The mothball fleet in Suisun Bay, California is a collection of a couple hundred essentially abandoned ships (at one point, the site had over 2200) once awaiting reactivation, and now awaiting the shipbreaker (with at least one exception, asa the USS Iowa is there, too, as it waits its turn to be a museum).
Recently, some intrepid photographers decided to sneak in, explore, and take a few pictures while avoiding patrols. Enjoy.
Everyone appears to think this video of a baby watching a lion in a zoo is adorable, but I’m pretty sure that lion would like it a lot better if he could just eat the little buggar.
The biggest joke in gaming has been, for 15 years, the ongoing delays surrounding Duke Nukem Forever. Astonishingly, it dropped this month, finally.
Not so astonishingly: it’s apparently awful, awful, awful. The two reviews I’ve read are clinics in brutal-but-deserved takedowns.
From Ars Technica:
In another scene, a woman sobs and asks for her father. You see, the women in the alien craft are being forcibly impregnated by the aliens, and during your journey, you hear a mixture of screams and sexual noises. After I accidentally blew up a few of these female victims in a firefight, Duke made a joke about abortion.
This is what passes for humor in the game. It’s not racy, it’s not funny, and it makes you feel dirty. Every time I put the controller down, I felt the need to rub my hands on my jeans as if the game were making me physically dirty. It’s like watching your uncle tell racist jokes at Thanksgiving and praying someone has the guts to tell him to cut it out, but this time it’s interactive — and you’re the uncle.
[…]
Multiple developers have worked on this game for over a decade, so I don’t know who to blame for the unplayable, glitchy, ugly, offensive mess it has become. No humor can make up for the game’s rampant hatred of women, and the terrible writing and one-liners can’t even be compensated for by good gameplay. The game’s jokes about other titles are laughable when you see how putrid Duke is upon release.
Sure, it may still sell millions of copies due to the name alone, but it will disappoint buyers and make anyone with half a brain feel uncomfortable. I have no clue how a game so all-encompassingly ugly can suffer from so many framerate issues, but Duke finds a way. From a business and gaming history perspective, the fact that the title exists at all is fascinating; for everyone else asked to spend $60 on it, it’s merely sad.
I’m a fan of humor that’s willing to push the boundaries, but nothing is being sent up, mocked, or lampooned here. There’s just no reason for what you see and hear. This is an ugly game that exists to celebrate ugliness. The people involved should be ashamed.
But the even better slam comes at the end of this review in the Guardian:
If this was 15 years in the making, it makes you wonder what they did for the other 14 years and 10 months.
Not quite “I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul,” but it’s about as close as we’ll get in the real world.
If you are as annoyed at that little inbred Joffrey punk as we are after Sunday’s episode of Game of Thrones, then this video will make your night. It’s ten minutes long, and includes Zeppelin as the backing track.
From our far-flung correspondents; there is so much to love about this:
HOQUIAM, Wash.(AP) — Police say a man was carrying a dead weasel when he burst into a Hoquiam apartment and assaulted a man.
The victim asked, “Why are you carrying a weasel?” Police said the attacker said, “It’s not a weasel, it’s a martin,” then punched him in the nose and fled.
The attacker was apparently looking for his girlfriend and had gone to her former boyfriend’s apartment Monday night where the victim was a guest.
KXRO reports he left carcass behind.
Police later found the suspect arguing with his girlfriend at another location and arrested the 33-year-old Hoquiam man after a fight.
He said he had found the martin dead near Hoquiam, but police don’t know why he carried it with him.
A martin is a member of the weasel family.
Seen online:
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. — John Rogers
Here’s an interview with Miles Davis by Alex Haley, from the September 1962 issue of Playboy. Somewhat long, but worth your time.
(The URL is playboy.co.uk, so potentially NSFW.)
David Simon was pleased to hear that Attorney General Eric Holder was a fan of The Wire, and that he wished for another season.
So he’s made an offer:
“The attorney general’s kind remarks are noted and appreciated,” Simon said in an email to the Times of London. “I’ve spoken to Ed Burns, and we are prepared to go to work on season six of ‘The Wire’ if the Department of Justice is equally ready to reconsider and address its continuing prosecution of our misguided, destructive and dehumanizing drug prohibition.”
Your move, Eric.
The Noun Project has a variety of infographics, typically with very liberal copyright terms, for all your iconographic needs.
You may have heard mention of a beer ad so wonderful that people online have been openly declaring it the finest example of the genre ever.
That is because it is:
Enjoy this sequence from Jimmy Fallon’s show, with guest Marcus Samulsson from Harlem’s Red Rooster restaurant. See, there’s this hot sauce…
(After perusing their menu, Heathen HQ is now plotting a NYC getaway.)
Check out their doodle today. It’s playable. See this Reddit thread for some key sequences to try.
(Oh, and happy birthday to the late, great Les Paul.)
