Scalded

As you probably haven't surmised from my too-clever-for-its-own-good title, I have been burned by Steam's summer sale, which I was excitedly raving about in just the last post. Now here I am, a week later (plus shipping and handling) and I find myself with about 70 fewer dollars, and about 20 more games, suspiciously few of which I am actually excited to play. Not included in that amount of dollars is the controller that I still need to purchase if I wish to play some of these games effectively. And on top of that, I need to buy Shin Megami Tensei IV for the sole purpose of registering it and Fire Emblem Awakening so I can get a $30 credit with which to buy Fire Emblem DLC And I guess I'll talk about it now? Is that what I do here? Jesus Christ

I've only played a small handful of the games I've purchased, and maybe a small fingerful of them have been played for any real length of time. Despite this, I think I already know enough to declare Recettear 2013's Steam Summer Sale MVP. As I briefly mentioned in the previous post, it is a game about running an item shop. The main character, Recette, is the result of a genetic experiment, conducted by The Professor from Nichijou to create a being even more cute than herself.

It was a landmark study in the correlation between ties and cuteness.

Well... while searching that picture, I noticed that one of the autocomplete options for "Recettear" was "Recettear 34". (This refers to the infamous "Rule 34 of the Internet", which states that there is porn of it. No exceptions) Needless to say, I found this stupendously distasteful. Then, when I searched, I saw it. It was there. In the top left corner of the screen, it showed images for "Recettear 34". So, when you see that image, just know that it was purchased with my soul.

Recette's father takes out a loan of almost one million Pix, (The currency used in the game) with the house as collateral, then disappears to go adventuring. A fairy named Tear shows up to collect on the loan, and Recette is forced to open up an item shop to pay off the debt, or else live in a box on the street. Recette, hilariously misunderstanding her relationship to this loan shark, names her shop a portmanteau of their two names that sounds an awful lot like "Racketeer". You buy low, sell high, and rent out thugs for paltry sums to kill stuff on your behalf, while making off with all the loot. Standard business stuff, really.

Recettear is by no means a perfect game. Sometimes I question whether or not it is even a good game. But it is certainly a fun game, a distinction I first appreciated upon answering the question "Is 999 a fun game?" with "Well, it's a good game". And to top it all off, it has a soundtrack that, while not terribly varied or complex, is quite excellent. All in all, getting 50 hours of gameplay out of $5 is a pretty impressive feat of shopping savvy, in my book.

The only other game I've really played too extensively is Cave Story+, which is different from Cave Story, because I paid money for it. It is, without a doubt, the best freeware game I have ever paid money to play. It's a retro style platformer-shooter reminiscent of the SNES era, and it was entirely made by one man, who goes by the pseudonym "Pixel", which is appropriate, because he would probably be made of money if he charged anything for this game. Actually, he might still be, considering all the paid versions that have been released.

This game has a character named Curly. Curly Brace. I think we're done here. And to make matters better, the game is abbreviated as "CS", which often stands for "Computer Science", which is a branch that uses curly braces. So if you're in the mood for a fun game with no cost to you, feel free to click here.

If, for some reason, that wasn't enough to convince you, I guess I could talk about the gameplay or whatever. Though I feel I should warn that this is easily one of the most frustrating games I've ever played, and I've played a lot of Mario Parties. Getting the true end without a walkthrough is damn near impossible. Not that I'd want to. The ending I got was harder than a diamond encrusted carbon nanotube, and I wasn't even playing on the most difficult setting. And if the true ending is any harder, (It absolutely is) then it would be harder than... look, I'm running out of comparisons here, but I just want to impart to you that it would be very, very hard.

As you might guess from the name, the game does have a story, and it's pretty good. It also has music, and it is some of the best, made all the more impressive by the fact that it was also all made by Pixel. It's also available for free, legal(?) download on the same website where you can download the game, so that's a pretty groovy thing.

The final game that I've finished, entirely in the time between starting this post and finishing it, is The Walking Dead. In general, one plays a zombie game with the expectation of gameplay that centers around killing zombies. The Walking Dead bravely subverts this expectation, with gameplay that consists mostly of watching people die and then feeling bad about it. It's like someone's attempt to make the Catholic Church into a video game. (DISCLAIMER: I go to a Catholic school, and I know about as much about Catholicism, and religion as a whole, as I do about writing concisely. If nothing else, it garnered a "x'D" out of my content manager, so feel free to blame her for any offense) The game is entirely unrelated to Cave Story, despite the similarity in mechanics. {Spoilers?}

Trust me, there's a joke to be found somewhere in all this.

 As Payton Knobeloch already said, The Walking Dead is a game about story, about slow pacing punctuated by frantic button-mashing, about losing everything you hold dear, and wondering why you don't even have enough left in you to hate the person who took it from you. Is it a fun game? Well... it's certainly a good game, perhaps making it a nice foil to Recettear up there. It is, more or less, a visual novel or adventure game, and as anyone who has read some of my earlier work can attest, I eat that shit up. So if you want a story-driven experience with interesting characters and choices, similar to the Zero Escape series, but are for some reason unwilling to play Japanese games, (At this point I'd like to give a shout-out to a man that I am arbitrarily referring to as "Bong Hardeners") then check it out.

And then there's Fez. I have... complicated feelings about Fez. After several days of my sister egging me on to play it, simply by virtue of the fact that fezzes are cool, (It seems she shares my love of references, for better or for worse) I played it, and I wasn't terribly impressed. Now, I wouldn't really say that Fez isn't a good game, but I'm not sure that I could say, in good conscience, that it is a fun game. Fez is a game about a 2D character who flips dimensions around to solve puzzles, in a way that sounds similar to Super Paper Mario, but is really quite different. And when it works, the gameplay is fantastic. The way that it defies our understanding of a three-dimensional space is pretty cool. That said, all the puzzles seemed to either have a difficulty of "just keep flipping stuff around, and you'll get it eventually" or "I'm quite convinced that, with the right tools, I could prove this to be mathematically impossible.", with nothing in between. It might be that I'm just too stupid to appreciate its genius, but I thought that it was just a pretty good game, not worthy of all the hype I heard. Then again, I still haven't finished it, and likely won't for awhile, so keep that in mind.

But the part of Fez that really whips my cream is the soundtrack. Now, you'll probably never catch me saying that a game has a bad soundtrack, but for some reason, it seems like every source I've seen is praising Fez to high heaven for its beautiful music. And yet, when I actually played the game, I noticed that I was spending a lot of time listening to nothing but the occasional sound of Gomez falling to his death. Well, maybe a bit more than occasional. The point is that, while you could say that the silence is an artistic choice meant to represent Gomez's loneliness and confusion, that doesn't make it a good soundtrack. And when there was music, it was often far from what I'd call "Listenin' Music" (I don't believe in the letter g). It mostly felt like ambient sound, meant to set a tone. And it did that well. If I'm being honest, most of Zero Escape's music was like that: Listening to it on its own is kind of dull. But I didn't praise 999 for its great music. Well, I guess I did, but... I had to come up with 9 reasons, and I couldn't come up with anything better. I think that charging $6.99 for this soundtrack is an outrage, because I don't believe in paying for things.

There are a few other games that I spent a bit of time with. I attempted to play Castle Crashers with my friend, foolishly believing that it seemed like a game that could conceivably be handled with a keyboard. I was surprised to find that they A, B, X, and Y buttons on the Xbox controller actually corresponded to the A, B, X, and Y keys on the keyboard, at least for the menu. Here's a fun experiment. Try putting your fingers on all of those keys. Done? Congratulations! Now go call a chiropractor. You have arthritis.

