Darkness, And Lack Thereof.

I am in love. I've never been in love before, and it's a new and exciting time for me. My newfound love, the one who completes me, whom I love without compromise, is published by Lionhead studios and developed by Peter Molyneaux. I'm talking about Black and White, the most amazing game to ever be released for any platform. I'm not biased or anything (go buy it now) but it is my honest opinion (even if you have to sell your body to afford it) that you should buy this game, and soon you will pledge your undying love to this masterwork, this opus, this bar-raising product of pure genius. In Black and White, you play a god, created by the prayers of some poor little suckers/innocent islanders. when you arrive, you start helping out the village and learning about your godly powers, you can be nice to the people, or you can be evil and kill them with wild abandon, giggling the giggle of a wicked god throwing his followers into the sea at several hundred miles per hour. I took a mostly neutral path. I will sometimes be a little nasty and roll a boulder thru town or something, but I'm quick to call up a food miracle or heal the village. Oh yeah, and you have a creature. Your creature is your avatar, an extension of your powers and your representative in the physical world. I have an ape who throws cows but eats sheep. The creature is a miracle of coding. the AI is astounding - they will learn from your actions and can take care of themselves if you teach them well. My ape knows to eat when he's hungry, drink when he's thirsty, and poop on trees when he, well, needs to poo. Your environment changes when you change - if you are evil and spend all your time terrorizing people, your land will become dark and evil to match. your creature can change as well, becoming evil or good depending on how you trained it. when I first got my creature, I beat him senseless (you can slap or pet them if you want to punish or reward them), of course, I felt like an abusive parent when my badly bruised ape had to go to this guide creature to be trained. There are several "neato" features in the game that set it apart from pretty much everything else: the game has a built in email client, and can name members of your village after names in your address book. The game also has a weather system built in so you can go register the game and where you are, and while in the game, the weather on your land will match the weather in your real life area. Did I mention the gestures? you can draw shapes with mouse movements (called Gestures) to create miracles and such. some are a little tough, but it really helps in blurring the line between the game and that other thing that happens outside the game (I think somebody called it "a life"), since you don't have a bunch of menus clogging things up. I would also like to mention the amazing look and feel of the game in general. it starts with the lionhead logo - it consists of a bunch fo blakc and white spheres floating around, which eventually form the company logo. You can interact with this logo as it forms. moving the mouse makes the spheres swirl around in response. Once inside the game, you can zoom right up to a single person, then zoom out to above the clouds, all in one swift seamless motion. All the movement is smooth, and when the in-game cutscenes activate, the camera moves under its own power, and there is realy no indication that anything has changed, except that you are no longer moving the view. There is just too much in this game to mention without writing a book about it or something. Go get it, now. this game is beyond amazing, it is beyond anything ever made. It will be remembered in 20 years when many more games have copied it. You will fall in love and forsake your real life and wish that you could just live in the game world. I need to go play Black and White now, so you people all go buy it.

If I spell it "tyre", does that make me british?

uh, here are some links, cuz I feel like posting and can't think of anything to post that doesn't somehow involve giant killer robot monkeys.
Visual Elements The periodic table of elements represented as images. neato.
MattTracks Wanna spend 15 grand replacing the tires on your truck with tracks, like they have on tanks? go here. Neat stuff abounds.
Sixties Stuff Now, I wasn't born until the 70's, but I had a lot of this stuff when i was a kid. that damned videosphere goes for 700 bucks, and I had one! damnit!

Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Giant Killer Robot Monkey.

This is a test. Had this been a real emergency, people would have been running around screaming for a good 3 minutes by now, and you would be wondering "why the hell are all these people running around screaming?", but that is not the case, as this is indeed a test. Should this test coincide with an actual emergency, you should look outside and note any screaming running people, and take appropriate action. Now, we may just be messing with your head here - this may be a real honest-to-goodness emergency, and we might be just stalling you so we can loot the stores while they still have some good stuff left, but we probably aren't, since we have good jobs pretending to have emergencies every couple of weeks. It isn't really a glamourous job, it isn't even a high paying one, but - well, we were coming to a point, but now we are depressed and don't feel like talking about it anymore.

