Are You Frigeen Kidding Me!

Why the hell would anyone want an Xbox signed by Sarah Palin, especially when it costs $1.1 million? Check it out here.

The actual Xbox 360 with Palin's John Hancock on it

I personally don’t want anything signed by that idiot, but I could imagine some hipsters trying to be all ironic owning this. However hipsters don’t typically have 1.1 million dollars ( I mean come on, they need to spend that money on skinny jeans and crappy music… oh burn). I took a look at the auction and surprise, surprise there are no bids. On top of that the person that posted the auction, dmorrill32, has a feedback score of 0 and the requested method of payment is “money bookers” not Paypal. On top of that but only “pre-approved buyers” can bid, and they need to email the poster to qualify. Is the dude trying to compile a list of morons with a lot of money? When I think about this I feel a bit like Lewis Black “If it weren’t for my horse”

The auction contains a quote from the poster; take a look at it below:
“I live in Alberta Canada and I have always wanted to drive the Alaskan highway from my home near Edmonton Alberta, all the way to Alaska. This trip is about a 7000km / 4300mi round trip. I figured that since I was going up there anyway, I should try to see the most famous person from that state, so I timed my trip with the governor’s picnic in Wasilla. When the governors picnic took place there were hordes of people trying to see her, but I pushed my way through the crowd to the front of the line. When I was in front of Sarah Palin, I told her that I had traveled three days to see her and asked her to sign my Xbox360. She said it was the most extravagant thing she had ever been asked to sign. I shook her hand, removed myself from the crowd, and then I packed up my Xbox360 and headed home. It was one of the greatest thrills of my life to have watched Sarah Palin on CNN, SNL, Youtube, and then to see her right in front of me.”

Here's this moron getting his Xbox 360 signed by the worst governor ever.

Firstly I question the sanity of this dmorrill32, meeting the Governor of Massachusetts would be cool, but I would not drive many hours to do it, nor would I “push my way to the front of the line” mostly cause I would probably get tackled or shot or something, and because just don’t care enough to do it, I would wait in the line. An additional knock to this dude's sanity is that he posted this now. Not during the election, or when the Palin lovers were out in full support. Had he posted this during the 2008 election he would have stood a chance, although a small one that some rich repub would want to own this piece of memorabilia. But now!? I think the GOP just wants Sarah to disappear into the background (I know I do) and so they can forget about her and the damage she did to their presidential candidate. Also I think I read somewhere that we are in a recession and people are trying not to spend money on stupid stuff.

Next is the fact that Xbox’s have over a 50% failure rate, what depth of shame would you reach if your million dollar Xbox with Palin scrawl on there was to fail. I guess if you spent $1.1 million on an Xbox you probably would not play it, but if you were dumb enough to buy this, you are also dumb enough to use that Xbox.


Lastly I would like to reiterate the following quote “It was one of the greatest thrills of my life to have watched Sarah Palin on CNN, SNL, Youtube, and then to see her right in front of me”, had this dude been selling the Xbox for twice or even three times the market price for the same Xbox I would almost believe that quote, but he obviously got the Xbox signed to sell it on eBay. So only the idea of the money he was going to maybe make was what was giving him the “greatest thrills of my life”

Ok I need to calm down before my head explodes. Hopefully either eBay will see this and take it down, so those “pre-approved buyers” don’t get hosed, or at the very least I hope no one bids on it. I would just like to in conclusion call this guy a Giant Jack Ass.
Thank you

No Tweets for Me

This should be a quick post. Yesterday for anyone that follows me on Twitter, I tweeted that it was a slow Twitter day. Basically, I was checking my Tweetdeck and I was not seeing any new posts. I thought this was strange, as I follow a fair amount of very tweety people (“tweety” is like chatty but on Twitter and yes I made this up). I was able to see my posts, but all the posts in my columns were old. At first I thought this was because no one was saying much of anything, but later, I learned that something was clogging up the tubes over at Twitter and posts by people you follow were not ending up in the feed. However this was not happening to everyone, just some users. Twitter agreed that something was wrong and they were looking into it.

Twitter is known for its outages and fail whales, so this is not really anything big, more just par for the course for the popular social networking site. However I was one of the users who experienced the strange phenomenon so I wanted to at least write an entry about it. If you (the one person that reads this blog) experienced this too leave a comment and we commiserate together.

It’s like Teddy Ruxpin… if he were built by Cyberdyne Systems

The Teddy Bear. Childhood friend. Named after a president. Sent from the future to protect you.

