And So It Begins...

In a half hour, I'll be somewhere I really don't want to be right now. But I can't avoid it. That's what sucks.

For what will most likely end up being the next four hours, I'll be sitting in a huge room, shaking like a leaf, sweating to beat the band and trying (most likely in vain) to keep my sanity, or what little of it I have left.

A bit of advice: Card.

NES Review: Q*Bert

Ahhh, the classics. You can't fade them at all, and they never really go away. There once was a time when we pumped quarters into arcade cabinets like heroine junkies shoot smack. These games were addicting, even with their simple gameplay structures and concepts. Mention the word Arcade to anyone and a select few names will come immediately into their minds: Pac Man. Qix. Q*Bert.

Ahh, Q*Bert. Lord knows what he is. Basically, he's a hushpuppie with legs, a dust buster-sized schnoz, two huge eyes, and a potty mouth. Yep, that's right, Q*Bert cusses like a sailor in port after six months at sea. But hey, all you right-wing fundie game haters, you don't have to worry. Q*Bert's vulgar display of ouch is limited to a few choice symbols and a bit of medium-high pitched mumbling.

The premise is simple: Maneuver Q*Bert up and down the pyramid, changing the colors of all the available steps to the desired color. Simple, right? Wrong. You've got plenty of problems while you're jumping around, but thankfully, a bitch ain't one. You do, however, have to worry about bouncing balls which will land on your head and induce a swearing fit that would make R. Lee Emery blush. But balls aren't the only things out to get your... your... hushpuppie with legs. There's Coiley, the tweaked out purple snake who thinks he's a Tigger. He'll actually track you down and mush you, so you'd best watch out.

Gravity is your enemy here, but your enemies don't always abide by the laws of Issac Newton. Say hello to Ugh and Wrong-Way, two two-dimensional beings working in three dimensions with one-dimensional minds. They'll hop on the sides of the pyramid's cubes, swiping and clawing at you as they pass. But fear not, for there is a method of escaping all this purple-pixeled peril.

Flying discs are positioned at the sides of the levels, and hitching a ride on one will send you to the top of the pyramid. If Coiley is in hot persuit, he'll bail off the side, netting you some bonus points. There's also the little green ball. Snag it and your enemies will momentarily freeze, allowing you to take care of your business before you go hopping mad or get out of a tight space.

Green isn't always good, though. There are Slick (with the shades) and Sam (with the hair), two green teardrop guys who will reverse the colors of the blocks you've covered, forcing you to go back and do them over. Fortunately, though, these two can't kill you, and you get a few extra points if you catch up and tag them.

OK, so Tomb Raider it ain't. But hey, if you're a sucker for geometry and odd controller angles, then Q*Bert is right up your alley. The NES version is a nearly faithful port of the Arcade classic.

Q*Bert - NES - Arcade Port

Bringing Jeebus To New Media

While working on the other blog today, I noticed something interesting in the ads served up by my connection to Google AdSense.Um, Yeah. I figured it was some sort of site like mine, which is sly and rather critical of the Right Wingnuts. Instead, I find the opposite. Welcome to Sermonade: Bringing new media to a pulpit near you.

So they finally figured out how to snare the kids. It's common knowledge that, since the dawn of the medium, television has been the great babysitter, entertainer, and part-time educator (if kids are smart enough to flip off of Yu-Gi-Oh! for a few mintues to watch something cool on Discovery) of legions of kids. Hell, there's an entire TV Generaion, and the offshoot MTV Generation to boot! They were glued to their sets, and that has carried over to their own kids. Now more than ever, kids are bombarded by media imagery: Crystal clear digital audio and video are only the next step as the Internet Generation takes over.

Kids like the fast moving images. Kids like the flair of slick animation, and the sense of cool they get from doing full motion video on their computers. They eat up anything the media throws at them. Just look at the Kidz Bop! CDs, Bratz, Pokèmon... All of it crap, but all of it generates billions of dollars for their respective trademark and copyright holders.

And now, religion is getting into the game. Gone are the traditions of the past (thank whoever, some of those are so dated it's not funny -- hello Catholics!), and God is moving into the 21st centry. If you ask me, that's just further proof that God is a figment of the Human imagination. He keeps evolving to suit the needs of the Church (those who control the flow of God) in parallel with the evolution of Society.

