Oh, Hey, Post #1000

Whatever.

I thought this thing, "Movie: The Movie," was funny, but... (Note that there's a bit of the typical mildly crude late night sketch stuff, but nothing too bad...)



...I also think that they maybe didn't go quite far enough.

-Signing off.

WILD SPECULATION

Submitted with a bare minimum of commentary for your consideration. (I don't know the real details, and honestly don't care to.)

The band Nightwish originally had a lead female singer, Tarja Turunen, who is by all accounts a very good artist. (This song is the one that introduced me to the band.)



However, apparently there was a difference of opinions and parting of ways. On the first album with their new lead female singer (which had a thirteen-minute opening song that was about a suicidal personal crisis and which mentioned the songwriter by name), there was this song, "Bye Bye Beautiful," about someone who used to be the singer's/writer's friend, but took a path that the singer/writer didn't agree with.



And here's a song by Tarja Turunen as a lone artist called "I Walk Alone." (Note: Disturbing imagery. Not inappropriate, just disturbing.)



Note that these two songs were (as near as I can tell) released the same year or close to it.

That doesn't seem like a coincidence.

(I'm sure that the Wikipedia articles on the band and musicians would reveal stuff about the interpersonal conflict, but I don't care. This is basically how I found out about it.)

-Signing off.

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species #33

321. Force wielders. Force wielders are some kind of apparently immensely powerful race who are presumably all strong in the Force. They can shapeshift, and some members (that is, just two members) of the race apparently could have had a disproportionate effect on the balance of the Force. Maybe. Or something.

Somebody apparently thought they might have been the Celestials.

[EDIT MUCH LATER ADDENDUM: Apparently, it's been recently claimed that the Killik, a race of bugs whom I haven't reached as of this writing, remember working under "The Ones," or the "Force wielders," who are/were the Celestials, and building Centerpoint Station, a huge space station that can potentially be used to destroy suns, and which was supposedly created to imprison an eldritch abomination, who was... also a Celestial/something? Maybe? This hasn't really affected their score any.]

Rating: 1/5. Give me my goshdarned Force demons, darnit!

322. Forshul. The Forshul wanted to punish the Bothans during the Caamas document crisis.

At least one Forshul had a booming voice, a thin, long face, and shaggy blue-green hair. Wookieepedia thus assumes all of them do.

Rating: 2/5. Grr, Wookieepedia, don't make such assumptions.

323. Fosh. The Fosh are-or were-a race of bird people. They are/were uncommon and elusive. One of them was involved in the whole Yuuzhan Vong thing, and was a probable Jedi and possibly also a Sith. Maybe. She lied a lot (Obi Wan's "certain point of view" looked like total straightforwardness by comparison), and I'm inclined to think other characters lied about her a lot.

...There's not a lot of information to go on, actually.

Rating: 4/5. They're interesting because of the mystery. Vergere appeared in a fairly large number of books, and was a regular character, but I'm inclined to say we still know next to nothing about her.

324. Fraii Wys. The Fraii Wys were thought to have been extinct for nine thousand years when they suddenly turned up again. I have a mental image of them looking like coelacanths now.

Rating: 3/5 for the mental image alone.

325. Fras. Ambiguously canonical tiger people who laze about most of the time, but during the three to five hours of activity they do go into each day, they are frenetic, and also prone to eating their dead enemies.

Rating: 3/5. Hey, that's an interesting variation on the ol' cat alien, isn't it. It even comes across as a lot like a real cat.

326. Freckers. Freckers are apparently sapient killer rodents. Once, some were unleashed in a pack intended to kill Jabba in his sleep by eating him.

I'm inclined to think that wouldn't have worked so well, as Hutts can actually stand up to being hit with blasters more than once in the same spot because their hide is thick. Also, if Jabba shifts in his sleep, they'd all be crushed instantly.

Rating: 1/5. I'm not sure there's even much evidence they're sapient, and there are plenty of other rodent aliens around.

