Even my food is mocking me

You will have an exciting addition
to your life by being the warm
person you are.
6 12 21 26 36, 23

That sage wisdom is from a fortune cookie I got tonight. This wasn't a cookie that somebody else got and shared; it's mine, baked to plastic perfection and stuffed by God himself with a hurtful note just for me. There are many words one could use to describe a cookie-conducted note: "inspirational," "cute," "mangled Engrish." "Sarcastic" is something I haven't seen. There are plenty of fortunes that don't make sense for the person who gets them. I don't mind those. But this was clearly meant for me. Listen to the tone: "by being the warm person you are." There are a dozen different ways to word that, none of them nearly as sarcastic and biting. Yes, fortune cookie, I am a prickly introvert. It has cost me plenty of opportunities to make friends. There is a significant chance I'll die alone in a hillside shanty covered in my own feces because of it. Well, the feces will be a choice. Point is, these are my problems; they're not yours, and I don't appreciate you up in my personal business. I didn't even ask for your opinion, fortune cookie! Nobody paid for you! You ain't Lucy at her psychiatric booth on the roadside, getting a nickel to tell people what's wrong with them. You are a free dessert. FREE. I'd have to pay five dollars for a scoop of "green tea" ice cream that doesn't even taste like ice cream, and you think you get a say?

"The warm person you are." It's not enough to stop at warm person. Tack on "you are" just so it's completely clear that the author of this fortune cookie knows who I am and how I behave. It's seen into the depths of my soul, and my soul has been found wanting. For the record, the particular cookie that I opened was handed to me at the end of dinner by my mother. My actual mother who pushed me out of her uterus. Everyone else in the family got the sorts of meaningless platitudes that you'd like to read while eating a lame dessert. At least they tacked on some lucky numbers at the end, to restore the illusion of being a normal everyday fortune cookie note when it is in fact a barbed arrow loosed directly into my soul. "Hey, you're dying alone. But here are your lucky numbers so you know how many cats to adopt off the street!" One question: why is there a comma after the 36 but not after anything else? Is "36, 23" coordinates to something? Buried treasure? Upon searching for that latitude and longitude, I've found it's a point just off the coast of Crete in the Mediterranean. So maybe treasure? That "treasure" is probably just another note telling me how much I suck.

*****



Video! Haven't done this in a while and a friend linked this to me (you my boy, Paches!) Yeah, I have friends with dog names. What of it? This video is special and I want to give it the credit it deserves. Many music videos are bad; largely as a result of the song, often due to a lack of ideas ("Let's have the band play in a parking lot! And we'll cut it up with shots of the singer arguing with some hot chick. Oh man, the hot chick should have a leather wristband! And while they're arguing it'll be in slow motion and the singer WON'T be lip synching. I am a genius."). This video is fractally bad. What do I mean by this? I mean not only that every element of the video sucks, but every single individual component of the video is bad. It is just as bad as every other component. They are all equally bad in exactly the same way, such that every single frame of the video is basically indistinguishable from every other frame. Every element is identical in that they all suck in exactly the same way to exactly the same extent. You could see one frame or you could see the entire video, and reach the exact same (correct) conclusion.

Let me show you what I mean. Let's take the name of the group: "BrokeNCYDE." Break that name down. Take into account the capitalization. I count no fewer than five ways in which this name can be interpreted, and they all suck. They suck equally; you can't pick which interpretation of the band's name is "correct" or even "less stupid than the others." It's all the sort of meaningless nu-rap-metal detritus I'd normally expect to find floating at the top of a full-to-bursting Port-O-John at a Linkin Park concert.

Which isn't to say there aren't positive elements in the video. BrokeNCYDE has clearly made a real effort to expand their appeal. They've taken the best parts of several genres and mixed them into a thizz-face-inducing musical gazpacho for all to hesitantly sip. What do people love about rap? How about Auto-Tune? Everyone fucking loves Auto-Tune. Let's hook it up! And what do people love about rock music? I think they love it best when some asshole is screaming in the background for no reason. ON IT. Finally, what are the techno kids into? Awww yeah, guys in animal costumes! Throw your Rule Book away, Mr. Stodgy Video Director! We'll have none of it. We...are...BROKEncyde! (I think you're supposed to anti-capitalize when emphasizing letters that are already in caps. Not sure. Another oversight in my Stanford education.)

