Ravy 2011 Pg. 35.

Click Here.

I can just hear the purists now. "No specific reference in the game. Over-interpreting the nuances of a friendship. Doesn't add anything to the enjoyment of the game?"

Hey, this is nothing new for me. I'm the guy that has on many occasions overly implied something more than just a sisterly relationship between Becky and Toni. Come on, you actually expected more from me concerning Grolla and Sichte?

Yeah? Well, wait 'til Friday.

Transformers: The Real Season 4.

While wandering aimlessly with my head on a swivel through the video section of the local Best Buy, the cover of a Transformers DVD caught my attention. It did because it was very different from the ones I had have been seeing on the shelves for the past couple of years. Deciding to take a closer look, it turns out it was Headmasters.

Believe it or not, even in this day of the information super highway, many do not know about Transformers: Headmasters, Powermasters, and Victory. Most people think the original series ended with three awful episodes culminating in Galvatron rocketing Cybertron towards Earth in order to destroy both. He fails, the Decepticons are sent into deep space, and Cybertron enters a new golden age.

As did I. Until my first Asian vacation. I got to watch most of all three series. Now concentrating on Headmasters, I can sum it up with one word:

AWFUL!

Voice acting: AWFUL! Writing: AWFUL! Animation: AWFUL! Let's not get started on Daniel. Thought he was annoying in Season 3? While watching the real Season 4 I was wishing that Fortress Maximus would just take his thumb and push down on Daniel really hard.

So I bought a copy. Now where in the queue should I put it? Just got done with Batman: The Brave and the Bold Season 1, but I'm currently watching Those Who Hunt Elves. Also I'm taking in lots of House and The Closer. When's the next volume of Family Guy going to be out?

What's that on the cover? “First part of the rare Japanese TV Trilogy...” They're bringing over the real Seasons 5 and 6? That sure put to waste all that effort to get a hold of Super God Masterforce from England.

The Huh files.

Once in a while you will see something that makes you stop, turn and look again, scratch your head and go "Huh?"

 

 When choosing a Twitter handle, you might want to double check and make sure that it isn't a Donnie Baker song.

I was always bothered by seeing Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving, then the day after Halloween. Kids haven't even gone back to school yet. Stan Freberg needs to rewrite his song Green Christmas.

Jeff Hardy has always had a rather unique way of dressing himself, but could we at least get the promotion correct?

NOT AN ENDORSEMENT! GOD NO!

Something like this had to have taken maybe a week's worth of effort to put together. Five minutes worth of fact checking would have prevented me from making fun of the fact they used brass coins.

Very accurate description of his driving style. Especially when next to Slowski Jr.

Why the Huh Files? Because WTF is so overused.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 34.

Click Here if you dare.

The memories. Of when I took the time to align the text and edited in mouth movement.

Final Thoughts: Tomohane.

I guess I'm not done with Inukami. At first I lived in dreadful fear of Tomohane. Why? One word. Chibi-usa. I was so afraid that the manga and anime would be taken over by her. However Tomohane was sparingly used, and when she did show up, it built the story and made it much better. It turns out Tomohane was handled quite respectfully. There were several occasions in which she could have been the victim of serial perversion but the writers instead took the high road. Even in the movie when she broke character and tried to take her shirt off like everybody else was doing, Nadeshiko made sure that didn't happen. Tomohane was really the breakout star. She I think that could do well in her own series. Provided that the writing is as good as Inukami's was and doesn't turn into a minutes long transformation sequence with recycled minutes long attacks stock shots with only a minute or so of actual story that will be forgotten by the next episode.

Final Thoughts: Inukami.

When I did my initial reviews of Inukami many months ago, I had to recognize that fact I hadn't watched all of the anime. Well I have, and even the movie (that's an hour of my life I'll never get back.)

Let's start with the anime. To reset, I thought that the anime of Inukami was very well animated and the stories and character development were outstanding. However I was very much disappointed at the incessant display of rather uncleverly censored male nudity. That's just not my thing. It wouldn't have bothered me so much if some balance was struck with Yoko topless once in a while. I'm against nudity in cartoons, but I recognize the fact that there is a substantial demand for it. If you can make money off of it, go for it. However, after reading and liking the manga, I wasn't expecting to have enormous amounts of wiener shoved in my face.

Now with the final few episodes, all the good writing was pretty much thrown out the window. It became the hack premise of delay tactics to fill out a bunch of unnecessary episodes. It is one battle after another with the badguy using some fanfic like plot contrivance to win. Dai Yoko is about to beat Sekidosai when Sekidosai says he is more powerful and defeats Dai Yoko. When everybody is about to beat Sekidosai, he's not Sekidosai he's actually Jasei and beats everybody. Then the truth behind Nadeshiko is revealed. I was seriously expecting her to be Yoko's sister or even mother. The writing was that good. But no, Nadeshiko is the most powerful Inukami ever who destroyed a village and sealed her powers. Ho-hum. As she is about to totally defeat Jasei, he turns back time a few minutes to before Nadeshiko unlocks her powers and beats her.

Like I said, the writing took a downturn. And it got worse.

All the while where was Keita? He got turned into a baby and flung to the other side of Japan. He has to crawl his way back and every negative element of this series helps him out. Anime had a really tough time at first. From the poorly animated stuff being brought over, to bad writing, and bad voice acting. Now we have the celebration of nudity, guys hugging painted pillows, sadomasochism, poopie diapers, panty perverts, furries, and on and on and on. Let's not give anti-anime people anymore bullet points to use. (On several occasions Bob Kevoian mentioned that is what he thinks anime is all about.)

This is one reason why I say fact checking is a bitch. Sitting through all that so I will have some idea of what it is I'm bitching about.

Back to the action. At the last possible moment Keita and Yoko reach the wish machine, Keita is turned back into a grown up and confesses his love for Yoko. They beat the badguy and wiener is shoved in our face one final time.

The one positive part was Kaoru's back story. While essentially just filler, it was well written filler and tugged at the heart strings. The the fight between Keita and Kaoru was good and unexpected. I knew Keita was going to win, I just didn't know how he was.

