Someone’s been leaving pamphlets all over town: I’ve been finding them on car windshields and in elevators. I’d hasten to call them religious propaganda, but it would be a bit reluctant. It’s a document regarding the Anti-Christ, how he’s coming, and how he’s going to fuck up your life and rape your dog unless you’ve got Jesus backing you. It points to various factors like Global Warming as a sign that he’s already here, so apparently the Anti-Christ has been leaving his car idling in park.

Let me just say: it takes a real guts to speak out against the Anti-Christ, because NO ONE has had the balls to do that before.

…He’s the FUCKING Anti-Christ. I know you’re a crazed religious fanatic trying to start your own cult, but people don’t need to be told the Anti-Christ is bad news. He’s got that whole, “Anti-Christ,” thing in his name. He’s supposed to be the evil opposite of Christ. He turns wine into water and causes leprosy, or some shit like that. Maybe he has a goatee. Who knows? Why are you wasting paper trying to tell people he’s up to no good?

I didn’t read that much of the pamphlet, because it is essentially a book. Best guess is about thirty pages, and it could fit snugly in your pocket. If I read more than the front and back I’m sure I’d see the author spewing hatred at homosexuals and insinuate that Obama is the Anti-Christ: fun stuff like that.

Can I ask a question? Let’s say the Anti-Christ is real, that he’s here today, and he’s going to destroy the world. What the fuck do you expect me to do? Am I supposed to go stop him? How? He’s the Anti-Christ, meaning he’s equal to Jesus Christ, who himself is 50% God, which if my math is correct: the Anti-Christ has half of God’s power. I’m 100% mortal. I’m going to get fucked up if I try to take him on. I don’t have to see Brock Lesnar in person to know he could slam me headfirst through the floor. Stuff like that hurts, and that’s exactly the kind of crap the Anti-Christ could probably do if he put his mind to it. I’m not going mono-a-mono with him. He’s the Anti-Christ, so it should be Christ himself who has to take him on. Good luck to him. I’ve seen crucifixes, and Jesus doesn’t look all that imposing a fellow. I could probably beat him up if I wanted to. Plus he’s been dead for about 2000 years, so that’s not good. Usually, when you’re looking for someone to save the day, you don’t choose someone who was tortured to death 20 centuries ago. Maybe Jesus will get lucky and the Anti-Christ will turn out to be some 11 year old in a wheelchair. Maybe then he could win a physical confrontation.

I get the feeling that whoever wrote this thinks Jesus is fuelled by the magic of prayer, and if we pray enough Jesus gets super powers. I don’t think it works that way. Jesus doesn’t get juiced up like Hulk Hogan when people clap their hands. You need a better plan: like get Jesus some mixed-martial arts lessons. Have him spar a bit, then try to take on the Anti-Christ. Like he could try to fight Dick Cheney first and work his way up.

I also noted how the author kept referring to “666” being the Number of the Beast, when in fact is in the page the devil first appears in the original King James Bible. It is only a reference number. I know there’s some great songs and that about the Number of the Beast, but it’s not that significant.

Also: believing in the Anti-Christ is just plain retarded. There’s lots of evil men and women out there who like to fuck shit up, but they’re not the Anti-Christ. You know why? Because the Anti-Christ in very specific terms laid out by Revelations has to be born of jackal. That’s not a metaphor: they literally have to be born from a jackal. That’s not happening: mainly because it can’t happen. Human babies do not come from canines. Case closed.

Recently, I jokingly predicted that P-Diddy (also known as Wendy) would produce a tribute to Michael Jackson. This has come to pass. Twenty-four hours after his death, P-Diddy came out with a song dedicated to the fallen star. It features lyrics like, “I’m Michael Jackson. You’re Michael Jackson. We’re all Michael Jackson.” No sir, I am not Michael Jackson, for I have not touched a monkey, nor are you, if the quality of your music is any indication.

Even though it sounds rushed, the song had to have been in development for months now. Meaning: P-Diddy, who owes his entire career to the death of B.I.G., has been writing memorial songs remembering celebrities WHO HAVEN’T DIED YET. It’s like he writes obituaries, only he doesn’t work for a newspaper.

It’s good to know that if I’m ever hard up for cash I can produce an album dedicated to Wilford Brimley, pop it onto i-Tunes 10 seconds after he dies, and make a load of cash. Maybe I’ll start hooking celebrities up to Life-Alert, so when they fall and can’t get up, I know when to make my mint.

The worst part about this P-Diddy song is that is features CHRIS BROWN, who’s just been convicted of assaulting Rihanna. So here’s the situation: there’s about 10,000,000 Hip-Hop, R&B, rap singers out there in the world today, and P-Diddy picked the one man accused and convicted of beating the living shit out of his woman, who far from being some dumb ho in a trailer park, is one of the most beautiful women in the world. I have no sympathy for this fucker: especially since he essentially got off Scott Free. He’s still a fucking multi-millionaire, he doesn’t have to do jail time, and Rihanna still wants his dick. Did you see the picture of her afterwards? It wasn’t pretty. Chris Brown didn’t just smack this bitch, he beat her until her face was black and blue.

It’s like if I went out and did a song about Caligula with the ghost of Ike Turner.

Also: this whole situation has me thinking P-Diddy kills people to make money off songs he writes.

So Michael Jackson is dead, but as we know from his Thriller video, death is not always the end. M.J. died of cardiac arrest, but I think everyone was expecting him to go out more extravagantly. After all: this was a man who survived being set on fire and endured numerous elected surgeries. I always thought he might be mauled to death by a vengeful Bubbles, or a traumatized Macaully Culkin. Maybe he’d choke on a diamond encrusted glove, or fall out a window as he was dangling his baby. These are more suiting ends for the world’s most famous acquitted child molester.

