Why is the plane spinning straight down from the sky when we can clearly hear the fucking engines running full tilt?

Why exactly do batteries not work when they function via CHEMICAL REACTION? They don’t actually need electricity to operate, JJ…

Oh boy, a Magic macguffin…errr…AMULET. Now we have WIZARDRY! So, will Criss Angel end up ruler of the world, climbing to power on a mountain of illusions? Because that’s not a world worth saving.

“Your dad was my friend…I am go-ing too…” Wow, that guy’s one Hell of an actor, isn’t he?

Why is everyone using longbows and old school muzzle loading guns? Or did modern guns stop working for no explicable reason beyond JJ thinks old muskets look awesome? AN M4 DOESN’T RUN ON ELECTRICITY! And clearly gunpowder still functions, so what the fuck?!

And now we have a middle aged ninja. Wonderful. So we’ll get some fantastic fight scenes with all the martial artistry seen performed by Tom Berenger in The Substitute.

OH BOY! The macguffin makes stuff work! And since she’s conversing with someone, I guess there are a bunch of them! And that will be the entire mystery of the show that will never be explained. My only hope is that the amulets are also puzzle boxes, and solving them sends these idiots to the realm of Pinhead to be torn apart by hooked chains while the other Cenobites look on…and maybe crack a few beers.

And hey, we have these amulet macguffins (macguffulets?) that let tech work all magically again…now, we COULD just hang them around iPads or some other handy and portable device. NO, WAIT! Let’s rig together desktop computers out of what seems to be a Hoover, bailing wire, pieces of robots from 50′s sci fi television shows and a Vic20! That way we can constantly have to hide it from the man! Ooooo…drama! Did the mysterious event leading to this cataclysm also destroy Science and intelligence?

There are not enough balls on Earth for this insipid load of garbage to choke on.

Luckily it should be over soon. I sense JJ heading down the same horrible path last trod by one M Night Shyamalan…

-Here’s a new one : ‘fleshing out’ is kind of a creepy phrase. It sounds like the process taken by a mad scientist to convert a normal human being in to a monstrous Hell beast.

-With Diablo 3 dropping tomorrow, I wanted to finish up any games I still had in the works. Batman : Arkham City is giving me tech glitch crash type problems (That seem related to Games for Windows Live. What a wonderful fucking service that puddle of shit is), so no go there. But I DID get to finish Double Fine’s Stacking. I absolutely loved it. Every character in the game is a Ukrainian stacking doll with their own unique abilities who you will stack in to to become them when needed or wanted. Lots of different ways to solve puzzles, and lots of amusingly juvenile Hijinks to pull off for points. And a story about abolishing child labour in the early 20th Century as told through silent film style cinematics. Really an enjoyable game. Hobo Assault Teams, women who fart potpourri, a boy who vomits by literally tossing cookies, industrialists who splatter pollution from their hats, and a villain named ‘THE BARON’…what the fuck else do you need in a game?! Not sure if I liked it quite as much as their game from last year, Costume Quest, but you can’t go wrong with either. Anyone who does not at all enjoy either of those games is a heartless automaton, and probably the type of person who enjoys fleshing out monstrosities.

-Peter McKay. You know, I thought he might actually be a decent Defense Minister. And perhaps he would be, if he could learn to add. They apparently ‘missed’ the budget estimates for the Libya Debacle by just a touch…they said a cost of $50-60 mil, and it passed the $100 mil mark. Actually, replace ‘missed’ with ‘lied about’ and you’re closer to the truth. The officers at the top of the Canadian military said all along that it would cost $106 million, and they ended up being pretty damn close. Oh, and that’s with a budget that didn’t account for such extras as ‘bringing the planes and men home after the mission’. Yes, really. That important tidbit apparently didn’t need to be budgeted for.

