Learn all about neo-burlesque and the revival of the art form with our top highlights from 1990 to the present day. Not to mention our delish new timeline inforgraphic. Ooh fancy!

The History of Neo-burlesque so Far…

We took a brief journey through the history of burlesque dancing which began in the Victorian era. Unfortunately, by the 1960s burlesque was facing censorship and dwindling interest.

Burlesque dancers were encouraged to spend time with the audience encouraging liquor sales. This evolved into modern strip dancing clubs.

By the 1990s women all over the world began to reclaim the comparatively chaste, vintage style of stripping. Below is a timeline of key events. These have now led to a burlesque boom in the US and beyond.

Nineties Neo-burlesque and the Heroines Who Created It

Burlesque legend, Jennie Lee had been collecting memorabilia of the burlesque dancing industry. She hoped to open a museum to support former dancers in their retirement. Due to her ill health she roped in friend and fellow performer, Dixie Evans.

Sadly, Jennie Lee didn’t live to see her vision become a reality. Though, Dixie Evans followed through with true pizazz to the industry’s benefit.

In 1990 she released a press release about the all-new Miss Exotic World Pageant promising a star-studded audience in attendance. Of course all the names were invited, whether they showed up or not, it got the attention she’d hoped for.

Out in the Californian desert, the first Miss Exotic World Pageant took place. It soon became a yearly pilgrimage for burlesque dancers from all over the world.

In 1994 fiery-haired burlesque dancer, Catherine D’Lish had already won the title for the second time. Later, famed LA burlesque dancer, Dita Von Teese admitted the red-head’s name on the bill stopped her from entering. It’s no wonder they went on to become collaborators and close friends.

Then in 1995 Michelle Carr launched The Velvet Hammer Burlesque in Los Angeles. The sold out burlesque shows boasted a bevvy of wild and wonderful talent including Kitten de Ville.

At the same time trained dancer, Miss Dirty Martini began researching the classic fan dance. Elsewhere, Dita Von Teese performed her first feather fan dance. This proved that a renewed interest in 1940s burlesque dancers like Sally Rand was in full swing.

Meanwhile, in 1996, underground burlesque show Dutch Weismann’s Follies began to get attention in New York. One of the stars was influential burlesque dancer, Angie Pontani but more on her later.

Later, in 1998, Lorelei Fuller formed The Shim Shamettes burlesque troupe in New Orleans. This began a brief but influential part of the revival.

Noughties Neo-burlesque Flourishes

By 2001 Lorelei Fuller set up the first Tease-O-Rama in New Orleans. This introduced a new generation to the art form and the new burlesque.

The following year The Shim Shamettes downsized to the smaller Southern Jeze-Belles headed by Nina Bozak. As a result, Ronnie Magri formed The Shim Sham Revue in their stead which starred the likes of, yes, Dita Von Teese. Unfortunately, this remarkable slice of neo-burlesque closed in 2003.

Elsewhere, however, neo-burlesque was moving up in the world. In 2002 saw the New York Burlesque Festival. It’s now brought to you by Thirsty Girl Productions and none other than Angie Potani.

In 2004, Dirty Martini was the final woman to be crowned Miss Exotic World in the desert. Therefore, 2005 saw the Burlesque Hall of Fame annual event moves to Las Vegas. Whilst an extra day dedicated to burlesque legends was added, creating one wonderful weekend.

The genre was growing, expanding and now encompassing its male counterpart. The next year saw Tigger becoming the first Mr Exotic World for ‘Best Boylesque’ at the Burlesque Hall of Fame.

By 2007, Chaz Royal created the London Burlesque Festival. Moreover, the Toronto Burlesque Festival began showcasing Canadian talent and beyond. Not forgetting the Helsinki Burlesque Festival getting in on the action.

The subsequent year, saw Goodtime Mama Jojo perform at the ‘Legends’ night of the Burlesque Hall of Fame. Our guru was the first British burlesque dancer to receive the honour. This is just one example of how neo-burlesque was already an international phenomenon.

Closing the decade, Miss Burlesque Australia was founded. They began taking crowned winners from across the country to compete for the ultimate title.

Whilst Perle Noire was the first Queen of Burlesque to be crowned at the début New Orleans Burlesque Festival.

Now, Neo-burlesque and the Boom

To begin this decade, the Stockholm Burlesque Festival began sharing the best and brightest from Europe and further afield. And, of course, our theatrical burlesque shows were brought to you beautiful people.

The burlesque Hall of Fame museum also celebrated their grand opening in Las Vegas. Watch the cutting of the feather boa here.

Then in 2011, the Milan Burlesque Award was up for grabs. The following year also saw Baby Doe and her co-producer Alan Parowski revive Tease-o-Rama.

Meanwhile, alongside the Olympics, the first World Burlesque Games were held in London and is now an annual event. Again, brought to the capital by Chaz Royal.

Alongside hundreds of other events and shows, this all brings us up to this year. Midnite Martini was crowned Miss Exotic World 2014. Dita Von Teese has also announced her semi-retirement. Now, the next generation are taking to the stage and teasing patrons, particularly across the US. Find out more on HuffPost.

We look forward to the new wave of burlesque performers and our continued inspiration from the legends, living and otherwise. All of which we will be sharing right here.

Let us know your favourite moments of neo-burlesque by commenting below.

Shop for burlesque lingerie in the Burlexe Boutique.

Burlexe is a sensational London burlesque show inspired by the women who created the genre and perform the art. It fuses burlesque performance with storytelling, dancing with acting.

Find out more about our unique burlesque show and join our mailing list.

(Main image from LA Weekly. Burlesque gifs from K969)

The post The History of Neo-burlesque so Far… appeared first on Burlexe.

There’s one particular place of residence that changes the way people think about you at the mere mention that you live there, one park that most people in the surrounding neighborhoods don’t want to visit, with a name that sounds more fun than the reality contained within.

That place is the trailer park- where residents become marginalized, disregarded and generally cut off from the rest of society simply because they can’t afford to live anywhere else.

Photographer David Waldorf went in to a trailer park in Sonoma, California looking for a few good shots, and he came away with a photographic story to tell about the park's residents.

David's photo essay exposes trailer park residents for who they really are- human beings from a lower economic status living life their own unique way, in a microcosm that seems miles away from "regular" society yet exists right next door to us all. 

-Via Boing Boing

The ronin rabbit Usagi Yojimbo was created by Stan Sakai in 1984, at the height of the anthropomorphic comic book character craze, but Usagi has always been a bit different than the other critter comic stars.

His tales were less about life as a rabbit and more about the life of a ronin, because in Usagi’s alternate version of Japan's Edo period every character is an animal, so he doesn't have to wear a disguise or deal with mutant problems like his friends the Ninja Turtles.

(Image Via tmntentity)

Usagi was a fan favorite from day one, and his action packed comics are just as fun to read today as they were when they first came out, so why hasn’t Usagi Yojimbo been adapted for the big screen? 

(Video Link)

A film adaptation is finally being discussed, and as this proof-of-concept short film released by Lintika Films reveals it might actually live up to the geeky dreams of Usagi Yojimbo's fans.

Lintika seems to be staying faithful to the source material, but they still have to overcome a budgetary hurdle before the film can actually begin production.

-Via Cartoon Brew

Article reposted with permission from Business Insider.

Just about everyone agrees that the world would be a better place without the brutal terrorist group known as ISIS (or Islamic State or ISIL).

On Wednesday, Barack Obama compared the group to a “cancer” whose spread must be contained and that the group “has no place in the 21st century.” And Secretary of State John Kerry tweeted that “ISIL must be destroyed/will be crushed.”

But there is one thing everyone must realize in the anti-ISIS crusade: Given the momentum that ISIS has built over the past two years in Syria and Iraq, it would be very difficult to dislodge them from the region. To actually do it would require a full-scale war.

“If destroying ISIL becomes the near-term policy goal—which seems the likely outcome of saying you are going to ‘roll back’ the group—then 10,000-15,000 troops vastly understates the true commitment, which will actually require years, direct military action on both sides of the Iraq/Syria border, tens (if not hundreds) of billions of dollars, and many more than 15,000 troops,” counterterrorism expert Brian Fishman writes in War on the Rocks. “ISIL is an inherently resilient organization—look how far they have come since getting ‘rolled back’ during the Surge in 2007 when 150,000 American troops were occupying the country.”

ISIS has gone through many iterations since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and is now at its most powerful point as they control a vast swath of territory across Syria and Iraq. What has become a de facto criminal petrostate brings in nearly $12 million a month in revenues from extortion and other shady practices in the Iraqi city of Mosul alone in addition to $1 million to $3 million a day selling oil illegally.

“So long as it exists, the Islamic State’s borders will always be bloody,” Fishman writes.

“No one has offered a plausible strategy to defeat [ISIS] that does not include a major U.S. commitment on the ground and the renewal of functional governance on both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian border,” Fishman adds. “And no one will, because none exists.”

That said, there are moves the U.S. can make beyond bombing ISIS positions near the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Erbil (or Arbil) and the Mosul dam.

“The breadth of the Islamic State’s presence in the open expanses of Syria and Iraq is testimony to its prowess,” former Iraq and Kurd advisor Michael Pregent and journalist Michael Weiss wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “But it is also testimony to its vulnerability to destruction by U.S. F-18s.”

