2. Penelope Trunk: "My blog is getting killed by psycho Nazi spammers, and I can't stop it because my site admin is an Orthodox Jew who doesn't work on Shabbat."
3. Let's see if Bill Simmons knows what he's talking about: "Why Chicago's sudden willingness to move Hinrich/Salmons? They're getting LeBron & Bosh! I keep telling you."
You can play the demo for adventure game Machinarium right in your browser. Aside from some really long loading screens, I liked it a lot. The site also features several desktop wallpapers.
Every order from Last Exit to Nowhere comes with a swell sticker. Take a photo of the sticker someplace clever, and you can win three t-shirts. The most recent winner, Michael Robinson, photographed the sticker at the M Street steps in Washington, DC, where Father Karras plummets to his death in The Exorcist.
2. You can now play Popcap's Plants vs. Zombies for free online. It's insidious. At the exact moment I was starting to lose interest, the gameplay completely changed and kept me sucked in.
3. Batman strikes fear into criminals with a loogie.
3. A cable snapped on the Xcelerator roller coaster at Knotts Berry Farm in Southern California - - there's video of two people riding it, screaming as debris strikes them. Via.
Canabalt is a free flash game where all you do is run increasingly fast across a rapidly decaying cityscape and jump to avoid obstacles. Very addictive and not for people who need to blink. My top score was 1,574 meters. Why are console games so complicated? Via.
Alex Pardee's signing at Upper Playground & 5024SEA in Seattle, Washington ended in blood. He describes what happened here. Warning - - it's horrifying. (And surprisingly well-photographed?)
The fight at a ballpark in this video isn't particularly interesting - - but check out how many people started filming it:
And a few more links:
1. Until quite recently, it was illegal to capture rainwater in Colorado, even if it fell on your own roof. Via.
2. Why would you invite, as a keynote speaker at a blogging conference, someone to speak about making money online, when that speaker claims 2 million unique visitors a day, yet makes no money?
3. Wired has a flash game called "Cutthroat Capitalism" where "You are a pirate commander staked with $50,000 from local tribal leaders and other investors. Your job is to guide your pirate crew through raids in and around the Gulf of Aden, attack and capture a ship, and successfully negotiate a ransom."
As part of the festivities, there will also be a few other n00bz on sale:
In April, Blizzard Entertainment held a contest inviting employees from around the world to take blank n00bz home and get to work turning the featureless figures into canvases for their own Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo themed art. Over 250 employees from departments throughout the company took up their brushes—and in some cases, what appear to be chainsaws and welding torches—to paint, sculpt, and otherwise craft a veritable n00bz army of marines, murlocs, Mimirons, and more.
The top three most reproducible designs (shown below) were dissected by gnomish engineers, analyzed by Sanctuary archivists, and reconstituted for folks to purchase at the BlizzCon store.
You can see some of the other epic entries on display in the art gallery between Halls B and C—and if you're feeling inspired, you can pick up your own blank n00bz at the BlizzCon Store and head to Hall B, where you'll find a dedicated design area with paints and other implements of n00bz-craft.
Fury of Ragnaros by John Butkus (World of Warcraft team)
The Good Factory is definitely a site worth bookmarking. They're you'll find concept art like the image you see above for the upcoming game Mutatione, and this woman at a collapsed freeway.
And by the same people, Five Minute MMORPG is a primitive flash game that's exactly like what it sounds, with charming graphics like this death scene:
4. Apparently, Tom Clancy actually wrote about Jim Von Brunn, the holocaust museum shooter. Via Fark, where you should note the first comment. (I didn't really examine the site, but per the comments, it might be overall NSFW.)
4. I filled my Zazzle store with lots of merchandise featuring the new Super Punch logo (and the extra special alternate colorway). Please note, you can choose the type and color of clothing you want - - the images you'll see are just some combinations I liked.
As you may have noticed in the video, there's a website for Close Range, where you can supposedly play a demo. I say supposedly because it loaded absurdly slowly, and my browser crashed before it finished.
Please tell me no tax dollars helped pay for this public service announcement to help raise awareness about child abuse, starring Casper Van Dien, reprising his role as Starship Trooper's Johnny Rico. I mean, I can only think of two explanations: (1) someone really had the hots for Casper; or (2) someone wants to harm the chances of James Cameron's Avatar by reminding people about Starship Troopers. Hey, the only way to fight child abuse is by glorifying genocidal violence, right? Via.
And a few more links:
1. You can play a Watchmen-themed side-scrolling brawler flash game here. It's probably dramatically better, at least visually, than the old NES game Kung Fu, which gobbled up hours of my time. I scored 31391. Completing it doesn't seem to unlock anything. For everyone who played Kung Fu, did you ever imagine that the basement was simply full of stacks and stacks of dead bodies?
Here's a strange little flash game by Alexander Shen and Kaolin Fire. It's called Saber Duel, and it's supposed to simulate lightsaber training while wearing a blast shield. In other words, you can't see what you're doing. You can only hear the targets. I scored 821, but it mostly sounded like my character was getting tagged by powerful lasers.
Tennis player Juan Martin Del Potro nailed a little kid right in the face at the Australian Open. Still photo of the player consoling the boy here. Via.
And a few more links:
1. Visit Executive Bomb if you need contact information to send a product/service complaint. Via.
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