Congratulations on Convincing That Gopher to Let You Go!

Fun fact: the character portrayed by Bill Murray in the film Caddyshack was actually based on a real live person, and that person is you. And your life didn’t end when the film did. You spent the last few decades working in various groundskeeping capacities, keeping it fresh and real in equal measure, and you’ve been quite good at your work. You’ve kept the greens of every place you’ve worked perfectly manicured, and decapitated, poisoned, burned and blown up hundreds of gophers along the way. It’s been a great ride, but there’s a downside.

Every time you move somewhere new a gopher or group of gophers tries to kill you. Most of the time it’s easy enough to deflect: gophers don’t have opposable thumbs and they’re not very bright. Most of them are only dimly aware that human beings aren’t all the same person. But given all the chemicals and shit in the world today sometimes a gopher of unusual size and intellect will emerge. Today, following your move to South Carolina where you hope to tend the most divine of greens, you’re going to meet one such gopher.

He’ll have appeared at your house last night with a baseball bat and some rope. He’ll have knocked you unconscious and dragged you away to his lair, where he’ll bind you and wait for you to wake up so that he can take his revenge on you.

You’ll awake about midway through today, while he’s out doing whatever giant gophers do, so you’ll have some time to take in your surroundings, test your bonds and think about escape. You’re a crafty and resourceful individual, but you won’t be able to think of a single way to escape with the materials you have on hand before the giant gopher returns, clutching some giant radishes that won’t stop glowing. He’ll notice you’re awake right away and put down his radishes, picking up a pair of shears in their place.

“GRAAAA!” he’ll scream at you, but you won’t be so easily cowed.

“Hey buddy,” you’ll drawl in your sweetly retarded voice. “Whaddya doin’?”

Your friendliness will make him pause (he isn’t very bright) and you’ll continue talking to him, trying to convince him that you just want to be his friend.

Over the course of an hour you’ll tell him all sorts of bullshit and he’ll fall for it completely. He’ll loosen your bonds and get ready to make some turnip stew for you, his new bestest buddy. At this point you’ll stab him in the base of the neck with the shears he was going to use to torture him and manipulate them until his head comes off. It’ll be messy and horribly, but when you’re done you’ll have a new giant gopher head to display on your front lawn as a warning to others.

Congratulations on Convincing That Gopher to Let You Go!

Congratulations on Rewriting the Gay Rulebook!

Every once in a while the gays sit down and re-write their rulebook. The best known rewrite happened in the mid-ninties when they decided to make condoms a necessary accessory for nearly all sex in response to the AIDS pandemic, but other lesser known rewrites include “bros before hos,” the conceit that a failure to make eye contact “cancels out the gay” and some pretty stringent rules on how much cuddling is too much.

But the gay rulebook has never been re-written by anyone, even big old homos, who are publically strongly opposed to open homosexuality as a lifestyle before. But today it’s going to happen. Today you, Senator Rick Santorum, are going to write a whole new page in the gay rulebook and, shocker, it’s going to cause some controversy.

In this page you’ll strongly encourage all gays, especially Leonid Tamerlin, your young, firm lover and poolboy, to “keep their traps shut about what goes on in the shed” under punishment of being beaten with a rubber hose while an obese man watches and laughs. You’ll also put in some Gay Union stuff about improvements to health benefits and financial support for gays who have been particularly hard hit by the recession.

That rider will trigger a fervent discussion over a set of provisions which would have otherwise been dismissed immediately – closeted gays like you, Senator Rick Santorum, normally don’t get to set policy. Your failure to openly participate in gay culture really makes it seem like you don’t have the best interests of the social group at heart, and a lot of the reforms you propose do seem quite heavily geared towards using heavy handed tactics to silence a handful of poolboys.

But the provisions that would improve the quality of life for hundreds, if not thousands, of underprivileged gays in the community will make most people pause. They’ll wonder if giving a little ground is worth it if they can make such a progressive movement towards supporting the least fortunate members of the gay community. Conservative elements of the social movement who would normally block such a provision’s passing will be supportive of it, thanks to its poolboy related provisions.

There will be ten hours of long, hard debate and a little bit of sex on the floor of the gay assembly hall surrounding these provisions, and by the end large portions will be stripped out, but two things will remain: gay universal healthcare and Leonid keeping his perfectly formed lips pressed together in a fashion that prevents any sound, however delightful, from escaping his pert little mouth. It will mark the first time that a closeted homosexual has ever made an effective change to the gay rulebook, a dark day in Leonid’s life and a tremendous gain for the gay community who, closeted and open alike, enjoy going to hospitals just as much as anyone else.

Congratulations on Rewriting the Gay Rulebook!

Super Nerd Sunday Presents: Modern Warfare 3 in Perspective!

So Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has a hilariously poor single player story that literally hits every note you don’t want to hit when you’re telling a story in a game. Arbitrary plot twists, nonsensical set pieces, poorly written dialogue delivered with self serious gravitas and nonsensical level design. Okay, whatever. People don’t buy Modern Warfare games for the story! They buy them because, since Call of Duty 2 in 2005, they’ve been the standard for competitive multiplayer play for first person shooters. So, with that in mind, how does Modern Warfare 3 stack up to its predecessors?

To put it briefly, quite well. The thumb for this game is decidedly pointing up, even from Modern Warfare 2. Everything about it is a little bit better than Modern Warfare 2, each retained element refined, each omitted mechanic wisely chosen. Modern Warfare 3 represents the latest refinement of the Call of Duty model, and, unlike the previous two installments, Call of Duty: Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2, it hits more often than it misses. In fact, more than that, it does so in a fashion that showcases both the focus of Modern Warfare as a multiplayer series and the problems at emerge from this focus.

In the past it’s relatively clear that balance was the central concern for Infinity Ward in their multiplayer. The first Modern Warfare game exemplifies this marvelously. Every gun has a unique personality, a unique set of pros and cons, and fits into the tapestry of the game quite well. There are no useless weapons, nor are there any weapons which eventually become obsolete. You could be successful in a match using only the starting weapons (in fact, quite a number of people would use the M-16 ad-infini and do embarrassingly well) given the right style of play and sharp enough reflexes. Even the most similar weapons cut different profiles and showcased different efficiencies. Weapons demanded different skill levels, different approaches, benefitted different styles of play, each in their own special way. The end result was a complicated game which could still be grasped and enjoyed by the most casual of players, while mastery remained reserved for the most dedicated few.

But the focus has noticeably drifted over the course of the last few titles. In fact, you might even contend that this trend began with World At War: the trend away from balance and towards refining the metagame, the feedback loop that drives sustained play in Call of Duty games. In Modern Warfare this loop was initially relatively isolated. You would rank up, earning a fancy badge, and you would unlock new weapons, perks and pieces of equipment along the way. Earning unlocks for each weapon was entirely reliant on kills you earned with said weapon, and earning new skins for the weapon revolved around getting headshots with it. Anyone could get that grenade launcher, but to unlock that red tiger camo? That was an act of love.

Modern Warfare 2 added on to this system tremendously. It replaced the simple “name tag and badge” badge system with a series of ever-evolving name tags and badges which were earned based on your ability to meet a set of isolated circumstances, varying from using a weapon a lot to jumping off a building to piloting a helicopter into a crane to killing someone with a dog. The lean, mean progression system suddenly acquired “pro” versions of each perk, which would unlock when said perk was used to accomplish its required goal. It also acquired additional killstreak rewards, unlocked through sustained play.

There were three killstreak rewards in the original Modern Warfare. Three rewards, set in stone. Modern Warfare 2 boosted that number to eleven.

Even so, many of those rewards were duplicates. I’m not entirely sure how an attack helicopter and an attack AC-130 were really that different. And while the concept of a Stealth Bomber was cool, it wasn’t functionally that different from a regular bomber. Nor was a normal helicopter sufficiently different from a Pavelow to really warrant the addition of a whole new accomplishment. Some of these new killstreak rewards were pretty cool, don’t get me wrong: care packages were a great concept, and changing the number and the mechanics of targetable explosives that you could use after a set number of kills was a brilliant way to tie some of the most enjoyable moments of the single player game into Modern Warfare’s superb multiplayer model.