Look. There's really no need to "spread the word." That's part of the reason history - and yes, modern times - is so peppered with conflict and drama. Religion is still the leading cause of war and death throughout history; It even beats smoking. It inspired three invasions of Palestine (dubbed "The Holy Land" thanks to some scribblings in a 2,000 year old storybook), including one attempted by children that ended in disaster before they ever left Europe. It has cause a radical faction of Islam to fly planes into buildings, killing thousands. It has caused such a rift in American political and social structure that people are bombing abortion clinics and starting extreme fundamental incursion attempts aimed at our modern laws.

Don't even begin to tell me that God is the answer. The way and the truth and the life. It's more like the myth, the falsehood, and the lie. And look what its making you do. Spread the virus and cause the pain. It's that conflict that drives the worlds problems these days. Spreading the virus simply prolongs the war, and I don't mean just the war in Iraq.

Filling kids minds with this stuff makes this all the more sick. You want your kids to be so pure, so innocent and oblivious to the world for as long as you can. You shield them from the "bad images and words" and stifle their development as individuals and human beings. And then you brainwash them by telling them that this fairy tale bullshit is the absolute truth. Who are they to question their parents? They adopt the parents' belief system instead of figuring out their own on their own time.

Look. I'm all for freedom of religion. If you want to believe, believe. But please, do it as an individual. Not everyone wants to share your faith, your message, and the pseudo-sense of joy that you get from thinking that there's this wonderful happy place your soul goes when you die. Some people have conflicting opinions, and you've just got to learn to deal with that. And for God's sake (Ha) please: Leave the kids out of it.

You want them to be truely innocent? Then don't pass on to them the blood on your hands, passed down to you through the generations of hell and damnation that Religion has brought upon the face of this planet.

Taking A Look At Blogger Gen-3

In the blogosphere, there are three "generations" of bloggers. The first are the Founders, the ones who started it all. These are the guys and gals who laid the foundations of blogging, started companies like Blogger and Six Apart, and established the technology that we all use today. Bloggers like Neil Gaiman, Xeni Jardin, Cory Doctrow and Wil Wheaton fall into this generation.

The second generation of bloggers are the Extroverts, the generation I fall into. We're the ones who initially discovered blogging thanks to the founders, and have used it to express our diverse, sometimes wild, and always opinionated views on the world around us. Our blogs are our soap box, and even if we fail, we're going to use them to try and exact societal change, no matter how little an effect we have on our peers.

And then, there's Gen-3, the subject of today's little rant. Gen-3 are the general public, mostly high school kids, who blog because they merely think it's "cool," and sometimes, they have a valid opinion on important issues. But, for the most part, they use it to talk about their school days, how much they like/hate this or that person, and to post stupid graphics (especially those gay little Bratz-looking avatars the kids love to use). My time on Blog$hares has afforded me a window into the world of Gen-3, with links to their sites. And now, I present to you, reviews of a few piss-poor Gen-3 blogs, and why they suck.

Steph's Lil' Secret Diary - Not much of a secret if it's on the Net, is it, Stephy? If you're going to keep a 'secret' diary, go get one of those GirlTek Password Journals or something, jeez! Upon first viewing the page, you can tell you're in for a choppy ride. There's a starfield background that showcases right to left motion, which can give you motion sickness if you're so inclined. I'm not, so it's just something distracting and takes away from the true purpose of the blog. Which, by the way, isn't even the main page! All it is is a pic of some stupid Adidas ad, the starfield, and a pink-bordered box with exactly seven words, four of which make absolutely no sense to anyone with an IQ over 80. Clicking the Rants link, you finally find her posts, and good lord, are they a mess. Overuse of color is a big turn-off, and get the spelling and grammar:

yeapz..may al my lovely frens stay hapi n healthy..
esp dear Yanti....

may me n darlin's love be evealasting...
i love him! muackz!*

Said what? Come on! If you're going to blog, at least use proper English, for Pete's sake! It's a whole bunch easier to understand someone when you don't use AOL Kiddie Speak. I don't care if you are from a foreign country. If you're going to use English (like this guy), use English, not Engrish or the aforementioned Kiddie Script. No trophy for you.

