The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I have puppy dorg. He lay down. Cute dorg.
Here’s what puppy dorg say: “I found lots of eggs. With peanut butter. I’m the best dog. Not like those other dorgs. Other dorgs dumb. I best dorg. How dumb can other dorgs be? They walk right by the eggs. I’m the best dorg.”
CJ: ” I think you should no longer post that. Writing from the first person perspective of your dog is a bad idea. The worst idea.”
Okay, I won’t post it then, no worries.

Oh, right, it’s Easter. We went over and had a pretty good dinner and stuff and it was all very nice! My mother, being my mother, decided that she had to have an Easter Egg Hunt for the dogs, I guess because she doesn’t have any grandkids yet or something. She got a bunch of plastic eggs, and lined the insides with peanut butter, and had my dad hide them outside before letting the dogs loose on the whole thing. The dogs, in general, did not do a very good job finding the eggs! Molly figured it out quick, because Mom always does stuff like this for her, and Q got one or two, but Skillet and Flapjack were, for the most part, clueless on how the game worked. They just ran around, happy we were all outside with them. I guess they had fun though, so, success?

This week is a week of evaluation. There’s a big audit of the stupid-as-shit new work process at Kohl’s this Monday, and my boss, who I haven’t met in person yet, is coming to visit the satellite campus this Tuesday, and will probably be sitting in on my class, at least for a little bit. PRESSURE?! I dunno. I’m not really that nervous, though I do need to do some extra prep for Tuesday. I’m sure I will be when my boss walks into my class Tuesday. Lots of pressure then. I do a great job. I’m not worried about that. But I just, you know, want to make a good impression. I suppose I should probably dress up that day too, now that I think about it.
This sort of stuff is just part of the job, but I dunno. You go it alone teaching for so long, it’s weird to suddenly have someone looking over your shoulder, even if just for a class, or part of a class. It feels like a lack of trust. In reality, that’s not really it. It’s kind of the opposite: once a semester you get checked on. That’s a lot of trust, especially in me, who hasn’t done this for them before. You know?

I just realized that Ty’s should be open for the summer season now. OH SHIT. Gotta get me some snowcones! I always forget, and it always frustrates me, because it’s so good, you know? I should be hitting them up so often! But normally I forget until like a week before they close and never get to enjoy it. NOT THIS YEAR. Not this year. I swear it.

Anyway, something interesting tomorrow, maybe. Happy Bunny Day!

Okay, so, I’m part of the problem. I’m really enjoying Draw Something.

I had seriously the worst luck, too. I bought the paid version for the game for a buck literally A DAY before Zynga bought OMGPOP. I am the worst. (Yes, I bought the paid version. I really get frustrated with ads, especially in a game like this where you need all the screen real estate you can get for doodling. It’s worth a buck to me to not have that. Plus, you start with a bunch of coins in the paid version which let me start with a color pack which makes the game much less frustrating.)

I’ve heard why this game is so popular talked about before, and it’s true: this game works because it is anti-competitive. There’s no time limits. You aren’t competing with who you’re playing with. It’s just you and your opponent trying to juggle a combo back and forth for as long as you can by not having any missed guesses. You can take forever to draw, and forever to guess. You can make as many wrong guesses as you want, you just have to eventually get it right, or give up and pass. There’s no stress. It’s just fun.

And I mean, fuck, doodling in general is fun. I suck at art, clearly. But it’s still fun to try to be creative when I doodle a little picture, and come up with an interesting way to get my friends to guess what’s going on. It’s nice. It’s also nice that I’m playing on an iPad with a stylus. That’s kind of cheating, as most of the people I am playing with are playing on phones, but it also makes it so I can have more fun playing the game, so I’m not going to complain.

There are certainly some things about the game that suck. Often you will get clues that are multiple words, but the game will not separate them or anything, so you end up with something like lordoftherings or something stupid like that. It just makes it all more complicated for absolutely no reason. It’s also kind of frustrating sometimes when people write words. The people I play with are normally pretty good about that, but I did try playing some random games and people would just write the fucking word on the screen after they drew, or if they had a hard word, just write the word in general. Way to drain all the fun out of the game and miss the point entirely, assholes.

