A Small and Odd Campaign

Mongoose is an odd word. You would imagine it would have either a weird plural or at least an interesting one. It does not. Instead, the plural is "Mongooses" which sounds like a mistake when said aloud, and looks like one when written. Mongi on the other hand, seems like a word both when heard and read, and is weird enough to do Mongoose justice. But if you think that mongi makes drastically less sense than Mongooses, surely mongeese would be better than mongooses? After all, the plural of goose is geese. So whatever your tastes, it seems mongooses is a far inferior option for a plural than mongi and mongeese. Maybe if this gets enough signatures, others will agree.

http://twitition.com/a63p8/

LEGO Reviewing Lego Zelda

Some of you may have seen the viral video by Michael Inglis, which is a stop action video containing LEGO minifigures adapted to resemble characters and monsters out of the hit Nintendo series Legend of Zelda.

Many people have said that this video has made them want a genuine LEGO Zelda set, and it looks like that could soon be a possibility.

After being sent 10,000 requests, LEGO have officially stated they are considering the idea, and if they deem it a good idea, then the products will likely be hitting the shelves.

Of course, there is one large gap they must cross before hand, and that is Nintendo approval. Very few third party Nintendo products have been made, and unless Nintendo think LEGO can bring something new to the idea, it probably won't get approval.

Of course, this isn't the first game series to get turned into a building block set. Halo, the hit series for X-Box  was turned into a Mega Blocks product, and has sold reasonably well.

It may have sold better if it wasn't Megablocks.

But unlike Zelda, Halo is an incredibly successful series in the West, while most of Zelda's fan base can be found in Japan. So even if Nintendo do give it approval, it may not even make it's way over here.

6 Extraordinary People From Unexpected Places

There are some incredibly boring jobs and hobbies out there. Some are dull. Some don't involve much. Some are just stereotypically associated with dull people. The sort of things where you cannot possibly imagine the holder doing anything that interesting. However, sometimes, once every so often, someone goes out and does something big. Such as the people below...

6. Retired Teacher Takes Her Purse Back From Theif

Tell me, does anyone know who this is?

If anyone said she is Jean Hirst, the person who is also in this photo:

You are smarter than the 15 year old who ran off with her purse. 

Now, I'm not saying the mugger made a massive mistake, they did do a few things well. When Jean Hirst had to ask a group of passing girls for the directions to the theatre, the girls offered her a lift, which Jean took. Once they arrived, one of the teens asked for 20p. The other took her bag and ran off with it.

Now, if you're a fifteen year old girl, you're probably thinking that you're pretty much in the clear now. In this particular case, the mugger was not. Despite having both a head start and a 57 year advantage, when the mugger looked back round to see what was happening she saw...

Now, in any other situation, this would not strike the fear of god into you, but in this case, the girl realised that a 72 year old woman had just outrun her and even if she did somehow escape her son the Flash would not be very happy. So, she did the same thing any one of us would do and dropped the hand bag and presumably ran off and hid.

This is actually a GIF of her running around the planet.
A few moments later the sonic boom shattered the shutter glass.

 Now, if you think ends there, you're wrong. She actually returned to the van the teenage girls had been in, and the other girls apologized, presumably worried about any other powers she may have. To cap it all off in a way that somehow makes her seem even more powerful, she then talked to them about choosing their friends more carefully, and presumably ran counter-clockwise around the planet in order to make sure she wasn't late for the theatre. 

5. Construction Worker Does Not Get Crushed By Train

If you've just read the title, you may fail to see how that makes him extraordinary. The answer is: He was under it, along with another man.

If you've ever seen Superman: The Movie, you will know that it is rife with events that still leave people ranting about the sheer implausibility and impossibility of them, and as such I would never say something similiar to them on this blog...

*Re-reads last paragraph in last item*

Never mind.

One scene involves Superman being forced to replace a damaged railway track with himself, without ruining his hair or lycra.

Why on Earth doesn't the Metropolis Police Department wear lycra?

Question Answered

Though Wesley Autery didn't quite do the same, I reckon he must wear the same clothes, as he it was either going to be that or sheer defiance that saved his life.

If you've ever seen any form of Superman media, you will know that just before he goes and does something that would leave a non-Kyrptonian in several blackened pieces, Lois Lane is placed in a situation in which she will be turned into several blackened pieces. In this case, Autery's Lois Lane takes the form of Cameron Hollopeter, who had a fit in an American Subway.

God dammit Bing, this is why nobody uses you. Go sit in the corner.

He was helped to his feet by Autrey and two other men, which would have been a rather dull ending. Since I don't think I can use the word "fortunately" concerning people having fits and trains, I shall just say that if you want to read this for longer, it is good news, because it doesn't end there. As soon as he got back on his feet, he lost control of his legs, and fell in front of a fast approaching train, still having a fit. I imagine Superman would have placed in his "I was too late" list.

