Tinfoil Zombie

Transorbital Lobotomy

2009-04-13T02:58:00.003-05:00

If you have a strong stomach, you can watch the American Experience documentary on Dr. Walter Freeman, the Father of Transorbital Lobotomy, on PBS's website.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lobotomist/program/

It's a heart rending to thing to see. If you don't cry, you must have an iron constitution.

Destroying the Past for Fun and Profit

2009-02-25T01:57:00.014-06:00

I have just watched Discovery Channel's new program Treasure Quest. I had recorded the first few episodes on DVR and was planning to catch up in one fell swoop. Instead, after one episode I've deleted the recording and all the saved episodes. I believe this show is best described as greasy.

Treasure Quest left me feeling dirty for having watched it and not at all convinced of the sincerity of the people involved at the Odyssey Exploration company or Discovery. What I thought would be a program about searching for underwater archaeological treasures like the Antikytheran wreck, turned out to be more a bastard offspring of Deadliest Catch and Indiana Jones, with all the excitement cut out. As Zach Zorich of Archaeology Magazine so succintly put it, "Treasure Quest [depicts] scenes of middle-aged men sitting in comfortable chairs, sipping coffee, and cracking lame jokes while the ROV pokes around a couple of wreck sites that had been discovered years earlier."

The show tries hard to reel people in, with exciting music, montages of bleeped profanity, and constant quotations of treasure values. I don't watch archaeology, history, and science programs for drama, so trying to imply drama and suspense seemed unnecessarily forced. The whole package of music and montages comes across as tacky editing, meant to attact people that love the manufactured conflicts of unreality shows like The Biggest Loser and Survivor.

That is not the main fault I found with the show, though. Rather, I was most appalled at the dishonest character of the treasure seekers, the methods used to recover the treasure, and the secrecy involved. Discovery chooses not to highlight any of the glaring problems or controversies surrounding this method of excavating, and I have to believe the omissions are intentional to make the show successful. The practices onboard the Odyssey's ships Explorer and the Finder are disgraceful.

At one point in the first episode, a representative of Odyssey, onboard the Finder, advises the ship's captain to let him know if anyone of authority challenges them, night or day. Shortly thereafter, a French Coast Guard ship radios in to ask their intentions in sailing into French territorial waters. The Odyssey representative lies and says they're avoiding some bad weather and will be sailing back into international waters later that afternoon, when in fact they're trolling with a sidescan sonar looking for new wrecks. The Odyssey dissuades the French from intervening, then orders the Finder's captain to sale in a random zigzag to conceal their true purpose from the French observers. No honest archaeological excavation I've ever seen has lied to governmental authorities in such a way. It belies a low moral character. If hunting for treasure there was legal, what harm would come to them by being honest?

Discovery spends little time discussing the science behind the project. If anyone is mapping the shipwrecks, cataloguing the locations of items before they're collected, making any effort to keep the site's archaeological record intact, it is never mentioned. Rather we see the ROV's arm vaccuuming up coins and bones, seemingly at random. This seems contrary to proper archaeological practice and makes the site worthless at saying anything about the past. Perhaps the correct treatment of the wrecks is being carried out behind the scenes, but I have strong doubts.

Most discouraging of all is the secrecy. I don't believe I've watched a show with so much blurring in all my life. Almost every computer monitor, every piece of paper, every scrap of identifiable information about the locations, the ships, the firms analyzing the data, etc. are concealed. That makes the whole affair seem dishonest. Science and archaeology are done in the open, with findings being shared with everyone. Treasure hunting like this is not archaeology, it's just sucking up the ocean floor for a profit. One of the ships in the first episode, at an area nicknamed Black Swan, contained millions of dollars worth of lead ingots. They found this out by having them tested at a secret lab. What process did they use to find out if the lead was a valuable, low-alpha variety? Which lab was used to do the research, so others could verify it as well? We don't know because that's a carefully guarded secret for some reason. Archaeology and secrecy do not go together. Archaeology could practically be defined as the process of bringing to light that which is hidden and revealing the truth of that which is kept secret.

Mister Zorich's article linked to his name above is far better at describing the problems with this show and with the company involved. I just wanted to express my own impressions. As I said, the Treasure Quest left me feeling dirty. Deceitful, money hungry scavengers are not archaeologists, even if they put a sign on their door to the contrary. If they're going to salvage the seas for profit, they shouldn't make a TV show out of it to glorify their work and try to paint it as something it certainly is not. Discovery should be ashamed of themselves for once again compromising their committment to real science in exchange for ratings.

Fallout (PC) - Review

2008-12-10T23:31:00.015-06:00

I got Fallout 3 from my wife as an early Christmas present. After arriving at the first town in the game, I decided to stop where I was and go back to the originals to make sure I didn't miss any inside jokes. Fallout has such a rich and engrossing back story, plus a love for self-reference, that I felt like I'd be missing out in the new game if I didn't go back and remind myself of what the first two were like. After about three solid days, I've once again saved Vault 13 and broken up the scourge of the mutant armies. This is my first full play through in almost 10 years. How has the game held up? Let me tell you...