But that’s nothing when compared to the F-35, a true clusterfuck in defense design. It STILL isn’t ready to build, mainly because the Vertical Take Off and Landing version still isn’t done due to a few million technical glitches. And the price just keeps rising. Buyers for this mess are dropping off faster than unsuspecting innocents exposed to the stench of a hippie drum circle. Our budget for this thing is now out by somewhere in the neighbourhood of $40 BILLION dollars. It’s probably time to look at alternatives, preferably ones that actually exist and are ready to be built. Hey, maybe we could just switch to the F22 Raptor, the other American new generation fighter that actually exists? Oh, they can’t sell it due to new stealth tech inherent in the design? Well, our pilots probably wanted to be able to breathe anyway…

-With Diablo 3 dropping tomorrow, whining gamer Internet babies are once again out in full force. Not since the ending debacle of Mass Effect 3 have so many absolute bitches had ‘reason’ to cry so fucking much. And every decision has just DESTROYED their LIVES. They ruined the graphics style, there’s no LAN, the auction house will somehow knock the Earth off of it’s orbital axis and cast us all in to the fiery embrace of the sun…FUCK OFF. Can’t these people please reach the inevitable conclusion of their bitter lives and just kill themselves? Please?

-With Diablo 3 dropping tomorrow, I will be playing my first Diablo game. Ever. Yes, really. I didn’t like RPG’s for a LONG time and avoided the genre like a plague. Now I have at least half a dozen installed on the PC that I still need to get to and a growing shelf of table top system books. Apparently I’m either all in or just think something completely sucks. Middle grounds are for pussies.

-So, that Thomas Mulcair is all kinds of special, isn’t he? I already had problems with this idiot when he started running election style ads after being named the new leader of the NDP. Um, good for you? And congratulations on your spectacular beard, which seemed to be the basis for your greatness as extolled by the ad.

NDP Party stuff…NDP Party stuff…Layton’s wife appears for a burst of sympathy…Capt. Beardy.

Now he’s whining and crying that Western oil is jacking up the dollar and hurting Eastern manufacturing interests. He joins Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty, who has already made similar complaints.

Here’s an idea, guys : Maybe this wouldn’t have happened if Ontario and Quebec manufacturers had focused on producing a product with enough value that it would still be worth buying when prices went up as the dollar rose. But they didn’t. No, they completely focused on the fact that the Canadian dollar was (at the time) worth about 65 cents US. They turned themselves in to a clearance store.

“Hey guys, buy from us and you can save serious money! Come on down to Crazy Canuck’s House of Bargains!”

And then the dollar rose. And now they’re fucked. This is an almost entirely self inflicted wound. And even when they were selling bargain crap during the bad dollar days, the government STILL had to bail out DOZENS of these companies. That isn’t success! That’s enabling and rewarding bad business practices in a cynical shot to keep Eastern votes as a ‘Party of Jobs’! SO FUCK OFF with this bullshit that a successful industry is being gutted due to the big bad West. A successful industry would be able to largely roll with the punches without sending Mommy Government out to whine about people.

And Dalton McGuinty’s name sounds like a brand of shitty pre-fab food products.

Too goddamn lazy to cook? Head over to the microwave and pop in a container of McGuinty’s Olde Fashioned* Stuff n’ Sauce and heat up your dinner! It’ll fill you up with something food-ish.

*Olde Fashioned relates to the age of the actual product in the container. It also refers to the fact that it was produced by child labour, some of whom may have fallen in to the vat.

Or maybe…

Lonely? Desperate? Crack open a can of McGuinty’s and find some solace the same way that real Irishmen have for a lifetime!

McGuinty’s…we’ll get you fucked up!

Anyway, I’m not even surprised about the NDP jumping up and down for Quebec’s interests. I expect a lot more of it because they don’t have a choice. The vast majority of their big rise in the last election came out of Quebec, to the extent that they’re now beholden to that province as a party. They can either constantly push for Quebec’s interests and piss off the rest of the country, or they can ignore Quebec and piss off voters there and lose seats by the dozen in a few years. They’re screwed, and they were screwed from the moment the election results came in. The only reason they aren’t automatically condemned to a tumble back to irrelevance the next time around is that the the Liberal Party is a bombed out hulk.

