Santa VS. the Zombies

He was making a list and checking it twice. He was going to find out who was naughty or nice. Santa Claus was coming to town.

According to the Decidotron 2800, over seventy percent of the children had been naughty the past year. That was an all time high, even higher than than in the 80’s, when the numbers had been split pretty evenly. He had been lenient back then, as the Decidotron 2800 had been new at the time. A child who may have been a little naughty still received their Transformers figures and Cabbage Patch dolls under the Christmas tree, because Santa was a Saint. Those spoiled children went on to become irresponsible adults, and Santa felt he was partially to blame. Even so, a 70% reading bore further investigation. Perhaps the Decidotron itself was on the fritz. Periwinkle had been bothering him to update the system to the new iDecidotron, but Santa was very old and set in his ways. It had taken much for him to agree to a computerized system in the first place, but the Elf strike of 1978 had made it necessary. The strike itself had barely been settled in time for Christmas, and the rushed production on toys resulted in more than a few disappointed children. In the years that followed, soulless toy manufacturers took advantage of the disenfranchised children by hocking their goods to them through cheaply made Japanese cartoons. Due to the trade marked manufacturing rights, Santa now had to buy most of his toys directly through these companies instead of having his elves make them in his workshop. The struggle now became finding enough money through the trade of resources.

Santa shook himself from his gloomy thoughts and reminded himself why he was at his desk. The Decidotron was showing a significant spike in naughty children following Halloween. This was common with all the Halloween mischief that went on. Santa forgave most instances of throwing toilet paper and eggs at houses, as he was a Saint, but something was different this time. Instead of children binging on candy after Halloween, they had taken to eat each other’s brains.

Santa sat back and thought about that for a moment. Living at the North Pole, he was more or less out of touch with today’s Generation. It was hard to judge a child who lived over 4,000 km away, across the frozen Arctic Tundra that kept his creditors at bay, but he knew that times changes, and every Generation brought something with it. He remembered when children thought they were being naughty for listening to Beatles records, or wearing their hair long. Now, they had taken to cannibalism. Times were strange.

It wasn’t just one or two children, mind you. There was always a bad apple in the bunch. To him it seemed like all the children at once had decided to upset their brothers and sisters by sinking their teeth into their skulls. Perhaps they had seen it on TV, or maybe it was that new Justin Bieber who got them to do it.

As he looked, he also noticed that there were fewer children than ever. At best, there should be seven billion people on the planet, and under two billion of them should have been children. It looked as if there were only six hundred million, or so, all told. Where had all the children gone?

Santa sat back with his egg nog and wondered if there could be some kind of correlation between children eating each other, and there being fewer children. Santa was very old, and there were many things he forgot. At end, he continued his research, and saw it much the same. Children eating one another, and their parents as well. Some even ate their pets. So much naughtiness, and all in little over a months. It was twelve days before Christmas, and Santa was worried the children wouldn’t be able to make up for their misdeeds before the Christmas Eve deadline. From a financial perspective, though, it was greatly to his benefit. Fewer children, and fewer nice children made for fewer presents and less work for himself. Santa was an optimist and preferred to look at things this way.

He depress the button on the intercom and leaned forward, “Periwinkle, I need you in my office please and thank you.” Santa always tried to use good manners. It especially helped around the elves, as they were becoming more belligerent as the years wore on. A kind word here and there helped to keep the peace. The last thing he wanted was another strike.

The large oak doors to his office swung open on greased hinges and in walked the relatively tiny figure of Periwinkle, all dressed in his uniform of green. He was slight, even among elves, standing barely 2’9” tall. His pointed hat and the stripes on his stockings were all designed to make he appear a few inches taller than he ought to be. Santa made sure of that when he approved the company uniforms, as he was secretly freaked out by little people. Children he loved, but short people creeped him out. He told Mrs.Claus that it was because he often mistook them for children and was ready to give them a hearty, “Ho. ho, ho!” and offer them a gift when he realized his mistake. Nevertheless, Santa smiled broadly at Periwinkle as he stood at attention before his desk. The little elf was always more formal than necessary, but reminding him of the casual nature of Santa’s business made no impression on him. He played his role as a soldier in the field, which was why he had become one of Santa’s most trusted elves.

“Periwinkle, I’ve been going over the figures, and I’m noticing an awful lot of naughty children this year. Are you aware of this?” Santa turned the bulky monitor toward Periwinkle and bathed him in the green glow of the text on screen.

“Yes, Santa. Distribution has made a note of it. We’ve increased production at the coal mine to compensate. All in all, this could be a very profitable year for us. We might even be able to pay off or debt with the toy companies,” Periwinkle noted proudly.

“Ah yes,” Santa said distractedly. He didn’t like to dwell on his deal with the toy companies. By licensing his image and selling coal on the global market, he was able to make up for a lot of his losses, but as toys became more expensive, it was difficult to close the gap. “Have we heard from the companies lately?”

“No sir, not since the incident,” Periwinkle said.

“The… incident?” Santa was confused. He’d been sleeping since Boxing Day, as was his wont. Some years he would stay up and keep a normal schedule, but as he got older, he found himself hibernating more and more often. It was difficult to refill the vast reserves of energy it took to deliver presents all over the world. He always woke up by December at the latest in time to make the final preparations for Christmas.

“Allow me to fill you in, Santa,” Periwinkle offered as he produced a flat tablet from his side pouch. Touching it, it lit up like a TV, and he showed it to Santa.

“What’s this?” Santa adjusted the wire frame lenses perched on the end of his round nose.

“This is the new iDecidotron,” Periwinkle explained.

“I thought we decided against that,” Santa made his disappointment known in his tone of voice, which was difficult given his otherwise jolly nature. He looked at the device with confusion.

“We held a meeting with the elf committee back in August, which you couldn’t attend because you were still in your post-Christmas hibernation. Mrs.Claus tried to wake you, but you couldn’t be roused,” he hastily explained. “You do know that in the event your unable to attend we have to proceed without your blessing.” It was one of the concessions Santa had agreed to end the strike of ‘79. “One of the points we decided on was to update our operating system. It’s still backwards compatible with the 2800, but as of now you’re the only person still working with the old system.”

“How many of these do we have?” Santa turned it over. He could find any buttons to push. His thumb brushed the screen and it suddenly changed to show him a different display, and he almost dropped it in surprise.

“One for every elf, and you Santa,” Periwinkle told him reluctantly.

“Oh my stars,” Santa slumped back in his chair and stared up at the vaulted rafters. “How much did that cost us?”

“The cost is moderated by the increase in efficiency and productivity,” Periwinkle explained hastily.

“How much?” Santa repeated. His chair began to spin lazily.

“I don’t know the exact figure, sir, but we were able to afford it after selling off certain assets,” Periwinkle explained.

“Which assets?” Santa became alarmed.

“We sold the oil rights for the Island of Misfit Toys,” Periwinkle told him, unperturbed.

“What about the toys?” Santa fretted.

“What about them?” Periwinkle was slightly confused.

“Where will they live? You know I try to find them a home every year with the good girls and boys,” Santa told him.

“Sir, the children, they… They don’t like those toys. We’ve looked into it, and in pretty much every case where you’ve brought them a present from the Island of Misfit Toys, it goes straight in the garbage,” Periwinkle told him sadly.

“No!” Santa was horrified.

“Sometimes they were burned in the yard. My point is, they’re not good presents, sir. That’s why we threw them all on the island in the first place. We’ve taken to recycling them to save money, and to be eco-friendly,” Periwinkle tried to put a positive spin on it all.

“You mean you kill them!” Santa was shocked.

“They’re not really alive to begin with, sir. They’re toys. We make them out of cheap plastic and lead paint,” Periwinkle shook his head sadly. “Eliminating them is just one of the cost-saving measures we’ve taken. We’re trying to modernize our entire industry. To bring things back to the subject at hand, I’m showing you the iDecidotron so we can look at one of it’s new features. We can now see streaming video of naughty children caught in the act. If I may,” Periwinkle waddled behind the desk with his curly-toed shoes and pressed the screen of the pad Santa was holding. It brought up a new menu. “This is a video taken at one of the toy manufacturers we buy from, over in China. It goes a long way in explaining why things have been so quiet on their front.” After pressing the screen a few more times, it brought up a video of a factory in China. The workers sat in long rows in white coats at an assembly line, putting bits of plastic together to make dolls. No one looked happy. It was quite different from his workshops full of merry elves.

The monotony was broken by a sharp scream from somewhere off camera. A few of the workers looked around, alarmed, but a shift manager walked by and told them to keep working. He struck one of the workers violently in the back of his head, and he immediately bent down at his station and picked up his tools. Then another scream came, this time even louder. The worker did not look back up, so he did not see the main entrance burst open. A worker dressed in the same white coat as him fell backwards through the door, only his coat was splashed with red. The man scrambled backwards on his back a few feet, but the bent and twisted figure above him collapsed over him and began to tear away at him. Blood gushed out from the man’s neck as the strange

On Vacation.

I have from now until Boxing Day off, and I’m already bored after three hours.

My step-son got the last of his Nintendo Ambassador Program games today for his 3DS, which he then took with him on his trip to his real dad’s house. He received ten games in total that I downloaded for him as part of the free program for buying the system before the price drop, such as Mario Kart Advanced, Wario Ware and Kirby, and another goddamn Zelda game. I now have four Zelda games on the 3DS and I didn’t have to pay for shit. Personally, I only ever liked the Zelda game for Super Nintendo. I’ve been meaning to try at least three different Zelda games for the system legacy such as the Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks and the Ornica of Time. If I could justify owning a Wii, I’d want Skyward Sword, because I refuse to own a motion-control system without games that involving me flailing an invisible sword around in my living room.

