The horde will be closing in on you from all sides, jabbering at you incoherently. You’ll look around yourself for a way to escape and, for the first time, notice just how incredible the carvings on the ruins around you are.
“Huh,” you’ll mumble, running your hand along them and feeling the etched stone under your fingers. “This is kinda neat.”
The horde will halt for a moment, confused, their scimitars raised in mid-air. You’ll continue examining the carvings, completely oblivious to the violence building around you.
The carvings will explain, in simple wordless terms, the story of the Hindu creation myth and its fallout. It will detail the various cycles of each god, their trials and tribulations and the stories they’ve visited upon the Hindu people for generations.
“This is so much cooler than Christianity!” you’ll shout, patting one of the sword-wielding locals on the back. He’ll nod, tentatively.
“Yes,” he’ll mutter in heavily accented English. “Is very cool.”
The two of you will talk for a while about the myth, its nature and how it relates to the practice of Hinduism in daily life. You’ll discuss the differences between the faith you know and the faith you’ve just now discovered, the manner in which it can reshape your life. And while you won’t want to convert, you will offer to write a lengthy discourse with him about the nature of religion and your two faiths in his company, to co-author it with him and eventually publish it with his name credited first.
He’ll agree, and the two of you will live and work side by side for many years, away from the barbarian horde. You’ll eat your meals together, talk constantly, learn to love and respect each other in a totally platonic way, and you’ll create a masterful work on the nature of religion and your lives.
Once it’s published, he’ll execute you and take full credit, effectively initiating you into the academic community.
Congratulations on Figuring Out the Hindu Pantheon!
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Congratulations on Escaping Your Responsibilities as a Father!
Many people avoid their responsibilities as a father through cowardice or cunning. You are going to go into the history books as the only person to have ever been removed from your duties of fatherhood by court order, following your complete inability to assist your children with anything.
“Is it true you once mixed baby food with motor oil in an attempt to make your child a cyborg?” the judge will ask. You’ll shrug.
“And that you don’t know how to make soup?” she’ll inquire.
“The defendant would like to plead the fifth,” your lawyer will interject after you open your mouth to respond, cutting off your no doubt cutting rebuke that soup is surprisingly tough to make.
“I’ll simply read off the rest of the evidence, then,” the prosecuting attorney will declare.
It’ll be a laundry list of ineptitudes. He’ll recount the time you once sent a chauffer to a professional soccer game to acquire your daughter, how you once hired a high priced prostitute to teach your son about proper condom use and STIs. He’ll read segments of testimony from all three of your children about the time you once tried to get your dog to clean up glass by licking it off the floor, and how you proceeded to beat it with a newspaper when it refused to do so. These are simply the ones we can recount here. We’re not even going to get into that one night with the not-so-high priced prostitute you wanted to use to teach your children proper diving mechanics.
The jury will deliberate for fifteen minutes before they emerge with the sentence.
“We find that the defendant will no longer be allowed within one-thousand feet of his children and that, should he attempt to do so, he will be confined in a federal penitentiary for no less than one year. We also find that he will have to pay sufficient child support, totaling at least fifty percent of his total income, to his children and the plantiff, in this case his wife.”
Normally such a harsh sentence would elicit gasps from the crowd. But you’re such a shitty dad that no one’s going to be shocked by it in the least. In fact they’ll be a little bit surprised that you weren’t just sent to prison right then and there for being such a shitty dad. But they’ll let you go, the bailiff shaking his head as he pushes you out the door into the cold spring air.
As you trudge down the courthouse steps the decision will ring in your ears. You’ll walk across the street, counting your steps, until you reach a bright red sports car. A young woman will be sitting in it. She’ll be dull, but beautiful, her eyes glassy, her face expressionless.
“How’d it go?” she’ll ask. You’ll shrug and she’ll nod, and the two of you will head back to the apartment you own, furnished entirely with funds you receive for managing the investments of Lehman Brothers.
Congratulations on Escaping Your Responsibilities as a Father!
“Is it true you once mixed baby food with motor oil in an attempt to make your child a cyborg?” the judge will ask. You’ll shrug.
“And that you don’t know how to make soup?” she’ll inquire.
