My Comps

All these computers laying around. What's a nerd to do?

Yo Yo Ma-Suzuki

This guy makes Tom Smothers look like...well, me with a yo-yo, basically.

Passin' It Around

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, even if we don't speak often, please post a comment with a memory of you and me. It can be anything you want -- good or bad. When you're finished, post this little paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people remember about you.

Oh, and don't forget to include a name. Thanks.

Mucho Trabajo

Just to let you all know, the project I’m working on now is entitled “Gangster’s Guilt”, a short film directed by my good friend L.D. Taylor. I will also be editing together a documentary on the making of the movie as a freebie for the DVD. As events unfold, I’ll let you guys know.

The Song Heard Round The World

No Disassemble

Ready to see something really cool? It looks like we’re making advancements in Science and Technology as usual. Watch as this robot knows where to grab the ball:



Youtube Summary: The MIT CSAIL humanoid robot Domo reaching to a moving target.

Ah, that’s SOME input. Anyone who can guess the movie reference I’m making here can leave a guess in the comments, but this is still just really cool to watch.

80s Nostalgia Update

As a proud child of the 80s, news like this makes me feel…Hmm, good, bad…Skeptical is more like it:

CLEVELAND and LOS ANGELES, April 12 /PRNewswire/ -- American Greetings Properties, American Greetings entertainment and outbound licensing division, and DIC Entertainment (DIC), a leading global children's media company, announced today that an agreement has been finalized to launch educational and informational programming on the Saturday morning programming block on CBS. The Saturday morning line-up will showcase an all-new animated series featuring world-renowned favorite Care Bears(TM), an animated series starring the ever-popular Strawberry Shortcake(TM), plus an exciting new animated series called Sushi Pack.

Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake will target children ages 4-8 and Sushi Pack will skew higher to children ages 6-11. All three series are scheduled to launch September 2007.

"We are excited about bringing the new look of Care Bears to another generation of kids, as well as introducing the brand new Sushi Pack and showcasing our timeless Strawberry Shortcake through this new programming," said Jeffrey Conrad, Senior Vice President, Creative for American Greetings Properties. "The initial feedback to the new, updated look of Care Bears has been overwhelmingly positive, and Sushi Pack has the potential to be a breakthrough property for us with its unique style, adventure and sense of humor."

"We have had a tremendous amount of success with American Greetings in re-launching Strawberry Shortcake, and DIC is thrilled to continue our relationship as we partner to introduce brand new entertainment from the classic property Care Bears, as well as the innovative new property Sushi Pack," commented Jeffrey Edell, President, DIC. "The new series will compliment our existing programming line-up this Fall on CBS and offer our viewers a broader range of programming options from pre-school to tween."

The Care Bears, everyone's favorite bears, filled with warmth, caring and humor, are back with an all-new animated series of delightful tales from Care-a-lot. The 52, 11-minute episodes will feature a fresh and contemporary twist on the classic property.

The new animated series Sushi Pack follows five crime-fighting pieces of sushi that protect Wharf City from over-the-top diabolical villains. The humor-filled, action-packed television treatment for Sushi Pack was written by animation legends Tom Ruegger and Nicholas Hollander, the Emmy(R)-winning writers/producers behind such animated hits as "Animaniacs," "Tiny Toon Adventures," and "Pinky and the Brain." The series, of 52, 11-minute episodes, is being co-produced by American Greetings Properties and DIC Entertainment.

My Personal Rundown
Care Bears: This property I could never get enough of as a kid. As an adult, I found it interesting to analyze the evolution of the property even as it was brought into the new millennium. Clearly, this one franchise as wonderful as this one has gone through more changes than a newborn infant’s diaper. I could pinpoint some of the differences between the DiC era and the Nelvana era back in the 80s to the changes already made in the Nelvana in the new millennium, but I wouldn’t want to bore you all with the details. I’ll just say that the initial rebirth of this franchise in the new millennium has been less than phenomenal (to me at least) due to the apparent need to reinvent the world of the characters. It seems strange to me that they had a recipe that once worked and decided to change that recipe just because they could. Now they’re changing it again.

