iTunes? More like cryTunes

Pull up a seat, make yourselves comfortable, and I will tell you a tale. A classic tale that will echo throughout the ages, an emotional roller coaster of frustration, rage, anger, irritation, aggravation, grief, longing, and buttmad.

This isn't your average, everyday joke reuse. This is... ADVANCED joke reuse.

I guess you could say that this story began in the year 1711, on a lonesome ship in the middle of a stormy sea, where a group of alchemists attempted to summon a devil to aid their quest for the grand panacea, an elixir granting immortality to any who imbibe it. Surprisingly enough, the ritual worked, and all aboard the vessel were granted everlasting life, only to be cut short by the hand of another immortal. But that's enough of my backstory. It could be said that my troubles began a few years ago, the moment my brother won a free iPad in a raffle, but refused his friend's offer to give him $200 to smash it against the ground then and there. This resulted in the unfortunate affliction of owning an iPad, and a yet more severe case of having to deal with iTunes. But little did I know, all those frustrations were but a prelude to the fugue that was to follow.

A few months ago, I saw an update on Serebii that said that the soundtrack for Pokemon X and Y (That's right. It's another one of those posts) would be sold on iTunes. Gamefreak had finally called me out on my bluff that I would legally pay for and download video game music if only I was given the chance. And I was glad they did. Gamefreak, and video game makers (Developers? Producers? Birthers?) in general make some pretty spectacular music, and they deserve to be recognized for it, monetarily. Sure, it meant that I would now have to actually pay for the music, and opportunities to become poorer usually aren't something that I celebrate, but as long as the money was going to a good cause, it would be worth it, because it would allow me to fit way too many commas in one sentence, wouldn't it?

And then, on November 12^th, a month after the game was released, the full soundtrack was released on iTunes, an impressive 212 songs for a meager $10. Deals don't get much better than that, right? I mean, sure a lot of the “songs” are probably just short jingles and sound effects, but even if as much as half of them were proper songs, it's still be chin and earlobes above most other songs you'd buy off iTunes. Hell, just a few days prior, I had considered buying the Bastion Soundtrack for the same amount of money, and it only has 22 songs. As it turns out, I should have purchased the Bastion Soundtrack, and heeded its words more carefully. Indeed, some day, these tears were gonna spill.

After taking a few minutes to download iTunes and get an account set up, I moseyed on over to the soundtrack, and-- wait, what? You know, Gamefreak, when I said “if even as much as half of them were proper songs”, I wasn't just trying to win a pretentious-sounding sentence competition. That was supposed to be an exaggeration. I didn't expect that that would be anywhere close to the truth. Well, whatever. Even just 20 songs makes for a pretty burly album, so I shouldn't complain. I'll just click on the “buy” button, enter some credit card information, fail to understand how the money that I'm spending correlates to real world time spent working, and get on with my life. Eh? It says the connection has been reset, and the purchase couldn't be completed. And if I try it again? Same thing. I guess I'll check out the internet to see what they have to say about this problem. This guy says that his problem went away after he logged out of iTunes then logged back in, so I guess I'll try that. No, that didn't work. This says that switching my DNS settings solved this guys similar problem. For all I know, DNS stands for “Do Not Switch”, but if someone on the internet says it's a good idea, who am I to argue? And... nothing. Same error. Maybe my firewall is blocking all the grass and ice types from getting in? Let's see what happens if I disable that for a bit. Huh. That didn't work either. I'm kind of running out of ideas now. Maybe it'll work if I try switching this narrative from present tense back to past tense? But that didn't work either.

The remainder of this story will be told in first person omniscient.

The error message seemed to indicate that some kind of error was occurring with my network as the album was being downloaded, so I reasoned that it may have been the size of the album that was causing the error. To test this hypothesis, I tried downloading a song. To my surprise, and immediate regret, the download was successful, and I found myself in possession of a song I had already possessed.

Pictured: Immediate Regret

So individual songs were able to slip past the music embargo iTunes had placed on my computer, but what about albums? I didn't know if all albums would produce the same error, or if it was just the Pokemon soundtrack. And, being a scientist, I knew that there was only one way to test my hypothesis: by experiment. So I decided to try to buy a different album, and see if it would work. So, with as little consideration as possible, (consideration is the enemy of scientific endeavors) I decided to buy The Decemberists' newest album, The King is Dead, because, hey, why not? I mean, sure, I spent $10 on an album that I could have just listened to on Spotify for free, but... wait. Actually, that is a pretty good answer to the question “Why not?”.  But the real kicker was when I later found out that I could have bought the Bastion Soundtrack on iTunes for the same price as elsewhere, killing two birds with one stone.

Pictured: Delayed Regret

At this point, I had had it. It was time to bring out the big guns. If no one else on the Apple forums had asked about this problem,  I guess it was up to me to nut up and do the opposite of shut up. So I made my own little discussion about how I could download other songs and albums, but not the Pokemon X and Y soundtrack. And apparently this is a problem others have experienced, as 8 other people indicated that they had the same question. While I was waiting, I figured that I might as well listen to some of the music I just bought. But, of course, my hardships were not over yet. Whenever I tried to play about half of the songs, it would ask me to authorize my computer to play my iTunes music. After entering my credentials, it would tell me that my computer was already authorized, only to ask for authorization again if I tried to make like Sam and play it again.