My Escape To Freedom - News flash, honey. Getting out of High School isn't the Escape you're looking for. Trust me on this one. When you get to be my age (28), you'll WISH you were back in the carefree days of High School, I promise. While I hated high school as much as you do, it still beats the tar out of real life hands down. Now, on to the meat of the review. This chick has a HUGE header graphic that took a relatively long time to load up, and I'm on Cable over here! On the Web, smaller is better in terms of filesize. If any of your readers are on dialup, they're going to have a bit of a wait to read your drivel thanks to that asinine graphic. Yeah, it's neat looking, but damn, woman, shrink the filesize! Image Compression Algorhythms are your friends. And now, for the text byte:

love my prezzies.. :D and I got a necklace from Tiffany from my aunt... lol i was like 0.O omg omg haha.. ok that was smth realli nice to rmbr...
been ultra ultra bz this past few weeks.. moving stuff and everything.. i haven't even had time to watch t.v!!! T.T
went to the new campus and bought my books... you know you get the floor plan all nicely memorized but when you get there it's like you're walking around blind.. haha

Well, for the most part, the English use here is sound, but it still has Kiddie Script moments. Are you kids really, truely that lazy? Is it too much of an effort to type three letters, like "Are" or "Our," that you have to shorten it to "r?" You're not saving much time at all, unless you're the hunt-and-peck keyboard type. Here Comes The Schooling: It's "presents," not "prezzies." Sentences begin with Capital Letters. It's "busy," not "bz." You only need one "OMG" to get your point across. There are no dots in "TV," it's an acronym, not an initial. And you might want to discover the line break tag (
or
), as it can make paragraphs easier to read. No trophy for you, either...

Jen's Lovely Little Space - Oh. Dear. Lord. This chick is 30? You'd swear by her blog that she was 13! Now, I'm not familiar with MSN Spaces, since I think Microsoft is the ultimate Digital Evil, but damn! You think she'd organize her space a little better. Most MSN people keep their photo albums off to the side, but this chick has them front and center, and you've got to scroll down a bit to get to any blog content whatsoever. Kinda defeats the purpose of having a blog to begin with. But I digress, as there are such things as strictly photo blogs (I have two of them, but they tie in to my sites, and don't take up more than a few hundred square pixel area in my sidebars). No text byte this time, since all of her text is peppered with gay little images and what not, which totally throw the paragraph formatting all out of whack. At least her spelling and grammar are consistent. No trophy for you until you learn how to organize. And there's nothing wrong with being 30. It's 50+ you gotta worry about. That's when you really get old. This blog stands as proof that there are people over 18 in Gen-3, and their lack of computer or design knowledge makes them no better than the kiddies they're sharing a blog generation with...

:+:s o . n e a r . y e t . s o . f a r:+: - OK. Seriously. This whole stylized title thing? Played out. Yeah, I did it with The Ranch, but it wasn't overkill like that. Here we have yet another typical Gen-3 blog, as is evident from the text byte:

hmmmm...this 2 days sux til the max!!SIGH..
well,smth really bad happened..and thx 2 myself!! i made this happened..arghh..
no matter what,thx nic..> u calm me down n b there when i really need sum1 2 talk =) u're a great friend!!
then,acc me msg til i fall asleep.muahah..

Ugh. Again, if you're going to use English, use it right. No trophyt for you.

As you can probably tell, viewing these blogs long enough to review them here is a painful process. Sure, I might be a Grammar Nazi, but hey. If you're going to communicate, and you want to be percieved as a rational thinking, intelligent human being, then please, blog like one. Not like some damned 12 year old...

Funnies

Click To Enlarge -- Flound on B$

NES Review: Ghosts'N Goblins

One of the best things about reviewing old school NES carts is the time I get to spend with so many classic games. Now, the good majority of you probably wouldn't call these "classics" if you define a classic as a franchise that survived into the modern console age. But to us Gen-Xers, the original NES was our altar, and our rewards were side-scrolling action titles that we spent endless hours playing, trying in vain (mostly) to reach the end and save the damsel/princess/weird mushroom dude. Ghosts'N Goblins (and it's 'sequel/remake' Ghouls'N Ghosts) is one of those uberclassics. JC will back me up on that one...Here's the deal: Christian wingnuts (not regular Christians, you guys are cool) leave now, because this game deals with Satan. But in a fictional sense, so there's no need to tweak out. Besides. He's the guy you're trying to best at the end of the map there, so you can honestly say you're doing "God's work" if you're hard-up for a positive message.