If you don't know already, Fallout is a post-apocalyptic, retro-future game. It was created by Interplay in 1997 and is generally seen as a spiritual successor to an earlier game from EA called Wasteland. A nuclear war in 2077 has ravaged the planet, but pockets of civilization live on. Some people escaped altogether by living in underground shelters called vaults. The main character you play is from one of those vaults. You create your character RPG style, modifying stats, picking skills, and traits. At which point you're thrust out into the world to look for a water purifying chip for your home vault.

Played in a 3D isometric view on a hexagonal based map, the game is for all intents and purposes in realtime except in combat mode. It's played entirely with the mouse. The game is open ended to the point that you can conceivably defeat the last boss in the first few minute of play. Similarly, you could wander around the desert for 13 game years and never achieve any of the goals set for you. You can talk to everyone or shoot everyone on sight. Your choices aren't necessarily unlimited, but they're certainly varied. There are consequences to your actions in the form of the karma system, which causes you to be viewed positively or negatively by other characters, which can effect the dialogue choices you have with them or whether they'll pull a gun on you the moment they see you. Unlike most games with such good/evil systems, it's possible to complete the entire game killing everyone and everything you encounter. It's easier to play smart and use your words, though.

Most goals in the game can be achieved in several ways. If someone has something you need, for instance, you might be able to bargain with them for it, challenge them to a duel for it, shoot them out right and take it, pick pocket it from them, pick a dialogue choice (if your intelligence is high enough) that gets them to just hand it over, etc. The game has many sidequests and stray missions here and there that can be solved either with brute force, trickery, diplomacy, or all three. There are several alternate endings possible based on the choices you make, which causes the sidequests you take to feel more meaningful.

Combat is turn based and strategic, carried out with an assortment of guns, hand to hand weapons, or simple fists. After combat is initiated and it's your turn, you have a limited number of action points to spend on walking, shooting, reloading, or just readying yourself for an attack. You use those up, then your enemies take a shot. This back and forth style allows you to think about your moves before you make them, weigh the pros and cons of shooting or running away, and makes the game feel more like a refined chess game with guns than a simple first person shooter.

One of the best aspects of Fallout is the game environment, which is a 1950s futurist vision of the future, complete with ray guns, tube based computers, dome headed robots, art deco architecture, etc. It's an alternate future where technology developed faster after World War II than in our own world, while the cultural icons stayed frozen in time. The opening sequence, complete with a classic song from the 1940s, "Maybe" by the Inkspots, sets the scene in a fantastically ominous way. In this post-bomb world, where the bottle cap is the legal currency, there are an eclectic mix of mutants, ghouls, gigantic insects, Mad Max-style gangsters, farmers, religious cults, peasants, rangers, businessmen, gamblers, and street vendors.

Fallout does have a couple of annoying problems. First and foremost, the inventory system can be tedious. If you have collected a lot of items, you can wear out your hand clicking the down arrow to scroll through the list to find what you're looking for. Similarly, if you find a few thousand bottle caps you'll have to spend a fair amount of time moving them into your inventory 999 caps at a time because that's the limit on the number of things you can add to your inventory at once. Another problem I ran into frequently was getting stuck in rooms thanks to my NPCs. You don't control the sidekick you pick up along the way, and they have the bad habit of standing doorways you need to get through. About the only way to move them is to run further into the room and hope they follow to clear a path. There is also an issue with one of the great features of the game. Namely that the non-linear nature of the story can sometimes work against you. If you don't pay close attention to everything the characters say, you might miss a quest and find yourself wandering the wasteland for a few weeks before you get back on track. I can't say anything about my biggest gripe of all because it would ruin the plot. I'll say that one part of the ending always effects me emotionally. It's a kick in the stomach.

If you have never played Fallout, now would be a good time to do so. Before you tackle the new game I'd recommend getting back to the roots of the series. I had fun leading my ragtag band of misfits around the wasteland protecting the innocent and slaughtering the evil. I saw things I'm pretty sure I missed on my original playthrough because of that whole varied ways of achieving the same goal thing. The game takes time, but it will feel like time well spent when you get those cutscenes telling how your actions impacted the environment. If you like to grind levels in an RPG, this is a game well suited to you. If you like guns, blood and guts exploding everywhere, off color humor, and general chaos, then you should enjoy this game as well. Fallout covers a great many genres quite well. Pick it up today off Amazon or eBay. Try to find one of those dual packs with Fallout 2 in it if you can.

Speaking of Fallout 2, that's what it's now on to. I got quite a ways into this game back in the day and never finished for some reason. I'm hoping this time will be the charm. I'll come back to tell you all about it if I finish.

