Dirk Hardbody here, and I’m letting all of you know about my amazing new martial style, Dirk Hardbody’s Dirkwando.  I developed Dirk Hardbody’s Dirkwando after 6 years in the Nineagon.  You’ve heard of the Octogon?  Well this is ONE better!  It’s like taking an octogon and adding one extra side!

Over the next few months I will teach you the basics of this deadly and effective martial style.  Not only will you learn devastating moves, but I’ll show you the secrets of this ancient martial art.

Today I will reveal the first of the Seven badass ranks you can attain in Dirk Hardbody’s Dirkwando.  It is the rank of Black Belt.  You know how most martial arts people END at Black Belt?  Well, Dirk Hardbody’s Dirkwando is so badass it STARTS at black belt.

All of the other ranks are too hardcore for you to know about right now, but don’t worry, you’ll get hardcore.  You’ll get hardcore training Dirk Hardbody’s Dirkwando, and learning to fight in the Nineagon.

So tune in next week for more badassery, including :

• Basic moves, including the Mullet Grab, and the Bottle Smash.

• How to get YOUR black belt in Dirk Hardbody’s Dirkwando

So get training.

For those of you who don’t know what Penny-Arcade is, you’re missing out.  Penny-Arcade is a gaming related comic, touching on topics from Ubisoft’s new (and some would say idiotic) DRM, to Dungeons and Dragons, to social commentary to Star Wars.  They publish comics three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, along with a blog which relates to the comic.  Unfortunately, as is the case with XKCD, sometimes I am just oblivious to the joke.  Fortunately, however, they are not in the same physics and science humor section.

The comic’s creators are represented by characters withing the comic, Jerry Holkins (“Tycho”, and the written genius) and by Mike Krahulik (“Gabe” and the artistic genius).  While I never met either of them, I do know someone who knows someone who said they know them, so I feel like we’ve met.  While I do enjoy their comic, they have really earned my respect through their Child’s Play charity.  According to wikiepedia they’ve raised over 6 MILLION dollars in cash and gifts for children hospital’s.  That’s amazing.

So, on top of being gut-busting hilarious at times, they are also damned serious about helping kids.  What isn’t there to love?

So, we had our veritable pyramid of beer, an awesome movie, great friends, and the perfect holiday to drink to.  Now all we needed were some rules.  Many drinking games require you to drink a certain number of shots / sips when specific things happen, for instance “2 shots whenever Dwight mentions animals” or “1 shot whenever the Minister mentions God”.

This, however, leads to massive confusion the more you drink.. one shot or two when Bambi’s mom bites the dust?  Do I down my drink when Barney in the Simpsons drinks?

So, we decided to simplify things.  Just one drink whenever one of the following happens, with ONE instance of downing everything…

Down your drink when the cat dies – A gun goes off – Someone dies – Someone swears

Simple, right?  Too simple actually… Those of you who’ve seen this movie know what we were in for… For those of you who haven’t seen Boondock Saints recently (or ever), here’s a short clip that will help you understand the insanity of our proposed drinking game.  (Note : violence and profanity warning). (for a longer and more painful drinking experience, check out this extended clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd3Sl7P0IOA, which has MORE violence and profanity).

Just in that scene alone we counted something like 300 shots fired, a dozen or so deaths, and a flood of profanity.  We were counting on BOTH hands AND our toes (mind you, there was already a bunch of drinking before this scene…) and quickly ran out of digits.  Assuming each beer is good for… 20 sips… that’s still 10 beers a person.. 12 beers per case means we only had 60 or so beers.  It was bad.  Oh, and the rest of the movie, while not as saturated with lead, is still violent and profane.  Terrible idea.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (www.smbc-comics.com)  unfortunately not Count Chokula…  It’s another funny webcomic!  Ok, it’s also a delicious breakfast food, at least when combined with milk and hopefully not Captain Crunch, which is basically like eating flavored razor blades (link goes to testimonial).

The comic is really funny, and covers topics such as :

The Bible -(One , Two , Three) ,Teen Pregnancy,College ,Mythology,Fairy Tales,Sex Educatio, Science, and more Science , and Porno Collections (SFW).

It is run by Zach Weiner, someone with significantly more artistic and comedic ability than me.See?  So go get yourself some Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and start your everyday off right.

