The Ziggurat of Doom

Is it Christmas?

Beauty Queen Wins Despite Ugly Prank, Pageant Organizers Want To Know Who Tainted Winner’s Make-Up And Gowns - The ShowBuzz

Pepper spray failed to deter Ingrid Marie Rivera, who beat 29 rivals to become the island’s 2008 Miss Universe contestant.

Pageant organizers said they hope to catch and expose whoever was responsible for dousing Rivera’s evening gowns with pepper spray and spiking her makeup, causing her to break out in hives.

Potentially NSFW

TorrentFreak > Marvel and DC Comics Join Forces to Target BitTorrent

The Z-Cult FM comic book tracker has re-opened despite threats from Marvel and DC comics. “Contrary to popular belief, United States’ laws are not, in fact, applicable outside America” they told TorrentFreak. As comic publisher SLG comes out in support of this torrent site, Z-Cult restarts its trackers.

In the parlance: Oh Snap.

ZCult FM > Our Response to Marvel/DC and SLG News. Straight from the horse’s mouth.
(Background Post)

Boston = win.

The Sunset = extra super win.

G’night everyone.

Monkeys, Robots, the Internet, and Japan.

Monkey Brains Control Robo Legs…Through Internet

The short: Marvel and DC are beginning to take a hard line approach to comic scanners. They’ve pushed people around to different websites, but it looks like it’s been ineffectual so far.
The long: Read the rest of this entry »

Psychonauts was a brilliant sleeper hit that was criminally underrated by the critical press. And also, it’s free now.

A review:

Most sitcoms, let’s face it, suck and blow and suck again.

Except this one, with proof below the cut. Hat tip: Steve.

Read the rest of this entry »

So, if you play Assassin’s Creed (which you should), just a warning: wait until after the credits. I mean it. You’ll see.

In related news, Happy Mass Effect Eve to all!

To review, here’s a recipe for beer bread. Here’s a recipe for bread that short cuts all the complicated stuff by putting it on the shelf for half a day. I’ve been putting off posting the recipe for general bread dough. Without seeing those simpler recipes, there is a possibility your mind could break in a very Lovecraftian fashion. That, or this one is longer, and I was just putting it off.

This is the dough I use for most bread ‘projects’. I’ve successfully made breadsticks, dinner rolls, sandwich bread, raisin bread’s close cousin Craisin bread, pizza crust, and the Ohio Valley delicacy pepperoni bread. I’ve synthesized this from a number of different sources, from the Joy of Cooking, to my mom, to some serious trial and error, so there’s no link.

This is enough for 2 loaves of sandwich bread, a dozen pepperoni rolls, or two-dozen dinner rolls. You could make half as much, but the hard part is the kneading, and it’s not any easier to knead half as much.
UPDATED: Pics at the bottom.
Read the rest of this entry »

Bread-a-thon rolls on. This recipe makes a very good, very crusty loaf of Italian bread. It’s shocking, really. Bread is supposed to be hard to make. You’re supposed to cover your kitchen in flour. It should require you to get up at the crack of dawn to get a loaf made for dinner. At least, that is what I’d been lead to believe.

Turns out, that’s not the case at all. I’m not taking credit for this recipe, because i follow someone else’s almost verbatim. I grifted it from the NYT, and there’s even a youtube video showing you how it’s done. I can tell you it works. It doesn’t take any more work than what you see in the video. The end result looks as good as what you see, too.

I noticed a few things when I make this. The first time I made it, I thought I had really screwed it up. When I turned out the dough to fold it a few times, it was a glob, not dough like in the video. Folding it didn’t make creases, just reshaped the mound. I thought I screwed it up, but decided to keep going anyway. Turns out, it worked fine. Don’t worry if it looks too thin, just keep going.

Second thing is, I think the temperature they used in the video was far too high. The first time I made it, the bread was stuck in the crock pot. I figured I’d just let it cool and shrink a little, and it would pop out. Nope. It was burned too the bottom. I eventually pried it out with a metal spoon, but the bottom of the bread was all black. I make it at 425F now, and it works fine. The bread comes right out.

Lastly, and this is just personal preference, I only cook the bread with the cover on for 15 minutes and lengthen the uncovered time accordingly. I like a crust, but not a real hard one that you have to work to chew through. Steam creates crust, so logically the longer you have the lid on, the more crust there will be.