Pills filled with powdered human baby flesh found by customs officials

South Korea has seized thousands of smuggled drug capsules filled with powdered flesh from dead babies, which some people believe can cure disease.

Yes indeed. 17,000 capsules filled with dried and ground up fetus.

Congratulations, Egypt. You actually passed a law allowing husbands to fuck their dead wives and still come out looking okay in comparison to this. And once again we are reminded that Asian countries might just be messed up in the head.

Who comes out worse here? The people producing this or those purchasing it? It’s like deciding whether you’d like to die in flames or doused in acid.

And what nation is going to attempt to top this?

Look at that! Character models that are part professional football player, part Saturday morning cartoon, and they appear to have access to Ted Nugent’s armoury. How could that possibly fail? Well…

The original Monday Night Combat was a fun team based shooter that bordered on too over the top. Multiple levels per stage, tons of customization for the classes, explosives raining down that can blow you off the map, mascots you shoot for upgrades and ’cash’, and amusing commentary as you played. It was fifty three pounds of “Holy shit, this is great!” stuffed in to a package meant for 40 pounds at most. But man, was it fun.

Super Monday Night Combat tries to structure it a bit. Teams are now five to a side. And while you’re trying to blast the other team’s members, you’re also trying to blow apart the other team’s robots while protecting yours to allow them to advance. Robots fire on and take out the other team’s defense turrets, before finally hosing down the other team’s money ball, and that’s how you win. So it’s a frenetic attempt to do everything at once.

Oh, and there’s also a second level in each stage that both sides can access, filled with NPC bots that attack anyone, but taking them out lets you earn experience and level up. Every time you level up, you can boost one of your three class abilities (and each class has 2-3 different sub classes, all of which have different load outs and skills) or your offensive or defensive levels. And that second level ALSO contains the big ‘Kick the other team’s ass’ button that takes 5 minutes to prep, then obliterates every single robot the opposing side has ‘on the board’ with one use.

Did I mention that the money you earn in game can be spent on unleashing new waves of bots, or unlocking jump pads, or on full health replenishment without having to return to base?

There’s a lot going on. And all of it works. Unfortunately, the game itself is a broken mess due to a couple of enormous issues. And they have nothing to do with the fact the game is the typical ‘Free to Play, but you can buy a shit ton of stuff’ type. I actually don’t have any real issues with that model, anyway.

1. There is no server list, so you choose a region and have it search for a game. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, except for the fact that it can take forever. Yesterday, I started up a game search and then went over to the table in the basement and set up a board game that I wanted to mess around with and try out for a bit. It took 20 minutes. The game browser was still searching. And I wasn’t alone…several other people were just sitting in the lobby, waiting for the same. What a pile of fun that is.

2. If someone abandons your game, they won’t be replaced. Part of the reason that the game search takes eons is that a game in progress cannot be joined. This wouldn’t be a huge issue, except that far too may gamers are entitled little fuck bags who ditch a game as soon as it isn’t going their way. Forget comebacks, they want to be winning for start to finish, and they’ll piss off if that isn’t the case. And if you get ditched, you’re done. You’re now down 5 to 4. Your chances of victory are pretty close to nil because you simply can’t cover everything. And just wait until that sets off another sulky little bitch on your depleted team and THEY leave. Oh boy, I now get to spend ten minutes playing to an inevitable loss! What FUN! Apparently the developers of this game have confidence in the human race not being filled with selfish ass hats. They shouldn’t have that confidence, and their game is broken because of it.

So yeah. Great idea absolutely destroyed by a couple of fatal flaws. I hope that it gets sorted out, but I can’t imagine that too many people are actually buying items and unlock packs in a game that they might never actually get to play, so I can’t see development being all that active. And it’s just a complete waste. Oh well, I have quite a backlog and Diablo 3 (which I pre-ordered) goes live in 8 days. NEXT!

You may be shocked to learn that the Middle East is not exactly a hotbed of growth for the rights of women.

I know, right? Who knew! Well, you do…now.

