You’re a scheming amusement park owner from a long line of scheming amusement park owners. This means that you’re almost assuredly going to lose your livelihood (arms smuggling) when a group of meddling teens step into your park and fuck up your semi-legal business bringing automatic weapons to militia members the world over. It’s happened to your dad and your granddad before him, and you fully expect to one day be outwitted by teens.
But unlike your forbearers you have no desire to operate under any sort of moral code which bars doing harm do those self-righteous little shits who tour the country in a van, searching for smugglers and people defrauding insurance companies so they can turn them into “the man.”
That’s why you’ve filled your amusement park with a series of deadly traps protecting your various smuggled goods. You’ve also hired people kicked out of Blackwater because they were too violent in order to maintain security in public areas during off hours. That means your amusement park becomes a giant deathtrap when the lights go down each evening.
And next Saturday when a comically balanced band of twenty-somethings enters your park and starts poking through all your shit looking for the piles of opium you keep in the empty staff lockers and the guns you hide in the tidal cave all of your careful planning is going to pay off.
The straight laced guy who wears cardigans and ascots will be garroted by one of your “security guards” when he asks about being able to use the restroom, and the slutty one will be gang raped by a number of Blackwater employees before being thrown into a well, where she’ll live out the last few days of her life in total agony.
The stoner and the nerdy girl will evade your guards, but they’ll be killed when their hilarious dog trips a Claymore mine rigged to a tripwire turns all of them into a big red smear all over your staff lockers.
There’s going to be quite a mess to clean up, and you’ll have to figure out what to do with the bodies and the van, but you’ll have kept your livelihood intact for a few more years and defeated the curse which has plagued your family since the 1970’s.
So Congratulations on Dealing With Those Meddling Kids! We really hope we never have occasion to deal with you, because you’re a horrible, psychotic person and we’re not entirely we ever want to know what you’re capable of.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
Congratulations on Surviving the Explosion!
You’ve managed a Macy’s for nearly three years at this point. You know every inch of roadway between its welcoming doors and the basement entrance to your mom’s house. You know that if you don’t assign the proper array of young women to the perfume section disaster will likely strike and an elderly Jewish woman will be blinded. You know just what to expect in your painfully monotonous daily life.
Except on this day.
It comes once a year like clockwork, but it never seems to make a difference. Sometimes things will barely change at all and sometimes hell will visit itself upon your shop, blood running across the floors deep enough to stain the hems of some of the more traditional dresses in the Women’s section.
You’ve learned from the mistakes of your predecessors. Craig, the manager before you, wouldn’t prepare at all. And Jack, the previous manager, would hire Chechnyan mercenaries to maintain “order” in the store. The day of the Macy’s Half Off Sale has been a red-letter day in each of their histories, and this is your last chance to get it right.
You’ll take a middling approach after seeing both Craig and Jack fail under the pressure of their own extremes. Early in the morning you’ll deploy private military contractors in key departments throughout the store, each armed with a cattle prod and a can of pepper spray. You’ll take the same approach to encouraging moderation and creativity that the Navy takes with the Marines, limiting their resources severely in order to force them to reconsider their approach to both their task and their survival.
You’ll also have a back up.
Things will all be in place, your department managers equipped with two way radios and “panic buttons.” You’ll nod to Jesus, your ethnic assistant manager, and he’ll nod in response before unlocking the front door. Nothing will wait outside but the cool dawn air.
At first all will be silent. The recession, it seems, will have spared you your horrible fate. But then a slow drumming will rise in volume, growing into a cacaphony as if a herd of bison were charging your shop. You’ll know this sound all too well after nearly a decade of employment at Macy’s. It will be the sound of potential disaster.
After a moment stretching into eternity the sound will give way to the creaking of the main doors as a press of humanity forces itself into your store, overweight middle aged women blindly stomping and snapping at one another as they press through the doors. You’ll wonder for a moment why none of them have thrown anything through the front window to make a new entrance before you realize: it’s instinct that drives them, not reason. Their minds are too clouded by bargains to conceive of such advanced problem solving techniques as shattering glass with a nearby trash can.
“First wave,” you’ll say into your walkey-talkie in your gruffest Batman impression.
No response will come from the PMCs on the first floor, but you’ll see them surge forward to meet your customers, jabbing forward with their prods and spraying their mace wide. At first the tide of humanity will slow around them, but after a few seconds their progress will stem and then turn. A thirty-seven year old man will be dragged to the ground and henpecked with high heeled shoes. A fifty-two year old will be blinded by a swinging purse before being knocked to the ground and having his skull crushed under a two-hundred and eighty pound woman’s pump. All around men, men you hired to keep yourself safe, will be dying.
You’ll shake your head at their plight before turning and nodding to Jesus. Jesus will nod again in response before speaking into his walkey-talkie.
“Back please,” he’ll lisp before fiddling with the nobs of his two-way until it clicks off awkwardly. You’ll bite your lip and watch as men rush backwards towards you in futility, screaming as they fall under a wave of rictus faced women. Not a single man will have reached the escalators when you blow the charges and send a cascade of explosions rippling up the devices.
Shrapnel will fly in every direction, giving the tide of humanity a momentary pause and injuring several of your men. Jesus will take a piece of metal in his throat and go down, gurgling and clutching himself as his life leaks out.
But you’ll stand there, proudly looking out over the smoking wreckage of your store as the baffled mass of humanity stumbles about below. You’ll have survived the first hurdle. As you direct your men to the stairwells, where they’ll be able to better control the flow of middle-aged women, you’ll give yourself a little mental pat on the back.
You’ve saved at least half the store, and that’s better than most managers can do. Your job should be secure for at least another three months, until your next performance assessment.
Congratulations on Surviving the Explosion!
Except on this day.
It comes once a year like clockwork, but it never seems to make a difference. Sometimes things will barely change at all and sometimes hell will visit itself upon your shop, blood running across the floors deep enough to stain the hems of some of the more traditional dresses in the Women’s section.
You’ve learned from the mistakes of your predecessors. Craig, the manager before you, wouldn’t prepare at all. And Jack, the previous manager, would hire Chechnyan mercenaries to maintain “order” in the store. The day of the Macy’s Half Off Sale has been a red-letter day in each of their histories, and this is your last chance to get it right.
You’ll take a middling approach after seeing both Craig and Jack fail under the pressure of their own extremes. Early in the morning you’ll deploy private military contractors in key departments throughout the store, each armed with a cattle prod and a can of pepper spray. You’ll take the same approach to encouraging moderation and creativity that the Navy takes with the Marines, limiting their resources severely in order to force them to reconsider their approach to both their task and their survival.
You’ll also have a back up.
Things will all be in place, your department managers equipped with two way radios and “panic buttons.” You’ll nod to Jesus, your ethnic assistant manager, and he’ll nod in response before unlocking the front door. Nothing will wait outside but the cool dawn air.
At first all will be silent. The recession, it seems, will have spared you your horrible fate. But then a slow drumming will rise in volume, growing into a cacaphony as if a herd of bison were charging your shop. You’ll know this sound all too well after nearly a decade of employment at Macy’s. It will be the sound of potential disaster.
After a moment stretching into eternity the sound will give way to the creaking of the main doors as a press of humanity forces itself into your store, overweight middle aged women blindly stomping and snapping at one another as they press through the doors. You’ll wonder for a moment why none of them have thrown anything through the front window to make a new entrance before you realize: it’s instinct that drives them, not reason. Their minds are too clouded by bargains to conceive of such advanced problem solving techniques as shattering glass with a nearby trash can.
“First wave,” you’ll say into your walkey-talkie in your gruffest Batman impression.
No response will come from the PMCs on the first floor, but you’ll see them surge forward to meet your customers, jabbing forward with their prods and spraying their mace wide. At first the tide of humanity will slow around them, but after a few seconds their progress will stem and then turn. A thirty-seven year old man will be dragged to the ground and henpecked with high heeled shoes. A fifty-two year old will be blinded by a swinging purse before being knocked to the ground and having his skull crushed under a two-hundred and eighty pound woman’s pump. All around men, men you hired to keep yourself safe, will be dying.
You’ll shake your head at their plight before turning and nodding to Jesus. Jesus will nod again in response before speaking into his walkey-talkie.
“Back please,” he’ll lisp before fiddling with the nobs of his two-way until it clicks off awkwardly. You’ll bite your lip and watch as men rush backwards towards you in futility, screaming as they fall under a wave of rictus faced women. Not a single man will have reached the escalators when you blow the charges and send a cascade of explosions rippling up the devices.
Shrapnel will fly in every direction, giving the tide of humanity a momentary pause and injuring several of your men. Jesus will take a piece of metal in his throat and go down, gurgling and clutching himself as his life leaks out.
But you’ll stand there, proudly looking out over the smoking wreckage of your store as the baffled mass of humanity stumbles about below. You’ll have survived the first hurdle. As you direct your men to the stairwells, where they’ll be able to better control the flow of middle-aged women, you’ll give yourself a little mental pat on the back.
You’ve saved at least half the store, and that’s better than most managers can do. Your job should be secure for at least another three months, until your next performance assessment.
Congratulations on Surviving the Explosion!
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Congratulations on Going to the Movies!
You’ve been a hostage for a while now and that basement cellar has got to be feeling pretty small. Well, we’ve got some good news for you! You’re going to be getting out soon!
Tomorrow after James, the masked guard with soft hands who “rapes” you, finishes up he’s going to fall asleep spooning you, leaving your needs unsatisfied just as he almost always does. You’ll bite your lip and tenderly slip out from between his arms, leaving the body pillow they offered you as your sole creature comfort in his arms.
You’ll whisper an apology to the pillow as you pull away, making James start in his sleep. But after a heart wrenching few seconds he’ll settle back into his slumber and you’ll carefully rummage through his pants until you find his keys.
After that it’ll be a quick tiptoe through the basement of a certain Halliburton ex-CEO before you’re free. You’ll want to rush off to a news studio to make your story public, but you’ll be pretty far away and it’ll be super late. You won’t want to wait around for a bus for fear of being recaptured and you won’t want to call a cab because you only have around thirty dollars in your wallet and that isn’t nearly enough for the fare.
So your options will be limited to finding a nearby newspaper office (since newspapers require actual work to produce they never close, unlike television news studios, open for only half an hour every day, or one hour in some special cases) or finding a place to lay low until daybreak.
And while Cheyenne, Wyoming doesn’t have a lot of people who can read it does have a lot of whorehouses and movie theaters!
You’ll be frightened of the sort of whore thirty dollars will get you, so you’ll wander about until you find a shady looking theater open late at night. You’ll purchase a ticket, some popcorn and a cup for water from the concierge and sit in the lobby until Couples Retreat starts.
You won’t have seen any previews, so you won’t know what to expect, but you’ll recognize a bunch of the actors as being fucking hilarious people. After an hour, though, you’ll sort of wish you’d waited a little bit longer in James’ arms before escaping. Maybe your cell really wasn’t so bad after all.
Congratulations on Going to the Movies!
Tomorrow after James, the masked guard with soft hands who “rapes” you, finishes up he’s going to fall asleep spooning you, leaving your needs unsatisfied just as he almost always does. You’ll bite your lip and tenderly slip out from between his arms, leaving the body pillow they offered you as your sole creature comfort in his arms.
You’ll whisper an apology to the pillow as you pull away, making James start in his sleep. But after a heart wrenching few seconds he’ll settle back into his slumber and you’ll carefully rummage through his pants until you find his keys.
After that it’ll be a quick tiptoe through the basement of a certain Halliburton ex-CEO before you’re free. You’ll want to rush off to a news studio to make your story public, but you’ll be pretty far away and it’ll be super late. You won’t want to wait around for a bus for fear of being recaptured and you won’t want to call a cab because you only have around thirty dollars in your wallet and that isn’t nearly enough for the fare.
So your options will be limited to finding a nearby newspaper office (since newspapers require actual work to produce they never close, unlike television news studios, open for only half an hour every day, or one hour in some special cases) or finding a place to lay low until daybreak.
And while Cheyenne, Wyoming doesn’t have a lot of people who can read it does have a lot of whorehouses and movie theaters!
You’ll be frightened of the sort of whore thirty dollars will get you, so you’ll wander about until you find a shady looking theater open late at night. You’ll purchase a ticket, some popcorn and a cup for water from the concierge and sit in the lobby until Couples Retreat starts.
You won’t have seen any previews, so you won’t know what to expect, but you’ll recognize a bunch of the actors as being fucking hilarious people. After an hour, though, you’ll sort of wish you’d waited a little bit longer in James’ arms before escaping. Maybe your cell really wasn’t so bad after all.
Congratulations on Going to the Movies!
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Congratulations on Taking It Like a Champ!
When you show up in the middle of her shift, Cherry’s face will light up. Then she’ll catch your gaze flitting between her and Carl, the three hundred and twenty pound bus-boy from Papua New Guinea, and her glowing smile will collapse into a despaired frown.
“Oh no,” she’ll say, shaking her head.
“Oh yes!” you’ll cry, shaking your bike helmet at her. “Did you really think you could get away with this?”
She’ll rush to your side and place her hands on your chest, cooing at you in a way that threatens to erode your rage. “But honey,” she’ll demure, “you know I never could resist a lil’ taste of brown sugar.”
You’ll steel yourself and push her away.
“He’s three hundred god damn pounds, my dear!” you’ll say, before you realize it’s insensitive and make an apologetic gesture to Carl. “Sorry,” you shout at him across the restaurant.
“No,” he’ll shout back. “Totally deserved under the circumstances.” You’ll nod.
Cherry will roll her eyes and throw her money belt in the general direction of the kitchen before she walks up and taps you one in the nuts. You’ll go down like a sucker but you won’t cry, which is impressive because Cherry used to do Golden Gloves in high school.
As your eyes roll in the back of your head you’ll smile to yourself, thinking that this still went way better than your breakup with Cheryl Crowe.
Congratulations on Taking It Like a Champ!
“Oh no,” she’ll say, shaking her head.
“Oh yes!” you’ll cry, shaking your bike helmet at her. “Did you really think you could get away with this?”
She’ll rush to your side and place her hands on your chest, cooing at you in a way that threatens to erode your rage. “But honey,” she’ll demure, “you know I never could resist a lil’ taste of brown sugar.”
You’ll steel yourself and push her away.
“He’s three hundred god damn pounds, my dear!” you’ll say, before you realize it’s insensitive and make an apologetic gesture to Carl. “Sorry,” you shout at him across the restaurant.
“No,” he’ll shout back. “Totally deserved under the circumstances.” You’ll nod.
Cherry will roll her eyes and throw her money belt in the general direction of the kitchen before she walks up and taps you one in the nuts. You’ll go down like a sucker but you won’t cry, which is impressive because Cherry used to do Golden Gloves in high school.
As your eyes roll in the back of your head you’ll smile to yourself, thinking that this still went way better than your breakup with Cheryl Crowe.
Congratulations on Taking It Like a Champ!
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Congratulations on Removing Your Doo-Rag!
An American Flag Doo-Rag is one hell of a statement. If you’re a Hell’s Angel, it says that you’re a Hells Angel and you really like America. Also that you’re super violent and probably an alcoholic. If you’re not a Hell’s Angel the meaning changes slightly.
If you’re Caucasian it means you’re overweight and impotent. If you’re African-American it means you’re a weight lifter and do martial arts. We’re not sure what it means if you’re Asian. We’re pretty sure most Asian people don’t wear Doo-Rags. Indian guys with American flag Doo-Rags just really dig the United States, and don’t have awesome communication skills.
If any of the above applied to you you’d be totally justified in wearing your American Flag Doo-Rag. But you manage tech support for a middle school in central Indiana. You have no business wearing an American Flag Doo-Rag. You’re terrible at martial arts, and less than an eighth Black to boot. And your dick works just fine. Also, you work out.
That’s why, after reading this post on Tuesday morning you’re going to ceremoniously remove your American Flag Doo-Rag from your head, fold it into a tiny triangle and bury it in your back yard. Anyone who sees you doing so will be treated to one of the most hilarious sights Middle America has offered the rest of the world in years.
We’d love to think you could laugh at yourself, but you wear a piece of clothing with an American flag on it and don’t have any idea who Abby Hoffman is. You honestly thought you were making a patriotic gesture instead of committing what the Founding Fathers™ would’ve considered one of the most egregious acts of disrespect towards your motherland imaginable.
What we’re saying is you’re bad at learning, and that burying the Doo-Rag was a good first step but that you’ll have to keep pressing onward if you ever want to move out of your mom’s house and lose your virginity.
Congratulations on Removing Your Doo-Rag!