327. Freda. The Freda had an armed conflict with their neighbors, the Jante, which apparently ended when the Empire said "Cut that out! Don't make me come over there!"

Rating: 1/5. You can only read so many of these casual little non-articles before they start to grate on you.

328. Frenk. Frenk are skinny alien people. A couple of them were bounty hunters during the Clone Wars.

Rating: 2/5. They're reasonably appealing, I guess... Although the fact that these seemingly reptilian/amphibian creatures who are painfully thin also have what look like breasts is kind of weird. (I guess that it could be a rib cage, maybe?)

329. Frezhlix. The Frezhlix blockaded their neighbors in anger after said neighbors opposed a Galactic Senate bill that would have demanded the Bothans pay reparations to the Caamasi during the Caamas document crisis. Hey, twice in one post?

Rating: 2/5. Not much else to say.

330. Frid. The Frid, like the Chuhkyvi, are part of the Iskalonian school, a diverse group of aquatic races who all lived on the planet Iskalon (who all ended up there when their various homeworlds went kaput). They are considered the least humanoid Iskalonians.

Rating: 3/5. They actually look like an aquatic species! Amazing!

-Signing off.

I'll Refrain From Hand Related Puns

So I randomly found this clip from a cheesy Star Wars ripoff of some sort.



What's funniest about this for me, at least, is the space station, which I don't think anyone else looking at the clip even noticed.

It's a frikkin' hand, and its fingers appear to move.

That is obviously very ridiculous, but it's also awesome.

-Signing off.

I Apologize In Advance

If you're wondering: I have very circular thought processes. It's probably a function of all the mowing I've done over the years-going in all those goshdarned circles. Going over the same thoughts repeatedly, sometimes something gets trapped in the circuit and won't leave. I randomly thought of the Hercules clip after seeing the Planet of the Apes cartoon intro, which was followed by the other ones through memetic connections. ("Disappointed!-NO(OOOOOO)!-It's a trap!-Yes! Yes!" seems like a logical flow to me, but maybe I'm alone in that.)

And that's the best explanation I can come up with.

-Signing off.

Mayonnaise On Cereal? Disgusting

Earlier today, I read Colt Noble and the Megalords. (Watch out, it's at least a bit NSFW.)

It's a parody/pastiche of the old He-Man cartoon. I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed by many aspects of it, mainly the whole horny little kid protagonist thing (and I also prefer to look at attractive women when they're fully clothed-although I acknowledge that's just me).

There was one thing, though, that struck me as absolutely perfect: The kind of house guest that Archfiend, Lord of Annihilation, the Skeletor expy, makes.

That is so true to Skeletor that I have a hard time not imagining him doing that kind of thing now.

Of course, here's the thing: This is the kind of house guest Skeletor would be if he liked you. If he didn't like you, he'd steal your house and try to use the ancient magics and artifacts stored in its basement to conquer the universe. (Or just generally do nasty things, rather than extremely rude things.)

-Signing off.

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species #32

311. Firrerreo. The Firrerreo are a race who has pretty much been devastated time and again by warfare and plagues. An Imperial loyalist Firrerreo wanted to prove to Darth Vader how hardcore he was, and so arranged to wipe out their homeworld Firrerre's population with a plague, and only thousands were known for sure to have survived-they were kept in slave ships by that genocidal Firrerreo, and later freed. (Said genocidal Firrerreo was later eaten by an antimatter monster from another universe [well, basically]. Seriously.) One of the colonies the survivors founded was later wiped out by the Yuuzhan Vong. When a Firrerreo showed up in one book set after the latter event, she and other characters noted her kind were now exceptionally rare, to the point where there were concerns they would continue to exist; she was hanging out with a powerful old politician who more or less kept her around to enjoy her company because she was exquisitely beautiful. (She also helped him with secretarial and personal espionage... stuff, if I recall correctly.)

Which is one of the things about Firrerreo; while it isn't invariably so, the general popular notion seems to be that Firrerreo are very sexy.

