The Culmination.

From the beginning of the Marvel Comics Civil War event, I've not only followed it, I've been all OVER it. The fighting between Iron-Man's Pro-Registration forces and Captain America's Secret Avengers has kept me on edge and intrigued. In key moments I have felt all the right emotions- anger, excitement, sadness, joy- The books were fantastic, and I eagerly devoured 1-6 with such zeal that I imagined that I knew what it would be like to have been reading the initial adventures of the Fantastic Four or the Avengers in the mid-sixties.

I just read book 7, the last one in the series. And, I'm not going to spill any details, just because I know for a fact that everyone hasn't read the series yet. If you don't care to read comic books, the synopsis can be found here.

Words fail me. What's even worse is the fact that I knew that it was coming. Literally. I have so many thoughts flying through my head right now, I think they might explode.

I miss him already.

-Gregor

[intriguing stuff here]

I waitress. Now, this proves to be an amusing job, partially because it means I am one of the more sane employees and thus am constantly entertained, and partially because of the opportunities to people-watch and strike up conversations that often take a nerdy turn.

My job kicks ass. I get extra money if I can have an interesting, intelligent conversation with a customer about video games or movies. I couldn't ask for more.

Except tips.

Goddammit people, for the love of everything that is good in the world, tip your fucking waitress. We live off that money. If I take the time to add a personal touch to your meal and visit without being irritating or intrusive, drop an extra buck or two. Don't leave a glowing comment card and no cash- that does me no good. We get taxed for tips, regardless of if we actually receive them.

That was my rant for February. I'm done now, really. I just had a long shift and got stiffed by half the tables I worked, although no one complained, left a bad comment card or showed any sign of dissatisfaction. Fucking people... *grumbles*

Amy out.

Recently, being of inquisitive minds and a brave spirits, my good friend Oz K. Fodrotski and I decided to share lunch at a new restaurant that had just opened up in (and this might foreshadow what was to come) Anytown America: Carl's Jr.

The first thing I noticed was the fact that there were two separate drive-through lanes, which strikes me as ridiculous, but perhaps more a comment on culture than on the restaurant itself. Another aspect of the culture could be gleaned from Oz's observation regarding the type (big) and newness (very) of the vehicles parked at this establishment.

Regardless, we entered, and pondered a little while we ordered.

Now, to be fair, I don't eat fast food very often at all, not feeling a need to drive off campus when I already have food for the lazy prepared for me, along with all the soft-serve ice cream a man could ever need (go go Lol Tilly Commons Lol). My good friend Oz, on the other hand, "somewhat regularly" (according to his account) partakes of this fast-food, and so perhaps it should be his opinion you should seek as to these restaurants: "Man, this reeks of the states." The reaction of the (obviously not Alaskan) man to his left was priceless.

Noting the ice-cream-kiosk, I quickly moved on to looking at the meat, as I am wont to do. Finally deciding upon the Philly Cheese Steak Burger, I preceded to order at the one open register, and encountered a small confusion as to the fact that small, medium, and large combo prices weren't listed that I noticed, but single, double, and six-dollar-burger sizes (which are apparently different things) were. Call me a fast-food philistine. Deciding upon the medium size combo ($8.59), I was greeted with a massive cup of size perhaps 32 liquid ounces. Medium, it was not. Hilarity ensued upon reading a quote on side about the quality of the burgers at Carl's Jr. from "Phoood.com." No, not a typo, and yes, has that got to a reliable source, oh boy. So filling my cup with completely uncarbonated Fanta, to a table I went and sat until they brought my meal to me (a nice touch). The fries were actually a medium size in quantity, actually seemed like potato and were overall decent, but my interest was - as always - on the meat. Noting the dripping juices from the burger with approval, I dug in. And it tasted decent: I could taste real onions. It was also so rich, that I really could feel my chest get a little constricted. Thus, while fairly (though not especially) tasty, I just couldn't finish it all. This from a man who used to be able to demolish BK Quad Stackers with ease. Oz describes his burger as good, but mild for something that was tagged "Jalapeno."

