Saturday, January 31, 2009

Congratulations on Finding a Lump!

On your anniversary dinner you’ll give your scrotum a good scratch, itching from the fresh shave you gave yourself in preparation for the evening, and discover a strange, solid growth on your ball.

You won’t want to ruin the evening, so you’ll walk to the table still bouncing with each step. It won’t be until desert that your wife realizes that something is off.

She’ll put her spoon down on her plate next to the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Sundae and reach across the table to put her hand over yours. Looking in your eyes she’ll ask you, voice tinged with fear.

“What’s wrong, honey?”

You’ll smile at her and try to put on a brave face.

“Nothing. I’m just pretty full.”

Her eyes will turn down a little, a tinge of sadness coloring their usual gorgeous green. You can tell that she thinks there’s another woman in your life or some terrible secret on your shoulders. You know that telling her would set her at ease, horrible as the news is for you. But you won’t be able to.

You just can’t think of a way to put it, and whenever you try to put it to words your mouth will run dry and you’ll start to discuss the plot of a film. You’ll go through all three Bourne Films and most of Mullholland Drive before the check arrives.

By the end of the night she’ll be cold to you, a complete reversal from the morning when she jumped on top of you in bed with your boss on your cell phone, rubbing you through your pajamas and grinning devilishly.

You’ll awkwardly sit in your kitchen, drinking a glass of water and staring at the table until she finally comes in and stands in the doorway, blocking your only escape.

“What’s her name?” she’ll say, voice full of wrath. By her body language you know that if you don’t handle this just right you’ll end up with, at best, a broken collarbone. She’s done worse to you before for less. Remember the time you finished her Funyuns?

You know you’ve bungled it and you’ll be paralyzed by that fear as you all too often have been in life. She’ll ask two more times, voice growing colder with each repetition, before you can finally force it out.

“I found a lump.”

She’ll just look angrier at first, staring you down as if it was some sort of awful joke to deflect attention from your affair. But after a moment it will sink in. She’ll come to the table and hold you close, crushing your head against her breast with her remarkable strength.

“Oh god, honey. I’m so sorry.”

She’ll hold you there for an hour and a half stroking your hair and in her arms you’ll feel as if you’re safe from the whole big bad world.

Your wife is a remarkable woman. Buy her flowers spontaneously and be sure you tell her you love her often.

And congratulations on finding a lump. We hope it all turns out okay for you.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Congratulations on Avoiding Divorce!

You and your wife have been going through a rough spat of late, so when the idea of this cruise came up you thought it would be the perfect way to breath a little life back into your marriage.

Things have been, at best, tepid sexwise for the last few months and you’ve begun to suspect she’s cheating on you after finding used condoms in your bedroom trash can (this is actually because you use Ambien; we’ve written about this before for different people, but it isn’t a miracle drug).

So you’ll browbeat her into taking two weeks off so the two of you can go on a lavish cruise, the theme of which is “Get Your Spark Back.”

But as it turns out the cruise is little more than a thinly veiled front for swingers. After less than a week the two of you will each have cheated on your spouse four times, and you’ll both believe the other has no idea.

Suffice it to say this has added to the strain on your marriage. If you didn’t think you’d divorce before you’re positive you will now.

It will all finally come to a head when you confess your affairs to her. She’ll be horrified and won’t admit hers. She’ll start throwing things at you, anything she can find in the room. Pillows, lamps, clothing.

Eventually she’ll reach under the bed, pull out a discarded condom and hit you with it. You haven’t had sex in this room since you boarded boat and you’ve stopped taking Ambien on your doctor’s orders after it caused “nightmare visions of the future.”

Suffice it to say you’ll flip shit and call her a bitch, then slap her. Your wife is sort of weird, and this is really going to get her wet so she’ll be all over you. Even though you just found out she’s cheating you’re pretty weak willed in general, so you’re going to go for it.

It’ll be some of the crazy, angry sex you both love so much and it’ll make you really happy while you’re doing it but once you’re finished you’ll realize that your sex, like your marriage, isn’t healthy. It will be unsatisfying, frustrating, and violent in ways that make you question your sanity.

So you’re going to storm out of your room in your boxers while your wife lies in bed, sexually sated by your aggression. You’ll stand there in your underwear, staring out at the sea wondering how you got to this point, surrounded by forty-somethings exploring each other’s bodies.

This is how you will be twenty minutes later when the ship is attacked by a giant squid. You’ll have seen it in an Ambien fueled dream a few days earlier, but you never thought it would come true.

You and a handful of others will survive the attack by leaping off the ship before the leviathan pulls it down, but your wife will not be so lucky. She, along with most of the couples and crew, will be dragged to a watery grave.

But on the upside her death will allow you to avoid any fees associated with the litigation that would’ve been forthcoming if she’d made it back to shore. So congratulations on avoiding divorce, man.

Oh, also, if you want to keep taking Ambien and want a job send us your résumé. We’re always looking for new talent.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Congratulations on Removing the Foreign Object!

Family members were shocked, medical professionals baffled. Senators were moved to draft new legislation, all because you had to see if it would fit.

What will it be?

That’s a little hard to say. So many things find their way up there: wedding rings, penises, shark bites, key chains, and, of course, dildos.

But we’re loathe to reveal just what it is before the end of the post. Instead we’re going to talk around it and give you hints to see if you can guess it. Try it at the end of each paragraph.

It’s not alive.

That’s right! It’s not Whiskers, your adorable pet rat, who’s going up your colon on Friday night. It’s also not sharp.

You’ve got it. The can opener is going to go up there without a hitch. It's also not made of wood.

That clears all of next week, sure. That means the plunger, those braided chair legs, even your precious wooden tiki from Malakaloa are all kosher with your rectum. So here’s our last clue: it belonged to your mother.

Still don’t have it? Well, we’re glad you’ll be surprised. And congratulations on removing the foreign object. You’ve got a pretty amazing healthcare package.

PS – It’s a vintage Atari 2600 joystick. Your mom was really cool and you need to slow down on this habit.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Congratulations on Completing Your Capstone!

After almost a decade as an undergraduate you’re finally going to prove your academic advisor, your parents, three of your ex-girlfriends and that one girl you hooked up with when you were really high wrong. You’re going to complete your senior capstone!

Thanks to your family’s largesse you’ve been able to remain in school across three presidential terms. While there you’ve shifted majors four times, completed enough courses to finish five minors and, oddly enough, not yet fulfilled your PE requirement.

But the recession has hit your folks hard and you’ve decided that the time has come for you to stop wasting their money on courses on how Georgia O’Keefe also thought about penises a lot and heroin and up and graduate so you can move back home, where you’ll be a slightly less significant fiscal burden.

So this last semester you’ve kicked it into overdrive. You’ve taken three whole classes, attended at least 40% of the classroom time those classes offer, and taken the majority of the tests for these classes. In instances where you failed to take a test you have either made it up or bribed the professor with what remains of your family’s financial clout.

And, at long last, you’re going to complete your capstone project in art history. None of your professors think much of you, so its going to be pretty fucking stupid (a power point presentation of O’Keefe’s paintings morphing into penises) but they’re going to give you a “fuck off” C anyway and you’ll be overjoyed.

So overjoyed you OD on heroin celebrating and have to be rushed to the hospital, missing one of your critical finals.

So it looks like its summer school for you, since “ODing on heroin” is not one of the acceptable reasons to miss a final. But congratulations on completing your capstone. We all knew someone like you in college, and its nice to know that sometimes things work out okay for you fuckheads.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Congratulations on Inheriting the Rights to Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam!

Your eccentric uncle spent most of his life acquiring the rights to various asinine pop songs. Well, not just doing that. He also built a yard supply empire which allowed him the financial leeway to acquire those rights.

But he’s been ailing and you’ve been showing him just how much you care by spending time with him and playing a lot of Connect Four. It’s his favorite game and, of late you two have had some great heartwarming moments. It helps that you’re unemployed and seriously have nothing else to do except work on your “novel” about a sexy nurse who fights crime by having unprotected intercourse.

Your uncle has genuinely enjoyed the chapters you’ve read to him by the way. We just put novel in quotes because we think it would make a better novella here in the office.

Over the last few months the two of you have really bonded. And, unbeknowst to you, he’s going to redraft his will in the days preceding his death and leave you the majority of his music rights. His children will still get most of his material property, but you’ll inherit an overwhelming store of intellectual property rights including, but not limited to, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam.

What this means is that, thanks to an upcoming movie and the Black Eyed Peas’ reliance on other people’s music, you’re going to have a shit-ton of money.

We suggest doing something nice for yourself, like maybe soft serve ice cream or a half and half from a fairly clean prostitute.

