Prepare to meet thy Doom. After four years of waiting, iD Software’s big leap forward is here. Doom 3 is officially to be released locally on the August 12 and 13.
Naturally, given that the United States release date is the August 3 and 4, the game hit online in a big way on August 1. (Local distributors Megarom shouldn’t worry — most gamers who are able to download the hefty 1,7-Gig pirated version are going to buy it as well. The game is too special and meaningful not to purchase the original, even if there are copies online.)
Read the initial unfolding rumours and comments (in the “Doom 3 Out?” news-item thread) as the game first appeared online, this past weekend, at Doom World. And for a more well-behaved Doom site, try Planet Doom.
By now perhaps you’ll have seen the “Cancelling Christmas” headlines, as this Stalinist (read “genocidal outdated wankers”) African National Congress government begins to float slowly its long-term, Khmer-like policies in the public arena. Maybe President Thabo Mbeki has more in common with US President George Bush than it seemed at first. Consider the frightening implications of Sullen Depressed President Retreats into Paranoid World. Or maybe you should just try and Build a Better Bush.
Staying with local news: read what Jani Allen has to say, and consider the message, not the messenger, at Draconian Gun Laws Spell Genocide for SA Whites.
The United Kingdom government recently jumped on the internet bandwagon and created a “let’s pretend to care about our citizens” website called Preparing for Emergencies. Unfortunately they remembered to register the URL for “gov.uk”, but they forgot to register “preparingforemergencies.co.uk”.
Naturally the pranksters leapt in rapidly and made Preparing for Emergencies. This would have been quietly ignored, were it not for moron ministers in the British government who decided to get official about the fake website. Browse through News Items on Fake Emergency Site.
More reality-warping, to see the influence that a certain Middle East country has on US education and media. Consider the following quiz result — seven out of 10 American college students studying journalism and media didn’t know the correct answer to the question, “Who is occupying the occupied territories, and what nationality are the settlers?”
I’m always in awe of those who modify their PCs and turn them into strange, Cronenberg-like art works. Then there are the other ones, who decide to go a decidedly different route. Have a look at what happens when you have the urge to perhaps bake little cakes and cookies in your PC — and fit a small oven into it, instead of a CD drive. Go stare at PC Oven.
There’s lots of whining from retards about gay marriages and the like. Ultimately I don’t care what you do with your sexual choices, it’s simply not my business. And you have to be pretty damn stupid to think that pointing to 1 000-year-old texts with ghost stories that suggest otherwise gives you any advantage in the argument. “My big imaginary fairy said this is how you should behave.” Hmm, so much for a sane human society, right? Which leads us, in a meandering fashion, to lesbians! So what do you get for the lesbian who has everything? How about some action figures? Go look at Dyke Dolls!.
And speaking of marriage, if you’ve got nothing better to do, go admire the sheer chutzpah of a matchmaker who has decided that she wants to find the perfect mate for herself — go say hi at It’s Time for Blair to Get Married!.
Then, for those of you who didn’t follow the links a few weeks back to download Fahrenheit 9/11 as Michael Moore clearly stated it was fine to do, you won’t have seen the scary and vacuous gum-chewing moment in the movie as Britney Spears speaks up for Bush. But for gum-chewing, empty-headed focus of a different sort, go find fellow fans and fight about Avril at The World Avril Lavigne Forums.
Time to look at the big picture in terms of global realpolitik. Having stationed troops in nine of the 15 post-Soviet states in the past three years, using September 11 as a pretext, “Washington has drawn a big chalk circle around the largest nation on the Earth,” says a Sobaka magazine analysis, “but it hasn’t made a whisper in the headlines.” Read and consider the slow but clearly visible below-the-radar movement of the US military at The Silent War.
