One of the reasons I’ve preferred 360 this generation over my PS3 is because the PSN sucks rotten balls. Sweaty, post-jog balls. The 360 has offered an integrated experience. I really feel like I’m logging into a community. Whereas with PS3, you’re floating in some decentralized, sleek universe. It’s gorgeous, but I just feel like I’m not within some sort of beautiful hall of nerdy sweaty douchebags like myself. I enjoy how 360’s online component is centralized, and it’s not a bunch of companies doing their own thing.

Some Sony Big Wig Guy Importantatron dude realizes the same thing:

Via Destructoid:

I think we were late to offer the platform-level support, to make the online functionality work at that level,” spills Yoshida. “We made the prior decision that you do not introduce the common centralized network names into every experience, so publishers made their own. That was fine at the start, but as more and more games have online functionality you need a unified approach.

Well, it’s always refreshing to see a company admit a mistake. The next part is fixing it! Because between Blu Ray, Sony not screwing you over proprietary hard drives like Microsoft, and gorgeous exclusives like Uncharted and God of War and Ratchet and Clank, even my deep 360 fanboy-ism is beginning to quiver. All it’s going to take is Mass Effect going multi-console and a viable online community for me to jump ships. Ian Drinkwater, he’s a fickle beast.

Well, you know how I pioneered the “Supermanfuck!”

If you’ve forgotten, it’s when you’re having sex in the missionary position. And you lay down on your boyfriend/girlfriend, and you put both hands out like you’re flying. Assuming the iconic Superman mid-flight position. It’s brilliant. Still haven’t tried it.

Anyways.

I’m now combining it with my crush of the moment, Christina Hendricks. I’ve decided she’s literally the perfect woman to share your performance of the Supermanfuck with. Why?

Sam and I were watching an episode of Mad Men, and some guy is making out with Joan (her character). And because of her ample bosoms, the dude is literally floating above her. He’s got to be five feet in the air, resting on her cleavage. That’s how much of a bosom this beautiful woman has. And it has hit me, she is perfect for this position. If you can land on top of Christina Hendricks, and you hit the Supermanfuck!, you’ll literally find yourself flying above the most gorgeous woman on television.

You go, Superman!

I’m from Boston, so I’m torn on Curt Schilling. The dude delivered us two World Series championships. But he’s also a loud-mouthed blowhard conservative. Being from Boston I’m a child-aborting, same-sex kissing monster. But there is one thing I can assure you, Warcraft is going to break Curt Schilling.

Why? I’ll tell you. Yesterday, Curt Schilling said that he was considering a run at Ted Kennedy’s vacant senate seat. When pressed on it today however, Schilling said that while he was serious, it was going to take some serious thought. Why? According to Steve Buckley on WEEI radio today, it’s because a lot of his money is tied up in 38 Studios, his gaming company. And what are they developing? A fucking MMO. Oh Curt Schilling, you should have given me that money! I probably would have used it to buy an autograph from you.

A lot of Curt Schilling’s money is tied up in a gaming company, that seriously thinks it can compete with WoW, WoW2, and the Star Wars MMO.

Warcraft will break Curt Schilling if this is true. And they will dance on his smoldering remains.

As I mentioned before, the “Welcome to the Future” category is based off of inspiration from reading Warren Ellis’ Doktor Sleepless. It seems fitting then, that it appears his crazy insight is about to become true. In DS, there is the Clatter. What is the Clatter? Peep it:

Clatter is a wireless IM Lens instant messaging system built on to a soft contact lens. Clatter differs from other, commercial lens services by being open source and “riding” other services to create free cross-platform access.

It was created by John Reinhardt/Doktor Sleepless before he left for the Amazon.

Shriekygirls piggyback their shriekyware connections on Clatter signals.

In other words, it’s an instant messaging system that you see in front of you. This is futuristic sci-fi nonsense, right?

Not according to this news article at the IEEE Spectrum:

In the Terminator movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character sees the world with data superimposed on his visual field–virtual captions that enhance the cyborg’s scan of a scene. In stories by the science fiction author Vernor Vinge, characters rely on electronic contact lenses, rather than smartphones or brain implants, for seamless access to information that appears right before their eyes.