And maybe you could actually sit down and work on that novel for a while? Just a suggestion.

Congratulations on inheriting the rights to Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, by the way. You had your first handjob to I Wonder If I Take You Home, so that’s kinda cool.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Congratulations on Curing Your Hiccoughs!

Well, none of us thought it would work. But it turns out your son pretending to come out to you actually did scare the hiccoughs right out.

He wouldn’t have resorted to such drastic measures, its just that you’ve been hiccoughing for five years. That’s a long time to be crippled by embarrassing bodily functions. You’ve had your latest cat almost that long. Heck, that’s actually how long your son has known he’s gay.

Oh, he is actually gay, by the way. When he yelled “just kidding” after you went really pale and started making the sign of the cross over yourself he was just trying to cover. He thought you’d flip shit if you really knew and just think it was a brilliant ploy to rid you of your hiccoughs if he acted fast. He played you right, but he felt bad and didn’t want to live a lie. He also really wanted to introduce you to Troy (his boyfriend, who is a delight by the way) without lying about it.

So he’s since reconsidered and asked us to inform you here. Oh, also, congratulations on curing your hiccoughs.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Duty and Death!

Today's Super Nerd Sunday is all about death in video games, with a big focus on Call of Duty 4. It also still mentions Bioshock. Maybe next week I'll get away from doing that. Anyhow, enjoy.

Odds are if you’ve played a video game, you’ve died. Few and far between are the games which don’t heap deaths upon players, old and new alike, and then do their all to make it seem like they didn’t happen. Sure, some of the old Lucas Arts adventure games featured main characters with realistic (read as: cowardly) senses of self-preservation, but for the most part death has always been a part of video games.

Part of the art of designing a game, then, is incorporating death into the game’s flow. Most games fail at this completely. Death is an interrupt, an inconvenience. If you died you did it wrong and you have to reload from an earlier save state. Oops. Maybe it’ll spit out a tool tip or two or let you know you can lower the difficulty level if they’ve really given their all. But for the most part games just break their flow on deaths. They treat them as if they should never happen, as if the player did something wrong in a scenario that they as a designer knew full well would come to pass.

Even great, meticulously designed games have fallen prey to this. Half-Life and its follow-ups and bastard children (Portal) all have the “whoops, reload” stance on death. Japanese games have a particularly infuriating way of dealing with player death, usually establishing an arbitrary limit on failures or setting up arbitrary, optional checkpoints from which the game can be replayed. Most games treat death as the wrong answer to a question and something you really should’ve known better than to do.

Despite this enduring trend of ignoring player incompetence, some people have sat down and made death a part of their story. I’m loath to talk about Bioshock more, after dedicating the last two weeks entirely to it, but it deserves a quick jerk of the head since it did a nice job of making death a part of its play. Its predecessor, System Shock 2, did the same with a nearly identical plot device. Prey devised an entire mechanic and plot device to account for player deaths. And these are just examples of making it a tolerable part of game play.

What’s always been more impressive to me personally is when people can make death a part of storytelling, even in a small way. Prince of Persia, or Prince of Persia: Sands of Time or whatever the hell they’re calling it now, had a great way of doing this. Beyond giving the player control over an “oops, I done fucked up” button they also gave us a nice two second sound bite that moved the death into the context of the narrative. You’re not incompetent, the Prince just has a terrible memory.

Assassin’s Creed had the same modus operandi. For all the flak people gave AC it really did account for the entirety of the game world and made sure that when you died you both knew you’d fucked up and didn’t have to hit a magic “load last save” button. It plopped you back a short distance away “resynchronized” with what you were supposed to be doing before you cocked it all up. Perhaps its a fine distinction rather than a sweeping difference, but it maintained game flow and made sure that however you chose to pace your play you’d never encounter any big flow breaking events, outside of the overlong assassination soliloquies (okay, they weren’t technically soliloquies but they really might as well have been; it was a dude with a knife in his throat talking to a laconic douchebag for a solid five minutes).

Some games took it to another level entirely. Torment had one of my favorite death mechanics ever, one which shifted dramatically based on context. Torment made death a part of advancing through the story and exploring the world. It took the concept of immortality that we bring to games already, the concept that we’re unkillable but not invulnerable, and turned it on its ear. Torment was smart. It’s too bad it didn’t sell more copies and too bad that it had pacing problems, but its death mechanic was masterful. The way it blended into the story, the mechanics and the game world was just excellent. Certainly a lot of that was owed to Planescape’s already expansive and imaginative setting, but Torment absorbed the knowledge that players were going to die and decided to make it a major game play mechanic from start to finish. And it did a pretty awesome job.

But the game which hit home most recently with its treatment of death was Call of Duty 4. If you’ve played through the opening sequence of CoD4 you know that the game forces you to die and makes these deaths a part of the story. Sure, it has the “load the autosave” problem games suffer from all too often, but it does make the concept of death a critical part of the game world and I think it warrants discussion.

The game opens with you, the player (or the president of Arabistan, depending on how you look at it), being driven through a nameless war torn city, tied to a post and shot in the face. This is Call of Duty’s world: violent, claustrophobic, and constrictively linear. You move from place to place under orders from unquestionable figures beyond your sight, objectives and perceptions changing rapidly and inexplicably. You’re a soldier in a modern context, a tool for those who want you to complete a specific task who is given just enough information to do so.

I enjoyed the earlier Call of Duties, but in 4 Infinity Ward finally hit their stride: they made a great game, completely unpretentious, which by either intent or accident was also a great work of art. Every part of CoD4 lends itself to creating an idea and a feeling of what it means to be a solider. You’re surrounded by chaos structured by your orders and in these orders you ground yourself. You generally have three things to think about: kill enemies, don’t die, and don’t fuck up the mission. IW doesn’t try to make soldiers seem like heroes; as Ben Crawhee points out both sides seem more like amoral psychopaths than heroes in their own right. Instead it portrays them as brave people struggling through a violent, oppressive world that doesn’t offer them any other options.

Nowhere is this more visible than in the famed twist of CoD4. If you haven’t played it yet and actually plan to close your browser and go get on that, because here thar be spoilers. Also, the game is like forty goddamn dollars. What are you waiting for? It’s awesome, and its on Steam. You won’t even have to put on pants to get it.

In Call of Duty 4 one of your beloved player characters, one of the faceless, voiceless protagonist cameras you’re all too accustomed to controlling in these games, dies. You don’t die heroically, fighting off a great advance or with your hands clutched around someone’s throat. You die because you make a decision. Your basic humanity overrides your orders and you go back to save someone. And you die for it. You die like a crippled dog, dragging yourself through ruined streets looking for help while your legs refuse to work.

I won’t say anything about the fact that the choice is made for you, but I will mention that your inevitable death does come as a result of disobeying the faceless voice in the sky, something Call of Duty makes sure you should never do. But that’s a topic for another essay. It’s more the grisly nature of this particular demise, rather than its thematic ramifications, that I want to talk about.

In most games you’ll die fighting. You’ll die because the game was too hard, because there were just too many of them, or because you accidentally walk off a ledge and topple hilariously to your death. In Call of Duty 4 you die helpless. You’re unarmed, unassailed. There’s no one for you to fight. You die in a nuclear wasteland, the wreckage of society generated by the carefully orchestrated and highly politicized violence you’ve been party to for the entire game. You die because in the modern world people are replaced and destroyed by these weapons of war. You die because soldiers die, and they don’t always die fighting. And Call of Duty 4 wanted us to know that.

And even if you didn’t draw all of that out of the experience it’s difficult to ignore the feeling of helplessness as IW puts you through your final moments on those unspecifically ethnic streets. Which is what makes Call of Duty 4’s treatment of death so great. It makes us play a tragic hero and it doesn’t remove us from the game to do so. It shows us that to be a tragic hero in the modern world is to die alone and helpless because you were just trying to do the right thing.

And Call of Duty lets us keep on playing for revenge, doing all we can to strike back at the people who put us through that slow and terrible death. It brings us to death’s door once again and gives us our revenge. Still, even then it’s bittersweet and the last few seconds of the game are tinged with survivor’s guilt.

It’s a fantastic use of player mortality as a game mechanic. Even though I’d died dozens of times along the way I was still struck by each of these sequences because they slowed down and let me process what was happening: I was helpless, aligned against forces bigger than me, and the only reason I was still alive was because of my squad mates and their sacrifices. It might sound cliché, but when I saw Zakhaev shoot Gaz anger overpowered fear in me. I wanted a gun. I wanted revenge.

