Food For Thought:

Here's food for thought: in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, when we first meet the Ewoks, they hold Luke, Han, Chewie at spearpoint, tie them up, and prepare to cook them for a feast. (Spoilers for those in a 30 year coma:) It is only through Luke using Jedi shenanigans on C3PO that he puts the fear of God in them and they let them go.


These little furry bastards are cannibals.



NOW go back and watch the movie again, paying special attention to the fact that they have several Imperial Stormtrooper helmets assembled as trophies (and an admittedly bitchin' drum kit), and ponder this: are there heads inside those helmets? What exactly are they serving at the celebration feast? They never, to the best of my memory, show any other animals in the forests of Endor, which would seem to suggest that these creatures tend to hunt other species to near (or total) extinction, and are not shy about frying up anyone they manage to trap (even if they are not so distant relatives, genetically speaking, as the Ewok must be to the Wookie).

All I'm saying is that the Rebels feasted on the flesh of fallen Stormtroopers, which were basically genetically modified and cloned organisms held in bondage against their will and trained to murder. If the noblest heroes of our generation's fantasy lore are okay with this, I think we can survive eating a genetically modified tomato and a cloned beef burger.

Rusted (UPDATED: DO NOT PURCHASE WITHOUT READING THE NEXT POST!)

Do you like Minecraft? Was your favorite part of Minecraft those first few nights, huddled against a cliff face in a primitive structure praying the zombies and wolves wouldn't eat you, and that you'd be able to find a pig the next morning to get some food?  Did you enjoy that feeling when you first met another player, not knowing if they were friend or foe, being careful to not be too aggressive while not letting your guard down? Did you ever wish that it was scarier, bleaker, and more beautiful?

Welcome to Rust.

Rust is a new first-person Survival game from Facepunch Studios, and it is guaranteed to drive you crazy. Still in its Alpha stage of development (and containing all the bugs that condition implies), Rust is a nightmare. You awake naked in a field surrounded by green trees, only to have this seeming utopia disturbed by the growl of wolves, or the groan of the walking undead. Hungry? Go hunt. But don't run blindly after that pig, or you may run right into the jaws of a nearby wolf. And don't forget to gather some wood and make a fire to cook your food, or it may make you sick. Cold? Butcher your kill and you MAY get some cloth that you can use to make some pants. Dead? Congrats, you get to spawn somewhere else, naked, and with only a slim chance to find your corpse and the meager possessions you worked so hard for.

You get almost nothing in the way of guidance. Running naked across a field, I was hailed by another player from a nearby structure. After ascertaining that I was no threat, he dropped some cooked meat at my feet out of pity. I didn't even know how to pick it up. So I ended up having to check out the Wiki, and learning all the little nuances that make the game a little easier.

So here, for your benefit, are 15 tips about Rust to help you adapt, and hopefully… SURVIVE.

1. You will NOT SURVIVE. The Rust experience has been likened to Hell, and it's not far off. When you die, your corpse falls to the ground, the screen goes dark… and then you are back where you started. Not geographically, (that would be too helpful), but you lose everything that was on your person and spawn in a random spot. The best thing you can do is embrace that and adapt to that concept as soon as possible. If you are running from danger, or starving to death, or bleeding out, look for distinctive landmarks, and run towards a tree or a rock. If you manage to find that spot again, you'll have a better shot of remembering where your corpse (and its spawned backpack of your goodies) fell rather than the middle of a grassy field.

2. Know thy E key. The E key is your friend. It will allow you to interact with any item that is interactable. It opens your doors, searches storage boxes and backpacks, and picks up items. If you see white text and don't know what to do, hit E. Also, when attempting to interact with items like a campfire, or a furnace, HOLD DOWN E to bring up a tiny sub menu. It took me a while to realize how to actually interface with a campfire to cook my food rather than just ignite and douse it.

