Collisions and Muffins

How many of you have heard about the small town of Kenai, Alaska? Anyone? No?

Well now you have, and you can thank me for telling you about it. This unknown town about as far from civilization as you can get in the United States birthed the metal band known as 36 Crazyfists. This four piece has been bringing the pain for over 15 years now, and the time they've put in has shown.

A follow up to 2008's The Tide And Its Takers, their fifth studio album Collisions And Castaways is not only a great listen, but it's their best effort to date.

The album takes about 90 seconds to really start to pick up with an instrumental introduction to the album-opener that fades in to start track number one. After that wait, though, these Alaskan boys grab you by the throat. They continue the trend with one of my favorites on the album, "Whitewater" - a wicked metalcore song with face-melting guitars and driving drums, complimented nicely by Brock Lindow's vocals. The pace keeps up at near breakneck speeds until halfway through the album with the track "Long Road To The Late Nights" - an instrumental track that showcases the talent level of all the musicians in the band, as guitar, bass, and drums mesh perfectly. However, after this brief reprieve, the metal comes back with a little bit of a southern bite on "Trenches". The boys of 36 Crazyfists close the album with "Waterhaul II". Those familiar with the band will recognize this as the sequel to a song off of 2004's A Snow Capped Romance. I thought this was a great way to close the album, and a perfect continuation of the "Waterhaul" series.

On the technical end of things, the mixing on this album is superb. Nothing is lost when listening to this release. The guitar, bass, drums, and vocals work together wonderfully. In addition, this album shows an evolution in sound from The Tide. Brock's vocals have a more refined feel in both the screams and in the clean sections, and the instruments have the high quality we've come to expect from 36 Crazyfists.

Overall, the Alaskan quartet has added another great album to their discography, and to the list of great metal albums of 2010. I highly recommend Collisions and Castaways to people who love metal, people who love the band, or people who love Alaska, because, let's be honest, Alaska is metal.

Okami and the Celestial Muffin

For this review I will be going over the game "Okami". It was released originally for the PS2, but was later released for the Wii as well. In short, you are the god of the sun, Ameterasu, with the power of the Celestial Brush. You go around the game world - not totally sure where exactly it takes place other than some random place in Japan(of course) - and you have to use the powers given to you by other gods that you rescue for the Celestial Brush to destroy the demon that is trying to destroy the world. Simple, right? Well, as I said earlier, that's the short version. The long version is a lot more complicated and does the game justice.

The game starts with a bit of backstory. Shiranui, a white wolf, and a swordsman named Nagi are locked in an epic battle with Orochi, a demon who is trying to destroy/take over the world, like they always are trying to do but never seem to get that they never will be able to. You work with this little... thing... named Issun, who is an artist. He acts much like the Navi character from the Legend of Zelda games, being all annoying all over your screen. You get this disk on your back that breaks shit and you're told by the guardian of Kamiki Village to go save the world. Wonderful.

So you're off, time to save the world. But wait, you have more help than an annoying tiny artist and a dinner plate on your back. Yes, you are given the tool known as the Celestial Brush; the painting tool of the Japanese gods. You're taught the restoration brush technique and kicked out of the wonderful world of... the tree. So you go about restoring the world and things and fighting off evil with your dinner plate. Every time you beat a big boss, you get a new brush technique. A pretty solid game for all concerned.

But going a bit deeper into it, this entire concept of the Celestial Brush is amazingly intuitive. When you use it, the screen turns into a canvas and you paint the power you want to be invoked, aiding you in ways you wish you could have done in other games that aren't as ass-kicking as this one. You can slice up your enemies, summon a bomb on command, and bring about the sunrise and sunset on command to assist with puzzles or quests that are totally necessary to your big mission. The people you meet aren't totally unlikeable, and your ally is the normal drunk swordsman who thinks he can beat everything but really can't beat anything and carries around a giant wooden sword and thinks that it is some legendary blade... well I guess that isn't really the "normal." But either way, he's annoying and usually drunk and a credit hog. But whatever, you deal with him because the game is worth it.

This isn't the kind of game that has a fantastic storyline, despite it being fairly involving and overall pretty awesome, and it doesn't have the most horrifyingly awesome gameplay. It is simply immersive. The plot is convoluted enough to keep you guessing, and the puzzles and battles are intense enough to keep you hooked, but you simply can't stop playing it. There's such a great blend of story and gameplay and intuitiveness that it just blows away most of the mainstream games.

I give Okami this praise because it's not afraid to show it's true colors right away in the game. It doesn't try to lure you into thinking that it's action and then throw puzzles at you left and right while you're busy trying to fight off hordes of demons. It doesn't pretend to be scary when in reality it couldn't scare a two month old gerbil. It gets right up in your face and says "You have to kill things, then solve puzzles. You need to go on quests, and do whatever the hell you want to get them done, within reason. Have at it." I also give it the recommendation it deserves because it's actually got some creativity poured into it. It isn't like any other game that I've come across, and that's saying something.

All in all, Okami is an in your face, immersive game that will catch your attention and hold it until you're thrown from the game at the end. If you're a person who actually has decent taste in games and not just a Call of Duty and Halo nerd who does nothing except rant about how good they are at "pwning sum n00bs at MW2 online" then you'd really enjoy what this game has to offer. I rest my case.

