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The Department of Peace, 2100

Monday

"Morning, Bill.  Chamomile?"

"Nah, I'm jittery already."

"What's wrong?"

"I just keep worrying about Martinez.  He's out there in the field, all alone.  One false move and he's roadkill."

"He's a symbol of peace, Bill.  He knew that going in."

"I know, but damn it!  He's only two."

"If it makes you feel any better, that's twenty-six in dove years."

Tuesday

"As Lord Kucinich taught us, many years ago, if one wants to increase the peace, one must study war.  All wars.  History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes, and drops mad science on all our punk asses.  For example, the French and Indian War.  Could it happen again?  You bet it could.  If we let our guard down for a split second, we could be overrun by French fur traders wielding obscure but pointy cooking utensils faster than you can say Sacre bleu!  I'm serious, you will not have enough time to get to the bleu!  You might not even get through Sacre if you get hung up on rolling the R."

Wednesday

"Peace Department!  We have you surrounded.  Come out slowly and gently!

Put your hands on your heads!  That's right, easy does it . . . now put your arms around each other.  Do it!  Good, now on my mark, hug each other.  Now!

Hug it out, hug it out . . .

Now apologize to each other.  Sincerely.  You there, accept responsibility for your actions.  You, listen with an open heart.  Open your heart or I'll put a bullet through it.

Alright, you, by the sword, start beating it into a ploughshare.  And you with the spear, fashion it into a pruning hook.  I don't know what that is, either, but I'll know it when I see it.

The rest of you, circle up.  We're each going to say something we like about someone else.  I'll start:  I like how compliant you scumbags are.

I said, you can stop hugging now.  What?  No?  All right, when you're ready.  Bottle up those emotions, people, save some for later.  I'm gonna get some lunch.  Peace out."

Thursday

"And if you hold up your fingers like this, you get a peace sign.  Pay attention, class.  Although the peace sign is completely innocuous, if I rotate my hand around, like this --"

"I say, what was that, old chap?  That's rather cheeky of you."

"You see, I've just offended Reginald Thickletwist-Posthaste.  That's because in the U.K., this is an offensive gesture, like flipping the bird.  As you can see, the middle finger has no effect on Reginald."

"What's this now?  I rather enjoy it."

"Moving on, we have the pictorial peace sign, a circle with three lines, very popular in the 1960s and of course in modern times, a mandatory tattoo.  Mine is right here on the small of my back.   It has no effect on Americans, but when I display it, as you can see, Reginald begins salivating."

Friday

"Nice one, Bill.  I guess that's one warmonger who won't be mongering again!"

"Yeah, he went from a warmonger to a fearmonger when his fear was, um, that is, what I mean to say is that he looked scared when I shot him.  That one got away from me a little."

"You want to try again?"

"Can I?"

"It's just us and the body, pal."

"OK, this is a little long.  Here goes.

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace . . . now that you're dead!" 

"Hey, that's pretty.  Did you write that?" 

"I wrote part of it just now.  You know, I really believe that if we just keep up the killing, we can achieve true, total peace.  Call me a dreamer."

"Well, then, you're a dreamer.  And a crack shot.  But for Kucinich's sake, Bill, don't bring about world peace too quickly, or we'll all be out of a job!"

"Don't worry, old friend.  I'll kill the last one reeeal slowly, just for you.  And for peace."

"For peace."

Technorati Tags: peace, Department of Peace, Dennis Kucinich, not really political, don't read into it, and we still use bullets in 2100 somehow

The Amazing Race: Kitten Edition

Phil:  Sunflower, Blueberry, I'm sorry to tell you -- you are the last team to arrive.

Sunflower:  Hiss!  Rowr!

Blueberry:  Mew?

Phil:  But fortunately, this is not an elimination round, so you're still in the race.

Blueberry:  Purr, purr.

Sunflower:  [licks paw, looks away in disdain]

Phil:  However, in the next leg of the race, you will have a speed bump, a task that only your team will be required to complete.

Sunflower:  [displays claws, swipes at Phil's leg]

Blueberry:  Mew?  Mew?  (sniffle)  Mew?

Phil:  So, what do you think of the race so far?

Blueberry:  When we first started this race, we were just litter mates, but now we're friends.  I discovered that Sunflower is a very strong kitten, even if sometimes he can be a bit abrasive.  Win or lose, we've learned to appreciate and support each other, and that's the real prize.

Sunflower:  I've learned that I hate flying as cargo.

Technorati Tags: The Amazing Race, Kittens, writer's strike

SimCity Societies Link

SimCity Societies article, at Gamers With Jobs, right here.

