I am not kidding – this movie is about killer yogurt. But I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s get to the movie. Much like every other movie about deadly dessert, this movie starts in a mine. I have no idea what mine this is, or what they mine for because they don’t tell us and they’re wearing absolutely no protective gear, except a flashlight. That’s smart mining. Nameless old man miner enters and notices that in the corner of the mine is a bubbling white substance oozing from the floor. It looks like it’s a little thicker than paint, but less thick than spackle. Actually, it’s the consistency of feces. White bubbly feces. Anyway, old man miner (who coincidentally does have a name, it’s Harry) does exactly what I would do in this situation — he reaches down and puts his hands in it, and he eats it.

Wait what? Wow, I’m 23 seconds into this movie, and already I can tell that I’m going to need to assume that this whole movie is based in a world of retarded people. Who else would just find something coming out of the ground and eat it? That’s right. The retarded. So we’re in a mine that is run by retarded people, and I just watched a man eat white diarrhea coming from the floor. This movie was a good choice. Apparently, so was Harry’s decision to eat this paste — because it’s “good” and sweet. Harry and his team of miners quickly decide that the best plan of action is to call poison control and then to figure out what this goo is and make sure that nobody else eats it or anything until it’s properly tested. The end. Well… that’s what they should have done. Of course, that doesn’t happen, and instead they decide it’s a good idea to package it up and sell it, since it’s obviously totally normal to eat random chemical runoff.

And their new product, cleverly named “The Stuff”, is quite the hit. It begins filling store shelves, refrigerators, even buying out Chocolate Chip Charlie’s West Coast business line. I didn’t even make that last part up, and it will be of some importance later, so file that away in the “why am I reading this” drawer for now. Naturally, a business taking off from startup to billion dollar business has some unwanted attention, and they have it in the form of a conglomerate of businessmen who are concerned about their own dessert items being forgotten (and more importantly not purchased). That’s right, “Big Ice Cream” is worried, and as such they hire an ex-FBI agent named Mo Rutherford to figure out what The Stuff actually is so that they can copy it. Mo isn’t his real name – people call him “Mo” because every time he gets money, he wants mo’. He actually says this, and I actually threw up in my mouth. His actual first name is David, and he is probably the worst actor in this movie, and that’s saying something since it’s about an evil food item.

“Just can't get enough … of the Stuff!”

Other than ice cream millionaires, only two other people are concerned about this mystery paste that nobody seems to know anything about. In great 80s movie tradition, one of them is a kid. Kids always ruin the best plans, just ask any Scooby Doo villain or anyone who’s heard Chris Hansen ask them to sit down for a minute. This kid is Jason (no idea what his last name is), and he wakes up one night to get a snack and catches the family tub of the Stuff crawling in the fridge. From that point on he’s making it a point to refuse to eat it, and tell anyone who will listen about how the Stuff is terrible and moves around all by itself. Of course, nobody believes him, not the least his own family, and he spends the next few times he’s on screen making everyone around him really annoyed and pretty much spilling the sourest of creams all over the place. I am far too proud of that last sentence.

Mo Rutherford, on the other hand, has been busy working on discovering the secrets of the Stuff in what appears to be a high school chemistry lab. After giving up on figuring out the formula for The Stuff using “science”, Mo decides the best way to get information on The Stuff is to try and convince the woman behind the advertising campaign to somehow give him access to the company. Her claim to fame is that she picked out the name of the product, you know… the one that is officially named The Stuff. Then again, this movie is populated by miners that eat unknown discharge and people who buy carts and carts of dessert at the store, so she probably is a genius here. Mo finds this advertising exec, Nicole Kendall, and cleverly gets her to talk to him by lying to her, telling her that he wants to buy out her whole agency and put her in charge. Nicole responds in the way you would assume – she and Mo go back to her hotel room to have sex and room service dinner. Then this plot ends abruptly, never to be referenced again. Seriously, from here on out somehow Nicole and Mo are working together and it’s never really explained why.

Mo next goes to interview the only person still available that was part of the original FDA testing and approval of The Stuff, Mr. Vickers, because apparently the rest of the people involved in the original testing have either left the country or deceased. During the whole interview Vicker’s dog, a large black Doberman looking thing, keeps barking and scaring Vickers– probably because Vickers admits he feeds his dog The Stuff instead of dog food. The only thing of value that Mo gets from this interview is that The Stuff was tested in a little town in Virginia, and some copies of some initial lab reports. Immediately after Mo leaves, Vickers’ dog goes apeshit because they are all out of Stuff. He attacks Vickers, unplugs the phone line while Vickers is trying to call 911, begins violently shaking, and white goo erupts from his mouth.

Mo now drives to Stater, Virginia where the stuff was previously tested. I’m not 100% sure that is the name of the town since there is no Stater in Virginia, but does it really matter? Stater, VA is a run-down town with nothing but a working gas station, a post office, and a bunch of abandoned houses. While looking around for any sign of … whatever Mo thinks he’s going to find here, Mo runs into the second person that seems to think something is up with The Stuff – dessert mogul Chocolate Chip Charlie himself., played by Garrett Morris from the first few seasons of Saturday Night Live. I only mention this because I didn’t see Garrett Morris much after SNL, unlike Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, or Dan Ackroyd. No – it appears Garrett’s agents weren’t very good, because instead of bustin’ ghosts he’s been stuck fighting killer snot.

Remember that earlier I mentioned that the Stuff people bought out Charlie’s west coast business? Well, that’s not quite how it worked out. Charlie is in Stater because his family sold him out of his own business to the Stuff people and then ran off to Stater to hide from him. The address he has for his family was actually the address for the post office, so Mo and Charlie head over there to see if they can get any more information on what happened to the residents of this town. The clerk at the office is less than helpful, but by looking at the outgoing mail, Mo and Charlie find out that almost everyone in Stater has relocated to the same address in Midland, GA. Charlie confronts the clerk about it, and the clerk responds by excusing himself to the back room and vomiting white slime all over himself.

Paint has never looked so horrifying.

Charlie and Mo get concerned when they hear gurgling sounds and realize they’ve been sitting in the post office for way too long, and they break the door down to find the postal worker laying dead on the floor with his mouth open wide enough to insert a softball. Then out of nowhere they are attacked by a group of men at some sort of industrial dockyard. I don’t know how they got to a dockyard. A minute ago we were in a post office in a small town with no sign of water around mid day, and now here we are at night fighting people in a dockyard. This is not the only weird break in continuity, but it’s probably the most glaring. I’m sure if more than 7 people saw this movie, there would be some amazing directors cut or something with all the scenes added back in which would make a lot of this movie make more sense, but for now, we’ll all assume that this is a mystical teleporting post office of the future. Charlie and Mo run from the men, stopping to literally punch a hole in a guy’s face, and make their escape to a little metal rowboat which somehow takes them to a diner.

I am sorry if that last paragraph is unintelligible, but it’s pretty much exactly what happens in order. I had to watch this movie a few times just to figure out why Mo was going to each place he went to. You wouldn’t believe how unreadable this would have been if I didn’t. Anyway, Mo and Charlie decide to split up, with Charlie heading to find Agent Frank Herbert of the FBI because Mo thinks he will help. Mo heads out to Midland, GA to see where the people of Stater, VA have packed up and moved to. We won’t see Charlie again for quite a while, so instead we follow Mo over to Midland.

Actually, Mo makes a stop at the Stuff headquarters to talk to some sort of President of Marketing or something. This begs the question – if Mo knew where to get a hold of the corporate branch of The Stuff, why did we just go through the last 30 minutes of wandering? After a completely unimportant conversation with the Prez, Mo goes back to the high school lab and finds out about Jason – the kid who hates the Stuff. He finds this out because Jason getting arrested at the grocery store for causing a scene is somehow front page news on a newspaper.

Worst newspaper ever. I guess Batboy had the day off?

Speaking of Jason, we haven’t seen him in about 20 minutes – wonder what he’s been up to? Well, he’s been grounded by his parents for throwing The Stuff at the supermarket and generally being an annoying douche to everyone he meets, so Jason gets to spend a long time in his room. His family has gone on an All-Stuff diet, and they are acting like they live on a commercial. Actually saying stuff like, “Hey son, did you know that the Stuff is good – and good for you! [big smile].” His parents force him to stay in his room until he eats a pint of Stuff. What does Jason do? He throws the Stuff in the toilet and proceeds to eat a pint of shaving cream in front of his family to prove he’s eating it. Now, he was told to stay upstairs until he ate it all, so he could have just thrown it out, waited like 10 minutes, and then come back downstairs with the empty container. That’s what I would have done. Instead, by bringing down fake Stuff, he gets caught when he gags on shaving cream and drops the Stuff, leaving the container sitting around for his father to eat some. Real smart, Jason. You douche.

Jason is then chased around by his family, and Mo shows up just in time to pick him up. Jason has never met Mo, and Mo is a guy in a trench coat in an unmarked car. So Jason gets in the car, which is always a good thing to teach your kids. I would also like to point out that I went to IMDB to get some of the character names for this movie, and one of the commenters on there said that this movie made him eat shaving cream, just to see what it tastes like. This person also gave the movie like 9/10. This person was probably a mongoloid.

Mo and Jason meet up with Nicole the ad exec and they fly out to Midland to the Stuff factory for a tour. Nicole, being the creative force behind the Stuff’s marketing is able to get this tour, so I suppose that is why Mo hunted her down to begin with. It’s taken over 45 minutes, but something actually makes sense in this movie. Well done. While Mo and Nicole go through the most boring tour I’ve ever seen, Jason manages to find a nearby abandoned mine area–except this mine isn’t abandoned (DUN DUN DUN!!!!!!!). After hiding in an empty tanker truck, Jason is taken off to who knows where and Mo and Nicole act as if Jason was never around and rent a motel room. Mo makes no point of looking for Jason, or even saying something out loud like “a minute ago there was a 12 year old boy with us… man, I sure could use a handjob!” Instead, Mo and Nicole just go off to hump all night at the Starlight Motel and Jason is left to his own devices.

However, Mo and Nicole don’t get a good night of sleep for other reasons – Mo is attacked as he is trying to sleep by Stuff oozing out of his pillow and covering his face so he can’t breathe. Nicole wakes up to find Mo flopping around on the ground ripping at his face, so she does the most reasonable thing you can do. She throws alcohol on his face and lights it on fire to burn off the Stuff. This goes about as well as you’d think it would.

Hunka hunka burnin' love.

It does actually work though, and the flaming Stuff leaps off his face and sticks to the wall. Some guy, assumed to be under the influence of The Stuff, runs in to finish the job, but then the bed shoots white goo all over the Stuffy and drags him across the ceiling in a scene that looks ripped off of the boyfriends death scene in the original Nightmare on Elm Street, except with more liquid marshmallows. Mo lights that on fire and runs out of the hotel to head back to the Stuff factory to see what’s going on.

