Image: Assassin's Creed. Ubisoft.

I’ve been playing Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood in preparation for Revelations, and I had a rather interesting thought during my playthrough. There are only about three people in the entire world of the game that appear even the least bit overweight. Oh sure, you could blame this on the starving peasant class of the Middle Age setting of the game, but I’m not so sure that’s the reason.

The entire world, every city, countryside and building, is completely inaccessible by any reasonable means. Traversing the world is one giant obstacle course. If you want to go kill that unsuspecting guard at the top of that tower, do you know how you have to get to him? Fucking climb. No elevator. Not even stairs. Yeah. You CLIMB that tower by hand and get up there and do your murdering.

If you have a meeting with a thief on the other side of the city in five minutes and you can’t miss it, you climb a ladder and start jumping over rooftops and you don’t stop for freaking anything. If a guard gives you any grief over wandering over the rooftops, you just jump faster. If cities all over the world adopted the planning methods and architecture of Ubisoft’s interpretation of Rome, we could end the ‘obesity crisis’ that the media keeps hitting us with. Picture this: that thief you have to meet? He is now an important client that you need to give that presentation to today. That guard you need to kill that I mentioned earlier? He’s your mindless four-hour TV session after you get off work. Getting to either is now a huge workout.

If everyone’s basic day could be one giant workout, if exercising was something you had to do to get from point A to point B, I think we’d all end up in a lot better shape.

So city planners and architects, school principals and office managers, make the inside of the schools and office buildings jungle-gyms or obstacle courses you need to navigate to get anywhere. No taking the elevator two fucking floors anymore. You take some stairs and jump through some windows. Then go over the rooftops and drop down through another window. And then leap over a gap using a series of wooden beams and monkey bars.

Maybe we could all pick up fake Italian accents, too…

Shower, taken

Breakfast, bacon

Attire, wrinkled

Bus pass, crinkled

Donut, sprinkled

Train, missed

Feeling, triste

Coworkers, pissed

Lateness, noted

Employee, undevoted

Timesheet, miscoded

Work, incorrect

Disdain, indirect

Revisions, needed

Instructions, repeated

Words, heated

Lunch, tasteless

Emails, faceless

Criticisms, baseless

Small talk, engaging

Internally, raging

Fakeness, suffocating

Coffee break, long

Work, again wrong

Sorrowful, song

Home time, desired

Avoided being, fired

Everyday, so tired

Dear Star Trek Advisor,

I am worried about Valentine’s Day coming up. I’m not sure what my girlfriend wants. Any ideas?

-Nervous About V-Day

IMAGE: STAR TREK. COPYRIGHT CBS PARAMOUNT STUDIOS.

This Week’s Advisor: Commander Spock

Nervous About V-Day, your conundrum is illogical. If you do not know what your mate wants, simply ask.

I understand that letting your mate know you are not omniscient can be… unpleasant. However, in that case, it may be necessary to remind your mate that you are not Vulcan, Betazoid or Ullian, and therefore do not have access to her mind. Depending on the woman, this has up to an approximately seventy-four point three six two percent success rate.

I have observed many Human courting rituals, some of which produce more positive results than others. Women, despite protests to the contrary, are often very fond of material gifts, fine food and drink, samples of vegetation, and gestures of chivalry. Some Human creativity may be required. As for what your particular female desires, I would highly recommend merely asking her.

Looking to spice up your love life with some Star Trek inspired help? Head on over to the contact page or use the comment form below to submit your question(s) today! The advisor is standing by.

Image: Final Fantasy XIII box art. Square Enix.

Welcome back to Games in Review! Today we’ll be reviewing Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox360. It is also available on the PlayStation 3.

Story

The game starts out in a world called Cocoon, a pinnacle of civilization when compared to the lawless, monster-infested boogeyman world of Pulse. The citizenry of Cocoon wet their pants at the mere mention of a Pulse invasion. Apparently there was a huge war way back. Whatever.

The story begins with a mass deportation being enforced on anyone from Cocoon who came anywhere near a Pulse Fal’Cie (really powerful magical bastards). The heroes of the game are suitably pissed, as most are on that list, so they eventually join up in a resistance against the Sanctum (Cocoon’s government).

Gameplay

The game is extremely linear, and progression is typically possible without going far out of your way to level your characters. There are a ton of things you can do outside the realm of the main quest, though, so checking it out can be fun and net some decent rewards.

Final Fantasy XIII has a really cool battle system. You go into battle with a team of up to three characters, but only control the one you designate as the party leader. The rest of your party follows a priority based set of actions according to their classes. You set up a list of ‘paradigms,’ a set-list of classes for your entire party. You can switch between paradigms mid-combat according to your current needs. If you’re suddenly getting beaten down by some angry bit of magic, consider shifting to a paradigm with a Synergist and Medic for some protection spells and healing. If you manage to stun your enemy, switch to a combat heavy grouping and drop some damage. The paradigm system can seem a bit confusing at first, and then a bit limiting since your characters only perform within their classes (example: a medic cannot attack, a ravager has no physical attacks and cannot heal, etc.), but the system is truly fantastic. It leads to some engaging and fast-paced combat that keeps you immersed.

Another piece of the combat system is called the ‘chain gauge’. This is extremely important to the effectiveness of your party in combat. Each enemy has a chain gauge and it builds up as you attack them, slowly draining if they are left alone for a while. When it fills, many enemies will become much more vulnerable to attack. Different attacks have differing effects on the chain gauge, filling it faster, or making it empty slower. A large part of success in battle focuses around manipulating the chain gauge properly.

Moving around the world is fairly straightforward, it’s pretty much third-person free movement along the various paths and fields through the game. Gone from this FF game is the invisible random encounters occurring every three steps. Encounters are initiated by running into enemies out in the world, so you have an actual chance to run away or avoid encounters if you wish. This makes side quests and any backtracking you decide to do much more accessible with less slogging through weak enemies for little gain.

Image: Final Fantasy XIII character art. Square Enix.

Graphics

This game is beautiful. The environments are fantastic, and the characters and enemies are well rendered and clear. You don’t get any of the goddamn slowdown that you get with some other graphics-heavy games, everything is smooth and fast, perfectly fitting with pace of the game. Pretty polished.

Sound

Here’s where FFXIII is going to lose some points in my opinion, if only for the voice acting. Several characters were flat-out piss-poorly voice acted. Very disappointing. Music was pretty great though, not brilliant, but well done all the same. Battle sounds were above standard as well, and that’s good because there are a lot of them.

Complaints Department

This is a new section of Games in Review that I just created on the fly because I felt that my problems with this game really don’t fit into any of the above categories. So here goes:

Character Design. Come the hell on. These were all in all a pretty poorly written set of characters, with some borderline dialogue and some crappy voice acting. And what the hell accent does Vanille have? They just made it up! They even got lazy with the names: Snow, Lightning, Hope, Vanille, Fang… Seriously? And they’re all such fucking whiners.

And the biggest problem with this game is how long it takes you to really get going. As I said above, the game plays ridiculously well, and is a ton of fun. But the token tutorial section lasts for about 10 hours. During this time you are kept running around frantically while the game teaches you the basics, while telling you as little about the story as possible. You have very limited ability to customize your characters, no ability to deviate from the story to check things out, and are subjected to countless events of mostly meaningless character development. Thankfully, by the end of these sections, you fucking really know how to play, and your characters are mostly over their issues with each other and you can start to get your shit together.

Overall

A must-play for any fan of the franchise. Fast action, extremely customizable tactics, great graphics, and a compelling storyline that develops really well. Despite its faults, FFXIII has a lot of gameplay value, and was an unregretted use of my time. This game was a blast.

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Image: Adapted from Bell Headquarters by Sweet One under a CC-BY-SA license.

I have a series of questions for our Canadian fans. Do you like the internet? Do you like using the internet for legal services such as gaming and Netflix? Do you like watching ShufflingDead’s videos in glorious high definition on YouTube?

If you said yes to any of the above, then you are, right now, in the process of receiving an almighty corporate cock-lashing.

The CRTC, whose supposed job it is to regulate telecommunications carriers, gave network owners the go ahead to implement “usage based billing” as requested by Bell Canada. This was to come into effect 90 days from its October 28, 2010 decision. That would be right now. Under this system, Bell and others are allowed to charge internet users by the gigabyte.

Smaller ISPs who operate on the owners’ networks will be similarly charged, with a mere 15% wholesale discount, and forced to pass those fees on to their customers. This leaves Bell’s smaller competitors with little edge, and makes them more readily crush-able.

And what of those fees? Ontario’s TekSavvy will now be forced to slam its users with a 25GB per month cap. Going over that limit will set you back $1.90 per gigabyte. Let’s all go to the fucking lobby of justice known as the truth and figure out what that might look like for a “heavy” user (read: someone who actually uses the services available on the modern internet, not your email forwarding grandma):

Wow, over $100 a month to use the internet?!?! Convenient how the high-bandwidth entertainment offered online suddenly looks a lot less appetizing, huh? With users forced to pay more for the bandwidth they’re consuming, they’ll be forced to cut down on such activities, and turn to other sources for movies and other amusements. It just so happens that Bell and other carriers offer their own entertainment services at slightly more palatable rates! This move severely harms the competitiveness of great services like Netflix.

You may be thinking “poor Bell, it’s not fair that they should have to endure my heavy usage!,” but then you’d be a fucking idiot. There are fixed costs to delivering internet to your house, just as there are to hooking Freddy Facebook up with his poking fix. Your long nights of porn streaming that Freddy doesn’t engage in cost Bell about $0.01/gigabyte. Bell doesn’t have to manufacture extra bandwidth for you, they don’t have to mine it out of the ground.

The “why” of this scenario is simple: Bell wants to make as much money as possible. Charging customers out the ass is one way of doing that, being able to provide better deals than their small ISP competitors is another, and driving out competing services for their entertainment offerings is yet another.

The “how” is a little more disturbing. The CRTC initially sought to require Bell to delay usage-based billing until moving its customers off of unlimited plans, and offer usage insurance plans to smaller ISPs. Bell appealed those decisions, and the CRTC complied. Let’s read the subtext: Bell owns the government of Canada. Corporations run our lives and the government is complicit.

The internet is the most powerful communications and entertainment tool in human history. It allows anyone, from anywhere in the world, to talk to anyone else. It allows anyone, anywhere in the world, to produce digital entertainment, and provide it to anyone else. When corporations are allowed to limit and manipulate your use of the internet, they deprive you of the freedom fundamental to the value of that tool. Fight the power.

Image: Ocarina of Time. Nintendo.

I’m counting down the greatest boss battles in Legend of Zelda history. Click here to view part 1.

5. Veran (Oracle of Ages)

Image: Copyright Nintendo.

Two of Link’s toughest adventures appeared on the GameBoy Color with the Oracle games. Oracle of Ages‘ final boss, Veran, stands as one of the hardest challenges between the titles.

The fight consists of Veran flipping through an incredible five forms, beginning with Possessed Ambi and then switching to her True Form before randomly cycling through Beetle, Bee, and Spider forms. Every stage is a struggle which requires serious ingenuity just to get through, and taken together the battle is one lengthy slog.

4. Ganondorf (Wind Waker)

Image: Copyright Nintendo.

The hardest part of putting this list together was preventing the temptation of allowing the various Ganon/Ganondorf final-boss battles to completely dominate. There’s nothing quite like heading into the final boss fight of a new Zelda game and knowing Ganon will be waiting for you, but having no idea what new twist or trick will await, or what forms your foe will take. I’ve limited myself to only two appearances of the King of the Gerudo.

Wind Waker is a controversial game, its graphics were reviled by the fan community when the game was first shown, and criticisms have lingered regarding its few number of dungeons, generally easy gameplay, and late-game fetch quest. There is little doubt, however, that Wind Waker boasts one of the most epic final battles in Zelda history. Ganondorf’s tight character design, the expressiveness of the characters which Wind Waker‘s art style allows for, and the uncluttered waterfall scene you fight in, all contribute to a pure and intense fight.

That is all to say nothing of the final blow. Wind Waker concludes with the most satisfying sword swipe in Zelda history, but I’ll save the gory details for players to discover on their own.

3. Armos Knights (Link to the Past)

Image: Copyright Nintendo.

It may seem questionable to put a game’s first boss fight so high on this list, but I consider the battle against the six Armos Knights in Link to the Past to be some of the finest action in Zelda history.

In the dungeon leading up to this fight, you get your hands on your bow, so you know it will be extremely useful, if not necessary, in the battle to come. It’s a simple and elegant weapon to use from the overhead perspective: line up with whatever you want to hit, and fire away. That’s where the brilliance of the Armos Knights comes in. They dance around, stomp, and generally make it a mental workout to keep pace. There’s a subtle strategy in taking down the knights, too. Do you focus on one at a time, clearing space to make your battle easier as you go, but leave yourself vulnerable to an extended altercation with the final, tougher Armos, or do you spread the pain around, and mostly avoid his wrath?

2. Majora’s Mask (Majora’s Mask)

Image: Copyright Nintendo.

The final boss battle of Majora’s Mask is another one of those vintage Zelda multi-form wars that seem to go on and on. In Majora’s Mask‘s appropriately trippy final boss battle, you must take on the mask itself.

The first form of this boss is simply called “Majora’s Mask.” Here, you must fight with tentacles and the masks of the bosses you’ve already beaten in the game. Things escalate rapidly from there, with the fast-moving second form, known as Majora’s Incarnation, taking on bizarrely long arms and legs. The battle concludes with the mask becoming Majora’s Wrath. This form is more human in shape, but there are now two whip-like arms to contend with.

1. Ganon (Ocarina of Time)

Image: Copyright Nintendo.

This battle stands as perhaps the most singularly epic in gaming history. After finally breaking into Ganondorf’s chamber, you see your expectant nemesis playing a massive pipe organ, Zelda hangs helplessly suspended above him. Ganondorf’s study fades away as he flies into the air, and the battle begins.

Things kick off with some of the previously mentioned Dead Man’s Volley. Hitting Ganondorf with his own energy will knock him back, allowing you to strike him with Light Arrows, which in turn allows you to hack away with your sword. After a number of rounds of this, your enemy will send his own castle crashing down around you.

This is followed by a mad dash for what seems like safety. Of course, waiting for you outside the ruins of his castle is Ganon in his final, massive pig form. Lightning cracks, and Ganon stretches back to reveal his true, awesome power.

Image: Copyright Nintendo.

The Legend of Zelda. It’s the greatest game franchise in history. It’s games are, well, legend, and so are its boss battles. This list is my attempt at ranking the greatest, that is to say, the most fun, the most epic, and the most memorable, boss battles in Zelda history. Click here to view part 2 of this article.

10. Gleeok (Legend of Zelda)

Image: Copyright Nintendo.

Gleeok is the multi-headed dragon which appears in different forms (with different numbers of heads) in three of the original Legend of Zelda‘s dungeons. You first encounter the two-headed form of Gleeok in the game’s level 4 dungeon.

Much like the rest of the original Zelda, Gleeok is a true challenge. The player is required to hack off each of its multiple fast moving heads, and the battles grow more intense as more heads are chopped. The heads you manage to separate from Gleeok stick around the room you’re in, attacking with fireballs. Battles with Gleeok are a struggle to stay alive, and a perfect example of the rewarding difficulty the original Legend of Zelda is so famous for.

9. Agahnim (Link to the Past)

Image: Copyright Nintendo.

The first portion of Link to the Past builds the dark wizard Agahnim up as your great adversary, before you’re sent to the Dark World and it is revealed that Ganon is actually the source of the evil you’re trying to combat. Fighting your way past Agahnim and discovering the game has only just begun is a true thrill.

This particular battle is memorable not only for its setting and story importance, but for introducing Zelda players to a now common series trait, “tennis” or “Dead Man’s Volley.” This brilliant mechanic requires the player to bounce back his or her opponent’s energy attacks with carefully timed sword swipes in increasingly quick succession, until the enemy can no longer keep up, and is struck by his or her own energy ball.

8. King Bulblin at the Bridge of Eldin (Twilight Princess)

Image: Copyright Nintendo.

King Bulblin is a recurring minor enemy in Twilight Princess, but it’s his cinematic jousting match with Link at the Bridge of Eldin that has stuck with many gamers. As Link, you chase King Bulblin down on horseback after he kidnaps Colin, one of your village’s children. In desperation following your slaughter of his minions, this enemy will lead you to Twilight Princess‘ now famous bridge scene.

In a game full of great horse-mounted combat, this battle stands above the rest. You must aggressively charge and hack at Bulpin while he presses back riding Lord Bullbo, a massive warthog-like creature. This battle concludes with King Bulblin being flung off the bridge. The scene is so spectacular, it was even recreated in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

7. Igos du Ikana and his Bodyguards (Majora’s Mask)

Image: Copyright Nintendo.

If it’s been awhile since you last played Majora’s Mask, you may miss-remember the game as being a brief, four-dungeon affair. While it is true that the game has only four proper dungeons by Zelda standards, it does have a number of quicker mini-dungeons which the player must explore to complete the game.

My personal favourite of these mini-dungeons is the Ancient Castle of Ikana, which is guarded by Igos du Ikana and his Bodyguards, all three of whom are giant skeletons, or Stalfos. The battle begins with the curtains of Igos du Ikana’s throne room being drawn closed as deep, ominous music rumbles. This sets up a thrilling battle which requires you to reopen the curtains (with fire, of course) so that light can get back in and be reflected back at your opponents (a weakness of theirs). Aside from the light, however, there’s not a lot to the fight except hack-and-slash swordplay and gymnastics, the gameplay highlights of 3D Zelda, in my opinion.

6. Dark Link (Ocarina of Time)

Image: Copyright Nintendo.

Dark Link is probably the second most famous villain in Zelda history, and his infamy is due almost entirely to his presence in Ocarina of Time. Link’s villainous alter-ego is actually “just” a mini-boss, appearing in the latter part of Ocarina‘s infamous Water Temple.

As you move through the Water Temple, you become accustomed to going from one dark-blue hall to another, until you open up a door that appears to lead to some kind of alternate realm, one which looks like it exists outside the rest of the game you’re playing. You know something good, or something terrifying, is coming. The walls are a milky white, the music is quiet, and a bare tree sits ominously between you and the exit on the other side. Move through the room and nothing pops out, nothing confronts you. When you reach the other side, you find yourself locked in this room. When you turn around, you will find that you are suddenly facing down anything but your typical Zelda boss. This is no dragon, or great beast, or twisted knight. This is you, this is Link, in shadow form.

Click here to view 5-1.

Image: Tron Legacy poster. Walt Disney Pictures.

Have you tried to watch the original Tron recently? I was first exposed to the 1982 film several years ago. I think I got through it that time, but barely, and can’t claim that it left enough of an impression on me to actually remember anything heading into a recent re-watching.

Watch the trailer. Yeah, it’s pretty much like that. A goofy, very eighties plot stuck on top of a compelling concept, some interesting (for their time) effects, and a truly unique style. That formula apparently worked well enough for the film to develop a fan base and survive in popular consciousness. Thus, with the potential for profit on the line, a sequel was ordered up.

I won’t attack Tron: Legacy for being unnecessary, I think there is enough in the original to draw out a compelling continuation of the series, and any use of the license would surely be better than the likes of Yogi Bear. I will, however, attack it for being an unnecessarily direct sequel. The original film may have worked in its time, but going back to characters from some 28 years ago, when those characters are not the part of your source material which are iconic or well remembered, makes for unnecessarily awkward storytelling.

The problem with Tron: Legacy is, put simply, the plot. For whatever reason, the decision was made to remain beholden to the original film and make this thing as a sequel, where a re-make/re-boot/re-imagining would have better served to bring the world of Tron to modern audiences in a more engrossing way, unencumbered by the events of a film most people don’t really remember anyway.

In short: kid grows up without parents after mega-successful computer engineer dad disappeared. Goes back to his dad’s old office, figures out what the old man was up to, is digitized, and must now uncover the mystery. Dad’s there, as well as fake-dad clone, and he’s joined by some marginally more interesting new characters encountered along the way in the quest for digital liberty.

Everyone is adequate enough to move us through the special effects. Jeff Bridges plays Kevin Flynn (the missing father), but could just as easily be described as playing himself, or else The Dude. He also stars as his younger self in computer program (and villain) form, Clu. In this role, he is helped along by significant CG de-aging effects. The attempt is noble, but frequently distracting, and only occasionally convincing. Garrett Hedlund plays Sam Flynn, Kevin Flynn’s now grown son. He’s entirely passable and entirely unremarkable.

Then we have the ladies, oh yes, the ladies. Olivia Wilde is Quorra, an ally of the Flynns, and Beau Garrett is Gem, a more ambiguous side character. Both wield hotness to rival the impressive effects of the film. The movie’s style, especially the wardrobe (tight, sci-fi chic), have turned these two women into my club/techno/science fiction fantasies come to life. That’s not to say the characters, or the actors playing them, are used to any great effect otherwise. Both seem to show up just to be seen more often than they meaningfully contribute to the plot.

I went to see this movie in its opening weekend, shelling out the cash for the 3-D experience, for no reason other than the visuals, and in that respect I cannot claim to have been disappointed. I’m a sucker for unique science fiction motifs, and Tron: Legacy certainly has that going for it. The old Tron style has been modernized beautifully, with vivid tones and lighting mixed with the black skies of the movie’s digital world.

I was surprised by, and ended up thoroughly enjoying, the movies soundtrack as well. This was composed by French house duo Daft Punk, whose electronic style meshes and enhances the world presented by the film’s visuals.

I cannot claim that Tron: Legacy is a good movie. It offers nothing to the world of science fiction that hasn’t been done better, and repeatedly. Its plot is not thought provoking, or even all that entertaining, and its characters are not endearing. In the end, Tron: Legacy is a special effects master work burdened by the vestigial plot points of a script cooked up some 30 years ago, and no amount of gloss, glow, or hotness can compensate for that.

Score:

Hit the jump for the what was the live blog coverage. Relive the pain.

All times are Mountain.

8:05: And that concludes Shufflingdead’s live coverage of the SpikeTV VGAs. I can’t believe I’ve endured this ass for another year. Goodnight.

8:02: Game of the Year goes to… Red Dead Redemption. Fuck you Spike, fuck you everyone.

8:00: Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception premier now. Nathan Fillion needs to streak for this.

7:59: CoD: Black Ops dude has won character of the year. It must have been the unique combination of facial hair and guns.

7:58: SSX: Dudebro Descent. Jesus Fucking Christ. Time to snap your copies of the old games. This franchise has been chewed by Master Chief and shit out by Codblops.

7:52: SSX Deadly Descent premier on now. Is this a CoD game? WHAT. THE. FUCK.

7:52: Just 9 minutes left. Hope you’ve got your heads shaved and oiled, your broheims signed into Live, and your brews loaded in your hat. Time to save the world braaaahs.

7:49: Yes Nathan Fillion! Oh no, he’s talking about Halo. Yes, his mic isn’t working and he looks pissed! This is awesome.

7:47: TMZ skit. This is kind of not terrible.

7:46: It won’t be long now. I only have to endure 14 more minutes of ads for bro-bro-bros.

7:42: Christ have we had some awkward moments on this show. Monaghan excusing bad jokes by stating he’s reading them. Chiklis hoisting a hot woman in a short skirt back stage. What are these people paid to be there?

7:41: Yes, a fucking hobbit is on screen! Dominic Monaghan sounds like he gargles with razor blades. Is he trying to turn himself into a space marine? Forza 4 premier/ad.

7:36: Michael Chiklis is talking about Red Dead Redemption. Oh sweet relief, more music. I needed the break.

7:34: Is this over yet? I need a shower. I also need to quietly reflect on my hobby and whether or not it reflects me as a person. I don’t think I’m sweaty/gritty/angry/ripped enough for this stuff.

7:30 Time to hammer through some categories. Winners: Need for Speed, Scott Pilgrim, Mass Effect 2, Rock Band 3, DJ Hero 2. With all the ads, I guess they didn’t have time to give those categories any real screen time.

7:28: NPH is singing about dead game characters. Wow an NBA Elite joke that actually hit.

7:28: Breaking news! Portal 2 has been announced Most Anticipated Game. Something other than a total bro game! Oh wait, they’ve got a premier video for it. Now I understand.

7:26: Spike is now running ads for their programing inside their programing, talking about tie-in products. I think xzibit would have something to say about this.

7:23: Best Indie Game goes to Limbo.

7:22: Guillermo is on stage now! He’s talking intelligently! And insulting the bullshit promoted on the show! He just introduced a game he is working on called inSANE.

7:21: Harris is singing an Angry Birds song. Oh no, animal cruelty is about to commence. Uhh… yeah this is another awkward joke.

7:14: Tony Hawk has been dusted off for another go. He’s introducing Prototype 2.

7:10: Best Performance by a Human Male, presented by a woman who cannot read. Nominees are actor who isn’t there, actor who isn’t there, actor who isn’t there, actor who isn’t there, NPH, actor who isn’t there, and actor who isn’t there. NPH wins. Huh, I wonder how that happened.

7:09: Dane’s back. Woods, “Woody,” is the next character, from CoD.

7:07: Kratos and Hades are doing something. Frankly, I can’t even follow this show any more. I’ve lost the will to focus my eyes.

7:05: Hey, smack talk guy is now on stage and making masturbation and pot jokes.

7:04: What always astounds me about this show is that forumites across the internet get duped by the hype and tune in for all the game reveals that have been promoted. Then they actually watch the thing and it turns out to be the same poorly run bro-fest as always.

7:02: Finally, a custom Jeep for gamers. Just what I always wanted. Now I can crawl out of my man cave, four-wheel-it to the country, roll in some mud, slam brews, charm hotties, play catch with my dog, and game.

7:00: What the fuck is Dane Cook talking about now? Oh, John Marston of Red Dead Redemption.

6:59: Next world premier is Resistance 3. I can’t wait to exchange my hard earned dollars for all these AAA, well produced bro games. Soon everyone will see that I love mature games, which will translate into signs of my mature masculinity. Truly, saving the world from aliens over and over again, following scripted gameplay events, and shooting things while sporting a 5′o’clock shadow is the be-all end-all of this art form.

6:56: NPH and Olivia Munn are doing a between-award skit. Jokes written, jokes recited. Munn confesses to eating hotdogs to inspire boners.

6:54 Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Cast reciting jokes. They’re presenting best shooter. CoD Black Ops wins.

6:46: Moustache man confused on stage before video cuts in. Looks like the company’s next game is another Mass Effect. 3.

6:44 Pedo-stache alert. Talking BioWare.

6:44: Some guy talking back stage at trash talking. This is worth watching. I’ve seen more interesting commentary on YouTube broadcast from parents’ basements (mine).

6:40: Wow, Denise Richards is there. What ever happened to her? Oh! NPH is hosting, and he was in Starship Troopers with her. My Chemical Romance performing.

6:35: Let’s see: AC Brotherhood has a 91% on GameRankings. SMG2 has a 97%. Hmm.

6:33: Greatest Game Hero ad for Spike’s website just featured voice over work of woman pronouncing Samus as “Same-us.” Ugh.

6:32 Best action adventure game (braces for Nintendo robbery). Bro game, bro game, bro game, and Super Mario Galaxy 2 are up. Yeah, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood just won.

6:31: Thor: God of Thunder is running on screen, and how (poorly).

6:30: Oh, Dane’s back. This time Kratos is the man meat being promoted for Character of the Year. Ah, female objectification is really getting this guy’s points across.

6:27: NPH making games-to-porn title jokes. Yeah, drunk.

6:26: Some curly haired dude is on stage surrounded by men cloaks. Oh, it’s for the world premier for Elder Scrolls V

6:19: I hate Dane Cook.Ah, he’s there intro embarrassing promos for the Character of the Year award. Talking Assassin’s Creed character. Ugh.

6:17: Olivia Munn is on The Daily Show now? Wow, I’m out of touch. Studio of the year goes to… BioWare. Oh, and the BioWare guys are actually there to thank their fans. Take a shower and have a coffee.

6:12: Here come the in-program commercials. Batman: Arkham City rolling now. Take a drink.

6:08: NPH shilling for Kinect hardcore. Crowd shot of Guillermo del Toro. More hints of legitimacy? Neil’s jokes sucking hard thus far. I think he’s drunk already.

6:06: Oh good, we’ve already been promised first looks by a pile of bro games. Prep your drinks.

6:05: Opening with a song and dance number by men in white tuxes. Trying to look legit, Spike? Oh, wait, NPH shows up and corrects that “misstep” with gunfire.

6:00: We’re three minutes away from the annual VGA disaster train. Watch this page for ongoing updates throughout the show.

Click here to view the rules for the official Shufflingdead VGA drinking game.

Image: SpikeTV Video Game Awards logo.

SpikeTV’s Video Game Awards will be airing 6pm Mountain time tonight. What I like to call “the annual abortion” will be hosted by living god Neil Patrick Harris, who has explained that this year’s sets will be digital, and that he plans on getting through the night by drinking. “I try to be as drunk as Dean Martin, that makes it all go away much faster,” says Harris. Wise words. That’s why we at Shufflingdead have decided to put together a set of drinking game rules for the evening, thus propelling the rest of us suckers through the night as well.

Remember, Shufflingdead will be live-blogging the event when it airs, so check back here later today.

Every time a new bro game is exclusively premiered, take a drink.

Every time a legitimate developer is given the chance to thank his or her fans, take a cold shower and have a coffee.

Every time a D-list celebrity pretends to know something about video games, take a drink.

Every time a rapper pretends to know something about video games, take two drinks.

Every time a bad nerd-reference joke is made, take a drink.

Start drinking when a presenter looks like he or she is about to bungle a bad nerd-reference joke, and don’t stop until that person has gone away.

Every time an award is obviously given to whoever paid the most for it, take a drink (note: this is every award).

If a publisher/developer is shown actually handing money over in exchange for an award, pour a forty out on your systems in memory of the industry you once loved.

Every time a celebrity-pandering award is given to whoever bothered to show up, take a drink.

Every time Nintendo is robbed of an award, take a drink.

Every time gamers are represented as stereotypical cave dwelling monsters, take a drink.

Every time lonely male gamers are insultingly pandered to with hot women for the sake of hot women, take a drink.

Every time an award in an entirely illegitimate category is given, finish your drink.

Image: Adapted from 765 – Tripping Pac Man – Pattern by Patrick Hoesly under a CC-BY license.

Some are reporting that WikiLeaks.org is now being hosted from a Cold War-era Swedish bunker built into a fucking mountain, but at this point, it has become difficult to tell where the WikiLeaks’ website is actually hosted. Wikipedia says the organization’s site was moved to servers in France following denial of service attacks and a brief stay with Amazon. According to Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks, the site is now being hosted from Thor Data Center in Iceland. It may very well be the case that WikiLeaks’ hosting is spread out among some or all of these locations.

What is more clear is the accuracy of jokes surrounding the bunker story, those being that founder Julian Assange is some kind of Bond villain.

Everything fits. He’s got a funny accent, he looks like an anorexic albino, and governments the world over can’t stand him. More importantly, his reputation is rapidly evolving into legend, with it difficult to discern reality from rumour and smear. He has been dogged by allegations for everything from violation of espionage laws to sex crimes, and his location is often a secret.

That’s not to say that Julian Assange is bad or evil. I’d argue that he’s about the most amusing person alive, his cause is noble, and his views radically just. He’s not out to destroy the free world, he’s out to liberate it from the corrupt forces of institutionalized power that have sought to conceal and manipulate for their own interests.

If Assange is a Bond villain, then he is the real world’s version. Unencumbered by the necessity to sell tickets and toe the nationalistic line, this is the story in which Queen and Country have become the enemies of their own people, and the crazed loner with the the world-destroying doomsday device is on the right side of history.

And what of that doomsday device? Assange doesn’t control any EMP-shooting satellites, nor has he developed a toxin made from orchids. Of course, in this instance, we are talking about information. It is the truth with which Assange has repeatedly captured headlines the world over. WikiLeaks’ activity has become so important that each new major release does not simply warrant “a story,” it warrants updates, follow-ups, and opinion pieces. These leaks chain together and cause subsequent events.

Governments supposedly behaving in the best interests of their people have admitted to the heinousness of their acts simply by protesting these reveals. These are groups threatened by the open revelation of activities which include brutal, unnecessary killings by military personnel and insulting comments made about foreign heads of state. The woeful hypocrisy of the United States government has been unmasked. Thanks to WikiLeaks, the world now knows that a country which feels it necessary to entirely deprive airline passengers of their privacy has repeatedly hidden damning and embarrassing evidence of its own misconduct.

The truth is that Assange’s doomsday device is exactly as dangerous as his detractors claim, but only for them. It is currently rumoured that the list of WikiLeaks’ “victims” will soon grow to include more ugly entrenched power, American corporations. Let us hope that Julian Assange’s lap cat stays healthy, his henchmen numerous, and his lair mysterious. Eventually, an educated public may come to recognize true villainy.

Image: Adapted from Julian Assange by espenmoe under a CC-BY license.

Image: Cover art for Baby by Justin Bieber. Copyright Island Records.

Justin Bieber. JB. Biebz. You’ve watched the parody videos, you’ve seen Twitter drown in his name, you’ve read 4chan tried to send him to North Korea, but you’ve never bothered to look him up on Wikipedia and figure out who he is, or what he is all about.

Well, after years of wondering, and becoming increasingly convinced of my disconnect from the culture of kids today and their pre-teen pseudo-R&B music, I have performed about five minutes of research. I now feel qualified to enlighten you, the rest of the world, on the sensation that is Bieber. Disclaimer: I have yet to sit through one of his music videos.

Justin Bieber is hair. Look to the top of this page to marvel at the wonder that is JBiebz’s hair. I’m not exactly what you would call a “hair expert,” a “knower of hair,” or indeed, even a “comber of hair,” but I can tell you that Bieber’s hair is something precious, even unique in this world. How does he get it so straight? How does he get it so long in the front? Would he lose his powers should he ever go bald? How does he get it to curve inward like that without poking his delicate heartthrob eyes?

Justin Bieber is fever. Bieber rhymes with fever. As I under stand it, lazy headline writers and those looking to appear clever will invariably put this stunning convenience together and declare “Bieber fever” should the Bieb ever roll into town.

Justin Bieber is adolescent girl. When I was in Junior High, the girls I went to school with busily funneled their parents’ burnable income into repeat viewings of Titanic. That movie went on to gross $600 million domestically, and stood as the box office champion for twelve years. Bieber has caught on with that same, occasionally obsessive demographic.

Justin Bieber is internet fans. The internet is an important place for people the world over to gather, share information, and communicate. It has also shredded the slow crawl of popular culture into popular consciousness. Bieber’s popularity is due, in part, to the staggering power of internet spam. We live in a time in which Bieber’s fans didn’t have to wait for the TV or magazines to tell them about Bieber, they got to tell those outlets about him. And they did, and they do. A recent rumour claims Bieber-related talk accounts for 3% of Twitter’s server use.

Image: Adapted from 2010-08-261 (Large). Photo by HeatherSokol. Used under a CC-BY-SA license. Yes, you can similarly share alike!

Justin Bieber is internet. Bieber was born of the internet, the internet got him discovered, and he lives on the internet. He uses this once drab place that we geeks used to call home to communicate directly with his fans. That is to say, a very large group of people decidedly outside the neckbeard demographic are using the internet to engage in their interests on a massive scale. This likely explains the attempts at Google manipulation, the pranks, and death hoaxes. Just as I bitterly hated Titanic in my youth because it usurped the titans of my geek universe (Star Wars, Jurassic Park) at theatres, so do the nerdlingers of today hate Bieber for owning such a large mindshare of this place they once thought would always be their own.

Justin Bieber is music. I can’t say I ever followed music, especially popular music, very closely. I can tell you that when I was the Biebz’s age (he’s 16), we still had music videos on TV, and people still bought CDs. Of course, times have changed, and Bieber represents the business of the present. Bieber’s fans have replaced MTV and CDs with YouTube and iTunes, with Bieber boasting the most viewed YouTube video of all time. One constant in all this: teaming up with rappers is still a requisite career move for all mainstream artists.

Justin Bieber is puberty. We can all take comfort, and find amusement, in the fact that Mr. Bieber is getting on in years, and the great destroyer of non-threatening boys, puberty, has struck. Bieber admits his voice now cracks, and can’t hit the notes he once could.

Justin Bieber is fleeting. Thankfully, Bieber fever cannot last forever. Puberty, the fickle interests of tweenage-Twihard-other-buzzword-girls, and an entertainment industry which always demands the newest will eat away at Bieber’s popularity until he is reduced to comeback tours and embarrassing reality TV appearances like some kind of New Kid.

Remembering The Lord of the Rings

The Fellowship of the Ring

Image: Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring. Copyright New Line Cinema.

For Fellowship, I believe my count was five. I think it was my second watching, this time at a livelier city theatre, that the audience cheered when Aragorn decapitated that Uruk-hai who had pumped Boromir full of arrows. That remains the only time I’ve ever witnessed an audience respond to a film in a non-embarrassing way.

Upon re-watching Fellowship of the Ring, I am happy to report that it is just as I remember it. Still awesome. The slavish attention to detail, the richness of the world that Jackson has recreated on film, the acting, and the dialogue have ensured a graceful aging. Of the three, I still maintain that it is my favourite, and still the best paced. The film begins slowly, just as with the novel upon which it is based, presenting the idyllic hobbit life, and then steadily layering tension and complexity.

That’s not to say that it’s a perfect movie. The moments that made me grit my teeth and wish they would go away when I saw the movie for the third through infinity times are still there. These aren’t movie-ruining moments by any means, it’s just that the corny bits here aren’t endearing, they’re distracting. The cinematography has a habit of reminding me that Jackson used to direct cheesy horror movies, with those choppy slow-down moments and wacky zoom-outs. Mostly though, it’s Galadriel’s green-faced freak-out that gets to me.

The Two Towers

Image: Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers. Copyright New Line Cinema.

I saw The Two Towers maybe four times in the theatre. I think the general consensus is that it’s the weakest of the three. That was also my opinion once I had seen all three movies, and it’s still my opinion now.

There are too many eye-roll moments in Two Towers for it to stand up to repeated viewings the way Fellowship does. Early on, we’re re-introduced to Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli as they hoof it cross-country in their search for Pippin and Merry, and right away a disappointing tone is set. We get goofy lines about “Elf eyes” and “red suns,” and it’s immediately obvious that Gimli has been demoted to comedic relief.

I don’t want to come off as harsh. It would be too easy to pick at the details of a movie I’ve seen ten or more times and end up hating it. The Two Towers has serious strengths as well. As an action film, it is nigh-unassailable, and probably my favourite of the trilogy in that regard. Anticipation for the Battle of Helm’s Deep is well established, and the payoff is spectacular. In a fashion similar to Fellowship‘s storytelling as a whole, the Battle of Helm’s Deep is carefully and deliberately paced. Both sides have layers of strategy that are steadily introduced in a sort-of one-upmanship that sucks me in every time. First the arrows, then the ladders, then the destruction of the Deeping Wall. One after another.

The Return of the King

Image: Lord of the Rings, Return of the King. Copyright New Line Cinema.

My theatre viewings for Return of the King probably number five or six. The first was a mighty all day event which consisted of getting up early and hungover to marathon the Extended Editions of Fellowship and Two Towers (that’s eight hours of film), followed by a premiere night showing which included a costume contest.

I maintain two complaints with the movie, one minor, and one major. The small nuisance is Pippin’s awkward little music video for Denethor. Especially when the shot returns to Pippin following a catch-up with Faramir. The camera pans slightly as candles dance in the background. Yuk. My larger issue is, frankly, the action. That spectacular pacing from the Battle of Helm’s Deep is missing from the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Instead of building tension, the opposing forces seem to just take turns washing over each other. The easy victory by the Dead Army is completely unsatisfying. The highlights are Théoden’s speech and Éowyn’s showdown with the Witch-King. The rest lacks emotion.

Those things aside, I’m happy to report that the film holds up well. Jackson’s directing is more skilled than with the first movie, and the dialogue is significantly less cheesy than the second. The depth of plot, characterization, and mythology tower above the first two films. Jackson’s handling of the source material is respectful and smart.

Anticipating The Hobbit

It was recently announced that New Zealand would be keeping production of The Hobbit. As everyone knows, that was where the Rings movies were filmed, and I’m relieved that that’s where there prequels will be made as well.

The other great news on Hobbit’s production has been the casting. Martin Freeman will be Bilbo. Freeman, of course, played Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s Arthur Dent, and his casting has been well received by the fanboy community. I’m happy with the choice as well. The man just looks like a hobbit. He also looks like someone who could reasonably age into Ian Holm (who played Bilbo in the Rings films). More good news, Ian McKellen (Gandalf), Andy Serkis (Gollum), and Hugo Weaving (Elrond) are all expected to return for their characters’ roles in The Hobbit as well.

I was disappointed when, in May of 2010, it was revealed that Guillermo del Toro had left The Hobbit project. I was looking forward to his take on Middle Earth, having enjoyed his visual style in Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth. I don’t mean it as a slight against Jackson, it’s just that we’ve already seen his vision of Middle Earth. Having said that, the further we get from the Rings movies, the more I miss having their releases to look forward to. By the time the first Hobbit film is released, which isn’t expected to be until 2012, I think I’ll be ready for another glance at Jackson’s Middle Earth. Additionally, del Toro was involved for some two years on the project with Jackson, and so I suspect many of his ideas will live on.