The movie. I did a quick check, it turns out that it is only 25 minutes long. Sure felt like a hour. The animation was once again top notch. But, all the stuff I liked about the anime was pretty much absent, all the stuff I didn't like was there times 100. Let's just ignore all that and focus on Keita's speech. Towards the end Keita had a good line about people being left alone to enjoy what gives them pleasure in life. It really was the solid gold moment of the movie. While I certainly don't share in these perversions, I have no problem with CONSENTING ADULTS having a good time.

I just don't want to be blind sided and have it shoved in my face. (Like when I'm picking up a shrink wrapped triple volume of Hustler Humor and sandwiched between is a magazine of a "family way.")

To sum up. Parents, don't let your kids anywhere near Inukami. All because of the nudity. Female in the manga, male in the anime and movie. Still, it is some of the best animation and story telling I have seen.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 33.

Click here.

I know that there is someone out there going (using overly nerdy voice): "Sichte is a woman of fine breading and culture and would never stoop to telling scatological humor." (End nerdy voice.) That's what makes it funny (I hope.) It's a tried and true humor technique. Assigning lines to those who may never speak them. I have a comedy bit somewhere of a guy impersonating Nixon, Carter, Barney Fife and other as if they were high on marijuana.

Don't like it? Do your own comic. There's plenty of web space out there and lots of it for free.

Spidery Instict.

I'm willing to bet that spiders don't just build webs across doorways and hallways out of their instinctive need for food, but to annoy me personally.

My annoyances with Mac.

Recently I built a Hackintosh. Wasn't all that difficult. I had a spare Intel machine and Mac OS X costs only $30. (You hear that Micro$oft?) After a couple of days of downloading various Linux distros used to install Mac on a PC I found the right one. I got annoyed.

My mouse has a back button on it. Instead of moving the cursor to the back button on whatever explorer or browser window. Or even just hitting the backspace key. I just tap the back button on the mouse with my thumb. Not with Mac. Hell, XP has had this feature for 10 years.

Closing programs is a hassle. Even in Windows the most you do is hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete if a program hangs up. In rare cases hold the power button. (A few time I actually had to unplug the power cord.) Mac on the other hand. Hit the red button, Itunes keeps playing. Do what? You have to click on the menu and then click quit Itunes?

This isn't the result of the vulgarities of a Hackintosh. I went to an Apple store to fact check this. I even went into preferences menu to find the check box that says to quit a program when the big red button is pressed, not there.

Even Microsoft is falling for this. Adding in all kinds of extra steps to everything. Ctrl-Alt-Delete now has an extra step to it.

This one isn't a Mac annoyance, but it's Apple's fault, mostly. You know Quicktime? I'm sure we all do. I have it just because. On some random sites that I download podcasts from, instead of just opening up the download manager, out poops Quicktime. Adding all kinds of extra steps to listen to listen to my favorite bunches of goof. It's not all Apple's fault. Sometimes it's the web designer, and of course Firefox which doesn't make it easy to calibrate that damn Quicktime plug-in.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 32.

Click Here NOW! Before it's too late!

I did do a Google search on fart jokes. Wasn't at all surprised at the number of sites that bubbled out. Just disappointed at the constant trumpeting of the same jokes.

Dr. House.

Been watching House on DVD, now I know why he keeps calling that one doctor "13."

Rosario Vampire + Girls Bravo.

Kind of an odd pairing to talk about, but I'll make the link.

While reading Deathnote I kept seeing ads for Rosario Vampire. The cover girl looked cute so that got my attention. Got a couple of issues and this is pretty much what I found: Tenchi Muyo in a high school for monsters. Generally I find the story arcs are well written, but also repetitive. Big bad monster makes havoc, Tsukune makes the save by removing Moka's cross. Monster of the week would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids and their bat too. This is the same process for introducing all the main girls.

What has bothered me throughout the series is the high level of violence and blood that these kids find themselves in. The characters are 10-17 years old. Yes it's monster manga, but if it was a college setting, no problem. Then there's the sexual component. While I don't recall anything explicit, just the occasional hands on inappropriate places, shots of upskirts and bras, and girl with open robe on top of guy. Once again it's just the age factor. Especially with Yukari and Koko. Why? I really don't see the need to see these little girls in the situations that they put in all the time.

(What is it with witches in this series? Yukari is totally perverted at such a young age. Openly trying to get Moka and Tsukune in a menage a trois and copping a feel on a grown up Koko. Let's not get started on Ruby.)

I have considered many times dropping Rosario Vampire from my reading list. What keeps me coming back is the writing. While it doesn't have the depth of say Deathnote or the warm fuzzy of Inukami, it's good enough to keep me interested at least.

That's the important part. These characters are growing. They're not stuck in neutral like in Oh My Goddess. Friendships are formed and changed all the time. Most tend to have a deep emotional background as to their motivations. Even Gin. For someone that is hardly ever seen, he is really well put together, both physically and personality wise. That's why I tend to over look the violence and what some call fan service.

I digress to tell this story. A friend of mine has been buying this series for his son. I asked him if he even knows what is in Rosario Vampire. He said he flipped through just to make sure there was nothing he had a problem with. “Hey, it's not like it Hustler Humor.” He told me. He's right. As long as parents take the time to open up the book and see what is inside and not rely on the rather misleading jacket.

On to Girls Bravo. There was a sale at the many Hastings were I live. Buy two get one free. Plenty of Girls Bravo. How can I turn down a good deal like that with such cute girls on the cover? I thought to myself: “Self, you know what you getting into right? It's pretty clear on the covers and the rating on the back.” I was a bit wrong. I though there was going to be nudity everywhere. We get plenty of fan service and compromising positions. When after many volumes we finally get some nudity, it is rather uncleverly censored.

I only have four volumes. I doubt I'm going to continue with it. It's the writing. It's not good. Everybody is stuck in neutral and shoe horned into stories that are pretty generic. There is no growth what so ever. Not even in the outlier characters get much. In Tenchi the characters didn't do much, but at least we saw Yume and Minagi grow, change, and develop.

Now the anime of both series is the opposite of the manga. Rosario Vampire is not well written and not really well animated. Where as Girls Bravo was superbly written and animated. I had low expectations for the anime of Girls Bravo, I was completely blown out of the water. Everybody had motivation, direction, growth, depth, and well thought out character background. The manga's stories were contained within a single chapter. The anime's writers were able to flesh out each one into a twenty minute episode and make it entertaining.

However...

