I Faced Batman At My Job Interview

I’m bored these days. Sitting at home leading my tremendously eventful life is, quite unbelievably, tedious. So I thought I’d jot down the tale of how I encountered the batman at my first and last job interview to date.

—

I pay and get out of the three wheeler I use to get to the address in Kolpetty. It’s 9:55am on a sunny September day. The sun feels like a dog that has had too much chili to eat licking my face. I hurriedly scamper up the stairs to the office on the second floor and look around. Two people. They look at me. I stare back.

We stare at each other.

I squint. Two males, one in office wear, the other casual. Reception?

“sup?”

“Uh, I’m here to meet a man about a fish. Uh… a job- an interview. Designer thing….?” I eloquently orate.

“Oh. Wait a minute please”

With that the dude in office wear picks up the phone on his desk and speaks into it.

I do not hear what he says for I am now staring into a black curtain that has suddenly dropped down in front of my face.

I push it aside, to be confronted with a mess of sharp looking black metal things.

Before I can say out loud that their boiler seems to have crashed down through the ceiling, a deep, throaty voice goes “I’m here for the job. Give it to me.”

My senses tingling, I compute that I have competition. From a big black… thing. I step around the object and find myself staring upwards at a face covered by half a mask, a strange looking vest, fetish for black and a cape. I had this round clenched. All the clues led to only one conclusion.

“The opera business not paying enough for you to carry out your evil DESIGNS?”

Then I took out a pair of Ray-Bans and dramatically put them on while staring into the middle distance.

“Your picture’s been cropped, Phantom.”

And then,

“Of the Opera.”

Then I proceeded to take off the shades and remove my glasses, and then put the shades back on again. This was done discreetly, aside.

While I waited for the masked genius murderer cum composer to wallow in shame and go home a broken man, someone ushered him into a door to my left saying “Step this way please, Batman”.

He then gave me a look which said “You have made a great fox pass and now you will pay for it by living a life of shame if you ever get chosen to work here, infidel! Do you not know who Batman is? Also, would you prefer tea or coffee?”

I flexed my eyebrows, signaling tea. Then I followed them in and was greeted by smoke. Someone who looked like the boss was telling everyone to calm down. I went up to him, and noticed b-man sidling up next to me looking a little sheepish. Which is hard to do when your face is half covered in a mask. “I don’t work well in daylight, or in ‘Natural Sun’-themed office lighting fixtures”.

I looked at the boss. He seemed displeased. I was confident I had made a better first impression.

Then we sat down and it turned out we were both being interviewed at the same time.

Boss: So, I see from your resumes that neither of you has much experience in 3D modeling or graphic design professionally.

Me: Yes, It’s just a hobby of mine. But I’m quite confident of my ability to keep up with any work.

Batman: I can make your psd files fear the night. *cloak self with cloak in swift movement*

Boss: Okay then… So where do you see yourself in a yeAARRGHHH! What are you doing?!

Batman: Just cleaning my batarang…?

Boss: No, not you, HIM! *points at me*

Me: Eh? Can’t a guy pick his nose without being ostracized? It’s a free country dammit.

Boss: Employees of this organization maintain proper manners and discipline at all times.

Batman: I’m quite disciplined, if I say so myself. I can stay perfectly still in the middle of a blizzard wearing only minimal clothing and at the same time do calculus equations in my head. I can survive in an arctic wasteland populated by snow eating hippies for an indefinite period.

Me: I’m sure that’s a great skill to have for a DESIGNER.

Boss: Yeah… I’m not sure we’re ready to expand to Canada…

Batman: Don’t you have dreams? Do you not wish to eradicate all crime?

Boss: We’re…in… the services industry… But anyway. What would you say is your greatest weakness?

Me: I’m a perfectionist. I keep changing things in my designs every time I open them.

Boss: Very good answer, what about you, Mr. Man?

Batman: The name’s Batman. No last name. Remember that.

Boss: uhhhhh

Batman: I have no weakness. Weakness is for other people. It is for the people who I hunt. In the night. For I am the knight of the dark. The Dark Knight.