“The defendant would like to plead the fifth,” your lawyer will interject after you open your mouth to respond, cutting off your no doubt cutting rebuke that soup is surprisingly tough to make.
“I’ll simply read off the rest of the evidence, then,” the prosecuting attorney will declare.
It’ll be a laundry list of ineptitudes. He’ll recount the time you once sent a chauffer to a professional soccer game to acquire your daughter, how you once hired a high priced prostitute to teach your son about proper condom use and STIs. He’ll read segments of testimony from all three of your children about the time you once tried to get your dog to clean up glass by licking it off the floor, and how you proceeded to beat it with a newspaper when it refused to do so. These are simply the ones we can recount here. We’re not even going to get into that one night with the not-so-high priced prostitute you wanted to use to teach your children proper diving mechanics.
The jury will deliberate for fifteen minutes before they emerge with the sentence.
“We find that the defendant will no longer be allowed within one-thousand feet of his children and that, should he attempt to do so, he will be confined in a federal penitentiary for no less than one year. We also find that he will have to pay sufficient child support, totaling at least fifty percent of his total income, to his children and the plantiff, in this case his wife.”
Normally such a harsh sentence would elicit gasps from the crowd. But you’re such a shitty dad that no one’s going to be shocked by it in the least. In fact they’ll be a little bit surprised that you weren’t just sent to prison right then and there for being such a shitty dad. But they’ll let you go, the bailiff shaking his head as he pushes you out the door into the cold spring air.
As you trudge down the courthouse steps the decision will ring in your ears. You’ll walk across the street, counting your steps, until you reach a bright red sports car. A young woman will be sitting in it. She’ll be dull, but beautiful, her eyes glassy, her face expressionless.
“How’d it go?” she’ll ask. You’ll shrug and she’ll nod, and the two of you will head back to the apartment you own, furnished entirely with funds you receive for managing the investments of Lehman Brothers.
Congratulations on Escaping Your Responsibilities as a Father!
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Congratulations Surviving Camp Counselors!
We all know the story. A child died decades ago at the camp where you all work and his vengeful spirit entered the body of a bulky retard and he’s been systematically murdering people at irregular intervals every couple of years since. It’s a tale as old as time, but everyone’s still shocked when it happens to them.
So this week will begin. But luckily local law enforcement in the small town located nearby your campground is surprisingly assiduous and they’ve prepared for this situation. It seems that their funding was often reduced after a string of unsolved murders related to demonic retards and, in an effort to avoid losing the pinball machine in their breakroom, they’ve stepped up their disaster-preparedness by building a staggeringly well armed SWAT force and learning a lot about the occult.
So even though things are going to be rough for the first hour or two of the horrible rampage the mystically infused mongoloid visits upon you and your friends you’ll run and hide and, before long, the police will show up with M-16s filled with bullets that have tiny crosses carved on them and incendiary grenades adorned with springs of garlic.
The end result will be a three hundred pound block of hamburger where once an indestructible sociopath stood. Sure, some teens (including one of the camper’s pregnant girlfriend and one kid who probably would’ve gone on to do something amazing with his life) will die, but in the end at least one slut and one black guy will survive, and that’s really the best you can hope for in these situations. Also, the police department will have additional funding, which means better readiness for events like this in the future.
Think of how your hardships have helped benefit the general public, and rejoice!
Congratulations Surviving Camp Counselors!
So this week will begin. But luckily local law enforcement in the small town located nearby your campground is surprisingly assiduous and they’ve prepared for this situation. It seems that their funding was often reduced after a string of unsolved murders related to demonic retards and, in an effort to avoid losing the pinball machine in their breakroom, they’ve stepped up their disaster-preparedness by building a staggeringly well armed SWAT force and learning a lot about the occult.
So even though things are going to be rough for the first hour or two of the horrible rampage the mystically infused mongoloid visits upon you and your friends you’ll run and hide and, before long, the police will show up with M-16s filled with bullets that have tiny crosses carved on them and incendiary grenades adorned with springs of garlic.
The end result will be a three hundred pound block of hamburger where once an indestructible sociopath stood. Sure, some teens (including one of the camper’s pregnant girlfriend and one kid who probably would’ve gone on to do something amazing with his life) will die, but in the end at least one slut and one black guy will survive, and that’s really the best you can hope for in these situations. Also, the police department will have additional funding, which means better readiness for events like this in the future.
