Cancer is scarey shit

Lately I have been pretty sick. I don't say that lightly. I'm not the type of person who swoons over and dies at the first sign of a cold. In the last year I have been 'sick' roughly 6 times and none of those times have even made me think about taking a day off work.

So you know it's serious when I get knocked on my ass for two weeks straight. I have had a chest/lung infection of the most horrible type. I had to cut my recent holiday short by a day and come home because of it and I've been unwell since. The doctors prescribed me some antibiotics and steroids to clear the inflammation. 

Normally I am one of those people who think, "Pshaw (because in my head I'm a member of 1820's Gentry) I don't need none of that snake oil. My body is a God of Healing. I'm like fucking Wolverine man." but this time I was so sick I actually took the full course of medication. I had thought I was feeling better. I've been back at work and up an about this last week which is good because if I had to spend one more day in bed I might have burned my house down out of boredom.

Well, this morning I coughed up blood. Like... a fair bit of blood. That's scarey to me because I have been a smoker for 20 years (off them for four months now) and so lung cancer is always in the back of my mind. I went to the doctor and he's pretty sure it's just from the horrible cough I still have tearing up my throat but I have to have chest X-Ray's tomorrow just to be sure.

If the lung cancer kills me during the night Suzanne, you can have my Magic The Gathering cards. 

Update: That was depressing... Here's a picture of a Robot with a Rainbow to cheer you up.

The Wrath of the Space Marines

This review was originally posted on my Facebook page. I have a few more I will be moving over here in the next few days. I added the trailer to the bottom which I will be doing with all my reviews from now on. Apologies if you've read this before.

----------------------------------------------------

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war. For more than ten thousand years the Emperor of Mankind has sat in His deathless state upon the Golden Throne. Not alive, but never truly dead, He is master of man by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of His inexhaustible armies. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium to whom a thousand souls are sacrificed each day so that He may never truly die. Billions give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, His Space Marines. Bio-engineered super warriors formed from the genetic material of His sons, the Primarchs. 

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine puts you into the Power Armoured boots of one of the Emperor's finest as you battle to save the Forge World Graia from a deadly Ork invasion. The planet is a main production hub of one of the Imperium's most important and powerful weapons, Warlord battle class Titans, monstrous humanoid machines capable of leveling entire cities. The beginning of the game centres around Captain Titus and his squad mates, the grizzled veteran Sergeant Sidonus and the recently promoted initiate Leandros as they drop to the surface of Graia and move to secure the Titan production facility. Millions of Orks have swarmed across the world, decimating the planet's defense forces and burning and looting everything in their path. Your squad must cut a hole through their ranks and move to take the production facility before the counter-invasion can begin. 

Typically, someone lost the keys to the giant murderbot.

Combat is bloody and ferociously fast passed, seamlessly slipping from dealing death with your boltgun to slicing greenskins into bloody chunks with your chainsword. Enemies range from sniveling, shrieking Grots right through to huge, hulking Nobz who take a fearsome amount of punishment before being put down. Your Power Armour will give you protection in the form of a rechargeable armour bar but your health can only be replenished by performing executions; special power moves you can perform on a stunned opponent which will cause a gory, satisfying kill animation. There is a slight problem here however, as enemies can still hurt you while the animation plays out, leaving you vulnerable for a few moments. Luckily your health bar will almost totally recharge after every execution, meaning that you're only in trouble if you have really low health.

The games controls are well done, making it easy to pick off targets and maneuver Titus across the battlefield. Your character has an appropriately heavy feel, being the power armoured super-human that he is. Surprisingly cover is a no show in this game. The Space Marines of the Warhammer universe are typically described as being able to shrug off all but the highest powered attacks, your power armour and the lack of a cover system gives you that slight feeling of invincibility as you stride through a storm of gunfire. As you slaughter your way through wave after wave of Orks you will slowly build your Fury meter. When activated Fury acts as a kind of bullet-time mechanic, slowing time and making your attacks much more powerful. Entire waves of enemies can be mowed down with your bolter or chopped into pieces with your chainsword in a few short moments, making Fury a useful when you're almost down and out. Fans of 40k will be happy to know that the game pays homage to a sizable portion of the Adeptus Astartes arsenal. Your main weapons are of course a bolter and chainsword, but plenty more make an appearance including Plasma Cannons and the Thunder Hammer.

