Today, I finally got my Metal Gear Awesome shirt, and I'm happy with the quality of it. The colors are really clean and solid, and the cloth itself is nice and thick; none of that thin Cafepress pussy shit. I recommend you guys get one and look like nerds to everyone, and assholes to everyone who gets it.

Also, it's March 21st and it's snowing in Spokane.

EDIT: I just unintentionally deleted somebody's great reply. I don't care if you re-post it.

If women are just going to vote for other women when it comes to important things like President of the United States, they should be flogged and get their right to vote revoked.
Hillary Clinton is getting votes from old people, women, and blue collar voters. Most of them happen to fall into all three categories. Among them, the most prominent reason to vote for her was "to put a woman in the White House." I guess it's good we're not voting on trivial things like politics. Voting based on religion, race, or gender is retarded, sexist, and racist. Even if you are voting for Hillary because she's got a vagina, you're a sexist. If you're voting for Obama because he's black, you're a racist. While there could be an argument for Obama getting the "black vote," it's much more obvious that Hillary is getting the "bitch vote." They're not even pretending to avoid this. They're proud of it. Seriously.
If we're going to have women just voting for women without any real reasons, we might as well revoke their right to vote until they stop being retards.

EDIT: "Old people" originally linked to Lemon Party, but apparently I found a link that Newgrounds filters.

For some time now, Giant Pandas have received a lot of coverage for their remarkably low offspring turn-out and their worryingly dropping population. Every time one of these Lun Luns, Mei Xiangs, or the genderally confusing Jinzhus give birth to a cup, the media has an orgasm. The following days are filled with pictures and pictures of ugly fuzzy fetuses.
But why should we care? These pricks do nothing. They barely even mate, which is why they're in the problem that they're in. But that's not my problem with these fag bears. They never fight anything. Bears are notorious for ripping shit apart. Its arctic cousin, for example, mauls shit all day and rolls around in the warm, bloody organs of dead baby seals. Bad ass, right? Further down, kodiaks topple trees and terrorize Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin. But these Asian pussies shame the bear family.
Trust me, everyone. I have done at least one extensive Google search to find just one picture of a panda attacking something. The closest thing I found was this. The stump shows more enthusiasm. It's obvious that people want to see pandas in action. So why don't we all agree to stop breeding these natural pussies until they start mauling shit?

Also, Zoobooks is a lie.

So, I've been working on the hard shots of Ingus 9, but I'm hardly making a dent nonetheless. I've so far got seven shots done out of... 92. Yay? To be fair, most of those scenes are just duplicates (the same layout with different lip-syncing during back-and-forth bits). For the sake of wasting time and space, I'm going to break down the shots into Simple, Medium, and Complex of the 85 remaining ones.

Simple Shots - 52
Medium Shots - 16
Complex Shots - 17

I funny thing is that most of the complex shots are the fun ones, but also generally the shorter ones. It's sad. They take several times longer to do, they're under appreciated, and they don't last very long. It's likely that the easiest stuff will take up the most time and get the most response. Oh well. At least they'll snap everything together snugly so that the viewers don't bat an eye at anything that could have been done better.

Below I've thrown in a screen-shot from an early complex shot for those who don't like to read this crap.

- Jared

So, I just applying the audio to the time-line, matching it up with my storyboards, to get a rough idea of how this episode is working so far, and how long it's looking to be. I only cut a little bit so far, but I've clocked the play-through at a mere 5 minutes and 30 seconds, which is about a a minute and a half off of what I predicted. Had I kept everything I wrote, it likely would have met my mark, but there was about a minute of stuff that I cut pretty much as soon as I began the storyboards, which I'd been forgetting to subtract from my estimated length.
So now the question is: what can I possibly add to make this thing a minute longer, without dragging it out too much? I guess that's something I'll have to figure out.
So I'm going to say it now: You dicks will get a 7-minute episode of Ingus, and I'll guarantee that I will make it happen, damn it!!!

Or at least close to it.
Thanks, fuckers!
- Jared

Now that 2007 has come to a close, it's time to look back at the important things in entertainment. However, since I missed most of the good movies of 2007 (No Country For Old Men, Juno, 3:10 To Yuma, et cetera), I guess I will just cover video games.

