28 Dec 2006

Why Saw Sucks

A few years ago, a movie called Saw came out, and stupid viewers the world over watched it and cried in unison “Wow, that was so unexpected. I just came in my pants”. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s about some guy killing people by putting them in situation where escape is hard (such as trapping a guy in a device that will crush his face and putting the key behind his eye or some shit), and enjoys watching what they do.

So, these two dudes wake up in a room with a corpse one day, and try to escape. After many trials and tribulations, it is revealed that the murderer was a patient of one of the two dudes, and we see him in the movie for two fucking seconds. Literally, he’s lying in a bed during a scene, he doesn’t even have a line. In the end, the dead body with the bashed head that has been in the room for the last two hours stands up and it is revealed that hey, that’s no dead body, it’s the murderer. This is the point where people go “wow, I did not see that coming”.

A good movie surprise must consist of two elements: Giving you hints all over the place, and the outcome still being totally unexpected. Sixth sense was a good surprise. Saw excels in the second element, but only because it fails miserably in the first. It’s very fucking easy to do something unexpected when you haven’t shown anything relating to it during the whole fucking movie. A dead guy gets up, and whoop-de-doo, nobody expects it. Of course you don’t expect it, you idiot, it wasn’t hinted at at all! Would you still think the movie rocked if the murderer came out a flowerpot?

I am thinking of making a movie as well, and since audiences are so easy, it will be an instant hit. It’ll feature gory murders and major plot holes, but in the end some dude will come in and be like “I did all the murders because I am going to die some day and I wanted you all to die before me! Also, I am responsible for all the plot holes, and I have been hiding in this flowerpot for the entire movie! How obvious was that?!”. I can see it now, it will be the highest grossing movie of all time. Noone will expect the ending, even though the killer will have been right there under their noses the entire time. Maybe I’ll add a flowerpot watermark on the lower right corner of the screen, too, thus making it the only movie ever that featured the killer in every single scene with no one being any the wiser. It’s brilliant, brilliant!

So yeah, there’s this dismembered dude in the middle of the room for some twelve hours, and neither of the characters notices he’s alive. No “Hey, this guy’s breathing”, no “Who farted? It was you, wasn’t it? Well, it wasn’t me, so it’s either you or the dead guy! Oh, wait…”, no nothing. And in the end the guy just gets up and is like “Hello gentlemen, I am really alive, my severed head was really just makeup, how good am I, huh”!

I am in awe of how stupid people can be while thinking they’re Sherlock Holmes. “Wow, how could I have missed that? He was there the entire time, and I am very very good at spotting these hints, therefore my hat’s off to the writers”. Nobody considers that the reason they might not have expected the dead guy to be the killer is that the guy is fucking dead!

Please, please, if you have seen this movie and think it is the best thing since anal sex with a young Thai boy, please comment here and tell me why you find it so brilliant, I am very much interested in hearing your opinions (so I can mock you afterwards for being an idiot).

7 Dec 2006

I'm THAT guy

Hi…

I’m that guy.

You don’t know me, but you’d definitely recognize me if you saw me.

I’m the guy who always pukes first at the party and forces his friends to look after him so he doesn’t die.

I’m the guy who starts shit with random guys at bars, just to see the reaction.

I’m checking out your girlfriend, even though I know you guys are still together.

I’m the guy who swoops IN on your girlfriend at the first sign of trouble between the two of you.

I’m the guy standing on the wall by the dance floor waiting for your friend to leave you long enough for me to start anonymously grind on you.

I’m the guy who thinks that if he buys those girls drinks, they will go home and sleep with him, and who will get mad if they don’t.

I’m the guy who keeps feeding that girl drinks until she DOES go home with him, even though I’m aware of the fact that if she was sober, I’d have no chance.

I’m the guy who gets drunk at the classy party/wedding/bar mitzvah/funeral

I’m the guy who cock-blocks his own wingman while the wingman is talking to a really cute girl.

I’m the guy who deserts his wingman when he sees a really cute girl.

I’m the guy who will go/has gone after your little sister.

I’m the guy wearing one Lacoste shirt underneath another Lacoste shirt so I have more than one collar to pop.

I’m the guy who is the first to make racist jokes in mixed company.

