I nitpick otherwise enjoyable activities!

So it's been a while since I wrote anything. I'd apologize, but I don't give a shit. First, an administrative announcement:

Just Stunned hasn't updated in about a month. I know this. However, I started hitting wall after wall with the last week or so of strips that I did, and I was dissatisfied with the results, so I'm putting the comic on hiatus until I'm back in a comic-ing place. I'm not going to let it fizzle, but I do feel that I owe it to people to put out funny strips, and not just comics for comics' sake.

Now on to why I'm actually writing this: Of late, I've been playing quite a few video games, what with acquiring a shiny new DS, getting my xbox back from Microsoft, and having access to my own Wii again. That having been said, I've been noticing my gripes with some of my recent acquisitions have been building up almost as quickly as the things I love about them. First up:

Any game in the Mario Series: This gripe is spawned from mario games where you play as mario doing mario things, not to be confused with all out battles to the death, go-kart racing, and inexplicable, pointless, and repetitive party games. First of all, why does anyone use "lives" anymore? Lives were something that were created when games didn't have save features and were more or less beatable in one sitting if you were really good. The problem is, nowadays lives are just a way to punish you for getting stuck. Both "New Super Mario bros." and "Super Mario Galaxy" are guilty of this. You die, you go back to the last checkpoint you reached. You can do this ad nauseum should you still have lives. Once you run out you... uh... go back to the beginning of the level you got stuck on, meaning you have to go through all the shit you've proven you're capable of doing, only to get stuck on the same part. Until you run out of lives. Also, New Super Mario bros. has 2 entire worlds that you have to meet stupid and contrived requirements to get to. Not just levels, mind you, but full on worlds. World 4 as well as world 7 (out of 8) are not accessible should you play through the game the way any normal mario player would (left to right, jump on or throw fire at whatever gets in your way). Instead you go from world 3 to 5, then from 6 to 8 unless you meet some stupid requirements and find hidden pathways to worlds that for all intents and purposes, should just be accessible in the fucking game, given that numerically, they are BEFORE THE LAST FUCKING FIGHT. I looked up how to get to these levels on gamefaqs, and the methods typically involve using very hard to find items (like the magic shrinking mushroom which makes you even smaller and a one hit kill) in the final stages of worlds 2 and 5. My point is no rational person would think to do this because it deliberately makes what you're doing harder and less fun. So Nintendo, if you stop using lives and withholding features I fucking paid for in my games, then maybe I'll lighten up on you for once again releasing a system that ONLY YOU GUYS can make good games for.

Grand Theft Auto IV: From the number of perfect 10's and 9 point whatevers that this game got, you'd think that it signified the second coming of Christ. Fortunately, since Rockstar is not paying me obscene sums of money to plaster my blog with advertisements for their game, I have no qualms pointing out a few design tweaks that could have made what is a very good game (maybe an 8 in my opinion) into that 10 that IGN was so fucking eager to plaster across it. First things first: When I play a video game, I play it to retreat to a fantasy world where I can do things that I cannot do in real life (beating random pedestrians to death for no reason, waiting for the paramedics to show up, grenading their ambulance, then changing my clothes so the cops won't recognize me anymore). Here are a few things that happen to you in GTA IV.
* You have a cell phone. Now this wouldn't be so bad if you could only use it to make outgoing calls. The problem is you receive calls too. This means that you might want to go out and just play through some missions or kill random pedestrians until the army sends a tank up your asshole, but instead you get every lame-brained dipshit you have ever met in the game calling you all the fucking time wanting to hang out and get food and go to bars and stuff. This would be great if any of the stuff said dipshits ask you to do was actually fun. Instead you get treated to:

1. A lame darts minigame that is so childishly easy you have no problem scoring 301 points within 2 turns.
2. A lame pool minigame where you can view the table either from directly behind the cueball, or in a bird's eye view of the whole table. Now when has anyone EVER looked at the table from that angle except on unnecessary recaps in billiards tournaments on ESPN 2? Consequently, the game turns into you just mindlessly beating on the cue ball until you start deliberately trying to sink the 8 ball early so the game will just fucking end, but instead you halfheartedly knock around the 8 ball for a while because sinking shots is based purely on luck
3. Opportunities to go drinking which basically means an opportunity to drive drunk. Now here is what really bothers me. Provided I don't hit a cop car or kill a pedestrian in front of a cop, I can do whatever the fuck I feel like in a vehicle without currying police attention. However, once you're drunk (and believe me when I say driving well is impossible when you are) if you so much as drive near a cop, they start chasing you. Why shoot for realism on one end of the spectrum, but not on the other? It also bears mentioning that cops will chase you if you, and i will italicize this for emphasis, fail to pay a bridge toll.
   
