Conversations With Charlemagne

Often (usually while showering) I wonder what it would be like to kidnap someone from a more primitive time, bring him or her to the present, and try to explain the world of their future. I imagine it would go a little something like this:

Me: So, anyway, Chuck, this is a cell phone.

Chuck: [Speaks excitedly in some forgotten dialect of Old Frankish.]

Me: I see this is going to take some time.

[Assuming we can properly communicate…]

Me: Like I was saying, Chuck, this is a cell phone.

Chuck: A cell what?

Me: Cell phone.

Chuck: A what phone?

Me: Okay, this is a device that allows people in remote locations to communicate with one another.

Chuck: Fuck! It glows!

Me: Yeah, but check it out: I can use it to talk to a person thousands of miles away as if he were right here next to me.

Chuck: Are all people from your time powerful wizards?

Me: Pretty much.

Chuck: [Draws his sword.] Then I will scourge the necromancers of this land in the name of the Christ!

Me: No, wait! It’s just science!

Chuck: What is that, some kind of Moorish sorcery?

Me: No, it’s not fucking magic, you ape! This is a device that transmits information to orbiting satellites via radio waves. It operates on electricity, which--

Chuck: I’m not hearing anything that doesn’t sound like wizardry.

Me: Okay, here, just play with this pocket calculator while I check Wikipedia for a second.

Chuck: Yes, you consult your fantastical grimoire of charms and curses while I dash this unholy offense against the flat of my blade!

Me: Fine, go ahead. My phone has a calculator on it anyway. God, what a cretin.

[After re-familiarizing myself with the principles of electricity…]

Me: I see that you’ve managed to expertly disassemble that pocket calculator.

Chuck: I was quite surprised to see no imps spring from its corpse, though it seems perfectly reasonable to me that they should be invisible.

Me: Naturally. So anyway, to explain electricity I first have to explain electrons. Which means I kind of need to cover atomic theory. At least. I printed out kind of a worksheet you can follow along with to help grasp the basic concepts… and I can see that you’re bored already.

Chuck: Quite. Do you have any other unholy relics for me to smash?

Me: Okay, forget science. I didn’t want to do this, but you leave me with no choice. Behold… INTERNET PORNOGRAPHY!

Chuck: [Engaged in careful study.] These women…

Me: [Expectantly.] Yeah?

Chuck: Where is their hair? They are all shorn, as if mere babes!

Me: Oh, they’re babes all right. Check this out…

Chuck: And they are grotesquely emaciated. Are these women slaves of some kind, taken prisoner in conflict? Are they deprived of food for the sick pleasure of your race of vile magicians? Is it part of some demonic ritual?

Me: Charlemagne the chubby chaser, huh? You like the big women? You need a little cushion for the pushin’?

Chuck: As a god-fearing man, I prefer not to copulate with skeletons.

Me: Fine. Here are some fat girls taking it in all holes. How does that make you feel?

Chuck: It bores me.

Me: What!?

Chuck: Look, kid. I’ve waged war from the Spanish March to Saxonia. I’ve put thousands to the sword. I rule an empire. AN EMPIRE. Do you have any idea how much tail an emperor gets? Son, I’ve fucked more people than you’ve ever met.

Me: Oh. So being an emperor… that’s a pretty sweet gig, then?

Chuck: You couldn’t possibly imagine.

Me: I see. Need any wizards?

True Tales From the Shallow South: Stay Classy, Kentucky!

From the “I’m not racist, but…” file:

I bet Randall has spent many a sleepless night thinking about enticing black males.

Letter of Resignation

Attention: Human Resources
CC: God

When I joined this enterprise nearly 30 years ago, it was under the assumption that it was a growth-based firm with a clear vision for the future. In the intervening decades I have seen this organization’s seemingly unlimited potential squandered again and again on one fruitless, self-destructive enterprise after another. Thus, it is with a heavy heart that I tender my resignation from the human race, effective immediately.

My own personal growth with this company has been hamstrung by the incompetence of upper management, which seems content to wallow in luxury perks at the expense of progress. Worse than that, I have seen numerous programs falter under this entrenched attitude of entitlement and selfish aggrandizement, including (but not limited to) space exploration, alternative energy, solutions to ongoing geopolitical problems, waste management, and education of future generations.

At the very heart of my complaints is this defective corporate culture. I have held out hope for many years now that we were on the verge of a shake-up, a change in the board of directors that might send this company in the direction under which it at one time seemed destined. I am no longer able to hold on to such a foolish, futile hope. This company has set itself firmly down the path of a doomed future (and I do not speak of your half-hearted environmental programs, which is primarily an outgrowth of this inveterate self-love).

The truth is that this company will not last. Disaster is inevitable, and you have done nothing to prevent it—or even to mitigate the damage. Instead of securing a future for this company and its inheritors, you have satisfied yourself with being the last princes of a city on fire. We are surrounded—as literally as one can imagine—with resources ripe for the exploitation, in amounts that promise a prosperous future for untold generations. Again, management has preferred to use our treasure for their own ostentatious tombs. I can only hope that when your doomsday comes it will consume the last of your kind and pave the way for a new company to take its place: one with actual vision.

As the goals of this company and my own are in irreparable conflict, I have no choice but to depart. I can only hope that somewhere out there is a company willing to take up the mantle that this one has gleefully, bafflingly abandoned. If there is not, it will be necessary for someone to create one.

With not malice but sorrow,
Nobody Important

A Harsh Political Reality

It’s much easier to be a celebrity demagogue than an actual leader. You are not obligated to make good on any promises, nor are you required to respond effectively to any challenges.There’s no expectation of accountability, as you have no authority. All that is required of you is talk, and the closer you cleave to the 8th grade comprehension level of your fan base (supporters seems a disingenuous term) the more successful you will be. Speak of policy only in generalities; it’s not your job to come up with actual ideas. Your job is simply to provide form and figure for the undifferentiated plebeians who—by their very nature—know not what the fuck they do.

It is a supremely cushy job, and you would have to possess a truly legendary stupidity to want to ruin that by running for actual office.

Imagine being such a person, a simple voice unused to actual challenge. Imagine your custom is to be fawned over by drooling simpletons who like you precisely because you don’t seem to be any smarter than they are. Would you really want to throw yourself into the wolf pit by seeking nomination? Would populist rhetoric shield your neck from people who have spent decades sharpening their knives for the express purpose of slitting throats?

Such a person, more suited for a book signing or a softball interview, would be eaten alive by the opportunistic, Machiavellian world of American politics. It would be an absolute bloodbath, and a humiliating enterprise for that certain fool. A person cannot be both a leader and a celebrity.

At first glance, leadership and celebrity seem similar. Both are fickle enterprises that are reliant on the public will. This is superficial.

Leadership implies action, and controversy, and the possibility that people will grow to hate you for what you do. Yet the post demands that you do, for better or worse, and submit to the heartless forces of history for judgment.

Celebrity is inert: a passive enterprise that is buoyed up entirely by the throng. It is—as they say—being known simply for being known, at best for what you represent but never for what you actually do. The leader does not have the luxury of being reduced to a symbol until long after his or her death. The celebrity is instantly transmogrified by the crowd, pseudo-immortalized in flesh, and stripped of all essential human features. This is especially true if the essence of your celebrity is parroting the simplistic opinions of a benighted subgroup. You become those opinions; you become those people. They tie their egos to you and, as a consequence, your ego becomes tied to theirs—your identity is defined completely by them. It is a gruesome symbiosis, one which the leader cannot afford or maintain. The good news is that once inaugurated as a Symbol of the (Certain) People, you become incapable of doing any evil in their minds; however, you are also deprived of the ability to do any actual good, as doing would invite controversy and potential disdain. Your role is but to preen, and grovel, and pander until the day you die.

