I saw this on Wired. I think it might have come from the Chicago Tribune but I’m too lazy to log into their site to look.

Sometimes I wonder how often people actually pause to think about what they’re doing. Actually, that’s a lie. I don’t wonder about that at all because I know for a fact that most people don’t.

Take Fiji brand bottled water, for example. It’s bottled in Fiji, loaded onto a big ass boat and shipped here where it sells for more money per liter than gasoline.

They purify and bottle it in a plant that runs on diesel fuel 24 hours a day and it’s estimated that each liter bottled results in 26 liters of contaminated water as a result of the process.

Despite this, I think the sheer stupidity of paying 2+ dollars for a bottle of water that they shipped over the ocean is reason enough not to drink or buy it, particularly if you live next to the largest bodies of fresh drinking water in the entire world. You wouldn’t go out in public wearing a clown wig wrapped in dirty underwear yet, in my mind, you would look just as stupid with a bottle of Fiji water in your hand.

Therefore, I will add Fiji Water drinkers to my shit list, although they’re toward the bottom of the shit list (if you’re on the list, the bottom is where you want to be.)

This is a German card game that I played for the first time over the weekend. It’s very easy to learn with a good amount of strategy involved (the strategy takes a game or two to grasp.)

In 6 Nimmt!, players are dealt a hand of ten cards from a deck of 104. Each round, players choose a card from their hands and play it simultaneously, attempting to abandon the card in one of four rows positioned in the center of the table. Each card is marked from between one and seven ox heads; when a player has played his hand, he receives a point for every ox head he’s taken. The game ends when somebody reaches 66 points; lowest score wins!

A great simultaneous-action, psychological card game! Link

It seems to be sorta hard to find should anyone want to buy a copy. Try Ebay.

Rolling Stone published a good article about the perceived death of the recording industry. The article got me thinking about the cable television industry and how I’d love it if it could be the next one to suffer a collapse that necessitates a major reorganization.

Let’s break down my cable TV viewing habits.

I subscribe to RCN in Chicago (they’re the cable company that prevents Comcast from being a local monopoly.) It is with great shame that I admit my monthly cable bill is $152.90. This includes 10 Mbps internet, 99 basic digital channels, about 70 expanded digital channels,  10 or so HD channels, and HBO (RCN gives us Showtime, Cinemax, and Starz for free with HBO.)

That’s about 200 or so channels. Now, as for the ones we actually *watch*

CBS, NBC, Fox, Discovery, Food Network, HGTV, Comedy Central, ESPN, Comcast Sports Net, WGN, PBSHD, Cartoon Network, HDNet, National Geographic HD, HBO, Showtime.

16 out of 200-ish. Let’s round up to 20 out of 200. That’s 10%

RCN forces us to buy 200 channels so we can watch 20 of them. Granted, HBO alone accounts for $17.99 or so out of the $110 or so that we’re shelling out for TV but you can be assured that asking RCN to block the unused channels and subtract 80% off the remainder of our bill is not an option. The situation sucks, and because we’re not prepared to cancel cable in favor of downloading our favorite shows, we’re stuck with it (I like baseball too and it’s hard/impossible to download a live baseball game in HD.)

The television industry is increasingly playing for an audience that wants to dictate their own TV schedules.  The concept of ala carte cable service has been around for a long time but I have yet to see it as an option on my bill.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand that ala carte cable is a nightmare for the cable company. Their infrastructure operating fees per house are the same regardless of how many channels are transmitted. It just bothers me to no end to know that I’m paying a company to deliver 4 home shopping networks that I’ve never even purposely turned on.

Maybe Google will somehow solve this problem. *shrug*

In an ocean of shit, even a dead horse can smell good.

It will be found in Dubai….

You see, they built this man-made island for rich people to occupy…

Now think about what will happen to that island if sea levels rise.

At about noon on the Summer Solstice (that’s today, FYI) airplanes on the southwestern approach to Chicago Midway Airport (MDW) cast a shadow that passes exactly through the White Castle restaurant (and subsequently the intersection) at 79th and Harlem.

I don’t think any cult activity is centered on that White Castle though. Occultists are offended by the idea that chicken can be served in ring form.

Ditch Blade

Primary use: Decapitation

Drawbacks: Useless at close quarters

FuBar (Fireman’s Utility Bar)

Primary Use: Cranial Trauma

Secondary Use: Breaking and Entering

Drawbacks: Short

Gas Powered Chainsaw

Primary Use: Morale Building

Secondary Use: Obstacle Removal

Drawbacks: When used as a weapon a chainsaw is more likely to seriously injure the wielder than anything else. Loud as hell. Requires gasoline and lubricant.

Wel, I hope this has been educational. I might someday open an online paranormal university.

Personally, I don’t much care for this game but my family loves it and we played it yesterday so I decided to write it up.

Apples to Apples is a card game for (theoretically) 3 or more players. In my opinion, the more players there are the more fun the game is.

The game consists of two stacks of cards: red apples and green apples. The red apple cards all bear the name of a person, place, thing, event or concept. The green apple cards all bear an adjective. Each turn one player acts as the dealer and deals one green card in the center of the table. Each player besides the dealer chooses one red apple card from their hand (each player maintains a hand of 7 red apples) that they think the dealer will choose as the one best described by the adjective on the green card. The players all put their chosen card face down. If the dealer picks your card as the best, you score a point. The cards in play are scrambled up so the dealer can’t play favorites.

So, for example, the dealer flips a green card that says “moronic.” The players all play red cards with things on them that they think the dealer will think are moronic. If someone knows the dealer is a hardcore republican and they have a red card that says “democrats” they would be well-advised to play that card as the dealer is likely to characterize it as the most moronic concept played that round. Players take turns being the dealer until someone gets enough points to win.

In terms of mechanics it’s a pretty weak game but it can be good for ice-breaking, socialization, or just a few laughs.

Just as Mondays are dedicated to “pick up and play” games, Fridays will be dedicated to games that you have no Earthly business attempting to play unless you have a vested interest in gaming.

The game is set in H.P. Lovecraft’s fictional city of Arkham where a nameless, unspeakable horror (as the title suggests) is lurking in the shadows and getting worse every day. The players represent investigators who must gather clues and put a stop to whatever is going on. As it turns out the force behind the unspeakable horror is one of the Old Ones, ancient pagan gods who slumber in the Earth. If the players fail in their investigation they’ll have to deal with one of those old boys (and they aren’t too easy to kill if they wake up.)

The game is interesting because it actually has a form of A.I. to foil the players. Gameplay is cooperative, that is, the players work together against the game mechanics. Using their characters the players gather spells, items, and clues to seal the gates through which monsters, undead, and cultists are entering the city. The game gets easier as more players are added, obviously, but it can be a real pain to win with only 1 or 2 players (yes, it can even be played solo.)

The encounters and events that occur in the game are driven by decks of cards (and believe me, this game as a SHIT TON of cards and tokens) and many of them have a dark humor about them. Obviously, references to characters, events, and places from Lovecraft’s work are rampant.

Lovecraft may have been a mediocre writer and a blatant racist but I’ve gotta hand it to him, he created a pretty interesting mythos. I actually prefer playing the game to reading the stories, to be perfectly honest. The stories are like an instruction manual to a grander device. They lay out the framework of a compelling world of horrors while leaving plenty of room for imagination on the part of the reader. The reason something like Arkham Horror can exist is that Lovecraft encouraged others to use and expand his own concepts.