Your Vote Won't Count

Greenpeace has adopted a whale, and you can vote for it's name. You'll know what to do.

Desktop Tower Defense

Guys, guys; you know there's this, right? Play it here, record your high score with the name "piecesofthings". Let's have a contest where the winner wins!

Where I got my "Strong Moral Center"

I was over at my parents' home for Thanksgiving, and was trying to get my son Turbo to take a nap. I took him up to my old room, which was up in the attic (it has since been converted into an actual attic). There, looking for a story to read him (a book on UFOs, or Ann Nocenti and John Romita, Jr.'s sweet run on Daredevil, maybe) I stumbled upon my old Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar disks. This game taught me a lot, brothers and sisters. In the game, you're not fighting to kill some fat evil boss or anything like that. Instead, you're trying to reach this weird state of moral perfection, by behaving 'properly' in all of eight virtues: Honesty, Valor, Justice, Honor, Spirituality, Compassion, Sacrifice, and Humility (of those, I had to look up Sacrifice and Humility). Reach a certain level in one virtue, and you get the equivalent of a trivial pursuit pie wedge for that virtue. You lose the wedge if you blow it later on, like if you lie to get out of getting beaten up or something, your honesty points go down, and your wedge goes pop.

There's more to the game than this. It's a bad world, and dudes are always trying to beat you up, so you fight a lot, and gain experience and weapons and gold, all of which make you stronger and huger. This might be a flaw in the central message of the game, actually, since it's really a whole lot easier to be a centered person guided by morality when you're really freaking powerful.

All that notwithstanding, I consider this game to be one of my formative experiences, up there with Benjamin Parker's power and responsibility thing and Paul Atreides' "A storm is coming" speech. Astute readers will notice that I played with a pirated copy of the game.

Oh, apparently, you can download Ultima IV here.

Star Wars Risk, Game One of Ten Thousand

Guys, I'm with you. I felt that even the four hours we took to learn the game (while drinking ourselves under the table with Ferucio's savory mohitos and V.'s doomScotch) was ever so slightly epic, if I do say so myself. And while the tacking-on-of-licenses-to-existing-classic-board-games is getting pretty tiresome, I think we'll all agree that this one was written by a true, true, ridiculous fan; someone who's read everything from Han Solo at Star's End to Tag and Bink are Dead, and considers it all pretty much canon--the kind of dude we can all get behind. I'll bet the guy (or lady) has been to a good number of risk parties, too. The kind with sandwiches, maybe.

What I really liked was the dramatic structure of the thing--how the game opens with the Empire (Fugu and V.) completely raping the Rebellion (galspanic and myself). We really had to scratch our way to a place where we could even make a dent in their totally superior forces. I think it's set up so that we (the Rebel Alliance) feel cool playing the game for the same reason Mon Mothma feels cool when planning a raid on an Imperial outpost. Pretty sure I saw a gleam in Fugu's eye similar to the one Grand Moff Tarkin gets when fucking telling the fucking Death Star what planet to fucking destroy.

As long-time players of Regular Risk will note, however, being at a tactical disadvantage does not necessarily put you at a general disadvantage--it merely reduces your choices, which has its own strategic benefits. Risk-players also note: Star Wars Risk has no Australia equivalent, and the cards have stuff on them that can make things happen. Wild, change-your-life stuff. You don't just sit there, when you're playing this.

I'm not sure if I've played enough of this to give it all three thumbs up, but the thing shows promise. The rules are pretty tricky, but if any of you off-worlders are planning a visit, let me know ahead of time and I'll send you scans of the rules so you can take the 5+hour plane ride to maybe skim them. Next time, we have to play with Active Hutts. And we should probably make sure no one has to work in the morning, and anyone new, like I said, gets the rules to study in advance.

So yeah; so yes, I'll play again.

We Want More

Shall we have at it? My mentally ill friend here and I would like a try at that Risk thing again.

Plus, happy AfterThanksgiving.

Plus, this place has been awfully quiet recently.

And Hey! Good luck with the football game tonight!!!! Go Fucking Bows and all that shit!

My Beloved Wife

I adore Mrs. Pony, and here is proof.

I know this is accurate in my heart, but also because this love meter was fairly accurate on some other points.

A reason to watch footbawl

N E R D S ! ! !

The Results of a Poll

Okay, dudes, the results of the poll are in, and the results is this! You guys miss the smileys. I miss them too. I miss combining them most of all. There was that thing you could do where you could blow your own brains out in a cloud of blood. That totally surprised me when I first saw it, and I never got tired of it. Okay. I will see what the hell I can do about this.

Also more team members. I thought I'd invite you guys first, because the tone of the Old Forum rules because of you guys. Tone is important, probably. Other important team members to follow. God, this is all so important. Again, I will see what the hell I can do about this.

Other: You guys have admin powers. Please feel free to mess with this blong. Add widgets, if you like. There are some neat freaking widgets out there. There's a chat thing I added. Scroll down. As long as you're moving us in the right direction, no one will mind. When Fugu was all "I moved the thing up because I didn't know it was there," I was all "YESS!!" That's the spirit. Add links to the Links thing. Use labels in your posts. Tell stories.

Or, you know; don't. You are all my brothers. I will love you forever if you do exactly none of these things.

Vote Your Mouth in the Poll

Guys, there's like only 2 hours left to vote in the poll. I can't begin to tell you how important making your voice heard in the poll is. Because it's not.

