Distance

Recently I came upon this game: Distance


The controls couldn't be simpler. Mouse clicks advance the frame, and you watch the two characters go through their separate days. Then, each day ends with a phone conversation where you're given a choice of two possible conversational routes.



You pick one, then see how things go, then go to sleep, then click through another day, the end of which sees you in this same place, making another choice.




The way this game is sneaky is that the choices slowly become deeper. Do you want to talk about a movie or soul mates?

There are a couple things about this game that really grabbed me.

What this game does well is capture the experience of those awful long-distance relationships. If you've never tried it, it's awful. I would tell you to never try it, but that's a ridiculous thing to say. Every person I know would declare "I would never want to be in a long-distance relationship" but what they're really saying is, "Given the option to do it or not, I pick not." The real question isn't whether or not one would be in a long-distance relationship, in general. It's really, "Would you be willing to engage in a long-distance relationship with [person you currently love very much]?" Those are two very different questions.

Having done this before, it's tough. And what the game really does nicely is taking you back to that place where you're really unsure about everything. Does she still love me? Do I still love her? Can I love someone even if we never occupy the same physical space? What if someone else comes along?


Even more so, and this part rang more true for me than anything, the game reminded me how shitty the phone is. When you have a phone-based relationship with someone, you have good nights and bad nights. And what's really strange is you can't be sure why some are good and some are bad. Why did asking about a beard turn into a conversation with laughs and both people hanging up happy? How did I ask about her dog and somehow turn things into discussing how we don't agree on the idea of soul mates?

You can play it a number of ways as well. The way I played it was certainly trying to make things work, as though I am the person on one end of the phone. I felt really bad when things didn't work out, but maybe making it work involves saying things not so much because it's what you want to say, but saying what the other person wants to hear.

Yeah, it got kinda real for me in front of my computer there.

The thing that makes this game truly excellent is that it values story over all else. I was listening to the fantastic podcast The Indoor Kids and one of the hosts made a great point about the idea that story and emotional attachment are becoming king. Meaning: we're quickly coming to a point where graphically, anything is possible. Games are less and less limited by someone saying, "That's not possible," and they're more and more based on, "What do you want to do?"

The range of emotions I've experienced with video games is pretty much limited to the triumph of finishing Special World and the agony of being killed over and over by this asshole. And these emotions are all created as a result of my gameplay abilities, not because of story elements or characters. And what scares me about games like Bejeweled is that there's no narrative, and really nothing for me to get into from that angle. I think that's a lot of why I rarely enjoy driving games and sports games. Even Street Fighter II had backstories, slim as they may have been. But I don't care so much about faceless drivers, and because I don't follow sports the players are just cardboard cutouts to me.

So when someone asks "What do you want to do?" I would say that I want to feel something as a result of narrative. Maybe it's just a little twinge, but SOMETHING would be a good start.

Resident Evil was one of the first games that was legitimately scary. God of War was one of the first games that used scale to underscore the narrative arc. But what makes Distance so fascinating is that it doesn't find an emotional place within the larger context of missions and collecting. The emotions are the totality of the gameplay.

It can be done, and it can be done on a minimalist level. I think the gauntlet is thrown down. Personally, I'm looking forward to a world of gaming where some of the cash goes towards creating stories that are heartwrenching and hilarious, and characters who are memorable for their traits and not because they make handy mascots.

Captain America and the Avengers

Thanks to my good friend Nica, I was able to enjoy this wonderful game from my childhood at home, revisit the memories, and see just how well the thing held up.

I should say this, for starters: Playing arcade games on a machine that does not require quarters kind of kills a bit of the fun, the reason being that there's really no way to LOSE, lose. Quarter-based games really were like gambling where there was a certain amount of skill that could make it last longer, although eventually you will have to pump in more money to succeed. They are also like gambling in that I am very bad at them.

This game is a classic beat-em-up style where you walk from left to right beating the shit out of everyone and everything that gets in the way.

In order to complete your task, you are given the choice of one of four characters. Allow me to discuss each, going from right to left for the simple fact that I moved from left to right for so much of my life in these games:


Hawkeye: The worst one in terms of powers. He's good at shooting, so he elects to use a bow and arrow instead of a gun. Also, according to the game, he posesses super vision, a skill that I would think would be posessed by the character named goddamn Vision. Not my first choice.

Captain America: Ah, the brave leader. Note that this was in the 90's, a time when Captain America was not very cool. It took about 10 years of him doing shit like being a werewolf for comics to get through the phase where everything had to be about darkness and almost seeing a titty. Also a very unlikely choice.

Iron Man: This was my guy back when. He could shoot lasers, and in the levels that involved swimming or being in space he did not require any sort of bubblehead contraption to breathe. It made the most sense to me, which is kind of hilarious in that NONE of this makes any sense. You can throw a rock and make it explode in this game, but I was concerned with the fact that Captain America's headbubble might crack, and then he'd be fucked.

Vision: Now we get to the reason we went right to left, in order to save Vision for last.

Can someone explain this posture to me? What is he doing? It looks like he's about to break into a little number from Grease. And when he walks? Crosses his arms, upper body completely still, only his legs moving. It looks insane, and very affected. I hated that. Between his bizarre poses and the fact that he was wearing a Speedo and a cape, Vision didn't get a lot of play from me.

