my.bicycle

Cats. In sinks . That is all.

If you enjoyed the style of soundtrack in This Spartan Life , you could do worse than to check out YMCK and goto80 ( Warning: both the beeping and the booping commence immediately).

Gamespot’s article “ Rebelstar: Tactical Command goes gold ” is the first I’ve heard of this title. I played a mess of Laser Squad Nemesis , and have friends who are coo-coo for X-Com . How did we miss this coming up?!

The first two books in the Rifters series , about bio- and psycho-hacked criminals working in a chain gang on the ocean bottom, have been released under a Creative Commons license. I’ve got the first one loaded in my Palm and am reading it now. ( boingboing )

i <3th darth combines Star Wars mythos with Hello Kitty-esque visuals. It’s somewhat the logical extension of what the kid in Episode I might have ended up being, if there were any consistency in the Prequels.

Venerable comic detective Dick Tracy is now is taking on copyright infringers ! ( waxy )

This sad, bizarre tale of a man stuck in gorse bush for two days reads something like the aftermath of a Saturday Night Live skit.

There appears to be some clever viral advertising for the upcoming Firefly movie, Serenity . (thanks, jjgalahad ) Update—Once more, in order, one new bit: Session 1 ( .mov ) Session 22 ( .mov ) Session 416 ( .mov )

Firefly’s spaceship, Serenity , and crew as a Lego MOC .

Avoider : "Don't let the little guy get your cursor." Very simple but suspensful. Surprisingly fun. ( waxy )

A SHERIFF, a BEAUTIFUL WOMAN in her thirties, has a revolver leveled on Jack from the kitchen’s open back door. Jack smiles, raising his hands. JACK You shouldn’t point those things at people. They’re dangerous. SHERIFF Only if I pull the trigger. JACK I wasn’t talking about the gun. SHERIFF Neither was I. They stand there a moment, confused by their own wit. From the script’s opening to Ben Stiller’s Heat vision and Jack , a pilot that was not picked up, but is available for viewing on the interwebs.

If you can’t play Windows Media files (my iBook choked), or would have an issue with seeing a lot of cockroaches, don’t click on this link . Hint to Train Station Guy: Next time, tape up the cover’s holes before you spray the poison into the nest.

This is really making the rounds, but somehow I missed it until Timmeh pointed it out: This Spartan Life is an episodic machinima talkshow “filmed” in the Halo 2 online environment. What I find most interesting and humorous is the way that it discards the game’s fiction while maintaining the validity of the hostile environment.

Enjoy this very big ad . (thanks, Rachel)

I need help with a hefty, professional favor. We need video footage (preferably on MiniDV video, though other formats would probably be fine) of a dirty back alley, New York style, and evening shots of Las Vegas neon and marquee lighting. “New York,” is more of a descriptor than a parameter — if there are similarly urban and gritty and somewhat scary alleyways in your city, that’ll work too. “Vegas” may need to be Vegas though; it is pretty unique. I am looking into whether or not the supplier of said material could be listed in the Special Thanks section of the videogame in which it will be used, it is probable but not guaranteed (my company is developing, but not publishing, so it isn’t our call). Update: If you supply content, we will be able to include your name in the Special Thanks section of the credits.

Luc Besson's Banlieue 13 features an insane escape sequence . I keep wondering if this would be an exceptional example of a thief in GURPS using a high Acrobatics skill and an inhumanly high Area Knowledge skill. ( i am a human inbox )

I am a big fan of Advance Wars for Nintendo GBA even though I haven't finished the first one. It turns out, in terms of fan-ness, I am a lowly n00b compared to the creators of this set of inspired papercraft models and the guy who reverse engineered the game to make it playable on the web

Hotmail’s current would-be turing test replacement turns out to be not only an anti-robot tool, but anti-human as well . ( linkbunnies )

Christopher Walken for President! Walken 2008 - Official Website : Possibly the one president would would be less predictable and potentially more scary to the rest of the world than Bush II. ( warrenellis )

Pure Pwnage features the second-most frantic FPS player I have ever seen.

Way back in the day, I heard about Kindgom of Loathing (KoL). When I went to check it out, it looked silly and amateurish and maybe influenced by the hipster æsthetic. Then, months ago, my anything but hipster-positive friend Monty pointed it out, so I looked again but still somehow resisted registering. Today I finally caved, and I am in like with this game. Not in love , but definitely something positive, as I am jonesing for more Adventures. Some compulsive statistician rules guy in the forum made a FAQ with a lot of the basic functionality , and there is a good article at wikipedia about it , but I am more enjoying the brief stun followed by chuckles that come from figuring out a game that uses meat as its main currency, and requires a language test administered by the Ghost of the English Language before allowing use of the chat feature. (thanks, monty!)

