The second I finished reading about the 'Spend a day at id Software' trip for auction I knew I was meant to go. Why? ...
Another main reason I thought it wasn't just coincidence that the trip came up was I'd put the finishing touches on my DOOM movie script and had started trying to get into contact with JFR Productions, the company that is making the film. I thought "well hell, if that wouldn't be the icing on the most bitchin' cake ever" so I started figuring out how much I could possibly spend on it.

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I don't have anything against Salon.  At one point, I was going to write an article for them about Croteam.  Unfortunately, the piece was killed due to the Internet troubles, which also caused the Salon editors to take a temporary paycut while waiting for all their "erotic art" money to start rolling in.  So there's that.

As a measure of what deep financial trouble Salon is in, I respectfully - and bravely - present this ebay auction and the subsequent article on Salon.  If you discount Wagner James Au's weird, finger-wagging, Amish-among-the-English story, Salon's only coverage of E3 was 900 words they won in a kid's ebay auction for $14.50.  Since I'm sure erotic photography is much more expensive than your average dirty trucker porn because all the models went to graduate school, I'd like to offer my own cost-cutting advice to the Salon editors.  You can get regular old blue collar beaver shots for free at Uh-Oh.net, then have somebody over there - maybe Garrison Keillor - smarten them up.  For instance, the series "Pussy Lips on Display" could be "eroticized" by simply renaming it "Pussy Lips on Display...FRANZ KAFKA!"  I'm no expert on art, erotic or the completely worthless non-erotic kind, but if I was on my way out for a night of theater followed by poetry slam, and desired a brief unilateral erotic interlude, I think this would do it for me.  Here, I'll act it out while I read it:

Pussy Lips on Display  - [fluttering hand on chest] "Well I never.  How vulgar."
... - "Ellipses.  Now that's curious...doo-da-doo...tap tap tap..."
FRANZ KAFKA! - [monocle pops out of eye] HUUHHH?!?  Why, Salon, you've done it again!  Well marx my engels, Penis, I see you've experienced a metamorphosis of your own!  HA HA HA!  I'm going to need that monocle back, though.

Jenny, Laura, Eleanor, Karl, Sweet Amateur Pussy, and Fred Marx

E3 is over.   As always, that means it's time to debate the merits of sexy women.   Personally, I'm all for them.  God bless attractive people, I say.  More than he or she but probably he already has, I mean. 

As per usual, the other team is represented by Wagner James Au aka any combination of those three words.  In an article on Salon, he bravely takes on an entire industry for its obsession with tone, appealing asses.  I only made it about 1/3 of the way through the piece, so I may be wrong about everything I'm saying here.  If I am, it's a small price to pay for not having to read the whole fucking thing.  I've developed a sixth sense about Au that triggers any time he's just about mention German expressionism or break into French.  I stopped reading when it started tingling at this point:

Whatever the motive, the GOD lot was packed with flesh-addled gamers gathered for the booby show -- while the GOD games themselves went almost entirely ignored.

First of all, God forbid someone uses sex to sell a product.  Unless of course that product is Salon itself, which advertises as one of its subscription services

Premium-only galleries of erotic art and photography in Salon Sex.

Maybe Au's real problem is that E3 hasn't thought up a decent leftist euphemism for porn that won't taint the thrill of blood rushing to his penis by making him feel as if he's experiencing the unsophisticated boner of the common man.

Secondly, someone should tell Au - since he may be new to the job - that GOD games are generally ignored regardless of whether or not there's a "booby" near them.  For all its overwrought, manufactured edginess, the only GOD game to ever really make an impact on gamers was the seriously rock-n-roll-less Railroad Tycoon 2.   On second thought, that might be proving his stupid point, so ignore that part.

I've talked about this before, but this kind of hand-wringing, stridently "pro-woman" rhetoric is just a New Age pick up line of the most transparent sort.  I can imagine Au typing the article and thinking to himself, "I dare women to ignore me now!"  Also the phrase "Checkmate, ladies!" was probably in there somewhere too. 

