BuzzFeed has created a compilation video of the best Vines starring dogs from 2013. Dogs ride bikes, dramatically play dead, paddle in the pool half-heartedly, and pull off other impressive feats in this entertaining compilation.
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16 Dec 20:35
First-Person Video Shot With Google Glass at a Gun Range
by Kimber Streams
Google Glass owner cheekflapperer took a trip to a gun range and captured some first-person video while shooting at a target.
via Digg Video
16 Dec 20:14
Cures for obesity and heart disease could come from grizzly bears
by Josh Lowensohn
firehosebears will tear us apart again
Safely binge eating then losing weight isn't just easy for grizzly bears — it's a way of life, something researchers want to better understand, and perhaps even replicate in humans one day. Pharmaceuticals company Amgen is currently tracking the ins and outs (but really more the in part) of what happens to these bears as they get ready to hibernate, as well as during their day-to-day munching. The hope, reports The Wall Street Journal, is that the research could be turned into something to combat obesity, heart disease, and other ailments in humans. Early findings suggest the secret revolves around insulin, something bears can adjust their sensitivity to based on their activity. That may be difficult to emulate in humans, but could eventually result in drugs that cure obesity while also fulfilling an ideal set by the Romans centuries ago: eating massive amounts of food without our hearts exploding.
- Source The Wall Street Journal
- Image Credit Grizzly Bear by Deborah Simon
- Related Items bears science grizzly grizzly bear
16 Dec 20:10
comixology: comiXology’s 12 Days of Free Comics is here! Check...
firehoseyeah, hawkguy. hawkguy
comiXology’s 12 Days of Free Comics is here!
Check out this page every day to find out what we’re giving away!
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16 Dec 20:10
Bill Jemas joins game company Take-Two to start comics imprint
by Albert Ching
firehosewhat
16 Dec 20:01
GIF Making 101 – Converting Video to GIF with Jasc
In my previous tutorials you’ve learned how to emulate games, and how to capture your favorite moments as video files. But this is called “GIF Making 101”, and I still haven’t shown you how to make a GIF yet. Today we shall remedy this problem! Once again, this is mainly for those of you with PC’s, because my utility of choice is a Windows-based freeware application called Jasc Animation Studio. I know a lot of people use Photoshop for this kind of thing, but it’s kind of expensive, and it does way more than you’ll need for GIFs. Jasc’s focus on animation makes it simple and easy to learn.
First off, you can download Jasc version 3.11 for free by going to this page, and clicking the green arrow in the lower left-hand corner. You may notice it’s from 2003, but it works fine on my Windows 7 machine. Install it and start it up.
Either drag in or File/Open one of the AVI files you recorded with HyperCam, and you should see a dialog like this:
Range of frames to import
A “frame” in animation is basically a screenshot — a single image that does not move. Frames are strung together to create an illusion of movement. If this is new to you, it will make more sense after you see your video loaded into Jasc.
As you can see, there are only 368 frames in my AVI, so we can select “All Frames”. When there are more than 800 frames, Jasc will usually choke and say it can’t handle it. If you accidentally try to load more than 800, you’ll probably need to kill the application and start it up again. Usually I just go through 800 at a time by setting the range (1-800, 800-1600, 1600-2400, etc.).
Sampling
-
Take all frames in range — I always do this because you never know which frames you’ll want until you see them.
-
Merge identical frames into one — Always check this because it makes animations much smaller and easier to deal with.
Click “OK”, and your frames will appear in Jasc:
Notice there’s only 220 frames loaded instead of 368. That’s because we chose “merge identical frames into one”.
Now take the horizontal slider at the bottom of the window and slide it to the right until you start seeing the frames of animation that you want. You can also use the right/left arrow keys for this. I’m going to make a GIF out of the title screen for the Super Famicom game Jungle King Tar-chan, which in my case starts getting good at frame 177:
Now hold down the Ctrl key and left-click on each of the frames you want. I’m going to take frames 177 through 181. Try to keep it to just a few frames; otherwise you might get errors during the Tumblr upload. I use the horizontal slider at the bottom to go back and forth between frames, because Jasc can’t display all of them unless you zoom out. When you’re done, all the frames you want should have a blue outline around them. Now copy them by clicking Ctrl C, or choose “Copy” on the File/Edit menu. Then paste them by clicking Ctrl V, or choose “Paste” on the File/Edit menu. You should now see your animation like this:
It looks pretty much the same as before, but now you’ll see at the bottom that you’re starting with “F:1” (Frame 1) instead of “F:177” or whatever frame you were at before.
