20-25 minute drawin' warm-up

 

Yeah, so I have a twitter account now, and I'm actually pretty okay with that. If you feel the need to follow it, you can do so at http://twitter.com/RaeBeta

Okay, local peoples: What would you think if I said (hypothetically speaking, of course) that John and I want to throw a Rock Band/board game party on Saturday afternoon/evening? As in, January 2nd? Would any of you be interested in attending?

The party (again, still hypothetical) wouldn't be at the Abarnment, as the new furniture configuration doesn't allow for setting up extra tables for board games. However, it would be at a fairly easy to find location in Cary (thank you, icepanthar22!), plus with the New Year already here, the roads should be free of the drunken stupiditude that prevents a lot of us from venturing out New Year's Eve.

I'll need at least 5 yays before I say 'yes' to setting up this party. In theory, you could also call this shindig "Amanda's Not-Quite Birthday Party." Every year, most of my friends miss out on my birthday festivities because Kingdom 12th Night almost ALWAYS falls on or around the day of my birth. Go figure. In lieu of presents, just having people show up for the drunken tomfoolery that is Rock Band 2 would be gift enough for me. :) (Though, if you want to get/make me something, wool socks or fingerless knitted gloves would be brilliant. . .)

So, what say the people? To party on, or not to party on. . .that is the question.

Time to shill for a Christmas gift the wife found for me: "Yummy Earth" brand "Organic Hot Chili Pops." I'm one who is wont to toss some "Dave's Insanity Sauce" in the ol' chili pot (or, at least, in my own bowl so nobody else eating with us has to go to the emergency room), and these suckers come nowhere near that level of heat. I'd put them at highest around Taco Bell "fire" sauce, but the burn is variable from lolly to lolly. Anyway, you can find them here, though you kind of have to hunt for them (they're the third row of photos down, under "lollipop pouches" in the drop-down menu). At the moment, they're only available in 15-unit bags, and you get a mix of "Chili Lime Lambada" and "Chili Mango Mambo." One participant in our holiday gatherings enjoyed how the lime one tasted with his beer, and I liked having them in the car as a little pick-me-up for the duller parts of the drive (the ones without snowbound cars). Anyway, I really dug this stocking stuffer and hope I don't get sick of them anytime soon. They're also only 22 calories apiece, so I hopefully won't expand my waistline too much over the coming months...

With little going on in movies or TV, here are a few items: Kevin Bacon is going to be a superhero in an upcoming film, "Super." His character, "The Crimson Bolt" is the alter-ego of a former drug dealer named "Jacques." Why does this sound like something thought up by Ben Edlund, father of "The Tick?" The other item that piqued my interest was Peter Jackson's announcement that he's working on a post-apocalyptic film where cities fly and do battle against each other. I predict at least one slow-mo jump from one floating city to another, with about 50/50 odds that it will be a parkour-style jump or via a car.

Odd "D&D" news (or at least, "D&D-like") from what I believe to be a Chinese website promoting a new online game. From the Google translation, I see a lot of D&D-esque words like "Illithid" and mention of what I'm guessing is either a realm name or the fact that part of the game takes place in a British suburb called "Chelsea Heights" (it's on page 2). The second page's picture of a kid with a flintlock shooting what appears to be a sea troll over the head of what appears to be a pretty powerful cleric makes me wonder what other oddities were in store on page 3... and I was greeted with mention of "Canadian pets." I know odds are high that meaning is being mangled, here, but I kind of hope not. :)

And on an "around the office" note, I'm hopefully going to be test-driving a new office chair soon. Some might remember my raving about the AK-Octane, which appears to be out of production. My current AK's cushions are losing their "cush," and one of the arm rests has begun to disintegrate from the bottom up. Rather than buying another new chair, I'm trying something different. I've found a cheap (yet antique) set of legs and manual swivel chair mechanism on eBay, and I'm going to graft the seat and back from a wooden "school board" chair liberated from a now-defunct educational building. Tossing a few "skateboard" castors on it, I'm hoping to have a pretty sweet "new" old chair. The screw mechanism going into the leg assembly does wobble a bit, but some research tells me that its vintage (possibly from the late 1800's) is pretty much doomed to wobble, being old and made of cast iron. If it ever fails, I'd have to replace it with steel, but I could keep the legs. Sadly, no parts are made to fit the old hardware for the purposes of stabilizing the thing (the screw is larger than the current 1-inch or "acme" swivel chair standard), but I read that as long as I don't abuse it, it'll probably work for a few more decades before becoming unusable. I'll post some pics if it comes together as planned!