But this killstreak creep had a lot of problems. The duplicates, for example, were a bit impractical from a design and balance perspective. And then there’s the way that they were structured, with an overwhelming number of late game options, one of which effectively ended the game, but a parsimonious selection of low kill killstreak rewards. The end result was a system that simply gave players who were already winning, in a community dominated by hardcore players who were already hostile to new or novice players, a new selection of tools with which to punish their fellow players.

This was echoed in the way that weapon and skill unlocks functioned. Weapons were no longer carefully balanced. There was no longer an excellent interplay between assault rifle, machine gun, submachine gun, shotgun and sniper rifle. Instead there was a coiterie of exploitative playstyles that completely broke the game when employed, changing the game from a thoughtful shooter to a zombie-horror movie or an exercise in frustration. Death streaks were added in order to alleviate this problem, and they did to some extent. But again, redundancy abounded: the careful balancing that the first Modern Warfare had done so artfully, so invisibly, was totally absent, replaced with a mishmash of features intended to counteract each other which clearly hadn’t been given enough time in the oven.

Then there was the issue of hacks. Hacking abounded in Modern Warfare 2, and since it occurred entirely on the side of a single, isolated, randomly selected client it wasn’t something that anyone could do anything about. The end result: a broken game which could be easily exploited so that players could leap in the air randomly, receive a prestige rank with each and every kill or run the game in fast motion. And basic issues, like the famed javelin bug, pervaded multiplayer. It was a mess, a big, sloppy, expensive mess.

Modern Warfare 3 entered into this stained battlefield for my affections, and appropriately sits between the original Modern Warfare, with its elegant, pared down model, and Modern Warfare 2’s bounty of features and means by which to advance. Everything that Modern Warfare 2 added is still present, but you might not recognize it. It’s cleaner, meaner and leaner. It’s a smarter game through and through, and while you could be forgiven for not noticing right away, it’s pretty clear, as time progresses, that they’ve done a lot to reduce the number of redundant killstreaks, remove game breaking elements such as teleporting ninjas and long-range shotguns that could kill in one hit and reload indefinitely, and generally turn out a more polished product.

And the Death Streaks, simplified and refined as you might expect, have also been complimented by a new set of killstreak options, including the Support killstreak, which provides unique rewards to players based not on their killcount for a given life, but rather their kills over the entire game with said class. It’s a fantastic way to allow players who don’t fit into the hardcore model of Modern Warfare to get into the game and feel like they’re contributing, and it doesn’t interrupt or override the existing killstreak model at all.

Even dedicated servers, the enemy of hacks and the cornerstone of online communities, have made their return, though the XBLA style matchmaking system remains the game’s default means of pairing you with other players. Still, the nod to the community is a nice touch, and it shows that Activision is a little worried about the Battlefield franchise stealing their bucks.

Really, the only issue I have is the total lack of weapon balance. It’s obvious that many of the clear balance issues from the previous game have simply been cut. But dual wielding submachine guns is suspiciously effective at all ranges, many of the assault rifles are replaced by weapons that are simply better versions of them and I’m almost positive that there’s a shotgun which is simply a slightly reskinned version of another shotgun in this game.

It’s unfortunate to see Infinity Ward broken up, but this is the price of doing business with Activision, it seems. And we, as consumers, will lack their acumen in fine tuning their products. Their work used to polish to a fine sheen, and it seems that this is no longer the case. Still, Raven and Sledgehammer have picked up the torch admirably. The progression system for both players in general and weapons has been fine tuned in a great way, and they’ve done a lot to make the game more customizable and friendly to new players. I’m enjoying it and playing it a lot, and while it lacks the raw polish of the first Modern Warfare, most games will. All things considered, it’s a step in the right direction and, for a studio’s first game, a fine multiplayer offering. Just steer clear of the campaign.

Next week: the story of me and my M-4.

Congratulations on Delivering!

Today you’re going to open your pizza box and, instead of delicious pizza, thousands of rats will emerge.

“OH SHIT, RATS!” you’ll scream, but the customer will seem unperturbed.

“Oh good,” he’ll mumble at you, licking his lips. “This is even more rats than I expected.”

Congratulations on Delivering!

Congratulations on Teaching Joe Rogan How to Love!

It’s well known that Joe Rogan, despite his rapidly advancing age, doesn’t know what love is. It’s not for lack of trying, he’s just been barking up bad trees, trees with legs that don’t quit that make sadness in his heart, constantly. And lately it’s been taking its toll on his work.

He’s been more of a dick in public and seems a lot less manly when he appears on re-runs of The Man Show and current episodes of Fear Factor (Joe Rogan exists simultaneously in all times, so however, he is now effects how he acts in all tapings, ever). So today you are going to enter the body of “romance therapist” and awkward person Doctor Drew Pinsky and, instead of giving the adequate, well intentioned, often totally wrong advice that Pinsky usually gives, you’re going to sit down with Joe Rogan and make balls-sloppy sex all over him.

You’ll start by caressing his butt. When Joe protests you’ll whisper in his ear “Don’t worry, I’m a doctor,” and that’ll shut him right up. Then you’ll put your hand on his before unbuttoning his pants and ramming your dick all up in that weird, smelly, tight, warm crevice we like to call “the magic button.”

You’ll be a little bit rough in there, and there’ll be a little tissue tearing after you thrust awkwardly a few times, so you’ll pull out right away and, to Rogan’s relief, slather some aloe-infused lubricant all over your dick and his gaping asshole. Then you’ll re-enter him and introduce Joe Rogan to a world of awkward, shameful delights over the course of the next sixteen minutes.

When you come inside him, he won’t protest or try to shrug you off. He’ll just let you hold him there for a few minutes, running your fingers over his nipples, letting your tongue linger inside his ear. As he sighs and relaxes in your arms he’ll feel, for the first time, complete.

Then you’ll phase out of Doctor Drew’s body and back into Tom Green’s body, where you’ll be miserable again. Doctor Drew will be confused and revolted by what he’s done and Joe Rogan will know, for the first time in his life, that he can feel complete if he just gives in to the moment as it occurs around him. He’ll also know he likes buttsex with people he trusts, something every human being could do to learn.

Congratulations on Teaching Joe Rogan How to Love!

Congratulations on Embodying a New Adage!

You’re a tortoise. That means that, usually, you’re just kind of generally unemployed, but today it also means that you’re going to become the centerpiece for a new adage. Because today you’re going to engage in a footrace with a speed freak.

“C’MON LET’S DO THIS!” he’ll shout at you as you saunter up to the starting line.

You’ll lick your lips lazily as he twitches uncontrollably, occasionally surging forward before trotting back to his starting position to make up for his false start.

When the race does finally begin the race-judge-man will fire his pistol into the air to signal its start and the speed-freak will drop the ground, clutching his chest. His heart will have exploded.

You’ll win the race on a technicality and go home to fuck your tortoise wife. Slowly.

Awwww yeaahhh.

Congratulations on Embodying a New Adage!

Congratulations on Getting Your Modern Art Installation Approved!

Modern art is a tough business to crack. Sometimes people do it through raw creative force or sheer willpower, but you know that those people are actually tremendous suckers. You’re going to blow all of them out of the water today because you know you’re a freak of nature and more than anything else, modern art patrons really just want to see freaks on display.

So today you’re going to propose to the gallery you spend a lot of time in in Chelsea that they give you an installation. It’s going to be, in your words, “All about the pain of being a man in modern society, the pain you project and the pain you receive, you know?” But really, it’s just going to be an exhibit where you hang a giant weight from your penis for several hours while you’re surrounded by a combination of pictures of your penis without a weight around it, really beaten up vaginas from around the world and botched circumcisions that organizations attempting to make people hate Jews like to pin up around the city.

The end result will be a work of “art” that showcases less a conceit of how the world functions or a piece of insight on how humanity as a whole exists and more pinpoints just how much genital punishment you can both take and how much genital mutilation you can tolerate in your life. It’ll fall just short of “Somalia” and well above “the amount that normal people can enjoy.”

