No D&D for Prisoners

An inmate of Wisconsin's Waupun prison has lost his legal battle to play Dungeons and Dragons behind bars.

Apparently, the ban against the world's nerdiest pastime was imposed because prison officials were concerned that the game promotes gang-related activity and could be a threat to security.

Okay. A few things....

Back in my day, the worry was that D&D promoted Satanism. Glad to see that we've moved on and that had nothing to do with this ruling.

But "gang-related activity"? First of all, the game doesn't promote gangs, they're called "adventuring parties." Way to make yourself look stupid, Waupun prison officials.

Frankly, I think the only gang-related activity they should be worried about are all the pantsings being doled out to D&D boy by prison gangs.

Second, shouldn't the prison officials be happy to see their inmates playing D&D? Isn't that better than them doing drugs? Or making shivs in the metal shop? Afterall, a ruling like this is just going to drive the trade in D&D paraphernalia underground. And, how many cigarettes does a d20 go for these days, anyway?

One argument advanced in defense of the ruling is that part of the justice system is punishment and taking away a prisoner's access to a preferred hobby is part of that punishment. But you know, if you don't let prisoners have any hobbies and expect them to do nothing but stare at the walls in penitence, you really haven't thought through this whole "imprisoning people for life" concept. Take away everything that helps these guys pass the time and, you know, keeps the human and you're just asking for riots.

UPDATE JAN 28: Damn. Damn. Damn. I just today realized what the title for this post should have been: "Prisoner Fails Save Versus The Man"

On the topic of graphic design...

In response to Stephen's previous post, someone named Olly Moss made these book covers based on video games.

Then, because this is the internet, a bunch of people started making them-- much to the overwhelming joy of those of us who enjoy looking at things that reference newer things but look like older things.



Ah, to live in a world where everything isn't generically airbrushed in Photoshop. I love these things! NERRRRRRrrrrr....

Hey Nerds:

Here's some news for you. There's going to be a World of Warcraft movie. And Spider-Man/Drag Me To Hell/Evil Dead director Sam Raimi is in charge. So it's probably going to have a gigantic budget. (Dark Horizons)

There you go--now you can fight for Azeroth with a fresh sense of purpose.

UPDATE: Here's the story in the Guardian (yes, I go to the Guardian for everything, I know, I know. But it's soooooooo good). Also, I've added an image from the game courtesy Friend O' Dog Blog Peakay. It's a gnome warlock named Fidgit. Fidgit rawks.

Trek Of The Day: Final Frontier

I saw Star Trek last night, and if for some reason you want my opinion you can read it here.

More importantly, today is the last day for Trek Of The Week, my lame-o linkfest celebrating the release of the new film.

It's Friday, and hopefully we're all heading out for drinks and par-tay-ying tonight, so what we need is some Shatner style rawk to set the mood. Here's a fan-made video of the rawkenest song the Shat ever recorded. Footage is from Star Trek: the animated series.

Play it loud, play it repeatedly and dance, dance dance like Checkov drunk on girl-drinks.

UPDATE: No longer links to the wrong damn video.

Trek Of The Day: Hot Vulcan Sex Edition

Tonight the newest Star Trek movie opens in Regina. It's a semi-reboot of classic Star Trek featuring the series' iconic original characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Sulu, Scotty and Chekov, all played by new actors (spoiler--and one original actor).

While there's some surly, nitpicky and frankly wrongheaded opinions permeating my personal cabal of nerds, consesus seems to be it's a really good movie. Reviewers say it's fun for people who don't give a rat's ass about Star Trek but is also a good time for the hardcore Trekkies (or "Trekkers" if one has ridiculous delusions of respectability, which I do not).

As of this writing it's pulled in a 94 per cent "fresh" rating on the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes (67 reviews, 63 of them positive). And it's scoring a 94 on Metacritic, which is pretty impressive because Metacritic's ratings are based on a composite 1-10 score. (For instance, a mildly decent movie could concievably score 100 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, because the RT score is either "good" or "bad"--no shades of grey. On Metacritic it'd score a mildly positive 6.5/10 or so.)

On both sites, those ratings makes it the best reviewed movie of the year so far...which not only shows how much fun it will be but also indicates how lame movies generally are these days.

Anyway, in celebration of tonight's warp-factor eight nerdapalooza here's a short film ripped from teh internets. It's an unbelievably accomplished amateur music video by T. Jonesy and Killa, whoever they are, for Nine Inch Nail's very, very, rude song, "Closer". It depicts the brutal unleashing of a hallucinating Spock's repressed sexual fantasies using doctored and sneakily-edited footage from the original series.

WARNING: NIN's song is probably NSFW (not safe for work), depending on your job (it's safe for MY work, but my job is weird). And the video has sexual content (though no nudity).

Tip of the hat to Peakay for first showing me this thing years ago.

Trek Of The Day

Of course there's more to Star Trekkery than William Shatner overheating under stage lights. There's Spock singing. What's weird to me is how much cooler Leonard Nimoy is than the Shat, even when he's performing material that's every bit as idiotic. And this song--blown right out of a 60s bong--is righteously idiotic.




Tomorrow: the shocking truth beind all those long, smouldering glances between Kirk and Spock.

Trek Of The Day

All right, here's a classic. Maybe you've seen the excellent Family Guy parody where Stewie does it, but this is the original, featuring the Shat in all his terrible-toupeed glory. Plus, he's smoking!!! On stage! Holy crap!




Okay, I'm just not sure that's enough Shat. We need more Shat. More Shat!!!





Ahhhh, that's the good stuff.

(Courtesy YooToob and copyright violation.)

Trek Of The Day

Star Trek opens Thursday, May 7th. In honour of this forthcoming nerdgasm, Dog Blog will post a classic Star Trek-themed YooToob video every day this week.

Let's get things started with a terrible tale of fear, darkness and William Shatner. Brace yourself, true believer, for the horrifying movie known only as...Incubus! "The only film shot entirely in the artificial language of Esperanto!"

Saturday Morning Cartoon: Nerd Special

Guess what movie opens next week? Huh? Huh? Are you excited? Are you as excited as I am?

Here's a Saturday morning cartoon hint:




Star Trek: The Animated Series debuted in 1973, four years after NBC prematurely cancelled the U.S.S. Enterprise's original five year mission. It's most noteworthy for two things: one, it was produced by Dorothy Fontana, the script editor for the original series, and she brought in writing talent like David Gerrold, who wrote a sequel to his classic episode, The Trouble With Tribbles. Second, and this is just something you wouldn't see these days, nearly all of the original voice talent returned for this. Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan and of course the mighty William Shatner all boldly went were no cartoon had gone before. These shows are available on DVD and are essential watching for Star Trek nerds and cartoon fans, and worth a look by a broader audience.


Okay, we're going to need another clip here. Beam me back, Scotty!





(Courtesy YooToob and copyright violation.)

I'm Jealous Of Nerds

I want this. (New York Times)