^ This space here to dodge the saying at the top.

It seems my images are all broken, and I'm far too lazy to fix them. So you shall read and suffer! (Until I get around to changing it.)
posted by Slade at 4:24 AM

Sweet Flaming Baby Jesus, it's been nearly a year! While I have no intent of using my masteries of Technomancy and Necromancy to ressurect the site, I suppose I should fill that 300 day void with something. There was alcohol, programming, philosophy, almost no women in school, and none for me, and all of the Buffalo chicken tenders I could eat at school. Summer's been the usual boring thing, minus a few surprises... You know who you are. And I'm heading back at the end of August.

Oh, I do occasionally write for Jelly Pufflmur, and they say I've still got it, but don't expect much out of me.

And A Dinner of Leeks has been published! Of course, you don't know anything about it yet, since I haven't said anything, but it is the most hilarious/worst book ever written. Check it out here. Trust me, it's worth the small bit of cash. And I spent two afternoons fixing the formatting for the public edition, so it kicks ass, visually. (Special thanks to my '93 edition of The Hobbit for page setup ideas.)
posted by Slade at 3:56 AM

Well, it's been over a month since my last update. In case you were wondering, no, I didn't die, yes, the red wire is the wrong one to cut, and George Herbert Walker Bush Junior still looks like a monkey.

I guess I'd better fill you all in on what's been going on. You'll have to pardon me for the lack of humor involved, as there hasn't been much that's funny to write about lately.

First and foremost, on the 13th of August I went to visit Cathy, my girlfriend while she was on a family camping trip conveniently nearby where I live. We spent a weekend of total bliss together, and as this was a last hurrah before college.

Since it was a long distance relationship and we didn't know when we'd be able to see each other again, it was arranged that I would go down to her house in Maryland. So I get down there and I'm as high as a kite, as I discover I'm falling in love with her.

I'd actually been realizing this for about a month, but was hesitant to decide that was what was happening because it had never happened to me before. And we hadn't really been going out for that long - two months. Our contact was a 3-4 hour phone conversation a day for all of July.

Backstory - We'd known each other since we were infants, as our parents were friends since before we were even sperm and ovum. I'd had a crush on her for about 7 years prior to this summer. She came up as my date for the Senior Ball (formal dance, end of school thing just before graduation), and it had been my goal to tell her how I felt (finally) during it. I actually managed to go through with it (which surprised me, as I lack nerve and social skills), and it turned out she had also had a crush on me for some time. So all of July I was counting the days until August 13th. It comes and I'm so excited my head explodes, but I manage to drive for 3 hours in heavy traffic at 75 miles per hour and not kill my mom and I on the way to the campground.

So to totally confuse you, I'm going to jump back to Maryland. I get there Sunday night after an entertaining night of riding around trying to get a hunting license for her father on his way home. I don't feel like going into it, I'll just tell you it was quite humorous. Monday morning, I wake up and think to myself "Holy shit, man. You're in love with one of the most wonderful people on the face of the planet. When did you get so damned lucky?" So I decide that today I'm going to tell her and see what happens (I wasn't sure as to how she would react). And then, of course, the universe realizes that it's made a huge mistake, and decides that the only way to correct the imbalance of forces (mainly my good luck) is to crush me completely. I walk up to my girlfriend, take a breath to open my mouth and ask to talk with her in private, and she says "We need to talk." At this point I realize that my brief streak of luck is over and my life is at least temporarily shattered. We go to her room, sit on her bed, and naturally, she breaks up with me. I'm not going to go into it online for the entire world to read, assuming they cared, so I'll just say it was a combination on her part of not feeling like she could keep up a long distance relationship, and other issues she needed to work out.

Yes, that's right. I've gone from love to heartbreak in a matter of seconds, and to top it off, I have to spend an entire week with my now ex-girlfriend. That's what I get for being blissfully happy for any length of time. And boy, was I in a euphoric daze. I was even slowly sliding from deep bitter cynical pessimism toward optimism, because, hey, if an unsocial dork like me could find someone as phenomenal as my girlfriend, and actually make her happy, then there was still hope for the world. In retrospect, this was probably the exact thought that tipped off the universe, causing it to investigate my life for this sudden change. The forces that usually consistently screw me over must have slacked off or gotten fired and there was a management error in replacing them. Nothing else could explain my situation but a reality gone mad. But don't worry. I'm back to despising just about everything, dwelling in my melancholy, cursing at my pens for blowing up just because I've used them to write with. (I've killed seven ball point pens since coming to college. Five in the first week alone.)

