eats enemies and drags them through a portal. For some reason, you have to be naked to do this. You can apparently play with one-button controls on easy. One imagines this is so you can masturbate while you’re playing, although the game isn’t that sexy. There’s a lot of cheesy characters. One’s a Danny Devito type with too many rings on his fingers. Another is some kind of jazzy black-guy/demon who serves drinks in very tiny glasses. Bayonetta is basically Wolverine, meaning she has amnesia and is trying to reclaim her past after being locked up in an underwater coffin. It’s taken her twenty years before she’s bothered to investigate the matter. For some reason: she hate the shit out of angels. Maybe because they’re constantly trying to kill her. She’s a witch in skin-tight clothes killing angels. No one has boycotted the game, or spoken out against it. Remember Mortal Kombat and how people went ape-shit over that? No one cares anymore. You play the game by mashing buttons to perform combos and unleash more powerful attacks. You don’t have to remember any of the more advanced combos to beat enemies. Simply tapping B or Y in any order will produce the results you want. It’s kind of fun, but then kind of confusing at the same time. There’s one battle where you’re literally fighting on the ceiling, trying to fight an enemy. It’s difficult to track your opponent as you’re running around a barrel-roll style, and more difficult to block her attacks as it’s hard to see her tells.

Combat in Fairy Tale Fights is far more frustrating. The game’s basically a rip-off of Castle Crashers, only not as fun. You have the same ability to play with four other people. The actual fighting in the game is pretty retarded. Instead of pushing buttons, you have to use your right joystick. It took me like five minutes to figure that out. It also took me that long to figure out where to go to start quests. You have your choice of four characters to play as. I of course picked the naked Emperor, because why wouldn’t I? You fight by picking up weapons. You have two weapon slots you can toggle through. You can’t pick up a new weapon until you’ve thrown out your old one. So to be clear: you can’t just automatically pick up a new weapon. You have to throw the old one, then pick the new one up. This causes confusion during play, as you accidentally can throw the weapon you want to keep. Off of a cliff. You also lose whatever weapon you’re holding upon dying, and  a lot of gold coins. The maps suck shit. You can fall into a pit of lava about ten times in a row because the other side of the ledge doesn’t line up the way it looks like it does. Everything has this too-colourful aspect to it, so it’s hard to see in general. Plus whenever you fight, you’re swarmed by enemies. As you chop them to bits, some remain on their feet after they’ve died. So you could be attacking a dead enemy while a live one is hitting you from behind. Plus, when you cut them in half, half the screen is taken up by a close-up of you doing so in bright, red colours. I don’t know how this would play out in a four person game, but if you’re the person fighting behind that screen, I bet it’s pretty annoying, as it blinds your path. Plus it’s pretty seizure inducing in general.

Most of the weapons are useless. The gold coins seem useless as well. You could have a veritable fortune halfway through a level, but each time you die you lose more and more. The boss battle will kill you about thirty times, minimum, as you can’t instantly predict when or where to dodge. Plus in a couple boss battles, when you knock the boss onto a series of spinning saw blades that cut through his back and he drops a bunch of gold coins HE GETS BACK UP AND KEEPS FIGHTING. You’ve clearly won, but you have to keep fighting. So going into the battle, you have about 30,000 coins, and going out you have 300. There’s no bonus for winning. The bonus comes halfway through the fight, and then you lose that by dying more. Plus the only thing you have to spend your coins on is a statue back in the city, a city where you can’t even talk or interact with the other NPCs. So why go back? It’s basically just a menu screen, trolled up. Dying has no consequence other than losing coins. You respawn almost automatically, usually in the path of a fireball. The whole game feels like they took a use made level from Little Big Planet. Plus you can kill children. For no reason. Bullshit.

Death of a Robin

The range hood over the stove collapsed off of it’s fittings tonight while my fiancée was in the kitchen. The range hood itself is one of those peculiar appliance few ever think of, but it’s omnipresent in every kitchen. You use it sparingly at best, and usually only in dire circumstances of cooking. It’s always particularly noisy; ours in particular.