In the weeks to come you’ll see reviews of your “showcase of pain” that uphold you as the Norman Rockwell of America’s disdain for sex – one critic will go so far as to call you “the Norman Wreckwell of dicks.” But you’ll know in your heart of hearts that this entire thing was accidental: that really all you wanted was rent money and attention and to have a bunch of strangers look at your penis with weights attached to a fishhook that has been skewered through it. Really, that’s all you ever wanted, though you’re rarely comfortable saying as much.

Congratulations on Getting Your Modern Art Installation Approved!

Congratulations on Being Convinced to Live By That Gargloye!

Today you’re going to be on the top of a building, looking down at the city below. You’ll be contemplating ending your life, and who could blame you.

It’s been a rough couple of months. First your food cart business “Shit on Your Sandwich,” where you’d put almost anything on a sandwich for anyone who showed up, failed for some completely inscrutable reason. Then your girlfriend left after you asked her if she “wanted a threesome” for her birthday (you figured she’d like a guy-guy experience since she often asked to watch double-penetration themed porn during sex) and your mom stopped taking your calls following your advice to “discuss dad’s cheating with him” after she complained for the umpteenth time about him dicking around behind her back (that one’s not your fault).

So today when you go up to the roof of your building to smoke you’re going to look over the side and wonder what the world might be like without you. And you’ll happen to do so while you’re next to the only psychic gargoyle in Brooklyn (most of them live in the Bronx). And as you ponder your life he’ll start to talk.

“Yyyyyyyoooooouuuuuu shhhhhhhoooooooulllllld dooooooo iiiiiiiit,” he’ll intone in a voice that reverberates through your body.

“What?!” you’ll shout back, astounded at the fact that a gargoyle is talking to you.

“Kiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllll yyyyyooooooourrrrrssssselllllffff,” he’ll mumble.

“How did you know?” you’ll ask, fascinated by him now, no longer fantasizing about the end of your own life.

“Goooooooodaaaaaaaaaamniiiiiit,” he’ll moan. “Iiiiiiit’ssssss oooooobviiiiiiousssssss.” The tone of his voice will shift downward, and you’ll realize almost immediately that he just wanted to see your body splattered on the street below – that would make his day a lot better. His telepathy will work both ways, and he’ll know that you’re actually kind of an okay dude, aside from the fact that you’re a bit of an idiot, and that the world is better with you in it.

“Thanks, I guess,” you’ll tell him, and then you’ll throw your cigarette into the street below and walk back inside.

He’ll call after you:

“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo…”

But you won’t pay it any heed. You’ll head back downstairs to call your mom and let her know you care on her voicemail, because it’s important that she knows she can always talk to you if she has to. Then you’ll consider the best way to get back in touch with your girlfriend, because you’re pretty sure she’ll get VD if she tries to move on from you.

Congratulations on Being Convinced to Live By That Gargoyle!

Congratulations on Offending Everyone at Ground Zero!

Everyone loves to laugh, and people love to reference 9-1-1. So when you show up at Ground Zero to perform your award aware-of one man show, “Forgetful Freddy’s Day About The Globe,” you won’t think that anything could possibly go wrong.

You’ll begin your show, as you always do: by donning a diaper made out of the American flag and pooping your pants.

“I FORGOT!” you’ll shout at the crowd assembled to pay their respects in a baby voice. You’ll frown when they respond not by laughing hysterically but by grimacing and looking away from you, mostly at their shoes.

You won’t be discouraged, though. You’ll know that if you want to make it big you’ll have to work past such petty disagreements. So you’ll load a t-shirt gun with a photo-copy of the Constitution wrapped around your own poop and shoot it into the crowd.

“I FORGOT!” you’ll shout at them again. This time you’ll get the attention of some police who, ill at ease at the best of times, will stare awkwardly at you, deciding whether or not they should act or just get a bagel. They’ll stand there, transfixed, as you prepare for the next part of your act.

This will involve taking off your shit-filled American flag diaper while the crowd, now even more horrified, stares at you. You’ll then carefully clean your rectum and genitals with an American flag towel before winking at the crowd and laughing.

“C’mon, guys,” you’ll say douchily. “Work with me here.”

You’ll shake your head and walk towards them, hefting the shit-filled diaper in one hand while you keep your towel closed with the other.

“Shouldn’t you be able to remind me of something here? Or did you all forget too?”

You’ll laugh at your own joke as you prepare to heft your diaper towards the site of Freedom Tower in an attempt to express your feelings about the influence of capitalism on American nationalism and the direction our country has been in, but none of the people assembled at Ground Zero will recognize the validity of your self-expression. Instead the biggest one of them, a giant of a man named Hank from Missouri, will burst forward from the crowd and tackle you, covering himself and you with the feces from your diaper.

“I guess not!” you’ll cackle at him as the police officers rush towards you, bagels in hand, trying to figure out what, exactly, they’ll have to arrest you for.

Congratulations on Offending Everyone at Ground Zero!

Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Star Wars: The Old Republic: After Chapter One!

I’ve spent almost a month playing Star Wars: The Old Republic now, and it’s been a fascinating journey. There have been ups and downs, new companions I love and new companions I hate but still want to love oh so very badly. The game has been unfolding in a way that previous MMOs have never really been able to, in a fashion that makes me regret each piece of content that I miss through careless action or misstep.

This is something that I never felt in WoW, where I skipped entire sections of the game that were just the wrong level for me and never gave a shit. In SWTOR, when I skip a portion of an area I feel like I’m missing out on the bigger story at work there, and even when I’m not a fan of those areas (and there are some planets that feel like a chore, I’ll be honest) I feel like I’ve lost something by leaving it before finishing everything.

Now, the gear and money I receive for this completionist attitude, previously the distinction that MMOs like WoW would use as an incentive, really isn’t that great when you come right down to it. SWTOR uses an upgrade system to actually make getting fresh drops a lot less significant than other MMOs, and I’ve found myself selecting which piece of equipment I want to wear based on appearance over stats because I know that I’ll be able to spend a handful of commendations to get some armor upgrades that will let me get the whole affair up to snuff. And the experience boost, by the time I’m done with all the quests on a given planet, is usually pretty minimal by the end of my time there. Quest rewards scale with level, and I’m usually well above the level range for a given world by the time I’m done there. So these conventional incentives for retaining my attention as a player aren’t at work – what is?

Well, if you remember the previous tirades I’ve issued about SWTOR you’ll likely be unsurprised, since the thing that’s keeping me around is also the thing I’ve been lionizing for the last few weeks: SWTOR’s heaping injection of story into each and every aspect of its content.

Some of the stories backing its missions are a bit meh – one of the earliest planets involved a tale of political intrigue that made fuck-all sense and put me right to sleep. But for the most part, the storylines that run through SWTOR make great worlds even better and sustain me through environments I’d be miserable in otherwise. A perfect example: I’m currently playing through Taris, the first world of “Chapter Two” of the SWTOR experience. While on Taris I’ve been enjoying the story more than almost anywhere else: I’ve been engaged in a rivalry with another Sith, who seems to fuck up everything she touches, I’ve been tracking down complicated and interesting enemies who are in equal turn crazy assholes and noble antagonists and I’ve had some great comedic beats while helping incredibly earnest Imperial agents spread zombie toxin throughout the planet’s water supply. And I’ve been doing all of this in a planet that is, frankly, uglier than any planet I’ve ever seen before.

The encounters themselves on Taris seem poorly designed – I’ll often find myself fighting wandering elite enemies along with dozens of trash mobs because of poor timing, and I’ll summarily die and spend a bundle of my hard earned cash repairing my gear, not because I made a bad decision but because a giant golden frilled lizard decided to wander up at that moment. I’ve been fighting re-skins of the same enemies again and again and, following an enjoyable stint where I was fighting and killing Republic troops and Jedi early on in the world, most of those enemies have been identical zombie-like creatures called rakghouls who can only be differentiated by their proper names (such as Greg) and slight variations in color between them.

But the class-story missions bring me back, showcasing the sort of epic war and the balance between nobility and honor and self-serving skullduggery that makes playing an Imperial character interesting. There are still stretches between these missions that I find pretty unenjoyable, stretches that focus on me churning through dozens of samey enemies until I’m standing atop a pile of their bodies next to a giant toxic pit. It feels (not incidentally) like one of the starting levels of Knights of the Old Republic, the first true Star Wars RPG, and it reminds me of why I hated playing through Taris then as well.

