THE RETURN OF HAROLD AND THE RISE OF JL421 BADONKADONK

Remember Hobo Pete & Harold? Of course you do, you're a loyal Placemaniac. He kept haunting me via pop-up ads wherever I traveled. And he was the subject of a pile of photoshops, bunches of which I have yet to post. (Review the Hobo Pete/Harold Saga here: 0 1 2 3 4)

So anyway, I was stalking Amazon's lesser known regions and came across The Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank. Yes, click the link, I'll wait.

I guess you can sell anything on Amazon. This super neat tank has a comment section that beats the band. But it was seriously lacking something in the customer photos section. So I fixed that. Enter outdated photos of M & 19th Street DC, the Badonkadonk, a dash of Harold - and you get internet magic. Just scroll over a few images on the view all customer images for the full effect. Or hit the image below.

There is a secret, unique pleasure to posting complete bullshit on public sites. I learned everything I know from the Canadian master in this area.

8 BIT GODS AND MOUTHBREATHING MILLENNIALS

Castlevania. Level 5. Stage 15. Grim Reaper.

Oh man. I've spent a buncha of time with a buncha different Castlevania titles and this stage + boss combo still haunts me. The image above is likely a ROM capture with a game save feature enabled (save whenever, whereever you want). Just way too many hearts, full life, and III Holy Water. Yeah, no.

The stage leading up to the Grim Reaper fight is pretty rough. Way too many erratic little Igor bastards jumping around and pain in the ass regenerate-o red skeletons. Though the stage is loaded with secret hidden treasures and a rare 1up, so it's point heavy. But, points are secondary to survival here. Once you manage to survive the level and meet the boss, often beat to shit, it gets worse. Sure, it's a breeze if you've made it this far with Holy Water and II or III throw, since there's a one hit glitch that pins the undead bastard in place while he burns. But, that's pretty rare stuff and you need a pile of Hearts to fuel it.

Generally you make it there with a boomerang and a few Hearts. And even with the super useful boomerang, the Grim Reaper is a mafucker. So much so that if you do kill him, his animated scythes still remain and continue to do damage until the magic glow ball finally appears to end the level. Which has happened several times. The high of victory coupled with the horror of defeat, seconds later, is too much to bear. You basically go tin there and hoped he'd fall into a bouncy pattern on one side of the screen so that his accursed scythes would appear on the other.

Castlevania is a game of pixel precision and the Grim Reaper hucks so much crap at you from weird angles, it makes for an unpredictable maze of doom. If you fall to the floor below, you're done. Get hit and bounce in a bad direction - done. Poorly timed jump - done. I break into a sweat thinking about battling the guy. But there are those who would walk among us mortals as 8 bit Gods. The video link above is one example. Initial whip form. No sub weapon. No damage taken. Grim Reaper - toast. Amazing.

Then, there's the sloppy bastard nerds who need to get the fuck off the internet and stop clogging it with their sticky, hair covered, thumb ridden, poorly quoted pop culture video content.

This particular special person has 4 videos, totaling about 35 minutes of some of the worst Castlevania skills I've ever seen - complete with mouth-breathin' bad nerd commentary. I've linked out to one choice hunk of terrible gameplay above. It also contains piles of lovely evidence that nerd culture needs to fucking die already. It's been glommed onto by the lowest common denominator that I don't even know where to draw the line anymore. This particular videodude makes several boasts about how Castlevania was great "back in the day" (he sounds 17) when he played it and how it was his first game.

Well, I call bullshit. No one who has played Castlevania for any amount of time can wipe the 1st stage of the game from their memory. It's ingrained like breathing. Yet, this toad has difficultly hitting the first fucking candle. See below.

The rest of the damning evidence includes: several incorrect "Whip It" references, 307 jokes about the absurdity of candles producing hearts and treasure, barely completing the 1st stage, fluent verbal use of "Oh Noes" and the "I Can Has Cheesburger?" language, hand eye coordination of a salmon, Medusa sound effects, a plea to not leave negative comments about his voice, and actually uploading these videos for the world to see.

Finally, there's the fact that this shitheel is playing a friggin' ROM (which is fine, not completely hating on that fact) that has a game save feature engaged. Wow. Just, wow. Even with a mega-cheat in place he has no clue. Oh, and he complains about the lag his shitty computer produces while running the damn ROM.

I had a point to this, but lost it in the bile somewhere. Meh.

TV CASUALTY

Thanks to Mr. Horse, I now know this awesome/scary factoid.

"A recent study found that at peak times, Netflix represented 20 percent of Internet download traffic in the United States."