The reason it had come loose of it’s screws is hard to fathom, especially after so many years. For all I know, it could have been in place since the 80’s. A brief examination showed the four screws holding it in place had been over-tightened at bad angles. It had slipped off along the tracks, and dropped a few inches. It was spared a complete plummet by the tightness of the cupboards against which it rested and a power cord slipping up and through a hole in the drywall.

After a long search for the necessary power drill to fix it, I took the opportunity to clean some of the grease and grime that had accumulated over decades in the thin space between the range and the bottom of the cupboard above. Somehow, a few pieces of nacho chips had made their way through the razor-thin crack, though I see no earthly way of how this had happened. We had a problem with infestations in the past year, so I sought out any remnant of the insect variety, and looked for various ways in which the insects could gain access to our apartment.

What I found, when shining a flashlight into the dark recesses where the ceiling fixture could not shone, I discovered something quite shocking:

It was the preserved remains of a captive robin.

At first, I had hoped he was still alive, as his presence could have explained the sudden dislodging of the range, but such was not the case. He lay on top of a trap above the fan. His foot had become trapped between the flap of the door, and he could not escape, although he must have tried frantically. It was all to no avail. Eventually, he had to lie down to die. There was no telling how long the bird had remained in that position. I am not skilled enough in these areas to hazard a guess. It could have been weeks, it could have been months. To think of how my family and I must have breathed in the dust of his feathers without knowing he was in our apartment.

Cleaning, at this point, was very necessary, but I found a lack of garbage bags and paper towels.

I went first to the Home Depot to collect some screws and a new filter for the range. I had no idea what size I needed, but after checking a similar model I made a gamble. I could always return them if they didn’t fit. Fortunately, they were absolutely the right models. Apparently these filters are to be washed or replaced once every six months. Our had never. It went immediately in the trash.

I tried to wonder how the bird became so trapped. We live on the second floor of a three storey apartment building. It would have had to have bypassed numerous channels of ducting and who knows what else to have found it’s way into our particular exhaust. Such is not an uncommon thing, however, as I remember birds becoming trapped in our chimneys as a child, and I know some birds are attracted to smoke as a way to delouse their feathers.

It felt sad to have to throw a once living creature in the garbage. To me, it deserved better. As a young boy, I would demand of a neighbour to bury a dead bird I found lying on the side of the road. It, of course, went into the trash. Such is the fate of birds.

Worst Olympics Ever?

Every time I read the paper, it poses the question, is the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics the worst Olympics ever? This is based on an ice paver breaking down, a lack of snow on one of the courses, and long lineups. The death of the Georgian luger before the opening come in a distant fifth in their list. Even if death, he loses the gold. If Vancouver is the worst Olympics on record, which Olympics are they comparing it to? Are they forgetting Munich, when a group of terrorist murdered eleven athletes? Or the Berlin Olympics, hosted by none other than ADOLF HITLER? What about the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics? What about when the Montreal Olympic Stadium collapsed? What about the ancient Grecian Olympics, when female athletes were executed for infiltrating the Games disguised as men? I personally think the Nazi Olympics takes the cake, although seeing the expression on Hitler’s face when Jessie Owens won the gold makes it all worth while. It was like Captain America #1 where Cap punches Hitler in the face, times a million.

RANT!

My New Year’s Resolution was to flip more people off, and so far I haven’t been living up to that lofty goal, so here goes:

$50 Bills:

No one accepts $50 bills as legal tender, although it says so right on the bill. I’ve had the same fifty in my wallet for over a month. Every checkout counter I go to has the same sign posted saying they no longer accept $50s. I remember a time when $100 bills were verboten. To me, it made sense. You don’t pull out a $100 bill at a convenience store and not be met with some scepticism, but a $50? Allegedly, it’s due to counterfeits, but counterfeiting is a crime as old as money itself. People in olden days didn’t refuse legal tender when it was offered, but they still checked for fakes. Even a Victorian shoe shine boy would bite down on a gold coin to see if it was real. Are you saying today’s modern Subway sandwich “artist” is less skilled at checking for fakes? On the rare occasion you do find a shop that accepts a $50, the cashier will invariably handle your money like it holds some ancient secret of the universe. No section will go unchecked. It will be held up to the light, it will be held under the light. It will be stretched, it will be bent. It will be used to make origami. If they could taste it, they would.

