The Ziggurat of Doom

…The Hermit Now Doesn’t Care.

I used to really get hot an bothered about what bands didn’t make it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Black Sabbath, The Sex Pistols, Alice Cooper, Metallica, Skynyrd. Really, you should have heard this argument before.

As time went on, I started to care less and less. Then I went to the Hall itself, and I’ve got to say, I haven’t been that under whelmed in a long time, and I live in *Cleveland*.

Well, this year, I’ve finally decided I don’t care at all. Not one little bit. Apparently, this was the sign to induct a bunch of good bands. This year is:

• Black Sabbath
• Blondie
• Miles Davis
• Lynyrd Skynyrd
• The Sex Pistols

If this was a list of anything else, I would have assumed that Blondie was a paperwork error, but, well, not for our good old Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

(Hat Tip: Cinerati)

So says Chuck:

When I was kid, comics were more readily available and there were ALL kinds of titles. I read anything I could get my hands on except Aquaman. (never liked that character)

Remember kids, this is a guy currently drawing checks from DC.

He continues:

Never wanted to do anything else except for that time I thought of becoming a priest. I was six years old and it seemed like such an easy gig; only work one hour a week and spend the rest of the time smoking behind the rectory and playing pick-up basketball.

And:

TCR: What TV shows, and movies have you liked recently? are there any of your projects that you would like to see turned into a movie or even animation?
CD: ALL of them. Bane was recently made a Spaghetti-Os pasta shape and I couldn’t be prouder.

Note, Bane is the Batman baddie that broke the Bat’s back. He was created by Chuck.

(Thanks Monitor Duty)

So, everybody loves Firexfox right? (Yes, I know it says mozilla.com and not mozilla.org. Apparently, they moved.)
Well, now Firefox 1.5, the major new release, is out, and you should all go get it.

I heard of some new Firefox Extensions recently, and thought I’d share.
So, you’ve all probably heard of Adblock, and some of you might have heard of Filterset.G, the best set of filters out there for it. What you may not know is that there’s a companion extension to Adblock, the Adblock Filterset.G Updater, which keeps your Filterset.G up to date. Spiffy. I’m trying this one out right now, and it seems to work pretty well.

Hate the FireFox Download Manager? Me too. But how to get rid of the little bugger? Simple, it turns out. The Download Manager Tweak can be used to shunt it off into the sidebar, or into a new tab, which loads in the background. Has a few other interesting options too. Haven’t needed to download anything yet, but I’ll let you all know how it works once I do.

Old plugins you absolutely HAVE to get:
Bugmenot. Ever wanted to look at the New York Times? Plus now it does all the filling in of forms and such automatically. ‘Nuff said.
Forecast Fox. Handy weather display tool which has a bunch of options of where to put the info you want, and how much info to display. Also does handy pop-ups when there’s a severe storm and you might want to, you know, hide.

I’ve already mentioned Stumbleupon recently, so that speaks for itself.

Hat tip to Arashi for the Download Manager one :D

Family Circus + H.P. Lovecraft = the hilarity.

Today, and again in a few days (when I get through the rest of them), I’ll be offering brief reviews of some of the tabletop RPGs I’ve been looking through recently.

To recap my tastes:
In fluff (setting and fiction), I like detail, coherence, and at least a quasi-realistic world (not in the sense of being like the real world, but in the sense of having some level of rational cause-and-effect in things like city locations, nation interaction, etc). In cruch (rules systems), I like light, organic systems that are easy to tweak, don’t unduly limit characters, and aren’t mind-bendingly unbalanced. I hate and loathe level and class based systems, and I don’t, as a general rule, like random chargen.

Covered below the cut:

• Legend of the Five Rings 3rd Ed. (medieval fantasy)
• Shadowrun 4th Ed. (cyberpunk/fantasy)
• All Flesh Must Be Eaten Revised (survival horror)
• Weapons of the Gods (wuxia action)
• Hero 5th Edition (generic, slight superhero tilt)

Read the rest of this entry »

So, have you ever wanted to play Air Guitar?

Well, now you can.
No, really.

The Rude Pundit declares war on Christmas.

Read the whole thing, but beware of the kind of profanity that lands you a special place in hell, if hell’s the kind of thing you believe in.

(Hat Tip: Unscrewing the Inscrutable.)