You can test out your animation by clicking the “View Animation” button in the toolbar here:
In my case, the animation looks like this:
If your animation isn’t doing what you want, you may want to go back and choose some different frames or remove some of the frames (using the “Delete” button on your keyboard). I would definitely slow this one down a bit if I was doing it for real, but that’s a more advanced topic than I want to present here. Now stop the animation by clicking “View Animation” again.
There is one thing more thing we need to do before this will work in Tumblr. The video I recorded is 512 pixels wide, but Tumblr will usually choke on GIFs wider than 500 pixels. So in this case we need to crop the animation down to 500 pixels. You may be thinking, “Why don’t we just scale it down so we don’t lose anything?” Because that would cause distortion and make your GIFs blurry. There’s a lot of ins and outs to cropping and scaling, so I don’t really want to cover all that in a basic tutorial like this. So to crop the animation, first click the crop symbol on the toolbar:
This will make a rectangle which you can click and drag to whatever size you want. The size of your rectangle will display in the lower left-hand corner, but only while you’re dragging. Basically you’re trying to create something that’s EXACTLY 500 pixels wide. This way Tumblr won’t choke on it if it’s too big, and it won’t try to scale up (making it blurry) if it’s too small. Height isn’t as much of an issue, but you want to keep it 600 pixels tall or less. For my image, I’m going to keep the full height of 448 pixels, and just clip off 6 pixels on each side. ZSNES leaves some ugly space at the bottom, but we’re just going to ignore that for this tutorial. The rectangle in my case looks like this:
Now click the big button that says “Crop” (NOT the Crop symbol that you used before). The cropped animation looks like this:
See how it says “500 x 448” at the bottom? That means we have the 500 pixel width we need. And it didn’t just crop the frame we’re on, it did it for every frame. Now click File->Save As from the menu, and save it wherever you want. Just make sure the “Save As Type” is set to “Compuserve Graphics Interchange”. Then click “Save”.
Unfortunately you’re not quite done, and this part can be a little confusing until you get used to it. This is where we optimize the GIF, potentially reducing size and number of colors. You’re going to first see a dialog that looks like this:
For pixel GIFs, you need the best image quality possible. So put the slider at the top where it says “Better Image Quality” (if it’s not already there). Then click “Customize”, and you’ll see another dialog like this:
-
Number of Colors — Jasc decides how many colors your image needs, and usually it’s correct. However, sometimes, I have had problems with game systems like the NES that don’t have a large palette. In that case you may need to redo this and raise it if the GIF comes out looking wrong. You can be safe and always set it to 255, but the problem is you’ll have to do this every time you save a GIF.
-
Create palette by — Either “Optimized Octree” or “Optimized Median Cut” is usually pretty much the same for most low resolution pixel GIFs. For 32-bit (and later) games you’ll see a big difference, but which one is “better” is usually a matter of personal taste. I’ve never even tried to use the other options.
-
Reduce colors by — “Nearest Color” is what you want for clean low resolution pixel GIFs. I occasionally use Error Diffusion for PSX, Saturn, N64, Dreamcast and PS2 games, but usually the files end up being too big. Remember, Tumblr has a 1 Megabyte file size limit. For SNES games like the one we’re doing here, either option will usually do the same thing.
Finishing up
Now click “OK”, and then keep clicking “Next” and eventually “Finish”. The GIF should now be saved to your PC. You might want to open it up in an image viewer before you upload it to Tumblr just to make sure it looks the way you expect. This is how mine came out:
As I mentioned before, Tumblr’s uploader may reject your GIF for various reasons. But it won’t tell you why! If you’ve followed my instructions so far, you can probably fix any errors by just removing frames. For 16-bit games, usually you’ll be fine if you can keep it less than thirty, but for newer games, you’ll be lucky to get more than ten. The less, the better; just try to keep it moving smooth. I know other applications have ways to automatically remove and change colors to make them “Tumblr-friendly”, and sometimes this will fix the problem as well. Personally I’d rather remove frames and keep the colors as authentic as possible.
