It has now been over two years since I came to Newgrounds, and if I thought less than a month was a big change, I should have waited until the two-year mark! And as in those days, my biggest recent change seems to be a return, at last, to video games. In 2007 it was simply playing Zelda again after two and a half years or so of mental, spiritual, and political decline, blamed on WWE fandom but possibly more rightfully attributed to the malady of the teenager: sure, I blamed McMahon for my ruin at the time, but as I rebuilt my life I realized that teenage rebellion, not professional wrestling, was my downfall. Now, with my personal world being once more set right, I return to the old games not crawling on hands and knees but triumphantly, not as a beggar pleading for a return to his old life but as a man asking simply for his old recreation. Almost everything is back as it should be.

As before, I say almost because no perfection exists on Earth. Something is not as it should be, and that something is once again the Flash Portal. Since the decline of spam which began just before my arrival, a decline which I foolishly cheered on, the Flash Portal has declined immeasurably in some intangible way. There's far fewer submissions than I remember, a smaller percentage of them are from recognizable artists, and the quality of all of them? Down the drain. Maybe the spammers, by going against the expectations of 12-year-old boys who desire DBZ ripoffs in the form of Mario/Sonic crossovers and Family Guy set to video game characters (the second of which, at least, is a complete bastardization of the games and makes me wish Egoraptor would lose his drawing hand in an accident involving gay bondage), actually formed a vital part of Newgrounds: the controversy the caused somehow kept this site "going", and without the controversy it "stopped". Or more likely their disappearance was just a sign of NG's decline and not a cause. Either way, something is missing here, and there's some connection between the lost activity and the loss of well-done, infuriating spam. And by "well-done", I mean it stays in the Portal for more than five minutes because the author doesn't turn around and fileswap with hardcore gay porn, and then gets a 10-page minimum total of posts on the BBS complaining about it that doesn't get deleted.

Of course, the admins' handling of the issue didn't help this state of affairs (the inactive Portal, mind you, not the lack of spam). I'm not going to focus on the featured game of the week taking up that all-too-prominent spot on the front page, practically guaranteeing whoever sucked Tom's dick the hardest Weekly 1st and even a period as All-Time #1. I'm not going to place too much attention on the side banner ads on the front page either, because I can actually see a reason for them, even if it sucks to have them when there's supposed to be side parts to a theme there (Tom could have at least waited until now, after he took down the Halloween decorations). No, this too relates to spam, and I mean the manner Wade dealt with it. He must have thought that by quietly deleting it he'd make the rule-breaking that all to often comes with the spam go away without damaging the overall Portal activity, but no. The one time I can remember where NG had a chance to slow down the spam on its own, the one time Wade actually showed a sign of doing what was probably the best idea for tackling spammers (as later shown) was right here, on the BBS. If you don't understand what I mean, I'll spell it out for you: "quietly deleting" the spammers makes it safe to savewhore. If I were Wade, I'd have made the community do its own cleanup, focusing on the actual rulebreaking and occasionally making a thread in General showing movies that, by all counts, should never have passed, mostly made up of movies that managed to pass Judgment but dipped below a certain score threshold, most likely 1.00.

The way Wade handled it made it safe to savewhore but unsafe to spam, meaning spammers, instead of figuring out ways to make their spam interesting (it's sad that I have to go back to the 2008 re-release of a 2007 Kberkag movie to find funny spam), had nothing left to lose and could be as chaotic as they wanted. The good spammers mostly got tired (though if he didn't fileswap so much, one more recent spammer would impress me greatly, he has a pretty good sense of humor for a spammer when he's not phishing Kirby fans), the bad ones, especially one in particular, were the only ones left, and the Portal descended to its current state. That's just the way things are.

But that's not the way they have to be.

As bad as things look at any point, something god may make it through the night. The sun can rise again. The sun will rise again. My anti-spam position was misguided, to say the least, and the Petition, if you can call it that, became a subject of jokes (including one I'd like to see re-released this Christmas in its own two-year anniversary, if you're listening, KB), but it's time I make things right, or about as right as they can be. This is my dedication: to end the night, to help NG grow as a website and a community in any way I can. I will not leave again until I see the rising sun!

