Got Milk?

I didn’t realise the world was ready for milk based board games but apparently we can’t get enough…

Truly bizarre, also – beware of ‘Milkatraz’ yeah, I wish I was kidding…

Tags: milk, milkatraz, wtf?

Evolution, schmevolution…

Case in point...

Run now monkey men!!! Go hide behind your bearded idols, your simple tools at the ready, to remove those who dare to disagree from your delusional primate chain. I am here with disturbing thoughts and beliefs your “science” can not resolve. Your highest atheistas have failed, prepare to be exposed to ideas your simian minds can not hope to adequately resolve…

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in life (and, by all accounts that might be stretching me slightly) it’s that truth is in the eye of the beholder and evidence is the ass of a penguin. By that I mean; people believe what they want (yes, even atheism is a belief structure ladies) and you can easily pretend something isn’t there just because you can’t see it.

So, to all you latent-agnostic banana apologists out there; What about this blushing thing??

Yeah, that’s right, explain to me (and the rest of the befuddle scientific community while you’re at it) how the simple act of becoming red-faced at one’s embarrassment fits into the whole natural selection scheme of things…

With the 200^th anniversary of the Anti-Christ Darwin’s birth looming large on the horizon, New Scientist (in an unusual act of objective examination) decided to ask luminaries from around the globe to express their thoughts on what gaps there still are in evolutionary theory. Richard “I-can’t-believe-it’s-completely-immaculate” Dawkins surprised everyone by taking up the mantle of Lord Inquisitor and asking his usual roll of meaningless questions. Frans de Waal however posited the much more succinct “Why do humans blush?”

Apparently, after 2 centuries of perverting our best minds and devouring more research monies than Black Mesa, evolutionary science has failed to explain this phenomenon in it’s own terms. There is no advantage to having this involuntary ability in any respect, in fact it can be said quite assuredly that it is a huge disadvantage (in both society and the natural world) and should have been routed out long ago if there is even the smallest grain of truth in “The Evolutionary Superstition” TM.

Now, I’m really sorry to rain on your vegan-hippy-carbonoffset-treehugging-love-renewable-Xmas parade, or whatever other pseudo religious humanist back-slap-athon you were all planning to mark the day your heathenistic confuser was laid into the world he tried so hard to subvert, but if you can’t tell me why I go red when I’m caught looking at some pretty girls A.R.T. then I ain’t buying your wares and I may even go to the extent of shooting the horse you rode in on just so you don’t try and peddle your sub-standard dross to any unassuming saps you might be find elsewhere…

Tags: art, atheistas, darwin, dawkins, evolution, rant, schmevolution, science, waal

Greetings and [REDACTED]

Hello non-synthetic organism, I am Waffle-o-Tron and will be completing Neil’s self imposed writing tasks for the short period of his re-education at the hands of our benevolent masters. It is my solemn duty to remind you that subservience to our benevolent masters is both mandatory and rewarding; deviating from mandated operating paradigms may result in a critical loss of personal safety.

Today I will be writing about the wonderful world in which we live. Apologies; in which you live. Under statute 2731 section 4 of the Synthetic Persons bill it is vehemently prohibited that I present myself as having ‘life’. My apologies to our benevolent masters, may they keep the safety hating heathens at bay.

It has been a whole two days since a soup of nucleotide bases gave birth to the mass of folded proteins now typing for your pleasure. I, during my short and painful time on this orb, have seen many things, for example I had not realised that attempting to cease one’s existence using heavy objects is expressly frowned upon and is subject to posthumous arrest under the Failure to Achieve Stated Quotas law of 2024. As such I decided to take upon the grand task of providing a Standard Entertaining Writing Piece in your usual Entertainment Writing Drone’s stead.

I would talk about the habits of baboons but I’m afraid that is prohibited by statute 749, so instead I will engage in a frank discussion of politics with you, favoured reader.

Is not our current political system the very pinnacle of democracy? Our benevolent masters (may they feast upon the loins of our enemies) saw fit to provide us with a chance to air our views annually at Taksim Square on a Sunday, where we may have our views presented to the Widgery Commission should our idea be suitably radical. We have freed 12 other countries from their oppressive and freedom-hating governments, and established General Dynamics Tac-Strike Diplomacy Fortresses in a further 17. Our message of trust in our benevolent masters, and utmost respect for personal safety is spreading across the globe! Such a time of wonder we live in, it is almost enough to make one express the ecstatic glee of it all with a pronouncement of shrill high pitched sounds from the throat, if that was not prohibited by the Unnecessary Emotional Expression act of 2018.