Top Five "Freaxxx" Moments
5. After the fantastic chorus of "Let's get freaky now; let's get fucking freaky now" (I'm sure the semicolon is in the original notes for the song), at 0:57 we catch Big-Haired Douche convinced that the shot is over. He leans back on his haunches, looks down and starts messing with his hair. CAMERA IS ROLLING. PRETEND YOU ARE SINGING SONG.

4. After only 0:14, Big-Haired Douche decides to crack the seal on his sick-ass screamo skills! He's so fired up that he forgets where he is and just screams in the face of this poor girl. She's a central attraction of the video, though she always looks like she's confused and this was NOT what her cousin who knew these guys said would be going down. She didn't get all made up to get yelled at! And what does the guy yell? What is the sentiment he's got to scream himself hoarse to truly express? "SEXY NOW" is what he's got to say! I guess if it's good enough for a Justin Timberlake album title, it's good enough for me.

3. 2:50 in, Big-Haired Douche is pouring one out for his homies. They lost a lotta boiz on the mean streets of suburban Albequerque. Like my homey Keith who done crashed the SHEE-hit outta his Pops' Land Rover. Never forget; we even got commemorative T-Shirts screened in his honor down at the Big 5. Those sons of bitches forgot how to spell his last name--just like they forgot about Dre--and misprinted it, but it was like the day of the funeral and we went with it. Jesus knows how it's spelled. And my boy B Rabbit who dropped dead right in the parking lot outside that Jamba Juice. Brain freeze, dogg. Brain freeze.

2. 3:08. After the bridge has lulled us to sleep....REMEMBER ME? I'M A SCREAMING ASSHOLE AND I'M DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE. RAAAAAHHHHHHCCCHHHHHH. And we charge into the chorus! We have two more syllables in the second line than the first. Whatever will we do to fill the gap? What words have two syllables? Misanthrope? Way off. Syllogism? That's four syllables; misanthrope was three. We're getting worse! Uhhhh...fucking! We'll just add the word "fucking" to bridge the gap! Skinny Possibly Asian Douche is a motherfucking lyrical genius. The voice of a generation. I think he's Asian because they show him dancing with the Asian girl a lot.

1. At 1:57, the girl I mentioned in #4 is really, really questioning her decision to appear in this video. It was bad enough when just Big-Haired Douche was dancing and yelling at her; now there is a decent chance that he and Fat Douche will murder her. If they don't pony up that Urban Outfitters gift card, she is gonna be PISSED. Here's how I imagine the conversation going:

Director: "Okay, you're gonna put your hands around her neck. Like you're strangling her."
Cute Blonde Girl: "He's gonna do WHAT?"
Director: "Just a little bit! Strangle her just a little bit! Don't really put your hands on her throat, more like on her shoulder. Like she was one of those horses in 'Avatar' with the gills on its neck."
Big-Haired Douche: "Like this?"
Director: "That's great! Love it!"
BHD: "But it makes no sense! What am I supposed to be--"
Director: "I'M THE CREATIVE GENIUS HERE!"
Fat Douche: "Do we have any more pot?"

The Brothers Douche proceed to yell LIAR comically at a succession of women. They are all liars! Liars who are pretty weirded out by this whole thing. Those women do not look like they're having a good time. Those ungrateful skanks! It's not like just ANYONE gets to have her face yelled at by a fat dude in shorts for a music video.

That's my five. It was harder than usual to make the cuts because that video is so full-to-bursting with comedy gold. You'll notice I couldn't even give the guy in the pig suit (probably Fat Douche) more than a cursory mention. Have a great long weekend; Monday's post will go up as usual, because the comedy train don't slow down for mere Presidents. Necromancers, yes. Necromancers resurrecting Presidents...well, I'll need some time to think about that.

