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the land that knowledge forgot

Things that are fantastic: History Teachers, a fantastic YouTube channel taking popular songs and rewriting them to teach history. Of course, when I describe it that way it comes across as some painfully square teacher trying to connect to her students using the parlance of their time and failing miserably, but it’s the complete opposite. I was in tears watching these because they hit all the right nerd buttons: music nerd, history nerd, art nerd, etc.

I think my favourite is “William The Conqueror” (above), which I love for being set to Justin Timberlake’s “Sexyback” and featuring the Bayeux Tapestry (which is awesome in and of itself but is also one of my favourite memes). Other favourites include: Illumianted Manuscripts, combining my love of the Beatles with poor figure drawing skills; Mary, Queen of Scots (“Jenny From The Block”); and Renaissance Man (“Blister In The Sun”). I may or may not have spent an hour-and-a-half watching these after being linked to them. I really am that cool.

in which I am eight years-old

I got to ride the new subway today!!

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With all the various transit woes in this city (fare hikes! streetcars vs subways! wildcat strikes! nothing wrong but we’ll complain anyway!) it’s sort of nice how excited people are now that the new subways are rolling out. I had a momentary burst of joy when the new train pulled into my station yesterday, but it was completely packed and I prioritize getting to sit in the morning over getting to ride the new train. But today! Today was my lucky day! Barely full when it pulled in!

Some thoughts (yes, I am reviewing the subway): Continue reading →

reason #5728959 the Nazis lost the war

This is an actual thing in the world: Dino D-Day.

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I discovered this as an ad on Steam while playing Civ 5 yesterday. I still haven’t decided if this is brilliant or completely offensive.

Adolf Hitler has succeeded in resurrecting dinosaurs. The reptilian horde has trampled Europe and the Mediterranean. Can nothing stop the Nazi’s dinosaur army?

Dino D-Day is a frantic, action-packed multiplayer game that will transport you to a World War II that should have been. [...] Gun down a Dilophosaur with your trusty M1 Garand, blast a kamikaze pterosaur out of the sky with your Thompson sub-machine gun, toss out a dead jack rabbit to lure a raptor into a trap.1

As an Axis player you will have your choice of three human classes and three dinosaur classes. Ambush your enemy with speed and stealth as the Raptor, mercilessly pound the enemy with the Desmatosuchus’ heavy 20mm gun, rampage through enemy groups as the Dilophosaur, pick up a body and throw it at an enemy for a double kill! The German soldier classes are the perfect complement to their dinosaur comrades.2

You’ve played World War II games before…but have you played a World War II game with dinosaurs?

I think I can safely say no, no I have not.

1Like a raptor would fall for this. Amateurs.
2What does that mean?

Why is bad taste ubiquitous?

April Fool’s Day is not my favourite day of the year. At best, most practical jokes are not especially funny. At worst, I get sucked into believing pranks because I am exceedingly gullible sometimes.

But never before today has this day ever terrified me. TERRIFIED ME. No one should ever Google “Helvetica” and be subjected to this:

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Kill me now. (Via navygreen)

there are also approximately four million searches for an explanation for the end of Black Swan

I know that Google’s autocomplete feature can often give good insight into the simultaneously interesting and disturbing things that people Google, but what’s of interest to ye olde average bloggeur is the stuff people Google to get to your own website. These are the search terms in which the Google results currently yield this blog as the number one result (links go to the relevant post on this site):

Honourable mention: I used to be the number one result for Asian Dawn (as in, “I read about them in Time magazine”) but have rightfully fallen to #2 so that the Die Hard quotes page is in its proper place at #1.

also, the Germans are kings and queens of word smashes

I’m re-reading a book called The Meaning of Tingo (Amazon / Kindle) which is essentially about words in other languages that have no equivalent in English. The words often express things that are more conceptual in nature and I think I have just determined my absolute favourite one:

Backpfeifengesicht (German): a face that cries out for a fist in it.

YES. Leave it to the Germans to come up with a word for such a glorious sentiment.

the crew was stunned into unconsciousness

New addiction: Football Manager 2011. My sister and I both downloaded the demo last week, became hopelessly addicted, and then quickly purchased the full game because naturally you always want more. I still have no idea how to use the majority of the strategies and tactics and whatnot but I’ve managed to not get fired as manager of Bayern Munich thus far, so I guess that’s okay.

I’m taking a short break because I have to mourn the loss of Bastian Schweinsteiger to a season-ending injury right as we’re on the brink of playing the final in the German Cup and the semi-final in the Champions League. Timing is everything! The volume of injuries in this game seems unreasonably high, but maybe that’s just because I prefer my players to be healthy. Philipp Lahm was injured several times for several months total, which was awful, and Mario Gomez went and broke his leg. Cue shaking, crying, and gnashing of teeth.

The game comes with a hilarious amount of built-in bias against certain types of managers. I was immediately distrusted for being the trifecta of what no one is looking for in a football coach: Canadian, under 30 years-old, and female. At my first press conference they asked me what I thought the status of sexism in soccer was, which I thought was interesting.

Other teams seem to be disinterested in giving up key players like Per Mertesacker or Arne Friedrich just to make me happy, and my board seems disinclined to give me the necessary exorbitant transfer funds to bring those players to my team. Apparently this game is supposed to be realistic!

Crap, not the winged dragon!

Also, can I share with you the greatest video game of all time? Advanced Dungeons and Dragons for Intellivison.

The genius of this game, aside from being horrifically low-fi, was the intense anxiety it would cause you as a player and/or viewer. You could never see your opponents coming because the maze would only unfold as you walked towards completely uncharted territories! Eek! But sometimes you could still hear them coming, which made it worse because, like, where is that snake? Is it around the corner? Where’s the dragon? Am I going to be able to shoot enough arrows before it descends on me? And what about the blue demon, who is like a Milford man in that he is neither seen nor heard? You’re dead before you even know what happened.

I have an elevated heart rate just thinking about it. If you watch enough of the related videos on YouTube, you’ll find some excellent clips where the player dies in a variety of lame and hilarious ways, e.g. gets killed by a blob or bitten to death by a rat. That was the other equally awesome end of the spectrum in this game.

This game used to scare the ever living crap out of me when I was four and five years old watching my dad play. I’m not gonna lie, I’m kind of still scared of it — loading up the video on YouTube just now and hearing the cloudy mountain noises nearly gave me a heart attack. I’m not even kidding, I had to turn the sound off so I wouldn’t frighten myself to death. I can’t watch these video clips by myself without having to sleep with all the light on afterwards.

what a question, what a query

A) Does anyone else use Stumble Upon to find random sites of interest? B) Is anyone else as judgmental as I am about some of the stuff that people “like” that gets added to the vast pool of sites you can then stumble upon?

Perhaps I’m not understanding the purpose of the site, but my understanding is that SU is a great tool to find little corners of the interwebz concerning subjects of interest that you might not otherwise find given the vast size of said interwebz. You know… things you might only find if, perhaps, you were to stumble upon them by chance. (So it’s not just a clever name.) Why, then, when I’m stumbling through the Sewing category do I keep getting redirected to such difficult to find webpages like Wikipedia’s entry on cross stitch? There’s lots of great obscure stuff on Wikipedia that is definitely SU worthy, but I’m not sure that top-level topics of such a broad nature fall into this category. Come on, people, get it together.

In related news, I just stumbled upon this cool Alice in Wonderland fabric, so it wasn’t a total bust.