It would have been better if he had gone down years ago, after the bizarre rumours of his lifestyle first started surfacing. Honestly, he hasn’t accomplished that much since the 80’s. HIStory is better left forgotten, and his singing about being, “black or white,” is probably the most ironic song since Allanis Moirrsette’s, “Ironic.”

He was supposed to do a huge performance in London, where molesting children is still considered okay. Maybe Latoya can fill in for him. I secretly think they’re the same person anyway. Will his family even show up to his funeral? I don’t think he even talked to them after that video he did with Janet. If they do come, it’ll be the first time we’ll see Tito since 1985. Tito: the NORMAL Jackson.

Other things to be thankful for:

1: We don’t have to worry about him molesting our children anymore.

2: We can look forward to post-mortem albums and P-Diddy tributes.

3: They might turn Neverland into a new Graceland.

4: NEVER CONVICTED: So you never know: maybe he didn’t. The eternal debate will continue.

5: His kids can stop wearing Eyes Wide Shut masks in public.

6: We’ve never seen his genitalia.

7: Awesome M.J. auctions to pay off his debts.

8: Tell-all books that tell-all.

9: We don’t have to worry about him throwing his kids out the window anymore.

10: He couldn’t get any whiter anyway.

In other news: crazy-bitch Farrah Fawcett is dead too. This comes a few weeks after David Carradine kicked the bucket: and by kick the bucket I mean: auto-erotic aphyxiated himself. Which can only mean someone’s picking off celebrities who’ve lost all relevance decades ago.

 

1:The Bachelorette:

The concept of this show just pisses me off in general, as technically it’s borderline prostitution. Recently, however, there was a row over one of the 25 male contestants on the show having a real-life girlfriend.

…One of the 25 male contestants. A woman is dating 25 men simultaneously, and she’s upset that one of those 25 men is dating another girl. Listen sister: A 1 in 25 chance at a relationship isn’t exactly the best odds there are. Having a girlfriend on the side is just good common sense, especially when the other woman you’re dating is practicing polygamy.

Weren’t you just fucking dumped on another reality show? Aren’t you aware by now how this shit goes? If not, ask Flava Flav. Fucking grow up and find a man on your own.

Whore.

2: Wal-Mart:

Wal-Mart’s new slogan is: Save Money, Live Better. Living better an Wal-Mart don’t go hand-in-hand. There’s a fucking McDonalds inside every Wal-Mart. They’re physically trying to kill you with this shit. Wal-Mart is a fucking death trap: just ask the poor bastards who get trampled to death every Black Friday. Plus now they’ve got fucking doughnuts at the check-out now. DOUGHTNUTS. Half-a-dozen for $1. They may as well have a trough filled with sugar-glazed lard at the door.

3: Movies based on action figures:

At some point: God stopped caring about you. You’re the plant God left to wither and rot while he was on vacation. That’s why you’re being subjected to this bullshit. Transformers and G.I. Joe. Remember how awesome the cartoons were? Then you’re 30, and you’re too fucking old to see this shit, because it’s been dumbed down for today’s youth audience, whom Hollywood treats like the Twittering twits they are. Before you complain: it’s a movie based on a cartoon based on a toy. Of course it’s going to be terrible. People are fucking jumping around missiles in slow-motion while wearing some kind of speed suits and the Eiffle Tower is dissolving. What’s that got to do with G.I. Joe? Nothing. Why? Because no one without a secret cache of grainy VHS tapes remembers what the G.I. Joe cartoon was like. The kids who fucking watched that shit are trying to pay off their morgates now. The movies are just over-used special-effects with a brand name stamped on them to sell toys, because it’s got to turn a profit somehow.

An ancient document etched onto vellum, containing a language that no man on earth can read. Believed to be an elaborate code of some kind, but the document, running between 240-280 pages, also contains numerous drawings of a fantastical nature, mainly involving nude women bathing, herbs, and astronomical charts. Some aspects of the document may have been altered since it’s first inception, especially in regards to the drawings themselves, and the arrangement of pages. Exact age of the document is unknown. Rumoured to be either 400, or 100 years of age.

Personal thoughts: While the document is assumingly coded, most documents of this nature are discrete works kept mainly to hide secret thoughts. The drawings in this work draw undue attention to it. It is meant to be read, but has been written in it’s own language. The populous theory is that the work is a forgery, but to what purpose? A work of this length would take quite some effort. While forge a work so that no one could read it? The appeal would be limited. If it was a forgery, it would have to be tailored to a specific buyer.

What if the author had created a work to express certain thoughts and feelings that otherwise could not be expressed? Such as those in a dream?

My theory is only given credence by the fact that in a dream, written words can not be properly read, as this is a function of the left brain, and dreaming is of the right. The author could be copying something he read inside a dream. In other words: gibberish, which can only be understood in the context of the dream itself. The drawings of non-existent things further evoke upon this theorem.

It’s a dream journal, written in dream-speak.

What interest me the most is the elaborate star charts. These could be a virtual map of the dream-world itself. A whorlgog.

I recently visited the Vancouver Aquarium, where I was treated to the rare sight of a dolphin defecating in front of hundreds of people. During the dolphin show, three of the dolphins jumped out of the water onto the dock, where they proceeded to lift their tails high in the air. One they had achieved that, one of the dolphins squeezed out a juicy dump.

This was not the only scene for animals taking craps. We went to the underwater viewing area and saw one of the otters swimming around it’s tank. It passed us by several times, but on the third or so pass, it decided to dump. My face was separated from an otter and it’s bowel movement by a few inches and some reinforced glass.