One of the other things about Firrerreo is that they may have had extreme healing ability; like, borderline Wolverine extreme. (Wolverine from two or perhaps three decades ago, not regenerates-from-nuclear-detonations Wolverine.) However, the only Firrerreo that I know for a fact did this was also a Jedi who specialized in healing, I believe, so...

Rating: 4/5. I'm a sucker for the Firrerreo, I'll admit. I just feel so darned sorry for them, and it doesn't help that there's just that one particular very appealing picture of one.

312. Flakax. Flakax are a race of rather large colonial bug people. "Rather large" means that their average height is over six and a half feet tall. Not quite as big as a Wookiee, sure, but still, that's taller than me, and I'm not small by any stretch of the imagination. Unlike many colonial bug races from science fiction, the Flakax have a social structure that actually almost matches real colonial insects: The majority of their numbers are drones, there is a queen who is a breeder, and males serve only to mate with the queens (who in this case kill and eat the males). Sure, it's said that they become crazy without a queen's "guidance," but since they're intelligent and independently so, don't you think they'd be pretty upset if their community was doomed to destruction by the death of a queen?

Also, if a male is found anywhere, he's probably escaped and is likely a dangerous fugitive. That's... kind of twisted.

For my sister's amusement, here is an article on an individual Flakax. I know she will at least giggle.

Rating: 3/5. I like bug people. There's nothing exceptional about these guys, but they aren't bad, either.

313. Fleebogs. Fleebogs are (roughly) inch-tall people who... who kind of remind me of alien toys I had as a kid.

They were involved in a "let's shrink for an episode" story from the Ewoks cartoon comic book tie-in. Apparently, one of their communities came under threat from a single scorpion-like arthropod getting hungry and invading their home tunnel.

Rating: 3/5. They're honestly too small to be remotely realistic, but since when has that been a real problem? Although honestly, I gave them a bonus for reminding me of childhood memories which had little to nothing to do with Star Wars.

314. Flesh Raiders. The Flesh Raiders have a rather awesome name. They're some kind of primitive tribal guys who look like rubbery hammerhead shark people, or something. They primarily exist as video game enemies.

Rating: 3/5. They're "primitive," but they also seem to have piping running in and out of their bodies. Weird.

315. Floubetteans. They're known for their complex mating dance, which is apparently considered high art by other avian species, but revolting to "most humans."

Um, so is there a reason behind this? Like, does the mating dance go right into the actual mating, perhaps? I could think of a few reasons why it'd bother people if that's the case, not the least being that bird sex is often violent. (Well, I suppose it varies a lot from bird to bird, but what I always think of is the mauled behinds of my neighbor's hens-their rooster always yanked out all their tail feathers for some chicken-headed reason. This is not an invitation to talk about chicken sex in the comments.)

Rating: 2/5. At least it's an amusing cultural detail.

316. Fluggrians. Fluggrians inhabit Poo Ploo IV, a moon of Poo Ploo. They look goshdarned ugly.

One was a podracer, which presumably means fast reflexes. They'd need 'em, based on their little bean bodies.

Rating: 3/5. It's a reasonably pleasing kind of goshdarned ugly, really.

317. Fneebs. Greedo saw some Fneebs once.

Rating: No/5.

318. Fnessian. The Fnessian of Fnessal are basically slug-headed rough humanoids with masses of hairlike fleshy things on the backs/tops of their heads. They have at least one gender which doesn't match up with what we're familiar with called "thos." We don't actually know if there are male or female Fnessian.

Rating: 3/5, although it'd be nice to know for sure that "thos" was actually some different gender than the standard biological ones. Hey, maybe their language has actual words for nonstandard sexuality? ...Nah, that's unlikely.

319. Fondorians. From the sound of things, Fondorians are snooty intellectuals who compose music and expect other people to think they're smart and like them.

Rating: 1/5. What makes it worse is that they're just slightly different-looking humans. I'd probably give them a fairly high rating if they were, I don't know, eight-hundred pound sapient jellyfish or something and had an otherwise similar description.

