[Search Engine Terms come from an app in the Word Press dashboard. It tells you the terms that people are using in google to lead to your site. Most of ours are ultra depraved and horrible. And amusing to sick people like me.]

Dude, are you kidding me? The aisles are running full with the fluids spilled by fanboys and fangirls over Bayonetta.

I saw Tron when I was a little kid. And knowing how neurotic I was, it probably gave me nightmares. After I saw the second Terminator movie, I was convinced that every other child I interacted with was secretly a robot plotting my death. I’m not kidding.

Since it’s been so long, I really have no idea what the movie was about. That isn’t stopping me from being really stoked about the sequel. It’s got all the ingredients to make me excited for a movie. It’s got Hot Chicks In Latex. It’s got futuristic, maybe even retro-futuristic visuals. And it’s got The Dude. It’s a perfect storm. Watching the trailer is like snorting a line of Nerdboner Viagra. Check out the trailer below.

EL LINUS struck this week, giving us an hour of the weasel and his nasal voice. I’ve always found Ben to be a tremendous douchebag, and I mean that in a loving way. There has never been anything he wasn’t willing to do in the name of himself, and you have to appreciate that in a guy. Be it letting his daughter get shot, or owning Locke in a seedy hotel room, the dude plays for keeps. He’s a a shitbag you respect because of how far he will go to maintain his tenuous grip on power.

The interesting wrinkle that this week’s episode addressed is what happens to Benjamin Linus when he realizes that he’s been duped, ain’t had no power, and has been a rube for the past twenty or so years? The immediate answer is simple: he stabbed the shit out of Jacob, before his dumb ass was rolled into a fire. But I suppose I’m talking more about the emotional effects.

On the Island, Ben is totally busted as the dude who jabbed Jacob in the belly-guts with a knife. Miles rats him out after doing the creepy twitching thing with Jacob’s ashes and this severely pisses off Ilana. And not in the good way, because I know you’re thinking it may be enjoyable to get spanked by such an authoritative and sultry woman. No sir, she has a gun. So then she’s like, hey, Linus, dig your own grave while we go and eat mangoes and shit. TTYL, d00d.

What a busch league move by Ilana. Hasn’t she been watching this show at all? You leave Ben Linus alone for anything more than nine seconds and he’s going to get out of the situation somehow. He has a remarkable ability to escape certain doom. So while she’s letting him dig his own grave, y himself, with some bamboo shoot or something, good ole Smokey rolls up and chats up Linus.

The biggest revelation this week on LOST was something that no one seems to want to talk about. Smokey is a fucking Jedi! Did you see that shit? He unshackled Benjamin with nothing more than a cute little wink and a hand gesture. Isn’t anyone else amazed by this? I am. I mean, I knew LOST was awesome, but I had no idea that we were dealing with wielders of The Force! Good god damn.

So Smokey and Ben have a heart to heart. It’s all very touching but all I could think about is how Ilana, while she was eating her mango, had no idea that Smokey had approached. I mean, for the past six seasons, every time he went anywhere, Smokey roared and you could hear him from three miles away. Well, if she’s dumb enough to let him be, she may be deaf enough to not hear a rampaging pillar of black smoke. Smokey frees Ben’s ass and once again Ben flees and Ilana is like, “Oh fuck, maybe I should be watching the sociopath and not eating a mango” and chases after him.

The two of them talk, and they get into one of the overriding themes of the show, which is a person’s sense of purpose. Ben has been feeling legitimately ass-crushed since he thought that Jacob had been playing him for a fool. And when he found out he had been betrayed and his entire sense of duty was but a charade, he freaked the fuck out. All of the power he assumed he had, all of his existence was tied up in what he thought was his position as the leader of the Others. When this was dismissed, he wile’d out. Like, woah.

Benjamin isn’t the only one being a self-pitying asshole ever since they learned they weren’t a Unique Snowflake. My boyfriend, the inestimably gorgeous and immortal Richard Alpert, is afflicted with the same sense of Emotitis.