>Ryft

Moose

This has nothing to do with a moose.  Nothing at all.  Really.  You should believe me.  Because if you don't....

Ebola.

This is about Ebola virus.

 Ebola really does have absolutely nothing to do with moose, except that moose are lucky bastards who don't get infected with ebola, and neither do caribou, for those that are interested in caribou and such things.

But, aside from making moose and caribou some of the luckiest mammals on earth, lets go over, briefly, what it is that ebola does...

Ebola will kill you.  It's a biosafetly level 4 infectious agent, meaning that you don't handle this stuff without wearing a spacesuit.  Literally, a spacesuit, in a negative pressure chamber, and you get scrubbed down with bleach for a good 7 minutes afterward anyway.  People don't fuck around when handling ebola, seriously, there may be less safety measures in place around nuclear weapons than around scientists working with ebola.  There is a reason for this.

Ebola has had, in past outbreaks, as high as a 90% kill rate, and that's with hospitalization.  To put it in perspective, another biosafety level 4 agent, Yellow Fever, is considered a highly lethal virus, and at best it has a 20% kill rate.  Yes, that makes ebola, or rather, the entire Fillovirus family, roughly 4 times as deadly as any other infectious biological agents on earth and almost as detrimental to civilization as Kanye West's continued existence.  

Now, a 90% kill rate might not be that bad, if it killed you by say, making you enjoy life too much, or by giving you an obsession with eating pancakes; but that's not how ebola rolls.  Ebola starts off rather nicely and politely, like a cousin you don't like much but invited over for tea anyway, by giving you a simple headache, maybe a tiny fever and some nausea; at this point you've probably had worse from Taco Bell or pop radio.  But then it gets  a little rowdy, like a clown you hired for your child's birthday that drank an entire bottle of Mr. Daniels before tearing down all your drapes and pouring kitty litter on the brithday cake, and it starts with the bleeding.  For some clarification, ebola causes hemorrhagic fever, hemorrhaging means that you're bleeding profusely, and I don't mean 'knicked yourself shaving' profusely, i mean 'you're bleeding out of orifices you didn't have 10 minutes ago' profusely.  But this bleeding doesn't start all at once, it starts in the eyes; your eyes will fill with blood and turn red.  And that's just the start of the fun, and by fun, I mean torture, like reading the Twilight series torture.

While you're bleeding, ebola is also dissolving you.  It goes for the connective tissue, in your face; you lose the ability to have facial expression after the first few days.  After that, hair starts falling out, your fingernails fall off, teeth come out, skin starts sloughing off, and it's not just on the outside that you're losing the bits that hold your body together; this is happening in your digestive system as well.  Effectively, it's like when a woman has her period, and the lining of the uterus is sloughed off as menstrual flow, but with your entire digestive system, and it's all vomit and shit and donuts you couldn't digest because you caught ebola.

Oh, and about the bleeding, you're probably wondering why the bleeding doesn't stop.  Ebola actually promotes blood coagulation phenomenally well, so well, that all of your bloods clotting factors are used, and used improperly.  It makes your blood just clot, everywhere, eventually your entire spleen becomes one big blood clot.  But wait, you're not wondering why your blood isn't clotting; because ebola also turns your frontal cortext to goop.  Well, goop isn't a very sciency term, but, well, it fits, because you loose your personality, which is what the frontal lobe of your brain is responsible for, along with other trivial things, like conscious decision making. 

Ok, so, now you're bleeding out your eyes and assorted orifices which you may or may not have had before you caught the 'bola, you have a fever and a headache, you're vomiting black vomit (oh, yeah, your vomit turns black, and it's not an awesome black vomit that could come from drinking excessive amounts of coffee, it's actually kinda nasty lookin), you have no facial expression, your personality and decision making abilitys are gone, and you're dissolving from the inside out.  This all can happen within 10 days, under 7 if the virus is impatient, or if you're just predisposed to being dissolved.

Now, if you're currently not infected with ebola, or at least in the non-dissolving state, you're probably wondering how you catch this little demon particle.  It's simple, you touch it, or inhale it, or drink it, well, drinking it wouldn't work, probably, but if someone gives you a glass of ebola, you take it, pour it on their crotch and run like hell.  Thing is, we don't really know how it's spread; no one wants to work with it (no sane person at least), and when there is an outbreak, people are mostly concerned with not-dying.  There's some evidence that the virus can be airborne, or at least aeresolized; meaning that if you can see someone with ebola, you can probably catch ebola.  And it takes less than a dozen virus particles to cause a lethal infection; in soviet russia, you don't catch ebola, ebola catches you. 

And another fun things about ebola is that we don't even know where it comes from.  It's form somewhere that might in Africa, but maybe not, maybe the Philipines, but maybe not.  It could come from a cave under a mountain, but maybe not.  We don't even really know what carries the virus (meaning an animal that can support the virus's life cycle without a deadly infection, commonly refered to as the virus's vector), it could be fruitbats, mosquitos, anything, really, anything; if you're in africa, and something bites you, looks at you, sneezes near you, or breathes the air on the same side of the equator as you, it could give you ebola.

