Friday, February 26, 2010

Meep

So I am playing cards earlier tonight.

And we're playing Uno Attack, I don't know if anyone'a familiar with this, so I'll describe it breifly as an Uno card game with a demonic machine the spews forth a random number of cards from it's evil maw whenever you press it's button. So instead of drawing two cards from the deck, you press the button twice, and if you don't get cards, you're lucky. Sometimes, you get 14. I hold the record at 14. The machine hateses me.

And my nephew and his twin are over. His twin meaning, this psychotic, evil, wicked witch of a girl who follows him around like a hulking brute of a bodyguard and loves nothing more than MAKING MY LIFE HELL. If I was a superhero, she'd be my ARCH NEMESIS. Luckily, I look way too good in tights and a cape to have them on for long, so she doesn't know my alter ego as... AAADVIIIIIIIIIIIICE MAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNN!!!!

Honestly, I just use it as an excuse to wear the tights.

So it's her turn to shuffle and deal, and we are having a fun night, and i decide to shove the Uno machine at her a little bit, just to irk her. It was a decision that will haunt me for the rest of my days.

Without warning, and with the speed of a striking snake, she grabs the pen from the scorebook and STABS ME IN THE HAND WITH IT. Oh yes. I was assaulted. Brutally. I am not sure what provoked the attack. I grant that, perhaps irking her at that time was a bad idea. I suppose, in retrospect, it's rather like stirring a big pile of vipers with a stick and then shoving a hand into the pile. Come to think of it, when I say it like that, it makes me sound like an idiot.

Now, I'm not a violent man. I don't like confrontation. It frightens me. While I may be a large man, it's mostly hairy flab. I do not consider myself manly in any way. I guess my defense mechanism must have kicked in. My next act was one of pure, animal instinct, the adrenaline-charged reaction of being attacked, stabbed and wounded, my life hanging by a thread.

I meeped.

Now, some of you are wondering what i mean by meeped. In a tiny, scared voice, I said "meep." Yes, well, what can I tell you. Some men, when faced with a charging bear, pick up a rifle, aim down the sights and shoot it between the eyes, killing it dead before it reaches them. Other men, men like me, we meep. You just, just don't know until you face that moment, that single, gut-churning, instant of decision, the time when you either stand up and fight for your life, or you meep and run. I'm a meeper. Who knew?

What happened after that, you ask? Oh my hand's fine. There was a tiny dot of ink that went away after I ran crying to the bathrooms and ran it under cold water to ease the swelling. I was going to put a scooby doo band-aid on it, but alas, i could not find the dot of ink after i washed it off, so I am not sure where she stabbed me exactly. I am sure at any moment, the blood will come spurting out in great red gouts, bathing my walls in blood and ink-poisoned flesh, but as of right now, well, the wound is more to my pride than anything else.

And don't give me that "You got your ass kicked BY A GIRL!!!" shit. This girl is like 7 feet tall, with fire shooting from her eye sockets, and a laugh so heart-rendingly evil that your very soul will flee your body when you hear it and be in the eternal hereafter before your lifeless body hits the floor.

I can't believe I meeped. Sigh. I may as well hand in my man-card and get a sex change, start singing in a transvestite night club or something. I am not sure how good my singing voice is, but I look damn good in a dress. I already have the man-boobs for it.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

What, again?

I know I've posted about stupidity before. But you know how it irks me.

So today I want to mention two particular odd (meaning stupid) events. One of which I read online. The other I was actually part of. Although luckily, I was not the stupid party. This time. lol

So I'm at work reading the news online. I hear about this story in Kentucky, I am pretty sure it was. And yes, I know, some of you are going "Oh of course, Kentucky." Maybe so. This is how the story goes. Police seize a semi truck full of marijuana in one city. That's pot, mary jane, dope, weed, etc, to those who don't know. 1,700 pounds of it in the truck. Almost a ton. Police from the city it was seized in, and sherriff's deputies from the place it was going to (they didn't say why they were transporting it) were escorting this truck. Sorry, not just escorting, this was a "controlled transportation." Now, keep in mind, the story i read said police and deputies. Which means AT LEAST two police and two deputies, 4 officers, were watching and escorting this truck. There may have been more. So the title of the article is "1700 pounds of marijuana disappears." Yea, here's how it apparently disappears. The article stated, and I am almost quoting here, the officers WATCHED people coming up to the truck, parking, then going away and coming back later, parking and then going away. When they checked the truck, it was EMPTY. How is this a surprise? You're telling me that at least 4 police officers watched a bunch of guys unloading the dope from this truck and when they went to check it it was empty? WHy didn't they oh, you know ARREST THEM or something? No, they were just watching. And at some point one of them must have said "Hey, you think those guys are, you know, taking anything from our truck?" And one of the other policemen, with guns and badges, replied "Shit, maybe, you think we should check and see?" And then "HOLY SHIT IT'S EMPTY!!!" Damn fine police work there, Lou. Damn fine.

