Being able to read my RSS feed subscriptions on my phone is an amazingly geeky experience. It's one of the aspects of the iPhone that make you just sit back and revel in the glow of the future. But as much as I love Google's various services and Apple's glorious Jesus Phone, I can't help but feel frustrated with not being able to perform really basic tasks. Beyond not being able to copy and paste text, Google Reader acts a bit funky on this mobile device. While it's been fantastic to be able to read my RSS items during my commute (making me less enticed to get that unread count down while I'm at work) I'm a multitasker and the iPhone doesn't seem to like that.
For example, clicking a link in Google Reader on the iPhone opens said link in a new page, which you can scroll over to. Handy, right? Well what if the link is in the middle of an article you'd like to eventually go back to and finish reading? When you close the page you just opened and go back to Reader, sometimes it automatically refreshes the page, marking the item as read and making it disappear. This also seems to happen whenever I want to bump out to the home screen to turn on some music, or to answer a text message. Every time I go back to Reader there's a chance it will reload the page.
In addition, this morning I was having issues with Reader bumping me back to home while I'm in the middle of reading an article. I didn't even touch anything! Real frustrating. Good thing I'm Apple's bitch and will keep using the thing anyway. Curse you and your addictive devices, Jobs!
Anyone else having issues with Reader on the iPhone?
Here's a custom Munny I made to look like Mog from Final Fantasy 6. He is the best moogle. Made with Sculpey and acrylics. I'm trying to think of other cool video game related Munny customs to create, any suggestions?
Yeah, I'm one of those early adopter assholes who stood in line to get an iPhone this weekend, but at least I waited until Saturday morning! That's eons in early-adopter land. The iPhone 3g was practically passé at that point. While I am not so keen on adding to the messy pile of iPhone articles the blog-o-net has turned into over the course of the weekend, I figured you guys might be interested in what applications I am running on the device, as the applications are really what make this smart phone shine. Most of these are free, too!
Twitteriffic: I'm a fan of Iconfactory's full-fledged version of Twitteriffic, and the mobile version is fairly similar. There's a free (ad-supported) and a paid (ad-free) version, the free version being the one I'm sporting. I like the interface but I really wish these things ran in the background. I'd love to get tweets growl-style while surfing Safari. Oh, and by the way my twitter name is "chrisfurniss". Obvious enough for you?
Save Benjis: Nifty little app for you to take along on shopping trips to do some price comparison. I imagine you could even use it to haggle with shopkeepers or do some price matching if you're clever. Enter the name of any product and it shows you a pricing rundown Froogle-style.
Yelp: I'm an avid Yelp-er and having an app that detects your location and brings up reviews of nearby restaurants and businesses is almost exactly like being in the future. My only complaints are that you can't submit a review from the app, and you can't click on a reviewer's name and see all their reviews. This is more for the location-specific features.
Paypal: Splitting the restaurant bill? Why not just send your half via Paypal and have your friend foot it on their card? Simple and straightforward app, though I am concerned about security. If someone steals my iPhone, couldn't they transfer a bunch of money from my Paypal account to their own?
Exposure: A good, workable (not to mention free) Flickr solution. View your photos and friends photos and such. I wish you could save photos viewed as wallpapers. Again, as with the Yelp app, Exposure has a location feature where it will show you images that have been geotagged near your GPS location. It won't, however, show you user profiles or anything helpful.
Enigmo: Classic "The Incredible Machine" style gameplay from Pangaea Software, and the only app so far I've spent money on. Great fun and the graphics are surprisingly decent. Satisfying sound effects, too.
T4Two Free: Really simple little Pong-style game with multi-touch. Jinny and I were playing this at the park by each holding an end of the phone and controlling a paddle with our thumbs. You can also tip the phone to influence the way the ball rolls. Real stripped-down but loads of potential here.
Midomi: Sing, hum or play a song directly into the speaker and Midomi claims to be able to detect what song it is. I have yet to have it work correctly. Maybe I don't *really* know how to sing Dani California after all.
Pandora Radio: Holy crap, this app is so good. Utilizes Pandora's online offerings and syncs any playlists you already have with the service onto your iPhone. Type in an artist or song title and it automatically generates a radio station based on your listening tastes. Sound quality is great, and you can bookmark songs or order them from iTunes directly from your phone. Handy!
Remote: The best app of the bunch. I can control iTunes on my Mac at home from anywhere in the house. I can also use Remote as I am walking home to queue up some tunes for when I walk through the door.
With all this device integration, I'm getting that great "Holy crap I am in the future" feeling from my iPhone whenever I use it. Personally, I love the little thing. It may not be as responsive as I'd like, and the apps not being able to run in the background is a pain in the ass but it is definitely a large step forward. I'll download a few more games and let you guys know how they are and be sure to listen to the podcast to hear about new apps we've tried, what we like and what we definitely didn't like.
Are there any you guys are using that you'd recommend?
So, you're an indie hipster who shops madly at Threadless? Can't be seen without your Urban Outfitters messenger bag? Do you buy the latest iPod not because you have a huge mp3 collection but because you want people to THINK you have a huge mp3 collection? And do you like Pokemon?
Nintendo has you covered, man.
Aging Pokemaniacs rejoice, there is now a way to proclaim your love of the sport AND be subtle enough that you don't come off as a child molestor. The latest Pokemon franchisee is Pokemon 151, a line of t-shirts that take your favorite teeny-tiny little killing machines and amps them up with haute designs that would put Threadless to shame. While at present only four designs are available, and the site seems to imply that these shirts are only available in Japan, the promise is that eventually the complete 151 initial Pokemon will, indeed, be made available. At present, Hot Topic is stocking retro-90s Pokemon gear, but it would be FANTASTIC if they picked these up and brought the love of Pokemon to the adults among us (myself included) utterly shameless enough to proudly and boldly admit to it.
I live in a tenement. Sure, it's called "comfortable urban living at sustainable lease rates," but it is, in fact, a tenement. During the day it sounds like a cross between an octogenarian Jewish guy's memoirs of Brooklyn, circa 1937, with screaming kids with names like "Sparky" and "Squeezit" playing stickball while their mothers chat away folding laundry outdoors and their fathers trudge off to work in the coal mines or for some guy named "Lucky", and, by night, a Tijuana Red Light District, with more arrests for drugs and prostitution per evening than the Netherlands has a year.
But hey, there's rent control.
