The Gaming Den

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2009 4:59 pm**

Lago PARANOIA wrote:What's this about the Decepticons making a slutty robot to seduce some high school twit?

Dude, that was like one of my main fantasies at 13, minus the 10ft prehensile penis part. Then again, I was smart enough to not put it in a movie.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2009 5:42 pm**

I just don't remember that the Decepticons had the ability to do that.

It's been awhile, but I don't really remember any of the Transformers having any real superpowers other than 'I am an enormous robot that transforms into useful inconspicuous objects'. The Decepticons flew and had marginally more firepower.

I mean, I'm not against the idea of Transformers being able to turn into more things, even people. I personally think it would be pretty rad. I am just wondering where it came from.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2009 6:57 pm**

The "hey lets put this in the movie!" hat.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2009 9:35 pm**

Well, Count, it appeared to be a prehensile tail like Nightcrawler's. I can only assume "dick" is is the only phrase the boardfilter allows for "limb that isn't an arm or leg"

Lago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretenders_(Transformers)

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2009 9:56 pm**

Sir_Neil wrote:Well, Count, it appeared to be a prehensile tail like Nightcrawler's. I can only assume "dick" is is the only phrase the boardfilter allows for "limb that isn't an arm or leg"

Wat? That isn't Nightcrawler's dick? Now I have to revise my fan fics!

Posted: **Sat Aug 22, 2009 5:15 am**

Naruto...Again.

So, looks like Sasuke's going Super Saiyan.

It's a shame. I was genuinely interested and excited when Madara showed up next to Naruto. Then they cut to show that Sasuke's gone all evil.

At least this week's Bleach didn't disappoint.

Also, is it me, or are the Samurai total pussies modelled on the Zakus from Gundam?

Posted: **Sat Aug 22, 2009 5:45 am**

Agreed on all points. I was actually quite happy with the way Bleach turned out this week.

Posted: **Sat Aug 22, 2009 6:00 am**

Sasuke lost any trace of being a character I care about because there is no plot for him left. His whole "thing" was to kill his brother. His brother is dead now. So guess what... Sasuke doesn't have a story any more so now he's just running around being retarded and of course, mysteriously gifted. [/rant]

Posted: **Sat Aug 22, 2009 9:50 pm**

The Grapes of Wrath.

That ending was like having a charming young spouse who is the perfect soulmate and raising a family with them of healthy, successful children... and then on your deathbed, when you are at your final moments and reflecting on how much you love your life, your whole family jumps up onto the bed and starts taking diarrhea dumps on your face.

Why, God, why?!

Posted: **Fri Sep 04, 2009 6:37 pm**

I have isolated part of my exasperation/disappointment with Naruto lately.

The author's pulling weird plot stuff out of his ass now. Not quite to the degree that Bleach does sometimes, but it stands out more because Naruto has a pretty good track record of showing its work and having a more-or-less consistent system of phlebtonium.

But for a series which had the loser underdog beat the twit who thought he was vouchsafed with the true nature of the universe and fate and felt it was his sacred duty to tell people WHY they could never beat him and why their penis was small...

It's pretty damn rich for a character who knows most of what's really going on to be going on about fate and destiny. Also, they have actual curses in this setting now?

Posted: **Fri Sep 04, 2009 6:56 pm**

Naruto lost me before Shipuuden even began. I was never a big fan of it or Bleach like I am with Berserk but now I can't even find it entertaining.

Posted: **Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:20 pm**

Just stop reading Naruto. It's not going to get any better. All of the possible cool things or things to look forward to have happened or have been negated. The rest of the manga will be a stumbling, wheezing race to the finish line while the author tries desperately to convince us that there's still something at stake other than Naruto and Sasuke's crybaby feelings.

I stopped reading after the whole conclusion to the Nagato arc and I'm a much happier person.

Posted: **Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:52 pm**

+1 to that.

Posted: **Sun Sep 06, 2009 5:27 am**

MGuy wrote:Berserk

Berserk?

That's hilarious.

Now I assume if you are a fan you are a Manga fan since I haven't read the manga so I can assume it might go somewhere or do something.

The anime however, specifically the commercial English dub was a laugh a riot jokefest. It included such moments as...

1) Bite Me Hawkwind
It was SOO Micheal Moorcock it wasn't funny. No wait. It was.

