You can't make this stuff up

Seriously, even if I tried, I couldn't come up with something this off-the-wall in my most drunken stupors.

Michele Allen, 32, will spend the next month in jail after admitting to a wild drunken weekend dressed in this silly cow outfit, said Middletown, Ohio, authorities.

She had been hired to wear the outfit to advertise for a local "haunted trail" theme park.

While at work Saturday evening, Allen hit the sauce hard and then stumbled into the streets - blocking traffic and chasing kids, said Police Major Mark Hoffman.

Allen also urinated in a nearby yard during the drunken grazing, cops said.

Despite having two nights to sober up, Allen was in a foul mood Monday, yelling at jailers. "She was challenging people to 'suck her udders,' " Hoffman said. "I'm not joking."

Since I feel obligated to make ammends after posting that picture, I'll give ya'll this to help lessen the mental blow you just took in seeing it. Seeing I just re-watched the Transformers, this fits the bill.
 

Bass Aackwards

This one goes out to CrypticCat, 2o2p's resident pothe...I mean, resident of the Netherlands.

While the Netherlands has kept its liberal policy on the smoking of cannabis in the country's legendary "coffee shops", zero tolerance is now shown to tobacco smokers in Dutch cafes and restaurants after a smoking came ban came into force last July.

An Amsterdam police spokesman admitted that it could be difficult to understand the current Dutch policy of allowing smokers to puff away on pure cannabis while fining tobacco users.

"For logic it is sometimes impossible to explain, even to the Dutch," he said.

The man was caught lighting a hand rolled cannabis joint during a routine police check and fined because officers found tobacco mixed with the soft drug.

"The man was not fined for smoking a cannabis joint but for smoking. You can smoke cannabis but not tobacco in coffee shops."

Full story here. That's right...no harm, no foul for smoking up a fatty of pure weed, but lace it with tobacco and you'll get a fat fine thrown down on you. Feel free to swagger into any one of the red-lighted single rooms of sin that blanket the city of Amsterdam, but break out those Marlboros and the cops will come down on you like vultures.

Little Big Planet™ - Day One Impressions

To set the stage - like most on this site, I grew up on side-scrolling platfformers.  From Super Mario Bros. to Castlevania to Ghouls N Ghosts to Metroid, I played them all into the wee hours of the morning, long after my parents through I was sound asleep.  Granted, they were "the" thing back on the consoles of the day, but still were and are a whole lot of fun.  In fact, lets trace back to the platformers origin - Pitfall anyone?  I think, at least in my too-early-and-not-enough-coffee mental state right now, that might be the first platforming game made.  Please correct me if I'm wrong tho', and I'm sure I played whatever came before it. 

Anyways, as you're probably aware, through the employment of the "you don't get anything if you don't ask" adage, a developer from Media Molecule hooked me up with a handful of beta keys for the upcoming smash hit - yeah, not going out too far on that limb there really - for the PlayStation 3 Little Big Planet™ (LBP).  For those without the evil 2nd or 3rd console, depending on your situtation, LBP is part side-scroller game, part adventure/collection game, and part creator/God game.  You play the game as either a Sackboy or Sackgirl who is exactly that, a puppet built from a burlap sack.  However, that lasts for all of 2 minutes, as you're immediately given a handful of different ways to customize your character with promises (both of what I've seen in game and on the web) of thousands if not tens of thousands of different combonations to make your character truly unique.  You can animate your character on the fly, from facial expressions via the D-pad directions, to arm and body movement through a combonation of the shoulder buttons, dual analog sticks, and the six-axis motion of the controller.  All in all, it's very impressive how much you truly are the puppeteer!

The game itself has two distinct modes - story mode and build mode.  In the former (which was all I got into last night), you run through either pre-packaged levels or user levels trying to collect as many treasures (in the form of costume pieces, stickers, decorations, etc) through the level, or just racking up the highest score through a combonation of collection and time.  The controls are tight, and the physics engine behind the game is really cool.  No, actually, the physics engine is really frigging cool!  From how blocks move and react as you drag them around or climb over them, to your flight path as you launch yourself willy-nilly off spinning ferris wheels, it feels right.  Graphics are very well done as well, with a unique style to them that I don't think we've seen really as strongly since World of Warcraft hit the scene.  It feels like you're playing right in the middle of a cartoon, a well scripted, well drawn, and well designed cartoon.  Level design, from the three I saw, was diverse and enjoyable even though the levels were made solely as tutorials.  It does take a bit of time to comprehend that there is depth in the sidescroller, but after your mind grasps there are three levels in and out of the screen, it adds a whole level of complexity to the game and what a builder can do.