Egypt today has set an all new low bar standard, though. No, I don’t mean their lowering the age of marital consent for girls to 14. Or even the ridding of a woman’s right to education or employment. No, I’m referring to their passage of a law giving husbands the right to have sex with their wives.

Not shocking?

Did I mention that the wives in this case are dead.

Yes indeed, only in the Middle East are the ladies still getting screwed after they pass on.

How fucked up is your country when a guy will actually even suggest that such a law needs to exist? How fucked up is your country when that guy’s suggestion isn’t laughed at and he isn’t mocked in to such a deep depression that he gives the world the gift of his own suicide? How fucked up is your country when that suggestion is actually discussed and passed in to law by your government?

Egypt. We’ve got so little else to worry about that Necrophilia is the agenda.

Oh, don’t worry though, they put a 6 hour time limit on how long after death it’s acceptable for one to pump their wife. Good thing too, otherwise that might be weird…

So, the election is more or less in the books. And we have another PC majority. I’m not thrilled with that result. Frankly, I think it’s time for an end to these massive majority governments, at least in the near term. But that isn’t going to happen, so at least I like the basic direction that the Redford led Conservative party seems to be heading.

-David Dorward wins in an Edmonton riding? The lame duck Edmonton mayoral candidate who was parachuted in to that race at the 11th hour with a platform of keeping the stupid Muni open? Were his opponents a cartoon duck and a paper bag?

-Just saw interviews with David Eggen of the NDP and Laurie Blakeman of the Liberals. Eggen spoke positively of an improving percentage of votes won by the party, and of what he was looking forward to and the future direction of the party. Blakeman spent almost all of her camera time whining that the only reason their returns were a smoking crater was because of strategic votes to stop the Wild Rose. Pretty telling difference.

-Seriously, if the Liberals think that the only reason they end up with MAYBE 4 seats is because of strategic voting, they’re proving themselves to be so deaf that they deserve irrelevance. I didn’t think it was possible to be so thoroughly sidelined and yet still manage to come off as smug and entitled.

-Raj Sherman was chosen primarily because of his name. His debate performance was an unmitigated disaster, where he blathered like a drunken idiot. It didn’t get much better from that point on. I really think his future as the party leader has to be brought to question. Not only did he regularly seem unprepared, he slung more mud than anyone else. Every single time the man spoke, he always seemed compelled to start off with shots at the PC and Wild Rose parties. And to make things worse, he is HORRIBLE at it. It’s like listening to someone who simply cannot pull of smack talk insist in doing so despite their inability. He’s the painfully talentless white rapper trying to spit rhymes with battle rap all stars. I still have a lot of respect for the stand he took as a doctor, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of substance behind the sizzle he once had in the political world.

-I also suspect that this might be the last run for Brian Mason. I felt he ran a solid campaign, but he is beginning to seem like the old warhorse up against a younger demographic of fellow party heads. They took a larger chunk of the popular vote, so maybe the next election cycle will be a good time for Eggen or Rachel Notley or somebody else to take the helm?

-Good riddance, Ted Morton! Weren’t you convinced that you were the way forward for the Conservatives? Guess not. I’ll miss you about as much as I’ll miss Ron Liepert.

-Not sure where the Alberta Party goes from here, if it goes anywhere at all. Sure, it isn’t a bad first try to rack up almost 14,000 votes (at the time of this writing) in an election campaign where your leader didn’t get the chance to participate in the debate. On the other hand, that leader didn’t even manage runner up status in his riding, and pulled under 20% of the local vote. Is there any relevance for them moving forward? Where do they even fit in to things?

-Does a single person give a fuck who won the right to be senators in waiting? Christ, it sounds like some ridiculously huffy position within the royal family. What a colossal waste of ink that whole mess truly was. We just spent thousands of dollars choosing people to maybe do something sometime if they get the chance. I was concerned that I had to vote for some of them or it might spoil my ballot, so I randomly chose three. I couldn’t even tell you who it was because I don’t remember.

