Congratulations on Making it With Your High School Crush!

You were kind of a loser in high school, but then anyone who’s worth knowing was when you come down to it. As such you were never very excited by the prospect of attending your reunion.

All that changed a week ago when your software company went public to an explosive response and you became so fucking rich you couldn’t spend all your money if you wanted to. Since then you’ve created three charitable foundations and commissioned several poets to prepare for the upcoming reunion.

You’ll show up thirty minutes late, on the advice of one your poets who tends to be more successful with women but who is considerably less articulate than the other one who is occasionally described as technically being a virgin by the standard of his current romantic success.

Once there you’ll order a gin and tonic and quietly sit in a corner, watching the party from behind a pair of large black men you’ve hired too intimidate your former classmates and beat the living shit out of a select few persons from your old life. You’ll sit there, occasionally sending one of the men to assault someone, for around two hours before she finally works up the nerve to approach you.

“John?” she’ll say, shocked. She’ll look just as beautiful as she did ten years ago when she hugged you and said she sort of regretted never getting with you, even for one night.

“Mary-Anne,” you’ll say in a low, coarse voice, just the way your poets told you to.

“Wow,” she’ll say, taking in your dress and your bodyguards. “You’re doing pretty well for yourself.” She’ll lean forward, giving you an obtuse view of her cleavage that you’ll have to try to ignore.

You’ll shrug in response. “Just money,” you’ll say, sipping your drink.

She’ll smile. “Can I sit down?” she’ll ask. You’ll nod, smiling a little for the first time.

For the next hour and a half you’ll be walking the razor’s edge, doing all you can to seem like a better man than you are for this ideal of womanhood, all the finer for ten years of age, until she leans forward and asks if you’d like to get out of here. You’ll smile wide, forgetting all the poets taught you as you take her hand and leave for your mansion where she’ll proceed to fuck your brains out, which won’t be hard considering you’ve only had sex six times in your life up to this point.

You might get into some trouble later for conspiring to have your former classmates assaulted, but they’ll be hard pressed to prove it and they’ll have to admit to being beaten up, indirectly albeit, by a nerd. So you shouldn’t worry about that tonight.

Tonight you just have to worry about your laughable sexual performance and being charming enough to get Mary-Anne to stick with you long enough that you can become good at getting her off. The poets should be able to help you with that, but remember: they’re poets. Their advice is only as good as your interpretation of it. It’s their nature.

Anyhow, Congratulations on Making It With Your High School Crush! The sex gets better when you stop stressing so hard about it, trust us.

Congratulations on Reconnecting with Your Estranged Daughter!

You’re doing okay nowadays, but that wasn’t always the case. Time was you lived in an empty lot with a meth addicted hag named Kara. Kara had lost her virginity at the age of 11 and she’d continued aging at a tragically rapid pace. By the age of 16 she was pregnant and dealing with the shakes because you were too poor to score for her and too much of a dick to share your stash.

So she left you. But not before you delivered her child, who was most assuredly yours. It was pretty old school, and your time making meth helped you improvise a lot of solutions to problems that would’ve stumped straight edge potential dads. Household products were transformed into medical supplies in your hands and your success during the delivery was a big part of what got you back in to med school.

Unfortunately you didn’t clean up and get on that track for a while, so instead of falling into your role as a father you sold the child to an adoption agency and used the money to buy a bike and some more drugs. Kara was pissed until you gave her some drugs to calm her down. They did their job for around three straight days until she ODed and put you on your last bender.

It’s been around eighteen years since then and life has been kind to you. You’re forty now and riding high with a successful OBGYN practice. But in a week’s time all that’s going to change at this year’s ASCO conference in Godless Atlanta.

You’ll attend ASCO, as all doctors do, in order to acquire a lasting supply of shitty key chains and pens. Even though you don’t use any of the products there and aren’t particularly interested in any of them you’ll still head down there to hobnob and pick up things you’ve got no need for. It’s also the only chance you get to chill out with your best buddy from meth addiction and med school, the current president of Phizer.

You’ll be eating dinner at Chili’s, the classiest restaurant available in the area immediately surrounding the convention center, when an attractive young woman comes up to say hello to the two of you. At first you’ll assume that she’s a prostitute, but she’ll seem familiar. That wouldn’t be odd spare the fact that you normally avoid whores in Georgia for a number of reasons. Also, unlike most whores who hang out in Chili’s, she won’t immediately quote you a price.