This served to remind me that the ocean is chock full of crap. Even if we stopped ocean dumpage, there would still be animals dumping in the ocean. Furthermore, if mermaids were real, they would likely be swimming around in their own feces all the time. I saw the Little Mermaid, and while I saw a version of a powder room where Ariel could apply her underwater makeup, I saw no facilities. Meaning: Ariel just goes anywhere she pleases, like a horse in a parade. She probably continued to do it after she got her land legs.

Interesting.

I went to Toys’R’Us yesterday and saw what Michael Bay is calling Soudwave:

Just for the record, this is what Soundwave is supposed to look like:

The important difference? He transforms into this:

A fucking Boombox, which was by definition the most awesome thing one could possess in the 80’s, aside from an oversized car phone. I understand that kids today don’t know what a Boombox is, but I think they’d have a harder time understanding what this is:

What the fuck is that? Is that supposed to be some kind of spaceship? Am I supposed to fly in this thing? Bear in mind that this is a triple-changer: meaning it has three possible transformations. The other one looks like this:

…That’s not a different transformation. That’s the same transformation, only the wings are bent back. What kind of shit are you trying to pull? You want to see a triple-changer? Here’s your fucking triple-changer:

Do you see how it’s three different things? Not two. Three. Triple.

Michael Bay, did you honestly look at the Transformers archives and say to yourself, “You know what the Transformers could us more of? Jets.”

1/2 of the Transformers are fucking jets. The other half are cars, like this one:

That’s the Transformers Animated Soundwave. He’s still not a fucking Boombox, but at least I can tell what he is. You know the other thing he has that Michael Bay’s Soundwave doesn’t? Laserbeak.

Soundwave is supposed to be able to shoot out robot minions out of his chest. Can your movie Soundwave do that? I DIDN’T THINK SO!

The most important part of Soundwave is that he has other robots living inside of him, in tape form, which he can pop out of his chest any time he needs a crony to run errands. There’s nothing creepy or weird about that. In fact, it’s fucking awesome. What’s more awesome is that these tapes transform into robot animals. Laserbeak, for instance, transforms into a fucking robot hawk, or some shit. Looking at the movie Soundwave package, I didn’t see any fucking Laserbeak, making the toy a piece of shit.

I understand the need to “update” shit for a younger, and more retarded audience, but what’s the point of cashing in on an old franchise if you’re going to ignore what made it so great in the first place? Megan Fox’s fine young ass can only take you so far. At the very least, Soundwave should look like something. Something soundwavey, but no, you failed at that and you failed at life in general, now die.

Ever go into an eating establishment (Tim fucking Hortons) with a gift card not knowing how much money is on said card, but a person must assume there’s SOME. This card, after all, gifted, making you believe the gifter might have set some funds for the giftee. There is in fact, none, so after splurging with your order you’re left to pay for the full amount from your own wallet. This would make for a hilarious joke, if you were the kind of asshole who played those sorts of jokes.

Furthermore, when ordering your Turkey Bacon Club sandwich, the cashier immediately decides this means you want a B.L.T.. So you open your sandwich later and discover that there is no turkey, just bacon, lettuce and tomatoes, and you hate tomatoes. You would have requested, “No tomatoes please,” but the bitch got your order wrong anyway, so what fucking good would it have done.

Many times, I have been asked why I will order an item with tomatoes if I’m not going to eat them. Why? Because if I order, “No tomatoes,” I will still be given tomatoes. Then I’m expected to throw a fucking hysterical fit and charge the cashier like a wild animal, my sandwich held open like a Satanic Bible filled with terrible lies and demand why the fuck there’s tomatoes in my no-tomato sandwich. The answer, of course, is never satisfying. I see these people at the till. They’re the ones who decide to cut in when I’m placing my order, saying shit like, “I asked for no lettuce!” The implication is that they should re-make the sandwich without lettuce, as opposed to removing said lettuce: a task that does not require assistance from the restaurant staff. You could, alternatively, simply remove the offending food item yourself with your own hands, as your hands are going to be touching the sandwich anyway. And, if you’re going to do that, you might as well ignore asking for no tomatoes altogether. It saves everyone from a potentially deadly conflict.

But I had asked for an entirely different sandwich than what I was given. I ended up paying $6.50 for fucking bacon and lettuce in a bun. I’m already in the car driving away, so I don’t fucking feel like going back and complaining like some douche just so they can hem and haw and still get my fucking order wrong a second time. I don’t know why this happens so often at places I go. I suppose it’s some mix of stupidity and being hard-of hearing. Maybe they could hear better if they TOOK THE FUCKING HEADSET OFF. Why the fuck do they need these things? They’re in a kitchen that’s about fifty square feet. The person they’re talking to is right-the-fuck next to them, but they decided to make things “more efficient” they’re going to use these fucking headsets so they can only hear out of one fucking ear at a time. How is this fucking progress when I’m placing a simple-as-shit order and they can’t fucking hear me because they have a speaker crackling in their fucking ear?

It happened twice the last two times I went to Tim Hortons. The other time I was in the drive-thru ordering a dozen donuts and a coffee. By the time I get to the check-out, all they have me down for is the coffee. What the fuck did they think I was saying before I got to the word, “Coffee?” Was it, “Blah blah blah blah blah blah coffee?”

Plus getting in and out of Tim Hortons is a deathtrap. There’s always six cars minimum blocking the entrance. If you parked your car in front of the place when there was a rare, rare break in traffic, you’re never getting the fuck out. You have to fucking park across the lot at the Burger King. That’s the rule. If you go inside to take a look at what donuts you want or whatever, it’s usually backed up out the door. So you have to create your own line, because they haven’t figured out how to rope it off like a bank teller. So you always get some fucking moron coming in behind you and asking you if this is the end of the line, and some fucker who thinks he’s in front of you when he’s not.

All I want is a fucking coffee, a sandwich, and donuts. Why is it such an ordeal? Why? Why can’t you be a Krispy Kreme?