Well not quite. This is the Army’s prototype Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot or BEAR (very clever) that is designed to haul wounded soldiers off the battlefield without putting other soldiers in danger.

Built by Vecna Technologies out of Cambridge, MA, BEAR can haul 500 lbs, either stand 6 feet tall or “kneel” to only a few feet. BEAR can act as a recon robot, can lift more than wounded soldiers and got placed as number 11 on Newsweek’s 15 best examples of Weapon Porn. Check out this demo video by Vecna.

I’m all for ANYTHING that saves a US soldier’s life but this thing has a goddamned teddy bear head on it. Apparently the Vecna company is run and staffed entirely by 15-year old Japanese girls. They say the reason is to reassure victims as they are rescued but I’d like to see the research that backs that up.

Now, I’ve never been shot or hit by shrapnel or stabbed in a battlefield (one time I got a splinter on a soccer field but that may be different) but I’m pretty sure that’s not going to make me feel better. I imagine a reassuring sight is more like the medical chopper swooping in, the 40 ton tank rolling up to shield me from fire or Dr. Manhattan in his black Speedo.

By the logic they’re putting out there, then medics should wear teddy bear shaped helmets. BEAR with me here for a second (rimshot), I think they should have put a freaking Terminator’s head on that thing! I don’t care who we’re fighting in the future, Islamic extremists, the Chinese, Canadians… they'’ll all be terrified as a swarm of Terminator-headed rescue robots sweep in to survey the area or pluck fallen soldiers from the area.

Seriously though, kudos to Vecna for looking out for our boys in tan. Since you’re local, feel free to send us a BEAR for mature, responsible testing that in no way involves flipping my boss’ car on its side in the parking lot.

Too Little, Too Late Verizon

I was, until recently, a Verizon Wireless customer. Despite the facts that Verizon definitely has the best service coverage nationally, and is ranked the number 1 wireless provider, I switched to AT&T, and I bet you can guess why. If you guessed iPhone, you would be correct. I don’t live in New York and I don’t live in the Bay Area, I live in Boston and in Boston, AT&T works fine (if I start to have problems I will definitely write something about it). Coverage is great and all, but a phone is so much more than just a device for conveying voices from one handset to another. Rather, what the phone can do is important. A case could definitely be made that things like the iPhone are not really even phone, but that’s a different topic.

I see today that Verizon is going to start carrying Android phones, and you know what I say to this? Too Little, Too Late. Phones need an ecosystem in order to succeed. They need functionality that is both built into the phone itself and extensionality that is built in through applications. I love Google, and when Android came out I was all for it. I could see a place where Android would be the OS of choice since it was so easy to develop for and that development was supported by Android. But this never really came to pass. Android exists, and there are some things developed for it, but it still does not come close to the ecosystem for the iPhone; despite the fact that Apples is way more closed and oppressive than Google in this regard, I mean just look at Google Voice.

Recently some Android developers came under fire for creating ROMS for the Android phones. The lawyer end of Google told them to stop because they were including proprietary Google code in their ROMs. They included Google’s mobile apps and Google’s lawyers gave the developers a cease and desist for including them, since the mobile apps themselves are not open source.
Now Google is a company and thus they have lawyers. These lawyers do what all lawyers do, they try to enforce rules to protect their companies interests while at the same time Google’s developers, the people that want to make software and the internet more open, support and are part of the developer communities. So there is a little of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing between the Google developers and the Google lawyers. The developer community, which is small compared to the iPhone community, seems to be mainly geeky techie people (this is not a bad thing). It seems to me that the Android phones are more of a toy for the tech savvy, the people that like to dismantle their gadgets and write new and better code for their toys. This brings me to my main point.

Verizon is jumping on the bandwagon but they are doing it wrong. Verizon, for the longest time, has never had any good phones; they had and have great service (just watch their new ad below), but on that service, the consumers are given little choice.

Now Verizon is going to have Android phones, and while these phones are “cooler” than the phones they usually have, they will not be enough and the reason is that none of these phones have an ecosystem that really jumps out to the consumer. Verizon says they will support Google Voice, no details on how or to what extent yet, and that is a selling point. However, eventually Apple will allow it too (I suspect), mooting that selling point. I don’t think that the Android phones will really cause people to switch to Verizon, but it will do more to stop people that are already Verizon customers from making the jump to another provider. But will it be enough?