Overall, the food tasted alright, but was probably death to your internal organs. Service was certainly decent, but prices were too high. Go there if you're from the military and need something familiar from the States, otherwise it's not worth it.

Ab B. Lancaster out.

Sex Sells shitty blow jobs

It's that time again. This week's porn of choice was the 1999 Vivid film, "Sex Sells." Unlike last week's choice, "Sex Sells" qualifies as a true porno: crappy storyline, crappier acting, and lots and lots of sex.

The premise for all this sex is a hot young girl trying to make it to the top of a company that produces and sells (drum roll please) porn. Please, hold your applause. It has a unique style of filming, with "interviews" done in a choppy, off-color strobe-light setting, and the stories told by the interviewees nice and crisp. It was refreshing for the first twenty minutes, then my head started hurting every time the screen tinted purple.

The porno aspect of "Sex Sells" was actually decent, except for two things. Firstly, there was one chick in all the sex scenes- fitting, I suppose, given the "plot," but her tits were so fake she couldn't titty fuck properly and they didn't move much. Although I will say that the lesbian three-some was awesome, especially considering the other two participants were both natural, curvy and oh-so gorgeous. The second "ugh" factor was the blow jobs. There were a lot of blow jobs in this movie, and they looked like they sucked, and I don't mean in a good way. Lots of head bobbing, smiling up at the guy, and spit. Not terribly hot. I ended up sitting there thinking "dude, that looks like shitty head." My friend actually said out loud that he could probably give better head then the actors. I will say that not only did the girls appear to fail at giving head, the guys looked like they had never put their faces near a pussy before and had no idea what a clit was, let alone how to do anything other then lick.

But at least the actual sex was good.

I really wish they had let me know if they ever let that chick out of the closet...

GRADE: C-
acting: D-
script: D
hot chicks: A
sex: B-
awesome factor: C

Amy out.

Valentine's Day Post!

Valentino was a martyr; the only thing we know about him was that he refused to deny Christ before Emperor Claudius. The Valentine's Day holiday was originally created, like many Christian holidays, to stamp out a pagan holiday near the same date (Jesus was probably born in March, for the record). It took on it's romantic connotations because of a fictional work by one Geoffrey Chaucer, of Canterbury Tales fame.

So what you are celebrating is a fictional holiday based on a tribute to someone's death pragmatically created to deal with a pre-Roman feast which existed, apparently, to replace a sacrifice made to appease sentient wolves.

My recommendation: you should treat your significant other with the same love and respect I would hope you use the rest of the year- but if you have to do something special today, protest the hunting of wolves.

Dear Anonymous- a tribute to the assholes of the internet

We have heard about the wonderful communities that are born on this vast creation that we call the Internet. Many of us rejoice in the chance to speak our minds and argue over petty things because we can. We have started flame-wars with rival forums, called people noobs (and worse), and laughed at the misery we inflict from a distance.

This is one of the joys of the Internet, and one of the pitfalls of the Community we choose to inhabit. Don't get me wrong, I was a /b/tard for a long time. I laugh at things that sicken most "normal" people, name call like a mofo, and pick fights that really don't have anything to do with anything.

You'd think I'd be all for logging IP addresses and requiring a login so I could retort and individually address all the people who hate me or are angered by what I write.

Wrong.

I choose to sign posts I make on forums because I don't care if someone decides to personally target me. That is my choice, and I could just as easily slip into the soft cover of anonymity that blankets the Internet. I don't take offense if someone corrects me, flames me, or attacks my person online. It's just the internet, what are they going to do, confront me in person? The ability to vent and accuse, even attack others online is a right that I for one respect. If the flamer is someone I know in real life, they should bring up their issues to my face, or suck it up and be a pansy. I don't care.