After two straight days of poor sleep and no food, I decided that since I was stuck with my ex for a week, and we'd been best friends for our entire lives, I should at least try to stay friends, so I forced myself out of my shell and with an effort that gritted my teeth and twinged my tear ducts, I put up my end of becoming closer friends, and she followed suit. And when I wasn't lamenting the fact that I'd now be single for another seventeen years, and probably wouldn't find someone like Cathy and be forced to settle into a mediocre relationship, I actually did have fun. Picked up a Nirvana T-Shirt (It says Nirvana on it, but underneath has a map of Dante's circles of Hell. So it makes absolutely no sense. So I love it.) and Christine by Stephen King. Sometimes, I need to take a break on the social satire and just read a violent horror novel.

I got home, hung out for a week, moved into college. There's been some fun stuff, some not so fun stuff. I love it around here, despite constant reminders of my single-ness. The universe and I are fighting in no man's land, going from war to uneasy ceasefire every few days or so. I may be single for the rest of eternity, but if the powers that be can screw me over, I can fight right back. That's right. You've gotta face me, the person you've been shitting on for 17 years. And I've also got baggage because I didn't take actions in the past when I should have. You're mine, powers that be. Watch your back...

So, this isn't all leading up to me having consistently bad luck or whining about said luck. Yesterday it was declared Kirby Week on the floor on my dorm by some of our resident dorks. I felt compelled to participate, so I drew 80's Hair Metal Kirby. That picture is the rest of my update. You can get it at here. I figured since I was updating my site so Zach could see the picture, that I'd better fill you in. That's all for now. In case you haven't noticed, I've not been in a very good mental state for writing humor website updates in quite a while.

Those old wounds still flare up far to easily...
posted by Slade at 10:31 PM

Ok,I'm at my (now ex) girlfriend's house, and will be attempting to enjoy myself until Sunday, when I'll get back home. Meanwhile, I will obviously not be updating this meager site.
posted by Slade at 3:44 PM

Ok, I'm back, after monitor escapades. Dig the latest low-res comic here. That's all for now.
posted by Slade at 1:15 AM

First of all, good news! I recently ordered some new apparel from Jinx, Clothing for Geeks, Gamers, Hackers, etc, so when it gets here you will have a photo of me in my cool new clothing. Secondly, I've been watching the tracker for my website, and I get roughly 3 hits a day. And I've only updated twice in the past two weeks! This is amazing to me, since I figured that almost no one bothered to look at my site period, so to keep up with all of you people, I guess I'll have to start updating more frequently. I'll start working my subconscious into update pondering mode starting... now...

Zach actually found my recent update with the wacky futuristic detective film-noir thing entertaining, so there will be a part two coming your way. Like it? Hate it? Blame him, not me. More low-res comics, and actually continuing that Occasional Slade story arc. Then there's also my short story, which I've sent out to most of my readers probably already at some point during it's development about a guy who's cursed to have things happen to him reminiscint of Walt Disney movies. People burst into song around him, animals tend to flock near him, but he's a very angry and cynical guy, and doesn't take no crap from nobody. I think it's pretty good, although it's only half finished. If you got a copy, unless it was a few weeks ago, it's progressed monumentally since you've checked it out. This guy (his name is Phil, but it's not very important) is eventually going to join a group of rag-tag super heros to foil all the evil villans that get overlooked by Marvel or DC Comics. I'm not going to bother with the HTML tags to stick in the TM thing over their names. You know they are trademarked, I'm not making money off of them, so we're good.

And then there's NES game reviews. I really enjoyed making one for Solomon's Key, and I have a ton of NES games to review, thanks in part to me, and in part to my wonderful webmaster, who donated a bunch to the "Make Slade Happy" fund, bless his big fuzzy heart. When I get another one out, I'll even make a brand new crappy html page for it! Frames? We don't need no steeeeeenking frames! Or tables. Or graphics. Or a coherent theme. Or a standard font. Or an original page design. It's all about the content, or lack there of.

Ok. Bottom line: Fun for the entire family, unless I start spouting profanity, and then the rating gets pushed up... Stupid ESRB...


posted by Slade at 1:46 AM

Well, I've finally got an idea tonight, so I'll share it with all of you. Also, you happen to be lucky because I'm bored stiff and depressed, as I haven't been able to talk to my girlfriend (who lives in Maryland) for more than five minutes in three days, and she's leaving on vacation for three weeks starting Saturday. And since I rented a new game for my GameCube today, I figured I'd review it for you all. Although don't expect a full blown Super Awexome^TM review like I'd treat say, an NES game, because that's not going to happen right now. Although it might in the future...

