The Occasional Solipsist

For those who don't know, t-shirt hell is a company that markets extremely funny, oftentimes offensive t-shirts for the online shopping enthusiast. Some shining examples of shirts that I would like to buy but probably will never fork the cash for are Don't Neglect the Balls, Your Sister is Hot, But Your Mom Does That Thing With Her Tongue, Mary Was Only a Virgin If..., and my personal favourite I Support Single Moms. (In a 3/4 jersey, baby blue/navy, size Small)

I received the monthly t-shirt hell newsletter today and included with the latest in their very funny offensive t-shirts was copies of correspondence between the company and some very offended hatemailers. I thought I'd include the emails for those who like me, have the kind of warped sense of humour that finds these kinds of shirts funny.

I'll also throw in a disclaimer that while I like a good joke as much as the next guy (so long as the next guy is middle class and white - HA, just kidding. see?), I don't recommend all of the products that t-shirt hell sells. Just the funny ones.

Here's the email traffic:

----- Original Message -----

From: Kellijean*** @ ***.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 7:26 PM
Subject: (no subject)

Dear who ever makes money off of a disability that not only effects my brothers but also millions of children and adults in the world your shirt "autistic kids rock" is beyond horrible autism is not a joke its a horrible disorder and I would like to know how you sleep at night making money off of hurting handicapped children I hope your company goes under and you someday have the pleasure of meeting one of the disabled misunderstood children that you are hurting so you know how truly disturbed and ignorant you truly are!

sincerely,
Kelly N.

P. S.: I am also a teenager who frequently buys tee shirts online along with my friends and I'm am going to work very hard to make sure no one i know will buy any of your "funny tee shirts"

(Editor's Note: It is ironic that you complain about our autism shirt, when one of the symptoms of autism is that the person lacks a sense of humor.
Perhaps, your brother's autism has rubbed off on you? Perhaps, it occurred when you were having him eat candy corn out of your panties in the back of your parents' walk-in closet? Or perhaps you don't really have a brother and the autistic person in question was you all along? The shirt in question does not hurt autistic children any more than it hurts them when you poke them with pointed sticks. Maybe that's a bad example. Regardless, the enjoyment of this shirt hinges on the person who sees it having a sense of humor, regardless of whether they are autistic. The boy who collects carts at the grocery store finds this shirt hilarious and I know he's some kind of retard. Of course he also finds soda cans, and bits of broken glass to be amusing, consequently he may not be the best judge. But I'm sure he is quite fond of candy corn, so you may find a use for him.)


----- Original Message -----

From: Rev. James J.
Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 3:35 PM
Subject: Offensive

"Nothing runs like a queere"?

This is patently offensive and is yet another example of how it is still ok to "smear" the lgbt community.

How fitting that this came across my email desk on the 7th anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepherd, a young gay man brutally beaten and left to die on a fence in Wyoming. A student brought it to my attention, a young man struggling with issues of sexuality himself. This product, others like it, and the sentiment behind it make my job much more difficult.

I would suggest that you withdraw this product.

The Rev. James J. OCC
University Chaplain
Associate Dean of **** Chapel
**** University

(Editor's Note: It's always nice to see a University Chaplain take the time out of his busy schedule to address the important issues facing college students today. No, not date rape, substance abuse, or dwindling supplies of financial aid. You want to devote your time to exorcising the funny t-shirts from campus. I'm sure the young man struggling with issues of sexuality is tormented by our t-shirt. I doubt his struggles have anything to do with the warm welcome he has received his entire life from organized religion, and people like you, telling him his soul is doomed to eternal damnation just because he enjoys a little ass play and the occasional reach around. We are equal opportunity offenders. We poke fun at all races, colors, religions, and sexual orientations equally. So, until your church performs a Wiccan coming of age ceremony don't preach to me about tolerance.
It's too bad the young man in question didn't seek out a Catholic priest who could not only offer spiritual guidance, but also valuable tips on
technique.)

