*click**click**click**click**click**click*[chat]*click*

....Because Diablo III is coming out at some point in the future

Jesse Helms: Respectable Asshole

Jesse Helms died. And if you don't know who Jesse Helms is, he is:

No to civil rights. No to abortion. No to communism. No to the United Nations. No to gay rights. No to arts funding with nakedness. No to school busing. No to the U.S. giving up the Panama Canal. No to a nuclear arms reduction treaty called Salt II.

You don't have to respect his ignorant, stupid positions. But, you can respect his being a stubborn ass and willingness to stand up for what he believed.

Obama and McCain could learn something from this fucker.

Obama: Blazing Saddles

Independence Day: Slave Fucking Assholes

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Viacom gets YouTube Records

The judge granted a Viacom motion that records of every video watched by YouTube users, including their login names and IP addresses, be turned over to the entertainment giant.

Source

So now someone at Viacom will now know exactly how many times a login name or IP Address watched "Miko Miko Nurse" or "Angry Cat". I guess that's a kind of victory.

Zero Punctuation: Webcomics

James Wallis: 'Brave N00B World' is Kitsch

When inane dipshits are granted access to higher education one result is an application of academic exploration, method, and know-how to bullshit like Buffy the Vampire Slayer; so, rather than fostering useful and meaningful exploration of the human condition we get shit like Buffy Studies. The latest example of this trite "academic" waste to come to my attention is N00b World Reorder by James Wallis, a "scientific" exploration of Azeroth, the primary fictional world in World of Warcraft.

Starting with James' first sentence, "I have spent the last few months on sabbatical, visiting a persistent fantasy world known as ‘Of Warcraft’." the tone of this academic diarrhetic is set as both faux-academic and tongue-in-cheek to the point of oral harm. It acknowledges that the "world" is fantasy yet also feigns a notion of "visitation", defining the duality of this rampant idiocy which serves as my primary source of psychotic fucking hatred.

James Wallis, henceforth referred to as "motherfucker", is incapable of setting a perspective for the damn article. Motherfucker measures distance based upon the movement of in-game characters, then utilizes "page 66 of one of the only authoritative works of Azerothian Studies to date (World of Warcraft Game Manual; Hutchens, Catalan et al, 2005)" as a means of comparing various race dimensions. Motherfucker does not break the fourth wall so much as motherfucker continually leaps back and forth through its shattered frame. But this duality, this inability to establish perspective, is not limited to only motherfucker's tone. No, the rampant, schizophrenic lurching is also evident in motherfucker's process.

After establishing a rough estimate of the size of the landmasses within the game, motherfucker then wraps that surface area around "an imaginary sphere" and calculates the sphere's diameter as "12 kilometres [sic]". From this motherfucker is able to determine the sphere's density, gravity, and its spacetime. These calculations are all certainly interesting, until motherfucker points out the main problem with the entire fucking thought experiment: "all this assumes that Azeroth is a standard astronomical body, and it isn’t".

That's right, you fucking guessed it. Motherfucker, after wasting his valueless time extrapolating bullshit, negates any progress he might have made by determining that WoW's World is flat. How did he determine this? By "swimming to its edge and jumping around like a prat" motherfucker found that "Azeroth is (a) flat, (b) finite and (c) rectangular". Gosh. It's almost as if Azeroth is merely a coded plane upon which a game occurs which is governed by the code of the fucking game rather than any sort of planetary body maintaining gravitational forces.

YOU MOTHER FUCKING, DIPSHIT, FAUX ACADEMIC, TRITE, SHIT-HEADED ASSHOLE!

Imparting real-world physical characteristics and mechanics onto game worlds for the sake of justifying a bullshit-stupid paper is fucking moronic. Period. Trite assessments of in-game gravitational forces by calculating the relation of gravity and biological composition required to ensure that Supremus does not break his non-existent hip bone is not academic, not insightful, not brilliant. It is the height of useless, ignorant, base, fanboy-level faux academic stupidity which ought to merit expulsion on the grounds that motherfucker is fundamentally confused about why the fuck academics do what they do.

We're not trying to kill time bullshitting. We're not trying to dick around while we avoid real jobs. We're trying to accomplish something. We're trying to make progress. And if you'd rather go play WoW than make some lasting improvement to mankind's shitty existence then just fuck off and die, James Wallis, rather than dragging academia down to your base level of sophomoric stupidity with your meaningless, wasteful kitsch.

Nostalgia Confusion

io9 post

Warren Ellis.

G.I. Joe

Adult-Aimed hour of mini-eps.

Brain... broken?

Extortion: NOOOOOOOOOOOOK!

Kotaku had a Nook Video up

I'm not embedding, as I've not actually watched.

Being at work and all.
(edit)

Home from work, Behold it's NSWness-

Obama: Remove Dick from Hand

You could feel it. The ramping frustration of the informed electorate who watched for the past seven years as the Constitution was dismantled and rampant idiocy festered within the confines of Washington D.C. Then hope which steadily grew through the primary season climaxing when Obama won the nomination. A momentary relief at a chance for hope with opportunity on the horizon and a self-asserted assurance of victory. And now? Inkling trepidation. We're worried.

