Skywarp!

"right thurr"

Kane was over Charlie Manson's house: "Hey Chuck, you gotta hear this one Beatles song. It'll change your life!"

I can't finish this story because it makes me want to puke. Seriously, it churns my stomach. Guts

I'm a total online SOCOM II addict. Username: Agent Curry

Ebert's objection mainly seemed to be "making light of a serious world situation, creating the message "who gives a fuck about this war?" belittles everyone fighting and dying in it and that it does matter, and who are these dickheads to say it doesn't?", if that's an accurate portrayal of what he's trying to infer. I still haven't seen it, so I can't tell you if he's off the mark on this one.

Because this board doesn't acknowledge my existence, anyway.

Kane gave a guest speak at Villanova University on overcoming adversity. He then lifted his arms and thrust them down, setting the students in attendance on fire.

AJS;LKSDJTGI;AOJBGV;ALKLK;FJAP;OIST!!!!!!!!!1111111111111111

It isn't the puzzles that annoy me--it's that I love the scary factor that moaning zombies bring...and I can buy other zombie infected animals. The problem starts with the unrealistic creatures...there's something about the hunters, giant spiders and centipedes, and the other unrealistic creatures that kills the mood. Nothing gets my pulse going like knowing there's a plain old zombie lurching after me. I understand how that doesn't make for a good game--there would be no "boss" characters and fighting one kind of enemy would get too repetative--so I don't know what the solution would be. Although, the shackled zombie Lisa in the original R.E. that tracked you down periodically was pretty scary too. Maybe more things like that would work.

Ebert is definitely loosing his mind. However, I'm starting to get skeptical of the film--the only review that gave it over 2 stars was Rolling Stone with 3 1/2. Everyone else says that it's kinda funny, but a good number of jokes fall flat, it overstays its welcome, and it pretty much has no point. Or maybe I'm just reading the wrong reviews. Unfortunately, the people that I think are the best critics, the Onion A/V Club, update Wednesdays and don't see sneak peaks, so it's always too late to find out what they think. I'm still seeing it, but my defense mechanisms are causing my expectations to lower.

Ebert gives it one star. Team America: World Police Roger Ebert / October 15, 2004 Cast & CreditsFeaturing the voices of Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Kristen Miller and Daran Norris Paramount Pictures presents a film directed by Trey Parker. Written by Parker, Matt Stone and Pam Brady. Running time: 98 minutes. Rated R (for graphic, crude and sexual humor, violent images and strong language, all involving puppets). "What are you rebelling against, Johnny?" "Whaddya got?" --Marlon Brando in "The Wild One" If this dialogue is not inscribed over the doors of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, it should be. Their "Team America: World Police" is an equal opportunity offender, and waves of unease will flow over first one segment of their audience, and then another. Like a cocky teenager who's had a couple of drinks before the party, they don't have a plan for who they want to offend, only an intention to be as offensive as possible. Their strategy extends even to their decision to use puppets for all of their characters, a choice that will not be univerally applauded. Their characters, one-third lifesize, are clearly artificial, and yet there's something going on around the mouths and lips that looks halfway real, as if they were inhabited by the big faces with moving mouths from the Conan O'Brien show. There are times when the characters risk falling into the Uncanny Valley, that rift used by robot designers to describe robots that alarm us by looking too humanoid. The plot seems like a collision at the screenplay factory between several half-baked world-in-crisis movies. Team America, a group not unlike the Thunderbirds, bases its rockets, jets and helicopters inside Mount Rushmore, which is hollow, and race off to battle terrorism wherever it is suspected. In the opening sequence, they swoop down on Paris and fire on caricatures of Middle East desperadoes, missing most of them but managing to destroy the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre. Regrouping, the team's leader, Spottswoode (voice by Daran Norris) recruits a Broadway actor named Gary to go undercover for them. When first seen, Gary (voice by Parker) is starring in the musical "Lease," and singing "Everyone has AIDS." Ho, ho. Spottswoode tells Gary: "You're an actor with a double major in theater and world languages! Hell, you're the perfect weapon!" There's a big laugh when Gary is told that, if captured, he may want to kill himself and is supplied with a suicide device I will not reveal. Spottswoode's plan: Terrorists are known to be planning to meet at "a bar in Cairo." The Team America helicopter will land in Cairo, and four uniformed team members will escort Gary, his face crudely altered to look "Middle Eastern," to the bar, where he will go inside and ask whazzup. As a satire on our inability to infiltrate other cultures, this will do, I suppose. It leads to an ill-advised adventure where in the name of fighting terrorism, Team America destroys the Pyramids and the Sphinx. But it turns out the real threat comes from North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Il (voice also by Parker), who plans to unleash "9/11 times 2,356." "Why that would mean ..." says Gary. "2,146,316," says Kim Jong Il. No. 1 on his list: Blowing up the Panama Canal. Opposing Team America is the Film Actors' Guild, or FAG, ho, ho, with puppets representing Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Matt Damon, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn (who has written an angry letter about the movie to Parker and Stone). No real point is made about the actors' activism; they exist in the movie essentially to be ridiculed for existing at all, I guess. Hans Blix, the U.N. chief weapons inspector, also turns up, and has a fruitless encounter with the North Korean dictator. Some of the scenes are set to music, including such tunes as "Pearl Harbor Sucked and I Miss You" and "America -- F***, Yeah!" If I were asked to extract a political position from the movie, I'd be baffled. It is neither for nor against the war on terrorism, just dedicated to ridiculing those who wage it and those who oppose it. The White House gets a free pass, since the movie seems to think Team America makes its own policies without political direction. I wasn't offended by the movie's content so much as by its nihilism. At a time when the world is in crisis and the country faces an important election, the response of Parker, Stone and company is to sneer at both sides -- indeed, at anyone who takes the current world situation seriously. They may be right that some of us are puppets, but they're wrong that all of us are fools, and dead wrong that it doesn't matter.

"Reinhold' is either their best or 2nd best album, I think. They hit their peak, and I think they called it quits after that because they knew that's as far as they could go. "Army" is the rockinest song they've ever done.

The "Together We're Heavy" CD release party was in NYC, but I forgot to go check it out. I hear it's a fun show to see live.

Here is a letter a former Wall Street Journal reporter wrote home. It has somehow found its way online. She has since been dismissed for telling too much. http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=72659

ALL PLANETS SHALL BE NAMED "THE 14TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, FRANKLIN PIERCE!"

I'm innocent, I swear.

The only good SK rant is this SK parody rant. The Smark Rant for Transformers: The Movie

This thread has great timing as I was listening to "Rockin' the Suburbs" on the way to work.

Now I believe in stem cell research, but I believe that some things just aren't meant to be fucked with, and the direction we could head in with implantable computer chips is one of them.

The Polyphonic Spree is from Dallas.

Edit.

Because at first it wasn't about "doing the right thing". The reasoning for this war is that WE were at risk from weapons he might have. The humanitarian issue was the fallback excuse when it was discovered there were no WMDs, popular with those who were going to defend this war despite everything. There are so many humanitarian wars we could have waged if this President was really concerned with this. It's almost transparent.

It's worth everyone reading.

Comparing this to the Revolutionary War is stupid and shortsighted. That was a war fought by people who wanted their independence and governed themselves afterwards, knowing that even with the troubles right now, they are better off. This is a war fought by another country saying, "You should have your independence" and proceeds to destroy everything about those people's lives to the point where the dictator's rule was looked upon as "the good ol' days". Not only that, but you're suggesting that things are getting better, when it seems to me that it just keeps getting catastrophically, exponentially worse.