What I’m trying to say is, too much change makes the baby go blind. Albeit the changes already made seem to make the franchise a shadow of it’s former greatness, changing it again sounds like bad news to me. And to think the changes are being put in place by DiC, the company that couldn’t bring the franchise to it’s fullest in the 80s (even though they have some of the best cartoons in TV history under their belt), that’s doubly bad news. And didn’t they just recently sell the Care Bears to SD Entertainment? I think so.

Strawberry Shortcake: Never watched it as a kid. While the Care Bears appealed to both genders, any little boy caught with one was branded a sissy. Any boy caught with Strawberry Shortcake would have been treated worse, no doubt, because it only targets little girls. But I acknowledged the franchise’s existence nonetheless and even when it was reborn with the other 80s franchises. And, I confess: I did, in recent years, watch one of the direct to video Strawberry Shortcake movies they cranked out lately. By my own free will and curiousity, mind you. And I once happened to catch an episode of the show one morning. PLEASE DON’T KILL ME! I was just curious.

Anyway, looking at it context, it’s a cute franchise for kids and thus should be given a chance to flourish. I’m no expert on the history of Strawberry Shortcake, but if I had little girls, I’d buy that stuff for them. No doubt.

Sushi Pack: There’s nothing nostalgic about this property for me whatsoever. It’s a new franchise, which means, of course, that it wasn’t around in the 80s. But in trying to understand what Sushi Pack was, I Googled “Sushi Pack” and the official website came up first. Immediately, the first thing that came to mind was “Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!” Although it would be unfair to claim that they were ripping off another franchise, I’ll go, instead, with the summary on the website, that they are crime-fighting, adolescent pieces of Sushi who happen to look too kyoot! Although I know have to beg the question, what kind of evil does mutant sushi battle against? Food from major fast food restaurants? The westernization of Japanese food? Perhaps they fight for the rights of sushi everywhere to have the right amount of additives? I gotta watch the show now just to find out.

Mama's Boy

Same uncle, same e-mails

I owe my Mother so much!
1. My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE. "If you're going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning."
2. My mother taught me RELIGION. "You better pray that will come out of the carpet."
3. My mother taught me about TIME TRAVEL. "If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle of next week!"
4. My mother taught me LOGIC. " Because I said so, that's why."
5. My mother taught me MORE LOGIC. "If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you're not going to the store with me."
6. My mother taught me FORESIGHT. "Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you're in an accident."
7. My mother taught me IRONY. "Keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about."
8. My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS. "Shut your mouth and eat your supper."
9. My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM. "Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!"
10. My mother taught me about STAMINA. "You'll sit there until all that spinach is gone."
11. My mother taught me about WEATHER. "This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it."
12. My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY. "If I told you once, I've told you a million times. Don't exaggerate!"
13. My mother taught me the CIRCLE OF LIFE. "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out."
14. My mother taught me about BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION.
"Stop acting like your father!"
15. My mother taught me about ENVY. "There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don't have wonderful parents like you do."
16. My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION. "Just wait until we get home."
17. My mother taught me about RECEIVING. "You are going to get it when you get home!"
18. My mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE. "If you don't stop crossing your eyes, they are going to get stuck that way."
19. My mother taught me ESP. "Put your sweater on; don't you think I know when you are cold?"
20. My mother taught me HUMOR. "When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don't come running to me."
21. My mother taught me HOW TO BECOME AN ADULT. "If you don't eat your vegetables, you'll never grow up."
22. My mother taught me GENETICS. "You're just like your father."
23. My mother taught me about my ROOTS. "Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a barn?"
24. My mother taught me WISDOM. "When you get to be my age, you'll understand."

And my favorite:

25. My mother taught me about JUSTICE. "One day you'll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you

Good God, Y’all

I’ve been too lazy these past couple days to blog or check my e-mail. And considering yesterday’s tragedy at Virginia Tech, I was rather depressed. So I decided to snap out of it today and take a look at some of the jokes my uncles sent me in my e-mail. And as usual, there are important lessons to be learned from a good joke.

