Congratulations on Falling From Her Fire Escape!

It’s tough to say goodbye to someone you loved. And it can be even tougher to say goodbye to them when they refuse to speak to you or respond to your text messages.

Which is why you’re going to find yourself on your ex-girlfriend’s fire escape late, late tonight, climbing up, wincing at each moan of the metal beneath your feet. You’ll be a floor and a half beneath her window when her roommate will poke her head out and look down at you.

“She doesn’t wanna talk to you!” she’ll slur down at you. She’ll have been drinking. The half-empty bottle of Jack in her fist will be evidence enough of that.

“I’d like to hear that from her!” you’ll shout back up. Her roommate will drag her head back in the window for a moment, and you’ll hear speech from within the apartment. It won’t quite be shouting, but it’ll be close, and when her roommate reappears in the window it’ll be clear that the outcome wasn’t in your favor.

“She dasn’t wanna!” she’ll scream down at you.

This will give you a moment’s pause. You’ll have climbed up like four stories at this point, and you’ll have jumped up to get her fire escape down in the first place, which was really really hard. You won’t want to turn back empty handed, but if your ex doesn’t want to talk to you there really isn’t a lot you can do about it.

But nobody ever accomplished anything by quitting. So you’ll grit your teeth, step up on the next rung on the ladder and shout up at her roommate.

“Fuck you!”

You’ll scramble up as fast as you can, trading sure footing for speed. Her roommate will duck back inside for a moment while you rush up, and when she reappears she’ll have the whiskey bottle, now empty, clutched in her hand.

“No!” she’ll shout before throwing the bottle at your head.

She won’t hit you, but she will make you shift your weight to dodge her. And as you shit your weight you’ll feel the fire escape twist beneath you and give way a little. Not all the way, but just enough that you’ll go tumbling off of it.

You’ll plummet down, your shoulder catching out of the guard rails, sending you spinning into the dumpster beneath your girlfriend’s apartment. You’ll land with a crunch on a combination of cardboard, scrap wood and paper products. Coughing and crying a little you’ll hear muffled cursing from the apartment above.

As you lay in that dumpster you’ll think long and hard about whether or not you should try moving, about your relationship to your ex and about just why you thought it was a good choice to try climbing up an ex’s fire escape to talk to her when she clearly wasn’t interested in speaking to you anymore. The ambulance will arrive ten minutes after the fall, long before you manage to figure anything out.

Congratulations on Falling From Her Fire Escape!

Congratulations on Meeting Your Online Stalker!

The Quizno’s will be nearly empty, an all but unheard of occurrence for the part of Brooklyn you’re in. There is no such thing as an empty Quizno’s near Fulton Mall. That is, unless something is very, very wrong.

He’ll be seated towards the back wearing a panama hat and a pair of dark glasses, just like in the picture he sent you. He’ll look worried, like he’s not sure you’re going to show up. Well, you’ll say to yourself, time to rock his world.

When you sit down across from him he’ll look surprised.

“Cheryl?” he’ll ask tentatively. You’ll nod in response, smiling. “You look different from your pictures.”

He’ll be referring to the pictures on your OkayCupid profile, which won’t have been updated in almost three years. They’ll portray a much, much heavier you with skin problems and some pretty clear self-esteem issues. There will also be a few that are just your cleavage from that time, which was pretty awesome.

You’ll shrug at him. “They’re old pictures. I should probably update them.”

He’ll look uncomfortable, gazing past you. After a moment’s hesitation he’ll tug on the brim of his hat and stand up.

“Well, it was good to meet you,” he’ll start, but movement behind you will distract him again.

“Seriously?” you’ll ask him. He’ll have been badgering you about this meeting for almost four months at this point, a ceaseless series of instant messages, emails and one very sweet and entirely inappropriate handwritten letter with a comic strip that portrayed you, circa two years ago, on a bear skin rug. It was kind of sweet.

He’ll nod at you, a jerking motion that carries his whole body up and down.

“I was just interested in murdering you and taking your skin to make a dress. James over there wanted to wear it.”

He’ll point to a slender young man in jean shorts with thinning hair and a pair of aviator glasses on. The young man will wave back.

“There really isn’t enough of you to work with. Sorry for the trouble,” your stalker will say, tossing money on the table.

You’ll just sit there, your honey mustard turkey unwrapped in front of you, surprised at how the whole thing turned out. You knew there was kind of a risk that someone online wouldn’t turn out to be who you thought they were, but you didn’t think they’d ever be that shallow and materialistic.

