Of course, being an avid, or possibly even rabid, fan of real-life mixed martial arts tournament, I had to get UFC Tapout for my X-box, once it was released.  At first, I was kinda disappointed - while the graphics would have been impressive as HELL a year or two ago, today they're pretty uninspiring; even though minor muscle groups are poly'ed out to an impressive degree, the actual textures seem to be limited to "maybelline 'nude' color foundation, powder-based".   And the sound REALLY sucks.  And you get REALLY tired of hearing Bruce Buffer say THE EXACT SAME THING every goddamn time you win a match.  And the fighting engine is really kinda underwhelming.

But.

It turns out there is a surprise twist to the game... the humor factor, after you get good enough to start going a really long way in the arcade mode.  See, eventually, thrown in amongst the real-life fighters like Tito Ortiz and Dan Severn, you get... a ring girl.  Hahaha!  I've been watching this little polygon-pushin' bitch strut that stuff around the ring for the last 16 matches, and now I get to get her in the "mount".  Kinda sick, and in a way irritating because you figured that maybe, just maybe, UFC Tapout would be the ONE fighting game in the history thereof that didn't have a spunky little 110-pound chick holding her own with 190-350 pound professional fighters... but, ah well.   Smack my bitch up.

Then there's another chick a few rounds later.  Then some random "tapout master" wearing camo pants, named "The Mask".   Ho, hum.

Then Big John McCarthy shows up to fight!  Okay, now my interest is back... really, who watches UFC and doesn't wonder how that big bastard would do if he had to fight instead of just pull 'em off of each other?

And then, a mouthful of lemonade bathes my TV screen as I howl in laughter at the squinting, popeyed face of... Ice Fucking T.

I still can't decide what was better, fucking up Ice T or kicking Bruce Buffer (the voiceover guy for about 90% of the boxing fights the world has ever had) in the jimmy a few rounds later. =)

I've known it's been in the works for a long time, but I'd finally given up checking on it... I just sorta hoped.

Today, I was bored.

Today, I randomly checked again.

At long last, r33t.org is back, baby.
 

No, I did not Photoshop this... and neither did anybody else; DrSeudo scanned it out of Parade magazine himself and sent me the raw scan file.

Makes you wonder exactly what "Hidden Valley" that stuff came out of, doesn't it?

Maybe hers.

Think I'm making this crap up?  Check the full-size scan here.
 

I still get the occasional SirCam email, most of which I delete. But when I got one with the attachment "scans.zip.pif" today, I was intrigued...

As it turns out, although I had previously discovered that WinZip won't process SirCam-infected ZIP files, the highly superior WinAce (which I liked enough to pay for) doesn't even hiccup at the worm code snippets - it just recognizes them as trash, strips them off, and presents the archive to you.

... and when I found filenames like Jamie lying down.jpg and Jamie on her side.jpg, I thought YES! I finally hit the goldmine and got naked pictures of some chick from SirCam!

Of course, it turned out just to be somebody's fucking kids. ::sigh:: Better luck next time, I guess...
 

As for my skiing abilities:

1. Ability to remain upright at EXTREMELY high speeds - check
2. Ability to sorta kinda steer slightly, with much violent pole work - check
3. Ability to slow down in any shape, fashion or form - HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM!

This creates for some pretty entertaining incidents when the slopes are populated like rush hour through Charlotte in the rain, let me tell you. More than one hapless skiier was amazed by the sight of a big bastard in brand-new cheap ski gear bellowing too-little-too-late warnings (with a hideous doppler effect) while blasting by at approximately Mach 4 and frantically stabbing the ground with ski poles to try to avoid people... I never really did any major damage to anybody else because I'd kamikaze into the ground instead of plowing into somebody, but after one really earth-shattering meeting between my sternum and the slope, when I dazedly muttered "uggghh... I felt that" this random dude skiing by me said "dude, we all felt that."

As soon as I could breathe again, I laughed.

On the plus side, I quickly discovered that the best way to feel better about yourself after having a disastrous trip downhill is just to stand by the entrance to the ski lift queue all the way at the bottom of the mountain, where the "bunny slopes" feed in - about twice every five minutes, some cute chick will barrel into your back and knock you down. This might not sound so great at first, but the entertaining part is that then she'll immediately begin profusely apologizing, from the prone position, underneath you. "No honey, it's okay... really."