Wacky Mormon Fun: Real Things Are Fake

2008-12-05T04:20:00.013-06:00

I watched the South Park episode about Mormonism again tonight. It got me thinking about the Mormon faith, so I started with Joseph Smith and wikied my way out in the usual fashion. Of course, we all know he claimed to have found golden plates with the Book of Mormon written on them in the mountains of New York, and that he translated them with the help of God, then they were taken back by the angel Moroni, so no one ever saw them but Smith and some friends. I went off into a branch of study on one of his many potential successors, a man named James Strang, who claimed to have dug up the brass plates of Laban, mentioned in the Book of Mormon, near Voree, Wisconsin. He said God guided him there and helped him translate the plates into English. Unlike Smith, Strang actually produced the plates for anyone who wanted to see and feel them. Strangely, members of the Latter Day Saints see Smith as a prophet and Strang as a forger and fraud.

Do a search for James Strang if you want all the finer details of his life and eventual assassination, because what I want to talk about here is the hilarious irony of reading the comments of a devout Mormon about this breakaway leader. Looking for more information about what happened to the plates after Strang's death, I came across a Latter Day Saints blog, where someone was trying to give an impartial analysis of the plates' writing system. In the comments, a poster went into a protracted rant against Strang, stating that the LDS Church and all its affiliated branches, except the Strangites themselves, consider him a charlatan, who was just trying to imitate their beloved prophet Joseph Smith.

The thing that most amused me was that this person put the word "witnesses" in quotation marks, as though to suggest Strang's assistants in digging up his plates were not qualified to witness anything. I guess the LDS doesn't consider them as credible as the 11 mysticism-loving, treasure-seeking friends that Smith supposedly showed the Golden Plates to after he found them. Something seems very backwards in praising the man who showed a handful of people his plates, while denouncing the one who went out of his way to show off the plates he had found. Don't get me wrong, they're both follower-hungry zealots, but at least Strang had the decency to offer something tangible as proof of lost tribes of Israelites roaming North America. He didn't ask people to test their faith and intelligence by just believing he saw and translated magic plates because he and some friends said so.

Actually, providing physical proof was probably Strang's undoing, and why his church only has a few hundred members today, compared to Smith's millions. People could see that his plates were fashioned from brass that looked like it came from a tea kettle, and that the writing system was similar to one he used in his own diary. Smith smartly created divine rules about the plates to keep him from having to show them to anyone, said he could translate them without having them present, made up new imaginery plates when the first 116 pages he translated got lost, and then presented eyewitness testimony from close friends as the only real proof of their existence. As statements from the LDS poster confirm, real artifacts are of less significance to the faithful than something spiritual in nature. It's apparently better to have a vision of a golden plate, than to hold a brass one in your hands.

This kind of conflict isn't anything really special when it comes to religious sects. It's just another case of one outlandish faith questioning another for its own supernatural beliefs. This one is just more ironic because the LDS calls foolishness and forgery at someone for trying to pull exactly the same scam their founder did, just with a little bit more credibility in the way of evidence. In addition to rebuking the plates veracity, there is also some suggestion that the LDS eventually wound up with the plates, after a church member asked to borrow them from one of Strang's descendants. The church refutes them, but they're not crazy enough to let them exist as an iconic relic to an opposing faction. I imagine they were destroyed by the Mormon Church, right along with all the other contradictory documents and artifacts they've collected over the years. I'd write a couple paragraphs about the Hofmann forgeries to follow that up, but the murder-suicide aspect makes it kind of a downer for this forum. Go look it up if you're interested.

Five Games That Scared Me

2008-12-04T04:07:00.002-06:00

My recent review of Fatal Frame got me thinking about other horror games I've played. In the interest of adding more lists to the blog, I thought I'd throw together the five scariest games I've personally played. Not just games with a scary atmosphere, but games that legitimately caused me to jump. The list comes after the jump.

5. Alone in the Dark (PC DOS)

So much about a good horror game is sound. This blocky, plodding game about a detective investigating a murder in an old house might seem pretty clunky by today's standards, but when I played it about 1996 or so it scared me to death. The creak of your detective's feet on the wooden floors, the gibber of the monsters, the occasional whipser, it would send chills up your spine. The killer for me, though, was the alert sound. Whenever a monster was about to attack you, there was a sudden audio cue and then the music would change to let you know there was trouble. I'd be walking around in a quiet room, and that alert sound would hit, and my heart would skip a beat. Sitting, alone in the dark, naturally, it was enough to make you scream. It was mostly about the sounds. Well, except for the tunneler worm at the end. That freaked me out on sight alone. If you can find a copy of Alone in the Dark, it's well worth the time to get it up and running on DOSBox or an older game machine. However, avoid the

4. Aliens vs. Predator 2

As an Alien or a Predator, this game is just pure fun. Especially if you make it a challenge to collect the heads of everyone you kill as a predator. The scary part is playing as the human Marine, single handedly trying to survive attacks from both xenospecies. Running down empty metal corridors, with acid burned and blood stained walls, listening to the chitter of invisible predators and the hiss of angry aliens; it's enough to make you look over your shoulder in real life. A good pair of headphones, a dark room, and a sweaty mouse hand are all you need. Just as in the movies, aliens will burst out of almost anywhere, charging for you and making you spray machine gun bullets in random patterns of fear. Sincerely, this game gave me nightmares. It desperately needs a sequel, too.

