We Fish You A Merry Christmas

Conspiracy theorists rejoice! With the Doctor Who Christmas special now unleashed upon the world we now have a pretty clear idea of what the Moffat master plan is all about. It's not about cracks, or silence, or rivers or any of that.

It's about fish.

Behold your new masters

 Now, I admit that Christmas fish wasn't something I ever saw coming. And it's not everyday you get to say that. But the thing is it was all forshadowed from the very first episode of the new series. What was it little Amelia Pond was thanking Santa for?

A FISH.

Then the Docor comes along, and eats FISH custard. And then in the Beast Below the Doctor quips about looking for an escaped FISH before finding the star whale. Which is sort of like a fish. And what were the Vampires Of Venice? FISH from space.

Thus I have no doubt at all in mind that the big bad guy at the end of the next series will in fact be.... THE MYRKA.

Just like I always said it would be

But anyway, I'm supposed to be talking about the Christmas special. Mind you, I'm supposed to be taking my medication and not listening to the voices anymore, but whatever.

Doctor Who of course has a long and respected history of ripping off classic literature, but I don't think it's ever been quite so overt, at least from an in-story perspective. The point where the Doctor basically decides to reinact a Christmas carol as his plan to save the crashing space liner is a joy to behold. It's like you can SEE the cogs turning in his brain. This is, of course, down to the brilliant Matt Smith who is of course a pure joy to behold as the Doctor. Poetry in motion. Albeit a somewhat spastic, random motion. But motion nonetheless.

The script is great, replete with much wit. It was mentioned to me by a certain someone watching the new series for the first time how very Douglas Adams it all felt. And you know something, it really does. There is that certain sparkle to dialogue.

Visually we have a nice neo Victorian type aesthetic. You could call it steampunk if you really wanted, but the lack of anything actually powered by steam rather puts paid to that overworn term. It does, after all, require something in excess of wearing goggles.

But what of the story itself? Well, it's certainly the most christmassy of the Christmas specials done thus far. This is perhaps it's strength and also it's greatest weakness. The whole thing is so strongly tied into christmasness, both in script, tone and execution that I feel it'll seem rather out of place watching it at any other time of year. But only time and the series 6 boxset will tell. Obviously there is room for a certain amount of cheesiness here, but I think that the central conceit of having the characters knowingly and deliberately acting out a Christmas carol avoids much of these issues.

The fact that the companions are sidelined for almost the entire episode in favour of concentrating on the Doctor and Sardick is interesting, and does actually work well. Whilst you do rather feel sorry for poor ld Rory having basically nothing to do, Matt Smith is just so very GOOD as the Doctor that you really don't miss him or Amy that much at all. Just goes to show that maybe you really don't need the traditional companion after all. Tom Baker was right. Not that I would wish to knock any of the companions here. It's just that there's really not much for them to do here than play the centurion and the call girl. Thankfully offscreen.

So the action is basically confined to the Doctor, Sardick in his various age brackets, and his frozen paramour. What can you really say about these performances? I've already mentioned that I'd have Matt Smiths babies. Micheal Gambon puts in a good turn as the fundamentally unlikeable (yet fundamentally flawed) Sardick. And The opera singer whose name eludes me right now does manage very well when you consider she's never done any acting before. It does have to be said that the big draw with her is perhaps not so much her acting skills as her beautiful singing voice. Which is awesome.

Though it is worth mentioning that her 8 day romance with a young boy is kinda creepy when you think about it.

Overall what we have here is a well crafted tale with a very specific focus. This isn't a bad thing at all. We also get the concept of Christmas fish, which really should become a fixture of future decorations. Better than the usual ghastly tat anyway. Everything's better with sharks.

Merry Christmas!

The Misadventures of Tron n'est pas bon

So, we went out to see Tron Legacy last night. Whilst I wouldn't say the movie was exactly top of my list of things to watch I was certainly vaguely intrigued to tag along with a couple of friends for a night out. I mean, everybody loves Tron, right?

Anyway, this was also my first time experiencing the latest fad of 3D. It's that I've been avoiding watching a 3D film up to now, so much as there has so far not been any films that are in 3D that I've had the slightest desire to actually go and watch. Frankly 3D has always struck me as being a bit of an unnecessary gimmick.

Tron Legacy has done nothing to change my mind on this issue.