And Call of Duty 4 let me have it, along with a moment of hope knowing I’d be alright and then a few seconds sadness knowing that Price, Gaz, and Griggs wouldn’t be. And then they had to cock it all up by inserting a voice actor’s Call of Duty inspired rap over the end credits.

But hey, the game itself was wonderful. And it used death in a way that both forwarded the story and reinforced the world of the game. And IW did it in a way that wasn’t entirely post-modern, which is in its own right impressive in the current world of game design. Although I am curious: why weren’t there any other bodies in the crashed chopper? Where was everyone else?

Death is always going to be a part of games. As gamers we seek to challenge ourselves, and that always means you’re going to fail. And most games are still going to treat death as a situation deserving punishment rather than an expected part of game play. But those titles that truly resonate, the ones that stand the test of time and exhibit greatness, the vast majority of them look at death and see an element they can use to tell a story. And that’s one of the great strengths offered by video games: that we can die many times and learn a new lesson with each demise.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Congratulations on Purchasing a Didgeridoo to Assist With Your Health Problems!

Congratulations. Today you join the ranks of filthy fucking hippies who decided to buy one of the most pretentious and irritating instruments in the world instead of seeking medical attention. Kudos to you, sir.

It will all have begun while you were browsing the internet. You’re a 37 year old man who lives off disability checks due to his severe obesity. You also suffer from severe apnea, specifically the kind where your heart stops beating as you sleep, and you’ve been looking for quick fix solution that would allow you to keep getting checks for being profoundly fat.

You’ve been emailing your mother about it a lot lately (she only communicates with you via email because your constant labored breathing makes her uncomfortable over the phone and you can’t travel anywhere because you can’t fit in a car) and Gmail™ will have come up with an ad for you about how didgeridoos cure apnea.

The science of the ad will be, at best, questionable. But after reading a few testimonials from dirty, dirty hippies and some aborigines who thrive on feeding white people false hope you’ll be sold.

Five to seven business days later they’ll be gone with over two hundred of your American dollars, but you’ll have the didgeridoo and a false sense of hope that at long last you’ll be able to sleep without worrying about heart failure.

You’ll die in around half a month from massive coronary failure while awake.

But hey, congratulations on purchasing a didgeridoo to assist with your health problems. You fucking rube.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Congratulations on Your Abortion!

Some people would call you brave, some a sinner. We here at the office would just like to call you “champ.”

Not for your sexual exploits, those are sort of funny in an embarrassing way. Most people don’t wear luchador masks during, by the way. No, we’re here because by getting this abortion you’re not only keeping a child who would’ve been raised without love out of this world, you’re also ending the life of a future supervillian.

See John in HR sometimes sees moments of divergence in our everyday lives. And in this abortion he saw a big one in yours.

Most abortions, mind you, are big ones. They represent the potential for a life, whichever side of the fence you’re on on the whole issue. And when they occur they definitively end that potential. It actually makes our job a lot easier, to be honest, by removing variables.

But your particular abortion has significance to everyone in the world, because if you hadn’t chosen to abort today your child would grow into a precocious young man who would hold the world hostage with an army of mutant shark men.

Even after his appropriately ironic death at the hands of his own bloodthirsty minions feral bands of shark men would have continued to roam the earth, confining humanity to a few ravaged settlements for decades.

They’d be wiped out John Conner style eventually, but society would take some serious hits for a while, and the internet would become a bigger part of most people’s lives.

If you’d like to hear more about this whole adventure, John’s working on a book based on what he saw along the other path. He said a lot of his visions were “rockin’” and he’s hoping to use some of the money to help him quit working here.

The rest of us are all just super psyched that we won’t have to worry about being murdered by shark men. At least, not for a while. And you won’t be raped and killed by them either, causing your son to abandon his last ounce of humanity.

So you’ll be avoiding raising a child you don’t feel prepared for and the rest of the world will avoid a grisly age of carnage ushered in by the spawn of your loins. It really is a win-win.

Oh, also, he’d just end up looking like his daddy, who was heinously ugly.

So congratulations on your abortion. It’s not an easy choice, but trust us, it’s the right one.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Congratulations on Cooking Some Amazing Biscuits and Gravy!

It’s Thursday, January 22 three days before your anniversary and you’ve woken up early to cook your wife a delicious surprise breakfast.

Normally she gets up at 6 AM to get to her job early, so you had to get up at around 4:30 to get the sausage started, but it’s smelling really good. By the time you hear the shower running you’ll have just put the finishing touches on the gravy and it’ll be cooking down. The biscuits will be plumping in the oven and the eggs will be frying up just the way she likes them.

By the time she gets downstairs you’ll have a pair of elegant place settings on the table and all of her favorite breakfast dishes carefully arranged. You even got some of her favorite flowers, chrysanthemums, for a centerpiece.

It will be absolutely perfect. Which is why her panicked expression will seem so out of place.

You’ll do your best to ignore it, sliding up to her and holding her, saying “Call in sick today.” But she’ll just stand there, unblinking. When you move to kiss her she’ll pull away.

You’ll stand there looking at her, puzzled.

“Happy early anniversary,” you’ll say.

She won’t say anything in response, but you’ve been married to this woman for almost a decade now. You’ll know exactly what she’s thinking. It’s just two words: oh shit.

When a light knock sounds on your door you’ll feel like your stomach dropped out. It’ll be like you were hit right in the solar plexus. You’ll have trouble breathing. You’ll want to sit down, but you’re afraid you’ll vomit.

Your wife won’t say she’s sorry. She won’t even get her coat, she’ll just run out the door in her work clothes. You’ll catch sight of a man through the jamb, but it will barely last a second.

The way she’s been over the last few months will all make sense now. The early mornings, the late nights, the increase in her smoking. You should’ve seen the signs, but you’ve been so busy yourself.

And now that you know she’s left with an ultimatum. You don’t know anything about him, if he matters to her, if she loves him more than you. You just know that she’s scared.

She’s so scared she ran out of your house. Because she’s worried about how you’d react. So she still feels something for you.

You try to take comfort in that fact as you sit there, delicately moving tiny portions of your special anniversary breakfast on to your plate.

As you shovel the biscuits coated in gravy into your mouth they taste like ashes. You swallow the mouthful, with effort, then shove your plate away.

The taste is just a physical manifestation of your grief, because the food you made is possibly the most delicious in the world at that moment. Sorry that this is how you found out. It’s not the worst way it could’ve happened, but it is pretty close.

And congratulations on cooking some amazing biscuits and gravy. And seriously, we’re really sorry.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Congratulations on Meeting Your Favorite Lava Monster!

You’ll be deep under the earth’s crust, where you all too often find yourself. As a scientist-explorer-inventor you’re always hanging out in weird places and doing crazy shit, and since your PhD is in experimental petrology a lot of this shit is in places filled with searing hot magma.

What’s usually lacking in these “hot spots” (yes, we’re proud of ourselves) is “smoldering” sexual tension. But that’s going to change when you meet the aptly named Corey, a creature of living rock with molten lava for blood who dwells with her brethren deep under the surface where they can make their rock art and brew unique beers in peace.

As a scientist all you want to do is to learn more about their society, their physical makeup and the geologic history of the rocks they’ve got down there.

Most people find you boring as fuckall, but the rock beasts will perceive you as a threat to their society. Were your findings ever published in a journal of scientific repute their isolated lifestyle would be destroyed. Scientists from all over would want to board your drillship and travel to their secret caves.

While some of them will consider the eco-tourism a positive possibility most of them will be kind of racist, and will think that the influx of scientists, specifically geologists, will bring naught but violent crime and a rapid increase in the number of liquor stores in their city.

They’ll sort of be right about the second one.

But in Corey you’re going to find a like mind. She’s going to teach you all about their unique geologic heritage and, because her people live for eons, you’re going to learn a lot about what really killed the dinosaurs and neat shit like that.

In exchange you will teach her a lot about surface conditions, astronomy, tigers, and brewing lagers, which are largely untenable in their hot climate.

Eventually this will enamor the other rock monsters to you and you’ll leave their Rockopolis to report your findings to the AGU.

You’ll be the toast of the organization and you’ll be responsible for fostering positive relations between the Magmoids (what Corey’s people refer to themselves as) and humans.

So congratulations on meeting your favorite lava monster. It’s going to be a pretty positive experience, except for the third degree burns.

Work on inventing some flame retardant condoms over the next few months and you’ll be all set, super-scientist.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Congratulations on Blinding Your Foe!

Wow. None of us thought you’d pull it off, but tomorrow afternoon you’re going to get sulfuric acid right in the eyes of one Professor Higginston, your primarily rival for grant funding from the NSF.

