Saturday, March 31, 2007

Demo Fun #8



Today's demo is "No Kidding" and can be found at the usual place.

We start on a dull grey screen with some black text. The demo was made by Dutch USA Team. Underneath, there's a sentence that says
We must be serious this time, we have a problem...


The text starts to scroll underneath. "Hi there all you guys," it starts. Hi, what's wrong? The author identifies himself as MC. He and his team is called "The Great USA Team." I thought they were Dutch. What are they trying to pull here?

The Great USA/Dutch Team still has a problem ; somebody else in Germany is using their name! You know, I never trusted those guys. MC doesn't think it's a coincidence, and you know, I agree. It's not like great, USA, and team are common words. I smell a conspiracy. MC tells us that the name was already his since 1984! Those Communazi bastards!

So MC lays his cards on the table.

We'll get very rude!!!


YEAH! YOU TELL THOSE THEIVING BASTARDS, MC! But first, MC wants to tell us where the 'musix' comes from.

After a big ellipse, MC says hey to the guys in Flensburg. You hear that, Karl? You're going down! MC asks why the theft took place and announces that he's angry. I'd feel sorry for the fakers but they brought this on to themselves. MC rants on that there are some people who even greet them! Damn, I'd hate to review a demo where a long list of nerds include "The (Fake, Tee hee!) Great USA Team". As MC poins out, these jerks are trying to get famous of The Real TGUSAT's hard work.

Like MC poins out, clearly this criminal stuff is happening because TGUSAT's products are so "ace". Then MC sums it all up.

...and then they say, "look, we made this" (but we did)


MC finally loses it and says the f word at the German crooks. They had it coming! MC screams at them to change their names because TGUSAT is the first, they are worst. TGUSAT is the first and will be the last. MC announces that until the fakers are destroyed or they change their name, TGUSAT will now be known as The Dutch USA Team. MC then threatens his enemies to change their names or they won't be allowed to greet him in their demos. TGUSAT/TDUSAT is known for all "USA No Border Demos", "+..." demos, and all the musix by MC. And that's not all! Some products are stunning!

MC hopes everything will be solved quick, and promises to all good hackers that his team will still make demos. He mentions his friend Honey of 1001 and mentions his/her picture from a demo called Suburbia. Also, we learn that a guy name MAD (Mr. Mad?) whose work sounds fab!!! However, MAD uses a lot of memory, which puzzles MC.

Suddenly, MC brightens up and screams "YYYYEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHH!" MC is once again working on his musix routines but this time he's writing everything down before he makes a piece of non working spaghetti code. Good for him. Shows that he's learning. MC says in paranthesis that he just wants to be independant. Apparently the eighties were the decade of spaghetti code. That's why graphics sucked so bad. MC is also working on a game.

What about a greeting list?


About damn time! TDUSAT greets: 1001 Crew, New Stars, All Flashers, Dynamic Duo, TMC, TMR, BAM, (all computer musicians including MAD), All at CNET, Jazzcat.

MC says good bye, except for the ****ers at Germany. MC threatens again that he may have to get real rude!!!

Change your name! No kidding! We hate u!


MC uses some more rude but understandable language and tells the German team to learn proper English. It would all be real easy if they just changed their name, and MC thanx them if they do. MC is too nice.

Before MC goes, he mentions that there is a bug in his program, "Soundrelocater." Long story short, one of the bytes is screwed up. Our author also asks the German team to look up his older demos so they can find his address.






Stats:

Date - Sometime in the eighties.
Scrolling text - Standard
Font - Flashing between white, orange, and yellow
Europeans - Yep.
Bragging about Accomplishments - Yep.
Putting other hackers down - Putting down theives!
Listing a ton of other nerds - Yep.
Harsh language - Four cusswords of the f variety.
Song - 4/10

Friday, March 30, 2007

Tork Book Club: Tomb Raider: The Man of Bronze



Ok, I wish I could start this with a stronger book. When I mentioned a "Tork's Book Club" back in January I imagined I would give my thoughts on the Discworld series among other books I've read. Sadly, my poor memory has forced me to put this off for a while. Now I'm going to discuss the book in question since I just finished reading it and it should be fresh in my mind.

I would just like to say that there are
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!












Ok, I don't need to poin this out, but Lara Croft is a video game character with big boobs. If you think I'm a perv for saying that, then I would poin out her hype during her early years. It was all about her breasts. It was very annoying since her first game was a genuine classic, and the second had it's moments, but the video game magazines all focused on her chest. The very people who now put her down are probably the same people who were drooling over her back in 1996.

Oh, and Lara is a British (former?) aristocrat who has Indiana Jones-like adventures. I would mention her backstory but they changed it from the first game to the fourth game to the movies. Her choice of weapon is two pistols.

This is the third of three novels. The first novel was written in an attempt to provide background from the time Lara "died" at the end of her fourth game and when she reappeared in the sixth game. The other two have no specific connection to the series. Each novel was written by a different SciFi author.

The plot of this last novel is much like the plot found in a video game. While the first novel had Lara travel with some Muslims and had many discussions about their culture, this novel sets up a plot where Lara finds some artifact and must go find three MacGuffins. Action persues. This novel differs from the last two in that it's written in the first person and much more violent.

The plot revolves around a sophisticated, mysterious "robot" that's made of bronze. It was once broken 10000 years ago into many pieces and is trying to reattach it's parts. The setup to this story has Lara meeting with an old friend at a secret hostpital after he survives an attack. The friend has a briefcase handcuffed to his arm. While at the secret hospital in Warsaw, mercenaries attack. This includes some very violent stuff, including the scene where Lara takes out one guard by stabbing him in the heart. It's rather nasty because she pretended to be on drugs to lure him to her legs and considered kissing him to silence his last breath. Later on a bomb goes off and sends shrapnel into a guy's head. The only time I can remember the other novels being this violent was the end of the second novel, and that was an accidental death involving the bends.

Anyway, Lara finally finds out what's in the briefcase. It's suppose to be a map to the other parts. Lara then meets the Bronze Man, who we find out is the inspiration for the myth of Osiris. Bronze has contacts all over the world and has united many religions just so he can find his missing parts. (In exchange, he offers his brain to catch many criminals.) In this case, he only needs his leg. An attack by a nemesis pushes Lara to go find the three pieces of the leg and to get revenge.

The video game plot is now set up. The next three sections of the book has Lara teaming up with an old friend and investigating where the next piece is. Stage two involves an old Russian friend and a cave. She learns about the mysterious radiation of the bronze parts (including a part with a charging mastadon) and it's effect on people. Stage three has them teaming up with a sea captain and fighting against zombies. Stage four has those three teaming up with an Aborigine woman while fighting giant spiders (ICK!), an giant alligator, and having an obligatory temple to raid. The final part of the novel is a face off between Lara and the villian behind everything and her nemesis.

We spend the novel inside Lara's head, and she's really the only character to get much characterization. She is often thinking her way out of situations, and her catchphrase is, "Ok, new strategy!" Lara's three companions are old friends which was probably done so the author didn't have to spend too much time establishing them. The nemesis doesn't make too many appearances either, and is just an arrogant bastard. The only character that isn't Lara that the book goes into details about isn't introduced until the last stage of the book.

The plot of the book is fast paced. The chapters are titled by the location that Lara is at. Lara and her friends never stay too long at one location.

If there's one thing I would remove from this book, it's the scene where Lara wakes up after being tranquilized. She finds herself in a cell wearing lingerie. It turns out that the big bad guy really likes women and had her dressed up so he can later seduce her. Lara says that she doesn't feel like anything happened, but I still object to a novel throwing in even a hint of rape. Tomb Raider is about escapist adventures and there's really no need for that kind of garbage. I really don't like it when rape is tossed in to make the reader hate the bad guy more, even if it's done for "realism." Female adventurers shouldn't have to put up with this crap, and since this is escapism there's no excuse for it. I would have removed the paragraph or two that this issue was brought up.

On a lighter note, I must poin out that in the Lara Croft universe, apparently James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, and Tarzan are real people. I think the author was being a little too cute when he mentioned that these families were blessed by the radiation of the bronze pieces.

Also, may I poin out that I hate spiders? This is the third thing connected to Tomb Raider that involved giant spiders. The second game had jumping tarantulas in the first level, and giant spiders in the next to last level. It took me several hours and liberal use of a grenade thrower to get through a fifteen minute area. The third game's final boss was a giant mutant man-spider. He was a little easier to face against but I still would rather jump in the lava then have him touch me. This novel has to big spiders and said that the spiders had webbing that looked like part of the jungle. I don't think I'll be going to any jungles anytime soon.

Anyway, I'll admit that the Tomb Raider novels are more junk food fun then anything, but I'll miss the series.