Incidentally, if you've never been to a Japanese hibachi restaurant and witnessed a redneck belting out David Allen Coe tunes from where he's set up in front of a rice paper mural and in between two bonsai trees - make a trip to Beckley, WV and check out "Hibachi Japanese Steak House." After the restaurant/bar closes, you can go to one of two local after-hours hotspots - "The Hideaway Lounge", or "Hillbilly Shindig." I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. We had a black guy with us who absolutely refused to go to "Hillbilly Shindig", no matter how much I tried to convince him it was just bound to be full of white honeys that would doubtlessly be down for a little "brotherly love."

Maybe next time. =)

I had the distinct pleasure of the following today:

1.	0\/\/|\|1|\|G a group of children unwise enough to start some snow-type shit
2.	Engaging in a much more even contest with several friends
3.	Spending 5 minutes digging a bigass plug of ice out of my left ear
4.	Purchasing a toboggan cap (so #3 wouldn't happen again)
5.	Playing lots and lots of Dead or Alive 3 on an Xbox
6.	Powersliding viciously at every available intersection on the way home at 2 AM

As Ice Cube would say, "I guess it was a good day."

I know, those of you who live in the frozen ass-crack of doom north of the Mason-Dixon line are probably thinking "bah, 8 inches or so of snow, big deal"... but 2 weeks ago, I left this very same driveway in a convertible, with the top down, accompanied by a good-looking girl in a tank top.  So YES, the snow is a big deal here. =)

Oh yeah, and five or six of us are all gonna pack up this weekend and go skiing, assuming the weather here is decent enough that we can get to the slopes in the first place.  Wheeeeee!

Over at PenIs, Oneitnsloth posted a pretty special net.game to the net.games thread in the forum... it's a flash game called Josh and The Big Wall, in which you help a bunch of animated vegetables destroy the city of Jericho - and become a better Christian while you're at it!

Now, this is a premise blatantly gay enough that it's already pretty funny, even before you see the retarded bouncing produce, or factor in the equally retarded villains throwing Slurpees (!) at you from the walls, or... well, I could go on, but there would be no point... and there *is* a point that I'd like to make.

See that little orange-and-black splash to the right? That's part of the splash screen you get when you beat the final stage of the game... and I'd just like to contrast it with what the actual Bible has to say about the fall of Jericho:

Joshua 6:21 And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.

Nice.
 

I think I'm having a... 1/3 life crisis?   Fuck, I don't know.  I'm not old enough to have a midlife crisis yet, and it doesn't really bear the same markings, so I'm going to call it something different.

A part of me - a very big part of me - doesn't want to post this at all.  It's a big chunk of internal anguish; worse yet, an admission of... uncoolness?  Basic life-type incompetence?  There's probably no single word, or phrase, to describe it satisfactorily enough.  More generically put, it's a block of that sort of indefinable something that, no matter what it is, you don't tell people about.  Your own little inner demon, your Achilles' heel, that which you shelter deep inside so that nobody else can see.

Which is probably a bit too melodramatic for the not-so-striking revelation that, basically, I'm a freakin' misfit.  For the life of me, I simply can not figure out how to "fit in", completely, to the society around me... and I don't know what the fuck to do about it.  It's easy to hide this from myself most of the time, because after all I am adept enough at fitting in in small doses.  I'm articulate, dynamic, and manage to exude something that makes animals and children and most people trust me instinctively... in short, I can connect with people.  Hell, I even have a job focused specifically on doing just that - connecting with people - and I'm damned good at it.

But those connections are limited, confining.   I make them by finding the small part of me that's necessary for the communication at hand, and stripping myself down to the essentials for that tiny interaction, so that people can understand the things they need to without needing to understand the rest.  It's not like pretending I'm someone I'm not... more like pretending that a very limited subset of me is all that I am, for long enough to make whatever connection needs to be made.

So how's this fit into my melodramatic little "1/3-life crisis?"  Well, I have all these different groups of people in my life - different ages, and maturity levels, and lifestyles - and I can't quite identify with any of them. 

