Ever so brief writing

Yeah, yeah. I know. It's been ages since I wrote here. Been meaning to write more, busy, yadda yadda. I'm lame. Accept it and move on. Even this isn't a particularly sizeable post but I just felt I had to come on and mention this. Y'know, since the end of the Rogers Blue Beetle era I've been feeling kind of annoyed by comics. Still reading but with a lot less joy. But something happened in comics this week. Something that I just have to share the world to show that once again the joy has returned. Now, where did that image go? Ah, there we are, just to warn y'all...



Ah-ha ha. Ah ha. Ha ha. Ha.

I think this is where "Ode to Joy" starts playing.

Back of the net! Steph's back! And she's breaking the fourth wall no less!

I think he's actually talking to us Tim...

And so's Batman!

Postmodernism and Spoiler. Comics, I love you. For more context, go here.

Red light! Green light! Go! Go! GO!

After the heady heights of Thor hurling Loki back to Asgard, Daisy Duke posing and Wildcat punching a Nazi we're back to the usual level of ham-fisted content that you can only find on This Sentence No Verb.

Let me ask you a question. Have you ever wished that you could perform archaic forms of surgery with rusty tools as blood and pus flies everywhere? If the answer is 'Yes' then you're in luck! Yes, thanks to the fine people at ArmorGames now you too can lose yourself in a world of grimy pain thanks to Dark Cut, the internet's primary Horrific Surgery Simulator™!

If the answer was no, then I suggest you go somewhere else instead.

I've said before that these little games that you can find on tHeINtErnEt.com can be a fantastic way to spend a little time. Then they become a fantastic way to spend a lot of time. Then they become a time-consuming behemoth that will not rest until they've sucked the life out of you. I'd managed to kick the Curve Ball habit, and deal with my Nuclear Eagle addiction and was feeling pretty confident about not getting sucked in again. The thing is, this game is different to all the others and therein lies its allure.

The premise is simple - you are a doctor in the dark ages and must perform medical procedures without killing your patient. The controls of the game are very simple, at each stage of the level an appropriate tool appears and the mouse is used to control that tool to perform the required action - be that slicing the flights from an arrow, sawing an arrow shaft in half or hammering it all the way through the patient's leg.

Hammering wood through a leg. Yesterday.

Fairly straightforward and easy. The only problem is that if you make any mistakes then you end up hurting the patient. So, say you're sawing the shaft of the arrow, if you're too vigorous with the saw you end up wounding your patient, but if not vigorous enough you'll never cut through. You have to find the right balance. This is made all the more difficult by the near constant blood splatters and twitches and by the very nature of the tasks you have to perform. Here's what your plague patient ends up looking like.

Pus and leeches and slit veins to relieve pressure. Lovely. And yet it still
manages to seem cleaner than an NHS hospital. Ah-ha ha ha.[/satire]

Biting political commentary aside, I love this game. It may not be overly complicated or have that many levels but there's a definite atmosphere to the game that I find particularly absorbing. The crepy music and basic graphics only add to that sense of griminess. The ideal way to play this game is in the dark whilst slightly drunk. Sure, you can play it stone cold sober in the middle of the day but you're not getting the best out of it if you do.

Worryingly for any future plans of other activity I may have had, there's also a Dark Cut 2 that takes place in the American Civil War and requires you to remove shrapnel wounds and perform rudimentary brain surgery as cannonballs explode all around you. The patients react more vigorously with twitches and screams of agony which really throw your aim off. Also there's a level where you have to saw your own leg off.

I love me some of that Will-To-Live-Meter!

Whoever knew that surgeons were so badass?

This Sentence No Verb: Now Interactive!

Because anonymous demanded it!

After easily taking care of Loki and a Nazi, I don't think Boss Hogg's
latest scheme will pose much of a problem for these Good Ol' Boys.
Probably have to get better suspension on the General Lee though.

Thor! Daisy Duke! Take That, Ratzi! And the good thing about this level of interactivity is that I still have content to add later in the week! Back of the net! I think that that alone is worthy for another outing of This Sentence No Verb's entirely uninteractive regular feature!


Anonymous strikes me as a Heineken drinker.