I’m the guy who tells his female friend he’s in love with her, then spends the rest of the night trying to pick up random tail.

I’m the guy who sends drunk e-mails late at night that are in NO way appropriate.

I’m the guy who screams 'WHOOOOO!’ at really inappropriate times.

See, I knew you knew me.

If you have a 'That Guy’ statement, put it in the comments.

16 Sep 2006

Starlight Lounge (a.k.a. Save Yourself Three Dollars)

It is not often I get to hang out with a particular friend of mine. She is a very cool person, with a great taste in music and with a lot of great ideas. Very rarely has she ever even hinted at letting me down. However, let’s call you Carlita… I hate you forever now.

For those of you who don’t live in the Waterloo region, you are mostly safe. However, for the rest of you, and I want to be 100% clear about this, The Starlight Lounge in Waterloo sucks so much, I’m surprised the town isn’t concave.

So I suppose you’ll be wanting the story. I was supposed to meet Carlita at 10:30 at the aforementioned Tower of Babylame. Knowing her to be in possession of functioning ovaries, I arranged myself so that I would arrive there at 11. I climbed the stairs, somewhat troubled by the pounding bass lines descending from the lounge above. I walked through the doors, and this is what I saw.

The Decor

The place was clearly decorated by an opium addict who lives and dies by the maxim “Everything cheap and 20 years old is automatically cool”. There were cheap pop-art posters advertising shows that have either already happened or are fictional by bands with names like “The Runnerups” and “Maggie’s Ovarian Cyst” and “I Left My Wallet At Home Can You Please Lend Me Some Money So I Can Buy A Razor And Kill Myself?”. The place was kept in almost complete darkness, which I can only assume was done to disguise what the rest of the place looked like. An orange disco ball and some multicolored pot lights provided only enough illumination for a person to recognize their cocaine balloon from their heroin baggie. Short red leather couches and sofas bordered the room, centred in a completely vacant dance floor. Small wonder when you consider…

The Music

I try to be open-minded about music, because it is a reflection of the creator’s world view and like food or visual art, it is in the eye of the beholder. That being said, house music licks my ball. The DJ spinning the records was almost comical if the whole scene hadn’t been so sad. Picture Marge Simpson, then turn her head upside down. This guy had a beard that would make the wisest kung-fu master in the most stereotypical Chinese movie jealous. He made the guys from ZZ Top look prepubescent. What was the most incredible is that he was really into the 'music’, bobbing his head and making odd hand gestures. I’m not sure how anyone can listen to house music, since all of the songs are virutally identical. And yes, I realize that this is a claim commonly made about hip-hop, but really people… any idiot can listen to three hip-hop tracks and discern them. House music is completely beat-driven, and the composers have only figured out how to use one of the pre-set beats on their Casio™ synthesizers. I saw a screen running something, which is when I started watching

The Movie

I must admit, this was the first time I’ve ever seen a bar show a film in the background. I was almost impressed, until I actually saw what was playing. This guy gets hit with a pie, then he trashes the roadside pie stand, and his friends break some stuff. Then some girl wearing leather pulls out a molotov cocktail and blows up someone’s van. The guys walk around the corner, when these two 12 year-old black kids with automatic weapons start shooting at them. So they duck into a nearby bakery, go to some lockers, grab their own automatic weapons and take to the streets. A lot of shooting ensues, seemingly between a gang of hippies and a tough-as-nails chick gang (with a station wagon converted into a tank).

(I just want to interject that I am not making up or exaggerating anything in this recounting.)

It’s time for one of the female gang members to undergo her initiation by murdering the last member of the male gang. She has him cornered at the bottom of a stairwell, but can’t bring herself to pull the trigger. Luckily a chick with a metal eyepatch and a belly-topper is there to finish the job. Back at their hideout, the women’s gang celebrates their triumphant rise above male tyranny by… BAKING A CAKE. At this point I had to leave.

The only way the Starlight could have been any worse is if I had to pay money to get in. Oh wait, there is a $3 cover. Never mind, zero redeeming features. The phrase 'powerfully lame’ kept flitting through my mind. To paraphrase a friend of mine, I imagine that the Starlight is what hell must be like, only with louder music. Some day lingustic scientists will invent a word capable of encapsulating how terrible that bar is. Until then, I advise you hide under your bed, read your dictionary, and don’t trust anyone with a metal eyepatch.