Both series have a problem: the over sexualation of the characters. While I could tolerate the poor writing of Rosario Vampire, I don't get the constant upskirts, Kurumu's much more explicit and has all sorts of sound effects, and Yukari even more perverted. Girls Bravo is a constant stream of nudity distracting from what was a good story.

Maybe I'm just being too conservative on that particular subject. Strange considering my mom let me read Hustler Humor when I was ten.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 31.

.ereH kcilC

Not sure which is better: transparent PNG or transparent GIF. Both require at leats a $50 program to make possible. And both can't render the graphics from Rosenkreuzstilette correctly.

Macho Madness: The Randy Savage Collection.

Saw this sitting on the shelf for $10 at Wally World and decided to give it a try. What stood out were the matches not included. None from the 70's. Nothing about George "The Animal" Steel. The one where Savage crushed Ricky Steamboat's throat. When Honky Tonk Man hit Savage with the guitar and Elizabeth brought Hogan to the ring. The street fight with Bad News Brown. When Savage beat Jim Duggan for the King of the Ring. And the final WWF match with Crush.

I didn't watch much WCW at the time so I'm not aware of many of Macho Man's antics while there.

What really stood out was the team work of Matt Striker and Maria. They played off each other well, and did a good job reading the script. While it seemed that Maria was there mostly for show, she got in a few good jabs.

There is a match that really had my attention: WWF Champion Macho Man and Intercontinental Champion Bret Hart VS Ric Flair and Sean Michaels with Curt Hinnig and Sheri Martel. Thinking about the history of all these players up to that point, and then to today was just mind blowing.

Thinking back, Randy Savage should be considered one of the best Intercontinental Champions of all time. Like other great champions such as Sean Michaels and Honky Tonk Man, Savage cheated, got DQ'ed, counted out, and just plain pinned his opponents. This got a reaction from the crowed because the fans wanted to see the heel beaten and their hero the champion.

One final thought about Macho Madness: The Randy Savage Collection. For me there was a overall sadness to it. In the back of my mind the whole time was the death of Miss Elizabeth a few years ago and the death of Randy Poffo a few weeks earlier.

Fact checking can be such a bitch.

Here's a couple of stories you should get a kick out of.

Many many years ago I saw the movie 2010. Then a while later I watched 2001. That's just the way they played on my local channel. I noted that the Discovery looked quite a bit different. As many have noted the interior of the ship was changed up quite a bit in both movies. But I swear the exterior of the ship was drastically redesigned. I went to the Wikipedia articles and movie mistakes sites to see if anybody else had noted it. Nothing. I thought maybe I had caught something no one else had. There were a couple of other movies I had caught mistakes in that no one else had. Running away with that high, I decide to tell the world about the mistake made in a movie from over 25 years ago.

But first the research.

Boy did I ever save myself from a ton of stupidity. I took screen shot of the Discovery from both movie and compared them. Identical. I don't really know why I thought they were different. My best guess is that I originally watched 2010 and 2001 on a sixteen inch floor model TV on a analog broadcast signal. The quality left a lot to be desired. My research was done with DVDs on a 23 inch LCD flatscreen. (You should see the spelling suggestions for flatscreen. “Disgruntled?" Oddly appropriate.)

The next boo-boo was about a minute away from happening when I stopped myself. I used to have a navigation menu at the bottom of each page for Season 2011. To update it I had to open each page and paste in the new link. A major pain in the ass when doing it 10, 20, and 30 pages at a time. How could I make a single change to one file that updates them all? I eventually came upon the iframe tag. It displays the menu and I could update on the new page and it changes all the other pages. I go and add this in to all the current pages for Season 2011. With one minute to go before the big update, I finally test to see if the links still work and discover the horrible mistake I was about to make. It opened up the new page inside of the iframe. Not change the whole page like I expected. Panic set in. What do I do, I really wanted this menu, but not piss off the reader anymore than I already do. So It's gone, No more menu.

I've looked into other ways, but most wind up with the same effect. Javascripting is a way, but is extremely difficult for me to get right. Plus with java blockers in most browsers it won't show up. I know because I used to have used Google Analytics and it showed me nothing while my web host was much more forthcoming. Flash would solve it, except the time it takes to update the flash file it just about as long as it is to update 50 pages with copy/paste. And again with most people flash is blocked and doesn't work with iPhones and iPads.

Once again looking at the stats, no one bothers with the menu anyway. Most just look at the home page. The occasional victim...er... potential fan that finds a page through Google looks at what he finds, goes back and forth, then leaves.

This mistake slipped by for six months. Those button that I have on top of the home page and each page of Season 2011? Two were messed up. I never checked them. The one for 2011 was supposed to go to the first page of 2011. Instead it went to the home page. The button for Season 18 didn't work. I only found out because when I was copy/pasting the table over to a new page, the images got jostled. In order to get them realigned I had to look directly at the code. I saw that there was no link associated with the image to Season 18. So I had to go through over twenty pages to fix it. It was a few weeks later when I found the link was wrong for 2011. Went through the same process again

I tell these stories not just for laughs. I tell them as teachable moments. Learn from my mistakes. Don't make them again. A simple five minute fact check can save you from sticking your foot in your mouth. And athlete's tongue is no joke.

(Addendum a day late: Should have taken an extra five minutes to re-read this before it was posted, because spell check doesn't catch gamma.)

Ravy 2011 Pg. 30.

Press the button just to the left of the scroll wheel on you mouse. Your mouse has one, doesn't it? If not why not? Catch up to the 90's already.

Wait a minute, does a Mac mouse have a scroll wheel? I don't ever remember seeing one. Hold it, some don't even have buttons to press. Poopie.

I was going to talk more about the Daisukino sisters, ran out of time.

Horrible Bosses.

When you have a crappy dead end job while in the middle of a recession, it is easier to kill your boss and get away with it than find a new job. That's the conclusion reached by a trio of amigos. As the plan comes together, it falls apart when one of the intended victims makes a victim out of another intended victim. The situation is made worse when a guy that has watched every episode of Law and Order forgets to lawyer up when you have info that can send someone else's ass to prison and keep yours out.

Friend of mine said that Horrible Bosses would be in the dollar theater soon because when he saw it the theater was empty. When I saw it the theater was packed. Last week everybody was watching Transformers 4. I was quite impressed with the turn out for a week old movie. The audience was reacting quite well to it. I did to. I liked it. I laughed a lot. But, and there always is, it just seemed that the whole bit with the dentist was tacked on at the last minute. It was like after finishing the script, they were a half an hour short.

