Wired Magazine's cover story depicted Optimus Prime stepping in as a father figure for those whose father didn't bother. (I guess their Mom was the television. I think in my home the television is more like a deadbeat uncle that pays no rent, runs up our electrical bills, but fascinates the children with wonderful stories and games, in between commercials and a lot of crap.

Michael Bay is not alone on his mission to destroy these latchkey kids' kindergarten memories of their surrogate father. Capital Bullshit has beaten Mikey to the punch. Doesn't hurt that another childhood television legend, (I can't believe I just called him that) and German rock god (maybe I just justified that last comment, and no, I'm not talking about Klaus Meine) has provided the fodder for their celebrity parody mashup.

LINKY LINKY.
Optimus Hasselhoff.
David Hasselhoff's fall from grace.

Tasty spoon, indeed!

BONUS LINK:
Huge freakin' statue of Optimus Prime. Thanks, Karate Party.

I used that title so this posting would get listed first in the phone book. Just thought I'd mention a post I did over at Armchair Arcade, usually I post at both blogs at the same time, but not always. So if you want to read about my first impression on Atari Anthology for the PS2 then that's where you go. If you could care less, don't go. It's that simple.

But I'll provide the bonus content here, just like how if you buy some CDs at Best Buy they give you a link for a double secret download that people who buy the CD at Target or Circuit City or Jack's Music won't get.

Remember my post referencing Katamari t-shirts? Well the folks at Panic also have t-shirts featuring the dragon (specifically, Grundle, the green dragon) from Atari Adventure from the Atari 2600. That's the bonus. And you didn't even have to drive to your nearest strip mall to get it. Links are still free. Sometimes.

SPOILER ALERT ! Here's a clip of someone beating Level 1.

BONUS LINKS !
Yorgle Cosplay.
That's a Dragon, Not a Chicken.
Strongbad video for "Everybody to the Limit" - dragon cameo.

Yours too, I'm sure. Here's the link. It may take awhile, and I should probably waterproof the place first, but of course it would be worth it. This certainly would entertain the spiders. Hopefully even keep them occupied, so they no longer visit us on the first floor.

As I write this I realize I am posting this 4th generation. But I'm guessing there's plenty of people who still haven't seen it. And I'm pretty sure my three friends who actually read my blog haven't seen it. It's all about knowing your audience, right? That's why my Chuck D reference was lifted out of a health blog posting recently. (But you gotta keep trying to slide things in there, you never know when it'll work.)

Here's the due diligence. I found this at Bring Me Up, while studying their layout and format for major multiple blog categories within the site. I've had ideas for the same thing, since I have a few varied interests and may want to create separate blogs for each. BMU referenced a post at The Last Boss (soon to be revamped). Who in turn, found the post on youNEWB.

Mural by Arno Coenen of Rock and Royal.

Originally posted at Armchair Arcade.

I had something that resembled a blog slightly more than it did primitive cave paintings at one time. It was actually updated less frequently than this blog. There was no blogging buzz and the tubes weren't getting too slowed down, but every now and then I would post when I wasn't destroying CDNow's bottom line with web coupons and different e-mail accounts. And now they're gone and I miss them and it's all my fault. Not to say I wouldn't have done things the same way. You had to save a buck here and there. Was Napster around yet? I don't recall.

Anyhoo, I found a link to The Blair Family Circus Project in my archives and thought I'd share, since amazingly it's still up. I didn't know the Brunching Shuttlecocks had the stamina.

Is it really that hard to tweak winning formulas and put in the effort required to rule?

It's sentences like above that keep me coming back to fluxblog as my favorite mp3 blog. I never declare favorites, but for musical variety and curious description fluxblog is the one.

Why this post? Why today? I decided to look at all my "Worthy blogs and links" and decide if there was any I wanted/needed to eliminate. A couple were weeded out. I'm on the fence about a few more. But I just figured, if I'm not taking the time to read them, why should anyone else?

I'll also single out Max Barry tonight. I may or may not have posted about Jennifer Government, but I've been blogging too long to remember these things, and if you're here you're probably not searching through the archives either, so let's just be lazy together and mention it again. The book is worth it. Moves quickly like a Crichton book, but does not fit nicely into any niche. I like books that don't fit nicely anywhere except on my bookshelf or in my cranium. Anyway his most recent post offers some advice to would-be writers that I believe applies to bloggers as well.

I'd describe why in more detail except I'm done for now, I just went through my links, I'm happy with where they're at for now. There's some I'll miss, but mostly since the postings aren't happening there anymore, so I guess I already missed them and hoped they'd have returned by now. But they haven't, so they're gone, let me know if you've come back, it's only html, there's more room on the right column, it's not going anywhere, although I may sublet it to some grad students in the meantime.

Good night.

My son ate a blueberry today. One. He didn't like it. But he tried it. That's kind of important.

My other son caught a ball for what may be the first time. He's tried it before, and now he's done it. Good for him.

My wife made a shrimp salad with dill and snow peas today. She never made it before, and didn't have a recipe, but she remembered something she ate somewhere about 10 years ago. She tried something, and it was good.

I was just getting to the point where I couldn't come up with anything new that I attempted today. But I did try something.

Her shrimp salad.

And it was good.

photo by audreyjm529

I'm amazed at what actually makes me go from "Gee! That would make a great blog posting." to the actual logging in and typing and making with the linky-linky. I think some of my best ideas have retreated to the 95% of my brain we feeble humans are incapable of using.