Probably not, but it could be if Verizon gets in there and helps to create an ecosystem the Android phones can exist in. A place where the phones are not just a sophisticated piece of technology, but a great gadget with loads of extensionality, and fun. But as we have seen in the past Verizon does not really care about the consumer, so at the end of the day Verizon is totally half assing this. They are getting coolish phones, but not going full on to the coolest phones, the phones that could not only be a boon to their advertising, but then they would have awesome phones and awesome service, launching them way, way out in front of any of their competitors. But, as I said, Verizon does not really care about the customer, yeah there is a map for that, but it would be so much better if there was a map and an app for that too.

Warhammer, more like Lamehammer

Ok, let me nerd out here for a minute, I would suggest getting a trash bag to keep yourself clean of Cheetos dust (everyone knows that the side affect of nerding out is Cheetos dust). It was recently made public that there is going to be a Warhammer 40k movie. I love Warhammer 40,000, but not in the way you probably think. I love the books, Dan Abnett specifically. I have never played the miniatures game, Warhammer or Warhammer 40k, or the MMO (I will get into the MMO in a minute) but Dan Abnett writes some kick ass science fiction. I personally think it is some of the best scifi being written today. There are a lot of fan boys out there that don’t really like Abnett because he tends to take the Warhammer IP and make it his own, but he does this in a fantastic way. I know that part of the appeal of playing RPGs (the non video game versions) is that you get to inject your own fantasy into the world, and sometimes things like books and movies tend to canonize things that might not jibe with your fantasy. But you know what? Fan boys are fan boys and they sometimes need to deal. This is one of those times.

The Warhammer 40k IP is a really rich and so much could be pulled out of it that is good, so long as it is done in the correct way, and this movie and the things that have come out in the past have never lived up to the potential they could have, at least not in my option.

In cases you are unfamiliar with what Warhammer is I will give you a quick rundown. There are two basic types of Warhammer. There is regular Warhammer, which takes place in a middle ages type world with elves and orcs and humans and they are all fighting each other (sound familiar?). It’s basically high fantasy. Then there is Warhammer 40,000. Warhammer40k basically takes the things from the high fantasy version of Warhammer and launches them all into space. There is a huge mythology worked into both versions, though personally I like the one from 40k better which, in a nut shell, is that humans are roaming around the galaxy fighting a massive war against the forces of Chaos (Chaos is the primary evil in the Warhammer world). Some of the Chaos are traitors from the Humans that chose to ally themselves with the “dark powers”. It gets a lot more complex than that, and there is even a notion that the Humans are actually in the wrong and Chaos is in the right, it’s all a matter of perspective. If you want to learn more about it check out the 40k wiki.

In 2008 Games Workshop (GW) released “Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning”, which is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) where you play a character in the high fantasy version of Warhammer. I have personally never played it, however I have heard it’s a pretty fun game, and it does some things better than existing MMO’s. The big problem is that it took place in the high fantasy Warhammer, which is basically the same setting at World of Warcraft, and WoW was already a massive success. WoW has put other MMO’s out of business, so to release something that is basically the same is a huge mistake.

On top of that the fantasy setting has been done to death (Did anyone even play Conan?). Had GW actually wanted to have a successful MMO without having to even really deal with WoW all they needed to do was set it in the 40k universe, which would make it scifi, and a scifi MMO is something players have been wanting for years (Yes I know there is EVE, but EVE is EVE and not part of this discussion). There is a lot of basic overlap between the fantasy setting for WR and the scifi setting so I don’t think it would have been that big of a deal to make the scifi one. If I had to guess, I would bet that GW was too scared to try something that was new and wanted to stay in the safe realm of MMO settings that had been done already, neglecting the fact that if they hads set the Warhammer MMO in space, they could have created something to actually compete with WoW rather than just something for bored WoW 80s to try out for a couple weeks and then go back over to WoW when they get sick of playing yet another fantasy MMO.

Dan Abnett, who has written comics for both DC and Marvel, as well several originals and, in my opinion, is the best author in the Black Library, which is the book publishing arm of Game Workshop. His books that take place in the 40k universe are awesome. They are well written, no fan fiction crap, with good characters, awesome action and really interesting plots (you can find them in hardcover). If you have not read any of his books I would highly recommend the “Ravenor: Omnibus”. It’s a killer scifi read. The Gaunt’s Ghosts books are awesome too. There are other authors in the Black Library, but the all pale in comparison to Abnett.

