Rampant Exclamations

Welcome back from your weekend, folks. And thanks for all the comments recently, by the way: as Will (or maybe it was Greg? I’d had several beers) analogized on Friday, a blog without comments is like being the stand-up comic that no one laughs at. Only in this case, it’s like the stand-up comic does his act, no one at all laughs, then one guy comes up after the show and goes “hey, man, that was alright.” Don’t be that one guy!

Sorry about the grouchy Facebook message; I’m permanently grouchy.

Now, on to the metric asston of links I have for you today, including a very interesting story about a town whose economy is made up almost entirely of cocaine.

- Catch of the day: cocaine. The coastal town of Bluefields, in Nicaragua (population: about 50,000), has an economy that’s powered almost entirely by cocaine. Turns out that whenever the Coast Guard pursues Colombian drug traffickers and they throw their coke overboard, this is where it washes up. The town has 85% unemployment and little to no violence; it’s classified as an autonomous zone by Nicaragua, and the heavily armed natives (”AK-47s and up”) discourage the traffickers from coming back for their own drugs. This is seriously a fascinating read; if you don’t click any other link I post today, click this one.

- Oh wait, here’s the other big news: Wal-Mart is no longer carrying HD-DVD, and Toshiba is giving up on HD-DVD altogether. For those paying attention, that’s the official end of the format wars. HD-DVD is now the Betamax of our generation. Except Betamax was superior to VHS… okay, so it’s kind of like the Betamax of our generation, except that Sony finally won one. Betamax got the beatdown, ATRAC was atrocious, but Blu-Ray… you win, Sony. Now I wonder if we’ll see a re-release of big-grossing movies like Transformers on Blu-Ray.

- There’s a companion site for the book Japrocksampler, by Julian Cope. This book has quietly been on the edge of my radar for a while; it largely deals with post-war Japanese rock music. There’s some pretty amazing stuff to be found there, and I’m happy to see a book about it (and equally happy to see Cope’s companion website).

- If this t-shirt were for any wrestler except John Cena, I might actually buy one. Ugh, Cena.

- Have you succumbed to the magic of Rock Band? Do you wish you had your own bundle? Target’s selling them for $149 this week at Target, a savings of $20 off the full price, so feel free to open your wallet and take the plunge. Assuming, of course, your weekend drinking binge didn’t totally empty your bank account. Seriously, get help.

- I really hate Jack Thompson. There’s no way to describe it other than hate. Here’s Jacky Boy getting a raging clue over the latest school shooting, and here’s the Entertainment Consumers Association responding to the dimwit. Seriously, who else on Earth gets a boner over getting to blame school shootings on Counterstrike? For that matter, who still blames Counterstrike for anything except ‘not getting laid in college’? Thompson once again also continues trying to blame the VT school shooting on games (already proven patently false), and even plugs his own friggin’ book. Classy, Jacko.

The ECA says:

We’d like to extend our condolences to the families, friends and classmates of those who were affected in the school shooting at Northern Illinois University.

Separately, we are disgusted, but no longer shocked, to find that anti-game activists are again rushing to conclusions about what drove Stephen Kazmierczak, the clearly disturbed 27-year-old who police say was responsible for this tragedy, to commit such an act.

Blaming video games for the behavior of the mentally-challenged is vile on many levels. And, as Generations X and Y mature, it is extremely likely that just about all of us have played at least one video game at some point in our lives.

Drawing a parallel between games and violence without any substantive proof is sensationalism for its own sake. This is a sad event, made worse by the irresponsible actions of attention-seekers and the media that has given them a platform for their reckless venom.

- Now for more news on everyone’s favorite murder simulator game, Rock Band: this week’s downloadable content list. Weezer’s “El Scorcho,” Stone Temple Pilots’ “Sex-Type Thing,” and Garbage’s “Why Do You Love Me” are all available this week, and now we’ll never be able to get Will to play the correct drumbeat on anything because he’ll basically be trying to play El Scorcho all the time. Oh, and they’re all based on the master tracks this week, for those who aren’t fans of awful covers.

- Debbie Wolf, along with a number of other British people who seem to be able to interfere with electronics. Great, Britain’s breeding superheroes. That’s actually pretty good news, unless they’ve still got a grudge over that whole Revolutionary War thing. They don’t, do they?

- Here’s an overview of a Psycho-inspired bathroom, though I have no idea how you’re supposed to tell if someone is actually creeping up on you to stab you in the shower now.

- Be glad this wasn’t you, Will: FTD charges customer $75, forgets to deliver flowers on Valentine’s Day.

Technically spoileriffic Smash coverage:

- Smash gets a new stage: Luigi’s Mansion. No one’s really surprised about that, I guess, but the neat part is that it’s destructible - but will rebuild itself. That seems to be a trend, since the self-rebuilding of the big bridge from Twilight Princess was the basis of the Giga Jigglypuff glitch from the other day. Hmm.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 9:54 am and is filed under Alcohol, Animals, Architecture, Books, Defeat, Drugs, Forwards from Phil, Holidays, Internet, Kitty!, Music, News Post, Pirates, Politics, Science - Mad or Otherwise, Science Fiction, Television, Things To Spend Your Money On, Video Games, WTF?, Wanton violence, lol. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.