RNC coverage is everywhere in St. Paul this week. Marc Ambinder has posted the full transcript, I have highlighted some excerpts - along with what Todd actually said as opposed to what Ambinder posted.

“Is this really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?” -Chuck Todd

“You know what’s really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is ‘no cynicism’ and this is cynical.” - Mike Murphy

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States like Massachusetts, California and New York have begun reluctantly allowing folks to seek a gay marriage. This is an outrage! There is no reason for these states, or any states, to force an expectation of happiness onto any bickering couple of disgruntled partners. If people want to despise each other, if they insist on hating, then by all means, it is their God-given right to loathe their very existence!

Passing legislation mandating joy and happiness is beyond comprehension. Just because it’s in the constitution doesn’t make it any more right! Even if everyone on earth were married there would be only a handful of couples who would declare their marriage to be gay.

The rest of us? We’d be working on the honey-do list…or working to avoid it! By definition, the very nature of settling down with one other living creature for the remainder of our lives is flawed. Wolves seem to practice serial monogamy. But only you and me - FOREVER!? It’s madness. It’s a bad song from the 50s. It is fitting that in the animal kingdom only a vicious species of wild canine are one of the few examples of monogamy. I doubt that they are happily monogamous. It is likely that their monogamy is what drives their viciousness.

There is no such thing as a gay marriage. You can legislate all you want, you simply cannot people to be happy! By definition, once you are married, there is no happiness. There is no joy. In the end, your only joy from the imprisonment of marriage is the silent release of death. Once you are released from your earthly bondage, any happiness you were forced to enjoy through legislation won’t matter anyway.

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Best headline ever.

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Gibson is claiming that Activision’s Guitar Hero III is violating a patent filed by Gibson in 1999.

According to their complaint filed in US District Court in LA,

Gibson’s 1999 patent covers a virtual-reality device that included a headset with speakers and that simulated participating in a concert.

If this is the basis of their legal claim, then I would suggest they start filing patents for things like, “possible future profitable thing that simulates something we not yet created or thought of but if someone else creates something nobody else is currently producing and selling we will use this patent to stake our claim.”

C’mon Gibson. You may have thought of something about simulating a concert, but clearly, if you were going for a VR headset-type thing, you were watching too WAY many pornos (or maybe the same skin-flick over and over over and and - OH MY!) where a lone stroker sits in a room with a VR headset and enjoys act after act of mind-blowing orgasms.

Activision is being sued not for patent infringement, but for producing a profitable game franchise. There may be some behind the scenes things going on we will never know about, like Gibson licensed something to Activision or vice-versa and one of the companies thought nothing of whatever legal arrangement they signed off on, when suddenly this game took off like a rocket and now the company who signed the crappy agreement is feeling robbed. Who can say?

Ah hell, I am heading down to the courthouse to file a patent on something not yet created but might produce a profit for someone at some future time. Or maybe I’ll just go play Virtually Jenna.

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If your ego is bigger than your brain then mark Friday on your calendar! Hell, if you just want to have fun or see if you can hang with the local competition, you’ll want to stop by the Mall of America to test your brainpower mettle under the pressure of competition!

Date: Friday, March 7, 2008
Time: 5:30pm – 7:30pm
Location: Mall of America, Sears Court

It looks like they’ll give out prizes, host “just for fun” games and also present pre-screening for auditions to get on the actual show. Want your fifteen minutes of fame? Can’t sing? Got no other talent?

Your quest for glory could start Friday! You could be the next Ken Jenningsor Brad Rutter,but get your buzzers ready, you can’t answer unless you ring in first!

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What’s ninety-five feet long and twelve feet tall? Too short for a skyscraper and too big for a queen on Clark. Not too big for a MOMI though! I guess the MOMI website address could be interpreted as a mangled malaprop if one were to read it as, “mod, er…nice!”

Aside from all the other wonderful reasons to visit Chicago in the wintertime, there is now a temporary museum! MOMI will be around for the month of February only so make your plans now. I suspect some 8n5ers will make their way down to Millennium Park, perhaps we could get a review of the museum?

Not that you need any more justification to explore the Lake Michigan branch of 8n5, but if you happen to be in town in February make sure you give a call!

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My experience with the Xbox 360

About two weeks ago I received an Xbox 360 for my birthday from my wife. She did a lot of research and got a really good deal on a refurbished machine with an extra controller and a copy of Halo 3. Now, I know that 360s are notoriously unreliable and one might immediately assume getting a refurbished machine is a bad idea, but the reduced cost and the supposed elimination of the red-ring-of-death problem (that’s what they refurbish) made it seem like a good idea.