To that point, some ISIS commanders have retreated back into Syria amid t=the ongoing U.S. airstrikes.

“U.S. has total air superiority and ISIS isn’t used to fighting this kind of enemy,” Aaron Stein, a fellow at the London-based think tank The Royal United Services Institute, told WSJ. “So they’ve turned tail” to an area where they have much more strategic depth.

Garrett Khoury, Director of Research and Content for The Eastern Project, writes that the situation calls for an inclusive government in Iraq, weapons and training for the Iraqi Security Forces and the Kurds, and an international conference on confronting ISIS.

And it’s increasingly clear that something more must be done.

James J. Jeffrey, the American ambassador to Iraq from 2010 to 2012 and a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute, writes in Foreign Policy that the sooner the U.S. begins a sustained campaign against ISIS, “the less complicated our involvement will be, the greater our chances of success, and the more likely IS’s forces can be defeated before they tear apart the region completely — and directly threaten America.”

But any sustained military campaign involving U.S. troops would also require an about-face from an increasingly isolationist America.

“The country must be ready to accept the sacrifices necessary to achieve grand political ends,” Fishman concludes. “Until then, any call to ‘defeat ISIL’ that is not forthright about what that will require is actually an argument for expensive failure.”

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Still from 'Video Games: The Movie'

There are over 180 million active gamers in the US. The gender divide has become next to non-existent, with the male/female split sitting at about 52 percent to 48 percent, based on stateside figures. Total global revenue in the video game industry is predicted to break the $100 billion mark by the end of 2014. The release of one game alone, 2013’s Grand Theft Auto V, generated $800 million in worldwide sales in just 24 hours—more than any other piece of entertainment, ever.

42 years after Pong popularized the form, gaming is, evidently, more mainstream than it’s ever been. And yet here I am, in 2014, regularly checking myself during conversations in bars, and at evening exchanges with family and friends, so as to not get too in depth about gaming.

Perhaps it’s the company I keep, but I genuinely have friends, close ones, who see gaming as something to steer clear of. Music and movies, sure, we’re on safe ground. Sports? Of course, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the World Cup. What a goal that was, huh? That Suárez, what a champ. And so forth.

Games? Well, if we can discuss FIFA Ultimate Team. Or go retro, and get nostalgic over a few beers, waxing lyrical about what it was like back in the day: Mario versus Sonic, versus whatever Atari’s mascot was. Paperboy, perhaps? 

It’s weird that anyone should "not game"—as that’s effectively like saying they won’t watch movies, or read books. No way, no chance. Not going there. That’s for you guys over there. The geeks with the cosplay, the ironic tattoos and the man-child tendencies. Stay away from us regular folk. We’ve read about your addiction, about how it’s as dangerous as heroin (no, really, The Sun actually said as much, just the other week), how it turns perfectly balanced children into gun-toting maniacs who embark on their murderous sprees to chase high scores.

Bullshit, obviously. Evidence: only ever circumstantial. Sandy Hook killer Adam Lanza drank Coke, ate pizza, watched the evening news, sometimes rode in cars, saw violent movies, hung out with pals and probably did some dumb shit in front of girls. We’ve all been there. I have. I play videogames regularly, too. As yet, though, I’ve a big fat zero on my kill count—outside of Gears Of War, anyway.

Gaming virgins afraid to take the plunge for whatever reason, or those who’ve not picked up a pad since the SNES days, might have just had a gateway opened to them through the movies. Video Games: The Movie chronicles the history of the industry, its highs and lows, in a very approachable fashion. On board is Zach Braff (Scrubs, Garden State) as executive producer and Sean Astin (The Lord Of The Rings) as narrator, while further contributions come from a range of recognizable (to US audiences) faces: Wil Wheaton, Alison Haislip, Chris Hardwick. It’s a pretty perfunctory account of a story that could never satisfyingly fit into a 100-minute running time, but stylishly presented and always accessible. It’s like Sesame Street Does World War II, only with Call Of Duty rather than any actual tragedies.

It’s okay to come to gaming late—I never bought a Talking Heads album until my 30s, and still haven’t seen half of the supposedly unmissable box sets that have overrun what used to be record stores. And if you do, please, trust me: you’re not about to be brainwashed. Games are good for you. Being something of an industry veteran, you’d expect the fantasy writer Ian Livingstone to say as much—but his points about kids learning valuable life skills through gaming, expressed in an article for The Telegraph, serve as the perfect counter to trashier tabloids’ summation that All Games Are Like Bad And Stuff.

Again, games are good for you. Here are some more reasons why.

THE HEALTH BENEFITS

Photo via Flickr user Andrew*

A lot of gaming takes place sitting down, there’s no denying that. But when Nintendo released the Wii in 2006, suddenly people were off of their asses and swinging controllers, smashing invisible tennis balls past equally flailing opponents. The Wii was a major force in breaking down the persistent gamer stereotype of some pimply white dude with no friends sitting in the dark with nothing but a bucket of beef jerky for company. It got families together in front of their TVs, and it got them moving. The bundled Wii Sports was a revelation, and the system’s unique motion controller can still be used to play original Wii games on the console’s successor, the Wii U.

So that’s the physical side of one’s health taken care of. Want to get a sweat on somewhere other than your palms? Buy a Wii. (No, seriously, do. They’re cheap everywhere, and there are some fantastic games available for it. Or, spend a little more, get a Wii U and enjoy both the Wii’s expansive catalogue and the current-generation games, too.) But mentally, games can be tremendously beneficial, too.

In January 2014, the BBC asked: Could playing videogames help to beat depression? The American Psychological Association says that gaming is an area “largely untapped” and holds “great potential” for the treatment of depression, while a 2013 game called SPARX (standing for Smart, Positive, Active, Realistic, X-factor thoughts) has been proven to reduce anxiety amongst teenage test subjects, and noticeably helped some overcome their depression.

Games have helped those in the military, too—to find a little escape when their surrounding circumstances are far from idyllic. Just recently, a soldier serving in Afghanistan took to Minecraft to create his own fantasy environment: “So finally I have something pretty to look at.” For those haunted by indelible memories of frontline combat, games can provide something of a blocker, temporarily putting dark thoughts aside. A survey conducted by Grant MacEwan University, in Edmonton, Canada, in 2011 showed that regularly playing war-themed games helped military personnel diminish their emotional connection to what they’d seen for real. It helped them sleep better, allowing them to battle against very real nightmares.

Disabled players find great refuge from the circumstances of the everyday within the virtual environments of their favourite games. AbleGamers, which has been going for 10 years, is a charity committed to improving the quality of life for those with disabilities through the power of games. It provides not only access to a range of software, adapting controls to suit the needs of the player in question, but also provides a community, allowing disabled gamers to discuss their hobby with each other and communicate with developers as to how their products can best be tailored to meet their requirements.  

Oh, and games can cheer up your miserable grandma, too.

YOU CAN BE A TOURIST FROM THE COMFORT OF YOUR COUCH

Grand Theft Auto V is very much an adults-only affair, full of brutish behavior, graphic violence, sexual content, crude humor and the very coarsest language. But when its bloody story is wrapped up, the player is free to just enjoy the wonderful landscape that Rockstar has set its most recent, splendidly multifaceted crime caper in. Its fictional county of San Andreas is an analogue for Southern California, and its city hub, Los Santos, a parallel of Los Angeles, with a number of districts renamed for the game: Hollywood becomes Vinewood, for example, and Beverly Hills is translated as Rockford Hills.

There’s great pleasure to be had in drinking in the scenery, once the guns have cooled. Having not played GTAV for some months, I fired it up just to take a drive, for the purposes of this article. The game began with me as Michael, one of three protagonists, standing in my spacious hallway, the sun streaming in through stained glass doors. Out I stepped. Out he stepped. The car was in the driveway, in we both got. Where were we going? Who even cared? We selected Space 103.2 on the radio. Stevie Wonder played. Let’s chase the sun a while, we thought.

Having most recently played Watch Dogs in terms of open-world driving games, Ubisoft’s GTA-clone-with-fancier-phones, I found the handling a little sensitive at first. But soon enough we were on the highway, heading north into Blaine County, towards the dominating peak of Mount Chiliad. Halfway there, a station switch: Non-Stop Pop and "Music Sounds Better With You." I drove right around the map, stopping in Paleto Bay to repair my headlights (inevitably shattered within a minute of pulling out of the driveway), until the lights of Los Santos’ Del Perro Pier were sparkling, reflected in the lightly lapping Pacific. I’ve never been to California for real, but as far as I was concerned, at that moment: this was it.

I took my eyes off the road, distracted by the beautiful view and by trying to change the station, because Rihanna’s had come on and I don’t care for "Only Girl (In The World)" (I’m holding out for "With Every Heartbeat"). I hit the brakes too late at an intersection, and collided with stopped traffic. Los Santos Customs was about to get a whole heap of my hard earned cash. Damn. I made it out in time for sunrise. Perfect day. I headed back to the safe house—our mansion. But then Robyn finally came on, right before my gates swing open, so I drove around the block a little bit. It’s not like we had any killing to do. Press right to drink green juice, and to bed.

