So, following my haiku "review" of TMNT and extended comments here in the blog, here is a fairly lengthy review of the PC version of the game based on the movie. I don't have a lot to add, as I've included just about everything that I wanted to say in the actual review -- but yeah, read that. And if you're interested in giving the game a try, you can download the PC demo from Ubisoft's game site! The page is admittedly pretty confusing to navigate (I never did find that interactive comic book thing it mentioned, unless they meant to suggest that the entire site is the comic), but there should be a button towards the lower right-hand corner that will let you grab the demo. It's got an eight-minute time-limit (which is kind of silly, seeing as how you can get fairly far into the level and would only need an additional minute or three to complete it altogether), but I guess Ubisoft did that to trick players into thinking that the level is longer and thereby conceal the overall brevity of the game. Shame on you, Ubisoft.

As always, comments are encouraged and appreciated.

...how difficult it was for me to get those columns on the front page to line up in both Firefox and IE7. Making matters worse, I have a strong feeling that they look completely broken in IE6.

At any rate, you can now summon the Foot Clan to search the text of the article blurbs for you! Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Yeah, it's not much, but here's a bit of filler to tide you over until the next update: A Crayon Haiku #62 and A Crayon Haiku #63. The first of these is a reference to "Desertion of the Dinobots" from season 2 of the original Transformers cartoon, but the picture itself was taken while Grimlock was drying after I applied some clear nail polish to his hip joints. Good stuff.

As for the second, I'll doubtless have a Hot Flash (or whatever I decide to call the comics following #100; do feel free to weigh in on that) or two about the new TMNT movie, but -- for the moment -- suffice it to say that I was kind of disappointed with it. I mean, I wasn't expecting Welles' The Trial, but given all of the OMGZ BEST TURTLES MOVIE EVER type fan reviews, I was expecting it to at least live up to that descriptor. It totally doesn't. It comes nowhere near the level of the first movie. For all of its preachiness about family and brotherly love, it fails to actually illustrate these concepts in a manner even remotely on par with the many great moments of the first film. (For a look at some of those moments, see our 2004 Father's Day tribute to Splinter.) And while after seeing the movie I'd determined that it was at least better than TMNT II, my re-watching of those earlier flicks yesterday has forced me to recant that statement.

Yes, this new movie looked better and had a slightly more serious tone than the early films, but those films are easily superior in terms of plot, direction, and characterization -- particularly where the villains are concerned. TMNT II is definitely inferior to the first movie, but it still introduced Tokka and Rahzar and Super Shredder (who's really just Shredder mutated, but still) and gave them enough characterization for them to be memorable characters. By comparison, Karai and the stone generals in the new film were barely even mentioned by name, such that if I didn't already know who they were I'd be reduced to calling them "that Foot chick" and "those rock dudes". And whereas the first two films had decent enough (if simple) storylines and direction that, at the very least, wasn't distracting, TMNT 2007 felt rushed and made little sense at times. (Why the heck did Leo have such a problem with the Nightwatcher, seeing as how he was pretty much doing the same thing they did when they battled the Foot and defeated the Shredder? How did these giant monsters show up in NYC without anyone noticing? Since when was April a badass ninja skilled enough to go toe to toe with freaking Karai? Would a mask-wearing mutant turtle really criticize his brother for "dressing up like it's Halloween?" I could go on.) I don't think it was a terrible movie, and TMNT fans will want to check it out for the fantastic battle between Leo and Raph, but I found the flick on the whole to be highly unsatisfying. Animation aside, it was only slightly better than one of the ho-hum filler episodes from the 2K3 cartoon series.

And finally, regarding the site's ongoing redesign, here's a question concerning the search: how do you feel about the highlighted words? Like, if you enter a search query, the page outputs with your terms highlighted (I liked purple, though it's possible for me to change the color). Search terms are also highlighted for visitors coming in from engines like Google and Yahoo. Admittedly, I'm not sure how I feel about it -- on the one hand, it could be helpful to people, but on the other hand (at least in my case), I find highlighted words to be kind of annoying when I visit a page, since I'd typically just use the "Find" dialogue to locate them myself. And seeing as how readers would still have to do this if the search brought them to an article (because those lie outside of the WordPress database and therefore outside the scope of the Search Hilite plugin), the highlighting wouldn't necessarily be all that helpful anyway.

