Banditos! Banditos! Banditos!

24 in D.C.

This season of 24 will be set in Washington, D.C.  For the next couple of weekends, Kiefer will be in town, which is OK, I guess.  I'm more excited about the tiny, tiny chance that they'll rename a street for Mary Lynn Rajskub.  We don't need a New York Avenue in D.C.  That's just confusing.  What's New York ever done, anyway?  Mary Lynn Rajskub can light up any room with a simple, joyful scowl.  Scowly Street, NW.  It's a one-way street, and don't cross it, or it'll pout and sigh all day.

From Variety:

While there, the "24" crew will also lense a lot of 180-degree backgrounds into which Sutherland and others can later be inserted via greenscreen. Gordon said the technology has finally gotten to a point where it looks seamless enough -- but it will still be a challenge given the frantic camera style that's a hallmark of the show.

"Some of the technology is amazing now," Gordon said. "You can insert actors onto the Washington Mall and do things you couldn't have done even a few years ago."

"Torture that goose.  Torture ALL these geese!  There's no time to explain!"

Technorati Tags: 24, Kiefer Sutherland, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Washington, DC

Zack and Wiki and Gobliiins

My new article on Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure is up on Gamers with Jobs, right here.  The short version is that it's delicious.  The game, I mean.  In the review (which is tangy and robust), I mention Gobliiins and The Lost Vikings, two old adventure games, which prompted Rabbit to suggest that I throw some Wikipedia links in there, because they're a bit obscure nowadays.  I wasn't sure whether to feel old or hopelessly out of touch, but then I thought, why not both?  Let's rattle on about the Gobliiins series.

Gobliiins was a 1991 puzzle game by the French studio Coktel Vision which was translated into English and distributed by Sierra.  There wasn't any dialogue to translate, but they changed the names of the characters from Oups, Ignatus and Asgard to Dwayne, Hooter and BoBo.  It's just a cultural thing; English speakers like their goblins named Dwayne.  Each goblin has one ability -- BoBo punches stuff, Hooter casts spells, and Dwayne can pick up and use items -- and you control all three together to solve puzzles.  LOTS of puzzles.  Lots of HARD puzzles.  Each level is only one screen, but that screen is packed with items and creatures and stuff, all of which needs to be manipulated in just the right way to achieve the main goal, which is usually just to exit the room.  Let's say twenty objects times three goblins, and everything needs to be done in a certain order, some actions are time dependent, and some actions kill you.  It's frustrating and unfair, but it's fun.  It's like life itself, but with three goblins.

(By the way, Zack and Wiki has a similar structure, but is much easier.  It's challenging, but never truly frustrating.  It's a very fair game.)

So how do you ramp up the challenge for a sequel?  Interestingly, Gobliins 2 dropped a goblin (and an "i") but gave them personalities which affect their actions, rather than an arbitrary task that only one goblin can perform.  The new goblins, Fingus and Winkle, can pick up objects and perform actions, but they choose different actions because one is smart but afraid of everything, and the other is a courageous moron.  It's even more difficult than the original, despite the streamlined goblin count.  I don't want to get all combinatorics on your ass, but there are more possible actions now, and the goblins are all like, "I'm too smart to listen to you," or, "Hurrrrr."  Again, like life itself, specifically high school.

Goblins Quest 3 (Quest?  Don't ask.) has only one goblin, Blount, but he's a werewolf.  Switch between goblin and wolf, wolf has his own personality, goblin can deputize other animals and make them sort of mini-characters, blah blah blah, puzzle induced migraine.  This game's so frustrating I have to wonder if opening the package was a test that I failed.  I honestly don't remember if I ever finished it.  I think I paused, left the computer, and moved to another town.  Looking back, though, the Gobliiins series always made me feel really good when I finally stumbled upon a solution.  Sadly, there's not much of a market for "impossible" games anymore.  It's 2007.  I should stop living in the past . . .

What's that?  Off in the distance?  Could it be?

Gobliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiins!