The GTA series—IV is set in Liberty City, aka New York, and Vice City is Miami for all intents and purposes—isn’t alone in bringing city breaks into your living room. Watch Dogs is set in a condensed but compellingly lifelike Chicago, and Sega’s Yakuza games in various shady districts of Tokyo; Assassin’s Creed II brings Renaissance-era Italy to vivid life, while Infamous 2’s New Marais is developer Sucker Punch’s take on New Orleans. And then there’s Skyrim. Yeah, dragons and trolls and stuff—but exploring its vast landscape is as close as some will ever come to a trekking holiday in Scandinavia.

So power up, settle down and expand your horizons—all for substantially less than a cramped flight with nowhere near enough luggage allowance.

YOU'LL MEET PEOPLE AND EVEN MAKE FRIENDS—SOME OF THEM IN REAL LIFE TOO

Online gaming is a Big Deal—94 percent of gamers in China choose to spend their time competing against peers over an Internet connection. While this can be a very faceless, nameless experience, there are numerous accounts of people meeting virtually first, across a World Of Warcraft battlefield, and going on to forge real-life relationships. Here’s one such account—and in the comments: “I met my wife on Xbox Live, playing Gears Of War.”

The shouting, swearing jerk-in-a-headset side of online gaming exists, naturally, but it’s easy enough to avoid—just play the right games, and ideally with the voice chat muted if you don’t want the slightest ear-bashing. Mario Kart 8 is a fantastic online game—connect to its servers and you’ll join a lobby of up to 16 players, all of whose usernames are on screen alongside their location. You can share a few text messages via the Wii U’s GamePad: “Good luck,” “That was funm,” or “Go easy on me,” that sort of thing. But like many of Nintendo’s multiplayer games, the forthcoming Super Smash Bros. included, it’s a much better game played with your fellow racers beside you.

Equally excellent for local co-op play is Valve’s tremendous puzzler Portal 2. A separate story to the single-player campaign, the game pits a pair of robots, Atlas and P-Body, against an array of Aperture Science’s challenging test chambers. It’s a game that will likely strain relationships as the two of you argue over the best strategy, but to come out victorious on the other side is a most splendidly satisfying thrill. And keeping things strictly in pairs, Journey is a captivating crusade for two, avatars whose online identities are only revealed post credits. It’s a simple, sweet connection—while playing, all you know of the other figure is that they’re being controlled by someone, somewhere, just as enraptured by the game’s shimmering sands.

Get familiar with competitive play, and you can take it public: organized gaming meet-ups are becoming more common in the UK. I recently spent some time at a Brighton night, where friends and strangers alike come together to compete at Street Fighter IV—but there are many more events like it happening regularly around the UK.

EVEN IF YOUR PARTNER, ROOMMATE, OR WHOEVER WON'T PLAY ALONG, YOU CAN STILL INVOLVE THEM

I’m quite prepared to be drowned out by a cacophony of know-betters for this, but I really enjoyed the last three games made by Quantic Dream—or, as the French studio’s founder David Cage would categorize them, “interactive dramas.” Fahrenheit (2005), Heavy Rain (2010) and Beyond: Two Souls (2013): I’ve played them all right the way through to their what-precedes-the-credits-matters endings, which are dependent on the decisions you’ve made throughout.

There isn’t a whole lot of what anyone could legitimately call gameplay in the last of this trilogy—starring Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe, Beyond: Two Souls is Cage’s most cloying plea to please be given a screenwriting gig—but it’s held together by a cracking lead performance from Page, and features just enough sci-fi-flavored, family-ties hokum to hook in the sofa-dwelling watch-along significant (or not) other. It’s kinda shitty, but the kinda shit that you can kinda get into, when there’s nothing on TV.

Beyond: Two Souls features no game-over scenario, its threats only ever there to drive the narrative, rather than suspend it. Instruct Page’s character, Jodie Holmes, to commit suicide and she won’t—but the game will remember that you tried, you fantastic bastard. But Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead is rather different. Again, it’s an experience that can be shared without the other party even holding a controller—but the tension is great and each wrong move can take the player closer to a grizzly end.

Essentially a point-and-click game—Monkey Island gone flesh-munchingly modern-day, with all the use-item-A-in-receptacle-B sort of puzzles that developer LucasArts built an unforgettable series on—The Walking Dead takes Robert Kirkman’s comic series as its inspiration, and is presented in five episodes, each lasting between two and three hours. Do not accidentally buy a game called The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, for that is a festering fumble of a third-person shooter with only one thing to its credit: It’s not as bad as Aliens: Colonial Marines.

I played through The Walking Dead—the first season of it, as a second is now unfolding across a variety of platforms—with my wife, and she stuck in there for the whole story, moving as it did through salvation to tragedy, impossible decisions and instances of amazingly moving sacrifice. It might look cartoony, but The Walking Dead offers conclusive evidence that games can tell stories every bit as engrossing, as affecting, as those in other mediums.

YOU MIGHT ACTUALLY LEARN SOMETHING

There’s a lot of literature out there on World War I, documentaries and first-hand accounts, recordings and various works of art inspired by the four-year conflict. And it all finds its way into Valiant Hearts: The Great War, which I recently profiled. Don’t let the game’s cutesy aesthetic fool you—it’s very much a blood-and-guts depiction of several significant moments in WWI, and developers Ubisoft Montpellier combine their puzzle-centric gameplay with reams of information regarding the reality of what you’re pointing your character at. Expect to cry, just a little.

Valiant Hearts is a rather more accurate telling of one of the more terrifying chapter’s in mankind’s on-going history than many other games supposedly set in the real worlds of the past. The Capcom-developed PS2 title Shadow Of Rome (2005) claims to present a plot centred on the assassination of Julius Caesar, yet is dogged by needless inaccuracies.

The most significant swerve it takes with a pretty well known slice of political history is that the murder of Caesar was actually something of a whodunit—this, despite accounts from the time telling us that some 60 people were, very publicly, involved in the attack, during which the Roman leader suffered over 20 stab wounds. Those who rained down the blows weren’t afraid of admitting as much—they were proud to have played their part in Caesar’s downfall. Oh dear, Capcom. That’s a straight fail at even O Level history.

And a brief moment, please, for The Saboteur’s watery representation of Nazi-occupied Paris during the Second World War. Said writer Keza MacDonald, for Eurogamer: “The Saboteur is aggressively, wilfully stupid, taking a historically charged place in time and turning it into the backdrop for a dumb action romp. This story is the worst, most disgusting load of dribble I’ve ever seen in a videogame, and I’ve played a lot of them.” Burn. There are loads of rather more faithful-to-the-period games available, of course, Gearbox’s Brothers In Arms series amongst the sticklers for accuracy.

Games can inspire their players to check out great literature, as several have taken their own cues from celebrated tomes. Yager’s memorable war game of 2012 Spec Ops: The Line draws no little narrative design from Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness—it’s as close as you’ll ever come to playing Apocalypse Now on your Xbox, with every discomfort that implies. Irrational Games’ intellectual shooter BioShock (2007) revolves around themes of Objectivism, most obviously borrowing story beats from Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged. Not that you’ll be thinking about philosophy when pumping bullets into sinister splicers.

GAMES ARE FUN, MAKE YOU SMILE AND HELP YOU FORGET ABOUT BILLS AND DEADLINES

Just play Super Mario Galaxy for half an hour. See? Much better. Sweet dreams.

And if you’re now convinced to get back into button-mashing, mouse-clicking and stick-twiddling, heed the words of games journalist Matt Lees, who offers his picks for those returning to the habit after a spell away doing, y’know, "Real" Grown Up Stuff.

“My recommendations are Portal 2—because it’s tight, brilliantly paced, and very fucking funny. Red Dead Redemption, because it's GTA on horses, and ended up being vastly better than any GTA game I’ve ever played. Finally, Dark Souls—just because I think what puts so many people off getting back into games is the intense set of rules and ‘videogame lore’ we’ve gradually built up over the years. Dark Souls ignores all the rules and builds something from scratch. It’s an odd suggestion, as it’s also bloody tough—but it has so much in common with older videogames that I figure it’s always worth a punt. For every two people who turn their nose up at Dark Souls, a third person finds their new favorite game. Only the original is worth a look, mind you. The sequel is garbage.”

Everyone has an opinion the second I mention that I’m from Las Vegas. People feel like it’s appropriate to ask: Was your mother a stripper? Where do you people really live? Do you know where I can get blow? It’s fairly offensive. For the record: My mother was never a stripper, I live in a pretty cool 1940s house, and I can only find you cocaine in Los Angeles. Sorry.

This is the city where I was raised. It’s a charmless place full of strippers, gambling, and alcoholism. If every Beavis and Butthead era Mike Judge character sprang to life in all of their drooling, nasty, shaky-lined glory, I imagine they would all come here and fit right in. Here’s why:

Photo by Megan Koester

Everyone Is Drunk 

Vegas is a 24-hour liquor town. I’ve been wasted before 9 AM too many times to remember. There are so few restrictions regarding alcohol consumption in Nevada that being drunk in public is basically a way of life.