Why are you stopping at $50s? Any amount of currency can be faked. I could have three fake $20 bills, and one real $50, but you’ll take the $20s? Way to go, genius.

What if a fake $50 bill slips through? What horrible things would happen? My parents once received a fake $20 from a bank. Yes, the bank distributed a fake $20. Which means, even the bank can make the mistake of accepting a counterfeits. The money itself has no real value to it: it’s just the idea of money. Which means, if you give a fake bill to a cashier, and they give that fake bill to the bank, and the bank give it back to you, nothing happens. No one loses money, because money isn’t a real thing. It’s only when someone notices that things go bad. Then the police come in, people are questioned and someone loses out.

Why even have denominations over $20 anymore if businesses are refusing to accept them as currency, which I believe may be illegal? They’ve been talking for years about getting rid of the penny, and how expensive it is. Why not $50 and $100 bills? It’s a sensible suggestion. Of course, it leads to greater numbers of bills being printed, and would likely prove more costly. So I suppose there’s no easy answer.

Assholes and Bitches:

One of general rules in my life is that a person of disreputable character should, by chance, piss me right the fuck off, I’ll likely see that person again, and again, and again. Obviously, this theory first formed in school, where whenever someone shoved me into a locker, called me a fag, etc., I’d be guaranteed to see the person again every period for twenty-four semesters, and perhaps college as well. Once I exited the educational system, I figured I’d be a free agent. No such luck. Co-workers will always be a problem for everyone, but I meet random people every day in various capacities, people too dumb to live, but endure regardless. They pop up two, three times a day. Let me explain that: some random dick-licker has pissed me off. Normally, that’d be okay, because I wouldn’t have to see that person again. A few hours pass, and I see them again. Then again. I don’t know these people. I don’t know their names. I don’t want to, but they’ve broken through the background scenery of my life.

On occasion, I’ve been pestered by customers at work. Numerous times. Every day. For years on end. I leave the job, move, etc., but for whatever reason, I meet that person again in an awkward social situation. “Oh, you’re my girlfriends school friend’s relative? Great party, huh?” Fuck you.

Aging:

As a child, I looked at the adults around me, and what they’ve been doing with their lives. Twenty years of this, fifty years of that. You know how it goes: people building mountains out of molehills, getting nowhere but getting on.

I’m an adult now, and I’m one of them. I’m at the point where I’m looking at fifty years of sweet fuck all, then old age and death, and it’s pissing me off. Day in, day out, punch in, punch out  kinda shit. Not looking forward to it.

SLAP CHOP!

