I have just been awful to you, blog.

Three weeks without so much as a hint of Sad Robot or Exterminators, and no new short stories to boot! My production of topical hilarity in video game news form has also been halved. I wish I had some interesting excuse for you, but I don’t. The last part of Sad Robot I began working on, and the short story I promised, have both become a bit longer and more detailed than I anticipated. This has caused me to slightly drop off the face of the planet, mostly thanks to the fact I am so pretentious I yell things like “I CANNOT BE BOTHERED WITH A FIVE MINUTE BLOG WHILE I CREATE!” Then I slam my fists down and my quill pen and ink go everywhere.

I promise I’ll be better, blog. Starting right now. Expect a deluge of delightful drivel.

Also I’m going to see Evelyn Evelyn in Boston, and feel that you all should also. They are such delightful girls.

Written by: Gavin

I make no bones about the fact I believe Battlestar Galactica, regardless of fairly odd ending, is the best sci-fi drama in ever. So when I saw a video involving some internet hero editing scenes from Galactica to mirror the Beastie Boys’ iconic Sabotage, I kind of thought “Hey, I’ll post that on my blog even though every other blog on the internet has it posted too.”

So here it is.

Written by: Gavin

I really like this, and I find Funny or Die to be the most hit or miss video collector site out there. The dude from The Mask’s Reagan impression is uncanny. Still, I probably only find it hilarious because I agree with the political agenda behind it. So if you like banks getting lots of money, abortion doctors being murdered, gays being considered unequal, women getting paid less than men, unnecessary wars, segregation, trying to teach religious doctrine in the place of scientific fact, or celebrating mediocrity through misdirection and media manipulation, then you probably won’t find agree with the political humor I enjoy. Also you are an asshole.

Written by: Gavin

This is more Epic than a mash up of Epic Beard Man reading a copy of Clive Barker’s Nightbreed while listening to Epic by Faith No More. In the end Fred Williamson teaches White Dog the true meaning of tolerance and Christmas before he shoots him in the face and turns his fur into a present for the mayors fine looking white daughter. Academy Award for best screenplay? That would be mine, thank you.

Written by: Gavin

Hey, hey you over there. Finish your drink, we’ve got to close. No, no I understand Al Gore said the Internet would last forever, but we are closing now. So drink your improperly poured Guinness and get out, the waitresses have to clean the tables and put the chairs up before we can leave. What? Why is the internet closing? Because no YouTube video is ever going to top this once. We are just calling it a day now. You can see if Arpanet is still open down the street, but I think that is an Army bar.

Written by: Gavin

How come nobody told me there was a new Symphony of Science video? Are you still mad at me for not getting anymore Sad Robot up yet? I’m sorry, but that is no excuse to withhold the only thing in this world that should be allowed to use autotune. This would probably be the first CD I will purchase since I the day I discovered IRC when it is all finished. Plus this one gives me an ultra geek boner since it is named after a Dawkins quote.

Written by: Gavin

Captain’s log, stardate 2010.33
I have been thrust directly into a world of intrigue and excitement. My life as a space captain began without much warning, as I found myself playing a large part in rescuing a Federation ship from the evil Borg. My reward for these heroics is my very own ship- kind of an odd reward system really, but who am I to judge. After spending a nearly infinite amount of time with the litany of options the Federation has provided me in order to customize everything from my uniform to my haircut to the design of my ship, I am finally ready to begin my journey in the USS Monsieur Rougeur. If these first few hours of action are any indication of what my career will be like, my excitement is palpable.

Written by: Gavin

Let me set the scene for you- the date was 1999. The Euro was brand new, Napster was getting ready to bring music downloading out of the seedy back alleys of IRC, everybody still had jobs, a certain governor of Texas calling himself a “compassionate conservative” wasn’t a laughable statement, and computers were looked down upon with scorn and fear due to the role they were so obviously about to play in ending human civilization. More importantly, it was also the last time Rebellion sprayed their creative acid all over the faces of gamers in the form of an Aliens vs Predator game. I’m conveniently ignoring 2007’s Aliens vs Predator: Requiem for the PSP because it was awful and acknowledging it would make me have to rewrite this intro.