Emotitis is a disease that is fatal to one’s dignity and leaves them without any sense of pride. Where your self-respect once was, you find a puddle of wallowing and lack of self-worth. Many of those suffering from this disease also still use MySpace-esque pictures in their Facebook profile, post status updates that read things like “Gee whiz I can’t ever catch a break :-/” or “UGH today is the WORST”, and they use self-hate as a way to attract members of the sex they wish to copulate with.

So yeah, Dicky Alps is seriously suffering from that.

Ricardo dupes Hurley and Jack the Sexpot to follow him to the Blackrock, where we’re given confirmation of what we already knew: the dude can’t die. Everyone who Jacob touches receives a “Gift”, which explains Dick’s predicament, but is vague enough to create another thousand questions. Like, is everyone immortal? Or what are their gifts? Can Jack shoot lasers out of his asshole? And since he can’t die, he wants Jack to light the fuse of the dynamite he wishes to go kabloom with. What a shitty way to die, right? I mean, couldn’t Richard have found like, a bottle of pills somewhere and had Jack dump them down his throat? Jesus, explosion?

Richard is seeking obliteration because he as well as Ben feels betrayed by Jacob. Much like Linus claims, Dicky was told by Jacob that he was part of some enormous plan, and now that Deity-Dude-Guy has been stabbed and rendered ashes, he assumes that it was all a lie.

What a fool! How can you possible begin to conceive of God’s…I mean Jacob’s plan! You self-absorbed fuck!

Jack’s drinking the Destiny Kool Aid though, and he agrees to light the stick of dynamite. After staring out at the ocean and humming that Kings of Leon song from the Grey’s Anatomy commercials, he’s come to accept his totally-specialness in the grand schemes of everything. It’s just like in the Matrix when Cipher is like IF HE IS SPECIAL CAN HE TOTALLY DIE TRINITY?!, Jack knows he’s all Neo shit and the fuse won’t go off. And look at that, he’s fucking right.

Jack’s got some grand role to play in everything, and it seems by displaying that, he cures Dicky of his Fall Out Boy-Blues, though I assume Alpert will continue to wear eyeliner. Can’t win all the battles.

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My friend Buddy and I have been friends for ten years, and the two of us are legitimate Final Fantasy fanboys. In fact, we met on a Final Fantasy message board. We’ve been texting back and forth as we play, and this a good indication of some of my initial feelings. I’m in green, Buddy is in gray. I also spell fal’Cie wrong, because it isn’t a word constructed by humans, but rather by grammatical devils.

[Variant Covers is a column every Tuesday that breaks down the various titles coming out that week in the world where Jean Grey dies over and over again, only to return as a hot-ass redhead. Again.]

Cable #24

I think tomorrow may be the day when I hope aboard the X-Train again. I haven’t been following those kooky batch of freaks for a while now. The X-Verse has become so convoluted and expensive to follow that instead of trying to keep up with it, I just imagine days when Wolverine used to drink beer in Australia and get crucified, and everyone was hopping through the Siege Perilous. The good ole days!

Cable this week is the beginning of the X-Event that hath been dubbed Second Coming, and if I had to say of what, I’d guess: Jean Grey. It’s not the most complicated guess, given that Cable has been escorting around a super-special mutant with red hair and green eyes for the past couple of years. Also, last year at New York Comic-Con, when Matt Fraction was asked who Hope was, he was like “Uh, she’s got red hair and green eyes” and then he laughed.

Seriously.

So shit be poppin’ off with Jean Grey and Cable, having finally returned from the timestream, or an alternate reality, or wherever the fuck they were. And so I figure it’s worth checking out. The whole Hope and Cable storyline is an example of why comic books are both absurd, and great. Let’s deconstruct what’s going on here.