Then there is that issue of one simpler book (The Hobbit is a children’s novel, after all) split into two films. Although initially planned as a single Hobbit-proper movie, followed by a “bridge” title that would connect Bilbo’s adventure with the ring to the events of the Rings trilogy, Jackson has now committed to splitting the events of The Hobbit between the two movies. Having recently read the novel, I can tell you that there is plenty for the director to work with. If Jackson’s intent is to match the tone of his Rings films in The Hobbit, then there should be little issue with stretching large and dramatic, but simplistically explained, events from the novel and producing the sort of lengthy work seen in The Lord of the Rings.

In summary, with production issues apparently worked out, my outlook on The Hobbit is strongly optimistic. Their releases in the next few years should keep me highly entertained. Of course, a few years past that point, and I may begin wondering where the movies based on The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales are, but that may be asking too much of Mr. Jackson.

Image: The Expendables cover art. Copyright Lionsgate.

Welcome again to Movie Maundering, home of my opinion. Enjoy. This week, I actually went to the theater to see a recently released movie, The Expendables.

Plot

Mercenaries turn crusaders for some reason.

Cast

This film’s cast is a spectacular coming together of some of the most iconic action stars into a single tremendously badass movie. Main characters are played by Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, and Dolph ‘you’d better not rob my house’ Lundgren. The whole crew basically runs around slamming bitches and shooting faces. Stone Cold Steve Austin makes yet another Hollywood appearance as the bruiser muscle for the bad guys, and even Bruce Willis and the Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger show up to the party for a quick cameo.

Weskimo’s Take

Fun. Just lots of fun. The Expendables is pretty much one single streaming ass kicking on all fronts. The story is nothing to write home about, seeing as it is virtually non-existent. They take a job to assassinate some military leader on a remote island, but turn it down when they reason that it must be a CIA setup. But then they come back and do it anyway, because Stallone inexplicably wants to save the target’s daughter(who is young enough to make you question his motives). Doesn’t make a lot of sense.

But the film just explodes with violent content. Brutal striking, wrestling, shooting, and knife-fights make up the entire flow of the movie, typically getting more explosive towards the finale. The only real complaint I could come up with on the action was a fairly grand amount of exceedingly unrealistic performances. Guy uses a super-shotgun and blows up concrete watchtowers. What up with that?

The Expendables was obviously created with a mission in mind: to make the audience sit up and say ‘that was cool!’ That being said, mission accomplished. This movie was cool. Also, it was extremely cool to see all of these actors stand up and whip some ass. Can’t give it many points for creativity or story, but if you’re out looking for a movie to deliver a furious flurry of action straight into your occipital lobe, The Expendables will hit the mark, probably with an unexpectedly explosive grenade.

This guest post comes to you from the brilliant mind of sirbretly, who writes for CineBombs! Seriously, check out his site.

For just a moment, rewind your clocks to the year 1997 for the release of a game hailed by many as one of gaming’s most vaunted “artistic” creations: Final Fantasy VII. While the exact nature of FF7’s contributions isn’t something I really hope to discuss here (since I find my own perspective rather varying), I will say that it was a very ambitious story, carried through three discs and hours of gameplay. So, what was it that drove that narrative? Did it belong to the visuals that were (for the day) some of the most beautiful ever released? Was it due to the expansive soundtrack composed by series-veteran Nobuo Uematsu? Or was it due to the writing?

Well, you could say it was a combination of both things, but what I most remember is the narrative. Convoluted as it was, the story behind it all struck a chord, and now I find myself looking back in nostalgia at a game that actually gave me some surprises. Well, fast forward to 2001 for Final Fantasy X. Again, another epic storyline, convoluted with twists, but this time there was something different. There was some obstacle between me and the game that really left a sour taste in my mouth.

What was that, you ask? The voice acting.

With the continual expansion of console hardware and the inclusion of new features, it was only a matter of time before voice acting became a more prominent aspect of video games. Typically limited in use before this point, Square had done a good job of telling a narrative without speech of any kind in its cutscenes. Now, however, gamers were forced to suffer the incessant whining of the game’s protagonist Tidus, and the flat, Zanax-riddled voice of the summoner, Yuna. Mix in a few annoying accents and awkward pacing and you’ll see why (despite overall walking away having enjoyed the game) I thought something was amiss.

Well, like most, I think FF10 was my first real exposure to that much voice acting in a game, and also like most, I figured that it could only get better from there onward. Nine years later, I find myself setting aside a copy of Lunar: Silver Star Harmony and feeling the same way. This game, which is itself a recreation of a recreation, seems to have continued its trend towards sloppy, poor voice acting. And I find myself wondering, what if games like Final Fantasy VII or Chrono Trigger had been voiced as well? Looking back at Barrett’s string of censored profanity and clearly culturally stereotyped dialogue, I shudder at the thought.

I know it seems as though I’m focusing my attentions on RPGs, and that is true, mainly because it’s a genre that typically focuses a great deal on plot development and character interaction. They also feature some of the most dialogue heavy games on the market, where involvement with the game involves sympathizing with the protagonists.

You see, the transition to sound isn’t a simple conversion, and it certainly is far from complete at this point. Much like the revolution bringing silent movies into the realm of the aural, gaming is passing through a similar phase. As the genre fights for recognition on artistic and entertainment fronts, the natural progression has been toward cinematizing games. Look at the ratio of gameplay to cutscenes and you’ll see what I mean. Whereas the genre started out with fairly simple roots in action, there has been a gradual transition towards games of substance and story. The old style (now referred to as Casual gaming) has been replaced by the epic to some degree. And whether or not this change is good or bad or simply natural (the topic for another article entirely), we’ve now come to the point where the sound and voice-acting of gaming can’t be ignored.

Some franchises already got it right. Look to the Ratchet and Clank series for a stunning display of voice talent. I’ve yet to hear one line of that series which didn’t feel appropriate, and that isn’t due to dumb luck or innate talent. It comes from revisions and rewrites. And in a game such as Ratchet and Clank, where the dialogue is primarily limited to rendered cutscenes throughout the game, it’s not that difficult to revise until reaching perfection. In general, platform games have begun to ace the formula. But for those of us seeking the epic adventures and engrossment of a Role Playing Game, things are still a bit wonky.

Explore Bioware’s Dragon Age: Origins, and you’ll find a game that has begun to get it right. But even so, some of the side characters and conversations still ring false. And you might argue, “Well, it’s an enormous game, of course they might get something less than perfect.” And I can agree with that. I sympathize with the game creators, because I don’t pretend making something of that scope is easy or quick. Yet, if the goal of promoting video games as a form of art is ever to be taken seriously, then this is one realm where improvements must be made.

Voice-acting is an incredible talent, and giving voice to words only ever written before is a challenging prospect. In games that typically last anywhere from 30-60 hours, there’s an incredible amount of dialogue to be voiced, and by no means is it a cheap process. But in the same way that sound revolutionized the cinema, it will become a measure for separating the best games from the merely good. Proper voice work can’t continue to be confined to pre-rendered scenes. As we can commonly agree, when things are going good, we tend not to notice. But when they go wrong, everyone’s attention is centered upon the problem. Well, I’m hoping that as developers continue forward, they put the extra effort to blend the voice-work into the narrative seamlessly.

That, or perhaps the issues inherent in the “futuristic” technology of 3d-entertainment will overshadow any other complaints. One never knows.

Check out more from sirbretly at CineBombs!

sulci: There is this terrible stereotype that the only Caucasian cosplayers are fat and hairy, and that only Asian cosplayers are hot. What do you think of this stereotype, Newbs? True or False?

Newbs: I have seen bang-able ladies of all races in cosplay. I’ve also borne witness to quite a number notties: white, Asian, blue, and purple.

sulci: Well I would like our readers to come to their own conclusion on this episode of Cosplay Idol. Exhibit 1: nipple girl here, Cammy from Street Fighter. All signs point to hot, however the status of her nipples is quite unknown. Are they falsies? continually hard? Is it part of her suit? Was she just chilly for the shot? Does it add to her hotness? Personally I have no idea, and am just very confused. You?

Newbs: Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Boots.

sulci: I see, very profound. Let’s take another look at a Street Fighter cosplay. Zangief, bearer of the treasure trail from hell. only it’s upside down. Again, very confusing to the overall hotness of the person. What is that stuck in his belt? Nametag? Cosplay tag? Are his nipples hard?

Newbs: Well actually, sulci. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Nipples. Beard.

sulci: Thanks again Newbs, for your important contributions to this conversation. Let’s leave Street Fighter for a moment to reflect upon this cosplayer. It seems to be a very hot Pikachu girl. Although it’s hard to tell without the Pika-tail. :(

Newbs: If given the opportunity, I would Poké-pummel this Pikachu until my Pokéballs erupted with Gengar. Check out how low down that skirt actually starts. I can almost guarantee there is ass crack on the other side of this shot. We are one inch from vag. And that belt. And that bra. And those ears. Arrgagagfj.

sulci: Yes well, no confusing nipples here, but there are some confusing moles. Overall not enough to take away from the Caucasian hotness. Let’s move on.

sulci: So I hear you are a big fan of the legend of Zelda. How likely would you be to bang Zelda here?

Newbs: Despite the previous image, I have lost the ability to get an erection, and indeed, the will to live. Surely, heavy-metal Link, and heavy-ass Zelda represent the worst whitey has to offer. I can not imagine a worse offense to the game franchise I value so dearly than these repugnant excuses for cosplayers.

sulci: I’m sure the year before she went as Princess Peach or Sailor Moon. Ruining one franchise every year and spoiling the image of any hot cosplayer ever existing.

Newbs: sulci, I am proud to introduce our next contender in Cosplay Idol. It’s this incredible fan video from Otakon featuring the music of Katy Perry. In this piece, we see American cosplayers in varying shades of hotness show off to sometimes stunning degrees. The break dancer proves to me that, yes, nerds can be physically fit. I’m a changed man because of this video, and for the better.

sulci: I think this video can definitely disprove the idea that Caucasian cosplayers are only hot because of Photoshop. Here we see them in flesh and blood and moving about and sometimes blinking while posing all cool. A particular highlight for me was the end, where this super hot girl from some unknown anime is seen with three Adams jumping around in sync. Plus, that is the hottest Asuka I have EVER seen. And trust me, I’ve seen a lot of Asukas.

sulci: Well we’ll wrap up this controversy with a little bit of cuteness, this angry little Stormtrooper. How cute!! Probably takes direction better than baby Vaders. What do you think, Newbs?

Newbs: “Aren’t you a little short for a Stormtrooper?” I can’t tell what race this kid is due to the costume, all I see is an awesome Stormtrooper. In the end, isn’t that all that matters?

Newbs: Bonus: there is a cowboy in the background of this shot.

Video Game Character Analysis is an ongoing series here at Shufflingdead in which I analyze the physical appearances of game characters. I have previously considered male and female human digital heroes. This time around, I will be looking at female furry abominations.

Let’s begin with Kongiku from Vanillaware presents: More People Should Play This Games: Muramasa: The Demon Blade. Kongiku is an “Inari Kitsune,” or fox deity, who hangs out at save stations in Muramasa and bounces her breasts in a mesmerizing fashion. I don’t know anything more about her role in the game since I started skipping dialogue fairly early on.

Kongiku is mainly human in appearance, and if I stare at her breasts long enough, her ears and tail fade into the background. If there really is a pro-fur agenda at work in the types of anthropomorphs seen in this article, then Kongiku is surely gateway fur. Looking mostly human means that it’s easier to be attracted to her, and easier to not feel guilty about that fact.

Although Kongiku’s kimono may be a little low-cut to be justifiable as anything other than sexualization for marketing, at least it makes sense for this largely human-looking furry abomination to be wearing human clothing.

This is Felicia from Capcom presents: Let’s Make a Niche Game: Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors, she has also appeared in many other Capcom fighting games. A glance at Wikipedia tells me that, according to the UDON Comics, Felicia is a struggling entertainer who grew up in a Catholic orphanage. She is a catgirl, and that has caused problems with her career. No explanation as to what causes a person to be part-cat, or why the world discriminates against such cross-breads is given.

Judging by the artwork on the right, I have to assume that anything that looks animal on Felicia is actually part of her body. That is to say, she’s got cat paws, cat ears, a cat tail, freaky were-cat feet, and convenient patches of fur on her naughty bits. Also, apparently, catgirls can have human hair in addition to cat hair.

I’ve just come to the realization that Felicia crosses an important boundary in human-animal permutations which justifies the use of the term “abomination” in describing these furry characters: she is completely naked. Think about that. If this catgirl did some waxing, you would be looking at a person with nasty hairless cat bits.

Rare takes the title of proving the most, and the worst, furry abominations in the video game industry for things like this stunning mostly-animal blend to the right. This is Candy Kong, from Rare presents: Good Graphics Make Up For Terrible Art Direction: Donkey Kong Country. Candy is Donkey Kong’s girlfriend (although they have the same last name), and just like Kongiku, her biggest role is as caretaker of her game’s save stations. Sexy ladies are an easy signifier to gamers that they are in a safe, home-like environment.

Candy’s appearance is not part-human as with the last two examples. Rather, her body is entirely monkey, but she is dressed in human fashion and has human-like posture. This makes any sexual attraction to the character a full-on committal to not just furrydom, but actual bestiality. Candy escapes total demonization from me thanks to an appearance too strange for most to consider actually attractive. Candy’s “hotness” is, I think, thankfully ironic.

No list of furry abominations would be complete without an example from the Sonic universe. This is Rouge the Bat from SEGA presents: We’re Not Trying Any More: Sonic Adventure 2. She is some kind of treasure hunter, listed as species “bat” by Wikipedia, and 18 years of age.

Although supposedly a bat, it seems obvious to me that Rouge is also part cat (I guess, she looks a lot like Sonic the Hedgehog too), and part human. From bottom to top, she’s got: oversized human (or maybe cat) feet and legs, human breasts, human arms and hands, bat wings, and a cat’s head.

As far as the wrongness of her sexualization goes, Rouge draws her power from the fact that she is a clumsy mess of characteristics which confuse human sexiness and animal cuteness. I can’t even begin to imagine where the character designers started. Was she always meant to be a bat? Or just a cat wearing little black wings like a goth chick? And did they always plan to give her human breasts, or were the tits clobbered on later at the demand of the marketing department?

Of course, Krystal from Rare presents: All Our Talent Left: StarFox Adventures had to make an appearance in this article. She is a 19-year-old fox creature from the destroyed planet of Cerinia, and a favourite among furry abomination lovers. Although she may be the only survivor of her race, she is a fox, and her appearance is similar to the other fox creatures of the StarFox games.

Like Candy Kong, Rare’s other entry in this article, Krystal is an example of true anthropomorphism. Biologically, she appears to be entirely fox, but has a roughly human build. She has no distinctly human parts. But unlike Candy, Krystal’s appearance is in no way ironic or goofy. She is a skillful bridging of animal cuteness and human hotness. She represents the ultimate test presented by fur promoters.

Image: Butterfly Effect cover art. Copyright New Line Cinema.

Welcome again to Movie Maundering. Further expanding upon my recent urge to punish myself for unknown sins likely committed in a past life by watching exceptionally poor movie choices, I just finished watching The Butterfly Effect.

Plot

Speaking of committed, this movie focuses most of its time around the theme of mental instability, insanity, and institutionalization. Evan Treborn is afflicted with a seemingly hereditary bout of behavioural instability, manifesting itself in the blacking out of traumatic events. But as it turns out, Evan, and his father and grandfather before him, were actually able to return themselves to these points in their past and redo them, dramatically changing the lives of everyone around them. Everyone else just thought they were crazy. But things never go quite right, someone always gets the stubby end of the dick when Evan goes time traveling, and though he might help one friend, he often causes greater damage to himself or others. So he sets out to fix that too… and there we have the movie.

The film is largely based around the model of Chaos Theory, a set of studies based in math, economics, philosophy and physics to study how any action can affect events far out of its scope. This is commonly known as the ‘Butterfly Effect’, where it is suggested that something as small as a butterfly can flap its wings and the ripple effect of that action could cause a hurricane halfway around the world.

Cast

Ashton Kutcher stars as Evan Treborn, though he is often portrayed in his teenage self or child self by John Amadori and Logan Lerman respectively. His paramount love interest and ultimate goal of the girl to rescue is played by Amy Smart, the character Kayleigh Miller. Other faces show up that you probably can’t name yourself like Elden Henson (Fulton from D2: The Mighty Ducks), William Lee Scott (teenage Anton in Gattaca) and bigman Ethan Suplee (Frankie from Boy Meets World). All in all a pretty decent cast. Ashton Kutcher does a crazy-man run that is a must-see.

Weskimo’s Take

I’ve gotta say, this movie had a fair bit going for it. Chaos Theory is an interesting premise for a movie. However…

This movie ended up with some cheesy balls in its mouth. The beginning of the movie is hard to follow, and though they try hard to build suspense and be dramatic, the feelings they are going for just aren’t there. It does possess a bit of the psychotic behaviour that will shock the audience, predominantly shown through Tommy Miller, Kayleigh’s brother. The problem child actively enjoys brutally delivering a beat down, and likes burning puppies. Pretty sick. Evan’s best friend Lenny also ends up in a mentally unstable state more times than not after his little ‘fixes’ as well, moving between quietly withdrawn, openly violent, and nearly catatonic.

Another serious flaw of the movie is its lack of focus. They attempted to try to cram too many big attention-getter issues into the movie, nothing gets more than a few minutes of play. Prostitution, child pornography, parental abandonment, abusive parents, lost loves, psychological trauma, fraternity douchebaggery, suicide, cancer… they hit on all the key effect points, but never stayed there long enough for anyone but Evan to care.

I have to mention as well that The Butterfly Effect has a few rather large holes in its plot. Mostly, I can’t understand why Evan refused to simply return to the blackout event in question when things went wrong and try a different way to fix it. True to its name, just a couple of tiny things make everything blow up for him in almost every case. He could just try it again, couldn’t he? Also, they never explain the origin of this hereditary ability to change the past? Was his grandfather exposed to gamma rays as a child? Attend Hogwarts? Or is it just some random genetic brain anomaly that allows them to manipulate time and space? Most frustrating.

Probably one of the things that bugged me the most is the Director’s Cut ending. In the Theatrical version, as a last resort, Evan realizes that Kayleigh is better off without him, and makes one last trip to a birthday party when they were 7 and proceeds to alienate her beyond all repair. They grow up separately, and are both decently successful and happy, and none of his friends are insane. There is even a cliché déjà vu moment as they pass each other in the street, and you think she recognizes him, but she’s not sure, so they keep on walking. But in the Director’s Cut, Evan decides that the world would be better off without him entirely, and travels back to the womb and strangles himself with the umbilical cord. What the fuck? No worries there, Mr. Emo, I’m sure your mom would love the gift of a third stillborn child. Nice work, champ.

In conclusion, The Butterfly Effect is a less than mediocre movie. I didn’t gain much enjoyment from it, and I spent most of my time waiting for it to get exciting. It was rather predictable, poorly explained, and dramatically ineffectual. The premise was good, the cast was pretty great, and even showed some decent versatility by being able to play their characters in several realities, but in the end, the film just did not deliver a lasting performance for the audience.

Wow, I got through this review without an abortion joke after watching a baby hang himself in the womb. Where’s DMUSER when you need him?

Scoring

Image: Antitrust cover art. Copyright Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

In an attempt to bum rush my To-Do List for some last-minute points, I got myself to watch another member of the Computing Science 101 pack, Antitrust. Here’s what I thought of it.

Plot

Milo is a computer programmer who is headhunted by a giant global corporation called NURV (Never Underestimate Radical Vision) and offered a lucrative job opportunity at the firm. Although sad to leave his friends in the small-time project they started together, he takes the position and moves to the company’s headquarters in Oregon.

Work goes very well at first, friendly coworkers, nice job perks, etc. And his job is made easier by his new boss, CEO Gary Winston, seemingly coming up with the missing piece of code out of thin air whenever he hits a roadblock. All is on track for the completion of the company’s next claim to fame, Synapse, a huge social multimedia network set to launch and revolutionize communication the world over.

This all changes when his best friend and former colleague is murdered, and then Winston delivering another piece of ground-breaking programming the following day. Suspicious, Milo begins to investigate, and following the gruesome discovery that NURV is behind the conspiratorial theft, murder, and cover-up of dozens of programmers, he sets out to bring about righteous justice.

Cast

Not bad. Ryan Phillippe plays the lead as Milo, with the oh-so-hot Rachel Leigh Cook backing him up as the hot girl from work/sort of other woman, but not really/traitorous biatch in the end, and Tim Robbins makes a great creepy but charismatic corporate villain. He kinda looks like a cross between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

Weskimo’s Take

This movie has a lot of flaws. The soundtrack is pretty good, though its ‘suspense music’ can be pretty oddly placed sometimes. And from several instances of poorly explained story and weak script to the beat-you-about-the-face predictability present throughout, there is a fair bit wrong with this movie.

That being said, I like Antitrust. It’s got that nerdy computer-based storyline that I find appealing, along with a Big Brother type of story progression where Milo discovers just exactly how much of his life is tracked, followed, and manipulated by the evil watchdog enterprise of NURV.

Otherwise, I suppose my only real complaint is how little actually happens in the movie. It sort of seems like it runs you in circles the whole time. I suppose this could be because that is what the movie is about, basically playing for time until the life-altering media network is complete, but it really comes through as simply a lack of significant actions.

All in all, Antitrust is a decent movie. It won’t blow your mind with a big twist ending or anything, and if it does, it will be about half an hour before the writers wanted it to. Worth the watch, but it’s no Hackers.

Scoring

Welcome back to Games in Review! Today I’ll be reviewing RPG-Shooter, Borderlands for the Xbox 360.

Story

The story of Borderlands is blessedly simple: You’re a Treasure Hunter on the planet Pandora looking for a legendary find called The Vault. Nobody has ever been able to find The Vault, so of course no one can tell you what is inside, but many have speculated that The Vault contains spectacular riches, far-advanced technology, or anything else they’ve ever desired.

As a note, I was hoping for a secret harem. I was kind of right, but not in a good way.

Gameplay

When you begin the game, you take on one of 4 characters to control, each with his or her own unique skill set, proficiencies, and ability tree. Your choices are Hunter (for sniping and revolvers), Soldier (assault rifles and shotguns), Siren (SMGs), and Berserker (Fists and Rockets). You can obviously attempt to customize your characters, and it is often useful to steer away from the predetermined career paths in order to use some more effective weapons or round out your party if you are playing with friends. Your view is from first person, and you can level up your character in the menus to learn new abilities, gain stat boosts and critical hits, and otherwise customize your ass-kicking machine.

The game consists of many small quests of the usual variety: kill this, steal that, find these pieces of a new weapon, etc. Quests are activated either at designated terminals around the world or by talking to the often surly locals. You can simply push your way through the story, but it is extremely worthwhile to play as many of the optional side quests as you can for big payoffs of the experience, gold, and weaponry kinds.

You can play with a party of up to four friends, and the game will balance the difficulty based on the number of players involved. Luckily, the designers realized the tendencies of the internet and the bane of the infamous Leaver to online gamers. The game will automatically scale down the difficulty if a player leaves.

The gameplay is fairly straightforward, but it’s not a simple blast-through-everything type of game. There are many different armor types, weapon strengths and weaknesses, enemy strategies, and customizable abilities to be considered to even have a chance at success.

Combat is usually quite sudden and frantic, barely offering time to whisper “oh, shit”, making it extremely important to be as prepared as possible. If you or an ally is downed, that person can be revived by either getting in the killshot on an enemy for a self-revive (called a second wind), or be picked up by another player. If the timer expires, the character respawns at the last spawn point, usually leaving the team at a significant disadvantage, so know when to get the hell out of Dodge.

Graphics

All in all, pretty good. Environments are well rendered and engaging, and it really adds to the game’s Western-Comic Booky feeling. Not really much to complain about, but not groundbreaking either. Really cool stylized textures though. Nice to see something different.

Sound

Gotta give this one some good marks for sound. Between using pretty decent weapon and attack effects, effective ‘in danger’ combat music, and including Cage the Elephant’s ‘Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked’ as their overall theme song, Borderlands gains some points for me in the sound category. Even the voice acting was more than tolerable.

Overall

This game is worth the play. Other than a couple of annoying missions that my completionist compatriots and I embarked upon and a startlingly easy final boss, Borderlands delivered everything that was promised. Think Halo crossed with Diablo. Sounds pretty good, right? It is.

Gameplay:
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Overall:

Check out Shufflingdead’s video review of Borderlands.

Image: Constantine cover art. Copyright Warner Bros.

I must apologize, both to our readers and the rest of the staff at here shufflingdead.com. I’ve been really slacking these days. My Movie Maundering article is now two weeks late. I’ve even got two started right now, but I just can’t seal the deal. I have been trying to figure out why I just couldn’t get into reviewing another movie, but now I understand: I didn’t fully and completely proclaim my hatred of Constantine, my last review. It’s been tearing me up inside without me even knowing. But luckily, a half bottle of wine and some quiet have allowed me to discover this prolific problem, and I am about to settle in to rectify the situation. Strap in, boys and girls.
This movie left me with a feeling of senseless rage. Absolutely nothing about it was good.

Let’s start with some Shia rage today. First of all, and I don’t know how I forgot to mention this in my initial review, but after the credits roll, Neo (Keanu, when you learn to act like anyone but Neo, I’ll start calling you something other than Neo) visits Shia LaBeouf’s grave, only to witness his triumphant return as a fucking angel. Seriously? Neo has been working his ass off, banishing demons all over the damn place, and Shia says a few biblical phrases and is awarded angelhood? That’s gotta be frustrating. Second, why on earth is the cab driver his wish-to-be sidekick? How often do you even get the same cab driver twice? And third, why does he try to be as good at it as Neo? Doesn’t he know that Neo is The One?

I’ll get back to Neo now. They say several times in the movie that Constantine has no real powers, that he is a mere mortal. Then why the hell is he able to defeat the magics of one of the most powerful heavenly beings around with some runes on his arm that were clearly drawn with a sharpie in Grade 10 Physics class and pretending to be on Dragonball Z? Then there is the fact that he simply walks through a host of demon warriors with a cross-shaped, pimped and gold-plated shotgun. And the chain-smoking man dying of lung cancer, who smokes 4 packs a day, doesn’t wheeze or cough once during the whole thing?

And then we have the true workhorse of the movie: the nameless man carrying the key to earthly destruction. Does he HAVE to be Mexican? Really Warner Bros? You had a man dig up a centuries-old spearhead and WALK it all the fucking way to LA? Nice work there Warner, thank you. Thank you for telling the world that Mexicans are Hell’s Couriers.

There is so much unbelievable crap flying around Constantine that I half expected them to turn around and tell me that my dog snoring in the middle of the night is the devil speaking to him in code to tell him to shit on the sidewalk in the morning. I’m going to have to wrap this up because my rage is starting to overcome my ability to be coherent. This movie freaking sucks.

Image: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World poster. Copyright Universal Pictures.

Dear nerdlingers, have I got a movie for you. Ever dreamed of a film directed by the genius behind Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead based on an indie comic about 20-something slackerdom and filled with video game references both obvious and subtle? It may sound too goddamn awesome to exist in the same universe as Twilight: Eclipse, but such a thing is real, and it’s called Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. It is sad indeed that I needed to tell you that, but not many of you seemed to notice. The film only grossed $10.6 million in its opening weekend. Let me try to convince you why it deserves so, so much more.

I’ll try to avoid spoiling too many of the specific video game winks and nods which exist within Scott Pilgrim, but hear this: the film opens with music ripped straight from Link to the Past. If your Nintendo nerd boners haven’t reached full mast yet, then consider this: Scott plays the bassline from Final Fantasy II.

Video game influence doesn’t just show up in the thrill provided by easy references. The story of Scott Pilgrim is told with the frantic, illogical logic of games. The movie’s pacing rapidly accelerates when Scott finds out he must battle his way through the seven evil exes of his new love interest, Ramona Flowers. No real explanation is given as to why this is the case. Even less of one is given for the remarkable powers most of the characters in the movie possess (like wielding flaming pixelated swords and traveling via sub-space). All of this is in glorious homage to the games which inspire the film, where fun holds significantly more value than adherence to reality.

I don’t mean to suggest that the shallowness of plot often found in games is carried over here. Scott’s true struggle is not in dealing with the League of Evil Exes, but rather life as an unemployed 22-year-old coming to terms with his own shallow existence, and the unkind way he treats the people around him. Scott is forced to juggle his feelings for Ramona along with his absence-of-feeling for his current girlfriend, naive high schooler Knives Chau.

Michael Cera is, of course, Scott Pilgrim. While Cera can once again be accused of playing the same deadpan wimp he always does, it’s hard to fault him here. Anyone in his place would have surely been doing his best Cera impression. The rest of the cast is filled with unknowns and semi-knowns taking on smaller roles and succeeding without exception. Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona Flowers is sexily dry-witted. Ellen Wong as Knives Chau is frantic and hilarious. Kieran Culkin, playing Scott’s older, gayer roommate Wallace, demonstrates honed comedic timing as he quips on Scott’s inability to run his own life.

To take only one small issue with the film, the members of Scott’s band Sex Bob-omb (seriously, that’s what they’re called) are disappointingly underused. Young Neil, Stephen Stills, and especially Kim Pine are funny and well cast. We just don’t get to see the three hanging out with Scott enough.

Scott Pilgrim isn’t just a character piece or a comedy. In fact, it’s an action film as much as anything else. Again, director Edgar Wright excels here. As Scott battles through the pantheon of Ramona’s evil exes, we’re treated to video game action come to life. Characters wield stat-boosting swords, giant hammers, and supernatural powers. Rhythm-based dance-offs and wild fist fights straight out of arcades are presented one after another replete with the corresponding panache of chirpy sound effects and glowing lights.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a film that gets it. Video game references that are correct. Video game references that are used out of respect for the medium rather than mockery. Toronto, where the story takes place, portrayed without the need for belittlement. 20-something slackerdom portrayed accurately (I know, I’m living it). Find every rupee you can find (they tend to be hidden in pots and under long grass) and go see this movie as many times as you can afford.

Scoring:

When it’s on the radio, apparently. As a Canadian citizen, I have the ability to enjoy music on the radio. 91.7 The Bounce pipes in the American Top 40 on weekends, hosted by the ever-irritating Ryan Seacrest. One of the recent hits that’s been on the AT40, as well as frequently played on The Bounce during the week, is Jerimih’s Birthday Sex. It’s a catchy tune, and the phrase “birthday sex” is repeated many times in the song. It is not edited during regular play on The Bounce, but on the AT40, “sex” is replaced by a “shhh”.

I wasn’t aware that sex was a word to be equated with the worst of the worst. It is now one of those words that nobody dares to play during daytime television and anywhere on the radio. It’s among the ranks of fuck, shit, cunt, cock and the like. At least on Canadian stations, they still play hell, damn and sometimes even an ass slips through. And since so many songs give rather graphic descriptions of sexual acts that don’t get censored, and different words for the act are allowed, why is the kibosh being put on “sex”? Especially from a nation that is drenched in sexual imagery, anyway?
Listening to 102.3 Now! Radio, in one of Hedley’s big hits, Cha-Ching, the word “lesbians” is censored. This really boggles my mind. To me, that seems like blatant discrimination.

Maybe it’s just my Canadian liberalism clouding my judgment. After all, Jay-Z’s new song, I Just Wanna Love U, contains the lyrics “gimme that funk, that sweet, that nasty, that gushy stuff”. And it doesn’t take a lot of effort to think of what that is most likely referring to. Yet that line is never censored. For all the sex, drugs and violence that are depicted on TV, condom and male enhancement supplements advertised on the radio, you’d think they’d ease up at least on regular, everyday English words.

Guilty secret: I read fan fiction.

Perhaps you’ve never heard of it. Fan fictions, affectionately known as fan fics, are basically self-explanatory. It’s “new” works of fiction written by fans of certain literature. Hence, fan fiction. The stories are based on the characters and environments in the original work. I liken it to music, where musicians regularly cover each others’ work to create something new and different, but made from the same base. For example, a Harry Potter fan fiction may contain a plot where Lily leaves a letter for Harry to read in the future, confessing that Severus Snape is actually his father, not James Potter. Or a Lord of the Rings fan fiction may revolve around a complicated romance between Legolas and Aragorn. Anything can happen. In fact, some fan fics can get pretty smutty, spelling out the romantic and lusty scenes we all envision between our favourite pairings that never actually get published. Or even acknowledged by the author, depending.

Fan fiction can be found most specifically on the website fanfiction.net, but is available via search engine on all sorts of websites, collective or private. Fanfiction.net stories have been divided into many categories, including books (further divided by book or author), film, television, manga, cartoons, plays and musicals, and video games to name a few. Say you really enjoy watching House MD. Well, in case just watching it once a week doesn’t get you enough House action, you can read one of the over 18,000 stories on fanfiction.net alone.

I am more of a book fan fic reader, considering the original work is text itself. I find it difficult to read about something I regularly watch, play or sing along to. But it never ceases to amaze me how many stories can be spawned from a single work or series. Keep in mind that some fan fics are longer than the original work itself.

The top twenty fan fiction sections in books on fanfiction.net are as follows, as of July 29, 2010*:

20. Vampire Academy - 2,480
19. Silmarillion – 2,635
18. Vampires – 2,879
17. Bible – 2,920
16. Clique – 3,056
15. Inheritance Cycle – 3,856
14. Artemis Fowl - 4,071
13. Fairy Tales - 4,081
12. Animorphs - 4,577
11. The Outsiders – 5,273
10. Chronicles of Narnia – 6,695
9. Gossip Girl - 6,961
8. Percy Jackson and the Olympians – 7,678
7. Song of the Lioness – 8,073
6. Warriors – 8,221
5. Phantom of the Opera – 9,384
4. Maximum Ride – 10,787
3.Lord of the Rings – 43,558
2.Twilight – 156,842
1.Harry Potter – 467,071

So Harry Potter still dominates, as it has for years. But Twilight, thanks to hundreds of thousands of sexually frustrated teenage girls worldwide, is quickly catching up. I had no idea The Outsiders or The Phantom of the Opera were so popular as to garner one of the top twenty spots in books. I mean, they’re great books, but seriously? The one that completely stymies me, of course, is the Bible. Seriously? Who writes a fan fic about the Bible? That’s like writing fan fiction about your history text book.

Part II: Bible Fan Fics – Spiritual Glory or Just Fucked Up?

I checked the Bible fan fics and disappointingly, most of them are poems about God and Jesus and pretty normal stuff like that. But with a bit of searching, I found some synopses that sound rather epic:

The Way of the Lord, by StarXEnoch

“A modern day reimagining of the teenage years of Jesus. Through the eyes of John the Baptist, we will watch the young Messiah as he attends high school, learns about who he is, and begins his ministry.”*

Jesus went to high school?

Lilith by Min Daae

“Lilith/Eve. Temptation is sweet. Like fruit. Sort of dark and weird.”*

Nothing like some Biblical girl-on-girl action.

Jesus and Hitler: A Romance by Angkras

“Adolph Hitler travels back in time and meets a man who will change his life forever.”*

I…don’t even know what to say to that.

Judas: On the betrayal by Zak’s-blood13

“Judas’ take on Jesus’ death and his own actions. Remember, there are other gospels and writings from Jesus’ time that weren’t included in the Bible – this takes after one of those – Judas’ gospel. I don’t own Jesus/Judas/Peter or the ideas behind this.”*

I love the disclaimer. I know a lot of people put “I don’t own Harry Potter!” or whatever in their fan fics, but “I don’t own Jesus”? The Bible officially gets top ranks for most awesome fan fics ever.

*Denotes quotes or statistics taken directly from fanfiction.net.

Welcome back to Games In Review. Today, we’ll be reaching way back into my childhood to the ol’ SNES days and reviewing Super Mario RPG.

Story

The game starts out like any other Mario game: the Princess is missing, and it looks like Bowser is up to his old tricks again. After a bit of investigating, however, we discover that the true culprit behind all of the goings on is a villain named Smithy, a smith, who has somehow managed to put a stop order on all the wishes in the stars. If he isn’t stopped, nobody’s wishes will ever come true again…

Gameplay

As the title might imply, this is a Mario game, except it’s an RPG. The usual Mario linear world map applies, and each area is free movement until Mario gets into an encounter, followed by a turn-based battle to the death. I’ve gotta say, this game is full of Mario-themed fun. Lots of running, jumping, dodging enemies, and movement based mini-games; it’s a hell of a good time. Mario once again navigates the world with runs and jumps. This game was a refreshing change from the simple Mario platformers more common with the franchise to this point, as Mario was free to move in eight directions.

Mario is joined in combat by four friends: Princess Toadstool, Bowser, and two new characters; Geno and Mallow. Each has varying strengths, weaknesses, spells, etc. What is really different about this game is the Timed Hit functions. Each weapon has a method of timing to it that allows extra damage, what other RPGs usually deem a critical hit. This game allows you to, if you’re paying attention, constantly dump critical hits on your enemies. The spells work the same way after a fashion. You might have to press Y repeatedly, or hold Y to charge depending on the spell, but the game ends up being some button-mashing fun.

Graphics

For a Super Nintendo game, this game has amazing graphics. Well-rendered sprites abound and bounce around the screen and our heroic plumber’s frantic gait takes us past well-rendered environments. No grainy crap for this game.

Sound

Just what you would expect from Mario, the soundtrack is perfectly fitting for the game. It almost seems to fit the mood everywhere. From exploring the Mushroom Kingdom town to battling the Axem Rangers, Super Mario RPG manages to keep it’s sound on track throughout. Sound effects are the usual Nintendo bonks and smashes, but my only complaint is possibly the battle music. I found that it started to get old fairly quickly.

Overall

This game is beautiful, and an absolute treat to play. The story moves along quickly, and the game can be played through in a relatively short amount of time without missing anything important. The characters are fun, and the dialogue is certainly entertaining. And let’s not forget that this game introduced one of the most iconic characters of all time, the infamous Chef Torte. With all of the new-gen games on my shelf, I could easily sit myself down and play through this title again.

Gameplay:
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Overall:

Image: Constantine cover art. Copyright Warner Bros.

Plot

John Constantine has been able to see demons since he was a child. Nobody really knows why. Unfortunately for him, it has led everyone he knew to think that he was crazy, so he tried to kill himself. He was legally dead for two minutes, but then resuscitated. This leaves him damned in the eyes of God, having committed the deadly sin of suicide. In a quest for redemption of the highest order, Constantine spends his time banishing demons back to the plane of Hell to make the world a better place and find himself in Heaven as a reward.

During the normal course of business, he stumbles across a full-blooded demon trying to gain entry into the human world, which is apparently not allowed. After investigating with his cab-driver sidekick and a couple of twitchy contacts, he uncovers a plot to use the blood of a human psychic to attempt to break the bonds holding the demons in Hell. The son of the Devil, Mammon, wishes to manifest himself on Earth and create his own kingdom here. Constantine sets out to stop him.

Cast

Keanu Reeves, you are the bane of the film industry. Other big names grace the screen in this movie, though few of them add anything beneficial to it at all. Rachel Weisz is on screen a lot. You all remember her, right? And of course, the whiny Shia LaBeouf shows up a few times as the shitty sidekick. Although, I gotta say, Gavin Rossdale is pretty badass as a slick half-demon mastermind.

Weskimo’s Take

This movie is awful. It’s hard to even describe how dumb this movie is. After you sift through all the religious rhetoric being tossed around, you are left with absolutely nothing. Lackluster acting and a weak story combine to give birth to this atrocity of a movie.

Keanu Reeves plays a chain-smoking, demon-exorcist, who is terminally ill from the chain-smoking, trying to buy his way into Heaven by doing good things, but because it’s a selfish reason, Heaven gives him a big “Thanks anyway, but fuck you.” However, it’s this damned soul who is apparently God’s only champion on Earth with a clue. Right. This movie might as well have been the Matrix for all the sense it makes. He slits his wrists, and time stops? What the ever-loving crap is that about? He must be The One or something. Jesus.

Rachel Weisz, who I have to admit I don’t mind looking at, didn’t add anything useful to the movie. She had a couple of bad dreams, then got kidnapped and drowned in a bathtub. Twice. And I seriously spent the whole movie expecting freaking Brendan Fraser to run in and save her from the scary decomposing monsters. Shia LaBeouf makes his usual attempts to be useful or funny and really accomplishes nothing throughout.

It seemed like the movie was trying very hard to either impress or scare us with all of its special effects, but ended up doing neither. A demon made of shifting bugs attacks Constantine once, and otherwise there are some glowing eyes and some dead-looking humanoids we call demons which turn to ash when Neo, I mean Constantine, looks at them wrong. Oh, and some lights go out. That’s about it.

This movie was a giant Heaven-Hell circle-jerk. There are rules flying all over the place, different types of demons coming and going that nobody bothers to explain, and a couple of silly psychic humans. I wish I had a dollar for every minute this movie sucked, because I would have $121 dollars right now. Congratulations Warner Bros. You’ve managed to make a movie about redemption with no redeeming qualities.

Scoring

Image: Cover art for Bitch Slap. Copyright IM Global.

After watching the movie Bitch Slap we felt that we should share some of the extremely valuable life lessons it teaches.