It will be quite an accomplishment, mostly because he’ll be very close to an eyewash station. He’ll beeline for it after you “accidentally” slip and cast the steaming beaker into his face, but you’ll also “accidentally” body check him into some glass, which will cut him up fierce and cripple his left hand.

We never thought you’d have the balls to do it, especially at work where there are so many safety precautions to keep just that from happening. But you did it perfectly. He’s not going to die, but his eyes will never work again. He’ll also be horribly disfigured.

So there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be able to score with his hot wife, Chezmerelda St. Claire. She’s a pretty big deal in the Biochemistry world, and you used to date before Higginston (that son of a bitch) stole her away from you.

There is a catch, though. With his eyes and body crippled and his sexual needs left unsatisfied, Higgz, as you refer to him on your blog, is going to get even better at sciencing.

All that energy he used to put into satisfying Chezzie (what you call her on your blog) he’s going to pour into new nucleotide theories and experiments. And it won’t be long before he ends up grabbing that Nobel prize, much to your chagrin.

He’ll be like the Daredevil of the bio world. Taking away his vision will just have given him new abilities to perceive science. So you’ll actually have done the world a favor in a strange way. Without your avarice he may never have found that upcoming cure for AIDS.

But for now he’s on the floor screaming. Better drag him to a chemical shower to make sure he can’t indict you for his injuries. He knows you hate him, and he’s got reasonable evidence on his side, so you really have to make sure it seems like an accident.

Congratulations on blinding your foe. Come the end of this financial quarter he’s still going to be in the recovery ward and you’re going to have enough ill-gotten federal funding to fill a small bathtub with one dollar bills and swim in it like Scrooge McDuck before you go off and buy some new pipettes.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Congratulations on Losing the Paternity Suit!

We say losing, but in this case it’s really winning.

You’re not the little shit’s father, you don’t have to take responsibility for what he’s done and, more importantly, you don’t have to send his ugly ass momma a big fat check every month because you fucked her while you were drunk and forgot to wear a rubber.

To celebrate, we suggest a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 and that homeless girl under the overpass. It looked like she’d do just about anything to get some shelter for the night, if you get our drift.

And congratulations on losing the paternity suit. Woo!

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Bioshock, Part 2!

I’ll do my best to keep this short, since it’s been a long week and I’m sort of wiped out. But before I moved on to another game, I wanted to make another note on Bioshock and the impact it had and to get more specific about the artistic message it imparted to me.

So here goes.

The most profound connection I made in Bioshock was one that didn’t hit me until long, long after I’d finished the game. It was a scene towards the end of the game, one where a pair of splicers dance in a relatively pristine apartment the ruins of Apollo Square. If you disturb them they would attack but unlike most of the denizens of Rapture they were not aggressive.

They were content to fox trot in peace amidst the ruins of what had once been their lives, humming their love for one another. I couldn’t bring myself to hurt them, to find out just what would happen if I fought them, so I sat and watched them dance, a kernel of beauty in the heart of the twisted wreckage of humanity.

It was a beautiful moment, one that made me sit and reflect on the game. I rested in that port in the storm, carefully scavenged for supplies and left them to their dance, a little bit happier with the knowledge that someone in Rapture still had love in their heart aside from Tennenbaum.

A few weeks later while I was thinking, as I incessantly do, I realized that that moment had had the same impact on me as the Egon Schiele poster my ex-girlfriend had hung over her bed.

Schiele was an Expressionist Austrian painter famed for his twisted portrayal of the human form. His self-portraits and nudes are probably his most recognizable work, and his paintings have an explicit sexuality to them which simultaneously accents the frailty of the human body. Schiele portrays people as what oh so many of us are: ugly, ugly things obsessed with sex and the inevitability of our own deaths.

There’s a good chance you haven’t seen him before, so if you’d like open a new tab and Google Image his name. I’ll wait.

A little disturbing, right?

But in these twisted forms there is something beautiful. If you look at Schiele’s paintings you can see that there’s something amazing in each of the figures he renders. Their sorrowful eyes, their overt sexuality and the disgust with which they see both themselves and the world... They’re all beautiful.

His paintings are ugly, morbid and inhuman, but in these traits they capture what it truly means to be human. In Bioshock I found a companion to Schiele. Neither of these works endeavor to show you how good humanity can be. Instead they show us the worst aspects of our nature.

Schiele shows us our fear and obsession with the end, our overt concern with sex and sexuality and, through his refusal to portray it, our harsh judgment of beauty. Bioshock deals constantly with death and destruction and the hideous nature of greed. It unapologetically displays what happens when we lose track of what is truly important in our lives.

But in both of these portrayals we can see the glimmers of what makes us great as people. Certainly we are ugly, selfish things who can’t stop thinking of our own ends. But there’s something alluring about that self-destruction. In Schiele’s haunting eyes we see that even if we’re all ugly we have something beautiful within us. And in Jack’s caring hands we see that even amongst the worst humanity has to offer we can still find things of beauty.

And if we must we can and should fight to protect that beauty. But sometimes all we really need to do is look, smile and walk away.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Congratulations on Your Heavy Smoking!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Congrations to the Groom!

Perhaps an Aztec temple isn’t where you thought you’d be getting married.

Perhaps you didn’t want to be wed in full, period accurate pirate garb.

And perhaps you didn’t ever really want to marry Kelly McKinnes.

But on January 15th, in the heat of the South American summer, the two of you are going to be wed under, more or less, these circumstances (there’s a slight chance she’ll request costumes from the Tudor period. She’s an SCA member).

Kelly, as you know, has loved you for years. She’s never been subtle about it, but you’re a thick son of a bitch so you’ve didn't really noticed it until recently, around the same time you started to notice her friend, Claire.

Claire looks a little bit like what you’d call a “punk rock pinup.” She doesn’t wear make-up or anything, and she isn’t particularly punk. But she is very indie. She makes her own clothes and wears canvas shoes, and the music she likes is a lot like the music you like.

Look, we’ve established you’re thick, so we're going to come out and tell you how it is. You love Claire. You loved her since the first day you ever saw her. But Claire had a boyfriend. That is, until recently, when she caught her boy of six years cheating on her with her cousin, Mary. Mary, by the way, will not be invited to the wedding. Claire’s boyfriend will have received an invite months ago, but will have the good taste not to come.

So a newly single Claire will be attending the lie of a wedding you’re getting into with the girl you never really felt much for until she started to make you feel important. And what’s more, she’ll be flirting with you. She knows you’re thick so she’ll say things like “I wish some dashing guy would just get me out of this bridesmaid’s dress and fuck the misery out of me” and “Chris, I think I have feelings for me that you reciprocate and I honestly think this wedding is a mistake” just to make sure you get the message.

You’re having trouble reading her, and you’ll be baffled throughout the ceremony. It’ll all go smoothly up to the exchange of vows. Exactly as everyone in our office as well as your bride to be expects.

This is one of those points of divergence Ted Chiang wrote about in Stories of Your Life. There is a maximum for happiness and a maximum for sorrow here. You have to make a choice.

On the ruined steps of that ancient temple you’ll stand there facing Kelly and just behind her will be Claire. Kelly and Claire both know what’s going on, even though they haven’t talked about it directly. Unlike you they’re not oblivious. They still value their friendship but they both know that whoever ends up with you will never see the other again.

They’ll both have tears welling in their eyes. They’ll know you’re the best and worst thing that could’ve ever happened to either of them. And they’ll see the choice before you more clearly than even you can.

You can marry Kelly. As we said, predictions following these events are foggy at best, destiny still being unresolved, but it looks like you’ll have three children, a high paying job and a labrador retriever. You will die in your sleep at an old age surrounded by the things you have collected over a lifetime you can take pride in.

If you don’t marry Kelly you’re going to walk out of the ruins and Claire is going to follow you into the jungle. She’s going to jump your bones and it’ll be fucking great and, at some point, an anaconda will attack you.

If it was just you, you’d be fucked, but Claire is an expert machete fighter and with her around we’d give you a fifty-fifty chance. On a related note, she is a very amazing woman. But so is Kelly, in her own right. After all they've both endured your idiocy and saw through it to something wonderful.

There is, however, a third option.

When the pagan priest in his colorful robes asks you if you take Kelly as your yada yada you know this already, say “Say whaaaat” as loud as you can.

The entire wedding will burst out laughing while you stand there looking baffled. Then a toucan will land on your head and you’ll smile. Freeze frame on the smile and then roll end credits.

The last one is a terrible choice, but it remains yours to make.

So congratulations to the groom. As always there is no right choice. There are simply choices. Whichever you make remember you must live with it always.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Congratulations on Driving a Subaru!

Congratulations! People who canvas believe that your preference in Japanese car manufacturers makes your more likely to put up with their bullshit and give money to their causes, and they’re often proven correct.