Eventually you’ll get to talking with her about where she’s from and where she grew up and you’ll discover that she used to live in the same part of L.A. where you spent most of your youth strung out.

She’ll seem entirely enchanting to you, so you’ll barely notice when she murders your friend by placing something in his drink. You’ll be alarmed but she’ll gush to you, visibly shaken that she is doing so, about her training as an assassin throughout her orphanhood and her strange pride in her work. She’ll also apologize that she’s going to have to kill you.

You’ll miss that last part because the whole orphan thing will totally floor you. You’ll ask her if she grew up in the orphanage you dropped your baby into and she’ll nod, tentatively. Then the two of you will hug for a little bit too long and you won’t be murdered.

We’re not sure if the two of you will interact aside from that, since you’re emotionally incapable of managing a family and she’s a professional killer. She’s also kind of angry at you for giving her up for adoption and you’re a little jealous of how easily success has come for her. But whatever the two of you do, it’s good that you met. It’s better this way, knowing that she didn’t turn out like her mom. Or like you, for that matter.

It’s the best you could’ve hoped for.

Congratulations on Reconnecting with Your Estranged Daughter!

Congratulations on Matching Your Socks!

It’s days like this you wish you were a regular person with a regular life. Normal people don’t have to deal with their mothers being taken hostage by crazy men who hold guns to their heads and ask them trivia questions while a Fox crew films for an upcoming game show. Normal people don’t get stones thrown at them in the street because people “think they’re Venom.”

Of course, normal people also have more trouble in bars than you, because normal people don’t look just like Topher Grace.

As a Topher Grace body double you’re subject to remarkable scrutiny. You’re expected to monitor his every action and act accordingly. If he puts out an eye tomorrow and replaces it with a piece of glass, well, you partially blind yourself with a steak knife and ram a baby blue marble in that hole. At least that’s what you do if you want to keep your sweet, easy paycheck.

Today’s nothing like that, or the aforementioned mom fiasco of yesteryear (Fox abandoned the concept of the show after realizing that people probably wouldn’t tune in to watch the middle aged mothers of body doubles being questioned at gunpoint and then “snuffed” on camera, even if they did show the children their mother’s fake executions and video tape their reaction). It’s not even as bad as the time you had to defuse that suitcase bomb because Topher Grace had to shoot a scene that day.

Today you’ve just got to find a matching pair of socks which look reasonably similar to the ones Topher Grace is wearing on The View.

You’ll begin your day by ramming a seven inch steak knife into the neck of a security guard outside of Grace’s home. You’ll lay him down gently as he struggles, taking great care not to get blood on anything other than your plastic raincoat. Then step over his body and into Grace’s home where his Mexican housekeeper, Liselle, will greet you with great enthusiasm.

She finds your hard work and ambition appealing, and after a long day of taking care of Mr. Grace and his sometimes excessive needs she often fantasizes about you killing him and taking his identity so that the two of you could drive bumper cars instead of living beneath the thumb of a man best known for playing opposite Ashton Kucher.

Liselle will help you go through Mr. Grace’s sock drawer and find an appropriate pair of socks which match the ones Liselle placed on his feet this morning. Then she’ll put your cheek and insist of making you a cup of coffee before you go out on to the town to do what you do best: look like a C-list celebrity.

Congratulations on Matching Your Socks!

Super Nerd Sundays Presents: What I Didn't Do With My Summer Vacation!

For the last two months Portland has been caught in the grip of a drought. Not a total drought, although that was the case around a month ago, when my roommate was forced to water the campsite in the little slice of woods he owned so that we could light a bonfire there and avoid torching the entire forest. But Portland, which normally has a weather schedule akin to Boulder, Colorado or any other region located abreast of a mountain range, has been dry of late. The drizzles have been irregular and the heat severe.

It seems like a similar clime has existed regarding new games.

Sure, games have been coming out, but of late they’ve been lackluster. Overlord II was the last title I had even moderate interest in, Hearts of Iron and East India Compqn6 two games which caught my attention just enough to make me sit and read about them, Call of Juarez also warranting a brief look long after the fact, but none of those titles made me give up any of my hard earned money.

