Congratulations on Finishing Off Your Cousin!

There’s a trick to it. You never make eye contact. That’s the trick.

With your wrist straining, your cousin’s face contorted into a rictus, it’ll be hard not to look him in the eye, as if to say “Really? That’s the face you want to make right now?” His breathless gasps will come in as clipped, fractured things. His pants around his ankles will twitch with each quaint spasm and when he finally convulses your hand will slow, then stop altogether, knuckles still tight around the shaft of his cock.

“Thanks,” he’ll breathe away from you, his hands darting downwards to shove yours away from his penis. Your fingers will be sopped through with a mix of lubricant and semen, which will seem odd. Semen, in the movies, always flies away. You won’t know how it got on your hand since, in addition to not looking at his face, you weren’t looking at his dick.

As he buttons up his pants you’ll look around for a paper towel or something, anything, to clean yourself up. Your best bet will be an old, stained white t-shirt on your cousin’s bedroom floor. You’ll pick it up and wipe your hand clean without him noticing. Then you’ll check your clothes to make sure you’re clean and walk out, suddenly incredibly happy that you decided not to go all the way with him.

Congratulations on Finishing Off Your Cousin!

Congratulations on Capturing That Ancient Evil In Your Stepmom's Corpse!

Your stepmom is a total bitch. That’s why you killed her with a piano wire. But it turns out Johnny Law gets all up in arms when you murder someone, at least when they weren’t trying to murder you, so now you’ve got a whole new can-o-worms to deal with in the form of your stepmom’s dead body.

But, years ago, you made a pact with a demon whose name cannot be spoken with our mortal language, in exchange for some funyuns and a stylish hat that went out of style back in the mid-oughts. You told it you’d help it break into this world or, failing that, grant it your immortal soul to toy with for all eternity. So, with the vessel of your stepmom’s course inside of a protective salt circle and a bunch of cats to sacrifice, you’re going to bring your demon buddy into the world, feet first.

“I RETURN,” the shapeless evil will screech.

“Awesome!” you’ll clap your hands and laugh in a moment of self-congratulation. “So far so good.”

“WHY AM I SUMMONED?” The voice will skirt along the room, seeking purchase.

“My stepmom is dead and I want you to take her body. You just have to promise not to murder me and you have to pretend to be my stepmom, at least until I move out of my dad’s house.”

“WHY HAVEN’T YOU MOVED OUT ALREADY? YOU’RE ALMOST FORTY,” the voice will have a mocking edge to it, like it’s judging you.

“Look, I’m still getting my shit together, okay? Do you want this corpse or not?”

The voice will turn silent for a few seconds, then erupt anew.

“IT IS ACCEPTABLE.”

A storm of light and fury will fill the room, penetrating your eyes, your ears, your very mind and, of course, your stepmom’s corpse. The corpse will lurch forward and backward, head shifting at odd angles as it finds new purchase upon your stepmom’s neck, still gashed open from the piano wire. Your stepmom’s body will shudder, her eyes will fly open and skin around her throat will close suddenly. Her fingers will snap into fists and then relax. Then the corpse will rise to its feet and grin.

“It is accomplished,” she’ll murmur. Then your stepmom’s demon inhabited body will cross the salt circle and start doing your laundry, which is a relief because you’ll almost be out of clean clothes at this point and you’re totally incapable of fending for yourself for even a short period of time.

Congratulations on Capturing That Ancient Evil In Your Stepmom’s Corpse!

Congratulations on Using Your Hand-Mirror to Save Everyone in the Mine Shaft!

You know how McGuyver sometimes used common household items to solve big problems? Today you’re going to do that. Sort of. When the mine shaft collapses, people are going to freak out. Hardcore. They’ll be running around, trying to figure out who’s going to be eaten first, determining whether or not there’s any air flowing into the tiny pocket of rock that has become your home.

Everyone but you. You’ll just be standing there, smirking at yourself, holding your hand mirror. Your mine-buddies will have made fun of you for carrying that around for years, almost a whole decade, but you never listened to them. You never listened to them because you knew the truth behind the mirror, that it was far, far more than a simple vanity. That it was, in fact, the prison for a powerful djinn.