320. Force Demons. A bit disappointingly, Force Demons are crystalline creatures with glowy stuff inside them.

On the other hand, they're immobile-looking crystalline creatures with glowy stuff in them that are said to have once ruled the galaxy with their near-immeasurable power. (They apparently predated the race called Celestials. This would mean they existed as a dominant galactic civilization over 100,000 years before the era of the movies.)

The only known member of the species, Wutzek, had somehow been imprisoned by a bunch of stupid cultists who mistakenly believed Chewbacca was just an animal and put him in a cage that any halfway intelligent person could open; when Chewbacca freed others that the cult had imprisoned, Wutzek was among them. Out of gratitude, Wutzek let the cast escape and then blew up the ship they had all been imprisoned on (which was in what the cult described as "another dimension"); then, Wutzek apparently went free him/itself, and was hypothetically in a position to be a threat to the galaxy at large.

But since it was a one-shot story, that didn't happen. If it had, it would have been great, though.

Rating: 3/5. Y'know what would have been awesome? If they had dug these guys up from that old comic they'd appeared in and had them be involved in the big huge extended storyline that they wrote about the Yuuzhan Vong instead. If they'd done that, it'd have been just about the best thing ever.

-Signing off.

After the End, We'll Still Laugh (Assuming Anybody's Left)

Because it's part of being human.

My sister found a delightful webcomic yesterday, and I thought today, "Meh, I'm tired and I do have some other stuff to do-I'll just talk a (very) little about that! And some other sorta not quite related webcomic!"

Happily, there was a trailer of sorts for it.



(Don't question the weirdness-the Captain there talks a lot about having been a little girl. Nobody's quite sure if it's true, although for the record the person in the costume is apparently a woman more often than it is a man. Yes, really. Incidentally, that just makes the character even better, at least so far as I'm concerned.)

Romantically Apocalyptic is the strangest webcomic I've seen in a while. And as I read comics that feature Transformer toys as characters, that's saying something. Not that it's a bad thing, unless you hate (or just don't get) Dada humor. Which this is.

The beautiful and striking thing about it is that it's essentially the equivalent to the higher-end of those Transformers comics I've alluded to, but done with actors/models instead of toys. That is, it's photographically based and uses Photoshop to change it from pictures of people in costumes to people in costumes in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

It's also confusing as all heck, so while you could easily read the seventy-odd pages in a single sitting (they're big and beautiful, but light on text), it'd probably serve to go through more than once and look at additional materials, which will probably suck up a fair chunk of additional time. (Not that it took me that long, but I cheated with the TVTropes page.)

A more down to earth comic, Gone with the Blast Wave, has similar elements, although they don't have that much in common other than the look and general setting. (People who are unidentifiable except by their costumes wander a post-apocalyptic setting, although the art is so different that Romantically Apocalyptic's beautifully oppressive color choices make Gone with the Blast Wave's setting look cozy.) It's also... well, very, very sporadic. (The most recent page went up last July, and it isn't actually considered to be entirely on hiatus by its author.) It's more about violence as comedy, as well (RA is more like total bug-poop insanity as comedy-when a terrifying alien monster construct infiltrates one character's brain, the monster freezes up for a minute because he's that doggone nuts... and he's not necessarily the craziest one).

Anyway, pretty unique and entertaining stuff, and... Um... Yeah, I don't know what I'd do to end this post. (I did say I was tired.)

End post.

-Signing off.

Dragon Ball Z: It Doesn't Need To Be Memetic...

...to be funny.

Just so you know: The man is just a strong and tough but otherwise entirely ordinary dude. The chick is a virtually indestructible cyborg (they call her an android, but she was originally human, so she's a cyborg-THERE IS A DIFFERENCE, PEOPLE!!) who has essentially infinite endurance and could destroy the entire planet if she wanted.