3. System Shock 2

Are you afraid of zombies? Killer computer programs? Cyborgs? Don't play this game then, because it has all three. There are few games with as much atmosphere, nuance, and superb story telling as SS2. The first game was touted as a sleeper hit, crushed by the power of DOOM. Personally, I can't play it because I played SS2 first and the control and look of the original just can't compete. This is an epic space game with horror wrapped around it. A combination of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Aliens, Virus, and Carrie. Talking monsters, taunting radio messages, screaming psionic monkeys, and a generally desolate atmosphere make this a great game. It's also not just a run and gun FPS, but a real fleshed out thriller with data tapes and a constant encouraging voice helping to tell you the tale of the alien infestation you wake up to from cryosleep. Find this game, play it. You'll be glad you did. Unless you have a heart attack from the terror of the talking mutant zombies!

2. Eternal Darkness

Fight an evil that spans generations. Witness your characters die or be imprisoned in almost every chapter. Begin to wonder if this game is even winnable. Eternal Darkness is the only reason I own a GameCube. I purchased it exclusively to play this one game. A multi-tiered tale cut from the same cloth as the stories of HP Lovecraft. Giant other-worldly gods do battle and you're stuck in the middle of it, trying to imprison them all back beyond the veil. Wield an assortment of medieval and modern weapons. Be a priest, a fireman, an archaeologist, or a blond girl of indeterminate profession. The story is linear, but fantastic. The surprises are, surprising, and they'll make you jump. Oh, and did I mention the game screws with you based on your sanity meter? From turning off the TV, turning down the volume, or claiming your save games have been erased, this game is out to get you. Have a Wii? Buy Eternal Darkness.

1. The Thing (XBox Version)

This was a hard decision, but this game frightened me the most I think. It cheated constantly, having your people turn out to be infected with the Thing, even if you had checked their blood for it only seconds before and they'd had no contact with anything, they'd still have extra arms burst out of their head when you least expected it. You'd be talking to a character, having a very subdued discussion about something, and suddenly they'd explode into some hideous monster. It was disturbingly faithful to the film, and impressively frightening as a result. Perhaps I pick it because my memory of it is getting more and more vague, and if I played it again I would no longer be frightened. For now, though, it stands atop the heap as the scariest for me. Got an XBox or XBox 360? Ever wondered what happened at the end of John Carpenter's The Thing? Buy this game and find out. Seriously, it resolves the ending of the movie.

Perhaps Dead Rising or Bioshock will unseat these games once I've had a chance to play through them. For now, this stands as my list. Oh, for an honorable mention I'd throw in American McGee's Alice and Clive Barker's The Undying. While not really scary, they are disturbing and atmospheric. Good horror themed games, just not the scariest.

Junkyard Wars - My Belated Complaints

2008-12-03T02:58:00.006-06:00

Ah, Junkyard Wars, how I fondly remember watching this show with my friends at the turn of the century. Recently, though, I've been recording the reruns on TLC and I've noticed some problems. It's a little late to complain, what with the American version having been cancelled five years ago, but I'm going to anyway. If you're not familiar, the show pits two teams of four people, three friends plus an expert, in a battle to build a specialized machine in 10 hours time. The show started life on UK television as Scrapheap Challenge in 1998. Discovery Communications bought the US broadcast rights, then ordered US localized episodes that ran in five seasons from 2001-2003. The original British show was shelved for retooling just this year, with the BBC desiring a daytime show with lower production costs.

When I used to watch the show in one or two episode a weeks spurts, it seemed far more innovative and fascinating. Watching whole seasons at a sitting, the cracks start to show. I think the primary issue I have is that they can't decide if it's a trick to get people interested in science, a reality show with manufactured drama, or a legitimate competition. My preference would be for it to stick to the latter. There are all sorts of things that stood in the way of the show being a fair competition. First and foremost, the experts wield far too much control. In researching the behind scenes of the show, I learned that the producers met with the experts beforehand and had them present their design ideas. For the purposes of making it interesting, the producers would then encourage them to pick different methods of achieving the same goal. This results in one team being stuck with the lousy idea and being almost assured defeat. In season three, for instance, the Geeks team from MIT was given two experts that wanted to use unconventional methods. In one case, the expert insisted on a aluminum sail for their land sailboat, which just happened to actually work, and in the other the expert wanted a water pump manufactured from a four stroke engine. In both episodes, team members suggested using the method being employed by the other team, a cloth sail and a centrifugal pump respectively, but the experts fought with them until they agreed to the crazier methods. In the Geeks second appearance, they lost because their pump actually worked, while their opponents, the Pit Crew, couldn't even get their's to function.