I hope this gets you started doing some basic GIFs. In the future I’ll try to cover more advance topics. Let me know if you have any suggestions.
16 Dec 19:51
68% Of Americans Will End Up Owning An iPhone
How many of you will be using an iPhone when the smartphone market is fully saturated? Analyst Horace Dediu is saying the answer will be 68 percent.
16 Dec 19:49
'Beyoncé' review: the queen rethinks the throne
by Trent Wolbe
firehoseshared entirely for "Bey comes across like the Walt Whitman of the erotic poetry game"
When it’s done well, pop music makes you feel you live in a planet populated by other intelligent beings. When it’s done really well, pop music makes you feel you live in a slightly better version of the planet you inhabit.
Late Thursday night Beyoncé dropped an album on us like a ton of bricks: 14 works of dense mid-tempo minimalism revealed without a peep of publicity except an Instagram post featuring the demure caption “Surprise!”
It’s hard to imagine a bomb when known quantities like Timbaland, The-Dream, and Pharrell are in the studio
Musicians have done big album reveals before, but the release of a Hollywood-caliber series of films to accompany it — without anyone expecting it — feels distinctly surreal in an industry plagued by eager leakers armed with surreptitious USB keys. Even if the album were a trainwreck, its House Of Cards-like reveal would be a testament to the extreme degree of control Beyoncé exerts over her team and over the music industry as a whole. But her fifth full-length is so, so not a trainwreck.
Half of the production roster behind Beyoncé reads a lot like any big commercial album: it’s hard to imagine a bomb when known quantities like Timbaland, The-Dream, and Pharrell are in the studio. But then there’s this dude named Boots, a previously unknown figure who “produced 85 percent of it and [has] four original songs on the album.” While we still don’t know much about him, the album credits imply that he shaped the sound more than any person other than Knowles herself. Sonically, it’s a work of diverse precision that signifies a newly unified direction for hip-hop, R&B, and pop music as a whole. Artists like Drake, Lorde, Rhye, and Jungle have used 2013 to prove that there is subtler, more nuanced life in store for pop after the ecstatic bubble of EDM bursts, but it took a focused effort from the Queen Bey herself to prove that weird, laid-back seriousness is the sound that will guide the pop landscape in 2014.
The Knowles knows
Beyoncé’s little sister Solange has been making music with more experimental producers for years, and for the first time it’s obvious that these underground-ish leanings have rubbed off on her superstar sibling. “Haunted” sounds like The Knife had a Sade-induced sleepover with Boards of Canada; “***Flawless” is a sonic tribute to Houston’s DJ Screw, “No Angel” bears more than a passing resemblance to Solange originals from 2012’s True EP, which she produced with the brilliant British weirdo Dev Hynes.
Bey comes across like the Walt Whitman of the erotic poetry game
Even when Boots and Bey draw from already successful aural templates, they push pop boundaries in all the right spots: “Drunk in Love” is a trappy-trashy aphrodisiac full of club-busting builds and bass, but it uses Animal Collective-esque vocal filtering to add an intoxicating feel to the Jay-Z-infused bedroom narrative. Justin Timberlake and Pharrell channel Prince’s “Erotic City” in the straightforward funk of “Blow,” and Beyoncé’s affinity for soaring Coldplay life-affirmers shines brightly in “XO.”
The only thing that ties everything together is that voice, stylistically stranger and more versatile than ever and heavily influenced by the syrupy sexuality of her pop peers and always horny husband. I don’t think there’s anyone else who could get away with saying the kind of shit she says and still manage to come out looking universally classy on the other end. Thinly veiled doesn’t adequately describe these new metaphors: at different points we find her “Ridin’ on that surfboard, that good wood,” “Loving the lights out,” getting her Skittles eaten, or turning her cherry out. But with peers like Rihanna (“I wanna fuck you right now”) and Nicki Minaj (“If I had a dick I would pull it out and piss on ‘em”), Bey comes across like the Walt Whitman of the erotic poetry game.