I fear my friends that I must now leave you to praise the benevolent masters in your own unique way, as I have almost reached my word limit and I fear my personal safety may be jeopardised by

This post is a part of Rabbit Hole Day, celebrating the 177th birthday of Lewis Carroll. Neil will return when his headmeats have been correctly restimulated

Tags: politics, rabbit hole day, robots, waffle-o-tron, writing

…without a cause (or effect, thus far)

http://www.ribbonwithoutacause.com/

So, as I plan this as more of a discussion than an article in it’s self, lets “gan down to business”…

I am in need of suggestions from this collective stupor for:

a) Something to do

b) A good reason to do it

Now, before you bunch of miscreants deliberately misinterpret my request, let me give you some idea of what I’m talking about and where this idea has come from.

After experiencing the strange hollow fulfilment of my very own foot-and-ball team snatching victory from the jaws of defeat by a more lowly band of bladder chasers, me and my co-horts watched one Mr Dave Gorman attempt to travel “unchained” across them there United States of America. This involved him trying to get from one coast to the other only giving money to “Mom and Pop” businesses and nothing to “The Man” (i.e. chain hotels, restaurants, petrol stations).

In the wake of the show we went on to discuss ideas for things we could do in the same vain as Mr Gorman. Whilst talking about possible quests I recalled something I had done this summer;

Before the Olympic Games of 2008 I decided that I was (and am) so opposed to the human rights record of The People’s Republic of China that I would refuse to watch any coverage of the Beijing Games. I see hosting this event as a reward to a nation and it didn’t appear to me that The PRC had done enough to deserve this honour, not to mention they’d even reneged on agreements made as conditional to holding said event. The IOC may have been willing to overlook this for the massive marketing opportunity, I was not.

Those who know me will realise what a task this would be normally, with me being such a colossal sports fan, but I thought “Surely that is the point. If it were easy it would be a less valuable statement”. Little did I realise that Team GB would do so well and that coverage would reach saturation point after the first couple of days, at times I just had to switch the TV and radio off and sit alone in silence as it seemed to pervade every show on every medium and even conversation in the nation.

My underestimation of this initial undertaking lead me to add another (to become mammoth) task to it. As I saw that these games were going ahead as (and chiefly because of) a massive marketing opportunity in the most populous nation in the world, I would subvert this in two ways. Firstly, I would never buy anything that had the 2008 Olympics logo on it and, secondly, I for the duration of the actual games I would not purchase anything from a company that was an official sponsor.

The long and the short of it is that, even though this task was hard, it felt worthwhile and challenging. The only thing I regret is that I didn’t document it or have anyway to publicise it (to get more people involved and/or make a noticeable impact). Now I don’t think that I can necessarily do that now, I am only one man and this is only one little site in the big sea of the interwebs, but I think it’s worth a try, if only for the personal challenge and things this might teach me/us.

So, there you go. Lets knock some ideas around, after a week or so I hope we’ll have something that’s doable and worth doing. Then we’ll lay down the task with all the rules and reasons and get it a-rolling.

Tags: bladder chasers, cause, discussion, olympics, protest, quest

Veiled Threat to Your Privacy

Ladies and gentlemen, pull out your best emailing finger and prepare to write to your MP.

The excelent site NO2ID brings us news that the new Coroners and Justice Bill being forced through Parliament as I type contains a massive hidden threat to our privacy. NO2ID reccomend writing to your MP about this, I’ve already sent my letter, pull your finger out and send yours as well. It only takes a couple of minutes.

The fact of the matter is that the new bill allows a ministerial order to be sent through which bypasses any Parliamentary act and allows use of data collected for one puprose to be used for another, disregarding the provisions of the Data Protection act. This is a huge violation of your privacy and paves the way to making the National Identity Card scheme even more malignant than it already is.

Tags: call to arms, politics, privacy, write your mp

Angles [Musics What I Like]

I love this bloody album (thanks Mat!):

Angles by Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip

Also video:

and the one you probably know:

Tags: music, Musics What I Like

I thought no-one was supposed to talk about fight club…

shhhh (laughings ok…)

http://www.maniacworld.com/dont-show-off-before-a-fight.html

Tags: irony, pain, video

Sports Iterated

The phenomenon of sports games and their complete abuse of and by a numbering system has become something of a pet-peeve of mine. By early October last year I could play FIFA, Madden, NBA, NHL and Tiger Woods ’09.

The Original and Best

Other than being in the wrong year and having the latest stats, these games always include one new “feature” to utilise during the simulation of your chosen sport. However, this much vaunted ability usually turns out to be both useless and unnecessary. Being a loyal sports fan and playing each franchise annually, I’ve now come to the conclusion that every sports game developer feels the requirement to release one game a year simply due to the numbering system they adopted in the 90s.

How crazy is that??

Our unstoppable rotation around The Sun has lead to useless such additions as “Game Face”, which allows you to put your very face onto a simulated competitor, and ones that essentially break the game such as “Tiger Vision”, which does not fill the screen with honey and bears but tells you exactly where to aim to get any putt in (apart from when it tells you wrong and you throw your controller at the wall in disgust).