At any rate, you're hanging out in your loin cloth with your hottie-bo-bottie, when out of nowhere, The Man Downstairs shows up and snatches her straight from your picnicing bliss. Obviously, you're jacked, because hey: Beelzebubbabutt just stole your woman! If the great Evil wants honey-girl, she must be worth it, right? Right. So, into your armor you jump, and off you go to fight your way to and through the underworld to do battle with Lucy Furr.

But that's no easy task, let me tell you. Your little Arthur dude can only take two hits before biting thine bullet. One hit pops you into your skivvies until you find yourself another tin suit to keep you modest. Thankfully, this knight of the triangle drawz has an array of weapons at his disposal to ward off the Minions of Satan (TM). You start off with what amounts to a lance of holy tossing and destruction, but can pick up knives, torches, and more. The torches are rather nifty when baddies come-a-runnin', since it flares up for a second or two after hitting the ground. Mindless Zombies become Kamikombies and walk right into a firey gateway, ensuring their one-way return trip back to Heck is, in fact, in a flaming Handbasket of Doom (R).

But Zombies aren't Lu's only weapon. He's got hairball-spewing plants, annoying little devil critters that swoop about and cause general havoc, and bosses at the end of each of the five enormous, increasingly difficult levels. I'm serious. You have to be a pro to get anywhere in this game. n00bs will spend the first two days just trying to get beyond level two at best, ensuring the frustration which often drives marathon gaming sessions. That and the combination of Jolt and Doritos.

In the end, if you can best the Worst of the Worst, you rescue the girl (obviously the hottest woman in the world if Satan's after that booty) and live happily ever after. That is, until you restart the game and she gets Bogarted again. All in all though, G'NG remains one of my all-time favorite games, and deserves to be dusted off every once in a while, if only to whoop the forces of darkness in your medieval boxer shorts...

Ghosts'N Goblins - NES - Arcade Port

Ghosts Of Christmas Past...

The magic is gone. The joy has departed. All I have left? Just another day of the year. 2005 has been like that a lot for me. New Years? Questions. Easter? Questions. Summer? You guessed it, questions. My Birthday? While I did get to spend time in Pittsburgh with friends, still Questions. Thanksgiving? Questions.

Sadly, for Christmas, I got answers.

Oh. And new shoes, a pair of blue jeans, and a 250GB hard drive. The hard drive has really come in handy, eliminating my storage woes. You see, I'm revamping this machine entirely, and now (thanks to Western Digital, the bums) it's a bit of a necessity. First on the install block is Windows XP. Now, call me crazy for trying to run it on a 566 Celeron, but hey, at least I can run half the software I need. While I'm not a big fan of XP at all, it'll have to be there for some things.

The 20GB drive (my old storage drive, which has been through hell) will be reformated and cut into either thirds or fourths, ready to play host to a few Linux distributions. Long have I used Mandrake (since 7.2), and now I'm going to give Fedora Core and Ubuntu a go-round. If I go for fourths, I'll probably pick a random distro, but for now, three is cool. Quad Boot sounds better than Quint Boot, anyway.

Because I'm working on redoing the machine I have doesn't mean I'm not working on getting a better one. For that, I have to call in some favors, but I think I can swing it now that the crush of the Holidays is pretty much over and done with. The presents are long since opened, the kids are playing happily or visiting with the grandfolk and cousins, and me? I've been here long enough, sitting in my room.

Years ago, we started a bit of an odd tradition. When I was 16, I had long since quit going to church at all, let alone on Christmas. The suggestion was made (by Chris, I think) that we open presents after they arrived home from services, which was around midnight anyway, given their gift of gab with the Churchies. So, technically, we were opening presents on Christmas morning, having bailed on the "Santa" routine (though some presents are still tagged from the Fat Man in my mother's dead-giveaway handwriting) long ago.