Autrey though, apparently has no time for, well, time. While other people may have been a touch preoccupied with preventing themselves from dying, he didn't want his two daughters to see Hollopeter reduced to jam, and jumped in front of the train.

He jumped under the train, grabbed Hollopeter, trying to prevent him from moving, and lied there, as the train driver paniced and stopped the train, but he was too late, and two carriages passed over the two men. Everyone on the platform, including Autreys daughters, saw a train pass over the two men, with enough momentum to kill the both of them.

Apparently Hollopeter knew all this to, because he asked Autrey whether they were dead, and was told that  they were not, and they should remain still or else they would be.

You see, Hollopeter had landed in the drainage gutter, and Autrey pressed the two of them into it. 

That blasé person on the platform makes me wonder whether
Hollopeter fell or was pushed...

The train was so close that it ruined Autrey's hat, implying this was the only piece of non-lycra clothing he was wearing. 

Now... Why would that be?

After this, Autrey was showered with rewards, including a $10,000  check from Donald Trump, which he turned down because he wanted to meet him and tell him "Yo, you're fired."

I shall end this item here, because it has far too much Lycra in it.

4. Shark Loses Fight With A 60 Year Old

Most people when presented with a shark would scream, and for the first time in their life, wish Aquaman was real. When it takes two bites out of you, you would make deals with God, Allah, Satan, Thor and just about every other deity under the Asgard Sun. Paddy Trumpbell instead decided to punch it in the mouth.

Even seeing the name floating above it in a amateur column strikes
fear into it's heart.

When asked about the incident later, she said that instead of the above suggestions, she thought "This shark isn't getting the better of me." So she punched it in the face repeatedly, despite the fact it had one of her limbs in it's mouth and was pulling on it to the point of ripping, and it went away. 

When a rescue ship found her, they were appalled, due to the fact she had three chunks missing from her body, and about 40% of her blood had been lost. They saved her, and she was taken to hospital, where she started asking the doctors about implants.

They say it was silicon she wanted, we say it was this.

3. Judge Enforces The Law Personally

When you hear someone is a judge, you tend to think of a slightly portly old man sitting in a small square, with cobwebs on their armpits. This was what Paul Reid, a British man charged with sexual assualt relied on. He noticed his hand cuffs were a little loose, and waited until the hearing was over and people began to leave.

It was then he ditched his hand cuffs, jumped over the clerks bench, and ran towards freedom. He would have made it too, but when he looked round he saw...

That's the second time I've done this in this article,
and they both contain smiling old British people.

Judge Douglas Marks Moore grabbed Paul Reid by the throat, presumably proceeding to pick him up and throw him across the room. However, Reid was undettered, and probably motivated by fear just as much as freedom ran out of the court room, only to look back and see...

"Alright, now it's getting boring."

That's right. The 60 year old man chased him down the corridor and proceeded to rugby tackle him. Apparently the person who taught his lectures at University was Professor. Dredd. It was then Reid finally gave up, and let the security guards who arrived later take him away. 

I'm not the Judge Woolwich deserves, I'm the hero Woolwich needs.

2. Window Cleaner Kills Suicide

East Sussex: Home to holiday destinations, coastal towns and suicide hot spots alike. Beachy head, the cliffs facing the coast from East Sussex have on average 20 deaths a year, and if that figure had just been 19 in 2004, it would likely be more.

Why?

Because that year, Maggie Lane was pronounced dead at the bottom of the cliffs, after having presumably jumped. Her husband, Keith Lane, was obviously distraught. Most people would silently attend the funeral and be sad. Keith turned into a super hero.

He was completely untrained, but he went out to prevent suicides. How? Mostly by rugby tackling them.

"You have learnt well, my son. Have you ever considered a career
in law?"

He also found a woman 15 feet down the cliff edge, climbed down to retrieve her, pulled her up, and was heavily criticised by the local suicide prevention organisation, the BHCT, who apparently hadn't bothered to  look up the word "prevention".

They say that Lane's rogue rescues endanger the lives of people trying to kill themselves, which they obviously have never put down on paper. However, Lane has reduced the number of patrols, due to "disliking the confrontations". And he is busying managing his and Douglas Moore's rugby team.

1. Journalist Brings Terror Cell Down While Looking For A Story

You may notice how most of the people in here have ordinary backgrounds. Antinio Salas does not. He was a journalist who whizzed around filming human traffickers and guerilla warfare teams without their consent. He then got bored, heard about a terrorist attack in Madrid that killed 191 people, and thought "I know what I'm going to do today."

You're probably thinking he teamed up with the police to bring it down. He did not. He instead faked converting to the other side, and joined the terrorists.

It took him five years to get in.

He did everything he needed to, learned Arabic, converted to Islam, wrote out the Quaran by hand and wrote books in support of the Jihad, and got them published. After years of work, he got close to Carlos the Jackal, the most feared terrorist in the world up until Osama Bin Laden.

"It's like you took my heart and ripped it out. I thought
I was always going to be your favourite terrorist?"