The other example of stupidity was just... I work in tech support. And I occasionally set up people to connect with our service. By occasionally, I mean about 17000 times a day. Okay it's more like 17 but it feels like 17000. Anyway, I get this guy calling in. Come to think of it, he might have been from kentucky, too. One of the southern states. Anyway, we're setting up and he has to cut some twist ties that are wrapping up his cords. He cuts himself. Hey, shit happens, I am not judging the guy at this point, i am also clumsy and accidents happen. I ask "Hey, do you want to, you know, attend to that cut and call back when you've, uh, stopped the bleeding?" He replies "No, I been cut worse than that before." Okay, now I am judging, but I figure hey, maybe it's just a scratch or a nick, nothing serious. Nick on an ARTERY, maybe, because a minute later he says "I'm bleeding all over the place." Yea, I don't know, why it doesn't occur to this fine southern gentleman that he can CALL BACK LATER, i have no idea. So we are continuing with the connection, which, usually takes about 5 or 10 minutes to finish, and he says "I'm a bleeder, you know." No, i didn't know, does bleeder mean Hemophiliac, like it usually means? Because that means your blood doesn't clot normally and you can bleed to death if you aren't careful. Apparently it does, because the guy is getting quieter and quieter, and having more and more trouble doing simple things like typing. He says again "i'm bleeding all over." At this point, I'm just trying to finish the connection before he dies. He says "I'm having trouble typing it in, there's blood all over the keyboard." Oh wonderful. Good luck cleaning that up, I can't even get s... uh... yogurt out of my keyboard. I don't know, maybe it was the blood loss making him not think straight, but why not just apologize, go tend your gushing wound, and call back? Southerners are generally known for being polite, right? I was wondering if I should ask him if he still had all his fingers at the end of the call. I guess he really, REALLY wanted that internet set up. Oh well, one customer down, 150,000 to go.

So those are my two examples of stupid for today! Next time, I'll probably be the stupid party. I have a theory that a virus is circulating that makes everyone stupid, and once you catch it, it's all downhill from there. I'm trying to figure out if I've caught it yet, and just didn't notice, or if I been extremely lucky so far. lol

Monday, February 15, 2010

Post - Valentine's Day

I had originally intended this post for Valentine's Day, or shortly thereafter. However a cold derailed my posting plans and I am only now recovering from it. Hey it was a bad cold ok? I was, uh, sneezing and coughing and stuff. Like, really bad. Yea.

I was also busy on V-Day with other things. What? Did I get a girlfriend? Hell no! My blow up doll, Patches, got me some flowers (what, a man can't get flowers?) and I got her a skimpy negligee, however, she didn't get to try it on. I was so overcome with lust at her nude, plastic-skinned, inflated body that I leapt atop her and she popped. Again. Our love life is strewn with difficulties, but I will keep trying. Love, as they say, conquers all. In the meantime, does anyone have an old bicycle-tire pump? This cold is stealing all my air. I did, however, try the negligee on myself, and while I don't look as good in it as Patches would have, I'd still do me.

I have had many people ask me "Oh, beautiful scribe, why is it that you don't have a woman at your side this Valentine's Day? You are smart and sexy and lustfully made!" Well, all that is true, but I think it's my lack of skill with interpersonal relationships that has given rise to my issues. I can't tell you how many times a woman has asked me "Do these jeans make me look fat?" and I've replied "No, your ass does." Which, apparently, is something you are not supposed to say. Who knew? Women are so confusing, they want perfect honesty, and then when I am honest, they cry. So silly.

Here's a perfect example of why I have trouble relating to normal people, or anyone, for that matter. I come home early the other day from work due to a bad cough and my throat feeling like I have gargled with sulfuric acid. Since I answer the phone all day at work, and talking makes it worse, you can see how that would prevent me from doing my job. And my Mom is talking to someone on the phone, and she asks them "What does STDS stand for?" Being a single guy below the age of 75, I tell her "Sexually Transmitted Diseases." So she says "Oh, that makes sense." and then later on, she comes into my room, where i am sneezing, coughing, and generally trying to ward off the cold clammy touch of Death. While playing a game. Don't even start your shit, one, there was nothing wrong with my hands, just my throat, and two, if I am going to die, it's either going to be while having sex or playing a video game, because dammit, I am going to go out while having fun! So while Death is standing behind me tapping my shoulder, and I am ignoring him to play my game, Mom comes in and asks "What does the S stand for?" So I ignore Death and the game to answer her question because, come on, it's my mom, and anyone who knows mom knows she's like a cross between a bulldog, a bear and a mosquito. She just won't go away until you are drained of all life. I was close but not entirely drained, so after ascertaining that she meant the S at the end of STDS, I said "It means more than one." She didn't seem to understand this, just repeated her question. "If STD stands for Sexually Transmitted Diseases, what does the S at the end stand for?" I repeated myself, knowing this was not going to end well. You know that feeling? Like where you pull off the freeway and there's a sheet of ice at the end of the turnoff and there's about 15 cars piled in a smoldering heap at the bottom, and you gently apply the brakes and only go faster downhill, and you think THIS ISN'T GOING TO END WELL. Yes, I thought that. I should have just punched her dead in the face right there, but I can't do that, because I am reasonably civilized, and frankly, I was worried I'd never get homemade brownies again if I did. So I said "No no, STD stands for Sexually Transmitted Disease. The S means plural, like, more than one STD." To which Mom replies "But it's not a P, it's an S! If it stood for plural it would be a P not an S!" I blinked several times. I think my brain was still trying to process that last bit of stupidity, because my next example of how to illustrate more than one did not come out well. I said "No, Mom, what's the plural of... of... Fish?" Yea. I know. It's FISH. Shut up. You'd have been braindead after the comment about the P too. But no, I forged on ahead, hoping she'd be able to figure it out. "You know, FISH, FISHIES, FISH, FISHIES? STD, STD's, STD, STD's?" Okay, I know it wasn't my finest hour, but come on. It's a simple concept. There's either one, or more than one. So she repeats the question to me again, like I am an idiot. "What I'm asking is, what does the S stand for???" I assume it was either my blank stare, the drool coming from the corner of my mouth, or my ears bleeding that caused her next outburst. "Forget it, you obviously don't understand!" And then she stalks off. How I managed to restrain myself from grabbing an axe and hacking her to death from behind, I have no idea. I am sure that, if I believed in Heaven, my not doing so surely bought me a hallowed seat there. Plus, I don't know where the axe is. In any case, you can obviously see that I got my issues with communication from my parents. And I know, it seems like a copout to just blame everything on them, but seriously, I just gave you an example that illustrates my point. If you don't understand by now, you are also probably still wondering what the second S in STDS stands for.