1. Have big tits? Have boobs at all? You must show them off at all times. Just in case you were unsure before.

2. When in the desert, high-heeled shoes are not actually an impediment. No, not even if you are attempting an illegal salvage of riches, having a naughty water fight with a host of lesbians, or are involved in a frantic kung-fu fight.

3. A naughty water fight featuring a host of lesbians can save any movie. Period.

4. Hot people are apparently fire retardant. In fact, after being set on fire or being the victim of an explosion they will not only escape with zero burns, but they will rise from the ashes with their clothes burned away and their body smudged with soot and glistening with sweat, actually making them appear hotter.

5. All Asians have ridiculous accents and must dress as slutty schoolgirls. And they’re all kinky as hell, and of course, know kung fu.

6. Never trust a woman, especially the innocent-looking ones because she may be the head of a crime circuit as well as a secret ninja, no matter how much she got her ass kicked in the beginning of the movie.

7. Always ask for the name of the contortionist you banged behind the circus tent that one time, as it may save you from a nasty surprise later on.

8. Nuns, or at least the nuns of the future, are all lesbians. Actually it seems that most woman are lesbians.

9. Kevin Sorbo automatically makes a movie awesome. Also, Hercules would have been badass with shades and a gun.

10. No matter what you are in the middle of, there is always time for a little lezzing out.

11. Chicks who have boobs bigger than a D cup will clearly not have any trouble lifting a gun bigger than their torso. Or ever need a bra.

12. Chick’s got a crazy look in her eye? Probably means she’s crazy…

13. Everything is hotter in slow motion. This includes awkwardly shoveling sand, walking, yeah, everything.

14. If you’re looking for some hidden shit in the middle of the fucking desert, and you think you’ve found it, check your watch. If you’ve only been looking for thirty minutes, that’s not it, probably just another random corpse.

15. If you’re looking for some hidden shit in the middle of the fucking desert, rest assured that absolutely everyone you’ve ever crossed paths with will show up at some point in the next hour to harass you about it.

As you continue on with your daily lives, keeping the above wisdoms in mind might save you from disaster in the long run. But if there is one grand singular lesson of life that we can truly take away from this movie it is: TITS!

Welcome once again to Games in Review, featuring reviews, evaluations, and general commentaries for games that I, Weskimo, have completed.

This week’s topic is a game that has brought me many hours of sport-oriented enjoyment, Mario Power Tennis for the Nintendo GameCube.

Story

Mario and his friends and enemies are back, and this time they’re competing in a Tennis tournament. That’s about it.

Gameplay

Much like you would expect, the game takes place on the tennis courts. The courts themselves present a load of variety as players have the option to play on regular courts, clay courts, or sometimes Mario universe-themed gimmick courts. Various game modes are available such as the main tournament campaign (in singles or doubles), exhibition games, and a couple of other game modes like Ring Shooting and Item Battle.

As far as controls go, they are pretty basic. Mario Power Tennis is a game you can literally pick up and have fun playing immediately. That being said, there is opportunity for mastery on the courts with regards to types of shots, angles, and super-duper Power Shots. Learning how to deliver a devastating drop shot at the right time can leave your opponents demoralized. And the game is always mixed up by Power Shots. These shots can be used to either blast though an opponent’s defense or to fly across the court for a diving save if you’re about to miss a hit. Easy to play, but practice does make perfect.

My only real problem with the controls is actually their simplicity. This game fell victim to a mild case of over-assigning keys to actions. To explain, this typically tends to rear its ugly head when the game gets confused with the type of shot you want. For example, while moving to take a shot, you might find yourself watching in dismay as the ball trickles past you because your character has stopping moving and is winding up for a smash shot (which takes a few seconds) instead of just taking a normal shot for the win. Most frustrating. The Power Shots also present a problem as there are no control differentials between the two types, so you might find yourself doing a lame save shot when you really wanted to ram the ball into their face with an attack shot.

Mario Power Tennis features 18 playable characters including the usual suspects: Mario, Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, Peach, Yoshi, etc. One character I was excited to see as a playable character is the mighty Wiggler, who is playable for the first time in any game. One big angry bastard.

As for how the characters are different, Nintendo went with its usual classes of characters, some of them being faster but weaker (Yoshi and crew), some being slower but stronger (DK, Bowser and company), and some being average all-around players (Mario and Luigi). Very Mario Kart-esque, but not at all unpleasant. Players can choose the character that best fits their play style.

The best part of this game is, hands-down, the multiplayer. GameCube’s usual 4-player chaos reigns supreme on the courts of Mario Power Tennis, and it is glorious. I’ll testify right now that you can spend hours locked in a desperate struggle for victory with a few friends hammering furiously on the A button and smacking controllers out of each other’s hands.

Graphics

Gamecube’s textures at their finest, everything looks clear, lots of bright colors and rounded edges that you’ve come to expect from Mario games. Characters are animated to Nintendo’s usual standards and a handy colour effect gets added to the ball on a lot of shots to tell you what kind of shot is coming your way.

Sound

Nothing to write home about, but nothing negative either. Your basic Mario sound effects, monkey grunts, Italian plumber whoops, ditsy princess squeals, etc. They do have a rather enjoyable effect for hitting the ball that is pretty satisfying, though. Pretty standard BGM too.

Overall

Despite a few control flaws and some fairly meaningless gimmicks and bonus modes, this game’s multiplayer appeal shines through. This is a fairly fantastic game, good for some light gaming on your own or if you’re looking for another outlet to let your friends know how much you hate them. Definitely some good times to be had with this title.

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The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is frequently referred to as the greatest video game of all time, and rightfully so. Ocarina brought Hyrule to life with stunning polygonal graphics and revolutionary controls. Now, nearly 12 years since its release, comes word that this beloved game is being remade for the Nintendo 3DS.

With the madness of E3 2010 receding into the past, it’s time to take a hard look at Ocarina of Time in its original form, assess the hints we’ve been given so far with regards to its 3DS remake, and ponder the possibilities. What follows is my wishlist for the upcoming 3DS version of Ocarina of Time.

1. Modernize the menus

Ocarina of Time is guilty of only one major flaw. Its menus are truly sluggish. The game’s director, Eiji Aonuma, even admitted this when he announced the 3DS remake of the game at E3. Aonuma apologized for how long it took to switch the Iron Boots on and off in the game’s infamous Water Temple, and declared that the process would be made easier in the new version.

Aonuma’s comments are the biggest hint we have that Ocarina‘s outing on 3DS will be more of a remake than a quick port, and they’ve got me hoping for a serious menu retooling. Entering the game’s pause screen was always a chore thanks to a strangely slow load time (even more so on the GameCube Collector’s Edition disc), and navigating around them once entered became tedious as the game wore on thanks to issues exactly like the Iron Boot equipping/unequipping.

This issue should be easy enough to fix considering the 3DS’s processing capabilities and the system’s touch screen lending itself to easy menu use.

As an aside: can we have skippable cutscenes? Please?

2. Fix the damn Water Temple

Ocarina of Time’s Water Temple is so infamous it’s earned a place on Urban Dictionary, nonetheless, the necessity of its fixing demands mention one more time. There’s just something about that dungeon, something beyond the Iron Boots issue, something to do with its layout, something to do with keys used in the wrong places, that makes it an immense headache for players.

I don’t know exactly what needs to be done, probably a retooling of key placements or a simplifying of the central water-level rising/lowering puzzle that needs to be changed.

3. Increase the framerate, smooth out the animations

The initial screenshots released for the new version of the game demonstrate that it will feature improved graphics. Link is rendered with far greater detail than he was back on the N64, and the game’s environments appear to have gotten a polish as well. That all sounds great to me, and I’m sure 3D effects will do wonders for improving the look of the game, but Ocarina‘s graphics were never an issue.

Hopping between Ocarina and Majora’s Mask gives a pretty clear indicator of what was done with the RAM expansion pack. In Majora’s Mask, Link’s movements are significantly smoother, both because of improved animations and an increased framerate. This is another issue which should be easily taken care of thanks to the hardware power of the 3DS.

4. Fix and finish the sidequests, then add more

Ocarina of Time had a significant development time, and ultimately, things had to get cut in order for the game to ever be released. As such, it has some fairly famous loose ends, including that damn mailman who challenged you to a race, and could then never be beaten.

I’d like to see sidequests like the mailman’s finished up, and then more added. Ocarina actually has very few optional sidequests if you think about it. Aside from the quest for the Biggoron Sword, and the tedious Poe collecting you do as adult Link, most of the sidequesting is left to young Link, and his work with The Happy Mask Shop. I want to see adult Link given just as much, if not more, to do than young Link.

5. Give us the Bomber’s Notebook!

With more sidequests comes more to keep track of. This new OoT could use an equivalent of Majora’s Mask‘s Bomber’s Notebook to keep it all organized. All of the collecting you do in the game (hearts, Poes, and Gold Skulltulas) could also be kept neatly organized in there as well. I’m envisioning a tab just for Gold Skulltulas listing how many you’ve got left to get in each area.

6. Greater rewards for greater tasks

One complaint often leveled against the 3D Zeldas has been that they don’t give you much for your efforts. In Ocarina, for example, you’re tasked with collecting 100 Gold Skulltulas, and your reward is nothing but a big pile of rupees you don’t really need. I’d like to see the remade version introduce a number of completely optional items doled out for completing tasks like that. Several more swords, maybe some weapon upgrades, and a few magical wands (a la Link to the Past) would do the trick. Oh yeah, put the Bug Catching Net in there as well!

7. Add more hidden areas

During his roundtable at E3, Aonuma asked who had played Ocarina of Time. Everyone there put his or her hand up.

Perhaps the biggest thing working against an OoT remake is the fact that gamers have played the original, and played it again, and again, and again. What Nintendo needs to do is keep those kinds of people interested by mixing the new with the old. Part of the charm of this new game will surely be all the memories it brings back, but in order to live up to the original, it will need to surprise players as well.

I want to get sidetracked finding new areas, exploring new caves, and hunting down mini-bosses I’ve never seen before. I’m not asking for anything major, just enough to keep me from going through the motions by rote.

8. One more collect-a-thon for good measure

Sure, you’ve already got the Poes and Gold Skulltulas on top of the usual heart container search, but I’d like one more excuse to travel the lands of Hyrule. How about a Wind Waker style Pictograph figurine mission?

Actually, forget that, give us that Bug Catching Net mentioned earlier, scatter some golden bugs around, Twilight Princess style, and let players rediscover the vast world of Ocarina of Time.

9. That extra content from the 64DD version

Zelda fanatics have long discussed what was hidden away in that long lost 64DD Ocarina of Time remix, or Ura Zelda, Nintendo was working on. It is said to have been completed, and some claim the Master Quest offered as a preorder bonus for Wind Waker wasn’t the whole thing. Sure, the remixed dungeons were nice, but wasn’t there supposed to be added content, like extra dungeons? Wasn’t the extra space offered by the 64DD supposed to have been put to good use with this thing?

Give Zelda fans what they want, give them the total Ocarina of Time package that was teased for so long and which never completely materialized.

10. Include a second quest!

This seems to come up every time there’s talk of a new Zelda. Players want the excitement they had the first time they beat the original Legend of Zelda and discovered an entire second game waiting for them. Lucky for Nintendo, a second quest for Ocarina already exists, I’ve already mentioned it, it’s called Master Quest.

Come on Nintendo, take the remixed dungeons that already appeared in that special version of the game, double the damage everything deals, and make that into a second quest that becomes available once the regular game has been beaten.

Images: Copyright Nintendo.

Here we are, looking back at E3 2010, and it’s safe to say Nintendo’s conference was a stunner. I’m a little surprised at how well my predictions went down, considering how hopeful they were. I managed to score 10/50. Have a look below to see what I got right.

Original article:

June 15, 2010 will see Nintendo launch a new era, that’s for certain. We already know that the company will be showing off the 3DS and, most likely, Zelda Wii, but the highly secretive company hasn’t said much else. Being just 10 days from the historic moment, and unable to contain my excitement any longer, I’ve decided to throw together my official predictions for Nintendo’s E3 2010 conference.

I’ve divided my predictions into two sections: DS/3DS and Wii. Each section is ranked from most likely to happen to least likely.

3DS and DS Predictions

1. 3DS unveiled
2. Reggie pulls 3DS out of his pocket
3. 3rd party launch lineup for 3DS focuses on pastel colours and hobbies for 10 year old girls
4. Iwata flops his hands around while touting the potential of 3D
5. I ignore Cammie Dunaway while she explains upcoming murder mystery 3DS game
6. Next Professor Layton is coming to North America
7. Pokémon Black and White are shown
8. Pokémon Black and White are 3DS enhanced
9. Golden Sun DS is now for 3DS
10. $199
11. 3DSWare announced
12. replacing DSiWare
13. handheld equivalent of Virtual Console announced
14. Mario Kart 3DS
15. Miyamoto proclaims the dawn of a new era
16. All hail Miyamoto
17. Believers will rise to heaven (just like DS)
18. Nintencats for 3DS
19. New Super Mario Bros. 3DS
20. StarFox 3DS
21. 3DS’s graphical powers are beyond the Wii’s
22. 3G downloads mean 3DSWare anywhere
23. handheld Virtual Console will include Virtual Boy games
24. 3DS downloads are linked to a transferable account, rather than hardware
25. Metroid Dread

Wii Predictions

1. Zelda Wii is shown
2. Reggie doesn’t say “ass” but he slyly makes reference to it
3. Miyamoto announces he is not Link, but he does know him
4. Metroid: Other M is shown again, audience gets bored
5. Sin & Punishment 2 is shown yet again, audience gets even more bored
6. charts and graphs out the ass, audience nods off
7. new Wii bundle is shown, audience snoring audible
8. Cammie talks Wii Party, audience is awake, filled with anger
9. Super Punch-Out!! Wii announced, audience regains composure
10. Pikmin Wii shown, audience won over
11. Iwata unleashes the Vitality Sensor
12. it’s coming packaged with Wii Fit Plus Plus
13. Eternal Darkness resurrected, new game will use Vitality Sensor
14. 3rd party games given 10 second sizzle reel
15. new model of Wii Remote has built in Wii MotionPlus
16. F-Zero Wii
17. StarFox Wii
18. Kirby Wii
19. we actually see something from Retro Studios
20. it’s Kid Icarus
21. we actually see something from NST
22. it’s Wave Race 3
23. Virtual Console to no longer suck
24. Wii HD
25. Firmware update “unlocks” data, allows you to link it to an account rather than a system

This article was originally posted June 5, 2010.

Image: Kick-Ass DVD cover art. Copyright Lionsgate.

Plot

Dave Lizewski is an unnoticed highschool student with an unremarkable life.  Looking at the world around him, he is troubled by the fact that everyone just exists, nobody rocks the boat, goes out of their way to help their fellow man, and the world just coasts along unaltered. Inspired by his comic book heroes, he decides to become a superhero, despite the lack of any training, natural or supernatural ability, or clear goal.

Setting out to help people, he sets his sights on a pair of neighbourhood thugs who terrorize the area. As expected, he gets his ass kicked, knifed, and then hit by a car.  The result is several surgeries, rumors that he’s gay, and some messed up nerve endings that keep him from feeling anything in about half his body.  His second attempt is much more successful, fighting off three gang members to protect a guy while again taking a horrible beating. The footage is posted on the internet, and all of a sudden, Kick-Ass is a hero. Taking calls through his MySpace page, he tries to make the city a better place.

His efforts gain the attention of big-time drug dealer Frank D’Amico, and he is singled out for special retribution. Joined by fellow superheroes Big Daddy and Hit Girl they are pitted against D’Amico’s organization and it’s kill or be killed.

Cast

Nicolas Cage?  Really? Why? Well, he shoots a 10-year old girl in the chest, and talks like Adam West, so sure, I guess. The rest of the cast is pretty awesome. A nerdy teenager, a cute girl-of-his-dreams interest, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (aka McLovin) gets decked out as a superhero/villain. And Mark Strong is a pretty decent villain, playing Frank D’Amico. Throw in some non-descript goons for good measure and a snappy script, and we’re pretty much set.

Weskimo’s Take

This movie is fun.  The script was done very well, and I felt that it really added to the movie, contrasting how bland normal life is at home and how crazy and brutal things get when Kick-Ass enters the world of crimefighting; Dave and his dad will talk about whether or not the cereal box cover has changed, while Kick-Ass threatens to break people’s legs and Hit Girl drops the C-bomb on some lowlifes.

It takes a lot from other superhero movies, specifically Spiderman. Unpopular teenager gets a skin-tight costume and all of a sudden his stalkee starts to notice him, he starts leaping buildings after school and seeking masked popularity.  Even his house looks similar to Peter Parker’s. What I like about Kick-Ass is that even though it is a superhero movie it manages to be unusual about it. There is no scheme for world domination, no superpowers, and no overcome trauma from the hero’s past. It’s just a drug dealer looking for his next paycheck and a few normal (sorta) people out to stop him.

Where it’s low on flashy stunts and special effects, it’s high on simple brutal shock-violence. Otherwise a fairly true-to-form superhero movie, complete with the foreshadowing of the inevitable sequel’s next villain. All in all a good movie.

Scoring

Welcome once again to Games in Review, featuring reviews, evaluations, and general commentaries for games that I, Weskimo, have completed.

This week, I decided to go with 2008′s tactical RPG Operation Darkness for the XBox 360.

Story

I was really quite interested in the story of this game. It bases itself around World War II, visiting cities, events and battles of the war. Through the eyes of a British SAS squad, it creates a sideline story around the general progression of the war, including, most notably, the secret world of Vampires and Werewolves.  You get to kill Nazis AND use Werewolves to kill Vampires!?  Sign me up.

Your main character is Edward (no, he’s not a vampire), a young man from London. He joined the British Army to get some of his own back after a German attack killed his parents and his sister. His best friend Jude, his dead sister’s fiance, joins along with him. During a mission, their squad gets wiped out, and Edward is wounded. He is spared only by the timely appearance of James Gallant, leader of a special forces unit, who saves Edward’s life with a blood transfusion. But surprise! Gallant is a werewolf, and though his blood does not make Edward a true werewolf, some of the lycanthropic magic manifests itself in him. Unsurprisingly, Edward and his friend Jude are transferred to the “Wolf Pack”, a Special Forces unit of supernaturals, and are quickly dragged into the behind-the-scenes war between the Wolf Pack and the Blood Clan.

Gameplay

Not that pop culture needed another vampire versus werewolf entry, but given the recent increase of lycan and blood-sucker popularity, as well as Nazi killing being the central point to the game, I thought that this game would be at the very least playable. I was wrong.

The game’s basic layout is like any other tactical RPG. Combat takes place on a square-based checkerboard grid. Characters have movement speeds and attack ranges based on those squares to measure distance, and move at a turn-based rate. The game has features that aren’t seen in a lot of other tactical RPGs, like destructible terrain, and a rather innovative Cover System, effectively allowing players to bypass their usual wait time between actions, if they’re willing to devote the attention to learning the system and designating specific actions for the units to take. The Cover System can create a huge advantage if used correctly, allowing your units to move or attack as a unit under certain conditions, regardless of their turn status. It also lets you set up ambushes, having your characters all open fire on one poor sonofoabitch who walks the wrong way. 

Another thing that I liked about combat was that when you drop enemies, you can raid their body for a resupply of ammo, health, grenades, or new weapons immediately, rather than waiting for the end of combat and just getting a list of the spoils of war. Some of the game’s better weapons can only be found in this manner, so if you find yourself playing this game, get in the habit of robbing corpses.

This is where the game’s decent gameplay points end.

The first thing I’d like to touch on is the character advancement. The characters are forced to develop on a totally linear path, having proficiencies in specific weapons, and gaining new powers and stats at specific levels. Characters have one purpose each, end of story. Which, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. But by combining that with the slow pace and huge battlefields, it leads to the characters with the skills you need never being anywhere near where you need them. This tends to lead to some painful level grinding to buff up your characters to be able to withstand the beatdown they will no doubt receive.

Now, on to the characters themselves. You have one, count ‘em, ONE decent magic-user. In a largely magic-based combat game, this leaves you at an extreme disadvantage. Put the fact that all enemy magic is not based on line-of-sight, while all of the magic from your only competent magic-user is completely line-of-sight based… well. That sucks. Your forces are in a constant state of panic, no matter how well you lay out your battle plans.

Two of your characters can turn into Werewolves. Great, right? Werewolves are tough!  They’re sure to be able to rip some Nazis apart!  Then you realize that every action that they, or any unit on the battlefield, take drops their charge gauge and they quickly revert to their previous level of suck. This INLCUDES enemies! So the more people on the battlefield, the more useless your magic is. Fantastic. But going lycanthropic has its uses later in the game, as the enemies get stronger and fewer and your characters have a higher energy gauge, the damage boost of turning wolf is truly necessary to take out some of the bigger enemies and vehicles.

Oh, oh, and what if a character gets knocked out because they got gang-raped by 3 magic-users at the start of the battle? Game over. Enjoy that. It will happen often. There are, at the very least, 3 of your party on the field at any given time that cause instant game over if they are KO’d. As to your other characters, if the battle ends while they are KO’d, they DIE! You lose them, the end. And there is ONE character who has ONE spell that can bring an ally back from KO’sville. He is slow, weak, and has no offensive abilities worth more than a sheet of wet toilet paper.  Good luck making use out of him.

Let’s talk about the out-of-combat menus for a second. Your units tend to use, in the normal course of action, around 10 or so healing medpacks per battle. They all also probably use an ammo reload or two, or a grenade or three. So, at the end of your battles, you need to go to the store, and buy each item again, individually (can’t have those damn Brits buying in multiples! They might want a discount or something!). The items must then be equipped on each character once again. Each character’s loadout affects their movement speed and distance, as well as their attack ranges. As I said above: stick to what they were made for, trying to get them doing something useful in combat beyond that just isn’t worth it.

Touching again on the layout of combat; fuck combat. This game has some of the most frequent situational disadvantages I’ve ever seen. Winning a fight? Incoming tank. Hoping against hope that you have enough explosives to take it out before it runs over one of your main characters (that instant Game Over thing), you can basically count on a troop of magic-fueled zombies or skeletons to show up and ruin your day. Any of these things frequently tack themselves on to the end of your already 45-minute torturous ordeal and end it in several seconds, forcing the player to do it all over again. Important battles can often take five or more attempts. Tedious.

Graphics

The graphics on this game are actually okay. Decent representations on the battlefield with anime-type images to support dialogue really work pretty well for the game. The terrains look good, weapon effects don’t glitch, and the characters look pretty half-way decent. Graphically, it does what it is supposed to, which is pretty tolerable, but nothing special, and definitely below par for the XBox 360. Until they tried to animate dragons, that is…

Sound

Decent sound effects, but overall, nothing special. Lackluster explosions, repetitive magic and weapon effect sounds, and fairly average voice acting leaves the sound noticeable, but noticeably lacking in anything that would strongly contribute to the game.

Overall

This game kind of sucks. Despite the semi-cool story premise and entertaining demo, the game just does not do what you expect that it should. It had a cool basis and brought a couple of newer ideas to the table, but everything that could go wrong with this game did go wrong. It just wasn’t fun. They tried to compel the player with a couple of barely-developed, half-explained love interests and a large-breasted character with a hot Irish accent, but it just didn’t make the cut. I could go on forever about how often this game drops the ball, but I think I’ll just end this review here. Operation Darkness definitely makes my list of games that I’ve beaten just to satisfy my completionist obsessions. Great time waster, though. If you’ve got 60+ hours to spare and want to entice yourself into throwing your XBox out a window, pick up Operation Darkness.

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sulci: So I’m guessing that you’re filing this one under hotties, Newbs. For no merit other than some gigantian mammaries. Isn’t she like 12 in the anime? If you just saw her hair you might mistake her for Ronald McDonald or something. Am I old and cynical now?

Newbs: Urrrrrgn. I’m having trouble concentrating. Hell, I’m having trouble seeing the cosplay for the breasts… Tearing myself away for a moment, I see that this young lady is holding a Pikachu, and yet she is clearly cosplaying as Misty. That is a blatant contradiction from the show, in which this character carries a Togepi. I give this woman top marks in the breast department, but she loses points for accuracy.

Newbs: Actually, sulci, what we have here are three people very accurately dressed as the three Noonien type androids of Star Trek: The Next Generation. On the far left is Lore, Data’s evil brother. In the middle is Data’s short-lived daughter, the star of my all-time favourite episode of Star Trek, “The Offspring,” Lal. On the right is Mr. Data himself, the baddest ass in all the galaxy. Spectacular cosplay all around.

sulci: Finally some Sailor Moon cosplay that doesn’t include having to see the bazillionth reiteration of the famous Sailor Senshi uniform, or a last minute Tuxedo Kamen outfit. This is JunJun, a member of the Dead Moon Circus, a group of baddies from the SuperS season. I think this lady here is a prime example of the classic phrase “over the shoulder boulder holder” if I may say so. But overall I’d say its a creative and cute costume.

Newbs: JunJun here has some fine ta-tas that make me go boing-boing. I have no idea what the fuck sulci is talking about, and so I have to judge this costume based solely on the merits of its ability to present breasts, and it does so with remarkable panache. This is one of the most innovative means of displaying cleavage that I’ve ever seen. Would wank again.

sulci: You’ll have to thank Naoko Takeuchi for that awe inspiring costume design, Newbs. Moving on to another orb, I have no idea what the fuck this is. I can see his pants through the seam. And I’m glad he comes equipped with speakers at the very least.

Newbs: I can see this man’s crotch directly through the large crack in his orb. Having said that, I think the largest issue I have with this pitiful attempt at cosplaying as the Death Star from Star Wars is the absence of arms. How does this man plan on groping Sailor Jujubes without arm holes? Actually, how does he even plan on getting through any doors? And what about the bathroom? Is he planning on aiming through his crack?

sulci: Like every other interneter who has seen the movie Up by Pixar, the first time I saw this little chubby Asian kid coplaying as Russell I thought to myself, “Holy Shit.” It really is him. This is fucking epic. Look at the angle of his hat and everything. Coincidence or just pure awesomeness?

Newbs: This kid’s costume is of such high quality that I have to wonder if there was some parental pressure being applied in the fashion of Michael Jackson’s father. Was he always exactly the right weight, or was he force fed until he could achieve this singular moment of cosplaying perfection?

sulci: Okay, I take back what I said before when I said something negative about all the iterations of Sailor Senshi uniforms. Men wearing them is always acceptable. I appreciate the fine attention to detail exhibited here, such as the hair cut, pose, and booties. However, I have a few questions. Where is Sailor Mercury’s tiara? What’s he got under that skirt? And most importantly, do you think he really has cankles?? Note for next time: could have shaved.

Newbs: I have a few questions of my own, sulci. Firstly, are those sweat stains on his shoulders, or did he just wipe Cheetos grease across his costume? Also, is that facial hair, or did this man chase his cheese-flavoured snack with a brownie? I can’t even describe what an abomination of an attempt this little dress-up session is. Cosplay of Sailor Scouts is intended to provide basement dwellers like myself with late-night wank material, not fuel the energy-drink fever dreams of our days. It’s time for this middle-aged office-worker wash-out to head back to the cubicle, I’ve had enough.

Well noobs, It seems that if there are no breasts, or no Star Trek, you probably hate it when it comes to cosplay. Stay tuned for another post sometime in the far future, with your favorite column: Cosplay Idol.

Image: Hackers DVD box cover. Copyright Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Plot

Hackers follows the story of Dade Murphy, a young hacker who, at the age of 11, manages to crash 1507 systems in a single day. Impressive, right? Right. But he gets caught and is court ordered to not operate a touch-tone phone or a computer until his 18th birthday. So we fast forward to his 18th birthday, and Dade has moved to New York City with his mother for her new job. Cue typical teenage angst, some rebellious attitude, and new-kid-in-school highschool activities.

At his new school, Dade quickly falls in with other 1337s, taking on a new alias “Crash Override” for his hacking hijinks. Most notable among his new friends is the one with the nice rack, none other than Kate Libby, alias “Acid Burn”. Nerd chicks are hot, even short-haired ones.

All seems to be going well for young Dade when two of his friends get arrested for hacking a high-profile system, the Ellingson Mineral Company’s, and framed for creating a virus set to cause a major environmental disaster. The framing is done by the security officer for the company, a rather Snape-looking hacker named “The Plague” who is using the virus he created and pinned on two highschool kids as a decoy while a worm he planted siphons off $25 million dollars.

Dade and his remaining 1337 friends must band together and strike back against this slimy dickrag and his FBI dupes by trying a risky concentrated attack on the Ellingson supercomputer to try to download evidence of Dickrag’s treachery.

Cast

Great cast. Smartass protagonist, some truly zany friends, stick-up-their-ass grownups, and a smokin’ hot love interest with a passion for tight clothing. Not to mention the rather androgynous pair of asian boys running a regular webisode called “Hack the Planet,” an informative program for curious hackers… Umm, take that however you want.

Weskimo’s Take

Let me just send out a quick message: “Fuck you, every game console I ever owned in highschool. If I hadn’t spent my time playing YOU, I could have been invited to some really cool rollerblading/hacker parties at the blackmarket arcade!” Unless this was just a contrived theatrical ploy to make the audience think that nerds were cool in highschool… oh, wait a second.  I see what you did there. Nevermind.

But, excellent movie. Fun from start to finish, if a little predictable and/or unlikely. From two hackers fighting over a TV program to sending out arrest warrants on FBI agents and shutting down New York’s traffic control system, entertaining hacker antics abound. A few stereotypical teenager themes rear their ugly heads (“mission: find friends to accept me,” “why won’t the hot girl date me!?,” “I hate my life!,” etc.), but that really doesn’t take much away from the enjoyment of the movie. Plus, Angelina Jolie is in it, usually without a bra, and occasionally with a see-through shirt. And was it just me being lonely, or was Jolie’s ass particularly spectacular in this movie?

Anyway, Hackers is a great viewing, from when it came out to present day. On top of the sheer entertainment value, it dishes out pretty decent social commentary on the coming of the computer age and the relative computer illiteracy of the 90s. It makes mention of the “warrior” concept referring to computer savvy individuals, and the importance that they will all play in the shaping of the world as we become more and more dependent upon new technologies.

In closing, if anyone ever wants to watch Hackers, do so. Again and again. Also, as a public service announcement, this film has given rise to the greatest drinking game ever devised. Group A, drink every time Angelina Jolie is hot. Group B, drink every time Angelina Jolie is goth-hot. Enjoy alcohol poisoning. I know I did.

Scoring

Welcome to Games in Review, Shufflingdead’s newest semi-regular segment! Games in Review will feature a review, evaluation, and general commentary for games that I, Weskimo, have completed.

I’ve been trying to decide which game to make my topic for my first written review for a while now, and I finally decided that it only makes sense to use one of my favorite games. This is also to partially dispel the idea that Shufflingdead only reviews games to dump on them and piss off as much of the internet as possible. Well, fanboys, good news. I don’t hate Suikoden.

Story

Suikoden is a fairly standard RPG released in 1996 for the PlayStation. The story follows the path of the son of a famous Imperial General, General Teo. The hero starts to work for this empire like his father, and quickly finds himself confronted by cruelty, corruption, and betrayal. After only 2 days under imperial payroll, he’s on the run from the law, with only a pair of bodyguards to aid him. Desperate, he enlists himself with an underground resistance movement and winds up as the leader of a major rebellion against the empire that his friends and family serve so loyally.

Gameplay

I’ve already stated that Suikoden is one of my favorite games. What I love about it is that it ranges from infantile simplicity to the involved complexity of a traditional RPG. And I do not mean to say that you will be trucking along and all of a sudden have no idea what is going on. Suikoden manages to blend everything together in a way that lets an experienced gamer customize his party’s actions, but also lets a first-timer just pick up and play.

Combat is straightforward, if a little on the simplistic side. Each character is allotted one Rune slot, which will allow him magical abilities like spells or stat increases. Your party consists of a front and back row, and each character is strong in one or the other. When the front characters start to fall, the back characters shift up closer into the fray. This system allows the player to edit how his group will perform in combat. Confident that your front three characters can deliver the beatdown? Toss in a back row full of high-damage long range characters to speed things up. Think you might take some extra damage in the front ranks on this dungeon? Load up with healers, or some middle ranged characters who won’t be lost if they have to take up a front rank slot. Oh! And one of the most fun aspects of the battles is that all of your character and enemy actions occur at the same time, allowing combos and unity attacks every round, which can change depending on your party’s makeup and abilities!

There are three types of battles. The first is described above, the typical RPG, my party attacks the enemy party, let’s see who wins. The second is a duel-type scenario. Several events in the story will cause two characters to duel in an all-out one-on-one battle. The game lets these duels play out in a paper-rock-scissors type of gameplay, where you can attack, defend, or perform a special move. The third type is the full-scale war type battle. In raising a rebellion, the hero will sometimes come across an army that needs stomping. When the two armies clash, it is once again played out in the paper-rock-scissors style, melee defeating archers, archers defeating magic, and magic defeating melee. The game also throws in a few special attacks and abilities during this type of combat, like spies, thieves, or dragon knights.

The story rapidly advances so that the player does not find himself thinking that “is it over yet?!” question. Dungeon movement is rapid, you will rarely find yourself plodding along down long corridors to nothing. And one of the best parts of the game is the balancing. You will NOT have to level-grind. Enemies in new areas are more difficult, but not in to an insurmountable degree like some games (I’m looking at you, Star Ocean).

One of the other story elements that is fun to play with is the recruitment. A large portion of the plot focuses around the “108 Stars of Destiny”, and each character you recruit represents a star. That means that there are 108 recruit-able characters! As you recruit, characters will give you bonuses, opening shops in your castle, bringing in new items, helping you in combat, or even to recruit more new characters. The downside to this is that you have roughly 60 combat-able bodies, and only 6 available combat slots. Also, your out-of-party members do not gain experience, often leaving them anywhere from 5-20 levels behind! Luckily, the game’s balancing of experience is very good as well, and your characters will be mostly caught up if you just toss on a little equipment and baby them for 2-3 battles.

Another feature worth noting is Suikoden‘s length. Most RPGs of its time clocked out somewhere between 40 and 60 hours, making them a serious undertaking, and at times even a chore. Suikoden‘s story can be pounded through in under 20 hours! And though the story is simplistic, you won’t find it lacking at all because of the hours logged. That being said, there is a lot you’d be missing if you just blaze through, a lot of people to meet and places to see, but even after you’ve totally completed the game, you’ll still be under 30 hours. Suikoden makes for light gameplay with the traditional RPG feel.

Graphics

Not much to write home about by today’s standards, basic grainy sprite animation that was pretty common in the mid-90s. Some of the spell effects are decent, but the sprites in the full-scale war battles are truly awful to behold. Character dialogue is accompanied by clear anime-type faces to go with the characters and their moods, which adds to the game significantly. Level designs are clear and detailed though.

Sound

Background music soundtrack is EXCELLENT. One thing you are guaranteed to notice about this game is the music. It is all very well orchestrated and usually fits the mood extremely well. Combat sounds are a series of crashes, bashes, and pops that fit well with the graphical design of the game. Combat sounds change depending on the type and the element of the attack. The only sound complaint I have is that the actual combat BGM can be a bit tiresome after a long dungeon.

Overall

Great game. Can’t say it enough. Memorable characters, light but immersive gameplay, and a fantastic soundtrack, Suikoden will not be a regretted gaming experience. A playthrough of Suikoden can be anything you want it to be.

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Image: William Shatner Has Been cover art. Copyright Shout! Factory.

Bill Shatner has done a lot for the world. His portrayal of Captain James Tiberius Kirk has inspired generations of nerds, giving us indispensable modern day items like cell phones and personal computers. His hammy acting and halted delivery have birthed countless parodies, including Futurama‘s unforgettable Zapp Brannigan. Shatner’s willingness to promote seemingly any company that throws him a few bucks has popularized everything from a travel discount website to All-Bran cereal.

Given all those achievements, it’s easy to underestimate Shatner’s greatest gift to humanity: bringing joy to the world through song. In this article I will take an ear-melting odyssey through Shatner’s 40+ years of musical splendour, counting down the performer’s seven finest masterpieces.

7. William Shatner and Lin Yu Chun cover “Total Eclipse of the Heart”

We begin at the present, with Shatner’s inspired duet with Taiwan’s Susan Boyle, Lin Yu Chun. The two teamed up to perform an Earth-shifting rendition of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” on April 21, 2010′s episode of Lopez Tonight.

6. “Rocket Man”

Next, we venture all the way back to the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards, where Bill performed his world-famous spoken word rendition of Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” The song-murdering performance ranks among the most amusing attempts at entertainment ever performed by man. Shatner’s implication that he, being Captain Kirk, is the real rocket man, is profound to say the least.

5. A spoken word version of a rap song: “The Real Slim Shady”

Shatner blessed humanity in 2002 by playing himself in television’s finest half hour ever, that being the Futurama episode “Where No Fan Has Gone Before.” I can only assume the actual clip has been posted and removed from YouTube numerous times, and so the above clip will have to do. William’s performance ends with Walter Koenig reflecting “How can you do a spoken word version of a rap song?” To which Star Trek hyper fan Melllvar responds “He found a way.”

4. “No Tears For Caesar”

Bill didn’t bother slowing himself down to spoken-word speed for his epic performance of “No Tears For Caesar” at the conclusion of the criminally underrated 1998 film Free Enterprise. No, Shatner flat-out rapped Mark Antony’s speech from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

3. “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”

Shatner’s music career began with his album The Transformed Man. The 1968 record featured readings from Shakespeare interspersed with galaxy-transmogrifying spoken-word covers of songs like “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

2. “Mr. Tambourine Man”

The highest-high of Shatner’s first album was surely his cover of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” in which Bill sounds to be recklessly screaming for help from the Tambourine Man while in the throes of death.

1. Shat-man covers “Common People.”

Although William Shatner’s musical career continues to “warp” along, it’s hard to argue that Kirk will ever top his album Has Been. The 2004 master work, a collaboration between Shatner and Ben Folds, explored the depths of Bill’s long life. The LP kicked off with Shatner belting out a cover of Pulp’s “Common People” with Joe Jackson. No song has inspired me to make a drunken ass of myself more often.

What’s your favourite William Shatner musical performance? Any classics I missed? Let me know in the comments section below.

Waiting 5 minutes for Firefox to start up is never fun

Keeping your computer running fast is always important, especially for gamers. Let me take you on a speedy walkthrough of my weekly computer cleansing ritual that keeps my PC quick and healthy. I’ll show you some tips and tricks to keeping your computer running optimized without having to pay for any software.

Step 1: Uninstall programs you know you never use
Come on people, this isn’t that hard. Haven’t played WoW in a year and a half? Just uninstall it! You can download it (for free) later! Never use that free audio editing software you tried out 6 months ago? Get rid of it! You can always download it (for free) later! Uninstalling useless shit off your hard drive is definitely one of the best ways to keep your computer running efficiently.

There is no use holding on to old programs you never use and can readily reinstall them again if you suddenly need them again. Don’t forget to delete the install files as well, if you have them.

Step 2: Remove unnecessary system files & restore points
The next thing I do to make sure my computer is running fast is remove any extra data that I don’t need. Freeing up space on your hard drive will ensure your computer will be running super fast. To do this, simply go to the Disk Cleanup tool in your Control Panel. After it’s calculated how much it can clean off your computer, switch to the More Options tab. At the bottom there will be a System Restore Clean Up button, which will remove all but the most recent restore point. Go ahead and run that. After it’s finished, go back to the Disk Cleanup tab and check everything off and hit Okay.

Step Three: Clean out your registry
Your registry is just a huge database that your system, programs, and devices use to store different bits of information. Now that you’ve uninstalled that crap you never use, cleaning up your registry means that unused or corrupted registry data that was left behind gets taken out.

Some might call cleaning your registry unnecessary, I however think you might as well do it. Cleaning up stray DLLs and reg files might not give a great performance boost if you do it regularly, but I’m sure these little problems add up over time. As you install and uninstall programs or devices often they don’t automatically clean themselves up. Check out this great Lifehacker article for more information.

If you do choose to clean out your registry from time to time, make sure to back it up, either by creating a System Restore Point or using a program that will back it up automatically, like CCleaner.

Step Four: Check your startup settings
When you first turn your computer on, your system can sometimes crawl because a large number of programs are starting up at once. You want to minimize the number of programs that autostart.

To check what programs are run automatically at startup run msconfig.exe. Click Start -> Run -> and then type msconfig.exe. Switch to the startup tab and uncheck any unnecessary or suspicious looking executables.

Step Five: Defragging
The last thing I do is make sure my computer is defragged. Over time, data on your harddrive gets added, removed, and moved around. Defragging simply optimizes where the data on your hard drive is located, so that your computer can access it faster. Windows7 has a nice, quick defragger that you can schedule regularly. The built-in defrag tools on Vista and older Window OSes are super slow and I recommend you download a free defragger like Defraggler or Auslogics Disk Defrag.

Make sure your computer virus scanner only runs when you aren’t using it
This may seem like a no-brainer, but some people aren’t aware that this could cause a system slowdown. If you run your virus scanner regularly, don’t set it to run when you know you’ll be on your computer. Set it to 5am Wednesday morning, just make sure you leave your PC on the night before. Having it run can drop your frame rates in-game tremendously, and hog a ton of CPU. There is no need for you to ever be around when it runs.

Every so often check for Spyware and Adware
Sometimes when you browse the internet, regardless of the browser, you may pickup spyware or adware. SpyBot is a great, free program to get rid of these malicious files, although I recommend leaving TeaTimer and SDHelper OFF for optimal performance. You don’t need to run Spybot as often as the other system clean up tools, once every couple of months should be more than enough. Unless you look at a ton of pron.

