5 Thoughts on a Thursday

1) On the way home from school/work today, I slipped on some ice and fell right flat on my ass. Then a squirrel in a tree started laughing at me. I hate squirrels.

2) Conversation overheard on the bus:

Boy: You know what's the whackest thing ever?
Girl: What?
Boy: Taking store-bought food into the movie theater.
Girl: Store-bought food? You mean like soda and candy bars or, like, chicken?
Boy: Chicken.
Girl: Yeah, that is whack.

3) Crooked Timber has also noticed the new Inferno video game. I'm telling you people. Dante: The New Bacon. I, personally, prefer my take on the game, but their best riff may be on the uncanny similarities between the epic poem and a certain other story about another famous Italian:

OK, then, what about this: it’s obvious that the way to do this right would have been as an installment in the Mario series: Mario’s Comedy. With Peach as Beatrice, Bowser as Satan, Luigi as Virgil, providing ‘super guide’ assistance’. Or maybe Virgil should be a Toad. I’m flexible. And the rest of the cast. Mushrooms and King Boo and Koopas and Yoshis and big biting metal balls on chains, disporting in appropriate spiritual attitudes. Lava and ice and howling wind. Various souls trapped in blocks you free by jumping on them, then carrying them to the end of the level, maybe.

Of course this makes the same mistake that the new game makes: Nobody ever kidnaps Beatrice. She isn't a damsel in distress. Nevertheless:

4)

Video Game Pitch Meeting (1979) -- powered by Cracked.com

5) I earlier mentioned the difficulties of fighting of the depression that is caused by the never-ending terribleness of February. I have been trying to stave off these feelings the only way I know: Hero Dogs.

Treo, an eight-year-old black Labrador from the Military Working Dogs, who is to be presented Wednesday with Britain's Dickin medal, awarded for bravery and commitment in wartime, the highest military honor an animal can expect, poses with the medal at the Imperial War Museum in London, Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010. Treo is being decorated for his work sniffing out explosives in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)