Thursday, February 11, 2010

Thursday Jambalaya

Ingredients: Eli 8.6, Dick Vitale, the rectus abdominis, Mike Dornbrook, Uniquekeys, Arc, The Dickferno Part 2: Satan's Revenge, an excellent interview, and the return of Lenny Dykstra.

Since Eli 8.6 is now a huge sports fan, I get to see a few things through his eyes instead of mine.
--"Dad, look! That guy is holding up a "D" sign and a fence sign. It's Defense! That's genius!"
--The PRO Bowl? All the best football players in one game? We have GOT to watch that."
--upon seeing Dick Vitale for the first time: "That guy is really creepy."

Yes. Yes, he is.
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I found out this week that I have a strain in my rectus abdominis muscle, and no, that's not my ass--it's my stomach. It's a long muscle that goes all the way from above your groin to below your pectorals, and I'm 100% sure it's from unicycling.

It hurts.

I'm still riding, of course, but I'm wearing one of those ridiculous ab-reducer waist dealies to compress the muscle and keep it warm. Every time I think I've hit the top of the ridiculous meter, I take it up a notch.
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Jonathan Arnold let me know that the fellow who created the New Zork Times--Mike Dornbrook--was hired out of MIT by Infocom for their marketing department, and later wound up at Harmonix.
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Scott Zimmerman let me know that Ubisoft changed their FAQ last week. "Uniquekeys" has now become "unique keys," and that was a very odd mistake to make at first (if it actually was a mistake).
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Julian Dasgupta sent me a link to an article about Natal titled Analysts see Project Natal adding billions to Microsoft's revenue. LOL--okay. Even better, here's a quote:
Internally, Microsoft views Natal’s introduction as significantly extending the lifecycle of Xbox 360 to 10 years (until 2015), which is double the average for consoles," they write. "If this is the case this could have significantly positive ramifications for the longer-term margins of [Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices] group.

Yes, and if my grandmother had balls, she'd be my grandfather. Again, let me stress that just because the tech is more advanced, that doesn't mean consumers are going to like it more--it's not the same thing. And if the 360 is around until 2015, I will personally die of boredom.
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Rob sent me a great e-mail yesterday:
Just wondering if you are aware of the fact that the end boss of Dante's Inferno, Satan himself, has been faithfully rendered down to his dickferno....that's right, the devs saw fit to render Stan's dick and balls in 3D AND have applied ragdoll physics to it.

There is nothing more awkward than having your wife walk in and seeing giant close up renderings (due to the camera swinging around wildly) of Satan's wedding tackle jiggling about on the screen and have her ask "WTF are you doing?"

Wedding tackle--a highly underused phrase.
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I saw an excellent interview over at GameShark: Behind the Games: Might And Magic: Clash of Heroes. I think I just created a colon explosion. This is the kind of interview that stands out from the saturation of previews and reviews that seem to dominate most websites.
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Finally, our old friend Lenny Dykstra is back. Incredibly, he has a new investment service and says he hasn't made a losing trade in over two years, even though he filed for bankruptcy less than a year ago with assets of less than fifty thousand dollars. Um, okay.

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