'Dead Rising 2' Trailer

I didn't even play the first 'Dead Rising' - sadly, I have a PS3 and not an XBox - but this game looks crazy. It doesn't have any actual gameplay, I don't think, but it does have a lot of what I do like: zombies doing zombie shit. So there's that.

Does That Race Bait Ever Catch Any Fish?

What we are seeing right now is a very sly move on the part of conservative pundits and talking heads - from the incomprehensible and increasingly opaque Mr. Limbaugh to the relatively insubstantial Glen Beck - in their criticisms of Sonia Sotomayor. They call her a "racist" and a "bigot". Limbaugh goes so far as to call her a "hack" and a "reverse racist". I will not say that members of Congress have leveled such a claim upon her, because they have allowed right-wing hatchet men to do that for them. Suddenly, the Republicans have become the spineless Democrats, since their only claims on Sotomayor so far is that her views are "troubling". This sort of nonexistent critique of a potential candidate is "troubling" to me and bad for the country. When all you have is a Party of No in the Republicans and a Party of Whatever in the Democrats, then it does not speak very well of our country's direction.

But I digress.

What makes the right-wing punditry's criticisms of Sotomayor so sly is that the intention is to draw out race-baiting from the side of the Dems to curry favor for the candidate. If the Dems come out in public and say, "Mrs. Sotomayor, who is a Hispanic woman, is being attacked because..." then the other side has the advantage. It turns into an issue of whether or not she is being hoisted up for the Supreme Court for her ethnicity rather than her policies, and that does not bode well for an administration promising change as its main slogan.

The Democrats have begun to take the bait, though probably not with as much vigor as the right would like, and it will be interesting to see just how far the argument about race will go.

What is troubling is that it is the same defense that Limbaugh did give in defending Alberto Gonzales when he was to be confirmed as Attorney General and what, I'm sure, Glen Beck would have said, were he able to say anything. Limbaugh carried Gonzales's ethnicity like a banner when defending him, and it worked, to a certain extent. Democratic members of Congress had to backpedal and insist that their criticisms, which, I admit, were valid, had to do with his policies and not his race, which only muddled the waters and allowed any true criticisms of Mr. Gonzales to be lost in the shuffle.

And the opposite is true. What people like Limbaugh have done is take the race card and play it successfully against those who have historically played it, getting the other side to take the bait and make the debate over matters revolve around race and not the issue. That is an inherent weakness of Democrats. They do not, by the way, take the high road; that is not my implication. They are simply too afraid of offending anyone to not be sucked into the race debate, and that is how they often lose these ostensible PR campaigns.

If the race card can be played to muddy the waters on a person's lack of credentials for an office, it can also be done to muddy the waters when a person is clearly qualified, as Mrs. Sotomayor seems to be. That is what members of the right have discovered, and, though the tactic doesn't always work - I imagine that Sonia Sotomayor will be selected for the Supreme Court - it is a tactic that can almost always be used in the absence of a political smoking gun.

Surrogates Trailer

I actually haven't heard much about this graphic novel/Bruce Willis vehicle, but the trailer doesn't look bad. Sort of like 'I, Robot' being intimate with 'Blade Runner' in a teen drama sort of way. Or maybe a middle-aged Nicholas Sparks kind of way. Yep, that makes more sense. Still, I think I like the trailer.

Inglorious Basterds - Exclusive Clip - Yahoo Movies

'Inglorious Basterds' has been on the minds of filmgoers - especially those obsessed with Quentin Tarantino's work - for years. The movie, thankfully, has finally come to fruition, and clips of it have slunk onto the internet in drips and drabs. I, personally, cannot wait for the movie to be released, and, while the clip below is nothing special, it is a morsel to tide you over until the movie gets released.

One Step Closer...maybe

A 47 million year old fossil discovered sometime in the 1980's has recently been brought of a private collection and put on display in NYC. The specimen, nicknamed 'Ida', is a lemur-like creature that could close the gap in the fossil record between ancient primates and their modern descendants. While most likely not in the direct line of human evolution, she's an important step nonetheless:

"The team concluded that she was not simply another lemur, but a new species. They have called her Darwinius masillae, to celebrate her place of origin and the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin.

Dr Jens Franzen, an expert on the Messel Pit and a member of the team, described Ida as "like the Eighth Wonder of the World", because of the extraordinary completeness of the skeleton.
It was information "palaeontologists can normally only dream of", he said.

