5 days left to enter GEARS OF WAR 2: THE SOUNDTRACK signed CD contest

Just a friendly reminder that there are now five days remaining to enter the contest to win one of three copies of Gears of War 2: The Soundtrack, signed by composer Steve Jablonsky (who has also composed the scores for Transformers, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake and ABC's Desperate Housewives in addition to a ton of other good stuff).

By the way, these copies will be personally signed by Steve Jablonsky to the winners! So if you're name is "Barney Spepple" and you win one of 'em, your copy will be signed something like "To Barney..." etc.

How do you enter again? Well, here are the rules once more...

1. E-mail your entry to theknightshift@gmail.com with GEARS OF WAR 2 SOUNDTRACK CONTEST in the subject line. GEARS OF WAR 2 SOUNDTRACK CONTEST has to be in the subject line.

2. Include the following information in your entry:

- First and last name

- Mailing address

- Phone number

- The name of the Gears of War character you are impersonating

3. And then, attach a photo of yourself doing your best impersonation of a Gears of War character. It can be anyone from established Gears of War canon (the games, the comic book, the novel Gears of War: Aspho Fields but you'll have to be especially imaginative, anything that's been authorized by Epic Games as being legit part of the Gears of War mythology). Keep in mind that this is not a costume contest! If you're the kind of person who likes to parade around Comic-Con and Dragon-Con wearing a full set of COG Gear armor, you're more than welcome to pose wearing that. But this is all about character. This is a contest focusing on raw persona. In short: do you "get" what Gears of War is all about? Can you make that come across with nothing more than your own countenance? If so, pick a Gears of War character and show us what you got! Doesn't matter if you're male or female: plop on a do-rag and show us your best Marcus Fenix mug. Or give us Dom or Anya or Baird or Cole or Dizzy or Tai (ooh-boy I'm eager to see if anyone attempts Tai) or heck, even a Locust grub or the Locust Queen herself! Extra points will be given toward creativity and originality, but as I said this is about channeling character more than it is about costume ingenuity. Also, please try to keep your image size to 1 megabyte or less.

4. No age limit but this contest will enforce a "one entry per person" limit. So like shootin' a gun in a Gears of War game, make it count!

5. You'll have between now and until 12:01 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on December 18th, 2008 to e-mail in your entry, so that gives you a bit more than two weeks to come up with something.

6. Judging for the contest will be conducted by a three-member panel that has already been pre-selected. Their decisions are final.

7. By entering you are giving consent to have your photo published on The Knight Shift blog (the one you're looking at right now). So make sure your photos are "family-friendly", folks :-)

8. In addition to the three final winners, this blog reserves the right to also publish "honorable mentions" if there are any.

9. Insofar as real life will cooperate, the winners will be announced sometime on December 19th 2008 and the signed CDs will be rushed to each of the winners as soon as possible.

Remember: this is not a costume contest! Don't let your lack of real Coalition of Ordered Governments armor deter you from entering! If you have a face (let's hope you do :-) and you think you can channel and project the spirit of Marcus, Dom, Anya, or any other Gears of War character with it, then get your entry sent in today!

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Butt-Numb-A-Thon 10 starts today

For those who don't know what that is, it's an annual 24-hour long film festival hosted by Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News, at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas. Some consider it to be the most sought-after cinematic event in the country. I got to attend Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9 last year and twelve months later there's not a day that goes by that I don't think about the whole crazy experience.

Well, for those of us who won't be able to go to this year's Butt-Numb-A-Thon, here's something to assuage our pain. It's the trailer for Stunt Rock, which is shown every year at Butt-Numb-A-Thon to get the party started...

Is that not the most outrageously cool trailer ever made? :-)

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So last night was Performance #4 of OLIVER TWIST

I think having all this past week off from rehearsals might have been a good thing, 'cuz everything seemed to have really clicked well during last night's show. We all got into it totally refreshed and ready to knock it out of the ballpark. Also, there was a substantially good audience, despite what apparently was pro wrestling at the National Guard Armory next door which had also drawn a large crowd.

Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's production of Oliver Twist plays again tonight at 7:30 and then the final show tomorrow afternoon at 2:30, in the Advanced Technologies Building Auditorium at Rockingham Community College. Click here for more information.

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Study: Older people are VERY active video game players! But...

...they tend to hide that fact from their contemporaries, according to the story at Financial Post.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong, at all, with anyone enjoying a good video game. The story cites Nicholas Muehlen, a fifty-year old dude - and a chef, by the way - who likes to indulge in the Gears of War, Halo and Call of Duty series of games. He and his wife get into the play as much as their grown children.

This can't possibly be a bad thing. Or an activity to be embarrassed about.

Video games are a form of entertainment, just like television and movies. But they have the advantage of being an interactive experience that involves not just hand-eye coordination but more often than not some serious thinking, too. And consider immersive-style games like Gears of War 2 and BioShock: why just watch the story when you can be in the story?

Heck, the way the economy is right now, video games are a downright sound investment for your entertainment budget. Certainly they deliver more per dollar than DVDs or movie tickets.

So, Nicholas Muehlen and every other "seasoned" video game player out there: rock on! You are at the forefront of a trend that only looks to continue. Hey, if my own father can do pretty well at Gears of War 2, then this is something that anybody should stand up and feel proud about enjoying! :-)

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Federal Reserve won't say who's getting TWO TRILLION DOLLARS of taxpayer money

Either way you cut this, it screams out "biggest heist of all time".

The Federal Reserve is refusing to disclose the recipients of $2 TRILLION of emergency loans financed by American taxpayers.

On a related note, President Bush is considering tapping into the same funds since the "bailout" failed in the Senate last night.

Time to revisit "Hell Époque" post that I made all the way back in January. That was the term that future historians, I'm sure of it, would give our current era.

The era of United States history that stretched from the early 1990s until the end of the first decade of the 21st century, that has come to be regarded as the final years of America's long-time domination of the world's culture and economy.

Although noted for considerable achievements in computers and telecommunications that led to apparent empowerment of the individual, the Hell Époque was also a time of cultural and political stagnation in America that coincided with tremendous loss of individual liberty as the American government began to seize unprecedented power. Most authorities agree that although this had already been a long-time trend in America, the election of Bill Clinton as U.S. President in 1992 saw the start of the final phase of escalation toward an all-powerful American state. This would climax during the presidency of George W. Bush, whose disastrous domestic and foreign policies catapulted the country toward utter ruin.

Most historians agree that it became widely accepted among the American people during the Hell Époque that their government had finally become too corrupt and that the life they had come to believe in had drawn to a close, and that the "rule of law" under the Constitution no longer existed. This was especially apparent following the collapse of the traditional "two party system" and the failure of the American economy in...

Seems more and more like that's all happening these days.

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Two essays for those of us who are paying attention

The first one is by Matt Towery at Townhall.com, who ruminates on "Why More and More Politicians are Rotten to the Core". Towery echoes a lot of things that have been on my mind during the past year, which have led me to tell many people more times than I care to remember that "There is no faith to be had in politics".

And on the somewhat more ornery side of things, Fred Reed - the Internet's greatest curmudgeon - waxes eloquent in his piece "What Have the Bastards Done to My Country?".

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Ron Paul tells it like it is about auto bailout (twice!)

You would think that common sense might be prevailing enough. I mean, c'mon... would you buy a car from a company owned by the same federal government that has so brilliantly managed Social Security and Amtrak?

So yesterday before the House of Representatives came the Honorable (so rarely do I get to use that term and the person I'm speaking of actually merit it) Ron Paul, and he laid down the smack bigtime on how positively wrong the notion of this "bailout" is. Paul has the brass ones to call this what it really is: socialism, and nationalizing an entire domestic industry. Dr. Paul references not just the Constitution, but a lot of good history.

Here it is: a lone voice of sanity in Washington D.C.

Listening to this, I have no doubt: if the Republican Party leadership (a bunch that I have absolutely no respect for at all) had given this man the support that they gave McCain and the other phonies this past election season, Barack Obama would not tonight be a "President-Elect".

(By the way, I made the embedded video a bit bigger, courtesy of YouTube's new options. How's it look? :-)

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