{"id":101,"date":"2010-10-06T22:17:44","date_gmt":"2010-10-06T22:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/?p=101"},"modified":"2011-06-15T11:49:38","modified_gmt":"2011-06-15T11:49:38","slug":"look-girls-its-our-boy-with-no-pants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/?p=101","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Look, girls! It&#8217;s our boy with no pants!&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--  p.MsoNormal \t{mso-style-parent:\"\"; \tmargin-bottom:.0001pt; \tfont-size:12.0pt; \tfont-family:\"Times New Roman\"; \tmargin-left:0cm; margin-right:0cm; margin-top:0cm}  li.MsoNormal \t{mso-style-parent:\"\"; \tmargin-bottom:.0001pt; \tfont-size:12.0pt; \tfont-family:\"Times New Roman\"; \tmargin-left:0cm; margin-right:0cm; margin-top:0cm} -->What horrible events  have prevented me from updating the blog in a whole week? Not much. I&#8217;ve just  been a bit of vegetable, really. You&#8217;ve heard it a dozen times &#8211; I want to be  productive, but being a lazy bastard is just that much more appealing. Didn&#8217;t I  say I was going to have something made for the site this month? Ooer!<\/p>\n<p>Back in September I  was still determined to continue from where I left off from <a href=\"..\/..\/generalwritings\/classiccontroller\/index.htm\"> this little escapade<\/a> and find a way to get GameCube functionality for the  Wii Classic Controller. I&#8217;ve seen Classic Controllers online that have GameCube  plugs online, but usually they&#8217;re on the dodgiest of dodgy sites and the ones on  eBay aren&#8217;t exactly inspiring either. Of course, I&#8217;ve thrown cash towards all  manner of shady places for poorly-thought-out needs, so I <a href=\"http:\/\/cgi.ebay.co.uk\/ws\/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&amp;item=250641700232&amp;ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT\"> ordered one<\/a> for a mere \u00a34. And surprisingly, it actually arrived this time!<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Why did it surprise me  that the thing felt as cheap as chips? I don&#8217;t know what I was smoking that I  believed that this bootleg product would not only be on par with an official  first-party Nintendo product, but even for a knockoff controller I&#8217;m a little  taken aback. The D-Pad is loose and sunken, the face buttons are unresponsive  and the presses feel too soft (while every other button, shoulder triggers  included, are exceedingly stiff), the Home button functions as the Start button,  and most amusingly, the goddamned control sticks don&#8217;t work. Yeah, because  that&#8217;s not going to be important, right? It&#8217;s not like half the reason I bought  the thing was to finally get it compatible with <em>F-Zero GX<\/em> or anything!<\/p>\n<p>In a way I&#8217;m not <em> too<\/em> miffed, because although nobody likes how expensive game controllers are  these days, I&#8217;m at least thankful they don&#8217;t break on you within six hours of  play <span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">(hello, every third-party N64 controller I ever used!)<\/span>,  but you&#8217;re really asking for trouble if you think \u00a34 is going to get you a  decent-quality product. On the other hand, dude, how hard is it to just make a  Classic Controller work on GameCube games and not have to leech off a Wii Remote  in a process? It&#8217;s not something I&#8217;m frothing at the mouth for not having, but I  simply find it more comfortable than regular GameCube pads. I still see  officially licensed GameCube controllers being made for the Wii, and a fair  number of games still use it, so it&#8217;d be nice if when a company is going to  produce it they just try being imaginative and use a different design.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s particularly  bothersome is that of the feedback the seller has received, only one person has  complained about the product&#8230; because it doesn&#8217;t connect to the Wii Remote.  Everyone else is &#8220;great seller, excellent product!&#8221; and I&#8217;m like, are these guys  being polite or did they actually get products decent enough to be worthy of  busting out an exclamation mark? The knockoff controller is held together with a  mere four screws, though, so I might crack it open and see if it just needs some  re-aligning to make everything more responsive. If I do go ahead with it (and  don&#8217;t just let the idea drift away while I spend another week sitting around in  a vegetative state), I&#8217;ll be sure to give a second assessment of it.<\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t really been  in the mood to gush about what movies I&#8217;ve watched lately, so here&#8217;s another  round of summaries.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Fido:<\/strong><\/em> In  a version of the 1950s where radiation caused the dead to turn into zombies, a  company called ZomCon have found a way of disabling their flesh-eating urges and  utilise them as workers, servants and dogsbodies. A kid called Timmy befriends  his family&#8217;s zombie, naming him Fido, and numerous shenanigans happen, namely  when their ZomCon representative neighbour takes Fido away because of an  accidental flesh-eating incident. Despite the fact it&#8217;s about zombies, it&#8217;s  actually a very cute movie that barely takes itself seriously &#8211; the kid  accidentally causing a zombie outbreak in the neighbourhood is treated in much  the same manner as Dennis the Menace accidentally wrecking a neighbour&#8217;s garden <span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">(the American one, of course &#8211; the British one is more of a  guffawing git)<\/span>. There are some great scenes, the greatest one being two  ZomCon boy scouts tying up Timmy and Fido so they can shoot him, and then claim  it was an act of mercy by putting down a feral zombie&#8230; only for one of the  scouts to accidentally shoot his brother and then hides in a shack, Fido chasing  after and gobbling him up. &#8230; yeah, I just described this as a cute movie,  didn&#8217;t I? A lot of it doesn&#8217;t really work in text!