So while your co-miners are screaming at one another, brandishing pickaxes and trying to figure out who’s gonna die first, you’ll open the mirror, shine your headlamp into it and calmly say “I’d like to make a wish please.”

A flash of light will ensue, a torrent of energy coursing forth from the mirror. The light and energy will coalesce, converge and form into a shape vaguely reminiscent of a man without legs, his torso fading into a vague drift of energy tapering towards the ground. The apparition’s skin will take on an almost un-nameable color, simultaneously orange and yellow and pure pale blue. Its eyes will be white, beaming out towards the universe, filling the cave with ethereal light.

“YOU HAVE SUMMONED THE DJINN OF MANNERS LITTLE FLESHLING. SPEAK YOUR WILL POLITELY.”

Your co-miners will stop running around and stare at the giant creature of light in front of them. Their chattering will fall to silence, and the only sound in the cave will be that of their pick-axes hitting the ground.

“I’d very much appreciate it if you saved me and my douchebag co-workers from this cave-in,” you’ll tell the djinn.

The djinn, ever thorough, will smile at you. “WOULD YOU ALSO LIKE VERY MUCH TO SAVE THE NON-DOUCHEBAG CO-WORKERS IN THIS CAVE-IN?”

You’ll smile and nod back at him. “I’d love it, old friend.”

He’ll laugh a belly laugh and teleport you and all of your co-miners out of the mine and into a giant field filled with Cadbury Cream Eggs.

“SEE YOU NEXT TIME,” the djinn will say as his body fades back towards the mirror. You’ll wave at him, smiling, as your co-workers stare at you.

“It’s been a pleasure as always,” you’ll whisper into the mirror as you snap it closed.

“Why did you wish for a job as something other than a miner?” your non-douchebag co-worker will ask. You’ll smile and shake your head at him, largely because your severe brain trauma, which you could also wish away, will prevent you from forming a coherent answer.

Congratulations on Using Your Hand-Mirror to Save Everyone in the Mine Shaft!

Congratulations on Growing Mold Where No Mold Has Grown Before!

There aren’t a lot of places where mold hasn’t grown on earth. Technically it’s growing all the time under the ocean, where we’re largely unsure of just what’s going on. It’s in caves, even caves we haven’t been in. It’s in our houses, our basements, our root cellars. The only place mold isn’t necessarily is at the top of really high mountains.

Mold’s been trying to grow up there for a long, long time, though. But since mold acts a lot of independent agency, it needs some help to get there. That’s where you come in.

You’re a notoriously dirty mountaineer, a champion of mold and a fan of mid-eighties hip hop music about hat stores. You’ve carried moss to the peaks of most mountains in continental America, and mold has celebrated you for it, withholding its consumption of your genitals until such a time as it believes it is necessary.

Today you’re going to fulfill your ultimate destiny. Today you’re going to climb to the top of Mount Everest, alone, and let mold lay its precious little spores up there at the top of the world.

It’ll be a long, arduous climb. Over the course of the climb you’ll break one arm, one leg and lose one lung. But the mold will fill in the gaps in bone and the failing flesh and flex itself, giving you the strength you need to reach the summit, the ultimate peak in the world. Once you get there your life will be ebbing, but you won’t care. You’ll plant your flag, grin at the sun, and then let the cold overtake you.

The mold, with its heart in the center of your crotch, will silently applaud you for your efforts. Then it’ll consume your entire body before the heat leaves it and let the cold come and freeze it inside your corpse, waiting for a day when global warming allows it to explode out of your corpse and propagate itself across the earth.

Congratulations on Growing Mold Where No Mold Has Grown Before!

Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Star Wars Chores!