People are attracted to attractive people.  In turn, attractive people have to eat.  Granted, they have to eat less than ugly fat people, but the point is still valid.  Men like boobs.  When men see breasts, we experience a brief, pleasant  Run-Lola-Run-esque reverie during which we live an alternate life whose central theme is one or both of those boobs.  It happens about seven hundred times a day, and most men find it enjoyable.  So - attractive women need to eat and men like breasts.  As spelled out in the Declaration of Independence, women who have taken the time to nurture extraordinary breasts can charge people money to see them.   It's capitalism at work.  If I didn't think Au was actually involved in a sly con to trick these women into showing him their breasts for free, I'd say he's a goddamn socialist.

Whether it's showing your boobs or having a truly objectifying, soul-deadening job like working in an office, ultimately everyone gets paid to be nice to some asshole.  Maybe Au's never had a regular job, I don't know.  I've spent most of my working life pushing papers around while fluorescent lights slowly cultivate a tumor in my neck.  I've daydreamed of the day I could march out and tell the snooty boss "See ya, jerkoff, I got a new job delighting ugly women with my cock!"   If you replace "cock" with "tit" and then a couple of other words, Trade Show ladies have my dream job.

But what does all this say about gaming and gamers, which I'm told by someone who read the whole thing may be the point of Au's article?  It doesn't matter.  Look, we've got bigger problems that need to be addressed first.  I took an informal poll of women at the Duluth Center for American Indian Resources yesterday, and overwhelmingly they found it much more pathetic that gamers spend much of their time ordering little pretend army men around.  Women at least understand sex.  According to my sources, breasts and men's tendency to be distracted by them are the most recognizably human thing about the whole fucking subculture.  And they're Indians, so they know everything.

I know I've already won, but I'm now going to rip Au's spine out, Mortal Kombat style.  Here's an excerpt from an article on International trade show exhibiting:

Perhaps the least understood and most (for Americans) politically incorrect element of foreign trade show exhibiting is the use of attractive women as hostesses on a corporate booth. In the U.S., hiring "Booth Babes" is often seen as sexist and a base and demeaning use of women's beauty to attract businessmen to an exhibit. Companies often avoid using exhibit hostesses in fear of criticism, bad press and even lawsuits from disgruntled employees.

In Europe, exhibit hostesses are part of a cottage industry of well-respected and intelligent women who "hire out" for trade shows. They usually have another day job and use trade show work for extra income. Some of the best do it on a full-time basis. All are multi-lingual, well-educated, attractive and well-dressed. With a brief training session on the company, they can serve as able first-point-of-contact representatives as well as indispensable translators.

Since Au is a known Europhile who will switch to French whenever he becomes frightened that his statements don't sound smart enough in English, I figure this ought to bury the argument forever.  They have a long tradition of booth babes in Europe!  America - and here I'm not talking about the actual America that invented the peanut, saved Europe's poopy ass in WW2, and every couple of months has to fly our jets over there to forcibly shut down the rape camps, but the traditionless, vulgar one fruity-toots like Au are always complaining about - could learn a lesson from Europe.  In closing: whatever "Shut up, James" is in French.

Speaking of France, I thought you should see this terrifying image from the trailer for Steven Spielberg's dystopian summer blockbuster AI:

 
Most likely to be first casualty of the future: Lady Liberty

"Unless he messed with the Ark of the Covenant," she added, "In which case I wouldn't want to be him right now even more than I already don't want to be him right now because he's dead."

That really got me thinking.  At this point, I'm closer to deadly age forty-nine than I am to super-healthy age zero.  I could go at any moment, and yet I still haven't thought up a good catchphrase that everyone can trot out to commemorate my passing.  Adams had the foresight to invent "So long, and thanks for all the fish", which has become sort of the "FIRST POST FAGETS!!!!" of Douglas Adams Grief Expressionists everywhere.  Even though my morning ritual includes a heart-muscle strengthening cocktail of anabolic steroids, Zestril, and androstenedine, and even though sports doctors tell me I have the most ripped heart they've ever seen, I'm not immortal.  Though, since I'm still alive, that's just a theory at this point.  Still, if sports doctors and their patient explanations about how "as far as I can tell by bombarding it with x-rays and firecrackers, your heart is indestructible, but that doesn't mean you won't die of something else" are right, I may just die of something else. 