Boss: Okay. Right. Moving on, what can you bring to this company?

Batman: This company doesn’t deserve a designer. Where’s my dramatic music?! You deserve nothing! But I will still fight for you and give you what you deserve! Which is nothing! But I know what you deserve and will make it my mission to make sure all your text objects are turned to curves! And you will get what you deserve because you deserve more…than you get…from what you deserve me. Eh.

Me: I’ve got lots of hours under my belt working with relevant software. I’m a people person.

Boss: Are you a people person, Batman?

Batman: I have a great working relationship with most people. They’re afraid of me. I also have thirty two methods to kill you under MY belt. Hah!

***Hours pass, batarangs are thrown and more smoke is let loose***

Boss: Hello again you two. I’ve made my choice and I think I’m going to play it safe and go with Jerry here.

Me: Why thank you, I can assu-

*Enter Robin *

Robin: Yo Jerry, I’m really happy for you, I’ma let you finish, but Batman has one of the best typography skillsets of all time!

Boss: My decision is final.

*Boss shoots Robin with shotgun hidden under his desk.

*Batman rushes over to Robin

“Oh god no! What will I ever tell his parents?! Why does it always have to be the innocent bystanders! This mask makes it impossible for my tears to escape!”

*Boss calls security, drags wailing Batman out.

*Batman sobs hysterically outside.

Boss: I guess I’ll see you on Monday then!

Me: Why yes, thank you!

***I am shaken awake***

“Gerald Pereira?”

“Yeah?”

“Come on in for your interview. Great first impression, looser.”

*groan*

Knuckles

Most of you probably know by now that a bunch of us went to the Knuckles range to go look at some Bat infested cave. The knuckles range was supposed to be “far too windy” and “leeches would kill you, slaughter your family and mess up your saved games in GTA4″. We ignored all this simply because there was no other place to go. So Friday night found Fallen, TheWhackster, HisP, HisP’s friend, ThePuppeteer, Realskullzero, Papareboy, Thushara, Foxhound and me on the train bound for Badulla.

After an uneventful journey to Kandy, we hired a van to take us to a lodge near the trail. We passed through a town called Loolwatte, which was third in line in a valley with Rooflgiriya, Pwndwatte and just before Oomghena. Loolwatte was, contrary to popular assumptions, not filled with nerds from the world over gathering at the tiny village that bore a name with LOL in it. It was, in fact, probably the place where all ghost stories are born. It was just a couple of buildings with a small red bus stopped in the middle, in complete darkness. The wind howled around the bus, whistling and cat-calling at papareboy. The trees made ominous whispering noises and “bugger offfff” noises. After a minimal period spent there learning nothing, we continued down the road.

When we got to the lodge it was just an hour before sunrise so we decided to keep going till we got to Corbett’s Gap. As far as hip clothing stores go, it wasn’t much, but it made a hell of a starting point for a trail. We were supposed to be able to see all the way to China or something, but nature had decided it wanted to keep all humans off of the highest point on the Meemure-Hunnusgiriya road so it threw gale force winds in our faces. So we just huddled in the van and occasionally went out to check on the concrete sign that was there and to flip the birdie to nature.

We got out of the van a little distance away from the gap and started our journey on foot. The entire hike to the cave, through the jungles and up the steep climbs, was pretty tame. Few leeches, better weather than Colombo and nice mountains around. Whacko even managed to charge at a buffalo in the distance, who was looking at us all “wtf you huys doin here on my land, biatches?”. It ran away and then came back again, peeking around the bushes and communicating “You win, you can have my cows lol”. We did not verify whether whacko did indeed try to mate with the nearby cows. The last stretch saw fallen doing a nice Gollum impersonation by going down on all fours to scramble up the hillside.

The cave was cool. But it had a wasp’s nest at the entrance so I stayed the hell away. whacko, hisP, thushara and realskullzero went in and applied a layer of bat excrement onto themselves. Then looked at three big black holes and came out.

