Thursday, November 26, 2020

Bulksgiving 2020: The Results

 

Starting weight=197 lbs.

Ending weight=201 lbs.

Food consumed: Half-pound of turkey covered in gravy, several spoonfuls of mashed potatoes, half of a green bean casserole, one dinner roll, two Mad Tree Crisp Golden Ales, two Rhinegeist Dad Ales, one piece of cheese cake, one piece of apple pie, one peace of pumpkin pie with whipped cream, a quart of water, one small dog, half a stick of butter, a random container of mixed food, the rest of the whipped cream, half a quart of aged cider that smelled like cheese, a moldy apple, one banana and peel, a sock found under the couch with a significant amount of hair, a baby foot, a squirrel that got in my way and never lived to see another day, the sadness and idiot tears of half a nation (Tard Nation!), a pile of rocks (crunchy), a rat's nest, a book of twigs, my wife's diary, a history book, an old VCR, a couple of small persons rambling about the park after dark, screws that fell out of a minivan, a deer, another small dog (not as tasty as the first), a bushel of apples, an old bone found jutting out of the earth, a book of spells, a book of smells, the essence of evil, a crocodile heart, a shoe, Hunter Biden's laptop, Bungalow Bim, a pack of gum, some baseball cards, a sack of farts, and poop.

I think I have a stomach ache.

Estimated recovery time: Thanksgiving, 2021.

Gainz expected=infinite.

Happy bulksgiving, America.

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods, Part One Review

 

The Ancient Gods is perty.

Doom Eternal is my game of the year, which is remarkable considering I initially returned it because I was disappointed by the changes from Doom 2016. It is a complicated, difficult shooter, sort of a Dark Souls for FPS fans in how it rewards mastery of all of its many systems, and it is that complexity, I think, that's made me spend sixty hours with Doom Eternal, as well as purchase its first DLC, the Ancient Gods.

Let's get this out of the way: the Ancient Gods is HARD. I beat Doom Eternal on Nightmare, and I found that the Ancient Gods on Ultra-Violence (one difficulty level beneath Nightmare) was significantly harder than Eternal's campaign on Nightmare. Did you hate the Marauder in Doom Eternal? Well, you'll eventually face two Marauders at once, as well as one buffed by a totem, and those encounters rank among the Ancient Gods' easier battles. The Marauder was loathed by the majority of the Doom player-base because he's invulnerable except for a split second before he attacks. No other enemy in the base game is like this, and many thought that the Marauder broke up the game's flow. ID have not listened to this vocal contingent, however, because the two new enemies in the DLC share the Marauder's design philosophy. The Blood Maykr is a shielded version of the maykr drones from Eternal, but it can only be killed with a headshot while it's attacking. Unlike the Marauder, it only takes one shot, but these guys have a tendency to finish you off during a big battle. The other new enemy is the spirit, a blue ghost that possesses enemies, doubling their health and making them immune to the ice bomb as well as staggering. Oh yeah, they also move at twice normal speed, and you can't disable their weapons. When you finally manage to kill a spirit, the ghost hovers for a few seconds, and it is at this point when you must hit them with the microwave beam, making you rather immobile as well as extremely vulnerable. The spirit is far more frustrating than the Marauder, and it really seems like a troll job by ID, shrugging off concerns of unfair difficulty with a "Git Gud" attitude. I'm willing to bet that many players found Doom Eternal to be really hard compared to most first person shooters. I found it to be ridiculously hard in spots, and it was only after I beat the campaign on Nightmare that I felt I'd gotten pretty decent at the game. For hardcore Doom fans, the Ancient Gods is a really nice challenge, but I feel as though ID can't jack up the difficulty much more without alienating a large portion of their fanbase. Some battle arenas in the Ancient Gods, particularly at the end of the Blood Swamps, require you to face a ridiculous onslaught of heavies. One of the trials involved multiple mancubui, a doom hunter, a spirited arachnotron accompanied by three other arachnotrons, two barons, and a archivile. So don't fuck up, because you'll have to battle them all over again.