So you start walking and fighting, but almost right away you notice that the dialogue is a little funky. For example, one of my favorites:


Hmm...well, that is a tough question to answer, I guess. To be fair, if I were a bad guy this would disturb me a little. If Spider-Man was running around, quipping like a goddamn stand-up, I would be thinking, "Well, he's all there mentally." But if a roided-up guy in an America get-up spouted at me, "Why should it goes well?" I would be a little concerned that he would not be aces when it came to identifying that I was subdued versus having my brain mashed so hard into the sidewalk that the grease stain never really comes out.

Another great one:

Captain America: There is no escape!

Response:


OOOOO, sweet burn!
A little advice to all, if someone insults you and you respond with, "No, YOU are [carbon copy of original insult] then you are probably not going to impress anyone enough that they let you escape with a huge bag of potatoes with a dollar sign on it.

Just a couple of other favorites:

Bad Guy: "You came here to die!"

Good Guys: "What an evil thing you've done!"

Good Guys: "Where is the laser?"
Bad Guy: "Ask the police!"

Best of all, Captain America urges you on time and again with his battle cry of "Okay! Go!" Seriously, every boss you fight, when the boss' life gets about 3/4 drained, the game's theme song starts thumping and Captain America shouts a slogan I'm pretty sure was written for him by a drunk Paul Oakenfold.

But hey, the whole game is full of this kind of stuff, and really you could spend days scratching your head, wondering what the fuck is going on and what the fuck a Mechanical Taco is.



As in any good comic game, there are cameos from a number of characters who make attempts to help you along the way. Just for fun, here are the four other characters who show up. Try and guess which one is the most helpful.

1. Quicksilver: has the ability of super speed, like the Flash.
2. Namor: Super-ultra strong, shares Vision's fashion sense.
3. Wonder Man: Strong as fuck.
4. Wasp: Extremely small, fashion designer to the stars.

Did you answer Wasp? If you did, I have to believe you have played this game before because there is no reason for that character to be the one helpful extraneous character. It's just plain nonsense.

But before long, you get to the final stage.

Scene 4: The Giant Laser Cannon

You fight some more assholes, then you get to the Red Skull. This game does a very classic move where you fight the Red Skull, who is in a suit and has learned one karate kick in preparation for fighting 4 superpowered men at the same time, and just when you think you've beaten him he teleports into a little bubble, revealing a gigantic Red Skull robot!

Red Skull: "It's another trap, you stupid men!"

Stupid Men: "I'll show you the meaning of justice!"

The meaning of justice, we are shown, is punching out a giant robot until it falls onto the Red Skull and crushes him. Ah, horribly crushed on his own petard!

World saved. Dialogue giggled at. Superhero status cemented.



The big question: Is this a good game?

To answer that question out of context is impossible. I mean, really, how can this game compare to something like Batman: Arkham Asylum? Is that even reasonable to consider?

But! The things that were good about it in my childhood days are still good about it now.

The graphics are simple, but they're actually fairly crisp and enjoyable. The colors, too, are kind of brilliant, especially on the main characters (with the exception of Vision, who is a vision in beige).

Plus, it's just long enough. Right about when I'm getting sick of fighting the same stupid assholes with lasers, I get too the end.

There's an appeal to long, involved games. No doubt. But sometimes I want to put on headphones, listen to the first 3 minutes of a bunch of Mars Volta songs, and scroll left to right, punching indiscriminately.

MS Office Gets Sexy

For a presentation I'm doing in a little bit, I needed a piece of clipart to represent the concept "sexy." I did a search which resulted in two bits of media. One was a piece of audio that sounded like the kind of music you would get when Bugs Bunny stuffed oranges down the front of a dress and tried to bang whoever that racist cowboy guy was. Only shittier and made with a free, on-screen keyboard app of some kind.

The other piece was this image:

Now, I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the sexiness of the picture. I mean, maybe it is. I don't know that we all agree on cowboy hats paired with what is essentially a clayface makeup woman, but whatever.

What makes this curious to me is that this is the ONLY image that comes up after searching "sexy." There are certainly other images that work. In fact, I found one of the bottom half of a woman, who is wearing a bikini, has a belly button ring, and is using the part of her bikini bottom that wraps around her hip as a way to hold sunglasses. So it's not that clip art is all for prudes or something.

But apparently the above image is the only one that everyone at Microsoft could agree upon as being sexy.

So I guess nerds know something. And if you are the woman pictured above, and you're out there, congratulations. Maybe it's like being the most tech-savvy member of a bizarre cult that lives in caves created by breaking holes in rocks, jamming branches inside the holes and soaking the branches to swell them and slowly increase the holes until they are big enough to live in. Maybe it's like that very specific reference, but it's still a sort of an honor.

Picture That's Been Reposted To My Dismay

Okay, can we talk about this image that I've seen all over the Facebooks and Tumblrs this last week or so?

Before going any further, just know that this isn't some anti-feminist screed or something. I save that for audio broadcasts. I just have a dislike for this kind of thing because I think it's trying to make a point, but upon further investigation it's kind of silly.