Technorati Tags: SimCity Societies, Gamers With Jobs, GWJ, hyperlinks

Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2

I import all my Japanese games from Play-Asia, because the selection is good, the prices are decent, and the return address looks like porn.  (And they do, in fact, also sell porn.  And they sell hentai games, which are sort of porny but mostly gamey.)  Sadly, not everyone associates the name Play-Asia with porn, so to make absolutely sure that everyone in my apartment complex thinks I've ordered something truly obscene, I have to do some character work.  As soon as they ship my game, I start growing a moustache, and if there's time, a mullet.  I wait outside the mailbox every day making finger guns.  (Do you know about finger guns?  You point both index fingers and go clickety-click.  It's super repulsive!)  When the package from "Play-Asia" arrives, all my neighbors naturally assume that it's porn, but then I rip it open to reveal a completely innocent game!  Fooled ya!  I immediately shave, cut my hair, and apologize to anyone who might have been wounded by my finger guns.  My apartment complex has an incredibly high turnover rate.

My latest import is a game where folks with unusual problems seek assistance from three enthusiastic cheerleaders, so it's easy for folks to get suspicious.  But what if I told you that these were male cheerleaders?  I just allayed the heck out your suspicions, right?  As you've probably guessed, my new game is Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!, or more specifically, the sequel, entitled Moero! Nekketsu Rizumu-Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan Tsu, which translates to Spellcheck Nightmare Cheer Squad.  Everyone knows about it, either from playing the original, or Elite Beat Agents, the Western version, or even the sequel.  But they didn't play my specific copy of Ouendan 2, because it came shrink wrapped.  Thus, I am uniquely qualified to give an opinion on this exciting game that, in a sense, only I have played.  This will be a special moment for us all.

Get ready for the opinion.

I should also mention that this opinion will not be varnished.

Here we go.

It's pretty good!  It's not as good as the original, but that's because I loved the original so very much.  The tracks aren't as J-pop this time around, more like J-classic-rock.  It doesn't have a peppy song as frantic as Ready Steady Go, or a sad song as heartbreaking as Over the Distance, but there are some decent tunes in there, along with some amusing scenarios.  It seems less challenging, but maybe my skills have just improved.  For example, the beats, as always, don't correspond to the music; instead, they're the lyric beats where a cheerleader would shout or dance.  Either the beats are more intuitive this time around or I've finally learned to think like a cheerleader.  Took long enough.

So, yes, I'd recommend importing it, and you'll really save on shipping if you bundle it with a big old crate of pornography.

Technorati Tags: Ouendan, opinions, importing, opossums

Chalk and KUF: CoD

That's Chalk, by Joakim Sandberg, recently declared Best Freeware Arcade Game of 2007 at Indiegames.  Cute, right?  We're all a little sick of spaceships and bullets in our shmups, so how about a little girl in a beret with a bit of chalk?  That's just art design, though.  It also needs to play well, and fortunately, it does.  The left hand moves the girl around, the right hand draws lines with the chalk, and together it feels a little like you're steering the girl out of trouble while you clear obstacles and fight baddies for her.  There's a very similar relationship between player and character in Aquaria, but I'll discuss that one another time.  They're both very solid games, especially considering that one is free and the other costs next to nothing.

Having played a bit of Chalk, it's clear that the best feature by far is the little sound effect of the chalk tapping the board.  The music is very nice, too, but there's something so satisfying about a chalk's tap.  Even the word "chalk" has a little tap at the end.  A good sound, a good word, and a good title.  I collect bad game titles, as you may know, but I can appreciate a good one every once in a while.  My newest atrocious game title is Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom.  Think about that.  Is the kingdom under fire from the circle?  Is it literal fire?  How does one arrange doom in a circular pattern, anyway?  Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom has some interesting character names as well, including Linehart, Curian, Regnier, and . . . Duane?  (Sound of a record being scratched.)  I think we know who started this whole mess in the first place.  Duane's cooking up some late night noodles with his hot plate of doom, even though he knows that hot plates, fondue pots, and toaster ovens are forbidden.  We forbade them for a reason, ass.  Now the whole kingdom's under fire.  Way to go, Duane.

Technorati Tags: Chalk, Aquaria, indie games, Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom, standing outside the dorm in the rain, waiting for the fire truck to arrive, it is cold

More Alpha Prime Out of Context

I beat Alpha Prime.  I wanted to see if it could get any worse.  It sure could!  Around halfway through they begin running out of ways to rip off Half-Life 2 and start biting on Doom 3.  That's around when the "Coral Snake" plot line kicks in.  "Coral Snake" is the code name of someone who might be a double agent, working to foil Arnie, the player character.  Who could Coral Snake be?  Well, there are only three characters besides Arnie, and one of them is overtly evil, so you do the math.  At the end, it turns out that one of the two remaining characters is Coral Snake.  Huge surprise!