Beyoncé is an album that stands proud, weird and tall on its own musical merits, but as someone who’s obsessed with the concept and ownership of her own image she seems to have felt a need to step up the game with full music videos for every one of the album’s tracks. Doing good videos is really, really hard — especially in the world of hip-hop, pop, and R&B — and it’s only in the visual part of the album that Bey’s juggernaut shows any cracks in its armor.
Read the album, then see the movie
Much like reading a good sci-fi novel, listening to a futuristic album is one of the most efficient ways to travel through uncharted temporal-spatial territory because it leaves one or more sensory dimensions up to the imagination of the consumer. While the songs are full of subtle turns of phrase that imply worlds of meaning, their video companions almost universally paint a picture that’s far too explicit to do justice to the subtlety of the music. Please, please don’t get me wrong: I enjoy looking at beautiful, moistened women writhing in next to nothing just as much as the next guy, but after a few videos from old-school video hitmaker Hype Williams (“Drunk in Love” and “Blow”) and faux-thug tableaus like “***Flawless” and “Yoncé” I start to lose my flawless mental image of Queen Bey; she devolves into a stylized lookalike of the Shakiras, Rihannas, and Nickis of the world. Not that I don’t love them too but I prefer my vitamin B as pure as possible, unadulterated by antiquated hip-hop tropes.
I prefer my vitamin B as pure as possible, unadulterated by antiquated hip-hop tropes
It’s not like Beyoncé and her team aren’t capable of turning out amazing music videos. Jake Nava directed the minimal masterpiece for “Single Ladies,” but his contributions here are no more interesting than Cool Water ads. Jonas Åkerlund directed “Telephone” for Bey’s 2010 Lady Gaga collaboration — where “Telephone” contains a universe of fully developed characters, his contributions to Beyoncé (“Haunted” and “Superpower”) feel like boring opulence porn.
There is one video — a “bonus track” not featured on the audio portion of the album — that makes the $15.99, 1.1GB iTunes download worth the extra bandwidth: “Grown Woman” is a defiantly standard-definition piece of meme art featuring vintage Knowleses. Bey, Kelly, Solange, and Ebony prance in their full preteen VHS glory, later getting their 2013 heads photoshopped on to the tiny bodies for potent GIFbait. In the final scene Bey walks into a YouTube window where she grinds in a grainy world of synthetic low-bandwidth pixelation; it reminded me of the Beatles using guitar feedback as an intentional element in 1964’s “I Feel Fine,” turning a bug into a feature. It’s really the only progressive moment in the entire visual half of the album.
But for the price of a new CD, it’s hard to argue against downloading the “visual album,” which is already on track to break all sorts of records for digital sales. And, knowing how important money is to this pop star’s larger mission, it’s likely that Bey herself didn’t stress as much over the video as she did over the recordings. While it isn’t anything extraordinary on its own artistic merits, the “visual” part of this visual album might be a retail revolution — just the thing the record industry needs to believe in itself again.
So, yes: you better still call her Queen B.
16 Dec 19:49
The Liberal Arts College That Treats Rapists Better Than Laptop Theives
firehoseAmherst
"The typical laptop thief is suspended for five semesters," Seward said. "Rapists are not suspended for that long, if at all. No rapist convicted by a hearing board has been expelled from Amherst in 20 years. That's unacceptable and something Amherst has to change immediately."
The typical laptop thief is suspended for five semesters. Rapists are not suspended for that long, if at all.
16 Dec 19:47
Prison Break
firehoseAngola beat
For two hours every Sunday in October, the inmates of Angola compete in the world’s wildest rodeo.
16 Dec 19:46
Car Catches Fire During Paul Walker Tribute
A Paul Walker memorial was taking place at the Beach Boulevard Retail Park in Aberdeen when the fire drama was sparked.
16 Dec 19:46
The Cultural Evolution of Candy Land | Rachel Marie Stone
by gguillotte
firehoseCandy Land 1984 vs. Candy Land 2010
the pièce de résistance has to be Frostine, who has been demoted from Queen (1984) to Princess (2010), and has been majorly slimmed down and sexed up in the meantime ... portions are doubled, there’s no more fruit or nuts, and yet everyone and everything–even the game pieces!–is/are much, much thinner, while the number of actual Americans who are obese has at least quadrupled since 1984?
