Late to the (Digital) Party

Okay, so there's this site, Gamecrush.com.

Its business model, at first glance, is hardly new; it provides digital entertainment over the internet for a small fee ($6.60 for the first 10 minutes, $8.25 thereafter).

The digital entertainment it provides, however, is head-to-head games with women gamers. Apparently your fee gets you 500 credits; each 10-minute session costs you 400 of those credits. GameCrush skims 160 credits off the top, the woman gets the remaining 240 credits, and you can "tip" her your remaining 100 credits ... if she has earned them by being hot, playing well, and flirting like mad.

Jesus Christ, people, I thought we were trying to squash the lonely-loser image of people who play video games. Sheesh!

You can read more about this pathetic service, which is currently down and claims to have been overwhelmed by 10,000 page requests in 5 minutes, at Wikipedia -- but hurry, I'm afraid the article has been scheduled for termination.

Superman's Forbidden Room!

You'll never get the blood off that egg, Lois.

(Seriously, could that room be any creepier? Stalkerish behavior from Kal-El: 1.)

Sometimes, I Really Despair

How to Draw Fantasy Females: Create Sexy Cyberpunks, Seductive Supergirls, and Raunchy All-Action Heroines

Comics aren't all about the T&A!

They aren't!

You have to believe me!

*sobs*

Why, Internet, Why?

I have discovered a blog that's new to me, Post-Modern Barney.

Mr. Barney is, among other things, both a comic-book and a Doctor Who nerd.

He is also merciless with the weirder aspects of heterosexuality.

And I love him for it (in a manly, heterosexual way of course).

So it is with little shame that I steal this gem from him:

This Time ...

... he had pushed her too far.

What The What?

I'm just going to reprint the whole of this:

A well-heeled Philadelphia school district gave out laptops to students—then used the webcams attached to covertly spy on them, both at school and at home, according to a class-action lawsuit. The case, Blake J. Robbins v. Lower Merion School District, was filed after one of the school’s vice principals disciplined Robbins’ son for “improper behavior in his home,” using a photo taken from the camera as evidence, according to the filing.

The laptops were issued to 1,800 students at three high schools in the district, each with a built-in webcam that, according to the lawsuit, administrators can activate remotely and covertly. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all the students and their parents. They’re seeking damages for invasion of privacy, theft of private information, and unlawful interception and access of electronic information.

Words fail me.

Annette's Secret Passage

Cause for thirteen year olds the country over to snicker knowingly.

Zappadan: Day Zero

I haven't been honoring Zappadan this year; by the end of the tradition last year I was having trouble finding songs I hadn't posted and I couldn't think of a follow-up this year.

But I will call this out: the Official Zappadan Cupcakes.

For some reason I think I'll pass.

...

Funktionide Part II from eltopo on Vimeo.

/me squirms.

I don't want it crawling into bed with me when I'm asleep. Next it'll be getting into the liquor cabinet and helping itself to the silver.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!

This Book Is Not Helping

**SQUICK WARNING**

Via Pharyngula, I have run across one of the most horrible books in existence: The Professor and the Dominatrix. The author is a self-professed atheist, and his magnum opus here handily illustrates the fact that atheist does not automatically equal decent human being.

That link above goes to an extensive review of this horrible book. You can read the whole thing, if you're really sure, but to sum up, I'll list a few of the really awful aspects of this book:

1. The Dominatrix of the title isn't a very good one; she meets the Professor and immediately starts talking babies and marriage. They're married after they've known each other a) for a week, and b) twice (hem, hem). The Professor, on the other hand, is no more than a giant Mary Sue and Author Avatar.

2. The Mayor of this little college town is the only black man in the book, and while everyone else talks exactly like a college professor might, Mayor Stereotype speaks like Steppin Fetchit and curses about every other word.

3. Every woman in this book is either a frumpy, ugly old crone who continuously commits the mortal sin of not turning on the Professor, or a ditzy young thing who is simultaneously pure as the driven snow and built like a pr0n star.

4. The murder victims in the scant plot are both gay men; you'd think then the plot would be sympathetic to people of a non-normative sexual orientation; you'd be wrong. The gay slurs are up there with the women and Mayor Remus. Oh, and the text refers to a trans person as "he-she" and "it."

5. The sex scenes. Good lord, the sex scenes. There are only two, which apparently qualify this book as "dripping with sex," in the author's words (oh -- forgot all the sexual evaluations going on in connection with 3. above), and they suck. There are references to "whangs" and the text constantly refers to the Professor's "whang" as "Captain Marvel." Captain Marvel. I'll never be able to look DC in the eye again.

6. And finally, there's the arguments against religious people. This book is full of straw men and women who exist only for the author's abuse. There are author filibusters -- whole chapters of incoherent ranting with no plot or tension, just the author barfing all his pent-up frustrations onto the page. The philosophical climax of the book occurs at a televised debate between the Professor and the Dominatrix and a man-woman team of evangelicals, and it ends when the Prof (an accomplished boxer) goads the other man into attacking him so that the Prof can lay him out flat in as violent a manner as possible. Meanwhile, the Dom rips the other woman's clothes off. And then everybody points and laughs. Oh, and there's a man dressed as Jesus in the audience getting a hand job. Ew.