I don't know, I guess she was just too embarrassed to go on. (Actually, I'm under the impression that most of the characters, who are all superhuman fighters, had been letting him win to be nice. Or something. ...I'm only passingly familiar with DBZ.)

-Signing off.

BEST HOKEY MOVIE MONSTER EVER

(I put together an article for my sister's Yu-Gi-Oh! blog, if you're interested in that sort of thing. If you don't play the game, well, it'll probably be meaningless to you.)

For a certain definition of "best," of course.



That definition being "funniest." (In case you haven't guessed, this is a parodic mock trailer.)

-Signing off.

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species #31

(I guess I was taking an impromptu break after hitting 300 alien races.)

301. Felinians. Ambiguously canonical cat aliens whose only certain characteristic is that they can wield blasters made for humans, their homeworld Zoma V is unambiguously canonical.

A shared universe with lots of media for it created by hundreds or even thousands of different people is a weird place, you guys.

Rating: 2/5. The reason for a 2/5 over a 1/5 is because reading the "Behind the Scenes" section of the article gives interesting insight on the bizarre processes that result in something like the sentence I used to describe these guys.

302. Felucians. Not to be mistaken for another kind of Felucian (the "Jungle Felucian," who is presumably under "J" and which I thus won't get around to for a while), these Felucians are... rather charmingly bottomheavy. Seriously, look at the page picture-they're adorable.

Rating: 3/5. Just because they're cute, in a cuddly cartoonish sort of way.

303. Fenelar. The Fenelar made good armor. (I mean, they created good armor. People didn't use them as armor. That would be strange and/or horrific.) Emphasis on "made," as the Mandalorians killed them all between four and five thousand years before the movie era.

Rating: 2/5. Well, there's nothing to go on, but at least they're texture instead of meaningless detail. (What do I mean by that? They add a feel rather than just distract you, that feel being "Boy, those Mandalorians, they were pretty nasty to kill all those guys.")

304. Fere. At some point just shy of two hundred years before the movie era (give or take a bit and depending on the movies in question), the Fere all died in a plague.

They had six fingers per hand and were master shipbuilders.

Rating: 2/5. Texture again, although how there was a plague nasty enough to do that in the Star Wars galaxy is a bit mind-boggling. One wonders if perhaps they had some kind of anti-technology bent, except, well, master shipbuilders, y'know?

305. Ferroans. The Ferroans have a set of worlds in addition to their homeworld (Ferro, obviously) which are called the "Inner Ferro Systems." They are thus a relatively significant little region, and while they were nominally part of the Old Republic, they apparently were isolationist and didn't pay much attention to the Republic's laws that didn't suit them. (There's no information on their relationship with the New Republic or the Empire.) They apparently are known to follow a Force-based religion.

Ferroan colonists settled on a planet called Zonama Sekot, which turned out to be the child (!) of the original living (but now dead) homeworld of the Yuuzhan Vong.

Yes, really.

They're described as having pale blue skin and gold eyes; it is said that the women usually have white hair, but some have "traditional black" hair, whatever the flipping heck that means.

Rating: 4/5. It seems a little high, especially considering my low opinion of things connected to the Yuuzhan Vong, but hear me out. First, their little enclave is one of those interesting small internal nations within the larger Star Wars galaxy. Those are usually fun. Second, Zonama Sekot is the place where the Yuuzhan Vong were exiled when they were defeated. I don't know how they fit the presumably billions and billions of them all on one planet without making things awkward (unless the Vong had their population whittled down that much, I honestly don't remember or care to look it up), but Zonama Sekot was shown to be busy in later books trying to reform the Yuuzhan Vong warriors into farmers and peaceful people. This is hilarious, especially when you consider how doggoned bloody-minded Vong warriors are. (It's also ironic because the indication is that the Vong used to be extremely peaceful before they rebelled against and killed their living homeworld.) Admittedly, rating the Ferroans high because of a planet they colonized is a bit silly, but it's my goshdarned rating and I'll be arbitrary the way I want to be. Third, their color scheme sounds appealing. Good enough reasons for me.