LiveJournal Tags: TV,infomercials,commercials

I have to admit that the commercial for the slap chop is one of the most convincing sales pitches ever produced by man, but it’s still bogged down by the infernal lies of all infomercials. For instance, it claims, “Call in twenty minutes and we’ll double your order!” The commercial runs 24/7. You’re ALWAYS inside the 20 minute timeframe. Or perhaps there’s a three minute window sometime during the day. The one person who procrastinates for 21 minutes but still ends up calling gets screwed out of a deal. Do they argue with the salesperson?
-
“Your commercial said as long as I called within 20 minutes, I’d receive a SECOND Slap Chop and Graty for free.”
“I’m sorry sir, but it’s been 20 minutes and fourteen seconds since the commercial aired.”
“I HAD TO GO TO THE BATHROOM.”
“…For twenty minutes?”
“I have problems, okay? Not to get into anything too specific, but I don’t have a lot of time in the day. Which is why I need the Slap Chop. Times two. I need double the Slap Chop.”
“I’m afraid we still won’t be able to honour the deal offered by the commercial unless you call before the twenty minute deadline. Maybe if you called back in four minutes you’ll make the next scheduled commercial offer timeline.”
“I CAN’T. I’ll be in the bathroom by then.”
“Sir… Do you need help? Is there a place I can donate money to? Like does your problem have marathons for it or…”
“TOO LATE!” *CLICK*
-
They also say to beware of imitators. Why? What could be so wrong with a Slap Chop knockoff?
-
“Guess what I got in the mail today, honey? A Smack Cutter!”
“A Smack Cutter? What’s that?”
“It’s like a Slap Chop, only it’s made by Cambodians instead of the Chinese!”
“How does it work?”
“Easy! Let me show you. Hand me that onion over there, sugarbottom! Now watch as I place it under the Smack Cutter, and… prest-OH! MY HAND! THE SMACK CUTTER WENT THROUGH MY HAND!”
“How did that happen?”
“I don’t know! I just don’t know! God help me! My wound… I think it’s infected. There’s something on the Smack Cutter. It smells like almonds! I think I’ve been poisoned!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll call an ambulance!”
“It’s too late… Too… late… Honey…”
“Don’t leave me!”
“Why… why didn’t I order the Slap Chop instead? It was only a cent more… So… cold…”
“STAY WITH ME!”
“I want to go to heaven, Forrest.”
-
Harrowing stuff, I’m sure.
Seriously, though, this guy does stuff with the Slap Chop that doesn’t seem mechanically possible. Did you see when he takes the Slap Chop apart? It’s like watching Shiva pull a tiger inside out. Why does it even do that? Why would I need to completely invert my Slap Chop to clean it? I’m fairly certain I can get a brush that would fit inside. I don’t need to prolapse in order to wipe my ass. There is such a thing as too convenient, like your mother.
Who the fuck is this guy, anyway? It’s like they grew him somewhere to sell the Slap Chop. No one should be able to convey that much information in that amount of time. I feel like Johnny Memonic just from listening to him.
Why the hell do I have to call in order to buy the Slap Chop anyway? Why can’t I just go to the store and buy it? What makes it so special that I have to wait six to nine weeks to get it in the mail, assuming they don’t just overnight it. Do they screen their buyers over the line? They should. The Slap Chop seems like it could be used for evil if it fell into the wrong hands. Imagine if someone slapped you with the Slap Chop. Really imagine it. I’m not kidding, think about it. I want you to feel the cold steel imprinting itself into your flesh. Your gums bleed as it cuts through your cheek. A lightning bolt pattern is imbedded on your face, like a forgotten sibling of Harry Potter. Darkness seeps in as blood flows out.
That is the terrible power of the Slap Chop. They should make people wait four weeks for background check like the do with guns.

The Official Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games Blog*

It’s Sunday here in Abbotsford and two things are happening. One: It’s the Super bowl. Two: The 2010 Winter Olympic Torch Relay is coming through town. Which one do you choose? Considering how I can’t afford an $80,000 ticket for the Men’s Finals in Hockey, I chose the Torch Relay. Everything involving the Olympics has been priced specifically to keep Joe Average from attending, so seeing some random shlub run by carrying an oddly shaped torch is the best you’re ever going to get.

I went with my fiancée and stood out in the rain in the mall parking lot. All times given for the Torch relay are approximate, so I got there just as the torch should have reached the beginning of the main street through town. There were a few tents set up and people giving away free souvenirs and hot chocolate and cookies. A live band was playing covers. They did  a Beastie Boys cover and changed, “porno mag,” to, “girlie mag.” Same dif. We dicked around for a little while and then went to stand on the curb like common prostitutes.

Hawkey the Hawk, mascot for the local hocking team, the Heat, was in attendance, walking up and down the middle of the road, turning tricks for free. Yes, he’s a hockey mascot, and his name is Hawkey.

…

He was at my store once, promoting his team. I had to lug pallets around, and as I was busy, I happened to look up, and he was hanging off the back of the pallet, staring me down with his giant pantomime hawk head. Stuff like that will mess you up. My first instinct was to deck him in his hawk nose, but that’s like Vanilla Ice telling Ed the Sock about his bout of suicidal depression. He’s just a puppet.

An Olympic van went down the street, forty minutes before the torch arrived, so it’s like the biggest tease ever.