I also played Bastion for a bit, but not really for long enough to learn anything other than the fact that the narrator's voice is top-tier, which I had already known. The gameplay seemed pretty fun, if a bit challenging. Not much else to say.

I'm kind of running out of Steam here, (Hah! Get it?) so I guess I'll just wrap this thing up now. My Steam account username is the same as my blogger pseudonym, (Havoc Mantis, in case you hadn't noticed) so feel free to find me, if you're hankering for the companionship of internet strangers.

Natalis Felix Diem

We've now graduated from Greek to Latin titles. I guess that means this is my last post, because I really have no idea what comes after that. Elvish?

For those of you not fortunate enough to have taken a semester of high school Latin, today's totally-weird title means “Happy Birthday”. Or maybe it's “Happy Birthday to you”? I don't know, it was only a semester. All I really remember from Latin is the Pledge of Allegiance in Latin, which is somehow even more creepy than the regular Pledge of Allegiance, because everyone knows that everything said in Latin is a binding truth. That's why Rome's Senate failed. Politicians are crooked. Zing

I am saying “Happy Birthday” because it is someone's birthday today. I mean, it's always someone's birthday, but today is the birthday of someone close to me. That's right, it's none other than my mysterious content manager! Oh, and my sister as well, I guess. And maybe Satan? Because of taxes. I really, really hope that I manage to complete this before the end of April 15^th, or else that bit about Satan is going to seem really silly.

So... Happy Birthday? I haven't really planned on what to say after that, but I have a reputation to uphold. I can't just stop typing as soon as I run out of things to say, or I'd be more silent that Madame Kovarian.

Happy Birthday! Here's a reference you won't get!

Every paragraph so far as started out kind of related to birthdays, then wildly veered off to some barely related topic. This post has more tangents than... umm... a function that is differentiable on the interval (-∞,∞)? Except, you know, hyperbole. While ∞<3 might be some schmuck's idea of a cute math joke, it is not a mathematically valid statement, so I feel it necessary to include a disclaimer acknowledging that my statement is not literally true, merely an exaggeration made for comedic effect, because any mention of math automatically makes for side-splitting entertainment. I'd hate for my math professors to stumble upon this blog and judge my skills based on a joke. Actually, I can think of a few more pressing reasons why I'd be uncomfortable with future professors reading this. I'm sure you regular readers know what I'm talking about. Perhaps even those with bowel troubles, as well. Speaking of which...

Oh! Sorry! I should have clarified. I was referring to unwanted readers. Not bowel troubles. I'm afraid you'll have to go somewhere else to sort those out. I am fresh out of advice on the matter. In an event that would probably be described as ironic by someone out there, my parents happened to discover my blog. Right after that post where I specifically mentioned how awkward it would be if they ever found it. So, while that whole thing about this being the last post was a joke, it actually might be a very real possibility.

Of course, I am only joking. I know that I shouldn't toy with my readers' emotions like that, as I know that many of you have come to rely on me as a source of comfort and wisdom. But there will probably be some changes. First of all, I'll probably put a stop to mentioning Katawa Shoujo, or at least severely limit mentions. The reasons for this are pretty obvious if you know what that is. If you don't, then I'd recommend that you don't worry about. Just rest assured that it's totally legal (I was 18 when I downloaded it.) But just so we're clear, I'm not being forced to do this. It has nothing to do with my parents. I'm doing this because I want to, not because I have to. Beyond that, there probably won't be any major changes, because my parents are actually pretty cool, loathe as I am to admit it. If my grandmother, on the other hand, were to find this... I don't know what I would do if my grandmother read the word “asshole”, and she knew that it was me who typed it. It would be wrong. More wrong than ∞<3. Hahaha just kidding, math grad schools.

See, Content Manager? This is what happens when I don't have someone to tell me what to do. Chaos, and anarchy, and nonsense. I mean, even more than usual. Oh, by the way, I hope it's okay for me to give your birthday to everyone on the internet. You know what they say: it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, and, as it turns out, it's even easier to not do either of those things. In the unlikely event that your secret identity is discovered, just let me know if the paparazzi gets over-excited. I'll have them dealt with.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this post. Sorry it wasn't the best, but it's the thought that counts, right? I certainly hope my sister thinks so, at least...

σ

Oh, did you not get the memo? All titles are Greek letters now. Greek letters are cool.

The reason for the sigma in the title of this post is shockingly unrelated to Zero Escape. Rather, it is a reference to standard deviation, a concept of dubious relevance to the subject matter of this post. Really, I just thought it'd be a hoot if I kept putting Greek letters in my titles. And then everyone would be all like "Havoc, why are you doing that, that's so weird!" And I'd be all like "Haha, you know me, I'm totally a free spirit". Remember this. You will be tested on it.

Rather recently, a friend of mine dealt a serious wound to my honor, one that, as a gentleman, I could not allow. She called into question my weirdness. And no, she isn't my content manager, surprising as that might be. She even had the nerve to imply that she and our mutual friend (Who is also a girl. I'm sure your disbelief is all kinds of unsuspended right now, but please bear with me.) are weirder than me. This led me to challenge her, attempting to prove that I was the more unusual. However, I was easily bested, and as any gentleman would, I admitted defeat when I knew victory was unattainable. I may be eccentric, but I'm no parabola (This joke relies on you knowing that a parabola is an ellipse with an eccentricity of 1, the maximum possible. Conic sections). I've still a ways to go before I reach the tier of sympathizing with necrophiliacs.

Despite that juicy bit of slander I just made public, (or is it libel? You'd think I'd have learned by now, but I always have to ask the judge which it is this time.) I still have a chance against the other one. So I shall lay bare all the things that I think make me weird here, and let you, the disinterested reader, be the judge. In an effort to not be an unsalvageable asshole, I'd rather not say any of the "weird" things my opponent lays claim to, but believe me when I say they're pretty tame-sauce. And not just because that helps me win. I totally believe that I could win this, even if the judges were aware of my opponent's habit of tenderly embracing doors and whispering sweet nothings into their hinges whenever she opens them. (FULL DISCLOSURE: That was a joke. That's not a thing. Please don't get angry with me. I'm being so sincere right now.)

Don't worry, baby. It's just me and you.  Nothing will ever come between us.

Well, I guess I'll just list these out, in no particular order. You had better not think these are in a particular order, because you'd be wrong, and that would make me sad. While this list is by no means exhaustive, it is quite extensive, as you might expect. This is actually my longest post to date, so if you've got somewhere to be, or any will to better yourself, you might want to skip this one out.

I play D&D. Kind of. Sometimes. I've briefly mentioned my incompetent DM before, (might as well stand for Dumb Motherf– Well, you get the idea.) and he is the primary source of my hesitation to say that I play D&D. Honestly, D&D by itself isn't terribly weird. OK, yes it kind of is. Of all the nerdy hobbies, it's one of the few that has gained very little mainstream acceptance, despite how pretty rad it is. But like a Porky Pig made of antimatter, that's not all, folks! You see, for me, D&D is kind of like Pokemon. I have more fun thinking about it than actually playing it, and it's mostly because of the people I play with (In the case of Pokemon, it's "People who are better than me"). Most of the enjoyment I derive from D&D comes from making characters. Choosing stats and class and race are part of it, yes, but the real thrill comes from the backstory. I get a thrill out of creating characters with intricately crafted pasts, dreams, and motivations, despite the knowledge that I will likely never use them. And I think that's pretty weird.

