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Happy Lincoln Day!

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Happy Lincoln day everyone! Today we celebrate the birth and life of one of this nations most famous super powered heroes: Abe “Robot” Lincoln. I figured I might just might take this occasion to give you a little history refresher on this amazing hero.

First off, most people don’t realize it but old Abe was actually an American president before he started his heroic crime fighting career. This is why he is on the $5 bill. But that period of his life was largely uneventful up until the point when two time travelers (Bill S. Preston Esq and Theodore Logan later known as the Wyld Stallyns) whisked him off to 1989 San Dimas, California. There Lincoln got cybernetic enhancements, including the fabled Lincoln Repeater gatling gun mounted on his right wrist.

Abe Lincoln with his cybernetically bonded minigun.

The modifications gave him super human speed, strength and near invulnerability to gunfire. Upon returning to his own time, Lincoln almost won the civil war for the union until he was assassinated John Wilkes Booth who set off an EMP device during the performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater. It is unclear how he got his hands on the device as none of the known time travelers admitted to delivering it. It is theorized that it was either the work of the Evil League of Evil or the mysterious Time Keepers – a shadowy organization that often steps in to “fix” the past that was altered by unscrupulous time travelers.

After the assassination Lincoln’s robotic body was preserved, but the damage was irreparable using the periods technology. Abe spent the next two decades as a slowly rusting heap of useless 20th century technology. That was until he was repaired by Dr. Emmet Brown (another famous time traveler) who added many enhancements to his inner workings. Dr. Brown managed to restore Lincolns personality based on reconstructive templates he brought from the future and what was left of the positronic brain that was damaged by Booth’s attack.

Robot Lincoln hooked up to Doc Browns memory reconstruction machine

The procedure was very successful, and Abe Lincoln was brought back with only few minor memory gaps. From that point on, he devoted his life to fight evil whenever and wherever he saw it. Since his cybernetic body did not age, Abe was able to fight in the first wold war and then storm Normandy beaches during World War II.

He fought in many battles, but unfortunately his tour of duty was cut short in Berlin when he and his unit was ambushed by Hitler’s undead army. In case you didn’t pay attention in your history class, Nazi’s were the first to successfully synthesize the Zombie virus. Abe single handed dispatched over 700 unded until he finally fell under the sustained assault. With Abe’s whole unit turned undead, and the hero himself incapacitated Allied Forces had no choice but to nuke the city to prevent a full outbreak.

Lincolns body was not only damaged beyond repair but also extremely radioactive. His body was transported back to US where he was given his second funeral and was laid down to rest in a sealed underground tomb. A bit later Walt Disney petitioned the government for a permission to try to resurrect the hero once again. His request was granted, and Lincoln was transported to Florida where an army of Disney imagineers rebuilt his body from scratch, and used a much more advanced version of Doc Brown’s memory reconstruction process.

Abe Lincoln's Body being rebuilt by Disney Imagineers

Currently Abe resides in Florida and works for the Disney corporation under a contract to pay off the multi-million dollar reconstruction costs. His main job is to guard the head of Walt Disney and make occasional public appearances and speeches at the park. Disney corporation refused to allow him to participate in the current war efforts. Restoring the nation’s hero was a huge financial strain on the company, and they are not willing to risk losing it. At least not until they see some return on that investment.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

In related news, today is also the birthday of Charles Darwin – a great man who “invented” evolution. He was awesome too!

Happy Groundhog Day

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Phil and Phil - one of them controls time, the other one is a weatherman

Happy Groundhog day everyone! Yes, I’m lazy today, and I’m using a local holiday to post a half assed excuse for an article here. Sue me.

Now, I know that Terminalists are an international bunch, I should probably explain this US-centric ritual to my readers from other parts of the world. You see, each year on February 2 we commemorate a freak event in 1993 when Bill Murray got stuck in a time loop. Actually the custom is much older than that, but we forget. The ritual is simple: we pull out a random groundhog out of a hole and shake it in front of an angry crowd. This usually scares the shit out of the poor animal and prevents it from creating a stable time loop.

