Deep Fried Puppies

MSNBC posted a list of the 11 lamest blogs on the internet. They posted it as a slide show, which is a pretty lame way to post anything, but perhaps it was self referential. Anyway, the award for lamest fictional blog goes to The Adventures of Pat O’Neil.

Let me put this succinctly. If I was out drinking, and the author of that article told me he thought the Adventures of Pat O’Neil was lame, I would fight him. There would be face punching, body kicking, and whichever bar we were at would join the ranks of bars Mia is not allowed in. I would gleefully dive into a fracas about the merits of Pat O’Neil’s adventures, sober or not, were I to stumble across such a thing. I’d probably be perplexed later at the various coincidences necessary to put me in such a situation but would in no way allow these future perplexities to prevent me from adding one large, belligerent Mia to the conflict ensuing.

The Adventures o’Pat are a very bizarre, occasionally humorous series of first person narratives. They aren’t so much a normal story as the author’s brain vomiting ideas onto a page in purely creative stream of conscious narrative. Nothing’s very well polished, and I really wish the author would do something to duplicate the paragraph, as it can be pretty hard to read. But the sheer non-stop flow of ideas is incredible. The author is constantly putting something new out there. It’s always absurd and usually impossible. I don’t think I laughed aloud once. But there’s no end to the creativity within it. It’s so understated that the author seems to ignore comedic potential in favor of dry comments about flying squirrels. It reminds me a lot of “Shoot ‘Em Up.” In that the joke was that the main character would be involved in a shoot out carrying a live baby less than five minutes into the movie. Here it’s the meth ninjas and his sister named Frank.

The author isn’t under the illusion he’s writing great literature. He ain’t. But as he says, if you want great literature, go to the Gutenberg. He recommends you start with the Odyssey, I say the Illiad, but any Homer will do. But you know what Homer doesn’t have? A sense of humor. Pat’s adventures are to be amused by. Read them and smile a little. You won’t fall out of your chair laughing. But if you like that style of humor, it’s entertaining none the less.

Straight bitching. Looks like my plans just changed. Saturday, woot.

So I head up to some friends house for Thanksgiving as the established bullshit prevented me from visiting the family. Still, these people have known me since I was born, so they’re pretty close to family to begin with. Dinner is excellent. As etiquette dictates I make sure everyone else has eaten their fill before I consume everything on the dinner table. You know that point in the meal where everyone’s relaxed and poking idly at the remaining bits of their food, not hungry enough to make the effort to eat but it’s good enough that they don’t want to throw it out? That’s the point where I calmly take all the serving plates and clean them. Nothing goes to waste when I’m around. We sit, chat, I call the family unit, and the choice is put before me to watch Space Chimps. I’m a guest so I accede with polite interest.

The first half of the movie is mildly entertaining. The animation isn’t too hot; the script is all right for a kids movie but certainly doesn’t push any envelopes. We all chuckle mildly here and there. Then, about halfway into the movie, the chimps go off and get into space. After this there are six points where the movie strikes absolute comedic genius. I laughed so hard we had to stop the flick because I was turning purple and crying. We rewinded twice.

Like most animated kids movies these days it’s written at two levels. There is the usual slapstick humor for the kids, and a couple of obscure references for the adults. As you may know, 2001 is one of my all time favorite movies. I got that reference. I turned strange colors and hyperventilated. One of the children was looking at me like I was crazy, because unless you got it, it really isn’t very funny. The movie plods along again. I thought, oh, they had one really good homage/reference and then they were done. A Monty Python bit goes by. I chortle, now not politely but honestly amused. Something happened I don’t want to spoil for you. Oh, sweet jebus. It wasn’t a zinger. It was a Tomahawk cruise missile of perfectly aimed hysteria that exploded in my brain. We roared. Again the kids thought we were all crazy. It didn’t matter.

