I found something else to whine about regarding the new Diablo patch

They overhauled the Blacksmith.  He's still mostly useless, but the best helmet he offers is (conceivably) better than the one I have equipped. Only they went and got rid of all the pages and tomes, so now I have to salvage normal items in order to get "generic debris." Only they overhauled the loot system, so normal items rarely drop now.

BRILLIANT.

Musings

One of the most unintentionally hilarious things I read last week was Ian Fleming describing the nuances of Rock, Paper Scissors in the opening chapter of You Only Live Twice (which is so unlike the film they could probably re-adapt it with Daniel Craig and no-one would notice, although that ship probably sailed when they screwed up Quantum of Solace).  It's a lot like how he describes the card game in Casino Royale, patiently explaining it to you like you've never heard of it before.

One of the most unintentionally hilarious things I read this week was Judge Kozinski's opinion on a case called Micro Star v. FormGen Inc. 154 F.3d 1107 (9th Cir. 1998). No, not the part where I agreed with a 9th Circuit holding, although that in and of itself is cause for a quick sanity check. Rather, his description of a video game, Duke Nukem 3D, is amusing.

"Duke Nukem 3D [is] an immensely popular (and very cool) computer game... [It] is played from the first-person perspective... Players explore a futuristic city infested with evil aliens and other hazards. The goal is to zap them before they zap you."

I don't know why he felt the need to editorialize about the game, although this is still a step up from Justice Brennan, who felt the urge to invoke Godwin's Law in a free speech case I had to read earlier this week (Elrod v. Burns).

"Zap them before they zap you."  Did he think that we'd misunderstand him if he said "kill?"

(Diablo III patch) having had more time to whack at it...

Seems like the higher difficulty settings a) turn everything into a damage sponge, and b) give you less time to get out of the way of plague puddles before the damage really starts kicking in.

Meh. My Barb is more or less invincible (at least on the three lowest settings). Killing things now takes forever. TLDR combat is less fun.

Don't get me wrong, I still love Loot 2.0. But the balance is juuuuuust a tad off.

The Lord of Patches

An absolutely monster Diablo III patch dropped yesterday, and by "yesterday" I mean "all of yesterday" - look, Blizzard, given the crap you got for D3's release, wouldn't you try to make this patch go a little smoother? 

Anyway, so much is different. Me being me, I'll start with what I hate.

TSWLM preliminary stuff

I re-watched The Spy Who Loved Me, a.k.a. The Most Triumphant Example of the James Bond Formula, Like, Ever, last night.  We're still a loooooooooooong way off from the review, but here are some preliminary notes.

A Blog of Thrones (Chapter 39) Eddard X: Promise Be Dead

Previously on A Game of Thrones we were promised a duel. Now we get a flashback to another duel in the aftermath of yet another duel.

Random musings

Can't be bothered to do any sort of proper blog today.

I am rapidly becoming convinced that you can tell that a Supreme Court opinion is predicated on utter horsesh*t if:

1. It is written in a manner that makes it damn near impossible to figure out the Justice's line of "reasoning" or, even worse, what the case is actually about.
2. It is written by Justice [redacted].
3. Both of the above.

(I'm apparently not supposed to whine about either specific Justices or the Court in general, but my God, when you base your entire opinion on a reading of a prior case and the author of that prior case dissents, you are doing something wrong.) (Not that I am a huge fan of said Justice-who-wrote-said-prior-case either, given that he circled around the main point for several paragraphs without ever just bothering to outright state it.)

A Blog of Thrones (Chapter 38) Tyrion V: I Would Ace A Westerosi Civil Procedure Class

Previously on A Game of Thrones, Bran Stark was a cripple. In this chapter, Tyrion is guilty of being a dwarf.

A Blog of Thrones (Chapter 37) Bran V: I’ve Fallen And I Can’t Get Up

Previously on A Blog of Thrones, there was much running about without actually advancing the plot.  Now it's more of the same, minus the "running" bit.

Double dose of weekend song (cuz laziness)

A Blog of Thrones (Chapter 35 & 36) Eddard IX, Daenerys IV: Give Them a Leg Up

 Previously on A Blog of Thrones, we got to the Vale of Arryn, which numerous lyric sites insist did not get name-dropped in "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," but I digress.  This time we have a short chapter where important things happen and a long chapter where very little does.

I’m not sure if I was channeling my inner Rorschach or my inner Jim Morrison, but I have some pretentious bullsh*t to share with you.

I

The accused enters the arena to rancorous applause.

The judges are jesters and the heralds are heathens.

He stands above them, before them, apart from them.

It does not matter whether he slips the noose or dies in it;

The reruns won't stop for decades.

A sorry excuse for a clown tells us

This is funny and that is not.

This is evil and that is not.

Scripture is senseless

And the empty tidings of painted whores and their drug-addled pimps

Merit front-page headlines.

Where now is that wondrous spark?

The saving grace, the city on the hill?

The children of Apollo spend their summers in Sodom,

And a simpering, capering jackanapes howls,

Cheering on the sinners, 

Condemning the saints.

There are no more appeals for the human race.

But there is still time for the things that matter most:

One last toast, one clever smile.

A joke and a wink,

And an audience too dim to know who the curtain call is for.

A Blog of Thrones (Chapter 34) Catelyn VI: Are You My Mummy?