Technorati Tags: Goblins, Gobliiins, Coktel Vision, Sierra, Zack & Wiki, puzzles, puzzle games, love begins anew

Gimme My Taco

Last night, Jacoby Ellsbury stole second base in Game 2 of the World Series.  Now, I'm no baseball expert, but I know that can only mean one thing: free tacos.  Between 2 and 5 p.m. on October 30, anyone in America can demand a free taco at Taco Bell.  However, if you want soda or for some reason the first taco didn't fill you up, that's on your dime.  Also, it's fried crunchy tacos only, so you health conscious folks may want to dump out the innards and wrap it in rice paper or a leaf or whatever you do.

Still, I'm excited.  If everyone in America actually goes out to get their own taco, it'll be a cultural milestone.  Where were you when we got free tacos?  Did you eat yours immediately or wait around for it to appreciate in value?  How'd that work out for you?  Did you pass up the free taco as a protest because no one threw to second base so, technically, maybe Ellsbury didn't steal second?  Personally, I think that's unfair to a good athlete and taco benefactor.  Although I've never heard of Jacoby Ellsbury before, I kind of like him now.  I might follow his career a bit, just in case someday he gives me nachos.

A word of warning:  According to the fine print, "Participating Taco Bell restaurant manager reserves the right to deny Free Taco to any person he/she reasonably believes has already received a Free Taco or has engaged in any other fraudulent activity."  So, if you're scamming the Bell (and I don't advocate it), make sure your disguise is impeccable.  Don't be like those teenagers at Halloween who just flip their cap around and hit the same house twice.  If they're caught they just get sent away without candy.  If the taco jockey twigs to your con, he'll make things pretty spicy for you, my friend.  He's the man who handles your beef.  It's a deadly game of taco roulette.

Technorati Tags: free tacos, Taco Bell, Jacoby Ellsbury, stolen bases

Thoreau's On First?

The following is a transcript of an 1846 telephone conversation between Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Thoreau:  Waldo, it's Henry.  Were you asleep?

Emerson:  Of course I was asleep.  Damn it, Henry, it's 7 p.m.  I don't know how they do things in the woods, but here in town the cutoff is 5.

Thoreau:  Guess where I am?

Emerson:  How should I know?

Thoreau:  I'm in a jail cell!

Emerson:  For reals?  What are you doing in there?

Thoreau:  The question, my dear Waldo, is what are you doing out there?

Emerson:  Out where?

Thoreau:  Outside the jail.  Not in jail, like me.

Emerson:  Why would I be in jail?

Thoreau:  Why would you be outside of it?

Emerson:  Have you been, you know . . . I don't want to say over the phone.

Thoreau:  No, it's cool.  I'm just trying to make a point.

Emerson:  Or maybe, my dear Henry, a point is trying to make you.  See what I did there?

Thoreau:  Listen, I'm in jail because I didn't pay my taxes.

Emerson:  April 15, I keep telling you.

Thoreau:  I didn't forget.  It's immoral for me to give money to support slavery and the Mexican-American War.  So I refused to pay the poll tax.

Emerson:  Oh, is that all?  You don't have to support slavery and war.  You didn't know?

Thoreau:  What do you mean?

Emerson:  It's easy.  You just write a little note that says, Here's the money, but you can only use it for, say, haircuts for orphans.  Oh, and make sure you get a receipt.  If you see a bunch of shaggy headed orphans around, go back and they'll give you a refund.

Thoreau:  So they can't use the money for anything I don't like?

Emerson:  Obviously.  What kind of system would that be?  Someone else forces you to give them money just because they tricked a bunch of yahoos into voting for them?  This is America, Henry!  But you do have to pay.  Just make sure you pay for something nice.

Thoreau:  What do your taxes go towards?

Emerson:  Funny you should ask.  Look out the jail cell window and you should see it.

Thoreau:  The Home for Wayward Bisexuals?

Emerson:  No, but right next to it.

Thoreau:  There's some kind of a sign, but it's dark.

Emerson:  Okay, well in the morning, you'll see it says Emerson Rules.  And there's a drawing of me doing an ollie kickflip.

Thoreau:  Wicked!  I want one of those!

Emerson:  Pay the poll tax, then.  Oh, and Henry?

Thoreau:  Yes?