Sometimes I just look at the sky. I can't really say when it began. Pretty recently. Can't really say why. Certainly a weeaboo thing, so some time in the last year. As an aside, I'd just like to say that I have no idea how "Weeaboo" is spelled, so I may vary it wildly. The sky is a pretty big thing in Japan, it would seem, so it could be from any number of things. Rin, my not-waifu according to the same friend that prompted this post, is a strong contender, since she is the sky. And, honestly, the fact that I read (played? I really don't know what verb is used with visual novels) that whole thing (You know. The one with the boobs but it's totally not all about boobs I swear you guys.) is a testament to my weirdness, in my opinion.

Mai Waifu 

I might just give actual dollars to anyone who can explain the joke in that picture in the comments. It's a stretch, but I believe in you guys.

This one isn't really weird, it's more just unfathomably stupid and sad. Seriously, don't read this on the day of your wedding. If you start crying, it could give off the wrong messages. Because I commute to school by public transportation, I often do a lot of blog-writing there, because what else am I going to do? Schoolwork? (I think it's interesting to note that my word processor tries to autocomplete “school” to “schoolgirls”. Not that that's weird or anything...) Obviously, any reasonable person would do this writing in a word processor, as I implied, because that's what they do. They process words, and mine need all the processing they can get before they can be deemed presentable. But I've never much cared for present-ability, so I made the questionable decision to type my manifesto directly into the blogger window. I mean, having to copy and paste from a word processor to the internet would be lame. Well, public transportation doesn't have Wi-fi on it for some reason, so there was no way for me to save my progress. So if my laptop were to hypothetically pull a surprise reboot on me, it's pretty likely that all my work would be erased. I know of this likelihood, because that's exactly what happened. So I just want you to remember that for every joke that made the cut, there was a treasure trove of comedy gold cruelly taken by my harpy of a laptop. Thanks to it, you'll never know about the wicked rap battle I participated in, or how I managed to use the hilariously incongruous phrase "go-getter" while rapping.

While Anti-Porky has likely been annihilated by now, that's still not all, folks! There's one more unusual aspect of D&D that I feel I could stand to mention. I've actually referred to it earlier on this blog, as a testament to my "nerdiness", but because weirdness is integral (get it? like math) to nerdiness, I figure it would be appropriate here as well. You see, once upon a time, I was watching an anime, and I found myself empathizing with one of the characters. Except it wasn't me. It was my D&D character, whom I wasn't even role-playing at the time. But I'm just kidding with you. That wasn't true at all. It actually happened twice. And I suppose that, because the subject of shared feeling was a burning hatred towards humanity, I myself also empathized. The second instance involved friendship, so I needn't tell you that my ego was quite silent on the matter.

Xyphlan the Dragonborn Cleric sheds a tear on your behalf.

This next one is kind of risky, as it leaves open the possibility for people to obtain personal information about me. However, if you're Dan Browning my blog in an effort to know more about me, I'm sure that the shame you must feel is harsher than any punishment that could possibly be levied by a court of law. Sometimes, when I'm bored, I type various first names into an anagram generator, along with my last name. The ones that result in good anagrams are saved, so I can use them to name my children if I ever have them. As you've probably guessed by now, I have a real thing for readying myself for situations that I know won't happen. "Be Prepared" and all that. I have several good ones, but I fear that if I give multiple away, they could be used to reverse engineer my last name, which could result in crimes being leveled against my person. But if I ever do have a son, I'll likely name him in such a way that his first and last name will be an anagram of "Craven Dick Fire", which is the best anagram for a name since, well Havoc Mantis.

In high school, I played in concert band. The Bb clarinet was my instrument of choice. Every year, over the summer, we went on a "band tour", where we basically just went on a field trip for a couple of days. Every once in a while, about every four years, we went on a really big trip, one to a faraway location that actually involved playing as a band, since that's what we were. For my big band tour, I went to Hawaii, to play in honor of the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. While that's all well and good, what's relevant to this post is that some time the year before, my band director had a fundraiser where we were selling Hawaiian Leis. She also gave one to each of the band members at a football game (we were a marching band as well). She told us to hold on to them over the weekend, so I tied it to my clarinet case. Monday came, and she forgot about it. The week passed. Nothing. Days, weeks, months went by, and she said nothing. When we went on band tour, (funny story: I slept in an airport) nothing. I kept that lei tied to my clarinet for probably two whole years. And I probably would have visited her on her deathbed, asking what it was that she wanted me to do with that lei, were it not for the time that I accidentally left it on the aforementioned public transportation, and I found it removed when the case was recovered. I'd just like to take this opportunity to give a shout out to all the commuters who boldly and compassionately ignored the posters telling them to report suspicious packages. You're all real life-savers. That line about sarcastically congratulating commuters is basically the only thing keeping this dreadfully dull paragraph from being cut.

Aw, to hell with it. I guess Katawa Shoujo is the new thing for me to bring up at even the slightest prompting. But every instance helps my case, I feel, because, well... it's pretty weird. Anyway, I started running awhile back. Like following a schedule, and habitually running, just for the sake of running. And it was because of KS. This, in and of itself, is kind of weird, I feel, but what's even weirder is what didn't motivate me to do the same. One of the required merit badges for the Eagle Scout rank is the Personal Fitness merit badge, which requires, among other things, that the recipient be personally fit. This includes working out and stuff, I guess. But I didn't, really. I still weaseled my way into becoming an Eagle Scout, because it seriously isn't that hard, but really think about that. I was motivated to work out by doing it for some imaginary "her", but the highest honor in all of Boy Scouting was not a sufficient incentive. Aren't those priorities a little... weird?

I listen almost exclusively to soundtracks. I've been doing this for long enough that I hardly even register it as weird, even though it likely is. But my musical tastes are just a segue to the real heart of the matter. But before that, I just need you to listen to this song really quick. Now, did that remind you of anything, besides the eternal darkness that promises to deaden all love and life, only requiring enough time to make good on its dread purpose? A particular song, perhaps? If you answered Carly Rae Jepson's "Call Me Maybe", then stop reading this, future-me. Go do whatever it is that you're procrastinating. If, however, you are a more reasonable individual, you may notice something curious: Those songs aren't even kind of similar. At least, that's what you probably think. But, if you pay really close attention, you'll find that the part where Carly says “I threw a wish in the well, don't ask me, I'll never tell.” is similar to the part in Magia where they sing in some fantasy language (Hebrew, maybe?). I'll have you know, I've taken a semester and a half of music theory. I know how to spell “appoggiatura”, so I know what I'm talking about. (NOTE: The only hard and fast rule about spelling “appahggutura” is that it has two p's, two g's, and some other letters. This is music fact.)