Think of how your hardships have helped benefit the general public, and rejoice!
Congratulations Surviving Camp Counselors!
Monday, March 7, 2011
Congratulations Sally McNally!
You’re pretty. Real pretty. The prettiest girl in your whole gul-dern high school. And that’s a good thing, because the people in your high school are bitches one and all. If you weren’t so pretty they’d rip your shit up and down and leave you weeping on a daily basis, but because you’re so fine you avoid the bulk of the shit people get outside your world.
Well today it’s going to come crashing through when you wake up and, for the first time ever, do not look super fine. Gazing into your mirror you’ll see that your normally shimmering eyes look glassy and dull today. Your skin will hang a little bit loose and your lips will be flat. You’ll even have bags under your eyes.
“What happened?” you’ll ask your mirror, puzzled by the cruelty of the world.
LIFE IS WHAT HAPPENED, BITCH!
You’ll do your best to dab on make-up, but it won’t work. What follows will be a harrowing experience at school. People who normally look up to you will avoid eye contact. Even the dorks and dweebs will turn away from your kind smiles, your pariahdom will be so imminent. At one point a boy with a mo-hawk will drop a pencil down the back of your pants while his friend attempts to throw paper balls into your blossoming cleavage.
“What’s wrong with you?” you’ll shout at them, tears welling in your eyes while the rest of your high school looks away, unwilling to inform you that this is actually quite normal in our horrid world.
You see, the world is what’s wrong with those boys, and your old life is part of that world. Your bubble, your lovely perfect life, all of it made their horror possible. Because while you were living with your head in the clouds and birds circling you as you danced through the woods these guys were getting burned with hangers by their moms and beaten by their dads. And your happy little life made them seem weird and made it less than okay to get help.
So today you’re going to see the world for what it is, and you’re going to cry to your parents and you’re going to end up on Zoloft, which means you’ll end up fucking up your college applications and only getting into Cornell. Sucks to be you.
Congratulations Sally McNally!
Well today it’s going to come crashing through when you wake up and, for the first time ever, do not look super fine. Gazing into your mirror you’ll see that your normally shimmering eyes look glassy and dull today. Your skin will hang a little bit loose and your lips will be flat. You’ll even have bags under your eyes.
“What happened?” you’ll ask your mirror, puzzled by the cruelty of the world.
LIFE IS WHAT HAPPENED, BITCH!
You’ll do your best to dab on make-up, but it won’t work. What follows will be a harrowing experience at school. People who normally look up to you will avoid eye contact. Even the dorks and dweebs will turn away from your kind smiles, your pariahdom will be so imminent. At one point a boy with a mo-hawk will drop a pencil down the back of your pants while his friend attempts to throw paper balls into your blossoming cleavage.
“What’s wrong with you?” you’ll shout at them, tears welling in your eyes while the rest of your high school looks away, unwilling to inform you that this is actually quite normal in our horrid world.
You see, the world is what’s wrong with those boys, and your old life is part of that world. Your bubble, your lovely perfect life, all of it made their horror possible. Because while you were living with your head in the clouds and birds circling you as you danced through the woods these guys were getting burned with hangers by their moms and beaten by their dads. And your happy little life made them seem weird and made it less than okay to get help.
So today you’re going to see the world for what it is, and you’re going to cry to your parents and you’re going to end up on Zoloft, which means you’ll end up fucking up your college applications and only getting into Cornell. Sucks to be you.
Congratulations Sally McNally!
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Super Nerd Sundays Presents: The Terrible Lessons of Kane and Lynch!
Heat is a thing if you’re over a certain age, a cinematic phenomenon that it was hard not to see. It hasn’t sustained itself the way that Star Wars has or established itself as a classic of crime like The Godfather or Chinatown. But it was a pop-culture sensation, and it’s hard to see someone with a duffel slung over their shoulder and an assault rifle in hand without thinking “huh, that looks a lot like Heat.”
