No Zytrons In Range

(Make sure you un-mute it to get the whole experience.)

For the un-Flashed, this is a video game currently featured on the John McCain homepage called Pork Invaders.

It’s a pretty faithful clone of Space Invaders, with the following exceptions:

• The iconic invader spaceships are replaced by little pigs. Which is actually more like pre-pork than pork. Or maybe it’s pork chops shaped to look like little pigs, that would add a much-appreciated nuance to the game world. Oh, by the way, there are three levels of pigs, just like the three levels of invaders in the original, and they’re worth different point amounts like in the original, but in this game they all look identical.
• The red UFO has changed into a barrel. Of pork. A “pork barrel,” as it were.
• Shooting pigs and pig-derived meats will earn (or save, presumably) tax dollars. The pork barrels are still worth ??? points. Unlike the original, your points are measured in millions now. (It says so right on the game screen.)
• The bullet fired by your tank is turned into the word “veto.” You can still only fire one bullet/veto, at a time, though.
• Your tank isn’t actually a tank, but instead is a generic-looking McCain logo. When it explodes, it looks identical to the explosion in the original Space Invaders game which is really jarring and weird.
• At the end of each round, you’re presented with a cool factoid about how much John McCain hates pork.

I don’t even know what to think about this. It’s so retro, it could possibly be cool. But is it retro because McCain’s website is run by some hipster 20-year-old with an ironic t-shirt, or is it retro because McCain called somebody into his office and said something like, “those kids like playing the Space Invaders, don’t they? Why don’t we make a Space Invaders game for them?” Sadly, I think the latter is more likely.

The concept of the game aside, though, the execution is pretty lazy. Why are do all three invaders look identical? Is the McCain logo really the best thing they could find to represent a tank? And how come they didn’t bother to change the explosion when it got hit into something more appropriate? If you made this game, or know the person who made this game, put me in contact with them, because I have a lot of issues.

Oh well, I’m looking forward to seeing what the McCain campaign turns Frogger into.

An animatronic dog in a spacesuit playing Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Otherside”:

(Courtesy of ProgramBlue.com, via Fark)

As a sequel to “Zune - Wha!?“, Here’s another gem from the Zune team:

Error when connecting/disconnecting USB headset

Two bugs for this post:

1) I was watching a movie on Zune (MP4 format, if that matters) when I plugged in my USB headset to make a Skype call. Despite my computer’s default audio being re-routed to the USB headset, Zune continued to play over the speakers. Every other application on my computer will change its audio output to the headset except Zune, so this is extremely annoying.

Workaround: Quit Zune, restart it, then play the same movie and skip to the same point at which you plugged in the headset.

2) After doing the workaround above, I finished my Skype call and then unplugged my USB headset. Zune then stopped my movie playback with the error “To listen, connect speakers or headphones to your computer.” Two points here:
a) This error message is insultingly moronic. No shit, you need headphones or speakers to hear things? I’m so glad I have Zune to tell me these things! (Must have been written by the same guy who wrote this error message: http://blakeyrat.com/2008/05/10/zune-wha/ )
b) It also was a blatant lie; there *are* speakers hooked up to my computer. Zune was just too stupid to switch audio output to them, like every other application I’ve used ever does.

So if you plug in, or unplug, a USB headset while watching a movie on Zune, you have to restart Zune.

Can someone on the Zune team please look up the phrase “plug and play” in the dictionary? There’s no excuse for this shoddy coding in the year 2008, I think pretty much everyone is aware of the existence of USB sound devices by this point, right?

Thanks.

PS, despite my griping about bugs, I really do like the new features in the new version– now that Zune buffers MP4 files read from network disks, I have absolutely no reason left to use iTunes. And that’s nice, considering how bloated and ugly iTunes is.

Quickies.

• Re: A critical reading of the news: “FAA Criticized In Report on Airline Parts”. Commenter Nick Schwellenbach, from the Project for Government Oversight, has yet to get back to me and explain why it matters that an aircraft parts employee measured a length of wire using a piece of paper.
• Re: Is this the dumbest product ever?: Eneplug. The dumbest product ever is still coming the “begging of May” according to its official product page.
• Re: New Line Cinema DVD FAIL. New Line never responded to my email. Losers.

Whenever I go shopping, I always encounter the item with the gloop on it. Maybe you’re reaching into a freezer shelf and get frozen ice cream gloop, or you’re grabbing a can from a shelf and get exploded sauerkraut all over your hands.

What can you do? Well, you can’t blame the store, after all they stock thousands of items every day. And you can’t blame the truck driver, it’s not like he wants the products in the back of his truck to explode and get gloop all over. Some grocery stores actually have paper towels in some aisles to wipe gloop off, but those seem to be few and far-between. But as I was grocery shopping today, I came up with the perfect solution to this problem.

Inspired by the self-cleaning public toilets Seattle has placed in their public parks, and the moisture systems supermarkets already have installed for their produce, I propose the Supermarket Shampoo. Simply install car-wash style water nozzles and powerful fans on the top and bottom of every supermarket aisle.

When 2:00 AM rolls around, the nozzles let loose, blasting every single aisle with powerful water mixed with a special Supermarket Shampoo mixture and washing the gloop off everything in sight. Once the shelves are clean, you simply turn on the fans and dry out the store so everything is sparkling clean for the next day.

Best idea ever.