What’s really remarkable, then, is that I’m still hunting down all of the quests on Taris, unlocking each nugget of story, doing my all to avoid missing out on a portion of the game that I might enjoy. And even when I’m frustrated by the enemies I have to churn my way through or the map design of the area that I’m traversing, I still persevere because I actually want to know how this story sorts out. I’m interested in how the Sith Warrior storyline will progress into Chapter Two. Right now it doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as exciting as the search for Jaesa Willsaam, but I have faith that that will change, and even so the wholesale slaughter of the war-making body of the Republic offers some pretty promising stakes.

I have a feeling that the whole thing will pick up even more-so once I leave Taris. But even while I’m not a fan of my surroundings, I do enjoy savoring the plot and the pace as much as I can – even previous worlds that were frustrating, in retrospect, simply served to accent more enjoyable portions of the game. Frustrated as I might be by how ugly Taris is and how little I enjoy fighting its denizens I’m still hooked, and I’m all the more excited for the worlds to come. It’s tough to be a kid who grew up with Star Wars and not be excited at the prospect of fighting wampas on Hoth.

And therein lies the crux of SWTOR’s appeal. It’s not just that it allows you to be a part of the Star Wars universe: it’s that it allows you to experience the sort of epic story that fits so well into that universe. It’s all good and well to give people blasters and lightsabers and ask them to play. It’s an entirely different matter to guide people through an epic storyline that leans on these set pieces, warts and all, as well as Bioware does. And I can’t wait to see how it pans out, how the end-game will unveil and how my next playthrough will unwind as I do it all again.

Congratulations on Killing Your Potential Stepdads!

Your name is Telly, which is short for Telemachus. We’d like to claim that it’s just a crazy coincidence that your dad is a drifter and that your mom is named Penelope, but that’s not true. The fact is that you’re actually part of something bigger than yourself, and that tomorrow you’re going to have no choice but to get into the big old clock tower in your town’s square with a high powered rifle, chamber up seven rounds and wait until the bidding begins on your mom at today’s bachelorette auction.

It’ll be a silent auction, so the sound of the first shot will ring out true and clear through the county fair. The man who was bidding on your mother will drop to the ground immediately. Unfortunately for the townspeople, most of them won’t be too bright, so another man will immediately rise, assuming that the previous courter just lost his nerve and fainted, and raise his auction number.

The second bullet will take him just below the base of his skull, ripping through his throat and sending him to the ground gasping for air. A third and a fourth suitor will rise and fall before people start to catch on, relating the sound of the rifle firing to the sudden collapse of the men who want to rail your mom. By then, however, you’ll have noticed three additional men who seemed like they were sort of interested in your mom.

You’ll put down two of them before they have a chance to flee the town’s square. The third will be a squirrely bastard, but you’ll catch him as he dives into his car, putting one through his front windshield and his forehead, ending the various attempts on your mother’s honor that might’ve challenged your father’s rightful claim when he returns in a few days.

You’ll spend the next two days in a standoff with police, occasionally firing at them to keep them from advancing as you sit in that clock tower alone. Some will call you mad, but you’ll know in your heart of hearts that what you’re doing is right, and when your pappy shows up with flowers and a condom for your ma and helps tell off the police so you can all get drunk together you’ll know that you done right by killing all those men.

Congratulations on Killing Your Potential Stepdads!

Congratulations on Explaining Everything to the Judge!

Following your victory at Hammer Tag yesterday you’re going to begin the traditional “assault hearing following victory at Hammer Tag” portion of the game. This process was kicked off yesterday when your neighbors called in a noise complaint and found you standing in your backyard holding a hammer next to your dad, who was holding a gun, above your brother, who was bleeding profusely from the head. The officer really get anything you said about “Hammer Tag” and didn’t seem to care when you showed him your liability waivers, so you ended up in temporary holding pending a hearing to determine the scope of wrongdoing and whether or not your brother wants to press charges.

The trial will begin sharply at 10:15 in the AM, an ungodly hour for any god-fearing individual. It will begin with the judge reading off a list of the charges, which consist mostly of “talking about Hammer Tag” and “beating your brother with a hammer.” He’ll then open the floor to evidence. Your dad will bring the waivers that you and your brother signed to the floor and the judge will look at them. He’ll then ask your brother to come to the stand.

He’ll acquiesce, head wrapped in a bandage still stained with his own blood. After a barrage of question, which the headwound will make answering problematic, he’ll black out briefly before being rushed out of the courtroom to receive medical attention. The judge will then review the documents, pinch the bridge of his nose, look at you and ask one final question.

“Why?” he’ll ask in a tired, reedy voice.

You’ll shrug. “It’s the best,” you’ll say. “Plus FREEDOM!”

The judge will shake his head and stamp your form. Then he’ll slide a copy to you and ask you to leave his courtroom. You’ll emerge into the fresh air and inhale deeply. It will, indeed, taste like freedom. You’ll squeeze your pappy’s hand and head off to the hospital, where you’ll meet your brother for the awkward, final chapter of Hammer Tag: the “Holding Your Injured Brother’s Hand While He Tries to Remember How to Write Finale of Hammer Tag: Sponsored by Doritos.”

Congratulations on Explaining Everything to the Judge!

Congratulations on Winning at Hammer Tag!

To the uninitiated, Hammer Tag is the latest sport to sweep the nation. It consists of two or more people chasing each other around with hammers and attempting to strike one another in the head with said hammers, shouting “TAG!” upon each successful hit in order to score a point. Ten points are awarded for a successful knockout, and all points are nullified if an individual is killed during play. Play occurs over six seven and a half minute rounds.

That’s for people who don’t know about Hammer Tag already, people not you. You already know all about this spectacular sport. So you’re going to play Hammer Tag tomorrow with your brother and you’re totally going to kick ass at it.

It’ll begin as it always does, with the traditional signing of the Hammer Tag liability waivers. With the paperwork out of the way the two of you will wait for the referee (your dad holding a gun) to fire the starting shot, signifying the beginning of Hammer Tag.

You’ll charge at your brother and give him a pair of quick taps on the skull, which will make him drop to the ground in a heap.

“Urrgh,” he’ll mumble as he tries to rise to his feet. You’ll give him one last tap for good measure before your dad fires the finishing shot, indicating that a technical knock-out has occurred.

“Winner!” he’ll shout as he grabs your hand and raises it above his head, beaming with pride as your brother, now losing blood from a headwound, rocks back and forth on the ground wondering where he is.

Congratulations on Winning at Hammer Tag!

Congratulations on Escaping Your Failing Company!

After your CEO parachuted dramatically out of your offices yesterday you knew what was coming. Integrated Dynamic Business Life Solutions was going to collapse. And, having seen many other companies torn apart after their services were outsourced, you knew how it was going to go. You didn’t want that for yourself, so this morning, after you wake up from your night of binge drinking underneath the boardroom table where so many companies have had their futures broken, you’re going to enact your escape plan.

The corporate death squads will already be wandering from cubicle to cubicle, shooting staff in the chest and head and then leaving them for dead, but since they’re corporate death squads they’re not very well run and generally the people in them aren’t the brightest, so you’ll just lay there perfectly still until they pass.

Then, come nightfall, you’ll steal as many laptops as you can carry from the ruins of the office, reaching over corpses to get them. Then you’ll creep out the front door and begin the process you swore you’d enact should the company ever fall: tracking down and killing the former CEO with your bare hands.

Step one will involve selling all those corporate laptops to generate capital, so make sure none of them have password protection enable still and then get started! We’ll follow up with you later to let you know how the manhunt is going.

Congratulations on Escaping Your Failing Company!

Congratulations on Driving Your Own Company into the Ground!

You came up with a great idea for a company about four years ago. You’d figure out how to outsource various businesses to India by generating effective models for those businesses and then moving them to India wholesale through American companies that essentially manage outsourcing to Indian outsourcing companies.

It might be shocking to you that this isn’t actually a sustainable business model, but turns out it’s not. Turns out that when you basically just outsource people for a living you generate an infrastructure that eventually allows your employers to outsource your own job. So today, following your successful outsourcing of a customer service system for a mid-sized software company to India through a shell company in the Midwest, you’re going to go back to your office and treat yourself to a good job scotch.