The rest isn't about chairs, but you might like it nevertheless:

- DJ Earworm has released his 2009 'United State of Pop' mashup, compiled from Billboard's top hits for the year.
- Though I'm sure it's been done before, here's a very good Star Wars/A-Team mashup.
- Puzzles and magnetic fields are the basis of Magnetic Moment. Arrange magnets and objects to propel and guide a ball to its bucket.
- This is either genius or madness: Tuper-Tario-Tros is a combination Tetris/Super Mario game. Press your spacebar to switch between making a plumber jump and fitting together falling blocks.
- An interesting gallery of Nautilus designs. Captain Nemo has quite the array to choose from.
- The singing could use some work, but there are a few clever couplets in the Battlestar Rhapsody (if you haven't seen the new "Battlestar Galactica," spoilers ahoy).
- This next one gets a "violence 'n' bloody stuff" warning. There's a new trailer out for the upcoming Aliens vs. Predator game (note no "vs. Space Marines," as if they weren't a threat... a pink, squishy, screaming threat). The movie series might be a disappointment, but this looks pretty good. And Lance Henrikson does the voiceover.
- And lastly, some eye candy gaming with Perpetual Blaze, a game where your ship is your weapon, making whoever you smash into explode into gatherable particle effects.

I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas, and is recovering nicely. I am finally home with the kitties, after a few days that were both hectic and not.

Christmas Eve Day: Woke up, packed the car, said good-bye to the animals, drove to Morristown. Said hi, piled gifts under the tree, ate a muffin, went with my brother and my husband to see my aunt and uncle at my grandfather's old house, which they are getting ready to move into. Then went to see my grandfather at the assisted living place, which is a really nice place. He has a whole apartment, not much smaller than mine, and with better lighting! Then, back home to get the nieces and take them to see The Princess and the Frog, which, I'm actually going to have to recommend. The music is not particularly memorable, and the last section drags a bit, but the story is far better than I expected, and the characters are actually developed and multi-dimensional. I would watch it again. Then, home for dinner of much the same fare as Thanksgiving, and some present-opening for and from the nieces-- they would be going to their moms at noon Christmas Day, so to spread it out a little and give them time to appreciate things, we let them open some gifts Christmas Eve. Then went BACK my grandfather's old house to mingle with other relatives before going back to my mom's, where the nieces were already nestled snug in their beds, having left Santa a lemon poppyseed muffin, dry Cheerios, and a Coke with a note that said "Couldn't find any cookies-- sorry!" I love my nieces. Checked on them to find the younger one asleep with her thumb in her mouth and her other arm clutching the Lightning McQueen-shaped pillow we got her. Awww.... The older one, on the other hand, was awake and requested stories. So we read an L. Frank Baum story about Santa being kidnapped but refusing to lose his goodwill, and then the Nativity Story, before finally she nodded off.

Christmas Day: Woken up at 6:37 am by the nieces, and managed to keep them with us, talking about what Santa does when he gets home from his rounds (Does Mrs. Claus have breakfast ready for him, or is he too full from all the cookies? Does he go straight to bed, or does he have to put up his feet and watch some football to unwind for a bit?) until 7:00, at which point they got my mom and stepdad up, and I woke my brother up, which apparently I wasn't supposed to do. Oops. Lots of present opening, and watching the nieces squeal over their Santa gifts (Moxie girls! Art kits! LIVE FROGS!). Lee and I got a shiny brand new vacuum cleaner, which was the thing we needed most in the world. I will talk more about my loot in a later entry... I do love to catalog and categorize.

To be continued...

I was hoping to have a Sherlock Holmes review, but snow kept us at home this Christmas day, so it's postponed for the time being. For what it's worth, "Ain't it Cool News" seems to think it's decent enough, and, thankfully, both reviews do mention Holmes using his genius to solve a perplexing mystery. If that's included, then I'll most likely come away satisfied.

But I did get to see the Doctor Who Christmas Special, and without giving anything away, I can say a few things: I'm sorely going to miss Tennant, though he's bringing his Doctor to a close that feels complete rather than abruptly interrupted. But on a completely different note, I think this is the first episode of Doctor Who to mention a sitting U.S. President by name and use audio clips of his speeches as part of the episode's dialogue. And while I'm somewhat up on my UK politics and the views expressed about America via their topical comedy program(me)s, either someone has an overabundance of expectation regarding the U.S. President's effect on the worldwide economy, or the scriptwriter was being sarcastic (perhaps making a sideways dig at views held in Britain?). But either way, it was odd seeing (sort of) a "real" politician in an episode of 'Who, since normally the politicians are fictional archetypes made to either get killed by someone taking over or they are whoever is taking over, but in disguise.

