(the following is based on a true story)

A certain 3-in-1 printer-copier-scanner owned by Jimbo had not functioned for the past month. To protect the manufacturer, the company's name will not be revealed, but it does rhyme with crap-exmark. Jimbo saw no reason to repair it; he had no need for his printer. Come this afternoon, however, the need suddenly arose. The first order of business, he thought, was to determine the problem:

• None of the printer's functions worked
• The printer's display showed the COVER OPEN message

"Not a bad start," thought Jimbo. This information alone told him that the problem had nothing to do with the computer it was attached to. He was most thankful for this, since the computer has enough of its own problems. Next came the standard troubleshooting steps: turning printer on and off, opening and closing the cover, and hitting it a few times. Nothing worked.

The time had come for drastic measures. Jimbo opened the cover and, with a clean, upward application of force, could not move the cover much further from its default up position. This would require tools. Pulling some pliers from his tool box, he lightly squeezed the restraining arm that held the cover open to pop the pegs out of the holes that held the arm in place. Finally, the pegs snapped off and he was able to remove the arm and fully remove the printer cover. Granted, the arm was rendered unusable, but no success has come without minor failure.

He could see what the problem was. The small plastic switch that triggers when the cover is closed had fallen off and into the printer's bowels. Even with the cover off and the only tweezers in the household, he could not reach the small doodad. The paper tray was in the way. Being very careful, Jimbo slowly maneuvered the tray up, to the side, and with the snap of broken plastic, it was freed. Again, the tray will never be able to return to active duty, but Jimbo could at least reach the switch.

After some two-handed action with a flashlight in his mouth, Jimbo successfully reattached the switch. He proceeded to return the cover to its original position and give the printer a test run. All was successful.

by Jimbo
Jimbo News Network

In a move that is sure to result in irritation and the exchange of worried looks, Apple has announced that it will ban what they call "adult" iPhone apps. The company claims that exposure to these apps by children will negatively affect their marketability. Organizations that will be affected by the rule change and ban include popular news organization, GPS, bird-watching, and other application developers that do not produce anything that youth care about. The goal is to purge the app store of all boring and grown-up applications to better accommodate Apple's target audience.

"It is all ridiculous," says the developer for popular knitting app, Ms. Tonkins. "This is clearly ageism." Ms. Tonkins continued by exclaiming how these whipper-snappers nowadays would have done well to take advantage of these once readily available adult applications.

In a phone interview, an Apple representative explained that the decision was difficult, but for the company's best interest. "The youth are our biggest market," explains the representative. "We want to ensure that all parents feel safe purchasing every latest product we develop for their needy, demanding spawn." By enforcing the new rules for app developers, the app store will only have products for the youth crowd including Disney Channel, Hot Topic, and Pogs apps.

While this move will likely alienate adult Apple users, the company feels it will not hurt them too deeply. Recent poll results show that there are no adult Apple users, anyway.

All anime fans have their preferred moé traits they like to see in characters. Male, female, both, it doesn't matter. The moé trait(s) in characters give them some sort of appeal that fans can latch onto lamprey-like in a way that is guaranteed to ensure a steady income to anime companies. They are adorable and entertaining; however, the traits do not stretch beyond the world of animation. Some moé traits just do not work well in real life (IRL). Exempli gratia…

Tsundere - I can see why the idea of a violent love interest suddenly turning weak and romantic whenever the planets align and the mood is just right would be appealing, but the frequent jolts between polar extremes cannot be good for the opposite party's well-being. This is especially true if the tsundere's manic episodes include a proclivity for violence.

Dojikko - Again, this moé trait likely has a negative effect on the opposite party's health, but doesn't have any sort of mental disorder involved (at least, not medically). Being forced to deal with an insatiably clumsy person for longer than the half-hour per episode in the real world, however, is not something enjoyable or cheap.

Emotionless Moé - I'll admit my own preference to this moé trait. While I may enjoy it in my animated hobby, I can certainly see this trait being incredibly boring in reality. Emotion is the only thing that makes conversation between two human-beings bearable enjoyable. The emotionless may be nice to have around and useful if they're hyper intelligent, but probably not worth the effort.

Loli - Prison sentence. Duh.

Nekomimi - Cat ears and so on are probably a birth defect that betrays deeper genetic abnormalities. They may be adorable when they are just fake, little costume items one can purchase at a trade convention, but actual, biological cat ears on a person would still be incredibly creepy.

Zettai Ryouiki - I find no complaints with zettai ryouiki.

Hey there listeners, you're tuned in to one-oh-two-point-three, The J: America's greatest rock station. We are going to go to the phone lines now. Hello? You're on The J!

Hey, awesome! I got through.

It is pretty awesome, isn't it? What's your name pal? Where you from?

The name's Jimbo from City 1023.

It's rush hour, isn't it? Heading in to work?

That's right. Just pulled on to I-10.

Okay, I won't keep you too long then. Got a request for us?

Sure do. Can you play "Tom Sawyer" by- OH SHI-

*screeeeeech*

*CRUNCH*

*thud thud*

*skreeeeeee*

*hissssssss... tnk… tnk… tnk…*

Hey Jimbo, you still there? Oh dear, okay listeners, it's time for a quick traffic update. It sounds like there's an accident on I-10 and things are probably going to get pretty messy out there. To get you through the morning, let us get to more music. Here is "Tom Sawyer" by Rush. Stay safe out there.

