Lately I’ve been shying away from the reason I began Super Nerd Sundays, from writing about narrative in games. Partly it’s the fault of the games I’ve been playing. Most of them, aside from X-Com, have had pretty conventional narratives, narratives ill suited to video games. Modern Warfare 2 would’ve been a better movie (and indeed may have been more coherent if it had been) and Borderlands, for all the things it does right, tells a story that illuminates everything wrong with the way games are written and executed. The only interesting game I’ve played recently was Dragon Age, and even with the amazing things Dragon Age did with character and choice it ran on incredibly rigid rails. It meshed the strengths of video games with the strengths of other narrative mediums to great effect, but it didn’t really do what games like Far Cry 2 and Bioshock did: it didn’t tell a story which could only function in the context of a video game.
Lately, while working my way through the remarkable slough of quality sequels I wrote about last week, I’ve stumbled on a game which tells a story as only a game could. It is, surprise surprise, Left4Dead 2.
Very little in the formula that made Left4Dead such a great medium for interactive storytelling has changed in Left4Dead 2. In fact it’s all almost identical. But the fan service Left4Dead 2 offers up is a collective set of references near and gamers can immediately tap into. The AK-47, the chainsaw, these are symbols of games and zombie media respectively. The image of their combination is capable of evoking an entire evolving narrative of the history of both shooter games and zombie films, and their ability to elicit this response is a huge part of what makes Left4Dead 2 so successful at telling a story.
I should mention that I’m not claming the overarching story of Left4Dead 2, the tale of survivors who are rescued again and again only to find themselves forced back into the zombie-filled wastes of civilization, is one of the greatest stories ever told. Instead the moment to moment narrative of Left4Dead 2, its combination of up close and personal, panic driven combat and cool, collected, distant combat, the teamwork and the rivalry over supplies which emerges as part of playing the game, is fantastic. It’s fantastic because it is perennial, even when it is all too familiar, fresh and new even when we’ve played through it a dozen times before.
The sort of collective storytelling it nigh enforces is key to telling stories within games, themselves nakedly collaborative efforts of dozens of people who spend years locked in windowless rooms, designing games. It illuminates a tacit collaboration present in every game between developer and player, a knowing nod that the player is indeed a part of telling the story, even when they are receiving information passively from cutscenes or text files. It is the collaboration between readers and authors taken to its reasonable conclusion, the interpretation of language and information and the synthesis of these disparate elements into a story which can utilize and even rely on the reader’s ability to interpret that story’s elements.
I’ll try to slow that down with an example. In Joyce’s Ulysses language is purposefully obtuse, so much so that sections of the book become largely incoherent when taken on their own. However readers can interpret that language, synthesize it with information taken from outside of the text, from both historical knowledge and personal knowledge, and generate a coherent narrative from these disparate elements. The end result is that no two readers really have the same interpretation of the book, even if certain elements of general consensus can be reached. It’s one of the more interesting ways of looking at storytelling in a post-modern world, and video games rely on it all the time, a fact critics are usually all too happy to ignore.
A developer places a crate in the beginning of the level. They expect me to smash that crate for the supplies within. But I’m a crowbar enthusiast – I don’t need supplies. Ergo I ignore the crate, moving on. The developer places debris in my path, expecting me to use my beloved crowbar to smash it. Instead I find a hole in the debris and slip through it. The story the developers are attempting to tell is interpreted by me and synthesized with my own experiences into a cohesive, interpreted narrative.
All books, and indeed all games, rely on this collaboration to one extent or another. Games like Left4Dead embrace it wholeheartedly with their spare writing and dialogue inserted in based on context. Games like Left4Dead 2 try to refine that admission by adding in more of the shorthand language used to tell the story. By giving us new elements like melee weapons, adrenaline shots and defibrillator paddles, they give us new elements which establish both the world and our own narrative in greater detail. These new tools allow us to tell a new story by interpreting both the actions and back stories of characters and take them through new devastated stretches of landscape.
The story of me slicing that jockey’s head off so that he lets go of my friend, his twitching form coming to rest on the ground, is a part of the story of our friendship and our survival against impossible odds. The moment I watch him buried under waves of zombies as I yell for him to jump on the boat is the tragic end to our friendship, to his journey.
His reappearance next level is a quantum event, of course, too complicated to explain here.
All of these set pieces are traditionally laid out to happen before hand, scripted by developers so that we are forced to see them. But Left4Dead2 instead simply gives players the tools to generate these scenarios on their own through play. It is the ultimate example of trust to give players such power over narrative, and the response to this trust by the community at large is quite telling.
The manner in which people either embrace or reject the nakedly collaborative storytelling effort of Left4Dead illuminates their own level of comfort with the stories that permeate the games they play. The fact that people might call it story light is a misnomer – we as gamers, in the same fashion as readers, are largely slow creatures who need our hands held. When our hands are not held we complain, since we are forced to think and act on our own, and many people complain that these things are “bad” when what they mean is “difficult” or “requiring personal investment.” We then assign them a label based on our experience with them and our willingness to meet them halfway. Gravity’s Rainbow, for example, requires more of me than I am comfortable giving. It wants me to understand things about life in World War II and things about human psychology, sexuality and history that just don’t interest me. It isn’t made for me. In that sense it is a bad book. Left4Dead 2, however, wants me to invest myself in the fiction of zombies. It wants me to do so in a way which observes the entirety of zombie narrative and synthesizes it into a collaborative story which requires me to place myself in a character’s situation just as much as Gravity’s Rainbow does. However, since I am interested in zombie apocalypses and not interested in the psychosexual implications of the V2 rocket Left4Dead 2 is an amazing game.
This article could very easily have been about the first Left4Dead, and perhaps it is to some extent. But what Left4Dead 2 does with its collective fiction, the way it attempts to design a more collected narrative and the elements of the zombie-torn world at large that it illustrates all come together to make it a game all its own. Left4Dead 2 goes beyond showing us what it means to be the last group of people on the planet – it demands that we consider what would happen if we were but a handful left over in an incredibly dangerous place battling against all odds only to be thwarted by the people we believed would rescue us.
The military’s bombing runs, their interest in immune individuals and the furtive nature of life survivors in Left4Dead 2’s world enjoy all speak volumes about what society has become. Because it is very much present in the game and its varied set pieces in a way that it wasn’t in Left4Dead. It moves past Left4Dead’s focus on bare bones survival and introduces the impression that society itself has become a greater threat than the zombies, a key part of any zombie horror story.
It is far from totally present, but the military bombing, the knowledge that certain people were in fact evacuated and the infrastructure and personality of each place in Left4Dead 2’s newly abandoned world recognizes the presence and danger of humanity in a way that Left4Dead did not. The chained up tank corpse in the swamp village is less a symbol of defiance against a horrible enemy and more a grim statement about the violence of the players. This is what we are capable of. This is why we fear Versus more than Expert. This is why you should worry about what you’ll find in the manor house.
Its this use of shorthand, the fact that these interpretations can be drawn from the game and completely dismissed by other players, that makes Left4Dead 2 such a great benchmark for storytelling in games. Because no other medium can really support this sort of diverse narrative interpretation. Books can become bogged down when they grow too obtuse (Donald Bartholme’s The Dead Father comes to mind) but games can be as weird as they like and we’ll keep playing if we enjoy the way they involve us. Games like Left4Dead 2 realize this power and do their best to make more people see it and accept it. Here’s hoping 2010 has some more titles that give us the same sort of opportunities.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Congratulations on Being Stabbed!
It’ll happen on the Orange Line Outbound when a young man from the suburbs who has recently partaken of cocaine will believe that you are “disrespecting” him. It’ll hurt a lot, but you’ll survive, never looking at white people the same way again.
Congratulations on Being Stabbed!
Congratulations on Being Stabbed!
Friday, January 29, 2010
Congratulations on Viewing The Watchmen!
Today you’re Alan Moore. You’re a brilliant shut in who has written some of the weirdest, most evocative works of fiction in the last century and you’ve received jack all recognition for it. You’ve seen your works bastardized in reproductions which could generously be called parody and could be more accurately described as “absolute shit” and you’ve done all you can to ignore it and keep making interesting literature that academia will ignore for another twenty years before coming to offer you the same sort of fawning praise they’ve now condescended to offer “genre fiction” authors.
Today you’re going to receive a DVD containing the film The Watchmen from Netflix. You’ll have ordered the film some time ago, but it was a distant relic in your queue, behind The Zero Effect (such a good movie!) and 28 Days Later, both of which you just wanted to see again.
Today you’re going to watch that DVD. You’ll get halfway through before ejecting it from the tray, breaking it in half and mailing it back to Netflix that way, fulfilling the deep, secret wishes of everyone who saw that movie after reading the original story.
This entire affair will be complicated because the collective consciousness of those people will also be mired somewhere in your subconscious. We’d try to explain it in greater detail, but it’s really hard and you wrote The Black Dossier, so we have a feeling you’ll be able to understand the sort of metaphysics in play here.
Congratulations on Viewing The Watchmen and thanks for enacting what all of us want to do to that film.
Today you’re going to receive a DVD containing the film The Watchmen from Netflix. You’ll have ordered the film some time ago, but it was a distant relic in your queue, behind The Zero Effect (such a good movie!) and 28 Days Later, both of which you just wanted to see again.
Today you’re going to watch that DVD. You’ll get halfway through before ejecting it from the tray, breaking it in half and mailing it back to Netflix that way, fulfilling the deep, secret wishes of everyone who saw that movie after reading the original story.
This entire affair will be complicated because the collective consciousness of those people will also be mired somewhere in your subconscious. We’d try to explain it in greater detail, but it’s really hard and you wrote The Black Dossier, so we have a feeling you’ll be able to understand the sort of metaphysics in play here.
Congratulations on Viewing The Watchmen and thanks for enacting what all of us want to do to that film.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Congratulations on Being Pope for a Day!
In an effort to shore up dwindling numbers the Vatican has recent initiated a contest allowing one of the faithful to become Pope for a day. On this day you’ll go about the normal Popely duties AND be able to tell the Pope to do anything you like (except renounce Catholicism).
As a lifelong non-Jewish, white Boston resident you are, of course, Catholic, and on Thursday you’ll be selected from the millions of followers to become Pope for a day. It will be the proudest moment in the history of the Medford public school system and your big chance to see a girl’s boobs for the first time, theoretically, because Italian women are way hotter and looser than Americans, or so you’ve heard.
But when you arrive in Italy you’ll come to discover that the Papal state has a general lack of poon in it, and that the powers of the Pope don’t really relate to getting chicks to take their tops off. Instead you’ll learn a lot about the duty of interpreting belief for millions of people and the purpose and pressure inherent in operating an organized religion. You’ll see how much the Catholic church is like a business and how each day is a struggle for them to boost flagging membership and dodge criticism for missteps both past and present.
You’ll be incredibly bored by the entire experience and it will be nothing like the movie based on the events, which will feature way more hilarious coming of age antics and a much less cute Jonathan Lipnicki who really needs the work. It’ll receive lackluster box office returns and break even following its DVD release.
When you go back to your life absolutely nothing will be different, although you’ll be even more bored by your visits to church than you were before.
Congratulations on Being Pope for a Day!
As a lifelong non-Jewish, white Boston resident you are, of course, Catholic, and on Thursday you’ll be selected from the millions of followers to become Pope for a day. It will be the proudest moment in the history of the Medford public school system and your big chance to see a girl’s boobs for the first time, theoretically, because Italian women are way hotter and looser than Americans, or so you’ve heard.
But when you arrive in Italy you’ll come to discover that the Papal state has a general lack of poon in it, and that the powers of the Pope don’t really relate to getting chicks to take their tops off. Instead you’ll learn a lot about the duty of interpreting belief for millions of people and the purpose and pressure inherent in operating an organized religion. You’ll see how much the Catholic church is like a business and how each day is a struggle for them to boost flagging membership and dodge criticism for missteps both past and present.
You’ll be incredibly bored by the entire experience and it will be nothing like the movie based on the events, which will feature way more hilarious coming of age antics and a much less cute Jonathan Lipnicki who really needs the work. It’ll receive lackluster box office returns and break even following its DVD release.
When you go back to your life absolutely nothing will be different, although you’ll be even more bored by your visits to church than you were before.
Congratulations on Being Pope for a Day!
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Congratulations on Putting Your Foot Down!
When you call him in it’ll be obvious that he knows it’s not a good thing. His mouth tendrils will drag along the floor and he’ll barely have to duck his shoulders to get his horns through the door he’ll be skulking so low. When you invite him to sit he’ll accept for the first time ever, awkwardly folding his many limbs over the arms of the chair.
You’ll let loose a wordless shriek constituting a name and begin. “We’ve known each other a long time. Since I was four years old, my friend.”
He’ll nod, his tendrils twilling in affirmation.
“That’s why I feel I have to be honest with you. You’re just not scaring me the way you used to.”
He’ll stand up when you say this, his five barbed phalluses erect, tendrils writhing at you. He’ll roar, shattering glass before he picks up the armchair he was just sitting in and smashes it into kindling with a casual hurl. He’ll advance on you, his twelve foot bulk blocking out the light from the low energy florescent bulb you installed the week before. You’ll cluck your tongue and mentally calculate the value of the chair.
He’ll thump his chest with one of his nine limbs and indicate through a combination of American sign language and approximate gesture that, should he so choose, he could break all of your arms and legs and rape you to death at his leisure. You’ll shake your head and give him a sad look.
“It’s not that. I know you’re still the same hideous, formless creature from beyond. I know your seed would afflict me with an unknowable madness that comes with your power. But that would be a mercy compared to figuring out what to order next on my Netflix or negotiating office politics. You have to understand, it’s me.”
He’ll shrink a little, his phalluses one by one going limp.
“I’ve had to grow up.”
He’ll growl his affirmation, still angry, and trudge back into your room. You’ll hear a huge racket, but after fifteen minutes he’ll emerge in a trench coat and fedora, suitcase in one of his two exposed limbs. He’ll give you a tiny twitch goodbye with a tendril before he walks out into the rain, slamming the door behind him.