If you’re Caucasian it means you’re overweight and impotent. If you’re African-American it means you’re a weight lifter and do martial arts. We’re not sure what it means if you’re Asian. We’re pretty sure most Asian people don’t wear Doo-Rags. Indian guys with American flag Doo-Rags just really dig the United States, and don’t have awesome communication skills.
If any of the above applied to you you’d be totally justified in wearing your American Flag Doo-Rag. But you manage tech support for a middle school in central Indiana. You have no business wearing an American Flag Doo-Rag. You’re terrible at martial arts, and less than an eighth Black to boot. And your dick works just fine. Also, you work out.
That’s why, after reading this post on Tuesday morning you’re going to ceremoniously remove your American Flag Doo-Rag from your head, fold it into a tiny triangle and bury it in your back yard. Anyone who sees you doing so will be treated to one of the most hilarious sights Middle America has offered the rest of the world in years.
We’d love to think you could laugh at yourself, but you wear a piece of clothing with an American flag on it and don’t have any idea who Abby Hoffman is. You honestly thought you were making a patriotic gesture instead of committing what the Founding Fathers™ would’ve considered one of the most egregious acts of disrespect towards your motherland imaginable.
What we’re saying is you’re bad at learning, and that burying the Doo-Rag was a good first step but that you’ll have to keep pressing onward if you ever want to move out of your mom’s house and lose your virginity.
Congratulations on Removing Your Doo-Rag!
Monday, October 26, 2009
Congratulations on Losing Your Shit!
You, like many residents of Utah, have some wack-ass religious beliefs. But unlike most residents of Utah, yours don’t have a god damn thing to do with the prophet Joseph Smith. No, you adhere to a strict lifestyle demanding that you keep all of your waste close by so that you can one day be buried with it.
Did you ever see that one episode of the short-lived Tenacious D show that was on HBO for almost two whole hours? It’s a lot like that, but with fewer hot chicks and some really terrible odors.
But it does help you make some pretty incredible produce. Turns out human waste can be terrific fertilizer, and the relatively unsanitary lifestyle that your cult promotes means plenty of your faith-mates die prematurely and end up in your garden with all their poo scattered around them. The local markets love you, since your process is technically “organic” and your crops turn out huge. Since there’s almost no cost for transport and your beliefs also dictate living in abject poverty that means big savings for pretentious hippy twats who want to buy local.
But guess who doesn’t care for your particular brand of self-righteous bullshit? That’s right, Big Farm™. Those fuckers have kept you from being recognized as a legitimate religion for decades and when their upcoming campaign to torpedo your ability to sell your crops fails they’re going to resort to some good old fashioned low tech sabotage.
They’ll start by throwing rocks at the windowless sheds that you and your cult-mates live in. Since your beliefs demand that you wear ear plugs and blinders while indoors this won’t have much effect on you. Sure, you’ll notice the dents come daybreak, but you’re a cultist who lives in a tin shed. What do you care?
A week later, after their rock hurling endeavor fails to bear fruit, they’ll start blaring rock and roll from hidden speakers nearby. Again, the blinders and earplugs will help counteract their efforts, but the real saving grace will be your cult’s almost universal love of the greatest hits of the 70s and 80s. With the exception of a few suicides you’ll easily outlast those farmers, dancing to Foreigner in the open fields.
When that doesn’t pan out they’ll sneak into your compound late at night and steal the many, many, many jars of fecal matter that decorate your cult headquarters. They won’t get everything, but they’ll get a lot. Enough that you’ll have to seriously reconsider being a member of a faith which now dictates that you can no longer ascend to a higher plane of existence.
We’ll leave you with your thoughts and these pamphlets on Scientology, just to remind you that you could do a lot worse.
Congratulations on Losing Your Shit!
Did you ever see that one episode of the short-lived Tenacious D show that was on HBO for almost two whole hours? It’s a lot like that, but with fewer hot chicks and some really terrible odors.
But it does help you make some pretty incredible produce. Turns out human waste can be terrific fertilizer, and the relatively unsanitary lifestyle that your cult promotes means plenty of your faith-mates die prematurely and end up in your garden with all their poo scattered around them. The local markets love you, since your process is technically “organic” and your crops turn out huge. Since there’s almost no cost for transport and your beliefs also dictate living in abject poverty that means big savings for pretentious hippy twats who want to buy local.
But guess who doesn’t care for your particular brand of self-righteous bullshit? That’s right, Big Farm™. Those fuckers have kept you from being recognized as a legitimate religion for decades and when their upcoming campaign to torpedo your ability to sell your crops fails they’re going to resort to some good old fashioned low tech sabotage.
They’ll start by throwing rocks at the windowless sheds that you and your cult-mates live in. Since your beliefs demand that you wear ear plugs and blinders while indoors this won’t have much effect on you. Sure, you’ll notice the dents come daybreak, but you’re a cultist who lives in a tin shed. What do you care?
A week later, after their rock hurling endeavor fails to bear fruit, they’ll start blaring rock and roll from hidden speakers nearby. Again, the blinders and earplugs will help counteract their efforts, but the real saving grace will be your cult’s almost universal love of the greatest hits of the 70s and 80s. With the exception of a few suicides you’ll easily outlast those farmers, dancing to Foreigner in the open fields.
When that doesn’t pan out they’ll sneak into your compound late at night and steal the many, many, many jars of fecal matter that decorate your cult headquarters. They won’t get everything, but they’ll get a lot. Enough that you’ll have to seriously reconsider being a member of a faith which now dictates that you can no longer ascend to a higher plane of existence.
We’ll leave you with your thoughts and these pamphlets on Scientology, just to remind you that you could do a lot worse.
Congratulations on Losing Your Shit!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Super Nerd Sundays Presents: 4X Games And the Do It Yourself Story!
4X games aren’t traditionally looked at as bastions of storytelling. The Total War series, for example, doesn’t have any preset story elements. Certain events might be inevitable, like the Roman civil war, but Brutus isn’t going to show up on each playthrough and stab Caesar. Although it is possible, especially if you’re the Brutii and you use your commander aggressively against enemy cavalry. The Civilization games have the same “dearth” of the scripted moments we’ve come to interpret as a story in gameplay. We’re instead given a map, a cast of characters, and a set of rules through which to engage them. That’s hardly a story at all.
Anyone who’s studied literature at length will read what I just wrote as “sarcasm.” Those are the key ingredients in stories, the things that actually make them interesting. The events of stories are almost always re-treads of the same tired plots. Revenge, romance, redemption, we can normally see through the twists and turns of these tales if we try hard enough. It’s the characters and settings which distract us from them and draw us into fictional worlds, places where we feel something impossible in our normal lives is not only possible but inevitable.
Games are slowly learning this lesson. Very slowly. Most games still operate on high concepts with poorly drawn characters. In Doom you’re a space marine fighting demons on Mars. Great description, but I decry you to define the elements of character and setting which resonated with you while playing Doom. Did those aforementioned adjectives and nouns really effect the game at all? Did those hellbeasts fight differently from the Nazis of Wolfenstein, or just look different?
Doom, of course, is a straw man, an old game from the era when stories were a luxury. But all of the criticism I levied against Doom could be brought to bear on contemporary titles. Wolfenstein’s recent reboot, Overlord’s generic fantasy world, and the wreck of the Ishimura are all guilty of the same crimes against story. Two of those games were games I enjoyed, true, but not for their stories (Dead Space’s atmosphere was pitch perfect, but its use of character and setting was derivative at best and generic, worse than poor, at worst). Plenty of contemporary games introduce story hooks and generic overarching storylines in order to draw players in and get them playing, then string them along with characters so thin they blow away in a slight breeze and a setting which might as well be made from cardboard.
It’s a crying shame that the industry seems so concerned with hook rather than the substance which makes games more interesting and playable. There are certainly plenty of authors who don’t commit this cardinal sin. Tim Schaefer, Erik Wolpaw, Chet Falsiek, Dave Jaffe, Jordan Mechner, Clint Hocking, Ron Gilbert, Jerry Holkins and Patrice Desilets, just to name the first handful that come to mind. But these people don’t represent the entire industry or the discussion surrounding it. Most people telling stories in video games want to tell their story in a “traditional” way, where “traditional” means “in a fashion normally utilized by a non-interactive medium.” As a result they build a plot and forget that the most important parts of any story are a compelling set of characters and a vibrant world for them to inhabit. Given these things stories manifest themselves. Without them stories flounder as we’re asked to make leaps as readers and viewers, to essentially do the author’s job for them developing characters. Without these things we’re left with R.A. Salvatore novels, power fantasies which, while mindless and cathartic, aren’t terribly compelling or enriching.
So what the fuck does any of this have to do with games like Sins of a Solar Empire or Sword of the Stars? I’ll tell you: these games are all about setting and character. Some, like Sins, offer up a detailed, if largely unspoken, backstory and impart it on every element of their game. Their units are just bursting with personality, from the tiniest scout to the Kol-iest battlecruiser, and their universe is filled with cultures, largely imperfect, who interact with one another in a largely illogical way. Normally these interactions are hostile and alliances are formed only out of necessity. And Sword allows characters to build their own ships and truck them from unique world to unique world, battling AIs and players with their own quaint strategic preferences. In each of these cases ships are our characters – their crews our dramatis personae, galaxies our settings. It’s not something that has a parallel in any other genre or medium, which is part of what makes 4X games such a compelling medium for storytelling: their unique willingness to back off and let a player choose their level of involvement. It almost always leads to the player immersing themselves in a world which is most of the time procedurally generated.
Civilization manages a similar feat by allowing people to play as various world factions, generating outlandish scenarios between familiar parties. Aztecs can defeat Nazis in Civilization, entirely through the machinations of the player, and that’s an impressive bit of iterative storytelling. But for it to work units must be imbued with personality and importance by the players. In Civilization that’s a bit of a stretch.
The Total War games fix this problem. By adding generals and creating visually distinct units capable of gaining experience they create a mechanical incentive for forming attachment to units. A good general is a valuable thing, a battle seasoned group of legioniares worth three times their number in raw recruits. An army of veterans marching from your capital in Rome: Total War is a strangely cinematic moment, even though it’s represented by a tiny man with a helmet walking away from a 2.5 dimensional city. The personality these signifiers are imbued with, and the attachment we form with them as players almost as a matter of necessity while playing, make for a heady combination. Paired with a familiar setting, filled with historic factions with plenty of personality flair and lots of cities with old timey names which demand conquest, the Total War games are almost tailor made for the sort of storytelling 4X games do best – the kind which gives players all the tools and then places the onus upon them to generate an actual narrative for the characters they’re given.
It’s certainly not for everyone, and no story worth telling ever is. But it’s a compelling form of storytelling with its roots in the sort of playful narratives I remember creating for action figures in my youth, and it’s something only 4X games can really do. A game with a preset story would attempt to guide my progress, but in Rome: Total War my goal of conquering Ireland is mine and mine alone. I can defeat the problems which stalled the Roman invasion and tell the zany story of a governor who develops a drinking problem while coming to relate to his new barbarian subjects.
There’s certainly something to be said for more controlled efforts at storytelling in games, but 4X games remain a largely unsung hero in the courage and character they bring to storytelling in games. They aren’t the only means of telling stories, but 4X games lay the heart of storytelling in games bare – that the input of the player must be present for any meaningful sort of story to be told – and they deserve more credit for exposing us to this simple truism.
Anyone who’s studied literature at length will read what I just wrote as “sarcasm.” Those are the key ingredients in stories, the things that actually make them interesting. The events of stories are almost always re-treads of the same tired plots. Revenge, romance, redemption, we can normally see through the twists and turns of these tales if we try hard enough. It’s the characters and settings which distract us from them and draw us into fictional worlds, places where we feel something impossible in our normal lives is not only possible but inevitable.
Games are slowly learning this lesson. Very slowly. Most games still operate on high concepts with poorly drawn characters. In Doom you’re a space marine fighting demons on Mars. Great description, but I decry you to define the elements of character and setting which resonated with you while playing Doom. Did those aforementioned adjectives and nouns really effect the game at all? Did those hellbeasts fight differently from the Nazis of Wolfenstein, or just look different?
Doom, of course, is a straw man, an old game from the era when stories were a luxury. But all of the criticism I levied against Doom could be brought to bear on contemporary titles. Wolfenstein’s recent reboot, Overlord’s generic fantasy world, and the wreck of the Ishimura are all guilty of the same crimes against story. Two of those games were games I enjoyed, true, but not for their stories (Dead Space’s atmosphere was pitch perfect, but its use of character and setting was derivative at best and generic, worse than poor, at worst). Plenty of contemporary games introduce story hooks and generic overarching storylines in order to draw players in and get them playing, then string them along with characters so thin they blow away in a slight breeze and a setting which might as well be made from cardboard.
It’s a crying shame that the industry seems so concerned with hook rather than the substance which makes games more interesting and playable. There are certainly plenty of authors who don’t commit this cardinal sin. Tim Schaefer, Erik Wolpaw, Chet Falsiek, Dave Jaffe, Jordan Mechner, Clint Hocking, Ron Gilbert, Jerry Holkins and Patrice Desilets, just to name the first handful that come to mind. But these people don’t represent the entire industry or the discussion surrounding it. Most people telling stories in video games want to tell their story in a “traditional” way, where “traditional” means “in a fashion normally utilized by a non-interactive medium.” As a result they build a plot and forget that the most important parts of any story are a compelling set of characters and a vibrant world for them to inhabit. Given these things stories manifest themselves. Without them stories flounder as we’re asked to make leaps as readers and viewers, to essentially do the author’s job for them developing characters. Without these things we’re left with R.A. Salvatore novels, power fantasies which, while mindless and cathartic, aren’t terribly compelling or enriching.
So what the fuck does any of this have to do with games like Sins of a Solar Empire or Sword of the Stars? I’ll tell you: these games are all about setting and character. Some, like Sins, offer up a detailed, if largely unspoken, backstory and impart it on every element of their game. Their units are just bursting with personality, from the tiniest scout to the Kol-iest battlecruiser, and their universe is filled with cultures, largely imperfect, who interact with one another in a largely illogical way. Normally these interactions are hostile and alliances are formed only out of necessity. And Sword allows characters to build their own ships and truck them from unique world to unique world, battling AIs and players with their own quaint strategic preferences. In each of these cases ships are our characters – their crews our dramatis personae, galaxies our settings. It’s not something that has a parallel in any other genre or medium, which is part of what makes 4X games such a compelling medium for storytelling: their unique willingness to back off and let a player choose their level of involvement. It almost always leads to the player immersing themselves in a world which is most of the time procedurally generated.
Civilization manages a similar feat by allowing people to play as various world factions, generating outlandish scenarios between familiar parties. Aztecs can defeat Nazis in Civilization, entirely through the machinations of the player, and that’s an impressive bit of iterative storytelling. But for it to work units must be imbued with personality and importance by the players. In Civilization that’s a bit of a stretch.
The Total War games fix this problem. By adding generals and creating visually distinct units capable of gaining experience they create a mechanical incentive for forming attachment to units. A good general is a valuable thing, a battle seasoned group of legioniares worth three times their number in raw recruits. An army of veterans marching from your capital in Rome: Total War is a strangely cinematic moment, even though it’s represented by a tiny man with a helmet walking away from a 2.5 dimensional city. The personality these signifiers are imbued with, and the attachment we form with them as players almost as a matter of necessity while playing, make for a heady combination. Paired with a familiar setting, filled with historic factions with plenty of personality flair and lots of cities with old timey names which demand conquest, the Total War games are almost tailor made for the sort of storytelling 4X games do best – the kind which gives players all the tools and then places the onus upon them to generate an actual narrative for the characters they’re given.
It’s certainly not for everyone, and no story worth telling ever is. But it’s a compelling form of storytelling with its roots in the sort of playful narratives I remember creating for action figures in my youth, and it’s something only 4X games can really do. A game with a preset story would attempt to guide my progress, but in Rome: Total War my goal of conquering Ireland is mine and mine alone. I can defeat the problems which stalled the Roman invasion and tell the zany story of a governor who develops a drinking problem while coming to relate to his new barbarian subjects.
There’s certainly something to be said for more controlled efforts at storytelling in games, but 4X games remain a largely unsung hero in the courage and character they bring to storytelling in games. They aren’t the only means of telling stories, but 4X games lay the heart of storytelling in games bare – that the input of the player must be present for any meaningful sort of story to be told – and they deserve more credit for exposing us to this simple truism.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Congratulations on Getting Your Shit Pushed In!
You’re a curious young man who just moved to western rural Texas. You’re lonely and not sure of much in life, but you’re an open, trusting person so when John Tomlins, a kindly young man from your high school, invites you back to his house, you’ll take him up on his offer. What’s the harm, after all, in making a new friend?
