Computer Basically Dead

So my trusty computer has given up the ghost for at least a little while. God willing it’s something simple like futzy RAM or maybe even just a virus, but it appears to have hit hard enough to prevent me from starting up until minimum Sunday.

With that in mind, I have a few tiny pieces of information to tide your sadly undernourished minds over until I get up and running or any of the other contributors figure out how to make the words appear on their Devil Box more than once per fucking millennium.

*The Bugle, a very funny podcast by Jon Oliver (of Daily Show fame) and Andy Zaltzman (of just now being mentioned fame) has been running for around 3 years now, and continues to be an excellent recounting of important events of the past week. Did you know, for instance, that Vladimir Putin once shot a whale with a crossbow? If you’d only listen this and other facts could be yours. The Times Online, in taking the bold decision to never allow anyone to read the Times Online ever again, has basically taken the site I used to use to listen to The Bugle off the air. If you find iTunes integration annoying, and still want to hear them, go to the Bugle Online Archive! Spartan, but effective.

*Skeptoid is an interesting site dedicated to a thorough examination of all things that cross the author’s mind. At times too thorough! But usually interesting and certainly a good idea in general.

*Assassin’s Creed 2: Brotherhood is really quite a fun thing to play. I finally got into the single-player and my only real complaint is that they don’t dump all the mechanisms in the world at once. By the time I actually got to recruit Assassisitants, I was already the Land Baron of Rome. That said, the sheer amount they toss at you once they do finally open up means that you’re never at a loss for a heaping helping of stuff to kill, buy, refurnish, talk to, jump about on, or look at. It’s really a great time! It’s weird in that really there are few points at which you’re in any danger of actual failure, but it’s so fun to succeed utterly and build everything up to 100% that you remain engaged. I also love that your little Tamagossassins, when fully equipped, have plate mail armor and battle axes. History would be so much more entertaining if political assassination had actually been carried out by madmen crashing into the room and lopping people’s heads off with giant axes.

Anyway, that’s it! I’ll be back when the computer is less on the fritz.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, anyone reading! I hope you’re checking this long after the festivities. Trouble Thinking will be back on it’s regular schedule come next week.

I promise a minimum of 3 new facts about the mantis shrimp each day. That is my Christmas gift to you.

 

Also, this was the second Google Image result for “christmas”. The first was pornography. Happy Holidays!

Trouble Posting

Good evening, reader(s)!

It saddens me to inform you that since both of Trouble Thinking’s esteemed contributors will be off visiting the great land of French-Canadia, there will not be any new posts until late next week. Fear not, however, for we fully plan on returning from our trip both colder and wiser, at which point the same level of high quality content* you have come to expect will return unabated.

Thank you, and see you next week!

*Remember, quality can be a subjective concept.

Welcome to Chris Month on Trouble Thinking!

Good evening noble reader(s). For those of you who don’t know, James—I’m sorry, Durandal—has recently departed on the twenty year plane ride it takes to get to the mystical far off land of Oz, where he shall be communing with the kangaroos, dodging boomerangs, wrestling crocodiles, and visiting his sister for the next month.

This is all well and good, but as you may or may not have noticed, Jimbo is a bit of a madman when it comes maintaining a strict Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule around these parts. Further, since he doesn’t want to have to do anything resembling work on his fancy-pants exotic getaway, it has fallen on me, an irregular contributor, and a lazy, lazy man, to maintain that curly-haired Polish tyrant’s ludicrously demanding three day a week schedule.

It is with this gun to my back that I have decided to make the best of the situation, and declare June “Chris Month” on Trouble Thinking! Starting Monday (because let’s face it, this post is one-hundred percent space filler), join me on an exciting roller coaster ride of all-Chris, all-the-time, as I struggle to come up with three different ideas a week! Will I be able to do it? Will any of these articles be worth anything? Will I by the end of the month have devolved into a weeping, moaning mess curled up into a fetal position in the corner, anxiously awaiting James’ return? Will I be able to limit myself to just one superhero post a week?

Yes folk(s), it is going to be a horrible experience for all of us, but with a little bit of luck, we’ll all come out of this a little stronger. You will have learned to exercise patience for nonsense worthy of Buddha, and I’ll have figured out if I’m actually capable of doing anything resembling actual work.

May God help us all.