The Man Who Wasn't There

So, I'm watching The Moment of Truth and I'm wondering...why the hell am I watching this?

This is the best thing I've heard. Ever. And will probably bring a smile to the majority of my friendlist who enjoys all things Half Life.

There's a show on the AM radio called Coast to Coast AM that I used to listen to on occasion because it was just so much fun. At the time, it was hosted by Art Bell, who coincidentally can be heard at times in the game Prey in a kind of wink-wink/nudge-nudge fashion. Now it's being hosted by a guy named George Noory. Basically, it's a talk show where people call in about conspiracy theories, aliens, flashing lights, etc.

On the 18th, they received a call from "Gordon Freeman" who said he is a theoretical physicist and spins a story about being stalked by a pale man whom he calls "G-man." Additionally, he finally admits to working on "portal technology." It is awesome.

This should be a good link to the video. Hilarious stuff here, especially since it sounds like Noory totally buys what's being fed to him.

Let me know if the image of a new vacuum cleaner below the cut reminds you of a certain savior of the universe who enjoys blowing aliens up...

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You know, I wonder if the internet existed en masse when Jaws was released, would people be as "omgneedtoknow" about the shark as they are about Cloverfield's monster?

I kind of feel bad for the filmmakers (though they did bring this on themselves a bit) because chances are there's no way their monster is going to be as awesome as every little internet geek boy and girl has embellished it as being in their heads.

I forgot to mention that I picked up Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law for the Nintendo Wii this week. Last month, I purchased one of the Ace Attorney games because I had never played one and needed something to compare Harvey to...well, so far (and I'm not very far in either, actually) I like Harvey better. They share a very similar structure, though the way they're handled are very different.

For one, Harvey plays like an episode of the TV show, complete with cutscenes voiced by the same actors and all the usual trimmings. Fans of the show will enjoy the game. It's of close-to-the-same caliber as the show (written by writers of the show) but there are some things that are missing. The hammer falls as jump cuts (does that make sense?) are here, but they lack the music zing and the "WHIPPA!" Lots of characters are showing up, so it works great.

One thing, though, is that the game kind of lacks the neurotic feel of the show; you know, where characters pop in and out, say things, act incredibly random, etc. That feeling is kind of missing right now. It could change...I've only finished one of the five trials and it was a short tutorial.

I'm going to hold my opinion on the difficulty. The first mission was too easy, but we'll see; it was the tutorial after all.

Poll #1118351 Often
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 14

How do you pronounce the word "often"?

One of the recent Joystiq posts mentions some things about Devil May Cry 4 for the PC3 PS3. While the point of the article seems to show that DMC4 will have achievements like its cousin on the Xbox 360, there was one interesting part that's hard to miss.

The part that requires you to install 5 GBs before you can even play the game. And that it took the people discussing this 25 minutes (!) before they could play the game for installation. I assume that both of these reasons are because of the X2 speed Blu Ray reader in the PS3, meaning it's to improve load times. But still. I was planning on getting it for the 360 anyway. No word if the 360 version will require it, but judging from the lack of information that's probably not likely.

I think I'm going to see Juno tonight. Looking forward to it. I want to see what all the fuss is about concerning Diablo "The Second Coming of Tarantino" Cody's screenplay. Diablo, my advice is to enjoy the ride while you can. She apparently is going to pen or has penned a horror film, according to bloody-disgusting.com, called (if I remember) Jennifer's Body. That is, if this writer's strike ever quits.

Which is a nice segue to mention, briefly, before I really need to get busy at work, that I watched both the Daily Show and the Colbert Report's first show since the strike. And both were handled very well. I don't know how they're going to coast past the first episode since weeks upon weeks of discussing the writer's strike and the fact that they don't have writers interspersed with clips of previous shows would get annoying. I'm assuming this means more and more guests.