Mini-Kiss : an all midget KISS tribute band. ( Music for Maniacs )

Who’s lovin’ your Mama? I am I am Kennedy - Your Mama ( .mov ) and a host of other videos to eat your time at videos.antville.org (thanks, kristen!)

Whoa. Now that is a a completely unappealing pooch .

The New Yorker: Shouts and Murmurs: WHAT I’D SAY TO THE MARTIANS by Jack Handey People of Mars, you say we are brutes and savages. But let me tell you one thing: if I could get loose from this cage you have me in, I would tear you guys a new Martian asshole.You say we are violent and barbaric, but has any one of you come up to my cage and extended his hand? Because, if he did, I would jerk it off and eat it right in front of him. “Mmm, that’s good Martian,” I would say. ( more ) (D’oh! I forgot — THANKS, TimK)

Makers of DragonQuest VIII, Level 5’s upcoming Rogue Galaxy looks to be the prettiest PS2 RPG so far. And I still won’t have enough time to play it, or the only game that looks to top it, Final Fantasy XII .

YTMND offers “ YOU STOLE MY FUCKING CLOUDSONG .” I encourage you to lower your speaker volume and expectations for rational discourse in online games with voicechat. ( LJ Gamers )

Sony has launched a video portal with content preformatted for PSP called “ p-tv .” No, there is no complete collection of Beat Takeshi’s Castle on it; apparently that’s still what BitTorrent and the 3G Converter tool are for. There is apparently a requirement to download from the site directly to the PSP via a USB cable, bypassing the interim PC in an attempt to preclude piracy. Are there areas on the Memory Stick that can be placed off limits to being read as a normal storage device? Does the user get to set that partition, or is it possible to have some proprietary app arbitrarily get all Manifest Destiny on your MemStick and land grab the bulk of space there?

Rykarda Parasol had an interesting track on Warrenellis.com’s superburstmixtape #24 . It, and two other tracks are up at her site . Throaty, plonky, and unusual.

Yesterday Apple finally managed to get iTunes Music Store open in Japan . Apple, based in Cupertino, California, said iTunes would charge ¥150, or $1.34, each for 90 percent of its songs and ¥200 for the other 10 percent, undercutting some services, like Sony’s Mora, which charges ¥210. (...) Offerings from Japanese artists on Sony labels will not be available on iTunes, said a spokeswoman for Sony Music Entertainment, Kiyono Yoshinaga. “We are in talks with Apple, but we have not reached an agreement at this time,” she said, declining to give details.

Cake & Polka Parade features very strange audio, from tweaky instrumented pop to the thoughtful ramblings of the transient .

Zombie attack in San Francisco ! I wish I could have eaten a brain with this mob. ( boingboing )

They say that if a person has a pet cat and dies, if the person’s body is not found fairly soon after death, the cat, having not been fed, will become ravenously hungry and eat the dead person's face off — JUST the face! Is this true? My cat often looks me in the face. I used to think he was just being friendly. Now I know he's just sizing me up, like a chef at a butcher shop, waiting for “the big day.” Since hearing this rumor, every time my cat licks his chops it gives me the willies! — Snopes’ most ridiculous questions ( boingboing )

Lots of sumptuous high resolution shots from Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm are up at IGN . (thanks, weezie!)

Joey Comeau of the excellent and oft-copied A Softer World is promoting his self-published novel, Lockpick Pornography : Lockpick Pornography is a book about a boy. It is about a boy in search of the feeling that he’s a part of something queer and strong and worthwhile. When he reads about "the movement" in the paper, or see queers interviewed on TV, he doesn't feel like a part of that. He doesn't feel like he’s represented by that toned down image they've created to help straight people "tolerate" gay people. He wants to be a part of something more honest. He goes to lesbian bars dressed as a drag king. He struggles to reconcile his belief that gender is a construction and an illusion with his complete lack of attraction to women. He forms a terrorist cell to smash the heterosexual state. He punches a girl because she looks like Paris Hilton. He thinks too much. Lockpick Pornography is a book about figuring out what it means to be anything anymore. It ...

Misanthropicity: LUCKY

A real “ roll your own ” Lego MOC . I want the little prince minifig!