As he walks down the street, out of your life forever, you’ll watch him from your window. You’ll shout his name at the glass, since it can only be pronounced by shouting, and he’ll turn around to look at you. You’ll want to tell him that a trench coat is no longer a viable fashion choice, but you just won’t have the heart.
You’ll just stand and watch him go before sitting down at your dining room table and opening up your Comcast bill, where you’ll proceed to swear at it for thirty-seven minutes.
Congratulations on Putting Your Foot Down!
You’ll let loose a wordless shriek constituting a name and begin. “We’ve known each other a long time. Since I was four years old, my friend.”
He’ll nod, his tendrils twilling in affirmation.
“That’s why I feel I have to be honest with you. You’re just not scaring me the way you used to.”
He’ll stand up when you say this, his five barbed phalluses erect, tendrils writhing at you. He’ll roar, shattering glass before he picks up the armchair he was just sitting in and smashes it into kindling with a casual hurl. He’ll advance on you, his twelve foot bulk blocking out the light from the low energy florescent bulb you installed the week before. You’ll cluck your tongue and mentally calculate the value of the chair.
He’ll thump his chest with one of his nine limbs and indicate through a combination of American sign language and approximate gesture that, should he so choose, he could break all of your arms and legs and rape you to death at his leisure. You’ll shake your head and give him a sad look.
“It’s not that. I know you’re still the same hideous, formless creature from beyond. I know your seed would afflict me with an unknowable madness that comes with your power. But that would be a mercy compared to figuring out what to order next on my Netflix or negotiating office politics. You have to understand, it’s me.”
He’ll shrink a little, his phalluses one by one going limp.
“I’ve had to grow up.”
He’ll growl his affirmation, still angry, and trudge back into your room. You’ll hear a huge racket, but after fifteen minutes he’ll emerge in a trench coat and fedora, suitcase in one of his two exposed limbs. He’ll give you a tiny twitch goodbye with a tendril before he walks out into the rain, slamming the door behind him.
As he walks down the street, out of your life forever, you’ll watch him from your window. You’ll shout his name at the glass, since it can only be pronounced by shouting, and he’ll turn around to look at you. You’ll want to tell him that a trench coat is no longer a viable fashion choice, but you just won’t have the heart.
You’ll just stand and watch him go before sitting down at your dining room table and opening up your Comcast bill, where you’ll proceed to swear at it for thirty-seven minutes.
Congratulations on Putting Your Foot Down!
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Congratulations on Having Sex For The First Time In Like Five Years!
When you come to you’ll be tied to a bed with only a pillow covering your unmentionables. Your tuxedo will, thank god, be nowhere to be seen, presumably destroy by some kind, intrepid soul. In fact the room will be largely empty except for the bed you’re tied to, a discrete mini-fridge and a chair with that gorgeous Russian woman sitting in it.
She’ll be wearing a robe, high heeled shoes and a tasteful amount of makeup. Nothing whorish, just enough to cover up pock scars and reduce a pale slash running from her forehead, across her eye and down to her cheek to a sexy affectation rather than a grotesque disfigurement.
“Where are ze documents?” she’ll say in a way that simultaneously scares and arouses you.
“I’m not entirely sure!” you’ll shout back at the top of the lungs, uncomfortably aware of the erection that is now pushing the pillow up and away from your fetid (despite a fresh bathing courtesy of the Russian woman) body.
She’ll let loose another supervillain laugh, like the one she used when she drugged you, and slip out of her robe, revealing her naked body. It’ll be crisscrossed in scars, but toned and firm from a lifetime of combat and various laser avoidance maneuvers during heists, and it’s not like you’re in any position to judge. You haven’t even thought about a gym in years.
“I have vays of making you talk,” she’ll say, biting her lip and look at the pillow’s movement.
“Doesn’t this normally start with you in lingerie?” you’ll ask, still shouting all of your statements, hoping that someone will burst in and stop you from successfully having sex with a woman and (potentially) spilling any national secrets you might have concealed, even from your self, within your skull.
She’ll shake her head, still biting her lip, which will make the pillow shift even more. Her apparent genuine interest will reduce your nervousness, and you’ll ask your next question without shouting.
“And this generally helps you get information from people?” you’ll ask, now staring at her breasts and vagina in amazement.
She’ll nod and fall upon you, tearing the pillow away, her mouth moving ravenously across your body, hands scratching your stretch marked flesh, teeth seeking purchase on the accumulation of decades of heavy drinking and hard living.
Your wrists will chafe as you struggle away from the unfamiliar physical affection she showers upon you, but you’ll be unable to fight her. When she finally takes you inside of her you’ll have been yearning for what feels like an eternity. Her amused grin and rocking hips will be unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before, a fantasy of pleasant and desirable sex pornography crammed down your throat and used to shame you each time you arhythmically rammed yourself inside of a barely conscious date.
You’ll hold on for as long as you can as she forces herself upon you, wanting your partner to relish sex for the first time in your life, but as it turns out you can only last for ninety seconds before awkwardly coming inside of her without sound or warning.
She’ll feel it instead of taking any sort of cue from you, immediately ceasing her motions and staring at you, taking you in for the first time. Then she’ll dismount, grab a handful of tissues from a nightstand by the bed and clean herself up. She’ll look back at you, shiver, and head to the shower.
While she’s in there you’ll hear the sound of weeping over the ambient noise of the shower. When she comes out, fresh, clean and without makeup, she’ll look battered and drained, just like every girlfriend you’ve ever had for a week. You’ll realize what has passed and strike her while her guard is down.
“Where are YOUR documents?!” you’ll shout at the top of your lungs.
Biting her lip to hold back the tears, she’ll withdraw a briefcase from beneath the bed and place it between your legs. Then she’ll don the robe, cut your bonds with a knife produced from whereabouts unknown and leave the room with her shoes in hand. She will not look back as your rub your wrists and scratch yourself, relishing the unfamiliar feel of sex on your genitals.
When you arise after a long, fitful sleep curled up next to the briefcase you’ll embark on a long, interminably boring journey to Washington DC, where you’ll walk into the FBI’s headquarters and hand over the briefcase to general confusion and suspicion. After a brief two day period of detainment and interrogation the men will recognize the woman you kind of had sex with as the head of an international terrorist organization bent on world domination.
They’ll congratulate you on giving them the information they need to take down a huge number of terrorist cells worldwide and place you under protective custody, giving you all the cash you need to survive for quite a while and leaving you in Wisconsin with a great story about why no one should ever let you anywhere near their genitals ever again.
Congratulations on Getting Laid for the First Time In Like Five Years!
She’ll be wearing a robe, high heeled shoes and a tasteful amount of makeup. Nothing whorish, just enough to cover up pock scars and reduce a pale slash running from her forehead, across her eye and down to her cheek to a sexy affectation rather than a grotesque disfigurement.
“Where are ze documents?” she’ll say in a way that simultaneously scares and arouses you.
“I’m not entirely sure!” you’ll shout back at the top of the lungs, uncomfortably aware of the erection that is now pushing the pillow up and away from your fetid (despite a fresh bathing courtesy of the Russian woman) body.
She’ll let loose another supervillain laugh, like the one she used when she drugged you, and slip out of her robe, revealing her naked body. It’ll be crisscrossed in scars, but toned and firm from a lifetime of combat and various laser avoidance maneuvers during heists, and it’s not like you’re in any position to judge. You haven’t even thought about a gym in years.
“I have vays of making you talk,” she’ll say, biting her lip and look at the pillow’s movement.
“Doesn’t this normally start with you in lingerie?” you’ll ask, still shouting all of your statements, hoping that someone will burst in and stop you from successfully having sex with a woman and (potentially) spilling any national secrets you might have concealed, even from your self, within your skull.
She’ll shake her head, still biting her lip, which will make the pillow shift even more. Her apparent genuine interest will reduce your nervousness, and you’ll ask your next question without shouting.
“And this generally helps you get information from people?” you’ll ask, now staring at her breasts and vagina in amazement.
She’ll nod and fall upon you, tearing the pillow away, her mouth moving ravenously across your body, hands scratching your stretch marked flesh, teeth seeking purchase on the accumulation of decades of heavy drinking and hard living.
Your wrists will chafe as you struggle away from the unfamiliar physical affection she showers upon you, but you’ll be unable to fight her. When she finally takes you inside of her you’ll have been yearning for what feels like an eternity. Her amused grin and rocking hips will be unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before, a fantasy of pleasant and desirable sex pornography crammed down your throat and used to shame you each time you arhythmically rammed yourself inside of a barely conscious date.
You’ll hold on for as long as you can as she forces herself upon you, wanting your partner to relish sex for the first time in your life, but as it turns out you can only last for ninety seconds before awkwardly coming inside of her without sound or warning.
She’ll feel it instead of taking any sort of cue from you, immediately ceasing her motions and staring at you, taking you in for the first time. Then she’ll dismount, grab a handful of tissues from a nightstand by the bed and clean herself up. She’ll look back at you, shiver, and head to the shower.
While she’s in there you’ll hear the sound of weeping over the ambient noise of the shower. When she comes out, fresh, clean and without makeup, she’ll look battered and drained, just like every girlfriend you’ve ever had for a week. You’ll realize what has passed and strike her while her guard is down.
“Where are YOUR documents?!” you’ll shout at the top of your lungs.
Biting her lip to hold back the tears, she’ll withdraw a briefcase from beneath the bed and place it between your legs. Then she’ll don the robe, cut your bonds with a knife produced from whereabouts unknown and leave the room with her shoes in hand. She will not look back as your rub your wrists and scratch yourself, relishing the unfamiliar feel of sex on your genitals.
When you arise after a long, fitful sleep curled up next to the briefcase you’ll embark on a long, interminably boring journey to Washington DC, where you’ll walk into the FBI’s headquarters and hand over the briefcase to general confusion and suspicion. After a brief two day period of detainment and interrogation the men will recognize the woman you kind of had sex with as the head of an international terrorist organization bent on world domination.
They’ll congratulate you on giving them the information they need to take down a huge number of terrorist cells worldwide and place you under protective custody, giving you all the cash you need to survive for quite a while and leaving you in Wisconsin with a great story about why no one should ever let you anywhere near their genitals ever again.
Congratulations on Getting Laid for the First Time In Like Five Years!
Monday, January 25, 2010
Congratulations on Reaching Your Destination!
After that whole Triad thing you'll get a little lost, which is totally understandable. You rarely leave the confines of your apartment sober and have become unaccustomed to navigating the city during the day. So instead of taking you less than an hour the journey will take you four god damn days. You’ll spend most of that time in the sewers, doing things that make us incredibly uncomfortable, despite the amazing and terrible things our future-eyes have seen.
Luckily New Yorkers will care just as much about your trash soaked tuxedo as they did about about it when it just smelled like human blood and fear. The odor of human waste and filth and moleman blood and semen clinging to you will mesh with the greater miasama that makes up New York’s collective scent, and you’ll blend with the crowd seamlessly. Your passage to the Upper East Side will proceed without incident.
When you arrive you’ll gulp, look at the door and announce, to no one in particular, “I hope this goes alright!”
You’ll ring the doorbell and a woman in a slinky black evening gown will answer without a moment’s pause. She’ll be beautiful, intimidatingly so, and she’ll take you in with a single glance, measuring all that you have been and will ever be. She’ll be unimpressed.
“Enter,” she’ll say with just a hint of a Russian accent.
“Well okay!” you’ll respond, throwing your hands up in the air.
You’ll remove your shoes and jacket at the door, taking great care not to rest them on anything that might hold the scent still clinging to them. Your Russian hostess will rush ahead without asking you to follow, and when you dolely sneak in the room behind her you’ll see her finish fitting a plastic sleeve to a comfortable, very expensive looking overstuffed chair.
“Sit,” she’ll say, and you’ll comply.
“So why am I-“ you’ll begin, but before you can finish the sentence she’ll ram a drink in your hand.
“Drink,” she’ll say.
“Well okay!” you’ll say again, comically taking a large sip.
The room will immediately seem less substantial and the Russian woman will begin laughing maniacally. As the world fades to black you’ll bite your lip before saying “Oh.”
Congratulations on Reaching Your Destination!
Luckily New Yorkers will care just as much about your trash soaked tuxedo as they did about about it when it just smelled like human blood and fear. The odor of human waste and filth and moleman blood and semen clinging to you will mesh with the greater miasama that makes up New York’s collective scent, and you’ll blend with the crowd seamlessly. Your passage to the Upper East Side will proceed without incident.
When you arrive you’ll gulp, look at the door and announce, to no one in particular, “I hope this goes alright!”
You’ll ring the doorbell and a woman in a slinky black evening gown will answer without a moment’s pause. She’ll be beautiful, intimidatingly so, and she’ll take you in with a single glance, measuring all that you have been and will ever be. She’ll be unimpressed.
“Enter,” she’ll say with just a hint of a Russian accent.
“Well okay!” you’ll respond, throwing your hands up in the air.
You’ll remove your shoes and jacket at the door, taking great care not to rest them on anything that might hold the scent still clinging to them. Your Russian hostess will rush ahead without asking you to follow, and when you dolely sneak in the room behind her you’ll see her finish fitting a plastic sleeve to a comfortable, very expensive looking overstuffed chair.
“Sit,” she’ll say, and you’ll comply.
“So why am I-“ you’ll begin, but before you can finish the sentence she’ll ram a drink in your hand.
“Drink,” she’ll say.
“Well okay!” you’ll say again, comically taking a large sip.
The room will immediately seem less substantial and the Russian woman will begin laughing maniacally. As the world fades to black you’ll bite your lip before saying “Oh.”
Congratulations on Reaching Your Destination!
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Super Nerd Sundays Presents: The Season of the Sequel!
During a recession it’s easy to see why companies want to stick with successful intellectual properties, and we’re certainly still mired in financial turbulence as a world and an industry. Even so it seems like late 2009 and early 2010 are heavy with blockbuster sequels of a combination of tried and true properties and breakout hits of yesterday. While a certain amount of sequelage is to be expected, especially while Acitivion continues their tradition of releasing a new Call of Duty game each year, it feels to me as if winter of 2009 and 2010 are especially heavy with high profile sequels.
