Jason Porath

The Nintendo DS has a new game in Japan:

Touhoku Daigaku Mirai Kagakugijutsu Kyoudoukenkyuu Center: Kahashima Ryuuta Kyouju no Nou o Kitaeru Otona DS Training, which translates out to Touhoku University’s Future Technology Collaborative Research Centre’s Professor Ryuuta Kawashima presents: DS Brain Training for Adults.

Mini-review here.

WARNING: Extremely geeky graphic nerd t-shirts ahead.

I particularly love the Rigger Mortis and Choosy Artists Choose Tiff shirts.

Ones I still want:

Something referring to bent normals.
Blinn blinn!
One that more explicitly refers to NURBS curves.

I really enjoyed this manifesto on what’s wrong with current video games. An excerpt:

Instant-Failure Stealth Levels. Ack. This brings back horrible memories of a Goldeneye level where if you tripped an alarm, an infinite number of bad guys poured forth. We knew a man who failed that level 37 times, then got the Infinite Health cheat for it and came back. He intentionally tripped the alarm, the guards rushed out. Laughing maniacally, he proceeded to shoot those fuckers for four hours, killing 1,183 of them – 682 with groin shots – before his thumbs cramped up. Your game should not create this kind of bitterness.

This just in: Sony claims PS3 has “bigger genitalia” than Xbox 360. Microsoft rebuts, “Ours is thicker and therefore more enjoyable.” Industry insiders anticipate unzipping of pants and measurement thereof behind closed doors post-E3.

And in some dark corner, Nintendo offers a press release claiming that size doesn’t matter, because technique and experience are more important… and is roundly ignored by legions of teenage boys everywhere.

Had the most vivid dream last night that my parents were still together, and that my dad had brainwashed my mom. She wasn’t acting with any sort of free will anymore, and was just basically being a human doormat. I started brainstorming with Jeremy on how to help mom, when he busted in the door and found us conspiring against him.

Then I woke up.

I haven’t slept in 36 hours.

I cancelled going to see the Black Mages in concert (for free) because this movie has to get done.

If there’s a weak link in the work remaining, it’s me. If it doesn’t get done on time, it’s my fault.

I’ve worked every single day since getting back from New York, except for one solitary Sunday.

I’m experiencing severe bouts of insomnia.

I actually bought myself some alcohol just to help me get to sleep.

It’s only a little bit longer. Then I take some time off and write. And relax. The worst of it is over already, anyways. I can survive this.

Those of you who were never into comics may not understand the following link, so let me give you a short primer on comic history. Back in the 70s, Hostess Fruit Pies was a big advertiser in comic books, both Marvel and DC. They would license the popular characters (Captain America, Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, etc) and make a one-page comic in which the hero would subdue the villain somehow with the aid of Hostess Fruit Pies. Such plots included gems like a Captain America villain creating a super-sentient, omnipotent Power Cube, which spent its time lusting after Hostess Fruit Pies instead of destroying Captain America. This is not a joke. This really happened.

Recently, Marvel has been doing a lot of stuff which references its early history, including making references to Daredevil’s first costume (bright yellow and red… proof that he’s really blind), and lame villains like Stilt-Man. Part of this is drawing upon Hostess Fruit Pies ads. In fact, one of the more popular writers at Marvel, Brian Michael Bendis, has been creating a few of his own.. including one that got rejected, using the Punisher.

For those of you not in the know, The Punisher is probably the most violent superhero in mainstream comics, Spawn included. He’s an ex-Vietnam vet, and he basically finds bad guys and kills them in unpleasant ways. One of his persistent villains is Jigsaw, a guy whose face looks like a Jigsaw puzzle after corrective surgery to deal with what The Punisher did to him.

All this is to say, The Punisher is -not- a prime candidate for Hostess Fruit Pies ads. And yet, they made a script for it anyways. With such gems as “I’ve finally managed to corner The Hooker Hacker, and all I’ve got left is a garrote! And it’s all sticky with pimp-blood!”

Here’s the script.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was misquoted, and does not -actually- want to destroy the moon. Repeat, Schwarzenegger changed his mind on destroying the moon.

What a great headline.

Most unfortunate logo ever.