Thankfully, even though the factory is still fully operational and someone connected to the Stuff just tried to kill him, Mo has no problem getting to the secret source of the Stuff – the old abandoned mine, where Mo and Nicole get a good look at where the Stuff really comes from, it bubbles right up from the Earth itself. It also has blown up from the little puddle that miner found originally. The Stuff is now in a swimming pool sized basin, and filled with not-quite humanoid shapes that are floating around and doing nothing. Are these things eggs? Are these former humans that the Stuff itself is eating? Are these just rock formations that are now covered in the Stuff? All of those are plausible explanations, and are the best we’re going to get – what these things are is never explained at all.

Jason is also at the Stuff mine, although he doesn’t really know it. He’s been hiding in that tanker truck all night, and conveniently the truck has driven to the mine to get refilled with a fresh shipment. Jason is the luckiest boy on the planet, because just as he’s about to get drowned in the stuff, Mo happens to walk by the truck and hears Jason screaming for help. Mo steals the truck and sets off a detonator that caves the mine in, and drives off for safety – conveniently picking up Nicole who is just standing around by the road at two in the morning. Mo makes the point to explain that they need to go to a big city because a small city is too easily controlled by the evil Stuff corporation. That actually makes sense.

But he doesn’t do that. He instead drives out to an old castle run by an ex-military nutjob who is training his own militia, Colonel Malcolm Grommett Spears. Mo has never met this person before, and the Colonel is obviously a little bit crazy, but Mo knows this guy is a patriot and that the Stuff hates freedom or something, and that’s enough of a reason for the Colonel to send his boys out on a mission to blow the shit out of the Stuff factory and close them down for good. There’s not much resistance however, because when they get there all the Stuff employees are dehydrated husks with their mouths stuck wide open, much like the post office clerk. So where did all the stuff go?

Oh, Yeah!!!

The Stuff has banded together to become one giant slime, which chases Nicole and Jason through the factory and finally breaks through the wall to face the Colonel and his forces and…

It just sits there.

That’s right, all the Stuff which formerly was able to hide in pillows and strangle people, or weave like a snake through the factory now just sits in a big pile outside doing nothing. And that’s the big finish to this story? I mean, the factory is closed down, the mine is collapsed, what could be left. Well, there’s the matter of all the Stuff that is already available in stores, but there’s a limit to that. And the Colonel conveniently owns some radio stations in Atlanta, so he’s going to make a public announcement not to eat the Stuff. So this was our payoff? Right now I’m feeling pretty ripped off, but there’s still like 15 minutes left on this thing. So maybe something else awesome would happen.

Colonel Spears casually flies the whole group to his radio station to make their announcement. You’d think that their message of “Pardon me, but what’s in your fridge right now could kill you”, would be a little more pressing, but they sort of meander over to the station and then work on how to properly word the announcement and eventually they’ll make their statement and… oh wait a second, there’s a surprise guest from about half an hour ago–Chocolate Chip Charlie is back! Since he’s a loved semi-celebrity, they think he’ll be great person to give out the message to help convince people that they’re telling the truth. Charlie and Nicole head off to work on their message, and this movie is wrapped up.

You know… Charlie never did seem to find the FBI. And how did he know to find the station? Something doesn’t smell right here. Charlie waits until Nicole and he are alone, and then begins to shake violently and his head starts to expand and the Stuff expels itself towards Nicole to take her out!

You should really just go to youtube and search “Charlie Goes Berzerk” for the full effect.

Mo manages to save Nicole by cutting some giant unlabeled power cord and electrocuting the Stuff until it bursts into flames. This is nowhere near as awesome looking as Charlie exploding, however, and from here The Colonel just ad-libs a message about how the Stuff is evil and should be destroyed. People storm the streets in anger, having Stuff bonfire parties and sending people addicted to Stuff to the hospital. Mo has saved the day, but Mo and Jason have one more job to do– they make a little visit to the former Stuff corporation to confront them about their product causing the harm of the American people. The company hasn’t learned their lesson however, because they brag about their new product “The Taste” which contains a small portion of The Stuff and the rest is dairy product. However, Mo isn’t just going to let them get away with this. As punishment for their misdeeds, Jason makes the President eat a whole box of Stuff at gunpoint. I guess they got their – just desserts!

That was an awful pun, and I’m sorry.

So the Stuff is off the streets, the factory shut down, and the people responsible for the Stuff have been disposed of. The movie is essentially over, except that every bad movie needs the “is it really over?” scene, and The Stuff is no different. The Stuff is now some sort of underground superdrug and we watch as a new shipment of the Stuff is delivered to what I assume is a Stuff dealer.

The credits roll, and I am left with way too many questions. What exactly was the Stuff? What did it do to people? Some people seemed like they were mind-controlled by the Stuff, but other people were more or less just vehicles for the Stuff to travel around and infect people. The Stuff also was really liquidy sometimes, and other times it was more like cement. What were those weird shapes in the Stuff pool in the cave? Really, I should just stop caring and enjoy that I got to watch a bunch of people vomit paste for 90 minutes.

As a side note, you can find a lot of interesting things on youTube. For example, the trailer for this movie (which has a whole load of scenes that aren’t even in the actual movie) or even the whole movie itself.. So if you happen to have some extra time and want to watch this, here’s a gift from OMGJ that we didn’t actually put up on youTube so if it’s not there anymore when you try it, don’t cry to us.

Most of the time I go through life absorbed in my microcosm of a world; I am focused on that which is immediately relevant to my everyday life. But, every now and then, I wipe the sleeping medication induced crust from my eyelids and remember that there is an entire world out there, teeming with interesting cultures, landscapes, and intense hallucinogenic drugs that I can only dream of. Such a daunting endeavor it is to go forth from the comfort of your own hot pocket wrapper and porn laden home to travel halfway across the world to another country where, not only can you not communicate effectively with anyone, but just drinking the water could make your ass squirt blood faster than the hot pockets and beer do. That is why I have compiled this thorough guide to international travel; so that you may one day venture forth from your dark cave with confidence and poise.

Despite the monetary cost, international travel is quite rewarding. We have all heard the cliched stories of how much you will appreciate what you have when you see real poverty, or whatever other humanitarian shit-spew that international travelers rub your face in to elicit guilt and shame for not eating sewer garbage and donkey jizz. But despite the inspirational quality of such stories, this is not where the true value of travel is found. Only through true grit and determination can an individual hope to force their own micro-culture on unsuspecting residents in a foreign country.

Tip 1: Time Changes are for Pussies

Unless you happen to pick one of the countries that are on the same longitude as where you currently live, you will find that the time continuum has been disrupted, resulting in other countries being stuck in the future or in the past. While most travelers adapt to this dimensional time vortex in a couple of days, you must remain strong and retain your American sleep schedule. This can be quite challenging when you are preparing your tissues and lotion for a morning rub down as you notice the sun is setting on the horizon. Such an occurrence can cause serious injury to your highly regimented brain that craves its morning release so it is important to just ignore this difference and work on your schedule; besides, you didn’t spend thousands of dollars and hours in the fondling booth at the airport getting your rectum checked for nail files and bags of heroin just to work on the “correct” local time, right?

Tip 2: “Touristy” Attractions are Called that for a Reason

Another hunk of putrid bile soaked bullshit that you may hear from experienced travelers is that it is better to explore on your own or with a close friend as opposed to taking a highly structured tour with a bus full of camera toting white people and Asians. This, like most things you hear from the “experienced,” is a conceited lie meant only to instill a sense of awe and amazement at the traveler’s cultural prowess. You are a tourist after all, and you sure as fuck should act like one, otherwise you will just end up in a dumpster in some back alley of India after a group of street urchin kids shank you in the spine to steal the immensely valuable pocket lint and wadded up tissues in your fanny pack. Taking a structured tour ensures that you get to see the best sites exactly as they are on every post card or picture. Wanna know why you don’t see any pictures of the back of the Taj Mahal? Because no one gives a fuck about the back of the Taj Mahal except for the “experienced” shit-stain international traveler.

Having locals take pictures of you in front of buildings and objects with your expensive camera is an important activity for any tourist.

It is also important that you not only do “touristy” things, but you look “touristy” as well. By wearing a flamboyantly colored fanny pack, cargo shorts, bug spray, and of course, having a camera around your neck, you are making sure that God remembers you are American, and not actually a member of whatever shit-hole country you are in. This will ensure your safety should a catastrophic tsunami, earthquake, or nuking occur and you will magically be lifted from the tragedy so that you have a good angle for pictures.

Tip 3: Immerse Yourself in the Culture… and Then Mock It

Perhaps the most important element of any international travel is the culture. Oh the culture! You may find in this far and distant land that people do things differently from how they are done in America. Well, it would probably be more correct to say they do things “less right” than they are done in America. The food, music, television, art, and even the internet are often imitated, but never accurately recreated in foreign countries. You may even try to find an American-based food chain such as McDonald’s or Dominoes to ease your travel bowel woes, but alas you have been deceived because no matter how familiar it may look, it was created with the sweat and blood of the impoverished, literally sometimes.

It is ever important while traveling abroad to remind all non-American people around you that you are from the land of the free and the home of the brave by immediately discarding whatever “unique world view” they have to offer. If their world view was better wouldn’t they have a bald fucking eagle on their flag? As a citizen of this fine country it is your duty to spread Americanism as much as possible: bring a Bruce Springsteen CD to put in at the local karaoke bar, wear that American flag bandana your veteran uncle who jerks off during Christmas dinner gave you, shit sitting down, whatever you can do to make sure that the stars and stripes have thoroughly slithered their way deep into the bowels of the locals, locking onto their vital organs in brutal parasitic fashion.

Required items for traveling abroad: passports, visas, American Flag Fanny Packs.

Tip 4: Don’t Drink the Water

As much as your “experienced,” friends may lie to you, there is one truth that they do often speak. That is: don’t drink the water. Often the butt of many jokes, the water in many foreign countries will actually make your asshole do unspeakable things you thought were only reserved for people dieing from Ebola or the plague. The truth is, foreign countries intentionally pollute their water with bacteria that targets only the literate and affluent, thereby overlooking the vast majority of their population while wreaking intestinal havoc on wealthy traveling Americans. This is often exacerbated by a lack of adequate ass-squirting facilities, or even worse, you may actually have to PAY to use a fucking toilet. Such subterfuge is meant solely to give foreign inhabitants a kick as they watch you squirm while holding back the torrential diarrhea caused by their subtle chemical warfare and only enhances the need to follow step 3. Bottom line, buy bottled water and make sure it has one of those crisp unbroken seals on the lid to make sure some homeless lush didn’t just mix piss and bleach.

Señor Giardia and all his pals are ready to FUCK YOU UP.

Tip 5: Come Home “Enlightened”

Upon your return things may seem… different. This is normal. This just means that your body must readjust to the wonders of civilized life where water doesn’t liquify your innards and people only pray once a week. The sunrise will seem like the first, like staring God straight in the eyes as you make sex with a Jesus doll wrapped in an American flag… oh the flag. The wondrous red, white, blue, and eagle. It may come as a surprise that maybe those taint fuckers who droned on endlessly about how much you will appreciate home may have been a little bit right. Not a lot right, because you knew your way of life is the only and the best, but a little bit.