Even then history will deny you judgment.

A One-Sided Conversation

Based on a true story.

“Did you hear about Lord Monckton? He called out Al Gore on global warming. He said that Gore needs to either come and debate him or shut up and admit that the data shows that global warming does not exist. All of the studies clearly demonstrate that the earth has been cooling for the last thousand years. Have you ever taken a statistics class? I took one last semester that taught me how any statement can be proven or disproven by statistics. Hold on…

“So last weekend I felt myself starting to get a little sick. I had kind of a sore throat. What I do when I feel myself getting sick is I take a shitload of vitamin C. Like, five times the legally recommended dose of vitamin C. If I took any more my kidneys might shut down. Then I go to bed and that nukes the cold. I haven’t been sick in five years. Hold on…

“I was in class yesterday and the professor was showing a PowerPoint presentation about left-wing totalitarianism and right-wing totalitarianism. I was like ‘How can you have right-wing totalitarianism? That’s an oxymoron.’ Well, because, if you define left-wing as ‘more control’ and right-wing as ‘less control—’ No, that’s not the point. It’s like if you had a scale with bicycles at one end, and SUVs at the other end, then you showed a picture of a Hummer and said it was a bicycle. Like fascism is left-wing—. Because when they founded Nazism they explicitly said that it was socialist—. The only difference between Communism and Nazism is that one wants to take control over everything for everyone, and the other wants to take control for a specific group of people. Hold on…

“I’ve been trying to find this specific oyster sauce that I like to use when I cook, but I just can’t find it in this state. Do you know what sauce I’m talking about? Have you ever had Chinese food? You know that sauce that tastes, like, super good? Yeah, it’s not soy sauce; it’s oyster sauce. What happened was, like, a hundred years ago this Chinese guy was making oyster soup but he left it to cook too long. Like, he went out and then came back, and it was over-cooked. Like, way overcooked. Hold on…

“So I have a bunch of people coming over tonight and I’m supposed to cook. I make these drummies that I use the oyster sauce with. We’re going to watch an episode of this anime show that’s been going on for, like, hundreds of episodes. These two characters are supposed to fight and they’ve been building it up for, like, two years. One of them is the other’s student and what happened was—hold on…

“I heard about this game called Shogun. It’s like Spin the Bottle or Truth or Dare, only Japanese. Everyone kind of draws these straws—you know, like where usually one person gets a short straw and gets screwed, only in Shogun one person gets to be the Shogun and he calls out a number—all the sticks are numbered—and then says what the person with that number has to do. And they have to do anything he says. I was watching this anime where a bunch of guys were playing Shogun with an actual Shogun. Like, the government in the show is run by a secret group of people, and they tell the Shogun that he has to leave Neo-Tokyo and go live among the people for a while. Because he’s forgotten what it’s like to be, like, one of the regular people. So he’s playing Shogun and he keeps getting screwed, everyone gets to tell him what to do. Hold on…

“I’m designing a Babylon 5 mod for this game that I play with my clan. I’m in charge of doing the entire Earth Alliance tech tree, but I really want to do the Minbari tech tree. I’m hoping that when they see what a thorough job I do on the Alliance that they’ll let me do the Minbari. Hold on…

“So I don’t get what people see in Macs. The Mac is like a golf cart. It’s really good for one specific purpose where you don’t need a lot of power. But you don’t want to drive it on the highway. No, what I’m saying is that a PC can do a lot of things that a Mac can’t. You can do word processing, use the Internet, play games—. No, that’s not the point. I—I can’t talk about this anymore. You don’t get it. Just—hold on…”

I Write Angry E-mails to Faceless Multinational Corporations While Drinking Bourbon

Dear Dr. Pepper,

You are an asshole. I only signed up for your cocksucking newsletter because you promised me a free Dr. Pepper for Chinese Democracy coming out in '08. However I NEVER GOT MY FREE FUCKING DR. PEPPER. Yeah, because your cocksucking servers were down all fucking day. It was abundantly clear that you had no intention of making good on your promise to give everyone in America a free artificially-flavored beverage. Instead, you used these highly convenient technical difficulties as a means to renege on your solemn promise to America. This is COCKSUCKER BEHAVIOR of the HIGHEST ORDER.

It has been well over a year since that day—the day of your greatest shame—and yet you continue to send me your bullshit newsletter. I can only interpret that as a slap to the fucking face.

Desist immediately, you cocksucking assholes. I don't give a shit about your noxious sugarwater anymore, and I do not give a fuck about these "Sugarland" assholes. One of them looks like a homosexual parody of a cowboy and the other is not fat but looks like she really ought to be so (her cheeks are paradoxically hollow yet chipmunk-like). I consider these degenerate hillfolk to be appropriate spokespeople for your perfidious and thoroughly ugly business.

Also, there should be a period after “Dr” but you can’t even get that right.

I hope that a massive corn smut bankrupts you. I hope that your children grow up in a dystopian future ruled by the iron fist of Mr. Pibb.

Signed,
A BILIOUS ENEMY

---

I remember writing this quite vividly, but the precise thought process at work escapes me. The e-mail in question arrived at my Hotmail account, which I use entirely as a spam magnet. So I really can’t imagine why I was so upset to actually receive spam. I suppose it was just the principle of the thing.

Windows 7 Speech Recognition vs. Literature

Lolita, light of my life, the fire of Maya lin’s a period my scene, my soul. Lo – personnel press the capacity datata: the tip of the town taking it to the three steps down the power to happen, and three, on the teeth. Low. Movie. Top.

She was alone, the plane loaded, in the morning, spending 4 feet 10 and one sock. She was alone in slacks. She was Daly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always will be a period

Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In fact, there might have been no will be at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl – child. In a button stung by the city. Owen? About as many years but only two was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the Serbs, the misinformed, simple, no bowl – wing serves, convened. Look at this tangle of forms.

---

But as a greater sense of awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transforming his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armored action placated, back in when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome like brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the `hardly keep in position that was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thing compared to the rest of his bald, which helplessly before his eyes.

What has happened to me? He thought. It was no green. His room, a regular human bedroom, only rather too small, like quite a bit of the four familiar walls. Above the table on which a collection of cloth samples as unpacked and spread out—Samsung was a commercial traveler – home the picture which he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine put to a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady, with a fur cap on in the first goal, siting of bright and holding out to the spectator a huge firm up into which the whole of reform had vanished!

---

See the child. He is pale incident, he wears a thing in regulating sure. He spokes the scullery fire. Outside like dark turn the fields with rags of snow in darker woods beyond the harbor yet a few last wolves. His fault are known for hearers of wood and drawers of water but intruders fathers been a schoolmaster. He lies in drink, he quotes from poets whose names are now lost. The point grudges by the fire and watches him.

Knight of your birth. 33. The way and it’s they were called. God help us stores did fall. I looked for blackness, polls in the heavens. The Gipper stove. The mother dead these 14 years that incubating our own post the creature who would carry her off. The father never speaks her name, the child does not know it. He has a sister in this world that he will not see again. He watches, pale and unwashed. He can neither read nor write in a million birds already a taste for mindless violence. All is to read present in that visage, the child of the father of the man.

---

At the beginning of July, during a spell of exceptionally hot weather, towards evening, a certain young man came down onto the street from the little room he rented from some parents in S—lane and slowly, almost hesitantly, set off towards K—N bridge.