Anywho, I rented The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure for my GameCube. I was, as usual, seriously pissed at how money grubbingly gimmicky Nintendo has gotten, despite continuing to lose third party support. (For those of you not in the know, third parties are developers that go wherever the wind and cash takes them, and where they think they can make money. The are less renowned than so called second-party developers like Capcom or Activision, but they work the same.)

See, Four Swords is supposed to be a multiplayer thing. It's set in the world of A Link to the Past for the old Super Nintendo (Which if you've played you know to be the best Zelda game ever made.), except things are little skewed. Link normally is supposed to find the Master Sword (Or the Magical Sword underneath the graveyard, depending on the era) the obtaining of which is usually the equivalent of traveling through the twenty Hells and being forced to have sex with Dom Deloise. Link then uses said sword to stop the evil doer Ganon[dorf](sometimes there's a "dorf" tacked on to the end of his name, depending on the era) from getting the Triforce (magic artifact of the goddesses and source of supreme power) and becoming a demi-god capable of destroying the entire world because he's mad at his mommy and daddy for spanking him and leaving him in the mall that one time and always buying his brothers and sisters better toys and never giving him allowance or ice cream...

But this isn't A Link to the Past, as much as the game makes you wish it was. No! This is Four Swords. Four Swords Adventure In this game, the evil wizard Vaati has been sealed away by seven maidens fair because he wants to turn the scenic Lake Hylia into a noisy industrial area with a McDonalds and a T-Shirt stand.

This is what Link is fighting against.

So of course, trouble starts brewing in the castle, the ancient seals placed on the wizard are weakening, blah, blah, blah, and when Link and Princess Zelda rush to stop it, everybody gets abducted by Shadow Link from Zelda 2 and Ocarina of Time, except for our hero, of course. Link chases after him, but he's left his Wooden Sword  (even though it's dangerous to go alone!) at home, and is forced to draw the Four Sword from it's pedestal to kick some ass this time around. Except now there are two problems. One, Link has been split into quadruplets, each having a different tunic color, and two, the evil Vaati has now been released and is looking into cheap excavation equipment down at the Hyrule Construction Company. Once again, our elfin-esque hero has to save the day, without any reward except his experience points and maybe a copy of Grand Theft Auto 3 to play once he gets old enough.

"So," you think. "Great! I bought my four GameCube controllers, which conveniently go into my four controller ports. There are also four Links, and I'm ready to get three friends over for some old-school Zelda action!" And then KERPOW! It hits you like a ton of bricks. A heavy lourde. A pehat that just won't land no matter how many times you swing at it in vain.

You need Gameboy Advances and Gameboy Advance-to-GameCube ink cables for everyone who wants to play. You might just as well throw those slick (if slightly awkward for first person shooting) controllers out your window, because Nintendo wants you to use your Gameboy Advance as a controller now. Why use an analog stick, digital buttons, camera control, when you can spend 80$ to buy a gaming system to play a game for another? "But Slade!" You cry, I don't want to go spend 320$ extra to play a 40$ game that is shorter than a Super Nintendo game and is tailored to fit those of us with a zero second attention span!" Yeah, kid, I don't want to either...

I'm sure the brilliant marketers at Nintendo were all sitting around at a table one day playing "Guess what obnoxious office worker archetype I am" when some of the higher ups dropped in, and demanded that they try to save Nintendo's plummeting developer support to keep them from going under.

Marketer 1: [In the voice of Professor John Frink] "Well, let's see... We could, I guess, finally make the leap into online gaming, with the profanity, and the money, and all of the other twenty year old males who have no contact with the outside world GLAVIN!"

Big wig: [Voice of (The deceased) Phil Hartman] "No, I don't think that will work. We've already said we aren't going to go online, and if we give in to the pressure, then Sony and Microsoft will go back to beating us up and taking our lunch money because we aren't "cool" anymore. Why don't we try hearing from someone with a little talent?

Marketer 2: [Voice of Joan Cusack] Hmm... I've got it! We can play off of the sadly obsessed Nintendo Fanboys who will still be single and living in their parents' basements at age 40 and who actually bought and kept their Virtual Boys¹. We can rig up a new Zelda game based on an old Zelda game, disguise it with some almost decent new graphics, and get these guys to buy more Gameboy Advances so they can play it multiplayer!

Big wig: Brilliant! Let's get started! Oh, but you're fired. You know too much. And you have to buy me a cappuccino or I fire you too.

