Professor Octopus, we love you!
You teach at an undersea university, each student equally important in your eyes.
“You should hang out in anemonies more often,” you’ll tell a clown fish who is often being lured to bad neighborhoods by a barracuda who he was interested in dating. He’ll take your advice because he loves and respects you.
“You should just find out what you really want,” you’ll inform the related barracuda, who hasn’t been sanguine about a future where she functions as one of the world’s most vicious eating machines ever. Thanks to your advice she’ll free to pursue whatever occupation she wishes. She’ll pick art therapist, which isn’t the worst thing she could’ve gone for.
“Let your girl go,” you’ll tell the shark who raised the barracuda, who will think you’re sticking your tentacles where they don’t belong but will be restrained from the physical violence he so desperately wishes to commit by the presence of your assistant, a very physically imposing sperm whale who is considering graduate school.
“I’ll get by without you,” you’ll kindly inform the sperm whale, who will be tentatively asking you for letters of recommendation for a number of graduate institutions, most of them at the bottom of the ocean. With the force of your confidence he’ll propel himself into a fantastic career as one of the most prominent Melville Scholars in human history.
“I think we can make this work,” you’ll tell your wife, a giant squid whose family disapproved of your marriage from the start and who have, lately, begun to make your life quite difficult with their constant prodding and smack-talk about your octopus heritage. She’ll want to believe you quite badly, and she’ll know she still loves you, but it’ll be hard, so hard, for her to see the future.
She’ll rest her tentacle on yours and her black eyes will gaze into yours. She’ll long to lock her beak with yours so violently that she rips the delicate membrane surrounding it, but she won’t. Instead she’ll stroke the back of your adorably bulbous head with four of her arms.
“Okay,” she’ll tell you, smiling as best a squid can.
Congratulations Professor Octopus!
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Congratulations Micro-Loan Management Company!
Thank you! Thank god for you! You know those micro-loan companies that have been making waves by vastly improving the quality of life in sub-Saharan Africa, largely by improving the lives of women in rural areas? You know how people cannot stop fucking gushing over them and how they can do no wrong? Well after today people won’t be able to say that about those fucking self-righteous baby saving fuckface micro-loaners, and it’s all thanks to you.
Because today you’re going to put into place “…And A Chicken In Every Pot,” a 401C that exclusively attempts to put automatic weapons in the hands of underprivileged Africans, mostly AK-47s with a smattering of World War II and Belgian leavings thrown in to round out the arsenal.
You don’t care if they want to protect their family or if they want to join a guerilla movement. Your only rules are that you only provide loans to individuals, and that you only do so to cover the cost of five or fewer automatic weapons or accessories thereof. It’ll be a huge hit: the number of arm sales will double within your first week, quadruple by the end of the first month, and reach ten times the current level come the end of the fiscal quarter.
No one will sympathize with your cause or believe that you were just trying to “round out by the power base by putting everyone at an equal footing.” Even your history as a celebrated member of the ACLU won’t save you from accusations of racism and hate mongering. You’ll forever sully the useful, practical lone infrastructure that so many people have been able to better their lives through, and you’ll do it tomorrow with the stroke of a pen when you sign the paperwork to make your ill-fated, ill-conceived, observably amoral 401C.
Congratulations Micro-Loan Management Company!
Because today you’re going to put into place “…And A Chicken In Every Pot,” a 401C that exclusively attempts to put automatic weapons in the hands of underprivileged Africans, mostly AK-47s with a smattering of World War II and Belgian leavings thrown in to round out the arsenal.
You don’t care if they want to protect their family or if they want to join a guerilla movement. Your only rules are that you only provide loans to individuals, and that you only do so to cover the cost of five or fewer automatic weapons or accessories thereof. It’ll be a huge hit: the number of arm sales will double within your first week, quadruple by the end of the first month, and reach ten times the current level come the end of the fiscal quarter.
No one will sympathize with your cause or believe that you were just trying to “round out by the power base by putting everyone at an equal footing.” Even your history as a celebrated member of the ACLU won’t save you from accusations of racism and hate mongering. You’ll forever sully the useful, practical lone infrastructure that so many people have been able to better their lives through, and you’ll do it tomorrow with the stroke of a pen when you sign the paperwork to make your ill-fated, ill-conceived, observably amoral 401C.
