fiction is lying.

Here is a video about shit I have laying around that I like:

The Pez painting is 19:1 scale.

After years of destroying its own reputation as a television station that shows music videos, MTV is trying to redeem itself in part by putting on the internet what it should not have ever removed from its television station. The video archive seems to be succeeding.

How far we’ve fallen. What was lost in MTV’s destruction will never be completely explained or retrieved. It’s sad, but at least we now have these things to take us back to those innocent times. It is still pathetic, however, that a Britney Spears video is the most viewed on this site. Have some fucking decency, people.

Now, if it were only possible to resurrect the golden age of animation…

More profound small statements here.

On the lookout for images of these in meatspace:

Oh shit! Obey has endorsed Obama!

I feel that he is more a statesman than a politician.

Designer endorsements…that is classy shit!

(obligatory rhetorical hypothetical: has Black President Fever taken off yet? tidal wave)

(more…)

This sketch from The State was the first time I had been made aware of the idea of pushing a nonsense argument beyond its own limit:

This method has come under frequent use the past couple of years under what has become the insane modern umbrella of serious comedy.

With some comedy we are just past the point of jokes, where a joke can even be past itself, and this is that case. The real emphasis lies in drawing attention to the argument despite its pointlessness. This is a serious matter. This is acting; there’s an art form in excessively pigheaded lying.

Seem familiar? If you work in a bureaucratic environment, this crap tends to happen in real life! Politics? Watch a modern debate and tell me those guys are pushing lies to the point of comedy. They use this beyond circular reasoning crap as a debate tactic. It’s post-ironic.

The Boondocks has become almost a frustratingly dumb show replicating finally in style and writing what it always replicated in visual design: shitty anime. This week was much, much better than the last, but the show is still very shallow. It’s a fun ripoff of the The Mighty Ducks ripping off The Bad News Bears or Slapshot or South Park or something.

Xavier’s not a big thinker this week, but it’s also not as gratuitously gratuitous. Some interesting ideas, but a lot of garbage that some people might accidentally take seriously.

The hook with Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job is that anything is fair game as long as it could possibly be considered funny by anyone. Or maybe it’s an inside joke. Or maybe it’s performance art (complete with everyday people performing in weird ways) blended into video art (complete with shitty vhs effects) and something worked. Steve Brule rules also. This week’s is about dolls but this clip isn’t (pull the timer to :50 to see what I’m saying):

video removed!

And Garth Marenghi was a weird, slight letdown.

Nintendo America didn’t release Super Mario Bros. 2 in the United States because they didn’t think people would buy a game that looked just like the original, and they thought it was too hard (which it is, unless compared to the second half of the first game). Eventually it came along as the Lost Levels in Mario All-Stars, but was it ever really much more than just a damned sequel? Instead, this acid trip got made into a Mario game:

Familiar music (glad they beefed it up for us)? Assuming the lost levels thing isn’t entirely bullshit hearsay, there are a few problems with either the myth or the actual decision Nintendo made.

If you look at other Nintendo Entertainment System series, you see that sequels became a commonplace way to get more games out, and in many cases just make some cash for garbage. But those sequels generally had a few things in common.

1. They sold.
2. They looked very, very similar to their predecessors: Mega Man, Double Dragon, Castlevania, Final Fantasy, Metroid, Dragon Warrior, Adventure Island, etc.
3. They were almost never an entirely different Japanese game in disguise with very few changes.
4. They always warranted unneeded items on lists, or even unneeded lists.

Mario’s a weirdo all because they decided to make his first sequel another goddamn game in disguise.

One of the few major exceptions to this rule, which also follows the “logic” behind the Mario Bro decision, is Zelda. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, looked very little like its predecessor, but maintained Zelda continuity traditions that continue today. Zelda II was, however, insanely difficult.

Zelda stories are like a comic book over the years. The stories come from different places and do different things. Link is a bunch of different dudes. Mario’s just one guy. It seems now that he hasn’t changed at all since Super Mario Bros. 3. Instead, the game engines that drew him did. He’s a brutally minimal example of technological evolution, as are the worlds he lands in. Mario is video games.

The new adult swim show for this week, Xavier: Renegade Angel is a cd-rom loaded nightmare from 1994. The show looks like cutscenes from all the adventure and puzzle games of the early 90s available on the revolutionary newish cd-rom format, or perhaps even cruder. It appears as if it could’ve been “shot” in Second Life with a shitty digital camera and then digitized (trans-en-re-enconvertificated) again for the internets.

You might recognize the voice of the dumb main character. It sounds like a few voices from one show in particular. The reason is because the show was made by the same folks that made Wonder Showzen, PFFR.

It’s tragically hip and mentally twisting.

Oh and I broke down and got Guitar Hero III. I cry about it in an emovideo here.

I finished hard in about six hours straight though, failing only on Raining Blood, thus sacrificing my shit to SLAYER

Also it’s awesome, but I really explain it in the emovideo if you care about that kind of game, including some problems (I forgot to mention the almost unnoticeable ads), none of which really involved SLAYER

HATE THE NEW LOADING SCREEN AND THE LEAD SINGER HATE HATE HATE

Otherwise new art is good and all that mess. Some of the character exaggerations are for the best, and others aren’t. There’s surprises and disappointments (oh, my Judy, what did you do with your clothes!), and a hell of a lot of new crap to break your hands playing SLAYER

I cannot wait to stick all five fingers way up deep all gross into expert.

I’ve always thought the hydra was good torrent metaphor. It’s come up a lot lately.

No one is going to believe this, but I’m being completely honest here, have never committed plagiarism, and take pride in having an occasion original idea per decade. This was one I had early tonight at work, around 7pm:

When I got home, I about double-shit my pants when I saw this eerily similar image on that one site!:

I still can’t believe it. I mean, it’s not the most creative idea I’ve ever had, and I’ll admit to it being a little easy, but god damn. Here’s a detail of mine:

Some interesting things in common or different include mine having one less head, mine only having one pair of headphones all emosmashed on the ground, mine having a huge demon tri-spiked tail, and I can draw cloven hooves. Mine also has no little Dutch flying avenger, but instead has an inactive user.

This is an amazing coincidence, sort of. That other guy’s image (I think) came first, but I’d never seen it, so I’d rate this probably mildly weird.