From the Brow of Zeus

Here's a funny article written by Rob Bricken of Topless Robot: The 10 Most Shameful RPG Dice.

There's quite a few dice I haven't heard of, including an oddball little D5 from the maker of the Zocchihedron, a 100-sided dice of dubious randomness (also featured).

There are dice made of gold and dinosaur bones, but the highlight has to be the utter insanity of the D34.

What are we doing? We have descended into madness as human beings.

I love that line. Read it--and others--by clicking here.

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...


He was angry about the lack of non-slip floor mats.

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Heya guys. Wooo! Dig that new year smell. I know I haven't been around lately, but I've been pretty busy with, you know, stuff.

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For the next 23 hours and 20 minutes, you can read a full preview of my upcoming book, The Dream Quest: Dark Fantasy and Horror. This copy hasn't been proofread yet--or that is to say, I've proofread it, and a lot of good that'll do--so expect a typo or two, but don't let that stop you from getting through it. The upcoming softcover edition will be checked for typos and ready for the holidays.

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Either I'm up too late, or this description makes absolutely no sense:

"FBI Agent Peter Burke teams up with a most unlikely partner to catch him: a master criminal."

An FBI agent teams up with a master criminal to catch himself?

I don't get it.

Maybe someone can watch the White Collar pilot and tell me what the hell it's about. I mean other than some made-for-television Silence of the Lambs ripoff.

Edit: While digging around for that link, I came across this:

When the trail of elusive criminal "The Dutchman" deadends, FBI Agent Peter Burke teams up with a most unlikely partner to catch him; the imprisoned Neal Caffrey: master criminal, con man extraordinaire and Peter's most accomplished collar.

Okay, so that actually makes sense. It's just the first description that's horribly truncated beyond any meaning.

You too can be a writer for Hulu! Just drop random words until you're left with six or seven that might get people to watch the show. For instance, this:

When the trail of elusive criminal "The Dutchman" deadends, FBI Agent Peter Burke teams up with a most unlikely partner to catch him; the imprisoned Neal Caffrey: master criminal, con man extraordinaire and Peter's most accomplished collar.

Becomes this:

Dutchman deadends with a catch; imprisoned con man's accomplished collar.

It's that easy!

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There's a new sitcom aimed at black audiences called -- get this -- Brothers. It's like a bad Family Guy joke.

"Coming this fall on ABC... Jive Turkeys."

Okay, so it sounds awful. Could it get any worse? Yes. According to Bitten & Bound, a sleazy-sounding news site, Kim Kardashian is going to guest star on Brothers. That's right, Kim Kardashian of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. And I'm not putting that in italics because it's the title of a show, I'm doing it to emphasize the fact that you must run, run as far as you can, and for the love of God, don't look back.

Maybe they should just farm shows with tightly focused demographics out to Channel 4, who were able come up with a sitcom about IT Professionals and managed to make it enjoyable for couch potatoes and people who rarely leave their computers (or COM-puters as our British friends say).

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eMusic trials are fun. 50 mp3s, plus an audiobook? I'm there, dude.

The dirty trick is to hand pick singles or find albums with really low track counts. I love They Might Be Giants, but I'm not going to blow half my downloads on a single 23 song album.

So, there's this album called The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull. I previewed a track and immediately liked what I heard. Slow, heavy, southwestern rock, with no lyrics.

Let me put it this way: When you walk into a room, and everyone turns to see who's standing in the doorway, this is the kind of music you want playing.

Just out of curiosity, I checked out Amazon's reader reviews. Skimming down, the lowest review (3/5) I could find caught my eye:

"Sounds like a score to a post-apocalyptic western"

It just goes to show that however ambivalent or negative a review may be, it can still -- sometimes accidentally -- help people decide to buy the product. That "average" review sold me on it more than the five-star gushers. Any time I play this album for my friends, I'm introducing it as "post-apocolyptic western music."

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Dane Cook has been accused of ripping off jokes from fellow stand-up comedian Lewis CK (who you may remember from the Everything is Amazing, Nobody is Happy rant on Conan O'Brien).

Mr. Cook went so far as to tell my favorite Louis CK joke, the one about seeing a guy on a bike who's about to get into an accident and not having enough time to yell out a proper warning. (More details can be found in my upcoming docu-drama, The Cook, The Thief, His Jokes, Her Laughter.)

Well, I just caught Louis CK's latest act, and it's genius. The entire thing is about what a big pathetic out of shape slob he is. Every joke is about his wretched body, inability to pass up a cinnamon roll, weighing as much as two people, etc.

When I pointed out that he was coming up with jokes Dane Cook couldn't possibly steal, my brother's face lit up and he said, "It's like Dane Cook is playing the, 'I'm going to copy you' game, and Lewis CK is saying, 'I'm an idiot! I'm dumb!'"