Instead I spent it on old discounted games I’d been curious about, on Sins of a Solar Empire and Demigod and the Monkey Island remake. I spent my money on ancient games instead of new releases because for some unthinkable reason people don’t want to release blockbuster games during the summer, even when they’re clearly ready.

It’s hard to say why publishers have this mentality. Maybe it has something to do with the perception of video games as a child’s pursuit which should be given up in the summer for the sake of playing the “foot-ball” or some such. Maybe it’s simply a product of large trade shows falling in the early spring and hyping distant titles, shrinking the market for strong new releases which might take attention away from the brand hype. Who’d want to spend all that money on getting Jack Black to hype Brutal Legend at E3 only to have it be overshadowed by something like Assassin’s Creed 2? Or perhaps the development cycle has simply been established in such a way as to make a summer release an unattractive prospect for game makers.

Whatever the reasoning is, big summer releases are almost always the exception rather than the rule, a wonderful treat in a strange year. They’ll often stand out only for that reason. So much so that a lackluster title might be remembered for breaking this cycle.

I’m not saying that this is a rule. Many games attempt this and fail, but I do think it’s worth trying and that it behooves the game’s industry to release games throughout the year instead of clustering releases around the 60% surrounding Christmas. I’m not the first to say so. Holkins and Krauliak have both voiced frustration at this seemingly backwards tradition of the game’s industry. But I do want to point out some particularly odd members of the “ready to go but still in the gates” community of not-quite-summer releases from this year.

Heroes of Newerth, a shameless DotA clone which copies swaths of the original game play from DotA and removes much of the DIY brilliance it had but manages to, despite losing the indie panache, maintain the flavor and fun of DotA, is a great example. Newerth recently entered beta and anyone could tell you that it’s been ready to go for some time (Likely since DotA entered version 5.84c. Who’s with me, veteran DotA players?!) Newerth is a tiny game, produced from an existing idea without a large amount of input from the original DotA design team, Guinsoo, DotA’s best known developer, having moved to direct competitor League of Legends. It’s made by a group of developers known for making the Savage series, a group of very ambitious games perhaps best known for their total lack of success.

Heroes of Newerth will probably be a big success, although not as big as developr S2 would like, and it appears to largely be in the hands of the developers as far as distribution goes. Their beta is readily downloadable from their website, a tiny file which will run on aging hardware and never need a box release. It is an improvement, in some ways, of the WC3 engine (in other ways, a huge step down; just because you have access to particle effects doesn’t mean you should use them) and shouldn’t stress your processor in the least if you’re using a computer made in the last decade.

Yet despite this simplicity it remains in beta. It’s a port of a game, albeit one changed vastly over time, that came out when I was still in high school. And, having played the beta, it’s clear that it could come out tomorrow to rave reviews and rampant sales. However, it is noteworthy that the cost of entry, $30, seems a bit prohibitive. I’ve consistently found that fewer than 10% of the current player base has preordered the game. It’s a tough sell, after all, when it’s competing with a free-to-play Warcraft mod and when the changes seem largely cosmetic. The most noticeable changes are shifts in how stats and player reputation are tracked, alterations on the player created Banlist system used in DotA. Still, there’s absolutely no reason for this incredibly small game to delay its release, especially considering how empty the market is at present.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Section 8. I wrote about how Section 8 is going to save the first person shooter genre and, as a game which has been in development for some time from studio Timegate which, despite a difficult relationship with critics, has had no trouble remaining solvent. Tiimegate’s made quite a game in Section 8, a game which is, despite its flaws, as ready as it will ever be for release.

Which is why it is totally inexplicable that they’re sitting on it until the beginning of the holiday rush. Because they’ve taken their time so sweetly I’ve now got both their game and Red Faction: Guerilla to choose between, released within two weeks of one another, and it’s going to be a tough choice. I’d love to say that Section 8 is an unqualified buy for me, but it is so plagued with issues that testing and balancing will never fix that, if I end up leaving lunch at home a few times this week I might just not buy it at all.

And that’s tragic, because if it had come out two weeks ago I’d already have it and love it. It would dominate the long distance multiplayer sessions I find myself drawn into with old friends. But because it’s being released at a time when so many great triple-A titles are due out I’ve got to weigh its purchase against other games emerging in the near future. And Section 8 has a lot of polish. It’s a good game, maybe even a great game. And it came out of nowhere. If Timegate had pushed for a summer release it would be a huge story.