Oh, and there's at least one spammer(/ex-spammer?) out there who was around back when I was anti-spam instead of simply pro-Newgrounds. If he, or maybe it's "they", remember me from those days: no, this is NOT the Surrender of SoulMaster71. "Right" usually means fair voting, so if your movies suck, I still support giving them zeroes. The particular spammer I have in mind is far from "sucking", in fact he's amazing, but this is just giving him a heads-up. Also, this may mean I'm going to start making Flash. How does a Flash remake of ET for the Atari 2600 sound?

Well, that's it. May rule-breaking Flashes ever be flagged by your Whistle, may those accounts used to harass you forever end up deleted or locked, and may the users of the Portal smile forever on your legitimate Flash submissions. Until next time...
SoulMaster out!

As a child, I would go to bed at night and dream of one thing: video games. From at least 1994 my mind revolved around them, whether the arcade hits of the day (early Tekken, some relative of Soul Caliber, and most of all Mortal Kombat were mainstays of my arcade life by 1997) or the games on my cousin's Sega Genesis (mostly Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and, again, Mortal Kombat). In later years, once I felt the decline of games as I knew them, the thought came to me to own the classics of my youth, and of the days before I began playing. But though I scoured yard sales and the local auction for used systems, the games and systems I sought proved too elusive without the Internet, and by the summer of 2005 professional wrestling had displaced gaming for what seemed forever.

But reality is not always what seems real at the time, and eventually through the very gaming that seemed displaced (and through Newgrounds) my obsession with pro wrestling ended. Though my former thoughts remained dormant until my circumstances could support some of them, eventually that support became a possibility, and all it took to set them back in the track of my mind was one glimpse, one seed from which the tree of my thought could grow.

Then I saw the Angry Video Game Nerd. The room in which Mr. Rolfe films his AVGN videos was and is a prototype of my vision, filled with classic consoles and old games. But my vision is greater, filled with more consoles and more games than the Nerd will ever review, and perhaps with old arcade machines as well. Still, the systems and games on his set were enough to re-awaken my dreams of owning all, of building a great shrine to video gaming as it once was, as it should still be.

Consider this first a notice of intent: I intend to buy as many classic game systems, and as many games for those systems, as I can afford. As time passes and as I obtain greater and greater amounts of money, I will use more and more of it to buy video games. Anyone who knows how I become when focused on the game will understand how serious I am about this plan.

Second, I will provide here the most basic outline of my idea as it stands now, a system of organization that recognizes "good" games from "bad" ones.

I. Region of the Greats
1. Hall of Heaven: Where good games go when they die. On an upper floor, this room contains the good games of the past that just didn't make it to beatification. Think Zelda II for the NES, or the American Super Mario Bros. 2 (Doki Doki Panic if you live in Japan).
2. Palace of the Beatified: The greatest games of yesteryear. Games have to live up to the Two Tests before entry, the Test of Great Fun and the Test of Great Influence.
3. Canonized Saints of Gaming: The first recognizable games of the great series. If half or more of the series is in the Palace of the Beatified, the first game is probably in here.

II. Region of the Average
1. Hall of Purgatory: These games were, meh, OK in their time, and they haven't aged well at all. Probably the largest hall in the Shrine, filled with mostly-forgotten games as well as a few knockoffs and spinoffs like Ms. Pac Man.
2. Hall of Limbo: These systems just didn't get enough support or attention for the games to thrive. Under the forever-watchful statue of Duke Nukem, here as well lie the names of games from popular series that just never made it to the gamers, whether they were mere rumors or announced-and-canceled games.
3. Adam and Eve of Games: All men spring from the First Couple, and so all games spring from a single game and a screen somewhere in the early 1970s. One game, the first to garner mass popularity among the people in their own homes. One screen, the partner of the game. In this room waits Pong for the end of its descendants' story.

