Congratulations Trembling Rodent!

As the debate drags on, the Republican candidate will continue to spout vaguely religious bullshit about how god wants America to be great and he believes that he'll fulfill god's will on Earth by insuring that America remains the greatest blah to ever blah.

It'll be more of the same, more of what everyone's heard before.  It won't be until it ends, until the moderator turns to you and you sit there, shivering, occasionally making a small squeaking noise, that the crowd erupts into applause.

It won't be much of a speech, all things considered.  But it will be one hell of a piece of rhetoric.  You'll have, in one wordless 30 second chunk of slight gestures, perfectly framed the problematic duality of fear and hope that America is currently grappling with.

Paired with your strong stance on a number of prominent issues, including tort reform, gun control and healthcare reform, and a solid campaign run by taking the moral high ground and refusing to mount attack ads on your opponent, even as he attempts to cast doubt on your American heritage, this debate will effectively seal the election for you.  You'll be a lock, and you'll win in a landslide, taking all of the blue states, and most of the red states where they still like cuteness.  Only Texas and Florida will vote Republican, citing their famous state slogans, "Sorry, We're Assholes Here" and "We're Basically a Bunch of Dumb Racists," respectively.

Your inauguration will be met with unbridled hope, which will only make your assassination in a few months by a hawk that much more heartbreaking.

Congratulations Trembling Rodent!

Super Nerd Sunday Presents: Ode to the Medium Laser!

This week is crazy - crazier than I'd like - so this SNS will be a bit of a cop-out.  Because this week, I want to talk about the beauty of medium lasers in Mechwarrior: Online.

Medium lasers are, in a very real sense, the "baseline" weapon.  They weigh a single ton and occupy a single critical slot.  They generate a reasonable amount of heat.  They fire a pretty okay distance.  They are, in every way, the medium weapon.  Medium lasers do a medium amount of damage, they track lights medium well, they pintpoint heavies medium well.

There are certainly builds that take advantage of this remarkable utility.  The Hunchback-4P's best build, arguably, involves a large number of medium lasers and a lot of heat sinks.  The Blackjack-1X can be kitted out entirely with medium lasers and, as a result, wreak absolute havoc on enemy lines.  The six medium laser Jenner-7F is arguably the best light Mech in the game (though there's another superlative build on hand for dissenters).   But for the most part, Mechwarriors seem to look at medium lasers as filler weapons.  Weapons they can cram in there when nothing else will fit.

Double heat sinks are a must.  You've already maxed out armor.  You really don't need any more AC/10 ammo.  So you throw a medium laser in that you barely, if ever, use.  A medium laser you should be using all the time.

And here's why.

It took me a while to understand how medium lasers fit into MW:O past a baseline state.  They're good enough, good ratios all around.  But they're sometimes difficult to utilize.  If you have an Atlas-D you might not want to use the pair of medium lasers you dropped in its chest because, y'know, heat generation to range to damage... Not as great as dropping another AC/20 round, or dumping some large laser strobe from your wrists into some dumbfucks torso.

But then I started to play with Large Pulse Lasers.  I started to sequence LPLs with Medium Lasers.  I'd put them in the same fire group, use them in sync to drop armor or, even better, get kills.  And the end result?  A staggering amount of damage, pinpointed in locations.  Kill after kill after kill, against apparently superior targets.

I finally understood that the medium laser wasn't just a weapon to toss in at the last minute: it was the ultimate support weapon.

Perfectly rounded in every way, a medium laser burst burns through armor, crits, flim flam, like nobody's business.  Paired with heavier weapons, fired in close range, the medium laser becomes a key augment.  I found Large Pulse Laser bursts (pretty fucking intense to start with) knocking out key armor segments when paired with medium lasers.  I noticed that, in CQBs, my medium/LPL combo would strip armor in seconds and open enemies up for devastating LBX/10 and machine gun fire.  I realized, suddenly, that when I was knife fighting, I wanted a stack of medium pulse lasers, but when I was skirmishing around the 250-450 mark that most engagements seem to occur at, I wanted a medium laser array.

So I write this.  An ode to the medium laser.  Not for its own sake - it is, by its nature, infinitely middling.  But because of what it does when paired with other weapons, because I can make an LPL-2xML arm on each side of a boars head and, in theory, burn through a catapult's torso in a single concentrated volley without overheating I salute the stalwart little beam weapon that can.

You're my hero today, medium laser.

Congratulations Butcher Bill!

Martin Scorsese directs all the best movies, and the best of those movies, the single finest film he's ever produced, is Gangs of New York.  Or so you assume - it's the only film of his you've ever seen.

So in your mind there are certainly worse ideas than dressing up like your favorite character, that guy that Daniel Day Lewis pretended to be, and run around doing the sort of things he did, specifically stabbing random dudes and murdering the Irish.