So, like I said, I've been sitting here in my room vegitating long enough. It's time I went and did my Holiday visiting routine, and there's only one place I have to go: Angel's. She's moved back from Milwaukee to Clearfield, and hopefully she'll be getting high-speed soon. I'm trying to talk her into writing for Blog Prophyts, as well as keeping her own blog. But why do I need to go over there?

Silly Eric left his laundry there last night. Folded, bagged, ready to go, and completely passed over when I walked out the friggin door. Remembered my damn mug this time, but hell if I could remember all my socks, drawz, and quite the load of black shirts. Damnit, damnit, damnit all to hell. Oh well. Christmas Visit, here I come...

Merry Christmas to all, and to all: Don't get killed, OK?

YA RLY

O RLY?

O RLY?

YA RLY.

NES Review: Kung Fu

This was one of the first carts I got for the NES, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in 1986. You know how it is. 8/9 year old kid, hears the words Kung Fu, thinks "man, bet I get to bitchslap some fools!" Well, sortakinda.

I wasn't aware of it until some time later, but Kung Fu is an arcade port, and it's one of the ones that suffers graphically in the translation. Damn the four-color-per-sprite limitations of the NES. Oh well, what can you do. You can't ask for Halo 2 in 1986, can you. Heck, back then, the best CGI we had was Tron and The Great Mouse Detective.

The objective of Kung Fu is to whoop ass and climb stairs. Simple if not for the plethora of baddies that come at you from both sides, as well as above on later floors. Basically, you have to punch, kick, jump and duck your way to each floor's boss, until you get to floor 5.

There are plenty of baddies to choose from, including the grunts in the fruity looking outfits, knife throwing Daniel-san wannabes, snakes and dragons that fall in pots (or balls, can't tell) from the ceiling, and booby traps galore. There are even midgets (or is it little people? Damn political correctness) that come at you! Yikes! You know that if there's midgets, you're in some serious trouble...

Your reward for clearing all five floors? To be sent back to the begining all over again, doomed to forever climb and fall, climb and fall. And each time you make it through, the game gets progressively harder (as do most early games like this for the NES, before the advents of passwords and save batteries). Always a joy, right? Right.

This game killed alot of my time early on, before the video store started renting out carts and before my library (or those of my friends) grew. Sadly, I remember that one of my friends hadn't quite gone 8bit yet, and was still playing an Atari 2600. I felt sorry for him. Really sorry. But those are the breaks. I did envy him for a while, though, when all I had was an Intellivision II which wouldn't play Coleco games. Sad days, they were. Kids these days are spoiled with their XBoxes and their TRL.

But I'm getting off on a rant here. Wait a second... Isn't that the reason I have a blog? Oh well. Either way, Kung Fu was good, mindless fun back in the day, and kids today might appreciate its simplicity when they want a break from fragging losers on XBox Live...

Kung Fu - NES - Arcade Port

Insider Trading

Wow. Neato. I'm listed at Blogshares. Think of it as a stock market for Blogs. I guess I've got BP listed there as well, though it isn't being traded yet. If this sort of thing interests you, I suggest giving it a try. It's like the Hollywood Stock Exchange. I used to do that a bit, but forgot my login and password combo, and that account is still registered to a defunct email addy of mine, if the account even exists anymore...

NES Review: Kid Icarus

I remember that day well. We had gone to Altoona with the Reese's, and JC and I were each promised an NES cart apiece. I can't for the life of me remember what JC picked, because quite frankly, I didn't give a crap. I was too focused on what I would choose off of the rack. This was back before the Nintendo Power days, where we each had a subscription and knew about all the latest before everyone else. This was back in the Fun Club days, when info rags were heinously short and came out quarterly, if you were lucky.

Nope, we were pretty much forced to go by the cover of the box. And on this fateful night, I was to select Kid Icarus, thanks to my general knowledge of Greek Mythology, even at the tender age of 9.

What I ended up with was one of the first password-enabled games ever! When you died, you were given Sacred Words that allowed you to continue from the beginning of the level you were on when you bit it. It was ingenious, and many, many games afterwards would use the password system. Some still do today, but not as many.