Anyway, a good cliffhanger, and I can't wait to see how they follow up the tantalizing final few minutes on New Year's Day.

Normally, this would get a place in the linkdump, but I can't get it out of my head. This is UPular, (in case that kills your 'net connection, here's a YouTube link) an ambient mix-song created by snippets of the Pixar movie, "Up." For those not familiar with the work of the tunesmith, "Pogo," he started out with this ditty called "Alice," and his latest effort was either commissioned or endorsed by Pixar itself. Though just meant to be a soundscape (picking syllables that just hit notes rather than form a musical verse), I keep wanting to sing along somehow.

Now I have to go dig out my poor Honda, entombed in unassembled snowmen. While I frost my goatee, here's a video-heavy linkpile:

- Presented as a sort of religious tract is this amusing guide to the Creation of the World of Grayhawk, the D&D campaign setting. See how many of the old gaming supplements you own from which they pulled the artwork.
- A Christmas-themed (but still challenging) puzzler: Light Up the Christmas Tree. Rotate the wire/channel bits to get power to every light.
- If you're out in the ice and snow, be very careful, or you might wind up crunching your fenders on YouTube.
- Last post, UK comedian Bill Bailey generated a techno remix by making a comment on a news quiz. Apparently, something talked about in one of his concerts actualized in real life. I wonder if he's that kid Ron Howard portrayed in "The Twilight Zone," but instead of being overtly malicious, he went into comedy?
- I think I need one of these Star Trek webcams. That way, I can pretend there are little people in the ship that fear my wrath, like in the original series episode, Catspaw.
- In a similar vein, someone in Japan has constructed models of the USS Enterprise-A, Battleship Yamato, and Voyager as working remote-control submarines. I almost want an in-ground pool now...
- Two engineers try out Christmas Laser Beam cats. Pew-pew, indeed.
- This strikes me as a "Grow" game combined with an offbeat "defense" game: Tetraform gives you the power to click on an enemy followed by your planet (not recommended) or another enemy ship to make them attract each other until they collide and explode. Works well for missiles, too.

merry christmas!

For those unacquainted with the role-playing game mentioned in this week's FFN, there's a quick run-down of the basics for Synnibarr (as well as a few other, ah, "interesting" sourcebooks) at the RPG.net Wiki. There are even a few for sale via Amazon at various prices (and it managed to get a three-star review from someone, which seems a tad generous). I first heard of it thanks to this image from one of many motivational poster threads.

It's Christmas Eve Eve, and we're supposed to drive an hour or two on Christmas day, so I fully expect the force field surrounding our city to fail and allow in the blizzard that's supposed to blow through. I think I can say that the holiday has well and truly morphed from what Norman Rockwell envisioned into an event where I include visits with three to six other families (perhaps more, depending on how you count) and my big present is Cristi and I deciding to finally replace our 20-year-old washer & dryer (under mild protest. I mean, if you don't drag the sheets over the rust spots, they work as well as ever, right?). My siblings and I all agree that we won't break our checking accounts buying gifts for one another, but instead we buy either "group gifts" (food & drink) or donate to a charity in their name along with getting their children something fun to play with. However you celebrate or whatever you do, I hope everyone has some fun and safe time off to enjoy a little relaxation and something good to nosh on. And if you somehow think there's not enough stress, you could always decide to hit the malls on December 26th. :)

Or you could buy a T-shirt that I whipped up and somehow forgot to mention: LoLCats, HO!" Somehow, redubbing an episode of "Thundercats" in LoLspeak sounds somewhat intriguing, especially if you could make it seem that the mutants were confused by it and that it was Mum-Ra's annoyance at it that fueled his desire to destroy them. :)

Back to the usual items of interest: I've long told people upset by actors that say things they disagree with to separate the thespian's work from their private lives. Tom Cruise made that very difficult with quite a few well-publicized antics (though one of the remixes that resulted was quite amusing). That said, this trailer for his next film looks like a fun time. He may be kinda messed up off-screen, but he's got talent.

Here's something for the fans of British comedian Bill Bailey and "Have I Got News for You." Last week, Liberal Democrat MP Charles Kennedy was on the show, apparently the first MP to do so after a scandal involving other members of Parliament claiming some rather outlandish things as expenses (I believe the more famous ones were a duck pond, a moat, and a tower on a castle). Anyway, Bill was goading Mr. Kennedy into saying his colleagues were, ah, "less than honest" and suggested it would be remixed on YouTube and become a hit. Well, it's not on YouTube, but the mix does exist (using Bill's voice, samples from previous jokes about monkeys and octopuses, and the show's theme music).