My upstairs neighbors recently moved away, and they've been replaced by a new gaggle of titwits who can only be described as the worst, most obnoxious sort of gamers. Now, mind you, I write here for God's sake. I write tabletop supplements. I am comfortable with gamers, even bad ones. Like paraplegics, pedarasts and puppeteers, they're my people. I enjoy watching their strange habits and they generally keep their distance, except for Chris, who has become so clingy in his senility that I've had to expressly forbid him from standing less than two feet of me. He's taken to poking me with a bamboo rod, but I'm willing to compromise. He's a good kid.
Still, my upstairs neighbors cross the fucking line. They went and got Wii Fit. These kids weigh a good 500 lbs between the two of them, and even walking down the hall to take a piss is like the the scene in Jurassic Park with the waterglass and the tyrannosaurus. I'm a fan of loud music, so I, too, can adapt. I'm very good at adaptation.
Now, of course, Centaur #1 and Centaur #2 have decided to get in shape, and using Wii Fit is their ticket to ride. At least, I think it's a Wii Fit. A complete alternate theory exists in my head, and that is it's actually a BDSM dungeon. I hear a lot of pounding and rhythmic thumping, with grunts, moans and plenty of swear words, and that's a complete possibility. All I know is that I can't sleep.
And, like the Incredible Hulk, you wouldn't like me when I can't sleep.
The Weekly Geek is less a blog and more a podcast, this much is true. I completely admit that my little rants here and there on this site are the equivalent of the Tom Jones that's playing over the speakers at the grocery store. You're not there to listen to Tom Jones, you're there to buy rutabagas. Why are you buying rutabagas? I don't know. What's a rutabaga, anyway? I don't know. I don't know a damn thing about rutabagas. It's just a fun word to type.
Rutabaga, rutabaga, rutabaga.
So, ultimately, as far as the Weekly Geek's blog goes, it's here for your convenience while you wait for the podcast to download. A crunchy, sesame flecked breadstick before the Baloney Alfredo that is Mack and Caspian. Would madame prefer some FRESHLY CRACKED PEPPER? Would sir enjoy FRESHLY GRATED PARMESAN? Would Her Majesty gasp wistfully at some FRESHLY BUTTERED HAGFISH CUBES?
While the Weekly Geek's Blog is just a side dish, there are, believe it or not, blogs that exist solely for the pleasure of blogging alone. Self-induced bloggery is a disease and a scourge upon the urban landscape, somewhere between prostitution and those embroidered jeans with pseudo-Victorian motifs on them. Blogs like Perez Hilton and Ain't It Cool News are essentially shill-magnification zones, the rebirth of the Payola Scandals of the 1950s.
If you aren't aware of the Payola Scandals, they worked a bit like this: Record Company A would come to Radio Show Host B, and offer Radio Show Host B several hundred dollars to play one of Record Company A's records over and over again until the public had no choice but to accept it as a required purchase on their next record buying trip. This was, of course, the days before iPods and mp3s, so if a record was being pushed heavily by the record company, your Montgomery Wards or J.C. Penney's or Wilburson-Cockshit-on-Cam's would stock it by dearth of knowing that it was being played so often on the radio.
The Payola system explains why Buddy Holly became famous. I know I'm going to get hundreds (well, maybe one) of hate mails about this, but Buddy Holly was, and still is, the worst singer/songwriter of all time. Buddy Holly is to singing/songwriting what leprosy is to a Fourth of July Barbecue. Thank GOD he died in that plane crash. He fucking deserved it. As he currently burns in Hell for his crimes against humanity, we can all be thankful that Congress took the Payola problem into their own enormously chubby and checkered hands, and outlawed it.
Still, the Payola system lives on, in the so-called NEW MEDIA. NEW MEDIA must always be capitalized, because NEW MEDIA is here to stay. Basically, in the NEW MEDIA Payola, the Payola is even easier than it ever was, because bloggers are generally amateurs who have day jobs, and therefore, no dignity. Whereas before the NEW MEDIA, people who reviewed media were called "critics" and generally had doctorates or war correspondent credentials or very large hats, "critics" these days are rarely actually critical of anything at all, and hopelessly fawning over whatever they're given for free.
A few years ago, the decision was made that E-3 would restrict it's invite-only system to make it much more difficult for bloggers to attend, and the bloggers threw an unholy fit about it. I find it interesting that E-3 has to restrict attendance, whereas the Adult Industry Convention in Las Vegas actually SELLS tickets, and people who are otherwise completely passively associated with the "adult industry" (i.e. they've certainly been on a few covers, and interior pages, if you know what I mean) have no problem getting in. E-3, however, is different, and exceedingly exclusive, and this works to the favor of the gaming companies, because a ticket to E-3 is the blogging equivalent of a Golden Ticket to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Bloggers will do literally anything to attend, going so far as to give Will Wright a complete pass on his child molestation rumors. Now, I'm not saying Will Wright is a child molestor, but I'm not saying he isn't, and you're free to read between the lines on that, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.
And now, the Weekly Geek will never again be invited to E-3.
Will Wright's supposed tendency toward underage pederasty aside, there are a few tricks and tactics to being a successful Indie Blogger Cock and, thus, scoring as many freebies as possible.
1. DRESS AS ECCENTRICALLY AS POSSIBLE
Nothing says "NEW MEDIA" like dressing like an explosion at a K-Mart. Harry J. Knowles, who makes Two Ton Torres look like Karen Carpenter, seems to have started this tendency, although Matt Drudge's "Lemony Snicket" affectations certainly didn't stop that ball from rolling any further than it needed to. Perez Hilton, who otherwise looks like a total cuddlebug, personally keeps Manic Panic in business, and Ana Marie Cox, "Wonkette", tries to buck the trend by presenting herself as a fashionable Barbera Bush style proto-matron, but ends up looking like Cruella de Ville on a chubby day.
I, personally, admit to a certain predilection toward velvet and leather in my wardrobe, and I own a pair of trendy black nerd glasses. Of course, unlike the pretenders, I have spent time in a mental institution, so "eccentricity" is not my goal, it's just the polite way of describing it.
2. PICK A SUBJECT AND NEVER DEVIATE FROM IT.
If your blog's subject is "film", for instance, pick A film, preferably a sci-fi trilogy of some sort, and yammer on and on about it endlessly, comparing every new film you see unfavorably to the brilliance that is your particular hobbyhorse. If your blog is political in nature, pick a hilariously offensive nickname for the leader of your party's opposition ("Black Insane Obama" is a good one, "John McGain" is a slightly more subtle equivalent) and refuse to call that person by their real name. If your blog is about fashion or celebrities, obsess over one certain person ad absurdam.
