Skyrim

I’m very late to the game, but I continue to find a plethora of bugs and glitches in my copy of Skyrim on the 360. When you encounter these kinds of errors, the general consensus is you’re simply supposed to shrug and say, “What are you going to do?” then post a hilarious youtube video. Rallying against the studio would be pointless, as they’re too busy rolling around in a pile of money. Internet users will tell you to get the computer version of the game and then mod it to wipe the glitches, but that’s not my job as a gamer, now is it? They will also call you a fag, because they’re on the internet.

Imagine if you didn’t have an internet connection for one thing, and you were unable to update. Skyrim isn’t an online game, so why are patches being delivered that way post-install? Because fuck you, that’s why.

Mostly, the errors are ridiculous and incomprehensible. I was talking to the Puff-the-Magic Dragon, or whatever his name might be, on top of the Throat of the World, and he suddenly took to the sky. As he’s a dragon with wings, I thought this was suppose to happen. Then I noticed he was flying backwards and his wings weren’t even moving. He was like a leaf caught in a tornado, swirling ever higher until he reached the very stratosphere. Then he began to descend. I had hoped he would stop at my ground level, but he went down past the mountain cliff and probably through the mountain itself. I had to save halfway through because the was about fifteen minutes of pointless dialogue involved, which I couldn’t even hear because he was out of range and I was frozen to the spot. When I came back, he was still out of sight, but then he reset himself to the correct position.

I also finished the quest for the Helm of Winterhold, and was about to turn it in, which apparently isn’t allowed. I was previously hoping to avoid the quest altogether because of yet another glitch. I was doing the chain of quests for the Companions in the hopes I could cure my werewolfism, which turned out not to be as enduringly awesome as I had hoped. Every time I enter their hall the characters are frozen in their mourning states after their leader dies, and it won’t let me continue the quest chain. Looking online told me that I was basically screwed, and that I would be double screwed if I went through with the Winterhold quest, as both quest chains take you to the same location, and doing the one before the other makes it impossible to complete both. I did it anyway, and was prepared to bring the helm back to the Jarl. The map marker took me far from Winterhold, where he was supposed to be sitting on his throne. I instead found him swimming, fully clothed, in the middle of a river, which is just about as unlikely a place to find him as the inside of a volcano. I couldn’t even interact with him, although the screen showed the option of talking to him. I think it was because he was treading water.

So my point is: I’ve already put over 100 hours into the game, and I find out I might not even be able to finish at least two quests because of grievous errors, which also means I can’t get the Achievements associated with them. I could always try starting over, but then there’s no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again. There’s not even a rumour that the studio plans on patching the game anytime soon to help me out, aside from selling more downloadable content. Why would I buy an add-on to the game when I can’t even play the game I have?

Role Reversal

Do you remember how only a few, short years ago commercials for Axe and Tag body spray would all but guarantee you’d get laid like a billion times?

Literally:

That’s a lot of sex to be having. I don’t think my fragile imagination, let alone my body could handle that kind of tang. No man could. This product is dangerous and should be banned.

Then things got gay. Advertisers realized that the person most likely to buy a scented product designed for men are their sexually repressed and long-suffering women. That introduced the beefcake commercial:

Look at that video again: Not one tit jiggling around. A heterosexual male isn’t going to watch that an run out to buy Old Spice. Old Spice used to be that shit your Grandpa would slap on his face before between shots of rye. Now it’s associated with men who spend too much time doing crunches and not enough time slapping their wives.

Now advertisers have given up on men and their reeking pits altogether. Over the Christmas holidays there was an absolute barrage of commercials for women’s perfume.

Virtually every commercial like this is the same: women fucking random strangers, but on a train or in a ballroom so you know it’s classy. How is that any different than the male “sexist” commercial of yesteryear? The message is the same: spray this piss on yourself and good times will happen to your genitals.