In other news, the three levels of the Ancient Gods are visually compelling, and as well designed as any in the base game. I'm still on the final boss, but I believe I've spent about five or six hours with the DLC so far. If you're a hardcore Doom player who welcomes a challenge, then I think the Ancient Gods is worth it. If you barely made it through Eternal, stay away.

There's a lot of visual spectacle going on in this DLC.

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Batman Versus Robin: The Denial

 

Batman prowls the streets, searching for criminals that deserve the swift fists of justice. As he swings from roof top to roof top, a mantra is heard, barely comprehensible, yet said with vigor. "Fraud, fraud, fraud!" he mutters, eyes red, slivers of spittle flying from his lips. Momentarily perched on a gargoyle above a coffee shop, he sees a younger couple walk out onto the street, soy lattes in hand. With a bestial roar, Batman drops down before them, arms spread wide as though he means to crush them both in a titanic embrace.

"Who the fuck did you vote for!" he screams, grabbing the man by his lapels. "Did you chose to make America socialist again, you curly haired poofter?"

The woman throws her coffee right at Batman's face, causing him to drop the man and clutch his eyes. As the couple flees in terror, another figure emerges from the shadows to loom over the disabled Batman.

"You need some help?" asks Robin.

"Motherfucking communists blinded me," mumbles Batman, removing a Bat-hankie from his utility belt to wipe his face.

"I see you're not handling the election results very well," replies Robin.

"Fraud! Democrats cheated!" says Batman.

"Yeah, the Republican state government of Georgia cheated in favor of Joe Biden. If they cheated, don't you think they would've kept the Senate? There have been zero cases of fraud. Trump's lawsuits keep getting thrown out of court. You have to accept the inevitable. Trump will not get another four years."

"I don't have to accept shit! I make my own goddamn reality, you understand that? What Batman says is, is. And I'll be damned if I'll accept a socialist running the country."

"Joe Biden, socialist?" Robin laughs. "It's almost as if you don't understand what the word 'socialism' means."

"It means everything that is wrong with this country," snorts Batman. "Transgenders. Obamacare. School lunches without wholesome processed food."

"When the Right talk about socialism, they want you to think about an authoritarian boogeyman who will take all your money. They don't want you to think about Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, or the Affordable Care Act. Hell, any government program is technically socialism. Rich people like you have somehow convinced poor white people to vote against their own interests, mainly by appealing to their emotions and prejudices."

"Goddamnit, Robin, you should be arrested for treason," says Batman, removing a batarang from his belt.

"We live in a representative democracy. There's nothing in the Constitution that says I have to vote for a capitalist oligarchy."

"Smarty-pants commie word soup," says Batman. "Nothing you said makes any sense."

"That's because you've spent the last four years in an echo chamber totally divorced from reality," says Robin. "You're attacking people outside coffee shops because you see monsters everywhere. Your fellow Americans are not the bad guys, Bruce."

"I get to say who's an American, not you, you pampered pansy!"

"I'm beginning to think that you don't understand American values," says Robin. "Then I remember that you are a vigilante who operates outside the legal system so that you can beat up the lower dregs of society with your fists."

"That's the legacy I bequeathed to you! You're supposed to take up my mantle!" screams Batman, now out in the middle of the street. Cars honk and swerve around him, but Batman continues to yell and wave his arms like a madman.

"I reject it," says Robin. "I'm retiring as a crime fighter to pursue a career in environmental law."

"Fuuuuccckkkkkkkkkk!" yells Batman as an Escalade flips him over the windshield. He bounces off the next car and crashes into a bicyclist before coming to rest next to a drain. As he lies in the gutter, moaning and crying inconsolably, Robin retreats back into the shadows, leaving the past behind.