So here's to the assholes of the Internet- the people who are too spineless to face a response to their words, but post them anyway. That is what the internet is for, after all, speaking your mind with the ability to remain in the shadows. I respect your choice, I respect your rights, and I challenge you to sign when you flame me, simply because I love a good fight.

So Oz, if you deem fit, I vote you allow anonymous comments. They don't hurt anyone.

Amy out.

Woo! Idiocy! In comment form!

"Anonymous said...

Amy, your ability to spout absolute crap without making a point never ceases to amaze. Your review was uninformative at best, and I'm not sure you realize what the word prose means. Please google define: it and figure this out, as it is really just anything written that isn't a poem, i.e. every other movie ever. Saying that you love prose makes you soudn even dumber, and I hope you die in a car fire. "

Wow. Good sir or madam, your ability to write petty shit never ceases to amaze. It's not enough that you needed to be needlessy petty, you had to do it under the blanket of anonymity, so as to make sure that she can't respond. Hooray! Did your daddy not hug you enough? Was that it? Honestly, I'd have no problem if you'd been upfront with who you were, so she could at least retort to your stream of concentrated bullshit.

So she screwed up a word. Big fucking deal! Log in and let her know. Oh, what's that? You want her to die in a car fire? Wow. Not only unoriginal, but also mildly retarded. And yes, I mean that in the sense that whomever wrote this has a learning disability.

Morons of the internet, at least show your faces. That way they can get punched.

Sorry, Amy. I felt a compelling need to chastise.

Love'N'Kisses!

-Gregor

A rather interesting concept, to say the least.

A Doomsday Vault, you say?

It kind of makes me wonder wether or not it'll even need to be used for its designed purpose. :(

In any event, mark your maps with the Svalbard Islands, boys and girls. And in case of Apocalypse, we'll have a plan!

-Gregor

Pirates- the porn with everything except sex

I thought I'd start the weekend off with a porn review. The lucky movie this week is the old-news, but everlasting in its amusement value porn "Pirates." Yes, pirates. The one next to "Pirates of the Caribbean" at Blockbuster that who knows how many parents have unwittingly rented for their kiddies. I can see it now...
"Mommy, where's Johnny Depp?"
"Hm?"
*parent turns around*
"OH MY GOD WHAT ARE THEY DOING?!"

Oh yeah. Review. Getting back to that...

This film has everything you need for a slightly inebriated night with your friends (hey, maybe even a girl if you're lucky) full of laughs, amazement and not remembering what happened after that second bottle of jager. I should stress that this "porn" really isn't very good at the whole sex bit. The plot is at the same level of our all-amusing friend Oz when he hasn't slept and is downloading things that we all know will rape his eyeballs and innocent mind.
(I think she means the 1978 version of Battlestar Galactica. It's horrible. -Oz)(don't say I didn't warn you loudly and assuredly that you'd regret it- Amy)
The women are smokin' hot, and, at least one of them, natural (!!!), I'm fairly certain theres entire scenes written entirely in prose (and for those who aren't as Shakespeare savvy as Gregor and I, when I say prose, I mean iambic pentameter), and there's skeletons. Yes, that's right, skeletons. They have nothing to do with the plot, but as far as I can tell, they make the movie 100% better.

A word of advice: make sure you don't get the R rated version. If "Pirates" the porno lacks sufficient quantity (meaning there's a plot instead of all sex) nudity, you won't get more with a decreased rating.
So, overall, my summary:
GRADE: B-
acting: C-
script: B (okay, I'm a sucker for prose)
hot chicks: A
sex: D
awesome factor: A

Look for your next porn review just as soon as I find one worth writing about.
Amy out.

As I await my ride back to California, I'm sitting in the Backspace Cafe in downtown Portland. Filled with pool tables, local art instillations, chess tables ready to go, and about twenty or so computers for LANing, it's definite a stop for any geek in the City of Roses. Highly recommended to any House Geek individual or their friends!