Currently Reading: Diamonds Are Forever by Ian Fleming

Last Read: Tomb Raider Lara Croft: The Man of Bronze

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Irish History Month Essay #3.1



My essay is about Pierce Brosnan. He is most known for setting a record for the number of times an actor was almost James Bond, but he's done so much more then that.

Pierce's earliest breakthrough into show business happened when a circus agent saw him eating fire. Pierce trained under a clown and this is where he learned some of the quips used in his Bond movies. The clown is still on a government list.

Pierce was also trained to be an actor. He had a number of roles in dramas, including Mrs. Doubtfire. One of his breakthrough roles was a Master Piece Theater documentary, which he got a role in because he sounded Britishy. His most famous role of his early career was in Fourth Protocol, which led to his first connection to a movie that led to a video game.

Pierce also starred in Remington Steele somewhere around this time. It's about some woman who's bored so she opens a detective agency and hires "Remington" so they can have some "will they or won't they?" moments. The show was soon cancelled after the disatrous NBC poll to answer this question. "Yes" and "no" were tied, while "Ronald Reagan" and "I want to see Care Bears" got more votes.

In the nineties Pierce starred in his most beloved role, the model for the main character in Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64. This game is awesome and may have single-handedly saved Nintendo's butt during the late nineties. Starring in video games is now Pierce's main source of income. Rumors that he will appear in Super Smash Bros Brawl still persist.

Pierce also starred in a number of Bond films. Goldeneye was the first, and critics liked him, even if they thought his speech where he dissed NBC and Timothy Dalton was "...a little bitter." Pierce proved to be very professional in the role, since he didn't look completely ridiculous in a movie where his love interest was Denise Richards. He even restrained himself from punching Madonna in the face after he heard her theme song for his last Bond film. The studios ordered Pierce to star in really dumb movies so that his Bond films looked like masterpieces in comparison. "Mars Attacks!" and "Dante's Peak" were perfect for this. Well, except for "Die Another Day."

Pierce's first wife made an appearance in "For Your Eyes Only", which is more proof a The Bond Conspiracy. This is still being investigated by MI6. Top agent "Lara Croft" is unavailable for questions.

Pierce was going to star in a fifth Bond movies, but producer Albert Broccoli wanted a Bond who had hair like Mike Nelson. At this poin Pierce's career was over, but critics love him so much that they pretend that he occasionally stars in a movie and speak well of his performance.

Since Pierce is Irish, we know the reason why he signed up for "Die Another Day." Agent "Lara" has yet to confirm his role in the non-existant Catholic Conspiracy, though.

To sum up, I'll quote the famous tagline to his 1994 movie, "Lawnmower Man."

Your ass is grass, and I'm the mower.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Recurring Emails I Get

I was going to post my thoughts on the latest Bond film, but that wasn't going anywhere. Luckily, an email I got today has provided me with a backup topic to type words about. Here's some more words.

So today I got an email from Amazon.com. It was advertising the many video games based on the soon to be released, "Meet the Robinsons", by Disney. I was wondering why the heck I should care until I read the first line of the email.

As someone who has purchased kids games you might like to know that "Disney's Meet the Robinsons" is available for pre-order.


WHA?! "Someone who has purchased kids games"? What are they implying? It makes me sound like a pervert who spends most of the time writing erotic fanfics about underaged cartoon characters. Then I realized that I had recently purchased "Lego Star Wars" for the Game Cube. Usually when I get emails from Amazon, it's for Discworld books because I once bought "Witches Abroad" from the site.

Anyway, Amazon isn't the only website that regularly sends me emails. Here's a few more (I'm not including spam):


Sci Fi Weekly - I registered for the SciFi Dominion bboards way back in 2000, maybe even late 1999. I did it so I could post on the MST3k board. This is where I came up with the user name that I now use for this blog. When I originally signed up, I used one of my dads email addresses which I never checked. Sometime in 2001-2002, I finally changed it to my then yahoo email address. This is the oldest reoccuring email that I've received. I use to skim through the email for something interesting but now I all but skip them. SciFi Channel and the Duh hasn't been that interesting since they shut down the MST3k board.

Bravenet - I have a website, but I don't add anything to it anymore. It's mostly an archive for an rpg that I and my friends wrote. I always thought I could use the site to learn about html, but I was too lazy to do so. Back in the early days I signed up for Bravenet services so I could have a counter for my site. The bravenet updates include hints for html stuff, but I have yet to sit down and read one. I keep telling myself that I'll read the next one, but it's been about five years now.

Freefind.com - FreeFind is the free search engine I use for my site. This is a weekly email that tells me what words were typed into the search engine and tells me that my site was spidered. I usually skip this email because my site isn't visited that much.

Cafepress.com - I've only bought one thing from this site. One year for Christmas I bought a tshirt for my friend Lita. Somehow, the order got screwed up and she got two, but she was able to keep both while I got refunded for one. Now they don't even sell those shirts anymore. CafePress emails usually advertise the latest annoying political shirts or tshirts based on whatever the upcoming holiday is. I still may buy another shirt from that site.

Hallmark.com - You know those e-greeting cards? I still get emails from Hallmark since the day I sent one during a Valentine's Day. I don't know why I don't just ask to be left off the list. Anyway, Hallmark emails probably talk about flowers and cards, but I don't read them.

Ancestry.com - I don't get these anymore, but for a while I was looking up information about a dancer who I have a crush on. I was googling like crazy and found a few of those sites that promise you to find the family trees and other dirt on people. I forgot why I signed up to ancestry.com, but it never gave me anything. It wanted money and I wasn't willing to pay. I eventually got myself off the list.

Namesdatabase.com - Same deal, only it was one of those "find out about your old classmates!" sites. I screwed up and signed my name for Tad Tadlock's school instead of mine, so I spent my whole time trying to delete my account. I wonder if there was any people born in the 30s who was wondering when the heck I went to their school.

Nintendo.com - I can't remember why I originally signed up for Nintendo.com. Maybe I saw a thread about Earthbound and decided to throw something in. However, later that year Nintendo had an offer for a Zelda Collection GC game for those who buy a couple other Nintendo games. I bought those games and was able to get the Zelda Collection game. In exchange, I now get regular updates about the twos of threes of games that Nintendo releases each month.

YouTube.com - I first registered for a youtube account during June of last year just to post a couple of Tad's famous public domain shorts. Then I realized that I could post videos of video game endings. Then I got the bright idea of just playing through an entire game and posting everything in ten minute intervals. Now I have over 100 subscriptions and over 250000 video views, so I spend every day looking at emails alerting me to new comments. Luckily not everybody is an anime nerd. The sucky part is that these email alerts don't contain the comments that get posted to youtube, so you have to go and open up the movie just to see what someone said. Sometimes the comments haven't even appeared yet. It often makes me feel bad because I don't want to inflate my own view count.

eBay - These are a lot like the Amazon emails, but I don't think eBay keeps track of you in the way Amazon does.

codeproject.com - I signed up to this site originally because I was in desperate need of some code for a project that I was working on. The emails contain links to project descriptions but I ignore them and have yet to sit down and read one. This is the only email I catch in a yahoo filler, for some reason.

Toywiz.com - I bought a Jaws Poster (in 3D!) from this site for my friend Rimmi and I'm now getting update emails like from cafepress. Too bad the Caps suck because I could probably buy an Ovechkin figurine from this site.

paypal.com - I have a paypal account, but these emails make me nervous.



Update: Title edited to remove dumb spelling error.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Irish History Month Essay #4



My essay is about Kate Mulgrew, who is Irish-American so she counts. She is best known for her cameo in Star Trek: Nemesis, but she's done a couple more things.

Kate got her start playing a character on Ryan's Hope, a soap opera about Irish persons. Since I don't watch soaps, I can only assume that it involved ridiculous, never ending story lines about rich, sex-crazed people. Also, Benson probably made an appearance.

Later that decade she went on to play her most beloved role, Mrs. Columbo/Kate Callahan. The premise of her show was that she got to solve mysteries while desperately trying to figure out whether or not she was married. Her two of threes of episodes can be found on a couple of early Columbo DVD sets. I don't know, I think it was the third and fourth seasons.

In the eighties she played in a number of uninteresting roles. This was ok because by the mid nineties, she was cast in a role of Captain Janeway after some Canadian sourpuss quit on the job. Kate insisted on wearing the bun that would make her a household name. The Janeway Bun was in style in 1995 but is now only worn by women who are trying to hold on to their glory days.