In addition, Ida bears "a close resemblance to ourselves" he said, with nails instead of claws, a
grasping hand and an opposable thumb - like humans and some other primates. But he said some aspects of the teeth indicate she is not a direct ancestor - more of an "aunt" than a "grandmother".
"She belongs to the group from which higher primates and human beings developed but my impression is she is not on the direct line."

Others, such as Dr. Chris Beard of the Carnegie Natural History Museum, are less impressed:

"Dr Beard has not yet seen scientific details of the find but said that it would be very nice to have a beautiful new fossil from the Eocene and that Ida would be "a welcome new addition" to the world of early primates.

But he added: "I would be absolutely dumbfounded if it turns out to be a potential ancestor to humans."

Either way, there will be many research papers and even a special documentary concerning Ida in the upcoming months. Perhaps along the way, we can get one step closer to our own mysterious, shared past.

No Title

Please take fourteen seconds to watch this. That is all.

'Generation Dead' - Daniel Waters

Normally I don't comment on books until I'm done with them, but I'm bored and don't feel like writing 'fiction', so here goes. Furthermore, I'm only a measly seventy pages from finishing the book, so I feel justified in talking about [some of] it.

Generation Dead has a charming readability to it that I'll credit to Daniel Waters's prose style, which is fluid and somewhat witty, and it does tackle its main theme - social acceptance - quite deftly, so for that it gets a round of applause from me.

I cannot fault the preachiness it exudes, either, because it is YA fiction, and the entire medium has had a history of making everything so bloody melodramatic. I feel British today. The entire novel revolves around how silly people can be in not accepting others as 'human', even if those people are dead and not necessarily 'human'. Okay, let me clarify that thought. The entire conceit of the book seems, to me, to be that, if it seems sort of silly to discredit the undead solely based on whether they breathe or not, then isn't it silly to discredit others for other lifestyles? I can already hear how it would be taught in eighth grade classrooms everywhere.

If you took the words for undead - zombie, differently biotic, etc. - and changed the people from zombies to, let's say, gays, blacks, or middle easterners, then the message remains the same. Which, I guess, doesn't speak well of how the book is constructed. I can say, however, that there are some good zombie-ish moments in there, even if the book isn't drenched in gore and Romero mythology. Overall, it does present some very good points about humanity as a whole and what things actually divide us into our little cabals.

The problem is that it gets too muddled in what I'll call its 'Twilightishness'. SPOILER ALERT: [One of] The main characters falls halfway in love with a zombie, but their love/like situation isn't as transformational or transcendent as it is in Stephanie Meyer's books. It is marred by a type of discouraging real-ness not often found in these kinds of novels, and the main character, Phoebe, rides the fence through the latter third of the book, at a point when she should have either been totally in love or her passive prejudice should have shone through a little more clearly. Instead, we get a half-and-half working of Phoebe and Tommy Williams' relationship...and that's about as far as I've gotten.

Now, Generation Dead is more brain than brawn/lust, so approach with caution. There are a few "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" moments in there, so be prepared to see the soapbox come out and be prominent onstage. Other than that, it's a fairly quick, engaging read. And it has zomb, er, differently biotic people.

The Road Trailer

The official trailer for 'The Road' - based on Cormac McCarthy's bleak novel - has been released, and, while I think it's good, I also see that they're marketing it as a little more action-y than it probably will end up being. I don't remember too many big action moments in 'The Road' - or as many gunfights - but I guess I'm sure they were there.

Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat

Jon Stewart and Cliff May

My favorite quote in the entire interview might just be:

"I'm surprised to see us making arguments that we ourselves would never accept."

Or, maybe,

"Our ideals are only valid when we use them in difficult times." Wow.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 1
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

The Result is Irrelevant

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be either good or evil.
~Hannah Arendt

It seems to me to be a non-subject as to whether prosecuting CIA officials who called for the torture of any human being, no matter how despicable, is the right thing to do. When you cannot distinguish your methods from your enemies, then you yourself become indistinguishable from your enemy. And, while I am appalled at the conflation of CIA officials with Nazis defending themselves using the now-titled "Nuremberg Defense", I can certainly see no reason why "just following orders" is acceptable.

President Obama deserves harsh criticism on this point, I think. He cannot forgive and forget these indiscretions, especially since the proponents of torture attempted to - nearly successfully - cover them up. Releasing the memos without doing anything substantive about them is both politically and pragmatically dubious. Not only is it helping the fundamentalist recruitment effort - though to prosecute only on that basis would be morally shady - it is also inherently wrong, I think.