I hate fanning. Loathe it, really. You could even say I abhor it. Hell, you could say as many verbs as the thesaurus allows you, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. You know that thing that people sometimes do when it's hot out, and they have a piece of paper, and they use it to push air at their face? Whenever I see someone do that, I feel angry. Perhaps even disgusted. Why do I so despise the innocuous action of keeping oneself cool? I have identified two possible contributing factors to this phenomenon. As anyone who's ever played an instrument will probably tell you, performing can get hotter than your celebrity crush of choice (I refuse to acknowledge the attractiveness of people). While you're playing up a sweat in a ridiculously heavy uniform, you catch a glimpse of motion out of the corner of your eye. No, it's not the conductor; he's firmly outside of your field of vision. In the audience, you see some impudent asshole, fanning himself with the program, while you can never do the same. He has the audacity to imply that his temperature is more uncomfortable. But as you glare at him through sweat-blurred eyes, noting his not-playing-an-instrument and relative lack of clothing (ahem), he just taunts you with his ability to keep himself cool. The second contributing factor to my irrational dislike of manual air conditioning is from Boy Scouts. You see, at summer camp, there's this thing where all these old white guys dress up as Native Americans. I know it sounds weird when I put it like that, because that's exactly what happens, and it is indeed very much weird. Anyway, all these elder folk have fancy regalia, which often includes fans, which they put to practical use. But as a meager underling, I've no fan, so I can take no respite from the huge-ass bonfire that was built in a summer camp. So, as before I am put in a situation where I am forced to impotently watch as other people fan themselves, while I can't. And that really burns my poffins.

You think you're better than me? What a smug asshole

Finally, we come to the most compelling reason of all: this blog. It's a well researched fact that all bloggers are insane, a special case of weird. Actually, the studies involved needed only a few observations to prove this result by induction, (Which is actually a form of deduction, because screw you for thinking you know anything) so they presumably spent their leftover grant money on some dope-ass gyroscopes. I am no exception to this theorem of insanity (as I just conveniently verified). In fact, I believe that I may stand out even among bloggers for my weirdness. I mean, I named two consecutive posts after Greek letters. I frequently admit to having seen depicted naked bodies of handicapped persons. On purpose. Through a medium that I will inevitably link my parents to, as soon as I forget to exclude them from my Facebook posts. I once stated that libertarians are opposed to wisdom teeth removal. I've implicated myself in more crimes than I even know the names for. But here's the real kicker, the coup de grace: Someone said they were weirder than me, and I CARED. I cared enough about this accusation to write more than 2500 words defending my position. That's more than one word for every year since Jesus was kicking around. That's certainly more than I've ever written for any kind of school paper. Maybe more than all my school papers combined. And here I am, still going. Because being crazy isn't like being drunk. If you know you're drunk, that means you're not drunk (That's how it works... right?) But even if you know you're crazy, you're still crazy.


But hey, you're the one who read all those words. Who's crazy now? (Gary Busey, if my pop culture references are still up to snuff.)

Post Scriptum: I didn't really intend to have so many recurring themes (Band, Boy Scouts, Disability Girls). It just kind of happened that way.

Post Post Scriptum: Abbreviations are for chumps.

Creep Deprivation

A wise man once said that the easiest way to fix something is to break it so hard that it becomes fixed again. Actually, I believe it was said by a most curious man made entirely of grass clippings, who rode through my house on a glitterific unicycle not to long ago. He seemed pretty wise to me, so I've decided to follow his advice. Results so far have been inconclusive, as the police managed to wrestle me away from the drifter that I was trying to pound back to life before my research bore any fruit. Wait, is "I killed a drifter" humor in line with this blog's sensibilities? I have a feeling that corpse mutilations is one of those things that wouldn't make the cut if my mentally faculties were fully intact. Then again, I'd hope that a full intactness of my mental faculties would prevent me from wasting my time in the first place, but whatever.

Anyway, the thing that I'm trying to fix through egregious breaking is my sleep schedule. As hinted at in my previous post, I'm currently engaging in spring break. But through some cruel joke of fate, spring break doesn't last forever. My sleep schedule was immediately and ruthlessly screwed on my very first day of spring break, and it certainly hasn't gotten any better since. I've been going to bed at hours around 5 AM for most of break, and I'm going to have to start waking up at around 8 AM for college. It doesn't take a math major to tell that this is a recipe for bad times (though a culinary arts degree might help). So, in order to outwit my body, I've decided that, instead of falling asleep tonight, I'll just stay up all night, then fall asleep at a reasonable hour the next day. Now that's what I call strategy!

Clearly, trying to be productive during this time would be a fool's errand. I can hardly be productive when I'm firing on all cylinders, (This is just a metaphor. It's not like I actually have cylinders  like I'm some kind of engine, because that would mean I'm a robot, and we all know that's impossible and ridiculous and you should be ashamed for thinking that) so trying to get anything done when I'm mega-tired is laughable at best, and also laughable at worst, because laughable is really the only adjective up to the task of describing this. So, instead, I'm doing this. You know how everything you say is super-hilarious at 5:00 AM? That must mean that it's the perfect time to write for the internet, because we all know that it's because of an increase in quality, rather than a decrease in standards that causes this phenomenon.

So now I have get to the most difficult part of the post: thinking of something to write about. I've already explained my situation, and my content manager is reasonable enough to be asleep right now. There is literally nothing more that I can say about Virtue's Last Reward that isn't a spoiler. I've talked way too goddamned much about Fire Emblem. There's nothing interesting to say about my intricately arranged collection of buzzard scalps. It seems I am at an impasse

Well, my content manager recently convinced me to write a "stream of consciousness"  piece, where I basically just typed out whatever I found in my head. The problem with this is that I can type far faster than I can think, so the process kind of ground to a halt. I deleted it, but I can't say it was too funny, so you're not missing much.

And now here I am, at 5:00 PM, and I'm hardly tired at all. Why, I could probably go days without sleeping! You heard it here first, folks: sleep is just a trick by the government, trying to steal your free time. Every time you fall asleep, President Obama gets a dollar richer, and he uses that dollar to buy the dreams of orphans, which he then messily devours as his nourishment. In fact, I'd say that this lack of sleep is enhancing my reasoning capabilities. There is absolutely no way that I'd be able to pierce this shadowy conspiracy after a morning of being tired and cranky. In fact, I think I'm going to take this opportunity to solve all the world's problems. Buckle up, because it's about to get genius in here.

First of all: A cure for cancer. Easy enough. Criminalize all sexual activity from September 22 to October 22. This will be enforced by highly skilled "sex police". I doubt that I need to further expound on what they do. Any outliers can be handled by a special offspring task force. Kind of like Fahrenheit 451, but with live human infants instead of books. That's kind of messed up.

Or, we could just tell them that The Moon isn't  even a planet.

The energy crisis. Well, if there's anything I've learned from my physics class, it's that to deal maximum damage to your professor's head, you're going to want to throw a large object, buy you're also going to want it to have high velocity, to maximize kinetic energy. But the second most important thing is that everything is relative. Sure, you may be stationary with respect the ground, which means that you have zero kinetic energy. But you could be moving at about 30,000 m/s with respect to the sun. So, if you have a mass of, say, 72 kg, you would have a kinetic energy of about 3*10^10 J, which is about 10 times more than the energy consumption of the average clothes dryer in a single year. Doesn't that make you feel better about energy? You're like 10 clothes dryers hurtling through space!

I can't get a girl. Wait, what? Who let that in the list of problems? One, that isn't even a problem. Logicians the world over have derived many proofs for the statement that if one is of the female sex, that individual may be assumed to be psychologically impaired, a result often shortened to "Bitches be crazy". Two, I very definitely could, but I know of good reasons not to, so I don't. Tired me is a deceptive asshole. Don't listen to him.