16 Dec 19:42
Games News! 16/12/13
by quintinsmithster@gmail.com (Quintin)
firehoseRyuutama beat
'Everything from characters being able to afford their starting equipment by appending it with "uncool", or "broken". Your character might know some magic spells, but these might run along the lines of "summon candy ice cubes". Different characters in the party might be in good or bad moods, and these affect your dice rolls. Your character might be the group's mapper, or quarter-master, or you might simply keep a diary of your innermost thoughts, which you can show to the Games Master for extra XP.'
Quinns: Welcome to a Very Special edition of the Games News, in which Quinns finds out that Ryuutama exists.
The Kickstarter for an English release just ended, and it sounds like the roleplaying game I was born to play. Players journey across a fantasy land in a party, but you're not adventurers. You're merchants, healers, bakers, or other tradesfolk, travelling because you're struck by an incredible wanderlust. It's a game of wonder, relationships, and seeing what lies over the next hill in a very real sense. I cannot think of a game I'd rather have on my table.
16 Dec 19:41
Aurora Borealis Time-Lapse Video Captured Through Passenger Window During a Transatlantic Flight
by EDW Lynch
While flying from London to New York City aboard Virgin Atlantic in November, Paul Williams shot this beautiful time-lapse of the aurora borealis through his passenger window. He has posted photos from the time-lapse on Flickr.
via Slate
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16 Dec 19:41
Google Glass Trolling by xkcd
by Kimber Streams
“Glass Trolling” by xkcd describes the practice of pretending to talk to Google Glass while actually wearing normal eyeglasses.
image via xkcd
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16 Dec 19:31
Twitter / UMassBoston: UMass Boston Alert: The earlier ...
by gguillotte
UMass Boston Alert: The earlier report of a gunman on campus has been cleared. The McCormack building has been reopened for business.
16 Dec 19:28
jaclcfrost: being called by just your last name
being called by just your last name
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16 Dec 19:28
Uber's Surge Pricing In New York City Got Absurd Last Night
by gguillotte
firehosederegulate all the things beat
Much of the East Coast was hit by a storm this weekend that brought snow to the already frigid temperatures. It made last night the perfect time to pay a little more for a car service like Uber instead of trying to hail a cab or run for a train. Except Uber cost a lot more money in New York City last night. Not that Uber has ever been super cheap, but $137 minimum fare sounds ridiculously steep.
16 Dec 19:27
Your Heirs Want This Even More Than Your Money - Yahoo Finance
by gguillotte
firehosefuck boomers forever
baby boomers say personal keepsakes, family stories and last wishes are a far more important bequest than money.
Fully 86% of baby boomers and 74% of Americans aged 72 and older said family stories and keeping their family history alive is the most important piece of their legacy, according to a 2012 survey conducted for Allianz Life Insurance Co. of North America.
16 Dec 19:15
The X-Men Episode Guide 3×02: 'Out Of The Past, Part 2′
by Chris Sims
firehose'Gambit warns them that “that monster make it topside, dis city gon be its buffet.” '
The early ’90s were spoiled for choice when it came to comic book adaptations. Not only was Batman: The Animated Series on the air, but X-Men led Marvel’s push to get on the small screen, diving right into the often convoluted continuity of everyone’s favorite mutants, luring in a generation of fans, and paving the way for cartoons to follow. That’s why we’ve set out to review every single episode of the ’90s X-Men animated series. This week: We hang out in the sewer for another half hour and never even see a single ninja turtle in “Out of the Past, Part 2!”
Previously, on X-Men:
Season 3 got off to a pretty rough start by dropping Lady Deathstrike, the Reavers, the Morlocks and the Shi’ar Empire (uh, spoiler warning) on us all at the same time. When Lady Deathstrike started poking around the caves underneath Manhattan, she discovered a crashed spaceship that could only be opened by hacking at it with adamantium claws, which in turn led her to interrupt Wolverine and Gambit’s basketball game, luring them down into the sewer so she could use Wolverine as a sort of living crowbar to pry that thing open. Once they got down there, it was revealed that Deathstrike is actually Yuriko Oyama, the daughter of the guy who invented the adamantium bonding process that gave Wolverine his claws, who became a giant-handed cyborg in order to get revenge for Wolverine destroying her father. There was some fighting, and eventually Yuriko accidentally caused the ship to open, unleashing some horrific green light. Thanks, Oyama.
