Today you’re a sexy lady who tells jokes! You’re going to get up, go to a coffee shop dressed in a sweatshirt, and write jokes for most of the day without speaking to anyone. You’ll listen to a lot of peppy, upbeat music while you do so and occasionally read articles from various online news sources.
The barrista will be pretty bored with you since you won’t have any long or embarrassing conversations with anyone while you’re at the coffee shop, but she’ll honor the fifty-cent refill policy of the coffee shop all the same each time you come up to her with an empty cup.
When you’ve spent around six hours working you’ll head home, cook dinner and then write some more. You won’t make money for any of this time, mind you, but you will develop your craft in a dedicated, demanding way that few will see and fewer will understand. Once you’ve eaten you’ll crawl into bed and repeat the whole thing again tomorrow, except tomorrow you’ll cap it off by dressing up really slutty and doing your routine on stage while men who are terrified of speaking to you fetishize you sexually. You won’t get any numbers, but trust us: a lot of guys are going to be thinking of you tonight.
While they masturbate. We wanted to make that clear, since the last paragraph left it a little unclear.
Congratulations Burlesque Comedy Lady!
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Friday, December 30, 2011
Congratulations on Being the Best MC Ever!
Many MCs do their derndest to entertain us while they disseminate vital information to crowds. It’ a rough job: they’re generally not very good at entertaining people, or else they would be being announced rather than MCing people, but they also provide us with vital information, like who is coming on stage next and when that cystic fibrosis picnic is going down.
The result is a group of socially stunted, awkward people who like attention but can’t really deal with having attention paid to them- a troublesome group of well meaning folk who aren’t really trying to hurt anyone, but can’t help but draw some ire for just being so unlikable. Today there’s going to be a dent in that perception of MCs, though, because today you’re going to debut on stage.
“Welcome to the Laugh Shack,” you’ll announce to the crowd. They’ll be unruly, staring at one another, yammering on about who knows what; their cats, their taxes, their insanely boring jobs. It’ll seem like they’re absolutely incapable of shutting the fuck up and letting you announce who was about to show up on stage after you leave.
Most MCs would just tell a few shitty jokes and maybe do some light crowd work, but not you. You’re just going to unzip your pants, drop your trousers to your knees and let your dick hang out. Then you’ll tense your kegels and squint real hard and make the magic happen.
Fireworks will shoot out of your dick.
They’ll be small fireworks. They won’t go high – they won’t even hit the ceiling of the comedy club, which will be a modest eight feet. They’ll be bright and a multitude of colors. They’ll all arc and explode perfectly, above and in front of the crowd, silencing them in awe.
After around thirty seconds of that you’ll zip your pants back up and move your mouth back to the microphone.
“Our first act is going to be Nick Thune. Please give him a big round of applause!”
Your introduction wsill have been awkward, but that’ll be one warmed up crowd. Their applause will come as a cascade and Nick Thune will come out laughing, guitar in hand.
“Let’s hear it for that MC. Wow. Just wow,” he’ll begin.
You’ll receive a call at nine AM the next morning from the club manager, asking you to come back and MC again that very night.
Congratulations on Being the Best MC Ever!
The result is a group of socially stunted, awkward people who like attention but can’t really deal with having attention paid to them- a troublesome group of well meaning folk who aren’t really trying to hurt anyone, but can’t help but draw some ire for just being so unlikable. Today there’s going to be a dent in that perception of MCs, though, because today you’re going to debut on stage.
“Welcome to the Laugh Shack,” you’ll announce to the crowd. They’ll be unruly, staring at one another, yammering on about who knows what; their cats, their taxes, their insanely boring jobs. It’ll seem like they’re absolutely incapable of shutting the fuck up and letting you announce who was about to show up on stage after you leave.
Most MCs would just tell a few shitty jokes and maybe do some light crowd work, but not you. You’re just going to unzip your pants, drop your trousers to your knees and let your dick hang out. Then you’ll tense your kegels and squint real hard and make the magic happen.
Fireworks will shoot out of your dick.
They’ll be small fireworks. They won’t go high – they won’t even hit the ceiling of the comedy club, which will be a modest eight feet. They’ll be bright and a multitude of colors. They’ll all arc and explode perfectly, above and in front of the crowd, silencing them in awe.
After around thirty seconds of that you’ll zip your pants back up and move your mouth back to the microphone.
“Our first act is going to be Nick Thune. Please give him a big round of applause!”
Your introduction wsill have been awkward, but that’ll be one warmed up crowd. Their applause will come as a cascade and Nick Thune will come out laughing, guitar in hand.
“Let’s hear it for that MC. Wow. Just wow,” he’ll begin.
You’ll receive a call at nine AM the next morning from the club manager, asking you to come back and MC again that very night.
Congratulations on Being the Best MC Ever!
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Congratulations Porpoise Mechanic!
Most mechanics aren’t very bright. Not to say they’re stupid, they’re just not scientist material: they’ve got good heads, but they don’t generally invent stuff.
You’re special in that regard: you invented an above-water breathing apparatus that allows you, a porpoise, to explore the world outside the ocean to your heart’s content, manipulate objects with alarming dexterity and you work as a mechanic when you’re not inventing shit.
Oh, you’re also a porpoise who fixes cars. That makes you special too.
Anyhow, today you’re going to get an especially cool car to fix. Someone’s going to bring a big old ‘Cuda (pun unintended, but still great) from the mid sixties in. The customer will be a middle-aged businessman type, someone who likes muscle cars but doesn’t know a break pad from a drive shaft. He’ll want to know how much the whole rig will cost to fix.
You’ll smile (an imperceptible gesture for most people, because you’re a porpoise and people can’t easily interpret your facial expressions) and know right away that if you quote too high he’ll offer to sell you the car right then and there. It’ll be a fierce old beast, but the chassis will be all that’s left: you’ll be able to restore the entire thing for around ten or twenty grand in parts, far more in labor, but you’ll look him right in the eye and tell him, using your dolphin to English translator, just what you think of his attempt to get a car he can’t handle with your quote.
“Hundred thousand, hundred twenty,” the tinny robot voice will squawk.
The businessman will curse up and down, throwing shit about and swearing about the man who sold him the car, who told him exactly how much it would cost to fix it in parts but left out details like labor and over-quoting. When he calms down you’ll place one of your metal pincers on his arm and make him an offer he’ll be ready to hear.
“I will take the whole thing off your hands for twelve thousand dollars,” you’ll squawk. He’ll look at you like you’re crazy – he paid eight thousand for the whole wreck, along with a few hundred to get it to your shop. But after the two of you discuss it, and you use words like pet project and imply that you might sell the car to him after you patch it up if the fancy strikes you, he’ll come around.
At the end of the day your bank account (quite robust thanks to your inventions) will be down twelve grand, but you’ll have a sweet ass ‘Cuda with drop top that you can fix up and then ride around in wearing your driving robot suit and a burning desire to get that sucker gutted and fixed up. It’s going to look fucking awesome when you’re finished and driving around, so be sure to take it for a spin or two around our neighborhood.
Congratulations Porpoise Mechanic!
You’re special in that regard: you invented an above-water breathing apparatus that allows you, a porpoise, to explore the world outside the ocean to your heart’s content, manipulate objects with alarming dexterity and you work as a mechanic when you’re not inventing shit.
Oh, you’re also a porpoise who fixes cars. That makes you special too.
Anyhow, today you’re going to get an especially cool car to fix. Someone’s going to bring a big old ‘Cuda (pun unintended, but still great) from the mid sixties in. The customer will be a middle-aged businessman type, someone who likes muscle cars but doesn’t know a break pad from a drive shaft. He’ll want to know how much the whole rig will cost to fix.
You’ll smile (an imperceptible gesture for most people, because you’re a porpoise and people can’t easily interpret your facial expressions) and know right away that if you quote too high he’ll offer to sell you the car right then and there. It’ll be a fierce old beast, but the chassis will be all that’s left: you’ll be able to restore the entire thing for around ten or twenty grand in parts, far more in labor, but you’ll look him right in the eye and tell him, using your dolphin to English translator, just what you think of his attempt to get a car he can’t handle with your quote.
“Hundred thousand, hundred twenty,” the tinny robot voice will squawk.
The businessman will curse up and down, throwing shit about and swearing about the man who sold him the car, who told him exactly how much it would cost to fix it in parts but left out details like labor and over-quoting. When he calms down you’ll place one of your metal pincers on his arm and make him an offer he’ll be ready to hear.
“I will take the whole thing off your hands for twelve thousand dollars,” you’ll squawk. He’ll look at you like you’re crazy – he paid eight thousand for the whole wreck, along with a few hundred to get it to your shop. But after the two of you discuss it, and you use words like pet project and imply that you might sell the car to him after you patch it up if the fancy strikes you, he’ll come around.
At the end of the day your bank account (quite robust thanks to your inventions) will be down twelve grand, but you’ll have a sweet ass ‘Cuda with drop top that you can fix up and then ride around in wearing your driving robot suit and a burning desire to get that sucker gutted and fixed up. It’s going to look fucking awesome when you’re finished and driving around, so be sure to take it for a spin or two around our neighborhood.
Congratulations Porpoise Mechanic!
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Congratulations Obese Stripper!
There’s all kinds of strippers: strippers with piercings, strippers with tattoos, even strippers who have neither piercings or tattoos. There are strippers who are missing limbs, strippers who have cesarian scars. There are strippers who once knew true love and then lost it and strippers who go to sleep at night dreaming of it still.
There are very few strippers who know true love right now, but you’re one of them.
Every day you get up on stage to have bunched up dollar bills thrown at you (just how you like it) and men leer and jeer at you. Then you get off stage to find your life love standing there, tall and too-skinny in big thick framed glasses and his mouth constantly changing shape, shifting as if his brain is moving too fast from thought to thought for his face to catch up.
“Ilovedwatchingyoudance,” he’ll tell you in one rapid fire spurt.
“Thanks sugah,” you’ll say to him, leaning over to embrace him. He’ll squirm at your touch, but that’ll be normal. He’ll push you away after a few seconds and then blink at you. Once. Twice. Then a pause. Then the pattern will repeat itself.
“Iwannatakeyouhometomeetmymom,” he’ll tell his shoes.
Your heart will swell (metaphorically – if it were to actually swell you’d die, you’ve got a really weak heart) and you’ll grab his hand, tears welling in your eyes.
“I’d love to,” you’ll drawl at him, kissing him chastely on the cheek before he takes you out to the parking lot to his windowless, unmarked white van.
Later on, as you eat dinner at a table with him and the stuffed corpse of his mother, you’ll realize something is probably wrong. But during that car ride you’ll be happy as a clam, which means you’ll die pretty close to being happy early tomorrow morning. The details of your death cannot be disclosed here for legal reasons.
Congratulations Obese Stripper!
There are very few strippers who know true love right now, but you’re one of them.
Every day you get up on stage to have bunched up dollar bills thrown at you (just how you like it) and men leer and jeer at you. Then you get off stage to find your life love standing there, tall and too-skinny in big thick framed glasses and his mouth constantly changing shape, shifting as if his brain is moving too fast from thought to thought for his face to catch up.
“Ilovedwatchingyoudance,” he’ll tell you in one rapid fire spurt.
“Thanks sugah,” you’ll say to him, leaning over to embrace him. He’ll squirm at your touch, but that’ll be normal. He’ll push you away after a few seconds and then blink at you. Once. Twice. Then a pause. Then the pattern will repeat itself.
“Iwannatakeyouhometomeetmymom,” he’ll tell his shoes.
Your heart will swell (metaphorically – if it were to actually swell you’d die, you’ve got a really weak heart) and you’ll grab his hand, tears welling in your eyes.
“I’d love to,” you’ll drawl at him, kissing him chastely on the cheek before he takes you out to the parking lot to his windowless, unmarked white van.
Later on, as you eat dinner at a table with him and the stuffed corpse of his mother, you’ll realize something is probably wrong. But during that car ride you’ll be happy as a clam, which means you’ll die pretty close to being happy early tomorrow morning. The details of your death cannot be disclosed here for legal reasons.
Congratulations Obese Stripper!
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Congratulations Rabid Mom!
Moms can be great. They really can. They give of themselves to their children and, sometimes, to their communities.
But sometimes moms aren’t great. Sometimes moms get bitten by bats that were trapped in their attics and they start foaming at the mouth and making insane requests of the people around them.
“FUCKING JEWS GOTTA GO!” you’ll shout, spraying your children with spittle.
“Mommy?” your daughter will ask, tugging at your shirt sleeve. You’ll want to pat her head and tell her everything’s okay, but instead you’ll grab her hand and just start vibrating uncontrollably.
“SHIT’S GONNA GET REAL DANGEROUS FOR YOU, SHITHEAD!” you’ll lean into her ear before shouting. She’ll start crying, which will make you want to comfort her, but the rabies in your brain will translate that thought into letting go of her and opening your freezer, where you’ll try to consume several pounds of raw meat while standing.
As your daughter sits several feet away and weeps you’ll begin convulsing on the kitchen floor, face covered in blood and bits of meat. You’ll reach out at her, wishing you could tell her that everything’s okay, that you love her very much and that whatever happens to you, she’ll be alright and taken care of.
Instead you’ll shout “PRESIDENT SHOULD GET HIS SHIT IN A BUCKET!” Then you’ll slap the floor repeatedly while coughing up blood. “GRAB THE RINGS AND CALL THE GENERAL! PHONES ARE THE WAY TO GO!”
At this point your daughter will leave the room to find a phone and call someone: not the general, as you requested, but an ambulance to take you to the hospital where you’ll be diagnosed as being too far gone for aid and will be “put down” so that hospital staff won’t have to deal with you. But as she’s gone you’ll shout something profound, something so fantastic that, had she heard it and shared it the world would be so, so much better than it would’ve been otherwise. Hunger would no longer be a problem, healthcare would spill out to the masses like molasses from some sort of molasses accident and even though your mom would be dead she’d be remembered as a profound, tragic figure rather than a crazy bitch with rabies.
But she won’t hear you say anything until she returns to the room and you shout at her.
“FUCKING STOP STEALING MY SOCKS YOU WHORE!”
Congratulations Rabid Mom!
But sometimes moms aren’t great. Sometimes moms get bitten by bats that were trapped in their attics and they start foaming at the mouth and making insane requests of the people around them.
“FUCKING JEWS GOTTA GO!” you’ll shout, spraying your children with spittle.
“Mommy?” your daughter will ask, tugging at your shirt sleeve. You’ll want to pat her head and tell her everything’s okay, but instead you’ll grab her hand and just start vibrating uncontrollably.
“SHIT’S GONNA GET REAL DANGEROUS FOR YOU, SHITHEAD!” you’ll lean into her ear before shouting. She’ll start crying, which will make you want to comfort her, but the rabies in your brain will translate that thought into letting go of her and opening your freezer, where you’ll try to consume several pounds of raw meat while standing.
As your daughter sits several feet away and weeps you’ll begin convulsing on the kitchen floor, face covered in blood and bits of meat. You’ll reach out at her, wishing you could tell her that everything’s okay, that you love her very much and that whatever happens to you, she’ll be alright and taken care of.
Instead you’ll shout “PRESIDENT SHOULD GET HIS SHIT IN A BUCKET!” Then you’ll slap the floor repeatedly while coughing up blood. “GRAB THE RINGS AND CALL THE GENERAL! PHONES ARE THE WAY TO GO!”
At this point your daughter will leave the room to find a phone and call someone: not the general, as you requested, but an ambulance to take you to the hospital where you’ll be diagnosed as being too far gone for aid and will be “put down” so that hospital staff won’t have to deal with you. But as she’s gone you’ll shout something profound, something so fantastic that, had she heard it and shared it the world would be so, so much better than it would’ve been otherwise. Hunger would no longer be a problem, healthcare would spill out to the masses like molasses from some sort of molasses accident and even though your mom would be dead she’d be remembered as a profound, tragic figure rather than a crazy bitch with rabies.
But she won’t hear you say anything until she returns to the room and you shout at her.