Cable is protecting Hope. Who is Cable? Cable is the son of Cyclops and Jean Grey’s clone, Madelyne Pryor. Alright it’s pretty fantastical. So then, Cable is shot into the future and shit because of some techno-0rganic virus that couldn’t be treated in the present day. This was just an excuse to make him look XTREME back in the 1990’s, but whatever. Then Cable comes back from the future, and is older than his Dad.

Sweet.

Then there’s Hope. This chick was the only baby mutant born after the Scarlet Witch went all bonkers and willed the mutants out of existence. And oh, she happens to have red hair and green eyes. Then she jumps into the future with Cable. Dude cannot, simply, will not get enough of the future. He fucking loves it. As an aside, when is the “future” for Cable? If he grew up fifty-zillion years in the future, is present day the past? Whatever.

So there’s Cable, Cyclops’ son. And he’s protecting the reincarnated manifestation of the chick his Mom was cloned from. It’s pretty fucking fantastic, and this is the sort of shit that could only happen in comic books. As I mentioned, the X-Books and myself have not been BFFs for a long time, but the whole culmination of Jean Grey returning has got my attention.

There’s nothing really else I’m checking out in the Marvel Universe this week, though there’s the usual Spider-Men and Deadpools afoot. Does anyone check out any of the fourteen Deadpool titles? I’m intrigued, and I figure there has to be one worth reading.

Weekly World News #3

One of the stalwarts of grocery shopping when I was a kid was the deli counter guy always giving me a piece of cheese. In retrospect, the pervert in me wonders if he was just trying to tap my Mom’s ass. Oh, how cute, he gave my son some food and look at him with glee. And look how he handles the meat! Fuck, I need my meds.

The other staple of grocery shopping with Mom was the inevitable begging for a copy of the Weekly World News. I’ve always been a sucker for ridiculous stories about aliens and freaks, and Bat Boys. Which seems pretty obvious, given the fact that I write a weekly comic book column. This was far before the internet, so I didn’t have dope columns on conspiracies and shit to read every week. I had to get my fill from the ole Weekly World News.

I haven’t read any of the comic iterations of WWN, but I’m glad that this comic is out there. Clearly having read this as a child has warped my mind in unforeseen ways, and it gives me comfort that it shall be doing the same to other little children. Or maybe just fat fanboys like myself who can’t let go of childhood nostalgia.

Superman: Last Stand of New Krypton #1

Superman has spent the last god knows how many months embroiled in some legitimate bullshit on New Krypton. What’s New Krypton? Oh, just some fancy new planet for the Kryptonians to live on that is opposite the Earth in orbit around the sun.

Yeah, fuck that. Even if you hate on Superman, you understand something simple. Superman is dope because he’s the lone survivor of a demolished planet, trying to make sense of his place in the universe. As I’ve always said, and I love because of this, he is the emo existential crisis personified. And I’m emo, and constantly in some sort of existential crisis. When you bring a zillion million Supermen into the fold, all of a sudden they’re not as cool.

Just like Jedi, or those douchebags from the Matrix sequels.

So finally, Superman is throwing down with General Zod – yes he’s back – and all sorts of other Super-dbags in this one-shot, that is setting up the War of the Supermen storyline this Spring. Sweet. If you’re in charge of the next Superman movie and you have the misfortune of reading this column, pay attention. This is exactly what Superman needs to be doing. Fighting shit. Ignore Bryan Singer’s movie where he was Superlifter and cried a lot and sired a bastard child. Superman needs people to punch. I don’t care if they’re robots, or other straggler Kryptonians.

And judging by the cover to Last Stand of New Krypton, he’s going to be fighting both. Perfect.

I picked up Final Fantasy XIII last night at midnight, and I figure I’d fire off my initial impressions. There’s a lot to get into, but the most resounding thing so far is that the story is retarded. Now, I’m only in the first chapter, and I’d like to emphasize it could and probably will get better.

