Adam Fire Fist Shows No Mercy!!!

I consider myself quite the auteur.

2011-10-16T16:35:00.001-04:00

We took roughly a billion jillion pictures in Europe. That's too many for us to post and caption right now. If you come visit us, we'll show you some.

In the meantime, get a beer and some licorice, because I uploaded all of our videos!

These videos were all taken with my iPod Touch that Katie gave me as a wedding present.

They follow our adventures chronologically, staring in Paris and ending in London.

The videos are also here (in reverse order), if you prefer YouTube's interface.

We visited the Eiffel Tower, which sparkled:

In Bruges we saw an organ grinder:

Drinking your beer is public is not a big deal in Germany:

Statues in Prague are fun:

We had strong beer, good food, and accordion at U Fleku:

A tiny taste of the German beerhall/beergarden culture:

The hills are alive with the sound of foreigners huffing and puffing on bikes:

The always-exciting Vienna U-Bahn:

A tour of the overnight train from Vienna to Venice:

We got to ride a gondola in Venice:

We also got to see James Taylor (from afar) in Venice:

We rented a car and took a day trip from Florence out to Pisa:

We threw Eurocents into the Trevi Fountain:

We had Guinness at the St. James's Gate Brewery. I fucking love Ireland:

Appearances to the contrary, it turns out I'm actually fundamentally incompetent when dealing with technology:

Caaaaaark. The pub:

We kissed the Blarney Stone. Katie is thrilled that she now has the Gift of the Gab:

So there's this dolphin that lives in the harbour. I didn't think it was going to be worth the cost of the boat tour, but it totally was:

Then we slept in Kinnitty Castle. Too much fun for words:

Then we came back to Dublin and someone (guess who) wanted to buy a tin whistle:

Our last night in Dublin, we headed to Temple Bar to see some step dancing:

A bit more step dancing. Not shown: when the guy's heel flew off his shoe and nailed some tourist in the chest. LOL:

Then we spent the last few days tooling around London. We rode a double-decker bus:

And that's what slightly less than one hour of our honeymoon was like. Rest assured the remainder was filled mostly with screaming arguments and vicious, subtle mind games.

Ireland was my favorite; Katie is hard-pressed to choose a favorite, but she maintains that Venice was exceptionally fun. Also, the train and the castle were highlights, as was visiting Stonehenge with Liesl. (Huge shout-out to Liesl and Julian for showing us around London.)

The heat seems to finally have abated here in New York, to the point where we were actually able to remove the air conditioner from our living room window. The highs, I say, are in the teens and low twenties, which is nice, if confusing for my mostly American co-workers. I am usually very open-minded and tolerant, but there are two issues upon which I will not budge: universal healthcare and the Metric system. Privatized healthcare and Fahrenheit can go fuck one another for all the good they do anyone.

Speaking of healthcare, now that I work at a school again, surrounded by these delightful little contagion vectors, it seems that I am to remain ill for the foreseeable future. This cough will not go away, but thankfully I am now insured, after a long period of uninsuredness (and, luckily, good health). I still have trouble getting my head around things like "co-pays."

We traveled to Pennsylvania last weekend to watch Katie's Iowa Hawkeyes get beaten about the head and shoulders by the Penn State Nittany Lions. American College Football is another oddity that I continue to parse, semi-successfully.

The end for now! I will rest, take my medicine, eat pizza. These things will make me stronger.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Can they biiiite?

WHAT? Where did the summer go?

2011-10-02T19:51:00.000-04:00

Cripes! It's October! When did that happen?

So, the headlines are that we went on our honeymoon to Europe, and that I've successfully helped to open a school in New York City.

For the former, I will force you to wait, breath abated, a while longer. We took, literally, thousands of photos over the course of 40 days touring through France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, Ireland, and England. We have them, we have looked at them, but it will be a herculean task to post and caption them all. So, likely what I will do is make a cute little blog post here about each, say, city we spent time in, with the best pictures. If you want to see all of them, you'll have to come visit us and sit in front of our computer for a few hours.

We also have videos! I'll be uploading them to youtube starting.... now. (Uploading videos to youtube is distressingly slow for some reason. I will let you know when they're done.)

For more immediate satisfaction, you can go check out my school's website, which has some pictures of our opening day. It's at www.academyofthecity.org. Many of our students come from the Queensbridge and Ravenswood housing projects. The work is challenging, and it's very time-consuming, but it's a fantastic feeling to see these kids learning.

All's well in New York. Katie has started doing yoga, and she loves it. I have re-attached the World of Warcraft drip to my screaming, yearning, begging vein, but with significantly increased moderation this time around. The days are darker, the highs are lower. There's been a protest happening downtown for going on two weeks now, that the media is only now beginning to pay attention to.

I made Katie watch The Road and I Am Legend. I have to stop putting such strain on my marriage.

Have some fun links to give you, going back to May of this year. Ah, well.

I was wondering a while ago if dogs are really color-blind, or if it's one of those things that people just believe for no good reason. Answer: the second one. TL;DR*: Dogs can see colors, just fewer of them. If you want to be mean to your dog, throw a red ball on green grass. If you want to be nice, use a blue ball.

I like OK Go, so here's one of their videos.

I wish I was a person who had the amount of free time I had about a year and a half ago.
Wait, no I don't. The reason I had free time was because I was barely working. That sucked.
Anyway, if I could work _and_ have free time, I would spend lots and lots and lots of time on this website. And I would also waste buckets and buckets of paper.

Another, for all intents and purposes, infinite time-waster, is the World's Biggest Pac-Man. I understand that people are creating new boards faster than a person could possibly finish them. Which boggles the mind.

Here's a video of a little girl making a choice. A choice she is immediately told is wrong.

If that's the case, then I don't wanna be right.

And finally, a good investment of about an hour is to watch some very funny and dated news clips dedicated to technology. My favorite is watching Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric trying to figure out what an @-sign is.

I've also discovered Reddit, which is now my default go-to-when-I-have-30-spare-seconds website.
I used to go to Wikipedia during those decaseconds. Have I gotten dumber? Or smarter? Or.... something elser?

That is all for now, I'm going to spend some time uploading videos for you. More to follow.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Like a boss.

*Too Long; Didn't Read

Early morning with little to do.

2011-04-04T10:20:00.025-04:00

Hi!

All this talk of nuclear radiation in Japan puts me in mind of my single favourite panel from any ~~comic book~~ graphic novel (ahem, sorry, we're adults here). To wit, this one, from Watchmen.

The best (and simultaneously worst) thing about it all is the fact that most people (myself included) don't really understand how radioactivity works. Radioactivity is fundamentally weird. It's like quantum states and umami; it's outside of most people's boxes. So you end up with alarming-looking jpegs getting forwarded by e-mails, like this paragon of misinformation:

Which wouldn't be so bad, except that people who don't know any better have been overdosing on potassium iodide pills.

Which is why I'm always glad when people try to put things in perspective. There's another website which is much, much better than mine, called XKCD. The guy who does XKCD is much, much smarter than me, and he assembled a super-interesting radiation chart, which shows the entire spectrum of radiation doses, from standing next to the reactor at Chernobyl all the way down to eating a banana. (The dose that workers at the Fukushima plant got immediately after the tsunami is actually pretty low on the scale, just above the dose someone would get from a mammogram.)

I have a new favorite Wikipedia page: The List of Common Misconceptions. Spend some time with it, memorize bits of it, and become the most annoying person at the party. You'll find yourself starting many sentences with, "Well, actually..." People will think you are cool and good-looking, and you are almost 100% assured of getting laid on any given evening.

Okay. It's been a while since I laid a substantive post on you, so I've got some stuff saved up.

My boss sent me this list of "untranslatable" words from other languages. My favorite is "tartle." I'm notoriously bad with names, and I'm so glad the Scottish have a word for me.

I have been hoarding this video since July of last year. It has aged and mellowed nicely, and, having given it a few minutes to sit open and breathe, I pour it forth for you:

Savour its bouquet.

I'm not as young as I look; I cut my teeth on the Atari 2600. We never really had a computer in the house as I was growing up (my mom's electric typewriter represented the lofty heights of word processing), so I largely missed out on text-based games. I still got to fart around with things like Zork at the computer lab at Enrichment*, but now someone's assembled a website full of fun little time-devourers. The games run right in your browser. Mind the grue.

Speaking of games, I recently took a hiatus from World of Warcrack, which has been good for me. A suitable alternative may be NEStalgia, which marries the modern MMO to old-school 8-bit graphics. All I can say is that I am lucky the thing only runs on Windows. (Oh! But wait! I have Parallels! Mourn for me, I am lost!)

Mike Tyson seems to be enjoying a resurgence. Good for him:

We've recently (by which I mean in the last year and half) become converts to the Cult of Netflix. It is less time-intensive than torrenting, though apparently more legal. One thing that drives me up the wall, though, are those little paper flaps they use to seal the disk into its red shipping coffin. Thanks to the internet, though, there is now a way to recycle those flaps. Until you actually recycle them by putting them in the recycling.

It's rare that Newfoundland makes any sort of impression on the rest of the world, but I recently heard tell of a youtube video which had gone slightly viral. I present it here for your amusement.

Do you see the title? Do you you see those poor little apostrophes?
Did the bad man hurt you, little apostrophes? Come, let me hold you.

There are more games. When I was a child, a neighbour had a Game Boy. I was entranced. (Of course, I now carry a cellphone, a DS Lite and an iPod Touch, each of which boasts more computing power than the entire island of Newfoundland had during my childhood.) I did own a couple of Tiger LCD games. I think one was Thundercats-based. (However, I can find no evidence of such a thing on any of the Internets.) A website exists now that collects and emulates certain LCD games. It is diverting, but ultimately makes me happy to live now, and not then. (Well, I guess I did live then, but I was just a dumb kid.) Anyway, go look at it now, before Nintendo finds out about it and shuts it down.

I was able to wrest a few hours this morning from the dread beast Committed Employment, but I draw near to end of my freedom. Commence video dump.

A clever video spoofing the internet itself from CollegeHumor. I had wanted to embed it here, but the video was causing problems with Flash. So here is a link to it, instead. Stupid College Humor. Learn to code, dammit!

Sometimes I am amazed by the level of creativity some people show when fusing things like The Legend of Zelda with Every High School Movie From The 80s:

This one is a little disturbing, and caused some minor controversy upon its release. People don't like being told that sometimes zombies eat children. And that those zombie children sometimes go on to eat others. (There may be an age gate on this one.)

Again, I (who have no time at all) am in awe of people for whom time seems to flow like water, plentiful and clear. The audio for this comes from the trailer for Starcraft 2. The video... is from something else:

I did not see this guy in person, but he's here in New York somewhere. I will have to start taking the F line to work, it seems.

Congratulations! You've reached the end! As a reward for being good little Interneters and watching all the videos, you get two prizes. I confess to only having a rudimentary understanding of how this works, but it works, and that's the main thing.

If you take the following chunk of gibberish and copy-paste it into the address bar on your browser (where it says www.adamfirefist.com), you will be able to fly a SPACESHIP around my website and shoot things. I swear to god. This will work on any website. I found it hard to believe, too, but there you go. The word is full of miracles.

You can control the ship with the arrow keys and use the spacebar to fire. The ship's bullets are black, though, so you might want to try it out on another page.

And this snippet will enable you to roll a Katamari over the page, rolling everything up into a satisfying clump.

Scroll back up to the top of the page before loading that one, though. The ball starts at the top. It plays a song, too. To get either of them to stop, just reload the page or close the window.

That is all I can do for you today. I have given you the tools; go forth and cause havoc.

Next time I will teach you about charter schools and European honeymoons.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
The lottery will be held on April 13.

*Which is where all the little nerdlings like me got to go one day a week to expand on our regular book-learnin'.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2011-03-17T10:34:00.001-04:00

Suffice to say I've been mega mega busy. And it is too bright in the office.

I actually don't even have time to be writing these sentences. But here I am.
Still editing books for Oxford part-time, while helping to set up a new school here in Queens, called Academy of the City Charter School. It's fun, stimulating, fascinating, exhausting work. I have insufficient time. I am too busy to even play Warcrack anymore. There are trade-offs.

I have about a million different things to share with you. I will share them soon.
This will do for now:

All is well!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Enchantment? Enchantment!

Cards! (Green and Birthday)

2010-06-22T19:16:00.006-04:00

Greetings!

Well, it's been a busy few weeks! So, let's go in chronological order!

We had our interview down at USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) for my Green Card application. We were kind of anxious about it, since we had heard stories from a couple of other couples who got grilled fairly heavily, moved to separate rooms and questioned separately to see if their answers lined up, that sort of thing.

We went in 15 minutes before our scheduled time, waited in a lobby for five minutes, and got called in. A lovely lady took us both into her office and asked us a few simple questions about where we met. We showed her the photobooks Katie had made of our trips to Cambodia and South Korea. She asked for copies of our joint bank account statements and asked if she could keep a picture of us wearing umbrella hats (for their files, ostensibly). This one, in fact:

Then she shooed us back out into the lobby, where we waited for another five minutes, then she called my name and gave me my passport with my Green Card in it. Actually, it was a Red Stamp; my actual Green Card arrived in the mail a couple of days ago. And yes, contrary to popular know-it-allishness, the Green Card is, in fact, actually green. Not like a lime green or anything. More of a money green. Like millions of green swirly lines. It's got my face, and my signature, and my fingerprint, and a picture of the Statue of Liberty on the front. The back is mega weird, it's got all these teeny tiny micro versions of all these flags from other countries (but not Canada, oddly), as well as a line of teeny tiny micro portraits of all the Presidents of the United States, from Washington to Obama. Weirdest of all, it comes with a little tinfoil sleeve, upon which is printed, "We recommend use of this envelope to protect your new card and prevent wireless communication with it." A little Caprica, a little 1984.

Overall, the Green Card process was fairly painless. By which I mean it was a huge pain in the ass, and involved reams and reams of paperwork, but nothing insurmountable. It was, by far, the most complicated thing I've ever had to do, but I'm fairly proud that we managed to pull it off by ourselves, without having to spend ten to twenty thousand dollars on an immigration lawyer. I can now vote in municipal and state elections, but not the federal election. Every little bit helps, though, ya?

I had a birthday in June, too. Thanks to all my friends on That Thing who left birthday well-wishes for me. Marshall McLuhan will spin in his grave at my heresy, but the message was more important than the medium in this case. Thanks, thanks!

For my birthday, Katie planned a secret outing. She laid plenty of misdirects, both ahead of time ("You'll need your passport." "You need to bring sneakers*, definitely.") and after we had actually reached our destination of the Jersey Shore, specifically, Asbury Park ("I just wanted to hang out on the beach." "We're having dinner at a nice restaurant."). As we moseyed down Ocean Drive after checking in at our hotel, Katie directed my gaze to the sign of the Stone Pony (a famous bar where Bruce Springsteen used to hang out, where I saw:

Well fuck me backwards and forwards. She did a superb job of keeping the secret.

Now, as I think I've discussed before, I'm not a Music Person. I'm a Video Game Person, a Book Person, a Cat Person, but not a Music Person. I like music, I just have some sort of fatal disconnect when I hear it. It tends to take rather a lot to make me pay attention to music. It might be my years of video games, it might be the way my dad always had a radio on in the house, even when no one was home, but I tend to regard music generally as a background thing, and I struggle to concentrate on it.

There are, of course, a few exceptions to this rule, and the main one is They Might Be Giants. Discovering their album Flood in the CD room at CHMR (when I used to jockey discs, if such an activity can be believed of the person who wrote the preceding paragraph) is one of the best things that ever happened to me. I fucking love Flood. And I love They Might Be Giants. When people ask me who my favourite band is, I just say TMBG, because it's the first band that springs to mind. There aren't many bands about whom I can say that I like, basically, every single song I've heard by them.

Anyway. If you had told me, while I was bopping around MUN with my cassette-tape-copy of Flood in my Walkman (yes, tape; yes, Walkman; I don't look it, but I am that old), never fully hearing the song "Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love" because I cut it off by mistake, that I would ever get to actually stand in a bar in New Jersey and watch them play, I would have said, "That sounds fucking awesome." And it was.

The boys are just stellar in concert. I'm guilty of not having kept up with their recent releases (see previous statements about not being a Music Person), so some of the songs were too new for me to know them, but they were all good, and I was able to sing along with about 75% of the songs (along with everyone else in the packed bar. TMBG have a lot of crazy fans - we actually saw some of the fanboys/-girls jostling for the sheet of paper with the set list written on it after the show ended).

There were puppets.

Also, there was a confetti cannon.

I had a blast. Katie is the best.

We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out on the beach and doing things like playing mini golf. (We tied the first game, and Katie won the second.)

We also went to SilverBall, which is a sort of interactive museum, where you can play pinball machines from various eras. Katie found one called Freefall which caused a bit of a stir. Allegedly, there's an exact copy of this machine in her grandpa's basement, albeit under a different name.

It was a splendid birthday weekend. On my birthday proper, Katie took me to Blondies for hot wings. It would be difficult for me to improve upon my life.

Speaking of improving my life! Have you seen this photograph?

Probably not, because I, in all my infinite wisdom, completely forgot to direct you to the website of our wedding photographer, Darrell Sharpe. Darrell did an "engagement session" with us when were in town in April, and he did a fantastic job. You can see selected pictures from the shoot right here. Darrell's a great guy, with an excellent eye, and we were mega lucky with weather and lighting. (Also, Katie's prettiness offsets the freakishly-plain look that I'm currently rocking.)

I'm keeping busy on this project for Oxford, which is good, and wedding plans are blazing. Invitations got into the mail today, almost exactly eight weeks from the date, not too bad.

Parting shot: I collected some of my old toys from the basement at Dad's house when I was home. Among them was the foursome of the Real Ghostbusters (the cartoon, with the guy who did Garfield's cartoon voice as Peter Venkman). I noticed something the other day as I was ~~playing with them~~ ~~setting them up for display on my dresser~~ looking at them. The (pardon me) white** characters, Peter, Ray, and Egon all have hands molded in the typical "holding" position common to action figures like GI Joes or Star Wars toys. But Winston Zeddemore (which I've been misspelling, apparently, for my entire life as "Zedimore") has one of his hands in a unique position.

That reminds me of something, doesn't it? Someone who worked at Kenner in the 80's was awesome.

That's it, that's all! Check out our wedding website if you haven't already. (It's due for updates this week!)

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Ooh, baby, I'm tired.

*Only she probably said "tennis shoes," in her strange Midwest way. I don't even play tennis. But I do LOTS of sneaking.
**At a recent meeting for the book I'm working on, one of the editors raised a concern over my choice of denoting ethnicity for the characters in the art specs. On the orders of my boss, I've been using "white", "black", "asian", and "hispanic", because these are the ethnic categories that got the largest responses in the most recent American census. The (white) editor was concerned, specifically, that "white" and "black" were not politically-correct enough, and "wouldn't Caucasian and African-American be better?" Quite apart from the fact that it's a lot easier to type white and black than Caucasian and African-American, if people are self-identifying as "white" and "black", then perhaps it's appropriate to use those terms. I never call myself Caucasian, and throwing a blanket over all the dark-skinned people on the continent and calling them African does them a disservice as well.

Busy? No excuse!

2010-05-24T18:38:00.004-04:00

I really seriously dislike Facebook. This is a thing about me. Those who know this thing about me are most likely to be my actual friends. (In a world where "Facebook Friend" is a term, another thing that I dislike is having to qualify the word "friend".)

The reasons that I dislike Facebook are laid out fairly neatly in the Wikipedia entry called "Criticism of Facebook." The latest atrocities/idiocies/inanities to be laid at the feet of Zuckerberg and his posse are par for the course.

But enough about me. Or rather, enough about my problems with that thing over there. Despite the prevailing wisdom to the contrary, merely complaining about a thing does not fix it. There is a movement afoot to participate in a "mass-suicide" of Facebook accounts. quitfacebookday.com is the vanguard of the effort.

Katie and I together, on our Facebook account, have I don't know, maybe 200 friends. Which is about right. We don't approve everyone who tries to friend us, we don't join any groups or anything. We are highly antisocial when it comes to Facebook. I am sick of typing that word. We are highly antisocial when it comes to That Thing.

Still and all, what's the alternative? Yes, you can come to this website, but when I don't post anything for three months, it gets sorta boring. You can leave a comment to say hi, but nobody does that. If only there was another way that people could communicate with their actual friends and say something substantial....

