Ye Olde Intarwebs

This morning, I opened my Slashdot digest and found a little nugget of nostalgia waiting for me. Someone over at PC Magazine took a moment to reflect on the online games of yesteryear. As I scrolled through their list of titles, I think something got stuck in my eye. It got a little misty in here, I'm not gonna lie.

You see, few people know this, but back in the day, Yob ran one of the more popular Bulletin Board Systems (or BBSes for your fetuses out there) in the Phoenix area.

Thinking back on that time, I have fond memories of dragging a 50-foot phone cable across the living room every night. You see, in the 80s and 90s we didn't have persistent, always-on high-speed internet access. In fact, home "servers" could only talk to one visitor at a time (unless you had a lot of money and could afford multiple modems). So that meant lines were frequently busy, and you had to wait for your turn to log into a BBS.

Can you imagine waiting in line to check your Facebook? People would riot.

But I digress.

So there I was, a VERY nerdy early teenager, running a pretty popular BBS. But because I was a kid, the BBS had specific hours of operation when my parents would allow me to tie up the phone lines for hours on end.

It was there that modern-day file sharing was born. But more than that, it was there that modern day Massive Multiplayer Online games (or MMOs for you decrepit old farts) were born.

First off, there were games like Tradewars 2002.


To this day, I am hard pressed to find a game that I've been addicted to playing more that TW2k2. The only one I think comes close would be the Mass Effect series. In TW2002, my brother and I would join forces and dominate our own little corner of the universe, building trade relationships with a slew of spaceports, and amassing our forces to fend off intruders and the occasional wandering Ferengi. (Yes, Ferengi... apparently the game's authors just couldn't resist the irresistible urge to reference Star Trek).

Another favorite was Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD).


If you think of today's games like Oblivion, Dragon Age and Neverwinter Nights... you can probably trace their roots back to the likes of LORD. Knowing that, it's pretty obvious how addicting it was. Sadly fantasy RPGs of that era tended to be full of corny dialog and cheesy monsters. But LORD took itself just seriously enough to provide a balanced, engrossing gaming environment. Thus, another genre of computer game was born.

Casting aside the obvious gaming tropes for a moment, there were other gems from the dial-up BBS era that we just don't see much anymore. Games like BarneySplat!

If you were born before 1989, you will probably remember that fucking purple dinosaur named Barney and his vaguely creepy delivery of god-forsaken children's songs.


Kids loved him, adults quickly grew to loathe and ridicule him. And the teenagers caught in the middle? ...we dismembered him. Over and over again. Bloody, rage-filled, Dexter-like mutilation. It was a thing of cheese-filled beauty. I make no excuses for that behavior - that fucking dinosaur deserved every single beheading.


*ahem* ...But I digress (again).

My point here is this: take a moment to remember and pay homage to the people and the culture which helped bring us forward into today. Without the lowly teenage BBS owners of the 80s and 90s, would we all have our own personal 40mbps download speeds? Would we have the power to become our own online TV station, radio personality, hell, even movie star? Probably not.

Sure, the technology of that age was being used for legitimate business. But it was we who co-opted it for entertainment and leisure that ultimately resulted in our always-on, always-connected, insomnia-inflicted, text-while-driving, WoW-before-bills world of today.

So go on, hold that phone lower so the cops can't see your thumb-typing as you drift in and out of lanes all over the country. Play WoW 'til your fingers bleed. Pick your friends based solely on their Twitter and Facebook feeds. We know how you feel. These are the things we dreamt of doing as children, and new toys continue to flood the market faster than any of us can keep up with.

Part of me says, "keep up the great work." and the other part says, "Can't I enjoy the toy I just bought for a little while first?" But in the end, today's nerdy teenagers are doing things with this soon-to-be archaic tech that will continue to drive innovation even faster.

Like my father told me when I was a kid, "Your Grandmother went from a horse and buggy, to putting a man on the moon in her lifetime. Just imagine what will happen before you die."

Now, if you'll excuse me, my Team Fortress 2 clan is waiting for me. I've got to go light a few spies on fire.

Stupid Babies Need the Most Love...

Not to poke fun at child injuries, but how dumb is your kid? Genital bleeding?! Could they even make a softer rounder key? What kind of injuries did our grandparents receive playing with rusty shell casings and sticks?

Perhaps if we spent time with our children instead of letting them dry hump there toys like a neurotic hamster for hours on end? Then perhaps we wouldn't have to make everything fool proof or unsupervised proof.

Zombie Charts

I'm continuing my pre-Halloween ramp up with this piece. Here I've compiled a list of my favorite graphs and charts dealing with zombies.

Survival


These charts deal with survival techniques during a zombie outbreak.

Informative

These graphs (and related article) collate data from various zombie movies over the years and present the information in an interesting and novel way.

Zombie Movies vs Times of Upheaval

Silly

Last, I present a pair of my favorite charts that take a silly view of an already ridiculous topic.

Do you have any zombie data to share?

BFG: 1Kj Homemade Portable Coilgun

The best part is when he gives the toaster a good kick @ 3:36.