Wendows

Guys i'm in wendows. I installd wendows on my computr, which is an mac. I dont like it here. I can see the dots that make up the wrds. why is it showing me all these things? I don't care what wendows has to say. it's like wendows is trying to take credit for all it's doing for me by showing me what a hard time it's having of it all. I feel bad for my computr, for the first time. it's hard to make text, apparently. Rilly rilly hard. yow.

one thing, though--when you're on internet, and internet is trying to install things on you, wendows is like; hey, I'll do that for you. here, I'm going to make an upgrade a program. Through a WEB PAGE. Whaddah ya think of that? That's kinda cool. I kinda feel like there might be some security issues, but at my age, who the fucking cares!! I'm 35!

Namaste, gents.

Star Wars Risk

All right, so we never got around to playing Middle Earth Risk, and I think Demon was involved in the Risk 2184 fiasco, where the whole energon cube thing nearly drove us insane. but here's something. Star Wars Risk looks promising. It's full of real places like Ord Mantel and Nar Shaddaa, and it's fully OT, focusing overmuch on the Death Star and undermuch on Gungans and Jango Fett.

I ran into Kelly S. at the zoo. We decided that we all should do something as nerdy as seeing Transformers opening night again, like; after we've put the kids to bed. This might qualify! I mean, until Starcraft 2 comes out.

Seems like this has a bunch of those confusing new shoehorned-in rules that are the hallmark of Parker Brothers' license-driven mods (the box includes a couple of eight-sided dice that you get to use when you've deployed Star Destroyers in the system), but hey, those can be fun; as long as we don't drink too much.

On the other hand, drinking too much and taking the wheel of the Death Star might be just the thing to chase the blues away!

My highest scrabble score ever!

479--Take that mom!

Uniqlock

Our friend Demon Curry (who has a standing invitation to join this blong as an author) sent me this. I could watch it all day. I think I will watch it all day.

Goodbye.

you know...

For the krillions of things Family guy doesn't do well, I thought this was sorta good:

Ow, ow, ow, ow

OW, dudes!

Earth 617

Dudes, there is a very terrifying blong in the slot right next to ours.

Pukele Stream Overruns its Banks

Okay, that may have been ill-advised. I keep forgetting that my "backyard" completely reconfigures itself every twenty-four hours, and that moon or no, it's raining hard and dark, dark, dark. When I got to the bottom (my backyard has a bottom) the lightning helped me not fall in the stream, so that was cool. Thanks, world.

Anyway, it was like I was on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, but I had fallen off the boat and climbed ashore, and the ride itself was broken, and leaking. It was also like there was another Pirates of the Caribbean ride on top of the one I was in, like on the second floor, and that one was also broken and leaking. And maybe it was raining, too. That's what it was like, guys.

All in all, this is pretty sweet. I find I love living in the 'Lolo.

Attention: Hung Won is Not Closing

There was this really old greasy little take-out-only dim sum place on the main commercial street in the neighborhood we live in called Kwong On. You could get these little pork hash dumplings there for 40 cents, U.S. and baked manapua and turnip cake with little shrimps in it and other dumplings with green and gray stuff in them, for some equally appallingly low price. You could get enough food to kill you for three dollars, basically. So they announced that they were closing, and for weeks there was a line out the door. That happens here, for some reason. I don't know why they were closing. Maybe they weren't charging enough. Maybe they were breaking the law by selling something for 40 cents. I mean, it has to be illegal to pass that kind of savings onto the customer!

So they closed.

Also, there is a full sit-down Chinese Restaurant on the same street, called Hung Won. I heard that they were closing also. This, I felt, was too bad, because more restaurants and fewer auto parts stores is always a good thing. Walking by Hung Won, I stepped inside and asked when they were closing.

The Chinese lady at the counter got real mad and threw her hands up in the air. "We're not closing!" she said, in a Chinese accent I will not attempt to transcribe here. "Everybody thinks we are closing! We are not closing!"

"Oh, good," I said. "More restaurants and fewer auto parts--"

"It is KWONG ON! They are the ones that are closing! They have closed already! KWONG ON!"

"I'll spread the word. I'm sure--

"HUNG WON!" she screamed. "KWONG ON! You see; they are different! Quite different! HUNG... WON! KWONG... ON!"

"I--"

"People do not LISTEN!" Howling, she tore her shirt off. She climbed up onto the counter, and slammed her head against the overhanging shelf. Put her foot in a tray of cake noodles, which was inside one of those short cardboard boxes they ship cans of soda in. "PEOPLE ARE DEAF!" Still stooping, she reached up and brought the entire shelf down, releasing a torrent of three or four phone books, followed by a swarm of dozens and dozens of beetles the size of Hot Wheels. They crawled over her bare chest and down her legs and dove into the food, chittering and squeaking with beetle delight. She screamed again, sounding like a cross between a playground whistle and a tugboat. The windows shattered, and three burning men flailed out of the kitchen and tripped over each other trying to get outside. They were screaming. I was screaming. Hot oil spilled out of the kitchen and across the floor. The men fell, igniting the oil.

Anyway, we're going tomorrow night, with my sister and her husband. You guys wanna go? They said it was good.

Wedge=aeronaught=furry

So Garrick Hagon? The guy who plays Wedge? He's the voice of Lee Scoresby in the Golden Compass audio series. I figured this is noteworthy.

Edit: yeah ok, I FAIL. It's friggin Biggs. How did I not recognize that mustache?!? 

And this: Ferucio, dude, just come out already. We're ok with it.

Edit: Ferucio is the guy in the bull outfit.