When you arrive at his one-story ranch home, books still on your back, you’ll be struck by how still his house feels. Your house is always a bustle of activity, filled with siblings and pets and parents. There isn’t an hour of the day when you can be on your own. But Johnny’s house will be, by all indications, totally empty.
No parents, no brothers or sisters. Not even a cat. It’ll be strange and lifeless, like you’ve arrived at the end of the world. You’ll want to share this thought with him but you’ll think better of it. It could be construed as rude, and you don’t want to alienate the only person you’ve really spoken with in school.
He’ll lead you from room to room, starting in the kitchen, offering you juice. You’ll nod and accept it and he’ll laugh at the trace of southern drawl left over from your latest stint in Alabama. When he leads you to his room he’ll be asking you questions about school, about what you used to do.
Before long you’ll be in a rhythm, the one you know all too well from moving every three years for most of your life. You’ll recall the places you’ve seen and the things you’ve done in them, the ways that x-place is different from y-place. Halfway through talking about how friendly and weird everyone in Alabama is he’ll lean over and plant his lips on yours.
Most young men would freak out and start throwing punches to prove they’re not a sissy. But you’ll be a little flattered and very confused.
“Why’d you do that?” you’ll ask him, mind reeling from the feel of his lips against yours.
He’ll shrug. “Felt like it. Ain’t faggy or nothin’.”
You’ll want to tell him that that sort of thing is the very definition of faggy, but you won’t. Instead you’ll nod and lay on your back, staring at the ceiling and considering kissing him back.
You won’t get the chance. Before long John will be on you like gay flies on a pile of Tom Cruise’s shit. His tongue will be on your mouth, your pants will be off and before long you’ll have your head braced against a pillow as he awkwardly thrusts inside of you. It’ll hurt at first, but you’ll get used to it quickly. It won’t be John’s first time, even if it is yours.
You’ll try to figure out if you like it, but thinking will get harder and harder as the sound of blood in your ears gets louder and louder. You’ll wonder if this makes you gay as you feel him pressed against you, thrusting awkwardly, his hand gripped around the base of your penis, only moving when he remembers to against his exertions.
Congratulations on Getting Your Shit Pushed In!
When you arrive at his one-story ranch home, books still on your back, you’ll be struck by how still his house feels. Your house is always a bustle of activity, filled with siblings and pets and parents. There isn’t an hour of the day when you can be on your own. But Johnny’s house will be, by all indications, totally empty.
No parents, no brothers or sisters. Not even a cat. It’ll be strange and lifeless, like you’ve arrived at the end of the world. You’ll want to share this thought with him but you’ll think better of it. It could be construed as rude, and you don’t want to alienate the only person you’ve really spoken with in school.
He’ll lead you from room to room, starting in the kitchen, offering you juice. You’ll nod and accept it and he’ll laugh at the trace of southern drawl left over from your latest stint in Alabama. When he leads you to his room he’ll be asking you questions about school, about what you used to do.
Before long you’ll be in a rhythm, the one you know all too well from moving every three years for most of your life. You’ll recall the places you’ve seen and the things you’ve done in them, the ways that x-place is different from y-place. Halfway through talking about how friendly and weird everyone in Alabama is he’ll lean over and plant his lips on yours.
Most young men would freak out and start throwing punches to prove they’re not a sissy. But you’ll be a little flattered and very confused.
“Why’d you do that?” you’ll ask him, mind reeling from the feel of his lips against yours.
He’ll shrug. “Felt like it. Ain’t faggy or nothin’.”
You’ll want to tell him that that sort of thing is the very definition of faggy, but you won’t. Instead you’ll nod and lay on your back, staring at the ceiling and considering kissing him back.
You won’t get the chance. Before long John will be on you like gay flies on a pile of Tom Cruise’s shit. His tongue will be on your mouth, your pants will be off and before long you’ll have your head braced against a pillow as he awkwardly thrusts inside of you. It’ll hurt at first, but you’ll get used to it quickly. It won’t be John’s first time, even if it is yours.
You’ll try to figure out if you like it, but thinking will get harder and harder as the sound of blood in your ears gets louder and louder. You’ll wonder if this makes you gay as you feel him pressed against you, thrusting awkwardly, his hand gripped around the base of your penis, only moving when he remembers to against his exertions.
Congratulations on Getting Your Shit Pushed In!
Friday, October 23, 2009
Congratulations on Catching March Madness!
March Madness, in this case, is a euphemism for syphilis. You’re going to catch syphilis from a prostitute on Friday. This could be avoided if you frequented more expensive prostitutes or if you used a condom during sex. We hope you learn you lesson. Just to repeat, this has nothing to do with basketball, it’s October, you’re going to get an STD.
Congratulations on Catching March Madness!
Congratulations on Catching March Madness!
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Congratulations on Redefining Success!
You’re a smoking hot homeless woman with a heart as shriveled and black as the penis of that frostbitten man you slept with one time and you aren’t really happy with your life. You love living rent free and surviving on the kindness of men who wish they could take you home, if only they had the courage to ask you to become their live-in love slave, but most people who hear you describe your lifestyle (normally while drinking PBR in Montage) consider you a bit of a loser.
You’re sick of those less attractive women with jobs and families judging you, but you love your life way too much to change even slightly towards this end. That’s why you’re going to set a plan into motion today to redefine success.
For the most part it’ll consist of you sleeping with enough English nerds and literati to acquire a critical mass of language freaks. This will probably take you between four and twelve weeks. You’ll occasionally be fucking between two and four people a day, so remember your Kegels or you risk losing everything.
After you’ve got your loyal army of near-virgins under your thumb you’ll put them to work updating the OED. If you’ve done your job right they’ll ascribe your lifestyle to success as a definition enough times that you should be able to open up the OED’s website and show any stuck up bitch you happen to run into in a bar that you are, in fact, quite successful, thank you very much.
Congratulations on Redefining Success!
You’re sick of those less attractive women with jobs and families judging you, but you love your life way too much to change even slightly towards this end. That’s why you’re going to set a plan into motion today to redefine success.
For the most part it’ll consist of you sleeping with enough English nerds and literati to acquire a critical mass of language freaks. This will probably take you between four and twelve weeks. You’ll occasionally be fucking between two and four people a day, so remember your Kegels or you risk losing everything.
After you’ve got your loyal army of near-virgins under your thumb you’ll put them to work updating the OED. If you’ve done your job right they’ll ascribe your lifestyle to success as a definition enough times that you should be able to open up the OED’s website and show any stuck up bitch you happen to run into in a bar that you are, in fact, quite successful, thank you very much.
Congratulations on Redefining Success!
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Congratulations on Redefining Failure!
Nautical shipping lanes have been taking some heavy hits during the recession, which may or may not end at some point. It hasn’t been easy for anyone, certainly, but purveyors of goods through this archaic means have been especially hard hit. Consolidation and perpetual mismanagement have made it all but impossible to turn a profit as a shipping agent. It’s all over Slate and the BBC if you don’t believe us.
But the unsung victims of this crisis are people like you: terrifying monsters of the deep who prey upon sailors and their goods so that they may decorate their massive underwater caves and devour the sweet flesh of man at their leisure.
You’re a ten-ton giant crab with a Bachelor’s in Drama and Political Science and you’ve been doing this for fifteen years. But tomorrow the bank is going to call to foreclose on your undersea cave lease and you’re going to be left with some awkward decisions.
Since your income has been completely stymied over the last several months you can’t manage a financial solution to the situation. And you’re not pretty enough to seduce a bank owner and let him have his way with you in exchange for allowing you to keep your home. That limits your options to a bloody rampage through your financial institution, ending only when you stand covered in blood over your opponents, shrieking wordlessly into the sky, or moving out of your beloved cave filled with ancient treasure and moving on land where you hope to get a temp job.
You’ll strongly consider the former option, but then you’ll remember that those fucking bankers hired the Kraken to help defend them against sea monsters like you, and while you are a pretty big badass you’re no match for the Kraken. And as preferable as it might seem to just end it all in a big throw down with that epic beast, you’ll decide that you like living a lot more than you like being seen as powerful, so you’ll opt to wander ashore.
Once ashore you’ll register with a Randstad office in Seattle and they’ll get you set up with an office assistant job in Bellevue. It’ll be soul crushing and horrible, but you’ll be alive. Some days, of course, you’ll think back and wonder what it would’ve been like to perish in an epic battle with one of the greatest monsters ever to live (and your idol!) but as time goes on those days will come fewer and farther between until one day they seem to stop altogether.
Congratulations on Redefining Failure!
But the unsung victims of this crisis are people like you: terrifying monsters of the deep who prey upon sailors and their goods so that they may decorate their massive underwater caves and devour the sweet flesh of man at their leisure.
You’re a ten-ton giant crab with a Bachelor’s in Drama and Political Science and you’ve been doing this for fifteen years. But tomorrow the bank is going to call to foreclose on your undersea cave lease and you’re going to be left with some awkward decisions.
Since your income has been completely stymied over the last several months you can’t manage a financial solution to the situation. And you’re not pretty enough to seduce a bank owner and let him have his way with you in exchange for allowing you to keep your home. That limits your options to a bloody rampage through your financial institution, ending only when you stand covered in blood over your opponents, shrieking wordlessly into the sky, or moving out of your beloved cave filled with ancient treasure and moving on land where you hope to get a temp job.
You’ll strongly consider the former option, but then you’ll remember that those fucking bankers hired the Kraken to help defend them against sea monsters like you, and while you are a pretty big badass you’re no match for the Kraken. And as preferable as it might seem to just end it all in a big throw down with that epic beast, you’ll decide that you like living a lot more than you like being seen as powerful, so you’ll opt to wander ashore.
Once ashore you’ll register with a Randstad office in Seattle and they’ll get you set up with an office assistant job in Bellevue. It’ll be soul crushing and horrible, but you’ll be alive. Some days, of course, you’ll think back and wonder what it would’ve been like to perish in an epic battle with one of the greatest monsters ever to live (and your idol!) but as time goes on those days will come fewer and farther between until one day they seem to stop altogether.
Congratulations on Redefining Failure!
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Congratulations on Making a Difference In a Teen's Life!
You’re a high school guidance counselor. Normally your occupation is reserved for people who want to help children, but you’re an escaped criminal who needed to lay low, and the position was open. It’s worked out pretty well for you, since all the hot female teachers are sucker for a bad boy with a secret past who tends to take their money and knows how to do some freaky shit in the sack, but lately the tasks that make up the job have been getting in the way of your enjoying it.
It all started three weeks ago with Kim Kase. Kim is a beautiful, brilliant young girl with serious emotional problems who keeps on falling into relationships with men who don’t really love her. Normally it doesn’t distract her, but after around five or six of them she enters a brief period of serious depression. This time she’ll have passed the three dozen mark, and she’ll be really broken up about it.
She’ll come into your office weeping and moaning about being pregnant. You’ll look up the TV in the corner of your office at her as if to ask what the fuck are you doing here? but the dumb twat won’t even notice.
“Mister Mugugapan,” she’ll choke out between her tears. It’s not your real name, but so far no one’s noticed that it’s dervied from Moo-Goo-Gai-Pan. “I’ve been having some trouble.”
You’ll roll your eyes and nod at her, gesturing to the open seat in front of your desk. She’ll take it immediately and then huddle her body up, weeping openly and giving you an excellent view of your cleavage. It will take all your effort not to sigh and stare, but you’ll manage. After all, you’re a pro.
“How can I help?” you’ll say, with something that could potentially be mistaken for enthusiasm. She’ll respond to your lackluster statement with a hopeful glance at you, like you’d just told her that she was the prettiest girl in the world. You’ll take a sip from your coffee mug to avoid staring at her chest while she’s looking at you.
“I just...” she’ll cut herself off with a choked sob mid sentence. “I just need someone to listen,” she’ll finish, looking at you with that same fervent hope. You’ll wonder for a moment if there’s a bit of attraction there, but then you’ll remember that you don’t want attention and you’ll simply nod, causing Kim to go on an hour and a half diatribe about all the boys she’s been with.
At one point it’ll start getting pretty blue. She’ll be describing the fifth time she had sex, when she realized she first liked it, when she’ll catch you looking down her shirt. In response she’ll smile, leap over your desk and, before you know what’s going on, the two of you will be going at it like a Naughty America video. You’ll be lucky to get out of the whole affair without visible bite marks.
As for Kim, she’ll fuck someone for the first time without loving them. It’ll be an awakening for her, a realization that the physical and emotional acts of love are in no way intertwined. She’ll leave your office a woman, fully aware of her power and aware that love isn’t something you need for sex. All you need for sex is two people. Or more, like that time she described with her cousin.
Also, you’ll be the first non-high school aged boy Kim will have sex with, so it’ll last more than five minutes for the first time in her life. That means Kim is also going to have an orgasm for the first time, which will really help get some of the crazy out of her.
Congratulations on Making a Difference In a Teen’s Life!
It all started three weeks ago with Kim Kase. Kim is a beautiful, brilliant young girl with serious emotional problems who keeps on falling into relationships with men who don’t really love her. Normally it doesn’t distract her, but after around five or six of them she enters a brief period of serious depression. This time she’ll have passed the three dozen mark, and she’ll be really broken up about it.
She’ll come into your office weeping and moaning about being pregnant. You’ll look up the TV in the corner of your office at her as if to ask what the fuck are you doing here? but the dumb twat won’t even notice.
“Mister Mugugapan,” she’ll choke out between her tears. It’s not your real name, but so far no one’s noticed that it’s dervied from Moo-Goo-Gai-Pan. “I’ve been having some trouble.”
You’ll roll your eyes and nod at her, gesturing to the open seat in front of your desk. She’ll take it immediately and then huddle her body up, weeping openly and giving you an excellent view of your cleavage. It will take all your effort not to sigh and stare, but you’ll manage. After all, you’re a pro.
“How can I help?” you’ll say, with something that could potentially be mistaken for enthusiasm. She’ll respond to your lackluster statement with a hopeful glance at you, like you’d just told her that she was the prettiest girl in the world. You’ll take a sip from your coffee mug to avoid staring at her chest while she’s looking at you.
“I just...” she’ll cut herself off with a choked sob mid sentence. “I just need someone to listen,” she’ll finish, looking at you with that same fervent hope. You’ll wonder for a moment if there’s a bit of attraction there, but then you’ll remember that you don’t want attention and you’ll simply nod, causing Kim to go on an hour and a half diatribe about all the boys she’s been with.
At one point it’ll start getting pretty blue. She’ll be describing the fifth time she had sex, when she realized she first liked it, when she’ll catch you looking down her shirt. In response she’ll smile, leap over your desk and, before you know what’s going on, the two of you will be going at it like a Naughty America video. You’ll be lucky to get out of the whole affair without visible bite marks.
As for Kim, she’ll fuck someone for the first time without loving them. It’ll be an awakening for her, a realization that the physical and emotional acts of love are in no way intertwined. She’ll leave your office a woman, fully aware of her power and aware that love isn’t something you need for sex. All you need for sex is two people. Or more, like that time she described with her cousin.
Also, you’ll be the first non-high school aged boy Kim will have sex with, so it’ll last more than five minutes for the first time in her life. That means Kim is also going to have an orgasm for the first time, which will really help get some of the crazy out of her.
Congratulations on Making a Difference In a Teen’s Life!
Monday, October 19, 2009
Congratulations on Your Improper Funnel Usage!
As a “mad” chemist in your teens your experiments lack the zing of your fathers. Your dad does cool stuff like develop supersaturated acids and toxins that can proliferate reservoirs in seconds. He even made a sentient solvent once which could think, feel, understand Goethe and selectively eliminate chemical bonds.
You, on the other hand, spend most of your time dropping Mentos (The Freshmaker!) into Diet Coke and running around the gushing bottle in circles, pumping your fists wildly. It would be adorable if you were younger but at this point it’s just depressing.
You know it, and that’s why you’re going to kick your chemistry up a notch by doing some light terrorism. You’re going to geobomb a local lake.
But you’re pretty OCD, just like your dad, so you’re going to want to test your compounds first. Normally this would be a great idea but you’re not the brightest bulb in the discount lighting emporium. You’re going to place your volatile salt sample in a metal container with a small opening and ram a foot of tubing in there. Then you’ll run that foot of tubing to a funnel under a tap a short distance away.
After attaching some blank papers to a clip board and scribbling on them you’ll turn the tap on and the experiment will be underway.