I was on CNN.com just now, and I found the most fascinating article wedged away in the 'Politics' section.

I also found this one hiding away in 'World.'

But now let's see what exactly the front page article was.

It's times like this that a governmental media coverup seems to me not just possible, but likely.

Dear America: IT'S OKAY TO IMPEACH TWO PRESIDENTS IN A ROW. NO ONE WILL THINK THAT YOU'RE BEING UNORIGINAL.

Love'n'Kisses!

-Gregor

Dear Nicholas Cage- Please Reconsider.

I will preface this lilting tirade of arrogance with this fact: I fundamentally do not like Ghost Rider. I believe that, as a character, he is simply an excuse by Marvel to jump on the growing popularity of the 'Easy Rider/Evel Knievel' fads of the late 60s, early 70s; His powers are lame, his look is stupid, and his appeal is, to me, questionable. Anyone who is a die-hard fan of Ghost Rider gets dubiosity points in my book without any questions asked.

That said, Nicholas Cage is set to ruin him irreparably.

This shouldn't bother me as much as it does, but for the facts that A.) He is a Marvel creation and B.) He, if used correctly, can be a good supporting character. He could serve as a servant to Mephisto and antagonize Dr, Strange; he could join the Avengers as a reserve member or, to take an opposite view, take on the mantle of one of the Masters of Evil. Giving him his own book, let alone his own feature film, is a worse idea than watching anything other than the special edition Director's Cut of Daredevil (of which a review is forthcoming, I promise). So why does the fact that Nicholas Cage is playing Johnny Blaze make me want to expose myself to a dangerous levels of gamma rays in hopes of one day turning into a creature capable of utterly destroying anyone who had anything to do with his casting? Well, namely it's because of the story itself.

You see, Johnny Blaze has more to him than most people know. His parents died at an early age, attaching himself to a foster family and involving himself in a relationship with his foster sister that bordered on incest due to his incredible repression of his original childhood memories. He sells his soul to a demon to save his foster father from dying of cancer, only to have his father die in a motorcycle stunt close afterwards. On top of all of that, Mephisto forces him to cruise around on a flaming motorcycle avenging innocents.

And Nicholas Cage is expected to cram ALL OF THAT in a two hour movie.

I mean, he's done some good work. Leaving Las Vegas, 8mm, even (a guilty pleasure of mine,) The Rock. But now he has to communicate a plethora of neuroses, emotions, and most importantly, a spirit of all consuming VENGANCE? Nic, you're money, but YOU CAN'T DO THIS.

Anyone, name me ONE FILM wherein Mr. Cage shows talent that could encapsulate an elemental force made up of rage and lust for revenge. You can't.

And a note to Marvel: ONLY LISCENCE CHARACTERS THAT CAN BE MADE INTO MOVIES EASILY.

Wait, I'll rephrase.

To Marvel: ONLY LISCENCE CHARACTERS THAT WILL BE GOOD MOVIES.

Huh. Anyone disagree? I'll gladly debate, and/or be proven wrong.

-Gregor

Such Mourning

With the death of Anna Nicole Smith I feel I've lost a part of me. I am filled with such sorrow I don't know what to do with myself~

A cornerstone in my introduction to pornography has fallen, and I am now lost.

Who will help me in this dark time, who will help us all?

"'Cause I'm a-leaving on my jet plane..."

I hate to post in front of Xeno's fine tribute to the internet (see immediately below), but the folks over at Alaska Robotics have made a different sort of tribute, one to our late governor Frank Murkowski. It's worthy of a laugh, a few laughs, or, really, if you're a true Alaskan, a whole bucket of lulz.

Check it out.

Enacting the Internet

Hello, Internets.

It's late and I'm feeling fairly philosophical, so I thought we'd have a little chat. See, you've grown up, Internets. You're no longer some awkward tool utilized by geeks and hackers. True, you're not quite the cyberspace dream that many a science fiction writer from the 80's or 90's might have envisioned. In terms of the metaphor, the major hormonal changes have taken place, but your role isn't quite clear.