Monday, November 2, 2020

A Premature Obituary for the Last Four Years

 

I remember waking up Tuesday night, November 3th, 2016, checking the computer for the election results and then reassuring myself that in the morning, things would be different, that there was no fucking way that Donald Trump would be elected the President of the United States. Many people reporting feeling like we'd entered a parallel universe, an alternate timeline where crazy shit like the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series happened. Anything is possible, folks; we might wake up tomorrow and see a meteorite hurtling toward earth. In fact, that would be perfectly in character with the rest of 2020, amirite? Actually, fuck that. There have been plenty of worse years in human history. Did you know in the fourteenth century, the Black Death killed between 75 and 200 million people over the span of five years? Hell, the early 1940s were pretty goddamn bad, with World War 2 happening and all. Still, in my lifetime, the last four years have been full of things that I thought would never happen. I always thought people were smart enough not to fall for a charlatan like Donald Trump. I thought if an authoritarian political movement ever took root, it would be led by someone charismatic and intelligent, someone capable of distracting from the evil festering behind the scenes. Trump's appeal, of course, is that he doesn't hide that evil; rather, he puts it on full display. I never thought a large number of people could support someone who tore immigrant children from their parents and then lost the information to reconnect them. I never thought anyone could support someone whose campaign met with Russian agents to receive dirt on a political opponent. I didn't think the so-called religious right would throw their backing behind a man who used campaign funds to pay off a porn star. I didn't think anyone could accept Trump firing an FBI Director for refusing to end an investigation of Russian political interference in the 2016 election. I thought (for a split second) that Trump's attempt to withhold foreign aid to Ukraine unless they investigate the son of his political rival would be too blatantly corrupt, even for Republicans. Now, of course, I am wiser. A quarter of a million Americans have died because of the coronavirus, and it's pretty much all of Trump's fault. He made the virus political, after sitting on his hands while New York suffered. Now, the rate of infection is skyrocketing, and people in my red state don't wear masks. Are we in the dumbest timeline? Christ, I would rather have Herbert Mountain Dew Camacho for President. At least he listened to the smartest man in the world rather than trolls like Rudy Giuliani and whatever the fuck Jared Kushner is.

I don't know what's going to happen this week. I like that over 93 million Americans voted early. I would bet that most of those people feel similarly to how I feel. They've probably lived in a constant state of disbelief for the last four years. They've watched their country transform into a partisan nightmare where reality can be discarded and replaced with alternate facts. I cannot state the pure contempt I have for people that support the reelection of Donald Trump, a obvious sociopath who has never tried to be a President for anyone besides himself. He's the exact opposite of a competent leader. He never takes responsibility for anything. He insults anyone who disagrees with him. He is a habitual liar, a liar so lazy that he seems to lie out of compulsion and contempt for the very nature of objective truth. He has insulted women and military vets, made racist comments, and refused to disavow white supremacists. He has been accused of sexual assault by 28 women. He has made numerous attempts to discredit our democratic process, from telling his supporters to intimidate voters to hiring an unprecedented army of lawyers to challenge legitimately cast ballots in the courts. He is, in short, the biggest piece of shit ever to occupy the Presidency of the United States in the modern era, and it is far from hyperbole to say that he is a threat to the future of democracy in America.

So whatever the hell happens tomorrow, Wednesday, this month, this year, I hope and pray that the next four years are the exact opposite of the last four, that America reaffirms its commitment to liberalism, to equality for all, to hopefulness and progress rather than spite and bile; that we take our ideals seriously and hold all men and women to the same standard that we hold ourselves to, and that we punch nihilism right in its fucking face and send it back to the black pit from whence it came. A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for morality, positivity, and the future. A vote for Trump is a vote for debauchery, vileness, and a dead past that will never be living, no matter how much evil is pumped into its cold, rotting corpse.

New Music: Firefly

  A twelve-year old song that I wrote in Cincinnati. I don't believe it was ever played live, which is a shame, since it's a nice li...