Fuck My Phone

 

Seriously, fuck this piece of shit.

It took me years to buy one. All those years with a flip phone, a primitive device only good for talking and texting. Eventually, the ease of processing credit cards through Square and an unfortunate washing machine accident resulted in my purchasing of a smart phone. I won't be like everyone else I said. After all, I'd witnessed how people eschewed conversation, the beauty of nature, quiet observation, and obstacles in their path to pay attention to their phone. I didn't get it. What happened to our attention spans? Did we really need to be on the internet all the time? Could we not take a minute of boredom?

I understand now.

The minute I have a question, I think "I'll look that up on google." The minute I have nothing to do, I hop on Reddit and see what's on the front page. When I hit the weights, I take my phone with me, so that I can use it to calculate my percentages as well as keep myself entertained in between sets. It's an alarm clock, a weather forecaster, a repository for all of my data and precious things. It's a goddamn vampire is what it is.

Somehow, my smart phone has made itself essential despite being a thing I lived without for almost the entirety of my life.

What it does is never let me disconnect from the internet. The internet is a cruel place, a techno-capitalist nightmare of garish design and ADHD distraction. I'm starting to quote people from Reddit like they're real flesh and blood people. Which they are. But I don't know them.

Can't we sacrifice convenience for a little bit of humanity in return? Can't we turn back the clock and decided "hey, maybe it's not great to always carry the internet around in our pocket." The answer, of course, is no. People love their smart phones. They spend hundreds of dollars on them.

I want to toss mine out in the fucking driveway and run it over with my car. But I won't.

Who will tell me the weather?

I Got an NFT to Sell You, Moron

 

You can own a piece of this priceless artwork!

Hey, moron. Yeah, I'm talking to you, crypto-bro. We're all going to make it, but by all of us, I don't mean you. Well, it could be you, if you fall for the next scam. All you got to do is cash out before the bubble bursts. And it will burst. Despite being around for ten years, nobody uses crypto as a currency. And why would you? The value can literally change in the middle of a transaction. Not to mention it takes ten minutes to process a transaction with Bitcoin. Oh, and using Ethereum will cost you twenty bucks, maybe even fifty. Who the fuck knows? It's all made-up bullshit, with so much obfuscation that your average person just might buy into the hype without understanding how much of a scam it all is.

So yeah, Pointless Venture is cashing in. Straight from the blockchain, we will be issuing non-fungible-tokens for Dumb-Fat-Bastard, produced by our hard-working NFT collective, Dumb-Fat-Bastards. Our cryptocurrency, which exists entirely in my imagination, making it just as real as any other crypto, will be called ScamCoin.

A shot of the miraculous blockchain, the tech that will revolutionize fraud!

I assure you, the humble buyer, that if you give Dumb-Fat-Bastards your money, we will not produce a single thing of substance. Any attempts to contact us will fail because we're a DAO, which is short for go fuck yourself. If you're a tech-literate individual with low social skills, a small amount of expendable income, and absolutely no financial literacy, then jump on the hype train, baby! Daddy Elon is taking us to Mars, and only the true visionaries are invited! Good morning and good night!

Here are some other potential NFTs we are working on:

Muddy Penis!

A pile of shit!

Mutant waving high!

Hey, at least none of them feature fucking apes, eh?

X Box Series S Review

 

It's a small, attractive console with a simplistic yet elegant design. Hah.

Although I'm mainly a PC gamer, I purchased an Xbox Series S a while back, mainly so that my Playstation-owning buddy could come over and crossplay Halo Infinite multiplayer between the Xbox and PC. It also functions well as a backup gaming machine, which is something to keep in mind, since if my 5700 xt broke I'd be out at least 600 bucks to replace it with something similar.