Aside from that, It was well scripted and the characters seem to have some chemistry. While the bosses were certainly over the top, they were believable because we've all had to work for some dipwad that we wish had a peanut allergy.

I have to be honest, dollar theater for Horrible Bosses.
What is it with cops in California with southern accents, this is the second or third time.

It's all water under the bridge.

This water has long since traveled down river. Drunk by a dear. Peed out by the dear. Sucked up into the intake of a bottling company. Bought and drunk by someone. Peed into a toilet and flushed into the sewer system that leads to a waste treatment plant. Dumped back into the river and through a hydroelectric dam. And possibly a beaver dam. It makes its way through a delta marsh and maybe even an oil spill. Gets caught up in the current of some gulf, bay, or cape. Washed out into the middle of the ocean were it supposed to settle. That is unless someone has paddled furiously to find this water. In his single minded haste he forgot to bring a glass or canteen, so he sucks up the water into his mouth. Then furiously paddles back through the oil spill, the gulf, the marsh, up the salmon ramp, past the treatment plant and bottling company, busts through the beaver dam, takes a second to pee and poop in the river. Comes back to the bridge to spew that water out at someone only to find that the bridge is all burned up and demolished. The guy that was supposed to get spewed upon, has long since traveled down the road of life.

My dad is a very wise man, and a very wise guy. He told me once when I was complaining about a some idiot that cut me in traffic last week “Son, do you want to be that guy you're bitching about standing next to bridge with a mouthful of water that maybe has been through the kidneys of a beaver that you just pissed off?”

Ravy 2011 Pg. 29.

Click

It's pronounced: "Die-skee-no." That silent "u" screws you up every time.

Here.

Those other wacky podcasts I listen to.

I don't listen to Bob and Tom live on the radio, I instead get their podcast. I generally don't have the time to when they're on. The podcast gives me the ability to hear the show at my own leisure. The real big advantage is that I can edit and save the bits that I like. Usually I wind up saving about ninety percent of the yearly CD releases within a few months. The downside is that it is a paid subscription, but I definitely get my money's worth.

Botchcast is one I get once in awhile. It's a wrestling oriented show. When the hosts talk about how a match was screwed up, the history leading to and the aftermath of a match, or a wrestler's general history, and other such thing I find very interesting. However It tends to be a what happened this week which is incredibly boring. We're on the net, we've long since read the Smackdown and Impact spoilers. One of the co-hosts has this bad habit of getting into some sophomoric ethic humor.

The Tech Guy is a technology themed live radio show. The odd bit is that I think podcast is what is on Leo's mind while doing the show. When I listen to it live on the radio, things tend to get cut up a lot differently than he plans on. The big problem I have is that it seems like the same show each week. What phone should I buy, I lost my pictures, what phone should I buy, I think I got a virus, what phone should I buy, Mac is great, what phone should I buy, my email has been hacked, what phone should I buy. Leo handles all this with the utmost patience, never talks over people, or down to them. He generally gets the problem solved or points people in the right direction. All the while making sure he gets in his advertisers.

Listening to Leo's show led me to this:

Otaku no Podcast. It's everything anime and Japanese related. It's very sporadic, but you get notes on the latest releases, websites of note, political news from Japan that affects the medium we all love, and the latest conventions coming to town. The major downsides is that the hosts tend to prattle on insistently for about two hours and rabbit trail into their own personal political opinions that really have nothing to do with the topic at hand.

The Nerdist. For me this one is hit or miss. Somedays it is a total bore fest and I hit the next button after only five minutes. Then there's Adam Corolla, Kevin Smith, Weird Al, and, Mike Birbiglia, Plus the hostfull shows can be quite funny. If you are not a fan of Dr. Who, you're going to wind up knowing a lot more of Dr. Who than even the BBC.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 28.

With the Daisukino Sisters I'm practicing a new style for me. It's a hybrid of the Sailor Moon RPG and early Final Fantasy. I need an easy to mass manufacture style for a comic series that I was going to start back in 2010, but never got around to it. Maybe next year. I'll know for sure, maybe, by December of this year.

Of course the Daisukino Sisters will have nothing to do with it.

Almost forgot: click here.

Transformers 3.

The real reason we went to the Moon? Because the Transformers got there first. Events from the Sixties set off a chain reaction of a long term Decepticon plan to revitalize the Transformer homeworld of Cybertron. After the Autobots are betrayed by Sentinel Prime and banished from the Earth, it is up to Sam Witwicky, his girlfriend, and a rag-tag band of former secret operatives to save everyone.

Two and a half hours? I hate to see what was left on the cutting room floor. Couldn't they have left out the bit with Optimus trying to give the Matrix to Sentinel? Or even the whole damn section of Sam trying to find a job?

There were lots of inconsistencies. Bumblebee saves Sam from Starscream and one minute later he's shown as a P.O.W. Or when Shockwave captures Optimus's trailer. Prime is going on and on about how he needs it. Four hours later He shows up in a jet pack. I guess it's the trailer. They don't explain it. I guess the writers must think that everybody watching must have bought the toy.

Logical transformation was thrown out. I read many articles about how the 3D model designers went to great length to make sure that how the robots looked in robot and vehicle form were proportionally correct. That's why Optimus is a conventional truck and not a cabover. That the change from robot to vehicle followed a logical pattern. Now we see Laserbeak go from printer, flatscreen, and chickbot.

One of the annoyances I had with the first movie was the recycling of lines from the first movie. This one was worse. We were getting plot elelments from the cartoon and comic books. This is the third time that Cybertron is brought to Earth. The second time the Autobot ship is destroyed while taking off. Starscream gets a bomb stuck in his eye and is blown up. And we we get a line from Spock. That's when I said out loud: “Oh my goddess, they just couldn't resist.”

Transformers Animated had fewer references to the original series than this one.

However, the best part? Ken Jeong has his pants off, and we aren't forced to see his wiener.

Matinée for Transformers 4.

Odd Month of Anniversaries.

June is a month that has all kinds of meanings for me.

It is the month I started and ended my Army career. Technically, I signed the paperwork in May, but I did the oath in June. Then I did the oath several more times over the next many months. And I did pick up my orders telling me to get the hell out and don't ever come back in May, but the clock ran out in June.