In our discussion of the most ’90s names of all time, you brought some pretty strong contenders to the table, from Bloodwulf to Ripclaw to Stryfe to my childhood favorite, Kaine, the man who used his Spider-Man sticking-to-walls powers to rip dudes’ faces off. It was reader Ben Younkins, however, who took the top spot by alerting me to the existence of The Steel Slammer, which might not sound too bad until you realize that he is a POG-themed supervillain. That is basically the best thing I’ve ever heard.
Unfortunately, it’s probably going to be the last good thing to come out of this two-parter, so we might as well buckle down and get through “Out of the Past, Part Two!”
This week’s episode was produced and directed by Larry Houston, and according to Wikipedia, the script comes courtesy of Wolverine’s co-creator Len Wein, last seen here in the Episode Guide when he dragged everyone kicking and screaming down to the Savage Land for the second season finale. Interestingly enough, I had to check with Wikipedia because there’s actually no writer credit on the show itself, which makes me wonder if it was just an oversight, or if Wein asked to have his name taken off the episode. Either way, not a good sign for how we’re going to be spending the next twenty minutes.
Anyway, the X-Men, Reavers and Lady Deathstrike are being bathed in neon green light, which has the Reavers so freaked out that they start shooting at it. At the light. With guns. They are then very surprised that this has very little effect, because the Reavers are dumber than a pile of bricks.
Eventually, they stand around gawking long enough for the light to coalesce into a Class 5 full-roaming vapor, and a real nasty one at that:
This is the Spirit Drinker, and although the characters don’t actually know that, I’m going to go ahead and call it that so that I don’t have to spend more time looking up synonyms for “luminous green tentacle monster.” It only exists in an intangible energy form and, now that it’s free of the confines of the alien ship, the assembled mutants are starting to realize that they maybe shouldn’t have only brought guns, claws, and other weapons without the Ghost Touch ability (see DungeonMaster’s Guide, Page 328).
Before long, things start to get straight up Legend of the Overfiend down there, with the entire squadron of the Reavers getting drained by its mouth-tentacles before it turns its attention to the rest of the gang.
At this point, the X-Men and Lady Deathstrike decide that it’s probably a good idea to beat feet, and shocking virtually everyone, it’s that scumbag Gambit who volunteers to stay behind and distract the Spirit Drinker so that the others have a chance to get away. Even de Shi’ar ghost monster cannot resist de psychic charm, no? Alas, Jubilee didn’t get the memo, and jumps in front of Gambit, taking the tentacle lashing that was meant for everyone’s favorite cajun.
Back at the mansion, Professor X has entered his second straight week of freaking right the f**k out.
We only linger on him for a few seconds before it’s back to the caves, where Wolverine picks up Jubilee, takes a swipe at the Spirit Drinker, and beats a hasty retreat alongside Gambit and Deathstrike. Once they’re a safe distance away, he basically starts waving Jubilee’s body at Deathstrike, telling her to “take a good look, Yuriko — here’s your revenge!”
I’ve read enough X-Men comics in my time that I know that this is supposed to be the old saw about how revenge only causes suffering, even for innocent bystanders, but it’s a pretty terrible way to make that point to Lady Deathstrike. For one thing, it’s not like she could possibly give a damn about Jubilee — she was, in fact, trying to murder her about five minutes ago — and for another, isn’t this kind of the best-case scenario for her revenge plan? She only came after Wolverine to get revenge for him “destroying” her father (they never actually say “kill,” which is weird as all heck), so isn’t killing someone Wolverine obviously cares for, even accidentally, a pretty good result, all things considered?
To the show’s credit, Deathstrike remains pretty unmoved, reminding Wolverine that she wouldn’t have gotten hurt if she hadn’t been tagging along into the Reavers’ obvious trap to begin with, and they bicker until even Gambit is sick of hearing it and tells them to shut up and move along before they’re eaten by the Spirit Drinker.
