the piglet is a candy thief.



notice the candy is the wrong color. that is because there was NO Halloween candy at the store... just one long aisle PACKED with CHRISTMAS CANDY. wtf, mate.

...oh, what? it's halloween?

i was gonna say Final Fantasy XII came out. but whatever. fun-size Milky Ways for all!

try to raise your own kind of hell.

I just learned from a recent post in the SEO community about Google Co-op. It lets you create a customized search engine. It encourages people to create a search engine with sites "you" think are good on a certain topic. To test this thing out I've decided to create a Video Game Search Engine and I invite you all to contribute to it.

I can send you an invite to become an editor of the search engine or you can leave lists of video game related sites in the comments. I really want to do this thing right! Google Co-op also gives me an inflated sense of self worth and power! Muwahahahaha!

Thanks,
Johnny

Oh yeah! You can try my engine out so far. Notice how my SERP's don't include Wikipedia entries unlike the normal Google SERP's.

I've been in deep thought for the past 3 days trying to reason out the answer to this question:

When is a "next gen" console no longer next gen?

Does it take a year or 6 months? Or is the term next gen not constrained by time but rather subject to action and next gen consoles are rendered "gen" by initial development of a console's progeny?

M&M'S Dark Chocolate

This is one of those awesome games full of symbolic representations. In this case, you must find the 50 titles of dark movies (horrors, thrillers, etc) hidden in the artwork. And you get to think about M&M's.

I'm admittedly terrible at these, but i love to try. Only 8 so far.

Virtual economies attract real-world tax attention

No longer content to simply let us play video games with limited government controls, it seems some members of the government want to IMPOSE TAX LAWS ON VIRTUAL ECONOMIES!

WHAT THE HOLY F$%*?!

To borrow a phrase from Penn, and then there's THIS asshole: Dan Miller, senior economist for the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress.

"Right now we're at the preliminary stages of looking at the issue and what kind of public policy questions virtual economies raise -- taxes, barter exchanges, property and wealth... You could argue that to a certain degree the law has fallen (behind) because you can have a virtual asset and virtual capital gains, but there's no mechanism by which you're taxed on this stuff."

You could also argue that IT'S ONLY A GAME! What, is the U.S. government going to start taxing you for the money you earn playing MONOPOLY?! What about Final Fantasy?! What's the exchange rate for Gil?! Would a SWAT team bust down 12-year-old Jimmy's bedroom door for not paying his gold taxes in Warcraft?! ARE YOU GREED-SLUT WASHINGTON DUMBASSES NOT ALREADY RICH ENOUGH AS IT IS?!

I was over on John Mayer's site eariler, and he had a post on one of his blogs about this site that does face recognition. You upload a photo of your face, it scans it, and tells you what celebrity you closely resemble.

As it told John Mayer that he looked exactly like John Mayer, I thought it couldn't be horrible. So I tried, and it told me I look like Jennifer Love Hewitt at 73% with the first photo I uploaded. (It requires you to register a free account to participate.)

Who do you look like??

Here's the link: MyHeritage.com

Smartest State Awards 2006-2007

Here's another semi-meaningless annual list for everyone to discuss. The New England states rank smartest. I'll have to save this as a scrap of evidence for the next time someone tells me Maine is full of illiterate mountain men.

From the Bob & Tom Show: "Arizona is the dumbest state, but it's a dry dumb."

Alright, Lost has been back for two weeks, and i feel it's time to break the silence.

Amazingly, the big selling point for this season of Lost is that "stuff will happen." Even more amazing is the fact that the show has been so successful without the benefit of actual plot points. A lot of people gave up last season, but i'm still obsessed. In the first two episodes of this season, a couple things did actually occur. I GUESS. I won't spoil them here.

Another selling point this season is that they aren't going to fuck with our heads by playing one new episode, then three repeats, then another new one. There will allegedly be two half-seasons without interruption between episodes. Thirdly as amazing is how the show even survived the sort of ridiculous scheduling that killed so many shows before it. However, ratings did take a big dip, and the network took notice.

This week's show has already been spoiled for me by the insanely revealing previews i failed to avoid. I guess some things never change. This episode will answer a question that has been asked by everyone i know: "Locke?!?" So, if you're ready to forgive all that is Lost and jump back on board, now's as good a time as any.

In closing... did you notice what i did there? I typed a whole lot and said next to nothing. Yet you read it through until the end. I also caused more questions than answers. This post was symbolic of Lost. And that is deep.

P.S. I'm sorry, Ana, and i take it back. I miss you :(

i choose to believe this fluffy old email forward is special, though the white bird isn't particularly rare.

let's honor him with a potentially challenging Caption This!

How many catch phrases did this team create?

too many to count. lets see if we and 'hurl' them out

we've all complained about the upcoming PS3's pricetag so perhaps it's finally time to give one of those get-shit-for-free-but-not-actually-free-sucka sites a try. some are actually reputable and send people the prize. there have been a lot of "free" iPods and XBOX360 offers thrown about on the web.

www.yourps34free.com

this one's been mentioned a lot and appears to be legit as the company has done other offers in the past. the catch to the point-based freebies, if you aren't familiar, is you have to complete several offers (in this case, around 9). completing an offer could mean signing up for a free trial to Netflix. if you cancel that membership, you'll have spent nothing. some of the others are, say, pay $1 to try one of those coupon sites for a week or $5 to get your first order at a book club, both of which you can then cancel. all are apparently free-$10. so i estimate you're looking at spending $20-$60 for various stuff (or even less if you're choosy) plus the PS3 at no additional cost, including no S&H. your only potential headache would be in organizing yourslef and canceling the unwanted memberships in time to avoid getting charged.

the *other* option is the somewhat trickier method. you are required to refer a certain number of other people to sign up and complete an offer. in this case, it's up to 14 successful referrals. this leads to people starting "congas" in forums and blogs where netfriends and strangers cooperate in a chain of referrals so that everyone lives happily ever after with their new toys. except maybe the last people on the list... i dunno what they do. hey, i'm new to this.

the terms - i haven't read this 100% yet but it sounds reasonably easy. one caveat mentioned is they do not guarantee *when* you get your prize but "all possible measures will be taken to ensure that users receives rewards within a reasonable amount of time." so basically you could get your PS3 as a Christmas present... in December 2007, anyway. btw, there are different packages up for grabs. getting the lite PS3 requires fewer tasks than getting the "gold" package.

i'm willing to try. the potential of getting screwed *appears* to be outweighed by the potential of actually getting a very cheap console.

Ok. I've done a bit of research for a Halloween post. Below you'll find links to a site (www.hauntedhouses.com ~ what else?) that will tell you all about haunted houses in your neck of the woods. (I got all but Captain Sanchez and Johnny because I have no clue where you all live!)

There's Zann and Mike in Maine
ChrisBlack in Nevada
Amy, Joe, and Christopher in Florida
Paul in Michigan

Sistah. Stay out of the Inns.

Happy haunting!

HOLY CRAP-IN-A-PITA: SCARY-ASS BURGER KING VIDEO GAMES!

As one has some sick facination with civil war photography or the twisted metal of a car crash on the side of the road, this is automatically my personal favorite:

DEMETER COLOGNES & FRAGRANCES

i... that's awesome.

there are other weird ones available, like you can smell like dirt!