The signal was noticeably stronger after construction of the aluminum dish, and this fact impressed us enough that we were excited to share this news with the blogosphere. The idea that one could take a common household material like aluminum foil and build a device to boost one’s wireless internet service seemed so cool, so… taboo. It gave us a geeky feeling of resourcefulness, like we were on the verge of discovering a plethora of other cheap, alternative ways of improving our quality of life.

You mean all I have to do is eat vegetables and I'll never have to get a flu vaccine again?

However, our inventive euphoria did not take long to fade, and within a couple weeks of building our aluminum dish we noticed a severe drop in our signal strength. I should note that our internet service was still technically better with the tinfoil than without, although at its worst the signal had become so weak that the difference was hardly noticeable. Bizarrely, this drop in service quality coincided almost exactly with a timetable given by Clear in previous weeks to improve signal strength in our area by building new towers nearby. Despite their promises to the contrary, however, our service began an extreme downward spiral in the weeks following our last post on the subject. It appears that our failure was not to trust in tinfoil to improve on Clear’s hardware, but to trust Clear to provide a reasonable service in the first place.

Had we zoomed in closer on Clear's service map we might have noticed the tiny gray area over our 800 square foot apartment.

The service actually got worse and worse, as if the Clear Gods were punishing us mere mortals for attempting to exert some control over the realm of invisible WiMax signals, with our pagan aluminum technology. In the last couple of weeks, it was taking up to 2 hours to load a 10-minute video on Youtube. At one point, attempting to download a multi-gig file, we determined that it would actually, literally be faster to buy a plane ticket, travel to the home of the person who created the file, load it onto a flash drive, and fly back. Even at it’s best, our service was rarely better than that offered by a dial-up connection with a 28 kbps modem. I nearly jumped for joy when my download speeds peaked at 30 or 35 kbps, a fact to which no human should ever have to admit in this day and age. We were paying $35 per month for service that was slower than dial-up. It was clear that something would have to change.

How many people under 20 even know what this is?

Unfortunately, in our folly we had agreed to a long contract with Clear, and in order to get out of it we had to set up an appointment with a service technician whose job seemed to consist entirely of (1) asking us stupid, generic, and insulting questions over the phone, to the tune of “Is your modem plugged in?” and (2) asking us stupid, generic, and insulting questions in person, while simultaneously ignoring our responses because he was right goddamn there and could see with his own eyes how shitty our service was, through no fault of our own. It was a hassle, but by the time the Clear representative had actually come out to our apartment and verified the lack of a reasonable internet experience, getting out of the contract wasn’t really far off.

The moral of the story? Even creativity and tinfoil can’t solve every problem. Unless you need internet access on-the-go and you plan on “going” mainly through large sunny fields within range of Clear’s towers-or-whatever-it-is-they-have, just go with Comcast, Verizon, Qwest, or one of the other umpteen Cable or DSL internet providers in your area. It may cost a little more, but we’re willing to pay $10 a month extra for download speeds which are literally 750 times faster than what we had with Clear.

Lipstick on a pig

This week on Finding the Funny : XKCD.  I have no idea what it means.. not even Wikipedia knows what XKCD means.  Well, “the comic’s name has no particular significance and is simply a four-letter word without a phonetic pronunciation”, is the best we get.  I’ve had loads of fun trying to pronounce “xkcd” (ex-kud?.. ex-kac-ed?…).

XKCD has been keeping me amused for a good long while now.  While painfully aware of the scientific humor on the site, or, more accurately, painfully aware at my lack of understanding said scientific humor of many of the panels, overall this comic is great.  In the middle of a science joke he’ll toss in something (like the electric eel and other funny stuff in his electrical diagram, do they really use those?…)

At other times the science is used in a more.. touching.. manner.  I mean, comeon, how sweetis that?  Have YOU ever slowed the rotation of the Earth just to spend more time with someone?  Or, in Superman’s case, to stop someone’s death?  I sure haven’t…

The last thing I’ll bring up is the alt-text associated with the strips.  If you hover over them you’ll get a little bonus text… This usually helps illuminate the joke (if you’re scientifically dis-inclined like myself).  Personally I feel a bit embarassed because I didn’t know about this until a friend mentioned it a good year or two into reading XKCD… after that the strips made a LOT more sense.

So there you go, check out XKCD for some funny, enlightening, sometimes confusing, heartwarming and all around good comics.