Oh, and if you think this shit only lives in africa and kills those poor kids you see on those compassion commercials that you've probably long since stopped giving a damn about because you're American and you care more about Justin Beiber hitting puberty than dying kids in Africa, then you're wrong (and you're a bastard coated bastard topped with a bastard sundae and served on bastard coated porcelain plates to bastard children that never get presents from Santa and eaten with forks forged by bastards).  There was an outbreak of ebola in America, and not the outskirts of 'America' that people don't care about like Chicago, or Dallas; this shit went down in Reston Virginia, right by Dulles International Airport.  Now, for those exceptionally thick readers out there, having a highly contagious and lethal virus, like ebola, break out in an airport, and international airport, where it could spread uncontained to the whole word, would be a bad thing; like having the soviets win the Cold War grade bad, possibly even worse than listening to Miley Cirus.  Fortunately, not much came from this outbreak, and not because uncle Sam kicked ebola in it's virus sized testicles, but because we were the luckiest sons of bitches ever to exist on the planet Earth; we got hit by an ebola virus that didn't cause deadly infection in humans, only monkeys.  The odds against this are pretty staggering.  I won't bore you all with the bio details that only interest me.   


Summarily, ebola sucks; it's like a malevolent combination of the chickenpox, herpes, hiv, tetanus, meningitis, c-dif, communism, alcohol poisoining, pure evil, the twilight series, Ke$ha's 'music', Kanye West's people skills, bad drivers, the E.T. video game for the Atari and the BP oil spill, only it's all contained inside your body ready to destroy everything you know and love, but you don't care, because it already erased your personality.

 And you're dissolving.


Ebola could probably take down Chuck Norris.

There Will Be Muffins

With a name like Impending Doom, you know the heavy can't be far behind. This five-piece (reduced to four since the recording of the album) death metal, or as they call their particular style "gorship" (a cross of gore and worship), group just put forth their third album, There Will Be Violence, and they certainly delivered.

I'll be honest, I didn't like Impending Doom for a very long time. The "pig squeal" death metal vocals were never something I enjoyed, so their debut album was quickly brushed off my listening list. I pretty much ignored their second album due to my disinterest in the first. However, when they posted some of their new material online, I decided to give them a second chance. So I found their sophomore effort, The Serpent Servant, and gave it another listen. To my surprise, it began to grow on me. So I decided to pick up the new disc when it came out, and it was definitely worth it.

"Hell Breaks Loose" brings the pain right off the bat - this instrumental introduction is absolutely crushing. And these boys don't let up. They bring track after murderous track as this album progresses. They use elements from many different styles just to top it all off.

Now, this is not the Impending Doom you remember from Nailed. Dead. Risen. They've grown as individuals and as a band, and they've branched from the original brutal death metal/grindcore style they started out with. Though they still throw some blast beats in there, they've evolved beyond their roots without abandoning them.

On the musical side of things, this band has some versatility. None of the songs bring anything terribly complex to the table, but they manage to incorporate death metal (as in "There Will Be Violence", "The Great Fear"), thrash/metalcore, ("Orphans", "Peace Illusion"), and even groove metal on the instrumental track "Love Has Risen". The guitars shred through each song, and the vocals have such a brutal tone to them without falling into the low end squeals of their past. Everything melds together to craft a stellar deathcore album.

The stand out tracks on this album are definitely "There Will Be Violence" and, surprisingly "Love Has Risen". Normally, I'd never give an instrumental much recognition, but this song is a masterpiece. They meld death, groove, hardcore, and thrash together for such an enjoyable listening experience that I had to point it out.

When all is said and done, this album shows how much Impending Doom has progressed since their start five years ago. They pushed their limits and There Will Be Violence definitely deserves your attention.

>Pawn

Poison Muffin

Okay, so let's say you're walking through the woodlands of Britain, lost after your plane full of stolen Mexican cocaine and crazy straws crashed. It's about day three, you're out of crack, and you've had to leave your partner behind as bait to satisfy and escape the pack of bloodthirsty wolves (which you could've sworn were doing river stomp and drinking out of a keg) that were stalking you; and you're hungry. So as you drag your sorry butt through the brush you see some juicy looking black berries; you grab one, eat it, and decide it's awesome and you want more. So you keep stuffing your face. After about twenty berries or so, you realize things have gotten brighter and you must be tripping balls. As you enjoy the pretty lights as a mild distraction from the huge withdrawal you're in from all the gutter glitter, suddenly your vision blurs and your throat starts burning. Eventually your pitiful mass begins to convulse and your heart races until it stops; and just before the blackness completely takes over, you realize that even after all the drug running, all the cartels and border-patrol, you were taken out by a plant.

That plant is the atropa belladonna, also known as the deadly nightshade. This is the most lethal green thing that grows out of the soil in the western hemisphere. Every part of this malicious five-foot-tall killer is deadly. Seriously. Two to three of those luscious, sweet-tasting berries are enough to take out a small child; while ten to twenty will take out a full blown ponce. And if you happen to be enough of an idiot to actually eat any other part of the plant, such as the leaves, well, it only takes a bite of one of those bad boys to send you to that short-bus in the sky.