Of course some of the credit should rest on 2007, which had a staggering array of top shelf releases. 2007 remains a golden year in my mind, which feels wrong to me. It’s not even a prime. Why should it have had the likes of Bioshock, Modern Warfare, Metroid Prime and Assassin’s Creed? And 2008 was an incredible year as well, with Left4Dead reshaping the concept of multiplayer games by taking what used to be an optional mode of play for certain games and making it into an entire game, Fallout 3 changing the way stories were told and Grand Theft Auto 4 meeting expectations, if just barely. Of course, it’s worth noting that two of those examples were themselves sequels, and one of those sequels was released during the 2008 holiday season as well.
But something about the more recent slough of releases seems more pervasive, less like a celebration of previous titles and more like attempts to make money with safe bets on existing intellectual property still vibrant in public memory. Some of them, like Left4Dead 2, received massive public outcry, some of it quite reasonable. A sequel to a game which could’ve been called out as content light and, when considered in light of its roots, really is little more than a repurposing and repackaging of the same technology behind Counterstrike.
But since it has emerged most of the criticism for Left4Dead 2 has stopped. Cries that there wasn’t enough content to warrant a $50 price tag were stilled when users saw that the game was much, much more than a reskin and a retooling of existing content. It’s difficult to articulate the way that Left4Dead 2 reshaped the concepts laid out in Left4Dead without making the differences sound facile. But the manner in which the new finales work, the balance of the new weapons and new weapon mechanics, new healing items and the new game play modes like Scavenge all add a layer of depth to the game that it really lacked before. Paired with the addition of user created content, Left4Dead 2 took the foundation that Left4Dead had laid and expanded it in both reasonable and totally unexpected ways. It elevated what the first title had accomplished without ignoring the problems facing the original Left4Dead. It did exactly what a sequel should do.
It wasn’t the only high profile sequel to do so. Assassin’s Creed 2, for example, both expanded the world of Assassin’s Creed and the control scheme in response to criticisms that the first game had been clumsy and content light in its treatment of combat. It also, reportedly, involved an incomprehensible story twist later in the game, continuing the first game’s tradition of meaningless story twists, throwaway characters and visits to various places of historical significance without any real context. But for every game like L4D2 (which I type here solely because it resembles R2D2) you seem to end up with a sequel like Modern Warfare 2.
MW2 represents the worst aspects of sequels, to me. It fails to innovate the design of the original game, often cribbing from it in order to gain mileage from the amazing qualities the first Modern Warfare had without deconstructing why those elements worked or attempting to develop those elements into a more refined, controlled framework for play. Instead it simply expanded elements of the first game wildly, throwing killstreak perks, weapon attachments and new equipment at characters without considering how or why these items worked in the original Modern Warfare. It is a testament to the strength of the first game and the shorthand that Modern Warfare 2 borrowed from it that I’ve spent as much time playing and enjoying it as I have. I do so almost reticently, gritting my teeth as I try to unlock my thermal scope on my Vector, because I feel as if I’m playing a crappier version of Modern Warfare which still enthralls me with its incredibly addictive leveling system. The single player, of course, is something to be abandoned by the wayside as quickly as possible. It is difficult to overstate how thoroughly Infinity Ward missed the point of what worked and didn’t work in their first game and how ham-handedly they translated that into their second.
Which is still not to say that sequels are bad or that Modern Warfare 2 is a bad game for being a sequel – it is simply a bad sequel, a sequel that fails. Perhaps some of this stems from Mackey McCandlish replacing Keith Arem as design lead, or perhaps it came from the increased attention or pressure from Activision that Infinity Ward received after the immense commercial success of the first Modern Warfare. Whatever the explanation truly is, Modern Warfare 2 is a bad sequel, and it makes me worry for other high profile sequels. Mass Effect 2 has already fallen under some quiet criticism on the blogs of a few critics, even before the pre-release embargo on reviews has lifted, and Bioshock 2 has an unsettling lack of designers who worked to make the first Bioshock such an incredible game.
And this is what worries me about this sort of sequel-crazy design approach. People purchasing these games won’t have a clue whether or not they were developed by different teams. Instead they’ll just purchase them based on the strength of the first title. That means they’re both guaranteed to sell like hotcakes, but it could prove disastrous if either of these games turn out to be bad. Bioshock 2 is something I’m especially nervous about in this respect, because a Bioshock 2 flop could mean a black mark on Irrational’s reputation, despite their total lack of involvement with the game.
The other downside is that we’ve seen fewer risky new IPs emerging this year. Games like Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space, dark horses with no known quantities involved in their production and new ideas (or in the case of the latter, the appearance of new ideas) about their genres aren’t appearing this holiday season. Instead we have safer fresh faces like Brutal Legend and Dragon Age, which aren’t risky in the slightest. Even Borderlands, which was the holiday season’s biggest unknown quantity, came from a team of veteran developers and enjoyed an aggressive marketing campaign leading up to and following its relief. It’s a little disappointing to see this new kind of risk-taking emerging, to see the focus fall on making money from titles instead of establishing remarkable titles and to let the cash flow based on that, and it’s more unsettling to see it centered around so many of the best titles from the last three years, but I suppose I shouldn’t cry foul before these games come out.
The trend of recent sequels, even when it disappoints, hasn’t actually been a bad thing for gaming. Even poor sequels, like Modern Warfare 2, generated pretty good games, and some of the sequels, like Left4Dead 2, completely changed the atmosphere surrounding their genre. Bioshock 2 and Mass Effect 2 remain risky in every sense but the commercial one, however, and that represents an unsettling trend that companies are taking away from focusing on the content they produce and concerning themselves more with issues like branding and marketing. It’s a bit immature to cry foul about it, games are certainly a business first and foremost for publishers, but I can’t help but feel somewhat justified in my concerns so long as sequels are created less than two years later by completely new sets of developers and enjoy marketing lead ins which can take us much time to sift through as the games themselves. We’ve been lucky with the sequel glut so far, but so long as we aren’t trying anything new we’re threatening to stall ourselves as a community, and it would be a shame to see that happen as we push closer and closer to a new golden age of gaming.
Of course some of the credit should rest on 2007, which had a staggering array of top shelf releases. 2007 remains a golden year in my mind, which feels wrong to me. It’s not even a prime. Why should it have had the likes of Bioshock, Modern Warfare, Metroid Prime and Assassin’s Creed? And 2008 was an incredible year as well, with Left4Dead reshaping the concept of multiplayer games by taking what used to be an optional mode of play for certain games and making it into an entire game, Fallout 3 changing the way stories were told and Grand Theft Auto 4 meeting expectations, if just barely. Of course, it’s worth noting that two of those examples were themselves sequels, and one of those sequels was released during the 2008 holiday season as well.
But something about the more recent slough of releases seems more pervasive, less like a celebration of previous titles and more like attempts to make money with safe bets on existing intellectual property still vibrant in public memory. Some of them, like Left4Dead 2, received massive public outcry, some of it quite reasonable. A sequel to a game which could’ve been called out as content light and, when considered in light of its roots, really is little more than a repurposing and repackaging of the same technology behind Counterstrike.
But since it has emerged most of the criticism for Left4Dead 2 has stopped. Cries that there wasn’t enough content to warrant a $50 price tag were stilled when users saw that the game was much, much more than a reskin and a retooling of existing content. It’s difficult to articulate the way that Left4Dead 2 reshaped the concepts laid out in Left4Dead without making the differences sound facile. But the manner in which the new finales work, the balance of the new weapons and new weapon mechanics, new healing items and the new game play modes like Scavenge all add a layer of depth to the game that it really lacked before. Paired with the addition of user created content, Left4Dead 2 took the foundation that Left4Dead had laid and expanded it in both reasonable and totally unexpected ways. It elevated what the first title had accomplished without ignoring the problems facing the original Left4Dead. It did exactly what a sequel should do.
It wasn’t the only high profile sequel to do so. Assassin’s Creed 2, for example, both expanded the world of Assassin’s Creed and the control scheme in response to criticisms that the first game had been clumsy and content light in its treatment of combat. It also, reportedly, involved an incomprehensible story twist later in the game, continuing the first game’s tradition of meaningless story twists, throwaway characters and visits to various places of historical significance without any real context. But for every game like L4D2 (which I type here solely because it resembles R2D2) you seem to end up with a sequel like Modern Warfare 2.
MW2 represents the worst aspects of sequels, to me. It fails to innovate the design of the original game, often cribbing from it in order to gain mileage from the amazing qualities the first Modern Warfare had without deconstructing why those elements worked or attempting to develop those elements into a more refined, controlled framework for play. Instead it simply expanded elements of the first game wildly, throwing killstreak perks, weapon attachments and new equipment at characters without considering how or why these items worked in the original Modern Warfare. It is a testament to the strength of the first game and the shorthand that Modern Warfare 2 borrowed from it that I’ve spent as much time playing and enjoying it as I have. I do so almost reticently, gritting my teeth as I try to unlock my thermal scope on my Vector, because I feel as if I’m playing a crappier version of Modern Warfare which still enthralls me with its incredibly addictive leveling system. The single player, of course, is something to be abandoned by the wayside as quickly as possible. It is difficult to overstate how thoroughly Infinity Ward missed the point of what worked and didn’t work in their first game and how ham-handedly they translated that into their second.
Which is still not to say that sequels are bad or that Modern Warfare 2 is a bad game for being a sequel – it is simply a bad sequel, a sequel that fails. Perhaps some of this stems from Mackey McCandlish replacing Keith Arem as design lead, or perhaps it came from the increased attention or pressure from Activision that Infinity Ward received after the immense commercial success of the first Modern Warfare. Whatever the explanation truly is, Modern Warfare 2 is a bad sequel, and it makes me worry for other high profile sequels. Mass Effect 2 has already fallen under some quiet criticism on the blogs of a few critics, even before the pre-release embargo on reviews has lifted, and Bioshock 2 has an unsettling lack of designers who worked to make the first Bioshock such an incredible game.
And this is what worries me about this sort of sequel-crazy design approach. People purchasing these games won’t have a clue whether or not they were developed by different teams. Instead they’ll just purchase them based on the strength of the first title. That means they’re both guaranteed to sell like hotcakes, but it could prove disastrous if either of these games turn out to be bad. Bioshock 2 is something I’m especially nervous about in this respect, because a Bioshock 2 flop could mean a black mark on Irrational’s reputation, despite their total lack of involvement with the game.
The other downside is that we’ve seen fewer risky new IPs emerging this year. Games like Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space, dark horses with no known quantities involved in their production and new ideas (or in the case of the latter, the appearance of new ideas) about their genres aren’t appearing this holiday season. Instead we have safer fresh faces like Brutal Legend and Dragon Age, which aren’t risky in the slightest. Even Borderlands, which was the holiday season’s biggest unknown quantity, came from a team of veteran developers and enjoyed an aggressive marketing campaign leading up to and following its relief. It’s a little disappointing to see this new kind of risk-taking emerging, to see the focus fall on making money from titles instead of establishing remarkable titles and to let the cash flow based on that, and it’s more unsettling to see it centered around so many of the best titles from the last three years, but I suppose I shouldn’t cry foul before these games come out.
The trend of recent sequels, even when it disappoints, hasn’t actually been a bad thing for gaming. Even poor sequels, like Modern Warfare 2, generated pretty good games, and some of the sequels, like Left4Dead 2, completely changed the atmosphere surrounding their genre. Bioshock 2 and Mass Effect 2 remain risky in every sense but the commercial one, however, and that represents an unsettling trend that companies are taking away from focusing on the content they produce and concerning themselves more with issues like branding and marketing. It’s a bit immature to cry foul about it, games are certainly a business first and foremost for publishers, but I can’t help but feel somewhat justified in my concerns so long as sequels are created less than two years later by completely new sets of developers and enjoy marketing lead ins which can take us much time to sift through as the games themselves. We’ve been lucky with the sequel glut so far, but so long as we aren’t trying anything new we’re threatening to stall ourselves as a community, and it would be a shame to see that happen as we push closer and closer to a new golden age of gaming.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Congratulations on Making It To the Weekend!
You’ve spent your entire week evading various assassins from various organized crime organizations that your various ex-boyfriends who look a lot like Justin Thereaux were involved in at various times, so it’s kind of an understatement to say that this week has been rough for you.
But tonight it’ll all be worth it when you show up at Tiger Lilly and enjoy Ladies Night, every Saturday night. All local microbrews will be only two dollars for peeps with vaginas (THIS INCLUDES YOU!!!) and their delightful vegan corndogs will cost but a pittance. Sure, tomorrow you’ll be under a bridge hoping a small Asian man in a suit doesn’t find you. But tonight you’re going to be living large, drinking heavily and enjoying some of the best Vegan food in Portland at a bargain basement prices.
Congratulations on Making It To the Weekend!
But tonight it’ll all be worth it when you show up at Tiger Lilly and enjoy Ladies Night, every Saturday night. All local microbrews will be only two dollars for peeps with vaginas (THIS INCLUDES YOU!!!) and their delightful vegan corndogs will cost but a pittance. Sure, tomorrow you’ll be under a bridge hoping a small Asian man in a suit doesn’t find you. But tonight you’re going to be living large, drinking heavily and enjoying some of the best Vegan food in Portland at a bargain basement prices.
Congratulations on Making It To the Weekend!
Friday, January 22, 2010
Congratulations on Your Stirring Rendition of Ballroom Blitz!
You normally don’t have much success with The Ladies™. There are lots of explanations, like your wooden leg, terrible breath and awful skin, but the real reason is your total lack of confidence. Chicks dig confidence and you don’t have any.
You don’t even have the balls to sign up for a solo karaoke night. No, you’ve got to sign up for a Rock Band concert with some pity friends from work who were kind of worried about you and still felt bad about giving you the leg so that you’ll be able to stand up on stage and sing your heart out without being singled out.