A few things about this that I think need to be acknowledged:

1. First off, if we're reconciling body issues here, let's not do so by attacking the bodies of others. That's pretty counter-productive. It may feel empowering to point out that the skinniness of the women on the top row is repulsive and unnatural, but really making anyone feel repulsive and unnatural is not doing a whole lot to address a problem. That's what brought us here in the first place.

2. Because I've heard it many times, I do have to break everyone's hearts by reminding us all that the good ol days were not as good as we like to think, no matter how much you are enjoying Mad Men. The old rumor that Marilyn Monroe was a size 14? Not really true. Sorry, it's just not true. That's not to say that a size 14 can't be stunning and sexy, but let's not hold up someone who is NOT a size 14 to make that point. Not to mention the fact that fighting to expand the range of acceptable sizes is an asinine pursuit as these sizes have no connection to any sort of reality whatsoever. Guess what? I just invented Derk size. It's whatever the label says, and then you just say it's 6. So in Derk size, everyone is a 6. That is equally logical, which tells you how fucked up this sizing stuff is.

3. I think we can all agree that the women on the top row have some shit going on. The bottom row? Represented, we have schizophrenia, one woman who was married 8 times, an overdose death, and loads of other issues that are more conveniently hidden. Invisible problems are still problems, people. So let's not get too excited about making lifestyle changes or wondering where all the heroes have gone.

4. Okay, there's a pretty wide spectrum of body types here. While I don't endorse putting one's body through a lot of bullshit to please someone else, there is someone in the world who is attracted to every single one of the eight photos on that image, plus a whole hell of a lot of other ones. As much as it's wrong to place beauty expectations on someone, it's also wrong to condemn someone for what they are attracted to (assuming consenting adults). I don't think most people really get to choose that, yet we give people shit for it all the time. It's wrong to hate someone or think less of them because they have a preference.

5. Are we really comparing the 4 women on the bottom, legendary beauties of their time, and saying that the 4 on the top row will occupy that same cultural space? Because although I don't want to dismiss anyone's beauty here, I don't think that the 4 on top will be the first four names to cross most peoples' minds in 2060.

6. Does this comparison even matter if we consider that we're comparing one impossible standard of beauty against another? Is it easier going through the day now that you know you merely have to be as hot as Marilyn fucking Monroe?

7. How about we have a look at some comments from web site where this picture was posted:

i prefer handles

I'll take a "normal" woman over Skeletor any day.

Sir Mix A Lot said it best, Little in the middle but she got much back.

I'll take the bottom row over the upper row. I've always found that if they are too boney, I get hurt.

Well, wasn't THAT enlightening. I'm not sure I can speculate on what exactly the point of the above image is, but I have to say, I'm almost certain it was not to elicit these reactions.




All I'm saying: Let's stop with this stuff. If you talk to people who make you feel bad about yourself, fuck 'em. You need to find new friends.

I mean, what are you going to do? Print this out, fold it up and put it in your wallet? And then you can pull it out and, what, guilt someone into changing the standard of beauty?

If someone doesn't think you're hot, quit trying to change his or her mind. Your time is better spent just about anywhere else, with just about anywhere else.

In the meantime I'll do my part. If I find myself faced with the decision to have sex with four of eight hot Hollywood women, I'll try and make the best of it.

Sentient

01/20/2012

This is either the day Goodreads became sentient and started responding with emotion as opposed to search results alone:

OR it is the day Pete begins the long process of acknowledging the depths of loneliness required to make you see friends in a book database mated with social networking.

Pete's Smartphone

I decided to buy a smartphone.

Partially it was because of a latenight bar discussion regarding whether or not Joesph Gordon-Leavitt was Cobra Commander in the GI Joe movie (he was, for some reason).

Partially it was because I discovered that I could get a plan that would include free data for $10 less than I was currently paying monthly.

After getting it home, I had it for about a day, fiddling around, looking like a grandfather trying to answer a cordless for the first time and looking wide-eyed and frightened when picking it up didn't do the job.

I am proud to say that I used the Navigation feature, the browser, the Twitter and Facebook apps, and the gmail connection before checking out how it works for pornography.

I would rate it as nearly seamless. Which is the opposite of the anatomy of the people I like to watch in the videos.

That was dirty. But fuck off. This is called "Digitally Stimulated" which is fairly vulgar to begin with.

My question for those with smartphones, iPads and the like, is how are you holding this and masturbating? Surely it's on some kind of a stand. What are you using? How is it working for you? Is the masturbation thing why they have all these covers and cases? Why was the ease of this use not profiled when I hit the "compare phone" button on cnet?

Answers are very much appreciated.

Long live technology.

FINISH HIM!

The other day I stayed up far too late watching Mortal Kombat finishing moves.

I know. I'm sorry.

When I was a kid, these were the most exciting video game innovation I'd ever seen. Let me say again: Freezing a man and then breaking him into pieces was the most exciting video game innovation I'd ever seen.

Cut me some slack. We didn't have the Power Glove.

Watching through them again, I have to say there were some that were pretty disappointing, even then. ESPECIALLY in Mortal Kombat III. Take a ride with me through some terrible Mortal Kombat finishing moves.