Perhaps the next step in the Astros devolution to little league could be accelerated if they managed to trade for this guy.
It’s pretty easy to see why Palin would consider running for President, or at least consider looking like she might: her leap from backwater civil servant to millionaire was accomplished exclusively through her sudden national exposure via the McCain campaign. More of the same will doubtless line her pockets well even if she bows out early.
What’s less clear to me is why Rick Santorum thinks he’s got a shot at all. His most recent electoral experience was getting voted out of his Senate seat, so he’s got the taint of LOSER on him already. He’s a strident right-winger unlikely to garner much centrist support. I suppose he could be banking on the exposure helping him in a future race, but he’s not telegenic enough to cash in like Palin. The alternative is that he’s self-deluded enough to think he could challenge even Palin or Romney or Pawlenty for the nomination, and that he has a chance vs. an incumbent Obama in the general.
Who really thinks that?
The second guy to play Gunsmoke‘s Matt Dillon — and the first on TV — was James Arness, also of note for his role in the original Thing, and for being sadly-also-dead Peter Graves‘ brother.
Arness died today, at 88.
(What I didn’t know: the first guy to play Dillon, who worked only on the radio version, was William Conrad, who later appeared in the 70s cop drama Cannon as well as the TV version of Nero Wolfe and as the latter character in Jake and the Fat Man.)
This one is especially for Edgar, but most of the rest of you will be amused by it, too.
Cosmo’s covers are the stuff of self-parody already, so imagine my surprise at finding an actual funny parody cover.
Oliver Hencsey’s video for the Foo Fighters’ new single Walk is a direct homage to the 1993 Michael Douglas film Falling Down. Enjoy.
Nerve notes what Heathen have long noticed: He’s an overrated and very lucky hack.
A Looftlighter, which shoots a plume of 1,000 degree air out for quicker barbecue ignition.
But imagine the possibilities…
How about you stop not surprising us?
Three years ago today, Elias Otha Bates shuffled off this mortal coil at the age of 79. You knew him as Bo Diddley, and he helped invent rock and roll.
Here.
You’re welcome.
Of course, the main reasons we never played George Plimpton’s Video Falconry are (a) it was on Colecovision, and we had Atari; and (b) it didn’t exist. But great video, eh?
Check out the Obama campaign’s new t-shirt.
Some men, it appears, have squirrels for hands.
…but it’s important to remember that, back when Sean Young took these candid Polaroids on the Blade Runner set, she was also crazy HOT.
The ones with her and Rutger Hauer and Harrison Ford are perhaps the coolest, along with the weirdly incongruous ones of her with her Rachael hairdo, but 1980s street clothes.
Via MeFi, we find this charming footage of a budgie playing with a tennis ball.
Perhaps we’d have been more concerned about the other Saturday had we realized this was what they meant.
It appears there now exists Tabasco Family Reserve. I believe most of you know Heathen HQ’s address, no? Get to it.
In England, there’s an abandoned ballroom under a lake built in the late 1900s.
Somewhere, there’s a steampunk kid having a conniption at the very thought of it. Check out the pics, as it’s just as awesome as you — and he — might imagine.
He, apparently, plans to stay in bed all day.
And the answer is, unequivocally, no NONE. NONE MORE HEAVY:
From this MeFi post with several other worthwhile links.
Observations gleaned from various comment threads on this:
First, amazingly, “War Pigs” is only eleven years after Buddy Holly.
Second, N.B. what a tiny drum kit Bill Ward plays compared to modern metal drummers. It does not seem to slow him down.
Finally, how the hell did Mrs Heathen and I not know this was happening at the 9:30 club that night?
Withnail and Star Wars. Do not miss the followup.
It’s been a while since we linked to ol’ Cockeyed.com, but Cockerham has an interesting one up right now about just how big a million dollars in cash is. Enjoy.
It’s nice to see that some theater owners do understand how to compete with better home theater: give the customer a solid experience, including not just a fantastically curated film selection, but also great food, solid fundamentals, and vigilant protection of the whole experience.
It’s even cooler that the guy TechDirt is using as an example is someone we Heathen actually know, at least tangentially. All Hail Alamo and Tim League!
Well, this is clearly no surprise: the DHS does no cost/benefit analysis. The sheer existence of the bullshit porno scanners is proof of this, but seeing it quantified makes me even more annoyed. How many of our tax dollars will they blow without considering efficacy, just because of fear and bluster?
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is one of my favorite comics. Here’s two for sample purposes:
and
Twenty Things You May Not Know About The Wire. Hey, I learned a few things.
Via Rob, we get Awesome People Hanging Out Together.
Don’t believe me? Well, try this one. And then there’s this one.