-Danielle Smith has a chance to actually be a good MP and solidify her spot atop the Wild Rose. One skill she is most definitely going to have to show is the ability to LEAD. Too many people running beneath her made too many outlandishly stupid statements that scared the shit out of people. Also, the “Hey! Get your money over here!” cheques for every Albertan nonsense was just plain stupid. And while dumping out of the scientifically unproven Carbon Capture program wasn’t and isn’t a bad idea, you can’t offer up nothingness as a replacement. Not when every environmental group in the Western Hemisphere is trying to paint a bulls eye on the provincial oil industry.

-While I would love to see us become less of a one trick pony economically, what exactly IS the future of oil sands production? I’d like to see some sort of plan to increase the amount of fuel and gas we actually refine ourselves, rather than just pumping the bitumen away for lower royalty takes and less cash overall. And with the US starting to get in to refining fuel from shale deposits, their need for our oil is actually likely to drop in the future. That’s why the oil companies are trying to push Keystone through now…the need for it might vanish in a decade, along with billions they’ve spent building up oil sands extraction. Then what? Unless we give BC a financial incentive to build a pipeline to the coast, why the fuck would they sign on for a project that involves them taking all of the risk for no reward? And that’s just repeating the export of raw bitumen issue that we have now. If we can’t refine it due to lack of manpower, maybe we can set up some sort of inter-provincial system where we ship it to them and they do so? Worth a look.

-Looking at the list of votes tallied so far, the Social Credit Party received 218. I can only assume that they did well among the ‘so old they may as well be dead’ and ‘time travelers from the fifties’ constituencies. The Communists managed to pull 134. Completely absent from this list? The Evergreen Party. Seriously, did they even receive a single vote province wide? Then again, can anyone actually tell me anything they were running on? Locally, our Evergreen candidate didn’t even join the race until about 2 weeks ago, and her signs looked like they had been drawn up in crayon by children who had lost the will to live.

-And proving that they’re that kid who just HAS to have attention all the time or they’ll throw a fit (and that I’ll find a way to slag the French regardless of the discussion topic, goddammit!), Quebec has even managed to toss themselves in to our provincial election discussion. According to Quebec MP Denis Coderre, had the Wild Rose won it would have harmed Canadian unity because Danielle Smith may have tried to reduce our contributions in terms of transfer payments. A QUEBEC MP is criticizing ANYONE else for ‘harming national unity’? No shock he’s whining about ANYONE possibly lessening the stream of money to the teat his province has been voraciously sucking at for decades now under threat of taking their fucking toys and going home. Fuck off. Just fuck right off.

I can’t accept the blame…errr…thanks for finding this one. Nope, the guilt…thanks…belong to my brother in law Pete.

I present a song about how hot girls also struggle through life’s journey. I don’t know who the performers are, but I do know that something called Old Bailey Productions produced it. And you know you’re in for a treat when the production company puts this under the video :

Old Bailey Productions did not create any of the audio or lyrics for this video. We produced the video as a favour.

Woohoo! We’re in for some quality entertainment! (Actually, it SHOCKINGLY turns out that OBP consists of the two high school girls in the video and some nebulous figure who filmed this…product…)

Well. That was something.

All of a sudden, I find myself thinking that Rebecca Black and Justin Bieber positively ooze vocal range and talent. School buzzers are less monotone that those two, and probably more gifted.

I would normally say that we should drink in the wonder of that video, but I’m worried about what sorts of disease might be passed along by drinking anything that came from them. Seriously, how many bouncers have those two blown to get in to bars despite being underage? I’ll put the over/under (a very appropriately named gauge in this case, I suspect) at an even dozen. And I suspect that they’re not exactly strangers to amateur camera work, thus explaining their comfort in front of the lens. I’ll lay odds that within a year or two, these two fine upstanding citizens will be starring in hundreds of pornographic films emblazoned with titles like “Barely legal anal sluts”. I don’t know who the fathers of these girls are, but I’m pretty confident that they’re already developing hard core alcoholism to numb themselves to what their daughters have become.

