Who knew that Stormtroopers could get downnnn?

Yet another pretty awesome Danny Choo video...The bit on the train is really good....I really need to get my ass back to Mars for another visit.

Lookin' Good, Chuck D

Two interesting images I’ve come across as of late.

Shepard Fairey, of OBEY fame, doing a portrait of Chuck D. While I’m not down with all his work, I’m always a fan of anyone who loves They Live.


From the website of UK street Artist BANKSY

The end of Yellow Ribbon Magnets?

From the front page of last Saturday's Financial Times

Yellow ribbons dwindle with war support
By Andrew Ward in Atlanta
Published: March 2 2007
For three years after the invasion of Iraq, it was difficult to drive more than a few miles through middle America without seeing a car displaying a magnetic yellow ribbon. The magnets, bearing the slogan “Support Our Troops”, became a symbol of patriotism for millions of US motorists. But as support for the war fades, demand for yellow ribbons has collapsed.

Magnet America, the largest manufacturer of the product, has seen sales fall from a peak of 1.2m in August 2004 to about 4,000 a month and now has an unsold stockpile of about 1m magnets. “We have enough supplies to meet demand for years to come,” said Micah Pattisall, director of operations. “Every product has a lifespan and this one has run its course.”

At its peak, the North Carolina-based company employed 180 people to handle sales, marketing and distribution. Today, it employs 11 people. Mr Pattisall said declining support for the war was not the only reason for the slump. A flood of cheap imports from China also hurt the company, which has refused to shift production overseas even though it costs three times as much to manufacture in the US.

Only about half a dozen companies are still supplying the magnets compared with up to 200 at the height of the fad, according to Mr Pattisall. When the company was founded in April 2003, during the initial invasion of Iraq, nearly all its revenues came from yellow ribbons. Today, patriotic products account for only 6 per cent of sales. The yellow ribbon has been overtaken as the company’s best-selling product by a wristband promoting chastity before marriage with the slogan “True Love Waits”. “We are growing again and looking to hire additional staff,” Mr Pattisall said.

Yellow ribbons were first displayed widely in support of kidnapped US diplomats during the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979. Some critics have condemned the magnets as a cheap and superficial way to honour the armed forces and highlighted the irony of placing them on gas-guzzling vehicles that deepen the US’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Resentful that the yellow ribbon has become associated with support for the president, George W. Bush, opponents of the war have introduced their own car magnets emblazoned with anti-war statements.

On Ebay, the internet auction site, on Thursday, a black and white ribbon bearing the slogan “Out of Iraq, Bring ’Em Back” was priced at $5. Traditional yellow ribbon magnets, in contrast, could be bought for one cent

Captain America-Dead

While I don't follow comic books like I did 20 years ago, I was surprised about the amount of ink/TV time spent on the death of Captain America and what this meant for US society. Even the New York Times weighed in with coverage in the A section. Granted it didn't get as much coverage as Britney shaving her head....but, after all, there's a war on and the media must focus on the truely important stories of the day. But as is often the case, the Onion was spot on with its coverage.

Smokin' Ouch!

While I had seen a view ads for the recently released Smokin’ Aces and had chalked this up to one of those films that I will put in my Netflix Q only to be continuously pushed down my list as other more worthy films come out (the film Domino fits this bill as well), this review in the WSJ struck me as one of the most sedately savage reviews I’ve read recently

When someone says, in "Smokin' Aces," that a Las Vegas mob boss wants a snitch's heart, it is not a figure of speech. That heart, beating in the chest of a sleazy magician named Buddy "Aces" Israel, figures heavily in an otherwise heartless and ultimately brainless action thriller. But calling Joe Carnahan's movie heartless implies that this auteur of affectless anarchy might have meant to invest it with detectable human feelings, and failed. Better to call it heart-free, and acknowledge the wisdom of Mr. Carnahan's self-promoting, semiliterate Web site, in which he says: "Don't let those douchebag critics scare you off. I promise, on the souls of my ancestors, you will come out of that movie with at least one scene, that you'll never forget."

Possibly more than one. The splatter of mutual snuffery in an elevator. The grisly ventriloquism of a killer manipulating his dead victim's face. A monstrous child gone off his Ritalin. The souls of the filmmaker's ancestors may be safer than our own, for "Smokin' Aces" is a vision, nightmarish but far from unthinkable, of a movie genre in which drama and character -- fuhgetabout character development -- have been banished by extravagant freakery, cheerful degeneracy, mind-numbing logorrhea, lip-jerk profanity and serial spasms of murderous violence, all framed in the sort of striking, hollow images pioneered by fashion photography and music videos.

Mr. Carnahan came to prominence four years ago with a darkly efficient little cop thriller called "Narc." To give him his due on "Smokin' Aces" (the first word of the title is a gerund), he applies lavish amounts of manic energy and perverse humor to an outwardly simple premise -- all sorts of unpleasant people want to kill Buddy Israel before the FBI whisks him away to protective custody. The plot comes equipped with some intricate twists, but they aren't really dramatized. Rather, they're discussed and simultaneously illustrated, in fragmentary music-video style -- first to let us know what we're going to see, and, at the finish, to explain what we've seen.