Most of my friends were problem drinkers by the time they turned 18, myself included. I would give a lot of rides during high school—not because I was being nice, but because so many of my friends lost their licenses by almost killing themselves or someone else while operating a vehicle under the influence. Las Vegas’ roads are filled with drunk drivers. The light poles on certain valley streets are bent or knocked down every few miles like matchbook prongs. These are large physical reminders that drinking plus driving equals bad.

But never fear, dears. This place has just as many ambulance-chasing lawyers as it does drunk teenagers. In a wreck? Need a check? Call up your ‘roided out ex-sports star of choice. There are plenty who live here and own law offices that specialize in suing the living shit out of people.

Women Dress Terribly

Grown ass women of Las Vegas look like wanna-be Kim Kardashian duplicates most of the time. When they aren’t singlehandedly supporting the spray tan industry, ladies of Vegas like to impersonate overweight Bettie Page. No one looks normal. How do men respond to these idealized versions of sexpots? As it happens, not very well. In 2011, Nevada had the highest rate of domestic violence murders by men against women in all of the US.

This attitude drips down to a street level. Catcalling happens everywhere, but there is a huge difference between leering and hollering like a heina. Every dude who comes here seems to think it’s okay to act like a royal douche to everyone he encounters, women especially. More than once, I’ve been asked, “Oh, you’re from Las Vegas? Were you on a stripper scholarship?” Because so many girls living in this shitty excuse of a city actually strip to pay tuition. As a kid, I remember driving past billboards featuring vacant-eyed, bobble-headed women with advertising copy that read: “OUR GIRLS DO IT ALL” and “LOOSEST SLOTS AND SLUTS IN TOWN.”

As you can imagine, dating is a nightmare. I recently moved back home after a stint in NYC, and my pool of options shrank considerably. It’s a major dumpster-diving-for-dick situation for all the straight ladies. Please send help.

At Home I Feel Like a Tourist 

If you think your small town bar scene sucks at home, you’ve very obviously never spent time in this glitter gulch. The amount of bars not chock full of tourists or video poker machines can be counted on one hand. Casinos own absolutely everything in sight. If something even remotely cool pops up, we have to enjoy it while it lasts because chances are it will be gobbled up by one of those cheesy and generic institutions or some E to F-list celebrity.

Case in point: one of my favorite local bars was recently bought by Darin Feinstein—owner of the extremely uncool Viper Room in LA, and Corey Harrison—a cast member on Pawn Stars. Only the old guy from Duck Dynasty or Guy Fieri would have been more eye-roll-inducing investors. At least Guy graduated from the University of Nevada. Bars that were once not-that-bad are now filled with monster truck bros. The countdown to Vince Neil karaoke and TGI Friday’s-style bar food starts now.

If anyone knows of a Vegas bar that isn’t overrun with mouth-breathing What Not To Wear candidates, please tell me about it. I have come to enjoy hanging out in old man bars just to avoid the sheen of hair gel and Britney Spears’ signature perfume.

Photo by Megan Koester

The “Vegas” You Think You Know Isn’t Even In Las Vegas 

That’s right, folks. The only part of Vegas that people ever see—the Strip—is actually located south of the city limits, in the unincorporated towns of Paradise and Winchester. These areas don’t actually have a municipal authority, which gave developers free reign to build up the exorbitant hotels and casinos along the Strip. Las Vegas proper, to the north, is where most of the people live—in dusty desert communities devoid of all the glamour of the hotels and casinos. That said, you’d never know that the Strip isn’t technically “Vegas.” Even the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign is located half a mile south of the Mandalay Bay entrance because apparently Paradise, Nevada is the only version of Vegas that matters.

Downtown Is a Joke Downtown 

In the past few years, a sudden change has occurred in this neighborhood. Gone are the shoddy 7-11s we used to loiter near while bumming for cigarettes, and the bombed-out hooker coffin motels. These dusty gems have been replaced with concert halls that look like the backstage scene in Wayne’s World and brunch restaurants. Oh yes, the brunch phenomenon has finally hit the Las Vegas Valley. We are pretty much Los Angeles’ ugly little poseur stepsister who was left in the desert to rot and also be completely behind in everything from fashion to craft beer and cocktail worship.

So the city is rapidly gentrifying, but much like the rest of this corporate-spawned wasteland, our sad little downtown is being snatched up and bought by an “entrepreneur.” In a real estate fever only a dot-com dweeb could catch, Zappos darling Tony Hsieh has purchased most of the buildings and abandoned lots in this pocket of the ‘burg. So far, I’ve seen a park built entirely of storage containers go up that hosted a $50-a-head Sheryl Crow concert. This kind of development will push out the below-poverty-line residents from their weekly motel rooms to make space for specialty candle shops and more brunch spots.

There are a handful of people who want to make a difference downtown—as in make a huge profit on businesses that are such long-term gambles it’s insane. I can hear the board meetings now: “Instead of funding arts or helping the homeless in this area, we should totally parking lot the shit out of it! Art is hard! Building a shoddy version of Downtown Disney is way easier!”

High Schools Look Like Prisons 

Nevada has the 13th highest incarceration rate in the US. This is probably because Vegas schools are windowless, cinderblock buildings that alternate between freezing and sweltering temperatures. I remember going to school and feeling like I was definitely being prepped for prison. Sure, plenty of people felt like this in high school, but did the architecture resemble an actual cellblock? The classrooms in my school district were so overcrowded that we’d have certain classes in non air-conditioned trailers in the parking lot. Some days, our dress code was waived because otherwise kids would pass out due to heat exhaustion during remedial geometry.

At least a quarter of my asshole schoolmates did end up in the clink. That is, if they didn't drop out first. Las Vegas' graduation rate is the worst in the nation at 63 percent, which means that not only are we surrounded by future criminals, but they are future criminals who can't read.

“Classy” Doesn’t Exist Here 

I went to a sex club in a strip mall a few days ago. Mainly just to have the experience, to possibly write a Yelp review, and to feel a bit better about myself. My partner and I walked in on what I could only interpret as Martin Luther King’s dream come to life. Two gigantic black women were in a dungeon-themed room, one in chains while the other went to town on her junk. Twenty or so various men of different ages, races, and walks of life were sitting or standing around jacking off over the scene. As I lost a little bit of respect for everyone involved (including myself), a part of Dr. King’s dreamy speech echoed in my inebriated mind. “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

On the way bright side, weed is finally being legalized. Maybe I will just become a stripper after all, buy a house, and see how it all pans out. That’s classy, right?

What Happens in Vegas Stays In Vegas

Whether it’s for a bachelor party or some kid’s 21st birthday, everyone comes here to lose their inhibitions and go fucking crazy. It’s called Sin City for a reason. People often forget that there are still laws here, like this asshole who beheaded a guinea fowl at the Flamingo’s Wildlife Habitat for sheer amusement. As the saying goes, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas—but when you live here, you’re stuck cleaning up after all the other people who treat the city like a toilet.

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Primeira actuación de Siniestro Total no cine Salesianos (1981)

Antón Reixa na presentación do disco ”Fai un sol de carallo” (1986)

O obreiro conocido como ”Sandokán” enfrontándose á policía en Vigo durante as protestas de 1987

We’ve watched this show so many times now we might as well be quizzed on it. We’re not including the fourth season because many of us have watched it just once.

What score did you get?

Arrested Development / Netflix

What’s cute, has the best smile, and was just recently born?

"Hey there! I'm one of the two red panda twins recently born because what's better than one red panda cub? Two red panda cubs!"

"I was born at the Chester Zoo, where they help other wildlife like me in the Sichuan Mountains of China!"

Chester Zoo

"This is the first time anyone's gotten a look at me — I've been trying to hide from this new world."

Chester Zoo

"I'm ready for my closeup though! Hello! Nice to meet you!"

Chester Zoo

"Oh look! Here's my dad, Jung! He likes to hang out in trees and watch from afar."

Chester Zoo

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Because Pope Leo X has absolutely no chill .

1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.
2. This word cannot be understood to mean sacramental penance, i.e., confession and satisfaction, which is administered by the priests.
3. Yet it means not inward repentance only; nay, there is no inward repentance which does not outwardly work divers mortifications of the flesh.

ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com

4. The penalty, therefore, continues so long as hatred of self continues; for this is the true inward repentance, and continues until our entrance into the kingdom of heaven.
5. The pope does not intend to remit, and cannot remit any penalties other than those which he has imposed either by his own authority or by that of the Canons.
6. The pope cannot remit any guilt, except by declaring that it has been remitted by God and by assenting to God's remission; though, to be sure, he may grant remission in cases reserved to his judgment. If his right to grant remission in such cases were despised, the guilt would remain entirely unforgiven.
7. God remits guilt to no one whom He does not, at the same time, humble in all things and bring into subjection to His vicar, the priest.
8. The penitential canons are imposed only on the living, and, according to them, nothing should be imposed on the dying.
9. Therefore the Holy Spirit in the pope is kind to us, because in his decrees he always makes exception of the article of death and of necessity.
10. Ignorant and wicked are the doings of those priests who, in the case of the dying, reserve canonical penances for purgatory.

gifhell.com

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Everybody loves a good dystopia, where the world of today has turned into a nightmare of decay, hopelessness and gelatinous food cubes. But to do them right, you need to follow these ten rules.

Read more...

