Video: Final Fantasy XIII ‘Kick Off Trailer’
It may not be coming until the year 2177, but this trailer for Final Fantasy XIII shows just why we’re willing to wait that long: awesome Final Fantasy awesomeness, PS3-caliber graphics, and a laundry list of new terms and names.
Some of those new terms and proper names appear here: the gang talks about a “Focus,” about the behavior of a “fal’Cie,” and fighting agents of “PSICOM” who work for “the Sanctum”. We also hear an ominous Big Brother-y voice talk to the “residents of Cocoon” and “going to Pulse.” Lastly, after the nameless gang is saved by “Serah,” they discover they’re “l’Cie now.”
Do with that what ye will, FFanboys. Am I the only one who gets a FF7 vibe from this trailer? Maybe it’s just the Midgar-esque setting and wishful thinking…
Steelers logo
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Charlotte Hilton Andersen: Women Exercise to Get Male Attention
This is exactly the type of idiotic advertising that companies do just to get a rise out of people so we’ll all post it on our blogs and natter about it and give them lots of viral publicity and attention.
Sadly, I am unable to resist the bait and so I’m giving it to them. (”That’s what SHE said!” ba-dum-bum.)
Men’s Health magazine has launched a new advertising initiative ostensibly targeted at men but really aimed at getting the women folk up in arms. Probably because we’re so cute when we make that little scrunchy mad face!
The basic gist — as you can plainly see; it’s so unsubtle that I’m probably lowering your IQ by explaining it to you — is pictures depicting women exercising all alone, covered in sweat and exhausted. Why, you ask, is this poor woman blowing off a fun night with the girls to ride the one stationary bike in the deserted gym that isn’t facing the beautiful scenic view? You see, it’s because she wants a man. And as we all know (or at least so the magazines keep telling us), a man will only love us (subtext: will want to give us a good tumble on his high heat cycle *wink wink nod nod*) if we are svelte. Nay, not just svelte but skinny.
I mean, Lindsay Lohan’s got nothing on this bony chick.Of course if she’s like Lindsay in other respects then it is definitely not all about the men. Ahem.
And this poor woman? Begging to have somebody jump out of the woods holding a chainsaw. Do women not watch horror movies? And why has nobody told us about reflective gear? And pepper spray??
The truly crappy thing about these ads are that they’re partly true. As much as it pains me to write this, a primary motivating factor in getting women to exercise is their looks. You can enthuse about heart health and longevity and increased intelligence all you want and we’ll all nod and agree. And then we’ll jump on the elliptical and whine about how we’re “working off dinner” last night or “running off the thigh jiggle”. It’s a sad state of affairs but it’s true. And to any woman who denies being at least partially motivated to work out by her looks, I would ask “What if exercise gave you all the health benefits — but made you fatter. Would you still do it?” Of course not. It’s why you see Katherine Heigl running on the treadmill for an hour and then lighting up a cigarette in the parking lot.
But there is one little nuance that the marketers forgot (perhaps intentionally?). Women don’t get thin for men. We get thin for other women. We know that men like a few lady lumps. And yet we pursue perfect thinness. Not because it makes us more sexually desirable - often it has the opposite effect — but because it makes us the Alpha Female. We’re competitive like that. Sigh. Stupid Men’s Health.
California facts
I’ve created a poll. The optimist in me wants you all to prove me wrong. But the cynic in me just wants you to be honest. We can’t change what we don’t acknowledge. (Holy 900-pages-of-advertising-in-Vogue crap, did I just quote Dr. Phil on here??)