The Internet is a big and scary place.  Zombie’s, viruses, and naked people prowl it’s streets.  Fortunately there are sites like “The Oatmeal” which help to mitigate the otherwise frightening and not-funny wilderness.  Well, maybe not so much a wilderness as an endless series of tubes. 

First up on his hilarity.  “How everything goes to hell during a Zombie Apocolypse”.  It pretty much covers all the bases.  Including crazy scientists “I know, lets mix rabies with this old meatloaf and feed it to this gorilla!”, the right thing to do when confronted with a zombie (shoot the head and not the chest, head shots are the very best). 

Next he illuminates us on the subject of coffee.  He gives us “15 Things Worth Knowing About Coffee”.  Personally, the only thing I need to know about coffee is that it’s delicious.  Well, that and to stay away from the Pike’s Place roast from Starbucks.  Back to the funny though.  By far the most amusing this about it (and almost all of the other comics on this site) are the illustrations.  I don’t know if it’s the lack of pupils on the characters or what, but I find it highly humorous.  (Closely related to “15 Things Worth Knowing About Coffee” is “The 5 Phases of Caffiene Intake”.) 

“17 Things Worth Knowing About your Cat” is another informative poster, this time about kitties (cats are not amused by cupcakes… really? comeon.. I’m sure they’ll at least try and bat it around or something… mine would). 

There are also several comics on the proper use of various punctuation marks.  The noble apostrophe, the odd semi-colon are covered.  I don’t know about you, but I have never really learned how to use those things.  I know they’re on my keyboard for some reason, but I’m only 50% sure when I should apply them. 

The layout of the site makes it rather simple to find a comic… either click on one of the rectangles with a tagline in it, or click on “Comic” at the top… can’t get simpler than that.  (If my crappy Clear Internet service were any better I would be able to find more examples).  There are also some amusing quizzes to take, from How many hungry weasels could your body feed? (how did he fact check this?)to How long could you survive won the surface of the sun? (I’m pretty sure the answer is zero… I’m thinkin you’d burn up well before you got anywhere near that ball of fire), to How addicted to Facebook are you? (not very… I only sign on 10 times a day). 

This is definitely a comic site you should check out.  Lots of variety and funny visuals paired with somewhat useful and amusing information.  Plus, it looks like there’s a book deal coming up soon, so you can even read when the intertubes are full of bets and pornography. 

One of the most talked-about movies up for recognition in last year’s awards ceremony was Doubt, a film by John Patrick Shanley, adapted from a play he wrote in 2004 called Doubt: A Parable.  The story takes place in a Catholic school in the 1960s Bronx, and follows the school’s principal, a nun by the name of Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep in the film), as she investigates whether or not a new parish priest has been molesting a male student.  The subject matter is certainly timely, given the Church’s recent and ongoing molestation cover-up scandal, and this good timing is undoubtedly (no pun intended) one of the main factors in the popularity of both the play and the movie.

The film was nominated five times for four Oscars (twice for Best Supporting Actress), although it didn’t win in any category.  The play on which the movie was based, however, won several awards, including a Tony for best play and a Pulitzer prize for drama.  As a matter of fact, the play won a ton of awards, waaayyy more than its movie adaptation.  Here’s a list (thanks Wikipedia):

• Drama Desk Award for Best New Play
• Drama Desk Award Outstanding Actor in a Play (Brían F. O’Byrne)
• Drama Desk Award Outstanding Actress in a Play (Cherry Jones)
• Drama Desk Award Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play (Adriane Lenox)
• Drama Desk Award Outstanding Director of a Play (Doug Hughes)
• Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play
• New York Drama Critics’ Circle Best Play
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama
• Tony Award for Best Play
• Tony Award Best Actress in a Play (Jones)
• Tony Award Best Featured Actress in a Play (Lenox)
• Tony Award Best Direction of a Play (Hughes)
• Theatre World Award (Heather Goldenhersh)

While the film failed to win any of the Academy Awards for which it was nominated, it did win several other, less publicized awards.  However, out of its nine total wins, five went to Meryl Streep (for Best Actress or some variation thereof), and three went to Viola Davis (for supporting actress, although she was only in the movie for about five minutes, it seemed like).  That’s 8/9 awards the movie won going to just two actresses.  This disparity between the outstanding reception of the play and the lukewarm critical recognition of the movie adaptation should have sent my Spider Sense a-tingling, but unfortunately I didn’t do most of this research until after I had already watched the film.