The four of you will arrive at the local pub where the contest is taking place to find a moderately sized crowd already waiting. They’ll run the gamut from drunk to super drunk, which will fill you with confidence. Confidence that will be smashed when you spot several attractive women in the crowd.
Cringing, you’ll step up to the bar and order some club soda to help open up your pipes. Then you’ll wobble back to your band to find them drinking heavily. This will further damage your confidence, until Shelly, your hot bassist with a heart of gold, slips some gin into your club soda.
After that you’ll feel a rush of confidence you’ve never known in your life before. The world will slow down and seem more peaceful, more ordered. Its jagged angles and aggressive paper shredding teams will seem like small prices to pay to live in a place of such beauty.
You’ll also be less nervous and actually observe the other performers. They’ll be universally awful, the plunks of missed notes and awkward pounding of the amateur drummers making the crowd wince. Most of the “bands” won’t even have a singer. You’ll snort a laugh to yourself, watching their efforts with growing drunkenness.
When you hear the name “Blazing Boners” called by the MC you and your team will swagger up to the stage, your stalwart, nerdy co-workers taking up their instruments with a completely inappropriate lack of gravitas. You, however, will step up to the microphone and take it off the stand, proudly announcing your intention to play Ballroom Blitz on Expert.
Then you’ll look back to Mark, the guitarist, and nod. He’ll nod back, flip his difficulty to expert, and the games will begin.
The lot of you will rock that song so hard that faces will melt. Or they would if any of the faces in the audience were made of plastic. But since you’re a Washington state resident there isn’t too much plastic surgery in the area and the faces of your observers will remain largely intact. But you’ll all five star the song and exit the stage to massive applause.
You’ll still be way too nervous to approach any of the women in the audience, but on the upside you’ll have made three new friends who now view you as a nice, nervous dude instead of a suicide risk. And right now that’s probably much better for you.
Also, work on the skin and breath and you might have a shot with Shelly. She’s got a thing for pirates.
Congratulations on Your Stirring Rendition of Ballroom Blitz!
You don’t even have the balls to sign up for a solo karaoke night. No, you’ve got to sign up for a Rock Band concert with some pity friends from work who were kind of worried about you and still felt bad about giving you the leg so that you’ll be able to stand up on stage and sing your heart out without being singled out.
The four of you will arrive at the local pub where the contest is taking place to find a moderately sized crowd already waiting. They’ll run the gamut from drunk to super drunk, which will fill you with confidence. Confidence that will be smashed when you spot several attractive women in the crowd.
Cringing, you’ll step up to the bar and order some club soda to help open up your pipes. Then you’ll wobble back to your band to find them drinking heavily. This will further damage your confidence, until Shelly, your hot bassist with a heart of gold, slips some gin into your club soda.
After that you’ll feel a rush of confidence you’ve never known in your life before. The world will slow down and seem more peaceful, more ordered. Its jagged angles and aggressive paper shredding teams will seem like small prices to pay to live in a place of such beauty.
You’ll also be less nervous and actually observe the other performers. They’ll be universally awful, the plunks of missed notes and awkward pounding of the amateur drummers making the crowd wince. Most of the “bands” won’t even have a singer. You’ll snort a laugh to yourself, watching their efforts with growing drunkenness.
When you hear the name “Blazing Boners” called by the MC you and your team will swagger up to the stage, your stalwart, nerdy co-workers taking up their instruments with a completely inappropriate lack of gravitas. You, however, will step up to the microphone and take it off the stand, proudly announcing your intention to play Ballroom Blitz on Expert.
Then you’ll look back to Mark, the guitarist, and nod. He’ll nod back, flip his difficulty to expert, and the games will begin.
The lot of you will rock that song so hard that faces will melt. Or they would if any of the faces in the audience were made of plastic. But since you’re a Washington state resident there isn’t too much plastic surgery in the area and the faces of your observers will remain largely intact. But you’ll all five star the song and exit the stage to massive applause.
You’ll still be way too nervous to approach any of the women in the audience, but on the upside you’ll have made three new friends who now view you as a nice, nervous dude instead of a suicide risk. And right now that’s probably much better for you.
Also, work on the skin and breath and you might have a shot with Shelly. She’s got a thing for pirates.
Congratulations on Your Stirring Rendition of Ballroom Blitz!
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Congratulations on Buying a Bagel Sandwich!
On to way to the address you found in that woman’s mouth your tummy will get all arumble and you’ll decide to stop in at this Korean bagel place that you head to every Tuesday and Saturday or whenever you’re hung over in the neighborhood.
When you enter the store Lee, the proprietor, will let out a sigh and shout something at his wife in Korean. She’ll laugh and head into the back while you order a Chicken Teriyaki bagel. As you wait by the counter she’ll emerge with a mop and stare at you wordlessly. Waiting for your bagel for what seems like an eternity. When it’s ready the proprietor will wave you over to him and smile.
“You bring Triad today?” he’ll ask, quite racistly.
You’ll look at him, baffled.
“They were no trouble last night.” He’ll say the l in last like an r and hand you your bagel with a wink, refusing your money when you try to pay. As you begin to leave a pair of men in suits will rush into the deli and the storekeep’s wife will tackle you to the ground. Gunfire will pepper the wall behind where you once stood the world will go red in your mind, spinning with the force of that surprisingly strong Korean woman’s blow.
You’ll be dimly aware of the shopkeeper emerging from behind the counter with a shotgun and pumping round after round into the now oh so clearly anachronistically suited men.
You won’t have time to watch them wither under his fire. His wife will have already dragged you out the back door and into the cruel, cruel sunlight, where she’ll kiss you on the cheek.
“Go with massage,” she’ll say.
You’ll assume that she’s directing you to a massage parlor, but then you’ll realize that she means message, not massage. You’ll double check the note and start off towards you destination again, bagel in hand, moving as fast as you can, which is around limping speed after having the wind knocked out of you by a fifty-five year old Asian woman.
Congratulations on Buying a Bagel Sandwich!
When you enter the store Lee, the proprietor, will let out a sigh and shout something at his wife in Korean. She’ll laugh and head into the back while you order a Chicken Teriyaki bagel. As you wait by the counter she’ll emerge with a mop and stare at you wordlessly. Waiting for your bagel for what seems like an eternity. When it’s ready the proprietor will wave you over to him and smile.
“You bring Triad today?” he’ll ask, quite racistly.
You’ll look at him, baffled.
“They were no trouble last night.” He’ll say the l in last like an r and hand you your bagel with a wink, refusing your money when you try to pay. As you begin to leave a pair of men in suits will rush into the deli and the storekeep’s wife will tackle you to the ground. Gunfire will pepper the wall behind where you once stood the world will go red in your mind, spinning with the force of that surprisingly strong Korean woman’s blow.
You’ll be dimly aware of the shopkeeper emerging from behind the counter with a shotgun and pumping round after round into the now oh so clearly anachronistically suited men.
You won’t have time to watch them wither under his fire. His wife will have already dragged you out the back door and into the cruel, cruel sunlight, where she’ll kiss you on the cheek.
“Go with massage,” she’ll say.
You’ll assume that she’s directing you to a massage parlor, but then you’ll realize that she means message, not massage. You’ll double check the note and start off towards you destination again, bagel in hand, moving as fast as you can, which is around limping speed after having the wind knocked out of you by a fifty-five year old Asian woman.
Congratulations on Buying a Bagel Sandwich!
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Congratulations on Keeping the Blood Off Your Suit (Mostly)!
When you awake this morning something will be off.
You’ll be in a strange place with no memory of how you arrived so, like most of our predictees, you’ll be comfortable in that respect. But you’ll also be fully clothed in what appears to be a moderately priced tuxedo and someone will be in bed with you. That’s two things that will, at this point, never have happened to you before.
Curious you’ll begin to reach around, gently exploring your apparent partner’s flesh with one lazy hand. You’ll encounter the soft, cold tissue of what feels like an attractive, toned young woman. She’ll also be clothed, at least partly, and as you trace your hand down her body towards her crotch to see if the two of you had sex last night you’ll be shocked when you feel a cold, wet spot on the mattress.
You’ll awake with a start and leap out of bed, fully expecting that you’ve soiled yourself and the increasingly uncomfortable and probably rented suit that you’re wearing. You’ll feel a moment of relief when you examine yourself and find that you don’t have any wet spots on your clothing. You won’t have soiled yourself this time.
That relief will turn to dread almost immediately as you take in the scene of the room. Your bed mate will remain immobile in bed, covered in blood. You’ll gather, from your hours spent watching CSI, that she must’ve been placed there after she was killed, since the only blood on your suit will be on your hand and the spot you touched on your collar while nervously loosening your tie. Her body will be covered by the sheets.
You’ll slow your breathing and try to think like a detective, taking inventory of the room. There won’t be a lot to take stock of. It’ll be a hotel room, as generic as they come. A single double bend, an end table with a lamp, two wall sconces and a short, narrow hall with two doors.
The only distinguishing feature will be the woman, still covered by the duvet. You’ll lift it, just to see if she was hot and, to be your surprise, a piece of paper will be rammed into her shocked, pretty little mouth.
“A clue!” you’ll exclaim to no one in particular.
You’ll unfold it and see that it contains a brief address.
Clearly someone will want you to head to this address. So much so that they’re willing to frame you for murder to get you there and buy you a tuxedo so you’ll be appropriately dressed no matter where “there” is. They’ll likely even have risked touching your penis in order to get you into the tuxedo.
Sighing you’ll retie your tie, resolving to follow the clue. The walk through the halls and the ride down the elevator to the hotel lobby will be unnervingly mundane. You’ll wish you weren’t wearing the tuxedo when you breeze past the doorman and give him a nod, but he’ll barely notice you, i-Pod buds in his ears, boilerplate frown on his lips.
You’ll thumb the spot of blood on your collar unconsciously, thanking whatever higher power there is that this happened in New York and not somewhere where people might notice a man in a partially bloodied tuxedo walking around the streets in the middle of the day.
Congratulations on Keeping the Blood Off Your Suit (Mostly)!
You’ll be in a strange place with no memory of how you arrived so, like most of our predictees, you’ll be comfortable in that respect. But you’ll also be fully clothed in what appears to be a moderately priced tuxedo and someone will be in bed with you. That’s two things that will, at this point, never have happened to you before.
Curious you’ll begin to reach around, gently exploring your apparent partner’s flesh with one lazy hand. You’ll encounter the soft, cold tissue of what feels like an attractive, toned young woman. She’ll also be clothed, at least partly, and as you trace your hand down her body towards her crotch to see if the two of you had sex last night you’ll be shocked when you feel a cold, wet spot on the mattress.
You’ll awake with a start and leap out of bed, fully expecting that you’ve soiled yourself and the increasingly uncomfortable and probably rented suit that you’re wearing. You’ll feel a moment of relief when you examine yourself and find that you don’t have any wet spots on your clothing. You won’t have soiled yourself this time.
That relief will turn to dread almost immediately as you take in the scene of the room. Your bed mate will remain immobile in bed, covered in blood. You’ll gather, from your hours spent watching CSI, that she must’ve been placed there after she was killed, since the only blood on your suit will be on your hand and the spot you touched on your collar while nervously loosening your tie. Her body will be covered by the sheets.
You’ll slow your breathing and try to think like a detective, taking inventory of the room. There won’t be a lot to take stock of. It’ll be a hotel room, as generic as they come. A single double bend, an end table with a lamp, two wall sconces and a short, narrow hall with two doors.
The only distinguishing feature will be the woman, still covered by the duvet. You’ll lift it, just to see if she was hot and, to be your surprise, a piece of paper will be rammed into her shocked, pretty little mouth.
“A clue!” you’ll exclaim to no one in particular.
You’ll unfold it and see that it contains a brief address.
Clearly someone will want you to head to this address. So much so that they’re willing to frame you for murder to get you there and buy you a tuxedo so you’ll be appropriately dressed no matter where “there” is. They’ll likely even have risked touching your penis in order to get you into the tuxedo.
Sighing you’ll retie your tie, resolving to follow the clue. The walk through the halls and the ride down the elevator to the hotel lobby will be unnervingly mundane. You’ll wish you weren’t wearing the tuxedo when you breeze past the doorman and give him a nod, but he’ll barely notice you, i-Pod buds in his ears, boilerplate frown on his lips.
You’ll thumb the spot of blood on your collar unconsciously, thanking whatever higher power there is that this happened in New York and not somewhere where people might notice a man in a partially bloodied tuxedo walking around the streets in the middle of the day.
Congratulations on Keeping the Blood Off Your Suit (Mostly)!
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Congratulations on Entering the Machine!
Today you’ll be playing a racing game on your i-Phone when a beam of light will shoot out of said i-Phone and draw you in, following an offhand comment about how during weather like this you wouldn’t mind being trapped inside of an i-Phone in order to stay dry.
Once you’re inside you’ll find yourself in a world that strongly resembles the inside of the computer from the classic 1982 film Tron, only with slightly better resolution and weird clouds of code that manifest limbs instead of people in funny jumpsuits.
A pair of those weird computer clouds will accost you immediately and force you into one of those hideous jumpsuits before dropping you into a cell, their tinny laughter mocking your plight.
They’ll then force you participate in various brutal sports based on mobile games, so you’ll mostly be forced to consume fruit as it makes you bigger and bigger, or to play the first three levels of Super Mario Brothers again and again. Eventually the once fresh and exciting world you inhabit will become tedious. Your digital-cloud concubines, rewards for your many hours of successful game playing, will seem less and less attractive to you, and one day you’ll snap and refuse to fight.
This will lead to you being imprisoned in a smaller digi-cell, with no weird computer programs to stick it in. When they let you out you’ll have formulated your plan to rebel. It’ll just be a matter of time before the CPU of the phone is overridden by the process of your resistance.
Congratulations on Entering the Machine!
Once you’re inside you’ll find yourself in a world that strongly resembles the inside of the computer from the classic 1982 film Tron, only with slightly better resolution and weird clouds of code that manifest limbs instead of people in funny jumpsuits.