This freakishly normal looking doom bringer can dilate your pupils, blur your vision, make your heart race, cause a loss of balance, slur your speech, create hallucinations, make you convulse, and remove your ability to take a potty break (full urinary retention and constipation...I shudder just thinking about that one). The fun stuff is that all of that is survivable. How this badass plant kills is by taking your nervous system and saying, "Hey, guess what? No more breathing or heart rate control for you! Bwahahahahaha!" Yeah, it either gives you a heart attack or suffocates you.

Perhaps it's fitting then that atropa belladonna means "do not betray a beautiful lady."

> EpicError

Wikipedia

20 Deadliest Plants on the Planet

I Dream of Muffins

Critically acclaimed director Christopher Nolan, famous for such works as The Dark Knight and Memento, has brought us another piece of cinematic brilliance in the form of Inception. Starring Ken Watanabe, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Ellen Page, Nolan's latest work doesn't disappoint.

I'll admit, I had high expectations going into this movie due to the fact that I have never seen Mr. Nolan put forth a less than incredible movie, and given the star-studded cast he had to work with, my expectations were launched to new heights. What truly surprised me about this is that these were not only met, but they were completely blown out of the water.

At 148 minutes (2 hours and 28 minutes for those of you who are too lazy to convert it yourself), this movie doesn't sit still for even a second. It consistently pushes itself forward in such a smoothly streamlined manner that you'll find yourself sitting on the edge of your seat, waiting for what happens next.

The movie follows a man named Cobb who introduces himself as an "extractor" - someone who goes into people's dreams to find their secrets for anyone who can pay. After a job goes bad, he is offered a new job by the very man he had been trying to con, in addition to a very motivating deal-sweetener. The majority of the movie revolves around developing Cobb's character, revealing more of his past and why he does what he does. It is such a compelling and involved story that, despite its runtime, I never once felt like the movie went slack or lost steam. That's all I'll say about the story, because this is a movie you really need to see, and giving any more information would be doing you all an injustice.

The cast worked incredibly well together. DiCaprio and Page partake in interactions that blur the line between rehearsed and genuine. However, Tom Hardy and Joseph Gordon-Levitt stole the show in my opinion. They have a repartee so witty and dry that you can tell they had a phenomenal time playing their parts, which resulted in an extremely enjoyable viewing experience.

On the technical side of things, this movie is top-notch. Nolan is a fantastic director, and this movie is no exception. His style is refined and professional, and doesn't fail to capture everything needed to make a perfect scene. The fight sequence that takes place in the hotel hallway was possibly the best choreographed and directed fight I've ever seen - Nolan's gift at work. In addition, the visual effects were stunning and subtle. The CG was seamlessly integrated into the live filming, and it all melded together beautifully.

My only qualm with the filming style was the use of the slow-motion camera. Now, having watched the movie the whole way through, I understand the reason behind using it, and really appreciate it, but initially it was a little off-putting. However, this is only a minor blemish on the portrait of this shining example of film and art.

In a market that has been flooded with movies focused on base level humor, excessive special effects, and a complete lack of story, Inception rises above the crowd to bring a truly mind-bending and awe-inspiring tale. This is most definitely the movie of the summer, if not the year.

>Pawn

Muffin Minions

Okay, so a few weeks ago I talked about Pixar's supremacy in the realm of modern animation in the movie industry. During this I had a quick, less-than-loving comment referring to Shrek, another animated movie series which finally (thank the gingerbread man) has ended. Shrek, along with other (better movies) such as Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, and How to Train Your Dragon, have all been produced by DreamWorks Animation. DreamWorks is essentially Pixar's younger, less attractive brother. While they have had their share of witty, fun-loving films, they've always seemed to be trailing behind the masterful, moving story telling Pixar seems able to slip seamlessly into their movies; like a chocolate laxative into a batch of brownie batter. So DreamWorks has always been the one who gets the brief spotlight whilst their bowels are opened in the middle of the party; but now, while they sit on the toilet, they finally get a laugh as they watch Pixar walk under the bucket of iced pickle-juice they set on top of the door frame.

That wonderful bucket of formaldehyde is Despicable Me. Now, given DW's past exploits, I expected I would have seen the greatest moments this movie had to offer within the previews. I was happily mistaken. While some of the funniest moments were encapsulated by the trailers, I was also pleasantly surprised with several unexpected laughs.

Now, I should make a quick note before continuing: DreamWorks only had a small part in the making of this film, Universal and the creator's of Ice Age were the main brains of the operation; but I still have to give DW props for supporting them. Now, continuing on.

The plot was also deeper and generally better than expected. While I wouldn't say it "tugged at the heart-strings" (which, by the way, makes me wonder what people mean by that phrase. What are "heart-strings"? Why would we want something tugging at them? It sounds painful and potentially fatal if you ask me.), it did add a level of depth and compassion to the main character Gru. I think this is where the movie truly triumphs, as it does an incredible job of the somewhat bland and standard "bad guy to good guy" theme. There are parts where you truly feel sorry for Gru, and others where you're happy for him. Now, for those of you wondering where those "unexpected laughs" were that I mentioned earlier; well, you can wrap duct tape around your vocal cords and wait a sentence or so.