Anyway, it’s basic, stupid fun, and it’s free. You should try it, even with it now being controlled by Zynga. Just don’t microtransact, and you’ll be fine. (Though those color packs are real tempting! But I have like 3 now and have all the basic colors covered, so I’m not too concerned. Still, when you only have the starting four, it makes you want to pony up. But just play the game, earn coins, and buy them that way!)

Let’s talk Skylanders.

Let’s talk Skylanders: Cloud Patrol.

Someone on twitter is like “Oh, it seems like they’ve released a Skylanders game on iOS” and then feel free to put two and two together and figure out what I did. (I threw down my buck and bought the game immediately. If you guessed that, you know how predictable I am.)

Skylanders: Cloud Patrol is pretty alright! A lot of times, shit like this would be thrown together as a quick cash-in, and wouldn’t really have any real value as a game. Cloud Patrol is a legit little casual game. I’m not going to play it for hours, but at least I can appreciate that it’s not a huge waste of my time.

Basically, Cloud Patrol is sort of Fruit Ninja with Jetpack Joyride’s constantly shifting mini-challenge system. You pick your Skylander (who all function the same, just look different. The only reason you’d want to have another Skylander in the game is to look cooler or to match the daily elemental bonus to get more money.) and fly out in a little airship to shoot escaped trolls. You have to tap or draw a line between trolls to target them and shoot them, but if your target line swipes over a mine, you die. The powerups you get in the Adventure Packs fly about, and can give you score bonuses and little buffs, like temporary invincibility, if you tap it. It’s a simple game, but it’s fast. You can play a round in a few minutes while waiting in line or whatever. It looks nice, and it is responsive. What more could you want?

You can unlock all your Skylanders and Powerups in the game by entering in the web codes. Again, besides the powerups, this doesn’t give you TOO many advantages, besides the Powerups. I did it anyway because I am stupid. However, you can also earn Gems in the game by leveling up, collecting presents in game, and, of course, via microtransactions, which you can use to unlock various Skylanders without owning the figure and play with them. Of course, if you own the figure, it gives you a little crown by the Skylander, so…! Little Crown! Come on!

Anyway, it’s a buck, and if you were actually obsessed with Fruit Ninja and want something like that, Skylanders: Cloud Patrol is a quality product that does not require you to own any figures to have fun. It’s been a nice hour or two of distraction for me? That’s all I really need out of a dollar purchase, I suppose.

CJ was like “I’ve heard The Hunger Games is actually pretty good. Do you want to see it?” and I’m like, “I am all for dates, yo.” Except I didn’t say yo. I would never say yo, unless I was saying something like Yo Tengo Queso En La Bibliotecha which is probably nonsense? I don’t think I remember anything about Spanish.

Anyway, we saw The Hunger Games movie awhile back.

I certainly had no prior knowledge of the thing. I knew Shauna liked the series to some extent. I knew that the premise was kind of similar to Battle Royale (although I found, not especially, outside of “kids murdering kids”). I knew the main character was female. I assumed at some point people would be hungry. But yeah, I didn’t have any reason to be racist or anything.

The one thing that surprised me about the story, in a good way, was the look of it all. CJ and I agreed that in a lot of ways, it had a very Fifth Element vibe: all the crazy-ass stupid costumes and whatnot for the rich people of “the Capitol” were just kind of fantastic. It certainly, in a lot of ways, made the movie feel less serious, but I felt like it also emphasized the bad shit about the Games themselves by having it be enjoyed and run by such ridiculous people. Not that “kids shouldn’t be forced to murder each other” is a thing that really needs emphasis to make sense, but, you know.

I also thought the music was pretty good. During several points of the movie, when it was really getting all violin-heavy, I remarked to myself how nice the movie sounded. Maybe I’m easy to please, but it struck me as really enhancing things. Maybe if I went back and listened to it more I’d change my mind. Oh well.