A United States Marine was attending some college courses between assignments. He had completed missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One of the courses had a professor who was a vowed atheist and a member of the ACLU. One day, the professor shocked the class when he came in. He looked to the ceiling and flatly stated, "God, if you are real, then I want you to knock me off this platform. I'll give you exactly 15 minutes."

The lecture room fell silent. You could hear a pin drop. Ten minutes went by and the professor proclaimed, "Here I am God. I'm still waiting."

It got down to the last couple of minutes when the Marine got out of his chair, went up to the professor, and hit him square in the face, knocking him off the platform. The professor was out cold.

The Marine went back to his seat and sat there, silently. The other students were shocked and stunned and sat there looking on in silence. The professor eventually came to, noticeably shaken, looked at the Marine and asked, "What the hell is the matter with you? Why did you do that?"

The Marine calmly replied, "God was too busy today protecting America's soldiers who are protecting your right to say stupid stuff and act like an idiot. So, He sent me."

I wonder if this is the same professor who dropped the piece of chalk, asking God to save it before it broke on the ground. You never know with these stories. Wink, wink.

Other People’s Ideas

And when I say “Other”, I really mean “OTHER.” Remember the Doomsday Prophet of Religion I mentioned in my last article? Well, this is the part where I explain myself. Upon entering the campus yesterday, I picked up a flier from a ranting old codger who held a sign I didn’t read up in the air. Typical Doomsday Prophet type. Nevertheless, I read the flier he was handing out from “People’s Ideas” and wondered to myself what the heck kind of people read this junk.

Here’s what the flier had to say. As usual, my comments are non-italicized words.

PSYCHOCRATS NEED WARS

Those who deal with people as a professional way of life, whose religion is psychology, are the leading aspect of the ruling class even when they see themselves as being used by the big money people. Recently, many of these types of professionals have acquired big money even though accumulating riches was not their initial goal.

When it comes to certain political issues, the psychocrats and promoters of older religions such as Christianity, Judaism, etc, are sometimes bitterly at odds with each other. Nevertheless they are married as one, each dependent upon the existence of the other for their survival.

The problem as I see it so far is that the old man shouting on the sidewalk in the manner that I previously described is referring to the people of my religion and every other major religion as psycho – or actually “psychocrat” which isn’t even a word. I acknowledge that he could be referring to the term “psychology,” but in context, it doesn’t seem like he exactly means that.

The psychocrats are not so conscious of their interdependence with the likes of George W. Bush and millions of his supporters, but this current invasion and occupation of iraq could not exist if it were not for so many American soldiers with a strong God-belief. If our soldiers lacked this strong God-belief, our military would fall apart from within. Religions need and maintain wars.

Seems all right except for one part that seems rather skewed. He’s stating that religions need wars, like it’s automatically inherent that war is an evil thing. So how to get rid of war, in this perfect version of the world that he invisions? By getting rid of religion, of course:

Because the sons and daughters of the psychocrats usually lack that strong God-belief, it is rare to find them willing to kill and to risk their lives for the power of the nation. Thus, it is easy to understand why Bush would not institute a draft to man his wars, despite the fact that many thought our president would implement it.

You hear that folks? We don’t need a draft because we have enough faith to go around and a strong sense of patriotism! Alright!

Yet the non-productive way of live of the psychocrats could not exist for so many millions of Americans if we did not dominate the world. That is why the psychocrats and the older religions are married as one because neither could exist except alongside the other.

I’m sorry, but people don’t get to high places by being NON-productive. Being productive implies that the producer has a tendency towards producing, generating and creating. Throughout history, no institution has ever gone into place without being productive. It’s either be productive or die out. Even the most despicable institutions ever created, i.e. Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Napoleon’s empire, could be classified as productive, with the obvious exception of morality in the equation. That’s how imperialism comes along, though.