More than a decade later, Rebellion has returned to the table to spray our faces again.

I just realized how awful that sounded, yikes

Written by: Gavin

I was sent this link with the message “Hey man, i’m pretty sure that if you wrote dog books in dog language for dogs, this would be your fan base.”

I think it was supposed to be a compliment. But you guys are so much more adorable than these puppies!

Anyway, I took a little time away from Ripten just to refocus myself on my fiction nonsense. Except more video game posts and reviews coming up next week- that should enthrall many of you who are scratching your heads going “why is my ALL TIME FAVORITE video game journalist rambling on about depressed robots and sci-fi nonsense.” This week was kind of a wash thanks to loss of power/internet and having to dig out from underneath SNOWPOCALYPSE 2K10. I’ll still have a new Sad Robot up for you but I’m pushing it back to Valentine’s Day because, well, it makes sense.

Written by: Gavin

What I mean by that is, add me on Twitter. It is the easiest possible way to get a hold of me and I begrudgingly use it despite the fact it is clearly vapid and… you know what, screw you. I like it.

Written by: Gavin

I was going to reward you six awesome weirdos who read my stuff with a Sad Robot entry a week early, but I didn’t want to burn you all out. So instead, I figured I would tell you about the wonderful sport of Speed Beer.

A few years ago, the awesome Jeph Jacques of the doubly awesome Questionable Content, which is pretty much Tenchi Muyo for Hipsters when you really think about it, invented a game which just astounds me that it hasn’t caught on yet. The game is Speed Beer, and it is perhaps the greatest drinking game ever made. I think Monsieur Jacques can explain the rules better than I;

It is a simple game with simple rules. It should also be remembered that Speed Beer is not necessarily a competition between people, as it is more of a competition against the course. There are also some variants we have added, such as “Team Speed Beer” which would mean teams of two or more per sled, “Championship Speed Beer” which is a race to the bottom of the hill where the loser must drink an entire beer and is more of a direct competition, and my favorite “Time Trial Speed Beer” which needs a very large hill for. Essentially you sled down the hill, and the amount of time you finish behind the winner is the mount of time you must do what the Madden and lanyard crowd refer to as a ‘keg stand.’

Drink responsibly.

Written by: Gavin

Sometimes you all surprise me. The handful of people who actually check this website and, by some absolutely bizarre stretch of the imagination, call themselves fans of mine make it impossible for me to ever get down about anything. I just got an e-mail from someone asking if I was stopping updates for the Exterminators and another from someone else if I was done with video game journalism. I guess from my last couple posts it made it sound like I was done with both, but I’m not. Exterminators will start seeing updates again, and I dialed back my video game journalism commitments so I could focus more on my fiction stuff, I’m still writing full time for Ripten.com- so a no to both questions. Thanks “CupcakeCreator” and “Chad_Vader” for giving a shit about what I do. I’m going to assume the former isn’t the One True God of Cupcakes and that the latter isn’t the real Chad Vader (let me know your twitters and I’ll post them here), but either way I thank you for the sentiment. Knowing people give a shit makes it a lot easier to stay on the ball.

I may end up putting up the next bit of Sad Robot a little earlier than expected just because you people make the circuitry and wires where my heart used to be so fuzzy.

Written by: Gavin

I promised you a new project would be starting now that I’ve cut down on my game journalism responsibilities and recommitted to my starving artistness, and here it is.

SAD ROBOT is a tale about, what else, a robot. Although he isn’t very sad. Not all the time at least. Sad Robot lives in a city, and he, like all the other robots in the city, spends his entire artificially created life training for a job in The Factory, but he doesn’t know why. SAD ROBOT will be an ongoing series of stories about his desire to find out why. And also his desire to find out why he wants to find out why. He has a lot of desires, and he doesn’t really understand any of them either. SAD ROBOT is just a simple story about a robot as he finds himself in a world that wasn’t built for robots that were built like him.