Speaking of searches, I'm planning to add a search box to the category content pages as well. Owing to the point above, it wouldn't let you search the fulltext of articles, but you would be able to search the blurbs. However, this could be even more useful for locating relevant articles. For example, if you search for "Donatello", you won't get all of the pieces in which I simply mention his name, but you'll get the ones in which he features prominently enough to warrant a mention in the blurb. So yeah, that's on the horizon too.

And eventually there will be new articles!

I just made a few updates to the sidebar. They've thrown the alignment off on the main page, but as I'll likely be adding more links and perhaps other stuff to the sidebar and the main and content pages in the near future, I'm not in a terrible hurry to get that taken care of. I mean, the columns are misaligned (and necessarily so) on all of the category archive pages.

And I guess my question at the end of the previous post kind of got overshadowed by the "insults" and death threats and whatnot, so feel free to post a response here regarding the nominal state of Dusty Plastic HELL comics in the near future. All for now -- ja!

Aaaand here's another quickie -- A Crayon Haiku #61! I probably should have done something related to THE IDES OF MARCH (hope nothing unfortunate befell you, btw), but I caught the tail end of this show on TLC last night and just had to post this. I mean, I know this is obviously a serious psychological problem for these people, but I find it hard to feel sorry for people who get so fucking fat that they are unable to walk or even get out of their beds and still continue to shovel in excess of 9,000 calories into their mouths on a daily basis. When this one 600-pound cow -- whose daily diet includes something like four large meals and multiple snacks that include an entire one-pound bag of M&Ms -- saw what she eats in a day laid out on a table and commented that seeing it all like this really makes her think twice, I got angry. As if barely being able to walk because one's knees are unable to support your fatness isn't enough to get one to think twice! Shit, I'd be thinking twice about my eating habits if my weight got to 150 pounds, let alone four times that amount. These people should simply be exterminated.

And then, JUST AS I MADE THAT VERY REMARK, they cut to this other fatass who had the nerve to be sitting there with a bowl of food on his naked chest -- apparently he'd gotten too fat and sloppy to even wear clothes, so they just draped a bedsheet over his lower half -- and I noticed something. At first I thought that perhaps I was developing my own serious psychological problem, because there was no way that this dude could've had a Dalek sitting behind his fat ass. I rewinded and watched the segment again to make sure. Then I paused and took a screencap. There was no mistaking it. A DALEK. And it's from the new Doctor Who series, so it's not as if he acquired it as a younger lad when he was thin enough to actually walk to the store. It's possible that he was thin enough to purchase it in 2005/6, since apparently these people eat so much that they can legitimately gain 50+ pounds in a single month, but I'm guessing that he was immobile when that Dalek came into his possession. Somehow, a bastard so fat that he cannot even leave his bed acquired a Dalek. A remote-controlled Dalek, too -- you can see the controller right next to it. The fucking toy is more mobile than he is. And yet he sits there, NAKED, talking about food and eating on camera. Disgusting.

Okey-doke, all for now. Seeya next time, when (hopefully) I will have an actual article for you! If not, maybe another Hot Flash. Actually, seeing as how there are tons of Hot Flashes and hardly any "legitimate" Dusty Plastic HELL episodes, I'm thinking of just merging them -- which is to say maybe discontinuing the "Hot Flash" line after #100 and just calling them all Dusty Plastic HELL. Heck, I could even start up a new edition called Dusty Plastic HELL v2 or something. I'd probably come up with special names for the special, lengthier comics that actually tell a story (a la the Halloween and New Year's editions), but yeah. So my question is this: would you a) welcome this change, b) actively oppose this change, or c) not care either way because the content would still be pretty much exactly the same? Lemme know, with reasons if applicable.

And do feel free to continue to share feedback concerning the revised layout! The IE6 display problem should be fixed now, so hopefully everything is working well with that. Ja!

EDIT: Apparently, according to some folks I know, wider shots revealed that fatty actually had MULTIPLE Daleks in his room. In fact, if you look really closely at the blue and red controller thing next to the Dalek's gold remote, you can see a miniature Dalek in front of it! Fatty sure likes Daleks, but he should have them confiscated for being such a fucking pig. He doesn't deserve them.