I, the Passive Aggressive Gamer

I wished the mother in How I Met Your Mother was a chain smoker.

I’ve been watching How I Met your Mother, if only because the show sucked away a good portion of my life and I continued on only to hope that I will one day be privy to the identity of the mother. Otherwise, it’s a repetitive show, trailing behind narrative juggernauts like Kitchen Nightmares and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

They revealed the mother, played by Cristin Milioti. I know I’m a bit late on the revelation, but hey, it didn’t hit me until now.

After looking up Cristin Milioti’s profile on IMDB, I can only guess that the casting choice was partly because of her eyes (and when I say ‘partly’, I mean entirely). They’re like soccer balls. She’s a giant squid, if the defining characteristic of a giant squid are its soccer ball eyes.

I’m not saying she’s ugly. In fact, I think she’s quite attractive. But why her? I didn’t know get it until the ending of season 8.

She was looking around with that dainty stare, wistfully looking at sheet metal and hobo urine at the train station. A manic pixie dream girl.

For those of you unfamiliar with a manic pixie girl, a manic pixie dream girl is a woman whose life plan is shortsightedness and social awkwardness, and she carries a purse full of platitudes that is somehow meant to crack the lonely, brooding shell of a male protagonist.

The eyes are a dead giveaway. They’re like black holes, sucking in all negativity and realism to conjure up a quasar of nonsensical spontaneity that is meant to be equal parts smirk-summoning and cringe-destroying.

They not only are supposedly meant to be unique, but impose uniqueness upon others, especially their loved ones. “Oh, she’s always been like that.” the mother of a manic pixie dream girl would say, struggling to open a bottle of Ritalin.

To a young man whose defining character trait is his lack of one, the manic pixie dream girl is his character trait.

Just watch. HIMYM season 9 will have the manic pixie dream girl. She’ll at first be apprehensive, perhaps a little curious, and then go into full blown nonsense mode. She’ll have something that defines her as quirky, the character equivalent of a plane crash.

And it could have been easily avoided. Make her a New Jersey matriarch, a chain smoker, and an arms dealer. You already made eight seasons of trite nonsense and overextended half-memes, why not just go full retard and do that? What have you got to lose?

• 31 May 2013
• 3

The Xbox One is a murder machine

I get it. I figured it out. The Xbox One is meant to kill people who buy secondhand games. It’s a tool of the Microsoft-Electronic Arts industrial complex (also known as the MEAIC for short) to choke out hard working companies like Gamestop and shifty Ebay sellers, who do it out of the kindness of their hearts and lacklustre customer service.

At first I was hesitant. The Xbox One was a gargantuan piece of chrome and plastic, gargling its triple-OS teeth at me, yelling at me to yell at it. It’s a chaotic thing of Nyarlathotepic proportions, threatening to consume my living room into a singular body of tacky sleekness.

And I wondered why it was so big. It’s a raging, pulsating, vicious thing, a slap in the face of Moore’s Law. And I figured it out.

You see, you don’t see the inside, because one night, while the secondhand-game gamer is sleeping in his or her bed, the Xbox One comes alive. Its unholy gears turn into something unnatural and alien, and swiftly disembowels them.

“Steam sale?!” It asks in a robotic tone, layers of artificial drollness amid an uneasy flickering of Halo TV. Oh, you mock me now, but just watch. There will be a day, and it’s coming very soon.

There can only be One.

• 21 May 2013
• 9

Misogyny may crash and burn with Dragon’s Crown

Any gamer that’s on the cutting edge of misogyny will be familiar with the hilarious avatar of male oppression known as Dragon’s Crown:

Originally I was hesitant; out of all three women, only one of them will not be having back problems, and out of all three women, none of them are dressed for optimal practicality. “This isn’t obviously a game for people with a passing concept of political correctness,” I thought.

But then you look at the males:

And you realise that all these guys are just caricatures of heroism, and that the game shouldn’t, theoretically, take itself that seriously.

But there’s gonna be someone who will, and someone will raise this game with a haughty shout and bated breath, claiming that this is an avatar for hyper-ism, linity, and archy. What’s more concerning is that I’m looking forward to it.