It is the month that Ravy Comics went online. That in itself is a very uninteresting and boring story. I got time, if you're here, then you do too. I had hoped to get on with Bob and George. I sent in a bunch of comics for review and it was taking so long to get a response I thought I had been rejected by being ignored.

I really really wanted to be published, so I did a little investigating and found out it wasn't as hard as it looked. A friend gave me a beta copy of Fontpage. Just by farting around with it I made something somewhat passable. I had just purchased the webspace and was in the middle of the final designs when I get an email back saying that Bob and George was possibly maybe, kinda sorta, on the fence. A couple a emails later we both agree that it was better we go our separate ways. I wish I could have have gotten the notoriety that would have come with BnG, but I think I made the right choice. Just think, if I had made it, I would have been one of two currently running comics.

Most controversial, June is the month I started blabbing about Rosenkreuzstilette. I think. You see most of the stuff I wrote was pre-blog. Looking at the articles themselves doesn't help because I never dated anything. Right-clicking properties doesn't help either because the created by date is the last time I transferred the file form one harddrive to another. The modified date is two days before that. Same thing with the images I used. The harddrive I found the game on has long since died. The receipt has long since been thrown away.

Luck was on my side. While digging through my Windows Museum. A place where I store all those copies of Windows 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, and Seven. I found the copy I made of Rosenkreuzstilette to test out the English Patch. There are two versions of this patch: one for the digital download, and one that was for “original” C.D.s only. The Original CD version was released first. Only those who had bought an Original CD could use it. Me, and many other before figured out a workaround. By burning the Rosenkreuzstilette folder to CD. On that CD I made was the created by date of July 2009. Which means I had to been playing the game before then. Maybe May, or even April. But for the purposes of this monologue, June will suffice.

Even more controversial: June is the month my grandmother was born.

And the month her son, my father, was born.

Happy Birthday, America!

Ravy 2011 Pg. 27.

Click Here.

I wanted to use the line: "The one with the hands of an acoustic guitar..." But thought that was too obscure so I went with the less obscure wrestling reference.

Bad Teacher.

Elizabeth's dream of spending rich hubby's money for the rest of her life is thwarted and she must return to the only job she can do: finding another rich guy to sucker. Meanwhile she has to deal with the job of teaching a class and Elizabeth masterly handles this by showing videos all day long.

When she finds her next target, Elizabeth must also compete with sickeningly sweet coworker Amy. Elizabeth fights for her dream by trying to get the one thing she needs to get ahead: breast implants. She does this by doing what she does best: lie, cheat, and steal.

A turn around happens when it is found out a prize of over five thousand dollars is offered to the top teacher in the state. Elizabeth decides that it is time to get serious in teaching so she can show up the ever perky Amy and get the money she needs for the breasts she so desires. Of course when dealing with a group of kids that have been failed by their teacher, Elizabeth does what she does best: more lying, more cheating, and more stealing.

I went to see this at about 10:30 at night and was surprised to see the theater was packed. I was also surprised to see that Bad Teacher got fewer laughs than Green Lantern. (I think a bunch of us were distracted by the rather attractive female in tight-tights constantly making bathroom trips.) There were two parts I didn't like: first was showing a young kid with a boner. Then showing a guy splooging in his jeans.

After having watched "Hung"-over 2, I was happy to see some boobies. Even if they were fake. It was even pretty nice to see Cameron Diaz playing with them.

Now, if those three parts had been left out, this movie would had been about perfect for me. What made this movie very enjoyable for me in particular is that it was a gross out comedy without the grossness. They relied on verbal cues. Painting a picture in the mind of what is going on. Trust me, mental pictures can be far worse than the real thing.

I think I got my money's worth at full price.
To be honest, matinée for the very heavily rated R Bad Teacher.



(By the way that line at the very end of the trailer was changed.)

How can Win 8 win great?

For a while now all the tech talk has been about leaked previews of Windows 8. So far it has been a real yawn fest. I haven't seen anything worth reporting yet. Who is Microsoft building it for? We all know not the people that buy their products. Especially those talking about them on their arch-rival's blog service, and does the pre-write on a free office suite.

Have I ever let that stop me before?

While flipping through those other articles on PCWorld, MaxPC, and Leo LaPorte, I had some other ideas that I think would be a big improvement.

We only need one version. Not starter, home, pro, and ultimate. And certainly not in OEM, upgrade, and full retail. There really wasn't any differences between XP Home and Pro. Every possible version of Vista was on each disk. Now 7 is a little bit different, there seems to be some code hidden on the disk that tells the installer what version the disk is, but I have a feeling that it can be easily removed and you can install any version you want. I did it with the release candidates.

All these different versions do is confuse people. They're too busy trying to figure out what version to buy and at what price. I have used both Ultimate and Pro. I've seen no differences. If I were to switch to Home, I'd probably type away happily. I would miss XP Mode, but only so I could test out new apps without junking up my hard drive. You can get Virtual Box for free with out spending an extra $80 for visualization from Microsoft.

Also, there really is no difference between an OEM, upgrade, and full retail disk. Except for that little line of code that tell you what it is after it is installed. And the differing prices. Win 7 Ultimate goes for $250 OEM, $220 upgrade, and $320 full. It's the same damn thing. Just one version of Windows is all we need. One price.

Look at Mac. One disk, one version, one price. $30 dollars, $50 if you want to have the five install family pack.

Looking again to Apple, Microsoft should not try to build Win 8 for the desktop and try to adapt it for phones and tablets. They shouldn't build it for phones and tablets and adapt it for desktops. Apple has separate OSes for desktops and phones/tablets. Apple built the iOS on it's own and is not really related to Mac OS. Microsoft has failed for ten years in tablets because they haven't done that.

In other words, I recognize the fact there should be at least two versions of Windows.

Once again we barrow another page from Apple. Apple has this habit of telling software and hardware venders to suck it up when Apple releases a new OS. Meaning that if a program no longer works when Mac OS is upgraded, too bad. Fix it. Microsoft needs to do the same, by making a 64 bit only OS.

Awhile ago I talked about switching form 64 to 32 bit. I did it as an experiment. And found that 32 bit runs everything better. The reason for this is that all apps and drivers are written in 32 bit. So there are going to be some bugs running 32 bit apps in a 64 bit OS. It's time for Microsoft to stop being coy and make the switch. Since Vista, most new computers have come with 64 bit Windows installed. But you could still get 32 bit on the shelf over there. No more.