Sturm + Drang = Storm Drain

Today the depressing realization hit me: football is over. I'm not sure when the next NFL season begins, but it's 7ish months to go without. Brutal. The season always takes forever to arrive and then it's over before you know it and your team is out of the playoffs with an embarassing home defeat to a mediocre team and...well, I'll stop. Or rather, I'll stop so long as the world agrees to formally retire the phrase "Who Dat." See how I said "the world" and not "the people of New Orleans" because I'm still being nice to those people. In that spirit, I pretend you are not the originators of one of the worst, most bandwagony phrases I've heard in my life.

"Who Dat?" First, I shouldn't have to look your cliche up to understand what the hell it means beyond "I enjoy following the travails and pursuits of the New Orleans Saints, who I would prefer won all of their contests regardless of opponent." This is a fine sentiment. But it turns out that "Who Dat" is in fact short for "Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?" So not only is this phrase gibberish, it is a gibberish shorthand for gibberish. I just spent five minutes trying to conjure up a nonsense-squared saying to rep the Patriots, but the Boston accent is mostly manifested in vowel sounds and it's just that...an accent. In Boston, they don't make up new words for commonplace articles. Just milkshakes, which become frappes. And sandwiches, which become grinders. My point is, these are not the same kind of core language building blocks as the words "who" and "that."

Upon doing some research (we will define "research" as "typing something into the Wikipedia search field"), it seems that the phrase has a longer history. Of course people have been saying the words "Who dat" with that pronunciation since goofy Southern drawls were cooked up in a government language laboratory. They did it to help us tell who we should be listening to. Goofy southern drawl? I don't need to take you seriously any more! Thanks for saving us all some time. But it looks like people have been using this particular phrase to root for bad Southern sports teams for decades. The Jaguars and Saints apparently both have claims, but here's my proposal: because it's a ridiculous eye-rolling thing to say, the Jaguars can keep it and the Saints have to give it up. I understand, Saints fans. You were in the wilderness for a long time. Your team was a joke and "Who dat" made sense under the circumstances. I mean, the list of teams dat gon' beat dem Saints was pretty goddamn long for the majority of your franchise's existence. The "overall rating" for the Saints in my copy of Madden 2010 is 73. It just wasn't a good team. But now you have a Lombardi Trophy, one you captured in awesome and memorable fashion. You're big-time. To quote Matthew Lillard in the seminal Hackers, "when I became a man, I put away childish things!" Retire this and let the stupid Jaguars have it. Their fans can roar it to the rafters as Tim Tebow sidearms his way around the field for the next couple years. It'll be grand.

Finally, all I can think of when I hear "who dat" is those obnoxious Boost Mobile commercials. I know their catchphrase was "where you at," but it's not that big a jump from one meaningless ethnic outburst to another. I actually worked in connection with Boost a few years back when I actually got paid for being creative (the word "paid" in that sentence should be taken as hyperbole), and they were white as driven snow. "Where you at" got cooked up in some boardroom as part of a giant list on a dry-erase board of "Things Black People Say on the Phone." You like how I called it a dry-erase board? They can make it any color they want to! Doesn't have to be white. You're racist.

*****

The reviews for Dante's Inferno are in, and they are not particularly favorable. The consensus seems to be that it's not a genuinely bad game. It's just lame and derivative and some parts are bad. That's what you want to see from your please-please-please-save-our-company title, right? The silver lining for the folks at Visceral is this: EA was gonna lay your asses off anyway, sooner or later. You had a good run and made a good game (Dead Space, one of the most underballyhooed titles last year.

It warms my heart to think of a brief conversation I had with an Inferno producer, where all of my questions and comments were answered with "we tried to make it just like God of War. God of War was awesome so that's what we went for." Resting the creative and financial hopes of your company/studio/self on a self-conscious facsimile of something else that was good is not something you should be doing. Doubly so when the next installment in said patron-deity-of-armed-conflict franchise is due out this fucking year. Why would I buy Inferno when I can wait a few months and play an actually good game? Simple answer: because Nick still works at EA and can use his employee discount on my behalf. Your mileage may vary.