A pair of those weird computer clouds will accost you immediately and force you into one of those hideous jumpsuits before dropping you into a cell, their tinny laughter mocking your plight.
They’ll then force you participate in various brutal sports based on mobile games, so you’ll mostly be forced to consume fruit as it makes you bigger and bigger, or to play the first three levels of Super Mario Brothers again and again. Eventually the once fresh and exciting world you inhabit will become tedious. Your digital-cloud concubines, rewards for your many hours of successful game playing, will seem less and less attractive to you, and one day you’ll snap and refuse to fight.
This will lead to you being imprisoned in a smaller digi-cell, with no weird computer programs to stick it in. When they let you out you’ll have formulated your plan to rebel. It’ll just be a matter of time before the CPU of the phone is overridden by the process of your resistance.
Congratulations on Entering the Machine!
Monday, January 18, 2010
Congratulations on Your Dishonorable Discharge!
Martin Luther King Day is our favorite holiday here in the office. Partly because it celebrates one of history’s greatest activists and one of America’s greatest heroes, but also because it allows us to drink for an entire extra day without consequence. A quick poll of the office and all surrounding service industry workers shows that this holiday is universally received as “sweet” for those two reasons alone, but that wasn’t enough for Dr. King.
No, he had to teach us lessons about life on his holiday as well. That’s why today we’re all going to learn a little lesson about the government’s stance on cockfighting, and why it constitutes grounds for a dishonorable discharge.
On the upside you’ll have lots of experience which will help you find a new career in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans, engaging in the sort of quasi legal shit that now passes for an economy down there.
Congratulations on Your Dishonorable Discharge!
No, he had to teach us lessons about life on his holiday as well. That’s why today we’re all going to learn a little lesson about the government’s stance on cockfighting, and why it constitutes grounds for a dishonorable discharge.
On the upside you’ll have lots of experience which will help you find a new career in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans, engaging in the sort of quasi legal shit that now passes for an economy down there.
Congratulations on Your Dishonorable Discharge!
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Super Nerd Sundays Presents: X-Com and The End of the Age of Challenge!
I always find the games that I missed during my youth to be a little bit shameful. I didn’t have time to play System Shock 2 amidst the pangs of adolescence and the incredible story that was Half-Life. I didn’t have the opportunity to play Command and Conquer, one, two or Generals, because my parents would only buy me so many games and damnit Starcraft was great. The list goes on: Terra Nova, Ocarina of Time, Heroes of Might and Magic, Icewind Dale and a bevy of less random halcyon titles which came and went while I was busy being an awkward teenager.
But all of the excuses I used to have are fast vanishing as Steam increases our access to classic titles, and this is just a good thing. Steam negotiates a number of technical problems and lets us all see if these games really were as good as we thought, or if our perception of them was really tainted by rose colored glasses. For most players it’s just a chance to re-experience something like Monkey Island or the classic Dooms. This is your chance to see if those waterfalls in Unreal measure up to your adolescent mind, person who already had a chance to experience Doom ages ago.
But for some of us it’s a chance to examine these games in a vacuum for the first time, to see what all the fuss was about. And with Steam’s retardedly cheap holiday sales it was a great time to grab as many five dollar classic games as your tiny, withered heart could hold. That’s how I came to have X-Com sitting on my hard drive.
I didn’t learn about X-Com until Sluggy Freelance started running a series of in-engine comics a few years ago. Until then I’d associated the titles with the incredibly shitty X-Com: Interceptor, the first game in the series to come out when I was even mildly aware of games. There was no reason for me to go in on a generic space-sim at that point – I had X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, after all, and that was more than enough. Why would I want to tediously micromanage weapon hard-points when I could swoop in and fuck some bitches up in my A-Wing?
But a top down tactical game? That’s something I could get behind. I’d been enamored with the concept since Shining Force dropped on the Sega Genesis and cracked games as a medium wide open for me. When Final Fantasy went tactical I spent countless (because I’ve lost my memory card from the time) hours min-maxing my party and finding Cloud’s god damn motherfucking Materia Blade, easily the coolest and most colossal waste of time in the game. I was livid when Neverwinter Nights dropped its tactical Baldur’s Gate roots. If a game had an isometric view and character progression I would be on it like nothing else.
But technology has moved past the era of the tactics game, and indeed why should we keep making the same tired titles when we can try new and exciting things? So top down tactical games have fallen by the wayside. There’s no one to blame, really. Real Time Strategy games are awesome, and turn based tactical games are terrible to play with multiple people. My only frustration came from the fact that older tactics games tended to glitch out with newer operating systems, when you could find them at all. So when I sat down with X-Com last week, knowing just what I was in for, I was pretty excited.
But I hadn’t expected most of the elements of the game. The open world, the procedurally generated mission structure and the punishing difficulty curve were all staggering. I got the idea of firing aimed shots and staying in cover, but my first engagement still cost me a two-thirds of my soldiers. I thought I was just going to trade shots with aliens, but instead I was dropped into a losing battle with a vastly superior force. The only thing I had going for me was that I was so insignificant that the aliens had no need to attack me in my base, with my four assault rifles and bevy of horrified scientists.
X-Com did something few games manage to do: it challenged me. On its easiest difficulty setting. I was completely overwhelmed, John Kerry running for president. I had no idea what I was doing, how to accomplish objectives or manage resources. All I could do was save and reload, save and reload, save and reload until I finally learned that you can fire at different elevations or that labs can’t cooperate on research or that cannons are completely useless.
The challenge helped, though. It took all of two missions for me to form an emotional connection to my soldiers, to tool out my favorites with the best rifles and keep the rocket launcher in the back on whichever FNG had just come into the squad to replace recent casualties. I started to do everything I could to keep the little guys alive. I put an entire lab’s worth of staff to work researching med kits, powered armor and flight suits, anything for my squad’s safety. I didn’t want one of my little angels bleeding out.
And through this a greater narrative started to form, entirely divorced from the game. I started to imbue my characters with personality without thinking about it. There was the hardened sniper chick with nerves of steel who stayed at the back with a med kit and a steady shot for any scout in over his head, the hard nosed, fast moving leader who was always leading the charge in the best gear and the recon man with a plasma rifle and more twitch than a Crysalid. I should by all rights be embarrassed to have written that, but I just can’t be. X-Com made me shameless. It made me a kid again.
For all the childlike wonder, though, the systems governing the game were impressively complex. The interplay of various statistics, the tactical decisions it demanded and the punishing resource management that it forced on me was beyond anything that more recent RTSes were willing to levy at me. Even ostensibly hardcore games like RA:3 and Sins of a Solar Empire were nowhere near as complicated or finicky. They couldn’t afford to be, they needed to be tooled for multiplayer.
But without any of that wacky “need to interact with other humans” shit X-Com was free to construct an impressive elaborate set of systems which opened up a tremendous engine for emergent storytelling. What’s most impressive is how well it works with how little it has on hand. The cast of characters is limited, a tiny array of mostly interchangeable soldiers and faceless engineers and scientists who toil in the background and produce guns with more personality than half my military (previous members aside). The nations are all indistinguishable from one another – a base in the United States simply can’t be different from a base in Canada or Africa or Asia, the technology can’t support it. It’s already straining to deal with the world as a whole. Despite this the way the interactions between nations and your economy work, the way content is doled out, making every mission a potential first contact where you discover a new and potentially deadly threat and the way that these elements build towards an uncertain and unsettling future where literally anything can happen at any time is nothing short of amazing.
Contemporary games seem weak by comparison. Starcraft 2 is bitching about creating a campaign map, and how rendering each one is going to take them so much time that we won’t see hide or hair of their game for six months, at least. And then we’ll have to sit and wait for expansions to drop so that we can get the sort of content we’ve seen in ages past. X-Com has a dynamic campaign map running out of a DOSbox, and it manages to tell a story with as much drama and aplomb as Starcraft. More, maybe. The stakes in Starcraft were always low. Mengsk was always going to betray you and you could see it coming. Raynor is always going to live. Kerrigan’s tragedy, the game’s lone hook, comes up early and leaves players expecting something more. X-Com, by comparison, is constantly threatening to kill off my entire team. One Floater with a blaster launcher can take out five or six of my hard-won veteran squad members and put me right back at square one. I’d be lucky to get the armor back off their smoking bodies, and I wouldn’t have time to mourn. There are more troops to train, more vehicles to staff, more aliens to kill.
That’s the power of X-Com, the stakes that it forces the player to contend with, and in a way that’s what’s wrong with storytelling in games today. The stakes are pathetically low, the depth non-existent. It’s rare to see a design team with the stones to kill a main character, and rarer still to see them do it with anything but a noble sacrifice. And as Modern Warfare 2 proved even this sort of high-stakes storytelling can be poorly used, so much so that the impact it once had is completely annihilated by ceaseless or crass use of death as an “easy out.” By setting stories on rails and demanding that players “do it right” however many times games lose some of the cache they had in 1996, where fail states would do more than force you to play it all again, they’d potentially ruin your hours of progress or dramatically change the landscape of the game. Marketing departments weren’t calling the shots regarding game structure and difficulty, and as such developers could permit players to fail, work their failures into the game and punish them instead of picking them up and dusting them off, handing them a lolly to make sure they were still interested in sticking around and trying again.
I can’t think of a title quite so willing to allow players to fail, except perhaps Demon’s Souls, a game I have been unfortunately unable to play due to its console exclusivity. When we permit players to make mistakes nowadays we clearly label it with “optional objective” tags, and it’s kind of a shame. The tension of making difficult decisions, of being forced to deal with consequences, certainly wasn’t for every gamer, but it was a powerful and potent tool at the disposal of designers and developers, and we’re poorer as a community for the loss of this sort of gravitas.
So I recommend anyone with five bucks to lose purchase X-Com on Steam and re-live this sort of tension and challenge. Sure, it’s not perfect. The game is a little ugly, incredibly min-maxy, aggressively difficult and almost absurdly demanding. But it’s still well worth the time and the effort, and it stands as a reminder of what games used to be: punishing engines for the expression of our imaginations, places we could inhabit as much as systems we could master, and accomplishments under our belt when they were finally finished.
But all of the excuses I used to have are fast vanishing as Steam increases our access to classic titles, and this is just a good thing. Steam negotiates a number of technical problems and lets us all see if these games really were as good as we thought, or if our perception of them was really tainted by rose colored glasses. For most players it’s just a chance to re-experience something like Monkey Island or the classic Dooms. This is your chance to see if those waterfalls in Unreal measure up to your adolescent mind, person who already had a chance to experience Doom ages ago.
But for some of us it’s a chance to examine these games in a vacuum for the first time, to see what all the fuss was about. And with Steam’s retardedly cheap holiday sales it was a great time to grab as many five dollar classic games as your tiny, withered heart could hold. That’s how I came to have X-Com sitting on my hard drive.
I didn’t learn about X-Com until Sluggy Freelance started running a series of in-engine comics a few years ago. Until then I’d associated the titles with the incredibly shitty X-Com: Interceptor, the first game in the series to come out when I was even mildly aware of games. There was no reason for me to go in on a generic space-sim at that point – I had X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, after all, and that was more than enough. Why would I want to tediously micromanage weapon hard-points when I could swoop in and fuck some bitches up in my A-Wing?
But a top down tactical game? That’s something I could get behind. I’d been enamored with the concept since Shining Force dropped on the Sega Genesis and cracked games as a medium wide open for me. When Final Fantasy went tactical I spent countless (because I’ve lost my memory card from the time) hours min-maxing my party and finding Cloud’s god damn motherfucking Materia Blade, easily the coolest and most colossal waste of time in the game. I was livid when Neverwinter Nights dropped its tactical Baldur’s Gate roots. If a game had an isometric view and character progression I would be on it like nothing else.
But technology has moved past the era of the tactics game, and indeed why should we keep making the same tired titles when we can try new and exciting things? So top down tactical games have fallen by the wayside. There’s no one to blame, really. Real Time Strategy games are awesome, and turn based tactical games are terrible to play with multiple people. My only frustration came from the fact that older tactics games tended to glitch out with newer operating systems, when you could find them at all. So when I sat down with X-Com last week, knowing just what I was in for, I was pretty excited.
But I hadn’t expected most of the elements of the game. The open world, the procedurally generated mission structure and the punishing difficulty curve were all staggering. I got the idea of firing aimed shots and staying in cover, but my first engagement still cost me a two-thirds of my soldiers. I thought I was just going to trade shots with aliens, but instead I was dropped into a losing battle with a vastly superior force. The only thing I had going for me was that I was so insignificant that the aliens had no need to attack me in my base, with my four assault rifles and bevy of horrified scientists.
X-Com did something few games manage to do: it challenged me. On its easiest difficulty setting. I was completely overwhelmed, John Kerry running for president. I had no idea what I was doing, how to accomplish objectives or manage resources. All I could do was save and reload, save and reload, save and reload until I finally learned that you can fire at different elevations or that labs can’t cooperate on research or that cannons are completely useless.
The challenge helped, though. It took all of two missions for me to form an emotional connection to my soldiers, to tool out my favorites with the best rifles and keep the rocket launcher in the back on whichever FNG had just come into the squad to replace recent casualties. I started to do everything I could to keep the little guys alive. I put an entire lab’s worth of staff to work researching med kits, powered armor and flight suits, anything for my squad’s safety. I didn’t want one of my little angels bleeding out.
And through this a greater narrative started to form, entirely divorced from the game. I started to imbue my characters with personality without thinking about it. There was the hardened sniper chick with nerves of steel who stayed at the back with a med kit and a steady shot for any scout in over his head, the hard nosed, fast moving leader who was always leading the charge in the best gear and the recon man with a plasma rifle and more twitch than a Crysalid. I should by all rights be embarrassed to have written that, but I just can’t be. X-Com made me shameless. It made me a kid again.
For all the childlike wonder, though, the systems governing the game were impressively complex. The interplay of various statistics, the tactical decisions it demanded and the punishing resource management that it forced on me was beyond anything that more recent RTSes were willing to levy at me. Even ostensibly hardcore games like RA:3 and Sins of a Solar Empire were nowhere near as complicated or finicky. They couldn’t afford to be, they needed to be tooled for multiplayer.
