Hey! Look! down there! a non-World of Warcraft post!

Just thought I'd point it out!

Shock Horror Exclusive! Disney in 'Not awful' movie scare!

Now, dont panic, I am not saying that when I went to see 'Sky high' it was an amazing movie to rival 'The Godfather', but my heart sank when the Disney logo appeared at the start (I hadn't realised) especially with it being a live action movie, as at least Pixar have managed to shoehorn some enjoyment for the over 5's into some of their CGI extravaganzas.

Now, as Mr Burns himself said 'I may not know about art, but I know what I hate...and..I don't hate this!'

What I am not sure about is why I liked it, as it seems to tick all the boxes for a good wholesome teen Disney movie, although I reckon the mighty Bruce Campbell will always increase my estimation of a movie's worth, and a couple of the 'Kids in the Hall', although now pushing their mid 30's surely, (Damn, just looked, the first one I checked was born in '63, so mid 40's!...Another sign of Actors in their 20's playing teens I guess) still make me smile, as I keep expecting them to be 'crushing your head.' Of course, you'll have no idea what I'm talking about unless you happened to catch their show, which was an import from Canada, and if I remember rightly , shown at the prime slot of about 3am on a Wednesday night on ITV. Oh and just for fun, they've pulled Lynda Carter (of 'Wonder Woman' Fame) out of retirement to play the school's Principal.

Anyway 'Sky high' is, in case you haven't seen the ads, about a school for kids with super powers, similar to X-Men, but not so serious. Hell, see it, so long as you go jut expecting a fairly enjoyable 90 minutes, you won't be disappointed, it's not X-men 3, but then at least its not Spy Kids 3 in 4D either!

Oh and one more, purely because I've found you can only post 5 pics at a time in Blogger...

I've been in Azeroth for about 5 months now...

..and still thoroughly enjoying the freedom I have there. I checked and it will be 5 months as of today I first signed up to enter the World of Warcraft, persuaded by the pleases or warcraft 3, and the times I'd spent in Diablo 2, which is also Blizzard, and I'd taken many happy hours there on their free, well organised servers.

Sure, Blizzard have people who knock them, and there's occasional downtime, but very rarely without notice! Hell, sometimes it takes the shutdown on Tuesday nights to tell me it IS Tuesday!

Anyway, 5 months, and as a fairly casual player, I've worked out I've spent just over one hour a day on there since I started, which I think keeps me well out of the crazy obsessive section of the online gamer Venn diagram.

last night though, I finally earned my 'mount' which is quite a milestone for a player, as you can only qualify for mounts at Level 40. As ever , I've included some pictures, as well as a few others from the Halloween celebrations. Someone got a Skeletonizing wand from the Trick or Treating Innkeeper, and I got to join in some stupidity outside the bank, there ended up being about 7 of us dancing in a line, but fortunately not line dancing!

Soon to come, stuff that isn't just about WoW!

If you like comedy...

Maybe I should throw out a few names I've picked up on over the past few months.

Firstly, Mitch Hedberg.
Sadly he died March 30 this year, relatively unknown in the UK. I would place him somewhere between Eddie Izzard and Steven Wright, with perhaps a touch of Emo Philips, but he still had a style and delivery all his own.

A few of his lines that came to mind, and I imagine this is the sorta thing that shows up in email inboxes regularly, but hey, would be nice if the guy got some credit for it!

"It's kinda depressing, I've been playing tennis, but I've realised no matter how hard I train and practice, I'll never be as good as...a wall."
"I find that ducks' opinion of me is largely based on whether or not I have bread."
"So Advil tablets have a sugar coating, and it says on the packet...'Do not take more than 2' If you dont want me to take more than 2, do not put a sugar coating on those things"
"I imagine if you know morse code, tap dancers must drive you nuts."
"We have this classy bread over here, Petteridge Farm bread, its wrapped twice. Hell I won't buy that, because I don't need another step between me and toast."
"I haven't slept for 10 days...because....that would be too long."
"So where are all the 'during' photos, anyway?"
"Bigfoot just is blurry, its not the photographer's fault"
"You know when people are showing you photos of themselves? 'Hey, this is me when I was younger' 'Hey dummy, all photos of you are of when you were younger."
"traffic lights, yellow means hold on, green means go, but bananas are the exact opposite...red means where you get that banana at?"
"I'm against picketing, but I dunno how to show it"

I'll add more as , if, and when I think about it.