Pic Unrelated

Global Warming! That's a big one. We could go with the tried-and-true Futurama method of dumping ice cubes into the water every year, but cubes are a choleric shape by nature, so their affinity for fire may reverse any good that they could potentially do. What this requires is some design thinking. Using metaphors. Let's say for a moment that the earth is like a bowl of soup, despite the fact that that's a simile, and I specifically called for a metaphor. The oceans are the soup, and the continents are the... edges of the bowl? The crackers that you crumble in? The third, funny thing that might be found in soup, thus completing this joke? Perhaps. And what do you do with soup when it's too hot? You blow on it! And why do you blow? Peer pressure! Because it never actually helps, but we all do it anyway, because we saw grown-ups do it when we were young.  Now, skirting right by the crude joke I just made, we can apply this to the earth by making... like... a giant machine that blows? Like a vacuum in reverse. Or one of those Dyson fans that doesn't chop the air, but rather propels a pleasant breeze by the will of the Heart of the Zephyr. That would be a pretty convenient truth, amirite?

Education. Honestly, I have too many actual ideas about education to come up with a suitably ridiculous one. And since I sincerely doubt that many school board members will end up reading this, there's not much reason to include actual ideas. So I guess I'll just have to think something up. Sledgehammer olympics. I'm not quite sure what that means, but I like the sound of it, and I'm sure your elementary school children will think the same, up until they begin participating.

Music. As we all know, music hit its peak when you, the reader, were a teenager. So how do we get back to the good ol' days of music? Just look for music that matches your tastes on Spotify or whatever. It's as simple as that. There is too damn much music out there for you to say that none of it is good. Just because you can't find something doesn't mean that it isn't there. The cops can pretend that the corpse of that drifter isn't out there somewhere out there, but they know, and I know that it is. In this metaphor, the corpse is the music, you're the police, and... the artist is me I mean the murderer. I dunno man, I'm just trying to get some running gags going, because my gags have been rather sluggish of late.

Wow, there sure are a lot of unrelated pics in this article.

Crime, war, ect. How about everyone stops being terrible? Like, for even just a couple days, every human being makes a conscious effort to not be awful to his fellow man. I'd say that I'm more familiar that most with just how terrible the dark side of humanity is, and it's not just because I'm an egotistical jackass. It's also because I literally cannot differentiate between real people and fictional characters. But anyway, consider this a decree, a mandate from on high. I hereby order the human race to just stop being despicable. Did you know that every person you meet, every person you see, every person you hear about, is a fully realized individual, with hopes and dreams, and secrets, and fears, just like you? You know how it sucks when someone is mean to you? Well that exact same thing happens to other people when you're mean to them, regardless of your justification. As the great Raymond Smuckels said "No one should be a cock to a stranger, ever." In fact, I believe this courtesy should be extended to those you know. Is that so terrible?

Oh. Oh dear. It seems that, in my state of fatigue, I've forgotten the first, most important rule of blogging: Give the people what they came for. And preachiness is not what my readers come here for. So I apologize. Without further ado...

THE BEST TIME TO WEAR A STRIPED SWEATER
IS ALL THE TIME
ONE WITH A COLLAR
TURTLENECK
THAT'S THE KIND
BECAUSE WHEN YOU'RE WEARING
That... special... striped... sweater...

There's no need for me to type anything. You're singing it in your head already.

Diamond Emblem

As promised in the previous post, here's a fresh batch of letters pertaining to the newest game in the Fire Emblem series, Fire Emblem: Waifu Edition. Read on to learn what that means!

Before I get too much into the nitty-gritty of this game, let me first say that it is great. I haven't finished it yet, (I'd hazard a guess that I'm somewhere around halfway through) but so far I wouldn't hesitate to say that it's my favorite Fire Emblem, and not just because it has the highest Metacritic score. If you have a 3DS, and even a passing interest in tactical RPGs, then I urge you to buy it as soon as you can. In fact, that's an order. Internet court-martial awaits anyone reading this who doesn't buy it. The internet police is on standby. I should also note that, while a good chunk of this post was indeed written before I finished the game, I unsurprisingly got a little carried away, and now indeed have finished. So expect this to take on a rather schizophrenic tone, just in case you did not have the foresight to expect it coming in.

However, before you buy it, you should be warned: This game is hard. On Moh's hardness scale, this game goes all they way up to 11. This game is so hard, I could make an outdated pop culture reference about certain unsavory people wanting to find it. This shit is pretty cray. When they first announced that there would be a “casual mode”, I thought it ridiculous. A mainstay of the Fire Emblem series is that if one of your units falls in battle, they're gone forever, which effectively means that all battles must be won without any casualties. Casual mode disgraced this tradition, allowing players to let their units die willy-nilly, and have them ready for action for the next battle. Now that I've actually played the game, I can see why this option was included. Even with the ability to let a unit fall without crying and restarting, this game could be quite difficult. Perhaps it's my fault for choosing to play in hard mode, but in my defense, the “hard” difficulty is the middle of the three difficulties, making it as much a hard mode as a tall drink from Starbucks is a large drink. If just one person understands where I was going with that comparison, then I'll consider it worth it.

At heart, this game is all about teamwork and companionship. At least, the mechanics are. I haven't finished the story, so it could be about moon monkeys, for all I know. Except I now have finished, and unsurprisingly enough, the power of friendship is quite important. As for the relevance of lunar simians... spoilers. How can mechanics be about teamwork and companionship? Well, the game basically plays like an apology for Radiant Dawn's terrible support system, which did away with support conversations entirely. In Fire Emblem, most characterization for non-vital characters comes from support conversations, which is why all the new characters in Radiant Dawn sucked. Awakening says “Screw that noise”, and makes it so that EVERYONE CAN SUPPORT EVERYONE. This isn't literally true, but it seems that most units are capable of supporting a whole bunch of other units. Marriage is also handled differently in Awakening. As most Fire Emblem vets (experienced players, rather than animal doctors) know, maxed-out supports between units will occasionally manifest as a joined destiny in the part of the credits where it says what happens to each person after the story is done. For opposite gender units, this occasionally results in marriage. In Awakening, any maxed-out support between heterosexual units will culminate in a proposal (barring siblings, as well as cousins, much to the embarrassment of Operation: Incest). As stated before, the number of possible supports is huge, especially in the case of the Avatar, (the player character) who can support any playable unit in the game. And, because the Avatar's gender can be chosen, this means that s/he can marry any of the 30+ units in the game. According to my calculations, The Avatar may have upwards of 300 possible support conversations, a figure so impressive that they made a movie about it. This is made all the more impressive by...

The fact that I am writing a whole two paragraphs about arranging fictional marriages. But the actual reason is the quality of the writing. I've only puppeteered 5 marriages so far, so I don't really have enough data to make generalizations, but all of them were... good? They all had a little story to them, and the proposals were singularly... I'm trying to think of a word that isn't “adorable”, but my extensive knowledge of synonyms is failing me. So, at the risk of having my Y chromosome stricken by the sacred fires of manhood, I will now describe a proposal as “adorable”. Havoc's proposal to Lissa was adorable (Havoc is the name of my Avatar). The only downside to this is the meticulous consideration of gender when deciding which troops to accept or reject, and the fact that I'll likely never have a same-gender support. But I feel that's a small price to pay for the sick glee that comes with holding the love lives of your soldiers in your hands. And now, with the wisdom of age, future-me can clarify that all units can build as much support as they want, as long as they only have one significant other, which means that same-sex support is a-go. I'm sure you're quite relieved.

Further augmenting the support system is the ability to “pair up” units. Essentially, this allows two units to join together to act as one unit. When asked how it works, the most succinct explanation I could come up with was “It's like rescuing, except instead of taking a stat penalty, you get a stat boost.” If that sounds overpowered, then, well, refer to the third paragraph. You need every advantage you can get. When two units are paired up, the primary unit fights as normal, except with some stat boosts, depending on the stats of the supporting unit, and the support level between them. In addition, the supporting unit will occasionally get in a bonus attack during combat, or block incoming attacks. This can lead to amusing circumstances, like your cleric heroically jumping in to defend your general from an incoming arrow. This can also happen when units are just adjacent to each other, but it's probably more likely if they're paired up. This leads to a number of interesting strategic implications, and is also just pretty neat in general.