I briefly toyed with the idea of writing actual physical letters and putting them in envelopes and sending them to people. And I may enact that plan sometime soon when the twin boulders of Work and More Work are lightened to some degree. But for the interim, I've decided to go back to the way things used to be, in simpler times, and write some reasonably-long-winded (medium-winded?) emails to people. Just one or two a week probably, just to reach out and touch base with someone I haven't heard from in a while. It's not a perfect solution, especially since I live so far away from 99% of the people I care about, but it'll have to do. Because it'll be a damn sight better than That Thing. Have you ever actually tried to figure out how someone's doing by looking at their That Thing account? You look at a bunch of smiling pictures, read 15 or 20 ten-word-or-less status updates, get confused by conversations you aren't involved in, see what groups or whatever they've "fanned". The voyeurism would be obscene if it wasn't so superficial.

Anyway. Watch out, you might get an e-mail from me. Send one back if you want. It's a fun new technology! I've recently started an e-mail correspondence game of chess with a very good friend of mine. The game is slow-going, but interesting. If you play at all, let me know, and we can arrange something.

About me: As it often happens, famine is followed by feast, raining is concurrent with pouring. After eight months of sitting on my bum, looking for jobs which stubbornly refused to materialize for Nonimmigrant Aliens, BookLinks now needs me to manage projects full time, while a project for Oxford University Press is finally building steam as well. It's better to be busy than to be fallow, but damn, little Adams need sleep, too. My work permit came through, as did my travel document, which let me get home for a rest and visit with my grandmother, Elizabeth Williams, who died three weeks after we came back to New York. I love my grandmother, and I'm going to miss her.

Katie and I have an interview with the Department of Homeland Security on June 2nd to prove that we have a real, loving, honest-to-God relationship, and that ours is not merely the story of a Canadian editor marrying an American to avoid deportation. Ahem.

I'm reading the last of my Christmas books, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon. It's quite good, but all the yiddish vocab can be a bit dense at times. I found it due to its having garnered both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for science fiction, so I've been surprised more than once when people who I know for a fact do not read such a genre ask me if it's any good.

I've been slowly chipping away at the monolith that is Final Fantasy XIII, but it's slow going. I've read that the game really picks up after the thirty-hour mark. Which seems like a long time to wait for a payoff, until you consider that the game's main storyline is expected to take nearly 100 hours to complete. Either way, chip, chip, one hour at a time.

Do not judge me! I will just say these things: I have been playing World of Warcraft. My guild, the Windrunners (of which I am "2nd-in-Command", lol), has been successfully raiding the first two wings of Icecrown Citadel, in both the 10- and 25-man versions. My GearScore (because such things matter) on my Paladin, Alessan, is over 5500. This is a "good" GearScore, I'm told. Most of that is gibberish, and I'm sorry. I'll make up for it by showing you my Paladin and his pet Baby Blizzard Bear outside the Human capital city of Stormwind:

Pretty slick. Alessan's sword is called "Rimefang's Claw", Rimefang being a fucking dragon that I killed.

Now I am tired, so I will present you with a video dump, for fun.

Since we were already talking about World of Warcraft, here's a funny song about zombies with a video using the game's engine (these things are called "machinima," for some reason). EDIT: As House helpfully points out in the comments, the song is by one Jonathan Coulton, who has become ensconced as the poster boy for geek rock. (That may not be the correct term. One could fill volumes with what I fail to know about music genres.) Please pursue him, it is well worth it:

Tron 2 (which is not actually called Tron 2) is coming. I continue to build barely-suppressed anticipation for it:

This is an excellent news story about news stories, which I'm sure you've already seen 2000 times on That Thing:

And this is a short LEGO-based sequence that manages to be significantly cooler than two-thirds of the Star Wars prequels:

Thank you for reading. I will close with a half-hearted promise to post more frequently as I find things floating in the twisting nether of the many internets.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Cormoks and unruns are delicious.

A Question, Followed by Reviews and Videos

2010-01-25T22:24:00.006-05:00

Greetings! I challenge you to single combat on the field of honour. The weapons are to be sharpened spoons.

My playful drawing above asks a serious question. I will allow you to slowly come to the appropriate conclusion without further prompting.

Work continues to be ephemeral. I know it exists, but it floats just beyond my grasp. My refrain has become, "Well, it's not actually a visa, even though everybody calls it that; it's a 'status.'" No one ever understands me. *bangs head on desk*

We'll be hosting a guest this week from "The Miami of Canada." (Most bizarre nickname for a city EVAR.)

I've taken in a lot of popular culture since Christmas, so I'm going to favour you all with Adam's Review Dump!

Review: Taken

Taken, simply put, was a bloody fucking mess. Wooden acting from all except Qui-Gon Jinn; wretched dialogue; spastic, ham-handed editing; action scenes that require an actual effort to willingly suspend disbelief, and an ending so predictable it could have been called by a four-year-old.

No, Jean Grey and Shannon from Lost cannot save your film, Luc Besson, you hack. You've been making The Transporter over and over again for the past eight years. Stop it.

The editing of the action scenes in particular killed me. Jump cut, jump cut, jump cut, handbrake, jump cut, rearview mirror, jump cut. My eyes hurt. Apparently the editor watched the Bourne movies and thought that was all that was required.

I will not belabour the two-dimensional characters any further than stating their stereotypes: the Fretful, ex-CIA Father who Smothers his Daughter; the Sorta-Kinda Bitchy Ex-Wife/Mother, happily remarried to a Rich Guy, who feels that hands-off parenting is the way to ~~win her daughter's love~~ create a strong woman out of their Silly Daughter; the oblivious Silly Daughter who means well, but gets talked into things by; the naïve Brainless Best Friend, who dies to serve as the tsk-tsk example of the film and willingly gives all kinds of personal information to; the Guy at the Airport, who is cute and obviously Evil and works for/with; the various Bad Eastern European Men, who are brutally executed by Neeson one by one on his way to; the Evil Arab Sheikh (I swear to God I would not make this up), a grossly fat, eyeliner-and-silk-dressing-gown-wearing pervert who purchases the miraculously still-living daughter.

Taken was a fucking stupid movie. If it was a person, I would tell it to go die in a fire.

Final Score: 0

Review: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

No, it's not a Pixar movie. Yes, it's based on a famous children's book, and yes, the people at Sony Pictures Entertainment took some patently mind-boggling leaps to inflate a 30-page picture book into an hour-and-a-half movie. Loads of new characters, conflicts, and jokes, with only cursory nods towards some images from the book.

It was fun. It was a fun little movie. Bill Hader and Anna Faris provide throwaway voiceovers for the leads, but the rest of the cast is stellar. Bruce Campbell as the Mayor? Mr. T as the Police Officer? One of my personal heroes, Neil Patrick Harris as Steve the Monkey, delivering most of the films LOL moments? My mind is ablown.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a grand little movie. It's not a genre-defining masterpiece like Wall-E or Up, but it has its place, and is well worth a look.

Final Score: 10

Review: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Hoo-boy. Okay.

When I saw Michael Bay's first Transformers film, I reviewed it with a few trite sentences after a lengthy diatribe on the shortcomings of Spider-Man 3. This second... thing... cannot be overlooked as easily.

The 2007 film was easily forgiven for its whirling-tornadoes-of-steel action sequences, primarily because it had so many whirling-tornadoes-of-steel action sequences. The movie succeeded in justifying its title (Transformers, for those of you who've lost the thread of the review already) by featuring the frigging robots. The boy-gets-car-and-meets-girl subplot was annoying, but it never pulled us away from the giant transforming robots for too long.

The sequel (which doesn't even dignify itself with a 2, as though it is some sort of add-on, or fucking DLC) fails here. Michael Bay, that son of a bitch, spends practically the entire film following Shia the Beef and The Sweaty Midriff that Walks Among Us as they run in slow-motion, deal with irascible professors and slowly, agonizingly inch towards the boy saying, "I wuv yoo." Nnngh.

Add to that the deficient plot swirling around The Beef's character (that Spike Witwicky is somehow imbued with Cosmic Powers and becomes a saviour of both the Human and Cybertronian species - and, now that you mention it, who told Cockhead that he could change Spike's name to Sam?); the patent idiocy of having the "ancient" Transformer, named Jetfire, who's been on the Earth for millennia, be a geriatric, complaining old codger with a cane, whose vehicle form is a Blackbird jet; the lack of a vocoder effect on Soundwave's voice, which left Frank Welker sounding like Doctor Claw; and the absolutely, appallingly, mind-stunningly racist caricatures that are Mudflap and Skids.

Thing is, this was not a Transformers movie. It should have been called Humans: Revenge of the Fallen. This was a movie about humans blowing shit up, blatant over-sexualization and trivialization of women, and thinly-veiled, "come on, it's not that bad," casual racism. Michael Bay, like George Lucas before him, needs to go away for a while and have some alone time.

And let someone else reboot this poor franchise and make it cool again. (And for Christ's sake, get rid of Elrond and let Frank Welker fight with Peter Cullen again, please.)

Final Score: 0

EDIT: Video dumped snipped to get rid of broken Today's Big Thing links.

I always suspected that there was some cruel deity at work behind the scenes while I was playing Tetris.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Final Fantasy XIII nerdiness for me and some of my more-nerdy friends. (Non-Final-Fantasy-nerds can skip this one.)

BBC News wins the award for Best Lead Sentence in a Legitimate News Story with this gem. (It's the bolded sentence that begins, "The elusive...")

And this picture was good for a giggle after someone stuck it up on the Book of Faces. (Knowledge of the Rivalry makes it only marginally funnier.)

In closing, a pithy comparison found on one of the internets.

That's all you get for now. Home for a rest in March!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Read? Nah, we don't really do much readin'. Not so much. (Skip to 1:25 on the video.)

Merry Christmas, with Apologies

2009-12-24T19:45:00.004-05:00

Hi! Merry Christmas!

I'm not typically prone to over-self-analysis, but I realized that part of the reason I hadn't gotten off my duff to post something to the website is that I was mildly ashamed of the fact that I'm currently *ahem* under-employed. I have a job, but no hours to go with it; and, of course, I always want to put my super-successful-and-mega-optimistic-Adam face forward at all times, so when things don't go so hot(ly), I imagine I just kind of want to stick my head in the sand for a bit.

Pfft. Anyway.

It's Christmas!

Here's our tree:

As you can see, we've been naughty this year, and Santa's passed us over. (PROTIP: That's Ganesh on the wall behind the tree.)

And here's our door:

Katie saw these wreaths when we were in Columbus, Ohio (visiting Matt and Abby), that were made of jingle bells. We weren't able to find one for sale, so we hit upon the idea of buying a regular wreath and sticking a load of jingle bells on it, for the same effect. The Snowman cost a dollar at the Dollar Tower store down the street. A steal, pure and simple.

Meeting people in New York is a bit of a mission, namely because no one else will ever take any goddamned initiative. We successfully befriended our neighbours in Glendale, but distance has rendered that relationship sort of moot. (The remove between Glendale and Manhattan is nearly as great, comparatively, as that between Taichung and St. John's.) We've been in Inwood for about 8 months now, and only ever met a few of our neighbours (in a 50-unit building) in passing. So, in the spirit of the season, we had a party last night to celebrate Tipp's Eve (which, stupefyingly, doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry; WTF). We posted a little sign down in the lobby of our building. A grand total of five neighbours showed up, lol. They were absolutely lovely people, all of them, and we happy few had a nice time. But I'm simply astounded that so few people dropped by, just for a drink and how-do-you-do. New York is a strange place, and we continue to muddle through.

I've saved up a great deal of internet fun over the past few months. Here are some things to look at as your chestnuts roast over open fires, etc.

Obama has nothing on this guy.

Hooray, beer! I cannot believe I had never seen this commercial before.

I've never even had Red Stripe. Is it any good?

Not for kids:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

(Stupid video is too wide.)

Tron 2 is probably old news, but this is still pretty slick.

This is a pretty cool cover for a French gaming magazine. I can recognize everyone except for the girl holding the green vegetables. (I think she might be the character from Mirror's Edge. Oh yeah, that's totally her.)

Here's a weird, weird, weird CNN story about the world's weirdest guy. Read it all and watch the accompanying video. Then go hug someone and thank whatever god you believe in.

This is a very funny explanation of World of Warcraft, using Super Mario Brothers as an analogy. Amusing for those not addicted, hilarious for those who are. The screenshots kill me.

And, Hitler has, fantastically, finally become the object of utter ridicule that he deserves to be.

BlazBlue is a fighting game, I think.

That is all. I am going to sit and watch some Christmas movies with Katie. Her mom and stepdad are coming to town tonight. (They were supposed to come tomorrow, but something happened with a storm, and things got changed. Fun!)

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I really mean that. I miss you all. Call us on Skype or come visit.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Jinggedy-jing (hee-haw, hee-haw), it's Dominick the donkey. Jinggedy-jing (hee-haw, hee-haw), the Italian Christmas donkey. La la la-la la-la la la la la. La la la-la la-la la-ee-oh-da....

Team of two.

2009-08-31T15:01:00.007-04:00

Well, it was a good trip home. Rebecca was in New York for ten days, then ten days in Newfoundland where I finally screwed up my courage and asked Katie if she wanted to get married. Are you ready for some super-cute photos? Brace yourselves.
So, there was a whole super-secret plot that my dad, stepmom, and sisters were involved in to just get the ring in the first place. Then we went out to Bowring Park to "take a picture with the Peter Pan statue." We stopped under the weeping willow near the Bungalow (which Katie stubbornly insisted wasn't actually a weeping willow), and I took the opportunity to ask her.

I think she said yes. Actually, I don't believe I was quite able to get the question out before she said yes. Awww. (My next post is going to have to be all about fluffy adorable kittens if I'm going to keep the level of saccharine sweetness up to this post's levels.)

"What's your problem?" I asked.

And here we are, slightly overexposed under the willow (or whatever the hell it is).

Looks like Friday, August 20, 2010 is the date for the thing. Yes, b'y.

Well, there you have it. A wonderful marriage of ~~convenience~~ love.

Adam
No snotty little quote this time!

Review: 12 Women (+ Bonuses!)

2009-07-07T09:04:00.004-04:00

So, an insufferable asshole I know wanted me to "review" his newest CD, based mainly on the fact that I left the longest comment on his message board when he released his first album, Small Apocalypse.

I am admittedly not a "music person." My hobbies are games, books, chess, and computers. Don't get me wrong, I like music, and I listen to it a lot. I've just never had the acumen for picking out new bands and songs that several of my friends have (i.e., Chris, Melissa, and Paco). I love hearing new music (Melissa's website is great for that), but I rarely seek it out. Similarly, I tend to treat music as background noise. I can listen to a song fifty times and never pay attention to what it's about. There are songs I've heard hundreds of times over 30 years, that one day I'll actually pay attention to and be surprised by their content. So reviewing a whole album represents a unique challenge for me: I have to sit and concentrate on it. I have to close my book, turn off my game, and pay attention. I listened to 12 Women about a dozen times on the subway going to and from work over the past week and a half, and god damn me, it was only this morning, a scant two hours ago, that I finally got what some of the songs were about. I'm not implying that Oliver's work is byzantine or opaque, but that my powers of analysis are about as sharp as an Apple Mighty Mouse.

Still, let it never be said that I do anything half-assed.

12 Women takes as its overarching theme the idea of women in general, and the album examines the 'gentler' sex from a variety of angles. There seems to be a bit of a skew towards women in the late-teens-to-thirties demographic, but that's perhaps understandable. The songs:

35mm: The album's first track. Sounds like a single. Not that that's a bad thing, but it has that undefinable feel of being the song that attracts attention. Which seems to have been borne out somewhat by its appearances on Electrical Language and Pop Free Radio's top ten.

Watch the World Burn: Some of Oliver's songs remind me of They Might Be Giants, and this is one of them. Granted, I'm biased, since TMBG are my "favourite" band (as far as someone who is so musically deficient can be said to have a favourite band). It is also a good song.

Substance Abuse: Best song on the album. The female vocal backbeat is so cool, the content is edgy, and bonus points for Kate Storey's fantastic characterization of Substance with only four lines of "dialogue". The extro/lead-in to the next song is slick, too.

Pretty Girl on Roller Skates: This sounds like the second single to me. Not a bad song, but following Substance Abuse, it feels a little bland.

Mall of America: I didn't like this one at first, but it really grew on me, especially the creepy, haunting chorus (courtesy of my compatriot Lisa Gillam, I've learned). I've been to the Mall of America. It was a bit much, but for all its size it felt empty. Plus, where do they get off being such a huge mall and only having two video game stores, both of them Gamestops? WTF. That chorus sounds familiar, too, but I can't pin it down.

A Million Dollars in Her Eyes: Not a huge fan of this one. The backbeat was a little too hiphoppy for me, and the sample (David Bowie?) with Oliver's spoken addendum felt out of place.

Extraordinary Handcuffs: Sometimes, even when I'm really trying, my attention wanders. That happened with this song practically every time I listened to it. It just didn't hold me. When I finally caught hold of it, it reminded me of Oliver's older, Moonshine Flush material.

The Money: Something about songs focusing on money always turns me off. That song by Pink Floyd does the exact same thing. I think it's that cash register sound, actually, because a quick search for "Money" in my mp3s reveals many songs on the topic that I like. Anyway. Wo buxiwan.

A New Summer: Another slightly hiphoppy song, but I like it better than Million Dollars. I think because it's slower? My listening skills fail me.

Lady Liberty: The sole incorporeal woman on the album. The song interested me from the outset, because it's about New York, and I live in New York, and I like New York. The "too much, too many people" conceit in the song is a bit predictable, and seems to oversimplify the city a bit, but it's a song, what do I want? I do like the subtle "Another One Bites the Dust" bassline I keep hearing in there. I thought that was clever.

Clubmare: A song about the decadent, speed-sniffing club culture and the inherent emptiness implied by it. I think. The clubby, dancy main track is offset nicely by the folksy intro (which works really well in the context of a "this is how partying has evolved" sort of thing). I'd like to hear a full-song version of the intro. Also, nightclub, nightmare, clubmare, I see what you did there, clever boy. Nightnight would have been less effective as a title.

I'll Find You There: Again, this sounds a bit like Oliver's older stuff. A nice solid love letter of a song.

(The repeated bits of the Pointer Sisters' Sesame Street numbers song were great. This was my favourite skit on Sesame Street, along with the ladybugs' picnic and the alligator king. Oh, hell, I'll just embed them all at the end.)

I thought 12 Women was a very good album, and you should both download it and throw a few dollars Oliver's way (he has a paypal account).

Final Score: 10

Also very much worth mentioning is Oliver's Gods and Devils collection of instrumental tracks. They're of uniformly high quality, but Ganesha's Last Stand and the most recent Mars Attacks really stand out from the crowd. Good background musics! Go give them a listen!

I have work that needs doing, so I'll quickly toss a few internet things at you and go.

Funniest detention slip ever, courtesy of Arnold's gmail status message.

A graphic representation of teh sex in Marvel's X-Men universe. No, not that kind of graphic representation, you hentai-craving sickos.

DARPA's new pet is a hummingbird-sized hummingbird drone. I want one.

And finally, I can't believe I haven't mentioned Lisa Gillam before or linked to her website. It's an atrocious oversight that I am correcting as I write this. Lisa's super fantastic, and she was kind enough to put up with my utter lack of musicality long enough to stand helplessly by and watch me butcher some Irish-Newfoundland songs at a couple of St. Patrick's Day parties in Taichung.

And, as promised, nostalgia in its purest, most concentrated form:

Get in touch! I'll be home in August!

Now fuck off.

Love Adam
We all live in the Mall of America, and we are fast asleep.

Flyin' solo!

2009-06-23T08:28:00.006-04:00

Well, Katie's gone off to do her Montessori teacher training for the summer, leaving me to ~~wallow in my own filth~~ fend for myself for a few weeks. She'll come home on the weekends, though, so that's a good incentive for me to ~~hide the bodies~~ keep the place tidy.

I had a birthday. I got some cards from various quarters, a couple of games from Dad and Liz, and a slew of books I've been coveting from Katie. On my birthday proper, Katie took me down to Chinatown to one of the only games arcades in New York City (arcades having been pretty much slain by the current wild success of home consoles). We played $4 worth of games, Katie beat me down at Street Fighter II, we got some Häagen Dazs and headed up to Central Park, where we rented a rowboat and rowed around the lake for a bit. Then we went home and ~~spent a goddamned hour trying to find a parking spot for the car because it was Puerto Rico day~~ immediately went home and were happy and nothing was bad. Katie led me on a treasure hunt for the aforementioned books, then we went over to the park for a nighttime picnic! So fun! I loved my birthday.

Fun stuff:

I found a cool little toy on the internet that lets you create your own World of Warcraft-style item descriptions. Pretty funny for anyone who plays the game, mildly amusing for the rest of the people in the world. I created the item to the right. I think it's funny.*

[strained silence]

Fuck you guys.

Here's a little flash game that's cute and clever. It's called ClickPLAY!, and the framing story (such as it is), is that the poor neglected "Play" button, ubiquitous in flash gaming, has finally had enough and wants nothing more than to run away and hide. The object of the game is to click the little bastard. Fun!

