Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

So I went to an early screening of the Borat movie last week (effectively thanks to Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso), and I left with three major impressions:

1. There was so much PLOT. There were so many scripted scenes of just Borat and his producer planning their documentary. I would rather they have devoted more time to doing more interviews. (Also, I wonder how much of the interviews were scripted this time around.)

2. In general, not as funny as the Borat segments on Da Ali G Show.

3. One of the explanations of the film's R rating is "graphic nudity." OH THEY WERE NOT KIDDING. SO unnecessary.

They did show the running of the Jew, though.

I'll just get mine from Draeger's

I briefly thought about driving by Toys Я Us to see how long the PS3/Wii line was around 3 AM, but decided it would just be depressing. I also had this amusing realization: Because of daylight savings ending, everyone who decided to camp out overnight had to spend an extra hour in line, making what was already a stupidly-long wait just that much longer. Don't mess with daylight savings!!!!!

My one PlayStation 3 answer?

Several months ago I asked one question about the PlayStation 3 which I hadn't heard anyone talk about since E3, and to which a favorable answer could have gotten me lining up in the early morning in hopes of reserving one (although probably not this early). The question was: Will PlayStation 3 be region-free for backwards compatible PS1 and PS2 games?

So apparently SCEE vice president Phil Harrison read my post, because last week he answered it! (Sort of.) Here's Magic Box's paraphrase:

PS3 is region-free, but PS2 is not, therefore Japanese PS2 games still won't run on American PS3

The reason it's a "sort of" is that Magic Box loves to quote stuff and not cite their sources, plus I seriously doubt English is their first language. But, they did list it among a bunch of other facts Harrison revealed during Sony's Gamers' Day event last week, so I'm leaning towards it being true.

...Which SUUUUUCKS. PS3 being region-free is pretty much the only feature that's been unanimously praised. Especially when Sony's people are gushing about being able to offer downloads of rare PS1 and PS2 titles over the PS3 online service, wouldn't it make sense to make the entire library of games playable if people already have the discs? Sony should realize this means people will just have to keep importing hardware, which they have not been too happy about lately.

Just call me SmarterChild 2.0

Based on this mostly one-sided exchange:

chiIled: http://fanboys-online.com//comics/20061013.jpg
KiyreEatsTrees (Autoreply): ehahehe
chiIled: i like that one
chiIled: also: your away message has obsoleted the actual conversation i would have had with you

...I'm going to be rolling out the following:

KiyreEatsTrees (Autoreply): loool

KiyreEatsTrees (Autoreply): dude

KiyreEatsTrees (Autoreply): nice

KiyreEatsTrees (Autoreply): aghgha

KiyreEatsTrees (Autoreply): OLD MEME

The Presteej

lol

I hate when I have all these dumb comments to make about a movie but I can't because they'd spoil the whole thing.

Anyway, go see The Prestige. Probably one of the top three movies I've seen in the theater this year. And I saw Miami Vice! (I will never get over that.)

I predict this will be a shoe-in for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Bowie.

God Hand

Heh HEHHHH!

God Hand is the greatest baseball batting, face stomping, button mashing, uppercutting, crotch kicking, drunken boxing, rocket launching, kick-me signing, arm chopping, gay bashing1, barrel rolling, demon spawning, haymaking, clown crushing, wall clipping, poker playing, repeatedly continuing, mach speed pummeling, woman spanking, mighty morphing, Devo singing, massive damaging, chihuahua racing, Clover closing, double-or-nothing, surf rocking, gorilla suplexing game I've played this year. STRONGLY ENDORSE.

1 LITERALLY

Battlefield 2142

where is my jetpack

Let me start off by saying I am a huge fan of Battlefield 2. I love the tiered, teamwork-heavy gameplay, and despite the giant bug-disguised-as-a-server-browser that still plagues the game a year after release, it's one of the few games that I've played for more than 200 hours1.

So this 2142 business (out today!) has me sort of torn. All the new unlocks and squad bonuses sound great. No more constant bombing from players in unstoppable jets? That sounds good, too. But then the demo came out and stupidly didn't include any method of moving up in rank, so there's no way to access any of the unlocks, and thus the vast majority of the new features and equipment is not in the demo. Isn't the entire idea behind a demo to give players an indication of how the final game will be? Good thinking, DICE. On top of that, the single demo map is really boring, and the gameplay just feels off. Joshua LaTendresse over at Games Radar says it best:

The feel of being on foot can be best described as "swimmy" - moving around feels thick and unresponsive, and heaven help you if you are on a moving Titan. Worse still, most of the futuristic weapons feel insubstantial, sound like sewing machines and don't often hit what they're aimed at.