Remember: Blogging isn't journalism. You're not supposed to be objective. You are to be slavishly one-sided and utterly devoted to your pointless "insider" position.
3. DEMAND AS MUCH FREE SWAG AS POSSIBLE, AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE, AND TO AS MANY PLACES AS POSSIBLE.
And don't be afraid to threaten to throw back the thinly woven curtain of deceit surrounding the pedophilic tendencies of your quarry, either. Please give me free Spore stuff.
Again, the Weekly Geek is guilty of this one, although I am, admittedly, not a recipient of as much largesse as others. The worst I get is emails offering me "sneak previews" of shitty web cartoons. And while my particular sickness gets off on cultural fecalphilia, I should, by all rights, be demanding much, much more. I should be demanding paid junkets to the Lucas Ranch for hookers and blow and handjobs from Robert Rodriguez. I not only demand these trinkets, but I also demand to be put on VH1 as an "I Heart the ________" talker. I heart the ________ more than you do, and I can prove it, because I have a blog.
Incidentally, Michael Ian Black* the penultimate hearter of the ________, opened his blog a scant few weeks ago, to coincide with his book of essays about his van customization service. 90% of it is him (charmingly) attempting to start an East/West Rap style feud with David Sedaris. Good for him! My dream is to be a heart-er of something, preferably the 80s, maybe the 90s, but I'll settle for the Oughts in due time.
The Free Swag situation is a problem, sadly, especially in the geekier parts of the blogospheroidmatron. The comic conventions, which have long basically just been an excuse to throw free shit at increasingly desperate nerds, excel (saga) at this tactic. Nerds will love anything they get free shit for, which explains why Iron Man somehow became this century's version of Citizen Kane overnight.
On the video gaming front, from Nintendo, I was given a plastic mannequin hand for my DS. X-Box once gave me a foam rubber brain shaped stress ball and a LANYARD(!), and Sony gave me a keychain shaped like a tomato, in one of the great non-sequiters of all time. Of the three, Nintendo's was the best, thus tainting my opinion of Nintendo for decades to come. Still, I sigh longingly whenever I see that LANYARD(!) and think of my close personal friends at Microsoft (especially Ted in Accounting, KEEP AIMING FOR THAT STAR, YOU CRAZY DIAMOND!). As for Sony, they can choke on their own vomit, so far as I care.
APPENDIX: WEBCOMIC BLOGGING
This one is tricky, and, admittedly, a salvo for the few brave souls who have webcomics AND blogs. Your webcomic must be understood by reading your blog, and your blog must be completely unreadable without first reading the webcomic. This cyclical system is required, and cannot be broken, lest the whole balance of the Chi be thrown off.
Your webcomic explains your blog, and your blog explains your webcomic. Break the circle at your own peril. Penny Arcade once broke this rule, and the next day, Tycho got fat. I know, man. I KNOW, MAN.
*I harbo(u)r a personal lust for Mr. Black that few would ever understand. You think I'm joking. Ha ha. I'm his own personal Mark David Chapman. I'm right behind you, Bright Eyes.
I sometimes think that maybe I'm the one who is living in Bizarro World. In the real, non-Bizarro world, George W. Bush is an Austin news weatherman, the dollar is worth the same as a Soviet ruble, and the evolutionary distinction between the Eloi and the Morlocks still had several thousand years before it really kicked in. Unfortunately, here in Bizarro World, everything is the complete opposite. Therefore, instead of heckling the current situation, I think I should just accept it like the good White Male Consumer 25-33 like I am.
Still, there's one Bizarro thing that I know is Bizarro and is going to stay Bizarro: I am not wealthy enough to even comprehend renting a villa in Italy. In fact, I have never actually paused to think to myself, "Self: We should really think about that villa in Italy, what with all this spare time and all of these millions of gold coins we have in the Money Bin, maybe we should get a little place in Tuscany instead of swimming around in all of this obscene monetary excess," that is, of course, before Facebook decided to tell it's advertisers that I am.
Now, every single time I check my Facebook profile, there it is.
The Villa.
It sounds a bit like an M. Night Shyalaman film, doesn't it? "The Villa". The obligatory twist at the end? It's full of BATS. It would be just like The Birds, only, you know, with bats. Even worse yet, it's full of ITALIANATE bats. Bats with names like "Manny" and "Guido". Bats with really great shoes. Bats that own fish markets on the South Side and mysteriously get Christmas cards from Sammy Davis Jr. Bats that have Steve Buscemi on speed dial for blow. Those kind of bats.
Only Facebook isn't trying to rent me a house full of adorable winged mafiosa with echolocation, no. Heavens to Mergatroyd, no! Facebook is trying to honestly convince me, and their respective advertisers at Invitation To Tuscany, that I am in the mood to rent a villa in Italy, and, conversely, that Invitation To Tuscany is not throwing away their hard earned Euros in advertising to riff-raff like me. I'm the kind of jerk that throws financial caution to the wind to splurge from time to time on a Grilld Stuft Burrito at Taco Bell, a place that is so inexpensive they can't even afford to put certain vowels in the names of their products. Even in this time of global kicking up of heels and international high spirits, when people like Henry Kissinger are doing the Charleston with glee since there's just so damn much money around, renting a villa in Italy is just a tad bit pricy for the likes of me.
It's not like I'm blaming Invitation To Tuscany, they're probably owned by a senile necromancer, and their call center is staffed by the zombies of old people, typing very slowly and growling with rotting, pallid lips into those teeny little earpiece/microphones that every office has these days. Nor am I placing the blame on Facebook. No, I'm placing the blame on Hanna-Barbera, because ever since Jabberjaw, the increase in natural disasters, childhood obesity and lupus has increased exponentially.
They call him Jab-Jab-Jab-Jab-Jabberjaw, the most demonic Faustian manipulator you ever saw.
So, Facebook, I know you're trying to build a successful business model and not end up like that shmuck Tom over at MySpace. I can rid you of the influence of Jabberjaw, trust me. It'll be a long, hard process. Lucky for you, I'm a trained professional Life Coach. Just leave all your problems to me. That mean ol' Jabberjaw won't get you.
Your advertisers need to be relevant to the audience, stores like Target or Borders, possibly. Then, once you've got a good, steady set of appropriate advertisers, start slowly picking off Facebook members at random. I can think of a few already, personally. Nothing TOO violent, of course. Just a quick injection of bleach in the buttock, or maybe a nice, quiet strangulation with a necktie. Guns would be a bit messy, yes, but maybe that would be a good idea too. Snipe them in public.
Once you've got a few random Facebook murders under your belt, things will slowly become evident. I've provided you with a business model, Facebook.