There is a consumer demand for Windows to do more. People want to be able to edit photos with overly bloated software, watch streaming videos, constantly running anti-malware suites, and play games. All at the same time. You need RAM. Unfortunately 32 bit OSes can only address 4 GB at once. I just checked, right now I'm using I'm using a gig of RAM just to type this out. I remember just getting 128 MB (that's megabytes) of RAM was a big deal. Now I'm seriously reconsidering switching permanently to 64 bit just so I can have that extra RAM.

Wow, I certainly can talk up a storm, and there's a lot more I want to say concerning Windows 8, but I'll save that for later.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 26.

Click Here.

Waiting in line at the lunch counter, everybody's watches said 12:05. But not the manager's. He had a atomic clock wrist watch powered by a black hole singularity that somehow kept amazingly inaccurate time. Why didn't we just go somewhere else? Because the next place was a half an hour down the road.

Mr. Popper's Penguins.

Tom Popper is on the verge of the greatest financial success of his life. First he must buy the restaurant from a fire brand of an old lady, deal with his teenage daughter, memories of his own father, and the gift of penguins. Hilarity ensues. While taking care of these birds Mr. Popper realizes the one thing he needed all along, his family.

This is your fairly typical Jim Carrey movie, one of the good ones. Like Liar Liar, Bruce Almighty, or even The Mask, you have someone that is thrown into an impossible situation, falls on their face, then rises above it all. In this case, Pet Detective was thrown in for good measure. I was too busy laughing throughout and enjoying the reuniting of the Popper Family to even care about that. Or all the poop flying around.

It was worth it at full price.

A couple of side bits: There were a couple of mistakes. When the bathtub floods, you can clearly see the overflow. This handy little device prevents water from filling the bathroom. That is unless it is full of penguin feathers and poo. This mistake was worth making just to see the penguin waddle up to the glass door, and then swim up the door.

Maybe Tom Popper's copy of March of the Penguins had that scene with the uncovered eggs freezing cut out. That's what happens when you don't let the bird sit on them.

Best of all, it was great to see Angela Lansbury again. She was just perfect in this movie and practically stole the show.

Online snail mail.

One of the many weird and totally boring hobbies I have and have decided to not bore all of you with is coin collecting. Trust me, I have become a total nerd and can really bore you about the proper way to clean a coin.

The point I'm going to make is that if I do buy form the U.S. Mint directly, I do it online. So why am I getting advertisements and catalogs in my mailbox? You know, U.S. Mail. United States Postal Service. Everything I buy from The Mint is from The Mint's website. I have never ever filled out an order form made from paper.

What? Do they need to spend the money or their budget is going to get cut? (Yeah right.)

This missive was prompted by Adobe. They sent me a card in the mail, U.S.P.S. an offer to buy CS5.5. Why? They got my email account. How many people got that mailer? How much did that cost? Is that why CS5.5 costs $1900? To make up for all the stamps Adobe bought?

Ravy 2011 Pg. 25.

Click Here.

Reading all that Lucky Star finally paid off. I got a reference worked in.

Black Friday.

Yes, you can count me as one of the over 145 million people that has actually watched Becky Black's video "Friday." For those who don't know me probably expect me to be amongst the 2.8 million people that dislike this video. And talk all about how I hate it.

And for those that know me are expecting me join the overwhelming 401 thousand that like her video and to talk at nauseating length about how much I love it.

EHHHH!! Both wrong. I have decided not to say a word negative or positive.
You see I took a look at my own music collection. Two words: Chisa Yokoyama.



(What? Were you really expecting me to post her video?)

Academia Waltz: Snake bit again.

Years and years ago I found the comic Opus by Berkeley Breathed. While I thought it was better than Outland and not as good as Bloom County. I was very much pleased to see Berkeley get back to what drew me to his work in the first place.

I post links all over my site to the comic Opus. Only a month later to have it stop production and completely disappear. I now have to go back in and remove all the links.

Back in April I'm all agog over Academia Waltz. Only a few weeks later the comic stops. I caught it at the end if its two year run. All the links become broken. However this time the comics are still up. All I had to do was click around and find comic one and change all the links to that one.

I have been keeping an eye on it to make sure the links are still good. Which reminds me, I think I'm at that two or three year interval that requires a check of the links page at my site.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 24.

Click Here.

That picture of "Penny" that's been in the upper left of the nav bar for 6 months now?

How I love misdirection.

That is unless its me trying to find a coin shop that moved and they never updated their address.

X-Men: First Class.

We get to see the formation of the Children of the Atom team. Going from the trials, triumphs, and tragedies. We get quite the insight into the true motivations and what made Charles Xavier and Magneto. Set during the Cuban Missile crisis, we also get quite the look at early sixties history and quite the reminder of the Cold War mentality of the struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Overall I felt I got my money's worth. Of course, I'm the guy that actually liked X-Men 3 and Wolverine. This was the first movie I saw this year that was worth paying full price.

Now let's have some fun by riffing it. There were some technical glitches I noted. In the scene where Eric is trying to turn a giant satellite, I could easily tell that not a whole lot of time was spent animating it. Then there was a scene of the Soviet ship carrying the missiles to Cuba, it too looked as if somebody forget to touch it up before being sent out to theaters.

Another part were the weapons being carried by the CIA agents in Russia. They looked like late model M-16s. In what research I did for this article, the M-16 was in development long before 1962, doubtful that even the CIA would have a variation that looked like ones from the 1980's or 1990's. These things were only on screen for split seconds, so I couldn't get a good look at them. Going to have top wait for the DVD to come out and freeze frame it to tell. Probably going to have to come back in here and line through this section.

I never really understood how Magneto's powers could affect non-magnetic metals such as brass. I totally understand iron, steel, and tin, but copper wires? Is he using magnetic fields to do this? Take a magnet and try and pick up an aluminum can. In the movie Magneto twists around the railing of a brass bed to choke out Emma Frost. How is this possible? Guess I should just chalk it up to comic book logic and move on.