The writers of Star Trek: Voyager held a secret grudge against her. They were always trying to make her say ridiculous pseudo-scientific stuff, but Mulgrew was a professional and she rolled with it. The writers thought they could kill her credibility after the episode that turned her and a co-star into mating salamanders after a ship went to fast, but it backfired on the writers. Kate's character proved so popular that she made a cameo on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Kate has also done some voice work for popular cartoon shows. I mean really good cartoons like Gargoyles and Batman: The Animated Series. On Batman, Kate played a Russian Terrorist named Red Claw. Kate (who sometimes goes under the name "Arachnia") must be watched at all times.

Kate Mulgrew now stars in some plays, because she can. Her best known play is Tea at Five where she stars as Katharine Hepburn. I haven't seen it, but I assume it was originally called Waiting for Tracy.

Since she's Irish, it can be assumed that drinking led her to this amazing career. I can't prove that she fights a lot, but she probably turned into a leprechaun at one poin during the run of Star Trek: Voyager. "Too many deuteriums!", she would have said.


Update: This essay was edited to remove a dumb spelling error.

Monday, March 26, 2007

Coming Soon: Puppets Edition



I'm so psyched about this horrible movie! This is going to be the Snakes on a Plane of 2007! I can't wait!

Check out some photos here. I really hope that they make a rifftrax for this one.

I believe it comes out on Halloween of this year. Take that, Saw 4!

This Week in Entertainment (3/26/07)


There are people who prefer The Munsters, and there are people who prefer The Addams Family. Such a question divides the country in red and blue, somehow. This is why my Pick of the Week is The Addams Family Volume 2.

Also out on dvd is the complete first and second seasons of the British version of Whose Line is It Anyway? I prefer the American version, but this set is for those who complain about Drew Carey.

The Complete Sonic the Hedgehog Series is coming out. This is the more serious Saturday Morning series with the catchy theme song. Features furries doing furry things. This series proved that Urkel could be cool! Warning: The series ended with an unresolved cliffhanger.

The Three Stooges: Triple Whammy is for fans of the Stooges who have never bought any of their stuff on video before and want it all dipped in color. I'm not even going to look at what's being offered but I bet I can guess which four shorts is included.

I thought this was already out, but here it is anyway. The Swing Parade of 1946 is being released in color and comes with a rifftrax by Mike Nelson. The Three Stooges have a supporting role in this movie. Curly probably looks awful since he was having health problems at the time.

I was going to recommend Comic Legends - Groucho Marx & Redd Foxx, but there's too many Xs in that title.

Hmmm, it appears that there will also be a couple more Three Stooges DVDs. The Three Stooges: Greatest Rountines and The Three Stooges: Extreme Rarities. There's no mention of what is featured on the DVDs, so presumably it's more public domain stuff that's now dipped in color.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

March Madness: First and Second Round

Here's the results after the first round.



I got a 22 out of a total 32 poins.


And round two:


I got a 16 out of a total 32 poins.



I now have a total 38 out of 64 possible poins. I guess I'm not as good as this as I previously thought.

Also, stupid Maryland got knocked out of the tournament before the Sweet Sixteen. Losers! That's the end of Terp Watch until football season unless I try out for the baseball team.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Small Hiatus

I'm not going to post anything for the rest of this week. My heart's just not into it. Hopefully I'll be back into it on Sunday or Monday.

Monday, March 19, 2007

This Week in Entertainment (3/19/07)



My pick of the week is the sixth Rocky movie. Now, I haven't seen any of the earlier ones yet and I don't really plan to see this one. I just picked this for three reasons. One, there aren't that many good picks this week. Two, any series that launches the careers of Mr. T and Dolph Lundgren has to have some respect. Three, this movie pushes us one step closer to a Rocky VII: Adrian's Revenge.


In theaters this week is the latest TMNT movie. I hope it's good, but the CGI animation in the commercials wasn't working for me. Plus, how the heck long can these guys remain teenagers?

Back to DVD.

Justice League Unlimited - Season Two is coming out. I haven't watched any of the Justice League cartoons so I'm not sure if I would be a big fan of the series, but the Batman cartoons were great so I may eventually watch the earlier Justice League cartoons.

You should watch The Care Bears Movie (25th Anniversary). You know why? Because you care. You Care! YOU CARE!!!!

Mythbusters - Mega Movie Myths (2003). I've only seen one episode of this show, but this looks interesting. I did see them talk about how you can't really get sucked out of a plane like at the end of Goldfinger.

Playboy presents the Anna Nicole Smith Collection. What better way to exploit someone's death then to release all her boob movies!

W.C. Fields Comedy Collection, Vol. 2, because drunk guys are funny!


On the Virtual Console, I think Splatterhouse (TG16, 800 poins) is coming out. I'm curious about this game just because it seems to be so out of date. Far gorier games today most likely blow it away. Still, any game where you where a Jason hockey mask...

Friday, March 16, 2007

OPEN THREAD!

Since I won't be here tomorrow to make an update, this post is here for general comments. Don't be shy!

Pins

When I was a kid I started collecting pins. My mom gave me something to put all the pins on, and I eventually filled it out. I'd like to show it off now.



There it is. As you can see it's divided into many sections. Let's take a look at a few close-ups.




I apologize for the blurry pic. Anyway, Hardees once had a promotion where you could buy a pin with a Superbowl on it. This was just before Superbowl 25. The first Hardees they had this deal at just gave you a pin at random, but later we found a Hardees where you could pick the individual pin you wanted. I actually wore the two Redskins Superbowl to school when we were out of uniform for a day.

You probably can't see it but the Superbowl 25 pin just has an advertisement for Diet Coke. Heck, it was probably available in larger quantities but I can't remember since we gave all our extra pins away.




Under the Superbowl pins is a pin I got after the Redskins won Superbowl 26. Sadly, Dallas won several Superbowls afterwards so I don't think I could stomach any pins past 26.

To the left of that is my "science" pin. It's blurry, so let me just say that it's a piece of paper with a quill on top of it that says science. In my freshman year, we had to do a dumb thesis for my honors biology class. After we were done we got this pin to wear. Around the time, students were wearing pins on their blazers, and I wore this for a while, even though it was kind of lame compared to honors pins.

To the right of that is three San Francisco pins. They all feature trollies. Below the middle one is a criminal from Alcatraz. He has a ball and chain on his leg.

Several other pins have trains or TCU on them. My dad works for Amtrak and is involved with their union so he gave me a few of these pins. At the bottom is a Chicago pin, which he got from a trip there. That was a trip that he went on but we stayed home for.

There's also a Simpsons pin and a Star Trek pin.





The second picture is blurry. Sorry about that. It has the collection of state pins I mentioned in yesterday's post. I only got about 8 before they started over, and only got one from the newer collection. The Maryland one is oddly shaped. It's as if someone squished it from the sides. I have Delaware and Virginia because they were important to me. The others include Maine, Alabama, and California, which is weird because I eventually had some online friends from those states. No New York or Illinois pins, though.



I guess I shouldn't have used the zoom feature. Anyway, here are several Christmas pins, including the "I believe in Santa" pin. I wore that proudly one year around that time.

Above that are a couple state flags, another collection that ended before I really got started. They didn't have Maryland or Delaware, so I settled for Washington State and some other state. I'd have to look at it and then go look it up to figure that out.




Here is my collection of Mario pins. There was a KB toys store in a mall that we frequented that had a box full of these pins, and at the time our parents let us get one pin a week. The pins were a dollar or two. I actually had three princess pins at one poin, because of a Christmas gift.





Here you can see a Sebastian pin from The Little Mermaid. Underneath him is a gumball machine. Underneath that is a "World's Greatest Kid" pin. Next to that is a "I (heart)" pin with my mom's name on it. There are several more union pins floating around the Pinky and the Brain pin.

There's a Mystery Science Theater 3000 pin that I got from the mst3k Info Club.

Underneath the Greatest kid pin is a cross pin that I wore to my first Communion.

The bottom pins have pictures of stamps. Two of them are state pins and one of them has the Discovery on it. To the right is a Catholic Schools Week pin.


That's my collection. Maybe I'll take a few more pictures to improve on the blurry ones that I took.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Terp Watch (3/16)

The Terps beat Davidson today, despite sucking for most of the game. Davidson his many three poin shots early on and the Terps were lucky to have a one poin lead at half time. Then Davidson started the second half with an eight poin run before Terp answered with a run of their own. The teams traded baskets until the end of the game where the Terps pulled away. Final score - 82-70.

A win is a win, but that was ugly. I still think they'll make the Sweet Sixteen, but I can't see them lasting beyond that. At least I'm not cussing them in this post. Next up is Butler.


In bracket news, Stanford was blown away, despite the fact that I picked them to last a couple rounds. That blows away my joke about being able to pick well despite not following college sports at all. [Update] The same can be said about Duke.