He had succeeded in avoiding an encounter with his landlady on the stairs. His room is situated right under the root of the tall, five story tenement, and sooner resemble a closet and a place of habitation. His landlady, verbally rented this room with dinner and a maid, lived on the floor below a separate apartment, and each time you wanted to go down to the street he had to pass his landlady sketching, the door of which was nearly always wide open onto the stairs. And each time, as he passed it, the young man had a morbid sensation of fever, of which he was ashamed of which caused him to frown. He was heavily in debt to his landlady and was afraid of running and we’re.

---

Enter Richard duke of Gloucester, solace.

Rich. Now is the winter of our discontent
Maybe glorious summer by the son of York;
And all the clouds that bordered on our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean curry.
Now are our brows about the victorious wreaths;
Power bruise arms home for monuments;
I were stern alarms changed to marry meetings;
104 Marches to delightful measures.
Green – visage more Moved his wrinkled front;
And now,—instead of mounting barbs deeds,
To fight the souls of fearful adversaries,—
He capers Kimberly and a ladies chamber
To the lascivious and pleasing a violent.

---

The roar shocks journal. October 12, 1985.: Daughter carcass in Ali this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. The city’s afraid of me. I’ve seen its true face.

The streets are extended daughters and the gutters are full of blood and one that drains finally stepped over, although vermin will drown.

The accumulated field of all their sex and murder will fall about their waists and all the wars and politicians will look up and shouted “save us!”…

… And I’ll look down, and was her “know.”

They had a choice, all of them. They could’ve following the footsteps of good men like my father, or President Truman. Decent man who believed in a day’s work for a day’s pay.

Instead they follow the droppings of lectures and communists and didn’t realize that the trail over precipice until it was too late. Don’t tell me they didn’t have a choice. Now the whole world stands on the brink, sparing down into bloody hell, although as the bruins and intellectuals and smooth talkers…

… And all of the sun, nobody can think of anything to say.

Windows 7: A Few Thoughts

I took the plunge with the latest version of Windows after a mysterious sprite excreted a copy--from some unspeakable orifice--onto my chest as I slept. I've been using it continuously for the last several days and am prepared to make a few comments.

First, it was very childish of the installer to offer to backup my old XP files then, after I clicked "YES," to tell me that it was going to mangle them instead. It later told me that it was joking, but I found that all of my old MP3s had been replaced by a single Depeche Mode box set--in 64kbr WAV format.

Also, during the install, a very disturbing video played that depicted Mac users being fed to a multi-phallused beast with a mouth shaped like a vagina. A very strange song played during this video that made my head hurt. At some point I passed out. When I woke up the installation was done, so I can't really complain, but still ALL MAC USERS MUST SUFFER AND DIE SUFFER AND DIE SUFFER AND DIE SUFFER AND DIE.

When I was finally allowed to use the OS (after a brief quiz on the succession of Holy Roman Emperors--DRM these days, yeesh), I found the new taskbar very refreshing. For those not in the know, here's how it works:

Instead of the old system where every program had a little bar at the bottom of the screen, each discreet program is now represented by a tiny picture of an old man defecating the program icon. When you hover over the icon a list of Chinese characters appear that represent all open windows for that application. The characters are color coded by age according to the alchemical process of perfect unification of matter and spirit (nigredo, albedo, citrinitas, and rubedo). This creates a kind of fun uncertainty (Am I checking my e-mail or formatting my hard disk?) until you get used to the system (and while you only really need to memorize a fraction of the 50,000 traditional Chinese characters, I'd go ahead and pick up a copy of Rosetta Stone anyway, for reasons that will become obvious later).

Windows 7 immediately detected my hardware and downloaded the appropriate drivers. I could have done without it telling me that ATI video cards are for "fags and n00bs," though. I already know that and the shame haunts me daily. I did have a major ordeal finding Windows 7 64-bit drivers for my USB Pork Roaster, though, but it's a pretty bleeding edge piece of equipment.

I want to take a moment to talk about the sample media that come with the OS. It’s traditional for Windows to offer a smattering of “sample pictures” and “sample music” and such, but Windows 7 takes this to a bizarre and humiliating new level. The “sample pictures” are all pornographic MS-Paint illustrations of Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters, and the “sample videos” are haunting compositions consisting of static, shadowy figures, and ominous garbled speech that an antiquarian friend of mine assures me is a rare dialect of Akkadian. These videos give me headaches and nightmares but I find myself unable to stop watching them.

Back to the OS itself. The obtrusive Vista UAC is gone, and in its place is a sneering, sarcastic creature called MOLOCH. He has three settings: Off (not recommended), Jerkass, Motherfucker and Absolute Bastard. When I tried to turn him off he made my screen flicker in a strange pattern that made me feel sad and sleepy. I’ll never try it again. On the “Jerkass” setting he limits himself to questioning your manhood (or womanhood, as the case may be) and randomly undeleting your files. On “Motherfucker” he refuses to let you change anything on the system, claiming that you are “too stupid to own a computer.” The “Absolute Bastard” setting limits you to playing Free Cell and visiting MSN.com. It also uses your webcam to try to take surreptitious pictures of your genitals, then edit them into collages that make unflattering comparisons between your organs and those of common domestic canines. This setting also automatically deletes your Facebook account.

Even on the lowest setting MOLOCH is fiercely critical of the user’s taste in pornography. His constant recommendations are shocking and, I suspect, illegal. For instance, a Google search for “Sasha Grey” was redirected to an article about her contracting anal warts and a Bing search for “Russian lolitas all holes filled doberman pinscher.” All and all, MOLOCH is a very helpful feature and I would recommend that the user leave it at maximum strength because, let’s face it, you are nothing but a mewling ape-creature barely in command of your own feeble, moist body.

Windows 7’s system requirements bear a brief mention before I close:

“The Spaghetti Incident?” should be optional, though. Part way through the installation, you are asked to put in the CD. The installer then plays the 13th track, “Look at Your Game, Girl” just so it can inform you afterwards that the song was written by Charles Manson. A dialogue appears that says “Did this freak you out?” Your options are “yes” or “no,” and the installation will not proceed until you admit that it did freak you out. A brief lecture follows on Manson’s involvement with Dennis Wilson and the Beach Boys. Interesting, but I don’t see what it has to do with installing Windows. (Note: The installer says to hold the vinyl version in the flames of a tallow candle and to inhale the fumes.)

There you have it. If you want an OS that basically runs itself (and on startup and shutdown lectures you on the intellectual and cultural superiority of the Chinese people), Windows 7 is just right. If, however, you prefer to be thought of as a homosexual by your friends and peers and to be the butt of cruel jokes made by the opposite sex, you might prefer to use a Mac or some effeminate *nix variant. PRAISE MOLOCH.

A Place of Judg(e)ment

Every Halloween the church down the street hosts something called “Judgement House.” A few days later, on some years, I have to go to that same church to vote, which I think is something of a conflict of interests.

“Judgement House” always brought to mind images of a Christian haunted house: pious hams in demonic costume raving about the consequences of premarital sex, abortion, and an activist judiciary against a painted backdrop of flames and damned souls. It was something I have always felt compelled to experience—one of American Protestantism’s unique offerings, for want of a 21st century version of “Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God.”

I was to be profoundly disappointed. Of course, having attended no prior Judgement Houses I can’t say how this one compares; I speak only of the general experience.

First, we were required to register. This was actually required in advance, so you begin to understand my commitment to the experience. I signed in under a pseudonym: Sam Simms.

The evening of the event was damp and chill. A persistent gloom blotted out the stars and shed icy mist onto those of us awaiting entry to the church-cum-Judgement House. I learned that we would go through in groups of ten or so, with ten minute intervals between groups. Of those I spoke to outside, none were return visitors. Judgement House was clearly a “once is enough” experience.

