The great Pat Condell is back and I’m wasting no time in featuring his latest video on my blog. Check out what Pat has to say about the latest shift in the political spectrum regarding the West’s fight against this growing tide of medieval darkness.

I know this past month has been the longest time since I updated the blog with a new post, but I have been really trying to make my most recent business ventures work. Unfortunately, internet retail is in bad shape along with the rest of the economy.

However, I am going back to my trading classes and taking a fresh look at a new field: currency trading. I have been reading up on FOREX and hope to try my hand at trading a small account in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, the weather is nice, the Renaissance Faire is opening soon, and I hope to make new posts a more frequent occurrence at Merchantprince!

See? If those crappy prequels had been anything like this, we’d have a new Star Wars legacy to look back upon fondly. As it is, George Lucas can’t tell a story to save his life anymore (poor Indiana Jones) and the best stories in the mythology for the past several years have been coming from the video game company Bioware, who previously made the excellent Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

Now a brand new cinematic trailer comes down the pipe from Bioware’s eagerly anticipated Star Wars: The Old Republic. This MMO adaptation of the pre-history of Star Wars was on display at E3.

Looks like we’re getting treated to a remake of classic 80s cheese, in that the original miniseries ‘V’ is coming back to television in the form of an ongoing series. The new ‘V’ (if successful) is purportedly slated to run like ABCs Lost, with a long storytelling arc stretching out over four seasons.

So get ready for some more hot chicks as nazi lizards from space!

I heard just part of an old Cliff Richard song on the radio and it took me right back to when I was a kid in the early 80s.

So I felt like sharing some of this great music with you. With songs like “Dreaming”, “”We Don’t Talk Anymore”, “Devil Woman” and “Suddenly” (a great duet with Olivia Newton-John), it seems almost impossible to pick just one to feature.

Yet, here is one of the best, “A Little in Love”, released all the way back in 1981.

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I read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road about six months ago and it was an interesting read. A fairly simple plot, the book’s strong suit was it’s evocative description of a post-apoclayptic landscape and the dread and suspense of a father and son moving across the decaying landscape toward some hope for a better future.

The long awaited trailer for the film version of The Road is finally here, and it looks amazing. It seems some liberties may have been taken with the book (as is often the case), but I can’t tell for sure from this preview.

The wasteland shots look incredible, and the cast is all-star calibre, with Viggo Mortensen, Guy Pearce, Robert Duvall and Charlize Theron all starring in the film. The Road hits theatres October 16th, 2009.

The real phobia lies with Islam itself (and all religions) and their pathological fear of Reason – which they know can evaporate all their delusions in an instant. Because Reason to religion is like sunlight to a vampire.

Longtime visitors to this site may recall a previous video from Pat Condell which I happily featured some time back. I said then that I’d very much like to feature more of this witty and insightful man’s work here at Merch.

Well, today we enjoy his brief video treatise on Islam and the idea that somehow people of the West are ‘phobic’ towards this noxious belief system. As always, Mr Condell provides and erudite and articulate repudiation:

Found this earlier today and was laughing so hard my sides ached. Even if you don’t normally watch Mixed Martial Arts fights, this is great fun!

Check out Cracked Magazine’s top Holy Crap moments from past MMA battles:

The Top 8 ‘Oh @$%&!’ Moments from Mixed Martial Arts

Mother of all fan films, The Hunt for Gollum is now on-line at DailyMotion. Watch it in full screen HD for the best effect.

“Above all I was so inspired by Peter Jackson’s trilogy – and jealous that he got to make it first! I loved the scale, the quality, the epic scope of it all and figured, hey, maybe we can do that too. We don’t have millions of dollars of funding (our budget is less than £3000) but we do have a huge love for the subject, a growing number of talented volunteers behind us and above all the determination to make it happen to a high standard of professionalism.”

What can be said? The quality of the production is amazing considering the cost and – after a few quiet minutes of exposition – the amateur production does all it can to mimic the big-screen quality of Hollywood’s most impressive trilogy.

The best part? They pull it off! With appearances by most every major character of Peter Jackson’s seminal films, excellent special effects, stunt work and professional film direction, this short film truly impresses.