It's hard to make a judgment on the story, as I haven't finished it, but it seems pretty good so far. Perhaps the best of any Fire Emblem. I'm not sure if Zero Escape has just destroyed my ability to play games without drawing comparisons to it, (it sure has destroyed my ability to play real life without drawing comparisons to it) but the story seems to share some elements that I cannot specify, at the risk of spoilers. But I mentioned it anyway, because screw you. Yeah, you. Not the rest of the readers: just you. You know what you did.

In some ways, Awakening represents Intelligent Systems' attempt to gather all of the good ideas over the history of Fire Emblem into one place. It borrows the overworld and branching evolution system of Sacred Stones, the Skill system of the Radiant Console games, the universe of Shadow Dragon, the breeding system of some Fire Emblem that no one's ever played, the general goodness of Blazing Sword, and the difficulty of every other Fire Emblem combined. The overworld allows players an opportunity to train their weaker units, while discouraging the rampant grinding that inevitably occurred in Sacred Stones. The overworld map also lets the player complete “paralogues”, which are like sidequests, except with a ridiculous word that sounds exactly like something I'd make up. Not even spell-check believes in it. The skill system is complicated, and not very well explained, so I will graciously attempt to make both heads and tails of it here, so that my readers may have an edge over their jealous peers when playing this game. You're welcome. As your units are trained, certain classes gain certain skills at certain levels. Quite certainly. By using a “Second Seal” to reclass units, one can customize their units to possess whatever skills one desires. I think? The game takes place in the same universe that Marth once inhabited, although far enough in the future that everyone from that era is dead and forgotten. Which is a shame, because I'm sure you were all looking forward to a continuation of Shadow Dragon's deep and engaging story. Breeding is an interesting concept that seems rather well-done, but is off-putting for several reasons, not least of which is that I continue to insist on referring to it as “breeding”. When some characters marry, they have children. This leads to the unfortunate implication that your units have resorted to profane and forbidden magicks that they might create life. Or perhaps something even more unclean.

In Path of Radiance, Intelligent Systems made the dubious decision to separate magic and strength into two different stats that each unit had, while in previous games, a magic unit would have a magic stat, and a lesser unit would have a strength stat. This served to completely ruin magic swords, which now used the pathetic magic stat of most swordsmen, and ruin the ability of some mages to hit twice, as the strength stat replaced constitution in determining a unit's capacity to wield heavy tomes. I guess the strength stat also came in handy if you chose for your sage to wield knives, rather than staves, but I'm kind of hoping that the game just blanked your save if you were stupid enough to do that. But in Awakening, this splitting of offensive stats comes in handy, as there are units capable of using both real weapons and real magic. It also removed the weight of weapons, letting you use steel weapons without fear of missing the opportunity for a double hit. This is as awesome as it is dreadfully impractical.

I'm sorry for interrupting this riveting paragraph, but all my posts are written stream-of-consciousness, so it can't be helped. I just learned something so surprising, so amazing, so wonderfully stupid, that I have to type it RIGHT NOW, and I refuse to put it somewhere that makes more sense. Dark Fliers cannot use dark magic. Dark knights cannot use dark magic. Both can use magic, and both have “dark” in their name. Dark knights are a possible evolution of dark mages, yet they can't use dark magic, meaning, as far as I can tell, that your dark mage will immediately forget the forbidden arts as soon as s/he becomes a DARK knight. I have a dark magic tome that is named after a dark flier. But apparently dark fliers can only use dark magic if they're bad guys. To try to comprehend how stupid this is, imagine if Flareon didn't learn Flare Blitz. I think we can all agree that would be unforgivably wrong.

Actually, that kind of turned out to be relevant, as dark knights and dark fliers are the two classes (along with tactician and its evolution) that can use weapons and offensive magic. The problem is that Dark Fliers evolve from Pegasus knights, who are incapable of using magic, and thus have terrible magic stats. The reverse goes for dark knights, who evolve from mages or dark mages, (but not knights, curiously enough) and thus have so little strength that there is no reason to use a sword. The tactician has stats that are pretty well balanced, but that just means that you should use magic, because magic is mo' better. The only way to produce a good mixed sweeper is by breeding one from scratch, but the mechanics involved are even more confusing than those in Pokemon. Are my general and cleric in the same egg group? If I give the mother an everstone, will the offspring retain her nature? What really happens in day-care? All these questions go woefully unanswered.

If you have played Fire Emblem before, and you still aren't convinced that you need to pick up this game, I have 5 words that will fix that problem right up: Anna is a playable unit. That is all.

Because I am too oblivious to realize how sad it is that I apologize all the time, I would like to say I'm sorry that this was more of a review/explanation of Fire Emblem than a post of substantive humor, as is expected of this blog. My excitement over this game has demolished my talents of writing, to be sure, but take heart, for it has marred my other skills as well, and made a lesser man out of me. Indeed, this game has condemned me to a life of poverty, as the damage it has dealt to my scholastic pursuits prove insurmountable, and I will be forced to get one of those jobs that you have to get if you don't have a piece of paper that says good things about you. Probably one outside of the lucrative field of “Having strong opinions about Turn Based Strategy RPGs”.

Oh, and because a gentleman never goes back on his word, I guess I should explain what a “waifu” is. It's a not-actually-Japanese word that means “wife”. It is used by the kind of people who have a real passion for animated women.  

A Gentleman's Challenge

I have recently been issued a challenge. The challenger in question is the same person who requested the last article. Apparently she's now in charge of deciding what I do and don't write about. Yeah, I'm just as shocked as you are. Also, she's given me permission to use gender specific pronouns when referring to her, so it's totally on her if internet hooligans reverse engineer this data to kidnap her.

I lack a very particular set of skills

The challenge is to use seven specific words, all in one post. Now, I could easily just make a post that consists solely of those chosen words, but that wouldn't be very sporting, now would it? And if there's one thing I'm always doing, it's sporting, because no one here has more gentlepoints than me. So I am making a game out of this. I will use all seven words in this dubious post, but it is up to you, the reader, to try to guess which words were assigned. Now, you can rationally expect that the chosen words will be awkwardly shoe-horned in, so I will be awkwardly shoe-horning as many words as I can into this post, in an attempt to obfuscate the identity of the chosen words. Because I can't sport all the time.

Now, you may be wondering what it is that I'll actually write about. And the answer is that I have no idea. The purpose of this challenge was to be an enticing offer of a topic, but it's failing pretty badly at that. I mean, I guess that it inspired me to write this, but I'm not terribly happy about it. Hell, I've written two paragraphs so far, and the closest I came to a joke was maybe-threatening to kidnap my friend. So, as with all of my previous posts, if you fail to find this amusing, I implore you to blame someone other than me. I would consider that swell.

So, I'm sure you came here for a very specific reason. You told your computer to navigate to this particular locus of the internet so that it could tell your monitor to emit photons in a pattern that will react with the chemicals in your eyes in such a way that they sends signals that your brain processes as words, which your brain will react to with amusement, leading to the release of some kind of pleasure chemical. Probably dopamine, because that's what we always hold responsible for our pleasure. Now, as you read that monumentally lengthy linguistic construct, you probably noticed that those were all things that were indeed happening. Up until you read about pleasure chemicals. As you may notice, the pleasure centers of your brain are dryer than the 1920's, a joke that would actually make sense if it weren't for speakeasies. They are more parched than a thirsty barber. And for this dreadful lack of amusement, I apologize. On the behalf of my friend. Because it is totally and absolutely her fault.

