 March 8th, 2010 by Newbs -
This week’s Shameful Human is Fredrik Liliegrin, the former DICE CEO and co-founder who now heads up Antic Entertainment. He had a recent chat with Gaming Union in which he claimed the Wii was a “virus.”
Liliegren took the form of a wild-eyed prophet who has seen the future and knows the doom awaiting mankind when he announced “people have got to realize the Wii is a toy, not an entertainment focused product.” That’s funny, I always thought games were entertainment. Or is entertainment a higher form of art, something only reserved for the more refined palate of your 18-29 year-old Gears of War loving males?
Fredrik went on to say “this is not a games game machine.” Huh, I wonder what that means. Does the Wii not play critically acclaimed games software like Super Mario Galaxy, or does it merely provide amusing distractions for so-called “non gamers” looking to have a pretend game of tennis.
Liliegren followed up his rant with an attempt at some vigorous backpedaling a few days later on his blog, in which he basically said the same things over again. He claimed:
Given this design direction the Wii in my mind is more of a toy then a games machine, and I say millions of Wii Fit players agree with me! It’s a Toy that plays some pretty good video games, but the majority of users that has bought a Wii, I believe, would never consider buying a Xbox 360 or a PS3. Simply because I believe they would not be interested in that experience.
Again, Liliegren differentiates toys and games, with the implication that toys are something lesser. I suppose what he’s saying is that while the Wii may very well be a games machine, it is by no means “legitimate” in the same way the 360 and PS3 are, because while the public at large may buy a Wii, they would never pick up a 360 or PS3, where the “real” games are.
Liliegren joins legendary Shameful Humans like Capcom’s Antoine Seux, EA’s Alain Tascan and SEGA’s Constantine Hantzopoulos as a games industry insider bent on hating the Wii for no reason other than his own ignorance.
QJ.net, MCV
March 6th, 2010 by Newbs -
Conan O’Brien’s internet usage came around only after years of failed attempts at starting a career in real-world entertainment. He had brief stints as a writer for The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live before landing a gig as host of an obscure late night talk show called Late Night. O’Brien flirted with real success when he was promoted out of that bleary late-night/early morning vacuum into his dream job as host of the Tonight Show. O’Brien quickly found that position to be ill-suited to his dedication to quality and originality; he was fired soon after accepting the job.
It was only after these many years of struggling with the hardships of the real-world entertainment industry that O’Brien finally found his place, and it happened to be on the internet. On February 24, 2010, O’Brien got a Twitter account, and his career took off with immediate and explosive success. At last, O’Brien had found his place.
Conan’s Twitter is a stunning piece of internet humour done right. He posts with an unobtrusive reliability, and always has something amusing to say. Take, for example, this early message: “This morning I watched Remington Steele while eating Sugar Smacks out of a salad bowl. I was naked.” Now that’s good writing.
O’Brien’s latest spark of creative internet genius was to announce the first person he would follow with his account, Michigan resident Sarah Killen. His wit drove thousands to her humble Twitter account, and she has quickly gone from 3 to 11 000 followers. That’s the power of real internet celebrity.
Conan O’Brien, Shufflingdead salutes you for being one class act.
March 2nd, 2010 by Newbs -
This week’s Star Trek episode is “11:59,” Voyager’s fifth season tribute to sleep.
Plot: This episode flips between Janeway slowly coming to the sad realization that her ancestor, Shannon O’Donnell, was not an astronaut, did not work on any Mars missions, and was a mere consultant on the Millennium Gate, and the tale of the real Shannon O’Donnell, who was, in fact, just as boring as Janeway discovers her to be.
Character Development: In this episode, we learn that Janeway is a fraud of a scientist and researcher. Despite having lived a cushy Federation life, with unimaginable amounts of information easily available, she has never been bothered to do any serious research into the family history which inspired her career. She also believes that the Great Wall of China was one of the few man-made objects on Earth visible from space prior to the 22nd century, an absolute myth.
Forehead of the Week: Since there are no new real aliens introduced in this episode, I’m going to go with Janeway’s doppelganger ancestor, Shannon O’Donnell. In this episode, the crew of Voyager, along with the viewing audience, is subjected to the dull tale of O’Donnell, a consultant on a building project. Her only noteworthy characteristic is her predatory sexual nature toward geriatrics.
Memorable Quote: There aren’t any.