“FUCKING STOP STEALING MY SOCKS YOU WHORE!”
Congratulations Rabid Mom!
Monday, December 26, 2011
Congratulations on Installing Those Tinted Windows!
Most people who install tinted windows are pedophiles.
We do not congratulate those people.
But you’re a porn producer living outside the valley who likes to film people fucking in vans while an overenthusiastic cameraman and driver have really loud conversations, apparently to distract you and everyone else from how hot and desperate the young woman fucking in the car is.
Sometimes people see you fucking and you have to stop shooting and pay a fine for public indecency. It’s a problem, and you’ve been working on finding a solution for it.
Today you’re going to find one: install some god damn tinted windows in your van. That way your driver will be able to see out, and police won’t be able to see in and watch you and your “models” fucking.
Everyone wins, especially you, who won’t have to worry about being slapped with a felony for driving past a school or a playground ever again. One charge was enough! Now please stop talking while people are fucking in front of you, you have an annoying voice and no one wants to hear you stutter and repeat "bro" in front of a woman who's being paid to fuck someone with a huge dick.
Congratulations on Installing Those Tinted Windows!
We do not congratulate those people.
But you’re a porn producer living outside the valley who likes to film people fucking in vans while an overenthusiastic cameraman and driver have really loud conversations, apparently to distract you and everyone else from how hot and desperate the young woman fucking in the car is.
Sometimes people see you fucking and you have to stop shooting and pay a fine for public indecency. It’s a problem, and you’ve been working on finding a solution for it.
Today you’re going to find one: install some god damn tinted windows in your van. That way your driver will be able to see out, and police won’t be able to see in and watch you and your “models” fucking.
Everyone wins, especially you, who won’t have to worry about being slapped with a felony for driving past a school or a playground ever again. One charge was enough! Now please stop talking while people are fucking in front of you, you have an annoying voice and no one wants to hear you stutter and repeat "bro" in front of a woman who's being paid to fuck someone with a huge dick.
Congratulations on Installing Those Tinted Windows!
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Super Nerd Sunday Presents: The First Eleven Levels of Star Wars: The Old Republic!
As I put the finishing touches on my final paper of the semester, the day after I’d finished with my students, the day my work, more or less, ended, I received an email.
The subject line proudly declared: “Your Saga Begins!” It was my notification that I could begin playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. I knew I wouldn’t be able to right away, even though I’d updated the client fully earlier that day. I still had commitments: handmade books needed binding, a class needed attending. But when I got home, after fourteen hours of work or work adjacent activities, I was ready to play.
My friends hadn’t picked a permanent server yet, so there was no call for me to jump into making my final character. I’d briefly played through the game as a Jedi during the beta, but I hadn’t done anything in depth. I’d spent most of my time as a Sith, and I’d been less than inspired by the visuals that surrounded me on Korriban. The time I spent in the starting areas of the Jedi had been equally uninspiring, but hey. These things happen. I stepped in expecting nothing to have changed, and I was more or less unsurprised. Spare a slight polish, most of the graphics seemed the same.
But the play, the stability, and that slight, almost imperceptible increase in visual fidelity has been shaping my experience with SWTOR, inspiring me to play more and more. It’s made me take my wee Jedi from level 1 to 11, make my Knight into a Sentinel. There are still plenty of bugs to be found. My personal favorite came during a mission critical cutscene, where Satille Shan, head of the Jedi order and normally a fully grown adult woman, shrank down to one-tenth size during council meetings. I ran into this bug during my previous playthrough as a Jedi, so I wasn’t overly surprised or frustrated. In fact, I thought it was kind of funny. The bug gave the entire thing a certain surreal-ness that made me chuckle. I’ve come to accept, indeed expect, this sort of thing from SWTOR at this point, but it’s been considerably less prominent in the release build.
Since then I’ve leapt into leveling a Sith Warrior up for the third time in as many months, however, and there I’ve noticed fewer differences. There’s some nice polish throughout – a texture upgrade was put in place for many of the more prominent NPCs I encounter, lag issues have been much more manageable and combat has been a great deal more fluid. Sure, the character classes are exact parallels of one another (visual effects aside) across light-side dark-side divides, but I already knew that was coming. While it’s lamentable and unnecessary, I understand the mentality behind it and the way that the visual effects of their abilities shape the mechanics of different classes while retaining parallel effects is kind of cute. For the most part, though, what I’ve noticed is that this game hasn’t changed much since beta.
The only thing that’s changed since then, aside from the NDA and my reticence to share half-formed thoughts, is my impression of the first ten levels of the game.
See, previously I’d only taken time to play through the game from a single class’ perspective – I had elected, once my friend Alex decided to be our Powertech, to be our group’s Marauder: a class that does massive amounts of damage and can take a little too, sometimes. Each time the beta reset my characters I’d dutifully level my Marauder up as far as I could so that we could all enjoy the wonders of Dromund Kaas together.
This time I took a very different tack: by leveling up a Jedi Sentinel first, I saw more of the world and came to understand both the game and the way that alignment choices function in it a little better. It also made me realize what Bioware has done here that no MMO has ever done before: they’ve made you feel powerful and important from level one.
I’m not just saying they do a great job scaffolding their game and guiding you through specific areas at specific times appropriate to your level. They certainly do that, largely through the use of very well designed maps that make you do what they want without ever making you aware that you’re doing it. They also use the solo story areas to such tremendous effect, it’s kind of insane. By inserting a single player story into a multiplayer game, they make your every choice in the world a crucial one, one that not only establishes your character but also the fundamental nature of the world around you. Adding in hirelings who grow near or distant to your character based on these decisions was an smart move, and making them not only useful gameplay aids but also integral parts of a crafting system? Inspired.
In fact, these hirelings and their impact on story missions sort of showcase my point: namely, that Bioware spilled a singleplayer game all over SWTOR, and that SWTOR ended up far far stronger for it. In an era where other games try to out World of Warcraft World of Warcraft Bioware looked at their arsenal and realized that their greatest strength was their ability to weave a story, something Blizzard has failed at miserably in recent times.
I’d like to take more time to get to know the various ins and outs of Bioware’s latest baby before I write about it in-depth. Space combat, for example, is something I haven’t touched at all. I’m not entirely sure what the Legacy system is, though I’m excited to find out. But my first impressions, my first for-realsies impressions, are terrific. They’ve made something special, something new that violates all the rules of MMORPGs using the tools that were already available more adeptly than anyone else has before.
Sure, Blizzard perfected the conventional MMO in World of Warcraft by creating a feedback loop system that rewarded specific kinds of exploration and art assets that meshed perfectly along with a gameplay system that was hyper accessible and simultaneously difficult to master. And it’s going to be hard to crack that nut, even as subscriptions dwindle from MMO fatigue. But Bioware has done something completely different: they’ve made an MMO where your individual choices have meaning, where you can play through the game nine different times and experience nine different stories. They’ve made a game where expansions could not only expose new worlds but tell new stories and let us continue to grow not only numerically but emotionally with the characters we’ve built.
Regardless, after my first twenty hours with SWTOR as a released product, I’m convinced that this game is something special, and I can’t see the next twenty hours changing that.
The subject line proudly declared: “Your Saga Begins!” It was my notification that I could begin playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. I knew I wouldn’t be able to right away, even though I’d updated the client fully earlier that day. I still had commitments: handmade books needed binding, a class needed attending. But when I got home, after fourteen hours of work or work adjacent activities, I was ready to play.
My friends hadn’t picked a permanent server yet, so there was no call for me to jump into making my final character. I’d briefly played through the game as a Jedi during the beta, but I hadn’t done anything in depth. I’d spent most of my time as a Sith, and I’d been less than inspired by the visuals that surrounded me on Korriban. The time I spent in the starting areas of the Jedi had been equally uninspiring, but hey. These things happen. I stepped in expecting nothing to have changed, and I was more or less unsurprised. Spare a slight polish, most of the graphics seemed the same.
But the play, the stability, and that slight, almost imperceptible increase in visual fidelity has been shaping my experience with SWTOR, inspiring me to play more and more. It’s made me take my wee Jedi from level 1 to 11, make my Knight into a Sentinel. There are still plenty of bugs to be found. My personal favorite came during a mission critical cutscene, where Satille Shan, head of the Jedi order and normally a fully grown adult woman, shrank down to one-tenth size during council meetings. I ran into this bug during my previous playthrough as a Jedi, so I wasn’t overly surprised or frustrated. In fact, I thought it was kind of funny. The bug gave the entire thing a certain surreal-ness that made me chuckle. I’ve come to accept, indeed expect, this sort of thing from SWTOR at this point, but it’s been considerably less prominent in the release build.
Since then I’ve leapt into leveling a Sith Warrior up for the third time in as many months, however, and there I’ve noticed fewer differences. There’s some nice polish throughout – a texture upgrade was put in place for many of the more prominent NPCs I encounter, lag issues have been much more manageable and combat has been a great deal more fluid. Sure, the character classes are exact parallels of one another (visual effects aside) across light-side dark-side divides, but I already knew that was coming. While it’s lamentable and unnecessary, I understand the mentality behind it and the way that the visual effects of their abilities shape the mechanics of different classes while retaining parallel effects is kind of cute. For the most part, though, what I’ve noticed is that this game hasn’t changed much since beta.
The only thing that’s changed since then, aside from the NDA and my reticence to share half-formed thoughts, is my impression of the first ten levels of the game.
See, previously I’d only taken time to play through the game from a single class’ perspective – I had elected, once my friend Alex decided to be our Powertech, to be our group’s Marauder: a class that does massive amounts of damage and can take a little too, sometimes. Each time the beta reset my characters I’d dutifully level my Marauder up as far as I could so that we could all enjoy the wonders of Dromund Kaas together.
This time I took a very different tack: by leveling up a Jedi Sentinel first, I saw more of the world and came to understand both the game and the way that alignment choices function in it a little better. It also made me realize what Bioware has done here that no MMO has ever done before: they’ve made you feel powerful and important from level one.
I’m not just saying they do a great job scaffolding their game and guiding you through specific areas at specific times appropriate to your level. They certainly do that, largely through the use of very well designed maps that make you do what they want without ever making you aware that you’re doing it. They also use the solo story areas to such tremendous effect, it’s kind of insane. By inserting a single player story into a multiplayer game, they make your every choice in the world a crucial one, one that not only establishes your character but also the fundamental nature of the world around you. Adding in hirelings who grow near or distant to your character based on these decisions was an smart move, and making them not only useful gameplay aids but also integral parts of a crafting system? Inspired.
In fact, these hirelings and their impact on story missions sort of showcase my point: namely, that Bioware spilled a singleplayer game all over SWTOR, and that SWTOR ended up far far stronger for it. In an era where other games try to out World of Warcraft World of Warcraft Bioware looked at their arsenal and realized that their greatest strength was their ability to weave a story, something Blizzard has failed at miserably in recent times.
I’d like to take more time to get to know the various ins and outs of Bioware’s latest baby before I write about it in-depth. Space combat, for example, is something I haven’t touched at all. I’m not entirely sure what the Legacy system is, though I’m excited to find out. But my first impressions, my first for-realsies impressions, are terrific. They’ve made something special, something new that violates all the rules of MMORPGs using the tools that were already available more adeptly than anyone else has before.
Sure, Blizzard perfected the conventional MMO in World of Warcraft by creating a feedback loop system that rewarded specific kinds of exploration and art assets that meshed perfectly along with a gameplay system that was hyper accessible and simultaneously difficult to master. And it’s going to be hard to crack that nut, even as subscriptions dwindle from MMO fatigue. But Bioware has done something completely different: they’ve made an MMO where your individual choices have meaning, where you can play through the game nine different times and experience nine different stories. They’ve made a game where expansions could not only expose new worlds but tell new stories and let us continue to grow not only numerically but emotionally with the characters we’ve built.
Regardless, after my first twenty hours with SWTOR as a released product, I’m convinced that this game is something special, and I can’t see the next twenty hours changing that.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Congratulations Christmas Eve!
Christmas is usually a rough time to be a prostitute. It’s cold outside and everyone’s at home with their families, so the majority of Johns are really just serial killers looking for an easy mark. Violence against sex workers spikes, and prostitutes the world over are sometimes forced to huddle together in big naked, writhing piles just to stay warm. Some people would probably pay to see that, but none of you have come up with a fair, effective business model that would make it a reality, so times remain quite tough.
But there is an exception, and that exception is you. You’re a hooker and your “working name” is Eve. Normally that means you’re asked to work with snakes and that you endure a lot of “snake” jokes when you’re about to fuck dudes. You hate it, and you always think of changing your name to “Charity” or something classy like that.
But tonight, and each night like this in the past, has made you realize just why you should hold on to your ignominious name. Because tonight, you see, is Christmas Eve. Which means that your clients, instead of asking you to “tempt their snakes for a change,” will instead ask you to “make their Christmas merry” and to “give them plenty of Eve this Christmas.”
On this night of the year your business increases sevenfold. You’re sore for days later, but it doesn’t matter because you can take time off you rake in so much dough. You charge extra because you’re so pressed for time and you sometimes just get so generous with the sexy-times that you end up giving random dudes on the bus handjobs just to keep the holiday spirit flowing.
Also, tonight your last client is going to have a huge dick and fuck you until you actually come. You’ll wake up sore tomorrow and gingerly touch your pussy, thinking that the whole thing was a Christmas miracle.
Congratulations Christmas Eve!
But there is an exception, and that exception is you. You’re a hooker and your “working name” is Eve. Normally that means you’re asked to work with snakes and that you endure a lot of “snake” jokes when you’re about to fuck dudes. You hate it, and you always think of changing your name to “Charity” or something classy like that.
But tonight, and each night like this in the past, has made you realize just why you should hold on to your ignominious name. Because tonight, you see, is Christmas Eve. Which means that your clients, instead of asking you to “tempt their snakes for a change,” will instead ask you to “make their Christmas merry” and to “give them plenty of Eve this Christmas.”
On this night of the year your business increases sevenfold. You’re sore for days later, but it doesn’t matter because you can take time off you rake in so much dough. You charge extra because you’re so pressed for time and you sometimes just get so generous with the sexy-times that you end up giving random dudes on the bus handjobs just to keep the holiday spirit flowing.
Also, tonight your last client is going to have a huge dick and fuck you until you actually come. You’ll wake up sore tomorrow and gingerly touch your pussy, thinking that the whole thing was a Christmas miracle.
Congratulations Christmas Eve!
Friday, December 23, 2011
Congratulations on Catching That Stroller!
Today you’re going to be involved in a shootout in a train station and then-
OH NO! THAT STROLLER IS ABOUT TO ROLL DOWN THE STAAAAAAAAAIRS!
You’re going to catch it and shoot someone in the chest and he’s going to tumble down the stairs the way the stroller was about to.
The entire thing will make you feel like sort of a hero in an action movie. When your partner comes over and helps you get the stroller out of its precarious position you’ll both look inside and discover that it has not a baby, but a bomb inside.
You and your partner will turn, look at each other and then shout: “OH SHI-!”
Then you’ll leap away from the impending explosion, down the stairs, to safety. If either of you were brighter you’d note the irony of the situation, but neither of you are, so that’s unfortunate.
Congratulations on Catching That Stroller!
OH NO! THAT STROLLER IS ABOUT TO ROLL DOWN THE STAAAAAAAAAIRS!
You’re going to catch it and shoot someone in the chest and he’s going to tumble down the stairs the way the stroller was about to.
The entire thing will make you feel like sort of a hero in an action movie. When your partner comes over and helps you get the stroller out of its precarious position you’ll both look inside and discover that it has not a baby, but a bomb inside.
You and your partner will turn, look at each other and then shout: “OH SHI-!”
Then you’ll leap away from the impending explosion, down the stairs, to safety. If either of you were brighter you’d note the irony of the situation, but neither of you are, so that’s unfortunate.
Congratulations on Catching That Stroller!
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Congratulations on Making Her the Best Glass of Orange Juice Ever!
