Mashing buttons since 1984
I received a copy of The 2006 Gamer’s Tome of Ultimate Wisdom : An Almanac of Pimps, Orcs and Lightsabers
The book looks great, I don’t have time to read anything right now since it’s time for dinner. Thanks a bunch to Todd (and QUE Publishing), this looks like a fun read. Support a fellow blogger and buy Bill’s book!
Just got back from the theater. Saw a little movie, you might have heard of it — King Kong. Wow.
Wow, was that movie visceral and intense!
Wow, was the action amazing (once it got started).
Wow, was that movie long.
Wow, was Jack Black out of his league.
Wow, were some of those sequences both breathtaking and heartbreaking.
Wow, was that an excellent movie!
I’m a pretty adventurous guy when it comes to food. I’ll try pretty much anything. I’m not talking “Fear Factor” adventurous, but I’ll try anything reasonable at least once. It was this willingness that lead me to try Pulpo a la Gallega, Escargot, and my most recent finding, Wasabi Funyuns. They’re just like funyuns, only they taste good. The last time I got into trouble eating something new was the time I tried those nasty Harry Potter Jelly Beans (oh that I hadn’t tried the Sardine Jelly Beans!). That was until a co-worker brought in the Jones Soda Holiday Gift Pack. That’s when curiosity almost made the cat throw up.
If you didn’t already know, Jones Soda makes quirky soda flavors and bottles them with even quirkier labels. They also have a tradition of selling “holiday” flavored sodas around the Thanksgiving/Christmas season. We’d been joking about them at work and someone decided to buy the five-pack. On Friday we decided it was time crack them open and give them a try. Big mistake.
We ordered the taste testing how we thought they would taste, from the most tolerable to the most heinous. We started with the Cranberry Sauce. It was not the harbinger of doom that it should have been. It had a mildly tart cranberry taste with a bad aftertaste. Compared to what was to come, it was nectar of the Gods.
Up next was Pumpkin Pie. I had high hopes for this flavor but those hopes were dashed upon opening the bottle. Its smell was unappealing but I soldiered on. A little swig was all it took. This flavor should have been named Burnt Caramel with an overpowering hint of Nutmeg. Bleh! Such potential wasted. So we put that away and gave the Turkey and Gravy a try. One would think a turkey flavored soda would be horrible, but it was surprisingly not disgusting. It wasn’t good by any stretch, but it didn’t kill me, either. It tasted like a rather flat, stale orange soda. It certainly wasn’t as horrible as that pumpkin pie. I still shudder at recalling that flavor.
The next on the list was the Wild Herb Stuffing Soda. This is where things got ugly. This flavor didn’t past the smell test but the taste test was almost the death of me. Heck, it didn’t even pass the “look at the bottle test”. It looked like dirty rain run-off. It wasn’t going to be good. Imagine, if you will, straining chicken broth through a dirty gym sock. Gross, right? Then imagine straining that liquid through a gauze patch that had been covering a festering blister for a week. Still with me? Okay, now take whatever horrible taste you’ve imagined and raise it to the tenth power. It was worse than that. As soon as that drink of death touched my tongue I immediately gagged. Horrible. It took all I had in me not to lose my lunch. I could go no further. Brussel Sprouts would have to sit untouched by my hands. Others were brave enough to try it and paid the price. After a friend tasted it he uttered words that I had never before known to exist, so horrible on my ears. I later wafted the scent of Brussel Sprouts Soda to my nose and was ever-grateful I never tasted it. If the smell of rotten key lime pie doesn’t turn your stomach, you might like it.
So please, learn from my mistakes. Jones is doing this for a good cause, but is it really worth it to torture your taste buds in such a cruel manner?
Well, it’s back to the old grind for the buttonMasher. I’m about 5000+ posts behind with my bloglines subscriptions (why do I do that to myself?) and I still haven’t unpacked my suitcase and I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.
A lot of stuff has happened over the past week, including the Xbox 360 launch (and subsequent problems and successes), so I’ll be slowly catching up with all the goings-on in the gaming world. But I do want to remind everyone about the next Carnival of Gamers over at The Game Chair. This is the big end-of-the-year, Christmas, Xbox 360, whatever-you-want Carnival. Should be great!