Congratulations Micro-Loan Management Company!
Monday, January 2, 2012
Congratulations Mouse Train Conductor!
You’re a mouse who conducts a tiny train. You already know this, we’re telling our readers what’s up, because they might be a little confused. So here’s the deal, READERS:
Mice have trains that run through your walls. That’s what all that scuttling is about. Usually these trains run between key locations, like from the kitchen to the Mousehome, the giant hollowed out collective home that mice have in the center of each and every home they inhabit. Sometimes they stop at the bathroom so mice can get small amounts of toothpaste and watch naked people while they’re wet and soapy (fun fact: mice are almost all perverts). Wherever they go and whatever they do there, they have to get there via the mouse train, and you’re the mouse who drives it.
This means you wear a tiny, adorable conductor’s hat. Sometimes it falls over your eyes and it’s even more adorable. Occasionally you squeak orders at coal-stained mice who stoke your engine. You act imperious to them, but you’re really buddies who hang out later at the mouse-bar, so it’s all still quite adorable.
But that’s all just background for the neophytes. What’s really important is what’s going down today.
Today your train is going to be assaulted by cat-bandits. They’ll have found their way into the wall and, despite being horrified, their instincts towards mindless cruelty will have remained intact. They’ll hiss and strike at you with their claws, trying to rake mice off the train.
But as a stalwart mouse conductor you won’t be perturbed. Instead you’ll simply load your mouse-kett (so cute!) and fire it, point blank, into a cat’s eye, blinding it and giving your train the time it needs to reach the Mousehome. Once you get there you’ll spread word of the approaching threat and rally a small army to combat it. You’ll be celebrated as a hero, and tomorrow you’ll be a mouse-conductor no more, but for now we’d just like to say Congratulations Mouse Train Conductor!
Mice have trains that run through your walls. That’s what all that scuttling is about. Usually these trains run between key locations, like from the kitchen to the Mousehome, the giant hollowed out collective home that mice have in the center of each and every home they inhabit. Sometimes they stop at the bathroom so mice can get small amounts of toothpaste and watch naked people while they’re wet and soapy (fun fact: mice are almost all perverts). Wherever they go and whatever they do there, they have to get there via the mouse train, and you’re the mouse who drives it.
This means you wear a tiny, adorable conductor’s hat. Sometimes it falls over your eyes and it’s even more adorable. Occasionally you squeak orders at coal-stained mice who stoke your engine. You act imperious to them, but you’re really buddies who hang out later at the mouse-bar, so it’s all still quite adorable.
But that’s all just background for the neophytes. What’s really important is what’s going down today.
Today your train is going to be assaulted by cat-bandits. They’ll have found their way into the wall and, despite being horrified, their instincts towards mindless cruelty will have remained intact. They’ll hiss and strike at you with their claws, trying to rake mice off the train.
But as a stalwart mouse conductor you won’t be perturbed. Instead you’ll simply load your mouse-kett (so cute!) and fire it, point blank, into a cat’s eye, blinding it and giving your train the time it needs to reach the Mousehome. Once you get there you’ll spread word of the approaching threat and rally a small army to combat it. You’ll be celebrated as a hero, and tomorrow you’ll be a mouse-conductor no more, but for now we’d just like to say Congratulations Mouse Train Conductor!
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Super Nerd Sunday Presents: Practical Problem Solving and Games!
There are some fantastic thinkers who have considered the pedagogical implications of game and the impact game theory can have on the process of education. James Paul Gee and Jane McGonigal have written some fantastic books on the subject and done some fascinating research on the subject. I’d go so far as to call McGonigal’s work in generating gaming communities with practical impact seminal. Sure, it’s not a global phenomenon yet, but her optimism is so infectious, her generosity and work ethic so inspiring that it’s hard not to see her vision of games changing the world becoming a reality. Each victory for her is a landmark, an assurance that our progress as both a subculture and a cultural whole is indefatigable and unstoppable.
I want to believe in McGonigal’s vision, and in a way I do. But she’s very specific in her goals and her conceptual reinforcement, which is fantastic, and I’m not sure I quite agree yet. Because games have taken a lot of my free time and made me something of a social recluse. Well, games, books and writing together have. And television and film. But I digress.