Now that you have experienced the world outside of your little “eat, sleep, spend, fuck” bubble, you must return and give rambling accounts of your epic, culturally immersed journey to everyone in a fucking ten mile radius at all times. This is the most important element of international travel because it lets everyone know how much better you are, thus supporting Americanism in its purist form. It is now appropriate to listen to NPR and watch BBC because you are savvy in the ways of the world, you are a brave adventurer who went, saw, and conquered with an open mind. You have been enriched and can now package your entire trip into a one hour speech that picks every story worthy element apart from the actual truth with brutal ass-fucking honesty. You can now be one of the “experienced,” giving out life lessons and selling weed to youngsters at the YMCA. More importantly you have a reason to act pompous, to walk with your head high, to indulge in every possible mind-altering substance that comes your way… not because it makes you feel good, but because you have been enlightened by international travel.

Growing up in the 80s, the lines between what were considered “Boys” and “Girls” activities, toys, and forms of entertainment were pretty clear. Boys played with He-Man figures and M.U.S.C.L.E. Men, or if they were pussies they had some G.I. Joes. Girls, well they had Barbie and those horse things that were mostly pink with purple hair, and yeah…just a lot of stupid pink shit. Nowadays, the lines have blurred quite a bit. You see boys playing with plastic kitchen toys, and just a lot of stuff in general that would have gotten the shit beaten out of you years ago for being seen with. Of course, when someone caught you you just told them it belonged to your sister and you stole it and was just about to burn it. This always took you and your male friends to the backyard where you incinerated these items that belonged to your “sister”, all the while you cried a little bit inside that dinner wouldn’t be on your imaginary family’s table by 6PM. You were even more shit out of luck if you didn’t have a sister to begin with…take it from an only child.

A lot of toys are made today with the intent of winning over both sexes. Pinks and blues give way to middle-ground colors, and packaging is no longer really trying to sway one particular gender more than the other. However, something still comes along that celebrates its one-sidedness when it comes to being for a particular gender. It celebrates it without such things as shame or decency. It throws in your face the fact that this is meant for one sex only, and if you are the opposite sex and are playing it, YOU ARE IN THE WRONG! Take what I am about to speak of for instance, something that could only be more geared toward lady-folk if it was coated in chocolate and was able to stand listening to nonstop bitching and irrational emotional outbursts.

Welcome to Sorority Life

If you use Facebook, chances are you have at least seen updates about this application in the profile of at least one or two of your friends. If you don’t use Facebook, stop fucking lying and acting like you are some elitist because you haven’t “given in” and signed up. You know you’re on there and you’e just shitty because people can’t even stand talking to your stupid ass online. This is one of those time-wasters that for all intents and purposes you should put down after playing for a few minutes, but people instead get insanely hooked on them and it becomes their life. Think Animal Crossing, but pinker. After watching my girlfriend play it for awhile, and insulting her for doing so, I decided that it wasn’t fair to make fun of something I did not fully understand. She didn’t give me shit for playing Lost Planet, after all. So I sat down and started what would become a very strange, oddly surprising, yet depressingly predictable journey. A week or so ago, Belinda Hollinsworth, bald sorority chick that is really a guy going under deep cover to get some hot college ass, was welcomed into the world. I made that back-story up myself, in an effort to justify why my online persona was wearing heels.

Note my boyfriend, DON THE RIGHT GUY! He doesn't require pampering and can NEVER be stolen from me. I assume Belinda Hollinsworth must suck it like a pro.

What It Do?

This game, like most of those fucking FB time-dumps, follows the same pattern. You do activities in order to gain some sort of points, and you use these points to level up your character so you can spend even more on other shit and so on and so forth. You can even turn in REAL money for in-game currency…then hang yourself. You earn points by taking part in various activities, the amount of which you can do is dependent on how far leveled up you are. You have to look at your “Skills”:

I don't see Cooking, Cleaning, and Getting Poked...the only woman-skills I was aware of.

I’ll be honest, building up your skills playing the various games is pretty fun. Even though (as of level 20-something), the games are limited to two types, really. One is a semi-fun word game where you make as many words as possible out of jumbled up letters, and the other is one of those where you have to find objects hidden (and sometimes not so hidden) within a picture.

ugh

These games take up varying amounts of energy, so you probably can only play them 2 or 3 times before you have to sit and wait until your energy is refilled. How does it refill? Well, you can buy an energy refill using Brownie Points (a form of in-game currency). Running low on those hard to come by Brownie Points? Well, you can also pick some up by paying REAL GODDAMN CASH. A simple 21 BPs will only run you $4.99. Need a little more? You can get 170 for only $39.99. Need to have your fucking ass beat? Then pick up 700 BPs for $149.99. Take that in for a moment. Instead of spending 150 bucks on real clothing or accessories or tampons or whatever the hell women buy, they can throw down $150 for in-game clothing and other worthless shit. The sad thing is, I’m sure this happens every single day. They should investigate all domestic violence cases and ask the husband if their wife bought a shit-ton of BPs from Sorority Life. If she did, then the crime was justified.

You can also gain money and experience by fighting. Yes, fighting. Not so much hair-pulling and slapping and the chance of some tits nakedly exploding for all to see…but clicking a button to what I assume is insult your opponent and take away some of their confidence. Yes, you have a set amount of confidence that can be easily depleted, just like real girls! Lose too many fights, and you’ll have to run off to the safety of The Spa. Yes, wash away all of your troubles and regain the confidence you need to continue your catty-assed battles. Who knew that one spa trip (and several thousand dollars later) would give you the renewed gusto to yell at other girls to “Go Fuck (some unappealing item, person, or themself)”.

Ultra-Realism

Playing various games isn’t your main way of getting cash, however. This is where things get a little ridiculous. To make money, you actually have to GET A JOB! Yeah, I can count on my penis the number of sorority girls out there that have a fucking job. Not only do you get to choose your own profession, but the pay…well the pay isn’t quite right somehow.

Jeremy could not confirm or deny if that is how much a Professional Blogger really makes. He was too busy picking out which 100 dollar bills he was going to wipe his ass with tonight.

Also, while it is normal to purchase such things as clothes, hats, shoes, and chartered planes, there are a few things in the store area that struck me as a bit odd.

Yes, you buy your boyfriends. Usually it’s the other way around, with guys having to essentially pay for a girlfriend.

Don’t believe me? Offended by that? Well, think about it.

Even if you are one of those girls that is “SUPER INDEPENDENT I DON’T NEED NO MAN PAYIN’ FOR ME!”, you still let him buy you dinner. You still let him take you on trips and pay for the gas. You still let him take you to the movies, or buy you a little something now and then. In return, you do sleep with him. Not because you love him, and not because you really want to, but because you feel deep down (whether you know it or not), that you HAVE to because of everything he has done. You’re as much of a damned whore as the girls you claim you totally are not. Yes I do feel that way, and yes I used the word “totally”. That could be related to my playing Sorority Life over the last week.

Anyhow, you buy the dude…then you have to pay upkeep on him by pampering him. Yes, you have to pamper your boyfriend or else the bitches in YOUR OWN DAMN HOUSE can steal that bastard from you! I can only imagine how many real-life friendships this has ended, when Susan decides that Sarah just isn’t treating Dante the Dancer right and decides to swoop in and snatch him up. I think you can actually just steal back and forth, and the boyfriends value goes up. Yes, like a trading card or some other thing you trade back and forth, his worth seems to grow over time and the more he is desired.

In Conclusion

I went into this thinking it would be the most mindless thing ever. Well, it was. But that isn’t necessarily bad. As a simple distraction when you have some extra time, I can see how it could fulfill a purpose. Some of the mini-games are actually sorta fun, and being able to look at the actual profile of the other players is fun (especially one girl who looked like the guy from Robocop after he hit the toxic waste). I don’t think the average guy can get much out of it. Certainly avoid it if you are one of those that thinks that listening to a boy band, seeing a penis, or wearing a turtleneck automatically makes you gay. Playing this doesn’t make you any less of a man. In fact, it takes a REAL MAN to play something like this and admit it openly. It strips away no masculinity at all, and you’ll be every bit the man you always were.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m bleeding from between my legs.

I found Summerbreak while perusing some of those sites that list free online role playing games. I’m all about getting shit free lately since I barely have enough money to buy a couple of Hot Pockets to live off of. So I immediately clicked the links to a few of the games listed, and while most of the games I saw were in fact free, the site usually forgot to mention that most of these games are either unplayable or still just a few random thoughts in the creator’s brain. Virtually none of them had anything to offer except promising me that their crude version of a chat room with a couple of multi-colored polygons floating around would totally revolutionize online gaming and how people communicate forever. But in the meantime I guess I’m just supposed to accept this, and click on their thousands of “VOTE FOR ME NOW” buttons scattered across their site. No thanks. I think I’d be better off spending my precious life force punching myself in the stomach until I scream.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I do NOT think a chatroom with MSPaint characters on screen with little thought bubbles above their heads should be classified as a “game”. It’s not a game. It is retarded. And it is certainly not the future of online gaming, as already pointed out in the Sims Online review. I’m not looking for an animated chatroom when I want to play online games. I want things I can shoot with my rocket launcher. I don’t want to talk to little people acting goofy on screen, I want to run them over in my jet-powered monster truck.

Welcome...TO THE FUTURE

But there were a few games listed, and I figured I’d try those. The few sites that did actually offer a REAL game download as opposed to an online chatroom, fail to mention that once you download their 800 meg game and take the time to install it file by file, thanks to the creator deciding that installers are for wusses, you’ll find that the game is largely unplayable, and most of the time not even online yet. I downloaded one game (which shall remain nameless) that was roughly around 450 megs, and once I finally got it installed, I discover that I can’t start the game. Hmm…I must be doing something wrong. So I finally find the readme file buried deep within the 7,006 folders that the zip file shit out all over my desktop, where it explains to me that the game is still working out bugs, and isn’t even bootable. ISN’T EVEN BOOTABLE. Why do you put a 400 meg game online that ISN’T EVEN ABLE TO BE START UP. I guess for the sole purpose of making me scream at the fucking monitor for hours after finding out that there isn’t even an uninstall included. Wonderful. Now I’m stuck with 400 megs of virtual shit, and a million folders containing a game that can’t be played. I guess the “Still in beta” announcement on their site was actually supposed to mean “HAHA STUPID WHITE BOY”.

After that little adventure, I was about to give up. After all, there’s no better truth than the saying “You get what you pay for”. But there was one last link left on the list. The game’s name was Summerbreak, and was currently dead last on the list, with a total of 9 votes recommending it to the general public. I could only imagine what Summerbreak contained, as even the game that wasn’t even playable had around 30 votes. This could possibly mean that Summerbreak could simply not even be a game, and instead a a program that shuts your computer down forever for being such a moron for even trying to play it. But against all logic, I clicked on the link to see what Summerbreak could offer me while inundated with boredom.