Hefford tried to send me the link to this video a long time ago, but he made the miscalculation of sending it via Facebook. (Which, I must mention, was the source of many Happy Birthday wishes... some from my closest friends and relatives, some from complete or near-strangers, and some directed not to me, but [well-meaningly, I've no doubt] to Katie. Ahem. Facebook.) Either way, I can only hope for three things: 1. that they really are making Beyond Good & Evil 2; 2. that they will not release it only on the XBox 360, which I have no intentions of buying; and 3. that they will not release it too soon, because I do not have any money with which to buy a PS3.

Now, blogger is acting up, so I will cut this short and hope the post publishes without too much drama.

I hope to talk to you soon!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Never rub another man's rhubarb.

*The funniest part is that it's a Paladin-only item, but Paladins can't equip Fist Weapons! LMAO!

Not much!

2009-06-03T12:28:00.019-04:00

I know, but what can I say? Work is work: project management is boring. Sarah and Beverly had a lovely visit. I'm looking forward to Rebecca visiting in August. I played the new Punch-Out!! at Nintendo World, and it was really fun. There's a new Super Mario Galaxy coming out. Yoshi will be in it.

We saw a few movies recently. We went and saw Up in the theatre, watched The Wrestler at our friend Donna's house, and watched The Graduate the other day.

Let us review them!
Up was great. It was a great movie. It was great from top to bottom. And it was in 3D. And it was great. Up is the kind of movie every other movie wants to be. It was a great movie. Go see it.
Final Score: 10

The Wrestler was a very good movie. Mickey Rourke was robbed. The depiction of the pro wrestling culture was a little shallow, but it was geared to people who don't know anything about wrestling. (Watching it with two Montessori teachers was an experience all its own: "Do they really cut themselves??? Ohmygod.") Bonus points for featuring Ernest Miller as the Ayatollah in the final fight. Bonus bonus points for Marisa Tomei as the strung-out stripper love interest.
Final Score: 10

I honestly didn't know what to make of The Graduate. Good music, good actors, decent camera work and cinematography. I think it may have been that Dustin Hoffman was just a little too inscrutable. Is the message of the film that women are over-emotional, fucked-up people with no will of their own? Is it that the best way to get the woman you want it to be a fucking creepy motherfucker (lol) and stalk the shit out of her? I always heavily criticize the 'forced romance' plot device (also called "I love you so much for no reason!!!!! See Transformers for a really stellar example), but it seems here that it's the entire reason for the movie. Anne Bancroft was so good at the beginning of the film (back in an age when a cougar was a cat), but Mrs. Robinson dissolves (devolves?) from "confident, interesting older woman with some emotional baggage" into "paranoid wicked witch" mode at the first hint of competition from her daughter. Too bad. Really, the movie fell apart in the second half. Katie brought up a good point when she said, "Where is he getting the money for all this?" Driving around in his Spider, buying an engagement ring, I felt it really hard to relate to young Benjamin. Bonus points for KITT as the dad, Mr. Roper as the landlord, and Dr. Leo Marvin as the guy who says, "Shall I call the cops? I'll call the cops."
Final Score: 0

We went to see some theatah as well, catching a performance of "Sophistry", featuring our favourite actress, Ellen Dolan. It was quite funny, even if it couldn't really settle on what kind of play it wanted to be.

I consistently say that my friends are almost universally more talented than I am, and an excellent example of this is Oliver Benjamin Thayer. Oliver (or "Jolly Ollie" as he likes to be called) has just released his second full-length album, entitled 12 Women. You should go to his website and download it, along with his previous effort, Small Apocalypse. SA scored a perfect ten on this very website (Small Apocalypse, not South Africa [although that gives me an idea {see below}]... too much World of Warcraft has got me using shorthand for everything... lfm hVH 1heal 1dps gtg.... eep!). Jolly's been after me to review his new CD, but my headphones are broken, so I need to get new ones so I can listen to it on the train... it's a whole big thing. So, 12 Women review coming soon.

You know, I've only ever reviewed movies and one CD. I think I'll try to review some more diverse stuff. Like, I dunno, countries, books and... um.... people. That ought to be good for a laugh. Wanna see something (or ~one) reviewed? Leave a note in the comments section, and I'll take it under advisement.

Also (serious face), my grandmother hasn't been well lately, so if you know her think a good thought at her, and if you don't, think a good thought at someone else who may need it.

Well, I have to get back to waiting for a shipment of books from the client which was "sent out a week ago" but we still haven't gotten it, not that that's a big deal, you know, I mean, we've only got editors in Barcelona, Mexico City and Berlin waiting for stuff we need to send them after we receive it, and oh, we aren't getting an extension on the deadline, well that's just hilarious arrrrrrgh work. As always, I'm both disdainful of and intimidated by Facebook, so you may need to actually talk to me in order to let me know what's going on in your life. We have skype, and we love talking on the computer, so leave a comment or send me an e-mail, and we can set up a date.

Parting shot: bizarre, yet real.

One last thing.

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

When I was a kid, speaking in tongues was a good way to get burned at the stake.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
I think Katie might need an intervention for her addiction to Intervention.

Quick & Dirty

2009-05-06T13:20:00.004-04:00

Hi!

This one has to be quick, because my sister, Sarah, and her friend are coming to visit in, like, four hours.

We're all settled into the new apartment. I have pictures, but my internet connection has been a total dick for the last couple of weeks. (Plus, I'm ascairt to post pictures without Katie's input.)

So, you'll have to be happy with another walkthrough.

Here are some extra videos to eat your time.

First, a lovely staged... thing... that I saw on Melissa's website.

Sound of Music Train Station @ Yahoo! Video

Next: an equally lovely, but longer, "keep your chin up" video that will make Katie and people like her cry, perhaps.

Finally, less likely to make people cry, but more likely to be 'full of teh winz': a reboot of the G.I. Joe cartoon, called "Resolute". It's supposed to tie in loosely to the new Joe film. There are many parts. This is the first.

A link to a flash game: ScaryGirl.

And a closing photo of Kitty and Fauntleroy at our old apartment.
Farewell! More substantive posts to follow!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
The phone is ringing....oh my god. Get it together....

A video is worth 4830 pictures.

2009-04-02T20:23:00.002-04:00

So, here:

Come visit!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
My paladin is at level 75. Like you care.

Movin' on up.

2009-03-31T09:27:00.006-04:00

Well, here we are. I've got a lot to cover, so this is going to be a long one. Go make a cup of tea or a rum and coke or something, because you're gonna need about half an hour.

After a couple of weeks of abortive stops and starts, Katie having called in family members as diverse as her mother, her step-aunt, and her step-cousin for advice and support, it looks like we've finally nailed down a new apartment in Manhattan.

I've had a song going in my head since yesterday.

Yeah, that's the one.

(While we're not actually moving to the East Side, it's debatable whether the second storey qualifies as "the sky", and I don't like fish, I still feel some kinship with George and Weezie.)

Backstory: when we first moved to New York, the chief concern for Katie and her mom in doing the apartment hunting (I wasn't a part of the process because I was busy in Newfoundland securing legal entry to Murka) was proximity to my place of work, in Queens. Now, as we've learned since, Queens is the largest borough in New York City, and the neighbourhoods of Astoria and Glendale are quite a ways apart from each other.

Regardless, it was in Glendale we ended up, surrounded by the dead. Glendale is a lovely, quiet neighbourhood. Our landlady is an absolute sweetheart, if a little slow-moving when it comes to repairs and such. (Which, I suppose, is similar to criticizing milk for being white.) We have neighbours whose company we legitimately enjoy.

BUT, the hour-and-a-half commute is killing us. I work in DUMBO, and Katie's on the Upper West Side. We needed to move.

We found the 'perfect' apartment last Saturday. A two-bedroom around the corner from family/friends Emily and Derrick. $1500 a month. $1250 broker's fee. We felt we could swing it, got the application in on Monday, lost out to someone who applied on Sunday.

Pewp.

But things work in weird ways. After the fact, I was researching the management company (who would have effectively been our landlords) on one of the internets, and lo and behold, scores of blog posts about how XYZ Management are "a bunch of fucking slumlords" and "stay far away from 000 Something Ave [the very building we were looking at]."

Days pass. Craigslist was pored over. E-mails were sent. On this Saturday past we looked at apartments in our desired neighbourhood again.

The result was an absolutely massive one-bedroom on the same block as the one we missed out on (but not in the same building). The rent is only slightly higher than what we're paying now, and it includes heat and hot water (which we currently pay for separately). Plus, no broker's fee. 25 minutes will get Katie to work, about 45 for me. We sign the lease on Thursday. (There was a bit of additional drama regarding some unreasonable expectations on the landlord's part regarding what constitutes 'adequate' personal savings, but we were lucky enough to know some very cool people who proved clearly that teamwork makes it happen.)

So, that's the big news from New York. So long ~~dental plan~~ Glendale, ~~Lisa needs braces~~ hello, Inwood! Photos, videos, and hilarious commentary on several local street names forthcoming (i.e. the intersection of Seaman and Cumming LOL).

On to the rest of the world.

A fantastic birthday present that you can actually buy and read:
There are also, allegedly, ninjas in it. Adam want.

Observe! The Cajun Crawler: "Like a Segway, but with a dozen creepy feet."

Let us discuss free games. Those who care not for games ~~can go fuck themselves~~ may skip this part.

There is something called Dwarf Fortress. The sheer size and scope of the game causes my head to spin. I spent a few minutes reading the tutorial, and I fear it. I fear it in the way I once feared World of Warcraft, a primal fear that my very soul would be devoured were I to venture too near its blinding brightness. Having proven that I am man enough to both play World of Warcraft and also lead a sensible and reasonably normal life at the same time, I edge closer to Dwarf Fortress each day, and my anxiety grows. I fear I am lost.

More accessible, less potentially-time-consuming, are our friends the Flash games:

In Music Catch 2, you must catch yellow notes while avoiding red ones. Music plays. It is soothing.

Loops of Zen is also soothing, in a maddening sort of way. Turn things until they make no sense. Suddenly, a breakthrough, and you see the pattern briefly before being thrown to the next meaningless jumble of lines. Is that zen? I am ignorant.

Bowja the Ninja 2: In Big Man's Compound is not particularly soothing, but you can take your time and you never die. I finished it in about fifteen minutes. A standard click-on-the-right-thing-at-the-right-time game.

Ultimate Crab Battle is not soothing. It is batshit insane. Good God. Never let go of the A key.

There seems to be something of a vogue going around the video game websites lately. Chemistry.
I Heart Chaos has assembled a periodic table with video game characters instead of elements. It's colorful and fun. It will serve as a desktop background.
The reason I call it a vogue rather than an oddity is the fact that someone else created a thematically-similar if less brightly-colored periodic table featuring a timeline of game console controllers. It's interesting to look at, but less ideal for downloading and sticking on your computer's desktop.

People who play video games are often very, very stupid. Nothing evidences this truth more than fanboyism, wherein a person chooses a side and then sticks with it through thick and thin, the nerd equivalent of rooting for a given pro sports team.

Nor do I claim to be immune to fanboyism. In my formative years, I had a NES, and my neighbour Darrell Whitten had a Sega Master System. He thought the Sega games were great, and I knew that a system featuring Mario, Link, Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior and Startropics had to be superior. Even now, in my sage wisdom, I refuse to consider purchasing an Xbox 360, not because I have any particular affection for Sony's ridiculously-priced monolith, but more because I think Microsoft has quite enough money (which they use to create hilarious pranks like Windows Vista), thank you very much.

That said, the way some people talk to each other about video games makes my heart hurt. "HAY U GUISE R ALL GHEY WITH UR HOMO PS3S LOL" or "wii is so gay its only for littel kids", and their ilk succeed in offending on many, many levels. Which is why it was refreshing to find these cute cartoons on, of all places, the IGN comment boards. (Do not click that link. It is not worth your time.) I repost them here in the spirit of camaraderie.
The Xbox 360 sick in bed with the Red Ring of Death made me laugh out loud, and the last one reminded me that I really am going to have to pick up a second-hand Dreamcast sometime in the future.

A shout-out is due to the person who created Fuck You, Penguin. Good work, lad.

I will leave you with the frank and honest statement that I do not know what the fuck this is.

But I very much want to watch the whole thing.

That's all! Exciting times ahead!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
You'll need to have _six months'_ rent in the bank to even be considered. Fuck. That.

Penis. No, I mean... wait...

2009-03-10T08:55:00.009-04:00

Well, we might as well go ahead and get it all out of our systems. Doctor Manhattan, like most males, has a penis. He rocks out with his cock out. I was afraid that they would wimp out and make him wear clothes through the whole film, but they didn't. Good for them. It was mildly irritating when, during dramatic moments, the chuckleheads sitting in front of us would notice Jon's blue manhood wagging about and burst into Beavis-and-Butthead style "uhuhuhuh" laughter.

Also worrying was the large number of small children in the theatre as we watched this (deservedly) R-rated movie. I'm frequently amazed at how poorly some people parent their children. In a similar vein to the legally brain-dead parents who allow their kids to play games like Grand Theft Auto and then act surprised when they stab their sister over a Nintendo DS (or not), Katie and I actually sat next to a group of four children, aged approximately 6-11 years. One of the kids was sucking his thumb, and another took a fairly expensive nap. Meanwhile, on screen, Nite Owl is putting the blocks to Silk Spectre in the Owlship, Rorshach is planting a meat cleaver into a child-killer's forehead, everybody's saying "fuck" and "shit" like they're contributing to this website, and let's not forget Doc Manhattan's big blue thang. Sigh. And yes, I'm aware that I'm being sort of hypocritical, accusing people of bad parenting when I don't have kids myself, but fuck that. This movie was not appropriate for kids, based solely on the level of violence.

Which leads us neatly into my brief critique of the film. If you plan on seeing it, have never read the comic, and don't want things spoiled, then go watch the movie or read the book and come back afterwards.

I liked it. I can actually make this faster by saying that I liked it all, with the exception of the following elements:
• Malin Åkerman - was apparently cast more for her physical resemblance to Silk Spectre II then for her acting ability; successfully took one of the two most important and deep characters from the comic book and reduced her to two facial expressions; such a shame.
• the violence - I am a big fan of fictional violence in general, but the comic purposefully veered away from excess in favor of a more realistic portrayal; Nite Owl pulled a Jet Li, busting-the-elbow-through-the skin move that made no sense; Silk Spectre stabbed a guy in the throat; the violence was a bit over-glorified, where I think its portrayal as ugly-but-sometimes-necessary would have been more effective.
• the "super" heroes - in the novel, there was Doctor Manhattan, and then there was everyone else; there was exactly one superhero (perhaps two if you count Ozymandias' metahuman reflexes, but that's more of an amazingly-well-trained thing, like Batman), but in the film, the Comedian, Nite Owl, and Silk Spectre all exhibit greater-than-average strength, which I thought was silly and tried to drag the movie into the same genre with Batman and Iron Man, where it does not belong, any more than the comic should be placed on the same shelf with the latest X-Men crossover.
• the ending - I don't think it was bad, it was just different; the replacement of the giant alien squid with Ozymandias' vilification of Doctor Manhattan made sense in that it kept Jon as the lynchpin which the entire story turned on, and that's fine; I just felt that the catastrophe lost a lot of its viscerality, since, in the novel, the alien squid thing dies and kills half of New York, but it doesn't actually destroy anything: there are just piles and piles of twisted human bodies; the movie sanitizes this a bit by having large portions of several cities be vaporized, resulting in a (perhaps satisfyingly?) cleaner rebuilding-New-York shot towards the end that wears its post-September 11th sensibility plain on its sleeve.

All that said, I liked the film, and I will watch it again when it becomes available on DVD. Therefore...

Final score: 10.
(I know that was a lot to read. Sorry; here, have some pictures and videos.)
We had guests. Paul and Stephanie trekked down from Halifax for a week, carting wee little Colin along for the ride. Sadly, Colin is a drunk. Shame. We actually didn't get any photos of the trip, so I'll have to hit up Paul's flickr... stream.. or whatever. It was lovely to have visitors, though, and we can't wait to darken their doorway someday soon.

Speaking of wee little things! Our oven gave out a couple of weeks ago. We told our landlady. Nothing happened for a while. Suddenly, we're told we're getting a new stove! Hooray, right?
Not so much. Now our kitchen looks like it had one of its teeth knocked out. Christ's sake. Ah, well. I hear Inwood's nice...

The internet continues to vomit forth its bounty.

Shopping Cart Hero doesn't do lots, but what it does, it does well. Go down the hill, go up in the air, try not to die.

Don't Shit Your Pants probably doesn't need much explanation. If you've ever played Maniac Mansion, Police Quest, or any of those old Sierra or LucasArts game s, then you should be fine.

Someone very clever mocked up an intro for a faux-80s Saturday-morning Watchmen cartoon.

There is a person in the world who performs video game theme songs a cappella and with a ukulele, and this person is, alarmingly, not me.

In more distressing news, sadness suffuses my soul:
Without the Green Lantern Ring, how will I ~~open my beer~~ defend the Earth from aliens? *whinewhine*

We'll have to depend on Kitty, I suppose.

That's all the time I have today, kids! Keep in touch!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Not enough mana!

Desperately Trying Not to be a Cynical Asshole

2009-02-22T12:37:00.008-05:00

The easy way is easy. I can easily sit here and crow about corporations, dehumanizing commercialism, selling our childhood memories, billions of dollars in mouse-ears sales, the absolutely criminal price of $2.75 for an Itzakadoozie, the utter homogeneity of Disney culture, or just how bloody creepy a farmed community spitting distance from Walt Disney World (named Celebration, for Christ's sake) is. See? That was easy.

Still. Still. It was fun. I had a nice time. There were crowds. They thronged. There were people there dragging their children onto rides which the kids did not want to get on. These children were yelled at. And still. It was fun.

But I'm not here to change the world, and you're not here looking for answers to the world's myriad problems.

Katie's dad has a condo in Celebration, FL. Just read the Wikipedia article. It was a lovely little condominium complex with a pool, a business center, a cafe, a gym, the works.

When I was ten, I went to Florida with my mom, aunt, grandmother, sister and cousins. We stayed in Daytona Beach. My memories of that trip are hazy. I remember ants in the cracks on the sidewalk. Watching the old Hercules cartoon on television. Going to Toys R Us (which was a big deal, because there wasn't one in Newfoundland in 1988), where I was allowed to buy a Dino Riders toy. Going to a flea market where I got one of those clacking silver ball things you put on your desk. (I didn't know what it was called.)

My memories of Walt Disney World are brighter, but no less hazy for that. The Haunted Mansion, Swiss Family Robinson treehouse, It's a Small World, and not being permitted to press the "go up" button on the Dumbo Ride because Sarah was frightened. The World is composed of four parts now: two Kingdoms (of both the Magical and Animal varieties), Disney's Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM Hollywood Studios), and a wildly-recapitalized Epcot (which used to stand for Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow).

I'll spare you a longer rant. I've posted plenty of pictures from the trip here, with the diatribe broken up into bite-sized captions instead. Suffice it to say that we did actually have a great time, even if Reed can be a bit... um... results-oriented in his approach to vacationing. That said, it was due to Reed's diligence in planning and actually sprinting from place to place that we got to do and see as much as we did and saw. I just went through the pamphlets and came up with 29 as the number of attractions we saw in three days. It was as concentrated a dose of Disney as can be administered without killing the test subject.

Onwards.

For those of you who care about such things: we did not, in point of fact, disappear from the face of the Earth in the closing months of 2008. To prove this, I have provided a couple of dozen photographs from that period of time here. There is a giant Hello Kitty.

Jeff was kind enough to notify me of the existence of something called a Pomegranate. It purports to be the ultimate in slim, sexy mobile computing. An iPhone killer, if you will. Click on through to its website and take a look. The catch, of course, is that it is a spectacular fraud. The Pomegranate does not exist, other than as a wonderful little trick to get you to learn more about Nova Scotia. The entire thing was dreamed up as a viral ad for Nova Scotia's tourism push. Good for them! Adam approved. Final score: 10.

As Watchmen draws near, they continue to come up with nifty expanded-universe stuff. Like this.

Which segues neatly into some free online video games. Heff directed me to this one; drop a coin in the slot and play Final Fight with either NiteOwl or the Silk Spectre. (Protip: Kick through garbage cans FTW.) Also, less punchy-kicky, more obssessivey-compulsy is Perfect Balance, which explains itself very clearly in its title, and which I played to level 4 before getting too pissed off to go any further.

Today's Big Thing has been a source of amusement for me. Here's a particularly good one.

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Also, I have learned that there will be a film called Black Dynamite. This is the trailer.

I think it will be a perfect film.