Now I must away to help Cristi wrap [DATA EXPUNGED] for the nephews, so until Christmas Day's posting, here's:

- A bit of "hard" science for fiction to argue over: ten ways to travel in deep space and the physics of space battles.
- A guy decided to see what his cat, Kookoo, got up to during the day, so he put a GPS receiver on Kookoo's collar and compiled a video of the results.
- And since the season is 'tis-ing, from the nuts at "Everything is Terrible," here's The Majesty of Christmas Music. Sanity checks may be required.
- This is the time of year when people forward that text file about how fast Santa's sleigh has to go to reach every house and what happens to him and the reindeer after physics are applied (it's not pretty). So instead, I'm posting what most likely happened to the Ewoks after the second Death Star blew up in close proximity to the moon they were living on.
- Two rather offbeat holiday traditions: watching Donald Duck in Norway on Christmas Eve and watching a a sketch called 'Dinner for One' in Germany for New Years (at least, as of 2005).
- How about a new holiday tradition: Infectionator: Xmas Edition where you can not only generate zombies, but you can try to have Santa join your army of the undead.
- It's all a matter of opinion of course, though what intrigued me about the worst comics of the year (of which this is the second page) is that the winner(?) was a bizarre storyline from the "Mark Trail" comic strip.
- A coffee grinder might seem aggressive enough for many coffee drinkers, but this espresso machine is for those who find Chuck Norris a bit wimpy.
- The Vatican now says that his holiness is now his copyrightedness. Get to those "Pope Rooms" at Buca Di Beppo before they're closed down, folks!
- Artist of engine-driven oddities, Stan Mott would have surely been a huge tabletop gamer. I would love to see a "Car Wars" supplement based on his work. :)
- We end with a game called Space Ace, though it has nothing to do with Don Bluth. It's a flavor of the old vector-graphics "Lunar Lander" games, except you're flying through a maze of tunnels collecting dots while trying not to touch your highly volatile hull against the walls.

I went back and edited my decade in review to add things that didn't quite make it in the first time around, but are really too important to be left out. Is that allowed? Oh, well, I did it anyway.

Have been going nonstop today. Worked a double, and did last minute shopping and other errands both in the three hours between shifts and after the second shift. Still have lots of stuff to do around the apartment, including packing and present wrapping.

Leaving for Morristown tomorrow morning, hopefully pretty early because I need to go see my aunt (didn't know until today that she was in Tennessee for Christmas this year) and I told my niece I would make an effort to take her to a matinee of The Princess and the Frog, which I think I want to see as much as she does, if not more. I'm not expecting it to be great, but it's been so long since Disney has come out with an actual FAIRY TALE in 2-D ANIMATION, that even if the plot stinks, it will be a refreshing return to childhood.

Did I mention I got my first video game credit earlier this fall? Normally, testers in my position (working for a company that develops casual games for other companies rather than publishing their own) don't get credited in video game credits. In the film industry, this would have the union calling for blood, but we don't have a union, and frankly, I'm okay with that.

Normally, the head of Quality Assurance keeps tabs on who tested which game and writes a letter of recommendation when we request it, outlining what work we have done for the company. Not sure if this is how it works for other studios, but given what I've heard at IGDA gatherings, I'm grateful all the same. :)

Anyway, my fellow game tester and all-around fabulous online gal pal Meg Stivison clued me in to this about a week ago, and I was so excited. . .I forgot to write about it. You'll have to scroll a bit to find my name, but it's there, under the Merscom, LLC section.

To make things easier, Meg also snagged a screenshot for me. Cuz she's awesome. (I'm third from the bottom under "Special Thanks.")

Enjoy. :)

Marmaduke. This is a comic I thought was occasionally funny 'round about when I was eight. Of course, there were no webcomics back then, and if you wanted any graphical representations of humor, you got your folks to buy books for you or you got nothin'. And nothin' was what you got with Marmaduke, pretty much. The premise is that a Great Dane does something outrageous (and that's "outrageous" in a 1950's media sense of the word, the furthest extent of which would be catching a glimpse of a madien's slip as a breeze ruffles her calf-length skirt) in one panel and the humans involved explain why it's funny. However, I'm just an amateur when it comes to explaining Marmaduke, so thankfully someone else does so on a regular basis, as does another someone else.