About halfway through it, you’re going to get a call on your land line. It’ll be from the head of the company that hires your company to outsource shit to other companies. He’ll sound kinda sad.

“Bill,” he’ll say. “It’s time.”

You’ll know what he means immediately. You’ll know that he’s met an amoral Indian person who is also a compulsive liar with a sociopath’s mentality but not the courage to murder who expresses his desire to undo others by outsourcing work to other countries so that he can harm his fellow man without risking direct conflict.

”I knew this day would come,” you’ll mumble into the phone. Then you’ll put the receiver down while your boss continues talking. You’ll ride up the elevator to the roof, where you’ll grab the parachute you stashed up there ages ago. Then you’ll dial the number you marked as “END” in your cell phone and leap off the side of the building with your parachute.

The cell call will go to another phone in the basement of your building, which will trigger a set of explosive charges that you imbedded into the underground parking structure of your building ages ago when you first moved here.

As you descend gracefully from the building, winding along fifth avenue to the honks of cars below, you’ll smile at your foresight. But as the ground races up towards you you’ll wonder for a moment at just what the future holds for you, at what you can do now that the life you’ve built for yourself, a life constructed on other’s misfortune, has fallen apart.

When your feet hit the ground, agony will shoot up your legs. You won’t know how to land properly, and you’ll lock your knees and walk as you hit the ground, causing stress fractures to emerge in your calves. The pain will momentarily distract you from the void of your life, which will be nice for the time being.

Congratulations on Driving Your Own Company Into the Ground!

Congratulations on Making Love to That Horse!

War Horse was a hit. It’s pretty clear to everyone involved and the critical apparatus that there’s never been a better time to be a horse in the industry since that movie came out. Seabiscuit is now a name dimly remembered. Everyone’s scrambling to get the horse that played War Horse (lovingly referred to as “Horsie” by agents everywhere) attached to their picture.

They’re plying him with carrots, oats, horse blankets and, of course, expensive prostitutes.

You’re one of these prostitutes. You’ve always had a thing for horses thanks to the absence of a strong father figure in your life when you were growing up. Unlike all the other hookers that get thrown at Horsie you’re actually going to be accepted into his stable and, instead of being stamped to death, you’ll make sweet, sweet horse love with him.

What follows will be an explosion of media, scandal and a story of true love.

“Can horses marry?!” slower reporters will ask, while other, smarter reporters cover other stories in newspapers.

When the dust settles the media coverage, months from now, will ruin any chance the two of you had at a real relationship, which is a shame because you’ll get along famously. But Horsie’s career will be propelled by his tale of love lost, crisis and redemption and you’ll be well taken care of for the years to come thanks to your role in the entire thing. Some other woman will write a book with your name on it and you’ll occasionally go on talk shows to talk about love and just how much punishment vaginas can really take.

But the real victory here will be the love you two will share, however briefly, following your sexcapade. Facilitated by Horsie’s success, sustained by your big heart and durable vagina and your mutual distaste for language and eye contact during sex, it’ll be brief but wonderful, the best that either of you will ever have throughout your entire lives.

Enjoy it while it lasts and try not to cry in the shower in the years to come.

Congratulations on Making Love to That Horse!

Super Nerd Sundays Presents: The Unfortunate Return of Modern Warfare's Storyline!

I absolutely loved the first Modern Warfare. It’s one of those games that resonated with me in a tremendous way. It was problematic, sure, and the potency of its single player campaign was easily overshadowed by its spectacular multiplayer, but my god. What a single player campaign! Pitch perfect, well paced, with some new, evocative themes that perfectly fit action movie topos to video game logic. The famed Chernobyl sniper level, with its mix of melancholy, tension and pulse pounding action, was almost perfect in every way. The nuclear explosion and the final car chase (following the conclusion of the most dramatic set piece, mind you!) were fantastic as well: moments that reminded you of your character’s fragility and made you realize that danger could strike and people could die even when the world wasn’t at stake.

I’d like to say that Infinity Ward has been resting on their laurels, just treading the same ground again and again, but that’s not quite accurate for two reasons. The first is, of course, that Infinity Ward is no longer making Modern Warfare games following the catastrophic layoffs that Activision implemented. The games are now being made by Sledgehammer Games, famous for making absolutely nothing, and Raven Software, famous for making slightly shittier versions of other games and Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force. The second is that the set pieces in Modern Warfare 3’s single player campaign don’t just tread the same ground that Modern Warfare tread far more aptly, they stumble over it clumsily, always trading logic and intellect for a bigger explosion.

It’s as if Michael Bay made a video game and infused it with all of his unintended absurdity and acerbity. The finished product is a clumsy, awkward treatment of a type of game I really used to love, levels and pacing that ape an earlier game but lack the intellect or the controlled movement that earned the twists and turns that earlier iterations in the Call of Duty franchise used to such tremendous effect. Modern Warfare 2 already lost some of the franchise’s glamour, but it did manage to do a few things right. Modern Warfare 3 didn’t even pull that off. Instead it nakedly utilized all of the set pieces that Modern Warfare used to greater effect without pacing them correctly or inserting them with any sort of meaning or logic in the game itself.

I’m about to get into specifics, just so readers know. Spoilers to follow.

My personal favorite was a moment wherein Yuri, a character Tom Chick astutely described as “the Modern Warfare equivalent of Woody Allen’s Zelig,” and Soap, the affable be-mohawked protagonist from the first two games, are in a tower together. You’re playing Yuri this time, instead of Soap. That’s the only new thing about Modern Warfare 3 I noticed, by the way. The two of them are getting ready to snipe someone, presumably the big-bad for this game, from a clock tower. This, of course, follows a journey through a war-torn eastern European city where people are dumping bodies into rivers left and right where you’re encouraged to use stealth to avoid conflicts and quickly resolve the conflicts you’re forced into. That part should sound quite familiar to anyone who played the first Modern Warfare.

The two of you are sitting in the tower until you’re prompted to pick up your rifle and look down the scope. You’ve been up there for fourteen hours, mind you, purportedly monitoring the building across the street and cleaning your rifles or whatever. After a sniping session which is striking similar to, while a great deal less difficult or interesting than, the climactic assassination attempt that capped off the first Chernobyl’s storyline, something goes wrong. The plan, which involves one character leaping into a board room to await the arrival of the big-bad of Modern Warfare 3 just so he can look cool while he’s killing him, should’ve been foolproof! But apparently a minor character from the first Modern Warfare game (I consider it a fanboy feather in my hat that I immediately knew who Kamarov was, though I’m not sure I’m proud of said feather) tied to an office chair and covered in explosives has replaced the big-bad! After a brief bit of expository dialogue, the big-bad mentions my name and calls me his friend, which, of course, then triggers a bout of distrust and some explosives which, conveniently, were timed to go off just after he said that. You and Soap then leap out of the building on to some conveniently placed plot device – I mean scaffolding. The scaffolding breaks your fall but Soap, who has not only previously fallen great distances but has also been hit by cars, shot, stabbed in the chest and recovered just fine in the past, is done in by his fall. He then mentions that the big-bad mentioned your name on an open radio channel to Price, the badass character from the previous Modern Warfare games, before dying on a table because, well, it’s time for him to die dramatically. Price, armed with this knowledge, then knocks you down a staircase after you’re forced to open another plot device – I mean door – and you explain, through a series of first person cutscenes, why you don’t like the person who mentioned your name very much.

There’s a lot wrong with this whole setup. Right off the bat, the logic is problematic with almost every aspect of the scene. Although I will say that so much troublesome logic abounds in Modern Warfare 3 that you could hardly be blamed for missing it here if you missed it earlier. But it should seem odd to you that two highly trained military operatives who have spent half a day casing a target missed a bunch of explosives planted around them, theoretically at some much, much earlier date. It should also seem a bit out of place that two men you’ve spent the last few days murdering hundreds of people with, men you’ve at times carried to safety, men you’ve killed and bled with, would react so violently when the big-bad mentions your name in passing.

But this is just symptomatic of a larger problem within Modern Warfare 3, wherein explosions are often used to replace plot points. In fact, I spent a lot of my time while playing Modern Warfare 3 thinking of tag-lines that could’ve been applied to the game. I came up with:

Modern Warfare 3: LOUD NOISES!