Instead their release is more likely to be a footnote, an attempt at a great game which will be received as good. It’s quite a game, regardless of how it’s received, but because it’s falling into blockbuster season and going up against titles like Arkham Asylum and, more directly, the PC release of Red Faction. I’m no business writer, but common sense dictates that if you want to stand out you might as well do it without commercial competition. Summer would’ve been the perfect time for Timegate to do just that but, through either their own machinations or those of Southpeak, Section 8’s publisher, Section 8 won’t be seeing the light of day until September 1st. To its credit it will be personally heralding the end of the summer game’s drought for me, although Arkham Asylum effective managed that for the rest of the world a week earlier.

My point remains that Section 8 could’ve ended the drought in mid-August, but it didn’t. And it’s tough to say why, since, by the look of the beta, it’s been done for some time. The issue it has, such as the issue of runaway victories through the not-so-selective use of deployables, aren’t going to be corrected overnight, and the selling points it has, such as its Tribes-like gameplay and wonderful pacing, were clearly there months ago.

That is not to say that there haven’t been plenty of important releases in the last few months. Indie darling Trine emerged, doing wonderful new things to the platform genre, and some low budget RTS and TBS titles emerged as well. But as far as big budget games go gamers haven’t had a lot to enjoy, and it’s sad that this has become par for the course.

I wish I understood the business sense of releasing games in this way. I wish I understood the artistic sense so I could contextualize why developers and publisher seem to clutter so many games towards the end of the year. Perhaps they want to vacation with their families around the holidays and would prefer to do so as their games are received? Perhaps they want to cater to all the stay at home moms and dads who now have time freed up by having their children return to school?

It’s an impenetrable choice that these people seem to be making and it’s something we notice as consumers, the same way we notice that Ubisoft releases a game with parkour around the same time every year and that there’s a new Call of Duty game every November. Perhaps the worst offender is Left4Dead 2, a game which will be sold at full price and be bought by staggering numbers of people, likely including myself. It’s a bit pandering, and it would be nice to see the whole system change, even if it’s not particularly realistic. I’d love to be able to sit down and say that I’ve played some new games with my summer vacation, if only so that I can set them apart from all the others I’ve dealt with over the last year.

Congratulations Dracula Wannabe!

Some children dream of being doctors and lawyers. Gay children sometimes dream of becoming Olympic swimmers or construction workers. But it takes a rare, very efite brand of child to pursue the path you’ve been walking for the past decade and a half: that of a professional Dracula impersonator.

Some Dracula impersonators try to be ladies men and play up Drac’s rep for seducing chicks. These Johnny-Come-Latelys don’t seem to realize that Drac only seduced chicks so he could murder them and feed upon their life energy, and they don’t last long. The Dracula impersonators who make it are the ones who recognize the relationships he had that were really important: the ones he formed with his various deformed, ubiquitous manservants who carried out his every whim without compulsion.

There was something going on there and the people who can tap into it are Dracula impersonating gold. But you’ve had trouble doing so yourself. You spent so long in the closet and so much time impersonating a monster that you never really had time to date. It also left you with few interests outside of your profession, so you’re painfully dull to be around.

But you’ve never given up hope, even though literally everyone in your life has told you to do so. Tomorrow night it’s all going to pay off.

Tomorrow night you’re going to be hanging out in your favorite Montreal bar, that one built underground filled with freaky looking fat chicks and moderately queer dudes dressed in black. It’s one of the few places you fit into easily, and everyone there is so strung out on E that they don’t give a shit how weird you are.

Normally the spread there is pretty bland, but tonight you’ll catch sight of a hunky one eyed dreamboat sitting at the bar. You’ll spend fifteen minutes nursing your vodka tonic trying to work up the courage to talk to him before you catch sight of him twirling a ring around the fourth finger of his right hand.

Your heart will drop right out of your chest and you’ll start to walk away when Big Annie, a goth who wishes she was a vampire, pushes you back in.

“Where are you going, bitch?”

“Home. To my coffin,” you’ll say, eyes downcast. Annie will look you up and down and snort.

“Fucking right you are, daywalker.”