Delaware: The Early Years 2

Our trailer had three bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen area. There were two bath rooms on opposite sides of the place. We got the bedroom on the west side, my uncle had the bedroom right next to us, and Uncle Buddy had the east side bedroom to himself. My sister and I had to sleep on a mattress on the floor of our bedroom. That was usually done when there was a full trailer. At other times we had a couch with a fold out bed.

We use to go to the trailer quite a few times in the early days. Many times we would go up for a weekend, but we would always go up for a week when my dad had a vacation. These usually happened around my sister's birthday in mid July and my birthday in later August.

We would always bring up the cats during these weeks and the cats would go crazy at nights. One time our cat Angel got stuck behind some furniture that was placed diagonally across a corner wall. It was because of Uncle Buddy that we learned that cats love to play with pipe cleaners. Our cats would go into his room just to stare at him for hours and I'm guessing it was partially due to that.

Before 1988, we had an old Beta camcorder. This thing was rather large and had to have a really bright light on top of it when we were indoors. I don't think we used it too often up there. I have a vague memory of my dad aggitating Uncle Buddy, then rotating the camera 90 degrees for some reason. I remember thinking it was the funniest thing when I was a kid but I sadly can't find the tape so I don't remember what my dad said. I have found stuff from 1987 which included my uncle waving his butt at the camera, which was also pretty funny. Later that night it showed my sister, our favorite cousin and me playing. It was my birthday and my dad asked me what the date was. I sorta mumbled it, and my cousin was frantically trying to get me to repeat it.

During the early years we didn't play too many video games. We brought up all the Atari 2600 games early on but my parents always made my sister and I do other stuff. Under the bed were a few containers containing a bunch of toys. The best thing we had was a bowling game. You set up the pins and they're held up due to some magnets. Then you pull back on one ball that's attached to the outside of the board and it snaps and hits the bowling ball. Our parents gave us each a drawer and in my drawer when I cleaned it out was a piece of paper with the results of one of our bowling games. I can't remember who won.

I began collecting small games at 99 cent stores around this time. We got several magnet games. These were small games that you kept the pieces inside by folding them up and they could fit in your pocket. The first few games were classics like tic-tac-toe, chess, chinese checkers, while the last few included a baseball, football, and basketball game. I forget which game it was, but one of the games was virtually unplayable. It was either the basketball or baseball, but the instructions made two players roll two dice to figure out what to do, but it never made any sense. It was probably the basketball because I remember that baseball told you that if you roll something, you get an out or a double or whatever.

I also got quite a few electronic games. I can't remember what they were called so I'll have to describe them. One game had a hippo head opening and closing it's mouth. You had to put a blue marble down and snap it into his mouth. Another game was a frog that lept up and ate something when you pushed a button. Your goal was to collect all the flies hanging on a tree before time was up. I think the tree popped out like the pieces in Perfection. A third game had a mad doctor and some round pieces that spun around him. Your goal was to first flip the pieces to reveal the magents on them, then to push the button again to get a hammer with a magnet to pick the pieces off the board. The mad scientist was thrown off the game if the timer ran out. I really should look for these games and make a blog entry about them.

I had a few windup toys, as well. My favorite was a shooting gallery where you had to knockdown four cans, even though you could win by pulling the trigger as hard as you can and snapping it. The rest of the games just involved pulling the trigger and snapping balls from one poin to another. For example, there was a monkey that swung back and forth and you needed to get balls (usually eight) into its arms so it could drop them off in the goal area. Many games were like that. On the side of these small games were the titles you got for your score.

We were really into puzzles at The Beach. We had several plastic bags filled with puzzles from Disney, Woody Woodpecker, Snoopy, and one Mario puzzle. Most of them were 100 or less, but we did have a couple that went up to 200. I think it was the Snoopy puzzles that took the longest. I liked the Mario puzzle, but it was too easy at 60 pieces. The weirdest puzzle was the inverted Disney puzzle. We were so use to looking at the box while putting the jigsaws together that it was weird that everything was inverted.

The rest of our toys included several toys we had when we were toddlers. We had one Snoopy toy that you pulled to cause Snoopy's ears to spin while it made some noise. We had some toy workbench where you drove in plastic nails and screwed in plastic screws. It had a ruler too, but I stupidly gave that away to our favorite cousin.

We had a Mr. Potato Head and his Missus, but we also had a lot of the Potato Head Kids from some cartoon show from that time. The kids were lumps that basically had two holes, one on their head and one on their bottom. You couldn't do much with them besides exchange their hat and feet. Still, I always thought it was cool that we got a rarer Potato Head Kid that looked like Hermes because my mom sent away for it.

Ok, enough with toys! Let's move on to something else.

We had a basic cable service at The Beach. Everytime we went we had to pull out a paper and remind ourselves where all the channels were. Despite this, I think my sister and I watched a lot of Home Shopping Network. We were at the age where non-cartoons bored us. We would watch these channels when we couldn't think of anything else to watch. Thankfully we knew better then to bug our parents to buy anything on these channels. At night our parents watched a lot of Nick at Nite, which was good when it showed stuff like Gilligan but I hated when it showed stuff like Alfred Hitchcock or Superman. I really hated it when I was trying to go to sleep and the tv was still on at eleven for some drama that I thought was dumb.

I wish I could have been a little older back then. The UHF channels started dying before I could have appreciated the cheesiness they offered. My mom said that she saw an MST3k-like show which I believe is called "Canned Film Festival" while up there. It would have also been fun to compare the local "Delmarva" stations to the more professional Washington DC stations back home.

Delmarva is a silly name, by the way. I've always thought that.

Delaware used to have a lot more farms, so there weren't as many places to go early on. There was a mini-mall across the street from the McDonald's that marks our turn off Coastal Highway. We used to visit this mall a lot because it had a Superfresh grocery store and a Roses, which was a local Wal-Mart like place. The inside of the mall had a Radio Shack which may still actually be there. It also had a big food court. At it's peak, there were all kinds of things to eat, but my favorite was a place called "Hot Diggety Dog", a perfect name for a hot dog restaurant. Sadly, after it's peak, the mall quickly started losing stores, even Hot Diggety Dog. Roses and Superfresh lasted for a while longer.

One of the places we always go to is Rehoboth Beach. For us kids it had Funland, which I can spend a whole post on. Basically it had rides, arcade games, and games where you can win prizes. I don't think too much has changed so I will save this for another day.

Other places at Rehoboth included two 99 cent stores back then. This is where I got stuff like the aforementioned magnet games and some pins. I collected a few pins shaped like states. Those can also be shown on a later day. I ended up hating these stores when I became a teen, but for then there was some interesting stuff. There were also a couple tshirts stores, although there are half a dozen today. Some of the tshirts were dirtier then what I was used to. One tshirt had a guy stuck in the butt cheeks of a really fat woman. Another tshirt had a parody of a drug PDA

See Dick Drink
See Dick Drive
See Dick Die
Don't be a Dick.


Some of the stuff I've seen in later years makes this seem tame, but this was pretty memorable.

There were a couple arcades, but I didn't play in them too much at the time. I did play mini golf on the roof of one of the arcade places.

We rarely went on the beach itself. My sister and I hadn't learned to swim so we were wimps when it came to the ocean. We once bought some sand castle toys from Rehoboth Mall, but we didn't have any luck building a single thing.

When it came to swimming, we preferred a pool. And there was a public pool in Nassau Park where our aunt and grandma had a trailer. There were two pools, really, but we soon abandoned the kiddy pool. The other pool was L shaped, from 3 feet to six feet vertically and eight feet for divers. I could probably save this for another day.

I think I'll end it here. There's a lot more I can say about Delaware, but I want to save the 1988-1994 era to later posts. For now, I'll leave us with one embarrassing story. One time it was early in the morning and I wanted to go outside and play. I decided that I could just dress myself that day. Which I did, and I got outside and ran around for less then a minute before I realized I was missing something. I forgot to put on my pants, so if anybody was looking, they saw a young boy running around in his underwear for a few seconds before running back in.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Terp Watch (3/15)



The Terps face Davidson in their first game of the tournament. It should be a tough but winnable games for the Terps. If you've seen my bracket, I still think they'll make the Sweet Sixteen but no father.

Since I don't have much to add, let me say that while I care little about college basketball, I have some fond memories of it. During my eighth grade I had to go to the after school care a few times. One time during the tournament someone turned a tv on and we were able to watch Maryland play. I think they won the game but lost later on. Either way at least it was better then most of the times I stayed after school.

Also during high school, there were a couple times where we skipped entire classes just to go watch a game in some class room. The room we were in was usually used for science lab classes and everybody was cheering wildly at the game. I would be glad if someone brought in a tv tomorrow so I could skip work for the last couple hours.


Also playing in a tournament are the lady Terps, who are defending their championship title. I'm not following them, though. Sorry.