306. Fia. The Fia (singular is "Fian") are a group of wide-footed, thick-legged, and frankly ugly folk. Probably the most interesting thing about them is that they seemed to be good at using political maneuvering to avoid being wiped out by invaders.

To wit: Their homeworld, Galantos, is in the Koornacht Cluster, a region where the Yevetha, xenophobes who hated everybody and were at one time heavily armed, lived. They joined the New Republic just to have the protection of the Republic's military against the Yevetha when the Yevetha began a "great purge" of the region. Later, they agreed to leave the New Republic so that the Yuuzhan Vong would exterminate the Yevetha. After that, when the Yuuzhan Vong, no nice guys themselves, showed up to invade and/or exterminate the Fia, they decided to rejoin the Republic in a hurry.

Rating: 3/5. While I find them... unappealing to look at, their honestly rather cowardly (though understandably so) political maneuvering amuses me quite a bit.

307. Fiery Ones. The Fiery Ones are little floating orbs that live on Kathol. They probably weren't created by the DarkStryder, which created most of Kathol's indigenous species, so it's a bit of a mystery. They're adept at using the local special variant of Force powers, Ta-Ree energy.

There's not much more to them than that.

Rating: 3/5. A little odd, in a good way. (And yeah, the associated Lovecraft reference helps too.)

308. Filar-Nitzan. The Filar-Nitzan are gaseous beings (no jokes please), and make excellent spies because they're borderline invisible and can pass through barriers that would be, well, impassable to anyone else. They're not widely known, and there are legends associated with them that call them "cloud demons" and "gas devils" (I said no jokes).

Rating: 3/5. While gaseous entities (stop laughing) are obviously implausible, I can't say I mind them if there's only one or maybe two species of them.

309. Filordi. The Filordi (singular Filordus, and they're from the planet Filordis-this makes me laugh) are interesting-looking six-limbed quadrupeds. Their ears are used to shield their eyes from rain. Filordi apparently don't like their homeworld, and are prone to overusing resources; they're bad at long-term planning.

A single Filordus is apparently born from the corpse of its parent a week after death, and this is the only way they reproduce. There are so many things wrong with this (scientifically speaking) that I'm not even sure where to start, but the main issue is that there's no way that their population can ever increase, and indeed, it should be decreasing due to unsuitable conditions for reproduction (say, a predator consuming too much of the corpse, the corpse being burned, exploded, thrown into hard vacuum, etc.) rapidly enough that the species should cease to exist before very long at all.

Rating: 3/5. If one just fixed it so that there was an actual explanation for the reproductive oddity that made sense, they might do better; as it is, the concept is interesting even if it's totally messed up. (Maybe if they died to reproduce? That would make at least a little sense.)

310. Filvians. The Filvians of Filve (heh) are rather cattle-like in terms of facial structure and body build, but aren't obligate quadrupeds (and are rather more powerfully built in front), have three-fingered hands, camel humps which allow them to survive for thirty days without food or water, and... gee whiz, they're like someone visited an open buffet of ungulate-inspired animal features, aren't they?

Rating: 3/5, partly because I got to use a fun metaphor.

-Signing off.

Surprising Brutality

(I probably wouldn't have put two videos like this up in a row, but I had a bit of a time shortage yesterday and my Tuesday night schedule is wonky lately.)

This fight between a "kraken" and a two-headed giant surprised me. Why?



Because despite the incredibly cartoony design of the kraken, it turns really brutal at the end there.

-Signing off.

I Love Me Some Huge Dragons

I'm afraid I know basically nothing about this movie other than the fact that it's described as being about Sinbad, but I enjoyed this clip.



"Warg! This thing that's two to three times my size is attacking me! I'd better hit and bite it ineffectually! OH GOSH NO!" (Since I can't caption a YouTube embed the same way I'd caption a picture, and don't have time for the screenshot, either.)

-Signing off.