So, to sum up, this book's author may be a professed atheist, but his book reads like it was written by a right-wing hater, with all the unreconstructed opinions about the value of women and the jabs at gay people.

Being an atheist is a moral-neutral stance; it doesn't automatically make you good or bad. It's your own actions determine that, and this book is dripping with Bad. In the philosophical debate between atheists and theists, this book is absolutely a harm to its professed side, and not any help at all.

April Fool's Was Awesome This Year

ThinkGeek's Tauntaun sleeping bag.

I'm not sure whether to be excited or horrified that there was enough of a public outcry on the ThinkGeek site to convince them to at least try to get the rights to actually produce this from LucasFilm.

My favorite part? The lightsaber zipper-pull.

Infuriating Stupidity and Myopism (UPDATED)

Brazil Girl, Alleged Rape Victim, Aborts Twins
The procedure on the 9-year-old girl draws complaints from Catholic Church

This is a shame. The little girl at the center of this storm must feel awful.

I have a minor quibble with the main headline -- a 9-year-old cannot give consent, so of course she was raped, the only allegations are over who did it -- but the subhead really pushes my buttons. The statements from the Church demonstrate an affliction of rigid thinking coupled with massive ignorance. This unbending attitude and ignorance is borne out in the text of the article:

But Marcio Miranda, a lawyer for the Archdiocese of Olinda and Recife in northeastern Brazil, said the girl should have carried the twins to term and had a cesarean section.

"It's the law of God: Do not kill. We consider this murder," Miranda said in comments reported by O Globo.

Mr. Miranda obviously believes that if a girl is capable of conceiving, she is capable of carrying to term and surviving delivery. This particular girl, this 9 year old, is too small to carry twins to term. Forcing her to attempt it is almost certain to damage her health or even kill her. This abortion is not murder; it's self-preservation.

I can only hope that the Church never finds out who this little girl is. They'd never leave her alone again.

Via Pharyngula. I've also seen this on Shakesville, but I saw it at PZ's site first.

UPDATE: It turns out that everyone who supported the abortion, i.e., the doctors and the child's mother, have been excommunicated by the Church. The child herself was exempted "because of her age." The Archbishop of Olinda and Recife has stated that "God's law is above man's law."

Well, God's law is apparently as blind as ever justice could be, because it still does not see any difference between this particular pregnancy and an adult's.

Woman On Robot

David Gibbs III, a lawyer who in 2005 fought to keep brain-damaged Terri Schiavo on life support, told rally participants gay marriage would "open the door to unusual marriage in North Carolina. "Why not polygamy, or three or four spouses?" Gibbs asked. "Maybe people will want to marry their pets or robots."

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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"Dude, F----- My Parents," He Said

"'Cause they named me Adolph Hitler Campbell. Oh, meet my sisters, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Honszlynn Hinler. Man, do we wish we could divorce those jerks."

Or at least that's what I hope they say, twelve or so years down the line.

I need a drink. Or at least some Moon Unit:



She and Frank collaborated on this song, which got Frank widely recognized as a creator of "novelty songs." He hated that.

Gobsmacked

George W. Bush poses with the Men's and Women's Track Teams of Arizona U.

And they're all flashing an obscene hand gesture. I'd link to its entry on Urban Dictionary, but all the euphemisms for it almost made me reacquainted with breakfast.

For those who are blissfully ignorant, prepare to eat of the apple. It is called the Shocker and it is a sexual gesture aimed at one of the genders. It is a favorite of frat boys who want to "get crap past the radar," like all those boys on my high school's soccer teams who posed for the yearbook with one particular finger on the ball.

And these guys got W. to do it. I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.

Bad national disgrace, or worst national disgrace? as Stephen Colbert might ask.

Photo stolen from Pandagon.

Dear Clients: Help Me to Help You

Dear Clients:

I know that love knows no bounds, no obstacles, and the very word "no" (or at least it should).

I am all for helping you with your situation, in which you believe you were fired because you are dating a young woman who works for the company you're doing construction work for. I am very sympathetic to your plight, believe me.

But please, please, please do not consistently refer to the woman who stole your heart as "my little girl." It does not help me maintain my equilibrium while you're complaining to me that The Man done you wrong, that you keep saying "I'm dating this little girl over here."

I would be much obliged if you would find another appellation for your belle.

Thank you in advance for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Falconer.

Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnyyyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Sarah Palin Action Figure Can Kuh Kuh Kuh

Ab ba ba.

Bu bu bu bu bu.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

*Runs screaming for the hills*

New Category!

Introducing the category "God Luke She's Your Sister," wherein I shall file things heavy with irony.

And not that pansy sarcasm that masquerades as modern irony, neither. I'm talking full-blown "Zeus knows Jacosta is no blood kin of mine, and I will put out my eyes and cut out my tongue if I'm wrong" irony. Irony with blood in it.

Irony like claiming Obama is weak on foreign policy, while propping up John McCain based on his five years' POW status, only for McCain to turn around and talk about Chekoslovakia or tensions on the Iraq-Pakistani border.