Deep Sith

I was watching the new episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series where Darth Maul makes his reappearance and though none of what I was seeing made any sense, and yet it all made perfect sense in the context of the Star Wars universe. First off: Darth Maul died at the end of the Phantom Menace. He was bisected and left to fall into a deep pit that had no practical reason for being there, but is contractually obligated to be in every Star Wars movie. That hasn’t proved a hindrance for any other character in Star Wars. Arms and hands are cut off in practically every scene with little to no fatalities involved. Had the movies progressed chronologically in theatres, the series should have ended with the climax in Episode Three when Anakin has his legs and arm cut off and he burns to a crisp on a bed of hot magma. Instead, he gets the Six Million Dollar Man treatment and becomes Darth Vader, as opposed to Darth Skywalker, which would have made more sense. General Grievous, whose origins are never dealt with in the movies, is basically a lump of assorted organs in a robot body. My point is: pretty much any injury is survivable in the Star Wars universe, so have some hope for Bobba Fett.

When we find Darth Maul, he’s half-man, half-robot, half-spider. He’s Manrobospider, which is awesome. Why is he half-a-robot-spider when there’s clearly an abundance of human-shaped robot parts in Star Wars? That’s the question a Commie might ask, Ivan. The C.I.A. will be in touch with you soon. As ridiculously awesome as that is, he gets human-robot-legs almost immediately when the show decides that magic is real. They don’t simply build him robot legs, they magic-them-up out of some junk lying around. Possibly the Force was involved, but if the Force can build you robot legs out of nothing in three minutes flat, why couldn’t it just make you real-live legs as easily? Again, these are question for Communists.

Of course, Darth Maul is hell-bent on revenge against Obi Wan, which is odd because I don’t think the two were ever formally introduced aside from having a light sabre battle. The two have never exchanged words. So how does he know Obi Wan’s name, especially since he’s had amnesia for 10+ years? Commie question. His quest for revenge sets the stage for the darkest scenes in all the Star War movies combined, in what’s designed to be a cartoon show for eight-year-olds. He kills a bunch of innocent people on a remote planet and challenges Obi Wan to go after him. Obi Wan wants to go it alone, and Samuel L. Mother-Fuckin’ Jackson explains to him how that’s a retarded idea. Yoda tells Obi Wan to go for it, because Yoda is full of terrible advice. Yoda senses something in the Force telling him he’ll have one other person for back-up, which is very unspecific and not helpful at all. Also: last time two Jedi took on Darth Maul and one Jedi walked away, so two isn’t the minimum number of people you’d want going into that fight. It turns out as well as you’d expect given the circumstances, and Obi has his ass beaten like a pinata.

Also: Darth Maul had more dialogue in these episodes than his movie, where he played the lead non-shadowy figure bad-guy. Everything the audience knows about Darth Maul going into this show is that he has bitchin’ horns and natural war-paint, and he like his light sabres like his dildos: double-ended.

Skyrim Afterlife

I realized that even though I haven’t officially beaten Skyrim after hundreds of hours of play, my character’s afterlife is in question. Firstly, he’s trapped as a werewolf, meaning he’ll be expected to join the Wild Hunt. He’s become the Listener for the Night Mother, meaning he’s expected to come back as a Spectral Assassin. He’s a Nightengale, and expected to become a part of the shadows themselves as a patron for thieves. This will spark an all out war between Gods that will likely rip the fabric of reality apart, which is sort of the opposite of what he wants to do. The main villain in the game is a dragon who can fly into the afterlife and eat ghosts, or some shit, and he’ll tell you as much to your fucking face if you try to fuck with him. A part of me imagines him killing my hero and then waiting and waiting and waiting in the wrong afterlife for him to show up so he can eat him. It’d be like that episode of Futurama where Fry’s dog waits for him until it becomes fossilized.