So, in honor of Valentine's Day, and communicating with your loved ones, I was sent this multiple choice test by a friend of mine to determine my sensitivity levels. There were only answers A, B and C for each question, but those seemed insufficient to assess my particular level of sensitivity, so I added a D at the end of each question to give an example of what I myself would say.

1. In the company of females, intercourse should be referred to as:
A. Lovemaking.
B. Screwing.
C. Taking the pigskin bus to tuna town.
D. YUMMY YUMMY BOOM BOOM! YUMMY YUMMY BOOM BOOM!! YUMMY YUMMY BOOM BOOOOOM!!!

2. You should make love to a woman for the first time only after you have both shared:
A. Your views about what you expect from a sexual relationship.
B. Your blood-test results.
C. Five tequila slammers.
D. A glance from across the bar. I can't remember names anyway.

3. You time your orgasm so that:
A. Your partner climaxes first.
B. You both climax simultaneously.
C. You don't miss TSN Sports Centre.
D. You can actually get your pants off first this time.

4. Passionate, spontaneous sex on the kitchen floor is:
A. Healthy, creative love-play.
B. Not the sort of thing your wife would agree to.
C. Not the sort of thing your wife needs to ever find out about.
D. Something that could be even better with a partner.

5. Spending the whole night cuddling a woman you have just had sex with is:
A. The best part of the experience.
B. The second best part of the experience.
C. $100 extra.
D. Hard to do when she's crying like that.

6. Your wife/girlfriend says she's gained five pounds in the last month. You tell her that it is:
A. Of no influence on your affectionate feelings for her.
B. Not a problem, she can join your gym.
C. A conservative estimate.
D. Because she ate your whole gallon of pistachio ice cream, the fat thieving whore!

7. You think today's sensitive, caring man is:
A. A myth.
B. An oxymoron.
C. A moron.
D. Gay.

8. Foreplay is to sex as:
A. An appetizer is to entree.
B. Primer is to paint.
C. A long line is to an amusement park ride.
D. Rocky is to Fight Club.

9. Which of the following are you most likely to find yourself saying at the end of a relationship:
A. I hope we can still be friends..
B. I'm not in right now, please leave a message at the beep.
C. Welcome to Dumpsville. Population, YOU.
D. Of course I'll call you. What was your name again?

10. A woman who is uncomfortable watching you masturbate:
A. Probably needs a little more time before she can cope with that sort of intimacy.
B. Is uptight and a waste of time.
C. Shouldn't have sat next to you on the bus in the first place.
D. Better close her eyes before the end if she doesn't want to be blinded for life!

There you have it. On the sensitivity scale, I am obviously way up there with one celled bacteria and some college-age flatworms.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Friends

Okay, let me rephrase...

There are some of you out there reading this who may be upset that I said I have no friends. It's not completely true. What i meant was, I don't really have a social life. People don't call me up and say "hey, want to go out and swill beers?" Well, they used to, but after 7 or 8 years of me saying no, they got dejected and stopped asking. In some cases, they stopped talking to me altogether. lol

I am okay with that. I don't mind the odd beer-swilling event as long as it's intermixed with food-stuffing events, or even bed-breaking ones, but if it's all beer-swilling and that's the only thing we have in common, well, i'm not really a beer swilling kind of guy. I can force myself on occasion, and at times i've even been the life of the party, but beer just tends to make me sleepy, not uninhibited.

The friends I have are generally pretty loyal, pretty understanding of my rare bad moods, and enjoy sexting me pics of their boobies. I love them all dearly. My friends, too, not just their boobies. if I've offended anyone with any of my posts, I apologize, I generally only say things to be funny and entertain, and if you get regularly upset by what i post here, then why the hell are you reading this? I mean seriously, go read some alternative star trek porn, i hear captain kirk and mr spock are getting it on right now in some way or another! It's only logical.

So, don't be offended if you consider yourself my friend and I continuously insist I don't have any friends, what I mean is, I don't have annoying, clinging friends who demand i go put myself into an alcoholic coma just to hang out with them. I have buddies who like me for who and what I am, and because I can give them multiple orgasms. OH YEA BABY WE'RE GOING FOR NUMBER 14!!!!! BETTER HOLD ONTO THOSE ROPES!!!

I'd certainly love to have more of these kind of buddies, but alas, intelligent, reasonable people who have a sense of humor and a great ass are hard to find. I realize I am all those things and more, but hey, I'm like, one in 6 billion or something. if you have all these qualities and want to be my friend, I am fine with that! And hey, if you're female and want to sext me pics of your boobies, make sure you're 18+ and sext away. Come to think of it, if you're over 18 and want to sext me pics of your boobies, you don't really need to be intelligent, reasonable OR funny. But you still have to have a great ass. I mean, come on, we can't just let ALL the rules slide now, can we?

Oh, damn. I forgot, I don't have a cell phone, you can't sext me. Shit. Well, my plans are rarely without flaws. I know what you are thinking, so unlike me, who is perfect in every way, but all i can say is... It's true! lol

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Bioshock 2

I know, wtf is up with the game reviews, right?

Well SCREW YOU BUDDY. I'm a gamer. This is what I do with my free time. I make a decent wage, no honest girl would be caught anywhere near my rotting corpse, and fapping only takes about 30 seconds out of my day. And that's including finding and starting the sheep porn movie. I've never seen the end of it. I've only got as far as the part where the farmer grabs the sheep and ... oh god. I need to change my thong.