The way down was fast, but the first signs of trouble started showing when we reached the flat trail leading from the foot of the mountain to the road. Papareboy suddenly had all his energy zapped out of him for some reason and the puppeteer was falling asleep on her feet. On top of that we had missed our van. So we were stuck in the middle of nowhere without any means of communication, as the telco’s “Islandwide coverage” seemed to think that area was part of the Indian ocean or something. We sent HisP ahead of us with a passing motorcyclist to go call another van to come pick us up. This was when nature decided to screw with our lives again and made it rain. A lot. Even the leeches seemed to have been waiting for us to return from the mountains all tired before jumpoing at us. So we trudged forward slowly, towards Loolwatte, which by now had lost all hilarity in it’s name. Just about the time when we were thinking about how we would freeze to death if we continued up the road in this rain, a van showed up and recognized thepuppeteer and papareboy. We all praised our respective deities and got in.

Our return to Loolwatte was more scary than the first time. We were trying to talk the crew of the bus (who happened to be in the bus) to take us to kandy when they told us that they simply couldn’t. Career at stake and all. They were telling us of a truck that might take us down to kandy when HisP arrived with our van, to which he had caught up to on the motorbike. Apparently the dude had been drunk and raced down the roads.

We all agreed on the fact that none of us had been so glad to see him before that time.

We all rushed in, soaking wet and settled into the van. Leeches were pulled off and papareboys rested. Fallen, too, took a rest from being helped down the mountain like a pregnant woman.

When we arrived at Kandy we found that there were no buses and that the train that was supposed to be at 11 was leaving only at 1:40. So cursing Kandy for being a horrible excuse for a “city”, full of degenerates and headless piano players, we called a cab. The cab turned out to be the same dude who brought us to kandy. We were all best buddies by then and headed home.

Realskullzero and I were awarded by the populace of the world for the herculean tasks of doing an assignment and going to class, respectively. This was after coming home past 2am and and waking at 6am with our legs feeling like they were staging a rebellion against us.

Pictures can be found on fallen’s blog and facebook. Most of the good ones were, again, taken by me.

It was hell to go through, but we’ll probably be going again. Feel free to come along!

PapareFAIL

Last Friday was failFriday. A series of unfortunate exclamations, if you must. Meet failboy, vileness and fallen at the Thummulla Barista. Fallen read some failpoetry to us which we completely ignore, preferring to discuss the baffling mysteries of why the outdoor seating things were made of wood. Baffled, we were. A ride from TMS later we were again at Eatmore restaurant. More fried rice was consumed as whacko had failpoetry spoken at him by fallen. Many heavy subjects were discussed, none of which were featured in the poem.

Later, we decided to go to the beach, since we were all broke and the beach was free. We also secretly planned to sell fallen to hairy old German tourists hanging around the beach but that didn’t quite go according to plan. And then this happened-

Scene: Last Friday, on a Moratuwa bus on the way to Mt. Lavinia.

Stfallen: Yeah Vin Diesel movies usually suck…

Whacko : Yeah there was that racing movie thing… what was it called? Ah Need for Speed!

After we convinced fallen not to tweet every single thing that happened, we got to Mount. Then whacko pointed out that there was a gaming cafe right there. We weighed our options. The beach. Free, sand and… well… nothing much else. Selling fallen would be difficult in this stretch. Games, well, that sounded much more fun. And we had just enough, counting all the ten rupee notes in our wallets, for an hour. We settled into playing when the greatest fail of the night happened.

Scene : At Venus gaming cafe at Mt. Lavinia. Fallen, whacko, failboy and myself are playing Call of Duty.

failboy : Dude I’m getting the hang of this!

whacko : *kills fallen*

fb : Dude! That was cool! This looks cool man…

me : *kills whacko*

fb : Dude I killed him! Haha!

me : Err… no, dude, I killed him.

fb : But it said “You killed Whacko” on my screen, and I’m getting pretty good at this now, I can kill you too you know!

whacko : *looks at fb’s screen* wtf? Dude, you’re spectating through Jerry’s player!

me : *look at scoreboard*

all : *Break out in laughter as we discover fb had been spectating all this time*

all : *point and laugh at failboy’s EPIC FAIL.