The introduction of any game is fairly important to any developer wanting you to play their game. It’s their way of selling you their product. If the developer simply said “Hey fag play my game it’s neat” then no, I don’t think I’d invest much more time into his game other than the time spent punching him in the face. Most of the time though, your basic online fantasy game has intros such as “Come into a new world filled with FANTASY and ADVENTURE! Watch as your character builds exciting and meaningful relationships with REAL people over the course of your AMAZING ADVENTURES!” Or some moronic banter such as that. And even though it’s relatively stupid and completely false, at least it TRIES to sell the idea. But with Summerbreak, I was treated to what is probably the best introduction to a game ever:

“SummerBreakGame is the challenge to become the best of the best. Cruisin down Minionville poppin’ caps in peoples asses to picking up your cell phone to make a bootycall. Getting jobs to make cash and getting ass to showing off the badass car you own. Run with your posse and the best of the gang and most of all watch your ass because you never know when you’ll get stuck from behind…….Literally”

How could I refuse that? My inner black gangster murderer has always wanted to live the life of hardcore street gang boss. And there’s even an obscure reference to butt sex at the end! If this game was half as good as its introduction, then we’ve already got a candidate for best game ever created. Plus, there’s a picture of two guys with pistols in an SUV in front of a picture of an upscale house, which then carries over to the next page where they are doing the exact same thing, just in front of the Pyramids. And if there was ever one place where I wanted to throw down some caps on some disrespectin niggas, it’s in Giza.

Ridin' in the hood, first sand dune on the right brings PAIN

After a bit of investigating, I was pleased to find that the game was completely based online, which is good since I’m still trying to clean all the random files that last game installed. All I had to do was sign up, make a screen name and password, and I was on my way to finally being the large intimidating black man that I have always wanted to be.

Upon signing into Summerbreak, I was asked to create my character. While I was hoping for the kind of advanced character creation tools from other role playing games, I quickly found that the entire character creation process is basically selecting if you want to be male or female. Oh well. I quickly choose male, reaffirming my hetero male image, which you can see below:

Only faggy gangsters wear clothes on these mean streets!

I’m then taken to my “hideout” which seems to just be a screen with a picture of my character in his underwear, and a bunch of other shit that I have no clue as to what it is. I decide to peruse some of the options on the toolbar to the left, which appears to be the different areas in the “city” appropriately named Jiggletown, that I can visit. These are what are available to me:

-Whorehouse: The whorehouse is where you’ll go to gain experience by sleeping with various women. This was my first stop, and didn’t quite understand what I was doing, and simply thought I could sleep with women if I clicked on them. And when you haven’t had sex as long as I have, then you could see why I began clicking every option as fast as I could. But then I realized what I was doing, and found out all the women I just slept with were apparently very “mature”. Mature in the way that they probably can’t move unless they fall off their walker and roll across the floor. But the deed was already done, and this apparently gave me +1 in whatever stat sleeping with an old woman gives you. I would guess the ability to vomit onto a wall afterwards.

-Stash Bank: This is basically a bank where I can put my nonexistent cash reserves. Why would one want to use the bank? Well, it seems that one of the big things to do in Summerbreak is to steal people’s money at random, no matter how much they may have. Even if you’re offline. So stashing it in the bank is a good way to make sure no one throws down on my defenseless, naked man when I am away. Now, I just have to figure out HOW to get money….

-Headshop: I was a bit confused with the headshop at first, as I was totally expecting something MUCH different according to the name. What I got instead was this:

“OLD HIPPIE LADY: Damn you look healthy. I just wanna kiss you all over.”

Okay.

I didn’t find out until later that this is the place you go when you’ve been reduced to zero stamina to regain your health by taking a “hit” of the mysterious substance the old hippie lady offers. No, Summerbreak certainly isn’t going to be known for its subtle nature. But at the moment, I have no need to hit any weed, so I move on to the next portion of Jiggletown.

-Clothes Store: This is, of course, where you buy clothes. I went here immediately to try and find some clothes for my poor naked character, who must feel rather bad about trying to be a badass gangster pimp while walking around in his boxers. I was shocked however to find that Jiggletown is probably the most expensive city on Earth, as a basic pair of cargo jeans somehow costs 30,000 dollars. I currently had 500 dollars. Those cargo pants better suck my dick whenever I get around to putting a down-payment on a pair.

-Churches: I still have no clue what these are for, but basically there are five Churches in total:

• Followers of Zestu
• Riders of the Frisbee
• Flying Frogs Sworn to Zaka
• The Continuum Transformers
• Cult of the Shiners

I quickly enter the Continuum of Transformers and pray, because I figure if I’m gonna pray to any God, then it’s gonna be motherfucking Optimus Prime. Even if the Riders of the Frisbee have a cooler name. But I have no idea what praying does. Maybe it cleanses me for the nastiness of sleeping with an old woman, because there’s no shower strong enough to wash away that filth.

-Red Light District: This, it appears, is where you get jobs. I was more than ready to pick up a job as a bouncer or a surly bartender that served just as many punches as he does beers, but I was shocked to see that the only job I had the experience to qualify for was a Go Go Dancer. Seriously. While not exactly the job I would normally jump at, you’d be surprised the lengths you’ll go to when you need money to buy pants. So I accept my job as a Go Go Dancer and dance for a few people, earning me a nice 1000 dollars in the process. Unfortunately, that 1000 dollars cannot hide the horrible shame. Nothing will.

-Government District: The Government district is where you go to read about the various goings on in Jiggletown by reading the Newspaper. Excellent. Let’s read what today’s headlines are:

Aug-28: FRONT PAGE!!!! Eli, John, and Rob killed in a drive by! In other news, pigs do fly.

Wow that sucks for Eli, John, and Rob I guess. But it’s kinda cool that pigs can fly now. And as far as I can tell, that’s all there is in the paper.

After seeing all that Jiggletown had to offer, I decided to head over to “Minionville”. Minionville is what many of us would refer to as the ghetto, except Minionville takes that concept to a whole new level since the only thing to do in Minionville is to constantly get shot every other minute by other players. These are of course drive bys, and since I am new to Minionville, and have no car, or pants, I seemed to be a prime target for the more seasoned Summerbreak players, and within a few moments I was shot by someone named Big Sarge. The odd thing though was that even though it said I was killed, I still seemed to be alive and functioning. Death seems to be nothing more than a slight inconvenience in Minionville. And since I’m not one to punk out to some bitch who shot me in the head, I tried to do a drive by on him, which failed since the game informs me that my current ride is a pair of shoes and I am unable to do drive bys on other people without a car. I then tried to do a drive by on myself, which, unfortunately, failed also.

Welcome to Minionville, friend

I continued to trek around Minionville on foot though. It seems that every street you click on, you’ll find something. The first street I entered, I found a cat, then a dirty sock, a cold beer, and eventually a cheeseburger. It seems the idea is that if you’ve got enough luck built up, you’ll stumble across items you can actually use, like car parts, which you can use to build your own car. During my two weeks playing, I came up on a total of one car part, which was unfortunately not enough to make an entire car out of. This game has obviously not seen my idea for the “One Car Part Car” which should be implemented immediately:

It is purely coincidence that this car is made of the one part I found

Even though I was unable to make a fully functioning car, I at least found approximately 7,832,845 cats, so I guess that kind of evens things out.

After seeing all that Minionville had to offer, which took a total of five minutes, I was tired and decided to log out for the day, when I was appropriately shot and killed again.

During the next week I would occasionally sign in and go through the various routines of going to the whorehouse and sleeping with more old ladies (it gets easier after a while, trust me), dance for a few people at the bar, wandering around Minionville and getting shot, and trying my best to save up enough money to finally buy some pants. This carried on for what seemed like an eternity, but then something magical happened; I turned seven days old! Yes, much like present day Texas, once you reach seven days of age, you are officially “legal” in the game. The most important part of being legal is that you can now bootycall other players. And what exactly is being bootycalled? I have no fucking clue. Well, I didn’t for the longest time, and since Summerbreak is about the most uninformative game of all time, I was forced to find out on my own. The hard way.

It seems that bootycalling people is basically the most important part of the game. Much different from what I had previously thought to be the most important part of the game: logging out. But no, bootycalling just happens to be the game’s word for “battle”. Except instead of using guns or fists or crazy space weapons or dinosaurs, you’ll be having sex with your opponent, and whoever can go the longest before passing out wins the match, gaining experience points and all the money you were previously carrying. Don’t believe me? Me neither, but it’s true. I found out rather quickly as almost immediately as I turned seven days old, I was attacked and had all the previous money I had been saving for my illusive cargo pants taken. This game, much like Horseland before it, is trying to break me.

I then decided that perhaps I would try my hand at bootycalling someone. Perhaps then I could gain a level finally. So I grabbed my cell phone and searched through some of the players, and picked one out of the list as my random victim. I instigated the bootycall, and this is what transpired:

NotJeremy thrusts MadNate for 4.49375 stamina (29.50625 left)
MadNate thrusts NotJeremy for 6 stamina (14 left)
MadNate thrusts NotJeremy for 5 stamina (9 left)
NotJeremy thrusts MadNate for 3.49375 stamina (26.0125 left)
NotJeremy missed MadNate’s hole
NotJeremy thrusts MadNate for 5.49375 stamina (20.51875 left)
NotJeremy thrusts MadNate for 2.49375 stamina (18.025 left)
MadNate thrusts NotJeremy for 6 stamina (3 left)
MadNate thrusts NotJeremy for 4 stamina (-1 left)
NotJeremy passed out.

I’m going to be sick

If you’re wondering, that was about the same as a pitiful homeless village person going up against a giant fire breathing dragon made out of pure steel. Except that this turned out far worse. Not only did I get beaten extremely badly, but I also “missed his hole” once. This is more than enough to tell me to quit playing this game now and never log in again.

And that’s basically what I did. I had played Summerbreak for a grand total of two weeks and my character is no better off now than he was when I started. All I have to my name in two weeks worth of playing is a level one character with a car engine, a shitload of cats, and one extremely stretched ass from the 13 or so bootycalls that I lost. I was also shot and killed at least 100 times. Though I must mention this is just my experience. Several people from the forum decided to play too, and somehow did much better than I did. But I found out that most of the stuff they gained over me were things that were given to them by other players. Pussies. This just goes to show that, just like real life, it’s all about who you know. Unfortunately, my hermit-like character turned out to be Jiggletown’s equivalent of the retarded kid whose biggest achievement was not shitting on himself when he laughed too hard.

To its credit, Summerbreak is one of those games that shouldn’t be taken too seriously, as the creators obviously made the game that way. It’s stupidly fun if you get into it and start gaining levels. Plus, there’s no better way than to play than with a few of your friends, as playing by yourself is the equivalent of looking at yourself in the mirror for hours on end. There’s not THAT much to do, and it’s something to pass a few minutes a day since there’s only so much you can do in one session. I do however recommend it. Plus it’s free, so you can’t beat that.

And so ended my time with Summerbreak. I may not have gained much with my time there, but I did learn a good deal of humility in the process. After all, sleeping with old women, constantly being killed and raped, and the occasional messages from other players telling me to suck their cock and die doesn’t exactly give one the confidence they are used to receiving from other games. But even with all of that, I didn’t come out totally defeated….

