Luckily, my supportive guy and/or diehard Cubicle Bear fan has found me a Spacebear replacement via the internets. As it turns out, demand for Spacebears on eBay is low. Obviously, this seller had no idea what a gem he had (awkwardly listed under Burger King toy Spongebob Squirrel), and a new Spacebear was easily procured. Get ready this week for a new Cubicle Bear!

A dapper, new Spacebear!

Previous Episode: The Interview

Next Episode: Good Riddance, Spacebear!

But Kon’s  strengths weren’t in the stereotypical areas of Japanese animation – his action sequences weren’t particularly over-exaggerated, nor were designs caricatures of the human form.  His strengths were in his impeccable sense of timing, sound design, and framing.  If Kon had been making live-action movies, there is no question that they would have been some of the most elegantly made and beautifully shot works of photography around.  To say nothing of the compelling storytelling.  It’s a shame that his work was branded in the States by the stigma of animation.  I can only hope that some budding filmmaker will internalize and replicate his methods in the future.  More than any other modern director, his style should be carried on.

Even if you’re allergic to animation, as I typically am, check out at least one of his feature-length films: Perfect Blue (1998), Millennium Actress (2001), Tokyo Godfathers (2003), and Paprika (2006).

Cover art for Mass Effect

I am a late comer to the Mass Effect franchise, and I wish I had found it sooner. The first game is almost three years old now, released in November of 2007, and its sequel was just released this last January, 2010. I kept hearing about it, but just never thought about it until I found a cheap, used copy of Mass Effect and tried it out.

I was hooked.

Mass Effect, and its vastly superior successor Mass Effect 2, has set a new level for video game storytelling in my mind. Yes, the games are well-rendered and the technical appearance is great and everything, but storytelling is what I’m all about with RPGs. Well, maybe not all about, but it is priority one. I can forgive a number of flaws as long as the story is good. And oh my, is the story good. And oh my, are there a number of flaws.

Saren, SPECTRE traitor and primary antagonist of the first Mass Effect

On the story side of the equation, the Mass Effect series can be seen as one giant story, all centering around the exploits of the main character, Commander Shepherd. The situation the good Commander is in is uniformly the same, while the different options of how to play the character are left to you: Gender, facial features, background history (Spacer, Colonist, or Earthborn), service history and reputation (Sole Survivor, War Hero, Ruthless), and character type (Soldier, Adept, Engineer, Sentinel, Vanguard, and Infiltrator being the choices). These factors will all influence how the game plays and what you can do, and I must say the different classes do play very differently, unlike most other RPGs I have played before. Even classes that seem fairly non-combat oriented, like the Engineer, really manage to stand on their own and provide genuine usefulness. How you began your life and what you did professionally before going on your new mission influences how many characters treat you upon meeting you for the first time. For instance my first character, Elric Shepherd, was an Earthborn Soldier with a reputation for Ruthlessness. This history reflects how certain characters handle me upon meeting me, and it closes some doors while it opens up others.

Miranda, getting busy with Shepherd in Mass Effect 2

This is not unique to Mass Effect, or even BioWare games in general, but the way it was done here seems so much more seamless than any other attempts before. Also, like all BioWare games, there is a morality system, though in this case it isn’t so much about Good vs. Evil as it is about Decency vs. Douche-Baggery. On my first play I was, by and large, a douche. It’s just more fun. But unlike many other morality systems, the Paragon/Renegade meters are parallel, not balanced against each other, and if you were like me you could fill your D-bag meter to 75% while still having a lot of points in the ol’ Paragon-o-Meter. So I could intimidate with the best of them, while still being charming when called for. Since you play a hero who is trying to save the galaxy, you can never really be “evil,” but you can certainly swing more towards the Machiavellian side of things than the more noble sentiments, or the standard, neutral, soldierly order. In fact, the one thing you don’t want to be is neutral. The more noble or more ruthless you are, the more things become available to you. If you play the bland soldier-boy you will miss out on a lot. The efficiency and fluidity of this is even more pronounced in Mass Effect 2, where you can influence certain scenes when a Paragon or Renegade event is triggered (either by the Paragon symbol blinking on the left hand side, or a Renegade symbol blinking on the right) and you can jump in and do something to alter the conversation, or just end it, and score some alignment points. Like how in one situation when a merc guard was giving my character lip I cut the conversation short and didn’t allow the situation to devolve into combat when I hit the right trigger when the Renegade symbol popped up and kicked his ass out of a 30+ story window to the ground below. Splat.