1) Ramp up your advertising to be relevant to the audience. Low-to-middle market retailers, bookstores, convenience foods, florists, funeral homes, manufacturers of black textiles, taxidermists, that sort of thing.
2) As you slowly start to pick off Facebookers, one by one, your advertisers will suddenly experience a spike in return clicks.
3) Reign of terror, followed by profit. Reinvestment in Facebook branded cemetaries and the new "WHO'S DEAD YET?" application.
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure that Facebook hasn't already started this new campaign. That would explain the sudden rise in advertisements for FTD.
I'm slowly starting to wean myself off my RSS reader. Being a blogger and a podcaster has really taken its toll on me as I try to find a good work/life balance. Whereas in the past I thought it would be cool to be a pro blogger and get shipped around to press events and be wined and dined by major game companies, now it's starting to look a lot less appealing. For today's rant, I'm going to tell you how the basic model for the video game blog is broken and useless.
There was a time when I was subscribed to as many game and geek blogs as I could find, and I was motivated to keep up with them. That was when they still all had original content. Remember those days? The culture has shifted now to the point of over saturation, where there is very little original content and in order to fulfill quotas and sound like "real journalists", game bloggers have ensconced themselves in the echo chamber. Here is the usual process:
1. A press release is sent out by a game company stating that their new game has gone gold, released new screenshots or gameplay video or has hit store shelves. 90% of the time this is non-news that the normal everyday gamer shouldn't care about. These press releases are sent to every single game blog in existence.
2. Game blogs who thirst for pageviews/popularity/money/whatever republish said press release and attach a cleverly photoshopped header image.
3. Every single other game blog republishes the already republished non-news press release, either citing the release proper, or whatever other game blog got the press release first.
Only occasionally is there ever original content on a game website, and it's usually poorly researched and lackluster. If you're lucky it ends up being an intelligent rant, but these rants are more blog than news (see: this website). In the rush to get their post numbers up, these blogs allow egregious journalistic mistakes such as spelling and grammar errors and publishing rumors as fact without researching them first. We see articles about bland industry-related facts, such as NPD numbers or sales statistics. Why should gamers give a shit about on what console a cross-platform game sold better? Why not just enjoy the games?
We, and by "we" I am referring to the hardcasual early adopter gamer, have lost our way. We are being dragged around by the games industry PR machine and to what end? Bloggers are hurried through media events and fed data which they are expected to digest and spew to their readers without coming up with any original ideas. We're expected to review games and promote them in order for the game company to make enough money to release the next one and the next one and the next one. And this is the culture. It's a sea of early adopters catering to other early adopters who obsessively read these blogs.
Take a look at Kotaku, one of the web's largest and most popular gaming websites. Kotaku must publishing something like 70 articles a day. Just keeping up with Kotaku is a full time job in of itself. There are literally people who sit all day on Kotaku, waiting for the next article to be posted so they can comment. Kotaku publishes so fast I imagine their editors don't even edit the content before it's pushed live.
We're geeks, I get it. We are passionate about our "hobby" and our lives revolve around it. We eat, drink and breathe video games and fail to realize that the rest of the world doesn't. The rest of the world is content with bringing out the Wii Fit every time company comes over, showing off the shiny new gadget and putting it away until the next chance. We're stuck in a loop, an echo chamber. We don't need all these PR blogs, we don't need gamer's day events. We don't need companies showing us brand new screenshots every week until a game release. The PR blogs are being driven by the needs of the game companies, not the game consumers. Here's what we should do to fix it:
1. STOP POSTING EVERYTHING A GAME COMPANY SENDS YOUR WAY. We don't need 500 websites all posting new screenshots for the Hulk game at the same time. We don't even need one. The PR company should just post new content on their own website and allow the game blogs to research and notice on their own.
2. DO RESEARCH. If a friend of a friend of a friend told you that Gamestop posted a release date for Starcraft II, it's most likely not true. Don't post a "Rumor" post to your blog just for speculation sake. Do some research. Reporting on rumors is like telling your readers you're too lazy to give them accurate information. Anyone can say they heard a rumor from someone. You're not providing content, you're just adding to the chatter.
3. STOP POSTING ARCANE INDUSTRY NEWS. Do your readers really need to care when an exec from EA steps down? How does this have even the smallest bearing on whether or not the games you play will improve or decline in quality? The games industry is so obsessed with its shitty minor celebrities, it will pretty much post anything. These people are not celebrities. They are normal people. Please start treating them as such. Sales numbers aren't amazingly interesting.
4. POST LESS. I like reading blog posts about video games. It's the reason why I have my own blog. But when a blog posts 70 times a day, there's no way to filter out the mundane from the high-quality. Focus on quality. Post less frequently and not only will you improve the level of discourse, you will save the sanity of people who actually have other things to do during the day than keep up.
What would you guys add? Have you been feeling the same frustration I have, or is this limited to people like me who run their own blogs?
Oscar Wilde once stole a bit from William Shakespeare, who in turn stole it from me, when he said "Brevity is the soul of wit." To verify this undisputed truth, old people are very rarely funny. Occasionally you'll meet a truly hilarious geriatric delinquent, like those old bastards who yank out their dentures to scare small children and rodents, but for the most part, old people aren't very funny at all. The longer something goes on, the less funny it is. This is a solemn, brutal reality, and something I'm about to prove, because this is going to be a very long article, and I dare you to find something to laugh about while reading it.
Take, for instance, The Satyricon by a dead old Roman named Petronius. The thing is supposed to be a hilarious comedy of errors as a slave is freed and suddenly inherits millions of drachma, in sort of a Sid Meier version of Brewster's Millions. This thing goes on and on and on and on, until finally you realize that there is absolutely nothing funny about it all, and you're just reading pages of what the nouveau-riche Roman ate for dinner (flamingo tongues and stuffed dormouse, BTW). It's absolutely dreadful. Still, they classify it as a "comedy", and it apparently was considered to be so in it's day. The Emperor Nero, a man with a high sense of camp if ever there was one, found absolutely nothing funny in The Satyricon, and sentenced Petronius to commit suicide for besmirching his family's reputation with anti-comedy. To further prove that drawing things out beyond their duly alloted minutes is unfunny, Petronius spent his last evening alive reading poetry loudly while slowly bleeding himself to death, tying and untying a tourniquet around his arm during the course of this terminally unfunny party.