Why do I bring up a single-panel vortex of un-funny on the comics page? They're making a Marmaduke movie. I'm not kidding. The the trailer is on this page at Slashfilm. And it looks like they're "updating it for a new generation" or something. Either he's going to talk in the film, or this is a "Kangaroo Jack" style trailer where the animal star only speaks in ads. But quality wise, it really shouldn't matter. This film didn't have to be called "Marmaduke," because nobody was out there wishing for Marmaduke to make a big-screen appearance. Any "big dog" character would have had the same effect on the bottom line, the studio wouldn't have had to pay the comic syndicate a dime, and my head wouldn't hurt thinking about the other films that must be in development based on "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith," "The Lockhorns," and "Ziggy." In fact, I can think of several comic strips that would make better movies than "Marmaduke," under certain conditions:

1. The Far Side. Already proven to be watchable in "Tales from the Far Side," this would be the animated movie for families where the grown-ups are nerds and the kids are ones you'd suspect of liking David Lynch if they knew who he was. How it would work: Gary Larson must write it or pick the cartoons used as source material. Further, it's not going to be a huge hit in the box office, but it will sell steadily on DvD forever, like a Monty Python movie. Also, the little 'bits' making it up will circulate on YouTube until the end of time.
2. Calvin & Hobbes. If there's one comic strip just about everyone wishes hadn't stopped, it was Bill Waterson's epic about a boy terror and his imaginary(?) friend, a stuffed tiger. They should have hucked "Dennis the Menace" when looking to the funnies and picked up Calvin, but... How it would work: Give it to Pixar and let them work on it without interference. Send Waterson to them in a locked crate so they can study him at leisure. If anyone tried making this in to a live-action film, it would fail so hard that audiences would be killed by the shrapnel.
3. Bloom County and/or Doonesbury. I put these two in one category for the "how it would work" section. Bloom County was one of the first newspaper strips to start doing things that a lot of webcomics now do on a regular bases: Introducing aliens, mad science, random celebrities, etc. and still making it all work instead of looking like the author is dredging the bottom of the creativity well. Doonesbury, for all the criticism lobbed at it from its political targets, had some really good and poignant runs. Alongside "Snoopy," Zonker Harris was one of my favorite comic characters ever, and I discovered his uncle Duke long before I ever heard of Hunter S. Thompson. How it would work: In both cases, making any kind of movie from this would have to be set in its heyday. That means no post-hiatus Trudeau and no "Outland" Breathed. These are the only projects I could think of that might do better without their authors, allowing directors who are fans of the features in their prime to do stories set in the 70's and 80's using the casts of these features.

And of course, there are loads of webcomics out there that deserve a whole string of feature films more than Marmaduke does, starting with Girl Genius getting a three-picture deal with Peter Jackson directing.

The second movie trailer I saw that crushed the other half of my soul was the one for 'Cats & Dogs 2.' The first film looked like it was almost a good idea which got saddled with lame jokes that sounded like they came from a Disney "made for our cable channel" movie with voiced-over puppies. The sequel appears to not only continue the trend, but seems, in spots, to suffer from a lower budget. I can pick out several "stuffed animal we're supposed to think is real" shots, and they re-use the "my owner is a crazy cat person" gag for the villain... again. But at least its a "new" franchise and not a remake, I suppose. And the writers (or maybe just the guy who came up with the title) have seen at least one classic James Bond film...

But all is not gloom and doom. I listen to very little music radio anymore, and when I was doing so recently, I heard a rather jaunty tune on a local "alternative" station (which they do tend to live up to; they don't sound like anything else on my dial, but I do live in Kansas City, so there you go) called "Fireflies." It's a synth-pop feel-good piece of bubblegum, and so I thought I'd share. Looking it up on Wikipedia, I saw that it had been a top Billboard hit, so I'm probably quite late to the party, mostly because I've been busy chasing kids off of my lawn. In hunting down the video, I also came across a one-man acapella version that was pretty decent as well.

I just realized that I've been very lax in getting new issues of ps238 up in the store, and that'll be rectified sometime tomorrow. In other comic happenings, I'm informed that North 40 was nominated for an award at Comicmonsters.com, with voting starting in a few days if I read the site correctly. The juxtaposition of the nominees' subject matter with the festive season doth please my ironic bits. I think if you win, you're given the soul of one of the other contestants... or a night's stay in a haunted asylum. I wonder if there's a cash equivalent? :)

While I hire a witch to help with the voting (what could go wrong?), here's some mystic portals to other realms:

