To quote the folks at DiaWebLog, “this story has it ALL”. A guy tried to smuggle pygmy monkeys from Thailand into the US by transporting them in his pants.

It almost makes up for the fake cancer story from earlier today, but not quite.

Today is the beginning of a holiday vacation for both Desiree and I, but unfortunately the news of various sick bastards is sort of dampening my holiday cheer.

Question: who is more evil - the guy who threw a dog off a 23rd-story balcony, or the mom who not only falsely claimed that her 7-year-old had cancer in order to defraud charitable organizations, but actually convinced her child that the cancer was real and would be fatal?

As much as I like to think there’s a special place in hell for malicious dog-killers, I’m going to have to go with the woman. Telling your daughter that she’s going to die so that you can get money… I don’t even have the words for how disturbing that is.

Don’t say that I never gave you anything - here are a bunch of gaming downloads that were new this week (free registration required for some):

Microsoft DirectX 9.0
UT2003 patch (12 megs)
Warcraft III bonus maps
Splinter Cell playable demo (101 megs)
BloodRayne playable demo (168 megs)

Have fun!

Well, I don’t want to include any spoilers but I wanted to take a moment to say that the movie was AWESOME!!! Easily leaping to claim the spot as my favorite movie of all time.

Please go and see it as soon as possible. I know I’m going again the next chance I have…it’s worth it.

Monkeys are funny. Monkeys in spaceships are funny. Playing a Flash game with monkeys in spaceships is funny too.

Dunno why I’m on the browser-based gaming kick recently, but it certainly is amusing.

Ok, ok - you get it: I was busy this week. Still, it didn’t escape my notice that the trial version of Impossible Creatures, the real-time strategy game where you use “science-light” version of genetics to breed wierd creatures (e.g. crossing a tiger and a lobster to get a tiger with claws) is available for free download. Nor did I forget that Wednesday was the launch of the December episode of AC2, Emergence.

In the non-electronic gaming world, I’ve been meaning to point out that DC Heroclix sold over 5 million figures in its first 6 weeks. I did my part back in October, but I still didn’t get what I was looking for.

And last (but not least), if you play Decipher’s Lord of the Rings CCG (or even if you just think the cards look cool), don’t forget to send in your US$1 to get a special version of the Faramir card before December 31, 2002.

Having enjoyed some flash games recently, I decided to read a bit more about how to make them myself and game across Klas Kroon’s OutsideOfSociety, where an excellent tutorial for making Flash games can be found. I read through this Monday night, getting inspired for a little gamecrafting myself until the reality of the work-week reared its ugly head. Now it’s on an ever-growing “to do” list.

On a related note, one game I’d earlier identified as being a Flash game is actually a Java game, but who cares - at least it’s back.

Ahh..the solidarity of Macintosh users. It never fails to amaze.

Anyway, here’s (free registration required) a story about a brave group of Macintosh users who banded together to fight the evil of an eBay fraud artist named Christmas.

Do I smell a feature film in the making?

*Remember…”it does not pay to mess around with Mac people”*

Enjoy!

TheOneRing.net has a new Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers commercial for download - it’s really quite exciting, but if you haven’t read the books or even if it’s been a while, I’d strongly suggest that you don’t watch this, as it depicts glimpses of what I’d consider to be some of the crucial plot twists in the story.

If you’re a die-hard and know the book inside and out, then take a look at this - pretty compelling evidence that not only has Peter Jackson done a masterful job, but that moviemaking technology needed to wait this long to bring Tolkien’s story to life on screen. Desiree and I can’t wait for Wednesday!!!

Sorry for the lack of entries; it’s been hectic so far this week at work and only going to get worse. I’m off to the airport in a few hours, so expect the rest of the week to be sparse in terms of posting (unless Desiree decides to get prolific).

Doing my usual end-of-year reflection, one of the things that I realized is that I’ve travelled a lot in the past 18 months or so. Just some of the places I’ve been in that time:

Austin, TX
Bethesda, MD*
Boulder, CO*
Ehningen, Germany
Herrenberg, Germany
Key West, FL
Miami, FL
Nassau, The Bahamas
Raleigh, NC*
Shanghai, China*
Sindelfingen, Germany
Singapore, Singapore
Somers, NY*
Stuttgart, Germany
Tokyo, Japan
Toronto, Canada*
Washington, D.C.*
White Plains, NY*

*multiple trips

That list doesn’t include (among other things) the travel to see friends and family, so it’s fair to say that I’ve been in transit quite a bit. Most of it has been work-related (although I think you can pick out the honeymoon location pretty easily from the list above), so there has been very little sightseeing or leisure time. For example, despite being in Singapore for a couple of weeks, the only pictures on my camera when I got home were of the sculpture that memorializes the lives lost during the Japanese occupation of Singapore during World War II. While that’s very photo-worthy (link is not to one of my own pictures), I only manged some shots of it because it was visible from my hotel window.

More when I return from this week’s jaunt…