But so far, I don’t think I’ve ever been this apathetic towards the characters in the beginning of a Final Fantasy before.

Everything is overwrought and ridiculous. Everyone is crying and making epic proclamations and acting like emo kids. The problem is that I’m not invested in these characters yet, and so when they cry and the dramatic music swells, I just roll my eyes. I’m all for in medias res, but so far the narrative is fractured between three different strands, and all of them are vague and insubstantial. Terms are getting thrown around, everyone is chasing down a loved one, and I’m standing in the middle of the room yelling WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON.

I expect the storyline to get better, but I think I would be caring more if they didn’t throw me into some overblown confrontation while never bothering to get me invested in the characters, or the complicated mechanics of the game’s world. If I don’t know the characters, and I have to dive into a glossary every four seconds just to decipher the ridiculous names for everything, I’m going to be more confused than empathetic.

[pic : source]

It’s fucking weird out today. Something’s up. Massachusetts feels like it exists on an inhabitable planet. Which is really odd, since the shit and the snow and the sleet and the muck had convinced me we were on some awful amalgam of Hoth and Dagobah. I’ll take it though. The skies are blue, the air doesn’t stink of frost and snow, and the wind only makes my nipples slightly hard. Knowing New England we’ll be struck by an unforgiving blizzard next week, but who the fuck cares. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Monday Morning Commute. Every Monday I’m going to detail the various things I’m either currently or will be watching, reading, playing, and listening to in the next seven days. It’s Monday. You’ve got a long week of school, work, or compulsive masturbation to get through. Tell me the arts that you’re indulging in, to stave off suicide.

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Came across more Fallout: New Vegas pictures courtesy of All Games Beta via PC Gamer scans. In a post Final Fantasy XIII / Mass Effect 2 world, there’s nothing I’m more excited for. I recently cracked open Fallout 3, of which I still haven’t done a shitload, and I remembered why I loved it so much. There’s something so hauntingly enjoyable about wandering a decimated, desolate land.

I’m ready to rock. At first I was hesitant, since it isn’t being developed by Bethesda, but rather by Obsidian. And if I hold Obsidian accountable for anything, it’s churning out the shitty sequel to Knights of the Old Republic, and ruining my Star Wars dreams. However, I didn’t realize that the motherfuckers at Obsidian include the founder of the team who made the original Fallout.

Well then! Alright, let’s rock. Head over to All Games Beta for all the scans.

The reckoning is upon me! The day I have been waiting for! As prophesied by uh, release dates and press releases. Final Fantasy XIII. Shit be droppin’ off at midnight, and I’ll be standing there in line with sweaty nerd palms.

There’s nothing more I can say about this game until I’ve actually played it, other than I’m stoked and my genitals swell at the thought of playing it. If you find me passed out in a pile of Diet Mountain Dew cans and covered in Chez-It crumbs, just leave me be. Spring Break kicks off for me tomorrow, and I have a date with a Playstation 3 and Bahamut.

Holy sweet Jesus Christ, the new Iron Man 2 trailer makes me throw rope everywhere. It’s got everything to put a Tony Stark fanboy like myself into a state of rapture so powerful I want to explode with nerdgasm. Alright, so Mickey Rourke is either going to be cheeseball villain perfection to some, and unbearable goof to others. He’s commentary about God and blah blah and the crappy accent? I dig it, but I can see why you wouldn’t.

All I know is that the moment when Stark takes   Iron Man armor out of a suitcase and it binds onto him? Pure technogasm sex. No, seriously. As a gadget fiend, I was fapping furiously and unrepentantly. One of my favorite aspects of the first movie was all the toys and technology Stark employs. The clicking and clinking of armor in the first one was sex to me, and the suitcase armor in this trailer gives the same service to my nerd-nads.

Also euphoric? Scarlett Johansson as a righteous redhead, what looks like to be some derivative of the Crimson Dynamos, and fucking War Machine. I need this shit, now. Check out the trailer below.