figures by twiigs.com
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Lost Bloggers: The Community
yesterday i was notified that this milieu made the list of the top 100 study fiction blogs, in the goggle-box category. it was a unforgivable surprise and honor!and then today i discovered a list of the top 10 lost blogs (as compiled by the transferral mob ryan ozawa), which is very cool. i aspire to make such a list in the future.i the feeling very lucky to grant in a very shamed way to the vast online lost community, and to fool people literally interested in what i have to say about the reveal.because so many fellow bloggers/lost fans either occasionally link to articles on this site or have added me to their blogroll (list of friends and/or favorite blogs), i thought i would return the favor and recommend them to all of you. i encourage you to visit, bookmark and follow those which you enjoy!in alphabetical order, of course…annie in mnapproaching lostcapcom’s lost blogcinematically offsetcrazy georgia lost fan!docarzt & friends’ gone blogdube’s exultantthe four toed footfringe bloggersit’s less bunnieskaren’s lost notebookles jonesthe life tusslelong live lockehopeless blogspotterslost islenot confused very recently buriedthe odisceneggiatori newssl-obsoletetoo many hatszap2it’s teach to lostif i have in some way missed your site, opt stop me know and i will update it immediately!thanks in the interest of stopping by! i look forward to getting lost with you again late tomorrow night.
Words i learned from reading david foster wallace
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Miley Cyrus Picked By The Obama’s To Be The “First Kiddoes” Babysitter
culver city, california - president barack obama and first lady michelle obama have revealed to talk show host bonnie look high that they clothed chosen miley cyrus to be the seemly babysitter in spite of the two ‘first kiddoes’ malia and sasha. the president t…
747 lands in Yuma for soldiers
when a united 747 airplane taxied by the yuma international airport terminal tuesday, it got people’s attention. turns extinguished the even had been chartered by the military to pick up a shipment of soldiers who had been training at yuma proving rationale
Muxtape is back!
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AMSC To Host “Power Delivery Solutions For The Smart Grid” Exhibit At DistribuTECH
american superconductor corporation, a leading energy technologies company, will host a “power delivery solutions conducive to the well-versed achat de cialis en ligne grid” exhibit at the 19th annual distributech conference & exhibition. company representatives will achat de levitra en ligne be on hand to discuss amsc’s products, services and system-up solutions that approve cleaner, more efficient and more reliable generation, delivery and deplete of electric power in today’s smart grid.
The quick and the dead
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Amber Le Bon: Simon Le Bon’s Daughter
Dress games
meet amber le bon, the eldest daughter of simon le bon, lead songbird of duran duran, and his supermodel wife, yasmin parvaneh. see photos, video and a biography of the beautiful young model here. with celebrity parentage amber le bon could easily turn just another charming fixture in the party scene (as is not atypical). …
PITNB Readers, 012409
here is this week’s number of photos sent in by pink is the new blog readers. this week we receive a only one submissions from folks who made their way inaccurate to washington dc for president obama’s inauguration or celebrated at home, gain a couple of natural pink reader pics — courtney and friend send …
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Exclusive Details On Playmates Full Line Of Star Trek Movie Toys + Hi Res Images
over the last week there has been a lot of news and images floating around since playmates toys speech of toys and figures for the redone star trek movie. today, with the help of playmates, trekmovie puts it all together, presenting the full line with closed details, analysis and high resolution images. see below for …
Detailed Look At Star Trek (Toy) Prop Designs viagra ohne rezept
there experience been images of playmate toys related to the hip star trek movie floating relating to, but today i came across the cleanest versions of them yet. there are pics of the the new transporter stay and bridge Comprar levitra and a ornate look at the new tricorder. oh and a first clear look at the phaser. 
now …
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Around Azeroth: I don’t want to set the world on fire
Filed under: Screenshots, Around Azeroth, Galleries
as a liable smooch proprietor, it’s necessary to provide the correct living environment for your companion. mzi of <involution> on thrall, having recently acquired a flaming horse from attumen the huntsman, has kindly stabled it in a similarly burning location in northrend instead of dragging it during the snow. you’ve got a d.e.h.t.a. commendation coming your avenue, mzi, as soon as they finish renaming murlocs “sea pandaren.”
Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!
remember to include your Thespian name, server and/or guild if you need it mentioned. please include the word “azeroth” in your brief so it does not repossess back swept into the spam bin. we strongly be inclined full screen shots without the ui showing — use alt-z to remove it. please, no more battleground scoreboards, double-mounts, or pictures of the ninja turtles in dalaran.