Previously on A Blog of Thrones, a Stark bumbled ineffectively as the country lurched closer to war. Plus ca change...

What random nonsense did I get up to courtesy of Wikipedia today?

I went through all the Bond films and grabbed their box office figures and their budgets.  Then I divided the one by the other to determine the least successful Bond film of all time.  The result actually did surprise me.

A Blog of Thrones, Chapter 33 (Eddard VIII): The Madness of King Bob

Previously on A Blog of Thrones, Varys plotted. Today, Varys plots. Hey, seasons last years; we can take our sweet time here.

A Blog of Thrones Chapter 32 (Arya III): Yer a Wizard, Varys

Two posts in one day? You must be the luckiest sons of dogs out there.

Previously on A Blog of Thrones, we learned that Catelyn Stark can occasionally be clever and Tyrion Lannister can occasionally axe impoverished people to death. (Occupy Casterly Rock!) Now it's Arya's turn to tell us a bunch of stuff she doesn't really comprehend.

A Blog of Thrones: Chapter 31 (Tyrion IV): And No Jycks Were Given

Previously on A Blog of Thrones, we encountered a very suspicious man with a goose. Today we discover that Catelyn Stark is the brains of the family. Oh dear.

Weekend Soundtrack excerpt

Happy Hunger Olympic Games

Bonus! Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' flight to America.

Extremely dumb Game of Thrones/James Bond actor crossover thing published simply to get my one-a-day schedule back on track

Sean Bean (Ned Stark/Alec Travelyan, GoldenEye) um, dies? He has an old friend whom he knows he can't convince to come around to his way of thinking.

Julian Glover (Pycelle/Aris Kristatos, For Your Eyes Only) offers advice to the hero, but turns out to be a treacherous little git.

Tobias Menzies (Edmure Tully/Villers, Casino Royale) is a sniveling, incompetent twerp.

Spoilers for Season Four for the last two...

What's going on with the 2014 Bondathon

Yup, I blew it yesterday.

So here's the deal. I went through the entire list of James Bond films and ranked them from best to worst to assign them all grades for my 2014 James Bondathon series. I figured at least this way I could keep the grades appropriately balanced.

And then, as always starts happening, I second-guessed myself.

"Is The Spy Who Loved Me really the best James Bond film ever? Isn't Goldfinger really overrated? Aren't you judging, say, Thunderball and Casino Royale by completely different standards?"

And so on. 

The answer to those questions, by the way, are yes for a certain definition of "James Bond film," absolutely, and frickin' duh but only because they're so completely different I can barely believe they're part of the same franchise.

Thunderball Yakking: Number Two is Number One

(I'm discovering that I'm getting more hits for my James Bondage than I am for by Game of Thrones readblog. As part of a cynical ploy to garner more pageviews keep my daily output going excuse my laziness, I hereby present the first part of my Thunderball review. Eventually I'll amass the whole thing in one post.)

Conventional wisdom is that Thunderball is a bloated, over-the-top follow-up to Goldfinger that should be roundly condemned for spending 20% of its screentime underwater.  Actually, the biggest change from Fleming's novel is the addition of a character named Fiona Volpe, who never once puts on a scuba mask.  The underwater sequences are long, but nowhere near as gratuitous as, say, the Blue Danube sequence(s) in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And, yes, Thunderball's got a lot of things Austin Powers ripped off: the man-dressed-as-a-lady, the eyepatch-wearing Number Two, the nuclear terrorism plot, the booby-trapped chairs...

Ah well. Thunderball has something going for it that no previous entry in the series does, besides a gun-barrel with Connery actually in it (it's been stuntman Bob Simmons up til now). No, that something is Emilio Largo, The Best Bond Villain, Like, Ever. Let's just run through his introductory scene to show you exactly what I mean.

Thunderball: The Adaptation

This is not the complete Thunderball review. I'm not going to get all gushy about how Film!Largo is probably the best Bond Villain ever or anything like that (although he totally is).  A bunch of this will be incorporated into the proper review, but this is just a series of observations about the changes made from the book to the film.

Fiona Volpe
Shockingly, one of the best things about Thunderball the movie isn't in Thunderball the book at all.

More James Bond filler: Classic films for the Craig fans

All right, I owe you an explanation as to why the Thunderball review for the 2014 James Bondathon is getting shoved back again. Here it is: I read someone else's review of Thunderball in which this person accused the writer/director/what-have-you of needlessly complicating Fleming's novel. Being the extremely dedicated reviewer that I am, I decided the best course of action would be to read the novel before I published the review.* Well, last weekend there was a giant snowstorm and the book didn't show up until Monday, and then law school stuff got in the way.  I've now finished the novel, but will (likely) not have the time to watch Thunderball again this weekend.

*I'm also going to do this for On Her Majesty's Secret Service (that, and the fact that I want to do these in order, is why I took the OHMSS review I did in January down) and Live and Let Die, and at some point I intent to revisit the From Russia With Love and Goldfinger reviews and do this for them too.  There's really no point in doing it for any of the others until we finally reach Casino Royale because the rest of the films stray so far from the source material.

Having said all of that, I'm determined to have something to post every day in February, and by "something" I mean "something more than just an excuse." With that in mind, here's something I meant to publish a while ago: Bond Films I Recommend For People Whose First Bond Film Was Casino Royale (or Skyfall).

...aaaaaaaaand life is now a James Bond movie

Moonraker:

Life: