Sword, virtual. Murder, real:

A Shanghai online gamer has been given a suspended death sentence for killing a fellow gamer.

Qui Chengwei stabbed Zhu Caoyuan in the chest when he found out he had sold his virtual sword for 7,200 Yuan (£473).

The sword, which Mr Qui had lent to Mr Zhu, was won in the popular online game Legend of Mir 3.

Attempts to take the dispute to the police failed because there is currently no law in China to protect virtual property.

...

Buying and selling gaming artefacts such as imaginary weapons is a booming business on the web.

The internet games section of Ebay saw more than $9m (£5m) in trades in 2003.

While China has no laws to deal with the theft of virtual property, South Korea has a section of its police force that investigates in-game crime.

...

According to the Chinese press, more and more gamers are seeking justice through the courts over stolen weapons and credits accumulated in games.

In this case, Mr Zhu did offer to hand over the cash but Mr Qui lost patience and stabbed him with "great force" according to media reports.

Thanks to Chickpea.

Posted by: Ace at 08:38 AM | Comments (11)
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At Rightalk.com; look for "Now Playing-- Channel 1" at 4 ET.

Guests: Evan Coyne Maloney, who gave up a lucrative but frustrating career as a software designer to make conservative-themed documentaries. His first short got picked up by Fox News and was discussed by Rush Limbaugh for two days running. Not a bad start. Now he's done a short -- Brainwashing 101 -- about speech codes on campuses and the selective enforcement of such codes against conservatives. He's actually been funded to the tune of $250,000 to produce the full-length feature by a software magnate, and he just may be the right's answer to Michael Moore.

And... took a while to get a confirmation, but we'll be talking with Rich Lowry of NRO in the last (short segment). We'll ask him about Howard Dean... and maybe a little about Kerry's grades.

It's a theme show: while all these commencement speeches are going on, we'll be talking about universities and Kerry's grades.

We're geniuses or something. Well, not really. We're geniuses, but it hasn't come through yet on our shows... we hope to fix that.

Try calling in at 866-884-TALK. One of these days we'd like to have someone who introduces himself as "long time listener, first time caller," because, well, I always wanted to hear that.

Thanks for the corrections, LD and LW.

"Hoist the Black Flat" might have been a Freudian slip, given the low energy of last week's show.

I'm hopped up on dangerous narcotic diet pills in order to be a little bit punchier this time.

I think I'm going to do an ambush interview with Evan. He seems like a really cool guy, but I'm going to fuckin' gut the bastard. It's just not right that he's making a feature-length film and I'm still working on the script for my Transformers fanboy-short, which is all about an "alternate universe" in which Optimus Prime decides that fighting evil isn't for him and instead joins the thriving Key West arts-and-craft community to make necklaces from sea-shells and hermatite.

Posted by: Ace at 12:31 PM | Comments (30)
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It's not that I necessarily object. Obviously, it does draw attention. And occasionally one of these PETA chicks has a nice rack.

But... it's always the same. Can't they come up with something new?

And if they want to be daring... well, nudity for political causes is no longer daring. It's expected. If I don't see raw tit at a Take Back the Night march, damnit, I demand to get back the donation I never gave gave them.

They've really got to turn it up a notch if they want to keep my interest. Naked Hairy Hippy Girls for Peace? Eh, it's played.

Free Handjobs for Peace? Now I might just show up for that rally.

I really hate PETA. I've known a couple of PETA people, and I've got to tell you, in terms of personality and emotional development they're every bit as childish as in their politics. They generally tend to be seven-year-old girls who never really grew up. One PETA girl I knew was essentially asexual; the normal interest in sex that usually strikes at about age seven or eight just seemed to pass her by completely.

Too bad. She was a nice piece of ass.

We should just give them what they really want -- PONIES! PONIES! PONIES! -- and be done with them.

Thanks to LauraW (third from write under the saran wrap).

Posted by: Ace at 10:33 AM | Comments (57)
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So claims not-quite-cute pundette Cece Connelly on the Brit Hume broadcast.

Not to get all legal here, but a "homicide" is any death at the hands of another human. It is not, in fact, synonymous with "murder." Murder is subcategory of homicide.