Gallery: Around Azeroth
National statuary hall
Around Azeroth: I don’t want to set the world on fire originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Reconsidering Family Photographs
Not so many years ago, I was visiting my parent’s home in Atlanta. As we were sprawled around the living room, glancing through the Sunday papers, my mother let out a gasp, “It’s like I’ve seen a ghost!”
She passed the paper over to me and showed me a photograph, which I was pretty sure I had seen several times previously. It depicted Martin Luther King being led through the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta following one of his many arrests for civil disobedience. It was being reproduced this time in anticipation of a PBS special about King. “Yes, I’ve seen this picture of King before, Mom.”
“No,” she said, “it’s Pap!” I looked more closely at the photograph, searched my memory, and realized that one of the deputies escorting King was my late grandfather. Needless to say, I was now as stunned as my mother by the discovery that my grandfather had been involved in King’s arrest.
Now keep in mind that I never really knew “Pap,” my mother’s father, who had passed away in the late 1950s when I was a little over a year old. He was someone who lived for me primarily through old photographs — including many that are included in my own yellowing baby book. He was the kindly looking man who had given me my first haircut, since he had spent much of his life running a barber shop in downtown Atlanta. There were pictures of him bouncing me on his knee as a newborn and there were snap shots of him receiving visitors from his hospital bed shortly before his death. There are even photographs showing the huge mound of flowers at his grave-side. Family legend is that half of the city passed through his barbershop and a goodly portion of his friends and associates had turned out for his last rites. From old family stories, I knew that he had helped to run the city’s draft board during World War II and that his own oldest son had ended up in a POW camp in Germany. My father liked to tell a story about sitting in Pap’s patrol car and having baby Henry reach up and pull the siren, creating a minor ruckus.
Crawford
It was hard to reconcile these images and stories about my grandfather with the popular representations of King’s captors and tormentors, hard to reconcile the photographs in my baby book with the all too familiar images of King’s followers being knocked down by fire hoses or besieged by attack dogs. So, the new information passed over me with a wave of shock and shame. As a white southern male who grew up in the south during the civil rights era, I have always struggled with issues of liberal guilt, not sure about my ability to talk meaningfully about race, unsure how to acknowledge my own complicity in a system of white privilege. And here, suddenly, the issue was asserting itself with a new degree of urgency.
For me, this era of segregation was perhaps best summed up by two childhood memories, which suggested the transitions Atlanta underwent in the period of my childhood. When I was about five or six, my parents dropped me off at the Decatur Courthouse to attend a “Toys for Tots” performance of Peter and the Wolf. My parents were going to meet me outside after and I went in proud at being on my own for perhaps the first time in my life. After the concert, I wandered outside, eager to find them, and they were nowhere to be seen, having gotten turned around and exited the building in the wrong direction. Not particularly paniced, I must have decided that I should just try to walk home and so I headed out on my own, wandering through street after street for the better part of an hour, while my frantic parents turned the city upside down. What I remember from that day was wandering through an entire neighborhood without saying any white faces. Disoriented, I had moved into the black section of the still segregated city and for the first time, I experienced what it was like to be in a minority position. I was growing up in an almost entirely white world yet I hadn’t realized it until that moment. I’ve always been fascinated by a Flannery O’Connor short story which described more or less the same experience — a young child separated from his parents who finds himself encountering a world where there are no white faces.
When I was a child, my father had owned his own construction company and I spent a fair amount of time playing on building sites, collecting bottles for the deposit money. One day, I found myself playing with several other children my age who happened to be the offspring of black construction workers. What did we do? We were collecting big black blocks of tar with the stated plan of creating our own tar baby, inspired by a recent screening of Walt Disney’s Song of the South. Once our parents learned of our creative project, there was a general awkwardness. Though both sets of parents had taken us to see the movie, there was an understanding, even then, that this was not an appropriate thi …
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