Shepherd and the Citadel

Now I’m not going to go into a lot of specifics on the technical aspects of the games since so many other people have done that to death, save for stating a few things which I will get out of the way, such as Mass Effect 1’s frame rate was ass, micro-managing equipment and menus was annoying, I hated riding elevators, the Mako sucks diseased mule wang, and bopping around the same boring, lifeless alien worlds with altered skins looking for junk to collect was a colossal fucking waste of time. Also, I wish Mass Effect 2 didn’t rely so heavily on planetary scanning and mining to complete the mission successfully, getting all the needed upgrades to help assure the team’s survival in the end. All the original Mass Effect complaints were logged, registered, and altered by BioWare for ME2. They really listened to the fans, what a novel idea. They will do so again with ME3 as well, count on it. But even with the piss-poor auto-saving of ME1 and the dull but necessary work of resource collecting in ME2, the games simply blow away everything else in the RPG genre hands down. And the reasons are these: Story, characterization, and dialogue. Truly, Mass Effect proved as hard for me to put down as some of my favorite books. And not because I was having fun blowing stuff up. Really, all the ass-kicking was just a means to an end, and that end was unraveling the story.

For the few of you out there who managed to ignore this game for so long, like me, spoilers will now ensue. Commander Shepherd and his team are first swept into galactic intrigue when a special operative working for the Citadel Council, the supreme galactic political organization, has gone rogue and absconded with a piece of Prothean technology – a race of hyper-advanced aliens that went extinct some fifty thousand years ago. Eventually it is revealed that this rogue is attempting to harness the power of an ancient alien intelligence that was not only the reason for the Protheans’ extinction, but for the elimination of every advanced civilization to ever evolve in the Milky Way, for several million years. The story evolves in ME2 when it is revealed that the Protheans were not entirely eliminated, but in fact they were changed, turning into beings known as the Collectors. The ancient alien force known as the Reapers, which appear as enormous Cthonic space vessels of inscrutable power and profound intellect, subverts those it does not destroy and uses them for their own ends. What those ends are, precisely, is beyond normal sapient understanding.

Garrus, Turian ally of Shepherd.

Mass Effect’s world is not perfectly unique, as the Reapers indicate (you can’t help but think of Cthulu when you first see Sovereign), and it does play on many popular sci-fi stereotypes. You have your warrior species (Krogan), your sneaky/smart species (Samarians), your tough bastards (Turians), the Space-Slut species (Asari), Pan-galactic used-car salesman species (Volus), Gypsies (Quarians), and your right-slaving-dick species (Batarians), but even when operating within stereotypes these species receive texture, definition, and enough mold-breaking to prevent them from being caricatures (except the Volus. They’re all pretty much douchey comic relief). The Asari, for instance, despite being the Milky Way’s most unabashed hoes, are also the longest lived and wisest of the races. They live a thousand years, and the way you understand them to work is that they sow their wild oats for the first few hundred years before settling in and becoming responsible. After all, they have a lot of life to live, and can wear many hats during that time, constantly re-inventing themselves. They go out of their way to mate with other species in order to ensure their biological diversity and evolution (Asari on Asari parings are actually considered taboo since they do not further the species at all), and they can mate with everyone since they do not reproduce via normal meiosis, but they take the DNA of the “father,” who need not be male at all, and produce offspring by assimilating their genetic information and then complete the process of gestation independently. They are all female since males would not serve any genetic purpose in-species, so while they make the obvious ploy for sex-symbol species, your disbelief can be suspended because in their own alien way they make sense, and they do not all act alike. Enough exceptions exist for each species that none of them truly became caricatures, as many alien species do in other sci-fi or fantasy stories. All these alien archetypes are noticeable, but unique enough that Mass Effect truly makes them believable.