All in all, this beta is really the last thing I needed.  I was hyped over the game and its launch on October 21st.  Now the time between the 12th, when the beta ends, and that date will just be all the longer.  But I'll endure, and will be dreaming up those levels to create and publish for all of 2o2p (or at least 2o2resist) to game on.

B.

And there was much rejoicing...

Around 1:30PM yesterday afternoon, I get a call from the Mrs.

Her: "A Sears truck just left the house."
Me: I get that screwed-up WTF look on my face. "Umm...why? We order something?"
Her: "Well yeah...you know."
Me: "I do?"
Her: "Remember...John (my bud in the A/V industry) subcontracts out to Sears with some of his time?"
Me: Stands up out of chair "YEEESSSSSSSSSS!"

The subwoofer was delievered yesterday, after a painful week-long wait. Needless to say, yesterday afternoon was one of the longest afternoons in the office in a long time. As I'm driving home, I get a SMS from my friend letting me know it was dropped off. My reply was that I was 10 minutes away from the house at that point, and will have the liquidification of my internal organs commencing as soon as I get home. He reminds me to calibrate the receiver and new subwoofer first, which I conceed to do (against my will). Well, after about 45 minutes of letting my receiver take test points at 6 different seating locations in the room, I'm finally ready to test it out.

I call my two boys into the room, have them sit down, and toss in The Transformers. Fast forward to the first scene with Blackout. BOOOOOMMMM! My 7-year old turns to me and says "Daddy...I can feel the floor shaking!"

<insert ear-to-ear grin for the rest of the night>

Application to procreate

** PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT - RANT INCOMING - READ AT YOUR OWN RISK! ** 

Every now and then...no, more often than I care for...I get reminded of the idea I have that there should be a mandatory application process in place for an individual to procreate.  There simply are too many incompetent, ill-prepared, or simply stupid people having and then trying (and more often than not failing) to raise children in society today.  And who suffers?  First of course are the kids.  Innocent of their parents ineptitude or lack of basic skills and emotions that are inherent to even simplest animals, they get put into positions and situations they don't deserve.  Then, long after that, we all suffer because these kids grow into the same type of adults who then repeat history all over again, and worse yet become the society we will rely on as we age.  It's really a sad, sad state of affairs when you think of it, and I only take solace in knowing that at least I can do what I can to make sure my kids grow, mature, and live to the best they can, in the best manner they can.

So what spawned his rant, eh?  Check this piece of utter stupidity.  All states have what are called Safe Haven Laws, put in place to allow mothers who are not fit or capable of caring for a newborn to surrender it at a local hospital or fire station.  The child then goes into state care, leading to foster care.  Now while I know that system is far less than ideal, I support this type of initiative because its a better option than leaving the child with someone who can't - or won't - care for it.  HOWEVER, the brilliant lawmakers of Nebraska passed the law without any stipulation of the age a child can be surrendered at!  So now you have teenagers being tossed aside by parents who get to a point, throw up their hands, and say "That's it, fuck it, I'm done".  Those asshats need a smack with a 4x4 IMHO.  When you decide to have and raise a child, it's a lifelong commitment, and should not be open to negotiation down the road just because it gets hard.  How the hell are you going to convince a 15 year old kid that it's not his or her fault that mom and dad, or whomever is their caregiver, just doesn't want to deal with them anymore???  If they didn't have mental/social issues before that, they sure as hell will afterwards. 

/me takes a deep breath.  Sorry for the rant, but when the level of idoicity gets to a level like this, I just can't help but comment.  Agree, disagree...your prerogative.  I just can't get my arms around the idea of letting any of my kids go, no matter how bad it were to ever get.