Badasses own Dogs and July 29th, 2014

I am a Dog Person and I like Dog People(not a furry)

(original post at my media blog )

The first Mad Max movie I ever saw was "The Road Warrior".  The character was cool by itself, but the fact that he had a bad ass dog companion made him even more cool.  The way the dog knew to be an out of sight "trap" for anyone trying to get into the car was really cool, and how he was trained to do exactly what Max told him was great too.  But, it wasn't all one sided.  The world had gone to shit, and you literally had to kill for a mouthful of food, and its very telling that Max took the effort to feed and care well for his dog.

"He'll slit his own mother's throat for a nickle" was how you were introduced to Shadow.  "Don't touch the dog, he eats people" was how you were introduced to Interceptor, his faithful dog.  Both introductions proved to be pretty accurate, but also a mask..  You have to dig hard to find this dog-loving assassin's true intentions, but he'll match Max for being the badass that cares.  Interceptor's name is homage to Mad Max, as Max's patrol car was the "Last of the V8 Interceptors"

Lonestar is a bafoon.  He's not good with his money and he's pretty lousy with the ladies too.  He also drives the most uncool spaceship in movies.  So what makes him a worthy hero at all?  Barf.  As in the Man-Dog Mog.  He's his own best friend, but after that he's best friends with Lonestar.  Also, when he's not being a kickass best friend, he's John Candy, and who doesn't like John Candy?  Terrorists, that's who.


An American ninja dressed in blue, a level where you get to cut up barrels of apples, what more could you want for kickass fighting game character?  He's got a dog. Galford from Samurai Shodown had a dog named Poppy.  Poppy was not just a kickass attack dog that would eat the opponent or turn into a ball of flame to make attacks, Poppy is also a responsible mommy.  Yep, in Samurai Shodown 2, when you win, there will be a row of puppies that come in and celebrate the victory with mommy and ninja-step-dad.

Early in Fallout 3 I found the junkyard.  I found the double barrel shotgun, the biker armor and the dog companion named Dogmeat.  It was obvious by the character dead near it that this was an homage to Mad Max.  I took Dogmeat as the companion and only switched out when forced to for story reasons, I always came back and got my dog though.  His practically "infinite" taunt made him the best companion for me, everything instantly targeted it, and let me get headshots real easy.

July 29th, 2014

Yesterday I talked about the "New Deadball Era", which is probably a term only I use.  This weird thing happened in the 1980's era of baseball.  Some of the greats retired, and suddenly baseball had no great hitters.  Well, that's kind of weird too, because we lost some pitchers, and gone to were the pitching.  Somehow in the 80's we had bad hitter and bad pitchers, and its reflected in the Hall of Fame now.  When these players came up for election, we had "best in history" numbers playing on TV.  This belittled their accomplishments.  The Hall of Fame has always taken into account the era a player was in when he was playing, and compared him to his peers as well as to history.  Don Mattingly, Jack Morris, and Dale Murphy are some of the best players of their era.  All multiple time All-stars, and in some cases the best of their generation in stats.  Many claim Morris would be a sore spot because he would have by far the highest ERA of anyone in the Hall, or that Mattingly just didn't pull in the numbers.  I say judge him against his peers.  This is also the Hall of Fame.  Mattingly is one of the most famous players of his time.  He had appearences and references all over popular culture, from the Simpsons to Seinfeld.  Dale Murphy was voted most popular player and head of the players association for a very long time.  These people deserve their place in the Hall.

For a long time I would catch Galaxy Express 999(pronounced Three-nine) on Sci-fi channel, but only half way through or near the end.  Because of this I never watched it all the way through.  When it comes to anime in the 90's, Galaxy Express 999 was one of the ambassadors of the medium to a wider audience.  Fist of the North Star and Ninja Scroll were overly violent.  Akira was disturbing and complicated.  Anime distributors focused on the over-the-top action to get a movie brought over here in the US.  Galaxy Express 999 was the closest we had to "family" friendly stuff due to Disney blocking all the Miyazaki movies they could.  There are some stuff in this movie that would make you raise an eyebrow... but what anime doesn't have at least something "off" with it.  Overall I liked it.  It is pretty much a "fairy tale" as improbable coincidences shape the future of the main character, the right people are in the right place at the right times, etc etc.  It is pretty nice, and heartwarming, if a little cheesy, and you can't help but think there's more to the story because of those that surround the main cast all have history.  Worth watching if you like sentimental scifi with interesting characters.

Titans of gaming lose out all the time.  Sometimes for reasons beyond anyone's control, and sometimes for very good reasons.  The big name in miniature wargaming is Games Workshop.  This is one of the companies that refused to modernize, refuse to work with retailers, and have said to their fans "we've got you by the balls and we're going to squeeze and squeeze".  Instead of working with fans or finding new solutions, they've only tightened their grip, raised prices and told everyone to "suck it" for a few decades now.  You can't sell their stuff online brand new, you can't mention prices.  The majority of non-store purchases is still mail order.  MAIL ORDER.  You want to stick by your guns and work like a cave man, that's fine, but you CAN NOT treat your fans and customers like shit for twenty years and then beg them to help because your resistance to modernization is killing you.  Someone finally challenges Games Workshop, and like Paizo did to Wizards of the Coast, they're making the game and making policies that fans have begged to have for many years now.  They're getting your market share, Privateer Press, and they remember when they were just customers.  When they have Games Workshop by the balls, I bet they'll remember what GW did.