Delaware: The Early Years 1

No, this is not about the history of De La Warr, or whoever. This is a brief history of my memories of our earliest trips to Delaware. We had a trailer there from the mid eighties until the death of Uncle Buddy in 2005.

Dad, my uncle, and Uncle Buddy started looking for a trailer in 1986, I believe. I was only about five or six at the time, so I don't remember much. We do have an old video of them looking at a few trailers on sale. They must have gone on a trip by themselves giving how young my sister and I was. I do remember going on one trip where someone showed us around one trailer which I'm sure we didn't get, but my memory isn't that trustworthy. Anyway, we finally got a trailer located at Angola Crest II, next to Rehoboth Beach.

The trips to "The Beach" (as we would call it) would usually take about three hours. We usually drove with Uncle Buddy in his big red car. This had three seats in the front and three in the back. Dad would always drive and Uncle Buddy would have the passenger front seat so he could crack a window to smoke his pipe. My sister and I would have big fights over sitting in the front if we were allowed. I think there were a couple years where we would switch places on the return trip to shut us both up. If I sat in the back, I would usually sit behind Uncle Buddy and watch him dump ashes outside.

Since we were kids, I'm sure my younger sister and I were for the most part bored out of our minds. We probably played guessing games or brought coloring books or just slept just to make it. At least there were a couple things that would grab our attention. The first thing was the stop we used to make about half way there. Somewhere next to the Delaware border was a couple of gas stations that we would take a break at. We would look around and usually be allowed to get one drink and one snack. I would usually get chips, and this was the first place where I tried FunYuns. One of the gas places had a couple arcade games, but I can't remember which games. Something obscure.

Our favorite part of the trip was the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. This was a pay bridge ($2.50 if you go one way, free the other) that was really long. The rest of the trip was interstate highways and some (less as time went on) farmland, so this bridge would always wake us up. It was actually exciting to see the signs for the bay bridge long before we saw the toll booths.

After paying the toll, we would usually use the right bridge from our view. One of the bridges had two lanes and the other has three, and it was the "right" bridge that had two. I say usually we use this one because the lanes had traffic singles with either a green arrow or a red X indicating which lane to stay in. There have been times where we went on the "left" bridge and stayed on the right lane while westbound drivers were zooming by.

I spent a lot of the time taking everything in. I would look down at the bay to see if any boats were going by. I would look to see if there were any seagulls on a nearby dock. I would watch for and count along with the mile marker. A lot of times I would imagine a man running around on the bridge as we progressed. He would either be running up the cable support or underneath the opposite bridge. It was like a game in my mind, because I had to have him make some crazy leaps so he wouldn't fall in the water.

At one poin I had a dream about this bridge where I watched a news report that said that there was a hole in the bridge. And by hole, I mean that it looked like a giant lemming had mined downwards. For a while I had wondered if I had dreamt this or not, which shows how silly I was. In the dream I actually saw a car nearly drive off, so clearly this didn't happened or it would have been a huge news story.

Anyway, after that I can't remember too much, but I do remember there were four towns with compound names. I remember this because when we once visited an aunt at the nursing home, we played a guessing game with our dad. Dad picked out four towns and made us guess at the names by putting together two words. For example, the name of one of my teachers plus town was Milltown, or something. (Google maps says I just made it up. Who asked them anyway?) I don't think we go through these places anymore after finding some better routes. Yes, my memory is this bad.

Anyway, we would finally reach the big road leading to the trailer. There's a big McDonald's billboard around the final turn before Coastal Highway and that was as exciting as the Bay Bridge signs. Finally we would start seeing what would quickly be familiar sites. We would first see Nassau Park, where my dad's mom once lived and where several of my dad's siblings lived. We would see St. Jude, a church we used to go to before we found another one. There was a mini-mall that included a theater that is still there. Eventually we would see the McDonald's that would mark our turn. We would continue down another highway before we would see a strip of old looking stores. It contains a convenient store that I hated because of the one time I went in and saw some magazine with some Garbage Pail Kids. At this poin we were a mile or so away.

Making our turn at the intersection here led to a real long road. We would pass a few farms before we finally got to Angola Crest II. Angola Crest was a place with several strips of trailers that are divided by three roads. Our trailer was on the left side if you go down the middle road and was the next to last trailer. After three speed bumps, we would finally reach our destination.


I apologize for ending the post here. I wanted to do a post about our early trips to Delaware, but just talking about the trip is going longer then I expected. Besides, I should have plenty more stuff to talk about when it comes to Delaware. Tomorrow I'll talk about some of the stuff we did in the early years at the trailer. Hopefully this post isn't that boring and will help lay the foundation of future nostalgic trips to The Beach.


Update: I know I did a poor job of describing what the bridge looked like in my dream. Here's a side view of what I meant. Keep in mind that I had a frontal view of it when I was watching the news.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Irish History Month Essay #2



My essay is about Liam Neeson. He is best known for the off-screen mention of his character in Revenge of the Sith.

Before he became an actor, Liam worked as a truck driver and a forklift operator, ole. This shows nothing important. He wanted to be a teacher at first, but people thought that slamming his lightsabre down on a student's desk was inappropriate. So he went on to acting.

Liam probably had a breakout role at some poin. After that, he starred as Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List. Director Spielberg made the movie because he knew that he could get a magazine to print the title, "An Oscar of Oskar?" Liam lost when the people who vote for Oscars learned that Oskar was a Nazi moments before the actual vote. At that poin they removed his name from the hat.

Liam was known for asking people really perverted questions, so what better role for him then to be the star of Kinsey. Here he played a guy who had to fight against his arch-nemesises, Masters and Johnson and their (air quotes) "precious science."

Liam is well known among fan boys for starring in the first episode of the Star Wars other trilogy. He became a fan favorite when he refused to make eye contact with Jar Jar. He also starred in a Batman movie as some villian who has a name that only nerds can remember.

Liam did the voice of a lion that's Christ-like, which shows how blasphemist he can be. One of his upcoming movies is about how one of our most famous presidents kept the country together by riding around on a big wheel.

Since Liam is Irish, he must drink a lot. At one poin he was a boxer, which proves he could fight. He is, however, not a part of the huge Catholic Conspiracy that doesn't exist.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Harry Potter Update (3/12/07)

The final battle between Harry and Voldemort will take place after one challenges the other to a game of quidditch. At one poin, Voldemort will say, "Let this be our final battle!"

This Week in Entertainment (3/12/07)



My Pick of the Week is the latest Bond film. I didn't get to see this movie in theaters but I have read the book and all the reviews poin to a great movie. Anything would have to be better then Die Another Day.


In other DVD news, I Love Lucy Seasons 7, 8, & 9 is coming out. Apparently this includes the Conneticut years and the Lucy/Desi Comedy Hour. No word yet if there's an extra included called "I Hate Lucy."

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Season 4 comes from the first year the show moved to CBS. I thought the whole thing was dumb until I started watching the show that year. Hopefully it includes the Turtle Tip.

The Ed Wood Collection is for those of you who don't already own Glen and Glenda, The Violent Years, etc.

The NBA is releasing a DVD featuring the best Indiana Pacer games, but since it doesn't have the Artest Brawl, I call false advertisement!

John Paul II
- ARE YOU READY TO ROCK!!!?!?!!

In video game news, sorta, Dragon's Lair is coming out on Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Guys, it doesn't need to be released on every platform known to man. It's not that great a game.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

MADNESS 2007!

Here is my bracket.



And here it is from a different angle.




I just realized that I have too many #1 teams making it to the final four. I should have had more upsets, but oh well.

I'll score this thing as the tournament goes a long. I'll score it the same way Gamefaq scores it's Battle contests. 1 is for every right entry for the first round, and then it doubles afterwards.

I probably won't watch a single game, though. I'm not a college sports fan. Maybe I'll watch a Terrapin game.

This bracketology thingie is sponsored by DeGiorno.

Kitty Pictures #4



This is Gigi, our smallest cat. She's the sibling of George and Hazel. She doesn't like to be picked up.

Sunday, Lazy Sunday (3/11/07)

I just printed out my bracketology thingie. I'm going to post my picks later on. Whee! Time for a lot of guessing!

I may be going on a trip to Delaware this week. That means I should have at least one good Delaware story up on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. That also means that I may not update either on Friday or Saturday. If that happens, I'll do the missed update on Sunday.

What Chris Simon did to get suspended was awful. And he was a part of the second best sports team that I rooted for.

I was playing Zelda: Twilight Princess today. Without spoiling anything, I played one of the most fun boss fights I've played in a while. Stallord is the name if you have the game.