The ending was aiight. It never recaptured the beauty of the long dark shadow. But those thirty seconds of completely unexpected, ninja-like awesomeness that doubled me over and left me gasping for breath as tears poured down my face were worth it. Overall it gets half a Madagascar. In places it matches Nadesco or Ranma. And I mean the best parts of Nadesco or Ranma. Definitely worthy a Red Box rental.

Twilight the movie. I didn’t see it. I kept meaning too but couldn’t bring myself to, even with my well established love of the vampire mythology. Now, I may have to. I still don’t really want to, but this review is so awesome I want to know the source material.

And for the record, truth.

Edit: Just saying that sometimes the cigar isn’t just a cigar.

Okay guys. I understand common sense is a relative term. Still, I thought there were some things that didn’t need to be said, and now I see that I was wrong. Do not, and I repeat, DO NOT pick a fight with the guy wearing a meat cleaver as a necklace. Just don’t do it.

My recreational time these days consists of reading Exalted and writing. Exalted looks to be a lot of fun, albeit with some mechanical difficulties. The whole rolling a bag of dice thing is kind of silly, but I haven’t run a long term game in it yet, so I withhold judgment. What’s great about it is that every single character is both a magic user and fighter by default. I guess you could build one that wasn’t, but you’d have to work at it. Also, it wouldn’t make much sense because a lot of the magic is fight magic and not in the retarded way. It’s actually good, effective combat magic designed for a swordsman to use while slashing the other guy to thin little bits. It’s always astonished me that no one else has ever thought of not penalizing fighters for knowing a few spells or sorcerers for wanting to stab someone. Corwin knew a bit, as did Belgarion. I defy you to tell me the mechanical difference between Ryu’s fireball and Merlin’s. This has always kind of bugged me. As a PC I hate magic, usually because of the bullshit that seems inherent to it in any system. As a GM I love it because it can add so much flavor to the game and, as GM, I can attack the bullshit with a paring knife. I think this setup has a good middle ground. Nightbane tried with Talents, and had a decent run, but ultimately the power levels got unbalanced. That being said, Nightbane always took itself pretty seriously, which was its downfall. Exalted doesn’t. And the art is pretty. It’s hard to run a game with my schedule though.

The writing continues apace. I’ve got probably the whole next four chapter arc written with the exception of one knot I’ve left to untangle. It’s bugging me, but every attempt I make to bridge this particular plot hole seems forced and unnatural. Still, the hole is several chapters ahead of what I’ve posted, so I may put up this bit and see if that gets the ole creative juices flowing. Oh, and I think I’m going to give it a title too. Crazy eh? I’m considering Idiot Savant.

Work sucks.

Someone went out and built the Minority Report OS. It probably requires the god-processor to run, but it looks flipping sweet.

Some images that I thought were amusing have been attached to this post. Enjoy. Send crack.

I hate Vista. It’s so goddamm buggy it drives me nuts. There’s only so many ways I can bitch about bad code in a funny manner. I hate this fucking OS. I want g-speak.

Sadly, I wasn’t very surprised by the outcome of Lesnar/Couture. Brock is just a big dude. Couture isn’t a good enough wrestler to overcome the size disparity, not a good enough boxer to take Lesnar’s shots, and too old to keep going. Awesome fighter, and I’ve still got nothing but respect for him. I really wanted Lesnar to go down. But one lucky shot is all Lesnar needed. He got it. Mario Yamazaki is rapidly becoming my favorite ref, mind you. He just lets these things go for a while. He’ll watch the first five or six head shots, consider stopping the fight after the next few, reconsider during the next, look appreciatively at Couture’s writhing attempts to defend himself, notice no gaping heap wounds, let it ride, watch a few more hammer fists, think about interrupting, waffle as murder unfolds before him, and finally, when even I am willing to admit the fight’s done, he steps in.

Fedor was talking about Brock: Says he has a lot of respect for him and would like to fight him. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Still, I feel sorry for Frank Mir and Antonio Nogueira. They both kind of got shafted. But let’s be honest. UFC is a business, and they banked like fiends on that last round.