The point is, when and if I eventually pass on, the title of today's news article is what I'd like you all to post over and over and over again.  It's good because it's whimsical but also might keep me from being buried alive.  I know a lot of you probably think I'm an alarmist, but I'll tell you what:  More regular people die from being buried alive every year than hippies were killed at Kent State.  And God knows you're all still pretty agitated about that.  Four people, for chrissake.   More people die in blimp accidents every year.

Speaking of the Government and my girlfriend, I want to post a new public service alert for any readers with a wife or girlfriend:  You're going to want to add Supreme Ruler 2010 to the list of products whose titles need to be hidden from women, especially sarcastic women.  Raven did a favor for people with children by releasing a bloodless "tactical" version of Soldier of Fortune.  Maybe Battlegoat Studios can do something similar for gamers who have females in the house by releasing a version of Supreme Ruler 2010 with a nonsense name such as "Alkamalka'Mooga" or something else that doesn't raise any alarms in the Terminator readouts that constantly scroll across the inside of women's eyeballs.   Don't get me wrong, like you, not a moment goes by that I'm not daydreaming I'm the Supreme Ruler of something - usually the future - but we all know that the security of this fantasy is inversely proportional to women's awareness of it.  

The other day, Chet and I were busy directing our undivided attention to feeling sorry for ourselves because the Internet had exploded and burned up all our Internet money.  I tried to cheer him up with some inspirational catchphrases I'd learned the night before while I was reading the book on videotape, Remember The Titans.  "We may be broke, but you taught this city how to trust the soul of a man, not the look of him,"   I told him.  Chet didn't seem cheered up, so I grabbed both of his hands in my own and continued:  "We're gonna get old, we're gonna get fat, and someday there ain't gonna be this black and white between us."

I stared at him while I waited for the cheering up to start.

"Look.  Stupid.  For the last time," he told me, "I'm not black."

"Well, you did teach me how to be less uptight by listening to Motown instead of my country music," I pointed out.

"No I didn't," he pointed out right back.

One of the purposes of the multipurpose metal polish Brasso is that, thanks to its active ingredient, petroleum distillate, it's a great, cheap alternative to the street drug "Gasoline".   If you pour some on a sock and then secure the sock to the middle part of your face, you'll forget about your banner ad troubles along with other things.  Thanks to the Internet and Brasso, I forgot that Chet isn't Orlando Jones and that I'm not every white person who's ever been in a movie with Orlando Jones. 

I'm only pointing this out as an example of how racism hurts us all.   To varying degrees.  Once again, my inspiration is IGN.  Though best known for their diligent, uncompromising reportage on what it might be like if Jessica Alba touched their dick, the IGN editors are also fearless crusaders for social justice.  And Might and Magic, etc.  Here's a quote from their recent review of Army-Men - World War Final Front:

These games are built around a world of unceasing warfare, a constant global struggle between the forces of Us and Them. We are always right, and They are always the Enemy, to be destroyed on sight regardless of the circumstances. There is no reason for the conflict -- it's Orwell's 1984 come back to life. "We are at war with the Tan. We have always been at war with the Tan."

But what differentiates Us from Them? Only color, and here we come to the crux of the matter. What is the message contained within Army Men, and what is it teaching to the young audience it's being marketed towards? If someone is a different color from you, you should shoot them? Maybe I'm overreacting a little, but I'm wondering about what it will be like to live in a world full of children who've grown up on Army Men, and I don't like what my mind's eye sees.

And now I proudly present the crux of my matter:  I have no problem when someone plays the race card as a necessary last resort.  If it's your job to keep O.J. out of jail, be my guest, I say.  On the other hand, if it's your job to pan this week's Army Men game, and the only bad thing you can think to say about it is that it's racist, you're simply convincing me that it just might be the greatest game ever.  Which means you're not doing your job. 

In a perfect world, we'd all lie blind and motionless in stacked coffins filled with pudding.  It would be dark and warm and nobody would have to compete with anybody and also the government would pay for the pudding. 

Unfortunately, contests are a tragic fact of life.  These contests often involve multiple teams.  Because white people are so stupid, our ancestors could never figure out what team anyone was on when they played their beloved croquet and Abraham Lincolnball.  Then in 1890, after inventing the peanut, George Washington Carver invented color.  He sold the invention to whites for some beads - which, back then, white people always gave you whenever they bought anything - and ten million dollars.   Carver taught the whites that his colors could be used to differentiate one side from another.  Whites were so pleased that they began calling all African Americans "coloreds" as a tribute to George Washington Carver's brilliant work.  They even gave the "coloreds" their very own Abraham Lincolnball league. 