25 Jul 2006

What a perverse world...

A wise man once said “Treat her rough, get some muff”. When I heard this I immediately dismissed it as codswallop, but last night my skepticism was shattered by the events that transpired.

There is a bar near where I live called 'Phil’s’. It is dark, dingy, and smells of feet and hockey equipment at the end of a day-long tournament. However, it has $1.75 drinks, so we go. I went with my buddy Nathan; my roommate and wingman extrodinaire Kevin; Virginia, my former lab partner, and her friends. It was partway into the night when I found myself beset by Kevin and Nathan shouting at me to go hit on this random girl in a pink shirt. I protested that I am not 'that guy’, which they did their best to refute using the logical tools available to them ('Yes you are!’).

While I was being verbally pummeled for my lack of will to bother random girls in bars, a group of ladies came up to talk to Nathan, having apparently met him some time before. To get my two harping buddies to leave me alone, I decided to undecoriously perform a suicide mission on one of the girls there so they would leave me alone. To compound the inevitable failure, I decided to be the biggest jerk I could possibly imitate. I made nothing but disparaging comments about her every statement, ridiculed her in front of her friends… I was theatrically rude.

Nothing in my many years of bar-going could prepare me for what happened next.

Far from being offended or discouraged from further conversation, this girl (who we shall call Cyndi) was intrigued by my ruthless and irreverent banter. The more I berated and disparaged her, the more interested she seemed. I’m pretty sure that if I had punched her she would have gone down on me.

I ask you people, what kind of sense does it make that being nice, courteous, complimentary and generally decent is a turn off? If I met a girl who upon meeting me immediately began talking shit, it would be SO OVER. Why should I have to pretend to be an asshole just to get the time of day and a dance?

The story doesn’t end as well as you might think: we spent a good portion of the evening grinding each other into oblivion on the dance floor, then her roomies (who were giving me some serious stink-eye) had to go home, so she left. I did get her number though… worship me for I am your god.

31 May 2006

Giants

A famous poet once said “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?”. Or was it Bob Dylan? Whoever it was, that is fucking stupid, because you already called him a man, retard. The truth is, that before someone can be called a man, he must do these things (women are excluded, they can do whatever they want, or not):

  1. Eat chocolate.
  2. Have sex.
  3. Say nothing while someone verbally abuses them for two months and then beat him into submission without sustaining a single scratch.
  4. Watch Family Guy, even reruns.
  5. Play Giants: Citizen Kabuto.

I have done all those things, and let me tell you, they are immensely enjoyable. The enjoyment grows the further you go down the list, but I probably find Family Guy better than sex because the sex was really bad. I was actually thinking of watching Family Guy during sex. Oh well, at least I got paid.

Best. Bluescreen. Ever.

This brings me to my main point: Playing Giants: Citizen Kabuto is the greatest thing anyone can hope to do in their entire lives. This game kicks ass. If there was a contest between pirates, ninjas, robots and Giants: Citizen Kabuto, plenty of people would watch it, because they are all immature morons. Ninjas don’t exist, you fucking retards, and pirates are just Somalis trying to feed their families, they are not awesome. Also, robots. Have you seen a Roomba? That’s as advanced robots get. What the fuck can a mechanical cockroach do? Giants: Citizen Kabuto, though, kicks ass. It would win hands down.

A bit about the game: You start off as an alien australian astronaut (say that ten times fast) or three and you get weapons and shit and try to destroy stuff while running around destroying stuff, building bases and generally being amazing. Then you become a woman who has no guns (except a sword) but many spells, and then you become the most amazing thing ever conceived by human imagination: Kabuto.

Awe. And shock.

Kabuto is awesome (I will buy a thesaurus later). He fulfills the three requirements for awesomeness:

  • He is taller than a tall building.
  • He can roar.
  • He can smash shit and eat people in cold blood.

That, together with his offspring, that look like lizards, makes him the best thing ever. If Kabuto and King Kong fought, Kabuto would have anal sex with King Kong while watching Family Guy. That’s how awesome Kabuto is. When he eats enough sheep (or are they cows? something like that), Kabuto gets mad and shits an egg, which then produces an offspring which does Kabuto’s evil bidding.