4. Strip clubs where you can't do anything but watch repetitive and boring lapdances by mediocre character models
5. Food places where, and I am not making this up, the whole activity is driving to the food place, automatically losing $50 (even if you go to the McDonald's equivalent), then driving your douchebag friend who can't make their way to you even if they are in a completely separate burrow back to where they want to go.

The kicker is, if you DON'T do these stupid inane activities, you don't get valuable benefits they confer (free cab rides, cheap weapons). Sometimes the characters themselves are so annoying you don't want to listen to them ever, but you're forced to hang out with them so you get the bonuses for doing so (for players of the game, see: Brucie and Roman).

*The cops are way too easily alerted to your presence. I touched on this with the drunk driving/toll bridge thing, but I feel it bears a double mention because it gets really fucking annoying after a while. I don't know if they beefed up the cops' programming or just added more, but it seems like even when I'm not doing illegal things, a stray button push or an accidental bumper tap has me running from the fucking law for the next 20 goddamn minutes. It doesn't help that they come after you in such force that you kind of need to kill a few just to make your escape, which gives you a higher wanted level, meaning you have to run for another 20 fucking minutes... you get the idea.

I guess my overall gripe with the game is that it is inconsistent in how realistic it wants to be. Car crashes can now fling you through the windshields, getting punched doesn't lower body armor levels, you can now move faster than a walk when you're holding something heavier than a handgun... These are all good things, and it's certainly not as bad as say, cops in Driv3r, which is read Driver 3 for the uninitiated, chasing you with vigor typically reserved for #1 on the FBI's 10 most wanted list for running a red light, but still. This game is cartoon caricature violence at its finest, and it gets wrecked by having cops jump up your ass for tapping their car after you swerve to (against your better instincts) avoid a hapless pedestrian. They got rid of the ridiculous "your character needs to eat and exercise" requirements from San Andreas, but there are still a few things. I realize that Nicco will make friends in the course of the game, but for fuck's sake, if I don't need to make him eat and go to the bathroom, why do I need to take these assholes to dinner on my dime, requiring me to steal a car which usually results in me running around for a long time trying to avoid the cops that saw me from half a mile away. The point is if I wanted to take freeloading assholes out to lunch, I'd call my real friends (just kidding, you know I love most of you). When I play my video games, I'm doing typically to AVOID going out and doing things.

I'm gonna turn this into a two-parter, because this is getting ungodly long. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for part two!

You Wouldn't Take No For An Answer You Fucking Bitch

Don't worry kids, I'm not insulting you (yet, although we'll see where this takes me), rather quoting one of the many songs that has been stuck in my head for the last week or so. Yes that's right, Mindless Self Indulgence has finally come out with a new album (well, almost, but it's available to listen to on their myspace so, yeah, it's pretty much out). Let me put it to you this way. I, erm, acquired their album on Sunday night so I could listen to it on my iPod. Until today, nothing but that album was played on it. I think the lowest playcount for any track on the album right now is 12. Suffice to say, I am thoroughly enjoying it.

Now, the actual reason I'm writing this is because of a news post I prepared for Just Stunned (one of the strips set to go up I believe at the beginning of May). It started getting lengthier than I feel the average news post should, so consequently I decided to expand on it here. See, If has been completed for a while now (I would have to surmise at least since February. The band may have put it up on their blog but I'm just too fucking lazy to check). This means that they've been spending the interim period getting their marketing machine powered up to full steam, and have kept true to their roots of bending their fans over and fucking them in the ass.

You see, this makes the second album in a row now where MSI has released no less than eleventy-billion different versions. OK, that was kind of a lie. In actuality there are 4: standard edition CD, limited edition CD, limited edition vinyl, and edited cd. Normally, edited wouldn't warrant a mention, except for the fact that they added one track to it. They also added a different track to the vinyl edition, and added a few live songs on a special dvd for the limited edition. This of course means that there are, in actuality, 17 tracks in total (plus some live songs, but I'm only counting new stuff), but if you want all of them, you have to buy the same goddamn album at least 3 times.