Labels: funny

There's a new review of the upcoming Tomb Raider Legend set for release Spring 2006 at IGN.com. Updated screens and video are included, and thanks to IGN, Lara has regained her place on my desktop in all her rendered glory.

One thing they finally answer in the preview is what console the game will be playable on, and the answer is all of them. Apparently Tomb Raider Legend will be playable on PC, PS2, AND a special port to coincide with the XBOX 360 launch.

I love having a great game to wait for. Not too long mind you, but everybody needs something to look forward to.

And since I have everything else I need; great wife, beautiful baby girl, something to pay the bills with, a reasonably long life expectancy, I can now put all of my anticipation into waiting expectantly for cool new video games to come out.

Labels: gaming

There have been two truly great movie adaptations of comic books in my lifetime: Spiderman, and now Batman Begins.

Honourable mention should probably go out to Brian Singer's first X-Men outing, but that movie was geared way too much for the kiddies and non-fans, so fell pretty short. And what does it say about a movie when its sequel is inifinitely better than the original?

We could get bogged down in discussing the long list of shitty adaptations (The Hulk, Daredevil, etc, etc), but I just don't have the time.

So. To the Reviewmobile!

Batman Begins does for The Dark Knight what Keaton, Kilmer, and (shudder) Clooney never could: Put the anti-hero in his rightful place in iconic history.

The movie opens with the necessary origin story, a job that is very well done here. We see the genesis of Wayne's phobia of bats before we get an inkling of what happens to his parents behind the theatre. (No spoiler there - everyone knows about that already).

From there we see Wayne travel the world, learning from criminals, being trained as a ninja, and finally making the decision that Gotham can be saved if he is strong enough to choose justice over revenge.

When Wayne finally does return reinvested in assuming his father's quest to clean up Gotham, we are treated with the dark, tough, terrifying figure that those of us who read the comic book know.

This movie makes the Keaton era Batman movies look like third rate fanfic: Gotham looks like a real city, Batman's costume, armour, and cape all make sense, as do all his gadgets. The special effects are awesome, the villains believable, and the acting was top notch, even that coming from Mrs. Tom Cruise.

In fact, the best part of this movie was the acting : Finally, finally Gary Oldman gets to play a good guy! Probably the single most gifted actor I've ever seen, (If you don't agree, stop reading this and go rent True Romance) Oldman has the unique ability to make you forget that he's acting and allows you to look past the actor and see him only for the character he's portraying. And the rest of the cast is well-suited as well: Liam Neeson, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Rutger Hauer, and finally Christian Bale. The big guns were definitely brough to bear to make this movie.

Bottom line, go right past rent and go directly to buy for this DVD. Must have for any fan.

Labels: comics, movies, scifi

Came across a 'most influential science fiction films' meme going around the net today. A meme is an idea or information pattern that causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is considered memetic.The term meme as it applies to web culture is a list of something that you customize as it pertains to you, and pass it on for others to do the same. In this case, you bold the entries that you've seen and throw it out there. That's all there is to it:

• The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!
• Akira
• Alien
• Aliens
• Alphaville
• Back to the Future
• Blade Runner
• Brazil
• Bride of Frankenstein
• Brother From Another Planet
• A Clockwork Orange
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• Contact
• The Damned
• Destination Moon
• The Day The Earth Stood Still
• Delicatessen
• Escape From New York
• ET: The Extraterrestrial
• Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial)
• The Fly (1985 version)
• Forbidden Planet
• Ghost in the Shell
• Gojira/Godzilla
• The Incredibles
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version)
• Jurassic Park
• Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior
• The Matrix
• Metropolis
• On the Beach
• Planet of the Apes (1968 version)
• Robocop
• Sleeper
• Solaris (1972 version)
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
• Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
• The Stepford Wives
• Superman
• Terminator 2: Judgement Day
• The Thing From Another World
• Things to Come
• Tron
• 12 Monkeys
• 28 Days Later
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• La Voyage Dans la Lune
• War of the Worlds (1953 version)

Funny that there are so many stinkers on this list. Funnier still that I've seen almost all of them. I don't know who comes up with these things. Glaring omissions from the above list, off the top of my head, are Logan's Run, Soylent Green, 1984, Dark City, The Fifth Element, The Thirteenth Floor, and maybe Westworld, all of which I've seen multiple times.