We're really worried.

We're watching as Obama and McCain lob shots at one another. No deadly blows yet, merely minor skin irritation. But we see the strategies developing during the lull before the conventions. The first trimester of the general election nears its close and we're all teetering on a razor's edge of fright at a possibility we thought entirely unlikely: Obama may keep his dick in his hand.

This past week Obama rejected General Wesley Clark's true comments. Obama continued walking his political tight-rope, respecting John McCain while politely questioning his positions. McCain embraces the politics of fear while Obama preaches hope. McCain manipulates his own positions while Obama is labeled the flip-flopper. McCain runs a campaign while Obama phones the Clintons. And we're all shitting ourselves over the possibility that either Obama isn't ready for a general election, or Obama isn't ready to fuck McCain.

Obama is leading in the polls, Obama has more money, Obama is right. But Obama supporters, the people who are paying attention, are starting to worry. Obama isn't fighting back, he's not going for blood. Obama is keeping his dick in his hand, offering rhetoric and change while turning the other cheek to McCain's bullshit. It sounds noble, it seems noble, it's damned idealistically compelling...but it's lacking. It's politics without balls. It's fine for a primary, when you're simply trying to win over people who agree with you. But a general election? How will it play?

Perhaps Obama is still finding his feet; perhaps Obama is saving himself for after the conventions, warming his dick in his hand before he lets loose with some rampant political fucking of McCain's doddering corpse. I've no idea. But for the time being you can sense that we're all just a little bit worried that each passed shot, each turned cheek, may undo this seemingly delicate little package which is Obama's chance at the presidency.

We're not primarily looking for blood, not even all that interested in seeing Obama fuck McCain for fucking's sake. We've just seen truth trampled, ignored, and abandoned for nearly eight years. Now we would like to see truth brazenly extolled and our nation returned to something resembling its former state. And as Americans our default path to political truth involves a touch of primal political combat. It's entirely possible that our trepidation is misplaced and Obama knows what he's doing. But after eight fucking years...you can hardly fault us for worrying and harboring a touch of the bloodlust.

Special Comment: Obama and FISA

I don't know whether to be amused or annoyed..

NYT story about a botched grift / vigilante?

Basically, a guy comes into town, calls himself a federal agent, invades homes busting meth users, and then turns out to be a nobody, completely without authority.

And he fooled the entire town's justice system.


I can't figure out my reaction. On the one hand, this can HAPPEN? Who the hell's paying attention? On the other.. This totally happened and idiots fell for it..

I duno.

McCain Points: Respecting Failure

Much as I love the incessant fetishizing of John McCain's military service which has occurred and undoubtedly will continue to occur I think it would be damned terrific if someone could please explain why the hell we have to honor and respect John McCain's inability to get a real job.

If you missed it apparently General Wesley Clark said something and shortly thereafter Obama totally rejected what Wesley Clark said because...shit if I know why. Here's what Wesley Clark said, in part:

Because in the matters of national security policy making, it's a matter of understanding risk. It's a matter of gauging your opponents, and it's a matter of being held accountable. John McCain's never done any of that in his official positions.

Yup, Wesley Clark said true things. John McCain was in the Armed Forces, John McCain fought in Vietnam, John McCain was a P.O.W., but John McCain was never president, never made presidential decisions. And for some reason General Wesley Clark felt compelled to, you know, FUCKING SAY SO. For shame. By the way, I said, "in part" because I wanted to address this wonderful snarky comment by General Wesley Clark on its own:

I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war.

Isn't that terrific?

Why do we have to honor and respect John McCain? Has it not occurred to anyone, ever, that we ought to make fun of the decrepit old shit for being caught, that the noteworthy portion of his story results from his failure to avoid failure? Sure he flew planes in Vietnam, but he also failed to avoid capture, failed to not fail. Of all the qualifications that ought to be required to be President I'm certain that "captured by fucking gooks" is nowhere near the list.

Sure, John McCain learned valuable lessons from his capture such as "I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.." And I am happy to honor and respect his blatant racism. But do we really need to respect his failure? Do we need to honor his "service as a prisoner of war," his service of sitting in a cell in Vietnam? Do we really need to continue fetishizing and romanticing military service out of some antiquated notion that it's keen to shoot people? I contend that we do not. And it would be fucking awesome if Obama followed General Wesley Clark's lead and called McCain a "Gook Hating racist" instead of lauding him with faux praise.

The easiest way to win an argument is to not grant your opponent's premise. And "we must respect military service" is a premise which is just begging to be shot out of the air, as it were.

TOYSES!

There is some dread overlap here with J's collection rantlet... but..

Comicon Toys

Okay.. so there are a couple really cool things there... but I'd KILL to have FOOM.

And yet, the last one is the best.

So very bestest

Diablo 3: Interview with Jay Wilson

Kotaku posted an interview with Diablo 3 lead designer Jay Wilson.

He says things. I want to play Diablo 3.

*Update*:
Interview with Paul Sams, COO of Blizzard Entertainment