So I got Bioshock 2 last night. And it just came out yesterday so this game review is even like, current and up to the minute and shit. Wow. I am STATE OF THE ART, BABY!!!!! W00000000000000000000000T!!!!!!!!! First time in my life ever. Reminds me of my morning talk show I listened to on the way into work this morning. The guy is literally in the middle of his broadcast, stops to talk to the weather guy, and BAM his electronics freeze up. Yea, I don't know what happened but he said he got a Not Responding error, which probably means he's running on windows or something. lol So he finishes killing time with the weather guy, thinking it's all fixed, tries to play a song, and NOTHING. It was hilarious. He leaves the microphone, starts rummaging through a rack of CD's, and starts playing one. Yea, talk about old-school. Too funny.

Bioshock 2 might be considered fun. I don't recall because I started it, and then suddenly it was like 3 hours later and I had no recollection of what had happened to me the last three hours, except i had wet myself, and I was at a savegame screen. So I saved my game and changed my pants. I notice I have to do that a lot. Maybe I should buy stock in denim. Which means if Bioshock 2 can teleport me from my hellish world of reality to the hellish underwater world of bioshock, then it must be halfway decent, right? Either that, or I had a petit mal epileptic seizure for like 3 hours. Which... would explain the wet pants. Hmmmmmm.

So Bioshock starts out ten years after the first game. The first game, for those of you who haven't played it, and if you have a real life, I can udnerstand that, if you don't have a real life, get our nose out of the midget porn, man, Bioshock 1 was like the biggest game of the year when it came out, and generally rocked across the board. In Bioshock you started out as a passenger on a plane that crash-landed in the ocean. You survive the crash and swim to this lighthouse-looking thing, only to discover stairs down into this underwater city built by some whackjob tycoon back in the 50's. Anyway, in the city, shit's gone to hell in a handbasket because they have run amok with scientific discoveries and learned how to splice superpowers into your genes, only the drug that does it is not only addictive but psychotropic, so it's casued everyone to become insane, superpowered addicts. And unfortunately, to combat them, you have to take multiple doses of the same stuff yourself. Which is good because you can fight them, but bad because, to get more of this stuff, they have to harvest your blood and remove it. Now I don't want to go into a long detailed synopsis of the first game, but suffice it to say that you win by becoming a Big Daddy, armored in an underwater version of robotic armor, and proceed to detonate the city's self destruct mechanism before escaping.

Which is why I was so confused when they set the events of Bioshock 2 ten years after the first bioshock. I thought the city was gone, but no. Oh no. In the first game there are these little girls called... little girls, I guess... who run around sucking the psychotropic gene-altering drug out of dead bodies with gigantic syringes, and all the addicts are after them because they can harvest the drug for the addicts and are full of it themselves. Obviously the little girls wouldn't last long if not for the Big Daddies, which protect them as they run around stabbing gigantic syringes into dead bodies and sucking the blood out of them to process into the drug. So in Bioshock 2, you start out as a Big Daddy (not the one you turned into at the end of Bioshock 1), going about protecting your little girl, who ironically, happens to actually BE your little girl. Yes, as I understand it, and I may be wrong, but apparently you are actually this little girl's father, who has been turned into a Big Daddy as some sort of bizarre bonding experiment to get you to protect her better. So at the beginning of Bioshock 2, you run into your, well, your ex wife, I guess? In any case, she paralyzes you, steals your little girl, and then with her drug-induced superpowers, manages to force you to shoot yourself in the head. Talk about a messy divorce, eh?

What I don't get is, this Bioshock is set not only ten years after the original, but is also set ten years after you shoot yourself in the head. So.. apparently... you've been lying on the floor dead for ten years and just randomly decided "Okay, i been napping long enough! Time to get back to work!" Yea, I know I've only been in the game for 3 hours so maybe this is all explained later on but for right now it just seems downright silly. For one thing, I thought the undersea city (it's called Rapture) was destroyed at the end of the last game, so I have no idea why there's even still a city to go traipsing through, and why a skeletal mass of bone and armor would decide to rise up and go around searching for his lost daughter is a bit creepy. I mean, I suppose it's kind of nice playing a zombie, but doesn't that mean I would be immune to actually getting killed, and honestly, if I ever do find my daughter, what sort of dad would I be to her? It's not like anyone would hire a zombie, so I couldn't support her, and if she's ten years older then I'm that creepy, deadbeat dad that still thinks of her as a kid and who she doesn't want around because I smell bad. So, like most dads, I guess. And I'm not even getting into the whole "BRAAAAAIIIINNNNNNNNSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!" issue, because if i start devouring my daughter's brains, that brings a whole new meaning to the word AWKWARD. Plus, come on, think of the conversation at the dinner table. "Dad, are these my brains we're eating?" "MMMMMMMM BRAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIII why yes honey, they are, would you like a second helping?" "Sure daddy, I'm a typical teenage girl, it's not like I ever use them anyway, and they are SO tasty!" "And completely fat free!"

Besides the sillyness, the game is pretty decent. I have no complaints with the gameplay in the single player version, and despite not completely enjoying playing as a lumbering Big Daddy, the effects are well done. You have a giant drill for your right hand that you can replace with other weapons, and your left can wield the same superpowers that the psychotic addicts use, so you can do dual attacks and attack combos as you progress in the game. The scenery is awesome, half the levels are afflicted with growing coral and there's other big daddies wandering about repairing random things, which was kind of absent in the first game. If you ran into a big daddy, chances are it was there to kill you. I think it was a nice touch and sort of explains why the whole city isn't gone, if these semi-robotic cyborg zombies are going around repairing everything. Of course, I haven't finished the game yet, but I'd be playing it now if I wasn't at work, so I can't say how it'll all turn out, but my initial review is positive.