But without any of that wacky “need to interact with other humans” shit X-Com was free to construct an impressive elaborate set of systems which opened up a tremendous engine for emergent storytelling. What’s most impressive is how well it works with how little it has on hand. The cast of characters is limited, a tiny array of mostly interchangeable soldiers and faceless engineers and scientists who toil in the background and produce guns with more personality than half my military (previous members aside). The nations are all indistinguishable from one another – a base in the United States simply can’t be different from a base in Canada or Africa or Asia, the technology can’t support it. It’s already straining to deal with the world as a whole. Despite this the way the interactions between nations and your economy work, the way content is doled out, making every mission a potential first contact where you discover a new and potentially deadly threat and the way that these elements build towards an uncertain and unsettling future where literally anything can happen at any time is nothing short of amazing.
Contemporary games seem weak by comparison. Starcraft 2 is bitching about creating a campaign map, and how rendering each one is going to take them so much time that we won’t see hide or hair of their game for six months, at least. And then we’ll have to sit and wait for expansions to drop so that we can get the sort of content we’ve seen in ages past. X-Com has a dynamic campaign map running out of a DOSbox, and it manages to tell a story with as much drama and aplomb as Starcraft. More, maybe. The stakes in Starcraft were always low. Mengsk was always going to betray you and you could see it coming. Raynor is always going to live. Kerrigan’s tragedy, the game’s lone hook, comes up early and leaves players expecting something more. X-Com, by comparison, is constantly threatening to kill off my entire team. One Floater with a blaster launcher can take out five or six of my hard-won veteran squad members and put me right back at square one. I’d be lucky to get the armor back off their smoking bodies, and I wouldn’t have time to mourn. There are more troops to train, more vehicles to staff, more aliens to kill.
That’s the power of X-Com, the stakes that it forces the player to contend with, and in a way that’s what’s wrong with storytelling in games today. The stakes are pathetically low, the depth non-existent. It’s rare to see a design team with the stones to kill a main character, and rarer still to see them do it with anything but a noble sacrifice. And as Modern Warfare 2 proved even this sort of high-stakes storytelling can be poorly used, so much so that the impact it once had is completely annihilated by ceaseless or crass use of death as an “easy out.” By setting stories on rails and demanding that players “do it right” however many times games lose some of the cache they had in 1996, where fail states would do more than force you to play it all again, they’d potentially ruin your hours of progress or dramatically change the landscape of the game. Marketing departments weren’t calling the shots regarding game structure and difficulty, and as such developers could permit players to fail, work their failures into the game and punish them instead of picking them up and dusting them off, handing them a lolly to make sure they were still interested in sticking around and trying again.
I can’t think of a title quite so willing to allow players to fail, except perhaps Demon’s Souls, a game I have been unfortunately unable to play due to its console exclusivity. When we permit players to make mistakes nowadays we clearly label it with “optional objective” tags, and it’s kind of a shame. The tension of making difficult decisions, of being forced to deal with consequences, certainly wasn’t for every gamer, but it was a powerful and potent tool at the disposal of designers and developers, and we’re poorer as a community for the loss of this sort of gravitas.
So I recommend anyone with five bucks to lose purchase X-Com on Steam and re-live this sort of tension and challenge. Sure, it’s not perfect. The game is a little ugly, incredibly min-maxy, aggressively difficult and almost absurdly demanding. But it’s still well worth the time and the effort, and it stands as a reminder of what games used to be: punishing engines for the expression of our imaginations, places we could inhabit as much as systems we could master, and accomplishments under our belt when they were finally finished.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Congratulations on Soldifying Your Hold on the Western Provinces!
You’ve been trying to conquer the Gauls for a while and, wouldn’t you know it, the little fucks just won’t quit. Today you’re going to discover that burning their villages, woods and holy sites all discourage them from generally resisting your ongoing assault.
Or encourage them. We’re really not sure. But in about two thousand years no one will be able to tell you apart anyway, so who gives a fuck. And as March approaches everything looks great for you. Pretty soon people will be singing the name Julius in the streets!
Congratulations on Solidifying Your Hold on the Western Provinces!
Or encourage them. We’re really not sure. But in about two thousand years no one will be able to tell you apart anyway, so who gives a fuck. And as March approaches everything looks great for you. Pretty soon people will be singing the name Julius in the streets!
Congratulations on Solidifying Your Hold on the Western Provinces!
Friday, January 15, 2010
Congratulations on Being Raped by Tom Sizemore!
We apologize for the blanket nature of these predictions, as well as their brevity, but we’ve been swamped with “other stuff” we all have going on and, as a result, have not been able to meet our normal “telling you about your hideous fate” quotas.
As such we regret to inform you, on such brief notice, that anyone who did not participate in yesterday’s public singing exercise will be suddenly and violently raped by Tom Sizemore this evening. Mister Sizemore, while glad for the work, is generally angry and as such will likely not be gentle.
We recommend gritting your teeth or lubricating your asshole prior to sleeping. More adventurous readers might consider packing a razor blade up there, but then you risk the Wrath of Sizemore if things don’t work out the way you hope.
Whatever happens you brought this on yourself by disappointing Leslie Feist.
Congratulations on Being Raped by Tom Sizemore!
As such we regret to inform you, on such brief notice, that anyone who did not participate in yesterday’s public singing exercise will be suddenly and violently raped by Tom Sizemore this evening. Mister Sizemore, while glad for the work, is generally angry and as such will likely not be gentle.
We recommend gritting your teeth or lubricating your asshole prior to sleeping. More adventurous readers might consider packing a razor blade up there, but then you risk the Wrath of Sizemore if things don’t work out the way you hope.
Whatever happens you brought this on yourself by disappointing Leslie Feist.
Congratulations on Being Raped by Tom Sizemore!
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Congratulations on Singing!
This is far from set in stone, but we received a very polite call from a very sick girl (a certain indie darling named Leslie Feist) who asked us to put together a large, pleasant event. Since we normally tell you how everything you love is going to one day die and how everything you do is not only meaningless but senseless and horrible we really didn’t want to. But then she sang, and the people who didn’t want to have sex with her lapsed into deep comas from which they could not awake and, ergo, could not vote on today’s topic.
So today we’re not telling any of you how you’re doomed and going to get fucked in the mouth by an unwashed homeless man. Today we’re telling you to go a mall and sing.
Sing at the top of your lungs and just shout. If you live in a place without any readily available malls just stand outside of strip malls and sing at the top of your lungs. Those without strip malls should opt to stand near supermarkets and scream punk lyrics at the top of their lungs.
Regardless of talent or schooling we high recommend that you sing that the top of you lungs tomorrow in a public place. If you don’t we predict a high chance that Leslie Feist will never have sex with you.
Congratulations on Singing!
So today we’re not telling any of you how you’re doomed and going to get fucked in the mouth by an unwashed homeless man. Today we’re telling you to go a mall and sing.
Sing at the top of your lungs and just shout. If you live in a place without any readily available malls just stand outside of strip malls and sing at the top of your lungs. Those without strip malls should opt to stand near supermarkets and scream punk lyrics at the top of their lungs.
Regardless of talent or schooling we high recommend that you sing that the top of you lungs tomorrow in a public place. If you don’t we predict a high chance that Leslie Feist will never have sex with you.
Congratulations on Singing!
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Congratulations on Dealing with the Late Fees!
When you come to it’ll be almost a month later in the library. You’ll still be seated at the table where you were reading all those incredibly lame occult books only now you’ll be covered in various kinds of blood and dust. You’ll look like absolute hell, and when you stumble up to Gladys with books in hand she’ll look at you like she’s seeing a ghost.
That is, until she notices the condition of the various volumes you’re returning. Then you’ll flip shit on you, tearing you up and down about proper book care and acceptable standards of behavior when using what is essentially public property. You’ll get a little aroused by the whole thing but you’ll be way too tapped out from fighting devils to do anything about it.
When you try to tell her the story, largely through flashbacks, she’ll be skeptical and will start totaling up the damages and late fees you owe for books that you never actually removed from the god damn library. Your heart will leap into your throat, since the fees will rapidly approach the quadruple digit range and you’re relatively confident that after a month of absence you’ll no longer have a job selling people lube and dildos at reasonable prices.
You’ll be saved, luckily, when a massive, otherworldly horned beast leaps at you from behind the stacks, pinning you against the desk and drooling all over your skull. You’ll be sure that this is the end, since the burly swordsmen from the dark ages won’t be there to help you this time, but then Gladys will let loose an ear splitting scream and the hellbeast will lose track of you for a moment, cocking its head at her panic.
You’ll take advantage of that moment and grab a pen from the checkout desk, tearing it off its beaded chain and driving it between the beast’s gaping jaws and into its soft upper palate, wedging it deep into its brain. The monster will go slack above you and collapse, pinning you under its weight, but at least it won’t be trying to eat you.
We suggest saying something cool at this point, something about the pen being mightier than the sword, maybe, so that you’ll have a shot at banging Gladys, but that’s your call. However you play it she’s going to waive your late fees, so that’s pretty sweet.
Congratulations on Dealing with the Late Fees!
That is, until she notices the condition of the various volumes you’re returning. Then you’ll flip shit on you, tearing you up and down about proper book care and acceptable standards of behavior when using what is essentially public property. You’ll get a little aroused by the whole thing but you’ll be way too tapped out from fighting devils to do anything about it.
When you try to tell her the story, largely through flashbacks, she’ll be skeptical and will start totaling up the damages and late fees you owe for books that you never actually removed from the god damn library. Your heart will leap into your throat, since the fees will rapidly approach the quadruple digit range and you’re relatively confident that after a month of absence you’ll no longer have a job selling people lube and dildos at reasonable prices.
You’ll be saved, luckily, when a massive, otherworldly horned beast leaps at you from behind the stacks, pinning you against the desk and drooling all over your skull. You’ll be sure that this is the end, since the burly swordsmen from the dark ages won’t be there to help you this time, but then Gladys will let loose an ear splitting scream and the hellbeast will lose track of you for a moment, cocking its head at her panic.
You’ll take advantage of that moment and grab a pen from the checkout desk, tearing it off its beaded chain and driving it between the beast’s gaping jaws and into its soft upper palate, wedging it deep into its brain. The monster will go slack above you and collapse, pinning you under its weight, but at least it won’t be trying to eat you.
We suggest saying something cool at this point, something about the pen being mightier than the sword, maybe, so that you’ll have a shot at banging Gladys, but that’s your call. However you play it she’s going to waive your late fees, so that’s pretty sweet.
Congratulations on Dealing with the Late Fees!
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Congratulations on Reenacting the Events of Army of Darkness, Sort Of!
When you come to from your book-coma you’ll be in an unfamiliar waste. The landscape will be blasted, dotted by the husks of dying trees and stubborn grass, clutching to what little life remains in the ground. It’ll immediately look familiar, since, like any self-respecting occult scholar, you spent a lot of time watching every Bruce Campbell movie ever made before beginning your more literate research.
Almost on cue, a terrible flying beast will swoop towards you, jaws agape. However, since you won’t be traveling back in time in a shitkicking car with a shotgun in hand you’ll have nothing to fight off the devil beast.
Frustrated you’ll hurl a book at it, catching it in the face with a particularly thick (and entirely inappropriately filed) copy of Salman Rushdi’s The Satanic Verses and sending it tumbling to the ground. Filled with adrenaline, you’ll rush to the side of the beast and hammer various books into its skull until it finally gives way beneath you and you’re surrounded by hardcovers stained in black ichor.
While you’re sitting there panting a small group of soldiers will come upon you and ask you, in Olde English, if you’re alright and what’s up with all the books.
You won’t respond, instead choosing to stare into space, which will convince the soldiers that you’re a wizard and are key to defeating the darkness which assails their people.
What follows will be a series of events very similar to (but legally distinct from) the film Army of Darkness. We’d describe your incredible journey, but we don’t want to run afoul of any lawyers so we’ll just say that in addition to keeping your hand you’ll also not get laid and won’t be the hero, since you weigh ninety pounds and smoke constantly. Mostly you’ll just complain and stare at tits, which is fine by us.
After your lengthy struggle you’ll eventually be sent back home, covered in scars and slightly tougher from the lack of Playstation and cloves in the past, by drinking from a chalice and blacking out again.
Congratulations on Reenacting the Events of Army of Darkness, Sort Of!
Almost on cue, a terrible flying beast will swoop towards you, jaws agape. However, since you won’t be traveling back in time in a shitkicking car with a shotgun in hand you’ll have nothing to fight off the devil beast.
Frustrated you’ll hurl a book at it, catching it in the face with a particularly thick (and entirely inappropriately filed) copy of Salman Rushdi’s The Satanic Verses and sending it tumbling to the ground. Filled with adrenaline, you’ll rush to the side of the beast and hammer various books into its skull until it finally gives way beneath you and you’re surrounded by hardcovers stained in black ichor.
While you’re sitting there panting a small group of soldiers will come upon you and ask you, in Olde English, if you’re alright and what’s up with all the books.
You won’t respond, instead choosing to stare into space, which will convince the soldiers that you’re a wizard and are key to defeating the darkness which assails their people.
What follows will be a series of events very similar to (but legally distinct from) the film Army of Darkness. We’d describe your incredible journey, but we don’t want to run afoul of any lawyers so we’ll just say that in addition to keeping your hand you’ll also not get laid and won’t be the hero, since you weigh ninety pounds and smoke constantly. Mostly you’ll just complain and stare at tits, which is fine by us.
After your lengthy struggle you’ll eventually be sent back home, covered in scars and slightly tougher from the lack of Playstation and cloves in the past, by drinking from a chalice and blacking out again.
Congratulations on Reenacting the Events of Army of Darkness, Sort Of!
Monday, January 11, 2010
Congratulations on Opening The Book!