I also just haven’t noticed the kind of conceptual benefit that McGonigal expresses, and I find some of her abstract attempts at solving specific problems through gameplay models to be somewhat obtuse. She essentially sees games as a means of behavioral reinforcement and structural progression in order to showcase an incremental progress system which makes seemingly insurmountable tasks extremely achievable (as I understand it – apologies to the wonderful Ms. McGonigal if I just misrepresented her here!). Such a system relies on a majority of an effected group participating in such a system – World of Warcraft, for example, wouldn’t be able to support its end-game model of giant fifty person raids without a collective understanding and investment in completing the operation again and again, performing specific tasks that form a portion of a massive collective task. McGonigal’s model of collective problem solving makes total sense, if we can get enough people to participate – she says as much. More people need to play games and play them with the kind of focus she has in mind. If they do so, the world can change, reform into a wonderful, beautiful, better place.
I’ve got a notion that games can improve the world in a more personal and individual fashion, based on another claim that McGonigal makes. In her fantastic TED talk she introduces the idea that games boost our self-esteem by presenting us with manageable problems – a game never asks you to solve an un-solvable puzzle, never puts you in a situation where you don’t have the tools to solve the problem you’re presented with. This is totally true, especially now. Games, since around 1998, have endeavored to never present a player with an absolute fail state, an occasion wherein the player will be totally incapable of advancement. The end result is a system of games that are sometimes quite easy, sometimes quite difficult, but always present players with a task that is inimitably do-able.
The downside of this is that gamers sometimes do things that aren’t necessarily in their best interest, things they can’t necessarily do (I recall a situation where a gamer was shot while attempting to subdue an armed assailant in a public place in…I want to say the Netherlands?) and sometimes develop inflated senses of confidence that make them in some measure unbearable. But all games encourage a sort of problem-solving skill set, a tendency to look for solutions where others see problems, and certain games do this explicitly and, despite their abstraction, in such a fashion that encourages the develop of problem solving skill sets in their users. Games like World of Goo and Portal, for example, force players to engage in systemic problem solving that involves assessing resources, environment and goal and then form an effective solution (perhaps not the one the developers anticipated!) based on these factors. This pattern of behavior and thought isn’t just attuned to this sort of systemic problem solving, however. These are the same factors that enter into practical problem solving.
I’m not sure these skills translate perfectly – I’m not aware of any psychological studies on the matter, and to be perfectly frank I’m not sure how you’d form control groups for assessing such a conditional skill set (though psychologists who assess behavioral traits of “gamers” rarely seem troubled by such concerns) but I will say that I’ve personally come to approach practical problems with a more open mind since I’ve started playing more puzzle games. I’m not saying that it magically made me good at solving problems – rather it made me realize that solving problems is something anyone can do, so long as they carefully observe the tools available to them, the problem facing them and the circumstances surrounding that problem.
Perfect example: I’ve been hand-binding books to help out one of my classmates who are micro-publishing a magazine for our MFA program. Hand binding, unfortunately, is quite difficult and takes a shitload of time. Each book takes thirty to forty minutes of collaborative work to complete, even after the signature pages have been printed. And sewing the book is probably the single most time-consuming part of the process for the worker – four book signatures need to be bound by thick gauge fabric thread, bound tightly and securely. And mistakes can happen.
My mistake occurred before I even began sewing – I miss-measured the amount of string I needed to bind the signatures by around half a book length. As such I found myself at the last signature with most of the book assembled, but a string end where I needed another four inches to finish my spine. After briefly lamenting my plight I looked at the resources I had available, noticed some string remnants from previous bindings (over measuring string is encouraged, as under measuring leads to situations like mine) and realized that I could just knot a remnant into my spine on the inside of the signature I was working on and then complete the project. In the end, I created a book that was indistinguishable from the other copies, thanks to sitting down, assessing my resources, assessing the situation and trying to derive a solution for success. I did this a few more times with miss-bound books with skipped stitches and miss-formed spines.
I know it’s a bit much to say that this is a product of me playing puzzle games – I’ve also been involved in wilderness survival since I was a kid and spent time in elementary school in a club that challenged young students by presenting them with engineering puzzles. But as I play more puzzle games I’ve certainly noticed my aptitude for seeing solutions where others see road blocks improve. Sure, I still fuck up a lot, but that’ll happen. I’ve learned to let my failures inform me and help me form solutions. If something doesn’t work, it’s a lesson that can point me in the right direction.