Finally my turn came, and instead of a menagerie of mincing homosexuals and pinch-mouthed adulterers, I was greeted with lukewarm amateur dramatics. Judgement House, it seemed, was essentially a live performance of a Pacific Garden Mission “Unshackled!” radio drama.

We went through several rooms, across which we were told the story of a young girl named Samantha who—Oh, you know. She finds Jesus and then she dies, inspiring her drunken and sinful father to repent his evil ways. Pretty standard stuff, but distinctly unentertaining.

We were then presented with a “judge” who ruled on the damnation or exaltation of the various characters from the playlet we had just witnessed. The judge then read out each of our names in turn, and explained that there was still time for us to choose our ultimate fate. I felt a giddy rush at hearing him call out “Sam Simms!” It was as if I were some kind of spy infiltrating secret proceedings. “Your identity for this mission will be Sam Simms: a simple sinner in search of salvation.” I resisted the temptation to take surreptitious pictures with my phone.

After that we were taken to hell. Rather than being accosted by comically-attired buffoons with pitchforks, we were instead crowded into a room not quite large enough for all of us. It was dark, vaguely smelly, and kept just barely too warm by the aid of out-of-sight space heaters. All told I was somewhat impressed by the subtlety of the presentation. Still, I don’t think that minor physical discomfort is a proper analogue for the eternal separation from the divine spirit, but I’m no theologian.

A shadowy figure then introduced himself as Satan and briefly lectured us on how rejecting the salvation offered by Christ will doom us to an eternity with him. It took a tremendous feat of willpower to avoid saying something snarky (“Why should we believe you? You’re the devil!”), but I prevailed. I was determined to see this through.

Our group was then paraded into another room where we were presented with—I shit you not—bibs. Well, our guide somewhat sheepishly told us that they were robes, but they only covered our shoulders and part of our chests. I found myself salivating out of some Pavlovian expectation of a rack of ribs.

Our next stop was the empyrean heights themselves: Paradiso. This was not as impressive as hell. Composed largely of bright lights and white fixtures, it looked more like a photoshoot at an abandoned house. We were greeted by a figure who claimed to be Jesus and he told us pretty much exactly the same thing Satan told us, which I thought was odd. I mean, if Satan was telling the truth about how to get to heaven, is he really that bad of a guy? That’s not exactly behavior befitting a Prince of Lies. What else are we not being told about Old Scratch?

After that we handed in our bibs—distressingly free of barbecue sauce stains—and moved right to the “Would you like to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior?” bit.

I declined, and apparently did so casually enough as to pierce my facade of legitimate interest. My “encourager” and I locked eyes, and in that moment my deception was revealed. I was no penitent seeking absolution. I was one of the heathen horde, holding his beliefs in silent contempt. We looked at each other from opposite sides of an impassable gulf, each regarding the other with silent pity. Beneath his feet yawned the abyss of damnation, and only by the grace of God did he avoid plummeting headlong into its depths. Beneath my feet was only the whirling crust of the earth. Never the twain shall meet.

I left for the parking lot, where Judgement House’s previous patrons fled the grounds in their cars. Did the weather or the message propel them with such curious urgency? Did they feel God’s arrow aimed at their hearts, ready at His command to be made drunk with their blood?

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.”

I walked home as the gloom began to part, if only for a few minutes. Through the rent I could see Orion, and I remembered the story of his punishment by gods older than Yahweh—but no less spiteful. Behind him stretched not the void of damnation, but of eternity.

A Special Reminder From Hollywood

As the holiday season approaches, you, like many Americans, will be drawn to the warming light of cinema to fill the idle, empty moments in your life. We would like to take a moment to thank you for being an essential part of the process of making movie magic. Without your patronage it simply wouldn’t be possible to continue delivering the kind of high quality entertainment that you have come to expect—and deserve.
That said, we would also like to take this opportunity to remind you of something:
POPULAR ACTRESS has breasts.
We here at Hollywood are very interested in making sure that you, the average movie-goer, is fully aware of the existence of POPULAR ACTRESS' breasts. Please take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with them, as you will be seeing them many, many times in the future.

Nice, yes? I thought you would agree. Just give yourself some time to appreciate them, to fully comprehend them. Admire their dimension, their bearing, their very gravity.
Imagine them in your hands. Imagine the soft, yielding flesh pressed against your calloused palms, tickling you with the tiniest of downy hairs.
Stop.
This is a pleasure that will, of course, be forever denied you. Do not weep. This is simply the nature of the world. As bigshot studio executives, we have had varieties of pussy so magnificent as to be fully beyond your corn-husking comprehension. Compared to many of these women, POPULAR ACTRESS is but a bloated Hefty bag full of cottage cheese and despair. Yet to you she is an angel on earth, a carnal paragon—sex incarnate. She is no more a woman than an ephemeral ideal that, so far as you know, exists only in the imagination of the Olympians themselves.
Tonight, as you lie sweaty and spent atop some sow-eyed she-creature (that we can only imagine passes for female in dim light) it is our hope that your moment of physical exultation was filled instead with the vision we have crafted for you:
The vision of POPULAR ACTRESS' breasts.

Oh, what a dreadful life you must lead, oscillating between shifts at the cannery and bitter rounds at the local dive. Our fondest wish is to gift your empty and baleful existence with the faintest taste of what nature has seen fit to hold apart from your oleaginous kind.
Take POPULAR ACTRESS' breasts. They are our gift to you. Stare, slack-jawed, at them as they bounce and heave across the screen. Allow yourself to be lost in whatever passes for erotic fantasy among your proletarian kind—something involving Neolithic positions and country music. Later, as you drive back to your double-wide trailer in your Ford F-150 with a window decal of Calvin urinating upon something, you may feel that vision fade. You may feel the panic of returning to that mewling, ape-like troglodyte you call a wife or girlfriend. You may think about how her breasts—saggy udders with nipples like vulcanized rubber—are nothing like the breasts of POPULAR ACTRESS. A deep depression will no doubt seize your soul.
Take heart! There will be many, many, many more opportunities to delight in the jiggling visage of POPULAR ACTRESS' breasts. We will see to it.

We make this solemn vow, to you, our wailing patron: We will put POPULAR ACTRESS' breasts in every movie possible, from now until the pre-ordained day of their expiration (not long after her 25th birthday). When that day comes, we also promise to replace them with a bosom no less bountiful to fuel your gruesome, primitive rutting.
We will do this for you.
Because we fucking hate you.

Game Review: Dragonage

Dragonage is a new RTS/RPG hybrid by BioWar games, famous inventors of Belter’s Gate and other Dungeons In Dragons video games. This is their first foray into recording games for the X-Boxer and Player Station 3, and it shows. The entire affair is marred by amateurish presentation more fitting for a late night sword & sorcery schlockfest than the CD-ROM multimedia interactive movie it was intended to be.

NOTE: I AM REVIEWING THIS GAME ON MY IBM PERSONAL COMPUTER. IT HAS AN INTEL PROCESSOR AND A HARD DRIVE. RAM: YES. IT IS WATER COOLED BECAUSE I LIKE TO OVERCOOK MY CHIPS.

Let’s start with the graphics. I don’t know for certain, but I’m pretty sure they’re at least 128 bit (maybe even 200). The problem is that they look closer to 96 bit, which really shows the series’ Atari Jaguar roots. Whatever, they’re passable, even if all of the character models look like muppets half burned up in a grease fire. It’s hard to believe this is FMV. Supposedly they used the same high tech imaging process as Moral Combat, but I just don’t see it. (Before you think I’m just not familiar with the technology, know that I used to play MC2 at the roller rink eight hours a day while my mom was at work. Sometimes sixteen hours if she had to pull a double shift because one of the other girls was at the clinic. I still know all of the fatalities, animalities, babalities, and bestialities. Do not question what I know.)