So Link is split up into four of himself, a green, a red, a blue, and (for some idiotic reason) a purple Link. Don't ask me why they couldn't have picked a less crappy color for link, like, say yellow. Or orange, or gray. I'd also suggest black, but that's what color Shadow Link is, and you don't want to confuse your sprites. But no, don't let us have any satisfaction. Slit our wrists and then pour salty lemon juice on the wounds.

The setup is thusly: You as your band of links have to fight bad guys, solve puzzles, and chop down so many harmless bushes that the phrase "war crimes," or more specifically "Auschwitz" springs to mind to get to the end of the level. Yes, I said level. The game is broken down into little jaunts into various parts of Hyrule. They take somewhere from 10 to 15 minutes to play, and there are only 6 of them, like the first level you start out near Lake Hylia and have to work your way back to the castle and inside. You can change formations into box (The links stand in a small square, wide and long (essentially the same thing, just one is them all lined up horizontal and the other is vertical), and this formation where all the links stand back to back Surrounded by Orcs With no Chance of Escape style to fend off attackers from all four directions.

As with any game with multiple characters, you have to at times split up and stand on various switches, or each Link must defeat a different color coded enemy, or the Links must team up to push or pull something big.

Anywho, on with the critique.

Music: It hits the old SNES Zelda music dead on, which still kicks ass to this day. I am, however, all too aware that this is a GameCube treatment and that the music should have at least been redone for the game. I like the past (and Past), but I don't want to live there.

Sound: Sounds are pretty good. When they aren't the old SNES sounds, they are either made up for the game (like when soldiers gurgle in pain before they die in a puff of smoke), or from WindWaker (like the sound of bomb explosions, and the Links' voices when they swing their swords.) The constant yelling of Link somehow manages to not get annoying, but I'm still trying to figure out how.

Gameplay: It's old-school Zelda, which is great, except again, this is my GameCube, not my Super Nintendo, so I was expecting a little more here. There are some cool things added, like side scrolling sections and cannons, underwater swimming, but usually these things are hampered because they are done on a GBA screen. It pops up when you enter houses and caves, along with the 16bit music, sound, and graphics the GBA has. It's all anti-aliased on your big TV screen. Tolerable with WarioWare, not with a Zelda game when there is only one person playing. See, the idea was so when the multiplayer Links enter a house separately, the whole screen doesn't change for the rest of them, only on their own GBA. However, some other system definitely should have been devised for the sane among us. Also, you can only carry one item at a time besides your sword, so you have to decide if you want to ditch those bombs for a boomerang or slingshot, or maybe a nice fire rod. I don't know why each link couldn't simply carry a separate item. Another note: You find heart containers in chests easily now, but your hearts reset (back to the oddly numbered [for a Zelda game] four) at the beginning of every new level. It reminds me irritatingly of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles and the find new magic every level system.

Neato-new effects (and graphics): There are a couple of these. The ambient atmosphere (clouds, smoke, light sources in darkened rooms) is awesome, i.e. beautifully rendered. The bomb explosion effects are taken directly from WindWaker (not a bad thing), the fire looks super spiffy, and there's this neat new effect where any flame that catches a bush on fire will also catch adjacent bushes. The chain reaction this creates looks really cool, and is sure to get Smokey the Bear and Greenpeace royally pissed at you. A plus!

Overall: I'm not very impressed by this game. The four Links gimmick is underplayed (it needs many more deep puzzles), and being forced to progress on a set path through Hyrule (even old-school Hyrule) really, really sucks donkey testicles. I would have been much happier with a re-release of Link to the Past for my 'Cube, with the new features (side scrolling parts, the pyro-effects) added, some actual new graphics, but the old purple haired Link. This blonde guy doesn't look right in this Hyrule. Putting in a second quest like the original Legend of Zelda for after you beat Link to the Past would be even better. But I'm not picky. I'd even take a straight port of Link to the Past. This game, despite the liscense, does not give me that warm fuzzy feeling in my nether regions that a great piece of software or too much alcohol does, unlike most of Four Swords' predecessors. C'mon, Nintendo, get with the program.

The bottom line: It's more fun than a kick in the crotch, but less fun than watching a monkey shoot fish in a barrel. If I had to describe it in one word, it would have to be "flapjacks."

Ratings (On the scale of 1 to awesome): A notch or two above "Meh."

¹My webmaster actually owns a Virtual Boy. They are kinda not that good at all. It was an interesting idea though. My webmaster is also not a Nintendo fanboy.




posted by Slade at 1:48 AM

Well, yet again, I have proven to be unreliable by not updating. And you will be pleased to know that since I haven't been thinking about it at all, I don't really have anything planned at the moment, so I'm just as curious as you are irritated at me to see where this is going. I apologize in advance for any crap that comes out...
 