The late teens and early twenties are out having carefree fun, in large part, and hoping vaguely that things will line up eventually... or, in some cases, that they'll magically stay carefree forever.  (You won't, dears.  Trust me on this one.)  I can identify to the degree that I've been there and done that, but... shit, that was a stage I was looking to break free of when I was in it.  I long for stability, not perpetual chaos - no matter how much fun that chaos may be at any given moment, it wouldn't be called "chaos" if it didn't have the potential for becoming something else... numbers games don't favor time, and even if you found the fountain of youth, there still would be time.

And then there are the people in their late twenties and early thirties.  Some of them are desperately trying to hang onto the mindset from the last group, and that very desperation becomes more and more obvious the longer they cling... there's nothing wrong with hanging with the younger crowd, but trying to live the same life that they are when you're ten years older, well... it just doesn't fly.  Eventually, it's destined to lead to an existence as either the pathetic hanger-on that the kinder young'uns tolerate smilingly and the more vicious ones openly mock, or the predator-upon-youth that everyone's parents try to figure out how to protect their children from - and often enough, both roles become wrapped around the same deluded wanna-be Puck.

Others have gotten married, and perhaps had a kid or two... and what's come with it?  All too often, a burning resentfulness of one another; a neverending limited-scale War Of The Roses in which all it takes is the token beer or fruity umbrella drink while out on the town to bring out the smoldering discontent that's buried shallowly beneath the surface.  Suddenly, everyone around them must try to ignore the little slights toward one another, and half-hearted passes at someone - anyone - else... maybe in sight of each other, maybe not; maybe for escape, maybe to provoke jealousy, maybe just to do something, god, anything, to Make Things Different somehow.

Perhaps rarest of all, there are the lone wolves.  They're too smart - or, to be more technically accurate, wise - to try to stay young, but they're equally unwilling to put themselves through the War Of The Roses hell they've seen around them.  They progress through life along their own path, not pretending they're something which they aren't, but at the same time making few real allies.  Generally, they're ferociously competent, but know no real inner peace... however much they strive to make it otherwise, life holds no real security for them no matter how they surround themselves with wealth and/or sexual dalliances, because they know all too well that there is never a time in which to let down their guard and be at peace - whatever security they have wrought is there solely through their own effort, and they are all too aware that they have nothing and no one which is both capable of and willing to protect them for any real measure of downtime.

So where the hell does this leave me?  I guess I qualify right now for the "lone wolf" category, but it's not where I want to be any more than I wanted to be in any of the others.  What I really want to do is find and marry someone else who'd otherwise fit in that category... to have someone whom I can trust both in intention and in capability to "get my back" when I need to let my guard down, and for whom I can do the same.  But how the hell do I find that person?  Most people - no matter which of the above categories they fit in - seem to do so by starting out skeezing, then occasionally finding what started out as calloused, emotionless sex inexplicably becoming something more... and then they either run like hell, or attempt to get over the barrier of mistrust caused by the mutual knowledge that each are perfectly capable of using people with little regard for anything but scratching a personal itch.

I simply cannot do that.  I just fucking can't.  I can't even make myself try to emulate it with any real diligence - if the only real reason I have to talk to somebody is because she looks, physically,  like somebody I'd like to fuck, I can't even bring myself to approach her.  I need more.  But if you're not in college, how the hell do you get to know people other than by randomly trying to fuck them?

There's always work... and it's been where an awful lot of my relationships have come from.  It's also a tremendously bad idea.  As for "church", well... suffice it to say that I find Christianity disgusting enough without trying to use it as a tool with which to get laid.  What's left?  Probably something, but... damn if I know what.  ::sighs::

So... here I am.  About to turn 30.   Living in a beautiful house.  With all the toys I ever really wanted.   With more income even than I expected to grow into when I was a child - and back then, I thought the career side of life would turn out to be a lot easier than it really did.  But without people who you can connect to with the full version of yourself, what good is it?  What good is standing at the top of a hill, without someone's back to press against yours?  How can you possibly feel "successful" if you're an evolutionary dead-end?

Those are the questions I don't have any answer for... that's my life, and the crisis that currently goes with it.

Thanks for listening.

Dana tipped me off to this little gem a few days ago, and it totally owned me.

(note: avoid the thousands of comments at the bottom of the page.  They're all from unwashed retards - and worse yet, unentertaining unwashed retards.)