For a game that’s pretty much 90% script, the writing and logistical problems are pretty jarring. I know it’s a game about a guy (or girl, or lizard-man) fighting talking dragons by shouting magic words at them, but still. For instance I tried to get Ebsen to help me kill some dragons. He told me to fuck off until I kill the only dragon who’s not actively trying to kill me, and incidentally is more help to me than Ebsen himself. Ebsen is the co-leader of the Blades, an organization devoted to wiping out dragons, which is all I basically do, or exist for in the game. I’m essentially I’m their chosen one like Neo, and the only reason they should exist at all is to back me up while I do all the work. Yet, he tells me to my face (or rather the wall he was facing at the time), that he won’t lift a finger to help me until I kill the dragon that’s helping me, even though he knows better than anyone that if I fail in any of my quests, then the entire world is going to end. He says it’s part of his oath, which I’ve heard, and it contained nothing in regards to Bros before Dovun. So he’s hell-set and ready to die, and watch the whole world go down in flames, and he’s giving me ultimatums because he wants to serve out justice a few millennia after an alleged crime was committed, with nothing to collaborate the truth except a few dusty old books. He also won’t get up off his ass and do it himself. I’m the one who passed the trials of the Greybeards and went to the Throat of the World and learnt the secret about the dragon who lived there. Ebsen wouldn’t even know he existed if I hadn’t blabbed about it. Now: he won’t kill dragons with me unless I kill a dragon for him. He’s also useless, as my character is the only person in his entire universe that’s capable of permanently killing dragons, who can endlessly resurrect without using my special abilities. All he or anyone else in his group can do is wave their swords around and give a dragon a beating. The dragon dies, turns to a skeleton and comes back a few days later good as new. Do you know where I found this guy? In a sewer beneath a sewer, where the rejects of the rejects go. I even saved his miserable life in the process. Now, he has demands, an unreasonable ones at that. You know what, Ebsen? FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU IN YOUR STUPID BEARDED FACE!

The Mocking Dead

Despite the show being tailor-made to appeal to someone of my demographic, I just can’t get into The Walking Dead. I’ve only watched two full episodes and some snippets from others, and it never really bagged me. I know it’s based on an ongoing comic book series, but then so is Naruto. The difference is Naruto is a cartoon and doesn’t have to worry about budget cutbacks and if they’re going to have enough money to dress up the extras. Also: ninjas.

To me, my main problem is with suspension of belief. If you’re watching a zombie movie, you only have to put up with their gaping plot holes for an hour and twenty-two minutes. Every zombie movie is littered with moments where you feel the urge to shout at the screen, “You idiot!” when someone goes off on their own down a dark hallway, or the motley crue of survivors overlook the fact there’s an infected in their group. With Walking Dead, you have to do that every week.

The biggest plot hole of course is how the zombies took over the world to begin with. Of course during the first 48 hours there’s going to be a few losses, but not 99% of the world’s population. I’m basing that on the fact that any zombie can easily be defeated by a chain link fence, or a locked door. That’s all it takes. They’re too weak to break through most barriers, and they have no climbing skills aside from going up the stairs. I was watching one episode where the dude who banged his best friend’s wife and some fat guy were holding off a horde of zombies by standing on top of some lockers, just barely out of reach. Seriously, they were basically just cookie jars on top of the cupboard, and the zombies couldn’t get them. Even a five year old could have got them. Your cat could have got them. The zombies were helpless. Then, the fat guy jumps off and tries to make a break for it, and breaks his ankle, because he’s fat. He’s 300lbs and has a broken ankle, and he still manages to escape despite all logic. Then, at the end of the episode, they both hide behind a cage being held in place by a single loose bolt on a thread. The cliff-hanger was them cowering in fear hoping that the bolt wouldn’t rattle out of the lock. The fact it held for more than a millisecond is phenomenal. The fact that none of the zombies posses the intelligence or coordination to push that bolt out with their thumbs is embarrassing for everyone involved. It’s like watching a senior citizen try to open a childproof bottle.

The sad fact is that zombies in this series are less threatening than wild animals. Being cornered by a pack of zombies is totally survivable. Being cornered by a pack of wild dogs? Not so much.

How did it get so bad to begin with? No one turns into a zombie instantly and there’s plenty of time to diagnose a victim before they turn full zombie. Lets say there’s a zombie attack at a baseball game, or a rally. The zombie might bite one or two people before someone steps up and stops him. Whoever’s bitten has hours before turning. Obviously, they’re going to be treated and hospitalized. If they die, they’re taken to the morgue at the hospital and laid out on a slab, or put into one of those drawers where they’d never be able to escape. Hospitals are chock full of locked doors, alarms, sharp implements, and they have their own security. It’s almost ideal for fending off a zombie wave.