It’ll make you reflect on the nature of online dating. It’ll make you wonder if it was worthwhile to lose all that weight if you aren’t going to flaunt it. And, most of all, it’ll make you start looking at boy’s asses in the room, lamenting the spread of man at this particular Quizno’s.

Congratulations on Meeting Your Online Stalker!

Congratulations You Rapacious Scoundrel!

You’re quite the scoundrel.

Not like Han Solo. You’re not a crazy “playa” who saves the day and lives by his own rules. No, you’re an ascot wearing, fluffy shirted rich kid who doesn’t know how to be in a relationship and doesn’t take no for an answer.

Usually people like you get the shit kicked out of them so often and so hard that they end up giving up their scandalous ways before they’re over twenty, but you’re special. You’re really, really handsome. You’re so handsome, so fucking handsome, that even straight dudes and lesbians kinda want to fuck you. This handsomeness has kept you from being severely beaten even as you fuck our wives, our girlfriends and, upon a few occasions, our really hot grandmothers.

But sooner or later everyone’s luck runs out.

Tonight you’re going to find yourself at a state dinner, a perk of your incredible handsomeness and your tremendous wealth. You’ll be seated between the Chancellor of Germany and none other than America’s sweetheart: Michelle Obama.

Since Angela Merkel can’t really hold up to the Lady Obama’s charms (Who has a name like Merkel?! Seriously?!) you’ll spend most of the night talking to Michelle. And since you only know how to flirt with women, you’ll end up seducing her. Not because she doesn’t love her husband, and not because she’s a floozy. You’re just that amazing a flirt. Which is how you’ll end up in a bathroom with the first lady, hand up her skirt, teeth digging into her neck, asking her how long you have until Secret Service personnel bust in on you.

She won’t respond, since she’ll be really distracted by how hot you are, which is why you’ll be so shocked when a Secret Service agent kicks in the stall door and pulls Michelle Obama off of you, underpants around her knees, tongue lolling. He’ll look at the two of you, baffled, before handing the First Lady off to one of his Secret Service buddies.

He’ll keep one hand on your chest, pressing you back on to the bathroom stall, looking at you through his dark glasses with a constant frown.

“The boss won’t be happy,” he’ll mumble at you, shaking his head.

The two of you will wait this way for an endless ten minutes before Barack Obama finally shows up. He’ll enter the bathroom with all the stately grace he brings to speaking and basketball, taking off his jacket and handing it to one of the Secret Service agents watching the door. Then he’ll roll up his sleeves the way he does during a campaign speech when he wants to show he’s ready to take care of business, and he’ll wave the Secret Service agent holding you down aside.

You’ll immediately stand up and extend your hand.

“Big fan,” you’ll begin, but you won’t get a chance to get any farther. Barack Obama will slug you right in the gut, lifting you three inches off the ground with the force of his blow. You’ll rise with his fist like it’s a wave before crashing back down, your legs caving beneath you, splaying you across the floor. He’ll start walking away from you right away, letting the Secret Service agent who was holding you pick you up and wipe the spittle from your mouth.

“Have fun in Guantanamo,” he’ll say to you as he collects his jacket from one of the agents at the door. He’ll step out without putting it on, pausing to poke his head back in and offer you one last parting word.

“Prick,” he’ll utter with complete dispassion, his head and shoulders barely entering the room at all. Then he’ll leave for good, and the Secret Service agent who has been holding you will shake his head and pat you on the back.

“Tough break,” he’ll whisper in your ear. Then he’ll punch you in the face, knocking you to the ground where you’ll be cuffed, have a bag placed over your head and be dragged to a car which will swiftly carry you to a helicopter bound for Cuba.

Congratulations You Rapacious Scoundrel!

Super Nerd Sundays Presents: The Source!

The versatility of the Source Engine has long stood as one of its greatest selling points, so much so that it’s kind of old hat to even mention it. But recent events have brought this to the forefront of my thoughts about gaming. Long term readers will recall that Defense of the Ancients, or DotA, is a game near and dear to my heart, and that DotA clones are a hobby horse of mine. Most recently DOTA 2 began releasing massive amounts of footage and information to the public in the form of a fascinating and incredibly lucrative invitational tournament where the finest teams in DotA-dom beat the shit out of each other for our entertainment. This would be impressive enough on its own, but DOTA 2 and its smooth, efficient play is all coming to us courtesy of the Source engine.

