Amber Night (rebooted)

Turns out “transparent government” is boring as shit. *yawn*

Space Monster Richard Garriott demonstrates prostate is 'this big!', circa 2008

Hey remember that Lord British guy who bought the Soviet Union so he could go to space because, well…fuck, SPACE amiright!!!??  Besides that and living in a Lego castle, he was also responsible for the incredibly well-received disastrous Tabula Rasa, which is Latin for Seinfeld because it was an MMO about nothing ha! (ziiiiing!!) But seriously, the mutant radioactive brain of Richard Garriott cannot be stopped with our earth weapons:

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Richard Garriott isn’t a man content to rest on his laurels. Just after we hear that the documentary about his space trip is coming out, we now hear that he’s found a new niche in the multi-player gaming industry. Only this time, he’s not developing a traditional MMO as one might suspect. Instead, Garriott has revealed his involvement in a start-up called Portalarium, which is setting out to get a chunk of that browser-based social game cash floating around on Facebook and other social media networks.

Maybe it’s the Saurian Tribble brandy that he’s been quaffing to excess to ease the painful itching of the space herpes, or maybe…well I’m just gonna go with the space herpes, but…Portalarium?  Portalarium? Richard Garriott’s new company apparently makes fiberglass toilets for RV’s or construction sites or…Роскосмос? (it all makes sense now!)

Anyway, congratulations to Richard Garriott for not “resting on his laurels” and instead resting on the laurels of about sixty-seven million other startups who think that “revolutionizing the game industry” means cloning Farmville but with hobos. Resistance is useless puny earthlings. All your base are belong to that Ultima guy.

Hey, remember that angry tax hero dude who killed himself and others because wtf taxes suck!!!??  Well now you can BE HIM!

From Prisonplanet.com:

In the game users must obtain a can of gasoline, burn a house, then pilot a single-engine airplane into an IRS building. Upon successful completion, the game declares: “Justice is Served!” Along the way, if players manage to hit a malfunctioning Toyota Prius, they are rewarded with the “Auto Recall” medal.

Haha! Stupid Joe “Sixpack” Stack (there is a Trig Palin joke in here somewhere, I just know it!) flew his 1/75th scale Boeing 747 into a tax building thus killing himself and people who are not selfish asshole douchebags, but all he really had to do was wait a couple days for this game, which has worse graphics but is less irl deathy.

Also hey!! The Toyota Prius is a deathtrap just like…Trig Palin?? No, still not there. I’ll work on this and get back to you.

(But welcome first-time “Trig Palin Joe Stack Toyota Prius douchebag” Google Alerts viewers!)

But you can help!

Good times. For Satan.

From Game Politics:

The Boston Herald, citing a source, claims that suspected shooter Amy Bishop was a fan of Dungeons & Dragons and actually met her husband at Northeastern University through an on-campus D&D club. The source told the paper that “They [Bishop and her husband] even acted this crap out.”

Bishop’s husband, James Anderson, described the pair’s immersion in D&D as a “passing interest.” He added, “It was a social thing more than anything else. It’s not the crazy group people think they are.”

You people with your Monster Manuals and your dee-twinnys and pewter crystal-ball holding dragons. Oh yeah, oh sure, it’s all just cosplay and Quidditch or whatever the hell you’re doing down there, but then when Glenn Beck REALLY FUCKING APPEARS after you said “Bloody Mary” for the 13th time, what then Mister “Don’t worry I’m immune to feaaaaaaaagh!!!!!” ? You think you can contain him in your little pentagram drawn from the dust of Dollar Store Cheetos-style-food-product, but you CANNOT! Next up, you’re walking into a Build-a-Bear with an AK-47 in one hand, and a copy of “GURPS Mall Massacre Sourcebook” in the other, and you simply cannot distinguish cutesy-wutsey widdle “Bearemy” bear from a rampaging, slavering Owlbear because Gary Gygax has wrapped his Centaurian-slug-like tail around your cerebral cortex, and then oh god there will be stuffing. Lots and lots of stuffing.

From GameSpy:

In the dark of the night, Sex City is in panic because of the terrible Sperminator whose sole mission is to infect all citizens with various sexually transmitted infections (STI). Who do you call? The Sex Squad! An elite team of superheroes dedicated to keeping the citizens of Sex City safe from sexually transmitted infections. It’s up to you to help The Sex Squad stop The Sperminator and save Sex City.

Thus begins Adventure in Sex City, an online Flash game designed by the Middlesex-London Health Unit to teach youths about the dangers of unprotected sex. The well-intentioned videogame is drawing praise and criticism on the other side of the pond for its overtly sexual characters.

No, seriously:

Players choose a member of the Sex Squad and face off against the Sperminator in a sexual health true-or-false game. Get an answer correct, and your character uses a condom shield to repel Sperminator’s infected sperm. Get it wrong and… you get the picture.

I…um…no, actually I don’t get the picture. You sort of lost me at “condom shield.” How does that analogy even work? Don’t answer that please.

Money-quote from the comments:

thats a new take on head shotting someome

Haha. Gross.

Sewwwwwwww…

Most people go through their entire life having only habbed.  It’s all you really need.  You live, you love, you hab, you die.  Like breathing or singing 99 Red Balloons in the shower¹, you never even really think about it, because you are a responsible, habbin’ member of society.  But there are a select few of us–the elite if you will (but you probably won’t and who could blame you?)–who couldn’t get enough of the first hab, so first we habbed, and then we muthafuckin habbed again yo.  We had to re-hab. (insert ob and I said no no no! here)

Anyway, it’s a funny thing, rehab.  Not haha funny (except when it really is, and sometimes it really is; I highly recommend it for the comedic value alone), but funny crazy in the linoleum yin/yang evil twin/good twin order/chaos Simon/Paula R’lyeh/??? Daphne/Velma sort of way.  You age.  You youthen. (often simultaneously, at least in the beginning) You learn how to let go of  your dependencies, you pick up other dependencies².  You learn what’s important, you learn what’s not important, and sometimes it’s the unimportant things that are the most important³.  You go through the 10 stages of grief in about 7 seconds one day, 7 weeks on other days, and then there are the days where you just say fuck it and re-roll because grinding for a respec is just going to be too much of a pain in the ass.  It’s a roller coaster mind frak wrapped in a misery inside an enema. Oh and you get free comfy slippers, so you know, bonus.

That didn’t take a year of course.  I did other stuff.  I did some traveling, which was cool.  I did some…er…other stuff…which at the time seemed pretty cool but in hindsight turned out to be not so cool (see paragraph 1). And of course I gamed. Because…yay games!

I picked up Star Trek Online a couple days ago.   I’ve just gone through the Borg-fest tutorial, and people is it just me or wtf crappy graphics?  I’ve twiddled every setting I know how, and every other game looks good on my system, so I’m really thinking the graphics are just awful, which is double-secret awful in what should be a predominately visual game. Still reserving judgment on game play, but so far it seems like it could hold my limited attention span for a good 3-6 months if there’s a graphics patch in my near future.

§

¹ I mean, everybody does that, right?

² Like chapstick.  You wake up and look in a filmy mirror at lips that look like something the Mars rover would have some serious reservations about exploring, because you’re no longer on the coast where facial moisture is state subsidized, and tell me you wouldn’t do the same thing.   I’m a tube-a-day user now but I’m trying to cut back.

³ Spork: unimportant. Spork shiv so bitch stop stealing my pudding: important.

Dear gawd are you still here?!

Well, we’re back!  Give me a little time to clean the joint up and say howdy in the comments if you want.