Wow, it's certainly been a while. The holiday month was incredibly busy - I thought I was safe when Christmas ended, but then New Year's popped up, and with it, the opportunity to trek upstate to one of our friend's houses for a few days. I actually made someone bring a laptop up there under the premise that I could get an article done - of course, I overlook the fact that three-day New Year's parties aren't exactly conductive to writing 3,000 word articles about old movies and toys. So oh well and pfft. I'm obviously quite good at making excuses for myself, but the holidays are gone so I can no longer blame ennui on 'em. Look for articles to come at a much better pace from here on out.

Speaking of which, I just got finished doing a villain character tribute for Super Mario Bros. 2. Click here to read it! I've been waiting to do that one ever since I got the game all boxed up nice with the original manual at a thrift shop a few months back. It's funny - I had set up the article last night, and went to sleep feeling like it'd be an easy one to write today. Those types of articles don't really take too big of a thought process to forge, but when I was done, the thing clocked in at over 4,000 words, making it the longest article in a good long while. I stopped counting words with my stuff a long time ago, because having lots of them doesn't mean you've written anything worth reading. Still, I try to keep it at least above 1,000 words, because my feeling is this - on a page with a pop-up ad and all that stuff, you should have enough there to where it isn't a waste of a click. Now try as people may to complain about the ads they see on the Internet, it's my personal belief that dealing with a few of them is fair enough for reading a free article that took hours to create. And no matter how much people complain about ads, I'll never change that opinion. (actually, I'm pretty lucky - few seem to complain to me about ads these days)

Anyway, I have some really great stuff coming up in the coming week, or next few weeks. Some really obscure and strange movie reviews - everything from The Devil's Rain to The Garbage Pail Kids flick. The latter is pretty well-known, but you won't believe what goes on in Devil's Rain till you see it. And that's just a sampling - I went through a great deal of effort to get some real killer stuff in. As much as I like writing about He-Man and Transformers, there's an unparalleled thrill in being able to show people something they might never come across anyway. It's why I'll spend a whole day putting together a review of a movie as bad as Star Crystal, and it's why I just spent thirty bucks so I could properly vidcap just how stupid Garbage Pail Kids were in film-form. Stay tuned.

We've been cleaning the Christmas decorations out of the apartment, and this has somehow turned into an early Spring cleaning of our entire place. I've come across a thousand things I forgot I had, including many I'm embarrassed to remember buying. One of the more stupid items? I've somehow amassed a collection of broken Virgin Mary statues that'd make the Vatican jealous. Still, I did find a few treasure. Some old sci-fi rag proved entertaining enough through it's strange metaphysical ads - some of which I've scanned for your viewing pleasure...

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Up above is some ad for a candle that can make all your dreams come true. Since the candle only costs a buck, it's one hell of a deal.

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This next one above features your chance to buy the real story about extra-terrestrials blowing up Earth. Yeah.

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Something about witchcraft, not really sure. I think it has something to do with stealing hair strands to perform insidious spells against your enemies. Either that or they're selling a cake pan, my eyes aren't good enough for small print anymore.

Happy New Year, all.

Posted by Matt on 01/05/2003. E-mail me!