Games, the image-centered form of entertainment they are, have kind of co-opted Heat’s imagery from time to time. Sometimes it’s just part of a much larger game, as was the case with Grand Theft Auto IV. And sometimes it’s the basis for the entire game, as is the case with Kane and Lynch.
I’m well aware how late I am to the party on this game, and really, can you blame me? Critically panned, tasteless, advertising on shock value: there was nothing to attract me to Kane and Lynch. Poorly managed cover dynamics, the word “mercenary with a dark past” in every piece of ad-copy released and a graphics engine that would’ve been at home in 2002... There wasn’t a lot of good to say about Kane and Lynch.
Nor is there about it as a game. In that regard its failures are pretty profound. The shooting is sloppy without any of the serendipitous realism that STALKER brought to its sloppiness, the cover system fails on every level, with none of the ease of Gears of War’s definitive experience and zero fluidity to make up for the lack. The story is laughably bad, and the bits of framing that surround each episode are like a list of catch phrases selected at random from various heist movies of the past decade. The characters themselves are weak tea, a few archetypal qualities wrapped around a vague backstory with no driving motivation or even personality driving the action forward. The only thing I can really give Kane and Lynch credit for is its thematic continuity: everything in the game is about a heist of some kind, and it holds to this principle throughout. Even the introduction forms around a certain kind of heist, the theft of a prisoner from his transport one fateful day.
Sure, the surrounding action, is poor and the game hardly seems aware of what it does right and what it fails at completely, but you cannot fault Kane and Lynch for inconsistency. And this consistency, this dedication to the heist, seems to be at both the core of the game as a work and its commercial success. Because despite being a piece of shit, Kane and Lynch sold. It sold well enough to get a sequel. And unlike its contemporaries, games like Blood on the Sand and other third-person exploitation shooters, it didn’t have a brand or high concept driving it. All it had was a set of potent images on offer, a set of images that we’re already intimately familiar with before the game even opens.
Every movement, from bus to bus, van to van, lobby to lobby, all of these various settings are well travelled ground, places we know from other games. We’re never shown something new, something different: instead we’re given, as with the dialogue, a best-of list of set pieces from crime games. And, in a strange way, Kane and Lynch totally succeeds because of this. There’s really nothing to provide you with a reason to play Kane and Lynch, you see. It’s not very good. But the imagery, the overarching theme thereof and the manner in which it fits together, makes it something attractive to a spectator. The idea of robbing a bank or a mansion or an armored car is a romantic one, the idea of great risk and great reward for a single act of human courage and greed, and Kane and Lynch provides a set of images that attach fundamentally to these concepts. It makes it really sell-able since literally any screen shot of the game will inevitably showcase some sort of good, hokey heist action that you’ll get a chance to play through. It’s a marketing masterpiece in many ways.
But it collapses with play, and for that Kane and Lynch is useful as more than just an example of how to sell an original IP without any originality to it: it’s a showcase for how imagery functions in games.
When a game fires on all cylinders it’s difficult to really deconstruct how it works and why it works so well. Portal, for example, can be looked at from almost any perspective and be held up as a masterpiece of both writing, design and art. It is as perfect as any game ever made has been (which is not to say it’s perfect, just that it’s as close as anyone’s probably ever going to get) and because of that there’s really nothing to say about how games could be made better by its influence. “Be a little longer, maybe?” could come out, but really, that’s not a valid critique. Short cheap games are fine as long as they’re well executed. But a game like Kane and Lynch is incredibly valuable as a object for critical derision.
See, Kane and Lynch fails so handily and in so many transparent ways that it can illustrate mistakes that game developers can make during their process and provide us with a framework where we can introduce fixes for these problems. Take the cover system for example. It’s sloppy, with ineffective collision detection governing whether or not you enter cover and loose controls governing your choice to either lean out of said cover and shoot or run out from cover and be shot. A single “cover button” or even “contextual action button” could easily fix that. Of course, this is a problem solved in Gears of War and present in a game which already has a contextual action button totally unrelated to cover. But still, had Kane and Lynch come first we could’ve learned these lessons and fixed some of the game’s crippling problems before it came along.