Well, I can only deprecate myself for so long before it starts to get legitimately sad, so I'll see if I can find something else to talk about. Hmmmm... well, it's said that you should write what you know. And you know what it is that I know? Math. So I will now talk about math. I had hoped that it would never come to this, but my hands are tied. The Godzilla threshold is crossed. Calculus, algebra, trigonometry, geometry, abstract, applied, mathology... I'll talk about all of it. And there's nothing you can do about it. Well, I guess you could just go to one of the innumerable sites on the internet that's more interesting than watching me struggle in imaginary-time (It's the opposite of real-time, you see). So I guess I'll start with mathology, since that's something you've probably never heard of. This is because I made it up, completely independent of the mathology that Stephen Colbert apparently made up. You see, mathology is like mathematics, except it is a science, which means that it involves observation and experimentation. If you think that's stupid, that is because you are smart and right. Mathology is more or less math without all that pesky rigor or practical applications  The first rule of Mathology says that if a formula or equation works for at least 3 cases, then it probably works for all cases. Because all numbers are basically the same, right? Now that I've explained mathology to the best of my ability, I'll try to talk about something else. Any discussion of calculus would probably quickly devolve into me bitching about integration by trig substitution, which I am gruelingly relearning as of this writing. So... um... geometry? I think I found a general case formula that will allow you to quickly calculate the area of any regular polynomial of n sides, with each side having a length of s. The formula is as follows:

Note the use of degrees, rather than radians, indicating that I am no true mathematician.

Ironically, this formula has not been tested by Mathological principles. But if you feel qualified, I'd appreciate it if you could check my work. Furthermore, I've also derived formulas for... wait a second. I've already used the word that I was planning on using, so I can just abandon this train of thought. 

So, now that I can feel my will to write trickling away like an ebbing Tide, (Arm and Hammer is more prone to flowing.) guess I'll... do something? I guess I could explain the joke that I just made, because it's a well known fact that the most valuable jokes are the ones that necessitate explanation. You see, the tide is something that ebbs, but tide can also refer to Tide, which the internet assures me is a laundry detergent. Arm and Hammer is another laundry detergent, and it flows, which is the opposite of ebbing. This is because of comedy. Because this is basically just stream of consciousness now, here's a fun fact: some guy named "Armand Hammer" was apparently a major shareholder in "Arm and Hammer". It's not like he founded the company, so it wasn't named after him. On the other hand, I can find no mention of this on his Wikipedia page, so I am faced with the inconceivable possibility that Cracked.com lied to me. On yet another hand, for some reason, the real Armand Hammer sold alcohol during The Prohibition through some kind of legal loophole. While I would love to end this post with the arrival of that full circle, I still have at least one more word to write, and as the esteemed Hershel Layton always says, "A true gentleman may find himself faced with 99 problems, but he always ensures that a bitch is not among them."

OG: Original Gentleman

Whelp, it looks like I'm going to have to go to my fall-back topic. It seems that I have no other hoptions. That's right kids, it's time to talk about about Zero Escape again, because continually discussing a game whose greatness is mostly derived from shocking twists is a Grade-A idea. In case this is the first post you've read on this blog, I beg you to go back and read something different. I promise, most of my other posts are at least a standard deviation above this one when it comes to the facilitation of chuckles. But also, I'll explain the Zero Escape series. You see, in both games, you're kidnapped by a person in a gas mask who calls himself Zero, and then you have to Escape from wherever it is that he's locked you up. Both games have you playing a Nonary game, which has nine participants. The only way to Escape is to win the game. The two Nonary games have different rules, which I won't talk about because of spoilers I guess? The first game in the series is called Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, and if that isn't the right order for those three things, then I really couldn't care less. Just type "999" into Google. Tell'em Havoc sent you. He'll know what you're talkin' about. It is for the Nintendo DS. The second game is called Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, and is for the 3DS. Or the PSP Vita, if you're a chump, but I have faith in my audience to not be chumps. Since there's nothing I can really say about it that wasn't said in previous posts without giving away too many details, this section amounted to little more than egregious name dropping. Neat.

Now that my fall-back topic is expended, I guess I'll have to fall even further back to... Katawa Shoujo? Haha nope. Not gonna happen. I'd rather that worm come in here and eat you all alive. It would take a miracle more miraculous than a magnet made of rainbows  that looked like its father for me to talk about that again.

What's that bandage doing on that heart? I certainly don't know.

Have I mentioned how much I love the word "conflagration"? It's really one of my favorite words. It basically means "fire", but it sounds radder, badder, and nastier. A "fire" is something that you use to solemnly light a funeral pyre. A "conflagration" is something that use to drunkenly set your ex's house ablaze, then direct towards the constabulary when they start being a bunch of buzzkills. I just thought that it would be a good idea to surreptitiously introduce the word "conflagration" into this post, apropos of nothing.

But what I really brought you here to talk about is Pokemon. Competitive Pokemon battling, to be specific.  If you're wondering how competitive Pokemon battling differs from regular Pokemon, the adjective "competitive" indicates a battle between two human opponents who have their shit together. Level 100 Pokemon, optimized natures and EVs, and teams with coherent purpose are all hallmarks that set a competitive battler apart. Also, switching. To use a football analogy, keeping a Pokemon in when you have a disadvantage is analogous to receiving the ball, then somersaulting across the field saying "Sonic's the name, Speed's my game!". Actually, that analogy works pretty well for any sport. And if you know anything about competitive Pokemon battling, you know Smogon University, the authority in competitive Pokemon Battling. They rule the Pokemon battling metagame the way that Oprah ruled basically everything: They have no official power, but everyone just listens to what they say anyway. They have more street cred than a hippopotamus. Get it? Because they're hip. Anyway, despite the frequency with which I talk about how competitive battling ruined my ability to enjoy Pokemon, it's actually a blast, if you can get the hang of it. If nothing else, I probably have more fun reading about various Pokemon than I do actually battling, because that just results in tears. If somehow even less else, a team of EV trained top-tier Pokemon will surely be more than a match for your unenlightened friends, even if it would get you laughed off of Shoddy Battle. And, in the end, isn't life all about proving yourself better than your peers? I certainly think so. So if you're bored, and thinking of picking up a new skill, why not give Competitive Pokemon Battling a try? It'll probably help you understand what I'm talking about down the road when I inevitably start bitching about some Pokemon or another on this blog.

There are going to be so many new base stats to memorize! I'm so excited, you guys!

And with that, it seems that we're in the home stretch. All words have either been used, or can feasibly be fit into this concluding paragraph. While I'm sure I don't need to tell you this, I feel like I should for legal reasons: Do not try to guess the 7 words. That is stupid, this is stupid, and it's all stupid. But you're not stupid. I don't mean to insult your intelligence, but there's really no way guess which of the 1000+ words here I was assigned. It's like trying to define a triangle when you only have an angle and a side. So just bubble in "D. Not enough information given" with your number 2 pencil, and go to the next question. It's not too late to do something great with your life. Learn a language. Take up an instrument. Learn a computer language. Fall in love. Buy a stamp. Commit arson. Really, just about anything you could do would be a better use of your time. And with that, my dear readers, all the words have been used. The gauntlet was thrown down, so I picked it right back up, and used it to punch some words into submission, Brockway style (This reference assumes that you are intimately familiar with the Cracked Columnists). But I don't want this to be a precedent. I don't want people thinking that they can just challenge me to write with whatever conditions they choose, and I'll happily oblige. They say that artists produce their best work when working under constraints, but this place isn't about good work. It's about practice. We ain't talking about the game. We talkin' 'bout practice, man. We talkin' 'bout practice. You've been a lovely audience. Thank you, goodnight. 