I want someone to kick up a fuss once this games out, because I’m interested in seeing what the arguments will be for a game like this. In most discussions on gaming misogyny, the arguments are either a subtle, overbearing, oppressive sensation from the ongoing patriarchy, or we have some sort of inability to write women because the project lead has a penis.

But here, there’s a blatant hammering in Dragon’s Crown. It’s not subtle, it’s not trying to be subtle, but in all instances, it’s fair. That’s what interests me - it seems to be treating every single member of the potential party as some walking slather of meat, riddled in tumorous features so gaudy and ridiculous that you can’t help but consider whether anyone in their right mind would look at these illustrations and say “YEP, LET’S THROW MONEY AT IT”.

But they did, and that’s what interests me. I want to see a flurry of gargling, frothing band-aiders come together and condemn this game, not because I’m against feminism or anything (I’m not delusional), but because this seems like the visible target that isn’t. And that’s beautiful. That’s exciting, blood-boiling, magical.

Just like those back problems.

• 18 May 2013
• 1

My testimonial of the Z10

So someone had questions about the transition from an iPhone to a Blackberry. I’d like to share my thoughts.

I came from an iPhone. To be honest, the biggest problem I had was switching it up and learning a new operating system (because I’m borderline mentally retarded and had no problems with the stagnancy in iOS6). I was blown away. Not literally, mind you. That would’ve been better.

For me, the Hub and the gestures made it work. On the iPhone, it would pop up on the screen and show me “@RickDick says: lol i fukk yur jew mom last nite” for everyone to see, and I’d have to log in to Twitter and then I was compelled to tell him to fuck off. However, with the Hub, it’s just swipe up, peek, say “fuck this shit” and go about my merry business hosting cock fighting rings in my basement.

Likewise, the gestures are super great. I mean, when I found out I could force my keyboard to show up any time I wanted, I lost my shit. No physical buttons? Yes, please. You remember that part in Constantine where Keanu Reeves gives Peter Stormare the finger before getting the cancer ripped out of his lungs? That was me to my iPhone after two weeks with this bad boy.

If you’ve already bought it, this could be a bit late, but the phone is big. I mean, big. The iPhone felt like I was golding a giant glass cock in my hand (which was okay, cause having two penises felt empowering), but the Z10 felt like a Crunch Bar; the phone is a giant black slate that I’d never in a million years sink my teeth.

Another thing is that it’s not a perfect transition from Apple Fanboyism. For instance, I have those Ear Pod things from Apple that look like alien testicles. I have an Air as my primary computer. My blood is Starbucks (Vente, please) and my urine is PBR. The transition isn’t super perfect. I can bring stuff through with Blackberry Link, but some Apple products (like those Ear Pods) don’t work 100 percent with the Z10. Sure, you can pause and play and raise or lower the volume, but when you’re in East Village and listening to Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven is a Place On Earth and you just want the “OooooooOOoooOOOh” opening, you won’t get such convenience. Just a heads up.

All in all, it’s good. It’s a damned good phone, and not because I spent a gajillion dollars on this. I really like it.

• 10 Apr 2013

1 Week Ago

I haven’t updated this in a long time, and my mantra was to update it around 2-3 times a week, or die trying. Of course, since I’m not dead and the updates aren’t coming, that insinuates I value my life more than I’m aware of.

I’ve been working on a small project recently, and hopefully I can get it up and running by the end of the month before all my dick jokes and Holocaust references fall into obscurity.

• 10 Mar 2013

Quality Research

Nothing is more magical than doing research. It’s an endless cycle of bad ideas on paper sifted out by more competent people, like some sort of sieve of moronic diatribes that you hope someday will make you the most famous homeless man around. It’s a beauty, a journey, a cliche, an original thought, all meshed up into one nonsensical cavalcade of mediocre writing. For me, that’s research.

Research is like shooting a dog with rabies multiple times for multiple people, sometimes several thousand times. Except in this case, the shotgun is your brain transmitting intellectual diarrhea to your fingers and the dog is every single Word document you’ve saved. It’s living a state of perpetual Ol’ Yeller, except instead of feeling cathartic you feel like your soul has been sucked dry of every meaningful piece.

After a while, you don’t feel anything; it’s empty. You shit your pants. Not literally. Instead, you shit your pants mentally, and hope that the cleanup is soon, because your brain has no legs.

Or something. I’m doing research right now.

• 25 Feb 2013