Happy Halloween. In the spirit of the holiday, I link to Diesel Sweeties, and the beginning of this year's Halloween related strips.

I've been to 2 Toys "R" Us stores and neither has had a copy of Bully, or even the marker on the shelf for it. The salesperson had no information on it. I see Toys "R" Us has no shortage of games receiving the Mature rating with the shelves lined with Scarface, Yakuza, Black and a few more. Perhaps it's the controversy over the Teen rating when many feel it should be labeled Mature. (Immature would be more like it what with the wedgies and firecrackers in the toilet type shenanigans.) Or maybe its the alternative lifestyle possibilities that Joystiq recently commented on.

Does Toys "R" Us carry this game?

'm glad I posted on the blog and then did some other work before playing Bully. Suffice to say there was not much sleep. The game is a lot of fun. Similar to Grand Theft Auto in many ways, yet a different game. Rockstar's imprint is all over this thing, from the top notch writing, interesting mini games, open game play, etc. Where you had Uzis, rocket launchers with GTA, Bully's got stinkbombs and slingshots. GTA had its rival gangs, Bully's got its rival cliques. In GTA, the cops chased you when you shot, maimed, and ran over people. In Bully, the prefects come after you for truancy, trespassing, breaking into lockers, and mmissing curfews.

If I have any willpower, I will sleep tonight. And I do wanna sleep, but maybe after just one more mission.

Why am I not home playing Bully right now? Right now the aggregate is 90 over at Metacritic. Here's a peek at what you get for an extra 10 bucks. Thanks, Kotaku.

But right now I'm just being a geek. I was heading home from a night class in financial planning, and had to use some coupons I found online at the local Barnes & Noble. (DISCLAIMER: This is not a paid placement.) But I had a coupon for 20 free Wi-Fi sessions, and one for a free stratta. A stratta seems to be a fancy word for quiche which is kind of fancy in itself. It's clearly fattening, contains eggs and cheese and along with coffee, I'm sure will have some fun with my insides, but whatever. I give you links to this free stuff to share with you and your friends that are Barnes & Noble members.

Free Stratta. Oh, the coupon is not legit at bn.com, for all of you that want a fancy slab of egg & cheese sent via UPS. Is it possible that someone would really try to order this online? I hope it was the coupon designers having a little chuckle. But it's probably not. Stupidity may not be a recessive gene in all human life forms.
Free Wi-Fi. This posting brought to you via that coupon.
Free James Brown.
Free Mike Tyson.
Free to do what I want any ol' time.

Like right now. Where I do this posty-posty thing with my laptop possessing questionable battery powerand the screen looking not as bright as it could be. Will I be smart enough to save this post along the way? Probably not. Just did. There will be a few less expletives heard by the gaggle of high school girls nearby. That is, if a gaggle is three, and I have any inkling as to determining ages.

...aka Canis Canem Edit.

Bully has been a much maligned title that should only prove to sell well. The Truth ads haven't stopped people from buying cigarettes yet, have they?

Tony Blair continues a long tradition of folks condeming things they haven't seen firsthand. Glad to hear he was laughed at by Parliament.

In this case, confronting the Bully will not cause the Bully to stand down, just to sell more copies.

Thank goodness they didn't name it Canis Canem Edit here in the United States.

I believe you'd get your ass kicked sayin' something like that, man.

It looks like Rockstar will take a little bit more of my lunch money today.

Anyone going to this? If so, be sure to say hi.

Because it's Amanda Congdon. That's why. Not quite Amanda-era Rocketboom yet. But give it time. Joanne at Rocketboom doesn't have the timing and delivery of Miss Congdon. She seems nice enough though. The claymation movie by the CMA kids is wonderful though. Gee...thanks Rocketboom. We still got a little love for you at TBIMB.

Wow, it's 12:51.

At State of the Day.

Found by Crooks & Liars.

...the one who makes homes out of little plastic LEGO blocks.

The LEGO Ice Tray. This may be a stocking stuffer this year, or if it's too big for that it will fit nicely under the tree.

It's one thing to post about how you have no time to post. It's another to make that post into interesting content. I know I've done it before without 'interesting' being part of the equation. Rajesh Setty in a recent post entitled, 10 things they didn't tell you about blogging lists #1 as:

It's easy to start but hard to maintain.

True. He continues on but I'm not going to blockquote his whole article. If you can't click a link, then you should watch television rather than go online.

Hobbies can be rewarding but blogging seems to be a hobby that must be continued even on days where one finds no reward in it, if one seeks to develop an audience to the blog. If audience is of no concern, than frequency of posts is not important. But I'm thinking most bloggers have it in the back of there head that their blog may lead to something bigger. The blog may not be the road less traveled these days, but more like a long and winding road that may actually be a road to nowhere. You may not know unless you do the walking.

10/13/06 NOTE: You may have to reload the above links after clicking, for some reason my browser won't follow the links to the other site unless I reload the page. Strange. Might be a global thing, might just be me for some reason.

If you see this shirt in your travels, buy it for me. I can't find any dope Marinate Retard gear in the States anymore.

This is good news for unbaptised babies, and those born before Jesus. The article says that the change in church canon may be because of difficulty in converting people in Asia and Africa to Catholicism.

Why are there so many pictures of this Pope where he looks so sinister? Here's one that's a little better. Is that Anthony Hopkins as the Pope in this picture? I didn't know they had the made-for-TV movie yet.

Has this gone viral yet? It should.

Brought to you by Ugly Pictures.

...A SalmonGram.

A Salmon is Forever,

if forever for her is over for you.

Interesting take on breast cancer. The guy's dead on about prevention.

Insightful review of the new Jet album, Shine On at Pitchfork.

The president and vice president often meet with Henry Kissinger as an adviser. They do this in person, I would suppose so they can all compare hands and see whose hands have the most blood on them. Then they talk about the merits of certain brands of soap for removal of said blood. Unless of course they like to leave the dried blood on sometimes to remind their underlings of their unchecked power. This from CBS News:

Woodward also reports that the president and vice president often meet with Henry Kissinger, who was President Richard Nixon’s secretary of state, as an adviser. Says Woodward, "Now what’s Kissinger’s advice? In Iraq, he declared very simply, ‘Victory is the only meaningful exit strategy.'" Woodward adds. "This is so fascinating. Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam War again because, in his view, the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will."

Quite disturbing.

And I'm ashamed that both New Jersey Democrats, Lautenberg and Menendez both supported the Torture Bill. Thanks guys. When's Ned Lamont moving to New Jersey?

I've been doing a million different things and nothing at all lately. But I'm glad I popped over to see what Warren Ellis has been talking about lately. And his words were not needed. Keith Olbermann said it all.

If I have any duty as an American, it is to link to Olberman's commentary.

And here's a link to the Bill Clinton interview on Fox News.

Like most of America of been distracted and sometimes unconsciously sought distraction, so here's something back to anyone who still wanders my way.

Another Rockstar banger in the pipeline. Team Bondi is the developer. Bondi was founded by Brendan McNamara who wrote and directed The Getaway. The game that is, not the Steve McQueen film.

Yes, indeed. I'll be purchasing this one, I'm sure. Games don't need to be all about photorealism, and immersion into what seems to be a different life, yet still in our world, or using our first person and peripheral vision as the frame of reference. The power on these game systems can be harnessed in ways that reinvent things. Perhaps at some point we'll even see something similar to an RPG taking place in a Cubist environment. If someone can figure out a way to play Jackson Pollock painting, I'm for it. As the envelope is pushed, the results all across the board will improve.

Popemobile is not a proper noun. Therefore, unless popemobile begins a sentence, such as the previous sentence, it is not necessary to capitalize popemobile. Although popemobile must be capitalized, when referring to the Australian indie rock band, Popemobile.

I probably should have capitalized popemobile in this article title, but I chose not to. Yes, I used a bit of license. I wonder if one needs a specialized license to drive a popemobile. Perhaps some sort of CDL test must be passed.

Unlike popemobile, Batmobile must always be capitalized. Perhaps this is because there is only one Batman, while there have been many popes. In the US, president is capitalized when used as a title, e.g. President Clinton. Otherwise president would not be capitalized, the same logic seems to follow with pope. No matter what actor played Batman, or who drew the comic, it was still the same Batman. One Batman, one Batmobile. No other "Batmen" (I give up, should that be capitalized during speculative use), drive a Batmobile. There are not multiple Batmobiles available in different countries for Batman's use. (Though given Bruce Wayne's wealth, you would think he'd probably have a fleet of Batmobiles, but he was too busy to get caught up int he bling factor.)

Although, I'm sure Batmobile is a trademarked term in the DC Comics canon. And if DC says capital letter, then it gets a capital letter.

Now then shouldn't Green Lantern then be lower case at times. It is a title given to many different guardians of various sectors of the universe, and there have been at least 4 or 5 different Green Lanterns on Earth alone. (Amazing that Green Lanterns come in at of service, but Bruce Wayne is seemingly eternal.)

If a layman in the DC Comics universe said, "For my money Hal Jordan was the best green lantern I've seen in my lifetime," then lowercase may appropriate, would it not?

This has gone from me just wanting to note the difference between "P" and "p", to something so much bigger and so much more convoluted, that right now I wish I never started this stupid blog. I will never see this last hour again. Granted there was a distractdion wher I read about the Swiss Guard, the Sack of Rome, Pope John Paull II, Jan Hus, and ten othe things on Wikipedia, but alas, I've got nothing left in me for linking. You're on your own, you've got the tools. You've got the Google and the Wikipedia. You can cut and paste a few things in the search fields. There's no guarantee my links would be any better than those you'll find.

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