And in the face of all of this, I kept circling back to one question: Why? Why is iTunes the top music merchant in the world if this is how their software works? It certainly isn't because of quality. As it turns out, when you buy music from iTunes, you don't actually get an MP3 file, and whatever it is that you get, it isn't compatible with anything other than iTunes, and converting it to a more widely usable file is expensive, inconvenient, or illegal. And the whole "authorization" thing I mentioned earlier. You can authorize 5 computers to play your iTunes music, and then your account is basically dead, and you can't play that music on any other computer, as far as I can tell. And for what benefit? Why do we, as a society, allow Apple's monopoly on music to persist? Is it just because we've come to associate digital music with iTunes, and are too lazy to try something else, like Amazon Music or Google Play? And I think it's a real shame, because iTunes has a vast library, with even more music than Spotify.

Pictured: Even more music

 And at this point, I was going to lecture to lecture on the evils of DRM, and how information wants to be free, and how I wish that I could support the people who made some music that I enjoy without the money going to an evil corporation that is an enemy of Liberty and Justice. But I just managed to download the Pokemon soundtrack, and I'm quite enjoying it, even if many of the best songs are above my clearance at the moment. So I guess you win this round, Apple. I'll save my jokes about how you're "rotten to the core" for another day.

And what of the end of our tale? How was it that that most cursed of days drew to a close? I listened to Hyadain and cried myself to sleep. And that, kids, is how you make a silver lining out of a mole hill.

Pictured: ADVANCED joke overuse

Pokemon X and Y: The Last Hurrah

Well, here we are. For the first, and hopefully last, time, I will be writing a no-holds-barred, full-speed-ahead, other-hyphenated-phrase review of a game. It should come as little surprise that the game in question is Pokemon X. If you've come here for a review of Pokemon Y, then I'm afraid you'll have to go elsewhere. I'm not part of that mess.


I suppose I might as well focus on the good things. Good thing number 1: I don't have to play it anymore. Witty jabs aside, It really wasn't that bad of a game. It was a Pokemon game, and it had all the good things that come with the territory: pockets, monsters, attempted xenocide, mass graves, you know, the usual. The music was pretty-top notch, as is to be expected from Gamefreak. The biking song was particularly memorable. Speaking of bikes, in this game, you can bike and skate around smoothly, uninhibited by the opressive squares that constrained us in the past. It's pretty nice. There's also a really neat sidequest at the end where Detective Looker learns you what it means to be a hardboiled man. He's a pretty cool guy. Easily my second favorite fictional character that looks like David Tennant.

The first being Barty Crouch, naturally.

Moving on from the good things, let us now speak of the actual Pokemon, and the battles between them, and the real substance of the game. There is no doubt in my mind that 6th gen introduced the least change to Pokemon of any Generation. Of primary concern is the number of new Pokemon. Up until 6th gen, each new generation added at least 100 new Pokemon to the mix. The number of new Pokemon introduced in Pokemon X and Y is 69, which is alarming for a number of reasons. First and foremost, hahaha 69 is a funny number. Second and fivemost, that is not enough Pokemon. Granted, even number generations have historically introduced fewer Pokemon than odd numbered generations, but the amount of new Pokemon with each new generation has generally been increasing. So why did Gamefreak reverse this trend? Well, because there are too damn many Pokemon. People have said it before, and I agree with them. We don't need 800 Pokemon. So, in a way, I get where Gamefreak is coming from when they decided to only make a few Pokemon, and then just make the game a smorgasbord of mostly Pokemon from previous generations. I guess my main problem isn't that there are so few new Pokemon, it's that there are so few new Pokemon that I don't actively hate.

I am the 99%.

This is Diggersby. His prehensile ear-arms (earms?) are well suited for digging, allowing him to burrow into the anger glands of your brain and play them like a fiddle. He is just one of many new Pokemon that I could accurately describe as "revolting". Another such pokemon is Slurpuff, who impossibly manages to live up to his disgusting name. When I first heard that there was a cotton candy Pokemon, I thought it was a fun joke on people who wouldn't shut up about how stupid an ice cream cone Pokemon was. But when I heard the name, and saw its form, I immediately knew that it was no joke.

Serious Business

Keeping these fellas company at the bottom of the barrel are Quilladin, which just looks like a fatter Chespin, Dedenne, which is Pikachu except it's a Fairy-type this time, and Klefki, who is a key ring. Now that I'm out of Pokemon to complain about, and I'm realizing that there actually aren't that many Pokemon that I hate, I guess I should talk about the good Pokemon. That instance of the word "Pokemon" might as well have been singular, because Aegislash is THE good Pokemon of 6th gen.

Aegislash is the first Ghost/Steel type Pokemon, a great type that would be even greater if Gamefreak hadn't nerfed the steel type, removing its resistance to dark and ghost, with the explicit intent of keeping Aegislash from being overpowered. As you can clearly see, it is cool as hell. When Aegislash first takes the field in battle, he keeps his sword sheathed, giving him incredible defense stats. Then, as soon as he attacks, he draws his blade, giving him incredible attacking stats. Then, if he uses a defensive move, like King's Shield, (a new, overpowered-seeming move that, as far as I can tell, is like Protect, but it also sharply decreases the Attack of anyone who hits him with a contact move.) he goes back to shield mode. Unfortunately, he's pretty slow either way, but this is mitigated by his potential to play mind games with his opponent. He can also use boosting moves to beef up his attack and/or speed stats while tanking hits in shield mode, then switch to blade mode and put his enemies to the sword when he's in blade mode. In addition to the possible competitive implications, it cannot be stressed enough that this Pokemon is cool as hell. And speaking of Pokemon who are cool as hell...