It’s not the first top down game to come out of the Source Engine, sure. But it is the first RTS game to use Source’s venerable tools to bring its play to bear, at least that I’m aware of, and it’s a testament to the versatility of the engine that it is absolutely indistinguishable from all of the other DotA clones. I’m sure that some unique element from the Source Engine will make itself known during play, some sort of operational physics perhaps, or improved arbitration of DotA’s many obtuse rules. I can’t wait to see just how DOTA 2 makes the Source Engine work for its needs.

This comes on the heels of my finally playing Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, another genre bending game that totally defied all of my expectations. For the uninitiated, Might and Magic is a venerable real time strategy title that has a bunch of generic fantasy stuff in it which I have been informed is actually described by an elaborate canonical underpinning. It’s mostly about armies of orcs fighting armies of people and people usually winning. Dark Messiah is a first person shooter set in that world, filled with might and maybe a little magic if you level your character up properly.

It’s a fascinating first-person-slasher, a melee combat oriented first person shooter that also occasionally allows you to cast spells, use physics operable objects and shoot bows every once in a great while. It also has jumping puzzles galore, key hunts, switches that you’ll pull to make things happen, weak cutscene-ish story asides and everything else first person shooters bring to bear. Coupled on to all of this is a leveling system that allows you to purchase skills for your character which dramatically change the way the game plays, eventually shaping your character into a role falling between or into one of three traditional fantasy classes: fighter, mage and thief.

It’s a middling game with an interesting concept and a lot of repetition (by the end of the game you’ll be a little sick of ramping up your attack of choice and letting it loose on every enemy you see). The leveling system actually does a great job of encouraging specialization while permitting a little bit of multi-classing, and the product as a whole hangs together wonderfully, even if it does drag a bit by the end. Cyclops will transform from exciting bosses to lamentable chores later on, and the final boss fight is more annoying than interesting or challenging. It has pacing problems, like most shooters, issues with its own learning curve, level design and voice acting. The writing is sloppy, even if it does switch up a few classic bits of the “chosen one” trope that video games love investing themselves in so much.

Aside from its overarching concept, it’s not even really worth discussing as a game. It has all of the problems that middling examples of all of its various genres have, and it shapes them into a competently executed product worth about fifteen to twenty dollars, depending on how much you like seeing new game play concepts executed. Thief did the sneaking, slashing and exploring from a first person perspective earlier and better, and Deus Ex did being kind of an RPG better. Deus Ex did boss fights way better, which is saying quite a bit considering how frustrating so many of its fights were. The only thing that nets Dark Messiah a place in a thousand word piece instead of a place in a two hundred word piece is that it showcased the versatility of the Source Engine.

That’s right, all that wacky blending of genres I just defined was accomplished entirely within the generous confines of the Source Engine. All of the leveling, all of the exploring, all of the fighting, the environmental manipulating, the crazy little jumping puzzles and the magic, all of it worked in Source. And all of it worked seamlessly, without loading screens of breaks. Even Bioshock’s amazing alteration of the Unreal Engine needed loading screens and menus to separate out its leveling and character development from the rest of the game, but the Source Engine accommodated all that and more in Dark Messiah. As a work of game design it’s middling in every way, but as a feat of engineering Dark Messiah is fantastic. It showcases the power of an engine which, at its inception, was considered just a fantastic means of delivering real-time physics to shooter game play. It took the Source Engine and shaped it into something new.

This is the power of the Source Engine, the power it shows through both middling games like Alien Swarm and Dark Messiah as well as amazing games that have long subsisted on in terrible engines such as DOTA 2. It gives people the power to make their ideas shine, to bring their art and concept to life. It gives designers untold opportunities, remarkable versatility available to a far greater breadth of people than most tools they’d use. It’s so incredible it makes me see beauty in things I’d otherwise write off as meh experiences. So raise a glass to the Source Engine, to the remarkable things it is capable of and the wonderful games it’s bound to present us with for years to come.

Congratulations on Not Catching Fire!

Being drunk on the trampoline isn’t necessary the worst thing in the world. It’s kind of expected, actually. People get wasted on trampolines and bounce. They’re more injury prone, sure, but they’re usually quite relaxed and have a good time doing their thing on the old trampomoline.

