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Criticizing Punk isn't about hating the guy or even his work in the ring. It's about ethics in video game journalism.

The only thing worse then the "Punk can save the business" crowd is the irrational Punk hatred around here. I never got it. Some of you guys talk about Punk like he's a convicted rapist or something.

They've held up about aw well as Hero's waist line. I've never seen any of those matches, but there is no way I would let that stand in the way of s good ole Chris Hero fat joke.

I have no problem with Punk the guy. He can go be grumpy and run or read comics or cook dinner for his wife for as long as he wants. I do have a problem with Punk the in-ring performer. When he came to WWE I'd never really seen him anywhere else. I liked him. I liked it when he bitch slapped Shannon Moore and I liked it when he got bigger chants than DX at the Survivor Series. I loved the Straight Edge thing being brought back against Jeff Hardy. I loved the Straight Edge Society. I liked his commentary run and I even liked Nexus leader Punk. Then the big promo happened. I liked the promo. I loved it, actually. I still do. It seemed like the start of something, like one person was saying to the crowd "this has been crap and I'm tired of it." I loved the Cena match. I thought that they were onto something. Now say what you will about the post-Summerslam booking, but it happened. It bothered me, but I was still a Punk fan. The problem was right around the time that his "I Dig Crazy Chicks" t-shirt came out I sort of realized that the "change" that the guy hyped wasn't a rallying cry for the WWE to drop their crap, it was just that he wanted to be the guy making peepee pooh pooh jokes instead of Cena. Does he have a right to want that? Sure. His only responsibility is to make a name for himself and make enough money to survive once he can't take bumps anymore, but he just seemed shitty to me after that. I wish Private Citizen CM Punk well, I hope that he's happy. But I never need to see CM Punk the Big Deal Wrestler on my TV again.

Who are you to doubt Shinzaki doing the high risk moves for Liliput-Proresu's biggest little show of the year.

CM Punk couldn't move a needle even if you gave him a sewing machine.

And one day later, EN090 restores his Twitter account that never existed in the first place.

Damien Sandow is branching out in his stunt double services.

He desecrated the Macho Man elbow. Unforgivable.

What about that good kush and alcohol? *feels death glare* I'll show myself out.

He just couldn't believe how great Roman Reigns' hair was.

No, blood makes Barbie dolls cry.

If Punk wanted to be there, the WWE would be better with him than without him. Since he doesn't, though, the WWE is better without him.

Hoist by his own petard. Excellent.

...and that's when the thread got locked, your honor.