Exhibit A

Hawlucha is a hawk that is also a luchador. And that's it. The prosecution rests. Case closed. In the trial of Hawlucha for the crime of "Being the most baller Pokemon ever", we find the defendant guilty. Hawlucha also receives the dubious honor of being the only Pokemon to learn the only dual-type attack, Flying Press, which is simultaneously a Flying type move, a Fighting type move, and a not very good move, since you can't hit Rock or Steel types super effectively with it. Or Bugs, I guess.


If you look closely enough at Hawlucha's face, you'll notice that he has regular mouth under his beak. This seems to imply that his beak isn't a real beak, and is just for show, like part of a mask. Notice also that it has a physique similar to a humans, and that its wings don't really look like wings, but more like arms with feathery things coming out of them, like Charizard X. Hawlucha is also very small, only 2'07'' tall. Now, I'm not saying for sure that Hawlucha is actually a 3-fingered little person who dresses up like a Pokemon to beat the crap out of other Pokemon, but it gave me the idea that that could happen, and for that I am extremely thankful.

In terms of actual new things added to the game, there isn't too much to talk about. Shiny Pokemon were made considerably more common. This news put quite a damper on the lavish party that I had thrown in celebration of the shiny Tentacool that I caught on my second day of playing. There's now a Fairy-type, whose arbitrary-seeming type-effectiveness match-ups were the cause of much confusion and frustration. Riding Pokemon is a thing that people apparently wanted, because they didn't realize that it would be clunky and unenjoyable. The fact that they are stupid may also have been a contributing factor. Competitive worries aside, Mega Evolution is pretty useful if you want to use one of a small handful of Pokemon to wreck absolutely everything. Not that you'll necessarily need a mega Pokemon to do that. Just about everything has been made easier in this game. I don't think there was a single time in the story where I was in any kind of danger of losing a battle. The new and improved Exp. Share allows all of the Pokemon in your party to get experience, without any being taken from the active Pokemon. Breeding changes and Friend Safaris have made it much easier to get Pokemon with good IVs. Super Training let's even the most plebeian Casualry EV train their Pokemon. The aforementioned increase in the odds of getting a shiny Pokemon is another example of something made easier. There is, however, one thing that stands in stark defiance of the trend towards everything being easier: Hordes.


A horde is when you fight 5 wild Pokemon at the same time. Remember how annoying Zubats were? Now multiply that by 5. That's what a horde is. Because, make no mistake, there are no "normal" hordes. Every single horde will have something about it to make killing it even more annoying than it has any right being. Like paralysis. You better pray to the RNG gods that you aren't fully paralyzed. That goes double for confusion. You may be able to OHKO pokemon that are half your level, but what if they keep lowering your attack? Or, God forbid, your accuracy? And if they have Sturdy, then I hope you brought some reading material, because it's going to take you at least 10 turns to take down those assholes. And to top it all off, since the Pokemon are half your level, they barely even give any experience. Rideable Pokemon was another failed attempt to introduce something cool and new, which ended up just being clunky and unenjoyable.

Not bothering with any kind of transitions, I will now talk about gym leaders. Specifically: I don't really remember them. I think there was an electric gym leader named Clemont? He was a dorky kid who made gadgets and lived in the Eiffel Tower. His name has nothing to do with electricity, so I have no idea how he passed the Gym Leader test. The terrifying thing is that they're all like that. To the best of my knowledge, none of the gym leaders really had pun names, so I guess I'll have to wait another day for Ace Attorney to get my fix. In general, I found most of the characters to be rather forgettable, other than Looker, and one of the Elite Four members that made a particularly strong impression on me. Rather than a singular rival, you're given a whole posse of children that I really couldn't care less about. Though I did get them to call me "H Bomb" as my nickname, and they had some pretty great music, so I guess that's a plus. I also found the main villain to be rather compelling, though I seem to be the only one who thinks so. He wasn't as sympathetic as N, or as deplorable as Ghetsis, but I think he managed to make the story with Team Flare a bit more interesting than some in the past have been.

I feel that I would be remiss if I were to talk about this game and fail to mention how unbelievably French it is. It is no secret that the Kalos region is based on the Fantasy Kingdom of France, similar to how Unova was based on our very own United States. But while the US's influence on Unova was mostly restricted to the existence of a huge, NYC-esque city replete with towering skyscrapers, every bit of Kalos is inundated with French culture. The capital, Lumiose City, is literally Paris. They have a freaking Eiffel Tower, the place is littered with cafes, there's a fancy art museum, everyone has poodles, and people even ride goats as their primary method of getting around. Routes, plazas, and towns are commonly given French names. They even have Stonehenge, complete with an ominous Underhenge.