Geth troopers and a heavy Armature

The central story may seem like pretty standard sci-fi fare, with a hero and cast of allies facing off against a galactic-grade boogity-boogity, but the way the story unfolds and the relationships you build with NPCs, both minor and major, can be profound, and that lies in the exceptional work BioWare did with voice acting, scripting, and dialogue. Every character feels real, speaking as real people, each with their own points of view, and different reactions to you based upon your dealings with them. Sometimes romance can even ensue. This is handled pretty clumsily in ME1, but ME2 improved the concept, another aspect of RPG gaming that has become a trademark of BioWare. Every character has so many different dialogue options depending on different situations; it is truly staggering how much work went into realizing the world of Mass Effect. Your main character is also voiced, which greatly helps in connecting to the story. In other games, all you had was a dialogue box and a few things to choose from, and other characters either react with their own text, or in present games like Bethesda’s Fallout 3 and BioWare’s own Dragon Age: Origins, the NPCs will have a voiced reaction. But even in those cases the voice work has been fairly strained, but Mass Effect is much smoother, and it aids the story and the player’s ability to interface with it greatly. And BioWare has secured top-shelf talent for most of its voice work, with the ME series employing stars such as Claudia Black, Michael Dorn, and even the legendary Martin Sheen as the Illusive Man, and there are many, many more.

Screw you, Mako!

What you say and do to these characters influences the story in many ways, with ME2 being superior in this area, but the continuity between the games is insured because you can bring the Commander Shepherd you finished ME1 with into ME2 to continue the story, and the game will remember everything you did in the first and alter the story accordingly. For instance, I allowed the Citadel Council to go down in flames, sacrificed Williams rather than Alenko, had a romance with Liara T’Soni, saved the Rachni Queen, and put Captain Anderson on the Council. All these things affected how my game in ME2 played, to a greater or lesser extent. ME2 had some short comings here, as well, but BioWare has stated that all the stops are being pulled out for ME3 since it will finish the series and no worries will be placed on the possibility of the story continuing. Therefore, things that happened all the way back in ME1 will likely arise in ME3 – that’s quite the continuity chain, and it has changed how I view video game RPGs forever. I don’t know if I can enjoy other RPGs nearly as much, when I became so involved in Mass Effect. Admittedly, after playing thirty some hours of ME2, I find it hard to replay 1 since ME2 is just so superior, from the combat to the story, to the characters and potential for relationships. Oh, and I really fucking hate the Mako. I had to say it again. Diseased mule wang, for real.

Cover art of Mass Effect 2

But I can rumble through 1 again to see the effects on 2, and then to eventually see what happens in 3. It’s the most epic RPG of all time. Not even Dragon Age: Origins, my former favorite and another BioWare product, can come close. All those hours of playing, and very little of it is what I would term grinding. The only grinding in Mass Effect comes from the resource collecting, as there is little to no need to force-level your characters as in many RPGs such as the Final Fantasy games, but you don’t feel offended at having to do side quests in order to max out as much as in other games. There isn’t as much unnecessary bend-and-fetch action in the ME series, which is so welcome in this genre it’s not even funny. I wanted to do the side quests, especially in ME2, because they could often tie into other plot points, get you what you need to make it out of the final battle with everyone intact, or just because it feels right in-character.

Tali'Zorah, everybody's favorite immunosuppressed alien.