That is one doable sun.

Overall, the game is beautifully designed and has great style. The writing is hilarious, almost as funny as Porocrom, but without all the repetitive crap. It cannot be classified in a single genre because it ranges from an FPS to an RTS to an STD. The stunning visuals, coupled with the witty script and imaginative quests are guaranteed to fuck your shit up with their awesomeness. Seriously, just look at this picture. Wouldn’t you do that sun? If I was a planet, I’d do that sun. The only downside is that the game was made in like, 1990 or something gay like that, when there weren’t even computers and the only way to play a game was to have Mexican immigrants do the math by hand and then draw the picture on the wall. The framerate suffered as a result, but it was mostly playable. The colours and all are quite great, but the lack of antialiasing might put you off a bit, but then you’re just a stupid fanboy who only cares about graphics and not about gameplay, in which case you should just go masturbate to your Lara Croft poster and leave me alone.

Hawt.

In detailing the awesomeness of the game, I have purposefully left out its best characteristic. The Reapers. You only actually play as one reaper, Delphi. Now, she is hot. P-H-A-T, hot. Well, in reality she looks kind of a dog to me, but she’s supposed to be really hot in-game since everyone falls in love with her and she is a princess and shit, plus you can like delete a file and have her play topless, and she has nice boobs, so who cares, I say she’s hot. She’s different from Kabuto and the Meccs in that she has spells and some sort of warp speed and a jet ski. That jet ski rocks, you can go anywhere with it, but the Meccs have a helicopter which is even more awesome and can drop bombs and shit and kick the shit out of other players. You can also jump out of the helicopter while it is really high and land safely by using your jetpack as a lander.

This game is amazing. Sadly, it was a rather huge commercial failure due to its numerous bugs (although there are patches to fix those nowadays) and if you want it you can get it for like $2 at bargain bins. Seriously, if you find it at one buy it, what’s $2 anyway, you can’t even get a decent blowjob for that.

25 Mar 2006

Hippies: an endangering species

So every now and then I get suckered into doing something stupid. My social psych prof (who is GREAT and nothing at all like my research prof) told the class that she would give us extra credit if we attended an event at the local city hall to mark International End Racism Day (since we are discussing prejudice in lecture). So I went with my friend Amy down to city hall to check out this supposed Tibetan Peace Concert that was happening in the evening. Now the word 'Peace’ should have alerted me to the nature of the event, but I naively assumed it would be something cool. Little did I know that I was about to enter a whole new realm of Lame.

We arrived on the tail end of what must have been a series of speeches. We caught a 5-minute speech about the importance of recognizing the connection between human beings by a local Tibetan Lama (not to be confused with a Llama, a fuzzy animal that tends to inhabit more arid regions such as outer Mongolia), which I thought was pretty neat. I was looking forward to an eclectic and educational evening. Little did I know that this supposed Peace Concert was really a breeding ground for dirty greasy hippies.

In the audience, I counted about three good-looking people, which included Amy, myself, and my reflection in a nearby mirror. The rest of the audience was children (who can’t be described as UGLY, per se) and people who looked like they had just come off the bus from Camp Retro. People of Kitchener, I beseech you: at the end of each decade, please update your wardrobe/look… and also please shower and wash your hair :(

The MC hit the stage and began introducing the bands. He was one of those people who was once told that he was funny, and since then nobody has had the heart to tell him that he’s about as funny as tripping and landing balls-first on a porcupine whilst pissing in the woods. I think the only funny thing about him was his idea of fashion. Maybe in the parallel hippie universe where it is still acceptable to wear your hair slicked back into a rat-tail this guy was the shit. However, in THIS universe, a dandelion-yellow shirt with a blue Snoopy tie and faded blue jeans can get you 8-10 months imprisonment in fashion jail, and don’t you dare drop the soap around THOSE boys.

He introduced the first band, which was a sort of Latin/blues group with this REALLY hot guest singer (who I think I might have gone to high-school with, oddly enough). They were pretty good. They were followed closely by the semi-cliche 'guy-with-piano’ act (the ultimate cliche being 'guy-with-guitar’). In between each act, the grease-ball corporate hippie MC regaled us with examples of his bizareness – he told us a story about how a Buddhist friend of his said that “Jesus Christ was a cool guy!”... (the laughter was deafening in its silence) – and semi-insulted each performer. I guess it’s one of those things: if you have no talent on stage, you spend your time tearing apart people who don’t have talent either, but are at least trying (for further example, see Simon from American Idol).