When the torch did arrive, everyone ran out into the middle of the street. Let me explain: It’s a five lane road, with plenty of room for everyone wanting to watch from the sidewalk. That wasn’t good enough for some people. They decided to go out into the middle of the road, block any view for people at the side. So of course, everyone went out. I love riot mentality like that. I love the fact that one asshole can have a bad idea, and everyone will go along with it like lemmings, and there’s shit anyone else can do at that point about it. Cops riding by told people to stay off the street. Not one person listen. Not one.

There was a huge police presence. I think I saw about ten cop cars, at a bare minimum. I have no idea what their role was. Were they expecting a terrorist attack? Worst case scenario: someone throws water on the torch. Does it take ten cop cars to resolve that? Not even in Alabama.

A van carrying Olympic-type people (who the fuck are these people?) went by, escorted by two cop cars. I was confused for a few minutes. Was the Olympic torch inside? Were they holding it out the window on the opposite side of the van? WTF?

Then about five more cop cars went by, and the three Coca-Cola trucks, in case you didn’t know that Coke was sponsoring the Games. You think the 40 million bottles of Coke with the Olympic logo on them were enough of a clue, but no. (Fun Fact: Coke isn’t healthy for you, and you shouldn’t drink it if you’re training for the Olympics. Also: an ice-cold coke is a poor choice of beverage when you’re outside in freezing temperatures, participating in the Winter Olympics.) There was one dude with a sack handing out glowing Coke bottles to kids. I wanted one. I nearly tackled him to get one. I didn’t get one.

There was also an RBC truck with some kinda black-dude D.J. on it and cold dancing people. It added a

When the torch eventually came by (and it took a long-ass time), I had no clue who this person was, or why I would care to see them. For about a year, I’ve been watching commercials offering people a chance to carry the Olympic Torch. Over 12,000 people have carried the torch. How many of them are above the barest minimum of celebrity status? How many of them matter? Probably about ten.

Oh well, I saw it. I can’t unsee it.

Hulk Smash

LiveJournal Tags: Marvel Comics,comic books

Marvel Comics are pissing me off. A lot of it has to do with the “Siege” arch-saga, in which Norman Osborn (The Green Goblin) decides to take his Dark Avengers and the rest of H.A.M.M.E.R. and go up against the Norse Mythology. It’s previously been established that Norman respects Thor, and that H.A.M.M.E.R., his incarnation of S.H.I.E.L.D. is named after Thor’s weapon of choice. At some point, Norman lets Loki call the shots for him, and he uses the opportunity to frame Volstagg, an Asgardian, for the death of a few thousand sports spectators. This incites an immediate war with Asgard, while Volstagg, the man accused of the crime, walks free. There’s a comic, “Siege Embedded” Issue 1 showing Volstagg trying to hitchhike his way back to Asgard, while military vehicles pass him by: completely ignoring him. In a way, it’s the perfect metaphor for Osama Bin Laden. In another way, it’s completely unbelievable.

What really has me pissed of is the order in which these comics are being released. Norman wants to go to war with Asgard because it’s on American soil without his authority. Only, at this point in the Marvel chronology, Asgard has been moved to Latveria with Doctor Doom. It isn’t until the latest issue of “Thor” that it returns to America, long after the Siege story begins.

That’s not the only problem Marvel has with chronology. The one-shot issue of “Captain America: Who Will Wield the Shield?” features a story about Captain America reuniting with his old partner, Bucky, the current Captain America. Only, at this point when it’s release: CAPTAIN AMERICA IS DEAD. The last issue of “Captain American: Reborn” Issue 5, shows a Red Skull possessed Captain America about to take Bucky’s head off. Then, suddenly, he’s back in this one-shot with no explanation. You have to wait until Issue Six (of a five issue series), for Steve to return. The issue itself is a trainwreck, illustrating why Captain America was “cancelled” in the first place. A giant Red Skull robot attacks Captain America on the footsteps of the Lincoln Memorial while a horde of flying M.O.D.O.K. heads swarm the Avengers. The Red Skull’s daughter gets her face burned into an effigy of her father.