I have a book of primitive game ideas. I'll one day xerox that and show off my ideas. Admittedly, I only have about 10 pages, so maybe I should work out a few more ideas this week.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Demo Fun #7



Today's demo was called "Eddie Murphy", but I scrapped that. It didn't go anywhere. So instead, today's is now called "Running with Girls." It can be found at the usual site.

This may be a controversial demo, assuming anybody cares, because it's authored by United Style Crackers, the same people responsible for Demo Fun #5. I am in no way affliated with that group and will try to avoid them in the future for a while.

Our picture is of a woman lying on her side. She shows us a little leg. In the background is the initials for these well known crackers. Underneath it is the name of the author, Devil.Fox. I bet he makes people pronounce the period. "It's my middle name!"

The demo starts with an enigmatic greeting.

......JJJJIIIIIPPPIII


I bet it's something only him and Izeman know about. Demon announces that he's back again. And about time, too. He tells us that he's the master of masters between two ellipses. Don't be so modest, Fox!

Next comes an odd thing to say:

What about this piggy


I guess if I ever become the master of masters, I'll decide that question marks are for peasants. Oh wait, is he saying "Piccy"? Damn font. Anyway, Devil informs us that as we can see, he likes GIRLS! He likes them almost as much as his computer. I bet he was first in line for Virtual Valerie.

He poins out the little Epyx-like man running on top of the text. There's a reason for it. I'll let Demon put it in his own words.

...... I have promise him to see the girl when the scroll will disappear ......


I'd hate to tell that little guy that the picture isn't really worth it. Poor dope. Anyway, that's the reason the demo is named "Running for Girls", even though there's only one girl.

Now it's time for the self-congratulation of all the demo nerds! This time it's for, and we're talking about special greetings here: Ares ("You don't get it! I'm the god of war!"), Mr. Crowley, and world famous Izeman. Regular greetings go to: Amigos, Azyx (oh dear, the first two and we're already stuck in the As), Clarion, Hornblower, DMD, Mega Boys, Swedish Cracking Institute, The Explorers (Demon apologizes about mispelling their names a couple times), TWR 1881, The Silents (I'm really feeling sorry for the running guy), The Warlocks, The Bit-Boys (Some Playboy has Demon's disks and it's upsetting to him), The Atomic Socety (oops, time for an apology in the next demo by Demon!), The Limit Crew ("We can't do it! We would need 3 more Kbs!"), Danish Circle (This isn't in alphebetical order!?!? NOOO!!!), The Game Masters (insert Captain N reference here), GSS, and Triad (Demon kisses up to them). Phew.

Demon next tells us that he's really keeping the scrolling text going because he doesn't want to show the little guy the picture. Jerk. He asks us if we've seen a demo named "Monster Dog." Sorry, I won't see that for a while now. Oh, Demon is now listing a bunch of demo names. Super. Here goes: "Lucifer My Dad", "Iron Demo", "USC Strikes Back", "Champions Demo", and so on. Or, "and go on."

He asks us if we have a video. Heck, I have a youtube account. "Do you like filmes?" I guess this is one of those quizzes. If I keep answering questions, I'll find out what kind of cracker I am. I hope I'm not an Izeman. "Do you want to swap filmes or games (demos)?" Wink wink. Also, I think games and demos aren't the same thing, unless Xenogears is the only game he's ever played. Demon can be contact at address 4000. I'm not sure if that's an actual address or a virtual one. A lot of ellipses follow. It's now officially a USC trademark.

"What now?" Demon asks. Apparently it's "I'm out of stuff to say so I'll just say random stuff" time, because Demon mentions that it was sunny yesterday. At least, he thinks it was, because that's followed by a dozen question marks.

"And what now?????" Demon finally says bye a few times. It's 11:42pm where ever he is. Demon then reveals that the text will repeat, meaning the running guy will have to run again. Why, he is a demon!!


Stats:

Date - July 24th, 1987
Scrolling text - Standard, with the tortured soul running on top.
Font - Blue, hard to tell the difference between Cs and Gs.
Europeans - Yep.
Bragging about Accomplishments - Actually, he's bragging about his heterosexuality.
Putting other hackers down - Nope.
Listing a ton of other nerds - Yep.
Harsh language - Nope.
Song - 5/10. Not bad but really forgettable. Music has not been USC's strong poin so far.

Friday, March 9, 2007

Mickey Watch: Mar. 7

I was in front of my computer all morning when I saw the latest pack of lies from the biggest crook of them all, MickeyTheLiar. His latest sack of B.S. that he wants to feed to his Dumbeners was posted. I immediately logged on to my blog to express my outrage at this jerk.

In his latest propaganda piece for Mr. Pants (aka, John Pukes (Because he makes be barf!)), Mickey once again brings up the long ago debunked story of the history of pants. He even smears my website, which will continually bring to light the lies that he's sewed in his garden of deceit.

Look at GardenLIE number one:

Now the president back then was John Pants. He was tired of the cows. So he says, Punch them all in the eyes. How do you think they got those black eyes? Oh sure, tons of animal rights groups complained. But it's better this way.


If Pukes was so tired of cows, then why did he own stock in CowCo? And note how FalsekeyTheGardener conveeeeeniently leaves out the investigation about the animal abuse. I tell you, people like Pukes and MickeyLIEGardener are always doing stuff like this!!!

My hatred for Mickey knows no bounds when he introduces the next set of spin.

So I said, yeah. What the hell are pants? He said, I don't know, just invent them. And I said, okay. Never turn down the request of 2678 pound man.


In Mickey's grand jury testimony, he said that he said "All right!" Ha! Gotcha there, you son of a @^($*%!

I would dissect the rest of this but there's no need. We all know by now that whatever MickLIE types is garbage. And I will continue to slowly wake people up to the madness of this evil man and his cronies. (Hey, is Waldo still hiding? Don't make me scoff more!)

Updates for March 9th

There is no update on the Tork Book Club thing. I should do an entry but it's harder to remember a whole book and do a critique of it.

There is no update on the mp3 player thing. Heck, I haven't looked into it for a while.

I have no update on dumb bans.

Those projects I've been working on? No updates.

No fake essays.



I hope that answers a few questions.

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Terp Watch 3/8

Note to self: If this blog is still alive in August, don't do a Redskins watch!


The Terps exited the ACC tournament today by losing to an 11-19 team. They were down by 13 at the half and lost 67-62.

Oh well. They have at least one more game before I can retire this short-lived feature.


What I find funny about today's lost is that during the middle of the season, MD lost several games, including many conference games. At this poin, with MD 3-6 in their conference the teams' hopes for the NCAA Tournament were in doubt. Since the team only went to the NIT the past couple years, someone wrote an article for The Diamondback tearing Coach Gary Williams apart. Afterwards, there were several supportive emails and columns basically saying, "Hey, shut up! Leave Gary Williams alone." Then the team won their last seven games of the season, which must have vindicated Gary to his supporters.

So now what are they going to say? Maybe Miami is better then their record indicates. I'll admit that I have no clue. Still, this team seemed poorly prepared for a first round opponent. Maybe the school paper will be fun tomorrow instead of the usual whiny.

Court TV

The other day I was walking by the tv in the living room and I saw an episode of the modern Divorce Court. That's a good excuse for me to talk about the court shows I used to watch as a kid.

I used to watch the USA Network a lot as a kid. It had The Cartoon Express, which I could write about in another blog update. It also had three back-to-back court programs. They were all shows that reenacted court cases for tv.

The first show was Divorce Court. The people on this show were actors, I think, and they were generally portrayed as adults compared to real people who go on the modern shows. Actually, let me rephrase that. These people could be really petty and vindictive, but in a comparatively adult way.

I don't think I really remember too much about this show. It was aired first and I wasn't that interested in it. I don't even remember the procedure for verdicts. The only thing I really remember is that the wives always talked about their sex lives. If the husband committed adultery, the wife would inevitably talk about how the sex was "hot and heavy." One time a wife walked in on a cheating husband and they were "rolling" around on the floor. Now at the time I knew what sex was, but what I imagined was still goofy. I wish I could take that memory and post it because it was silly.


The second show was my favorite of the three, The Judge. This was about a likable old judge who did cases in a closed court room. I think I can still remember the theme song. It had no jury and the judge would usually dismiss himself to deliberate. I think it was this show that I had the most fun just picking who I thought would win, although I'm not sure if I was picking based on the case or who I liked better. Since I was a kid, it's most likely the latter.

One court case that stands out in my mind was a rape case where two women raped a man. The man testified that he was tied down and the women raped him. The first woman testified that he was a big creep. The second woman revealed, over the protest of the first one, that the man had continually raped an 18 year old that eventually comitted suicide. The first woman cut the man 18 times because of that. The judge gave the second woman a lighter sentence then the first one and promised that there would be a investigation for the man. I remember thinking that justice was going to get the man but my mom was far more cynical.