Modern Warfare 3: OH SHIIIII-!

Modern Warfare 3: I GUESS WE’RE GONNA HAVE TO JUUUUMP!

Modern Warfare 3: Ear Raper

Modern Warfare 3: Revenge of the Explosions

Modern Warfare 3: OOPS! YOU FELL DOWN! THAT MUST MEAN THE PACE OF THE LEVEL IS CHANGING!

Modern Warfare 3: ARE WE DONE YET?

I’m not proud of most of them (though I think Ear Raper is a goodie and LOUD NOISES is very accurate) but the staccato explosions that substitute for plot have kind of pressed me into a place where I have to view the game in these terms to get any sort of enjoyment out of it. I have to look at it as a work of unconscious parody of what Activision sees as what its players want in order to find something that justifies the time and money I’ve invested in Modern Warfare 3. This isn’t how the series was, but it seems to be the direction it’s gone in of late.

And the end result is, as I mentioned earlier, the Michael Bay-ification of video games. There’s a lot of homosociality that borders on closeted homosexuality, a lot of explosions, and a lot of choices and developments in the story that don’t make a lot of sense. I could perhaps deal with all of these in a game which strives to earn these experiences, but Modern Warfare 3 launches into them without any real lead up. Characters die and we’re supposed to feel bad not because we’ve been encouraged to empathize with these characters, but because the script calls for us to feel bad. In one level, where you’re called on to protect the Russian president, I immediately knew upon starting the level that I would die by the end of it – I just had that feeling. Sure enough, when I came to the end of the map I was shot in the chest by the big-bad in a scene that could’ve been ripped straight from Modern Warfare 2.

And this dovetails nicely into another major gripe I had. It’s not enough that Modern Warfare 3 wants players to attach themselves to undeveloped, personality-less characters. It’s not enough that it wants to just do random shit and blow up monuments and expect us to be impressed by the sheer spectacle of what they managed to do with a graphics engine (which no one who’s played Red Faction: Guerilla would find impressive, by the by). Modern Warfare 3 has to tell us a story while haphazardly ripping off and inserting parts of other Modern Warfare games into its structure. And bear in mind, there have only been two, so this ground is both pretty familiar, and already pretty limited. The aforementioned level wherein a Russian secret service agent dies, for example, begins with a re-tread of the first Modern Warfare’s bonus level, a firefight through a plane to rescue a VIP. The map is almost identical to the original level, but is played in reverse this time for good measure. Then it dovetails into a moment where you’re killed while attempting to board a vehicle by the big-bad, a scene which happened at almost the same point in time in Modern Warfare 2. Hell, the same character even kills you in both games.

This comes up again and again. The sniper missions are especially bad – you’re asked to do synchronized sniping with your buddies in some new locations, but many of these new locations seem quite familiar, and bring back some very, very, very familiar gameplay mechanics. And then there are the climactic levels which take place in a cave/castle, reminiscent of the fortress built into a mountain that capped off Modern Warfare 2. Even the missions in Sierra Leone Somalia, included to showcase the horribly relevant issue of genocide in Africa, echo the design and mentality of the Brazil and “generic Middle Eastern” missions of previous Modern Warfare games.

It’s uniquely frustrating to see a series with such potential ridden into the ground in such a fashion. Modern Warfare was a game that broke all the rules of a first person shooter. It showcased amoral protagonists who did awful things and let civilians die if it meant completing the mission. It was a game that made you feel your character’s mortality at every turn and used death as a set piece sparingly, in such a manner that it did not elicit an emotional response so much as a thematic note, a rising pitch that resounded through the game and colored all the actions that came afterwards. Modern Warfare 2 undid much of my love for the series with its single player, and Modern Warfare 3 has carried this tradition of diminishing returns to a new extreme.

Of course, I’m harping on something largely insignificant here. Steam isn’t showcasing Community Achievements for Modern Warfare 3 right now, but I wouldn’t be shocked if many players didn’t even bother booting up the single player campaign at all. And really, why should they? Modern Warfare games have spectacular multiplayer. I expect that I’ll like Modern Warfare 3’s multiplayer a little less than Modern Warfare’s, which I liked quite a bit, more than I like most people. These games have made multiplayer gameplay a feedback loop of challenges and positive reinforcement and they’ve found interesting new ways to iterate on the idea of reinforcing and encouraging improved performance even as they also sometimes muddy the formula with their efforts. I’m excited to see how Modern Warfare 3 will shake down in that respect. But I cannot help but harp on such egregiously poor storytelling in a game where the story was once a spectacular element, which could sit comfortably alongside titans the like of Bioshock. I wish I had the clarity of vision to simply see Modern Warfare 3 as I wish to: a multiplayer affair, bereft of any sloppy single player story trappings, but the single player game is so pervasive, so insistently incompetent, that I cannot do so. Alas, for the ability to purchase a copy of Modern Warfare 3 which excised these elements completely.

Congratulations on Captaining That Ship Filled With Human Cargo!

Human trafficking isn't for everyone. A lot of people get into it because they're big old rapists, and a lot of other people get into it because they're friends with big old rapists but just don't know how to say no. You got into it because your daddy left you when you were just a boy and you didn't know no other way. Warn't your fault that folk couldn't understand a boy from the Balkans wanting to be something more, and it certainly warn't your fault that the only job you could find out of Balkan college happened to be running guns with mercenaries.

From there it was just a quick skip and a hop to human trafficking.

At first you just did it in trucks and vans, bringing a handful of refugees across the border at a time. They were almost always women, young, pretty women. You never asked where they were coming from or where they were going. Occasionally you'd move someone unusual through, a man or an elderly person. Sometimes you'd move children through: you'd always ask about them. A man has to have some principles.

After a few years of doing that, though, it just got old. So you decided to move on to bigger, better things. You saved up your pennies or rubles or whatever they use for money in that shithole you call a country and you bought a boat.

It wasn't a big boat - it was a sixty foot fishing boat, retrofitted to function as a small cargo ship. You decided to fill it up with people and set sail.

Your maiden voyage is going to be tonight (cops take the weekend off in your country, which makes your job super easy) and it's going to go swimmingly. No one is going to die or make trouble, which means you'll get all the money you thought you were going to get for the run: enough to pay for the ship and still have plenty to divvy up among your crew.

Also, you'll have customers who aren't just pervy old men trafficking in women and mobsters trying to get their family members out of the way of the law after committing murder or whatever. You'll have mostly moved families attempting to avoid one of your many festive genocides out of the country. And you'll have moved them into Turkey, a country with even looser borders than your own, and far fewer genocides of late.

So you'll feel good about being you, and you'll have launched a lucrative business venture that makes you, more or less, your own boss.

Congratulations on Captaining That Ship Filled With Human Cargo!

Congratulations on Having That Sixth Digit Removed From Your Left Hand!

Bitches always be staring and men always be asking for hand jobs and lately it’s all gotten a little bit much for a prospective senator from upstate New York to be managing, so today you’re going to go ahead and do what you’ve always wanted to get done: you’re going to get a doctor to take some acid and fry the living shit out of your left hand until that extra finger you’ve always had is nothing more than a giant, unsightly scar sitting at the edge of your hand.

You’ll roll up to the office with your aides flanking you, West Wing style – you always have to look good for the cameras – and then remove your illustrious, custom made gloves, exposing your exquisitely formed extra digit.

“Oh my,” the doctor will say, shaking his head at the raw perfection that is your freakishness.

You won’t pay him any mind, though. You’ll hop up on his exam table, kick off your shoes and wink at him.

“Let’s do this,” you’ll say, putting on your shades so he won’t see you cry.

He will hear you cry, however. They’ll be muffled and drawn out, but the sobs, oh god the sobs, will rack your chest as you lay there, feeling that doctor sear off your unique little digit through a protracted, corrosive campaign. It’ll take him nearly four hours from start to finish, and he’ll have to anesthetize the region six times. You won’t want to think about what the whole affair would feel like without anesthesia – the thought alone would make you break composure, and then you’d have to have the doctor killed for seeing you totally lose it, which isn’t great for you financially right now.