The story, the world, the characters, all give you a reason to care about what is happening. In ME2 I cultivated a relationship with Tali, the Quarian, because it seemed like my character would want to be with someone he knew from before, and because she was just a cool character and the challenges in getting close to a species that lived forever in bio-suits because their immune systems were gone from centuries living in spaceships without biospheres was challenging and truly alien. And the way it unfolded, her nervous, sputtering behavior (“I mean if you don’t want to, you, uh, I know, and it’s, uh… oh wow is it hot in here, ummm…”), everything was so natural without being crude or dirty. And you can’t help but feel happy for the Commander and for Tali when they manage to find some small happiness in what has so far been a pretty damn bleak life. It was a satisfying story-point, and one that other games I have played up to now have not been able to do nearly as competently. I haven’t experimented with other character combinations yet, but from everything I’ve read from people that have truly dissected the game, many of the other options are equally striking. Then, when I realized I had botched a bit at the end of ME2 and lost two of my crew in the escape I actually felt bad, even though they were two of the more unlikable characters. Not because I didn’t beat the game perfectly, but because the characters I had grown to know were suddenly dead. No game has done that to me before. That was the moment that I decided that this series was truly great. That is one hell of an achievement.

So now I wait, likely until some appropriately dramatic time in 2012, for Mass Effect 3. This is not a set release date, but more based on what the good folks at BioWare have said, which is that the development time for ME3 will likely match that of ME2, which emerged two and a half years after ME1. My best guess is late August, 2012, based purely on the numbers. It’s a hell of a long wait, but folks, it is worth it. By all appearances Xbox 360 and its competing systems will still be around then, updated here and there, but until then we have DLC content. That’s ok, and it helps to connect what is happening between 2 and 3, but Mass Effect 3 has some big shoes to fill. Between Knights of the Old Republic, Bioshock, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect I am confident BioWare will pull out another magnum opus. Dragon Age 2 promises to follow this idea, with a set main character with live dialogue, and that will be a boon to that franchise as well (you go, BioWare). Other RPG makers need to follow this lead or be left in the dust. I’m not sure I can ever go back to the old days. Nostalgia gamer, I am not. Here’s to the future, to innovation, to superior characterization, awesome voice acting, and good story telling. Now, just work on those frame rates and mini-games, people, and we can all end this story happily. Happy gaming, everyone.

Solipskier is a fast paced skiing game where you draw the slopes with your mouse (or your finger) and an animated skier rides along. Obstacles come whipping by and it’s up to you to guide Solipskier through safely! If you hit a red gate, a wall of snow, or just plain fall below the bottom edge, Solipskier takes a comical fall to his splatworthy death! The music is great. It is one of those addicting games, but my favorite part about it is once you get the hang of it, it is really fun!

Solipskier can be played for free on Kongregate and you can also find it on the App Store. Android fans shouldn’t fret. You’ll see it soon.

It was great working with my friends Mikengreg porting this game to iOS. Once upon a time we sailed the same ship called Intuition Games.

Given I have a full time job, it took us 3 months to port Solipskier from flash to iOS. There were some tricky parts, but nothing we couldn’t handle. It took a bunch of weekends, a trip to Florida, and lots of Skype high fives to finish, but it was a pleasant experience! My girlfriend was even cool enough to support me the whole time! She’s pretty rad.

To top off the day, Solipskier is currently a featured App in the App Store!

photo credit: Juice

I know Angela and Jeeves will be against me posting this, but I think it’s awesome. Jeeves and Angela were recently featured in an interview in a local Des Moines Newspaper, Juice. Juice is a weekly newspaper owned by the Des Moines Register.

There is a print version that came out a few days ago, but you can also read the story online, on the Juice website.

Pretty awesome, guys!

