For some reason, this embeddable version of this MAD clip does not include the punchline at the end, where Superman says "Uh... so how about 'Justice League'?"
August 2012 Archives
Smack in the middle of the super-serious MEGATRON RETURNS FOR THE MILLIONTH TIME story arc in Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, you can find this bizarre easter egg: a hidden arcade room called "Megafun's" with a useable claw machine.
Does your local parks org do this?
In conjunction with the county library system, they did this thing where they set up "hidden" observation posts in dozens of local parks. You picked up a free book with instructions and maps, then you were free to spend the summer finding as many as you could. At the end of the summer, you hand in your rubbing sheet for chances at some grand prize packages.
Each rubbing station focused on some kind of outer space term or object. The book (and connected website) gave you lots of cool science info, plus call-outs to the various natural settings you were exploring. Kind of geocache-y, I guess. Except with fewer plastic eggs full of hair barrettes.
Atom was at that one. Some kind of science gang, maybe?
Some of these posts were stashed inside longish park trails; others were just standing by a soccer field. Clark had a great time hiking down paths, climbing rocks and playing on playgrounds. Clark did ALL THIRTY of the rubbings, which, in addition to being a memorable way to spend Summer 2012, gives him the maximum number of chances at the prize raffle to be held later in the year. His grandparents took him to 27 of the 30, making them true champions of exploration.
A pretty cool way to encourage kids to get outdoors.
Here's my end-of-game recap for my Trophy run through MGS4.
This was on the lowest difficulty setting, because I wanted a nice, stress-free jaunt. Compare that with the recap from my first MGS4 adventure from 2008. (I achieved a Hyena emblem back then as well, but Eagles must outrank Hyenas.)
Looks like the difference in difficulty comes to about five hours American.
Almost two months after the project started, here's the finished patio. The plants are managing okay (it's all direct sunlight back here) and the grass has mostly filled in. Bottom of the frame is probably the worst grass cover we have in the newly sculpted yard, since that's the lowest point trough intended to shoot hated water off to the ditch instead of into my basement, and some the seed was flushed out and/or drowned. We put in some easy solar path lights. And we had enough stone leftover from our two ton purchase to fill in a plant area in the front yard.
See above. That is a very fancy Target gift card, of the more modern type that eschews the traditional plastic credit card model. It's actually a full on Hexbug, which would normally retail for anywhere from $6 to $12. This one is effectively free.
Hexbugs are kind of a cool little item for this post-Zhu Zhu Pet world. The line is on the wan (in fact, the newest releases are Battle Hexbugs With Armor, and whenever a toy line starts using the With Armor appendix, you know there's trouble in River City) but you can have a good time building little tracks and traps and bridges for the 'bugs to vibrate through. Seriously, it's a miniaturized Zhu Zhu setup with a tech/insectoid theme.
Anyway, this gift card means you get a Hexbug for free. Which I completely do not understand how this is possible. This is a Target-exclusive Hexbug sculpt (Hexbugs do not have this cartoony butterfly look) that you just get for nothing. I picked one up, put $10 on the gift card portion of the toy (the 'bug comes in a cute plastic chrysalis that acts as the gift card scanner), and then turned right around and used the $10 on our Target bill.
I don't get it.
Are these dopey DC Squinkies the first mass market toy to feature the characters in their New 52 costumes? That's clearly a New 52 Green Arrow and a Superman-without-red-underwear.
I'd like to see some kind of research done that answers the question: Is Atrocitus the "youngest" comic character with the most toys? He first appeared in December 2007 (not even five years old, in retail terms!) and he has already had multiple action figures across a half dozen toy lines.
But okay, of course you're going to get Green Lantern and Superman Squinkies... but did you expect this group? Kamandi, Zatanna and Swamp Thing are blind-boxed Squinkies, although I'm pretty sure you get the same three secret Squinkies in each pack.
Remember when a Flash figure with wind-up legs was considered a rare toy character? I love the future.
Just grabbed an update to the Cartoon Network iOS app. They've reworked the entire thing, starting with menus that are more akin to Apple's CoverFlow than what they had previously... which was "a bunch of 1998 horizontal ad banners." So that's nice.
The app is now more than just streaming video. There's a game section that has a handful of tappity tappity mini-games that (to my eyes anyway) look to be built specifically for this app. The games are nothing special. In fact, they're pretty dumb. One of them is an obvious steal of Fruit Ninja, which, which not illegal, is awfully sad. What's the other game where you have a dude running around planets and you have to jump from gravity to gravity? Well there's a Ben 10 version here. So whatever.
What's good about the games is that they're build to give you something to do while you watch the shows. Which is rather interesting. For some time we've known that people do other things (internet) while watching TV. Now you can do other things on your iPad while you're watching TV on your iPad. It's like we're falling into infinity here.