But not you. You’re kind of a dick whenever you get something. And when you get wasted the dickishness gets that much worse. So today, when you down a bottle of schnapps alone and decide to get on your son’s trampoline and bounce and bounce and bounce while throwing small, hard objects at the children around you, it’s not going to be cool. Definitely not as cool as you think it is, at least.

And when you finally topple off the trampoline and crack your skull against the tile surrounding your pool, there’s a reason no one is going to run to dial 9-1-1. You’re going to deserve that wheelchair you’ll be getting, prick.

Congratulations on Ruining Your Son’s Birthday Party!

Congratulations on Not Catching Fire!

It’s well known that tragedy follows clowns wherever they go, whether they be dancing under a big top or shopping for groceries. Normally it’s domestic trouble, like a clown walking in on his wife cheating or being told he doesn’t take a particular relationship seriously enough by his partner of six months when he tries to ram a balloon animal into her vagina in a moment of passion.

Sometimes it gets a little bit better.

Today you’re going to be walking during an electric storm, right through the middle of a field. You won’t really recall the reason why you’re there (you’ve been hitting the sauce pretty hard of late) but you’ll know it’s very very important that you get home soon because your cat’s dander will no longer be making your eyes red, which means you won’t have seen your cat in over a day.

Lightning will be searing across the sky, silver bolt after silver bolt excising its poetry against the iridescent gray of cloud cover. You’ll pick up your pace and begin running, knowing the danger that those bolts imply in your animal brain. You’ll run harder and faster than you ever have before, forgetting where your feet fall. It is because of this momentary lapse in awareness that you will stumble across a roadway, and cause a car to comically veer to the side before crashing into a tree.

The car’s wheels will still be spinning as its occupants spill out in a cascade of agonized moans. Grunts and occasional shrieks will accompany them as they haul their battered bodies out of the car one by one, white pancake makeup smeared red with their own blood and the blood of their fellows. They’ll be clowns to a man, and there will be like eight of them.

After an awkward pause which won’t be very funny at all the one who is standing the steadiest will shake his head, point at you and shout.

“What the fuck were you doing, man?!”

You won’t be able to give him a very good response, since you’ll be a bit confused by the entire image and you won’t really have a good reason for running aside from “my brain told me to” which really doesn’t sound too great right now. He’ll look at you like he’s going to hit you, although he’ll also look really, really tired for some reason, but you won’t want to fight him so you’ll put up your hands in your own defense, warding him back.

At this very instant lightning will streak from the sky, striking the clowns, who will have clustered together for warmth. Their bodies and giant shoes will fly in every direction, cascading to the ground as they scream in agony. Most of them will be lit aflame, including the clown who was making you feel threatened.

You’ll be elated. Not only will the scary clowns be gone, you’ll now have a safe place to wait out the storm. You’ll stand upon the spot where lightning struck, the earth charcoal black, and warm yourself on the fires lighting the bodies of the dead and dying clowns.

“God bless us,” you’ll say to the sky, shaking your head. “Every one.”

Congratulations on Not Catching Fire!

Congratulations on Personifying Human Wreckage for a Day!

Most days you’re a lady lawyer. You’re black, sassy and a little bit too smart for your own good but you teach us lessons about life so we like you and most of your weird, somewhat off-color opinions, like your controversial stance on the estate tax.

But today, through a magical scarab, you’re going to be transported into the body of a white man with a big bushy beard and a wild look to his eyes. This man will normally live on the streets with a heavily tattooed woman in her mid forties named Starla. He will have no occupation, no accomplishments to his name and no future. He will be the literal personification of human wreckage: physically and emotionally ruined, bereft of any positive qualities. Just for context, once he gets in your body he’s just going to start masturbating furiously.

But you, you’re going to immediately set about improving his life once you get into his. As a black woman it’s a fact that you pretty much have it worse than any person in history ever and while that white dude rams your fingers into your puss just to see if it feels like you’d always imagined, you’ll be applying for jobs, grooming your beard, and doing your best to ignore Starla, who will constantly be trying to suck on your chafed, diseased penis.

When your day in the destitute man’s body is done you won’t even have learned his name, unless his name is “big daddy.” But you will have secured a small business loan for him, found him an apartment and written down a six page list, bullet points only, of potential ways for him to improve his life.

When tomorrow comes you’ll switch bodies back, and he’ll promptly ruin everything you did. But for a while there you totally proved how much easier white people have it in life than everyone else, and even though you looked horrible while you were doing it you look fantastic now.

Do you have any plans for tonight?

Congratulations on Personifying Human Wreckage for a Day!