Another thing: Take any real-life situation where someone opened fire on a crowd at random. The highest death toll for a single shooter is around fifteen. Most times, the shooter is taken down after the first three shots. Those are real statistics for people armed with deadly weapons. A shuffling monstrosity with only his hands and his teeth as weapons isn’t going to get as far as that. There’s no way that can balloon into billions of casualties.

What about graveyards? What if the dead actually rose up and started killing? Ever see a graveyard without a fence? The zombies are screwed.

Skyrim

I’m very late to the game, but I continue to find a plethora of bugs and glitches in my copy of Skyrim on the 360. When you encounter these kinds of errors, the general consensus is you’re simply supposed to shrug and say, “What are you going to do?” then post a hilarious youtube video. Rallying against the studio would be pointless, as they’re too busy rolling around in a pile of money. Internet users will tell you to get the computer version of the game and then mod it to wipe the glitches, but that’s not my job as a gamer, now is it? They will also call you a fag, because they’re on the internet.

Imagine if you didn’t have an internet connection for one thing, and you were unable to update. Skyrim isn’t an online game, so why are patches being delivered that way post-install? Because fuck you, that’s why.

Mostly, the errors are ridiculous and incomprehensible. I was talking to the Puff-the-Magic Dragon, or whatever his name might be, on top of the Throat of the World, and he suddenly took to the sky. As he’s a dragon with wings, I thought this was suppose to happen. Then I noticed he was flying backwards and his wings weren’t even moving. He was like a leaf caught in a tornado, swirling ever higher until he reached the very stratosphere. Then he began to descend. I had hoped he would stop at my ground level, but he went down past the mountain cliff and probably through the mountain itself. I had to save halfway through because the was about fifteen minutes of pointless dialogue involved, which I couldn’t even hear because he was out of range and I was frozen to the spot. When I came back, he was still out of sight, but then he reset himself to the correct position.

I also finished the quest for the Helm of Winterhold, and was about to turn it in, which apparently isn’t allowed. I was previously hoping to avoid the quest altogether because of yet another glitch. I was doing the chain of quests for the Companions in the hopes I could cure my werewolfism, which turned out not to be as enduringly awesome as I had hoped. Every time I enter their hall the characters are frozen in their mourning states after their leader dies, and it won’t let me continue the quest chain. Looking online told me that I was basically screwed, and that I would be double screwed if I went through with the Winterhold quest, as both quest chains take you to the same location, and doing the one before the other makes it impossible to complete both. I did it anyway, and was prepared to bring the helm back to the Jarl. The map marker took me far from Winterhold, where he was supposed to be sitting on his throne. I instead found him swimming, fully clothed, in the middle of a river, which is just about as unlikely a place to find him as the inside of a volcano. I couldn’t even interact with him, although the screen showed the option of talking to him. I think it was because he was treading water.

So my point is: I’ve already put over 100 hours into the game, and I find out I might not even be able to finish at least two quests because of grievous errors, which also means I can’t get the Achievements associated with them. I could always try starting over, but then there’s no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again. There’s not even a rumour that the studio plans on patching the game anytime soon to help me out, aside from selling more downloadable content. Why would I buy an add-on to the game when I can’t even play the game I have?

Role Reversal

Do you remember how only a few, short years ago commercials for Axe and Tag body spray would all but guarantee you’d get laid like a billion times?

Literally:

That’s a lot of sex to be having. I don’t think my fragile imagination, let alone my body could handle that kind of tang. No man could. This product is dangerous and should be banned.

Then things got gay. Advertisers realized that the person most likely to buy a scented product designed for men are their sexually repressed and long-suffering women. That introduced the beefcake commercial:

Look at that video again: Not one tit jiggling around. A heterosexual male isn’t going to watch that an run out to buy Old Spice. Old Spice used to be that shit your Grandpa would slap on his face before between shots of rye. Now it’s associated with men who spend too much time doing crunches and not enough time slapping their wives.

Now advertisers have given up on men and their reeking pits altogether. Over the Christmas holidays there was an absolute barrage of commercials for women’s perfume.

Virtually every commercial like this is the same: women fucking random strangers, but on a train or in a ballroom so you know it’s classy. How is that any different than the male “sexist” commercial of yesteryear? The message is the same: spray this piss on yourself and good times will happen to your genitals.