Any MMORPG LOTR fans should enjoy this lil link...

and it will be utterly lost on the rest of you, and to be honest some of the gags will be lost on non WoW MMORPG players too, for instance 'kek' is what you see when the 'other side' go lol at you, as both 'sides' speak a different language.

If you've ever played an online game with idiiots thoough, you'll probably enjoy it, and it would help if you've seen the 1st LotR movie, too!

Lordy Rings Wow nonsense here! It is an animated gif, and nearly 2MB, just to warn you in advance...

Out of curiousity I went to the root of the URL, and found some rather interesting stuff also, although it has the tendency to drift towards the 'OMG look at this hot chick LOL' kinda 'somethingawful' site, there were some interesting bits and pieces there too, like a link to the latest Jack Thompson idiocy. Damn if this guy isn't the king of the ambulance chasers. Not only has he failed repeatedly to blame all the wrongs of the world from murderous kids up to and including Hurricane Wilma on Rockstar Games, but he's now backed out of an argument, which he lost, saying he would donate $10,000 to charity if proved wrong, and ... yes ..WAS proved wrong... AGAIN! He is now saying his offer of a donation was 'ironic' Does this not make you think of small children going, 'Yeah? well, I'll give you my bike if you can beat me!..umm..DIDNT MEAN IT!!' Except this time, it is someone that should know better. When did a lawyer last 'know better' though, or 'know when to quit'. Yes, I know there's good lawyers out there, sadly they don't get any publicity, which gets all those guys on my side against wastes of space like this guy.

Anyway, after an argument with 'Penny Arcade' , with them stating its a pretty pitiful attempt after they had got together $500,000, and they were supposed to be the bad guys, Penny Arcade pulled £10,000 out of their own pockets and sent it in, stating 'From Jack Thompson, because he won't'. This all starting from Thompson's original goldmine sniffing idea that a guy of 18 that shot three police officers, it was GTA that was DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE. Hey, I'd maybe have said the GUY, or if I was pushed, the guy that supplied him with the guns. What do I know, I'm not a lawyer, huh? All I know is that until they release a game that comes in a case that fires real bullets, or has springloaded razors in the side of the case, its gonna be hard to convince ME, they had much to do with anything but a good time.

Well, how's that for cinematic...

Spooky, I mention Halloween, and there's a roll of thunder and a bolt of lightning enough to be seen thru the curtains, and I'm knocked offline! Thank the gods of shiny things that I have a surge protector!

One more stupid picture, Here's my Dwarven engineer Burleigh, with the product of his ascension to the higher levels of engineering, the Diver's Helmet! No more shall I panic a hundred feet below and desperately swim straight up for lack of air, I can explore the watery depths at leisure!

Well, something reminded me that Halloween is fast approaching.

That's right, its back to World of Warcraft again, the horrible Xmas grind seems to have started a little later this year, but it HAS started, so I run off to my favourite holiday location, to get away from it all, and as I step thru the gates of Undercity, my home town in world of Warcraft, it seems the decorators have been overnight!

Seems there's pumpkin lanterns everywhere, Hallows eve candy sellers, and if you go into an inn and demand 'Trick or Treat' they'll either give you candy or a halloween mask to wear, or cast something on you...who knows what!

On top of that, they marked the beginning of the week, at least on 'our' side, the Horde, with a giant Wicker Man burning... and a new set of special quests. Turns out instead of the regular slaughtering of the enemy humans and elves, this time we must sneak into one of their towns, and pelt them with stink bombs, and other such silliness. (Then run away laughing no doubt, for bonus XP.)