The first ten games were mainly rejects from the Nintendo system, with all their original charm and faults. Considering that Nintendo was trying to make up for consumers wasting a big wad of cash when they could have waited a few months an gotten the system on the cheap, the initial offering was pretty weak. They were mainly classic games that should be a part of any fan’s collection, but they made me worry about the Virtual Console in general. I’m a consumer that’s bought plenty of XBLA games, and enjoyed them, but their original digital selection seems sub-par to what you could buy in stores, and their classics are outdated graphically. On the other hand, it’s free, and I shouldn’t complain. The new games definitely make up for the old, and the fact that people in the program are getting them free of charge before they ever show up in the virtual store (if ever) is a definite plus.

I was part of the Xbox Live Update Beta program, and couldn’t talk about the impending changes. That’s all in the past now, so I can finally say: I kind of hate the new layout. For anyone who bought a Premium Theme, they lost a lot the functionality in it with the new page settings. It use to be you could switch menus and your Premium Theme would change along with select icons, like the backgrounds for the Avatars in your Friend’s page. That’s mostly gone, or buried deep. You now only see your friends who are on live in the main page of the Friend’s tab, and looking at the friends offline come up with some strange and somewhat unsettling animations for them, that make them seem like their sleeping in a Chinese laundromat. There’s a whole tab for Bing, which is just wrong. Nobody like you, Bing. The music tab is still as pointless as ever, as I doubt anyone really uses it unless they own the now defunct Zune. People who use music on the 360 are people who plug their iPods into the system. The Ap tab is solely devoted to video aps, so it could have been part of the video tab. On my system, even after the update went live, I still have the Preview tab for the Beta. I tried deleting the files in the system, and it’s still there.

I read someone complain about how Xbox found a way to put more ads onto the screen, and they were immediately bitched at for being ungrateful. The guy in the forum brought up the valid point that you’ve already bought the damn thing and paid for the service, so why were they still advertising themselves to you? The main middle of the screen is no nothing but an ad. That’s the main focal point. If you want to find a game to play, go elsewhere. Also, if you happen to like the ad, and try to click on it: good luck. It skips through about five different ads. It’s possible to switch back, but the new menus were intended for Kinect users only, so the controls for doing this are not intuitive. When you want the screen to shift left, you can’t simply push the “left” button. That doesn’t even make sense with the controller, as there are no less than five buttons for “left,” (a left D-pad button, two joysticks, and a bumper and trigger button). Pick one and you have a one in five chance of it being correct.

The only thing I really give a damn about is the Cloud saves. I have two 360s (or one 720). Now I can play a game in my living room, get kicked out by my wife, and then go into the bedroom and keep playing on a different console. Before, I had to use a third-party cable to transfer saves from one box to the next, which was time consuming and could possibly overwrite or damage the saves. It also screwed me out of getting official achievement points before, for some odd reason. Plus: I couldn’t have the same content on both systems at the same time. Now it doesn’t give a fuck.

I also picked up a third-party wireless router for the 360 on the cheap at $20. The official 360 version is still priced at $99, which is insane. The Mad Catz N-something or other (I’m not getting paid so I can’t be bothered to remember their names) required me to basically hack my own network in order to make it work. I followed every instruction, but couldn’t make it through one of the set-up stages. For some reason, it worked using Internet Explorer, but not Google Chrome, and I finally made it through without crying. It was one of those “Eureka” moments where you’re just wandering around work, staring blankly off into space and wondering how things went so terribly, terribly wrong. Now it works better than my computer itself, which is quite sad. It also recognizes the connection as “wired,” even though it’s going through a wireless router.

I’d have to say the one feature I don’t give a shit about is facebooking achievements. That sounds like a surefire way to piss people off. Remember when facebook was new and every time you “liked” a comment, or made a comment, or thought about making a comment, your inbox would fill to the brim with notifications? That seems like it’s part of that.

Bored of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was on the other night. I had one of those revelations that only come from seeing the same movie over-and-over. This time, during the scene where Legolas goes apeshit on the giant elephant, I realized what a total dick he was being. After releasing the harness and sending the saddle base tumbling off of the elephant, he had effectively won the fight. There was no reason to go any further. In the scene prior, it was firmly established that the Rider of Rhodan were outnumbered 10 to 1. Sauron’s armies were on foot, while the Riders were obviously mounted, and therefore could escape the path of an elephant far more easily. Therefore: a rampaging elephant without it’s handler was far more likely to kill a huge swath of the orcs instead of the Rhodans it had been sent to kill. Legolas didn’t see it that way. Instead, he put multiple arrows into it’s brain and slid down it’s trunk as it died. It was a dick move, especially for an elf who’s supposedly into animals and nature.

Previously, when asked why Gandalf didn’t have the giant golden eagles fly Frodo to Modor at the very beginning and be done with it, I had always said it was because of the dragons. They would have to kill the dragons before the eagles could reach the mountain. Then, as I watched it again, I saw the eagles actually show up during the last battle before the ring was destroyed and fight a dragon, blowing my theory to shit. The eagles apparently outnumbered the dragons at all time, and are more than capable of killing the shit out of them. So why didn’t they help out before? My new theory is: the eagles don’t give a shit. They’re eagles. Gandalf was saved in Part One by the eagles, but it’s not like he controls them. It was more like calling a cab than him going all Aquaman and summoning them telepathically. Getting you down off of a tower is one thing: flying past the Eye of Sauron through a flock of dragons into an active volcano is another. I think they just showed up in the end so they could look like the heroes. All the work was already done. By the same theory, the Balrog could have taken over all of Middle Earth on his own. He was a giant flaming hell demon. Gandalf pretty much shit his grey robe when he saw him. After he killed him, and vice versa, the universe was so impressed it decided to give him a promotion, and a change of pants.

Which brings me to my next point: Gandalf is basically given a promotion by the powers that be with the understanding that he fire the current white wizard. It’s the exact plot to the pilot episode of News Radio. There’s some kind of cosmic force doling out wizard colours. At any point it could have fired Sauromon and be done with it. It could logically do the same to Sauron. After all: he’s just a floating flaming eye on top of a tower with it’s life-force connected to a magic ring he managed to lose. In a flashback you see how he gets pwned just by losing a finger. He’s not exactly the most powerful being in that regard, and yet he’s still the most powerful being, with the exception of whoever is giving out these wizard robes. If this power decide that Sauron could go suck it, what’s he going to do? He’s basically just an living lighthouse.

What the fuck is up with Sauron’s tower anyway? What’s in there? Is it nice. Does Sauron actually live in there, and he’s like the Wizard in the Wizard of Oz? Could you kill Sauron by knocking the tower over? It’s like the One Ring and the tower are his horicruxes. It’s like there’s alternatives that no one ever bothered to look at.

Also: if you look at Modor, you realize that there’s no way Sauron’s army was going to make it another year. The war happened when it did not simply because Frodo was planning on chucking the ring into the fires of Modor, but because if they didn’t take over some agricultural resources immediately through arms they were going to starve to death. There was no food in Modor. There’s nothing but rocks, fire, and pain. Sauron was the undisputed ruler of a inaccessibly and uninhabitable wasteland, due largely to the fact that no one else wanted it. Plus: orcs and giant spiders.

Pyjama Jam

This:

This is a real thing. Forever Lazy. It’s a fleece coverall, incredibly similar to a baby sleeper. You’re expected to wear this in public. At all times. The video shows people working, and attending tail gate parties with other people dressed the same. There’s no attempt at fashion. One of their highlights is the zipper on the side for when you need to make poopies, like those flap-traps in ol’tyme pyjamas you’d see hillbilly prospectors wearing in Looney Toons. Basically, they took the already ridiculous notion of the Snuggli: the blanket with sleeves, and turned it into an outfit.

It’s called the Forever Lazy, but honestly it would take more effort to put this on than a shirt and a pair of pants. Especially when it comes to going to the bathroom. Like I said, the zipper is on the side. You’re expected to pee like a turn-of-the-century Chinese stereotype.

Don’t buy this. I know people are buying this, but don’t buy this. Even for people you hate.

Christmas Time

I did some quick calculations, and found out that I’ve listened to approximately 1,500 hours of Christmas music in my life. Nearly 1,300 hours of that has been from the last nine years alone. This is a result of working retail where Christmas music plays constantly on a non-stop rotation from late November to late December/early January. The songs in their playlist automatically become my most listened to songs by default, as the song rotation is fairly short, and I listen to roughly 130 hours each year.. The top listened-to songs on my iPod don’t even come close in terms of time played, even combined. Christmas music comprises 1/12th of all music that reaches my ears. None of this is by choice, mind you. I have, and still listen to Christmas music by choice, but it differs greatly by content, artists, and target audience than the songs I listen to at work, or in malls and stores, and makes up a tiny fraction of total Christmas music I’ve listened to. It’s hard to gauge, but I believe I may have listened to over a hundred hours of Christmas music intentionally, be it on record, on television specials and movies, singing or instrumental, or in concerts and pageants.

My point is that I’ve mentally broken, and have long since gone insane, and am now a danger to myself and others.