There are those who maintain that LOLcats are a dying breed. I say these people spend too much time on the internet. (A dangerous thing for me to say.) So, it with great joy that I present to you, rolcats, a clever spoof of lolcats wherein Cyrillic gibberish is superimposed on photos of cats, and a witty "translation" is provided. It is wonderful.

I mentioned last time that I was trying to learn some C++ and Flash. Well, I spent about an hour and a half of my busy Friday night making my first flash animation. I uploaded it to youtube, but the framerate took a hit. If you want, you can download the .mov file here, or the .swf file here, for a less-choppy version.

Not much, but it's a start.

That's it for now. I have to cook supper. We have visitors arriving from Nova Scotia ~~tomorrow~~ tonight! Surprise!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
I'm her mom. No, she's not.

Hello, World!

2009-02-07T18:29:00.005-05:00

The world of educational publishing is, apparently, not as recession-proof as we were all led to believe by the educational publishing pundits, and as such, I find myself with slightly-more-than-is-average-for-Adam free time, which I am filling with some work for SUPER SECRET PROJECT, as well as some much-needed self-improvement in the arena of computing. That is, I am teaching myself to code in C++ and Flash (thus, the clever pun illustrated above*). So, if anyone has any knowledge of Flash or C++, I would dearly love to hear from you and become your apprentice in these arcane symbols, delimiters and variables.

Our subjugation to the Book of Faces has been gentler than I had anticipated (initial volley of "another one bites the dust"s notwithstanding), but I still think you all have rocks in your head for allowing the Book to absorb all your pictures, names, vital statistics, etc. I am unable to trust this 24-year-old Haah-vaad dropout with so much personal data, especially given the fact that "impersonation schemes affect fewer than 1 percent of Facebook's 150 million users."
But, wait. 1% of 150 million is...
1.5 million.
So, fewer than 1.5 million people who use Facebook are affected by impersonation schemes.
Christ Jesus.

ANYway.

Things of interest found on the internets:

Arnold directed my attention to a website called Today's Big Thing, which showcases a different, seemingly-random video each day. After paging through a few ho-hum attempts at humour (and a couple of childish asshole pranks), I unearthed these two gems.

Video the First: A clever bit of self-promotion by a band called Axis of Awesome, which nonetheless manages to point up the unsurprising dearth of actual talent and originality on offer in the pop music of the past couple of decades.

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Video the Second: Star Wars: As Retold by Someone Who Has Never Seen It. Quite funny.

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

In my constant search for diversion, flash games are always welcome. This website has several baffling Japanese flavours to taste. Also, Grow Tower (as well as all of its cousins) is fun and adorable in a very Katamari-Damacy-way. I hope to one day soon be able to make something so interesting and fun with my burgeoning Flash-powers.

The worryingly-titled What the hell just came out of my ass dot com is, as near as I can tell and quite surprisingly, Safe For Work, while at the same time being an interesting experiment in absurdity. In order to operate it properly, you must click the "Refresh" button on your browser constantly. If you don't 'get it', well, sorry; you're just stupid, I guess.

Finally, I must admit that Facebook actually "gone done good" for once, by allowing my friend Heff to share this video with us. (However, in keeping with the general theme of "Facebook sucks", the embed code will not play nicely with my website. Figures.)

That is all I have to share today.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Winner of catchphrase of the year: Fred Willard's "Wha' happened?"

*Sprite image of the Flash respectfully lifted from Scrollboss.

Fuck you and the facebook you rode in on.

2009-01-06T07:33:00.011-05:00

It seems that we have been press-ganged into joining this... thing. I can see that we have already acquired 60 friends, several of whom are very good friends.

Please don't demand that we put pictures up or scribble incessantly on 'walls'. I already have a place to put pictures, a place that is actually mine and not owned by some smarmy 24-year-old prick, and you're reading my (nnngh) 'wall' right now. Granted, since my descent into madness, I haven't been as attentive to your needs as I'd like, but it's a New Year: renewed energy and all that. I will not post our Facebook name here, but if you know us, you can probably figure it out, or e-mail us and ask. I am happy that I can now know what all my friends are doing without burdening them with the responsibilty of sending an e-mail once every six months.

Speaking of needs, I just this moment learned that Google has finally released a version of Picasa for Macs. If you're not using Picasa, the photos on your computer are a random jumbled mess. I used it on my Windoze machines in Taiwan, and it's been hell not having a version for Mac. iPhoto just isn't as good. Do yourself a favour and go get it. (They also have versions for Windoze and Linux users.)

A few tit-bits to tide you over until Picasa finishes grinding through all the photos on this machine:

Dolphin Olympics 2 is an exercise in fantastic game design. Swim, flip. Perfect.

Auditorum is similarly spectacular. Play around with it for a few minutes, and you'll see what I mean.

Katie and I don't often eat fast food, but if any of you happen to go into a Burger King, see if you can't grab one of these bad motherfuckers for me.

That is so what I'm talking about.

Behold! The new office in Brookyn!
My little hobbit-hole:
And a clever cellphone-picture opportunity at the Times Square subway stop (three storeys below ground), pointing up the fact that the MTA is cutting back on heating:
Life continues apace. For Katie's birthday, I reserved a table at a tiny little Italian place in Hell's Kitchen, followed by Mary Poppins. I have now seen a grand total of three Broadway shows: The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, and Mary Poppins. Well, four, I guess, if you count Video Games Live!. (Katie has completed the Disney musical quadrifecta, having seen Beauty and the Beast years ago.)

Christmas was a predictably lovely affair, New York being a large and vibrant city (with hardly any snow to speak of). Pictures of the massive Rockefeller tree, as well as our own, slightly smaller tree, will be available for viewing... later.

New Year's Eve was spent semi-quietly at a friend's house in Glendale. (Hilarious video forthcoming.) Last year we watched the fireworks from Manhattan and didn't get home until 4am because the late-night New Year's subway schedule licks balls. Watching the ball drop in person at Times Square is not something real people do. The mystique of the ball has never held any interest for me (perhaps because I'm from Canada, or perhaps because in Newfoundland we always celebrated the New Year thirty minutes before anyone else).

Our rent-free hotel continues its normal operation: my sister and her friend will be visiting from Yellowknife, and Katie's brother will be in town at some point as well. Visitors are always welcome, but book early, space is limited.

Work is work. Things are slow. I just translated a box of 1000 English-Spanish flash cards into 1000 English-Chinese flash cards. I am unable to escape the effects of four years in Taiwan. Ai-ya.

And this. This is just great.

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard
Okay! That's all I've got!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Hey, this guy over here dropped some really good cloth boots.

Regrets. And projectiles!

2008-12-14T17:46:00.001-05:00

Sorry for the radio silence. Katie's birthday. Christmas. Work. World of Warcraft.

Larger updates, pictures, weaker excuses forthcoming.

In the meantime, enjoy....

That could have been a grenade.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
This is a farewell... you dog!

Love.

2008-11-21T05:51:00.000-05:00

From Melissa's website.

Well put.

I know what a "Prot Tankadin" is now.

2008-11-20T11:39:00.014-05:00

Because I am one. World of Warcraft is very fun. It was fun while I fooled around, killing wolves and bears in Elwynn Forest, but it reached a whole new level of fun when I teamed up with four other real people and killed the pirate king Edwin Van Cleef in his well-guarded cavern fortress, the Deadmines. What the fuck am I talking about?

I've created three characters. Alessan (pictured below administering justice to an evil farm animal) is a human paladin. He is a "tank", which means he's the guy who strides into a room full of baddies and shouts, "COME GET SOME!" (I picture him as having Joe Swanson's voice.)
Sandre is a troll mage. He does damage from a distance.
And this is my dwarf hunter, Eckerby. He has a gun.Okay, I'm done being a mega-nerd now. For now, I mean.

Oh, wait, no I'm not. If I had an iPhone, I would totally get this program.

Technology frightens and excites me.

We just moved the BookLinks office from Astoria to Brooklyn. It was a lot of god-damned work, is what it was, but the neighbourhood is great. I have pictures, but they're all on my phone. I'll transfer them on the weekend. We're in the acronymerrific DUMBO, which is being gentrified as I write this.

Abby and Matt were down from DC for a fun-filled weekend. Katie helped Abby set up their wedding website, which is actually pretty fun, with all sorts of borderline-inappropriate pictures.

GAMES! First, Stair Dismount, a dandy little physics simulator that has you rolling some hapless motherfucker down a big flight of stairs. You need to download and install it to play, but it's small and safe.
Second, Hanna in a Choppa, a fun little time-waster wherein you pilot Hanna in her ROFLcopter around various levels. Good for an hour, easy.
Third, Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals.
Yikes.
I mean, jesus.
Look at that. Let me say first, I am all about animal rights. (I reserve the right to not be vegetarian much in the same way that, while not gay or a woman, I feel that gay and women's rights are very, very important.) But good God. Sometimes PETA just get a hair up their collective asses, and we get something like this. The game is gruesome and gory and makes some very good points about the way food animals are treated. But picking on Mama probably isn't the way to do this. Well, yes, the game is kind of fun, in that it apes Cooking Mama almost perfectly. Ostensibly, the idea was that PETA was putting pressure on Majesco to make a vegetarian version of Cooking Mama. Majesco classily responded that "more than" 25 of the 51 dishes in the newest Cooking Mama game are, in fact, vegetarian. I wonder if they'll get points when they release Gardening Mama.

All this talk of Mama reminds me of a very funny comic I saw on VGCats. (Clarification: it's funny because of they way it portrays gender roles in video games.)

I told Katie I would put this video of a baby hamster eating broccoli on the website. It is, apparently, "cute."

Attentive readers will recall that at about this time two years ago I whined and moaned about how the South Park character generators were incapable of rendering Canadians correctly. Thankfully, the kind men who run South Park have been good enough to rectify this situation. The new generator lets you create adults, kids, kindergarteners and Canadians. So, instead of this atrocity, I can present myself as I truly am:
Drinking beer. In China. Excellent.

That's all for today. I leave you with a fantastic video of a ninja cat.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Against gay marriage? Then don't have one.

Well, good for them.

2008-11-07T08:44:00.005-05:00

And, the video to go with the story...

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
...the special pride that must be theirs tonight.

Big day.

2008-11-04T09:12:00.005-05:00

Well, here we are. The frothing, sweaty climax. Thank God. Katie frets a little that the Dark Side will pull a jack move at the last second and win. I'm firmly convinced that the only way McCain can win this election is by cheating. And cheating hard. Not kinda-sorta cheating like in 2004. Like something major, like saying that California no longer counts.

A couple of Quebecois comedians called up Sarah Palin and said they were the president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy. She bought it. Mirth ensues.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

While we're talking politics, did you hear about the nice Michigan woman who turned trick-or-treaters away empty-handed because their parents were Democrats ? I choose not to comment.

Now I know celebrity endorsement doesn't hold as much water as it used to, but...
Anyway, I'm sure it'll work out. Otherwise, there's always armed rebellion!

Halloween came and went. I've collected some pictures and posted them here with appropriate captions.

World of Warcraft is, unsurprisingly, fun as hell. I created a Human Paladin named Alessan. I am at level 14. I enjoy the game. I did not enjoy the process of updating the game client, though. I installed the game on my iMac, then watched as it downloaded and installed patches for the next (I shit you not) fourteen hours. Not exactly pick-up-and-play. Sheesh.

Good luck, Murka. Go out and vote.

UPDATE: Despite panicky reports of long lines and broken machines, Katie managed to vote this morning, encountering no lines or machine difficulties.

UPDATE2: I can't believe I forgot to add this video! Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are being made available as downloadable skins for the PS3 and XBox360 game Mercenaries 2.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
For the Alliance.

Master crafters we.

2008-10-31T09:35:00.004-04:00

Well, here we are again. Last Halloween we didn't do much, owing mainly to the fact that we had only been here for a month. We got exactly one trick-or-treater (a surly teenager drawling, "Can we have some candy?" Fuck, no, son). We made a couple of tiny jack-o-lanterns (lit from within by LULZ Hanukkah candles). This year, though, we have friends! We're going to a party over at Chris's house. (Attentive readers will recognize the name as belonging to a real live hero.)

Katie has created her very own homemade Hello Kitty mask (drawing on this woman's template). No pictures yet. Those will come tomorrow.

I don't plan on being as creative. (I'm currently thinking something along the lines of a punnish 'cereal killer.') My creativity manifested in a, shall we say, more organic way. BEHOLD!

From Halloween 2008

I was sick and tired of seeing all the fantastic lanterns people were making by scraping the skin off the pumpkins. I wanted in. So, I printed off images of Paper Mario and Hello Kitty, got out my trusty pushpin and screwdrivers, and two and half hours later, voila.

From Halloween 2008

We also made a regular jack-o-lantern each. (Mine is on the left, Katie's on the right.)

From Halloween 2008

The Kitty and Mario are on opposite sides of the same pumpkin. I think they turned out pretty well for a first try ever.

Since you've all clamored to see more of our worthless neighbours, here's a video of Vinny from New Year's Eve wearing Chris's girlfriend's robe. Note Danielle falling down on the left.

These are the people I associate with. Christ Jesus.

Mega Man!

We're getting a new computer today, a nice little Macbook White. Katie is thrilled, and I am eager to fiddle with it.

Also, on a topic entirely unrelated to super secret project you cannot know about (yet), I am going to try my hand at the World of Warcraft. I got a free 14-day trial when I bought my copy of Starcraft, so I'm going to give it a shot for the next two weeks. If any of you out there in the intertubes play this game, e-mail me and let me know what faction and server you're on, and perhaps ~~I can follow you around and steal all your loot~~ we can do some quests together.

Okay! Happy Halloween!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
And I've got the scars to prove it.

I never cared much for democracy, anyway.

2008-10-24T14:13:00.004-04:00

And it's a good thing. Because otherwise I might get all pissed off about, you know, being disenfranchised. See, last July marked five years since I left Canada to go to Taiwan. Apparently, any Canadians that have not lived in Canada for five years are ineligible to vote in elections. (It used to be that if you at least returned for a visit, you maintained your eligibility, which would put me in good standing.)

I think that's bullshit. I don't pay taxes in Canada, but neither do many students over the age of 18, as well as people who are unemployed or otherwise tax-exempt. It's not like the Americans are going to let me vote in the upcoming election just because I pay taxes here.

I remember when I was in Taiwan, my friends from South Africa would say, "South Africa has gone so politically-correct that even our prisoners are allowed to vote." I thought that was crazy. Well, haha, joke's on me, because guess what I found out this morning while I was screwing around on the internets? Yep. Inmates in Canadian prisons can vote, too. Which is fine. If that's the law, that's the law. I understand how it contravenes their human rights to deny them the right to vote. What I kind of have a problem with is the fact that convicted serial killer/rapist Paul Bernardo has more of a say in who gets elected to lead my country than I do. That's not okay.

At least I can take some small comfort in the knowledge that the riding I would have been voting in (St. John's East) was handily won by (former provincial NDP leader) Jack Harris, so my vote would not have affected this particular outcome.

Still.

Sigh. Anyway, it's been a slow week. I've started doing some work on a super-mega-secret (awesome) project that I cannot tell you anything about. Yet.

Christmas is coming.

The Murkans are nearing climax in this frothing orgy of rhetoric that claims to be an election. A neat side effect is that people trying to sift through the mounds of lies and half-truths can play Truth Invaders to chip away at the lies (from both Democrats and Republicans). Fun and informative.

Also worth checking out: the immaculately-titled Brokers With Hands on Their Faces Blog.

Here are two videos from Funny or Die (the website that brought us Will Ferrell's Pearl McKay videos and Paris Hilton's hilarious political ad). These kids took "Take On Me" and "Head Over Heels" and re-dubbed them with literalistic lyrics. I love it.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Mega Man 9 update: I'm stuck on Wily's Castle. The laser/lava things keep blowing me up.

Slow week! That's all I've got! Thanks for stopping in!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Well, technically, we're a constitutional monarchy.

What's so civil about w... nnngh, I can't do it.

2008-10-17T08:18:00.012-04:00

Hi! I've been meaning to talk about this for a while now. When Jessica and Vincent were here, Vincent mentioned to me that Marvel Comics' big crossover event from 2006, Civil War, was worth checking out. So I did. I read every single comic in the crossover. There were 7 comics in the Civil War series, and then just about every other Marvel series published during those months tied into it. Civil War reminded me firmly why I stopped reading most comics in the first place: because most comics are fucking shitty.

It's a real shame, too, because the ideas at the heart of Civil War were excellent. It starts off with the deaths of hundreds of innocent people in Stamford, Connecticut, an event which quickly spirals out of control as the public turns against superheroes, with Iron Man leading a pro-registration faction, and Captain America leading the resistance. Great premise, but somewhere along the line, a bunch of comic-book writers got their hands on it and fucked it all up. The simple truth of the matter is that for every Joss Whedon, Jeff Smith, or Neil Gaiman, there are innumerable writers who grew up reading X-Men and little else, who find it impossible to assemble a coherent narrative. Given the stark limitations of comic books as a medium (i.e. dialogue must be short and concise, tone is set by the illustrator more than the author, stories must be hacked into 25-page chunks, etc.), it's no surprise that I found myself reading the same regurgitated, imbecilic arguments over and over throughout the series. (It was almost like reading fucking Atlas Shrugged again.) Related is the simple fact that nobody in the Marvel universe is capable of ever changing their minds, apparently, except (of course) for Spider-Man, who waffles back and forth between the two sides like the wishy-washy "conscience of Marvel" that he's been twisted into.

On the plus side, Deadpool has somehow become Marvel's best character. Awesome. I love Deadpool.

Final Score: 0 Fuck Civil War. Fuck it in its stupid ass. Go read anything else. Except Atlas Shrugged. Go read, like, Tigana or something.

Staying on the topic of Marvel for a moment, though, here's a new, very pretty trailer for Spider-Man: Web of Shadows.

I can't wait to get a PS3 so I can play this thing. I know there's a Wii version coming out, but, let's be honest, it probably won't be as good.

Look at these guys. These are our new neighbours, Vinny and Danny, and their girlfriends, Danielle and Christine (who are sisters). They moved in a couple of months ago, replacing the lady we called "Mom of the Year" for her habit of allowing her two very small children to stay up until midnight. The seemingly-random, um, gentlemen callers might have had something to do with that, too. And she a sixth-grade teacher. For shame.

Anyway, the boys took us out to a haunted house in a place called Bayville a couple of weekends ago. It was organized in a firehouse by the local fire department, and I must say, it was quite good. Katie screamed and screamed, and I laughed and got startled a couple of times. A lot of the people would hide in plain sight in these tiny, cramped corridors, dressed like a prop skeleton or something. Then they would jump out at you. It was really fun.

This guy here, though. Man. Creepy. He was hanging out near the entrance with his razor blade, and blood all over the place, and he just stared at you. Never cracked a smile, or said anything. Just held this perfectly neutral serial killer look the whole time. That's some self-control right there. He got Katie by walking up behind her when she was talking to us, and he tickled her with his razor blade. She jumped and yelled, "FUCK!" (Forgetting that there were kids nearby.)

Speaking of scary, though, how about some zombies? Vincent sent me a link a while back to something called "The Outbreak", which is this interactive short film about a zombie infestation. It sort of plays out like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, in that you watch a couple of minutes of action, then you're faced with a decision. Obviously some choices are better than others, and many of them are morally ambiguous, which I really like. I was going to post the trailer, but it doesn't do a good job of showing off the film. I played through a couple of choices there a little while ago, though, and I must say I think it's pretty cool. Give it a shot and let me know how you do.

I found a few new time-wasters on the internets. Shore Siege is a fun, cute little defend-the-pirate-ship game, and Warfare 1917 is kind of the same thing, only with tanks and soldiers set in the Great War.

But game of the week goes to Don't Shoot the Puppy. (Actual screenshot at left.) After hitting "START", touching any key on your keyboard or moving the mouse causes the gun to fire, obliterating the puppy as he prances merrily towards the finish line. The key is to hold your murderous impulses in check as long as possible. I only lasted three levels, but I was trying it out here at work, and I can't afford to invest the time necessary to get the puppy to the double-digit levels.

One thing I've never understood about kids today is their propensity for using the word 'gay' to mean 'stupid.' "That's so gay." I don't get it. 'Gay' means one of two things: 'happy' or 'homosexual.' It does not mean 'stupid.' (And don't give me any of that objectivist bullshit about how "if that's how people use it, then that's what it means." We're not talking about people saying 'OMG' in conversation here, we're talking about taking a word that a large number of people identify with and making it into an insult. It's not linguistic evolution here, it's fucking hate.)

Which is why I'm glad to see that the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) has started a series of ads targeting this misuse of the word. This one, by comedienne Wanda Sykes, is hilarious. (There's another, starring Hillary Duff, which packs slightly less punch, but is commendable nonetheless.)