At first everything will go fine. The water will flow through the tubing and come into contact with the reactive metal. You’ll hear it sizzling from across the room. But the pressure of oncoming water will keep going and the reactive metal will keep...well, reacting. Eventually, thanks to the pressure of the tubing, it’ll eject the tube and spray boiling water all over the room.
You’ll be blinded when some of it lands right in your fucking eyes because you’re going to be too much of a dumbass to wear your safety goggles. Better hope daddy can chemistry up a cure for that, kiddo!
Congratulations on Your Improper Funnel Usage!
You, on the other hand, spend most of your time dropping Mentos (The Freshmaker!) into Diet Coke and running around the gushing bottle in circles, pumping your fists wildly. It would be adorable if you were younger but at this point it’s just depressing.
You know it, and that’s why you’re going to kick your chemistry up a notch by doing some light terrorism. You’re going to geobomb a local lake.
But you’re pretty OCD, just like your dad, so you’re going to want to test your compounds first. Normally this would be a great idea but you’re not the brightest bulb in the discount lighting emporium. You’re going to place your volatile salt sample in a metal container with a small opening and ram a foot of tubing in there. Then you’ll run that foot of tubing to a funnel under a tap a short distance away.
After attaching some blank papers to a clip board and scribbling on them you’ll turn the tap on and the experiment will be underway.
At first everything will go fine. The water will flow through the tubing and come into contact with the reactive metal. You’ll hear it sizzling from across the room. But the pressure of oncoming water will keep going and the reactive metal will keep...well, reacting. Eventually, thanks to the pressure of the tubing, it’ll eject the tube and spray boiling water all over the room.
You’ll be blinded when some of it lands right in your fucking eyes because you’re going to be too much of a dumbass to wear your safety goggles. Better hope daddy can chemistry up a cure for that, kiddo!
Congratulations on Your Improper Funnel Usage!
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Super Nerd Sundays Presents: This Slop Is Where I Live, Bitch!
When we play a game we all form our own relationship with the protagonist. That’s one of the cool, powerful things about games as an art form: they simultaneously force you into a character and give you input in the interpretation, development and growth of said character. It’s an odd sort of duality, like subs and doms, where the relationship is a kind of consensual bondage wherein power needs to be given up and exerted in concert for it to work at all. Developers can throw ideas at us all we like but we, as players, need to actually accept these rules in order for them to have any sort of effect.
The nature of this relationship is something difficult to hammer down, and it’s something that games need to put more effort into grounding and controlling if they want to grow as a medium. It’s fair to say that books have been doing this pretty expertly since they became a mainstream means of entertainment. Some of the earliest novels were obsessed with how readers would consider their protagonists and their stories. Consider Gulliver’s Travels to see what I mean: an unsympathetic character who you, over time, gradually come to like and relate to but who, in the end, it’s still tough to get behind. By the end of the book you might find yourself clucking your tongue as much as at Gulliver, though, which is exactly what Swift was going for: pointing out the lunacy of Britain’s sense of innate superiority over all other cultures. Of course, even these efforts weren’t entirely successful. Many people, even today, still read Gulliver’s Travels and come away with the idea that the Houyhnhnms had this whole society thing down pat, but the book still does its best to make us see Gulliver as a man who doesn’t quite get the joke that is his life.
Games, on the other hand, seem to be largely unconcerned with this concept. Consider the Prince of Persia reboot, where you’re immediately thrown into the body of a context-less animalistic warrior-dude and the plot is dribbled out through forced banter between scenes of plot. There’s no grounding for the character here, no context. There’s no control whatsoever over how you can interpret this character. You’re press ganged into helping Ubisoft tell this story and odds are you couldn’t care less about it. It’s not too far from the days of 8 bit storytelling, where the flimsiest backstory was issued and you were left to derive your own plot from the context. Darkness has taken over the land. Are you a bad enough dude to banish the darkness?
On the other side of the spectrum you have games like Metal Gear Solid IV which do their all to force Snake’s personality on to you. Guiding you to his story through interminable cutscenes and, if you want to get really technical about it, a bevy of previous titles, there’s very little room to interpret Snake and his story in any way aside from the one that Hideo Kojima wants you to (incredibly homosocial relationship between Otacon and Snake aside). Traditional RPGs have the same on-the-rails methodology, the one traditionally pressed on readers by dime store novels. It’s cathartic and mindless to interact with, but it’s almost always insubstantial. The best moments in these games emerge from relationship where characters are left open to be interpreted by the players. Aeris’ famed death scene in Final Fantasy VII is frequently hailed as one of the most impactful moments in contemporary gaming history, but people rarely seem to discuss that it came about after a lengthy period where the player was given much of the power in deciding just what their relationship with Aeris was. Final Fantasy VII was actually possessed of many of these moments, with its ambiguous depiction of Cloud and largely optional character development. It was undone to some extent by having a “correct” interpretation of Cloud's and every other character, but the attempted ambiguity and the level to which it was taken was very impressive.
Of course there are also some games that try to give you sufficient context off the bat and let you interpret your character. For example Fallout 3 literally begins with your birth and holds your hand as you grow up. It’s an impressive attempt at storytelling and one that expertly weaves you into the context of the world. The original Fallout games also managed this interpretive power deftly, giving you an ideal lens from which to interact with the world they’d constructed. They offered you enough information to let you know just where you’d been placed but gave you enough freedom with your character to develop them in almost any direction you desired.
But Fallout is a strange example in its desire to separate itself from linearity. While that’s a great way to let players inhabit and develop a character it isn’t the only way to let them do so and it is, arguably, the easiest way to give them the space to tap into the interpretive power of gaming as a medium. There are far fewer games that allow you to interpret your character in this fashion while tying you to a linear storyline. And that’s where Half-Life enters the gaming pantheon.
Half-Life is a game which, if played casually, can easily be dismissed as a same-old-same-old first person shooter. You pick up guns and shoot monsters. It’s not very complex. But when you consider Gordon Freeman, the background he’s given and the tasks he finds himself involved in, the player’s power over how he is developed and interpreted as a character grows to an almost overwhelming level. He’s an MIT educated physicist who spends his days doing the job of a lab assistant. He’s in amazing physical condition and he’s really, really good at killing things. He fights his way through invading aliens and black ops soldiers without breaking a sweat. Who the fuck is this guy?
It doesn’t matter to the game terribly. No matter who he is he’s forced through the same tiresome events. Sunrise, gunfight, sunset, he must move through the same enemies regardless of who we see him as, carving a bloody swath through the denizens of Zen to save his world, himself, or whoever you want to think he’s saving. Half-Life 2 continues this tradition of making Gordon Freeman something of a walking question mark. They go so far as to make it a running joke – Breen’s broadcast criticizes the professional super-soldiers of the Combine for not being able to take down a lone physicist armed only with a crowbar.
We, as players, are free to interpret Freeman in any number of ways: as a psychotic, dissatisfied young man frustrated by his job who simply wants to kill, an avid anarchist freed from the bonds of society at large, the unwilling figurehead of a worldwide revolution started entirely by accident or a guy who just wants to get the girl and live what’s left of his life quietly. There are few other games which embrace the interpretative freedom provided by the First-Person Shooter genre on a comparable level. Bioshock comes to mind, but most others actively fight against permitting players to interpret their character, forcing them through the same interactions time and time again with the same inane cutscenes informing them of who they really are and how they see the world around them.
Even games which purport to give you a choice usually fail at this. In Jedi Knight, for example, you’re given little choice in who you are. You can choose to be a Jedi or a Sith, but whichever path you choose your interpretation of Kyle Katarn is undone by the cutscenes which illustrate his journey through the galaxy. You’re always going to be a bit of a mournful Sith and you’re always going to be a taciturn, noble Jedi. There’s no middle ground, no chance to see Kyle as a self-deceiving do-gooder who really just wants to kill or as a noble Fallen hero who defeats Jared and abandons power. No matter what we do we’ll see him weeping in front of his father’s holocron or making a statue. Doom’s space marine will always be the same reticent badass who isn’t really that reticent. The Master Chief is always the Master Chief. These games undo their own interpretive power through the framing techniques – they don’t consider the stories that players are trying to tell, and instead force them through a set of narrative loops.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn’t really utilize all the power that games have as a medium. It tries to put them into the same narrative framework which works for non-interactive visual media. It smacks of the people telling these stories not having read many books. And while I don’t think linear stories which limit the interpretative power of players need to be done away with, I think they need to be balanced out by efforts to tell stories in an appropriate fashion for the medium. The seconds between stories are where games find their power, where we as players can establish ourselves. Sometimes games have to script these moments, the way Final Fantasy VII does, but the best ones, the Half-Lives and the Bioshocks, just let the player sit with a loose backstory and fit a game world around their actions. Alyx is there, and while you can’t kill her you can see her however you like. You don’t have to fulfill your romance with her. In fact, you’re never given the chance. You never get a chance to embrace or kill Tennenbaum. You’re left to sit and simmer with your feelings for her, alone. And this unfulfilled narrative is what games do best – we don’t need thousands of scripted endings telling us how our actions panned out. Sometimes we just need abandoned plotlines. We need games that progress and end the way that Oryx and Crake did instead of the way that Aliens did. We need games that tell us a story and end with the protagonist staring at his watch, waiting for what comes next.
The nature of this relationship is something difficult to hammer down, and it’s something that games need to put more effort into grounding and controlling if they want to grow as a medium. It’s fair to say that books have been doing this pretty expertly since they became a mainstream means of entertainment. Some of the earliest novels were obsessed with how readers would consider their protagonists and their stories. Consider Gulliver’s Travels to see what I mean: an unsympathetic character who you, over time, gradually come to like and relate to but who, in the end, it’s still tough to get behind. By the end of the book you might find yourself clucking your tongue as much as at Gulliver, though, which is exactly what Swift was going for: pointing out the lunacy of Britain’s sense of innate superiority over all other cultures. Of course, even these efforts weren’t entirely successful. Many people, even today, still read Gulliver’s Travels and come away with the idea that the Houyhnhnms had this whole society thing down pat, but the book still does its best to make us see Gulliver as a man who doesn’t quite get the joke that is his life.
Games, on the other hand, seem to be largely unconcerned with this concept. Consider the Prince of Persia reboot, where you’re immediately thrown into the body of a context-less animalistic warrior-dude and the plot is dribbled out through forced banter between scenes of plot. There’s no grounding for the character here, no context. There’s no control whatsoever over how you can interpret this character. You’re press ganged into helping Ubisoft tell this story and odds are you couldn’t care less about it. It’s not too far from the days of 8 bit storytelling, where the flimsiest backstory was issued and you were left to derive your own plot from the context. Darkness has taken over the land. Are you a bad enough dude to banish the darkness?
On the other side of the spectrum you have games like Metal Gear Solid IV which do their all to force Snake’s personality on to you. Guiding you to his story through interminable cutscenes and, if you want to get really technical about it, a bevy of previous titles, there’s very little room to interpret Snake and his story in any way aside from the one that Hideo Kojima wants you to (incredibly homosocial relationship between Otacon and Snake aside). Traditional RPGs have the same on-the-rails methodology, the one traditionally pressed on readers by dime store novels. It’s cathartic and mindless to interact with, but it’s almost always insubstantial. The best moments in these games emerge from relationship where characters are left open to be interpreted by the players. Aeris’ famed death scene in Final Fantasy VII is frequently hailed as one of the most impactful moments in contemporary gaming history, but people rarely seem to discuss that it came about after a lengthy period where the player was given much of the power in deciding just what their relationship with Aeris was. Final Fantasy VII was actually possessed of many of these moments, with its ambiguous depiction of Cloud and largely optional character development. It was undone to some extent by having a “correct” interpretation of Cloud's and every other character, but the attempted ambiguity and the level to which it was taken was very impressive.
Of course there are also some games that try to give you sufficient context off the bat and let you interpret your character. For example Fallout 3 literally begins with your birth and holds your hand as you grow up. It’s an impressive attempt at storytelling and one that expertly weaves you into the context of the world. The original Fallout games also managed this interpretive power deftly, giving you an ideal lens from which to interact with the world they’d constructed. They offered you enough information to let you know just where you’d been placed but gave you enough freedom with your character to develop them in almost any direction you desired.
But Fallout is a strange example in its desire to separate itself from linearity. While that’s a great way to let players inhabit and develop a character it isn’t the only way to let them do so and it is, arguably, the easiest way to give them the space to tap into the interpretive power of gaming as a medium. There are far fewer games that allow you to interpret your character in this fashion while tying you to a linear storyline. And that’s where Half-Life enters the gaming pantheon.
Half-Life is a game which, if played casually, can easily be dismissed as a same-old-same-old first person shooter. You pick up guns and shoot monsters. It’s not very complex. But when you consider Gordon Freeman, the background he’s given and the tasks he finds himself involved in, the player’s power over how he is developed and interpreted as a character grows to an almost overwhelming level. He’s an MIT educated physicist who spends his days doing the job of a lab assistant. He’s in amazing physical condition and he’s really, really good at killing things. He fights his way through invading aliens and black ops soldiers without breaking a sweat. Who the fuck is this guy?
It doesn’t matter to the game terribly. No matter who he is he’s forced through the same tiresome events. Sunrise, gunfight, sunset, he must move through the same enemies regardless of who we see him as, carving a bloody swath through the denizens of Zen to save his world, himself, or whoever you want to think he’s saving. Half-Life 2 continues this tradition of making Gordon Freeman something of a walking question mark. They go so far as to make it a running joke – Breen’s broadcast criticizes the professional super-soldiers of the Combine for not being able to take down a lone physicist armed only with a crowbar.
We, as players, are free to interpret Freeman in any number of ways: as a psychotic, dissatisfied young man frustrated by his job who simply wants to kill, an avid anarchist freed from the bonds of society at large, the unwilling figurehead of a worldwide revolution started entirely by accident or a guy who just wants to get the girl and live what’s left of his life quietly. There are few other games which embrace the interpretative freedom provided by the First-Person Shooter genre on a comparable level. Bioshock comes to mind, but most others actively fight against permitting players to interpret their character, forcing them through the same interactions time and time again with the same inane cutscenes informing them of who they really are and how they see the world around them.
Even games which purport to give you a choice usually fail at this. In Jedi Knight, for example, you’re given little choice in who you are. You can choose to be a Jedi or a Sith, but whichever path you choose your interpretation of Kyle Katarn is undone by the cutscenes which illustrate his journey through the galaxy. You’re always going to be a bit of a mournful Sith and you’re always going to be a taciturn, noble Jedi. There’s no middle ground, no chance to see Kyle as a self-deceiving do-gooder who really just wants to kill or as a noble Fallen hero who defeats Jared and abandons power. No matter what we do we’ll see him weeping in front of his father’s holocron or making a statue. Doom’s space marine will always be the same reticent badass who isn’t really that reticent. The Master Chief is always the Master Chief. These games undo their own interpretive power through the framing techniques – they don’t consider the stories that players are trying to tell, and instead force them through a set of narrative loops.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn’t really utilize all the power that games have as a medium. It tries to put them into the same narrative framework which works for non-interactive visual media. It smacks of the people telling these stories not having read many books. And while I don’t think linear stories which limit the interpretative power of players need to be done away with, I think they need to be balanced out by efforts to tell stories in an appropriate fashion for the medium. The seconds between stories are where games find their power, where we as players can establish ourselves. Sometimes games have to script these moments, the way Final Fantasy VII does, but the best ones, the Half-Lives and the Bioshocks, just let the player sit with a loose backstory and fit a game world around their actions. Alyx is there, and while you can’t kill her you can see her however you like. You don’t have to fulfill your romance with her. In fact, you’re never given the chance. You never get a chance to embrace or kill Tennenbaum. You’re left to sit and simmer with your feelings for her, alone. And this unfulfilled narrative is what games do best – we don’t need thousands of scripted endings telling us how our actions panned out. Sometimes we just need abandoned plotlines. We need games that progress and end the way that Oryx and Crake did instead of the way that Aliens did. We need games that tell us a story and end with the protagonist staring at his watch, waiting for what comes next.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Congratulations on Gettng Rid of That Mannequin!
You’ve got an awesome apartment. Great location, rent controlled, utilities included. You’ve got a roommate who literally just uses his bedroom for storage but still pays all his rent and an elevator. You’ve got it all.
But there’s a catch. I mean, you’ve visited this website before. You’re alive. You know there’s always a catch. In this case it’s a creepy mannequin.
It might not be so bad if it didn’t have these really realistic nipples and eyes that followed you around the room. Like, we’re talking robot grade eyes. It’s unsettling to say the least.
You’ve been trying to get rid of him for a while now. You’ve dropped him in dumpsters, lit him on fire and even put him on Melrose Place, where he was sure to vanish forever. But nothing’s worked. No matter what you do he just shows up the next day in your bedroom after work, staring at you.