Full Moon

In the past two days at work, I had a customer swear vehemently at me, I was treated like a retail slave worker by another, I had two customers break open lifts of merchandise in the overhead to get at things that didn’t really exist and argue with me all the while, and I had some dude with a shaved-head (ie. skinhead) in a 80’s acid washed jean jacket come up to me and say the following when he saw me using a pull bar, “Hey, you didn’t happen to work in the death camps in a former life, did you? I think that’s the kind of hook they used on the Jews when they took them out of the ovens.” I nearly went nuts and punched him in his meth teeth. There was that brief instant where I literally thought I would fucking do it. He made a blatantly anti-Semitic remark out of fucking nowhere, while simultaneously calling me a death camp Nazi. Nothing that person could say or do for the rest of his life would ever make up for that. All I did was clench my jaw and ask him, very pointedly, “Did you need help?” because I work in fucking retail. I never had less respect for myself than just then.

Worse thing is: I think this is the second job I’ve been in where I’ve dealt with this fucker. I don’t know what kind of shit he does for a living, but it’s not legit. Plus, I know I’m going to see him again. Seriously, even if I quit this job and get another, he’ll probably show up again. I think the first time I noticed him, he was towing around some chick like a piece of property and making very sexual remarks to other members of the staff. Classy.

I’m going to refuse to give him service next time I see him, and I’m going to let the managers know why. I honestly don’t care if I’m fired because of it.

Double Jeopardy

Last night I had not one, but two dreams that I died, and both dreams ended the same way.

In one I was picking up my kid from school, and on the way home I was chased down by another driver wielding a gun. I tried speeding away, but he shot at the back of my car. I eventually made it to my childhood home, and it turned into a gun-in-the-back hostage situation where I had to pretend everything was okay. This went on for quite a while, until we were separated, and I told my mom to call 9-1-1. The gunman caught on to me immediately, and took my brother hostage in the basement. I ended up getting shot in the leg before I woke up, with my heart racing.

When I went back to bed, I had another CoD-style dream probably inspired by those n00b trailers. I was a soldier in a war trying to clear out a huge swath of the enemy on a cliff-side. I got up to the last batch, and ran out of bullets. I took a strange old fashioned gun from one of the enemies, and tried using it. I couldn’t get it to work. I was grabbed, and one of the enemy gladly showed me how to use it by emptying into my body. I woke up again, heart pounding. More than anything, I was worried about my pulse rate, which was getting fairly high. I had a nosebleed later on in the morning.

Occupy Ball Street

Occupy [fill in the blank] has reached around the world to most major cities with freeloading hippies living in them, and now it’s coming to your backyard. Or, more specifically, my back yard. Yes, according to the local paper, Occupy Abbotsford is coming this Saturday, SATURDAY! SATURDAY!!! You'll pay for the whole seat BUT YOU’LL ONLY NEED THE EDGE!!!

Actually, it makes a lot of sense, so long as you’re a jobless, pot smoking hippie. All the shiftless losers featured in Occupy Vancouver are being kicked the fuck out after a drug overdose death, along with mayoral candidates complaining about used needles, fire hazards and rodents. Instead of moving four blocks over to East Hastings St. where they’ll continue to live just as they have but slightly out of the public view, they’ll apparently set up their tents down near the town library here in Abbotsford, which happens to be four blocks from my house. That means more homeless people jaywalking across the street during my daily commute. Abbotsford has all the essentials an Occupy movement needs. It has a high unemployment rate, and the few job prospects there are are mainly minimum wage. It also traditionally has a high crime rate with easy access to the drug trade, so stay tuned for more drug related deaths. People here are generally pissed off, and take pains to have it known.

What does Abbotsford have to do with Wall Street? Nothing. You’d struggle to find people in Vancouver who could even find Abbotsford on a map, despite being an hour’s drive away, so imagine the global impact we have when we don’t even rank locally here in B.C.. It’s really just an excuse for the homeless to set up a new homeless city, after their last one, Camp Hope lost all hope. One day, Abbotsford will be magically transformed into a Hobopolis, and shifty-eyed drifters will come from all over the world to squat in our backyards and defecate in our gutters.

Honestly, though, I support the Occupy movement to the extent that it gets me laid. If you want to protest, go protest. It worked out great for the students of Kent State. But if you come complaining to me about inequity, you can go and fuck yourself. I’m barely hanging on by a thread. The whole town is probably hurting too. So who the hell are they complaining to? The Fat Cats at the public library? They couldn’t even find a business centre to protest, because they have no idea where to look for one.

Post-Modern Warfare

With all the hype surrounding today’s release of COD: MW3: Electric Boogaloo (citation needed), I almost forgot the game was being released by Infinity Ward in name only. The originators were denied their bonuses, fired, escorted off of the premises and sued shitless, and I was thinking about how that all ties back to the anti-corruption protests going on around the globe. How more corrupt does a company have to be to completely black ball the people who made them millions? Activision completely got off Scott Free with their deplorable actions, as today’s release will prove. It’s set to be the highest grossing release in history for a video game, and consequently all media by proxy. They basically proved you can keep an idea and do away with the people who had it. Imagine if James Cameron was fired from his studio after Avatar was released, and they gave the sequel to Uwe Bowl to direct? There’s not much of a difference. No fan of the series would ever be indignant enough to boycott the release on principle alone. You can hate what they did, but you’ll still give them your money. The team who created this game could very well find themselves fired as well, as the gaming industry is notorious for it’s unjust layoffs.

Gamer

I think Gamer is a movie a lot of people passed over when it first came out, even it’s own FPS playing target audience. Which is a shame, because it’s great satire. I know it’s not considered a satire, but that’s what it is. It’s a dead-on look at the video game generation, right down to their screen names. It takes current ideas of the most popular games and takes them to the natural conclusion of people controlling other people as their avatars. The outcome isn’t attractive. If you know anything about the actual habits of gamers, you’d know enough to be wary. In a Second Life style open world game, obese men who dip waffles into buckets of syrup before cramming it into their faces control female character and engage in what is essentially gay sex. A female actress goes up to a male actor and the two get it on, without any choice in the matter, because their minds are being controlled. That’s what people are doing all day long on Second Life. The only change is that the avatars are being replaced with flesh’n’blood people. Your average gamers would take great offense to being portrayed as overweight, perversion-obsessed shut-ins who live through their game characters, but they’ll tell you this in the comment sections, with their outdated anime pictures as their avatar, and never in person.

The main bulk of the movie, though, is a Death Race 2000 style game, with criminals fighting in a FPS for freedom. They’re being controlled by greasy teenagers who’re treated like rockstars. Now: the movie hinges on a Mike Zucherberg-style villain and his invention of mind controlling nanobot technology. He uses it on criminals not to make them more compliant, but instead to force them to do violence. Seriously, the same nanobots being used to make them kill each other gladiator-style could also make them perfectly docile and productive members of society. If you watched Shaun of the Dead where they eventually train the zombies to put shopping carts away, the same idea could apply to this movie. Criminals could hold jobs and have ideal lives, and the general public would never have to fear for their safety. The guy who killed your uncle could make your latte, and then you could spit in his face, and he’d just stand there and smile at you. Is that a type of slavery? Yes, but less so than the one illustrated in the movie. After all, it’s just a lousy plot device to get people to kill each other.

The movie actually takes great pains to show how the participants are, for the most part, completely unwilling to take part in the bloodshed. Avatars have total mental breakdowns after each session, while the players look at their fans’ teenaged boobs on webcam. Only one dude is really into it, and he’s a psychopath rival to the hero. They’re all supposedly fighting for their freedom, which is exactly like Death Race 2000, especially since that promise is complete bullshit. You have to feel sorry for the characters in the movie who fall for it. Do you think they’d let the world’s most deranged killing machine free, after proving himself to be virtually indestructible? On the other hand, they use to do it in Ancient Rome.

The whole scheme seems like it would cost everyone involved a lot of money. Having your own human slave with accessories can’t be cheap. The one fat dude was living in the dingiest apartment imaginable, but he could still somehow afford a glamorous female avatar. The FPS player had an entire room that was a virtual projection screen, and he could afford new weapons and armour for his avatar to use in-game. Plus when your character dies in the game, you’re basically fucked. Imagine if you had to pay every time you respawned.

I was watching the movie, and I thought to myself, “This movie could use more Ludacris.” Then, Ludacris came on. That automatically makes this the best movie ever, because you know Ludacris would never attach himself to anything terrible.

Oh, wait.

There’s honestly not enough movies out there with rap stars in them.

Then we find out that Ludacris can hack anyone’s mind control nanobots and download useful apps. He could have gone mainstream and made a killing with his “Walkie-Talkie” program that lets two people talk to each other using only their brains. But no, he decided to take on an evil corporate empire by freeing one guy out of hundreds of potentially sympathetic victims. That didn’t turn out too well for him. Or he could have just hacked everyone’s mind with a virus and put a stop to the game that way by giving them their free will back.

There’s a lot of stupid plans in the movie. Like the bad guy having his team of elite killers perform a song and dance number, then let them be killed one-by-one. Then he challenges the deadliest man in the world to a game of basketball. Or the whole escape plan that involved the hero drinking himself stupid, then throwing up and urinating into the fuel intake of a truck to power it. For some reason, he couldn’t bring the bottle with him. He had to drink it, then pee it out. And somehow it was still potent enough to fuel a truck for a daring escape through an exploding city. He had someone sneak booze into his locker, which is in a maximum security detention centre. He could have just had the person fill up the truck with some fuel, which is in an unguarded garage. Was he so certain the truck was empty to begin with? In the same act, there’s a vehicle that a player uses to run over some chick in the street, so obviously there’s cars with fuel, and they’re easily accessible.