Written by: Gavin

Anything idiotic that NBC does will automatically make me smile since the elimination of poor (well, poor in the sense that he made 30 million dollars for 7 months work) CoCo. I wonder if the pool is still open.

Written by: Gavin

This is not work safe, but you shouldn’t be at work anyway and should be out frolicking in the fields free of commercialization and the evil overlords in polo shirts and bad ties that control your life. But, just in case you are at work, this AIDS awareness spot (you know, just in case you weren’t aware it existed or anything) contains a whole lot of naughty parts. It is also decidedly awesome.

Written by: Gavin

In order to accurately review a game like Blood Bowl, you have to look at it from two entirely separate perspectives. On one hand is the type of gamer who is intimately familiar with the warm embrace of the Warhammer tabletop games and their subgenera. You remember the days of wielding your 28 mm metal miniatures as if they held the power of Thor’s hammer. The rules already lay dormant in the back of your mind, ready to be awoken and destroy Tokyo by the depth charge that is a Blood Bowl video game. On the other hand, you have the other 90% of gamers who are going to play this and didn’t even have a clue that Blood Bowl was a tabletop game to begin with. That gives developer Cyanide the double edged sword of having to make a game that appeals to a large amount of gamers while staying true to the source material. If they pitch the balance too far from one side to the other they will either have a game inaccessible to new comers, or have to face the ire of a whole lot of people who are hardcore enough that they might have the Living Rulebook tattooed all over their body like they are in a Clive Barker novel.

So roll a d16 and see which one you are…

Written by: Gavin

I’ve been really slacking on posting links to video game stuff lately. I figure at this point 90% of the hits I get are from people who read my stuff on Ripten, so it has gotten kind of redundant. I did get an e-mail asking if I was still writing about video games though, so I guess not everyone who comes here keeps track of the Daily Gavin Updates, so I promise I’ll start being better with links to my stuff in other places.

He heard the noise come closer, the rhythmic pounding of excited footfalls. Feet thudding briskly against the floor with enthusiasm that only children could ever wish to harness.

“Grandpa! Grandpa” they yelled.

“Aye, aye. Calm down children. Your grandpa is too old and slow now to be going anywhere, you can be patient.” He chuckled and tousled the youngest’s hair. “What has gotten into you all to greet a common man like me with such a welcome fit for a king?”

Written by: Gavin

Sometimes I wish writers still used quills and parchment. Acting frustrated over a blank word document just isn’t as dramatic an image. You end up looking less like an artist struggling with his vision and more like a dude who is slightly uncomfortable with his game of spider solitaire. I say this because the last two weeks have been brutal for my creativity. At first it was because I was sick, but now I feel like being sick somehow burnt out the part of my brain that converts ideas to words. There is nothing more frustrating to me than having ideas but not being happy with how they are being conveyed. One of the reasons I picked up video game journalism was because I needed a creative outlet for when my mind wouldn’t let me get any writing done and, as the moderate success I’ve had with that whole deal shows, it has been a pretty good formula. Recently however, I have found myself with an increasingly strong desire to do more with what little talent I actually possess. Yet I haven’t been happy with a single thing I’ve put to text in a month. I seemed to accidentally disengage the part of me that does video game journalism from the part of me that wants to make word-art. This isn’t to say I don’t like writing about games, I love it, and I still think my reviews and style are creative and original within the industry, but it is no longer filling my artistic coffers. I need to write- really write- more. I have pages upon pages of ideas I think are fantastic, and I have even more swirling around in my brain, but I just have no motivation/muse/morale and am having the hardest time getting things down.