3. Say 'No' to grass. Everybody is doing it. The developers think it's a performance issue, and maybe it is for others. But I turned off grass because it took me 12 hours to even realize there were rabbits in this game. The tall grass obscures EVERYTHING that lies low on the ground, ESPECIALLY your corpse's backpack full of goodies. Turning off the grass makes all those rocks, woodpiles and backpacks pop. Hit F1 and type - grass.on false (period between grass and on, space, then false) - in the text bar. You may need to do it twice. And helpful tip: on a Mac Keyboard, you may need to hold the 'fn' key to activate the F1 without simply dimming your monitor (I didn't know this, so maybe you didn't either).

4. That clicking is not your hard drive. Whatever calamity befell this island, it involved radioactivity, because there are areas of the landscape where you will be bombarded with radiation. You can recognize this by the clicking noise and the fact that your monitor will actually start to show mild speckling. You will see your rad count begin to rise, and this will lead to a drop in health. Leaving the area will allow your rad levels to drop down again, and food will promote healing. Some supplies available in game may actually counter radioactivity.

5. Gatherer/Hunter, not Hunter/Gatherer. You can't hunt with nothing but a stone (except Pigs, if you have a TON of patience). Your first priority should be to find a tree (or better yet, a woodpile) and bash it with your rock. You will gather wood, and this will eventually be your primary mission in life. Wood means shelter, tools, fire, defense. Then find a rock outcropping. These stand apart from the various stone cliffs you will doubtless encounter. Bash these as well to get stones, ore and carpal tunnel. With wood and stones, you can make a stone hatchet, which will replace your rock as your primary tool and weapon for the first little bit. The TAB key brings up your inventory, and clicking on the CRAFTING tab will bring up your crafting interface. It tells you what you need to craft an individual item, and what you have. Once you are able to create a stone hatchet, you are then ready to hunt. But you won't yet.

6. Hell is other people. Because why bother gathering food and trying to stay alive if you will be devoured by wolves in the middle of the night, or (more likely) murdered by another player and have your meager possessions stolen? This game is PvP in many servers, and players have become notoriously wicked in this game. If you see another human and you doubt your ability to kill them, be ready to have your stuff ripped from your corpse. Sure, you may get lucky and find some other friendlies (hit ENTER and type "friendly" if you are, you may save your life) but always be wary. If you keep a weapon equipped, you may draw aggression when interacting with other people. Put away that weapon unless you feel hostility is imminent. Even if you feel you are better equipped, don't invite a fight you might not be able to win. The player may have allies and come back looking for revenge. As Sun Tsu tells us in the Art of War, "Appear weak when you are strong." A guy running around naked with a stone will draw less interest than a guy in pants with a stone hatchet.

7. Find your place in the world. It is recommended that you explore the environment and find a safe hiding place before "settling down." I managed to find a deep overhang on a coast facing the ocean, which means people would have to actively be looking for me to have a chance of finding me. But location is key when deciding when to make your stand. With no compass or map, you will get lost. Many times. You may think you know where you are, and then realize that the nice field you were gathering in is nowhere to be found. The only constant in the game is where the sun comes up and where it goes down. I decided to orient myself by putting the sunset to my right and heading toward the water. Once I found a nice somewhat defensible clearing near the rocks, I found my seaside overhang, built a storage box, and called it home. Leave as much stuff in this box as possible, because until you construct a sleeping bag, when you die, you will respawn at a random location without any possessions, and you can save yourself a big headache by keeping most of your stash in your bolt-hole. Be aware though that ANYONE can search this box, so if they find it, be ready to lose all your stuff.

8. Home Sweet Home. Once you have enough wood to build enough planks to create a foundation, pillars, walls and a door, you can consider building a home. But if you are even a little short, you run the risk of completing MOST of a structure and having someone else jumping on it. Doors are designed to open ONLY for the one who placed them (wooden doors CAN be broken through with enough time and patience, but no system is perfect) so once you place that door, the completed structure can only be entered by you. But stay flexible. I recommend building a two foundation wide structure with doors on two sides and a door in its one interior wall. This will create a sort of airlock, so in the event of an ambush (say another player waiting for you outside your outer door), the ambushing player will only get as far as your outer room. This will keep your inner room as a safer place to keep your valuables.

