If you have 20 minutes to spare, this is fantastic. And also this is hilarious (via xkcd). OH AND ALSO, the quality of the Joystiq podcast is very spotty, but this week's was very titter-some. Also holy cow, were you aware of this? Were you aware of it?

Okay and also here is the question part. So there has been much talk lately about the latest adventure of Super Mario, and it brought back to mind some of the stuff you do in Super Mario Bros., and maybe you do this in the new game too. So here's the thing, you run around and collect coins, and when you have collected one hundred coins, the coin counter rolls over back to zero and you get an extra life, right? So who does Mario buy these lives from, and how can that person afford to sell them at the bargain basement price of $100?

And also I did finally put up that photo set depicting my walk south down Meridian Street to work every day, maybe this is of interest to you:

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Also, put into a briskety frame of mind by recent brisket propaganda, I suggested we grab dinner from the flying barbecue restaurant, so called because of the giant barbecue bolted to its exterior high up in the air. We'd never tried it, and it had the advantage of being nearby, and though it was too expensive it was extremely delicious, but my main question is if the barbecue fell off the side of the building and happened to fall on your head such that you ended up wearing it like a helmet, and also there happened to be a lot of delicious meats in there, could you live in the meat dome forever, or would you have to give it back?

A pop tart is the same size as an index card. What kind of pen writes on frosting?

Many moons ago in the delirious late hours of a drive to North Carolina, we tuned in a couple of wiseacres playing novelty records on their radio show. One of the songs dealt with the things to which Jimmy Carter would and would not say yes. That was the last time I heard a peep of it, and since then I have often wondered, did it really happen? Did such a song really exist?

Today I say to you: YES!

Coming soon, 2 compelling photo essays: walking to work; walking the dog. My ongoing quest for photos to fill out a currently non-existent one entitled "The dog and the cat snuggle and are totally friends" is not gong well. Jones is constantly stalking and tormenting Jupiter, and Jupiter is constantly trying to snack upon his fat belly. I think somebody told her it is rich in nutrients.

Destructoid is doing a series on how to avoid embarrassing yourself in Team Fortress 2. Lord knows I could use it. Also, if you read this blog and you play TF2, the power of Christ compels you to tell me so.

Hey, while we're on the subject, my sweetie working a lot of extra hours (she takes the morning train, and then works from nine till five and then also takes another home again to find me waitin' for her) + a Gamefly membership = video game reviews!

skate.: Around the age of 12-ish, my folks delivered unto me a skateboard as a birthday present. I cannot remember why, maybe I had nagged them for it, maybe they thought I needed the exercise, maybe they thought it was a 'not gay' thing I could do? Who knows what goes through the minds of a skateboard giving parent? I was useless on the thing, I could make it go forward, I could turn, and that was about it. Never figured out how to ollie, no matter how I tried I couldn't crack that puzzle of exerting pressure here, then releasing pressure here, and moving yourself just so and so on. A lot of stuff came naturally to me as a kid, but not this. How frustrating! A few years later, a good grammar-school friend of mine came into possession of a little plastic toy skateboard, about as long as a ring finger, and he would 'ride' this thing around practiced and practiced and eventually worked his way up to the ability to ollie with this thing. Just like the real thing, where the upward motion of the board made it 'stick' to his fingers as he jumped it through the air. And what jumps, from desk to desk, from desk to chalkboard ledge and other equally impressive jumps. Try as he might to teach me the trick of this, I just could not pick it up. Now comes skate.: the skateboarding video game, whose main claim to advancement over Tony Hawk: the skateboarding video game institution, is a control scheme where in order to perform an ollie, instead of pressing a button you wiggle an analog stick around, down then suddenly up, or up then suddenly down. Presumably this is meant to mimic, at some abstracted level, the way you would move your body to perform this move in real life. All of the tricks in the game proceed from this mechanic, move the stick over here, then do some other thing with it, move it through a partial rotation, or move it suddenly in one direction at a particular angle, that kind of thing. And this is vastly appealing to me because it makes me feel like at some level, I am in on the magic trick. Anyone can press a button but only we, the members of the magic skateboard trick club, can move a joystick over here, then suddenly over there. Therefore, I am in favor of this game. As a fun way to spend ten minutes here, twenty minutes there, two hours over there also, it's a winner.