After that, failboy was too embarrassed to do anything so he just quit and created a Counter Strike server called “papareboy’s mom”. On which he again got killed repeatedly. Later was Need for Speed. Failboy fell back by a few thousand light years in the first lap itself so he decided to go the other way, intending to impede us by crashing into us. He didn’t. Not a single hit. Missed by miles, on roads only three meters wide. He learned the basic lesson that it is extremely hard to crash into someone head-on when your combined speeds are in the hundreds of miles per hour. Thankfully he didn’t try to go backwards in the Sprint tracks.

After we all thanked failboy for the entertainment, we all set off home. People, if any PC game thing comes up, just take papareboy. The opposing team will be too busy rolling on the floor laughing their limbs off to notice you killing them.

Friday

I can’t even remember Friday all that well. Mostly because I have to type this stupid post over again after losing the entirety of it to some weird crashing bug.

Friday, papareboy and I called each other at the same time for the same reason. To waste some time after work. It was freaky. Fallen was jealous it never happened to him so he kept making gay jokes at us. The jokes were gay, that is. We(Hisham, Whacko, Fallen and Papareboy) eventually ended up at the beach in Mt. Lavinia at around 11pm. After the mandatory dumping of fallen on the sand, head first, we settled down on a boat on the sand.

The evening would not have been complete without at least a slight involvement in Twitter, so whacko wanted to “see what dabr.co.uk was like”. So I showed him.

The fact that it was the beach, we all had working legs and whacko wanting to show off his Baywatch-esque slow-mo run on the beach all contributed to all of us ending up running up and down the beach trying to, or trying to avoid someone posting “@stfallen tastes good” from my account.

After a complex procedure during which we got ourselves covered in sand, we made our ways home. Point to note is, everywhere we went, whacko would recognize someone and go talk to them. At the beach, whacko and hisham started talking to two random beach boys. It took much coercing and offers of introductions to females to get them to leave.

Saturday

Was spent in Hanwelle, getting my feet sucked clean by tiny fish at the base of a tiny waterfall thingy, sitting on old tree trunks over a pond, plucking rambutan and bathing from a… water hole. Was much fun. I might have twitpic’d some pictures of it.

Sunday

Papareboy’s Life – Brought to you by Britannia

Went to watch Ice Age 3. At the entrance me and Fallen had our pictures taken with our “favourite Ice Age characters”. Strangely enough, our favs included four cups of Newdale yogurt. Pic will be posted shortly

There were also some people handing out biscuits outside the theater. We all got a few to munch on while waiting for the movie to start. Hijinx, Sabby, Fallen and Sabby’s little bro were there. Papareboy later showed up with his hands holding a month’s supply of biscuits. “Lunch. What the hell man I was starving and the guard looked at me funny so I asdjlkgahregwagadswagwra….” he said when queried.

After the movie we went to Coffee Stop to watch fallen and papareboy playing with each other on a couch, after which we headed down to the food court. Here we were met by MoM and DeeCee, who was “in a rush”. Now, most people in a rush are, well, in a rush. They rush, do things quickly and drop stuff on the floor and things. Dee didn’t even acidentally bump into anyone on the way out. What a sucky rush. I think she was lying just so she could get away from fallen, who was hitting on hijinx like a bull in heat. Not that bulls in heat hit on hijinx, just that… you get the gist of it.

After DeeCee left, we dragged MoM along with us to Burgers King in Malay Street. But not before slamming fallen into the ground again. This time outside crescat on the driveway. Everyone should try throwing fallen. It’s practically therapeutic, and doesn’t take much effort.

At burgers king we got food and fallen was thwarted by Sabby’s bro. After much rejoicing we all went home through contorted bus routes.

Big Robot Balls

Watched Transformers on Sunday. Tagging along were Gehan, Sabby, Fallen, Hijinx and Gehan’s brother. I can safely say that fallen causes more drama than that which is in the movie by just appearing somewhere. Which is exactly the way it should be. Whacko’s already written about the movie but I’ll pretend it doesn’t exist and say the same things over again.