All in all, if you were considering buying this game, you've probably bought it already. If you were hesitant enough about buying it to wait a week, then perhaps you're better off not playing it. Pokemon is often panned for its inability to keep things fresh and new, and it's especially noticeable in this generation, where there really isn't much to keep the games fresh. At the end of the day, though, it was still a Pokemon game, and I still had fun, even if it wasn't as much as I had hoped. I refuse to give it any kind of quantitative score or grade, such is the extent of my rugged individuality.

Now that that's out of the way, I thought that I might as well share some of the best nicknames that I gave some of my Pokemon. I nicknamed all of them, but I won't share all of them, because I caught more than 100 Pokemon over the course of this game, and so many of them were not given good nicknames. I will also include a small blurb about why I chose the name, or what it means, or something. So, over the course of Pokemon X, I had:

A Greninja named "Slippy Toad". It is a frog, you see.

A Honedge named "Edgeworth". This one was actually my sister's idea. I've never been more proud.

A Talonflame named "Guillotine". I'm actually rather proud of this one. It's a reference to my assertion, earlier on this blog, that execution by Talonflame is the most humane form of execution. Also, it's French.

A Litleo named "Burnin' Leo". I'm sure this is hilarious to those of you familiar with archaic Kirby Mini-bosses.

A Zigzagoon named "Class". Originally, it was supposed to be named "class C0", an esoteric math joke referring to how his stripes are not differentiable. But C0 was censored for some reason, and this is what I ended up with.

A Weedle named "420 hes bi". Rather than try to explain this myself, I'll just leave this here.

A Kecleon named "TheGreatLeon". Sadly, he never dogfought with my Greninja.

An Oddish named "Evenish". I am a weak man.

A Skiddo NOT named "Gogoatse". Evidently, Gamefreak is wise to my tricks. Instead, its name is "Gogrohst", because I don't even know how to spell made up words.

A Spoink named "CaptainHooke". Because jokes about Hooke's Law and springs never go out of fashion.

A Hariyama named "E. Honda". 'nuff said

A Hawlucha named "El Fuerte". I traded this one to my friend. Unfortunately, I did not name any other Pokemon after Street Fighters.

A Streetcar named "Desire". Hahaha jokes.

A Mime Jr. named "Grady Jr.", and a Mr. Mime named "Grady Sr." This is really funny if you remember the names of all the people in Bastion.

A Miltank named "Teatmeat". One of the less pleasant combinations of words I've ever come up with.

An Electrode named "Elecchode". Easily the dirtiest thing I got past the censor.

A Magneton named "Bohr", because there is a real life physical constant called "Bohr's Magneton". This is because Physics is radical.

A Durant named "DurantDurant". Like those music guys

An Aipom named "Raipom". Jesus, whose idea was this?

A Minccino named "Crimson Chin". Because he's a Chinchilla

A Psyduck named "Diesuck". I'm actually surprised I was able to get away with this.

A Plusle named "Anode". I actually got this from a Wonder Trade, and I give the guy an A for effort, but the Anode is actually the negative one.

A Solosis named "Felix Walken", because I'd love to see you figure out why.

I hope that you enjoyed that as much as I loathed not being able to proceed until I gave the 4th new Pokemon on this route some stupid name that I'd just be ashamed of later. Seriously, there are a lot of damn Pokemon in this game.

X, Y, and Everything in Between

I've been giving a lot of consideration to X and Y recently, as I'm sure many of you have. And, I don't mean to brag, but I am something of an expert on these matters, and I totally do mean to brag. Since I'm such a respected authority of the field, I'm sure that many have been waiting to hear what I have to say. Well, fear not, my flock, for it is now by my immeasurable grace that you shall find yourself unnerved by how much I sound like some kind of creepy cultist. And so, without further ado, I will now start talking about math. Because, you know, variables.

Really? Sorry, doesn't ring any bells

But before that, I'd like to talk about arithmetic. Now, you may be wondering why I just slyly implied that arithmetic isn't math. It's because I don't believe that arithmetic is math. Well, not Real math, anyway. Saying that arithmetic is real math is like saying that singing "Head, Shoulders, Knees,  and Toes" is practicing medicine, or getting in a playground argument is practicing law, or that I ever practice the clarinet: Hilarious. And yet, despite how trivial and elementary arithmetic is, people still manage to mess it up, and the only proper response is to get really angry and tell everyone how wrong they are. Like so:

It's about to get pretty mad in here. Viewer discretion is advised.

 Yes, of course, I'm talking about one of these stupid goddamn PEMDAS things that you always see on Facebook. When I saw this, my first instinct as a math major was find some clever math way to turn this into something it clearly wasn't meant to be. (Well, 3x3 is clearly 0, because any vector crossed with itself is 0, HAHAHAHAHA I know things you don't) My second instinct, as an internet man, was to look at the comments, and feast on the bountiful harvest of rage laid out before me. Naturally, there were plenty of people getting 18, because the American education system has failed them, Big Government, Idiocracy, ect. Some even had the audacity strain the bonds of their shackles of ignorance, and accuse us, the Knights of the Twelve, of incorrectness. And while the foolishness of a fool too foolish to realize his own foolishness is sad indeed, it is no cause for mourning. Neither grief nor rage can bring them to the light, so steeped their souls are in darkness. They reside in a place from which there can be no return. The Lost Zone, I guess.