As a budget machine, I think the Series S works really well, especially with last generation games. Halo 5 runs at 4k and 60 fps; I ran through the tutorial section of Gears 5 and it seems to hit the advertised 1440p/60 fps that Microsoft claims the console was designed for. However, Halo Infinite is another story. Performance mode in Infinite is a dynamic 1080p/60 fps, and boy, that resolution scaling is pretty noticeable, to the point where I'd say that Halo 5 looks better on the Series S. If you sit a distance away from your tv like I do, that's not a big deal. If you sit closer, however, you'll notice those resolution shifts. Regardless, the Series S is still a great deal compared to a budget PC or a last gen console. An Nvidia rtx 3050 will cost you at least 250 bucks, and realistically you're looking at probably twice that. So for the price of an entry level graphics card you can buy a Series S. Also, the updated Zen 2 8 core CPU will ensure that the Series S ages much better than an Xbox One X or a PS4. However, there's no doubt in my mind that this console will probably be targeting dynamic 1080p/60 fps or native 1080p/30 fps in the next couple of years. The GPU is just too weak. Halo Infinite might not be a well-optimized game, but it's still a cross-gen title, and as developers push the power of the X Box Series X and Playstation 5, that advertised 1440p/60 fps nonsense will be forgotten. Keep in mind that the high end consoles can't even do native 4k/60 fps. Demanding titles such as Halo Infinite, Forza 5, and Deathloop all use dynamic resolution scaling to hit 60 fps, with the resolution often dipping down to 1440p. In the words of the great poet Flavor Flav, don't believe the hype.

So yeah, the Series S is a great budget machine, perfect for Game Pass. It's Quick Resume feature let's you immediately resume a game you've been playing, and the whole process, from turning on the console to resuming your game, probably takes less than ten seconds. If you're a budget gamer or looking for a cheap console, it's a great option. Just don't expect it to rival a mid-range PC.

God of War, Eight Hours in

 

God of War is an excellent cinematic experience with high production values, amazing graphics, decent beat 'em up controls, and somewhat repetitive puzzle design. All in all, I've enjoyed it immensely on PC; however, I have a few critiques. First let's examine what this game does well. The entire game is one shot; there are no camera cut aways (unless you count bringing up the inventory), and the close angle makes the game feel intimate and cinematic. Kratos, the player character, has a long backstory that I, as a primarily PC gamer, was not aware of, although the game will eventually fill you in on some of it. In the opening scene, he's cutting down a tree, one of the last requests of his dead wife, and his facial expressions are instantly readable, and you sense the weight sitting on his shoulders. Throughout the entire game Atreus, Kratos's son, will accompany you, and their relationship is the main focus of God of War. Kratos is gruff, untrusting, harsh, and distant, while his son is precocious, trusting, and optimistic, and watching their characters develop is something I have rarely (if ever) experienced in a video game. As they travel through the realm of Midgard, they encounter a host of gods and monsters, all pulled from the weird, wonderful world of Norse mythology, depicted here in all of its strangeness. Originally released in 2018 as a Playstation 4 exclusive, God of War is gorgeous, its dense environments packed with color and detail. Really, it's amazing they released this title for the last console generation. On PC, it sports graphical improvements, such as higher textures and improved shadows and reflections. Unfortunately, on AMD GPUs, there are occasional frame drops, especially around the Lake of the Nine area. Capping my framerate to 60 lessened the severity of these drops; I noticed a few as low as 54 fps, which isn't very noticeable on a Freesync monitor. Just something to keep in mind, as the experience is apparently much smoother on Nvidia hardware. From a design standpoint, my biggest critique is the busy inventory screen. You can craft and upgrade Kratos's armor, Atreus's armor, and their weapons; additionally, you have several screens worth of skills to buy for both characters with XP. In a game very focused on its characters and immersion, I feel God of War too frequently asks you to pull yourself out of the game world to focus on RPG mechanics that don't exactly fit this type of button masher. Also, as you make your way through the game, you'll find yourself switching between combat, which occurs a little too infrequently for my tastes, and puzzles, which all feature Kratos throwing his ax at something. This puzzle design is a little too monotonous and frequent; I'd much rather focus on destroying dark elves and wraiths. Kratos and Atreus don't often fight more than a handful of enemies at once, and I wonder if this was a design limitation of the PS4 (maybe too many enemies tanked the framerate). These are fairly minor quibbles. If you're looking for a cinematic third person action game, then you can't go wrong with God of War.

Screenshots:

Batman and Robin's Political Debates

 

Robin is enjoying a nice cup at coffee at his favorite Gotham shop when he sees a huge black truck pull up.There is a blue and black American flag flying on the left, while a Trump flag rises like a specter of doom from the right of the bed. The door opens, and Batman climbs out. He is decked out in his heavy assault body armor, but now there are little Trump heads dotted all over the front of it, as though some dumb bastard gave a toddler a bunch of Trump stickers and told them to go to town. As he enters the coffee shop, some people audibly gasp. Batman marches up to the counter, sits down on a stool, and barks at the barista.