Also, statistics show that you’re probably a stable homosexual in a fulfilling relationship. The state may or may not recognize you and your partner as married under common law. Google “blue state gay index” to get a good idea, although following November 4th, a lot has changed. Fivethirtyeight.com might have some statistics on it, christ knows they have them for everything else.

But these are both statements about who you are, or probably are, and not about the horrible future that awaits you. So let’s dive right in!

Tomorrow your daughter will become teen pregnant. I’m not talking 19 years old teen pregnant, where maybe its a shotgun wedding but they end up really happy. No. Your thirteen year old daughter is going to get knocked up.

Even if she isn’t sexually active she’s going to be preggers like whoa (Jewish families pay attention here, it could be important). Even if you’re a same sex couple I guarantee that your adoption paperwork is going to come through tomorrow and you’re going to get an adorable little Vietnamese girl who turns out to be eighty-six pounds of trouble and baby.

Also, you’ll think she’s just really fat when she shows up on your doorstep and mistreat her as such. Learn some Vietnamese first so she can easily communicate that she had a child with an elderly man she didn’t love in an effort to secure his hand in marriage, but that he overdosed on black tar heroin and she was forced to flee through an adoption agency that also sells teen brides.

You’ll also get along better if you show an active interest in her culture. It’s common sense.

Anyhow, consider all your options and think carefully about what this means to your family. Also, as we said, Jewish parents, keep an eye on your daughter’s vag. There could be some messiah action in your household, and one of the wise men will actually be George Burns’ zombie.

I know. How sweet is that!

Anyhow, only couples with thirteen year old children or seeking to adopt need concern themselves with today’s post. And congratulations on driving a Subaru! You brought this on yourself, you self-righteous douche.

On the bright side it could be a lot worse. Tomorrow everyone who drives or rides in a Ford Windstar is going to get AIDS.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Congratulations on No Longer Riding the Rails!

Well, we racked our brains to find you doing something dumber than running away from your awesome, liberal parents who used to invite you to smoke pot and let you drink fifteen year old whiskey at dinner and it turns out there were lots of things. We were sort of surprised but your life over the next few years will consist of failure after failure.

It’s a miracle you’re alive, but as it turns out you’re some sort of retarded Highlander. All of the stupid shit you do seems like it should kill you, but none of it will. We’d rather not take away from any one stupid decision, so we’re going to delicately omit all of them right now and just go on to the best decision you’re going to make over the next few years after we impart a few important pieces of advice.

First, avoid sleeping in sewer pipes. We know you liked TMNT, but seriously. Who the fuck does that?

Second, pack extra socks. You’ll never be sorry you packed extra socks, and who knows, they might save your life. That is, if you weren’t immortal.

Third, fire. Keep it close to you, master it and it will be your tool in the darkness to come. I’m sorry I can’t go on, but I’ve very nearly said too much.

And now, on to your future.

The wisest choice you’ll be making in the next 7-14 years, free will determining, will be your choice to stop riding the rails. Maybe you’ll go back to your parent’s place, or maybe you’ll settle in the tranquil town of Superior, Montana. Hey, maybe you’ll even end up on Jeopardy and take down enough money to kick back your heels and relax for the rest of your life.

But you’ll make the decision the same way regardless of what you choose to do.

You’ll be over 18 walking down the side of the road in Arizona. You’ve been hanging out in reservations there ever since you accidentally popped up on the grid buying cigarettes and your parents tried to track you down. You needed to get somewhere state law enforcement couldn’t touch, and fast.

After shacking up with several truckers you’ll be headed to your next destination when it’ll hit you that your rebellion will have taken far more effort than actually living up to your potential ever could’ve. You’ll feel a tinge of regret, largely because you don’t realize you’re immortal yet. But don’t worry.

When you realize that you’ve stopped aging at the ripe old age of 19 after that pissed off old Indian guy shot you in the chest with a magnum you’ll cheer up. Well, after you suffer a total breakdown because you realized you’ll have to watch all the people you know and love slowly waste way while you, timeless and indestructible, must endure their passing alone.

So congratulations on no longer riding the rails. It was a great decision, and whatever life you choose is going to be way, way better than trying to live like a 1920s era hobo in the era of Homeland Security.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Congratulations on Breaking The Ties That Bind You!

Today you will unfetter yourself from the tightest bonds of all, those of family. You’ll be legally emancipated from your parents!

As a spunky tween it has been your dream for years to be out from under their controlling heel. Your mom is always on you to make boys use condoms when they ejaculate inside of you and your dad is all “work to your potential and you’ll go far, honey.” As if.

So after months in court rooms and a few white lies about your father taking pictures of you while you’re asleep and your mom collecting your hair you’ve finally rid yourself of those meddling adults. To celebrate, since they’re both currently in a county prison, I suggest having a huge rager at your house. Invite all your friends, and a bunch of people who aren’t your friends who you don’t really care for at all.

Next, get some abortions. Five or six should do. Have fun, but don’t go crazy. Too many abortions can tire a girl out and you’re going to want some energy for the last part...

Running away! For realsies this time!

Sure, you’ve run away before, but your parents always tracked you down and made you feel special. Without them around there’s no one to tell you your life is worth anything or that riding the rails is less a way to find yourself and more a way to be raped by hobos.

By the time the FBI realizes the evidence against your parents was falsified you’ll be long gone and, according to the police, likely dead (you dressed a homeless man in your clothes, pried out his teeth and set him on fire before running away. You’re a very industrious child).

So congratulations on breaking the ties that bind you! This was easily the worst decision you’ve made in your life so far, but that’s okay. You’re young and I’m sure you’ll do something even dumber in the years to come.

Tune in tomorrow for more on that, actually.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Congratulations on Getting Totally Fucking Plastered!

Congratulations! Over the last six days you’ve been drinking at a steady clip and now top scientists have come to agree with your assessment: you are so wasted dude.

It’s a great accomplishment for you, really it is. One of the greatest things you’ve done since the box factory let you go. And you’ve really committed yourself to it, too. Even when you weren’t sure it was a great idea you still got up and threw back a shot to get your day started.

But to be honest, it’s time to let it go. It’s nice to party for a week solid, especially when times are tough but… Well, your fake leg is starting to smell and your children are worried about you. You leave them a lot nowadays and they’re good at taking care of themselves, but they still love you. They don’t need you, but they love you.

I know, isn’t that so weird?

Anyhow pick yourself up out of the gutter, zip your fly back up and stumble to the nearest bus stop. We’re almost positive your aversion to tipping has left you with just enough petty cash for bus fare. And be sure to sit at the back. You smell fucking terrible. We cannot emphasize this enough.

And congratulations on getting totally fucking plastered. If we held awards for the “World’s #1 Dad” you would get our Wal-Mart mug.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Bioshock, Part 1!

Hello, readership. As I'm sure all seven of you know I'm going to try pushing up game essays regularly each Sunday from here on out. We'll see how it all comes together.

Today's essay is about Bioshock and the concept of games as art. It contains spoilers, albeit spoilers for a year and a half old game which has had its brains written out but still, fair warning. If you so choose to read it, I hope you enjoy.

And so, without further adieu: Bioshock and the discussion of what makes a game art.

Games are still fighting their way towards widespread recognition as a viable art form. The movement truly kicked off with Half-Life, although you could trace it back to the first meta-textual Lucasarts adventure games of the early 90s. But Half-Life was one of the first titles we saw that recognized what it meant to be a game and tried to tell us a story in a way only a game could. It was subtle, challenging, and a decade later we’re still left with pieces of a puzzle and thematic points to debate. It was one of the first major releases that proved that you could use games to tell stories that simply cannot be told anywhere else.

Over the years games have had both their artistic champions and opponents, both ridiculous (Roger Ebert and Clive Barker’s debate comes to mind) and sagacious (who doesn’t love Tom Chick?), rattling shields and spears on either side of the line, but of late we’ve had a modern Half-Life, another game we can point to and proudly declare “This is a story that can only be told through this medium. To tell it any other way is to do it an injustice.” This game was Take2’s not so modest Bioshock.

Ken Levine’s previous title, System Shock 2, was in its own right an impressive work. It used its technology expertly and told a great story while immersing the player in a richly and fully imagined world aboard the Von Braun. But it’s hard to imagine someone sitting down with SS2 and calling it a work of art. It’s a great game, and it certainly makes a statement, but that statement is largely beware the hubris of man. System Shock 2 doesn’t really show players anything about themselves, aside from how easily they flip shit when horribly mutated creatures bear down on them. It used the confines of the game to tell us a story about a character, SHODAN, but it never sat down and made us a part of that story.