Worse still, when I tried to research this article, I stumbled across page after page on youtube of frumpy, unattractive and probably unemployed women reviewing perfumes. Some only had like 57 hits, which makes me wondered why they bothered, while others had over 100,000 views. Furthermore, it’s women reviewing the same product. There are dozens, and dozens, and dozens of different women making videos about the same thing they picked up by happenstance at Wal-Mart. Is this some kind of underground marketing ploy, or is this really happening by itself? Are they watching each other’s videos and saying, “I don’t think they touched on all the different points of that one perfume in their 2:36 minute video. I’m going to make my own.” How do you even review a perfume, except to say it smells like lavender, celebrity-tie in and commercial greed? Wine reviews are usually only three paragraphs long, and they have the extra sense of taste to deal with. Why are these women so obsessed with cosmetics and perfumes when they obviously can’t attract a man with either? Watching their reviews is like taking dietary advice from Dr.Phil.

Before it’s gone.

I logged into myspace today. It was like travelling back in time; a very confusing time. I did so to scrounge my account for a video I may have uploaded back when I was doing Minimates animations for fun an not profit. I’m still not making any profit off them, and never will, because they are terrible. Yet, here we are.

This is all I found. Everything else was destroyed to shit because of copyright infringements.

Final Sectet Crisis Invasion Episode 3: The Long Pause

Strangeman | Myspace Video

Yop

The Superbowl was held today, and with it came the Superbowl ads. In Canada, our live feed of the game is overridden with Canadian commercials, mostly for Goldbond Medicated Foot Powder. It detracts from the spectacle, especially since the Superbowl is comprised of 50% commercials, 25% half-time shows delivered by faded rock stars, and 25% time-outs.

I barely watched this year. Instead I was forced to watch children’s programming. At nearly every commercial break there was the same damn ad for Yop. I shit you not: this commercial has been on the air for over six years.

SPIKE
Yop Commercial
www.spike.com
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I put this copy of the video up because I know it will force you to watch another commercial before you get to the real video. How meta is that? It’s convoluted, it’s weird and it’s unnecessary. It angers me, and it’s art.

Take a look at this commercial. First off: it’s vaguely racist. A couple of white kids having their CG mouths sing with a Jamaican accent. Is Yop even Jamaican? If so, why is Canada it’s prime demographic? What is Yop? All I’ve been able to discern is that it’s some type of breakfast drink. I think it might just be yoghurt that’s been left out in the hot Jamaican sun too long.

It’s not even the product or the commercial that gets me. It’s the fact that it’s been on the air for over six years. SIX YEARS. The Taco Bell dog likely didn’t even live that long before he was turned in a burrito. The company that made it apparently blew their entire marketing budget on the one commercial, but still had enough money left over to air it twenty times a day, every day, on every channel, for six years. I shit you not: I saw this commercial three times today on two different cable channels. My six year old step-son started singing the song at bedtime. THE COMMERCIAL IS OLDER THAN HIM.

I tried researching the video and discovered it had it’s own facebook page with 86 likes. Your Grandma probably has more friends than that on her page. ……OH SHIT! AS I’M TYPING THIS THE COMMERCIAL IS PLAYING AGAIN ON CANADIAN MTV! THAT’S THE THIRD CHANNEL TODAY!

It knows I’m talking about it…

I’m sincerely not writing that for comedic effect, or as hyperbole. It was literally playing as I was writing about how often it’s on. I’ve seen this commercial more than I’ve seen my own parents over the last few years.

If you do the math, (because I’m not good with math), a large percentage of the Canadian television industry is funded by the Yop company. They control a little piece of the media everywhere they go. That means they could put poison in it tomorrow and we’d never hear about the deaths due to a media blackout.

Is this commercial really so successful that it has to be the ONLY commercial? It’s got a catchy jingle and it clearly conveys that Yop is a thing you drink, without getting into the nitty-gritty of what Yop actually is (toothpaste and motor oil?). Think of how many commercials you see for something simple like milk. Why does milk even need commercials? It’s milk. Are you going to be swayed over to milk’s competition (possibly soy-milk?) if they don’t have commercials playing? Does having a commercial do anything for milk’s sales? There’s no possible way to even prove the effectiveness of a milk commercial. Any consumer who’ll say they were influenced is lying.