Once settled in, we were treated to yet another explosive start, just like the first movie. The military, with the aid of our heroes, the autobots, were taking down some random decepticon which had turned itself into a gigantic bicycle. A bicycle? Really? All the others get cool things like F-16’s, batmobiles and hot chicks but this guy becomes a giant hulking bicycle. Probably had a little bell and a ribbon tied to the handle too. Maybe he missed out on the pointers saying what was cool and what was Mary Poppins from the first movie. Way to go, Mr. I-didn’t-get-the-last-memo.

After about an hour or so of robots beating up other robots, Fallen pointed out that this was a brilliant way to showcase all the violence you wanted in a movie. Since there’s no blood, and they’re just robots, they can do whatever they want to each other, and they did. Bumblebee tearing out that tiger thing’s spine or Optimus tearing some random bot a new one could not have been shown on anything less than rated R if it were in human. We also noted that gigantic robotic cojones were banging together jovially like a bad porno.

Some people were complaining about a plot or something. This is Transformers, not a generic-as-vanilla Dan Brown book. Remember the figures? The toys? Remember making up your own story as you go along? They usually just involved “That thing is evil. Let us go destroy that thing by banging you against it”. The ‘thing’ is usually another toy, an adult’s foot, a pet or your sister’s dolls. Who cares about the plot in the movie as long as they beat themselves up, in glorious CG? Call me shallow but I am easily entertained by giant robots blowing things up and Megan Fox just… being. She doesn’t need to act. She just has to be in the shot for it to be engrossing.

My brain conveniently ignored the walking talking slow motion explosion prop that is Sam. Michael Bay lost his sense of sanity for a bit while making this movie and actually wanted Shia LeDouche to talk. Maybe to offset the sheer awesomeness of giant robots killing each other.

The military units were also a mystery. Why they were there, what hey were doing, why were they so american? Nobody knows. Only thing we know for sure is that shooting at a decepticon is about as effective as blowing kisses at Godzilla. Most humans in the movie were just charcoal waiting to happen.

All in all, the movie was a brilliant watch. Optimus finally gets badass and grows some ba wings, and megatron lives to plot another day. Fallen also died, but only the onscreen one. The regular, not-of-any-particular-interest Fallen just kept snickering each time the fallen one was mentioned. Gehan kept looking at me each time Megan Fox came on, for reasons best known to him. Sabby was bored throughout, being female.

Also, I have now instituted a new insult – “Female”. All the negativity of sexism, and minus all the coolness of being male rolled up into one word.

—–

Cast
Gehan – http://darksidedaily.blogspot.com/
Sabby – formerly of sabbyaz.blogspot.com, now merely twittering
Fallen – http://www.fallenfootwear.com/
Hijinx – http://dancingwithd.blogspot.com/
Gehan’s Brother – Of Kandy

Supporting Cast
The WhacksteR – http://thewhacksterslair.blogspot.com
Keyboard

Based on real life events that took place on the 5th of July, 2009.

My Country

Note that in the title, the emphasis is on ‘my’. I don’t want none of you fools thinking I’ve gone all 4th grade essay. I have not gone street grammar either, that ‘none’ up there was just for effect.

On my way to work I have to take three buses. It’s not a very winding route or anything, just a perfectly straight path. Along the Kandy road, then up along the Baseline road. I get a 138 from near home, get off about two minutes later, go to the main bus stop thing for a 154. I get into a waiting bus and pick a seat, usually at the rear. Today I chose the back seat. There was already a woman sitting in the corner away from the door so I sat in the middle. The opposite corner, I knew, would expose me to the rising morning sun. I had quite enough vitamin D as it is. What with crazed parents and siblings telling me it’s good for the skin, most of my formative school years were spent in the sun, turning a deep… whatever it is my skin colour is. But I did move slightly towards the offending corner, just to make sure the female opposite wouldn’t feel crowded or anything.

You see, an unspoken rule of the bus is that you position yourself according to the space available on the bus. If it is completely empty save for a single person, you would do well to stay at the opposite end. Especially if it is a woman. If it is a woman, you would do well not to get into the bus. Instead, you must follow it in a different bus and make sure that the conductor acts decently towards her.