To look at this information inline with other trend setting studies, the internet is basically 3 things to Americans. Cats, porn, and reruns of the A-Team. And the way things are going with our useless government elected officials - we are going to have to enjoy it in the form of regulated cats, porn, and reruns of the Incredible Hulk. "Netflix is gettin' too big fer hem thar britches, I reckon.", an inbred Comcast wonders aloud, as it pulls at it's suspenders and chews on a long stem of grass whilst wearing a top hat, "Best slow that down to dial up speeds."

What does this mean? Perhaps we should look to England for advice on how to best spend the twilight years of an aging empire. If so, then we can at least look forward to some superior comedic programming - if our ISPs deem it a good thing.

FLAMES COMING OUT. OF THE SAXOPHOOOOOOOONE!

There was an opener for Devo, some band named JP Inc. Who opens for Devo I asked myself? I did a quick interwebs search and found some spoofy songs and their accompanying weird videos, one of which involved a monster truck. I watched one and figured, oh it'll be some sorta goof band like the Dead Milkmen or something. I was close. Ish.

So one dude comes out on stage. Dressed up as an old fella wearing a suit. He's supposed to be the CEO of a fake TV channel - JP Inc. I get it now, it's basically a stand up act. The giant movie screen above starts playing one of the videos I saw online beforehand. The Jazzbot Xtreme. And the dude simply rips into it, singing along and jamming a foot pedal for when the voice holds the eeeeeeeee in "extreme". His stage act, besides singing along, is to dance along in a weird wooden fashion. He had some sweet moves.

The video ends and he just keeps on keepin' on as the DVD plays through all his goofy videos. The videos are all the stuff of early interwebs funny - ie busted Flash movies. Crappy graphics that float across the screen and stolen internet images. The guy also photoshops his face onto pretty much every character in his fake TV shows and commercials. It was like watching a "live" version of my standard lunchbreak from 8 years back. Amusing stuff, for the most part. It was a fine way to get the crowd ready for Devo.

The songs that stuck in my mind are Jazzbot and Lieutenant Mustard. While listening to Lieutenant Mustard's jam, the backing vocals starting buggin' me as they weren't the JP dude's voice. Someone else. Very familiar stuff. I went home and found it online and had a listen again, then noted the guest vocals were credited to Joe Jack Talcum. The beloved Dead Milkmen singer guy. Double awesome! The JP guy has been doing this for years, so I'm way late here...

AMAZINGLY CONVENIENT PRICE INCREASE and JOIN THE "RECENT" INTERNET AGE YOU FUCKING LUDDITES

Hi, I run some, mostly unheard of miniatures company. Most likely from my 'carport' where I keep spare stock in the 'boot'. I live in England, so obviously the internet is a strange and whimsical place where design and function often cease to exist due to fairy and unicorn interference. I use olde tyme webz terminology like:

"Click on the following links to 'jump'
to these 1:1200 ACW related headings."

This kind of amazing 'jump' technology helps you explore my crazy person website maze. Also, since the cost of free digital images is so costly, I choose not to include images of the models I sell. It's more fun to get a surprise in the post! Don't you agree? But I do include some really faint and jaggy diagrams to help you along, so worry not.

Well, now I come to the important part of my missive. See, I've been operating for years selling tiny historical ships and men getting a sale here and there. It's a nice side hobby I suppose. But, it seems the time has come for a 10% price increase to reflect the growing cost of materials. This has NOTHING to do with the world's largest manufacturer of tabletop games (I believe the fellows go by Games Workshop or some such) recently releasing a Trafalgar ruleset that features my ships in the book heavily as well as 'jumping' out from their site to mine. No sir, this purely coincidental. But it should keep me in Bacon Buddies for a bit!

Furthermore, instead of me actually adjusting the prices on my excellent website, which I believe can't be done with current technology, simply add 10% on top of whatever you plan to buy. Easy! Then when you have your prices adjusted, factor in the package and posting for England's crack fleet of wondrous auto-gyro flying machines. For you yanks please add another 30% (including the previous 10%), UK add 10% and EU add 20%. See simple. Now that you have an inflated total of around 20-40%, finishing your order is a breeze!

There are a bevy of options available. The preferred method of course is to simply mail us a letter with money in it. If you don't trusty your cheeky postman, then get on the blower and give us a ring. Fab! But we do realize in this age of 'dotcoms' and 'browsers' that we should offer up an alternate method to you folks. That's why we are pleased to offer you Secure Ordering (of a sort). We suggest if you fear identity theft, which is absurd really, simply send a few different emails of a few days with your credit card infos and we'll piece them together, then send your order out. Huzzah!