While Gru and the three orphan girls remain the main focus, about 80% of the comic relief comes from the Minions (those little yellow dudes in the movie poster above). These guys are hilarious. They're quirky, rowdy, dispensable, fun-loving, and speak a great form of gibberish (somewhere between the Sims and Mario). Funnily enough, my favorite thing about them was the fact that they each had bland, individual names (Tim, Bob, Mark, Phil etc.). Almost all the movie's laughs involve their yellow antics in some fashion, and I think DreamWorks could easily make a short film dedicated to them; and I would make sure to see it.

The other factor that truly makes Despicable Me great is the art design. Everything has that Ice Age / DreamWorks feel, but seems more polished and refined. What truly got me, aside from the originality of characters such as Gru, Vector and the Minions, was the environment design. I found myself somewhat awestruck by the rocket launch sequence, but then again, I'm a sucker for any and all things outer-space.

Despicable Me is a fantastic film chalk-full of lovable characters, great humor, and satisfying story-telling that sums up to one worthwhile film I would highly suggest going to see...if for nothing else other than the cookie-army-robots...that's right, cookie-army-robots! I can't even make up something that outlandish.

Score one for DreamWorks (and Universal as well as Illumination Entertainment).

> EpicError

Star Ocean: Till the End of Muffins

In this bit, I will be reviewing the longest game I've ever played. Exclusively for the PS2, Star Ocean 3: Till the End of Time is still one of the few games that I have not beaten, but have put over 120 hours of gameplay into. Given, half the time I didn't know what I was doing, so about 50 hours of that is my dicking around without a clue in the world, but it's still a remarkably hefty game.

This is your basic, plot driven, Final Fantasy style game, which comes as little surprise, seeing as how it's developed by Square Enix. In short, you journey around multiple maps plagued with monsters (unless you're in a town), with random encounters in which you have to fight off said monsters, or run away, to survive/progress. However, unlike in the FF series, you can avoid encounters in this game a good deal easier. The levelling up system is a bit different as well, not totally sure it works as well with the game as the whole sphere chart thing with Final Fantasy X, but whatever, it does it's job and it does it well enough. You have the stand in for magic, called Symbology, which holds a hefty role in the entire plot of the game, and is a great help in the battles you fight. Probably my favorite part of the gameplay itself is the battle system. It's based on a real time fight environment, with a menu screen that pauses the game so that you can select an item, symbology invocation, or whatever else you might want from the selection available. It works, more or less, and can still provide a decent challenge unless you grind as horribly as I do in RPG's.

Anyway, gameplay isn't the strongest point of this game, despite it being overall functional and flowing. No, this is a game that you play for the story, and what a story it is. It is years upon years in the future, not completely sure the year. You are the character named Fayt, a college student from Earth who's dad is a brilliant scientist in the field of Symbological genetics. His cousin's name is Sophia, whose parents work with Fayt's dad in his lab. They're on vacation on Hyda IV when it is attacked. You follow Fayt and... well, consistently Fayt, as he tries to get his dad back and, of course, save the universe or something. That doesn't really become clear on the first disk, though, but rather soon into the second disk it does. I'm not going to go much farther because it's a great story and I don't want to ruin it for the ones who would actually play the game.

Back to the gameplay itself. The enemies in SOTET are a brilliant array of well developed monsters and villains, ranging from little mushrooms that hop around and shoot supersonic waves at you that make you go totally loopy, to giant dragons that have the wisdom of a thousand lifetimes and stomp all over your face, to the well oiled battle machines of the various powers of the time that seem to all want to kill/capture you. The battles may seem to play out the same when you first look at them, but they all are unique in their own way. Different strategies and abilities can be utilized to take down each group of enemies as they are encountered and then you'll learn new abilities and have to pick and choose which ones you want based on the character customization interface.

There are eleven total playable characters, each with a unique fighting style and repertoire of abilities (except for Cliff and Mirage, but what can ya do). Each ability can be strung together with others based on the placement and usage of each, and you can pull off massive damage and combos if timed correctly, reducing all who oppose you to tiny shiny pixels that disintegrate away. Combining tactics with your two AI battle partners can come in handy, and utilizing their strengths can work to your benefit.

Each of these characters also have a set of skills for inventing. The most useless and possibly greatest addition to the game that the developers made was the invention system. You can sign other npc inventors to your crew and have them invent items for you, which you receive a profit for every time they file a patent. It also provides a number of sidequests that bring usefulness to items that seem utterly meaningless otherwise, and can give a break to the endless carnage that otherwise ensues.

Overall, SOTET is possibly my favorite game ever made, and if it isn't, it ranks really high up there among them. The story telling is brilliant and well strung together. The battle system and character customization are intuitive and require tact, and the invention system is a quirky, but fun, addition to the game that allows the gathering of money in an unconventional way. For those of you who are RPG fans, I highly recommend getting this game, you will enjoy it despite the mediocre voice acting. For those of you who aren't RPG fans... start on something that doesn't completely tear your life away from you in order to finish it in any reasonable amount of time.