I always hated Stryker. Not to be confused with the Loveline host. Him I REALLY fucking hated. This whole thing makes no sense. I mean, with today's political climate, I can see it. But in 1997 or so? Plus, the frying someone by taser followed by firing a GUN into the air in celebration is really making my point for me.


(the first one in this video)

After you finish crushing this Native American man to death, remember to thank Felix the Cat for the use of his bag, which can store infinitely large items in a very uninfinitely-sized space.



For whatever reason, it was important to explode people in MKIII. Not enough to impale, then you have to somehow...shake someone to the point of skin melting off, followed by explosion?




Okay, okay, okay. I know that part of the MK suspension of disbelief is not asking the question "If you could finish him like that, why not just do that in the first place?" But never has a finishing move begged the question more. You could be a giant this whole time? What the fuck? Shouldn't you be involved in some separate, giants-only tournament?

It's also a consistent problem with fighting games that the fighters are never weight-classed or anything like that. How Dahlsim ended up fighting E.Honda I will never grasp.



This one bugs the shit out of me from a purely graphic standpoint. If both characters are on a plane, and one comes down on top of the other like a rotating saw blade, how does he then go in front of the foreground at the same time? I call bullshit. If you have a headsaw that can liquify a man, how about you just keep on going through the floor?


(the first one here)

I liked being Kabal. Finally, a guy with the sense to bring weapons. Why the fuck not? Everyone can throw fireballs all around, this other guy has metal arms, but nobody is bringing weapons? This finisher, though...I guess I'm to understand that his mask is feeding him helium? Although that would explain why the scream from finisher two is so high-pitched...



Whaaa....?

I don't know whose idea this was, but I suspect that "Toasty" asshole.

thisiswhyimbroke.com

My little brother, in preparation for the holidays, introduced me to thisiswhyimbroke.com

It's one of those frustrating web sites that has some awesome shit, the best thing you've ever seen, right next to an item that represents everything unholy, stupid, and disturbing about commerce.

Come along and see!


Snuggle Pillow

Uh, this pillow was invented to give one the illusion of snuggling with a human man. A human man in a button-up shirt who was sawed in half at some point. Frankly, I'd rather buy a fuck doll because getting caught snuggling a fuck doll seems somehow less embarrassing than snuggling this thing. I'm a sad guy, but I have my limits.

R2-D2 Trash Can

This is the first I'm hearing that R2-D2 was not originally intended to be a trash receptacle.



Novelty Monopoly Money Tie

Can someone explain to me the situation where it is appropriate to wear a novelty tie? Because if you're supposed to wear a tie to something, that means it's formal. But if you wear a novelty tie, it's now informal. It's the worst thing to happen to fashion since the tuxedo t-shirt worn to a rock show.



Glass-Bottom Canoe

I'm not so much opposed to this item as I am the way in which it's being sold to me. How come every water craft or floaty or whatever has to be advertised by a babe in a bikini? I don't need to be hard when I'm picking out water wings. I really don't. I've gone over the exhaustive list I made of times when it is crucial for me to be hard, and purchasing pool shit is not one of them.



Corn Dog Machine

I already have a corn dog machine. It's called the Carnival. And the great thing about the carnival is I don't have to keep it in my cabinets.



Futon Bunk Bed

A couch that converts into not one, but TWO beds? I never thought you could turn a couch into two shitty beds, but you did it. And maybe the futon is a lost cause in terms of quality, but this is at least a step forward in quantity. It's never been easier to have two drunken friends stay over, one sleeping while the other one lies awake in sheer terror, waiting for his buddy to fall through and crush him.


Baby Carrying Jacket

Yeah, why buy you and your baby separate jackets when you can horrify me by buying this single jacket that makes you look like that dummy who turned into a blueberry on Willy Wonka plus the added terror of a baby head emerging from her stomach?



Labyrinth Aquarium

This would be kind of cool, but I think after a while I would start to feel bad for the fish. They don't seem to be the sharpest creatures in the sea. I don't know that fish can cry, but watching a fish weep seven months into the search for the particular bubble he's adopted as home would be bad times all around.


The Water Jet Pack

....

It's about fucking time.

This thing is two-fold the best thing that has happened in our time.

First, having any sort of jetpack is a win for science in my eyes, and science wins are pretty rare these days.

Second, even if I never use it, I can already feel the rumblings of a belly laugh when I read the headline "Sophmore on spring break killed by jetpack malfunction at Lake Havasu."

Lytro Camera: What's the Point of Photography?

So this little box is the next thing that is transforming photography from the art of capturing a moment to the art of pointing a thing at a thing and then fooling around with it on the computer.

It's very scientific and all that, which you could probably guess by the description that starts, "The very first light fields were captrued at Stanford University over 15 years ago..."

Really, all you need to know is that this little bugger captures a very full image, which means that you can change it in ways that were not possible before. If you want to understand the difference, look off at an object 5 feet away from you. While still focusing on that object, you can see that everything between you and that object and beyond that object is blurry. This is what we call depth of field.

The way cameras worked traditionally is similar to the way an eye works in that you would capture an image, and the depth of field was set, permanent. It was what your eye was seeing in that moment in time.

