Yarr. Me can’t believe anudder year gone by already. Why, weren’t it be not but yesterday that I be running rum wit Johnny-stick-at-Nought and Petey-Three-Penny when the shinin’ sea reminded me it be September 19th once agin. Let it be me the first to wish ye and ye crew a fine and hardy, YAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRR!
a little taste of the Adventures of Lil’ Link…
He was a man with a camera…
HE was a 2 inch high piece of vinyl plastic
They lived in separate worlds
but for one day their worlds would collide
COMING THIS FALL!
The Adventures of Lil’ Link!
A Gluemeat Photo Fict-u-mentary.
It’s time for another look back at stuff which got me going last week, as I hand out Robots and Milk to lucky, lucky recepients, no matter how conceptual they may be.
A very Irate Red Robot to the Canadian media’s handling of the “breaking events” of
the Dawson College shooting. Everyone was so busy trying to out-scoop each other, they muddled an already chaotic situation by passing off rumours and hearsay as “latest developments.” Seriously, how do you go from having four gunmen (one captured, two shot dead, one committed suicide) to a single one at the end of the day? How about reporting on four dead students to end up with one? I can only imagine the stress the parents were under as they listened to this garbage, waiting for their kids to call.
Which leads me to my next Irate Red Robot, which will pay a visit to Bell and Telus, whose cellular services shut down due to “overload” when word got out of the shooting. The Telus spokesperson said it was normal for this to happen in times of crisis, like on 9/11 in 2001. Not to downplay the tragedy, but aren’t the stakes in these two cases light years different? There were probably a lot less people on the phone last Monday than there were when the World Trade Center collapsed. Bell and Telus need to beef up their infrastructure so that they can handle more than a few hundred “extra” calls at once. It’s not quite comforting to know how fast our mobile phone service will die on us in a time of need.
There’s a nice Glass of Warm Milk waiting for the developers of the Night of Bush Capturing video game. It’s a Quake-like first person shooter where you, a jihadi, go on a glorious rampage, taking down all sorts of infidel Western scum to finally go toe-to-toe with ol’ Dubya himself in the final level. You might want to take a shot or two at Tony Blair or those Hezbollah pricks along the way, too. Knowing this, you may ask “why the Glass of Warm Milk?” Well, I know when I’m feeling pissed, a couple of rounds of Metroid Prime always helps get the bad out instead of taking it out on someone. And God Allah Caesar’s Ghost knows that if a bunch of folks are in dire need of a good old fashioned venting session, it’s terrorists!
Another Glass of Warm Milk to the programming folks at Teletoon who have finally got their acts together and bought the rights to Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim shows. Even better, their daily Detour programming (after 9pm) includes stuff like Family Guy and Futurama, then serves a generous helping of Adult Swim staples like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Robot Chicken, The Venture Bros., Squidbillies, Tom Goes To The Mayor, 12 oz. Mouse, The Boondocks, Stroker and Hoop… it’s Adult Swim every night of the week! If it weren’t for that terrible, terrible Tripping the Rift series, it would be virtually flawless.
An Irate Red Robot goes to breasts being at the center of blogger drama. Apparently, looks do make a blogger’s credibility. Next: pics of Warren Kinsella’s ripped, comforting pecs.
I’ll give a nice Glass of Warm Milk to anyone who can suggest to me a really good online RSS reader. I’ve tried Rojo but it’s a little buggy with some feeds and Google Reader is fine but lacks some punch.
And a final Glass of Warm Milk to what I got in the mail this week:
In the 1940s, Walt Disney and Salvador Dali collaborated on a cartoon short together. Using Armando Dominguez’s ballad Destino as the backdrop, a six minute Fantasia-esque moment was conceived. But 22 paintings and 135 story sketches later, the project was abandoned due to financial reasons.
The result, concluded through the dedication of Walt’s nephew, Roy Disney, was completed 57 years later in a breathtaking array of imagery and animation heights. It’s almost tragic to think that this magnificent dreamscape almost never saw the light of day.
Walt Disney was once said: “Like the Night On Bald Mountain sequence Kay Nielson designed for Fantasia, I want to give more big artists such opportunities. We need them. We have to keep breaking new trails.”