Frankly the only thing it actually added to the experience was severe ocular discomfort. Now, I'll say that the technique is certainly interesting from a technical perspective. So are particle cannons, doesn't mean I want to be staring down the end of one. The main problem I found was simply that the 3D made everything look really flat, which I admit may seem counter intuitive. Basically what it looked like a lot of the time was a series of flat layers superimposed one over the other, like a cardboard diorama. Rather than adding any sense of depth or perspective this just made it look like a bunch of flatness on flatness on flatness. Only the lst layer is slightly out of focus to make it look further away.

Also, since the glasses just hurt my eyes it made it very difficult to actually focus properly on what actually happening, particularly in the more fast paced action sequences. Now, the film does have some nice design work, but it's kinda wasted when you can't actually look at it properly because the glasses are trying to send you boss eyed. There are, I do admit brief moments where the 3D appears to work, and you'll have a sense of depth or things coming towards you. But these moments are far too rare and infrequent to justify the vast majority of time which is spent doing my goddamn eyes in and looking frankly naff. At the end of the day I saw NOTHING achieved through the use of 3D that a half decent director couldn't do by appropriately framing his shots and taking a bit of time over composition.

Or, you know, DIRECTING.

So, the 3D was a complete bust, but what of the film itself?

It... wasn't a childhood raping atrocity like most crap they pump out these days. But neither was it really actually very good. And when simply being not utter crap is the best you can say you know that something is wrong. It's just sort of there, you know?

Visually (when you're eyeballs aren't trying to escape out of the sides of your head) it looks very nice of course. But it takes more than just looks to make a good movie. What this lacked was a real sense of heart I think. It's slightly hollow. It has lots of nice nods back to the original, which is cool, but the story really doesn't GO anywhere. The program characters are too much like people and the main person character is to much like cardboard. Nothings really properly defined. Now, in order to talk about the films various short comings I will have to give out spoilers. Though how you can really spoil a plot that doesn't really happen I'm not sure.

So, Bit. Do the spoilers begin here?

YES!

Right, so after a cursory bit of real world introduction (thankfully presented in flatland o vision) Chippy McCardboard or whatever his name is gets sent onto the grid. He is promptly captured and stuck in the games. Disc combat and lightcycles, woo. We are also here introduced to our evil overlord, xbox Jeff Bridges. To be fair depending on the lighting the cgi job they've used to make him appear young can look pretty cool. But it seems to get less convincing as the film progresses until it finally looks like a screenshot from mass effect or something. So anyway, xbox here is a program copy of Flynn from the original movie who's gone a bit mad and taken over. This is not actually a bad idea. After all, these are PROGRAMS we're talking about. So if he's working from a faulty assumption as to what it is he's programmed to do that could cause problems. Oh, and there's also an uberminion guy who fights with 2 discs. This is quite cool, but would be a lot better if he didn't otherwise look exactly like every other disposable minion in the film.

Which is quite a lot of minions.

Anyway, our cardboard hero is rescued from the arena by some bint in a lightcar, because merchandising. I think the car must be operated by some sort of pump mechanism, as that's the only way to explain what the hell she's doing with the steering wheel. Seriously, I've seen five year olds pull off better driving acting. She then takes him off the grid out into some poorly defined wasteland and it's at this precise moment that the film stops making ANY sense. I mean, how does a computer have wastelands? The world in which Tron takes place is either the internet (though the lack of porn would dictate otherwise) or the ENCOM server array. This is the space in which the programs move. It's all fairly metaphorical I know, but what the fuck is this wasteland supposed to be exactly? Couldn't they have just moved the files to secure server or something?

I dunno.

Anyway, in the "wasteland" we arrive at Flynns super special secret hideaway. Captain Cardboard briefly tries having daddy issues for about 5 seconds before realising it's completely out of his acting range (which basically encompasses eye candy and little else). Flynn reveals that he's been hiding out here doing absolutely NOTHING to fight the encroaching totalitarian regime (a matter in which he has some experience) because....

BUH?

I don't know. HE doesn't know. No one does. He just couldn't be bothered I guess? That or he was to busy spying on bint through the big creepy interconnecting spy holes in all the rooms. No wonder he's dressed all in white.