Warning: Watching this Princess Bride trailer, recut to make it look like a creepy horror film where Westley is Buttercup's psychotic stalker, may ruin the beloved movie for you forever. Other than that, though, it's pretty awesome.

Read more...

“The way my books are structured, everyone was together, then they all went their separate ways and the story deltas out like that, and now it’s getting to the point where the story is beginning to delta back in, and the viewpoint characters are occasionally meeting up with each other now and being in the same point at the same time, which gives me a lot more flexibility for killing people.”—Noted death-dealer George R.R. Martin talking about the last two (or “three?” or however many) books left in his A Song of Ice and Fire series at an event at London’s Freemason’s Hall. Specifically, he was asked whether there are any characters he can’t kill.

George Mar-tin, George Mar-tin. Fire suspenders, books are not yet done. Characters beware. Characters beware. He’s coming. He’s coming. He’s coming.

(via BuzzFeed)

Previously in Evil Santa

• George R.R. Martin On Book Secrets You’ve Already Guessed & The Princess Who Inspired Brienne
  
• George R.R. Martin Talks Sci-Fi, Superfans, and Gay Sex at the Edinburgh International Book Festival
• George R.R. Martin Has an Answer to Fans Who Say He Might Die Before Finishing ASoIaF: “F*** You”

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Yup, still happening.

We know Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been working on developing The Sandman for quite some time. In an interview with Moviefone the actor updates us the progress so far:

Right now we’re working on a script. It’s me and [David S.] Goyer and the screenwriter and Neil Gaiman, as well as the good folks at DC and Warner Bros. It’s a really cool team of people. It’s a lot of the same people who worked on the Nolan Batman movies. It’s really exciting. There’s not a script yet, we’re still kind of working it out because it’s such a complicated adaptation because Sandman wasn’t written as novels. Sin City was written as a novel. Sandman is 75 episodic issues. There’s a reason people have been trying and failing to adapt Sandman for the past 20 years.

Gaiman previously mentioned he didn’t know much about the project but that he was meeting with JGL to discuss it. He also gave confirmation that writer Jack Thorne was working with them on the film. Thorne was familiar to Gaiman as he was also working on the film adaptation of his book The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

Gordon-Levitt, who will appear in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For this weekend, also noted he was a fan of those comics growing up:

I love the stark, graphic black-and-white aesthetic. I’m no good at drawing but I remember when I was young, just having fun sketching stuff. But what’s really fun, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it and Frank Miller is the master of it, but you cover a page with India ink and scratch out the white from the black. So you’re not drawing in black lines, you’re drawing in white lines. And it’s so much fun. Then the light is the exception and the shadow is the rule, versus the opposite. Frank Miller is just the opposite of that!

But as far as The Sandman goes, things are still in the very early stages. “We’re still in the middle of it, so I don’t want to make any claims, but I think we’ve got the right ideas,” he told Moviefone. “It’s such a huge world. We’re definitely talking about in terms of a whole world.”

(via io9)

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I’m going to assume that most people, what with their impressive IQs apparently ranging anywhere from 125-134, have figured out that the IQ test that’s been going around on Facebook lately isn’t exactly any more accurate than the “What Disney Character Are You?” or “Which Friends Character Should You Marry?” quizzes they’ve found on the ol’ social network. Since we’re not all actually undiscovered geniuses, here’s the difference between your online quickie IQ test and a real one and how IQ scores actually work.

If you somehow haven’t seen your friends posting their improbably high IQ test scores on Facebook, the quiz in question is the one you can find at Memorado, which bills itself as a site for improving your cognitive function (also kind of dubious). Why do I say that your friends’ IQ scores from the quiz are improbably high? There are a few reasons—some obvious, some a bit more technical.

First and most obvious, the test is only 18 questions long. If there’s any indicator that this test isn’t so much designed for science as it is as a way to kill five minutes, share with your friends, and get you on Memorado’s website, this is it. Actual IQ tests, like the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales or the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-IV), contain several hundred questions and take, in the case of the WAIS-IV, between 60 and 90 minutes to complete.

Then there’s the way that IQ scores work. IQ points are arranged along a bell curve so that 100 is at the top of the bulge with most of the scores surrounding it. 100 should always be the average score of an IQ test within its intended audience. If the vast majority of IQ scores from a certain test come in around the 125-134 range, as they appear to on this and several other online tests I’ve seen over the years, the test is inherently broken and not really showing IQ scores at all.

But how is it possible that 100 is always the average for IQ tests? IQ tests are norm-referenced tests (NRTs) based on what is basically a scientific sample. The test is first administered to a norm group intended to be representative of the population that will eventually take the test, and then their raw scores are converted into a scale so that an IQ score of 100 is in the middle. On most modern IQ tests, the scale is arranged so that 95% of the scores spread out across a range of 70 to 130, with 66% falling within 85-115.

In simpler terms, when taking an IQ test, you’re not being ranked against the test based on percent of questions answered correctly like any regular school test. Instead, you’re being ranked against other test-takers, or a sample group thereof, on a weighted scale. So, an IQ score of, say, 130 should mean that you scored higher than 95% percent of the sample group on any given IQ test. Your IQ score is a description of where your test score fell in relation to the greater population.

The Memorado test even acknowledges this, as it tells you upon completion what percentage of the population you’ve outscored, but it instead seems to be simply telling you how much of the population you should have outscored based on your position on the IQ scale. So, I went through and purposefully clicked only the answer choice on the left for each question, and I was rewarded with an IQ score of 110, which should be above average. Then, having figured out what the right answers are to score in the top 1% (for reasons absolutely not related to stubbornness), I went through the test again and deliberately didn’t answer a single question correctly, which got me a score of 98.

Despite purposefully answering incorrectly, I got approximately the score of someone with average intelligence, which means 50% of people should somehow be able to score lower than 0 questions right. Call me an optimist, but I don’t think average human intelligence is low enough to get every question on a Facebook, for-funsies IQ test wrong. Again, it’s more about the numbers than optimism, though: To even be an IQ test, it has to allow for scores that go as far below 100 as above it.

Also, IQ tests are best administered in a 1-on-1 setting with a professional who can gauge the test subject’s knowledge and tailor the test accordingly. A generalized IQ test will invariably be too easy for some and too hard for others without necessarily meaning one of those people is smarter than the other, since the goal of measuring intelligence isn’t to find out what you’ve learned but more to gauge your ability to learn, as demonstrated in studies into how intelligence scores correlate to future academic performance.

But finding a psychologist or someone at a university nearby to give you a personal IQ test sounds like kind of a lot of trouble to go to. So how can you easily get a pretty accurate idea of your IQ? Well, another norm-referenced test is the SAT, and studies have been done which show that similarity means that IQ scores can be relatively reliably extrapolated from your SAT score. Basically, whether or not you think colleges place a lot of emphasis on them anymore, your relative SAT performance is a good general idea of what an IQ score would tell you about who you are or aren’t smarter than.

I’d also ignore any online tests for any reason other than some quick entertainment like any other online quiz. They’re likely unscientific and just flat out inaccurate and pointless, some of them have extremely weird time-based scoring mechanisms, and some of them will even try to look official and then waste a bunch of your time answering questions before letting you know that you have to pay to see your score.

So, here’s a fun exercise: Take all of the IQ scores shared on Facebook by everyone you know and lay them out on a graph. Assign an IQ of 100 to the average (probably around 129-130 from what I’ve seen), and then for estimation’s sake, put 70 at your lowest scoring friend and 130 at the highest. Finally, evenly assign IQs to the rest based on where they fall between the lowest/highest and the average score.

That may not stand up to scientific scrutiny either, but it’s a lot more like a real IQ score than what’s been going around in this test and every other one in the history of the Internet. Congratulations, you’ve just made almost everyone you know a lot dumber.

Previously in

• A recent study shows that boys have always been behind girls in academics
• There’s a headband being designed that will make you smarter by shocking your brain
• Meanwhile, computers are now smart enough to beat Super Mario Bros., so….

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If you’re an early twenty-something Internet user with a fair grasp of HTML and an unusual penchant for omelets, odds are you picked up both of those traits from playing Neopets at some point in your life. First launched in 1999, the site was kind of like a beefed up version of Pokémon: you got your own virtual pets and an entire world to explore with them. Fifteen years later, the game is still chugging along—and it’s become a lot more complicated than any ten year old could imagine.

A bit of background: Neopets was once a small pet project (pun intended) by British college students Adam Powell, who first conceived the idea in ’97 and worked on the programming, and Donna Williams, who was responsible for the web design and graphics. They created the site to “keep university students entertained, and possibly make some cash from banner advertising,” and as a result it was originally full of local colloquialisms and references. For example, the penguin-looking Neopet, Bruce, was originally just a picture of English entertainer Bruce Forsyth.

There was also once a Neopet of Macy Gray brandishing a ray-gun. Yep. Those are two things that very much happened.

Anyway, the site soon grew in popularity, and by Christmas of 1999 they were already getting 600,000 pageviews a day. In order to manage the influx of visitors, Williams and Powell sold the site to media research expert (and Church of Scientologist member) Doug Dohring, who moved Neopets headquarters to Southern California and set to work making the site into a family-friendly media empire through the use of “immersive advertising”—basically, by sneaking ads for actual products into places where kids would be more likely to remember them.