Reality show additions like a workshop camera for people to complain to about their team mates, putting teams with judges that have ideas that are so far out there that the team captain has to overrule them just to get things done, and instituting a rule so people can steal parts from their opponent's garage if no one is watching it reek of trying to manufacture drama. It worked, too. One member of the Pit Crew became enraged and nearly started a fight with an opposing team member over a junked car. One team was saddled with a seemingly drugged out hydrofoil racer, who proved so useless the team had no choice but to try to design his stupid plan without his help.

Junkyard Wars just doesn't stand up very well anymore for me. I've seen too much, too fast, and realized the competition is all a joke and the inventions aren't really the ingenious frankenstein contraptions they seemed to be, when I watched originally.

History Book Deleted Scenes I

2008-11-28T01:58:00.008-06:00

Every so often I stumble across articles and websites dedicated to little known events in history. I store their subject matters away until I can spring them on unsuspecting friends and relatives, under the pretense of really fascinating history. Not everyone finds them as interesting as I do, so this becomes the alternative method of sharing what I've found. Today, let's look at the Battle of Bloody Mingo.

Bloody Mingo

After watching the movie October Sky, I became interested in a reference made by a character to Bloody Mingo. I looked it up and found it was a nickname for Mingo County, West Virginia, which was involved in a conflict referred to by some as the Coal Wars. Between 1920-1921 there were frequent clashes between members of the United Mine Workers of America, who were trying to get safer working conditions, better wages, and shorter working hours, and the private armies of the coal companies, who ostensibly fought on the grounds that it was their patriotic duty to prevent Communism. In May 1920, a particularly important battle or massacre, depending on who you ask, occured at Matewan, Mingo County, WV. There, miners, backed by Police Chief Sid Hatfield and 14 private detectives hired by the Stone Mountain Coal Company, engaged in a brief gun battle. The detectives had been forcibly evicting union sympathizers from their company-owned homes, and Hatfield was trying to arrest them, saying they had no legal right to evict anyone. In the end, the Mayor of Matewan, four miners, and seven detectives were killed. Hatfield became a hero to the miners. He was acquitted of murder charges, but while standing trial for conspiracy he was shot on the court house steps by the surviving detectives from the Battle/Massacre of Matewan. The men who killed him were not sought by authorities. This led to the Battle of Blair Mountain. A subject for another one of these posts.

Fatal Frame (PS2) Review

2008-11-25T23:57:00.004-06:00

I don't know the kind of drugs that Japanese game programmers use, but they have to be pretty powerful. It's the only thing that can explain some of their game concepts. I'm not sure anyone stateside, high or sober, would have come up with the idea of invisible boxes floating above our heads, full of gold coins, mushrooms that make you grow, and flowers that let you shoot Hadoken fireballs. Similarly, I don't think anyone but the Japanese would look at an old camera and imagine it as a weapon for fighting ghosts (any red-blooded American would opt for an unlicensed proton pack, natch). Still, a camera that captures evil spirits when you take their picture is yet another clever Japanese game gimmick that works. I just finished the first Fatal Frame game again, and I thought I'd share my thoughts on the experience.

I last picked up Fatal Frame on the Xbox in 2003. I beat it over the course of a couple of weekends, playing alone in the dark with Surround Sound. It was a psychologically effective game, atmospheric, absorbing, and frequently heart pounding. I came back to it a few days ago, this time on the PS2, and it is still quite haunting after all these years.

The main premise of the game is that ghosts are corporeal enough to attack living people, and the only means of fending them off is with a spirit camera that has magical properties. When alerted to a ghost's presence, you pull out the camera, take aim and snap a photo to deal the apparition damage. The camera has a finite amount of film, with replacements of different quality and quantity throughout the game, so you can't just snap wildly. You get points for taking pictures, which you can use to upgrade your camera's features. Depending on certain factors, like how long you target the ghost before shooting and the closer you allow them to get to you, your damage inflicted and points earned can be greatly increased. These RPG like elements of upgradeable weapon and magical bonuses provide you with incentive to actually battle the ghosts with strategy instead of trying to photograph them to death quickly.

The story begins with an introduction to navigating the game, saving, using the spirit camera, etc. You play this section as Mafuyu, a young Japanese research assistant. He's come to Himuro Mansion in the mountains near Tokyo to investigate the disappearance of an author and his research team. After learning the ropes of the game, Mafuyu is attacked and then the real story begins with a new character, Miku, the brother of Mafuyu. With her brother missing for two weeks, she comes to Himuro Mansion to look for him. She finds the spirit camera he dropped, then sets off capturing ghosts and reading up on what happened to the previous inhabitants of the house.