III. Region of the Terrible
1. Hall of Hell: Shitty games and consoles galore. Anyone can enter, but who the fuck would? These games are an example of what not to do when licensing, developing, publishing, or marketing.
2. Eternal Prison of Worst Offenders: These games are well-known, even legendary, for sucking. Never, it is to be hoped, shall the people of Earth ever again have to suffer from their like.
3. Mouth of Satan: One system, a Colecovision with Atari 2600 emulation attachment. Two games, both Atari 2600 games of 1982 make, who together nearly destroyed an industry on the American continent and most of whose kind are said to have been buried in New Mexico. You and I both know which games these are.

Fellow users are welcome and requested to suggest changes to the system, or to voice their opinions on what constitutes a "classic" console or game.

As you can see from my sign-up date, today, October 9 2009, is my two-year anniversary on Newgrounds. Ah, and what an eventful two years it has been!

When I came, I liked watching Mario and Zelda parodies. Let's just say things changed, and I ended up bored with them.

When I came, I was a WWE addict. Immediately I was freed from addiction, and today is also the two-year anniversary of my cure.

When I came, I was at the depth of a crisis of faith. It took a bit longer to escape, in fact it was my one-year anniversary before I was completely back to my pre-crisis level of faith in God and society, but it happened.

Soon after I came, the moral order of Newgrounds looked simple: spam seemed bad, and anyone opposing it was good. Thanks to a particular now-inactive "spammer" of the time (and a number of his friends), I can see the gray and grey of the situation, and it looks now like the best way is to find the correct balance. It can't all be as clear-cut as Lord of the Rings or The Legend of Zelda, I guess.

Thanks mainly to Newgrounds (and a couple of experiences that can only be attributed to the supernatural), I am back to my old thought patterns that brought me success in the past, and the faith that I had before my wannabe rebellion years started in 2005.

But where do I go from now? Only time will tell. A history is never written down before it happens; neither can I say now what I will become tomorrow. But another two-year anniversary comes in less than a month, and maybe then you will know more of my plans. So until next time...
SoulMaster out!

If you're getting your news from the same sources as I get mine, you probably know that nowadays a lot of people don't have time to cook a meal, or even to sit down and eat one. The world is scarfing down over-processed fries, Coca-Cola, and substandard burgers with processed "cheese" (not really cheese, more like chemicals diluting what used to be cheese), and quite frankly, I think that's not only a tragedy of culture, but a slap in the face to our ancestors, to our culture, to our nation, and to our capabilities as humans.

See, food and cooking are on the boundary of art and science. In the preparation of a delicious dish, scientific concepts such as chemical changes and mixtures are combined with more artistic elements of flavors and textures and scents to please the subjective senses of the audience. All of this is wrapped up in the cultural heritage and the experiences of the cook and the diners, another element more closely related to art than to science. In that way, a good meal goes right to the heart of the one eating it.

For me, food is even more. Most people out there, especially on a largely atheist website like Newgrounds, won't agree with me on this part, but to me at least, cooking and eating is almost a religious experience. When I am cooking, I am taking the ingredients given to the world by God's grace, the meat and the dairy products and the vegetables and the spices and the starches, and I make them into something else entirely, imitating God's work of creation, but in God's honor and not in mocking. Cooking and eating a delicious meal is a way to experience God for me. In that way, a shared meal is akin to a church service, and a chef is almost like a priest.

The fast food industry, then, is taking the art and the faith out of food. Certainly the science remains, and is in some ways enhanced by the formulaic and repetitive way in which the burgers and such are made, but art is not repetitive, and faith is individual. That individuality, that variation, is missing from fast food: every burger patty is the same, the fries are identical in all but size, the buns are strictly controlled to be alike, every Big Mac has the same formula of "two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, 'cheese', pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun". There is no "art" in the food preparation practiced in fast food restaurants: it's the same everywhere, produced for quantity and not quality. It's like when AfroUnderscoreStud did those Adolf Hitler:CAI493+D movies back in 2007 and 2008, only on a much larger scale, and dangerous to the culture instead of just annoying.

