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)

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.

How bad is Terminator 3? Let me count the ways.

1. Magical Terminatrix Powers:
   • Gratuitous boob inflation. This puts Terminator 3 slightly below Critters 2, which had a very similar scene that was marginally less gratuitous.
   • Remote control of vehicles with no remote control capability. This puts Terminator 3 slightly below Maximum Overdrive, which used the same premise but didn’t try to explain it using ‘nanobots.’
   • The ability to yodel into a cellphone, making a broadband connection to some school district to pull photos from their middle school yearbook.
   • The ability to lick people to identify them. (Oh yeah, the Terminatrix has the a storehouse of the targets’ DNA, but not their photo!? Explain that one!)
   • The ability to change her arm-weapon from a plasma-ball-launcher into a flame-thrower. With this ability comes the compulsion to use it to burn random trees for no reason.
   • What looks like spider legs coming out of her mouth. I guess these come in handy when you’re wailing like a banshee.
2. Imagine this scene in your mind’s eye: cut to a news broadcast of a reporter talking about a new Internet virus that’s crashing computers all around the globe. The camera zooms out to show a guy, about 16 years old, and his girlfriend drinking beers while watching TV. The doorbell rings, and the guy says, “my mom’s home early! Hide the beer!”
   • Why would his mom ring her own doorbell?
   • Why would a drunk 16-year-old with a girlfriend and beers be watching the plot-advancement news network? Don’t they get MTV?
   • Who wrote this crap?
3. Nick Stahl has to be the worst saviour-of-humanity ever. Hell, the teenaged version of himself from Terminator 2 could have done better, and that kid was annoying as hell.
4. The best line they could come up with for Arnie was, “I’m back?” A three-year-old could write better dialog.

I will say that the prototype Terminator robots from the military lab were kind of cool, and the action sequences weren’t completely botched. But, man, what a stinker.