But it is not these, who have forgotten that which has been taught to them, who have me dismayed. It is those who remember the vile lies they have been taught, striking out against the light of truth, and thinking themselves agents of justice for it. It is The Cult of Six who are a truly pitiable lot. They are the fundamentalists of the Church of PEMDAS, taking its word for how it is stated, rather than for how it is meant.



PEMDAS, for those of you who have probably been very confused for a while now, is a mnemonic for remembering the order in which mathematical operations occur in a mathematical expression. It stands for Parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction. So if you have some mathematical expresion, operations in parentheses are evaluated first, then exponents, then instances of multiplication and division, then instances of addition and subtraction. Some common mnemonics for PEMDAS are “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally” (The boring one that everyone knows), “People Expect More Drugs And Sex” (Randall Munroe, of XKCD fame), and “Passing Egregiously Makes Dunking Awesomely Satisfying” (A Havoc Mantis Original).



So if, for example, you have the expression 2*(9+1)-3^2+20/5, you would first do the addition in the parentheses to get 2*10-3^2+20/5. Then, square the 3 to get 2*10-9+20/5. Perform multiplication and division to get 20-9+4. And from there, the answer is clear as day, right? Of course! The answer, as can be clearly seen, is 7. Because in PEMDAS, subtraction comes after addition, so you add to get 20-13, which is 7.

Remember this? This is what you should look like right now.

If you are nodding your head in agreement, or thinking to yourself, "Well, gee-wiz, that Havoc sure is correct. Only a devastatingly witty and powerfully sexy person would be able to type something so correct at 3:30 in the morning." then I am terribly sorry to inform you that you are wrong. Well, not about the part where you lavished me with compliments, but the part where I was right. You see, I was actually pretending to be wrong. The real answer is 15. Also, the cameras that you use to keep constant surveillance on me must never have sprung forward, because it's actually 4:30. It's no big deal, since Daylight Savings Time changes back pretty soon, but I just thought I'd let you know.


I guess the point that I'm trying to get at is that in PEMDAS, addition and subtraction happen at the same time. There are those who have been deceived, and would let you be deceived, given the chance. They say that subtraction happens afterwards, and I have taken it upon myself to tell them that they are wrong, and endeavor to guide them to the path of righteousness. It's over there, guys.

The path of righteousness is your weapon in the zombie apocalypse. How screwed are you?

If it helps, just remember that subtracting a number is the same as adding that number times -1. The multiplication goes before the addition, and then you add the negative number the same way as you add any other number, going left to right. Division can be thought of the same way, as multiplying a number that is taken to the power of -1. Are we all on the same page here? Can I stop bitching about this? Awesome.

Well, remember when I said that I was going to talk about math, but first I'd talk about arithmetic? Well I only said that so I could make those jokes, because I don't think there's any actual math I can talk about without talking over everyone's heads, while simultaneously being funny or enjoyable in any way. Unless you want to play cross-product tic-tac-toe? (You do not want to play cross-product tic-tac-toe)

Having exhausted math, I suppose I'll see if I can undash your hopes and talk about Pokemon, as I kind of promised in the beginning. I don't really want to spoil too many things, for my readers or myself, so I'll avoid talking about too many Pokemon, but there are some issues that need to be addressed.

"Issue" may be a bit of an understatement

Now, for those of you who aren't already in the know, would you care to guess what this thing is? Well, yes, I agree that it is an "abomination", but I was hoping for something a little more specific. An alien? Not quite. The shattered fragment of an orphan's forgotten childhood? Almost. I'll give you its name: Espurr. That's right, this thing is supposed to be a cat. The real problem with this Pokemon is its waste of one of the greatest names in Pokemon, made only better by how much it sounds like something out of Virtue's Last Reward, what with its abundance of cat puns, but no other reason, because of spoilers. I cannot identify a single trait of its appearance that indicates that it is a cat. I'm told that apparently its ears have something to do with it? What about the fact that it clearly seems to have 6 legs? Or its eyes, which are more unbalanced than psychic type in 1st gen? Or its rippling chest hair, reminiscent of a friend I've decided to refer to as "Baja Blast"? Perhaps I should just move on to the next Pokemon.

When I said that I was typing at 4:30 in the morning, this was the reason I couldn't sleep.

This Pokemon is the dusk that draws the sanity of mortal men to its end. It is beautiful in Its terror, and It is terrible in Its beauty. It makes Its home outside the scope of humanity, far removed from that which has been crafted by human hands, and far removed from that which has been imagined by human minds. It is removed from the trappings of human description. It labors not for good or evil, for order or chaos, for hope or despair. Its song is sung in languages that cannot be understood. That must not be understood. To gaze upon It is to feel that a piece of you has gone missing, yet know that it was not taken. This void within you has existed since the beginning. It has only made you Aware. It is a perfect contradiction, embodying that which It is not, giving form to what could never be. It is the weight that must exist to counterbalance the laws of an ordered universe. It is the knower of all that cannot be known. It is that which existed Before, and that which will exist After. It is too fearsome to be feared, too lovely to be loved, and too powerful to be stopped. It hates not, it loves not, it feels not, it does not. It is. 

Gal Bursten it.

I Guess This is a Gaming Blog Now

What's something you can say about your homework, but not your girlfriend?



"Is this due tomorrow?"