Emerson:  Next time you wake me in the middle of the night, I'm going to put my taxes towards a Do Not Call list.

Thoreau:  Oh, Waldo!  [twelve minutes of giggling, followed by obligatory but mechanical phone sex]

Technorati Tags: Thoreau, Emerson, Civil Disobedience, poll tax, telephone conversations prior to 1876?, that was your first clue

Extracurricular Activities

For today's video game post, click over to my new article at Gamers With Jobs.  It's an excellent site for folks who play games but don't go all crazy about it.  Well, sometimes they go crazy, but not the way twelve year olds do.  For example, they do "perspectives" rather than "reviews," which means they don't just slap an arbitrary score on a game and then kill time for two pages.  Scores sell games, but for reviewers they're a way to hide behind a number and feign objectivity.  Painkiller: Overdose, the game I'm discussing, is horrendously bad, even worse than you would expect from the title, but the lowest score it would ever get on any review-based site would be maybe 5 out of 10, and that's if the disc didn't fit in the drive properly.  Reviewers tend to default to "it's good for what it is" when a game lacks ambition.  Maybe there should be a scoring system that starts at zero and has no upper bound.  Does that make any sense?  Read the article instead -- I may have used up my coherence for the day.

Technorati Tags: Painkiller, Overdose, Gamers With Jobs, GWJ

Fighting Like Hats and Dogs

Get ready for the dumbest thing you'll read all week.  Guaranteed.

As you may know, I've always wanted to make the world a better place.  To this day, I haven't gotten around to it, because I had a thing, and then I thought I'd wait a bit and see if someone else did it instead.  The other day I was thinking about the phrase "you can't have your cake and eat it, too". It doesn't make sense to say it that way.  The original version is "eat your cake and have it, too" -- once you eat it, you don't have it anymore.  This is all common knowledge.  I was wondering whether reversing the verbs made people just a little bit more optimistic, because on some level they realize that it is possible, even as they use that phrase to deny it.  Also, mmm, cake.

You can see where this is going.  The next logical step is to start using the phrase "fighting like hats and dogs".  When cats and dogs fight, it's violent and they both get hurt.  But hats and dogs, as you can see from the visual aids here, are adorable.  You can't stay mad for long when you're fighting like hats and dogs.  Obviously this little change wouldn't wipe out war and aggression overnight.  That's unrealistic.  We'll need to come up with something for the non-English-speaking countries.

Possible objection:  Dogs and hats don't fight.  Answer:  Yes, they do?  Dogs don't like wearing hats, so they pull them off.  They fight the hat, and the hat fights back, just not very well.  It tries to stay on a dog's head to the best of its ability.  It's like fighting boredom.  Boredom is lazy but it's still in the ring.

Problem:  People will make fun of me.  I'll get tired of explaining it to everyone.  Answer:  That's not my problem.

Question:  Have you adequately proven a connection between the meaning of a phrase and its effects on the speaker?  People say nonsensical stuff all the time.  No one thinks about everything they say.  Answer:  Remember at the beginning, when I said you were about to read something really dumb?  You read it anyway, right?  And dumb as it is, you've absorbed the idea.

Follow-up question:  What if I just read all this because it was woven around a bunch of cute dog pictures?  How could anyone ignore an image of dog wearing a hat?  Triumphant answer:  YOU HAVE PROVEN MY POINT.

Technorati Tags: hats, dogs, fighting, and, like

The Waiting Game

Well, Jayden, I have one thing to ask you . . .

Is this your card?

It is, isn't it?  But how?  How could a web page from the early 21st century know what card you chose?  Is it magic?  No, just brilliance and genius.

You see, in 2007 I wrote a "post" on this "web site" using "written English".  I took the chance that despite current trends, people would still know how to read written English the way they can still listen to plainsong chants or worry about polio.  You know, it's pointless, but you can do it.  I put up this picture of your card, memorized the address, and waited for fifty years.  Every day, I giggled to myself in secret, anticipating this moment.

