Month: March 2018

Merriam-Webster has announced that 850 words are being added to its dictionary–and among them is “embiggen,” a word that The Simpsons made up more than 20 years ago.

Writer Dan Greaney came up with the word, which was spoken by the character Jebediath Springfield in the 1996 Season 7 episode “Lisa the Iconoclast.” He says in the episode, “A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man,” which is Springfield’s motto. Merriam-Webster defines embiggen as “to make bigger or more expansive.”

In response to this bogus word, Mrs. Krabappel says, “Embiggens? I’ve never heard that word before I moved to Springfield.” Ms. Hoover chimes in with her own made-up word to say, “I don’t know why, it’s a perfectly cromulent word.” However, Merriam-Webster is only recognizing “embiggen” this year, so fans of the word “cromulent” will have to wait.

Greaney, who came up with the word “embiggen,” responded to the news today on Twitter.

Merriam-Webster’s 850 new additions this year come from “a cross-section of our linguistic culture.” Other new ones this year include “cryptocurrency,” “life hack,” “hate-watch,” “dumpster fire,” and “subtweet.” You can read this blog post to see more of the newly added words.

The 29th season of The Simpsons is running now. You can watch new episodes on Sunday nights on Fox. A second Simpsons movie is being considered but no official announcements have been made.

This year’s Call of Duty game is indeed Black Ops 4. That’s according to a report today from Kotaku, which follows on from an earlier report claiming that this would be the case. None of this is a surprise, given that Black Ops creator Treyarch is confirmed as developing this year’s game. But as of yet, Activision has yet to formally announce the title.

Lending even further credence to the speculation is that NBA star James Harden wore what looks like a Black Ops 4 hat tonight as he walked into his team’s game against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Harden was also wearing a camo outfit, for what it’s worth.

Two sources told Kotaku that Black Ops 4 is coming from Treyarch this year, and that it will take place in the near future. Activision has not yet commented. A source speaking to Kotaku added that Harden’s hat is indeed the logo for Black Ops 4. It looks like the game won’t use the Roman numeral for 4, which is IV.

Historically, Activision announces new Call of Duty games in April or May, though given that Harden is already teasing it, that timeline could be moving up this year. We will report back with more details on this year’s Call of Duty game as they are announced.

Treyarch also created the fan-favourite Zombies mode, so we expect an updated version to come with Black Ops 4. Treyarch’s Black Ops III was released in 2015, so, given the three-year development cycle for Call of Duty games, it was expected that Treyarch would make this year’s game. Call of Duty releases rotate between Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer, and Treyarch.

Despite being more than two years old, Black Ops III remains popular and continues to get new updates. Just today, Activision released a new map and mode for the game.

Production has begun on the movie inspired by the events of Limb Bizkit singer Fred Durst’s life starring John Travolta. Shooting is now underway on the thriller Moose, which sees Travolta playing a “rabid movie fan” whose admiration for an action hero (played by Devon Sawa) turns into stalking. This story was inspired by a person who stalked Durst in real life years ago.

Durst wrote the script with Dave Bekerman, and is directing the movie. The news today comes by way of Hollywood news site Variety. There was some amount of confusion today about this, as Variety initially posted a tweet that said Travolta would play Durst in the movie. People got excited about that. But unfortunately, this is inaccurate, and Variety has since deleted the tweet.

Moose is shooting in Birmingham, Alabama. There was apparently already a scary moment on set involving Sawa and Travolta, but thankfully both actors are OK. Sawa said Travolta had a “brutal fall” during a scene, but got right up and asked if the cameras kept rolling.

Moose is scheduled to hit theatres later this year.

Durst, 47, has already directed two movies: The Education of Charlie Banks starring Jesse Eisenberg and The Longshots starring Ice Cube.

Durst is still touring with Limp Bizkit. The band, which was formed all the way back in the early ’90s, is heading to Australia later this month for the inaugural Download Australia and other sideshows.

While no new Halo games have been announced, those looking to learn more about main character Master Chief now have something to look forward to this year. Microsoft today announced Halo: Collateral Damage, a new, three-part mini-series book that shines a light on Chief “during some of his exploits in the Covenant War.”

Here is the official description, as shared by Microsoft on Halo Waypoint:

“Halo: Collateral Damage follows the Master Chief and Blue Team as they are deployed by the UNSC to an unstable colony world. Their mission: to terminate the Covenant’s efforts to uncover something ancient and powerful beneath the planet’s surface. However, as the mission takes a turn for the unexpected, the Spartan-II strike team realizes that the stakes of their mission are higher than they imagined, and they’ll have to rely on each other and a small group of human rebels to survive.”

Collateral Damage is being written by Alex Irvine, who previously wrote Halo: Rise of Atriox #4, along with the Iron Man story The Rapture. Doing the art for Collateral Damage are David Crosland (artist), Leonard O’Grady (colorist), Simon Bowland (letterer), and Zak Hartong (cover).

Issue 1 of Collateral Damage will be available to buy starting on June 6, with pre-orders at comic stores available now. You can see the first piece of art from the series above.

We know that Halo 6–or whatever Microsoft decides to call the next mainline Halo game–is in development, but it has not yet been officially announced. Despite that, we know it will have split-screen support, which is good news considering that Halo 5 left it out. In other news, developer 343 recently stressed that its ongoing support of Halo: The Master Chief Collection will not have an impact on the next core Halo game.

2015’s Halo 5 was the last entry in the core FPS series. There was three years between 2012’s Halo 4 and Halo 5, so if Microsoft is keeping with that schedule, Halo 6 could be out this year. Of course, it hasn’t been announced yet, but we sure do hope to see or hear about it during the Xbox E3 2018 briefing in June.