Greatest Roast Ever 2 [chat]

Ingredients:
2 Pound Rump Roast
2 15 oz Cans Whole New Potatoes
3 8 oz Cans Whole Water Chestnuts
1/2 Pack of Baby Carrots
8 oz. Pack of Baby Portobello Mushroom
Full Garlic Bulb worth of Garlic Cloves
2 32 oz. Boxes of Beef Broth

Preparation: Rub Rump Roast with blend of Crushed Red Pepper, Crushed Black Pepper, and Garlic Powder daily for 3 days prior to cooking. Refridgerate between rubbings.

Cooking: Place garlic gloves in the center of the Crock Pot in a circular pattern to create a "bed" for the Roast. Surround Garlic Cloves with water chestnuts and carrots until bottom of Crock Pot is covered. Place roast upon bed of vegetables centering it over cluster of garlic cloves (for flavors). Add any desired spices at this point. Then, fill in space around and above roast with remaining vegetables. Pour in Broth to rim under top of Crock Pot. Finally, place Mushrooms in broth and allow to float. Cook for 8 hours in Crock Pot on low.

It has Flavors.

Rachel Maddow Reads Newspaper

Allowed, but reads it non-the-less.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

So Denis Leary does that Asshole song where he describes his character as a "suburbanite slob" who "like[s] football and porno and books about war". He is a simple man who probably thinks a cowboy punching Nazis with his machine gun fists from the back of a speeding missile made out of dinosaurs would be the greatest thing ever. Not that that wouldn't be great, mind you, but I don't know that this is the person who should be directing a movie about how the human race is too brutish and stupid to keep from destroying itself. And yet here we are, and remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still is pretty fucking stupid.

Incontrovertible Proof that TDtESS is Stupid
1) Scientist describes the speed of an object as being 3 x 10^7 meters per second. Now, you might think to yourself, wouldn't it be easier to say "thirty million" than "three times ten to the seventh power"? Oh no. Science is not here to be easy, it is here to sound complicated. That's why another scientist repeats the number later as "three times ten to the seventh power meters per second". Gosh, just listen to all that fucking science!!

2) Any time the military or police are involved, the movie grinds to a halt to watch the flashing lights and gun cocking. Probably the words "grind", "flash", and "cock" are the words to pay attention to here.

3) Movie contains a man who looks at some sort of a complicated equation on a blackboard, then instantly is able to correct it. This is pretty cliche in terms of retards making movies about people who are supposed to be smart, so TDtESS ratchets up the retard by having TWO characters write the corrected equation in some sort of dueling chalkboard nonsense. Also, those two people are Keanu Reeves and John Cleese.

4) Something computer related was compromised, therefore the planet has been hacked. In this case, some communications satellite related to the government was shut down. But not just any some communications satellite related to the government. The one where if they shut it down, THEY KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT US...AND WE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THEM

There's more, but I'm getting nit-picky.

Now, I haven't seen the original in a few years, but it appeared to me that even though the remake was pretty dumb, the important bits still came through. The bits about how the human race has all of its little systems and its little gadgets, so it thinks that it rules the world and is in control, but it actually isn't. But if that's all you're looking for, then you may as well just watch the original. As I recall, it was pretty rad.

Double Fine is Back in the House

Brutal Legend 'Debut' trailer

I want to play this so very badly.

WoW Paid Character Customization: $15

WoW now offers paid Character Customization. So what, you may ask, may be customized?

Character Re-Customization is a paid service that lets you change an existing character's gender, face, skin color, and other cosmetic features determined by his or her race and gender combination. When you perform a Character Re-Customization, you may also change the character's hair color and hair style (similar to the in-game barbershop) and select a new name, if desired.

The FAQ for this new service outlines other particularities of paid characterization.

So, yeah, for a mere $15 you can now change the name and appearance of your WoW characters.

Be sure not to all sign up at once...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO _J_!!!

Exactly one year ago it was my birthday. Through some fluke in the calendar it happens to be the case that, again this year, IT R MY TEH BIRTHDAY!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, _J_!



Today is totally my birthday. Or, as I like to think of it, "Christmas in December". Today is a day upon which all reflect upon the degree to which I am FUCKING AWESOME!

I shall spend the day writing a feminism paper which is due tomorrow at 4. But you, in your free time, may spend the day reflecting upon the ways in which _J_ has improved your life, made the world a better place, and generally been awesome for this past year.

That or you can post a birthday lolcat which will make me lol. Or buy me a whore.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, _J_! _J_ IS GREAT!

Zero Punctuation: Left 4 Dead

Joe the Plumber II, Electric Boogaloo

Guess what, he wrote a book.

Richard Bartle on WoW Torture: The Art of Persuasion

So, there is a quest in WOTLK which involves torturing a guy. Or, at least, that's how Richard Bartle would describe the situation. I, on the other hand, would say that the quest The Art of Persuasion involves finding an NPC (Who is a pain in the ass to locate, by the way) and using the Neural Needler on it three or four times until the NPC says a line of dialog and the quest is completed. This quest apparently pissed Richard Bartle off because, well, Richard Bartle just can't help himself. In assessing his "argument" of "zomg torture bad" I have two points.