This understanding places President Bush as smarter on this issue than the elitist left who see him as stupid. Although Bush may not think of America as an imperialist nation, his God belief enables him to believe that American domination is a good thing for the world. We desire that our nation play a leadership role, but Bush’s dream of American imperialism being necessary for a free world reveals social ignorance.

Oh, so now America is an Imperialist nation. Well let’s just see what the definition of imperialism is according to Dictionary.com, shall we?

Imperialism: The policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies.

So in other words, we need to have absolute control over other countries to be running an empire. I guess then that’s why the United Nations decided to support us in the Iraq war from the start without batting an eyelid, right? Wrong. We HAVE no absolute control over other countries. That, and imperialist nations throughout history have tendencies to either execute or deport their own citizens for speaking out against them. Alright then, back to our regularly scheduled lunacy:

The president also reveals his social ignorance in his efforts to gain a hired Arab army to control the Arab world. It seems the resistors to Bush’s dream also have God-belief and are more willing than the occupiers to give their life to defend their religion.

We cannot kill and maim all of the resistors, and the more our soldiers and the puppet soldiers make moves to tighten their grip on the resistors, the more resistors they will create. That in effect is what Saddam was telling Bush and his supporters long before they decided to invade and occupy Iraq.

In this war, there are two kinds of people, folks. Two kinds of people fighting this thing. The first kind is the kind who kill so that they can get into heaven and please Allah for slaying the infidels, and the guys who are trying to defend their country from those who think that. And a good percentage of those who are of the defending type just so happen to believe in God. Which religion is the problem? According to this guy, both. According to me, just one.

Saddam did not ask to be captured, jailed, and tried in a puppet court, but he knew that his cause would not die with him. He too put his life on the line to serve his cause, and it is working out similar to the warnings he gave Bush. In regards to the results of the American invasion of Iraq, it turns out that Saddam was wiser than Bush.

He’s completely gone from reality at this point. He’s actually talking about Saddam Hussein like the guy had a cause worth dying for. And to top it off, he ends with saying that the fascist is smarter than the imperialist. Don’t believe me? Well, if you continue along that line, that’s the kind of conclusion that this guy would have to come up with.

If the Arab people did not resist imperialism , their unity as a people and the religion that keeps them together would die. In the Arab world, like in the American world, the majority seeks only peace. In elite class society, however, the majority never makes the important decisions for power and therefore the liberty of the whole group.

What Bush fails to tell the people is that the resistors have extensive support from their people and that support will not stop. The support for Bush and the imperialist wars will also not go away partly because the way of life of the leaders of all political parties in the U.S. need those wars to maintain their professional ways of life. Those leaders are obligated to maintain the non-productive professional ways of life of about one hundred million employed Americans and a high percentage of our youth also seek those non-productive professional ways of life.

I guess then Bush is just so professional and non-productive then. He’s professional at being non-productive. Same goes for all politicians. All politicians are good for nothing. And this guy wants people to take him seriously.

No political party is an exception to this rule. Let us come together to make conditions in which such a political party will, in the future, arise.

I would LOVE to see this guy try to make a political party that never fights any wars whatsoever just to see how long it lasts.

Many of those who now do not even bother to vote will be in the vanguard of such a political party. Unlike Stan Roberts or John Tuvo, they cannot yet conceive of resolution to the class distinction. Most falsely believe that class opportunism is human nature even if it is not their own nature.

The Bible implies that the organization of the productive people for their own collective power can not stop the wars. The purpose of that is for the preaching class to maintain their nonproductive professional ways of life. If class opportunism were human nature, the effort to stop wars would be foolish and the Bible would be correct.

Class opportunism is not human nature, although it is practiced by a large percentage of the people. This is especially true in this nation because the opportunity is so great.

The things the Bible says in particular to human nature being opportunistic and violent, says it in order that the productive people remain meek, and that we should look to the teaching of the non-productive with faith and obedience.