- I'm a special effects nut from way back, starting with Ray Harryhausen and blue screen. But it's almost scary how often new techniques are used in seemingly mundane scenes. This is to preface you for this demo reel from Stargate Studios, showing how often their talents come into play in popular TV shows and movies.
- Even though his colleagues have been calling him "Sir" for some time, Patrick Stewart is to be knighted. Would that make him Sir Captain, Sir?
- A British court has ruled that Stormtrooper costumes from Star Wars aren't "sculpture," which enjoys 75 years of copyright, but "industrial design" that only gets 15 years, which means the guy who designed the helmets in 1976 can keep doing selling them.
- Way of an Idea is a puzzle game where the goal is to foster an idea in the head of a scientist by guiding an apple in its descent towards his head.
- Impressive stop-motion animation in Western Spaghetti.
- The "Snuggly" blanket-with-sleeves was apparently involved in a road accident with Underoos and they couldn't figure out which part went where.
- Penny-Arcade is getting started on what appears to be a short holiday series, though it's a little Illithid for some tastes.
- A classic ice-cutting-to-save-vikings game gets another installment in Icebreaker: The Gathering.
- Who knew the use of a tape measure could be a superpower? I think he may have found inspiration from a classic XKCD strip.
- Try your skills at Eeniebounce: Bounce your smiley face, collect all of the stars, and rebound off of numbered and colored platforms a specified number of times to progress. It's harder than it looks.
- And we close with something for all you holiday bakers out there (myself included): Gourmet magazine's favorite cookie recipes from 1940 through 2008.

The week between Christmas and New Year's is traditionally the lowest-traffic week of the year for my site, and I'm gonna be out of town anyway, so I thought I might try something a little different this year. Here's a teaser for my idea:



I've already got the basic idea for the story and will hopefully start working on it before we drive down to Maryland (one advantage of driving down is I can actually bring my big Cintiq with me) for the holiday. Of course, going over my outline and idea list, this might end up being MORE work than the usual QC strips >.<

So uh I no promises yet I guess, but hopefully I won't puss out and will actually get this done.

my good friend emily found 2 kittens amongst the frozen bodies of their brothers and sisters the other day :(

she's nursing them back the health... but that gets expensive! and in this time of giving and helping out those tinier and much cuter than we are... i give you this post:

a note from the kitties:

The week before Christmas we were found living in a groundhog hole on the side of the road in Salem, Michigan. Beside us were the seven unfortunate bodies of our brothers and sisters, frozen and starved, but we managed to survive!

We will be making our first trip to a veterinarian (whatever that is) on Monday and we are going to be vaccinated, tested for infection and likely treated for mild frostbite to our kitty-toes. Our foster-mom says this is going to cost quite a bit of money, as we also have worms and earmites.

There are two of us, a female black-and-white and a male brown tabby-and-white. We are both domestic short-haired kittens between the ages of 5 and 8 weeks old. We will be ready to go to new homes once we are healthy and at least 12 weeks old. We are both pretty awesome at keeping our waste in the litterbox and we are getting better at cleaning ourselves now that our foster-mom has showed us how (with a washcloth, not her tongue.)

If you can spare a paypal of $1 (or more) or if you are local to ann arbor, michigan and would like to donate pop cans to our Kitten Can-Can drive, you would be contributing to our health and wellbeing. If we can raise enough, our foster-mom is going to have us spayed/neutered before we go to good homes! We don't know what that means but Boy! Doesn't it sound fun?!

a note from emily:

-- The female is younger smaller and more independent than the male. She is very playful but willing to cuddle quietly. She is definitely the caretaker. She cleans her brother and keeps an eye on him. She currently has a habit of shivering when she's purring. Depending on finances we may have to have her tested for nerve or brain damage as she suffered from hypothermia when we picked her up. I will post frequent updates on her condition on my kitty-Twitter @EMJKitties.

-- The male is more of a cuddlebug. He insists on snuggling and will lie on his back with his toes in the air if you pet his belly.

Thank you for your time and help. All paypal and contact can be sent to Emily at emilymargaretjenkins@gmail.com

a note from katie:

i've seen these kitties in person and they are ADORABLE and i'm donating to help them out :) they're so CUTE!

(also, please re-post or tweet this!)

"Honey Maid" has turned on us. Like all people getting up in years, the Maid is getting smaller. This might seem an odd thing for me to harp on, but wifey-poo has this great (and incredibly simple) recipe for toffee bark, (minus the nuts, sometimes with cinnamon) and it calls for graham crackers as its "crust" (she's also a "name brand" shopper, so it might take surgery to switch her to another crispy carbo), which was fine... until this year. The old crackers, about 1/8 of an inch wider, fit perfectly in the rimmed baking sheets we were wont to use. Now, cracker surgery has to be performed to get a "wall-to-wall" fit, which just adds to the stress of holiday entertaining. Were this a recipe where one could scarf raw cookie dough as an emotional salve, that would be one thing, but these are graham crackers: they need other stuff to be edible*. So Nabisco had better fess up and fix this problem or the torrent of complaints will no doubt destroy their baked-good empire.