This camera, however, is a little different. You can experiment on their web site, but here's a sample of how this would look:

Here's picture A:

In picture A you can see that the can in the foreground is crystal clear, and the clarity fades as the row gets further and further away.

Let's look at picture B:

In this image, the first can in blurry while the middle cans are clear.

Okay, so this is Photo 101, but the difference is that before, with film and digital, you had to decide what to include in your depth of field beforehand, as you took the picture. Once you took the picture, it was difficult to sharpen some parts while blurring others to create this effect. If you took picture A, it would take enough work to warp it into picture B that it was prohibitive. With the Lytro, you just click with the mouse. That's it.

So this is awesome, technologically. But what about for photography?

To be honest, I think it must be harder and harder to be a professional photographer anymore. Even ten years ago, there was enough technique and practice that you could see a huge difference between an amateur and a pro. But now you can make up a lot of that difference with money and software.

It's a fairly close analogue to hunting. Bow hunting is pretty challenging, and you have to be good at shooting, patient, and have some sort of skill to get close enough. If you were allowed to use top military technology, you could blow up a deer with a missile that you pilot, and you could screencap the entire event.

But on the other hand, I think bow hunting is kind of silly when one considers that you're really just handicapping yourself for the sport of it. I mean, I sort of get it, but couldn't you just start forcing sprinters to smoke cigars while they ran? Or why not hunt with only a knife?

What I'm getting at here is that there is, to me, a disappointing and sad devaluing of the photographic image because an image is no longer what it once was, which is a moment of time captured for others to see (at the least) and an artistic interpretation of that moment (at best). Whereas before the photographer had to do both of those things at once, now all that is required is to point and shoot. You can worry about the rest later.

These improvements in technology can have an upside. For example, the fact that someone can now make a feature-quality film with equipment that can be purchased at Best Buy is pretty awesome in that it allows people with ideas to create and make something that maybe would not have been made if it had to go through a studio. But the downside is that all of this equipment being available means that it's also available to dummies who have no ideas and figure the good ideas will just come to them at some point.

The technology also gets rid of something that we don't talk about a lot in art: the complete fuck-up.

Take this A and B example, also from the Lytro web site:

Okay, artistic license and all that, but I think most people would agree that photo A is a fuck-up. You've captured an interesting background, but with a blob in the foreground that's way more interesting than what you focused on. Alright, so you fucked up.

But fucking up is how you learn to do things right. When you develop this picture, that's the moment when you say, Okay, next time I need to make a different aperture adjustment to capture exactly what I want.

And fucking up is important because if every photo is edited to be perfect, then a good photo really has no value anymore.

Celebrity Doppleganger

The other night a couple friends and I were having an argument/discussion/boozefest where we all discussed celebrity look-a-likes. This happens a lot in my circle of friends, the question, "If you were casting a movie of your life, a biopic, who would you cast to play so-and-so?"

There was much discussion. Names were thrown around, everything from the lovely and talented Nancy Kerrigan to the less lovely and less talented (at least in the ice skating world) Danny Devito.

So, to see if I could find an unbiased answer, I turned to the internet.

I found a celebrity lookalike generator at this address: http://celebrity.picadilo.com/

There are certainly others out there, but this is the only one I found that doesn't require any email address, logging in, or any other nonsense. I try not to do that whenever possible. Giving up your email to find a celebrity lookalike is like telling someone your phone number to buy batteries.

Let's take a look at the results, starting with myself:

Hmm...okay, some awesome ones mixed in with some...Jay Leno. I see a couple problems with this right off. For starters, if I match Jay Leno 59% and Pierce Brosnan 58%, does that suggest that there's only about a 1% difference between the faces of these two men? Because I think people with the use of their eyes worldwide would disagree.

The other big problem I see is that looking like David Bowie could be pretty great. He had some handsome times. However, looking like the pale, vampiric version of David Bowie above is slightly less complimentary.

In order to see how much difference it makes depending on the picture, I tried a second one as well:

This makes absolutely no sense to me. I should get some extra points for getting 2 of 3 male Friends, and the two best, in my opinion. But if I looked 93% like Matt Damon, I would be far, FAR too busy working my way through trim to write blogs. And clearly, that is not the case.

Let's move on to friend #1:

Now, while the idea that my white male friend in his late 20's looks like Queen Latifah (my mom's favorite "rapper"), a black middle-aged woman, is hilarious, it doesn't really help me cast the movie so much. And again, a 1% difference between Queen Latifah and Owen Wilson? This shit ain't working. And though I feel like Ellen is funny, I don't know if the world is ready for that gender-bending role. So another picture was absolutely necessary.

A guy could do a lot worse than this. Denzel and the white Denzel (who could be Richard Gere OR Harrison Ford, depending on how you feel about cinema).

So how about a female friend?

What's interesting is that, of the three of us, she most often hears that she looks like different celebrities. None of THESE, but others of equal quality or better.

And though I respect what JK Rowling has done, I think seeing her as a celebrity look-alike is a stretch. She's a lot more famous for inventing a game where people straddle brooms than for having some kind of a face.