Relic and THQ have done a good job capturing the grandiose scale of the Warhammer universe in the scenery and locations throughout the game. Towering manufactories dominate the landscape and your first target on landing is a huge orbital defense gun. Dark, gothic architecture features heavily and is rendered expertly. Warhammer aficionado’s will recognize the many and varied symbols dotted throughout the world such as the Aquila and the Cog symbol of the Cult Mechanicus as well as the haphazard Ork banners and towers. Warhammer has always been about scale. Everything is bigger in this universe, from the super human Space Marines and the mighty ape like Orks to the planet-wide cityscape you battle in and the game delivers no less on this scale. It is a pity however that the graphics occasionally give everything a cartoony look that feels out of place amidst the blood and gore. 

Ha har! Jokez on you space marine. Oi ate me muthaa!

Unfortunately there are some problems with this game that drag it from being a truly epic struggle, worthy of a place in the Imperial Archives, down to a standard battle that threatens to be lost to antiquity. Space Marine is a very linear game, forcing you along tight corridors and throwing wave after wave of cannon fodder onto your guns. Exploration is occasionally rewarded with pickups like extra ammo or a Servo-Skull (which provide some back story in the form of audio clips) but these are rarely a challenge to find. Melee fights become repetitive as you only have a small repertoire of melee moves which are all activated by the same button combo regardless of weapon and after the thousandth time you hear an Ork scream, "Waaaaaaaargh!" you'll want to tear your ears off. As mentioned the graphics are sometimes a bit on the cartoony side, detracting from the overall feel of the game. The lack of a co-op mode, either online or split-screen is also a glaring omission in a game that should be about squad based combat. It's also disappointing that such a small amount of unit classes made it into this game. There are unfortunately no controllable vehicles and only standard Space Marines make an appearance. No Terminators or Dreadnaughts or Killa Kans this time around.

However none of that should stop you playing this game. Space Marine delivers in the fun department and that's what it's really all about in the end. It has an engaging story that will hook old veterans and new recruits alike and the combat is appropriately gory and fast paced. The multi-player modes are also a great way to kill some time with friends. Classic team deathmatch makes an appearance as well as a 'horde' mode called Exterminatus where four friends can battle wave after wave of Orks for experience to unlock upgrades. This is a fun addition to the game and the ability to use the fantastic Assault Marine jetpack more (it is fairly limited in the campaign) is very welcome.

"Hey Bob, you hear a whining noise?" "Nah, it's prob'ly your imagination."

The enemies of the Emperor fear many things.
They fear discovery, defeat, despair and death.
Yet there is one thing they fear, above all others.
The wrath of the Space Marines.

This gamer gives Space Marine a 7.5/10

Holy Binary Bovines! Robots!

Nothing in this mortal universe is immutable and everything is subject to change... especially my blog. The Raving Nerd has died a painful death under the lethal guns of the Robot Overlords. New management (re: essentially me but with more coffee) will be making many changes around here. Hell, I can't even guarantee the Robot Overlords are going to stick around for long.

I'm bored and I want to write stuff that other people will read and hopefully find amusing/thought provoking/dumb enough to get a reaction out of. So if you're reading this, REACT damn your eyes! With the Raving Nerd I tried to have some form of structure to the things that I was writing. I kept trying to push myself to sit at a keyboard and actually punch out something that made sense, like an article or a piece of fiction but I've realized that I can't do that. My writing just comes to me when it wants to and when I sit down and try to force it I end up writing three paragraphs of shit, deleting it and then crying into my coffee for an hour about how inadequate I am losing interest and going off to play video games.

So here let me unveil Robots Building Robots! my new (re: pretty much the same as the old) blog. Wheee!

I'll leave you with the first image that comes up when punching Robots Building Robots! into google search. The Robot Overlords tell me it's not sinister and that I am totally reading too much into it......

Oh! A post!

It's been brought to my attention that there are actual, living, breathing humans who visit my blog. Apparently the page views I've been getting lately aren't just viagra bots. It appears that I have been linked by the kindly fellows over at the 'How To Speak With Girls blog'. Not sure if they intended to link me, but hey! free page views so thanks guys/girls/aliens!

Anyway, my body has recently informed me that it's jack of being uber-human and as such has invited a bunch of bacteria to come and party in my lungs for a week. Now, I know what you're thinking, parties are awesome right so how can that be a bad thing? Well, it's like being the landlord of a property that's used exclusively for parties that you're never invited to but definitely expected to clean up after. Everyone else is having the fun and you're left with nothing but a billion empty beer cans and the lingering smell of vomit. I wasn't aware it was possible for lungs to contain the level of mucus that has been making an appearance of late without me statistically being 'drowned'.