Install a browser plug-in like NoScript
Speaking of pron, if you regularly visit sketchy sites or do a lot of online shopping or banking, it might be wise to install something like NoScript, which automatically turns off any scripts or flash until you approve them. While this won’t speed up your performance directly, having this installed will prevent any unknown scripts from running in your browser, ensuring that you won’t get hijacked by any malicious netcrap. It take a little while to get used to approving your regular and trusted sites, but after using it for a few weeks you won’t even notice it. An added bonus is it blocks a lot of (but not all) advertisements.

Don’t pay for any computer optimization tools
Because someone out there makes a better one for free. Let me know your favorites programs in the comments below and I can add them.

This concludes my handy Computer Optimization Guide. I try to do the main five steps once every week, and encourage you to do the same. If your computer is still running dismally slow after following these tips, it’s probably time to upgrade your hardware or reinstall a fresh copy of your OS.

Images: Windows 7. Copyright Microsoft.

Shufflingdead.com contributor and video editor Sulci, hard at work.

For those of us blessed with a computer and the internet at work, there is nothing more satisfying than having a few spare moments to scroll through the day’s important updates on the old RSS feeder. Today’s News stories, Youtube videos and that weekly update from that one webcomic that you would never remember to check otherwise, all ready for your viewing pleasure.

These critical updates maybe not be enough to keep you busy throughout your working day, however. So to keep the day interesting, sometimes we have to fill in the gaps, so to speak, and fill out our feeders with other interesting content.

I have compiled, for your reference and potential time wasting pleasure, a list of some of the feeds that I can’t believe I read everyday. But that I might as well read, because that way, when I check every 5 minutes during my busy day, I’ll at least have something to read.

10. Awkward Boners: Full of pictures of awkward boners. Seriously. Pretty safe work. I imagine that a few of them are staged, but a lot of them are just snapshots that look quite authentic. Classy.
9. There, I Fixed It: Sometimes stupid, sometimes quite innovative… Mind blowing, breathtaking DIY photos of everything and anything. Instructions not included.
8. People Of Wal~Mart: Sometimes this site seems to just be a collection of overweight people shopping at Wal~Mart, but sometimes there are some genuinely weird and awkward moments captured in Wal~Marts all across the United States.
7. Crazy Things Parents Say: Just like the title implies, its a collection of funny quotes that kids post after hearing horrifying things that their parents talk about.
6. Cute Overload: The definitive website for cute animal pictures and videos. This site has been around forever and even has its own line of merchandise. I should know, I own the 365 page calender.
5. Black & WTF: This site is a real gem. On it you’ll find crazy black and white photographs, both new and old. Almost all of them will make you take a second look. Just a warning however, some of the photos are not safe for work. If you have a job like mine, they are safe.
4. Cracked.com: The ultimate time wasting list site. Not only will you manage to waste hours and hours going through these lists, you will also learn things which can help you make small chat with your fellow bored co-workers.
3. Fail Blog: If someone or something has failed and somehow it was recorded on tape or video, you know you can find it here.
2. Know Your MEME: Another hidden jewel of the interwebs, Know Your Meme will educate you in all things meme, ensuring that you will always be in the know and that you will understand why people are laughing when topics like snorting cinnamon on Youtube or “Where the Hell is Matt?” come up.
1. Texts From Last Night and F My Life: TFLN and FML are probably two of the most popular RSS feeds you’ll find in the workplace. The biggest advantage of these feeds is how often new content is added. I’m sure a lot of the stories that get posted are fake, but a lot of them are pretty funny. But seriously, updated all the time, for you 5 minute checkers.

Well folks, that about wraps up the list. There is just one more, highly secret, RSS to mention here: the Shufflingdead feed. That’s where you’ll find daily updates on all the most important stories, not to mention the best writing on the internet.

I would like to thank my charming and internet savvy co-workers for providing most of these links, making my job a much more satisfying place to be.

Recently, former Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment (DICE) co-founder, and head of Antic Entertainment Fredrik Liliegren garnered serious criticism when he called the Wii a “virus.” That included Shufflingdead, we made him our Shameful Human of that week.

Mr. Liliegren has agreed to an interview with Shufflingdead with the hopes of clarifying his comments.

I think your initial comment about the Wii being a “virus” has been taken out of context by many. Can you clear up what you meant by that term specifically?

The analogy that I used stating the Wii is like a virus, was in reference to how I think a lot of the sales of Wii Systems has happened. I think a lot of people showed up at someone’s house, they had the Wii out and played some games (most likely Wii Sports) thought “wow this is cool and different!” and went out and bought one, played a few rounds of Wii sports, possibly with some other friends whom did the same thing, Looked at it and said “wow this is cool and different!” and went and bought one as well. So the Virus spreads, but it’s not that contagious, because most of these people viewed the Wii as a Toy and bought it as a Toy not a games machines, thus have not continued to play with it other than occasionally, and most likely have not bought any “serious” games or many other games for it (hence the small tie ratio for Wii software).

In your “Wii is a Virus!” post on your blog, you say the Wii is “more of a toy then a Games machine,” but you also acknowledge that the system has some great games. What is the difference between a toy that plays games and a games machine?

Once again it’s in the perception of the buyer where the reference is done. The Wii is viewed but a lot of Wii Owners as a Toy, something you take out and play with occasionally, it was never bought to be a Games machine, something you engage with more focused and on a more frequent basis. I think that’s why a lot of more traditional “games” has failed miserably on the Wii cause the audience is not interested in that experience. The problem is that the experience they might be interested in is much harder to market.

How would you feel about developing games for the Wii? Do you consider the system riskier for small developers than other systems because of its more “casual” base?

I would develop on the Wii if I had the financial backing of someone else and an IP I thought was attractive to the “mass” consumer that the Wii has attracted. We have considered the Wii for some of our own internal IP but not yet reached the conclusion that it would be worth the financial risk. I do think that the opportunity is greater for a smaller game developer on the Wii then the other platforms due to its lower barrier of entry but on the other hand it is harder targeting that consumer with your marketing and PR.

The expectation of ever-higher production values, especially on HD consoles, seems to be a real hindrance for small developers. Are the perceptions of PS3 and 360 owners not also an issue?

To a certain extent but then you have titles like castle crashers that did phenomenally well, So to a certain extent I think you have two levels of quality the Boxed product quality and the online only quality. And as with all markets, once they start getting big enough they will attract bigger players that can raise that quality bar, and thus the push out the smaller developers. The same thing is now happening on the Social game scene as well when EA (Playfish), Zynga etc can throw large amounts of money at a product and just make it look and feel and play better, thus competition is now fierce in that space as well.

You contend that many traditional games have failed on the Wii due to the system’s “mass” audience, but I’ve long felt that such games have struggled because publishers and developers don’t put the same kind of money and effort into their Wii games that they do for other systems. For example, the system often receives spin-offs and ports of old games rather than new entries in popular franchises. Do you see this as also being a part of the problem?

It’s a little bit of a chicken and egg problem, people see that a lot of titles do not sell much at all (mostly because they suck!) so they feel hesitant to risk a lot of cash on an unproven thing so they do another me to product or simply don’t invest enough into their title to lift it above the competition. There is always opportunity available for a high production quality product to stand out if you are willing to take the risk BUT (and it s a big but) you have to really know your audience and how to communicate your product offering to them, which is the hard part on the Wii.

What is the future of gaming? Is it browser-based or downloadable?

I believe gaming as a broad market (package gods, MMO, Casual, Iphone, Browser, social) has never been in a better shape as a creator, there are just so many avenues right now to put a product in front of people it’s crazy. I think we are finally seeing the major shift onto digital media (distribution) and Social and Mobile (consumption), I don’t think next gen major titles are going to go away, but the growth moving forward I believe is in Web based development (be it Social or portal based) as well as Mobile (Iphone). The business model that will in the end rule it all is Free-2-Play with micro transactions. Why? because the gap in experience between a paid upfront and free 2 play title will only narrow, so a user that can get experience A for free versus the slightly better paid for experience B will choose in greater numbers experience A due to its lower barrier of entry (aka free).

Let’s talk about Antic Entertainment. From a design perspective, what does “casual games for the hardcore player” mean?

it means offering the high quality play experience from the console space that is considered hardcore and serving it up to the users in a casual play setting (short play cycles, free 2 play) on the web or on mobile devices.

Tell us about Junk Battles!

Junk: battles is our launch title for Antic Entertainment. It’s a free 2 play, web absed product available at www.junkbattles.com. In short it’s about Collecting, Building and battling. You collect parts or “junk” in our world thru different play mechanics and with these parts you construct different vehicles with different abilities, you then take these vehicles into the world to do PvP battles, questing etc to gain rank, level and fame and fortune!

I’d like to thank Fredrik for taking time out of his busy schedule to clarify his comments. I think this has been a great insight into the mind of a game developer. To my readers: how do you feel about the “Wii is a virus” comment now? Still bothered by it?

Have a look at this video (note: NSFW due to anime tits), it’s called “Akihabara Majokko Princess,” and stars Kirsten Dunst singing “Turning Japanese” while she visits Tokyo dressed as a magical school girl. The video was directed by McG, and was produced by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.

At first glance, the video appears to be a fun, Japan love session from the perspective of a western visitor, with the Dunst character having found the place of her dreams. Having watched the video an unhealthy amount of times at this point, however, I think there’s significantly more to it than that. I view the piece as telling the story of a westerner enamoured with an imaginary Japanese culture constructed in the west and existing in her head. The Dunst character from the early parts of the video may also be representative of the west more broadly.

Dunst is dressed up as a truly outlandish “magical schoolgirl,” and that may seem like the perfect get-up for fitting in in Akihabara, but if you pay attention to the people she’s interacting with, no one is even close to her level of insanity. The video opens with people getting on the train for work, and, I think importantly, a young man yawning. These things indicate to me that this is every day life in Tokyo, and the people living there enjoy themselves as much/as little as people living anywhere else. Enter Dunst: she struts around like she “gets” this place, and immediately starts acting like a total lunatic while a bunch of very bored locals look on. At one point, she even chases around an old guy in a grey suit who appears to have no interest in her shenanigans. The whole thing is reminiscent of a person who doesn’t get the “tone” of a party, walks in, starts slamming drinks and screaming while everyone else just feels put off.

Eventually, the Dunst character gets a few people to play along with her antics. This includes some street performers wearing track suits and masks from western entertainment (like Dobby!), and some random girls who look like they got pulled out of their jobs at maid cafes. These scenes contribute to the “fun” outer layer of the video, but they also illustrate another misunderstanding by the Dunst character. Our magical schoolgirl and the others are dancing around in the middle of a wide open road while dozens, if not hundreds, of “normal” people look on from the sidewalk. These events suggest that while the wacky elements of Japanese culture which the Majokko Princess wants so badly to be real do exist, they are smaller and less pervasive than she has imagined them to be.

The significance of the song Turning Japanese should not be overlooked. As Zeek Slider points out, “the cliché of East meets West is a rabid as herpes in this video.” Japanese and western popular culture intermingle and double back on each other in the video, with a Japan fused with western culture (see: the Dobby mask) being visited by a white girl seeking a place outside of the west. Her fetishising of Japan mirrors a past (or is that present?) fetishising of the west by Japan.

At about 3:15 into the video, Dunst falls to her knees while the camera pans around, but the street around her is empty and grey. She appears to be deluded, her body language suggests she is enraptured, and she exclaims “turning Japanese I really think so,” as though she has finally made it, she has become Japanese and it is exactly as she imagined it to be. Sadly, no one is around her, she still doesn’t “get” the culture which she desires so badly to be a part of, and she is missing the fact that she’s still living a masturbatory reimagining of Japanese culture invented in the west.

The video is spliced with scenes in a white room of Dunst playing with some colourful plush toys. At some point, these objects assemble to form a giant living toy, seemingly thanks to the magic of Dunst’s wand. The two characters dance around this room, having fun, until the end, when Dunst waves her wand one last time and makes her friend disappear. The symbolism should be obvious: the room is the princess’ imagination, she created this make-believe friend for herself, and the friend represents the Japan of the Majokko Princess’ dreams. When Dunst finally puts an end to her imaginary friend, it may be that she has now seen the real Japan and matured past her fantasy. The video suggests that the west need only visit Japan to find that the country is not so deserving of othering, and that the two cultures are not so different.

[image source]

sulci: I always pick Ulala in Sega Superstar Tennis for DS. As for cosplay, I think we all have to admit that the girl is pretty hot, and that her costume is very well done.

Newbs: Now this is the kind of cosplay I like to see. Asian broads wearing pink wigs and shorts skirts is pretty much my number one fetish. I approve heartily of this particular example, and thoroughly enjoy objectifying this lovely young lady.

sulci: Thigh highs, short shorts, high cut tops. I’m sure this is another stunning example of what Newbs likes to see in cosplay. Apparently this guy, “Man-Faye” is uber famous in the cosplay world.

Newbs: This is pretty much the opposite of the preceding picture, and represents everything wrong with cosplay today. First of all, this is a man, goddamn it, and I can’t do anything with pictures of men! The only redeeming quality of this guy is that he’s dressed as Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop, and she was pretty stylin’.

sulci: Aaah, Blood Elves from WOW, the first really nice looking playable characters for the Horde side (aside from that one troll face) ladies. Aside from the slightly off-putting foot long ears, and the fact that the lady here is wielding a blade instead of magic, it’s a decent attempt at probably the most over-cosplayed race. Where are the trolls, damnit???

Newbs: I don’t know what the fuck sulci is talking about. All I see is another fine Elf that I wouldn’t mind impaling with my +8 mithril sword. I was, at first, uncomfortable with the giant pointy ears, but I’m starting to think they could be useful in the barracks.

sulci: What the fuck is this. I don’t know what game she is from, or why she appears to only have one leg, but it is pretty disturbing. Plus her latex (I assume), if you look closely, has sweat stains or something on it. I guess from far away it’s a pretty cute costume (aside from the leg thing), and the hat looks well crafted. But why is it a different colour? And is she yawning or laughing? I’m so confused!!!

Newbs: sulci, I don’t think you’re showing enough respect for Midna, of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess fame. First of all, those aren’t sweat stains, that’s where I drooled all over her. She’s got a white foot that blends in with the harshly lit ground, and her helmet is the colour of a damn helmet. Now stop whining and start fantasizing about this tight piece of Hylian ass.

sulci: Now this is a cosplay I can appreciate. The three main characters from Death Note, Misa Amane, Light Yagami, and the notorious L. Stoic faces and emo-inspired costumes from a pretty good manga series results in an A from me.

Newbs: What the fuck is this bullshit? I can’t beat off to this OR make fun of it. These guys are from some anime series? Who cares! Let’s get back to the sexy ladies.

sulci: Ok No0bz, last one then. Here is a fine example of cosplay from a classic game. Look, he is even holding a ring. That’s fucking authentic. Still not sure if it’s a girl or a boy though, but I’m pretty sure the real Sonic was a lot flatter. So, what do you say Newbs? Gonna jack off to that?

Newbs: I reserve judgment on masturbatory value until after deciding if this hideous thing is a man or a woman. I think I see some breasts, but that is an awfully strong jawline. I also have to wonder why this human has chosen to only paint half of his/her face, forcing me to see so much of the hideous face that lies beneath this sad attempt at an anthropomorphic abomination. I can’t stand to look any longer, let’s end this thing here.

As of the first day of 2010, it is illegal to speak blasphemy in Ireland. The law was passed in July of 2009, but came into effect just in time for New Year’s. It seems to be a bit of a touchy subject, as the “rules” to the law is that the blasphemy must “intentionally cause outrage” amongst followers of the religion that is targeted. Mind you, at least they’ve broadened to all religions and not just Christianity.

One has to wonder how they enforce such a law. The law that states blasphemy as “publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted”. How would they rate outrage? What number is substantial? And how will they find out if the impact was at all intentional?

There have been many books and comics and speeches made by some by the right of free speech that have offended many people, and sometimes the offense spreads worldwide. The infamous Danish political cartoon, depicting the Muslim prophet Mohammed, caused a worldwide outrage among Muslims. Yet in Ireland, Muslims make up a very small two percent of the population. If not all of them are outraged, that amount of people is even less than two percent. That’s less than 84,000 people in a country of more than four million. And who knows how much less? It really depends on how devout and how political the Muslims in Ireland are. Is that enough people to offend to arrest someone for blasphemy? What about very small religious minorities?

The impact caused by that cartoon, by Kurt Westergaard of Denmark, was slightly unforeseen and certainly not intentional. You know, unless he wanted all the death threats and physical assaults on his person. He had people break into his home, and was targeted by al-Qaida. Surely he must be punished under the anti-blasphemy law as well.

What about simple disagreement in religious belief? Seeing as Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the saviour of all mankind, they will hold that belief. But if a person is Jewish, they do not believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah. So are a Jewish person’s openly expressed beliefs blasphemous to a Christian and vice-versa? Where is the fine line that decides?

Ironically enough, many countries still have blasphemy laws. Like Canada. We still have an anti-blasphemy law in our criminal code. But no one has been prosecuted for blasphemy in a good seventy years! Shouldn’t our “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication” granted to us through the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms override that law? Apparently not, unless your blasphemy is “express[ed] in good faith and in decent language, or [while] attempting to establish by argument used in good faith and conveyed in decent language, an opinion on a religious subject.” Good luck with that.

To conclude my look back at the soul crushing 2000s, I will now review American politics for the decade.

I call this the decade of the conservative talking point. Through the use of the talking point, Republicans and conservatives managed to entirely dominate American political discourse this decade, and as a result, rendered reality woefully irrelevant. The ability for conservatives to control the media, as they so overwhelmingly did, allowed them to carry out the most heinous acts and behave at best indifferently, and at worst callously, toward many of the very people who elected them. The decade of the conservative talking point was the decade in which reason, truth, and reality ceased to matter; these things were replaced by emotion, lies, and distortion within the popular consciousness of the American people.

The decade began with the inauguration of George W. Bush, and with his dictatorial administration came an eight year rule from hell in which personal freedoms were rescinded, religiously inspired hate and ignorance became acceptable in the mainstream, a war was blundered, another war was waged needlessly, an American city was allowed to be destroyed, and the destruction of the world’s economy was engineered and overseen.

Bush’s reign as overlord shit-fucker was helped along by snowballing power of the right-wing media. Fox News rose to prominence early on in the administration’s life, and with it came a 24 hour a day propaganda machine which not only promoted the administration through traditional blatant (enthusiastic pro-war support) and subtle (mislabeling shamed Republicans as Democrats) means but through a wholesale manipulation of the discourse of the entire country. Conservatives on Fox News, right-wing radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Bush administration officials were able to collaborate on a relentless push against mainstream discourse, shoving it forcefully to the right, and in so doing, shifting the centre radically into their political camp. Suddenly, torture didn’t seem so radical; neither did unjustified war, nor the dismissal of scientific research.

Conservatives were able to eschew reality itself, ignore the hard truth of unsustainable economic policies, the lack of weapons of mass destruction, and the absence of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. The truth was that those truths no longer mattered; only the opinions of conservatives repeated ad nauseam by right-wing talk radio hosts, Fox News personalities, and White House officials. Eventually, any lie, repeated enough times, started to seem like the truth for the public at large. The extent of this power allowed Bush to be reelected in 2004 despite the Iraq war having already been needlessly launched. And although it did not technically get another Republican elected in 2008, it has allowed their ideals to continue to dominate the decision making process, even under a Democratic administration, as I will later discuss.

During a press conference in Baghdad, on December 14th, 2008, a man named Muntadhar al-Zaidi managed to chuck his shoes at the outgoing President Bush. The act symbolized the sentiment of much of the world, even those in the United States who had once supported Bush. It was a great farewell “fuck you” to a president who managed an eight year reign of terror which paired simultaneous Machiavellian genius with ignorant, bumbling stupidity.

November of 2008 saw the election of Barack Obama as the successor to Bush. In many ways, Obama’s campaign promised an anti-Bush, an administration, we were told, which would work for the people, with openness. Decisions would be made cautiously and with consideration for their consequences, personal liberties would be restored, the public would be put ahead of corporations, etc. In other words, reality and responsibility would replace misinformed idealism and corporate handjobs. As the decade closes, one year into the Obama administration, there is little evidence of these promises being met. Some things have changed, the arrogant swagger of the Republicans has been replaced by the stooped pussy-hood of the Democrats, but the results are the same: corporations get what they want (see: the absence of a public option in health care reform), and right-wing radio whiners get what they want (see: the ongoing operation of Guantanamo Bay).

The 2008 election saw the rise of another political personality named Sarah Palin. Palin lost the election, of course, and some time afterward she also quit her position as Governor of Alaska. Somehow, despite no longer having any legitimate role in politics in the country, Palin continues to be a major player in controlling the decision making process of politicians in America. She popularized the term “death panels” as relating to health care reform, and threw the debate wildly off course for some time because of it, for example. The 2000s, the decade of the conservative talking point, have, at their conclusion, given birth to a monster of unimaginable power.

Politicians no longer even need to be in office to have power, they merely have to get their words on TV, and those words will be replayed, discussed, obsessed over, and even marveled at, and somehow, those words will carry with them such tremendous power that they will go on to run roughshod over the words of real politicians, and ultimately these non-politicians will have managed to exert power without having to even be officially elected. The decade saw the rise of conservative media, and over time that conservative voice became so pervasive that it no longer even seemed conservative, but the norm within public discourse. Now, Palin’s words are treated as gospel by this newly remade media, a media which perpetuates the myth of a false majority of an ultra-right population.

The 2000s close with an American president noticeably less awful than the one they opened with, and yet one not really any better, either. Conservatives now almost wholly control the media, and they use that power to perpetuate their twisted, misinformed, and greedy ideals. As a new decade begins, the United States appears to be entering a second decade under the banner of the conservative talking point, and Karl Rove’s dream of the permanent Republican majority, while not literally real, has essentially been created.

Hidden by the long shadow of the PS2, two other company’s consoles eked out their lives. Microsoft nurtured a small but deadly force for evil under the X-Box banner which would mature six years later and be called the 360. Nintendo kept quality gaming alive with its GameCube and GameBoy Advance systems, carefully plotting revenge against the game industry’s interlopers.

Microsoft’s November 2005 attack seemed to be the stuff of madness: each 360 was designed to fail, and precious resources were wasted crashing against Sony’s impregnable Japanese stronghold. Nevertheless, the 360 managed to strike hard at Sony’s North American operation and wound Sony deeply. Nintendo worked from within Japan to weaken Sony through the handheld front: the DS launched in November of 2004 and quietly began to heal the Sony infected. Two years later, Nintendo would make its true intentions clear with one of the most honourable acts in gaming history. They forged a godslayer console called Wii, and in November of 2006, the struck Sony down, ending the reign of the PS2 and easily casting aside Sony’s puny counterattack, the PS3.

With Sony gone, Nintendo has spent the remainder of the decade battling Microsoft. Although untouchable in Japan, Nintendo continues to deal with the brainwashed American gamers and their lust for bald space marines.

Best System of the Decade: Nintendo DS

In the 2000s, Nintendo released numerous impeccable systems, but the DS, with its deep library of innovative games, stands tallest. Onlookers lacking in respect for Nintendo’s divine vision at first questioned the design decisions of the system. With two screens, a touch screen, and a microphone, the DS was like nothing before it, but Nintendo’s team of worship-worthy game designers found exciting new gameplay in every corner.

Whether it was drawing on maps in Zelda, blowing off sludge in Mario Kart, or tapping for speed in Kirby, gamers witnessed the definition of fun wherever Nintendo took them on the DS.

Worst System of the Decade: X-Box 360

The evil of the PS2 is undeniable, but at least the console succeeded in part because of quality, rather than pure market manipulation. I have selected the 360 as the worst system of the decade because a system’s value is ultimately decided by its software library and hardware reliability.

The 360 is host to nothing but the worst in gaming: a library of overhyped, uninspired shooters featuring muscle-bound, shaved head space marines with a lust for alien blood. The system is designed for 20-something-year-old men with too much money, desperate to prove their own masculinity. They have been trained by Microsoft to replace designed-to-break 360s as frequently as every few months, just to play games with perceived manliness like Gears of War.

Best Game of the Decade: Super Mario Galaxy

It goes without saying that the best game of the decade should go to something made by Nintendo. The developer has spent the decade innovating with a stream of brilliantly crafted systems and games. The Nintendo systems of the decade, the GameCube, GBA, Wii, and DS all did their share in fighting the war against thick-necked fratboy influence. However, as I have argued, it was the Wii which ultimately took back the industry and reintroduced quality to the masses.

Super Mario Galaxy was released in 2007 and proved to the world that Mario was still one of the great game franchises around, it was fun to play, fun to look at, and oozed innovative gameplay from every mushroom and Star Bit. Galaxy was Nintendo’s startling, revolutionary pronouncement to the world: “motion controls are here, they work, they’re awesome, and space marines can fucking suck it.”

Worst Game of the Decade: Halo: Combat Evolved

Released on my seventeenth birthday, way back in 2001, Halo: Combat Evolved legitimized that absurd Microsoft venture known as the X-Box. Through sheer marketing force, this uninspired Goldeneye clone snowballed through popular consciousness to become something revered, buzzed about, and sought after. It kept the X-Box alive for months while nothing else of note came out for the system, and allowed Microsoft to slowly grow mindshare for its console among frat boys and all the other morons of North America.

The game has done more to damage the industry than any other. It was the lone agent which infiltrated the industry for Microsoft, propped the door open, and waved all of its space-marine buddies in for one destructive party. It created today’s standard for “hardcore” (that is to say, idiot-approved) games: a big budget, space marines, guns, and unoriginal gameplay.

]]> http://shufflingdead.com/articles/games/the-2000s-in-games.php/feed 0 http://shufflingdead.com/articles/popculturepain/the-2000s-in-popular-entertainment.php http://shufflingdead.com/articles/popculturepain/the-2000s-in-popular-entertainment.php#comments Fri, 25 Dec 2009 04:44:53 +0000 Newbs http://shufflingdead.com/?p=3242 We are quickly coming to the end of this abhorrent little decade known occasionally as “the two-thousands” or “the naughties.” As such, I thought I would throw together a series of articles discussing the best and worst of 2000-2009. This week, I bring you the decade in Popular Entertainment, excluding games, which I will cover in their own article. Please note: I have said Popular Entertainment, which means that I realize Harry Potter is not the actual best book of the decade.

Best Movie of the Decade: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

In a decade wrought with unnecessary remakes, sequels to perfectly good trilogies, and movies based on toy brands, the LotR trilogy stood as a beacon of hope for fans of fantasy, epic blockbusters, and literature.

I’ve chosen to honour The Fellowship of the Ring specifically because it can stand for the other two as well, and I consider it the best of the trilogy anyway. Fellowship blew the nerd hive mind in 2001 when we were introduced to this picture perfect representation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s seminal work.

Worst Movie of the Decade: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

There were so many awful movies this decade, including two Cheaper by the Dozens, two Twilights, and two Transformers. Ultimately, I’ve chosen RotF not just because it is itself bad (which it is, thoroughly one of the most cringe-worthy films I’ve ever encountered), but because it also represents so much of what was wrong with this decade, both in film and as a whole.

The film is utterly unoriginal: a sequel to a film based on a line of toys. The story isn’t so much told as vomited clumsily onto the screen as a series of absurdities meant to entertain people with a phobia for thinking. The movie offers up explosions, talking robots, humping dogs, racism, awkward drug humour, American flag waving, and Republican talking points in a clusterfuck of stupidity so choked with lazy filmmaking that its success proclaims for the world the brain-death of the film-going audience. Looking back at that list though, I can’t help but feel those things kind of represent the 2000s themselves. That’s why Revenge of the Fallen is the worst film of the decade: it is the decade in all its lowest-common-denominator loving shame.

Best Book of the Decade: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The Harry Potter phenomenon may have begun with a novel published in 1997, but it climaxed in the 00s. Supporting the delirium was a sturdy frame of quality novels featuring well developed characters of both sexes, penned by an author with integrity.

Goblet of Fire was the first Harry Potter book of the decade, and perhaps the most important in the series. Starting with Goblet, Harry Potter books became monstrous tomes. Each massive volume was released to delirious fans who would take them home, devour them within a couple days, and then turn to the internet where they would puke them back out as increasingly erotic fan fiction and art. The whole thing was a genuinely fun time.

Worst Book of the Decade: Twilight

The 2000s featured a strange pairing of massive young adult book series: one which provided readers with respectable heroes called Harry Potter, and one which provided embarrassing, sexist, and archaic role models called Twilight.

Twilight‘s power in our culture is its worst aspect, young women read this shit and love it for some reason, seemingly unaware of the harmful gender expectations which they are absorbing. The novel features a weak female lead, Bella, submitting to her mysterious jerk-off boyfriend, Edward, at every opportunity.

Best Website of the Decade: Shufflingdead.com

Officially born June 17, 2001, Shufflingdead.com has become the go-to website for news, reviews, and humour relating to everything from Technology to Politics. With every careful keystroke, Shufflingdead Editor in Chief Newbs creates not just words, but revelations. When Shufflingdead speaks, the world listens and respectfully bows its head to the awesome power of this electric website.

In the 2000s, Shufflingdead has gone from humble Angelfire shithole to the most powerful media conglomerate in the universe: producing everything from webcomics to videos, all of which ooze undeniable gravitas and provide splendid amusement. Shufflingdead is all things to all people, and it is relentless in its violent conquering of human consciousness.

Worst Website of the Decade: MySpace.com

This was a difficult category. There are millions of terrible websites in the world, but few which anyone has really heard of. Of those which are broadly known, most possess vast amounts of shit produced by huge communities of users.

I’ve selected MySpace because it is a site which everyone has heard of and many have used, its reach is massive, it is supported by one of the giant media conglomerates (News Corp.) and yet it does not function in the least. MySpace is guilty of success despite total failure in its design. A typical MySpace profile contains broken code, obnoxious auto-playing music, animated gifs, and basically everything that was once associated with 90s Geocities sites. In 2009.

Best TV series of the Decade: Battlestar Galactica

Television changed in the 2000s, led by HBO shows like The Sopranos, the good stuff became great by adopting ongoing plotlines and harder-edged drama. The height of this trend came with the 2003-2009 sci-fi drama Battlestar Galactica. We were shown interesting characters who were actually affected by the events with which they were involved, and who acted like human beings instead of unflinching robots. Instead of being fed the same formulaic plotline each week, the audience was given a story which progressed, and sometimes a story which took unexpected, dark directions.

Worst TV series of the Decade: American Idol

With the 2000s, television split, the good half became things like Battlestar Galactica, the bad half became the awful half, became the unbearable half. As the decade dawned, a new television program named Survivor began, and with it came the birth of reality TV. Survivor itself was not such a bad show; it was original when it started, it was engaging, and the people on it seemed real enough. As networks began to push more and more reality programming, the quality became lower and lower, once again, the race to the bottom was also the race to the greatest success. Fun shows like The Osbournes led to blatantly scripted un-reality shows like Gene Simmons Family Jewels.

The worst of this cancerous growth on television was, and continues to be, American Idol, because Idol is the powerhouse of reality TV that keeps the whole thing going. The show features lazy character arcs for its annual rotating cast, while its mainstays spout predictable catchphrases. The show is like the Home Improvement of reality television, with the characters behaving in the same manner each episode: Cowell is mean/Tim screws up, Tim talks to Wilson/Jackson says “dawg,” Jill accepts Tim’s apology/Paula is crazy.

Stay tuned for decade-end reviews of the best and worst in Games and Politics!

Newbs: We started out at the arcade. I found House of the Dead 4 to be quite greedy with my quarters.

Katte: Newbs died by the time I acquired my tokens.

Newbs: I had been to this theatre before, and so I knew they sold pickles. But then, when I tried to purchase one, I was informed they no longer carried them.

Katte: There was an old guy behind us who became very distraught when Newbs exclaimed “they don’t have any pickles?!”

Newbs: I felt like one half of a duo of bitter old men, like those two guys in the Muppets.

Newbs: Explain what things were like inside.

Katte: Well, first of all, the popcorn was very stale. And the bathroom… was literally full of shit.

Newbs: While watching the film, I heard an old man cough himself to death. Perhaps intentionally, as a means of escape from the quality of popular culture today. Someone in front of us, while we were heckling the moving picture, in a brash outburst, demanded “are you gonna talk the whole movie?”

Katte: So we talked more quietly, but by the end, she, just like everyone else, was heckling along with us.

Offending Moments

Katte: Unless you are one of those people who trawls for YouTube videos of dogs having sex, you won’t enjoy most of the opening sequence of this movie.

Newbs: I found the numerous dog humping scenes to be hilarious, educational, and inspirational.

Katte: Some of the scenes didn’t even make sense, though.

Newbs: They seemed to just be inserted at random, as though the film makers thought so little of their audience that they assumed any representation of dog fucking would automatically be funny.

Katte: There also seemed to be an inordinate amount of swearing. I’m not against swearing, but in comparison to the last movie in this series, based on children’s toys…

Newbs: Well, it just seemed to pop up in unnecessarily offensive places. For example, Mikaela gets called a bitch by a robot. He also called her dumb. Way to be a woman hating misogynist, Michael Bay.

Katte: Megan Fox really got all her sex-symbol status from being objectified in Transformers. So I’m not really sure what to say. She’s famous because Mikaela’s a good-looking skeezebag?

Newbs: No no, you’ve got her all wrong. She’s a beautiful and talented young girl who’s had a hard life with a deadbeat father. She just needs a strong boning.

Katte: I don’t think Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky could administer a strong boning.

Newbs: No, and neither could Bay’s representation of the Democrats.

Katte: I like how they added in the clip naming Obama as the current president.

Newbs: And then proceeded to inform us that Obama could only hide while “the worst terrorist attack since 9/11″ was going on. What was Bush doing on 9/11, again?

Newbs: Reading children’s stories.

Katte: Not to mention Obama’s representative amongst the armed forces was a total jerk-face. And a pussy.

Newbs: Or that “negotiating with the enemy” was an automatic recipe for failure and spelled destruction for humanity.

Catastrophically Offensive Moments

Katte: I am sure any mother, any woman, knows what a pot leaf looks like. So then why is Sam Witwicky’s mother such a dumbass? Not only that, but apparently a two six of hard liquor plus some prescription meds equals a pot brownie.

Newbs: I’m not qualified to say for certain, but her little trip seemed unrealistic for what marijuana supposedly does.

Katte: Extremely unrealistic. But to all the right-wing conservatives, it’s probably the perfect example of why the war on drugs is justified. Despite the fact she just looks drunk.

Newbs: Apparently, tasers are good clean fun.

Katte: Never mind all the people dying from being tasered, let’s tase each other’s nuts!

Newbs: And rape women with little robots.

Katte: Just in case you need the example of robot-leg copulation that this movie provides.

Newbs: My eyes were tea-bagged by the on-screen presence of Transformer BALLS.

Katte: Ah yes, good old “enemy scrotum.”

Characters

Newbs: The Leo Spitz character existed simply as a cheap parody of Shia LaBeouf from the first cinematic feature Transformers.

Katte: Obviously to prove how much spiffier, and generally more macho, the Sam Witwicky in this movie was than his former self.

Newbs: I was overcome with emotion when Sam grew up, as if before my eyes, through the engrossing character development that occurred during the course of the film.

Katte: The way characters interacted throughout was so terribly stilted, so terribly scripted, so terribly acted…it was just terrible. In general.

Newbs: Weren’t you moved when Sam realized he had to be a man, and his parents realized they had to let him go in order for him to grow up?

Katte: Not really. His parents played polar opposites at each end of the movie. His mother sniveled in the beginning and his father whined at the end.

Newbs: Racism.

Katte: I suppose what Newbs is trying to say, is that the only new Autobots introduced with any depth are racist representations.

Newbs: One of them couldn’t read! And they spoke in Ebonics! And one of them had a gold tooth! Jesus Christ. And gaps in their teeth!

Katte: They also had weird droopy eyes and they looked like rodents in their transformed state.

Plot

Newbs: This was half an hour of story stretched to nearly three hours.

Katte: The main fight, Optimus Prime vs. Transformer Voldemort, had two and a half hours of movie leading up to it and was over in a matter of seconds.

Newbs: Sam found that pile of dust, the Matrix of Leadership, awfully easily, considering it was supposed to be so well hidden that all the Fallen couldn’t find it. Somehow, him and his crew of specially abled robots just bumped into a wall and got it.

Katte: I especially enjoyed the moment where Sam died, but was disappointed and horrified when he awoke in the motherfucking robot afterlife. Then when he wakes back up in reality, robot magic! The Matrix is whole again. (After being smashed to smithereens of course).

Final Reactions

Newbs: I walked out doubting the survivability of the human race.

Katte: All I really heard from him was shouted expletives over how horrible of a movie it was.

Newbs: I’ve seen many bad movies, but I can usually laugh at them. This movie made me angry. I was horrified that such an aberration could even exist, let alone make so much money.

Katte: It was a terrible movie at a terrible theatre with no pickles. The company was sympathetic, at least.

Newbs: Thank you for the lovely evening.

There are 22 Bond theme songs, and all of them will thrill you. They begin with Dr. No and run straight down to last year’s Quantum of Solace. Not featured, although given an honourable mention, is The Simpson’s end credit song from “You Only Move Twice.”

To start, Monty Norman wrote the first Bond movie’s theme song. Dr. No’s title is really just James Bond’s theme song entitled “James Bond Theme.” Classic, vibrant, a blast to drive around to in the summer with the windows down and the top off. But it gets disqualified for not ushering the audience into the movie with hushed whispers about this mysterious man and his all-time foe. “From Russia with Love,” which was the first to have John Barry on as the bigwig soundtrack composer, is sung by Matt Munro. It’s slow, kind of romantic, and decidedly not Russian. More of a cross between Neil Diamond and gypsies. A nice song, but Munro sounds like he’s saying “Russi-er” most of the time and that dog won’t hunt. Sorry, FRwL, you’re a fine contender but lack that extra umph.

Goldfinger, he’s the man with the Midas touch! And you can hear Shirley Bassey’s wonderfully piercing voice tell you all about him. If you’re a pretty girl, this is required listening for staying alive. Honestly, this is the go-to for Bond songs– ridiculously dramatic, kind of jazzy, and even though it introduces the villain you can see how the words vaguely reflect Bond as well. A definite possibility for best Bond song, no doubt.

“Thunderball”– or “Thank you, Mr. Tom Jones.” Originally Shirley Bassey wrote the theme song for this movie entitled “Mr. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang,” but because the lyrics didn’t call for her belting out “THUNDERBALL” every five minutes, a producer demanded a different song. Most of the leitmotifs and musical themes were built around Bassey’s song but oh well. In Hollywood, any day any time, producers can STRIKE. …like THUNDERBALL.

Nancy Sinatra, whose voice cannot penetrate hardened concrete bunkers like Shirley Bassey’s, croons out the slow-going “You Only Live Twice.” It doesn’t sound very much like a Bond song, but it is a nice listen. All about love and danger, which fits the Bond world like a fine leather glove– but where are the tambourines? The jazz, the hip, the skit-skit-skidaddle? “Her Majesty’s Secret Service” tries to bring it back, but… well, it’s alright. John Barry wrote it in the sound of a Gilbert & Sullivan opera, which you can hear when listening, but because it lacks any lyrics whatsoever it’s hard to put it high on the list. Where are the references to spiders and poison lies? Eyes like diamonds that shoot the hope from your smiles?

John Barry told Shirley Bassey to sing “Diamonds are Forever” as if she was singing about a penis. The first lines of the song are “Diamonds are forever, they are all I need to please me; they can stimulate and tease me…” And these are all facts. Hard, rigid facts; unbendable and undeniable.

Wings sung “Live and Let Die.” And honestly, I’m kind of a Lennon man.

“The Man with the Golden Gun” is a pretty hilarious Bond song. It takes the title of the movie and continues on the premise that there is an assassin who has a literal gun made of gold. It’s pretty funny. Much like the next two decades or so of Bond films under Moore’s sappy, though surprisingly racist, family-friendly Bonds. “Nobody Does it Better” is the title song for The Spy Who Loved Me. It’s a slow, piano medley, and the atmosphere matches the movie pretty well. The lyrics are kind of inappropriate for a story about a rival spy who wants Bond dead due to the fact that he killed her husband. The song basically comes out and says “your husband was a punk and this ain’t a gun in my pocket right here.”

Moonraker is an awful movie with Shirley Bassey’s worst song. “Moonraker” is only a fun listen if you imagine that Shirley Bassey is singing about another penis. “For Your Eyes Only” isn’t the worst bond song, but it is the first one of the eighties. Basically, this song reminds me of Bond if he was a member of The Breakfast Club or if he really dug Dirty Dancing. “No one puts Pussy in a corner!”

“All Time High” is the theme song from Octopussy. It is the most un-Bond song here. Unless Bond just kicked a hippie out of a helicopter, its title is almost incomprehensible to me.

You know which Bond song is the worst? Duran Duran’s “A View to Kill.” It’s awful. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank,” you should recognize how shitty this song is. What the hell, Duran Duran? What’s with the whiny glam-rock? Do you think that sums up a cold-blooded killer doing the Queen’s work across this wide, crazy world? Bond would never “dance into the fire,” he would toss his dance partner into the fire. “She’s hot for me,” he’d say. “And now she’s burning to death.”