In the past, MMO lategames have always stood as anathema to me. Not because I don’t enjoy big time investments. I LOVE big time investments, that’s part of why I’m a gamer. If you don’t like spending a lot of time doing one thing reading books and playing video games aren’t really activities for you. No, I hate the lategame of MMOs because they usually, almost always, take the form of work. It’s essentially a set of time commitments or daily activities you need, absolutely need, to participate in. You’ll get a schedule from your manager (guildmaster) and pound away at your tasks until they’re done. Granted, your tasks might be things like “kill everything in this magical fantasy valley” instead of “alphabetize these files before 5 PM” but it’s still essentially a job. Best case scenario, it’s a set of chores that you’re asked to do and, should you choose to avoid them, do not experience any adverse consequences for choosing to do so. Though you will feel like you’ve achieved less and your character, which is an analogy for your apartment in this situation I guess, will be kind of a mess.

I’ve just started investing myself in Star Wars: The Old Republic’s lategame content, and they do this in spades. With Daily Quests that you’re asked to engage in time and time again, end-game instances that insist on being run multiple times so that each and every member of your party can get their absolute best gear, it can get out of hand quickly. I’ve spent three hours a day every day of my vacation doing my SWTOR chores over the last two weeks, and it’s been fucking killing me. I finish my daily quests feeling exhausted rather than refreshed. Instead of feeling ready to attack the day I think about what else I could play to recharge my batteries a little and get ready to plan that lesson or rework that poem. It’s kind of a nightmare. So why am I still doing it?

There are three answers to this. One is that Star Wars: The Old Republic is just fun to play. Add lightsabers to a game and holy shit, you got me. I will do whatever you ask me to do to get me a little bit of that glowing stick action. I will play fucking Cooking Mama if she has a lightsaber. As repetitive as this late game content is, it’s still SWTOR and I’m still a destructive whirlwind of dark side energy, ripping up everything around me as quick as I can. It’s tough to be annoyed during SWTOR’s admittedly rote combat gameplay, by sheer merit of its inherent specatacle.

The second, more honest answer is that SWTOR paces its late-game content quite well, rewarding players consistently and providing them with some pretty nice carrots for enduring effort. In just over a week of playing daily-quest content I’ve got from having 12,000 hit points (putting me at the low end of being able to engage with late-game content) to having 15,000 hit points. Instead of struggling through fights I tear them down. I’ve got from thinking my Powertech was like playing the game on easy-mode to relishing my time with my marauder, stacking up rage and unleashing it in torrents that drop enemy health like it’s hot. My character has improved dramatically in a very short period of time, arguably more than she did when she was leveling up normally, and she’s looking to get a lot stronger in the next few weeks. I’ve still got two major pieces of daily equipment to get my hands on, and then there are the crafting recipes that you can grab with daily commendations. I can see myself doing daily quests and getting a lot out of it for at least two more months, maybe more if Bioware continues expanding daily content the way they have been with the Legacy updates. And it’s tough to see any other future for SWTOR: their subscription fees seem to be paying into little mini-expansions that stick around and really do make the game…better!

Which leads into the last reason I’m still playing: all of the lategame content is gated behind this daily system of repetition, and all of this lategame content still has story material in it. And this story material is still driving me to play. I’ve finished up every ounce of class and companion story available to the Sith Warrior at this point. I’m still working on cracking the Bounty Hunter. I plan on playing through every class story in due time, though I’m not invested in it right now, given the combination of my SWTOR chores and work in general. But the story, even the promise of additional story, is still a big draw for me. I really, really want to see new parts of this world, even if they look a lot like parts I’ve already experienced. SWTOR tells a damn good story, and its Flashpoints are a stroke of genius. I’m already chomping at the bit to piss off my party mates by actually taking the time to listen to the story when I play end-game content (another problem with SWTOR being the disconnect between a largely more civil than usual MMO player base and an min-maxing end-game player base every bit as douchey as any other game’s).

I don’t expect it to be anywhere as involved as the wonderful storytelling that populates any of the class storylines. But I do think it’ll be enjoyable. I want more bite-sized SWTOR story chunks in my life, and thanks to the late-game repetition engine, I’m going to get them.

