Point Transit

Point Transit is the gateway to the Far West, or to the Desert Heart - depending on your perspective. A city of such importance has lots of secrets, which will not be spoiled in this short introduction, instead there will be a separate document taking a look at some of the dirt the people of this fine community have accumulated over the years. This will be stuff only the game master should know, or characters who spent an inordinate time digging in the backstreets, cracking safes and computers, or listening to pillow talk. An addition to the Scorched Earth materials post, with a map.

Polite society

A tool for the enforcement of nearly lost societal norms, via this isn't happiness. It's practical use is nearly zero (unless you want to get into a fight with an expectorator, and you are superfast with a marker and scissors), but it is a nice handy list concerning acceptable behavior in our urban centers. Alien infiltrators, take note!

Joss Whedon: The Avengers

Four superheroes for the price of one (plus the charge for 3D glasses, can we please stop this nonsense?), so what could go wrong? Indeed, this is a very amusing movie, even if you aren't a raving comic fan. It has a lot of Joss Whedon dialogue, so if you are a fan of Buffy and Firefly, you should have a good time on that count alone, although I found the characters unbelievably precious at some points. But it is genuinely funny, and they stopped the thing that made Ironman 2 nearly unbearable, where two characters are chattering away at the same time, so you needed to be a schizophrenic to get both parts of the dialogue.

The backstories and involvement of the heroes (Aryan Viking, Snide Toasterman, Green Butt-Naked Giant and Clean-Cut Protestant Guy, supported by the lesser heroes Sultry Temptress and Lotso Arrows, if you have been living under a stone) are deftly handled, meaning that I wasn't waiting for the big action pay-off, but really enjoying the slow bits of the movie. At 140 minutes this is a rather longish movie, but it does not feel that way.

And the action pay-off is grand, absolutely fantastic, I really think I won't see anything like it for the rest of the year. This includes the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises. No shaky cam here, but a clear sense of who is doing what where and why. I don't know if you should stay through the credits, because I didn't. If there is a "surprise", it will be on YouTube anyway.

4 of 5 chair fights

Like this

Your co-worker the next cubicle over will go on a shooting spree any day now? Jörg Sprave has you covered, but please note that all these weapons take a few minutes to construct. Be prepared - build them now. Right now. Via io9.

High speed shenanigans

Sundry buffoonery recorded via a Phantom Flex highspeed camera .Via panzer's telemetry feed.

The big Paranoia LARP "London 2012" takes up steam

The term of today is "bespoke legislation". Via the guardian.

With a view of Paris

That's what you can look at in your living room on a big screen, in your own sweet vault, complete with hydroponic garden and classroom. It may only be a refurbished missile base, but the whole setup has a distinctive Vault-Tec feeling to it. I wonder what kind of sociological experiments they have dreamed up this time.