But wait, there's more! Did you know that there is a special deal on their site's store where if you buy all 4 editions you get a t-shirt and a special vinyl single with yet ANOTHER new song plus a demo for one of the other tracks on the album? That's right, for $60, you can have the same album 4 goddamn times plus a t-shirt and some collector's edition shit. On vinyl. Because everybody has the capability to listen to vinyl all the time and of course it's not costly or a hassle to get vinyl onto your computer so that it's in an easier to access format. No, of course not, that would be MADNESS. It's an established fact that everybody everywhere always has access to a turntable and you can get songs off of them and onto your ipod simply by clicking your heels 3 times and saying "I didn't just get fucked, I didn't just get fucked" until you start to believe it.

I mean, seriously, if they're trying to keep people from pirating their stuff, this is so NOT the way to do it. I preordered If back in March and felt no pangs because 25$ for the limited edition CD and a t-shirt was a pretty sweet deal. And it almost seems like paying double that plus change to get all 4 isn't that bad a deal, but remember, you're paying the 25$ for one album and a t-shirt and the subsequent 35 amounts to 2 extra tracks and a vinyl single. Are you fucking shitting me? Is this shit for real? The only thing I've seen that's more jaw dropping was the "special edition" of trent reznor's latest crap fest that sold for 500$ and sold out upon the day of release.

The best part is that if you read the band's blog, they announce these "deals" like they're doing you a favor. I will reiterate a past statement: Are you fucking shitting me? I took one look at that announcement and my first thought was "I wonder how long it'll take for the other editions to get put up on isohunt". Because, my friends, the day I pay for the SAME FUCKING ALBUM 4 times will be the day my dick falls off from getting fucked to death by Jessica Alba. Need a less wordy summary? The day I buy the same album 4 times will be the day I am fucking dead.

The Unveiling

So those of you who haven't been paying attention to my shameless self promotion, the super secret mystery project (aka my webcomic) is now up with a grand total of 2 strips. You'll check it out, won't you?

http://juststunned.comicgenesis.com

It updates monday, wednesday, and friday hopefully. Hope you enjoy it!

We Find Most of our Clients Can Remember 2 Words

OK, Sega, this is it. I've been patient with you as a company, given that the Sega Genesis was my first video game system, but goddammit enough is enough. I cannot stand idly by while you continue to mouth-fuck your beloved intellectual properties to death.

So last week my roommate calls me over to check out the new sonic game's gameplay footage. Suffice to say, I was trepidatious. Remember Sonic 3D? The Sonic Adventure Series? Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games? Sega has done absolutely nothing to retain the trust of the gaming community at large, is what I'm driving at here. However, this new trailer had me about ready to drink that blue and prickly kool-aid. Minimal 3D elements, linear game play involving collecting rings and running fast, the game doesn't appear to be on rails, just some good looking 2D gameplay in some pretty nice looking 3D environments. Somebody hand me a chalice, I'm ready to drink.

Well, WAS ready to drink. I paused today to go on joystiq because I was at work and had nothing better to do. There I saw this coupled with this (sorry to be pulling a Tycho here and linking to 50 different things rather than summarize. I'm lazy. Fuck you.) Take this Kool-aid from my presence, for it pleases me not. "Reinventing sonic's gameplay" with "unusual situations"? All while "staying true to what made him an industry icon"? Fuck you! You don't get to claim you're reinventing him AND keeping him the same. And have you brain dead fucks at Sega learned nothing? What happened every time you tried to "reinvent sonic"?

Sega Developer 1: "guuuuuuh, let's turn sonic into a pinball game, then continue hitting ourselves in the heads with rocks"

Sega Developer 2: "better idea! let's give him a voice that 5 year olds would find lame, add some characters no one likes or cares about, THEN hit ourselves in the heads with rocks!

Sega Developer 3: "Gahhh! I just choked on my own tongue!"

Getting the basic gist here? So Sega, to quote the only funny madTV sketch in existence: "I will offer you a piece of advice. 2 words. Stop it. Just...just stop it." No good has ever come of "reinventing" sonic. Anyone remember the Dreamcast? No? oh right, at least in the US, there were like 4 games available before it tanked! That was when Sega turned themselves into the $50 hooker beneath the underpass, offering to license their beloved properties to the highest bidder, churning out shitfest after shitfest. Ever wonder why Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2, 3, and Sonic And Knuckles did so well? Sega had the common sense not to FUCK AROUND with a working formula.