That said, it would be lovely if there was a way to avoid making the entire game feel like one big chore. I understand why the Daily Quests are Daily Quests, why mechanics are in place to prevent players from grinding the game until it eats itself or to keep them from ruining the economy of play. But it still feels odd to reluctantly play a game just to make sure I’ve done what I can with it for a given day. Today’s the first day I’ve taken off of my SWTOR chores in a week, and it feels liberating to do so. But I’m still lamenting the daily commendations I’m giving up by not playing right now. Maybe I can still get them tonight, after I’ve done everything else I want to do today. I don’t know, I’m just thinking out loud here.

Congratulations Ejaculate Jackson Pollock!

This one’s pretty simple. You make paintings by jerking off on to campus. You then sometimes splatter paint on the canvas as well, but mostly you’re just jerking off while thinking about the concept you title the painting after.

You used to do landscapes, but then you tried this shit and it worked out really well for you financially so you just kept at it. We’d feel bad for you if you weren’t so hilariously successful.

Today you’re going to start your first major gallery show in Minneapolis. Your work will sell like hotcakes. We don’t necessarily dig it, even though we get the concept, but we’re not going to begrudge you your success. We will recommend that you branch out your interests, especially before fall of 2014, when ejaculation art won’t be nearly as gauche as it is today.

Do with this advice what you will, and try to be a little less pretentious in general. Also, stop wearing that hat.

Congratulations Ejaculate Jackson Pollock!

Congratulations on Telling Her How You Really Feel!

“Look, it’s just… It’s too big for me.”

By her facial expression it’ll be immediately apparent that she’ll think you’re talking about her vagina. You’ll scramble to recover.

“Not that! The books.”

You’ll let your hand rest on the pile of George R.R. Martin books that she’ll have stacked next to your bed. They’ll rise above the box frame and mattress that you sleep on. If you were standing you think they’d come over your knee, but you won’t want to stand. You’ll know that this is a tender moment, and that standing up would destroy any chance the two of you have at making it through together. So you’ll pat those books and look at her with your doe-iest of eyes.

“I don’t know if I can read all of these.”

She’ll shrug at you, unwashed hair shuffling over her eyes with the gesture. “I’m reading your dumb book.” She’ll punctuate her sentence by trying to blow some of her hair off her face futilely. A single strand will lift up and then fall back down across her nose. It’ll be adorable.

You’ll sigh. “Neuromancer is like half the length of one of these books. And you said you liked it.”

She’ll lean her shoulders forward and fold her arms so that her breasts press against them. It’ll look kind of uncomfortable, but it’ll also accentuate how big her breasts are and make you want to push her back on your bed and just make out with her until she forgets about books. But that would, at best, postpone this conversation and, far more likely, backfire disastrously, and you’ll know it. So you’ll take your hand off the book pile and spin around on your ass so you’re sitting down facing her criss-cross-applesauce. She’ll look up at you from her breasts through a tangled network of vines of hair.

“I don’t wanna dismiss your interests, and I really like you. And I’ll try to read one of them. But I started the first one and I’m not sure I like it. That doesn’t mean I don’t like you, it just means I don’t like something as much as you do. But I don’t want you to think the way I feel about the books is the way I feel about you. Or us.” You’ll crane your head underneath her chin so you’re looking up at her. “Maybe we can compromise.”

She’ll mumble something in response. You’ll lean in close to hear her better, ear turned towards her, eyes fixed indistinctly on your own sheets, the unspoken question, when did I change these last?

Her response will be unexpected. First the lips, then the tongue, then her teeth lapping upwards across your ear. Then her hands on your arms, spinning you into place, pushing you back with the strength and speed of shock until she’s sitting on top of you, jeans against your jeans, fabric already beginning to strain in wonderful agony. She’ll lean in close to your face so her hair hangs over you too, so you’re inside of the vines now, looking up at her eyes, nose, lips.

“I said I guess you only have to read the first one,” she’ll murmur down, no louder than before. You’ll hear her just fine this time.

“That sounds fair,” you’ll whisper back up. Her lips will split, expose teeth, and then you’ll lose sight of them as her mouth darts towards yours.

Congratulations on Telling Her How You Really Feel!