You’ve been trapped in the basement of a crazed old woman who thinks you’re an incredibly gifted novelist for months now. She lured you in when your car broke down outside her house and she’s had you chained near her boiler with a typewriter for a long while now. She occasionally stops by to throw things at you and shout at you to “write better,” which you never do.
But today things are going to be a little different. Today she’s going to unlock your manacle and ask you, quite politely, to make her a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice.
You’ll walk up her stairs unsteadily, legs trembling with the effort of movement after months of atrophy. When you reach the top you’ll see that she has arrayed a variety of oranges on her kitchen table, organized by size, shape and region of origin. You’ll be excited, since your real job is working as a professional juice maker, and set to work right away.
You’ll select a blend of oranges, so that the flavors pop appropriately, and squeeze each orange to its maximum potential. You’ll take great care not to obliterate the orange, not to make the juice too pulpy or watery. After fifteen minutes of intense labor your arms will be sore from the bustle of activity after months of disuse. Your legs will be screaming from standing up. But you’ll have a perfect glass of orange juice ready for consumption, set in front of that crazy old lady.
She’ll put down the rifle she’s had pointed at you this whole time and gingerly take a sip. Then a slurp. Then a gulp down the back of her throat. She’ll make a little moaning noise and, inside of her head, she’ll realize she needs to let you go.
Unfortunately she won’t get a chance to tell you that. She’ll be hit in the back of the head with a toaster by you. The force of your blow will knock her to the floor, where you’ll climb on top of her and smash her face repeatedly with the toaster clutched in both hands.
When you’re finished she’ll be unrecognizable, and you’ll be free to leave, which will be pretty great. But on your way out you’ll be sure to make a fresh glass of OJ and take a nice long sip of it, just to keep your strength up.
Congratulations on Making Her the Best Glass of Orange Juice Ever!
But today things are going to be a little different. Today she’s going to unlock your manacle and ask you, quite politely, to make her a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice.
You’ll walk up her stairs unsteadily, legs trembling with the effort of movement after months of atrophy. When you reach the top you’ll see that she has arrayed a variety of oranges on her kitchen table, organized by size, shape and region of origin. You’ll be excited, since your real job is working as a professional juice maker, and set to work right away.
You’ll select a blend of oranges, so that the flavors pop appropriately, and squeeze each orange to its maximum potential. You’ll take great care not to obliterate the orange, not to make the juice too pulpy or watery. After fifteen minutes of intense labor your arms will be sore from the bustle of activity after months of disuse. Your legs will be screaming from standing up. But you’ll have a perfect glass of orange juice ready for consumption, set in front of that crazy old lady.
She’ll put down the rifle she’s had pointed at you this whole time and gingerly take a sip. Then a slurp. Then a gulp down the back of her throat. She’ll make a little moaning noise and, inside of her head, she’ll realize she needs to let you go.
Unfortunately she won’t get a chance to tell you that. She’ll be hit in the back of the head with a toaster by you. The force of your blow will knock her to the floor, where you’ll climb on top of her and smash her face repeatedly with the toaster clutched in both hands.
When you’re finished she’ll be unrecognizable, and you’ll be free to leave, which will be pretty great. But on your way out you’ll be sure to make a fresh glass of OJ and take a nice long sip of it, just to keep your strength up.
Congratulations on Making Her the Best Glass of Orange Juice Ever!
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Congratulations on Disarming that Roadside Bomb!
The army is full of all kinds of heroes. Most of these heroes do stuff like run around, shoot guns and generally celebrate life in all its forms. These men are the most brotherly of brothers, representatives of the American way of life who stand as halcyon beacons of hope to all who gaze upon them.
The army is also full of other heroes. These heroes are mostly robots. They’re the unsung heroes of our military. No one ever talks about the sacrifice that predator drones make. Well today we’re going to. Today we’re going to talk about you.
You’re one of those robots that they send in to disarm bombs when they don’t think that a particular bomb is worth the risk to human life that it involves or if they know for a fact that the bomb is going to go off and kill anyone nearby. You’ve had a long life (four months of sustained operation!) and you’ve done a lot of good in it. You’ve successfully determined that several abandoned backpacks were not bombs at Baghdad International Airport, you disarmed a bomb in a parking lot one time without it going off and at an event at a school in Baghdad you convinced a little girl that robots can love by robo-winking at her coyly when she hugged your chassis.
Yes, you’ve had a good life. But sometimes good things must end.
Today you’re going to get “the call,” meaning the door of the box you spend most of your time inside is going to open up. You’ll then roll into the heat and dust of the Afghani sun and, after receiving some directions from your operator, make your way towards a pile of rags and sandbags by the side of what could charitably be called a road.
You’ll be the only one around for miles and miles, and you’ll be fine with that. That’s kind of how you like things: you’re a bomb defusing robot, you like alone time and helping others. So as you roll up to the roadside bomb you’ll be kind of excited. This is just another time to shine for you.
But as you approach, before you even get a chance to use your clever little manipulating appendages to do your thing, the un-thinkable will happen: the bomb will explode. The explosion will launch hundreds of pieces of scrap metal, marbles and wood out in a dome-like pattern from the sacks laying on top of the charges, tiny fragments that are intended to maximize damage to the soft tissues most people are made up of so prominently. Most of these makeshift flechettes will ricochet harmlessly off your steel chassis.
But the concussive force of the bomb will not be so kind. You’ll be just close enough that the shockwave of the explosion will rattle your frame and devastate your motors, shaking your servos to bits. The bomb will effectively be defused, your mission a success, but your body will be in ruins. A pair of techs will rush out after the dust settles to collect your parts and put them in a small wood box.
The wood box will be sent back to the place of your birth, Flint, Michigan, where you’ll be given a hero’s burial: entombed underneath the factor that produced you in the hope that your spirit will transmit to the chassis of a new robot and find a new life as another bomb defusing robot. It will be a good death, and a burial appropriate for a hero of your magnitude.
Congratulations on Disarming that Roadside Bomb!
The army is also full of other heroes. These heroes are mostly robots. They’re the unsung heroes of our military. No one ever talks about the sacrifice that predator drones make. Well today we’re going to. Today we’re going to talk about you.
You’re one of those robots that they send in to disarm bombs when they don’t think that a particular bomb is worth the risk to human life that it involves or if they know for a fact that the bomb is going to go off and kill anyone nearby. You’ve had a long life (four months of sustained operation!) and you’ve done a lot of good in it. You’ve successfully determined that several abandoned backpacks were not bombs at Baghdad International Airport, you disarmed a bomb in a parking lot one time without it going off and at an event at a school in Baghdad you convinced a little girl that robots can love by robo-winking at her coyly when she hugged your chassis.
Yes, you’ve had a good life. But sometimes good things must end.
Today you’re going to get “the call,” meaning the door of the box you spend most of your time inside is going to open up. You’ll then roll into the heat and dust of the Afghani sun and, after receiving some directions from your operator, make your way towards a pile of rags and sandbags by the side of what could charitably be called a road.
You’ll be the only one around for miles and miles, and you’ll be fine with that. That’s kind of how you like things: you’re a bomb defusing robot, you like alone time and helping others. So as you roll up to the roadside bomb you’ll be kind of excited. This is just another time to shine for you.
But as you approach, before you even get a chance to use your clever little manipulating appendages to do your thing, the un-thinkable will happen: the bomb will explode. The explosion will launch hundreds of pieces of scrap metal, marbles and wood out in a dome-like pattern from the sacks laying on top of the charges, tiny fragments that are intended to maximize damage to the soft tissues most people are made up of so prominently. Most of these makeshift flechettes will ricochet harmlessly off your steel chassis.
But the concussive force of the bomb will not be so kind. You’ll be just close enough that the shockwave of the explosion will rattle your frame and devastate your motors, shaking your servos to bits. The bomb will effectively be defused, your mission a success, but your body will be in ruins. A pair of techs will rush out after the dust settles to collect your parts and put them in a small wood box.
The wood box will be sent back to the place of your birth, Flint, Michigan, where you’ll be given a hero’s burial: entombed underneath the factor that produced you in the hope that your spirit will transmit to the chassis of a new robot and find a new life as another bomb defusing robot. It will be a good death, and a burial appropriate for a hero of your magnitude.
Congratulations on Disarming that Roadside Bomb!
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Congratulations on Blasting Out the Side of the Mountain!
You’re a wealthy oil tycoon who likes to blow stuff up just for the sheer meanness of it. You don’t even care about there being oil in the shit you blow up, you just like to blow it up and then laugh and laugh and laugh about it.
You recently set your sights on a piece of land owned by a group of industrious youth who run a camp to help at-risk-youth reform their wayward natures and become safe, secure members of society who can contribute and find happiness in the world at large. They don’t charge them anything, run the entire project on donations, and have a prodigious success rate.
You won’t care though. You’ll love oil and destruction so much that those kids and the things they do for kids won’t matter one whit to you, no way, no how. So several months ago you’ll have bought up the land surrounding their wayward youth camp and then started to develop it. Eventually fumes made the wayward youth camp uninhabitable, and the wayward youth camp’s property ownership company was forced to sell off their land or face severe fines for running an at-risk-youth oriented camp in such a toxic environment.
The plucky twenty-somethings who run the camp were left with only one option: a massive fund-raising concert to generate enough funds to purchase their land from the property ownership company so that they could possibly, somehow save their home for wayward youth. So today they’ll get a bunch of bands together, a few celebrities, and then they’ll hold a concert.
It’ll be a huge success, and they’ll raise enough to buy the property. Or rather, they’ll earn enough to buy the property assuming you don’t outbid them by ten grand the entire parcel, which you will.
You’ll then bulldoze their at-risk-youth rehab center while laughing maniacally. The kids and the counselors will just sit there watching you do it, wondering where they’ll be able to go next. A few of them will cry, and the rest will resolve to move to Philadelphia, dragging their weeping cohorts along with them. Once there they’ll hook up with one William Cosby and make the best damn at-risk-youth rehab center in the world, courtesy of the Cosby foundation.
You, on the other hand, will blow up the side of a mountain to find out if there’s oil inside. It turns out there won’t be, and you’ll have spent millions and millions of dollars just to fuck with a group of social activists and inner-city kids. But you’ll have blown up a mountain and hurt some good people, and that’ll make you feel a little bit better about life. Even if it also makes you realize how insignificant you and everything you do truly are.
Congratulations on Blasting Out the Side of the Mountain!
You recently set your sights on a piece of land owned by a group of industrious youth who run a camp to help at-risk-youth reform their wayward natures and become safe, secure members of society who can contribute and find happiness in the world at large. They don’t charge them anything, run the entire project on donations, and have a prodigious success rate.
You won’t care though. You’ll love oil and destruction so much that those kids and the things they do for kids won’t matter one whit to you, no way, no how. So several months ago you’ll have bought up the land surrounding their wayward youth camp and then started to develop it. Eventually fumes made the wayward youth camp uninhabitable, and the wayward youth camp’s property ownership company was forced to sell off their land or face severe fines for running an at-risk-youth oriented camp in such a toxic environment.
The plucky twenty-somethings who run the camp were left with only one option: a massive fund-raising concert to generate enough funds to purchase their land from the property ownership company so that they could possibly, somehow save their home for wayward youth. So today they’ll get a bunch of bands together, a few celebrities, and then they’ll hold a concert.
It’ll be a huge success, and they’ll raise enough to buy the property. Or rather, they’ll earn enough to buy the property assuming you don’t outbid them by ten grand the entire parcel, which you will.
You’ll then bulldoze their at-risk-youth rehab center while laughing maniacally. The kids and the counselors will just sit there watching you do it, wondering where they’ll be able to go next. A few of them will cry, and the rest will resolve to move to Philadelphia, dragging their weeping cohorts along with them. Once there they’ll hook up with one William Cosby and make the best damn at-risk-youth rehab center in the world, courtesy of the Cosby foundation.
You, on the other hand, will blow up the side of a mountain to find out if there’s oil inside. It turns out there won’t be, and you’ll have spent millions and millions of dollars just to fuck with a group of social activists and inner-city kids. But you’ll have blown up a mountain and hurt some good people, and that’ll make you feel a little bit better about life. Even if it also makes you realize how insignificant you and everything you do truly are.
Congratulations on Blasting Out the Side of the Mountain!
Monday, December 19, 2011
Congratulations on Losing Your Horn!
We all know the story about how unicorns are just horses who need to get laid bad. Horse pedophiles prevent the formation of unicorns for the most part nowadays (most horses develop their unicorn horn, or unihorn, at the age of six months, and most horses get fucked at around four months) but every once in a great while a unicorn is born.
It’s not common – if it was common we wouldn’t give a shit – but it happens. And it happened to you, and you’re a unicorn and now you’re going to lose your horn.
You’ll lose it after a delightful bottle of red wine that you’ll share with Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch is fascinated by things like unicorns, pure things that simply beg corruption.
He’ll have sex with you in missionary, then “horsey” style, because that’s what he’s into.
After sex your horn will begin to wither in fast motion – it will dissolve in fast motion, a flaccid erection to a man’s thinning hair into a nothingness so permanent and final that you’ll wonder if you ever had a horn at all.
Of course, you did. But Rupert Murdoch took it away, because Rupert Murdoch fucks horses. That’s what he does. He’s a horse fucker, and he loves destroying innocence.
Congratulations on Losing Your Horn!
It’s not common – if it was common we wouldn’t give a shit – but it happens. And it happened to you, and you’re a unicorn and now you’re going to lose your horn.
You’ll lose it after a delightful bottle of red wine that you’ll share with Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch is fascinated by things like unicorns, pure things that simply beg corruption.
He’ll have sex with you in missionary, then “horsey” style, because that’s what he’s into.
After sex your horn will begin to wither in fast motion – it will dissolve in fast motion, a flaccid erection to a man’s thinning hair into a nothingness so permanent and final that you’ll wonder if you ever had a horn at all.
Of course, you did. But Rupert Murdoch took it away, because Rupert Murdoch fucks horses. That’s what he does. He’s a horse fucker, and he loves destroying innocence.
Congratulations on Losing Your Horn!
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Reflections on The Old Republic Beta!
It is truly remarkable how quickly ire dissipates under the right circumstances, how fast we’re willing to forget decades of cruel mistreatment for a few seconds of joy. This is, in a very real way, the story of my relationship with Lucas Arts.
Anyone of a certain age within the gaming community came of age with some truly amazing Star Wars games, games like Dark Forces, like X-Wing and TIE Fighter. But of late there’s been a lot of, for lack of a better word, Shit Wars material coming out on the Star Wars license. With the exception of the wonderful, technically flawed and obviously under-funded and under-supported Knights of the Old Republic titles there hasn’t really been a good Star Wars game in a while, to say nothing of a good Star Wars MMO.
There was an attempt at a Star Wars MMO, one that could be considered two different attempts by especially generous commentators. But this attempt, or attempts as you choose to look at it, fell apart. It fell apart hard. So when early rumors started almost five years ago that Bioware was going to be developing a Star Wars MMO, people responded as you’d expect: with tentative, heavily tempered hope. If anyone could make a Star Wars MMO and do it right it would, after all, be Bioware, who had managed to eke out a worthwhile space in the downtrodden franchise’s annals. But no one, in their wildest dreams, actually imagined that this game would do anything new or interesting. No one ever hoped that it would be good, that it would make us feel something other than bitterness when we looked upon the Lucas Arts logo.
Today, while attempting to log into Star Wars: The Old Republic on a bus’ wi-fi, (I make no apologies for my actions, my beta time was limited and I wanted to get as much in as I could) I found myself frozen on a loading screen. The loading screen presented me with a number of triumphant graphics informing me of the involvement of Bioware, EA and, of course, Lucas Arts with the project. Full disclosure, I’d already played the beta, albeit on someone else’s account, but I’d spent enough time with it to get to know the game, to start to understand what it could be, to like it. So now, attempting to start over on my own account, frozen in time as I tried to struggle my way through those miserable early levels, I found myself staring at those logos, wondering how I really felt about them, and suddenly I realized something, something strange.
I loved the Lucas Arts logo again.