You can deal with it when you’re sleeping alone. In fact, it’s kind of comforting in a really gay way. But when you bring a lady home it tends to freak her out. Comforting comments about not minding the mannequin never seem to work, even when you whisper them really softly in your ladyfriend’s ear.
But you’ve spent a lot of time under the mannequin’s watchful gaze wondering just what the fuck it really wants. You’ve looked deep into its unsettling blue eyes and you’ve realized that all it really wants is a friend, a companion. Which explains all those unnerving crayon drawings on the fridge of the two of you together and that brief typed essay you found declaring profound feelings of loneliness paired with a strange sort of attraction to you that felt wrong but not entirely wrong.
So tomorrow you’re going to pack it into your car. You’re going to talk to it as you drive. You’ll bare your heart to the doll, letting it know that you view it as a companion, a source of comfort and a reliable factor in your otherwise chaotic, occasionally emotionally destitute life. The mannequin will listen pensively, its face still fixed in a terrible riticus. When you arrive at Frederick’s of Hollywood you’ll swears its countenance brightens.
You’ll prop him in Frederick’s and drive away, your rear view clear the whole way home. Two weeks later you’ll sleep soundly, alone with a single tear in your eye.
Congratulations on Getting Rid of That Mannequin!
But there’s a catch. I mean, you’ve visited this website before. You’re alive. You know there’s always a catch. In this case it’s a creepy mannequin.
It might not be so bad if it didn’t have these really realistic nipples and eyes that followed you around the room. Like, we’re talking robot grade eyes. It’s unsettling to say the least.
You’ve been trying to get rid of him for a while now. You’ve dropped him in dumpsters, lit him on fire and even put him on Melrose Place, where he was sure to vanish forever. But nothing’s worked. No matter what you do he just shows up the next day in your bedroom after work, staring at you.
You can deal with it when you’re sleeping alone. In fact, it’s kind of comforting in a really gay way. But when you bring a lady home it tends to freak her out. Comforting comments about not minding the mannequin never seem to work, even when you whisper them really softly in your ladyfriend’s ear.
But you’ve spent a lot of time under the mannequin’s watchful gaze wondering just what the fuck it really wants. You’ve looked deep into its unsettling blue eyes and you’ve realized that all it really wants is a friend, a companion. Which explains all those unnerving crayon drawings on the fridge of the two of you together and that brief typed essay you found declaring profound feelings of loneliness paired with a strange sort of attraction to you that felt wrong but not entirely wrong.
So tomorrow you’re going to pack it into your car. You’re going to talk to it as you drive. You’ll bare your heart to the doll, letting it know that you view it as a companion, a source of comfort and a reliable factor in your otherwise chaotic, occasionally emotionally destitute life. The mannequin will listen pensively, its face still fixed in a terrible riticus. When you arrive at Frederick’s of Hollywood you’ll swears its countenance brightens.
You’ll prop him in Frederick’s and drive away, your rear view clear the whole way home. Two weeks later you’ll sleep soundly, alone with a single tear in your eye.
Congratulations on Getting Rid of That Mannequin!
Friday, October 16, 2009
Congratulations on Destroying Your Band!
You’re going to have a shot at a successful musical career today. But don’t worry, it’ll vanish tomorrow in a heartbeat.
Today you’re going to meet a young, hip record executive. You’ll meet him in line in Safeway and he’ll think you look marketable, mostly because fat is in ever since that tubber Jonah Hill started getting film roles. When he sees your pizza rolls and 40 of PBR he’ll mark you for a hipster and two minutes of conversation later you’ll be in like Flynn.
You’ll immediately hurry home to tell your roommate and lead singer that you’ve got the audition of a lifetime, but when you show up he’ll be balls deep in your girlfriend. You’ll be super excited and will have known for a while but when you move to join in the two of them will freak and get really upset that you ruined their cuckolding you has had no effect.
Your lead singer will dismiss your audition in a feeble last minute attempt to hurt you. It’ll work and you’ll show up the next day to try and sing for the first time in your life, like a scene out of a teen movie. It won’t work at all and you won’t get a record deal. All because you couldn’t keep it in your pants, perv.
Congratulations on Destroying Your Band!
Today you’re going to meet a young, hip record executive. You’ll meet him in line in Safeway and he’ll think you look marketable, mostly because fat is in ever since that tubber Jonah Hill started getting film roles. When he sees your pizza rolls and 40 of PBR he’ll mark you for a hipster and two minutes of conversation later you’ll be in like Flynn.
You’ll immediately hurry home to tell your roommate and lead singer that you’ve got the audition of a lifetime, but when you show up he’ll be balls deep in your girlfriend. You’ll be super excited and will have known for a while but when you move to join in the two of them will freak and get really upset that you ruined their cuckolding you has had no effect.
Your lead singer will dismiss your audition in a feeble last minute attempt to hurt you. It’ll work and you’ll show up the next day to try and sing for the first time in your life, like a scene out of a teen movie. It won’t work at all and you won’t get a record deal. All because you couldn’t keep it in your pants, perv.
Congratulations on Destroying Your Band!
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Congratulations on Deceiving the Woman Who Birthed You!
You’re a cowardly twenty nine year old who works data entry as an alternative to pursuing and potentially failing at a career in a field you care about. Your life is comfortable, if miserable, and you manage to hold on to a significant portion of your income by living with your mother.
At the age of twenty nine.
We don’t judge you for that. We’ve all been there. Sharon here in the office, for example, lives with her mother, and she’s thirty five. Sharon’s mother also has leukemia, but she still loves living rent free. In fact she’s gone on record that she’d let the bitch die if it wasn’t for the fact that she loves watching cable and being able to leave work at erratic hours without anyone questioning her.
But you simply want to avoid even the most minute responsibility. You’d be able to handle yourself just fine but as long as you live with your mother you have an excuse for why women don’t want to talk to you and an extra eight to ten hundred dollars a month in your pocket to spend on booze and notepads for your “novel.”
But lately she’s been getting sick of it. She’s nice enough about it, but she wants to retire soon, and enjoying her retirement is contingent on getting you the fuck out of her house.
You’ve been savvy to it, which means you’ve been avoiding her so that she can’t initiate that discussion which will end with you leaving forever. That means a lot of eating in your room and pretending you can’t hear her. But tomorrow she’s going to try to put an end to it.
She’ll be waiting for you when you return from your busy day typing names into a database at Kaiser Permanente so they can decide who to deny coverage to this week. She’ll gesture for you to sit as she sees you, but you’ll feign ignorance and try to walk by her as quickly as possible. When you pass her she’ll reach out and grab your wrist. Her grip will be just as strong as it was when you were a child.
“Honey,” she’ll say, dragging you down to a chair, “we need to talk.”
She’ll lay down that she wants you out of the fucking house by thirty. She’ll use that exact phrase, actually. But you’re no slouch. You had this covered.
You’re going to burst out weeping when she finishes, confessing your online gambling problem with tears in your eyes. You don’t actually have an online gambling problem, but some creative banking and a few hours of video poker should be able to keep you in free rent for another month and a half at least before she finds out what you’ve done and kicks you out for being a terrible son.
Congratulations on Deceiving the Woman Who Birthed You!
At the age of twenty nine.
We don’t judge you for that. We’ve all been there. Sharon here in the office, for example, lives with her mother, and she’s thirty five. Sharon’s mother also has leukemia, but she still loves living rent free. In fact she’s gone on record that she’d let the bitch die if it wasn’t for the fact that she loves watching cable and being able to leave work at erratic hours without anyone questioning her.
But you simply want to avoid even the most minute responsibility. You’d be able to handle yourself just fine but as long as you live with your mother you have an excuse for why women don’t want to talk to you and an extra eight to ten hundred dollars a month in your pocket to spend on booze and notepads for your “novel.”
But lately she’s been getting sick of it. She’s nice enough about it, but she wants to retire soon, and enjoying her retirement is contingent on getting you the fuck out of her house.
You’ve been savvy to it, which means you’ve been avoiding her so that she can’t initiate that discussion which will end with you leaving forever. That means a lot of eating in your room and pretending you can’t hear her. But tomorrow she’s going to try to put an end to it.
She’ll be waiting for you when you return from your busy day typing names into a database at Kaiser Permanente so they can decide who to deny coverage to this week. She’ll gesture for you to sit as she sees you, but you’ll feign ignorance and try to walk by her as quickly as possible. When you pass her she’ll reach out and grab your wrist. Her grip will be just as strong as it was when you were a child.
“Honey,” she’ll say, dragging you down to a chair, “we need to talk.”
She’ll lay down that she wants you out of the fucking house by thirty. She’ll use that exact phrase, actually. But you’re no slouch. You had this covered.
You’re going to burst out weeping when she finishes, confessing your online gambling problem with tears in your eyes. You don’t actually have an online gambling problem, but some creative banking and a few hours of video poker should be able to keep you in free rent for another month and a half at least before she finds out what you’ve done and kicks you out for being a terrible son.
Congratulations on Deceiving the Woman Who Birthed You!
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Congratulations on Keeping One of Them!
Most people aren’t as lucky as you are. They don’t get venture into space period. And some of those that do don’t get to return alive at all. Remember Challenger and Columbia? To say nothing of poor, poor Laika.
So when the instruments start to explode in your spaceship due to a combination of crew incompetence, panel mounted explosives and alien plasma fire you should try to count your blessings. You’ll have an awesome view of the earth from your precarious space-ship vantage point. Plus the whole situation will be pretty awesome from an objective standpoint. Sure, it’ll be horrifying to experience, but if we were watching it in a movie and we were a Tourettic black kid in the audience we’d stand up and yell “oh snap!”
Downsides will include massive crew casualties. Franklin, your space-lover of the past two months, will be killed in the initial bombardment. And Shara, who used to use you as a space-sounding-post-for-her-outfits-who-she-was-probably-kind-of-attracted-to-but-percveived-as-off-limits-because-of-your-sexual-orientation, will be sucked out into space when one of the bulkheads fails.
But you and Terry, the unbearable guy on the spaceship, will make it to the escape pod safely. And the explosion which tosses your limp form into the pod will only catch half of your face instead of the entire thing. That means you’ll retain 50% of your normal vision and half of your face won’t be horribly scarred.
Sure, this could be avoided if you followed security procedures and spent less time on Franklin’s dick. But you’re not going to. You’re going to make the choices you like and live with it, which is really as much as any of us can do.
So just try take solace in the fact that a single member of your crew survived and that you get to keep the use of one of your eyes. And try to ignore Terry as he breathes out of his mouth like a fucking mongoloid throughout re-entry.
Congratulations on Keeping One of Them!
So when the instruments start to explode in your spaceship due to a combination of crew incompetence, panel mounted explosives and alien plasma fire you should try to count your blessings. You’ll have an awesome view of the earth from your precarious space-ship vantage point. Plus the whole situation will be pretty awesome from an objective standpoint. Sure, it’ll be horrifying to experience, but if we were watching it in a movie and we were a Tourettic black kid in the audience we’d stand up and yell “oh snap!”
Downsides will include massive crew casualties. Franklin, your space-lover of the past two months, will be killed in the initial bombardment. And Shara, who used to use you as a space-sounding-post-for-her-outfits-who-she-was-probably-kind-of-attracted-to-but-percveived-as-off-limits-because-of-your-sexual-orientation, will be sucked out into space when one of the bulkheads fails.
But you and Terry, the unbearable guy on the spaceship, will make it to the escape pod safely. And the explosion which tosses your limp form into the pod will only catch half of your face instead of the entire thing. That means you’ll retain 50% of your normal vision and half of your face won’t be horribly scarred.
Sure, this could be avoided if you followed security procedures and spent less time on Franklin’s dick. But you’re not going to. You’re going to make the choices you like and live with it, which is really as much as any of us can do.
So just try take solace in the fact that a single member of your crew survived and that you get to keep the use of one of your eyes. And try to ignore Terry as he breathes out of his mouth like a fucking mongoloid throughout re-entry.
Congratulations on Keeping One of Them!
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Congratulations on Misusing 9-11 in Conversation!
This happens to all of us. I don’t mean people in general. I mean our staff. Here in the office we’ve seen the end of man, and compared to the shit you people are going to have to deal with 9-11 is just what we treat it as – a laughable footnote in human history, a minor tragedy used to justify horrors. It’s only fitting to giggle uncontrollably when someone says “Never forget!” following a discussion about the Khmer Rouge.
But the thing is, we don’t really have families or friends. The few of us who aren’t horribly mentally ill are asocial freaks who no longer speak to any who can’t see the writing on the wall of the universe. We don’t deal with “normals” so there’s no risk in making these jokes for us. You’re not so lucky.
So when you tell your aunt that you thought she’d never forget you probably shouldn’t keep pushing the joke. You shouldn’t tell her that if the Bush administration had put as much effort into finding Osama as she was putting into finding her purse they would’ve found him by now. And you defiinitely shouldn’t tell her that she should check Afghanistan.
When she stares at you like you’re a fucking idiot you definitely shouldn’t hold up your fingers and then bring them down in a gesture miming the tower’s collapse, all the while making soft screaming and exploding noises. It’s just in poor taste.
And you shouldn’t be surprised when your uncle punches you in the face and he and your cousin haul you away from the Thanksgiving table and hurl you out of the front door into a snow drift. You also shouldn’t be surprised when you feel cold, because you won’t have a jacket on. You were, after all, sitting and eating Thanksgiving dinner, not expecting to be injured and ejected from your parent’s home by your extended family.
But this is what happens when you don’t know how to make jokes appropriate to the people you’re around. You end up in the hospital for hypothermia.
Congratulations on Misusing 9-11 in Conversation!
But the thing is, we don’t really have families or friends. The few of us who aren’t horribly mentally ill are asocial freaks who no longer speak to any who can’t see the writing on the wall of the universe. We don’t deal with “normals” so there’s no risk in making these jokes for us. You’re not so lucky.
So when you tell your aunt that you thought she’d never forget you probably shouldn’t keep pushing the joke. You shouldn’t tell her that if the Bush administration had put as much effort into finding Osama as she was putting into finding her purse they would’ve found him by now. And you defiinitely shouldn’t tell her that she should check Afghanistan.
When she stares at you like you’re a fucking idiot you definitely shouldn’t hold up your fingers and then bring them down in a gesture miming the tower’s collapse, all the while making soft screaming and exploding noises. It’s just in poor taste.
And you shouldn’t be surprised when your uncle punches you in the face and he and your cousin haul you away from the Thanksgiving table and hurl you out of the front door into a snow drift. You also shouldn’t be surprised when you feel cold, because you won’t have a jacket on. You were, after all, sitting and eating Thanksgiving dinner, not expecting to be injured and ejected from your parent’s home by your extended family.
But this is what happens when you don’t know how to make jokes appropriate to the people you’re around. You end up in the hospital for hypothermia.
Congratulations on Misusing 9-11 in Conversation!
Monday, October 12, 2009
Congratulations on Leaving the Butcher Shop!
You’ll know you shouldn’t have fucked his wife, but it’ll be far, far too late by then. Four weeks and three nights too late, plus that one time in the Olive Garden bathroom a while back to be precise. But your momma raised you partly right and one of the lessons she made sure you had etched into your skull was that you don’t wrong a man and not apologize.
Sure, your mom left your dad for another man when you were seven and never spoke another word to you again and as far as you know she’s dead with some freak’s semen in her belly but that doesn’t really relate to the importance of the lessons she taught you, including “don’t touch the third rail.”
Which is why you’ll show up at Glenn’s butcher shop on St. Patrick Street on Saturday. You’ll walk in, wait patiently in line and consider the various meat choices available. You’ll giggle, wondering why Glenn likes meat so much, then feel bad about giggling at a man you’ve wronged so profoundly. When you get to the counter he won’t recognize you at first. He’ll open his mouth like you’re just another customer, but before he issues his greeting the gears will click and he’ll stammer in surprise.
“H-hey Franklin.” You’ll nod in response.
“Glenn, I need to tell you something.” He’ll look at you, then at the line behind you.
“Can it wait, buddy?” You’ll shake your head, a gesture he’ll seem to miss. His eyes will drift to the next customer in line, an elderly black woman with a list written on the back of a Safeway receipt in hand.
“I’ve been fucking Christy.”
His eyes will go wide.
“You fucking joking?”
You’ll shake your head.
“Sorry. Not about sleeping with her, that was awesome. About betraying your trust. For like a month.”
He’ll be fuming after that, chewing the inside of his lip and breathing heavy with his hands on the counter. “What?” he’ll say, violence evident in his voice.