So do your part and correct people when they say shit like that. Most of the time, it's people you know anyway, and most of the time, it's young people who don't know what they're saying and are easily cowed if confronted.

Parting shot today is a hilariously out-of-context screenshot I took while playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations on my DS last night.

Oh, Edgeworth, you're so funny.

Oh, and since so many of you expressed concern about my progress in Mega Man 9, I'm happy to inform you that I've since defeated all the robot masters and am currently launching an assault on Dr. Wily's skull-shaped castle. All is right in the world.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
What we've got here is... failure... to communicate.

I used to be good at video games.

2008-10-10T09:10:00.010-04:00

Jeepers creepers. So I went ahead and downloaded Mega Man 9 on my Wii. A couple of days earlier, I played through one of the five best games of all time, Mega Man 2 on my NES emulator on my DS. Blew through the game in about two hours total while riding the subway to and from work. I see that my choice of the Mega Man game I am most familiar with was setting myself up for disappointment.

See, I've played Mega Man 2 so many times that I know all the levels by heart, and I know precisely which Robot Masters to tackle in which order. (For reference: Metal Man, Wood Man, Air Man, Crash Man, Bubble Man, Heat Man, Flash Man, Quick Man.)

But playing Mega Man 9 is like being eleven again.

I... I can't beat it. Seriously. The first time I fired the game up, I played for nearly two hours. I tackled every level, and I never once even caught sight of a Robot Master. I couldn't even reach the end of one single level.

The second day, I finally met my first new robot master (Galaxy Man). He trashed me. Utterly.

The third session (last night), allowed me to glimpse my second robot master (Magma Man). I also belatedly discovered what all the fucking screws I had been picking up were for. (Read the instructions, I know, I know.) The screws are the game's currency, and can be used to purchase things like extra lives and energy tanks. OMFG. So I went ahead, grabbed a pile of energy tanks (after first wasting 200 screws on a new god-damned outfit for Mega Man's sister, Roll), and proceeded to teach Magma Man a lesson in humility. I followed that up with a sound thrashing of Galaxy Man, and boom, I'm back in it.

The problem is, it's not just the order of the levels that's tricky. The levels themselves were designed by the most sadistic game designers in the world. Take this part of Magma Man's level where you have to jump to the ladder. Looks like he's going to make it, right? Only problem is, the jump is impossible. The only way I've been able to reach the ladder is by purposely getting hit by that little grey fucker down there, so that the lava doesn't kill me, then running on the lava to jump to the ladder. What. The. Fuck.

I don't have the time or expertise to take videos of myself playing the game, but I was able to find a couple of videos on youtube that effectively demonstrate the myriad ways you can die in the game. Trust me, there are no spoilers in these videos. I assure you that I have, in fact, died in every way illustrated, and when/if you play Mega Man 9, you will die in these ways, too.

Suffice to say, Mega Man 9 is BITCH-HARD.

Final score: 10. I love this game.

So. I guess some of you have been following the riveting soap-opera that's been passing for the American presidential election these days. Katie and I, having shunned cable television lo these many years, joined our less-TV-immune neighbours for the town hall debate between Obama and McCain the other night. Highlight of the night: McCain derisively pointing to his opponent and calling him "that one." Hilarious. I checked the internets the following day, and sure enough, my first search produced three separate sites selling "That One '08" t-shirts. (The number has now ballooned to the dozens.) Caplitalism at its finest.

Speaking of ~~Christmas presents for Adam~~ capitalism! Namco is offering a "Pac-Man Plush-Head." This would constitute the entirety of my Halloween costume. (Along with hysterically shrieking, "HELP! PAC-MAN ATE ME!" every few minutes.)

Sighted at the Met grocery store: imported luxury beer. "Imported daily from Canada." At the steep price of $1.29 per can, I was forced to shoulder the financial burden of enjoying the taste of home. Now if we can only get some Old Stock...

Confusing and slightly off-putting: in order to get that ludicrous bailout package approved, lawmakers added $110,000,000,000 (yes, 110 billion dollars) in what is called "pork" to the package. Pork is essentially bribes; apportions that favour a particular person or group in order to give that person or group an 'incentive' to support the package. Some of the weirdest provide tax exemptions for a particluar kind of arrow used by child archers and some kind of tax/depreciation loophole for the owners of motor speedways. I honestly am no closer to understanding this country. (To be fair, the pork also includes a large amount of money and tax breaks for green energy, which is, needless to say, long overdue.)

So there's this game called LittleBigPlanet that's coming out soonish for the PS3. One of the major draws of this obscenely-cute but otherwise fairly-typical platforming game is the availibility of user-created content. Utilizing a vast array of user-friendly tools, just about anyone can hop in and make a level. The game has been "in beta" (meaning that it's not for sale yet, but some people are playing it to help test and get the bugs out) for a while now, and the amount of user-created content is already baffling. The one creation that really got my attention was the one below. It's just a simple difference engine (basically an adding-subtracting machine), but when the camera pans back to show the shockingly complex system of pulleys, magnets and yarn that allows the machine to function, one can only shake one's head in astonishment.

LittleBigPlanet 'Giant Calculator' gameplay

I shall have to get a PS3 soon.

Local News: One of my new New York friends, Chris, recently read an article in the Daily News about a woman who had scattered her father's ashes on the pitcher's mound at Shea Stadium. Now that the stadium is being torn down, the woman approached the Mets (baseball team) and asked if she could have a bit of the dirt from the mound as a memento of her father's passing. She was refused (citing safety reasons), and Chris, who is currently working at Shea dismantling the bleachers, acquired a bit of the dirt and gave it to the lady, attaining his fifteen minutes at the ripe old age of 26. Can we have a round of "awwwww"?

International News: A man in Cambodia who wanted a divorce from his wife "because his wife wouldn't tend to him when he was ill" took the novel approach of actually cutting their house in half and taking his share away. Words fail me.

Now, you know I love many of the internets. I love the video internet, and the information internet, and the prOn internet. But occasionally the world wide web tosses up something so wonderful, so spontaneously ridiculous, that I have to stop and marvel at its magnificence.

I present to you such a thing. An innocuous article from Wired about an organism found deep in a South African mine that is essentially the one-man-band of the biological world. But the great thing about it is not the article itself (which is as perfectly perfect as any Wired article can be), but the comments thread which follows it. Hundreds of people took a simple misspelling from the very first comment ("Maltian" instead of "Martian") and spun it out into a golden tale of the kingdom/planet/religion of Maltia. And all in less than a day. This thing has "next internet meme" stamped all over it. (Which I guess is a lot like saying that my next breath has "Adam's next breath" stamped all over it, internet memes being roughly as common as my individual inhalations.)

Well, I guess I'll leave you now with this wonderful, wonderful video from Gametrailers. It requires no explanation, merely a childish gasp of glee and a quiet prayer of thanks that I don't have to try and buy a Wii this holiday season.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Mike Tyson is a rapist and will never ever ever ever be in a Nintendo game ever again. So stop saying that it 'won't be the same' without him.

Could be worse...

2008-09-26T09:15:00.010-04:00

My country's economy could be inextricably tied to a much larger economic system which is fundamentally flawed and run by a gang of poorly-trained apes.

Oh, wait.

Well, fuck.

UPDATE: Marcy Kaptur is my kinda lady.

We went to Pittsburgh last weekend to see the Iowa Hawkeyes play a game of football against the Pittsburgh Panthers. I have yet to see the Hawkeyes emerge victorious from a contest. This may be due in part to my only ever having seen three games (two in bars, one in person). The 21-20 defeat was notable for having been the first football game I have ever attended. It was exciting. We stood up and sat down repeatedly. Katie coached me on the correct things to shout (useful phrases are: "Go, defense!", "Let's go Hawks!", "Go, Hawkeyes!", and "Go, D!"; less helpful were my original exclamations: "Yay!", "You're doing very well!", and "You are going to win!"). After every Pittsburgh first down or Iowa third down, they would play a panther snarl sound effect. Absolutely hilarious. Pictures forthcoming.

Finally made an effort at recapturing Hiro Nakamura's first moments in New York City.
Dammit, I was too far back. At least I was facing the right way. Hey, there's Andrew on the left! Anyway, yatta! Sort of.

My sister Jessica has finally escaped the flash-embedded clutches of the Book of Faces and bravely staked out a claim of her own in the wilds of the larger internets. Applause, please, for her new website. (I still abhor the word "blog.") If she's good, she may be in line for the second-ever OaAfTE. You can also nominate websites for the Award in either the comments or by e-mail.

I discovered a couple of new games this week. Adult Swim have created a sequel to the diverting Five Minutes to Kill (Yourself). Five Minutes to Kill (Yourself) 2 has you attending a horrfying family reunion in a park. The only way to escape? You guessed it: suicide. But hurry! Song-singing and family-picture-viewing begins in only five minutes!

Second, the boringly-titled Z-Rox has you trying to identify letters, numbers, symbols and shapes as though you were viewing them through a tiny slit. Katie and I got up to Level 50 last night before going to sleep. (When you click on the link, hit the tiny grey "Play!" to start the game, not the huge ignorant "CLICK TO PLAY!")

I'm a huge fan of Ben Croshaw's Zero Punctuation, so when I first heard of this anonymous series called "Zero Originality", I scoffed and passed it by. That was unfair. Beneath the blatant rip-off lies an honest and insightful look into the inner workings of that McDonald's of video game stores, Gamestop. I'm not sure if you've ever had dealings with Gamestop, and if you haven't: good, keep it up. If you have, then you probably already know what's wrong with that particular merchant. Suffice to say, the employees at the Gamestop on Myrtle Avenue near our house made someone important to me cry once, and I'll never bring my business there again. Blah blah blah, watch the videos, they're interesting. (The first one, however, has been removed from youtube, so start with the second one.)

Check out this game. (This is primarily for Katie, Abby and Jessica.)

Still. Pretty sweet, huh?

Speaking of sweet, gaygamer.net posted a video of the recent promotion for Kirby Super Star Ultra for the DS. It involves soap and helium and broke my mind when I first saw it. Totally wicked.

Saw this on the walk home from the subway one day:
Nice.

Nintendo has a new Wario game coming out for the Wii. It's a platform game (think Super Mario World), but the youtube video showing some gameplay is one of the most creative things I've seen in a while. (Protip: watch the whole page, not just the video window.)

And when I first saw this I thought I had missed a few months and it was April 1st again:
Seriously? Fuck me, then. Check out Romper Stomper there on the left. Here's the blurb from Ubisoft's website: "In Imagine Party Babyz (Nintendo Wii, October 2008) girls can play as a babysitter and take care of adorable babies. Entertain the babies through hilarious mini-games such as swings, tricycle races, monster chases in babies' dreams, dancing and soap bubbles contests."

GIRLS can play as a babysitter. What's next? "Imagine Subservient Housewivez"? "Imagine Conservative Hockey Momz"? This is the same company that created Beyond Good & Evil, Assassin's Creed and Prince of Persia? Day-um.

Hey video game companies: STOP TREATING WOMEN AND GIRLS LIKE IDIOTS.

A-hem.

Last thing (before I go lie down for a bit). All this talk of the Large Hadron Collider (which is now, sadly, offline until next year) has lots of people asking: what does a gluon look like? What about this mysterious Higgs boson we've heard so much about? Well, the truth is, those particles are way too small for light to hit, so they actually, technically, don't look like anything. Weird, huh? Anyway, that's not about to stop these weirdos from making plushies of all the relevant theoretical particles. The tachyon, Higgs boson and strange quark are the coolest.

And a discussion of weird plushies wouldn't be complete without at least mentioning the Giant Microbes. One of the only opportunities you'll have to give someone the clap and not lose a friend/lover because of it.

That's all I've got for now! Thanks for visiting!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Objection!

Je suis brilliante.

2008-09-12T14:49:00.015-04:00

My friend Melissa moved to Korea fucking ages ago, and I found her via her website during my last year in Taiwan. She had a baby and a Korean husband, but other than that she was exactly as I remembered her. Suffice to say that her website is impeccably-written, fascinating and funny. Suffice to say she has fantastic taste in her reading habits. Which brings us to the point.

A winner is me. Melissa gifted me with this lovely award, in all its pink, sparkly, compression-artifacted clipart glory. My website is apparently now "brilliante." Not sure what the "premio" means, though. And all I had to do was cry like a little baby.

Right. So, the award comes with this set of instructions, which basically amount to "send this to at least seven other blogs." Which is silly. First off, I don't think I even know of seven other blogs which are updated regularly and are well-written. (I mean, my god, have you read Kotaku recently? Fuck me, they need a copyeditor.) Secondly, I don't want to just float around somebody else's crappy jpeg when I could just as easily make my own crappy jpeg.

So that's what I did.
I give to you, the Official adamfirefist.com Award for Total Excellence, representing over an hour of Photoshop practice. (A staggeringly informative learning experience it made, as well, after bumbling my way through that McToken poster from the last post.) Well, I don't give it to you, not necessarily, but maybe.

If your name is Melissa, and you live in Korea. In a total shocker, Melissa is the sole recipient of the very first OaAfTE. Congratulations! Your official notification is on the way!

The award may also be presented to people, things or events which I recognize as having innate self-worth, such as Mega Man (who happens to be the first honorary recipient, btw).

Of course, every rose has its thorn, every night has its dawn, and every cowboy sings a sad, sad, song. Light and dark co-exist. The Force is constantly balanced by the Dark Side. Buffy and the Scooby-Gang are always faced with the machinations of the First. And to balance the zenith of accomplishment that the Official adamfirefist.com Award for Total Excellence represents, there is also the nadir of those websites (dis)graced with the Official adamfirefist.com "Dead to Me" Condemnation.
The Oa"DtM"C is presented to those individuals who can't be bothered to update their websites at all, having set off for the more 'productive' glades of MySpace or the Book of Faces. Well, screw that. J'accuse! J'accuse!

It is with a heavy heart that I present the inaugural Official adamfirefist.com "Dead to Me" Condemnation to both Katherine and Jonathan. Your websites are fail. (Allison, you're on notice.)

The condmenation may also be presented to individuals, things or events which evoke my ire, such as the Beijing Olympics and the sitting president of the United States of America.

Thanks for coming out to my impromptu awards ceremony. We had a few laughs, shed a few tears, and made the world a slightly better place.

On to matters of import.

This past week, the kids over at CERN fired up the Large Hadron Collider for the first time. It's a great jesus atom smasher, 27 kilometres in circumference, that's going to bash the shit out of a bunch of atoms to try and find the Higgs boson. It's fascinating and awesome. Of course, there are those who have no idea what a particle accelerator is or does, and they manage to conjure up all kinds of doomsday scenarios, wherein the collider creates a black hole, or some strangelets, or some antimatter, which will destroy the Earth. Some of them even went so far as sending death threats to some of the scientists on the project. Oh, heavens.

Speaking of CERN, Wired recently collected 10 videos showing off the flashier side of science. The water bubbles in space, Taiwanese demonstration of superconductors, and (of course) the Large Hadron Collider Rap are the standouts.

This guy has a deathwish, but for one brief, shining moment at the end there, he's almost badass.

IT'S PIKACHU!
GODDAMMIT!

This impeccably-photoshopped hamster (or gerbil) was found for sale on the Japanese Yahoo Auction site for the quite-reasonable price of ¥99,000,002,805,760 (over $900 million Murkan dollaz).

I'd buy one.

(Here's the auction watch website that Kotaku posted. Y'know, if you feel like being dazzled with kanji and kana.)

I found a new game called Aether. I played it for a while, but I wasn't able to accomplish anything. I went to another planet and ran around, but the fifteen minutes I devoted to it at lunchtime the other day were insufficient to unlock its secrets. If you can figure it out, let me know.

Well, it's Friday night, and I'm still here slaving away at my keyboard when I should be spending time with Katie. I'll leave you with this cartoon. Apparently, Seth McFarlane (the Family Guy guy) has turned his hand to youtube cartoons. He's released five (well, four and an intro), but this is the only one that's about video games. They're basically the Family Guy without the Family bits.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Asps. Very dangerous. You go first.

Jesus save us.

2008-09-05T21:57:00.006-04:00

Well, here we are. They both refer to themselves as "mavericks" almost constantly. What the fuck does that mean? If they were mavericks, they wouldn't be the christly Republican candidates. The foolishness they carried on with at the Convention this week is exactly the sort of empty, flag-waving jingoism that makes American patriotism so unpalatable to most of the rest of the planet.

All right, that's enough for now.
(P.S.: That abstinence-only sex ed. worked wonders for your daughter, didn't it? Oh, yes, I went there.)
(P.P.S.: Can you beleive that there's no McCain/Token logos freely available on the internet? I had to make that one up there all by myself.)
(P.P.P.S.: How did they do it?)

We went to Montreal last weekend, partially to enjoy a lovely long Labour Day weekend (Labor Day, for the Murkans), and partially to renew my work visa. Yay, NAFTA!

I put some pictures from the trip (along with our visit to Abby and Matt in Virginia and the long, long ago trip to Iowa for Nordic Fest) up on my Picasa account. Here is Vigirnia/Montreal, and here is Iowa.

Katie's never played an MMORPG before (and she probably couldn't even tell you what it stands for), but this game seems to have everything she likes, all rolled into one, pay-by-month package. I think it might be a WoW killer.

Everybody knows about Guitar Hero, but how many know about Guitar Praise? I'm not joking. And since I was so vitriolic up there towards the Republicans, I'll give the Christian Rock crowd a free pass. This time. I hope it does well. I can see how rocking with Satan himself would be anathema to the faithful. Easily my favourite aspect, though, is how you can't get booed off the stage as in Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Instead, "if you can't keep up, the artists will take a break and stop the music." Ooooh.

Here's a grand little commercial for Metal Gear Solid 4.

And it wouldn't be a post if there wasn't some Mega Man 9 love.

That's all you get this time. I'm tired, and I want to go watch Heroes with Katie.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Pit bulls lick their own balls.

Worst Olympics EVAR.

2008-08-26T08:10:00.008-04:00

All right, let's get the Olympics hate out of the way first.

Never mind China's horrifying human-rights record. Never mind the ongoing idiocy in Tibet. Never mind the government's blocking of websites which could sow dissent. (I guess I'm one of those, now.)

Let's talk about concrete things, easily-provable things. Let's start with the opening ceremonies. When I was in Iowa for Nordic Fest, they had fireworks. I love fireworks. But one thing I've felt for the last few years (and gave voice to when we were in Decorah), is the fact that I am very disappointed in today's fireworks. We can put people on the moon. We can put rovers on Mars. We can clone puppies. Why in the name of Al Gore are we unable to make fireworks like Gandalf's in The Lord of the Rings movie? I was impressed by some of the 4th of July fireworks we had here in New York. There were some cubes and some happy faces; pretty good. But why not letters? Why not complex shapes? We have the technology, get to it. So, I was thrilled to read about the giant "footprints" stomping across Beijing to the Bird's Nest. Well, I was, until we found out that it was all bloody computer-animated. For fuck's sake. Strike one.

Ah, yes, look. An adorable Chinese waif singing "The Ode to the Motherland" during the opening ceremonies. Isn't she cute? Isn't she just the paragon of Chinese childhood? Well, actually, yes, she is. Because she never sang a word. The girl who could actually sing was deemed "not cute enough" to appear on stage and camera, so China's darling lip-synced the entire thing. Click through to CNN to see the girl who sang behind a curtain. I think she's very cute. Strike two.

Hey, those gymnasts look sort of young, don't they? Hey, their birth dates for the last four years don't match their birth dates posted this year. China's response: they're 16. No further questions. Strike three.

Copyright law is interesting. I learned when I was running Rainbow Time magazine at Cornel Language School that classical pieces are considered to be in the public domain, but the arrangements and recordings of those pieces are not, and are protected by copyright law. Well, national anthems are the same way, and a Czech composer who arranged the anthems for the 2004 Olympics says that Beijing stole his arrangements whole hog. China's response is akin to the kid who lies, and then lies about lying. Strike four. Sigh.

Well, enough of all that. I'm glad it's over and we can all start looking forward to the next real Summer Olympics in 2012. London has nothing to worry about. Seriously, though, the Beijing "Games" are the George W. Bush of Olympic Games. How fitting that he was the first U.S. president to attend an Olympics not on American soil.

Final score: 0 [Epic fail.]

On to better things.

Katie just started her new job at the Montessori School on Manhattan's Upper West Side. I'm still toiling away in the salt mines. We're zooming up to Montreal next weekend for a Labour Day (or Labor Day) trip. Also, the time has come to renew my NAFTA visa, so off I go, distressingly-expensive lawyer-drafted paperwork in hand, to charm my way back into Murka for another year.