Do you really need more reasons to see this clip?  Click the dork to watch. (MPG, 10MB)

Thanks to Lamfear1337 for the clip!
  

Sometimes I can understand why people who aren't from the South have difficulty believing that we wear shoes here... times like now, when I just got done watching the Toughman Championship fought in Albany, Georgia.

The finalists pretty much said it all - one guy clearly had an IQ of about 80 and mowed lawns for a living - complete with the gratuitous "backstory footage" of him meandering about an already-mowed lawn on a lawn tractor and maundering on in a slurred drawl about how "yew doan really have to theenk when yur roalin araouwnd awl daey dewin theeyis" - and extolling the lack of thought required as a virtue.  The other?  Well, he supervised people who put trailers together, and he went on about how incredibly much it would mean to him to have the Toughman trophy for Albany to present to his three little girls.  I really can't do his rendition of how very, very, very, very, very much it would mean to him, or how very, very, very, very, very much it would mean to them, or how very, very, very... well, you get the idea.  It didn't exactly help that, in addition to their other failings, neither one of those guys could crack a fuckin' egg.

If it gives you any idea just how pitiful the proceedings were, the normally enthusiastic Lawrence "L.T." Taylor, one of the two color men for Toughman Championship fights, disgustedly said "I can't believe neither one of these guys has compared a fight to a box of chocolates yet."

The thing is, though, Albany is a sleepy little county seat stuck a solid 30 miles away from the nearest interstate.   A backwater.  When you dig that deep off the beaten path, you find pretty much the same flavor of yokel no matter what part of the country you're in - the only real difference is what kind of godawful thick accent has managed to develop there.

But it was still painful to watch.

You might think that "pathetic" would be a good adjective for the fact that a national-level broadband service company's mailservers were lit up like a Christmas Tree and going down like a Tijuana whore on Two-Fer-Tuesday less than 2 hours after the newest nasty email worm, WORM.GONER, hit the net for the very first time.

If you did think that, you were wrong.

What's pathetic is that the guy who made with the clicky-clicky hoping to check out TEH COOL SCREEN SAEVAR was none other than the Executive Director of Network Management for one of that company's two geographical operations - whose machine promptly broadcasted the damn thing out to the DL ALL group, consisting of 2,000+ employees - among whom another six had made with the clickety-click within ten minutes.

And all but one of them were in one of the various technical departments of that company.

Six hours later, the company LAN administrator was still sending out grim messages about how he was really sorry AIM was still firewalled, but since it was so insecure, he wasn't planning on restoring it anytime soon and everyone would all by God just have to suck it up and find other ways to communicate... and I tell you, it's a damn good thing he did send those emails, or nobody would've had a clue - 'cause AIM never skipped a beat.

I tell ya man, sometimes I really fucking wonder.

For the love of gods and little fishes... the Feebs are really outdoing themselves this time. Their latest project is a government-approved Trojan called "Magic Lantern", which the FBI hopes to trick people into installing in the same way 1337 h4x0rz have infected their victims with everything from BackOrifice to SubSeven for years now.

The truly disturbing thing about this isn't so much the threat of the technology itself, but the way the Feds are approaching it - there is collusion with McAfee at least, and possibly other security vendors as well, to make sure that their anti-virus products won't detect the Gubmint Approved trojan horses.

There's also some concern over whether or not the FBI will be required to obtain a search warrant before attempting to infect someone with Magic Lantern, which will be designed to sniff keystrokes in order to assist in efforts to break encryption, log into protected accounts on external systems, etc.

Think I'm making this up? Read about it on CNN.com.

(Thanks to Laural for the tip.)

Okay, not really. I mean, even though I've finally managed to propel myself financially into the realms of Upper-Middle or possibly even Lower-Upper class, my idea of "extravagant lifestyle" is to purchase an (almost) new Neon instead of continuing to buy cars with 80k to 120k miles on them that "will run like new with a little work"...

... but I do wonder why I just went to Best Buy and bought Pool of Radiance II: Ruins of Myth Drannor when I've already got two completely unopened computer games sitting somewhere in my "still to be unpacked" spare room, something like seven hours of Farscape stacked up in my TiVo waiting for me to watch them, and enough "side work" and grueling daily hours in the gym to eat up any more time not covered by salary work, sleeping, eating, and basic hygiene.

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