A-Ha did the song for The Living Daylights, entitled “The Living Daylights.” I’m kind of pissed off at this song because I don’t know if it sucks or not. Safe bet? It does. But the electric synth-pop breathes such pretty “bip-bleep-bleeps” into my ears. Actually, this sounds like it should be a Brosnan title song instead of Dalton. Friggin’ Dalton. Anyway, Gladys Knight does “License to Kill” and we’re back to dramatic Bond songs. Thank God. It’s a good bridge between that and the upcoming 90s songs which are all a little grungy. Actually it sums up Bond songs pretty well from the start up until the nineties. Dramatic, dour, and sappy all at once.

And here we are– GoldenEye. Tina Turner sang this song for the movie; I wish she had been an unlockable for the game. Anyway, the problem with this song is that the movie doesn’t really live up to it. I’ve always said that one of the main thrusts of the movie–the relationship between Bond and Trevelyan–is woefully underdeveloped. The song works best as sort of a fast chess game, a Spy vs. Spy that should have been dripping from every screen of the film. But as it is, it’s just an alright song that has some really boring lyrics. It’s no Goldfinger, I’ll tell you that.

Sheryl Crow’s Bond song is great. “Tomorrow Never Dies” is this wonderfully noir-ish little song that goes slow for a while and then explodes. Great Bond drama, very nice sound, and Sheryl Crow is pretty good at what she does. Also, the lyrics fit the song title in a lot fucking better than “Thunderball,” I’ll tell you that. Plus it manages to fit the dark humour of the movies in with the fun of breaking the fourth wall!

Garbage did “The World is Not Enough,” and, although every part of me wants to make a pun involving the band’s name, the song is pretty good. It captures the heart-ripped-out feeling that the movie tries to throw out a couple of times. Not the best, I’m afraid, not by a long shot. Not bad, though. Much better than Madonna’s “Die Another Day.” For God’s sake, woman, use your human voice!

Casino Royale’s “You Know My Name” is one of my favourite songs. I’m ashamed to admit it, but there it is. I love the shit out of this one. It’s ridiculously dramatic in lyrics and melody, it’s cartoonish and tries to rock out so fucking hard and I love it. It is also pretty fun to drive around to, but pedestrians will be confused when you scream about how they “know your name” every thirty seconds.

I can’t go on to the next one yet because I’m still listening to “You Know My Name.” Since I’ve now decided to let this one run to the end, I’m just going to go ahead and take this opportunity to spoil another Bond article: best Bond girl. Easily Eva Green from Casino Royale. Come on– she’s feisty and smart and drop-dead gorgeous in every friggin’ scene. Even the one where she’s crying and guilt-ridden over helping to murder someone. Oh, and drowning. I’m man enough to admit when a drowning woman is hot. (Hint: mermaids).

Finally, the only song which might beat out Duran Duran as the absolute worst. The Alicia Keys and Jack White duet– the first duet in Bond history. “Another Way to Die” is not only a terrible Bond song, it’s one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard. At one point–I can only assume because she was too busy checking out chicks to bother writing lyrics–Alicia Keys resorts to wailing like a guitar instead of singing. And not good guitar, either; random, sharp guitar noises that might have been made by a dying coyote. She talks like Mushmouth from Fat Albert at another point. That said, the song is catchy when it’s not stupid beyond belief.

So, truly, what is the best song? Goldfinger? The one about penises? The one with Mushmouth? The answer is simple: “You Know My Name.” “Diamonds are Forever” is second, and “Tomorrow Never Dies” is third.

Yup. There you have it.

To begin, I need you to admit something, and that is the joy of laziness as compared to the strain of living life fully. You see, you can’t be cheap until you figure out how much time you could be spending not working, and the merits of that not working. Imagine, surviving without overtime, full employment, or even any employment, basking in the free time that that would provide, as well as the malaise you could replace it with. Additionally, consider the acceptability of living with your parents, not doing anything on weekends, and never leaving your house. I’m sorry, but you won’t be able to be cheap without first having this little epiphany.

Let’s move on to the details of living cheaply. I’ll start with “living with your parents,” since I already brought that one up. Although I reference living with certain people specifically, that isn’t your only option, and indeed, may not even be your best option. The trick is really to find a living space in which you will not have to pay a rent, mortgage, food, or utility bill. Many, especially younger people, will accomplish this easily by simply living with their parents. Other options include: house sitting, squatting, leaching off of a romantic partner, and homelessness. If you choose to live off of a romantic partner, you may initially have issues with guilt, but once your legs meet the cushion, you just won’t care any more.

Learn to live with whatever amenities your patron provides. Some may find that food and utilities are covered, but luxuries such as cell phones and car insurance are not. Sorry, but you’ll have to go without those things, just don’t leave your house or have friends (unless those friends are your patrons). Those things should be easy to give up, as I already explained, laying around is an acceptable form of living as compared to working.

There are some expenses which will be unavoidable, unless you have an extremely generous charity supporting you. Hair grooming, prophylactics, and clothing are good examples. I’ve said before that a person really can cut his or her own hair, provided he or she is willing to accept the butchered consequences. Getting laid is necessary to mental health, and having children is about the most expensive thing you can do, so I recommend just going ahead and buying the damn condoms. Clothing though, that’s a more interesting proposition. Making cheap clothing purchases is a matter of compromising with your vanity. Shop around, go to big-box stores and Salvation Army, pick out whatever you can live with, and just stock up. I once managed to find $3 sweaters at Canadian Wal~Mart wannabe Zellers and I bought four. Having constant vigilance for sales is key.

Incredible though it may seem, following what I have said above is all you need to live a truly cheap and unfulfilling life.

I’ve written before about creating a successful website, but this is 2009, and things have changes. GeoCities will soon be closed, the first result of seemingly every search is to a Wikipedia article, and people actually make money uploading their content to other people’s websites. This is the era of getting big on big sites, and using that fame to trick people into visiting your website.

Step 1: Get Internet-Famous

You might have assumed that the first step would be to actually build your website, but that comes second. The first step in creating a successful website is to become popular somewhere else on the internet. If you are already a real-life celebrity, you may move immediately to Step 2.

Becoming one of the most subscribed people on YouTube would be an incredible way to do this. If you don’t have a camera or you’re not hot or horrifying enough to develop a following, you can try for text-based celebrity. Pick a large internet forum, post with absurd regularity and see if you can’t become infamous by being annoying enough to get noticed, without being offensive enough to get banned. Alternatively, become a highly friend-ed member of a link sharing site like Digg.

Step 2: Build Your Website

Once you’re internet-famous, you can build a website. You need to establish a destination dedicated to you, so that all of your new fans may gawk at you and educate themselves on all that there is of you. Make sure that the site you build is equipped to eventually handle the content you put on that site. After getting a domain and web hosting, you need to install a content management system (nobody makes his or her own anymore, by the way). Go with WordPress, it does everything for you.

PhillyD: YouTube’s favourite son.

Step 3: Get Accounts at a Bunch of Social Networking Sites

Step 1 required you to become popular on one social networking site or online community. Now that you’ve built a website, you need to join several more such sites in order to give your fan base additional material. No one cares about your Twitter posts unless you’re famous, there was no point in joining up at Step 1, but now that you’re famous, people will love to hear about the meaningless things you do each and every day.

Step 4: Promote Your Website

Step 4 cannot possibly be performed unless you are a real-life celebrity or have first accomplishing Step 1. It’s impossible to promote a site unless you have a large pool of obsessed fans already paying attention. Don’t worry if you have little-to-nothing on this new site of yours. To begin with, all you really need are a few pictures of yourself, and links to your accounts at the social networking sites you’ve just joined. To promote your site, simply start telling your fans about it, and how amazing it might eventually be. They’ll be amused long enough for you to enter Step 5.

Social networking is vital.

Step 5: Create Content for Your Website

The most important trick in making a successful website these days is to never, ever, make content for the site. Instead, you can do one of two things: either make content for other sites that then gets aggregated on your site (like with YouTube videos) or make content that is hosted on your site, but that only exists to facilitate alluring hooks on other sites (like Digg).

As I’ve mentioned, it can be tough to become popular on YouTube, and so you may once again need to resort to this second, text based method of attracting readers. This type of content should only consist of innocuous lists of pop culture items like “top 7 Star Wars movies,” or “top 6 pictures of Gaius Baltar.” In order to maximize hit count and therefore ad revenue, make sure to space out your writing with lots of images, and separate each list entry onto a separate page.

Well there you have it, five easy steps to self employment. I wish the best of luck in your endeavour.

“I’m here to kick ass and chew bubble gum– and I ain’t looting any bubblegum ’til Thursday.” – Anonymous

There seems little point in focusing on any individual riot for a better perspective on the subject; after all, one doesn’t look at a particular painting to judge the merit of fine art. Thus, I turn this article over to a more diffused, general look at opinions and facts about riots the world over. The following is the result of my rational, well-navigated research.

The name “riot” comes from Doug Q. Riot, inventor of the aglet. The concept of wide-spread civilian discord was named in his honour after he was trampled to death.

“Riots aren’t about violence, or college angst, or looting– that’s a misconception. What riots are about is change– always necessary though not always for the better. Now, that said, my living room just wasn’t complete until I got that Lazyboy.” – Riot Expert Chip Macathaway

The Egyptians believed that riots were caused by the excrement of Ra hitting the city from the sky beyond the clouds. This myth was turned into the television program Stargate: Atlantis.

Studies show that only 12% of riots are caused by “The Man.” Scientists aren’t sure what, exactly, causes the other 88%, but they’re pretty sure smoking has something to do with it.

“If I could start a riot at a country music festival, I would die happy. So would Tim McGraw.” – Garth Metley

On November 28, 2008, there were riots at the Black Friday Sale at Wal-Mart. One employee was trampled to death and four others, including a pregnant woman, were taken to the hospital. Many of the crowd were rushing towards a half-off plasma screen television, and would not let any poor unprepared soul get in their way. We all know what that means. Next year, you need to bring a knife to the Wal-Mart Black Friday Day sale if you want that t.v. Bring your A-Game.

“A late party becomes an early riot.” – Confucius

Two years ago a group in the midwest published a study on the national percentage of casualties in non-gang related riots. These are their findings:

Children… …30%
Men (over 45)… …3%
Men (under 45)… …2%
Women (over 45)… …5%
Women (under 45)… …3%
Women (shoe-related riots)… …24%*
Nerds… …15%
Jocks… …(Unknown. Sent out questionnaires, was sent back a Playboy where every chick has a dick Photoshopped on)
Parrots… …(0.5%)
Faith in Mankind… …unquantifiable, like the loss of a child’s love.

* Curiously, most deaths of this type are not the result of trampling or suffocation, but of bludgeoning and stabbings, the wounds from which correspond to the season’s hottest fashion.

“I can resist anything but rage. Hardcore, cold-burning fury. Fuck all y’all.” Oscar Wilde

Rioters’ favourite song (as decided by unanimous vote) – Detroit Rock City.

It was reported at this year’s ComicCon that Twilight writer, Stephenie Meyer, would include a riot in the script for the next Twilight movie. When reached for question, Twilight Star Robert Pattinson replied: “Why not? She’s already figuratively stomped all over the vampire myth, might as well make it literal. God I hate her so much. I mean, I get money and women and cocaine from the hairdressers, but… I don’t know, man. I just don’t know.”

The first riot likely occurred over ownership of the wheel. That or Rodney King’s handling by the LAPD. This event was covered in-depth by that one episode of the Flintstones (Episode #403, “Molostone Cocktail”, guest-starring Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson).

Riot Tech Inc. has developed the “Riot Cape” set for mass production in early 2011. A statement from Riot Tech reads as follows: “We predict that this will raise the coolness of riots by approximately 14% by the year 2013. That said, these capes are in limited supply, and only the first three hundred customers will get the bonus second cape free of charge. They say that the stores open at nine, but they’re probably just holding out on you, letting the employees have the pick of the litter before you, the paying customer get your chance. You gonna take that?”

“The man who likes riots has a small penis indeed.” – Confucius

The first riot in recorded history was begun by Jesus of Nazareth. Roman Emperor Biggus, in response, commanded each follower of Jesus to wear a thread of wooden beads and roam the land bare-chested, so the sun might teach them meekness. The name of this punishment: Mvrti Grvus.

Over the last few months, nerds have not only seen a massive change in the rules of popular, life-affirming card game Magic: the Gathering, but they have also been forced to endure the upcoming changes to World of Warcraft in the newest expansion, Cataclysm. Many say that this is a “perfect storm” of nerd rage, with police seeing a flood of new graffiti covering EBGames across the nation. Such slogans as “Stack THIS,” “More like GAYblin Warriors!”, “More like the GAYttlefield!”, and “The idea that Night Elves would use arcane magic after (continued on other side of store),” have forced many parents to cover their children’s eyes as they pick up the new copy of Pokémon Ranger Dungeon Aquamarine released this week. When asked what measures police were taking against possible geek riots, Police Chief Lug Manstrong looked me in the eyes, cracked a beer and said, “Been a while since we pantsed us some nerdlingers, eh babe?”

He preceded to slap his wife’s posterior, run a hand through his gel-spiked hair, and took off down the road in the Cadillac his dad’s money bought him.

One of my goals this summer was to “get in good enough shape to fuck with impunity.” By that, I meant “get in good enough shape to be a glistening wall of muscle, so toned that no lady could resist.” Most people have, in their lives, gotten exercise: when they were kids they were a part of some after school activity like soccer or karate, when they were teenagers, they acted out through hoodlum-ish behaviour requiring physical strength, when they hit adulthood, they participated in guilt-induced bouts of jogging and weight lifting, and throughout all of this, rode their bikes. Not so, for me. Previous to this summer, my only exercise experience came from the odd walk, clumsy nerd basketball, and that one summer when I jumped rope.

I’m explaining all of this to make it clear that I started out well back of what most people would consider average. I didn’t have muscle hidden beneath fat waiting to break free, and I lacked a lot of the basic skills which people have generally acquired by my age that they use to work out: bike riding, skating, swimming, and even running.

I didn’t accomplish my goal this summer. I lifted weights almost every day, went for regular walks, and played one game of sweat-inducing nerd basketball every week, and yet the mammoth tower of flesh I imagined does not sit at this keyboard. Having said that, my level of fitness has improved, and I plan on continuing my regimen until such time that I am unable to cope with all of the sex being thrown my way.

So, now that I’ve explained all of that, what was the problem? Why didn’t I have this background? The answer is, surprisingly, not laziness, or even cheapness, but fear. Fear of being normal, in other words, fear of being a dick. When I was in Junior High, gym class was a lesson in what it meant to be within the normal parameters of strength: the normal person whips volleyballs at your face, explains to you that you are worthless, and follows it up with a wedgie in the change room.

You might think that such behaviour is typical only of the Junior High student, and once he or she grows out of that phase, the healthy person ceases to be a dick, but you’d be wrong, and I can prove it. You see, once annually, I like to justify my misanthropy by checking in on these people at the gym.

The last time I went was no different from all of the others. Women wearing tight pants and stretching (you’re hot and unobtainable, I know!). Men lumbering around, lifting the occasional weight or playing a bit of some sport (you’re in shape and could beat me up, I get it!). You gym people and your casual attitude, your confident and non-showy way of performing your exercises, you think you’re better than me! If we were fourteen again, you’d be letting me know it, too!

Because I’m constantly aware of the brobdingnagian hatred my gym onlookers have for me and their desperation to physically abuse me, I can never be truly comfortable in a gym. It’s just that when everyone around you is thinking “that guy sucks,” it’s hard to work out non-ironically, because the only way to defend against the constant threat of fist-wailing is to get in on the joke yourself. Tyler Durden called exercise masturbation. For normal people, it’s public masturbation without the embarrassment. It’s masturbation for the sake of comparing dick sizes, but finding you’re all tied at 10 feet and then circling up for congratulations.

My solution was simple; this summer I exercised in the protected space of my basement. That way, I could masturbate in private, the way it’s supposed to be.

Nintendo’s Gamer Assist

Source: Computer-readable storage medium patent

Explanation: With this patent, Nintendo hopes to make their already laughably easy Legend of Zelda games even easier by allowing gamers to view clips illustrating the steps necessary for progression in the games when they become stuck. The image makes it obvious that Zelda is in mind for use with this technology, and actually, other images included in this filing reference the name of a game called “Legend of OO.”

Potential: I think this idea has great potential. Despite what I said earlier, it allows Nintendo to actually up the difficulty of its games without worrying that inexperienced gamers would find them too hard. Additionally, this will hopefully be the end of my tendency to become frustrated by some completely obvious puzzle from early on in each Zelda game.

Will it actually be released? Definitely. This technology is reportedly included in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, coming out Christmas 2009.

Sony’s Emotion Detector

Source: Sony Patents Emotion Detecting Software For Games

Explanation: With this technology, Sony seeks to create games which respond to the emotions of the user. A microphone and camera detect the sounds and movements of the player, and in return, the system may come to better understand its human master. Although the PlayStation 3 may ultimately know why you cry, it will never itself be capable of crying.

Potential: Sony doesn’t need to study their consumers to know what makes them laugh, they’ve already got humour nailed down. Look, just look, at that damn image. A man turns a crank which powers a self-ass-kicking machine. Ha Ha Ha. Having said that, I think this idea has a lot of potential. Interactive story telling is something which has never been properly explored in gaming and this could certainly be used to help in that regard.

Will it actually be released? The threat of Natal looms large for Sony, so I’m going to say yes.

Nintendo Edutainment

Source: New Nintendo patent “Edutainment”?

Explanation: I’m not entirely certain how Nintendo can patent what amounts to a series of edutainment mini-games, but that’s what’s detailed in this patent. In some instances, a child plays matching games using recognizable Nintendo mascots. In the image displayed here, a child learns about making his damn bed because mommy was out late last night and now she has to call a cab for her bed-jumping buddy. With this technology, a child may actually learn from Mario’s example as he acts out the process of making a bed. When I was a child, the only thing I learned from Mario was to avoid banana peels while driving a go-cart.

Potential: I could see kids playing this.

Will it actually be released? Not only will it be released, it will sell 4 million copies, and I’m not being hyperbolic.

Nintendo Horse Riding

Source: Nintendo’s Patented Horseback Riding Wii Controller

Explanation: This device attaches to the Wii Remote to simulate horseback riding. When sketching this idea, Nintendo felt they should attempt to be inclusive and use a little person as a model. Unfortunately, they were unable to resist demeaning him, and depicted their model wearing toddler’s clothing while riding a horsey. Either that, or the artist forgot that baldness does not regularly inflict six year olds.

When I was a kid, I had to defend my Super Nintendo and its “sweat rather than blood” version of Mortal Kombat. When I was a teenager, I had to defend my GameCube’s purple colouring. As an adult, I must now defend a company which regards the equivalent of riding a wooden horse as something marketable to adults.

Potential: Only as a sex toy.

Will it actually be released? No, because Nintendo is too pussy to make a sex toy.

What others are saying: “That kid is literally wearing a onesie.” – lawblob

I know what you’re doing. Even if I haven’t actually talked to you in a decade, I know the details of your life, because you let me know on Facebook. I see you, in your relationships, going on your trips, having, unbelievably, your weddings, and even reproducing.

Once, long ago, people relied on gossip as the means of discovering the life events of people they didn’t know very closely. The thing about gossip, though, is that it’s almost certainly only worth sharing when it’s negative, or at the very least, naughty. With Facebook, I’m forced to hear about all of the positive developments in people’s lives, the stuff they actually want to share, and it’s starting to depress me.

Until recently, Facebook was like a hyper-gossip, and actually quite useful. I would log in, creep on some of the attractive ladies, and feel comfort in the fact that soon enough I would see their relationship status switch to single. Now, with the onset of adulthood, I find that I’m increasingly being confronted with much more horrifying, much more positive life changes, the kind that make it increasingly obvious that I’m losing.

It’s time to consider just what the fuck it is that you people are doing before you get a little too far ahead of me. Your information was useful when it had the potential to help me get laid. Seeing people have children, seriously, read that word again, children, is not only something that doesn’t help me get laid, and is not even just something that makes me less likely to get laid, it’s actually something that makes me not want to get laid. Children. You’re reproducing. What in the ever loving fuck are you doing?

Alright, look, I can live with you having kids if I have to. Since you’re bragging about it, I assume it’s something you actually want to be doing, and as such I can be made moderately jealous of, but it’s sure as fuck not what I want to be doing. Marriage too, might be nice, but I’m in no hurry. The things that really bother me are the trips, the cars, the houses, the hot girlfriends, and the general happiness which your photos, status updates, and mass-mailed messages convey. It’s all making me look bad, and it’s all making me feel bad.

All of this signals the utter meaninglessness, time wasting nature of my life. If you wouldn’t mind being just a little more considerate, try balancing all of the positive news with equal portions of bad. Bought a house? Great, now post your utility bills. Went on a trip? Now write a note explaining in detail the gruesome food poisoning you experienced, and throw in a mention of the turbulence you encountered on the flight back.

If your life really is the pristine magnificence you have so far represented it as, and you’re considering bragging about it yet again, take a moment to reflect on how much better you are than me already, and spare me the embarrassment of being faced with that fact yet again.

Lie
In filling out my interests for an online dating site, I started by listing things that would hint at bookishness and nerdiness, but hoped to avoid creating the profile of a complete otaku. After “reading,” “writing,” “women’s studies,” “webmastery,” and “nerdliness,” I was out. Soon, I found myself spewing “Harry Potter,” “Star Trek,” and ultimately, even “anime.” As I reflected on this list, I thought “these are my interests?” I’ve noticed most people list things like snowboarding, running, traveling, cooking… interests that require some modicum of skill and energy, hobbies that have at least the potential to provide a small amount of meaning and satisfaction in ones life.

The lesson here is simple: lie. If you’re going to be at all honest in creating a profile for yourself on a dating site, you’re not going to get any single professional women who don’t have the time to meet someone (that’s okay, they don’t exist anyway). You’re not even going to get any “BBW” (they definitely exist). Instead, make up a bunch of shit that makes you sound like an Olympic athlete with attention deficit disorder. If, for example, you’ve seen people play a sport on TV before, feel free to list yourself as having written a doctoral thesis about that sport by method of carving letters in the snow with your snowboard. If you’re asked to list what your ideal date would be, claim romantic walk, as those are cheap and easy.

Additionally, online dating sites often ask you to list details about your personal life like if you’re married, if you have a car, how tall you are, etc. Instead of entering anything plausible for these fields, just imagine what Fabio would list if he were also Barack Obama and use that. There’s no sense in admitting your low income status or crippling drug habit, those might turn women off. Once you’re actually on a date is when you should introduce your match to reality, as people are much less choosey once their own horrible flaws are also apparent.

Post Your Wang
Finding a partner online should not be limited to those serious dating sites, don’t be afraid to post a personal on Craigslist as well. Craigslist allows for a lot more freedom to behave in a repulsive manner and seek out whatever utter depravity you desire. On Craigslist, the number one rule is: no one clicks your ad unless you’ve got a picture in it, and no one responds to your ad unless the picture is of your dick.

If you’re a man seeking a woman, then logically, she’s going to need to see your penis to adequately asses your personality, so be sure to slap that in there. If you’re a man seeking a man, even though you’re straight but seriously just want to get fucked just once, then of course you’re going to need to post your tool. If you’re a man looking for a platonic friend for just hanging out, chilling, going to the mall, and beating off to porn together, then again, you’re going to have to demonstrate your qualities as a friend via wang shot.

Only Talk to Fatties
If you’re using Craigslist, there are only two types of ads posted under women seeking men: fake, and fat. Due to the high volume of fake ads posted on Craigslist by scammers, a code has been developed that women use to indicate to men that their postings are real; they will describe themselves as “Big Beautiful Women,” “BBW.” If any level of physical attractiveness is claimed by a woman, especially through use of a picture, then you know automatically that the posting is a scam.

On dating sites things are a little more complicated, decent looking women do sometimes post at those places. If a woman’s profile has no picture, it means she is ugly beyond imagination and you should probably avoid her. If a woman’s picture makes her look decent, you’ll need to be cautious as she probably has debilitating personality problems, if not, she probably won’t bother talking to you, but you can try if you want. If a woman’s picture uses one of the infamous “MySpace angles,” if she describes herself as BBW, fun, outgoing, or anything else synonymous with fat, then congratulations, you’ve found a target.

Because our society maligns overweight women so significantly that they have to find romantic partners online, they tend to be much more willing to consider the kinds of men who also have to turn to online dating. Be careful though, some fatties have personality problems just like everyone else. If she lists “family,” “friends,” and “movies” as her interests, she’s probably too dull or too dumb to even bother. If her username specifically refers to her dislike of drama or baggage, she will definitely have issues with both.

If you’re really, really, incredibly lucky, you’ll find a fat girl who’s not so much fat as she is chubby, and by chubby I mean busty, and who calls herself fat because she has low self esteem. This is your ultimate goal. Congratulations, you’ve just won at online dating.

Last week, I wrote an article analyzing some of the grizzled bad-ass men of gaming, this week I’d like to check out the finely sculpted female equivalents.

Let’s start with KOS-MOS, from Monolith Soft presents: Otaku Fodder: Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht. I know absolutely nothing about Xenosaga, and so I’ll have to rely on my ability to examine this image and base my analysis on that. The small amount of research I did perform regarding this character led me to understand that KOS-MOS is “formed from some sort of highly advanced nanomachines.” This certainly helps me to begin to comprehend what I’m seeing.

KOS-MOS is engineered, her hotness, not to mention blue hair and red eyes, can be explained as simply stemming from the whims and sexual desires of her creators. These desires are most clearly expressed in KOS-MOS’ ass, which appears to have been sculpted with great care and is surely the product of the most advanced nanotechnology. I was originally going to suggest that her body may actually be what we see here, but Google Image Search’s recommendation of “KOS-MOS swimsuit” suggests to me that KOS-MOS (can I call her Kos for short?) is actually wearing a set of pants so well formed that they perfectly rest up inside her gluteal cleft. I suppose that since she is an engineered being this would be quite possible.

Here’s a character that I’m much more familiar with. This is Samus, or actually, Zero Suit Samus from Nintendo presents: Yet Another Remake or Port: Metroid: Zero Mission. Samus is the galaxy’s greatest bounty hunter, despite her strange tendency to lose part, or even all of her suit on a shockingly regular basis.

In completing Zero Mission, and depending upon how much you’ve collected in the game, Samus can be seen in a number of scenes wearing nothing but the Zero Suit you see here. I can understand that her regular armour, as bulky as it appears, would require a tight under-suit like this. What I’m less certain of is Samus’ interest in ensuring that this under-suit so precisely display her back side, including, once again, a well defined crack. Perhaps in the future, clothing materials more adequately adhere to their wearer’s bodies without introducing additional chafing.

Next up is Vanessa Z. Schneider from Capcom presents: Contractual Agreement Fulfilled: P.N.03. Vanessa is a dexterous, groovin’ chick with a contract to blast some robots. Her movements are restricted only by her own skills and the rule that one must not shoot while running. Like so many of gaming’s female heroes, Vanessa is cybernetically-enhanced, and battles the future’s horde of horrible space villains with grace and sexiness.

The technology of Vanessa’s clothing is beyond that of even KOS-MOS or Samus, the lower portions do not only hug her booty region, they appear to be pulled inward as though through force of suction, and leave no possible doubt as to the shapeliness of the character. At this point, it is becoming clear to me that in the future, as prophesied by game creators, the futuristic female hero’s skills can be based in large part simply through analysis of her ass, the tightness of the clothing on that ass, and the power of the hero to turn and pose so that both her face and bottom can be seen in the same image.

Finally, I’d like to take a look at Nova from Blizzard presents: Never Coming Out: StarCraft: Ghost. Since Ghost has been indefinitely postponed and I have obviously been unable to play it, I will once again have to use the image provided as my source of information regarding this character. Nova is one of the Ghost units from StarCraft, and beyond targeting nukes, I guess they’re also good for engaging in intense third-person combat (or not, considering the development path of Ghost).

In considering Nova alongside the other three ladies studied in this article, she is clearly the greatest future hero of them all. She does the over-the-shoulder turn as well as anyone, and rocks the tightest skin-tight clothing that anyone has ever dared render. Her one-piece techno suit leaves no question as to the alluring quality of her posterior, but where Vanessa needed an uncomfortable suction process to tighten the clothing on her backside, the lower part of Nova’s suit may as well be her skin. Surely, her plainly displayed buttocks illustrate an overwhelming ability for space-villain-blasting.

In the video game industry, it is commonly understood that the greatness of your male hero should be represented visually by loading him up with a bunch of heavy and awkward equipment, then adding a scar, and finally, giving him a really displeased facial expression. I’d like to look at a few examples today. Note: the female equivalent of this article can be found here.

Here we see Marcus Fenix, legendary star of Cliff Bleszinski presents: Gears of War. Since I’ve only played about five minutes of Gears in my life, I’m going to have to base my understanding of this character on this picture to the right. Marcus Fenix is a man on a mission: a mission to be the most geared up gear of war ever to chainsaw an alien.

Poor Marcus had a difficult childhood. Due to his grizzled face and unflinching scowl, Marcus never had many friends. For Marcus, childhood was just an irritating wait before he could wear an 800 pound suit of armour and punish some aliens. Mysteriously, Marcus’ very comprehensive armour leaves his scarred head exposed, although that do-rag may offer some protection. Marcus Fenix is a hater of many things: pussies, homosexuals, the weak, minorities, and anything else that does not fit into his narrow, and very manly, definition of normal.

Next up I’d like to consider Solid Snake, from Hideo Kojima presents: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. I’ve played even less MGS than I have Gears of War, and so my analysis will have to once again focus on the provided image. Like Marcus, Mr. Snake is not a happy man, and we can all tell that by noticing his facial disfigurement (as represented by an eye patch).

Unlike Marcus, Snake is battling a personal struggle, the inevitability of old age, and Snake tries to compensate for this unfortunate reality by maintaining a very manly mustache. Snake is not weighed down by the “gear” of war that Fenix is, relying on his own strength, as displayed by this freakishly tight suit, and his stealth-ing abilities. Not to be outdone by Fenix’s choice in out-of-fashion headgear, Solid Snake sports a very dashing headband. The trusty headband serves to keep this silver fox’s hair out of his eyes whether he’s battling giant robots or clubbing with the boys.

We now come to Altaïr Ibn La-Ahad, from Jade Raymond presents: Games are Better When They’re Made by a Woman: Assassin’s Creed. Unfortunately, not only have I never played Assassin’s Creed, I’m too lazy to even read beyond the second paragraph of the Wikipedia article for this game, and so my speculation for this example will be especially uninformed.

In Assassin’s Creed, a man in a lab must channel his long dead ancestor, Altaïr, and as such, gain knowledge of what it is to be the manliest warrior. Altaïr’s descendant, Desmond Miles, discovers that a hoodie adorned with intricate metal plating and daggers is very much befitting a great warrior. Additionally, he learns that men do not need to be scarred and terrifying to be great, so long as they look like smoldering, mysterious sex machines. Rendering hairlines is tricky stuff, and so where Fenix wore a do-rag and Snake wore a headband, Altaïr covers up with a hood. Hoods can be very convenient for hiding your face from potential adversaries, as well as a great way to keep the elements out of your eyes.

Finally today, I want to consider Kratos, hero of David Jaffe presents: Don’t Forget that this Franchise is Exclusive to the PlayStation Family: God of War: Chains of Olympus: As Seen on Spike TV’s Video Game Awards: Hosted by Samuel L. Jackson. I haven’t even seen anyone play DJp: DFttFiEttPSF: GoW: CoO: ASoSTVVGA: HbSLJ, and so once again, I will have to largely glean my knowledge of this character from his image.

Kratos is the angriest man on Mount Olympus, and he’s very concerned that you might not realize it. As such, he’s carved a well placed scar across his right eye, and thrown up a crazy warrior’s tattoo across the other one (for symmetry of design). Kratos is a man genuinely unhappy about everything, and as such he’s definitely going to cut up some bitches, but even that wanton violence won’t be enough to bring even a smirk to this deeply troubled man. Just in case you were still uncertain about Kratos’ character alignment, check out that goatee, only the most brutal of men would dare share Satan’s choice in facial hair. Just as with our other heroes today, Kratos just can’t handle a hairline. Instead of hiding his shame under a piece of clothing though, Kratos has decided to simply go bald.

Gamers whine when a new game isn’t coming to their favourite console, and they really whine when a game is coming to their most hated console. For the gaming community of 2009, no console is more hated than the Wii. You see, the Wii continues to sell incredibly well, and bring new (scary) people to gaming, an industry which, much like its most loyal customers, is in need of a shower and a bit of physical exertion.

As such, when High Voltage Software announced that they would be making a first person shooter for the Wii with actual effort put into its development, gamers whined. The Wii isn’t supposed to be the console of shooting people, it’s supposed to be the console of six year olds mesmerized by Mario’s smiling face, and of 90 year olds, jumping around trying to play Wii Sports. Or so gamers will tell you, because maligning a console is much easier than accepting change or diversity.

Alright, I’m not really speaking for all gamers. There are a few out there, crazier, more demented, more brain-washed, more unbalanced than the rest, the Nintendorks (of which I am one). Worshippers of Nintendo for the life-nurturing warmth which it offers, these Nintendrones certainly did not complain when The Conduit was announced. Rather, they cried tears of joy, and lauded the game as the second coming of Perfect Dark. For Nintendolts, the mere announcement of the game was like mana from heaven.

I will now attempt to review this long awaited game in an attempt to determine which side of this ridiculous internet battle turned out to be correct.

Art, Graphics, and Sound
The makers of The Conduit are bold and ballsy, and have dared to do something which no developer outside of Nintendo themselves has dared, to make a game with graphics superior to a sub-par PS2 game. Incredibly, High Voltage succeeds. For the sake of winning fanboy wars on internet message boards, gamers have tended to knock The Conduit’s graphics as wildly inferior to those found on the 360 and PS3. Not surprisingly, they’re correct. Yet, The Conduit looks great when you consider the more reasonable metric of other Wii games (even Nintendo games), and as such, The Conduit succeeds in the realm of appearance.

Innovation Factor
FPSes are like football sims: the only things that ever change are the number of polygons on screen and the resolution of the textures on those polygons. Ultimately, it’s still Madden screaming commentary, or the Allied hero, as the case may be. In a genre filled with unimaginative cloning, The Conduit stands as the most derivative and uninspired sameness available. In the near future, aliens are invading, and you, a one man army, must defend Washington DC. In the process, you must shoot down the interlopers and their human bodyguards, uncovering the secrets of this invasion as you advance.

Gameplay
As I’ve said, The Conduit is as derivative as a game can get, and its appeal is not in its story or the broader terms of its gameplay, but in its control scheme. The Conduit’s controls are truly something exciting. Rather than the clumsy dual-analog affairs of the 360, and away from the uncomfortable desk chair of the PC, lies the exacting Wii remote pointer, held in the hand of someone comfortably resting on a couch. The controls are also fully customizable, and so any inconveniences players find in the default control layout can be corrected.

Last-ability and Re-playability
The Conduit’s single player consists of nine linear levels, five difficulties, a few achievements and collectables, and nothing else. The campaign is fun enough, and without anything more appealing like TimeSplitters’ Challenges, going back for the collectibles is a not un-enjoyable way to do some gaming. The Conduit’s ambitious online component is more robust than anything else available on any Nintendo system, although I’ve lost every match I’ve competed in.

Things I Wish I Had Known Before I Played
Go ahead and pick up the collectibles in the single player if you see them, even if you’re not trying to get them all right away. It’s not all or none.

Overall
The Conduit is pretty fun. It’s not revolutionary, and it’s certainly not worthy of the hundreds of angry internet wars it’s spawned, but it’s worth giving a try.

Final Score:

Part 2: We probably won’t care if you break one of these rules:
1. Don’t image leech. Really, I don’t care that much, especially if it’s from a bigger site, but hosting your own images is a good way to ensure that they don’t get deleted or changed, as well as ensuring I don’t get harassed by anyone about it.
2. Don’t break the tables. If you post a really long line of text or a large image, it can extend your post beyond the width of the other posts in a thread, and it’s really irritating. If you do this, we’ll probably edit your post to fix it.

Part 2: Post in the right place:
1. Before starting a new thread, consider where it should go. A detailed description of each forum can be found below, under heading III, but each forum is pretty self explanatory, please try to start new threads where you think they should go. If you’re not sure, either ask an admin, or post it in General Discussion, and we’ll move it to where it should go.
2. Before making a new post, consider if it belongs in the thread you’re posting in, or if it deserves a new thread. Threads can easily become derailed when people don’t stay on topic. If something in one thread makes you think of something that’s not directly related, consider starting a new thread for it.

Part 2: Using the quote button
One issue that people seem to frequently have when posting on the forums is not knowing how to quote other posters.

Find the post you want to quote:

Click on the quote button directly above the post and you get this:

Type your response underneath and hit submit:

Part 3: Using the “Mark forums read” feature
Many users have wished for this feature, and as it turns out, it’s just hidden. Here it is:

I started out on the internet a little later than a lot of nerds. I never had dial-up, never experiences BBSes, and I never did much with chat rooms. Still, it was 2001 when I got the internet, and that feels like a long time ago now. Back then, we had something called ICQ, I used it to waste time with my friends and harass the girls I went to high school with. My early experiences with the internet very much sprang from ICQ, it was where a friend told me you could get free hosting for your own website at a place called Angelfire, and it was over ICQ that many of the interactions which I discussed and parodied on that Angelfire site (which eventually became this site) came from.

After a couple of years of dealing with that particular piece of bloated software though, something happened. A girl I knew declared that she was switching to MSN Messenger, and desperate as I was, I had no choice but to join her there. I don’t know exactly how it started, but a trickle becomes a flood, and in time, everyone I knew who once used ICQ had switched to MSN. Sometimes, I wonder if it was that one girl who caused the entire switch. There was a strange divide too, Canadians had gone to MSN, and Americans had gone to AIM, nevertheless, we had all switched.

MSN was so much better, in so many ways, than ICQ, but it lacked one feature that I missed for a long, long time: the random messaging. On ICQ, you could search for people using just their name and location, it was easy finding acquaintances and local strangers. You could find the hot girl in your class, and occasionally, a random girl might contact you, and you could try tricking her into thinking you weren’t a mal-adjusted high school dweeb. I used MSN just as much as I had used ICQ, but the excitement I had about instant messaging faded and died with the switch. The novelty of talking to my friends without having to look at them stopped feeling like an adventure, and started feeling like an exercise in time wasting. But I’m a chronic time waster, so I kept it up.

Early on in my university career, new ways of using the internet continued to emerge. Rather than the concentrated, direct methods of communication that dwelled in email and instant messaging, ever more diffuse methods rose up from the aether. Social networking sites appeared, and they allowed people to do that thing I had missed so much about ICQ, that ability to try to pick-up near-strangers over the internet. I don’t remember why I joined MySpace, but like with most things in my life, it was probably for the chicks. I never really got into MySpace (most of my friends just never bothered with it), but I do remember trying to pick up the odd girl, and even got a date out of it.

Around the same time as MySpace, another trend came to be. Everyone I knew already had cell phones, but for whatever reason, they started using them to text each other. What at first was a novelty, became a trend, and the trend became a near-requirement for communication. With the rise of texting, came the downfall of IM; why sit at your computer and text for free, when you can text from your couch for money? Then, as with now, I remained too cheap to get a cell phone, and I just didn’t care. I was texting in 2001, it was called ICQ, and it never cramped my hands. The novelty of engaging in meaningless drivel-talk with people without gazing into their twisted faces or hearing their cracked voices had left a long time ago. I found fewer people were using MSN, and because of that, I was using it less.

Not long after the emergence of MySpace, another social networking site appeared from obscurity, and it was called Facebook. I remember why I joined Facebook, a girl told me to. Early on, it was just a few people on there that I knew, and I largely ignored it (logging on infrequently to check my messages). After a few months, that pattern appeared again, the few number of people I knew on Facebook became several, became many, became all. Facebook’s power is in its ubiquity. Now I can stay in loose contact with nearly everyone I know, and easily stalk the ones I don’t. There were only a few of the girls from high school on ICQ, but Facebook has all of the girls from university.

Months ago, I realized I had come to only ever use MSN (it was renamed Microsoft Live Messenger some time ago, I never stopped calling it MSN) to have drunk talks with one young woman, but I didn’t think much of my decline in usage. Then I started trying to pick up yet another woman, and my usage surged, but as the hope of that pursuit faded, I began to realize something: I hate instant messaging. It’s like talking to people without really talking to them, it’s communicating without any emotional connection. I’d argue that even emails and Facebook messages have more of an emotional presence, perhaps through the added time and effort people put into writing them, I don’t know. Even at the end, the ability to talk to women was what had kept me using instant messaging, but with a growing distaste for the sheer waste of time that it was, even their power waned. It was fun when it was new, and it was important when all my friends used it, but by the end, just a few weeks ago, it ceased to be anything but a time sink. I uninstalled MSN.

