The Advocate

I was probably the only person in my entire high school/town/county that watched this show , courtesy of Cartoon Network's Toonami programming block. And, honestly, the only reason I even ended up watching the show originally was because I routinely stayed up all night grinding Warcraft 2 multiplayer on Bnet. (Of course, being like 14-15 years old makes it somewhat easy to stay up all night and recover like a damned mutant.) Once I got hooked on it, I had my alarm reset so I would wake up at the lovely hour of 5 AM just to catch each new episode, Monday thru Friday. The first incarnation shown on American television was the "Chaotic Century" storyline, which followed Hero Protagonist -- Van Flyheight -- as he roams the semi-post-apocalyptic wasteland of Planet Zi with an amnesiac love interest named Fiona, as well as his zoid, Zeke. (A zoid is basically a sentient fighting robot thing that humans can pilot. They are serious business.) BT Dubs: the Wikipedia page for...

The commodification of nerd culture into the mainstream has brought with it both Jedi... and Sith, among us. In this case, I am speaking of Ernest Cline's "Armada" and Adam Sandler's "Pixels." These are 2 pieces of art -- novel and film, respectively -- that draw upon the rich history of nerdy geekdom in similar stories. However, where one succeeds the other fails. Miserably. Horribly. It wasn't just a setback; it was a goddamn tragedy. In Cline's novel, you're basically getting War Games meets Ender's Game, with a healthy dose of The Last Starfighter and Knights of the Old Republic to boot with smatterings of old-school games like Galaga, etc. The essential premise is that aliens misinterpret our intentions when we sent all those space-probes looking for life and we, in turn, grossly misinterpret their attempts to communicate with us such that a full-scale war breaks out requiring the help of Hero Protagonist in the guise of your pro...

All your base are belong to us is a phrase from the classic Zero Wing game circa 1991 utilizing some of the best Broken English ever translated designed by accident. The quote has gone beyond a meme and turned full zeitgeist amongst the cyber-web-crawlers. Actually, the entire game is full of nonsensical non-sequiturs that, taken in or out of context, are effing hi-larious. Sadly, their hilarity was undiscovered until the more recent advent of YouTube and meme-technology could bring it to the masses. Now, we've got all kinds of references to it. The dude pictured in the video, who is the enemy leader of CATS (the evil faction in the game) looks like a cross between Legolas, a Borg, and some vampire from Twilight. Which only makes the kitschy dialogue that much better. I recommend you check the original video and then get lost in a spiral-web-hole of knock-off vids . Enjoy!

  (For this level of deadly cuteness) Or are you? Consider the query. Welcome to this blog! This will become a repository for my gamer, geek, nerd, dork, dweeb, dofus, and otherwise awesome passions. (That you will not find in such abundance on my other blogs and web-based whisperings.) So I thought it worthwhile to open it with the infamous words of the late-but-soon-to-be-revived Illidan Stormrage of Warcraft, one of my all-time favorite computer gaming franchises. Don't worry; you'll get used to my eccentricities. This blog is, especially, dedicated to the late-night grinders such as myself -- the 4 AM, red-eye-lidded, HotPocket + Dr. Pepper = ulcer, incessant thought-wanderers who haunt the alleyways of the cyberspace for no better reason than habit. Do you grind LFR the Monday before server reset for Xmog grear? Then this blog is for you! Do you google minor plot points to John Scalzi novels while your spouse has long since passed out on the couch? Then thi...