2) Fun voice actor outtakes
The English dub group got a bunch of "outakes" some of which were crap some of which were rather funny, and actually did them up with the footage rather nicely.

3) Incredibly alarming innuendo
There is some really amazing utterly dead pan innuendo in the show. How many times Gut's stupidly large sword was somehow in shot jutting at an angle from his (or someone elses) crotch was minor in comparison (though large in comparison to say, anything else).

There were tons of them, so dead pan you couldn't tell if they knew what they were saying, my favorite/only one I can remember with detail off the top of my head is...

Guy sneaking into princesses room on a rainy night says something that basically goes...
"I beg you let me enter your chambers my lady, but I'm afraid I'm going to make them all wet."

4)) Flash back stacking
The entire anime series is a flash back.

Within that are multiple episode arcs of flash backs occuring in the flash back.

Within those multi episode arcs. THERE ARE MORE FLASH BACKS.

So yeah. Berserk fans are either...
1) Complete idiots. That can't tell the difference between story telling and someone giving them a blood spattered turkey slapping during an LSD freak out.

2) Freaks like myself that revel in the truly most spectacularly terrible entertainment that is so crap it transcends into pure comedy genius (or pure comedy idiot savant...ness I guess).

Posted: **Sun Sep 06, 2009 6:43 am**

I haven't seen the anime nor read the manga of Berserk, PhoneLobster.

But I do know that the anime was so hated that it's pretty much universally disowned by manga fans. There's a reason why that anime is at the top of the list for Dethroning Moment of Suck.

It's just one of those things you know and laugh at other fandoms at. There's the Star Wars Christmas Special, there's Spock's Brain, and there's the Berserk anime.

Also, generally, laughing at the English dub of something is considered a cheap shot; it's the equivalent of using, say, Elton John to mock LGBT rights.

Posted: **Sun Sep 06, 2009 6:58 am**

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Also, generally, laughing at the English dub of something is considered a cheap shot

Except that in this case the English dub, seems to make it better.

The bit where they did a bunch of "outakes" jokes and the bit where they either translated (but didn't entirely notice) some heavy double entendres, or put them/left them in with dead pan delivery. Those were some of the best bits.

I suspect a more... honest... translation would have turned the volume on the sadomasochistic homoeroticism, the pathetic melodrama and "no this is serious stop laughing" tone into intolerable territory.

If the dub were a little less bad/tongue in cheek it would immediately drop from "so bad it's funny" to "so bad my ears are bleeding". It's a razor edge tight rope of crapness that one is.

Posted: **Mon Sep 14, 2009 10:56 am**

Is it just me or has the Comics Curmudgeon stopped being insightful towards comics and started being derivative?

I mean, come on! Here's the wikipedia entry for this page:

* Apartment 3-G's Margo Magee is a psychotic person with delusions of being God, and tends to dominate her feebleminded roommates. Also, the male characters are distinguishable from each other only by hair color, which can suddenly change without warning.[7]
* The Archie comics are written and drawn by a machine, the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000 (AJGLU-3000).[8]
* Dennis the Menace gets progressively less "menacing" with each strip.[9]
* Dick Tracy is an unrepentant fascist.
* Family Circus describes a religio-military compound in which the parents have life-and-death power over their children.[10]
* Funky Winkerbean is "a black hole of bleakness and depression and cancer from which no joy or laughter can escape".[11]
* Gil Thorp's characters have an alien physiology only marginally related to human.
* Herb and Jamaal is "ludicrously non-specific".[12]
* Judge Parker is about "sexy people doing boring things"[13]; namely, the asexual Judge Parker characters and the uninteresting storylines are de-emphasized in favor of illustrator Eduardo Barreto's sexy drawings of female characters.
* Marmaduke is a terrifying demon dog who spends his days devouring people[14] and inflicting complete terror upon his owners,[15] one of whom is actually Adolf Hitler. (The world of the comic strip may in fact be a special purgatory created for Hitler.)[16]
* Mark Trail is an asexual or a zoophile who constantly goes on adventures to escape the advances of his wife, and is the sworn enemy of all facial hair, which he smites with his "fists o' justice." The distinctive circular credit marker for strip creator Jack Elrod is called the "jackelrod," and its positioning is often considered in analyzing a strip. Also, thanks to sloppily drawn speech balloons, much of the dialog comes from the foregrounded animals rather than the much less prominent human characters.
* Mary Worth is a wealthy widow whose raison d'être is to meddle in others' business. Most story arcs take months to progress, and contain plenty of questionable clothing, disgusting finger foods, and suffocatingly conservative morality.
* Rex Morgan, M.D. is a closeted homosexual and a pederast[17] who finds his medical career (and wife) to be largely uninteresting distractions, and is either incompetent or completely lacking in medical training.
* Slylock Fox routinely persecutes and frames innocent people; the strip's (generally poor) supposed "villains" are the actual heroes.
* The Amazing Spider-Man's Peter Parker is lazy and far more interested in watching TV or surfing the internet for pornography than in fighting crime, and can be incapacitated or knocked unconscious in embarrassingly simple ways.