Bioshock, however, dropped the player right in the middle of its twisted, objectivist paradise. From its tragic, gripping opening cinematic, easily one of the most memorable in gaming history made all the more forceful for its brevity, it drew the player in with just enough information: a few fragmented images, the sound of screams and then bam. We didn’t need much to get started, really.

We had all, after all, been there before. A hostile series of tunnels populated by hideous creatures and our lone amnesiac hero, for whom this world is just as new as it is to all of us. But Bioshock used these set pieces to great effect, to comment on both what they meant and represented and what they made us.

Bioshock was a very self-conscious game. It was a game that knew it had a weak outlining plot. The whole thing could be equated with Quake 2, after all. It was just a stripped down bit of tripe to explain why you were all alone in this terrible place. But Bioshock recognized that. Through this story there were cracks miles deep, and Bioshock traded on these cracks, making the player a participant in telling and uncovering the story. The vignettes of Rapture, the brief audio logs and hallucinations, expose the player to bits and pieces of his life. And when you finally reach the moment of revelation, when the game takes control away from you, it does so perfectly. It does it to prove a point: that as a player you really don’t have any power over how this will end. You’re not going to change the outcome of the game. You have three choices, one more than in most games: a good ending, a bad ending, and to walk away from the computer.

But in the spaces between these forced events, the metaphorical births and deaths games force us to experience, we find room for self-realization. It is here we define our character. I’m not just talking about the choice to save or harvest the Little Sisters, although that certainly does shape the way you see the game world. Bioshock surrounds the player with context and allows the player to interact with it in a way only a video game ever really could.

It drew us in and took us to a place and left us there with its twisted inhabitants. And it did it all for a reason. Every horrible act, every dark corridor, every tragic missive uttered by one of its shattered vestiges of humanity, was there to tell us something about the nature of man. And our own true nature. When you found yourself beatingAndrew Ryan with a golf club, how did you feel? Frustrated? Satisfied? Helpless? Empowered?
Or confused?

Bioshock did what most games avoid doing: it took the enduring training that we all have, the special mindset we bring to games where crates are our greatest ally and the bigger the target the bigger the threat, and it took this logic apart. Why would icons ever glow in our vision? Why would we instinctively know, through a magical compass arrow, where we need to be?

This logic we’ve come to see as normal is not, and the fact that we’re so accustomed to it and think nothing of it is unbelievably odd. Bioshock wants us to think about that fact, about the way that we obey faceless voices without a second thought. It wants us to consider that maybe the people who are telling us what to do don’t have our best interests at heart. But it also wants us to think on our own. It wants us to step back and look at the game we’ve been playing, to reflect on all that’s come before, and go “huh.”

To its credit, it doesn’t force us to. You can play through all of Bioshock and just enjoy beating horribly spliced human remnants with a pipe wrench. But Bioshock gave us more than that, if we were willing to look. It gave us a game that commented on how games are made and played, which commented on the way stories are told, and still told a great story while doing it, using all the tools at its disposal to do so. And, beyond all that, it gave us a wonderfully realized world, a horrible, shattered one that asked us what we were going to do about it.

I want to close this post by mentioning GTA4. Following release there was a big push in some parts of the community to ask “Is GTA4 the first great work of gaming art?” The answer was a resounding no, for a number of reasons, but I’d say a big one is that GTA4 forgot it was a video game. It wanted to be a venue for performance art, and even there it was sort of half assed. If you ignored the tacked on bits, rife with Rockstar’s juvenile and occasionally wonderful humor, you could find a pretty fun game buried under there. But GTA4 never really approached art in my mind because it never made me feel anything. When I completed GTA I walked away with a few fond memories of 70 hours of gameplay and a bevy of X-Box accomplishments. GTA4 wasn’t the right pick for our gaming champion. It tried, but it focused all its energy in the wrong places and did it in ways that really broke the game.

Bioshock, though, it cemented games as art for me in this decade. There are other games that belong with it, but to me it is the most prominent title and the best one to point to and say “pretty much that.” It isn’t accessible to people unfamiliar with the genre, sure, but the same could be said of most great artistic books or films. But if we were to say “what makes a game a work of art?” you could take any single aspect of Bioshock and break it down to show just what it expressed and how.

Except for that bullshit Pipe-Dream hacking mini-game. I don’t know what was up with that.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Congratulations on Staving Off the Wolves!

This isn’t like Richard Nixon and his paranoid rage against the people who wanted to take him down. You’re going to get on a plane in about three weeks and it’s going to crash and you’re going to literally be fending off wolves with your bare hands.

You’ll mostly be using fire to do so, so brush up on fire safety and how to properly manage and care for fires in the wilderness. Also you should probably invest in a small discreet lighter.

There’s no way to keep from getting on the plane, since free-will is an illusion and your reading this will simply make you depressingly helpless to change your own fate so don’t even try. You fly so often, how would you even know, right?

But a few preparations won’t hurt. And who knows, you might even befriend some of the wolves and become a part of their pack. It’ll be like when you joined that gang of 13 year olds when you first went to grad school, but less directionless and violent.

So congratulations on staving off the wolves for those few days. Your wife is going to be really, really happy when she sees you again, assuming you get back in the next year and a half. Otherwise she’ll marry your brother, and shit will be way awkward.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Congratulations on Your Spectacular Demise!

Today is going to culminate in the single greatest accomplishment of your life: your death. This might sound kind of depressing, but it’s really not.

It will all start when you wake up at 10 AM. Your cell phone will be ringing. You’ll check the caller ID and it will be your father. You haven’t spoken to him in months, not since your mother died and the two of you spiraled into depression and closed yourselves off from the rest of the world. You’ll answer the call and the first thing you’ll hear will be his breathing, heavy and panicked.

“Christ, they’ve got me. They said they’ll kill me if you don’t come. They want the case. Son, I need your –“

His voice will cut off with a grunt and a few curse words in what sounds like Mandarin. Then a man with a thick Chinese accent will come on the line.

“We have your father. Bring the stones to the Accelerated Shipping warehouse at the waterfront. Come alone.”

He’ll hang up and you’ll sit there for three minutes in your underwear, just processing what’s happened. Then you’ll slip into your three year old Pumas, grab your keys and head out to your car to drive to your father’s house. Once you get there you’ll dig up his old Colt 1911 from the shoebox in his bedroom closet, then go into the basement to the loose floorboard. You’ll pry it up with the claw end of a hammer and the briefcase will be sitting there.

Your dad had had that briefcase in the basement ever since you were in high school, but he never talked about it. The only reason you even knew was because you and your brother had dug it up one night after you’d gotten into your dad’s whiskey. You won’t even open it when you find it, you’ll just pick it up and lock your dad’s front door on your way out.

On the way to the warehouse district you’ll obey all the speed limits and traffic laws. You’ll park a few blocks away from the address, far enough so you can walk and get your bearings on your way in but not so far that you’ll tire yourself out. When you get to the warehouse a pair of Chinese mercenaries will be outside, clutching assault rifles. They’ll be unalert, conversing with one another. They’ll never hear you coming.

You’ll shoot one of them in the face and then other in the leg after yelling “Supplies!” It was a little racist but the joke was pretty great, we have to admit. After that you’ll grab the survivor by the neck and walk him into the warehouse with the case in his hands.

When you step on to the warehouse floor there will be five more mercenaries surrounding your father. They’ll also have John from accounting at your old job. He and your dad will both be pretty badly beaten. When they see you John will start sobbing.

“I’m sorry. They said it was for a surprise party. We were all worried about you.” One of the mercenaries will smash his rifle into the back of John’s skull and he’ll tumble to the floor, still weeping. The mercenary who hit him will step forward and speak.

“You have the case?” He’ll pose dramatically, gun at his hip like an action star.

“I’ve got your god damn case,” you’ll reply.

The leader will nod his head and two of the mercenaries will walk forward, one holding your father and John, the other with his gun pointed at you. When they reach you the armed one will take the case and the other will deposit the hostages with you. They’ll walk back carefully, still facing you.

The leader will stride forward and meet the guard halfway, where he’ll open the case to inspect it. His eyes will go wide immediately, and he’ll say something in Mandarin you don’t understand. That will be your cue to shoot the case, causing it to erupt in a fiery explosion that will race towards you.

The explosion will knock you back off your feet, sending you flying with your hostage and ripping the gun from your hand. Most of the mercenaries will be caught in the blast as well, but one of them will still be standing when the smoke clears. He’ll pick up his rifle and shoot you twice in the chest through the body of the man you were using as a human shield. It’ll hurt, a lot.