March 1st, 2010 by Newbs -
For years we’ve had to endure Jenny McCarthy’s ignorant rantings about how childhood vaccinations supposedly caused her son’s autism, despite a complete lack of scientific evidence, along with her insistence that chelation therapy actually did something to help him. Well, now Jenny’s theories have been thoroughly laid to rest, and that’s a great reason to make her Shameful Human of the Week.
It seems her son never actually had autism, but rather “a rare childhood neurological disorder” called Landau-Kleffner syndrome. LKS can cause speech impairment and neurological damage, but affected children have been known to regain their language abilities. That would explain why her son kept getting better, despite her fake science having long been proven bullshit.
Jenny’s backpedaling like crazy. She’s decided she just wants vaccines better researched, and not eliminated entirely, as she once pushed for. McCarthy claims that she will continue to be a voice for autism, although I would hope all of this finally ends the shred of credibility the mainstream press was giving her.
As a formal apology for making the world dumber, and for endangering the health of everyone by publicly promoting the boycott of vaccines, I’d like to see McCarthy free Jim Carrey and return him to reality.
[source]
February 23rd, 2010 by Newbs -
This week’s Star Trek episode is “Fair Haven,” that 6th season Voyager classic in which Janeway bangs a very boring hologram.
Plot: Faced with a neutronic wavefront, the crew of Voyager are forced to bide their time in a dull recreation of a 19th century Irish village named Fair Haven until the storm passes. Instead of allowing her crew to enjoy the endless possibilities of the holodeck, Janeway feels it would be better to keep just the one program running, and force everyone to play along with her sick fetish for Irish holograms.
In this episode, Janeway meets a bartender in Fair Haven, and quickly falls for him. As their relationship develops, Janeway finds numerous small flaws with her new fake man, and modifies him to her liking. In other words, she makes him as dull as possible.
Eventually, the netronic wavefront causes Chakotay to need all the ship’s power to be redirected to the deflector emitters, and much of the Fair Haven program is lost as a result. Janeway’s man is saved, but the captain uses the events as an excuse to stop seeing him so much, and to stop modifying him.
Character Development: In this episode, we see yet more proof of Janeway’s stunning dullness. Instead of creating an 8-dicked-pleasure-monster, she spends all her time with a bartender/poet.
Forehead of the Week: Since there aren’t really any new aliens in this episode, I’m going to have to give it to Voyager’s holodecks. At one point, Janeway has Paris expand the program to use an additional holodeck, and yet there were no obvious limitations when only a single holodeck was used. How do those things work?
Memorable Quote: “Delete the wife.” – Janeway, not treating all holograms equally.
February 22nd, 2010 by Newbs -
Finding an image of Mike for this week’s Shameful Human was a difficult task, so you’ll just have to live with the little thumbnail to the right. At least there is joy in staring at that mysterious robot claw that seems to be reaching up at him, and imagining it is some unfortunate victim being held down by Hickey’s repressive boot.
Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey is still in denial that Nintendo has fully won this generation’s console war, and insists the company needs to enter panic mode in order to have a chance against its competitor’s knock-offs. Hickey recently stated:
We believe Nintendo needs to cut the price of their console from $200 to $150 immediately, as they should establish as meaningful of an installed base as possible before the Natal and Arc are introduced.
That’s funny, I thought Nintendo had already established a meaningful installed base when they sold as many consoles as their two competitors combined.
Hickey’s lunacy didn’t end by assuming he knew how to run the world’s most successful video game company, he’s also tricked himself into believing the “fad” of Nintendo’s dominance might soon be ending. He predicts:
We remain optimistic for near term PS3 and 360 market growth opportunities… We expect continued market weakness through ’10 for Nintendo related products, as the Wii cycle fades meaningfully and the DS platform faces considerable competition from Apple related mobile gaming devices.
I suppose Wii and DS sales may fade in the upcoming year, although that does tend to happen when video game systems begin to reach a certain saturation point. Note Hickey’s language, “market weakness” is simply a nonsensical way of talking about a company which outsold its competition at a nearly 2:1 margin just two months ago.
Why is it that analysts and so-called experts still insist on predicting Nintendo’s doom, even as the company’s victory march continues? None of them foresaw this walloping coming, maybe they want to will their original guesses into existence.
[source]
February 16th, 2010 by Newbs -
This week’s Star Trek episode comes from the idea-bankrupt seventh season of TNG.