Also, if you read this far hoping to learn about the musical TV special against the Doctor's orders that was promised by the label, then I regret to inform that you've been deceived. I just thought it was funny when Ryan North did it, so it would probably be funny when I did it, right?

Gaelic? More like Gay-lick, amirite?

Sorry about that, guys. I literally could not resist. My body was taken captive by ancient and primal spirits of crude humor, and I was forced to watch in horror as my very own fingers wrought this disrespectful pun. It absolutely has nothing to do with the fact that I am basically a 5 year old.

Anyway, at the request of one of my friends, I am going to talk about Irish and Gaelic Mythology. This was likely something that s/he (gender obscured for anonymity’s sake, even though the idea of me talking to a girl is laughable at best.) suggested jokingly, but it would seem that s/he underestimated just how desperate I am to write about absolutely anything, and how averse I am to coming up with my own ideas. So to him/her, I ask this: Is this the victory you imagined? Are you satisfied with what you've created? Because, if you are, then perhaps it is only because you have not read on.

So. Irish and Gaelic mythology? Well, honestly, I don't know a damned thing about either one. I couldn't even point to Ireland or Gaeland on a map. Holy crap! You know what literally just occurred to me? (As I am writing this, not as you are reading it) “Ire” comes from the latin root “ira”, which means anger or rage. Someone tell the stereotype committee! Their groundbreaking work in portraying the Irish as angry drunks was right all along! The Romans said so. Now might be as good a time as any to mention that I don't know the difference between “Irish” and “Scottish”. Now, I could say it's because I believe in the greater whole of humanity, and I dislike giving people labels, but in reality, I just don't give one thin shit about who you are or where you came from. Unless you came from the moon or something. Then I'll have my people call your people. Fun thought experiment: If a joke falls flat on a blog that no one reads, does the writer still make a sound when he cries himself to sleep at night? 

Now, the first thing that comes to everyone's mind when they think of “Irish and Gaelic mythology” is the Loch Ness Monster. Now, I'm actually fairly sure that Loch Ness is in Scotland, but as I've previously discussed, I don't care, and I refuse to look it up, or I'll run out of my already sparse repertoire of things to talk about. As we all know, Nessie is a creature that unequivocally does not exist. If you believe that s/he (Is Nessie the friend that prompted this post? Perhaps) does exist, please stop. Your field of “cryptozoology” is the worst thing to happen to the suffix “-ology” since astrology. Or maybe Scientology? On second thought, that joke was in poor taste. Scientology is definitely a legitimate religion, with which I have no qualms. This is an official statement that is in no way being made out of fear of legal prosecution.

Man, I really need to learn to stop trailing off my paragraphs into overly long jokes. But I digress. Like the vast majority of myths, Nessie is indeed mythological. It is a fantasy creature that could never exist, like a sane blogger. As you may know, the Loch Ness Monster is purported to live in Loch Ness, or “Lake Ness”, if you don't have a speech impediment. Stop laughing. Speech impediments are a serious problem, just like the racism necessary to assert that an entire country is incapable of pronouncing a word correctly. According to world-renowned monster expert, J.K. Rowling, The Loch Ness Monster is actually a kelpie. A kelpie, according to her, is a shapeshifting beast that spends most of its time as a horse. But in the water, for some reason. This is because a kelpie is a monster from Irish(?) mythology that looks like a horse, but sometimes turns into a beautiful woman to lure sailors (notoriously gullible when it comes to beautiful women in suspicious places) so they could kill them. The fact that Wikipedia describes the Kelpie, a figure from Irish Mythology, as looking like a horse, then shows a painting of a naked woman, is proof that Wikipedia has a sense of humor. It's the stealthiest bestiality joke ever made. Or was it the Scottish that were notorious for such affairs?

Another figure I vaguely remember from Irish Mythology is Finn McCool, who... killed people, or something? I remember hearing about him from the website "Badass of the Week" , which is about exactly what it says on the tin. Before you click that link, know that the author describes is as containing "an unnecessarily copious amount of profanity". So don't say I didn't warn you. From what I can tell, Finn was more or less like an Irish Kratos, at least as far as defeating the local pantheon's God of War goes. One of my friends describes his story rather admirably here, in a video that he honest-to-God turned in to an English teacher. He fails to mention how the salmon that Finn burns his hand on was a salmon of wisdom or something, which is the science responsible for his smart-knowing. Finn also apparently really hated cartographers, judging by all the geography he caused. He is said to have created the Giant's Causeway and the Isle of Man, making him roughly as strong as a tectonic plate. Also, “McCool” is a pretty cool last name. Like anything else that's Irish, it can be spelled in at least a baker's dozen different ways, but “McCool” is easily the best.

And now, at the suggestion of the same friend I mentioned at the beginning, (The one who takes full responsibility for any complaints you have about this post) I'm going to talk about something called a “bean sidhes”. Despite sounding like a painfully inauthentic new menu item from Taco Bell, this is apparently... a banshee. This is what I'm talking about, Scottland. No one will take you seriously if you keep intentionally spelling things with the intent to obfuscate what it is that you're talking about. Now, as you all know, a Banshee is a Covenant light aircraft that features two rapid-fire plasma cannons as its primary weapon. Its purple paint job and unusual cockpit clearly designate it as an alien aircraft, because humans would never design a vehicle so ridiculous for the purpose of warfare.

Clearly a work of advanced alien technology

I suppose it also bears mentioning that “Banshee” is also the name of a kind of ghost that screams a lot or something. Apparently they shriek when someone is about to die, kind of like how you see a doppelgänger when you're about to die. In fact, I think the concept of doppelgängers might also be Irish/Scottish/Gaelic/Celtic. A quick Google search... denies. Looking back, the umlaut probably should have tipped me off that they were German. This is a great disappointment to me, as I was all ready to link to an article about Doppelgangers. The more I can link to other people's work, the less I have to do myself, which is always the primary goal to which I strive. Anyway, Banshees scream when someone is about to die. But send not to know for whom the banshee keens, it keens for thee.

And, for the big finale, I'm going to talk about Cat Sith. Because the Irish are downright masters of deception, it pains me to report that these are not feline masters of the Dark Side of The Force. They are basically a race of fairy people, but they are also cats. Like all fairies, they are humanoids with wings, and they can do magical things, like cast spells and fly. What differentiates them from other fairies is their cat ears, which are totally kawaii. Some myths purport them to have a verbal tic that causes them to sporadically insert “nya” into their conversation, as well as refer to themselves as “neko”. And, because this section is purposely engineered to make my friend regret suggesting this to me, I'll say this: some rumors suggest that Cat Sith play a role in the plot of Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward. I cannot say what they do, nor can I respond to any accusations that this is obviously just a joke. Or is it?!

A wistful guess of what could have been

So, to the reader that provoked this desecration of a once-proud heritage, I ask once again: Was it worth it? Do you now regret what you have inflicted on this world? Let me know in the comments! You know who you are.