It was during this period of growth that I first came across the site in the fourth or fifth grade. Immediately I fell in love with Neopia and all it had to offer: I’d spend hours reading up on the staff murder mystery events, pouring over neoHTML tutorials to create the best pet pages ever, roleplaying in the (very restricted, heavily censored) chat long past the point when I was supposed to be asleep every night, and writing very detailed fanfiction about faeries—not fairies, and believe me when I say it took a while to break the habit of using the English spelling after Neopets had indoctrinated me so thoroughly—to submit to the Neopian Times.

(Also, I have a very vivid memories of breaking up with my fifth grade crush after he attempted to sabotage my Sailor Moon themed Neopets guild from within to get a rise out of me. We were hardcore, emotionally-manipulative little dweebs back then.)

Eventually I got older and started to spot the ads a little more clearly as they became more and more pronounced, and sometime around 2003 I fell out of the habit and couldn’t pick it back up no matter how many times I tried. But the site was still going strong: in June 2005, Viacom bought the company for $160 million. At that time, the site boasted 92 million accounts and 30 million unique users, 39% of whom were 13 and under, and 57% of whom were female. There were trading cards, plushies, cheap PS1 video games, ads on Nickelodeon, and even talks of a movie in the works. Neopets had become a veritable cash cow. Or Kau. Whichever.

Of course, the site also had its own virtual currency in Neopoints, which players use to buy and sell virtual items such as paintbrushes for turning your pets different colors, codestones for training them, eggs and potions to spawn rarer pets, treasure map pieces, items for “Faerie Quests”; basically anything you can imagine. You can then choose to trade, sell, buy, and auction those items with fellow users. You earn neopoints by playing the sites hundreds of games in what’s more or less the Neopets equivalent of grinding; the more you play, the more you earn. But no matter what I did back then, it never quite felt like enough to actually buy the things I wanted to buy. The asking price for rarer items were always just beyond my reach.

As it turns out, this may not have been a figment of my greedy preadolescent imagination. Rather, it might have been an indicator of rapid inflation in the Neopian economy. Over the course of the game’s history, it got a lot worse before it got better.

All online games of this nature have their own form of virtual currency, of course, and along with it their own problems of inflation and wealth distribution. After all, when you get a certain amount of gold for starting out as an MMO player and even more from every quest you complete, eventually thousands of new players arriving every day to go on those same quests is going to make for too much gold in the system. It gets even worse when players are invited to barter and sell virtual items to one another; the prices of rare or valuable items tend to get higher and higher until it becomes too difficult for casual gamers to keep up with the people who are farming and grinding for gold on a consistent basis. Even EVE Online has problems keeping up sometimes, and that game has its own professional economist on staff.

In Neopets, the rising rate of neopoints got particularly bad as it expanded. The trend didn’t go unnoticed, either; as early as June 2001, many economically savvy users noted in the Neopian Times that inflation was occurring and might need intervention to balance itself out. (Still others attempted to use the market as a way to teach real economics to readers, such as this article from last year). A popular Tumblr post written this year by user Cobrall suggested the site is now “a horrifying and disturbing look into the faults of late capitalism and the unfettered exploitation inevitable in unregulated economic systems,” that “poverty in Neopia” nowadays translates to earning something around 33,000 NP, and that “wealth disparity is huge with no regulatory system helping out the lowest tier.”

“If you earn 16k a day (about average if you’re casual), it would take you 59 years to save up for a dark faerie wand,” the post also reads.

Not everyone is so pessimistic about the game’s economy, however. “The Neopets Team introduced a lot of things to help either lower [inflation] or make things easier for people to achieve,” a longtime Neopets user who preferred to be anonymous told me. Her current account has been on the site for 156 months, and nowadays she specializes trading rare pets, including “unconverted” ones which retained their original artwork after a side-wide 2007 overhaul—which I’ll admit, is not a market I could have ever even conceived of before writing this piece.

“Making NP now is so much easier then it was when I first started,” she continued. “There are now ways to win Draik eggs and Krawk morphing potions which made those pets more available to everyone. And the NC mall has Faerie Quest cookies and [Fountain Faerie Quests] aren’t uncommon from them so you don’t have to save for a paintbrush.

Other measures that the Neopets Team—TNT for short—have put into place to address the level of inflation have been met with various levels of success. First of all, the site threatens to freeze the usernames anyone who’s caught making multiple accounts for the sole purpose of earning more neopoints in a day. “Playing on multiple accounts brings even more Neopoints and items into the economy, which causes inflation,” they said in a 2010 Neopian Times editorial. Neither is it permitted for users to sell or trade neopoints (or Neocash, which actually has a monetary value) for real world currency.

There are also several “sinkholes” in place to entice users into dumping large sums, thereby removing that money from the market entirely. Some features entice users with the prospect of earning more money, but actually end up collecting more than they distribute; still others reward players with chat avatars and rarer items.  And most shockingly (for me, at least), every once in a while there’s an “account purge,” during which time The Neopets Team cleans their servers by disabling very old, inactive or frozen accounts. All pets, items, and neopoints associated with these accounts disappear, and new players are permitted to create new accounts and pets with the now-deleted names. This keeps users from returning to their millions of neopoints and rare items after losing interest in the site. Which is great. Really. I’m not mad that some girl from Canada who hasn’t even logged on in 35 months took over my username from when I was eleven. Definitely not.

For those Neopets users who just enjoy the games, the worldbuilding, and the adorable animals, none of this tends to factor into their day-to-day play very much. “The prices have always been pretty inflated whether it’s 2005 or 2014,” another Neopets user, D.B., told me, but aside from some very specific types of collectors, “Everyone’s still trading or selling basically the same way.”

Of course, she acknowledges that there’s some stuff you just can’t buy no matter how much you earn. “I don’t even entertain the idea of trying for a faerie paintbrush anymore, but it might have been more feasible 9 years ago. Now they’re going for about 1.3 million neopoints at the trading post.”

Though it’s harder for newer players who have might have less time and access to the same kinds of items and information as ones who’ve been around longer, that doesn’t mean breaking in is completely impossible. As D.B. notes, “there are always new events cycling through that give new users a chance to earn neat stuff,” and younger users who are more familiar with coding or other kinds of content creation can also get the jump on older ones through site theme contests.

But how many new users are actually coming to the site every day, anyway? Not as much as there were back in its heyday ten years ago, unfortunately; where once there used to be 40,000 users on at any given moment, now you can expect to see only 10 or 11,000 instead. Some users theorize that this lack of growth in the past three or four years has actually created a problem of deflation. Goods that are inflationary by nature (such as the retired faerie pant brush) still exist, of course, but for items that are just a little less rare, some of those prices are starting to drop.

“As more people quit Neopets, fewer items are being traded,” one player, Colin Straka, wrote on the subject. “As fewer items are being traded, their value goes down. As their value goes down, fewer items are traded. The result is a vicious cycle that drives users away from the site.”

But there might be hope for those Neopians who want to see their game go in a different direction: in March, Viacom sold Neopets for an undisclosed amount to a company called Jumpstart in March this year. Yes, that JumpStart: the one that used to teach you how to add numbers together back in the third grade with their line of educational PC games. Reportedly they are interested in the site’s older user base, specifically those players who first got into Neopets when they were young and never left like I did. With any luck, a new managerial policy (most of TNT is still on board, of course) and a stronger hold on the site’s monetary forces may entice some frustrated older players in particular back to the world of Neopia, and make it easier for new ones to get on board, too. Hey, you think maybe they’ve got some kind of  Math Blaster: Economics  they might be able to pull out of somewhere?

(all images are from Jellyneo.net)

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Sure, you’ve had gazpacho. And yeah, you’ve probably also had a great watermelon-feta salad at some point. But what if you combined the two? It’d be pretty darn tasty, that’s what. Try it for yourself, tonight.

Get the recipe: Watermelon Gazpacho with Feta Crema

The post Remix Your Gazpacho with Feta and Watermelon appeared first on Bon Appétit.

Las papas son uno de los ingredientes de mayor consumo en el mundo. Las encontramos en una gran variedad de especialidades gastronómicas y bajo una infinidad de preparaciones. Hoy les propongo una manera deliciosa de preparar papas en gajos al horno con muchas especias que les darán un sabor inigualable.

Los ingredientes son:

Cuatro papas (medianas a grandes), una cebolla chica, un limón (o lima), tres dientes de ajo, 3/4 taza de aceite vegetal, una cucharada de puré de jitomate, dos cucharitas de paprika dulce, una cucharita de chile en pasta o chile piquín (en polvo), una cucharita de tomillo, una cucharita de orégano, una cucharita de comino, sal y pimienta negra molida.

La preparación:

Lavar las papas y ponerlas, sin pelarlas, en una olla con agua hirviendo por unos 5 minutos. Mientras están las papas en el agua cortar el limón en gajos irregulares así como la cebolla. Pelar los ajos y portarlos en cuartos.

En un recipiente mezclar el aceite con el puré de jitomate, el chile y todas las especias. Sazonar con sal y pimienta negra al gusto.