But the fast food industry isn't the only problem here. No, even in our own kitchens, the loss of our culture surrounds us. Hamburger Helper? Kraft Mac & Cheese? Take a good look in your cupboard, and see how many mixes are there that are meant to emulate actual dishes. Not much variation between them, huh? One Hamburger Helper tastes exactly like another of the same flavor, unless the cook decides to deviate from the recipe (which is rare, though I do it whenever I make Hamburger Helper, also rare). I like to refer to this when I talk about food and culture: Mr. Phillips' perspective on the issue of food as a part of culture pretty much mirrors my own. In that, he talks about the cultural significance in one community (the black community) of one specific food (macaroni and cheese). Extend that across hundreds of dishes, in hundreds of cultures and geographic locations, and you have a true culinary map of the United States of America. Make it thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dishes and families and locations and cultures, and you have the entire world. And many of the developed parts of that world are in danger of losing that local, regional, national culinary culture as easy access, mass-production, and homogenization overwhelm identity, effort, and the beauty and satisfaction of creation.

So when you're tempted to pick up a burger at Burger King, remember how much better food you can prepare at home with just a little time and effort. And when you're looking in your cupboard for food and see the "artificial orange lab experiment", as Mr. Phillips called it, look up a recipe for macaroni and cheese and cook it yourself. You'll be glad you did, and if enough people do it, we'll be on the road to cultural recovery. Until next time...
SoulMaster out!

(The content of this news post does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Team Westrider, its employees, or anyone involved with its leadership. Emperor Kénuros wrote this whole damn thing and is making me promote it, I swear.)

Vanessa Hudgens is planning to turn everyone gay! She's working for Hindol, I just know it. Come on, exposing children to so gay an "art form" as musical theatre while they are still impressionable and weak-minded? Then going and doing the same thing even without the High School Musical franchise behind her, with this "Bandslam" thing? All a plot to gather souls for the Dark Lord, to turn a larger and larger segment of the population into evil queers.

Then there's the nudes. Ever notice how they were released at exactly the times when they would get her the most attention*? Just after the release of HSM2, and around the time of Bandslam? Funnel in a few with nudes to inflate the box office sales, then more kids will want to see it in an attempt to be like everyone else. She expresses embarrassment and remorse, so parents will think "it was just a bad decision" and not refrain from taking kids to see the movies.

Oh, and when you thought it could get no worse, it does. See, Hindol has this theory that if he destroys the white race, with its relative tolerance of individualism, he could easily control the other, more tribal races of the world (stupid, I know, but that's his idea). Whatever he can't do with sexual deviance, he does with cultural and moral decay and with promotion of race-mixing. And who better to promote those effects than a half-white, half-Filipina girl who poses nude for camera phones and leaks them online, and whose acting career is based on mass-produced music**? Her very existence is a sign of whitey's decline.

(Back to me, the Emperor's gone back to monitoring the world for his enemies or something)

Anyway, I was considering redesigning my page. You have any idea how long it's been since I actually played Zelda? I'm a different man now than I was when I joined, but my profile image and user icon haven't changed since February 12, 2008. Redesigning my page would allow me to better reflect myself. On the other hand, on the rare occasion that people (from Kitty Krew members to EGB people to random users off the BBS and beyond) look at my page, it's almost like they expect to see Fierce Deity Link looking back at them. It is, you might say, iconic. It's what I use on other forums too, including the EGB forum. What does everyone think of this?

Oh, and a few notes to what the Emperor wrote/had me write for him:
*I'm pretty sure YOU did that, Emperor.
**This requires some explanation. The disagreements between Hindol and myself (the Emperor sides with me in the conflict) stem mainly from where we believe the culture should be centered. Hindol believes in a mass-produced, top-down culture, made by a few elites (preferably with himself at the top) who control everything and pushed down onto the people. Mass-produced, homogenized foods such as processed "cheese", formulaic pop music, unoriginal sitcoms, vastly overrated parodies of commercially developed video games on a Flash website, these make up the culture of his dreams. I believe it should go the other way: the culture comes from the collective soul of the people, not from centralized authority, and grows from there. When you cook your own meal from your own recipe and ingredients, when you have choices in genres of music and art and television and many people can contribute to those, when the Flash website features artists of all persuasions and lets a balanced userbase decide what gets promoted and what gets forgotten or even deleted, that is what I view as proper. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but it can be said that I respect the free market, while Hindol desires Communism.