He got a job as his webmaster, which meant that he had to visit a new country daily, making sure no one knew where he was, just to update a blog. I wonder if he has a vacancy...

He was trained, so he if he wanted to, he could be a real terrorist, and commit major atrocities. This meant that as well as being in danger of being killed by the terrorist cell if they found out his true identity, the worlds intelligence agencies would also kill him without a thought. There were people looking for him, intent on capturing him and torturing him for information. 

Fortunately for Salas, they did not. Instead, he published his own book, under his real name, and offered insights into real terrorism, no doubt helping intelligence agencies across the world.

Now, I don't know about you, but I think he got a pretty good story.

Are Nintendo Making Super Mario Bros 4?

Earlier this year, Nintendo announced they are working on a 2D Mario Platformer for 3DS. While New Super Mario Bros DS and Wii were done in the style of the original trilogy, it appears the 3DS version will be going even further, because Nintendo have registered the domain name "Super Mario 4". Nintendo wouldn't be the first company to do something like this, with Sega creating Sonic 4, and Nintendo has used Sega ideas before (and vice versa) so it seems that it is possible. With E3 coming up in June, it is likely we'll find out all the answers then, along with many of the details about the Wii U.

Nintendo Runs 3DS Photo Contest

Good news British Nintendo 3DS owners and amateur photographers, Nintendo are running a competition where you can put your favourite snaps against the rest of the world. They've teamed up with the National Geographic Kids and the Royal Photographic Society, with the grand prize being a trip for four to Paris (In France, which is bad news for all Texas enthusiasts).

The competition runs until 17th June, and gives you six categories to choose from, Animals, Augmented Reality, Objects, People, Places and Plants, and you merely choose which one, name your photo, and voila! You're in with a chance.

Of course, the photo must be 3D, and have been taken with a 3DS. In order to enter, go to http://3d-photo-contest.nintendonetwork.net/contest/en/.

If you've looked at the URL, you will see that this is part of the upcoming Nintendo Network, which can only be a good sign.

Torchwood May Return

Any keen sci-fi fans out there will probably be familiar with Torchwood, the less family friendly spin off from Doctor Who, written by Russel T. Davies. It's basically part X-Files, part A-Team, and part Micheal Bay film. The series has had 4 runs now, and it's been suggested that a fifth may be yet to come.

The last series, which was basically a 10 part long episode, covering what would happen if everybody stopped dieing due to a crack in the Earth developing an addiction to the immortal stars blood.

Yes, this really was the climax.

The thing that made this series different from the others, apart from the whole blood crack thing, was that it was a British/American collaboration, with Starz working alongside the BBC.

Starz's Chris Albrecht has said that Torchwood is "not one of the shows we went into thinking about an annual return", with head writer and former head writer of Doctor Who being unable to write due to a busy schedule.

But now Chris Albrecht has told Multichannel News that if Davies' schedule clears, then maybe another series could be put into production. Davies schedule has been busy at the moment mostly due to his partner Andrew Smith being diagnosed with Brain Cancer, and has began a small product for the CBBC, which will be Aliens Vs. Wizards, hinting that he may be returning to work soon.

John Barrowman and Eve Myles, who play Captain Jack Harkness and Gwen Cooper respectively, have previously stated interest in returning, the only problem is, if it does return, are either of them going to make it to the end? Torchwood hasn't exactly got a track record for long running characters...

Game Over

Many of you are no doubt familiar with the Game family, one of the most popular game retailers. Many of you no doubt received gift cards for Christmas that you're saving for one of the upcoming big releases of 2012. And many of you have no doubt heard rumours of GAME's upcoming demise. These rumours have been circulating for years, brought on by retailers like Steam and Amazon. And it looks like there is now some accuracy in them.

Stock is the easiest way to measure how well a business is doing, even if error can be created by panicking investors. To give us an idea, let's look at some other game suppliers stock...

The below graphs, courtesy of Google Finance, compare the Game Group (GMG) and Amazon (AMZN). And as you can see...

Amazon (AMZN)

Game Group (GMG)

Oh dear. Back in 2008, buying stock from Game would set you back £296.75, now it's just £2.38. That means that you can now buy more of Game than you can buy games.

And it gets worse. The stock keeps on falling. That means Game is going to be worth less and less.

Apparently we're not the only one's to notice this. Major suppliers have stopped supplying Game, which does nothing for their poor sales. Too widely different games, Mass Effect 3 and Mario Party 9 were notably unavailable in both Game and Gamestation, which made their demise a lot more credible. It seems this is only going to get worse, with more and more suppliers backing out.

We are heading for one of three scenarios:

1. GameStop, or another big game company buys out Game.
2. Game goes into administration, and someone tries to salvage what they can, preserving some jobs.
3. Game dies out altogether.

Personally, I would rather see none of these, and hope that Game pulls through against all the odds. But the only advice I can give you is that now is the time to cash in those Gift Cards.