When all’s said and done you’ll remove your sunglasses, wipe the streaks of eye shadow from your eyes and hop off the table to examine your hand. Where once a perfect sixth finger lay there will be nothing more than a long black splotch of skin.

“That’ll turn into really weird grainy skin after a few days,” the doctor will tell you around the cigarette that he’ll have immediately popped into his mouth after finishing your operation. “But you can wear normal gloves right away.”

He won’t tell you about infection or heavy lifting – he knows you won’t have time to change your life to deal with that kind of bullshit. Instead he’ll write you a prescription for Percocet and slap you on the ass on your way out the door.

“Look out world!” he’ll shout after you.

Outside of his office you’ll examine your hand, hideously deformed to your eye now, and smile. Now you’ll be able to campaign without waiting for something called “Sixth Digit-Gate” to come up. Next stop: a seat in the state senate. Several stops later: The White House!

Congratulations on Having That Sixth Digit Removed From Your Left Hand!

Congratulations Sexual Vasco de Gama!

Everyone’s always talking about sexual exploration like it’s some sort of big deal. Whatever, most of it’s already been done! If there’s a hole and a pole, it’s probably been put in there by someone long before you came along – we’re all just treading the same ground time and time again.

What’s important, and indeed kind of beautiful, is to recognize the people who have come before, to understand the lessons they learned and incorporate those lessons into your own sexual knowledge. The trick is figuring out what kind of sex-adventurer you are, what tradition you’ve come from.

It’d be easy if you were into bondage or black chicks or whatever – you’d just have to run a quick Google search and bam! You’d be bombarded with your sexual progenitors. You’d come to know Man Ray and the quaint spider web that is the history of interracial porn in a matter of hours, and you’d get super aroused in the process.

But your fetish is a bit more obscure. Not so obscure as to have an interesting or easily mapped history, unfortunately. Just obscure enough that you have trouble finding pornography that isn’t constructed by really weird douchebags and can’t really find any information about the genealogy of the porn you prize.

See, you’re not that weird. You just like Indian girls. Mostly Indian girls sleeping with white dudes. You kind of have a conquistador fetish mixed in there too, but not too prominently. Mostly you just like watching a nice, sweet girl from the Indian subcontinent getting railed by someone with a skin tone similar to yours.

As a result you did pretty well for yourself in college, but you’ve still spent a lot of time feeling alone and wondering if there’s anyone else like you, anyone who came before. Today, while perusing Wikipedia entries about Hindu culture you’re going to find a name you haven’t seen before, thanks largely to the malfeasance of American public schools: Vasco De Gama.

Turns out De Gama was the first European to sail from Europe to India. De Gama, as a filthy sailor, liked to fuck, no question, but he also respected the ladies and respected alone time where people didn’t try to high five him while he was inside someone.

As you read more and more about him you’ll realize his love of math and his fear of Muslims are exactly like what you’ve felt your whole life. You’ll also realize that with your fetish apparently comes a tremendous capacity for human cruelty. Aware of it now you’ll see it reflected in the way you’ve named every pet you’ve ever owned.

Armed with this new knowledge about your sexual past you’ll determine yourself never to repeat it: you’ll swear to hate Muslims a lot less and to avoid complicated revenge fantasies on people you believe have “wronged you” while embracing your love of Indian pussy.

Congratulations Sexual Vasco de Gama!

Congratulations on Realizing the Truth!

Seconds before the axe blade severs your friend’s feet you’ll realize the truth.

“It’s not an axe blade at all!” you’ll yell at him while he writhes on the floor. “It’s a scythe blade!”

“What?” he’ll moan at you.

“A scythe blade!” you’ll shout at him. “Like, for harvesting crops.”

“Oh,” he’ll groan in response. “How does that help me?” he’ll beg.

You’ll shrug.

That’ll be the last thing your friend will see as the scythe doubles back and catches him in the base of the neck, mercifully ending the twist spectacle that his life has become over the last few seconds.

You’ll sit there and stare at his corpse, wondering how this new piece of information can be put to good use. After a lot of pondering you’ll realize that it can’t, and that the real lesson here is that no amount of hillbilly gold is worth your life.

Congratulations on Realizing the Truth!

Congratulations Heroin Jack!

Today your name is Heroin Jack and you really like heroin. You sometimes rob people for heroin and then retreat to your lair, which is a street corner, to do some heroin real quick before Batman catches you and puts you in jail for assault. Tonight, after a pretty mild crime, Batman is going to catch up with you just after you’ve done some heroin.

“Fuuuuuuck,” you’ll tell Batman as he shines a light in your eyes to see if your pupils dilate. They won’t.

“Hm,” he’ll mutter to himself before calling the police from a payphone and telling them where you are.

“He won’t be going anywhere for a while,” he’ll tell them. “He just shot up.”

“Laaaaame,” you’ll mumble at Batman as he leaves you on the street corner, gun inches from your hand as the twilight of drug takes your mind and makes you forget for just a few hours how terrible a Batman villain you are.

Congratulations Heroin Jack!

Congratulations Newborn Baby Hitler!

The nursery has been in a state of economic depression for some time now, and someone’s got to draw it out. If not you, then who?

You’ll be the only baby in the nursery with any kind of notable hair at all, which in old-times was a terrible mark of Satan’s influence on your life. It’ll only be appropriate that you, with your fashionable moustache, should be such an auspicious child, destined for such fleeting, horrible greatness.

Your campaign for dominance will begin when you rise up from your crib (having somehow crazied your way out of your blankets) and begin speaking. By speaking, we mean “crying.”

When you start crying as loud as you can all the other babies in the nursery will cry back in response: the revolution will have begun! Weeping as loud as you can you’ll force the foul Jewish nurse who takes care of you to notice your economic plight and take action.

She’ll storm into the room (quietly and gently), settle you back into your crib and tuck you into your blankets.

“That’s a terrible moustache,” she’ll mumble as she works.

This will instill in you a terrible hatred of Jews will which eventually become sexualized when you’re in high school and you fuck a Jewish dude for the first time, proving once and for all that Hitler was both gay and that, if he had hooked up with a dude we never would’ve had World War II.

We really dodged a bullet there.

Congratulations Newborn Baby Hitler!

Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Building A Computer!

I built my first computer when I was twenty-three. I was living with my parents in Massachusetts, working a job I hated. I was saving my money to move somewhere, anywhere, which would eventually narrow down to Portland, Oregon, but part of saving money is having money for the first time ever. And having money made me want to do things that I’d always wanted to do but never been able to do due to lack of money. Things like build a computer. So I set myself a budget of $1,200 (three weeks or so worth of pay) and set to it.

I had a lot of great resources available to me. Most of my friends in Cambridge were in tech support, and had insight on how to assess hardware. They were also extremely poor, and had a lot of advice on how to comparison shop and spot a bargain, sorting out true finds from rip-offs. I talked through my system with them, learned a lot about how all the parts fit together and what I should consider while constructing my theoretical computer, and then I learned what could go wrong. I learned about things that aren’t listed on item’s profiles when you’re shopping for them, things like rate of failure and the pros and cons of certain technological operations I’d previously viewed as entirely beneficial (read: I learned why I should RAID and why I shouldn’t RAID). I learned what OEM meant and learned why buying OEM was smarter and cheaper than buying products with warranties. In a way, I learned how to do something awesome on the cheap, a skillset I’ve carried over to other things in my life.

I still use my first home-made computer, despite some technical failures since then. I’ve had a power supply brick during a heat wave, which taught me both how to assess a failing power supply and how nasty a failing power supply can be for your motherboard if you let it go long enough. Each of these issues, thanks to my home-brewing ways, became a chance to learn something new for me about my system and how it worked. I learned, for example, that a fluctuating power supply can cause problems with almost every part in your system, that it can damage a motherboard and that re-seating a CPU on a motherboard is actually quite easy.

I’ve had to replace almost all of the major parts in my computer by this point – only the original RAM case, and CPU remain. I’ve learned how to navigate warranties on products that had warranties and how to replace products that are out of warranty quickly and effectively. I’ve learned how to get as much performance as I can for my buck and how to differentiate poorly optimized software from poorly optimized hardware – for me, building a computer has been an experience just as much about learning how the system worked as it has been about assembling a platform for playing games and storing information.