Spot That Guy

The main things that got my attention in this commercial spot were Voltron and He-Man, but if you look carefully, there's somebody else of significance.



Can't see him?

Who else would it be?

-Signing off.

I'll Pretty Much Vote Dinosaur Every Time

I'm not going to lie: These are some awesome dinosaurs (and giant lizard thing).



I don't really mind the old-fashioned, inaccurate dinosaurs, and to be honest, in terms of accuracy issues, these things are pretty much not problematic beyond the tail on the theropod (the theropod does take the unbalanced stance some of the time, but when it's actually walking its posture is much more correct-the issue is that tail, which hangs low and is too flexible, a thing newer movies and sources get wrong with alarming frequency). (I hesitate to call it a Tyrannosaurus, rex or otherwise, because not only is it a stupid movie monster, but because this clip is from "Planet of Dinosaurs," which apparently had some crazy convergent evolution going on, and even if the species was physically indistinguishable from T. rex, it's pretty unlikely scientists would be willing to describe it as the same species.)

What makes it is the music, though.

Those people, though? All annoying idiots whose gruesome deaths by mauling wouldn't inspire the slightest twinge of sympathy in me.

I mean, I don't have context, but what the heck? You're all sitting around in the open, with no lookouts and some of you aren't keeping track of your weapons! (Although I think I've seen another clip from this movie, and it looks like their weapons are... pretty useless.)

-Signing off.

Whoops, No Time To Blog

I ended up with a rather unexpected obligation today, so I'm afraid this is all you're getting.

Remember those NHL Guardian guys? This guy is one of them, just so you know.

I wonder if anything ever happened with that...

-Signing off.

This Is Cool Yet Flawed (So I Don't Actually Have a Problem With It)

I'm of two minds on this short film. (Note: There's a character who swears quite a bit, in case that sort of thing bothers you.)



The first part of me thinks it's a really cool little film (especially with the maker's note that it had essentially no budget), and I'd totally love to see the rest of RL7's story.

The other part basically thinks that there couldn't possibly be a stupider way to check for malfunctions in a robot, especially an insanely dangerous one with organic brain components apparently harvested from a hapless victim.

Not that this actually makes it less enjoyable, it just strikes me as the stupidest idea ever.

-Signing off.

More Darth Vader Silliness

Eh, what can I say?



I think he needs his respirator checked.

This next one is a matinee promo for a local station, and it throws logic out the window, but not in a bad way.



"I'm the Michael Keaton version!" Win.

-Signing off.

Combine For the Kill

I've stated in the past that I don't care for Starcraft, but Blizzard has some pretty fun things they've done for fun in relationship to it, most notably this April Fool's gag. (There seems to be a mild swear at the beginning, but other than that, it's fine.)



If those were playable, I probably would be interested in Starcraft, but as it is, I'm not.

-Signing off.

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species #30

(Last week's article has a small revision, by virtue of one of the species it mentions having their page updated.)

291. Falleen. The Falleen are human-like reptilian people who have an average lifespan of 250 years, are considered very attractive by human standards (despite their prominently scaly and spiny backs), and that's apparently without the pheromones that let them mess with your head (regardless of your preferences).

They hated Darth Vader because he saved their planet from a plague once. Granted, he did it by vaporizing an entire town...

Probably the most notable Falleen was Prince Xizor, a major mob boss whose family had been killed in that incident, and who sought to take revenge on Darth Vader by 1) taking his place as the Emperor's right hand man, and 2) killing Luke Skywalker, whom he had somehow learned was Darth Vader's son. (He also, largely coincidentally, was trying to seduce Leia.)

Darth Vader didn't take kindly to this, and it didn't end well for ol' Xizor.

Rating: 4/5. They're fairly interesting, and they're also very good at being huge creeps. At they very least, they're useful when you need a huge creep, so they get more than they might have otherwise.

292. Farangs. A holographic board game was based on the conflict between the Farangs and the Waroot. This conflict was really old and continuous, and thus was unique and distinct in many ways, making it an interesting study for tacticians and strategists.