Headcrab update

In regards to my last post (which was quite a while ago…Project Arcturus was quite time consuming this holiday season), it looks like I spoke too soon. Shortly after my post, Valve did release their own headcrab hat…While not quite as impressive as their original mini headcrab, this mono-color hat is pretty awesome….And I should know, since I own one…It fits my rather large noggin quite well, and while the longer crab arms take a little getting used to in your field of view, it is quite warm as well. Now my only question is how should act when I’m wearing it…should I incorporate a bit of zombie shimmy into my step or should I behave like the crab and I have more of a symbiotic relationship where I'm more of a mode of transport for the headcrab? It even looks pretty good just sitting on a shelf, just like Headly. I’ll save the world the embarrassment of a picture of myself wearing the hat and just use Valve’s stock picture to give you an idea of what it looks like (I just noticed that the headcrab stock photo victim is reading a story about the PS3, which given Valve's Gabe Newell said about the P3 --"The PS3 is a total disaster on so many levels. I think it’s really clear that Sony lost track of what customers wanted and what developers wanted. I’d say, even at this late date, they should cancel it and do a “do over.” Just say, “This was a horrible disaster and we’re sorry and we’re going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it.”-- is interesting).

Adventurous souls looking to serve the Combine in a mentally diminished fashion can get your own head crab HERE

Get your headcrabs! Fresh from Xen! Don't be the last one on your block without a headcrab!

The above are fake banner ads on a site that has with sewing plans on how to make your own headcrab from the game Half-Life...Since the owner didn't have any real ads, s/he thought they would make up some fake ones. The sewing plans look vaguely involved but some of the end products don't look too bad.

Too bad that Valve chickened out with their own efforts on this front


They didn't make very many and they were very, very small...the only head they would fit onto would be a little bigger than a fist...I guess that liability (Hey, those teeth poked my eye!) concerns was the reason why they are so small....but it is pretty cool looking and would make an amazing full sized hat.

What doesn't Ebay pretend to sell?

It is reassuring to see that Ebay, when not trying to explain why Skype was worth $2 billion, is investing its cash in ad buys like this.

Given Ebay's rapacious and wholly inefficient ad buying strategy, I guess it shouldn't be that surprising that this sort of thing doesn't happen more often...such as in this Register piece on what cropped up shortly after the death of Croc Hunter Steve Irwin

There's a hole in the sky...through which things can fly

While not exactly new news, there is a very interesting new game on the horizon, called Portal. Using the Half Life 2 engine, the game is a 'first person puzzler" in which you shoot dimensional portals in order to move objects around and overcome obstacles. You first shoot an exit portal and then the entry portal…once you or an object goes through the entry portal, it comes out the exit portal. For example, if you shot an exit portal in the roof and then an entry portal in the floor, when you entered, you would exit by falling from a hole in the ceiling above you…A pretty simple concept but it looks like it has some very interesting game play. I’ve given up on Windoze now, so I’ll be looking forward to seeing this when its bundled with Xbox360 version of Half-Life 2 Episode 1+2 sometime around Q1 2007 or so. The video below show it in action and also has a very amusing style as well.

Now with Imperial meeting room action!

One of the markets I pay attention to for Project Arcturus is the Star Wars action figure market, which is just huge. Over the last few years, Hasbro has released hundreds of different figures, ususally in lots of 60 to 80 released over the course of a year, often similar popular characters are released several times with slight variants…Vader with a cape, Vader with a remove able helmet, Vader with the crates he force threw at Luke during their battle at Cloud City, lava scorched Vader, ect. Surprisingly, (or maybe not given the appeal of Star Wars and the avarice of Star Wars collectors), most of the figures do sell evenutally. From last year's the Revenge of the Sith (ROTS for those in the know) collections, almost all the figures sold out in my local stores fairly quickly with the exception of the some of the more obscure/wussy characters, such as Aayla Secura, (the female Jedi knight with two blue tentacles for hair) and Shaak Ti, (another female Jedi knight who has horns and tentacles for hair with a clown like face), or Senator Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits).

The hottest part of the market is for the various forms of clone trooper that often come in color variants (such a battalion dressings such as the white and orange clone trooper that fought with Obi-Wan or the blue and white clone trooper that Vader led at the massacre the Jedi Temple, which come with boots stained with Jedi blood). Characters who where on screen for less than 5 seconds (such as Imperial Galactic Marine Commander Bacara seen here on the left), will have their own figure and some retailers get exclusive colors/versions of figures that are only available at Target or Toy R Us. Typically, many of the commanding officers are the more rare characters (ie, there will be only one of that figure in a retail case, while there will be 2 or 3 identical common characters in that case) and many people try to buy multiple clone troopers to build up their own personal clone army…which also results in their scarcity on the retail shelf, even when they are not less common figures.But I think Hasbro must be running out of ideas, since they are planning to release a set based on the scene in the Imperial briefing room on the Death Star…the one where the various officers talk about what is the best way to use the death star, and one of them calls out Vader (“Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerer’s ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebel’s hidden fortress…”) and Vader reminds him of the power of the force by force choking him for a while until Grand Moff Tarkin calls him off.

Imperial Briefing Room Boxed Set
though not fully operational, the Death Star was already an imposing presence, dwarfing its Star Destroyer escort as it cruised through deep space during its final pre-operations check. Even as the final systems check progressed flawlessly, the Imperial officers in command of the battle station met in their first strategy session to plot the total destruction of the Rebel Alliance, and the continued domination of the Emperor. This boxed set includes one each of these 3.75" figures: Darth Vader, Grand Moff Tarkin, Admiral Motti, General Tagge, Chief Bast, Officer Cass, and Colonel Wullf Yularen along with various blasters and Darth Vader's Lightsaber

I guess all those 3 of those Wullf Uyklaren fans out there will be now, finally, satisfied.