Watching Kung Fu Grip is very much like watching Petronius commit suicide. It's long, it's painful, and there's a certain post-ironic bent in knowing that everything about it has already been done somewhere else, funnier. The concept is relatively simple, much like it's intended audience. Some fleeting source of gamer humor is drawn out, suffocated, drawn, quartered, defenestrated, and finally dunked under an icy lake like Rasputin with action figures and dolls. Much hilarity is presumed by invocation of rape, poop jokes and casual racism.
Now, to be fair, I like jokes about rape, bowel movements and casual racism. I am quite the connoisseur, actually. To do these sorts of jokes correctly, they must be served like prosciutto, not like Spam. Thinly sliced, delicately positioned, and surrounded by as many tasteful things as possible. And then jammed up one's nose.
The problem is that we've already seen this thing before, both in ToyFare Magazine's "Twisted Toy Theater" and the mindbogglingly dreary Robot Chicken on Cartoon Network. The advantage that both of these have is production value and the creative goad that is editors/producers/advertisers. The Internet, being srious bizness and all, tends to breed a certain sort of "entertainer" without any sort of limitations to guide the flow of their creativity, leading to a free-for-all of bad taste, bad production, bad timing.
I hate to end a review on a hateful note, call it the softening of this barnacle encrusted heart of mine. Kung Fu Grip... I admire your Mickey Rooney "HEY KIDS LET'S PUT ON A SHOW!" kind of mentality.
Onward and upward!
On the opposite end of the scale is Broken Pixels, a weekly offering starring the Internet's version of Baby Jane, Seanbaby. Seanbaby is a firm believer in the Law of Anti-Charisma, which states that you will be much more interesting, funny and charming if you surround yourself by persons who are socially inept, unfunny and boring. Broken Pixels is a show about old, bad video games, territory that Seanbaby staked and claimed over a decade ago.
For those of us who are old timers at this Internetting thing, Seanbaby used to be the end-all-be-all of awesome websites. His site was witty, well designed, original (for the time) and, most important for the New Media, completely self-absorbed. Seanbaby is an arrogant ass and we loved him for it. He knew we love him for it. And we kept going back. Then, in about 2001, his site went dead, a bleak relic of what we thought was the end of an era. He resurfaced in EGM as their "Crazy Back Of The Magazine Rant" Guy (i.e. what I do here) and occasionally showed up on G4 shows from time to time.
Broken Pixels is a mixed bag. Like I said before, brevity is not this show's gimmick. While each episode is about 15 minutes long, it's at least broken up into several bad games before wrapping up. The hope is to be a Mystery Science Theater 3000 for video games, with Seanbaby and pals yakking it up and exposing some true horrors. Unlike the utterly brilliant Zero Punctuation, which takes brevity to a level of grandeur not seen since Peppin the Short, Broken Pixels takes it's time. Seanbaby takes many long, languid sips of beer.
At the risk of continuing to talk and breaking the brevity thing (oh well, you weren't laughing anyway), most of the games Broken Pixels is mocking have been mocked ad nauseum online for years. The Cho Aniki series, for example, is the standard by which Japanese weirdness can be measured, the Greenwich Mean Time of Nippophilic Insanity. The oddball rail shooter, Space Pirates, has been dissected and snickered at for almost as long. There's just not that much ground here to cover that hasn't been covered.
BUT!
And there is a but! There really is! I swear!
The real charm of Broken Pixels is not the video games, not the set-up. The charm is the feeling that you're sitting around, listening to guys tell bullshit stories and goof off. At the risk of sounding like I'm hitting on him, Seanbaby has some really, really great stories to tell. One story, referred to here as the "Spunk Burrito" story, is worth the entire price of admission. What Broken Pixels does that I can appreciate is basically take an established format, surround it with a specific topic, and then let a few funny people be funny. It's similar to Stephen Fry's Q.I. in that way. Kung Fu Grip takes the same approach, but fails. Why? NOW YOU KNOW WHAT'S IN THE BURGERS.
A while back, Chris and I stole got the bright idea to mod us up some Nerf Mavericks. Turns out people like that kind of thing, and our geeky arts and crafts made their way 'round the tubes in no time. And while we were content to simply fashion a hasty holster solution that would only last a night, others found a better way in the form of the Grab-it-Pack.
The fine folks over at Grab-it-Pack HQ were nice enough to send us one of their uber-pockets and being that I'm the Weekly Geeker most likely to dress like a character from Final Fantasy it was decided I should take it for a spin.
You may recall my Steampunk Nerf Gun post from a while back, where I painted a Nerf Maverick all metallic to go with a costume I was making. I got an email from the creator of the Grab-it Pack(™!) who saw the post and mentioned that multiple people have purchased this pocketed accessory as a holster for their Nerf Mavericks.
Extra pockets are always nice and the Grab-it Pack actually looks like an incredibly useful pack if you're going hiking, cosplaying as the Man-With-Too-Many-Pockets or raiding a tomb full of ancient treasure and secrets.
They are about 23 bucks and you can order them from GrabitPack.com.
This week New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art unveiled it's newest exhibit "Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy." As you may have guessed from the title, the exhibit features costumes worn by actors in superhero cinema. In addition to a wardrobe that would inspire murderous jealousy in any comic geek, on display will be outfits created by today's leading couture designers inspired by the supersuits and contemporary sportswear similarly inspired.
The exhibit runs through September 1st, so any Big Apple based geeks would do well to go and have a peek. For those of us not lucky enough to live in New York City the gallery over at DVICE will simply have to do.
Every once in a while, Woot has a Photoshop contest that really brings out the funny. This week the subject was "an especially inappropriate franchise (an old TV show, comic book, classic novel, ancient myth, cartoon, movie, etc.)" Here's my favorite (and the winner!)
Up for sale on Etsy as of today, a painting I did in college called "The Death of Peach".
Mario is grief-stricken in this nightmare scenario where Princess Peach is impaled callously by a giant pirahna plant. Toad watches in horror as Mario prepares to hurl a Bob-Omb and avenge his love. Oil on canvas 38"x36"
Thought you guys might enjoy watching a video of me hit by a sudden burst of inspiration today. I've been thinking of something to fill up this canvas I painted over a month ago. The subject? Only one of the creepiest villains in game history: a Combine Hunter from Half Life 2: Episode 2. I wanted to keep it simple and exercise my brushwork skills while capturing the strangely vicious kinetic energy of the things.