Anyway, theres' some guff about how xbox Jeff Bridges needs real Jeff Bridges disc. Because I guess if we aren't gonna have a real plot we might as well have a Macguffin instead. Oh, it's also here that it's revealed that Evil "2 Discs" Minion is actually Tron. We wondering where he'd got to. They even have him grabbing another guys disc in the flashback and fighting with 2, just to make sure you get it.

Oh, I also nearly forgot a major plot point. Mainly because after this moment so do the writers. So apparently, before xbox went crazy these dudes showed up. SPECIAL dudes. A form of machine intelligence arising spontaneously from the grid. Which might be cool of they weren't EXACTLY like everyone else only with a tattoo. But they had special green house to live in. And the xbox blew them the fuck up, because he's a dick. And now they're all dead. So you know, that was really worth putting in, since absolutely nothing ever come of the idea.

So anyway, son of cardboard decides to go fight the power. When even this guy has a better plan than you it's really a sign to just give up already. So, he's trying to get the portal to get off the grid and unplug xbox from the outside, which seems reasonable. However despite coming in right in the middle of the grid the portal is now off in the distant beyond. Because I guess portals are migratory. Anyway, where does he go to look for help getting to the ancestral mating grounds of the portalbirds?

A NIGHTCLUB.

Captain, if you be so kind.

Why do PROGRAMS need a nightclub?

Seriously. The whole sequence is simply a drawn out and pathetically transparent opportunity to have Daft Punk do a cameo. Consider they wear helmets covering their faces this seems redundant at best. Anyway, blah blah, betrayal, ambush, whatever. Flynn turns up and demonstrates his awesome powers, which is actually pretty cool and kind of what you'd expect a user to be really capable of here. I mean surely there must be SOMETHING to differentiate them from the programs?

No? Not even the beard?

Okay, nevermind. So anyway, the Macguffin disc is stolen, oh noes. But it's okay because right outside the nightclub is a space tram headed straight for the portal. Why we couldn't have just taken this to start with is not an issue that is ever addressed. Sadly it's the slow train, stopping at Slough, Putney, and the TOP SECRET EVIL MILITARY BASE.

Cracking bit of luck that.

So anyway, xbox is apparently making an evil army to invade the real world with. And now he's got the disc he can send through his literally hundreds of buys with pointy glowsticks.

Into a small room.

ONE AT A TIME.

Let's be honest. It's not VERY threatening is it?

Anyway I guess there's some fights or something and then there's a chase with lightplanse because merchandising. the Tron decides to turn good because... they... shot at him? Nicely? I really have no idea, it makes absolutely no sense, but it also makes absolutely no difference as all that happens is he falls in the water and is never seen again. I mean, considering the amount of money they spent on xbox Jeff Bridges we never even get to see Trons face. But Bruce Boxleitner is IN THE FILM. He's right there, in the real world bits. He even gets a line when tron randomly decides to be good/useless (take you pick). Did they just hate him or something? What do you suppose he did to piss them off?

Anyway, one chase seen and no sense later we arrive at the portal, but xbox is already there. Oh noes. So Jeff Bridges activates his cosmic hoover powers and explodes whilst the cardboard kid and his generic lady friend exit the grid into the real world.

AND THERE IS NO CLIMAX. That's it. It just sort of happens and then everything stops.

Woo. Oh, and apparently the bint is one of those super special dead people. Though for all the difference it makes she might as well actually be a secret turnip. But now she's real. Thrust from a world of pure data into a fleshy sac of disgusting secretions. I confidently predict a nervous breakdown and possible suicide once her period kicks in. I mean, seriously, how can you prepare a program for that shit? When you think about it biology is basically nauseating. Does anyone think a program will be able to deal with all those FLUIDS?

NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO!

So yeah. Tron himself is not addressed in anything but the most cursory and indeed arbitrary way. Plot points are raised and then ignored, and far to little actually makes sense. Whilst the visual look is quite cool it frankly feels a lot less like another world inside of the machine and more like a trip to Cyberdog. The soundtrack is pretty cool though, with a fairly old school feel. But like I say, whilst it's not great it is at least some shade of respectful to the source material. So rather than wanting to pretend the franchise never existed at all it really just makes you want to go dig out the original and watch that instead.

There are worse ways to spend an evening. But then there are also plenty that don't involve corneal hemorrhaging. Your mileage may vary.

Seriously, They Should Have Had The Myrka In It.

So, it's christmas then right? And being that I'm an overly verbose Doctor Who fanboy with far too much time on my hands there's only one logical thing that I'm gonna be writing about today.