The reviews I've read haven't castigated the story or characters or dialogue. They've just neglected to mention them at all. Success! In a similar vein, the title I'm working on at Namco is a sequel to a relatively popular RPG. It's a pretty fun game--honestly, the most conventionally "fun" title I've worked on. But the story is a goddamn high-fantasy Mad Lib: "The (Paladin) goes into the (Tower) to defeat an ancient evil called (Jareth the Goblin King). Along the way he battles (Goblins) and (Elves) and (Orcs) and Skeletons." Skeletons isn't a field you can fill in. There are always fucking skeletons. Point is, the story is totally lame and half of it has obviously been written by programmers or producers who can barely assemble a complete sentence. They struggle with the distinction between "its" and "it's." They use "their" when they mean "they're." Homonyms are difficult. To be fair, I bet if I were actually making a living wage and getting health insurance I'd go soft too. Guys lose their lean fighter's form when it comes to writing coherently in their own native language. You hate to see it.

Anyway, I went back and read the reviews for the original, and they were pretty uniform: game is fun, story is eyeroll. I'm glad to see they took that criticism to heart. This is why I'm trying my damndest to get out of this industry: the people already making games are such fucking geniuses that jobs are impossible to get. How am I supposed to compete with these titans, who blatantly plagiarize popular lines from Star Wars in their dialogue? It's downright discouraging. I realize this is unfair and borne of frustration; after all, things are the way they are for a reason. I just haven't worked in the industry long enough to understand why it's a great idea to have programmers with no interest in the English language writing your dialogue. The game industry, more and more, resembles the real world around it: everything is fucked. It is so thoroughly fucked that the only way to solve problems is to immerse yourself so thoroughly in the fuckery that you actually understand it. At which point you are so invested in the status quo that you will fight to the death to defend it. So you can fix it.

I'm moving to Australia.

Going Deep on "Bill and Ted"

The Super Bowl is over. The Saints won, which is what I hoped for. I got the Manning Face I waited all season to see. I know a couple people who were rooting for the colts, but they all had money on the game and in my whole life I've never met an honest-to-God Colts fan. Good and reasonable people were rooting for the Saints. Let's be real: their city got destroyed. Leveled almost to the ground, just a couple years ago, because of George W. Bush. He summoned the great storm Katrina by channeling a mighty spell from atop the White House. Like Saruman in The Two Towers when he was on the roof of Orthanc just hurling a never-ending river of storm clouds towards the Misty Mountains. George Bush destroyed the city to prove to the world how little he cared about black people (not at all, as it turns out), and if you were rooting for the Colts you were rooting for Katrina to happen all over again. Yes you were.

Sean Payton called a great game start to finish and you have to admire his ballsy moves throughout. Going for it on fourth down in the first half, even though they didn't make it, put them in a great position to score a field goal as time expired. The onside kick paid off big-time, because that's the real time to try it--not when you have to and they're expecting it. The Saints felt like they needed an extra possession in the second half, and when they got it they capitalized. That drive at the start of the third quarter was enormous and (I believe) the onside kick was the difference in the game. What if Manning had gotten the ball and embarked on a scoring drive at the start of the second half? The game has a totally different complexion. Ultimately, I liked the Saints' approach and it's surprising how often fortune favors the bold.

Something funny happened in the bathroom at work Friday. I walked in having to pee. The urinals were empty and the room was silent. I sidled on up, deployed the landing gear and started my business. I normally pee against the back of the urinal so it doesn't splash or make any noise to speak of, and that's what I did here. However, the second I got my stream going, I heard a loud, sustained splash sound. I freaked out momentarily before noticing the sound came from a stall. Somebody else had been in here the whole time, lying in wait and starting his stream right as I started mine! It was perfect timing, and for a split second I honestly thought my penis had taught itself ventriloquism. I'm not going to say that would be awesome, because honestly I can't think of too many applications for a ventriloquist penis. You could make people believe that somebody else was peeing while you were peeing, but it would be difficult to maintain that ruse for long. Because...well, you'd be peeing. Even if you sold it and never got caught, what would the upside be? You confused a couple folks and pissed all over yourself.