“Don’t worry. We’re done. Unless she follows through on leaving you. She’s a great girl, I just don’t want to betray you anymore through her.”
After that last one he’ll let loose a wordless scream and throw a knife at you. You’ll duck with Bush-like reflexes and it will catch the elderly black woman waiting behind you in the chest, mortally wounding her. You’ll scramble through the line while people kick and scratch at you and Glenn follows you out of the store brandishing a cleaver at his side.
Once you get out you’ll start running, hoping that Glenn’s girth will keep him rooted to his business, shaking his cleaver in the air at you as you fade away. As the sounds of his shouts fade behind you you won’t be able to shake the feeling that this whole situation could’ve been avoided if you hadn’t taken that “speak whatever the fuck pops into your head” class from Ted Nugent.
Congratulations on Leaving the Butcher Shop!
Sure, your mom left your dad for another man when you were seven and never spoke another word to you again and as far as you know she’s dead with some freak’s semen in her belly but that doesn’t really relate to the importance of the lessons she taught you, including “don’t touch the third rail.”
Which is why you’ll show up at Glenn’s butcher shop on St. Patrick Street on Saturday. You’ll walk in, wait patiently in line and consider the various meat choices available. You’ll giggle, wondering why Glenn likes meat so much, then feel bad about giggling at a man you’ve wronged so profoundly. When you get to the counter he won’t recognize you at first. He’ll open his mouth like you’re just another customer, but before he issues his greeting the gears will click and he’ll stammer in surprise.
“H-hey Franklin.” You’ll nod in response.
“Glenn, I need to tell you something.” He’ll look at you, then at the line behind you.
“Can it wait, buddy?” You’ll shake your head, a gesture he’ll seem to miss. His eyes will drift to the next customer in line, an elderly black woman with a list written on the back of a Safeway receipt in hand.
“I’ve been fucking Christy.”
His eyes will go wide.
“You fucking joking?”
You’ll shake your head.
“Sorry. Not about sleeping with her, that was awesome. About betraying your trust. For like a month.”
He’ll be fuming after that, chewing the inside of his lip and breathing heavy with his hands on the counter. “What?” he’ll say, violence evident in his voice.
“Don’t worry. We’re done. Unless she follows through on leaving you. She’s a great girl, I just don’t want to betray you anymore through her.”
After that last one he’ll let loose a wordless scream and throw a knife at you. You’ll duck with Bush-like reflexes and it will catch the elderly black woman waiting behind you in the chest, mortally wounding her. You’ll scramble through the line while people kick and scratch at you and Glenn follows you out of the store brandishing a cleaver at his side.
Once you get out you’ll start running, hoping that Glenn’s girth will keep him rooted to his business, shaking his cleaver in the air at you as you fade away. As the sounds of his shouts fade behind you you won’t be able to shake the feeling that this whole situation could’ve been avoided if you hadn’t taken that “speak whatever the fuck pops into your head” class from Ted Nugent.
Congratulations on Leaving the Butcher Shop!
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Super Nerd Sundays Presents: A Week in Red Faction: Guerrilla
October 3rd - 2:45 PM
I just returned home after fixing my computer. I’ve got half of next week’s Congratulations! done and I’m updating all my games. Oh! Red Faction’s gone up in price on Steam, and I no longer receive bonus games with it. Oh well, sometimes these things happen. I’ll still totally throw down my money. Three hours to download. Hm. Ah well, time to masturbate!
October 3rd – 6:00 PM
After several “near misses” I regained consciousness and decided to check on the status of Red Faction: Guerrilla’s install. Imagine my delight when I saw it had finished! Then I remembered that Steam games run that annoying fucking first time config on their initial boot. After watching Keyboard Cat play people off for fifteen minutes I’m ready to play!
October 3rd – 6:25 PM
My generic everyman is in some sort of abandoned playground with a sledgehammer and some explosives. This game’s tutorial is already well beyond every other game’s tutorial. Kudos, Volition!
October 3rd – 6:35 PM
My brother keeps peer pressuring me into finishing my “objectives” instead of having fun. I’m sure this trend will in no way persist through the entire game.
October 3rd – 6:40 PM
OH GOD MY BROTHER HAS BEEN SHOT! THE HUMANITY!
October 3rd – 6:45 PM
Having recovered emotionally from my brother’s brutal murder I’ve decided to blow some shit up. I’m a little bit high on caffeine right now so my thoughts aren't clear but that playground was pretty fun. Maybe the actual game will come close.
October 3rd – 8:00 PM
I blacked out for the last hour and a half. I remember some explosions and a guy being hit really hard with a hammer, but that’s it. I have this strange feeling of euphoria, like I had fun, but my brain kind of rejected it. I’d still be playing but my friends from Massachusetts called and they want to play DotA clones against people who do nothing but play DotA clones. Time to have some fun!
October 3rd – 11:30 PM
After some fucking horrible games with those fucking assholes I thought were my friends but who just did everything could to make me lose and six beers I’ve decided to start playing Red Faction: Guerrilla again. After a cordial parting in which the word “fuck” is used for less than 60% of all verbage in my sentences I decide that Red Faction: Guerilla was a lot of fun earlier and that I should totally head back and play some of that to blow off steam. I’m also going to quit drinking after this next beer.
October 4th – 12:30 AM
FUCK YOU INTERNET! FUCK YOU EDF! SO WHAT IF YOU SHOOT ME AND KILL ME! I BLEW UP YOUR BUILDING BY DRIVING THROUGH IT AND MURDERED LIKE SIX OF YOUR GUYS WITH A HAMMER! ALSO I FUCKED YOUR MOM! YEAH!
Brb, more beer.
October 4th – 12:45 AM
After being told by the prick at 7-11 that he wouldn’t sell me any more beer until I put my pants back on I somehow completed the transaction without police assistance and made it back home to play more Red Faction.
October 4th – 1:00 AM
This game is more fun while I’m drunk. Also harder. And as I drink more I care less about how bad the storytelling is, which is good. I wish they’d let me upgrade the weapons I enjoy using most, instead of forcing me to upgrade ones which are kind of “shitty,” and I get angrier about that when I drink more, but maybe if I keep it up I’ll stop caring at some point. Back to the game!
October 4th – 1:30 AM
Im njoying rf alot. sa good game but no i hav to driv and s relly n hard. thnk im gonna take a brake n watch frakes/geeks.
October 4th – 2:00 AM
freaks and geeks is such a good sho. still don’t get why it was cancel.
October 4th – 3:15 AM
After a nice sober-up session with James Franco and those other, less handsome cast members I start back in on Red Faction. Suddenly I realize why this game is so familiar. The Combine has reached Mars. I can’t do this alone! I need Freeman!
October 4th – 3:45 AM
After spending almost an hour trying to complete the last mission in Parker Sector and drinking steadily I decide that a little sleep is in order. I lay my sledgehammer to the side of my computer, considering giving my monitor a love tap for a moment. In the end I think better and try to shove my tongue inside of my PC's case. I shock myself.
October 4th – 12:30 PM
I wake up with a headache and a vague idea of what Red Faction: Guerrilla is: Half-Life 2: Episode VII and some sort of Space Grand Theft Auto VIII. With this in mind I sit down and beat the shit out of Parker. Patting myself on the back I decide that it’s best to take a break after my victory and make breakfast.
October 4th – 1:15 PM
If I was a Martian rebel this is what I’d eat, eggs and potatoes with too much hot sauce. It’s energizing and substantial and it cost me like, a dollar to make. Time to put that energy to good use by taking a nap.
October 4th – 4:30 PM
At some point during my nap I woke up and started playing Red Faction again. I honestly don’t know when, but I’m really enjoying this game. Dust is a great place to hang out and I’m enjoying murdering law abiding citizens with my hammer and explosives. I’m waiting for Fox News to play this game and then discuss it as a terrorist training program. I think I’ll write a letter to get the ball rolling on that.
October 4th – 10:30 PM
I have no idea what’s been going on, but Dust is almost entirely clear. Now I only have the final mission and side missions to play in this area and I can’t bring myself to finish the game. As much as I want to see the next area I don’t want to miss out on resources and missions and the experiences they offer. So I’m not going to deal with any of them for now. Time to tour the old applications on my computer. Has Dawn of War II changed a lot lately?
October 4th – 10:45 PM
After fifteen minutes waiting for a match I realize that no, Dawn of War II has not changed since its patch. I go back to doing side missions and blowing shit up.
October 5th – 1:30 AM
I have work tomorrow. Better finish up this mission and go to bed.
October 5th – 2:30 AM
I finally hop off the computer and get to bed. I have four and a half hours to sleep.
October 5th – 7:00 PM
After satisfying the crude needs of my body vis a vis food and Youtube I decide to finish up things in Dust. It’s not that I don’t like the area, but it’s better this way. I bite my lip and stay strong as I walk away.
October 5th – 8:00 PM
After a much, much better finale mission I enter the Badlands and am treated to my first clusterfuck as friendly units bombard a valley where I’m trying to capture a briefcase. I am literally running from my allies fire when I suddenly realize that this game perfectly models what would happen if my co-workers were given ballistic weapons and asked to assist me in combat. Kudos, Red Faction.
October 6th - 2:30 AM
Once again I seem to have been transported through time and space to my current location. I spent the night cleaning out the Badlands and before long I had most of the side missions finished. Then I realized I could explore Oasis, where the game is even more like Half-Life 2, but it’s also even more like Halo. Then I stopped and mined a little bit and blew up a bridge. It’s kind of foggy. The important thing is that I found the McGuffin. And I upgraded the McGuffin so I have the McGuffin device, which isn’t actually as awesome as the cutscene made it seem because RF:G insist on neutering every enjoyable gun by giving it a shallow clip and a downright tiny ammo pool.
Even upgraded I can’t be the one man army I so obviously and justifiably want to be. What the fuck, Red Faction? It would be one thing if I was being overwhelmed by powerful enemies, but I’m just getting swamped because I don’t have enough bullets. Which, again, would be fair if you had a combat system which rewarded conserving resources to win fights, but you don’t. The battles are sloppy, and when I win I feel like it’s because the AI doesn’t know what it’s doing, not because I’ve done a great job. In summary your combat makes me drive through lots of buildings instead of being able to choose a strategy the way I want to but you are still very fun thank you.
October 6th – 7:00 PM
I’m going to play a quick bit of Red Faction: Guerrilla before I write some of my statements of purpose for grad school and then sit down and help a friend buy a new computer. I’m still kind of angry at it.
October 6th – 9:30 PM
I think I said something about writing things earlier, but I don’t remember. I think I might’ve been angry at RF:G earlier too, but it’s really tough to say. Right now I’ve just spent over an hour banging my head against targets of opportunity and I really couldn’t care less. I have to go buy soap and food or some bullshit. It’s hard to imagine why but I don’t want The Ladies to think I’m less fly than originally advertised so off to Safeway I go.
October 6th – 10:15 PM
After crashing into the wall of Safeway, hitting a manager in the jaw with a hammer, and grabbing my shit I had to run the two miles back to my house because none of the residents of Portland had the balls to step out of their cars and help me get home after my brave assault on the capitalist mecca. But now I’m here with soap and shampoo and some more hot sauce and it’s time to have some fun.
October 6th – 11:30 PM
I find myself reluctant to finish up in the Badlands. Not necessarily because I want to explore, but because of how dead the regions become after I’ve “liberated” them. Nothing seems to actually change, and I don’t gain any personal benefit from doing so, but the entire area I’ve been treating as my personal playground is transformed from a vibrant battlefield to a wasteland. If I was looking to track down all the demolition challenges and dick around with them for a while that would be one thing, but that takes fuck all time. The end result is that I feel punished for moving the ball ahead in this game. Red Faction: Guerrilla’s narrative causes me constant annoyance. But I’m still playing it.
October 7th – 1:00 AM
I close out the night by carrying out some light operations in Oasis using the rocket-launcher dump truck. I just re-read that sentence twice and I can’t tell if I should be proud of video games or ashamed. I guess I’ll default to pride, because all things considered it’s pretty awesome.
I find that the challenge of the Badlands vanishes fast in Oasis, where I have more resources in general and the terrain is more negotiable. The fact that Oasis doesn’t ask me to destroy a massive bridge which helps me as much as my enemies is also nice. Not that blowing up that giant bridge wasn’t fun.
But it comes back to my original qualm. The game doesn’t generate challenge by introducing a scarcity of resources, it forces challenge on you by offering lots of places to restock resources and limiting what you can carry severely. If Red Faction wanted me to play a conservative, pensive game they wouldn’t have rockets and exploding barrels lying around like they were on sale, they’d force me to carefully consider where I place each det pack before I blow a building.
But they’re all too willing to let me blast the shit out of whatever’s nearby, then run out of supplies after a few seconds, not because I didn’t ration them, but because I’m being battered by guards and asked to run and gun when I want to carefully prepare my assault. It’s fun, but it makes every engagement into the same trial and error clusterfuck. Oh well. Time to go to sleep after one more mission.
October 7th – 7:10 AM
The blaring of my cell phone alarm wakes me from my slumber, face down on my keyboard. I seem to be in a safe house conversing with Sam but I have no idea how I got here. I consider showering and changing my clothes before work but I decide that it would be a better use of my time to transport a nearby vehicle back to a safehouse so I can buy that last arc welder upgrade.
October 7th – 8:30 AM
At work, where there’s an alarming lack of explosives. I’m writing an email to my boss about it.
October 7th – 10:00 AM
After a brief conversation with my supervisor it sounds like the issue is going to be “fully resolved.” His words!
October 7th – 6:30 PM
After a long day being followed around by uniformed gentlemen making sure I didn’t put a second copier through a wall during the course of the day I decide to sit down and try to get a few more missions done in Oasis before I clear out The Badlands. After around an hour of failing and retrying unreasonably difficult rescue missions I hurl my monitor across the room and select a new one from my “monitor closet.” I then log on to Gmail and hear from the same soulless friends who ruined my life on Saturday that real time strategy games have had destructible buildings for years. Intrigued, I decide to investigate.
October 8th – 1:30 AM
After losing five hours worth of Heroes of Newerth games I return to Oasis and try my hand at a few more missions. Soon the landscape is all but stripped of missions, a lifeless, pleasure-less playground ready to be plundered tomorrow. It’s like a high school filled with treasure with no principal and a gang of rowdy teens ready to cause hijinx. This can only end well.
October 8th - 7:30 PM
After briefly giving myself food poisoning by eating fish tacos I’d planned to finish just before first purchasing Red Faction I settle in to finish up the last few missions in Oasis. This’ll be easy peasy!
October 8th – 9:30 PM
Fuck this game and fuck anyone who’s still reading this. Red Faction has gone from being a pleasant diversion to being appallingly difficult. Not in its core gameplay, but in the “puzzles” they want me to solve. I’m forced to function now as the sort of aforementioned one man army I mentioned the game keeping me from becoming. I’m literally angry with rage.
I take a break and pay one of the young Somali children in my neighborhood to act as a moving target as I hurl another monitor at them. I miss and am doubly frustrated. Fuck you, Volition!
October 8th - 9:45 PM
I return home, hat in hand, after buying and drinking an entire forty at a nearby corner store. I apologize to Red Faction: Guerrilla, remove my penis from my pants and we get started again.
October 8th – 11:00 PM
I’m struck, while writing this journal, how repetitive many of this game’s actions are. Generally you’re just blowing shit up, an inherently fun activity, but sometimes the game forces you down a different path. Right now I’m trying to rescue three hostages from a EDF stronghold and it could’ve possibly be more frustrating, partly because they’re located on three separate floors and destroying the infrastructure of the building in any way would kill all the hostages. So I’m fighting off dozens of soldiers while trying to keep a handful of colonists alive and avoid destroying assets while clearing out ever returning waves of troops.
It’s less challenging than frustrating, perhaps because I can’t see “the trick.” I try to remove enemy emplacements, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I try to move as quickly as possible, rescuing the hostages in different order, but again, no difference. In the end the whole thing makes me want to walk away from the game I’ve enjoyed playing so much. The design elements seem to fight one another rather than meshing. Maybe if I could scout out the area and take a taciturn approach to the whole thing it would make a difference, but right now this rescue mission simply recalls how similar all of the missions to date have been by sucking the fun right out of them, and it’s making me want to punch through a wall.
October 9th – 12:00 AM
After almost three hours of trying to beat one mission and failing I’ve decided to give up on a mission for the first time in Red Faction: Guerrilla. Maybe later, eh? Instead I’m going to attempt to prep Oasis for a nice easy win. I expect that after the last three hours it’ll feel like a god damn vacation.