We here at Sexy Results Future Agency support the institution that is the public library. After all, where else could we poop and shave after our significant others have kicked us out for sleeping with their sibling(s) and the local YMCAs have barred us from their facilities for repeated instances of sexual harassment? The library remains the ultimate bastion of egalitarian knowledge and humanizing facilities in the United States today, and studies show that those who genuinely support it are generally more attractive, smarter and poorer than other American citizens.
That’s why we highly recommend you trip to the library this Monday afternoon, even knowing what we know already.
When you walk through the door Gladys, the 27 year old hot librarian who already has an old lady librarian name, will give you a nod and you’ll nod back at her. You are what she refers to as a “non-homeless regular,” which is exactly what it sounds like and her favorite kind of customer to boot.
You’ll breeze past the public computers, spattered with a combination of pornography and right wing conspiracy theory websites, and roll right up on the occult section, of which the Woodstock Public Library has a staggering amount.
That’s right. You’re one those people. You know what we mean.
You’ll thumb through the titles for a long while, pulling out titles and authors whose names pique your interest or ring familiar in your mind. Before long you’ll have an impressive heap by your side, an uneven stack threading its way up to your knee, a pile that your spindly stick arms will have trouble lifting. When the time comes to find a quiet corner and sit with your Darkness™ you’ll stagger to the far side of the library and plop down in a chair, losing yourself in the array of books about religion, Alister Crowley’s culinary preferences and ways to make a primitive gambling determination system out of the inside of a horse’s testicle and some Red Zinger tea.
Eventually your hands will fall upon a book you don’t remember adding to the stack. Its cover will be soft and textured to the touch, a unique binding which will conjure deeply troubling thoughts for you. You’ll search the spine and cover, but there will be no title or author visible. The only real visible adornment will be a pentagram. Beneath it there will be a stain that looks vaguely like a face, but it’ll be hard to say just what it looks like. It’ll seem to shift every few seconds, as if it was deciding what its expression should be.
You won’t want to open it at first, but a few seconds touching it, becoming familiar with its texture, will make you curious. That curiosity will build as you stare at the stains, building into an overwhelming compulsion to crack the spine and swallow each and every word contained therein.
The urge will grow so great that you’ll do just that with all the ferocity of a teenager opening a CD’s plastic packaging, but to your dismay the pages will be blank. You’ll trace your fingers across the paper, noting its weight and texture, again off somehow, perhaps too heavy, and when you move your hand away you’ll see that your fingers have left little black trails wherever they touched, as if they were coated in ink.
When you look at them, though, they’ll be unblemished and perfectly manicured. You’ll bite your lip and press your palm to the page entirely, some part of your brain screaming against the act. It’s as if you already know how this will end, before the blackness takes your consciousness and a throaty laugh echoes in your ears, the last sensation you have before the empty dreamlessness of rest.
Congratulations on Opening The Book!
That’s why we highly recommend you trip to the library this Monday afternoon, even knowing what we know already.
When you walk through the door Gladys, the 27 year old hot librarian who already has an old lady librarian name, will give you a nod and you’ll nod back at her. You are what she refers to as a “non-homeless regular,” which is exactly what it sounds like and her favorite kind of customer to boot.
You’ll breeze past the public computers, spattered with a combination of pornography and right wing conspiracy theory websites, and roll right up on the occult section, of which the Woodstock Public Library has a staggering amount.
That’s right. You’re one those people. You know what we mean.
You’ll thumb through the titles for a long while, pulling out titles and authors whose names pique your interest or ring familiar in your mind. Before long you’ll have an impressive heap by your side, an uneven stack threading its way up to your knee, a pile that your spindly stick arms will have trouble lifting. When the time comes to find a quiet corner and sit with your Darkness™ you’ll stagger to the far side of the library and plop down in a chair, losing yourself in the array of books about religion, Alister Crowley’s culinary preferences and ways to make a primitive gambling determination system out of the inside of a horse’s testicle and some Red Zinger tea.
Eventually your hands will fall upon a book you don’t remember adding to the stack. Its cover will be soft and textured to the touch, a unique binding which will conjure deeply troubling thoughts for you. You’ll search the spine and cover, but there will be no title or author visible. The only real visible adornment will be a pentagram. Beneath it there will be a stain that looks vaguely like a face, but it’ll be hard to say just what it looks like. It’ll seem to shift every few seconds, as if it was deciding what its expression should be.
You won’t want to open it at first, but a few seconds touching it, becoming familiar with its texture, will make you curious. That curiosity will build as you stare at the stains, building into an overwhelming compulsion to crack the spine and swallow each and every word contained therein.
The urge will grow so great that you’ll do just that with all the ferocity of a teenager opening a CD’s plastic packaging, but to your dismay the pages will be blank. You’ll trace your fingers across the paper, noting its weight and texture, again off somehow, perhaps too heavy, and when you move your hand away you’ll see that your fingers have left little black trails wherever they touched, as if they were coated in ink.
When you look at them, though, they’ll be unblemished and perfectly manicured. You’ll bite your lip and press your palm to the page entirely, some part of your brain screaming against the act. It’s as if you already know how this will end, before the blackness takes your consciousness and a throaty laugh echoes in your ears, the last sensation you have before the empty dreamlessness of rest.
Congratulations on Opening The Book!
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Why We LAN.
Walking down the streets of Arlington, I felt like I was back in high school. The curve of the hill, the corners, the sand stained snow drifts, none of them had changed. The air still stung my lungs and I still felt the same nervous twinge that I might run into someone I know and have to talk with them, to explain why I’m walking across town at ten PM at night. The twinge subsided when I made the last turn and stepped on to Alex’s street. For a minute I was fifteen again, my feet remembering every inch of pavement, every step up to his door.
I’d arrived in town just that afternoon. I hadn’t seen Alex in person in nearly a year. All the same I didn’t bother ringing the doorbell before I tested the knob and found the door unlocked. From there it was a quick trot up the stairs to the room he’d grown up in. The door was open and nothing had changed.
Pillows littered the floor, Rock Band instruments were propped against the wall and the boxes of various electronics served as makeshift tables for empty cans of soda and beer. Dan was there with him, splayed in front of the television watching music videos speechlessly. I entered without a word, handing Alex a handle of Seagram’s VO, still in a paper bag, fresh from New Hampshire.
Then I took up my place, back to a wall, staring at the TV, waiting for Alex to collect the shot glasses.
“How’s Jen?” Dan asked, breaking the silence.
Jen is our mutual friend from high school, a police officer in New Hampshire. I’d just been visiting her for the first time in two years. I’d caught flak for it because it meant that Game Night would have to be postponed. I’d received a series of text messages over the last 24 hours about how great Game Night had been last night in preparation for my return. I’d also had to spend two hours discussing the logistics of hanging out with other people visiting home so that we could have a Game Night.
“Fine?” I answered. I didn’t really know what to say. “Want to get the shot glasses?”
Alex didn’t move when he responded. “They’re in the other room. Near the computers.”
“What are we waiting for?” I said, standing against the wall. “Let’s lose some HoN.”
Alex stared at the TV for a moment, watching a heavily made up white hop hop starlet finish gyrating like she was having a stroke before he let out a sigh and rolled off the couch on to his feet.
“Fine. Just a sec.”
He slid out the door and down the stairs, leaving me and Dan together. MTV stayed on the TV, muted.
“So how’s Jen?” he asked without moving, still splayed on the floor.
“Good. Busy,” I answered, back against the wall, staring at an astronaut who was apparently using rock to reenact scenes from 2001.
"That's good," he said, without moving.
We sat there without speaking until Alex's telltale footsteps sounded up the staircase. At that sign we rose to our feet and stumbled in to Alex's room.
We sat down at our stations, me at Al’s old desktop, Dan on Al’s bed. He pulled his laptop out with a graceful lack of ceremony and put it on top of one of the cardboard boxes littering Al’s floor. I pulled out the shot glasses from the mess of soda bottles on Al’s desk and handed one of them to Dan, setting another next to Alex’s new rig.
Al, on cue, slipped through the door, balancing a stack of glasses with a pair of two liters. He closed the door as if by slight of hand. Soundproof foam covered the walls and we all sat in front of our computers. It was time to lose some video games.
“Let’s pour some shots and find a game,” Al suggested, draining Coke into a glass filled with ice. In lieu of response I lifted his shot glass from his desk and grabbed the bottle of VO from its home near Dan. Two deft pours later I thrust it back towards him, where he ignored it for a full minute before he noticed its neck pointed towards him.
“Oh.”
Searching for a game we might as well have been splayed across the country again. Refreshing, clicking, waiting for the right match.
“Got one.”
“Nope. Full.”
“Fuck.”
“How about this?”
“Wait. Alright, go.”
“’Kay.”
The ritual, the process lasted for an eternity, where eternity is defined by five minute intervals, before we finally found something with enough room for all of us.
“Yesss!” I hissed. Dan lifted a fist into the air.
“It’s called Shmishmorshmon for a reason!” Al declared, lifting his glass up before tipping it back. Dan and I followed suit quickly, refilling our glasses just as quickly. By the time the bottle touched the ground again we’d left the game. The host had ignored our requests for a lock and split us across different teams. We’d had no choice.
Whiskey’s warmth made the next eternity pass far more quickly, and before I’d even started to think about the second shot we were watching the countdown on the Repick screen, discussing our heroes.
“Who wants the Void?”
“I’m sticking with the Vengeful. I’m confident I can not suck with her.”
“I’m repicking. I don’t want to play Nymphora again.”
The dice rolled, the game started and we were a team again. We might as well have never left high school, synchronizing. Cheering, tipping back shots and laughing, we were a team. We destroyed the competition, and when the enemy quit after twenty five minutes it had just been their way of informing us that they knew we were indeed superior.
We searched for a new game, laughing and waiting. Our heroes were solid. Not excellent, but good enough. We had a shot. No, we had this.
Halfway through the game it started.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked Dan.
“Huh?”
The text appeared, Dan (Puppetmaster) has been killed by Enemyplayer (Doesitevenmatteratthispoint?), and I let out a sigh.
“Fuck it,” I said, pouring another shot and fighting the tide. Our camraderie gave way to flippancy and internal rivalry until we began to vote in rapid succession, trying to convince our remaining teammates to just let this fucking game end already.
“That sucked,” Dan muttered as we looked at our new K-D ratios and lamented.
Al shrugged. “Yeah,” he said, refreshing the game list.
“Fuck it,” I said. “Let’s play Last Stand. At least then we know we’re supposed to lose.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Fine.”
And so it went.
Against the waves of tyranids, orks and eldar we had only each other for company. No noobs or assholes to frustrate us, we came together again. But we might as well not have been in the same room. Dan wandered across the map alone, Alex lamented that he’d chosen an Eldar character and I did all I could to cajole my dreadnaught into attacking what I wanted it to. When the game ended in round 17 we opted to play again.
This was why we were LANing, why we played together. Despite all the bullshit, the last two of days of ridiculous barbs and the near fatal amounts of alcohol it seemed worth it. Jetpack roaring through my friends' silence, I remembered why we'd loved doing this in high school, why we still set aside hours every week for this express purpose.
“Let’s play HoN again after this,” Dan said as we lifted our glasses again. It would seem like a good idea at the time, but then it always did.
I’d arrived in town just that afternoon. I hadn’t seen Alex in person in nearly a year. All the same I didn’t bother ringing the doorbell before I tested the knob and found the door unlocked. From there it was a quick trot up the stairs to the room he’d grown up in. The door was open and nothing had changed.
Pillows littered the floor, Rock Band instruments were propped against the wall and the boxes of various electronics served as makeshift tables for empty cans of soda and beer. Dan was there with him, splayed in front of the television watching music videos speechlessly. I entered without a word, handing Alex a handle of Seagram’s VO, still in a paper bag, fresh from New Hampshire.
Then I took up my place, back to a wall, staring at the TV, waiting for Alex to collect the shot glasses.
“How’s Jen?” Dan asked, breaking the silence.
Jen is our mutual friend from high school, a police officer in New Hampshire. I’d just been visiting her for the first time in two years. I’d caught flak for it because it meant that Game Night would have to be postponed. I’d received a series of text messages over the last 24 hours about how great Game Night had been last night in preparation for my return. I’d also had to spend two hours discussing the logistics of hanging out with other people visiting home so that we could have a Game Night.
“Fine?” I answered. I didn’t really know what to say. “Want to get the shot glasses?”
Alex didn’t move when he responded. “They’re in the other room. Near the computers.”
“What are we waiting for?” I said, standing against the wall. “Let’s lose some HoN.”
Alex stared at the TV for a moment, watching a heavily made up white hop hop starlet finish gyrating like she was having a stroke before he let out a sigh and rolled off the couch on to his feet.
“Fine. Just a sec.”
He slid out the door and down the stairs, leaving me and Dan together. MTV stayed on the TV, muted.
“So how’s Jen?” he asked without moving, still splayed on the floor.
“Good. Busy,” I answered, back against the wall, staring at an astronaut who was apparently using rock to reenact scenes from 2001.
"That's good," he said, without moving.
We sat there without speaking until Alex's telltale footsteps sounded up the staircase. At that sign we rose to our feet and stumbled in to Alex's room.
We sat down at our stations, me at Al’s old desktop, Dan on Al’s bed. He pulled his laptop out with a graceful lack of ceremony and put it on top of one of the cardboard boxes littering Al’s floor. I pulled out the shot glasses from the mess of soda bottles on Al’s desk and handed one of them to Dan, setting another next to Alex’s new rig.
Al, on cue, slipped through the door, balancing a stack of glasses with a pair of two liters. He closed the door as if by slight of hand. Soundproof foam covered the walls and we all sat in front of our computers. It was time to lose some video games.
“Let’s pour some shots and find a game,” Al suggested, draining Coke into a glass filled with ice. In lieu of response I lifted his shot glass from his desk and grabbed the bottle of VO from its home near Dan. Two deft pours later I thrust it back towards him, where he ignored it for a full minute before he noticed its neck pointed towards him.
“Oh.”
Searching for a game we might as well have been splayed across the country again. Refreshing, clicking, waiting for the right match.