Another case was about a kid who jumped off a roof. The plaintifs were suing the parents of the kid's friend because supposedly the friend was also on the roof or something. Sorry, my memory isn't helping. The trial revealed that the first kid was neglected by his parents. At one poin it was brought up that the wife (ex-wife?) would bring some stranger into her bedroom and close her door. The Judge talked to the friend and the friend said that he promised not to tell and that he had to be loyal. I think The Judge finally went to the boy himself, who jumped because he wanted to be like Superman or something. The Judge awarded on the Defendants side AND chewed out the plaintiffs for their neglectful ways.


The third show was Superior Court. This reenacted jury style court room cases. Memorably, the narrator would remind us that the names were changed to protect the innocent, "...and the guilty!" I didn't like this show as much as The Judge, and I think there's a reason why. The Judge was a likable guy and the good guys seemed to win on his show. Superior Court was different and there was a few times the bad guys won.

One case included a small company that got sued because a kid drank their detergent(?). The parents sued the company because there wasn't a safety cap. The small company said it couldn't afford safety caps The small company's lawyer made the father confess that he bought the detergent off a truck and made the mom confess that she left the detergent out in the open. She may have even left it open, but maybe not. (I'm not sure about this last part. You would think even the dumbest jury would realize that this blows the case away, but then again...) Anyway, the kid was trotted out and spoke with one of those electronic things, and cried. Small company lost and the mean judge ordered them to have safety caps.

Another case involved a young lawyer who had to defend a racist who was accused of buring a cross on someone's lawn. Just before trial he told the lawyer that his friend was going to *wink, wink* testify for him. The lawyer realized that he just pulled this guy out of nowhere for a phony alibi, and the show was now about this young lawyer and her moral dilemna. She called a more experience lawyer and they discussed just ignoring the witness or not mentioning the witness in her closing argument. The lawyer finally chose to be held in contempt, and the racist got off in a retrial. It was furious watching this episode unfold, although now I have to wonder if the young lawyer was a little naive.

One more case where the bad guy seemed to win was about a mother that accused her son-in-law of being responsible for the death of her daughter. I think the case was pretty convincing but I'd have to see it again. Towards the end of the trial the mother collapsed in court and the DA ordered a retrial. However, the narrator informed us that the mother died and the retrial was thrown out. That was a depressing ending.


One thing about these three shows that I like compared to today is that people wouldn't talk over each other. The reason why I like Judge Judy is that she yells at idiots and constantly tells them to shut up and wait their turn. Of course these are reenactments, but the behavior of the actors is refreshing compared to the "real people" court shows that they show today.

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Terp Watch 3/7



The tournament isn't happening yet, but the Terps play tomorrow against sucky Miami in the conference tournament.

Frankly, I just wanted an excuse to post that cute picture.

Oh, and it roars, too.

MST3k Episode #104: Preliminary Reaction


So I saw The Women of the Prehistoric Planet yesterday for the first time.

Anyway, this is a season one episode, so the host segments all suck. Seriously. Joel's invention is toilet paper in a 2 liter plastic bottle, and that's it. One of the mad scientists make a joke about using it for a molotiv cocktail. Joel gets angry, but since the thing only seems to exists for that joke, the whole thing fails. The song about Clay And Lar's Flesh Farm must have looked funny on paper, or when it was made up on the spot just as everybody was getting stoned right before the camera rolled.

The rest of the host segments are about a doomsday device. For some bizarre reason, this leads to a lot of Isaac Asimov jokes instead of Dr. Stranglove jokes. I guess the writers (or The Comedy Channel?) thought since "science" is in the shows title, it needs to be less pop-culturey and have more jokes for SF nerds. I've only read "I, Robot", so Asimov-bashing doesn't work for me. The ridiculous prop that Joel uses to pull the device inside the sattelite is a hoot, though. It's no Manipulator Arms, that's for sure.

The movie is a space movie, which means it's boring. (Sorry, but space movies often dump the spaceship because listening to on board protocol is sleep-inducing.) This movie takes too long to do so. Anyway, I didn't catch what the plot was about because it was the first time I saw the movie and I was waiting for the guys to say something funny. There was a good gag here and there, but it's no Robot Monster.

From what I gathered, there are two spaceships. One spaceship is going to meet another one because of something to do with Centaurians. One of the oddest parts of this movie is the way it treats Centaurians. And when I say Centaurians, I mean Asians. Seriously, what the heck? Anyway, one ship crashes, and the other ship has to go to that planet. There's some scientifical stuff about how going at the speed of light makes the second ship go faster then people on a planet. This at first seems to be a nod to actual science (boring!) but then appears to be more bogus as the plot goes on (sadly, not that less boring.)

Anyway, starship two lands on some prehistoric planet, and we learn that it has no women. There's only three women in the whole movie, and two are useless to the plot. The only major female role is a "Centaurian" who is the daughter of drunken Wendell Corey for some reason. She ends up meeting a crazy survivor of the first ship who is a Centaurian (PHEW!!) and is now acting like a caveman. They have a very juvenile relationship and end up together.

The rest of the movie which is not about boring space sets and an uninteresting "love" story is about a bunch of white guys I can't tell apart. One of them is John Agar, but I couldn't see it was him except for a couple scenes. There's a comedy relief who's probably in his forties and says, "Haikeeba!" before flipping for no reason, but even he seemed forgettable when usually you end up hating such a character. This movie seemed like it was going to set up a lost Amazon tribe scenario, but they completey avoid that. So what's with the title?

The highlight of this movie is one of the lamest action scenes I've ever seen. There's some pool that the generic white guys have to cross, and there's a lone log. The pool has a dry ice effect, so the guys assume it's dangerous. One of them barely makes it across what must be about ten to fifteen feet. They tie a rope over the pool and four of the five guys make it across, while some loser falls in. What makes this so lame is that they could have easily crossed this puddle by walking five feet to their left and cross there. There was absolutely no reason to cross over this thing, except that the movie needed some lame action.

More highlights: Nobody lands a punch. Some guy gets killed by a really goofy spider puppet, and one of the survivors says, "It was the shock that killed him more then the venom." He must be more arachnophobic then me if he dies of shock due to that goofy thing. There's the Eegah-ness of the caveman Tang. Lastly, there's the ending to the movie which tries to be profound, or shocking, or some damn thing, but it only reminds us that the movie cheated us out of a perfectly good lost amazon tribe scenario.

Anyway, bad movie. Bad episode.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Irish History Month Essay #1


My essay is about Paul Hewson. He is the lead singer of the band U2 and is known as Bono Vox, not to be confused with the former senator or baseball/football player. It's pronounced "Bonn no." The Vox is silent.

Bono is best known for his roll in movies, but he's done more then that. His most famous movie is the one he wrote, Million Dollar Hotel. Since it stars Mel Gibson, I can only assume that it's really gory and questionable.

Bono's band is known for it's use of giant TVs. This is because the group is so tiny that you can barely see them on stage. I don't know what the cars are for, though. Their signature song is Elevation, which is about how awesome the Tomb Raider series is. Well, at least the first couple, and maybe the last one.

Other movies that Bono sung for or contributed to include Johnny Mneumonic, Batman Forever, and Goldeneye. This is because Bono believes in helping others, and he helped out by making people want to put up with 2 crummy movies and an only ok one.

Other causes he supports is the "Help Popes Become Cooler" cause and the "Only Invite Brunettes On Stage" cause. He wants to give iPods to hungry children, but is constantly thwarted by apathetic beaurocrats.

Bono's arch-nemesis is a devil that has taken on his form. You can tell it's the devil by noting it's more feminine appearance and the lack of cool sunglasses. Also, the devil uses less cuss words.

Since Bono is Irish, presumably everything he did in the previous paragraphs happened because he drinks. He once got arrested for indecent exposure at a bar.

Truly this One is no Lemon.

Monday, March 5, 2007

Silly me.

I thought the whole bracketology thing would be sorted out by now, but I learned today it would be up on Sunday. And when it comes in, I'll fill one out and post it here. I know next to nothing about college basketball, but I bet I'm in the upper 80-90 percentile by the time it's over.

This Week in Entertainment (3/5/07)



What do you get when you cross the Mad Max fad of the eighties with teens rollerskating? You get my Pick of the Week! I can only assume that this movie is filmed with the cheesiness of the decade is was made in.

Also out on DVD is South Park: Season 9. This features the episode that won an Emmy for shilling for Sony and lost an Emmy after pissing off Issac Hayes.

The Borat movie is coming out on DVD. One of my coworkers tried to get the rest of us to see this movie, but we couldn't all be available at the same time. I'm not sure if I would have liked this movie, but I was totally willing to ditch work.