I rented Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts this week after having played the demo. It’s described as a vehicle-based game, which in most cases means: racing; but in this instance it means: building. You go through a platform adventure filled with racing-style mini-games, but the catch is you have to build and complete vehicles to win challenges. The building process takes up about 3/4 of the game, as each challenge likely requires a brand-new modded vehicle. So before you enter into the challenge, you have to construct a new car, or boat, or place, or whatever it may be that’ll help you win. Then you have to test it out. Half the time, what you build is either too hard to control and you literally have to go back to the drawing board. Other times, you’ll lose an entire challenge by missing a checkpoint by a fraction of an inch, or you’ll drive off the edge of a bridge and have to start over. The challenges are repetitive in a Warcraft-style, save for the vehicle you’re using. There’s also thousands of “coins” to collect, which must be traded in for new parts, blueprints, etc., which is time-consuming. The main stage is a town where there’s little-else to do but hunt for parts. I spent most of my time trying to access new areas and rooftops by stacking crates and climbing, only to discover that later in the game you get a spring that jumps you up over obstacles.

It’s not particularly hard, providing that you’re not a completionist. My three-year-old girlfriend’s kid was able to control most of the vehicles when I let him play. The trick is completing each challenge with a perfect score,

I also played the first round of Canadian Beta-Testing for 1 vs. 100, which is free for any Canadian on XBox Live with a Gold Membership. It’s a MMO trivia game-show, where one person faces off against 100 other players. 10,000+ other players are in the audience in teams of 4, and can chat freely using their headsets. You play to win Microsoft Points, and other prizes. There’s multiple ways to win, either by winning as “The One,” winning as one of “The Hundred,” or winning as one of the top three players in the audience. There’s even sweepstakes entries you win for just playing, and Achievement points are supposedly tossed around freely.

The most innovative things about the game is the inclusion of a live host, who offers commentary, commercial-breaks, and the fact that 10,000 people are watching one guy play. That’s never happened in an MMO before. Think  about it: 10,000 people are watching you win or lose.

There was a few technical slip-ups while I was playing, like the host’s audio cutting out, players disconnecting, etc, but it’s still a Beta. There wasn’t anything that affected my game personally, which would have enraged me.

Thing is: you have to play live during a two-hour schedule, so if you miss a game, you have to wait a week, or however many days for it to come back on, just like a real TV show.

I’ve been playing Free Realms since it went live last Tuesday, and I’ve found it an enjoyable experience except for what seems to be a recurring error. After winning key card game matches, the game informs me, “You Lose.” …After winning. I know I won because:

1: I won.

2: My opponent lost.

3: A screen comes up, telling me I won.

4: I receive a playing card as a reward for winning.

All compelling cases for winning. Then, a second screen pops up with a, “Wa-wa-wa,” sound and bold red letters saying, “You Lose.”

That means I have to fight the same opponent again. Only, it’s harder the second time, and the third and fourth time. I have to fight the same opponent five more times before I win again, and this time I see the screen:

“You Lose.”

…But I won.

WTF?

What kind of B.S. is it when winning doesn’t result in me winning? The conditions given for winning the game was as follows: “You must win the game.” This isn’t some kind of Sinister Choice scenario where I rescue Gwen Stacey with my web, only it turns out she’s dead already, and the Green Goblin flies by on his glider and laughs at me. It’s a fucking card game. If winning isn’t good enough, losing is like double-losing. What else do they want me to do? Beat my opponent so bad they get thrown out of their virtual world and into reality, where I then have to fight them to the death with battle swords? Fuck you.

I needed something to eat for dinner, so I thought I’d try the Wrapstar from KFC. Basically, it’s like every chicken wrap on the market, but in star form. I go into KFC, and it’s not particularly busy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have to wait 25 minutes for my food. As I said, it’s a chicken wrap, so it’s basically comprised of two parts: one part chicken and one part wrap. First: you take the chicken. Then: you wrap the chicken.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had to wait an ungodly amount of time for a minor menu item at my local KFC. I can understand when there’s a rush and some fucker wants 100pcs of chicken and a small seasoned curllies, but there’s five people in the kitchen. I can see them through the window, wiping their noses on their hands then touching the food, which is especially encouraging given the fact there’s a DEADLY FLU OUTBREAK. I think we take for granted the fact that the disgusting samples of human filth around us can make us sick for weeks at the merest cough, but now they can FUCKING KILL US.

Today some woman came up to me asking for shelf brackets at the store. Except she didn’t simply as. She coughed heartily, then asked. You know when you can actually smell the reek of their Halls in the air? That’s when you KNOW you’re breathing in their germs. Anyway, I left he with VERY SPECIFIC instructions on finding the shelf brackets. Then she came back to me two minutes later, and I asked her what she needed.

She said, “SHELF BRACKETS,” as if I was retarded, but more as if she was retarded. Far be it from me to assume that she may have found the very easy to find item on her own. I again explained to her, this time drawing pictures in the air with my hands, as I might communicate with a Neanderthal. The difference is: I might want to actually fuck a Neanderthal.

She of course came back a third time, and again stated, “SHELF BRACKETS,” like it was an accusation.

I’m not a big believer in human rights, because instances like this make me realize human shouldn’t have rights.

I had to physically direct her to the shelf brackets, and along the way I had to listen to her bullshit accusations implying I didn’t know what I was talking about: as if I didn’t work in the same department for forty hours a week for two years. And, of course, being in that kind of proximity meant I had to breath in her disease: so I’ll be dead of swine flu soon.

My point about work and KFC is this: the fuckers at KFC make the EXACT same wage per hour for being incompetent as I do for being competent, and they make it as THEIR STARTING WAGE. I HAD TO WORK MY WAY UP TO REACH THEIR PAY LEVEL. At no point should I be able to jump behind the counter and do another person’s job faster, and more efficiently than they, and make less or equal to than that person. I believe this to be the root cause of war.