Part 4 of the adventure games.

I WOULD be doing a review of the christmas special, but I want to watch it through again before doing so and it wasn't yet on iplayer last time I checked. However the final installment of the adventure games has been available for a few days now, only I hadn't gotten around to playing it yet. Something to do with the ridiculous amount of grinding I've been doing on Devil Summoner. But this morning I finally managed to play through.

These games have certainly been an interesting experiment. Had they decided to charge for them I have no doubt I would have bought them, though perhaps not in as timely a manner as I've aquired them thus far. They're not bad games by any means. However neither are they, in all honesty, the most shining examples of the art ever commited to disk. They're a fun enough diversion for an evening, which seems to be about right for this whole episodic thing. Replay value I'm not sure of yet. I can't say I've felt particularly motivated to replay the others thus far, though I do think it would be interesting to work through them now we've got the whole lot and see how things progress. Or not.

See, the question you might well ask about this fourth installment is "what does this add to the series?" and the answer is, basically, more of the same. It's not really a dramatic departure in any way. There's a few puzzles, a bit of exploration, a bit of stealth. Fairly basic stuff that was established in part 1. Not exactly "hardcore" but then why should it be? It works well enough, suits the tone of the show and is simple enough for the younger ones to play without getting annhiliated. Not that it's THAT easy. I still died plenty of times.

The big thing this time of course is the return of the Vashta Nerada. As a monster they do seem to be one that would suit the game environment. And they're used reasonably well as you might imagine they would be. In addition the odd lumbering suit coming to get you (Barbera) there's a bit of light based running around puzzles.

Kind of.

See, whilst the whole keep out of the shadows OR DIE thing works very well I must confess that a lot of the time the shadowy realm of death parts didn't look particularly dark. At all. It's hardly Fury From The Deep bright, but I do think they could have upped the contrast a bit, which would add to the atmosphere as well as making things a bit more obvious. Though it's always possible this is just my crappy display. Who knows? My impression is that the Vashta Nerada could have been utilised slightly better.

Whilst I don't think the game is particularly longer than any of the others it does manage to FEEL bigger. This is due in a large part to the glass corridors of the sea base. At the start there is an awful lot of running down corridors as a giant mutant alien shark harrases you, which certainly adds to the feel of the available square footage. But it's really being able to see the base sprawling around you (as well as said shark swimming around) that gives a feel of openess. Contrast this with the view out of the windows in City Of The Daleks, which was a matt job painted on the inside of a bubble, and you've got a much less claustrophobic feel. Even though you're trapped in a base at the bottom of the ocean.

Story wise things are okay I suppose, though there is a bit of rather jarring jumping around in one or two places that really disturb the flow of things. There's bad stuff happening, everbodies getting eaten. save the day, defeat the bad guys, back home on time for tea.

It's also here that I've finally pinpointed one of the main problems with these games. See, whilst the voice recording seems well and good there's always been something that felt a little off with dialogue. After watching a few episodes of the series in close conjunction I've finally realised that, quite simply, it's just that a large part of matt Smiths performance is very physical. The way he moves is just not something that you really capture in a game like this. Frankly I doubt you could capture it even with a huge budget "proper" AAA game on whatever overpriced console happens to be flavour of the week right now.

Overall there's really not much I can say. If you liked the other chapters then you'll probably like this one too. If you didn't then I don't think there's anything on offer here that'll change your mind. Considering that all 4 games are available free I don't think there's really much to complain about. Whilst not perfect these have, I think, certainly been a shot in the right direction and have proven the viability of Doctor Who based games. What will be particularly interesting is to compare them to the new Wii game and see which comes out best.

But that is a job for the new year I think.

Lincoln Vs Presley

"Death reveals to man what he truly is"
                The intro to that one song by the Berzerker

“Bullshit.” Thought Abe Lincoln sullenly.

The real problem with death is when it reveals to everyone else what you really are.  Especially when that something happens to be an immortal vampire overlord.
Oh sure they covered it all up. Put out a story about how he'd been assassinated, how he was a great president. How he'd never eaten a live baby on the white house roof.

Lies! All of it. Nothing but Illuminati bullshit propagated by those CIA bastards.
So now people remembered him as some benevolent martyr to freedom, rather than a bloodthirsty tyrant. Outcast, forgotten. Skulking in the shadows, scavenging from the dregs of society to survive.