Boy, times sure have changed.
Via Lukira.
Fellow folks and travellers of the Internets, I am pleased to announced that I have endowed my little corner of the world with Gabbly, a web-based live chat application which allows you to… chat… live… with all other people who visit the site and jump into the chat room. Only people who are on Gluemeat will be in the chat; so you’ll know you’ll have a bare minimum of one thing in common with everyone there.
It’s all in this web 2.0 rage that everyone’s going ape over, so you don’t need to download any software, nor do you need any plug-ins. All you need is an up-to-date browser like Firefox 1.5, IE 6.0, Safari 2.0, or Flock. The Gabbly FAQ says they’re working on Opera and IE 7.0 support.
So just click here to reload Gluemeat.com with the chat window, or click on the link I set up in the sidebar, pop in, see if there’s any folks, and stay a while for a chat. Meet new people. Make new friends. Bake me a cake. Who wants to bake me a cake? I like cake.
Enter Gabbly on Gluemeat!
While I feel sadness for what happened yesterday at Dawson College, and send my warmest thoughts to those who are struggling to stay alive on a hospital bed, I cannot but help feel bile rise into my mouth as I stumbled upon the front page of the Toronto Sun this morning:
Their basis for this headline? The killer wrote on the Internet that his favourite video game was Super Columbine Massacre RPG. The Sun article can’t even substantiate the claim further than a one-line blurb about video games. But no, he mentioned video games. It has to be video games.
Forget the fact that he was obviously depressed. Remain oblivious to the fact that he was angry at society. No, dumb all of this down to video games once again. It would be so, so wrong to try and figure out the complex psychological background that compelled him to do this. No, it has to be the fault of video games. What else could it be? Everything else in the world is going so well.
If you have the time, I invite you to check out his blog and accompanying photos. You tell me if it was a man who let video games rule his life, or if he was just profoundly troubled.
Bravo, Toronto Sun. You morons.
Today, in Japan, in the US and in Europe, Nintendo is making the details of its Wii console known.
I’ve been waiting impatiently for this moment for many, many weeks. I have a Wii reserved at a local retailer since last June and been dying to know when it’s going to pop into my home, and at what price. I’ve been reading video game blogs, trying to sort fact from wet dreams, crumbling under the pressure of certain rumours, all in the name of excitement for the arrival of the Big N’s new, innovative machine.
The press event in Japan has already been held. This is what we have learned:
- The Nintendo Wii will be launched in Japan on December 2, 2006. What??!?
- The price of the console will be 25,000 yen (about $238 CDN). Quoted price allegedly includes tax.
- The Wii will ship with Wii remote (w ith strap) Nunchuck attachment, Wii AC adaptor, Wii A/V cable, Wii “console stand,” sensor bar, sensor bar stand and two AA batteries. Damn, looks like I’ll be chucking out more bucks for a second remote.
- Nintendo promises 30 Virtual Console games by the end of the year, at a rate of ten per month. Nice!
- Rates for playing Virtual Console games will go for 500 yen for NES games (about $4.75 CDN), 800 yen for SNES games (about $7.60 CDN), and 1000 yen for N64 games (about $9.50 CDN). Cheap!
That’s where we stand for now. I have to admit to being shocked at the lateness of the launch date. Seems to me Nintendo is stretching the anticipation a little too much. A quick outing could have really helped them stick it to Sony, and I fear this could come back to haunt them. The price range is pretty much in the average everyone was expecting, though definitely not in the “under $200″ range most were clamouring for.
Nintendo of America will be holding its own press event today at 9am EST. I’ll be back to fill in the details of how it’s gonna go down in our neck of the sphere.
UPDATE 1 - 2:19am: The proof is in the picture; The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess will be sold at 6,400 yen (about $65 CDN). That’s a price I can live with for a AAA title.
Apparently the word is 16 titles from ten publishers at launch. These numbers doubtlessly only represent the Japanese releases.
Okay, I’m going to bed now. More with the American launch.
Via Joystiq.