Now this is built for kids, so it probably makes extra double sense that a kid can tap through a Fruit Ninja clone while "Adventure Time" is playing upstairs. See above screenshot for the iPad layout. There's a cute trick in the app... tilt the iPad to the left and the video goes full screen. Tilt to the right horizontal and the game goes full. You have to keep the device on the vertical center to get both panes at once.
But that's not all. Playing the games earns you energy. Watching episodes earns you DNA (noun keywords like "RABBITS" and "BOWLING" and "ROCKS.") Buy combining DNA icons and using energy, you can unlock virtual trading cards and by now you've probably guessed how I've spent the evening.
However, it seems the app still can't handle beaming the video stream over AirPlay to the Apple TV. Just as it has over the last major releases, your video will stream beautifully for about seven minutes and then go blank. By this point, I don't know if there is a genuine problem with how Cartoon Network is using AirPlay, or if this is just some kind of dick move on Cartoon Network's part to keep me from enjoying fullscreen HD animation without watching commercial cable.
Just finished an exceptional Magic 2013 Planechase match against the first tier of CPU players... Talrand's pissy blue flying dragon deck, Garruk's obnoxious big green creature deck, and Ajani's shitastic cheap-as-fuck keep-gaining-goddamn-life white ass deck. I was playing my slightly-tuned red Goblin Gangland deck (I keep adjusting it back down to 60 cards after the game inserts new "unlocked" cards). SPOILER: I won. But how it played out was super cool.
First up, you have to realize that playing against three CPU opponents in Magic 2013 basically means all three are playing against you. In a game that is *supposed* to be a four player free-for-all. Talrand and Garruk let Ajani build his life up like idiots while they focused on whittling down my forces. Clowns.
This match had a funny start because the first planar card was that mountain whatever that ends up doing X damage to all creatures, with X going up every turn. I managed to be the only one to roll protection against it, so then the other guys stopped rolling entirely so as not to trigger the damage effect. After several turns, I rolled to trigger it, killing every creature on the board but mine. So that was a nice advantage for while.
However, this goblin deck has almost no flying defense, so Talrand was picking me off with some huge sphinx and some drakes. Then I managed to play Krenko, Mob Boss and start getting aggressive. Krenko is probably the best Magic card ever made, because he creates 1/1 goblin tokens for nothing. (Tap: summon X 1/1 goblins where X equals the number of creatures you have in play.) Both Ajani and Garruk had no flyers, so I knew that I could keep blocking them with stupid 1/1 chumps, as long as nobody showed up with trample damage. I had to take out Talrand. On the turn before the above screenshot, I cycled a Gempalm Incinerator to kill the sphinx, and used Shock to take down a drake. Then he put out some dumb flying wall, and I killed his second drake with the Ember Hauler.
Somewhere in there, Talrand knocked me down to 1 life, mainly because the dumb game did not let me give my Goblin Balloon Brigade flying AND choose him as a blocker. The big downfall to Magic 2013 is that there's no Undo, and also no friendly "oh jeez, buddy, I forgot to do this, so can we back up a sec?" The upside is, there's no friendly "oh jeez, buddy, I forgot to do this, so can we back up a sec?" from your opponents either.
Anyway, Talrand had one guy - the wall - and 9 life. I had about 13 1/1 goblins and some assorted marginally better goblins. I sent 10 of them at Talrand and another 6 at Garruk. Talrand was finished... and I played Relentless Assault to give myself another attack phase... and I had enough dudes to account for Garruk's three blocking creatures and put him out as well. Two opponents killed in one turn! I am a god.
Which left me at 1 life and Ajani at 55. Obviously I'm a precarious spot there, since any flyer or cheap direct damage would end me. He attacked me with his ground troops and I blocked with some of my joyously disposable goblins. I did 20-some damage to him, and he healed back 10 of it, because his deck is a piece of shit. We went through another turn where he tried to send ground guys at me and I just let blockers do their thing. Luckily he could not pull any flyers over his last few turns, although I was keeping my Balloon Brigade available should he field one.
Finally, I had about 50 1/1 goblins on the table. Then I pulled Goblin Bushwhacker, which gives all creatures +1/+0 for the turn. So a massive horde of 2/1 goblins took down mighty Ajani, Chief Pride-Lord of the Asscrap Healing Crapcraps.
So that was fun. I need to get some of these 2013 cards in real life. Particularly Krenko, Mob Boss.
Related: earlier tonight, Clark and I were playing that Mini Master variant where your deck is one blind booster plus some mana cards. And I just happened to get the Ajani planeswalker card in my booster. Clark likes to talk smack, so when I announced I was playing the card "Ajani, Caller of the Pride," he snorted and said "Heh, 'Johnny.'"