My brain is weird though. When I’m in a creative lull like this and the artistic process isn’t coming easy to me, I get incredibly jealous of people with artistic ability they can convey in more visually and aurally pleasing ways. Painters, musicians, photographers, et al. Maybe it is just because I’m a basket case about my writing, with my hangups and superstitions and all, but I get jealous because in typical “grass is always greener” fashion it just seems easier for musicians or performance artists to get feedback on their work. Which, in turn, makes it easier to create it. It isn’t necessarily a confidence thing, I know my writing is good, but it just seems more frustrating for a writer. Hell, I’ve had people even say that I can’t call myself an artist because artists “draw or paint” which just struck me as so offensive. I always feel an artist is someone with a desire to create, regardless of what medium they use. I understand where those people come from though, because a painter or a musician can make art that appeals to people at a base level. A good painter creates a painting that people can look at and discuss easily. A performance artist puts themselves into a piece and people can view it and be moved by it. A musician plays a song and people hear it and acknowledge it. They do this with amazing visuals or pleasing audio. What I do looks like a bank statement no matter what. The only people that see beauty in words are other writers.

That is why I wish we used parchment and quill pens still. That was the only time a writers plight could be made a visual and easily understandable thing. If I visit a friend who plays an instrument and they are having a hard time doing something, it is noticeable. You can commiserate easily. Same with an “real” artist who like draws or paints. Go to their house during a creatively frustrating time and see crumpled sketches, half-finished canvas, and eraser shavings sprinkled on their desk like snow. Back in the day it would be the same thing with a writer. The mental image of a struggling writer with paper strewn about and their head hanging in their hands is a powerful one, and one that kind of gets lost nowadays. When I get frustrated with my writing what do I do? I hit backspace a bunch of times or open up a new word document. There simply isn’t enough dramatics there for me. I know it sounds kind of ridiculous, but it goes back to that comment about writers “not being real artists” that bothered me so much.

Luckily my jealousy of other artists is only a superficial jealousy. Because the irony is that I find people who do express their vision and do it uncompromisingly to be the most stabelizing thing during times like this. It seems that anytime I have trouble creating I tend to find inspiration in other artists. I can kind of track my creative periods by this. For example, when I finished my first still unpublished novel I did it during a time when I got into the incredibly underrated Ryan Armand’s comics- especially minus which you may have seen me talk about here before. I use inspiration here in a different sense then usually expected though. The novel I finished during that creative high point didn’t reflect his work at all. It was just the sheer fact that someone as talented as him was doing what he wanted and making a living by following his creative vision. You can always tell the difference between somebody that does something because they want to make money doing it, and somebody who does something whether or not they make money doing it at all. It is that latter category that helps give me inspiration. So I’ve found that usually when my respect for an artist reaches its peak is when I’m most motivated and find it easiest to focus on conveying things. The positive of this is that I’ve recently rediscovered Amanda Fucking Palmer. I say rediscovered because I think it is a prerequisite that every artsy current/ex-goth kid in the North East have at least a passing enjoyment of The Dresden Dolls. But after they went on their hiatus, I kind of put them out of memory. Then last year I got a copy of Who Killed Amanda Palmer and never really gave it more than a cursory listen, it was enjoyable but didn’t really register for various inexplicable reasons. Now that I’m in a creative lull, however, I had been churning through my Neil Gaiman collection (another thing I do when I am lacking motivation/inspiration/focus) and checked to see if anything new was coming down the pipeline. This lead me to reading something about him getting engaged to Miss Amanda Palmer. I figured, hey, if my authorial idol, one of the most brilliant writers in existence, fell in love with the broad the least I could do is listen to her album again.

So as I warm up and realize what a creative powerhouse she is, and more importantly how dedicated to her art she is, maybe a switch will go off in my head like it did when I first discovered minus or the first time I picked up a Sandman comic and decided that was what I wanted to do with my life. If so I guess I’ll send her a fruit basket.

Written by: Gavin

Honorable Mentions 50-46 45-41 40-36 35-31 30-26 25-21 20-16 15-11 10-06 05-01

I figured for those of you who like clicking as little as possible and would like to avoid anything else I post here, placing all the links to my album list in one spot would be convenient. Also, because I am a benevolent blogger, I have taken one song from each album on this list and put them into a four disc set that you can download in order to peruse and see if there is anything you are interested. Although we all have a billion gigs of storage now so you really should just download every album on this list without even reading anything. That is how they would have done it in the Wild West.