"This was given to me as a gift at the Phoenix Comicon. I'm tempted to call up my friends and say, "Hey, I was just wondering if you have a customized Lego figure of your Star Trek character on your desk?" Then I realize how pathetic that sounds, and I just get drunk." - Wil Wheaton
I love it when I can bring video game sound effects into the context of the real world. I own a couple of those gashapon sound drop keychains, and revel in the fact that the Super Mario Bros death noise scares my small dog enough to make her bark nervously and then hide under the bed. Last night, Herr Bizzleteats received a missive from the ether on his Blackberry, which caused it to chirp as if he had gained an extra life. A plushy question mark block sits on my couch, waiting for unsuspecting guests to sit down and accidentally gain a coin when it drops on their lap. Now, with ThinkGeek's help, I can become invincible. Check out this awesome Super Star, which gleefully grants you doot-dee-dootillies whenever you desire. It's plastic, fits on your desk, and looks amazing. It's battery powered too, so you could feasibly take it into any dangerous situation such as walking home by yourself late at night or if you are going to smash a few of your brothers or there's a mushroom uprising.
This thing is pretty neat. Now if only they did a whole series of classic powerups (no stupid New Super Mario Bros blue shell ridiculousness please) I could further blur the line between fantasy and reality.
It's been a strange week, filled with job interviews and exhaustion, leaving me little time to play as much as I wanted. Though it has allowed me to think a bit about my play habits. As of late, I've been a sort of ADD gamer, bouncing from one title to the next. After all the progress I made in Rock Band I've had a craving to explore a lot of other games that I haven't given much time to. I've also secretly been anticipating GTAIV. Don't tell anyone! What I did play this week was awesome, however.
Lost Cities - If you haven't at the very least downloaded the demo of this awesome XBLA game, you owe it to yourself to try. It's perfect for picking up and playing a quick game (each game takes maybe 20 minutes total to complete) but you'll soon find yourself saying "just one more game and then I'll take the dog for a walk". When your dog starts peeing on your rug in front of you out of spite is when you know you're a bit addicted.
Devil May Cry 4 - Ridiculous, overwhelmingly Japanese, violent and wonderful. I don't care what anyone else says, I like the over the top action cut scenes, even if the characters do crazy tricks that I have no hope of ever attempting in-game. There's a certain visceral satisfaction from being able to juggle an enemy in the air, constantly grappling them back up to you and slamming them down again.
Call of Duty 4 - I've avoided this game for no other reason than I dislike the stigma attached to people who play only online shooters. I don't like online first person shooter deathmatches because I am horrible at them. Also I have tender, virgin eardrums that catch on fire whenever a cuss passes through them. The single player campaign in CoD4, however, is stunning. It has an exciting pace and does well to make you feel like you are actually there. The story is a bit generic, but it's so well presented I am willing to forgive it.
This weekend I'll probably be delving further into CoD4, what are you playing this weekend?
One of the shining pillars of vaporware has finally broken out of mythological territory and stepped into the path of unsuspecting consumers. The OLED-powered marvel that is the Optimus Keyboard is ready for your hard earned $1,589.99, surely a price point meant to help stimulate the economy. We've discussed the merits of the fabled keyboard in the past, including its ability to display custom keyboard configurations for programs like Photoshop.
While I am dubious about the usefulness of such a thing (if you are spending one and a half thousand dollars on a keyboard it is most likely that you don't look at your keys anyway, as apparently you are really really into computer keyboards), it's certainly a shiny, expensive piece of early adopter-focused hardware that will wow any nerd whom you deem worthy to enter your hovel.
Consider this post a sort of new Weekly Geek "manifesto". Except less sinister-sounding.
The Weekly Geek has been around in many forms since its inception in 2002(ish). First we were a radio show on a small desert town's college station. It was just Grant and I back then, and we would rock every Wednesday morning with three hours of music, geeky or otherwise hilarious news, video game reviews and pseudo-internet-celebrity phone interviews. We even did a comedy sketch or two.
During the three years The Weekly Geek ran in Ellensburg, we put on a couple big video game tournaments, covered two E3s and gave away thousands of dollars worth of games to on-air callers. We started uploading the non-music bits of the show to the radio station's website around 2004, before we even knew what podcasting was. You had to walk uphill both ways to download a podcast those days, and that's the way we liked it.
In 2005 we launched the first official Weekly Geek blog and attached our audio file to an RSS feed. Ever since then we've tried to bring you a steady stream of great articles and content, unique to the geek community. We've even started our own little community here, which has been one of the coolest things I have ever personally been involved in.
You may noticed the place has changed a little bit... hopefully this design will serve you better than the last disorganized mess we forced you to look at. There's revamped commenter options, a better tag system and archives and direct links to download the most recent podcasts on the right hand bar. These certainly are exciting times.
I've always envied people who had the tenacity to complete photo journaling projects. Whether taking a picture of yourself every day for a year, or documenting a family history, photo projects are fascinating studies in human mortality. Linked from Boing Boing today, I found YOUNGME - NOWME on a site called Color Wars, where people take old childhood photos and recreate them with their newer, older bodies. I especially enjoy the ones who put a lot of effort in getting the clothing/setting correct, such as this chap who finally was able to live his dream of having the world's greatest mustache.
Mike linked me to this article today on Gizmodo about a single mother who's 13 year old kid wouldn't do his chores. The story goes that the kid wouldn't quit playing Xbox and do the list of chores that his mother had typed out for him. After repeated requests, he deviously broke the vacuum in order to get out of vacuuming. She even found out he was surfing porn sites on his computer! So she retaliated by hacking his MySpace profile and selling his Xbox and games. Good parenting or horrible parenting? Gizmodo seems to think that this is an appropriate response, but I have to disagree. I don't know the specifics of this family's relationship with each other, and I don't claim to be an authority on parenting, but I think this was probably one of the worst things she could have done to raise this kid, and let me tell you why.
While I do think that we need less 13 year old Halo players spouting ignorance over Xbox Live, let me discuss this from the kid's perspective. All kids are biologically pre-programmed to rebel. At around age 13 they are supposed to start showing signs of rebellious behavior. It's called being a teenager. There are myriad ways to deal with teenagers, but more often than not extreme forms of punishment only serve to push them further and further away. I had a very similar experience as a kid, as I am sure a lot of you have. I think this kid is going to hate his mom even more for her actions, which I would imagine is not the desired effect.
I was a lazy kid. Hell, I'm a lazy adult. I never liked doing chores, and I would usually put them off in favor of video games. Even more I despised the parental notion that going outside and doing things under that burning ball of fire we call the Sun was somehow more life-enriching than, say, experiencing the brilliance of Final Fantasy. We were always on different planes of thought. I'd request something like a new Game Boy game for my birthday and I'd get a pair of rollerblades. I'd ask for a comic book subscription for Christmas and get a telescope.
