In case anyone was wondering what I’ve been up to. Did you know Red Dead Redemption lets you hog-tie an innocent woman and leave her on some train tracks to get run over? And you can also capture the entire population of a small town and leave them wriggling in impotent desperation while a train comes bearing down the tracks at them?
I’ve just had to find a new video link for the trailer for The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, which I discuss on the post linked. The original uploader apparently set the video to private, meaning I had to see if someone else posted the same trailer to Youtube. It’s easy to forget how ephemeral stuff online is but when big stuff like the deletion of Geocities happens people get a big kick in the pants reminding them that uploaded stuff is always in danger of disappearing. Good thing the Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine exists, we sorely need their help if future generations are ever to understand the history of the Internet.
I am just now testing what my site looks like on a mobile device and unfortunately it looks like utter shit. I suck large for this oversight. Mea culpa. Expect fixings posthaste.
[T]o Squirrel Girl, greatest superhero ever. And, yes, she did defeat Thanos single-handedly. It’s in continuity. Deal with it.
— A. Lee Martinez, in the dedication to the novel Divine Misfortune
What the hell? One day it was warm, the next day it was actually fall. I’m pretty sure last weekend was the last time I could have worn shorts but I foolishly didn’t take the opportunity. The Toronto International Film Festival really marks the end of the summer movie season, doesn’t it?
And by the bye, The Bourne Legacy wasn’t a pile of crap. Kind of weird pacing in the start but it was okay enough.
I’m kind of obsessed with playing Dust 514 right now. It’s a multiplayer game set in a distant science fictional future where you get to shoot other people. It’s also got aspects of role-playing games in it and I’m a complete sucker for the Skinner box reward structure of the genre, what with all the numbers and flashy virtual items you get awarded for doing stuff. I cannot say more than that, since the game is still in closed beta and I’m bound by the pesky Non-Disclosure Agreement.
I can say that I’ve discovered a second level to the game beyond mere violence and statistics. On the game’s online forums I’ve now started dropping as much homoerotic innuendo as possible into my posts. All the misspellings and competitive posturing can get rather tiresome so now I’m seeing how many times I can insert phallic imagery into my replies.
For level 2 of this meta-game I think I’ll see how well I can make subtle connections between fighting other players and having sex with their avatars. “Have you ever been penetrated by another player’s hot lead injection and been disappointed that you couldn’t return the favour?”
Well, we’ll see how it goes.
I usually grab the free tabloid Metro for the morning subway ride since for some reason I like green more than orange but today I picked up 24 Hours for the first time in months. Thus I was shocked to discover seven different typos, one egregious enough to turn a sentence into gibberish. I only skimmed through the daily and didn’t look through every article so I can only assume there were more flubs than what I spotted.
This is really quite unprofessional, being a free daily doesn’t absolve the tabloid’s copyeditor of the responsibility of producing a daily newspaper that won’t make certain readers feel like they’re being stabbed in the eyeballs.
Yes, call me a grammar Nazi if you wish, but now I’m sticking with Metro especially since they stopped being so Americo-centric with their crossword clues and have gone perhaps overboard with the Canadiana – I’m now having to dredge up half-remembered historical trivia from Grade 9 History.
Though let it be noted that I would prefer to be known as a Grammar Stalinist.
I had to go to work today. Nothing ever happens on Sunday, especially on Canada Day, so my coworkers and I talked about movies and watched the Euro Cup championship online. No one was cheering for Italy mostly because if Italy won then Toronto’s Italian contingent would come out and block the streets in celebration, making it hard to get home after work. Yes, we cheer for countries based on what would inconvenience us less. That’s what happens when you divorce nationalism from international sporting championships, though some people just cheer for the country with the weaker economy.
3:07 PM: Spain just scored, yeehaw! Suck on that, Italian-Canadians.
3:31 PM: Spain scored again. How’s that taste, Italy?
Against all odds, someone called and signed up with my company, and as it happens Spain scored twice more while I had to do the thing I was being paid to do. Curses. But 4-0, there’s no arguing with that score. Ha ha, eat that Little Italy, that’s what you get for blocking the streetcar home and making me take the Dufferin bus after Italy beat Germany. A happy Canada Day to all!
You know, I just realized this but Peter Parker’s photography career consists entirely of selling pictures of himself in a zentai suit.
Sweet Jesus crap I’m glad that thing’s extinct, I would shit myself if I saw something that size flying through the sky. And hey, good news: scientists think it mostly ate carrion like its relative, the Andean condor. However, apparently it would occasionally hunt small to medium sized animals and “[s]kull structure suggests that it ate most of its prey whole”. I think children count as small to medium sized animals. Something to sleep on, friends. Pleasant dreams!
Oh fine, all Argentavis fossils are around 6 million years old and they’re all from the Andes, so it probably never swooped down and dragged our ancestors screaming into the sky.