By the time the third act came on stage, I was regretting my decision not to wire myself with a bomb before I left the house. Although I am pretty sure God/Allah doesn’t like suicide bombers, I think he would make an exception if I took a few dozen hippies with me. The third act consisted of a dreadlocked black stoner with 9 fingers (I wish I was making this up), a RAGING bull-dyke who was probably seen more naked women than I have or ever will, and a guy who, with a haircut and a de-ponchoing, would actually be semi-normal-looking. The trio, called “Organic Groove” is a three-piece percussion band…

I don’t know if you have ever been to Ottawa and seen street drum circles, but they are pretty cool. It’s just a bunch of stoners and arts students who own drums who hang out on the streets and beat out some cool jams. I think Organic Groove desperately wants to be one of those groups. They had everything that the Ottawa groups have, except fully-competent members, and credibility. The dude with the dreads was great, minus the crazy bug-eyes that remained somewhat half-closed the entire time. The semi-normal guy was… semi-normal (read: completely unremarkable). The chick was TERRIBLE and could learn a few things about beating from a 15 year-old boy whose parents just recently got high-speed internet.

Just when I thought things couldn’t possibly get any more ridiculous, they brought on their fourth SECRET member… the cow-bell girl (again, I wish I was making this up). For about 7 minutes, this chick hit a cowbell with a stick. I can’t imagine a less exciting role in the band than being the cowbell person. She didn’t even put any obscene thrusting into it like Will Farell’s character from the now-notorious SNL sketch about Blue Oyster Cult. I speculated momentarily about which one of the band members she was sleeping with to get mandatory inclusion in a crappy band, and concluded it must be the bull-dyke, or all three of them (damn hippies).

As much as I like to pick on Organic Groove, they did include the audience in their third song (which, incidentally sounded EXACTLY like their first and second songs). Cowbell girl handed out drums, clack sticks and a big Native drum (take THAT, ancestors’ spirits!) to members of the audience, irrevocably proving that it takes ZERO talent to be in an all-drum band.

I debated sticking around to watch the next band, a group of people with physical disabilities (called “The Opportunities”) play, but after waiting 20 minutes for them to set up, and noticing that the greasy MC was trying to start an a capella singalong of “Lord, Won’t You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz” (again… not making it up), Amy and I decided to flee before things got out of hand.

So, in conclusion, don’t go to Peace Concerts unless you are wearing C4… or ear plugs…

And yes Jakub, it is ironic that a peace concert made me want to kill someone.

26 Feb 2006

The movies

I went to see a movie yesterday to this new multiplex movie theatre thing which boasted a screen the size of the equator, a sound system that plays even sounds you can’t hear and seats that give you orgasms. By the way, if you watch Ong Bak, there’s some chalk writing on a wall somewhere that says “Hi, Speilberg. Let do it together.” I wonder if they are going to “do it together”... But yes, the theatre.

I don’t understand the point of larger and larger screens. They have gotten so large that I always have to turn my head from side to side to catch the entire frame. Whenever conversation scenes come on I get spinal injuries, I have watched tennis games with less pain than that. I can only blame the stupid people that go to whatever theatre has the largest screen. Here’s a tip, Einstein: If you want a big screen, stick your nose up to your TV and watch, it’s much better that way.

Also, what is up with the sound systems? People seem to have mistaken “better quality” for “higher volume”. Hey, owner guy, I would prefer gunshots not to cause my ear drums to bleed. On romantic scenes it feels like I’m in a club and on action scenes it feels like I’m strapped to the bottom of the space shuttle during takeoff. Digital sound is great as long as it doesn’t cause deafness, and soon my insurance company will stop covering cinema-related injuries so a movie will cost about $1300.

Needless to say, the seats didn’t give me an orgasm (or if they did it was when I was unconscious), my pants were clean. Seriously though, how can each row of seats be a foot higher than the next one and I still get some guy’s head right where Kate Beckinsale’s genitalia is supposed to be? Damn you, tall guy. Maybe it would help if they didn’t make the fucking screen larger than a football field and then lower it right in front of the first row.