Labels: movies, scifi

First up, a really funny comic for anyone who's ever played any of the 'F-Zero' games. A buddy and I lived in an apartment for awhile that was kind of the hub for all of our friends, and at any given time, there was likely someone playing F-Zero on our old SNES console. What a ridiculous game, but I can't tell you how many hours we spent out of our heads battling it out on that game. The strip is here.

Mute City. LMAO.

And fans of the genre-spawning vidoegame DOOM, who have been cringing for the last few years anytime the movie version is mentioned, can finally breathe a sigh of relief. First reviews coming out for this movie sound very promising, and all signs point to the best videogame adaption since the first Resident Evil movie (and NOT the despicable sequel, cool fact that it was shot in Toronto notwithstanding). Apparently DOOM is going to be just like you remember the videogame as you played it, gore and all. IGN has an outstanding review.

And now to the offensive read. If you're a person who thinks that op-ed pieces about the quality of female drivers just aren't funny, I'd give this one a miss. For anyone else, the hilarity is here.

Labels: gaming

1. Clark and Lana woke up in bed together after a night of non-superpowered sex


2. Lex has restarted his campaign to poison our boy Clark's relationship with Lana


3. Clark got his powers back and in fine form saved Smallville from no less than a nuclear missile


4. Clark got shot, died, and was resurrected, like all great fictional heroes (see: Neo, Sherlock Holmes, Jesus Christ)


5. The show is finally being written for its audience (me): villains actually killing people, people bleeding when they're shot, people over 18 having sex, etc

Man, I love that show.

Excellent review of the episode in question, 'Hidden' here.

Labels: smallville

Cosplayers: Whenever I get it in my head that I devote too much time to videogames (playing, reading & blogging about them, thinking about playing, reading & blogging about them) I think of the people that get together at conventions that are held for the express purpose of wearing the outfits of their favourite videogame/anime/scifi characters, and just laugh and laugh.

But as much as these people are (and should remain) the object of everyone's ridicule, I came across an article today about a few cosplayers that, silly as they are, at least got the costumes right. The picture of Tifa and her anatomically incorrect boobies speaks to that point. Full article here.

Don't get me wrong though: If Superwife comes to bed in full Princess (from Battle of the Planets) costume, complete with gogo boots and the ridiculously short skirt, you can be sure I won't kick her out.

Labels: final fantasy, funny, gaming, superwife

So I finally realized what was going on with the Stylecatcher plugin for my recent MT 3.2 upgrade.

I have spent hours frustratedly swearing, trying to figure out what the hell was causing Stylecatcher to line up all of my site content into one column whenever I applied a new style. I finally gave up and settled on a very boring, plain as hell format with the intention to someday manually customize everything to my own tastes.

But earlier today, I was screwing around in my MT admin panel and finally realized that in order to use the Stylecatcher plugin, a base css file has to be installed into a particular directory, referrenced by the output file generated by the plugin, a fact that should have been obvious even to a n00b like me.

Reminds me of all the times that I've told people, in providing tech support, that before they go any further, to first make sure the computer is plugged in.

Anyway, bottom line is now that I've got it working properly, I get to change my site whenever the mood takes me, AND I don't have to screw around manually rewriting my stylesheeet everytime.

Labels: tech

The Green Bay Packers won over New Orleans 52-3 this afternoon, finally validating fans like me sitting through the first four games of the season that saw them get their asses handed to them over and over and over.