* after you reach a certain age, that is. Kind of like how you stop eating vanilla wafers unless they're used as a topper for some kind of viscous pudding-based organism.

Sorry. Sugar rush. Too much peanut brittle (on sale near every freakin' cash register for a buck a box... right next to the chocolate covered cherry cordials. I'm doomed). Anyway, since I'm having to fend off addiction, I've got something that could return long-vanquished monkeys to a few backs. Among the computer game deals I saw this week was one from "Good Old Games," the place I acquired the first two "Fallout" titles: You can get a metric ton of Might & Magic for about twenty bucks. Somewhere, in my deep past, are the graph paper maps I made for the original M&M game on the Commodore 64. I even used colored pencils to denote which part of the map was mountain, which was forest, etc. I loved that game, as it was about as close as you could come to D&D on the computer back then, but also because it didn't try to steer you away from danger. The whole world was open, pretty much, and my 6th level party happened upon a dungeon that led to some kind of major demon convention. I got to read the room description right before they wasted every one of my characters (probably for not having a pre-reg 4-day badge). I also recall wondering why my cleric, who I had casting "raise dead" spells every other minute, kept dying in his sleep, requiring me to hit the nearest temple. Apparently, there's a cost for bringing people back from the grave, and my formerly youthful holy man was now over a hundred years old. I remember thinking that was kind of awesome. Then I made more maps, and I don't remember much else until "Doom" came out, I think...

And speaking of games, the holidays have hit the two superhero MMOs. In the City of Heroes Winter Event, all of the old classics are back (snow beasts, candy cane collection), and so is the skiing. That dratted ski slope was something I just couldn't get the hang of, even when playing late at night where nobody could see me eventually miss a curve and plummet to my super-doom.

Over at "Champions Online," they've got an event that shares roots in CoH (large boxes you open that usually earns you an attack from something lurking within) but with an hourly-spawning villain (hourly for the whole "world." Players monitor several feeds to find out which instance the master bad guy has appeared in) and action figure pieces to collect. Unfortunately, as there are five or so figures players want, and they all have three pieces, and the pieces are hard to come by, the chat window scrolls by like the ticker on CNN crossed with an auction house Twitter stream. More disturbingly, it appears to snow indoors in some places. There are "charities" your player can support by giving up game cash, and some heroic players are donating to real-world charities for each "gift" you send them via the game's e-mail system. Some of the aforementioned boxes give you items like a Holiday CD or a pair of Festive Socks, and they can be donated to raise actual funds for causes. On a geek-reference note, I was delighted to see that the "Matching Pen and Pencil" item has "just the thing I need, how nice" as it's description. I love that song.

Back to movies and "livin' the dream." A while back, I linked to a short film shot by a budding filmmaker in Uruguay who showed alien spacecraft and robots demolishing buildings and generally getting all 1950's invasion in everyone's face. That tale has a happy ending as Sam Raimi has hired the kid to make a $30 million feature film! Also from the same alert reader (thank you, Mike!), Stephen King will let you option any of his short stories for a dollar, provided you're an aspiring filmmaker or student. Any future Frank Darabonts in the house?

So now that you know to ask for a high-def camera equipment for Christmas, let's look at what the 'net has for us this weekend:

- Need to make a stocking stuffer and you have extra yarn lying around? How about crocheting a 'Yip-Yip' Muppet alien?
- What's the weather like where you are? No, I mean, what's it like in 'Star Wars' terms?
- The new "Star Trek Online" game has Zachary Quinto lending some of his vocal talent.
- Speaking of "Star Trek," no longer can the show be ribbed for always dismantling the communicators in the first ten minutes, because (language warning) just about every movie and TV show does it now.
- A fast-paced simple (yet sometimes challenging) time-waster: Obey the Game. Try to pass a hail of mini-games where you either follow the instructions or do the opposite, depending on what you're ordered to do.
- A rather amusing list of (probably college dorm-based) 4th edition D&D spells. I especially like #56.
- "Lipdub" films, of massive numbers of people lip-syncing to a song, are nothing new... unless you filmed the whole thing in reverse. Whoa.
- It's "Spot the Difference" time with Goldilocks: Twisted.
- A classic sci-fi remake ("Day of the Triffids) and it's got Eddie Izzard with a gun? This had better be on BBC America or there will be a terse letter or two!
- And just because I like flying saucers, here's a game called Moo Beam. Guide your flying saucer to the next cow to abduct without flying off of the screen.

Tubgirl staggered and finally collapsed. "You...you have defeated me," she gasped.

"No," Fart-chan replied. "It was you who defeated yourself."