Awwwwww yeah

(As of the time this review was posted, Summer Break is not available online anymore. It seems the guy who ran it got arrested and was sent to jail for an extended period of time. I am not even joking.)

Welcome to Aquanaut’s Holiday.

To be fair, Aquanaut’s Holiday was at one point an amazing idea. The game basically revolved around you piloting a submersible submarine around a large body of water, exploring…and exploring…and exploring some more. You started the game in your little sub thing, which was nothing more than a camera angle (No on board controls or anything to let you know you were in a sub. You could have been looking through the eyes of the world’s first deep diving cow for all you could tell). You then just sorta explored the ocean around you, looking at random fish, bumping into rocks, and then slowly realizing this is all you could do in the game you just spent fifty bucks on. Though I suppose if you were the kind of person who just spent fifty bucks on a game called Aquanaut’s Holiday, then you can only really blame yourself.

This is Aquanaut's Holiday. No I am not kidding.

I am not kidding when I say that the pinnacle of fun in Aquanauts Holiday is to push the throttle to your cow sub, get up to a blistering 3.5 MPH, and slam that fucker broadside right into a helpless fish. This accomplished two things:

1. It sort of makes you feel like you are punishing the game for being so full of nothing.
2. Hitting anything in the game produces the single loudest bass sample in the history of anything. The first time I played this game and had my speakers up, I hit the side of a goldfish and nearly leveled my house. I found my cat hours later hiding inside a wall from fear.

It was all for nothing though, as the fish never seem to care that you are trying to have the sea-equivalent of road rage with them. They just keep swimming until they flicker out of view, or clip into a rock and crash the game. Also the above two things still don’t justify why you’re playing Aquanaut’s Holiday.

That Dolphin is just asking to be slammed into repeatedly

There is a little more you could do, besides endlessly looking at fish modeled with the bare minimum of polygons. There was a side game that allowed you to collect Lego-like pieces of…something…to lay down on your own little spot in the ocean. Each piece allowed you to attract different sorts of fish to it, giving you a bit of customization to your over-sized virtual fish tank. You could also build some pretty basic structures, and then swim around in them admiring your handy work. Unfortunately, this also was terribly boring. Simply put, there is no real reason to even do this. You don’t get cool upgrades or better weapons to slam into fish with. Your reward is to, yes, look at even more unresponsive 3D fish. You could have a better undersea adventure by building something with Legos, and then throwing it in your fish tank, watching in wonderment, while your very real fish lose their god damn minds in the process.

And there you have it. That’s Aquanaut’s Holiday. To my surprise, a sequel to AH was released on the PS3, but I can at least say it looks far more interesting than the original. For one, the technology has caught up to the point where such games can look far more convincing. There also seems to be far more of a game this time around built around it. This is something I can get behind, as I’m not slamming AH for being different. I think games as experimental as AH can be pretty amazing when done right. I just think this is sadly a case of a game coming out way, way before a time when such a game should have.

So what should you take from all this? If possible, I’d suggest you go back in time and tell me not to spend fifty bucks on Aquanaut’s Holiday.

I’d sure appreciate it.

So would my cat.

With help from Mr Holiday

We all go through hard times at some point in our lives. Perhaps we were laid off at our job, had an accident while uninsured, went into a long drawn-out divorce process which cost a lot in legal fees and is now costing a lot in child support. We run out of money, get evicted, or just have to give up a few things in order to conserve money. Sometimes, you just have to rely on the good will of friends to help you through this difficult period, until you get back onto your feet and become a respectable human being once again.

These are all understandable things, and it is very nice to know that people care about you and about what happens to you. Who would you turn to? Well of course you would turn to family first provided you still speak to any of them. But what if family wasn’t an option or didn’t want to help you out because they KNOW what kind of a drain you really are… then you would turn to your friends.

As a friend who has just learned their good friend has hit a hard spot, what should you do? As a friend are you obligated to help? Maybe this friend has helped you out in the past, or maybe you just feel sorry to see a friend seriously considering where they are going to find their next meal. It gives you a certain sense of pride and satisfaction to be the person who is helping their poor friend who is being beaten by life. To be smiled upon karmically, to be considered a hero among other friends and family. Well, for whatever reason, you take this individual in.

Boy you’ve done fucked up now.

You will notice people, the ones who AREN’T helping, shaking their heads and patting you on the back very hard. You will hear the comment “better you than me” softly murmured under the breaths of these humans and see that they are so very glad that you decided to shoulder this instance of a burden. They are so sincere that it gives you pause – but only for a moment.

What you don’t know as you embark upon this chapter of charity and good will is that things are about to go very wrong for you and anyone you live with.

We Are Here to Help You Help Yourself in Helping Others the RIGHT Way

When you invite a friend to stay in your home until their lives stabilize, until they stop weeping at night, until they get a job – ANY job – and find a place of their own to live, you may not realize
exactly what you are about to do. You may think to yourself, “This man or woman has been my friend for X number of years, I feel fondness for them and would like to give them sanctuary from their troubles. After all, were I in their place, I would hope that I had a good person to help me out.” But you fail to acknowledge the fact that this person will be using your furniture, your bathroom, your cooking utensils. They will be all over your living space. They will probably even look in your bedroom when everyone else is out working.

Better install a lock or else they'll walk right in like they belong here!

Basically you’ve gone above and beyond the call of friendship. Of course since you are so kind as to do all of this, what with the inconveniencing your life to an extent and shaking up your day-to-day, your friend would be more than happy to do the one or two things you ask of them. No sir.

You see, when you invite a friend to live with you, something happens to them. They change into a monster. Many of you have seen this happen with real room mates. But the complexities of the Room Mate is a topic for another article on another day. Friends who are staying with you as guests do not have to pay rent, or bills. They often feel like real guests, although they start out as overly grateful ones.

At first, they will do dishes, be quiet and clean, offer to help. But slowly, they get used to their surroundings and become relaxed. They start viewing the futon, corner of the living room, or if you are of the fancy sort, the spare bedroom, as their own place. They begin to leave their things out, in a slight mess which casually turns into a hideous mess that most parents would beat their children over. They stop cleaning their dishes, and eventually they leave their old plates and milk glasses on the coffee table to crust in the sunlight. They begin eating your food, and staying in the bathroom for hours at a time with no regard to you and your room mates or family.

This is of course very awkward for you, the host. The friend. The hero. You do not want to kick them out. After all, they haven’t yet gotten a job, and you can’t be sure if they have actually been trying because you are out at your own job for many hours of the day. You do not want to scold them, as they are adults and not children which you created yourself, and by god, you will destroy them if you so choose!

What inevitably happens is that you will endure several weeks of hardship until one day you snap and force them out with screaming and fists, or you concoct a clever lie which makes it look as though you cannot help it, but through no fault of your own, they have no choice but to leave. And, once they have gone and you have disinfected your home of their sluggish presence once and for all, you proclaim to all who will listen that you will never, EVER help another living soul again.

You are right to be upset, brother or sister, but you do not have to go to such extremes. In fact, if you follow the advice that we are about to give you, you should be able to host a whole string of ill-fated chums without negative consequence!

List Your Stipulations

In fact, get it all down in writing. List your expectations. List your demands. List a time frame for when they will get jobs, get an apartment of their own, when they will come home at night, whether or not they can invite friends over, and so on into infinity, if need be. Write it all out in contract form and have them sign it, cross their heart, and swear an oath. They may feel so daunted with facing all of these expectations that they may move on to another, less demanding friend. This is all the better for you and your friendship with this person, avoiding the situation altogether.

You’ve been kind enough to give a great gift…the gift of actually not having to sleep in the streets. You gave up space for your friend’s stuff, maybe even emptied out a room you weren’t using that often so they could decorate it and feel more at home… It is not rude of you to simply ask them to agree to your demands. It is not unreasonable for you to protect yourself, and let’s face it, you are protecting them too. If they get indignant and try to guilt you about treating them as not-friends, as suspicious people who may take advantage of you, remind them that if they were not your friend, you would not be offering them a place to stay in the first place. Also, take a mental note, as this reaction may be indicative of future conflicts. If a person overreacts to this “contract,” perhaps you would not be having a very fine time sharing your home with them.

Be sure to include a Bathroom Schedule which they are expected to follow, otherwise you'll be seeing THIS every time you need to Go.

Make Them Get a Job

If you’ve ever taken someone in, upon asking you or right after you made the offer they stated “I’ll start looking for a job as soon as I get there”. If you haven’t heard that, then for the record if a friend ever says that to you upon their wanting to move in… DON’T BUY IT! They’ll start off strong all right, maybe going out to a few places to pick up applications. They’ll come home and fill them out, making sure that they ask you several times what the address and phone number is. They know this information; they really just want you to notice that they are indeed filling out the applications. They’ll go on and take those first two or three in to the stores, and come back home. Thus concludes the great job hunt. You see most people who are enjoying free living don’t really want a job. They wouldn’t put in those first applications if they didn’t feel so obligated to. But that is the end of their obligation as far as a job goes. They know they can just sit around and live off of you, because if you were a good enough friend to let them live with you… you aren’t going to have the nerve to tell them to leave when their sponging has become too much.

The most important part of this entire ordeal is to make them, use physical force if you have to, MAKE them get a job. And make them do this as soon as they possibly can. No one seems to put this into consideration, but a person can’t just move out as soon as they are employed. Many places do not supply the first paycheck until two weeks into the job. And then, it will take a while of saving before the person can afford the security deposit and first month rent on an apartment of their own. This spells out maybe three months of hardship for you, and that is after they have become employed. Do not ask them to find a job “within a few weeks.” No, tell them to find a job within the week, on the first day if at all possible. In the morning, when you go to work, force your friend out of doors and do not let them have a house key. If you are in a subdivision or suburb, drive them to the nearest shopping plaza, get them a bus map. Accommodate as much as you are willing to, but make it known that they must spend at least 8 hours everyday on the search. They will be welcomed back only in time for dinner, which they will have chipped in to buy as directed by the signed agreement.

TELL THEM YOU'LL SEND THEM TO LIVE IN THE GODDAMNED STREETS!

Chores

Along with the contract, you might want to give them their Chore Schedule. Explain to them that they will be expected to do all kinds of things that you don’t really like to do. If you play your cards right, you will benefit hugely from the fact that your unfortunate guest will be cleaning the foul bathroom from now on, and mopping the kitchen floor weekly. You can think of it as orchestrating your own instant karma.

The lone silver lining.

Groceries

Food costs a lot of money these days, and, as your friend is dealing in hard times, be sure to take him or her to the dollar store where cereal is half the price, and half the quality. Sympathize with them and tell them that you understand how it can be when you must starve or eat dollar food, but do not back down and start feeding them. That is exactly when they start taking advantage. Like a damn stray cat, once you feed your friend, he or she will just keep coming back and
meowing at your back door until your ears bleed with fury.

