In the dungeon you encounter a Swarm of Hipsters. Roll for Initiative.

Swarm of Hipsters has resist 5 radiant damage thanks to their stupid ugly sunglasses. However, they take double sonic damage when you play music that they thought they were the only ones who liked. Their armor class is poor thanks to mostly shopping at underground thrift stores, but beware. You grant combat advantage to them since they always think they have the high ground.


Let's talk Oscars. The awards that kind of matter. And it's less of a wank fest than the Golden Globes or the SAG.

Best Picture has been expanded to 10 nominees. The only good to come of this is allowing Up a chance. This is only the second time an animated movie has been up for Best Picture, the first time being Beauty and the Beast back in the nineties. There's no way Up will win, and after all it still has Best Animated Picture (or the "Pixar Invitational") but can you imagine? If Up won I'd be deliriously happy. So much so, that I'd probably blindly say yes to anybody who asked a favor of me for like a week afterwords. (...ladies...)

Realistically, I'm hoping that the Academy will do what they did for Scorsese and give Best Picture to Inglorious Basterds to honor Tarantino's past films. And also, it was a pretty darn good film.

-District 9? HAH. No way, not in a million years.
-Avatar? I doubt it. A Golden Globe means nothing. It'll sweep the techie stuff thought.
-Up in the Air? I can see it, but there's too much competition.
-A Serious Man? Possible, but the Coen Brothers just got a Best Picture two years ago.
-The Blind Side? GOD NO. PLEASE NO.

So it's a toss-up between Hurt Locker, An Education, and Precious I think.

Best Director could be Tarantino, but I think it'll be Bigelow. If only because I think the idea of James Cameron losing out to his ex-wife for a movie with a fraction of the budget of Avatar's is high-larious.

I'm going to say Jeff Bridges for Best Actor, though this could be Colin Firth's year.

CHRISTOPH WALTZ VILL BE ZA BEST SUPPORTING AHCTOR, JAH? VAHT ZAY YOU, FRAULIEN?

If Sandra Bullock gets Best Actress, the Academy Awards will lose so much credibility. Mo'Nique will take Best Supporting Actress.

Best Screenplay I'm firmly calling for Tarantino. You just can't beat lines like "Say Auf wiedersehen to your Nazi balls." *gunshot*

Best Adapted Screenplay I'm gonna go ahead and call for Precious.

So many loyalties at conflict here for Best Animated Picture! I want Up to win because I love Pixar so much, but I really want Princess and the Frog to show that 2D animation is far from dead. And what of Coraline, whose roots can be traced back to Neil Gaiman aka "Jesus the Christ"? I can't choose!!

And Best Foreign Language film? Um... *throws dice*. Ajami (Israel) will win. Totally.

And those are all the awards I feel qualified to talk about.



I finally found a store that restocked and put out Bludgeon! I can say with complete confidence that it is the best action figure of a skeleton samurai that transforms into a tank I have ever encountered. If only because I was only a year old when his original iteration came out. The 2003 release doesn't count because he's just a repaint of Generation 2 Megatron and as such, has absolutely no samurai elements. They didn't even bother with a new head!

News you can use

I had the honor of attending an academic discussion with renowned author and zombie expert Max Brooks tonight. He appeared completely in character and schooled the assembled crowd on the ways of zombie survival in an honest and frank way, but with a certain degree of self-awareness about it. Things I learned, presented in bullet-point form for your convenience:

*A sledgehammer or blade is preferable to a firearm for the simple fact that you do not need to reload one.

*Were zombies to invade a college campus, like say UWM, jocks not only make excellent workhorses but also serve as cannon fodder.

*The phrase "Hey babe, wanna be in my zombie group?", in addition to being a poor preparedness-builder, is not particularly effective as a pick-up line either.

*The line between zombie and stoned-out hippie is much thinner than you might expect, though you should put a cap in either of them just to be sure.

All in all, perfectly worth missing House for.

I returned to the Ancestral Motherland over the weekend and slipped back into the role of Dungeonmaster to preside over a game of Dungeons and Dragons for my younger blood relations and some other guy. Among my devious machinations were the Corruption Corpse and the Gelatinous Cube, a D&D standby. The players escaped with little but their lives and a tale to spin at the local inn.

Roommate the Second is having a very lively discussion with a Bot right now. And goodness-do-I-really-have-a-class-in-eight-hours?

He didn't really get much accomplished there, other than growing some fierce muttonchops.

This post contains House spoilers. But not until the final paragraph.

Rgh, do you really think you can get away with pre-empting Castle tonight, ABC? I don't care who the Packers are playing, I needs me some Captain Reynolds being smarmy and solving crimes. Argh. Another TV show sacrificed at the altar in the name of the horrific and writhing deity that is Monday Night Foot Ball.

I put together the Arche Gundam. Mine doesn't look quite as pink as that, though. A fairly quick build, took about three hours over the course of two days between the snap-fit and the detailing. There may be a post devoted to it later.

Hey! I got accepted into an online Play-by-Post game of Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition! That is to say, my character Dagarth Crossroad did. The game will be the Scales of War adventure, something I'm not really familiar with, so it should be rad.

Also! Look what Roommate the Second bought! I'll let you know how they taste.

So listen, dude who sat near me in Meteorology today. Don't read over both versions of the test that you were given, because one of them is supposed to be passed to me. The professor did not decide to give you the opportunity to compare the two and decide which test you would rather take, he decided you would be competent enough to merely TAKE ONE AND PASS THE OTHER TO YOUR NEIGHBOR, who is waiting very patiently, even though he studied and could probably deal with either version perfectly well. I'll be way interested to know how you did, though.

What else? House tonight. Epic.

If, back when the show started, you had told me that Chase would ultimately be responsible for the fate of a nation, and that the episode that this occurs in would involve James Earl Jones guest-starring? I'd have said there's no way that this show could get that cool. However, if you had told me that Thirteen would be angry at Foreman and their relationship would be boring and lame, I would've believed that completely 100%.