Second try:

Sooo....this is a little all over the map for my liking. Julianne Moore and Mariah Carey, both very beautiful. And Roman Polanski. Maybe this thing is really advanced, and maybe this particular friend has mannish hands.

Anyway, this strikes me as a good tool for determining celebrity lookalikes for two reasons:

1. It does not in any way take into account personality, which doesn't matter. If someone is going to play you in a movie, they learn your mannerisms, not the other way around.

2. Arguing about it is kind of pointless because if I say, "You look like Richard Dreyfuss," and you say, "No I don't. I'm a woman" we'll reach an impasse very quickly. But if you feed it into the machine, and everyone uses the same machine, you get what you get. And when it comes back with Jay Leno, you can walk away assuming that it's a programming issue instead of standing in front of the mirror for forty minutes, doing bits on newspaper typos while studying your chin.

New Oregon Trail

Today I learned that there is a new Oregon Trail game coming out for the Wii.

First there was excitement. Then dysentery.

Because after the initial excitement wore off and I wiped up, I remembered that there was the AWESOME Oregon Trail (1992-ish) that I came to know and love in elementary school, and the shitty version (1995-ish) that had better graphics, but was mouse-dependent and everything else about it was total shit.

The new game just didn't have the same appeal. So what were the appeal factors of the O.G.O.T. (Original Gangsta Oregon Trail)?

1. Naming


Before you could hitch up your wagons, you had to name your family. This small customization is endless fun and can add so much to a game.

I started by naming the characters cool shit. Optimus Prime and his son Galactus were the only ones to make the ford across the first river. Their daughter/sister, Rainbow Brite, unfortunately didn't make it.

Then, when I got smart, it was time to put in teacher names. This didn't pay off right away, but when the message "Mrs. Pesja has died of a snake bite" hit the screen, you'd say, Damn right she has. Serves her right for making me MEMORIZE times tables. Barbaric practices, barbaric death.

Of course, then you also hit on the idea of swears. "Shithead has died." "Fuckface has starved to death."

And finally, in case you are like me and enjoy giggling in your apartment alone, adding racial epithets to any game adds a bizarre element to any gameplay scenario. All of a sudden it appears as though this friendly shopkeeper has a bad case of the Klansies. OR, if that doesn't push your button, just add "Goddamn cocksucking" to the front of every character name, transforming every video game into Deadwood: the game.

2. You were in charge


Being a kid, it was like role reversal. All of a sudden, you were like the dad on the road trip, making all the decisions with disregard to this dumb family that don't really even exist to you off paper. One of the kids wants to stop because he's ill? Too bad. We're making good time. Someone needs to be buried? Great, we'll bury him right here and get on the road. Good thing we were hauling all these tombstones. And if I wanna try and just drive straight through a river, maybe a couple people don't make it out. Oh well. All part of the adventure!

You also decided to set the pace. Though I didn't really understand the meaning of the word fully, "grueling" was always the obvious choice. It's called the Gold Rush, not the Gold Get There When We Get There.

You also got to pick your career. You could be a carpenter (if you were an idiot), a farmer (if you were a bigger idiot) or a banker (which was the obvious choice because you started with GODDAMN MONEY).

3. Hunting


Clearly the best part of this adventure was shooting. I'm certain that we must have been the last generation to grow up in schools that PAID MONEY for a video game that featured the use of GUNS.

Anyway, even a 3rd grader can appreciate the hilariousness of standing in a field with 7 downed buffalo, 4 squirrels, and a couple rabbits, more meat than a family could ever hope to eat or carry. It was enough to make a Native American man shed a single, badly pixellated tear.

4. The Rafting Endgame


The last sequence of the game involved piloting your wagon, transformered into a raft, down a raging river. It was awesome, and all of a sudden you were playing what appeared to be AN ACTUAL VIDEO GAME.

5. It Was Played At School

Probably the most important point.

I'm not sure how schools were tricked into thinking this game was educational, but they were suckers, man. It must have been before people understood what video games were, because I learned a hell of a lot more (almost nothing) from Metal Gear Solid than I did Oregon Trail.

I learned the word "typhoid" but still had no idea what it was beyond the fact that it was fatal to ShitBitchHell, my only son. I still have no fucking idea what a wagon tongue is, nor what effect it's breaking may have on a traveler.

Oregon Trail was far from a great, great game. But compared to doing anything remotely resembling work, I'd be happy to march pioneers to their grueling deaths, squashing the spirit of American westward expansion one family of unfortunately named travelers at a time.




See Also:

Organ Trail (zombie version)
Thule Trail (roadtrip to a music fest, scroll down to middle of page to play)

Things That Wreck Video Games to Shit: Looking for the Damn Yellow Key

You found the blue key, the red key, and you've killed every single thing that moves, blown up every barrel of toxic/explosive waste, and pushed space bar while facing a wall and heard that oddly sexual grunting noise as the character tries to open a brick wall.

And you still can't find the goddamn yellow key.

Here's the thing, when you spend 20 minutes on one level of a shooter like Doom and others, 15 of those minutes will be spent walking around, shooting nothing, listening to the music that you never really noticed before and now hate like poison.

