Earlier this year I began a mass cleansing of useless but valueable objects in my life. Near the top of the stack was my original silver Nintendo DS and a stack of games to go with it. Since I got rid of the DS I’ve missed it on a few occasions, but not enough to warrant going out and getting one of the shiny new Nintendo DSi.
So I got to thinking, why is it that I don’t miss my Nintendo DS? I did play the games on it, and I know that most of the games for it don’t have any direct versions available on other platforms I own. Then I realized, I just have versions of these games. I don’t miss playing New Super Mario Bros. on DS because I’ve got all the Mario games on the Wii and I’ll be playing Super Mario Galaxy 2, and New Super Mario Bros. Wii this winter. I don’t miss Legend of Zelda on DS because I still have an unbeaten copy of Twilight Princess collecting dust on the shelf.
There was one Nintendo DS original game I never got to play and that game was Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. It was designed from the ground up for the Nintendo DS and its touch screen interface, and was a step outside the normal for the GTA franchise. But I just read some exciting headlines today, and it seems that GTA: Chinatown Wars is being adapted this fall for, the PSP, and Apple’s iPhone & iPod Touch. Thankfully I just so happen to own a nice shiny iPhone 3GS, and I’ll be looking forward to downloading that game, regardless of the crazy price they’ll be charging.

So thanks to Rockstar Games being awesome and realizing the iPhone is a valid game platform, I will never again miss having my Nintendo DS. Today I am a happy geek!

Surprising I wasn’t on the ball in hearing about this one. I saw people making weird name mash-ups on twitter of Marvel and Disney characters, and just thought it was something stupid like usual. Once I heard about it a second time from my friend Terry I thought to maybe go check out the news. What a surprise I was in for when I found out at Comic Book Resources, that Disney had acquired Marvel Comics.

So what exactly does this mean for Marvel and Disney? Disney has stated they’re taking a hands off policy, but hope to help promote and market Marvel properties, and Marvel now has financial security, and backing of one of the most powerful companies in the world.

This isn’t the first case of acquisition in the comic book industry, considering DC Comics has been owned by Warner Bros. since 1969, and it’s this case that is really the best comparison for Marvel Comics. From a consumer point of view there really doesn’t seem to have been a lot of influence in DC Comics other than from film and television franchising options. Occasionally there is a call from Warners to not kill comic book characters they’d like to use, but honestly when is the last time a comic character stayed dead?
I see Marvel/Disney forming a large film and television franchise that will reach an ever increasing global market. The comic aspect of the company I believe will stay relatively unchanged. Comics are having trouble across the field, and being bought by Disney is not going to help it. Though one major headache will be the large number of existing business relations Marvel has in Film, Video Games, and other aspects of its marketing or distribution. Secretly I’m sure Disney would love to bring all aspects in house to control all flow of money, but that kind of change could take years. Also there is a severe chance of conflicting rights to characters being used in other mediums now that they are all owned by Disney. With any luck they may be able to avoid large scale fiascoes like the fight going on over the Adam West Batman series, which involves no less than Warner Brothers, Fox, all music rights owners from the show, and all celebrities and their likenesses that appeared in the show. As a result the red tape and pride has prevented this show from doing anything other than languish in reruns, and fuel black market DVD sales.

For the sake of Marvel fans I hope this change is for the best. Though I think its going to be much more difficult than everyone really anticipates.

Yesterday I finally grew tired enough of the look of this blog and went searching for a replacement theme. I had narrowed it down to two choices and excitedly downloaded them for installation. Little did I know that I was moments away from near total destruction of this beautiful blog. I had updated the Wordpress back-end of the blog before installing the new themes, and neglected to create a backup of the blog in total. Needless to say when I went to install a theme called Whiteout, I instead got what is known as the White Screen of Death. Turned out Whiteout is not all that compatible with the new version of Wordpress. Though thanks to the magical ability of my infinitely more tech savvy fiance the White Screen of Death was banished to the depths of the internet, and the blog in its entirety was recovered and put back up. I don’t know how, and I know enough to not ask how all this was done, but I am very thankful.
So now you can enjoy the new theme Bluemod, which is not fatal, and decidedly prettier than Whiteout anyways.

Being an avid reader, I always have more than one book on the go. As a result the less exciting books in my reading pile often get pushed to the side and remain partially read for long periods of time. Every once in a blue moon though, a book is so boring, or so catastrophically bad that I call it a day and never read the rest of it. The most recent offender of this calibre is PYGMY by Chuck Palahniuk.
I’ve read much of Palahniuk’s work and I’ve been impressed on almost every occasion. His work is often vulgar and graphic, but is usually has some redeeming quality or story quirk that makes it enjoyable. I have yet to find a single redeeming quality about this book. It nearly induces physical pain when reading the hobbled english of the narrator and the story wanders aimlessly along with no real goal being apparent after forcing myself through 94 of the 241 pages. The only real hope I have for this book is that it will make the rest of Palahniuk’s work look better. Worst case scenario is that it will deter readers from discovering a very talented author.