Sorry if this got a little too anecdotal for some – it’s New Years Eve and I’m somewhat homeless, so I’m writing this as a bounce from couch to couch and my gaming rig sits in a storage unit in downtown Brooklyn. I’ve actually gotten my hands on some games I’m incredibly excited to write about – Star Wars: The Old Republic, the final chapters of Skyrim, Modern Warfare 3 and Rage are all stand-out games with great histories and topos that I want to explore and discuss over the next few weeks. DotA 2 will soon be going live, and a renewed involvement in critical theory and textual analysis in the coming months might find its way in here soon. It’s been a wacky year, and just keeping the content coming has been a challenge over the last few weeks. So if you find this particular SNS lacking, but think the topic of the practical impact of games interesting, I apologize (more so than I usually do for these, which is saying quite a bit) and encourage you to read some Ian Bogost, some James Paul Gee and some Jane McGonigal. There’s some great material on this subject, and a discussion is slowly taking shape around it – if you find the topic interesting you should read up and get involved. Become a bigger part of the community and figure out how games can impact the field you care about more than gaming!
I want to believe in McGonigal’s vision, and in a way I do. But she’s very specific in her goals and her conceptual reinforcement, which is fantastic, and I’m not sure I quite agree yet. Because games have taken a lot of my free time and made me something of a social recluse. Well, games, books and writing together have. And television and film. But I digress.
I also just haven’t noticed the kind of conceptual benefit that McGonigal expresses, and I find some of her abstract attempts at solving specific problems through gameplay models to be somewhat obtuse. She essentially sees games as a means of behavioral reinforcement and structural progression in order to showcase an incremental progress system which makes seemingly insurmountable tasks extremely achievable (as I understand it – apologies to the wonderful Ms. McGonigal if I just misrepresented her here!). Such a system relies on a majority of an effected group participating in such a system – World of Warcraft, for example, wouldn’t be able to support its end-game model of giant fifty person raids without a collective understanding and investment in completing the operation again and again, performing specific tasks that form a portion of a massive collective task. McGonigal’s model of collective problem solving makes total sense, if we can get enough people to participate – she says as much. More people need to play games and play them with the kind of focus she has in mind. If they do so, the world can change, reform into a wonderful, beautiful, better place.
I’ve got a notion that games can improve the world in a more personal and individual fashion, based on another claim that McGonigal makes. In her fantastic TED talk she introduces the idea that games boost our self-esteem by presenting us with manageable problems – a game never asks you to solve an un-solvable puzzle, never puts you in a situation where you don’t have the tools to solve the problem you’re presented with. This is totally true, especially now. Games, since around 1998, have endeavored to never present a player with an absolute fail state, an occasion wherein the player will be totally incapable of advancement. The end result is a system of games that are sometimes quite easy, sometimes quite difficult, but always present players with a task that is inimitably do-able.
The downside of this is that gamers sometimes do things that aren’t necessarily in their best interest, things they can’t necessarily do (I recall a situation where a gamer was shot while attempting to subdue an armed assailant in a public place in…I want to say the Netherlands?) and sometimes develop inflated senses of confidence that make them in some measure unbearable. But all games encourage a sort of problem-solving skill set, a tendency to look for solutions where others see problems, and certain games do this explicitly and, despite their abstraction, in such a fashion that encourages the develop of problem solving skill sets in their users. Games like World of Goo and Portal, for example, force players to engage in systemic problem solving that involves assessing resources, environment and goal and then form an effective solution (perhaps not the one the developers anticipated!) based on these factors. This pattern of behavior and thought isn’t just attuned to this sort of systemic problem solving, however. These are the same factors that enter into practical problem solving.
I’m not sure these skills translate perfectly – I’m not aware of any psychological studies on the matter, and to be perfectly frank I’m not sure how you’d form control groups for assessing such a conditional skill set (though psychologists who assess behavioral traits of “gamers” rarely seem troubled by such concerns) but I will say that I’ve personally come to approach practical problems with a more open mind since I’ve started playing more puzzle games. I’m not saying that it magically made me good at solving problems – rather it made me realize that solving problems is something anyone can do, so long as they carefully observe the tools available to them, the problem facing them and the circumstances surrounding that problem.