So if you Harriet Tubman's at IGN actually manage to smuggle colors out of games, you'll be performing a great disservice to one of Disney World's Pirates of Black History Month's most popular robot puppets.  Not to mention we'll have to start determining teams by smell.  Or even eliminate competitions altogether.  And that means you'll have to cancel Anna Kournikova's Tennis Panties Wedged Up Her Ass Week.

And as far as the allusion to 1984, well, point to you, Drs. Brainiac.  I guess someone at IGN went to college - junior high school college!   Even my arch nemesis Wagner James Au, aka James Wagner Au, hasn't sunk that low.   Before yesterday, I mean.  

McVeigh saw himself as a counterpart to Luke Skywalker, the heroic Jedi knight whose successful attack on the Death Star closes the film. As a kid, McVeigh had noticed that the 'Star Wars' movies showed people sitting at consoles -- Space-Age clerical workers -- inside the Death Star. Those people weren't storm troopers. They weren't killing anyone.But they were vital to the operations of the Evil Empire, McVeigh deduced, and when Luke blew up the Death Star those people became inevitable casualties. When the Death Star exploded, the movie audiences cheered. The bad guys were beaten: that was all that really mattered. As an adult, McVeigh found himself able to dismiss the killings of secretaries, receptionists, and other personnel in the Murrah building with equally cold-blooded calculation. They were all part of the Evil Empire.

Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols (in raincoat) Jew David Koresh

Reprinted from the official Lionhead discussion board without permission or comment:

I was originally thinking of adding this message as a reply to the "Please post your creature's amazing stories" thread, but as I wanted to be sure that Lionhead could see this one I decided to make it it's own message.

Mr. Molyneux and Lionhead, you have all done a really fantastic job on this game's detail and spectacular AI. I want to strongly compliment you on "Black and White". All your hard work has really shown, as I was shown last night just how powerful your game really was. I was so touched by your game last night that it became the first videogame I've ever encountered that made me cry.

To save myself some typing time, let me show you a copy of an email sent out late last night to other members of my little clan concerning what happened:

--

I wanted to tell you about something that just happened.

Tonight after spending all day doing other things, I decided to take some time to play my new game, and was genuinely astonished and horrified at what happened in it. Well, you know what I mean, it was just like watching a dramatic movie when I say "horrified".

You know how the game says it's like a giant personality test and will reflect your own personality due to the fact that it's wildly open-ended and will reflect your moral choices?

Well, I was so proud of my tiger Rainbow...he was entertaining the children, petting and kissing the villagers, doing chores for them, even putting them all to bed at night when night fell. He was beginning to glisten with a heavenly rainbow-like glow aura, and his alignment read something like "saintly and true".

But then I watched something awful happen. He wasn't eating. He was just taking care of everyone, so I immediately tried to feed him. He simply took the food, rejected it and gave it to the villagers instead. In other words, he was so compassionate and caring towards the people that he wasn't caring for himself. I desperately tried to get him to eat and rest, but he kept refusing.
He died of hunger and weakness.

Fortunately, creator Peter Molyneux promises that your creature won't actually "die" permanently, he'll just come back in his home and you can correct whatever happened. But as I tried to get him to eat, he kept rejecting the food and giving it to the people and ended up "dying" some five more times. I kept thinking sadly "This is for your own good, Rainbow" as I slapped him hard as he threw the food away yet again.

Finally, I got him to eat by putting food in his paws and rubbing his chest until he realized it was alright. So he seems to be alright now. But man, that was touching to watch, just like watching a good movie or something.

--

I sat there and just began to cry as the above happened, and my ten-year-old nephew was genuinely concerned (he was watching the game over my shoulder and desperately hoping I could get "poor Rainbow" to eat). I've had certain movies move me to that degree, but this is the first time I've ever encountered a *computer game* that affected me like this. Obviously, you and your staff must have an incredible amount of talent to create a program this special.