Heavenly Sword: It's the Andy Serkis game! Where you are the attractive lady with the red hair swording folks! Gosh it's really hard to not like this game, it tries so very hard to be a big step forward for storytelling in games,  and big and epic and 'cinematic', but it just doesn't come off. On the positive side, the gameplay is piles of fun, and it looks amazing, and the character performances are excellent, and just about any single element taken on its own deserves a list of superlatives a mile long. But it ends up being so much less than the sum of its parts, it is 100% sunk by the spots where technical limitations, or in some cases just necessities of game structure, crash into its attempts to ape cinematic tropes. And I think what's going on there is something like: this is a fantasy game (fantasy in the fantastical fanciful swords and magic type fiction), striving to be a big piece of fantasy cinema that you! control! But cinema of this nature requires sustained immersion, and does not hold up well when subjected to repetition. Botched lip-sync breaks immersion. A loading screen between a narrative-advancing cutscene and a resultant gameplay sequence breaks immersion. The first time through a boss fight, the bombastic orchestral score strikes an appropriately dramatic note, and the villain's diabolical dialogue helps sell the character. By the tenth time through same, the dialogue rings false, and the music seems less dramatic and more manipulative. Although I guess those are two different words for the same thing. Anyhow. It's like so...

You know what I mean?

The Orange Box: Just incredible. If you are able, get your greasy mitts on it and play the gently caress out of it. I have no more to say, other than all the things that Heavenly Sword gets wrong in its storytelling approach, Half Life 2: Episode 2 gets right.

Also HAHAHAHA.

Clearly this one is settling in at the new place. One interesting thing about Jupiter (other than her crazy-ass sloth paws) is that to fight her arthritis, I now give her an injection to the 'tocks (alternating from left 'tock to right 'tock) weekly. Had a lesson in proper injectamation at the vet's office and everything! I'm a new prescription for terror!

This weekend is finishing-touches-of-the-move weekend AND, if all that goes well, new computer weekend too! Hopefully my next post will be sent from a shiny new iMac. Hooray for moving!

So close to being done with the move, but still not quite there. Done is the moving of 99% of our stuff, done is about 80% of the unpacking and reorganizing, still to go is moving that last 1%, and taking a van-load of stuff to the Goodwill, and also taking a van-load of couch to my sister-in-law's place in Shelbyville. Shelbyville, home of the world's oldest living person by the way. In case your hunger for Shelbyville facts needs sating.

Also you should go see this immediately. If not for larabarFan256, I might never have beheld its splendor. Can we trade workplaces Andrew? The snack robot here is full of items whose labels say things like 'phenylketonurics: contains phenylanine' and contain hardly any cord blood.

So many many changes! I can't believe that Randal and Suzanne and us at the State Fair was the last post, since then we have TOTALLY been to the Fair again and TOTALLY saw a car go up in flames at the Demolition Derby. And also, before that visit I had never eaten a corn dog. And now? I have eaten a corn dog! The relentless march of corn continues.

Other interesting progress. I have taken a moment to upgrade the site to Movable Type 4. To you, the every day reader, this means not very much, the site looks the same as before (except now no blogroll, because that plugin hasn't been updated for 4 yet). Frankly, to me it means not very much either, I don't use any advanced MT features so it's really not much more than a re-skinning of the 3.x UI. But who knows, maybe in 3 weeks I will need to use static pages, or have a podcast, and then I will be pleased that my three-weeks-ago self had the foresight to upgrade. PS in 3 weeks I launch my 'mouthy sound effects I make when pretending to bonk the cat on the head with a vertically oriented fist' podcast. It will mostly be about video games.

Sheesh, only four more days left until yet another moving day. It has been incredible living in this gigantic house, but we swung the pendulum too far. Three storeys and four bedrooms and a big yard is just too much friggin' space to occupy for little ol' us, so back to apartment-ville we go. On Friday we begin moving into a really nice apartment right downtown. Incroyable details and photographs to follow. More posting to follow, also. In the meantime, pictures of tomatoes!! And the State Fair!!!

I have blanched and skinned about 300 of these in the last couple of weeks. Damn you fertile soil!!

Welcome to the State Fair: Home of deep fried motherfucking Pepsi.

...and the reaction shot. What is deep fried Pepsi, you ask? Delicious, is the answer.

This hasn't gotten any less funny since spamming 2/3 of the people I know with it last week. So now you all must pai!!! But also it has 'curse words' so, you know, watch out.