Oh Come-Goddamn-On

Sims 2 content "worse than Hot Coffee" - PC News at GameSpot

This Thompson guy is a nutbag, pure and simple.

Hot Coffee is one thing (everyone is commenting on this, and so I probably won't), because it was a deliberate attempt at circumventing ESRB ratings and giving a naughty nod to fans. But Sims 2? Come on! Grow the fuck up.

I have to be honest with you. I want the kids to see some nekkid boobies. Not hardcore farmyardteens.com crap, but what's the harm in a nekkid someone preparing to shower? I mean, kids are generally naked when they're about to shower, anyway, so they know everyone does it (those who actually shower, that is). Why give them complexes about their bodies and those of others? I'm not saying Ma and Pa need to do the Nude Troop Revue in front of their kids (those are for the bedroom, folks), but really. There is little more natural than a naked human being (though the entirety of that body might not be natural, strictly speaking).

Besides, the game is rated T for Teen. This means that kids who see worse things on MTV (erm, I mean Much Music... I'm Canadian now, I think) can apply a patch that they downloaded from the Internet, where they all know how to find porn anyway, and see a Sim's "naked" Barbie-doll body. Woo! Holy shit, Billy! Let's have a swordfight! Grab the soap!

The best part of the article is how much of a koo this guy is. Jeff Brown, corporate communications for EA and complete tool, pointed out that removing the blur only produces a smooth, mannequin-like body. Which is in direct contrast to Thompson's statement that the game "contains, according to video game news sites, full frontal nudity, including nipples, penises, labia, and pubic hair (Thompson's words, from GameSpot)." Thompson apparently followed up with (bold emphasis mine), "The sex and the nudity are in the game. That's the point. The blur is an admission that even the 'Ken and Barbie' features should not be displayed. The blur can be disarmed. This is no different than what is in San Andreas, although worse." He even actually noted that kids can be "nudified," saying that this was "much to the delight, one can be sure, of pedophiles around the globe who can rehearse, in virtual reality, for their abuse."

People need to grow the hell up. Women and minorities are still being shat upon in the US. Companies are getting away with stealing billions of dollars from their employees and from the government. We've nearly lost as many soldiers in Iraq as people who died in 9/11, not to mention the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have died since the "end of the war." We have prisoners in Cuba who are held without charges and without representation or trials and who are being tortured with the approval of the US government. And this guy, this total, utter, brain-hosed psycho, is ranting about how a blur covers an anatomically incorrect Barbie doll figure in a computer game? Little kids see Barbies and Kens naked all the time, you unconscionable freak. Should they be rated Mature, too?

I think if this guy is this outraged about Sims 2, he'd be horrified to know what's out there on the Internet. There's stuff out there that makes Hot Coffee look like cold milk.

I feel like I'm in my house, and there are monkeys on my lawn throwing shit at my house. No matter what happens, no one will shoo these monkeys from my lawn, and so I have to sit there and accept that shit will be hitting my house. The worst thing is that there's a chance that the police might come by and think the shit-flinging is a good idea and start doing it, too. But with machine guns. Actually, this analogy is putting a cool image in my head, so it's not really serving its purpose. Let's just accept that I'm annoyed and wish I could shoot this Thompson guy in the balls with a BB gun.

If ever there was a better use for a "Make Him Stop Breathing" button... well, I think I linked to it earlier today.

Forbes.com Goes On A Limb: "Video Games Need Female Touch"

I am so goddamn awesome.

Read this article on Forbes.com. It takes the risky and innovative stance that the game industry needs more women and women gamers.

Then go here and here to read my timely response to their article. It's so timely, in fact, that both of those posts I link to are FROM THE PAST!!!!!!

I'm so awesome it hurts. Especially when my awesomeness kicks me in the mouth.

...

ARGH!

RIP James Doohan

Fuck. Scotty's dead.

He has a scene in Trekkies that I think sums it up. He seemed like one of the good people in the world.

Even for non-Trekkies, losing a decent person is something worth at least a moment of silence.

......................

My Home Country is Screwed

The title of this post links to a page about God-King Bush's Supreme Court Nominee.

I don't fucking get it. How much worse does the country need to get before people wake the hell up and do something about it?

This is retarded. Bush has shown nothing but contempt for the Consitution and nothing but love for big business and war. He has charged the US into an unwinnable war, lied to the world (and worse, the Americans), bullied nations, fucked the environment with a chainsaw, set science in the US back years (chasing the real science off to China and other countries), ruined education, threatened Social Security, drafted our retired veterans, named a pro-torture psycho to Attourney General, given the top %5 of the US tax cuts, and... well, I'm sure the list goes on, but typing this tastes like poison.

I have never been so saddened and embarrassed to be an American. The country is nearly unrecognizable to me, someone who grew up after the Civil Rights and hippie movements. I seem to remember a nation that had liberty as its ideal, but I wonder how much of that was just me drinking the Kool-aid.