>Ryft

Historic Muffins: Moon Nazi Hopscotch

It's history time! And what better way to learn history than to have an undereducated, irreverent slob explain it to you with profanity and pictures.

Let me lay something out here: without Hitler, we would have never landed on the Moon.

Because Nazi Germany invested so much time and effort into developing batshit-crazy weapons technology, when World War II ended, thousands of German scientists - experts in jet engine technology, automotive design, rocket propulsion technology - were left abandoned. Scientists like Werner Von Braun. These scientists were almost immediately snapped up by the Allied powers, and soon American and Russian weapons development was directly affected by research done under Hitler's command.

Fast forward to the Cold War. ICBMs have become a reality. Russia has so many, they're fucking mailing them to Cuba. Kennedy is waving his arms on national television, calling the Russians his "little bitches" and proclaiming that America would put a "bad motherfucker on that goddamn moon, and show those Ruskies what 'fer".

1969. Kennedy's been dead six years, and Neil Armstrong is playing hopscotch on the Moon and flipping off Moscow from space.

All because Adolf Hitler was a mass-murdering asshole.

Operation Paperclip: What The Fuck Was That All About

How the V2 Rocket Is Like The Most Important Goddamn Rocket Ever

Operation Osoaviakhim: The Russians Pulled The Same Shit As Us, But They're Commies

Patriot Muffin

So, it's obviously now two days after July 4th, so for those of you who will give me crap for writing this now; well, you are obviously not American enough to be reading this. However, if you are not American enough, I know a film that can rip out your inner Canadian, tie it to a monster truck with the good old red, white, and blue and launch it into an Olympic-sized swimming pool full of cheeseburgers and Red Bull.

Independence Day is perhaps the greatest patriotic film of all time. Why is this, you may ask? This is because of the plot, which I am about to summarize fantastically (so yeah, spoiler alert and all that junk).

A race of hyper-advanced, genocidal, resource sucking, planet killing, bio-suit sporting, telepathic alien freaks roll up to our shiny little blue ball of mud and decide they want our dirt. So they park their 1/4 moon-sized space ship in orbit, and send death-discs down to rain super-napalm on our cities. Now, as far as the movie is concerned most of Earth's nations on the planet don't do anything other than chill and watch as their little civilizations are taken to flamey-ville. All nations, that is, except America.

America sees these big discs chilling over our cities and says, okay aliens, perhaps we'll see if we can be friends, and then take your technology; but of course the space freaks don't like our hovering light-bright, and decide to level New York, LA, and Washington. Now obviously, this pisses us off a little bit. Will Smith is the first to show how we really feel, giving an American-style Earth greeting. Then the re-incarnation of JFK steps in and says hey, my hair is too awesome for me to die, so let's kill 'em; right after I give the most patriotic speech of all time (yeah, that's right Lincoln..."Four-score and seven years ago"...psssssh, you've got nothing).

So Will and the world's smartest hippie/computer scientist roll up to the mother ship in a fighter we jacked in the 50's and kick alien rear with Windows 3.1 and a nuke. This sub-sequentially screws over all the little ships hovering around our rock, and America decides to be a champ and tell all the other nations: "Hey, fly a fighter-jet into the glowing green thing." (Which, by the way, further proves the theory that the weak point is always the thing to which the bad guys draw the most attention). This causes them to explode, and the world is saved thanks to good old Uncle Sam.

Now, at this point you should be saying to yourself: "This sounds like the greatest movie ever, and I would gladly pay my monies to see it." And you, fine reader, would be correct. This film is a patriotic cake baked with great acting, iced with amazing special effects, and sprinkled with great emotion and humor. It should be a mandatory viewing experience every year on the day it's named after, if not several other times all year.

Just remember aliens: We're America, and we'll wreck you :D

> EpicError

The Muffins Have Arrived

Part 2 of 2!

So, after giving these albums a thorough listen, I can definitely recommend all three. What's that you say? You want more? You want MOAR?

Of course you do. You need me to tell you what musics you should listen to. Just in case you missed part 1, I reviewed the most recent releases from these artists to prepare you all for their latest works.

So, without further ado, I give you part 2.

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The new release from punk rockers Children 18:3 is entitled "Rain's 'A Comin'", and it's a very well done album. Everything has been stepped up a notch on this release.

It opens with the title track, a slower, heavier effort featuring grungy guitars and gang vocals. However, they quickly pick up the pace to give you the punk you all know and love with track number 2, "Cover Your Eyes". This might be my favorite song on the album, as it brilliantly showcases everything that Children 18:3 is: a punk band with vocalists who harmonize perfectly, a guitarist who knows his way around the fretboard, a bassist who can really pump the low end, and a drummer who sets the pace and doesn't let it slow for a second.

Lyrically, it is exactly what you'd expect from this band, and it's excellent. With challenging lyrics and catchy rhymes, they boys and girl of Children 18:3 have once again shown their songwriting skills.

The only thing that caught me really off-guard about this album were the two instrumental tracks. The first appears only four songs into it. Now, it's not a bad song by any means, I'm just not used to any instrumentals appearing on a punk album. The second instrumental closes the album, and it's a wonderful ragtime piano piece. I absolutely loved it, and you will, too. This album is a great release and a lot of fun to listen to, so go pick it up.