Numerous homicides are not illegal. Killing a prisoner as he riots or attempts to escape is technically a homicide, but it usually not a crime (assuming it was a justifiable homicide). Putting a prisoner in a hot-box, only to find later he had a weak heart and died within a couple of hours from the stress and heat, is also a "homicide," but it's an accidental homicide, and often not criminally chargeable unless there is a finding of willfully and knowingly putting the man's life in jeopardy.

For that matter, the US has in fact ordered thousands of homicides. Killing soldiers on the field of battle is, technically, categorized as "homicides." But obviously they are lawful homicides.

Are those on the left ignorant of these distinctions -- as they ignorant of the difference between what is colloquially called an "automatic pistol" but is in fact semi-automatic and not truly automatic like a machinegun? -- or do they deliberately use vague language in the hopes that the American public will equate "homicide" with "murder"?

I don't know. They're both ignorant and shamelessly manipulative and dishonest to advance the left's cause du jour. So it is, as they say, overdetermined. They have a lot of reasons to say thing like this; it's hard to narrow it down to one specific motive.

Posted by: Ace at 09:48 AM | Comments (7)
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It's not as if the media isn't friendly to their America-as-the-women-in-Margaritaville philosophy.

Is it really necessary to allow them to impose their version of America the Vile on the memorials at Ground Zero?

This issue is inherently political. Here's a compromise: Keep politics out of it. Recite the actual facts. The deaths. The men and women jumping from the hundredth floors to avoid a holocaust of jet-fuel fire. The stewardresses having their throats slit, Helter-Skelter style.

As the they say: Let people bring their own interpretations to the event.

More... from Don's Attic.

H/t's: Joe, the omnipresent NickS.

Posted by: Ace at 09:36 AM | Comments (3)
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I'm tipped by someone who's never lied to be me before that ABC will feature a cheapie summer-schedule special about the best movie quotes of all time.

I haven't given it much thought, but here are a couple of mine, in no particular order. Off the top of my head, so I realize these aren't necessarily really all that killer.

1) "I guess we need some more FBI guys." -- Die Hard

2) "I'm Bad Ash, you're Good Ash, Goodie-Goodie Good Ash."

(Good Ash blows Bad Ash's head off with a shotgun, and says

"Good...? Bad...? I'm the guy with the gun." -- Army of Darkness

ALSO: Bad Ash now has his head cut off and is being buried alive (or undead-alive). Good Ash says, "You have a little something on your face." Bad Ash says, "Where?" and looks around for the something on his face.

Good Ash's response is to toss a shovel full of dirt onto his head.

3) "Conan, what is best in life?"

"To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and hear de lamentations of de women." -- Conan the Barbarian

4) "I've never met someone who made being a sonofabitch such a point of pride." -- Miller's Crossing

5) "Wait... I'm only supposed to use [my dad's credit cards] in emergencies"

"Well, maybe one will come up." -- The Sure Thing

6) "You are talking about the nonsenical ravings of a lunatic mind." -- Young Frankenstein

7) VILLAIN: "You and are I really not so different, Mr. [Hero's Name]. I am but a shadowy reflection of you." -- From Raiders of the Lost Ark, but really from every James Bond movie and EVERYFUCKING action movie ever made. Apparently all villains -- ALL villains -- feel the psychological need to resort to moral equivalence and also a sympatico kinship with the hero.

"Son of a bitch must pay!" -- Big Trouble in Little China

9) "You've got to be fuckin' kidding me." -- The Thing (really a performance-based, stituation-dependent great line)

10) "I'm here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubble gum." -- They Live

11) "Your levity is good. It puts off de fear of death." -- T3: Rise of the Machines

12) "That was the most exciting sexual experience -- without actually having sex -- that I ever, almost, had. It was so... professional. " -- The Man With Two Brains

13) "Before I met you I thought you were cold and unimaginative. Now I see you're quite... emotional." -- The Dirty Dozen, with Lee Marvin delivering a stealth but deadly insult to a higher-ranking officer

14) (Tuco, reading a note left behind by Angel-Eyes): "See you later id... idi... Idi..."

(Blondie, taking the note and reading it "Idiots. ... it's for you."

15) (Harrier pilot): "Hitting those trucks won't detonate the nukes, will it?"

(Schwarzenegger): "That's a negative, a negative. They nukes won't detonate."

(turns to Tom Arnold and gives a cringy shrug that says "Probably not. I think.")