So why am I posting today? I'm really not sure. Sometimes I have a fascination for the mundane, the seemingly useless, or the completely stupid. Maybe I realize somethings are only stupid skin deep, and all those somethings are really smart on the inside. And yes, I mean somethings, I'm using it to describe a singular unnamed or possibly vague individual thing (or a just one concept, event, phenomena alone in a vcacuum), and not a group of ...you know I do this some times and it really works...but right now I'm not feeling the "really works" part. Sorry for the brain tease, but let's get back to why I'm posting.

I added Lar as a friend. You know one of those friends. Lar looks a little like my one sister's dumpster diving neighbor, except a bit younger. But that's irrelevant.

I added Lar because when I looked at Lar's profile, I looked at Lar's other friends. Not because they were "Cool New People" (another post in itself, perhaps), but because there were a lot of Lar's (plural, does the apostrophe go there?) It seems that Lar searched or ran a script to find anyone with "lar" in their profile name, and then invite them to be friends.

Does everyone have an urge to belong to something? Is that why I felt like I needed to add Lar as a friend? Do I even still want to finish this post now that I've been bullshitting with my nephew for the last half hour?

I can't answer any of that. But I'm a Lar. And I'll always be one. Perhaps I'll even join Lar's for Lar.

So this isn't essential linking or anything. Just commentary on searching for Lar's in the world we live in. But if you're a Lar, too, there's a place for you in this crazy, mixed-up, online world.

There's too much going on in my head right now. And none of it can describe how irritated I am by my own stupidity, because for the umpteenth time, I did not open a separate browser window and consequently lost my entire post. And, here I sit with less of an urge to try to recapture the rare magic that comes along when a post flows beautifully from my fingertips to its pixelcoated fruition.

I sit here with more of an urge to throw things, a complete counterproductive measure that will not prove anything, except that it will fortify my claim of stupidity since it's highly likely that such throwing would wake up my not quite two year old in the adjoining room. There's a reason time's are listed on blog posts, so shift your irises and peek somewhere nearby and things will make sense.

Alright. Spit out the rest. Post what you were gonna post, and get out.

I found a video clip that reminded me of how dominant Bo Jackson was in the original Tecmo Bowl game for the NES. Actually Game | Life found it, or GorillaMask.

Well, I wouldn't have found it if I wasn't searching for an online version of an article on Lord British that just appeared in Wired. (Didn't find it, by the way.)

But Game | Life featured the unstoppable, uncontainable, un-hip-injured 8-bit Bo Jackson footage in a post about the next Tecmo Bowl. It's safe to say I won't be pre-ordering that one. I'm not sure the current generation of systems could reproduce the fun quotient of the first two Tecmo Bowl releases. The beauty of Tecmo Bowl was in its simplicity.

And I still think the picture on the box looks like Robin Williams from that football movie he did with Kurt Russell. Was it called The Best of Times? [Blogger jumps to new window to fact-check,then returns to finish post.] Yes, it was.

...nothing.

For the last couple weeks, I've been talking and thinking about posts, and at last when there's a free moment the tank is empty. I seem to be changing into more of a morning person than an evening person, but the evening is still when the optimum times for me to post come up. This is one of those "take up space" kindof posts, that only serves to remind me, that indeed, I'm still here.

Film by Robert Greenwald and Steven Connell.

Steven Connell, the slam poet, Stupid. Not that other guy, he created The A-Team.

I was going to tag this one under politics, but the whole mess goes way beyond that.

Interesting printbyte from a Philip Rosedale Rolling Stone interview.

I'm guessing by now you're either fully immersed, or have chosen to ignore any buzzing static on Second Life. Perhaps you're even blissfully ignorant. But I'm guessing that group will start shrinking soon.

I don't like to explain my allusions, I figure people pick up on them or they don't, and being clever has sort of worked out for me, at least somewhat, so whatever. Perhaps that's something I can include in my upcoming10 Reasons You Don't Read my Blog post that according to consensus (of one, namely me) will never materialize, but as you're not reading anyway, you won't miss it.

Architect. Rosedale. Matrix. Get it, or don't. It's a free country. Mostly.

Perhaps Rosedale should move to acquire The Matrix Online since his world's "not going to turn out that way".

Lest I forget what generated the most traffic to this blog, I link to the Rockstar Games trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV. Perhaps calling it a teaser site would be proper. But proper and GTA kind of make for strange bedfellows. It looks like a return to Liberty City. Maybe they'll take a cue from San Andreas and expand the territory and have some road trips through the Northeast, or at the very least down the Jersey Shore.

Despite what McCain says, it's not getting any better. I've heard similar things from clients that have loved ones over there.

This Wolf Blitzer clip compares John McCain's Baghdad with the real Baghdad, as described by Michael Ware.

Reality bites.

No sir, No sir, not with yams.

Not tomorrow, not today.
Not according to the FDA.

Will they label the cloned meat?
No sir, no sir, not this week.

Not tomorrow, no not ever.
FDA may not be clever.

Is it safe? Wait and see.
Try some, no, not I, not me.

I do not want cloned eggs and ham.
I don't. that's just the way I am.

A little Seussical fun with a serious topic. You can send comments to the FDA regarding your feelings on cloned meat. Here's the link to the docket. Here's the link to the comment area.

If this stuff is going on the market, it should at the very least be labeled so the consumer can tell the difference, and make their choice. Yes, they say cloned meat is safe. Yet, there's no history of humans eating cloned meat over time to determine if it really is safe. And they'll still feed these cloned cows the same GMO-corn and hormones and whatever else they can concoct, so Lord only knows what the entire concoction will yield.

This has been a public service announcement from thisblogismblog.

I'm ending the drought. I wasted enough of my time on this, considering I don't have a square to spare. I pass it on to you to eat away your precious minutes. Maybe I can find a few of mine lying around in the aftermath.

5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself)

found at Kotaku