Multiplayer is a little laggy. It works similar to single player only you start out as one of the addicts and work your way into a big daddy if you can, but the lag or glitchiness or wahtever the issue is, is kind of annoying. You'll be aiming at somcone and then POOF they are across the room, and it's not like they just jump there, it's almost like they teleport, because they are then moving smoothly and firing again. It's just odd. I'm not fond of how the gameplay is, either, it doesn't seem as polished as the single player game. But i give it good marks for effort, before you actually get into the multiplayer, there's a little prologue where you wake up in your apartment in the underwater city and you go around customizing your character like you were getting ready to go out on a date. lol So up until the point where I actually entered the arena and started the battle, i was amazed. After that, I wasn't so thrilled.

UPDATE: Okay, as I am getting on in the game, I am starting to notice some bugs. i can't tell if it's because I am using a trainer to cheat so i don't die and have unlimited ammo, or it's just an issue with the game, but the trainers I get are from a professional who gets paid for it, so I doubt it's an issue with the trainers. Basically, you tend to lose either the ability to use your drug-induced superpowers, or you lose your guns, and at this point in the game, i seem to have lost both at once and I turned off the trainer to see if it was causing it, so now I ran out of gas and can only bash people with my weapon arm. Which takes forever to kill them. Sigh. Well, I think the game is still decent, but until this whole trainer/game bug thing gets fixed, i'm stuck! More on this as the situation develops...

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Game Review - Mass Effect 2

First, let me preface this by saying that I was not actually going to buy Mass Effect 2. My nephew, bless his black little heart, probably wanted to know how it was without having to buy it himself (he's the cheapest bastard I know, i mean, seriously, he makes scrooge mcduck look like santa claus), so he tells me "I hear it's nothing like Mas Effect 1."

Well, that's true, I suppose. But that doesn't necessarily mean better. Now keep in mind I've only played a little bit into each game, but the first Mass Effect starts out like this. You get tossed onto a planet with a gun, some armor, and a couple soldiers as backup. I'm going to call them Redshirts, because I can't remember their names, but I am pretty sure they die. So you go through the first mission, you find some armor suits, some guns, and you have to pick and choose what you want to use on yourself and your redshirts. Along the way you meet more powerful allies, ones who don't die like bitches on the first hit, and they become your allies through the whole game. I would assume you collect guns and armor throughout all of Mass Effect one, but here's the problem I ran into. After the first few missions, the whole game is just running around. I don't even mean running around killing stuff, I mean, you run across the map to talk to this guy. He says, go talk to this other guy. You run across the map back to where you were, and it's the guy in the next shop. Then you run... well, anyway, it's a shitload of running with no fighting. Yea, I know, BO-RING. With a capital BO. And a capital RING too, even. yea. So after the first few missions, now this is even before I got my fancy schmancy little space ship, I got tired of the running around on a space station trying to do the talkie talkie touchy feely missions and uninstalled the stupid thing. If I wanted touchy feely talkie talkie missions, I'd have a girlfriend.

Mass Effect 2 is slightly different. You don't get new armor or weapons. You start with a set of them and that's it. Supposedly you can swap out pieces of armor that you find on missions with different pieces instead of swapping out whole sets, but I haven't run into that yet because I ran into a game design flaw called STUPIDITY. You start out in a system where there's a space station that has your first few missions. Big obvious markers on the space station to let you know, HEY DUMBASS, GO HERE FOR YOUR MISSION. Which, I need, because I'd get lost otherwise. But once you finish that mission.. HEY.... there's no markers. No pointers. No directions. I have no idea where to go next. I mean, I got the name of a planet to go to. But I can't go there because I don't know what system it's in. There's 5 other systems in the nebula you start in. But none of the planets are explored. And i don't even know if there's other nebulas or galaxies to look through, because nothing's been explored. And to do any exploring, you have to actually fly your ship there, orbit the planet, and scan like, every bloody square inch of the damn thing to find anything out about it.

Let me give you a perfect example of what I am talking about. I got this mission to go to this other planet and rescue some operative or other who sent out a distress call. Now, I know the planet name and what system it's in because the mission briefing on it was exceptionally helpful. So i fly to the other system and HOLY SHIT THERE'S A BUNCH OF UNMARKED PLANETS HERE. yea. Wonderful. So while I am trying to figure out if it's even the right system, I fly to a planet and start scanning it. Now keep in mind there's mineral deposits on these planets, and you need to use fuel to get to them and then use up probes to mine the locations you find, 1 probe per location. So while you are scanning every single inch of surface area on a planet the size of jupiter, you get a spike in mineral density. So while you're busy dragging your mouse pointer over the entire surface of jupiter, your little seismometer or sphygmomenaom... some graph will spike and you'll then have to drag your mouse back around to the point you thought you were at looking for the highest density of minerals, and finally you find it, and then you drop a probe (and you can only carry 30 at a time or so). And the probe mines and you get like 50 minerals of a certain type. And there are 4 types. And researching one research project out of dozens of research projects can take tens of thousands of minerals. So needless to say, you'd have to mine the entire universe to finish your research projects. So I'm mining away and I move onto the next planet (which didn't have much in the way of minerals so i moved right on), and a third, and as I am mine the third planet, i notice the name of the planet is the same as the one I am looking for! Not that there was any notification of that, but hey, there it is. So then I have to scan the entire surface of the planet AGAIN to find the beacon that is supposed to let me know where my next mission is. So I finally find it and then take the shuttle down, there's a brief firefight with like 3 guys in a 1-room base, and then it's back to my ship! Whee, isn't this fun.

So there was some additional content that you can download (luckily it was free or I wouldn't have bothered), so I noticed that mission was nearby. I went there, found the planet the usual way (I'm already getting tired of scanning every individual planet for minerals or whatever mission I am on, there's no other way to know if you found it or not), and went to where my original ship from the first game had crashed. So I could collect 20 dog tags. Yep, that was the additional content. Collecting the 20 dogtags was the only mission, there was no fighting, just running around looking for grey dog tags on a frozen blue planet for like half an hour until I found them all. Yippee.