So I'm starting this festive holiday book called "Death Troopers," which, given the current trends in horror fiction, is probably about Star Wars Stormtrooper zombies in some fashion or other. I'm only a few chapters in, and I've noticed a few things:

1. I wish they hadn't named one of the main characters "Trig." I'm a bit of a news wonk, and I can't help thinking his mom was the former governor of Alaska. His last name is "Longo," which doesn't help, either.
2. Star Wars seems to be the last refuge for people trying to toss off comparisons that go "that's like a [planet]ian [made-up word] [animal name] trying to eat a [planet]ian [made up word] [animal name]" with a straight face. And that sounds about as natural as a Pelemaxian Tentacle Bird trying to eat an Atrisian Shredder Bat.
3. Nobody swears in Star Wars, even if the story takes place on a prison ship. The exception is when an alien says something in non-whatever-passes-for-English, and the best you get is a clinical description of what is supposed to be inserted where.

Geeky-snarking aside, it seems to be coming off as a decent "popcorn movie" novel. Nobody has even mentioned the Force yet, and if it (and the Jedi) are left out of the picture, I think that'd be kind of refreshing. I just hope we aren't going to see a follow-up novel, "Sparkling Vampire Troopers."

In other sci-fi stuff, i09 has listed its 20 greatest SF movies of the past decade, and I did enjoy a lot of 'em, especially "Primer" and "Serenity." I would have included "The Man From Earth," as well. And quite a few on that list are "sci-fi to varying degrees," but actual science fiction is hard to sell. I think the last hard sci-fi films (or at least, the less fantastical ones) I can recall were "Gattaca" and "2010," the latter of which still remains one of my favorite films. It's also fun to see who starts getting uncomfortable listening to John Lithgow hyperventilate while spacewalking over Io. :)

The trailer for "Iron Man 2" was just released, and I think Marvel's got another winner on its hands. I will say I'll be interested to see how "Whiplash" (the guy who turned Tony Stark's race car into a modular vehicle) gets around. That's a big thing with superheroes and supervillains: Transportation. Especially in this case, if you can't really disguise yourself instantly and you don't have a fast getaway, how do you expect to last more than however long it takes for the first cop with a gun to show up? Even if you do leave, what's to stop you from being followed? We kind of give Batman a pass at this kind of stuff, because he's wonder-rich guy with super-high tech that can stop people from following a highly conspicuous car and what have you. But shirtless Russian guy with electric streamers should have a clever plan to vamoose, even if Iron Man doesn't have his armor handy.

There's also a new "Clash of the Titans" trailer. While it still follows the heavy metal concert theme, has a three word "slogan" embedded in it, and at times looks like two or three different movies, I have to say the design for the Kraken is pretty darn cool-looking. I wouldn't have minded that thing being the Cloverfield Monster.

And then there's "Robin Hood," or "something that looks a lot like the last King Arthur movie meets Gladiator." The trailer sets this up as "the story behind the legend," which seems to be code for "guys on horses with swords, yelling and chopping bits of each other off, set to rock music." Though in retrospect, rock music is preferable to Bryan Adams, I think.

I'll most likely be catching "Sherlock Holmes" on Christmas day with the other "kids" at our family gathering, and I'll dutifully report my findings. Until I can make it to 221 Baker Street, we've got:

- If you like things traditional and old-fashioned at your holiday meals, and you have less-than-perfect relations with your relations, here's some tableware that might come in handy.
- Nature, though sometimes seemingly cruel, can be quite the entertainer: It offers us octopuses who use coconut shells.
- I ran across some new interpretations of the Portal song, "Still Alive": First, version that sounds like a pop ballad, the other a techno remix by Raddox. Both YouTube links have info on getting free mp3s of each track in their extended info sections.
- Almost like a harbinger of the upcoming "Epic Disney" game, here's a collection of photos from 'River Country', an abandoned section of Walt Disney World, closed since 2001.
- From Adult Swim games comes Mountain Maniac. You're a crazed mountain man, using your hammer and (slightly steerable) falling boulders to cause as much destruction as possible.
- There are some out there who have gotten away with avoiding mandatory dress codes for too long. Next, we have to make them wear proper boots in bad weather.
- I'm not sure how "free" is defined here, but Steam appears to be offering Team Fortress 2 for free this weekend.
- How do silent medieval monks sing for Christmas shows? Quite creatively, it seems.
- Nerd-rapper MC Frontalot is quitting smoking, using a most unique method based on D&D.
- Shooting, physics, and removing blocks are all a part of Blosics. Knock as many blocks off of the screen as needed to pass each level, but watch out how many shots you use, as each costs you points.