Coming soon on This Sentence No Verb: Uninspired Game Review!

Visual Entertainment

This family walks into a talent agency - a mother, father, son, daughter and baby. The father says to the talent agent that they have an act. [A self-satisfied comedian says something controversial involving fecal matter and incest.] They call it The Aristocrats. No-one laughs.

Well that was a big pile of not funny. I fully understand the idea that comedy shouldn't have taboo, and that humour often arises from crossing any of our self-imposed social barriers, but I'd also like it to be, y'know, funny. Otherwise it's not comedy. It's just...talking.

90 minutes of my life I'm not getting back. Bastards.

Anyway, before I get too hung up on the waste of time that was The Aristocrats I just want to say that genuine content is atually coming on Tuesday. As ever my intention was to get it finished today and stick it up here but all I ended up doing was watching things and continually promising myself that I'd post just after the next episode. Too late to get it done now though. And what have I been watching that's kept me from excercising my brain by trying to write something entertaining? Well, I've been watching Numbthreers which is a programme of my favourite genre - x fights crime in their spare time. In this case the x is a mathematician. Whilst not as good as Players or Renegade it does feature one of the coolest visual devices of televisual history - Maths Vision.



Predator can bugger off, Maths Vision is way cooler than heat vision. Formulae appearing in chalk writing over what you are looking at beats the hell out of indistinct red and orange blurs. In my mind, that is how the inimitable Luke McKinney always sees the world. He's like the Predator of Science. (That's my subtle way of sending you to go read his stuff. Possibly the funniest writing on the Internet. Apart from AP2, natch.)

And speaking of science, I've also been watching The Big Bang Theory. An alrightish sitcom about geeks which features David from Roseanne and That Funny One Out Of 8 Simple Rules Who Isn't Katey Sagal. It's nothing special but there are a couple of good performances so I think I'll stick with it and see what happens.

Another day, another failed attempt at content. Nevermind. I'll just have to throw something up here that will hopefully leave everyone with a feeling of satisfaction and not the same feeling of wasted time I got from watching The Aristocrats.

Take that, Ratzi!

That'll do nicely.

Token Content

Good thing about The Dukes Of Hazzard inspiring me to watch Smallville: It's actually pretty good. Michael Rosenbaum makes one hell of a cool Luthor.

Bad thing about The Dukes Of Hazzard inspiring me to watch Smallville: Spending the whole course of an episode where Jonathan Kent languishes in prison wondering when Luke is going to break him out whilst Daisy distracts Enos.



Roughly 300 times cooler than Knight Rider.

The latest gripping installment of...

Thor: Property Developer!

JMS continues his unique blend of action planning permission and mythology market prices in Thor Vol 3 #6!

I shit you not. - Captioning John

Even when he's in the guise of Donald Blake, the Odinson just can't stop with the real estate:

Is that deep and philosophical or simply advice on how to choose the right land for the project?

By the bristling beard of Odin, JMS just isn't letting this one go, is he? You'd never've caught Simonson doing any of this building nonsense would you?

Thor Vol1 #344

Touché Captioning John. Touché

CBB #4: Showcase #10 (1993)

I told you I'd be back.

Even though I fully intend to make the most of this blog and cover all manner of topics (well, pop culture ones anyway) I'm going to be easing my way back into the habit with something simple. Something pure. Something badass.

The setup:

Some young hoodlums are holding up some kind of corner shop (or convenience store if you'd prefer) but the stereotypical ethnic shopkeeper refuses to hand over any money. These thugs don't care though, they're probably whacked out on PCP or something and just totally lose it. Prepare to witness awesome depiction of superpowers.

Remember kids, stay in school or you could
end up doing drugs and shooting stereotypes!

There's just no way that could get any cooler, right? Dude just totally
caught some bullets whilst invisible. This cannot be out badassed.

It, I believe, is on!

That right there is some Comic Book Badassery. Not only that, but later in the same issue J'onn uses his shape-changing and telepathy to grant an old woman's dying wish and let her speak with her son one more time. That is pure class, and that's also the reason why Martian Manhunter is the first person to appear on This Sentence No Verb's all new and totally uninteractive feature: People I'd Quite Like To Go For A Pint With.


That's how we do things round here.