And don’t get me started about the popcorn and soda. Since when do they cost more than the actual fucking ticket? A bucket of popcorn costs like $6, and last time I checked it took two cobs of corn and some salt to make it. We grow that shit by the ton, what the fuck caused a worldwide shortage of corn these days? And since when did a medium Coke cost $3? Where am I, Africa?

The thing that pisses me off the most is that almost every movie is a piece of shit. I remember watching Ecks vs. Sever a few years ago, it was the most expensive nap I ever took. I slept through 90% of the movie and I still know the plot. It was like “doze off, explosion, wake up, Antonio Banderas. Doze off, explosion, wake up, Antonio Banderas”. What an original concept, and Lucy Liu wasn’t even naked in any scene (or maybe I missed it, but I doubt it, I would have woken up if anyone was moaning). At least there’s not much else to do in the theatre so my ADD isn’t a problem, but it takes me 3 days to watch a DVD when I rent one. Late fees are a bitch.

In summation, they should give you a complimentary blowjob with each movie, and with all the darkness in the cinema I wouldn’t even take that, you never know who’s doing the sucking. Also, I just finished watching Saw II, and it’s not as horrible as the first one, but a bit more stupid. Imagine, you’re in a house full of traps and you just rush to grab everything you see. “Oops, I died.” That’s Saw II.

P.S. Best movie ever: The Shawshank Redemption (Disclaimer: I haven’t watched any one of the Godfathers)

24 Jan 2006

The Parliament's New Clothes

Once upon a time there were two princes. One prince, Martin the Foppish, was plagued by accusations of indiscretions with the peasant women of the countryside. The other prince, Harper the Dastardly, maintained that he would destroy all corruption by throwing huge bags of money at it until it went away.

It came to pass that the people of the kingdom wanted a new ruler to govern them. They held a great tournament that would decide once and for all who would be the king. The first event was an archery contest. Sir Martin, momentarily distracted by the light shining off the head of Lord Layton, managed to repeatedly shoot himself in the foot. Sir Harper fired an arrow that killed several homeless people and single mothers. He quickly hid the evidence behind a bag of gold dubloons and was proclaimed winner of the archery contest.

The second event in the tournament was a joust. Sir Martin mounted his steed backwards and forgot his lance at home. Sir Harper, his golden toupee shining gloriously from atop his jet-black steed, promised to give money to anyone who couldn’t afford a horse so that they could ride around on a donkey cart. “But Sir Harper,” protested the people “Why not just lower the price of horses?” “Sir Martin is a LIAR!” replied sir Harper. “But…” began the people “No!” said Sir Harper. “It’s time for CHANGE! He’s a LIAR!” Sir Harper repeated this phrase until the people were hypnotized out of their foolish well-reasoned objections to easy answers. Sir Harper was proclaimed the winner.

The final event was the most exciting. The two combatants were sequestered in a ring filled with mud. It was declared that the contestant who could throw the most mud at the other man would be the winner. “Finally,” thought Sir Martin “Here is an event I can actually win!” Sir Harper made the first volley, splattering scandalous amounts of mud on Sir Martin’s standard. As Sir Martin was preparing his crushing reponse, a dark shadow appeared over the ring…

A passing Duceppe bird, over 40 furlongs in length and weighing 20 stone had flown overhead and released a dropping so big that it blotted out the sun. The castle archers fired arrows, but the bird was too far out of range to be hit. “Fie!” said Martin. “Once again, Duceppe has shit all over EVERYONE and gotten away with it!” For his failure to mud-sling adequately, Sir Martin was disqualified and relegated to the cruddy side of the kingdom.

“What will you do with your new power, oh great king?” the people asked.

“I will throw big bags of money at all problems that come our way. The more money people have, the more they will agree with me.”

“What if a problem comes along that can’t be solved with bags of money?” asked a wise man.

“If such a problem exists,” said King Harper “I don’t want to know about it… or I’ll just blame it on Sir Martin.”

And so Sir Harper won… and the people lost.

24 Jan 2006

Nostalgia.