Sure, there's better stuff to do - you could try to cure cancer in your stupid fucking job as a "clinical oncologist," or patch things up with your wife, who left you because "you couldn't process human emotions" or you could just say fuck it and be all like, yo, what up, I'm Butcher Bill and I've got all these knives.

It's not a difficult decision.

Today, you're going to put it into action for the first time.

Step one: stabbing.  Stabbing, stabbing, stabbing.  Irish people are the best targets.  Jews, a close second.  Blacks are a distant third since, in Butcher Bill's mind, stabbing them recognizes a sort of fundamental humanity contained within them by merit of the action of eliminating human life from their shell.  But there's a problem:  you have really weak wrists, and when you try to stab a redheaded lady on a crowded street, she'll grab you by said weak wrist, disarm you, and shatter your nose with her elbow.

She'll wait there with you until the cops arrive, and then the ambulance arrives after that.  At some point you'll get to talking to one another and she'll ask why you tried to stab her and you'll explain.  She'll tell you, in no uncertain terms, that you really need to watch better Scorsese movies - she'll recommend Goodfellas as a starting place.

One night, four months into prison, you'll get the chance, and boy howdy, your mind will be blown.

Congratulations Butcher Bill!

Congratulations Farting Modern Dancer!

The people in the rented auditorium will be stunned to silence as you pthbbbt and pffffrt around the space.  They'll be stunned, at one moment, then captivated at another, then enthralled at another.

Tomorrow, you'll be hailed as one of the most revolutionary performers of our time.  You'll be called "visionary" and "maverick."  You'll be told that your dancing is "edgy" and "begs us to reconsider what it means to be a dancer."

But tonight, you're just a woman.  A woman with IBS who decided to eat a bunch of beans before she got on stage.  And for that, you will be saluted, forevermore.

Congratulations Farting Modern Dancer!

Congratulations Farthing Whore!

It's not easy out there.  But you know what is easy?  Having sex for money!

By easy, we mean dangerous, emotionally taxing, harrowing, and, realistically, actually only "easy" to start doing if you're a physically attractive woman.  The first trick is finding a pimp.

There are a lot of sleezeballs out there, which is why you decided, right off the bat, "No male pimps."  That cut down around 90% of the potential pimp market, globally, and left you with three options in your area.

The first option, Transsexual Trina, specialized in freaky shit - shitting in people's mouths, sounding, making people wear diapers filled with your shit.  Creative, perhaps, but not your cup o' tea.

The second option, Filbrina, is a mouth breathing webdemon who you're almost positive steals your hoodies whenever you stop by her place, so she can smell you on them later.  Filbrina might as well be a guy.

Your third and, realistically, only option, is Mad Hetti, an elderly woman who acts like a British slattern from the 18th century and, realistically, might well have been one.  Mad Hetti, for all her grammatically problems, racism and seizures, will run you with respect, and she'll pay in ancient British coins, Farthings, which were, at the time of their mint, essentially a quarter pound.

"A Farthing a John," Hettie will tell you as she unfurls a coin into your outstreched hand before handing you a towel for your jizz stained face.  "And none's to be teary o'er it."

You didn't respond, but you kept coming back because in this economy, you'd be crazier than Hettie not to.  And the coins kept flowing but, when you tried to spend them at stores, you couldn't actually get any money for them.  You know they're legal tender, and that they're quite valuable, but you'll have no idea how to fence them to make them into acceptable legal tender in America.  Your savings will be drying up, and you'll worry that, soon enough, you'll have to sell some of your soiled old underwear to Filbrina.

But today that'll change.  A particularly sad sort of Milquetoast of a John, a quiet fellow who lives alone and collect coins, will enlist your services.  When the two of you finish you'll still be wrapped around him, nestling into his neck with an intimacy you're pretty sure violates the terms of your professional conduct, talking to him about your Farthing problem.  The moment he hears the word, he'll start a little in bed.

"Farthings?  From when?!"

You'll pull one out of your bag and hold it up to the light of his Ikea unbleached paper lamp.

"1863."

He'll laugh.

"That coin alone is worth ten thousand dollars."

"How?" you'll say, reflexively grabbing his junk to make him answer.

He'll lay it out for you while you give him a handjob.  He'll describe a network of sad mostly-men who sit and browse eBay looking for coins and the like, men who then take those coins and sell them to one another for ever increasing sums of money.  As one of those men, this man could potentially get you into that network, resolve all of the issues you have with your creditors and, potentially, insure that you can retire comfortably inside the year.

There's only one catch.

"I can help you out with it for free, but you have to put ass play on the menu," he'll tell you.

You'll shrug.

"Sounds fair."

Congratulations Farthing Whore!