A Cappella Crossword

Oh, Bugger All...

It seems that the gaming industry is once again following the tried and true maxim of Hollywood and the United States government: "If at first you don't succeed, throw in more money."

Apparently Sierra is following up on the steaming pile of skunk excrement known as 50 Cent: Bulletproof with a next-gen sequel, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand.

At this point I hardly expect that Mr. Cent will have to die trying in his quest to get rich, and neither will Sierra. White suburban teenagers in FUBU jackets will fly to this game like Eliot Spitzer to a brothel, only to sell it back to Blockbuster or Game Crazy like the dried-up whore that it is. The only people who won't get rich in this whole deal are said white teenagers, who will get a quick cheap thrill before realizing that they're wallets were stolen when they were asleep. Then they'll go to Gamespot or IGN to
vent their impotent frustrations.

Okay, I'll quit beating that metaphor. Prediction: This game will suck, but it will rake in tons of cash while quality titles are ignored. I'm against almost all regulations, but I wish that the industry would at least put some sort of moratorium on celebrities in games.

My Attempt at Being Glenn Reynolds

Heh. Indeed.

Those that know me are aware that my house was burglarized on March 12th while I was returning from SXSW. For the uninitiated, my house was broken into around 2:30-3:00pm and they made off with my xbox 360, an old powerbook (which they grabbed the wrong charger for) and ripped my TV right off the wall. Needless to say it was shitty news to come home to, but things can be replaced and I was happy that my dog, who was downstairs at the time, wasn't hurt.

Knowing full well that the detectives couldn't be counted on to "search" for the stolen items I took it upon myself to call around to the local pawn shops and the very first one I called (Thanks Google Maps!) recalled a young white man who came in trying to sell a G4 Powerbook but the battery was dead and he didn't have the right charger (clue 1) so he decided not to buy it. He also noted that the screen wouldn't stay up on its own (clue 2), which is the reason it was replaced with a MBP. I immediately knew it was the laptop that was taken from my house and started asking about cameras in the store and if they would be willing to let me somehow get a picture of this guy. The guy working there wasn't sure how to get the images off the security system machine so I took down a digital camera and got some second hand shots off the monitor as well as some video.

Read the whole thing.

GTA IV - Why I (Sort of) Don't Care

I'm sure that on April 29th people will be murdering each other to get a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV, and with good reason: GTA is one of the few gaming franchises that has never disappointed. Every version has always been an improvement over the last, if we don't count the portable spin-offs, and it's always fun to play the bad guy. After all, who hasn't played even so innocuous a title as The Sims without doing something evil? It's fun.

I won't be waiting in line, though. First of all, the damn game is going to sell out at every retail store on the planet within two minutes, and they won't restock it for at least a month. This was my experience with both Vice City and San Andreas. It's like trying to see a long-awaited movie on opening night. Why bother fighting the crowds when you can just wait a few weeks and get the exact same product? I'm sure I'll buy it at some point, because it probably will be awesome, but I see no reason to be trampled in the process.

This is just one example of how stupid the hype around this game is. It's every bit as stupid as the Halo edition of the 360. Seriously, are these things going to become collectors' items one day? They're electronic gizmos. It doesn't matter if it has a fancy decal for an extra hundred dollars, because we all know that the thing will be obsolete in a few years anyway. My 360 is the old white model, and it works just fine without any customization. My only complaint is that I bought it before it came with an HDMI output, but that's just another example of how good Microsoft is at screwing things up and pissing off customers. (How did this Gates guy become the richest man in the universe again?)

Count me out. I have enough games to last well into summer, when all this will die down. That being said, here is some footage from the first GTA and the latest to show just how far we have come in only a few years. I can't say I'm not just a little excited.

Then:

And now:

YouTube Is a Cesspool

I cross-post my videos at YouTube and Vimeo. I use YouTube because it attracts more hits, but I embed the videos using Vimeo's player because it seems to fit the site's theme better. Last night I had to replace my original Burnout video so that the right URL appeared in the title screen. Vimeo has a handy function where one can simply replace an existing video, but with YouTube the original video must be deleted entirely and uploaded again. No big deal.

Well, this morning I checked my email and found that someone had commented on the original YouTube video before I had deleted it. Unfortunately the comment is now lost, but the commenter did take the time to give the video a one-star rating. I really don't mind that, but he also left a rather interesting message on my channel. I won't give away the profile name, but this is the comment I received:

dumbass dumbass dumbass dumbass dumbass dumbass bastard bastard an once agian this is america you son of a bitch !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm assuming that the genius in question objected to my using music in (gasp!) French as a soundtrack to the video, which is all well and good. I'm no big fan of France myself, though I have nothing against the French as a people (so keep your shirts on, folks.) As to the rest of the comment, I think that it is a bit redundant to call someone a "dumbass" six times and a "bastard" twice. I don't mind being called a dumbass, since it may very well be true, but I know for a fact that I am not a bastard since I was born within wedlock.

I won't bother to comment on the grammar or the spelling. They speak for themselves, or rather they speak for the commenter. How patriotic can one possibly be if one cannot even capitalize the name of his own country? Finally, as for me being a "son of a bitch," my mother and I get along quite well, though other people might have differing opinions. Perhaps this fellow ran into her at some point and the two had an altercation.

Anyway, my next video on YouTube will no probably feature both Burnout and French music. There's no such thing as bad publicity.

More Jack Thompson!

I'm working on grading and finals right now, so there's really nothing to write about at the moment. However, thanks to Google Alerts, I did find the following video that some wonderfully demented individuals put up on YouTube. PurePwnage can expect a lawsuit any day now, if Thompson's own legal troubles don't get in the way. Thanks to Geekpulp for the heads-up.

If We Ignore Him Long Enough Will He Go Away?

Is there something about Counter-strike that makes ordinary people go insane? I've played scores, perhaps hundreds, of violent shooting games in my life and I have not once planned some sort of psychotic rampage. Years ago (probably almost twenty) at Chuck E. Cheese there was a game (the name escapes me) where the player fired a fake submachine gun at assorted baddies. I played that. I played NARC at the arcade. I played the NES version of The Punisher. I played multiple iterations of Doom and Quake. I own four of the Grand Theft Auto titles. I own the last two Halo games and the last two Call of Duty games. How many virtual people have I slaughtered by now? The number must be in the millions. Still, I hold a job, manage to be somewhat social and don't even own a gun. The answer to this seeming paradox? Counter-strike.

I am fully aware that after only three days this topic is so stale that even MSNBC has covered it, but somehow I just knew that if I did a search for Jack Thompson I would find a new story blaming video games for the school shooting in Indiana. You know what? I think he's right. Not about everything, mind you, but it seems that everyone who plays Counter-strike eventually goes insane and shoots up a school. I only hope that none of my students play this insidious game. Tomorrow, when I go into class, I shall insist that any student of mine who plays Counter-strike switch to Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4 under threat of expulsion.

Christ, I wish I had gone to law school. I could be on TV right now making soundbites about the evils of shooting fake people on a television screen instead of teaching Shakespeare to bored undergrads. I could afford a good pair of sneakers for chasing ambulances. I could lose my sense of shame and dance on real corpses for fame and profit. Hell, I could even be a Senator or a presidential candidate (in a few years, anyway.) (It's not about Right and Left, folks, it's about right and stupid.)

Related: Thompson sends an ever-so-tasteful letter to Northern Illinois University.