EDIT:

Oh and I would be completely remiss if I didn't mention the fact that not only is Rez HD going to be hitting Xbox Live this month for 800 MS points, but that it'd also allow a second Xbox 360 controller to act as the fabled Trance Vibrator.

callmesteam mentioned a post and it was one that I was going to post about as well, but accidently X'd out before I was done. Well, yay for LJ because it kept my post saved for me. Anyway, here it is:

I've talked a lot in the past month about Saul Williams' new album that was produced by Trent Reznor of NIN. It's a terrific album and worth more than the $5 they're asking for. Much like Radiohead's latest, they also offered it for free. Today, Trent posted some insight into the stats, etc. in releasing Saul's new album. Some of it is heartening. A good portion...not.

( Trent's post )

The interesting and sad part is the fact that only 18% of those who downloaded it thought the album was worth paying $5 for. Especially given that Trent's right that those who bought it were probably either NIN or Saul fans, 18% is kind of a disheartening number.

I sometimes think being placed on hold is some scientific experiment in patience. I secretly believe that the technicians are on the other end of the phone, smoking cigarettes and listening in on their patients who are on hold. And that they are laughing hysterically at the words being yelled into the phone when, every two minutes, a voice comes on saying, "I'm sorry, all the technicians are currently busy. Please hold for the next available technician."

Let me tell you, those SOBs are definitely laughing at my angst as it pours into the deaf handset.

I'm not one to hate people. My list of hated people is very small. But this guy is just going down a spiraling path of distatefulness.

Jack Thompson sues Omaha police chief...then doesn't. I cannot tell you how angry this recent development makes me.

How was everyone's holiday? Has anyone seen Sweeney Todd or AvP:R yet? I'm curious how they are. Not much to report on right now. I already talked about my brother's match. I got a super cool gift card from Nikki for Gamestop and picked up a couple Nintendo DS games. I hardly ever play handheld game systems even though there are games out there that I'm interested in.

So, I picked up Hotel Dusk: Room 215 and the latest Phoenix Wright game. I've never played a Phoenix Wright/Ace Attorney game before. However, I really want to play the Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law game that's coming out in January and I'll probably review it; consequently, I'd like to have something to compare it to so that I can see if it lives up to the gameplay of the Ace Attorney games. I'm enjoying it so far.

It's interesting. Kind of wordy and the humor is all over the place...literally. I think I'm done with hearing about how one of the character's hemorrhoids constantly flare up. Seriously.

Hotel Dusk, though, is excellent. It's truly like an interactive novel (you even hold it on its side!). Also very wordy. But it's a puzzle/mystery game and it definitely feeds my inner noir-lover. Love the art, too. I'm really enjoying it.

( blahing about itunes and iphone )

What the heck is up with Warner? Are they racing to get Blu Ray titles out before Christmas that they got sloppy? High Def Digest is a website I use to keep up to date on HD titles. They do a great job of staying informed and their reviews take into consideration the picture/audio quality so buyers can learn if it's worth purchasing or not.

Well, a week ago, there were reports that the Harry Potter Blu Ray Gift Set had some mix-ups and some of the gift sets actually had the HD-DVD discs instead of Blu Ray. This is a Warner title.

Then, yesterday, Blade Runner, another Warner title, had manufacturing problems on the Blu Ray side.

Today, Terminator 3 has been confirmed to have problems on the Blu Ray side. This is a third Warner title. What the heck?

I'm excited for Blade Runner, I have to admit. I am loathe to admit I've never seen Blade Runner before and now that it's out on Blu Ray and received an impeccable score for everything, I have no excuse. It's on my netflix list but I might just up and buy it for my collection.

According to Yale Book of Quotations, the following quotes are the most memorable of the year. They're pretty damn good. My favorite is "(I have) a wide stance when going to the bathroom."

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Apparently, The Golden Compass is Godless and hopeless. So says the Vatican.

"In Pullman's world, hope simply does not exist, because there is no salvation but only personal, individualistic capacity to control the situation and dominate events," the editorial said.