And, going a step farther, if it is, in fact, in violation of some international accord to not prosecute, then it is decidedly a stupid move on the part of our president to release the memos and then claim that all past offenses should be forgotten. Now, I am not so shallow as to believe that there is not some political edge to be had from making these documents public. Surely, political democrats wrung their hands at the idea of letting these hot little documents see the light of day. Of that, I am almost positive. It's just I am not so sure that it will not backfire in the long run, which is, in its own right, a very cynical point.

I Always Thought the Food Was a Little Salty...

This video may be pulled from the internets by the time you get to it, but trust me, the story is worth disseminating. You know how people always joke about fast food employees, how they "do things" to the food of unruly customers? Not true. They do it to ALL food.



Two obviously well-educated Domino's Pizza employees videotaped themselves tainting food while preparing it for delivery and then posted the video to YouTube. Of course, the defense is that this is an isolated incident. I'm sure this kind of thing doesn't happen anywhere else, since we have no proof.

Interesting Postscript to that:

I just read on Consumerist that some people watching the video identified the EXACT Domino's franchise by using contextual video evidence and then alerted the store's manager. The Exec of Communications, Tim McIntyre, was also extremely communicative with the whistle-blowing parties, and below is a copy of the e-mail that was sent by "Kristy Kristy" to explain the "practical joke":

I am sorry about all of this! It was all a prank and me nor Michael expected to have this much attention from the videos that were uploaded! No food was ever sent out to any customer. We would never put something like that on you tube if it were real!! It was fake and I wish that everyone knew that!!!! Michael never would do that to any customer, EVER!! I AM SOO SORRY! You see all the time of the pranks that people upload and the pranks need to seem real in order to get a laugh out of people but this prank was very very immature and I am sorry for the embarrasment that I have caused your company!

And, in addition, the two people featured in that fast food snuff film have been fired. Internet Justice, Unite!

GH: Metallica

Tonight I'm going to completely be a fanboy and partake in a little PS3 Guitar Hero: Metallica. Thankfully, the band won't really be watching me, because I'd do little more than embarrass myself on the Expert Difficulty. I'll get there, thought.

Prioritizing Your Life: Services

Recently, I contemplated adding HBO back to my list of cable channels. I used to be a proponent for having the biggest cable package on the planet - I'm a "movie buff", after all. I also had Netflix, to get those movies I couldn't watch on HBO, Showtime, and Starz. To complement that, I bought the movies I really liked, to show some kind of perverse allegiance to the movie.

That was also when I was in college and lived with several people who could share the cost of paying for all those wonderful movie channels. When I moved in with my fiancee, I convinced her to throw out the channels, on the grounds that we could rent the 'exclusive' TV shows on Netflix or buy them on DVD, if we were desperate.

What I've learned is that availability matters to most people. I thought I would absolutely die when my favorite drama, Dexter, came back this year. I made it out all right. During this last stretch of Big Love, LP and I went over to JOAJ's apartment to watch HBO, bringing along brownies or cookies to "pay" for what we were watching.

It's easy for convenience services to get out of hand. This post is pertinent to my life right now, as well, because I am contemplating getting rid of a video game rental service from Hollywood Video. I keep rationalizing it by saying that it's actually saving me money, because I'm no longer buying video games.

And, honestly, it has probably saved me money, as I did not buy the new Resident Evil - which was very tempting - or Bioshock - which I wanted very much. Those two games alone would have set me back $120 bucks, easily half of my total yearly cost of being enrolled in the Hollywood Video service.

So what I guess I'm advocating here is that you should weigh the cost, both actual and opportunity, of these services instead of blindly paying for them. They could easily eat into your paycheck without any benefit. For example, if you have Netflix, divide the monthly cost by how many movies you watch per month. If you pay $24/month and only watch four movies, you're paying six bucks a movie. Is that worth the cost to you? What if you go months without watching a movie?

Moreover, if you currently suscribe to monthly convenience services and don't want to get rid of them, start using them to decrease what I'll call the per cost. Like Netflix above, if you suscribe to it, start watching movies. In fact, if you spend more time at home with movies - if they are your passion - you'll probably save money on other things, like going out to movies or to restaurants. It's all in your perspective.