The sound in this game is great, even though sometimes it doesn’t fit. For instance, when your main character casts a magic incarnation, he sometimes calls out “SPAWN MORE OVERLORDS” which is kind of unusual. Female characters sometimes just make fart noises when given commands, and while it’s pretty damn funny it’s also just unnecessary. By and large, however, the swords sound just like swords and the magic spells sound just like they do in real life. My only real serious complaint is the narrator, who doesn’t sound like Mako at all.

UPDATE: the narrator is NOT Mako. Mako died in 1999.

The plot is a meandering mess. It starts out in this magical kingdom called Floralden, full of elfs and gnomes, and there’s some kind of war going on. It appears that betrayal is afoot, and things will never be the same. Basically it’s the same plot as Lord of the Ring: Return of the Jedi. I’m not strictly complaining, but I expected something more original.

You can choose from among three character classes: Swordman, Mana Wizard, and some kind of ninja guy. You can be a guy or a girl, but there’s really no reason to pick a girl due to the crippling stat penalties. To make matters worse male characters get +10 to hit girls, and every time you give a girl an order there’s a 25% chance that she’ll fall down and become stunned. Also their faces all look like they’re about to cry and you can’t change them.

Anyway, I really couldn’t follow the plot. You start out by meeting this guy named Gary Warren and he hires you to help him stop this disease called the Bloat. The Bloat is spreading all over the world and creating all of these ugly monsters called Darth Spawn. This is silly because Darth Spawn was the bad guy in the third Star War movie, I’m almost sure. Martin Sheen played him. You can check IMDB on this. Whatever.

The plot progresses along typical lines: go here, kill some rat lords, gain experience until you have enough X Points to buy a new firebrain spell. Occasionally you are required to participate in a rhythm minigame where you have to type out the lyrics to the Dragonage theme song. This wouldn’t be so bad except that it happens at every area transition and load screen. You open a door so your character can go to the bathroom because his Bladder stat is full, and you get “Dra-GONE-age! DRA-gone-age! Hearts of fi-re, love’s in-side her, Dra-gone-AGE!” It’s like they did it just to pad out the game. Right before you have to swap to the second disc it plays a variant version with extended guitar and bass solos. The guitar stuff sounds like AC/DC, so I didn’t really mind, but it didn’t jive with the whole Crimean War/Moorish occupation steampunk setting.

Near the end of the game you finally confront the evil Dragonage, who wants to rule the world because the love of her life—the Tempeler—left her for a Witch of the World. Before you can fight her, though, you are teleported to the underground land of Fate, where you discover the game’s dark secret:

All of the characters are patients in a mental hospital in the real world. The events of the game are just a dramatized version of their group therapy sessions, ending in a climax where the characters overcome their mental problems and move on with their lives. It’s something of an anticlimax, but it actually kind of works. When they all hug at the end is especially touching.[/SPOILER]

There are four alternate endings, but two of them are the same only with the characters in different period costumes (American western and Edwardian), and one of them has the characters starting a rock band called—guess what—Dragonage! I won’t spoil the final and best ending, but you can go back up a paragraph and read it again if you want.

Now let’s get to the real meat of Dragonage: the characters. By and large BioWar really outdid themselves giving the characters unique personalities and back stories. I have to question some of the creative decisions, however. One of the characters, a female Mana Wizard named Morrissey, spends the entire game completely topless. Normally I wouldn’t have a problem with this except for two things: First, the nipples on the character model are badly misaligned (also they are more brown than pink—brown nipples are gross). Second, they never explain how a female can become a Mana Wizard despite starting with half of the Intelligence of a male character. To be fair, however, she isn’t very good at her class and spends most of the game making meals and sewing things for the boys. She is basically comic relief, and several plot sequences require your character to console her after she is reduced to tears by your constant teasing about her lisp.

Other characters include Alice, a knight (and a man, by the way—I really think they mixed up a lot of the character names and just never got around to correcting them), and Steve, a black man. Later on there’s a pair of morbidly obese twins who join your party, but I never used them except in the pie eating contest. World 4, Level 5 takes place in a sumo wrestling contest, but you don’t meet the twins until Word 6—another example of BioWar’s slapdash approach to this game.

One problem character is this elfish assassin who joins your party. His character is openly gay (ASS-ASS-IN… get it?) and spends most of his time mincing about the screen in leather straps. He also hits on your character all the time, and since I made my guy to look a lot like me this made me feel really uncomfortable. It was made worse by the fact that when I first met him I thought he was a girl, so I chose lots of romantic dialogue options. If you aren’t careful BioWar will trick you into a depraved homosexual relationship that you can’t escape without uninstalling then reinstalling the game. Just another part of the gay agenda, I guess. It’d be nice if there were just one game that didn’t involve rampant gay sex between men.

Oh, did I mention the rampant gay sex? After you start a romance with the elf there is an obligatory interactive sex scene, complete with graphic penetration. If you try to skip it, it just starts playing really loud techno music. There’s an option to plug in a rumble-capable gamepad during these sequences, but I don’t know why you would want to.

These sequences are absolutely disgusting and I had to watch each of them three or four times before I could believe what I was seeing. They take the form of a minigame, and, in fact, replace the theme song minigame on every loading screen afterward. The mechanic is simple: just tap the spacebar to coordinate with the characters’ pelvis thrusts. If you fail the characters get this disappointed look on their faces, and it’s really disheartening. A help popup encourages you to use your own penis to tap the spacebar for maximum interactivity. At first I balked, but it really does make the sequences a lot easier. Later in the game the two of you run away to the neighboring kingdom of Quar, where gay marriage is legalized as part of the plot (there’s that agenda again). While there they learn some exotic new positions which are integrated into the minigame. Unfortunately they require so much tapping that you’re likely to inadvertently have an orgasm before the sequences are complete.

You can avoid the relationship with the elf, if you can, and instead pursue one with the comically large-breasted Morrissey. Unfortunately, the heterosexual sex scenes are far less graphic than the homosexual ones, and Morrissey’s weird nipples make it hard to maintain an erection for extended tapping. I can’t wait until someone puts out a mod to give her normal nipples.

Now, there’s no multiplayer but there is split-screen co-op, which is a mixed blessing because the game forces one player to be the gay elf. In that mode the minigames require both players to tap different parts of the keyboard, so…

All in all it’s a solidly average game. It doesn’t have the depth of Masterfect or the charm of Jade Umpire, or the powerhouse Dungeon In Dragons license (though there is a surprise cameo by Drizzt Do’Urden, it occurs during one of the previously mentioned minigames). BioWar clearly intends Dragonage to be the beginning of a new franchise, but after what I’ve seen in this game I’m not sure I want to go along for the ride. Still, projected advances in teledildonics over the next few years make the prospect of a Dragonage sequel simultaneously terrifying and irresistible.

So, if you’re a fan of this sort of thing (and there’s nothing wrong with it if you are), give Dragonage a try. Otherwise you might be better served by pre-ordering Modern Warfront 2: Called to Duty at your local Gamestop or EB Games—that way you are guaranteed a copy on release day, unless they happen to somehow run out and you have to go to Best Buy where they have, like, 500 on the shelf.

I give it 2 Thai Ladyboys out of 5.

Those two. Specifically.

My Left 4 Dead 2 Demo Experience

First there was a Steam update. When is there not one? Then I had to download the game. This was expected, and progressed very smoothly. In only a few short minutes I was joining my first game. I selected my character and waited for the person who started the game in the first place to… well, start the game.

And waited.

And waited.

Someone named “Brian Peppers” joined, and immediately began screeching into his microphone in a pubescent warble:

“WHAT UP, MY NIGGERS!?”