The whole game is basically just an overgrown Battlefield 2 mod (another issue drawing a lot of heat from fans), so it's strange that they'd decide to tweak something as basic as moving and shooting.

Finally, there's this scandal that came out yesterday about the game potentially scanning things like your browsing history to better target its in-game ads. I doubt they're doing anything malicious with the data, but the fact that they feel it's necessary is really the last straw. (The mandatory advertising doesn't even bring the cost of the game down.) I'll be fine with good old Battlefield 2 for now.

Plus there aren't even any FRICKIN' LASERS.

Update: The future battlefield keeps getting better: Heartless Gamer reports that a new patch (the second in as many days since release) recommends that, for compatibility reasons, players uninstall a Windows security update that prevented hackers from commandeering your PC. WTF?

1 Number of hours spent playing World of Warcraft since 2004: 0

The operation was completed successfully

deep deep

This turned out so much better than last time.

Yesterday's news, today!

I couldn't find the image I wanted

So despite how much I enjoy sleeping in (especially when clients don't even call in the morning), I managed to get out to EB yesterday morning to stand in the Wii line. At 8 AM I was the seventh in line and they ended up taking 13 preorders, so I can take comfort in knowing that I'll be getting a Wii at launch without having to camp out overnight at Best Buy (although I may drive by the line just for fun).

I was expecting that waiting out in the cold for two hours would mostly involve repeated glances at my watch, but it actually turned out to be pretty fun. I got to hang out with a bunch of other game geeks and play some Mario Kart. (We were only out-geeked by the guy at the head of the line, who not only was playing Ultimate Ghouls 'n' Ghosts on his ceramic white PSP, but showed up at 5 AM that morning and on Tuesday for the PS3.) After the karting wrapped up, we discussed what games and controller loadouts people were reserving with their Wii (mine: Zelda, Excite Truck, extra wiimote), and chatted a little about the PS3, about which people were actually pretty enthusiastic.

The only downside of this preorder business is that now whenever I read some blog post about the Wii, I become filled with this intense impatience that it's not already November 19th. The most ridiculous thing is that when I imagine bringing the box home and setting it up, what am I most eager to do? Not Zelda, not Excite Truck, not even Wii Sports. It's setting up my stupid Mii. I think it's not because the games don't interest me, but more because I like the idea spreading this little custom-created character around the Internet1, sort of like some of the patterns I've created in Animal Crossing. Also I guess I'm just really weird.

1 I have no idea if it actually does this.

Your attention please

Touch!

Bomberman Land Touch! has been bumped up a week to November the 7th. PLEASE ADJUST YOUR CALENDARS.

Glancing over in the sidebar right now, it appears I will be spending potentially over $150 on the 7th, and that is just a week into the month. November is going to be a dark time.

EFPDD

I was instructed to put this on my Internet Website:

ShoguNate2: "DJ Ross ... a fucking pimp daddy of design"

I really wanted to incorporate this into my other site, but, amazingly, electrofuckingpimpdaddymazdesign.com was already registered.

(It is not really. Please do not look this up.)

I am racist against </p>

Thanks to R.J. I now have this great clip from an IRC log sometime during 2003. This is me bemoaning having to make periodic maintenance updates on another of my sites (which is now dormant):

<metaly> i would have someone take over as webmaster for me except 1) no one dedicated+trustworthy 2) i am control freak
<metaly> i would go back to site after 6 months of someone else running it and be like NOOOOOOOooooooooooooooo there would be like </P> tags and flash everywhere

Since when I first got into HTML and for many years after, </p> was pretty much an unnecessary, implied tag. But now it's required to be XML compliant, thus leading to this from several months/years(?) later:

<metaly> ever since i started using css i knew i might one day have to use </p> ........
<metaly> HOWEVER I WILL DO IT GRUDGINGLY AND MY RACISM WILL PERSIST

I am so proud of my past self. Even as I sit here at this computer where I've closed hundreds (maybe thousands?) of <p> tags over the last few years, I must always remember my pledge. NEVER FORGET.

Somewhat incidentally, October 8, 1996 is the day I first logged on to IRC.

Broolooloop

I just got a 2X point multiplier, except in real life.