I haven’t had a chance to play Mario Kart DS online for over a week so I’m looking forward to throwing down some Mario Kart soon and Animal Crossing drops soon so I’m really looking forward to some more DS gaming.
Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving weekend. Feels good to be back.
Oh, and the ending of Prison Break? BIG disappointment.
I was watching Prison Break this evening (great show that it is) and noticed something interesting. LJ, the son of the wrongly accused Lincoln Burrows is being chased by a couple mysterious (read: ) special agents. They’ve already killed his mother and step-dad and now their after him. In the melee that ensued at his parent’s house, he snapped a picture of one of the bad guys with the camera on his cell phone.
In today’s episode, he had the wherewithal to send the picture to someone, via email. He decided to send himself a copy of the picture. His email address? “LJ@ign.com“. Interesting.
Why is that interesting? Oh, I don’t know, maybe because Fox just purchased IGN and all its trimmings. Virals are everywhere. I’ll have to send LJ an email and find out how he’s doing.
Update: I decided to send an email to the ign.com address. Here’s the message I sent:
From: Tony Rice
To: lj@ign.com
Date: Oct 31, 2005 10:03 PM
Subject: Hi.
I’m glad your safe. I thought those guys had ya.
—
Tony
https://buttonmashing.com
Here’s the cryptic response I received:
From: LJ
To: tony.rice@gmail.com
Date: Oct 31, 2005 10:03 PM
Subject: Re: Hi.
Hey, how’s it going? I know what a long time it’s been since the last time I talked to you so I just wanted to write back and ask how’s your dad, your mom? I’m on a boat sailing but I’m, looking forward to being home and safe, back in a harbor.
Someone asked me the other day if I remembered what steady land felt like under my legs . I don’t, but I’m sure you do! There’s no need to worry, I’ll be back in the states soon. But I’m enjoying the time I have here in another part of the world. A few days ago we were off the coast of Costa Rica and you wouldn’t believe how many dolphins there were about, all over the water! For me, it was a life changing experience.
I hope things with you are good, and that your luck, as always is unchanged. Be sure to remember that I, and everyone else here thinks about your love, and you, every day!
L.J.
—————————————————————————–
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That definitely looks viral to me because it makes abso-frickin-lutely no sense. I responded, so we’ll see what happens next.
Update 2: I replied to the cryptic message above with a “huh? That makes no sense” email but the response came back the same. I’m sure there’s hidden meaning in all this but I don’t have time to figure it out. I’m sure some enterprising “enthusiasts” (nerds) will make something out of it but not me. I’m not into the whole viral marketing/ARG kind of thing. It’s fun at first but gets way too confusing way too fast. I’ll watch it from the sidelines but won’t get too involved.
It’s almost that time, fellow gamers, when a certain Cable TV station hijacks our hobby and makes a complete blubbering mockery of it for two hours and makes us feel nauseous. That’s right, it’s time for the Spike TV VGAs (Video Game Atrocities)!
You can go to Kotaku for the complete press release, but I’ll break it down for you, because that’s what I do. It’s well known that we at buttonmashing.com are not friends of the VGAs. I believe my exact words were, “Hey, Spike TV! I want those two hours of my life back.” So it looks like it’s going to be 2004 all over again.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. What is World of Warcraft doing in the “Game of the Year” Category? Correct me if I’m wrong (I’m not) but WoW was released LAST YEAR. Shouldn’t that, uhmm, disqualify it from consideration? It’s not like 2005 had a dearth of good games and so they had to hold a carry-over from last year. There’s plenty of great games to choose from. How WoW slipped through the cracks boggles the mind.
Let’s get some obvious out of the way. How is a game (King Kong:Blah Blah Let’s make some money off Peter Jackson’s name!) that isn’t even out nominated for 6 awards? And King Kong is the only suspect. There are others. I can’t list them. My brain hurts. Why do we have an award for “Best Cast”? Why is Advanced Wars: DS not included in the “Best Military Game” but Splinter Cell is? Why is it that the more I think about this, the less I want video games to go “mainstream” (and by mainstream I mean hip-hop and Hollywood)? Arrggh!