“WHAT UP, MY NIGGERS!?”

“HEY, NIGGERS!”

“YOU BUNCH OF POOR NIGGERS!”

Fuck that. I joined a new game. I was randomly assigned Coach and after a short wait the game began. Immediately, one of the other players started shooting me. This player’s name was “NEGRO.”

The third time was a charm, however: after a vote to kick NEGRO, I and my competent and helpful teammates were able to play the demo to completion. Still, it was a brutal reminder of two things:

1) I fucking hate online games.
2) I fucking hate people.

You might think I’m generalizing too hastily. What about that third game that went well? Should I let the previous two incidents color my judgment? Well, consider that I played only three fucking games today. In the first, a teenager bleated tired racial epithets. In the second, a player named NEGRO teamkilled me. I consider this a pretty representative sample of the kind of sub-moron that gravitates towards online games.

If I had my way I would have them all rounded up and gassed. I shit you not. I don’t care if they’re otherwise normal kids just having a goof in the anonymous world of TEH INTARNET. They are, on some deep, intrinsic level, irredeemable scumbags who deserve—at the very least—chemical castration.

There’s a lot I could say about the semi-anonymous online environment and basic human nature, but I’m not going to. It’s not worth it. We just need a fucking pogrom.

I’m off to play Dragon Age.

Why Movie Theater Lobbies Don’t Have Clocks

I had one of those conversations the other day that starts out perfunctory but leads to a profound revelation.

“Why don’t movie theaters have clocks in their lobbies?” someone asked.

It was a good question, and at the time I didn’t have an answer.  Later on it occurred to me that concessions were the reason. If there were clocks in theater lobbies, people might look at them and think “I only have four minutes before my movie starts.  Fuck popcorn, I need to get a seat.”  Without the overhanging specter of clearly visible time people are more likely to linger in the lobby and stock up on overpriced popcorn and Milk Duds.

It’s a pretty standard “do everything you can to deprive the consumer of information so he will make more irrational decisions” strategy.  Casinos use it, theme parks use it, soda companies use it—everybody uses it.  When’s the last time you saw a clock in a Wal-Mart, or a Best Buy for that matter?

I’m sure that the numbers have been judiciously crunched: without clocks concession sales go up.  In this age of ubiquitous phones with synchronized timekeeping devices, the effect is certainly less pronounced.  However, if there were no effect at all, surely some theater somewhere would stick a clock in its lobby just for raw convenience.

There are certainly small theaters out there that provide such a simple courtesy for their patrons, but the big chain leviathans (Cinemark, Regal, AMC, etc.) do not.  Again, I’m sure they’ve run the numbers on it and found it simply to be more profitable.

This is such a strange idea, that it’s okay to withhold information from people if it brings in more money.  In fact, it’s downright nefarious.  They justify it by saying that they aren’t forbidding people from finding out what time it is; they just aren’t telling them.  Okay, fine.  Still, the overall level of ignorance is increased, and I fail to see how that benefits anybody.

Whatever.  The point is a simple one, and this is the revelation that struck me like the ray of light that knocked Paul off his literal ass: we cannot trust the private sector to do what is right if there is a wrong option that is more profitable. It’s simply the nature of the beast.  You can’t expect a bear to choose a pinecone over a fish.

We all understand this on some level.  It’s why we don’t have private police and fire departments, and why our roads and airwaves are public (sort of).  Of course there are those among us who believe that everything should be privatized: they call themselves libertarians, or Austrian school economists.  They believe that private organizations invariably provide better services than public ones.  From what data they draw that conclusion is a mystery, as nobody has ever tried a broad program of privatization before.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s no less flawed at its core than communism: sounds good on paper, leads to disaster in practice.

Which isn’t to unduly praise the waste and inefficiency of government.  That waste and inefficiency, however, is often the very thing that holds government power in check.  We should all dread an efficient government more than any thing.  Efficient governments come up with ideas, and they put ideas into practice with plans, and plans become beasts of their own that devour lives according to arcane political designs.

When the blunt and impersonal “invisible hand” comes into play, though, well, you end up in a world without clocks.

The End of the End of the World

Despite the unusually high level of public retardation on the subject, I’m looking forward to the year 2012. Once that year dawns without incident—like the year 2000 before it—the final hard date for the apocalypse will have passed.

There is this kind of loosely organized society of secular doomsday nuts floating around, and 2012 is pretty much their last chance.  When it becomes clear that the end of the world is not coming imminently, when that final box on the calendar for possible doomsdays is marked off, will we finally be done with this cultural derangement?  Perhaps they will simply resign themselves to watching the calendar with bated breath, hoping for one of the considerably more vague Abrahamic prophecies to pan out.

I consider it partly an outgrowth of the unfulfilled Armageddon promises of the Cold War. Some took the threat of nuclear war as a warning; the end of the world was supposed to fill people with a sense of alarm. Some, however, seem to have taken it as a promise. Rather than “We have these terrible weapons and must not use them!” they heard “We have these terrible weapons and using them is inevitable!”

When the Soviet Union disintegrated and the specter of large scale nuclear war disintegrated with it, a lot of death fantasies went unfulfilled. There still remains this little nugget of apocalyptic mania in the American psyche.

Still, one shouldn’t mistake the doomsday fascination for a recent phenomenon. Human beings have been predicting the End of All Things for as long as there have been human beings. In fact, cultures that produce apocalyptic literature tend to be going through rough times. The first Judeo-Christian apocalyptic literature was produced by the Hebrews during one of their many periods of enslavement.

“The world is crap,” the doomsayer says, “and it won’t get any better. The only way things could improve is if the world just ended and everybody died.” This attitude was echoed by Christianity during their own period of repression, and enshrined in the book of Revelation: a highly symbolic critique of the Roman Empire.

This is worth contrasting with Norse mythology, which has Ragnarok. At Ragnarok the Aesir (representing order) will fight the giants (representing chaos) in a battle that will kill most of them and destroy the world. A big part of Norse mythology is the inevitability of this: Thor will be killed by Jörmungandr, Odin will be eaten by Fenrir, and Surtr will burn Yggdrasil with a flaming sword. Everyone—even the mythological figures themselves—know that this will happen. They don’t lament the end, or celebrate it as a time when their oppressors will be destroyed; they embrace it as destiny.

This all harkens back to a simple fact, something that every human being understands on a primal level: the world is ending—not by prophecy, not by divine mandate, not by destiny—by fact.

The universe is a closed system. There is no energy coming into it from outside. What is currently here is all that exists and all that ever will exist. As light inevitably turns to heat, and the heat inevitably dissipates, the universe inevitably turns cold and dark. The universe is, in fact, dying slowly all around us. Very slowly. So slowly that none of us will be around to see it end—and then not in a bang, or even a much of a whimper. The end really will come, as the Christians say, “like a thief in the night.” A very, very long night.

For some people this physical fact of entropy isn’t good enough. I admit that it isn’t very dramatic (though it does possess a certain romantic resonance). Cities bursting into flame and continents sinking into the sea make for a much more satisfying mass-death fantasy.

This points to a deep cultural depression. Our age is one of social desolation. Progress is empty and mechanical, and science is no longer considered a source of joy, but of existential horror. I fear that we are all sick of living, but are too cowardly to just kill ourselves. We hope for some cosmic circumstance—some runaway bus of prophecy—to come and mow us down instead.

“It is fated,” we can say.

“SIGH.”

This thanatotic impulse constitutes a great challenge for our species. To overcome it, to discover the joy of life in an age of wonders, may prove an essential step in the long-term survival of our species. Rather than regarding existence as a burden successful sapients must treat it as a challenge—an opportunity to assert collective will against the impersonal forces of the universe and, rather than succumbing to ennui and despair, prevailing and taking reality by the throat. Intelligent life is the universe’s only hope for escaping the inevitable cosmic night.