As you all know, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) doesn't much like KFC. They also, as is well known, oppose McDonald's. For years, it was thought by those sympathetic to their goals that this was all based in their desire to help animals, and by the opposition it was hypothesized to be connected to their zoophilia. But across the interdimensional border, a report was just released by the Kanatória Intelligence Agency that refutes both these claims.

PETA is working for Hindol.

Ronald McDonald and the spirit that on Earth took the form of Colonel Sanders, they are our vanguard commanders. More specifically, when intelligence agents sense that a dimension of sentient beings is about to come under direct assault from the Enemy (Hindol's master, most of you might know him better as Satan), one or both of them go into the realm and keep an eye on things, making sure the Enemy doesn't get out of hand while we are yet unprepared. While I (like most of the Council) strongly prefer Sanders' focus on using the proper methods to protect the people from the Enemy's plots to the clown's battle philosophy of getting as much power as possible and then directing it against the Enemy (no matter what he has to do to get the power), I will not deny that serving with either or both of them is an honor. They are amazing at what they do.

Hindol, of course, can't stand their work, and he hates both of them personally. But he cannot outright kill them: he has no way to do that, since either of their deaths would only be temporary like his or mine, and he has no way to reach either of them anyway. Neither can he break their forces or sabotage their work from within: the inner circles of both commanders' units are too close to the commanders themselves, and too loyal to their task and their people, to be anything less than perfectly vigilant against sabotage, betrayal, and double agents. So the best he can do is mobilize fooled or mind-controlled citizens of this world into battle in an attempt to reduce the efficacy of their efforts, and mask the movement with "animal rights" language.

In other, more positive news:
Due to his efforts in the Blackjack Phase of Operation Card-Counter, SCTE3 has been awarded the Order of the Spear, First Class. As the first of his kind to take a field command part in a Kanatórian operation, SCTE3 managed to singlehandedly chase off Hindol and liberate the imprisoned Miku Hatsune. He is an example of courage and honor rarely seen in his people, and should be held up as a gold standard to them. Similarly, SlntCobra1 was awarded the Order of the Spear, Second Class. SlntCobra1 engaged in a standoff against two armed, armored transdikon warriors at the opening of Blackjack Phase, and lived to tell the tale. There are few in this realm who could say such a thing truthfully.

The Duck Division, responsible for recently hacking multiple Newgrounds moderators, are simply Hindol's grunts. Nothing but a distraction from the grand scheme, the Dysangol conspiracy. If Hindol thinks he can distract me with a bunch of "cl0nZX-and-Copycat" tricks, he desperately needs to think again, this time without huffing a whole 2-liter's worth of jenkem gas first.

Anyway, it doesn't matter now. The Council and the intelligence agencies have at last given me permission to divulge some truly secret information about our enemy. Note that this information is the key to the whole conspiracy, and includes the identity of some key players on the enemy's side. The fact that the leadership is willing to share this information with the public at this early stage is a sign of their devotion to openness, a devotion which, if things were right in the world, would be at least matched if not exceeded by the republics of this world.

First of all, you know how I said early on that this was based in the celebrity community? Faulty intelligence. Only a small percentage of the agents are famous. The High Lieutenant Commander happens to be famous, but her fame is not her own. Rather it is a gift from Hindol, in celebration of the sale of her soul and of her long dedicated service. According to the most recent reports, Steve McNair, too, was a Hindolist agent, and his girlfriend found out about the Dysangol conspiracy and moved to prevent it the only way she could. Most of the willing agents in this realm, however, are either celebrities or closely involved with celebrities. So without a moment more in hesitation, here's the profiles of some of the enemies.