Rating: 2/5. Sparse information, although it suggests good ideas, I think.

293. Farghul. Fearsome fighters, mischievous, a weird sense of humor, and cheaters at gambling who will give up their illicit winnings as long as you catch them? Oh, hey, typical cat aliens.

Rating: 3/5. They get a point for not having an obvious cat alien name-seriously, there's not a single hint in there that they're cats, not even a "k" sound.

294. Farnym. They're known for smelling of ginger and sandalwood, and for their "bowling-ball roundness."

Wait, there's bowling in the Star Wars galaxy? (And for that matter, ginger and sandalwood? I mean, there's a book where they describe hot cocoa as an exotic drink, but...)

Rating: 2/5. I hate short descriptions, but this one at least means something... Something vague, but something.

295. Faruun. A sapient species of ship-builders (as opposed, of course, to a nonsapient species of ship-builders, because those pesky nonsapient species are building spaceships and cruising around with them all the time, you know), the Faruun built numerous interesting spacecraft that made for an excellent splash page invasion fleet.

They were enslaved by another species, who had also enslaved the guys who used said invasion fleet, and those guys were running from the other species. But that has little to do with the Faruun directly.

The Faruun and associated species are among the few Star Wars species who originated outside of the Star Wars galaxy, albeit in a closely linked satellite galaxy.

Rating: 3/5. Aside from that lovely splash page, the background material on the Faruun is interesting. (It also unintentionally demonstrates that the fact that nobody ranges outside of it [the Star Wars galaxy, that is] is largely an arbitrary choice.)

296. Faust. The Faust... have only one known individual, and his only real distinguishing feature, a head ridge, may not be a feature of female Faust.

And that's all we know about the Faust as a species.

Rating: 1/5. Bleh, they're pretty boring in appearance, too. Well, "he's" pretty boring in appearance, I guess.

297. Feeorin. The Feeorin are reptilian beings who have tentacles as a hair substitute. They get stronger as they age, and can live to be about four hundred. They tend to come across as selfish. They lost their original homeworld and established a colony on at least one other world, but apparently that colony was destroyed, and so the Feeorin have a rather limited population at present.

Rating: 3/5. This is mostly because they look rather cool.

298. Fefze. From the planet Fef, the Fefze are insectoids who are independently nonsapient but sapient in groups, as they form hive minds when together. These swarms range from ten to a hundred individuals.

They also vomit stomach acid both to eat and for self defense.

Rating: 4/5. Bug people who are unabashedly bugs through and through appeal to me.

299. Felacatians. The Felacatians are rather obvious cat aliens (cat alien species feel like they travel in packs...), but with an unusual twist: They're actually werecats, because while they normally are merely cattish near-humans, they have a tendency to turn into huge saber-toothed cat beasts under stress. (This can be mitigated by training, and some Felacatians apparently can completely control their transformations.)

Unfortunately for any travelers who might plan on being in the same spacecraft as a Felacatian, hyperspace travel is apparently a huge source of stress for them. And, oh yeah, in their beast forms they can tear durasteel to shreds. When the Felacatian princess Miaria Prrt (great name) was kidnapped, she ended up turning into her beast form and killing all of them, despite the fact that they were presumably not very nice people who probably had blasters.

Rating: 4/5. They're rather amusing, if a bit out of place, and while they have very cat-themed names, they aren't really quite typical cat aliens-in fact, I would have expected a species with these characteristics to be a dog-themed alien. Also, that princess is rather attractive...

300. Felin. Ambiguously canon sapients.

Rating: N/A. Ugh.

Well, there's three hundred down, and only... Darn it, Wookieepedia, your split categories aren't very helpful. (Probably over seven hundred or so.)

-Signing off.

Additional Proof I Will Watch Guys Dressed as Darth Vader Doing Anything

(Gak, misused "prove.")

Cheating at sports!



I notice a recurring theme.



Apparently, being a bad sport is of the dark side.

-Signing off.