Sacar las papas del agua y dejarlas enfriar unos minutos. Cortarlas entonces en gajos. En una bandeja para horno colocar los gajos de papa, la cebolla, los ajos y el limón. Revolver todo. Añadir ahora el aceite con las especias y revolver muy bien todo esto con las papas.

Colocar en horno caliente a 200ºC por unos 50 minutos o hasta que las papas estén bien doradas.

Para una mejor degustación de estas papas en gajos con especias al horno les recomiendo servirlas junto con alguna proteína como una carne asada o un pollo empanizado acompañados de una copa de vino tinto.

Directo al Paladar | Tinga de pollo al Chilpotle. Receta

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La noticia Papas en gajos con especias al horno. Receta fue publicada originalmente en Directo al Paladar México por Philippe Saez.

El Comidista continúa su serie de bebidas especialmente pensadas para combatir el calor. Unas toñan, otras no, pero todas son perfectas para la estación del tú y yo a la fiesta, tú y yo toda la noche.

Hacia el conocimiento por la ebriedad. / EL COMIDISTA

 

Mucha bebida de verano y mucha gaita gallega, ¿pero dónde está el alcohol?, se preguntarán las más Sue Ellen ante la sorprendente abstinencia etílica que hemos mantenido hasta ahora en esta sección. Para aplacar las ansias de este dipsómano e imagino que muy nutrido sector de mis lectores, hoy traigo un bebedizo con alto poder revitalizante. El primero que te tomas te alegra. El segundo te pone en órbita. Y con el tercero ya eres George Clooney en Gravity, todo perdido por el espacio.

Aunque no son muy practicados en España, donde nos cuesta salirnos de la clara, los cócteles de cerveza cuentan con una tradición importante en otros países (por este blog ya han pasado algunos clásicos, como la michelada o el bloody brew). El que propongo hoy es una variante del stout diplomat inventado por Yanni Kehagiaras, del restaurante de San Francisco Nopa, que me gustó por su simplicidad y por una mezcla de sabores que encajan bien: cerveza negra, Pedro Ximénez y ron añejo. Mi versión es menos heavy que la suya -limito bastante la cantidad de ron y uso cerveza Franziskaner-, pero creo que funciona igual de bien sin toñarte tanto.

Dificultad

Puede que sea la receta más tonta de la historia de El Comidista. Y mira que es difícil.

Ingredientes

Por persona

• 250 ml de cerveza Franziskaner o negra si quieres un sabor más fuerte
• 1 cucharada de ron añejo frío
• 2 cucharadas de Pedro Ximénez frío

Preparación

1. Poner el ron y el vino en un vaso grande. Rellenar con la cerveza. Mezclar suavemente y servir de inmediato.

O PSdeG pide un plan de axudas para a actividade rural en zonas prexudicadas polo despoboamento e os incendios forestais.

A Comisión para a Recuperación da Memoria Histórica e a oposición de Sada alertan do peche do pazo malia o réxime de visitas obrigado pola condición de BIC do edificio, que ten as reservas completas segundo o servizo de reservas. A portada do Hola! reaviva a polémica.

Back in the mid-Sixties, The Artwoods were one of the most vital, impressive R&B bands on the circuit, fronted by Art Wood (elder brother of future Faces/Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie) and also boasting future Deep Purple organist Jon Lord, renowned drummer Keef Hartley, guitarist Derek Griffiths and bassist Malcolm Pool.
Between 1964 and 1967, the band recorded seven singles, the ultra-rare EP Jazz In Jeans and a nearly as scarce LP, Art Gallery, mostly for Decca but also for Parlophone and Fontana (the last under the pseudonym St. Valentines Day Massacre). Their records have long been coveted by fans of 60s beat, R&B and Mod music. Keep Lookin’ is the most comprehensive anthology of The Artwoods recordings to date. Alongside all of…

320 kbps | 587 MB | UL | OB | TB ** FLAC

…the bands As and Bs, this 3CD boasts four previously unissued early acetate recordings by the Art Wood Combo, several BBC radio sessions with unique tracks and a long-lost live recording in Denmark from that tail-end of their career. The compilation benefits from the involvement of the bands guitarist Derek Griffiths and basisst Malcolm Pool, plus legendary blues producer Mike Vernon.

Disc 1: The Singles … Plus,

01. Chicago Calling
02. Hoochie Coochie Man
03. Talkin’ About You *
04. Kansas City *
Tracks 1-4 credited to The Art Wood Combo
05. Sweet Mary
06. If I Ever Get My Hands On You
07. Oh My Love
08. Big City
09. Goodbye Sisters
10. She Knows What To Do
11. I Take What I Want
12. I’m Looking For A Saxophonist Doubling French Horn Wearing Size 37 Boots
13. These Boots Are Made For Walkin’
14. A Taste Of Honey
15. Our Man Flint
16. Routine
17. I Feel Good
18. Molly Anderson’s Cookery Book
19. What Shall I Do
20. In The Deep End
21. Brother Can You Spare A Dime
22. Al’s Party
BBC SESSIONS
23. Smack Dab In The Middle (17.08.65) *
24. Goodbye Sisters (17.08.65) *
25. She Knows What To Do (17.08.65) *
26. Can You Hear Me (10.05.66) *
27. I Take What I Want (10.05.66) *
28. Jump Back (10.05.66) *

Disc 2: Art Gallery

01. Can You Hear Me
02. Down In The Valley
03. Things Get Better
04. Walk On The Wild Side
05. I Keep Forgettin’
06. Keep Lookin’
07. One More Heartache
08. Work Work Work
09. Be My Lady
10. If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody
11. Stop And Think It Over
12. Don’t Cry No More
BBC SESSIONS
13. One More Heartache (08.08.66) *
14. I Feel Good (08.08.66) *
15. Things Get Better (08.08.66) *
16. Stop And Think It Over (16.12.66) *
17. In The Deep End (16.12.66) *
18. What Shall I Do (18.03.67) *
19. Day Tripper (18.03.67) *
20. Steady Gettin’ It (18.03.67) *
21. Devil With A Blue Dress On – Good Golly Miss Molly (18.03.67) *
22. In The Deep End (18.03.67) *

Disc 3: Live At Funny Park, Denmark 1967.

01. Steady Gettin’ It *
02. Keep Lookin’ *
03. I Need Your Loving *
04. Love Have Mercy – Bony Moronie -Love Have Mercy *
05. Be My Lady *
06. Day Tripper *
07. How Long Blues *
08. Shake
09. Tic Tac Toe *
10. Song Of The Journeyman *
11. Black Mountain *
12. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction *

* previously unissued

With roots deep in western Africa, voodoo spread to North America in the 19th century amongst the slaves and free black men living in the Creole plantations on the outskirts of New Orleans. Their great priestess was Marie Laveau, whose mojo skills and love-potions made her the emblem of a religion which became a “counter-culture”. 
As a reaction to the strict disciplines of American Protestantism, racism and segregation, voodoo – whether seen as a fantasy doorway to Africa or some sweet, erotic heresy – became an outlet for Afro-American musicians in search of their roots and identity. 
With detailed notes from Bruno Blum, these magnificent titles – blues, jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, even calypso – express all of hoodoo’s sentiments: spirituality, power, virility, pride, sometimes fear, derision and humour.Voodoo (frequently referred to as ‘hoodoo’ on mainland America) has had a bad press in America and Europe, with sensationalist media having a (racist) field day with zombies, white slavery, naked midnight rituals and sympathetic magic – take a look at some of the images in the booklet accompanying this double CD, although the sleeve illustration also falls into the same trap. Many African-Americans have also bought into this impression, drawing in southern folk beliefs, though it is with a little surprise that I note that Muddy Waters is the most represented artist on these two CDs, with his five titles – two more than a totally unsubtle Screamin’ Jay gets – comprising ‘Gypsy Woman’, ‘Louisian Blues’, ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’, ‘Got My Mojo Working’, and ‘Evil’, though the second of those titles points to the state most usually associated with ‘hoodoo’, thanks both to New Orleans and the state’s bayous. The Crescent city artists present range from Jelly Roll Morton to Eddie Bo, with Oscar ‘Papa’ Celestin’s ‘Marie Laveau’ almost a template for Mac Rebennack’s late ‘60s and early ’70s incarnation as ‘Doctor John The Night Tripper’. Zora Neale Hurston was initiated into a woodoo cult in New Orleans and gave a vivid description in her book, ‘Mules and Men’; she also travelled to Haiti – the home of voodoo, in the west at least – and wrote about her experiences there in ‘Tell My Horse’. A common saying is that ‘Haiti is 90% Catholic and 100% voodoo’ (figures vary but you get the idea), and that is acknowledged here by the inclusion of three titles by the rather cultured singer Josephine Premice, recorded in Los Angeles in 1957 and which feature Barney Kessel on guitar. ‘Chicken Gumbo’ owes more to Harry Belafonte than to her native island though – and it would be good to hear more by her. Blind Blake represents The Bahamas with the lively ‘Spirit Rum’, nice enough and well worth having, but not his best. Back on the mainland, the blues contribution ranges from – inevitably – Robert Johnson’s ‘Cross Road Blus’ (the notes link the big black man who purpotedly turned up at midnight and tuned Robert’s guitar at the crossroads with powerful Haitian deity Papa Legba) to the nicely sophisticated Terry Timmons, the r&b contingent includes Louis Jordan and JayMcShann, and rock’n’roll gets a look-in with sides from Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry (‘Thirty Days’) and The Clovers (‘Love Potion Number 9’). Besides those already mentioned, Billie Holiday, John Coltrane and Art Blakey are on the jazz side, though the inclusion of the latter two is only justifiable as the titles of their numbers display an awareness of African roots, though once again possibly quite stereotypically, and otherwise tel us nothing about woodoo as such. The only white headline act here is indeed a curious choice : The Kingston Trio performs the calypso ‘Zombi Jamboree’ after a careful introduction. This is a fascintating and entertaining set, but the booklet notes seem to have been cut before publication. The legend of the crossroads encounter quoted here was actually about Tommy Johnson, not Robert, and there is obviously something missing as this quotation is immediately followed by a source attribution ‘Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Dirty Work At The Crossroads, 1953’, which might suggest that Gate’s opus was at one time also scheduled for inclusion. It is not a massive oversight as the set stands up well enough without it. Norman DARWEN – BLUES & RHYTHM