But we are straying from the story.

I sat down, and started bastardizing twitter with chat replying to tweets. After a grand total of 3 minutes the bus starts moving. I look around and all the seats are taken. There was a small space between me and the dude next to me. At the next stop, a skinny dude gets on, motions to the man next to me to move over a bit, squeezes himself into the gap and sits at the edge of the seat. He crosses his legs. I put on my headphones, go back to reading. The next stop, a dude with a rabaana gets on. Starts playing. I turn the volume up.

The next stop. Passes by. Some dude starts ringing the bell just after the bus passes it. Conductor yells at him. He yells at conductor. Something along the lines of -

Conductor : Stop ringing the bell, insolent rat.
Passenger : I’ll get off whenever I want to, bus stop nazi!
C : [Insult]
P : [Counter Insult]
C : [Reference to disrespecting public services]
P : [Pointing out that C is an asshole]
C : [Reference to P's mom's circumference]
P : [Jumps off bus while saying something about sticking things in strange places]

Then the conductor stares, flabbergasted, at us. Nobody says flabbergasted enough these days. Flabbergasted.

Conductor looks imploringly at us and asks “Kisi ugathkamak naha mee lamayta”. I won’t translate. We just nod stupidly. He keeps asking us things about the state of today’s youth, what colour his rice will be today and whether he looks good in a tux. We all agree wholeheartedly. The whole backseat is transformed into the conservative media.

Eventually I get off at Borella. Wait for a 103. Get in, sit down. Get off.

Work.

And that is a normal morning over here on this patch of earth. Awesome.

PS : Yet again, most is not to be taken seriously. If you needed to read this to get it, you’re an idiot.

When the light buzzes

…the vibration causes the water to scream. Much like a penguin in a horror flick braying for it’s owner to come see the light, but this light does not vibrate. It slowly seeps into the grass on the ceiling that makes the inhabitants of the floor shudder in green. When the shudder stops the rudder moves, just a bit, as it it was hit by a pebble flying through the ocean after being spat out by a catfish. Speaking of cats, bobcats roam the wilderness of the paperclip holder looking for metal braces for their teeth, pushed out of place by bones in scones they were not meant to eat. But these scones were different. They were air dropped from a passing moon for the benefit of all the lepers on the ozone layer to throw at the lower things that roamed below in the desert. But what is a desert but a mousse, whipped to perfection by the gods of reflection. This reflection is what is seen on shop windows selling quantum clothing, that which is dirty and clean at the same time. The wearers of these clothes, quantum computers were made by ants in a faraway temple in the mountains, which was so cold the sun would shrivel up and live see another night. Goblins tore the clothes apart so that you and I could finally triumph over the evil of the construction calendars which one day roamed mars. Then again triumph is but only underwear. Can underwear battle the demons of MP3? Chinaware from China might work but genuine underwear from down under might work incognito. Going incognito requires you to scrape the trench coat of eternal defragmentation off the wall on which earphones write their model numbers. In roman numerals, of course. Since the time of Julius Caesar, desecrator of the great dictionary toting sixteenth army of big wall. No Berlin wall was to defend against the attack. The great wall was tripped up too. They went forward, ate the jelly and fell in the arms of the Popsicles. Ice cream was spurned. It reacted, violently. All were slaughtered by the unending torrent of fire trucks thrown by the escaping bread pudding, content to be eaten another day. The next day came, and refused to leave. It stretched itself so thin the whiskers on it’s nose were tingling with the pain of being married to a bottle opener. Many were the casualties.

The Update Post button won.

No.

Moving Pictures

Bussing it to work today, I was looking out the window. Mostly because there was a large-ish woman staring at me if I looked the other way. So as I was staring unseeing at the buildings, people and ‘HUNK’ movie posters flashing past, I noticed something else. Something scary. Something that made my aesthetic sensibilities curl up and wither away. Election posters. All sorts of bright, even garish colours going by in a blur, plastered on every conceivable vertical surface that is visible to pedestrians, create an almost hypnotic effect. Don’t leave your car parked on the street overnight during election time.