Lucas Arts was a bastion of intellect in gaming back in the day, releasing not just amazing Star Wars games but titles the like of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle which have earned their rightful place in Nerd Valhalla. But time, and the examples I mentioned above, mademe look at the Lucas Arts logo with something other than affection as time dragged on: it was no longer a treat to see it cast upon a box’s face, but rather a signpost pointing to disappointment. Buy our re-skin of a Battlefield game here. Play this truly atrocious, forgettable adventure game here. Lucas Arts logo, once synonymous with excellence, was a signpost to shit.
But the first twelve or so levels of The Old Republic, along with the impressively constructed Black Talon Flashpoint (encounter?) were all it took to win me over. An MMO with a moral system? With companions and party mates and enduring relationships in the galaxy at large? With lightsabers and dames that know how to use ‘em? There are certainly problems with the product, beta issues and bigger game design issues that involve player bottlenecking and some character development and difficulty curve snags, but the problems, contained within the product as a whole, are so minor, so overshadowed by the power of the experience as it can function, that I really don’t care.
I don’t care that the instancing system that makes earlier levels playable also makes party making an interminable chore. I don’t care that the chat system doesn’t take any of this instancing business into account when it’s trying to help me form a party. I don’t care that I can’t use the /who feature to actually look up players at this point to find out what kind of character I’m adding to the party before I invite them to join. I don’t care because the game, when it works, is still really, really fun.
See, The Old Republic, at its core, is about being a badass from level one onward. The ways you get to be a badass change and improve, sure. But from the second you log in you’re pretty awesome – you’ve got an epic destiny (just like the rest of the server), you’ve got a chip on your shoulder and you’ve got some special powers that just rip the shit out of your enemies. And what’s more, you have a personality, a personality you get to establish in the context of the world at large. Which means you’re not just grinding levels: you’re developing a persona, a persona which, despite moving through a set of limited conversation trees which usually have, at best, three options, allows you to make a pretty well archetyped character to project your actions on to. There are complaints I have about this system (the randomization of collectively selected conversation choices in encounters, for example, rather than a nuanced voting system which might weight player majorities and use randomization as a tie breaking measure) but overall it actually works quite nicely.
And the gameplay! There’s a sound balance between frenetic mashing and careful choice in the game, enough that a good player and a bad player, despite their limited ability selection by level 10, are clearly discernable from one another by any group member who is paying attention. Anyone who’s played with a Sith Warrior or a Jedi Knight who doesn’t use their Focus/Rage knows what I’m talking about. The end result of the design is a chaotic, visually engaging morass that keeps players occupied most of the time, unless they’re not doing their job. And the lack of an auto-attack feature, originally something I lamented, is something I’ve come to see the sense of in a game where even the most basic attack can constitute a tactical choice that can influence the course of a battle.
But connectivity issues and some early-game visual design issues plague The Old Republic. It’s not catty to say that the characters early in the game are pretty uninspiring, and you won’t really start to get out of this slump until you’re about to leave your starting world. If you’re lucky: one of my friends, a bounty hunter, still looked pretty lame when we ran The Black Talon together, more or less like a second rate Han Solo with a Fallout Boy haircut (though some of that might’ve been his choice). And time sensitive hits, an awesome idea, can be problematic with response-lag like the kind you can expect to see in SWTOR for quite a while.
Server queues are a frustrating thing and, as I discovered on this bus, a somewhat unpredictable and buggy thing. There’s a paucity of technical notifications for a bevy of issues that seem to be besetting testers left and right. But that’s beta for you: part of playing a game like this before release is enduring the problems that come with early builds.
Even with these problems it remains amazing to me that my heart swells at the sight of the Lucas Arts logo again. It’s such a coarse thing, such a simple thing associated with such a variety of creations good and bad. But this one great creation, a creation still in progress, a creation I’m still uncovering bits and pieces of, has turned me around on Lucas Arts. I no longer feel an urge to spit when I look at their logo: instead I kind of want whatever it is they’re selling in my mouth. Is that a bit too dirty or forward? I’m not sure I care.
This isn’t anything approaching a full treatment of SWTOR: I don’t think I’ve played enough of the game to really give one of those. Nor is it a defense of its many flaws – I don’t think anyone in their right mind would try to make one of those, especially at this point, except to say, quietly, that the game is, in fact, still in beta and that it might need some more time in the oven. This is just a quick love letter to Lucas Arts, to that crazy bitch who has fucked me over and wasted my money so often in the past.
I still have feelings for you, and that kind of scares me, but I want to go for it.
Call me. My home-made lightsaber is ready.
Anyone of a certain age within the gaming community came of age with some truly amazing Star Wars games, games like Dark Forces, like X-Wing and TIE Fighter. But of late there’s been a lot of, for lack of a better word, Shit Wars material coming out on the Star Wars license. With the exception of the wonderful, technically flawed and obviously under-funded and under-supported Knights of the Old Republic titles there hasn’t really been a good Star Wars game in a while, to say nothing of a good Star Wars MMO.
There was an attempt at a Star Wars MMO, one that could be considered two different attempts by especially generous commentators. But this attempt, or attempts as you choose to look at it, fell apart. It fell apart hard. So when early rumors started almost five years ago that Bioware was going to be developing a Star Wars MMO, people responded as you’d expect: with tentative, heavily tempered hope. If anyone could make a Star Wars MMO and do it right it would, after all, be Bioware, who had managed to eke out a worthwhile space in the downtrodden franchise’s annals. But no one, in their wildest dreams, actually imagined that this game would do anything new or interesting. No one ever hoped that it would be good, that it would make us feel something other than bitterness when we looked upon the Lucas Arts logo.
Today, while attempting to log into Star Wars: The Old Republic on a bus’ wi-fi, (I make no apologies for my actions, my beta time was limited and I wanted to get as much in as I could) I found myself frozen on a loading screen. The loading screen presented me with a number of triumphant graphics informing me of the involvement of Bioware, EA and, of course, Lucas Arts with the project. Full disclosure, I’d already played the beta, albeit on someone else’s account, but I’d spent enough time with it to get to know the game, to start to understand what it could be, to like it. So now, attempting to start over on my own account, frozen in time as I tried to struggle my way through those miserable early levels, I found myself staring at those logos, wondering how I really felt about them, and suddenly I realized something, something strange.
I loved the Lucas Arts logo again.
Lucas Arts was a bastion of intellect in gaming back in the day, releasing not just amazing Star Wars games but titles the like of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle which have earned their rightful place in Nerd Valhalla. But time, and the examples I mentioned above, mademe look at the Lucas Arts logo with something other than affection as time dragged on: it was no longer a treat to see it cast upon a box’s face, but rather a signpost pointing to disappointment. Buy our re-skin of a Battlefield game here. Play this truly atrocious, forgettable adventure game here. Lucas Arts logo, once synonymous with excellence, was a signpost to shit.
But the first twelve or so levels of The Old Republic, along with the impressively constructed Black Talon Flashpoint (encounter?) were all it took to win me over. An MMO with a moral system? With companions and party mates and enduring relationships in the galaxy at large? With lightsabers and dames that know how to use ‘em? There are certainly problems with the product, beta issues and bigger game design issues that involve player bottlenecking and some character development and difficulty curve snags, but the problems, contained within the product as a whole, are so minor, so overshadowed by the power of the experience as it can function, that I really don’t care.
I don’t care that the instancing system that makes earlier levels playable also makes party making an interminable chore. I don’t care that the chat system doesn’t take any of this instancing business into account when it’s trying to help me form a party. I don’t care that I can’t use the /who feature to actually look up players at this point to find out what kind of character I’m adding to the party before I invite them to join. I don’t care because the game, when it works, is still really, really fun.
See, The Old Republic, at its core, is about being a badass from level one onward. The ways you get to be a badass change and improve, sure. But from the second you log in you’re pretty awesome – you’ve got an epic destiny (just like the rest of the server), you’ve got a chip on your shoulder and you’ve got some special powers that just rip the shit out of your enemies. And what’s more, you have a personality, a personality you get to establish in the context of the world at large. Which means you’re not just grinding levels: you’re developing a persona, a persona which, despite moving through a set of limited conversation trees which usually have, at best, three options, allows you to make a pretty well archetyped character to project your actions on to. There are complaints I have about this system (the randomization of collectively selected conversation choices in encounters, for example, rather than a nuanced voting system which might weight player majorities and use randomization as a tie breaking measure) but overall it actually works quite nicely.
And the gameplay! There’s a sound balance between frenetic mashing and careful choice in the game, enough that a good player and a bad player, despite their limited ability selection by level 10, are clearly discernable from one another by any group member who is paying attention. Anyone who’s played with a Sith Warrior or a Jedi Knight who doesn’t use their Focus/Rage knows what I’m talking about. The end result of the design is a chaotic, visually engaging morass that keeps players occupied most of the time, unless they’re not doing their job. And the lack of an auto-attack feature, originally something I lamented, is something I’ve come to see the sense of in a game where even the most basic attack can constitute a tactical choice that can influence the course of a battle.
But connectivity issues and some early-game visual design issues plague The Old Republic. It’s not catty to say that the characters early in the game are pretty uninspiring, and you won’t really start to get out of this slump until you’re about to leave your starting world. If you’re lucky: one of my friends, a bounty hunter, still looked pretty lame when we ran The Black Talon together, more or less like a second rate Han Solo with a Fallout Boy haircut (though some of that might’ve been his choice). And time sensitive hits, an awesome idea, can be problematic with response-lag like the kind you can expect to see in SWTOR for quite a while.
Server queues are a frustrating thing and, as I discovered on this bus, a somewhat unpredictable and buggy thing. There’s a paucity of technical notifications for a bevy of issues that seem to be besetting testers left and right. But that’s beta for you: part of playing a game like this before release is enduring the problems that come with early builds.
Even with these problems it remains amazing to me that my heart swells at the sight of the Lucas Arts logo again. It’s such a coarse thing, such a simple thing associated with such a variety of creations good and bad. But this one great creation, a creation still in progress, a creation I’m still uncovering bits and pieces of, has turned me around on Lucas Arts. I no longer feel an urge to spit when I look at their logo: instead I kind of want whatever it is they’re selling in my mouth. Is that a bit too dirty or forward? I’m not sure I care.
This isn’t anything approaching a full treatment of SWTOR: I don’t think I’ve played enough of the game to really give one of those. Nor is it a defense of its many flaws – I don’t think anyone in their right mind would try to make one of those, especially at this point, except to say, quietly, that the game is, in fact, still in beta and that it might need some more time in the oven. This is just a quick love letter to Lucas Arts, to that crazy bitch who has fucked me over and wasted my money so often in the past.
I still have feelings for you, and that kind of scares me, but I want to go for it.
Call me. My home-made lightsaber is ready.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Congratulations on Catching That Giant Fish!
You’re a toothless old man from South Carolina (pronounced Souf Carlinny) and you love to fish.
But there’s a conflict! There’s a giant fish in the lake where you fish and you haven’t caught it yet.
“That giant fish doesn’t exist,” your son will tell you.
You’ll throw a full bottle of beer at his head. It’ll shatter and leave a terrible stain on the wall and the rug beneath.
“You have erectile dysfunction and a fish won’t change that,” your wife will tell you.
You’ll shoot your gun into the ceiling until she leaves the room in a huff.
“Let’s go fishing,” your old alcoholic buddy who also has erectile dysfunction and will, for some reason, still be in the room at this point will tell you.
You’ll grab your hat and get in the truck and drive down to the local fishing hole, which will be a giant lake flooded with toxins from years past.
Then you’ll get in a tin boat with some poles and spend the next three hours quietly suppressing your mutual homosexual urges. You’ll sit there a good long while, chewing your lip and letting your pole rest in the water. You’ll wait and watch the horizon and wonder what’s past it, what’s outside of Souf Carlinny, if it’s anything at all.
Then your pole will dip.
It’ll dip once, twice, and then a third time, a big time. It’ll dip so violently that you’ll barely be able to catch it as it starts to fly out the boat, your body surging forward, hands gripping the pole as a force than can only be the Biggest of Ones tries to pull it not just from your hands and from the boat but from the world itself – the pressure of the fish upon the pole will threaten the very space time continuum the force of its bite will be so great.
Your friend will grab you around the waist, taking great if momentary care not to touch your junk as he does so. He’ll grunt as he pulls back along with you, as the fish drags the two of you, along with your boat, around the lake.
The fish will move so violently and so vigorously that your boat will zip around the whole lack, back and forth and back and forth until your friend suddenly pitches forward into the water.
At this moment the violent movement of the boat will cease. The water beneath you will go dark.
The fish’s mouth will erupt from the water to swallow your friend whole.
You’ll act without thinking, catapulting out of the boat and on to the fish’s back, hands wedged into its gills. The fish will try to dive, but without the ability to close its gills it’ll feel pretty uncomfortable doing so, so it’ll mostly just skim around the surface of the water, making you wet and making its back feel quite dry.
You’ll yank on whatever fleshy bits you can get your hands into as hard as you can, struggling to guide the fish towards the shore, anywhere that might allow you to save your friend. The fish will be so powerful, so potent and unaware of its own strength that it will rush through the water, blinded by pain, into the shallows and up onto the shore itself. Beached, the fish will flop, flap, flip you off onto the dirt.
You’ll lay there a moment, gathering your wits as the fish tries to work its way towards the water. You’ll see it in all its splendor now: it’ll be the size of a small car, possessed of splendorous, scintillating scales. It’ll be beyond gorgeous, the single most profound thing you’ll have seen in your entire life. Mutated or not, it’ll be an incredible sight.
At this point there will be two options: you can either let the fish go, let the myth go on for future generations and perhaps let your grandson one day have the same experience that you’ll have that day: a moment where he realized that beneath the surface of everything, however banal or hideous, something beautiful and dangerous lives, something beyond our comprehension.
Or you can end it, kill the fish and go home to your shit life. Your friend will almost certainly already be dead, and you hate your wife so you won’t want to have to worry about fucking her again, so there’s no way you’ll be bringing the fish back with you. It’ll just be a moment in time after you leave the fish’s corpse on the shore, waiting for the buzzards.
You’ll walk back to your car and get your gun.
Congratulations on Catching That Giant Fish!
But there’s a conflict! There’s a giant fish in the lake where you fish and you haven’t caught it yet.
“That giant fish doesn’t exist,” your son will tell you.
You’ll throw a full bottle of beer at his head. It’ll shatter and leave a terrible stain on the wall and the rug beneath.
“You have erectile dysfunction and a fish won’t change that,” your wife will tell you.
You’ll shoot your gun into the ceiling until she leaves the room in a huff.
“Let’s go fishing,” your old alcoholic buddy who also has erectile dysfunction and will, for some reason, still be in the room at this point will tell you.
You’ll grab your hat and get in the truck and drive down to the local fishing hole, which will be a giant lake flooded with toxins from years past.
Then you’ll get in a tin boat with some poles and spend the next three hours quietly suppressing your mutual homosexual urges. You’ll sit there a good long while, chewing your lip and letting your pole rest in the water. You’ll wait and watch the horizon and wonder what’s past it, what’s outside of Souf Carlinny, if it’s anything at all.
Then your pole will dip.
It’ll dip once, twice, and then a third time, a big time. It’ll dip so violently that you’ll barely be able to catch it as it starts to fly out the boat, your body surging forward, hands gripping the pole as a force than can only be the Biggest of Ones tries to pull it not just from your hands and from the boat but from the world itself – the pressure of the fish upon the pole will threaten the very space time continuum the force of its bite will be so great.
Your friend will grab you around the waist, taking great if momentary care not to touch your junk as he does so. He’ll grunt as he pulls back along with you, as the fish drags the two of you, along with your boat, around the lake.
The fish will move so violently and so vigorously that your boat will zip around the whole lack, back and forth and back and forth until your friend suddenly pitches forward into the water.
At this moment the violent movement of the boat will cease. The water beneath you will go dark.
The fish’s mouth will erupt from the water to swallow your friend whole.