I can tell you are already getting bored just reading this post, so I'll wrap it up. The game is f'in boring. It's no different from the original except that you don't get as much character customization with different weapons and armor. So it's even MORE boring. The brief firefights can be fun, but since they are usually over in seconds and you only end up facing 2 or 3 opponents at a time (and you have several allies with you at all tiems) they don't last long nor are they particularly difficult at any setting. And once I finished the starting missions and the ones I could find, I was lost. All I had on my next mission was a planet name to go on, not which system nor which galaxy to look in, and if you know anything about galaxies, you know how hard it would be to find one small point on one small planet in one huge system in one huge galaxy. So that's when I quit. I admit it, I am a quitter. Challenges do not entice me, FUN does. This game wasn't fun. If you like running around, talking to random people once in a great while, and rarely shooting a little, mixed in with a whole lot of sheer annoyance, this is your game. If you don't like those things, don't waste your money.

I didn't notice any bugs, so in that aspect, the game seems fairly well put together. But I am never trusting my nephew's opinion on anything ever again. I don't care if we both see a nude beach babe with large bazongas and he says she's got a nice rack, I am going to disagree with him. They are probably fake. I mean, any slut walking around on a beach naked with big boobs is probably going to have had breast enhancement surgery anyway, right? yea, that's what I'm thinking.

Monday, February 8, 2010

My Hair... Person.

I'm not even sure what you'd call them nowadays.

I think barber is kind of derogatory. Hair cutter makes sense, but you never hear it used. Hair stylist seems to be the most often cited term, but come on, at least in my case, all she's doing is dragging an electric trimmer over my lumpy scalp. There's not really any styling involved, unless you want to call "post-army crew cut" a style. Not that I was ever in the army, mind you, I just don't like messing with my hair. In other words, I wake up looking this good. Yeah, baby.

So my hair "stylist" to use the least derogatory term, is a bit of a "personality" shall we say. I think it started, oh, last summer or so, when i began to put on a little flab. I don't know whether she just has a thing for larger guys or what, but she began asking after my relationship status. Now I don't think she's hitting on me or anything, at least, she's married, so maybe she is, what the hell do I know, right? But I made the mistake of mentioning this blond chick at work next to me and my hair stylist suggested I ask her out. Since the blonde and I at work do not exactly get along, wait, that's not really true, we've never really had a problem with each other, it's more of an... we have no desire to "hang out" with the other person. At least, as far as I can tell, on her part, anyway. On my part, she's got great legs and if she'd hold still for 30 seconds I'd hump one of them. I may be exaggerating for humorous purposes. And maybe I'm not. But in any case, her ideas of fun and mine don't seem to jibe so I've decided to wait until she's 15 years older than she is now and maybe then we'll be able to make pleasant conversation. Since I'm already 16 years older than her and have stopped growing (at least emotionally) this approach seems to make sense. That I will probably have forgotten who she was 15 years from now never entered into my plan. I didn't say my plan was foolproof.

So after dodging the whole "dating a co-worker" issue with my hair stylist, my hair stylist changed her tactics. One day we were discussing fat, I can't quite remember how we hit that topic, and I was going to make a joke about being a porker myself. It's true, I have a spare tire. Okay, maybe a spare tire is a bit of an understatement, I could probably replace the tires on a semi. But she interrupted me in mid-comment to say "I've never been skinny myself, and I never will be" Me, being the polite sort, stopped trying to talk over her and let her continue. "My husband likes to have something to hold onto." she stated. Ah, I see, makes sense. No more needed to be said, but she continued anyway. "like a cowboy." Yes, I am not a moron, I got it the first time. I just nodded politely, smiling, hoping she gets that I.. no, she's continuing. "YEEEEEEEHHHAAAAWWWW!" she yells and then laughs.

Now it's not that this woman is unattractive and i certainly didn't mind briefly picturing her in a cute little cowgirl outfit, but my point is, that's probably more than i really wanted to know. If that had been the end of it, I'd have been happy. But no. Not at all. And it's not that I'm unhappy, it's just, I'm a rather private person (he says as he posts his every thought to the internet) and when people pry into my life I get, well, uncomfortable. It's rather like getting anally raped by a dildo, I mean, even if they use lube, it's going to be uncomfortable in some way. I have begun to suspect that my desire for privacy is why I have so few friends (ok, none), but then I think, naaaaaaahhhhh. Can't be.

So last week I'm getting my hair buzzed and she asks me if I am having a superbowl party. "Oh, is that this weekend?" i ask. I'm not trying to be a douche, I don't follow sports and have no friends, so I honestly had no idea the superbowl was this weekend. But she seems to get it, at least. "You don't even know who's playing, do you?" she asked. Smiling happily, I shake my head. I am proud of geekiness, and will take every opportunity to show off how little I know about sports, cars, and women. "Are you even a man?" she asks me. I'm not really sure what to tell her at this point because she's shaving my beard. I'm either the bearded circus lady in men's clothes, or yes, I am a man. "So they tell me?" I reply. Then, she somehow got onto the topic of why I come there to get my hair buzzed. My immediate response, when asked, would be, "because I am too lazy to do it myself." But, she was off on a tangent here and not up to being interrupted. Somehow she got the impression and I liked abuse and was only going to that place because i liked getting abused. Now, I like abuse as much as the next masochist, but i have no idea how she got that impression. So I am just trying to humor her and she's going off on it, telling me i'm a sick man and all. Well, I can't really argue with that, can I? So I agreed with her and that seemed to
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP
We interrupt this blog for a test of the spider alert system. If there had been an actual spider (or centipede) you would have been told to place your arms above your head, flail them wildly, scream like a little girl, and run in a random direction. Please note that there is no spider or centipede. This was only a test. You can put your arms down and stop screaming now. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.
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smoking a cigarette and then I said "So see you in three weeks, then?" And she laughed.