Not that the film was terrible.  I liked Philip Seymour Hoffman as the questionable priest, and I enjoyed the story, or at least the idea of the story.  I’m sure if I had seen the theatrical version I would have raved about it.  However, watching the movie I almost felt like I was seeing a play – and what works in one medium doesn’t necessarily work in another.  Meryl Streep’s performance, in particular – yes, the one which garnered her half a dozen awards – was bizarre.  It seemed too quirky, too amateur.  It was over-the-top and theatrical.  I think her style would have worked on the stage, but in a film it was just plain cheesy.  Same with the writing!  The play won a Pulitzer, a fact I could barely believe after seeing the film – like I said, what works in one medium just might not be adaptable to another.  A lot of the lines in the movie seemed silly, especially several delivered by Streep in her melodramatic way.  When she starts to cry at the end of the film and confesses to Amy Adams “I have doubts!  I have such… doubts!” I couldn’t help but roll my eyes and search for the remote.

You can do so much in a film that you can’t achieve on the stage – a greater sense of immersion, or realism, if that’s what you’re going for.  I think that for a story like this one, that should have been the direction to take it.  But Shanley kept a very theatrical feel to the film which was strange and off-putting, to me at least.  So much could have been done, but wasn’t.  There were a ton of missed opportunities here, all because the cast and crew failed to think outside the box and make a movie, as an entity separate from its original incarnation on-stage.

All in all, it wasn’t great.  But it wasn’t really bad, either.  It may have left a strange taste in my mouth, so to speak, but there were elements of the story and of several of the performances which I found enjoyable.  If it’s still touring somewhere, I’d say seek out the play.  If not, the movie is worth seeing, as long as your expectations aren’t too high – as I fear mine were at the beginning.  ***/*****

Modern Warfare, while maybe not as modern as it’s more recent sibling, Modern Warfare 2, is still a great game.  The single-player campaign is quite challenging (some say too short, but they’re either really good at it or haven’t played it on Veteren…), and the multiplayer offers players the opportunity to customize their character to their play style and gives you hours days of gameplay (albeit with 12 year olds).

Single Player :

The single player campaign is fun, involving and challenging (at least on Hardened and Veteran.  I have yet to try the easy setting, I wonder if it “plays itself” like Halo 3 does.. they’re almost right!  We got through the first several missions just meleeing guys to death, it’s great!).  Several missions left me uttering streams of obscenities for what seemed like hours (I think it actually WAS hours) at how hard they were (seriously, the dogs are a pain in the ass, trust me.. they’re so tricky you get 20 Acheivement Points if you manage to melee one to death).  Even then I only escaped some by the skin of my teeth.  If you get shot more than once, or sometimes less than once, means instant death.  Crouching and going prone can help… or make you even more of a target.  Jumping behind cover helps unless the bullets go through your cover.  They’re great at going through buses, trees, walls, wooden fences, the guy in front of you, windows, cinder blocks.. basically everything.  This does make for some great kills through walls as you fire randomly while running away crying like a little girl.

The plot follows two characters, “Soap” MacTavish (even your buddies think that nickname is odd) with the British SAS, or Paul Jackson with USMC.  Most of the missions take place in the present, although there are a few flashback missions (including the fun, but hellishly difficult, “Ghillies in the Mist”).  Each mission provides you with several objective that you must complete.  Fortunately the HUD has a compass which points you towards the next objective, and your squad-mates will move towards it with you.  In addition to the main objectives of each mission, you can also find up to 30 pieces of “Enemy Intelligence” or some such scattered throughout the levels.  (They all look like the same laptop, which leaves me wondering how it’s “Intelligence”.)  The only things I find objectionable to the single-player campaign more are the lack of a co-op mode and the fact that your NPC squad-mates cannot die.  You can shoot in them in the face and nothing happens (although repeatedly attacking them will cause you to fail the mission “Friendly Fire is not tolerated”.).

The overall gameplay is good, somewhere between a movie and a videogame.  All of the missions serve to build the plot line, with several cinematic cut scenes to give you more background on the plot.  It is easy to get absorbed in the plot, which, when combined with the gameplay, makes this really hard to put down.

