Heartstopping Criminality!

Oh, my, God! I hope you're all as excited about GTA4 as I am. I'll be ready to swap tales of my free roaming exploits in about twenty four hours. Until then I will postpone sleeping, eating, and using the bathroom. All I need is my 360, a bucket and a gallon of water. I just opened up my GTA case and am currently basking in the heavenly glow of the disc itself. The best part is that I found the kick-ass freebie they included with the game. Check this badness out!

Alright folks, I'll talk to you Five thousand car jackings later!

It's A Comicstravaganza!

Witness the quest of a man. A man determined to ask the question of the century.

For Whom The Turnpike Tolls

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters.
Then God said,"Let there be this comic", and there was this comic. God saw how good this comic was.

My Latest Creation

Please witness this new feat in comic creation!*

*Severely dead pan humor. I think this kind of thing is funny. Maybe you're not a big fan of the anti-joke. Oh well.

Spare Time And How To Waste It!

I wanted to share with you, my (non-existent) audience, two things which seem to occupy an obscene amount of my time. The first is Day of Defeat: Source. I was heavily into the original Day of Defeat- the words obsession and compulsion have been bandied about by friends and relations- and I'm at home in this graphically updated version. I was just idly shooting Nazis until I discovered a server with which I could fall in love. That server is Fight for Freedom. Without a really good server to call home your time in any online game can easily turn into an endless cycle of bad maps, bad players and bad attitudes. It can take a long time to find a server worth playing at all. I prefer clean servers, that is, servers that do not tolerate foul language and abusive behavior. It may be a little stifling to check one's cursing but I find it to be worthwhile not to listen to ignorance and stupidity stricken adolescents and young adults (or as a man much better than I put it "the usual collection of mic-spamming pubbie retards"). I also believe that anyone unable to follow a clean language rule is generally undesirable to play with for a number of reasons, not the least of them being their habit of using some sort of gay porn spray.......I don't want to talk about it. I like everything about this server, the rules, the players, the admins. It's a great place to play. If you play this game I can't recommend this server highly enough. Just tell 'em dudekazoo sent ya!

Something else that seems to eat up entire nights is Homestar Runner and his Wiki. I keep finding unexpected daybreaks outside my window when I go to the Homestar Wiki. It's not just that I can find out every single thing there is to know about the Homestar Universe it's that I can watch all the cartoons I'm reading about by clicking the link at the bottom of each article. I read about the easter eggs, watch it, hit back and read the rest of the article. Then it's a quick click on any link in the page and I repeat the cycle. For hours. And hours. And no, I'm not proud of this fixation, but I am waiting for the Homestar Runner edition of Trivial Pursuit. Hooboy I will rule that game.

Monkey lovers and Adnanas

I was at the library and came across a magazine with this picture on the cover. I thought the story told itself, a picture is worth a thousand words. Here are the full size and original photo.

Now to turn from such frivolous matters to more grave goings on. I went to the kitchen to procure a delicious, calcium rich snack and found something horrifying. Right there on one of my bananas was an advertisement. Needless to say I was outraged. Bananas are not advertising space they're extremely delectable candies of the earth. Sure, it may just be adnanas now, but tomorrow it could be adples, or adions(add-yunz). Try to sleep with the thought of all your fruits and veggies turning up with stickers and banners and all manner of advertisement. I don't think you'll find it so easy.

A Brand New Very Old Toy

I brought this home today. It's a Steyr Mannlicher M1895. After a ten day waiting period the anticipation had nearly killed me. It was a breathless moment as I opened the extremely long box and removed the prize within. It's a lovely rifle, surprisingly good looking for being 91 years old. As an additional bonus it seems to have all matching serial numbers.

Manufactured in Vienna in 1917 and re-chambered in 1934, this rifle's been around. The M1895 was the main battle rifle of Austria-Hungary during the first world war. It was still in service into the thirties and you can find Nazi stamped ammunition and clips for the gun. Some of the unique features of this rifle are the straight pull bolt and the clip feeding. Instead of a rotating bolt as is common on bolt-action rifles this bolt is pulled straight backwards and then pushed straight forward. Its five rounds are loaded into a small bloc clip and then loaded into the magazine. When the last round is chambered the clip falls out a small hole in the bottom of the magazine, just forward of the trigger. When it does this it emits a ping noise almost identical to that of the M1 Garand, which is thoroughly satisfying to someone such as myself, someone who wishes they could own a Garand but doesn't have half the money necessary.

It will be a little while before I get to take it to the range. I need some clips and some ammunition, both of which must be ordered online. Hopefully I'll be able to write about it afterwards, maybe upload a video. I'm looking forward to the recoil. I own an M44 Mosin-Nagant which is chambered for the 7.62X54R mm round and it kicks like a beast. This Steyr fires an 8X56R mm round and is shorter and lighter than my Mosin, so it should try to rip my shoulder off. Which is honestly part of the joy of shooting. I love the kick of old rifles. Every time I fire one I have this sudden, visceral, compassion with all the soldiers who fired it many years ago. Video games and movies depict guns constantly but no war movie ever intimates to its viewers the full sensory impact of a firearm. The smell, the weight, the rattling boom, the jarring kick, it's something you have in common with the infantry of World War one after firing such a weapon. As soon as you imagine doing it all day for years you start to get a new handle on history. It's a sobering thought, and an experience that is, to me, utterly delightful.

If you would like to know more about the M1895 you can follow these links:
History of the M1895
Specifications, maintenance, disassembly and more

First Post "Woot"!

After titling this post I realized I had no idea what "woot" really meant or where it had come from. A quick jaunt to Merriam-Webster revealed that woot is not in the dictionary (I know, I was as surprised as you are). A search for woot at wikipedia, most magnificent storehouse of knowledge since the Great Internet Slang Archive of Alexandria, provided me with a little more information. I found this page, which was comical in the seriousness of its tone. I may be a snob but I just don't think the word etymology should be applied to internet slang. We need a different word for where internet lingo comes from, like osmosis. Something base, organic, stupid. A "word" like woot simply becomes absorbed into the bloodstream of society, pushing up out of a well of nonsense and ignorance. The dictionaryesque treatment of woot must needs be a joke. An unwittingly, ironically professional study of a completely ,dare I say it, retarded internet word. Hey, I thought it was funny.