Perfect example: I’ve been hand-binding books to help out one of my classmates who are micro-publishing a magazine for our MFA program. Hand binding, unfortunately, is quite difficult and takes a shitload of time. Each book takes thirty to forty minutes of collaborative work to complete, even after the signature pages have been printed. And sewing the book is probably the single most time-consuming part of the process for the worker – four book signatures need to be bound by thick gauge fabric thread, bound tightly and securely. And mistakes can happen.
My mistake occurred before I even began sewing – I miss-measured the amount of string I needed to bind the signatures by around half a book length. As such I found myself at the last signature with most of the book assembled, but a string end where I needed another four inches to finish my spine. After briefly lamenting my plight I looked at the resources I had available, noticed some string remnants from previous bindings (over measuring string is encouraged, as under measuring leads to situations like mine) and realized that I could just knot a remnant into my spine on the inside of the signature I was working on and then complete the project. In the end, I created a book that was indistinguishable from the other copies, thanks to sitting down, assessing my resources, assessing the situation and trying to derive a solution for success. I did this a few more times with miss-bound books with skipped stitches and miss-formed spines.
I know it’s a bit much to say that this is a product of me playing puzzle games – I’ve also been involved in wilderness survival since I was a kid and spent time in elementary school in a club that challenged young students by presenting them with engineering puzzles. But as I play more puzzle games I’ve certainly noticed my aptitude for seeing solutions where others see road blocks improve. Sure, I still fuck up a lot, but that’ll happen. I’ve learned to let my failures inform me and help me form solutions. If something doesn’t work, it’s a lesson that can point me in the right direction.
Sorry if this got a little too anecdotal for some – it’s New Years Eve and I’m somewhat homeless, so I’m writing this as a bounce from couch to couch and my gaming rig sits in a storage unit in downtown Brooklyn. I’ve actually gotten my hands on some games I’m incredibly excited to write about – Star Wars: The Old Republic, the final chapters of Skyrim, Modern Warfare 3 and Rage are all stand-out games with great histories and topos that I want to explore and discuss over the next few weeks. DotA 2 will soon be going live, and a renewed involvement in critical theory and textual analysis in the coming months might find its way in here soon. It’s been a wacky year, and just keeping the content coming has been a challenge over the last few weeks. So if you find this particular SNS lacking, but think the topic of the practical impact of games interesting, I apologize (more so than I usually do for these, which is saying quite a bit) and encourage you to read some Ian Bogost, some James Paul Gee and some Jane McGonigal. There’s some great material on this subject, and a discussion is slowly taking shape around it – if you find the topic interesting you should read up and get involved. Become a bigger part of the community and figure out how games can impact the field you care about more than gaming!
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Congratulations Burlesque Comedy Lady!
Today you’re a sexy lady who tells jokes! You’re going to get up, go to a coffee shop dressed in a sweatshirt, and write jokes for most of the day without speaking to anyone. You’ll listen to a lot of peppy, upbeat music while you do so and occasionally read articles from various online news sources.
The barrista will be pretty bored with you since you won’t have any long or embarrassing conversations with anyone while you’re at the coffee shop, but she’ll honor the fifty-cent refill policy of the coffee shop all the same each time you come up to her with an empty cup.
When you’ve spent around six hours working you’ll head home, cook dinner and then write some more. You won’t make money for any of this time, mind you, but you will develop your craft in a dedicated, demanding way that few will see and fewer will understand. Once you’ve eaten you’ll crawl into bed and repeat the whole thing again tomorrow, except tomorrow you’ll cap it off by dressing up really slutty and doing your routine on stage while men who are terrified of speaking to you fetishize you sexually. You won’t get any numbers, but trust us: a lot of guys are going to be thinking of you tonight.
While they masturbate. We wanted to make that clear, since the last paragraph left it a little unclear.
Congratulations Burlesque Comedy Lady!
The barrista will be pretty bored with you since you won’t have any long or embarrassing conversations with anyone while you’re at the coffee shop, but she’ll honor the fifty-cent refill policy of the coffee shop all the same each time you come up to her with an empty cup.