On real world topics, The whole pub quiz went well again, maybe I can get something happening regularly after all. Disasterously hard questions this time, but we've been promised an easier run of it next week!

And another thing...

You cant knock the experience of having trouble picking up a paperclip because you're so tiny, and then 10 minutes later uprooting trees, and rolling over houses and bridges because your katamari ball is now 500 metres diameter!

On an unrelated note, damn fine show on BBC1 tonight, 'Jack dee Live at the apollo'. Now I always enjoy Jack Dee, but he was pretty much relegated to third place by Marcus Brigstocke, originator of the classic 'Pacman' joke, (if you dont know it, check Fink's Blog, or Brigstocks own site) and Rich Hall, one of the few truly great current American stand ups. as he said tonight ' I think Bush is a fuckwit, everyone I know thinks Bush is a fuckwit, yet on TV polls state that "58% of americans think Bush is a fine President". Now I couldn't believe this, until I realised, most polls are taken in shopping malls. This means the true facts are "58% of americans too dumb to avoid a yahoo with a clipboard think Bush is a fine president". Things now make sense!'

Well, looks like *I* love katamari, too!

Well, I've finally had the chance to play "Minna daisuki Katamari Damacy" or simply "We Love Katamari" for the US version. I just hope they finally give this one a full UK release, now they've seen the light and let the sequel out of Japan for a US release, games like this deserve to be seen!

For the 99% of people that have never heard of it, Katamari Damacy and its sequel have no cars, no guns, no violence, hell, for the most part not even any buttons! You simply roll a ball around, and if you touch things that are smaller than the ball, they stick, making the ball bigger. If you hit larger things, you'll 'crash' and bits will fall off. The left control stick pushes the ball with your left hand, the right one pushes your right hand.... and thats about it!

So far, so dull... except its like saying 'Tetris' was just dropping blocks, or Streetfighter II was just punching and kicking, or that football is just kicking a ball about. As with most really enjoyable games, its easy to pick up and play, and damn hard to STOP playing..in fact I'm lucky to have torn myself away to type this up. I'm in full agreement with GamesTM magazine, in that ok, they've hardly changed a thing for the sequel, and thats why it works. Also, like the other games that may open the gaming market to non gamers, it looks interesting enough to get people to look, and the controls dont need explaining, like Eyetoy for instance. Not to that extent, but in some small way, its breaking down the barrier between games and non gamers, complex controls. Some small new things I've noticed tho, there's new challenges, for instance , you get dropped into a child's bedroom and have to 'clear up' 100 toys as fast as possible, and there's an underwater level, where rolling over a hook will get you fished out for a couple of seconds. really tho, I could fill this pages for another hundred lines, and no-one would really understand, and lots of people will be turned off by the chunky, childlike graphical style (also, I imagine having 1000-3000 things on screen at any one time probly cuts into how much trilinear bifocal pixel bendy multimipmapping they can squeeze in). All I can say is, if you get the chance, TRY IT! I also believe the original is getting remade for the Nintendo DS, I just hope they dont screw up the controls, as controls are everything. *EDIT* BAH! They've canned KD for DS, seems its going PSP way, we shall see...

So I've been keeping up my presence over at gamefaqs...

So, just to keep something appearing here until I can be bothered to bring up the paper to rant about the senseless stupidity I've read in the past couple of days, here are a few of my favourite signatures from the forums...

If at first you don't succeed, than skydiving is not for you.
You know, when Jesus died, it took him 3 days to respawn. Now THATS what I call lag.
“Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country,” –Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, DC.
you can't hug your children with nuclear arms.
There are 10 types of people in this world; those who understand binary,and those who dont.
If we're all God's children, what makes Jesus so special?
The only difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck is the day they make a vacuum.
Try to look unimportant, they may be low on ammo.
"I know not with what weapons World War 3 will be fought with, but I know that World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." -Albert Einstein.

Not all funy as such, but gives you an insight on the minds of people that lurk on forums, and hell, you dont need my sig, you've had quite enough insight into m mind , reading this.