The reports are true. Canada has been toppled. Government has been brought down, and people moving in roving bands in the streets*. Currently, Snake Pliskin and Max Rockatansky are unavailable for comment. Probably too busy being awesome.

*any claims that people are roving in the streets is pure hyperbole, used to set up an awesome Escape from New York and Mad Max reference.

OMGLOL111!!!!111ELEVENTYH4H4H4X|\/|ASBBQALIENLIGHTS

Or the direct link to the clip, so you don’t have to watch it embedded in your browser.

Insert Heiro bitching about bad encodes here. And he’s right, too.

Cleveland Jewish News has a good article about Cleveland’s and Jew’s role in the formation of the comic industry.

Why the Jews? How did the People of the Book become People of the Comic Book? San Francisco-based writer Gerardo Jones, author of Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book, says Jews did it by channeling “adolescent boys’ primal projections,” thus transforming a disreputable enterprise n the lowly comic n into a cornerstone of pop culture.

Usually, I tend to stay away from placing too much symbolism in things that happen in real life. It’s great in literature, but usually breaks down in real life. Comic books are one of the few places where I don’t shy away as much. Maybe it’s because comics have such a strong theme of symbolism, maybe I just want to romanticize one of my favorite escapist hobbies. Either way, the history of American comics is a bit more interesting than you might think, and this article is a good place to start if you’re at all interested in learning about it.

(Hat tip: Progressive Ruin)

A Degree in MacGyverology

Like the title says

A lot of us are going to be gone for a few days; some headed home, some headed to other destinations. Updates will probably be sparse in the interim. We’ll be back next week.

Have you ever wanted to know more about the Land of the Rising Sun? This website has answers to questions you never even knew existed about Japanese culture. This being Japan, of course, we get answers to questions like:

-Why do schoolgirls wear sailor outfits?
-Why do images of Tanuki show them with such enormous testicles? (note: in Japanese mythology, the tanuki can enlarge their testicles to the size of 8 tatami mats (6′x3′), and play them like drums.)
and, of course,
-Why are there so many love hotels near shrines and temples?

If you’re an expert on this type of thing, scroll down near the end - he has a lot of “Unsolved mysteries” down there which some knowledgeable person might help out with.

Once again, thanks to Stumbleupon for the link.

Sleepy.
No full scentences.
Speed Demos cool.
No emulator tricks.
Thanks monitor duty.

I hear there’s some sort of new console coming out tomorrow, some XBox thing. Am I getting one?

Hint: See title.

I am not what one might call an ‘early adapter’ when it comes to console games. For two main reasons: First, launch games suck. The PS2 launch games sucked, the GameCube had like 1 good launch game, etc. The last great launch game was Super Mario 64. Second, I have enough expensive hobbies without camping out at WalMart for a $zillion game system.

I will wait for the first reasonable price drop, and a few more reviews on games and suchlike. Then I may consider one of them. In the meantime, feel free to let me know if the games are any good or not. Because it’s the games that matter.

There’s a pernicious strand of irrationality in the medical world that holds that HIV does not, in fact, cause AIDS. On the great continuum of idiotic positions to hold, this one’s not far from young-earth creationism. And it can be deadly, such as the case of Eliza Jane Scovill, who died because her parents were credulous idiots.

So it’s all the more satisfying to see someone take one of them apart, on every level.

Rocket Jones has the Carnival of the Recipes #66 up, and this one is chock full of ideas for thanksgiving, no surprise there. It’ also got one of mine again, so yea.

I’ve got a new method for keeping track of when the next one is posted, so here’s hoping I can actually get a post like this up with some sort of regularity.

Those of you who, like me, hew to Ye Olde Skool of gaming might remember a classic Genesis run-and-gun platformer named Gunstar Heroes. Awesome level design, great boss encounters, a fun weapon system - it was Contra with a sense of humor and a spark of wit. But it died when the Genesis did, to live on only in emulation.

Until now.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Gunstar Super Heroes for the GBA.

FEC: Blogs Are As Much “Press” As Everyone Else

This morning, the Federal Election Commission unanimously approved Advisory Opinion 2005-16, agreeing that the Fired Up! sites were entitled to the same press exception from campaign finance laws as are the New York Times, National Review and Sean Hannity.

This is good news, I guess, that 1st amendment rights aren’t going to be ignored in an entire sector. It’s still bad news that there are laws that require this sort of decision.

(Hat tip: like 9 different places at once)

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