It made no difference. There was one simple fact that no rewriting of history or mass brainwashing exercise could ever change.

Being shot in the head REALLY, REALLY FUCKING HURTS.

Perhaps, Lincoln thinks to himself sometimes, he could have sweet talked his way out of having slaughtered half the theatre audience in a blind fury. What the powers that be really took offense to was all the swearing that accompanied it. Bunch of tightasses.

He scratched idly at the smoking hole that had once been his right eye. Never fucking healed. That bastard had known what he was doing. Must have had something holy in the bullet.

Never did get a chance to find out what. When the whole world thinks you're dead, except the people that want you dead some things get forgotten in the heat of the moment.

Damn thing had been knocked out by a CIA vampire hunter with a baseball bat and a bad attitude. Couldn't say he missed it, the damn thing had burned like crazy.
Still without the constant burning of the bullet he'd at least been able to think straight. Stopped being a raving tornado of death and laid low. 140 years on the run, and for the past 3 he hadn't needed to surf the waves of battle out of town before the reinforcements turned up. Not that skulking in a dilapidated crypt in a dead end backwater town in the middle of butt-fucking nowhere was really where he pictured himself being by now. In fact it was about as far from the opulent luxury and baby raping parties he’d assumed were his right as it was possible to get without actually living in a sewer.

He wondered what he must look like by now. No point looking in a mirror after all.  Words such as drawn, haggard, ragged, hobo and shite crossed his mind. Still, that's the problem with feeding of junkies. They might taste like shit, but somehow nothing else seems to quite... satisfy.

Still, with the hunters off his trail, perhaps he could find some time to clean himself up. Get out of this stinking shithole of a town, sort out his diet, and regain his strength. Maybe get out to one of those Amish places. No drugs there, and it's not like they could phone for help.

Lincoln chuckled to himself, a guttural, mirthless sound. Suddenly he span to face the entrance of the crypt, hissing. Someone else was here!

A black clad figure stepped from the shadows of the doorway. Moonlight spilled in behind him, illuminating the squalid filth in which Lincoln had been living all this time. Discarded needles mingled with discarded bones in stinking filth.

The stranger himself was illuminated. Black leather jacket and trousers, black T shirt emblazoned with the logo "Who Killed Marilyn?” He was wearing fingerless gloves decorated with a bone pattern, and his long black hair was slicked into a point, hanging down over his face.

“Oh great,” thought Lincoln. “It's a fucking goth.” He’d seen one’s dressed like this hanging around recently. One group of sad pretenders worshipping yet further pretenders to throne long since broken. The tributes He’d demanded in his day were of blood and fear. He’d walked his own grim path and none could follow, even had they so desired.

Another age, another life. Honestly, the youth of today. Still, he was hungry, and it seemed fate had ordered the metaphorical pizza.

Lincoln straightened up, confidant now. This was no threat.

“What do you want, little meat thing?” He spat contemptuously at the stranger.

“Well sir, I'm just taking care of business”

“What?”

Had he a working circulatory system or a body temperature above that of his surroundings, Lincoln’s blood would have chilled at that voice. He knew that voice.

“It can't be. You're dead.”
“Actually, you're dead. I'm just lying low for while. Mr. President.”
“Don't mock me Presley.”
“I'm not here to mock you Mr. President.”

Something glinted in the moonlight as Presley drew it from his jacket. Something sharp. Something pointed.

“I'm here to kill you.”

Instantly Lincoln leapt to attack, claws outstretched, fangs dripping. His sole remaining eye burning with hate. Centuries of experience in the art of the kill transforming his body into a lightning fast missile of concentrated death.

Or at least that was the idea. All those centuries of vampiric night stalking didn’t appear to have quite prepared him for the lightning fast roundhouse kick to the head which Presley delivered, with perfect timing.
Lincolns withered body slammed into the decrepit brickwork, sending up a cloud of dust and filth.

“Don't fuck with me Mr. President. I'm a goddamn black belt in ass kicking.”

Lincoln climbed unsteadily to his feet.

“Fool. You can beat my body, but you can't break it. Don't you understand I am immortal! Batter upon me until your fists bleed, eventually you, mortal will tire. And then I will destroy you! No weapon can harm me!!”