Here’s one thing you need to know about the class system before you continue reading. The class system exists to show who works hard and who doesn’t. That’s one of the important factors. If someone has worked his way up the ladder, he’s productive and worked hard to where he got to. If someone doesn’t have a job and spends his time in his parent’s house blogging about a flier some yahoo on the street was giving out, that’s not being very productive. The sacrifices I make for you people.

For a successful anti-war movement, a need exists that productive people come together to lead and not to follow the teaching of nonproductive people who lead the current organizations.

To be against violence is not enough. We must begin to dwell upon the class distinction. That is the thing that war and other violence is an inevitable consqequence of.

Translation: In order to have a successful anti-war movement, we need to throw another wrench in the works and effectively break something that was working. Like having an anti-war movement doesn’t throw a wrench in the works already.

The class distinction does not begin with personal wealth. It begins and ends with the division of the other people into two groups. One class deals with the people as a professional way of life. The other class produces and services the primary needs for the survival of the people as a professional way of life. Although this distinction is clear, a large percentage of American have a dual class nature and confuse the issue because some of such people claim to be classless while identifying more with the non-productive part of their practice that with the productive part.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the pathetic lack of common sense that parades the streets of San Francisco. Sad.

Smash Wednesday

Wednesday was a big and happy notable day for me. As my computer was chugging away at producing a hi-def copy of one of my short films from last semester, I decided to head off to SFState a little earlier today. I was hoping to run into the College Republicans at SFSU just to see what the group was like. They said on their site that they have a table set up nearly every day around noon or so, so I tried getting there early.

Today couldn’t have been a better day. Upon arriving at State, once I got past the Doomsday Prophet of Religion whom I’ll get to in another blog subsequently, the campus was having some kind of club day. Every club there had a table set up at the Cesar Chavez Student Center, but the stage was given to the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) who were putting on a show about how evil the United States is for supporting Israel because Israelis murder Palestinian babies. Two kids were there supposedly from the Palestinian location (I’m not sure you can really it a state) who had some things to say about the conditions in their homeland… in AMERICAN accents.

My 2 cents: I saw a video months ago on Youtube that was a bootleg of a 60 minutes documentary on what they called “Pallywood.” Basically, it was an exposition on Palestinians faking graphic war scenes for the news in the United States. That and anyone who’s seen the video that I just posted knows that the Palestinians are more fond of killing their own people and causing their own misery. What I saw yesterday was not a group that should be pitied. What I saw was a bunch of Socialists who were taking advantage of young children in an effort to bash United States foreign policies. And if their ages of eight and ten (I think they were) doesn’t suggest any gullibility to you, the reader, then this will: One of the kids made sure to include in their speech that the United States was created to end slavery among other things. Last time I checked, slavery wasn’t ended until long after the United States was institutionalized thanks to the Democratic Party.

That being said, the College Republicans had their own nice little table setup as well as a little theme called “Club Gitmo.” Three of the students in the club were pretending to be detainees at Guantanamo Bay, sipping drinks and relaxing in the sun under fake palm trees and complaining about the conditions they were in. According to a handout from the club, this is what they had to say about Gitmo:

- Detainiees get 3 “culturally sensitive” meals a day.
- Muslim detainees are given prayer rugs and allowed to pray 5 times a day.
- On Fridays, detainees are given Klondike bars and Dr. Pepper for good behavior.
- Even though non-uniformed enemy combatants are not protected by the Geneva Conventions, they have subsequently been given those protections.
- Over 70 detainees are currently on trail for participating in terrorist activitiy. With the remaining 250 detainees still under investigation.
- There is ZERO audio, video or photographic evidence to substantiate claims of torture at Guantanamo Bay.
- Claiming any alleged miscarriage of justice rationalizes closing Guantanamo is to say that someone being wrongfully convicted of a crime in the US criminal court is reason to shut down our prison system.

Disclaimer: the author of this post welcomes any concrete evidence to debunk any of these statements. However, I have heard from Senator Brownback and others who have actually been to Gitmo that the prisoners are being given the best treatment and actually eating better than most American families. They were having glazed chicken there, for cryin’ out loud. I wouldn’t be surprised if everything said here was absolutely true, and then some. Did you know that detainees who have had their charges dropped have been released? You know, like the way it goes here in the United States if they can’t prove you’ve done a crime? Yeah, like that.