The entire Steve Rogers Captain America resurrection was rather ham-fisted. Firstly: there was no need for him to come back. Bucky was doing well as his replacement. I personally preferred him as he had more of a stake in his own story. Secondly: it was too soon. Thirdly: his rebirth went back on a lot of established facts during his death. There was no doubt he was dead. Some of the greatest authorities in the Marvel Universe on such matters confirmed he was dead. No one doubted it. Then began a mess about Steve being “lost in time,” after being shot in the gut with some form of chemical solution. He skipped through his life ala “Slaughterhouse-Five,” while existing in a state of living-death. The comparison between the two works is unmistakeable. This is exposed as being part of the Red Skull’s plan to take over Captain America’s body, which work for about five minutes.

Listen: Captain America was shot in the skull like J.F.K.. When you want to take over someone’s body by inhabiting their brain, your plan shouldn’t include shooting them in the skull.

Returning to the subject of “Siege,” there a few continuity errors as well. Siege #2 has yet to come out, but already in the comics “Wolverine” and “Avengers: Initiative,” we see Norman Osborn and Thor defeated in a rather off-handed manner. Siege is supposed to last until June, and it’s already over.

“Spider-Man: The Gauntlet,” is another example of rampant bullshit. The entire: “One More Day,” saga was established to give Spider-Man a fresh slate: meaning new enemies to face and new plot-lines. Now they’re returning to the same six villains he’s been fighting for nearly fifty years, non-stop.

“Fall of the Hulks,” is falling short as well. Of late, the Hulk titles have been stripped of the Hulk himself, and replaced with knock-offs like the Red Hulk and Son-of-the-Hulk. I’m okay with that to a certain extent, but there’s more continuity errors. In one issue of the saga, the Cosmic Hulk robot attacks Dr.Doom at Bruce Banner’s command. Then, in a following issue, it’s revealed that the Cosmic Hulk has never been in Dr.Banner’s command, but rather that of the Leader and M.O.D.O.K.. …WTF? I couldn’t even begin to follow that.

There’s also the matter of “Deadpool: Merc With a Mouth” to contend with. Marvel offered variant covers of Deadpool to any comic retailer who returned DC’s Darkest Night comics back to the publisher. Only: the comic sucked, as did the variant cover.

Would you give up an authentic Orange or Black Lantern replica ring for this? No, you wouldn’t.

“X-Men: Necrosha” and the recent “Incredible Hercules” comics are probably the only thing Marvel’s got that’s worth reading, and out of the two, Necrosha is just a rip-off of Darkest Night featuring some of the most forgettable X-Men characters returning to life. Big ups to Hercules, though. He has yet to disappoint.