Now, WoW gets a lot of bad press for being an addictive tinksink, and while that may be true, there are some worthwhile skills there to be learned as long as the game is played with moderation. I don’t play WoW anymore, but I did play the game for about four years, off and on. The Yahoo post didn’t cover everything I think feel like I there is to be learned from WoW – there’s a few things it missed. So here we go:

Persistence

MMORPGs in general, and WoW in particular, are designed to keep you playing for long periods. Their revenue model is subscription based, so the longer they can keep you playing, the more money they make. While this may seem nefarious at first (and it certainly can be, if not kept in check), after months and years spent playing working toward in-game rewards, I found it much easier to focus and work singularly on creative projects. I don’t know if I’d have completed half of the creative projects I’ve finished without learning what it meant to sit there, day after day, and slowly grind something to completion. This is a skill I knew before, but WoW brought me to a whole new level. The ironic thing is, once WoW taught me all that persistence, I realized I had better things to while away the hours than play WoW. Go figure.

Research and Planning

There are aspects to WoW’s gameplay that require obscure knowledge of in-game items, locations, and game mechanics. Some of the game’s battle and character systems are so convoluted that it takes complicated algebra and mathematics to determine which in-game item is better to improve a character. While this may be a flaw for the game itself, for the players, these convoluted systems encourage extensive web research, planning, and the ability to analyze vast quantities of technical and jargon-filled information. WoW is its own world – you don’t just play it, you live in it – the ability to find out what you need quickly using the research tools you have available is essential to succeeding in the game. I’ve found these research skills carry easily to other knowledge areas – picking up jargon via in-context immersion is a skill WoW encouraged.

Leadership and Organization

I spent several months in the game as a member of guild leadership, organizing twenty-five people several times a week to conquer in-game objectives. Some of these objects require all 25 people to work in tandem for fifteen minutes straight, with every member needing to know their role and individual responsibilities for the entire fifteen minutes, changing their role every few seconds. Organizing this many people over the internet with only voice and text communication tools  is incredibly taxing, but also teaches valuable leadership, organizational, and motivational skills.

Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Strategy

Much of WoW’s gameplay involves reacting to stressors in a timely manner with a situation-tailored response. This sounds dry when phrased like that, but I can phrase it more interestingly, too: the best part of playing WoW is trying to figure out how to react in the span of half a second when a gigantic fire-breathing dragon is charging your ass, half your teammates are dead, and you have two minutes before he goes berserk and kills everyone else, costing your team thirty minutes of progression and maybe putting off the encounter for another week. You better make the right choices.

The thing that differentiates MMORPGs from other types of games is that the tools the player has to solve any situation rarely change (maybe once every year, after an expansion). The rest of the time, the player uses the same abilities in different ways. Snap choices must be made, based on familiarity with the problems, tools, and team members. At the highest levels of play, encounters must be strategized for, execution must be practiced, and all team members must be able to think on-the-fly to make good choices. This ability to plan ahead and think on your feet while dealing with stress translates well to other situations.

Have I missed any?

Volume 1

Hello, everyone. I have returned once more with another somewhat obscure manga offering this week: Blade of the Immortal. Where my previous offering, Excel Saga, is a humorous, off-the-wall series, Blade of the Immortal is considerably different. If you are a fan of samurai stories, stylish violence, wit, bizarre characters, and deep story, then this might be for you. Read on to learn more.

Blade of the Immortal, known as Mugen no Junin in Japan (literally meaning Inhabitant of Infinity), comes to us from the imagination of Hiroaki Samura, a classically trained artist who turned his pen to manga in the mid nineties, following his dreams of becoming a mangaka (a writer and illustrator of manga). His style is unique amongst mangaka, being done in black and white pencil-sketch style, with a masterful eye on subtle details and elements of anatomy. His knowledge of how the human body moves and functions imparts a high degree of expression into his characters, which greatly aids in his often frenetic battle scenes, where many characters can be engaged in combat simultaneously. One of the most well-known features of his work in Blade is his “center-fold,” a highly detailed snapshot of a character, usually the main character Manji, in motion while fighting. These sketches take a great deal of time and are filled with details that most manga don’t bother with. This is not your average comic book artwork, though many of his frames are simplified in style due to necessity. The balance of simple and complex art is one of the reasons I adore Blade so much, but pretty pretty pictures are just a small part of it.

Dark Horse Comics, issue 126, featuring Rin.