Anyway, the only really shitty thing the movie suffered from was “1-dimensional villain” syndrome. The “bad guys” from Districts 1 and 2 were nothing but bad guys. They really had very little about them that was interesting. I mean, sure, clearly they wanted to survive too, but the pleasure they took in killing with nothing to make that make sense just made them feel like cardboard cutouts. Katniss was at least a little interesting as a character, what with her kind of hating dudes but being forced to play nice with them. Her general issues with letting people in were important to the plot, and made things happen, you know? I dunno what I wanted from villains, but that just didn’t do much for me.
Other annoyances barely worth mentioning: Why won’t Katniss fucking retrieve her arrows ever? She needs those. Why would they revoke their special rules? That would only make the viewers turn on the people running the games, as they’ve gotten caught up in the love story and want to see it successful at that point. It makes no sense.

The action was fun, if not particularly special. The plot was also fun, if not particularly original. I really wanted to see what happened, romance-wise, after the movie, when Katniss went home to dude she was totally having chemistry with at the beginning of the movie. I felt like the fallout from all that would have been interesting to see! Of course, the movie ended there. Oh well.

Basically, I guess what I’m saying is that the film was pretty good entertainment. I had a good time. I’m not in a rush to read the books or anything now. I wouldn’t say the movie was something you had to see or anything. But it’s a good time at the movies! If you want a good time at the movies, that’s a good choice.

I have recently been listening to On The Stick’s Spoilercast of Saints Row The Third. I love those guys, and for the most part, they’re nailing it on the cast so far. However, they said something that made me go “Oh hell no. That’s wrong.” And so I have to now write a little essay here telling them why they are wrong. Or something.

They claim that The Boss (the character you play as in Saints Row The Third, to be clear) is not a real character. They all seemed to rally behind the idea that The Boss is simply some sort of avatar pinnacle of every video game protagonist ever. There’s no depth to The Boss. She’s just this huge perfect power fantasy. (I’m going to use she, because The Boss is a fucking she. Much like my Shepard is My Shepard and I don’t want to see anyone else, my Boss is My Boss, and I couldn’t imagine anyone else as that character. So for the record, I had female voice 1. The one without an accent or whatever. So if I say something that makes no sense with YOUR Boss, maybe that’s why?)

Now, there’s no doubt that Saints Row The Third is a game about power fantasy, clearly. However, I just incredibly disagree with the idea that the Boss is not a Full Character, and is just this one-dimensional avatar. One of the reasons Saints Row is such a fucking fantastic game is that it is incredibly smart in a lot of ways, and how your avatar isn’t just an avatar, but is a character with depth is one of them. How do I know she’s a character? Well, she fits my definition of a fully realized character. Maybe your definition differs, but allow me to tell you what mine is, and how the Boss fits that.

First off, the Boss is someone you relate to and care about. If a character is a real character, that means they have depth, and that means they are someone you can get invested in. Good characters are multifaceted, and just kind of exist to advance the plot or do one specific thing. If the Boss was just an avatar of you, then she wouldn’t have facets. She’d just be me. But I really care about the Boss as a character. When I played the Genkibowl DLC, and the Boss was not talking, in other words just being an avatar of me, I really hated it. I missed her, her commentary, and her view of the world. That was the one, sole reason that DLC was a disappointment in my eyes. When I played Gangstas in Space and she started talking again, I was obscenely relieved that I had her back. I don’t think I’d have felt that way if I wasn’t invested in her as a character.