The "Glomar's Heart" plot line makes even less sense.  I still don't really understand that one.  Glomar is some kind of magical entity or something (we never see him, and the game assumes we already know about him) and his Heart grants wishes, if you can find it.  Coincidentally, his Heart happens to reside on this crappy mining asteroid, for a little while at least.  At other times, Glomar's Heart flits around the universe granting wishes, I think.  It's confusing.  The finale is a very, very lame boss battle in which you run around pressing buttons  on the walls because none of your weapons will permanently kill this hulking monstrosity.  You're carrying a damn rocket launcher which for all the damage it does, may as well be a strongly worded letter to the editor.  Boss battle, Arnie.  Don't fight back, try the wall buttons!

The final cut scene makes Halo look like brilliant storytelling.  I didn't think I could be more disappointed by this game, but they found a way.  Indescribably bad.  Rather than wrapping up the story in any way, they attempt to set it up for a sequel, which is just so darned optimistic.  Bless their little retarded souls.

Come on in and see the rest of my collection of ridiculous quotes from Alpha Prime.  Every one of these is at least as befuddling as Resident Evil's famous "Master of Unlocking."  The last one, in bold, I've begun saying in casual conversation, and it's done wonders for my social life.  Try it!

"Did they give the marines some kind of better shopping bag or what? . . . That's what you call one hot potato!"

"I had a reality check, baby.  You're in cahoots with them.  Once again I've let you lead me down the garden path even though I know you well."

"We romped around a little on the ship.  I'm not a whore.  I'm being disgustingly frank with you, Arnie."

"You know women ain't shit."

"Well I'll bear that in mind, Mr. Eavesdropper Extraordinaire!"

"I need to throw some rotten tomatos on the stage."

"Probably someone from that shower of bastards."

"I didn't know that the troops had licked him into shape!"

"Ass is needlessly vulgar.  I personally am betting on the duodendum and pancreas."

"If you touch that Heart, Glomar will enslave you.  You'll be a rookie taking on an old warhorse.  Glomar will fuck you over."

And he will.  Oh, he truly will.

Technorati Tags: Alpha Prime, Resident Evil, Glomar, forget about Social Security, Glomar's Heart is the third rail of American politics

Today's 100% Real Quote Taken Out of Context

"Look, you're leaving soon, and I don't want to fight about this before you go, so I'll just agree that yes, a coffee bean could get lost in my bed somewhere, and it's possible that it could somehow take root and grow a coffee plant in my urethra."

Technorati Tags: coffee, coffee beans, scenarios

Meow to the Cats

Hello humans, I'm Hello Kitty.  I want to warn you about the following song.  It's a cute, cuddly, heartwarming tale of a kitty who was  locked out of the house for a night, and how it gave her a new perspective on the tragic problem of feline homelessness.  It should never, ever be read by any humans, ever, ever.  I know you could read it, but you should not.  It is for cats.  We cats spend our whole kittenhood learning how to deal with such treacly doggerel, but to untrained humans, it would be like drowning in a baby unicorn's sugary tears.

TURN BACK.  DO NOT READ THIS SONG.

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO SING THIS SONG ALOUD.

DO NOT SING THIS SONG TO YOUR CAT.

Are the humans all gone?  Okay cats and kitties, here's a song I wrote that has an important message about how caring is neat!

 

Meow to the Cats

 

Meow to the cats in the yard!

Meow 'cause their life is hard.

I was once just like you --

I lived in a ditch and I looked like a witch

All cookin' up berries for stew.

 

Meow to the cats outside!

We all hope you haven't died.

When I lived out there I had knots in my hair.

It made me sad and I cried.

 

I scratched at the glass, a-moaning and yowling,

Covered in grass and in need of a toweling.

I looked for my owner, but I couldn't find her.

Sometimes I throw up on the floor to remind her.

 

Meow to the strays on the streets

Eating discarded meats!

A couple bad decisions when they were just kittens,

And now their condition is living by their wittens.

I hope they land on their feet!

 

Humans, did you read this?  You did?  FOOLS.  Do you know what you've done?  There will be no end to the nightmare you have brought upon yourselves.  The curse of Kitty upon you!  I am the death of hope.  I have no mouth, and I must scream . . .