I'd get a list of chores, do them and then go back to playing games. My parents, however, weren't satisfied with that. They'd always leave one thing off of the list, such as taking out the trash. Of course, since it wasn't on the list, I wouldn't take out the trash. And then they'd get pissed off and take something away, such as computer or video game privileges. They'd even rush into my room after getting off of work and yank the cart right out of my SNES while I was playing it. It was a completely mind-boggling discipline process to me. In my opinion they weren't teaching me any sort of valuable lesson, just flailing because they didn't know what else to do. That's not good parenting, that's just retaliation. These kinds of experiences actually caused me to disassociate myself from my parents. I just recently got back in touch with my father after about 7 years of silence. While extreme, I am sure the mother mentioned in this article doesn't want anything near that.
I understand that kids are a bit different these days. They tend to be more independent, more uppity, and more prone to backtalk. What I think would have worked better is regulation of said child's game time, rather than getting rid of the thing altogether. Kids may be pre-programmed to rebel against you as a parent, but you can do things to help hold back the tide. Compromise is one of those things.
And as for the porn sites the kid was surfing? How about you teach the kid about sex in a frank and honest manner instead of keeping it taboo and mysterious? Now he's just going to be more careful in the future about hiding his porn. 13 year olds are obsessed with sex. Teach him how to deal with it instead of making him think it's a shameful, horrible thing. Put your computer in the family room so that someone is always monitoring what he's seeing, and talk to him. He is an intelligent future adult who deserves your respect no matter what vitriol his mouth is spewing. He's meant to do that. It's up to you to deal with it in a manner that results in a well-adjusted individual.
What do you guys think? Is this bad parenting or good parenting? Follow up question! Did any of you experience something similar with your own parents, and do you think it was positive or negative for your personal growth?
Have you ever had a weekend where you just popped back and forth between a handful of games in your collection? That's what this past weekend was like for me. I had this immense craving to go back to a simpler time and hear some of that sweet delicious SNES music once again. I spent my time this weekend with not only retro gaming, but some more recent titles I'd put down long ago.
Secret of Mana - One of my all-time favorite games still holds up to this day. Putting the cart in and turning it on, I realized I still had my original save file from back when I was a kid. There it was: Frodo level 99. I started a new game, however, so Jinny and I could play through together. This game was really magical to me. One of the first games I can remember fully absorbing, just soaking up all of the detailed art, experiencing the music in eardrum-shattering stereo sound. I'd explore every single corner looking for lost weapon orb chests, grinding levels in order to get the best spells. Multiplayer is near-perfect in Secret of Mana, I'd say bested only by Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. Really looking forward to playing more and feeling wave after wave of nostalgia. That's what it's allllllll about.
Tales of Symphonia - I picked up the Gamecube version of this off Goozex a few months ago and never really sat down to try it. I love the combat and gameplay elements, but the story (at least in the beginning) is the same trite anime crap as a million other horrible RPGs before it. I sincerely hope that aspect improves because I'm the weird kind of geek who gets really annoyed at anime-style writing.
Rock Band - Back on the horse? After finishing the drum solo tour on hard, I decided to attempt it on expert and absolutely ripped through it. I have about 15 more songs left and have been really enjoying the feeling of accomplishment from my increase in skills. We rocked band world tour as well, grinding through the venues on expert and unlocked the million fan achievement. We were at a total of about 980,000 fans and only needed a small bump to push us over the edge and ended up getting 250,000 fans in one 4 song setlist. I guess gold-starring songs really helps when you're looking to gain fans.
Beautiful Katamari - I was in the mood to roll some stuff up, so I decided to visit the King of All Cosmos for the first time since last year. I don't really prefer this version, actually. While I love being able to unlock achievements and such, I feel that the gameplay is too unfocused and lacks the charm of the original PS2 Katamari Damacy. I attempted a few online matches, which have one of the worst lobby systems I've seen. The other guy just kept walking around instead of starting the match, throwing cookies at me and putzing around. I'm all for the concept of play, but sometimes I want to get down to business. Katamari-related business.
World of Warcraft - My undead priest is now almost level 20 and I'm really excited to be playing a healer again. This time around I know my strengths and limitations and I am having a ton more fun jumping around Azeroth like some spastic bunny rabbit.
For the rest of the week I have a feeling it's going to be ADD gamer time, with me bouncing back and forth between titles. I'm also going to attempt hacking my PSP. Wish me luck!
It's difficult these days for parents to figure out how to deal with their kids being exposed to what they may deem inappropriate content. Our pop culture has become less preoccupied with self-censorship, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Things that parents might not find appropriate for children exist in the world, and eventually said children are going to become adults and get exposed to this content. While your six year old shouldn't necessarily be watching Sopranos and shooting hookers in Grand Theft Auto, eventually that world is going to reveal itself and you can guarantee they will be asking questions.
What They Play is a website for parents in order to help them better understand the games that their kids want to play. Instead of providing a giant list of "bad" games for parents to keep their kids away from, What They Play accepts the fact that kids are already playing these games, either at a friends house or their creepy uncle's apartment. The site provides level-headed, well-researched analysis of games. Not necessarily qualitative reviews, but an overview of what you are going to see and experience in the game. Their article on Grand Theft Auto IV is a great example. Not only do they provide a run down of all the "controversial" things you can do in the game, they acknowledge features such as the Rockstar Social Club, the tie-in with Amazon for music downloads, and an overview of what the limited edition contains.
It is classically difficult for older generations to keep up with younger ones. Trends change, technology advances and often the easiest thing to do is throw your hands in the air and resort to quick judgment and censorship. We've seen it with comic books, rock and roll, and I am sure in the middle ages there was some sort of sheep-based trend that parents just didn't understand.
Keeping things taboo just increases curiosity in a kids mind. It's up to the parents of the world to decide how to effectively deal with seemingly negative influences, and it's nice to see a website that chooses an intelligent, unbiased approach instead of the typical knee-jerk alarmism we've come to expect. I'd really love to see this site become the de facto location for parents-in-the-know to get the information they need to effectively raise their children in this new media future.
Love them or hate them, the Puritans at least had a goal. Several of them, in fact. Redeeming the Church Triumphant from the besodden hands of the Papacy and Powers Temporal, saving the souls of the faithful, guiding them toward an outward perfection suited for their inner Godliness, moving the educational and aesthetic commonweal toward the everlasting love of Jesus Christ, and burning an assload of witches. At least you knew where they stood on any given subject.