*

*Note: This file photo of Brandon Reinhart reacting to George Broussard reading the story out loud to the 3D Realms staff does not appear in the original post.

The chain of events that ended with my sandwich attached to a severed monkey's paw and sitting in a puddle of hair and liquefied meat started when I caught Erik's beloved monkey touching my sandwich with the same hand I'd seen it using just moments before to investigate its ass.   Erik was inconsolable.  As I remember it, he said something like "BOO HOO... BOO HOO." 

I responded by repeating the words "BOO HOO" in an even higher-pitched girl voice while running around him in circles and waving my bony, non-functioning dinosaur arms.  Eventually, I sharpened my impression.  "I don't like crates.  Fag fag fag. Crate.  Daikatana," I squealed.  Then just to make sure he didn't miss the point, I said "My name's Erik."

After a few minutes of this, Erik curled up on the floor and began sobbing the word "why" in between huge gulps of air.

"Your monkey had leukemia.  That's what made it explode." I explained.

"It didn't have leukemia!" he screamed at me.

"I meant Lou Gherig's disease," I said.

"Little Admiral Grace Hopper Inventor Of COBOL Banana didn't have Lou Gh-" he started.

"Well, it was definitely lew-something," I said.  "The point is, you should have taken better care of it.  Instead of giving it a funny pun name - like Nim Chimpsky, for instance - you took 'Admiral Grace Hopper', appended a short biography of Admiral Grace Hopper to it, and then just added the word 'Banana' to the whole thing.  That's indicative of how lazy you were about everything with that monkey.  It wasn't even female, for chrissake."

"But-" he said.

"Shut up," I said.

"But-" he added.

"Shut up," I said.  "Go make me some Beefaroni," I said.

Monkeys aren't even worth the small amount of effort it takes to strap them to gurneys and test lip gloss on them by smearing it into their eyes.  Over the next several days, I patiently explained this to Erik several times, but it didn't make him any less blubbery.  I eventually gave up.  The one thing I'm not allowed to do is kill either one of the two idiots, so my hands were tied there.

Just to shut him up, I bought another monkey that looked a lot like the first one and told Erik I fixed the original monkey, at which point everything returned to normal.  Or at least that was the plan.  Because of a difference of opinion regarding how often it should touch its own filthy ass before touching my face, the new monkey didn't survive the short car ride home. 

It did give me an idea, however.  I still had Admiral Grace Etc. Etc. Banana's little paw.  I could take that, force one of your caveman scientists to resurrect it through cloning, and have a good-as-new, probably deranged and homicidal monkey that, when Erik bent down to kiss it, would most likely bite his lips off before throwing him out a window.

So, in answer to the many emails I've received, that's where I've been.   Touring the country talking to scientists.  Are there stories to tell?   You bet.  I helped John Donohue and Steven Levitt - respectively, the Eminem and the crazy X-Box middle management niggas of Social Science - construct their almost magically pan-offensive theory that abortion reduces crime.  

But that's not what I'm here to talk about today.  In every lab I went to, roughly 50% of the equipment was dedicated to emergency eye washing.  In my day, losing an eye is a badge of honor for a scientist, like losing a tooth is for a hockey player or sucking the legs off an especially criminal-minded fetus is for today's crime fighting abortion doctor. 

I watched one scientist accidently pipette 10cc of mercury bisulfate into his eye, which caused it to catch on fire a little.  Thrilled, I started to scream "WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  FEEL THE BURN! GO GO GO!"  Instead of simply letting the eyeball burn itself out and then visiting the lab's eyepatch station, he made a shrieking beeline for the eye wash.

"BOO HOO," I mimicked as I stood over him.  "BOO HOO.   Ya fuck'n sissy."

A group of scientists had gathered around us.  "Look everyone, I'm him," I said and pointed at him. "BOO HOO.  I forgot to put the enzyme in my Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching test, and now it didn't work.  I need the emergency hug station."

Then I drew a picture of a cock, carefully cut it out, and taped it over the station's International symbol for eye washing:

"I hope this acts as a constant reminder of what a bunch of spineless fruits you all are," I told them.  "Good day gentlemen," I said and left. 

Maybe this little bit of scientific culture jamming will catch on and end up saving your entire civilization.  Because it's not a lack of knowledge that's holding you people back, it's a lack of will.