<\/p>\n<p>Problem is, I just  found it a bit shallow. It&#8217;s cute and amusing, but it&#8217;s rarely laugh-out-loud.  The horror aspect is rarely played up (though that doesn&#8217;t mean there aren&#8217;t  shots of gore and beheading) so gore fans likely won&#8217;t care, and although  there&#8217;s a few interesting ideas brought up, I felt the movie didn&#8217;t explore them  enough. Fido is originally just a regular zombie, but through loving attention  from Timmy and his mother, grows to express fondness for them, and even without  his anti-bite collar he expresses no ill will towards them. Does that mean the  true cure to violent zombies is simply by giving them some love? Who knows,  because every other zombie is just shot in the head. Fido also retains attitudes  from when he was alive, such as his love of smoking, and Timmy makes several  comparisons of Fido to his grandfather early on &#8211; does this mean that most  zombies retain memories or elements of their past selves, and are Timmy&#8217;s  assumptions true? We never find out, as all the other zombies are just&#8230;  zombies.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not bad and I&#8217;d  dare say it was an amusing watch, but in a way it was almost underwhelming, like  there wasn&#8217;t enough truly engaging content to fill the running time.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Tiny Toons: How  I Spent My Vacation:<\/strong><\/em> Frig yeah! I haven&#8217;t watched this thing in <em>years<\/em>,  we&#8217;re talking over a decade here, and it&#8217;s still witty, entertaining and truly  engaging. I don&#8217;t know what that implies when most live-action movies get an  &#8220;okay but forgettable&#8221; rating from me, but a children&#8217;s cartoon with snarky pop  culture references gets top marks. I remember a lot of the scenes, but since I&#8217;m  a little less of an idiot than I was over ten years ago I can better appreciate  the jokes and references. I was well and truly blown away by the animation &#8211;  it&#8217;s crisp, it&#8217;s smooth, it&#8217;s colourful, it&#8217;s full of character, and it never  felt cheap. Heck, even the painted backgrounds during Buster and Babs&#8217; segments  were beautiful! It has spoiled me a little, as I tracked down the Spring Break  TV special and its animation felt rather stiff and awkward by comparison, but it  served as a healthy reminder that although most 2D animation I see nowadays is  lifeless and dull, you can get some positively beautiful results if you have a  sufficient budget to throw around.<\/p>\n<p>The Happy Centrifuge is still freaky, though. It&#8217;s a throwaway glimpse, but seeing cartoon  theme park goers reduced to a gooey, groaning sludge leaves an impact on you at  any age.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Wanted:<\/strong><\/em> This doesn&#8217;t count. I watched a bootleg DVD <strong>(IT WASN&#8217;T MINE I SWEAR)<\/strong> and  had to turn it off after ten minutes because it was just so terrible. I  seriously thought the camcording-the-cinema bootlegs were just an exaggerated  joke, but Christ and his bunions, this was <strong>bad<\/strong>. It didn&#8217;t even get the  full screen! When a character&#8217;s face was meant to be in the centre, you&#8217;d only  see the right half of him. Sound was loud and a pain to listen to, and it just  came across as a waste of time. See, that&#8217;s why I like and support buying DVDs  and going to the cinema &#8211; you can actually <strong>watch<\/strong> the fucking thing. Ten  minutes with this terrible bootleg really spoiled my evening. I&#8217;m not lying. I  would&#8217;ve been happy to march over to Xtra-vision and rent the real deal, but I  was just too bitter and unhappy to bother trying.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>I Am Legend:<\/strong><\/em> Actually, this is the book. It was a pretty good read! Having discussed it a lot  with others in the past I&#8217;d already spoiled the twist ending and the general  events of the story for myself before I&#8217;d even started, but that was no concern.  I will admit at first I was a little turned off by the simplistic writing style,  but given the context is makes sense, and it never felt lacking &#8211; I&#8217;d dare it  fitted the atmosphere and the character perfectly. It did feel a bit short,  though. I knew the ending was coming, but I was almost expecting a little more.  Oh well!<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"CRASHING THROUGH THE SPACE \/ COMES A MEAN GRIMACE\" src=\"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/bl\/blog-doodle11.PNG\" alt=\"\" width=\"512\" height=\"320\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m running out of  decent doodles to throw in, so here&#8217;s one related to a personal project I&#8217;m  kinda sorta working on. I won&#8217;t deny that I&#8217;m sick of seeing my uneven MS Paint  lines <span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">(I should probably try and learn to use vector graphics  sometime)<\/span>, and the feet and hands on the green fellow really gave me  grief, but I&#8217;m pretty happy with it. Positively freakin&#8217; loathe the right arm on the blue  girl, though. My sheer hatred of it cannot be expressed efficiently in words! I redrew it three times and all of the attempts looked positively terribly, and I only settled for this one because I&#8217;d come to accept that I&#8217;d never get the stupid thing right. It makes me cringe with hatred just looking\u00a0 at the bloody arm. (I don&#8217;t like it!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What horrible events have prevented me from updating the blog in a whole week? Not much. I&#8217;ve just been a bit of vegetable, really. You&#8217;ve heard it a dozen times &#8211; I want to be productive, but being a lazy bastard is just that much more appealing. Didn&#8217;t I say I was going to have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24,10,11,7,6],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-book","tag-doodle","tag-game","tag-movie","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}