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With Herculean effort, I put the finishing touches on a story that took way too long to edit. I feel like that guy at the end of "The Raft", who swam to shore, looked back at the lake monster and screamed, "I beat you! I beat you!"

Granted, that was right before the flesh eating blob jumped out of the water and swallowed him whole. But for a second there, he was pretty dang happy.

Right now I'm editing a short story I originally wrote back in 2003. It's about a man who wakes up to a world that is somehow horribly changed. His girlfriend looks the same, and children still play in the streets -- albeit not quite as nicely as before. But now there's nothing reassuring about their smiles, and everyone around him has gone inexplicably hollow.

It's a fun story, short and scary, just the way Rita Perlman likes 'em.

"This is so bad it's almost good. "
"This is so bad it's gone past good and back to bad again."
- Ghost World.

As a confessed ironic consumer, I buy things that no one in their right mind would actually want. Today I picked up something that will no doubt send your heart fluttering, provided you're a teenage girl from 1987.

Kirk Cameron: Dream Guy. Tagline? "The Real Story of America's #1 Heartthrob!"

The look of surprise, then horror, and finally sorrow on people's faces when I show them the book is totally worth it.

I'll be back later with KIRK'S VITAL STATISTICS and, if you're nice, KIRK TRIVIA. But if you want KIRK'S WORDS OF WISDOM, you'll have to buy the damn book yourself.

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That get your attention?

Click here to claim your free M:TG cards! While supplies last! Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery! Offer not available in Phyrexia.

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Hockey Mask + Elvis Hair = Jason Presley.

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Three More Days 'Till Halloween

SILVER SHAMROCK!

As is tradition here at Mirtna.org, we're celebrating the last three days of October with three spooky posts. I've dugdeep in the cobwebbed vaults for the creepiest rants, reviews and random crap I can find.

Today's entry:

Gooflumps: Eat Cheese And Barf!

Three labels warn you, "Not a real Goosebumps book!" Even the title screams "don't sue us!" -- it's a goof, get it? Despite the excessive warnings (ten in all), Gooflumps isn't a badly written parody; it's really a knock off that substitutes poop jokes for satire.

Coming up tomorrow? Either my review of the text adventure game "Stephen King's The Mist" or something even better.

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New Radiation Symbol
For those of you who haven't heard, there's a brand new international radiation symbol. The new symbol depicts radiating waves, an arrow, a running person, a skull and crossbones, and a 15% chance that by the time you're done reading this, you'll already be dead.

Click here to read the full article.

I'm slowly bringing back all my old content. Write an email if there's anything you'd like to see again. Except for, you know, like, dead pets and stuff. Nostalgia is one thing, necromancy is quite another.

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It had to happen sooner or later.

In other news, I finally got Opera to work with Blogger. I just had to go to Tools/Preferences/Cookies and check "Accept All Cookies" instead of "Reject Third Party Cookies". Doesn't matter, because I still Delete New Cookies When Exiting Opera, so there.

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It's always interesting -- and a little scary -- when my page is quoted as a source. My stuff shouldn't be considered a source for anything other than a few laughs. But still, it's nice to be taken seriously.

TV Tropes tracks "story components or elements which have become standardized through decades (or more) of use."

It's kind of a wiki of television cliches, and they've got an article called Blond Guys Are Evil with a big ol' quote from yours truly.

"In Hollywood, blond guys have two choices: Dye your hair brown, save the world and get the leading lady. Or keep it blond and work on your bad guy face."
-- J.R. Antrim Vs. Evil Blond Men

Their description sums up the cliche quite nicely:

Fair-haired guys in media almost always end up evil. Especially noticeable if they are compared to a nice dark-haired guy, or if they are opposite ends of a Love Triangle.

If they're not evil, they're still jerks, although they may or may not be nice underneath, and they usually lose. Where a Betty And Veronica usually has a blonde Betty and a dark- or red-haired Veronica, a male version of this setup will do the reverse.

Given that blond heroes were not rare in films 40 or more years ago, this may be a Cyclic Trope, albeit with a longer cycle time than that for female "bad hair colors"

The Betty/Veronica bit is a good point.

Read the full list of Evil Blond Guy Tropes.

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Nine Inch Nails released a new free album today. The Slip is available from NIN.com, or you save 'em some bandwidth and legally download it from The Pirate Creative Commons Bay: MP3 and FLAC.

1. 999,999
2. 1,000,000
3. letting you
4. discipline
5. echoplex
6. head down
7. lights in the sky
8. corona radiata
9. the four of us are dying
10. demon seed

length: 43:45

streaming audio available at iLike. the slip is licensed under a creative commons attribution non-commercial share alike license. we encourage you to remix it share it with your friends, post it on your blog, play it on your podcast, give it to strangers, etc.

Done.

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This is the kind of thing I am faced with every time I check my Yahoo email account.