I’m not trying to excuse Kane and Lynch. Given its budget and marketplace stance it should’ve been much, much better than it is. I picked it up along with its sequel for ten dollars, and I actually feel a little ripped off. But I am saying that something can be salvaged from the wreckage of this game. Much as horrible movies provide examples of the pitfalls of amateur moviemaking, Kane and Lynch provides young game designers with a roadmap of what can go wrong with their first title. So please, young developers, play Kane and Lynch today. If only so the mistakes it made will never come to haunt us again.
Games, the image-centered form of entertainment they are, have kind of co-opted Heat’s imagery from time to time. Sometimes it’s just part of a much larger game, as was the case with Grand Theft Auto IV. And sometimes it’s the basis for the entire game, as is the case with Kane and Lynch.
I’m well aware how late I am to the party on this game, and really, can you blame me? Critically panned, tasteless, advertising on shock value: there was nothing to attract me to Kane and Lynch. Poorly managed cover dynamics, the word “mercenary with a dark past” in every piece of ad-copy released and a graphics engine that would’ve been at home in 2002... There wasn’t a lot of good to say about Kane and Lynch.
Nor is there about it as a game. In that regard its failures are pretty profound. The shooting is sloppy without any of the serendipitous realism that STALKER brought to its sloppiness, the cover system fails on every level, with none of the ease of Gears of War’s definitive experience and zero fluidity to make up for the lack. The story is laughably bad, and the bits of framing that surround each episode are like a list of catch phrases selected at random from various heist movies of the past decade. The characters themselves are weak tea, a few archetypal qualities wrapped around a vague backstory with no driving motivation or even personality driving the action forward. The only thing I can really give Kane and Lynch credit for is its thematic continuity: everything in the game is about a heist of some kind, and it holds to this principle throughout. Even the introduction forms around a certain kind of heist, the theft of a prisoner from his transport one fateful day.
Sure, the surrounding action, is poor and the game hardly seems aware of what it does right and what it fails at completely, but you cannot fault Kane and Lynch for inconsistency. And this consistency, this dedication to the heist, seems to be at both the core of the game as a work and its commercial success. Because despite being a piece of shit, Kane and Lynch sold. It sold well enough to get a sequel. And unlike its contemporaries, games like Blood on the Sand and other third-person exploitation shooters, it didn’t have a brand or high concept driving it. All it had was a set of potent images on offer, a set of images that we’re already intimately familiar with before the game even opens.
Every movement, from bus to bus, van to van, lobby to lobby, all of these various settings are well travelled ground, places we know from other games. We’re never shown something new, something different: instead we’re given, as with the dialogue, a best-of list of set pieces from crime games. And, in a strange way, Kane and Lynch totally succeeds because of this. There’s really nothing to provide you with a reason to play Kane and Lynch, you see. It’s not very good. But the imagery, the overarching theme thereof and the manner in which it fits together, makes it something attractive to a spectator. The idea of robbing a bank or a mansion or an armored car is a romantic one, the idea of great risk and great reward for a single act of human courage and greed, and Kane and Lynch provides a set of images that attach fundamentally to these concepts. It makes it really sell-able since literally any screen shot of the game will inevitably showcase some sort of good, hokey heist action that you’ll get a chance to play through. It’s a marketing masterpiece in many ways.
But it collapses with play, and for that Kane and Lynch is useful as more than just an example of how to sell an original IP without any originality to it: it’s a showcase for how imagery functions in games.
When a game fires on all cylinders it’s difficult to really deconstruct how it works and why it works so well. Portal, for example, can be looked at from almost any perspective and be held up as a masterpiece of both writing, design and art. It is as perfect as any game ever made has been (which is not to say it’s perfect, just that it’s as close as anyone’s probably ever going to get) and because of that there’s really nothing to say about how games could be made better by its influence. “Be a little longer, maybe?” could come out, but really, that’s not a valid critique. Short cheap games are fine as long as they’re well executed. But a game like Kane and Lynch is incredibly valuable as a object for critical derision.
See, Kane and Lynch fails so handily and in so many transparent ways that it can illustrate mistakes that game developers can make during their process and provide us with a framework where we can introduce fixes for these problems. Take the cover system for example. It’s sloppy, with ineffective collision detection governing whether or not you enter cover and loose controls governing your choice to either lean out of said cover and shoot or run out from cover and be shot. A single “cover button” or even “contextual action button” could easily fix that. Of course, this is a problem solved in Gears of War and present in a game which already has a contextual action button totally unrelated to cover. But still, had Kane and Lynch come first we could’ve learned these lessons and fixed some of the game’s crippling problems before it came along.