But what about your name?  Simplicity itself.  In 2007, there weren't any adults named Jayden, but a lot of new babies were getting stuck with what was essentially a made-up name.  In New York City, it was the tenth most popular boy's name, and was an up and coming girl's name, too!  I figured that, come what may, New York would survive in some form, as either a prison camp or alien stronghold.  That's why I eventually moved to New York, even if it meant committing a thought crime or collaborating with the space moths.

That's where I met you, Jayden.  I'm sorry to say that our friendship, love affair, or working relationship has been a pretense.  It could have been anyone with your name.  I mean, maybe once I got to know you, things changed, but believe me, when I first met you, the only thing on my mind was this magic trick.  But you gotta admit, I really had you going there.

What else?  Oh, the first card I showed you, the one that was wrong?  I knew that.  That was showmanship.  Building suspense.  I bet you thought I just forgot how to do the trick, because by now I'm eighty.

But wait, how did I know you'd pick the nine of hearts?  Well, remember when I pointed out the window at an interesting cloud?  When you turned your head, I used a miniature teleporter to switch the card in your hand with the nine of hearts in my pocket.  Today, in 2007, I started carrying the card everywhere I go, and started inventing teleportation technology.  Maybe I'm rich now from it!  But I didn't do it for the money.  I did it to see the look on your face, which I'm sure will be priceless.

So now you know how it's done.  It's really just a variation on Houdini's attempt to be reincarnated as a rabbit holding the four of clubs.  For my first trick, I wanted to start simple and do something in this life.  But Jayden, if you're reading this because your eerily intelligent rabbit knocked over a deck of cards and led you to this site, well, I guess I went with plan B.  Please refill my water bottle.

Technorati Tags: magic, magic tricks, careful planning

Brutal Legend

That's the trailer for Brutal Legend, Tim Shafer's new game featuring the voices of Jack Black and Lemmy from Motorhead.  I've never seen a game that looks quite like that.  Of course, we all know the game itself won't look like that.  Current technology doesn't allow a playable game with that level of detail.  I've always found it odd that movie trailers show actual footage but game trailers show something that tries to convey the experience without boring stuff like the pause screen and the tutorial level where someone explains to you how to play the game you thought you were playing pretty well already.

With enough style (and I think the above trailer has enough style to shred and/or melt the face off the last twenty non-Valve trailers I've seen) you don't need these piddling gameplay details, but just once I'd like to see a trailer that consists solely of a bunch of Game Over screens, with the tagline:  That One Jump Is Too Hard.  Jump Misser, plummeting to a store near you, December 2007.

The teaser trailer makes haruspices of us all.  We kill it with our opinions and search for omens in its entrails.  In the trailer, the roadie goes from axe slashing to driving to flying around.  Those are clues, and the order may indicate the relative importance of each element in the actual game.  Then he sits on a throne surrounded by sexy groupies, which indicates that Tim Shafer wants lots of young men to buy the game, the way they didn't buy Psychonauts.  (But if you actually bought Psychonauts, congratulations!  Welcome to our overlooked but self-satisfied little club.  We meet every ninth Thursday on a dragonfly's eyelash.)

Technorati Tags: Brutal Legend, Tim Shafer, Psychonauts, spellcheck doesn't like "haruspices"

Music and Race but Mostly Music so Chill Out

This week's New Yorker has a smart Sasha Frere-Jones piece about how indie rock turned lily-white and lost its way.  As a rule, I disagree with the premise that a genre can ever really take a wrong turn.  Of course, it's not my job to try to describe vast, shifting trends in music.  I just ignore the stuff I don't like.  For example, the article cites Wilco as an especially influential, overly white indie group.  I happen to loathe Wilco, but it's not because they're white.  I dearly wish I could claim that as my reason, it'd shut everyone down.  Instead, I just avoid them and any other Wilco-sounding band, so as far as I know, they're not influential at all.  Although it's nice to have music writers who try to explain the big picture, I think most actual music consumers are like me, provincial and confused.

Let's pack a couple more ideas into the musical segregation carryall.  First, let's recognize that sometimes music becomes popular because it makes money.  Some music sells things well, things like cars and lifestyle items and soda.  In the '80s, if you wanted to sell to white people, the best way was with rap.  Commercial-grade rap had very slow, easy-to-follow beats, and lyrics like:

My name is Snap Bracelet and I'm here to say

I go on your wrist with a snap.  Hoo-ray!