Meanwhile, at the art museum, there appears to be some sexy Star Trek cosplay happening:
Also, the Beast is there, loudly yammering on about the differences between Jackson Pollock and Pablo Picasso while putting his arm around people who are very clearly uncomfortable. I think the implication here is supposed to be that they’re uncomfortable with a mutant, but let’s be real for a second: Dude is actually being extremely rude, and even though he’s wearing a suit and not just hanging out in his underpants like he usually does, draping that gigantic, hairy hamhock of an arm over someone’s shoulders is a pretty clear violation of the social contract. Quit being such a dick, Hank. Yeesh.
Fortunately for everyone who wanted to enjoy themselves and see some art, his reign of terror is cut short when a mental summons from Professor X sends him heading back to the mansion. He’s not the only one, either: Cyclops and Jean are finally sitting down for their first real date since they found out their marriage was a sham perpetrated by a shapeshifter they’d left for dead when they get the alert too. Cyclops does his best attempt at “wry” and tells the restauranteur, Sidney, that they’ll be taking their order to go, again, and I have to say, this really would’ve been a nice setup if it had paid off later. I actually really like the idea of Scott and Jean, on the train back up to Westchester, eating a romantic Italian dinner out of a couple of styrofoam boxes. Alas, we don’t see it, and my all-consuming hate of Scott Summers and all of his works remains unchallenged.
Back in the sewers, things are going from bad to worse, and not just because Deathstrike and Wolverine are having a dramatic scene about why he has chosen to defend a world that hates and fears him, which I assume was brought up because they needed something to fill time while they waited for a cyclopean horror from beyond the stars to show up and try to eat their souls. Which, eventually, it does, only this time projecting an image of Jubilee on its forehead:
It seems that the reason they haven’t been able to revive Jubilee is that the Spirit Drinker has drunk her spirit, and they need to “destroy” it if they’re ever going to get her back. The intangibility makes that a pretty big problem, though, so they just run through the sewers for a few minutes while the Spirit Drinker is hot on their heels, broadcasting pitch-shifted Australian accents from the trapped Reavers.
Finally, Gambit hits on the bright idea of dropping a bunch of rocks on it.
They’re big rocks.
When Deathstrike points out that this is a pretty dumb plan since it can just burn through like it has been with all the other walls they’ve put between them, Gambit brushes it off with a classic “yeah, I meant to do that.” Or, in his case, “oui, chere, but dis give us time to figure out a plan!”
Wolverine hands the husk of Jubilee off to Gambit and tells him to get her back to the mansion while he and Deathstrike hold off the Spirit Drinker. This is a pretty dubious plan, what with one of these people definitely wanting to kill the other in revenge, but needs must, I suppose. Unfortunately for them, the Spirit Drinker seems to have learned a little about strategy, burning its way through the floor and then re-emerging from the ceiling like a mid-level Mega Man boss. I do not remember that many Mega Man bosses with tentacles, though.
This, however, proves to be the Spirit Drinker’s undoing! It seems that adamantium counts as a magical weapon for the purposes of overcoming damage reduction, and they pretty handily just start chopping up all the tentacles. Deathstrike misses one, though, and she gets Spirit Drunk, presumably because Wolverine cradling a woman’s body and screaming “NOOOOOOO!” was such a good idea that they didn’t want to use it just once.
In true action movie fashion, Wolverine gets up as soon as he’s done no-ing and calls the Spirit Drinker “a piece of alien gutter trash,” and I think we can all agree that there is no reason for space-racism. He waves his claws menacingly, but before he can suffer the same spirit-drunk fate, the Spirit Drinker gets zapped back by Cyclops’s optic blast, heralding the arrival of the rest of the X-Men.
Professor X takes advantage of the lull in the battle to ask who the young lady with the aluminum siding hair is, and Wolverine gets in a pretty good line with his explanation: “An old friend. She wants me dead,” prompting a stuffy rejoinder from Cyclops. It’s almost like they forgot they were in the middle of a fight, but it’s only a few seconds before they’re reminded when the Spirit Drinker shows back up and tries to eat them all.