Forgive me for derailing the talk about Bentley Little and my pal, Edward Lee, but Brian asked about the 1930s, and I just found out that I need to write a new novelette by mid-November, so in order to get the writing muscles turning, a bit about why the 1930s was such a bitch when preparing The Century's Best Horror. What made the 1930s so special? Simple, the Great Depression created the demand for cheap entertainment, and you can't go too far wrong with spending ten or fifteen cents on a pulp like Weird Tales, Strange Stories, Dime Mystery Magazine, Terror Tales, or Horror Stories. This says nothing about the horror content that was present in any of the dozens of general fiction magazines or the British story-papers or lending-library targeted books such as the "Creeps" series. More on that a bit later... So, on this side of the pond we not only had some of the very best to ever grace the field at their most productive, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Seabury Quinn (yeah, his star has fallen considerable over the years, but in the 1930s he was over in the clover), Henry S. Whitehead, Greye La Spina, Fritz Leiber, August Derleth, Robert Bloch, Frank Belknap Long and Clark Ashton Smith to name but a few. Consider, Smith, who is now nearly as deified as Lovecraft wrote over 75% of his career output in the 1930s (most of that in a five-year span). Were this not enough, we have a whole genre created in late 1933 and effectively becoming extinct by 1941 that featured a bunch of crap, but also some really excellent material by Wyatt Blassingame, Hugh B. Cave, Arthur J. Burks, John H. Knox, Wayne Rogers, Russell Gray, Donald Dale, Arthur Leo Zagat, Ralston Shields, and the Gregory brothers. Consider that all but Shields and the Gregorys were quite prolific, even Donald Dale (Mary Dale Buckner) who wrote for only five years produced over sixty stories, most of which were in the 10,000+ word range and you're looking at a ton of material. The more prolific authors like Zagat averaged over a million words a year for the entire decade, that's production that makes Stephen King look like a mere dabbler. The "weird menace" genre has been unjustly overlooked for decades, but in recent years people have started to discover that there was actually a lot of really tremendous material published, particularly in the "big three" Dime Mystery, Terror Tales, and Horror Stories. Now on the other side of the pond we had story-papers as well as monthly magazines such as Hutchinson's Mystery and general fiction mags that carried a lot of horror and supernatural material. The UK also had something unique in their lending-library market, where publishers would produce books as cheaply as possible specifically for this market. The folks at Philip Allan asked young editor, Charles Birkin to produce a string of anthologies on a close to zero budget and he responded in fine form with a series of books that pushed established Phillip Allan authors such as Tod Robbins, H.R. Wakefield, L.A. Lewis and mixed in work by newer writers (including Birkin himself, writing as "Charles Lloyd"), all to great success. So how did all this make the 1930s so difficult a decade for my anthology? Simple, a plethora of riches... Ground rules said that no author could be used more than once, and obviously, there are some names that you just have to include... Most years in other decades would wind up with a short list of three to four stories and usually it was pretty easy to pick a winner. 1934-1939 produced short lists of anywhere from eight to a dozen stories and it often became a case of figuring out how to include someone without snubbing an equally deserving choice. Sadly, the whole weird menace genre wound up just missing out. Had I the opportunity to redo the book, I don't know that the results would be way different, but I think that somehow I'd try to get at least a Blassingame, Shields, and/or Dale story in there somehow. So, when all is said and done, I don't think that we'll ever see such a golden age for short fiction of any type as we did during the 1930s. It's also a truism that during times of peace the horror genre booms and this was certainly true then. Keep in mind that there really wasn't a "horror" genre at the time, even with the special interest titles such as those I've cited above, the general fiction magazines were far and away the leaders in circulation. Horror as a genre didn't really exist until the early 1970s when it became a full-fledged marketing category. The 1980s saw a huge boom in horror as a marketing category, but that was for novels only. In the 1930s a trip to the newsstand gave you over a dozen general fiction mags to check out as well as a half-dozen titles that were all or at least partially horror in content.

Spoiled due to Sandman being a bloody mess.

Finally bought something from Xur. Exotic engram, which turned out to be Hunter Gauntlets. So i sold them, which leveled me up for thr Cryptarch. Which got me 2 blue engrams and a purple engram. Luckily, the purple engram was a helmet, which was the last thing i needed to complete my purple armor.

I can't not think of QBs as their characters from ProFootballMock.

Is Bayley's last name Borden?

HOLY SHIT I JUST FINISHED IN THE LEAD ON A WINNING TEAM. I'm officially joining Team Warlock. Not a Sunbro, though, I walk the void... I WALK ALONE! *imaginary machine gun*

I have. I'm content that he'll never wrestle again. That horrible Macho Elbow of his was destroying his hip. I'd rather the guy not need a new hip at 40 than come back and keep doing it.

Basketball more than any other sport allows rookies to contribute. Most of the time, whoever is the Rookie of the Year will be a top 40 player for that season statistically and that's not top 40 money. It's the teams responsibility to take a player in the slot that'll make the salary look like a steal, if teams draft badly that's on them, they have ample time to scout these kids. Sports teams, especially in the NBA now, throw around bad contracts and make bad picks and then franchises and fans want their teams to get bailed out. It's these GMs' job to know a good contract from a bad one, and good pick from a bad one.

