.........And had no idea yesterday was Dtoid Hug Day :(

Nowadays, everything is way over produced. CGI and other drastic post-production edits seem to occur with every TV show or film out. The love and care and craft that goes into making films and TV shows seems to have all but evaporated. There is one company, and one man in particular, whose aim is to keep the traditional craft in creating a TV show alive.

That man is this man.



His name is Nick Park, a 50 year old animator from Preston in Lancashire, England. His works include Creature Comforts (the British and American versions) Chicken Run and, most famously, the Wallace & Gromit series. Now, I've loved the Wallace & Gromit series of short films ever since I was a small boy. Why? Because they just seemed to homemade, which they were.

Each model was handcrafted out of clay and then stop-motion was used to animate these lumps of clay which seem to have more life in them than a number of Hollywood stars these days. The finer details, such as still being able to see the fingerprints on the clay in the films, make it seem rough around the edges but with so much character to it.

This is why I almost collapsed with excitement when I found out that today, Christmas Day, a new short Wallace & Gromit film was to be aired on BBC One.

And it was fantastic.



The story, in summary, is that Wallace & Gromit set up a succesfull bakery when a series of murders starts occuring in the local area, primarily of bakers. As this news appears, so does a woman for which Wallace falls in love with. The way the story pans out is a sort of faux-murder mystery esque pantomime.
The jokes are subtley funny, as they always have been, as well as a particular favourite showing the rivalry between Nick Park's home county, Lancashire, and my home county, Yorkshire.

It really was a fantastic 30 minutes and proof that proper, decent television is still around and is being made.

So, to Nick Park, I salute you for making my Christmas that bit more awesome and I suggest anyone remotely interested should try and dig it up to watch.

We all know that Left 4 Dead is now being overrun by the whiny Halo 3 players that insist on shouting racial and homophobic slurs to anyone in the direct vicinity. Now we have proof. Whilst myself, WIlbo and halfleft were having a nice kind game of Left 4 Dead in which much zombie slaughtering, a lovely chap by the name XxNuBXFoXLiFexX joined our social gathering. He wasn't the most co-operative of teammates and decided to put a vote out to kick me. As such, I retaliated with a vote to kick for him.

After this ordeal, I received a message from this young chap saying "fuck you geek." Wilbo and halfleft also received said message. Wilbo replied with "I love you" to which he replied "ur funny" I then replied with "Thanks babes. I love you."

This prompted this response from the young chap through voice message:

"Fuck you, you little gay ass queer. Go get a life and go suck your mum's dick. Now shut th..Go away you mother fucker."

Unfortunately for WIlbo and halfleft, they did not recieve a reply. I feel humbled and special to have recieved a gracious gift as this.

Thanks Xbox Live and Left 4 Dead, for proving that there are people in the world who need to be eradicated from the gene pool.

Well, today has been pretty crappy. My day went pretty shit and I couldn't wait to get home.
I got home and this was waiting for me:



Sent by the wonderful Tiff Chow it completely cheered me up to no end. Even the box looked awesome:



It contained a lot of awesome little things she picked up from PAX, because I wasn't able to go, as well as a few other things. Items include: Fallout 3 Promo Survival Guide, a collection of postcards, stickers, a Harley Quinn lego figurine, a Dragon Age ad sleeve, a little letter and a sort of little tag.



Then at the back of the box was this:



What is it? I here you cry:



Why, it's an amazingly cute little plushie made by dear Tiff herself.

The package has really brightened up my day to no end, so thank you!

This is seriously the most awesome thing I've ever had the pleasure of watching. It's so superbly done, great lyrics and it just works so well. Just watch and witness the majesty that is this amazing tribute to John Williams.

I'm relatively new, only been here about 3-4 months or something like that and a lurker before then, but in those 3-4 months I've felt so accepted straight away. And last night just sealed the deal for me.
For those unaware, it was a day that would go down in history as the day the Destructoid community collectively sang the YMCA. And it was epic! Even more epic than the most epic thing in the world.
People from all over the world, some who have met each other, some who haven't all raising their arms into a Y, an M, a C and an A while our leader Jim Sterling led us through the song.

Singing in IRC, singing on Xbox Live, singing in the NowLive chat made for one heck of a night that I could've spent doing some work but didn't

And so, on that note I say I love Destructoid, I love Niero for making Destructoid and I love each and every one of you fuckers who frequent this site and make it what it is!