You’ll act without thinking, catapulting out of the boat and on to the fish’s back, hands wedged into its gills. The fish will try to dive, but without the ability to close its gills it’ll feel pretty uncomfortable doing so, so it’ll mostly just skim around the surface of the water, making you wet and making its back feel quite dry.
You’ll yank on whatever fleshy bits you can get your hands into as hard as you can, struggling to guide the fish towards the shore, anywhere that might allow you to save your friend. The fish will be so powerful, so potent and unaware of its own strength that it will rush through the water, blinded by pain, into the shallows and up onto the shore itself. Beached, the fish will flop, flap, flip you off onto the dirt.
You’ll lay there a moment, gathering your wits as the fish tries to work its way towards the water. You’ll see it in all its splendor now: it’ll be the size of a small car, possessed of splendorous, scintillating scales. It’ll be beyond gorgeous, the single most profound thing you’ll have seen in your entire life. Mutated or not, it’ll be an incredible sight.
At this point there will be two options: you can either let the fish go, let the myth go on for future generations and perhaps let your grandson one day have the same experience that you’ll have that day: a moment where he realized that beneath the surface of everything, however banal or hideous, something beautiful and dangerous lives, something beyond our comprehension.
Or you can end it, kill the fish and go home to your shit life. Your friend will almost certainly already be dead, and you hate your wife so you won’t want to have to worry about fucking her again, so there’s no way you’ll be bringing the fish back with you. It’ll just be a moment in time after you leave the fish’s corpse on the shore, waiting for the buzzards.
You’ll walk back to your car and get your gun.
Congratulations on Catching That Giant Fish!
Friday, December 16, 2011
Congratulations Mexican Mom!
There are two kinds of Mexican moms, and they’ve both got huge assess. That’s why we love Mexican moms. That, and the fact that if we’re ever in a fight they’ll totally grab a tire iron and beat the living shit out of whoever we’re in a fight with (some of our members volunteer at their kid’s school). But that’s not why we’re writing this.
We’re writing this because today you’re going to be a very special Mexican mom is going to give a very special young man a handjob in the backseat of a Toyota Corolla outside of a Sam’s Club in South Bend, Indiana tonight. It’s going to last about fifteen minutes, involve a lot of spit and end with a kiss. It’ll be super romantic.
Then immediately afterwards you’re going ask the boy if he wants to come home. He’ll be nervous at first, but you’re a great mom, so you’ll be super encouraging and pushy and within another fifteen minutes he’ll be back at her apartment having very, very quiet sex (sock in the mouth) with you while your kids sleep in the adjacent room.
When he comes you’ll let out a long, fulfilled sigh and then roll back over to your side of the bed, dimly aware that a young man just came inside you, oblivious the fact that there could very well be a child preparing to grow in your belly at this very instant. The young man will be unable to think of anything else, and will lay there awake with a boner into the night, wondering if he’s ready to be a dad until you wake up the next day, notice his erection and immediately hop on for round two.
After that, you’ll make breakfast for everyone in the apartment.
Congratulations Mexican Mom!
We’re writing this because today you’re going to be a very special Mexican mom is going to give a very special young man a handjob in the backseat of a Toyota Corolla outside of a Sam’s Club in South Bend, Indiana tonight. It’s going to last about fifteen minutes, involve a lot of spit and end with a kiss. It’ll be super romantic.
Then immediately afterwards you’re going ask the boy if he wants to come home. He’ll be nervous at first, but you’re a great mom, so you’ll be super encouraging and pushy and within another fifteen minutes he’ll be back at her apartment having very, very quiet sex (sock in the mouth) with you while your kids sleep in the adjacent room.
When he comes you’ll let out a long, fulfilled sigh and then roll back over to your side of the bed, dimly aware that a young man just came inside you, oblivious the fact that there could very well be a child preparing to grow in your belly at this very instant. The young man will be unable to think of anything else, and will lay there awake with a boner into the night, wondering if he’s ready to be a dad until you wake up the next day, notice his erection and immediately hop on for round two.
After that, you’ll make breakfast for everyone in the apartment.
Congratulations Mexican Mom!
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Congratulations Really Important Soccer Ball!
Soccer is super popular in South America, and today we’re finally going to be able to give you a feasible explanation as to why. Because today you, a humble soccer ball, are going to kill a South American dictator.
You’ll begin your day, as you usually do, being played with by a group of orphans. These orphans will have recently received a bag of candy, care of the United States Marine Corps and so their kicks will be more energetic than usually (they’ll have eaten).
They’ll be so energetic that their usually listless soccer ball playing will be instead horrifyingly energetic. Where normally they simply bat you about lazily they will now actually be kicking you towards the net. They’ll score several goals, shouting “GOAAAAAAAAAL!” each time you connect with the back of the net.
They’ll kick you with greater and greater force, as if by driving you through the back of the net they’ll be able to escape their shitty lives. One boy will kick you so hard that you’ll soar over the net.
You’ll soar through the air, past the edge of the field and into the open top of the dictator of whatever South American country you’re in. You’ll catch the dictator’s driver in the back of the head and knock him into the steering wheel, making him lose control of the car. He’ll crash into a dynamite factory and kill the dictator instantly as you roll back towards the kids so you can continue the game.
The kids will barely even notice the blast, since they live in one of the explodier countries in South America, but the news will notice, and three weeks from now that little South American country will have a new leader who isn’t quite such a prick. Not the best guy in the world, but nowhere near as bad as the last asshole who was running things, which is a blessing.
Congratulations Really Important Soccer Ball!
You’ll begin your day, as you usually do, being played with by a group of orphans. These orphans will have recently received a bag of candy, care of the United States Marine Corps and so their kicks will be more energetic than usually (they’ll have eaten).
They’ll be so energetic that their usually listless soccer ball playing will be instead horrifyingly energetic. Where normally they simply bat you about lazily they will now actually be kicking you towards the net. They’ll score several goals, shouting “GOAAAAAAAAAL!” each time you connect with the back of the net.
They’ll kick you with greater and greater force, as if by driving you through the back of the net they’ll be able to escape their shitty lives. One boy will kick you so hard that you’ll soar over the net.
You’ll soar through the air, past the edge of the field and into the open top of the dictator of whatever South American country you’re in. You’ll catch the dictator’s driver in the back of the head and knock him into the steering wheel, making him lose control of the car. He’ll crash into a dynamite factory and kill the dictator instantly as you roll back towards the kids so you can continue the game.
The kids will barely even notice the blast, since they live in one of the explodier countries in South America, but the news will notice, and three weeks from now that little South American country will have a new leader who isn’t quite such a prick. Not the best guy in the world, but nowhere near as bad as the last asshole who was running things, which is a blessing.
Congratulations Really Important Soccer Ball!
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Congratulations Ginger Queen!
You’re a an eight foot tall redhead and you’re queen of the gingers. What does this mean?
This means you hand down decrees to other gingers.
“WE SHALL ONLY DATE OTHER GINGERS IN THE MONTH OF APRIL!” you’ll shout as your pale, formless horde shuffles in front of you.
“Creepy,” one of the gingers of diluted blood will mumble.
You will point to him, or someone near him at least, and the crowd will fall upon your target with ferocious rage, tearing them limb from limb. The crowd will be briefly made less pale by the display, but it won’t last. Their natural, freaky coloring will begin to shine through the blood almost immediately, and the stains will fade away under their luminescence.
“GINGER! GINGER! GINGER!” they’ll shout in unison.
“IT HAS BEGUN!” you’ll shout back at them, signifying the beginning, and the period just before the end of, your reign of terror.
Congratulations Ginger Queen!
This means you hand down decrees to other gingers.
“WE SHALL ONLY DATE OTHER GINGERS IN THE MONTH OF APRIL!” you’ll shout as your pale, formless horde shuffles in front of you.
“Creepy,” one of the gingers of diluted blood will mumble.
You will point to him, or someone near him at least, and the crowd will fall upon your target with ferocious rage, tearing them limb from limb. The crowd will be briefly made less pale by the display, but it won’t last. Their natural, freaky coloring will begin to shine through the blood almost immediately, and the stains will fade away under their luminescence.
“GINGER! GINGER! GINGER!” they’ll shout in unison.
“IT HAS BEGUN!” you’ll shout back at them, signifying the beginning, and the period just before the end of, your reign of terror.
Congratulations Ginger Queen!
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Congratulations Vending Machine Bandit!
Your tools: a sledgehammer and a pair of bandanas.
Your rate of success: prodigious.
You’re the best damn vending machine bandit in the northeastern seaboard and there’s no question. You’ve been through sixteen vending machines in the last four days and all you really do is smash them up and rip all the candy out of them before you smash ‘em up a little more but damned if it doesn’t work wonders.
Some men would take all that candy and stuff their fat faces or try to sell it in high schools, where candy can fetch a high price. Some men would take all their ill-gotten gains and go try to retire somewhere in Europe where vending machines don’t get robbed, but then they’d get greedy and try to pull one last big job where they’d end up getting shot up real bad by European vending machine cops who don’t know how to appropriately use force to subdue vending machine bandits. Some men would just leave the candy on the ground where anyone can take it, even if the people who take it are the kind of evil fucks who don’t deserve any candy, people like CEOs and hedge fund managers who would destroy candy forever if they thought it would make them a little richer.
But you, you grab all that candy and pack it into white trash bags (so the sun doesn’t make it too hot.) Then you drive to various nearby orphanages and you leave the candy, anonymously, under cover of nights, for kids to eat the next day or for nuns to distribute among kids if the orphanage is run by nuns or something. You make sure to pick out all the gross stuff, like Combos and apples, before you leave it.
Today you’re going to pull an especially big job, one that would’ve gotten the Feds on your ass if they gave a shit about vending machine banditry. And you’re going to drop all that candy with the biggest group of orphans of all: the United States Marine Corps.
“Thanks for the candy, mister,” one of the Marines on duty will shout at you as you drive away, waving furiously after you.
You’ll let a single tear fall from your eye as you drive away. That’s all you’ll allow yourself, though, before you start planning the next job.
Congratulations Vending Machine Bandit!
Your rate of success: prodigious.
You’re the best damn vending machine bandit in the northeastern seaboard and there’s no question. You’ve been through sixteen vending machines in the last four days and all you really do is smash them up and rip all the candy out of them before you smash ‘em up a little more but damned if it doesn’t work wonders.
Some men would take all that candy and stuff their fat faces or try to sell it in high schools, where candy can fetch a high price. Some men would take all their ill-gotten gains and go try to retire somewhere in Europe where vending machines don’t get robbed, but then they’d get greedy and try to pull one last big job where they’d end up getting shot up real bad by European vending machine cops who don’t know how to appropriately use force to subdue vending machine bandits. Some men would just leave the candy on the ground where anyone can take it, even if the people who take it are the kind of evil fucks who don’t deserve any candy, people like CEOs and hedge fund managers who would destroy candy forever if they thought it would make them a little richer.
But you, you grab all that candy and pack it into white trash bags (so the sun doesn’t make it too hot.) Then you drive to various nearby orphanages and you leave the candy, anonymously, under cover of nights, for kids to eat the next day or for nuns to distribute among kids if the orphanage is run by nuns or something. You make sure to pick out all the gross stuff, like Combos and apples, before you leave it.
Today you’re going to pull an especially big job, one that would’ve gotten the Feds on your ass if they gave a shit about vending machine banditry. And you’re going to drop all that candy with the biggest group of orphans of all: the United States Marine Corps.
“Thanks for the candy, mister,” one of the Marines on duty will shout at you as you drive away, waving furiously after you.
You’ll let a single tear fall from your eye as you drive away. That’s all you’ll allow yourself, though, before you start planning the next job.
Congratulations Vending Machine Bandit!
Monday, December 12, 2011
Congratulations Mango Thief!
You’re a thief and you exclusively steal mangoes.
“Why do you only steal mangoes?” the grocery store owner will ask as you push the gun against the side of his face.
“Man’s got to have principles,” you’ll tell him as you stuff mangoes into your pockets.
“They’re just not that expensive and have very little resale value,” he’ll start telling you, but then you’ll hit him in the face with the butt of your gun to stop him from talking.
Folk’s always gonna try to find something to complain about in life, and you give them that. And so, if only for that reason, you’re a very special sort of man. Plus you give most of your mangoes to orphans and you rarely kill people while stealing mangoes.
That makes you alright by us, mango thief.
Congratulations Mango Thief!
“Why do you only steal mangoes?” the grocery store owner will ask as you push the gun against the side of his face.
“Man’s got to have principles,” you’ll tell him as you stuff mangoes into your pockets.
“They’re just not that expensive and have very little resale value,” he’ll start telling you, but then you’ll hit him in the face with the butt of your gun to stop him from talking.
Folk’s always gonna try to find something to complain about in life, and you give them that. And so, if only for that reason, you’re a very special sort of man. Plus you give most of your mangoes to orphans and you rarely kill people while stealing mangoes.
That makes you alright by us, mango thief.
Congratulations Mango Thief!
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Super Nerd Sundays Presents: A Few Steps Backwards!
Just a brief statement to start this: I’m not sure if there’s an NDA on the build of DotA2 that I played. I don’t recall signing one, and I can’t really imagine a reason for one to be in place given what they’re making, but if this is in violation of any kind of NDA it’ll be coming down immediately. I’ve no desire to violate Valve’s intellectual property by posting something damaging about one of their upcoming projects.
I’d like to tell you that, after playing DotA2, I’m super excited about it. I’d like to tell you that it’s the latest and greatest DotA clone to emerge since the first DotA, the best of all worlds rolled into one. I’d like to say that it learns from all of the previous missteps and improvements that versions since the first DotA have made. I would really, really like to say all of these things.
But I can’t. DotA2 is, for all the hype surrounding it and the resources being funneled towards its completion, kind of a tremendous disappointment. It looks fantastic, don’t get me wrong – heroes, particle effects, landscape and creeps are all visually stunning – but it’s missing quite a bit of the polish that League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth brought to the table. And at the steep asking price attached to it, it’s going to be a pretty tough sell to most players without those basic features they’ve come to expect from their games about controlling a single hero up and down the map.
See, DotA2 is actually little more than a reskin of the original DotA. A lot of the third party tools that were generated for the original DotA, tools like Banlist, for example, have had elements incorporated into the overall design of the new game. But the tools that were selected are old – over half a decade old at this point – and many more appropriate measures of addressing the issues they were created to deal with have since emerged. For example, tracking and rating the number of premature drops that a player makes during a game might’ve been a great way to deal with the issue of leavers back in the days of the original DotA, and it’s still a vital component of managing the issue now. But without other means of addressing the problem, tools like concede and remake votes that allow players to collectively opt to restart or resolve a game, they’re not really a solution. They’re just a punitive measure, and replacing a resolution with a punitive measure is just a way to make your game more tedious for the people who want to play it as it was offered. People who want to engage in antisocial behavior will always find a way to do so; they’ll go to great lengths to do so, in fact.
And without a concede or remake vote to be found in DotA2, they’re actually in a better position than ever to pursue this anti-social behavior. People can trash games with captive audiences, they can grief to their heart’s content and then use whatever quaint loophole they find to continue doing so in another game after souring everyone else’s evening in a quick and dirty forty-five minute asshole session. In my mind there’s no real justification for not including concession in DotA2. It’s not a tool intended to break the game, it’s a tool intended to let players play the game more easily and pleasantly.
And it’s symbolic of the mentality behind the game. Once the game is actually a finished product I’ll sit down and comment on other elements of it, but some pretty basic aspects of DotA2 have, in my mind, almost completely failed at taking in the lessons of games like LoL and HoN (the good lessons, not the micro-transaction lessons). And this is at the forefront of those elements. LoL and HoN both changed the mentality of DotA by putting the player first. They generated systems that were intended to help acclimate new players and provide players in general with a way to self-police themselves within games. They experimented with game types and map types, they’ve experimented with heroes and game balance and mechanics as well. But the most important improvements they’ve made in my mind are improvements on how people approach the game on a social level.