In a way, I blame myself for not applying myself better. Moreover, I blame myself for going back to the same restaurant and expecting a different experience. I use to think poorly of my father for refusing to eat at the same place twice if the food or service was bad, but now I see the logic. There’s just too many choices out there. I’ll give a place a few months to improve before I go back, which is ample time to shape up, but not for some people. Ever have a bad experience at an eatery, then wait long enough to forget about it? Only: when you go back, the same dumb teller is behind the cash register? Then you go: “Oh fuck.”

For me, I placed my order, gave my money, then wondered after twenty minutes about walking out. I’d be doing myself a favour, only I’d be out of my money, and I’d still have no food. I could ask for a refund, but with the retards on till, my food would be ready by the time they figured out how, or else they’d charge me twice by mistake.

*SIGH*

Two days ago, Free Realms, a MMO went live. Basically, it looks exactly like World of Warcraft if it was designed by Disney, and considering how much Warcraft rips off Disney (magic brooms), it looks a lot like a Disney game. It should, though because it’s made for kids. You’ll see lots of flying pixies, and puppy dogs, and cake. Beyond that though, is the actual gameplay. Like many MMORPGs it hinges on a job system. You have your choice of a variety of jobs that you can move between freely. Unlike Warcraft, you’re not just stuck in the one class for the rest of the game, which is infinite, and unlike other games like FF XI: you don’t have to make a three-hour trek back to your moghouse just to change jobs. You change jobs AUTOMATICALLY when you start specific job quests, and you’re also able to change any time in your scroll bar. Each job also has it’s own outfit, which you can customize, so you have as many different pre-set outfits and equipment as you have jobs. You can also instantly teleport to any town you’ve visited before without having to cast a three-person level 30 spell, or pay 500 gold, or complete a tedious quest that takes 60 people, two weeks and eighteen levels, which to me is HUGE. 

Free Realms “free”ly rips off every other game you’ve played. Warcraft’s the most obvious from the outset, but there’s also Bejeweled, Cooking Mama, Nintendogs, Mario Kart and Yu-Gi-Oh. These mini-games crop up whenever you try and do a job quest. If you’re a Chef, for instance, you have to play a Bejeweled-style game to get ingredients to cook food in a Cooking Mama game. While it lacks in creativity for the minigames, the way they’re used in the game itself is much fresher (in a Puzzle Pirates sense) than Warcraft, where you kill X number of targets to get X number of ingredients to make X number of items. You can actually have fun while playing. As for the fighting part of the game, you can play for years without having to enter a battle. If you want to be a Chef, you don’t have to go off and kill every living thing. You can stroll from town-to-town without having to deal with constant attacks from monsters and other players. The only way you enter a fight is by selecting an attack target, then you enter a separate game space where the battle takes place. This is the only area where aggro takes place. In there, however, it becomes exactly like a Warcraft Dungeon battle.

Free Realms is actually free to play, except if you want to try certain jobs, or want your own pet, or more gold coins than quests give out, etc. Then it gets into that whole subscriber bullshit, but what you’re given for free should be enough to sate most people. If you’re curious and want more, it’s 1/4 the price of Warcraft a month. A lot of people are going to fall into the ,“OMFG I want to be a Wizard,” trap, and they’re the ones keeping the site going, so good for them.

Like I said, it’s for kids, so theoretically there shouldn’t be all that B.S. that goes on in other online games. Problem is, when it’s not 30-something dangerous shut-ins living in their parent’s basements causing all the frustration and drama you see in Guild-orientated MMOs, it’s some 12-year-old with a potty mouth. Expect heavy-censoring in Free Realms, which is actually a good thing.

I finally got around to renting Lego Batman for the 360, basically because it’s all you’d want to do with that game. It’s a kid’s game, even if it’s rated 10 and up. It was my first introduction to the Lego video game series based on movie franchises. Lego Batman is a video game based on a toy product based on a comic book/TV/movie series. In it, you can input secret codes found on McDonalds Happy Meal toys, which are based on the video game based on the toy based on the comic. It’s a game that’s made the top of the list for parents angry about cross-branding marketed towards their children. There’s no prize involved in that, but there is a prize in your Happy Meal. You’re supposed to walk away from the game you purchased or rented wanting to eat at McDonalds, go to Toys ‘R’ Us and buy the $100 Lego Batman Arkham Asylum playset and accessories, then immediately buy up every comic book, actions figure and DVD of Batman you can lay your hands on. It’s a costly affair.

There’s no dialogue in Batman, for some reason. Adam West and works cheap, so there’s no excuse for not hiring voice actors. Every cutscene involves Batman shaking his head at something stupid Robin did. It borrows from the cartoon and movie. Harley Quinn is a key figure, having originated in the cartoon. while the final stage is set in the Cathedral from Batman staring Michael Keaton.

Batman doesn’t kill: except when the people involved are made of Lego. Then he murders them with his bare hands and harvest their blocks for points. The point of the game is to destroy everything that can be destroyed and collect the Lego pieces, which fits in more with the Lego theme than the Batman one.

What’s the deal with all the Lego games? There’s a billion of ‘em for the PC. They’re even making a Lego MMO, which blows my mind. Have they given up on real Lego, considering that most Lego kits have been priced out of the availability market as they’re in the $30-$120 range? For that price you can buy REAL model kits and not some half-assed block version that doesn’t look anything like the thing it’s supposed to represent. The games are cheaper by comparison.