If you paid attention in your bio class you should know that American groundhogs are somewhat related to displacer beasts but rather than bend space they bend time – and only in February for some reason. Unfortunately (or fortunately for us) due to severe inbreeding and laziness they completely lose this ability when they get scared – a bit like Fainting Goats. Yes, it seems like a useless ability – you’d expect it to be a fight of flight type response thing, but it’s not. Groundhogs are basically like natural homing missiles. Most of the year they live as peaceful herbivores, bur around February they enter their predatory stage. Damn things have been living alongside humans for so long they actually evolved to prey on us. A Groundhog will usually imprint on a nearby human, and then snare him in a time loop. Then it will remain hidden and feed on his victims emphatic energy. Being stuck in time is highly stressful, and humans tend to get restless, frantic and delusional after a while – which is exactly what the beast seem to want. We don’t know how they choose their victims (but most likely it is convenience and proximity), or how the loop can be ended (killing the animal does not seem to work as it re-spawns at each iteration of the loop). All we know is that if there is one of them things living near your house, you better scare the shit out of it in early February or else you may end up like Bill Murray. Then again Bill got lucky and managed to break out of the loop and then make a movie about it. According to his research in the area, Groundhogs lose interest with the victim once it stops struggling and finds inner peace. But it is yet to be confirmed.

Yes, it’s a silly holiday but hey – it’s practical. If you have never experienced a time loop, don’t judge us.

Oh, and if you are relatively new here, I highly recommend taking this occasion to read my Groundhog Day post from 2008. That’s the one we discuss what we would do if caught in a time loop. For example, how would you keep time? What would you do with all the free time? Would you become a superhero or super villain and etc…

Happy International Hangover Day

Friday, January 1st, 2010

Happy International Hangover Day folks. And no, I’m not talking about the movie here. January 1st was an international hangover holiday since I can remember. That move is not even about new year celebration, so the fact the creators are trying to appropriate this day as their own is a bit disingenuous.

Anyways, it’s a holiday, we are probably all recuperating after New Year’s Eve celebration and are a bit depressed knowing that we have to go back to work on the 4th. As such, no one is probably reading this stuff and so I figured I’ll keep today’s entry short. Basically it’s a throw-away meta post that should have been titled something like: “What can you expect to read on Terminally Incoherent in 2010″. But I’m a lazy bum and I titled the post something else just to confuse you.

Here are some things I will be blogging about in the next few months:

  1. Video Games including:
    1. Dragon Age: Origins
    2. The Witcher
    3. Whatever else is in my queue (probably Borderlands)
    4. Mass Effect 2 when it comes out
    5. Not Modern Warfare
    6. I’m taking suggestions
  2. Movies – I have a queue of movies that I need to watch as well. Bunch of them are from this list. Others are new. And no, I haven’t seen Avatar yet. I also have few general movie rants sitting in my draft folder begging to be finished.
  3. TV – I wanted to mention a few decent series I discovered. Of course this will be limited since most TV sucks ass these days.
  4. Programming including:
    1. Developing apps for Blackberry with Java – I still have bunch of stuff to say about that, but the whole project is on the back burner due to my laziness
    2. LaTex – ok, not programming but I have few Tex related posts in there somewhere
    3. Doing some hacking in Google’s Go language is on my to-do list this year. You can probably expect a post or two on that
  5. Computers are Magical – more of this stuff. At one point I had an idea for a whole cycle but I neglected to write most of it down and now it’s in pieces. But I’ll definitely want to do few more silly pieces in which I can mock users for inventing tech-relate mythology to explain their own ineptitude
  6. Computer illiterate people suck! This is not a topic – it’s a fact. Also a recurring theme of this blog. So yeah…

Please note that most of the above is bullshit, since I’m notorious for writing whatever strikes my fancy at any given time and not giving shit about my self imposed goals. In fact, reading this blog will give you a pretty good idea what I was into at any given time. For me, looking back through the archives is like a walk down the memory lane. So I’ll pretty much continue doing that. The list you see above was basically composed by looking at my Drafts section and examining what games I’m looking forward to play this year.

How about you? What games are you planning to play in the next month or two? What movies are on your list? What hacking projects are you planing to work on? Please note that I’m not asking you about “new years resolutions” because resolutions are stupid. I want to talk about stuff you are excited about doing – not shit you will feel depressed about come February. Let’s face it – resolutions don’t actually have a chance to survive the clash with the bullshit that is reality.