Now here is my big gripe with the movie; it’s not going to be based on a work by Abnett, so the best we can hope for is that the CGI will be cool and watching Orc and Space Marines kick the crap out of each other will be entertaining. The movie will go straight to DVD which says to me that only a very small amount of people will ever see it. Currently, I imagine it will end up on my Netflix queue. This is a damn shame. If the movie was going to be adapted from an Abnett novel with Abnett doing the adaptation you could have a blockbuster! The movie could be billed as an action scifi and depending on the choice of work, horror. The scifi movie genre has been pretty stale and lacking anything new and Warhammer 40k has everything required to create an awesome movie that would appeal to current fans of 40k and the main stream public. A few years ago I would have hesitated to say that. However, since both DC and Marvel have turned their works into movies, some of which have been good, and the general public sees those; you could definitely get people into see a 40k movie especially if it was well written, and based on a solid story.

Of course the actual movie that is in the works is not going to be nearly as cool as it could be. Rather, the movie is going to just be Space Marines versus Orcs. This basically means that no one will see this movie and, once again, Warhammer’s potential is being squandered.
This is totally my opinion, maybe the movie will be cool, and maybe there are loads of problems with having an Abnett’s based movie or a 40k MMO, but I am going to issue a challenge to Games Workshop to “do something new, unique and challenging with your 40k IP.” And please try to do it before Star Craft II comes out! Now, I would suggest you go take a shower and wash all the Cheetos dust off.

Rule 4: Double Tap

That’s actually good advice no matter who you’re shooting at. If John McClane had double tapped Karl in Die Hard, he wouldn’t have come back at the end and pointed that gun at Holly. But I digress.

Zombieland is actually Number 1 at the box office with $25,000,000 this weekend and it deserves it. I checked the flick out Friday night and it was an all around fun time.

Jesse Eisenberg plays “Columbus” – who I guess you could call the hero of our tale. Columbus isn’t his real name, though. We never learn his real name because when he runs into Woody Harrelson’s character “Tallahassee” they insist on using only their destinations to identify themselves instead of names. Columbus is one of the only survivors of a worldwide human transmittable mad cow disease epidemic that turns people into zombies. Columbus meets Tallahassee on an abandoned highway and they decided to go it together if only for a little while. The two make an unlikely pair, but actually kick a little zombie ass together.

Columbus is on his way his parents home in Ohio to see if they survived although he admits he has never been that close to them. He learned of the outbreak early on when his hot, female next door neighbor turns and attacks him. So he forms a set of rules for himself and hits the road with a wheeled suitcase and a double barreled shotgun. He has 32 rules but we only learn a handful of them on screen.

Rule 1: Cardio – The undead in this flick can run, so you need to be able too as well. The first people taken out were the fatties and this has made me hit the treadmill at the gym even harder.

Rule 2: Beware of Bathrooms – When else are you at your most vulnerable?

Rule 3: Seatbelts – Can save your life in a normal world but in Zombieland getting tossed through a windshield may not kill you but it makes you helpless for when they feeding frenzy comes.

Rule 4: Double Tap- Don’t be stingy with your ammo. After you knock a zombie down with the first shot, put one more in their head to be sure.

Rule 17: Don’t be a Hero – Unless the only girl your age left alive in Zombieland is in danger… Then be the biggest fucking hero you can be!!

Rule 31: Check the Backseat – Columbus writes this rule the first time we meet him on screen.

Rule 32: Enjoy the Little Things – Tallahassee teaches this to him when he takes out his frustration on an abandoned SUV with a crowbar.

Columbus’ traveling partner is Tallahassee - a man who may not like Zombieland, but he’s going to kick a little ass and take a few names as long as he’s in it. Oh and he’s looking for the last Twinkie in the world. He says it will remind him of an easier, simpler time.

Woody Harrelson really sells the character to you. After all, he assaulted a photographer at an airport claiming he was still in character and thought the photog was a zombie. There’s even a moment when Tallahassee’s hatred of the zombies is explained and while it could have come off a little cheesy, you buy it. I also identify with Tallahassee when he says "My mother always told me, one day, I'd be good at something. I bet she never thought that thing would be zombie killing."

Along the way the two pick up Wichita (played by Emma Stone) and Little Rock (played by Abigail Breslin) two sisters who have heard that the “Pacific Playland” amusement park is zombie free. Actually "pick up" is too nice a term – "get fucked over by" is more like it.

Why is this flick so good? Because they clearly spent a few million dollars on a B movie and didn’t care. It’s junk food for your brain – good in small doses so the 88 minute runs time is perfect. There’s just enough character development to keep it from being totally devoid of heart but the focus is obviously the zombie kills. Just check out the trailer below for the Zombie Kill of the Week. Also, there is an A list celebrity cameo that will have you laughing so hard at certain points that it will be hard to breathe.