Speaking of upside, here is a decision that I never understood from a very important movie. It's actually a pretty important decision to the aesthetic of the movie, too: in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, why was the time machine a phone booth? My first thought was camouflage. The time machine was designed to be hidden in 20th-century San Dimas. But that doesn't make sense for a couple reasons. First, every time they park the time machine they do so in a place where it doesn't make sense. In the middle of a Circle-K parking lot, on Ted's lawn...this will arouse suspicion. Second, the booth itself looked ridiculous! It had this whole mass of metal antennae on the top of it, and it appeared through a magical sparkling hole in the ground. So even in the absolute best possible time and place for hiding this particular machine, it wouldn't work.

And things would be even worse in other time periods! If something like that phone booth just appeared in a shower of electrical sparks and these guys stepped out of it, some kind of violence or panic would occur. 98% of human beings throughout recorded history would, if they saw this thing materialize, try as hard as they could to just kill whatever came out of it. In fact, Napoleon Bonaparte attempts just that. But then he gets thrown into the air by a cannon and sucked through the time hole in the worst-blocked scene in modern cinematic history. Go back and watch it; you never have any goddamn clue where any of the characters are supposed to be standing relative to each other. But Napoleon makes up for it by demolishing the Ziggy Piggy. I don't really mean to nitpick a movie like Bill and Ted, but that phone booth is a really iconic image and a big-time decision in the movie. And it makes no sense aside from providing a clown-car sight gag when all the various historical figures were aboard.

And finally, let's acknowledge what so many others seem to be afraid to: Ted's little brother Deacon is an asshole. I understand he's just an adolescent kid, but you know what? That's no excuse. Bill and Ted are both adolescent kids and they're the heroes of the movie! They can handle the rigors and complications of time travel "with the greatest of ease." These guys, who are supposed to be particularly dim-witted (though creative enough to found a hair metal band on which a utopian society is one day founded), put together a spectacular future-saving history project through time travel in one night and Deacon can't handle babysitting Napoleon for a couple hours? Outrageous, and I can't believe there wasn't some righteous brother-on-brother retribution for the crap that kid pulled. Ted gave him money, for Christ's sake! When I give bums money to "watch my car," they're still sitting there when I come back!

But no, Deacon's just thinking with his dick. Unlike Bill and Ted (who are, by all appearances and accounts, total losers until the divine intervention of Rufus), Deacon is waist-deep in '80s tail. So he ditches the Emperor of France, the next Caesar made flesh, to hang out with some permed-up side-tail-havin' skanks. And I can understand that on one level, but on another he's got a major historical figure to babysit. Ted told him this was a "very famous French dude," and he just dropped the ball. This was his opportunity to man up and show some responsibility, and he couldn't do it. Very disappointing. While Bill and Ted's phenomenal history report saved their grades and the future of Wyld Stallyns, I have no doubt that Deacon ended up at Colonel Oates' Military Academy. In Alaska. Because there can't be futuristic time-traveling-deus-ex-machina-providing George Carlins for everyone. Deacon isn't going to save the world. But at least he could have made an effort.

Thanks always for reading.

A Prudent Hire

Fox News to sign British pundit Prothero
Controversial British TV pundit Lewis Prothero will join Fox News as a contributor, the cable news provider announced today. The 54-year-old Prothero, an outspoken supporter of the Norsefire party in England and a bestselling author, will appear regularly on Fox to offer his insights and political analysis.

"I'm tremendously excited," said Prothero in a written statement. "The broad spectrum of programming available at News Corp lets us make an impression on an awful lot of people." Roger Ailes, President of Fox News Channel, said in a statement that "Lewis has fundamentally altered the debate in England and we can't wait for him to make a splash on this side of the pond."

News Corp sources were unable to confirm rumors of a prime-time slot for Prothero. Fox's lineup is crowded and extremely popular, offering the top 13 cable news shows by ratings. It's not clear where such a show would be placed or towards whom it might be directed, but Prothero is a big name abroad and would undoubtedly draw viewers wherever he was slotted.