All that being said, the club was selling Klondike Bars and Dr. Pepper to anyone else passing by, as well as fliers. Not having anything better to do, I thought I’d stick around and support these guys for once. They went around with camcorders, mostly taping the GUPS for their statements. Leigh Wolf, the club president, filmed a guy from the GUPS rapping about how bad the United States was for supporting the evil Jews. As soon as he was done, the camera went down and the GUPS guy brought the crowd’s attention to Leigh, saying that he worked for Front Page Magazine, and that his club makes videos that portray a very negative view of SFState by filming events such as this one and getting police in there and whatnot.

My 2 cents: Wrong again, Pally. A quick search of Front Page Magazine for the name Leigh Wolf yields no results. Perhaps he’s mistaken Leigh for Lee Kaplan, one of their many columnists. That and if I understand what he says correctly, he’s complaining that Leigh filming him complaining about the United States is giving the campus a bad image. If he’s worried that anti-American rapping will make SFState look bad, he shouldn’t get up on stage there and start performing anti-American rap.

On the other hand, the one thing about the club’s demeanor that I wasn’t too proud of was their language. Often, I noticed some of the club members making some off-color remarks about the socialist groups on campus (there’s about four of them under different names.) Leigh Wolf heckling our rapping friend subsequently to his little blame throwing mantra there didn’t exactly make a positive image either. Mainly, it’s the policies that will ultimately keep me connected to these guys.

When the group decided that the crowd had thinned out enough, they decided to start packing up. The only problem was no one wanted to bring home an untouched package of half melted Klondike bars. So when someone suggested using it to make a peace offering to the GUPS, I made the move since they didn’t know me at all. This is a basic transcript of what happened when I went over to their table:

White girl working at table: Would you like one of our handouts?
Me: Actually, I’ve come to make a peace offering from Club Gitmo. The detainees have moved on to eating Kit Kats and don’t need these anymore (Holds up the Klondike bars. White girl gives me an angry scowl.)
GUPS Rapper: You know what, you guys are really sick with what you’re doing there. You’re making a complete mockery of the misery that’s going on at Guantanamo Bay. You ought to be ashamed.
Me: I take it then you don’t want the Klondike Bars?
Them: No, go away.

As I turned around, I noticed the Republicans filming me from a distance and starting to shout “Come on, you don’t want any Klondike Bars?” I officially feel like a white Borat, except without the whole running the idea into the ground thing. After that, I walked back to the group, told them what happened and we all got a big laugh out of it saying that, they should have just gone up there with a camera to get the whole thing with audio.

In a week or so, they’ll have finished editing and uploading the video to Youtube, and you can guarantee that I’ll post it here when they do. I really can’t wait.

The rest of the day went on pretty much the same as usual. Went to class, took the bus back, went to prayer group, went home. The only other thing really worth mentioning is that on the bus ride home, some guy on the bus got into a heated conversation over whether or not there should be more buses. My position: taxes will rise if we add six more buses on the one route we’re taking and traffic congestion will increase, making our problem of being packed into the bus like sardines look like a kankersore. His position: Six more buses will somehow decrease congestion and that I don’t know what I’m talking about because I don’t take the bus 6 times a week back and forth like he does, so come back and talk to him when I’ve done so.

Riiiight. After the guy got off, the girl on the bus next to me tapped me on the shoulder and laughed with me about it. A guy who’s agitated about taking the bus so often that he can’t think about the bigger picture isn’t the most intelligent person to be arguing these issues with.