Jean Grey, whose seemingly limitless telekinesis make her, perhaps, the most powerful of all the X-Men, attempts to use her powers and immediately falls down.
Her record of being useful remains a pristine zero point zero. Those two deserve each other.
The Spirit Drinker continues to just sort of stand around while everyone takes turns offering up exposition. Jean claims it has a “repellant” mind, Beast asks about this spaceship everyone found, and Professor X reveals that he’s been sensing a dangerous alien presence since last week’s episode. Then they all casually decide to go check that out, while the Spirit Drinker, who seemed pretty hell-bent on attacking them just a few seconds ago, graciously obliges by leaving — but not before Gambit warns them that “that monster make it topside, dis city gon be its buffet.”
At the spaceship, the Beast is having a pretty hard time figuring out just what’s going on here.
Good thing we’ve got an exposition dump coming up! Professor X touches one of the signs, prompting an electric shock that suddenly gives him the ability to read the Shi’ar language. Charles starts explaining how it’s a prison ship that crashed into Manhattan, information that comes a little too late to be of value once the Spirit Drinker is heading up to the surface through the subway, while also digesting the souls it’s already absorbed.
Finally, they realize that the solution was teamwork, and that it’s been inside them all along! Wolverine just needs everyone else to distract the tentacles so that he can give the Spirit Drinker a good stabbing. It’s like Dr. Forrester always said: If violence isn’t the answer, you’re asking the wrong question.
That’s pretty much exactly how it works out, too. We even get a theme song reprise, which seems to give people’s powers the ability to affect the Spirit Drinker, even though Gambit’s cards have been completely ineffective for the past 18 minutes. During the fight, they also learn completely by accident that it’s vulnerable to electricity, so they just shove it onto the subway’s third rail, and that’s that. Everyone gets their souls back, and since Wolverine saved her life, Yuriko decides to call this one a draw. Good hustle out there, team.
We’re not quite done yet, though. Before the credits can roll, Professor X has a flash forward of “terrible beings with ruthless, unimaginable power” (which means D’ken) and we get the most hilariously amazing next episode teaser of all time:
Check that real fire, y’all! Somebody got a video toaster at the Season 2 wrap party!
Discussion Question: The Phoenix Saga will have to wait a little bit, because I’m skipping ahead next week for a bit of holiday cheer. So, in the spirit of the season, What do you think the X-Men want for Christmas? These X-Men, I mean, the ones from the cartoon. A pillow for Jean so that she doesn’t hurt herself when she inevitably faceplants from using her powers? A pair of pants for Beast, who’s been too shy to ask for some since nobody acknowledges that he’s walking around in his drawers? Put yours in the comments, and I’ll pick my favorites for each character when we take on…
Next Week: It’s Christmastime, and that means we’re going to jump to Season 4 for “Have Yourself A Morlock Little X-Mas!”
16 Dec 19:13
Waffles the Cat Tries & Fails to Jump off a Snow-Covered Car
by Kimber Streams
firehosegpoy/ifapom
Waffles the Terrible attempts to jump onto the garage roof from the top of a snow-covered car, but fails and slips down the front windshield instead in this hilarious video by YakStudios.
firehose and -1 others like this
16 Dec 19:09
Google Tips, Google Provides Simple Explanations of How to Use Its Many Services
by Kimber Streams
firehoserather than making them usable
Google has launched Google Tips, a new service that provides simple walkthroughs and explanations of how to use Google’s many services. Simply click on a card, and Google tells you how long the process will take and the “stuff you’ll need” to do it. Then, Google provides a step-by-step walkthrough complete with helpful pictures for tailoring your Google News account, using YouTube’s “Watch Later” feature, and more. Users can tell Google whether or not they found the guide useful, and suggest additional walkthroughs at Google Tips.
16 Dec 19:06
Awards judges quit over Mirren 'fix'
by OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy
firehosedafuq
"It is not known which of the other shortlisted actresses - Linda Bassett, Lesley Manville, Billie Piper and Kristin Scott Thomas - originally had the same number of votes and tied with Dame Helen at the top."
Three judges resign from the Evening Standard Theatre Awards panel after it emerged Dame Helen Mirren won best actress after the transfer of a vote.