So, there you have it. Less than 15 minutes worth of work and 20 cents worth of ingredients, and you have a loaf of bread that’ll stand up to anything from a bakery. Tomorrow, I’ll post the directions for some traditional bread dough. This is the stuff that takes all day to make, covers your kitchen in flour, and takes a little bit of work, but man, the end results are worth it.

Not much food wise lately here on ZoD. This isn’t because I haven’t been making anything new and exciting, it’s because I’ve been making stuff that’s old and exciting. Bread, specifically. The stuff that forced us into 80 hour work weeks, subjugated our women, and gave us toast. I now know how to bake bread. It’s pretty cool. I’ve got three good recipes, so I’ll post them in order from easiest to hardest.

This first one is beer bread. It’s quick and easy, won’t dirty too many dishes, and tastes like delicious beer. If that has hasn’t sold you, nothing will.
Read the rest of this entry »

Assassin’s Creed is good times.

I mean - it’s a Crackdown-style sandboxer, only instead of a sci-fi supercop, you’re an Islamic ninja, Parkour-running around 12th century Jerusalem stabbing fools like an angry Spiderman. One of the Elseworlds versions where Spiderman stabs people.

It’s beautifully detailed, has an unconventional but entirely intuitive control scheme, a few neat gimmicks, and a few cool twists. It deserves serious attention, which it will get from me up until Mass Effect comes out. Which, let me remind you, is next week.

One more solid gold reason to own a 360. (Oh, there’s a PS3 version too, if you care, which you don’t.)

Pay-What-You-Want Digital Graphic Novels Now Available! : Ambrosia Publishing

Taking a cue from Radiohead and other forward-thinking music acts, Ambrosia Publishing is now offering you the opportunity to pay what you want for the digital versions of our graphic novels at The Ambrosia Publishing Store!

No kidding.

There’s no catch or hidden fee. If you want to pay 1 cent, then pay .01. If you want to pay $2.00, then pay 2.00.

You’ll remember a while ago I reviewed Clockwork Creatures a while ago. I fear the post has been lost in a server crash, but I has possitive things to say about it. I plan on checking out their other books at… some price to be determined.

Japan has Musicified their roads by altering the distance between rumble strips to produce variations in tone at certain speeds.

While awesome, I would just like to say that my dad thought of this when I was 12 or so. Come on Japan, get it together. Come out with your new taco-dildo-blender already.

Marvel has just opened it’s new service that will be a subscription based access to a large chunk of their back catalog. And for anyone who hasn’t heard my mini rants about the comic book industry, the highlights are: no new customers, expensive dollar to entertainment ratio, no digital avenues, few entry points for outsiders, and fear/guilt of hurting specialty shops. Basically, this is the sort of thing I was hoping Marvel/DC would do. Although I’d really have preferred downloadable CBR format, I can easily see why they’d prefer the online subscription model.

With this new service, Marvel can
1 - Make more money of off it’s huge back library, which is currently only helping trade paperback collections sales and crazy comic collectors.
2 - Try to grab new readers with relatively cheap price ($10 a month is the price of 3-4 22 page comic books)
3 - Help new readers in with many entry points, since you can actually start with issue #1 instead of #64 or #597
4 - Stay friendly with the shops that have kept them alive for so long by only offering titles “at least six months after they first appear in print”

Right now the service seems to be a little slow and the selection slightly limited, but I’m sure it will smooth out once people stop hammering at all free samples and they fill out the digital library (updates every week). But I plan to vote with my wallet by purchasing a subscription here, and canceling most of my paper and ink subscriptions for the few Marvel series I still buy.

Here’s more coverage and a partial roundup of some of the other online comic (not webcomics) attempts.

Did you ever wish you didn’t have to listen to those stupid people, the ones all around you? You do, you say?

Wait no longer friends, for The Internet has come up with a technology to save it from itself. It’s called the Stupid Filter. The tagline? “Because the internet needs prophylactics for memetically transmitted diseases.”

I recommend reading their FAQ, as it has gems like this:

Isn’t filtering stupidity elitist?
Yes. Yes, it is. That’s sort of the whole point.

Why curvaceous women are more intelligent. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine

A study says curvy women are smarter. Sample: 16,000 females. Result: Women with high ratios of hip to waist size “scored significantly higher on [cognitive] tests, as did their children.”

Alternate title: “The Bigger the Cushion, the Sweeter the [average standardized test scores after normalizing for race, income, and education].

For your health, you must watch this video, and learn. Read the rest of this entry »