Post Script: Creepy Dolls

There are plenty more creepy doll themed movies out there I'm sure I've missed. I'd like to see them all at one point or another because I am strangely drawn to them. Maybe I am subconsciously suspicious of dolls because my mother made and collected so many of them while I was young. They still sit around my parents' house, watching and waiting to this day. List some of the notable creepy doll films you recommend in the comments below.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite Johnathan Coulton songs about this very topic: Creepy Doll.

Getting in the Mood for Halloween

Hey all. I've notice it's been slow going around the Empathetic Egotists' office these last couple weeks. I think we're all busy with our own stuff. I'm looking forward to the next installment of the "Gin Rummy", so if you're out there Mr. Nice Guy, get on it.

I've been spending my time in a nostalgia time-warp watching movies from 1985 to get ready for our Ultimate Movie Showdown '85 event. Then I got temporarily side-tracked on Netflix instant watch, as it's easy to do when you start clicking around. I ended up watching a series of Full Moon Productions schlock films, many of which were straight to video during their time.

I started with "Demonic Toys (1992)".



This is why I love Full Moon's movies. It has all the elements I want in a crappy horror film: the perfect mix creepy yet cheesy looking monsters, a thin premise and plot, characters that don't take themselves too seriously, and plenty of over the top gore. The clown-in-a-box and Baby Oopsie-daisy are by far the best characters, especially with the foul-mouthed baby doll that drops the F-bomb constantly throughout the film.

Netflix recommended I keep mining this vein of creepy toys and suggested "Dollman vs Demonic Toys (1993)" and "Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys (2004)". Before I dined on those delicacies however, I chose to go back to the source and watch "Puppet Master (1989)".



I love this movie. The Puppet Master series is Full Moon's flagship product, in my opinion. These movies were inspired largely by the recent success of "Dolls (1987)" and "Child's Play (1988)". The puppets in the Puppet Master movies are unique in that they exist in this gray area between villains and heroes. Yes, they kill people, and in horrible ways, but they are usually killing Nazis or people that have wronged their master in some way and "deserve" their deaths. If their current master goes too far or threatens the puppets, then their strong sense of self-preservation overcomes their loyalty and the puppets eventually turn on their master. The puppets' creep factor comes from their lack of speech other than grunts or other weak types of vocalization. Also, the scenes where the puppets are manually operated are usually far creepier than those where they are stop-motion animated. Because they are supposed to be puppets, the manual operation looks appropriate and life-like. Pin-head is one of my favorite puppets, due to his huge meaty human hands, which gives him his personality.

Next up was "Dollman (1991)":



This is a terrible film, with a few funny moments. The trailer tells you everything you need to know about it. The first few minutes of the film are the best, where the police-cop is on his home planet shooting up bad guys and making them explode needlessly. The best element of the movie is that the villain is a disembodied head kept alive in some sort of life preserving floating saucer. They hint at how each showdown with the hero has ended in the villain losing a body part so that eventually all that was left was his head. For some reason they go to Earth where the hero is only 13 inches tall. They get a ton of mileage out of the "13 inches" joke. After he's on Earth it turns into your basic good people in the slums fighting the drug dealers story.

Once I had the previous films out of the way I watched the cross-overs:





Both of these were terrible films, but the Puppet Master/Demonic Toys mash-up was by far the worst. Dollman vs Demonic Toys was essentially a retelling of the first Demonic Toys film with the addition of Dollman and the nurse from "Bad Channels (1992)". They save some film by reshowing several minutes from both of those movies. In fact, you could skip the first Dollman entirely since you get the gist from watching this film. The toys are back with the addition of a GI Joe like character played by a stunt-man with a creepy plastic head. Baby Oopsie-daisy now inexplicably is male and wants to have sex with the nurse. Since the toys have to interact with "tiny" human actors now, there are several scenes where the toys have to be built on a large scale and never look convincing, although the huge clown-in-the-box head is nightmare-worthy. There are plenty more "13 inch man" jokes in this film as well.

Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys is horrible. This was made for TV. If you wondered what happened to Cory Feldman, well here he is. He over-plays the quirky puppet master and affects a terrible gravely voice throughout the film. The puppets have been remade and look more plastic and worse for the wear. Pin-head's signature human hands are now fuzzy pink muppet-looking gloves. The demonic toys are even worse. They've been given the plastic treatment as well and are far less scary looking. The sets are awful in this movie. For some reason they have these iron maidens that are supposed to look like Santa with the face cut out, but instead it just looks like a frothy vagina. They should not have tried to remake these films.

I've got the rest of the Puppet Master films on their way in the mail, since only the first two are on instant. I'm looking forward to these and I'm sure they'll get me in the mood for Halloween. If these don't do the trick I'm sure the Creep Shows or "Trick 'r Treat (2008)" will do it. If you haven't seen that last one, I strongly recommend it.



What are your favorite Halloween movies?

Fun with Fluid Dynamics

No one wants to play with dirty equipment.