Two people in BC have the swine flu, the hastily named disease that kills you dead in five days. I mention this because BC is a magnet for any outbreak of a new and rare disease. Previously, there’s been avian flu, S.A.R.S. and mad cow disease, all within 70 to 5 k.m. of where I am at any point. Several turkey and chicken farms in the Fraser Valley have had to be quarantined and the livestock culled because of avian flu. Considering how there’s over six billion people in the world the odds of a disease making it’s way from China or Mexico to one localized area numbering in the millions are small. Somehow, these disease bags are able to make that continent-spanning leap as fast as they can. No sooner will some pox emerge in a small village in rural China than it magically teleports to downtown Vancouver.

People cough on me all day, no matter where I go. Sometimes, their spittle, thick with lung butter, will leap from their mouths and enter my own. When they turn their heads and cough, they turn their heads in my direction. I will see people walk by with their children in strollers, and their children with have some form of terrible pox. In these situations, the townsfolk decide to take their diseased offspring out of school so they don’t infect the other children and instead take them to wherever they can find the most people in a crowded space, like shopping centres, sports arenas and airports.

If some life-obliterating disease eventually sweeps across the land, I’m fairly certain that it will make it’s first appearance in my backyard, and I don’t even have a backyard. I don’t even have a front yard, but still some hobbling, jilted freak is going to come uncomfortably close to me in a wide open space and proceed to spew out his infectious bodily fluids upon me in some vile manner, and that will be it for me. My town, my country, and my world are all conspiring to kill me.

I bet before it’s all over, a Rabbi will come out say, “That’s why God says, ‘Don’t eat pork.’” It will be the punch line to thousands of years of religion.

As for Mexico: you can’t drink the water, thousands of people are brutally murdered in drug wars every years, the air is virtually unbreatheable, you’re Catholic and now your pigs are killing you with their flu virus. Who did you piss off? I bet their name was long and unpronounceable, and some fat white tourist is taking a picture on top of his statue’s head right now.

I was thinking this morning of the pep-rallies I was forced to go to, or risk detention, back in high school. “Pep,” does not exist in nature, and “rallies,” are usually fascist affairs that end with someone being placed in an oven. Together, these two words describe an event of macabre fascination. Pep-rallies were usually held to bolster the confidence of people who already have too much, like the school sports team. Being popular was not enough: the required worship akin to Gods. Others were held like over-hyped prayer sermons for the Canucks. These were the worst, especially for a child like me who had no interest in hockey whatsoever. A hockey game was just something to be passed over while flipping idly through channels in search of brief glimpses of boob in the pre-internet days of the 90’s.

The entire concept of a pep-rally for the Canucks eluded me. These men were paid in the hundreds of thousands -if not millions- of dollars to do their dream job and went home to their overtly attractive wives in their McMansions to eat steak. They didn’t seem in dire need of my attention, or praise, especially in a group setting. The combined excitement for “our” team was somehow supposed to be able to magically transform from orchestrated shouting into raw vigour for burly men in sweaty uniforms hundred of miles away, who had no idea what we were doing for them. This resembled the beliefs of the “wackier” religions who felt that prayer in their mass sermons somehow amplified their wants and desires to a cold and unfeeling God. Let it be said that I am not magic: I cannot make things happen by willing them to happen. It takes some form of direct physical contact for me to do something. Furthermore, my implied intent extracted through duplicitous means will not gain you your vicarious glory. Why then am I being forced to sit in a crowded gymnasium and made to watch my school’s less-than-adequate cheerleaders fumble through their tumbling performance?

Who orchestrates this madness? Why, the biggest douchebag on the faculty.

But who could that be? The principal? The vice-principal? Both are firm candidates for biggest douchebag, but no, they can’t reach the heights of douchebaggery that this man has achieved.

The biggest douchebag of course, is always the gym teacher. This closeted homosexual who carefully crafts plans that involve young boys stripping down in a locker room he can observe through a window in his office that looks directly into the shower.

My first encounter with this man basically told me everything I needed to know about him. A high school is a large place, and it’s as segregated as it can be without directly violating any major laws. Based on your Grade, there were places you were expected to avoid, unless you wanted some dirty looks, or even a fist to the gut. Thus, you might not venture to the third floor, reserved for the older students. One time I was asked by my teacher to go to the upper storage room to retrieve some books for the classroom. I went up, following her instructions, but went to the wrong door. The key I was given opened into a computer room. A man sitting at a computer desk turned to me and asked me what I was doing quite gruffly. I told him I was looking for the storage room. He asked me, “Does this look like a storage room?” as rudely as possible. This was after the major offense of poking my head through a door into a classroom in my school, a class that was not currently in session. The door I wanted was across the hall, and looked identical to the one I had just passed through in an underfunded, due to be torn down, sort of way. Didn’t I feel stupid!

This was Mr.Keane, looking for all intents and purposes like Wayne Gretsky.

As a Gym/Journalism/English/History teacher, he was unavoidable for anyone trying to pass themselves through the school.

I mentioned segregation before: let me expand upon that. Mr.Keane was a firm believer in segregation. He separated classes based on their grades. If your grades fell below an “acceptable” level, you were moved to a different classroom, much as if you had special needs. This could happen for any reason: if you missed an assignment, or didn’t meet the Bell Curve average, or if he just plain shit didn’t like you. You were to be “educated” in a different sense than book learning. You’d be taken away from your fellow classmates as if you had a disease. Now: this was a man with some pretty bullshit assignments. Plus, he convinced the PTA and school board to combine classes. Math, Science and English class overlapped for group projects, which drained huge time and resources for students. These group projects included building shit like catapults, despite being dangerously unqualified for such tasks. Why do I say that? Because someone got hit in the head with a catapult. Not the projectile: the actual catapult. What did catapults have to do with Science, Math, or English? Nothing, but you were expected to say the opposite and stretch it out for eight pages in your final assignment You had to feed their egos, after all.