The background of the game is told through a combination of tape recordings, written notes, and grainy black and white flashbacks. The core plot revolves around an ancient ritual used to keep the gates of Hell beneath Himuro Mansion from opening and unleashing Malice upon the world. A maiden of the Himuro family is selected at age seven to be the Rope Maiden, who is then destined to be blinded, bound by ropes, and ripped limb from limb, in order to secure the Hell Gate. This went along swimmingly for generations, until one of the maidens, named Kirie, falls in love with a man and gets attached to being alive. This makes the ritual fail, and leads to Kirie's spirit being blighted by Malice, so that she kills everything she touches including all the future inhabitants of the house.

With the plot full of murder, drawing and quartering, ritual blinding, and some sort of long armed child abductor, the whole thing just oozes ghostly atmosphere. The music is eerie, full of white noise that makes your skin crawl. Everything is in darkness or at best moonlight. Miku falls unconscious at the end of each night in the mansion, so there are no daytime scenes. She can only find her way in the dark by a small flashlight, which fortunately has infinite battery power. Shadows are rendered beautifully, with their movements often playing tricks on your eyes at the periphery of the screen. In addition, there are a lot of "jump" moments, where the designers psych you out with harmless things like a flickering candle or a flash of lightning.

There are problems, though. Like most console games, you can only save at special save points scattered throughout the game, and you can't use them while in battle with a ghost. You can reload 30 shots of your most basic film at them, though.

The Secret Doors of the Great Pyramid

2008-11-25T02:17:00.010-06:00

When I was a kid I found an abandoned copy of Mystic Places, an entry in the Mysteries of the Unknown book series Time-Life used to hock on late night TV. It was full of a hodgepodge of real archaeology and Erick Van Daniken UFO craziness. One thing I distinctly remember was being confused by an etching very similar to the one you see to the right. What confused me was that the item labeled F was described as "The Well" and had no further description. I would later read that it was a ventilation shaft. But recent discoveries suggest it might be something more.

A robot explorer has determined these "ventilation shafts" have tiny doors inside them with brass handles. What's behind them was a mystery, until a probe was allowed to drill a hole in one. Revealing...another door. The head of the Egyptian Antiquities authority was supposed to allow another exploration this past year, but I've been unable to find any evidence one took place. This fascinates me and I want to hear more.

The Mystery Team is Coming

2008-11-23T07:34:00.005-06:00

This is one of those ideas where I wish had come up with it. An adolescent adventure team, like my beloved Three Investigators, grows up to find the neighborhood detective business isn't what it used to be. This is Derrick Comedy's first full length feature, but details beyond this trailer are pretty sparse. Check out this troupe's shorter sketches on YouTube if you have the time to spare.

Derrick Comedy Website

John Titor - Time Traveler!

2008-11-23T07:15:00.001-06:00

Ever heard of John Titor? Have you ever wondered what will happen in 2004 or 2008? Are you curious about the future of the human race up to the year 2036? If you are, do a Google search for the name John Titor and take a fun walk down future lane.

Mr. Titor was supposed to be a time traveler from the year 2036, sent back to collect an IBM 5100 computer to help resolve a UNIX time keeping bug. He stopped off to visit family in the year 2000, the same way you might load up to the kids to see Grandma back home in Tucson, and while he was there he decided to post on the Art Bell forums because that's where rational, scientific minds go to espouse their technological breakthroughs. I can recall finding out about his initial predictions in about 2002 and feeling some real fear. As much of a skeptic as I am, talk of civil war in 2004, division of the country in 2008, and all out nuclear war by 2015 gave me chills because it was so close at hand. Looking back, I feel silly. Mr. Titor's time machine was in a 1967 Corvette, until he switched it to a four-wheel drive truck. His schematic of the device was conveniently grainy with unreadable labels. He couldn't predict simple things like who would run for president, who would win, major historical events like 9/11, etc. He presented his predictions with the same kind of vagueness with a hint of authority that makes mind readers so wealthy. Now that 2008 has come and gone, and the class riot and civil war have yet to materialize, I'm personally ready to pass judgement that Mr. Titor was just another Art Bell crank. His defenders will say his presence in the timeline has changed history, but I don't think a few Internet posts and a ghost written book are enough quantum influence to change reality and invent a new future where civil war is averted.

Nah, the world isn't going to end until 2012, when the Mayan calendar runs out...at least that's what the History Channel keeps telling me. *face palm*

The Top Five Greatest Comic Book Villains

2008-11-22T05:33:00.021-06:00

I saw a show on the Illusion channel the other day that was counting down the top 20 comic book villains. I found myself disagreeing with the TV on several occasions, and it was my thoughts on this subject that inspired me to start this blog. So, naturally, my first list post will be of my own, personal top five villains. My criteria is based not on the amount of destruction the villain has caused or the amount of power they wield, thus Galactus, Darkseid, and Dark Phoenix, who scored quite high on the TV list, fall far down my own. Instead, I judge a great villain on how much he or she transcends petty crime and becomes a true nemesis to the hero. Below I give my choices and my reasoning.