Ads don't rap like that anymore.  The emotion you're feeling right now is overwhelming gratitude.  I feel it, too.  I want white and black artists to have healthy, productive collaborations, but if their work can be used to sell Fruity Pebbles, bury that track.  Bury it so deep the magma people get hi-top fades and tooth decay.

Another thing to consider is that nowadays rap (not to say rap is the only predominantly black musical genre, it's just an example) requires a lot of legwork.  White music rewards lazier listeners.  I can sweep away a good swath of the radio dial just by disliking country music.  I can't do that with, say, krunk.  Do I dislike krunk, or do I just not get it yet?  Rap's a moving target that even rappers can't keep up with for long.  Within a few years, they can sound as dated as M.C. Rubble up there.  But you can trust country music to never really get any better or worse.

Rock and rap need to take precautions or accidents happen.  Four words: Ba, wit, da, and then ba again.  So, three words, really.  And not really words.  LEST WE FORGET:

So, can white and black sounds ever safely interact?  Um, yes?  I've cherry-picked a few horrific examples, but there are others, like, I don't know, Gorillaz.  You don't get much whiter than Damon Albarn.  He's British.  Whatever kind of case I had here, let's say it's closed.  Anyway, as Frere-Jones points out, you can mix it all together in your own head, thanks to the magic of Full Shuffle:

Pop music is no longer made of just a few musical traditions; it’s a profusion of strands, most of which don’t intersect, except, perhaps, when listeners click “shuffle” on their iPods. Last month, in the Times, the white folk rocker Devendra Banhart declared his admiration for R. Kelly’s new R. & B. album “Double Up.” Thirty years ago, Banhart might have attempted to imitate R. Kelly’s perverse and feather-light soul. Now he’s just a fan.

And let me be the first to state my name and be here to say, hooray that Devendra Banhart won't try to imitate R. Kelly.  Devendra Banhart sounds like someone bit off Donovan's left nut.  And given his history, R. Kelly probably did it.  That's how he flirts.

Technorati Tags: music, New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones, Wilco, Fruity Pebbles, Kid Rock, Damon Albarn, Devendra Banhart, R. Kelly

The Little Prince: Whimsically Naïve, or Developmentally Challenged?

Q:  What is this?

A:  Digestion.  Specifically, a boa constrictor digesting an elephant.

Q:  How did this happen?

A:  The boa constrictor was hungry.  The elephant let his guard down.

Q:  Will the elephant be all right?

A:  Come on, really?  You don't know?  Sure, the elephant will be just fine.  Minor lacerations and he won't be able to wear shorts for a couple months.

Q:  Will the snake and the elephant be friends after this?

A:  Honestly, it'll be a little awkward.  If the snake sends out a mass email, it'll wonder whether it should take the elephant off the list.  But what if one of their mutual friends mentions the email to the elephant?  It'll be rough for a while.

Q:  Couldn't the snake just apologize?

A:  For being a snake?  For injecting another animal with venom, then swallowing and slowly digesting it?  If he apologizes to the elephant, he'll have to apologize to every rat and kitten and puma he's ever digested.  That'd take forever.  He doesn't know where half of them are now.

Q:  Say, if you didn't show that cross section, it'd look like a picture of a hat.

A:  No hat you'd want to wear.  It's full of poisoned, dying elephant.

Q:  He's dying?  You said he would be fine!

A:  I wanted you to have one last moment of childlike innocence.  But now it's time to grow up and help pick elephant bones out of snake poop.

Q:  Why?

A:  Because it's what the elephant would have wanted?

Q:  Really?

A:  Not really.  I sell the ivory.

Q:  So am I going to see any percentage of these profits?

A:  Wow, you sure grew up fast.

Technorati Tags: Little Prince, elephants, snakes, digestion, whimsy

Beans -- A Journey of Discovery

Time was, when I wanted to add beans to a recipe, I'd open a can.  Then one day, as I reached for that cold, indifferent can opener, I thought, Why am I using a machine to cook?  Have I become a robot?  And the answer came:  Of course not.  What an illogical assumption.  Which freaked me the hell out, so I gave up canned beans and started buying Rustic Beans.