I recently stumbled upon a copy of MechWarrior 4: Real Version Number – 121894, and it took me back to the “good old days”, when I was playing MechWarrior 2. Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December when I immersed myself in the incredible awesomeness that is MW2. It was 1997 or so and I had found a demo of it in a CD of a magazine. It only had three levels and three Mechs, but it was the best game ever. The graphics were superb, the gameplay magnificent and the sheer coolness of driving a 10-metre tall robot kicked ass.

I still remember the soft, seductive voice that ran the systems check whenever you began. “Reactor: Online. Sensors: Online. Weapons: Online. All systems nominal” she would say, and my heart would flutter before the reassuring bleep that meant that all was OK. Of course, come to think of it, there was no chance something would go wrong because that was hardcoded in the game, but it was awesome still. Then the game began and I would promptly kill the 3 enemies on each level (it was a demo, remember?). I would then proceed to shoot the legs off my teammates. They were so loyal, they wouldn’t even move while I wreaked havoc upon their Mechs (in retrospect, I suspect that was due to the fact that they had a good insurance policy).

Wanting to relive those glorious days, I, ahem, procured a copy of MechWarrior 2 and prompty installed it. I ran it, chose the biggest, meanest looking Mech in the game and entered the arena, but, what is this shit? The graphics are crap, the enemy vehicles look like shoeboxes with wheels and the robots look like chickens that rolled in the mud for too long. You can imagine my surprise, because that was certainly not the game I remembered. At least the voice was still great (reactors and all that).

This can only mean one thing. Games deteriorate with age. This game’s graphics are much worse than the first time I played, it, and it was somewhat boring. Why don’t the gaming companies make a game that won’t go bad after a while? I didn’t know that games had expiration dates, but apparently they do, and this game was way past its. I tried a few more games from the saintly days of yore and, sure enough, they had also gone bad! This is a great tragedy that has befallen me. I was planning to introduce my newborn son to the games I played as a kid, but what am I going to show him now? A moving shoebox? That’s gay. I tried to play MechWarrior 4 but it required the skill of a pianist and the stamina of a pornstar. If I wanted a fucking chore I would have taken out the garbage, not bought a game.

By the way, what the fuck is up with Prince of Persia? That damn game has a 60 minute timelimit and every time I got past the level in which I ran out of time the last time, it had a whole new one! Nice going Broderbund, don’t make new and challeging levels, just force the player to play over and over again. Also, what’s up with Pacman? A pizza-shaped dude eating dots? Where’s the fun in that? Ooo, look ma, I’m being chased by ghosts. I better eat that hugeass dot, I bet it’ll save me. How much LSD were the creators on? And don’t even get me started on Wonder Boy. He just ran around on clouds with his privates showing and threw hatchets. Brilliant idea. Let’s give him a skateboard while we’re at it. A caveman with a skateboard, deadly.

NewZealand Story, now that’s a kickass game. You were a small bird of indeterminate species and you went around on balloons and in water and shit shooting stuff to save something from someone. You would go in portals that were always in a loop so you would always end up where you started, but noone would notice, that’s how kickass it was. Golden Axe was also one kickass game. You could be a woman, a gay or a dwarf. The woman was the best of all, she couldn’t hit for shit but if you somehow managed to survive long enough to collect all the powerup vials she would cast a spell that caused a huge dragon to come and puke fire and shit lightning on everyone. There was noone left after that, even the final boss got pussywhipped. Plus, you could ride dragons, how cool is that.

The game I want to play now is Shadow of the Colossus, but unfortunately I don’t have a PlayCube 380 or whatever these new things are called, so I can’t. I have a lesbian friend who has all that stuff, but he won’t let me play because he’s gay, he just listens to Tori Amos all day. Shadow of the Colossus must be great, you play the role of a small dwarf who has to go kill the Colossi because they raped his sister or something. The Colossi are all tall like Michael Jordan (sometimes taller) and you have to climb on their legs and tickle their balls and stab them in the back. Sometimes you get a horse to ride on. That is the recipe to success, my friends.

Since it’s getting late and I have to study (computer networks exam in two days) I will give you this familiar epilogue where I just stop writing with a lame excuse. I’m having my period.