Friends List of the Ring. So not-funny it hurts.

First Gandalf asks, "R U there Frodo?"
To which Frodo responds, "What up, G?"

Get it? G....as in Gandalf! HAHAHAAHAHAHA!

Then Gandalf emails directions to Frodo. But they're bad directions, and we cut to a clip of a car plunging off a cliff, followed by a closeup of a cell phone with the text message, "Worst Directions EVER!"

I'm surprised Frodo can text after all the spinal damage from the car accident. Why not just go all out and use "EVAR"?

My mind reeled. How something like this legal? Then I remembered parody laws protect major corporations as well as the little guy. But come on, couldn't anyone at Something Awful have done a better job than this? Even the automatic spambot protection? I think I could write a QBasic program with a better sense of humor. Who does Yahoo hire for this stuff, the writers at SNL? (ooh diss.)

This is why I am switching to Gmail. Not just the free POP access. It's their gentle lack of "humor".

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This is an exciting time to be alive and online. New breakthroughs are happening every day. The following post on Lifehacker has me especially excited.

How revolutionary!

Now let's try it again without the bullshit.

Most of us who have websites most likely have links to other websites. Yahoo!-er Ian Kennedy has discovered nothing.

All kidding aside, Lifehacker's one on my favorite daily sites. But c'mon.

UPDATE: For the curious, this is a blogroll -- a thumbnail of your favorite websites, which is too small and blurry to make out, thus giving the user no idea what the hell he is clicking on other than "that blog is blue" or "that blog has gold lines running down the sides." Brilliant.

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All I know about the possible Microsoft-Yahoo merger is that, if it happens, it's going to suck.

Oh, and depending on which news service you check, you get a slightly different headline:

Yahoo News:


Now here's the same story on Google News:


I love corporate bias.

Microsoft Live Search is crammed with zombie sites and Hotmail has a reputation for deleting accounts after 30 days of activity (even if they're 9/11 hijackers), so I'm really hoping MS doesn't !@#$ up Yahoo! Mail and my current start page.

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After a full year of insisting gamers get an extra job or cash in their daughter's college fund for a $600 monstrosity known as PS3, Sony has finally issued a price that drops perilously close to affordable, maybe, if I sell a few pints of my blood.

But caveat emptor (which is Latin for, "hey, check me out, I know Latin"). The new model of PlayStation 3 is even more feature-reduced than the infamous "Xbox 360 Retarded." Yes, it is... PlayStation 3 Alzheimers.

Why Alzheimers? Because it's forgotten a proud tradition that Sony started with the PlayStation 2:

The $400 PlayStation 3 is not backwards-compatible. Not even a little. You can't play PSOne or PlayStation 2 games on it. (Hell, you're lucky it can still play DVD movies.)

"The new model is also no longer backwards compatible with PlayStation 2 titles, reflecting both the reduced emphasis placed on this feature amongst later purchasers of PS3, as well as the availability of a more extensive line-up of PS3 specific titles (a total of 65 titles across all genres by Christmas)." [Link]

You heard 'em right -- 65 titles. Who could ask for anything more? Merry Christmas!

The reason for this, Sony will assure you, has nothing to do with the fact that you can now download PSOne games directly onto your PlayStation 3 -- for a small fee, of course.

In other words, the new PlayStation 3 won't let you play Final Fantasy VII, but it WILL let you pay to download a copy that works.

Can you imagine if Sony redesigned other things -- like your girlfriend?

The good news: She's a lot cheaper.

The bad news: Now she's missing a few ports. And she's no longer "backwards compatible," if you know what I mean.

Ha!

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"I need ninety cents. I'd like to trade you for something. Like a business deal."

And being a nice guy, I automatically fish around in my pocket for loose change.

The man, dressed in a black leather jacket, John Lennon glasses and a thick coating of dust, continues: "I'm going to be walking to [a town about 14 miles north of here]. So if you see me, honk and wave at me."

"I sure will," I say, and hand him a dime and a quarter. "It's all I have," I say apologetically.

The biker-bum glances at the change then glares at me in disgust. "I meant like a business deal."

I stare out at the open field next to K-Mart, wrecking my brain for something random I could buy from a leather-clad hobo for less than a dollar. Some stink, perhaps, or a dead thing he'd picked up along the way.

"Forget about it," he says, cheering up. "Have a nice day."

Now, here's what I should have done: I should have asked for a 90 cent dance. Yeah, a bum dance, sort of like the kind of thing a cowboy would shoot out of you, only instead of bullets I'd be lobbing pennies and dimes at his feet until the $0.90 had piled up. Then when he got tired, I would have shouted, "More! More! I want my bum-dance! You have to really earn it, man! This is a business deal!"

Or, you know, he could have just accepted the pocket change and dropped the power-yuppie hobo act.

90 cent business deal my ass.

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