9. The Hunt is on. Start small. Take out some swine. Deer are too fast, rabbits and chickens are too small, wolves will mess you up, and if you encounter a bear this early in your experience… die and hope you spawn far away to start over. To hunt a pig, try creeping up on it (hold control to crouch) and get as close as possible with your hunting tool (rock, hatchet) in hand. Hit it once, and then sprint after it. Pigs run in a relatively straight line, so get behind it and pull even. Bash it on the head, and as your character slows when you strike, the pig will slowly start to pull away. You can use this opportunity to get in two or three more shots, and hopefully bring it down. Once it is down, skin it by hatcheting its corpse. You will gain cloth, animal fat, blood and raw chicken breasts (the only food item you can get from an animal at the moment). Cook these over a fire before eating them (Hold E to interact with a campfire to cook food) or you will get sick. Using cloth to create clothing is a natural instinct, but that cloth is better used creating a hunting bow. With a bow you have a better chance of hunting deer and defending yourself from wolves (don't forget to craft arrows, too). But your absolute FIRST priority once you obtain enough cloth is construction of a sleeping bag. This anchors your spawn point, and once you know you will spawn in the same place upon death, you are finally ready to start seriously gathering resources and creating your stronghold.

10. He who Smelts it, dealt it. Once you have enough cloth and animal fat to craft low grade fuel, combine it with stone and wood to create a furnace. This will allow you to turn your metal ore into metal fragments, which is what you need to upgrade your stone hatchet to a regular hatchet. The regular hatchet does more damage and increases the yield when gathering resources. The fragments can also be crafted into a variety of next level objects, like foundations and walls to make better structures, guns, weapon accessories, and the all important metal door (which can only be removed by explosives). Again, hold E to interact with the furnace, drag wood and ore into it, and then ignite it to create fragments, charcoal, and sulfur. Campfires and furnaces will continue to burn so long as they are fueled, so don't stock it full of wood if you only have a few ore to smelt.

11. Bigger Game. You have a bow. You have a hatchet. You have clothing. You have cooked food and bandages. You have a decent home. Now what? You step up your game, and go after the BIG game. There are pigs, deer, chickens, rabbits, wolves, and even bears to hunt out there. Deer require a few shots from a bow, and you can't really catch them once they run. You can only follow them until they stop and hit them again for the kill (again, watch out for wolves). Hunting aggressive predators like wolves and bears is tougher. In general, if you snipe a wolf from a distance, it will charge at you, and a well placed second shot will usually take it down. Bears require multiple hits and if you go after them it is advised that you do so from an elevated position at a distance. If you kill one, you can get leather which can be crafted into better armor once you know how.

12. The Walking Dead. There are zombies. They come in two kinds; black and red. The black ones are slower, but they kill in only a few hits and are tough to kill. The red ones are weaker, but they can close quickly, and if they spot you, they don't go down easy. You can snipe them out from a distance in one shot if you are good. Their corpses offer loot you cannot find elsewhere in the game, like food which counteracts radioactivity, and blueprints. If you find new blueprints, equip and use them IMMEDIATELY. If you die with them in your inventory, you risk losing them. But if you die having already read them, the knowledge of how to build what they detail stays with you. Most importantly, don't get greedy! Killing two zombies is cool; killing seven and getting killed by the eighth and losing everything really, really sucks.

13. Do unto others. Once you get to the point where you have a comfortable stockpile of goods, consider giving to other players. You can earn some good will and potential allies just by giving food, wood, stone, metals, or even weapons to players in need. But be ready to get backstabbed, especially if that's how you yourself do business. I have created a public access crate on the steps of my fortress where anyone can take the stuff I decide to put in there. I am hoping it will slake the thirst of any wandering bandits as well.

14. You will lose everything. Even if you take all the precautions to protect your stuff and tread carefully around others, this is an ALPHA version. There are frequent bug-driven wipes that occur that will decimate your inventory. The latest one left me with nothing but my structure (minus the wooden doors) and charcoal. But the fact that I simply couldn't walk away and just dove right back into the resource gathering side serves to emphasize how addictive this experience is.