So fuck you, Sega. Fuck you for getting my hopes up, fuck you for sending them spiraling back to the ground, and fuck you for shilling out all of your integrity and turning sonic into a fucking werewolf. You stupid fucks.

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat...

I hope that sounded menacing enough. Anyway, I've been absent a few weeks, but it is not for nothing. I've been working on something. Here's a preview. The resolution sucks because google auto-shrinks your images, and since this took up my whole monitor...yeah, it kind of got fucked. Still, GAZE AND MARVEL!



Are you excited? I'm excited.

How I Learned to Stop Hating Hardcore Kids and Start REALLY Hating Hardcore Kids

Those of you that know me know that when I go to a show, I like my moshes to be straight fucking moshes. This means there should be precisely 3 things going on: pushing people, running in circles, and pushing people some more. Those of you that know me also know my opinion about hardcore kids (for those of you who don't, I hate them, as the title implies). This was solidified last year at a Between The Buried and Me concert when, while defending myself from a hardcore dancer, I got sucker punched in the face. I have an old blog on my myspace ranting about why, if people are seeing an EMT on a regular basis at your shows, the reaction should not be "YEAH, HARDCORE DUDE!!!" Rather, people should wonder what is wrong with their scene that causes so many grievous injuries.

However, risk of life and limb aside, I still enjoy the music and, while I come out of some shows with a few bruised, the incident at Between The Buried And Me was relatively isolated in my personal experience. That was why I wasn't terribly fazed when I got to the Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza show last night. There was the usual run of idiots flailing around like retarded fish out of water, and because the space was limited, they were a little harder to avoid than usual. Nothing I can't handle though. You can take a punch to the face, you can survive a few hits in the arms or back (which is where I'm very sore right now). However, halfway through the second band's set (Born of Osiris: they were awesome, like As I Lay Dying but grindier) I noticed that we were dealing with a very special breed of asshole at this show.

See, at most shows, the hardcore kids maintain a moderate distance from the edge of the pit out of whatever small shred of courtesy they may have for their fellow concertgoers. This show however, had people rushing the edges with spin kicks and flailing punches. Now I cannot stress this point enough here, hardcore dancers look like fucking morons. Words can't even describe how stupid this new moshpit fad is, so I'll let video do it for me.



Look at these fucking idiots. Oh my god it makes me want to shoot myself, as if this is truly the up and coming generation, we are all fucked.

Anyway, Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza, Born of Osiris, and See You Next Tuesday (aka CUNT) went off without a hitch for the most part. CUNT was too drunk though, and by the end of their set, it degraded to pure noise. Not like grind noise, but like the guitarist slamming his fretboard against the amp. At one point he pulled me onto the "stage" (which was elevated about 6 inches off the ground) and threw me into the audience. I have no idea why. Anyway, Beneath The Massacre was headlining, and Mike and I were there for TDTDE and them, so we were pretty stoked. 10 minutes into the set, a guy came up on the stage, said something to the singer, and the singer announced "OK, guys, stop fighting with each other out there. Just come up here and headbang with us, we all want a good time but people don't have to get hurt." Solid advice from a cool guy. Flash forward to 5 minutes later when the show stopped again because 10 guys were beating the living shit out of 1 person. I don't know what that guy did, but these fucking pussies were on him like balls in a hardcore kid's mouth. They were slamming him into the bar, knocking him down, and punching and kicking him in the face. There was a puddle of blood on the floor about one foot in diameter. We're not talking smears here, we're talking an actual puddle. I also saw what I believed to be a tooth, but I couldn't be sure because all of the blood on the floor was obscuring things. Have all of my italics made this clear enough?

At this point a guy from the knitting factory came out and started yelling at the crowd that "they were acting like a bunch of fucking idiots and that they needed to show some fucking respect for the bands". Then they canceled the rest of the show. That's right, hardcore kids managed to get a show fucking canceled because they wouldn't listen to the band (who they supposedly respect enough to pay money to see) when they told them to fucking cool it. The show got divided into two people: those who supported the knitting factory guy, and those who kept chanting "fuck you, asshole!" Let me make this clear. They were beating the living shit out of somebody for no good reason (I don't know what he did, but nobody deserves the beating that he took unless they are Osama Bin Laden or Peter Jackson) and they were outraged when the band told them to stop beating the shit out of people. I have gone to somewhere between 30 and 40 metal shows and have never seen a beating half this severe. Before this, my trump card of mosh pit stories was my friend Ben getting half of his front tooth kicked out.