It looks as though my boss is moving the business to a part of Brooklyn called "DUMBO." (Which, in typical New York fashion, stands for "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass." Christ almighty.) I'm happy; it'll shave 30-45 minutes off my daily commute, both ways. That's an extra hour to hour-and-a-half that I can spend playing video games. (I need that time, too; I'm up to the 100-hour mark in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2: Grimoire of the Rift, and I'm replaying the first three Metal Gear Solid games in preparation for MGS4.)

We visited Katie's sister Abby and her fiancé, Matt, in Alexandria again a couple of weeks ago. Good fun, we got to watch a barful of drunken Murkans who could barely spell "olympic" lose their minds as some guy won a medal for swimming. Sheesh. We got to play Settlers of Catan, though, which was super fun.

I've added links at the top of the sidebar which provide instant access to the main page of this website, my collected photos on picasaweb, and my shiny new youtube channel. Enjoy!

Here's a really cool optical illusion. I spent like twenty minutes staring at it.

Speaking of optics, some Japanese researchers discovered a protein that transmits electrical signals from the eyes to the brain and went ahead and named it "Pikachurin." Japan is the best.

I've added three new games to the "Toys! Games!" list on the sidebar. Corpse Craft is a puzzle-RTS hybrid that's surprisingly fun for the first ten levels, then punishingly hard thereafter. The multiplayer is a laugh, though. I'm, predictably, "adamfirefist" if you want to play with me. Epic War is a typical tower defense game, only it's based in the Tolkien universe, so you also have squads of hobbits, elves and wizards at your disposal. Plays a lot like King Arthur's World on the SNES. Coign of Vantage is a weird little perspective-shifting game that will appeal to people who like sudoku. I say this based solely on the the fact that both games feature square grid pieces.

Wired alerts us that someone has gone to the trouble of finding out which body parts are most sung about in various genres. Unsurprisingly, "eyes" lead the pack across most genres, excepting blues and gospel (which favor "hands"), and, sigh, hip hop, which... well, see for yourself.

I'll leave you with this hilarious video.

http://view.break.com/536276 - Watch more free videos

Thanks for reading! Call me on Skype!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
How about it, Snake? Can you take one more?

Moment of Clarity

2008-08-06T09:29:00.002-04:00

There are times in a person's life when they are suddenly forced to look at something (or someone) in an entirely new light. When you question whether all your preconceptions about that thing (or person) were incorrect.

I have, astonishingly, just experienced exactly this event with regards to...

Paris Hilton.

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

I... like... Paris Hilton now.

Huh.

Discuss.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Did somebody page me?

Let's put a smile on that face.

2008-07-30T15:53:00.011-04:00

First order of business, yes, I saw The Dark Knight. Yes, we saw it in IMAX. Yes, my life is profoundly changed because of it. That's enough. If you haven't seen it, then you must. If you have, then there's nothing for me to say.

Other than that the trailer for Watchmen played before it. I am experiencing cautious optimism. (Shout-outs to my homies Paco and Heff for showing me this last week.)

Arnold was kind enough to direct me to a super-secret leaked prototype script for The Dark Knight, penned by none other than that sublime auteur, Michael Bay. Read at your own peril; that way totally radical awesomeness lies.
So! We just got back from Iowa. We went to Iowa for Nordic Fest, which is kind of like the Royal St. John's Regatta, only with a Scandinavian theme and no boats. We took lots of pictures, but I haven't uploaded any of them yet, so next time.

I have, on the other hand, finally captioned the pictures from last month of our fun trip to Niagara Falls and Dad and Liz's visit to New York. They are here. Also, for anyone late to the party, you can see older pictures from Taiwan, Cambodia, South Korea and North America by going to my gallery, here. Hualien and Kenting are uncaptioned, and may be deleted if I need the space.

Now, your dose of Mega Man.

Mega Man 9 - first footage
by rawmeatcowboy

Take two and call me in the morning.

I suppose I'll put on my serious face first and direct you to CNN for a serious story about a ~~whack-job~~ Republican who has rented two billboards which showcase the burning World Trade Center accompanied by the text "Please Don't Vote for a Democrat." I... I honestly don't know what to say. You either think this kind of behaviour is immoral and inherently ignorant, or you're a very difficult person for me to talk to.

Next, only slightly less serious:

I only wish I had half the time and resources required to pull this off. Look at that crowd!

My super sister Sarah (see? I did alliteration there) lives in Yellowknife, in the Northwest Territories, and she recently e-mailed me a link to the weather report for Yellowknife, which featured one of the oddest weather symbols I've ever seen. The site has changed, but I grabbed a screenshot of it before it did:
Is funny, yes? Condition: Smoke. Apparently there were wildfires burning all over and the smoke was just choking Yellowknife. And hey, check out those highs and lows! It's only a little bit colder than New York summers! Weird.

Now, I never played Mario Kart 64 or Mario Kart: Double Dash for the GameCube, I jumped straight from Super Mario Kart to Mario Kart DS, but still nearly busted a gut from laughing at this:

I have no idea. All I know is that it's been stuck in my head for weeks.

Have you ever been walking in the rain, and you get attacked by ninjas? I know I have, and if I had had this bad motherfucker right here, I would have been able to kill them a lot faster:

Well, now you all know what I want for Christmas.

Okay, there's no easy way to say this, so I'll just show you the picture and type the words.
There's a game called Fat Princess. I saw it, and I loved it. I love it now. I want to go buy a PS3 just so I can download it and play it. It works like this: you need to rescue your princess, while the opposing team tries to rescue theirs from you. The mechanics at play are twofold, send enough guys to go pick up their princess while feeding your princess enough shit and garbage to make her too heavy for your enemies to lift.

This game is the very definition of creative. Of course, not everyone sees it that way. Needless to say, there's been a lot of back-and-forth on the topic recently, so it basically falls to everyone to read it and make up your own mind.

Something, that you will not, however, be permitted to make up your own mind about is Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. A three-part internet-only musical by Joss Whedon starring Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion? You have got to be shitting me. Now, when Katie and I watched it, it was streaming free off of the website, but after a few days of being free, they started demanding that you buy it from iTunes for $3 an episode. I can only imagine that several of the internets cried foul, which resulted in it being restored to the website.

Also, you can embed it on any website, so that's what I'll do. It's 42 minutes long all together, so go get some chips and a beer before starting it.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

A website called Peaceful Rise has discovered some new signs in China pertaining to the upcoming "Olympics." The signs help Chinese nationals figure out what they should and should not say and do around waiguoren (i.e., foreigners). Helpful hints include such nuggets as "when chatting with athletes who are paraplectic in their upper body, do not say things like “It’s behind you.”" I cannot wait to see how this turns out.

You know who Bill O'Reilly is, right? Sure you do: he's got a no-spin zone or something. Anyway, he used to work on Inside Edition (of course). Here's a nice little fluff piece about videogames:

From 1988, no less! Fuck, 20 years ago. I was ten. Damn.

Well, that's all I can handle for today, kids. I super-promise to get the pictures from Iowa up before my next birthday, plus I plan on tackling the "YouTube Problem" this week, as well. We've got Jamey and Christy coming up for a visit this weekend (for fuck's sake! I'm just going to go ahead and install a goddamn revolving door in the apartment), so that should be a nice laugh, too.

I'll leave you with a quick story and an even quicker video. When I was in university at MUN, I used to watch Pokemon with Jessica and Rebecca. At every commercial break, the TV would shout, "Who's that Pokemon?" with an accompanying silhouette. When they came back from the commercial break, it would shout, "It's Pikachu!" or "It's Dodrio!" or "It's Snorlax!" or whoever the fuck it was. By the end of it, I got quite good at recognizing the original 150 Pokemon (151 including Mew.......... I can't beleive I just remembered that... ). So anyway, this very short clip caused me to fairly scream with laughter.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Ah... I'll buy it at a high price.

Well, slap a carrot in my mouth and call me Wilbur.

2008-07-03T09:03:00.011-04:00

I'm not an unlucky person. I have a nice job that pays almost enough to live comfortably. I have a nice, clean, cozy apartment. I live in New York City, so there's always something to do. I have a caring family and rock-solid friends that all live very far away from me. I have a Wii, a PS2 and a Nintendo DS. I have lots and lots of little robots to look at. I have a wonderful girlfriend who makes every day more fun than the one before it.

That said, I've never been particularly lucky, either. Not in the way my stepmother is lucky. Liz wins things like it's her job. A new kitchen. Several trips and concerts. Liz calls the radio station, and she wins. She's a lucky fucker.

Well, some of that luck must have rubbed off on me, quite literally, when she was here visiting with Dad. While they were here, we made a trip into The City to go to the Build-A-Bear Workshop on 5th Avenue to get one of the fantastic new Tropical Hello Kittys for my sister Rebecca (who has apparently abandoned 57.1% of the letters in her given name and now goes by the curt moniker "Bee"). While there, of course, Katie simply had to pick up a couple of $2 shirts for our regular, snow-white Kitty.

Jolly good. So while we're waiting in line, Katie sees some sweepstakes entry box thing and says, "Fill out two of these forms." I sigh and do it without really paying attention.

Flash forward to yesterday afternoon. I've just gotten home from a long day of dealing with this bloody Scott Foresman-Pearson Spanish Science B-Printing. We have guests. Josie and Andrew are in town from Des Moines, Iowa for a few days. I'm drinking a rum and coke, and we're all sitting outside on our steps (which is apparently the done thing in our neighbourhood). The FedEx man walks up to us. I'm so used to getting FedEx packages at work that I'm momentarily taken aback, like walking into your favourite bar only to find that your grandmother has made friends with all the bar staff while you were gone.

"Adam Hunt?" he asks. I take the envelope and sign. I examine the label. Build-A-Bear Workshop? Double-you-tee-eff? Kindly scroll back up to the beginning of the post to see the contents.

Apparently I won the 'grand prize', which consists of four tickets to a Mets game next week. Huh. I'm quite sure that it was sheerest coincidence that I won these on an excursion with Liz. Has to be.

My favorite part of the letter is the opening line: "Cubgratulations™!" They actually trademarked the word cubgratulations. LAWLZ.

Other things:

I really really really want this game to end up as fun as it looks. Pretty please?

I love the way the webbing looks, all squiggly.

Now, I don't know how much you know about Spore, but the game has me so excited. It's designed by Will Wright, the super-genius who created SimCity as well as the best-selling PC game in recorded history, The Sims. Basically, in Spore, you start off as a unicellular organism (like in Jenova Chen's free and fantastic flOw), but then you evolve to play as a bug, or whatever, then evolve and take control of your tribe, then civilization, then galaxy. It sounds fantastic. ANYway, Maxis have released a Spore Creature Creator, which allows you to play God and craft new organisms that could potentially eventually populate the game world when the full version of Spore releases in September. Needless to say, the basement-dwellers have used the Creator to create hordes of eating, shitting, running dicks, but the cleverest among them have fashioned reasonable replicas of creatures from other corners of the nerdiverse. Such a one is 'sylphx', whose blog showcases various beasties from the Final Fantasy pantheon, Sporified. Bravo, young man, bravo. (Edit: here are links to his Cactuar, Tonberry and Lavos creations.)

A lovely somebody named Lee Vidal (I presume) has created some fantastic backgrounds for your computer desktop over at deviantart. The ExciteBike one is on our iMac at home, and I have the colour Advance Wars one on my work computer. LOVE 'em.

Jamey and/or Christy were kind enough to send me this very entertaining flash animation about flash animation.
Quick! No cheating! Can you name the game pictured above? Trickier than it seems, huh? Well, it's not Mega Man 7 or 8, because they feature the new, slicker Mega Man. It's not Mega Man, Mega Man 2 or Mega Man 3, because we all know those games off by heart, right. So it must be 4, 5 or 6, right? Yeah, no. Motherfucker is a screenshot from Nintendo Power's big reveal of... wait for it... Mega Man 9. Now that's what I'm talkin' about. Paco sent in a link to this guy's website, which features a nice side-by-side comparison of 3, 8 and 9. The best part? Kotaku, Joystiq and all the rest have confirmed that Mega Man 9 will be released exclusively on the Nintendo Wii's WiiWare service. Bloody superb. Plenty of screenshots here. Man, my thumbs are starting to ache just thinking about it...

Okay, that's all you get. If you want to say hi or cubgratulate™ me on my awesome grand prize win, you can do it in the comments.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
K: Adam was raised Catholic, so he doesn't take the Lord's name in vain.
A: Yeah, I just say fuck, shit and cunt a lot.

BLOODY. FUCKING. DISGUSTING.

2008-07-02T09:24:00.002-04:00

A woman died on the floor of a an ER in a Brooklyn hospital.

She had been waiting for 24 hours.

She collapsed and twitched on the floor for an hour.

A security guard saw her and walked away.

Tell me now the American health care system isn't fucking broken.

The link below takes you to the video on CNN. It's bloody disturbing, so don't watch it if you're easily upset.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/07/02/waiting.room.death/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

Adam

Visitors! Water on Mars! My first-ever CD review! And MOAR!

2008-06-24T11:20:00.009-04:00

Ah, family. My dad and step-mom came to visit, and what a grand time it was. I just finished uploading the pictures to my picasaweb account, but they're not ready for viewing yet. Also, Since I'm a Mac person now (I think we're called iPeople or something), I'm using the Mac Picasa photo uploader, which doesn't upload videos like Picasa does, so I'm in the process of creating a YouTube account to post ~~pornography~~ videos to.

We had a marvelous holiday, filled with frantic hither-and-thither dashing about New York City. We went to Niagara Falls for the weekend of my birthday. Katie gave me Season 3 of The Muppet Show, Boom Blox and a copy of Matter (which I haven't been able to start because Paco gifted me a copy of Perdido Street Station that I am currently ravenously devouring. (Double -ly adverb score! 1000 points! wOOt!)) She also game me my new super bag and a giant card that belts out the theme from Star Wars at about 450dB. It being my 30th birthday, daddy splurged and footed the bill for our tickets to The Lion King on Broadway.

We had the opportunity to see/do most of the things Dad and Liz wanted to see/do while they were here. Central Park, a Broadway show, Times Square (twice), Coney Island, Incredible Hulk in theatres, the Statue of Liberty, the German restaurant near our house, the Empire State Building, Ground Zero, the Build-A-Bear Workshop, a Yankees game (2-1 win over the Padres), and we still had time to play Boom Blox on the Wii and watch Kill Bill and Batman Begins.

Judas Priest, is there any wonder I got sick again the day they left? Same symptoms as last time, too. Well, I'm feeling better today, at any rate. The new project I'm involved with at work is a reprint of a Spanish science book BookLinks did a couple of years ago.

Astonishingly exciting is the fact that Katie got a new job! She was working at the deviously-named Battery Park City Day Nursery in Manhattan, just a stone's throw from the World Trade Center site. But she just finished her New York State teaching certification hassle, and she just landed a position at the Metropolitan Montessori School in the Upper West Side (a super-nice neighbourhood just west of Central Park in Manhattan). Some good girl. The school's website is here.

Less good is the severe flooding that has trashed a good chunk of Katie's home state of Iowa. Thankfully, her town of Decorah is in the northeast corner of the state, so it was spared the complete drowning that happened in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City.

Here's a digest of all the information I've been collecting over the last couple of weeks.

Most impressive are the photos from the Mars Phoenix lander that seem to indicate that there is water ice (as opposed to carbon dioxide ice) on Mars, which could indicate that life is possible on Mars. Which is awesome. The original press release from NASA is here, and Wired has provided a helpful FAQ here.

Here's a link to a video that shows what it's like to be a little girl growing up in Oklahoma. Good God in heaven.

Of course, it wouldn't be a post if I didn't include some sort of Mega Man love. Even if this Mega Man love is a little too literal:

Also, LaughingSquid brings us this news of a Tokyo bicycle storage tower that can store nearly ten thousand bikes. Something like that is practically designed to break down and/or jam.

Barack Obama has launched a new website called fightthesmears.com which is designed to call out his detractors on the lies they continue to spread about him and his family. Smear campaigns are an excellent example of the failings inherent in democracy. Good on Obama for calling attention to them.

I just this morning stumbled upon a website called The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. As a grammar/punctuation/spelling nerd, I find it absolutely hilarious.

Oh, yes, my first CD review, I almost forgot.Oliver Benjamin Thayer's Small Apocalypse was made available on his website the day before my birthday. It's free, so go grab it right away. Of course, musicians need cookies and hookers, too, so feel free to drop a few coppers in his virtual PayPal hat as you pass by. Some of the tracks remind me of They Might Be Giants, while others just beam with the rosy glow of nostalgia, conjuring memories (for me, at least) of pleasant evenings at PJ's in Taichung.

Final score: 10. Good work, young Jedi!

That's it for now. The next post will have links to captioned photos and videos from the recent visit. We're going to see Billy Joel play at the Mohegan Sun casino this weekend.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
All baby cows are lost!

FYI: Driving with standard transmission is FUCKING HARD.

2008-06-10T09:09:00.014-04:00

Who knew? Clutch, brake, start the car, let off the e-brake, check to see it's in first gear, let go of the brake, give a little gas, no, that's too much gas, ease up on the clutch, *GROANGROAN*, too fast on the clutch, *COUGHSPUTTER*, oh, it stalled. FUCK. Okay, clutch, brake, start the car, first gear, little bit o' gas, eeeeease up on the clutch, the car is moving, *PANIC*, brake, *GROANCOUGH*, stall. AWESOME. What? My seatbelt? Oh, for fuck's sake... *buckles seatbelt* Cock. Sucker. Clutch, brake, start the car...

Well, that was the first day (Saturday). We practiced in the parking lot of Stop & Shop (a grocery store). Firemen laughed at me. A girl made a wanking motion with her hand at me. After an hour, I was starting to get the hang of it. Then I tried to shift into second, while moving (an exercise not unlike trying to rub your tummy and pat your head, except you're trying to do it while on fire). Fail. Epic fail.

Horribly discouraged, I called an end to the evening's lesson and wallowed in self-pity. I had this sort-of subconscious goal of being able to help drive to Niagara Falls this coming weekend, and I was pretty pissed off at myself for not being able to. When we went back to Stop & Shop last night for Lesson the Second, I actually felt nauseous as I got out of the passenger seat and behind the wheel. Pitiful. But I did better. I didn't stall the car at all (or maybe I did, but if I did it was only the once), and I successfully shifted into second gear several times. And I managed to buckle up after being in the driver's seat for only five minutes. (Relative) Success!

I may not be ready to drive to Niagara Falls, and parallel parking is as far beyond my comprehension and abilities as string theory is beyond the grasp of a typical hummingbird, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's a very long tunnel, and the light may well be the onrushing flames of an atomic detonation, but at least I can see it.

In work news, I released 95% of the files I'm responsible for today, one day early, so I'm feeling quite competent at my job. I'll be taking next week off in order to entertain my dad and wicked step-mom. So fun!

We recently got around to ripping all of our compact discs and making them into mp3 files on our superMac. We've no shortage of music now (I think iTunes estimated it at something like 7 or 8 days of playtime), just in time for us to construct some CDs for the long drive to Niagara.

In actual news-type news, SUVs are finally dead as an industry, and good fucking riddance. It ended up being, sadly, not common sense, but rising gas prices that brought down the behemoths. A firm reminder that if you want Americans to do something, all you need to do is hit 'em where it hurt$.

Also, Metallica just can't seem to do anything right. These poor fuckers. Seriously. They invite internet music reviewers to listen to their songs, then demand that the (generally favorable!) reviews thereafter posted on the internet be removed. WTF barely does the situation justice. Oh, Metallica.
Up, up, down, down... okay, I'll stop. Some guy with a lot more time on his hands than I have has posted a load of video game scenes constructed from Legos. Duck Hunt and Excitebike are particularly good. (Contra's pretty sweet, as well, and the shot from Shadow of the Colossus makes me want to go back and replay it on my big new TV.)

It's a lot more lighthearted than some of the images from another series, which features the self-immolation of Thích Quảng Ðức and the execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém among its more well-known subjects.

Now, to be fair, now that I'm here, (and I have Taiwan to compare it against), the United States isn't a bad place. The people here are not bad people. Some of them are rude, some of them are violent, and some of them have incredibly outdated modes of behaviour. But by and large, they are a good people working within a fundamentally-flawed system. I think the fundamental flaw is the notion that, when exercising their God-given right to vote, they are voting for people, not parties. Nowhere is this more evident than in the current amazing clusterfuck surrounding the Democratic nomination.

Supporters of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, pissy because she didn't win, are actually considering voting for the Republican candidate instead. Sweet merciful Christ. I personally think that websites like "Hillary Clinton Supporters for John McCain" are the creations of stealth Republicans preying on the famously-easily-divisible Democratic party.

ANYway.

I'll leave you with a cleverly-done mashup of two of my favorite things: the classic Frantics radio sketch "Boot to the Head" and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, B, A, (Select), Start

But What I Really Want to See Is "You Don't Mess With the Zohan"

2008-06-06T15:12:00.004-04:00

Well, at least it looks better than The Love Guru.