Well, that sure was a thing that I said during improv. Some rejected ideas were "I have no idea what the hell this all about" and "This thing exists in three dimensions." It was the idea of my secondary content manager to open up with that. She also wanted me to talk about dragons, so there you go. It's good stuff. On a totally unrelated note, I have ensnared a new content manager. Hopefully she'll give me something to talk about soon, because I'm just about out of material. Also, just in case you're wondering why all of my content managers are female, It's because my content managers are actually just all the females I know. And all the females I know, I met by telling them empty promises of how I'd make them an internet star. Like, you know those really shady people who lure young girls with promises of making it big in Hollywood? That's what I'm like.

Well, as it turns out, you can't just give someone a job without them knowing it, and make them do it. Something about a tall guy in a stovepipe hat. So disregard all those things I just said. Except for the Havoc Mantis Approved Method for Picking Up Chicks®. That's canon. It might also be cannon, but don't tell them that.

60% of the time, it works every time

Usually, when I blog a post, I write it about whatever I've been doing recently. The problem with this is that all I've been doing recently is video games and college stuff, and I don't particularly care to write about either of those. Instead, I guess I am opting to talk about why I will not talk about those things. The games I've been playing recently are Shin Megami Tensei IV and Fire Emblem Awakening. Trying to describe Shin Megami Tensei IV without spoiling anything would be akin to trying to navigate a minefield while wearing clown shoes. Except in this analogy, the mines are spoilers, and the clown shoes are a metaphor for my painful ineptitude at clearly expressing ideas (e.g. this analogy). Wikipedia beautifully demonstrates this with its use of the word "seemingly". Protip: If you say that something is "seemingly" something else, that means that it is actually not something else. For example: "Wikipedia is seemingly a trustworthy source of information where you can learn about things without spoilers, as long as you don't look too close at the plot summary." As far as Fire Emblem goes, I've done that before, and it wasn't pretty. Then again, someone who may or may not have been Albert Einstein said that "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." Maybe if I try again, things will be different. And that's why I keep asking people to tell me things to write about.

Actually, screw it. Spoilers be damned. I'm going to say a few things about SMT IV. First of all, it's pretty damn good. If you're a fan of JRPGs, I recommend that you check it out. Playing the first three is not necessary, (or, indeed, even legal in the US, as no official English translation has been released for the first two) but I think that playing the first one before playing IV enhanced my experience in a number of ways. If you've read this far, and you're still wondering what the hell Shin Megami Tensei even is, allow me to back up and explain. Basically, it is an RPG series with a billion spin-off series, (including, most notably, Persona) and the most prevalent thing they all have in common is demons. In Shin Megami Tensei, you fight, summon, converse with, fuse, and ogle demons. In SMT IV, for example, there are over 400 demons, and almost every one is based on some monster, god, hero, or other being from real world mythology. It is, in essence, Mythology porn.

Perhaps in more ways than one

You know Grendel, the monster that Beowulf slays? He's in there. Kicked the shit out of me when I first met him. Remember The Lady of the Lake, the "watery tart" who gave Excalibur to King Arthur, formally abolishing democracy in England? What about the three fates of Greek Mythology, who can be fused together into the Norse Goddess of Mythology, because why the hell not? And if you've ever wanted to memorize the 9 orders of angels of Judeo-Christian Lore, then I think this game could certainly help you with that. What's that, you ask? Christian elements are included as well? Well, I don't want to get into too many spoilers, but I'll just say that I'd really like to know what would happen if you got one of those religious types who decry Harry Potter for promoting witchcraft, and got them to play this game. And, as an aside, playing this game while taking a class in Theology is not advised. Unless you are literally playing in the middle of lecture. That is a USDA choice idea.

The United States Department of Agriculture is in no way affiliated with this asshole.

Well, now I've exhausted everything to say about that, but I'm not quite confident in how long this post is, so I'll talk about what it's like to be in college. Now, while it is true that I was in college last year, Jesus Christ this year is so much more college than last year. It probably has something to do with the fact that I'm taking real classes this year. Everyone always rolled their eyes at me when I implied that Calc I, Calc II, and Engineering Physics I aren't "real classes", but they're actually pretty easy when you've learned all the stuff before, even if you aren't a prodigy. But things ain't the same this year. It probably doesn't help that both my Calculus III and Principles of Math classes are taught by the same professor, whom I'll call “Dr. Marx” for the sake of anonymity, because he's the final boss of Math. (Everyone here's played Kirby Super Star, right?) He's a great teacher, but when he does math, he does it hardcore, and not many can keep up. Whenever he asks the class a question, it results in more awkward silences than a Doctor Who convention for the socially disadvantaged. Though I doubt Dr. Marx would approve of such a redundant statement. I also have a Physics professor who is not very good at explaining things, and I'm not very good at learning things from books, and everyone in my class has even less of an idea of what's going on than I do. The professor is also a woman, which I am mentioning despite the fact that it is in no way humorous or relevant. Which, looking back, could probably describe a lot of this post.

'tisn't The Season

Well, it's no longer summer, which means that school is starting back up. As a natural consequence, I no longer get any sleep. And from this, we can infer that I'll start blogging again, because only sleep deprivation can make up for the sense of humor that I seem to have left in my other pants. Now, I know that just about every other post contains an apology for how long it's been since my last post, but this marks the end of the longest hiatus this blog has ever been on, so I felt the occasion deserved a special mention.