Multiplayer :

The Multiplayer is fun!  It usually doesn’t take more than a bullet or two to kill you (much like the single player).  The most frustrating thing about it is when you think the person you’re shooting at / throwing grenades at / stabbing doesn’t die and then kills you.  Fortunately this works both ways, and sometimes you go all Matrix on someone for no apparent reason.

The Multiplayer maps are very well designed, there are no perfect sniper nests, almost every room has two or more entrances, making them almost impossible to defend by yourself (if you’re a high enough level you can place claymores, but that won’t stop everyone..).  Also, you can get shot through the floor/wall/ceilings, so nowhere is really safe.  That said, snipers can find loads of places to hide out and pick off their hapless victims.

Each class (Assault, Special Ops, Heavy Weapons, Demolition, Sniper) has an array of weapons it can choose from.  They are all variations on a theme, but each one has slightly different attributes.  Some shoot faster, or further, or have more ammo than others.  This gives the player a lot of customization options depending on playing style.  In addition to various weapons players have a selection of “Perks”, that give them additional grenades, make reloading quicker, or increase their accuracy.  The catch here is they are split into three categories and you can only have one of each (you can’t, for instance, sprint super far AND hold your breath longer for some reason..)

Unfortunately you have to unlock all of the above, with the exception of the basic starting weapons.  Players need to level up by completing objectives (get 15 kills which crouching, blow up 10 cars, with 5 matches etc), or get kills.  It does add a nice reward to all of your hard “work”.

Teamwork is pretty much required to be successful in Multiplayer.  Snipers are semi-useless at close range, while special ops (using sub-machine guns) are equally useless at range.  Given the atmosphere on X-Box Live this can make matches very, very frustrating.  (All of your 12 year old teammates get stuck in a “your mamma” loop while you’re vainly trying to do something).  Fortunately the game mixes up the teams every match so you’re in groups with different people each time.

Overall this is a great game.  While maybe not as… modern… as it’s older cousin, Modern Warfare 2, it is still quite entertaining and provides hours, if not days, of distraction.

If you’re looking for more info on Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare, check out :

Wikipedia’s Entry

Infinity Ward, the creators of the Call of Duty games.

Callofduty.com, the home of Call of Duty

Gamespot’s review of Modern Warfare

IGN’s review of Modern Warfare

We think it’s great that people leave comments on our posts.  Some of these posts are from real, interested people with something constructive to share.  Those are the ones you can see in our comments section.  The vast majority of the comments, however, are spam.  Fortunately WordPress has a great function called “Askimet” that is designed to capture spam, and it’s quite good at it!  Currently we have over 100 comments in it’s que.  Below are four of the more recent ones that I find the most amusing.. I’ve removed any links to their site, as 90% of them are plugs for some random site or another (110% of them are for porn, I’m sure).

First up, we have someone called “Sovi”…

“It is nice to be able share many things here…. Hopefully our post make the world better”

What is he sharing?  He doesn’t have any other comment, I guess he’s just sharing his bad grammer.

Number 2 :
“Diana Duby” Left this gem on one of our coffee reviews (Woodstock Coffee House).  My favorite part about all of these posts are that they are completely unrelated to whatever blog post they commented on. Like this :

Thanks for the post that you have. I found a new one the other day. They look open for business, but very similar to linkedin.com with more of a social business directory look and feel. Nice easy interface though.

I don’t think “linked in.com” appears anywhere on this blog…

Chase Bank has decided to chime in on our Dutch taco posting.  I’m not sure why they think it’s helpful info, does Chase invest in Dutch tacos?

“Chase internet banking” – Thanks for sharing this helpful info!

This last one I find hilarious mainly because of the website “Willie Feck” left as a contact.  Seduction666.. Quite obviously porn.. Or maybe devil porn?  People seducing Satanists?  Oh, yeah, and “Willie” left this comment on our Gears of War review.  I’d like to think I’m that good of a writer, but somehow I don’t think so..

“Hi – it’s great to read such interesting writing on the web as I have been able to find here.  I agree with much of what is written here and I’ll be returning to this website again.  Thanks again for publishing such great reading material!!!

I’m glad Sovi, Willie, Diana and Chase Bank found our site so interesting!  I hope some more of you leave comments, we always love reading the sincere ones.. And the spam!