To Mystique. Aside from Magneto and Xavier, she is one of the most well developed characters in this movie. What I don't like is her character design. It looks like scales of a fish or the exoskeleton of an insect. Is it some sort of clever way to get a naked woman on screen as much as possible? In the comics and cartoons it's just blue skin. Why take all the time for this kind of make-up job? Star Trek was able to pull off the green skin of Orion women back in 1965 and it looked good.

My final critique: They claim that it is nuclear energy that is creating the mutations that we see. How do you explain Xavier, Eric, Raven, Emma, Shaw, Riptide, and Azezel, who were all born before any atomic testing began? Madam Curie? How about Wolverine and Beast? Was there radiation in the chemical used in flash photography of pre-Civil War?

My my my: One more: There was no bonus scene. Most of the theater stayed through the credits. I saw a few people come back in. Apparently remembering that there is usually some teaser. We were all verbally disappointed by that. Especially me. I had to pee really bad. I waited through all that for nothing. I almost didn't make to Subway in time before it closed. I was expecting someone to find Bucky frozen in ice. Or Peter Parker stumbling into the Auotbot Ark. Maybe even Barbara Morse getting hit with a gamma bomb.

I think I'm tapped out. Go see it, it's worth you time and money. Though maybe they could have done a better job of editing the training sequence scene together like how it was done in 24.

Secret of the century: It's okay to pass a cop.

I'm tooling along, doing 55 in a 55 on a 4 lane highway. Well in the left lane is a cop. I'm catching him pretty quick. That's pretty unusual. Cops around here normally do the speed limit. I decide to slow down and take in the situation. So now I'm doing 50.

I look at his car and see no lights or even turn signals. The cop is looking straight ahead. I look around and see nothing out of the ordinary. I wait another few seconds, and then gun it. Back up to 55. As I start to pass him he speeds up and pulls even with me.

I can see out of the corner of my eye that he is looking me over. Probably thinking what crackhead passes a cop? A crackhead that wants to do the speed limit. I just keep doing what I normally do: look straight ahead and do 55 in the 55.

We hit a red light. It has been red for quite awhile, not a situation where I could have had it green if I had been doing the speed limit. (More on that some other time.) The cop is in the left lane, there's a guy in front of me in the right. The light turns green the cop takes off, then the guy in front takes off. And we ever so slowly get it up to 50. It's like that for about two miles. Slowpoke on the right has his front bumper about half car length behind slowpoke cop's back bumper. Meaning there's now way for me to safely pass them.

Police officers are just like everybody else. They are required to follow the law and do the speed limit while not on a call. If one is doing five, ten, or fifteen below pass him. As long as the law is on your side. I'm not going to get into a what if scenario about getting pulled over. This rant is getting long.

Would I pass a cop doing 50 in the 55 on a two lane road? No of course not. Five miles per hour isn't worth it. Ten or fifteen? I would think long and hard about it. Probably would.

The cop I was talking about earlier does a u-turn and speeds back the other way. I don't pass the slowpoke in front of me, because a block later I have to make my turn.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 23.

Click

Remember kiddies: If you don't want to know what the inside of a dragon looks like, share.

here.

Hangover 2.

Everything that was wrong with the first movie was in this one times ten.

I'm not going to harp on it. All I'll say is why do we get naked real women during the credits and only in still shots?

I will say the Ken Jeong's role is greatly expanded and practically steals the show.

Dollar theater for Hangover 2 that left me feeling hung out to dry.

(I'm not going to put in the "One Night in Bangkok" video, too obvious.)

This flag is not backwards.

You may have seen in the media, or even real life soldiers that wear the American Flag backwards. I have noticed that some big rigs, buses, planes, and others putting on backwards flag decals.

Until it was explained to me, I thought this was wrong. The Flag Code says the Stars should always be to the observer's left. Here is why it is right. Back in the day when armies would rush headlong into each other, the flag would be at the center. Troops on the left flank would see the flag and the stars would be on the left. Those on the right flank would see that the stars were on the right.

That is why the flag patch is backwards on the right shoulder. So that the stars look like the are flying forward into battle.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 22.

Click Here.

If you can at least guess the decade that reference comes from I'll give you 5 bonus No Points.

Sleep Walk With Me Live: By Mike Birbiglia.

A new Hastings opened up in town. It is only about ten miles away. The other closest one was about twenty. I love Hastings. Great place to go if you want to find something used, mostly. Each store has a random selection of used stuff. So every few months I'll do a Hasting run. All four, now five, in the area. This new one was worth the stop. Had the newest movies that I wanted. The latest books and magazines that I read and never buy. And to my surprise: Sleep Walk With Me Live.

Surprising because lately comedians have been releasing their albums on I Tunes and Amazon. Not really having them put out in any brick and mortar store. The costs are just too high and online is much cheaper.

Fortunately for Mike Birbiglia Comedy Central did put this album out because I bought it. It's always with trepidation I do that. Larry the Cable Guy and Frank Caliendo are funny to no end for the most part. Even they can put out a turd fest. Mike's album Two Drink Mike was one of those. His other album Secret Public Journal Live was really good.

There were two parts that derailed. I'm a Bear, ECT. Several other comedians had already done eaten by a bear joke. Even though no one was eaten It still wasn't all that good. Then there's Mike's Famouse story about jumping out the hotel window in track three, then rabbit trailed for an hour until finally telling it in the final track.

Overall the album was good and was worth the money. I had heard most of these bits on Bob and Tom, but Mike was able to punch them up and make them even funnier. He would pay off setups quickly enough so that the audience hadn't forgotten. Call backs that were timely enough to be funny. Most importantly told a very good and poignant story. With a few laughs thrown in for good measure.

Oh My Goddess 17 and 37.

Let's start with number 37. Because I want to end on a good note. (not intended) Clumsy Goddess Chrono is sent on mission to deliver a song to Belldandy. You guessed it, she screws it up. So everybody finds themselves chasing notes and singing their way through six chapters of near boredom. Oh My Goddess is my favorite manga, but I'm not one of those people that think with a zealotry that my heroes do no wrong.

Let's give credit: When have we seen a clumsy goddess in this series? You can't count Skuld, she just has bad luck because she doesn't realize that mechanical parts are made to work a certain way. You make them work they way they weren't designed to, so of course they blow up. Chrono on the other hand... Amazing how Fujishima can still come up with stuff we haven't seen in a 22 year old series.