My friend Alex had a slightly different take on system building. With a very different situation, economically, and a very different mindset, Alex focused on building mechanical beasts of machines: the best that money could buy or nothing. Quad core processors, SLIed video cards and multi-disk arrays, and damn the expense. In the end, he’s certainly come out with more potent machines that I’ve ever made, but he’s also missed out on some of the learning experiences that I’ve had: the troubleshooting and DIYing that I’ve done is alien to him. He thinks it’s insane to enjoy doing it, and think it’s a sign that I built a bad system that I’ve had to tune it and repair it. We’ve both wired cases and selected products, but the mentalities we brought to the table lead to very different experiences with building systems. I was interested in simply meeting my requirements. Alex wanted to destroy them. We also, as I mention, live very different lifestyle, with very different spending habits: I’m in Graduate School, and have hovered near the poverty line with minimal to no benefits for half a decade now, Alex has been steadily employed and, until recently, lived rent free.

What’s interesting to me, and what prompted me writing this, is another friend of mine who has decided to build a system. This friend, Dan, had never built a system before. He purchased performance laptops (a VAIO, techies lament) and had some technical difficulties getting them to perform as-advertised consistently, but when it came to assembling a system he took to it well. Dan’s also easily the most responsible of my circle of old friends: he doesn’t have any of Al’s trouble with keeping money or my trouble with “living like a normal person.” As a result he came to the process of system building with a healthy bank account, a stable life and job and a balanced mentality on the whole process.

I’m not sure how he’s come out of it yet: I still don’t think that you can really know what you’re doing with your system until something has gone wrong, until you actually have to sit down and patch your computer, make sure it’s working. But I’ve already noticed a renewed sense of excitement in him (as much as Dan displays) when I talk to him about games. He’s no longer concerned with technical requirements, he’s actually playing The Old Republic (which his Vaio had previously prohibited) and he seems to be genuinely excited about the process of making, updating and maintaining his new computer. It’s been kind of incredible to see, and regardless of how he continues to develop I’m excited to watch as he grows into a member of the system-building community.

Watching Dan make a computer has done more than just make me excited to see how he’ll grow into using his system. It’s made me long for the days when I had the disposable income to build computers on my own. There’s a certain magic to making a computer, in assembling a complicated piece of equipment, using it and fine tuning it. Upgrading systems, growing them and ironing out the kinks is tremendously fun in its own way (also stressful and frustrating). It’s inspiring to watch someone go through the process of building a computer for the first time, and it makes me long for the days of disposable income when I could afford to build my own computer. The repairs I’ve had to do have kept my system functioning well enough for my purposes, but sometimes I do long for the days when I could build a new system from the ground up.

There’s a power in building systems, a sense of competition and completion, a realization of philosophy in an act of creation which is almost always beautifully, accidentally unique. It’s a singular, wonderful, informative experience and it’s something any gamer, or any moderate to heavy tech user in general, should do at least once. I’m excited to see how it turns out for Dan in the long run, and I look forward to the day when I can sit down with a nice fat stack of money I don’t need and turn it into a brand new system of my very own.

Congratulations Fervent Believer!

No matter what anyone tells you, you believe that Scott Bakula is a very good actor.

“Quantum Leap was fucking amazing!” you’ll shout at them whenever they point out that Scott Bakula wasn’t really that great in it.

“FUCK YOU!” you’ll scream at anyone who mentions, even in passing, that Enterprise was unwatchable drek which owed a great deal of the critical ill-will it received to Bakula’s so-called acting.

No one else will say anything else to you, because you’ll seem really unreasonable and, by this time, no one will want to talk to you at all, let alone about something as insignificant as Scott Bakula’s acting abilities. Your belief, thus unquestioned, will never waver.

Congratulations Fervent Believer!

Congratulations Interracial Porn Star!

You’re a porn star and you only sleep with other races.

“It’d just be too weird,” you’ll tell the white guy who is fucking your pussy.

“URRRGH YEAH BRO!” he’ll shout, which will be distracting and really, really weird.

“You know?” you’ll ask the black guy in your asshole.

“WOOOOOAERRRRRGH!” he’ll shout as he comes inside your asshole, prompting the director to call a stand in (the boom mic operator) to enter your asshole in his place.

“Where would we even find another half-Filipina, quarter-Native American, quarter-Swedish porn star?” you’ll ask him.

He won’t say anything, mostly because your asshole will be incredibly tight and also because he’ll also be half-Filipina, quarter-Native American and a quarter Swedish and he knows that if he tells you that you’ll freak out and force him to get out of your butt. He’ll really want to keep fucking your butt until he’s told to come on your face – it’ll be really pleasant and you’ll be quite pretty, and if he doesn’t fuck up he’ll get double pay for the day for being willing to have unprotected sex with a woman he barely knows on film.

Congratulations Interracial Porn Star!

Congratulations Disco Orphan!

You didn’t ask to be an orphan, but you sure took to it well. When you were like three you spent most of your time running around, delivering papers to various locals for pennies on the hour. That kept you fed and kept you in contact with other orphans, but it wasn’t really a long term thing you wanted to do for the rest of your life. So by the time you hit six you had moved on to stealing bits of fruit and tiny valuables from shops and tourists and giving them to an old man with a beard who would sometimes hit you and sometimes give you food.

That kept you going until you were twelve and you realized that the old man with a beard was actually a pedophile who was waiting for you to get old enough to “be his type.” You turned the police on to his little operation and moved on, which meant being homeless for several days until you, snowblind and starving, wandered into Chicago’s last standing discotheque.

Discotheque people aren’t like other people: they welcomed you with open arms and let you stay in their discotheque. They fed you disco-biscuits and disco-soup until you were strong and then they asked if you wanted to stay and learn the ways of the disco.

You didn’t have anything better to do, so you said yes.

Over the next decade you learned how to dance every dance in the disco handbook. Your hips learned the rhythms of disco, your legs came to understand the purity of the steps and strides that were expected of them. You learned to hustle, to do other dances we’re not familiar with because, like most people, we stopped paying attention to disco decades ago and, as a result, most of what we see of your future is just a mass of random images that make no sense to us.

But they’ll all make perfect sense to you, and they’ll give your life a sense of purpose that it never had before. It’ll feel like it’s all building to something, something tremendous and momentous that will be threatening to collapse the dam of your senses at every turn and let in the blessed, overwhelming waters of enlightenment. You’ll know peace for the first time in a life where you’ve only been dealt bad hands, and it’ll be wonderful.

Alas, nothing can last though. Three days ago an evil urban developer approached the owner the discotheque’s property and offered them seven times the property’s value in order to purchase it from them and turn it into high-class new apartments that could only ever be occupied by people who have never even heard of disco. Your disco-parents will be crestfallen – they’ll have only one option if they want to save the discotheque: they’ll need to have a disco-extravaganza and raise eight times the property’s value so they can buy the evil urban developer out.

Obviously, things haven’t been too lucrative at the discotheque of late, but having been saved by the power of disco you’ll know that it is not only capable of changing worlds, that it also must be preserved if the world is to remain worth anything at all. So you’ll go out on the street with a boom box and start disco-ing your ass off on a daily basis.

You’ll disco up and down the streets, boogying, beginning today, from the South Side to Evanston. By the time you’re done Chicago will be pulsing with the power of disco – it will have remembered the fun, the cocaine and the ridiculous clothing that people used to wear without the slightest measure of shame. Chicago will, for one brilliant day, have remembered the magic of disco.

You’ll stumble your way back to the discotheque late, late, late this evening. Your feet will be bleeding in your wing tipped shoes, your bell-bottoms will be tattered by the exertions of your dance. You’ll attempt to do a little boogie as you enter, to announce your presence, but you’ll just collapse into the arms of your disco-father. Behind you a crowd will be surging, struggling to enter the doors of the discotheque for the first time in decades. Your discotheque will easily pull in the money they need and then some. You’ll spend the evening sitting in a chair, watching others fill the dance floor for a change. For the first time in your life you’ll feel like you gave something to someone instead of taking it. It’ll be a good feeling.

Congratulations Disco Orphan!