Ho Ho Etc

Blimey, I am being lax in updating this site. It's like I'm incredibly busy with various exciting projects like my second novel for example. Anyway, it's the Christmas season and that means next week will be my traditional week off for the holidays, and there won't be an XP or a ZP, except for a clip show filler episode I think Russ and the lads are putting together. Hope you're all having a lovely time resenting each other.

Anyway, here's all the stuff I haven't linked to yet. XPs: little touches in games and the fun of extravagant gore. ZPs: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Epic Mickey and Splatterhouse.

Splatterhouse I want to dwell on for a second, because I want it on record that I don't usually play 'challenge rooms' in games when I'm done with the main story. But in this case, I did. I played the Splatterhouse challenge rooms. Why? Because it unlocked extra pictures of titties. Divided into four scraps and bestowed throughout the course of the battle, and the last scrap would almost always be the one with the actual titties on, the coy sons of bitches. Kudos to Splatterhouse for figuring out my personal carrot and stick.

Now, I know full well that it's easy to find pictures of tits, in fact, on the internet it's hard to get through a day without seeing a least one lovely pair of bouncing judders. But as any sixteen-year-old sweatily bringing a Playboy up to the counter of a newsagent's expecting everyone in the room to suddenly point and start screaming like the guy from Invasion of the Body Snatchers will tell you, titties become considerably more satisfying when you have to work for them.

Throw me a frickin' phone

Last week there was an XP on why human beings like zombies so much. Here's a quote.

"Few if any of these petty hatreds are rational. They exist because humans can't function without an enemy, something to hate, and indeed to blame for the injustices we believe we suffer. Zombies are a permanent foe. To our "us" they are eternally "them." No redeeming qualities, no moral ambiguity. I guarantee you, in a zombie apocalypse scenario, relationships within the human strongholds will be considerably more courteous than they are now. We'll reserve our hate for those rotting punks outside. They want to eat us for no good reason. What dicks."

This week's XP was a selection of short Iphone (not iPhone, learn how to capitalise properly) game reviews. Here's a quote.

"The Iphone's virtually unique one-touchscreen no-buttons nature also means that games are basically forced to innovate in their controls and design. A lot of publishers have simply tried to port old 2D games like Sonic the Hedgehog or the first Prince of Persia, but they don't translate well to the format. Innovation is what gets rewarded, because if the download charts are anything to go by, there's absolutely no style of gameplay that's guaranteed to sell well. The top 25 contains shooters, physics puzzlers, platformers and whatever the hell you'd classify that Where's Wally thing as."

This was intended to follow on from last week's Zero Punctuation, which was also about Iphone games.

"I don't have a quote for this one because ZP is a video series, you dolts. Click on these words to watch the video."

I know some of you have been a little disappointed by this coverage, and now you know how I feel when faced with most of the half-arsed triple-A releases in the games industry these days. Sue me, I wanted to fill some time while WoW: Cataclysm is making every other publisher too scared to release anything that could possibly compete with it. And I genuinely think Iphone games and other small-scale indie markets are where a lot of the really interesting, cutting-edge innovation stuff is going on, while the massively advanced graphics engines of mainstream gaming produce little but big piles of indigestible overdesigned slop.

Anyway, in other news, those of you still dubious about my debut novel Mogworld's quality may wish to know that the entire first part of the book is being serialised on ABC.net.au's technology section even as we speak. And if you find yourself enjoying that, you should be aware that most critics agree the rest of the book is even better. Have I mentioned that it would make a perfect Christmas gift?

Splatter up

I don't know what it is about Yug but he's fast becoming obsessed with photoshopping me onto game characters whenever our quiz prizes are themed around a specific game. Look:

Perhaps this is his way of trying to get my attention, the poor shy boy. Anyway, kick off Tuesday at 6:30. Come along.

Somehow relevant headline

ZPs: Force Unleashed 2 and Call of Duty: Blagops. XPs: Fallout: New Vegas and Force Unleashed 2. I don't know what it is about the number 2 that it seems like the perfect number of weeks to update on. It always seems to be the moment when my apathy runs out.