Also particularly enjoyed the guy that asked 'So World of Warcraft is the third game , right? Cos there was Warcraft III, then the expansion, then this, yeah?' I just love the idea that there's people out there not thinking that perhaps the 3 in warcraft 3 means its the third one?

Last of all, I rad something interesting about a guy that is hoping to try out some big social experiments by using WoW, building communist, socialist, dictatorial communities, and seeing how they grow and change. Sounds like an interesting idea, and this time only pixels will suffer.
More if I find find the magazine again, and if anyone leaves me messages reminding me, hell, if I say anything you want to know more about, or disagree with, leave a message!

THUD!

I have to say congrats to Terry Pratchett on his new book, THUD!
He has the wonderful ability to be funny, while at the same time conveying a real sense of character to even the bit players in his ..well, I'd say stories, but he really has created a world all his own. He also deals with big serious topics in a lightweight way, without making them flippant or disposable, THUD takes on racism, detaching it from real life by making it between the Dwarves and Trolls, instead of black and white, while still dealing with mob mentality, the stupidity of hate of differences, mindless following of leaders, and the simple 'believing all you read'. Also its a pleasure to see that things that have been the focus of previous books, (see 'The Truth' about the troubles of the first ever newspaper started in Ankh Morpork.), when there is a unfortunate moment when the press photographer get a shot of a dwarf restrained by a troll policeman, and it gets taken horribly out of context. I'm certainly not insane enough to knock J. R. R. Tolkien, but you have to wonder if he'd have been able to keep his world growing and getting better,deeper and more 'full', 30 books on... and of course, JK Rowling may have shifted Terry to 2nd place in the UK's best selling author, but I can't say I'm sure how long the Potter phenomenon will last, and remember that Terry hasn't had the publicity machines rumbling away behind him, although to be honest, any Discworld Movie would need at least 200 million dollars behind it, as its only going to be compared to the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and what Hollywood moneybags is going to put a huge budget into a comedy? ( On a side note, a ring has appeared as a random reward in World of Warcraft, 'The One Ring', which gives +1 to all yours stats, and the description simply states, 'not as good as The Two Ring'. Nice.

Wouldn't it be nice?

If there was a talent show on one of the Terrestrial TV stations?
Unfortunately all we get are shows like pop idol, and 'X factor' which I was unfortunate enough to see some of.

from the small portion I could bear to watch, it seems the main factor in deciding who was going to stay in and who was going to get thrown out, was 'image' as in 'Well, I think you have an incredible voice, and you've impressed everyone, but your look, your image jut isnt 'popstar' sorry, you're going home.'

Firstly, The Beatles, Elton John, Alison Moyet, (Motorhead anyone?) and about a thousand other singers/bands didnt get there on looks, they shone through by having talent.

Secondly as a look in any tabloid newspaper or celeb mag will tell you, image isnt something you have, it is something created for you, if we're not seeing 'normal people' given a 'celebrity' makeover, we're seeing the so called celebrities falling out of bars, or close ups of bad skin/hair/clothes.

So surely, if you wanted to make a top selling act, surely you'd select the most popular SINGER (note not best singer, you need to appeal to the lowest common denominator), not the best looker. Still what would I know, I'm just some guy, I'm not the kind of expert that selected Steve Brookstein (who?), Gareth Gates, um...that boy band One True Voice, and yes, I had to google that one, damned if I could remember even their names!

Anyway, that out of the way, I'm very pleased that channel 4's new station isn't going to be filthy, I couldn't really see them doing it, and was pretty sure it was some cunning piece of marketing, but you never know... especially as there's no real point in making an adult anything in this country, and it would be nice to to have a station that could show adult comedy without having to be concerned about the legions of Daily mail readers scratching out another letter, demanding that whoever allowed the word 'bottom' to be said on television oughta be subjected to a public hanging. With any luck, we'll even get some more of the dark mind of Chris Morris, or some more of the 'Nighty Night' style humour.