15. Read up. There are other things going on in this game that I have not yet experienced. There are apparently airdrops which give you blueprints and other high value items, but I have yet to brave exploring them. You can find a lot of information at the Rust Wiki (http://play-rust.wikia.com/wiki/Rust_Wiki). 


Rust is available for PC, Mac and Linux at (REDACTED) for $19.99 USD. Get early access and get a leg up when the BETA drops! 

The Ben Affleck / Bruce Wayne Controversy

The news has recently hit that there would be a sequel to this summer's Man of Steel, at last confirming the rampant speculation that DC Comics/Warner Brothers will finally catch up to Marvel Comics/Marvel Productions and get a shared continuity started up. There has been implied shared continuity before (Batman Forever*, Superman Returns**), but this will be the first ever actual cross-over for properties of Marvel's Distinguished competition.

The more recent, more shocking news is that Ben Affleck has been cast as Bruce Wayne for the picture. Affleck, whose previous superhero effort has met with general loathing (Daredevil), was originally sought to direct the rumored Justice League movie, which would serve as a hub for all of DC's various properties to meet on the big screen. Affleck stated that he only directs movies in which he is also acting, so Warner Bros. said "No problem, how's Batman for you?"

Affleck was panned for his efforts in Kevin Smith's Daredevil, a movie which had a number of things going against it. There are those who know me and know my leanings who expected me to be apoplectic about this news. I hate to disappoint, but I am actually okay with this development. Here's why:

1. Affleck has shown he is a very capable director, and he's the man they want for the Justice League. Three movies in five years, all receiving critical acclaim. He can totally do that part of it, and I for one think he could bring this thing to fruition smartly, so long as the script is intelligently done. Look at it this way: it couldn't be any worse than Brett Ratner's efforts on X-Men: The Last Stand, and it will certainly have more action than Bryan Singer's Superman Returns. And hey, you guys, it gets the Justice League to the big screen!

2. We all know (well, I do, but you should all open your eyes and see what I do) that nine times out of ten, it's not about how you play the super-hero, it's about how you play the alter ego. Eric Bana was a terrible Bruce Banner. My hatred of Val Kilmer's Bruce Wayne is legendary. Ben Affleck was horrific as Matt Murdock (uh, yeah, but trust me, I'm about to explain). It's not about the guy in the rubber suit. Val Kilmer's Batman was the same as Michael Keaton's Batman. The problem with Kilmer is that he couldn't turn off the Batman for his scenes as Bruce Wayne (the problem with George Clooney is he couldn't turn off the George Clooney for either half of the role).

Christopher Reeves was amazing as Superman because you believed his bumbling Clark Kent. Robert Downey Jr., IS Iron Man, because he became Tony Stark. Mark Ruffalo shocked the world with his Bruce banner and became a stand-out of an all-star cast. Chris Evans was miscast as Captain America only because he should never ever play another role unless it's Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four (the highlight of a terrible cast).

Bruce Wayne is not that tough to play. A millionaire playboy with not a care in the world in some pretty sharp business acumen. Affleck actually has to just act like he's acting like that.

Nine times out of ten. The other one of ten is Thor. Just be Thor.

3. The other half of this role is Batman, and all he has to do is bring the same intensity and intelligence he brought to the role of Tony Mendez in Argo and he's already there. He can do the physical stuff (Daredevil) and at the very least, he won't go full-Bale on the Bat-voice (God help us all, that was some awful shit by the end of the trilogy). I'd prefer his Daredevil Afflecktations to Christian Bale's unintelligible screaming.

Think about what's happening here, people: The Superman/Batman movie (which will be sub-titled "World's Finest"; you heard it here first) isn't going to be a fist fight between the two; at worst, we'll see a tense showdown with Batman trying to come up with the perfect gadget to overcome Superman's powers, and at best, we're going to see a team up of the two facing a foe that Superman can't out-think and Batman can't out-punch (I'm calling Brainiac; again, YHIHF). We'll see Batman utilizing Superman like a bludgeon to set up the perfect battle plan and leave us with our collective jaws dropped.