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Next up we have the new masterpiece from Australia quintet Parkway Drive dubbed "Deep Blue". These boys seem to have a thing for the ocean (which may have something to do with where they were raised), and it really works well for them. "Deep Blue" lived up to and surpassed my expectations, and this is why.

Parkway Drive has followed a fairly similar pattern from release to release, and it's served its purpose in delivering two solid albums thus far. This third full-length release follows suit and opens with an atmospheric intro track. After this 1 minute 4 second delay, they grab you by the throat with the pummeling onslaught that is "Unrest". These boys put the pedal to the metal and just keep on going. The standout song on this album is the third one on the album, "Sleepwalker". Musically, this track shows the mastery Parkway Drive has in songwriting. Charged with emotion and passion, the guitars, bass, and drums fuel the intensity in the growls and screams Winston McCall emits.

An aspect of this album I truly enjoyed was the use of clean guitars on several of the songs. I felt that this showed a more mature and diverse side of Parkway Drive. It showed that they'd really grown as musicians in the space between "Horizons" and "Deep Blue". If you want an example of this growth, check the track "Alone". It displays what they can do when they decide to change things up beautifully. All in all, this album not only improved on what they'd done in "Horizons", but surpassed it. "Deep Blue" is a real competitor for metal album of the year, and it will take a lot to beat it out.

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Finally, we have "Attack of the Wolf King" from the metalcore outfit Haste the Day. As their fifth album, they certainly had a lot of time to work out the kinks in their musical style over the years, and it shows.

The album opens up with "Wake Up the Sun", and they do something that I've never seen a non-progressive metal band do well: they do the whole song in 5/8 time. For the less musically inclined among us, that means that each measure has five beats, rather than the standard four. Normally, I wouldn't even mention this, but it is such a departure from the safe formula they've used and mastered over the years that I found it worth noting.

Before I continue, I should note that this is a concept album about a Lion King protecting a flock of sheep from the wicked Wolf King. I say this because the second track on the album, "Dogs Like Vultures", plays up this aspect. I had a hard time picking out a standout track, but in the end, I had to go with "Travesty", because it portrays what Haste the Day is known for and what they've learned to do flawlessly. It's a strong metalcore track with sweeping guitars, crushing vocals, and pounding drums. Then the chorus hits with the wonderful melodic vocals of Mike Murphy, and the new kid on the block Scotty Whelan. Overall, this album is a great release that any metalcore fan can enjoy.

>Pawn

Muffin Bending

You see this here? This poster? This is pretty cool you might say. You might say this poster fills you with hopes and aspirations for a movie capable of living up to the amazing series it claims to be based on. If you would say this, or anything, even a negative something in a somewhat positive tone, you would be wrong. So wrong that not only would you feel the sting of regret burning in your wallet for spending money to be exposed to this travestry, but your children's-childrend's-children would wake up every morning wondering why their corneas were burning with the heat of ten-thousand O-class stars.

The Last Airbender is a cinematic tumor created by carcinogen M. Night Shyamalan. Technically, the abomination's name was originally to be the same as the absolutely fantastic series created by Nickelodion: Avatar: The Last Airbender, but that got screwed out when space Pocahontas rolled through on her glowing planet of sex-addicts (seriously, they "plugged-in" to like, every freakin' animal on the planet...that's just creepy) and took the first part of the title away from Shyamalan.

As I went to watch this puss-filled boil, my hopes were low. I had followed Avatar from beginning to end and was incredibly pessimistic about the movie living up to the series. And it's good I did so, otherwise I may have begun to choke the individual sitting in front of me in the theater, all the while thinking I was doing the honorable thing by putting them out of their misery.

The first painful thorn in my kidney were the actors. They weren't actors. They were about as good at acting as 120-proof vodka is at soothing a ruptured hemroid. Either emotionless or bipolar, they seemed to have no idea how to portray the potentially deep and compelling emotions they were supposed to be feeling; coming across as cardboard cut-outs I wanted to set on fire; savoring their transformation into ashes. The only one I would leave not-on-fire would be Shaun Toub, who (despite not being large enough around the waist) did a decent job of portraying Uncle Iroh. I'm sure he could have been better, had he not been surrounded by paste-eating retards.

The other iron stake slowly making its way through my pancreas was the story. Shyamalan decided to sum up a twenty-some episode season within 103 minutes. This did not go well. Major plot points were quickly skimmed over, while minor ones seemed to be over-emphasized. The movie felt rushed, incomplete, and left me guessing that, without having seen the series before-hand, I would have no idea what in the fire bending was going on.

And here we find the final splinter in my brain, the details. Shyamalan decided to take most of the wonderful details, chain them to a radiator in the basement, and forget about them. Here are the major ones I had issues with (I'd say spoiler alert, but I hope I've convinced you seeing this movie will shorten your life span): Firebenders cannot create fire from their fists (except for Iroh, who is apparently stronger than the fire-lord); The entire Fire Nation is Indian, and they all were missing their chops; Aang's name was pronounced Oong, in addition to the mispronunciation of every other name...oh, how I could go on and on and on. And you know what Shyamalan? If you're going to drown a character in a floating sphere of water...I mean, kill him; I think it would have been okay to let Oong use that GIANT BLOODY TSUNAMI TO ACTUALLY FREAKING WIPE OUT THE FLEET KILLING INNOCENT CIVILIANS!!!???

