If you’re looking for evidence that true communism has been smothered to death by decadent consumerism in China, well, here you go — a man in China has spent $16,000 on a virtual sword before the game it can be used in is even out yet.

The game this guy spent far too much money on is Age of Wulin, an MMO set in ancient China that will soon be released in modern day China. Apparently anticipation is kind of high, because in addition to the 16 thousand dollar sword, a hook has gone for $1,600 and a spear sheath has sold for $2,500. Yes, that’s right, someone paid 2,500 and didn’t even get a weapon, just a thing to hold a weapon.

Don’t worry, soon you too will be able to empty your savings account on things that don’t really exist — Age of Wulin will be available in English in the spring of 2012.

via Gizmondo

39 Degrees North‘s GUNDOG is a short film in the vein of ’80s action movies like RoboCop, Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, and Die Harder, except there’s a police dog who’s been rebuilt with a gun on his head. Which is exactly what all those movies were missing. The short is written and directed by Ben Foster — who also plays the obligatory German villain trying to destroy Christmas — and stars James Oliver as Kowolski and Zai Zai as GUNDOG. I lost count of how many action movie tropes they parodied right around the time the dog started hitting the sauce. He can’t help it. He just misses Lisa so much. You’re tearing him apart, Lisa!

Yeah, I could be covering some serious news right now, but come on. There’s a GUNDOG, and he saves Christmas. Look into your hearts. You know I made the right choice.

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Christian Bale, pictured on a less exciting day.

Although we no longer have a working embed of The Dark Knight Rises‘ prologue (please accept this kitten video as our apology), we do have a bootleg of the new second trailer which will inevitably also be pulled. That’s embedded below (for now) with another video I’ll get back to in a moment. Screengrabs from the trailer are available at CBM. Here’s a quick summary: it opens with a kid singing the National Anthem at a Gotham Rogues football game while Bane plots something. Alfred lectures Bruce Wayne then, at a party, Selina Kyle whispers in his ear about how he’s got too much money. Bane blows up the football field. Half a second of Marion Cottilard. Then a montage of action shots. Fanboys everywhere throw panties at the screen. The end.

If you missed the prologue or couldn’t figure out what was happening, there’s good news: WWTDD has the six pages of script the prologue was filmed off of, so now we know what Bane was saying. Unfortunately, at no point did he say, “If you want my body and you think I’m sexy come on sugar let me know,” which was totally what I heard.

Finally, the last video below (the one that should still be working by the time you read this) comes from CNN. Christian Bale was part of a car chase while in China for the premiere of The Flowers of War. He tried to visit civil rights activist Chen Guangcheng, who is under house arrest.

Accompanied by a CNN crew, Bale arrived at Chen’s home in Dongshigu Village. Once there, they were immediately confronted by Chinese authorities, who ordered them to go away. Some scuffling followed, and Bale attempted to flee with CNN’s Steven Jiang and the rest of the team in their car. A high-speed chase ensued, with the guards following the pair in gray minivans for 40 minutes through bumpy country roads. [TDW]

Chinese authorities were mad at him? Well, maybe he got in their eyeline while they were trying to shoot something. Wackity schmackity human rights abuses.

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In the latest story we’re sure anti-gaming trolls will barf up to prove that media they don’t like is bad, a bunch of Chinese scientists submitted a badly done study that amazingly happens to agree with the Chinese government that video games are bad for you and make you prone to making bad decisions. You know, because the problems of China have nothing to do with their corrupt, censorious organ-harvesting government and society still reeling from about three or four centuries of unrest. It’s WoW that’s responsible.

What’s shameful is that publications with actual credibility like Scientific American aren’t immediately laughing this study, which concludes excessive Internet and gaming use results in “reduced inhibition of inappropriate behavior” and “diminished goal orientation.” It’s like that study that said video gamers were more likely to be anti-social stoners, only this time it’s got MRIs so it must be true!

Let’s look at all the problems with this, shall we?
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Telecom worker Wang XiaoKang surprised his coworkers and especially building security when he arrived at the office in Shanghai wearing this homemade, 110 pound armor he built after watching Iron Man.  The 25-year-old spend about 3,000 yuan (US $460) on high-density foam, LEDs, wires, tubes, batteries, etc., and the suit even comes with a custom-build arc reactor light in the chest and a hidden cooling fan.  There’s a video and a bunch of pictures below.

He says it took him three months to build. He also says the security guards initially wouldn’t let him enter the building. Why not? Hasn’t everyone gone to work looking like War Machine?  XiaoKang says he was so happy with his suit that he’ll work on a Mark III replica suit next.  We think we might know what his motivation is:

He claims his armour has proven to be a success, with his bosses praising him and women falling in love with him. [Telegraph, emphasis mine]

I can totally see that happening.  I threw some panties at the screen when I saw this video.  I don’t even know whose panties they were or how they got in my house.  He’s that good.

[Sources: Gizmodo, WangXiaoKang, DP&F, and Telegraph]

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Liu Dali, 54, was imprisoned in China from 2004 to 2007 for the crime of ”illegally petitioning” the government about corruption in his hometown, where he worked as a prison guard.  He was placed in the Jixi re-education-through-labour camp in Heilongjiang province.  During the day, he was forced to do tasks like breaking rocks, digging trenches, assembling car seat covers, hand-carving chopsticks and toothpicks out of planks of wood, and memorizing communist literature.  At night, he was forced to gold farm in online games, meaning he had to spend 12 hours straight doing all the boring, repetitive crap us Westerners try to avoid, all to churn out some coins the prison guards would then sell to relatively rich gamers.

“Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour,” Liu told the Guardian. “There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. [Ed- US $765 to $925] We didn’t see any of the money. The computers were never turned off.” [Guardian]

Approximately 80% of gold farmers are in China.  An estimated 100,000 full-time gold farmers live in China, although there’s no tally of how many of them are prisoners.  As for Mr. Dali, he says if he didn’t meet his quota during a shift, he was beaten with pipes.  This is absolutely horrible.  Thus proving no human suffering is too harrowing to keep us from photoshopping animals wearing clothes into a banner picture.