Don’t sit around dreading/hoping that the universe will drop a rock on your head and free you from the burden of sentience. Grow, learn and do anything you can to make the world a better place. The human race deserves to survive, and so do you.

Harry Dean Stanton Approved

I love Wal-Mart's new line of "Great Value" products.  There's nothing like cracking open a bag of Great Value "Tortilla Chips" and dipping them in some Great Value "Salsa."  It makes me feel like I'm living in the world of Repo Man, where all products come in generic white packaging with labels that describe what's inside.  BEER.  FOOD.  SLICED PEACHES.  SHREDDED CHEESE.

Emilio Estevez Tested, Harry Dean Stanton Approved!

Along with this intoxicating lack of pretension, however, is the haunting suspicion that what you are eating is somehow ersatz--that the contents are kept deliberately vague, to disguise the fact that your TUNA FISH is actually HORSE HOOVES, or that your BAKED BEANS are, in reality, TOXIC PLANKTON.

Yet these products are inescapable, and you may be lured to them by their dangerously low prices. Why, turn down any given aisle of Wal-Mart these days and you are likely to be greeted by a sight eerily similar to this…

…right down to the blank-faced youths toiling in sullen anonymity.

Of course, there is a reason for all of this.  The economy is a turd basket.  When Repo Man was made (1984—right in the middle of the real wine and roses days of Reaganomics), store shelves were lined with similar bland generics.  Now they have returned, like a recurring cold sore that belies a deeper, more disturbing problem.

With them comes a hope, however: a foolish, impossible hope that I may one day drink BEER with Harry Dean Stanton in a 1973 Chevy Impala.

In these tough economic times we have to cling to our hopes.

Guns, Guns, Guns!

People with ideological or political axes to grind are invariably among the most oblivious people on earth.  Take this for example, discovered while looking for pictures of women with guns (hey, we all have our thing).

In summary: "My pet political opinions are awesome and people who disagree with me are ugly and dumb."  You know the drill.  It’s the kind of bottom-of-the-barrel simulacra of political discourse that we have all begun to accept as right and normal.

I’m past it.

Here’s the problem: The author finishes his diatribe by posting a trio of pictures featuring the very thing I sought--women with guns.  But just look at these pictures.  How could any responsible gun owner find them anything less than grotesque?

 OH

 MY

GOD.

TRIGGER DISCIPLINE, LADIES.  For fuck’s sake, the woman in the third picture is pointing the gun at her own femoral artery and her finger is on the trigger.  I can’t jack off to this.  It's horrifying.  It's one errant muscle spasm away from gore porn. 

(Also the first two are kind of ugly.)

The author of this filth should be ashamed of himself, particularly as a gun owner.  Hopefully he is a mere gun fetishist, and hasn't put himself and his family in mortal danger by owning an actual firearm.  It undermines his entire message, which amounts to:

"Guns rule, and Americans have the right to bear arms, now here are some pictures of women demonstrating deplorable gun safety!  Woo, I have no fucking idea what I’m talking about!"

He doesn't realize this, of course, because he is an idiot.  Like many of your rabid gun crowd I imagine that he will accidentally perforate his own skull while cleaning a loaded Desert Eagle, which he bought because he saw it blow a telephone pole in half in a movie.

Good riddance.

Yes, they are prop guns.  I hope.  That does not excuse such gross irresponsibility.

DLC Follies

At the risk of looking like I want to join the benighted ranks of so-called game reviewers, there is something I must say:

Mothership Zeta is a pile of suck.

Obligatory backstory: Mothership Zeta is the final piece of downloadable content (which we have taken to calling DLC in our pathological lust for easily digestible acronyms) for Fallout 3. 

I enjoyed Fallout 3, despite being a deranged Fallout purist who thinks that the cancellation of Van Buren was tantamount to Satan’s release from his infernal prison as per Revelation 20:7.

That said, I had (and still have) some misgivings about Fallout 3.  Misgivings that I cheerfully laid aside to enjoy the experience Bethesda actually delivered, rather than the one my fevered imagination wished might have been.

Mothership Zeta, however, is a pile of suck.

I won’t go into how it emphasizes Fallout 3’s weakest element (the S in FPS), or how it’s basically a giant gray corridor crawl punctuated by reactor explosions.  I won’t point out that it’s basically just Operation: Anchorage all over again with a graphics swap.

No.  Such complaints have been covered in more detail by people who actually get paid to play this kind of diarrhea.  Instead, I will focus on two particular elements that I believe showcase the general lack of “give a shit” displayed by Mothership Zeta at every turn.

You can’t see it in this picture, but the stars here are completely static.  It looks like there’s a giant black box around the ship upon which some miscreant spattered uniform blobs of white.  Because that’s exactly what it is.  The sun, meanwhile, just kind of hangs there and, due to the obvious proximity of the wall that mocks the eternal vastness of space, seems to be about as large as an overinflated beachball.

Inexcusable.

Then there’s this:

Perhaps you can see the problem.  Press ‘1’ for a hint.  Boop.  Where is your left glove, Captain Vacuum Exposure?

Now, a particularly clever shithead (or at least one who thinks himself clever), might attempt to rationalize these obvious deficiencies.  He might say that these things indicate that Mothership Zeta does not, in fact, take place in outer space but rather in a computer simulation.  Just like Operation: Anchorage.

A simpler explanation, of course, is that Bethesda simply didn’t give a shit.

“What are we gonna do for our last DLC guys?”

“Fuck, I don’t know.  Some new guns.  Some new guys to shoot.  I don’t think we need to work on a plot, or quests or anything.  Just kind of runnin’ around in a closed location, completely severed from the laboriously detailed game world we slaved over for years, shootin’ stuff.”

“And blowing up reactors?”

“Naturally.”

“Also, you can team up with a samurai and a cowboy.”  [NOTE: I am not making this up.]

How does this whole clusterfuck limp across the finish line?

Well, the Vault Dweller and his ragtag group of allies commandeer the alien spaceship, upon which another alien ship swoops in for the attack!  You must utilize the ship’s systems to defeat your interstellar adversary, rerouting power between the shields and the death ray, as the situation demands.  Eventually, through skill and determination, victory is achieved and the earth is saved.  You must crank up the death ray to maximum, then hammer the “fire” button until the enemy ship blows up real good.  No effort is required, and none is expended.

That sums up the entire Mothership Zeta experience in a nutshell.

Note: I demand respect for resisting the urge to title this post “MotherSHIT Zeta.”

Old School Internet

In conversation I’ve taken to preceding the words Facebook and Myspace with unnecessary definite articles.  “I don’t use the Facebook,” I’ll say, or, “The MySpace is for idiots.”

It’s an effacing acknowledgement of how deliberately, stubbornly (even curmudgeonly) out-of-touch I’ve become with the popular online landscape.  Whenever I express this distaste towards self-styled “social networking,” I am invariably challenged for a reason.  People act as if I should want to tie my Internet presence to my corporeal person, to cast myself as a celebrity-in-miniature.

I see little to no value in this.

The Internet is intangible by nature, a gloomy sheol populated by disembodied ghouls, each trying to carve an ephemeral fiefdom out of its ever-shifting sands.  If the nihilists are right, and all human achievement is but written on the winds, then that is doubly so for the Internet.