They’ve made it easy to mark assholes as people you don’t want to interact with a second time. They’ve made it easy to make comrades out of your fellow players quickly and easily, and play with them again if you want to. They’ve made it easy to escape unpleasant situations if you want to, and they’ve provided a reasonably easy to use framework for reporting such situations as they emerge. The game of DotA itself has remained relatively inelastic since its inception: it is the tools that allow us to manage the social environment surrounding that game which have changed. DotA2 appears to have ignored these messages, seems to think that DotA is fine as it was. But we aren’t playing in 2006 anymore. There are tools that allow us to avoid unpleasant people and escape from unpleasant environments and we’ve gotten used to using them. And removing them isn’t going to make the problems that made those tools necessities suddenly go away. I worry for DotA2’s future.
I’d like to tell you that, after playing DotA2, I’m super excited about it. I’d like to tell you that it’s the latest and greatest DotA clone to emerge since the first DotA, the best of all worlds rolled into one. I’d like to say that it learns from all of the previous missteps and improvements that versions since the first DotA have made. I would really, really like to say all of these things.
But I can’t. DotA2 is, for all the hype surrounding it and the resources being funneled towards its completion, kind of a tremendous disappointment. It looks fantastic, don’t get me wrong – heroes, particle effects, landscape and creeps are all visually stunning – but it’s missing quite a bit of the polish that League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth brought to the table. And at the steep asking price attached to it, it’s going to be a pretty tough sell to most players without those basic features they’ve come to expect from their games about controlling a single hero up and down the map.
See, DotA2 is actually little more than a reskin of the original DotA. A lot of the third party tools that were generated for the original DotA, tools like Banlist, for example, have had elements incorporated into the overall design of the new game. But the tools that were selected are old – over half a decade old at this point – and many more appropriate measures of addressing the issues they were created to deal with have since emerged. For example, tracking and rating the number of premature drops that a player makes during a game might’ve been a great way to deal with the issue of leavers back in the days of the original DotA, and it’s still a vital component of managing the issue now. But without other means of addressing the problem, tools like concede and remake votes that allow players to collectively opt to restart or resolve a game, they’re not really a solution. They’re just a punitive measure, and replacing a resolution with a punitive measure is just a way to make your game more tedious for the people who want to play it as it was offered. People who want to engage in antisocial behavior will always find a way to do so; they’ll go to great lengths to do so, in fact.
And without a concede or remake vote to be found in DotA2, they’re actually in a better position than ever to pursue this anti-social behavior. People can trash games with captive audiences, they can grief to their heart’s content and then use whatever quaint loophole they find to continue doing so in another game after souring everyone else’s evening in a quick and dirty forty-five minute asshole session. In my mind there’s no real justification for not including concession in DotA2. It’s not a tool intended to break the game, it’s a tool intended to let players play the game more easily and pleasantly.
And it’s symbolic of the mentality behind the game. Once the game is actually a finished product I’ll sit down and comment on other elements of it, but some pretty basic aspects of DotA2 have, in my mind, almost completely failed at taking in the lessons of games like LoL and HoN (the good lessons, not the micro-transaction lessons). And this is at the forefront of those elements. LoL and HoN both changed the mentality of DotA by putting the player first. They generated systems that were intended to help acclimate new players and provide players in general with a way to self-police themselves within games. They experimented with game types and map types, they’ve experimented with heroes and game balance and mechanics as well. But the most important improvements they’ve made in my mind are improvements on how people approach the game on a social level.
They’ve made it easy to mark assholes as people you don’t want to interact with a second time. They’ve made it easy to make comrades out of your fellow players quickly and easily, and play with them again if you want to. They’ve made it easy to escape unpleasant situations if you want to, and they’ve provided a reasonably easy to use framework for reporting such situations as they emerge. The game of DotA itself has remained relatively inelastic since its inception: it is the tools that allow us to manage the social environment surrounding that game which have changed. DotA2 appears to have ignored these messages, seems to think that DotA is fine as it was. But we aren’t playing in 2006 anymore. There are tools that allow us to avoid unpleasant people and escape from unpleasant environments and we’ve gotten used to using them. And removing them isn’t going to make the problems that made those tools necessities suddenly go away. I worry for DotA2’s future.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Congratulations on Watching the Barn Burn!
Light it. Light it with gasoline cans stuffed with rags, lit in haste, thrown carelessly. Light it and run away. Run away behind some hay bales and wait. Wait for it to catch.
The cans will explode, gas expanding rapidly, too rapidly for the container holding it. Small amounts of metal will fly about, most of it will dissolve in the fire, the flames moving outward, upward, scaling the wood up to the tin, peeling the paint instantly with their heat. Don’t move, just wait there, just watch it go.
Reach out your hand and let the person you love take it. Bite your lip, it’s not time to kiss them yet. Wait for the fire to surge, to move through the barn, catch the hay, cascade flames upward, inward until they find the propane tanks, boil the liquid in them to gas and the second explosion comes. Then squeeze their hand and pull them close and kiss them. Don’t use your teeth: they’ll already be freaked out by all the explosions, it won’t be a good time to be aggressive. Be tender, be true, be romantic. It’ll be the perfect moment, just the two of you erasing the past for the future.
Go home the next day. Drive to where the barn once stood. File your insurance paperwork in a timely fashion, though not too timely. Remember this moment when you think of leaving the one you love years later, idly scrolling through bus tickets online, doing the math, figuring out if you have enough to make a new life somewhere else.
Congratulations on Watching the Barn Burn!
The cans will explode, gas expanding rapidly, too rapidly for the container holding it. Small amounts of metal will fly about, most of it will dissolve in the fire, the flames moving outward, upward, scaling the wood up to the tin, peeling the paint instantly with their heat. Don’t move, just wait there, just watch it go.
Reach out your hand and let the person you love take it. Bite your lip, it’s not time to kiss them yet. Wait for the fire to surge, to move through the barn, catch the hay, cascade flames upward, inward until they find the propane tanks, boil the liquid in them to gas and the second explosion comes. Then squeeze their hand and pull them close and kiss them. Don’t use your teeth: they’ll already be freaked out by all the explosions, it won’t be a good time to be aggressive. Be tender, be true, be romantic. It’ll be the perfect moment, just the two of you erasing the past for the future.
Go home the next day. Drive to where the barn once stood. File your insurance paperwork in a timely fashion, though not too timely. Remember this moment when you think of leaving the one you love years later, idly scrolling through bus tickets online, doing the math, figuring out if you have enough to make a new life somewhere else.
Congratulations on Watching the Barn Burn!
Friday, December 9, 2011
Congratulations Mechanical Bull!
True fact: inanimate objects fall in love with people all the time. It’s not that weird. What’s weird is that we don’t talk about it!
For some inanimate objects it can be tougher than others. You, for example, are a mechanical bull who lives and works in a strip club. You fall in like quite often, and far more occasionally love. Today is going to be one of those days.
It’ll begin when a stripper with no panties on mounts you and starts riding away. You’ll feel her privates grinding against your genitals (cruelly placed upon your back by your creators) and you’ll grow excited right away. She won’t notice, because she’s not a mechanical bull, but you’ll be really, really turned on. And when she kisses the front of your chassis you won’t be able to control yourself.
You’ll begin rocking back and forth wildly, even more violently than you usually do. Your rider will shriek with glee as she thrashes about on your head, relishing the violence of her movement, the excitement of the ride. She’ll be so full of joy that her grip will slip slightly and she’ll go flying off of your chassis, over the padded mats that normally keep riders safe and straight into one of the exposed support beams that make the décor of the strip club so tasteful.
The force will crack her skull, shatter her spine and leave her laying there, a limp, dead vessel that once held the being you love. You’ll wish that you were born as something other than a sentient mechanical bull, so that you could weep at the loss of such a lovely creature. But you’ll know that you were not, that you cannot. And you’ll simply rock in place there, trying to figure out a way to hurt yourself so that you can feel something, anything, for just a moment, to distract you from the pain.
Congratulations Mechanical Bull!
For some inanimate objects it can be tougher than others. You, for example, are a mechanical bull who lives and works in a strip club. You fall in like quite often, and far more occasionally love. Today is going to be one of those days.
It’ll begin when a stripper with no panties on mounts you and starts riding away. You’ll feel her privates grinding against your genitals (cruelly placed upon your back by your creators) and you’ll grow excited right away. She won’t notice, because she’s not a mechanical bull, but you’ll be really, really turned on. And when she kisses the front of your chassis you won’t be able to control yourself.
You’ll begin rocking back and forth wildly, even more violently than you usually do. Your rider will shriek with glee as she thrashes about on your head, relishing the violence of her movement, the excitement of the ride. She’ll be so full of joy that her grip will slip slightly and she’ll go flying off of your chassis, over the padded mats that normally keep riders safe and straight into one of the exposed support beams that make the décor of the strip club so tasteful.
The force will crack her skull, shatter her spine and leave her laying there, a limp, dead vessel that once held the being you love. You’ll wish that you were born as something other than a sentient mechanical bull, so that you could weep at the loss of such a lovely creature. But you’ll know that you were not, that you cannot. And you’ll simply rock in place there, trying to figure out a way to hurt yourself so that you can feel something, anything, for just a moment, to distract you from the pain.
Congratulations Mechanical Bull!
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Congratulations Girl With Just the Right Number of Piercings!
Most people don’t have it as good as you. They’ve either got too few piercings (like most of us in the office) or too many piercings (like anyone who self-identifies as goth). But you, you’ve got exactly the right number of piercings in all the right places, and we just wanted to thank you for it.
You’ll probably read this sitting at a coffee shop, sipping on a chai tea that you made yourself. You’ll probably read it while you’re on break. We hope you smile, making that lip ring stand out even more than usual against the outline of your mouth.
Then we hope you get back to making coffee, because as much as we want to celebrate you for looking so adorable and having just the right amount of metal in your body we kind of hate the way that Monika makes our lattes, and we’d really prefer if you did it.
Congratulations Girl With Just the Right Number of Piercings!
You’ll probably read this sitting at a coffee shop, sipping on a chai tea that you made yourself. You’ll probably read it while you’re on break. We hope you smile, making that lip ring stand out even more than usual against the outline of your mouth.
Then we hope you get back to making coffee, because as much as we want to celebrate you for looking so adorable and having just the right amount of metal in your body we kind of hate the way that Monika makes our lattes, and we’d really prefer if you did it.
Congratulations Girl With Just the Right Number of Piercings!
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Congratulations Mongoose Smuggler!
Everyone’s gotta live somewhere and everybody’s gotta make a living. And the southwest part of America with all those rocks and mountains and shit, it’s got a lot of snakes. So what better way to make a living than to come down there and bring in something to deal with those snakes than to bring in something to deal with all those snakes? Something safe and natural and kinda cute when you’re not up too close to it? You figured there couldn’t never be a downside to bringing in mongooses and letting people buy them from you. They’d get to protect their property and get a cute animal to keep them company, you’d get to keep the lights and the heat on. Nobody gettin’ hurt, nobody losin’ nothin’ in the trade.
If only the government saw it that way. The Feds have been bird dogging you a while now, and while you’re pretty savvy you’re also proud. So whenever they make an obvious challenge, like when they have a special mongoose exhibit at a museum in Tuscon or something, you always show up to rub the Feds noses in the fact that they can’t catch you.
But as it turns out the Feds aren’t the biggest problem. Mexican cartel runners love snakes for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to us at this point, and they haven’t been happy with your campaign to eliminate snakes from their ancestral snaking grounds. So yesterday they captured your boyfriend (you’re gay by the way) and today you’re going to get him back and in order to do so you’re going to have to get the assistance of those Federales that have been trying to take you down for a good long while.
“This is bigger than me,” you’ll tell them, which is true because you’ll be assisting them in taking down a Mexican drug cartel and all you do is smuggle mongooses into a place where they aren’t native, but don’t really have a significant impact on the ecosystem.
“I know,” the Fed who took over for the Fed you used to sleep with will tell you. He’ll be a lot more professional than that other guy, a fact illustrated by the way he totally ignores your technically illegal but mostly just moronic activities.
“Good,” you’ll nod back at him. Then the two of you will formulate an elaborate strategy to rescue your beau involving mongooses, which the Fed will pretend to agree to in order to get you to go along with his real plan: using your fake plan as a distraction and then killing all of the cartel members with snipers and hoping you and your boyfriend don’t die in the confusion. If the two of you die, they’ll have to do a lot more paperwork, and this guy hates doing paperwork. Either way, you’re proving your love for someone and doing some good in the world today, and it’s been a while since you did either of those things.
Congratulations Mongoose Smuggler!
If only the government saw it that way. The Feds have been bird dogging you a while now, and while you’re pretty savvy you’re also proud. So whenever they make an obvious challenge, like when they have a special mongoose exhibit at a museum in Tuscon or something, you always show up to rub the Feds noses in the fact that they can’t catch you.
But as it turns out the Feds aren’t the biggest problem. Mexican cartel runners love snakes for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to us at this point, and they haven’t been happy with your campaign to eliminate snakes from their ancestral snaking grounds. So yesterday they captured your boyfriend (you’re gay by the way) and today you’re going to get him back and in order to do so you’re going to have to get the assistance of those Federales that have been trying to take you down for a good long while.
“This is bigger than me,” you’ll tell them, which is true because you’ll be assisting them in taking down a Mexican drug cartel and all you do is smuggle mongooses into a place where they aren’t native, but don’t really have a significant impact on the ecosystem.
“I know,” the Fed who took over for the Fed you used to sleep with will tell you. He’ll be a lot more professional than that other guy, a fact illustrated by the way he totally ignores your technically illegal but mostly just moronic activities.
“Good,” you’ll nod back at him. Then the two of you will formulate an elaborate strategy to rescue your beau involving mongooses, which the Fed will pretend to agree to in order to get you to go along with his real plan: using your fake plan as a distraction and then killing all of the cartel members with snipers and hoping you and your boyfriend don’t die in the confusion. If the two of you die, they’ll have to do a lot more paperwork, and this guy hates doing paperwork. Either way, you’re proving your love for someone and doing some good in the world today, and it’s been a while since you did either of those things.
Congratulations Mongoose Smuggler!
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Congratulations Philanderer!
There’s no denying it: you love the shit out of the ladies. You love all their lady parts: their boobies, their va-jay-jays, their bumbums. You even love their pee holes, which, as you are always quick to point out, are separate from their va-jay-jays. But not everyone knows it.
So today, after totaling making it with the boss lady that you sometimes put your peener in (your Aunt Carla, but she’s like a family friend aunt, not a blood relative, so it’s cool) you’re going to go out into the quad of the college campus where you live and, on a megaphone, announce how much you love the ladies to the world.
“I LOVE THEIR SKIN!” your voice will boom. “IT’S REALLY SMOOTH, EVEN WITHOUT MAKEUP USUALLY. LIKE SMOOTHER THAN A GUY’S, EVEN WHEN THE GIRL HAS PIMPLES.”
People will be passing you by for the most part, but as you go on they’ll clump together, stop, and listen.
“I LIKE HOW THEY SMELL,” you’ll declare. “EVEN WHEN THEY SMELL KIND OF BAD IT’S STILL SORT OF NICE!”
At this point young women will start smiling at you. They’ll start checking twitter on their i-phones to see if they can follow you and a select few will begin rubbing their crotches sensually as they listen. But it won’t all be roses. Their boyfriends will, to a man, begin cracking their knuckles and looking at you like they want to beat you up.
“THEIR LIPS ARE REALLY SOFT!” you’ll whisper into the megaphone, an awkward half boner surging into your pants. “I KIND OF WANT TO KISS EVERY GIRL AT LEAST ONCE TO MAKE SURE THAT ONE’S TRUE FOR EVERYONE, SINCE I CAN’T ALWAYS TELL BY LOOKING.”
At this point the women will lose all composure and mob you, grabbing your limbs and tearing your clothes off. The women, and by this we mean the entire college campus surrounding you, will then take turns having sex with you while their boyfriends look on, upset and perplexed. Each girl will make sure that, while you’re inside of her, she takes the time to kiss you and whisper her name in your ear softly, so that only you can hear it. Some of the girls will whisper their True Names, the names you can use to capture their souls in gemstones.