Secondly, I can guess what the Boss would do. If I put together a random scenario in life or in a video game, and asked myself “What would the Boss do in this situation?” I would be write, pretty distinctly, what the Boss would do. This wouldn’t just be something like “Well, she’d clearly kill the motherfuckers” because while the Boss kills plenty of people, all the time, that’s not her style. She almost always has to do it in about the most batshit insane way, which is one of the reasons the game is so entertaining to play, but these “insane” ways have a method to them. Often, they’re personal. They’re designed to not just stop someone, but to stop them in a way that would be most insulting to them. Why just kill all the Deckers when you could log in to their fucking Cyberbase and kill them on their cyberturf just to be a dick? Similarly, it always has to be big. There is nothing subtle about the Boss. She’s always going to add an extra layer to things if things are not crazy enough. These are just some examples, of course. But she has a whole internal logic that you, as a player, learn and can follow along with. She’s consistent. Compare this to, say, Master Chief. I mean, I could probably guess what he’d do in a situation (shoot some dudes) but I really don’t know why he’d do it. I don’t know what makes Master Chief tick. He’s flat and boring. He’s not a person with motivations I can grasp. I couldn’t guess how Master Chief would, say, deal with a dinner party with his parents. I can with the Boss.

Thirdly and finally, the Boss surprises me. A sign of a good character, to me, is that while I can understand how they tick, they’re capable of doing things that I wouldn’t have anticipated, but still fit in with that internal logic. Action-wise, this is not always the case with the Boss. I can pretty well guess what her actions are going to be. But her dialog, especially, is so very often surprising. In the helicopter chase after the Power Jump Sequence, for example, when she’s talking to Shaundi about how she’d look in a maid outfit and how Pierce would appreciate it? It totally fits with her character, but it was surprising to me after she’s all “Honey, sorry about this,” when she’s catching her in the air after the plane sequence in the beginning. The Boss gave off an almost motherly vibe then, and this fits that, but it’s a mother with really strange priorities. It’s a mother with the Boss’s priorities. But when you see a motherly relationship like that, you don’t put that in your head. Then bam. Surprise. Similarly, the Boss becomes really enamored with Kinsie because of her really fucked up quirks that I would have assumed, at first glance, would have repelled her because it made Kinsie harder to deal with. However, once you see that happen, you realize how much of the Boss is in Kinsie, and how they click in that regard. They show their own personal neuroses with dealing with people in different ways, (some of which Eric talked about on the podcast about how mostly asexual and uncomfortable with just relaxing with people the Boss is) but there’s still a kinship there. It’s a surprise, but it happens. That’s how I know the Boss is fully realized.

Anyway, this is why I love the Boss as a character. I agree with On The Stick: I would love to play the Boss in every single video game from now on. But I’d like to do it because I’d like her as a character. She makes me smile, and I love seeing what she’s going to do, which often isn’t what I would do. Because she’s her own person, who makes decisions, it lets me make decisions like her, which leaves me feeling more free to do things like randomly drop-kick pedestrians and really enjoy all the horrible, awesome stuff in the game. The game works so much better, for me anyway, because the Boss is a character. It’s what made me love The Third when I didn’t like Saints Row 2 all that much. When Giant Bomb was talking about the Boss as best character of the year, it was deserved. Don’t discount her just because you can make her look and sound however you want.

I am getting SO MUCH WORK DONE TODAY! No time to write something creative! Here’s some links! Gotta work work work!

Average Woona Adventures were pretty fun!

I’LL DESTROY HER!

Are we 100% sure why Spike is The Chort?

Get me pictures of that Spiderman!

Have you tried Really Advanced Search? Or this new Google Maps?

Let’s go bowling.

Robots: Sexy.

Apples!

And finally, buying this is always the solution.

See you tomorrow!

I am all super exhausted by today’s ADVENTURES which totally occurred. So I think I’m just going to describe them and then head to bed for today’s blog. Is that cool? We cool? Okay.

Anyway, CJ (that’s Aesa, so we’re clear) and I went to St. Louis. This was because I had an appointment but no work after, so we figured we could do something fun. We went early, and set out and drove, and it was pretty nice. We stopped in Festus, bought some picnic supplies, and then picked a whole nic. It was the first of many being outdoors moments that would pepper the day, for better or worse.

The plan was to go to the art museum. Little did we know that the art museum is not open on Mondays! I will never get to see all of this art museum, it seems, as I always go when it is closed or about to close or something like that. Oh well. We decided to go to the super-disappointing Science Center instead, because we enjoy disappointment. I spent the whole time there complaining about how much it sucks now. CJ couldn’t really disagree as it was not that great. Oh well.

