Apparently my friend who recently left there saw more writing on the wall than he realized. Now Shacknews is getting rumors that as many as 25 people got laid off, and studio chief Warren Spector might be leaving/have left.

In other news, fans and fansites are giving tentative praise to Thief: Deadly Shadows. The demo is out now.

This is the next art-film I’ll probably go see, though it’ll be another month before it comes to the Austin theaters.

Know what’s more bad ass? The fact that the Super Size Me official site has my review, Fear and Loathing in McDonaldland, archived on their site!

(I’d plugged it on Morgan Spurlock’s blog, and I guess someone thought it was good enough to be included with the rest of the reviews and press, pretty much all of which were professionally written instead of by someone who just felt like writing about it. Unfortunately, they got it before I realized I’d misnamed one of the two doctors from Houston that had perfected the super-fast stomach stapling which is shown in the movie to the tune of the Blue Danube Waltz. It’s Dr. Carl Geisler, not Dr. Steven Glorsky.)

“Life of Brian” wasn’t worth eight bucks to see it on the big screen, though I hadn’t seen it all the way through before.

Did see “Super Size Me” again. That was worth it. (Bonus: Check Morgan Spurlock’s blog for what Australian McDonald’s are putting on their sandwich wrappers.)

At least I didn’t blow any money on “Passion of the Christ.” Heard that one was a stinker.

Blame Rei for pointing this one out.

Now, beating the game will depend on how I play to Ivy League politicians who think a gun is something you hang over your mantlepiece to be occasionally dusted by the maid in your Connecticut Summer home. And when it comes to that point in the game where this panel demands the truth (and says they’re “entitled” to the truth) I want a little drop-down menu that will let me tell them that they, in fact, can’t handle the truth.

With a couple of clicks (or maybe a Hotkey) I’ll tell them that we live in a world that has walls and that those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. I will tell them that I have a greater responsibility than they can possibly fathom. They weep for mistreated prisoners and curse the military. They have that luxury. They have the luxury of not knowing what I know, that the naked human pyramid and homoerotic torture, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to them, saves lives.

I’ll tell them that they don’t want the truth, because deep down, in places they don’t talk about at parties, they want me on that wall. They need me on that wall. I’ll tell them that I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to men who rise and sleep under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then question the manner in which I provide it.

I’d rather they just said “thank you” and went on their way. Otherwise, I’d suggest they pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what they think they’re entitled to.

Soon to be played by thousands of left-leaning youth of America, and their friends in foreign countries who wonder why anyone would want to live here these days…

http://www.bushgame.com/

So on my way to the theater the other day (see previous report on Super Size Me,) I stopped at the Lakeline Mall to kill time and get coffee. It’s a nice mall, relatively new, just off U.S. 183 on the north side, where all the new development is.

Typical of malls these days, the wide hallways are crammed with portable kiosks where small-timers sell all sorts of bricabrac. I pass one selling ladies’ handbags and other small leather goods, and I look over the clerk’s shoulder.

He’s playing Shadowbane. On a little Dell LCD screen.

I talk to him about it. I wish I’d written down his character’s name (Faeland? Something like that,) but he pointed out that he’s on Entropy, playing a level 44 Druid. He proceeds to explain that the kiosk is a family-owned business, and he “works” 11 hours a day on it, so why not kill time playing games? And one of his party on screen was played by his girlfriend.

“So, do you play?” he asked.

No, I said. Co-wrote the strategy guide, was friends with the guys at Wolfpack. Used to play it a long time ago, but life goes on.

“Indeed it does.”

I’ve got more to write about this weekend, still. I love going to Austin.

Just got back from Super Size Me, the story of how Morgan Spurlock ate nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days and made a film about it.

It is by far the most compelling plea for public health awareness and responsibility that I have ever heard, read or seen.

I may swear off fast food for good, and here’s why.
Continue reading Fear and Loathing in McDonaldland…

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was on. I own this movie on DVD, but felt compelled to watch it anyway. That’s the thing about movies like this. Nothing on earth could motivate me to break it out of the case now that it’s on my shelf. But with commercial breaks imposed by someone else — now you’re talking. No obligations.

I have a friend who uses recreational drugs. She told me a little bit about a subject I’d heard a lot about lately — legal alternatives to marijuana. Seems there are all sorts of natural herbs on the market right now that will realign your neural processes in certain uncontrolled ways. These same herbs have no laws applied by racist politicians to support standards of decency that can’t be defined in modern terminology. Instead of marijuana, a drug that everyone born in time for middle-school “health” classes has been relentlessly taught to fear and respect, it’s some other cancer-causing devil weed.

So if I pay ten bucks for an ounce of “Vision Quest” from herbsmoke dot com, I wondered, considering my friend’s recommendation, and I light up and have some bad trip, should I not have to worry about my neighbors downstairs complaining that the Jefferson Airplane is too loud and orange juice is leaking through their ceiling? That if they call the cops, I won’t be hauled off for doing what they might justifiably think are illegal drugs?

Of course not, she says to me. Just save the packaging.

I have got to try some of this shit.

And I owe it all to Tylenol Cold/Sinus.

Sometimes I wonder if I’d done more drugs in my formative years, such pleasures would be beyond my reach.

Thanks to Jeff “Dundee” Freeman for fixing the table widths in this site’s stylesheet. Site management (including myself) was indisposed to doing the simple thing.

Dundee’s got a blog. It’s one I visit now and again but hadn’t added to the list at left. Now it’s there along with all the other bloggers who