And you can add a couple more to the list:
* Beetle Bailey is a tragicomic pit of smoldering homoerotica and alcoholism.
* Marvin is the most horrible infant in the universe and is pure evil.
* Crankshaft is the most horrible human being in the universe and is pure evil.
* Curtis's Kwanzaa jokes are the best thing ever.
* Pluggers is an alarming accidental parody of (fat and unhealthy) smug, ignorant, lower-middle class Americans.

I'd say that those things comprise of 80%-85% of the comic's jokes nowadays. Even if you don't agree with that, those strips comprise of 80-85% of the comic strips analyzed.

I mean, come on! One of the things that the blog continually rides the ass of legacy comics for being lazy and repetitive. And the blog is in a rut of not only content but actual jokes.

Posted: **Mon Sep 14, 2009 11:02 am**

Lago PARANOIA wrote:The Grapes of Wrath.

That ending was like having a charming young spouse who is the perfect soulmate and raising a family with them of healthy, successful children... and then on your deathbed, when you are at your final moments and reflecting on how much you love your life, your whole family jumps up onto the bed and starts taking diarrhea dumps on your face.

Why, God, why?!

To clarify for those of you who haven't read the ending, just don't read the final chapter at all. The upshot of it is that Ma Joad has completely taken over the reins of the family and what remains of the family desperately tries to find meaning in the lives of other people who are in the situation even though things go to pot.

Don't read the final chapter. I'm not saying this because I disagreed with the theme of the ending or that it's sad or even that it's written badly... it's just amazingly disgusting. The worst part is that I don't think the author was trying to go for shock or gross-out value, he was going for biblical symbolism.

Well, you failed badly Steinbeck. I still love you, bro, but god-DAMN!

Posted: **Sat Nov 07, 2009 10:14 am**

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19PfUIovUaU

In this episode of Scientific Truth Journal we'll explore the theory of evolution and implicitly mock the people who hold opposing viewpoints.

Dogbert: Hnh. Evolution. What a crock. Can we change it, please?

Dilbert: Evolution is a scientific fact. Unless you're ignorant.

Dogbert: If it's a fact, why is it called a theory?

Dilbert: There are scientific reasons. It's all very complicated.

Dogbert: Give me one good argument for evolution.

Scott Adams, I had my suspicions that you were a hack but I didn't also realize until now that you're fucking retarded.

This hurts me almost as much as realizing that Bill Maher is an anti-vaccination freak.

Posted: **Sat Nov 07, 2009 10:24 am**

I'm not certain how serious we are supposed to take dogbert's skepticism (or dilbert's dogmatic ignorance) considering that their solution to species that have gone exitinct is that they are just hiding. It's not exactly a sensical world that they live in.

I can see the commentary being that some people just accept evolution the same way others do so for religion by dogma rather than more in depth examination.

Heh, I likes the video response.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqkK4OeQ2JI

Posted: **Sat Nov 07, 2009 10:31 am**

I'm not certain how serious we are supposed to take dogbert's skepticism (or dilbert's dogmatic ignorance) considering that their solution to species that have gone exitinct is that they are just hiding. It's not exactly a sensical world that they live in.

I was hoping for that, too, but some cursory investigation of Scott Adam's beliefs shows that he really does believe what Dogbert is saying.

Just look up 'Dilbert Future' and 'Evolution'.

Dogbert, I expected more out of you. You ain't welcome around here anymore. Don't you show your face around here you psuedoscience-promoting motherfucker.

Posted: **Sat Nov 07, 2009 11:05 am**

It sounds like he may be a little bit between where each of us thought he stood.

