I Love xkcd

Today’s comic sums up my mad internet love pretty handily.

Link for full version.

He’s the Best at What He Does…

… and what he does ain’t very nice.

Although we’re talking about a “World’s Greatest”, we’re not talking about Wolverine, for once.

I guess it’s an effective marketing ploy, but I think I’ve seen this one before.  Marvel’s marketing department amuses me, greatly.

Dear Reader, I promise that someday I’ll get off my lazy ass, walk over to my scanner, and stop taking backwards photos of these things using Photo Booth.

Aqua Vitae

So apparently a couple billion years ago, it used to rain on Mars.

Given that the combo of water and atmosphere seems to be pretty handy in making things grow, I’m holding out hope that we’re gonna find something organic over there. It’d be entirely awesome (in the original sense of the word, not like socks and hot dogs) if we found little lifey bits elsewhere in our solar system. Now, I don’t think the discovery of such a thing means we’re all Martians or some such, as I think the theory of panspermia is fairly implausible. But it does spark the imagination a bit, doesn’t it?

Don’t bother with shiny civilizations or telepathic greys. Start simple. Just ponder the idea of long-dead forests on Mars, the evidence of which has long since been buried under billions of years of red dust. Just forests, eerie virgin forests with maybe a bug or two skittering about. Or perhaps a Martian riverscape, with clear water pouring over red rocks, dimly sparkling in the dull sunlight while two moons whizz by overhead. Imagine those bleak rocky landscapes in the NASA panoramas, and then stick some cacti on them. Really ponder it.

Nifty, huh?

I know, I know. It’s just rain. But if our planet is anything to compare by, rain matters an awful lot.

Odysseus Comes Home

According to people who have a ton of time on their hands, Odysseus arrived in Ithaka on April 16, 1178 B.C.

Their evidence comes from star positioning and a total solar eclipse mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey.

Marcelo O. Magnasco of Rockefeller University in New York stated, “What we’d like to achieve is to get the reader to pick up the Odyssey, and read it again, and ponder.  And to realize that our understanding of these texts is quite imperfect, and even when entire libraries have been written about Homeric studies, there is still room for further investigation.”

Out of Town

Chimp and Jess are getting married!

Congrats to them!

We twain will be down in the Unfathomable South of California for the weekend, partaking in the merriment.

MGS4, Act 3

Don’t worry. No spoilers.

But, dear god! Act 3 will blow your mind!

Let’s put it this way: I’m grateful to have played Metal Gear Solid 2. If you played through that game, you know that the story was somewhat lacking, especially toward the end, when they brought plot out of left field.

This is my brother’s impression of Hideo Kojima at a MGS4 press conference.

I FIXED IT LOL! You thought Raiden sucked? WELL GUESS WHAT! NOW HE’S COOL, AND YOU CAN’T PLAY HIM!
Seriously, though. Almost all my “wtf”isms about this game have been clarified, mostly in Act 3.

Lego Does The Classics

Check out this gorgeous Flickr set of classic photographs redone with Legos. Charming, disturbing, totally awesome.

Metal Gear Solid 4

I picked up MGS4 at midnight on the release day.  So far, I’ve played through two acts of the story, and I’m thoroughly hooked.

Now, I’ve read a lot of poor reviews of the game, but I think that stems more from the gamer than the game.  You see, the game is everything that MGS fans love, taken to the extreme.  Combat is a penalty for sneaking poorly.  The story is deep and intricate, with very involving cutscenes.

Unfortunately, not everybody is up for these things.  A lot of people bought this game because it is the long-awaited PS3 exclusive.  These people often start their reviews with “Now, I didn’t really like/play the other MGS games…”  This is why they tend to give Guns of the Patriots lower marks.

My advice is this: If you didn’t like the other games all that much, don’t buy this sequel.  If you loved those games, and you want your questions answered (such as “What the fuck is with that La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo crap?”), go buy this game.

Further Reviews

Just saw The Incredible Hulk.  This makes this week’s list of “Undeniably Brutal Things”.

Edward Norton and Liv Tyler portray Bruce and Betty very well.  The story gets into the character of Banner for a while before the Hulk bits.

One of my favorite things about this movie is that the Hulk himself says next to nothing, and they waited for an appropriate moment for the inevitable “HULK SMASH!”

Another Comix Review (Rud Edition)

This week’s batch of comics was undeniably brutal.

You know how X-Force should have the subtitle “We Just Kill People”? They get one step closer in this month’s Giant-Size, X-Force: Ain’t No Dog. The two stories center around Wolverine and Warpath. Guess what they do. There’s theoretically some stuff about not losing yourself to the killing, but the killing somewhat overshadows it. Almost like how James Caan’s Rollerball was supposed to be an antiviolence story, but everybody loved it for the violence.

This month also saw the first issue of Skaar, Son of Hulk. This picks up after the end of Planet Hulk, on the planet Sakaar. This came at just the right time for me, since Conan just ended its run. Really, this reads just like a Conan story: a barbaric youth shows up and busts some skulls, in a vaguely dark-ages fantasy setting. And he fights a warlord with an enormous battle axe.