Having a really good day after somehow getting a good night's sleep. Ate both my meals and walked a bit without any problems. Out of ICU into probably the nicest room in the cardiac unit.

Do you happen to know any down B's I can call?

I am gonna have to move all the porn somewhere else aren't I?

Today in "Things Mark does that infuriate JT"

I've got a write up about it coming to SOund on Sight soon, but if you dig Cushing, watch him kick some ass in Brides of Dracula EDIT: Hey it's up http://www.soundonsight.org/hammer-horror-thursdays-brides-of-dracula-in-which-there-are-no-brides-and-no-dracula/

He's barely D-list as far as celebrities go. He's not exactly doing much of anything except be the "Hey, didn't you used to be famous?" guy in the crowd.

Shoot, if Maddon went to the Dodgers, I'd dump Matheny and bring Mattingly to St. Louis. Unlike Matheny, Mattingly has no idea how to stop the Cardinals.

I love all of the character QBs in the NFL. We have the hobo mountainman with Luck, pretty boy model with Brady, the alien weirdo with Glennon, the dirtbag hippy with Mettenberger, etc.

Xur has the Suros Regime. Fuck. Yeah. Except it's 23 SCs, so I'm 4 away. Guess I'll be hitting up destinylfg.com and .net to look to do a level 28 Weekly Strike.

"You gotta rest of the offense?" Coach: "No" "It'd be a lot cooler if you did, man"

Looks like I owe some gamer an apology. I ridiculed some other player for having OCD worse than mine since his toon had the whole White Wolf thing going on with The Crest of Alpha Lupi chestplate, The Strength of the Pack cloak, the Chatterwhite shader, and The Symbol of the Wolf emblem. I remarked that I may have a little bit of the I Am Become Death thing somewhat going on, but at least I wasn't as thematic as that dude. This morning, the algorithm then saw fit to have Xur carry The Crest of Alpha Lupi chestplate for sale as the Hunter armor item, but I balked and used the 40+ Motes of Light I had and bought an Exotic Engram instead... ....which turned into Young Ahamkara's Spine. ....Exotic Gauntlets for my Hunter... in keeping with the skull motif I have going on with my skull facepaint and Dustwalker cloak... Jesus, what is happening to me? All I need is an emblem with a skull on it and an all black shader and I can become the thing I hate most. I will join Dead Orbit and get that emblem that has the skull and crossed axes behind it. Once I get a grey or black shader and complete the look, I will then pause the game long enough to punch myself in the face really really hard. My Strange Coins were still burning a hole in my pocket so I got The Armamentarium chestplate for my Titan alt. I had to give my Exo some more love since my Awoken Warlock alt already has a full set of Legendary armor waiting for him in storage when he hits Level 20

I was at a house show a few months ago and there was one row of morons chanting "CM PUNK" , and "BORING" at a fun opening comedy match . The entire arena was full of people / kids having a blast besides these five scatmunchers who shut up after it was obvious no one cared.

Put a couple hours into Hammerwatch today for a change of pace from all the time suck strategy games I've been playing. It is, as advertised, GAUNTLET LIVES AGAIN. Although it's not nearly as brutal as Gauntlet was back in the day (at least on medium difficulty). Not an overly complex game, but it's a pretty hard formula to fail with you know? Pick a class. Kill stuff. Break barrels. Get coins. Spend coins on upgrades. When a boss launches novas of death at you hide behind a post. Got into that Zen-like state where you keep hitting attack and the skeletons keep falling down. Cannot complain. Haven't got past playing with the Ranger class yet. Everybody else will just have to wait. Another game with Steam Workshop and an editor that could theoretically never end. Canadian winter is long. You have to pack on extra game levels the way bears pack on pounds before they hibernate.

Friday Night Lights- Season 3 Episode 4 is where manly tears were shed because THE SMASH MADE IT!!!!

Rusev IS William Murderface.

Fixed

Cool Dad Jericho bitching about Punk not returning his texts is straight-up adorable.

My wife's phone number is 2.