God DAMN

If your friend begins complaining about feeling faint from hunger, and maybe hinting around that you are a big mean old meanie for feeding yourself and family first while they can only go through your garbage and eat the occasional Hot Pocket, do not feel afraid of treating them to a nice big fat juicy lecture. Really, though they may claim otherwise, this is exactly what your friend needs. You can lecture them on the value of a dollar, how to manage finances, how to eat on a shoestring budget, and all other good strong advice on how to be frugal. After all, you are qualified to do this since you are financially secure and they would be on the streets if not for you. In fact, remind them everyday of this fact. You will be getting aggravated by their presence and whining and stench by this point, they might as well be aggravated by your pompous superiority and lack of consideration or tact, right?

Bills

Housing an extra person will very likely drive your utility bills to be unmanageable. There is something about not having to pay a water bill that causes a person to suddenly require 45 minute showers. Or, not having to pay the electric bill suddenly causes one to turn on the
lights all day instead of opening the curtains.

Tell this friend in advance that while you know they cannot afford their own place, they will have to provide you with at least a few dollars every week for their share of the utilities. This is not at all an unreasonable request. Most of the time, these star-crossed friends have not been set back by a disability from an error on the job, so they are actually physically able work and make some money. Helping out a friend in need does not mean that you should have a burden equal to adopting a child or obtaining a new pet. Pets rarely earn their own keep and thanks to child labor laws, children also can’t help pay the rent. Ask your friend if they wish to be a child to you, a pet, a being less than human. The answer is seldom “why yes, that’s exactly what I wish to be.” If it is, your friend should be kicked out for sass, like some asshole teenager.

Don't worry about looking like a jerk - go ahead and photograph your utility meters any time your friend is using any feature of your house. Take notes if you'd like. It will only help you later.

Laundry

Do you know what really costs a lot of bill money to own and operate? The laundry machines. If you are lucky enough to not have these powerhouses of energy-suckage, then please skip this section. However, if you do have some in your home, you will quickly find that your normally filthy friend needs to wash ALL of their clothes every afternoon. I mean it. Even if you had suffered mad amounts of head trauma and decided to help out an acquaintance from your college days who was a massively nasty hippie with fleas and roaches in his dreads, and allowed his patchouli stink to possibly rub off on your furniture, you would find that if you owned a washer/dryer set, this peaceful stinking dirt-encrusted beast would peel off his poncho, get a hair cut, and wash all of his clothes until the water ran clean. This, of course, would take several hundred runs through the washer on the most thorough setting. Then, the former hippie would actively go out and buy NEW clothes and wash those as well. This is all part of the magic of owning laundry appliances and hosting guests.

Wanna deal with this? Who the fuck does?

I knew one girl who was somehow CONSTANTLY doing laundry at my friend’s house. I believe she actually stored her clothing there, because anytime the people who rightfully lived there needed to do their laundry, they found that BOTH the washer and dryer were stuffed with her clothes. Because there were not stipulations in advance followed by an iron fist of follow-up, no one living there said anything to cause a stir, and quietly took their own dirties to a laundromat, while they still had to pay the insane electric and water bills which she generated. They also got sick with secret angers and regrets.

Oh, Gentle Readers, We Hope You Have Learned

It is indeed a noble act, this helping of unfortunate friends. If you manage it correctly, you can give yourself a big old hug and a kiss on the cheek for being so swell. You must always remember that every decent person changes for the worst when faced with disaster, despair, and drama and then given a chance to relax and mooch because “the caring friend/host/hero WANTS [me] to recuperate, doesn’t he or she?” It is a natural human reaction to do this, and I am sad to say that even you or I, article viewer, would probably turn into soul-sucking users within a matter of days if the situation was reversed. Being thoughtful people, having read this cautionary material, we would be totally aware that we are dragging down our saviors, but we would secretly carry the hope next to our deadened hearts that no one would notice…

You see that is perhaps the worst part about the whole thing. It isn’t the fact that you, the hero, are being used… but it is the fact that you are being used and your friend thinks you are completely oblivious to the fact. You can just see them kicking back while you are at work, laughing and eating your food while they say to themselves “HA! He has no idea that I have no intentions of getting a job or really doing anything besides living off of his money and hard work”.

How long can it last? How long can YOU last? A lot of questions come up when this subject is involved. One in particular to ask yourself… is it worth it? Take into consideration the fact that this will in effect end your friendship. Sure this person is fun on occasion, you love having them over for the weekend…but this is no fun two-days-then-it-is-over weekend. This is the long haul, many weeks, months, sweet lord tell me not a year. When you live with a person you see them for what they really are. Thought your friend was just a little messy? Well that plate here and empty can there was just two days worth of collection. Try dropping into their room after they’ve been around two weeks. Look at the plates on the ground. Yeah the plates full of greens. Take a closer look…those ARE NOT eating greens! That is mold, and it is covering several plates, cups, and things that science taught us mold could not possibly survive on. You think just running the tap over those is going to make things come clean? You better go ahead and call your local pressure-washer.

Five minutes after you wash every dish in the house, you will find a sink that looks like this.

So when all is said and done and the free-loader leaves, what is left? A room that doesn’t just need cleaning, but is in dire need of sterilization. A partner who probably wants to see you become the next to leave due to your OK’ing the whole deal. A friendship that was once nice but is now in shambles. You used to look forward to seeing this person, but you know if you see them again it “ain’t gonna” be a pretty sight. You were a good person, and you felt pity for another human-being. Now you know never to do that again.

A shame. A damned, preventable shame.

“Souuulll Reeeaaaver…”

God it’s just such a good name. And it wasn’t just the name that was awesome. It got even better when you realized you were playing as a green, zombified vampire that feeds on the souls of the very people that killed him centuries earlier. It’s an epic revenge-filled plot, stuck in a zelda-like action adventure game with a name that makes you want to destroy everything in your path with your green zombie death. Could it get any better? For the time it was almost teen boy sensory overload. And remember, this was a time when vampires were actually considered cool, and not the laughing-stock of the non-Twilight fan world. It was a different time, and a game that made most of us sit up and take notice almost instantly.

The gist of the plot is that you’re a vampire guy that was about to surpass your master, so your master decides that’s not cool at all, and tosses you into a weird ghost abyss for centuries. During that time, you lose much of your pretty vampire looks, and come out looking more like something that…well just looked like you spent a century in a pit of eternal damnation. You don’t even have a jaw bone for Christ sake. You’re then chosen by the creepy tentacle ghost guy who tells you that it is now time to emerge from your unholy pit, and wreak havoc across the world until you can take vengeance on everyone that did this to you so you can finally have the eternal rest you were deprived of. And take vengeance you will. Many, many times.

You eventually get a spirit sword (the Soul Reaver), which just makes you even more awesome.

As you travel across the world and its dungeons in your quest to stick people through the abdomen with spears and suck their souls down your neck hole, you’ll fight all manner of terrible beasts, amazing bosses, and use a cool game mechanic that allows you to pull yourself into the spirit realm, effectively altering the world into a ghostly, twisted version of itself. Many of the game’s puzzles revolved around going back and forth into each realm, each one allowing you to access different areas depending on which you were in. It also looked pretty damn cool when you saw the world around you warp in real time. The first time I saw it happen, I almost lost my own jaw bone from how far across the room it went.

So I guess you can tell that I liked Soul Reaver a lot. It was one of my all time favorite PSX games. It’s just unfortunate that the game has aged so poorly. I recently sat down with it again to play a bit of it over to write this, and was immediately met with a game that is virtually unplayable by today’s standards. For instance, when I first got to control my character, I thought my controller was broke, as my character just sort of sat there when I tried to move him. I then terrifyingly realized that this was a game that came out before analogue sticks were the standard for 3D movement. A quick move over to the d-pad confirmed it, as Razeal slowly lurched forward with the push of a button. It only went downhill from there. An awful camera controlled by the damn shoulder buttons, sluggish controls, poopy combat that has you missing targets more than hitting, and worst of all, a framerate that literally slows the game down to half its speed almost 70% of the time you’re playing. This effectively makes it seem like you’re running head first through syrup when anything other than your character appears on screen (to be fair, the PC version of Soul Reaver doesn’t suffer from this, but who cares about the PC version?). With all that, Soul Reaver is sadly almost unplayable now. And that is kind of depressing.

Finding these rooms is essentially how you saved your progress. Note I just said progress. When you start up the game, you never start where you saved. Just close to a portal room like this, where you can hopefully warp close to where you left off

I suppose I should be happy that technology and gameplay has progressed so far. But it’s sad that I can no longer sit down with a favorite game of mine and simply play and enjoy it like I once did. This doesn’t exist for games like Pac Man and Galaga. When you sit down to play those games now, you get a game that is just as playable now as it was thirty years ago. I’m finding the opposite with many PSX games that were considered the best of the best on the console at the time. Most have aged terribly, and games I remember with amazing fondness are considered completely broken now. Maybe I should just be happy with the time I was able to enjoy them, and leave the rest for nostalgia.

At least the name is still awesome.

Submitted by Den

So, you are in your final year of sixth form/college/senior high. You’re thinking to yourself, “hmm, the last few years were the biggest pain my ass since I got raped by that ex-con”. You’re good/moderate in your studies, and want to make it medium to big, and cannot face real life just yet. In short, you’re wanting to go to university. Right now, across the pond to our Yankee friends, we’re enjoying a government that’s a mix between a communist provider state and a capitalist make it on your own country. The big G helps you out, but a company you pay for, set up by the government arranges where you study. This beats having to give handjobs to all the alumni in the university you want to go to.

The first and foremost thing you have to do is write a personal statement, where you try to make up as much semi-believable stuff you have supposedly done in the past (eg. Came 7th in the school 1600 meter race) that will make the university think you’re actually worth something. My personal favorite is lying about sports achievements when you’re applying for a course as a lawyer or doctor. But don’t make it too far-fetched (eg. I was crowned Ms Crack Whore 3 years running). Mentioning things like “I read computer magazines” when you apply for a computer course is not recommended, unless the only other thing you have to write to do with the course is “I use my internets to download porn!”

Also, avoid claiming to trap Asian families in your computer.

You pick 6 courses at 1-6 universities. This is done while you study for your final year, causing distress of time management between jerking off, playing games and loitering. As every student knows, the course is irrelevant. The relevant things about a university is the female to male ratio, even though you won’t get laid, the sophistication or unsophistication (whichever floats your boat) of the frat houses/societies and the hotness of the chicks found in the prospectus who you won’t meet in real life. A serious tip is to have a varied scale of requirements (eg : course that demands AAA, and a backup that only asks for EEE) this way, you can go to a posh university, complete with free monocle, or an establishment where the dean cannot read the essays you hand in, and chairs that break if someone heavier than 7 stones sit on them.

Your tutoring cast

If you’re smart, you randomly selected 6 universities that ask for minimal grades that you only require a pass to get in to (eg : EEE, at London Metropolitan). At this stage, if you fucked up, you’re doomed. No one wants to spend 4 years doing ancient history if you don’t know Alexander the Great from Julius Caesar ( hint : Alex is Italian, and Jules is Greek). If all your neurons weren’t wasted from getting the crap pummeled out of you, you were smart enough to do a course on one of your hobbies (EG : computer games design) and that you had a chance to succeed in. A year in industry also helps. Pick a course that seems to be an underdog (eg : all the other courses in that university demands AAA, yet yours asks for DDD. This means you’re either going to the crappiest course, or one which is new/unpopular); this lets the university whore itself to you, rather than the other way round.