2007 was a good year for video games, albeit lackluster or disappointing in several ways. The bad: Games like Halo 3, Heavenly Sword, and Lair all sucked; Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Home, Metal Gear Solid IV, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Too Human all got pushed back to 2008; and PlayStation 3 got a lot of bad ports. The good: It marked the first full year of all three consoles competing on the market, a lot of nifty news and twists, and a bunch of games gaining and losing exclusivity. Let's also not forget the sweet games that hit all three this year. Let's go over them.

XBOX 360
- Mass Effect
- BioShock
- Undertow
- Alien Hominid HD

PlayStation 3
- Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
- Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
- Warhawk
- Ninja Gaiden Sigma

Wii
- Super Mario Galaxy
- Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
- Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition
- Link's Crossbow Training

Multi-Platform
- Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
- The Orange Box
- Rock Band
- Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

A note before I continue: I don't care about Rock Band, but its quality is commendable.

As with any look-back, it is necessary to note the superlatives. As far as the multi-platform games go, Call of Duty 4 takes the cake. I don't even like first-person shooters or war games, but this game is done with so much thought and attention to detail that anyone will love it. The story can be a little confusing at times (who am I playing as right now?), but it doesn't really matter. It's also worth noting that this game runs perfectly on both PS3 and 360. Most multi-platform games this year ran like garbage on the PS3, and it began to reflect a poor image of the PS3. Infinity Ward showed that It wasn't a bad console, just bad developers that wouldn't take the time to get it to work.

XBOX 360 had a good year, with BioShock and Mass Effect leading the race. I have to go with Mass Effect because, despite its plethora of technical issues, it exceeds many expectations that many folks had. BioShock, for me, was just a good shooter, if you like to play alone. I don't. So, BioShock was interesting, but not for me. Mass Effect compelled me to play through it twice in two weeks.

PS3 had a good year, though not as good as many were hoping for. The two games that stand out for me are Ratchet & Clank and Uncharted, though Warhawk shouldn't be ignored either. Many people are going to side with Uncharted, because of its newness and graphical shock. However, I've got to go with Ratchet & Clank, which hasn't been getting the attention it deserves for its impressive length, overall polish, and lack of demons.

Wii didn't go to well for real gamer fans, but did for everyone's parents who just want to box on Wii Sports. Two games blessed us, however: Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3. While both are great, Galaxy takes the cake, and then bakes a new cake to taunt Samus with. Super mario Galaxy is probably the best game Nintendo has made since Super Mario 64. It's a shame he isn't on a more powerful console.

So now it comes down to the big question: What's the best? Mass Effect, Galaxy, or Ratchet & Clank? An RPG, an adventure, and a shooter, all set in space, where one travels about to various unique planets and completes completely different kinds of objectives. How do you choose which is the best of such different games? In terms of length, there's two ways to go: To the end and to the 100% mark. To the end, Mass Effect is probably the shortest. To completion, Mass Effect is probably also the longest. In terms of story, Mass Effect comes first, and Galaxy dead-last. When it comes down to polish, John Shepard obviously trips at the start line, and Mario and Ratchet have a Chariots of Fire-style showdown, with the Italian pulling just barely ahead. With whatever way you break it down, you can configure one to be better than the other in some fashion.

So, what do you guys think? Mass Effect, Galaxy, or R&C? Or do you think, "Fuck them! Call of Duty 4!" Let me hear your thoughts.

I haven't been working on Ingus 9 for quite some time now. I Have been setting up for college a few states away, but to make a long, confusing, boring story very short, I'm not going anymore. So, with that, I've had more time to play video games and other shit.