So, a guy walks into a bar in just his pajamas... Well, ok, so they aren't really pajamas as much as killer death ray-o-matic (R) brand briefs. So this guy walks into the bar, and he starts zapping... people... with the... ray-o-... Nope. That's just not working.
 
Ok, you know what I hate? A whole lotta things... Yeah, that's not going to go either right now...
 
How about...
 
Screeeeeeeeeeeeech! The overgrown purple taxi cab came to a dead stop, its artificial automobile sounds keying in late as the craft aged. We don't use wheels anymore, but some people cling to the almost forgotten past of burning rubber and smouldering wreckage. People with no lives who live alone to die alone and unhappy from alcohol poisoning at age forty. People with no future but to run down slowly like a clock that doesn't get wound, gradually losing touch with reality until they just stop one day. People like me.
 
No, not the old woman with abnormal amounts of facial hair who obviously lives with mangy cats, the guy behind her. No, keep going, I'm not the guy with the third arm extending from his forhead either. Wait, stop. Right there. The guy with the undersized trenchcoat and oversized mouth. That's me. Sam Garfield, private eye. I've got five slugs in me. One's a bottle of bourbon, and the other four are lead. Let's just say sometimes things get a little too personal when I'm on the job, if you know what I mean. No, I don't mean BDSM gone too far. People shoot at me when I'm on a case, damn it. You're dense, pal... But what am I doing here? What brings me to this forgotten street corner where the mist rises from the sewers. Where there is no color but grayscale. Where forgotten horn players give their last song from beyond the grave to a film no one will watch... Well, for that, we'll need a little monologue...

in this day and age, there's not much for us private eyes to do, what with these fancy security passcards, body scanning, bar codes on our necks, so I've been out of work for a while. Sometimes I kick myself for becoming a private detective. Or I let my ex-wife do it for me. She looks like a gorilla and hits ten times harder. I often wonder why thugs don't hire her as their toughs... maybe all of the backhair is a turnoff for that line of work...
 
There I was with me telling myself that if I didn't get a call today for the eighth straight week in a row I'd hang myself by my tie from my ceiling fan, when this dame shows up. Carle De'Ville, they called her. Her real name was Nancy McGill, but she had a way with words and weapons that took that name right out of a person's mouth - with remarkably little blood loss. At any rate, she was built. Legs up to her chin, those pouty red lips that only too much collogen could achieve, and only alcohol could love, but her voice... It could bring a dying man out of a coma if she wanted it to. Sadly, as my research had told me, she was more prone to having people put into comas.
 
It was drug money. It's all about the drug money these days. Of course, there's only one legal drug -soma - marketed officially by Morgan Industries, which also happens to own everything on the planet, people and their souls included. But there are always small home-made chains that pop up and sell blackmarket stuff. This dollface was the ring leader of one of those cells. By law I was required under pain of death to report any illegal capitalistic gain to one of the many police officers in the ciy. I probably would have gotten a reward if I had turned her in, but I've never been one for rules. And I was about to kill myself anyway, of course. Another intersting fact: the penalty for committing suicide is public execution. Go figure.
 
"I need to chew on some potted plants." She said as she walked in and I stared at her breasts.
"What did you say, miss?" I asked, wiping the drool from my chin.
"I need you to help me with some business..." She said, sitting down in the client chair - it had no cushion, and needed to be replaced before the first person ever sat down. I gestured to her to take a seat as I untied my tie from my fan and sat down.
"And what makes you think I can help you?" I asked gruffly, trying to light a cigarette - lighters and me are like oil and water, or whiskey sours and barmaids.
"Well..." She began hesitantly, "You're the only sane one left in this town." I nodded and swallowed my unlit cigarette.
"See, my problem is Jimmy the Hand." I sat up boltright in my chair. Ok, I'm lying. I actually fell over backwards in my chair and bashed my face rather hard into my desk. After I had finished running about the room and cursing violently, I gathered all of my composure.
"You mean Jimmy the Hand, that guy who masturbated so much his hand fell off at the wrist?" I asked, startled.
"No." She frowned, irritated. "I mean Jimmy the Hand, the guy who pushes euphor."
"Ah, that drug that supposedly would put private enterprise back onto the market... Not that it would do anything to Morgan Industries anyway, since they have the monopoly of the entire planet and unlimited resources..." I said, beginning to stroke my beard before I remembered I had shaved it off so I'd look nicer in my coffin.
"Yeah, and here's the score..."


posted by Slade at 12:44 AM