Plot: Doctor Beverly Crusher attends her grandmother’s funeral on Caldos II, a planet which hosts a human colony of make-believe Scots. It’s here that Crusher encounters her grandmother’s young-looking lover, the anaphasic lifeform Ronin who lives in a candle. Ronin attempts to upgrade to Beverly now that her grandmother is dead, and succeeds for a time by giving her wild, writhing orgasms. Eventually, Ronin enters the body of Crusher’s dead grandmother in a desperate means of fighting off Data and Geordi, and this finally ends Crusher’s interest in him.
Character Development: In this episode, we learn that Beverly Crusher had a grandmother living on one very strange human colony. None of this is of any relevance to her as a character more broadly.
Forehead of the Week: That would obviously go to Ronin’s unnamed species, the anaphasic lifeform. Apparently these creatures have lived among humanity since at least 1647. Their power is incredible, they are able to inhabit creatures and objects, and leech off old ladies for decades.
Memorable Quote: “McFly.” – One of the gravestones on Caldos II, a great Back to the Future reference.
February 15th, 2010 by Newbs -
Robert Pattinson is another one of those people who I’ve always known would have to be crowned a Shameful Human at some point; I was just looking for a good excuse. Lucky for me, Pattinson has done well to act like an absolute idiot this week.
In a drunken interview with Details magazine, Pattinson revealed what most of us already knew, he “really hate vaginas.” Indeed, Pattinson claims to be “allergic to vagina.” Pattinson barely survived a lengthy photo shoot in which he “had to” position himself between the legs of a hot female model, and apparently only handled the ordeal because he was hungover.
Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting that Pattinson is shameful for being gay. Absolutely not. It’s just that he’s spent an awful lot of time leading on an awful lot of confused young girls.
You might be thinking, okay, Pattinson is gay, well maybe now he can become a prominent gay rights activist. Actually, that won’t work, he’s not gay either. Add all of his gay followers to the list of victims he’s led on. It turns out that Pattinson only has eyes for his dog. In the depths of his bizarre interview, Pattinson unleashed this monster: “There might be something wrong with my emotional sight… The only emotional connection of relevance is with my dog. My relationship with my dog, it’s ridiculous.” Yikes.
[source]
February 13th, 2010 by Newbs -
Last week’s Interneter was LisaNova, a YouTube celebrity who parlayed her early start in vlogging into a successful internet career, far surpassing anything I’ve ever done. This week’s Interneter is her buddy and compatriot in being better than me, Philip DeFranco.
Philly D’s path to wealth and stardom kicked off in 2006 with the birth of his first YouTube channel, sxephil. I’ve never understood that name, is he straight edge or something? Well anyway, he quickly started churning out celebrity-gossip and stupid-news rant videos, and has now amassed over 900 000 subscribers. Phil has used the success of that channel to branch out into additional channels, including joining and then leaving that “TheStation” thing all the cool kids on YouTube are or were a part of.
DeFranco’s power knows no bounds, he now brags that his internet income exceeds $250 000 a year, and was voted Wired’s Sexiest Geek of 2008 by his loyal minions. I was a regular viewer of his show for awhile, but got sick of his shtick about the time he snuck in a little “blame the victim” commentary during the Rihanna-Chris Brown fiasco.
Philip DeFranco, Shufflingdead salutes you for filling us with hateful jealousy.
February 9th, 2010 by Newbs -
This week’s Star Trek episode comes from the often maligned first season of Enterprise.
Plot: This is a Phlox heavy episode in which the good doctor wrestles with both his ravenous desire for inter-species copulation and carefully considered philosophies regarding cultural contamination, although he seems unaware of the irony of his conflicting view points on the two issues.
In Dear Doctor, Phlox and Crewman Elizabeth Cutler reveal their attraction to one another, with Cutler unphased by Phlox already having several wives. The episode concludes with the two heading for a date. Sadly, Cutler could have been a fun minor character in the show, but she disappeared when the actor playing the character, Kellie Waymire, died.
In addition to Phlox chasing human tail, he also has to deal with creating a cure for the genetic illness of an under-developed alien culture. He ultimately decides that, of the two humanoid species living on a planet, only the healthy one should live, and that he won’t give out the cure he’s developed for the other, sickly species. I guess they should have used their bootstraps better.
Character Development: This episode reveals that Phlox is one serious player.
Forehead of the Week: That honour has to go to the Valakians, who did nothing wrong and only sought the help of more “advanced” cultures. It was eventually decided by the advanced culture they found that the Valakians deserved to die because they had a genetic disorder, even though a cure was available.
Memorable Quote: “It’s mating season, so you know how that goes.” – Dr. Jeremy Lucas, living with horny Denobulans.
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