"Lewis Prothero isn't moving thousands of miles for the occasional talking-head segment," insists NYU Media Studies scholar James Dorn. "This isn't a guy who'll settle for second place. Now, on Fox he may have to. But if you don't think a prime-time hour-long is in the works..." he laughs. "Well, you don't know the man. You'll hear his name and see his face. Believe me." Prothero's representation refused to comment.

But others aren't so sure. Prothero's far-right leanings make him a natural fit at Fox, but his strong nationalist and isolationist stands on a number of issues have already painted a target on his back. "He's got some fences to mend," chuckles New York Post Paul Peters. "I mean, the man's catchphrase for half his broadcasting career has been 'I'm a God-fearing Englishman and I'm God damn proud of it!' He'll have to build that credibility if anyone is going to take him seriously. It's not there right now."

As for Prothero's ideology, it too may prove a liability. He's an outspoken supporter of the wars in the Middle East, but the political climate of his homeland colors perceptions...even among his new colleagues. "England is a socialist kleptocracy," drones Fox anchor Brit Hume. "For God's sake, the government owns the hospitals! It's a health care apocalypse over there. I'm not sure I'm prepared to just welcome with open arms a man born, raised and bred in the iron grip of socialized medicine. On the other hand, I'm eager to meet him. It's been a long time since we had a military man in the halls." Prothero was a career officer in the British military, retiring to delve into journalism. He quickly changed his focus to broadcasting, and his meteoric rise in England has been well-chronicled, most notably here.

Owned by News Corp, Fox News Channel is a 24-hour general news service covering breaking news as well as political, entertainment and business news, and has been the most-watched cable news channel in the country for eight years running. It features the top 13 programs in cable news and can be seen in more than 90 million homes.

*****

That last paragraph was plagiarized directly from the last paragraph of a Fox News article with a similar purpose. What a bunch of assholes.

I haven't written anything about the Big Upcoming Football Game Located In Miami. Did you know that the phrase "Super Bowl" cannot be uttered in a commercial venue without express permission from the NFL? That's why the phrase "big game" is tossed around so liberally this time of year. It's actually not just a shitty euphemism. Anyway, there's plenty of asinine crap written this week and I didn't want to add to it. I'll get my asinine crap in next week when there's game analysis to do. For now, let's all just reflect on how little we care about Archie Manning. My news aggregrator has been clogged of late with stories about how Archie Manning loves the Saints...but oh nooooo, his son Peyton is playing against them! He must be torn!

No he mustn't be. He's a parent. He's rooting for his kid like every goddamn parent in the universe. DONE. Story is over. But no, I'm supposed to read an article about this. Sports-related puff pieces are amongst the most wretched samples of modern journalism. I hope Rick Reilly just bursts into flames one day. Such an event would be....

Evidence that maybe God exists
This week at work, I had a great idea. I took some printer paper and made a little poster that reads "This site has worked (blank) days without an accident. BE SAFE!!!" The blank is a square outline the size of a large Post-It, and on that outline I place a large Post-It with a number written on it. I hung the poster in the middle of our cube row. Now, I work in an office full of nerds testing video games all day. A hazardous work environment it is not. In fact, it is probably safer than most offices. QA testers do not move rapidly as a general rule, and any collisions would be...well, let's use a physics term and call them "inelastic." There's some padding there, is what I'm saying. I work with fatties. For the past couple days I've been maintaining this poster. 0, 1, 2, and on (I thought) into infinity. I didn't even know what would constitute an "workplace accident."

This morning, the guy who sits behind me went to get a soda. He comes back with it in a plastic cup. He sets the cup down on his desk and turns to talk to someone. After a moment, he spins his chair around to sit down in it. The arm of the chair hits the cup, which pitches off the desk and into the chair. I swear every single molecule of Pepsi got out of that cup within 50 nanoseconds of impact. It was remarkable just from a fluid dynamics perspective, and I say that as a physics minor. A MINOR. Respect it. There was so much that it actually formed an inch-deep pool in the seat of the chair.

There is a moment of silence. The victim breaks it in pretty much the way you'd imagine, yelling "FUCK!" in a volume suited to the workplace. Another heartbeat; everyone is too stunned to say anything. After this heartbeat, what's the first thing this guy does? Storms over to my poster, which he has never before mentioned, and furiously tears the "2" off of it.