When you have applied, our fancy British system lets us know as soon as the universities say “What the hell?”, and let you know that you are in no way welcome to study “Regal canines history” at Cambridge, but welcome to study “Erotic Media” at Universitica Generica. The university also taunts you by saying “Ha-ha! You can be here, but you gotta fulfill these conditions!” This is also when, if you didn’t apply for it, MIT, Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge giggle at your expense by offering impossible options for the course you want (eg : while you are doing 3 subjects, MIT asks for an Albanian passport, with AAAAA in 5 courses, excluding the ones you study. And promise that if you meed the requirements, you get a $50,000 grant)

This is simply not cricket. Or posh

Let’s suppose you actually didn’t make an ass out of yourself, and now have 6 universities that actually want you to go there. Now what? Well, you first do the most stupid dance since your father was at a 70s disco last Saturday. You then go through your prospectuses that you picked up waaay back, when your parents weren’t planning on how to convert your bedroom to a S&M zone for when you will be “studying” (read : getting drunk far away). Weigh up the pros and cons about each university and their courses in this manner :

• Less you study, the more time to party. Gooood
• Cheaper student booze means you get drunk for less money. Goooooood
• Less hours per week studying. Good
• Girl to boy ratio high. Goood, but doesn’t effect you
• Frat houses. Drunk-tastic. May cause arrest
• Distance from city center : Large = bad. Small = good.
• Size of dorm : large Good. Small = bad
• Shared dorm = bad… hell if your dorm partner is gay, and wants to be your partner partner
• Mixed sex shared dorm best.thing.ever….. unless your roomie is a fat girl.

Of course, in the “civilised” UK, we don’t get frat houses. We get “societies”, eg clubs. Look for good clubs, such as :

• Gamer society
• Snowboard society
• Wet t shirt society (not good in San Fransisco/blue oyster/gayland)
• Orgy society
• Porn appreciation society
• Drunk society
• Free drugs” society

Of course, for every yin, there is a yang, so bad societies include :

• Statistics society
• Tiddlywinks society
• Nudist society (good if its made up entirely of hot chicks and you)
• Racist society
• Nazi party society

Look for places that embrace your rare and unusual hobby, eg tooth flossing.

THE EXCITEMENT!

Open days are things common on the island across the pond, where we go and look at universities trying to wash us over with eye candy. When you are on an open day, some things are best kept to between your current friends such as “I wonder where the girls changing rooms are” and “Dean Richard? More like Dean Dick!” Don’t try to make Family Guy references at semi-appropriate timings trying to get on with your future friends when you are in a hall and the head of the university is there, unless you wanted to tease them with your master intellect that can fit on the head of a pin. Do not brag about your blog or minor related activity a chimp can do. Saying you experiment with medium in an art universities’ open day is like saying you can count when applying for a 7 year course on maths. Do not say you play computer games for a computer science course. Just because it has computer in it does not mean that, as you are the one that helps your parents look at their hotmail, you will go far on the course.

So, in your mom… ok, conclusion; when you apply to university be careful about where you go, because it might be a pain in the ass if it’s some place you don’t like going to, for example, the countryside. With the animals, fresh air, and no one around apart from your university peers for MILES! OH GOD! HELP ME OUT! I taked me some tranquilikilile to calm myself down. Heehee, MS Word is WhIt3!! When you choosed your subject, make it cool for you. You’ll be spending lots of time on it. I’ll see you next time, on tips on ononon something or other.

Just plain better than you.

I’m coming through, yes? Heroes have grim, memorable names and lead exciting lives that are chronicled in all mediums and you are ugly, boring and worthless but we can change that. Nobody is a lost cause. You can be special, too. Don’t you want to be special? Really, truly special? Can you imagine any life more pure, more perfect and more insatiably beloved of the people than that of an action hero?

Be a hero. Cure all your problems before you even come up with a catchy name. Bad acne? Put on a mask and be all dramatic about it. Fat and stinky? Wear armor. Problems with women? Beat a hooker. Tiny dick? Giant gun. It never ends. Every part of your body and your psyche can and will be improved one hundred thousand percent just by the simple act of brooding on top of a gargoyle in the rain. There is no reason not to quit your meaningless, dead-end jobs and come up with a gimmick and a catch phrase in the next five minutes. None. You get to be loved and you get to do whatever you want and that right there is something no other occupation can boast.

You will be encouraged to dig up every last angry little fantasy of senseless brutality and act them out in public and you will be applauded when you do. You could walk around with a tractor-sized gun in each hand, scream “I AM MADE OF JUSTICE™” before firing bullets the size of fists into the faces of three hundred people and you would be handed a medal from the president instead of locked away for the rest of your life. Loved and respected, lusted after by all women and you get to break anything you want.

You want to be an action hero.

And I will tell you how.

Many people foolishly assume that success in the merchandising kit-eat-focus group world of the action hero is based wholly on martial skill, the ability to shoot straight and keen detective skills. See, fuck that. You want to be a success, I can tell you how to be a success right now and you don’t have to know the first goddamned thing about throwing a punch or advanced forensic pathology. Three words: image, image, image. Nobody gives a flying fuck about anything but image so that’s all you need. Everything else falls into place.

Meet the president, and then BE the president. No doors will be closed to you. And you’ll have more chicks than you could ever possibly fuck.

Because the action hero is invincible. He’s untouchable, unimaginably mighty and any wound he takes will only enhance his appearance. Shoot wherever you want, every bullet will hit. Flail like a spastic monkey, your enemies will fall as wheat before your mighty feet for you are no ordinary man. You are a hero. Not even death will be able to hold you, unless you happen to be one of those boring ones with stupid names and dipshit gimmicks dressed in ridiculous, overblown costumes with dialogue that is funny in the sad way. Image. Image is everything and image is easy. It’s easy.

First, you need to decide what sort of hero you want to be. There are four choices and you’re going to want to choose carefully, because everything else comes from this decision.

SUPER HERO

Also known as “the whole shebang”, becoming a super hero will allow you to act out every single twisted fantasy your stunted emotions have blessed you with at once by dressing in spandex, putting on a mask and flying over cities shooting people with your laser eyes. By far the most lucrative choice, as every single part of you, your mindset, clothing and vocabulary is eminently marketable. Thought having your picture in your local newspaper was a trip? Try having a movie, a video game, a television program, a series of toys, a comic book and a newspaper strip dedicated to your face.

Are there any babies running around pretending to be you? Are there? ARE THERE?

Possibly the best part about this choice is the job itself because you get to break anything you want, whenever you want, for whatever reason and not have to pay a dime for it. Hurl people through plate glass, hit stuff with cars, throw tanks into buildings, it’s okay! Nobody’s gonna ask the beloved super hero to pick up the tab for that measly little twelve-story office building that got knocked down when you were chasing a purse snatcher, fuck no.

There is a downside, however, to the idyllic life of the super hero. There’s this kinda complex balancing act that goes on here, lemme see if I can explain it. See, a super hero cannot exist for long without a super villain, or else you have a guy who can lift a mountain fighting common thugs and it gets old. When it gets old it gets forgotten. Super villains are drawn to heroes depending on image and compatibility, and a hero with a brilliant, awe-inspiring and religiously memorable image will draw more villains, which in turn will draw more heroes – ones with lesser images – who will then sponge off the ‘alpha hero’s’ enemies until they draw more villains of their own. This draws more heroes, which draws more villains.

Soon you have a city with a 66% super hero/villain population and it’s just getting worse and worse. You’ll have random packs of super heroes and super villains waging all-out war with each other in the streets which triggers massive crossovers involving multiple packs which in turn will attract the attention of a Mysterious Cosmic Entity and his good friend Forces Beyond Your Understanding and the next thing you know, BAM. Continuity shift.

For fuck sake, not AGAIN.

Say goodbye to everything you ever thought you know about yourself, your powers, your past or what fucking version of which planet you’re on. It’s like someone’s hit the universal reset button and nobody can remember how it happened and why you’re suddenly a girl. And say goodbye to your social life. Sorry honey, no wild face sex for us tonight, Professor Oddlore Black has opened the Sucking Vortex of Allahaxstarus and the streets are crawling with mutant, demonic versions of me and the guys. Don’t wait up.

COSTUMED AVENGER

Some say this option is for people who don’t have super powers but still like to wear spandex and kick people in the face, and to this I say bullshit. Everybody knows how to get super powers, and if you don’t you’re an idiot and that’s all there is to it. No, the costumed avenger subset is for the bolder, considerably more violent sorts who get one major edge over the super hero, and that edge is derived from their very lack of actual powers.

not shown: forty-seven thousand furiously masturbating cheerleaders

Anyone can combat evil if their skin is bulletproof. A man with nuclear rays that fire from his hands does not need to be courageous in order to charge headlong at thirty-eight armed men. But the guy people REALLY respect, the guy who every teenager wants to be and every woman wants to fuck is the hard-as-nails badass motherfucker who takes down entire criminal organizations by himself with no super powers whatsoever.

That’s impressive and it means you can be considerably lazier. Nobody will applaud Captain Forever for catching a mugger, the guy can rearrange time with his brain, what the fuck’s he doing subduing a mugger? But the Black Mongoose, the mysterious masked man of mayhem with nothing but his unbreakable will as a shield against the endless forces of evil, that motherfucker could do nothing but beat up common hoodlums all day long and people would call him rock star.

Plus, you get to be the moodiest bitch on earth. No shit. Brood for hours in stunning poses on the sides of buildings and nobody will call the cops on you. Snap and torture a junkie to death with bullets, people with gasp and say “That is one fractured man, tormented by demons of the most dire and foul sort. How incredibly sexy is that?” Let a vicious psychopath get away scot-free with the vow that ‘I will find him again.. SOME DAY’, and then turn around and break a purse-snatcher’s legs. Plus, you get to have the word “the” permanently affixed to the front of your name. You’re not just Masked Drifter, no. You are THE Masked Drifter. Ask Powersmash the last time anyone called him THE Powersmash the next time he teases you about your realistic physical abilities.

Who knows what moisture lurks in the pants of women? The Shadow knows.

And finally, the lack of powers also enables you to be exactly as physically violent as you like. It’s not like you could subdue the terrorists with your mind now, is it? Restraint is for super heroes, and you don’t have any powers. Lacking any other option, you’re simply ~forced~ to batter people into bloody heaps of flesh. After all, they needed to be taught a lesson about the errors of their ways and there’s no lesson like a steel-toe boot in the teeth. Commit acts that would get police officers lynched by other police officers and feel that warm praise flow like blood in your veins.