"White mocha, on the double. Hurry it up, honey. My taxes are subsidizing your poverty-level wages."

Robin chokes a little bit when he hears this. He knows Bruce hasn't paid any income taxes in about four years.

A little boy comes up to Batman and asks for his autograph. The Batman shakes his head, sighs, and then scribbles something on a napkin before handing it to the kid.

"Batman? Why does this napkin say 'get a job?'"

"Because I'm done doing handouts. When I was your age, my parents were gunned down before me. What do you think I did after that? I got my ass up and started working. Let that be a lesson to you."

"Is the lesson capitalism destroys your capacity for empathy?" asks Robin, coming over to the kid's defense.

"Oh Jesus, I didn't know you were here," says Batman.

"It's been a while, hasn't it? What's up with the redneck ride out there?" asks Robin.

"I don't want anyone to mistake my political stance on anything, anymore," replies Batman.

"That's why you're covered in Trump stickers?"

"I want him to be the last thing criminals see before I destroy their faces," says Batman.

"Your feet are firmly planted on the road to fascism. Fuck democracy, eh?"

"The United States is a republic, not a democracy."

"We're a democratic republic. A republic is just a representative government. Did you get that from Fox News or something?"

"Robin, our culture is about to be destroyed. There's no holding back. If we don't act now, there won't be an America to wake up to!"

The mocha arrives, and Batman tries to swig it down like a beer, but it's too damn hot, and he spits most of it back at the barista, who cries and runs to the back.

"The ends justify the means, is what you're saying. You and your ilk are ready to burn it all down because of the increasing social liberalism of society, even though you could hide in your country clubs and five star dinners with the rest of the rich parasites and never even encounter a minority. Christ, Bruce, you're not some country bumpkin. You're the one percent. You're not supposed to fall for this brainwashing."

Batman smiles. The mocha has painted a mustache on his upper lip.

"Who says I'm falling for anything?"

He gets up, throws some change on the counter, and flips off the rest of the clientele before throwing a few crotch chops their way. As he burns out of his parking spot, the air is filled with thick diesel fumes that linger like a malevolent spirit.

"I'm the head fucker of Fuck-You-America!" screams the Batman as he tears down the road. "So fuck you!"

How to Know if Your Neighbor Across the Street is a Methhead

 

If your neighbor drives around in the middle of the night making deliveries with his pitbull's head sticking out the window, you may be living across from a methhead.

If weird, worthless piles of shit start accumulating in front of your neighbor's apartment, then they may be trading meth for junk.

If two jabronis are wearing headlamps in the middle of the night while crouching down in a field, working on god knows what, then you may have methheads as neighbors.

If you put something out next to the trash and you see it the next morning in front of your neighbor's place, no matter how worthless, then yeah, they might be methheads.

If random cars pull up and your neighbor gets inside for about thirty seconds and then gets out, then they are probably selling drugs, most likely meth.

If your neighbors don't seem to work or leave the house during the daylight hours, then they are either vampires or methheads. Same difference, really.

If your neighbor's teenage children prowl the streets like Malcolm McDowell in a Clockwork Orange, then you either live in Aurora and/or your neighbor is a methhead.

If you've never seen your neighbor dressed in anything besides pajamas or ill-fitting camouflage pants, then once again, you either live in Aurora and/or your neighbor is a methhead.

If one of the randos working on your neighbor's Toyota POS bears a great resemblance to Lord Voldemort in a tracksuit, then they are all probably methheads. 

Honestly, if anyone moves in across the street from me, I assume they are a methhead, and I'm right one-hundred percent of the time, every time.

God Bless America.

How to Recognize Fascism

 

Here's how you recognize fascism.

There is always an Other holding the nation back. Liberals, feminists, minorities, homosexuals, transgenders, immigrants. The language used to describe said groups is always hyperbolic and riddled with lies. Trump affiliated QAnon conspiracy wack-jobs accuse the Democratic Party of running a pedophile ring in order to harvest the adrenal glands of children. This is sadly ironic, considering how many Republican politicians have connections to known child abusers or are in fact child abusers themselves. Here's a list, just off the top of my head: former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (convicted pedophile), former Judge and GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore (accused of pursuing teenage girls), Congressman Matt Gaetz (currently being investigated by the FBI for sex trafficking of a minor),and Congressman Jim Jordon (refused to do anything to stop his wrestling team's doctor from molesting over 300 people while coaching at Ohio State, despite numerous allegations).