30 Dec 2005

Smokers

I hate smokers. They smoke all the time. You go out to the cafeteria, and someone lights a cigarette. What the hell is up with that? Seriously, who was the first person to look at a tobacco plant and say “Oh, what a nice plant! I will pick it, dry it, cut it into little pieces, wrap it in paper, light it on fire and suck on it.” I mean, even the Stadium Pal was created through a logical sequence of steps, some guy had the following requirements: “I want to pee. I do not want to get up.” Voila, Stadium Pal. What were the cigarette guy’s requirements? “I want to stick a flaming plant in my mouth and annoy people around me”? How does that make any sense? The only acceptable social circumstance for smoking is when you’re on fire, and you shouldn’t even do it then for long.

!/images/baby.jpg!
Death at an early age.

Thankfully, smoking in public places is banned everywhere here in Greece. That means that now whenever I go out to a club or a whorehouse or some other public place and tell people to put that cigarette out or I sodomize them, they will now go “bah, shut up” instead of “if you don’t like it, leave”. That is a huge victory for human rights activists everywhere. I especially hate it when women smoke. Not only is it repulsive, but when you try to kiss them you burn your tongue. Nowadays I blow the lighter’s flame out when my friends try to light a cigarette, but they have gotten smarter and bought one of those windproof lighters, so I just spit on them instead.

Smoking in a non-smokers face is very annoying. I started farting in smoker’s faces, but it had a few disadvantages. For one, no one else does it, so it puts me in somewhat of an awkward position, although essentially it is the same as smoking, you are still emitting noxious gases in peoples’ faces. Sadly, for the aforementioned reason, farting is still not as acceptable as smoking, though it can be more pleasurable and less harmful than smoking (it’s only harmful towards passive farters). Secondly, farting can be dangerous since, well, let’s face it, you are farting in a smoker’s face. Fire + methane = explosiriffic. Having your large intestine blown up from the inside is not good, because then you have to spend three fucking days in a hospital with some nurse sticking burn cream up your ass, and woe is you if it’s a male nurse. They gave me a male nurse once, I had to swallow half a tube of cream to avoid him. It worked out in the end, though.

Disgusting.

I also hate smoking after sex. Bitch, if you smoke after sex, I’m going to sleep and there’s nothing you can do about it. What is this fad with smoking after sex? Go take a shower you filthy whore, you have millions of unborn children on your face. Movies endorse this behaviour by showing people smoking after sex all the time. By the way, have you noticed how chicks in movies hide their tits with the sheets afterwards? What the hell, retard, I have had my junk in yours for an hour now, I have seen your tits bounce more times than I care for, why are you hiding them now? Did they grow anything new I shouldn’t know about in the meantime? IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SHOW YOUR ACTRESS’S TITS, DON’T MAKE HER HAVE SEX! If you want to show the conversation afterwards, just skip directly to that and film their heads only, you fools. If we see two sweaty heads panting, it’s somewhat obvious what went on, unless they are wearing jogging outfits. Requiem for a Dream was good in that respect, although those guys smoked pot or some shit like that afterwards, which is unacceptable, pot smells like ass, and they all died in the end, or they should have.

Smoking makes you crazy.

But I digress. I don’t really hate smoking itself, I just hate the smoke. There must be better ways people can smoke without all that damn smoke all around them. Chew tobacco or something (although that leaves those awful stains all over the floor). Heroin addicts have it right, all you need is a rusty spoon, a diseased needle and a lighter and you’re good to go for hours on end. Why can’t people do that? They should legalise heroin and outlaw smoking, at least I wouldn’t have to deal with it all the damn time that way.

By the way, what is up with coffee? It tastes like piss, only worse. How can people drink that, it’s not even thick. I don’t have anything against coffee, I’m just wondering what people find so great about it. I watched this movie, Coffee and Cigarettes, and it sucked extraneous amounts of ass. There were people who were drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and talking. It was also in black and white. Why was it in black and white? There have been colour cameras out for centuries, couldn’t that guy get one? Hell, I have one he could borrow. Anyway, that movie is no good. Don’t watch it.

This post is getting rather long and I know you people can’t stand reading for long, so I’ll stop here. It’s odd how people will gladly read two normal posts and still want more, but when you write a big one they get tired. Anyway, stop smoking. Well, in my presence, anyway.

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