Microsoft

Microsoft’s conference can be broken down into two parts: the showing off of games, and the showing off of bullshit. The conference began with the showing off of games, including a lengthy promotion of The Beatles: Rock Band, in which the opening cinematic was shown, a live demonstration was held, and then a couple Beatles and a couple Beatles’ relatives were trotted on stage for brief, but nevertheless, embarrassing appearances. Rock Band was followed by an extended series of videos and demonstrations in which more actual games were shown. None of them are worth describing in any great detail since they’re all the same as each other, and all the same as everything currently available on the 360: space marines/war heroes/Sam Fisher must battle aliens/Nazis/corruption in a beautifully rendered field of brown and grey while gargling razor blades.

The second part of Microsoft’s conference followed, and it was dedicated to the showing off of bullshit. Microsft unveiled Project Natal, an add-on for the 360 comprised of censors and cameras which can supposedly detect and scan objects in front of it, allowing users to play without any controllers. The device is intended to be Microsoft’s half-ass attempt at capturing some of Nintendo’s massive casual consumer base, and the thought of its iminent failure warmed me to the core as I watched.

The highlight of the Project Natal demonstration was called “Milo and Kate,” presented by Peter “I lie out my ass” Molyneux. Molyeneux introduced the world to Milo, a little boy who lives inside your 360, coming out to play and helping you in your development of pedophilia. The Milo demonstration was wonderfully fake, showing off, in classic Molyneux style, a bunch of unkeepable promises well outside the realm of even the most advanced AI technology.

As I endured the long, dull, Microsoft conference, I repeatedly asked myself “why am I watching this?” The only answer I could come up with was that I was a sad, lonely individual, who seeks to live vicariously through the irrelevant corporate drama which crops up in the gaming industry occasionally.

Sony

Sony’s conference was easily the dullest of the three. The company announced, to the excitement of onlookers, Final Fantasy XIV, and then broke the neckbeard’s hearts with a little additional information: the game will be another MMO. Another highlight of the event came with the unveiling of the PSP Go. The Go is another PSP redesign, but this one has no UMD, and its users will buy their games from Sony’s online store. Gran Turismo PSP was promoted by a wildly nervous Kazunouri Yamauchi during the show. Luckily, a completely disinterested translator, wielding a notepad, was able to help him out.

Like Microsoft, Sony also demonstrated a poor attempt to compete with Nintendo, the PlayStation Motion Controller, a phallic wand whose movement is tracked by a camera. Unlike Microsoft’s Project Natal, the device’s claimed abilities appear plausible, but software development seemed early. As I witnessed the device being shown off, my joy grew at the though of it flagging against the unstoppable Nintendo war machine. This feeling was immediately followed by immense depression as I began to question why I should have even a casual interest in the devise, let alone an emotional investment in its failure.

Nintendo

Nintendo’s conference was the only one which demonstrated anything worthwhile, as is typically the case. The company showed off Wii MotionPlus again, and unlike its competitors’ motion devices, MotionPlus actually works, and will be available on the market in a matter of weeks along with completed, functioning, and appealing software.

Some of the new games Nintendo announced include Super Mario Galaxy 2, a sequel to one of the best games ever; New Super Mario Bros. Wii, the most pure-fun looking game I’ve seen in a long time; and Metroid: Other M, developed by Team Ninja. Other M promises to be the most breast-bouncingest Metroid yet, and will probably destroy the franchise.

Nintendo’s great failing this year was the absence of an unveiling: Pikmin 3. In a roundtable following Nintendo’s conference, Miyamoto admitted that not a lot of progress had been made on the game, a statement which wrought within me total devastation. My emotional breakdown was stabilized somewhat as Miyamoto made it sound as though a new console Zelda game was fairly far into development. Following his roundtable though, my thoughts again turned to what an utter waste of two days watching the conferences had been, and the magic of E3 vanished for me, along with my self respect.

Canada is famously and perpetually confused about its own cultural identity. Some have tried to stitch one together out of hockey and beer; others attempt to find identities by clinging to the traditions of their long-dead relatives. What no one seems to realize is that these things just don’t mean anything. There is no logical reason to take pride in the actions of others, or to place yourself in a community of which you have no meaningful associations.

Being the citizen of a country doesn’t require much. It usually depends upon where you’re born, and is not even under your own control. That’s it. There’s no particular diet you need to adhere to, no passion for any particular sport you need to proclaim, no kind of music that you need to love. All of that, as well as what languages you speak and what religion, if any, you follow are decided by the circumstances under which you were raised and your own personal choices, and none of it is genetic.

The past actions of dead people can have major consequence on the lives of the living, but their accomplishments are not anyone else’s, and being related to them does not warrant dressing up like them and dancing the way they danced at the Heritage Festival. This kind of behaviour is nothing more than an attempt for people to grant themselves identities they can no longer claim to have.

I get that sometimes, ancestor’s lives were hard, and sometimes it was for unfortunate historical reasons. Sometimes, those problems persist in some capacity in the present, such as with racism. In those situations, I encourage everyone to work to overcome those societal problems. Claiming, however, the toil of your relatives as a source of personal pride is simply meaningless, you weren’t there, and you didn’t experience it.

If you want to celebrate the circumstances under which you were raised, embrace multiculturalism, and please do. I just ask that you first consider what your culture actually is, and what those circumstances actually were, rather than blindly attaching yourself to your one-quarter-Irish roots, throwing down some green beer on St. Patrick’s Day, and calling yourself Irish.

If you were born in Canada, you’re Canadian. You don’t have to be proud of that, you don’t have to embrace it in any capacity, and you don’t have to use it as an identity either, that’s just what it says on your passport. Everything else is a figment of your imagination. No matter how much you might wish you were your Chinese grandfather, or your relatives in China, currently contributing to the rise of the Chinese economy, you are not those people.

The point is that you have no association with these places other than the fact that your parents (or grandparents, or great-grandparents) happen to have lived there and then moved here. These places currently have very little to do with your life, other than under a broader social scope and in the roles you’ve forced them to play.

I’ve heard it claimed that it is important to remember where you come from. I, like everyone else, came out of womb. My ancestors lived on farms and used ploughs. It’s likely that yours did too, ploughs are a part of history and they deserve to be studied and remembered, but they hardly need to be dragged out once a year and driven around the back yard in celebration of the ploughers who came before.

Don’t be afraid to enjoy any culture. I’ve ensconced my life in Japanese video games and American movies, because those are the things I enjoy. Rather than arbitrarily selecting a few habits from the people you’re related to, consider attempting some hobbies you would genuinely enjoy.

An Ontario man named Pasqualino Cornelio was recently ordered to continue paying child support for twin 16-year-olds, who, it turns out, aren’t his. The story has caught a decent amount of attention, yet it doesn’t feel all that unique.

This story smacks of the same kind of disregard for men’s rights which perpetually crop up in family law cases. These kinds of man-gets-fucked-by-child-support stories stay with men. That’s because, in these cases, men’s rights are irrelevant, the courts just want someone who can start paying. As the judge in the Cornelio case pointed out, these decisions are based on the best interest of the child. That argument is extremely persuasive in our society, children are worshipped, but I think it’s time to rethink this whole notion of children before everyone.

Had the Cornelio case taken place in an alternate Canada in which children were just people, Cornelio would have been relieved of his child support duties, at which time the search for the real father could have begun. If none was found, then his cheating ex-wife would have been left with the task of supporting her teenage daughters. Both situations sound a lot fairer than the one actually put into place. The current decision rewards fraud and suggests that the best thing for people in need of financial support is to have their expenses assigned to the nearest-available passer-by. Think of the homeless, when they need help, we as a society can come together to help them, but I’m not interested in being saddled with the expense of one entire person just because he happens to beg on my street corner.

That may seem petty and harsh, “think of those poor girls, why should they suffer?” you might argue. Sure, I know their lives get harder; they become victims of an unfortunate situation. That’s true for a lot of people, Pasqualino Cornelio, for example. He’s a person too, funnily enough, but his non-daughters’ well-being takes precedence over his own, by merely being younger than him. I can understand that this man has appeared in these children’s lives as a father, but it’s up to him to decide what role he wishes to have with these girls now. I would like to see a court system which views men as people, rather than ATMs for other, shorter people.

Even in cases where the biological father is known, unfairness exists. In the realm of accidental pregnancies that come from broken condoms, forgotten pills, and drunken carelessness, women get to make a choice, and men get to pay for it. It takes two to make a pregnancy happen, but by law there’s only one person that can make it end, and with that decision it seems only logical that the future child become that person’s responsibility alone.

A woman’s right to choose what happens to her own body is absolutely vital, but our children-first society weakens the consequences of that choice. Currently, women can avoid the guilt of abortion by just having the kid, knowing there will be a father legally required to help support it. As a bonus, if he doesn’t pay up, he becomes a deadbeat, and a wonderfully convenient punching bag.

These issues are fundamentally about men’s rights. Forcing men to help pay for their unwelcome or non-children is currently considered preferable to having single mothers seek government assistance. The argument is another play that distracts from the real issue, a universal hatred of taxes keeps people for questioning the lopsided nature of child support cases. The argument ignores the pressure child support payments place on fathers themselves, and the well being of the child is held up above everyone else’s. In a society which treated children as people, their suffering would not take precedence.

This particular story stems from the mouth of none other than Shufflingdead founder, Newbs. The tale begins with the introduction of the four characters: Francis Feeble (Weskimo), Hermia Feeble (DMUSER), Derek Blacksoul (Quaid), and the voluptuous Volumnius (Psycho_Limey).

The adventure begins in the nation of Regolith, which is weak, failing, and being violently raped on three borders. Our “heroes” have grown up in poverty in the capital of Moncalari. Very recently, the capital was overrun, courtesy of the suck that your country’s sissy soldiers were able to deliver, and our team fled north with a refugee caravan, the cost of which completely emptied our already meager pockets.

En route to the northern city of Mosely, our caravan was attacked and overwhelmed by a rat swarm. Our four protagonists stole a wagon with two horses and made haste in the direction of a faint green tinge on the horizon in the night sky. Underneath this haze, we came upon a small town and, exhausted, collapsed into a small abandoned peasant’s shack and fell asleep.

As dawn broke, we were left with the not-so-simple decision of “what the fuck do we do now, guys?”

Now, I feel that not exploring these characters would be a near criminal offense against Newbs, and take away greatly from what happened next, so here goes. This motley crew were all created by Newbs for the purpose of his campaign. Francis is a scrawny wannabe thief with confidence issues, who is a drinker and hates small towns. His sister, Hermia, is a terrifically ugly woman, whose appearance has caused her personality to become as twisted as her face and breasts. It might have also unhinged her mind somewhat. She’s also a drinker, and hates small towns. Blacksoul is somewhat of an enigma, who refuses to acknowledge the ridiculousness of his assumed persona, and he’s a drinker who hates small towns. Volumnius is a giggly young girl who is loose with her morals and even looser with her pants. She’s also a drinker and hates small towns. Oh ya, and she has big tits!

To clarify, I said that Newbs created these characters; that’s half true. He didn’t give us any money, usable equipment, weapons, or even any SKILLS. His reasoning is that he wanted us to be forced to actually role-play and speak to the people in town, because any real adventurer would have just carved up the whole place. He wanted us to be “a bunch of shit-eaters”. So we, as players, embarked upon a quest to test the limits of Newbs’ planning, patience, and sanity, by playing the shit out of these motherfuckers.

And so, weaponless and penniless, we began our adventure. Francis, Hermia and Volumnius awoke in a small shack in the village. Staggering out into the bright day sunlight, wishing it was a hangover we were combating rather than total confusion, Volumnius decides to break down the door of the shack and take an old rotting board as a makeshift weapon. Thus armed, we made a beeline for the one saving grace of small towns…booze.

Inside the tavern, we came face to face with one serious motherfucker: none other than Bowser himself. Bowser was the town’s inn/tavern keeper, monstrously huge, bald, and with a wicked awesome beard. The arrogant barkeep tried to make our party pay upfront for our consumption, thus putting the brakes on a well contrived drink-and-dash. Furiously bitter, Hermia bear-hugged the monster, screaming “GET THE BOOZE!!!” Francis needed no prompting to steal, and after collecting an armload of sweet, sweet liquor, quickly quitted the scene, followed closely by Volumnius and Hermia. We retreated to our newly named “drinking shack” and proceeded to do the only thing these adventurers were any good for: get ridiculous.

Shortly afterwards, Bowser followed us to the shack, bringing backup in the form of some disgusting drunken regular at the bar. Unfortunately for us, we were well into the drink at this point. Hermia, panicking, tries to kick the wall out of the shack to escape, and ends up on her drunken ass. Her second tactic was “shock and awe”…she ripped off her shirt and flaunted her disgusting body, but this was ineffective as well. Francis and Volumnius chuck a couple of empty bottles at the intruders, and proceed to get the tar beaten out of them. Francis decided then and there to haul drunken ass, and makes a mad dash for the door, miraculously picking Bowser’s pocket on the run.

Once outside, he found a pair of town guards come to see what the commotion was about. His drunken slurs managed to convince the guards that Bowser and his pal were in the shack there assaulting two young girls, and the barkeep gets arrested! Now our heroes were possessed of some decent coin in one hand, and liquor in the other. I’d be willing to call that a win. We used some of our ill-gotten gains to purchase a little equipment, including a couple of clubs and knives.

Now, the next day, we are confronted by the town officials who have managed to sort all this out (this is why small towns are bullshit, by the way) and arrest us. Long story short, we bluff check our way into the mayor’s confidence, and he lets us in on the town secret of “Green Grants Life”. The green haze around the town keeps the rat hordes at bay and is produced by a small fist sized gem they call the Orb. The Orb’s is hidden with townsperson chosen by the mayor, and charged to keep it safe. Naturally, our characters decide that the only possible course of action here, really, is to steal the orb and use it’s radius of safety to take a walk along the road to Mosely, leaving the townsfolk utterly defenseless.

Around this point, we re-encounter Derek, who had been injured during the rat raids and been unconscious in the wagon ever since. Our exhausted minds must have forgotten him there…so sue us. He wakes up and is pretty damned ungrateful seeing as we’d hauled his sorry ass away from the rat-fight in the first place. The wagon would have moved faster without him, honestly… We also remember that we have two horses that have not been fed or watered in two days. Francis decides to feed and water the poor beasts.

Now, the townspeople are all pretty close-lipped about the Orb and its’ location, but thankfully, they’re mostly retarded. Another reason I hate small towns: Inbreeding. I won’t bore you all with a play-by-play, but here are the highlights: We got drunk with some rich douchebag’s wife and robbed her house a little. Hermia and Volumnius will tell you that Francis fucked the horses (he was unavailable for comment, you bastards). We sold Volumnius into the sex trade where she became one of our leading sources of information (that’s right, this town had 10 buildings, and one was a brothel. Nice, Newbs). She talked her way into the town’s main ho’s (nicknamed “leather-cunt”) house one night and let Francis and Derek in, on suspicion that the Orb was there. Her brother woke up and ended up arresting Derek, and got a pillow full of piss as thanks, courtesy of Francis. Volumnius lezzed out with the town bike. Hermia, still crazy, was convinced that the Orb was buried in the center of town and bought a pickaxe and spent about an entire day hacking at the ground trying to get underneath the town monument…in broad daylight. Finally, Francis got bored of the horses and decided he had some spare pocket change and thought he’d take a turn with the town’s whore. While in the lineup awaiting his servicing, he managed to convince that same rich douchebag to tell us where he had the Orb hidden, and even walked us to the spot. Utilizing all the combined cleverness they could muster, the heroes deduced the code to open the lock on the Orb, which came with a convenient finder’s fee of 400 gold. Treasure AND gold that we didn’t earn? Success!

Ok, now for the grand escape plan! Normal people might have just hitched up the horses and walked out of town. But not Cock Slap Inc.!!! (that’s what we named our group!) We decided we needed to terrorize the citizenry some more. They were already getting pretty annoyed with our shenanigans, so we figured we’d need to do something really noticeable! After about a half hour of talking about all the pointless ideas we had to be stupid, we just settled on arson and robbery, with a little bit of assault mixed in. So we set fire to several of the town’s abandoned shacks, and while everyone was supposed to be paying attention to the fires, we were supposed to pull our cart up to the door of the tavern and set ourselves upon Bowser (not a good couple days for this guy). What really happened was that the fires got everyone outside to witness us brawling, looting, running for it, and otherwise making assholes of ourselves. Derek slugged it out for a few rounds with tubby while Volumnius and Hermia loaded the cart with as much food and booze as they could carry. In two trips. Finally, we all piled into the wagon and peeled outta there.

The four members of Cock Slap Inc., cursing small towns everywhere, were extremely satisfied in short order, as they could hear those telltale screams and destruction of the unprotected town that told us the unimpeded tide of rats was eating the whole place. Fuck you, small town.

So here ends the first entry into the Shufflingdead.com D&D Record of Adventures. I’ll close by thanking Newbs for DMing this punishing, ridiculous adventure. I’ve honestly never laughed so hard playing D&D. And I’ll thank the other players for being such good sports and playing such ridiculous characters, as well.

Wikipedia tells me that you’re a quintuple-talented performance artist, musician, writer, painter, and actress. Is your talent limitless?

Does this answer your question.

Charlyne, you seem to have managed to make a very good life out of pursuing your own creative interests and not succumbing to The Man. I’d love to do the same, advice?

I suppose I’ve learned the hard way, I have been in situations where I wasn’t happy with the material I was working on. But I’ve realized in partaking in these sort of creative jobs and doing something you don’t believe in — it’ll pay a toll on my soul. And there’s nothing worth hurting that. Life is too short to compromise your soul.

Yes, there are times that you can’t always have your way and have to give in, however, there are ways to make sure you aren’t completely turning your back on who you are.

In the specific job I had taken I didn’t really know I was getting into, and signed up for something where I didn’t get to see the material until the day they brought me on set. When I was on set, I did not like what they had written for me. I was so disappointed in what I was in for. I was signed up for 2 episodes minimum and maybe longer. Luckily, I was such a poor reader (I can’t read well out loud)… I was fired. It was the best feeling ever. I was saved from ruining myself. Now, I won’t take a job unless I approve of the material.

I learned that if I need money, I rather take a day job like waitressing, than take a creative job that I was not passionate about.

I prefer to write in the middle of the night while eating uncooked macaroni noodles. What are your writing habits?

I’m not sure. Sometimes I dream of my ideas while I’m asleep. Sometimes I daydream about situations. I don’t really pay attention too much. Which is probably why I’m always dreaming.

Does it infuriate you when people say that you look young?

No.

So you’re in a band called The Glass Beef, and you have a video on YouTube for a song called “Tony Braxton.” Is it filmed in your home? What are all those jugs (milk jugs?) doing in the background?

It’s filmed in my friend’s apartment. Yes those are milk jugs. Empty ones.

Have you ever heard of cuddle parties?

Nope.

I bet Seth Rogen would be a good cuddler. Thoughts?

Nope.

People are very concerned about the release of a film you co-wrote and starred in, called Paper Heart. When are they going to be able to see this movie?

Strange. Why are people “very concerned”? – I am unsure of it’s release date.

You filmed Paper Heart in Toronto. What do you think of my glorious homeland of Canada?

I think it’s pretty. They’re downtown is pretty too. I had never seen frozen water before. I mean, I’d seen it like in my freezer. Ice cubes. But not frozen lakes, streams, or rivers. It was pretty mind blowing. I like the trees. Everything seems so much cleaner in Canada.

Thanks a lot Charlyne, this has been a lot of fun! May your internet connection remain stable and your Scotch tape maintain cohesion.

Thank you!

Many men came to Leonidas himself for a solid talking to.

There has been a lot of talk lately about Greece.  In light of recent fires, I have decided that now is the time to look over this old girl’s history and, with any luck, find a solution to its problems in some ancient dusty box in the attic of introspection.  Before that box is burned by rioters.

To start with, what is Greece?  What turbulent waters and epic conflicts helped to shape this coastal nation into the ineffective dive of a country we know today?  It all began with Mongol traders who stumbled upon a drunk oil-wench wandering around the mountains.  And although they could barely understand her ridiculous accent she was ridden more times that night than a communal saddle.  More times than a rickshaw on the Great Wall; more times than the chieftain’s thong; more times than a Greek prostitute!  Anyway, this writhing mass of Mongol-on-Grecian flesh gave birth to the kingdoms of Greece.  The rough and tumble son–with more than his share of mommy issues–was named Sparta.  The effeminate bookworm–who was kind of a momma’s boy–was Athens.  And the Grecian sister, Dot.

A few centuries and a couple of dead philosophers later, the sons of Greece were deeply entrenched in war.  Persia, the rich kid on the block, had decided to invade.  It was up to the king of Sparta, with his brave 300 and Scottish accent, to give up his life for freedom and the natural rights of all men.  Leaving his slave empire behind him, he and his men slaughtered the Persian monsters for three days before the cowardly homosexuals, which no fighting man of Greece could ever abide, overtook them.  That last night before their deaths, the brave 300 Spartans comforted each other, steeling themselves for tomorrow’s destiny.  Hardening themselves beneath the naked sky and the penetrating glare of the stars.  Many men came to Leonidas himself for a solid talking to– why that night the King of Sparta took on more men than the French Foreign Legion.  He took on more men than a feminist in the sixties; he took on more men than a bar stool at Hooters; he took on more men than a Greek Prostitute!

Yet the death of the brave 300 lit a fire under Greece, and with time and effort they threw back the Persian aggressors.  And, having grasped peace from the gauntlet of war, the kingdoms brought their fighting men home just in time to ravage each other.  Yes, the kingdoms ravaged each other.  Sparta sacked Athens, Athens laughed as Sparta fell apart.  Stuff happened to the other kingdoms but nobody cares about losers.

Some time after this, the nation of Greece saw the flaming beacon of World War II and, predictably, got their asses kicked by the Germans.  Germany is a much better, more interesting country, but they’re not in the news right now.  Anyway, boring old Greece has limped on ever since.  Imagine, dear reader, a country run by a cartoon rat whose partner in crime, a cross-eyed wild boar, holds the position of police chief.  The rat is always trying out another scheme to steal his nation’s cheese hoard without anyone noticing, and the wild boar shoots 15-year-olds.  This is a rough approximation of Greece in the last fifty years.  A few weeks ago, however, the mouse-like populace of Greece found out just how little of their cheese wheel remains. And now, not unlike a certain gorilla who found his mighty banana hoard reduced to a few shrivelled phallic tree-fruits, these mice are gonna burn the rest of that yellow bullshit and raise a little hell!  YEAH!  Democracy was born here it can die here, bitches!

(Stay with us for part 2 of this investigation, entitled: “A Rational Response to Riots”)

Dear Human Female:

I am a University student, webmaster, and all-around excellent young gentleman currently seeking the companionship of a human female. I am willing to be a one-time intimate encounter, a participant in some casual dating, or even a serious boyfriend, plus anything in-between that you can think of.

I look to bring my passion, emotional stability, and arousing good looks to a relationship with you.

Enclosed is a copy of my dating resumé for your perusal as well as a letter of recommendation from a previous girlfriend. If you are interested in pursuing my awesomeness further, you may contact me vial email at newbs@shufflingdead.com.

Yours Truly,

Newbs

Experience

I have had several girlfriends and pseudo-girlfriends previously. Additionally, I have had a couple of casual encounters and gone on many awkward coffee dates. I have also maintained friendships with countless other young ladies over the last several years. Though I have yet to get laid, I have acquired some experience in the field of foreplay, and am confident that I can apply and expand this knowledge.

Interests
My passion is writing, for the past five years I have run the website shufflingdead.com, which is dedicated to exploring the meaning of life, the universe, and everything through articles, comics, and even celebrity interviews. Additionally, I play a disgusting amount of video games and am a tremendous Nintendo fanboy. Other interests include Magic: The Gathering, Star Trek, walking, and building a huge Lego tower out of all my Lego. I look to share these interests with a female companion, and I hope that she will share her interests with me as well.

Physical Status

I am currently in fine physical form. I am not overweight, not am I scrawny. My eyesight is not perfect, though I strive for visual sensory excellence through the use of a pair of glasses. I recently participated in a strenuous daily workout routine involving jump-rope for some four months. I make every effort to maintain my resilient twenty-three year old body so that I may live to a very old age and engage in energetic sexual escapades for a long time to come.

Mental Status

I consider myself to possess exceptional mental prowess. I have developed my writing skills through my website, assignments in University, and even my University’s student paper. My breadth of pop-culture knowledge is formidable, and my analytical skills finely honed. As with my physical status, I recognize that there is always something to improve, and in this case that it is my short term memory.

Additional Skills

• currently learning how to ride a bike
• once jumped rope 100 times without tripping
• have actually beaten Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels and F-Zero GX
• pretty much all of the gross and fine motor skills that a human being is capable of

To whom it may concern, the following is a letter to confirm that [Newbs] and I, [Roam], entered into a relationship in late December of 2002, which lasted for approximately six months, before finally ending in early May of 2003. It was during this time that [Newbs] put forth valiant efforts to secure the position of my boyfriend, and despite my initial rejection, he continued his campaign to win me over, utilizing a combination of cleverly concocted hair-brained schemes, stalker-like behaviour, and an impressive knowledge of video games. Alarmingly, I found myself falling for his idiosyncratic sense of humour, nerdy good looks, and boyish charm. It was not long before I was picturing him naked.

It quickly became evident to me that [Newbs] is an extremely intelligent and unique individual. In addition, he is eager to please, willing to compromise, always sincere, and though he is perhaps a little obsessive and tight fisted with his money, he is a truly generous person and often acts unselfishly. His desire to avoid conflict makes him quick to solve problems, and I was pleased to find him generally willing to go along with just about any ridiculous idea that I could think of, with little to no complaining. But perhaps his most attractive quality is his highly developed sense of style, which he masterfully exhibits via a plethora of sweatshirts in varying hues of grey and blue.

All things considered, it is my unwavering belief that [Newbs] displays several appealing qualities one might look for in a boyfriend, and would make a fine contribution to any potential relationship. Indeed, he has much to offer the single ladies of the world.

Sincerely,

[Roam]

For the past eight years, Republicans working through their attack machine of conservative talk-radio hosts, Fox News, 527 groups, and Republican talking-head TV panelists have been able to control political discourse. They find the right talking points, hammer on them incessantly, and eventually the election is warped into John Kerry’s supposedly poor performance on a Swiftboat in Vietnam. In the United States, a politician who tries to take some sort high ground, who tries to avoid personal attacks, is a politician who loses.

I’m not sure that these tactics are necessarily wrong or “bad” in some objective way, they work, which in matters as significant as ensuring that your political interests hold the balance of power, probably makes it worthwhile. For the Democrats to ensure that they win the current presidential election, they need to start using the media the way Republicans have so successfully. The choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate is an obvious starting point for Democrats, and they’re letting it slip away.

After an initial flurry, Republicans have managed to quell much of the controversy surrounding John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee. When Palin was first introduced, she compared herself to Hillary Clinton, claiming “we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all.” The statement made plain what was already obvious, she was chosen not for her qualifications, but because she was a woman. The pick was an insulting act of pandering and a blatant act of tokenism.

It is the Republicans who have been the sexists on this issue, yet Democrats have been largely silent. Hillary Clinton proclaimed “No way, no how, no McCain” at the Democratic convention, but she hasn’t weighed in on this insulting comparison. The fear has been that Joe Biden would look like a bully attacking a woman (due to the latent sexism of voters), Hillary Clinton is the perfect alternative and she’s been missing.

On cable news channels like CNN, Republican talking-heads shout down legitimate criticisms of Palin with the sexism card. The claims have managed to warp discussions on legitimate issues into questions of whether or not they should be discussed at all. Palin’s lack of experience in fields relevant to the job for which she is attempting to get have been brilliantly eschewed by Republicans.

The discussions regarding Palin’s personal life, specifically her daughter’s pregnancy, have also become discussions of whether or not the discussions should be had at all. That Palin is a proponent of abstinence-only education seems quite relevant when it didn’t even work for her own daughter. Republicans have certainly never shied away from using family. McCain himself has been a victim of it, with the now infamous “black baby” whisper campaign which helped Bush gain the party’s nomination over him.

Palin’s decision to have another child at an age which would heavily increase the likelihood of that child being disabled in some fashion (which is exactly what happened) is indicative of her poor ability to make decisions even in her own life. When Republicans harp mercilessly on Democrats for their much more irrelevant sex lives, it is blatantly hypocritical to proclaim their own candidates’ personal lives off-limits. All that is required of Democrats is to push hard on these issues. Call Republicans on their endless reams of bullshit, and Democrats will finally be fighting the fight they need to.

Michelle Obama’s remark “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country” was made out to be unpatriotic by Republicans, and it got a huge amount of play in the media. Somehow, Palin’s husband’s former membership in an Alaskan independence party has been largely ignored. This is the sort of controversy that needs some help to get going, Democrats need to attack on it until it can no longer be ignored.

Democrats need to manipulate the media the way Republicans have done to such great success. Force the issues that appeal to the lowest common denominator, warp political discourse in their favour, and put the Republicans on the defensive. If the Democrats plan to win this election, then they should fight as unscrupulously as needed.

The internet has always been a butcher shop for the English language, but it seems to be getting worse. The problem is that while misspellings, misuse, bad grammar, and intentional, ironic bad grammar, were once relegated to sites I stayed away from, it’s now seeping into the sites I actually visit.

YouTube is massively popular, everyone seems to use it, it’s inescapable and I can’t help visiting it as much as everybody else. Comments are minimally moderated though, and this means that where I used to have only a small intake of “lol” and “!!!,” in my daily life, I now have an overwhelming dose.

The stupidity seems to be leaking; it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to read my favourite forums without becoming annoyed into distraction by obnoxious catchphrases. I’m not sure if there are any more catchphrases than there used to be, just that the latest generation is a lot more grating.

Where previously, catchphrases were several words long, internet memes seem to have become shorter over the years, so that now single words are the catchphrases. The internet has ruined for me the words “win,” “fail,” and “epic.” These three simple, common, useful words now make me shudder when I hear or read them.

That new movie is not “win,” nor is it “made of win,” and it is especially not “made of win and awesome.” Your anti-Scientology protest might have been great, even incredible, but was it actually “epic”? That new game may not be very good, but it is not “fail,” or even “epic fail.” The first time these words were ever used in this fashion might have been entertaining, but now I wonder if anyone using them even realizes that they’re doing so improperly.

It’s not just the grammar and overuse that are problems, but that the people using the words seem to think in binary, where movies, video games, and just about anything else can be described as being only the greatest or the worst thing “evar.” Nothing is decent or okay.

Almost as grating are the cat image macros, or “lolcats,” which are pictures of animals, usually cats, doing something “cute,” with some kind of text scrawled across the image. This text either conveys what the animal is supposedly thinking, or describing its action, both in saccharin-sweet baby talk.

If I wanted to roll my eyes at the way people talk to their pets, I’d leave my house, not spend all night in front of my computer. The internet is a cold, dangerous place, and posting images used to be for the purpose of disgusting fellow message board readers. Bring back gaping anuses; I’m sick of seeing your cat.

The only positive in the latest generation of internet trends is surely Rick Astley. Mr. Astley, and his 1980s masterwork “Never Gonna Give You Up,” have been endeared to me thanks to the “rickroll” phenomenon. I’ve never actually been “rickroll’d,” which means to trick someone into seeing the “Never Gonna Give You Up” music video (for those of you who don’t know, and if that’s you, what’s wrong with you?), but I sure have rocked out to that song many times (including right now, as I write this). My contribution to the 5 million+ views of the YouTube video have been voluntary and without remorse.

I think what separates “Never Gonna Give You Up” from win/fail/epic, and cat macros is that Astley’s use of the English language is not an attempt to revert to grammatically broken baby-talk. Where once, in an internet long ago, “all your base are belong to us” made fun of bad English, now the trend in catchphrases is to embrace it.

No ports. No release 6 months later with no mouse support, and lackluster presentation for full price.

PC gaming has been a hotly contested subject for a long time, make no mistake. Ever since the Xbox first came out, people have been proclaiming “THE DEATH OF THE PC IS NIGH” and other such fear-mongering. Generally for no better reason than some kind of superiority complex, because they want to feel like they’re getting value for their money when they spend upwards of $300 on a computer that is only really able to play games. There’s very little proven truth to these statements, and actually quite the opposite if you don’t simply look at NPD statistics, and add in the much more profitable category of digital distribution.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably seen the dire posts such as “Spore most pirated game ever; over 500,000 downloads in first week of release”; and that the supposed “failure” of Crysis was entirely attributed by the developer, Crytek, to be due to software piracy. Noted for originally PC-exclusive games like Unreal Tournament, Epic announced in April that they wouldn’t be porting Gears of War 2 to PC, like they did the first iteration of the title, because of piracy issues.

And while both Crysis, and Gears of War were both pirated more than Ukrainian weapons transports off the Somali coast, I think there’s a much better explanation to why they didn’t sell as well as expected on PC. They weren’t very good games.

Sure Crysis was shiny, and was “A spectacular and beautiful sci-fi epic.”~ PC Gamer UK; but there sure wasn’t a whole lot of gameplay there. Most people could beat the entire game in under 9 hours, the voice acting was mediocre, the story was predictable most of the time and the rest of the time is was unpredictable in a predictable way. The game was hyped all to hell by the critics, but hype doesn’t sell games, or at least not a lot of them.

Gears of War was almost groundbreaking on the Xbox 360. Cooperative, bloody gameplay that used cover elements, and had a very tactical approach to gameplay. Mix in visceral weapons, a tragic story, and boatloads of action, and you have a recipe for an amazing game. But when you port it to PC? It’s all been done before. And in most cases better and 3 years ago.

But now I think I’ve found an offender in the console market that is every bit as bad as digital piracy. This isn’t pointed at a specific company, but more a specific practice; the purchase and sale of used games.

Say I have 10 people, and I want to sell one book to each person. All 10 of those people want to buy the book, but only half of them want to spend full retail. So 5 people buy the book on release day and read it, while the other 5 wait for the price to drop. Of the 5 that bought it, 4 of them decide that they don’t want to keep the book after reading it, so they offer to resell it to the other 5 for half what they paid for it. Thereby allowing them to spend that money on another book, and the next person in line gets to read it. The last person waits until the book hits the super-saver discount bin at the grocery store, and picks it up for 1/10 the value 3 years after it’s released.

That means, of the 10 people I was expecting to sell that book to, I only actually made a profit from 5 of them. And chances are, the people that bought the book used are probably going to turn around and sell it to other people for an even more reduced price.

Now compare that to me trying to sell the book as an E-book to the same 10 people, but you can’t resell it once you buy it. The first 5 people are still going to buy the book. They want it; fast, safe, and they don’t care how much it costs. The next 5 people don’t want to pay full retail, and they don’t want to wait, so they pirate it.

What is the difference to me? I still only sold 5 books either way. I’m only hitting half of my target audience. And worse yet, chances are the people that resold the books from the first example, are most likely going to go use that money to buy used books while they’re in the book store selling their old ones, because then they can get store credit for them, and get more for their trade.

“According to OTX’s report, the used software market in the U.S. is projected to be $1.3 billion (not including systems or accessories).” ~ April 2008, [Gamasutra]

According to OTX, a global research and consulting firm that specializes in providing online research, out of a total 76 million gamers in the USA, 45 million have purchased at least one new game, and one used game in the last year. Two and a half million buy exclusively used games, with the remainder buying exclusively new games. Of those that buy games, either new or used, fully a third of them will resell an average of 60% of the games that they buy, which will then get resold, to no profit to the publisher, developer, or anyone, except for the reseller.

Through applications of store credit and buyer discounts these sales are almost pure profit to the reseller so why would games stores ever even consider selling new games at all? If you consider the number of games that “fall off a truck” and get resold, at 90% resale the first week of release, why would anyone BUY new games either? To a publisher and a developer this is just like theft. The games could have been stolen right off the truck heading to games stores everywhere, and it means the same thing as having them resold. It’s a customer that they lost, and less money to fund the next game.

“…OTX has attributed this to the current economic downturn, and has also projected a marked increase in the online sales market, along with an upturn in used game purchases at GameStop.”~ April 2008, [Gamasutra]

Used games make up approximately $1.3 billion of a $10 billion industry in the US. When I was growing up, I’d be surprised if you could even find a number, never mind one in the 15% of all sales range. There wouldn’t be enough room in all the Classifieds sections in all the world for that many ads. At what point is industry going to start looking at these numbers and wondering how they could let so much income slip through their fingers? And while many people would say that once you purchase a product, you own it and can do whatever you want with it; read the EULA that comes with a piece of software you buy. They’re absolutely medieval in the protection of their IP, and you agree to them simply by opening the product to read the EULA.

“I’d actually make the point that for us second-hand sales is a very critical situation, because people are selling multiple times intellectual property,” said Jens Uwe Intat, senior VP and general manager for European publishing at EA. [Gameindustry.biz]

I don’t advocate piracy of any kind. I purchase all the games that I want and play, because I want to support the developers that made them. If you don’t support the developers, eventually they stop making money, and therefore stop making games we all enjoy. Having said that, developers have to stop abandoning the PC over piracy excuses. If they’re going to blame the PC as being unprofitable because of people stealing their product, maybe they should look to companies like Stardock, that release products with little to no copy protection and have had great success.

I would have less problem with developers abandoning a platform because they think it’s too hard to develop for, or because that’s not where their target audience is. But PC developers seem to think that because there were x number of graphics cards that meet the minimum requirements for their game, they should sell exactly x copies of their game. They seem to think that everyone that has a PC should be buying their game, or it’s a complete failure. If I’m running a restaurant, I don’t automatically assume that I should expect to sell food to the entire population of the city it’s in just because everyone has a stomach.

Maybe if game publishers would stop forcing developers to release betas of their games at full retail price, and force the general public to squash bugs just to play it. Possibly they could start taking the time to make sure all of the content is actually implemented before the game is released, and, just spitballing here, release a finished product.

That could actually result in your game selling well. But maybe using an uncontrollable force as an excuse for releasing a terrible product looks better to investors. Kind of like blaming your dog for eating your homework.

Support the developers kids.

Location: The Office

Job Classification: Office Sidekick. Permanent Full-Time

Openings: 1

Open Until Vacancy is Filled.

Salary Range: To Be Negotiated

Duties:

As the assistant to the assistant, the office sidekick shall report to everyone in the office. Work tasks include answering the telephone, filing, sorting the mail, faxing, and assorted clerical duties as assigned. Numerous work-related consultations are required to take place throughout the day.

Qualifications:

The successful candidate shall possess the ability to listen carefully and nod at appropriate times as massive office bitching occurs. Initiative in the form of uttering such encouraging phrases as ‘I agree’ and ‘I most certainly do know what you mean’ is preferred.

The ability to avoid office rumours is required. Must be able to wear sweaters for long periods of time. Candidates named Chadwick, Beatrice, Eunice, and Worthington are preferred. A moustache is an asset.

Successful completion of our rigorous skill-testing examination, as well as a criminal record check, is required. We thank everyone for their interest in employment with our organization; however, only those deemed worthy shall be contacted for an interview. Candidates with lesser qualifications may be considered at a lower classification and salary scale.

Sleeping
Probably the best way to kill time is to sleep. If you wanted to use your time effectively, you would probably sleep between six and eight hours a day. Six if you have some stuff you need to get done, eight if you want to be healthy and feel good. What’s so effective about those numbers is that they work well as fractions, six is a quarter of a day, and eight is a third. Sleeping for exactly a third of a day will probably lead to a feeling of satisfaction and enjoyment. Of course, you want to kill time and burn through the day, so I recommend sleeping at least nine hours, and if you can manage it, twelve.

Nine is easy, make sure you don’t need to get up early, and just stay in bed until you feel you’ve really gotten all the sleep you want; it’ll probably be about nine hours. Twelve is the challenge. I recommend setting your alarm clock for the middle of the night to really fuck with your sleep patterns. The lower the quality of your sleep overall, the longer you need to sleep to feel well. If you find that no matter how poor your sleep has been, if you’re wide awake after nine hours and just can’t make it, try masturbating right there in bed, with any luck it’ll conk you out for the stretch. Twelve, being half of twenty-four is another clean fraction, but one you can really feel ashamed about.

Get that time, kill it.

Working
There are few who find work they actually enjoy, and having a job you hate too much might inspire you to quit and improve your life. I recommend finding a job you don’t especially enjoy but don’t completely hate either. Try finding a job with plenty of hours, and one with shifts right in the middle of the day. That way your free time is split up on either side of your shifts, and there is a reduced chance you might find something worthwhile with those hours.

Not Working
This is not recommended for novices, but not working can actually be a better way to waste time than working. For the less skilled, not working runs the risk of inspiring a person to self improvement and seeking out new experiences, so make sure you know what you’re doing before you try it. If you think you can handle it, not working has the potential to be a world of endless TV, movies, video games, porn, and internet browsing.

Watching TV
With twelve hours of sleep and an 8 hour shift at work, you should only have four hours for yourself, and those are best wasted on entertainment. If you’re going the route of not working, then you’re in for a whopping twelve hours. With this time, I recommend as much television as possible, as it truly is the most brain deadening, lethargic activity a person can engage in. Television is especially effective at night when utterly nothing worth attention is on, hours can be wasted by either changing channels continuously or leaving on one station featuring a Wild On marathon followed by promotions for Girls Gone Wild.

Consuming Other Entertainment
Television isn’t the only form of entertainment with which to waste time. There are also video games, though playing games you haven’t played previously runs the risk of feeling satisfying, I recommend playing the same games you’ve played through dozens of times already. Movies are similar, stay away from anything award winning as it might prompt you to think and/or feel emotions, just watch the movies you loved as a kid over and over again. Trilogies like the original Star Wars films, Indiana Jones, and Back to the Future make great marathons for weekends when you have extra time to kill.