Its a long way from 'Packers win the Superbowl!', but it's a start.

And why is it such a good time for Smallville fans, you ask? Because (SPOILER) Clark Kent finally slept with Lana Lang.

Yes he was a virgin until he married Lois Lane in the comic books, but let's remember that that particular plotline was written circa 1940. So kudos to the writers at Smallville for bringing Superman boldly into the 70's and getting the poor guy layed.

Now, if they could just find an excuse for Lana, Chloe, Clark and some red kryptonite to get trapped in a lingerie store for a few hours.....

Labels: smallville

I came across this strip moments before taking X-Men Legends 2 out of the box for the first time.

Haha, razzle dazzle.

Read the full strip here.

Labels: gaming

Today we tried Trinity out on a swinging baby chair that was given to us by a friend a few months ago. (Thanks Resa). I thought the thing was busted after I changed the batteries and found the swinging mechanism lacking in the swinging department. Turns out that the chair requires some weight in it before you can tell that is is indeed swinging along nicely.

But the thing that struck me about the chair (other than how fast that fucker can go when it is set on full speed - I thought it was going to catapult Trinity across the room at one point) was the very hypnotic effect of the blinking lights built into the top of it. The lights are synchronized to your typical baby-fare music, soothing, etc. But my daughter was so utterly mesmerized by the lights as they blinked on and off, she looked like she was going into a trance.

So like any good dad would do, rather than take her out of the chair before she received some kind of long term damage, I just kept repeating "You will be Prime Minister of Canada....You will be Prime Minister of Canada"

Labels: trinity

It was reported today that actor Nicolas Cage, star of great movies like Faceoff and Kiss of Death, and crapfests like Matchstick Men, 3000 Miles to Graceland, and pretty much every other movie he's made to date, has become a father to a healthy baby boy.

Normally this isn't the sort of thing you'd see on this blog.

I kind of hate celebrities, and the fact that western global culture is obsessed with celebrities and every facet of their lives. I'd go so far as to say that if i came across a 'celebrity' I would be more likely to laugh at them than be overcome by any desire that they acknowledge me in any way. In my world the real celebrities are the doctors working on a cure for cancer, the people of The Planetary Society, the people who want to effect positive change in the world for no reason other than because the species benefits from their efforts.

However.

Nicolas Cage named his son Kal-El.

Again, that name is Kal-El, as in the fictional sole survivor of the doomed planet Krypton. You might know him better as Superman.

So Mr. Cage, as much as I think actors are disgustingly glorified in our society, I have to tip my hat to you. In a world where my wife wouldn't have divorced me just for suggesting it, and if we had a son instead of a daughter, I would have named my boy the same thing: Start him off right.

Labels: superman

I just got ahold of an in-game screengrab for the upcoming Tomb Raider: Legend game.

Speaking strictly visually, how great does this game look? I'm chomping at the bit to get the game already, and there's no release date in site yet.

But let's face facts: for anyone who is a fan of the franchise, there've been a few disapointments in the years since Lara made her world-altering debut. Personally, I liked Angel of Darkness. A lot. But some of the other titles really came across like Eidos was just phoning it in.

And then there was a bit of brand watering-down that occurred after the Tomb Raider movie sequel made hardly a blip across radar screens across the globe. Too bad too, because Angelina Jolie made a great Lara. No Rhona Mitra, but still really good.

But this next revamp of the series promises to deliver where some of the previous games have fallen short, with Eidos even bringing back one of the original designers to bring the franchise back full circle.

So fans of the franchise can choose to believe that this will be the sequel that restores Lara Croft to her proper place in gaming royalty, or not. I'm a half full guy, so I'm hoping for greatness.

One thing that isn't clear however is what platform the new game will be for. Josytiq reports an XBOX 360/PS3 release, while the official site currently referes to the 2nd gen consoles.