Basically, here's the scenario. Medusa has taken control of the world, and it's up to Pit, the little angel with the bow and arrows, to journey from the underworld to the clouds, finding the three treasures on the way, and take ol' Snakeylocks down. But this isn't easy, Medusa has sent quite the army of interesting critters your way. Snakes, floating eyeballs, the infamous Eggplant Wizard (who can and will turn you into an eggplant, no joke), and quite the cadre beyond.

But fear not, because you'll have help along the way. As you kill critters, you'll get hearts (little, half-big and big) that you can use as cash to buy items that will help you on your journey. There are also hot springs where you can refill your life bar, and items like the harp, which turns baddies into useful hammers for a short time.

Heh. Check out the reaper tweaking out. The music that plays when this happens is quite annoying, but hey. That's what you get for ticking the reaper off.

The game is split into four levels: The Underworld, The Mortal Plane, The Path Through the Clouds, and The Skyway to Medusa. Levels one and three are bottom-top scroll, while two and four are side scroll left to right. Level four, after you have the treasures from the previous levels, auto-scrolls while you use the Wings to fly. That's the fun level, let me tell you. And the battle with Medusa at the end? You'd think a crazy mythical witch with the power to turn folks to stone would be five kinds of hard to beat. But...

She's not. Sad, really. There's a blind spot in her defenses, a position on the screen (shown in this screenshot) where you can stash Pit, never get hit by anything she throws at you, and wail away on her giant eyeball. Terribly easy. But once you wax Medusa, you save the entire mythological universe, and all is well. Until you find out you start the game over, have to regain the treasures, and beat Medusa all over again. This time, though, the game is harder.

A classic indeed, I'm surprised it didn't become a franchise for Nintendo. Pit and his adventures would have easily translated through the evolving structures provided by their subsequent consoles (especially the 64 and GameCube). But alas, this is all we have, really, which is just plain sad. Still, this classic always merits replay, if only for the cheesy music. Guess what...

Kid Icarus - NES - Platform Shooter

LiveBlog Experiment #2

Here we go. I'm gonna make an honest attempt at live-blogging a sit-n-go on Party Poker (since Poker Room seems to not want to connect at all right now, which is totally bogus). It's a 10+1 NLTHE, and I'll warn you up front. There'll probably be a good deal of chip movement on the first hand. Since it's play money, some fools like to go all-in on the first hand regardless of their down cards, and someone almost always calls. Hopefully I can get behind the button or as far from the blinds as I can. Here we go. Time to log in.

4:21AM - Folded my first hand, a 6-2o, and will be the big next hand. Oh well. At least there wasn't an all-in love-in.Board came A-3-2-5-5, so I would have been low man anyway. Just dealt a 3h7d in the big, maybe I can check in...

4:26AM - Yep. Got in cheap, flopped a set of 7s which brought in many, many chips. Love that slow playing. Next hand caught an A-10o, and won with top pair when I flopped 10s, taking out three players in the process. Nice haul for two hands, no? Yes!

4:29AM - Finally able to fold a few. Chip count: $4475, haven't lost a showdown yet! Rock on! Clearly the big stack at the table, and only one real contender is shaping up. Should be a quick game, and I should certainly place top three. Time to call with 9-10o...

4:32AM - That 9-10 cost me $30, and the next two hands cost me a total of $55, but oh well. Still in good shape, that's for sure. Table's down to five, biggest stack next to mine is in seat 10. The others are in the triple digits. Sad. I'm folding off good cards just to blog now, passed up a J-9h, just called a A-Jo, but folded to a bet too big for my tastes right now. I'll just wait it out until people fall. One already did, down to four now...

4:45AM - It's down to 3, $4990. Action is fast now, so don't expect much...

4:50AM - Down to two, still big stack. Here we go!

4:52AM - Aftermath - Yep, seat 10 turned out to be my adversary in showdown play, and I didn't lose a single hand down the stretch. All I did was fold one in the small blind, a 2-3o. The last hand, I took him all-in on a pair of kings, and he couldn't catch anything helpful. Table victories come often to me on Party Poker. Wish they would do the same on Poker Room, if only I could log in. Maybe I'll give Poker Stars a whirl...

All Kids Out Of The Pool

Since our local paper, The Regress, doesn't carry much more than traditional comic strips (can't upset the old folks, no), I haven't really been able to get into The Boondocks all that much. Aaron McGruder's own special brand of humor has managed to escape me for too long. So, when I heard Adult Swim had signed on to develop it into an animated show, I was happy.