Well, that's all for this blog. Review of Mass Effect 2 coming later.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Communication

Relationships are all about communication. If you can't communicate, you can't impart ideas, you can't explain things, and most importantly, you can't tell a police officer why you woke up naked hugging the red and blue lights on top of his police cruiser. So why in a world where communication is everything, is it so hard for us to communicate? The answer? People are stupid.

I know I've talked about this before, but it bears repeating. Some people are dumber than a box of rocks. I don't even mean regular rocks, either, I mean really dumb rocks. Regular rocks are like geniuses compared to these rocks. I mean, these are DUMB ROCKS. I hope I am communicating effectively here.

I'm not saying I am immune to the whole dumb box-o-rocks scenario, either, I mean, I was just reading an article on the internet that said socially rejected people like us nerds, geeks and outcasts have problems maintaining relationships and interacting correctly in a social setting. There was specific emphasis in this article about how we get bullied more than normal people because we miss the social clues that would otherwise be obvious to us if we knew what we were looking for.

So, what social clues should I be looking for, someone's fist in my face? That seems like a pretty obvious clue that I am about to be bullied. Which would mean the bullies in society are responding perfectly to social clues by beating the crap out of us? Well, I am glad they are maintaining correct social relationships, then! This article is ridiculous, I'm not sure why I read it.

But obviously, geeks, nerds, and other social outcasts can have problems interacting with others. Well, old-school geeks and nerds, maybe. Today's geeks have ipods and hot model girlfriends and run cell phone companies. But I digress, because I am an old school nerd, and frankly, I don't consider anyone who is socially acceptable to be an actual nerd. I mean, it really goes against the whole grain of society, if you are socially accepted and popular, you are definitely not a nerd. It's like rule number 3 in the nerd handbook, or something. Speaking of whole grain, I hear it's good for your health, if by being good for your health they mean spending most of your time on the toilet.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, back to my point. At least we old-school geeks are smart. And generally, not dumber than a box of rocks. Like the people I talk to every day. Take today, for instance, I had a person call in asking for help with "the thing." You know, the "internet thing." You see, she was trying to use the thing and the thing came up saying there was an error in the thing and the thing just won't work now. Do these people not understand that the word "thing" is a generic term that could mean ANY thing? I felt like responding with "Well duh, there's an error in the thing, click on the thing and type in the thing and click ok on the thing and that should fix the thing!" Then again, she probably would just have said "okay!" and hung up. Might even have fixed the thing, who knows?

I heard an ad on the radio this morning for this play, I think it was, "defending the caveman" or something like that. I'm guessing it's something about how guys can be hard for women to understand. Well, duh. Not only are men and women completely different critters, we are also completely stupid when it comes to figuring out the opposite sex. I have a solution. Stop talking, bend her over the kitchen table and make rabid doggy-sex with her. Who cares what we have to say to each other? It's not about the talking, it's all about the COMMUNICATION, BABY!!! And once you've done that, ask her how well you're communicatin' with her. I bet she says you're extremely eloquent and wants to talk again later. Eloquent means "hung like a bear" in nerdgeekian.

And hey, if you want to try that with your local bully, that'd probably work since most of them are homophobic bastards trying to hide how gay they are. But hey, that's healthy social interaction, right?

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Gaming and AI

Okay, I just got a new game but I haven't played enough of it yet, so I can't review it yet. And by played enough, I mean not hardly at all. All I managed to get to last night before I went to sleep was watching the intro movie, which, I admit, was pretty cool. You know the name of my new game escapes me at the moment, but I'll play it more when I get home and write up a review later.

What I wanted to talk about in this post is gaming AI. AI means Artificial Intelligence, for those who don't know. Now I'm not going to say it's come a long way, because in my latest game, it's not bad, but other games in the past have been better. The most awesome AI I have ever seen is in the game Halo, which had 4 basic types of enemy aliens in the single player aspect of the game. The weakest type and the most common, was this little thing that looked like a scrawny teenage mutant ninja turtle, and basically used a small pistol to shoot at you and threw the odd grenade or two. Now the pistol was something you also started with, and you could always pick up theirs, so it wasn't a useless weapon, and several of these midgets firing at you at once could really wear you down fast. The funnest thing about killing the midgets was tossing a plasma grenade at them (plasma grenades stick) and then watching them scream and run around crazily trying to get the grenade off before it blew up. At one point, I tossed a grenade at one that was fleeing around a corner, and it stuck to his foot, and apparently there were more of them around the corner, because next there was a BOOM and the bodies of several of the little buggers came flying out into the hallway. Creepiest thing ever: one of the AI soldiers I was accompanying said "Nice throw."

Now, I know they've made AI in games that tries to feed itself and seek certain things based on need levels that periodically drop and then need to be replenished, giving it a sort of daily life cycle. And obviously the bots in the game that were allied with me needed to be able to see the enemy aliens and fire at them until they were dead. Nothing new in gaming AI as far as that's concerned, it's in most games. But this AI was not shooting at an alien when he spoke. He somehow was aware that I had thrown a grenade, and that I managed to kill several aliens with it at once, at the very least. Now I know this is nothing unusual for humans, we make judgement calls all the time and think nothing of it. "YOU THROW LIKE A GIRL!" and "COVER UP THEM UGLY TITTIES, YOU OLD WHORE!" are common things that we might say to friends and co-workers on a daily basis. At least, it's something I say pretty often. But for a simple scripted program to analyze my actions and the result enough to say something like "Nice throw?" Just creepy.

Also in Halo, there was an alien jackal thing that wielded a shield and pistol to great effect. Then a hulking brute that was sort of a boss monster, and annoyingly and most frighteningly, a cloaked intelligent assassin type alien that ruled the lesser ones and used them as bait to draw you out of hiding so it could sneak up on you and then stab you in the back. All good AI.