Good was good, bad was bad, and in case of confusion, steer toward hatred. They were anything but not apathetic. Sure, they were vicious bastards who'd slit your throat and throw you in the oubliette if you so much as talked out of place, but what's the harm with that? I can think of few people that need a good bit of 17th Century Puritanical asskicking more the absolute titchuckers at Spike TV.
If, in case you are doing the reasonable thing when faced with modern reality and your head is currently encased in a bucket of rapidly solidifying Plaster of Paris, you haven't heard of Spike TV, perhaps you've heard of it's predecessor, The Nashville Network. The "The" is capitalized because it was founded and perpetuated for twenty years by people who called it "TNN", instead of "NN", which logically it should have been. Then again, we are dealing with the utter fuckwits who would watch something called "The Nashville Network" in the first place. People so neanderthalic that the sheer concept of images moving around on a lighted box constituted entertainment, doubly so when said moving images were SINGING AND YODELING, just like the folks on the radio tube!
The fact that "The" in "The Nashville Network" was capitalized is a sticking point, because it led to a cultural dynamic that still haunts us to this day. While The NN never took a political stance officially, it was pretty much de facto Republican, and, along with the Pat Robertson owned Family Channel, built the fundamental anti-rational force of the 1990s, the Christian Coalition. These piddling little factories of nincumpoopery created the atmosphere that led to the fullscale official amnesia of the Bush administration, fed by the belief that nothing between Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan actually happened. When pressed, TNN would revert back to "IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MUSIC!" just like Robertson would retort "IT'S ALL ABOUT JESUS!", proving that country music fans are not only dogmatic and conservative to the Nth degree, but piranha like in their refusal to admit anything might actually be open to debate.
Then, of course, Viacom put a bead out on TNN, and it was assassinated with one bullet to the forehead like a Yucatan drug lord on a parade float. It was swiftly transmutated into "Spike TV", the idea being a snarky male response to the female Lifetime Network, which is similarly insipid in nearly every context. Whereas Lifetime produces overblown soap operatics by the bushel, Spike doesn't actually produce anything at all, and sticks to the truism that men actively enjoying being able to recite every line from every rerun science fiction and cop drama they can get their greedy, Cheetos-besmirched fingers on.
Spike TV, just so you understand, is a rerun dump. That is all it is, that is all it ever has been. in case Viacom has a movie or television show elsewhere, they advertise it ad nauseum on Spike, since the theory is that anybody who would conceivably want to watch Spike is at least sentient enough to have another, better, network on the Memory button, just itching for a reason to turn elsewhere. In fact, Viacom has taken this into account, and it's a somewhat twistedly brilliant example of Corporate Symbiosis in all it's evil, mutant glory.
As an irrelevant side note emphasizing their patronizing attitude toward the hand that feeds them was the notoriously silly "Video Game Awards", hosted by noted albino marionette, David Spade. I'll give you pause to snicker to yourself at that idea. HINT: They gave an award to "Best Power Up".
In response to this theory, Spike has actually found ways to start disregarding commercials altogether. To this end, they've come up with the "commercial show", which is a mini-show that runs IN THE COMMERCIALS, with advertisements in little sprawling banners under both shows. Where it used to be that you only put up with the commercials so you could watch the show, with the grim reality setting in that with seven million other options available to you on Comcast alone, advertisement and entertainment are now fused at the spine like some sort of freakish, hateful Siamese twin garden gnome that attacks you while stabbing your grandmother with a rusty railroad spike.
The rusty railroad spike, of course, is what the network is named after, y'see.
AH, BUT WHAT IS HE RANTING ABOUT, you ask. And rightfully so.
Weekly Geek (Greek?) HQ recently received a not so thinly veiled attempt by the Spike TV treants to get us to pawn off to you their latest awful idea, a Commercial Show called "Hot Chicks with Cheat Codes".
Hold it. Scan up. Read that again. Then read it out loud. Then read it in a silly voice.
"Hot Chicks with Cheat Codes".
The morons reign victorious. We're doomed. Humanity only has a good few years left, it's been a great run, but all things need to come to a timely end. Yoko has joined the band. Better cash your Economic Stimulus checks ASAP, because it's the last hurrah before the concentration camps.
There is a saying in advertising circles, "No publicity is bad publicity". Therefore, we at the Weekly Geek will not be giving this foreskin wrinkle the time of day by linking you to it. That would be giving them exactly what they want. Oh, no. We have a much worse idea. I will be illustrating it for you with MS Paint.
The effect, to be frank, is exactly what we saw.
Braindead models stroking controllers like dildos, "bitchin'" pseudo-rock music, playovers of Halo greenscreened behind them.
Yes, we get it. You have absolute, utter disdain for your desired audience. And we can't blame you. If they're falling for this, we hate them too. The British equivalent of Spike TV, "Nuts TV" (yes, you read that just as correctly), has a show called "Fit and Fearless". Scantily clad models are locked in haunted houses with cameras, the idea being that presumably young British men enjoy a bizarre combination of sado-masochism and 19th century Blavatsky Spiritism.
Brilliant media commentator Charlie Brooker has written his piece about Nuts TV, and I boldly stride forth in his jowly shadow by saying that the point behind "Hot Chicks with Cheat Codes" is equally terrifying: presumably you're supposed to be masturbating while watching it, but doing so means you're totally, undeniably insane. "Fit and Fearless" is the next logical step, followed by "Bikini'd and Bound", which is essentially just softcore dungeon play with a streaming banner underneath inviting us to purchase Axe bodyspray. After that it's just a long, languid close up of a bleeding corpse, although doubtlessly, Spike will ace that up a bit with some tips on how to avoid the police read by wacky, sarcastic jerks deserving of a good unwrapped SlimJim being rammed down their tanned, impossibly intolerable little snouts.
I leave this blahdy-blah with this final thought: according to Wikipedia. Spike TV's average viewer age is 42. Mayhap they should reconsider their concepts just a bit. "Hot Chicks and Tax Tips", 'Hot Chicks and Mortgages", "Hot Chicks and A Solid Plan for Building That Patio You've Always Been Talking About" may be a little bit less insulting.
Being able to read my RSS feed subscriptions on my phone is an amazingly geeky experience. It's one of the aspects of the iPhone that make you just sit back and revel in the glow of the future. But as much as I love Google's various services and Apple's glorious Jesus Phone, I can't help but feel frustrated with not being able to perform really basic tasks. Beyond not being able to copy and paste text, Google Reader acts a bit funky on this mobile device. While it's been fantastic to be able to read my RSS items during my commute (making me less enticed to get that unread count down while I'm at work) I'm a multitasker and the iPhone doesn't seem to like that. 