Worse still, when I tried to research this article, I stumbled across page after page on youtube of frumpy, unattractive and probably unemployed women reviewing perfumes. Some only had like 57 hits, which makes me wondered why they bothered, while others had over 100,000 views. Furthermore, it’s women reviewing the same product. There are dozens, and dozens, and dozens of different women making videos about the same thing they picked up by happenstance at Wal-Mart. Is this some kind of underground marketing ploy, or is this really happening by itself? Are they watching each other’s videos and saying, “I don’t think they touched on all the different points of that one perfume in their 2:36 minute video. I’m going to make my own.” How do you even review a perfume, except to say it smells like lavender, celebrity-tie in and commercial greed? Wine reviews are usually only three paragraphs long, and they have the extra sense of taste to deal with. Why are these women so obsessed with cosmetics and perfumes when they obviously can’t attract a man with either? Watching their reviews is like taking dietary advice from Dr.Phil.

Before it’s gone.

I logged into myspace today. It was like travelling back in time; a very confusing time. I did so to scrounge my account for a video I may have uploaded back when I was doing Minimates animations for fun an not profit. I’m still not making any profit off them, and never will, because they are terrible. Yet, here we are.

This is all I found. Everything else was destroyed to shit because of copyright infringements.

Final Sectet Crisis Invasion Episode 3: The Long Pause

Strangeman | Myspace Video

Yop

The Superbowl was held today, and with it came the Superbowl ads. In Canada, our live feed of the game is overridden with Canadian commercials, mostly for Goldbond Medicated Foot Powder. It detracts from the spectacle, especially since the Superbowl is comprised of 50% commercials, 25% half-time shows delivered by faded rock stars, and 25% time-outs.

I barely watched this year. Instead I was forced to watch children’s programming. At nearly every commercial break there was the same damn ad for Yop. I shit you not: this commercial has been on the air for over six years.

SPIKE
Yop Commercial
www.spike.com
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I put this copy of the video up because I know it will force you to watch another commercial before you get to the real video. How meta is that? It’s convoluted, it’s weird and it’s unnecessary. It angers me, and it’s art.

Take a look at this commercial. First off: it’s vaguely racist. A couple of white kids having their CG mouths sing with a Jamaican accent. Is Yop even Jamaican? If so, why is Canada it’s prime demographic? What is Yop? All I’ve been able to discern is that it’s some type of breakfast drink. I think it might just be yoghurt that’s been left out in the hot Jamaican sun too long.

It’s not even the product or the commercial that gets me. It’s the fact that it’s been on the air for over six years. SIX YEARS. The Taco Bell dog likely didn’t even live that long before he was turned in a burrito. The company that made it apparently blew their entire marketing budget on the one commercial, but still had enough money left over to air it twenty times a day, every day, on every channel, for six years. I shit you not: I saw this commercial three times today on two different cable channels. My six year old step-son started singing the song at bedtime. THE COMMERCIAL IS OLDER THAN HIM.

I tried researching the video and discovered it had it’s own facebook page with 86 likes. Your Grandma probably has more friends than that on her page. ……OH SHIT! AS I’M TYPING THIS THE COMMERCIAL IS PLAYING AGAIN ON CANADIAN MTV! THAT’S THE THIRD CHANNEL TODAY!

It knows I’m talking about it…

I’m sincerely not writing that for comedic effect, or as hyperbole. It was literally playing as I was writing about how often it’s on. I’ve seen this commercial more than I’ve seen my own parents over the last few years.

If you do the math, (because I’m not good with math), a large percentage of the Canadian television industry is funded by the Yop company. They control a little piece of the media everywhere they go. That means they could put poison in it tomorrow and we’d never hear about the deaths due to a media blackout.

Is this commercial really so successful that it has to be the ONLY commercial? It’s got a catchy jingle and it clearly conveys that Yop is a thing you drink, without getting into the nitty-gritty of what Yop actually is (toothpaste and motor oil?). Think of how many commercials you see for something simple like milk. Why does milk even need commercials? It’s milk. Are you going to be swayed over to milk’s competition (possibly soy-milk?) if they don’t have commercials playing? Does having a commercial do anything for milk’s sales? There’s no possible way to even prove the effectiveness of a milk commercial. Any consumer who’ll say they were influenced is lying.