On the way out of the show, I commented to Mike that this was why hardcore dancing is stupid. Somebody gets hurt, a fight breaks out, and it wrecks the show for people who just wanted a night of headbanging and heavy music. Some dude overheard it and started calling me a "faggot pussy motherfucking bitch" and suggested that I "go cry about it" like "a faggot". And that sums up the hardcore scene right there. A bunch of meatheads who can't resolve conflicts like a human being and instead gang up on people, because in a one on one fight they would go down like the dickless pieces of shit that they are.

Do You Dislike People?

Then come and work at NYU's dining halls and health center. That's right, if you hate talking to, interacting with, helping, or simply seeing other people, then these positions are perfect for you. Allow me to elucidate.

I'll start with the dining halls, as I have less of a bone to pick with them, but a bone nonetheless (insert appropriate sexual innuendo here). I live at the Palladium, which amongst it's numerous other features (a career center that I have not visited since fall and a gym that I never use) features a dining hall. There are 12 residential floors in the building with about 25 rooms apiece, most of which house 4 students each. Suffice to say, there are a lot of people in this building which means the dining hall is always crowded. This of course means that the employees there (with the exception of one cool guy who can knock off 10 people in about 2 minutes) prepare and serve the food one person at a time. This is in addition to barely ever paying attention to requests (because asking them to not put onions on your sandwich is an affront to them and you must be made to pay for it), maintaining a gruff and shouty demeanor, and essentially treating you like shit scraped from their boots for asking them to do their fucking job and get you your food. If food preparation is not your thing, you can be the official swipe nazi, ensuring that only people who have swiped meals are allowed to even look at the dining area (which is a completely separate room from where you acquire the food). This means that if you have a friend who doesn't have a meal plan (about half of the people in my group) it will cost you an extra meal for them to sit with you. Not even take the food. Just to sit down at a table. As if, given the choice between their own good food and the dining hall, somebody would knock over the dining hall for all it's worth. There's nothing I love more than burnt burgers, powdered eggs, and quite possibly the shittiest, driest sandwiches I have ever consumed.

Now onward for those of you so misanthropic that even sighting another human being makes your stomach turn: The NYU Health Center. If you make an appointment, it is almost guaranteed that you will not be seen for at least a week, probably two, after you call to schedule. Should you actually still be ailing from whatever your initial problem was when your appointment finally rolls around, they will make you fill out a questionnaire about every possible thing that might be even remotely pertinent (pre-existing conditions, things that run in the family, do you drink/smoke/use drugs, what kind of sex you have with how many people, do you wear a seatbelt - yes that is a real question that they ask every time you go in). This may seem like something that would be worthwhile, and it would be if the quacks that work at that fucking cesspool of incompetence actually read it. Instead, the nurse will come in, ask you the questions that you just finished filling out, and write them down. Then the "doctor" will come in and ask you the same questions that the nurse just asked you, which you just filled out on the goddamn form. Brief example: I have been taking zyrtec for my allergies since I was 14 and always say such on the form, yet when I went in this week to get the horrifying hives I have been breaking out in treated, the "doctor" had the fucking gall to recommend that I try zyrtec. When I told them I have taken it for so long that I am practically immune to antihistamines, the doctor shrugged and recommended I make an appointment with the allergist. They fit me in in March.

Now, should you manage to make it past the form/question triple barrage without dying from overexposure to pure stupid, they will chalk up whatever is ailing you to one of two things: post nasal drip or (if applicable) smoking. I could walk in there with a gunshot wound to the fucking arm and they would tell me that it is, in all likelihood, a cold. It took Allison 3 trips in two weeks to get diagnosed with mono, and on the last trip her throat was so swollen that she could barely talk and they had to intravenously hydrate her because it hurt too much to eat or drink. And they were still ambivalent as to whether or not it was post nasal drip. I AM NOT MAKING THIS SHIT UP. This place makes me so goddamned angry that I sometimes contemplate lighting myself on fire and running around in front of their building to warn others not to enter if they might even be slightly sick, finally leaving an ashen husk as a grim reminder of my sacrifice (until the street cleaners sweep me into a dustpan).

So if either of these posts sound like something you'd be interested in, apply today and they'll be sure not to help you just as soon as they can.