5. Mr. Mind

A villain of the original Captain Marvel, Mr. Mind was the malevolent genius behind the Monster Society of Evil, a group made up of the Captain's previous enemies. I pick him not because of that, though, or because of the two year story arc revolving around him, remarkable though it was, rather I rank him so high because he was so small. For you see that tiny green worm being flicked off Billy Batson's shoulder is the evil super genius in question. A two inch long worm with bad vision and super intelligence was the greatest threat to the world and to the Big Red Cheese himself for 24 straight issues! When most villains have a scheme fail, they disappear for a few issues to lick their wounds. Not Mr. Mind, he kept plugging away at the problem of defeating Captain Marvel, until he was finally caught, convicted, and put into a tiny electric chair. A worm that terrifies society to the point of capital punishment has to be a great super villain.

4. Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom is a great villain because he doesn't have to be one. He is the despotic ruler of his own country. The people there worship and obey his every command. He is a master of the occult arts and basically wants for nothing. Yet he can't seem to help himself when it comes to fighting the heroes of the Marvel universe. He's fought more of them than any other villain, and there is really no reason why he should have. His primary motivations in life are to acquire power and to crush his greatest nemesis, Reed Richards. He already has power, so that leaves only one thing left to do, and he's been trying to do it for forty years. It's that insane passion for defeating Mr. Fantastic that puts him on my list. His single-minded, mad obsession with eliminating one man sets him amongst a unique handful of villains, that are more than just gimmicky criminal ne'er-do-wells.

3. Lex Luthor

Superman's greatest enemy has to be on anyone's top list of super villains. I rank him so low in my top five not because he isn't a great villain, but because he almost makes a case for being a hero of humanity in some of his appearances. He is a normal human being, charismatic and intelligent, but still just an average person in most respects. Yet his nemesis is an alien from another planet with more powers than you can shake a stick at. It doesn't seem like a fair fight, but on so many occasions I've seen Luthor come very close to defeating his much more powerful opponent with sheer force of will and often Kryptonite. Like Dr. Doom, the current continuity version of Luthor has no sensible reason for being evil or wanting Superman dead. He's the President of the United States, a wealthy businessman, and in no way lacking for power, money, women, or any of the other usual criminal motivations. Once again, he is a man driven by blind, distilled hate for his enemy. At the risk of everything he holds dear, he'll plot and scheme until he sees Superman broken and dead. As I said, I rank him lower because he's made the point in stories like Red Son, that Superman is an alien, not qualified to dole out vigilante justice on another species under any circumstances, and that in a world where Superman goes mad with power only Lex Luthor has the mind to stop him.

2. The Green Goblin

People often attribute insanity to super villains. I don't consider the previous three to be truly insane. They're intelligent, sane beings with sometimes ludicrous criminal plans. The Green Goblin, however, is absolutely certifiably nuts, to use the technical term. When Spider-Man first encountered him, his plans seemed fairly mundane. He was different from the every day villain of the month, though, because he escaped in his first appearance and he kept his secret identity. As time went on, we'd learn he was Norman Osborn, the father of Peter's friend Harry, and that the formula that gave him super abilities also made him mentally unbalanced. His repeated defeats caused him to focus less on crime and more on Spider-Man, who he saw as the root of all his problems. His unstable mental condition allowed him to forget he was the Green Goblin for periods, which left him to blissful ignorance, while Peter Parker paranoidally thought bubbled away, worried his old enemy might resurface in Norman. What puts him so high on the list are two of his greatest villainous achievements. He learned the true identity of his super heroic enemy, and paid that knowledge off with the always suggested reason heroes need one. He killed Gwen Stacy, the woman Peter Parker truly loved. What's more, she has remained dead all these years. Quite possibly the longest unreversed death in comics history. The Green Goblin gets such a high place in my list because he murdered Gwen Stacy, and truly screwed up Peter Parker's head for the rest of his life. Not to mention he retroactively masterminded nearly every evil thing that happened to Peter for the next twenty years, after his supposed death, including the abduction of Mary Jane's new born child and the murder of Parker's clone brother. In short, the Green Goblin has carried the crazy plans of other super villains to fruition, and thus outstripped them with his evil successes.

1. The Joker

I think there can be little dispute with this choice. Here is another completely mad person, who has no alter ego to fall back on, no half-way decent remnants to his personality. The Joker is an anarchist, plain and simple. He creates chaos out of order and does so laughing all the way. He is unpredictable, being as likely to squirt you in the face with seltzer as with acid. On any given day he might feel like being a killer and then again he might feel like being a clown. If the mood takes him, he might be both. He has all the duality of Two Face without all the needless probability. Of all the villains, though, he is the one who defines himself most by his enemy. In The Dark Knight Returns, we see that in a future with no Batman, the Joker is catatonic and disinterested in life. He only becomes lively and homicidal again upon hearing of Batman's return. He can't truly be himself if there isn't a Batman to oppose him. So his ambition isn't to kill Batman, as it would be any other villain, but just to insanely give his nemesis something to do at night. Besides his twisted fondness for Batman, one other thing sets the Joker at the pinnacle of evil. His murder of Jason Todd, the second Robin, also ticks off one of those seldom achieved to-do list items that super villains often have. Honestly, when it comes down to it, the Joker is here because he doesn't care. He isn't reasonable, rehabilitatable, or even very likeable in most versions. He is like a cackling force of pure carnage, unmotivated by money, fame, power, revenge, drugs, or sex. All he wants is a world full of madness, rictus grins, and a hopelessly optimistic Batman to torment.