There’s people in the game that are there for the sole reason to get blown up. They’re just there for decoration. They walk mindlessly though the killing fields and get run over or turned into swiss cheese. On some level, they agreed to that. One of them is John Leguizamo, though, so it makes it okay.

Then the hero, who claims to be innocent in everything he’s done, and apparently abhors the violence forced upon him, breaks the spine of another avatar he catches about to have sex with his wife. The avatar is a completely unwilling participant, and a paid actor. Essentially, he’s being raped, and the hero knows this. But he sees a dude about to bang his wife, who’s basically a hooker anyway, and he kills him with a backbreaker. It completely goes against every other theme of the movie. If he was innocent up until then and just killing to survive and find his freedom, he completely blew it with an act of Second-Degree murder. If you catch yourself over-thinking that scene, though, you probably would have turned off the movie by now. That’s what’s so messed up about the whole movie. It brings up all these ethical sci-fi questions and then shits all over them.

The Fog

So I watched The Fog on Netflix two days ago. I’m not going to shit all over the movie with a bad rating, because what’s one more drop of urine in a sewer?But I am going to say this:

I’ve never seen so many people thrown through windows. Like: never.

The first two chicks the ghost fog kills are thrown through the windows of the boat they’re on. Like that’s supposed to be scary, or something. At that point I could shrug it off, but then it keeps happening. Superman’s driving around town, and suddenly his windshield gets smashed in for some reason I didn’t really pay attention to very well, because it’s The Fog. Then, later, the fog throws the MILFy chick in the suit through the window, which is survivable, but apparently she didn’t. It’s kind of weird, because they didn’t even show the fog doing it. She’s just standing next to the window as the fog rolls in, and then she goes blasting through it. Then some priest dude is standing in between two glass display cases, and they explode, then the glass goes flying around and pierces right through him. So it’s like a Yakov Smirnov routine where, “In Soviet Russia, glass is thrown through you!” Then the mayor, who’s kinda blameless in the whole ghost fog revenge scheme, get thrown through the window.

One of the main plans by the people in the movie trying to escape the fog was to hide inside buildings and shut the windows. I guess the fog didn’t really like that idea, and tried to make his feelings known the best way he knew how.

The smashing glass actually relates back to the scene where the ghosts in the fog were dying (the first time) and they’re punching their hands through the portholes of their boat to escape a fire. It makes more sense, then other means of murder. Fire, honestly, would make more sense, but the fog does light the mayor on fire. Honestly, I don’t understand how burning to death on a boat turns you into a ghost fog. But think about the Friday the Thirteenth movies where Jason drowns, then starts killing teens with chainsaws and lawnmowers and machetes and shit. Shouldn’t he be drowning them? I mean the lake is right there, and we know he’s an undead zombie who doesn’t need to breathe. It seems like looking for all these sharp implements in the forest takes up a lot of his time.

The Man With the Golden Gun

Somewhere out there in this big blue world people are demanding war crimes charges be laid against the Libyan forces who killed Gaddafi. That’s fucked up. That’s like saying someone who had their house robbed should be charged with theft for taking back their stuff. Gaddafi got pwned in the most awesome way possible. I don’t think anyone could be more satisfied with how that went. There we people shouting, “We need him alive!” as he was getting kicked down the street. They weren’t listened to. No one needs a long, drawn out trial. Look at Sadam. Everyone knew he was guilty as shit, so why put on the show?

Besides, Gaddafi had a golden gun on him when he was caught. That’s a rare item drop that sells for top dollar at auction. It’s one of the few times life imitates WoW.

Seriously, that’s literally something a James Bond villain would have on him. You got to ask yourself, “WWJBD?” He’d kill that motherfucker.

People, mostly liberal hippies, had the same negative reaction when Osama was killed. There were tweets from that huffy Huffington Post chick about how we shouldn’t be celebrating the death of a human being. How far up your own ass do you have to be to not realize that something bad happening to someone bad is a good thing?

I saw an episode of Family Guy the other day where Peter annex Joe’s pool and creates the nation of Petoria, and invites all the world’s despots over. They showed Saddam and Gaddafi on screen at the same time.

Eerie, isn’t it?

Horrible Bosses

My resume has basically no one on it for references, due largely to the fact that I’m something of a loner. The two that are on there are former supervisors, one of whom I haven’t seen or spoken to in maybe eight years and likely has retired, so she should be removed. The second I am on awkward terms with due to a failed bromance. I’ve been thinking of asking my current and more recent supervisors for their seal of approval, but my last supervisor doesn’t give out references. Another, apparently, is a convicted felon.

I only found out yesterday that a former supervisor I worked with for two years robbed the store he transferred out to. I’m not talking about taking money from the till either. He went in with a mask, stole things off the shelf and got arrested a few minutes later by a cop waiting outside. That’s because the store he robbed, which is also the store he works in, is smack dab next to a police station. They couldn’t even call 9-1-1 in the time it took for him to have a pair of cuffs slapped on him. To recap: he went in to a place where he was very well known in a terrible disguise. I say terrible because the description of the suspect I found online has him pegged. To survey the scene of the crime the police wouldn’t even have to leave the station. They could have just pulled up the blinds and looked out the window. Plus, he stole tools, not money. At best he couldn’t have netted more than $500. It would have sucked if the police had to confiscate the good as evidence, because I don’t think he even made it out of the parking lot. The dude obviously had some kind of breakdown to think any of this was a good idea. It’s like how in the first episode of Prison Break the guy gets himself arrested on purpose.

Now: obviously when someone you know gets arrested in the stupidest manner possible, it makes for juicy gossip. This happened over a year ago, and I found out yesterday. Yesterday being a relative term because it took me weeks to finish this post.

Thing is: I applied for the same job as he did, and they chose him. Twice. Despite having actual credentials, and experience, they decided that I wasn’t even in the running. They made him my supervisor, then switched his department, then switched him back. They chose a dude who’d rob his own store over me. That’s depressing as fuck. That’s like taking the worst possible candidate, and then saying you’re even worse than that. “You were five minutes late yesterday, so we’re giving the job to this escaped mental patient, Phil. Now get the FUCK OUT MY OFFICE!”

FUCK and YOU, good sirs.

It’s the End of the World

Last night was the official end of the world. It had been bumped up previously from five months earlier due to a miscalculation or a misinterpretation, but last night was the real deal. All sinners were ripped apart by ravenous zombies while the good Christians of a particular niche religion who made a sizeable enough donation were Raptured up to White People Heaven. I survived by using my wits and a baseball bat, and made it home to blog.

Every time the world is supposed to end, you hear about people giving away all their material possessions, and then getting pissed off when it turns out they still need them. I don’t know if that’s just an Urban Myth, but it happens every single time, and I’d like to know why.

Why would you give away all your stuff, even if you thought the world was ending? It’s not a good deed if the world’s about to end. It’s like saying, “Here, you can use my walkman for the next thirty minutes.” I know everyone is a fan of deathbed repenting, but God’s not going to be fooled by that shit. You’d think giving something away for free would be a no-brainer in the charity department, but the sinner could have simply taken it from you after you ascended in a golden beam of light. They’re already going to spend an eternity in Hell, so stealing leftovers from a Raptured person who’s evolved beyond their corporeal form isn’t likely going to add much to their sentence. Later, a hell beast will take all your shit by proxy after consuming the flesh and souls of the people you donated it to. It’s trickle-down economics. Technically, by giving your possessions away, you let it fall right into the hands of the Unholy Ones, making you the worst person in history. Imagine someone being torn to shreds by a demon: now imagine instead of using it’s claws, it’s now clubbing them with the stool from your breakfast nook. You made that happen. Maybe some guy who stole a candy bar from the store when he was ten is being sodomized with your flatscreen TV. He’ll curse the day he ever accepted your charity.

Then, there’s the fairly high chance you don’t get Raptured. What if everyone else but you and the guy you gave your stuff to are taken up to Heaven? You’ll need that stuff back, and getting it is going to be pretty awkward. You’ll have to do favours. MOUTH favours, and that’s not the kind of good deed that gets you Raptured.

Of course, the person blames whoever told him the world was ending if he sells his stuff and nothing happens. The real culprit is him being an idiot.

The weirdest thing about these End of Days predictions that never come true, is that people still believe even after the day has come and gone. Looking at this Camping fiasco. They already pushed back the date from May 21st. The only reason anyone found out about the new set date was because people STILL believed in these predictions even after they had already failed. It’s like how people tried to invent the airplane. Someone would fall to their deaths off a cliff, and the next person would come along and try the EXACT same thing. We’re nothing but human lemmings. Technically, lemmings aren’t even lemmings, so we’re just human humans.

Call It In

Phones have existed for well over a century. Billions are invested in their production, design, distribution, research, and infrastructure every year. The average person spends $25-$60 or more a month on phone bills. That same average person will buy a cell phone for $250-$600, then trade it in and buy a new phone for the same amount the next year. Virtually every street in the developed world and many underdeveloped countries has telephone cables hanging from poles along either side. People will comment that even the homeless in third world countries will still have cellphones. There’s satellites in space, towers in our backyards, and cables across the oceans all designed to make our phones connect.