The Onion, of course:
High School Fuckup Now In Charge Of Checking Airport Luggage For Explosives
BIRMINGHAM, AL–Former D-plus student and complete fuckup Malcolm Tibbets, 28, was recently entrusted by the Transportation Security Administration with the task of searching all bags for explosive devices or other weapons that could kill passengers or cause irreparable damage at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport. “What I do is real important,” said the semiliterate, five-year Birmingham Central student, shaking a peanut brittle package next to his ear several times before replacing it in a passenger’s bag. “Got to make sure no bombs get on the planes.” According to airport sources, Tibbets, who once tried to punch his 11th-grade English teacher, was given the bag-searching job in December after TSA personnel deemed him the sharpest man on the metal detector team.
In the current comic‘s alt text, the author insists that if you pick any random article in Wikipedia, and then choose the first link in the article text not in parenthesis or italicized, and repeat, you will eventually find yourself at the entry for “Philosophy.”
So I tried. I started at Horse fly -> Diptera (which redirect to Fly)-> Order (Biology) -> Scientific Classification -> biologists -> scientist -> Systematic -> Elements (mathematics) -> Mathematics -> Quantity -> Property (philosophy) –> Modern philosophy –> Philosophy.
If you think Occam’s Razor is about picking an answer, well, you’re doing it wrong.
I’m researching an IE problem, but I’m using Chrome on my Mac to do it. What do I see in MSFT’s support articles? This gem of a warning:
System Tip
This article applies to a different operating system than the one you are using. Article content that may not be relevant to you is disabled.
Clearly, nobody in Redmond every researched a client problem on a different brand of computer than the client used. Who makes choices like this? Seriously?
Stay the hell out of the Houston waterways.
Note: This is probably true of ANY urban waterway.
I’ve written frequently here about the need for additional prosecutorial oversight, and about the distorting effects of their immunity; this case may take the cake, though I’m sure some overstepping jackass will exceed the venality of Philadelphia’s Seth Williams.
The story is this:
Philadelphia is a city with legally permitted open carry. Mark Fiorino had a bit of a run in with the Philly cops, who were completely ignorant of the law and threatened to shoot him for having a legal gun on his hip. That’s ridiculous enough.
It turns out Mr Fiorino has had run-ins with overzealous police before, though, so he recorded this run in, and said recording makes it abundantly clear what ignorant thug’s Philly had representing it as policemen that night.
All of this is bad, to be sure; as Balko points out in the first link, cops are the first to note that ignorance of laws is no excuse for breaking them — but that same ignorance appears to be permissible for the cops themselves. We’re used to this, though, sad state of affairs though it may be.
But it gets worse:
Philly DA R. Seth Williams knows Fiorino broke no laws, but has still made the decision to have him arrested, and to charge him with crimes he knows are trumped up.
So what are we to then make of Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams’ decision to arrest and charge Fiorino after Fiorino posted the recordings on the Internet?
Here’s what I make of it: It’s criminal. Fiorino embarrassed Philadelphia cops, and Williams is punishing him for it. Williams and the police spokesman are claiming Fiorino deliberately provoked the cops. No, he didn’t. He didn’t wave the gun at anyone. He didn’t invite police scrutiny. The cops confronted him upon seeing a weapon he was legally carrying in a perfectly legal manner. And they were wrong. Make no mistake. This is blatant intimidation.
But while their behavior in this story was repugnant, at least the cops had the plausible explanation of ignorance for the initial confrontation, then fear for their safety when an armed man they incorrectly thought was violating the law pushed back (though neither is an excuse, and neither should exclude them from discipline). What Williams has done since is much worse. It is premeditated. Much more than the cops, Williams should know the law. Moreover, even if he didn’t know the law at the time, he has since had plenty of time to research it. By now, Williams does know the law. (If he doesn’t, he is incompetent.) And he knows that even if Fiorino did deliberately provoke the cops to test their knowledge of Philadelphia’s gun laws, that also is not a crime.
Yet he’s charging Fiorino anyway, with “reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct”–the vague sorts of charges cops and prosecutors often fall back on when they can’t show any actual crime.
More:
Note that nothing Fiorino did was on its own illegal. Willliams is attempting a striking, blatantly dishonest bit of legal chicanery. His theory goes like this: If you undertake a series of actions that are perfectly legal and well within your rights, but that cause government agents to react in irrational ways that jeopardize public safety, you are guilty of endangering the public.
This can’t stand. It’s a blatant abuse of office. Williams is using the state’s awesome power to arrest and incarcerate to intimidate a man who exposed and embarrassed law enforcement officials who, because of their own ignorance, nearly killed him. Exposing that sort of government incompetence cannot be illegal. And it isn’t illegal.
The message Williams is sending is this: Yes, you might technically have the right to carry a gun in Philadelphia. But if you exercise that right, you should be prepared for the possibility that police officers will illegally stop you, detain you, threaten to kill you, and arrest you. And I’m not going to do a damn thing about it.
Whatever you do, don’t download Dungeon Raid for your iPhone or iPod Touch.