Rustic Beans are these dry, shriveled looking beans found in little plastic sacks on the same aisle as the Tin Prison Beans.  You'll see all different kinds of them, but don't get confused, just buy some in your favorite color.  They're so cheap, you can buy tons of them to pave a driveway or to stuff in a gun as emergency buckshot.

Cooking with them is simple as can be.  Just open up the bag, pour them on the ground, and play a little game of This Ain't No Bean.  About half the bag will be little clods of dirt or tiny pebbles that ain't beans.  Remove all of those and unless you have pica, throw them away.  I once got a bag that was all dirt and one bean, whom I named Lucky.  I gave him his freedom.

Now the real fun begins.  Put the beans in a pot, cover them with lots of water, and wait all night.  You could do something else while you're waiting, but if you let these little bean-watching moments slip by, you'll regret it someday.  The bag lists two methods: overnight and quick soak, which involves boiling them a little.  But think about it.  If the shorter method were preferable, wouldn't that be the only one on the bag?  Don't take the easy way out.  Soaking beans, like everything,  is a moral test.  I'm pretty sure that quick soaking is technically a venial sin.

After one sleepless but exciting night, you'll have some swollen, soggy beans sitting in nasty water.  They're like larvae of deliciousness, and you're about to hatch 'em.  Now you can boil them in some new non-stanky water.  And then eat them, of course.  I shouldn't have to tell you everything.  Some possible side dishes: parsley, napkin rings, or a tall glass of the stank water, which you should have saved.  You spent all night with that water.  Did you just throw it away once you got what you wanted?  You just failed another moral test, Captain Callous.  I can't even look at you right now.

So, the next time you get a sudden beany craving, don't open an unfeeling can with a scary machine.  Not even a simple machine, like an inclined plane or a pulley.  Just whip up a batch of safe, analog Rustic Beans.  Also, try not to have especially urgent cravings, because Rustic Beans take all damn night.  That's what separates us from the soulless robots: delayed gratification.  Plus the fact that we eat beans at all.  Eat enough beans and you'll pass the Turing Test with flying colors.  You'll see.

Technorati Tags: beans, robots, sin, tests, overnight soak

Portal Countdown

Wednesday night.  Midnight PST.  That's when they unlock the Orange Box.  That's when I start playing Portal.  Unless I get sleepy.  Which is likely.  So I might not play it until later.  Unless I'm sleepy again.  I should stop drinking warm cream.

My hopes for Portal, the time and space bending puzzle game, are that it will be tricky and fun, and that when I'm done, I can create my own little levels for it that will hurt other folks' brains.  Wired has a brief user's guide and this helpful diagram by Jason Lee.  I think that's a different Jason Lee, but it's more fun to picture the little mustache, isn't it?

Question:  Let's say I place one portal on the ceiling and I place the corresponding portal on the floor directly below it.  I drop an object, let's say my heart, into the floor portal, it comes out the ceiling, and falls right into the first portal again.  What happens to my heart?

Answer:  With sufficient momentum, my heart will go on forever.

Question:  No.  No more questions if you're going to be that way.

Technorati Tags: Portal, Orange Box, Jason Lee's stache of glory

Run and/or Gun

Thanks, Crystal Dynamics!  The new Wii version of Tomb Raider Anniversary will let Lara Croft run while shooting.  This article says it's a first for the series, and as far as I know, that's true.  I got out of the series early before it soured, about halfway through the second game.  Sure, the graphics improved, but I always liked the very first Lara, the one made of maybe twelve polygons.  You kids today don't realize lady archaeologists are sexier when you have to use your imagination a little.  You want her upper body to be one big shapely but immobile Lego, like she's wearing a sports bra made of cement.  Aww yeah, I'd dust that off with a tiny brush.