I don't know about the rest of the world, but I play shooters to shoot. That's why they're called first-person-shooters and not first-person-key retrievers.

And how long is this reality supposed to hold up? Isn't this supposed to be some kind of working military facility? How did people get around here before? Did they all just get to work, go to a keyboard and type in "idclip" and hope that they never tried to walk through an outside wall because then you were lost in a really graphically annoying limbo?

There should be a code you type in where after not shooting your weapon for 20 minutes, a text pops up on the screen that says, "Oh, wait. You just found the yellow key in your OTHER pocket" and then the goddamn thing shows up on your inventory.

Drinkify

So it's almost certainly just a way for people to nail down demographics (you know, I type in "Drive-By Truckers" and then "Lucero" and then "Gaslight Anthem" and that data all goes into some insane database) but it's still pretty fun. Type in your favorite band name and see what you're supposed to be drinking.

Some of my results:

Lucero: 8 oz Maker's Mark, 8 oz Ice cream, Combine in highball glass, stir. (I'm not really an ice cream guy. Is this a thing?)

Drive-By-Truckers: 12 oz Whiskey, 12 oz Monster Energy Drink (actually, this isn't too far from what I had last time I saw them: 3 back-to-back-to-back whiskey shots, then slam a cup of coffee. I'm told the show was pretty fun)

Jason Isbell: 4 oz Southern Comfort, garnish w/ cucumber slice (the Southern Comfort part makes sense. If I were dating Jason Isbell, that would definitely be my nickname for him. But I don't know why garnishing with a cucumber is necessary. EVER.)

Bon Iver: 1 bottle red wine, serve w/ a twist of grapefruit (red wine is kind of lame, but an entire bottle is worth an attaboy)

The Hold Steady: 1 PBR, serve cold (hmm, okay. Although they DO have an entire song about whiskey, citrus, and ginger.)

The National: 1 PBR, serve cold (hey, something's up here...)

R.E.M.: 1 PBR, serve cold (oh, goddamn it! Okay, I know how to fix this)

Lynyrd Skynyrd: 1 oz Canadian Club, 1 oz coffee (alright then)

Finally, I'm seeing Centro-Matic tomorrow...

Centro-Matic: 4 oz whiskey, 4 oz half-and-half, 6 oz Rose's Lime Juice (good lord. Between the sweet and the milk, and to a lesser extent the whiskey, this is going to be like being a baby again)

We've learned an important lesson today. Apparently, I'm allowed to drink PBR, whiskey, and whiskey combined with stimulants. I AM allowed to drink red wine, however it has to be an entire bottle of red wine.

Anyway, see what you find out about yourself www.drinkify.org

Slydial

Maybe I'm the only one who didn't know about this already.

All you have to do is dial 267-slydial (this is normally the place where people put the corresponding numbers, but c'mon. I think we've got this figured out by now, and doesn't it kind of defeat the point when you get this awesome number and then have to use the regular number anyway?) and it will bypass the ringer on your "friend's" phone and take you straight to voicemail. If you don't know why that's awesome, your life must be much better than most.

http://slydial.com/

Things That Shit Up Video Games pt. [something]

I got you, you bastard. I've got you right in my sights. I just have to make a slight adjustment downward.

Wait. Shit. I can't remember if this is one of those games where the control stick goes up to go up or goes down to go down. Fuck. Shit. Okay, I'll try- OH GODDAMN IT!

Who the hell decided that the controls to a sniper rifle scope would be like goddamn airplane controls? How in the hell, in what world does that make any sense?

I hate this shit. Think about it like this: People generally hold a controller one of two ways.

#1: Horizontally, the wire headed directly towards the TV.
#2: Vertically, the wire coming straight up out the top.

If you're holding it vertically, how does it make sense at all? And nobody holds it vertically the other way, with the buttons facing away from the player and the cord going straight toward the floor.

I guess there's an established system for these sorts of things. But that's the same kind of thinking that ended up America being the only place on Earth that uses the goddamn non-metric-system, whatever that's called. The Bald Eagle System?

Things That Ruin Video Games pt. 3: Obstructed View

You want to see me fucking lose it? Give me a game where you can't see what the hell you're doing.

Castlevania, hard as it could be, was always a personal favorite of mine. So when I got the chance to rent Castelvania 64, I jumped at it, and then immediately started jumping into canyons, creeks, and any number of endless pits.

Or sometimes you'd get a view like this:

So you're walking towards the player, but three steps from here you might find yourself falling into a big pile of bullshit. Actually, that would be fine because you wouldn't die and have to goddamn start over. You fall into a canyon.

The game was like playing Pitfall: Grand Canyon at Night Edition. You'd be walking around, then you would be falling. Just that fast. It's like my nights. I'll be sitting around, then I'll be sitting around eating Flavor Blasted Goldfish, just like that. No transition, no warning.

This wasn't an uncommon thing with the quick proliferation of 3D-ish games. Take this classic, for example:

You're swinging Bowser by the tail, and you have to let go at just the right time so he flies into a bomb. Not too hard, except that half the time the camera pulls in tight like this and you have to guess where the bombs are.