(Writer's note: I wonder how often that sort of thing actually happens)

Readers, I'm afraid I cannot review this movie. You see, I did not go into the movie with a clean slate. While browsing the Internet, I accidentally stumbled across a poor, misguided fool who does not know how spoiler tags work. As a result, I knew how the movie ended going in. I am afraid I would not be able to review it in any unbiased way.

There are lots of things I would like to say if I did decide to review the movie. For example, I would love to say that I enjoyed the movie, even though I knew the ending. Perhaps even more so. I noticed many of the nuances during the movie that only made sense after the ending was revealed. In fact, they were dropping hints to the ending all over the place. I would love to say I was impressed by how everything was held together.

If I could, I would also enjoy expressing how well they set up the atmosphere. From the very beginning, there is this sense of… awkwardness? Yes, that would probably be the best word. Everything seems slightly off center. You can feel that there is something going on that isn't quite right. It certainly keeps you interested to the end.

If I was going to write a review, I certainly would not be all praise, however. I would probably say something like, "the movie is exceptionally slow-moving." Perhaps it was necessary to set a proper atmosphere, but I think that they could probably pull through by cutting a lot of the dramatic pauses in half. Occasionally, the writers would try and crowbar in some out-of-place philosophy. The ideas may be profound and tangentially related to the theme, but they just do not fit anywhere with the story progression. Besides, the ideas are nothing new.

These are all things I would love to write about in a review, but I will spare you. Nobody likes to read the thoughts of a biased reviewer. I won't even mention how I would rate the film an average 7.1956 / 10.23. I will say, however, that anyone who wants to see the movie should try and dig up a spoiler. It might just save you time and money suppressing the urge to see it a second time just to understand what's going on.

Anyway, since I will not be reviewing Shutter Island, I will instead review the movie Blade: The Twilight Saga…

(No. No I will not.)

I am currently in the process of trying to make a list of songs with as many girl's names as possible in the event that such a list would ever be necessary. The only criterion is that the girl's name is mentioned in the song. Hopefully I can gather more input and have a list of such astounding depth and simplicity that I can try to sell it for money donate it to the lonely hearts in the world.

I think it is a fairly common human endeavour to wonder just what will remain of you when you die. I think this is part of the appeal of after-life promises. Even if you are a complete nobody, something of you will last forever. The alternative is that, for most people, almost nothing will remain of you and all memory will be purged from family history after four to five generations. Fortunately, I do not have such fears. I dedicate my life to material pursuits so there will always be something. In fact, if I died today, I have a picture that can best sum up how my life will be remembered through history.

Click to see at full resolution

Recently, the demo for Heavy Rain cropped up on the Playstation Network. I decided to give it a spin if only to justify all of the free time I have being unemployed. I didn't really pay much attention to the game until that point. The only reason I remember the title is because I heard it had good graphics. While that is true, it does offer a bit more.

Let me just say that I have a hard time calling this a game. I think it is going out with the intention of being a game that plays like a movie, but I'm not buying it. This software is more like a movie trying to be a choose-your-adventure book. You move from scene to scene while most of the action is played out to the tune of your button presses. They could probably change the title to Quick Time Events: The Game and it would be more fitting.

The demo for the "game" revolves around two scenes with two characters. The first is an overweight asthmatic detective who can turn into a Batman-like powerhouse whenever the software hands the fight controls to me. The first order of business is to buy some time with a local hooker (for questioning, of course) then beat the stuffing out of an ex-customer. At least, that's the path I took. I only played through once, so there may've been more options, such as not questioning her and just taking advantage of her services or leaving the room so the ex-customer and beat the stuffing out of her.

The next scene involved a FBI investigator with a slight New Yorker accent and sunglasses that make him look like a complete wussy. Your job is to walk around a crime scene and act like you know what you're doing while the computer in your glasses does all of the actual investigating. The demo ends after this scene and I find myself disappointed with the brevity.

The demo did endear itself to me, though. I'm not a hater of QTEs and the visual novel-like approach triggers a subconscious expectation of sex at the game's conclusion (like all good visual novels). Plus, there will be more characters presented that I could potentially latch myself on to like an obsessive lamprey. I might pick it up, assuming I can scrounge up enough dosh to actually purchase anything.

Here are a few questions I have for people who trade-in their used video games.

How do you get the disc so scratched? I can understand if accidents happen and the occasional statistically anomalous scratched disc can appear in the used game bin, but how is it that every single used disc I buy looks like it was roughed up with a cheese grater prior to resale? I have game discs over a decade old that look like they haven't left the case since the plastic wrap came off. It isn't hard to take care of these things. When you take the disc out of the system, you put it away in its case where it can't be damaged. Actually, this leads to question two...

How do you lose the case to a game? Some of you may already know this, but many moons ago I worked for a GameStop. I was employed for about a month and worked about ten cumulative hours. I was never actually fired, come to think of it. They just stopped calling me with my hours for the following week, so I never came in. Anyway, during my internment, I was astonished at just how many people came in selling a game without a case. HOW DO YOU LOSE A CASE?! I suppose there are some people who intentionally throw away the case and store the discs in one of those binder-things to save space, but this should be a statistical rarity and not happen with the high frequency that it does. I don't care how hard to find a game is; I will turn it down if it does not have its original case.

Why are you trading in your used games, anyway? I think over the course of my gaming lifestyle, I have traded in a grand total of two games: The Conduit for Wii and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for PS3. They were both dreadful games, but still fairly new so I could get a decent trade-in. I am a hoarder, so selling one of those games was like selling one of my kidneys (I try to keep at least a dozen on ice in the basement). All games have a replay value, so holding on to them is always the best option. I suppose this is purely an opinion, but I still cannot wrap my head around it.