For those who like typos, The Anna Micole Smith Show.

Eddie Murphy reportedly ditched the Oscars after he found out he lost. Good for him! Reward him by picking up this Beverly Hills Cops DVD set, DAMMIT!

Oh crap, now I have that Axel F song thingie in my head.

That's it with DVDs. I'll maybe add something later if Nintendo adds anything interesting to the Virtual Console.

Update: Three VC games, and only one that looks interesting. Super Ghouls and Ghosts (SNES, 800 poins) is a very early SNES game. Uncle Buddy had Ghosts and Goblins, and that was very tough. I think I only got as far as level six legitimately, and probably after many, many continues. Super Ghouls and Ghosts was the first game I played with a double jump, I think. Should be a good one.

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Sunday, Lazy Sunday (3/4/07)

Rocky Eye plus Rocky Eye Eye Eye equals Rocky Eye Vee: The Commies Is Coming!

I got my greedy hands on Wii Play today, after not being able to find it for two weeks. It's a quick game, but I now have one more Wii Remote then GameCube Controllers. I wish I had a green remote, though. Come on, Nintendo!

The Maryland Terrapins will be in the NCAA tournament this year after missing the last two. Maybe I should record the games and give my thoughts on them! Of course, I haven't followed the team at all and I'm not really a college basketball fan, but anything that can fill space in my blog will be great!

Seriously, this whole blog is about filling space, my horrible memory, and video games.

Now that February is over, there won't be any more Black History Month essays. Still, you may see something similar in the future.

Saturday, March 3, 2007

Kitty Pictures! #3



Here is a picture of George, our boy cat. He's a little bigger then he appears in this picture.

Demo Fun #6



Today's Demo is "1 Hour" and can be found at the usual place.

Our screen features the logo of Triad, the maker of this demo. It seems that they are a big fan of the Electronic Arts A. They're saying is "Dealer Quality Software." You know what that means, wink wink! This demo lacks background music.

Our good old scrolling text tells us that this demo is "drawed" by The Sarge Studios at the 24th of October. The name comes from how long it took to make. No kidding! Since they say it's exactly one hour, I wonder if they were racing the clock or wasted several minutes before compiling the program at the 1:00 mark.

We get the ranking list of today, oddly dated for the 6th of October: Ikari (The warriors?), TCS (who really impressed Triad. If you see the photo above you can see how hard it is to impress those guys. Anyway, TCS used videos. What that has to do with anything is up to our imaginations.), D-Gold, 1001 Crew, FCS, TTW/TLD, Judges, Antitrax, Yeti, ESI, MMX, Triton T (Jeez, did Triad keep the definitive list or what?), HTL/Popeye, FLT, New Edition(But only IPS! But aren't they a team!?), RWE/TLC, AFL '70, ... And several more hackers who named themselves after three random letters. I'm going to now have a chuckle at the idea of someone reading this list and bitching about, for example, how "MMX is worse then ESI, WTF!!!"

The guy on the bottom? Maffia Joe, who belongs there for presumably thinking it would be cool to add an extra f to his name.

After the list, Triad tells about it's status. "Expect the worst, U must be real worthy to be first in the ratings from now on,..." Wow, Triad was ahead of it's time. Now everybody on computers can't spell! "It's a good idea to send originals!!" You're right! We wouldn't want another one of those demos where people brag about their accomplishments and put down other nerds.

And then the text repeats! Wow, this was really short.

We're not done, though! This is the first demo I've done where it doesn't stop at one screen. For when we push the space button...



A picture of a helicopter! I'm guessing this was what most of the one hour went to. We even get a pretty good tune. There's no text though, so we really are done.


Date - October 24th, 1987
Scrolling text - Every other line is black, probably used for the font color.
Font - Rainbow colored.
Europeans - Can't tell. Placing the date before the month suggests so, but I don't know.
Bragging about Accomplishments - Yep.
Putting other hackers down - Yep.
Listing a ton of other nerds - Yep.
Harsh language - Nope.
Song - 8/10 - One of the better ones, for sure. It does have an odd poin where it has that song that they play at horse races.

Friday, March 2, 2007

Tork Visits Non DelMarVa Places! S.F.

Today's episode of the above title involves San Francisco, the Hippiest Place On Earth!

My dad works for the railroad and is active in it's union. Every few years, the union has a meeting in a city somewhere in the country. In 1992 or 1993 during June when I was 11-12, my family all went to San Francisco. It was for six days and it's the farthest west I've traveled from Maryland.

We had to take a plane, and this was the second time I've done so. The first time my parents took me to Louisiana to visit a relative. On the plane the stewardess gave my sister and me free headphones. Before the flight movie was shown I ended up listening to an all Henry Mancini channel, mostly just for the Pink Panther theme. The cartoon before the movie was the one where Bugs and Elmer sing opera. The movie was "Defending Your Life", which was about a guy who dies and finds out that he has to go to court and prove he didn't live a scared life.

My sister and I fought over the window seat, naturally. Those Rocky Mountains were pretty...rocky. Yeah. That was the most memorable part of what I saw outside. Anyway, I enjoyed just standing up during the flight and noting how weird it felt.

We finally reached San Francisco and was able to take a bus to the Hilton Hotel. This building was pretty huge, as we soon found out. We spent 6 days there and our parents decided that we should keep journals of the whole events. I remember that most of my journal poined out where we ate. Except for one pizza delivered to us, we walked to nearby fast food restaurants.

One of the places we went to everyday was Jack In The Box. We didn't have such a place in our area and I didn't hear about it's bad reputation until afterwards. It was a two story place. We did eat at a McDonald's on one day, but I can't remember where else.

Anyway, one of the things that you'll notice about San Francisco is that you have to wear a jacket all the time in Summer. It's foggy most of the time. My mom was especially a fan of the weather. It's also very hilly. It would be fun to just ride a wagon down the streets if there was no traffic. Sadly, we didn't get to see the famous crooked rode.

Another thing that stood out: There were bums everywhere. I see some standing in the islands at intersections from time to time, but I've never seen that many bums. There were always several next to the place where the public goes to watch the trolly stop and be turned around so it could start it's journey again.

One of our favorite places was the F.A.O. Schwartz toy store. It was a large three-story place with many elaborate toy themes. I think there was a lego display where you could control a camera to zoom in on the little people. There were more Hello Kitty there then I've ever seen. On the third floor was several video games, and I played Sonic the Hedgehog, even though I already had the game. I also played Punch-Out!!! on that NES controller thingie where you wave your hands around and it's suppose to capture your motions but it doesn't really work. Whatever it's called. I think we went there two or three times and we looked back to that place fondly many years later.

During the week we went to a big party held in a large room. This contained games for kids and my sister and I won a few crappy prizes. I forget most of the games, but one included a pop gun. I won a plush football with the Miami Dolphins logo on it for some reason. At one poin Chubby Checkers was on stage singing a couple songs. He is one of two celebrities I've seen from afar.

My dad also brought my sister and me to another party, but this was in a really loud room with a few video game arcade machines. The problem was that the games were free, and I could never get to any of them. I remember a baseball game and Berserk. I think the loud sounds just annoyed me and I wanted to get out.

My sister and I went to a pool during one day. It was the only time we went to a heated pool, which was a different experience for us. We were always used to going to pools at Delaware in the Summer. I think we made friends with some other kid but I don't remember.

My mom, my sister and I went on a bus trip around the city. My dad was suppose to go with us but he was at the wrong place. The driver was nice and told many interesting and funny stories. While we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge he told us about the suicides, including one person who was suicidal after a failed attempt, which led to his friends tossing him over later on. "True story," he would tell us. He also told a story about some bus getting stuck on the crooked rode. I think this was the poin where we got some S.F. spoons and a tshirt that said I was property of an Alcatraz swim team. I also got to stick my feet in the Pacific, so I could say I had touched two oceans.

On the last day we were able to take a bus on another tour, this time with dad. This bus dropped you off at wherever you wanted to go, and we opted to go to the area where the Ripley's Believe it Or Not Museum was. Our bus actually broke down at one poin, and we had to wait for a second. Finally we made the trip and went to the museum. The place was interesting, but the part I'll remember most was a trick. Early on there's a few monitors telling the story of some guy who could stretch his lip over his face. The monitors encourage guests to look in a mirror and try the same. It's only later on in the museum where you realize that the mirror is a trick one, and there's a whole gathering of people laughing at the poor suckers. I was one of those suckers.

That was actually the last day we were there, and we had to go on a late flight that night. We wanted to go on the trolley to get back to the hotel, but the line was unbelievably long. We instead had to hop on a shuttle bus back to the hotel. The flight was so late that I fell asleep.