There's some people that might talk about the blogosphere, and the way it's changing journalism. There's some that might talk of small business, e-trading, or cottage industries, creating a weird space for entrepreneurs and new industries. We could talk about MySpace, p2p, bit torrent, RSS feeds, YouTube, and just what all this has done to the way we consume media. There's a fair few of us in HG who might wax poetic about MUDs, MMO's, Counterstrike, Warcraft, Everquest, hell, even Kingdom of Loathing, and what all this means to the future of our favorite pastime.

Some people call it Community. With the capital letter and everything.

So what is it? Beyond discussions of mere crude infrastructure, of tubes and their series, at any level you wish to look, the fundamental nature of the internet is the exchange of information. In this sense, I think we can call this not a place, in dependant and sustained, but an act, ever changing as it is enacted by users. The Internet, then, is people engaged in willful connection with others to exchange information.

I want to be clear that we're talking not about a place, but something enacted by people. This means the internet has no rules. Not in the normal sense. There's a bleed-over effect from local culture and codes, but nothing is solid. Everything is fair game.

Now, if that is true, why isn't this all chaos? It's here I'll give the folks who say Community a nod; there are basic forces at work here in this non-place, forces nearly indistinguishable from those enacted by culture. This may not be a community, but communication is happening, perhaps more fluidly than ever before.

Ideas float freely, are examined quickly, free of pretense, analyzed, disseminated. The only cap on the evolution of ideas is bandwith. But the driving force here isn't natural selection, it's popularity.

Ideas people like get saved, bookmarked, linked. They thrive on page views, fanmail, hatemail, user-created content (fanart).

With ideas melding and becoming new ideas so quickly, it's interesting that nothing every gets thrown away. Huge databases sit in air conditioned rooms, quietly holding their archives until that day when someone needs the information they store. Old ideas, saved for a future date to be formed into something new.

And then we have the House Geek News Service. Very few people may ever read this, or indeed, find it useful or entertaining. But it's here. Our little collection of ideas, our contribution to enacting the internet.

The City of Next Week (a brief re/preview).

Recently, I've gone on something of a downloading binge. And when I mean binge, I mean it in a very real, hard-drive filling sense. I view it as something of an opportunity to have a look at some shows/movies/etc that have intrigued me for some time. Among this torrent (ha, ha!) of new media, I've come across something of a gem in Max Headroom.

Firstly, it's really, really quite prudent to note that the show is just about as old as I am. A little younger, to be perfectly fair, it was canceled, precisely, on my second birthday, after running for only a little over a year. With this in mind, the opening theme is in classic "overload-your-senses-with-synths-because-rock-is-dead" 80s-style, the special effects (aside Max himself) aren't stellar, and you'll be repeatedly stricken with the feeling "I think I've seen that guy before.

Don't let that frighten you off, though. The pilot of Max Headroom at the very least is full of dark hilarity, decent acting, a wonderful multitude of Cyberpunk themes (Wikipedia calls it the first prime-time cyberpunk show in the United States), and a strange sort of prescience on more than one occasion.

I found torrents of seasons one and two on ISOHunt, and as they've been released by the Digital Archive Project, they're guilt-free (the series proper has not been offered on DVD). You can get the series there, or simply wait until the next LAN.

Oz K. Fodrotski out.

Fear my Tentacled Might!

Someone please explain to me why school counselors ignore the imminent arrival of college applications and deadlines until months after our parents have begun pestering and harassing us about things over a year away. Luckily, I come prepared with the news that I have rifle scholarships available and I'm on top of things, thank you very much.

Then they ask me what I want to study.

Apparently saying "I want to design video games" makes me turn into a giant, tentacled eyeball that fears people and sics my evil orcs on your healer.

Or something.