Anyway, here are the four mixes. Be warned; they are terrible mixes. There was no way to really make them flow so I just kept them in order of appearance which leads to some pretty bizarre transitions.

Written by: Gavin

Honorable Mentions
50-46
45-41
40-36
35-31
30-26
25-21
20-16
15-11
10-06

05

Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More

Like a mad scientist, Mumford & Sons have patched together many different genres into a cohesive, shambling, and impressive monster. Mumford’s monster seems to be more content with playing the banjo then drowning little girls accidentally. Bluegrass instrumentation, indie structuring, pop sensibilities, and folk ideals equals one hell of a debut CD. There isn’t a single song on this album that misses, and each one seems to have a hook in it that forces you to rewind it a bit and listen to it again just to make sure it was as awesome as you thought it was. Don’t listen to the Arcade Fire or Fleet Foxes comparisons, this is way beyond those two bands.

04

Eleventh He Reaches London – Hollow Be My Name

Another interesting mix of genres. Eleventh He Reaches London put out an underrated release in 2005 with The Good Fight For Harmony, and it is nice to see this one getting attention now; especially because it leaves their previous album in the dust. This is post-hardcore played through a filter made out of post-rock, actual emo, and 90s alternative rock. Loud and abrasive at the same time it is melodic and catchy, the loathing and resentment the band explores using the concept of colonial Australia becomes an instrument almost in itself. I’m also a sucker for well written lyrics, especially when they do a lot of blaspheming- and there is a lot of  blaspheming here.

03

From Monument to Masses – On Little Known Frequencies

Not only is this a top 3 album for this year, this is one of the best post-rock recordings ever put to disc. I’ve always thought From Monument to Masses was criminally underrated. They are all the best parts of Godspeed! You Black Emperor and Explosions in the Sky swirled into one jar. If I had to get somebody into this genre, On Little Known Frequencies would be the example I use 100% of the time.

02

Between the Buried and Me – The Great Misdirect

If you don’t like Between the Buried and Me and have attempted to explain your dislike of them by saying some sort of variation of the statement “They just play a bunch of parts” then do me a favor- get the fuck out of my office, you are the worst kind of person. I get that they apparently have musical ADD, as opposed to AD&D where they would change back and forth between different rulesets, but considering every “part” they play is memorable I don’t really get the complaint. Once again, like the Kalisia CD I had on here, this is one that goes a lot better when listened to as a single track. They have come a long way from Shevanel, and I still love the more metalcore stuff that got me into them all those years ago when I was seeing them play before Nine Will Die (Happy Birthday xWOLFMANx!) and A Life Once Lost, but this and Colors are just a different beast entirely. This might be the best thing they’ve done since they turned the Cynic worship up to 11.

01

Sunset Rubdown – Dragonslayer

And here it is. I’m fairly confident that if my musical taste were a professional wrestling league, instead of Flair, Blanchard, Arn, and Ole the Four Horsemen would have been Crow, Kinsella, Kasher, and Krug. I feel like every year for as long as I can remember liking music, one of those four guys has contributed to my favorite album of that year. This is as creative as you would expect from a band that has connections to Wolf Parade, Frog Eyes, Swan Lake, and Pony Up! The weird part is that, as strange as one would expect Krug to be, this is the most focused album that Sunset Rubdown has put out. Normally when a band that has built its foundation on being difficult and artistically experimental puts out something more accessible that equals a misstep, but Dragonslayer might actually end up being Sunset Rubdown’s best album and is unquestionably my favorite album this year. Just because it got a little bit more straight forward doesn’t eliminate any of its subtlety or challenge. Plus the little winks and nods from Swan Lake’s Enemy Mine to this are fun for those who are paying attention.

Written by: Gavin