So why the fuck don’t they work?

If you’ve ever picked up a phone and had the person on the other end of the line say, “I can barely hear you,” then you know something isn’t right. You should be able to pick up the phone and have it work. How can you check your e-mail on your phone and not be able to converse with another human being? Technology has advanced, but hasn’t improved on tying two cans to a string. Fuck the future.

#OccupyEarth

The Occupy Wall Street movement yesterday accomplished one thing: Nothing. Nothing is a thing. As Wall Street was not toppled and the poorest 99% of the population are not suddenly rolling in greenbacks and hand-jobs, I’ll assume they failed. It’s hard to fail, though, when you don’t have an objective. ithout any leadership, unified message, or proposal, all people did was show up, wave some cardboard signs and kick over trashcans. In some cases, however, those cans were chained to posts, or else rooted in the spots. Protestors tried in vain to kick them, only to leave the can slightly askew, but still useable for it’s original purpose. In other instances, no trash was spilt, making cleanup simple and easy for the underpaid city workers who make up the 99%. In some places, trashcans were set on fire and the homeless were unable to collect cans and bottles for recycling money. There was no dinner that night for the 99%.

If you’re honestly upset about how the financial situation is being handled, and if you’re calling for a redistribution of wealth (you fucking Commie), how is holding up traffic so people can’t get to work and hence paid a good idea?

Plus, it was called the Occupy Wall Street movement, but it went global. People flooded the streets in cities all over the world in a symbolic gesture that supports another symbolic gesture. It’s like wearing a wristband to support people who wear support ribbons. If you’re trying to get someone in Wall Street in NYC to do something, which was never defined, how does standing on the street in Vancouver do that? All you’re doing is getting in the local news, and it’s unlikely anyone in NYC gets the Vancouver Province on their doorstep. You could have had the same factual impact if you stood outside your own front door in Kitimat.

Protesting simply doesn’t work, and it doesn’t make sense.

First of all, the signs: Protests are considered successes simply based on the number of people in attendance. They can accomplish jack shit, but if there’s enough people, the organizers are thrilled. Organizers will even express extreme disappointment with their own followers if there turnout is anything less than the ridiculously large imaginary number they have in their head. There’s no way to please them. In any interview, they’ll tell the newscaster that they had been hoping for a bigger turnout, then point the finger of blame straight at you, the viewer, for not believing hard enough in their stupid shit. It like when Peter Pan and the Lost Boys all have to clap their hands to bring Tinkerbelle back to life. If it didn’t work, Peter would blame the Lost Boys for not clapping hard enough, and not on the fact that Tinkerbelle needs immediate medical attention from a doctor specializing in very tiny people. Imagine if you were dying and all you heard was applause. I don’t know how organizers determine how many people will show at their events. I assume they use facebook’s famously unreliable events planner, then quadruple that number.

Oh yeah, the signs… Right, so there’s 1,000+ people in attendance packed into a tiny area, all with signs. How likely is it that your sign makes it on the air, or in the paper? It’s like getting a “like” on one of your comments on a webpage that already has 1,000+ comments. Only one person can be the wittiest of a group, and the rest are a bunch of assholes who tried and failed. The person they take pictures of always looks like a deranged hippie, holding a piece of cardboard with some, “Free the fish,” bullshit on it. If you’re not that guy: fuck you. If' you’re that guy: fuck you. What happens when two people show up with the same sign? They share the exact same beliefs and ideals, but they instantly hate each other because they think the other person stole their idea. That’s why we’ll never have world peace. Literally: they could be at a World Peace March, and then get in a fight over their identical peace slogans.

Secondly, or now: Thirdly: It takes exactly one douche to ruin your protest. One person with a, “God hates fags!” sign will ruin your entire movement. The Tea Party movement started as an okay idea, but they were instantly labelled by the liberal media as bigoted crackpots because people showed up with signs showing Obama as an African witchdoctor. Fox News still loves them, but Fox News hates fags (according to John Stewart).

Fourth: Disorganization. Like parties, there’s no real co-ordination beyond, “We’re having a party at Steve’s house. BYOB.” After that, all’s fair game. It goes back to the douche thing where your movement can get overrun with anarchists, who’ll grab all the media attention, or the counter-movement, who’s riding in on your coattails with their own separate protest. There’s no way to organize 10,000 people unless you’re the army. If you’re the protest leader and you show up and find 10,000 people are there with you, you have no idea who they are, but you assume they’re with you. They’ll cheer and boo if prompted, but that’s the extent of your power as leader. You’re not Martin Luther King Jr.. There will never be another. If you’ve got a band lined up, they’re waiting for you to finish your speech so they can listen to some Phish. Everyone is there for their own reasons, chief among which are getting laid and scoring weed.

Fifth: There were two successful protests in all of history. There was the Civil Right Movement in the States and the Passive Resistance tact in India. Both involved people getting the shit beat out of them. The absolute SHIT. These people were masochists. Your average protester can’t take the heat, let alone the pepper spray. They’re not this guy:

Racoon City

Last night, while driving home in the rain, three things happened in rapid succession near to the street by my house. First, someone began honking frantically on their horn while I drove though a green light at the speed limit, making me look back in the mirror and wonder what the hell someone’s problem was. Two seconds later, I had to brake and slow down because four teenagers were jay-walking the five lane road while wearing dark clothes. At night. Several feet later, after accelerating back to normal speed, I immediately had to brake again as I saw a racoon dart across the road in front of me and directly under the rear wheel of the car in the lane beside me. The car kept going, likely because it never saw the racoon, but the driver probably wondered at the bump they just hit. They slowed a little, then kept going. Meanwhile, I looked out the side of my window to see a tail twitching. There was a car directly behind me, and nowhere to pull over. I kept driving, but wondered if I should stop and see how it was. Then I remembered I knew nothing about first aid for wild animals. It’s not as if I could take it to the vet, where they would immediately put it down and throw it out like last week’s leftovers, then advise me to get a series of rabies shots to my spine. Even if I were to get out and move it to the side of the road I could be hit by a car in the dark, rainy night, or be scratched and bitten by a diseased, half-dead animal. This is what I told myself as I finished the drive home to make myself feel better.

It was Canadian Thanksgiving, which in a way is also the same as Homeless Day. No one gives a crap about the homeless or less fortunate on any other day of the year besides Christmas. I certainly don’t. People are supposed to donate canned food for the Salvation Army, and help out at the homeless shelters. I certainly don’t do any of that. I’m barely scraping by as it is, and it’s going to get worse for me in the coming months. That’s why I’m so unsympathetic in general, because I’m lower-class already. Also, it helps if they didn’t rummage around in my garbage all day every day, for years on end.

I went out later that night to closest liquor store to buy a Pumpkin Ale the lady in the store told me they didn’t have, and wasn’t even available in Canada, despite the fact I saw it in another local store. I was too lazy to drive the extra few blocks, so I bought the cheapest beer they had. By the front door coming in was the same homeless man I had seen a day earlier while trying to park my car at the grocery store. He was walking down the middle of the lane directly towards my car, so I had to physically brake and wait for him to shuffle past just so I could keep moving forward. That was enough to piss me off, or anyone for that matter. Roads and right-away are very simple concepts. Jaywalking is one thing: walking in the direction opposite to traffic in the middle of traffic is another. He sat outside the store’s Starbucks and watched me enter and leave intently, but I kept a wide berth. He looked newish. It’s not that big of a town and you usually have an idea who the homeless people are.

In the liquor store that night, he was arguing with the counter lady about the returns he was trying to trade in. As I said, this was Thanksgiving, and he could have been visiting any shelter to get a hot, free meal, and take the day off being a bum. The lady wasn’t having any of it, and told him to speak to her manager, who wasn’t there, and wouldn’t be available until the next day, which is a roundabout way of saying, “Get the fuck out.”

We both left the store at the same time, and as I was buckling into my car, he was tapping on my car window. I waved him off, and he kept tapping. Then I told him to, “Fuck off.” He kept tapping, so I said, “Fuck off,” again. If I’m in my car, I don’t want you near me. There could have been a thousand things he could have wanted: either he wanted money, he wanted a ride, or he wanted to sell me drugs or something he stole, or all of the above. I didn’t want any of it. I drove off, angry. I didn’t feel bad, though. Sure, it’s Thanksgiving, and I’m told to care about this kind of shit by a half-assed society, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to care. That night, I wasn’t visited by the Ghosts of Thanksgiving, so I think I’m good. I have real responsibilities, and the imaginary ones I’m supposed to be engaging in as part of being a Good Samaritan don’t really solve any problems.

The Nude 52

After over a month of readership, I’m convinced that the DC reboot was a secret plot by Batman to get laid. He’s already boned Catwoman and a reporter by the name of Catherine Rivers. Considering Batman is traditionally belittled as a closeted homosexual with a penchant for lithe boys in pixie boots, this is a startling turnaround. Every sexual encounter Batman has ever indulged in has ended the same way: by standing up the bitch on the second date. Batman doesn’t necessarily fuck-em’ and chuck-em’, he just fucks and forgets. There’s a panel in nearly every Batman comic where Alfred reminds him he missed a date with a such’n’such of this’n’that. This is just the latest is a string of off-handed conquests:

Here’s a head’s up for Miss Rivers: He’s not going to show.