I can go on endlessly about how much I hated this man, or how creepy it was trying to change into my gym short with him around, but I’ll try to keep it to a minimum. He kept me out of Journalism class because he thought I was a loser and he never bothered to look at my writing. He considered it to be embarrassment to have a Peter Parker-lookin’ motherfucker like me interview such prestigious figures as the mayor of Chilliwack (no relation to the band Chilliwack). Ah Chilliwack: the town that had the Guinness Book of World Records record for most churches per capita: now a rural haven for grow-ops and crackheads who grew weary of pot. Surely, a lowly Eighth grader like me should never brush elbows with a God-like figure as the mayor of Chilliwack. What questions could someone like me ask, aside from, “How pathetic is your life?”

With a Journalism credit, I might have been able to advance my writing beyond this bullshit blog. Oh well.

This fucker, Keane, loved pep-rallies, and he loved the Canucks.

There is nothing positive to be gained from pep-rallies. They do not bring schools closer together. There’s no such thing as school spirit. It doesn’t exist. A school is a cold and sterile place you go after waking up too early in the morning. “School spirit” is the organized hatred of the rival school. You know, the one where all the available girls who aren’t dating your friends or are super-Christian/ugly go. The one where there isn’t lead in the drinking fountain water. After a pep-rally, the assumption is you should go to the rival school armed with baseball bats and do what you may like you were in Clockwork Orange. Their mascot is to be bukkake raped, and the remains put up on a pole.

A school assembly is just another place for a kid to avoid eye-contact with his bully. No one on the school faculty seemed to understand that, or how intrinsically gay assemblies are. There was never any need to host an assembly with regards to the Canucks when every kid in school was already talking about them ad-nauseum. It was unavoidable on TV, newspapers, radio, and in the school halls. I had alienated myself from virtually everyone with the mere act of not watching the game the previous night, or any night before that. I never watched hockey. It was boring; even the fights. Pulling a shirt over someone’s head wasn’t interesting unless that someone was a large-breasted female.

I had “friends.” They had friends. That meant I had to hang out with my friends’ friends, who were even bigger douchebags than my friends. Which meant they loved the Canucks, traded hockey cards, and considered anything not hockey gay. So, I had to listen about hockey and contribute nothing in every conversation. Then, I had to file into an assembly and listen to further B.S. about a B.S. team. Hooray.

The Canucks winning or losing does not affect my life at all. It only affects the douchebags I have to deal with on a daily basis. Will they be loud and obnoxious, screaming things like, “Yeah we did it!” or will they act like prissy little girls on their period? This is my conundrum.

So your team won the big game and you’re excited. Why are you honking your horn? Why are you out, listening to the game on the radio in your car if you’re so obsessed over it? Shouldn’t you be at the game, or watching it on TV? At the very least, you shouldn’t be mobile, because if I know one thing about being Canadian, it’s that when there’s a big hockey game on, it’s completely dead outside. Imagine tumbleweed blowing down the streets. You could drive a tank through town and no one would notice.

For two hours last night, I had to listen to people honking their horns, solo and in concert. People would drive by each other and see a similar Canucks flag on the top of their car and honk like they’re having a wedding. This isn’t even in Vancouver, home to the Canucks. This is three towns away.

This wasn’t even the Stanley Cup, this was one of the final games for the Stanley Cup. Meaning: the excitement will get larger should they actually win the Stanley Cup.

I remember the last time Vancouver was in this situation, they lost the final game, and there was a riot. People were being shot with rubber bullets in the streets by riot police. They were smashing store fronts and burning shit.

One thing is true of Vancouver, which is true of most places, that people go apeshit when their town gets any kind of honour or mention. I’ve read front page articles from the Vancouver Province about the city getting some kind of ranking from some previously unheard of archive saying it’s the most liveable city, blah, blah, blah. When a city like Vancouver wins a big game, which happens to be the favourite local sport, they go completely insane. It’ll be like the Berlin Wall coming down.

For your consideration: here is my list of movies whose titles would not have to change should they become gay pornos. Some are quite lazy, others I barely get. I present them in no order.

Glitter

What About Bob?

The Fast and Furious

2 Fast 2 Furious

The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift

Fast and Furious

Star Trek: Insurrection

Pokemon: The Movie

Troy

The Crying Game

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Meet the Fawkers

I Love You Man

The Soloist

Home Alone

Frost/Nixon

17 Again

State of Play

Sin City

X-Men

XXX

The Passion

Max Payne

12 Angry Men

Watchmen

The Third Man

The Pianist

Jaws

Strangers on a Train

Cool Hand Luke

8 1/2

The Grapes of Wrath

The Thing

Toy Story

Ed Wood

In the Heat of the Night

Good Will Hunting

Iron Man

The Iron Giant

The Wild Bunch

Little Big Man

How Green Was My Valley

Rear Window

Singin’ In the Rain

Show People

Some Like It Hot

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut

The Great Dictator

Paths of Glory

Double Indemnity

Seance on a Wet Afternoon

Peeping Tom

Hollywood has awards for everything, from Best-Actor to Best Sound-Editing. They even have Razzies awarded for the worst movies. It’s like the Special Olympics, where everyone gets an award for any accomplishment, no matter how small and insignificant, but what about awards for sheer bullshitery? Moments that make audiences want to stand up and declare loudly to the screen, “That’s bullshit!”