“The Internet is our generation’s Vietnam,” I often say, and I am only half joking.  The online shadowplay is how our spoiled, weak and feckless generation gives form to its peculiar demons: entitlement, consumption, selfishness, and unbounded ego.  Every man on the Internet is a little ersatz god, carving meaningless commandments onto illusionary tablets of stone.  The allure of “social networking” is the illusion of teeming Israelites waiting at the foot of the mount for you to bless them with your wisdom.  Cobweb of cannibalistic sycophants, strangers and egomaniacs form, feeding one another through mutual attention.  Sheer numbers of believers—and whosever believeth in me, I shall also believeth in—give form to the shadow, to bring corporeality to the incorporeal wastes.

This pleroma quickly threatens to become kenoma under the influence of a million little demiurges.

Yet the times change, and despite my crabbishness I am something of a neophile.  The day may yet come where I abandon my snobbish “old school” mentality and set up a tiny outpost of flesh amid the sea of electrons.

The day may yet come.

Until then I will stare unflinchingly into the unformed chaos of digital space, delighting in the power that anonymity affords one in a world of ubiquitous celebrity.

A Dark Obsession

I have a problem.

Inklings of it first crept into my waking mind some months ago, as I slid a copy of “Next” into my DVD player.  It came as a kind of itch, buried in the depths of my brain, a vague sense that something in my life wasn’t right. 

I next felt this sensation while watching “Left Behind.”  The feeling still had no name, and no fixed identity.  It floated freely within me, this nebulous unease, and I had begun to think of it as a newly developed aspect of my personality.

Only a handful of weeks ago I was watching “The Room” when I suddenly perceived a new dimension to this presence.  It had a distinctly puritanical character, by which I mean it was composed largely of the feeling of “wrongness” and the intense desire to set things right.

Then it struck me.  The full force of it exploded in my mind, flooding my consciousness with a wailing, irrefutable truth:

While I was watching “Next” I could have been watching “Touch of Evil.”  While “Left Behind” was vomiting forth from my television in wave after wave of inanity, I could have been bathing myself in the warm, clean waters of “Ikiru.”  While “The Room” was doing things to my mind that could possibly be irreparable, I could have been watching any number of films by Welles, Kurosawa, Bergman, or Truffaut.  I could even have been watching any of the silent classics that sit inert on my shelf, purchased on impulse and then never watched.

I was deliberately watching bad movies, while ignoring ones that I had reason to believe would actually be good.  I had become a cinematic coprophage, gleefully consuming offal, and delighting in the bitter, hateful taste.

The feeling that had plagued me these last months was the very essence of good taste, bursting free from some psychic prison built out of improbable action sequences, shallow characterization, plot stupidity, murky cinematography, and bad writing.  It rose out of me like a fire, and I can feel it battling the dark presence that drives me to fill my eyes with the polluted light of bad cinema.

This monstrous presence has a terrible power, and I am not sure that my better nature will prevail.  I have not seen “Aguirre: the Wrath of God,” but I have seen “Twilight.”  I have watched the entire oeuvre of Uwe Boll, when even the weakest works of Hitchcock would be like dreams made real by comparison.

I haven’t watched “Battleship Potempkin” yet.  It’s only 75 minutes long.

In a few hours I’m going to watch “Push.”  I think it will be awful.  No.  No, I hope it will be awful.  If I have any power over this beast at all, I will watch “The Third Man” instead.  I feel a great heat that threatens to consume my body, and I know that it is born from the fire of conflict between these two aspects.

There must be a balance.  Part of the joy of cinema is, after all, stimulation.  Must every flim experience be an artistic enthusiasmos?  Is there no place for disgust, hatred, or even schaenfreude toward a job poorly done?

God help me, but the trash calls out.  Like a sleazy carnival barker, it offers me access to a world of intellectual outrages that give me every bit as much pleasure as great art.

After all, if you never watch a truly terrible movie, how will you ever recognize a great one?

The Good, the Bad and the Ataxic

Let me begin by saying that I enjoy “Call of Juarez – Bound In Blood.”  As far as Western-themed shooters go, I like it almost as much as Lucas Arts’ “Outlaws.”  Almost. Which isn’t saying much, I suppose, since that was over ten fucking years ago.  You have to understand that the pickings during that intervening decade have varied greatly: anywhere from utterly execrable (“Western Outlaw: Wanted Dead Or Alive”) to passably diverting in a bland, manilla envelope full of tapioca pudding kind of way (“Gun”).

The original “Call of Juarez,” of which “Bound In Blood” is technically a prequel, was a competent, not-too-hideous gunfight simulator marred by stealth sequences of the “stay hidden or die” variety.  Still, it allowed you to shoot faceless goons in ten gallon hats with one hand while reading fire-and-brimstone verses out of a Bible in the other.  There was no gameplay benefit to doing this, it was simply awesome.  Sadly, the amusement factor of playing a fundamentalist lunatic on a rampage of revenge lost all of its charm after four hours of gooey controls, “Oh, who gives a shit?” plot, and plasticized, zombie-faced character models.

“Bound In Blood,” in addition to (marginally) improving these areas, is also a frank depiction of the hardships endured by two brothers cruelly stricken with Klumpke’s palsy.

Ray and Thomas McCall—our designated protagonists—both suffer from sudden-onset hand paralysis, kicking in every time there’s a one-on-one gunfight.  Considering that every single mission ends in such a showdown, you begin to see the great hardship under which the outlaw brothers endure.  The gunfighting mechanic is as such: the camera drops down to ass-cheek level, with your adversary in the center of the screen, and your character’s hand hovering over his holstered shooting iron.  Your opponent moves right, then left.  This goes on for an eternity until somewhere, someone decides to ring a church bell.  That is the signal for you to reach for your gun by moving the mouse.  The problem is that every inch of on-screen movement requires about a foot and a half of mouse movement, regardless of sensitivity.  So the church bell rings, and your character begins to move with agonizing slowness toward the butt of his pistol, his hand jerking inch by inch across the seemingly vast interstice between man and victory.  While you are dragging the mouse across your desk again and again like you’re reeling in a garden hose, your enemy has effortlessly unholstered his weapon and perforated your character’s spleen.

You will repeat this process many, many times until finally you get lucky and your ataxic character manages to grip his gun and bring it to bear on his opponent. Inevitably you will shoot as soon as possible, which has the hilarious side-effect of making all gunfights end in crotch shots.

Now, despite the crippling disability that nature has bestowed upon the McCalls, their true downfall is pride.  They never turn down an offer for a gunfight, knowing as they must that every gunfight is an exercise in excruciating pain and humiliation.  It is inevitable, in fact, that your character will die several times during these events, in what is either a clever parody of the wild west anti-hero’s eternal flirtation with violent death, or just REALLY SHITTY FUCKING GAME DESIGN, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES.

Every single mission in the game ends with somebody wandering out and demanding a gunfight like it’s constitutionally mandated.  That the greedy, cruel and dishonorable McCall brothers heed these requests is all the more baffling.  Solitary enemies stumble out from behind cover, outmanned two-to-one, and aren’t unceremoniously shot in the face from a hundred paces. 

Nobody in this universe has ever been shot in the back of the head while playing cards.

Thus we come to my primary complaint, and it is the same complaint I have lodged against every western-themed game ever: this is not a depiction of the American post-Civil War frontier period.  It is a depiction of what Italians in the 1970s thought the American post-Civil War frontier period was like.

Western shooters need to give up spaghetti like military shooters need to give up brown palettes, or RPGs need to give up Tolkien and giant spiders.  It’s time to move on.  A whole generation of homegrown western films have raised the bar, introducing some of the real moral grayness that characterized the period (beyond simple not-so-nice guys shooting at other not-so-nice guys).

Is it necessary to keep going back to the trough for grizzled, scarred and stubbled villain-protagonists to shoot historically inaccurate weapons at mighty Apache warriors over lost gold?

Hopefully not for much longer.