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilb ... ill-b.html

It sounds more like he is making the case that a lot of the evidence that we get fed in schools is specious crap, and he isn't really focusing on the tauological reality of natural selection (if something advantageous can be selected for, then it will be because it is advantateous. bitches).

I have been fed all sorts of untruths in my schooling, so it does not surprise me that he has a beef with how folks are being taught. It's crappy and dogmatic foundations that cause people to lose belief in solid scientific facts when confronted with compelling refutation of shitting foundations.

So he has a problem with some evidence of evolution that gets offered. Understandable.

His major contention against evolution has more to do with how we perceive and describe time. Evolution is firmly rooted in the notion that time is something real. Things from the past are selected to influence the shape of things in the future. Adams is suggesting that as some people investigate what the implications are if time is not in fact a real thing, but rather a quirk of perception (a concept that is rather hard to get my head around, but it is interesting), then that would have implications for evolution as well. It doesn't make it any less real to us, just... different in a larger picture.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/scott-adams-answers-your-dilbert-questions-and-more/ wrote: Q: I’m interested in your comments on evolution. If you have read PZ Myer’s deconstruction of your opinions on evolution, I think they point out not only your misconceptions, but also those of a large number of people unfamiliar with theory.

A: Actually, PZ Myer deconstructs his misinterpretations of my arguments. If he ever addresses my actual arguments, he might realize he agrees with them. That’s what makes him so entertaining.

Q: What do you see as the actual flaws in the Darwin-esque explanations for evolution, and what possibilities can you see for alternate explanations of the phenomena and evidence?

A: Evolution passes all the tests of science to be treated as a fact. But if physicists someday demonstrate that our perception of reality has no connection to actual reality, which I consider likely, then evolution is just a point of view, albeit a useful one.

My main criticism of evolution has to do with the way it is presented to the public. And beyond that, I enjoy yanking the chain of people who think they believe things for actual reasons as opposed to taking a side.

So I'd not worry too much about him being some sort of fool. At least, not on this account. I think he just doesn't do an exceptional job explaining his position, and his snark doesn't help him there. I might have an easier time seeing his viewpoint since it closely resembles my own (or am I projecting?).

[edit]also from that interview...

Q: Does it frustrate you that so many of your blog readers (or, at least, commenters) seem to fail to understand many of your messages?

A: It’s more fascinating than frustrating. I love observing how people think and perceive, especially when they do it wrong.

it appears that he gets a lot of people grousing over his blog posts that he views as misinterpretations of what he means... I think it may be a chronic thing where he doesn't make his points clearly, perhaps out of his own desire for amusement. Some people enjoy being misleading and vague for the hullaballou that it causes. Maybe he does it on accident, maybe on purpose. *shrug*

Posted: **Sat Nov 07, 2009 11:21 am**

clikml wrote: Adams is suggesting that as some people investigate what the implications are if time is not in fact a real thing, but rather a quirk of perception (a concept that is rather hard to get my head around, but it is interesting), then that would have implications for evolution as well. It doesn't make it any less real to us, just... different in a larger picture.

Yeah, I remember that stupid World's Smartest Garbageman cartoon.

So I can say that it forms a very stupid picture.

it appears that he gets a lot of people grousing over his blog posts that he views as misinterpretations of what he means... I think it may be a chronic thing where he doesn't make his points clearly, perhaps out of his own desire for amusement. Some people enjoy being misleading and vague for the hullaballou that it causes. Maybe he does it on accident, maybe on purpose. *shrug*

While we're on the subject, I think that Hitler had some insightful things to say in Mein Kampf. Very insightful things if you read through it, especially about his anti-semitism and what to do about Jews.

...

What? I'm being misinterpreted!

Posted: **Sat Nov 07, 2009 11:53 am**

Dilbert completely lost me when it started ranting global warming denial as if it were the "reasonable middle ground." The fact that he's gone into full-blown biology denial doesn't surprise me. What can we say, He's an engineer. The things that are accomplished by biology, chemistry, and physics are a complete mystery to him because it all gets reduced to a simple formula by much smarter people before he even touches it. Then he is under the false impression that all these other disciplines are simple formulas that are small portions of his work.

It's a pretty common piece of bullshit for engineers to throw around.

-Username17

Posted: **Sat Nov 07, 2009 5:02 pm**

Goddamit, Frank! Being an engineer does not make a person a creationist or a Right Wing terrorist, even if there is a correlation.

The Gaming Den

Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.