Might be a smart move to bring it to the 3rd gen machines, except that I haven't made peace with that $500-600 price tag just yet. Hopefully Joystiq just missed the mark on this one.

Labels: gaming

Dear Trinity,

Today you are 3 months old, an age that many parents and child experts use as a developmental milestone.

You are many things now that you weren't even a month ago.

For one, you are a hell of a lot bigger. You weigh somewhere around 14 lbs now, making you almost double your birth weight. Your face has really filled out, and you now look like I always expected a real live baby to look, rather than the unbelievably tiny, vulnerable, fragile being that you had been to this point.



You are becoming more articulate every day, having had the eureka moment of discovering that those noises were indeed coming out of you, and that they could be replicated at will. So now, not often yet, but every once in awhile you will blurt out a string of coos and squeaks, sometimes laughing a little about it afterwards.

And man, can you laugh. Most of the time when you smile its a fleeting thing, as something else quickly takes your attention. Sometimes you flash us your toothless grin, sometimes you give us a shy smile as you turn your head away, as if you're being coy and hiding a secret from your Mom and I. But sometimes you let loose with this wild giggle that sends my heart racing. You really amaze me.



And just for the record, and despite what the terrible twos might do to my recollections of your early months, you are a fantastic baby. You wake up happy in the mornings, you rarely cry at all, you play often and with enthusiasm, and you look around the world with such fascination, drinking in everything you're exposed to with the eyes of the truly innocent. You are a real joy to be around.



You can also be really funny, and have decided to expose your personality to us in measured doses. On the rare occasions that you are unhappy, you like to express your displeasure with a short, no-nonsense series of grunts. 'Pick me up', 'Feed me', Change me', all with the air of someone who is used to getting her commands obeyed quickly and without question. And when you tell us to do something, as of right now, we listen immediately. Maybe that's the novelty not wearing off yet. I hope it never does.

So to celebrate the 3 month anniversary of your birth, we decided to take you to Niagara Falls this afternoon, so that you can say later that we took you to see something that people travel all over the world to look at. And if we still live here when you're older, you'll take them for granted just like everyone else here does. You slept through most of it, but you ended up having your lunch under some shady trees within about a hundred yards of the falls, so that was kind of cool.



I have to go cuddle my little girl now, but I'll write you again next month.

Love,

Daddy

Labels: trinity

I really don't have much to say except that Trinity and I watched the season opener of Smallville season 5 tonight.

And. It. Was. Fucking. Awesome.

Whether you're talking about the introduction of the Fortress of Solitude and the Phantom Zone, or Braniac's entrance, or Chloe telling Clark that she has known for a long time about his superpowers, and he in turn telling her everything else, it was just awesome.

I still can't stand Lana, and Clark should be with Chloe, but that didn't happen in the comic, so its not too likely.

I seriously love that SciFi has gone mainstream enough in my lifetime that really high quality shows & movies based on beloved icons from my childhood can get made.

Because as a solipsist its all about me anyways.

Can't wait til next week.

Labels: smallville

That is the name of a book I'm keeping a lookout for.

Let me know if you come across it, because it turns out that I need it rather badly:

I've been playing with my Movable Type 3.2 upgrade, and every new feature really impresses me.

Except for Stylecatcher, which is supposed to make switching stylesheets as simple as a few mouseclicks, as opposed to the arduous recoding of a css file that used to be required.

But because of some heretofore undiscovered talent for fucking up simple instructions, I cannot change the default (read:ugly) stylesheet that ships with MT without causing all the content to go to one column and generally look like ass.

You'd think that I could at least copy the css file I want and manually overwrite my templated stylesheet right? Nope, even that fucks it up. Must be something with the way I ctrl-v. I hear its all in the wrist.

Anyway, I did manage to find one stylesheet that, with a few minor tweaks, fits into my site nicely.

So this is the new look for the site; learn to like it, because with the huge pain in the ass that changing it will be, its staying the way it is for a long while.

Labels: tech