No Zytrons In Range

The site in question.

Much more importantly, the episode of ALF in question.

(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.

While surfing today, I came across some evidence that, despite reading up on it for years and owning several domains, I know absolutely nothing about the domain name market. Behold:

For the image-impaired, that right there is a screenshot of the Sedo.com domain name auction site’s “featured domains.” And highlighted in red is the domain whypaintcat.com with an asking price of $3250. That’s over three thousand dollars for whypaintcat.com.

What the hell! It’s gibberish! It’s not even whypaintacat.com, which would at least be grammatically correct. (Or perhaps whypaintcats.com.) By that logic, my domain hiareyou.com has to be worth at least five grand– it’s equally nonsensical, but it has shorter words in it.

And kind of website could you possibly put at whypaintcat.com!? Is it an educational site for cat owners who want to justify their irrational need to put a coat of latex-based on their pets? Is it a new soft drink with a surreal name to attract hipsters? I don’t get it.

If you own whypaintcat.com, or you recently bought it for an outrageous fee from Sedo.com before Googling it and finding this blog posting, please send me an email. I’m bubbling over with curiosity. Was it worth the money?

And for God’s sake: Why paint cat? Inquiring minds want to know.

Tonight for dinner, I thought I’d slowly kill myself in a slightly different way than normal and microwave-up a TV dinner instead of attempting to cook something, or attempting to eat something cooked at a fast food joint. After careful consideration, I chose Hungry-Man “Mexican Style Fiesta” as my main meal this evening. I am, after all, a man who is hungry. It consists of a plastic tray with three compartments. One has a oily-looking mass of refried beans, one has what an enchilada prepared by an alien from Venus who only received a vague recipe over the phone, and the third has the dessert: a brownie. (The box proudly proclaims it’s a Duncan Hines brand brownie.)

Here are the cooking instructions with the seemingly random application of boldface preserved:

MICROWAVE OVEN

1. Remove plastic cover from brownie. Keep plastic over refried beans and enchiladas.
2. Microwave on HIGH 4-1/2 minutes. Carefully remove brownie with a fork; set aside. Turn back plastic cover; stir refried beans. Replace plastic cover. Return tray to microwave oven.
3. Microwave on HIGH 2-1/2 minutes.
4. Let stand 1 minute in microwave oven. Stir refried beans and rice before serving.

Do you see the problem with these directions? The brownie is done a full 2-1/2 minutes before the rest of the meal! The delicious-smelling brownie, sitting idly on a plate for minutes while the hungry dinner-maker stares at a slow-moving two-minutes-and-change timer on their microwave screen.

I put forward that there is not a human being on earth who has followed these directions without eating the brownie first, and thus ruining their dinner.

(It doesn’t look like the picture on the box.)

By now, everybody has heard of the terrorism scare in Boston prompted by the discovery of flashing signs resembling Lite-Brite kits in several locations around the city. Unfortunately, when it comes to terrorist scares by popular 80s toys, this incident was only the tip of the iceberg. Read on to learn about some more frightening incidents that were buried in the C section of your newspaper.

Seattle Ferries Shut Down

After a frightened passenger aboard the Tahubamup ferry reported a suspicious package on the upper car deck, ferry security officers moved to investigate. After a short search, the package was found to be a box of the popular game “Hungry Hungry Hippos.” The bomb squad was called in and successfully destroyed the package once the ferry had docked at Edmonds. As a precaution, all ferry service was suspended for the next eight hours as the ships were searched intensively for other action-based board games. An hour later, the game “Crossfire” was found aboard the Tuboma docked in Bremerton.

Marie Drophet, the passenger who initially reported the box, described the picture of the cartoon hippopotamus printed on the box as “Islamic-looking.”

BART Train Victim of Hoax

Fourteen passengers had to exit a BART train car this morning after an anonymous call to 911 reported a bomb and Transit Police noticed a small plastic object underneath a seat of the train. “I was so frightened,” said daily rider Paul Sorhees, “We had to exit into the tunnel and everything. I almost wet myself.” The Bomb Squad detonated the object, later found to be a “Man-At-Arms” action figure from the popular 80s cartoon He-Man. Ralph Tanner, spokesman for the BART told reporters, “The situation was handled in the correct manner. Had the extra two arms on the action figure been filled with explosive as our specialist theorized, even a bomb of that size could have easily derailed a train.”

Wisconsin Daycare Evacuated by Authorities

A disc-shaped plastic object prompted the evacuation of a daycare in Madison yesterday. Early in the morning, Shirley Frock called the local police to the scene after noticing the object in a basement storage area of the small daycare building. After extensive investigation by experts, the strange device was determined to be a Sit-n-Spin toy. Despite the basement being locked tight at all times, Mrs. Frock claimed that she had never seen the toy before.

Bomb Squad members at the scene entertained the frightened evacuated children by giving demonstrations of their remote-controlled bomb defusing robot, named Wheelie.

Statue of Liberty Closed To Public

One of our nation’s more recognizable monuments, the Statue of Liberty, was closed yesterday after the discovery of a mysterious plastic object. Officials evacuated the statue and specialists were called in to examine the object, which was initially believed to be a mass of C4 explosive. Clad in protective clothing, a bomb squad expert put the device into a protective metal case and removed it from the statue where it was then investigated. The all-clear was given soon afterward when a child in the crowd of evacuated tourists pointed out that the mysterious plastic object was a misplaced Statue of Liberty souvenir he had purchased earlier that day. C4, used extensively by demolition operations is a malleable clay-like substance with many times the explosive power of TNT.

Why is the media covering up these incidents which clearly reveal a larger conspiracy? Concerned citizens should demand action! Today it is a Man-At-Arms He-Man action figure, but tomorrow it could easily be a Teddy Ruxpin doll… can we take that risk?