UNilaterally against Israel

To: Everyone else
From: The Jew-hating, PLO-hugging, oversanctioning, “kofi-annin’”, oil-for-moneyin’, human rights rejectin’, pointing-their-finger-back-at-us, sorry excuses for human beings at the UN.
Message: Please stop calling us Jew-hating, PLO-hugging, oversanctioning, “kofi-annin’”, oil-for-moneyin’, human rights rejectin’, pointing-their-finger-back-at-us, sorry excuses for human beings. It’s not very nice, ya know:

Gaming Update

Sitting here in my attic with not enough money for a newer game system, playing older games with whatever I can when the time comes, it’s always fun for me to log into IGN from time to time and look for something to oogle at that I’ll probably never be able to own. Which is why this hot recent news has got me wiggling in my office chair with excitement. For the longest time, rumors have flown around about the possibility of a “Mario and Sonic” games being made, even though the companies that made them have had a history of fierce competition. Now, it looks like it’s happening:

Finally the dreams of SEGA and Nintendo fans come true as news hits that Mario and Sonic are set to star side by side in a new game for Wii and DS, based on the 2008 Olympics.

SEGA made the historic announcement this morning and confirmed that Mario & Sonic at the Olympics (as it's known) is due for release this Christmas. The game's currently in development by SEGA Japan and Shigeru Miyamoto is supervising the project. The title will be published by SEGA of America later this year.

Players compete in events around venues based on official locations for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Featuring a supporting cast of recognizable faces from the world of both Sonic and Mario, players can choose from a range of characters including Luigi, Knuckles, Yoshi, and Tails. More characters will be announced at a future date.

If this works, they’ll probably consider future releases that have a little more action attached to them. For instance, maybe an action adventure title melding the two universes together for one game in one of their nice, epic storylines. That could be fun. Or perhaps, say Super Smash Bros. Brawl? One can only dream.

In other gaming news, classic Sega fans will die to hear this one. The sequel to NiGHTS into Dreams is finally becoming a reality:

SEGA of America and Europe today jointly announced NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams for Nintendo's Wii console. The game is the official sequel to the cult hit SEGA Saturn game in which players explored dream worlds and controlled a jester with the ability to fly. Journey of Dreams seems to follow the same basic premise.

According to SEGA, the title enables gamers to control a jester named NiGHTS through Nightopia, "a rich and vibrant world where dreams come to life." Players will, of course, utilize the Wii remote for what SEGA calls a "heightened sense of gliding, spiraling and looping through seven mystical dream worlds." In addition to soaring through the stages, gamers will battle Nightmares from the the land of Nightmare.

In an official statement made to the Japanese press today, Nights: JoD producer and Sonic Team veteran Takashi Iizuka said, "In 1996, under the concept of 'a refreshing feeling of flight,' we created Nights, a character of the world of dreams who dances through the skies. Eleven years later, the long silence broken, Nights will soar through a new dream world. A new stage, a new story, and a new plaftorm, the Wii. Please look forward to the new adventure of Nights and friends."

"We plan to deliver a gameplay experience never before seen on the Wii with NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams," said Scott A. Steinberg, vice president of marketing, SEGA of America. "The game takes full advantage of the unique Wii Remote controller enabling gamers to guide NiGHTS through spectacularly designed dream worlds intertwined with a story about hope and courage."

For those of you who aren’t familiar with NiGHTS history, lemme fill yaz in a little bit. It all beganin 1996 when the NiGHTS into Dreams was released for the Sega Saturn. It was the first game made by the Sonic Team not to feature the Sonic crew, but it was popular enough and overtime gained a pretty good cult following. It was even popular enough that a Christmas version was released and the Archie Comics people made two mini-series comics out of it. There never was a sequel, but the Sonic Team kept the game alive even after the Sega Saturn era. They even included the NiGHTS universe in a pinball game in Sonic Adventure.

But even after its run in the popularity mill, I never so much as got a chance to play it myself. I’d give it a try, though, just for the sake of being able to play the game for myself. But what really makes this good news is that after all the years of waiting, the true fans of the game will finally be satisfied. And who knows, I may be able to join in on the fun this time around.

Disclaimer: the author of this blog has no affiliation with Sega, other than the average hardcore fan. He just thinks that this kind of news is REALLY cool to hear!