October 9th – 1:00 AM
After a series of really easy missions I rethought my approach to that impossible fucking mission and cleared it in a few seconds. It’s nice to know a game based on “free form rebellion” makes it feel just as much like pounding a nail through your dick to play in any way other than the “correct” one as the next title. After clearing out two areas and receiving some pretty helpful items that I still have to fucking buy, thanks for that Volition, it’s been a “productive” night. Top on my list of accomplishments? Learning that game developers who aren’t from Belgium are dicks. And the ones from Belgium are queers, so they’re just being nice as a by-product of people being dicks to them. Or something. I’m kind of drunk right now.
October 10th – 8:30 PM
After briefly and awkwardly interacting with my co-workers I returned home to play some more RF:G and drink myself into oblivion. I have to admit, the “Free Fire Zone” section was pretty much as infuriating as possible at first, with a “drive through a desert while being shot at by unseen targets” section which should’ve swept GDC.
Eventually that whole surprisingly-easy-low-tension drive gave way to a brief segment where I “assaulted” an enemy base. Read “assaulted” as “drove over guards, planted explosives, and then tried as hard as I could to escape.” I had to do this three times in rapid succession, but luckily dying didn’t net me any penalties. In fact it was kind of helpful, since I knew where all the baddies would spawn.
After completing those two asinine missions I’ve been informed that the Free Fire Zone, which I only just now visited, is now liberated. Huzzah lifeless desert! Enjoy your newfound freedm!
October 10th - 10:00 PM
After “liberating” that new area I decided to try some side missions. Turns out they just scale towards being uninterestingly frustrating towards the end of the game. After thirty minutes of swearing at my computer I decide to play different games to cleanse my pallet before I make a fresh approach.
October 10th - 11:30 PM
haff a bottl of whiskey annd a lost game of LOL later im baaaaack!
jk, jk, not a robot, but i m playin’ this game. I’m gonna kick fucksticks off mars. i can haz marzzz!!!!
October 10th – 1:00 AM
Fuck lolcats and fuck all you people. Whiskey is my only friend, and even she’s betraying me. Six times is an unreasonable number of times to retry a mission. I hate you and hope you die, Red Faction.
I’ll see you tomorrow.
October 10th – 11:25 AM
After starting up RF:G and finishing up a few more missions this morning I decided I would end the journal here, in Eos. I’m poised to beat the game but I want this whole journal to be relatively spoiler free. There isn’t a lot to spoil in RF:G. You blow shit up, that’s sort of the entire game, but there’s a lot to repeat. Drive, explode, drive. Find a new way to blow something up or move. Be treated to a brief cutscene intended to animate just how generically evil the EDF is and how desperate the Martians are.
I’m going to finish the game, and I’d recommend it to anyone whose interest has been even mildly piqued by this journal, but I’m not sure I’d call it GOTY. Maybe once I play some multiplayer that’ll change, but Red Faction: Guerrilla has proven a smart game with some stupid aspects. Enough, in fact, I think to warrant an entire essay.
But it remains, and likely always will be, incredibly fun.
I just returned home after fixing my computer. I’ve got half of next week’s Congratulations! done and I’m updating all my games. Oh! Red Faction’s gone up in price on Steam, and I no longer receive bonus games with it. Oh well, sometimes these things happen. I’ll still totally throw down my money. Three hours to download. Hm. Ah well, time to masturbate!
October 3rd – 6:00 PM
After several “near misses” I regained consciousness and decided to check on the status of Red Faction: Guerrilla’s install. Imagine my delight when I saw it had finished! Then I remembered that Steam games run that annoying fucking first time config on their initial boot. After watching Keyboard Cat play people off for fifteen minutes I’m ready to play!
October 3rd – 6:25 PM
My generic everyman is in some sort of abandoned playground with a sledgehammer and some explosives. This game’s tutorial is already well beyond every other game’s tutorial. Kudos, Volition!
October 3rd – 6:35 PM
My brother keeps peer pressuring me into finishing my “objectives” instead of having fun. I’m sure this trend will in no way persist through the entire game.
October 3rd – 6:40 PM
OH GOD MY BROTHER HAS BEEN SHOT! THE HUMANITY!
October 3rd – 6:45 PM
Having recovered emotionally from my brother’s brutal murder I’ve decided to blow some shit up. I’m a little bit high on caffeine right now so my thoughts aren't clear but that playground was pretty fun. Maybe the actual game will come close.
October 3rd – 8:00 PM
I blacked out for the last hour and a half. I remember some explosions and a guy being hit really hard with a hammer, but that’s it. I have this strange feeling of euphoria, like I had fun, but my brain kind of rejected it. I’d still be playing but my friends from Massachusetts called and they want to play DotA clones against people who do nothing but play DotA clones. Time to have some fun!
October 3rd – 11:30 PM
After some fucking horrible games with those fucking assholes I thought were my friends but who just did everything could to make me lose and six beers I’ve decided to start playing Red Faction: Guerrilla again. After a cordial parting in which the word “fuck” is used for less than 60% of all verbage in my sentences I decide that Red Faction: Guerilla was a lot of fun earlier and that I should totally head back and play some of that to blow off steam. I’m also going to quit drinking after this next beer.
October 4th – 12:30 AM
FUCK YOU INTERNET! FUCK YOU EDF! SO WHAT IF YOU SHOOT ME AND KILL ME! I BLEW UP YOUR BUILDING BY DRIVING THROUGH IT AND MURDERED LIKE SIX OF YOUR GUYS WITH A HAMMER! ALSO I FUCKED YOUR MOM! YEAH!
Brb, more beer.
October 4th – 12:45 AM
After being told by the prick at 7-11 that he wouldn’t sell me any more beer until I put my pants back on I somehow completed the transaction without police assistance and made it back home to play more Red Faction.
October 4th – 1:00 AM
This game is more fun while I’m drunk. Also harder. And as I drink more I care less about how bad the storytelling is, which is good. I wish they’d let me upgrade the weapons I enjoy using most, instead of forcing me to upgrade ones which are kind of “shitty,” and I get angrier about that when I drink more, but maybe if I keep it up I’ll stop caring at some point. Back to the game!
October 4th – 1:30 AM
Im njoying rf alot. sa good game but no i hav to driv and s relly n hard. thnk im gonna take a brake n watch frakes/geeks.
October 4th – 2:00 AM
freaks and geeks is such a good sho. still don’t get why it was cancel.
October 4th – 3:15 AM
After a nice sober-up session with James Franco and those other, less handsome cast members I start back in on Red Faction. Suddenly I realize why this game is so familiar. The Combine has reached Mars. I can’t do this alone! I need Freeman!
October 4th – 3:45 AM
After spending almost an hour trying to complete the last mission in Parker Sector and drinking steadily I decide that a little sleep is in order. I lay my sledgehammer to the side of my computer, considering giving my monitor a love tap for a moment. In the end I think better and try to shove my tongue inside of my PC's case. I shock myself.
October 4th – 12:30 PM
I wake up with a headache and a vague idea of what Red Faction: Guerrilla is: Half-Life 2: Episode VII and some sort of Space Grand Theft Auto VIII. With this in mind I sit down and beat the shit out of Parker. Patting myself on the back I decide that it’s best to take a break after my victory and make breakfast.
October 4th – 1:15 PM
If I was a Martian rebel this is what I’d eat, eggs and potatoes with too much hot sauce. It’s energizing and substantial and it cost me like, a dollar to make. Time to put that energy to good use by taking a nap.
October 4th – 4:30 PM
At some point during my nap I woke up and started playing Red Faction again. I honestly don’t know when, but I’m really enjoying this game. Dust is a great place to hang out and I’m enjoying murdering law abiding citizens with my hammer and explosives. I’m waiting for Fox News to play this game and then discuss it as a terrorist training program. I think I’ll write a letter to get the ball rolling on that.
October 4th – 10:30 PM
I have no idea what’s been going on, but Dust is almost entirely clear. Now I only have the final mission and side missions to play in this area and I can’t bring myself to finish the game. As much as I want to see the next area I don’t want to miss out on resources and missions and the experiences they offer. So I’m not going to deal with any of them for now. Time to tour the old applications on my computer. Has Dawn of War II changed a lot lately?
October 4th – 10:45 PM
After fifteen minutes waiting for a match I realize that no, Dawn of War II has not changed since its patch. I go back to doing side missions and blowing shit up.
October 5th – 1:30 AM
I have work tomorrow. Better finish up this mission and go to bed.
October 5th – 2:30 AM
I finally hop off the computer and get to bed. I have four and a half hours to sleep.
October 5th – 7:00 PM
After satisfying the crude needs of my body vis a vis food and Youtube I decide to finish up things in Dust. It’s not that I don’t like the area, but it’s better this way. I bite my lip and stay strong as I walk away.
October 5th – 8:00 PM
After a much, much better finale mission I enter the Badlands and am treated to my first clusterfuck as friendly units bombard a valley where I’m trying to capture a briefcase. I am literally running from my allies fire when I suddenly realize that this game perfectly models what would happen if my co-workers were given ballistic weapons and asked to assist me in combat. Kudos, Red Faction.
October 6th - 2:30 AM
Once again I seem to have been transported through time and space to my current location. I spent the night cleaning out the Badlands and before long I had most of the side missions finished. Then I realized I could explore Oasis, where the game is even more like Half-Life 2, but it’s also even more like Halo. Then I stopped and mined a little bit and blew up a bridge. It’s kind of foggy. The important thing is that I found the McGuffin. And I upgraded the McGuffin so I have the McGuffin device, which isn’t actually as awesome as the cutscene made it seem because RF:G insist on neutering every enjoyable gun by giving it a shallow clip and a downright tiny ammo pool.
Even upgraded I can’t be the one man army I so obviously and justifiably want to be. What the fuck, Red Faction? It would be one thing if I was being overwhelmed by powerful enemies, but I’m just getting swamped because I don’t have enough bullets. Which, again, would be fair if you had a combat system which rewarded conserving resources to win fights, but you don’t. The battles are sloppy, and when I win I feel like it’s because the AI doesn’t know what it’s doing, not because I’ve done a great job. In summary your combat makes me drive through lots of buildings instead of being able to choose a strategy the way I want to but you are still very fun thank you.
October 6th – 7:00 PM
I’m going to play a quick bit of Red Faction: Guerrilla before I write some of my statements of purpose for grad school and then sit down and help a friend buy a new computer. I’m still kind of angry at it.
October 6th – 9:30 PM
I think I said something about writing things earlier, but I don’t remember. I think I might’ve been angry at RF:G earlier too, but it’s really tough to say. Right now I’ve just spent over an hour banging my head against targets of opportunity and I really couldn’t care less. I have to go buy soap and food or some bullshit. It’s hard to imagine why but I don’t want The Ladies to think I’m less fly than originally advertised so off to Safeway I go.
October 6th – 10:15 PM
After crashing into the wall of Safeway, hitting a manager in the jaw with a hammer, and grabbing my shit I had to run the two miles back to my house because none of the residents of Portland had the balls to step out of their cars and help me get home after my brave assault on the capitalist mecca. But now I’m here with soap and shampoo and some more hot sauce and it’s time to have some fun.
October 6th – 11:30 PM
I find myself reluctant to finish up in the Badlands. Not necessarily because I want to explore, but because of how dead the regions become after I’ve “liberated” them. Nothing seems to actually change, and I don’t gain any personal benefit from doing so, but the entire area I’ve been treating as my personal playground is transformed from a vibrant battlefield to a wasteland. If I was looking to track down all the demolition challenges and dick around with them for a while that would be one thing, but that takes fuck all time. The end result is that I feel punished for moving the ball ahead in this game. Red Faction: Guerrilla’s narrative causes me constant annoyance. But I’m still playing it.
October 7th – 1:00 AM
I close out the night by carrying out some light operations in Oasis using the rocket-launcher dump truck. I just re-read that sentence twice and I can’t tell if I should be proud of video games or ashamed. I guess I’ll default to pride, because all things considered it’s pretty awesome.
I find that the challenge of the Badlands vanishes fast in Oasis, where I have more resources in general and the terrain is more negotiable. The fact that Oasis doesn’t ask me to destroy a massive bridge which helps me as much as my enemies is also nice. Not that blowing up that giant bridge wasn’t fun.
But it comes back to my original qualm. The game doesn’t generate challenge by introducing a scarcity of resources, it forces challenge on you by offering lots of places to restock resources and limiting what you can carry severely. If Red Faction wanted me to play a conservative, pensive game they wouldn’t have rockets and exploding barrels lying around like they were on sale, they’d force me to carefully consider where I place each det pack before I blow a building.
But they’re all too willing to let me blast the shit out of whatever’s nearby, then run out of supplies after a few seconds, not because I didn’t ration them, but because I’m being battered by guards and asked to run and gun when I want to carefully prepare my assault. It’s fun, but it makes every engagement into the same trial and error clusterfuck. Oh well. Time to go to sleep after one more mission.
October 7th – 7:10 AM
The blaring of my cell phone alarm wakes me from my slumber, face down on my keyboard. I seem to be in a safe house conversing with Sam but I have no idea how I got here. I consider showering and changing my clothes before work but I decide that it would be a better use of my time to transport a nearby vehicle back to a safehouse so I can buy that last arc welder upgrade.
October 7th – 8:30 AM
At work, where there’s an alarming lack of explosives. I’m writing an email to my boss about it.
October 7th – 10:00 AM
After a brief conversation with my supervisor it sounds like the issue is going to be “fully resolved.” His words!
October 7th – 6:30 PM
After a long day being followed around by uniformed gentlemen making sure I didn’t put a second copier through a wall during the course of the day I decide to sit down and try to get a few more missions done in Oasis before I clear out The Badlands. After around an hour of failing and retrying unreasonably difficult rescue missions I hurl my monitor across the room and select a new one from my “monitor closet.” I then log on to Gmail and hear from the same soulless friends who ruined my life on Saturday that real time strategy games have had destructible buildings for years. Intrigued, I decide to investigate.
October 8th – 1:30 AM
After losing five hours worth of Heroes of Newerth games I return to Oasis and try my hand at a few more missions. Soon the landscape is all but stripped of missions, a lifeless, pleasure-less playground ready to be plundered tomorrow. It’s like a high school filled with treasure with no principal and a gang of rowdy teens ready to cause hijinx. This can only end well.
October 8th - 7:30 PM
After briefly giving myself food poisoning by eating fish tacos I’d planned to finish just before first purchasing Red Faction I settle in to finish up the last few missions in Oasis. This’ll be easy peasy!
October 8th – 9:30 PM
Fuck this game and fuck anyone who’s still reading this. Red Faction has gone from being a pleasant diversion to being appallingly difficult. Not in its core gameplay, but in the “puzzles” they want me to solve. I’m forced to function now as the sort of aforementioned one man army I mentioned the game keeping me from becoming. I’m literally angry with rage.
I take a break and pay one of the young Somali children in my neighborhood to act as a moving target as I hurl another monitor at them. I miss and am doubly frustrated. Fuck you, Volition!
October 8th - 9:45 PM
I return home, hat in hand, after buying and drinking an entire forty at a nearby corner store. I apologize to Red Faction: Guerrilla, remove my penis from my pants and we get started again.
October 8th – 11:00 PM
I’m struck, while writing this journal, how repetitive many of this game’s actions are. Generally you’re just blowing shit up, an inherently fun activity, but sometimes the game forces you down a different path. Right now I’m trying to rescue three hostages from a EDF stronghold and it could’ve possibly be more frustrating, partly because they’re located on three separate floors and destroying the infrastructure of the building in any way would kill all the hostages. So I’m fighting off dozens of soldiers while trying to keep a handful of colonists alive and avoid destroying assets while clearing out ever returning waves of troops.
It’s less challenging than frustrating, perhaps because I can’t see “the trick.” I try to remove enemy emplacements, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I try to move as quickly as possible, rescuing the hostages in different order, but again, no difference. In the end the whole thing makes me want to walk away from the game I’ve enjoyed playing so much. The design elements seem to fight one another rather than meshing. Maybe if I could scout out the area and take a taciturn approach to the whole thing it would make a difference, but right now this rescue mission simply recalls how similar all of the missions to date have been by sucking the fun right out of them, and it’s making me want to punch through a wall.
October 9th – 12:00 AM
After almost three hours of trying to beat one mission and failing I’ve decided to give up on a mission for the first time in Red Faction: Guerrilla. Maybe later, eh? Instead I’m going to attempt to prep Oasis for a nice easy win. I expect that after the last three hours it’ll feel like a god damn vacation.