Here are my nominees:

Fast and Furious:

The scene:

Riddick is racing down a hidden tunnel along the Mexican/American border that was somehow constructed in complete secrecy despite the fact that the only way to reach it is at night, in complete darkness, while racing along a desert plain as fast as a souped-up muscle car will carry you before a border camera pans back and detects you, and the slightest sign of a disturbance will launch a helicopter after you. He being chased by dozens of cars down this treacherous, narrow path, and there’s another car beside him. There’s a wall up ahead, and he can’t pull away. So he reaches out the door of his car to the car next to him and pulls open it’s passenger door. Then, while traveling at ludicrous speeds, he jumps from car to car, pushes out the driver of the second car, and proceeds to take the wheel. His old car explodes as it hits the wall, triggering a cave-in/car-pileup. The guy he pushed out is run over. He explodes out of the tunnel, and revs the car so it rears back on it’s rear wheels. While he’s doing this, he’s being shot at by a guy without enough sense to get out of the way. XXX crushes him to death between his car and a wreck.

The Matrix Reloaded:

The scene:

Trinity is falling backwards out of a skyscraper window, in slow-motion bullet-time with glass shards raining down all around her. An Agent has jumped out after her, and he’s shooting down at her as she shoots up. One of his bullets actually hits. This is all part of premonition in Neo’s dream of something that happens in a virtual world. He later alters the scene by flying like Superman at speeds so fantastic they rip cars up off of the ground in his jetstream. He snatches her away before she hits a car and proceeds to remove a bullet from her chest by phasing his hand into her chest. This brings her back to life in the real world.

Also nominated: Everything else in the Matrix.

AVP:

The scene:

The Predator and the Woman escape a nuclear blast on a rocket-sled flying up a tunnel bored through hundred of meters of ice leading from an Egyptian pyramid buried in the Artic Circle. They’re flung from the sled at speeds that would easily kill a normal human being upon impact with the frozen tundra above, but they roll away unscathed and proceed to run on foot from the blast, jumping not once, not twice, but three times from the nuclear explosion as it tears apart the ground underneath them.

Also: I’d like to create the category for Worst Post-Credits Surprise-Twist Scene.

Nominated:

Every Marvel Comics movie in recent memory, such as the scene at the end of X-Men: Last Stand, where Professor X comes back to life by psychically controlling a comatose boy, but as for the worst?

The upcoming Wolverine movie apparently. Wolverine’s in Japan, drinking, and talking to the hostess. Nothing happens aside from a little bit of dialogue, making the scene a waste of time.

Also: the scene at the end of Max Payne, as if any human being could make it through the entire movie. It basically sets up the sequel which, God willing, will never happen.

I don’t really understand what’s going on with DC Comics. They cancelled four underperforming comics series such as Nightwing, Robin, Birds of Prey and Catwoman, and then put all the characters from these series back into the original Batman comic series that spawned them. Only: there’s no Batman. The single most popular character in the DC Universe is dead. Let’s say you like Coca-Cola. You like drinking Coca-Cola. So what does the Coca-Cola company do? They force all these other flavours on you like Vanilla Coke, Coke with Lime, etc., and what happens to good old Coca-Cola? It’s replaced by New Coke. People don’t like New Coke. They like the old Coke. So they bring back the old Coke, call it Coca-Cola Classic. It’s the same with Batman. You know there’s a 100% chance old Batman is going to be brought back to life through the miracle of bullshit. No one’s so retarded as to throw out their licence to print money, coupled with the fact that currently the Batman family comics are completely overrun with characters who were completely dead, such as Spoiler, and are now magically alive, despite the fact that the writers who killed off her, and others like her, eft no wiggle-room to bring her back.

This has all happened before. Remember when they killed off Superman? Do you remember how huge a story that was? People were pissed OFF. Teachers were talking about it in schools. Those comics were worth CASH money. This time: did you even know Batman was dead? Can you name who killed him? Did it make any sense? Is he even dead, or is he a caveman?

Superman was briefly replaced by a group of imposters/impersonators (there’s a difference). The same thing’s happening with Batman. This will go on for a few months until DC looks at how much money they’re losing and then give up and bring original Batman back.

So I bitch a lot about the town I live in, since I believe it’s justified. I never seem to run out of fodder to hurl against my insurmountable enemy. Yesterday, the rocks I found seemed larger than before.

I was driving my girlfriend’s son to the park, when, not a hundred feet from my apartment building, I passed five cop cars with shotgun wielding police officers. I didn’t know what was going on, all I knew was that they had their bandoliers out, and it couldn’t be good. By the time I even realized how bad a situation it must have been, I was already driving my vehicle through it. I’m not sure what the risk factor was, but considering how close a loaded shotgun was to the side of my car door, I’d say it was pretty high.

At the park there was the obligatory homeless man sleeping in the middle of the field, which of course went unnoticed until I had kicked my soccer ball over in his direction. Of course I could be wrong about his state. He could have been a blanketed corpse.

Later, when I picked up my girlfriend at work, I found she had been forced to sell a suit to one of the Bacon brothers, who are in the news every second day for being the target of hitmen. Police have issued numerous warnings that anyone in their proximity isn’t safe, because of the risk of being hit by stray bullets. I can think of at least two murders in the past few months that have been linked to rival gangs trying to take them out. So, to summarize: my girlfriend could have been shot because some asshole walked into her store.

I’m basically trying to raise a family here, and I have to worry about shit like stray bullets and stepping over homeless drug addicts. This is all happening in a town that doesn’t even have an Applebees. There is literally no advantage to my being here, and the disadvantages (such as being shot, or having your family shot) are huge.

Of course my family, my girlfriend’s family, etc. all live in the Fraser Valley, so even if I move one or two towns over, I risk being cut off from them. If you drew a radius for where I could move to and still be conveniently located in the proximity of our combined families, I’d still be living in a crime infested shithole filled with rednecks, and I’d still be no closer to an Applebees. So, I’m stuck that way. Also, I’m broke, and can’t find a job in the area that pays for shit, meaning I’ll never get the funds to escape anyway, so I’m stuck that way as well.

Joy.