Luckily your dad will be right there with his pistol in hand and he’ll put down that son of a bitch with one well placed bullet. But it will be too late for you. Your dad and John will both rush over to your side and roll the corpse off your chest. Your dad will hold your hand and look you in the eyes.

“Son,” he’ll say, “Son, I’m so sorry.”

You’ll put up a palm weakly. “It’s alright, pa. I just wanted you to be proud of me.”

He’ll hug you. It’ll make your gunshot wounds hurt a little more, but it’ll be worth it. You haven’t been hugged since Kim left you for your cousin nine months ago.

Your father will speak to you, tears welling in his eyes, one last time.

“Tell your mother I,” he’ll start, but you’ll shake your head at him.

“She already knows.” Then you’ll smile and die.

Totally awesome, right? Congratulations on your spectacular demise, man. We should all be so lucky.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Congratulations on Experimenting with Dungeons and Dragons and Gay Sex on the Same Night!

For the longest time you’ve wanted to play a game of Dungeons and Dragons, but you’ve never known how to break into it. You’d spend time on Craigslist, but all the people you contacted were just women who wanted to fuck you. At first it was puzzling, then it just became creepy.

But all that changed when you moved to Seattle. Within about fifteen minutes of getting off your train you were confronted by a 15 year old boy from Taiwan who asked if you needed a live in DM. You didn’t know what you he meant, and sent him away holding his ragged shoes in his hands. But a few CL browses later you realized you’d stumbled upon the underground Dungeons and Dragons/Sex trade of Seattle.

Seattle is famed for its nerd credibility, but a good deal less famous for its seedy nerd sex trade underbelly. But you’ll find yourself up to your walnuts in this twisted hellscape soon enough when you find yourself surrounded by young boys when you just wanted to try an episode of collective storytelling as a minotaur named Marty who was from the future.

It’ll be disheartening, but you’ll finally find a game that doesn’t have a sexualized component after months of searching. It will be with three other men and one woman. All of them will be over 30 and make six figures a year, and none of them will be there for any other reason than to play Dungeons and Dragons.

Which is why it will come as such a shock when you and Kevin, the Dwarven cleric leading your party, accidentally touch hands reaching for some dice, Your eyes will meet soon after and you’ll find yourselves taking a quick “bathroom break” together that will culminate in your first sexual episode.

We’re really not going anywhere with this story, we just thought you’d want a heads up. You might want to make something out of it with Kevin, you might not. It’s your life. But you should probably pack some condoms and a little lube, just for safety’s sake. It never hurt anybody, right?

Oh, and congratulations on experimenting with Dungeons and Dragons and gay sex on the same night. That one time at summer camp really didn’t count, so this is going to be your first time.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Congratulations on Becoming a Super Hero!

Congratulations! Today you will wake up and discover that you have new superpowers. Normally this would be cause for celebration, however in your case you are a laughably poor superhero, the worst in the world in fact. How, you ask, did you beat out the likes of Aquaman, Ant Man, and Bucky? Your power is, believe it or not, even more limited. You’ll understand once we go over your origin story.

It’s wacky tacky tie Thursday at your office. You’ve gone through nearly your entire tacky tie wardrobe, donning aquarium ties, cow pattern ties, even ties filled with the faces of presidents. Today, however, you will don the last of your collection, a keyboard tie (a gift from your mother –in-law circa 1990 for your birthday. She hates you). As you adjust the tie in the mirror you’ll run your fingers along the keys as if you were a musician (you’re not) in a gesture you find hilarious (you think you’re the office cutup, but people really just wish you would die). You’ll be shocked when music emerges from your gaudy cravate. Stunned, you press key after key. Each time you are greeted with a perfect note eminating from the tie. You immediately grasp the gravity of this discovery. Surely this power was given to you so that you could somehow improve the world.

As you sit in your tiny cubicle matching up accounting figures you will formulate a plan which involves making keyboard music in order to frighten drug dealers who are easily scared. Eventually, you’ll concoct a costume and dub yourself “Phantom of the Rock Opera,” a hero who attempts to frighten criminals with pieces from the hit Who opera, Tommy. After foiling some easily spooked drug dealers (they smoked their own substandard product, and thought you were the government coming to steal their teeth). You’ll be overjoyed at your success, and will continue to formulate and execute such ill-founded plots. Of course, this will set in to motion a series of events which culminate in your being shot to death by meth addicts outside of a warehouse in Tahoe.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Congratulations on Having Your Gym Membership Revoked!

The nudist gym you attend doesn’t have many rules. No firearms on the premises, no running around the pool, no sex outside of the sauna, and no pets. But you’ve managed to set up a new one: no people named Greg Kinear who are not the actor.

You managed to do it in a way no one ever expected: you did not stop talking. Seriously. For a solid two hours every day for the last two months you have just not shut up and today they’re not going to take it anymore.

Hans, the insanely huge Swedish guy with the tiny dick, is going to grab you by the throat as you step in the door. It’ll be weird, because you’ve already been slipping out of your shirt and your arms won’t be in the sleeves. You’ll be there, arms under your shirt, with a massive hand around your throat and a man’s penis just a foot below eye level. If you were gay, it would be arousing.

But you’re not, you’re just a man who likes to work out in the nude, so it’ll be awkward for you. You’ll struggle for a few minutes, which will look like a worm squirming, before Hans just lifts you up to eye level so he can talk to you “face to face.”

“Greg,” he’ll say, stentorian voice emerging from deep in his chest. “We need to talk.”

“Is this really the best context for this conversation?” you’ll ask.

He’ll shrug, and do so without shifting his grip on you. He really is quite buff.

“We never really see you in any other situation. It seemed like the right time.”

Mary, the 47 year old owner, will emerge from the shadows next to him, finely toned breasts glistening with sweat. She clearly just left a sauna session with Teddy, the 17 year old paper boy she’s teaching about life. When she speaks it will be clear that the decision is final.

“Greg...” She’ll shake her head. She’s never had to eighty-six anyone before, and its not easy for her. “Greg, I’m sorry. We’re just not the right gym for you.”

“Why?” you’ll ask, shirt finally pushed up around your neck and arms crossed in front of your chest.

“Your life isn’t as interesting as you think it is. Let’s put it that way.”

She’ll nod to Hans and he’ll deposit you back on the street simply by sticking his arm through the door. Then he’ll gingerly shut it and turn the lock.

On the street, you’ll feel a great sadness. You finally thought you belonged somewhere, but just like at the Y it was not to be.

Chin up, buddy. Go tell the police that Mary’s involved in repeated statutory rape. A little blackmail always makes you feel better. And congratulations on having your gym membership revoked. Get a hobby.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Congratulations on Playing World of Warcraft for Another Month!

For most people the $15 subscription cost wouldn’t be quite such a hurdle, but you’re a full blown addict. I don’t mean to say that you play WoW to the exclusion of all other social interaction; that goes without saying. I’m saying that you play WoW to the exclusion of almost all other activity.

You’ve been living off of canned goods you stockpiled in 1998 after your roommate showed you Dawn of the Dead and you started to scream that “they were coming.” It isn’t unusual for you to just piss in the corner in lieu of losing precious seconds of leveling time.

It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so pathetic. Your savings have bottomed out completely now and you can’t even pay your rent and internet, let alone the minimal credit card payment required to keep playing. You even stopped paying for heat, since “it was always warm in Azeroth.”

With the impending financial disaster you’ll have finally hit rock bottom. You’ll log off for the first time in nine months and emerge from your tiny apartment into the blinding light of the hallway just outside of your apartment.

You’ll wander through your upscale apartment building, gradually adapting to the florescent lights, until you reach your destination: the apartment occupied by your landlord.

Your landlord is an old blind man named One Tooth, who spent most of his life in and out of the army, and he’s lonely. So when you show up and offer to blow him so you can get ten dollars and free rent, he’ll scratch his grizzled chin for a few moments before nodding his wizened head.

Thirty-five minutes and twenty two seconds later you’ll leave his apartment, a little more ashamed but ready to play WoW for another month. You don’t know if you’ll end up doing this every month, but that really doesn’t matter. There are purples dropping and you’re AFK. You’ll rush through the hallways until you get back to your keyboard, where you discover that nothing has happened in your absence.

Congratulations on playing World of Warcraft for another month. We’re all very impressed by your multiple level 80s, and none of us can fathom why your wife didn’t keep a winner like you around.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Congratulations on Taking the LSATs!

You’re hardly the first person to take the test who doesn’t really have any business being there, but they’re usually stoners or college students with political science degrees. Homeless people generally can’t afford the test fee, and even if they could they’d find better things to spend it on, like whores.