1) Fuck you, Dipshit
As I recall when I did this quest I obtained the item, sought out the location of the NPC using Questhelper, went to the NPC's location, used the item, and then completed the quest. You'll note that my account of the quest leaves out the whole "torture" issue because not only did I not read the fucking quest text but there were also no acts of torture involved. Given that this is a NPC in a fucking video game the entire enterprise can be condensed down to a mechanicalistic account of the acts which occur to complete the quest. I found the NPC, I used the item. Quest done. No torture. Fuck you, dipshit.

2) Killing > Torture means we raise a shit about Torture?
This is the part of Richard Bartle's "argument" that perked my interest:

yes, killing is worse than torture, but that doesn't mean that if you kill people then torture is fine.

What the fuck are you talking about, Bartle? If, as your brilliant little hierarchy suggests, Killing > Torture in terms of the "worseness scale" then why the shit cocking hell aren't you raising a stink against the issue of killing? I'm just a Master's Student, but it seems to me that if killing is worse than torture then...wait for it...KILLING IS WORSE THAN TORTURE!

There are a metric fuck-ton of quests in WOTLK that involve "killing". Hell, there's one quest that involves blowing up 60 something monsters by exploding other monsters around them. Yet is this problematic? Well, of course not. Because, you see, torture is somehow quantitatively different to Richard Bartle, ethical fuckhead. Killing things is terrible, but as long as we simply kill things rather than torture things we're good to go.

Here's the point: If a logical and coherent reconstruction of one's argument is "It would have been ethically better to have killed the NPC rather than tortured and killed the NPC" then the argument fails. That's it. We don't need to debate or discuss it. We don't need to be any more deeply engaged in the conversation. Richard Bartle is arguing that the Art of Persuasion quest would have been less ethically problematic, less morally problematic, if we had simply killed the NPC.

SORRY! You fail.

And I'm not going to buy into your distraction of "When I signed up to play WoW I knew it had fireballs, so I expected killing." You don't get to argue for a moral high ground AND say "killing is fine because I expected it".

This shit is why I hate ethics. Because fuckheads like Richard Bartle stumble into situations which irritate them and then they try to articulate coherent arguments utilizing ethical hierarchies, baseless appeals to contradictory legal/moral/ethical systems, and false equivalency to try and pass off a half-assed, poorly construed, subjective amalgamation of bullshit and stupidity as a reasonable position.

Except it's not reasonable. It's not coherent. It's not intelligent. It's just Richard Bartle, shithead, saying "zomg torture", "Geneva Convention", and "child sex quest" within various rhetorical frameworks in the hope that we'll all be too distracted by his stupidity to focus upon the real question this whole debate raises: WHO THE FUCK IS RICHARD BARTLE?!

Jizz in my Pants

Guster - Two Points for Honesty: Crowd Intro

Shit like this is why Guster is the greatest band ever. For the encore they have the audience start singing "Two Points for Honesty". Then at the awesome point the band walks back on stage and finishes the song.

You know who else does that? That's right. No One. Because No One else is as awesome as Guster.

Obama still gets to be president

Obama is teh British! and teh American!, and the Supreme Court say "we no care". Yay supreme court!

And McCain was not a "natural born" citizen either. Oh noes!
I heard a rumor that George Washington was born in Virgina when it was a British colony, meaning he was not a "natural born" citizen either! Oh Noes! Whats are we to do?

In an unrelated(or is it?) note I just wrote an exhibit catalog about art that is alive, and may have deconstructed the idea of objecthood in the process.

Think of MMO Subscription Fees as Netflix

So, in avoiding my Buddhism paper I came across this article regarding how Age of Conan is a shitty game which no one plays. In the comments to this article were the predictably banal comments of "Subscription fees are stupid" played out in the predictably stupid manner in which such comments are often sustained. I've ranted about this before and non-bloggingly bitched about it to people.

The issue is that jackasses think that subscription fees for games are uncalled for, meanspirited, unnecessary, detrimental, or preventative; they want to pay for a game once and then play it unhindered by any monthly fee. I, on the other hand, am trying to explain why this mentality is juvenile, unrealistic, and best left in the 90s. So here is maybe another way of thinking about it: Netflix.

Given that you're reading a blog you know what Netflix is and how Netflix works. So, here's the question: How is $15/month to Netflix different than $15/month to WoW? Both fees are for a service. Both fees offer "unlimited" access to a given service (WoW is unlimited gameplay, Netflix is unlimited DVD exchanges). So what is the difference? How can Netflix be a reasonable service which affords users a great deal yet WoW be a waste of money?

Is it anything more than subjective preference? Neither service affords the user ownership; one does not own a rented Netflix dvd any more than one owns one's WoW character. Both services are monthly fees for an experience.

So if one wants to pay $15 a month to watch a bunch of movies and another wants to pay $15 a month to play a bunch of WoW what the fuck is the difference?