And every new day brings another straw, and the camel's back is snapped in half. Bush's White House Chief of Staff leaked the identity of an undercover CIA operative to the press to get back at her husband, who released counter-Bush information that spoke out against the rationale for the war in Iraq. That's a felony that could lead to 10 years or so in jail, and it endangers everyone the woman ever worked with in the entire world, as foreign government now can suspect them of spying. Bush originally said, "I will fire anyone found to have been involved in this leak," (not the actual quote; I imagine what he really said was more like "Blah blah, freedom blah, read me a story, blah blah.") but a day or two ago he backpedaled, saying something to the effect of, "I will fire whoever is convicted of this crime." We have evidence, including Karl Rove's lawyer's statement, that Rove did this, but Bush won't stop sucking Rove's dick without a conviction. And Bush's neocon loser supporters are all over this, saying, "This is all a liberal witch-hunt" and basically acting like US politics is a team sport. Oh, and Dick Cheney's aide "Scooter" Libby was also believed to have been involved in the leak. Note that both Libby and Rove denied their involvement before. Remember another presidential figure who recently got caught lying? What happened to him?

And now Bush nominates the human smoke screen Judge Roberts to the Supreme Court. Here I was, holding out hope that maybe Bush might do the right thing and nominate a moderate judge to take Sandra Day O'-fucking-moderate-Connor's seat when she retires, but it turns out that I'm stupid. How could I expect Bush to do the right thing and try to heal the huge divide between the left and right in the US? No, he has to keep reaching for power in the government.

Goddamnit, something has to change in my home country, or things will change suddenly and violently. As it is, Bush is doing everything wrong, as far as I'm concerned, and roughly half of Americans are eating it up and going, "Woo hoo!! Take that, Liberals!" like they should be proud that their homeland is being ruined.

Fucking retarded country. I can't wait for the EU to power up and start bringing the States back to Earth.

Best Film Review EVER

This is the best film review ever. Not kidding.

Note the following line, and then compare it to mine in my F4 review below:

"There is a sense in which attacking this movie is like kicking a dog for not being better at calculus."

I bet that in the end of the game Roger Ebert turns out to be ME.

I Enjoyed The Fantastic Four

I almost titled this post "STFU," but I figured it'd be too vague.

It's no fun to write a positive review for a movie like Fantastic Four, so I considered making stuff up to hate about it. When I think about it, there are a number of things to complain about, but complaining about plot holes in this movie is like kicking a little kid. Sure, it's a lot of fun, but there's no real challenge, and the kid didn't mean to steal your balloon.

It's a fun movie. I refuse to even qualify that by going, "It's fun but brainless." I fucking liked the movie. In some ways, it showed up Batman Begins by being unapologetic in its comic-book cheese. Doom walks into a storage area looking for stuff and finds a box labelled "Heat Seeking Missile" and another that reads, "Hyper Coolant Device." Then he goes, "Ohh yeahhhh...." I half-expected to see "Invisible People Kill-o-tron" and "Anti-Rock-Guy Explosion Device." Then Doom sets up his diabolical plan, which is to shoot at the F4's home building with a missile. Brilliant!

If anything, the big complaint is that Dr. Doom is fairly crap. I mean, Johnny Storm can heat himself up to nearly the temperature of the sun, and Sue Storm can apparently contain that much heat in her forcefields, but Dr. Doom essentially shoots lightning from his hands and has the power of Wardrobe. Oh, and he's made of metal, which is cool.

The awesome parts are when Doom and Reed Richards get into science-geek battles. "You know what happens to rubber when it gets cold?" asks Doom of Reed, several times, just to set up Reed's AWESOME LINE: "Do you know what happens to metal when it cools too quickly?" AWESOME YOU ROCK DUDE. Cue wailing guitars.

The Thing and the Human Torch rock the movie, because they have a genuine brotherly rivalry going. Torch keeps playing pranks on Thing, and meanwhile, life shits upon the Thing every chance it gets. Michael Chiklis does a great job of getting shat upon, and his Thing outfit doesn't look nearly as bad as it could have. In fact, it's quite convincing except around his neck where it looks too much like skin.

The thing that rocked most about the film is that it wasn't overly self-aware. It didn't try to hide its comic book origins or go completely campy to apologize for its inherent dumbness. It presented the subject matter the way it's always been presented: with love, fun, and action. There's a reason why I and others read comics, and it's not to be assaulted with angst and realism and hard times. We like to be entertained, and that's the sum of it.

You may or may not like it, but this isn't about you. I enjoyed the hell out of the film and soaked up all the dumb crap, chalking it up to traditional comic-book storytelling. According to Rotten Tomatoes, 75% of film critics disgree with me, but film critics suck anyway. Especially that one in San Francisco with the hat and the leather jacket. He sucks.

Star Wars Episode III: The Backstroke of the West

This is the new funniest thing I have ever seen.

Earth is PWN3D!!!!!!

War of the Worlds taught me two things: One, don't try to drive a Dodge minivan into a sea of desperate people, and two, if there's an alien apocalypse, go to Boston, because it'll be perfectly fine when you get there.

By the way, this post has more spoilers than a high school parking lot. But then again, so does the H.G. Wells work this film is based on, so if you don't know the story, shame on you.

Of course, shame on me. I never read the story myself.