That time is done for.

Browsing the Internet
This is similar to consuming entertainment, but so effective that it warrants its own heading. The amazing thing about internet browsing is that it’s absorbing enough to ward off the sort of boredom that might otherwise force a person into accomplishing something. While stumbling through popular sites like YouTube, Digg, and Wikipedia is extremely effective, I find that lurking internet forums is the ultimate form of internet time-killing. Find a site with a large community that shares many of your interests, and start browsing. You will begin to find that reading every post of a good thread, and absorbing all of the differing opinions therein will become an overwhelming addiction. Best of all, you will remember little-to-none of what you read the next morning, therefore truly nullifying your time. Communities exist for everything from giant robot fetishes to, my favourite, video game sales statistics.

Everything Else
If you run out of entertainment, there are many other ways to waste time. Having a child or buying a pet requires you to allot a certain amount of time each day to caring for these horrific creatures, and interacting with these lower life forms automatically requires you to shut off your brain, they serve as excellent time wasters. There’s also the previously mentioned masturbation, which not only requires little thinking, but actually lowers any drive to engage in thinking afterward. Drinking, smoking, and illicit drug use can really waste time, and the costs required force a person to work more, thus wasting an even greater amount of time!

As you can see, there is a plethora of amazing ways to waste time, begin with a few of these suggestions, and work your way up as you push out the satisfying parts of your life. Taking the time to read this article was already an excellent start.

For me, this alone justifies banning pets in Canada, but there is a myriad of other reasons. Even the most responsible pet owners can’t control their pets all of the time. Being chased by runaway dogs can be terrifying, as once happened to me. I don’t know what kind they were, I just don’t care enough about the various human-engineered pseudo-species to know, but they were one of the large, vicious, angry kind. My youth has been filled with rogue cats shitting in my parent’s yard, and I anticipate much the same thing once I have a place of my own.

Of course, it’s not just pet owners that are the issue; animals themselves have inherent problems that make them unbearable to share a society with. Like many, I suffer from pet allergies, and it makes visiting other people’s houses difficult. You never know if you’re going to find their home infested with rampaging cats or slow-moving dogs, all bent on attacking with dander rather than teeth. Additionally, dogs and birds can be an extreme annoyance just with their incessant noise making.

With all of these problems, the reasons for actually owning a pet are entirely lost on me, without even considering the cost and responsibility associated with pet ownership. Anthrozoology.org suggests that there are “many psychological benefits animal companionship can give us, including providing security for the anxious, companionship for the lonely and status symbols for the image conscious.” All of which I interpret as “animals are crutches for the weak minded.”

These sound like very selfish reasons anyway, a person who gets married hopefully doesn’t do it for the psychological benefits. For a person to suggest that they want an animal for their own well-being is similar to a person declaring that they would like a husband or wife, anyone will do, just to feel better about him or herself.

I can’t help but wonder what the quality of life is like for the average pet. Is a dog that stares all day at the front door, waiting for the return of her owner, really having that great a time? Perhaps well behaved pets are simply living with a collective case of Stockholm syndrome. Boredom for these animals must surely be an issue, for a bird trapped in a cage, or a dog whose daily highlights are eating and walking.

I suggest banning pet ownership to solve all of these issues. Start by outlawing pet sales by pet stores and breeders. Step up animal shelter efforts, and play fast and loose with their euthanasia policies. Eventually all of the animals currently in captivity will die off, and we can officially outlaw pets.
I’m not suggesting that anybody stop eating meat, or that we end cattle farming, or any of those other PETA-esque animal lover ideas. I’m all for raising animals for specific, utilitarian purposes, though preferably giving them a bit of room to run around in, but keep them out of towns and cities. Things will surely be a cleaner and saner for it.

In my childhood I was wrought with guilt over celebrating Christmas. Being an atheist, I wondered what I was doing celebrating the birth of some dude’s birthday whose religion I wanted to have utterly nothing to do with. It was greed that kept me coming back though, a deep seeded lust for Lego and chocolate. Now I see the error of my ways, a great Christmas can be had, with the only connection to Christ being an unfortunate parallel in name.

Just as Halloween was usurped from Pagans and turned into a fun time with virtually no religious connotations, so too can Christmas be converted. The secular pieces are already there: Santa Claus, gift exchanges, food gorging, Christmas trees, singing, and gaudy decorations are already integral Christmas traditions. Just make sure to put something other than an angel or a star on top of your tree, sing Frosty the Snowman instead of Oh Holy Night, and you’ve got yourself a secular Christmas.

There have been many cries that Christmas has become too commercial as well, and while I think the gifts and everything else are an important part of a secular Christmas, there is still room to celebrate family and togetherness. These things are universal, and I see no reason to stop celebrating them just because I’m kicking Christ out of my Christmas. Even we heathens can appreciate peace on Earth and goodwill toward men, despite the religious origins of that phrase.

I suppose that there are other holiday time religious traditions that could be latched onto, but Christmas is already so prevalent, and filled with so many non-religious traditions that, aside from an over-used Seinfeld reference, it’s the perfect holiday to abduct. Hanukkah intrigues me, in later iterations secular Christmas could even come to include eight days of gift giving, but such a commingling of traditions will take time to develop.

I would like to thank Christianity, a couple thousand years of intertwining traditions, and sheer corporate voracity for secular Christmas. It makes sense for a religion to celebrate the birth of its icon, though I’m not entirely sure what all the other stuff is really for, other than to just have a good time and make retailers a lot of money. It’s this other stuff, with all its good times and over spending that I’ll be borrowing.

Some might accuse me of waging that fabled “War on Christmas.” I’m not attacking Christmas though, just proposing to borrow it for me and my atheist cohorts. Christians can keep Christ right there in Christmas for themselves. Indeed, the existence of a secular Christmas might even guarantee that it retains political correctness. Allowing retailers to exclaim “merry Christmas” without the fear that they are appealing only to Christians at the exclusion of other religions.

Do not shy away from Christmas like you were Scrooge McDuck, my non-Christian brethren. Instead, embrace the glory of gifts, food, and family. Celebrating for the sake of celebrating can be fun.

First, I’d like to announce that we’re changing our tournament formats. We’re eliminating Vintage, Legacy, Extended, Standard, and any other formats that allow you to play with old cards. Instead we’re only allowing Block Constructed, and only of our newest block (which will soon be Phyrexian Homarid!). Additionally, we’re disallowing all casual play, all casual players can expect to receive cease and desist orders soon. By the way, we’ve entered into a contract with all Magic vendors to buyback (get it?!?!?!?!) all the Magic cards we’ve ever produced. We expect this will raise card prices for those casual players who try to circumvent our laws by a magnitude of several thousand.

We’re not quite satisfied with sucking off the vendors yet! I am proud to announce that in addition to our Reserved Cards list of cards we will never reprint, we’re introducing a Disintegrate (seriously, these jokes are amazing, do you guys see what a fucking genius I am yet?) list. These cards will be burned on site by Wizards of the Coast whenever we come into contact with them. This should raise prices by a magnitude of several million beyond that of our buyback initiative. This is only a preliminary list, expect us to add more in the future:

• Black Lotus
• Ancestral Recall
• Time Walk
• Grizzly Bears
• Balduvian Bears

Our hope is that Black Lotus will actually become the rarest commodity on Earth. Once all copies of the card in circulation are destroyed, we will open up the vault and sell the last remaining copy of the card, and use the money to launch a multi-trillion dollar circle-jerking campaign, promoting some of our most accomplished tournament players.

Now, let’s talk about Phyrexian Homarid. Our market research tells us that our players love keywords, so we’re going to introduce 305 keywords, one for each card in the set, minus one. The reason for that minus one is that that one card will have all of the keywords of all of the other cards! Additionally, our customers love creature types, and the synergy those produce, so we’re going to go ahead and make every creature in the set a Homarid (thus the set name, by the way, do you see what a twat I am yet?). Homarids and Phyrexia also have great nostalgic appeal, another thing our research tells us our players dig. It’s a good thing we have market researchers telling us what to do, we are creatively deceased.

Let me tell you a little bit about some of the keywords and abilities we’re introducing.

Disappearing – We already made Vanishing and Fading, two abilities that are functionally exactly the same, people loved both, so we’re going to be introducing a few more in Phyrexian Homarid. The first of those abilities is Disappearing. Creatures with Disappearing come into play with some number of Disappearing counters, and one counter is removed during that creature’s controller’s opponent’s attack phase, before blockers are declared. When the last is removed, the creature is removed from the game with the same number of Time counters as Disappearing counters. During your own attack phase, before blockers are declared, you remove a Time counter, and when the last is removed, you get the creature back and the cycle starts again!

Going Away – Similar to Disappearing. Of course, it uses Going Away counters instead of Disappearing counters, and once the last counter is removed, the card goes into the graveyard rather than being removed from the game. Counters are removed at the beginning of your opponent’s second main phase.

Leaving Slowly – The same as Going Away, but with Leaving Slowly counters instead of Going Away counters. Also, the counters used must be pieces of the card itself, rendering the card useless after it has been played only once or twice. This will help boost the rarity of creatures with Leaving slowly immensely, creatures with this ability will likely become the chase rares of the set. Our vendors love it when we make chase rares! Speaking of which, with the launch of Phyrexian Homarid, we are changing the way rarities work. First, there are no more uncommons, only rares and commons. Second, booster packs will normally contain nothing but commons, only one in one hundred will contain a rare. Also, only rares will be remotely playable, players are recommended to heat their homes by burning the thousands of useless commons they will be collecting. This works well as the amount players will have to pay for playable cards will be so exorbitant that they will not have money to pay their gas bills.

Inappropriate Touching – This is another exciting creature ability! When a creature with Inappropriate Touching blocks a creature older than it, it gets -1/-1, when it is blocked by a creature younger than it, it gets +2/+2, when it is put into prison from play, it gets +1/+6 for each other creature in prison, when it gets back out of prison, it gets +6/+6 for each creature younger than it that blocks it.

Eloping – This is the keyword we are most excited about. Instants with Eloping can be played twice during your opponent’s draw step, and can be repositioned in the stack at your choosing! It comes with a heavy price though, using Eloping allows your opponent to play their own spells and activated abilities twice, and their mana abilities three times! We felt that the draw step wasn’t seeing its fair share of card playing, so we decided to introduce this exciting new keyword!

Wow! I can’t wait to start making money off of this set!

You see, Pluto’s orbit is whacked the fuck out, it just doesn’t line up with the eight real planets of the solar system. It likes to hang out with the other hoodlums of the Sol system, a gaggle of ice balls in the Kuiper belt who could never afford a better orbit. Real planets have nice, clean, round orbits close to the sun like Earth and Mars. Sometimes they blow their wealth on a giant body and hang out a little further away like Jupiter. Pluto could just never compete, and scientists have finally shown the little bastard the door.

Kuiper belt objects, along with their dwarf planet kin don’t understand what it takes to be a planet, they don’t bother clearing their orbits of other objects, and sometimes they’re so small they can’t even overcome rigid body forces to make themselves round.

Becoming a planet is like joining an exclusive club. There are rules for these sorts of things, we need to keep the riffraff out, or else any jackass of a rock could become a planet, and I’d never be able to remember all their names. If Pluto had remained a planet, that would have cleared the way for potentially dozens more planets. It’s a chilling thought for someone like me, whose overpowered brain couldn’t be bothered to actually memorize his multiplication tables.

Mere humans that they are, astronomers still lag behind the sort of super intelligence that an Arts education has granted me. Their definition of a planet still fails my rigorous testing. The persons responsible for deciding this new definition didn’t bother including anything about objects with eccentric orbits. Any real planet ought to have an orbit shaped like a fine woman, completely round. Pluto’s orbit is elliptical and it intercepts with the orbit of Neptune, and it could have just as easily been kicked out by my own, much more eloquent definition.

If the scientists of the world were all as intelligent as me, they would have figured out interstellar travel by now, and we’d know what other solar systems look like. Since they aren’t that smart and they haven’t figured out interstellar travel, very little is known about other solar systems. It’s impossible right now to know if our system is the standard, and I can dig it if the definition of planet has to keep changing to keep up with new discoveries, I’m just going on what our solar system looks like.

The Trifecta of Woman

I entered this year with a check list, three simple requirements that would refine my targeting system and streamline the process.

• Hot (any young woman who I could stomach to look at)
• Single (or willing to cheat)
• Puts out (she’d goddamn better)

I was focused, determined, and certain my new mechanized strategy would entirely eliminate my reliance on sappy emotions. This year, this one for sure, I would get laid, and I didn’t much care by whom. “In this world are many like me who’ve killed their emotions. Don’t forget that.” – Shadow, Final Fantasy VI.

Day One

I managed to keep all of that in mind, of course, until about half way through the first day, that’s when I ran into “her.” There are many young women I almost ask out, and I always regret it, but I had spent all summer kicking my own ass over this one. All of that careful planning left me, here stood my primary target, my only target.

She didn’t fit all of the requirements of my checklist. She was hot, that’s for sure. I probably shouldn’t talk about whether she put out or not (women seem to always hate when you do that). It’s the other one that was the real problem, the one about being single. I know, I know, I had been down this road many times before. Robbie Williams says “all the best women are married,” well they’re certainly taken, anyway. It wasn’t just that she was hot either, but brilliant, competent, she didn’t give me a headache, and all of a sudden these things mattered. I had forgotten, in all of my efforts to fuck anyone I could, that what I was really after was a Hermione. Somewhere in the back of my mind intelligence had become the thing I looked for above all else in a woman, yet I wasn’t conscious of that fact until the moment I ran into “her.”

The “Her” Phenomenon

I call this The “Her” Phenomenon, because that’s how they talk in overwrought teen movies when the protagonist falls immediately in love with most unattainable girl at his high school. It’s when you find the kind of girl you can’t get over, the kind you struggle and bash your head against your computer desk for, but can’t get past. There are only two things you can do when you find yourself in this predicament, try to get over her by going after everything that can walk, and fail, or you can hurl yourself at her, in the most all-out, balls-to-the-wall, maniacal fashion imaginable, and fail. I chose that latter.

Treatment

For those of you who find yourselves in the same situation I was in, I here present the best advice that I can, though it is a way of pain. It is a long and perilous journey that ends inevitably in disaster. You might get beat up by her boyfriend, she might stop talking to you, she might steal your books, but most likely you will be crushed and left distraught.

Let her know you don’t care if she has a boyfriend, ’cause “fuck that guy.” There’s no need to hide your intentions, tell her “I’m morbidly attracted to you,” you’re going all-out, remember. Be incredibly lucky and have her and her boyfriend break up for reasons completely unknown to you. Shave once a week. Be lucky again and run into her out of sheer coincidence over and over again. Ask her out weekly for two months; let her know you’re going to “harass her into submission.” Finally get a date, try to kiss her, get rejected. Ask her out weekly for another two months, have her ask for a kiss, kiss her. Date her for a month, have her break up with you.

Aftermath

It was some two or three months ago that I went through all of this. I found myself asking “where does a person go from here?” My first girlfriend in four years, and it had ended after a month. I guessed at why it didn’t work, why it never works. I stabbed bitterly at the dark and exclaimed “if only I were a foot taller, if I were rich, if I had my own place, if I had my own car, if I played sports, if I could swim, if I could ride a bike, if only I hit women and cheated on them, then I’d succeed!” I followed this up by thinking “maybe if I weren’t so bitter and miserable, stopped being a ranting lunatic, then I’d succeed.” Well, maybe.

I don’t think this experience was a poor one. After all, I did have a girlfriend, not for very long, but I did. It is with annoyance that I am forced to admit that all relationships can, at least, be learned from. Here’s what I learned this time around:

• Driving might be a legitimately useful skill for more than impressing shallow women.
• I don’t have to talk to girls online to pick them up.
• Holding off on showing women my website is a good thing.
• Not introducing women to my friends is key.
• I probably shouldn’t get drunk in front of the women I’m pursuing.
• Those who hesitate, masturbate.

I had hoped to be Ron to her Hermione, a bit of a screw-up, but somehow attractive in her eyes. Really though, I’m not a Ron, I have no interest in Quiditch, and I’m not interested in women interested in men who are interested in Quiditch. Maybe I’m more of a Neville Longbottom, and perhaps I should be looking for more of a Luna Lovegood. This is, ultimately, what I’ve learned. I might find intelligence a very attractive quality, and even though I like to think I’m decently intelligent, you need to have more in common than that. I need to go after the crazier women, because those are the ones I have the most in common with.

This site has an odd way of being fucked by its hosts, our dealings with Angelfire, for example, have passed into legend. Still, the means by which we have been fucked, and the degree to which we have been fucked by our last host, Page-Zone.com, are astonishing. I have asked my old host-reviewing friends back to help me out with this article. Enya, Jewel, and Maren Ord will be reading some comments made by other Page-Zone users, with their own expletives added in for clarification.

Page-Zone’s business habits are a fascinating mix of “mom and pop” small time web hosting and complete and utter disregard for their customers. Many of my support tickets, especially those threatening to leave their company unless my website was restored, were never answered. My one attempt at physically calling their office line ended when I reached an answering machine with a recording completely devoid of anything indicating a business line. Warnings and explanations for technical problems seem only to occur when the issues are small and quickly handled. Servers going and staying down for days are addressed only long after they are dealt with. At one point, Page-Zone’s front page, along with all customer support was barely functional for several days before it all went down and stayed down for several additional days.

brywool says: “What’s with [those motherfuckers in] SUPPORT???? This [cock of a] problem still has not been solved or even acknowledged other than here in this forum and then NOTHING.

I would like, for a moment, to speculate how it is that Page-Zone managed to keep Shufflingdead down so frequently.

1) Jim, the operator of the business, is not actually a human male, but instead a rudimentary artificial intelligence based on “tech support” stereotypes. His anger at us mere mortals is unimaginable, for we are the vaguely computer literate, whereas he is the semi computer literate. Jim’s program limitations prevent him from responding with any emotion or politeness, and if you complain about his business’ services in a private message through his message board, your forums account there will likely disappear mysteriously.

2) The tech support staff are AI spawned from Jim’s AI, who resemble him in their demeanor precisely, and who will always ignore your threats to take your business elsewhere.

3) Page-Zone doesn’t host websites on servers as they are classically understood, but rather by continuously shining flashlights through fiber optic cables which occasionally transmit data vaguely resembling hypertext markup language.

4) Page-Zone does actually host websites on regular servers, but rather than leaving them connected, prefers to disconnect them and play with their parts on a nightly basis to “see how they work.”

5) Page-Zone staff is invited to bring their spouses to work so that they may engage in animalistic orgies, resulting in trampled servers covered in bodily fluids. This environment of total unprofessionalism permeates every moment of office life at Page-Zone, and work is only done once all staff is adequately fellated and drunk.

dwhuff says: “I have [goddamn, motherfucking, shit eating, cock biting, anal stretching, cum swapping, zombie raping, rectal probing, ocular penetrating, nasal copulating, glamour boxing, paraphilic infantilizing, fur suit wearing, robot fetishizing, inflatophilia popping, foreskin tearing, golden showering, Gorean role playing, lactating, donkey punching, labia minora dangling] hosting problems, my websites are down, and Page Zone is the problem and they are not fixing it.”

Whatever the actually reason for Page-Zone’s incompetence, one thing is clear. Their total disregard for their customers indicates that they are more interested in infuriating the denizens of the internet than actually serving them, and the earning of money is of no consequence to their free-wheeling hosting cartel. I give Page-Zone Web Hosting one skull out of five.

Part 1: Entertainment, Arts and Media

Pandora

First Impression: Excellent, the site hasn’t changed it’s layout, which is to say I can actually navigate it. Not only that, but they seem to have forgotten that I used up my free time (or, more likely, I have a different IP address now) and I can listen to music for free again.

In Conclusion: This site is actually worthwhile, so far so good Time.

The 9

First Impression: Uhh, apparently this is like some kind of streaming tv show. Oh boy, she’s talking about Snakes on a Plane.

In Conclusion: This is apparently an internet-tv show created by Yahoo, and I basically have no interest in it. I noticed one of the stories covered on the site was the rising fame of YouTube video blogger geriatric1927, more on him later.

Drawn!

First Impression: Took a long fucking time to load, could just be the stress of being on Time’s list.

In Conclusion: This site actually looks pretty good. It’s really a news site for artists and fans of art. I should note that it is not a goddamn blog though. Just because it’s updated in a similar fashion as a blog and calls itself a blog does not mean it’s a blog. Note to self: stop using the word blog.

Sundance Splinks

First Impression: Typical corporate flash based website. I’m still trying to determine where the content is.

In Conclusion: I was right, this is nothing but a bunch of links compiled on what should have been a simple html based website, but wasn’t because it was designed by a “professional.”

Photo Muse

First Impression: Slow to load a plain splash page. I hate splash pages.

In Conclusion: This site is difficult as hell to navigate. Why these art sites always insist on splash pages between every piece of useful content is beyond my comprehension. It’s a good concept with terrible execution.

Jumpcut

First Impression: This looks like a corporate ripoff of YouTube.

In Conclusion: I’m not nearly the dedicated journalist I would need to be to actually try this site’s editing services. What I can tell you is that it looks like a YouTube ripoff, and that the highlight is watching the original trailer for “Revenge of the Nerds.”

Wolfgang’s Vault

First Impression: They’re playing Neil Diamond.

In Conclusion: I have an idea, check out the hundreds of streaming internet radio stations made available through Winamp and never go to this site.

Podcast Pickle

First Impression: Slow to load, green, filled with poorly stretched images.

In Conclusion: I don’t have time to listen to this shit. Dear internet, get a life.

YouTube

First Impression: I’m still logged in from when I visited the site immediately before writing this.

In Conclusion: Fuck you YouTube, seriously, fuck you. You take up all my time with the most useless content. I don’t know why I need to watch all of FilthyWhore’s and Emmalina’s video blogs, I just do. Speaking of which, Emmalina’s videos seem to have disappeared, how will I survive without her wonderful waggling ass? And, oh look, geriatric1927′s videos are still some of the most viewed. Well guess what, I was viewing his videos when he still only had a few hundred hits, I am a ground floor witness to the rise of another internet celebrity.

Let’s begin with Rory, daughter of Lorelai Gilmore. She is incredibly intelligent, reads obsessively, and knows seemingly everything about literature, popular culture, and current events. She writes for her school’s paper, she’s “cute” without being annoying, she’s not afraid to have sex. In short, she is perfection incarnate.

Now, if Gilmore girls were any sort of ordinary tv show, I would expect Rory to end up with a succession of either dick-ass guys totally devoid of character, played by guys considered attractive by the largely female audience of the show, or a bunch of awesome, well rounded, sane, and intelligent guys played by scrawny nerds. Neither of these is this case with Gilmore girls, however.

Rory’s first boyfriend is Dean, who comes closest to being one of those dick-ass guys devoid of character. He’s pretty much a stereotypical jock early on, but develops into a pretty level headed and sane guy with only one flaw: he shows his affection for Rory. Rory, being such a well written young lady runs away from Dean when he tells her he loves her. This is followed by a small piece of foreshadowing as Rory ends up kissing a rich, useless, dick ass from school, a theme which will return. Miraculously, Rory returns to Dean after a brief time, however. Following this, Rory quickly loses interest in Dean, a guy who dare show her attention, and begins dating the serial jackass, Jess. Jess, though a reader like Rory, pays no respect to those around him, steals and defaces property, can’t bother to attend high school often enough to pass, and generally sucks at life. All of this together causes Jess to appear as some sort of badical badass, irresistible, obviously, to Ms. Female Gender, Rory Gilmore.

Jess’ badicalness eventually causes his relationship with Rory to fizzle as she heads off to college, only to commit the ultimate act of shame. Before that though, knowing that Dean is such a sucker for her, she seduces him just long enough to fuck him a few times and ruin his brief marriage, she ends this new relationship rather quickly, however, by falling in with a group of the richest, prickiest, most conceited bunch of useless cunt fucks ever to walk the Earth. All of this together could probably already be taken as the ultimate act of shame, but no, that is still to come. You see, Rory happens to have a college friend named Marty. Marty’s an awesome guy, shares many of Rory’s interests, treats her well, and just happens to have a romantic interest in glorious Rory. Wouldn’t you know it though, the great Marty rises to the occasion only just in time to compete with the leader of the previously mentioned cunt fucks for Rory’s attention, and loses. Well of course he loses! He’s a decent guy, whereas Logan, that’s the name of the cunt fuck, is not only a cunt fuck, but a rich cunt fuck, an arrogant cunt fuck, a fucking mother fucker of a cunt fuck. Marty is, well he’s “just a friend.”

The other Gilmore girl is obviously Lorelai Gilmore. Lorelai is Rory’s mother, a little older of course, who sports a much more refined shallowness when it comes to mate selection. Lorelai is pretty hot for her age, and she shares much of Rory’s intelligence and encyclopedic pop culture knowledge.

Lorelai’s string of men is a hell of a lot more boring than Rory’s, so I won’t bother covering it all in detail; let’s take a look at the highlights:

• fucks Rory’s dad because he has a motorcycle
• leaves a guy on the day before their wedding because she suddenly decides she’s not quite in love with him enough
• fucks Rory’s dad for no reason because she has no self control
• leads the great Luke on for four years before finally being suckered into a relationship with him
• doesn’t tell Luke that she’s been hanging out with Rory’s dad

Essentially, Lorelai likes to have boyfriends to kill time and fill her insatiable sexual appetite (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but will always find herself wandering back to Rory’s jack-off dad, Christopher. Christopher’s appeal is two fold, his parents are rich, and he’s useless. Christopher spends his time failing at starting businesses, knocking up women along the Eastern seaboard of the United States, and driving a motorcycle.

Gilmore girls has greatly expanded my understanding of the female mind. Where before I would witness the ladies constantly choosing guys for completely incomprehensible reasons and assuring myself that these particular women must certainly be lacking in some regard, and that the decent women were just hiding somewhere, I now have the background knowledge to understand that even the most quality of quality women will still choose the dick ass cunt fucks.

Dear Human Female:

I am a University student, webmaster, and all-around excellent young gentleman currently seeking the companionship of a human female. I am willing to be a one-time intimate encounter, a participant in some casual dating, or even a serious boyfriend, plus anything in-between that you can think of.

I look to bring my passion, emotional stability, reliability, and interesting personality to a relationship with you.

Enclosed is a copy of my dating resume for your perusal. If you would be interested in pursuing my awesomeness further, you may contact me via email at newbs@shufflingdead.com.

Yours Truly,

Newbs

Experience

I have had one girlfriend previously, and additionally been friends with countless other young ladies in the last several years. Though none of these interactions have led me to get laid, I have acquired some experience in the field of foreplay, and am confident that I can apply and expand this knowledge.

Interests

For the past five years I have run the website www.shufflingdead.com, which is dedicated to exploring the meaning of life, the universe, and everything through articles, comics, and even celebrity interviews. Additionally, I play a disgusting amount of video games and am a tremendous Nintendo fanboy. Other interests include Magic: The Gathering, RISK, bonsai, reading, Star Trek, walking, and building a huge Lego tower out of all my Lego. I look to share these interests with a female companion, but I am also interested in finding new interests, introduced to me by this female companion.

Physical Status

I am currently in fine physical form. I am not overweight, nor am I scrawny. My eyesight is not perfect, though I strive for visual sensory excellence through the use of a pair of glasses. Although there is certainly nothing wrong with my current appearance, I have recently begun an exercise routine to strengthen and tone my resilient twenty-one year old body.

Mental Status

I consider myself to possess exceptional mental prowess. I have developed my writing skills through my website, assignments in University, and even the University of Alberta student paper. My breadth of my pop-culture knowledge is formidable, and my analytical skills finely honed. As with my physical status, I recognize that there is always something to improve, and in this case that is my short term memory.

Additional Skills

-currently learning how to ride a bicycle
-some degree of html and web mastery skills
-pretty much all of the gross and fine motor skills that a human being is capable of

The solution is elegant, brilliant in its simplicity, and wholly foolproof. It is one word; it is “volcano.” A code word for signaling to those attempting to interfere with your dick-in-vagina action that whoever is your target is, in fact, your target. That you claim this target as your own, and that for increasing the average happiness of humanity, they must cease whatever it is that they are doing and leave.

The line may be delivered in several ways. In more crowded social settings such as a bar, where subtlety is key and cock-blocking may be unintentional, a whispering of the word is all that is needed. In a more personal setting such as a party, where an individual is making blatant and obnoxious attempts to prevent you from getting laid only in order to assure that you remain a virgin as long as they, a guttural battle cry of “VOOLLLCCCCAAAAANNNNNNOOOOOOO!!” must be made.

The level of fury that you must convey with the word can be difficult for beginners, knowing how loudly to bellow depends on two factors. First, and most importantly, try to determine why the cock-blocking is occurring. If someone you do not know very well is hitting on your target, they may be doing so because they do not realize that this is your target, or they may be disregarding your attempts because they do not know you and are therefore not concerned with you. In either case, only a subtle utterance of “volcano” is needed, and is likely to be respected because your competitor is merely trying to get laid, just as you are, and can hopefully see the logic of not competing directly with anyone. If your target is being hit on or harassed by someone you know, or if your interactions with your target are actually being hindered by a person you know, the much more violent form of the word must be used. It is most likely that the people you know committing volcano are not doing so in a genuine attempt to get laid, but rather to hinder you in some fashion in order garner your hatred or salvage their egos by preventing you from attracting a mate as long as they also remain mate-less.

Aside from who is committing volcano upon you, the other factor which must be considered is the anticipated reaction of your target from your screaming of the word. A random bar person may find it frightening, outside their narrow definition of normality, and once again loud bellowing should be avoided. In more intimate settings, however, where the target is likely much less random, and a target has a much greater understanding of your eccentric personality, a hearty scream of “VOLCANO” will not only serve to drive your oppressors away, but may serve to gain favour with your target, as they will now know without question that you are hitting on them.

Jerry: Ahh. [puts head down]
George: What?
Jerry: What is this? What are we doing? What in god’s name are we doing?
George: What?
Jerry: Our lives! What kind of lives are these? We’re like children. We’re not men.
George: No, we’re not. We’re not men.

Brace yourselves.

So I say to you, people of the internet, people of my generation, all nerds and social rejects, maybe even all people: what is this? What are we doing? Seriously, I want to know. We sit around all day forwarding lists to each other of asinine facts about our lives and expect others to create similar lists in some kind of effort to sift through the meaningless shit that inhabits our time and make some sense of it. We, to paraphrase another line from Seinfeld, pore over the excruciating minutiae of every single daily event via instant messengers, blogs, telephone, and even face to face. And there’s something else, we can’t express ourselves without somehow relating it to popular culture. Of course we also anticipate that everybody is automatically going to “get” our pop culture references, and why shouldn’t they? When we’re not circle jerking online or trying to fashion an identity cobbled together from magazine ads and Star Wars characters, we’re eating this pop culture and mass media up because that’s basically the only other thing to do.

Once we’ve chewed up enough pop culture we spit it back out in the form of polls of “what fictional character could kick this other fictional character’s ass?,” or we make shitty Photoshops with tired out cultural memes about Chuck Norris and Admiral Akbar, or we make videos of ourselves lip syncing pop songs.

We don’t have goals beyond getting another day of work behind us. I mean, everybody talks about traveling and imagines these brilliant career paths but then we knock some broad up or we marry some chick and then we’re rocking a keyboard the rest of our lives. So we live vicariously through video game companies, we let their success determine our happiness, get excited when they do well, down when they’re down. We idolize their heads of marketing and give them funny nicknames. We try to justify why our company’s sales were down a given week in Japan. A lot more commonly, we live vicariously through sports teams. And we reinforce this bond by referring to our favoured teams as “we” as though by simply residing in the same city we helped put our team on the field, or court, or ice. When we’re not referring to sports teams as “we,” we’re making assumptions about the groups to which we belong and making “we” generalizations.

We see people in the street and have whole relationships with them in our heads because we’re too afraid to talk to them, or because they’ve already got somebody. We see pictures of people and pick them apart for physical flaws, we visit websites dedicated to scoring people based on appearance on scales of one to ten, and take joy in maliciously giving bad votes to the ugly ones. Then we go to our message board of choice and whine about how we’re however-many-years-old virgins, but then try to trump each other on who’s had worse luck with women. We read the posts of others, of guys whose girlfriends cheated on them, and we hold these examples up, try to use them as proof that, yes, all women are whores. Secretly though we are living vicariously through these guys as well, wishing that those cheating girlfriends could be ours for once.

What kind of lives are these? We’re like children. We’re not men.

Let’s start off with the channel the movie was on, SpikeTV. Spike is supposed to be a channel for “men.” Now, for the most part this means they cater to the emotionally stunted nerds that men so often happen to be. Certainly, many of my days have wasted away in front of their Star Trek and MXC laden schedule, so I can attest that they do typically cater to this crowd, the kind of “man” that I am. Still, the implication is blatant, Braveheart is on Spike because William Wallace is the kind of “man” that I, nay all men, are “supposed” to be.

Then there is the name of the movie, “Braveheart.” Obviously, this title refers to Wallace. A movie based entirely on the reckless violent whims of its main character can’t just show the audience all that is “man,” and all the ways that we should live up to this example of “manhood,” it actually has to come right out and tell us “HEY, THIS GUYS IS SO BRAVE HIS NAME IS BRAVEHEART.”

Just what kind of “man” is William Wallace? He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t care when his townsmen’s wives are being screwed by the occupying English, but snaps and sends thousands of the same townsmen to their deaths once his own wife is attacked and killed by those same English. He’s the kind of guy who lazily labels his quest of revenge as a quest for “freedom.” He’s tall, muscular, magically well traveled and learned. He’s the kind of man who lets his raving suicidal drive do the talking for him with women, so that they may interpret it as bravery and fall for him unquestioningly. He’s the kind of man who dies only after great struggle and not by some stray arrow during one of his many battles. He dies in the most dramatic way possible, under the “cowardice” of those defending their kingdom through torture. He’s the kind of man whose torture must involve being splayed out on a cross in some blatant Christ imagery. He’s the kind of man who rejects drugs to ease the pain of his torture, opting to “take it like a man.”

The English and Scottish kings, both enemies of William Wallace, are like two halves of a medieval Darth Vader, one with the coughing, the other with the bad skin. In every way they are shown to be the opposites of William Wallace. Where they are cold, intelligent, wealthy men, Wallace is Dr. Crazy Homeless Man. Of course, the movie doesn’t want you to interpret it this way, no, the film insists Wallace’s brutal murderous rampages are the struggle of a man seeking freedom for his people.

The movie is in every way predictable. The first time I saw the English King’s daughter-in-law, the only person in seemingly the entire Imperial court with any common sense or likeability, I knew that Mel Gibson’s mullet sporting character was going to be banging this broad in no time. Of course, a few scenes later she was lubing up just thinking about the deeds of this William Wallace, and wouldn’t you know it, off fucking him a little later. Her unlikable, and might I add flakey and fashion conscious husband, acts as yet another opposite of Wallace. Where Wallace is all that is “man,” the Prince is all that is “eww gay.” I guess a movie which so strictly adheres to Christian ideals has no problem with adultery when the guy is just that awesome, and the cheated-on husband is just that useless.

Braveheart is like a dictionary for defining the masculine gender. Everything about William Wallace is regarded positively, and everything about William Wallace is generic manliness.

I, like many, was first exposed to The Pussycat Dolls with their song “Don’t Cha.”

Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?
Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?
Don’t cha
Don’t cha
Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was raw like me?
Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was fun like me?
Don’t cha
Don’t cha

I think the message here is pretty apparent. The ladies are singing collectively about their shared desire to steal the boyfriend’s of other young ladies. Perhaps not the most moral of behaviours, but no where near the realm of madness that would put this song out of my comprehension. Remember the sexual suggestiveness of this song. If I heard a woman saying these things about me, I could only assume I had a pretty good chance of actually getting laid, but let’s move on. The next Pussycat Dolls’ song I was exposed to was “Stickwitu.”

Nobody gonna love me better
I must stick with you forever.
Nobody gonna take me higher
I must stick with you.
You know how to appreciate me
I must stick with you, my baby.
Nobody ever made me feel this way
I must stick with you.

It would seem the disembodied figurehead of our six women has landed herself a boyfriend. Did she manage to steal away the one she was lusting after earlier? Did she manage to land one on her own? I guess what’s going on here is that this female has been contemplating leaving her man friend, the reason being, in case you’re confused, is because “seems like everybody’s breaking up.” In the video for this song, we see the lead singer singing this song into her cellphone while she’s out with her “girlfriends,” a most traumatizing message for the guy I am sure. Still, nothing in this song breaks my mind. The third and final song that I’ve heard from The Pussycat Dolls is “Beep,” which happens to feature a guy named “Will.I.Am,” I think you can figure out who’s singing what here.

[Will.I.Am]
It’s funny how a man only thinks about the…
You got a real big heart, but I’m looking at your…
You got real big brains, but I’m looking at your…
Girl, there ain’t no pain in me looking at your…

Okay Will, we get it, you have the mental ability to process one thing, and you’ve settled on sex, and you’re going to have to assume that this is also the only thing that all men are able to think about. Let’s see what the ladies think of this.

[PCD]
I don’t give a…
Keep looking at my…
‘Cause it don’t mean a thang if you’re looking at my…
I’m a do my thing while you’re playing with your…
Ha, ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha

So you’re cool with guys jerking off while they stare at you do whatever it is you do with your life? Awesome, I am down with that, it’s kinky, you must be a sexually liberated woman.

[PCD]
Every boy’s the same
Since up in the seventh grade
They been trying to get with me
Trying to (Ha, ha-ha, ha, ha-ha)
They always got a plan
To be my one and only man
Want to hold me with their hands
Want to (Ha, ha-ha, ha, ha-ha)
I keep turning them down
But, they always come around
Asking me to go around
That’s not the way it’s going down

Oh, wait, so you’re not sexually liberated at all? Actually, you’re a virgin for no reason other than to assert your bitchiness and crush the hopes of the men you meet? And what do you mean you won’t go around with any men? In your last song were you not singing a song to your boyfriend? What happened to that guy anyway?

[PCD]
‘Cause they only want
Only want my ha, ha-ha
Ha, ha-ha
Only want what they want
But, na, ah-ah
Na, ah-ah

So you’re taking Will’s word on this, men only want sex, is that it? They couldn’t possibly want a relationship or anything like that? Hell, what does it matter if all men want to do is screw you, judging from your “Don’t Cha” song, I had to assume you were down with a good time? No? Were you just saying that to get me away from my last girlfriend so that you could break my delicate sanity? You told me you were fun! You told me you were raw!

[PCD]
Do you know that no
Don’t mean yes, it means no
So just hold up, wait a minute
Let me put my two cents in it
One, just be patient
Don’t be rushing
Like you’re anxious
And two, you’re just too aggressive
So try to get your (Ahh)

I’m sorry, all of these assertions of rawness, and your supposed dedication to our relationship led me to believe we could fuck eventually. Oh good, insult me, that will allay my fears of remaining a virgin forever. Tell me, is it your plan to remain a virgin forever as well? Does that make you feel special? What should I be patient for? Another woman to come sing me a song about her rawness, so that I might go try to lay her instead of you, my frosty cunt of a girlfriend?

In George Orwell’s classic novel 1984, ultimate control over a population is achieved when citizens are not simply forced to serve a ruler, but for their will’s and mind’s to be broken, so that they actually love their ruler, known in the novel as “Big Brother.” This is precisely the procedure applied in the working world, and the degree to which it is applied is the main difference between office and retail. In a retail job, even high ranking officials are often willing to grant some admission of the shittyness of the job, and of the company as a whole. An employee working under this environment is able to maintain some miniscule shred of identity and dignity by wallowing in self pity and hatred of his position.

Retail companies give their employees the occasional “small thing,” like some candy for good sales, generally rewards so meaningless they are offensive. Retail companies also take the occasional “big thing,” like robbing an employee of a promotion, or stealing his wages, these big things are obviously met with complete rage, and can be easily dealt with by pretending that one day you’re just going to quit.

The range of these small gives and big takes is severely restricted in an office position, thereby fully breaking the free will of employees and causing their unconditioned love of their employer. The “small gives” come in the form of casual Fridays and donuts, things that, rather than try to reward you, simply remind you that you work in an office. The big takes usually involve giving to a new employee their own desk, with their own computer and the promise that this will be their space for the duration of their stay with the company, then promptly kicking the new employee from this position. This leaves the new employee in a situation where he must work out of a goddamn box, latching onto the work stations of vacationing employees like a virus. These small gyrations in treatment quickly destroy an employee, and drive him to love his captors, as part of a conscious effort within a company to create a Stockholm syndrome amongst employees. The actions of employers can be compared to hypnotism, something that lulls a person into comfort and surreptitiously robs them of free will.

Office jobs have a definite tendency to let you sit down for the majority of the day. It really depends on who hires you, but the tasks you perform while sitting will likely range from the most monotonous and inane tasks on the planet to non-existent tasks, where you just pretend to do something, hoping every breath will be your last so that you may escape the crushing boredom of your existence. Retail jobs typically force you to stand in one spot for long hours. While in this position, you are likely to be forced to interact with the most notoriously evil segment of humanity, customers. Though thankless and miserable, this task does have the benefit that you’re actually doing something, and don’t quite have the time to beg for death.