The main downside is that costumed avengers only rarely attract super villains. No, instead, they draw criminal masterminds – who aren’t so bad, as they tend to be both reasonable and comfortably predictable – and homicidal psychotics who will, if you’ll pardon the play on words, drive you out of your fucking mind. Seriously. If you thought continuity shifts were a pain in the ass, try a raving psychopath with apparently limitless wealth who has affixed his identity to yours and follows you around, killing everybody you know and practically screaming LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME with piles upon piles of bodies and becoming so goddamned popular you’re never allowed to actually kill him.

On the other hand, you can carry as many guns as you like in public, every day.

ACTION HERO

While all of these heroes are ‘action heroes’, only the action hero subset actually carries that title. Action heroes are basically costumed avengers without masks. They still wear a costume, oh absolutely, as I’ve said; a hero is nothing without image – but their costumes are more, shall we say, ‘down to earth’. Trade the flashy spandex for a leather jacket and a pair of sunglasses. Put down the mask and put on a leather trenchcoat and a pair of sunglasses. No need for a cape, you have a personally-styled military uniform and a pair of sunglasses.

Action heroes, like costumed avengers, are only expected to take on normal human beings and action heroes, like costumed avengers, are expected to do it in a grotesquely violent manner. Break bones like Popsicle sticks, shatter faces with many bullets, set fire to inhabited buildings and do it all with the complicit acknowledgement of whatever secret government military law enforcement strike team you work for. Fuck, you could even buy a fake badge and call yourself a ‘private investigator’ and you’ll still get all that warm, juicy love you lust for.

Even a simple red headband can be considered a costume, provided you tie it slowly and dramatically. And walk around with a gun the size of a volkswagon.

Action heroes have one major drawback, (which can actually turn out to be a boon) and that is the lack of a ‘secret identity’. No masks. The flashy, marketable name you go by is the one you will always go by. Your life as a hero and your private life will be permanently connected by that one single name, and that means you’ll be expected to be ‘in character’ one hundred percent of the time. Dr. Impressive can take off his mask and be plain old John Pajvolski whenever he likes, he can hide away and ignore the tides of villainy, keep a normal job and take a vacation as a normal human being, but the action hero has no such option. At work, you’ll be John Steele and at home you’ll be John Steele, and that means kiss your family, your friends and everybody you’ve ever spoken to goodbye, as they’ll all be filled with bullets fired by bad people who want to get your attention. This can actually work out in your favor, as nothing makes a man look dead-hard and grimly awesome than a permanent scowl and a shopping list of dead girlfriends. Plus, the absence of a mask makes you appear to be even more ‘human’, meaning you’ll receive more vagina than you will know what to do with.

Plus, every woman you have sex with will get shot in the face soon after, which means no commitments!

KUNG FU HERO

One further step towards humanity and you have the final subset of the action hero, one who supposedly has no super powers and yet is capable of feats far beyond the abilities of any living mortal, with a simple costume, a convoluted or hard-to-pronounce name and most importantly, no guns. The kung fu hero is a soft-spoken badass who stabs his fingers into the brains of evil-doers everywhere on his endless road to vengeance for the death of his master, his father, his brother or some guy he met on the subway one time.

See that face? You're gonna die.

The image of the kung fu hero is the trickiest of all, as costumes, masks or even flashy names are not a prerequisite and may just bog him down. No, the kung fu hero’s image revolves wholly around the style and name of the martial arts he uses to break people into pieces. To be fair, the style itself isn’t all that important, so long as it’s full of unnecessary movements and flashy poses that little kids will imitate when they pretend to be you. More importantly is the name you give to your personal ‘savage dance’ – it must be complex, awe-inspiring and contain at least two of the following words: Flying, Leaping, Vengeful, Fearless, Invincible, Mountain, Iron, Dragon, Tiger, Leopard, Fist.

And that’s all there is to it, really. Just pick two or three of those words and stick them together in any order, contort your body into a pose that would look hilarious on anyone else and get ready to kick people very, very hard over and over and over again. The kung fu hero’s life is by far the easiest – though possibly the most strenuous – as there’s no real detective work to be done. All you have to do is walk around and kick people in the head, and eventually you’ll sort of run into the villainous scum you’ve been ‘looking’ for.

The strenuous part comes from the fact that all the kung fu hero ever does any given minute of any given day is kick people in the head. Grandiose, impeccably staged fights will follow you no matter where you go or what you do. It’s as if the kung fu hero emanates some sort of magic kung fu vibes that will instantly transform every single human being around them at any given time into a low-rent, easily-defeated hostile kung-fu master. You won’t even be able to go to the bathroom without the guy in the next stall flipping out about a lack of toilet paper, breaking down the walls and forcing you to kick him in the head. A quiet evening at a restaurant will end with every living, breathing person in a five-hundred-foot radius charging at you while you fend them off with your salad and kick them all in the head. It can get a little tiresome.

And who needs a gun when you have a giant stick with a huge shank of metal on it?

This is the best choice for those of you who prefer cutting or bludgeoning people to death rather than shooting them. Pick a sword or a knife or a staff or some sort of complicated killing tool that involves chains, hooks and blocks of wood, give it a fancy, nonsensical name like Black Falcon Dream or Iron Lotus Petal or Super Happy Fun Meathook and you’re set.

And you don’t even need to speak English!

IMAGE 101

Now that you’ve chosen what style of action hero you will become by the time you finish this article, it’s time to get down to brass tacks and come up with your image – unless you’ve chosen to be a kung fu hero, in which case all you need now is a pair of black pajamas and you’re all set to go.

First you’ll need to choose a name.

Those of you with super powers have it easy right here, as your name can be a simple self-descriptor. Can you fly? Name yourself after a bird. Are you made of lasers? Good to meet you, Living Laser. Have you the powers of an animal? Name yourself for it. Easy, easy, easy. The rest of you may actually have to think.

Colors are great! Nothing spells ‘badass’ like using a color as an adjective. Black Falcon, Blue Blazer, Red Menace, it’s all good and it’s all good for you. Stay away from colors with negative connotations or complicated patterns, as there is nothing but laughter waiting Yellow Justice and his sidekick, the Paisley Weasel. Metals are fine, too, provided you stick with metals that are used in things that kill people.

FEAR NOT, OFFICER, THE FLAMING BEAVER IS HERE

How about an unearned honorific? You can call yourself Fantastic until the cows come home and you will never get as much respect as you would if you’d just add the word Captain, Commander, General, Sergeant, Detective or Lord to it. You may think Jacob Stallion sounds dead cool, but think about how many more chicks you’d draw with the simple addition of those magic letters: P. I. Even a plain old ordinary ‘Mister’ will work wonders for your image.

Next, you’ll need a costume.

This one’s a bit harder as you’ll need clothing that would look good on a toy and a symbol that would look good on a bottle of cola. Remember that spandex never goes out of style and leather is made of hardcore, so you can never have too much of it. Also remember that weaponry makes for a fine fashion accessory, so load yourself up with more guns that a normal man’s spine could possibly support. A single, armored shoulderpad with great huge spikes is a powerful gesture, and for god’s sake, if we cannot see your balls through your pants, you are not wearing the correct pants.

Practice saying your every word through fiercely gritted teeth until it becomes second nature to you and get into the habit of twisting your body into convoluted, ridiculously uncomfortable-but-dramatic-looking poses at the drop of a hat until you can pull them off without pulling something. Never shoot the badguy without tossing off a grim, imitateable catchphrase like “Suck my throbbing justice” and you’re set.

GALS!

Doesn’t it suck, sometimes, to have a vagina? I mean, all the boys get to go out and shoot people in the eyes and pull off arms in the name of justice and there you are, time and time again, stuck in the kitchen making the thirty billionth dinner you’ll make in a lifetime of forced servitude and shattered dreams. And if it’s not cooking, cleaning or spurting children like some kind of fertility geyser, it’s something just intolerably degrading, like being used as the helpless goddamned victim yet a-fucking-gain.

Well chin up, ladies! The days of Heroing as a Boys-Only-Club are long since over and now women are not only finally allowed to come out from behind their ironing boards and washing machines to help the boys stomp the skull of villainy into a red, foamy paste, why, they’re practically expected to!

The world and wild life of the action hero can be yours for the taking, ladies, provided you look like a porn star and have tits the size of watermelons that stick straight out like you were in zero-gravity, or else fuck you, ugly, get back in your doghouse.

A few things to remember, ladies:

• There is no need whatsoever to armor your midriff, your cleavage or your thighs. No matter what odds you face, a bikini and hotpants with a visible thong are all you’ll ever need. Honest.
• Fighting the endless forces of injustice is NO EXCUSE to spend less than twelve hours a day making sure your hair is hot and sexy and perfectly groomed at all times.
• Comfortable, supportive boots or shoes are useless in combat, as any TRUE warrior woman knows. Stiletto-spike heels are the way to go.
• No fat chicks.

Appropriate female hero action wear. No, really.

Only one last piece of the puzzle and you’re ready to get out there and start wreaking havoc of biblical proportions.

LOVED ONES ARE FOR FAGS

You need a mysterious, tragic past, that’s all there is to it. The people will not rise up to embrace Willy Hamish, the part-time chef at the Do-No-Matic who leads a happy life with a loving girlfriend and no trace of personal trauma, just because he pulls on a mask or picks up a gun and calls himself the Red Ferret. Kill off his girlfriend, though, and make his childhood a Dickensian tale of dead parents and dead friends and POOF. Hero city.

Go on, look through the annals of action heroes through the ages. I dare you, I double-dog-dare you to find a single one who is not tormented by at least one well-placed death festering up his brains. The chronicles of action heroes are rife with dead parents, dead friends, dead mentors, dead lovers, dead children, are you seeing the connection here?

Have you lost anyone you love? No? Maybe you had better start picking out candidates for the chopping block, or else you’ll never get anywhere. All it takes is a single e-mail to xv_bones@yahoo.com, and you’ll be up to your neck in deceased loved ones who’s souls will perpetually cry out for vengeance and drive you to the brink of madness that you will hide behind a mask as you bring your personal brand of justice to the streets of this diseased city and pull in the cash hand-over-fist from all the marketing deals.

Pick someone out, and write that e-mail today.

You can’t afford not to.

Put them all together, they spell H-E-R-O, and that’s what you are, my friends, my most glorious children, that is what you are. Your name is picked and it is hardcore. Your costume is revealing and emblazoned with an image that children doodle in their notebooks. You are an action hero and you are ready for anything. All you need now is an insidious bastard, a true-form heartless motherfucker you can clash against again and again, a man who will torment your dreams with his senseless slaughter of countless innocents and laugh at the pain he brings you.

As I write these words, there is a robotic tapeworm the size of a subway train burrowing towards the center of the earth. In twelve hours, that tapeworm will coil around the earth’s core and drain it of all heat and energy, leaving the world a barren, lifeless rock floating as cosmic wreckage in the endless void of space.

The controls to this tapeworm are positioned in a bank of computers about four feet to my left, in my massive fortress of death and pain studded with automatic cannons, infested with deathtraps and overrun with my endless legions of armed henchmen who are supplemented by a series of grotesque mutant animals, over on the far side of town.

Take a left at the McDonalds and keep going past the gas station, you can’t miss it.

Come get me.