After volume 16 which put me to sleep, Vol 17 was a nice change of pace. It continues where 16 left off, but goes into high gear. I was finally able to fill in the gaps that I had from Vol 21. Then we got to a Banpei story. Not again. I never liked Banpei stories. I find them boring, and even sick and twisted in one case. This time was different. It started off stupidly as they always do, then comes Sigel. She saves this rest of this issue. Guess what this series needed, another weird female. For the most part I thought it was good story of personal growth.

Why couldn't Sigel had thought the missile launchers were in her legs or feet?

Ravy 2011 Pg. 21.

Click Here.

Angry Tonies.

10...9...8...7...6...

Fast Five.

Hiding out in Rio (seems to be a theme this year) our bad guy anti-heroic heroes find themselves in desperate need of cash. Taking what was supposed to be a simple job stealing some cars leads Dominic and Brian into over two hours of nonstop betrayal, shoot-em-ups, surprises, best laid plans laid to waste, the biggest score of their lives, and chased by local cops, DEA, The Rock, and Rio's crime lord.

I was a little confused at what was going on. Part of it was that I had only seen the first Five movie many years ago. So I didn't get the references to the previous movies. The the car stealing on the train also had me very confused. Dominic, Brian, and Mia thought they were stealing the cars from some playboy millionaire, but they were in possession of the DEA, for whatever reason Mia takes off with a car and Brian and Dominic are betrayed by the guys hired to help them because they are being paid by Reyes. The DEA agents are killed by Reyes's goons and The Rock thinks it was Dominic and Brian.

I think I got it.

….

…..

…..

No, I'm still a bit lost.

Any-hoo. This movie did tend to drag on because a lot of concentration was put on coming up with plans of attack just to see them thrown out. From stealing the cars, to collating the money, to winning fast cars that weren't fast enough, to stealing cop cars, just to have The Rock bust in at the last second and then Reyes makes a mistake of attacking The Rock as he was leaving with Reyes's headaches.

If they had just cut the obstacle course bit and went straight to stealing the cop cars, this would probably have been worth watching at full price.

Instead matinee.

Sure was nice to see The Rock in a movie that didn't tank after five fast minutes.

It's all my fault.

I admit it. I'm the one responsible. ME! ME! ME!

Recently Blogger went down. I had something to do with it. I guess it's my tendency to write these posts two and three weeks in advance that screws with Google's servers.

Totally me and no one else. Am I going to learn a lesson from all this? OF COURSE NOT! I'm going to see if I can do it again.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 20.

Click Here.

My Mom also said to always have a clean pair of underwear. And I do. Usually in the glove box.

IPad in my hands.

Local Best Buy had some IPads on display. Tried it out for the first time. Took me awhile to figure things out. Like Angry Birds wasn't on it. The icon was there but it wouldn't start up. Being a desktop guy I'm used to scrolling down or grabbing the slider on the side of a page and pulling it down to make the page go up. Instead you have to slide you finger up to make a page go up. Zooming was difficult for me. Using my thumb and index finger and twisting my hand to do so was very uncomfortable. Using my index and middle fingers seemed to work best. While doing zooms there's a tendency to click a link. So maybe zoom buttons would be helpful.

Aside from that. I was impressed. I went to nascar.com to test it out. I was thinking of getting this for my dad. Everything came up just fine. I could read and zoom in on stuff okay. Double-tapping became second nature after only a few seconds. (I realize the double meaning of that phrase.) Turning the IPad from portrait to landscape automatically adjusted the contents to fit just right. I found for me keeping it in portrait mode is the easiest to handle.

I find that if all I'm ever going to do is surf the web, watch YouTube, go to Facebook, and play Angry Birds this is a great little device. However I'm not spending $500 for 16 GB. Be nice if there was a SD Card slot. I understand that Apple doesn't want people sticking hacking programs on a card and playing NES roms, but hey, if Nintendo can lock out the DS OS...

Ultimately my dad won't use it. He's not into all the peripheral stuff Nascar does. He just wants to watch the race and some of the interviews and hope that Junior will finally win one.

Sucker Punched.

Having watched this movie, I then read the reviews. They all got it wrong. The first one, well, I don't know what it said. It droned on and on. It was like watching a politician answering a yes or no question. The second review hated Sucker Punch because the girls were wearing lingerie. The third hated Sucker Punch because it was about an insane asylum being run as a brothel. Close, but not quite there. He mentioned at being confused at the action sequences.

That's where things were screwed up. The action scenes while masterfully choreographed and beautifully animated. Some of the best and most realistic animation since Star Trek 11. Also very clever in the use of them to cover up the real action. Quite frankly they dragged this movie down. They were too long and too many. Predictable and therefore boring. So boring that during the train sequence I went to the bathroom and when I came back I felt as if I hadn't missed anything. I pretty much knew that something was going to go wrong, it had to. The others went off without a hitch.

The part that bothered me the most, and I know coming form me this will sound weird, was the constant references to anime, TV, and movies. If you don't watch any of these you will be confused. If you have watched entirely too much anime, TV, and movies, you will spend time trying to pick out the references, and being very confused as to why Sailor Moon, Saber Riders, Evangelion, and Flyboys are duking it out in All Quite on the Western Front. Then The Hobbit versus Lord of the Rings with Black Sheep Squadron. Terminators guarding the train from Undersiege 2 inside the movie Unstoppable.

It was like The Matrix but without anybody saying don't do that. A fanfic really. Or even a web comic that collates a bunch disparate characters and sticks them together in situations that make absolutely no sense. (cough)

It was a case of misplaced priorities. What should have been concentrated on was the asylum/brothel.

The story of a girl framed for the murder of her little sister by her evil step-dad. Dumped off at an insane asylum to cover the crime. The conditions there were so wretched she in her mind conjures up a brothel fantasy to cover the horrors. Then sacrifices herself so that a friend could be free. THAT'S the story that should have have been told. That is what had me interested. Reminding us that at one time mental hospitals were once this bad. We must be on our toes to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.

Admittedly Sucker Punch Out still would have bombed. But at least it would have been worth watching in the dollar theater. Wait for it on cable.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 19.

Click Here.

The major headache with doing comics so far in advance is that if I decide to do one about a current event, nobody will remember the event, especially if it is an obscure one, therefore making the joke even more useless than it already was.

Especially if the number one hit song from a year ago is no longer being played on your local hits station.

Update: That song has been played at least a dozen times now.