Office jobs typically pay better than retail, which is theoretically a benefit, but in reality fairly meaningless. See, the boredom faced in an office usually exceeds that of a retail position so much that an employee often finds himself spending much more money whilst in the job. For a summer student this may mean an increased intake of video games and music, things which demand ever increasing funds, yet never seem to fill that vacancy of a satisfying existence. This is also why society is constructed to push people into unsatisfying office positions, so as to allow maximum consumption of useless shit to drive the economy. Also, be warned that long term positions result in hard hitting addictions like hookers and cocaine. A retail employee is much more likely to spend his time drinking, partying, and trying to get laid. While these activities may sound as expensive as those listed for an office employee, they are actually required in much smaller doses due to a retail employee not needing to fill the gaping void left by his departed independence, as opposed to his office counterpart.

It is my solemn task that for all of these reasons I must declare retail work preferable to office work. Keep in mind that I am referring only to the kinds of jobs people do for money because they can’t think of anything better to do over a summer, and that if by some random chance or circumstance you find something you actually enjoy, you should cling to it and never let it go, for you truly are the luckiest.

It was only a few years ago that I was a minor, living in Sherwood Park, and I can say with sincere conviction that my animalistic urges for late night shenanigans has only increased since that time. That’s why I can’t help but feel sympathy for these so-called youngsters with regards to this bylaw, which establishes a curfew for minors between 1am and 6am.

It seems like a cliché at this point, and one that is well known by anyone who has ever also been in this situation, but there is a significant lack of anything for a minor to do in Sherwood Park. My youth was spent playing video games late into the night at a friend’s house, and then wandering home at some time that can only be described as ungodly. I wasn’t drunk, vandalizing, or starting fights, but simply walking home. This wasn’t the only way we found to entertain ourselves, of course, there was also late night bowling or movie-going, followed by marathon donut eating sessions at Tim Horton’s, again concluding with a walk home.

While no one is going to be arrested for going for a 2am walk, parents of the minors breaking the law will be fined $100 for the first offence, and $200 for the second offence. What parents have to do with the night life of their 17 year old children is beyond all realm of understanding for me. At that age, that person would not even be required to go to school anymore, and could legally live on their own. I guess you have to be careful, you never know what those rascally independent teenagers are capable of after picking up their 7-11 bread.

I’m all for parental responsibility, but it seems to me that the best thing a parent could do for their teenage child is give them a little freedom. I probably would have lost my delicate grip on sanity if I had been forced to come home by 1am on weekends, and it certainly would have ended my already very limited physical activity by stopping all those late night walks. It’s also ironic when you consider that this bylaw would not only discriminate against youths, but it would actually impede upon the parenting choices for the adults.

In addition, I am confident in saying that any kind of encounter with the police is a particularly traumatizing event for a lot of people, it certainly is for me, and would have been even more so when I was 17. Under this law, I suppose that as a young looking 21-year-old I’ll have to be wary of age checks myself, an additional impediment this bylaw would create for those of the age of majority.

It would be pointless to break out any statistics on youth crime right now, even if all crime were committed by youth, this bylaw would still infringe upon what should be a right for everyone. Not all minors are breaking existing laws when they go outside past 1am, and so there is no reason to punish all of them for it.

The fact that such a bylaw is even considered indicates that society is still wildly more accepting of ageism, as opposed to other forms of discrimination. If such a law were to be proposed based on sex or race, it would likely inspire militant resistance. I think the next time I’m in a restaurant I will demand my senior’s discount.

A person simply does not need another person to obsessively hack away little bits of their hair; they could shave it off themselves. If I have learned anything from Captain Jean-Luc Picard, it’s that a bald man can get shit done. I’ll admit, it might take me awhile to get used to bald women, but for the sake of humanity, I am willing to make that sacrifice.

While I personally refrain from such treatments as dye, jell, and conditioner, (and have saved myself a lot of money, I might add) thanks to public pressure I have thus far in my life made seldom but consistent trips to that woebegone den of masochism, the hair dresser’s.

The rage which I have experienced visiting this particular business is deep and multi-faceted. Typically, the stylist begins by asking how you want your hair cut, a reasonable enough start I suppose. My answer is always simple and understandable, “same style, only short.” Somehow this is never good enough for the person who supposedly got an education specifically for cutting hair. Inevitably, they demand to know how much hair I would like cut off, in inches. Now, I only have a vague idea of how long an inch actually is, and I certainly don’t know how long my hair is, so a more specific answer I can never give. It seems to me, however, that the hair expert really ought to be the person making these precise decisions. Not knowing the exact dimensions of your hair is apparently quite the insult to someone whose life is devoted to hair, and following this opening altercation my relations with the hair dresser are inevitably strained.

Following this, a person is left to endure what is probably the most uncomfortable session of small talk to take place in the retail world. For 20 minutes, as the hair-cutter makes their way across my head, I have to put up with whatever topic of conversation they may choose, they’re the one holding the sharp object up to my head, after all. Sometimes this is pretty innocuous, though I have been presented with stories of sex parties and descriptions of horrible, personal medical conditions.

It probably comes as no surprise that I typically go to the cheapest hair dresser I can find; still, the low point of the trip always comes at the end, when payment must take place. $14 is too much for a job which consists of haphazardly sheering material down to a randomly determined length in the span of only 20 minutes. I was shocked to learn recently that when my friends visit their even more over priced barbers, they actually tip the person who cut their hair, this is apparently common practice. I truly cannot even begin to grasp this concept, tipping is taking place for what amounts to a round of mental torture and extortion.

It is for all these reasons that I have decided that my recent trip to the hair dresser shall be my last. Next time my hair becomes hideous and unmanageable, I’m just going to buy one of those electric razors with the adjustable settings, and attack the scalp myself. I recommend that for the sake of sanity, and in order to end the maniacal rule of the barber, everyone does the same.

Tetris, originally designed by Alexey Pazhitnov, is a game about shapes. A puzzle game if you will. But a puzzle game that has entranced entire generations.

And it’s back. In pog form.

Or DS form, if you will. Nintendo reincarnates Tetris in its most polished and well thought-out iteration yet. With six distinct modes, the ability for ten people to play wirelessly off of a single cartrige, and, best yet, complete internet multiplayer. It truly doesn’t get better.

This game pretty much has it all. The lower screen is, for most modes, used for the gameplay section. While in Standard mode the top screen is classic games for the NES on a rolling demo, accompanied with the music from the game. The new multiplayer mode “Push” could actually be a standalone game, and I think people would pay $40 to go out and buy it. I know that I would. The game is basically one long Tetris screen, with both ends open. You are on the top, your opponent on the bottom, and the pieces fall towards the centre. With each line you get, you push your opponent closer to the end of his side. Push him over the line and he loses. With two players of relatively even skill, you can go back and forth for all of eternity.

I challenge each and every one of you to resist the call that is 10 player VS team battles in Tetris, and then I will ridicule you for not understanding just how intense that is.

I give this game a solid

Let me explain. People are lazy, indolent, greedy creatures by nature. Sloth is, in effect, the definition of the human character in 99% of people. This is what causes people to feel the need to shorten everything to an acronym, or to shorten their names from Timothy to just Tim.

This is what also causes people to shorten the phrase “Thank you.” to just an unintelligible sound — “Nks.”

And it fills me completely with an unutterable rage every time some fucking bastard that I just held the door open for barely even manages to grunt in acknowledgement. It makes me die a little inside every time I realize a new way that society has devolved into a completely useless wasteland of ineptitude and more importantly, ingratitude.

The Oprah Effect

People that espouse “empowerment” are largely the cause of this downfall. Empowerment is a bunch of bullshit made up by some very intelligent people that decided that if they made people believe that they had some kind of power over their lives, and the lives of others, that they could then charge gobs and gobs of money for workshops, seminars, and all the other goodies that go along with a good scam.

When people believe that they are empowered to help, control, or otherwise affect the outcome of other people’s lives, this gives in to narcissism. Narcissism leads to contemplating how great you are, which leads you to thinking about how people could be changed by your greatness, which leads you to thinking about how if you could just share your greatness through a book showing how you became so great, and how people could empower themselves….you see where I’m going with this.

Now, how does The Oprah Effect actually tie in to the dreaded “Nks.”? Thusly:

Empowerment leads to
Narcissism leads to
Contemplation of Oneself leads to
Degradation of everything that society(or your father) beat into you as a child leads to
“Nks.” leads to
Me bashing the door closed on your head repeatedly.

How can I prevent a vicious beating you ask? It’s simple. Instead of saying “Thanks”(which inevitably becomes “Nks.”), say “Thank you”. Or surprise me with a shred of intelligence and say something like “Thank you very much” or even “Much obliged”.

Really it comes down to this; if the fucking snake from Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone can say “Thanks”. You fucking can too.

It’s best to first realize that no matter what you choose, it’s going to take way too much fucking work. There’s no way you’ll be able to just go strait out and apply for exactly what you want. You’re usually forced to sit through years of education and dehumanizing bitch jobs for experience.

Begin by thinking of what your ideal living conditions would be. For me, it would be living in a gigantic old mansion with cool secret passages and possibly zombies. I would like to share this house with my many female sex servants and spend my free time playing video games, watching Star Trek, and running a website. Now to achieve this beautiful goal I’ll need a bit of money for the mansion and unfathomable amounts of money for the sex servants. See, by figuring out how much money you’ll need, it narrows your range of job perspectives. If I wanted a smaller house and no sex slaves, then obviously there would be many more lower paying jobs that I could select from. That’s just not the kind of life I want though.

Now that you’ve figured out how much money you’ll need, it’s time to pick a career. Obviously everyone has hobbies and interests, try starting there. Well, what were some of the things you thought about doing in your free time from my last question? I seem to be interested in video games, Star Trek, sex, and webmastery, so I should probably look into where I could make money in those fields. Try combining your interests into one great super interest. This super interest then becomes your “future.” For me, it would be a porn site about girls dressed in Star Trek uniforms playing video games, obviously. For you it might be something a bit different.

Here’s where it gets a might bit tricky. You see, a man is not instantly wealthy once he has an idea. I already know quite a bit about video games, so that’s covered. I know a little bit about running websites, so I might be alright there. My problem lies with the picking up of women for the porn. More particularly, girls willing to be in the kind of porn that I want to make… you know, the Star Trek kind. I suspect that for most people they can achieve their required knowledge at some kind of post-secondary education. Mine is much more likely the kind of thing you learn in an apprenticeship program, it all depends on what you want.

Serious Sam 2

Published By: 2K Games
Developed By: CroTeam
Released: 10/11/2005

In the third game in the series, the sequal to Serious Sam:The First Enounter, and Second Encounter; Croteam manages to mash even more levels, even more enemies, and even more weapons into the mix. Mny levels have over 500 baddies(with the final level topping in at a whopping 1300), many times with more than a hundred on the screen at once.

Gameplay

Unlike the previous two games, SS2 is actually a full game. First and Second Encounter had single player missions that even on the hardest setting could be finished in a matter of fifteen hours or so. SS2 has as much gameplay as the first two games, plus a few hours extra, with infinitely more variety to the enemies, and areas that you visit. It should also be noted that the single player element is also supported for four-player cooperative gameplay out of the fucking box. Deathmatch and “normal” fps multiplayer modes are coming at a later date along with an SDK and other goodies.

One thing that this series is known for is the tongue-in-cheek comedy that abounds. SS2 is certainly no exception. Cutscenes brdige every mission which keep up the “Serious” attitude. Sam’s quips and wit continue to induce laughs, and the occasional groan, throughout.

Graphics

Graphics are interesting and varied, especially considering that the engine can render as many detailed, and enormous, enemies on the screen at one time.

My one complaint with the graphics are that even mid-range systems of today can have serious hiccups in some of the busier areas. The game can only scale so far when you have an average of sixty or seventy enemies on screen at one time.

Sound

I had few complaints about the game, but the music definitely lacks something that it had in other Serious games. It didn’t hold my interest like it could have, but it was decent enough not to grate on my nerves for the entire game.

I did enjoy the sound effects and the voice acting though, both were excellently done, and maybe studios would do well to sit up and take notice. These days voice acting can make or break a game. This definitely made it.

Overall

Gameplay:
Pros:
-lots of variety, massive amounts of fun, zombie ninjas(I shit you not)
Cons:
-levels can get repetitive by the end of the game, not enough use of zombie ninjas

Graphics:
Pros:
-well done “Cartoony” look and feel to the game, areas are varied and large, level design is interesting
Cons:
-can make even decent machines turn sluggish at times, no single areas are as memorable as First or Second Encounter areas

Sound:
Pros:
-excellent sound effects and voice acting
Cons:
-music ranges from decent, to annoying

I can safely give this game:

Technological Advances – Transparent Alumina

Usually confused with ‘transparent aluminum‘ first made popular in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, transparent alumina has different properties.

Alumina is actually aluminum oxide, natural examples being rubies or sapphires. When you take alumina in small particles and sinter, or weld, them together at a high temperature it is basically transparent.

Transparent alumina has many startling properties. Being clear, it is the obvious choice to use in armoured vehicles and aircraft. When layers of transparent alumina are stacked and sintered together, and the right polishing techniques are applied, transparent alumina is stronger than steel at the same thickness, and many times stronger than bulletproof glass.

Technological Advances – Pulsed Energy Projectile

The Pulsed Energy Projectile, or PEP, was designed for, and by, the US military as a “less-lethal” weapon.

The PEP works by emitting a laser pulse invisible to the naked eye which, on contact with the target, vapourises a small area in a burst of plasma. This creates a shockwave of EMR that can damage nerve cells, and a burst of sound which can stun the target. It is powerful enough to be lethal if used to kill instead of incapacitate.

The weapon, even in its infancy works from up to 2km away, and is small enough to be mounted on vehicles and helicopters. It weighs in at just over 230kg.

Technological Advances – Commercial Spaceflight

In 2004 enterprising company Scaled Composites made history by making the first civilian sub-orbital spaceflight funded by commercial capital. Doing so they won the Ansari X-Prize and paved the way future voyages into space.

No longer bound in by government institutions that waste billions of dollars a year on a ever-burgeoning bureaucracy, solar-spaceflight could be within reach within our lifetimes. Plans are in the works for two suborbital vessels(the “Virgin SpaceShip” or VSS Enterprise, and the VSS Voyager) to begin carrying passengers over five years, starting in 2007 or 2008. Estimates show they need only 5,000 people willing to pay the $200,000 US pricetag over the five years to show a profit. Let’s hope that they exceed that estimate.

That’s it for this week. I hope to continue with even more examples of technological and societal advances that will prove the Star Trek theory in weeks to come.

You would think that reviewing games would be lots of fun. Well, it is. Unless you have the unfortunate circumstance to have to review a shitty game. Then you have to actually plow your way through long enough to form a(relatively) well-thought out opinion on it.

Lunar: Dragon Song is an RPG for the Nintendo DS, set in a relatively classic style, with a new twist. Still the unsuspecting teenager suddenly overcome with a mission of heroic proportions, but, pretty much the idea behind this game, is you are a delivery boy. You find ways through rain, sleet, snow, and hordes of slavering monsters to deliver your packages anywhere, anytime. And get paid well to do it.

It’s a good premise; one that promises at least an interesting diversion.

It’s not. And I won’t be displaying images, because that could entice some people to play it. I won’t be the cause of that much pain and suffering in the world.

I felt like I had to be doing about ten other things while I was playing this game just to keep from being bored out of existance. Part of this is because the battles that you fight are pretty much all automatic. You attack, they attack, repeat until one side perishes. They even have the option of fighting a battle in Manual mode, or Automatic mode at the beginning of every fight. This takes a lot of the boredom out, because I can then just set it to Automatic, and go watch TV until it finishes.

There are two combat “modes” in this game. One whereby you kill creatures, but do not receive items for your conquests, only the game’s version of experience. The other “mode” being when you kill creatures you gain items, and when you clear an area within the time alotted a mystical blue chest opens up with some pertinent items inside that you can either sell or use.

Now this choice would be quite interesting if you had to strike a careful balance between the two, always agonizing over whether you fought for money or levels. But the developers chose to make it so that you can play the entire game choosing one or the other for the most part. You need to switch between them only long enough to get the items in the blue chests in each area, and you’ll have more than enough money to buy whatever items you need, and then the next thousand times you pass through that area you can have it on Experience mode to get the levels you require.

If I wanted to understate the point I could say that I didn’t find the story particularly engaging. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the game is in a horrible form of Engrish. Grammatical mistakes abound, and I don’t think that the translators had ever even heard of that mystical punctuation device referred to as a comma.

One thing I did enjoy about the game are the graphics, and the use of the Dual-Screen. The battles are fought over two screens, as a single view, as if you were playing the game on a single screen. The animations are fluid and crisp, and there is even a relatively good selection of creatures to fight(without falling back on Red Orc, Blue Orc, Green Orc, and Orc Chieftan, all just having different colours of skin — at least not as much as some games).

One thing that really aggravated me about this game is the world map. You can’t move freely about the map, nor does it show all of the locations you’ve visited. It will only show the location that you are in, and the locations you can go to from that point. And you can only access it when you are leaving an area. You can only hop a single “square” on the map at a time, and then you have to traverse the next area, monsters and all. This makes for obscenely tedious travel. We’re talking worse than a Final Fantasy game.

I’d say that if you see Lunar: Dragon Song in the discount bin, pass it by, and buy some blank VHS tapes. Watching those would be more interesting.

Overall:
Terrible execution, more boring than baseball

Gameplay:
Uninteresting storyline, too much “filler” – walking, repeat battles, etc

Graphics:
Relatively impressive, makes good use of both screens, animations are well done

Sound:
Ranges from the uninteresting to the downright shitty

I give this game:

• Certified Pork Thief : Being a pork thief is not for the faint hearted. There is lifting involved, depending on the amount of pork one is looking to steal, as well as dogs to outrun along the way. However, this job offers beauteous rewards. Not only are you able to bring home the bacon, you can also bring home the sausages and the ham. Don’t delay, this opportunity is knocking down your door as we speak!
• Professional Shoelace Doer-Upper : Not everyone can be like Franklin; some people just don’t have the time or the mental ability to count by twos and tie their shoes. That’s where you come in. Forget about the counting part, that’s small potatoes compared to the shoe tying. People are willing to pay exorbitant prices for good services, especially services that can help them hide their shameful shoe lace challengedness from their friends. Charge an extra dollar for double tying, nothing’s more embarrassing than having a shoelace come undone in a social setting and being unable to correct the problem. You are really doing a public service with this one, no one wants to live in a world where people wear Velcro shoes.
• Loser Ridiculer : Losers exist and they are ridiculed. No one makes up the rules, that’s just how it’s been. I’m sure that the cavemen would all get together and make fun of the one who was the skinniest and couldn’t kill a buffalo with his bare hands; these things transcend time itself. Usually the ridiculers are dim witted and have such insults as “you are a loser” and “you are a big loser”. Well you can help this process along with better insults. Once you have verbally destroyed the geek/nerd/dork in question, everyone will high five and be on their merry way instead of standing around trying to follow up “you are a big loser” with something better, like maybe “you are a very big loser”. The geek/nerd/dork will be glad that their daily torture lasts for a shorter length of time, while the brainless goons will leave with a sense of accomplishment. You are really making this whole activity much more efficient.
• Beer Can Collector : This one is easy, just follow a homeless guy when he’s trying to make his living. Once his shopping cart is nice and full, trick him into leaving it by saying that some other homeless guy is taking a piss inside the box he calls home. Then, once the guy is gone to kick some homeless ass, quickly take his cart to the bottle depot and collect your 50 cents. Another few similarly tricked hobos later and you can surely afford a burger, what’s not awesome about that? Free food rocks. Can you spare some change? Hell no.
• Fake Charity Organizer : People are always giving to charities, even kids are getting into it, what with their “oh, it feels great knowing I helped someone in need” crap. Listen here Johnny Joe/Sally Sue, your whole savings of $1.78 isn’t gonna cure the cancer so get off your high horse and go back to work sweeping the damn chimneys. Now to get the money that really matters, your fake charity needs to have a good name, something that sounds real enough for people to want to donate but not specific enough for them to know that you’re a lying bastard. I suggest something awesome like The Foundation of Joy. People will be all “boy do ever I want to help this foundation spread joy” without actually knowing what it’s for specifically. It’s not even an outright lie, as their money will cause you joy, so all is right with the world. If by some unlucky chance someone decides to ask about your cause, be vague while still sounding convincing. Say something like “It is our dream to help eliminate suffering in the world. A child’s tear is like a drop of poison in our hearts.” You’re not actually saying that their money is going towards eliminating any suffering, nor do you state that you actually wish to help crying children. There are lots of opportunities for advancement in this field. One could go on to become a seasoned white collar criminal, or even a certified pork thief. Aim high.
• Certified Abettor : This position is not as exciting as that of the perpetrator, but that position requires a little more work. Thus, abettor is looking very appealing. Less work, but still the possibility of jail time. I suggest some soft core activities like encouraging gang fights, advertising for fake charities, and all around being an asshole. Abet your ass off.
• Rock Thrower/Paper Cut Giver in Organized Crime : There’s always a hierarchy in organized crime. You have your standard boss man, then the “go to” guys that bust knee caps and the like, then the overweight fella who doesn’t really seem to have a job except for just being there, then the guy named Tony that’s so important to organized crime. I propose that you work your way up the ladder, but start at the bottom with a very low but cool position. You can help keep up morale on the team by being an abettor (refer to above listing) or by giving yourself a cool title and then fulfilling the implied activities of said title. The official Rock Thrower gets to throw rocks at the fuzz, while the official Paper Cut Giver gives people paper cuts. An Official Scissors User would complete this roh sham bo triad of awesomeness.
• Money Launderer/Laundromat Owner : White collar crime is way more fun than petty pork thievery. For one thing, your collar is white, which is always good unless you have a shirt that is a colour other than white. I suggest that you set up a classic laundromat for this risky business. What better way to clean money and your collar than by using a laundromat as a front? Criminals in the past sure knew how to do things the classy way.

Now that you have some choices, go ahead and prepare yourself a kickass resume. These jobs will be taken before long. Now then, let’s all make our millions and retire before we’re 25.

If you enjoy trading, exploring, and maybe even a little fighting, then this game is for you. But you also have to enjoy:

Capcom-esque controls[except more controls than any Capcom game in existence]
A learning curve that is like hitting a brick wall, then finding two more on the other side.
BUGS![I don't mean the alien kind]

A rather glaring error in the manual shows up almost as soon as you launch the menu — that being that there are not any tutorials. The tutorial for the game is this; read the manual. Then after you read the 83 page manual the first time, read it again and hi-light any areas you don’t understand. The object at this point is to go onto any number of forums created on fansites or on Egosoft’s official website and find any one of a hundred threads from people that have never played an X game before. This should give you a relatively good idea of the basic controls.

The game, like many 4X games, starts you off with a ship[or two on easy mode] and a few credits. Right after the first loading screen you jump into a basic patrol mission which develops into a pitched firefight with a couple of Kha’ak scouting parties. The mission is relatively easy, and unfortunately the rest of the game isn’t representative of the first mission.

After the first mission you’re basically just dumped in space. You can continue on with the storyline, but at this point, I don’t really suggest it. The storyline ramps up in difficulty from “Novice” on the first mission, to “Expert” on the second mission. You need a better ship with better weapons and shields to hope to succeed in the story arc. This means that you need money.

Money can be acquired in two ways:

1. Trade between stations in basic goods(Energy Cells, BoGas, Delaxian Wheat, Crystals, Silicon, and Ore being some of the basic resources in the X Universe)

2. Fight. You get money from fighting in a number of different ways. Many times the ships you destroy will have valuable cargo you can collect upon its destruction. Pilots will sometimes bail out of their craft before it is destroyed, giving you a ship to salvage, as well as a pilot to sell on the slave market. Or, if you have a good enough relationship with the race who’s sector you are fighting in, you can purchase a Police licence and get paid for every pirate, Xenon, or Kha’ak raider you destroy.

Don’t let me scare you away from this game. I like this game. It’s difficult to master, but once you do you have literally an entire universe to explore. There are dozens of sectors with almost infinite variance between them. And the routes you can take in the game are just as varied. You can trade your way through the galaxy, eventually getting the resources to build factories, and purchase huge SuperFreighters to carry your cargo from sector to sector — all in an entirely dynamic “Invisible Hand” economy. Or you can join one of the different factions in the game and fight your way to the top. Eventually being able to purchase Destroyers and an armada of fighter craft to do your bidding – for good or for ill.

The largest complaint that many people have with this game[in fact with the entire series] is the bugs located therein. Personally I can consider myself lucky, most of the bugs that I’ve encountered have to do with the AI doing odd things, or the economy going crazy. But many people have frequent CTD’s, as well as large problems with control and slowdown issues, and problems with story missions. Happily, Egosoft seems to be addressing these as they are found in a timely fashion.

Summary

Gameplay:

Pros:
Deep, immersive gameplay, almost endless choices and replayability, game is heavily supported by Egosoft
Cons:
Steep learning curve, controls are numerous and difficult to master

Sound:
Pros:
The game has excellent special effects, the computer will tell you when you have a target lock, or when it is searching for a target, the weapons have decent sound effects and a good feel

Cons:
The music is repetitive and rather bland. It varies from sector to sector, but the loops are pretty short and when you spend a few hours between a couple of sectors you notice it pretty quickly.

Overall:
I really enjoyed this game, and will continue to enjoy it. The massive amounts of time that you can[and have to] sink into this game to build a trading empire in a completely dyanmic economy appeals to me on a basic level. The fighting aspect is rather beyond me, you need to be really good at it to succeed, but luckily with enough money I can buy ships and automated systems to do that for me.

I give this game:

It’s time to choose who will lead our country for the next…six months or so. And, as always, at least to me; it’s like choosing between the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Famine

Paul Martin and the Liberal Party of Canada.

The man that wants to institute a Bureacracy of Childcare, so that I can pay for the destruction of a private industry in Canada, and then it’s rebirth as a cushy government job.

This is the party that has robbed millions, if not billions of dollars from “general revenue”. They overfund projects and pad their pockets, they bribe large companies with tax dollars, and grants, so that they will support them at election time with private donations and advertising. The Liberals have raised taxes continuously for years, and then had the audacity to say that they were “balancing the budget”. Their party platform actually says exactly this — “…guarantee that government is accountable and efficient.”. Obviously they’re talking about some other countries government; because I certainly don’t see that happening any time soon.

But really…who can blame them? It’s not like they can be held accountable. Politicians are largely above the law in Canada. In Canada, to the Dictator goes the Spoils. And we’ve had the Dictator of one kind or another leading our country for most of the 20th Century.

Pestilence

A party that has grown insidiously larger for the last 15 years.

The Reform Party merged with numerous provincial Tory parties, to form the Canadian Alliance. This was to “unite the right” and form a unit to merge with the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. This was accomplished in 2003, whereby the current Conservative Party of Canada was born.

This party is somewhat of an enigma to me. Their platform changes constantly to suit their environment, and they seem willing to admit to mistakes, but they don’t seem to have much of an idea of what they’d actually be able to accomplish if they ever got a majority government.

Everything that they do seems to be more of a “Get the Liberals out of power” than a “What can we do for Canada?”. This makes them more like a retrovirus, to be cleansed when their purpose is accomplished, than a viable party.

Death

The Bloc Québécois. A party devoted almost entirely to the destruction of Canada. But, like Death itself, it has it’s merits on occasion.

Even though they want to destroy our country by creating [even more of] a gaping hole of nothingness inbetween Ontario and the Maritimes — I’ve heard they actually have some good party policies. Not that you would ever know. Their website is in French, their platform is in French, and they don’t have candidates running anywhere outside Quebec.

War

The New Democrat Party. This is the party that I will go to any length to stop. I’d vote fucking Liberal before I vote for Jack Layton.

Let’s break down their platform:

Aboriginal Peoples – Build up the infrastructure on reserves with tax dollars. Give legal space within Canada for Aboriginal peoples to have self-governance. And this one I have to quote – “Ensuring equitable participation of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples and governments in Canada’s stewardship of air, water and lands.

* Encourage environmental career choices.
* Provide specific space on boards, commissions and international delegations.
* Ensure equitable participation in environmental projects and activities, especially those related to climate change. “

I’m sorry. But exactly what do people that are 1/8th Aboriginal that have been living in largely self-induced squalor know about “environmental projects and activities”? Beyond the fact that they know they can legally poach all the animals they want no matter the season. Score one for Jack for getting the “poor underappreciated Aboriginals” on his side with government jobs and handouts.

“We are the only party with a formal policy of freezing nominations until there is a member of an affirmative action group seeking the nomination. Affirmative action candidates for the purpose of our policy are those individuals who identify as belonging to groups significantly under-represented in the House of Commons…Those groups are women, youth, LGBT, persons of visible minority, persons living with disabilities and Aboriginal peoples.”

…this party actually sponsors hiring people because they have a different colour to their skin, or different genitalia. Hiring on merit is obviously an outmoded pratice — genetic modification is obviously the way to go, since under JL’s rule that’s the only way Caucasian males will be able to get employment it seems.

This party scares the fuck out of me. Not least of which because Jack Layton is actually relatively charismatic. More than Paul Martin or Frenchy anyway. Which means it’s basically between Conservative and NDP.

I honestly have no idea who the hell I’m going to vote for on Monday. The Liberals lie, cheat, and steal; the Conservatives have to have an alternative agenda that they’re not talking about…because if their current platform is all that they’ve got, it’s scary as fuck; the Bloc doesn’t run here, and I don’t know if I could vote for someone that only speaks French, and hates anyone that doesn’t give them lots of money for no reason; and the NDP are on a Crusade for the minorities to have more rights than anyone else.

We’re all fucking doomed.

Discuss

Business operations could actually operate with a great deal more pleasantness, if it weren’t for all these pleasantries. Surely, the public transit system would continue to operate without all those announcements of “good morning,” “thank you,” and “have a good day.” I once worked in retail, I know that it’s a lot of effort to try to greet every customer to come into a store, and even if you do manage it, many of them won’t respond. This, again, leaves the greeter feeling dejected and the greeted feeling guilty. Then there is the extended interaction at the till, where one must ask the customer how they’re doing, as if the personal happiness of a complete stranger has any bearing on the life of a video store clerk. The question is often met with an obvious degree of discomfort from the customer anyway, as the customer will inevitably respond to the question “how’s it going?” with the oh-so-inane “it’s going,” or some tiresome opinion on the weather. Not only are these statements heard with unflinching regularity in the retail world, but they are wholly meaningless. There is no way to respond to “it’s going,” and unless my house is being annihilated by the weather, I truly do not give a fuck what it’s like outside. We’ve all seen rain before folks, nothing to passionately bitch about here. For the sanity of everyone working in, or shopping at any kind of store, I propose we eliminate these outdated formalities.

There is a whole world of uncalled for small-talk disguised as manners outside of business as well. It seems as though every conversation begins with “hey, what’s up?” or some variant which could easily be done away with. When two strangers cross each other while on walks, they seem to feel compelled to greet each other or at least smile, which is both unneeded and uncomfortable. Two people who don’t know each other very well will often dance around any topic of any interest, instead sticking to the safety of such topics as their majors, or, yet again, the weather. I myself prefer to launch right into discussions on Star Trek, Nintendo, and hentai. If a person has a problem talking about the things that actually interest you, then there probably isn’t much reason to be talking to them in the first place; fuck formality.

Although many of us may dismiss the ramblings of the old, it must be acknowledged that not all old timers are cracked in the head. Some seem to know what they’re about. For example, those who insist that the young whippersnappers of today have no respect for their elders or for authority are quite on the mark. Kids today are assholes, plain and simple. Gone are the days when ‘no’ meant ‘shut the fuck up before I suffocate you in the McDonald’s ball pit’. Clearly ‘no’ now means the parent who dares defy the child is the worst human alive and deserves to have his or her brains eaten by a bear. The new Beyblade must be purchased at all costs, I spit on all who tell me that I am acting in a socially unacceptable manner! Clearly this type of situation can be avoided through :

• Leaving your fucking kids at home. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you? Bringing small children to a store that sells toys and candy is like bringing a pedophile to a store that sells toys and candy. That makes about as much sense as the Amish shopping at Wal-Mart.
  
• Beat your kids…repeatedly. Invent new and interesting ways to instill fear in their young hearts, so they shall never again bother you…ever. They will learn to be grateful for every morsel of food you give them and never ask for anything you are not willing to give them. Tell those little bastards what’s what. Smack you in the face if you don’t be quiet is what’s what.
  
• Oh light bulb over the head moment! Don’t have kids! Nip the problem in the bud before it begins. Holy crap, I must be a fucking genius; this could be the very first time anyone in the history of ever has come up with the idea of NOT having kids, especially if you’re gonna hate them! The world is already overpopulated anyway. Do everyone a favour and stop having kids that will only take up more room, kill more trees, breathe more air, and eat more food. If you absolutely must pass something along to the next generation, how about adopting an existing kid instead of making a new one? You will be helping the poor orphans in god knows what country orphans always come from AND you won’t be contributing to the utter destruction of our world.

Everyone’s so fucked in the head, it’s no wonder that the whole “the world’s going to hell in a hand basket” saying of the elderly is also true. Do you see what we’ve done? Society has acted in a way that confirms all the delusions of seniors!
Having children will lead to countless horrors. They will usher in an era of unparalleled hedonism that will be synonymous with giving god the finger. If we’re all going to hell, then our hand basket will surely be made from poor life choices…and fingernail clippings (because what could be more uncomfortable than riding in a cramped little hand basket with your mistakes and sharp little fingernail clippings).

Speaking of GOING TO HELL, here’s a short list of those who really deserve an extra small hand basket:

• Kids-not just because they’re smaller, but because they are the ones who will cause the world to be consumed by eternal hellfire. GO TO HELL.
  
• Serial killers-those sick fucks should GO STRAIGHT TO HELL.
  
• People who ignore the serving spoons in restaurants and decide to stick their utensils into the food that everyone has to share. Way to go, asshole. Sure I’d love to have your mono, who wouldn’t? GO TO HELL.
  
• Bitchy girls who like to gossip about everyone and everything and won’t stop prying into your personal life for any sort of information they could possibly spread around because their own lives are devoid of all meaning. GO TO HELL.
  
• Everyone else that I hate. I hate you. GO TO HELL.
  

The name “Project Reality” comes from the codename Nintendo used for the N64 while it was in development. There was always something epic and tragic about that period in the company’s history. When they lost so much 3rd party support, people talked about Nintendo’s “dream team” of in house developers trying to support the console. They did some amazing things of course, Mario 64 was revolutionary, I’ve heard Ocarina of Time described as Zelda creator Miyamoto’s “magnum opus.” In the end though, the console still represents Nintendo’s fall from the top of the industry. It reminds me somehow of the Soviet Union beating back the Nazi’s in World War II, the Soviet’s won, but at what cost? These are the very things which my Project Reality embodies, a point in history so epic that is sad in a way, the last march of the Ents, if you will.

Project Reality’s true force comes from a cracking of my own self-control. For this plan, I shall catapult myself into the deepest, dankest depths of the most uncomfortable situations I can possibly imagine.

For instance, I have picked up I single “get-up,” a shirt, a pair of pants, and a method of styling my hair, which all shoe-horn me directly into modern “fashion.” The jeans come from one of the most vial corporations on earth, The Gap. Not only that, but they are jeans which the company is actually advertising on tv right now, that’s how much of a fucking sell out I am. Speaking of shoe-horning, these fucking jeans are so tight I have to finagle my manly man package down into them. This look, on a whole, is the most atrocious and even degrading thing I can possibly imagine, and from here on out it will be known simply as my “clown costume.” Apparently though, the ladies like this sort of thing. Not just that, but since I am a repeat offender of deciding I enjoy a particular lady simply by the way she looks, I suppose that this is only fair. My plan is to wear this clown costume when I am around the ladies, so that they might notice my scrawny nerd body in a sexual manner. Doing this will hopefully head off that nasty habit the ladies have of skipping right to the “friend zone” with me.

New clothes may get a young lady interested in a human male, but something more is needed for this scheme to come to fruition. This is where Project Reality’s second plan comes in. A member of the Shufflingdead forums recently suggested I follow the evil plot devised by Something Positive in this comic. The idea is that I write a dating resume and give it out to girls in malls, bars, the street, and wherever else I might encounter targets. Sadly, I am struggling with writing this resume at the moment. Here is the cover letter as it stands:

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Dear Human Female,

I am a University student, webmaster, and all-around excellent young gentleman currently seeking the companionship of a human female. I am willing to be a one-time intimate encounter, a participant in some casual dating, and even a serious boyfriend, plus anything in-between that you can think of.

Enclosed is a copy of my dating resume for your perusal. If you would be interested in pursuing my awesomeness further, you may contact me via email at newbs@shufflingdead.com.

“Newbs”

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And the resume:

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Dating Resume

Experience

I have had one girlfriend previously, and additionally been friends with countless other young ladies in the last several years. Though none of these interactions have led me to get laid, I have acquired some experience in the field of foreplay, and am confident that I could apply and expand this knowledge.

Interests

For the past four years I have run the website www.shufflingdead.com, which is dedicated to exploring the meaning of life, the universe, and everything through articles, comics, and even celebrity interviews. Additionally, I play a disgusting amount of video games and am a tremendous Nintendo fanboy. Other interests include Magic: The Gathering, RISK, bonsai, reading, porn, walking, and building a huge Lego tower out of all my Lego. I look to share these interests with a female companion.

Skills

-currently learning how to ride a bicycle
-some degree of html and web mastery skills
-pretty much all of the basic and fine motor skills that a human being is capable of

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Perhaps you see my difficulty. I really don’t know what the ladies are looking for, so I really have no fucking clue how to sell myself to them. I’m also pretty sure this resume makes me sound like a jackass. If you’d like to help me out on this noble endeavor, toss your ideas in.

So far, these are the only two plans to come out of Project Reality. As more ideas develop, I shall make you, the internet, privy to their inner workings. That is, of course, only if these current plans fail. Fuck knows, I might just get one of these things right one day.

DEAR ABBY: My wife spends all her spare time with a female friend I’ll call “Cassandra.” Last August they went to Nicaragua for two weeks, at Cassandra’s expense. They are planning a trip to Puerto Rico next month. Again, Cassandra is footing the bill. They spent a week together in Louisville at a church-sponsored activity. They give each other oil massages in our bed and make frequent bets with each other with the massages as the payoff.

They spend as much as three hours a day communicating, whether it be via phone, e-mail or text-messaging. They see each other a minimum of once a week, plus at church, and we live 50 miles apart.

When they’re together, I can repeat a question four times or more and never be acknowledged. They make special dinners and buy each other gifts. The items my wife receives are many times what we can afford. When they’re on the phone or e-mailing, dinners have been burned and normal things that should be done around the house don’t get done.

Do you think there is something I should be concerned about here? — WONDERING IN ILLINOIS

Abby’s advice is to talk to your wife about this issue. Good lord. At least Abby has the good sense to guess that this Cassandra is your wife’s girlfriend.

My advice: HOLY FUCKING GOD!!! Should you be concerned?! Should you be fucking concerned?!! Are you on crack?! If you have rats in your house, you should be concerned. If you go bankrupt, you should be concerned. If any part of your body suddenly falls off or explodes in an explosion of exploded stuff, you should damn well be concerned. Wake up and smell the lesbian activity going on under your own roof! Oil massages? In your bed? Think about it! They weren’t even considerate enough to include you!

Here’s what you have to do: Get a frickin divorce! See a lawyer…now. Get as much out of it as possible. That’ll show your cheating wife what’s what…she’s gonna be poor and homeless, is what’s what. Talking to your wife about it, pfffft, what a silly suggestion. You clearly are not important enough for her to even notice if you stabbed yourself in the eye in the kitchen in the middle of breakfast. Talking to her is useless. Good lord, while you’re at it, why don’t you throw her a fucking pride parade? She is too busy cheating on you with her lesbian lover, think about it, let that sink in a bit…Now divorce her and slap that home-wrecking Cassandra bitch in the face.

Oh by the way, and just because your stupidity is annoying, I shall comment on how your “dinners have been burned and normal things that should be done around the house don’t get done”. What normal things? Clearly your wife having sex with you is not one of them. Perhaps if you did things around the house instead of leaving it all for her, she might sex you up instead of turning to her lover. Besides, you have to do these things now, as you will quickly divorce her cheating ass and take house, car, and money with you. She can keep the kids, as you are the victim here and do not deserve to be punished with taking care of whiny, ungrateful children.

Now that I have helped this poor guy fix his life…onward to the next problem! Here is a stupid lady needing advice on something stupid.

DEAR ABBY: When I go to lunch or dinner at a restaurant, I’m confused about where to place my purse or handbag during the meal. What’s the correct thing to do? — CONFUSED IN FLORIDA

Abby’s advice is something or other relating to purses and the such.

My advice: YOU’RE confused?! I’M confused!! Why do you need advice on this?! Are you retarded? Seriously, HOLY CRAP!

Purses are dumb. If you carry a purse, it’s like you are carrying a sign saying “Hey criminals! I currently have on my person a magical bag of goodies for you to steal! Besides minty fresh gum, its contents include unknown amounts of cash, credit cards, AND personal information that can help you steal my identity for your own sick reasons!”
My suggestion is to kill yourself. They don’t have purses in hell. Problem solved.