When you’ve spent around six hours working you’ll head home, cook dinner and then write some more. You won’t make money for any of this time, mind you, but you will develop your craft in a dedicated, demanding way that few will see and fewer will understand. Once you’ve eaten you’ll crawl into bed and repeat the whole thing again tomorrow, except tomorrow you’ll cap it off by dressing up really slutty and doing your routine on stage while men who are terrified of speaking to you fetishize you sexually. You won’t get any numbers, but trust us: a lot of guys are going to be thinking of you tonight.
While they masturbate. We wanted to make that clear, since the last paragraph left it a little unclear.
Congratulations Burlesque Comedy Lady!
Friday, December 30, 2011
Congratulations on Being the Best MC Ever!
Many MCs do their derndest to entertain us while they disseminate vital information to crowds. It’ a rough job: they’re generally not very good at entertaining people, or else they would be being announced rather than MCing people, but they also provide us with vital information, like who is coming on stage next and when that cystic fibrosis picnic is going down.
The result is a group of socially stunted, awkward people who like attention but can’t really deal with having attention paid to them- a troublesome group of well meaning folk who aren’t really trying to hurt anyone, but can’t help but draw some ire for just being so unlikable. Today there’s going to be a dent in that perception of MCs, though, because today you’re going to debut on stage.
“Welcome to the Laugh Shack,” you’ll announce to the crowd. They’ll be unruly, staring at one another, yammering on about who knows what; their cats, their taxes, their insanely boring jobs. It’ll seem like they’re absolutely incapable of shutting the fuck up and letting you announce who was about to show up on stage after you leave.
Most MCs would just tell a few shitty jokes and maybe do some light crowd work, but not you. You’re just going to unzip your pants, drop your trousers to your knees and let your dick hang out. Then you’ll tense your kegels and squint real hard and make the magic happen.
Fireworks will shoot out of your dick.
They’ll be small fireworks. They won’t go high – they won’t even hit the ceiling of the comedy club, which will be a modest eight feet. They’ll be bright and a multitude of colors. They’ll all arc and explode perfectly, above and in front of the crowd, silencing them in awe.
After around thirty seconds of that you’ll zip your pants back up and move your mouth back to the microphone.
“Our first act is going to be Nick Thune. Please give him a big round of applause!”
Your introduction wsill have been awkward, but that’ll be one warmed up crowd. Their applause will come as a cascade and Nick Thune will come out laughing, guitar in hand.
“Let’s hear it for that MC. Wow. Just wow,” he’ll begin.
You’ll receive a call at nine AM the next morning from the club manager, asking you to come back and MC again that very night.
Congratulations on Being the Best MC Ever!
The result is a group of socially stunted, awkward people who like attention but can’t really deal with having attention paid to them- a troublesome group of well meaning folk who aren’t really trying to hurt anyone, but can’t help but draw some ire for just being so unlikable. Today there’s going to be a dent in that perception of MCs, though, because today you’re going to debut on stage.
“Welcome to the Laugh Shack,” you’ll announce to the crowd. They’ll be unruly, staring at one another, yammering on about who knows what; their cats, their taxes, their insanely boring jobs. It’ll seem like they’re absolutely incapable of shutting the fuck up and letting you announce who was about to show up on stage after you leave.
Most MCs would just tell a few shitty jokes and maybe do some light crowd work, but not you. You’re just going to unzip your pants, drop your trousers to your knees and let your dick hang out. Then you’ll tense your kegels and squint real hard and make the magic happen.
Fireworks will shoot out of your dick.
They’ll be small fireworks. They won’t go high – they won’t even hit the ceiling of the comedy club, which will be a modest eight feet. They’ll be bright and a multitude of colors. They’ll all arc and explode perfectly, above and in front of the crowd, silencing them in awe.
After around thirty seconds of that you’ll zip your pants back up and move your mouth back to the microphone.
“Our first act is going to be Nick Thune. Please give him a big round of applause!”
Your introduction wsill have been awkward, but that’ll be one warmed up crowd. Their applause will come as a cascade and Nick Thune will come out laughing, guitar in hand.
“Let’s hear it for that MC. Wow. Just wow,” he’ll begin.
You’ll receive a call at nine AM the next morning from the club manager, asking you to come back and MC again that very night.
Congratulations on Being the Best MC Ever!
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Congratulations Porpoise Mechanic!
Most mechanics aren’t very bright. Not to say they’re stupid, they’re just not scientist material: they’ve got good heads, but they don’t generally invent stuff.
