Before you read the new article I’ve posted, I must submit you to a spoiler warning. This is to avoid bitching.

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There. No bitching! I wrote a report for an old guy on Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle, because he told me to. Then I decided to post it here. Wee!

According to SPOnG.com, Rare is busy working on a massively multiplayer sequel to their Nintendo 64 platformer, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, which is (obviously) set for release on Microsoft’s XBox. If this isn’t definitive proof that the universe was created solely to piss me off, I don’t know what is. Besides being extremely gimmicky, Conker’s Bad Fur Day was one of the most polished, balanced, and best looking games of the last generation. It was pure platforming heaven and just happened to include some of the most original and sinfully enjoyable multiplayer modes ever produced. It’s a shame its sequel is entirely online, where a majority of the gameplay will revolve around listening to your ten-year-old playmate giggle every time a character curses and watching them get drunk in the corner rather than actually serve as a productive teammate.

Then again, if there was any single franchise which would convince me to finally break down and buy an XBox as my next next-generation console of choice, it was Conker’s. I guess Rare was just looking out for me by keeping my gaming budget to a minimum. Ah, who am I kidding? I can’t stay mad with you crazy Brits! Come here and give me a hug! Don’t get too friendly though, I’m still not buying your game.

..it was called Masturbation Club instead.

Think about it.

You asked. Piyonugget answered. That’s right kids, we have brand new non-update content in the middle of the week. Hell hath freezeth over… eth.

Hopefully this weekend I’ll find the time to get my embarrassingly large number of backlogged Warcraft 3 replays online and finally finish playing through Skies of Arcadia Legends, which I may or may not write something about. Right now, I’m leaning towards may but, because I just mentioned it, I instantly insured its death. Oh well, I could always finish up that article I promised for Christmas day, but its Animal Crossing-heavy content is quickly becoming less and less relevant. Much like this update.

The end.

(I’ve also decided that my next 52 updates, including this one, will bear the title of their numerically corresponding Beast Wars episode. I’ll be adding to the Transformer-nerd content this site’s been lacking lately while simultaneously copping out of actually coming up with titles – easily the most difficult aspect of posting to this site. Shame on everyone who didn’t think I could make this any dorkier.)

I really need this job.

So, I need to learn a trick.

How on Earth do you stop staring at a woman’s shamefully un-tweezed unibrow?

Every day I log on to AOL and find thirty four E-mails in my inbox. No one likes me nearly that much–I know it’s going to be spam. What hurts most is the pathetic hope that buried somewhere in all those get rich quick schemes and penis growing pills, there will be actual mail actually written to me. There isn’t. All of it is junk.

But most depressing is just how stupid this junk is. It’s as though they think I’ve never heard of the internet before, and furthermore, my ability to comprehend English is disturbingly low. Worse than that, they think I don’t know random strangers don’t generally E-mail you nude pixxx of their girlfriends.

I also like the ones where they claim to have a way to make my penis bigger without pills or pumps or anything. I think I know where this is going: Masturbation. Let me tell you, penis biggerizers, if there was a masturbation technique that made that bigger, I would have discovered it by now. Ten times over, I would have discovered it. If there is a way to masturbate that I’m NOT familiar with for either gender, it is because God wants it that way. And I can hardly argue with God.

Also: I do not want bigger breasts. Swear to God.

You know what I want? You know how to trick me into downloading your wicked cool virus? Promise me LOVE. Promise me PEACE. Promise me true fulfillment and happiness. For that, I would download everything.

Even your breast enlarging penis pill flavored nude girlfriend pixxx.

Today, I worked as an election judge.

This is not a career I recommend if you don’t like showing up at 5 AM, leaving at 8:30 PM, or having versions of the law apparently beamed in from the planet Zzaxmarr screamed in your face. Not to mention, this is Chicago, for God’s sakes - you know, the city that stole the presidential election for Kennedy, the city that STILL has a Mayor Daley (as of this moment he has 79% of the vote) after even I’ve lost count of how many years, the city of the legendary Democratic Machine. Getting people to not vote illegally is something of an uphill battle around here.

On the other hand, if you like the feeling of being the grist in the mill of democracy, or $155, it could be the job for you!

Of course, the good stories are only really of interest to other election judges (“When Mrs. X came back, she was claiming that she had moved to her new address within the last 30 days, but I asked her the date of the move and she said Jan. 1! BOO-YAH!”) but you sure can’t stop me from posting them!

Now, the law here prohibits “electioneeering” (putting up signs, passing out campaign materials, mentioning the names of candidates) within 100 feet of the entrance to the polling place. Now, we decided on a particularly liberal interpretation of that law, and set up a no-fly zone of a good couple hundred feet of sidewalk - considerably larger than it’s ever been. Our assigned police officer, and those of us who felt like a break, had quite a time shooing away passers and destroying signs. The best part came at maybe 2:00 - when we broke out the tape measure.