The truth is dependent on a certain point of view. Like a degenerate Obi-wan Kenobi, a fascist despises objective reasoning, science, intellectuals, and any criticism, legitimate or otherwise. Ever notice that people like Carlson and Trump constantly whine about the elites, as though they themselves are not part of the one percent? Carlson is the heir to the Swanson frozen food empire, and like Trump, he tries to depict himself as a populist. One reason why fascists constantly muddle the truth is that they aim to drown us all in a "flood of shit," to paraphrase Steve Bannon. Joe Biden had an dubious sexual assault allegation pop up during 2020, almost certainly to redirect media attention away from Trump's 26 accusers. A false equivalency is when two situations are compared as though they are equal, and it is a strategy frequently employed by fascists to equate misdeeds. Sowing doubt is the mission, and pretty soon the truth loses all meaning. It's harder to hold people in power accountable when you can't determine what the truth is.

Mindless Loyalty to a Leader. Any critic of Trump has been purged from the Republican Party. Liz Cheney lost her position as House Chair because she voted to impeach Trump for his role in encouraging the Jan. 6 riot. Anthony Gonzalez and Adam Kinzinger have retired after voting to impeach. Every Republican politician now walks on eggshells, careful not to disparage their Dear Leader, lest they lose reelection or suffer death threats from the Trumpian masses. The Right is obsessed and insecure about their masculinity, so it's pretty humorous to watch these paragons of masculine virtue cower in fear like soy boy beta cucks from the long, short-fingered arm of Donald Trump. The fascist knows that they have no honor and no true ideology. Power is their only concern, and they will do anything, no matter how debasing, in order to keep that power. Ted Cruz is perhaps the best example of this. Trump insulted his wife's looks, accused his father of killing JFK, called him "lying Ted," and Cruz became one of his most argent defenders. One only has to look at his recent humbling before Tucker Carlson to realize how pathetic he and other Republicans truly are. 

Contempt for Democracy. Republican politicians don't believe the Big Lie that 2020 election was stolen from Trump, but they'll be damned if they don't steal the next one. In 2021, 19 states enacted 33 voting laws to make it harder to vote, and you win no extra points for guessing that every single one of those states were controlled by Republicans. In wake of Democrats' 2021 victories in Georgia, state Republicans have given themselves power over local election boards, purging Democrats and black people. Their base is primed by Fox News and internet media to see the opposition as an existential threat, one worthy of using violence against, if necessary.

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

It's best that we call it like we see it before it is too late. The Republican Party is a fascist organization. It is hostile to democracy, liberalism, science, and American values. Anyone not under the sway of Trumpism needs to wake up and realize what meager political power the American citizen has is in danger of being swept away.     

Conan Brothers Q&A

 

SpeculativePossum asks "Did you guys ever invest in crypto? Hope you did, you'd be rolling in the dough right now."

Dave: I invest the old fashion way: by keeping my money under my mattress.

Arnold: Which sucks if you catch your house on fire.

Dave: Money is flammable, unfortunately.

Arnold: I'm all for putting your money in assets. Buy a house, improve your house, buy a car, become a slum lord. Investing, however, is not something I've ever considered, mostly because I've never had enough money to do so. Lately we've been sitting on a little bit of cash, though, and the thought of doing something other than letting it rest under Dave's mattress has dawned on me. Investing in crypto at this point doesn't seem like a great idea.

Dave: You gotta get in before the rest of the fools do, Arnie.

Arnold: That's right, Dave. Crypto's value is totally based on its perception as the hot new thing. In reality, a handful of people control most of the market. The bubble keeps building and building but it will crash again, like it always does.

Dave: Maybe a currency not backed by a government isn't a great idea.

Arnold: I wish people would just fucking use cash! Cash isn't easily traceable, you fools! I guess it's not great for buying illegal shit on the internet, but otherwise it does everything Bitcoin is supposed to do!

Dave: Now I want to see Matt Damon in a commercial for cash.

Arnold: We would be remiss if we didn't mention the needless wasting of vast amounts of electrical energy by crypto mining stations as they waste processing power computing algorithms for proof of work.

Dave: As if capitalism has ever cared about anything other than making money.

Arnold: Bring on the workers' revolution! Where's my hammer and sickle?

...

StrongGuyBill asks "Ever miss around with atlas stones?"

Dave: Yep.

Arnold: We just recently made a 215 pounder after throwing around a 145 lbs stone for over a year. Took me a while to realize you can't pick up a heavy atlas stone up without using your bare forearms.