There are occasions where fooling with the view is okay. If there's darkness, smoke, or something that would affect one's view, then it gets a pass. It's still obnoxious, but it feels on purpose and you can hope that the environment is designed with the obstructed view in mind.

But what is bullshit is when you look at the character and think, If I were standing on that platform, I would be able to see where the fuck I was going. If I were walking in those woods, I definitely would have seen that gigantic canyon before I skipped along and then didn't touch the ground. Nothing more embarrassing than having your last step off the lip of a canyon be a skipping step.

Making the view the main issue in a game is a little bit of Gotcha gameplaying, the type of game where there's no amount of skill that can save you, only a repetition of play that gives you a Daredevil-esque sense of the digital world you're occupying.

If you design a game that's difficult because you can't see shit, why not just send it to me with a goddamn blindfold? Or have blind payers test it out?

Figure it out, Nintendo of the late 90's.

Ubuntu Linux Laptop Save

This one is not for the un-nerds. It's not really for the true nerds either. It's somewhere in between.

Like a lot of people, I had a laptop that was getting to the end of its useful life. All the normal signs were there. It took in the neighborhood of 7 hours to properly start up. The battery lasted just long enough to unplug the computer and move it from one room to another. Where once I would have stabbed someone in the heart for approaching the machine with a beverage in hand, I now used the open keyboard as a coaster, a tiny individual glass on each of the keys. Yes, I designed a set of glassware for the express purpose of demonstrating how much I disliked the machine. Like you've never wasted a couple bucks.

My laptop was one of the first models to come with Windows Vista. Windows Shitsta. It was crap, and worse, the laptop was clearly not meant to handle the strain. It was built for XP or the like, and Vista was crammed in there. The little progress ring, that blue circle that says, Take a seat. This'll be a while, even that blue ring was too graphical for my computer.

I decided, after getting a new laptop to change the operating system. I don't need all the graphics, all the animations and whatnot. Just something that functions.

I started off looking for a Windows XP installation disc from my desktop. No dice.

Then it was Linux, Ubuntu 11.04.

The installation was a bit of a process. You had to make an installation disc, then change the boot order of your computer.

For the un-nerds who got this far, that means changing your computer's settings so that it looks to the CD-ROM drive for instructions on how to start up.

But, overall, not bad. It took a little while to reinstall, but I was pretty happy with the speed. Plus the narwahl, which is a dolphin with a corkscrewn dildo jammed on its head, was easily removed from the background.

Why are we obsessed with unicorns when a narwahl is a real thing? It's pretty much the unicorn of the sea. Why is a horse horn better than a fish horn?

Anyway, things were going great until I discovered that I was no longer able to connect to wireless. At all. Not just a particular network. Ubuntu didn't even acknowledge that the laptop had the hardware to connect.

Down the digital rabbit hole.

After some quick googling of Ubuntu + [my laptop model] I discovered a bunch of articles along the lines of "Why isn't my wireless working?" "How the fuck come my wireless isn't working?" and "Why in the hell shit ass isn't my wireless working, bitch!?!?"

Again, their words, not mine.

The fix wouldn't be too bad if you could connect to a landline. Which I couldn't. So, the trick was to rip out a driver, replace it with another one, and do the entire thing wirelessly.

I'm not going to bother you with the whole process, but let's just put it this way: It involved using a command prompt, a cutter, an installer, and checking the architecture, whatever the fuck that means.

For me, it meant following hard-earned step-by-step instructions to a T, and then it worked.

Until the computer connected to the internet, installed updates, and then I had to do the whole thing over again.

I'm not a computer genius, clearly. But I have to say, for all its expense and annoyance, Windows still works pretty well for me. I'm not claiming that things are not possible on Ubuntu, but I will claim that for me, and for anyone without a pretty good amount of computer experience, it's going to take you twice as long.

In other words, it's a good idea if you're looking for a hobby. But if your hobby is playing King's Quest and you have to work for hours to get a laptop back in shape to play a game that originally came on floppy disc, it's a lot of work for nothing.

Drilled

Interesting little thing that came across my radar the other day.

Randy Sarafan, media artist, has created these little stickers for your personal use. In fact, he's not even selling them. You can find his templates, including directions on how to best print them out, here.

He suggests that you open up your computer (or check online), locate the hard drive, and then place this sticker on the outside. Then, if you need to destroy your hard drive for whatever reason, you can do so within moments with a drill or power saw.

The guy seems to be on the up-and-up, putting forth the idea that maybe you, like him, are a media artist who pissed off the wrong people and need to delete, as in permenently delete, all your shit while someone's busting down your door.

Maybe it smacks of paranoia. But I'm not so sure.

After reading this book and seeing how Kevin Mitnick got fucked over and over again in court because people didn't understand what he was doing or how, it makes you think twice about whether or not someone might twist the contents of your hard drive into "evidence" of some kind.

This makes me sound paranoid on the level of a raving lunatic, but I have to say, what's to stop someone from putting something on your computer sometime between you being arrested and it showing up as Exhibit A?

There's an old saying that people with nothing to hide don't have to worry about their privacy. I call bullshit on that.

Just remember, you have a right to privacy, but nobody is going to protect that right FOR you.

As a quick P.S., how long before people get this shit tattooed on their heads?