And no ladies, I’m not like you. I have friends not named Johnny Walker or Chlamydia. And really, you’ve even failed at putting out (HA! Pretty sure that’s something they’ve never failed at before…) the worst song of all time. As bad as this truly is, it doesn’t even rate. You have a lot of work to do ladies. And in the mean time, those studio techs who gave you free mic time aren’t about to give themselves those promised hand jobs.

In Belgium, the new TNT network wanted to get some attention for their launch. So they set up a big red button in the middle of a town square with a sign pointing to it indicating ‘Push to add drama’. Had it actually been truthfully labeled ‘Push to add awesome’, it would have been the greatest marketing move of all time.

It was still pretty damn cool.

I would watch that channel 24/7.

Well, most of it. I missed the first chunk because I was having a shower and then eating. And then watching video game preview videos. You know, important stuff.

Where to begin?

-I had thought that perhaps the new crop of younger leaders might make Brian Mason seem old and tired. And actually, he might have been the most impressive participant in the entire debate. He stuck to answering questions, and his rebuttals tended to focus on what the NDP WOULD do, as opposed to what horrible things the other parties might do. That’s something I wish the other leaders had spent a lot more time focusing on as well. Very impressed with what he had to say. I wonder if our local NDP candidate seems vote worthy?

-It’s going to be harder than it should be to answer that last question, because the local debate also happened tonight. Yes, the debates were scheduled to happen at the exact same time as the televised leadership debate. Fine planning work, local douchebags. Perhaps learn how a calendar works.

-I really like Alison Redford. I just wish she was heading up a different party, because our local MLA (George Rogers) is a useless windbag who needs to go. The next time this guy actually stands up for something will be the first. I cannot vote for the continued reign of this twit, so the PC’s are out as an option for me.

-Note to Danielle Smith : you wouldn’t have to keep hijacking debate segments with periods for you to ‘clarify misconceptions about your policies’ if there was any clarity as to what the Hell your policies were in the first place.

-ENOUGH WITH THE FEAR MONGERING! Honestly, I was waiting for one leader to turn to another and accuse them of having a secret agenda to consume the flesh of babies.

-Although Mason performed tonight, I think the party does have to take a hard look at a fresh face if they don’t do well in the election. At a certain point, you need new blood.

-Raj Sherman was horrendous. Absolutely fucking horrendous. Quite possibly the worst debate performance that I have ever witnessed. Too often, he was just a babbling mess. Or he spent time regurgitating part of the Liberal platform that had absolutely nothing to do with the question at hand. And FAR too frequently, his ‘answer’ was essentially “Everyone else has no idea how to do this, but I do. Vote me!” with no detail provided for what his idea was. He seemed like he was being interrupted from something more important whenever his turn to speak came up. Was he watching funny cat videos? Playing a little Angry Birds, perhaps? Or was he getting his answers beamed to him from distant space? Let’s face it, the Liberals jumped on him as their candidate because he was the sexy name at the time. They are now paying the price for worrying more about immediate sizzle, because I can’t see ANYONE being swayed to vote for that mess after his performance. Perhaps choose a leader who actually seems to be one.

-Perhaps we can cut down the number of topics to bare essentials and give more than 2 minutes for a subject debate? Or extend the thing to 2 hours?

-CBC will re-broadcast the debate…after the hockey game is over. Good to see they’re spending our tax money wisely on that whole Canadian content for local viewers thing that is supposedly their mandate.

-Danielle Smith wins for most bizarre set of answers for the night. On the topic of could she work in a minority government, she first went off on a tangent about a completely different issue. She then said something to the effect of “Alberta doesn’t want a minority government because it won’t work, they want a majority. And they need a Wild Rose majority.” Finally, during the debate, she stated that a Minority government would work based on how well the opposition parties had done at keeping government accountable. Uhhhh…what the fuck?! Christ, you’re going to give people whiplash if you keep doing that!

-There was a reporter on the question panel named Vassy. Really? Vassy? How long until Medula really does take off?

I could go on, but…yeah.

Seriously, if this doesn’t make you grin, you are a fucking robot.