Also, the following people voted in our precinct:
A Mrs. Couch.
A Mr. Colon.
A Jennifer Lopez.

People denied the right to vote by DORK Club staffers today: 2

The largest argument against online gaming stems from the fact that the games force players to play with other people. People, as a group, tend to be selfish, careless, and generally self-serving. Stick these same people online, where they can instead deal only with words, rather than other human beings, and things to tend to break down. In no other genre is this as evident as in the subset of RPGs referring to themselves as massively multiplayer online role playing games, or MMORPGs. Contrary to popular belief, these games were not designed to act as jerk simulators, but rather as a means for humans to interact and cooperate on a grand, albeit virtual, scale. Silly designers, decency has no place on the Internet! After years of fighting to keep the “asshole” out of “online gaming,” (yeah, I’ve used that line before, but I like it enough to warrant a second use) while attempting to make every naïve designer’s vision a reality, I’ve finally realized that if you can’t beat them, the only alternative is to join them.

It goes a little something like this…

The Game: Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
The Time: Less than two hours ago
The Mission: Ruin it for others

I thought it would be a good idea to follow a low level character through the Cold Plains, Stony Field, and Underground Passage, killing everything in sight to keep the character in question from receiving any actual experience. It was. Eventually we made our way to the Dark Wood where I was actually able to trap our poor victim in a house. From there, things degenerated quickly. First, Piyonugget joined the fray, as we sang our mighty battle cry. Our victim retaliated in turn. Finally, after much name calling, our little schmuck-buddy left to “get his main.” A leet would be proud. (HA! An Anarchy Online joke!) When he finally returned with his 40zon, I mean 56pally, (HA! More in-jokes!) Piyonugget and I opted to sit in town and describe, in graphic detail, the homosexual acts we would perform on one another as soon as the game ended, rather than duel our new friend to the bitter end. As always, he cut us down with his rapier-like wit before calling it a night and leaving us to ourselves.

The moral of the story – it really is more fun to act like a complete jerk rather than play the game. Maybe this is why MMORPGs sell so well. Who knew?

Religion was invented by men to get out of going down on their girlfriends.

True story.

The forums have sprung back to life just as mysteriously as they died. And with new functionality too! Maybe these crazy phpBB forums auto-update themselves every time The phpBB Group releases a new version. Or something. Regardless, I’m sure you care about as much as I do - not at all.

It seems I’ve fallen back into full-fledged Diablo II Addict mode. I don’t know what it is about that game, but as soon as I seem to have escaped its demonic grip, I get sucked right back in for one reason or another. The game suffers from every shortcoming inherent in the MMORPG genre, from ultra repetitive point-and-click gameplay to incorporating every false replay value trick known to man. Still, it has one advantage over anything Verant Interactive or Origin Systems could ever hope to produce; it’s fun.

It’s not fun because there are literally hundreds of thousands of items to be discovered, it’s not fun because there are five acts over three difficulty settings begging to be conquered, and it’s not fun because Blizzard actually bothered to include a decent storyline. Although, those certainly don’t hurt it either. It’s fun because there’s more strategy behind Blizzard’s latest hack-n-slash affair than in many (read: most (read: all)) strategy games.

Blizzard’s innovative use of “skill trees” (read: tech trees akin to those found in any real time or turn based strategy game) force players to consider the consequence of every skill point they spend. Limited to a single skill point per level, players are forced to invest them wisely, as certain skills require other skills before becoming learnable and all skills become more useful as more skill points are fed into them. It’s an interesting system that requires a player to decide exactly what their finished product of a character will be long before they even complete the first quest. Will you focus heavily on two or three skills or will you branch out, becoming a jack-of-all-trades and spread your valuable points over upwards of ten unique abilities? The choice is yours. Yet, there is no “wrong” or “right” choice when it comes to character creation. Everything from Paladins who wield shields as weapons to unarmed Assassins are not only possible, but viable, as the inter-related skills are so perfectly balanced and fined tuned that nearly anything you can dream up is possible.

In the end, because you know exactly how your finished character will play, exactly what skill points will be spent when, and at exactly what level your character will be complete, it only serves to drive you forward at an even faster pace. I can’t count the number of times I’ve lost entire hours to the game, continuing to play for just one more level or in order to get my strength up just five more points, to find myself finally pulling strained eyes away from the screen 6 levels and an entire act later.

Blizzard owns me, and I’d probably buy a rock in a brown paper bag if it had the Blizzard logo on the front. Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft are some of the most addicting and enjoyable gaming series ever crafted and, seeing as how this update has already run off on about three tangents too many, I can honestly say I’m looking forward to playing World of Warcraft, an MMORPG. Will it ultimately be a better designed game than those that have come before it? Maybe. But even if it does boil down to a world of infinite fetch quests and player killing, at least it will keep my attention.

So, to summarize, I am a total Blizzard fanboy, I have no sense of organization, and the Inn Music Database is both new and neat. Still. The end.