If only they’d make slight changes to each poster before sticking them up in sequence. Would be much more entertaining to watch a flip-book style animation of our potential candidates doing something entertaining than to see the same repeating tile of fake smiles and photoshopped faces. Maybe a poster-show of Mervyn wrecking a cam or two? Or a Fight Club enactment in Parliament, starring the JHU members. Perfect light entertainment for a boring bus ride.

***Now Playing***
F>E>A>R> @ f.e. F.E.RR
FEAR 2. – Looks good so far!
Miata is coming along slowly…

In the Beginning…

There he stood, with a paintbrush in one gnarled hand and a bowl of moose-blood in the other. Eugene the caveman had just finished painting a red stripe on his wheel to make it go faster. He also slapped on a “[square]-Type” badge just to be sure. See, there wasn’t much you could do to a stone wheel to make it go faster without stumbling into moments of inertia, and nobody had discovered math yet. He was due at Mammoth Hill soon, to meet with his fellow modders and race their wheels down the slope.

Since the dawn of time, man has been fascinated with speed and cars. There was the clan of regular cavemen, who went out hunting and stalking about the jungles being mannish, and then there was this other clan, whose members mugged the guy who invented the wheel and got him to build them some more. These cavemen gathered in the night to roll their modified wheels down the hills and to impress cave women with how fast their ride was. There was also a third clan, one whose members hung out in the forest and made love to strange holes in trees and did things like trap mosquitoes in tree sap, and went on to invent SecuROM technology for anti-piracy. But they are shunned today as they were back then.

So anyway, after centuries of being chased by sabretooth tigers and police drivers, we eventually got games. Games like GTA and Need for Speed. Sure, GTA isn’t a racing game, but it does let you do much more with your car than NFS.

Most games have restrictions. In Half Life, it’s the particle physicist’s inability to conquer a three foot high wall. Or, god forbid, a locked door. Even though he has a Gravity Gun which can throw cars at 100 ft tall aliens, a door is just unthinkable. Crysis, you’re expected to kill everything in your path anyway, and the only other things you can pick up are big stones, turtles, little stones, and Koreans. Yes, America, you people are fatter than us tiny Asians. We get it. And in most RPG’s, it’s “Kill small enemies till you level up enough to kill the big enemy”. After a few million small enemies, you pick up a ring or something and get to decide which one compliments your silk shirt best.

But GTA is cool. It is a primitive world simulator, and does a commendable job. You are dropped into a sprawling world, and set free. There’s some story involving black people, but nobody cared about black people till one of them got in the white house, so I don’t remember. Something about a deejay guy and stealing TV’s. The usual black guy thing. I’m sure angry teens all over were amazed by it’s charming portrayal of fist fights as more a battle between you and your mouse than anything else. And scrawny 12 year olds would have been overjoyed to be able to go to the gym, press a button repeatedly and come out with a wider set of polygons the size of your fist. I have seen first hand what this game does to the “gangstuh’s” among us. They pick a car, get three err.. holies? and go riding round the countryside, apparently appreciating the limited palette scenery.

GTA will tell you what a person really _wants_ to do. What we cannot do in real life, but always wanted to try. A certain blogger’s brother, I’ve heard, keeps beating up people and running over innocent pedestrians with a pink Cadillac. Contact me for his whereabouts if you are afraid for your safety.

But just watch a person play this, and you will know them better. Be it blowing up everything in sight, going on a rampage with a chainsaw, or wreaking havoc on the city with a VTOL jet, parachuting down, making a car bounce up and down and then buying new shoes, you will get a rare insight into their mind.

Eugene would’ve been amazed.

The only thing I don’t get is why the game’s women seem to enjoy coffee so much.

…And why Niko runs like a sissy in 4.

And The Me Hits A Century!

100th post was the last one!

@%#$^&$#^%!!!

And here I was waiting to give ya’ll some cake and all.

Oh well, 200 then.

Anyway, sometimes, being called the biggest asshole someone’s encountered feels surprisingly empowering. I don’t really know how to describe it, but coming from some people, it just feels sort of… nice. I feel like I’ve achieved something.