As you can clearly see from the fact that I've been sitting here for roughly 20 minutes without typing anything, on my third attempt to write a post since the last one I published, I have ceased to be funny. Or rather, I have ceased to be funny on this blog. I assure you, this never happens in any other facet of my life. I'm still just as capable of hellishly clever Facebook comments as I always have been. My internet friends are routinely astounded by my ability to amuse them by mentioning things they know about. I recently performed improvisational comedy so laudably that I was paid a dollar to take my shirt off. That's how you know they like it.

Yeah, I tried to write two other posts previous to this, but didn't finish them because they were more boring than an asteroid mining station. Because there is no book funnier than a thesaurus. The first one was basically just humorlessly describing a bunch of stuff I've done recently. (Did you know that there's now a second Machine of Death? I sure did!) I also mentioned the special $30 credit you get from the Nintendo eShop if you register both Fire Emblem Awakening and Shin Megami Tensei IV. In fact, I may need to sell a copy of SMT IV soon. It's a pretty cool game. And by cool, I mean it's not hot. And by hot, I mean stolen. Which it is not.

The other post was about mega Pokemon, but that just kind of devolved into me bitching about competitive stuff. Mega Pokemon, in case you were lucky enough to not know, are a new aspect of Pokemon that's halfway between a new form and a proper evolution. "Mewthree", whom I wrote about earlier, turned out to be a Mega Evolution of Mewtwo. A few others have been announced, like Mega Lucario, Mega Blaziken, Mega Ampharos, and some others. Also, Mega Kangaskahn, who, I shit you not, is just regular Kangaskahn, except the baby is outside the pouch. Fighting alongside the mother. It takes a special amount of effort to combine child abuse and animal abuse into a new game mechanic, but it's an effort that Game Freak thought was worth it. Speaking of effort, it sounds like there's finally going to be an in-game explanation of effort values. You can call me Dean Kamen, from the way I'm making segues (He's the inventor of the segway, to save you a trip to Google, and he died by falling off of a cliff on his own invention, in a way that is totally not funny or being made fun of by me.) Actually, I don't really have anything else to say about that, so I guess that was kind of a segue to nowhere. Ahem.

I think it's cute that people hope that Mega Ampharos will finally make him competitively viable, because he definitely won't be. The funny thing about Mega Pokemon is that you can only have one on a team at a time. Which means that Mega Ampharos will have to compete with far superior Pokemon for a single team slot. Exacerbating this problem is the fact that, while all the other Mega Pokemon revealed thus far were given great abilities like Speed Boost, Adaptability, Huge Power, and Magic Bounce, Ampharos was given Mold Breaker, which will help him break through the Lightningrod Seakings that no doubt terrorize the NU tier. Add to that the fact that he looks exactly like a normal Ampharos, but with romance novel hair, and I just don't like him.

Look at that frown. Not even he likes his hair.

Also, he's a dragon type, because, you know, why the hell not? Actually, that's not a rhetorical question, because it's one I'm about to answer: Because he used to be a sheep. Sheep do not turn into dragons. That is precisely why the hell not. In fact, I'm going to put out a bounty of sorts. If anyone can satisfactorily explain why Ampharos is a dragon, I'll give you some kind of reward. I'm going to go right ahead and say that the fact that his Japanese name translates to "Thunder Dragon" is not satisfactory. I'm willing to wager that they decided to name him that because he was a dragon. It seems unlikely that they decided to name it "dragon", then thought "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if this thing were like, a dragon?" Also, Magikarp gets a free pass for turning into a dragon, because carp do turn into dragons in China, so it's all cool.

To summarize, Mega Evolutions made me pretty mad. 

This isn't your average, everyday mad. This is... butt mad.

Speaking of butts, did you know that Miley Cyrus has one of those? No one on the internet believed it until fairly recently, but there is now documented, empirical evidence to support this theory. I'm sure you're all thrilled to know this.



I think that time machines might be indelibly linked with telephones. Why do I think this? Well, there's the phone box time machine on my T-shirt that's being reflected onto my laptop screen as I type this, for one. Furthermore, of the 4 shows I can think of that heavily involve time travel, 3 have phones with special temporal abilities. Doctor Who is the most obvious one, and all three of the others are anime. Steins;Gate is about a mad scientist who somehow invents a cell phone that sends texts back in time, and Mirai Nikki (Future Diary) is about a bunch of people with diaries (Most of them are cell phones) that predict the future. They all have to kill each other. It's also about a girl who stalks the main character and attempts to kill his friends. The internet, and at least one person in real, actual life, finds this incredibly hot, for some reason. As for the anime with time travel that doesn't involve phones, it's kind of a spoiler that it involves time travel at all, so I won't name it. But I'll give you a hint: Seriously, I ain't spoiling it.



I actually learned an interesting thing on my first day of Theology, which is that, in Man of Steel, Superman is 33 years old. You know who else was 33 years old? That's right! The pope. Right up until the moment he turned 34 years old. But the real theological revelation came in Physics class, when I realized that Carbon-12, the most abundant isotope of the most important atom in organic, terrestrial life, has 6 protons, 6 neutrons, and 6 electrons. That's right. You didn't need the Anti-Christ. The Number of the Beast was inside you all along!



And that's all I've got for you today, folks. I've withdrawn everything from my savings account at the word bank, so I must now depart, lest I be hounded by bookies who want to break my legs.