Oh, and I passed my written drivers' test. Next we equip the car with weapons.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
jade cant spel yet eether hahahaha

I'm Better!

2008-06-05T09:11:00.008-04:00

Greetings! Pfft. That chest infection was a total pussy. Nothing that rest, vitamins, plenty of water and a good dose of azithromycin couldn't cure.

So, the project still isn't over. I thought it would be, but it's not. See, there's the manuscript phase (which I was barely involved with), followed by 1Rs (which stands for First Round, the pages created by Production - PDFs of what the actual book will look like). 1Rs get edited and sent back to Production, who then incorporate the changes and send the PDFs back to us as 2Rs. In theory. What actually happens is that we have no time, so we go straight from 1Rs to the Digital phase, (which I've also heard referred to as the PDF phase or the Confirming proof phase; these terms in publishing are apparently fluid), which are the final files that go to the printer. So now I've got editors reviewing Digital proofs, which comprise forty-eight chapters
of 50-80 pages each, as well as forty-eight seven-page front matter proofs. Poo.

Yes, Adam, fascinating. Please, drone on for a few paragraphs more, I'm almost at the REM stage of sleep.
I'm going to write my Driver's License test tomorrow. Yeah, I know, pitiful, right? Almost thirty and never had a license. My life was just a perfect storm of circumstances that resulted in me never getting licensed. (Dad's a Metrobus driver, so I always had a free bus pass; Toronto had an excellent mass transit system; people who drive cars in Taiwan have rocks in their heads [I got my scooter license, though]; New York, same as Toronto.) Anyway, I did get my Learner's Permit in Newfoundland when I was home for Christmas 2006, but I didn't get much of a chance to practice for my road test in Taiwan. Either way, vroom, vroom, beep, beep. The plan is for me to have my Learner's Permit for next week when we drive to Niagara Falls to collect my dad and wicked step-mother. (I jest, I jest. Liz is a doll. And she reads this website.)

I like video games. But I don't like all kinds of video games. The kinds of video games I don't like are first-person shooters, sports games, and fighting games. Now, of course, there are exceptions. Duke Nuke Them is fantastic in its own way, and what little I played of Bioshock was excellent. Some of my fondest gaming memories come from the hazy recollections of fierce competitions in NHL '94 on Brian Lundrigan's Sega Genesis. As for fighting games, there's Super Smash Bros. Brawl (which barely counts), the Soul Blade/Calibur series, and Street Fighter. I got really fucking good at Street Fighter II Turbo. Accordingly, news that Street Fighter IV is upon us gives me one more reason to covet the PS3.

Also, the fact that the SFIV trailer features Faith No More catapults the news into the Awesomesphere.

Now I want them to do one with "We Care a Lot."

Newsworthy: Apparently aliens are real, and some whack job in Colorado has 'proof.' I love it. Hey, if it's good enough for Larry King, fuck it, it's good enough for me.

Also, crime is on the rise in Liberty City. Won't someone please think of the children?

A parting gift for all the Mega Man fans I know and love. The last thirty seconds are genius.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
You are a super doody. You are a mega doody. You are a monster doody.

Chest Infection < The World.

2008-05-30T09:22:00.010-04:00

Well, the madness of this short, hectic project is almost over, and my body has chosen to respond to this by acquiring a chest infection. Hahahackhack. I'm finding it difficult having to classify things coming out of my throat as either 'mint' or 'olive' green. I am vaguely unhappy.

On the other hand, there is no shortage of things already present in the world which make my suffering less suffery.

To quote the Angry Video Game Nerd, do you know what's bullshit? Fucking ads on the internet. I'm not even talking about pop-up ads (which are special kind of evil). I'm talking about those usually-innocuous ads that are present on the sidebars of sites like CNN and GameTrailers. Usually quiet and nonoffensive. Lately, however, I've noticed a disturbing trend of the ads ballooning up and occupying large portions of your screen. This I dislike. Enter Add-Art. Add-Art is an add-on for Firefox users (because, really, if you're not using Firefox, everybody thinks you're stupid... I mean seriously. Internet Explorer? Come on. Let's all use AOL to go check our Geocities accounts while we're at it. So last century.) that blocks all those ads and replaces them with works of art. Remember art? Remember how nice it makes you feel? When was the last time you were deeply affected by a blinking banner for Continental Airlines?

My friend Paul directed me to a flash game. I have no idea what it's called, but I think it may represent gaming in its purest form. Click the picture to go there.

I told you previously about a wonderful, wonderful bar in Denmark called the Scrollbar (best nerd bar name EVAR) that hosted a Mario night. Well, the sons of bitches went and had a Final Fantasy-themed night recently. What the fuck. I live in New York City. Where is my Final Fantasy-pathetic-drunken-cosplayer-night bar? I am scandalized.

Oooh, speaking of scandal. Now, I'm a huge fan of Tolkien's work. Of course I am. And I loved the movies that Peter Jackson did. I could have done with more Tom Bombadil and less Liv Tyler, but you take what you can get.

Now we learn that Guillermo del Toro will be directing the film based on The Hobbit. He'll also be directing a second, original, film set between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

*COUGHHACKSPLUTTER* I beg your fucking pardon? I am distinctly uncomfortable with this. It smacks of the same sort of commercialization that made the Dune series into a laughing-stock, and which clogs the science fiction/fantasy section of every bookstore with Star Wars and Star Trek "novels." Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade sums up my anxiety well, and graphically. I hope it's unjustified.

This young fellow has a few good points to make about videogames and sex.

My friend Paco is, apparently, not as busy as I am, and has drafted himself into my service as "interesting-link-getter." He notified me yesterday of two things: First, the ability of monkeys to control robotic arms. His evaluation was, "it doesn't say how many monkeys control how many arms, or how big the arm is." I agreed that this ambiguity was actually far more entertaining than the content of the article itself. Second, well, just read the article's title and you'll understand.
Katie likes Hello Kitty. A lot. Therefore, I also kind of like Hello Kitty. Therefore, the upcoming release of a Nintendo DS game entitled Hello Kitty Panda Sports Stadium has me very interested. Any game which permits you to dress Hello Kitty up in a panda suit and then do judo is well worth the price of admission.

One last thing before I go. Metallica has apparently taken some notes from Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead's books on how to not alienate the shit out of the people who like the music (ie: make your music free to download, sell tickets for concerts, and don't sue your fans). They've started something called "Mission: Metallica", where you can sign up and get some free shit, and then, later, buy their new album. Not download it for free (like NIN and Radiohead have done), buy it. The general consensus on Metallica's "new" approach seems to range from "too little, too late" to "fucking metalica are a fucking stupd band anyway and their all homos." Me, personally, I think they topped out with Ride the Lightning and haven't sung a decent song since The Black Album.

Well, time to go put a few bullets in the head of this Spanish Math project...

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
A: Follow my lead!
B: Screw that!

No Me Gusta Trabajar.

2008-05-23T10:20:00.010-04:00

So, I ventured into Spanish Harlem last night to try my hand at Rock Band. (My friend Paco owns the PS2 version.) It played out much as I expected. I was fair-to-middling at the guitar (having failed to invest adequate hours into my own copies of the Guitar Hero trilogy) and too intimidated to sing. Luckily, Paco's girlfriend Sarah is an excellent sport, sharing the vocal duties with him, allowing me to focus...

On the DRUMS. Oh, the drums.

Rock Band for PS2 was a Lightning Deal on Amazon just two days ago, and I now wish I had gotten it. I don't want to work, I just want to bang on the drums all day. I love the drums. I love to bang them. So fun. SO fun.

All right, and what have the internets vomited up for you today...

First: this may go over the heads of anyone who is 1) unfamiliar with the sidescrolling shooter Gradius, or 2) unfamiliar with old-school text adventure games, like Zork. If, however, you have even a passing knowledge of these two, dare I say, cornerstones of modern gaming, then you will enjoy this:

If that was a little too silent, then you can check out this next, fantastically noisy video.

Someone got their grubby little hands on a SNES emulator and created a series of insanely complex levels, that, when Mario (and sometimes Yoshi) is catapulted through them, play music. Wow.

Finally, I am ashamed that have kept these two websites from you for so long.

The merits of icanhascheezburger.com should be readily apparent to anyone with a computer and eyes. I recommend going to the beginning and working your way forward, but be warned: the people who inhabit the intertubes have nothing but time to waste on these endeavours, and the LOLcats number in the bajillions.

On the other hand, graphjam.com can be a bit more abstruse. It consists mainly of graphic representations of songs or memes from film, video games, etc., such as this one:
Hilarious. (Check the "Friday" column closely if you still don't get it.) Each post on Graphjam has a "Cheat Sheet" button that will give you a video or something to provide a frame of reference if you don't understand something right away.

Well, have a good weekend. I'm going to finally buckle down and finish Rogue Galaxy. Plus, Katie and I are going to become not just fit, but Wii Fit.

Jolly nice!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Poppin' up like crazy.

There are so many cool things in the world that I'm seriously starting to freak out.

2008-05-19T09:40:00.005-04:00

Okay, I mean honestly.

Let's start off with an easy one. An article in the Washington Post that is actually titled Republicans Vote Against Moms; No Word Yet on Puppies, Kittens. Somebody deserves a Pulitzer for that one.

I have a Wii. I love my Wii. But they're making it very difficult to not buy a PS3.

Alas, when Final Fantasy XIII comes out (completing the GTA4/MGS4/FF13 trifecta), I am sure to be lost.

There is a person somewhere that calls himself Blu. Blu paints on walls. But he doesn't just paint on walls, he animates on walls. It's creepy and brilliant. (I personally would like to see this sort of thing done with ninjas flipping all over the walls rather than creepy neuters climbing out of the chests of other creepy neuters. But beggars can't be choosers.)

I found the following video on one of the Wired blogs.
When I was in South Africa, I didn't make it to Kruger National Park, where this video was filmed.

Totally awesome.

(Brilliant segue approaching!)
Oh, speaking of totally awesome, some crazy Swiss motherfucker has built a rocket pack and flies at 180 miles per hour with his rocket pack.
I am suffused with jealousy.

Let it also be known that I love Ricardo Montalban. I used to watch Fantasy Island, and I just thought he was completely the shit.

Check this commercial for the Chrysler Cordoba ("The Small Chrysler" LOL). You're probably familiar with the phrase "fine Corinthian leather", used to describe the leather in a car. Well, this is not the first, but the best-known utterance of the phrase (although it's actually "soft", not "fine").

Corinthian leather, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with Corinth. It was just a buzzword drummed up for the leather in Chrysler cars in the 1970s. It was made in New Jersey. I just love how completely enamoured with the Cordoba Ricardo Montalban is.

What a stud.

Last thing: there is a cat in England named "Macavity" who rides the bus.
That's just wonderful.

My sister and her boyfriend are leaving tomorrow, so pictures of their adventures are sure to follow.

My friend Oliver plays musics, and you may go to his website and listen to some of these musics.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Go Cavs!

Review: Grand Theft Auto IV

2008-05-14T11:35:00.005-04:00

Well, no, I don't own either a PlayStation 3 or an Xbox 360. No, I haven't technically "played" the game, as such. But since when has the internet frowned upon someone taking a stand on an issue they know absolutely nothing about?

Really, to be honest, I'm just jealous. It seems like everyone else in the world has been giving GTAIV perfect or near-perfect scores, so I just didn't want to be left out. (Also, I've decided that I'm going to refer to the game as though the acronym was a word. So, whenever you see "GTAIV" in print from now on, here or elsewhere, please vocalize it as "guh-tave". Thanks!)

So, on to the review. Well, gtaiv is... ummm... a massive, open-world sandbox title that takes the... uh.... open-world sandbox experience to a new level. The main character is Niko Bellic, an Eastern European tough who comes to America (possibly North America) to chase the American Dream (possibly the North American Dream*, but there's a chance it could, in fact, be either the South American Dream** or the Central American Dream***), only to find that his arsehole brother (or cousin, whatever) lied to him. Niko gets caught up in a whirlwind of stealing cars and murdering hookers, while occasionally doing some missions before getting bored, entering a God code and standing in the middle of an intersection slaughtering thousands of civilians, police and soldiers.

There's some sort of online mode, but whatever, I don't care about that.

Some people aren't happy unless you give a game a numerical score, so here's one.

Final score: 10.

Well, that was fun. I guess I'll become a professional game reviewer now. Maybe next time I'll review a game I've actually played.

I just today downloaded a drawing program that lets me sketch on the computer (as you can no doubt tell from the leading graphic above). Whee! Fun!

Oh, speaking of professional game reviewers, there's a lucky sod named Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw who creates a series called "Zero Punctuation" over at The Escapist. It is, without a doubt, the funniest series of game reviews on the internet. I can't recommend them highly enough. Set aside a long afternoon and watch them all.

I've slashed most of the chaff from the links section in the sidebar. Katherine, Johnathan, Jillian, Dana: you have all failed and have been banished. I feel bad for your poor, orphaned websites, as you callously flit off to Facebook with the rest of the sheep. I honestly can't think of anything sadder than a blog that hasn't been updated in six months, and the most recent post is something pitifully self-effacing like, "I bet nobody checks this anymore." (I check it. Well, I used to.)

I also got my Economic Stimulus Payment cheque. I didn't think I would, on account of me not being an American, but I pay my taxes, so apparently I was eligible. Thanks, Dubya! Now get the fuck out of that office and let Obama lead us into the recession you set the world up for, you stupid fucking TWAT.

A-hem.

Jessica and Vincent are currently visiting. I'll put up some pictures of the madness we get up to whenever any two of the Hunt children gather in one place. When there's three of us, we sort of reach critical mass, and sparks start hopping about. All four of us haven't been in the same place together since Dad and Liz's wedding, for fear of causing a singularity and destroying time.

Oh, and Iron Man was absolutely brilliant.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Hold still, you little prick!

* To spend one's $300 Economic Stimulus Payment on crack cocaine.
** To, someday, stop being raped by North America.
*** To finally be declared the Eighth Continent.

SWEET JESUS.

2008-05-01T20:50:00.001-04:00

You know what babies don't like?

Being dropped off a FUCKING TOWER.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/05/01/india.baby.toss.cnn

Sweet monkey-fucking Jesus Christ.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
What in the blue fuck is that all about?

It is May!

2008-05-01T19:52:00.003-04:00

Congratulations. You have survived your trials thus far. But the road ahead will only become more difficult.

It's dangerous to go alone! Take this:

The Angry Video Game Nerd has lost his mind. (I know the beginning is just a bunch of shitty youtube clips, but stick with it. Trust me, the payoff at the end is worth it.)

Also, some of you may have played The Last Stand when I told you about it not too long ago. (No, not the X-Men movie, the zombie-hordes-descending-upon-your-fortified-position flash game.) Anyway, they've made a sequel, and it's harder.

If you've never been rickrolled, consider yourself lucky. If you have, and you know who Robo is, then this will be hilarious:

Finally, Taiko Drum Master is an institution in Asia. Apparently, it's so popular that it's spawned a claymation animated series. All the (four-minute) episodes are available on youtube.
I present the first episode here. Enjoy.

I'm off to kill zombies.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
But why?

This is the 100th post.

2008-04-28T20:49:00.006-04:00

Wow. 100 posts. That's a lot. I've been doing this for two years now.

Most important: we had a Nerdy Day Out on Saturday. The pictures are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/theadamhunt/NerdyDayOut

Enjoy!

This will be funny for a select group of my friends.

You're welcome.

Also, this is exactly the sort of thing that makes an ideal birthday present for little boys named Adam:

You can buy them here. Thanks in advance.

Well, I'd wax nostalgic about the confluence of 100th post with two-year anniversary, but that would be waste of time. Suffice to say that I like my website better than anyone else does, which is fine by me.

Oh, and I'm going to be tidying up the links on the right very soon. Some of the websites over there haven't been interesting for quite a while, so either update them and make them interesting to me or be orphaned. As an addendum to that, if you have an interesting website that you want to tell me about, tell me about it.
Well, that's all. I must go play Mario Kart now. Vroom vroom! Beep beep!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Don't ever try to show off in front of me like that again... beast.

Fuck tha police. Comin' straight from the underground.

2008-04-23T09:23:00.005-04:00

Now, I've got absolutely nothing against officers of the law. Quite the magnanimous statement, yes? Coming as it does from a 29-year-old white guy from Newfoundland, whose only run-in with the law was a friendly Royal Newfoundland Constabulary officer who advised me to throw away the joint I was holding.

Um, for a friend.

A-hem.

Still, I've always believed that the police serve a valid purpose. They remove the need for us to take vengeance on those that have wronged us. It may be a slow and cumbersome system, but it's infinitely better than the feudal system which lasted up until the 20th century. (You know, last century.)

That being said, this morning I read about Jimmy Justice, a pissy New Yorker who's decided to document New York City police officers breaking the law. Not running drugs or taking payoffs or anything. For illegal parking and u-turns. He's fantastic.

We recently got a ticket for parking 9 feet from a fire hydrant (which is galling because the legal distance in our neighbourhood is ten feet, not the fifteen Jimmy refers to). $115 is nothing to sniff at. Maybe we should trade in our sensible Volkswagen Jetta for a police cruiser.

Jimmy's youtube channel is here.

Earth Day was yesterday. You didn't even know that, did you? You are all very bad people.
In interesting nerd news, the crowd over at the cumbersomely-titled website "Mightygodking.com" have photoshopped some old Atari game cartridges, with hilarious results. I found myself struggling to remember some of the actual names of the games, a sure sign that senescence is upon me. Ah, the quick decline.

I also found what is reputed to be the first issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, in PDF format, sporting one of my all-time favourite games (with one of the all-time worst boxarts) on the cover. Go ahead and download it; it's priceless. They talk about the Robocop game for NES. I loved that game.

Well, looks like that's about it for now. We saw Jon Stewart, who is funny. This Saturday we're going to see Video Games Live! at the Beacon Theater, and it looks like we're taking a trip to Decorah in July for some sort of event called Nordic Fest. I have suspicions that the event may be cultural in nature.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam.
This route? Bad idea.

Two.

2008-04-15T13:38:00.003-04:00

Item the first:

If you find video games too hard, you should try a game called "You Have to Burn the Rope." I'm calling it now. GTA4? Metal Gear Solid 4? Smash Bros? Mario Kart Wii? Fuck 'em. "You Have to Burn the Rope" will be crowned Game of the Year 2008 by the popular press, I guarantee it.

Item the second:

Say what you want about China's human rights record and the complete fucking farce that the Olympic Games have become, there is some good there.

http://view.break.com/487616 - Watch more free videos

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Katie pwned nOObz at Smash Bros. online.

All Transformers who aren't Soundwave are crap.

2008-04-02T09:35:00.002-04:00

I fucking love Soundwave.

"Ravage, get off the couch." LOL.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam

Don't fall behind.

Tron. Sweet Tron.

2008-03-31T07:08:00.001-04:00

Tron
by freres-hueon

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam

These two towers are just giving us twice the burden.

Nintendo Wifi service is crap. And turn off your lights.

2008-03-29T10:08:00.009-04:00

I hate to say anything bad about my favourite playing card company, but seriously, guys, come the fuck on. All I want to do is brawl with random people using my lightning rat, but I keep getting dropped from games and booted out to the main menu with weird error codes like 86640 and 30014. Fuck that. If Microsoft and Sony can do it right, then you can, too.

On to important matters. Today is the day that we do Earth Hour. It's simple. At 8pm tonight (your local time), turn off all the lights in your house to save a lot of electricity. It's not stupid, we're going to do it, and so should you. Light a candle and read for an hour or go for a walk. Stop being such fucking pussies and do something about the planet before it eats us.

The official website is here.

The web version of the Onion sucks. There, I said it.
It used to be cool, but now it sucks. The print version is still funny, but the web version lately just seems to be reprints of stories in the paper version.

That being said, this article about the Wii turning kids into pansies is hilarious.

Speaking of videogames, you know this guy, right?
Yeah! It'sa Mario! This guy is more famous than Mickey Mouse. He's cute and cartoony and shoots fireballs to save the princess (even though his down special in Super Smash Bros. Brawl is horseshit. (The water gun from Mario Sunshine? Cracker, please.)

Anyway, someone (someone EVIL), made Mario's face by photoshopping real people's faces into the correct dimensions for the plumber's visage. The result is actually too creepy to put on my website. The friendly folks at Kotaku have no such qualms, however. Take a deep breath before clicking: Creepy-ass Mario.

Interesting in an off-handed sort of way: a website that compares the major subway systems of the world by size and shape.