“Yu-huh” deadpanned Elvis as he slammed the three foot metal stake through Lincoln’s ribcage, straight into his dead black heart.

Lincoln screamed. The pain was incredible. Like nothing he'd ever felt. Nothing since... Since...

Shit. Since he'd been shot in the head with a bullet carved from the pope’s old hipbones or whatever it was. A holy bullet.

Shit.

Shit shit fuck fucking shit.

Lincoln screamed. And screamed, and writhed. But that was all he could do. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t pull the accursed object from his chest and shove it up Presley’s ass like he so badly wanted to.

“Wha.. What? Where?....”

Looking down he saw the spike protruding from his chest, pinning him to the wall.  Around the wound his pale, pallid flesh began to blacken and flake. Consumed by an invisible fire. Radiating outward from the golden stake.

“Where'd I get hold of a holy weapon? One powerful enough to put down an ancient night crawler like you?”

“Well it weren't easy by any means. But they haven't found all the secret passages and I do like to slip back home from time to time. And as much as I hated melting 'em down, those records weren't really doing much just sitting on the wall like that. Hell, the fake ones look just as good. It's not like anyone will ever know. Except you and me.”

“Wh.. why?...”

“Well, me anyway. So long Mr. President.”

As the burning finally overcame his ability to scream, the last thing Abraham Lincoln Vampire Lord of America was Elvis quietly singing to himself as he slowly walked away

"Five twenty five, august fifth, nineteen sixty two....."

Ultramas

It's christmas time. Hooray. And around these parts there's only really one way to do christmas. The same way we do most other things.

No, I don't mean badly or on the cheap.

I mean the ULTRAMAN way.

daa daa da daa!

So with that in mind consider this a specium beam in the war against christmas.

Of course, it was December 08 when I visited Ultramanland, and maybe that had an effect on me.

I DARE you to tell me this isn't awesome

And it was there that I acquired the fantastic Ultraman christmas card. Which in addition to being an ULTRAMAN CHRISTMAS CARD contained a DVD message from Taro and Ultra Father. I have no idea what they're saying exactly, but I don't need to. The message is clear enough: Ultra + Christmas = WIN.

But wait, it gets better. Because then we then find out that there is such a thing as the Ultraman christmas ALBUM.

Yes. This is an album containing christmas style versions of some Ultraman theme songs, christmas songs sung in Japanese (and thus rendered infinitely less annoying then usual), a short audio drama in which Baltan Seijin learns the true meaning of christmas and the single best version of jingle bells EVER RECORDED.

Baltan Seijin fucking LOVES christmas

And so the seeds had been sown. I'd had it in my mind to conduct an Ultraman themed christmas for a while now, and this year I have finally achieved it.

Now, the first part of my plan was to construct a suitably Ultra themed tree. How? Simple.

Yubi Ningyo! The original plan was to get a white or silver tree and decorate it with red tinsel. But then I found that you could get red trees, which somehow seemed much more appropriate.

These actually work really well. At first I was a bit unsure as to how I would affix them to the tree, but the solution was incredibly obvious. It's an artificial tree. Just bend the ends of the branches up and sit them on. They are finger puppets after all.

And then for the top...

At first I was unsure. I mean, Pestar or maybe even Bemstar would look pretty cool if you could get them in a suitably festive paint scheme. Or there's always Yunijiin, if only they actually made one.

I mean, he's only the christmas kaiju

But I found a set of glitter Mebius and Tiga from the Superior 8 Ultra Brothers on ebay pretty reasonably, and if I do say so myself they look pretty spiffy. Would be perhaps cooler if they were to light up, but I really couldn't bring myself to drill holes in their butts and jam fairy lights up there.

So far so good thought I. But somehow it wasn't quite enough. And then I hit on the best idea yet.

Yup. Ultra presents. I was, it has to be said, rather pleased with how these turned out, as I thought it would be lot more difficult. I admit they're not exactly mathmatically precise, but that's hardly the point.

Ultraman

Ultraseven

Ultraman Ace

Ultraman 80

Father Of Ultra

Mother Of Ultra

To make these I simply got some silver and red wrapping paper, as well as a bit of blue for the colour timers. Then I found an image of a leaflet checklist for the Ultraman toys, which provided me a reasonable straight on view of the chest designs. The it's just a question of cutting out the detail in paintshop, scaling it up to the approximate size ofthe present and printing out a template. Though if anyone wants to make some decent quality scalable vector templates I'd be VERY grateful. Anyway, scissors and glue later I have a pretty funky selection of gifts for my friends and family. 