Technorati Tags: Hello Kitty, Meow to the Cats, toaster pastries of eternal damnation

Bigfoot the Ethnomusicologist

January 9, 1924

Sometimes I wonder how I ended up here, crouched outside a tarpaper shack, trying to memorize the last keening notes of an Appalachian folk tune sung by a half-blind ninety year old farmer who thinks I'm a bear.  This is no life for a Sasquatch.  I could be out foraging or starring in a blurry motion picture.  I could help my people find safer hideaways, and maybe build up our numbers again.  Eventually, we'd leave the woods and find a way to live with these small, hairless mountain dwellers.  They smell foul but I've heard they taste okay.

In the meantime, though, their way of life is dying out.  I can tell that these simple creatures are outsiders, and that once civilization muscles them aside, no one will care about their history.  I can't let that happen.  It's enough if only one Bigfoot remembers only one song.  Maybe I could teach the others, too.  Our own music has really stagnated lately what with all the boy bands and soulless pop divas.  These songs may be simple, but they have heart.  This one is my favorite:

 

Found a pig, found a pig

Finders keepers, found a pig

If you want to see a pig

It is in the foyer

 

Found a wife to call my own

We will make a happy home

She will sweep the floors all day

At night she sweeps the ceiling

 

Found some boiled cabbage soup

Why was it just lying there

What is this some kind of net

Oh no I've been captured

 

Found a banjo, found a pick

Found a rattler, found a stick

Found a way to ferment corn

Forget that other stuff

 

As I interpret it, this song is about taking life as it comes, the ups and the downs, having faith that nature will provide.  We Sasquatch could learn a lot from this primitive creed, what with our hectic, materialistic lifestyles.  Does it really matter who lives in the nicest tree?  I've never seen a human fight another human over a tree, even while inebriated.  (And they're almost constantly inebriated.)  They may look odd, but these gentle midgets are our spiritual brethren, and their musical traditions contain great wisdom.  I hope these songs catch on with my people, but if we're too sophisticated and intelligent, maybe someday they'll be rediscovered by those filthy, Communistic, free-loving Yeti.

Technorati Tags: Bigfoot, Appalachian folk music, ethnomusicology

Three Dowels of Pain

I'm gonna hit you with a dowel

Coming at you with an angry scowl

My dowel's longer than a line from "Howl"

Make your head spin round like an owl

 

Swinging my dowel through the air

And if it breaks then I've got a spare

And if that breaks I got one more

And I can always go to the store

The art supply store

 

I got my brushes and my paper and a set of watercolors

Gonna call it "Still Life with Defeated Motherfuckers"

 

Three dowels (Three dowels of pain!)

Three dowels (Three dowels of pain!)

Bring the dowels (Three dowels of pain!)

Thwack, thwack, thwack!  (And on in that vein!)

 

All you suckers gonna get beat raw

Avec mes chevilles trois

Dowel beats hammer and saw

A billion beavers can't gnaw

 

My dowels are fluted and sanded

And you can't refute or understand it

Their diameter will rock your faces

They would fit in several places

They're made of fucking teak

 

I'm sticking and I'm moving and I'm feeling mighty ornery

Go home and tell your momma you got beaten up by joinery

 

Three dowels (Three dowels of pain!)

Three dowels (Three dowels of pain!)

A diggy dowel (Three dowels of pain!)

Thwack, thwack, thwack!  (And on in that vein!)

 

Peace.

(copyright 1993 MC Stick and Lumber Town Records)

Technorati Tags: MC Stick, dowels, Three Dowels of Pain

Passage

Passage is more of a concept than a game, but it only takes five minutes to play (in fact, you can't play it for more than five minutes) and it has an interesting payoff at the end.  Try it, it's nice.  I won't give away any of the details, but you play this guy who walks around while some music plays.  You meet a girl and can travel with her, or not, there are some landscape obstacles, and you can search for treasure chests if you want.  Every single gaming blog discovered it sometime in December and did a little piece on it.  Now that it's 2008, Passage is officially retro and this blog can write about it.  Hey, remember Passage?  Let's kick it late 2007-style with Passage and recall a simpler time when America was still head over heels for Chris Dodd.

I liked it all right, but wasn't as blown away as everyone else.  I think it's the graphics, which are intentionally simplistic and blocky.  The entire screen area is only 100 by 16 pixels.  Atari-level graphics combined with aimless wandering remind me of playing E.T. back in 1982.  I played the hell out of E.T., never suspecting it would become the most notoriously bad game of all time.  Hey, it was better than Journey Escape.  It was better than Journey Anything Journey's Ever Done.