Anyway, my desk calendar currently says 'do the laundry'. As well as 'Thursday, November 25th', and that means next Tuesday (the 30th) is trivia quiz night at the Mana Bar again, do come along for a piss-up and a brain-up. I do compile all these quizzes myself in my spare time, not that anyone ever thanks me for it.

In other news, the short story I wrote for the Machine of Death anthology, the tantalisingly titled Exhaustion From Having Sex With A Minor (all the stories are named after a death prediction that factors heavily in the story, you see), has now been released in audio book form as a podcast, read by some dildo called Yahtzee Croshaw. Oh wait, that's me. How embarrassing that I just called them a dildo, because that means I'm calling myself a dildo. Christ, I can't do anything right today. Click here to check it out if you're some kind of scrub who can't even summon the effort to download the PDF version, let alone buy a copy.

I'm such a hack

ZPs: Enslaved and Fallout New Vegas. XPs: Shaky cam and how Enslaved should have been. What, you want fancy graphics and quotes with those? I'm a busy man. Also, trivia night at the Mana Bar returns to its fortnightly schedule with the next one being next Tuesday on the 16th, another little window of colour and amusement in your otherwise grey, depressing lives.

I've been getting reports that Firefox has been reporting my original site (www.fullyramblomatic.com) as an attack site. Indeed, the redirect page appeared to have been hacked and filled with spam links. I've now removed it and put the original back in, and replaced the main index of the old site archive just in case, so hopefully that solves the issue and you can jolly well tell Firefox to stop being such a fussy nanny browser.

And finally, a thought for the day: a 'relationship' occurs when two people run out of things to say to each other, so they shut each other up by putting their genitals in each other's mouths. A break up comes about when they run out of things to do with those, too.

Come one, come all

It's back on Tuesday, November 2nd! Which is tomorrow, if you're on the right side of the international date line!

I'd Be Obliged To A Sniper Right Now

Yeah, yeah, neglecting updates, boo hoo. Here are some links to all the ZPs and XPs I haven't mentioned yet.

Machine of Death is now available! It got all the way to the top of the Amazon book charts by simple expedient of getting everyone to buy it on the same day. Why didn't I think of that? Anyway, it's too late to contribute to the sordid Amazon chart manipulation but you should still pick up a copy 'cos it's dead good. And my story's in it.

Speaking of my stories, Mogworld has now officially sold out of its first printing. This is good news for me. Probably less if you're still waiting for a copy, but the second printing should be underway even as I type this. I have spoken to the Dark Horse bods about a digital version and an audiobook, but while lacking any dates I can definitely say they're in the works.

And after an unfortunate bout of illness, and Yug rather obstinately wanting to stay on some mysterious regular schedule known to him alone, Yahtzee's Trivia Night is returning to the Mana Bar next Tuesday (November 2nd) after a solid month of absence. Can't say it hasn't been nice having my weekends free, not having to make a quiz and all, but it's always nice to shout people down from a position of authority, so do show up to join the fun. As always team registration is at 6:30 with kick-off at 7. But you should definitely try to be there as soon after opening time (5pm) as possible, because my musky animal magnetism always seems to fill the place up.

Finally, I asked this on Twitter but no-one seemed to know what I was talking about, so I'm posting it here because it's driving me mad. There's this thing that really good improvisational comedians and actors can do where they appear to be speaking in a specific foreign language but are in fact making up complete gibberish on the spot. The Swedish Chef arguably does it with Swedish. John Cleese does it with German while pretending to be a ranting Hitler in the 'North Minehead by-election' sketch from Monty Python. Danny Kaye's character in The Court Jester does it several times with several languages in a fairly early scene to show off his repertoire. There was a game in Whose Line Is It Anyway called Foreign Film Dub where the cast would speak gibberish that sounded like a particular audience-suggested language. Hopefully this creates a clear image of what I'm talking about that the Twitter character limit prevented.

The thing is, I know there's a special term for this ability but I can't for the life of me remember what it is. It's not pidgin - that's a blend of two languages. It's not glossolalia or xenoglossy, that's just plain old regular gibberish that isn't intended to resemble a particular foreign language. If you know what the term (it might be a two-word term) for this is, please post it in the comments before I eat my own face.