The style and feel of Blade of the Immortal is unique as well, blending the historical background of 1780’s Japan with characters whose style and speech seem to come from the here and now. It might put some readers in mind of Samurai Champloo, but Blade is considerably deeper and more mature story-wise, but the anachronistic similarities are there. Fans of the series also look to see what ridiculous weapons the characters will be wielding next – things straight from Samura-san’s mind, with often impractical applications in real life, but that make for some really awesome fight scenes. However, without a good, compelling story loaded with engaging characters it is all for naught. Luckily, Blade of the Immortal is strong there, as well.

The central plot is this: A young girl, Rin, watches as her family and friends are slaughtered before her in her father’s dojo by a band of renegade kenshi (swordsmen) calling themselves the Itto-ryu, lead by Anotsu Kagehisa. Rin then embarks on a quest for revenge, but with little skill of her own, it would be suicide to go up against such skilled fighters, so she had to find someone to help her. Enter Manji, the series’ main protagonist. Manji was once a samurai, but was made a ronin and wanted man after he battled against a hundred other officers and slew them, including his own sister’s husband. He wandered bondless, hiding from the law until an encounter with the enigmatic Buddhist nun, Yaobikuni. She infected him with creatures known as kessen-chu, or blood worms, which will unnaturally prolong his life and instantly regenerate any wounds he suffers, and she challenges him to find meaning in a now nearly unending life. Nearly unkillable now, short of a rare poison that attacks the kessen-chu directly, Manji pledges to slay a thousand evil men – ten for each good man he killed – and so be freed of his burden. When Rin approaches him with her request to hire him as a bodyguard, Manji sees it as a possible way to come closer to his goal and accepts the job. In due time Manji finds himself fighting everyone from renegade swordsmen to corrupt shogunate lords, who crave the secrets of his nigh-immortality.

Rin, preparing for her mission into the "Badger Hole."

The plot, however, goes far beyond a simple revenge yarn, and as the story unfolds and the characters develop, the motivations that drove them (protagonist and antagonist alike) seem less important as time goes by. The series is now approaching its finale, starting with volume 22, Footsteps, beginning the Winter War arc that will complete the story, and I can tell you it’s a hard wait. One of the largest problems Blade of the Immortal has is an extremely slow print-run, with only one volume printed every year to year and a half. So even if only three to four volumes remain, it’s still plenty of time to get caught up. The series is published in English by Dark Horse Comics as a collected volume, though it was once published monthly as a normally-sized comic, but that run was discontinued due to low sales (since people like me usually waited for the whole, complete, volume instead). Prices per volume range from $14.95 to $19.95, quite a bit more than most manga, but the effort that goes into the manga helps explain that. It is printed in standard English comic format, rather than the more standard Japanese style right-to-left, by Samura-san’s request, no less. He wished to preserve the way the art flowed, and so rather than simply flip it to English style, each frame is cut and pasted before printing to assure accuracy.

"Blade of the Immortal," animated version, 2009.

Blade of the Immortal was recently turned into an anime, though I must say the anime cannot capture either the beauty of Hiroaki Samura’s art or the intricacies of his story, and largely falls flat. The manga, meanwhile, is widely regarded as a masterpiece, but still has a comparatively small following. According to Anime News Network, based on a weighted average, Blade of the Immortal ranks #230 of 2079 – not very low, and far higher on the scale than Excel Saga, which I featured a couple of weeks ago (#1826 of 2079), but still not enough people know how incredible this manga is. There is nothing out there quite like Blade of the Immortal, and If you want a mature, adult-oriented story with incredible, unique art and amazing action, try out Blade of the Immortal. You won’t regret it. Cheers, everyone, and happy reading!

So no, this isn’t exactly deep insight from me, but it’s something I’ve had to come to terms with over the past few months. I have traditionally been a very politically-minded person, because I feel it is the duty of every American to be informed about what their government is doing and what direction it’s headed in. I am socially liberal, fiscally conservative, pro-death penalty, pro-choice (with certain limits), and believe deeply in the separation of state and religion. I tend to vote Democratic, but have also voted for Republicans and third party candidates in the past. I try to choose people who I think best represent what I believe America should be.