*ALERT* *TENSE CHANGE* *ALERT* *WEE*WEE*WEE*WEE*WEE*

I was dying. It was so goddamn funny, and I could not believe the seed I planted only three days ago already yielded comedy fruit. And I didn't even need to do anything! Tomorrow we'll start the counter all over again, and the best thing? It's self-reinforcing! I guarantee the next time anyone spills something or face-plants, they'll reset the counter because this was legitimately funny. It was all very encouraging, and the blossoming of hilarity from a simple ironic poster should be considered evidence that a higher power exists. A god who only used its infinite powers to make the universe funny would be a neat god.

Ludicrous Video Game Tropes, vol. II

I'm still slowly working my way through Mass Effect 2. I like to space these things out and try to avoid playing more than a couple hours at a time. Not because of any misguided desire for "moderation" or "balance" but because I hate when things are over too soon. And I know it will be over too soon, because this is Bioware. I fully expect to complete a series of "laying the groundwork"-style quests, then arrive at the Landsmeet only to realize the game is already 90% over and all that remains athwart my path to glory is a limp-dicked re-skin of a monster I've already killed twice. Ooh, but now the fire is purple!

Anyway, I like to savor games. My roommate Rob attacks them with the desperate ravening of a child on Christmas morning. As a result, he's already beaten the game. As a result of that result, he feels the need to walk into my room and start talking about it. No spoilers or anything, but God damn. Oh really, your character (optimized through looking up hints online) in a single-player RPG can be overpowered? LAWL! Tell me more! The good news for Rob is that I have a new foe: one of my co-workers. I won't use his name, but I WILL use enough personal details that withholding the name is futile. Deal?

He's not enough of a train wreck to make it into an "Adventures in QA" post. (But give him time!) He does, however, routinely look as though he is waiting to get into a workshop for authors of "My Little Pony"-themed erotic fan fiction. Mustache on otherwise baby-smooth face? Check. Parted comb-over despite having a full head of hair? Check. Popped collar from a short-sleeved button-down shirt? Hmm, there's no check mark here. Just a note reading, "button-down shirt is obscured; worn under BlizzCon 2008 T-Shirt. Popped white collar protrudes from black T-Shirt like a waterlogged neck brace. Unfortunately, no neck injury apparent."

How does this happen, you ask? Surely this fellow must interact with other human beings, whose opinions he respects and who might put an end to this running riot of retch. What if this guy is just supremely committed to looking like a dumbass? Normally I wouldn't understand how somebody could even make it out the front door like this, but perhaps he just pulls it off. He's at a full gallop, breaking his roommates' arm tackles as they try to bring him down and at least fold his collar back.

Finally, this man is a ferocious dumbass. I learned this pretty quickly and do my best to ignore him whenever he's talking. But he does not make this easy. Any work-related conversation is subject to constant interruption, because the scribe who penned "Locket and Whizzer Buy a Strap-On Horn" has something to contribute! I do my best to power through and not acknowledge him, but my co-workers don't share my iron resolve. They respond to what he says, fools that they are. Just today, when asked why he held a particular dumbass opinion to be true, he responded with "Logic." Not actual logic; the word "logic", which he spoke with his mouth and followed by shrugging with his shoulders. This is what I have to deal with every day.

Again, here's what you do when you are dealing with a dumbass: don't acknowledge him. Extract yourself immediately from any conversation. If he says something you just cannot believe, laugh like he just made a joke and turn back to your desk. I'm not even kidding; this is how I cope. These aren't problems, they're solutions to problems. Kinda like...

Sniper Rifles
So lethally effective that they become the weapon of choice in every shooter you've ever played. This stands in contrast to the operation of actual sniper rifles, which requires extensive training and is so difficult that it actually becomes absurd. Seriously, the fact that people can actually be effective with those things is a miracle of human ingenuity. "But Tony, they have a scope! Point and shoot!" You might think that, but consider that NYPD officers with years of training in weapons handling had to expend 41 pistol rounds just to take down an unarmed black guy! From 20 yards away! Actually being accurate with guns is very difficult, which is why video-game sniper rifles are so silly.