Oh! And I've become addicted to amazon.com, apparently. It all started one day when I was looking at their "Gold Box" deals. They have these things called "lightning deals" that are only good for four hours or so, but they're usually quite good. The one I first saw was Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn for the Wii. I missed it, sadly. But then on Wednesday, the lightning deal was for a 40-inch Samsung 720p LCD flatscreen television for the near-criminal price of ba-bai-quai. Now all I need are some component cables so I can play Super Smash Bros. Brawl in hi-def. Oh, too sweet.

That's all for now. We went to Connecticut last weekend for Easter with Katie's aunt and uncle. I'll post some photos of pastoral Connecticut as well as Matt and Abby's visit later today if I'm not too busy/lazy.

Youtube recently held their second annual Youtube Awards. I'm sure you've all seen the video of the paper-tearing, howling-laughing, mega-cute baby (winner in the "Adorable" category), and some of you may have seen the winner for "Comedy" (Potter Puppet Pals in "the Mysterious Ticking Noise"), but my favorite by far was the Human Tetris, which won in the "Creative" category.

I actually found myself saying, "Oh, no" and "Ah, shit" when I was watching it.

Well, that's all. Don't be dicks; turn off your lights for an hour tonight. It seriously won't kill you.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam

Like a doody.

Upheaval. Gnashing of teeth.

2008-03-13T21:16:00.008-04:00

Hola!

Hey, less than a month, pretty good.

And a month of excitement it has been! You may or may not know that I moved to New York to work at a company that develops ESL books for extension of core educational programs. I was hired to work on one particular project: a huge, multi-million dollar endeavour. The difficulties were immense. Our client (let's call them Bloughton-Blifflin) was going through a rough spot, due to a recent merger with another huge educational publisher (say, Blarcourt), so people kept quitting their jobs at Bloughton, leaving us consistently scratching our heads as to who we were supposed to ask when we had questions.

Suffice to say, the entire issue was rendered moot when, three weeks before the project's end date, Bloughton-Blifflin cancelled the entire project.

ROFL and LOL don't begin to describe it.

So, I was obviously deported from the United States.
Well, no. They just put me on a different project and told me how wonderful I was.
Anyway.

The project I'm working on now is a McGraw-Hill product called SuperGoal. I'm actually writing/revising/editing the entire student workbook for the project, so in a few years, you happy folks still teaching ESL can pick up a copy of SuperGoal and say, "Check it! That's Teacher Adam's handiwork!"

So. What else is new? Oh, TONS!

I've been meaning to point this out for a while now.

Our apartment is located in south Queens (so south, in fact, that people often think we live in Brooklyn). Our neighborhood is full of flower shops. Katie agonized over this for quite a while before realizing that it's not just flower shops we're surrounded by, but cemeteries.

While, for most people, this represents lower property values and a slight disinclination to go for midnight strolls, for me, it basically means one thing and one thing only.

Yep. Fuckloads of potential zombies. Oh, well, at least I'm informed.

And, as promised, I will no longer rant about Super Smash Bros. Brawl, because I own it. Now, will people please kindly buy it and play it with me on one of the internets.

This is my Super Smash Bros. Brawl friend code: 4339-2232-6946. Give me yours and then feel the wrath of the electric mouse.

The recent Game Developers Conference took place somewhere that was not New York. One of the things they displayed was a game that you control with your mind. With your good God-damned mind.

I also found a post on another website that displays Peruvian riot police in full gear. Worrisome? Or awesome? Discuss.

Then, of course, there's the urgent cnn.com news story about the two girls who were (wait for it) too pretty to fly. Yes, you read that right. Just go watch the video. I'll wait.

Meanwhile, in actual really important news, there's a bar in Denmark (where else?) called Scrollbar (best name for a bar evar), where they staged a Mario Bros. party. The linked site contains instructions for several delicious-sounding Nintendo-themed drinks. Bloody brilliant.

Amusing: a website where someone who has a great deal for free time has digitally removed Garfield and his attendant thought-balloons from several Garfield comic strips. The result is arguably funnier than any complete Garfield strip of the past decade.

For those of you who care about such things (Chris, Arnold, Paul, I choose you!), the newest trailer for Iron Man looks just frigging fantastic.

I am a bit of a computer nerd. But I'm that worst kind of computer nerd: one who actually doesn't know that much about computers. I know just enough to (just barely) be able to get my head around what a meet-me room is. No, it's not an online macthmaker; it's a room, an actual physical room in a building where different internet service providers hook all their cables up to one another's so that the person in California can look at this website that I created from my house in New York. Wired.com had a recent pictorial showing what is, effectively, the guts of the internet. I thought it was cool, so I'm sharing. It reminded me, eerily, of Taiwan.

Also, courtesy of Wired:

I want them, but I don't think I should be allowed to have them.

That's kind of all for now. Winter (such as it was) has ended here in New York. One of my bosses just had a new baby. It's 10pm, and I'm tired, so I'll leave you with this thrilling and hilarious video. The FMG-9. That's precisely the sort of thing I need in case the living undead rise from their graves while I'm taking my evening constitutional.

That's all. I hope you're all well. I miss everyone I can't see. Which reminds me, I'm growing irate with everyone who hasn't gotten Skype yet.
Now fuck off.

Love, Adam

Kitty had a grand day out at the Build-a-Bear Workshop.

Insanity.

2008-02-19T18:01:00.008-05:00

It was seventeen degrees Celsius in New York yesterday. Madness.

Mega Man 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. I never had as much trouble with Air Man as this guy did, though:

Of interest:
A lady recently appeared on that paragon of fair and balanced journalism, Fox News, to decry the XBox 360 game Mass Effect because it "contains frontal nudity and explicit depictions of sexual activity."

Needless to say, the game is not very explicit, and we have another example of people assuming the worst of videogames because they don't "get" them.

Also needless to say, we videogamers are an easily-roused lot, and we hold grudges. So, the faithful marched over to amazon.com and bombed the lady's book into oblivion with 1-star reviews. I think it's both unbearably funny and slightly depressing.

Speaking of funny and slightly depressing, Adult Swim's website (which brought us Bible Fight and 5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself)) has added a new game called Amateur Surgeon. It's like Trauma Center, only you're a pizza delivery boy who just wants to be a surgeon. No, I don't have a scalpel. But I do have this pizza cutter....In other news, Princess Peach has got all her shit hanging out and doesn't even care. I'm just happy that the makers of Super Smash Bros. Brawl don't know what a camel toe is.

A-hem.

Speaking of Super Mario Bros., I saw this funny article about a person teaching in Asia who has a humorous story to tell about the innocence of little Asian kids.

I leave you with a funny picture I found on one of the internets.Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
What the fuck did I do with the picture of Amy Lin flipping off the camera?

Epic conflict.

2008-02-14T23:05:00.001-05:00

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam

Why Forwards Can Go Fuck Themselves: A Lament

2008-02-12T17:08:00.001-05:00

I have lots of spam.
It has been exactly one month to the day since the last time I cleaned out my spam folder in my e-mail account. 31 days. 140 spams. That works out to 4.5 a day.
I don't enter my e-mail address on any suspicious websites. The websites that I do give my e-mail to are reputable sites that guarantee that they won't sell or share my address.
So why do I get spam? And why do I get so fucking much of it?

Because of those bleeding forwards. Forwarded mail is how spammers get e-mail addresses. You know how most of the time when you get a forward, it's usually got about a hundred e-mail addresses at the beginning of it? This tells you the history of the e-mail. It shows everyone that it's ever been sent to before it got to you.

The sons of bitches who clot your inbox (or, if you're lucky/a gmail user, your spambox) with spam harvest these e-mails like ripe fruit. Eventually, they get the forwards sent to them, and then you get 140 pieces of spam in 31 days. Arg.

Not helping things is the fact that most of the forwards, well-intentioned though they may be, are lies. Dirty, stinking, filthy lies. Bill Gates does not want to give you any money. Ashley Flores is not missing. Barack Obama is not "a radical Muslim." Nobody is trying to take the words "In God We Trust" off American coins. Illegal aliens are not stealing your social security. There is no powerpoint virus called "Life is Beautiful."

They lie to get your e-mail addresses and the e-mail addresses of all your friends and family members. Fuckers.

But all is not lost! We are smarter than them! Yes, we are! We can beat them in two ways. These are the two ways. There is a slightly more difficult way, and there is a brain-dead easy way.

1. The Slightly More Difficult Way:
The slightly more difficult way is, as soon as you get a forward, go check it out on http://www.snopes.com/. Snopes is a rumor-debunking/-confirming website that investigates the origins of many of the forwards that show up in your inbox from your well-meaning friends. Most of them are hoaxes.

2. The Brain-Dead Easy Way:
The easy way is so easy, it makes easy things look hard. You know when you get ready to forward something? Well, stop for a minute to delete all the e-mail addresses at the top of it. Boom, bad spammers foiled. Then, to protect everyone you care about, enter all their e-mail addresses in the "Bcc:" field. (It's right there, under "To:" and "Cc:") Bcc stands for Blind Carbon Copy, which means that everyone still gets your mail, they just can't see all the e-mail addresses. Boom, bad spammers foiled again.

Thus endeth the lesson.

In other news, the project I'm working on at BookLinks is nearing completion and everything is very hectic and insane. After March 21, I expect to have all kinds of free time LOLOLOLOL. Sure I will.

If I was awesome, I'd be able to do what this guy does:

Americans have Toffifee, too. They just don't know how to spell it.

There was a rat in the subway. While itself not a remarkable occurence, the fact that this rat was running around on the platform rather than the track makes it noteworthy. Still better than Taiwan.
They have pizza vending machines here. I feel like I'm living in fucking Star Trek: The Next Generation here.

And I swear, I am going to stop ranting about Super Smash Bros. Brawl. As soon as I own it. Not before.

We're expecting a new addition to our happy little house in the form of a shiny new iMac. I anticipate this will make posting interesting facts about our lives much easier. This poor groaning beast of a laptop will be honorably retired. There may be a medal for distinguished service.

And to prove that we are not liars and that we 1) have friends and 2) are willing to share our meager space with said friends, we will be entertaining guests next weekend. Katie's step-sister Abby and her lover, Matt, will be visiting from Alexandria (near Washington - astute readers will recall that we visited them before Christmas). Further, my sister and father will be coming (albeit separately) in the coming months!

I leave you with a flash game. Samurai Movers involves hurling furniture at a little old lady's house. With a catapult (which may actually be a trebuchet). Some call it a mindless diversion. I call it high art.

You may laugh, but the aforementioned laptop is literally gasping its last as I type this.

So, exit quickly.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam

I have nothing else to say right now.

New Year's Resolution.

2008-01-31T20:05:00.000-05:00

1. Post to my website with some regularity.

...fuck.

Oh, well.
This is on the side of a building one block from my workplace.

And this is awesome. The 80's were an interesting time.

I wish I had all the time in the world, but I don't, so instead of saving up my piss and vinegar for weeks and dumping a long-winded diatribe on you, I'll try to keep it to the bite-sized chunks that teh blogerzfere is renowned for.

Parting-shot: Robots are apparently learning how to lie. Fantastic.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam

No. Stop that. It's not okay with me.

Too funny not to share.

2007-12-24T14:06:00.001-05:00

Christmas in Murka.

2007-12-24T11:43:00.000-05:00

Hi!

Merry Christmas! I love Christmas, but most of this post isn't about the holiday. Our presents are all piled under the tree, Katie's baking a pie, and I'm going to try my hand at cooking a turkey tomorrow. Should be fun.

Here's some stuff to look at and have a laugh while you've got company.

You have a dirty mind.

And if you grew up playing videogames in the '80s and this doesn't give you a little thrill of joy, then you are not human.

My good buddy Jody has put a bunch of videos up on her Youtube site of odd things from Taiwan. Warning: madness that way lies.

"O HAI U CATCHED US SECKSING LOL."

GamesRadar posted a story covering the 15 worst videogame boxarts of 2007. I have to admit that I wasn't very fussy on GamesRadar when the site first launched; it was laggy and unintuitive, but they've tightened things up nicely, and their Top 7, Top 10, etc. lists are always good for a chuckle.

Speaking of stories, here's an interesting one. Those of you not familiar with Animal Crossing for the Gamecube or Nintendo DS might not find anything interesting in The Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing, but the whole story is told using unaltered screenshots from the Big N's freeform community sim. The story is creepy as shit, too.

Finally, I'm sure many of you know that I desperately love my Wii (which fanaticism has only waxed with Katie's recent gift of Super Mario Galaxy), but I'm still very interested in getting a PS3 when the price of said PlayStation comes down out of the fucking stratosphere. That said, this faux-commercial sums up the difference between the two systems nicely, if not particularly politically correctly. (w00t! Triple Adverb Combo! 1000 points!)

That's all for now! Merry Christmas!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
give me your Wii number, and I'll give you mine, and we can play with each other's Wiis

Things and things.

2007-12-08T09:47:00.000-05:00

Hi!

Interesting things:

They've found a dinosaur mummy, which I am tentatively naming "Mummysaur." Now, where are my vampire dinosaurs and dinosaur wolfman?

Also, I have a Wii. I love my Wii. The Wii is a product of the Japanese playing card company Nintendo. Not to be outdone, the Chinese have been quick to... um... emulate the Wii's success (and capitalize on the general ignorance of parents) by releasing the... Vii. (Which, due to the vagaries of the Chinese accent, is actually pronounced as "Wii" as well.)

Four years in Taiwan have immunized me to the inherent weirdness of Chinese commercials, but seeing this... this monstrosity made me sit up and take notice. It's bad, even by Tawianese standards.

Then, to make it funnier, the kids over at Chinese Engadget cracked one of the Viis open to see what made it tick. I've opened my old fat PS2 a few times, and it was really complicated, just packed with circuit boards and all kinds of stuff. The Vii... was not.

That's all for now!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam

Contra 4 is harder than driving nails with your forehead.

December!

2007-12-02T22:12:00.000-05:00

Hi, everybody!

First things first. I know they said it couldn't be done, but I did it. I finally finished captioning those pictures from our trip to South Korea.

In April.

Sigh.

Anyway, they're interesting, if not timely. Go look at them!

http://picasaweb.google.com/theadamhunt/SouthKoreaIsFun

Also, Katie and I went to visit her sister in Alexandria, Virginia. There were significantly fewer pictures, so I'm actually posting them... now! Amazing.

http://picasaweb.google.com/theadamhunt/AdamGoesToWashington

Oh, and I have to tell you that I finally found the vampire church. It's near my work, look:

They've been there since 1922! Creepy.

It was Katie's birthday on the 29th. About four weeks ago, I took it into my head to take her to a Broadway show for her birthday. I bought the tickets, but when I went to Manhattan on Novembver 10th to get the tickets, I was dismayed to find that the Broadway stagehands had gone on strike, shutting everything down.

For three weeks, I watched playbill.com and nervously waited for word that the strike would end. But it didn't. Argh. Well, long story short, the strike was resolved the morning of Katie's birthday, so the 8pm showing of The Little Mermaid was the first performance in three weeks.

Phew. We went out to dinner first, and I gave her a Hello Kitty DVD and the tickets with an obnoxious card that sang "Under the Sea" when she opened it. Oh, speaking of Hello Kitty, did you hear that Thai police are being forced to wear pink Hello Kitty armbands as punishment for being late or parking in the wrong place. LOL doesn't do it justice.

Reviews for The Little Mermaid have been lukewarm, but what do you want? It's not Les Mis, it's not Phantom of the Opera, it's a musical based on a cartoon about a little mermaid. So what if all the cast members are puttering around on heelies? It was fun, and Katie liked it.

We bought a tree! Yay, Christmas! It snowed last night, too! Katie named the tree "Prickly." It took a good long while, but we got it all set up and lights in the windows, so now it feels like Christmas.

See? Christmas! Yay! \o/

All right, I'm exhausted.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam

hello kitty has three pets: dusty, spot, and aflac

Well, here we are.

2007-10-21T17:46:00.000-04:00

Finally!

Well, we're all settled into our cute little apartment.
I've gotten some pictures posted, so go look at them.

Here: http://picasaweb.google.com/theadamhunt/TaichungToNewYorkViaStJohnS

I also took a little video walk-through of our apartment, but it wouldn't load to the web album for some reason, so I've embedded it below.

I just finished the last Harry Potter book. I thought it was good, even if it copped out a little at the very end.

And, hey did you guys hear that Dumbledore's gay? That's not a joke. He's actually gay. Bravo, Ms. Rowling.

Anyway, I'm tired.

Now fuck off.

Love,

Adam

So funny!

2007-09-09T16:07:00.001-04:00

Two videos Heffy showed me.

This is The Landlord:

See more Will Ferrell videos at Funny or Die

And this is Good Cop, Baby Cop:

See more Will Ferrell videos at Funny or Die

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam

The New Threat

2007-09-07T14:23:00.000-04:00

Seeing as I'm going to be moving...

...to America...

I thought I should bone up on the policies of the Bush administration.

He's doing God's work, dammit.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam

All right...

2007-09-01T15:37:00.000-04:00

It would appear that I now have a job in New York City. Katie and I will be moving there shortly to begin our wonderful new lives... in America.

(Spanish accent)In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power... and THEN you get the women.(/Spanish accent)

Jolly nice.

Now I have but to unravel the vagaries of the TN visa. Fun!

And, by the way, I'm honestly shocked that nobody thought of this before. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: we live in a wonderful world full of mystery and adventure.

Speaking of giant robots:

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
my sister showed me a guinea pig named shauna

This is fantastic.

2007-08-29T04:47:00.000-04:00

Absolutely stunning.

I love it.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam

NO Oredit Cnrds accepaed. thonk you.

2007-08-26T21:20:00.000-04:00

From our last trip to the night market.

Oh, and in other, significantly more alarming news, there is apparently a hole in the universe. Not just a regular hole, either. A gaping hole. An enormous hole.

Well fuck that.

I personally agree with Brian over at 8-Bit Theater. The hole is obviously the home of the Old Ones. Duh. I'm readying my mind for obliteration as we speak.

Oh, and I'm leaving Taiwan forever on Friday morning. \o/

Now fuck off.

Thonk you.

Love, Adam

I wonder if anyone will notice this sentence.

LOLLERSKATES.

2007-08-20T20:40:00.000-04:00

Only funny when you know that my boss' name is Bih Hua.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam

Gasp!

2007-07-31T04:58:00.000-04:00

I found a game called Sharkrunners, but I don't know if it's a game or not.
I haven't had time to play with it yet. Maybe you should play with it and tell me if it's any good.

It looks cool.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam

shrugs Okay, okay.

2007-07-26T08:43:00.000-04:00

I guess updating isn't as hard as I've been letting on.

Anyway, I have something to show you.

Chore Wars.

Anything that makes real-life more like video games is fine by me.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam

Adam Fire Fist Shows No Mercy!!!

I consider myself quite the auteur.

WHAT? Where did the summer go?

Early morning with little to do.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Cards! (Green and Birthday)

Busy? No excuse!

A Question, Followed by Reviews and Videos

Merry Christmas, with Apologies

Team of two.

Review: 12 Women (+ Bonuses!)

Flyin' solo!

Not much!

Quick & Dirty

A video is worth 4830 pictures.

Movin' on up.

Penis. No, I mean... wait...

Desperately Trying Not to be a Cynical Asshole

Hello, World!

Fuck you and the facebook you rode in on.

Regrets. And projectiles!

Love.

I know what a "Prot Tankadin" is now.

Well, good for them.

Big day.

Master crafters we.

I never cared much for democracy, anyway.

What's so civil about w... nnngh, I can't do it.

I used to be good at video games.

Could be worse...

Je suis brilliante.

Jesus save us.

Worst Olympics EVAR.

Moment of Clarity

Let's put a smile on that face.

Well, slap a carrot in my mouth and call me Wilbur.

BLOODY. FUCKING. DISGUSTING.

Visitors! Water on Mars! My first-ever CD review! And MOAR!

FYI: Driving with standard transmission is FUCKING HARD.

But What I Really Want to See Is "You Don't Mess With the Zohan"

I'm Better!

Chest Infection < The World.

No Me Gusta Trabajar.

There are so many cool things in the world that I'm seriously starting to freak out.

Review: Grand Theft Auto IV

SWEET JESUS.

It is May!

This is the 100th post.

Fuck tha police. Comin' straight from the underground.

Two.

All Transformers who aren't Soundwave are crap.

Tron. Sweet Tron.

Nintendo Wifi service is crap. And turn off your lights.

Upheaval. Gnashing of teeth.

Insanity.

Epic conflict.

Why Forwards Can Go Fuck Themselves: A Lament

New Year's Resolution.

Too funny not to share.

Christmas in Murka.

Things and things.

December!

Well, here we are.

So funny!

The New Threat

All right...

This is fantastic.

NO Oredit Cnrds accepaed. thonk you.

LOLLERSKATES.

Gasp!

*shrugs* Okay, okay.

shrugs Okay, okay.