I’ll just say this: If Resident Evil 4 comes away winless, I will turn off the TV (after the show airs in December), crawl into bed and weep silent tears for witnessing such a horrible tragedy take place. Yes, I will watch it. I will live-blog it so you, my faithful readers will not have to endure it. I will suffer the pain (and desire to gouge my eyes out) so you don’t have. It won’t be easy, but it’s the sort of thing I would do for you guys (and girls).
More: Oh, I almsot forgot! I’m not sure if I should congratulate the nominees for “Best Gaming Blog” or console them for being recognized by Spike TV period. And where’s the love for buttonmashing.com? This is easily the eighteenth or nineteenth most popular blog people visit, right? It’s worth $41k!
I admit that I fall prey to good marketing once and a while (damn you, Apple and your shiny iPod!) , but the marketers over at McDonald’s own my consumer soul.
Mention Monopoly and McDonald’s in the same breath and I begin to drool. It’s not even the prizes that get me (although the iPod + 1000 songs or the PSP/PS2 package would do nicely) — it’s collecting those little stickers. Thing is, I really don’t care for McDonald’s food. With the exception of the mana-from-heaven McGriddles, I don’t do the McDonald’s thing very often. But they throw the Monopoly Game out every year, and in Pavlovian fashion I beat a path to their door.
Alas, the contest ends at the end of the month. I guess the buttonFamily will be eating at Mickey Dee’s a disproportionate amount of time this month. Spurlock doesn’t have anything on me!
First I have to watch the Cleveland Indians collapse and lose their chances at Baseball’s post-season. Now, because of the playoffs on Fox, I have to wait three weeks for the next episode of Prison Break. Holy cow, who did I piss off to deserve this? I guess I’ll survive, but it will be tough. Man, Prison Break is good stuff. I don’t care if it’s testorone-heavy action with badly cliched stereotypes, targeted at the male demographic. This is good stuff. All I have to say is someone needs to open a can of “Prison-Shiv” on T-Bag. 
That guy didn’t have to off the rookie guard. I have a feeling someone is gonna put him down. So many questions left unanswered until later this month. I’ve still go Lost, but these next three weeks will drag on without my Prison Break fix.
On the buttonmashing.com front, I’ve been a little slow with posts lately. I’ve just been busy with RL things. I mentioned earlier that I was doing some housekeeping around the site, and I’m still working on that, it’s just slow going. I’m looking at some new themes, some new plugins and a basic dust up around here. I’ve been happy with the current look but it’s not exactly what I wanted. I’m thinking of going with the K2 theme, but we’ll see. In the meantime, I’m planning on some other changes but, like I said, it’s going a little slower than I’d like.
Also, there’s only a few days left to get your submission in to the Carnival of Gamers #6. Don’t delay, send your submission in today!
Chewbacca is left handed. I bet he throws a mean curve ball.
Link updated. Sorry about that, Bobster 🙂
I saw The Transporter 2 this weekend. I’m a big fan of Jason Statham (even if he is going to participate in this trainwreck) and I really enjoyed the first Transporter. The second Transporter was an enjoyable diversion but it didn’t have quite the charm of the first.
In the first Transporter, there were a few “there’s no way” moments but not enough to stretch the suspension of disbelief too thin. Unfortunately, there were a few too many in the second one. In an attempt to out-do the first movie’s wow-factor, the Transporter 2 just went too far over the top. That’s saying a lot. Trying to out-do a movie that included deflecting a rocket with a serving tray (even though that wasn’t included in the US release) is a hard thing to do. The Transporter 2 tries to do it nonetheless. Everytime things started moving someting would happen that would make you go “there’s no way” and that just ruins the moment.
It was still a fun movie to watch but I wouldn’t pay full price for this one. Wait for the cheap theater or a rental for this one. Other good Statham flicks include The Italian Job and Cellular, both good movies.