Once opened I immediately activated Xbox live and went to a store to pick up a game with the 25$ gift card that some friends had given me. I expected to get Gears of War or Crackdown because they’ve been out for a year–I was wrong. The used version of each was pushing 50$ which I found astonishing. It turns out that triple-A 360 titles are holding their value as much as triple-A Nintendo titles (go try to find a used copy of Smash Bros or Mario Kart). The only good game that I could afford was Dead Rising by Capcom. I think it was a launch title and it was still 30$ so I had to pay a little. I’d never played the game before but I know it reviewed well and I trust Capcom with zombies. The game turned out to be great (lawn mower + zombies = awesome), I had a fellow eightandfiver over and we played passing the controller. We also played a little halo but the game isn’t that good to watch and my wife was playing with us and wasn’t a big Halo fan. We actually ended the night playing Super Mario 3 that was just made available on the virtual console–score one for the Wii.

Within the next week I had gotten Bioshock and Orange Box through game fly. I also had Gears of War briefly but there were too many new games to play before I went through the catalog. I sent it back and got Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles (another good Capcom game, this time for the wii, also with zombies). I also managed to throw down a reservation for Rock Band that involved trading in an assload of games to get to the $160 and the last 360 reservation available at the GameStop I shop at.

Bioshock was great, although with Orange Box I had trouble committing to it, I’m sure the significant other and I will get around to it at some point. I put a lot of time into portal and even started replaying Half-Life 2. Damn these are great games. I had trouble playing team fortress 2 because all my multi-player time was going to Halo 3 (also a great game). I really felt like I had in the heyday of the PS2 when we had just tons of great stuff all at the same time (GTA, SSX, Burnout, Katamari…). I was in heaven—and it was during a game of portal just after I got the weighted companion cube that my 360 froze for the first time.

I restarted and started to play Half-Life 2 and got pretty far when it froze again (thank god for tons of auto saves). This time when I restarted the 360 it was flashing red. It was the standard red-ring-of-death that a refurbished Xbox isn’t supposed to get. I know this because the towel trick worked. The problem lies in some solders that fail to connect. The towel trick involves wrapping the console in a towel to deliberately overheat it so the solder expands and connects again. A temporary fix at best.

The real downer was that the next day I got to pick up Rock Band and then leave the house and spend thanksgiving in North Carolina (where I had a marvelous time). I got back on Sunday ready to try the 360 again, with the towel trick if need be, to finally get to try out the killer rock band drums… I couldn’t get past the title screen.

I managed to get a hold of the company that refurbished it and get a return authorization. They were really responsive and allowed me to keep the hard drive and all other accessories. The system is currently in transit to them, they’ve assured me they have a quick turnaround time and that they’ll mail off another system within a day of receiving mine.

I hope I get it soon. I’m afraid my weighted companion cube is going to miss me.

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Last night Super Smash Bros Melee was revealed to have Sonic in it. Which is super cool, but really not the best news to come out of Nintendo yesterday. The great news is that Capcom’s Monster Hunter franchise is coming. This is the best selling game in Japan at the moment and I love this game. I’ve played it on PS2 and PSP and it’s really a blast. At it’s core it’s a multi player game where people team up to go and hunt monsters all the while collecting loot and leveling up. With a decent wii interface and strong online play this could be the break out third-party hit that the wii needs to be considered a real console as opposed to something that’s aimed at my grandma and the 43 people who still think Metroid is a good game.

Here’s some of the sugar that this iteration of Super Smash will be packing: Apart from Sonic there will be Solid Snake and his box (mangina?) and pit (better known as Kid Icarus). Every other character that appeared in the series is expected back, even the ice-climbers. I expect we’ll see a few more sonic additions like Tails and Robotnik. There is a Pokemon trainer now which has the three starters in their evolved forms from Pearl/Diamond that the player can switch between. The online play sounds very robust. There is the standard friend code stuff but also random matches. There is a sort of ranking system and a tournament mode which allows up to 32 people to take part in a standard bracketed tournament either on or offline. It takes the winners and moves them up to the next round until the winner is determined. There’s also a cooperative (up to two players) beat ‘em up side-scroller called the “Subspace Embassy” complete with bosses and lots of meta-story to justify all of the characters participation. I can’t wait.

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Produce Paradise
seemed like a funny, good idea at the time.

These kinds of things usually are pretty damned funny when you are doing them. In fact, especially if you are the one doing them! In days of yore, the video would have been recorded and shelved and friends would have looked back in later years and laughed about how idiotic they were at that age.

But this is the age of instant digital media! The Fresh Beets miscalculated wildly and are now facing a $1 million lawsuit.

I understand that they want to protect their brand and their image, but come on. $1 million dollars? Is that really going to show those punks who’s boss? What is the point of bankrupting these idiots?

All it will do is make the next group of fools who do something like this try to do it more legit - like by purchasing their veggies before filming. That way they will be able to argue it is their own property with which they are, ahem, performing.

Instead of suing them, A&P should be thanking them for the free international advertising.

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