Month: September 2012

It was, ahem, bound to happen.

The existence of the Fifty Shades magazine should make you feel disappointed for bored housewives, literature and the human race, but you shouldn’t be surprised. There was an opportunity, and someone was enterprising enough to cash in on it. In this case, “someone” was Topix Media Lab, a highfalutin’ name for a lowfalutin’ business: they specialize in single-topic magazines that focus on the hot topic of the moment. I haven’t read the magazine, but Lois Alter Mark did, and she’s sharing 25 things she learned from it.

(I’ll admit that I plan to name my next band “Sexy Scavenger Hunt”.)

Comic by Jen Sorensen.
Click to read the accompanying article.

Comic by Kevin Siers.

Comic by Steve Greenberg.

Comic by Pat Bagley.

Graph by Jay Livingston.
Click the graph to see the accompanying article.

A phalanx of nine cops should be able to take on a single guy — until that guy is the Filipino Jedi.

(Pulis is Tagalog for “police”.)

Michael O’Hare, probably best known amongst geeks including Yours Truly as “Commander Jeffrey Sinclair” and later “Valen” from the 1990s sci-fi TV series Babylon 5, passed away yesterday. In addition to being on the underappreciated Babylon 5, he had other notable roles in the original stage version of Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men and one of the best obscure film references in The Simpsons: C.H.U.D..

He’s now, as they said on the show, “out beyond the rim.” Requiescat in pace.

In his memory, a classic “Sinclair” moment from Babylon 5. Gotta love that very 1990s look the reporter’s sporting:

If you’ve ever gone clubbing on King Street West, you already know this.

The Japanese sure can make some oddball videogames. Pictured above is a scene from one such game, Tokyo Jungle, a survival game in which some catastrophe has killed all the people on Earth, leaving the animals to run wild all over. The game is set in Tokyo, and you play the part of various animals trying to survive in the (now literal) urban jungle.

Anyhow, if you’re going out to Nuit Blanche tonight in the hopes of meeting someone (I gained a fan club at one Nuit Blanche for all the good it did me — I was married at the time), keep the lesson from the screen above in mind.

This is actually a good metaphor for the corporate politics at Microsoft.

My favourite description of  Tokyo Jungle comes from this article in Eurogamer: “It’s basically Grand Theft Auto with lions.”

This one’s a great metaphor for what it’s like to work at RIM right now.

In that article, the reviewer also called it “a celebration of classic games, with their ridiculous plots, repetitive tasks, excessive violence and all. It pulls off the impressive and nigh-on impossible trick of being an original homage. Also it lets you set a giraffe on a bear.”

If I had a PlayStation 3, I’d be getting in on some of that hot giraffe-on-bear action.

And now, for no other reason than this is a great photo, a young Ms. Betty White.

She presents no “evidence” or “data”, but this Republican strategist wants you to know that if you just think about it, scientists are scamming the American public for their “financual” gain. Asif Mandvi from The Daily Show reports in this “it’s funny because it’s true” piece.

Thanks to Daniel Shapiro for pointing me to this!