You’re special in that regard: you invented an above-water breathing apparatus that allows you, a porpoise, to explore the world outside the ocean to your heart’s content, manipulate objects with alarming dexterity and you work as a mechanic when you’re not inventing shit.
Oh, you’re also a porpoise who fixes cars. That makes you special too.
Anyhow, today you’re going to get an especially cool car to fix. Someone’s going to bring a big old ‘Cuda (pun unintended, but still great) from the mid sixties in. The customer will be a middle-aged businessman type, someone who likes muscle cars but doesn’t know a break pad from a drive shaft. He’ll want to know how much the whole rig will cost to fix.
You’ll smile (an imperceptible gesture for most people, because you’re a porpoise and people can’t easily interpret your facial expressions) and know right away that if you quote too high he’ll offer to sell you the car right then and there. It’ll be a fierce old beast, but the chassis will be all that’s left: you’ll be able to restore the entire thing for around ten or twenty grand in parts, far more in labor, but you’ll look him right in the eye and tell him, using your dolphin to English translator, just what you think of his attempt to get a car he can’t handle with your quote.
“Hundred thousand, hundred twenty,” the tinny robot voice will squawk.
The businessman will curse up and down, throwing shit about and swearing about the man who sold him the car, who told him exactly how much it would cost to fix it in parts but left out details like labor and over-quoting. When he calms down you’ll place one of your metal pincers on his arm and make him an offer he’ll be ready to hear.
“I will take the whole thing off your hands for twelve thousand dollars,” you’ll squawk. He’ll look at you like you’re crazy – he paid eight thousand for the whole wreck, along with a few hundred to get it to your shop. But after the two of you discuss it, and you use words like pet project and imply that you might sell the car to him after you patch it up if the fancy strikes you, he’ll come around.
At the end of the day your bank account (quite robust thanks to your inventions) will be down twelve grand, but you’ll have a sweet ass ‘Cuda with drop top that you can fix up and then ride around in wearing your driving robot suit and a burning desire to get that sucker gutted and fixed up. It’s going to look fucking awesome when you’re finished and driving around, so be sure to take it for a spin or two around our neighborhood.
Congratulations Porpoise Mechanic!
You’re special in that regard: you invented an above-water breathing apparatus that allows you, a porpoise, to explore the world outside the ocean to your heart’s content, manipulate objects with alarming dexterity and you work as a mechanic when you’re not inventing shit.
Oh, you’re also a porpoise who fixes cars. That makes you special too.
Anyhow, today you’re going to get an especially cool car to fix. Someone’s going to bring a big old ‘Cuda (pun unintended, but still great) from the mid sixties in. The customer will be a middle-aged businessman type, someone who likes muscle cars but doesn’t know a break pad from a drive shaft. He’ll want to know how much the whole rig will cost to fix.
You’ll smile (an imperceptible gesture for most people, because you’re a porpoise and people can’t easily interpret your facial expressions) and know right away that if you quote too high he’ll offer to sell you the car right then and there. It’ll be a fierce old beast, but the chassis will be all that’s left: you’ll be able to restore the entire thing for around ten or twenty grand in parts, far more in labor, but you’ll look him right in the eye and tell him, using your dolphin to English translator, just what you think of his attempt to get a car he can’t handle with your quote.
“Hundred thousand, hundred twenty,” the tinny robot voice will squawk.
The businessman will curse up and down, throwing shit about and swearing about the man who sold him the car, who told him exactly how much it would cost to fix it in parts but left out details like labor and over-quoting. When he calms down you’ll place one of your metal pincers on his arm and make him an offer he’ll be ready to hear.
“I will take the whole thing off your hands for twelve thousand dollars,” you’ll squawk. He’ll look at you like you’re crazy – he paid eight thousand for the whole wreck, along with a few hundred to get it to your shop. But after the two of you discuss it, and you use words like pet project and imply that you might sell the car to him after you patch it up if the fancy strikes you, he’ll come around.
At the end of the day your bank account (quite robust thanks to your inventions) will be down twelve grand, but you’ll have a sweet ass ‘Cuda with drop top that you can fix up and then ride around in wearing your driving robot suit and a burning desire to get that sucker gutted and fixed up. It’s going to look fucking awesome when you’re finished and driving around, so be sure to take it for a spin or two around our neighborhood.
Congratulations Porpoise Mechanic!
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