And now she can shoot while she jumps around.  It's funny how I expect that from every game now, except for Resident Evil, of course.  Video games have done nothing but impair my ability to kill anything in real life.  If you gave me a real gun the first thing I'd do would be to jump sideways while firing.  If you gave me another gun I'd try to fire them simultaneously in different directions.  On some deep level I'm convinced that in a desperate shootout, I could do a slow motion backflip without any loss of accuracy.  While all you people are slowly training your sights and checking your backdrops and whatever, I'll be out there mixing it up.  Sure, I'll miss you by a mile, but you'll admire my enthusiasm and spirit.  I'm like a gun toting Kerri Strug.

 

Technorati Tags: Crystal Dynamics, Tomb Raider, Lara Croft, Kerri Strug, firearm safety, Archaeology 101

Touching Letters from Adorable Children

Why I Smell

by Oswald M., age 5

First of all, I don't smell bad.  I smell like everyone else, just more.  And also, shut up.

Some people take a shower every day.  That is wasteful of water.  I don't ever shower, but I take baths, which is better for the environment.  Queen Elizabeth I took a bath once a month.  I take a bath more often than that.  So there.

As soon as I get out of the tub, I put on new clothes.  I have a system.  I take the old shirt, pants, and underwear I've been wearing and put them back in the drawer.  They've been "demoted" and can now recharge in the dark until they're clean again.  The other clothes get to vote on what my new outfit will be, which is a real honor, because that outfit stays with me night and day, learning from my wisdom.  Sometimes it's a popular outfit, or some clothes that haven't had much of a chance to see the world.  It's not up to me.

That's why sometimes I wear the footie pajamas for weeks.  The clothes have spoken.

Some people wash their faces every day, but I do something better.  I use the blow dryer on my face, which caramelizes the dirt into a hard, protective shell.  Also, it adds flavor.  My face tastes like peanut brittle.  Lick it and you'll agree.

And even if you care about the environment, you should change your socks every day.  But people don't realize that if you turn a sock inside out, it becomes a new sock.  Where'd the old sock go?  It's a mystery.  And you can also switch the left and right socks, that counts.  It also counts if you add stickers or decals.

Don't give in to peer pressure, or parent pressure.  No one can make you wash if they can't find you, like for example if you blend in with the backyard.  And although your friends might make fun of you, you'll make new friends.  The birds nesting in your hair will be your alarm clock.  The pinworms will sing you to sleep.

That's why I smell.  I smell because I have experienced life, and I don't want to wash it off.  And you can't make me.

Technorati Tags: stanky children, Queen Elizabeth, peanut brittle, pinworms

Zak AND Wiki? Bonus!

Continuing the Wii theme, one game I'm looking forward to is Zak & Wiki: The Quest for Barbaros' Treasure.  I'm also looking forward to never typing that title again.  Let's just pretend it's an old Sierra adventure and call it Treasure Quest.  It's colorful and pretty, I like the whole Wind Waker kiddie pirate theme, and it's promoted as an adventure game, with maybe a little platforming.  The DS has had some decent adventure games which took advantage of the touch screen, and this game seems to go way beyond that in integrating the Wii's motion sensing technology.  I love games that give me new ways to solve puzzles, where figuring out how the game works is part of the puzzle itself. 

But this trailer, from the Tokyo Game Show, gets a little too enthusiastic about features that every Western adventure game has had since forever.  "It's up to you to decide which item to use!"  Really?  You mean the game doesn't play itself?  Guess I better put down that hoagie!  "The door needs a key!  Is there a key nearby?"  Well, there damn well better be.  It's poor puzzle design to put a locked door with no possible solution in your way.  Of course, the most boring way to get past a locked door is with a key, and in the real world, people don't lock doors and then leave the key outside but just barely out of reach of a short kid.  Hell of a security system there.  Keeps out 100% of lazy midgets.

And one last thought:  Do Japanese people applaud when they watch someone play a video game?  That's so sweet!  I want people to clap for me when I play.  Damn this uptight no-clap American society.

Technorati Tags: Zak and Wiki, The Quest for Barbaros' Treasure, adventure games, hooray you used an item!, you are my hero!