Dave: Really bruised them pretty bad.

Arnold: Yeah, our stone has a ridge on it from where the concrete seeped in-between the two piece of the mold. No pain, no gain, I guess.

Dave: Stones are great. Lifting weights will get you very strong but you need to practice real world shit every once in a while, like lifting telephone poles or giant rocks.

Arnold: I'd recommend starting out with a stone that's about seventy percent of your body weight and then going up from there.

...

GoldenHalo asks "What's your favorite Halo Infinite weapon for multiplayer?"

Dave: Sword.

Arnold: I don't have one particular favorite. One of the great things about Infinite is that almost all the weapons are viable. Well, except for the ravager. The plasma pistols sucks too.

Dave: There is no reason for the plasma pistol with the pulse carbine around.

Arnold: Yeah, the pulse carbine is secretly a good weapon. If you keep the cursor on your target, the pulses track. It is really good at stripping shields.

Dave: The Skewer is another favorite. I'm good at no scoping with it.

Arnold: I would say that fifty percent of the time, I'm deadly with the Skewer. It is immensely satisfying to spike an enemy.

Dave: I'm just going to say that Halo Infinite is the best multiplayer game I've played since Unreal Tournament.

Arnold: It's not exactly an arena shooter, in that fast movement is important, but managing power ups, weapon spawns, and the map layout is just as critical as in Quake or Unreal.

Blog Plans for 2022

 

There is no reason for this screenshot to be here other than its hilarity.

So this blog started back in 2013 as a medium to post my creative projects, mainly my music and writings. Since then, it's evolved somewhat, becoming sort of a Something Awful front page lite in 2015, and then recently turning into more of a video game review site. My output has waned from my highpoint in 2015, when I manged 163 posts, but I'm a lot busier nowadays, and sometimes instead of writing I'd rather zone out and play video games. I'd like to keep this project going, however, and I don't want to see my output peter out like it did in 2017, when I only posted 60 times. Therefore, I'm setting some goals for this blog in an effort to give it a little more time and respect. Here are the main ones.

-post 10 times a month.

-include one piece of new music per month.

-continue some of my long-running series, like the Conan Brothers, Farmer's Only Profiles, and Batman and Robin's Political Debates.

-post a game review per month.

-include an excerpt from whatever novel I'm working on (hah).

-keep that bad poetry flowing.

-do a weightlifting post per month.

-try to keep this fun.

I'd love to bring back the Pointless Podcast, a podcast so pointless and vulgar that we had to discontinue it; however, I doubt that I have the time, and that I'd be able to find willing participants, and there's always the specter of saying something unfortunate that is preserved forever on the net. So that's what you, dear reader, can look forward to this coming year. May it be a better year than the last two.

Cyberpunk 2077 Impressions

 

The character models are insanely detailed in this game.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a Bethesda game with a better story and cast of characters. Just like the Elder Scrolls and Fallout, there are plenty of glitches and jank. If you park your car in the middle of the street, a half-mile traffic jam will form. If you have a hostile interaction with one character in an alley, any nearby NPCs might crouch down and cover their heads in mass like someone just told them to duck and cover. You can steal any car without any consequences. Combat is awkward and consists of pumping bullet after bullet into spongy enemies that don't seem to have much in the way of AI. But I'll be damned if this game doesn't have an incredible presentation. Conversations proceed in a natural way instead of the freeze-frame weirdness of Fallout or Skyrim. The environments look to be pulled from Blade Runner, and the artistry is so impressive that I can't help but to be pulled into the world. Jackie is perhaps the most likeable gangsta buddy in video game history. Johnny Silverhand is a douche, but I want to know why he forswore the rock star life to become a terrorist. In short, if you give the game a chance and become a willful participant in the illusion, Cyberpunk is as engrossing an experience as you'll find in computer entertainment. If you lift up its skirt and try to break the illusion, however, you'll come away disappointed. Despite its reputation as a system-melter, I've found Cyberpunk to run pretty well. Using Digital Foundry's optimized settings (found here) my Ryzen 7 3700x, 5700 xt power PC runs it around 60 frames per second at 1440p. Obviously a year of optimizations have almost certainly made Cyberpunk a better experience now than on launch. If you have a decent system or a next gen console, don't be afraid. Just don't expect the second coming of Half-Life or Deus Ex.

Screenshots below: