It seems to me there has been some spider-hating going down around these parts lately. Not cool, kidz, not cool! Weasel told me I should post a top five list (with pictures! Do I know how to do pictures? NO! Time to learn, woohoo!) and I thought what better thing to celebrate the five greatest of than… spiders! (Foley and Maristar, you can cover your eyes now, the pictures are coming. I hope.)

5. Charlotte. Who doesn’t love the clever and adorable title spider from E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web? Well, okay, Foley and Maristar don’t. I do though! Ain’t she adorable?

Bonus points for the person who came up with “Charlotte’s Web Design.”

DOUBLE bonus points for the LIVE ACTION PLAY! Not Creepy at all!

4. Norah, the Tarantula at The Victoria Bug Zoo ™. Did you know that no human has ever died of a tarantula bite? It’s true! Also, a tarantula’s third line of self-defense (after running away and/or waving her feet to make herself look BIG and MENACING) is to flick her bum-hairs at you! They’re like wee porcupine quills! So cool!

Alas, I don’t have any photos of Norah from my last visit; hopefully this will do instead.

3. Spider Solitaire! Who knew that this fabulously addictive game was available FREE on my work computer? Terrible idea, productiv0rs. The cards in the game even feature a sweet spider graphic. I won on “medium” too many times, so I’ve started playing the hard (four suits) mode. I mean, I spend all of my time at the office Hard At Work.

2. Umm… How about this lady?

1. Finally, my very favourite spider: the little dude who dropped down on his little web to right in front of my face as I typed this very article. What great timing, little guy! For your panache, you win… a free trip to the great outdoors via my coffee cup.

Awesome! Spiders! Rule! Have a good weekend.

Holy creeping catshit!

Somedays, a story reaches up off the website your reading and smacks you across the chops with such ferocity, that you can’t help but post it for your interweb friends. And shockingly, no, I’m not talking about these rumors of Britney Spears having a bondage dungeon in her house. Please. In the world since Marv Albert took a bite out of crime (prostitution is illegal still, right?), that’s not very shocking, or even titillating. Give me Richard Gere and a gerbil any day. Anywho…

Perhaps I’m the only one aware of the drama that is Nick Hogan’s life recently. The largely talentless son of the most famous wrestler of all time (most famous wrestler who didn’t murder his family, anyway) has been in some legal turmoil over the past few weeks. After three warnings (!) from police about his speeding, Nick, going 100 mph in a 40 zone, crashed his car while street racing and the passenger of the vehicle, one John Graziano, fell into a coma from his injuries.

Nick’s car isn’t very Supra anymore.

The first twist in this delightful little tale was the revelation that little Nicky was drunk at the time of the crash.

You know, having a lot of family from small towns in Newfoundland, and having visited Pictou Island, I’m not very hardline on drunk driving. Some of the best drivers I know learned how to drive while drunk. Of course, these people were driving in the middle of butt-fuck-nowhere, where the only ones at risk were themselves, a tree and a moose. And they certainly weren’t retarded enough to street race while drunk.

If you ask me, street racing is pretty stupid anytime, regardless of your mental state. If you ask the Hogan family, however, you’d get a far different answer. The next chapter of our tale deals with Linda, Hogan’s wife, who’s shoe-leathery visage implies she and Hulk share the same tanning bed.

Just as the Graziano family are readying their lawsuit against the Hogans, TMZ or some such celebrity nonsense website reported that Linda and her daughter were spotted on a street racing DVD. As well as being shown racing, they’re also shown talking about how awesome street racing is, and what a thrill it is to escape from the cops.

When asked about this, Linda just straight-up denied ever saying it, even though she’s right there on camera saying it. You could call it the “hide under a pile of coats and hope everything turns out alright” defense. Let that be a lesson to the interviewer: always bring the thing you’re confronting someone about with you, so that you may call them on their bullshit.

I’m going to detour in this story briefly to point out how stupid this whole thing is. You know, Hulk is one helluva shrewd businessman, a great politician (in backstage wrestling power struggle terms), and a master marketer. He’s been able to parlay that into getting his kids exposure on their own TV show, as well as getting toucan-beaked Brooke some airtime on the ol’ wrestling show to promote her album. All very smart moves that made him a lot of money. Unfortunately, common sense doesn’t seem to flow through the Hogan family. Although this does make the decision to film “Santa with Muscles” make a little more sense. Back to the story.

Things started to really look bad when it was revealed in a police report that the Hulkster was the one who bought his under aged son the beer. The report says that on the day of the crash, Hogan bought 5 cases of beer, accompanied by Nick, Graziano, and two of their friends.

As it stands, Nick is being charged with “Reckless Driving Involving Serious Bodily Injury, Use of a Motor Vehicle in Commission of a Felony, Operating a Vehicle with a Breath Alcohol Level of .02 or Higher while Under the Age of 21, and Having Illegal Window Tint.” Add “5th degree dipshitism” to that. And, of course, that’s to say nothing of the potential lawsuit from Graziano. Things are looking pretty bad, and are only going to get worse. (or are they?)

It looked like the final kick in the crotch for Hogan would be when his wife filed for divorce earlier this week. It’s certainly fitting. I felt bad for the guy, I really did, but then it all started to come together.

Ok, other than obvious judgment calls about the content of the Hogan’s character, the attractiveness of Linda’s skin tone, Brooke’s nose, Nick’s lack of talent, etc etc etc, everything in this article thus far has been fact. We’re about to get into theory, though.

The legal counsel for the Graziano family and I both came to the same conclusion: the divorce is a sham. It’s a way to tie up Hogan’s assets so they can keep the Grazianos from getting their hands on it. They can drag the divorce out forever if they want to, since they’re playing both sides. It’ll be a morbid contest to see what lasts longer: the Hogan divorce, the Grazianos’ will to sue, or John Graziano’s life as he lays in a vegetative state. God, what a classy family.

So, for faking a divorce to get out of paying restitution to the family of the boy your dumbshit son nearly killed in a drunk driving street race, after your wife promoted street racing, and you bought him beer, I hereby declare Hulk Hogan to be the biggest douchebag in the world!!!!

Now, just a quick note on a fictional douchebag. On the Dark Knight viral sites that I posted on the weekend, as well as a couple of newer ones, it seems that Officer Karl Breitup of the Gotham Police department (and part owner of the Gotham Cab company) is on the take by the Rossi mob! DAMN YOU BREITUP! It seems as though he and an officer Jason McCree may have been involved in the death of Gina.

The viral marketing was fun the past two days, as we needed to report the crooked cop to the We Are The Answer vigilante group’s website to get his badge number, then when we figured out he owned the cab company, called them up (they have a working phone line) and logged into his voicemail and found a message from a mobster!

What’s happening is a the movie has basically started already. The world of the movie is being established now, and by the time it actually hits, we’ll all be totally immersed in it. I love it.

Here’s the latest batch of Gotham websites (and the phone numbers associated with them) and the latest Joker pic revealed. Cheers!

Gotham School District (check out the lunch menu)
Gotham Cab Company 1-877-530-CABS (number seems to only work in the states)
Gotham Victims Advocate Foundation 1-866-237-6314
Acme Security Systems 1-866-237-6425
Joker wants you to crack a safe! (Don’t bother trying to crack it, the only way to get in is to set your computer’s clock to 7:38 am. I don’t even know where that one came from)

And, the newest Joker pic, from the cover of the new issue of Empire Magazine-

Goddamn those are some kick-ass socks!

You can tell from the title that this letter Banya wrote was all about computer “soft wares.” Obviously.

But wait! There’s a second page. Banya drew out a ship from his favorite game, Galactic Civilizations II:

Stardock wrote Banya back thanking him for his contributions and promised to hand the letter around to the dev team so that they can all equally appreciate Banya’s praise. How nice!

So, it’s pretty much on now. Obviously very few runs are open, but Old Man Winter has finally got his decrepit ass moving and we are in for the long hall. Here I am looking like a douche who asks a lift operator to take his picture.