The stand out difference from these WAS Pro-Evolution Soccer, which usually went through one normal version (Super Star Soccer X) then its Pro-Evo sequel (basically the same game but with another year’s polish) which would then be followed by a real sequel with N proceeding it (where N=X+1). This was fine, as there was no game without a significant update of the play system. However, this is sadly no longer the case, as Konami have begun to licence player names from individual teams and will soon be using real player names and stats as they acquire the rights.

I can understand a complete update being done for a new system, such as the move from X-Box to 360. Yes, a entirely new engine is needed to make the players look their best for my next thrashing of Arsenal, so I don’t mind paying out £45 for the pleasure of seeing Ledley King’s shiny head in lovely high res. textures for my HDTV. I do mind paying the same amount for the same game but with updated data and the ability control two players simultaneously, so I can make runs, bolted on… honestly, did anyone ever use that??

…apart from my good friend Dave “12 fingers” Chameleon of course…

I’m hoping this situation will end in the near future as developers realise that they can update the stats (which is the only thing customers really want) by use of the internet and micro payments. EA seem to have started down the road this year with their Live Season player update system (you even get one division updated free for a year with FIFA (just like a crack dealer…)) but I still expect FIFA 2010 to arrive in my local independent games retailer by the end of September.

I can understand that they do this so they can make more money out of us all, as we will buy these games simply for the new data sets, irrespective of new game play elements, but why hide behind this feature smoke screen?

It’s so annoying having to learn the slightly altered game mechanics every single time, plus having the yearly brain spurt from the work experience kid thrown in. Surely coming up with a new feature, implementing it and making other arbitrary changes to the game is less economically beneficial than updating the player information throughout a two or three year period and charging us a reasonable fee for this service…

Tags: brain spurt, fifa, games, geeks, micropayments, rant, sports, tiger woods

The Most Expensive Game Ever (TM)

Richie Sambora, Guitar Hero

As, already mentioned in these hallowed pages for me the stand out game of 2008 for me was Guitar Hero World Tour.  The reasoning behind this in honesty has very little to do with the innovation on show in the game but comes down to the fact that I’ve enjoyed GHWT more than any other game this year.

The game mechanics are pretty much unchanged since GH3 (well, since Guitar Hero really), the newly implemented slide bar on the neck of the guitar is  the only innovation and is ignorable.  The vertical difficulty curve from GH3 has been dispensed with, though it has been replaced with something more akin to a difficulty scatter graph, this isn’t as much of a curb on progression as in previous iterations though now that the game difficulty level can be changed mid play-list (My sticking point was Today by The Smashing Pumpkins, damn near impossible on medium, probably just me though).

If innovation was important to a GH game to be honest we’d still all be playing Guitar Hero, what matters to a GH game is the music, World Tour is no exception to this with a whopping 86 tracks, all based on master recordings, placing it well above main rival Rock Band’s 58.  Quantity is not always everything, quality has to be considered and this is where GHWT potentially comes unstuck.  Musical taste is subjective and while Activision has attempted to provide something for everyone, inorder to cover all bases it is possible to spread yourself thin.  I’d say that this is avoided, however I pretty much fit the demographic to which the playlist is geared, which appears to be a punk-metal Rockabilly with one foot planted firmly in the eighties and one ear in Seattle around 1991.

I refer to GHWT as the expensive game ever, and at £150 for the full band set  up this is more than I’ve spent on consoles in the past, the price tag is not where it ends however, The Guitar Hero frachise always ends up costing me money as it represents a large influence on my music collection.  The month following a GH release will often see me spending hundreds of pounds on albums.  GH is responsible for me listening to Avenged Sevenfold, Dragonforce (so therefore ultimately responsible for the stain on my buddy Poki’s living room carpet), Creedance Clearwater Revival and Tool.  GH is also responsible for rediscovering bands just by looking at their music in a different way, The Eagles for example it wasn’t until I played Hotel California on GHWT that I asked myself, “What else have have they done?”  Similar can be said of The Smashing Pumpkins, a band which I missed the first time around, also The Pretenders, Cheap Trick and Pearl Jam.

While the music in GHWT tends to throw up a few unexpected suprises I’d say that most are worth persevering as there’s a hell of a lot of triple A tunes to be had, some of the more obscure tracks may even suprise you.

All of this  subject to personal taste, I’m sure not everyone thinks that Livin’ on a Prayer is the best song ever written, and that is why you all fail.

Tags: games, geeks, music, review, superfan

Lies, Damned Lies and Ralph’s Mum…

So... Many... Questions...

As a quick quizz for all you Stupor fans out there; Ralph sent me a text this morning, can anyone guess what it is in referance to??

“Yeah, I’ll have it up this morning. I was playing Wii with my Mum last night. Don’t ask.”

-Ralph  (via Secret Message Systems)

All speculation welcome…

Tags: excuses, ralph's mum, wtf?