16) (Jack Walsh, on phone to bail bondsman): "Don't fuck with me. Don't fuck with me on this, or I will take the Duke and I will shoot him and I will dump him in a swamp." -- Midnight Run

(Turns to The Duke and shakes his head to say "Not really. Just kidding.")

17) (Hotel manager): "But if evict everyone from the hotel, where will they go?"

(High Plains Drifter) "Out." -- High plains Drifter

That's what I've got after thinking about it for five minutes. I'm sure you've got more.

Thanks for the suggestion to Duane.

Posted by: Ace at 09:20 AM | Comments (138)
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A lot of people concluded Kerry's grades must not be so hot since he wasn't revealing them and no one at Yale did, either.

Our suspicions were correct.

But of course he has an excuse:

In his Navy application, Kerry made clear that he spent much of his college time on extracurricular activities, including the Yale Political Union, the Debating Association, soccer, hockey, fencing, and membership in the elite Skull and Bones Society. Asked to describe nonschool training that qualified him for the Navy, Kerry wrote: ''A great deal of sailing -- ocean and otherwise, including some navigation. Scuba diving. Rifle. Beginning of life saving." He said his special interests were ''filming," writing, and politics, noting that the latter subject occupied 15 hours per week.

With all due respect, Scholar Bush also spent an awful lot of times pursuing extracurricular activities -- including Skull and Bones, of course, and being president of his fraternity -- but the press didn't seem especially eager to credit Bush for that. He was a dummy, pure and simple.

The fact of the matter is that the high-born do not go to college to become standout scholars, by and large. (Unless they're especially gifted and especially driven.) Middle-class kids need to get good grades, as those are the entre into professions otherwise denied to them.

Our country's nobility goes to college largely to network, establish the social skills that will be their primary skill-set later in life (in business, in politics, in... doing very little except living off trust funds), and, of course, to screw around and have fun. Which is part of why everyone goes to school. But the high-born think they can screw around a lot more than the average student and still walk out of college with a low GPA and yet almost unlimited career prospects, and, of course, they're right.

You wouldn't slam an athlete for deciding his best career path was athletics. (Or at least I wouldn't; it's a rational economic decision, even if a risky one.) Likewise, there's little sense in slamming the noble-born for pursuing the non-academic path through college.

And yet the media did this as regards George Bush. Kerry refused to release his grades, suggesting he was not an A student (I don't see Kerry as the modest sort), and the press did not dig.

IIRC, Bush's grades were not released with his permission but rather leaked. Oddly enough, no one at Yale felt the need to leak Kerry's sub-optimal grades.

Shockingly enough, one of Kerry's highest grades (and yet still not all that good) was in... French.

Posted by: Ace at 08:55 AM | Comments (16)
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Watching porn I get. Watching anti-porn? That's just weird.

But Dave from Garfield Ridge links and fisks an old anti-porn film a la Reefer Madness, only more interesting to me, because it's about boobs and not weed.

Dave wants to know how Cthulhu got into the smut business, and what the hell took him so long.

Necronomicon is not a sexy title. Dirty-Footed Sorority Whores-- now there's a title for a madness-inducing arcane text that'll really fly off the shelves.

Posted by: Ace at 05:49 PM | Comments (11)
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They protect their own:

Bridges turned back the GOP challenge on several fronts. He said the Republicans' claims of fraud were not supported by any evidence. He rebuffed their statistical proposal for subtracting invalid votes from the candidates, calling it scientifically inadequate. And he rejected their suggested interpretations of state laws and previous court rulings on election challenges.

"I don't think I can think of anything we argued that he didn't take lock, stock and barrel," Democratic lawyer Kevin Hamilton said.

Wow. A judge agreeing with a Democratic lawyer. What are the odds of that.

Posted by: Ace at 04:58 PM | Comments (92)
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"The suits" want to silence KITT for the Knight Rider movie, but David Hasselhoff is uncompromising about his creative vision for the film.

He's also threatened to walk unless "there's a really big car chase culminating in a big jump, during which there'll be some funny by-play between Knight and KITT about whether they can make the jump (KITT will calculate the low probability of a successful jump, and Knight will say something like "Never quote the odds to me!").

Hah! I doubt he'll get the suits to agree to that. They're not ready for that sort of edgy, experimental filmmaking.

Posted by: Ace at 09:16 AM | Comments (42)
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