However, as it was with the South Park episode “Douche and Turd,” ultimately we must all decide between a giant douche and a turd sandwich, our vote wasted on something we don’t want one way or the other.

"Douche and Turd" South Park season 8.

The reason is that our leaders have lost sight of who they are and what the hell they are doing. They are meant to be public servants, our duly appointed representatives, but instead they have ended up more like a new generation of lords, with the only difference being that every few years they have to jump up, pander, and lie to the voting public to hold onto their lordly power. In the end all these politicians, regardless of party, end up the same: Power-hungry, ethically-disabled, morally bankrupt, greedy, two-faced scumbags. None of them really do the work of the people; they simply work for themselves to keep their cushy lifestyles in place. The few idealists who try to do the good work, fight the good fight, are either ground down and broken or perverted and end up becoming a part of the problem in the end. Our leaders owe more to the special interests of corporations and lobbying groups than they do to their people, and it has blinded them to the degree that I cannot see this system of government ever recovering.

And the cherry on top of this turd sundae for me was the brainless drivel that poured forth from the mouth of Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas) during the BP chew-out, when he apologized to BP for the government’s attempted shakedown of their precious company.

"Damn those dirty, rotten congressmen, making BP pay for their screw up!

I sat in dumbfounded shock when I heard this and swore that I had to have heard it wrong. Nope, I didn’t. He actually apologized to the incompetent oil company who potentially ruined the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem for the next generation or two and all the many coastal-based businesses that depend on it, for the government’s audacity at demanding that they foot the bill to fix their mess and to aid the people they harmed.

Who else is supposed to foot the bill, you half-witted moron? Us? Sorry, we’re already tapped our from bailing out the entire American banking system that almost dragged us down into a full-blown depression because they were cheating hundreds of thousands of their customers in the most naked and ethically devoid cash-grab in American history. Oh, and then bailing our the car companies, who were too behind-the-times to find out that most people don’t want to keep sucking down fuel like it’s going out of fashion and would like some more environmentally, and bank account friendly, vehicles. Ya know, so we don’t have to be the Middle East’s bitch forever. And worse yet, the Republicans are letting this ninny-brained fossil keep his god-damned post as the leading Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee! And as Politico reported, John Boehner was reported as saying “Joe has done the right thing by apologizing — it’s time to move on,” to his fellows during a closed meeting concerning Barton.

No, it is not time to move on! You can’t just say “oops, my bad” for something like this. How can these people get away with just apologizing their way out of stuff like this? This is what mystifies me about our leaders, the same way that Democratic Representative Bob Etheridge assaulted a person on camera, grabbing the boy by the wrist and then by the neck while yelling “Who are you! Who sent you” like a nut-bag. Reports say the kids were planted to aggravate him, but I cannot say, but no matter what, you can’t just grab someone like that and get away with it. It’s called simple assault, and it is a misdemeanor, but Bobby got away with it so far by saying “he was sorry.” Oh, well, that makes it all better, doesn’t it?

I’m still waiting for this change I can believe in, too, but even if President Obama has the best intentions in the world and a possible plan to execute, how can it ever see the light of day when our leaders are more concerned with serving their own interests than in protecting ours? I’m pretty patient in all, I know none of our issues are going to be fixed in a year, or even two, but nothing so far that I have seen is giving me the faintest glimmer of hope that it is getting better. Stocks are up? Whoopdie-do, unless you have a retirement plan that rides on the market or have enough money to buy and sell stocks seriously it doesn’t really matter what the ass heads on Wall Street do. The average Joe and Jane are still struggling to make it by, find decent work, or keep their families fed. I know I’ve been living on the razor’s edge for a while now, coming into this economy with a degree that would be most useful in fields that are presently weak or dying, competing for entry-level positions against more experienced people because they, too, are looking to get whatever they can. I still don’t have health insurance, and I’m not overly confident with this new plan that is (very slowly) going into the works. And then I watch our idiot leaders fumble about in Washington, and see BP’s spokestard Tony

"Hello, my name is Tony Hayward, and I am a complete twat."

Hayward getting away from all the stress of being a complete and utter git by going out and racing his yacht. Tut tut tut. Sure, he’s handed the reins over now, but to what end? Damage is done, and now all they can do is stumble along and try to fix their mess.

It’s something Hunter S. Thompson saw over thirty eight years ago, when he watched the disintegration of the 1972 Presidential election, and how in the end one party was willing to sacrifice their chance at the Presidency due to internal politics, with the promise of being handed power in 76’, regardless of what was good for the nation. Finks, liars, and criminals all, occasionally trading power back and forth while ignoring their true jobs as our representatives. But, we keep electing them. Why? Because our choices are vanilla and chocolate, democrat and republican, giant douche and turd sandwich. Groups like the Tea Party arise out of a mutual sense of anger towards what’s going on, but lack the focus, power, and broad appeal to ever do anything more than act as spoilers for one party or the other. These third parties tend to be focused on one aspect of government, fail in every other area, and are so radicalized that the average person who just wants to be left the hell alone won’t vote for them. What else can we do though? America is so afraid of anything that smells of… socialism (oh noez, run!), and we don’t want nationalism, but what can we do? The problem is, we can’t do anything short of rounding up all our present leaders and kicking them to

WWCD?

the curb and trying again from the ground up. America needs a personality change, because most people are so disenchanted with government that they simply do not vote, and no amount of sweet words will easily lure them back and keep them interested enough to continue to care. The disconnect between our leaders and the people is so great that there is no feasible way as I see it to bridge the differences. But things will just keep getting worse if we don’t vote, because the fanatics will always vote, and we do note want our fates decided by fanatics. Thomas Jefferson said that “a little rebellion now and again is a good thing.” Short of that, I’m not sure what else can be done, but all I know is that I cannot bring myself to care as much about something I so believed in anymore.

In the end, unless anything amazing happens, I guess I’ll just vote for Cthulu in 2012. After all, if I can’t have the nation I truly want, why settle for the lesser evil? Ftaghn!

Jeeves LOL

Please be advised, mispeled.net will be undergoing some cosmetic changes over the weekend to reflect that it is now a multi-author site. It shouldn’t take too long, but if you show up and the site is all borked, at least you’ll know why.

First, to introduce the main characters.

IB

(short for Inappropriate Bear, aka Spider Bear, aka Cubicle Bear)

IB, the office drunk, has magnets sewn into his paws and middle allowing him to stick to walls. This also has the unfortunate side effect of making him stick to himself. IB was once a loner, but he now participates in an active office lifestyle. He is a tenacious wall climber by day and a party animal by night.

Spacebear

Although Spacebear cannot climbs wall he does possess an anti-gravity mechanism that allows him to hover over an cubicle barrier. IB and Spacebear are enemies about 40% of the time.

*I’m hoping to recast Spacebear as it has been pointed out to me that Spacebear is actually an underwater female squirrel from some popular cartoon show.

Dino

Dino is a gentle mannered, thoughtful dinosaur joining the office crew straight out of prehistory.

I’m going to try to summarize what’s been going on in one rambling sentence. You can read all the past episodes in the cubicle bear archives. There is a numbered episode list to guide you through the story.

IB and Spacebear, once the greatest of enemies fighting to the death, inadvertently fell back in time to a mysterious lost island where they met a friendly dinosaur named Dino who scared them into setting off another time bomb sending all three of them back to the land of cubicles where they eventually befriended the dinosaur and set plans to get him back to his home by gathering the ingredients for making a time machine (as they were all out of time bombs) and after stumbling through many difficulties in gathering these objects they are now set and ready to send Dino back into prehistory.

1st Cubicle Episode on Mispeled