Unsought Input

You know you want to just laugh or cry with these. For those of you who are internet ignorant of what cosplay is, basically people dress up as cartoon or video game characters (the key to this is that most of the characters who are cosplayed are animated) and walk around anime conventions or sometimes at Halloween as well. Basically one would expect to see this during Halloween but cosplayers take it one step further and dress like this for events and conventions all year long. It’s really a strange hobby and most people who do this spend a lot of time and effort to make their costumes better than anyone else as to always be “pwning n00bs”. I am planning to go undercover one of these days to a convention of supreme nerdlyness so I can get some insider pictures and also really cheap comics and candy. Here are some pictures I didn’t take.

I am sure most people will recognize this famous trio, Mario, his brother Luigi and Princess Peach. This one in my opinion is not so bad. This will be the highlight of our trip through cosplay and for that I apologize. (more…)

We learned that men are clueless about women, just as we girls alway suspected.

Arthur C. Clark, author of 2001 A Space Odyssey, is dead.

So is Anthony Minghella. 

And a fun video, Japanese human Tetris game.

See, I told you I wouldn’t let you down. And for your further review, Japanese arcade games part two.

Best Game for People Who’s Parents/Landlord Won’t Allow Pets: Dog Walker

In this game the point is to walk dogs. All sorts of dogs. You actually have a pretty good selection in some of these games, where you have some nice doggies to walk and then you have the pit bull. The game is basically a tread mill that you walk on while holding onto a leash. The antics begin as the dog goes to chase cats, cars, stops to pee, gets into fights with other dogs. Um, actually I don’t know about that because I have only ever seen this game, never played it. But I think that would make it more fun.

My Personal Favorite: Samba De Amigo

Samba is fun. You get your Maracas (which are surprisingly heavy) and you dance. The point is to hit certain heights with the maracas in time to samba style dance music. It’s simple but gets pretty challenging and it’s fun. As long as you like dancing with maracas and samba music. I think I must have spent like ten dollars playing this game when I was in Japan. (more…)

The Japanese have brought us many exciting and original experiences from environmentally friendly roller coasters to the current manga/anime phenomenon and everything between. I just thought I would put up some interesting arcade games that I have seen in my day and a few I found on the internet.

Strangest Arcade Game: IdolMaster

This is a weird one. I actually have never seen this one before but after reading about it I definitely give this one the winner of the strangest Japanese arcade game. This game console surrounds you for the full stereo effect. You get a comfy seat to sit your buns on for the hours you will sit enticed to spend just 100 more yen. So, what is the premise of this game? What do you do?

You manage a pop idol. You change her clothes. You give her dance moves. You pick her music. And you pay a lot of real money to do so. Here is a very detailed description of this game from several first hand encounters.

Coolest Arcade Game Setup: Silent Hill

The Silent Hill franchise is a recognizable name so I don’t think I need to describe play by play what kind of game this is or what you should expect from this. For a horror video game this set up is awesome. A nice creepy ambiance to shoot up some weirdo nurse freaks, body bags and the occasional pyramid head. Especially if the arcade was slightly ill lit in the first place and it was pretty abandoned? This could be a major creep out fest. I really want to play Silent Hill on this. (more…)

Recently I have been trying to plan my second trip to Japan and i am finding it incredibly hard. We had even considered just going to Europe to save a little bit of money, you know, by not traveling all around the globe. Usually I plan everything and do everything myself, but this year I wanted to do something “all inclusive” so I could actually enjoy and relax on my vacation instead of stressing out over whether everything was going as planned. You know, so I could have fun on my vacation?

So, anyway, I decided to go to a travel agent. My husband and I were thinking about a trip to Europe, with a few places we might want to travel in mind but no where set in stone (see, we wanted to see what the deals were), maybe a cruise or something tour bus-y. So, having never gone to a travel agent before, I set aside my pride and walked into the office. I told the woman what I have told you here, and she laughed in my face. Well, I also told her how much I wanted to spend. I think that is what made her laugh. It was only a thousand dollars less that what we spent to go to Japan before but she laughed in my face and told me that the cheapest two people could do all inclusive in Europe was $7000.00 before plane fare.

Somehow I don’t believe this. She wouldn’t tell me if they had any specials going on, she told me I had to know where I wanted to go. That was not the point, I said. We were flexible, we wanted to go somewhere that was running a special. Travel Agent 007 told me that that is not how it works. I was left in wonder how all these people got great deals to go abroad and how it doesn’t work for me. I guess the bottom line is don’t get a 007 Agent to tell you where to go on your vacation. Oh, and use the internet. I just was trying the small business support and stuff, and of course as with most human interactions, it backfired in my face. Don’t mind me if I sound a little jaded, I was just hoping she would have been nicer, since the internet is taking her job away.

Anyway, you don’t care about that, you are reading to find out cheaper ways to travel. Now, mind you these are not all going to be luxury five star hotels, but if you can afford that, why are you reading this? (more…)

This goes out to all y’all web developers out there.  You know who you are.  In 1999 while others partied like it was…  1999, you slaved away trying to get your table-based layout working on Netscape and IE.  Thank goodness it’s now 2007, and you can just grab CSS-based layouts from A List Apart.

But off all the possible abuses of old-skool HTML, I bet you never thought of this one:  using table cells and bgcolor to build an image, one pixel at a time!

Link to video for those of you on RSS.

Brought to you by Japan and cutesy anime chicks.

We’ve shown you the total awesomeness that are Japanese obstacle course competitions. And we’ve brought you the true power and spectacle of Hard Gay. So now head three minutes into the video below to see the Beyond-Ultra-Power-Awesomeness that happens when you combine the two.

Bonus Awesomeness awaits when the British announcer points out that Hard Gay’s competitor “takes one to the old happy sacks”.

I am not a very sports oriented person, as several people will tell you. In fact, I learn most all of my American sports knowledge from my mother-in-law. But, I do like extreme sports, like skate boarding, snow boarding, and the Ultimate Viking Challenge. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this challenge, this is possibly the most difficult obstacle course ever made. It was originally a Japanese show but now airs in the US on ESPN and in Europe. I don’t often get the chance to watch the show, but when I do it’s definitely worth it. Anyway, I am not writing about that right now, what I wanted to talk about today, actually to show you a video of today, is Nagano Makoto, the only person so far to get to the final stage of Viking, The Ultimate Challenge. He lost by running out of time in the last five feet of the course. Below is a clip (albeit of very poor quality) of Viking so you get an idea of what is going on there.

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