I’m not trying to excuse Kane and Lynch. Given its budget and marketplace stance it should’ve been much, much better than it is. I picked it up along with its sequel for ten dollars, and I actually feel a little ripped off. But I am saying that something can be salvaged from the wreckage of this game. Much as horrible movies provide examples of the pitfalls of amateur moviemaking, Kane and Lynch provides young game designers with a roadmap of what can go wrong with their first title. So please, young developers, play Kane and Lynch today. If only so the mistakes it made will never come to haunt us again.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Congratulations on Realizing You Shouldn't Have Fucked Your Wife's Sister!
Today you're going try and wash your mouth out after brushing your teeth and find that your mouthwash scalds the inside of your mouth.
"What the fuck?!" you'll cry. Your wife will just smile.
"Oh, I replaced it with rattlesnake venom," she'll demur, grabbing your dick and smiling like she plans on cutting it off and eating it later.
"Does that have any restorative properties?" you'll whimper. She'll shake her head, no.
Congratulations on Realizing You Shouldn't Have Fucked Your Wife's Sister!
"What the fuck?!" you'll cry. Your wife will just smile.
"Oh, I replaced it with rattlesnake venom," she'll demur, grabbing your dick and smiling like she plans on cutting it off and eating it later.
"Does that have any restorative properties?" you'll whimper. She'll shake her head, no.
Congratulations on Realizing You Shouldn't Have Fucked Your Wife's Sister!
Friday, March 4, 2011
Congratulations on Dealing With Your Daddy Issues!
You’ve got more daddy issues than the whole rest of Sante Fe combined, but it’s no surprise. He left you and your momma with more debt than fleas, and given that his business was raising poorly-groomed dogs that’s a lot of debt. He left you cold, alone and he left you with the sluttiest drunk that Sante Fe did ever see which, again, is kind of the same sort of superlative we applied with the flea story.
But today you’re finally going to cope with it. You’re going to walk up to a mall Santa who is working for some inexplicable reason in the middle of March, slap him in the face and push him down on the ground. You’ll start shouting at him.
“You were never there for me!” you’ll scream, digging your heel into his back.
“Agggh!” he’ll cry, inarticulately.
“Son of a bitch!” you’ll shout, kicking him in the gut to get him to roll over. “Left me and my momma for nothin’! For this!”
You’ll stand there above that sorry slab of a man, an alcoholic who is just trying to make enough money to get his next drink. He’ll look up at you with red rimmed eyes, brimming with tears and you’ll see for the first time just how weak and pitiful your daddy really was.
You won’t realize that your ex-boyfriend lied to you about tracking your pappy down, that he just wanted to set you loose on a mall Santa to make some miserably asshole’s life a little worse. But he didn’t realize that the other side of your daddy issues was a big old motherly heart, and while you look down at the quivering man beneath you you’ll realize that he isn’t your father, even if your father could still be any number of mall Santas at the same mall. And you’ll formulate a plan to track him down.
“Shit mister, you ain’t my pappy,” you’ll say, shaking your head.
“No, I’m not,” the mall Santa will say, suddenly articulate.
“Well…shoot, mister, let me make it up to you,” you’ll say, unbuttoning your blouse while stroking your chest and smiling. At this point the mall Santa will be confused, and you’ll take advantage of that, grabbing his dick and stroking it until its hard, and then ramming it into your vagina.
You’ll rock that mall Santa’s world, thinking that through him you’ll uncover all of the secrets of the mall Santa profession. But really you’ll just have sex with a down on his luck, out of shape guy and make his world a much, much better place. After a few weeks you’ll realize that your father is probably dead and that he’s definitely not a Santa employed in the middle of spring at that particular mall. You’ll just settle into a relationship with Tony, the mall Santa, who really needed someone like you to help him out of his slump. And while it won’t last with him, it’ll be good and the two of you will emerge from your relationship stronger than when it started.
Congratulations on Dealing with Your Daddy Issues!
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