No Me Gusta Trabajar.

So, I ventured into Spanish Harlem last night to try my hand at Rock Band. (My friend Paco owns the PS2 version.) It played out much as I expected. I was fair-to-middling at the guitar (having failed to invest adequate hours into my own copies of the Guitar Hero trilogy) and too intimidated to sing. Luckily, Paco's girlfriend Sarah is an excellent sport, sharing the vocal duties with him, allowing me to focus...

On the DRUMS. Oh, the drums.

Rock Band for PS2 was a Lightning Deal on Amazon just two days ago, and I now wish I had gotten it. I don't want to work, I just want to bang on the drums all day. I love the drums. I love to bang them. So fun. SO fun.

All right, and what have the internets vomited up for you today...

First: this may go over the heads of anyone who is 1) unfamiliar with the sidescrolling shooter Gradius, or 2) unfamiliar with old-school text adventure games, like Zork. If, however, you have even a passing knowledge of these two, dare I say, cornerstones of modern gaming, then you will enjoy this:

If that was a little too silent, then you can check out this next, fantastically noisy video.

Someone got their grubby little hands on a SNES emulator and created a series of insanely complex levels, that, when Mario (and sometimes Yoshi) is catapulted through them, play music. Wow.

Finally, I am ashamed that have kept these two websites from you for so long.

The merits of icanhascheezburger.com should be readily apparent to anyone with a computer and eyes. I recommend going to the beginning and working your way forward, but be warned: the people who inhabit the intertubes have nothing but time to waste on these endeavours, and the LOLcats number in the bajillions.

On the other hand, graphjam.com can be a more abstruse. It consists mainly of graphic representations of songs or memes from film, video games, etc., such as this one:
Hilarious. (Check the "Friday" column closely if you still don't get it.) Each post on Graphjam has a "Cheat Sheet" button that will give you a video or something to provide a frame of reference if you don't understand something right away.

Well, have a good weekend. I'm going to finally buckle down and finish Rogue Galaxy. Plus, Katie and I are going to become not just fit, but Wii Fit.

Jolly nice!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Poppin' up like crazy.

There are so many cool things in the world that I'm seriously starting to freak out.

Okay, I mean honestly.

Let's start off with an easy one. An article in the Washington Post that is actually titled Republicans Vote Against Moms; No Word Yet on Puppies, Kittens. Somebody deserves a Pulitzer for that one.

I have a Wii. I love my Wii. But they're making it very difficult to not buy a PS3.


Alas, when Final Fantasy XIII comes out (completing the GTA4/MGS4/FF13 trifecta), I am sure to be lost.

There is a person somewhere that calls himself Blu. Blu paints on walls. But he doesn't just paint on walls, he animates on walls. It's creepy and brilliant. (I personally would like to see this sort of thing done with ninjas flipping all over the walls rather than creepy neuters climbing out of the chests of other creepy neuters. But beggars can't be choosers.)

I found the following video on one of the Wired blogs.
When I was in South Africa, I didn't make it to Kruger National Park, where this video was filmed.


Totally awesome.

(Brilliant segue approaching!)
Oh, speaking of totally awesome, some crazy Swiss motherfucker has built a rocket pack and flies at 180 miles per hour with his rocket pack.
I am suffused with jealousy.

Let it also be known that I love Ricardo Montalban. I used to watch Fantasy Island, and I just thought he was completely the shit.

Check this commercial for the Chrysler Cordoba ("The Small Chrysler" LOL). You're probably familiar with the phrase "fine Corinthian leather", used to describe the leather in a car. Well, this is not the first, but the best-known utterance of the phrase (although it's actually "soft", not "fine").



Corinthian leather, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with Corinth. It was just a buzzword drummed up for the leather in Chrysler cars in the 1970s. It was made in New Jersey. I just love how completely enamoured with the Cordoba Ricardo Montalban is.

What a stud.

Last thing: there is a cat in England named "Macavity" who rides the bus.
That's just wonderful.