This is the face you make when you live here and you are sending a picture to someone who does not:

Because this is my back yard:

I need to get some good action shots of me in some powder, but at the moment it’s mostly ice. Also, I spent a couple of runs working on my switch stance today and the terrain parks should be opening soon, so it’s only a matter of time until we get some sick shots of me busting phat moves and/or eating it hard.

Also, as an editorial note: Is it possible to change your user name temporarily without causing a huge problem? AND - When the hell are we going to be able to center images again?

I’ve always gotten a laugh out of the “Batman is gay” thing. I guess you can read whatever you want out of it. If the life of Batman is your homosexual fantasy, more power to ya.

Really though, you can apply the gay theory of Batman and Robin to any iconic duo. Shaggy and Scooby, for example. Maybe Chris Farley and David Spade. Or Mario and Luigi. Or, my favorite, Hitler and Mussolini.

Seriously though, the whole “Seduction of the Innocent” thing in comics is really interesting. It’s usually folly to hold a past society up to the current society’s values, but some of the things that were forbidden by the Comics Code seem ricockulous to me. Some comics still operate withing the limited scope of this archaic standard.

Luckily, it’s not all in vain, as this all makes for a good segueway into your Dark Knight viral marketing update!

This is the most recent Joker picture released. I like that in each picture, his make up looks a little different. It’s like he goes through a few appearance changes throughout the movie. Christopher Nolan had said something about patterning him after his first few appearances in the comics. I’ve got a collected edition with the first appearance of Joker in it, and the look on his face in this shot is almost identical to one of the panels. It’s uncanny.

The other big piece of news is that at Imax theaters next month, there’ll be a nine minute Joker intro thing attached to Will Smith’s I Am Legend. I didn’t expect to be watching that movie, but I’ll happily give it a shot to take a look at the Joker. Around that time, we can probably expect a more in depth trailer too.

On the viral marketing front, over a few Joker websites, people had to take pictures of themselves with Joker makeup in front of landmarks in their towns. Those who did were rewarded with having 12 copies of The Gotham Times mailed to them. Those of us who didn’t do that, can check out the paper here.

It’s an interesting bit of reading. Of note are the part of the front page you can tear off, and the story about the dead girl on the last page.

Shortly after that, Joker posted his graphittied version, The Ha Ha Ha Times. I nearly did a spit take on “Dead girl no longer most likely to succeed. Entertaining stuff.

There’s also a slew of random Gotham-related websites that launched yesterday and today.

We Are The Answer
Gotham Police
Gotham Rail
Remembering Regina, a tribute website for the aforementioned dead girl.

Also, back on the Joker’s website, you can take a personality test.

Man, I this stuff is getting intense.

Edit: upon searching the sites a bit more, you can contribute, by writing a letter to the editor at the Gotham Times at letterstotheeditor@thegothamtimes.com, send a job application to the Joker at humanresources@whysoserious.com, report a crooked cop on the We Are The Answer site, and offer your memories of the dead girl at the e-mail address on her site. Presumably, they’ll use the best of the material they’re sent in future updates. Should be fun.

Next week: Hyrule!

So the other evening I was hanging out with some dudes I know. Some of these dudes even frequent this corner of the internet. As often tends to happen, our evening slowly progressed to the point where we started watching things on youtube.

Like this fine review of the film “Eragon:”

(I hope that attempt to embed a video didn’t just break the internet)

First, I feel that I should give Mr. Black some props. His movie reviews are all entertaining, and I must confess that I went home that night and watched everything else he put on youtube. Nice work, Mr. Black.

But here’s the thing about Eragon. I agree that it’s not a great movie (though that baby dragon is darn cute). But Mr Black’s main point is that Eragon’s plotline is ripped off from Star Wars — it’s not original. I agree that Eragon’s plot has been done before but, as I learned in grade ten English class, so has the plot line for Star Wars.

Now I could probably leave it at that. Pagz is AWOL, so it’s unlikely that saying such a thing will get me beaten up, at least as far as this website is concerned. But fear not, good reader, I will present an argument in support of this claim, at least until my boss comes in and gets mad that I’m not actually doing work.