I've just basically finished Ingus 9's storyboards. I'm going to add the rough dialogue within the next few days, hopefully. That will let me know pretty much how long of a runtime I will have. I spent a long time in with the script, and have had a year to toss in changes and stuff (literally, a year. I "finished" the script January 19th of 2007), so I doubt any re-recording or re-writing of lines will be necessary. Though I have no good estimate to pass on to any fans of its runtime, I will say that it's got something like 95 scenes, not including credits, pre-loader, and menu scenes. Granted some will be cut, or will only be very brief, the shots (which are mostly broken up into scenes, like many of my cartoons) are on average no longer or shorter than the other episodes, and Episode 8 had about 50. So, I'm guessing 6 minutes, maybe. We'll have to see. I hope to crank out the audio-attached version by Sunday or something.

In other news, I'm still hard at work developing my new series, which I will be detailing when I'm closer to actually making it. I'm still plotting out the story so that it lasts and doesn't suck, while still making sense. I'm also doing some character design stuff, which has proved to be very difficult. I will try to upload some artwork later on, when I'm actually invested fully in the creation of that series.
I'm not really sure what else there is to say. I've got nothing to show for anything, really, and Ingus isn't much of a story where I can even give any nifty info on.

I guess I'll let you in on a spoiler: A retard does some shit.

Later!

I'd just like to let everyone know that Conan is back on the air after a two-month leave (without his writers), and he's got a beard. Tune in for the Conan Strike-Beard, weeknights at 12:35 only on NBC.

For the first time in the duration of which I've owned my Xbox 360, I've felt it was worthwhile, if only for just 21 hours. Her name was Mass Effect, and she broke my heart.

Mass Effect is the first 360 game I've played since Halo 3, but what a hell of a way to break the silence with my Xbox 360. I was given this game for Christmas, as it wasn't a top-tier game for me to buy day-one. However, since getting home on the 26th, I spent numerous hours on this title. I finished it tonight, earlier than I had hoped (I had numerous Assignments I didn't get to go back and do). I was initially wary of jumping into this game, because I had heard so many complaints about its technical issues, and normally things of the like tend to spoil games like bad milk with piss in it. For this one, not so much. The slowdown people whined about generally doesn't affect the game's enjoyment. Only near the end of the game does it impede the experience. The big issue for me was texture pop-in, which was fine at first, but when you're watching these epic finale scenes, and numerous large ships are just shiny globs for a majority of the shots, or characters look like pre-vis models. It's sad, but it doesn't prevent this game from ruling in many ways. The graphics are pretty incredible for the 360, and the voice-work is incredibly deep.
Possibly my favorite thing is how much information they cram into the game, and how little of it you need to hear. It became one of the more fun things for me to just ask every question I could out of everyone than some actual game play stuff. The best part of this aspect, is that they hired picky scifi nerds to write this stuff, so most all of your questions are answered. "Why is there gravity here? How are they going faster than the speed of light? What's with that fag?" They also have original ideas, like the idea of humans not being on the forefront of technology. We're the newcomers who everyone seems to hate because we think we can do things by ourselves and that we demand more respect than we've earned.
The characters are also all very interesting and fleshed out. The dynamics of how they act or evolve based on your own prerogative is interesting. For instance, as a Paragon, I was able to convince Garrus that superseding the law is not necessary to take down bad guys. Had I been more of a Renegade, I'd likely have reinforced his idea that laws get in the way. Shit like that. Plus, I had sex with this lady with giant lips, and I snubbed the advancements of some blue chick. I really hope that Mass Effect 2 will allow for carrying over save files, as I'd like to see my Shepard continue his relationships with the characters as I have it now. For being an RPG, it's relatively short, and it left me thirsty for more. Like a hot mom, she's let me suck on her tit and pulled me away, just as I neared bliss. Mass Effect, you bitch. Please return soon, so that I may drink the milk that is Xbox's finest offering to date, and potentially the finest offer it ever will supply my hungering belly.

Oh well. Final Fantasy XIII comes out next year, so fuck it all.

I'd just like to give everyone a heads-up that aside from completing all of Seth's characters' dialog (Ingus, Bear, Ninja, and himself), I have done nothing on Ingus 9 or 10. This month is doubly hectic for me, as I have been juggling both Christmas and a ton of college stuff (for which I will need before my 22-hour drive down to Colorado to begin January 7th).

I promise, when I get time to work on them without having to shit my pants over so many things, I will get them out as fast as I can.

Bye.