These visions (if I may) might seem far-fetched, but a contact lens with simple built-in electronics is already within reach; in fact, my students and I are already producing such devices in small numbers in my laboratory at the University of Washington, in Seattle [see sidebar, “A Twinkle in the Eye”]. These lenses don’t give us the vision of an eagle or the benefit of running subtitles on our surroundings yet. But we have built a lens with one LED, which we’ve powered wirelessly with RF. What we’ve done so far barely hints at what will soon be possible with this technology.

Welcome to the motherfucking future. Where you’ll be able to see like the Terminator, and chat with your friends while you close your eyes waiting for sleep.

Last night, Pepsibones asked me if I had heard about Guy Ritchie. Yeah, I said, the dumb ass is directing the Lobo movie. Which is going to excite my fourteen year old self. Lobo was awesome back in the day, because he was a dumb swearing piece of shit who stabbed stuff. I was fourteen. Hopped up on testosterone and giggling at boobs. This dude understood me.

I convey to Pepsibones that I thought Lobo sucked now, when he hit me with:

Yeah, but did you know he was created as a commentary on Wolverine and other ridiculous anti-heroes?

I was aware of that, but it only was made vaguely known to me after I had evolved out of my primordial testosterone madness. Into my uh, post-mordial, testosterone semi-madness. And that said, I wasn’t the only boner-sporting adolescent who completely missed the message, according to the guy behind Lobo’s popularity, Keith Giffen:

Via Lobo’s Wiki:

I have no idea why Lobo took off,” Giffen once said in an interview. Referring to the 1990s incarnation of Lobo he created, he said, “I came up with him as an indictment of the Punisher, Wolverine, hero prototype and somehow he caught on as the high violence poster boy. Go figure”

No idea? I can help you dude. Because people always miss the point! Especially in mainstream culture. Maybe in indie comics or Focus Feature films the point is gotten, over-analyzed and then thrown to the wolves. But shit like Lobo? C’mon. It was marketed towards teenage boys who wanted to see gunshots and swears. It’s ironic, how the very medium you used to make your commentary turned against you! People always miss the point. The Dark Knight was just about Batmobiles, the Matrix was just about guns and kung-fu, and Fight Club was about people punching one another.

There isn’t much room for social commentary when dealing with us mouth-breathing teenage boys.

The pile of money that Blizzard execs use to wipe their ass and snort their coke with just got a little larger. That’s right, today the long-awaited Faction Changes!!! went live. Which means that you can now change your fruity night-elf hunter named “Leggolazz” into a Tauren hunter named “Leggolaughz”.

For thirty fucking dollars! Not bad!

God damn, Blizzard knows how to make them ducets. They know we’ll pay for name changes, they know we’ll pay $40 to watch a god damn live stream of their press conferences. Of course we’ll pay to transmute our dwarf mage into a blood-elf! DUH. I can’t even fault the bastards, they have me wrapped around their finger too. In fact, faction changes ain’t the last thing comin’! Soon we’re getting inter-alliance race changes. For money. Of course.

Too slow Blizz, I would have paid for a year ago!

Last year I used a three way swap between friends to get myself a Draenei hunter. I was tired of being all beautiful and female (this is before sex changes, which yes now do exist for money) and night-elfy. I traded a copy of WotLK to a friend, who then traded his warrior to another guy, who gave me his Draenei hunter.

No, I’m not fucking lying.

Blizz, they know us, they know us all too well. Soon they’ll capitalize on that shit too.

Remember guys, when rival developer teams engage in a cock-measuring contest, there’s only one outcome for the gamers: Awesomeness.

Apparently the teams behind Metal Gear Solid: Rising for the 360/PS3 and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker for the PSP aren’t too fond of one another. Why’s that? Take it away, Kojima:

“The reason why I say they are not good friends is because the PSP is working day and night to make it even better than MGS4, but of course they can’t do it because of a lot of restrictions,” he tells Gamepro. “On the other hand, the Rising team is using loads of money and loads of capacity and hardware specs.”

The Peace Walker bros are constrained to budgets and other logical concepts. However the MGS: Rising team probably spends the equivalent of the Peace Walker budget just modeling Raiden’s fruity ninja-stripper boots. I can only imagine how much money the Rising team has just spent on tickle-fights and other getaway retreats shooting guns and building absurdity Post-Modern Paper-Mache monuments to Hideo Kojima.