The thing about Star Wars is, the plot line was never intended to be original, at least for A New Hope. The characters, the planets, the spaceships, the aliens, those were all original and creative and kindof fun. Who doesn’t love muppets and wacky costumes? Not I!

The plotline itself, though, was Lucas’s attempt (his concious attempt, at least according to Wikipedia) to take a new stab at the Classic Monomyth.

And by Classic, I mean Classic. For those of you who slept through this part of High School, the Ancient Greeks told a whole bunch of stories about creation and stuff. Some of these stories involved heroes, and these heroes’ lives all tended to follow a pattern that went something like this: (NB: I’m going from memory of stuff I learned in Grade Ten here, so don’t hate me if I get this a little wrong. If you want more detail, check out the wikipedia link).

A mysterious birth. Something goes a little funny with the stork. Often the parents take off/die, so the hero is raised by relatives of some sort.

A call to adventure. Often this call is pretty nasty — the hero’s caregivers are killed, for example, which spurs our hero into action. Often, too, this call involves a supernatural mentor or guide.

A series of trials. Tests, if you will, of our hero’s mettle. S/he (usually He) will either succeed or fail, but failures teach valuable lessons, not only to the hero but to the reader as well! Oh ho!

Achieving the goal. Wham, bam, the galaxy is saved, the hero learns something new, and maybe there’s a wee lesson somewhere along the way.

Returning to the regular world. Again, the hero doesn’t always do so well at this, but to some extent life has to go back to normal so that the hero can use his newfound knowledge and/or golden fleece. One of the stages in here is even “Atonement with the Father.” That’s right. DV was not the first evil father to surprise his heroic son.

Now, in 1949 this dude named Joseph Campbell wrote a book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which he argues that this structure is UNIVERSAL and that ALL CULTURES tell stories that fit this basic framework. I’m not so sure about that; those of you who know me know that I tend to distrust cross-cultural generalizations because often the patterns we find say more about us, and our own culture, than about the culture we’re examining.

Regardless, I am certainly not going to argue that this structure, this Hero’s Journey, was pretty popular trope for the Ancient Greeks and Romans, and because the West has had a bit of a crush on Ancient Greece and Rome at some points in its history, this trope tends to turn up in a lot of our more modern stories as well.

Like Star Wars. Like Eragon.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that Christopher Paolini just ripped off Star Wars. It seems Mr. Paolini was sixteen when he wrote Eragon, so he might have been more familiar with Lucas than, say, Homer. Certainly a lot of Eragon’s book reviewers suggest as much. Common Sense Media, for example, called the plot “straight out of Star Wars by way of The Lord of the Rings, with bits of other great fantasies thrown in here and there” (Thanks Wikipedia!).

I won’t discount the possibility that Paolini’s muse was, in fact, a movie about a universe where garbage cans fly planes and heroes get stuck in garbage compactors. But it’s also possible that Paolini’d just taken a unit on Classical Mythology in high school and wanted to take his own stab at the Hero’s Journey. And heck, I sure didn’t write a novel when I was sixteen, re-hashed plot or not!

Then again, I’m still not going to watch the movie.

Two new games to look forward to in the new year! First, for anyone who has ever played the hugely successful Lego Star Wars games - known affectionately to the gaming community as ‘the star wars games that are actually fun to play’ - there is some good news.

There are several new titles in development using the ‘Lego’ paradigm, but of most interest to anyone with any taste is the very recent announcement of a Batman-themed Lego game.

 

The star wars lego games are legitimately a good time (though certainly not replacements for KOTOR), and if they simply follow the same formula but with the new characters, this game essentially can’t help but succeed.

Speaking of Batman, the other day Weas posted a cute little pic of the caped crusader and the boy wonder in the middle of planning their next move in the fight against Gotham’s criminal element:

Needless to say, I was kinda bummed to see it since I thought I was paying for original artwork when I got this done:

 

 

 

Oh, and that other hot new game just in time for the holidays? Check it out!