If you're wondering where all the Nazis are, have no fear. I'm saving them for a separate list. The Top Five Worst Comic Book Nazis.

The Evil of Frankenstein?

2008-11-21T06:43:00.005-06:00

This morning I watched The Evil of Frankenstein. I have to say that's a misleading title. This is Peter Cushing's Baron Frankenstein at his least nefarious. It might have been better titled as The Evil of Zoltan, since it's the eponymous hypnotist who spends his time manipulating the monster into stealing and killing for him. Frankenstein is practically a hero here, compared to his other appearances.

Hammer had worked out a deal with Universal Pictures which allowed them to incorporate Universal's Frankenstein plot, set, and make-up ideas, which they were previously forbidden to use. The film is very reminiscent of Son of Frankenstein, complete with the monster in a coma, Frankenstein trying to revive the monster to vindicate himself, and a character actively controlling the monster to do his evil bidding. In addition, there's a girl that befriends the monster, as in Ghost of Frankenstein; the monster is recovered from a block of ice, ala Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman, and in a nod to Bride of Frankenstein, the monster acquires a taste for alcohol, even going so far as to have the climactic lab destruction scene be the result of a drunken monster rampage.

There are problems with all this adoption of Universal Frankenstein ideas, however, namely the changes result in a huge continuity problem in regards to Baron Frankenstein's origin and that of his first monster. In his flashback, the Baron created the monster in a basement laboratory, with no servants, no fiancee, no friends, none of the characters we saw in the original Curse of Frankenstein. The monster only kills a few sheep before he is shot, and Frankenstein is immediately arrested, though how anyone knew what he'd been doing when he worked alone is anyone's guess. He isn't sentenced to death or forced to fake his guillotining as was seen in the first two films, instead he is just banished from the land. Many fans of the series consider this a one-off or alternate continuity story, rather than trying to shoehorn it into the timeline of the original films.

The make-up effects of the creature are very much inspired by Jack Pierce's classic flat-top design for Boris Karloff, but that is a bad thing in this case. It's admittedly frightening, but at times it appears as though the monster has a square block of cheese sown to his head. His skin texture comes across as cloth, rather than flesh. This may just be the hurdle of converting make-up that was created for black and white filming into a design that looks good in color. I've read in several places that one reason Universal dropped their plans to film Son of Frankenstein in color was that the monster make-up looked silly. Phil Leakey's original make-up for Christopher Lee in Curse of Frankenstein looked better, and I'd say they should have stuck with it, rather than trying to adapt everything they were allowed to from Universal.

All and all, this was a good entry in the series, despite the continuity problems and odd look of the monster. Although it felt like a medley of Universal Frankenstein plot ideas rolled together, who says that's a bad thing? The best part is that both the monster and the creator come across as sympathetic characters, which isn't easy to achieve in a Frankenstein story. I'd say this is my second favorite of the Hammer series, after the original.

The Origin of Tinfoil Zombie

2008-11-21T03:23:00.012-06:00

Let's begin by answering those burning questions. What is a tinfoil zombie? A zombie wrapped in tinfoil of course. Why would a zombie be wrapped in tinfoil? To lock in its natural freshness. How did the site get a name like that? If you really want to know, you need look no further than the little known anti-cryogenics film The Chilling, starring Linda Blair of the Exorcist and Dan Haggerty of "Grizzly" Adams. See the box for it to the right? As an impressionable young man, seeking exciting, gory horror films at the local Movie Gallery, that box was telling me something great was inside. With a tagline like, "They came, they thawed, they conquered..." how could I go wrong? Read on to find out.

The movie's premise is that cryonics is evil. After a text trailer explains this to us, the film begins with a long, pointless sequence about a bank robber killing people and having sex with his girlfriend. At some point, the movie remembers it's supposed to be about cryogenics, so it kills the bank robber and establishes that his dad loved him a lot and wants him frozen. There is a subplot about the cryogenics lab harvesting patients's organs, but the important point is about how frozen dead people become cannibal zombies. This happens on Halloween night, when the power fails at the cryo facility and security guard Victor Marlow (Haggerty) has the bright idea to put the body storage tanks in the rain to keep them cool. Of course, lightning strikes every single one of them in succession. Pissed about being harvested for parts, the unhappy dead emerge from their deep freeze capsules dressed in matching tinfoil bodysuits, and then nearly 20 years later I named my blog after them.

If you care to know more about this awful little film, I direct you to a thorough review found here: http://www.horrordvds.com/viewarticle.php?commentid=1321