How I Lost My Glass Eye

    How I Lost My Glass Eye

Being who I am, I've always had trouble with my memory, both short term and long term. I keep forgetting little things like where I left the keys to my truck, where I parked, and the fact that my driver's licence was been suspended ever since I backed into a police cruiser. Then there's the more important factors to my life that you would think I'd remember after all these years. I still can't remember what date my wife's birthday is, or my girlfriend's, for that matter. Sometimes I even forget their names, or worse yet, I get them mixed up during the height of passion. It's been the cause of great embarrassment on my behalf. Fortunately, I'm an alcoholic, so the mistake is usually blamed on my slurred speech. As a result, no one listens to what I have to say, especially my wife.
Since we take the trivialities of life for granted, so much slips by unnoticed. What I suggest is that we pay closer attention to our actions. Otherwise, we might end up hurting the ones we love, or in my case, my wife.
Case in point, there was an incident a while back in which I "forgot" that I had the safety off on my gun. I was "cleaning" it when I "accidentally" shot my ex-wife in the leg. Needless to say, she was pretty upset, which is why, I suppose, we got divorced. Now, thanks to a court order, I have to pay her alimony. I also have to keep a distance of five hundred feet from her at all times.
On a separate occasion, I was working as a courier when I to forgot to make a special delivery. Even though I left the cooler in the back of my truck, I can clearly remember saying, "Screw the kidney patient, I'm gonna have me a drink."
Another time, while I was in a restaurant (Hooters, to be precise) a man seated at the table next to me started to choke. I couldn't remember the Heimlich manoeuvre, but I did remember seeing an episode of M.A.S.H. once. Using my knife, I plunged a hole in his trachea, opening up an air passage for him to breathe through. After saving his life, the bastard thanked me by taking me to court. To make a long story short, I lost the case. Now I have to keep a distance of five hundred feet from him at all times. The moral is to never help anyone.
Yet, of all the things I've forgot, I never expected to forget where I put my glass eye.
I have a glass eye, or at least I used to. It's a memento from one of my ex-girlfriends. When you cheat on a woman, make sure you don't cheat on her in her own apartment, because in the right hands, a pair of nail clippers can do a lot of damage. I told my wife I lost it in a bar fight, but I think she figured out what happened when a prostitute involved in the incident came by the house to see if I was okay, and to get the money I owed her. Fortunately, I knew her pimp, so I got off with a severed ear. The doctors were able to sew it back on, but it's crooked, so I wear my hair long when I don't have to cover my bald spot. That's basically why you should never tell a prostitute where you live.
I might know where I lost my eye. I recall I was at a party the previous night, but I don't know who's house it was at. Since I woke up in a puddle of my own vomit, I suppose I must have been drunk, which really goes without saying. There's this little trick I do at public gatherings where I pop out my glass eye and replace it with an olive, or an onion from my martini glass, depending on which I'm served. It stings a bit, but it always gets a laugh, especially from optometrists. I don't know why that is. I must have given a performance, because when I picked myself up off the bathroom tiles, I discovered my eye was missing and there was some salt lining my empty socket.
Of course, the question still remains, "Where the Hell's my eye?"
The real problem, as I see it, is locating which house I was I was at. My girlfriend should know, but I'm not supposed to call her after three because of her "fiance." Apparently, a purely sexual relationship just isn't what she's looking for. Some women don't know what they want. Looking at my watch, which I stole from my girlfriend, I can see it's four o'clock. My wife would be busy with phone sex line, so I couldn't call Betsy even if I wanted to. I missed work again, but that's nothing new. Besides, I'm a lawn care specialist, so no one really cares whether I show up or not.
I got on the case after having breakfast, which consisted mainly of Lucky Charms and vodka, mixed together in a cornucopia of flavour. I wouldn't have had to make it myself if my wife would get off her ass and cook me some toast. When I confronted her about my dilemma, she swore at me, or at the man on the other end of the line, I'm not sure. I try not to pay any attention to her, since I don't want to get too attached.
Getting in my truck, which was impounded several times, I drove around for an hour or two, drinking from a bottle of tequila I found under the seat, before I remembered what I was looking for. Then I forgot again, so I went to a strip club. After I was kicked out by the bouncer for inappropriate misbehaviour, my memory came back to me, so I climbed into my truck and continued my quest. I saw a place I recognized so I went up and rang the doorbell, after running into the mailbox. I had a vague recollection of myself urinating in the rose bushes beside the house while clad in a soiled toga made from some kid's Power Ranger bed sheets. That could have been last night or last year, however, so I wasn't sure if I was at the right house.
After an hour and a few rear-ends later, I stumbled upon the house. Literally. I ran over the mailbox.
Ringing the doorbell, I found nobody was home, so I broke in. I discovered many mementos from the previous night, but not a single glass eye. It wasn't long before the police came by, so I stuffed my pockets with as much stuff as I could and got the hell out of there.
After ditching the cops at the mini-mall, I went home with a broken heart. I'd lost my lucky eye, the one I'd stolen from an old Vet at the pub when he passed out.
I took most of my anger out by yelling at my wife, who managed, as usual, to win the argument. Taking what little pride I had left, I retreated to my bathroom to take care of some business and recollect myself. She hadn't cleaned the floor since I'd gone on my futile hunt, so I had to step very carefully. As I was making my passage to my throne, I spied something lying in the bottom of the porcelain bowl.
Reaching into the cold water, I pulled out my eye. It must have fallen out while I was purging myself. Cleaning it off on my shirt, I popped it back in, happy as can be.
So I guess it's true what they say, "It's always in the last place you look."