Annie will shove you again back towards the bar, right into cute one-eyed man flesh. You’ll turn bright red the moment your cloak brushes up against him but he won’t notice. He’ll be staring at Annie, lips pursed and white as he clenches his fists.

“Do we have a problem?” he’ll ask, eyeing her up and down. She’ll snort at him too.

“You better hope we don’t,” she’ll say, reaching over him and picking up his beer for a sip.

He’ll grin a little, then hop up with surprising agility and shove two of his fingers into her eye. She’ll start screaming and flailing around, spurting blood everywhere while she calls for help. You’ll be left there standing dumbstruck, smiling a little despite yourself. You’ll stand there a whole thirty seconds before the cute guy with one eye shakes you back to the world around you.

“We have to go,” he’ll say, eying the crowd to see if anyone’s going to follow the two of you.

He’ll lead you throughout the streets of Montreal, past catcalling hookers on St. Catherine’s and tweens hanging out as late as they can in the malls. He’ll lead you up and down roads you’ve never seen before in a lifetime in this city until you reach a nondescript basement apartment a ways away from the bar. He’ll unlock the door and usher you in.

Once you’re inside he’ll pour you a drink, a vodka tonic just like the one you had at the bar. The whole interior will be lush, far too lush for a married man with mahogany furniture and lots of leatherbound books everywhere. After a few seconds of quiet drinking he’ll speak up.

“So what’s up with the cloak?”

You’ll sigh and explain it to him: your ten year plan, your love of the undead and the nightlife and your unique problem in being truly happy in what you do. He’ll listen with a thoughtful grin until you finish. Then he’ll cup his hand over yours, his smile growing so that you can see teeth.

“So you really want to be a vampire?” he’ll say, turning the last word up so it sounds vaguely like he’s Romanian. You’ll put your hand over his in response.

“Let’s talk about it a little while longer,” you’ll say, your eyes locked on his remaining baby blue.

After another few hours discussing European industrial metal and what the Da Vinci was really like you’ll be totally sold and you’ll have the life partner you’ve so desperately sought for so long.

Congratulations Dracula Wannabe!

Congratulations on Your Bountiful Harvest!

Picking your nose is a bad habit and you know it. You’ve been told by many over the years, “dissed” by your parents over your inability to stop. Girlfriends leave you, despite trying to weather your gross and antisocial habit for years at a time. You’ve even lost a few jobs because you can’t keep your finger out of your nose.

For your part you've never offer any statements in your own defense. Perhaps there aren’t any. Perhaps you’re just so broken that this is something you’ll do for the rest of your life. Perhaps everyone is given one such flaw in their life and yours is simply apparent. Or perhaps you have a destiny.

It’s actually the third one.

Today at 3:17 PM while you’re picking your nose, musing over taking a smoke break from your data entry job you’re going to notice a large obstruction in your left nostril. Puzzled, you’ll extract it and find a well sized uncut diamond.

Excited, you’ll pick more and more, each finger’s delve revealing a new treasure. By the time you’ve finished there will be a nice, neat little pile of uncut diamonds sitting on the floor.

You don’t know if God decided to reward you for not thinking of boys while touching yourself for a whole week or if there was some sort of time vortex into the Congo which summoned diamonds into your nose without your prior knowledge or consent. But whatever happened you’re fucking rich now and you should be able to attract someone shallow enough to disregard your total lack of personal hygiene because of your fabulous wealth. So that's good.

Congratulations on Your Bountiful Harvest, and we hope that you one day change.

Congratulations Bobcat!

Tomorrow you’re going to be transported into the body of Bobcat Goldthwait. You’ll be forced to deal with being a once successful, now struggling comedian who simultaneously must attempt to escape from his artistic persona while treasuring it and basing his career upon it.

You’ll also have to deal with being a recognizable, but not influential, celebrity who’s raising a child and trying to do it right. You’ll also have to manage your relationship with Steve Gutenberg, who has become increasingly insane and wants to “party” with you but mostly spends his time crying and sleeping on your couch.

He occasionally will do a big hit of cocaine between sobs, which makes you really uncomfortable since, as we mentioned before, you’re trying to raise a daughter.

This condition will sustain itself until midday tomorrow when you transport back into your body as a waitress at Chic-Filet. You’ll almost immediately wish that you were back in Bobcat’s body, dealing with his considerably more interesting problems.

Congratulations Bobcat!