I don't know about anyone else, but that sentence strikes me as odd. Personally, the entire series is filled with hope and nothing but hope. But that's not the part that drew my raised eyebrow. It was the the second part concerning "individualistic capacity to control the situation..."

I used to work with someone who is a very devout Catholic and who loved having his thoughts about whatever subject be known. To him, Lord of the Rings is a work that espouses Catholic beliefs and it was a story about good versus evil. Alright. Well, let's take a look at that series. It concerns a Hobbit named Frodo who prevails against adversity, evilness and death to destroy the Ring, a Ring that destroys the concept of free will, in a sense, and turns all those who touch it evil.

In other words, it's about the individualistic capacity to control the situation and dominate events to bring forth an outcome that frees the world from a tyrannous villain who wants to control someone's free will and subjugate everyone to his nefarious plans. Now, change the words "tyrannous villain" with "the Magisterium" and you have the exact same plot as The Golden Compass. Additionally, you could change the words to ones that reflect Narnia, and again you'd have a very similar situation.

So, rumor has it that Duke Nukem Forever will finally have a teaser trailer today. In fact, it might be here. Does anyone care? It's been in development hell for 10 years. And, to top things off, it's not as if it was a really terrific series. Honestly, it's only truly known for its first foray into 3D, creatively called Duke Nukem 3D.

Now that we're 10 years from when the game first was developed, and the gaming scene has changed, does the world really need another misogynistic, albeit probably at least semi-ironically so, action hero? I think "run and gun" games, unless thy name be Halo, are slowly becoming a thing of the past.

I got Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action (Xbox 360) as a Christmas present last night! It made me happy. I only took it out of its package and read about the controllers, etc. I did learn something kind of cool. While it's a bummer that you have to plug in an infrared sensor for the four "Big Button Controllers" to work and it's not the same wireless tech as in the normal controllers (I'm assuming to get past the proprietary $$ BS), the bonus is that you can actually have 8 controllers working. I haven't tried this out, but according to the instructions, the first controller corresponds to the green big button controller, the second to the red, etc.

This means that if you have more than four people playing and so play as teams, not players, each team could theoretically have two controllers. So, instead of having four teams of two fight over one controller per team, there could be two controllers per team. This doesn't mean you can have 8 individual players/scores, but it looks like it's a good way to supplement team play. So that's cool.

I did mess around with the infrared sensors since I was leery about it over pure wireless play, and it seemed to work pretty well. I moved around the livingroom from different angles and unless I was on the side of the TV where I couldn't see the TV, or I was trying to do it through my body, it worked. I could aim it at the ceiling, at the wall behind me and it worked. Now, to see how the actual game, you know, plays.

You can learn about the most interesting things by looking at candy packages. I need to preface this by saying that I'm a Marketer's Wet Dream since whenever I see new candy items in stores, I tend to gravitate to them and want to try them out. So it was, then, that I happened upon and quickly purchased Ice Breakers' PACS which is essentially a dissolvable packet with a mint powder inside (which, coincidentally, is problematic to police officers who think it looks like powdered drugs).

So, looking at the box that PACS come in, I saw "18 Xylitol pouches" on the bottom and thought that maybe Xylitol was the material they used that's dissolvable. Turns out it is the mint powder/sugar inside. And, in fact Xylitol is pretty damn cool when I wiki'd it. Take a look!

Apparently, Xylitol is a sweetener taken from natural products (corn fibres, birch, raspberries, etc.), has less calories than sugar, no carbs and has less impact on a person's blood sugar level, making it safe for diabetics.

But there's more. It's toothfriendly, is absorbed more slowly than sugar into the blood, can help prevent ear infections, control Candida yeast issues annnnd has the potential to be a treatment for Osteoporosis!

All of this because I looked at the bottom of a candy container.

It's a R.O.U.S!!!!!!! The Fire Swamp must be close by...