In further news it's 11pm and I am high on painkillers, steroids, antibiotics and a very small amount of scotch.

Pascal's Wager bitchslap

Please note that all credit for this goes to www.rationalresponse.com as it was taken off their forums. Absolute gold.

Why Pascal's Wager Sucks

A friend forwarded a message received from a xian attempting to use Pascal's Wager. The reply is classic.

The message:

Quote:

Someday, you'll understand. I feel sorry for you. Just promise me one thing, IF you were to hypothetically end up burning in hell or something, don't curse the religious for not saving you int time. Just consider that if my beliefs are wrong, so what, I'm worm food or whatever, no big loss. But if you're wrong, you're screwed. But you still have tons of chances to get it. Believe it or not, God loves you and when you meet your maker, you'll remember this and regret not taking it seriously. Good luck on your road of life, maybe our paths will cross someday.

My friend's reply:

Quote:

Hey, Bud! Thanks for your thoughts. When you sent your notice of pity, it would have been a lot more helpful had you mentioned which God I should avoid being screwed by.

There’s Allah whom the Muslim vehemently deny is triune; who say that Jesus is just a prophet, who say your Bible has been corrupted and so on. They give evidence from ancient history, science, archeology, Greek and Hebrew, Christian scholars, the early church fathers and the Bible itself to support their claim.

www.answering-christianity.com
www.muslim-responses.com
http://www.islam-guide.com

Or, how about the Jews. They say that Jesus at best was a good (if not problematic) Jewish Rabbi, but not the Messiah and certainly not God. They give evidence from ancient history, science, archeology, Greek and Hebrew, Christian scholars, the early church fathers and the Bible itself to support their claim.

www.jewsforjudaism.org
www.messiahtruth.com

Or, how about the Mormons who say that there are a multitude of gods and we can become one through acts like believing in their holy books and that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. They give evidence from ancient history, science, archeology, Greek and Hebrew, Christian scholars, the early church fathers and the Bible itself to support their claim.

www.farms.byu.edu
www.fairlds.org

Or, how about the Jehovah’s witnesses who deny the trinity also. They say that Jesus was just a man and that the holy spirit is Jehovah’s active force. They say he is not omnipresent, that we are annihilated and not condemned to Hell and that Jesus has already come secretly. They give evidence from ancient history, science, archeology, Greek and Hebrew, Christian scholars, the early church fathers and the Bible itself to support their claim.

www.elihubooks.com
www.jehovah.to/index.htm

Even the Roman Catholic Church, who while saying they have the same God as you, say also that you can by God’s grace (through the sacraments and other good works) earn salvation. They believe such go to Purgatory when they die and one should do nearly every act of worship toward Mary that you do to Jesus, just don’t call it worship. They give evidence from ancient history, science, archeology, Greek and Hebrew, Christian scholars, the early church fathers and the Bible itself to support their claim.

www.catholic.com
www.catholicapologetics.org
www.envoymagazine.com

It seems partner that “god” has “left you without a witness.” Anyway you slice it, you are just as screwed as I am! But don’t worry! Look at these passages:

Deuteronomy 20:10-17 "When you draw near a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if its answer to you is peace and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labour for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the Lord your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its male to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemy, which the Lord God has given to you. Thus you shall do to all the cities which are far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. In the cities of these people that the Lord your God gives you an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amoriotes, the Canaanites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded."

Deuteronomy 7:2 "and when the Lord your God gives then [the enemies] over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them..."

Numbers 31:7, 17 They warred against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and slew every male…[Moses said to them] "... Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by lying with him..."

I Samuel 15:1-3 And Samuel said to Saul, "The LORD sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore hearken to the words of the LORD. Thus says the LORD of hosts, `I will punish what Am'alek did to Israel in opposing them on the way, when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and smite Am'alek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.'"

II Kings 2:23-24 He [Elisha] went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, "Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!" And he turned around and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out from the woods and tore forty-two of the boys.

Looks like we didn’t have to worry about God being all that loving after all.

I hope that the Pascal Wagerer felt that bitch slap!

You're Not Dragonborn

A little something I whipped up on xtranormal. I had to sell my soul and fill out online surveys to get enough points for this so I hope you guys enjoy it!