Ferry Boat

I've just begun researching ferry boats for a short story I'm working on, and found this picture. I liked it, so I decided to post it.

Video Game OCD

I just found a hilarious list of the Top 9 OCD Behaviors in video games, and, even though I'm not susceptible to all of them, there are a few that I'm definitely guilty of. My favorite? Timing the jump in Super Mario Bros. 3 to catch the wand mid-jump.

G.I. JOE's Bataan Death March To Release

I have become increasingly skeptical of the possibility that the new G.I. Joe Movie will be any good. Good, of course, in that way that any movie based on a cartoon based on a toy line could possibly be. I may be wrong. I just may be wrong, and, if I am, I will have to eat a little crow - or a little Falcon?!? - the weekend of release.

But let me present exhibit A: An interview with "Duke". Or, rather, commentary on an interview with the movie's Duke, Channing Tatum. In the following BQ, Mr. Step-Up discusses at length the mood on the set of filming the movie:

"It's weird, and you laugh at it. It's the only way to really do it. I don't know anyone that wasn't laughing on the set all the time on G.I. Joe. Especially, Marlon Wayans is my partner in the movie, and we laughed through the entire thing. I'm sitting there looking at a green screen like, "RIPCOOOORD! NOOOO!" Stuff like that, and you're just like, "What am I doing?" Or you're like, "You get the rockets, I'll get the nanomites. Wait a minute, what are nanomites?" I don't know what's going on, but you're just having fun with it. You just pray. Pray, pray, pray that they get a good take in all the slew of things, because you don't know what anything looks like. You can only trust your director, and that's it."

Obviously, the quote has been taken (sort of) out of context, and the cast should definitely have fun on the set of the movie. Having a good atmosphere on the set means blah, blah, blah. I am fully aware that this is not a Charlie Kaufman flick. But, still, guys, you understand my fears, right?

Plot Synopsis for S. King's 'Under the Dome'

The official plot synopsis for Stephen King's upcoming release, Under the Dome, can be found on his web site.

From what I've heard, it's going to be a long novel and that the original conception of the story dates back as far as - I think - the Seventies.

Prioritize Your Life: Cleaning

I'm not going to pretend that I can solve all of your problems with a single, short blog posts. Believe me, I'm no saint of cleaning myself (ask my fiancee).

But I do have a system, and - when I follow it - my system works very well. My system, obviously, is not a panacea. I have certain cleaning tastes that fit my personality, and working within a certain set of standards helps me to achieve.

The best advice I can give you is: figure out what kind of cleaning personality you have, and then work it out from there. It will help you develop shortcuts to take all the work out of cleaning. For example, I am pretty lazy when it comes to mail, so right by the door I have a container where I can put all of my mail to go through once a week (or so). If I didn't have it, then there would be letters everywhere and I wouldn't be able to find anything.

I recently read a blog post over at Unclutterer, where they recommend cleaning for no more than fifteen minutes a day. They say that, cleaning for fifteen minutes a day, focusing on a different task every day, will save you from having to do a major overhaul each weekend.

I don't always use that system, because I clean in cycles. I'll get really adamant about cleaning for a week, and then have a bad week. Which is okay, because I realize that. So what I end up doing is setting up systems so that everything doesn't go crazy when I don't clean every day. I have a "landing pad" for all my stuff when I get home, so that my shoes and bookbag don't get strewn everywhere. Also, I try not to wash clothes and dishes on the same day, and I do one the very best that I can, so that one task doesn't get neglected.

Unclutterer always has useful information on how to clean efficiently, even for those who don't know your cleaning 'type'.

The Kite Runner & Afghanistan

Sometimes I feel like I use my "five paragraph essay" voice when I talk about quote-endquote important issues, so forgive me.

Anyway, I'm about ninety percent done with Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner and have an overarching feeling of dismay about the whole thing. Don't get me wrong, it's a wonderful novel, and I have thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

But the line between fiction that so often gives me comfort in and escape from the REAL WORLD has been shattered by this book, which details the life of a child who grows up in Afghanistan in the Seventies, moves to America, and then returns [for an important plot thread] after the country has been taken over by the Taliban.

So, anyway, that's the novel in a nutshell, and since I have painted the story with such a broad brush, please don't disregard the book based on such a silly little paragraph. There is too much to be explored plot-wise in the story, but the literal, surface meaning is not what I mean to talk about. The political undercurrent is, and it is that which interests me. It is so alive with the modern state of the country and pessimism about its future that I couldn't help but be fundamentally shaken by its implications.