October 9th – 1:00 AM
After a series of really easy missions I rethought my approach to that impossible fucking mission and cleared it in a few seconds. It’s nice to know a game based on “free form rebellion” makes it feel just as much like pounding a nail through your dick to play in any way other than the “correct” one as the next title. After clearing out two areas and receiving some pretty helpful items that I still have to fucking buy, thanks for that Volition, it’s been a “productive” night. Top on my list of accomplishments? Learning that game developers who aren’t from Belgium are dicks. And the ones from Belgium are queers, so they’re just being nice as a by-product of people being dicks to them. Or something. I’m kind of drunk right now.
October 10th – 8:30 PM
After briefly and awkwardly interacting with my co-workers I returned home to play some more RF:G and drink myself into oblivion. I have to admit, the “Free Fire Zone” section was pretty much as infuriating as possible at first, with a “drive through a desert while being shot at by unseen targets” section which should’ve swept GDC.
Eventually that whole surprisingly-easy-low-tension drive gave way to a brief segment where I “assaulted” an enemy base. Read “assaulted” as “drove over guards, planted explosives, and then tried as hard as I could to escape.” I had to do this three times in rapid succession, but luckily dying didn’t net me any penalties. In fact it was kind of helpful, since I knew where all the baddies would spawn.
After completing those two asinine missions I’ve been informed that the Free Fire Zone, which I only just now visited, is now liberated. Huzzah lifeless desert! Enjoy your newfound freedm!
October 10th - 10:00 PM
After “liberating” that new area I decided to try some side missions. Turns out they just scale towards being uninterestingly frustrating towards the end of the game. After thirty minutes of swearing at my computer I decide to play different games to cleanse my pallet before I make a fresh approach.
October 10th - 11:30 PM
haff a bottl of whiskey annd a lost game of LOL later im baaaaack!
jk, jk, not a robot, but i m playin’ this game. I’m gonna kick fucksticks off mars. i can haz marzzz!!!!
October 10th – 1:00 AM
Fuck lolcats and fuck all you people. Whiskey is my only friend, and even she’s betraying me. Six times is an unreasonable number of times to retry a mission. I hate you and hope you die, Red Faction.
I’ll see you tomorrow.
October 10th – 11:25 AM
After starting up RF:G and finishing up a few more missions this morning I decided I would end the journal here, in Eos. I’m poised to beat the game but I want this whole journal to be relatively spoiler free. There isn’t a lot to spoil in RF:G. You blow shit up, that’s sort of the entire game, but there’s a lot to repeat. Drive, explode, drive. Find a new way to blow something up or move. Be treated to a brief cutscene intended to animate just how generically evil the EDF is and how desperate the Martians are.
I’m going to finish the game, and I’d recommend it to anyone whose interest has been even mildly piqued by this journal, but I’m not sure I’d call it GOTY. Maybe once I play some multiplayer that’ll change, but Red Faction: Guerrilla has proven a smart game with some stupid aspects. Enough, in fact, I think to warrant an entire essay.
But it remains, and likely always will be, incredibly fun.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Congratulations on Washing Off Courtney Love!
Professional star fucking isn’t what it used to be anymore. Before the days of Heidi and Spencer Pratt being a celebrity actually meant something, and star fucking was a dignified profession. But ever since the rise of reality TV it’s become unclear just what a star fucker is anymore and what the point is nowadays. As a result professional star fuckers have fallen by the wayside.
You’ve been hit particularly hard. As a male star fucker there was a time when you would’ve made a living nailing chicks the like of Daryl Hannah, but of late most attractive and intelligent celebrity women have no trouble finding mates who match their status and aren’t intimidated by their fame. As a result you’ve been fucking your way through people like Amy Weinhouse and Paula Poundstone just to make ends meet.
Tonight you’re going to hit rock bottom.
You’re going to get a call from your agent at 8:00 PM, Pacific time, telling you to show up in a suit jacket, jeans and a t-shirt at an address in Hollywood. You’ll introduce yourself as Courtney Love’s biggest fan and smile your broadest, handsomest grin and she’ll let you in.
After twenty minutes of awkward conversation she’ll remove her underpants to “get your opinion” and you won’t have the heart to tell her that she got it wrong. You’ll hop to attention, do your duty as an American, collect a check from her manager on your way out and drive home as fast as your Honda Accord can manage so that you can try in vain to scrub off the scent of her sex.
We won’t describe it here, not for the purpose of remaining a tasteful publication about horrible shit happening to awful people, but because it will defy language. It will be as if an extra-dimensional stain has spread across worlds and is localized on your groin.
Four days later you’ll finally get rid of it with the aid of steel wool and some Ajax.
Congratulations on Washing Off Courtney Love!
You’ve been hit particularly hard. As a male star fucker there was a time when you would’ve made a living nailing chicks the like of Daryl Hannah, but of late most attractive and intelligent celebrity women have no trouble finding mates who match their status and aren’t intimidated by their fame. As a result you’ve been fucking your way through people like Amy Weinhouse and Paula Poundstone just to make ends meet.
Tonight you’re going to hit rock bottom.
You’re going to get a call from your agent at 8:00 PM, Pacific time, telling you to show up in a suit jacket, jeans and a t-shirt at an address in Hollywood. You’ll introduce yourself as Courtney Love’s biggest fan and smile your broadest, handsomest grin and she’ll let you in.
After twenty minutes of awkward conversation she’ll remove her underpants to “get your opinion” and you won’t have the heart to tell her that she got it wrong. You’ll hop to attention, do your duty as an American, collect a check from her manager on your way out and drive home as fast as your Honda Accord can manage so that you can try in vain to scrub off the scent of her sex.
We won’t describe it here, not for the purpose of remaining a tasteful publication about horrible shit happening to awful people, but because it will defy language. It will be as if an extra-dimensional stain has spread across worlds and is localized on your groin.
Four days later you’ll finally get rid of it with the aid of steel wool and some Ajax.
Congratulations on Washing Off Courtney Love!
Friday, October 9, 2009
Congratulations on Outdrinking Congress!
Most people don’t understand the complex system of rules which govern American legislature, and rightly so. They were created to actively defy comprehension, so as to make it easier to filibuster and vote in pay raises for sitting senators. There’s a whole section of their by-laws about orgasm order in state-sponsored circle jerks. It’s impenetrable.
Here’s a pop quiz. How is the president pro-tempore selected? Most of the people reading this have no idea, and the people who do have an idea of how it’s done are fucking lying to themselves. They probably think that the president pro-tempore resides over a fucking Latin club.
Which is why it’s no surprise that you, the junior senator from New Hampshire, are going to find yourself in an awkward position come Friday. You’ll be under close scrutiny for some less than moral campaign donations and a few things you did to young boys during the Vietnam conflict. The Senate has had to work long and hard to cut through the legal jungle blocking you from impeachment proceedings, but they’ll be nearing their fifteen year goal of expelling you from the Senate tonight and there’s only one way to stop it.
You’ll have to beat the entirety of the House of Representatives in a drinking contest.
It’s a little known loophole, one of those bits in the “fine print” of the Constitution, near the part that dismisses the Bill of Rights and states that you can marry a table if you write a convincing enough letter. It’s never been effectively used before, but there’s never been a Senator like you to give it the old college try and you know that you’re the man who can make a blue law into a precedent.
You’ll begin by opening the motion to the floor. After a brief filibuster the motion will carry and a quorum of the House will be assembled so that proceedings may begin. During this waiting period a motion will be introduced to consider the formation of a committee to determine available snacks during upcoming proceedings. After three hours of debate senior Senator Kerry will be chosen to chair the committee, suggesting Baja cuisine to a small bipartisan commission. The commission will vote six to three in favor of Baja cuisine and McCormick and Schmidt's will be contacted.
The quorum will arrive around the same time as the fish and the contest will begin.
The rules are simple enough. Each time you take a shot every member of Congress must take one with you. The contest ends when the House of Representatives passes out or the Senator in question falls unconscious. Proceedings may be interrupted at any time by filibuster, but filibuster may in turn be interrupted with a cry of “drink,” necessitating that all parties conscious drink. EMTs will be standing by.
You’ll shout drink to the floor and you’ll be out of the gates. Seven hours later an elderly statesman from Georgia will topple out of his chair and you’ll be declared the victor. Your reward will be a novelty hat with moose antlers and total immunity from prosecution while wearing said hat. So even though you’re going to look pretty silly over the next term you’re going to be totally safe. Well played, Senator!
Congratulations on Outdrinking Congress!
Here’s a pop quiz. How is the president pro-tempore selected? Most of the people reading this have no idea, and the people who do have an idea of how it’s done are fucking lying to themselves. They probably think that the president pro-tempore resides over a fucking Latin club.
Which is why it’s no surprise that you, the junior senator from New Hampshire, are going to find yourself in an awkward position come Friday. You’ll be under close scrutiny for some less than moral campaign donations and a few things you did to young boys during the Vietnam conflict. The Senate has had to work long and hard to cut through the legal jungle blocking you from impeachment proceedings, but they’ll be nearing their fifteen year goal of expelling you from the Senate tonight and there’s only one way to stop it.
You’ll have to beat the entirety of the House of Representatives in a drinking contest.
It’s a little known loophole, one of those bits in the “fine print” of the Constitution, near the part that dismisses the Bill of Rights and states that you can marry a table if you write a convincing enough letter. It’s never been effectively used before, but there’s never been a Senator like you to give it the old college try and you know that you’re the man who can make a blue law into a precedent.
You’ll begin by opening the motion to the floor. After a brief filibuster the motion will carry and a quorum of the House will be assembled so that proceedings may begin. During this waiting period a motion will be introduced to consider the formation of a committee to determine available snacks during upcoming proceedings. After three hours of debate senior Senator Kerry will be chosen to chair the committee, suggesting Baja cuisine to a small bipartisan commission. The commission will vote six to three in favor of Baja cuisine and McCormick and Schmidt's will be contacted.
The quorum will arrive around the same time as the fish and the contest will begin.
The rules are simple enough. Each time you take a shot every member of Congress must take one with you. The contest ends when the House of Representatives passes out or the Senator in question falls unconscious. Proceedings may be interrupted at any time by filibuster, but filibuster may in turn be interrupted with a cry of “drink,” necessitating that all parties conscious drink. EMTs will be standing by.
You’ll shout drink to the floor and you’ll be out of the gates. Seven hours later an elderly statesman from Georgia will topple out of his chair and you’ll be declared the victor. Your reward will be a novelty hat with moose antlers and total immunity from prosecution while wearing said hat. So even though you’re going to look pretty silly over the next term you’re going to be totally safe. Well played, Senator!
Congratulations on Outdrinking Congress!
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Congratulations on Catching Geddy Lee!
You’re going to be the head of Interpol one day but long ago, just like the rest of us, you used to be someone else. You used to be a little girl who loved Rush. But that won’t be the way of things soon. Soon you’ll be leading a manhunt for international superstar turned bank robber Geddy Lee, and you’re going to need all of your Rush fandom and crime solving acumen to beat him.
Your break will come one dark evening as you drink alone in a Cork bar, not far from the docks. It’ll have some aggressive generic Irish name, like Murphy’s or O’Reilly’s or something. It’ll be next to the River Lee, but inside you could be anywhere, any place. The dim lights and comforting taps would make it a perfect ex-pat bar, but the locals have never given it up and even as you sit and sip quietly by yourself they’ll shoot you dirty looks.
The only break in their derision will come when the entertainment plays. That night they’ll be taking a break from Scorpions and Eagles cover bands to host something a little more cultured: a Rush cover band. You’ll smile into your five Euro Coors each time they play one of your youthful favorites. But it will quickly become apparent that they don’t know too many songs, even though they’re a professional cover band. And after the third rendition of Tom Sawyer the crowd will grow restless.
The band, sensing that they’re three songs from having bottles hurled at them, will take a brief break and when they disseminate into the crowd to grab their free drinks and try to hit on some of the less time-ravaged locals the lead singer will be approached by a bearded man of slight build with slightly efite features. He’ll carry himself with a masculine air but you know that with a little bit of rouge and some swagger in his hips he’d be one hell of a drag queen.
You won’t be able to hear a word of their exchange but you’ll get the drift and when the band comes back up to play the bearded man will be leading them. He’ll take the microphone in hand like he’s addressing a stadium, poised for some Superbowl grade crowd treatment, but one look around the room and he’ll think better of it. He’ll turn around, nod to the band and they’ll start up into Limelight.
The singer’s voice will hit you sharp and swift, right between your ribs and your abdomen. Breathing will take too much effort and you’ll be unable to stare as you suddenly see what the singer would look like without his beard.
He’d be Geddy Lee.
His voice will rattle through the bars of Limelight with practiced precision and none of the tiredness that the cover band seemed to carry. It’ll be like each song is a creative celebration of Rush and their revolutionary rock anthems. When they play Tom Sawyer again the crowd will cheer, except for the lead singer who will be biting his lip and shaking his head, clearly jealous, clearly thrilled that he finally met his idol.
You’ll be enthralled. Despite your lifelong fandom this will be your first real Rush concert. You’ll have watched many a performance while tracking your prey but the recordings never captured the raw power of the man in close quarters. It’ll be hard not to strip off your clothes and offer yourself to him then, badge and all.
When the band takes a bathroom break you’ll feel like you’ve awoken from a deep slumber. The bar will come into focus around you again and you’ll notice that Geddy has been gone a long while. You’ll pull out your handcuffs and step through the narrow passage into the Men’s room at the back of the bar, to the knowing smirks of a few of the more observant regulars.
Geddy Lee will have his back turned when you enter. He’ll be pissing into a urinal. He won’t be humming, but something about how he holds himself will communicate just how free this performance has made him. You’ll stand there, handcuffs in hand, watching to see what he does next. What you do next.
His wrists will look so thin and so frail, his hips so rich and full. Lord only knows what you’ll do next.
Coongratulations on Catching Geddy Lee!
Your break will come one dark evening as you drink alone in a Cork bar, not far from the docks. It’ll have some aggressive generic Irish name, like Murphy’s or O’Reilly’s or something. It’ll be next to the River Lee, but inside you could be anywhere, any place. The dim lights and comforting taps would make it a perfect ex-pat bar, but the locals have never given it up and even as you sit and sip quietly by yourself they’ll shoot you dirty looks.
The only break in their derision will come when the entertainment plays. That night they’ll be taking a break from Scorpions and Eagles cover bands to host something a little more cultured: a Rush cover band. You’ll smile into your five Euro Coors each time they play one of your youthful favorites. But it will quickly become apparent that they don’t know too many songs, even though they’re a professional cover band. And after the third rendition of Tom Sawyer the crowd will grow restless.
The band, sensing that they’re three songs from having bottles hurled at them, will take a brief break and when they disseminate into the crowd to grab their free drinks and try to hit on some of the less time-ravaged locals the lead singer will be approached by a bearded man of slight build with slightly efite features. He’ll carry himself with a masculine air but you know that with a little bit of rouge and some swagger in his hips he’d be one hell of a drag queen.
You won’t be able to hear a word of their exchange but you’ll get the drift and when the band comes back up to play the bearded man will be leading them. He’ll take the microphone in hand like he’s addressing a stadium, poised for some Superbowl grade crowd treatment, but one look around the room and he’ll think better of it. He’ll turn around, nod to the band and they’ll start up into Limelight.
The singer’s voice will hit you sharp and swift, right between your ribs and your abdomen. Breathing will take too much effort and you’ll be unable to stare as you suddenly see what the singer would look like without his beard.
He’d be Geddy Lee.
His voice will rattle through the bars of Limelight with practiced precision and none of the tiredness that the cover band seemed to carry. It’ll be like each song is a creative celebration of Rush and their revolutionary rock anthems. When they play Tom Sawyer again the crowd will cheer, except for the lead singer who will be biting his lip and shaking his head, clearly jealous, clearly thrilled that he finally met his idol.
You’ll be enthralled. Despite your lifelong fandom this will be your first real Rush concert. You’ll have watched many a performance while tracking your prey but the recordings never captured the raw power of the man in close quarters. It’ll be hard not to strip off your clothes and offer yourself to him then, badge and all.
When the band takes a bathroom break you’ll feel like you’ve awoken from a deep slumber. The bar will come into focus around you again and you’ll notice that Geddy has been gone a long while. You’ll pull out your handcuffs and step through the narrow passage into the Men’s room at the back of the bar, to the knowing smirks of a few of the more observant regulars.
Geddy Lee will have his back turned when you enter. He’ll be pissing into a urinal. He won’t be humming, but something about how he holds himself will communicate just how free this performance has made him. You’ll stand there, handcuffs in hand, watching to see what he does next. What you do next.
His wrists will look so thin and so frail, his hips so rich and full. Lord only knows what you’ll do next.
Coongratulations on Catching Geddy Lee!
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