Which brings me to my current game, and I still can't remember the name of it, OH MASS EFFECT 2 yea, that's the name, now I remember, this alzheimer's thing is horrible past the age of 19. When you're 19 everyone just thinks you're drunk. When you're 39, people start to worry. When I'm 59, I'll be lucky if I remember to wear pants when I leave the house.

But anyway, the AI in this game is pretty decent and based on difficulty settings, so the higher your difficulty, the more the AI uses it's special abilities. Which sounds awesome. But I won't know until later. Sigh. I should have skipped work today to play my new game, I still feel a bit icky, but I'm not as bad as yesterday, so I think my cold is going away. And if I start just skipping days to play games, I may as well quit my job and play games full time. But then, I wouldn't be able to afford new games. Sigh. Life's little puzzles. I swear the puzzles life gives me are harder than the ones in the original Half-Life, and I hate that game. There was this one puzzle, like right after you started the damn game, where you had to jump on boxes and if you missed one and fell, you dropped into a bottomless pit of nothingness. I never got past that puzzle, and threw out my copy of Half-Life.

Now it's not that I hate puzzles, just pointless ones. But goddammit, WHAT THE BLOODY FRIGGIN HELL IS THE POINT OF MAKING ME JUMP FROM CRATE TO CRATE OVER A BOTTOMLESS PIT WHEN I DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO MOVE IN THE GAME YET?????????????????????????????? I don't think there are enough question marks in the world to express my frustration. And no, I didn't do a crazy german kid and wreck my keyboard, my mouse, and throw my computer out the window while swearing vehemently in a high-pitched voice, but I did sigh sadly in a rather manly way, close the game out, and uninstall it from my hard drive. That is about as much anger as I show in real life.

Good thing I have my blog to cut loose in, isn't it? :-)

Monday, February 1, 2010

I wonder...

So it's monday morning. Did you ever have one of those days where you finally manage to pry your eyes open with a crowbar and you realize you're at work? And you have been for hours? Which begs the question... Did I run over anyone while driving in? Hmmmmm.

So this cold has been kicking my ass for days. I know, I'm always sick. Viruses love my body like women love my body, only more so. Come to think of it, it'd have to be more so, because I look like a grumpy santa claus. On the plus side, if there's any babes out there with a bad santa fetish, I am your man. HOE HOE HOE

So i go out shoveling thursday night, and I'm out in the sub-zero temperatures and it's not really an issue because once I get warmed up I'm actually fine, but I guess the wind and cold did a number on my sinuses because my head has felt numb for like 4 days now. Which is odd because I would think I should get a ehadache or something, but this whole numb thing is just odd. plus my lips are numb. I think they're just dry, but isn't there some disease where if your lips go numb you're like dead or something? Oh no, wait, I know what it is, it's called being a slut.

So my boss comes to my desk while I am on a call and hands me my stat sheet. Supposedly the bosses here are supposed to review your stats with you so you can improve. I guess I'm good, not because I know what the stats on the sheet mean, but because he just handed it to me and walked off, and there's nothing marked on it, soooooo, yea. I guess I still work here. Good news, you ask? Eh, maybe. When I started this job I thought I'd quit after 6 months just to get the unemployment benefits. I been here 5 years now...

Something else that clued me in it wasn't going to be that great a day. I have a headset that I bring with me into work and as I am unfurling the cord from the headset, I manage to get it lopped through the arm of the chair I am sitting in, and then get it looped around the wheel of my own chair. I have no idea how. I didn't realize I was that dexterous. Maybe I should try out for the Ballet. Okay, bad idea, two things occur to me, one, I'd probably fall and break the ballerinas, and two, me in tights. Not pretty.

That reminds me, I once had a comedic contest in which a guy challenged me for title of funniest man ever. I asked him what his terms were, he said, if I were to lose, that i'd have to dance on the bartop in a pink tutu. If he lost, he'd have to admit to everyone that I was funnier than he was. I accepted his rules and he asked me if I wanted to go first or not. I told him it didn't matter because I'd already won. He asked me how I figured that. I said "Because me dancing on the bar in a pink tutu will be funnier than anything you can come up with. So whether I win or lose, I still win." Our judge, a mutual friend, conceded that I was correct and therefore, the winner, and funniest man ever. This story could also be titled "How To Win A Comedian Contest Without Actually Being Funny."

Some of you are probably wondering why I don't talk about my job more. And even if you weren't, I am going to tell you. It's mostly because I forget it as soon as I leave for the day. Yea, I pretty much blank it out. It's the same thing every day, anyway. I work in Tech Support, so it's a cycle of people calling in and asking for help connecting to the internet, and because of company policy which I keep asking them to change (but the bastards won't), I have to accept the calls and can't just hang up on the customers. I know, what a bitch, right? So here I am, talking to Bubba Jimmy Joe Bob's grandmother, and she has never seen a computer before in her life and wants to know how to design a house with it. First off, grandma, I only troubleshoot internet connections, so if you keep asking me why your printer doesn't work I am going to drive to your house and BEAT YOU TO DEATH WITH IT. And second off, you're DEAD NOW because you kept asking me about the printer! You couldn't even follow rule one, so now you're DEAD! So don't even think about breaking rule two. I'd raise you from the dead just so I could torture you and KILL YOU A SECOND TIME!!!!! So, yea, that's why I don't talk about my job much. They have anger management therapy sessions 5 times a day, I am thinking about attending...

ALL OF THEM. While drunk.

Happy Halloween!

And OHMRAT 2023 ends just as it began.  With a quiet whimper.  Sadly, I had no time this month.  Too busy trying to stay alive.  But, I did ...