In Catwoman #1, audiences saw Batman check in on Catwoman to see how she was doing after a bit of bad luck as a concerned friend, and to fuck her. He definitely knew that was on the table. Catwoman is more of Batman’s fuck-buddy than ally/enemy. The comic ended with Batman being used as a horsey. There’s nothing subtle about their relationship, unlike with other women where he might apologize to and send roses for missing dates. He’ll string them along because he has a genuine interest in them beyond keeping up appearances. Dick Grayson even sent Viki Vale flowers on behalf of Bruce Wayne just so she wouldn’t connect the dots and realize he’s not avoiding her: he’s dead. That’s dedication. Still, Bruce Wayne is the worst man in comics for following up on dates. Spider-Man even makes the time to call when he’s out being Spider-Man. In the One More Day reboot he missed his wedding to M.J. after an accident that left him unconscious in an alley, but he freely fessed-up without making excuses like Batman does. He’s not going to come out and say, “I had a business meeting,” when he’s secretly out fighting bad guys.

Since the reboot, everything’s been taken back to square one with revised stories, but no one’s re-explained Damien, Batman’s very-illegitimate ten-year-old son with a terrorist, or how he’s explained to the public where his bastard child came from. Everyone in the public knows Bruce Wayne has adopted three different boys as his wards, plus he’s a playboy, so why would he be so hush-hush about a secret love child for ten years when he clearly has no shame about the subject, and who is the mother? He pulled a Michael Jackson.

It’s not just Bruce getting his dick wet, other heroes associated with him are getting a new lease on love. Commissioner Gordon lost the white locks in favour of ginger to look younger, despite being white-haired since Detective Comics #1 back in the 40’s. The Red Hood also popped his cherry with Starfire, which is quite the feat. Jason Todd was little more than a teenager when he was Robin, and died, and obviously never got any nookie. When he came back to life, he pursued his interests in Donna Troy, who wasn’t having any of it: because despite becoming a homicidal bad-ass, he was still the whiny little bitch in green booty shorts she knew back in the day with Teen Titans. He got his own female sidekick later, but she was a complete butterface, and also underage, so let’s hope nothing happened there. So Starfire was officially his first, which, considering her new sluttified personality, really wasn’t that much of a challenge.

Nightwing, on the other hand, has it the worst. His two former will-you-marry-me love interests have been rebooted. Batgirl’s got her legs back, but she’s too busy getting back in the saddle to care about him, and Starfire is fucking a second-rate replacement to himself and his former drug-addicted friend. Nightwing use to be #1 with the fire crotches, and now he’s been left out in the cold.

This is What I Think of Your Face

I unlocked Emile’s helmet in Avatar rewards last night by scoring a Killtacular in Griffball. To get a Killtacular, you have to kill five enemies in a row five seconds within one another. Since teams on most maps are between 4-8, this is a little difficult. I did it in a 4 vs. 4 match, using my fist. Griffball is a game where your run at the other team with hammer and swords, and try to dunk a bomb into a tiny hole in the ground on the other side of the map, which will then explode, scoring you one point and killing you in the process. Everyone dog-piles onto the guy with the bomb, who has a little extra health and can hit a little harder with his fist, but has no other weapons. Typically, you can only kill him with a sword hit, or hit him with the hammer twice, but he has three players hopefully backing him up.

For my streak, I killed off the bomb carried with my hammer after my teammate weakened him with his and died in the process, then scooped up the ball and made a run for it. The first guy on me came at me with a sword, and I punched him to death in his stupid helmet-head. Same for the second guy, and the third. That brought me up to four, and dunking the bomb scored me my last kill with an explosion and an avatar award. It was kind of like Roadhouse with punching and explosions in the place of kicking. I still lost, but I didn’t care after that. What made it so sweet was the apparent lag the game had. An enemy was killing me a medium range with a weapon that only works at close range. I almost thought of dropping out, but stayed on, and now I have a helmet no one can ever take away from me.

I’m George W. Bush and I Approved This Kitty

The latest yankee to invade my game in Nintendogs is former President George W. Bush. He came with his cat and the option to meet up with him at the park. He stands by idly, watching and judging you coldly as you toss your frisbee around with your dog. In the background is a “Mission Accomplished” banner, and at the end of the play date a man in a suit comes up and whispers into his ear that there’s been a terrorist attack in New York.

I don’t know how the people who release these updates choose which President goes next. It’s gone from Jimmy Carter, to Ronald Reagan, to FDR and now Dubya. Is there a ranking system involved? Is Dubya one rung above FDR? I can’t wait for Nixon and Clinton, to be honest. At least I can name their pets: Checkers and Socks. That’s how much I, as a Canadian, know about American politics: I can name Presidential pets. I’d have to struggle to tell you the name of my former Prime Minister. For some reason, I keep forgetting about Paul Martin, mainly because he was completely useless and un-influential. Canada has more interim leaders than… I don’t think there’s a proper analogy. We have the MOST interim leaders: the Gerald Fords of the North. No one voted for them and no one ever will. I can’t even name the new opposition leaders after the old ones died or quit. How am I supposed to be interested in them politically when they’re so disposable? At least with American Presidents you know they’ll be around for at least four more year unless something VERY newsworthy comes up.

I don’t know the name of the current Presidential dog, but I do know that Obama basically didn’t want one and caved in to his two daughters after making an off-hand promise he didn’t think he’d really have to follow up on. He basically told them that if they ever got to move into the white house they could have a dog, and they did, so they got one. Now he’s probably sitting at his desk fretting over a bill, and he’ll look up and there’ll be a dog there for whom he has no love, and he doesn’t know what to do with. It’s just there.

I honestly think Americans wouldn’t vote for a candidate if they didn’t have a pet. In their minds, if a person can’t take care of a dog, how can they take care of a country? It’s the SAME thing.

Reach Reaction

There’s a Beta playlist in Halo:Reach for early October. and I played briefly only to have my ass completely handed to me. My opponents had reached the upper-most limits of what a human being can do in the game. Each was nearly, or at 100% completion in terms of their armoury, condemnations and rank. In a day, I might get all four Daily Challenges, and my experience meter barely fills, so the amount of time they’ve played is bordering on the insane. I had virtually no chance. These players were able to score one-hit headshots with handguns from around corners. I tried thinking about what they’re doing on their end. From the moment they round a corner, it takes them a split-second to locate my character on screen, and then they have to aim their sites at me. In that same timeframe, I’ve seen them, and I’m side-shifting to pull away from their target area and aim my own gun. Before I can even move my joystick, they’ve already capped me. Every time. The human-reaction to controller-input ratio should mean that I should still have half-a-chance to dodge at the very least, but it’s impossible. A bullet goes through my skull every time. Even if they’re cheating it shouldn’t be possible.

Frustrated, I moved on to another map and game-type, Big Team Battles, where I can jump in vehicles and play my own way. I was still finding myself completely dominated. Those on my team of eight who hadn’t dropped out were being completely pinned down. There was no way to escape the carnage even after spawning. Every enemy was either too-far afield or in a vehicle. Meaning for every twelve shots I would need to kill them, the players in vehicles could one-shot kill me with no effort. If I tried to run from the swarm of vehicles, a sniper in the distance would pick me off, even if I was camouflaged. I encountered the same enemy team twice while in that playlist. The second time, I was determined to get the upper-hand by manning my own tank. As I ran towards it shortly after spawning, my own teammate got in a secondary vehicle and shot the tank, bringing it down to nearly-no health. I still tried using it, and second later exploded. Everything was downhill from there. I tried using actual strategies, and nothing worked. Vehicles would run towards me, intent on mowing me down, so I’d throw up my shields in the hopes they’d crash into me like a brick wall. They would stop dead in that instant before impact, wait patiently, and then blast me as my shields fell.

My point is: Reach is over a year old now, and the only ones still left playing are typically the die-hard fans, who do nothing but play the game all day every day, and have become impossible opponents. New games like GoW 3 and the Battlefield demo have likely drawn off much of the crowd, along with regular schoolwork. This happens with every competitive FPS ever. These opponents are fine in small amounts, and they’re always around, but once the regular players are gone, and they’re the only ones left, it becomes a game-killing nightmare. If you’re playing with other entry level players, you’re somewhat safer because they’re there as human shields you can use to draw fire off yourself and counter. Plus you can score kills on the lesser opponents of the other team. If you’re on a team with only newbs, and your opponents are all hardcore, you might as well drop out and take the hit.

Alpha-Beta Max

While playing the Battlefield 3 Open Beta the other day, I realized that any player could receive a review from any other player in the game, be it positive or negative with their Xbox Live Account. Honestly, you don’t even have to play a game with someone, or know who they are to submit a review. All you need is to be able to look up their profile, and then file away. In the case of the Beta, you can receive a negative review for exploiting any number of glitches in the game. Yet, Betas are designed to weed out bugs and glitches, so by using them you’re improving the final experience. The more people who screw up the game, the more likely the publishing company is to address the issue through patches. So xXxWeedyMcSmokesPotxXx is a hero in his own right. It like if more people bring shoe bombs onto a plane, the more likely you will have to take your shoes off at the security checkpoint. These people shouldn’t be punished: they should be reward for their douchebaggery.

