Because we've been wronged, you see, and thus require some sort of retribution...

I was reading Ain't it Cool and saw that Howard Stern sidekick Beetlejuice could very well have a cameo in the next Transformers movie. But I was more interested when the title of the second movie was revealed to be Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

When you're called "the Fallen", doesn't that imply that something happened to you requiring revenge in the first place? Why not name the movie Revenge of the Vengeful? Revenge of the Revengers? It just seems clunky to me. Of course, that'll probably be the least annoying thing about the goddamn movie to start with.

I had the same problem with Revenge of the Sith because I had no idea what the Sith were getting revenge for. OK, maybe the Sith got wiped out or something in some big Star Wars continuity thing in one of the books I completely missed but it never seemed like what they were doing was revenge, but ascension. Revenge of the Jedi would have made more sense as a movie title back in 1983 but Lucas wussed out.

This is where my mind goes after a sleepless night before a job interview.

Physically fit office drones? You're shitting me...

My brother got the awesomely outrageous Wii Fit recently, and gives it a thumbs up even though it hurts his body with unaccustomed exercise. When I visit him this weekend, I'll give it a try, although I'll probably turn down the feedback option from Full Metal Jacket Drill Sergeant to 1970's Nonthreatening Leftist Children's Programming Folk Singers.

And it sounds like it's a good thing this is popular in Japan.

It appears that Japan has instituted mandatory obesity checks for employees over(!) 40, with failures resulting in employer fines. The report didn't say whether employees would face retribution if their chubbiness resulted in fines. I'd imagine that'd be SOOOOOO illegal to make your head spin, but I'd imagine this would result in some ostracism or humiliation that would serve as punishment.

I'd like to see this tried in the US, not because it would work (it wouldn't) or because it would even be legal (I'd imagine that obesity discrimination lawsuits would fly immediately), but it would be a chance for all Americans to display that brazen contrarian streak that I love and COMPLETELY understand. There would be no quicker way to drive people to Loaded Steakhouse Burgers than have our government try to force people to exercise.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to make myself a Luther...

Odds and sods (we're all going to hell version)...

* High heels for babies. High heels. For babies. Why? Fucking WHY??? HOW DID IT GET BURNED...sorry.

* James Dobson (yeah, that guy), says Obama's distorting the Bible. That's a level of painful cognitive dissonance that can be simulated by writing COGNITIVE DISSONANCE on a baseball bat and getting a workout with it in a cornfield.

* Salmonella's now popped up in New Jersey...but hey, for us, that's not so bad.

*sigh* Take us home, Nic...

Oh, shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.

Good-bye, George. Hope there's enough room in the afterlife for your stuff...

A couple of EXTREMELY late game reviews...

Recently I've gone back to an interest in game design and programming, not that I've done a lot but Photoshop's always been my friend and I've taken a crack at Flash every now and then (at least when Adobe trial software doesn't fuck up, I mean, really guys, ALL the trials?), but since I'm currently as the British say "on the dole" and the Americans say "shitcanned", I've decided to take time between recruiters BEGGING for my skills (CRAWL! CRAWL, I SAID!!!) and give my weak multimedia skills some exercise.

This meandering intro means I've basically justified video game purchases as a growth tool, and bought some games recently. To wit:

The Orange Box - Having never played Half-Life, but hearing great things about it and Portal, I decided to give it a try. My fairly cheap 2007 laptop that's been burdened w/Vista is able to run it just fine, thankfully. I'm currently about 3-4 hours into the first Half-Life 2, and my favorite part has been the cinematic scope of some of the set pieces. The part where I'm whizzing down a river in my hovercraft, only to see a huge smokestack from up ahead crumble and fall, blocking my path, sticks in my mind the most.

And I'm a huge pussy, the headcrabs and zombies have only started popping up and there have been a couple of times where I'm frantically firing, yelling AHHH! AHHH! AHHH! like a mental patient.

Portal, of course, is fucking brilliant and deserving of all the praise it gets. I wish I had a high-end PC so I could see how it is with good graphics. BTW, most reviews say the main game takes 2-3 hours. It took me about eight. Just saying.

Geometry Wars - Four bucks that are well spent. I actually prefer this to most FPSeseses because I'm old (or at least too old to be writing a videogame-related blog post, most likely), and this hits the retro 80s spot just fine. I do think an investment in a cheap USB controller may be warranted, though, because after 10 minutes of play on the keyboard my hands look like I've been caught cheating in the Tangiers...

Don't let it be said I don't do requests...

Yeah, I've been out of touch for a long time. Why? Well, I don't want to say, but if you think eastern European dungeons are easy to escape from, well, you're a better man than I.

* OK, I'll admit, I laughed when Mini-Me scored a goal in the trailer, but I laughed even more at this article going on about the career self-destruction of Mike Myers. By the way, the Clone Wars movie looks like it was rendered on an Atari 800...

* Hey, you damn kids, get off my lawn! (I'll make cheap jokes because when I try to think about what's really happening I'm wishing for the dungeon's daily ladle of swill and my beloved poop bucket.)