Their boyfriends will all consider beating you up, but they’ll fear a mass collective reprisal from their ladies, so they’ll decide that that probably isn’t the best idea. After all, they can’t all be dumped by their girlfriends for you, and if they freak out all jealous-like they’ll almost certainly be dumped at least a little.
When the orgy ends you’ll squeak “Thank you,” into the megaphone, let it ring out in the courtyard and the ladies will tweet about how much fun they had. You’ll lay there on your back a good long while, thinking about what just happened, about the walk back to your dorm room and just what you’re going to tell Aunt Carla about what you did today.
Congratulations Philanderer!
So today, after totaling making it with the boss lady that you sometimes put your peener in (your Aunt Carla, but she’s like a family friend aunt, not a blood relative, so it’s cool) you’re going to go out into the quad of the college campus where you live and, on a megaphone, announce how much you love the ladies to the world.
“I LOVE THEIR SKIN!” your voice will boom. “IT’S REALLY SMOOTH, EVEN WITHOUT MAKEUP USUALLY. LIKE SMOOTHER THAN A GUY’S, EVEN WHEN THE GIRL HAS PIMPLES.”
People will be passing you by for the most part, but as you go on they’ll clump together, stop, and listen.
“I LIKE HOW THEY SMELL,” you’ll declare. “EVEN WHEN THEY SMELL KIND OF BAD IT’S STILL SORT OF NICE!”
At this point young women will start smiling at you. They’ll start checking twitter on their i-phones to see if they can follow you and a select few will begin rubbing their crotches sensually as they listen. But it won’t all be roses. Their boyfriends will, to a man, begin cracking their knuckles and looking at you like they want to beat you up.
“THEIR LIPS ARE REALLY SOFT!” you’ll whisper into the megaphone, an awkward half boner surging into your pants. “I KIND OF WANT TO KISS EVERY GIRL AT LEAST ONCE TO MAKE SURE THAT ONE’S TRUE FOR EVERYONE, SINCE I CAN’T ALWAYS TELL BY LOOKING.”
At this point the women will lose all composure and mob you, grabbing your limbs and tearing your clothes off. The women, and by this we mean the entire college campus surrounding you, will then take turns having sex with you while their boyfriends look on, upset and perplexed. Each girl will make sure that, while you’re inside of her, she takes the time to kiss you and whisper her name in your ear softly, so that only you can hear it. Some of the girls will whisper their True Names, the names you can use to capture their souls in gemstones.
Their boyfriends will all consider beating you up, but they’ll fear a mass collective reprisal from their ladies, so they’ll decide that that probably isn’t the best idea. After all, they can’t all be dumped by their girlfriends for you, and if they freak out all jealous-like they’ll almost certainly be dumped at least a little.
When the orgy ends you’ll squeak “Thank you,” into the megaphone, let it ring out in the courtyard and the ladies will tweet about how much fun they had. You’ll lay there on your back a good long while, thinking about what just happened, about the walk back to your dorm room and just what you’re going to tell Aunt Carla about what you did today.
Congratulations Philanderer!
Monday, December 5, 2011
Congratulations on Finding Your Man All Over Again!
Worried about your marriage? Confused about how to bring the spark back into it after all these years? Here’s an idea: hire a skinhead to beat you with a pool cue until the memory center of your brain is so damaged that you lose the last decade and a half of your memory and believe that you’re still a junior in college.
When you wake up from your coma you’ll be in a hospital bed, alone and disoriented. Before the doctor has a chance to inform you of just what has happened you’ll leap out of the bed, ripping off your heart monitor in the process and triggering an alarm. Then you’ll throw your arms up in the air and scream “SPRING BREAK!” at the top of your lungs, the way you always used to when you were in college (you were kind of an idiot) and run out of the room, gown flapping around you. You’ll run as hard and fast as you can, which will leave you totally winded by the time you reach the end of the hallway.
You’ll pause in the waiting room, hands on your knees, bent over, flashing your ass to an entire hospital. You’ll want to vomit a little on the floor, head spinning, but you’ll just heave for a few seconds there, jaws aching, throat opening and closing in vain. Then you’ll look up and take in the room around you, the bevy of people staring at you.
One of them will catch your eye: an older gentleman in a suit and tie, nice shoes, jacket off, looking nervous, kind of desperate. He’ll make you think of a sexy professor, sort of. He’ll be your husband, but you won’t know that (remember, you’ll have mentally regressed to being a junior in college). You’ll just know you want him inside you. You’ll walk up to him and run your tongue along your lips, which will be super super dry.
“Hey there,” you’ll say, brushing up against him so that your vagina kind of touches the top of his leg. “Waiting for someone?”
He’ll look at you like you’re crazy, then nod. You’ll flutter your eyes at him and place your hand on the side of his face.
“Is it me?” you’ll ask. He’ll nod emphatically this time and you’ll smile and pat the side of his face before dragging him off to a supply closet, where you’ll have sex with him while the doctor and orderlies search for you. Later on, after you’ve emerged and the doctors explain your condition to him he’ll feel awful, like he just took advantage of a young woman and cheated on you at the same time. But then, later on, the two of you will learn to incorporate role play into your sex and this will become a huge trigger for the both of you, so don’t stress over it!
Congratulations on Finding Your Man All Over Again!
When you wake up from your coma you’ll be in a hospital bed, alone and disoriented. Before the doctor has a chance to inform you of just what has happened you’ll leap out of the bed, ripping off your heart monitor in the process and triggering an alarm. Then you’ll throw your arms up in the air and scream “SPRING BREAK!” at the top of your lungs, the way you always used to when you were in college (you were kind of an idiot) and run out of the room, gown flapping around you. You’ll run as hard and fast as you can, which will leave you totally winded by the time you reach the end of the hallway.
You’ll pause in the waiting room, hands on your knees, bent over, flashing your ass to an entire hospital. You’ll want to vomit a little on the floor, head spinning, but you’ll just heave for a few seconds there, jaws aching, throat opening and closing in vain. Then you’ll look up and take in the room around you, the bevy of people staring at you.
One of them will catch your eye: an older gentleman in a suit and tie, nice shoes, jacket off, looking nervous, kind of desperate. He’ll make you think of a sexy professor, sort of. He’ll be your husband, but you won’t know that (remember, you’ll have mentally regressed to being a junior in college). You’ll just know you want him inside you. You’ll walk up to him and run your tongue along your lips, which will be super super dry.
“Hey there,” you’ll say, brushing up against him so that your vagina kind of touches the top of his leg. “Waiting for someone?”
He’ll look at you like you’re crazy, then nod. You’ll flutter your eyes at him and place your hand on the side of his face.
“Is it me?” you’ll ask. He’ll nod emphatically this time and you’ll smile and pat the side of his face before dragging him off to a supply closet, where you’ll have sex with him while the doctor and orderlies search for you. Later on, after you’ve emerged and the doctors explain your condition to him he’ll feel awful, like he just took advantage of a young woman and cheated on you at the same time. But then, later on, the two of you will learn to incorporate role play into your sex and this will become a huge trigger for the both of you, so don’t stress over it!
Congratulations on Finding Your Man All Over Again!
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Still Not Done With Skyrim!
I still don’t know how close I am to finishing Skyrim, and I’m now 80 hours into it. I’ve barely scratched the surface of the central quest line at this point, and I’ve really only tackled a handful of major quest lines. I’ve purchased houses in two cities and finished two sets of guild quests. I’ve uncovered a conspiracy at the heart of a city and liberated a war criminal. I’ve been trying to cure my lycanthropy, but it doesn’t seem to be going too well for me right now. And I’ve been looking for a Necklace of Mara to give to a Aela so that she’ll settle down with me and we can start making some half-scaly, half-regular babies, but to no avail.
This is kind of the heart of Skyrim, of Elder Scrolls games in general: distraction, rather than guidance, is the order of the day. And that’s actually kind of great. Since Daggerfall the games have been less about what you’re supposed to do and more about the staggering array of options available to you in the world on offer. For the most part the series has just improved the fidelity and accessibility of the material as time has gone on, rather than really expanding it overmuch. There aren’t a lot of options that haven’t been around for many, many games at this point: the ability to acquire property, the ability to improve your own equipment, being able to marry characters, become a member of a guild and so on, you’ve been able to do most of these things since Daggerfall, at least. In fact, sometimes features are lost in a new Elder Scrolls offering and the world of possibilities shrinks a little. Oblivion and Morrowwind, for example, didn’t let you form relationships with NPCs. In fact, I’m confident that Oblivion got rid of your ability to become a werewolf altogether, a crucial part of many storylines in previous iterations.
The skill based leveling, the way that magic functions and the way that you chose stat bonuses, these were qualities that Elder Scrolls titles before Skyrim had kept consistent but they weren’t the core of the game itself. They were its delivery system. The experiences themselves formed that core, the wealth of cool shit you could do in Tamriel was the real driving force behind each of the games. And while fidelity has always increased from game to game, the degree of cool shit has remained inelastic at best, at times shrinking as the game progresses. That is, until Skyrim.
Skyrim has some problems, to be sure. It features a simplified system of character development and combat, wherein difficult decisions really don’t have to be made: you really can be a jack of all trades, there’s no sort of upkeep or grind for your equipment and the major and minor skill system which previously controlled leveling and the speed at which skills increased is gone, lost in favor of a set of stones that allow you to pick and choose which skill set you want to raise faster at any given time. In doing so, Skyrim has abandoned a number of things that would’ve been considered key Elder Scrolls features in the past, but it has also accomplished something wonderful. It cut through a lot of the bullshit of playing the game and made experiencing the world that much more approachable. And this more approachable corner of Tamriel is jam packed with cool shit that you couldn’t do in previous Elder Scrolls adventures. If you want to dual wield, you can. For the first time ever you can have companions at your side. You can make your hand into a fucking flamethrower, for fuck’s sake. And you can fight dragons, use your voice as a weapon and fight in a revolution that reshapes the entire game world.
I understand why die-hard fans might not like the mechanical changes: they’re a big step away from what was a previously consistent element of a venerable series. They dumb down a system which people would ply painstaking mathematic formulas to in order to develop the best character, a system people really loved. But much as I loved it, I have to admit I sometimes found that system of character progression to be kind of oppressive. In order to make the character I wanted to play I had to invest a lot of time and effort in gaming that progression system, effort that I’ve put into exporing the world in Skyrim.
Which brings me back to the scale of the game, the scope of its distraction. Skyrim is full of details, so full of them that I’m not sure I’ll be able to actually ever experience everything the game has on offer. And many of its details are things I don’t want to engage on my first playthrough, like picking a side between Imperials and Stormcloaks. Skyrim is full of places, more so than anywhere else I’ve been in a video game, ever, spare possibly Morrowwind. I don’t just mean that it’s big, though the world is quite large. I mean that the world has a lot going on in it, that it is densely populated and interesting in a way that other places normally aren’t. Each tiny hamlet, each ramshackle camp, is possessed of a story all its own, not just a single quest line but a history, a branch of quests that twine into the surrounding world and sometimes make their way back to distant places, places you’ve already been with histories you’ve already been a part of.
The end result is a flowing, shifting world where your actions, which are as robust as they’ve ever been in any Elder Scroll’s game, more than most of the recent releases, have meaningful impact, where you can make a name for yourself and change the world around you. Sure, there are technical problems (the giant-death bug where you’re launched into the skybox remains one of my personal favorites) but in any game with the sheer scope that Skyrim has, you have to accept a modicum of bugginess. When physics act a bit odd, there’s nothing wrong with it. However, when the scripting language bugs out the immersion breaks a bit. I’ve had to use console commands to complete a major quest which has a history of breaking early on (the Thieves Guild quest line, specifically) and a character who dramatically sacrifices himself in battle is now sitting in the Companion Hall again, ready to give me quests as often as he feels like it. The fact that things like this happen is a problem, bigger than a handful of bugs that make the game a little wackier than intended.
But with all that said, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a wonderful place to take a very, very lazy vacation, and I still think that, for allowing you to become a part of a world, to relax there and build it up or break it down as you wish to, there’s no better game at present. I can’t wait to finish enough of it that I’m comfortable writing a fuller and more formal review of it.
This is kind of the heart of Skyrim, of Elder Scrolls games in general: distraction, rather than guidance, is the order of the day. And that’s actually kind of great. Since Daggerfall the games have been less about what you’re supposed to do and more about the staggering array of options available to you in the world on offer. For the most part the series has just improved the fidelity and accessibility of the material as time has gone on, rather than really expanding it overmuch. There aren’t a lot of options that haven’t been around for many, many games at this point: the ability to acquire property, the ability to improve your own equipment, being able to marry characters, become a member of a guild and so on, you’ve been able to do most of these things since Daggerfall, at least. In fact, sometimes features are lost in a new Elder Scrolls offering and the world of possibilities shrinks a little. Oblivion and Morrowwind, for example, didn’t let you form relationships with NPCs. In fact, I’m confident that Oblivion got rid of your ability to become a werewolf altogether, a crucial part of many storylines in previous iterations.
The skill based leveling, the way that magic functions and the way that you chose stat bonuses, these were qualities that Elder Scrolls titles before Skyrim had kept consistent but they weren’t the core of the game itself. They were its delivery system. The experiences themselves formed that core, the wealth of cool shit you could do in Tamriel was the real driving force behind each of the games. And while fidelity has always increased from game to game, the degree of cool shit has remained inelastic at best, at times shrinking as the game progresses. That is, until Skyrim.
Skyrim has some problems, to be sure. It features a simplified system of character development and combat, wherein difficult decisions really don’t have to be made: you really can be a jack of all trades, there’s no sort of upkeep or grind for your equipment and the major and minor skill system which previously controlled leveling and the speed at which skills increased is gone, lost in favor of a set of stones that allow you to pick and choose which skill set you want to raise faster at any given time. In doing so, Skyrim has abandoned a number of things that would’ve been considered key Elder Scrolls features in the past, but it has also accomplished something wonderful. It cut through a lot of the bullshit of playing the game and made experiencing the world that much more approachable. And this more approachable corner of Tamriel is jam packed with cool shit that you couldn’t do in previous Elder Scrolls adventures. If you want to dual wield, you can. For the first time ever you can have companions at your side. You can make your hand into a fucking flamethrower, for fuck’s sake. And you can fight dragons, use your voice as a weapon and fight in a revolution that reshapes the entire game world.
I understand why die-hard fans might not like the mechanical changes: they’re a big step away from what was a previously consistent element of a venerable series. They dumb down a system which people would ply painstaking mathematic formulas to in order to develop the best character, a system people really loved. But much as I loved it, I have to admit I sometimes found that system of character progression to be kind of oppressive. In order to make the character I wanted to play I had to invest a lot of time and effort in gaming that progression system, effort that I’ve put into exporing the world in Skyrim.
Which brings me back to the scale of the game, the scope of its distraction. Skyrim is full of details, so full of them that I’m not sure I’ll be able to actually ever experience everything the game has on offer. And many of its details are things I don’t want to engage on my first playthrough, like picking a side between Imperials and Stormcloaks. Skyrim is full of places, more so than anywhere else I’ve been in a video game, ever, spare possibly Morrowwind. I don’t just mean that it’s big, though the world is quite large. I mean that the world has a lot going on in it, that it is densely populated and interesting in a way that other places normally aren’t. Each tiny hamlet, each ramshackle camp, is possessed of a story all its own, not just a single quest line but a history, a branch of quests that twine into the surrounding world and sometimes make their way back to distant places, places you’ve already been with histories you’ve already been a part of.