As the ’60s became a time of deep socio-political change and upheaval in America, the country music establishment wasted little time establishing itself as the voice of the “silent majority” who wanted to live in a quietly conservative nation (as opposed to the loudly conservative point of view that would arise in Nashville in the ’80s and onward). One exception to this was Johnny Cash, who was often moved to speak out in favor of justice for the disadvantaged and disenfranchised. One of Cash’s first and most powerful statements in favor of human rights was his 1964 album Bitter Tears, a song cycle that dealt with the way Native Americans had been wronged throughout United States history, and remarkably, one of its most powerful songs actually became a hit single…

320 kbps | 132 MB | UL | FS | MC ** FLAC

…– “The Ballad of Ira Hayes,” drawn from the true story of the Pima Indian soldier who helped raise the flag at Iwo Jima during World War II, only to face brutal racism and succumb to alcoholism after returning home. To honor the 50th anniversary of Cash’s album, producer Joe Henry has assembled Look Again to the Wind: Johnny Cash’s Bitter Tears Revisited, a collection featuring a handful of noted folk and country artists covering the songs from Cash’s landmark album. The tone of Look Again to the Wind is gentler and more thoughtful than Cash’s original album, largely due to the artists involved — while Cash’s voice was legendarily strong and dark, the vocalists here include Gillian Welch, Emmylou Harris, Nancy Blake, and Bill Miller, whose performances are heartfelt but less physically imposing than what Cash delivered in 1964. In addition, producer Henry has aimed for a sound more intimate and atmospheric than that of the originals, dominated by acoustic instruments and the often stellar picking of David Rawlings. But if this album is more subtle, the best work here is moving and eloquent stuff, especially Gillian Welch on the opening cut “As Long as the Grass Will Grow,” Kris Kristofferson putting all of his gritty authority into “The Ballad of Ira Hayes,” Rhiannon Giddens from the Carolina Chocolate Drops sounding sweet but strong on “The Vanishing Race,” and Steve Earle having a grand time dishonoring the dead on “Custer.” Ultimately, Look Again to the Wind is more about the fine songs on Bitter Tears (most written by Peter LaFarge) than Johnny Cash, but these performances certainly honor the courage of Cash, who was willing to speak out for Native American rights at a time when it was an issue that barely registered in the public consciousness. The issues raised on Bitter Tears are still relevant, and Look Again to the Wind reminds us that art can still speak eloquently about the best and worst parts of the human condition, and it’s well worth investigating.

There are many mysteries surrounding the origins of ska, the famous music-style born in Kingston in 1962, but this Bruno Blum selection puts an end to all the speculation. Ska and its signature offbeat (which later surfaced in reggae) derived from the little-known Ame rican R&B style called shuffle. 
This anthology has some dazzling illustrations of it, from the obscure, original version of the hit “My Boy Lollipop” to the classic song “Just a Gigolo” - as well as 27 shuffles recorded in Jamaica just before the creation of ska, not to mention some early Bob Marley - this is the original sound of Jamaican dancehall. - Patrick FRÉMEAUXDivided into three CDs respectively subtitled ‘USA 1942-1950’, ‘USA & Jamaica 1950-1962’ and ‘Jamaica 1956-1962’, this set has 69 tracks, all of them with the characteristic shuffle that influenced Jamaican music and fed into ska. The collection opens with four titles by Louis Jordan before moving on to the likes of Gene Philips, T-Bone Walker, Archibald, The Robins, Floyd Dixon and of course Rosco Gordon. Some of these American titles also have the title they were given by Jamaican sound system operators in parentheses too – for example, Gene Coy’s ‘Killer Diller’ was known as ‘Milk Lane Hop’ and most famously, Willis ‘Gator’ Jackson’s ‘Later For The Gator’ was called ‘Coxsone Hop’, with Jamaican record man (and soundman Coxsone Dodd’s biggest rival) Duke Reid taking years to track down the original record due to the subterfuge. Professor Longhair’s primitive sounding ‘Willie Mae’ reminds me strongly of footage I saw of Jamaican pianist Theophilus ‘Easy Snappin’ Beckford a decade or so ago. The second CD contains mostly American material, including three tracks by Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson and Barbie Gaye’s original of ‘My Boy Lollipop’, Louis Prima and Frankie Ford. The last few numbers shift to Jamaican material from Owen Gray. The Duke Reid Group, and this disc closes with Bob Marley’s first recording, which might just be there for commercial considerations as it does not really fit the theme – however, it does certainly not interrupt the flow, so perhaps I am being a little harsh on this ska item. American jazz saxophonist Jackie McLean’s 1959 Blue Note recording of ‘Greasy’ also seemed out of place, on looking at the track-listing anyway, though it fits snugly once heard. It also had me racking my brain trying to remember who once told me that Jamaicans in early 60s London used to dance to Blue Note material – I still can’t recall for sure but I think it was Gary Crosby, acclaimed U.K.bassist, leader of the big band Jazz Jamaica and a nephew of top Jamaican guitarist, Ernest Ranglin. The final disc consists entirely of Jamaican material, and although a few of the titles are familiar from reissues, the majority are not. Most still fit relatively easy into the ‘r&b’ definition but the march towards ska is audible, though there are still plenty of items harking back to ’50s styles. Back in the early ‘80s it was quite easy to pick up new Jamaican pressed 45s of many of  the American titles includes here at Camden Market in north London. Whilst there is an increasing amount of Jamaican r&b becoming available, this is still well worth considering due to the strength of the first rate selection.

If you’re wondering by the way, I don’t really believe in the introvert/extrovert thing. Its just labels and as soon as you label yourself, you limit yourself :)

Just accept that we’re all complicated little snowflakes who have lots of little preferences when it comes to everything and have a good day, hooray!!

Aportazo de martinchoginer que nos trae un impresionante post del mundo de Crossed, les dejo sus palabras… antes recordar que en el blog tambien esta: Crossed - Valores Familiares, Crossed Psychopath y Crossed 3D.

Cuando lees Crossed, todo lo que creías conocer sobre el comic de horror cambia, aunque sé que existen comics más horribles y gráficos que crossed, este les gana en una cosa simple: popularidad.
 
Haber nacido de la imaginación de Garth Ennis, ser una de las colecciones más famosas de Avatar Comics, eso directamente lo convierte en algo más, en algo diferente, fresco e impredecible.
 
Cierto, los 9 números originales son únicos, pero abrieron la puerta a algo más, muchos de los actuales fans de crossed no eran originalmente fans del gore o de la brutalidad grafica y argumental que crossed expone, el primero lo lees por casualidad y después no hay vuelta atrás, ya estas infectado.
 
Badlands (Tierras Malas), es la serie regular de la franquicia, con arcos argumentales y personajes diferentes, de duración variante, a veces 3 números, a veces 5, escritos y dibujados por diversos autores. También incluyo los anuales y especiales porque básicamente son lo mismo: historias variadas.
 
Como es obvio y lo digo EN SERIO, este comic no es recomendado para menores de 18 años, por su violencia y sexualidad explicita, tanto en el dibujo como en los guiones.
 
No hay donde escapar, no hay a donde huir, si los cruzados no los atrapan, lo hará su peor enemigo: ustedes mismos.
 
Esta tradumaquetacion de una calidad excelente hecha por el genial Ele para su blog: Crossed en Español (donde incluso pueden leer los comics online si no tienen ganas de descargar) los primeros números fueron publicados por Liano Gulik en L9D, Outsiders, CRG y Prix comix.

Idioma: Español.
Editorial: Avatar
Guion: Garth Ennis, Jamie Delano, David Lapham, David Hine, Simon Spurrier, Christos Gage, etc
Dibujo: Jason Burrows, Leandro Rizzo, Georges Duarte, Eduardo Vienna, Raúlo Cáceres, Miguel Garrido, Christian Zanier, Miguel Ruiz, Rafael Ortiz, etc
Tradumaquetadores: Liano Gulik (Prix-L9D-Outsiders-CRG) y Ele (CeE)
Archivos: 58 + 2 anuales + 1 especial
Formato: CBR y CBZ
Tamaño: 950 MB



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• Crossed - Badlands