Hindol: The bigwig, the top dog, the kingpin, the head honcho, the evil mastermind behind this whole plan. If it's bad, and it's happened in the last 10,000 years (meaning everything bad in human civilization, and some of the unfortunate events from before anyone figured out irrigation), you can bet he's at the epicenter. Like me, Hindol is immortal to the ravages of time, and unless he has agreed to leave the world in a battle, death by weapon is only temporary for him. Because he is not currently in this dimension, he acts solely through agents for this mission (some of which are willing, others are under mind control), but rest assured, it's all him.

Lady Gaga: The High Lieutenant Commander in charge of operations in this dimension. She's in charge of making the Dysangol resurrection go smoothly. She began selling her soul to Hindol at a young age. Piece by piece Hindol has gained parts of her mind and soul as she went ever farther into stardom and the music industry, in a manner similar to that in which Hindol sold his own long ago as he desired more and more power. As she sold her soul she rose ever higher in his esteem, and is now in constant contact with him, sometimes directly but other times through different messengers. And yes, by "Lady Gaga" I mean the one who sings Poker Face!

Dysangol: You don't want to deal with this guy. After defeating him in 1979 I went into a coma for 10 years, until I left that body behind to get a fresh start on life. He was imprisoned in Harlem, which is now a community of crack addicts (hence Gaga's decision to put the mind control agent in the cocaine supply). He is also Hindol's former overall second-in-command, and the most dangerous demon I ever battled. Hindol's entire operation right now is engaged in resurrecting this demon.

Khêrnak: Lady Gaga's dragon. Yes, like all evil sub-bosses, she has a pet dragon.

Cocaine & Crack: Don't let me catch you using this shit. As of now all known cocaine supplies in the Western world contain a potent mind control agent that turns you into Hindol's servant, and that mind control is only made worse when cocaine is modified into crack.

As usual, the precautions against American cheese, ranch dressing, and Dr. Pepper are in full effect, but then again when are they not? Shit's evil, don't touch it. Use Cheddar, blue cheese dressing, and Mountain Dew instead.

Mission Name:
Operation Card-Counter

Phase Name:
Blackjack

Phase Objectives:
Invade cyber-fortress
Raid datacenter
Obtain enemy battle plans
Invade dungeon
Rescue Vocaloid Miku Hatsune

Phase Outcome:
From the report of Kylapharos II, Primus Concilyatar of Kanatória:
"Blackjack Phase was, by most estimates, fairly successful. As the phase began, it seemed we would be in trouble; we had only managed to obtain two Yukkuri due to the meddling of the Council, and we noticed transdikoni* at the front door. Nonetheless, the Yukkuri performed their duty admirably, the humans and ex-humans were distracted, the transdikoni were killed (though not without some casualties), and the fortress doors were opened.

That was when the real battle began.

The first room into the fortress, and it was loaded with homosexual males. As pointed out by my friend and fellow Newgrounder Chewy2007, the cyber-fortress had the highest ratio of homosexual males of any command center on Earth. Had Drew Pickles not been with us, it might have been the end there: Hindol is possibly the only one since the beginning of the Christian era who has trained gays to fight as well as straights, and we were vastly outnumbered. Luckily Drew was there; all he had to do was pull out his gigantic penis, and the fags were having the most massive gay orgy since the fall of the Roman Empire.

The remainder of the group, small though it was, set out to storm the fortress. According to our maps, we would have to take control of three areas, though the official phase objectives set by the Council's War Committee only mentioned two. We would need to take the datacenter and the dungeon, as spelled out by the Council, and in order to damage Hindol's offensive in the realm it was decided that we would need to take the inner sanctum as well. I led my crew off to the inner sanctum, and let other squads take the dungeon and the datacenter, as planned.

Once we reached the inner sanctum, I found an old enemy. Quickly guessing its intent, I ordered my troops to stand outside the sanctum and prevent entry by enemy forces. At that moment, my second** battle with Transdikon Captain Ghlashnagh, now General Ghlashnagh, began.