Although I am left with one last problem. How the hell do I explain to my parents whats going on with the wrapping?

Anyway, this is how I'm doing christmas this year, and in all probability every year. I can only hope that this post will add to the somewhat dissapointing google search results for Ultraman christmas, and maybe even inspire some other Ultrafans to do christmas the right way next time.

Hail To The King

This is something I wrote for an RPG, but since in all probability it'll never get used for that I figure I may as well put it up here since it's one of those strange and rare things: Something I'm actually quite chuffed with.

The King of Murder dances slowly
Turning round and round
No smile he wears upon his face
But nor is there a frown

His smile he holds in both his hands
It's teeth are sharp and bright
To share it's laughter all around
That is the Kings delight

The young and old
The rich and poor
Both sorrowful and sane
Shall dance and scream but only once
Then never dance again

Things I Find Hilarious

You ever wonder if there should be like a Meagan's Law for Paintshop? You know, so before you start talking to someone online they have to declare that they have created a variety of atrocious pictures for their own amusement? That NO ONE else has any chance of finding funny at all? But they still post them and expect to be hailed as some sort of genius?

I am one of those people.

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101

My how time flies. Mind you, so do cats, bricks and hedgehogs when you pack them into a piece of drainpipe with a sufficient quantity of high explosive.

Fly Mrs Tiggywinkle! Be Free!

EVERYTHING flies with a sufficient quantity of high explosive. However I'm not here today to debate the depressingly linear nature of temporal mechanics or how almost everything is better with 16 pounds of C4 strapped to it. Oh no, what I'm going to talk about is far, FAR more boring.

Because you see this is my one hundred and first post this year. Not only that, but checking back in the archives this actually the 1st anniversary of this blog!

Yeah, I know, you can hardly contain your excitement. But if I actually gave two shits what you think I wouldn't be writing this. Because I'd have DYSENTERY.

Anyway, This is I suppose in some ways a milestone. 1 year on I'm still managing to crap out something every so often (that'd be the dysentery again) and have even managed to achieve my goal of an average of 1 post a week. I haven't actually MANAGED 1 post a week, far from it. But that's hardly the point. The long silent periods where I weep quietly in the corner have been counterbalanced by long soul destroying series of posts on badly written supernatural romance novels where I scream loudly at the computer. Seriously, I'm crying blood just THINKING about doing book 3.

Also I make this face a lot

It's also thanks I think to these particular forays into SHEER TERROR that I apparently have hits for the term "free comics rapening porn". Just think about that for a second. Someone out there thinks RAPENING is an actual word.

This is why I make the face. I'm not even in the DREGS of the internet here.

But ho hum.

The point remains that despite a complete lack of critical acclaim I've managed to keep going with this bullshit, and am not actually thinking of giving it up like almost everything else I've ever done. So go me I guess?

Anyway, let's round out the year with the last few bits of old crap from the vault I had on standby, and then enter the new year with...... Something else. Probably.

Until next time.....

Sometimes I Get These Ideas... And They Just Won't STOP.

And you know the worst part? This could really work. And don't just mean in terms of being so retarded that it's obviously awesome. I mean you could totally write this. Just replace "puritanism" with "being a fucking WEREWOLF" and the story practically writes itself. Except that someone would probably make the royalists vampires and the whole thing would quickly become gayer than a submarine full of jello. Maybe I should get some books on Cromwell and try it myself? Except for the fact that I'd be torn between wanting to write it properly or in the semi literate ravings that somehow pass for literature in this day and age. Either way it surely could never be as bad as certain other things I could mention but would prefer not to because it gves me an embolism.

.Anyway, I did another pic for this as well, so here it is.

Cromwolf Book One: A Parliment..... Of WOLVES!!!

The tagline is: Biting history....IN THE FACE!!.

This Is Why We Love Scrabble

I've been playing WordSquared lately for reasons which have nothing to do with avoiding doing any work. And I feel compelled to record todays triumph for posterity.

Interestingly though it doesn't recognize "shite".

Oh yes. And it's on a triple word score.

You know what that sound is? It's the sound of me WINNING THE INTERNET.

I am so not mature right now and I don't even care.