Hopefully their utter disdain for one another pushes them both into making ballin’ games. I’ve never owned a PSP, but with Kojima jacking off over how awesome Peace Walker is going to be, picking up the portable continues to tempt me. Now, back to the cock-measuring!

How the fuck did this shit get by me? I guess I’m not a soda afficinado. In fact, I sort of just grip it and rip it. I’m a junkie, I don’t have time to be investigating. I just need to consume before I get the shakes. I did some interneting today, and came across this:

For the first time in the brand’s history, Mountain Dew is introducing a flavored line extension available exclusively in a diet version.

Diet Mountain Dew UltraViolet, on store shelves for a limited time for 12 weeks beginning August 10, combines the light citrus flavor of Diet Mountain Dew with a refreshing juicy rush of mixed berries without the calories.

The product will be supported with a full slate of TV and radio advertising developed by BBDO NY.

Well anyhoo, I’ve been seeing this shit everywhere now. It’s on all the shelves, and I’m pounding it like a motherfuckah. You have to understand, I drink liters and liters of Diet Dew a day. The ability to throw in a little different taste amidst What Will Eventually Kill Me is fantastic. I recommend this to any fellow diet cola junkie, looking for some variety amongst their addiction. You only have twelve weeks until it’s back to can after can of bland ole Mr. Regular Chemical Death.

Here’s a shitty trailer to the sequel to that shitty movie, Boondock Saints. I don’t understand the rampant cumming over Boondock Saints. I remember it being an absolute explosion here in WICKED AWESOME Boston, and it really confused me. It was a shitty Tarantino rip-off with like OMFG blood and violence. YAWN.

Boondock Saints is part of a question which has stumped me for years though, and feel free to weigh in:

What’s the most overrated piece of cinematic garbage of the last ten years, Boondock Saints or Donnie Darko?

I’ve been stumped forever.

At some point in my life, I had to make a solemn pledge to myself. There came a time when I had to hold myself to a certain promise, no matter how painful it became. You see, there was a time when I said:

Ian William Drinkwater, you will not, I repeat WILL NOT play World of Warcraft instead of hanging out with your friends, or your girlfriend, and so help me God, if you turn down sex to make a raid on time, I will kill you. Which is sort of like killing yourself.

That I even had to have this conversation with myself is indicative of how addicted a player can become to World of Warcraft. If you don’t play the game, you won’t understand it. And if you do play the game, you’re probably thinking: No way bro, no way you’ll hold yourself to that standard.

And sometimes, sometimes it gets hard.

All of this is rummaging through my head as news trickles out that Blizzard’s COO wants us idiots to play their new MMO on top of WoW. The delicate balance that socially functioning nerds have between their crack and their lives always threatens to tilt and sway towards the darkness of empty soda cans and baggy eyelids.

There’s been this shitty fake bow that I had been sweating forever in Ulduar, the latest virtual weapon that means nothing in real life that has no impact on my existence. And yet it does. Week after week it eluded me.   I swore and swore and found new exciting ways to chain together vulgar words like a fucking Ultra Combo in Killer Instinct.

And that’s what kept me coming back. Despite the monotony of the same fucking dungeon every week, despite the knowledge that I was squandering my life not writing, sitting in front of a computer screen, eating too much and staying up too late.

I needed that fucking bow. So I could shoot bad guys bigger, faster, more pwningly.

I had always defended my raiding life through various skillful rationalizations. You see, my guild raids at 10 p.m. It is the blessing/curse of my friend Brian choosing a West Coast server four years ago. So my rationalization always went like this:

Well, it’s a week night. And my girlfriend, being a functioning human being, who contributes to society, has to go to bed. She must sleep, because she isn’t a worthless parasite like myself. And so if she has to sleep, then I’ll be fine.

And to an extent, that’s true. If I lived on the West Coast, I couldn’t be raiding. In some ways, having to raid into the early morning is the only way it could work for me. There’s no way that I could spend every night from 7 p.m. until 10 p.m. in front of a computer. I’d miss dinner; I’d miss quality time with my girlfriend and friends.

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