Streaming Japanese tunes. The announcer is pretty abrasive (sorry “m.c.”) but the music is stuff you won’t hear on the radio in the US, that’s for sure.
Category: Pointless Ramblings
Sportsmanship is not dead
When I was a kid, my father taught me to be a good sport. “Nobody likes a sore loser.” he told me, “And nobody likes a sore winner, either.” At the time, this wasn’t any great revelation; that was how the world was. People were expected to be gracious about both winning and losing in competition. Now I’m not saying everyone was gracious, but that was what society expected.
Over my years of gaming on the internet, I’ve sadly grown to accept the fact that sportsmanship was dead, replaced by ‘trash talking.’ When you win, you’re expected to berate your opponent. When you lose, you’re expected to accuse the other guy of cheating or something. And this isn’t limited to the internet, I should add. We see it in sports of all levels as well.
This is, in my opinion, a sad, sad part of our current culture.
And so it is with delight that I can say, sportsmanship and healthy competition does still exist! As I said in my last post, I’ve been playing a lot of board games online lately. Mostly Go and Backgammon, but also Shogi, Xiangqi, Chess, Pente and a few others. At this point I’ve played (or am currently in) hundreds of different games against people from all over the world. And the ‘rudest’ exchange I’ve had is the lack of pleasantries. That is, some people who play silently rather than wishing their opponent ‘good luck’ at the start of the match, and ‘good game’ at the end of it. Again, let me emphasize that these silent opponents are the most rude I’ve encountered, and I think you’ll agree that this isn’t very rude at all.
The vast majority of opponents I’ve played against have varied from cordially polite to pleasantly chatty. I’ve had much stronger players take me under their wing to teach me a few tricks. I’ve had people apologize for playing too slowly, even when they really weren’t slow at all. In all, its been such a pleasant and encouraging experience that I keep waiting for the other shoe to fall!!
And the cynic in me wonders if nationality has a lot to do with this. I’d say that at least half my opponents have been from countries other than the US. Perhaps sportsmanship is still alive and well inside foreign shores…
BloodRayne does nudie shots
Rayne Makes Her PlayBoy Debut
If you felt teased by her sexy Girls of Gaming cover, then this new feature art is going to blow your mind! Rayne is 100% topless and smokin’ hot in the October issue of Playboy magazine. This is a first in videogame history and trust us when we say that Rayne does not disappoint. The magazine hits newsstands in early September so here’s a great excuse to get a copy!
Bah! Who cares! Now if it was Astra, the hottie ghost chick from Ghosthunter then I’d be interested. 🙂
Save money! Eat crap!
I half-heard an interesting factoid on NPR this morning (I have a clock-radio alarm and this was on the radio when it went off, so perhaps my sleepy brain misheard). $1.00 will buy you, on average, 100 calories worth of good healthy food. The same $1.00 will buy you 1000 calories worth of fatty, salty or sugary junk food. The person making this statement said that this is why obesity is such a problem in poverty-stricken communities.
I add that it might be part of the reason those of us who really don’t give a rat’s ass about food constantly fight our weight. Fast food is easy food, and spending time preparing dinner is, to me, a huge waste of time.
Well, I gotta go. The pizza delivery guy just arrived….
PS It’s true! I just realized something. Today I’m eating a greek salad, a cup of soup and a bottle of water. This cost me about $7.50 at the company cafeteria. Yesterday I had a cheeseburger, french fries and a bottle of Mountain Dew and it cost me about $5.50! And really filled me up, whereas I know today’s lunch will putter out at about 4 o’clock and I’ll be hitting the vending machine for a snack.
Probation officers fired after ‘XBox killings’
Probation officers fired after ‘XBox killings’
So the ring-leader beat up a friend of his a few days before the killings, his probation officer knew about it, could have had him back in jail but didn’t bother to file the paperwork on time, it seems… yet they still call them “XBox Killings.”
Why not “Probation Officer Killings?”
At least the next story, telling that the judge has these psychos in jail with no bond, left the game system out of the title Judge denies slaying suspects bond but the link to the article on other CNN pages says Bond denied in ‘XBox killings’.
Funniest line I read all day: The father of one of the vile creatures that murdered these sleeping people says of his spawn “He was a good kid, he just got with the wrong crowd.”
No, I’m sorry pal. No one that joined in on this kind of pyschotic, evil behavior could be in any way construed as “a good kid” and I have to wonder what kind of man raises such a son…
Why The Press sucks
Here we go again. Check the headline:
Sheriff: 4 charged in Florida killings over Xbox
Killings over Xbox…well that says it all, right? Once again, these hyper violent videogamers go apeshit on each other. And I mean, this is CNN. Aren’t they supposed to be respectable?
Here’s another take on it. The headline isn’t much better:
Police: Xbox Theft Spurred Fla. Slayings
But if you read this story, you’ll learn that the Xbox in question was just one small factor in an on-going dispute. Which, I should add, the local police were aware of. The ‘ringleader’ has spent 8 of the last 11 years in jail for a variety of crimes. They’d been squatting in a vacation home and got pissed off for being thrown out of it.
Sick individuals? Absolutely. I hope to hell they fry for what they’ve done. But c’mon, is it really accurate reporting to call this the “Xbox slaying?” Isn’t 6 people being beaten to death, one so severely that they can’t even ID the body from dental records, sensational enough for the blood-thirsty press? Do we have to drag the ‘gaming angle’ into it?
Hell, CBS News ran a picture of an Xbox in their coverage:
Squatter Accused Of Xbox Slayings
Aquariass
Someone please buy one and then invite me over for a beer bash….
Pre-Incan brewery found in Andes
CNN.com – Pre-Incan brewery found in Andes
Ritual drinking!? Sounds like my kind of civilization!
Mercury mission set for launch
CNN.com – Mercury mission set for launch
Check back in 2011 for details! 😉
A revelation
Carm’s kitten is sick and we’ve been struggling twice a day to give her liquid antibiotics. How it works is, I essentially tackle and maul the poor animal. Once she’s subdued (aside from yowls of outrage and frustration) Carm pries open her mouth, sticks a syringe inside and shoots the antibiotics in there. Then I let the cat go and she scowls and storms around, shaking her head in displeasure at the taste of the stuff. And it finally dawned on me why this works…
Cats can’t spit!!!!
A baby would just spit the foul tasting stuff out, right? But think about what a cat (or a dog…I also realized that dogs can’t spit either) does when they bite into something they don’t like. They open their mouth wide and point it at the ground and hope gravity does the job. I’ve seen mean people throw a ‘treat’ to a dog that’s something vile. The poor dog can’t get the item out of its mouth at all easily!
So dogs and cats can’t spit. WHY? People can spit. Camels can spit. Spitting cobras can spit.
Can chickens spit? Can cows? What about chimps?
There must be an evolutionary reason why some animals can spit and others can’t. But for the life of me, aside from the spitting cobra example, I can’t figure out what it is…
I’ll no doubt spend my entire weekend contemplating this!