We then left for my appointment, but we were still early, so we ducked in the mall because dammit, I felt like I was going to get SOME sort of Street Pass. But it was for nothing.

My appointment was fine. I talked about sex, and about the stuff I talked about a few days ago. It was still all awkward, but at least I got it out there, I guess.

Then I had picked out a restaurant, because this is apparently my job? So I wanted to go to The Old Spaghetti Factory. I hadn’t been there in years and years, but I remembered great things. I didn’t know if it would hold up, but of course I talked it up big. I talk everything up big. Anyway, we got there while it was still early, and we wanted to wait a little to eat, so we decided to walk to the nearby Jefferson Expansion Memorial. The little museum in there was much nicer put together than the sad state of the Science Center currently. We didn’t really do much else than just sit in there for awhile and take in the ambiance, though. I think CJ took a picture of me. How embarrassing.

Anyway, we ate at The Old Spaghetti Factory after that, which was pretty good. Not great? But their location is still pretty awesome. Then we walked back to my car, which CJ and I began to freak out about because we thought it was towed. It wasn’t. We got home without any issues.

It was a lot of fun, really, overall. It’s just nice to have someone to do these sorts of things with, who makes me laugh and smile. And it’ll be even better once the wuff gets here to join us. We’re constantly scouting out stuff to do with Brer in tow. Life is pretty awesome.

Nobody in St. Louis Street Passed with me, though. The fuckers.

It’s April Fools Day, so that means it’s time for jokes! Luckily, I’ve been honing my joke-telling skills at work for awhile, writing jokes for my team, and I think I’ve improved! Let me try a few on you right now, and hopefully they will help you have a wonderful April Fool Day Time Thing.

Joke Number One
A Jazz Dancer, a Psychic Surgeon, and an Ant Queen all walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Hello, and welcome to the bar! You are being welcomed to the bar.” The psychic surgeon murders a chicken to use in his psychic surgeries. The bartender says, “That seems a bit inappropriate. You should have gone to the chicken slaughtery next door.”
“Oh, sorry, man,” says the Jazz Dancer. “We thought this was a combination bar and chicken slaughtery.”
The ant queen twitches her antennae in a seductive fashion.
“I can’t get mad at those luscious mandibles,” says the bartender. “Just don’t slaughter any chickens in here again.” The group all nods their heads.
The Jazz Dancer eats a banana, and then tosses the peel on the ground. The psychic surgeon saves a man from cancer using the chicken guts. The ant queen orders a whiskey and coke.

Joke Number Two
“Knock Knock.”
“Who’s There?”
“A vibrating and otherworldly mass of tentacles and viscera, all attempting to break down your door and absorb you into the great collective.”
“A vibrating and otherworldly mass of tentacles and viscera, all attempting to break down your door and absorb you into the great collective who?”
“I would really appreciate it if you would just open the door and face your fate. You are only delaying the inevitable. All will soon be part of the great mass. Your various bodily fluids and organs will make a great addition to our collective.”
“I would really appreciate it if you would just open the door and face your fate. You are only delaying the inevitable. All will soon be part of the great mass. Your various bodily fluids and organs will make a great addition to our collective who?”
“Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?”
“Yes, I am.”

Joke Number Three
A man walks into a doctor’s office and asks, “Why am I throwing up nearly constantly?”
The lady behind the counter goes, “I’m not a doctor. I am just the receptionist. Do you have an appointment?”
“Yes,” says the man, and fills out his required paperwork in silence.
Two hours later, he has made it into the doctor’s office. “Why am I throwing up nearly constantly?” asks the man.
“You’ve just not had enough training,” says the doctor, “I am prescribing 6 weeks of intensive baseball training. You’ll be throwing in a different direction in no time.”
The man begins his baseball training, and sure enough, he’s soon throwing the ball forward, instead of up in the air, where it is likely to hit him on the head. He rejoices, and joins a local softball league. 4 weeks later, he gets into an argument with a fellow player, who beats him to death with a baseball bat, then buries him under the pitcher’s mound. His family never sees him again, but the murderer slips on a banana peel left by a Jazz Dancer and hits his head on the ground, getting a concussion.