The battle between myself and the General raged for an hour or more, by the report of my men. All I knew in the combat was that it lasted a long time, and that in the end I came out victorious, and indeed had my revenge for my humiliation and injury in the previous combat. The General dead, we had control of the fortress.

But despite my battle, I was not the hero last night. No, that credit will go to SCTE3, a man I met here on Newgrounds. For though I faced an enemy which had once defeated me, SCTE3, in his first interdimensional mission, led a squad of men down the most dangerous corridor in the cyber-fortress, singlehandedly broke into the dungeon, and by the camera recording that reached the inner sanctum, singlehandedly faced down and defeated Hindol himself, and rescued the imprisoned Miku Hatsune. That would be brave for any man, however SCTE3 did it as a mortal of this dimension, untrained in magic and with only what combat skills he has learned in his life. For this act of bravery I recommend him for the Order of the Spear.

Kholestaros and his men report no unexpected incident on the way to or from the datacenter, and if there was an unreported one the inner sanctum's screens did not show it.

During out return to the rendezvous point, we neither saw nor heard nor smelled any sign of Drew Pickles. We fear the worst, but hope the best, for this strong, secure gay man and his 300-mile-long penis. The Yukkuri were rescued and escorted back to their home dimension without incident.

Phase: Complete and Successful
Starting army: 200
Killed in action: 26 regular warriors, 4 regular officers
Missing in Action: 1 mercenary commander
Enemy casualties: 50 humans and ex-humans, 20 transdikoni
Territory gained: One fortress and surrounding territory in Disputed Dimension 19090-239-4932

End report"

*A transdikon is a creature of evil, made from Orc and dragon DNA and filled with a demon soul. When among humans it claims to be a human female, but do not be fooled: it is neither human nor female. If anything it is anti-human and male.
**About 250,000 years ago, the writer lost his left arm after being captured by an enemy unit led by the transdikon in question. A new left arm was cloned for him, one which he still uses to this day, but the enemy kept his original as a trophy. Kylapharos' "revenge" was retaking his own arm and cutting off Ghlashnakh's.

Mission Name:
Operation Card-Counter

Phase Name:
Blackjack

Phase Objectives:
Invade cyber-fortress
Raid datacenter
Obtain enemy battle plans
Invade dungeon
Rescue Vocaloid Miku Hatsune

Phase Outcome:
Will be reported when Phase is complete

We've uncovered evidence of an insidious plot, based in the celebrity community, to resurrect an evil demon (the reason for the spread of HIV, the decline of Western culture, and worst of all the popularity of disco, actually) that we trapped in an underground chamber in Harlem in 1979, and so I've sent out my men to prevent this from happening. Michael, he was in on it, and after we got the info we needed, we made sure he wouldn't talk. Billy Mays was killed in retribution by an enemy agent. Farrah Fawcett just died of ass cancer, may her soul rest in peace. But the centerpiece, Lord Hindol's High Lieutenant Commander in charge of Mortal Realm operations, we haven't been able to catch her yet. We hear she's in England, or will be by July 13, but given Hindol's, ahem, "bent for security", we're not going to get at her unless we get her battle plans, and that's unlikely until we infiltrate her cyber-fortress.

So what can you do? Be on the lookout. Anything too suspicious, sudden spikes in homosexuality or 1970s nostalgia would be examples, and you'd best report it. Oh, and make sure not to use any cocaine or crack. She's laced the cocaine supply with a mind control agent that will turn you into her pawn (marijuana is OK). Oh, and any advice on the plan will be accepted based on its merits (the most likely current suggestion involves Drew Pickles and Yukkuri, but Yukkuri are so hard to gather...)

Operation Card-Counter is go.

UPDATE 7-3-09 5:46 PM
Miku Hatsune has been kidnapped. Her whereabouts are currently unknown, though we are currently moving at full speed to locate her.

UPDATE 7-4-09 5:02 PM
Steve McNair is dead, in an incident possibly related to Hindol's plot. No further information is available at this time.