UPDATE 2 - 9:45am: Here is the Wii packaging, as per the Japan press event:
UPDATE 3 - 10:18am: Nintendo has announced that November 19 will be the US release date. It will be spread across 25,000 points of distribution, 4 million units shipped worldwide with the US getting the biggest chunk of it all. Price? $249 USD. A little over expectations? First Nintendo console to not be sold $200 USD at launch.
Expand the article to read more about the US details.
This one is already a couple of days old, and I don’t know how I missed it, but here it is nonetheless, out of the sheer awsomeness of the event.
Hot off his Paris Hilton CD swap, artist Banksy placed a mannequin garbed as a Guantanamo Bay detainee inside the Rocky Mountain Railroad ride at Disneyland in Anaheim California.
More pictures here.
The dummy stayed there for about nintey minutes before Mouse security came to pick it up. Betcha ten bucks he tried to get into Disneyworld but recoiled at the finger scanning machinery.
Via Dateline: Bristol.
I believe the world has officially lost its sense of humour. Kazakhstan officials feel like they need to meet with US President Bush about Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan before it gets major distribution.
Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev is to fly to the US to meet President Bush in the coming weeks and on the agenda will be his country’s image.
President Nazarbayev has confirmed his government will buy “educational” TV spots and print advertisements about the “real Kazakhstan” in a bid to save the country’s reputation before the film is released in the US in November.
President Nazarbayev will visit the White House and the Bush family compound in Maine when he flies in for talks that will include the fictional character Borat.
Yeah, an over-the-top, completely absurd comedy could really damage Kazakhstan’s reputation. Forget about imepding on religious freedoms, the government’s messy oil bribe scandal, instilling fear into sex workers and drug addicts as the country’s AIDS epidemic grows, and the aggressive persecution of the media and political opposition, no matter how harsh. Really, the worst thing that could tarnish the country’s image right now is a jewish brit who also likes to pretend he’s a homeboy.
In fact, sure, go and make an issue out of it as you drop in on old George. It’s not like he’s got anything bigger on his plate, after all. Unless he’s caught up in his third re-read of I Am Charlotte Simmons.
Time to hand out some Irate Red Robots and Warm Glasses of Milk to the people and things I both disliked and liked last week.
A Glass of Warm Milk to everybody’s favourite guerilla artist Banksy who, after spraying the Israeli Wall of Justice™ with images of a better world, has decided to stick it to Paris Hilton by smuggling 500 of his own “Paris Hilton” CDs into London record shops which have been unknowingly sold as the real deal. Accompanied by a booklet which features re-touched images of everyone’s favourite socialite (like one picture of her exiting a luxury car now includes a group of homeless people), the track titles on the back of the CD have been changed to things like “Why am I famous?”, “What have I done?” and “What am I for?” Colin has pics.
An Irate Red Robot is about to tear into Disneyworld, as it appears that Disney wants our biometric data. I kid you not: the Mouse plans on fingerprinting people seeking admission into the park to “to ensure that the person using a ticket is the person who bought it.” No, not a credit card, not a valid photo ID; your fingerprint. Apparently, one can object and simply show appropriate credentials instead, but it’s a fallback which isn’t advertised anywhere. Imagine the thousands who are going to be suckered into this one.
A Warm Glass of Milk to R Stevens’ Diesel Sweeties being picked up by United Features Syndicate, thus living the webcartoonist dream to the max.
A great big fat Irate Red Robot to when I think Steve Irwin died painfully. And how goddamned unlucky he was.
And a final Glass of Warm Milk to my compatriot Tim for this little gem of instant messaging from a few nights ago…
Me: I like blaster sounds
Tim: do you like making them while you’re playing with your limited edition [Star Wars] action figures?
Tim: *pwwww *pwwww!
Me: no, because they’re all MINT IN THE BOX
Me: MITB
Me: BABY
Me: RIGHTN OW!!
Tim: you can still play with them
Tim: in their boxes
Mike: it’s not as involving
Tim: you could make paper craft versions of them and play with those
Tim: I’m sure there are about 400 links about that on boingboing right now
BOOM! If you’ve never read BoingBoing, you have no idea how funny this is.
Here is the entire Gluemeat comic archive.