They are literally just point-and-shoot. Maybe an enterprising developer added a "drift" feature when looking down the scope, but let's be real: that doesn't mean dick. It means you have to actually use a mouse, rather than aiming with Page Up/Page Down and shooting with Control. If I didn't just take you way back to Duke Nukem 3D, you are not the intended demographic for this post. But welcome! Finally, sniper rifles are beloved in games because it lets you be a huge fucking wuss. Every online shooter is overcrowded with the same terrified dorks who pissed me off in gym class...just standing in the back trying not to break a sweat. Just hang back, because you don't want to fake-die in a video game! It's not enough that you're watching a screen; you would prefer to watch a screen of a guy who is basically watching a screen (his scope). For as long as I live, I will pick Scout and smear you with my Scattergun as you frantically backpedal.

Useless Wingmen
I first experienced this in an SNES game called Wing Commander. You may have heard of it. StarFox was another early culprit, though the tradition endures to this day. You can say what you want about the deficiencies of A.I. programming in a three-dimensional environment like a flight sim, but I counter that it's all intentional. The wingmen are there sucking ass so you can feel more awesome. Let's be real: you sucked at StarFox. So did I. You were plowing into giant untextured polygons all over that bitch, missing with your "neutron bombs" that just colored the screen pink for a second. But you felt good about yourself, because every time you fucked up Peppy would remind you just how hard you could be sucking. He'd be begging for help one second and spurning it the next. You saved him anyway, because he'd die otherwise and then who'd absorb those enemy bullets? It didn't help that all your retarded wingmen sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher on various recreational drugs.

In Wing Commander, they impressed on you very early that you were a noob. You were the new meat! You'd never top the accomplishments of the mighty Iceman (I know, I know, but that was the guy's name)! He's got 22 kills! Maybe one day you'll get your 5th kill and be an ace and you can go on the leaderboard too!

Bullshit. You got like 7 kills the first mission and passed Iceman within the week. Everyone sucked; the only thing they were good for was swooping in on a severely-damaged Dralthi and stealing your kill. No wonder you were losing the goddamn war: the human pilots were incompetent! Or were they? Despite the fail hammering the canopy of my Arwing, the StarFox squadron still blazed a pretty mean path to Venom. Similarly, the guys in Wing Commander did eventually win the war against Kilrah (three games later). Both squads did prevail over like 10,000 enemies...even if you personally shot down 9,000.

Trivial Side Missions
These have been on my mind more than usual because of the Dragon Age-Mass Effect 2 duo. For the record, I fucking love these games and would kill a man if that's what Bioware demanded as a condition for employment. But in typical fashion, they're loaded with trivial errands. Where does this peasant get off asking me to help him make nice with his estranged sister? In case you're accustomed to seeing heavily-armed parties of epic heroes running around your place of residence, let me just put you on notice that I am a Gray Warden and a busy fellow. There's a bit of a Blight on if you hadn't read the papers, and...well, not to be blunt, but would you mind terribly FUCKING OFF?

Medieval peasants couldn't read or write. They didn't bathe. They weren't allowed to look their betters in the eye, let alone ask them to run off and find an axle for a broken manure wagon. Yes, Mr. Krogan Mechanic in Mass Effect, I would like to go out of my way in a combat zone to find a component for your truck! Asshole. The guy even admits he could build a new part himself, but that would take a long time. Oh, well, I guess I'd better get cracking and save you, the mechanic, the time of building a mechanical part for this mechanical machine. If this were something in your wheelhouse, something that maybe IS YOUR JOB THAT YOU GET PAID TO DO, then I'd insist you take this burden on yourself. But things being as they are, I'll go out and fetch that for you.

But of course, I'm full of shit. I do all these side quests. I do them religiously the second they become available. Why? Because they give me Experience Points. Maybe you don't understand how important Experience Points are, but trust me when I say I need them. If there was a quest to suck a dick for XP, I'd kill 20 men to be the first to suck that dick. Of course, killing 20 men would also yield XP. Like I said, I love these games.