W Double I

I got a Wii.  I'm now a Wii owner, and can now write about all things Wii with confidence and hands-on experience.  If I'm writing about the PS3, rest assured I just looked it up on Wikipedia.  Of course, all the new Wii owners wrote about it last year, so once again I'm behind the times.  I've been standing in line since December 2006.  Turns out it was the wrong line.  And get this, the second line I got in was also not the Wii line.  But third's a charm, and now I own a Wii, and I got to feed a baby goat, and Randy Jackson informed me that he, personally, was not feeling me.

What new casseroles can I bring to the table of Wii commentary?  First of all, I promise I'll never make a Wii pun.  I've done it a couple times before, with my friends, but that wasn't in print, and those were different times.  It's played out.  And I won't insipidly double the letter i or substitute "Wii" for all hard e sounds.  Check it out: implicitly, invidiously, interstitially.  If you've read other Wii articles, you know what a mangled nightmare the word "interstitially" becomes.  It makes Lex the Bookworm hide and cry.

Another refreshingly unusual (or boringly typical?  read on!) angle for my Wii story is that I'm bad at it.  Or at least, I need to unlearn all the years of experience with other consoles.  As kids, we would all jerk the controller while playing.  You press A to make Mario jump, but your hands also jump upward, as if that gave him more oomph.  As controllers got more complicated, we stopped doing that, because you couldn't mess with analog sticks, triggers, and buttons while waggling around like a bee with news.  But the Wii controller requires motion, and what's worse, sometimes there's no corresponding button to press.  In Mario Party, you wave the remote to make him jump up and hit a block.  I spent a full minute frantically mashing A and wondering why he wouldn't jump, even though there was a prompt right there on the screen.  And in Trauma Center, you apply the shock paddles by holding the remote and nunchuk towards the screen.  Somehow I could not believe that the game would register that action.  It seems crazy that the game can tell where I am in the room.  I feel like my privacy has been violated.  Does the game know what I'm wearing?  Is the next Everybody Votes going to be whether I should put on some pants?

So far, the Wii feels less like a game system and more like a weird appliance designed to produce and distribute Nintendo vibes around the room.  At its best, it turns people into little kids, and rewards them for acting silly.  At its worst . . . well, Nintendo vibes have been shown to cause obsession, bleary eyes, and corrupted spelling.  I'll try to remain objectiive.

Technorati Tags: Wii, Nintendo Wii, hypocrisy

Under the Blacklight, Rilo Kiley: 9/10

If you're a fan of Rilo Kiley, like I was, you owe it to yourself to give their new album, Under the Blacklight, at least one listen.  You don't have to listen to the whole album.  I only heard half of it before I broke.  Surely the second half is much, much better.   I have no direct evidence to disprove that assumption, and you can't make me gather any.  The Rilo Kiley case is closed.  Why are you so interested in dredging up all that ancient history?  Let the dead stay dead.  The alternative is gross.

Oh man, this new album.  Where to begin?  It hurts all over.  It sounds like Bonnie Raitt.  The local Bonnie Raitt fan in my circle informs me that it sounds like someone trying to be Bonnie Raitt, but failing, because they are bad, whereas Bonnie Raitt is, I think they said, not bad?  Good?  I forget.  They compared Jenny Lewis to Sheryl Crow, and not even favorably.  I asked a Mac person who said that it sounded like Bill Gates released an album.  I also consulted a snake, who said, "Who put on that damn mongoose music?  That mongoose sucks."

(This video's a little racy, possibly NSFW.  Mostly just cheesy.)

Rilo Kiley just played the 9:30 Club here in D.C., which sounds like it was a decent show, except for people in the audience talking.  I'm sorry I missed it, if only because they played several songs from their previous album, More Adventurous.  That was a nice album.  A bit over-produced, but deep down it was kind of raw and quirky.  All pop music is either too good, which is boring, or too bad, which is intolerable.  More Adventurous was very good, and just bad enough.  Under the Blacklight is a pitch-perfect reproduction of someone else's incredibly shitty album.  I give it nine out of ten stars, where stars are defined as giant flaming balls of gas which will instantly kill you if you go anywhere near them.

Technorati Tags: Rilo Kiley, Under the Blacklight, 9:30 Club, More Adventurous, Moneymaker, train heist music reviews