The end result is a flowing, shifting world where your actions, which are as robust as they’ve ever been in any Elder Scroll’s game, more than most of the recent releases, have meaningful impact, where you can make a name for yourself and change the world around you. Sure, there are technical problems (the giant-death bug where you’re launched into the skybox remains one of my personal favorites) but in any game with the sheer scope that Skyrim has, you have to accept a modicum of bugginess. When physics act a bit odd, there’s nothing wrong with it. However, when the scripting language bugs out the immersion breaks a bit. I’ve had to use console commands to complete a major quest which has a history of breaking early on (the Thieves Guild quest line, specifically) and a character who dramatically sacrifices himself in battle is now sitting in the Companion Hall again, ready to give me quests as often as he feels like it. The fact that things like this happen is a problem, bigger than a handful of bugs that make the game a little wackier than intended.
But with all that said, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a wonderful place to take a very, very lazy vacation, and I still think that, for allowing you to become a part of a world, to relax there and build it up or break it down as you wish to, there’s no better game at present. I can’t wait to finish enough of it that I’m comfortable writing a fuller and more formal review of it.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Congratulations Hilarious Executive!
You’re an executive and you’re hilarious.
“Stock prices are down,” you’ll say, before letting a snake out of a can of corn nuts.
The board room will go crazy, doubling over with laughter.
“Thank you,” you’ll tell them. Then you’ll shoot yourself in the temple to escape the shame of running a failing company.
They’ll all continue laughing until you’ve been dead for almost a full minute. Then one of them will stumble up to you and shake you. Then he’ll realize what’s happened and laugh even harder.
“Always was such a great joker,” he’ll say as he picks the gun up out of your hand, cleans it off and shoots himself in the temple to make it look like murder suicide instead of just murder.
The rest of the board room will follow suit in order of seniority until only one person, a junior executive in the company, remains laughing hysterically at what has transpired.
Congratulations Hilarious Executive!
“Stock prices are down,” you’ll say, before letting a snake out of a can of corn nuts.
The board room will go crazy, doubling over with laughter.
“Thank you,” you’ll tell them. Then you’ll shoot yourself in the temple to escape the shame of running a failing company.
They’ll all continue laughing until you’ve been dead for almost a full minute. Then one of them will stumble up to you and shake you. Then he’ll realize what’s happened and laugh even harder.
“Always was such a great joker,” he’ll say as he picks the gun up out of your hand, cleans it off and shoots himself in the temple to make it look like murder suicide instead of just murder.
The rest of the board room will follow suit in order of seniority until only one person, a junior executive in the company, remains laughing hysterically at what has transpired.
Congratulations Hilarious Executive!
Friday, December 2, 2011
Congratulations Asteroid Kid!
“This is a terrible idea,” your commander’s voice will crackle at you through the headset.
“You are!” you’ll shout back, even though your microphone will be turned off at this point.
You’ll flash back to all of those moments during your training where you thought about giving up, where you didn’t think you’d make it here. Then you’ll remember where you are: with a lasso tied to the surface of an asteroid, your feet planted on it, swinging a cowboy hat around as it begins re-entry. Everything you’ve done has all been to this end.
“Yee-haw!” you’ll shout as it starts getting warmer around you from the friction of entering the atmosphere.
“Shit!” you’ll shout as your suit begins to melt away.
You’ll die horribly a few seconds later, every ounce of your body burned away, but in the future you’ll be held up as a legend to other astronauts, an example of the dangers of chasing your dreams, but a handful of less-bright students will hold you up as a legend, as someone who never took no for an answer and never stopped dreaming. They’ll think you’re still out there somewhere, riding another asteroid, but the reality will be that you aren’t, of course, that you’re dead and that your body was burned so horribly that it’ll never appear again, which is just as good as being immortal if you think about it.
Congratulations Asteroid Kid!
“You are!” you’ll shout back, even though your microphone will be turned off at this point.
You’ll flash back to all of those moments during your training where you thought about giving up, where you didn’t think you’d make it here. Then you’ll remember where you are: with a lasso tied to the surface of an asteroid, your feet planted on it, swinging a cowboy hat around as it begins re-entry. Everything you’ve done has all been to this end.
“Yee-haw!” you’ll shout as it starts getting warmer around you from the friction of entering the atmosphere.
“Shit!” you’ll shout as your suit begins to melt away.
You’ll die horribly a few seconds later, every ounce of your body burned away, but in the future you’ll be held up as a legend to other astronauts, an example of the dangers of chasing your dreams, but a handful of less-bright students will hold you up as a legend, as someone who never took no for an answer and never stopped dreaming. They’ll think you’re still out there somewhere, riding another asteroid, but the reality will be that you aren’t, of course, that you’re dead and that your body was burned so horribly that it’ll never appear again, which is just as good as being immortal if you think about it.
Congratulations Asteroid Kid!
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Congratulations Fashion Icon!
Fashion draws from many strange places. The movie Zoolander, for example, posited a fake fashion movement called Derelicte based on the way homeless people dressed. This was based on a real fashion line generated by a very rich crazy person who lives in New York.
We say this because you’re a homeless person, and because the rags you clothe yourself in are, today and just today, going to suddenly become very, very gauche. It’ll all start when a man with a fake mole and a top hat on takes your picture outside of a very popular fashion show, mistaking you, in your incredible slimness, for a model.
“Oh my gawd!” he’ll shriek as he photographs you. “So raw!”
Twenty minutes later a group of fashionistas in a white, unmarked van will pull up outside the corner where you live and storm out, grabbing a hold of you and drag you back inside their van. They’ll cover you in cocaine, light a cigarette, ram it into your mouth and then start shouting at you.
You won’t be able to discern most of what they say, it’ll overlap so severely, but you’ll catch a few phrases that inform you that “you’re a model now.” You’ll nod dumbly at this declaration, as if it should be obvious by now.
You’ll be pushed from the van as it speeds by the fashion show, hitting the ground and rolling a few times before you come to a stop by the curb. A group of women dressed in black will stumble over and grab you like they’ve done this many a time before, dragging you through the doors of the fashion show and backstage, where they’ll look you over briefly, shake their heads and push you out on stage.
Once you’re up there you’ll look around in a dazed fashion, then stumble down the catwalk, unsure of exactly what you’re doing or where you are. When you reach the end the crowd will cheer as you shuffle around so that you’re walking back towards the backstage area. The crowd will surge as you return backstage, making you feel like you’d eaten (though you won’t have eaten in several days).
When you settle in behind the scenes in a nice quiet place a man will shove a contract in front of you and tell you to sign it.
“You’ll get money and a place to live,” he’ll mumble at you.
“Hot dog…” you’ll moan before illegibly signing and beginning your meteoric rise in the fashion world as the rawest of all models.
You’ll be dead within two months of a cocaine overdose, but it’s going to be one hell of a ride!
Congratulations Fashion Icon!
We say this because you’re a homeless person, and because the rags you clothe yourself in are, today and just today, going to suddenly become very, very gauche. It’ll all start when a man with a fake mole and a top hat on takes your picture outside of a very popular fashion show, mistaking you, in your incredible slimness, for a model.
“Oh my gawd!” he’ll shriek as he photographs you. “So raw!”
Twenty minutes later a group of fashionistas in a white, unmarked van will pull up outside the corner where you live and storm out, grabbing a hold of you and drag you back inside their van. They’ll cover you in cocaine, light a cigarette, ram it into your mouth and then start shouting at you.
You won’t be able to discern most of what they say, it’ll overlap so severely, but you’ll catch a few phrases that inform you that “you’re a model now.” You’ll nod dumbly at this declaration, as if it should be obvious by now.
You’ll be pushed from the van as it speeds by the fashion show, hitting the ground and rolling a few times before you come to a stop by the curb. A group of women dressed in black will stumble over and grab you like they’ve done this many a time before, dragging you through the doors of the fashion show and backstage, where they’ll look you over briefly, shake their heads and push you out on stage.
Once you’re up there you’ll look around in a dazed fashion, then stumble down the catwalk, unsure of exactly what you’re doing or where you are. When you reach the end the crowd will cheer as you shuffle around so that you’re walking back towards the backstage area. The crowd will surge as you return backstage, making you feel like you’d eaten (though you won’t have eaten in several days).
When you settle in behind the scenes in a nice quiet place a man will shove a contract in front of you and tell you to sign it.
“You’ll get money and a place to live,” he’ll mumble at you.
“Hot dog…” you’ll moan before illegibly signing and beginning your meteoric rise in the fashion world as the rawest of all models.
You’ll be dead within two months of a cocaine overdose, but it’s going to be one hell of a ride!
Congratulations Fashion Icon!
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Congratulations Wolverine Tamer!
You’ll be struggling to pick up your glass with your stumps when she comes up behind you and lifts it for you, bringing it to your lips. You’ll sip deeply from it and then nod at her as she brings it back down to the bar top for you.
“Thanks,” you’ll say.
She’ll wink at you and smile. “Looks like you’ve got a few stories,” she’ll say, pointing at your stumps. You’ll shrug and smirk.
“Wolverine tamer. Comes with the work.”
She’ll learn over the bar at you, cleavage glaring down at you. You’ll suddenly realize, just as you do every time you’re in this situation, that this is the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. Her tongue will dart out from behind her pearly whites and lick around her lips before eventually lolling back down into her drink. After she takes a swig, a long powerful one, she’ll exhale and speak.
“My daddy was a wolverine tamer,” she’ll murmur. “Always liked the kind.”
You’ll raise your stump to show that you want the check and then have the bartender sign your name for you. Then you’ll rush the little lady out of the bar and into the parking lot, where the two of you will enter the car you own that uses your eye movement to help you drive (you get into a lot of accidents). Then you’ll drive fast as you can back to your apartment, where she’ll strap in and ride on your giant, wolverine scratched cock for the rest of the night.
Sometimes it’s good to be a wolverine tamer who attracts emotionally damaged women. Sometimes.
Congratulations Wolverine Tamer!
“Thanks,” you’ll say.
She’ll wink at you and smile. “Looks like you’ve got a few stories,” she’ll say, pointing at your stumps. You’ll shrug and smirk.
“Wolverine tamer. Comes with the work.”
She’ll learn over the bar at you, cleavage glaring down at you. You’ll suddenly realize, just as you do every time you’re in this situation, that this is the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. Her tongue will dart out from behind her pearly whites and lick around her lips before eventually lolling back down into her drink. After she takes a swig, a long powerful one, she’ll exhale and speak.
“My daddy was a wolverine tamer,” she’ll murmur. “Always liked the kind.”
You’ll raise your stump to show that you want the check and then have the bartender sign your name for you. Then you’ll rush the little lady out of the bar and into the parking lot, where the two of you will enter the car you own that uses your eye movement to help you drive (you get into a lot of accidents). Then you’ll drive fast as you can back to your apartment, where she’ll strap in and ride on your giant, wolverine scratched cock for the rest of the night.
Sometimes it’s good to be a wolverine tamer who attracts emotionally damaged women. Sometimes.
Congratulations Wolverine Tamer!
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Congratulations African Queen!
Boats sometimes grow consciousnesses. Everyone knows it but not everyone likes to talk about it. That’s why we name boats, so they’ll have a sense of who they are when they come to life and, as a result, won’t murder everyone on board them with their fucking boat magic. But there’s a downside: sometimes people name boats wrong and those boats attain consciousness and they’re furious.
Today this is going to happen to you.
You’re a stately little steam powered river cruiser named The African Queen in reference to the boat from the classic film that you strongly resemble. But you have self-esteem issues (you think you look too heavy, even though everyone else thinks you look just right and they’re totally correct) and you don’t like being named after a boat, however venerable that you see as fat as well.
In retaliation to your owners, roughly twenty minutes after attaining sentience you’re going to lose your shit and totally make your boiler explode, beginning a cascade of explosions that will wreck the hull and kill most of the crew on board at the time. The survivors will flee into the river, where crocodiles will devour them.
All this just goes to show: self esteem issues hurt more than just the person who has them, it hurts everyone that relies on that person and, in the case of boats, can also prove damaging to the environment!
Congratulations African Queen!
Today this is going to happen to you.
You’re a stately little steam powered river cruiser named The African Queen in reference to the boat from the classic film that you strongly resemble. But you have self-esteem issues (you think you look too heavy, even though everyone else thinks you look just right and they’re totally correct) and you don’t like being named after a boat, however venerable that you see as fat as well.
In retaliation to your owners, roughly twenty minutes after attaining sentience you’re going to lose your shit and totally make your boiler explode, beginning a cascade of explosions that will wreck the hull and kill most of the crew on board at the time. The survivors will flee into the river, where crocodiles will devour them.
All this just goes to show: self esteem issues hurt more than just the person who has them, it hurts everyone that relies on that person and, in the case of boats, can also prove damaging to the environment!
Congratulations African Queen!
Monday, November 28, 2011
Congratulations on Burrowing Into Her Brain!
You know what? Chicks are great! That’s why we love getting laid so much, right bro? But everyone has to develop their own technique, because everyone’s got something different to work with. Hot people, for example, can just talk to someone briefly and not say anything interesting and they’ll get pussy like you wouldn’t believe. Nice, unattractive people can talk to people for a long time and maybe, if they prove themselves funny enough and if the person has finished having sex with enough vapid attractive people, they can get themselves some of that puss. Ugly people who aren’t nice have to pretend to be interesting, and so on and so forth.
But you’ve got a unique situation. You’re a brain parasite who falls in love with beautiful human women and you’re not ashamed of it. But the ladies don’t go for you. What’s a brain parasite to do?
We’ll tell you what. Today you’re gonna slip your way inside a lovely lady’s drink and wait for her to sip it down. Then you’ll use your parasite pincers to latch on to the roof of her mouth (you’re roughly the size of a shrimp, which is kind of huge for a brain parasite, but as we established earlier you’re extremely weird). Once you’re in place you’ll start secreting a powerful narcotic compound, which will distract her as you burrow into the roof of her mouth and into her brain.
Once you reach the base of her brain stem you’ll lash your weird little tendrils around it and start sending her nerve impulses that make her feel super horny and make her want to go home right away. She’ll slam her drink down and shout her goodbyes to her friends then drive home at unsafe speeds. Once she gets there you’ll send a chemical signal to her brain telling her that she should take a very long, very deep nap.
At this point she’ll pass out.
Once she’s unconscious you’ll crawl out of the hole you made in the roof of her mouth and down to her crotch, where you’ll fiddle with her belt for a few minutes before you get it off, unbutton her pants and crawl right up inside her vagina.
You’ll settle in there, feeling the texture of the walls of her pussy, the slippery, pleasant sensation of touching them. Then you’ll start masturbating furiously.
You’ll finish in a little under a minute. Then you’ll crawl out and leave her there unsatisfied, essentially date raped with a hole leading into her brain, making every man on earth look incredibly good by comparison.
Congratulations on Burrowing Into Her Brain!
But you’ve got a unique situation. You’re a brain parasite who falls in love with beautiful human women and you’re not ashamed of it. But the ladies don’t go for you. What’s a brain parasite to do?
We’ll tell you what. Today you’re gonna slip your way inside a lovely lady’s drink and wait for her to sip it down. Then you’ll use your parasite pincers to latch on to the roof of her mouth (you’re roughly the size of a shrimp, which is kind of huge for a brain parasite, but as we established earlier you’re extremely weird). Once you’re in place you’ll start secreting a powerful narcotic compound, which will distract her as you burrow into the roof of her mouth and into her brain.
Once you reach the base of her brain stem you’ll lash your weird little tendrils around it and start sending her nerve impulses that make her feel super horny and make her want to go home right away. She’ll slam her drink down and shout her goodbyes to her friends then drive home at unsafe speeds. Once she gets there you’ll send a chemical signal to her brain telling her that she should take a very long, very deep nap.
At this point she’ll pass out.
Once she’s unconscious you’ll crawl out of the hole you made in the roof of her mouth and down to her crotch, where you’ll fiddle with her belt for a few minutes before you get it off, unbutton her pants and crawl right up inside her vagina.
You’ll settle in there, feeling the texture of the walls of her pussy, the slippery, pleasant sensation of touching them. Then you’ll start masturbating furiously.
You’ll finish in a little under a minute. Then you’ll crawl out and leave her there unsatisfied, essentially date raped with a hole leading into her brain, making every man on earth look incredibly good by comparison.
Congratulations on Burrowing Into Her Brain!
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