My sister and her boyfriend are leaving tomorrow, so pictures of their adventures are sure to follow.

My friend Oliver plays musics, and you may go to his website and listen to some of these musics.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Go Cavs!

Review: Grand Theft Auto IV

Well, no, I don't own either a PlayStation 3 or an Xbox 360. No, I haven't technically "played" the game, as such. But since when has the internet frowned upon someone taking a stand on an issue they know absolutely nothing about?

Really, to be honest, I'm just jealous. It seems like everyone else in the world has been giving GTAIV perfect or near-perfect scores, so I just didn't want to be left out. (Also, I've decided that I'm going to refer to the game as though the acronym was a word. So, whenever you see "GTAIV" in print from now on, here or elsewhere, please vocalize it as "guh-tave". Thanks!)

So, on to the review. Well, gtaiv is... ummm... a massive, open-world sandbox title that takes the... uh.... open-world sandbox experience to a new level. The main character is Niko Bellic, an Eastern European tough who comes to America (possibly North America) to chase the American Dream (possibly the North American Dream*, but there's a chance it could, in fact, be either the South American Dream** or the Central American Dream***), only to find that his arsehole brother (or cousin, whatever) lied to him. Niko gets caught up in a whirlwind of stealing cars and murdering hookers, while occasionally doing some missions before getting bored, entering a God code and standing in the middle of an intersection slaughtering thousands of civilians, police and soldiers.

There's some sort of online mode, but whatever, I don't care about that.

Some people aren't happy unless you give a game a numerical score, so here's one.

Final score: 10.

Well, that was fun. I guess I'll become a professional game reviewer now. Maybe next time I'll review a game I've actually played.

I just today downloaded a drawing program that lets me sketch on the computer (as you can no doubt tell from the leading graphic above). Whee! Fun!

Oh, speaking of professional game reviewers, there's a lucky sod named Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw who creates a series called "Zero Punctuation" over at The Escapist. It is, without a doubt, the funniest series of game reviews on the internet. I can't recommend them highly enough. Set aside a long afternoon and watch them all.

I've slashed most of the chaff from the links section in the sidebar. Katherine, Johnathan, Jillian, Dana: you have all failed and have been banished. I feel bad for your poor, orphaned websites, as you callously flit off to Facebook with the rest of the sheep. I honestly can't think of anything sadder than a blog that hasn't been updated in six months, and the most recent post is something pitifully self-effacing like, "I bet nobody checks this anymore." (I check it. Well, I used to.)

I also got my Economic Stimulus Payment cheque. I didn't think I would, on account of me not being an American, but I pay my taxes, so apparently I was eligible. Thanks, Dubya! Now get the fuck out of that office and let Obama lead us into the recession you set the world up for, you stupid fucking TWAT.

A-hem.

Jessica and Vincent are currently visiting. I'll put up some pictures of the madness we get up to whenever any two of the Hunt children gather in one place. When there's three of us, we sort of reach critical mass, and sparks start hopping about. All four of us haven't been in the same place together since Dad and Liz's wedding, for fear of causing a singularity and destroying time.

Oh, and Iron Man was absolutely brilliant.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Hold still, you little prick!

* To spend one's $300 Economic Stimulus Payment on crack cocaine.
** To, someday, stop being raped by North America.
*** To finally be declared the Eighth Continent.

SWEET JESUS.

You know what babies don't like?

Being dropped off a FUCKING TOWER.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/05/01/india.baby.toss.cnn

Sweet monkey-fucking Jesus Christ.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
What in the blue fuck is that all about?

It is May!

Congratulations. You have survived your trials thus far. But the road ahead will only become more difficult.

It's dangerous to go alone! Take this:

The Angry Video Game Nerd has lost his mind. (I know the beginning is just a bunch of shitty youtube clips, but stick with it. Trust me, the payoff at the end is worth it.)

Also, some of you may have played The Last Stand when I told you about it not too long ago. (No, not the X-Men movie, the zombie-hordes-descending-upon-your-fortified-position flash game.) Anyway, they've made a sequel, and it's harder.