But your father’s on his death bed, and you wanted to show him that you could’ve been something if he hadn’t turned you into a gay with all his “college education” and “physical contact,” so you’ve spent the last six month saving your nickels and you’re going to take that test come hell or high water.

Even getting to the testing center will be quite an adventure. You’ve been banned from the bus following a public urination incident, you can’t flag a taxi, and you only have one foot. But after a series of events culminating in you carjacking a young mother you’ll reach the test center with just enough time to complete check in.

You’ll sit down and power through the test, distracting the other test takers with your furious work ethic, occasionally verbal outburst, and terrible smell. You’ll finish in a quarter of their time and, sure enough, you’ll have scored in the 90th percentile. Turns out you’re some sort of homeless genius.

You’ll make the mother, who was lot less terrified after she found out you were just taking the LSATs and not buying crack, drive you to your father’s death bed, where you’ll wave the scores in his face. He’ll just smile and say “I always believed in you, son.” You’ll call him a faggot and pee in the corner of his room.

As a joke you’ll submit one of your free scores to Harvard, with your return address listed as “under the 205 overpass on Powell.” You’ll be shocked when a letter carrier arrives with a letter of acceptance from the esteemed university, along with a set of financial aid options.

Thus will begin your amazing career as the world’s first homeless lawyer. You’ll still be homeless, but you’ll own one suit that you’ll wear to trials, and you’ll actually be really good at your job. You’ll specialize in intellectual property law.

It will be a good life for you, and you and your best friend One Tooth will be drinking only the finest Thunderbird and sleeping in your new personal storage unit for years to come.

So congratulations on taking the LSATs. Easily the best choice you’ve made in a while.

There will be a major motion picture about your story made without your permission in the near future, by the way. Get your lawyerin’ shoes on, Wally. It's what you were born to do.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Congratulations, You Son of a Bitch!

You piece of shit. You know just what you did, and its not for us to tell you, but we all hope you’re happy. As far as I’m concerned you deserve exactly what’s coming to you.

The investment fraud, cheating at ping pong, murdering your father and sleeping with your mother. I’m not sure how you thought it would end, but tonight it's all coming to a head.

You’ll be out on a date with a supermodel, one of the ones with three names, at least two of which sound vaguely Russian, and it’ll seem like nothing could go wrong. That’s when your deliciously ironic punishment will strike.

A falling safe will cave in your skull and crush most of your upper torso. According to the model it will be “kind of fucking sweet,” but also “totally gross.” We wish you’d had better taste in women so we could’ve gotten a vaguely literate depiction of your death, which we’ve been aching for for months, but hey. We’ll take what we can get.

Oh, and congratulations, you son of a bitch.

Friday, January 2, 2009

Congratulations on Your Tremendous Success!

Congratulations! As of today you will have achieved remarkable success in your chosen field, the design and manufacturing of formal clothing for large breed dogs. You’ve sacrificed decades of your life, two marriages and countless failed relationships all for your desire to appropriately garb dogs that could rip a person’s throat out at a variety of events, from boat shows to award balls.

It has been a long, thankless road, but it was so worth it to see German Shepherds the world over humbled by your simple, elegant creations. However, tomorrow your wife is going to leave you.

See, here’s the thing. We know you like dogs a lot. Like, a lot. Most people can gather it from your occupation. But what most people don’t know yet is that you’re obsessed with clothing dogs because you really enjoy fucking them.

We’re not here to judge you. As long as the dog doesn’t mind (and Patches doesn’t – we checked) there’s really nothing wrong with it, unless you use a major religion as your moral compass. But your wife isn’t going to agree with us.

When she catches you balls deep in your family Golden Lab (your partner and lover of the past eight years) she’s going to flip shit, grab the kids, and extort the living fuck out of you while living with her dad in Cabo.

Eventually she’ll just divorce you and the story will come out. Your wife will have long since become tired of living alone, and she’ll want to marry her tennis instructor, Doug, who is a really nice guy on an unrelated note.

During the proceedings her reason for seeking divorce will come out, and you won’t even try to deny it. You’ll feel lighter for the admission, as if you’ve finally stopped living a lie. The judge will grant her a generous share of your property and earnings so that she can change her name and give your kids a semblance of a normal life.

Once your bizarre fetish becomes public knowledge you’ll find that your friends and relations will no longer return your calls. You’ll become a true pariah, living alone and unvisited in your massive mansion with Patches. Even your children won’t return your calls. You’ll be devastated, but Patches will continue to lend you emotional support, licking your palms and making eye contact during.

Oddly enough your clothing industry will be almost completely unaffected. Turns out most people buying designer dog clothing don’t really care how fucked up the guy who makes it is. You’ll lose a few more prudish customers who have the same fetish as you and fear being “outed,” but mostly your business will continue to thrive.

You’ll comfortably make child support payments and live a simple life of seclusion, releasing new designs every few months to continued accolade until Patches dies. With her death the rock of your life over the last fifteen years will have vanished, and you’ll feel more devastated than when your wife ripped your children out of your life.

We’d say find a new dog, but Patches truly was your soulmate. She can’t be replaced. So don’t try. You were lucky to have her when you did. Build a respectable statue in her memory and try to move on. She’d want it that way.

Oh, and congratulations on your tremendous success. None of us buy dog clothing, but apparently it’s quite a booming industry if it managed to keep you afloat through one of the most public divorces in recent memory

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Congratulations on the New Year!

On January 1st, 2009 you’re going to wake up in a strange apartment, fully clothed, with just a touch of vomit drying on your shoes. You’ll be on a hardwood floor a few feet away from a sprawled out young woman who seems to be in the grip of some terrible nightmare.

Her body and face will be unfamiliar to you, but her expression is one you know all too well; the dissatisfied reverie of someone who mixed booze and pot last night and moved through the evening in what could be called a series of “rolling blackouts.”

You’ll give her a shake, but she’ll only react by punching at you with an adorable fist. When she punches, though, something on her fist will glint, and your heart will stop.

She’ll be wearing a ring. It will be around the fourth finger of her left hand. It won’t be anything new to you, you’ve been with married women before, especially while blacked out, but there will be a tiny feeling of wrongness in your head when you see it.

After a few puzzled minutes you’ll clasp your hands together and there it will be, on your own hand – a Cracker Jack decoder ring which had clearly served as your wedding ring last night.

Bits and pieces of the evening will come back to you: meeting the girl in a bar along with her sister, stealing her away from her group and taking her on a lengthy adventure through the city to find a hamburger joint, then finally catching up with them to watch the fireworks, hot dogs in hand. You even briefly remember the wedding, where you kissed your new wife and felt inside yourself a swell of love and rightness that has been missing from the last twenty-something years of your life.

This last bit will scare the living shit out of you.

You’ve been living the bachelor lifestyle, narrowly evading STDs and relationships like your name is Neo, and you’ve been pretending to like it a lot more than you actually do. This would trash that for roughly two weeks if it was a mistake, and for your entire life if it wasn’t.

And that feeling of warmth and belonging cut right through your drunken haze. She’s probably the right girl for you, and even if she’s not she makes you really, really happy when you’re both too drunk to stand up. You spend a lot of time in that state, so it’s a good bet you’d get along really well.

So here’s what’s going to happen. In about four minutes, she’s going to start coughing really badly. You have two choices.

You can push your new wife onto her side so she’ll vomit away from her body, then quietly egress from the apartment without waking her sister. It won’t be hard, her sister took home like three people last night and got so much nice nice she couldn’t stand up if she wanted to. Then you’ll call her up (she’s labeled “Mystery Wife” in your cell) and tell her that last night was fun, but you don’t want to structure your life around one drunken marriage, however fun it was, and that you’d like an annulment.

She’ll feel awful, she’ll be partially covered in vomit, and her brain will be shot, but at least you won’t have taken sexual advantage of her and you won’t have made a life changing decision based on really poor information.

Option two, you get up and dig through her kitchen until you find a bowl. Then you’ll hold back her hair as shit vomits into the bowl, helping her to keep her weight off the ground so she doesn’t puke all over herself.

She’ll heave for what seems like an eternity, occasionally groaning, until her body stops twitching and she collapses on to your lap. She’ll look like an angel, with her spit up ringed mouth and slight snarl from physical discomfort, but you’ll hold her there for an hour and a half until she looks up at you.

The moment those eyes open you’ll be captivated by her beauty and the only thing you’ll be able to say will be “I think you’re my new wife.” Then you’ll wrap your hand around hers and she’ll just look confused.

“Where the fuck am I?” she’ll say.

You’ll have time to sort out the details on both of these once you make your decision, and we can’t really see where either of these go, but good luck whatever you choose. And congratulations on the New Year! Its already shaping up to be a doozie.