I'm not sure why the film is called War of the Worlds, because there only seems to be one world really doing any effective warring. Earth's counterattack is essentially Tom Cruise with a belt of grenades. It's a bit like exclaiming, "War... of the Species!" just before smacking a fly with a flyswatter. I would have called the film "Massive Assraping of the Worlds," but then that might have upset the parents.

Not that the film as-is wouldn't upset the parents. Aside from showing a realistic family in crisis (well, realistic except for the idea of walking-forehead Miranda Otto as the doting mother who will somehow make it all better if we can just get to Boston and find her), the film shows humanity at its worst this side of a zombie epidemic. I can hear it now: "Mommy, would Daddy kill Mr. Nelson with his bare hands just to keep the aliens from hearing Mr. Nelson's mad prattling while we're hiding out to avoid being captured and having our blood sucked out by a giant Hoover attachment?" For some reason, some people think that Spielberg = Family Friendly, to this day, despite Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan being high atop his list of recent films.

At first, I was surprised to see Dakota Fanning get second billing in the film, with Tim Robbins and Miranda Otto caricaturing about, but she did a fine job being a neurotic child who got that way because her mother and doting stepfather allowed her to. She has a realistic child-scream that rattles the nerves, and she has a way of being sassy without being sitcom-child precocious. She's like the girl version of Haley Joel Osment, so expect to see her pop up in increasingly inappropriate roles as people try to capitalize on the one child in Hollywood who can apparently act. I can already imagine her starring in A.I. 2: Small wonder.

In any case, here's the plot: Aliens come and blow shit up, then die mysteriously from disease. Meanwhile, Tom Cruise is a bad father and must reconcile with his estranged children while being in an apocalypse. Simple, stock plots, both. Luckily, Spielberg takes both plots to their logical extremes: The aliens not only blow shit up, but they do it while looking awesome and being mysterious (up until a point). Tom Cruise is not only a bad father, but he leaves his kids to order food when he goes to work because there is no, count zero, food in the house. The kids order health food (because they suck), and Tom Cruise can't bear to eat it. Tom Cruise then invites his son out to play catch and ends up calling his son a prick. Good stuff.

But Spielberg manages to mess it up, as per usual. Steven, I know you hate guns, but in a crowd of hundreds of people in New Jersey during an apocalypse, I'd think there'd be more than two guns. Aside from the military, which really serves no purpose in the film, the film features three guns. I guess the rest of the people had Spielbergian cell phones.

Then Spielberg makes the mistake of showing the actual aliens in the flesh, and they're frickin' cute. They're like big-headed baby mushroom people with huge round eyes and a tendency to pick up and stare at photographs of Tim Robbins' family. Suddenly all the destruction they caused is cute, like a baby stomping about and breaking your fine ceramic pottery. "Awww," you say, "That ceramic vase may have cost me $100, but this destructive baby is priceless!!"

Finally, any fear that the audience has that Tom Cruise's wife and son might be dead has completely no payoff, because at the end of the film they're perfectly fine, hanging out with grandma and grandpa in the completely un-ruined city of Boston. I guess while the aliens were stomping about and, by this point, falling on stuff, the folks were eating beans and playing a rousing game of Parcheesi. It's supposed to come across as a relief that these characters are still alive, but since you are meant to hate Miranda Otto for treating the asshole Tom Cruise so badly, and since you never get to know Tom Cruise's son or his greasy '80s death-metal haircut, it just comes over as disappointment. After the easy way in which everyone but Tom Cruise dies in the film, for an entire family to have rolled natural 20s on the dice just seems off. I guess plot immunity is a wonderful thing.

The best thing about the film is how grim it is. This could have easily been another huge blockbuster thrill ride, but it's not. It shows humans at the brink of desperation, and it details what depths some people will go to to survive and protect their families. The film does a good job of keeping the threat personal; it doesn't go out to the national or global level, but rather keeps it all down to how it affects Tom Cruise. I'll excuse the "Bad father learns about family" plot because it keeps the camera focused on the human crises and not the cool ships towering about. And these ships really are a threat: We see early on how effectively and indescriminately they kill, so when we see two at once, we go, "Holy crap," and when we see legions, we slap the retarded kid behind us for constantly going, "Whoa" in that deadened I-just-swallowed-my-tongue voice of his.

That's the other thing: We had these annoying people in the seats behind us who just wouldn't shut up. When the film began and we saw a picture of an amoeba, the father of the family pointed, chuckled, and went, "An amoeba!!!" I'm not making this up. Every time something happened that was more exciting than Tom Cruise standing about, the kid went, "Whoa." Like, Tom Cruise goes to the phone and says, "Hello, Dominoes?" and the kid goes, "Whoa." I turned around three times and told them to shut up, which worked for a moment, but they struck it back up. Luckily the film was grim and scary enough to shut down the three working neurons in their brains about halfway through the film.

Anyway, not a bad film, but I probably won't remember it in a few months, which generally tells me that it's solidly mediocre.

Also, Tom Cruise is teh Scientologistz0r, lolroflmgdao.

That is all.

Why Does Toyota Hate America?

Toyota-New-Plant, 2nd Writethru Bgt

Sweet.