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.

Steamy Birthday Surprise

If you came here looking for disappointment, prepare to be disappointed. Despite my expectations to the contrary, it seems that I have kept my promise to update today. Rather than going through the hassle of half-assing this post on my birthday, (It's the only fraction of assing that I'm capable of) I have opted to first write a draft of it on the day before posting with pencil and paper, like some kind of barbarian. The reason for this primordial technology is that I am currently in a car, on a road trip from “Sick Ruckus” to “Good Morning”, and due to a nasty combination of poor planning on my part and short laptop battery life, I have nothing better to do than scrawl my ramblings in layered carbon like some kind of damn, dirty ape.

I suppose a title like that warrants some kind of explanation. You see, when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, sometimes the only adequate method of expressing their love involves razors, lasers, tazers, or some combination of the-- huh? Oh, right. It probably warrants a relevant explanation. You see, for the longest time, I never used Steam. I didn't know how dates work, so I couldn't get my debit card to work, no matter how much I wiped it on my jeans. And perhaps I was a better man for not using Steam. I mean, just a scant few days ago I read a Cracked article about how the author would just buy games on Steam, despite knowing he would hardly play them. Of course, I'd never have to worry about something like that. What kind of chump buys things just for the sake of buying them? (SPOILER ALERT: It's me. It is a Havoc Mantis Type Chump©. But I also might have accepted “Girl type chump”, depending on how misogynistic the audience is that night.)

So, let me tell you about a Type Havocmantis Chump (Abbreviated to “THC” from here on out). As you may know, Steam's summer sale started on the 11^th, and it is certifiably insane. No jury would convict this sale. Almost everything in their entire library of games (a library dwarfed only by Alexandria's) is at least 50% off. In addition, daily sales and 8 hour flash sales cut prices even deeper.

So here we are, two days in, and I've bought 8 games for a princely sum of about $18. The first game I bought, the one domino set off the sinister chain reaction that toppled my psyche, was Recettear: An Item Shop's tale. My friend always seemed like he was having all kinds of fun with it, and he said it was on sale, so I decided to check it out. Near as I can tell, it's an RPG, except instead of being an adventurer, it tells the story of the person behind the counter: The owner of those item shops that heroes love to frequent. I think there might also be adventures to commit, because shopkeepers have to get their wares somehow, and the world isn't ready for a game about graverobbing (but I'm willing to wait). The plot seems fairly similar to Animal Crossing, where buying a place saddles you with an enormous debt that you must spend the game paying off, except that this time, [FUTURE ME HAS DECIDED AGAINST MAKING THE JOKE THAT USED TO BE HERE]

There was an image to go with the joke, but I deleted it. I still need an image to break up the paragraphs, though.

EDIT: Oh man. This game, you guys. It may not be on sale as hard as it used to be, but at $8, it's still a steal. This game combines all the cuteness of the word "yayifications" with all the intensity and fun of paying the rent on time. If this sounds at all like a game you'd like to play, I'd highly recommend it. It describes drinking alcohol as being "Not entirely dissimilar to attempting to drink a tree". It is fun times on all fronts.

And all of that for just 5 bucks. Next, I bought a pair of games I've never heard of. Why? Because they were just $0.50. For the pair. Just to really make sure that everyone is pickin' up what I'm puttin' out: I purchased two games, and it cost me less than a single chicken wing from Buffalo Wild wings. A chicken wing that is also on sale, mind you. To top it off, they're adventure games, (In the vein of 999, Ace Attorney, and everything else I've been playing of late) self-described as being “like books, only good”. The names of the games are “Ben there, Dan that” and “Time Gentlemen, Please!” Puns? Gentlemen? Time Travel? Niceties? Sign me up!

After that, it was kind of a haze, so I'm not sure what order everything else came in. All I know is that once the dust cleared, I found myself owning Scribblenauts Unlimited, Bastion, Cave Story+, Hotline Miami, and an as-of-yet unquenched thirst for more games. Of course, no matter how cheap these games might be now, they'll end up costing a pretty penny when I have to buy a computer that can actually play them.

If you intend to get in on this action, here are some tips from a man who has no business giving advice: First off, set aside a certain amount of money that you intent to spend on the summer sale, (Ends June 22^nd!) and when that money runs out, stop buying games. This should prevent you from snowballing out of control with your spending and waking up in a ditch to find that your molars have been sold on the black market. Unless that kind of stuff happens to you regardless of your money situation, in which case I'm afraid I can't help you.

On top of that, it pays to be patient. The 10 day blanket sale is punctuated by shorter, more precise sales that offer even greater savings. By holding off on jumping a game you want right out of the gate, you might be able to catch it during a daily or flash sale, and save even more money, which you can then spend on even more games.

And I think that's about all I have to say about my newfound addiction. But before I go, I'd just like to give a big birthday shout-out to Patrick Stewart, Harrison Ford, and some guy named Hunter whose last name I don't remember, but I remember he was born on the same day as me. Have a good one, guys!

Man. All of these paragraphs seemed a lot longer when they were written out in graphite. And to lengthen this one just the tiniest bit, I'll mention that this is the 42^nd post on this blog, and I'm sure you guys all know what that means.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to spend the rest of this car ride breeding Shroomish and having fun. And I'm all out of fun.