There was an article, though, about how all the players in the Beta are ungrateful asshole for pointing out how much the game sucks:

http://www.gamebandits.com/news/battlefield-3-ungrateful-fans-get-an-earful-from-dice-16816/

The response was: If it’s free, don’t knock it. Lots of things are free in the world of gaming. Look at facebook. All those games are free, and they all suck. Why wouldn’t you knock it? The Beta they’ve released is more of a Demo than anything else. The article itself tells you they’ve already made changes to the game that address certain issues that players have, without even consulting the ongoing results of the Beta. They’re ignoring their audience. And why shouldn’t they? As long as they reach their quotas, why should they care?

Butterfield

I played the new Battlefield 3 Open Beta multiplayer online last night on my 360. This game is supposed to be a game-changer that wants to tear the FPS dominance away from COD while showcasing what the next gen might looks like in terms of graphics. It’s really coming up short on those fronts. To be fair, it’s just an unfinished beta of one level, but it looks and plays like every other Battlefield. From what I was hearing, it was suppose to showcase movie quality graphics. My worries was that I was playing on an old res TV, since we moved the HD into the bedroom, and I wouldn’t be getting the full experience. Still, it shouldn’t look so shoddy. It actually hurts my eyes to play it. I was wondering why I kept seeing red blurs across the screen, until I realized they were laser-site being aimed directly at my cornea, which is an obvious flaw right there. With the frequency I saw this, my head should have been left a piece of Swiss cheese. I died a lot, often immediately after spawning, but if I can see their laser, that means I should be dead. Like I said, I really couldn’t see for crap. I couldn’t even tell who was on my team and who was the enemy, if not for the site turning red when I aimed at them. I could have scored a lot more kills if I hadn’t hesitated for fear of team-killing. As it were, I sucked. I found about 100 glitches in maybe an hour of playing too. Every time I tried to crouch or crawl, I fell through the ground into that bizarre framework below. When I was shown the enemy’s kill cam after dying, it displayed the same under-layer background on white, grey and red geometric blobs. It was kind of sad to note too that over 3/4 of the people playing were level 18 or higher, after the beta had been out for all of two days. I’ve encountered their type before. If you’ve ever played an MMO, you’ve seen them. I’ve purchased the first WoW expansion the day it came out, and that same day after I came home from work and booted up, I encountered players who had already put in weeks worth of experience in a twelve hour, no pee break period.

The beta is free and I’m not sure if I even want to keep playing it. The only thing it’s really got going for it is the ability to crawl through bushes. That’s honestly the most major improvement in there to other shooters. If you’ve ever run around in any shooter map, you’ll see objects or scenery you could easily use as cover, but can’t because the game won’t let you. In B3, (assuming that’s the popular nickname it gets) I crawled from one end of the map to the other through bushes, and shot one enemy in his camp, before being shot by his partner. That’s the only new experience I had.

I also noticed yesterday that I received another complaint in my profile. I’m still at a 5-Star rating, but not 62% of people who reviewed me chose to avoid me. Since the last time I checked, I don’t recall anything I did that would have pissed off another player, but then again there’s people out there who will stab you in real life for playing a game the way it’s intended to be played. I did have a couple of experiences in Halo: Reach where I was playing Invasion, where you spawn next to your partner. My partner was AFK, and getting spawn camped. So every time I died, I would end up right next to him, and I would have to deal with his campers. Only, his campers were spawning as a team. So if I killed one in the split-second of opportunity I got after coming back to life, his partner would be right behind me with a gun. This went on for about five minutes of my time. Just when it looked like I’d be able to move past the area, I was booted from the game by my partner, who hadn’t been at his controller for more than twelve minutes. Earlier, I had spawned behind him seconds before a victory, and noticed him AFK. I decided, for fun to assassinate him from behind on the way out the door. That’s really the only way without a mike to tell someone to fucking get back in the game. Does it make me a poor sportsman? If you’re playing double in tennis and your partner has lapsed in a coma, isn’t it polite to bitch-slap him back to consciousness with a racket? I think so.

In another game, I was doing remarkably well, considering I suck, and especially since half the team had dropped out of the match and Halo doesn’t let new players hop on board. You’re expected to fight off up to eight enemy players solo for fifteen minutes and guard your base at the same time in some cases. In this case, I was mowing down everyone in my warthog and having a great time. I didn’t notice any real weirdness except for when some guy stopped dead in the middle of the map. I shot him from about half-the-map away. Afterwards, in the scoring, the other team went apeshit and accused our side of using a lag switch, or some shit, which would explain why I was doing so well. I don’t know if that’s even possible anymore. I always hear about bots and glitches and cheats people use, but I don’t even follow that shit anymore. Every game has it glitches, and I play too many to look into every possible exploit. There was one in SOCOM II where the enemy player could become invincible/invisible, which sucked donkey balls. Nowadays, people will fucking call the President if someone so much as shoots through a seemingly solid wall. Why do people still do this? Bragging rights pretty much go out the window when people find out you cheated.

Mind Control Agent

I noticed today that my baby’s new playtoy is a secret mind control agent issued by the C.I.A. to indoctrinate him into favouring a pro-American approach to Democracy. The toy is a plush coil with two flowers on the end and two animals hanging from it. One of them is a red elephant. The other is a a blue donkey.

Combined, they make the two most un-understandable symbols for America’s two political parties. Why animals? In Canada, the Conservatives don’t use a beaver as their mascot, and the Liberals don’t use a moose. Why do Democrats want to be represented by a jackass? Why do Republicans want to be represented by an animal indigenous to Africa, when they hate all black people?

At first I thought I was just being crazy when I noticed this. I thought the one animal was a horse, but it could very easily be a donkey. Can you tell the difference between a horse and a donkey in plush cartoon form? Plus the elephant was the red Republican colour, and the donkey a blue Democratic colour. They’re tied on a line, so one can be said to be on the left, or right, depending on how you’re facing them. It seems too spot-on to be a mere coincidence. There’s also a star and a mirror hanging from the spiral, which probably represent vanity and Texas, or some other poetic shit the Chinese child labourer making the thing thought up before having his hand cut off in a prison camp for daring to dream the American dream.

I’m now worried my child will grow up to be three hundred pounds, his fat face stuffed with McDonalds fries as he tries desperately to pull on a pair of blue jeans that will never fit him, so he can drive his S.U.V. to school and fail his geography test.

Sticky

Today, at work, I had to read over four pages of documents citing seven essential steps of using a stick, and then print my name, sign, and then date a form to certify that I am qualified to use a stick. Afterwards, my acting supervisor and manager both have to sign the document, and then it has to be filed away in my company record.

Let me assure you that this was not in response to me using the stick inappropriately. This was an official company document that anyone who wishes to use a stick must sign in order to pick up the stick.

The stick in question is similar to a metal hoe about three feet long, with a hollow metal handle that it’s welded to, and painted a garish orange colour which would make it visibly stand out in any environment except the one I work in. There are no moving parts. It probably cost about five bucks to make. It’s used only for pulling pieces of lumber forward when they’re out of reach. We previously used any sturdy wooden stick we could find with a metal hook screwed on the end. They worked fine, but they were banned when some chucklehead in the States was using one to grab something at the top of a long ladder, and fell to death. The stick and lack of training was blamed for the fatality instead of the person being a clumsy dumbass. We weren’t allowed to use stick for a total of six months until they found an alternative. Any stick found were destroyed and the people found using them were disciplined. It was akin to being caught with a firearm on a plane.

The instructions for the stick use colour photos. We’re warned to inspect the stick for damage prior to every use. Any stick found lacking must be tagged as out of service with a specified official out of service tag. When using the stick, we’re told to use a “staggered stance.” Customers or persons not certified are forbidden from using the stick at all times.

This is clearly meant to be serious business. Shit can an will go down if you don’t use the stick properly. It was like reading the instruction manual for the Wii, where about twenty pages are devoted to the awesome things you should never do with the Wii-chucks, like throw it at the TV, knock over lamps, or strangle a ninja to death.

We were warned never to write on the stick or put stickers on it. Previously, we’d broken the hoe off of a stick, and I had painted in green like a Riddler cane. Then someone came along and turned it into a Rio Carnival pimp cane. When they threw that out, a part of me died inside. A part I can never get back. Apparently, I should have been fired immediately. Now I wait in fear for THEM to come, and claim me, and I shall work no more.

Droppin’ Bombs

I’m convinced that Japan exists in an alternative timeline. Their version of history seems so different from our own. In their version, for instance, they were innocent bystanders in WWII until they had to defend themselves from the evil invading round-eyes. That may seem like an unwarranted stretch of my imagination to you, but think about how much emphasis they put on their country being hit by the atomic bomb, and how little they think about Pearl Harbour; kamikaze suicide pilots; collaborating with Hitler, the Nazis and the Fascists; and everything they did in China all for the sake of getting a bigger piece of the Imperialist pie. You’d think that after being hit twice by The Bomb, they’d at least know something about the man who did it. Truman may have given the order, but FDR was the man behind the plan.

Fun fact: FDR had Polio. Like, a lot of it. When he wasn’t on crutches, he was in a wheelchair. People didn’t talk about it much back then, because they were “classy.” Those same people would tell Obama to get to the back of the bus before turning the hose on him, though, so fuck them.

When I played Nintendogs 3D this week, I was notified about a Spotpass download for FDR and his dog. They’re running a series in the game on American Presidents of the 20th Century, or something. So far they’ve done Regan and Jimmy Carter and their dogs, despite the fact that Jimmy once shot a dog. It’s kind of odd how they’re doing it. If you’re playing, you’ll occasionally come across Regan as he’s walking his dog, and you’ll go to the park together, or he’ll give you some doggie biscuits as a present. I’m assuming that the Alzheimer's kicking in. The same thing happened with FDR. The game shows him walking around on two legs, which leads me to believe that Nintendogs takes place in heaven, and everyone in the game is actually dead, including you and your dog. That’s some Sixth Sense shit right there.