“Got one.”
“Nope. Full.”
“Fuck.”
“How about this?”
“Wait. Alright, go.”
“’Kay.”
The ritual, the process lasted for an eternity, where eternity is defined by five minute intervals, before we finally found something with enough room for all of us.
“Yesss!” I hissed. Dan lifted a fist into the air.
“It’s called Shmishmorshmon for a reason!” Al declared, lifting his glass up before tipping it back. Dan and I followed suit quickly, refilling our glasses just as quickly. By the time the bottle touched the ground again we’d left the game. The host had ignored our requests for a lock and split us across different teams. We’d had no choice.
Whiskey’s warmth made the next eternity pass far more quickly, and before I’d even started to think about the second shot we were watching the countdown on the Repick screen, discussing our heroes.
“Who wants the Void?”
“I’m sticking with the Vengeful. I’m confident I can not suck with her.”
“I’m repicking. I don’t want to play Nymphora again.”
The dice rolled, the game started and we were a team again. We might as well have never left high school, synchronizing. Cheering, tipping back shots and laughing, we were a team. We destroyed the competition, and when the enemy quit after twenty five minutes it had just been their way of informing us that they knew we were indeed superior.
We searched for a new game, laughing and waiting. Our heroes were solid. Not excellent, but good enough. We had a shot. No, we had this.
Halfway through the game it started.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked Dan.
“Huh?”
The text appeared, Dan (Puppetmaster) has been killed by Enemyplayer (Doesitevenmatteratthispoint?), and I let out a sigh.
“Fuck it,” I said, pouring another shot and fighting the tide. Our camraderie gave way to flippancy and internal rivalry until we began to vote in rapid succession, trying to convince our remaining teammates to just let this fucking game end already.
“That sucked,” Dan muttered as we looked at our new K-D ratios and lamented.
Al shrugged. “Yeah,” he said, refreshing the game list.
“Fuck it,” I said. “Let’s play Last Stand. At least then we know we’re supposed to lose.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Fine.”
And so it went.
Against the waves of tyranids, orks and eldar we had only each other for company. No noobs or assholes to frustrate us, we came together again. But we might as well not have been in the same room. Dan wandered across the map alone, Alex lamented that he’d chosen an Eldar character and I did all I could to cajole my dreadnaught into attacking what I wanted it to. When the game ended in round 17 we opted to play again.
This was why we were LANing, why we played together. Despite all the bullshit, the last two of days of ridiculous barbs and the near fatal amounts of alcohol it seemed worth it. Jetpack roaring through my friends' silence, I remembered why we'd loved doing this in high school, why we still set aside hours every week for this express purpose.
“Let’s play HoN again after this,” Dan said as we lifted our glasses again. It would seem like a good idea at the time, but then it always did.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Congratulations on Ending the Conflict!
You and your girlfriend get along pretty well, spare one key disagreement: she thinks the Bowflex is better, you know that the Soloflex is the only way to exercise in style and modern comfort in your home. The two of you are both intractable on the subject and, despite having an otherwise healthy relationship, have been fighting about this for months on end now.
And we don’t just mean “arguments and occasional scuffles where you have to tell co-workers you wrestled with your cat last night.” We mean “full out gang warfare between the two of you and your ideological companions.”
Most of the people who give a fuck about the Soloflex v. Bowflex conflict at this point in time will be super ripped dudes with no idea of how to fight and a desire to flex off against one another, but a tiny percentage of each gang will consist of disaffected teens just looking for a reason to snap. These teens will relish violence and drag the entire organization into it.
At first it’ll just make the entire issue more interesting for you but after a few fatalities and an attempt on your lady-love’s life the gravity of the situation will dawn on you. As cute as fighting each other with bike chains is, something will have to give.
You’ll contact a relationship therapist who will in turn suggest another, better relationship therapist hidden in the Alps. You and your girlfriend will go off in search of this therapist, leaving your gangs to ravage one another. Eventually you’ll realize that the original therapists just had you wander off in the Alps as a relationship strengthening exercise (what therapists normally do in these situations anyhow) and, in your absence, let the more violent members of each gang kill each other off rapidly.
After a few weeks away from douchebags and teenagers the whole issue of what a totally irrelevant exercise machine is called will seem a lot less threatening to your relationship. Also the inter-gang warfare will escalate rapidly and the few surviving members of each gang will retreat to use their Solo and Bowflexes (respectively) in peace and try to bulk up in the event that they have to street fight again.
You and your girl will stay in the Alps for various legal reasons, emerging just long enough to survey the blogosphere and ensure that no one is attempting to find and murder you for your opinions on exercise equipment. You’ll live out your lives in relative happiness until you finally separate over the much more relevant “is it okay to have sex with this woman?” issue in your relationship, which will have emerged during the interim.
Congratulations on Ending the Conflict!
And we don’t just mean “arguments and occasional scuffles where you have to tell co-workers you wrestled with your cat last night.” We mean “full out gang warfare between the two of you and your ideological companions.”
Most of the people who give a fuck about the Soloflex v. Bowflex conflict at this point in time will be super ripped dudes with no idea of how to fight and a desire to flex off against one another, but a tiny percentage of each gang will consist of disaffected teens just looking for a reason to snap. These teens will relish violence and drag the entire organization into it.
At first it’ll just make the entire issue more interesting for you but after a few fatalities and an attempt on your lady-love’s life the gravity of the situation will dawn on you. As cute as fighting each other with bike chains is, something will have to give.
You’ll contact a relationship therapist who will in turn suggest another, better relationship therapist hidden in the Alps. You and your girlfriend will go off in search of this therapist, leaving your gangs to ravage one another. Eventually you’ll realize that the original therapists just had you wander off in the Alps as a relationship strengthening exercise (what therapists normally do in these situations anyhow) and, in your absence, let the more violent members of each gang kill each other off rapidly.
After a few weeks away from douchebags and teenagers the whole issue of what a totally irrelevant exercise machine is called will seem a lot less threatening to your relationship. Also the inter-gang warfare will escalate rapidly and the few surviving members of each gang will retreat to use their Solo and Bowflexes (respectively) in peace and try to bulk up in the event that they have to street fight again.
You and your girl will stay in the Alps for various legal reasons, emerging just long enough to survey the blogosphere and ensure that no one is attempting to find and murder you for your opinions on exercise equipment. You’ll live out your lives in relative happiness until you finally separate over the much more relevant “is it okay to have sex with this woman?” issue in your relationship, which will have emerged during the interim.
Congratulations on Ending the Conflict!
Friday, January 8, 2010
Congratulations on Figuring Out How It All Works!
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Thursday, January 7, 2010
Congratulations on Restraining Yourself!
Prostitutes charge extra after they’ve been with you once. Most of them won’t refuse to see you a second time, so you’re obviously not that bad a john, but they will make you dole out a hefty payment because of the “weird shit” you usually visit upon them. And since you tend to wheel out more and more of your little secrets as you get to know them better, since they’re the only people you can really open up to in the first place, they tend to charge more and more as time goes on.
Eventually, inevitably, their rates rise too high and you must refuse. Then the two of you share an awkward goodbye hug (another exorbanant charge you insist on levying) and go your separate ways.
You’re okay with the rising cost of love in the world. You’re even okay paying for sex. But you just cannot afford to keep going through this cycle with a new sex worker every month. That’s why tonight, when fresh faced young Shelly come by you’ll strap yourself into restraints and tell her you just want her to “go to town” on you.
When she asks what you mean you’ll shrug and tell her to get as bad as she wants. Thinking you’re a John looking for a scare she’ll pull out her entire bag of tricks, an astoundingly filthy selection considering she’s a schoolteacher during the day. You’ll want to ask her for more and more but you’ll stop yourself this time, submitting to someone for the first time since Margaret ruptured your colon.
When she finally finishes, drenched in sweat, the two of you will both be smiling. Shelly will stroke the side of your face and charge you the arranged rate. She’ll release the cuffs and tell you to call her again, shaking her hips as she leaves the room.
You’ll feel hopeful for the first time in months. Not because you’ve found love or a new life for yourself but because you’ve found a sex worker who gets you and enjoys touching you in exchange for money. And really that’s just as good.
Congratulations on Restraining Yourself!
Eventually, inevitably, their rates rise too high and you must refuse. Then the two of you share an awkward goodbye hug (another exorbanant charge you insist on levying) and go your separate ways.
You’re okay with the rising cost of love in the world. You’re even okay paying for sex. But you just cannot afford to keep going through this cycle with a new sex worker every month. That’s why tonight, when fresh faced young Shelly come by you’ll strap yourself into restraints and tell her you just want her to “go to town” on you.
When she asks what you mean you’ll shrug and tell her to get as bad as she wants. Thinking you’re a John looking for a scare she’ll pull out her entire bag of tricks, an astoundingly filthy selection considering she’s a schoolteacher during the day. You’ll want to ask her for more and more but you’ll stop yourself this time, submitting to someone for the first time since Margaret ruptured your colon.
When she finally finishes, drenched in sweat, the two of you will both be smiling. Shelly will stroke the side of your face and charge you the arranged rate. She’ll release the cuffs and tell you to call her again, shaking her hips as she leaves the room.
You’ll feel hopeful for the first time in months. Not because you’ve found love or a new life for yourself but because you’ve found a sex worker who gets you and enjoys touching you in exchange for money. And really that’s just as good.
Congratulations on Restraining Yourself!
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Congatulations on Cleaning Out Your Fridge!
Many’s the day you’ve spent dreading this task, and it’ll be all the worse for the wasted time. It was pretty bad to start with, a minefield of hummus and cottage cheese from the 1970s, but that’s what happens when you rent in Tucson.
So today you’ll borrow your cousin’s hazmat suit, put it on incorrectly and begin throwing away various food items that, to the best of your knowledge, have been there since the house was constructed.
It’ll go alright, except for one part where something corrosive gets through the suit and on to your skin. That’ll burn horribly and fill the suit with a revolting smell, like rotten cabbage and vomit mixed together. It’ll make you barf, which will help because as an alcoholic you find the odor of your own vomit soothing, but the entire affair will be grisly, if less so then you imagined.
That is, until the end. As you turn your back to haul out the trash bag filled with shit that belongs in a medical waste container a leafy green tendril of ooze and vegetable matter will slither from the back of your fridge and wrap itself around your torso. Then it will pull you back into the fridge where you’ll discover first hand what goes on in there when the door is closed.
Congratulations on Cleaning Out Your Fridge!
So today you’ll borrow your cousin’s hazmat suit, put it on incorrectly and begin throwing away various food items that, to the best of your knowledge, have been there since the house was constructed.
It’ll go alright, except for one part where something corrosive gets through the suit and on to your skin. That’ll burn horribly and fill the suit with a revolting smell, like rotten cabbage and vomit mixed together. It’ll make you barf, which will help because as an alcoholic you find the odor of your own vomit soothing, but the entire affair will be grisly, if less so then you imagined.
That is, until the end. As you turn your back to haul out the trash bag filled with shit that belongs in a medical waste container a leafy green tendril of ooze and vegetable matter will slither from the back of your fridge and wrap itself around your torso. Then it will pull you back into the fridge where you’ll discover first hand what goes on in there when the door is closed.
Congratulations on Cleaning Out Your Fridge!
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Congratulations on Bringing Back th Super Bowl Shuffle!
Today and today only you’re William “Refrigerator” Perry. Life’s been hard for you for the last decade or two, and it’s been going downhill ever since you stopped appear on various Fox shows with “celebrity” in the title, but today it’s going to get better.
While attempting to sell some of the G.I. Joes made in your image on e-Bay to various nerds and hipsters so that you can make your credit card payments this month you’ll stumble on to a website called You-tube. On You-tube users will be able to share and watch streaming videos of almost anything.
Since you’re still a huge narcissist at heart the first thing you’ll type in is your famed Super Bowl Shuffle to see if anyone’s posted a video. What you’ll discover is a bevy of gangly white teens emulating your once graceful dance to Super Bowl fame.
You’ll run out of the coffee shop to a nearby payphone where you’ll contact your lawyer, leaving him a panicked voicemail about a potential intellectual property suit. He’ll send you an email the next day informing you that while your retainer is used up he’d gladly take the case as long as he receives fifty percent of any awards.
You’ll assent without hesitation and the two of you will begin suing kids who just wanted to videotape themselves dancing until you’re financially solvent and the national news has begun to cover your avaricious lawsuit with all the intent of a shark circling its prey. This will in turn trigger a brief resurgence in the popularity of your song and increased sales of said song on i-Tunes and in various vinyl shops specializing in the resale of novelty records. Within three months the entire thing will have faded from the national news, and you’ll return to total obscurity.
So will begin and end your brief return to cultural relevancy.
Congratulations on Bringing Back the Super Bowl Shuffle!
While attempting to sell some of the G.I. Joes made in your image on e-Bay to various nerds and hipsters so that you can make your credit card payments this month you’ll stumble on to a website called You-tube. On You-tube users will be able to share and watch streaming videos of almost anything.
Since you’re still a huge narcissist at heart the first thing you’ll type in is your famed Super Bowl Shuffle to see if anyone’s posted a video. What you’ll discover is a bevy of gangly white teens emulating your once graceful dance to Super Bowl fame.
You’ll run out of the coffee shop to a nearby payphone where you’ll contact your lawyer, leaving him a panicked voicemail about a potential intellectual property suit. He’ll send you an email the next day informing you that while your retainer is used up he’d gladly take the case as long as he receives fifty percent of any awards.
You’ll assent without hesitation and the two of you will begin suing kids who just wanted to videotape themselves dancing until you’re financially solvent and the national news has begun to cover your avaricious lawsuit with all the intent of a shark circling its prey. This will in turn trigger a brief resurgence in the popularity of your song and increased sales of said song on i-Tunes and in various vinyl shops specializing in the resale of novelty records. Within three months the entire thing will have faded from the national news, and you’ll return to total obscurity.
So will begin and end your brief return to cultural relevancy.
Congratulations on Bringing Back the Super Bowl Shuffle!
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