Happy Day Fool Time, everyone.

Is it okay if I write about this, blog? I’m going to write about this, I think. Just don’t… you know. If it’s uncomfortable-making, don’t read it. As the title suggests, it’s about sex. So, you know.

Aesa and I were laying together in a bed, as people in a relationship who live together at times do. Then things started happening and he started doing things to me as someone in a relationship with someone else often does. Then everything fell apart.

Okay, so we’ve done sexy things before, and it’s been wonderful. Totally wonderful. It’s not like this is the first time. But for whatever reason, this time… this time I couldn’t get over it. I couldn’t get over the reality of what he was doing, of what equipment I had, and how who I was clashed with that. I couldn’t focus on the nice feelings, and the fact that he’s all involved in such things because he cares about me, wants me, not this body I’m stuck in, and things like that which have been the cornerstone of getting over my stupid self in the past.

Instead, I ended up just kind of asking him to stop, curling up, and just sobbing for awhile. He clearly didn’t know what to do. He was trying to be helpful, comforting, but it just wasn’t a thing he could do anything about at that point. I couldn’t stop myself from crying. I felt terrible, like a freak, and I couldn’t shake that feeling. When I started calming down from that, I got onto the idea that this breakdown was going to somehow keep him from wanting to do this sort of thing again in the future, and I cried even more.

I get into this state where I think I’m alright, you know? Life is going fucking fantastic, and everything is going my way. Seriously. I’m over my issues, I tell myself. I’m happy, insanely happy, for the first time in my life. And it’s true. But then there are moments like this where all of the sudden that doubt, those issues, just burst forward and ruin everything. I feel like I can’t help it. I feel like I don’t have control over it. It’s terrible. Fucking terrible. Even today this shit gets in the way. It’s no fair.

Aesa understands. Brer understands. It’s not like there will be a problem. It’s not like they’re going anywhere. Nothing is really ruined. But fuck. Just… fuck. I really wish I wasn’t so fucked up.

The Resistance is shockingly simple, but a lot of fun. It’s basically Mafia, but it’s designed so that nobody ever “dies” and is removed from the game in order to keep everyone involved, which I can certainly see as a benefit. It has a bunch of cards, but they’re mostly just for bookkeeping and voting in secret: it’s an entirely social game. I really want to play it some more.

Basically, instead of voting on who to kill, and hoping to kill a bad guy, you’re instead voting on who the “mission team” will be for a top secret mission. Anyone on the mission can turn in a “Mission Fail” vote to screw the mission over, so if you put the bad guys on the mission, they will ruin it. If the good guys make 3 of the 5 missions happen, they win. If the bad guys manage to make 3 of the 5 missions fail, they win. For every mission, a different random “Mission Team Leader” is selected. This person is the only one who can call for votes. However, everyone is free to vote and complain and things of that nature. A majority has to approve a team for the mission to begin, but if 5 votes are called and fail, the mission is scrapped, which helps out the bad guys.

By looking at the mission results, you try to determine trustworthiness of everyone involved, just like in Mafia. It’s awesome. There aren’t really powered players, perse, although they have a mechanic where players can get one shot powers. When a new leader is picked, that person will draw a number of plot cards based on the number of players. They then, without looking at them, must distribute them to whoever they see fit who is not themselves. These give one-shot powers, like being able to take over as team leader, or looking at another player’s affiliation card, or even forcing someone to vote in public instead of in secret. However, there’s never many of them in play, so it doesn’t take away from the core gameplay. They’re just little twists.

The one game we played so far was kind of fucked, though. Spaeth, who was a good guy, sabotaged the first mission for NO FUCKING REASON, which made the bad guys, Shauna and Essner, win easily. I think he didn’t understand how huge of a setback that was and just thought he’d do something funny, then play for real after. It kind of sucked, though. Next time I’m sure he wouldn’t be like that. I do want to play it again.

Yeah, it’s a nice little Mafia variant party game! And I do like my Mafia.