Then it made me think about how video games discriminate against the handicapped. If you’re playing a game, you never get the option of selecting a wheelchair, or crutches for your avatar. You can’t show your Mii as having only one leg. The closest you can come to representing a handicap is having a pirate eyepatch, and obviously people playing the 3Ds aren’t going to have eyepatches (because of the 3D).

So in conclusion, screw elitist idealized renditions of Japanese history, fuck discrimination against the handicapped, and fuck M. Night Shama-lama-ding-dong.

In-u-end-o

Grace: the fine maker of Cock soup mix. Put some cock in your soup.

Also: today I found out someone had named their child Gaye Rider, and that child had grown into an adult. I suspect that Gaye was home schooled.

The Impossible Achievement

While playing Halo: Reach last night, I unlocked:

Which should impossible, because in order to get this achievement, I would have had to purchase and download the Noble map pack for 800MS point. I got angry afterwards and had to go through my download history, thinking either myself or my step-son had accidentally purchased it, but that wasn’t the case.

My theory is: I was so awesome that it broke the game. Usually, when playing these types of games, I always choose the jetpack loadout while the song “Fett’s Vette” plays in the background.

That wasn’t working for me this time. Every time I tried to use the jetpack to bounce over a vehicle barrelling down on me, they’d hit a hill and jump to collide with me mid-air, while the Dukes of Hazard theme plays.

So I picked up the armor lock on the next life. Next time some fucker tried to mow me down, I hit the armor lock and they ran into me like a brick wall. Chunks of futuristic machinery and shrapnel flew around me Michael Bay style as I crouched down, posed. Then I got 25 Achievement points. I then went on to die about twenty more times, and lose the game by a wide margin, but who cares after something like that.

Teh Gamez

I just saw this article, as linked through kotaku.com about game journalism:

http://www.industrygamers.com/news/xbox-360-power-not-yet-tapped-out-says-gears-designer/

It made me think about the old gaming magazines I use to read, and how they’re now basically extinct. A game magazine is essentially 100% ads, as even the articles are ads in and of themselves. The only magazines with any exclusives were the “official” magazines, like PSM, which people would frequently only buy because of the demo disc included with the mag. With there being three main competing gaming system, and two subsets of gaming handhelds at any time over the past couple of decades, it’s unlikely that any reader would prefer a “blanket” approach that covers games cross-system. If you only have a Playstation, why would you care what’s on Xbox, aside from morbid curiosity? That’s why each system had at least one main magazine devoted to it, and it was usually wholly endorsed by the company that produces those games. Any reviews inside the magazine were therefore suspect. Most trended towards how awesome the game in question was, and how you should buy it, with money. This sort of thing happens every day, in nearly every magazine. Fashion magazines aren’t going to crap all over fashion. Incidentally: print is dead.

In the modern age of video game reviews, the review is expected to be out long before the game. If you don’t have the exclusive from the latest convention or behind-the-scenes press-release for a game that won’t be released in months, if not years, then you’re left in the dust. If you’re an independent writer, and don’t have access to these scoops, there’s really no point in even trying. A single screenshot of an unreleased game can attract more attention than a 10,000 word essay on the game itself, once it’s been on the shelf. To be truly successful, you’d have to have access to every beta out there, and have played through every round. In the end, that wouldn’t even matter, because there’s only a handful of games every year out of hundreds that anyone in the world really cares about. Same with movies: no one really cares about the independent pic that got rave reviews at Sundance: they want the next Michael Bay blockbuster. These are from companies that have their own corps of PR people, who are doing your work for you. All you can really do is analyze it and regurgitate what they feed you.

Why? Because billions of dollars are on the line. Even though scoops are the lifeblood of the game journalist’s trade, if they were to publish anything without the prior consent of these companies, they’d find themselves on the wrong end of a lawsuit. To get these scoops, they have to agree to terms and conditions both spoken, written, and eluded at. You can’t look at a major project and tell people it’s nothing but another piece-of-shit FPS trying to compete with COD, because you’ll be blacklisted or worse.

The article above talks a lot about a code of conduct, which mainly entails not giving bad press to bad games. Reviews for games are mainly pointless. You can’t rate them on a scale. A person can play a .99 cent game on their iPhone for 24 hours, but it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a “good” game, if you’re using the old scale of rating that includes graphics, controls, playability, etc.. Add those up and what’s really a five star game becomes a one star bomb. It’s like judging the work of Shakespeare on his penmanship, or Michael Bay’s “talent” for his use of explosives. Angry Birds is an absolute phenomenon right now. Is it a masterpiece? No. Is it terrible? No. Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, there’s games on consoles trying to be fluid works of art with their graphics. They’re also terrible, terrible games. Final Fantasy XIII comes to mind. Does it look good? Yes. Does it play well? No. How do you rate it? And likewise, how are you not suppose to shit on it? Look at how long Duke Nukem Forever took to come out, and then look at how disappointing that game was. Is a game reviewer not allowed to crap on that? I say you should be able to smell his tears through the words.

I’ve gravitated to game sites like kotaku.com and penny-arcade.com, which aren’t necessarily review sites, but someone they’ve given me more insight into games on the market than any other source. They do it without rating the game, either. The just slap up some impressions on press-releases, and that’s it. Done. Money’s already in the bank.

That’s why to me, game journalism is a dead form of commercial art. There’s no want or need for it. I occasionally will see a review piece in the provincial paper, and it’s written about entirely random games no one could care about. I’m left with no desire to explore the game further. Meanwhile, a movie review on the next page may make me want to see a movie. How does that work? Why is one form of journalism more engaging than the other, when the two mediums are so closely related? It’s because games are meant to be experienced. You can either write a review, or write a guide with tips’n’tricks.

Garbage Day

For the second time in three weeks, the garbage man has refused to take one of my trash cans. I left out one trash can, a recycling bag, and an extra tiny bag of trash on the curb this morning. They left the full trash and slapped a form-letter sticker on it basically telling me to go and fuck myself, and also that they would only accept two trash cans per week. …Which meant that I was under the limit. I live in a basement suite, so it’s not like I’m paying the garbage collection directly, although I am paying well up the ass for my current living space. I have no idea what to do with the garbage if they don’t take it. I super don’t want to stuff it in my car and drive it to the dump. That’s what trucks are for, and I don’t have one. When I first moved here, I was stuck paying an extra month’s rent on my old place for not giving a full month’s notice, so in response to that, I would drive out there and leave all my extra garbage and recycling in their dumpster. That’s not really me being a dick. After all, I’m paying them a large, hefty sum for absolutely nothing. I had to turn in my keys and everything, so it’s not like I could go into the old place and hang out. Anyway, I don’t even want to get into a whole situation where I have to call up the garbage collection company and kindly ask them to stop being dicks, because that didn’t work out too well for Homer Simpson.

Like Jagger

Does anyone in this Generation (Generation X2: X-Men United) know who Mick Jagger is? Because they keep referencing him inappropriately. It’s like that game hipsters play with Smirnoff Ice, only with Jagger. It started with Ke$ha when she “sang” the “lyrics,” “..Kick him to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger,” insinuating that she would only ever give up her tainted meat to someone who looks like this.

…

This is one of the better photos of him. It’s not as if I spent twenty minutes on google image. All I did was type in, “Mick Jagger,” then copy-and-pasted one of the more recent photos. This is a picture of what Ke$ha is into, sexually speaking. People have their kinks, and I’m not going to disrespect that. I’m just saying he’s 100, and he looks his age. I’ve seen mummies that look better preserved than this. If you looked like this, they’d give you a closed casket ceremony. The only reason Jagger still performs with Keith Richards is so he can look younger by comparison. Even back when he was young, and had two functioning hips, he still looked bizarre. He looked like that P.T. Barnum and Bailey’s mermaid exhibit with the monkey sewn onto a fish. His mouth looks like the scene in the Pirate of the Carribean when the Kraken swallowed Jack Sparrow. Or, alternatively: Ke$ha’s girly bits. Ke$ha can almost be forgiven though, as the decisions of a person whom, “brush their teeth with a bottle of Jack,” aren’t necessarily the best.

Now there’s this damn song with the phrase, “Moves like Jagger. I’ve got the moves like Jagger. I’ve got the moo-o-o-oooves like Jagger.”

This is how Jagger moves:

Jagger moves like a hopped up coke-head with no sense of shame, and no remorse. It’s as if his every movement is designed to accentuate just how poor his choice of wardrobe is. There are many musicians that are known for their moves. Michael Jackson immediately comes to mind, and would fit perfectly into the framework of this song, but that’s probably a lawsuit waiting to happen. If you’re not sued by the Jackson estate, you’d be arrested for confessing to pedophilia.

It would seem that these… I don’t know what they are… somehow idolize the man, but care nothing for his work. Jagger has contributed a lot, and it seems like none of his lessons have rubbed off on these new musicians. There’s no correlation between the two. You can’t listen to these songs and think, “This is just a tribute.” I have no idea what to even call this modern genre, except Auto-Tune Pop, or Crap.

Jagger had to snort a lot of coke to get where he is today. I just don’t think these kids have what it takes to be that great.