I have never seen someone look as shell-shocked over the news that a teenage knows what she wants to do with her life as mine did a few minutes ago. Her eyes glazed over, slack-jawed, that ever-amusing "uhhhhrrrrr" emitting... you'd think I'd told her I want to kill babies for a living. (Not that'd I'd object to that. Damn kids.) It got even better when I told her that the school I'm eyeballing has a well-developed computer sciences and graphics design program, as well as is located in a convenient area near the headquarters for major game companies. This was followed by the information that I'm taking classes already to prepare myself.

The poor women looked like my Mom did when I came home with a $300 processor for Gopher.

By the way, if you haven't done so already, go pick up "Wolverine: Origins." It tells a bit of the early history of everyone's favorite X-man (ok, so there are cooler characters. Shhh.) and is visually stunning, as well as has a functional and riveting plot to keep you reading.

Time to go shoot of emails to schools and appease the women in my life.

Amy out.

So, here in Bouldertown. And you know what's bugging me? Oddly enough, that the snow won't go away. See, I have no car. Thus, I have to bike or ride a bus to and from school. And I'm not the kind of guy that likes being reliant on busses to get around. The problem is, remember all those blizzards around winter break? Well, all that snow is still here. And it's supposed to be gone by now. Long ago, actually. And thus, my problem. I have a road bike. With slick tires. So biking on my snowy street (which they don't plow, by the way) is a very good form of suicide. Thus I am stuck reliant on busses, and I don't like it. And this gets me back to the original point of: The snow just won't go away. narr.

Clark's Third Law

Who knows how your computer works? I know I don't. I'm also pretty sure you don't. Sure, you're a geek, no doubt, who can talk big of flashing a cmos or reformatting and installing a Linux partition, or replacing your stock heatsink with some l33t water-cooling, but odds are you don't know much more than a general idea how it all works. "Ones and zeroes," you might say, but your understanding stops there. How those ones and zeroes interact to form the pretty pictures on your screen, how the electrical signals somehow magically get transported across the innards of your computer at unimaginable speeds to process video or determine how a simulated particle flies is only understandable in the very basics. Odds are, you probably don't know what all the little thingy-ma-jiggers on a circuit board do. Those few that do probably don't really know what the software engineers that make the OSes or the applications for those OSes do with all those electrical parts. And, if by some freak chance you actually have a good idea on both...well, then it's likely you have no idea at all how your car works.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Clark's Third Law has been made manifest. We may not call it as such, but magic it is nonetheless. Not sure what's gone wrong with your computer? Mysterious dll errors? You don't for a second pretend to know what's really going on; you can only offer quick fixes.

In many senses, today's technology is like religion of old. Instead of offering up sacrifices of young lambs, however, we reformat our computers, or buy new parts. We have our priests, our patron gods and saints. One day our technology may do as old religions did and wrap everything up into one monolithic monotheistic (monotechnistic?) explanation of it all.

The key difference, of course, between then and now is that we know something is behind it all. We may not know what, we may not know how, or why. But we know it's something wrought by man, something tangible, something that, given sufficient time, we might just figure it out.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Bah! I say, if a technology does not seem like magic to those not steeped in its inner workings, then it is not sufficiently advanced! We are in an age of black-box code, of thousands and thousands of interconnecting bits of technology that don't care how any of the other parts get it done, they just do it. A web browser, independent of platform. An OS capable of running on radically different machines. APIs and drivers independent of OS. How does anyone get anything done? It's certainly not through hoping things work, but it's equally certain that it's not through understanding it all. Technology has gone past the point of any one person's understanding, so one might well be tempted to say magic...except that you know that it isn't.

I'm not quite sure where I was going with this.

Ab B. Lancaster out.

Because, really, we'd do it for free.

Welcome, one and all, to the House Geek News Service, providing whoever happens to stumble upon this blog with a variety of interesting postings. Soon, we should have a few more editors, so things will begin to get interesting around here. Stay tuned!