When war is waged on a country, it is difficult for people to understand the daily struggles of those people and whether or not the beliefs of the everyman align with those who have (ostensibly) caused the war. In Afghanistan, the fundamental - again, no pun intended - question is: do most people in the country align themselves with the Taliban?

The answer, I would say, is a resounding NO. I can't extrapolate all of Afghanistan out by the comments of one book, of course, but I do think it is important to note that perspective can be derived from sympathetic texts. And, while I criticized escalation of forces in Iraq, I have to say that I agree with Mr. Obama in sending more troops to Afghanistan to help the country get under control.

Khaled Hosseini himself has something to say about the presence of the US:

But this much we do know: Without a genuine and sustained, long-term commitment on the part of the U.S. and its allies, Afghanistan is doomed. Though Afghans are an independent people and take pride in their sovereignty, polls have repeatedly shown that, despite growing skepticism and disillusionment, the majority of Afghans still view the foreign presence in their country favorably. They know that a weakened western resolve will mean that positive gains that have been made so painstakingly will vanish swiftly and the country will slide back.

So, if I haven't depressed you too much, I encourage you to give The Kite Runner a chance. It's a damn fine book, and one that may help you get something that almost never hurts: a perspective other than your own.

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies: Update

I just read on BoingBoing that you can read the first three chapters of P&P&Z online for free.

Burn, Zombie, Burn! Review [Not My Own!]

Now, I'm not intentionally looking for zombie content to bombard you with - well, okay, maybe a little I am - but it just seems to be popping up everywhere I look. Which, I guess, if video game sites are where I'm looking, then that's to be expected. Zombies have almost always been present in video games - Ghouls N Ghosts, Zombies At My Neighbors, Resident Evil - and on gaming sites, and so it should be natural to expect them now to pop up on the downloadable content areas of the newest consoles.

I saw the review for a simple little game called Burn, Zombie, Burn, which is about as sophisticated as last year's game, oh, what was it called? The one that's just like this one on the Playstation Network. Oh well, it's sort of like a dollar-store version of Dead Rising. There. That does it. Click here to read the Escapist Magazine Review.

Shameless Self-Promotion

Occasionally, I do some guest blogging on a couple of other sites. Today I posted a blog about the show Friday Night Lights on a sports blog called From the Sidelines. Go check it out.

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies

Zombies are one of the things Yahtzee over at Zero Punctuation says nerds should shut the fuck up about, and yet, here we, are in the Age of Aquarius of the Undead. Zombies are as least as popular now as whale tails were a couple of years ago.

Zombies are getting their moment in the ashen, nuclear-winter, apocalyptic sun, and not a moment too soon. Beyond popular video game series - which are still, sadly, considered the realm of the nerd - and movies, now there are books. Yes, books. It didn't quite start with Max Brooks's Zombie Survival Guide, but that book provided the final bridge to coolness and acceptability in the written realm.

Ditto on the not a moment too soon stuff, either. There was only so much Romero fanfic to go around.

Well, now, the latest in the series is the reworking of the late-Romantic period Jane Austen novel into a book replete with the undead. If there has ever been a more awkward mash-up - other than Bruce Willis and Puff Daddy at that awards event a couple of years back - then I haven't seen it. I can't wait for this homage, not-homage to come out on April 9, and you should be stoked too. According to Bam Kapow!, the book was even featured on NPR. Wow.

Zero Punctuation

I may be coming to this party a little late - indeed, some people are probably already standing at the door with their coats and hats - but for the distinct possibility that you haven't experienced "Zero Punctuation" I have to blog about it.

"Zero Punctuation" is basically a series of video-based video game reviews helmed by a snarky British/Australian gamer with a rapier's wit and a penchant for talking really, really fast, whose pseudonym is Yahtzee. Seriously.

In a meta-video-slash-announcement that he was jumping ship to do reviews over at The Escapist Magazine, Yahtzee described releasing videos on YouTube, and I'm paraphrasing, as living on a deserted island and throwing bottled messages into a sea composed entirely of bottled messages. Sort of the like the Police song.

I think the analogy is brilliant, and that should give you an idea of what you should expect if you wander over to YouTube or The Escapist to check out the reviews.

Or, if you prefer, you can watch the review of The Orange Box below.