Judging a book

There’s a lesson to be learned here, I’m sure.

Damn you, bunnies!

I’m terribly sorry for not being around. But it’s not entirely my fault. It’s the damn rabbits. What rabbits, you ask?

These rabbits.

You know, a couple of years ago, I had never heard of this book. Then it washed up on the shore of my favorite island, but still I didn’t pay much heed to it. It took three years and  severe withdrawal pains that made me crave all things even marginally Lost-related to get me to actually buy it. And you know what?

It’s awesome.

If you haven’t read it, you really should. It’s about a bunch of rabbits that embark on an epic journey for survival in a world which is against them in all ways imaginable. If that sounds like a kids story, it’s because it is. Richard Adams actually made it up to entertain his bored daughters during a long car trip, but the story turned out so well that he decided to write it down. That was 1972 and the book has never been out of print since then.

And anyway, if you have a problem with things that are meant to be “for kids”, you probably don’t play video games, read comic books, watch cartoons or eat lollipops. So what the hell are you doing here, anyway? Get out before I make you wear a silly hat.

We recommend

Have you seen Flight of the Conchords? You really should.

How often do you get to hear a digi-folk band from New Zealand sing songs like this:

Robots (Humans Are Dead)

‘The distant future
The distant future

It is the distant future
The year 2000

We are robots

The world is very different ever since the robot uprising of the mid-90s.
There is no more unhappiness.

Affirmative
We no longer say yes. Instead we say ‘affirmative’.

Affirmative

Unless it’s a more colloquial situation with a few robo-friends.

There is only one kind of dance, the robot

And the robo-boogie

Oh yes. Two kinds of dances.

Finally, robotic beings rule the world
The humans are dead
The humans are dead
We used poisonous gases
And we poisoned their asses

The humans are dead

That’s right they are dead

The humans are dead

They look like they’re dead

It had to be done

I’ll just confirm that they’re dead

So that we could have fun

Affirmative. I poked one. It was dead.‘

Not very often, I tell you.

Now all I need is a theme song

Have you ever noticed how Stan Lee’s superheroes have superlative titles? Spider man is the “amazing” Spider man. The X-men are uncanny. Well, I’ve just created a new superhero – actually, a super heroine – and I’ve also given her a title.

Behold, the Unimpressive Beige Girl!

Isn’t she cool? She’s awfully beige.

But Beige Girl doesn’t just dress in beige, my friends. No, no. She IS beige. She is the very embodiment of the color beige – the most drab and boring color of the spectrum.

Beige girl, who doesn’t have a name yet, has a sad story. All her life, no one payed any attention to her. She was deemed uninteresting by all who knew her, including her parents. Devoid of any charisma or personal charm, she just faded into the background. So much so, that one day she became invisible. Not actually invisible, but just undetectable to the human eye. And what does a person in that situation do? Why, fight crime, of course!

That’s as far as I’ve thought up her story until now. I have a few more details but I’m still working on them and they’re not ready for public release yet. But I just had to post the picture, because the uniform turned out great – check out the sensible shoes.

P.S.: If you’re wondering how I made the very cool picture of Beige Girl, I used the Hero Machine. (warning: the Hero Machine is highly addictive. Use at your own risk.)

I wanna rock n’ roll all night

I live my life according to a very strict schedule. I am a firm believer in discipline and punctuality. Especially because if I don’t show up for my classes, my students get very upset and I might lose my job. Which in turn would mean I would probably have a lot more time to blog, unless I had to spend all my time searching for a job, in which case I would have even less quality blogging time and would lose the bet. But I digress.

Anyway, according to my schedule, Saturday is video game day. Besides my simming addiction, I have a few other pesky vices. Lately, I’ve been quite taken with Guitar Hero. I don’t actually own a video game console myself, but I get to mooch off that guy I know’s Playstation 2. I normally use it to play platform-type games starring fuzzy animals who kick butt or RPGs where mythical creatures kick butt, but this Guitar Hero thing is quite amusing, especially Guitar Hero II’s co-op mode.

Now, I don’t normally play co-op games for very specific reasons. When you’re playing cooperatively, you depend on the other player. And the “other player” I have available is a huge asshole – when it comes to video games, that is. Not all the time. You think I’m being harsh? Let me regale you with two tales of our past cooperative experiences:

1. While playing a split-screen first person shooter, he lured my character into a secluded bathroom and threw a grenade at him, killing him on the spot. The problem is we were on the same team.

2. While playing an RPG, we went into the upgrading screen at the end of a level, where you can spend your experience points to buy cool new moves and weapons for your characters. He went in first with his character and spent all the experience points. Not all of HIS experience points, ALL of them, for both characters. So in the next level, his elf had a tricked out bow with magic flaming arrows and back-flipping triple kicks or whatever, and my warrior had the equivalent of a wooden sword and a sucker punch.

So no, I don’t think I’m being harsh.

But in Guitar Hero, there’s absolutely no way he can mess up the game for me. And not because, as the game puts it “in cooperative mode everybody wins, unless you’re both losers”, but because we play separate instruments (usually bass and guitar, but sometimes lead and rhythm guitars), with individual difficulty settings. We’re not so much playing together as playing at the same time. And it doesn’t hurt that the bass is usually way easier to play than the lead guitar.

This weekend we went through all the songs with me playing on easy mode. Next Saturday I expect to upgrade to medium. I expect to be fully jamming like a pro to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird by the end of the month.