Shyamalan, I hope you implode.

> EpicError

Muffin Wrench

This is a bit of an older game now, with no shortage of reviews out there telling you that's it's great, game of the year, a life-changing epiphany waiting to happen, possibly the cure for ebola, or just a game worth sinking 12ish hours of your life into. But, I like this game, and I have a witty title that ties into the gameplay and muffins, so I'm writing it whether you like it or not. Even if you don't like horror games, play this, it's not horror, it's awesome, you can't help but like it, and if you don't, you may be a communist, and since this game has a retro 60ish feel to it, that means that by default you'll be exiled by your friends and neighbors and that the local gas station won't serve 'your kind' anymore, kinda like C3P0, yes, not liking this game would make you that annoying. But, if you're reading this, I'll assume you're not a commie, and you're not annoying, mainly so I can sleep at night knowing that the dirty reds aren't being entertained by my writing nor are they being guided through the capitalist petri dish that is America, rather that they are floundering around out there, trying to figure out why the hell radioshacks even exists, but, then, the average american might not even know that anymore. But I digress.

Though on a related topic similar to communism and broken down reactors that make entire cities uninhabitable, for some odd reason, we as human beings seem to have a strange fascination with wandering around a failed dystopian society whilst being the lone sane person left alive and killing everything else. And if this fantasy is one that you have every day at work, on your drive to wherever the hell it is that you decided to go, or simply when you're around other people, then Bioshock is likely a game that will fullfil your deepest desires and leave every other aspect of your life feeling comparatively empty. Is this to say that the game is a dream come true? Well, maybe, maybe not; while it will certainly fuck your dreams over with a steam powered blender and to a 50's era soundtrack just like in your twisted dystopian fantasies, it does have some drawbacks. It has no multiplayer: no co-op (which would have been awesome, like, crawling around Chernobyl fighting mutant commies awesome) , no versus, no CTF, nothing. To me that's a missed opportunity. But would you really want to share your dystopian fantasy world with your friends? No, of course you wouldn't, it's your dystopia, and all the miscreants in it are your bitches, and you're not in a sharing mood. Sharing is for commies anyway. But the lack of multiplayer is, sadly, not your perfect dystopia's worst flaw: the save system is. While it's not the horrendous holocaust grade trajedy that was the password system of old, it is something akin to finding out that the hot girl you just drunkenly hit on was your sister, or worse yet, your mom's sister; it's bad, game-breakingly bad. It makes dying more of an inconveinence than anything, or, in some cases, even the prefered method of playing the game. And only the commies prefer to play games by dying for mother russia; Americans survive, like McGyver, or Chuck Norris: we don't die like those commie death whores.

Oh, and you play Pipe Dream as a minigame; I'm not joking. I thought that had died with Windows 3.11, but, i guess if you're gonna have a minigame you can at least pick a classic and give it a slightly shiny new coat of paint. But it is a lump in an otherwise smooth and creamy milkshake of gaming goodness; but hey, some people like lumpy milkshakes as is their right, in America: but in Soviet Russia, milk shakes you.

Now, the good about this little, personal, communist free apocalypse. For one, it's beautiful; the Unreal 3 engine does a superb job of rendering this game, especially for the 360. It's not the prettiest game, especially not for the PC, but everything fits together perfectly. The art style is, well, art. This game could be put in a museum and, not only would it be the most badass piece of art there, but it would piss on the mona lisa and scare away the small children; basically, it's the perfect piece of art and a general improvement to society in general. But not only is it beautiful and a functional scarecrow for the elderly and the infantile, it's gameplay is fast paced (usually, with a few rare exceptions), well balanced, fluid (ok, the system's a bit clunky, but it works beautifully), atmospheric (the first five minutes of this game draw you in as nothing else before or since in my experience), stays fresh for the entire game (really, the game never gets old, and rarely repetitive), and is some of the most satisfying combat in a FPS game (possible exceptin being the Condemned games, but they're different, lets compare apples to apples here, or at least toasters to stainless steel toasters). But really, one of the greatest points of this game is it's plot, and the way it's told; you can't get this in any other medium: not movies, not books, maybe comics, but that's a stretch. It's phenomenal, I can't spoil anything for you, I won't, only a communist would do that; and if you have a friend that did spoil it for you, they're a communist, and you should email your state's governor to have them hauled off to a commie-camp, or at least start telling people that this friend has the herpes, everywhere, and is contagious, all the time, so that way people will avoid eye contact with them and treat everything they say as meaningless herpes induced alphabet vomit.

Essentially, if you enjoy, life, freedom, happiness, cars, and the right for every random person you meet to potentially be carrying a boomstick in their pocket and a miniature poodle in their purse, then you'll like this game, or at least enjoy it more than licking Oprah's fat rolls.