How Star Wars IV Should Have Ended

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

I am not too inspired to write much today as I am busy watching the US election unfold on CNN.  So instead I will give you a rather amusing Star Wars video which I found earlier on YouTube.

Thank God George Lucas didn’t end Star Wars this way! Then again, if he does one more “Director’s Cut”, this might be all we are left with!

Still Searching for that “Irrational” Third-Party Candidate?

by Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

According to Pi’s campaign manager, a good reason for this write-in: “What pi refers to as ‘endless change’ is its infinite series of digits, which never repeat, have no predicable pattern, and never resolve. Simply put, pi is history’s biggest flip-flopper.”

In other words, if you already know you’re voting for someone irrational, you may as well make it an irrational number.

Though it should be noted that, representing the ratio between a perfect circle and its diameter, Pi “is entirely unsuited for the Oval Office.”


Proof that Republicans are the Only Ones Still Using AOL and Dial-Up

By Stephanie Rogers
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

If AOL users could decide the election, John McCain would win in a landslide. That, of course, goes against virtually every single poll that has been released in the, oh, I don’t know, entire election season – but what it does show is the fact that AOL users are overwhelmingly Republican. As you can see in the map, AOL users in swing states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania would hand McCain the presidency.

The reader who submitted this data to the Silicon Valley Insider commented, “Proof Republicans only use dialup.”

Thanks Shea!

High-Tech Electronic Mouse Traps

Electronic Mouse Traps

A lot of people, including me, think that mice are cute little creatures. But no one I know would like to have the little pests roaming free inside their home. Not only can mice contaminate your dry food stock and clothing with their droppings and urine, but they are also known to gnaw on electrical wiring, often causing fires and breaking household appliances.

So if you have mice inside your home and want to get rid of them, here’s a high tech approach to the problem: The Victor Multi-Kill mouse trap! Check it out in the following video, that is, strangely enough, disturbingly entertaining.

“Twitter is being used by vegetarians” says US military

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

The US military has concluded in a report that the online microblogging service, Twitter, could end up being used by terrorists to organise an attack or to communicate covertly with one another.

“Twitter has become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences,” reads the document.

Since when have we thrown vegetarians into the terrorist category?!   If we’re counting vegetarians as “enemies of the state” then I’d better get my girlfriend locked up!   “My God!  She’s holding a carrot stick in her hand!   We’re all going to die!  Step away from the Twitter feed!”

The Election Through the Lens of Dungeons & Dragons

Thanks to the awesome brilliance of Livejournal user somehedgehog, D&D fans everywhere are laughing so hard they’re reaching for the Depends. In honor of the election, somehedgehog imagined what a game of D&D would be like if Barack Obama, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul were playing together.  If you’re at all familiar with D&D, I suggest you put down your drink now, lest you spit it all over your monitor.

GM:  OK, the bugbear attacks you.  What do you do?

OBAMA: I send one of my 672 henchmen after it.

MCCAIN:  OK, seriously.  Why does he have so many henchmen?  I’m a level 72 ranger and he’s only a level 8 paladin.

OBAMA:  Well, if you’d bought the Grassroots Organizing and Oratory/Colgate Smile proficiencies you could min max it so that you…

MCCAIN: Why is he even IN this campaign? I thought this was supposed to be a high level party.

OBAMA: Well, maybe some people got tired of the grim and squinty “Matterhorn, son of Marathon” shtick you keep doing.  Dude, could you be any less original?

MCCAIN: Oh my god, I did not leave my left nut in a tiger cage in the Tomb of Horrors to spend my Friday nights mopping up after the new kid.

OBAMA: “My friends, I am a totally unoriginal grizzled character class stereotype.  I should lead the party because I have more testicular damage than that one.”

MCCAIN: Yeah, well, you pal around with dark elves.

OBAMA: OH NO YOU DIDN’T.

MCCAIN: Whatever, so’s your mom.

OBAMA: So’s your FACE.

MCCAIN: So’s your Mom’s face!

HILARY: WTF you guys. Why am I playing the cleric?

MCCAIN: Hilary, we’ve been over this.

HILARY: No, dude. I am so sick of being the girlfriend healer. Seriously, I can’t even use a sword. Fuck this noise.

KUCINICH: IM A BARD

OBAMA: That’s nice.

KUCINICH: MY FAMILIAR IS A PURPLE SNOW LEOPARD

MCCAIN: Oh, Jesus. Here we go.

KUCINICH: DID I MENTION MY WIFE IS A TOTALLY BANGIN DRYAD WITH 20 CHARISMA

The Kucinich lines in particular are gold. It’s hilarious to imagine all of these political figures sitting around a table concentrating intensely on transferring damage and exploring caves. Just imagine John McCain, hunched over the table, wielding his cane like it’s Crenshinibon but totally powerless under Obama’s unfaltering epic paladin charisma and strength of will.

Read the rest over at somehedgehog’s Livejournal!

MTV and MySpace Turn Piracy Into Pennies

by Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

You know what they say… when you’ve got lemons, turn them into lemonade. And when you’ve got rampant video piracy, find a way to milk some ad revenue out of it.

The “fingerprint” technology that we’ve been hearing about from YouTube is making its way in some form to MySpace as well, where the tech firm Auditude is providing a way to cross-index countless seconds of TV footage and automatically detect copyright-infringing uploads. However, instead of automatically triggering removal, this Content Identification System gives copyright owners a choice: take it down, or insert ads.

That’s right–you may just go to your MySpace page one day and find that the clip of The Daily Show that you’d uploaded to your page is mercifully still there, but now contains ads that will generate revenue for MTV Networks (the parent company of Comedy Central).   These ads are “overlay,” appearing at the bottom of the videos, much like the ones that are already in YouTube’s “sponsored” clips. For now this system only applies to a handful of television shows, including The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Punk’d, and Reno 911.

Of course, this is all happening while the legal battle between Google and Viacom (MTV Networks’ parent company) continues over YouTube’s alleged mass copyright infringement. However, according to the president of digital media at MTV Networks, MySpace and YouTube are fundamentally different:

“This deal with MySpace is quite different. MySpace has always respected copyright and is more progressive about copyright in our mind. The way we’re pushing this out with Auditude and MySpace is different than with YouTube or our past associations there.”

Legend of the Seeker: Ripping Tale or Telling Rip-Off?

By Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

It seems like a guaranteed recipe for success: (1) source material from a series of best-selling fantasy novels (Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series), (2) the producers who brought us Hercules and Xena (Sam Raimi, who has since knocked our socks off with Spider-Man, and Rob Tapert, who is married to Xena‘s Lucy Lawless), (3) a lush New Zealand setting (which, if you didn’t already appreciate it in Raimi and Tapert’s previous series, probably hooked you during Lord of the Rings), and (4) a cast of seasoned fantasy actors (Star Wars’ Bruce Spence and Jay Laga’aia, and Lord of the Rings‘ Craig Parker).

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