A few of you might recall the great moment when — thanks to Howard Stern’s urging — Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf beat the likes of Brad Pitt and others to win People Magazine‘s online Most Beautiful Person competition. Sadly Hank is no longer with us. In a similar vein, how would you like to own a CD featuring at least 100 pictures of a “drunk and armless midget”? No this isn’t exploitation, or a joke — it’s a genuine offer from the drunken armless midget himself, on eBay. Apparently it’s to pay for his college fees. Go consider the online offer of Buy Pictures of a Drunk Armless Midget!.
And just when you thought the world was safe, understandable and sane — how about a sea bird getting an artificial leg made from a Barbie doll arm? By caring but surreal Turkish sailors? No, I’m not kidding. A seagull, found with a badly injured leg, had the leg replaced with doll parts. Go read Seagull Gets Barbie Doll Arm.
Get your tasty, unnoticed, heart-of-darkness Iraq war comments here. Note the comments from a returning soldier in the following item (“We shot a man with his hands up. We even shot women and children.”) at Iraq War Veteran.
The internet appears to be the ultimate comfort zone for geeks of all sorts, but is it really? Even if you are, like me, a data-shovelling geek of historic proportions, there’s a lot of thought-provoking sense being spoken about the supposed advantages of the internet at An Anarchist In Hudson Valley.
Downloadable bits. For those culture vultures out there who have a warm spot in their memories for celebrity atrocity moments, like William Shatner singing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, here’s another Cap’n Kirk attempt. This time he’s doing a duet with Joe Jackson — download it here.
And for those of you with bandwidth to spare — in other words not the Sentech customers — here’s a big download showing a bunch of happy-but-crazy bicycle fans playing tag in New York city’s rush-hour traffic: Tag in Traffic.
And to see a whitewash of massively historic proportions, not seen since the Warren commission ignored witnesses, changed testimony and did everything possible to promote the “lone gunman” theory in Kennedy’s public execution, go download the 7-Meg pdf of The 9/11 Commission Report.
Then if you’re new to the online world of neverending downloads, how about a site filled with a wide range of new British TV shows and documentaries to grab? Go take a look over UK Nova.
If you’ve got the bandwidth and would like to hear a wide range of radio shows dealing in assorted conspiracy and fringe subjects, which don’t ever get covered here, except as brief novelty items (mainly because the local radio hosts are too ignorant or backward to understand that there’s a growing market of people who don’t necessarily believe the “reality” that’s put out by the mass media), go take a look through the subjects covered at Jeff Rense Radio Archives. And in case you think this sort of thing is silly or not relevant, browse through Jeff Rense’s website, which gets more than 12-million hits each month. So much for it being a “minority” interest. Bookmark and look at Jeff Rense News.
End-of-the-world stuff. Well, it will be the end of the world for those living on the coastlines of the various continents, if the following item is true. Go read Top Glacier Expert Predicts All Ice Gone by 2020.
I’m a fairly happy vegetarian — not that I really care about the poor cows, pigs or whatever, it’s just that the idea of eating slabs of dead flesh from a once-living creature seems somewhat repulsive and disgusting as a habit for a society to accept. Added to this, of course, is the moral superiority this gives me. Tee hee. That said, soya is often the alternative way to go, and by now a lot of you will have seen the various-shaped soya-things in supermarkets, which, by the way, are wildly unhealthy. “Textured vegetable protein” is often another way of saying “massive unregulated and unlabelled quantities of monosodiumglutamate”. Lecture over, and if you’re looking at alternative foods, do some careful research at Soya Allergens.
Staying loosely with the health theme, I wouldn’t touch any cold drinks even if you paid me, as they’re filled with aspartame (also known as “nutrasweet”), which is a toxin that gradually damages the brain. (Look online for the medical research proving this.) But way back when we didn’t know better, do you remember a drink called Tab, which was the supposedly healthy alternative to Coke? Go stare at The Tab Photo Gallery.
Then, to show you I can be consciously as boring as the previous harangue suggests, try the mind-numbingly dull site Birds of the World on Postage Stamps.
Finally, for a site that is undoubtedly a favourite of most local DJs on radio, go consider the shameless joys of You Have Bad Taste In Music!.
Until the next time, if my own opinions don’t get me.