It'll be fine, gang. All it really needs to do is set up the Justice League movie, and even Affleck can't fuck that one up.

*Val Kilmer's Bruce Wayne mentions that Dick Grayson's circus "must be half way to Metropolis by now."
**A news anchor in Superman Returns mentions Superman helping out in Gotham City.

Retarded Business Practice: A Review of Joe's Crab Shack

Joe's Crab Shack, Riverhead NY - Opened on Thursday, June 20, 2013.

The line on opening day was out the door, as they were offering free crab for a year to the first 150 customers. Tried again on Saturday, but the wait was an hour and 45 minutes. Finally got in this Sunday for lunch with my bro, Tom.

VERY expensive. Two sodas, a cup of NE Clam chowder, two appetizers (crab nachos, mozzarella sticks), malibu shrimp entree, queen crab bucket, and two desserts came to $87, before tax and tip. They have a thing for buckets; bucket for crab shells, bucket for utensils, buckets for food. Portions were decent, even generous, especially desserts. (They make a chocolate s'mores cake with toasted graham crackers, marshmallows, and a melted Hershey Bar that was easily shareable, and incredibly rich, and the slice of Key Lime Pie was easily twice (if not three times) the size of an average dessert slice at any other establishment.

Service was mostly good, our crab nachos came out after a somewhat lengthy delay (AND after our entrees), but Skye was attentive and kept our glasses from being empty, and the glitches can be chalked up to opening weekend snafus.

There was one major glaring problem. Joe's Crab Shack apparently has a "no empty hands" kitchen door policy; there was a kitchen staffer standing by the door, and whenever a server walked towards the kitchen, he would say "you can't come into the kitchen without a dirty dish in your hands," and steer servers away until they had bussed something. One of the servers was our waitress, and as we were seated right next to the kitchen, we ended up volunteering available dishes to any waitress who happened to get turned away.

Hey, I get what the managers were TRYING to accomplish; to get servers into the frame of mind that they should keep the dining room clear of dirty dishes as much as possible. But the problem here is some of the waitresses were trying to put in the orders that they took from customers who had been waiting for seats, and explained that to him, but he wouldn't yield. And some of the customers (like us) had their servers turned away to scavenge for dishes while they were waiting for their food to come out.

I finally turned around and told the staffer "I just want to let you know that if I were waiting for my order and I found out that it was delayed because my waitress couldn't get into the kitchen without a dirty dish, I'd leave, never come back, and make sure that all my friends knew about it.

He assured me that he was just following orders (because that's always worked out throughout world history, right?) and that he disliked the policy himself. I once again told him that if I knew my order hadn't been placed because someone was "following orders" that they knew were stupid and arbitrary, it would create a very big customer service black eye. The next batch of waitresses that approached the kitchen were then told "just go, go," and there was a mini-rush on the kitchen.

Simply ridiculous. If I were a server there, this would not encourage me to clean. It would encourage me to stash a small supply of dirty dishes in a discreet location and only retrieve them when I needed to go into the kitchen.

Hypocrisy of the Highest Order

It has recently come to my attention that clothing company Abercrombie & Fitch doesn't want people who are "overweight" to wear their clothing. It is part of their corporate directive to only target "the young and beautiful," not only to wear their clothing, but to shill it as well. 

Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries, according to Robin Lewis, co-author of the New Rules of Retail and CEO of the newsletter The Robin Report, "doesn't want larger people shopping in his store, he wants thin and beautiful people."

You can read the full article here. 

My own beautiful niece says she has been approached several times to work in an Abercrombie & Fitch store, and was told that they intentionally recruit attractive people because that's the market they want to wear their clothing. I'd personally hope that she would never accept such an invitation to join the staff of any organization that uses the same hiring standards as the Hitler Youth. 

And I find it the height of irony that someone who claims he only wants his business to appeal to beautiful people looks, himself, like the product of a three-way between Rocky Dennis, Joan Rivers and the albino monk from the DaVinci Code.