Long I waited in the pits of Clearfield County, stranded in a sea of conservative stagnation, for this show to come along and breathe life into relatively dull nights. And it was well worth the wait.

Warning: If the word "nigger" and its many forms offend you, too bad. It's used a lot in this show. Doesn't bother me in the least, but you try living in an area that more or less is intolerant of anyone who isn't of Eastern European descent.

I just got done watching the latest episode during the [adult swim] repeat run for the night, and man, it was hillarious. With Mos Def guest starring as a rapper who's as phoney as the music he produces, the best joke came when the animated version of MTV's Sway (voiced by Sway himself, no less) came on the TV and said "Hi, I'm Sway. And this... is my inexplicable head wrap."

Teh. Funnay.

Not the first time Sway has lampooned himself, either. He did it once on Robot Chicken as the host of a show on the fictional XSPAN network, an MTV-ish version of CSPAN. Now that I mention it, Adult Swim has been more or less hitting home runs as far as programming. You have your "classics" like Aqua Teens, Sealab, Brak, Space Ghost Coast To Coast, and Harvey Birdman, sure. But with regards to new programming, they're batting somewhere in the neighborhood of .750. Here's what I mean:

Squidbillies - I wasn't too keen on the concept in the beginning: thanks to a receeding ocean and God's misguided purpose, a clan of squids was stranded in the north Georgia mountains. Thanks to generations of inbreeding, they're pretty much as out there hillbilly as you can get. But the show has grown on me a bit. Not super funny, but it's still cool to laugh at hillbillies, squids or not.

Stroker and Hoop - A buddy PI show in the vein of Starsky and Hutch, with some Knight Rider thrown in and a whole mess of insanity besides. I think it's pretty damn funny myself, and enjoy the absurdist humor that AS originals are known for.

Tom Goes To The Mayor - The title is the long, drawn out way to say "crap." Tim and Eric, the show's creators, are simply buffoons. Whatever they're trying to parody, they suck at it tremendously. The visual style is harsh and insipid, and the toilet humor is way overused. I can't believe Jack Black and Kyle Gass (AKA Tenacious D) signed on to do their "Traps All Day" episode. The biggest blemish on AS's impecible record.

Robot Chicken - Nostalgic hillarity. It's all the action figures I ever had as a kid, along with dolls and other toys of those bygone days of yore, in situations much to hillarious to accurately describe. Seth Green and company have developed a masterpiece tha sadly only clocks in at 12 minutes per episode, but those 12 minutes are more often than not packed with laughs. Optimus Prime gets prostate cancer. Voltron gets served. Teela is involved in a sex tape scandal with Beastman. And you can't ever forget those wacky bloopers...

Super Milk Chan - I'm still on the fence on this one. It's not AS influenced, though the level of insanity is right up there with that of Williams Street. Milk is a foul-mouthed 5 year old super hero with no discernable powers, who along with Tetsuko her farting robot and pet slug Hanage, take care of problems for the President of Everything, with help from gadgets from King's Idea Laboratory's Dr. Eyepatch. She also flim-flams her gay alien landlord. Funniest moment? The episode where a counterfitter is printing up bills to satisfy his addiction to Belgian Waffles. Yeah. It's like that.

The Boondocks - Love it. Beautiful style, funny as all get out. As I said before, it's the shizzle, nizzle.

Yeah, I have too much time on my hands, and stay up way too late. But hey, it's not by choice...

Fresh Horizons

You know, closing the Ranch and opening up this blog (and BP) has been a sort of refresher for me, and I kindof enjoy it. I'm blogging way more often than I did with the Ranch, and without the need to edit a boat load of HTML in order to get something published. Yes, there was the satisfaction of knowing that nearly every drop of code on that page was mine and mine alone, written the hard way by me. But ease takes over right now.

And since I have alot to say, and a very short time to say it, ease wins hands down.

Writing NES reviews is quick and painless, and since I have alot of carts to review, I've taken to writing them up and saving them as drafts, waiting to be posted at a future date. It makes things easier down the road, less I have to write and format in the future. At least the format process is easier this time around...

Now, if only I could convince Derreck to come up with something a little more often than he does...