There Is Nothing To Fear But- AHHHHHH!!!!!!!

I wish I knew somebody that was really paranoid. I would have that poor sucker wearing a tinfoil hat in a week.

We have nothing to fear but the giant killer robot monkeys. and fear, I guess.

A friend was telling me how she wanted to start an urban legend and get it all over the internet. Now I know how they get started... I think I might do that, except I've always been partial to idiotic chain letters, so here goes:

This is absolutely True!!! I have verified every single person in this list is actually dead or suffering from the affliction described!! And I should know - I'm a doctor!!! Before you read any further: forward this to everyone you know. go find other email addresses and send it to those people. If you can manage to send it to at least 400 people, you MIGHT avoid a HORRIBLY PAINFUL DEATH!! James Sanderval, a steel worker from Detroit, forwarded this letter to 360 people, and as a DIRECT RESULT of not going the extra mile, he is at this very moment THE PRISON BITCH IN THE WORST JAIL IN MEXICO!!! By the way, if you have not already sent this to AT LEAST 35 people, YOUR FATE IS SEALED!!!! Pray that your death will not be like that of Margeret Boycanth, who had only sent this letter to 3 people by this point. Poor Mageret never finished reading the letter, because A BEAR BROKE INTO HER HOUSE AND RAPED HER TO DEATH!!!!! You MUST send this letter to AT LEAST 400 people. Dave Macau sent this letter to 400 people exactly, and he is currently DYING OF CANCER OF THE BRAIN, LIVER, LUNGS, PENIS, AND HEART!!!! So you see, you absolutely must, for your sake, send this letter to as many people as possible, but NOT MORE THAN 700!!!! Illyich Andropov sent this letter to 1300 people, trying to secure his good luck, but in doing so he UPSET THE BALANCE OF THE UNIVERSE and we are all doomed to develop a HORRIBLY PAINFUL allergy to celery, AND IT IS DIRECTLY HIS FAULT!!!! So there you have it. Send this letter to at least 400 people, but not more than 700, and you MAY NOT DIE OF SCURVY!!!!!!!!!!

Be Afraid, Be very Afraid.

I just read on IBM's website that 2% of the world is online.... 2 percent. Yeah, I'm scared too. 2% of the people in the world have turned a noble and just venture into this orgy of stupidity and bad spelling, this world wide web. I wonder when AOL will decide to tap into the vast resource of people too stupid to get online by themselves. They'll start shipping specially equipped computers to Arkansas and Texas that will boot straight into AOLOS, and then automatically connect to the internet, then we can all rejoice because another 5% of the lowest common denominator has been added to the list of idiots with "screen names" like "johnsmith846723" who can barely speak, much less type. But they won't have to type, thanks to the redneck voice recognition software installed on these systems. So when johnsmith846723 says "gimme that thar chat winder again", the system will automatically bring up every chat system known to man, connect him to every channel and room, and send these words to everyone on the net: "WCW kicks ass, it's way beter than that WWF garbage. all them WWF peeple are fake wrasslin"

Concerted Effort

Party over here.
Party over there.
Party over here.
Party over there.
Now just the ladies.
Now the back row.
Now the front.
Good night, Seattle.

Happy Cinco De Mayo!

YAY!!!! People the world over are rejoicing now. For now we celebrate Cinco De Mayo, which is apparently a celebration of the fact that it is the fifth of May. Kinda like celebrating the fourth of July, only you aren't celebrating the fourth of July - you celebrate Independence day, which falls on July 4. I know lots of people who celebrate the fourth of July, rather than Independence day. These are the same people who pronounce Illinois with an "S" at the end and think Jesus was an American. I propose a new holiday: Lost Day. We would celebrate Lost Day at midnight on February 28 - a lot like we do for New Years now. Then, on leap years, we could have a big day long celebration, since we found the day we had been missing. I really think people would get behind this, I mean, it's a really good reason to stay home from work and get drunk. Maybe we could declare March 1 "Hangover Day" or something.