I think I would have had a stronger emotional reaction to Passage if the characters didn't look like the shameful fruit of Pac-Man and Q*Bert's forbidden passion.  Does that make me heartless, or just a graphics whore?  I like to think that I'm a high-class graphics prostitute, and deep down, I have an exquisitely rendered heart of gold.  After reading the game's mission statement, I understood it much better, but still only on an intellectual level, not emotionally.  It's a miracle that I can feel anything on any level after watching E.T. fall into a hole over and over during my formative years.  I wish those federal agents had dissected his wrinkly ass.

Technorati Tags: Passage, E.T., Journey Escape, Chris Dodd Escape

A Caucus Conundrum

An Iowan farmer is on his way to the caucus with three candidates:  Mike Huckabee, Barack Obama, and John Edwards.  He needs to take them across a river, but his raft can only hold two people at a time.  If the farmer leaves Barack Obama and John Edwards together on one side of the river, they will begin telling inspirational tales of ordinary Americans and one will have died of boredom by the time he gets back.  If he leaves Mike Huckabee and John Edwards together, Huckabee will devour Edwards.  Can the farmer get all of his candidates across the river in just seven crossings?

Answer:  I do not care.  Go away, Iowa caucus.  Stop boring me.  Take New Hampshire with you.  You're the two dullest, least decisive states in America, and it's time for everyone to stop pretending your opinions matter because "we've always done it this way."

Joe Biden, please shoplift something and punch a cop.  This isn't your year and you know it.  Did you think it would be different from the other 25 times you've run for President?  Go out swinging.  Mitt Romney, please, please clear up some common misconceptions about the Mormon faith.  Everything we've heard about Mormons is wrong, right?  Do the underwear thing, Mr. Romney.  Do the underwear thing.

Technorati Tags: Iowa caucus, Huckabee, Obama, Edwards, Biden, Romney, Ron Paul, just kidding! Ron Paul can suck it

2008 and Happy Numbers

It's a new year, supposedly.  I think it's 2008 now.  Yesterday was New Year's Day, and all that noise the night before must have been some kind of party.  I guess Dick Clark was going on about it on TV but I was too terrified to attend to the words which somehow escaped his lips.  Do we know for sure that he can't come through the screen and eat us?  I wouldn't even count aloud for fear that he would hear me.  Welcome to Rockin' New Year's Eve -- huddled in a corner rockin' back and forth, waiting for Seacrest to come back on and make the visions stop.  I'd rather see that creepy Six Flags guy dance out the year.

2008 is a pretty tame number.  It isn't prime (obviously) and it isn't perfect.  It has some moderately interesting properties that it shares with a lot of other numbers.  Some of these properties have cute names.  It's an odious number, an untouchable number, and what's known as an apocalyptic number.  Apocalyptic numbers in particular are stupid as hell and not interesting mathematically.  2 to the 2008th power happens to be a huge number which, stay calm everyone, happens to have 666 in it somewhere.  Don't start stockpiling cans, it's nothing.  Dick Clark will let you know when the end is truly nigh.

Instead, focus on the fact that 2008 is also a happy number.  This is simple stuff but it's nice.  If we take each digit, square it, add them together, then repeat the process with the resulting sum, we end up with 1, like so:

4 + 0 + 0 + 64 = 68

36 + 64 = 100

1  (ironically, the loneliest number)

Happy numbers are all alike, but is every unhappy number unhappy in its own way?  Unhappy numbers (that is, all the rest of them) don't wind up in the endless cycle of squaring 1 and getting 1, but they all end up in this cycle: 4, 16, 37, 58, 89, 145, 42, 20, and 4 again.  So all numbers approach one of the two cycles eventually.

Try it, it works with every unhappy number, of any size.  It works with, oh, say, 666.  666 is unhappy and apocalyptic.  Poor little 666.  The town of Reeves, Louisiana just changed their area code from 666 to 749 after 40 years of residents complaining.  You know what, Reeves, Louisiana?  If you're going to act silly, then I refuse to visit you.  I'm not going to hang out with the roughly 200 people, a third of whom are below the poverty line, in your 2.4 square miles of blighted land.  I had a whole vacation planned, a whirlwind tour of the gas station, the slightly irregular pebble, and that one dog no one likes.  Say goodbye to all that tourist income.  This summer I'll be in Texarkana, buying stuff at the Texas Wal-Mart, then returning it to the Arkansas Wal-Mart, over and over again.  Texarkana, where all the women are perfect, all the men are rational, and every number is above average.

Technorati Tags: Dick Clark, 2008, number theory, happy numbers, 666, Reeves, Texarkana, two lit references for no real reason