If you've never been rickrolled, consider yourself lucky. If you have, and you know who Robo is, then this will be hilarious:


Finally, Taiko Drum Master is an institution in Asia. Apparently, it's so popular that it's spawned a claymation animated series. All the (four-minute) episodes are available on youtube.
I present the first episode here. Enjoy.


I'm off to kill zombies.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
But why?

This is the 100th post.

Wow. 100 posts. That's a lot. I've been doing this for two years now.

Most important: we had a Nerdy Day Out on Saturday. The pictures are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/theadamhunt/NerdyDayOut

Enjoy!

This will be funny for a select group of my friends.

You're welcome.

Also, this is exactly the sort of thing that makes an ideal birthday present for little boys named Adam:

You can buy them here. Thanks in advance.

Well, I'd wax nostalgic about the confluence of 100th post with two-year anniversary, but that would be waste of time. Suffice to say that I like my website better than anyone else does, which is fine by me.

Oh, and I'm going to be tidying up the links on the right very soon. Some of the websites over there haven't been interesting for quite a while, so either update them and make them interesting to me or be orphaned. As an addendum to that, if you have an interesting website that you want to tell me about, tell me about it.
Well, that's all. I must go play Mario Kart now. Vroom vroom! Beep beep!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Don't ever try to show off in front of me like that again... beast.

Fuck tha police. Comin' straight from the underground.

Now, I've got absolutely nothing against officers of the law. Quite the magnanimous statement, yes? Coming as it does from a 29-year-old white guy from Newfoundland, whose only run-in with the law was a friendly Royal Newfoundland Constabulary officer who advised me to throw away the joint I was holding.

Um, for a friend.

A-hem.

Still, I've always believed that the police serve a valid purpose. They remove the need for us to take vengeance on those that have wronged us. It may be a slow and cumbersome system, but it's infinitely better than the feudal system which lasted up until the 20th century. (You know, last century.)

That being said, this morning I read about Jimmy Justice, a pissy New Yorker who's decided to document New York City police officers breaking the law. Not running drugs or taking payoffs or anything. For illegal parking and u-turns. He's fantastic.



We recently got a ticket for parking 9 feet from a fire hydrant (which is galling because the legal distance in our neighbourhood is ten feet, not the fifteen Jimmy refers to). $115 is nothing to sniff at. Maybe we should trade in our sensible Volkswagen Jetta for a police cruiser.

Jimmy's youtube channel is here.

Earth Day was yesterday. You didn't even know that, did you? You are all very bad people.
In interesting nerd news, the crowd over at the cumbersomely-titled website "Mightygodking.com" have photoshopped some old Atari game cartridges, with hilarious results. I found myself struggling to remember some of the actual names of the games, a sure sign that senescence is upon me. Ah, the quick decline.

I also found what is reputed to be the first issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, in PDF format, sporting one of my all-time favourite games (with one of the all-time worst boxarts) on the cover. Go ahead and download it; it's priceless. They talk about the Robocop game for NES. I loved that game.

Well, looks like that's about it for now. We saw Jon Stewart, who is funny. This Saturday we're going to see Video Games Live! at the Beacon Theater, and it looks like we're taking a trip to Decorah in July for some sort of event called Nordic Fest. I have suspicions that the event may be cultural in nature.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam.
This route? Bad idea.

Two.

Item the first:

If you find video games too hard, you should try a game called "You Have to Burn the Rope." I'm calling it now. GTA4? Metal Gear Solid 4? Smash Bros? Mario Kart Wii? Fuck 'em. "You Have to Burn the Rope" will be crowned Game of the Year 2008 by the popular press, I guarantee it.

Item the second:

Say what you want about China's human rights record and the complete fucking farce that the Olympic Games have become, there is some good there.


http://view.break.com/487616 - Watch more free videos

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Katie pwned nOObz at Smash Bros. online.