What, Me Worry?

Ah, the infamous Mad Magazine and their infamous mascot, Alfred E. Neuman, with his infamous credo. These days, it seems particularly relevant to me because I’d always interpreted that particular slogan as cautionary advice about stupidity. Specifically, the stupidity to be calm when one should clearly be bouncing off the ceiling and panicking. I say this, because I wonder of late if I myself am not pulling an Alfred E. Neuman and remaining stupidly calm and placid in the midst of events that would leave a more sensible human being sweating through a cold and sleepless night. But first…

Real Time Jiggle

At long last, Dead Or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball graced the television in The Cave. After watching James’ awestruck reactions to the close ups and camera pans of breasts and ass, I now feel fully justified in my enthusiasm for the game, and now attribute all the posturing of “It’s just a perv game” that most of the people I know hashed around as that ever so adorable macho hypocrisy that’s supposed to prove that you’re a mature human being with a much deeper, more profound insight into life. This doesn’t stop these deep and profound human beings from muttering “Oh… My… GOD…” the same way I was when the camera rotated around some white-haired girl in something called a “Ratri”; a V-Kini that consisted of little more than two strips of black lycra connected at the rear by a shoelace. Having spent the better part of midnight to 6 am trying to get the girl to accept this bikini (The girls, strangely enough, don’t like to wear the “raunchy” stuff, and so a lot of bribery in the form of gifts is involved, more real world lessons for all you gamers out there, pay attention…) it was with much glee and smoking of cigarettes that we finally watched her strut down the beach, unnecessarily arching her back and tilting her head at the sun as we Keanu-ed all the way and went “Whoa.”

I have learned two very important lessons from playing this game.

1) The games industry is finally starting to realize that their audience isn’t 8 years old anymore.

2) The only people who can play this game without fear of karmic retribution are single men. Anyone who is attached will automatically bring the wrath of the furies down upon their heads as, let’s face it, with a game like this, there is simply no excuse to justify why you’re playing it. EVERYONE knows exactly why you’re playing it and all the counter-arguments about “in-depth gameplay” and “astonishingly accurate physics” will fall on deaf ears and end in a cruel, cold finger pointing towards your bed for the night, The Couch.

To make matters worse, I resisted as long as I could, but the call of the Role Playing Game finally got to me, and I succumbed. Suikoden III is now slowly, methodically, anal-retentively being completed hour by excruciating hour of its 65+ hour life, which has once again turned me into little more than a gaming vegetable that cares more about finding the secret Bujutsu teacher to upgrade my combat skills than in actually caring about food, household pets, or girlfriends. This was all fine and dandy when the games were a bitter escape from the horrid reality of my single life, but now that that lifestyle is dead, this ability to shut out the world for days on end is proving something of a liability. So far the girlfriend is still understanding about this obsessive-compulsive need defeat game console RPGs, but if I ever do something really bonehead like watch her break her ankle and then tell her “Okay, I’ll take you the hospital, just let me kill this last boss in the dungeon, I’ve…almost… got it…” I’ll probably be able to enjoy my victory for exactly five seconds, then read the “Dear John, BITE ME” letter she wrote while crawling out of the house by her fingernails to get herself to the hospital.

Words, Sentences and Paragraphs

Serial Jen continues, and has finally broken the 10 page barrier, creeping up to 15. It’s going to be a bit tricky around the 2/4, since that’s the only one that seems lost in the fog. 1/4 is done. 3/4 and 4/4 I know what’s going to happen, but that second bit is tricky for some reason…

Jen, as usual, is proving to be something of a bitch, and it was nice to be able to write about my Alma Mater, the University Of Alberta again, as the story (Or at least the early part) is set there, circa 1994. In fit of whimsey, while I was enjoying the virtual tour feature and staring once more at much loved buildings like HUB, FAB and Humanities, I decided to check out the English department to see if my creative writing Prof, Kristjana Gunnars was still there. She was, so I wrote her an e-mail and thank you letter and she promptly wrote back the same day.

Kristjana is kind of important to me for a couple of reasons, but the most important one is that she really made me feel like I wasn’t wasting my time with this writing thing. After the horror of my introductory creative writing class (I got the highest mark in one semester and the lowest in the other. Long story…) I was ready for intermediate, and when I submitted my portfolio to her for consideration, she bumped me up to the senior course instead. Which was a good class for me and I knew that I was probably going to get a lot out of it when she said at the first class, “I’m not here to teach you how to good stories, I’m here to teach you better how to write the kind of stories you want to write.” And she probably regretted those words to some degree when I proceeded to bombard the class with one genre-laden/anti-literary story after another. Still, I stuck with it, and the one thing I’ll always remember is that when she bought dinner for the class (There were only 6 of us…) to congratulate us on finishing the course, I went out to smoke a cigarette and she followed me and told me, “I expect to be hearing quite a bit about you in the future.”

When you’re a struggling writer and an award winning author tells you that, it tends to mean a lot.

Living On The Dole

I have now officially been unemployed for nearly three months.

What little money I had is now gone and the rent as well as most of the living expenses are now largely carried through by the girlfriend, with the exception of a little bit of money coming in here and there for the odd freelance job, but these usually amount to a few hundred dollars and merely slow the growth of the hole, not fill it up. There are possibilities, such as the Nadya thing, though I may have to do the unappealing thing and actually call her up to ask about that. And there is still the little question of the legality of my presence in Singapore as MOM has yet to get back to me on the state of the application, and their Visa extension officially expires this Friday. So all around, it’s once more back in the pressure cooker, although, to be honest, I’ve been through worse, which is why it’s hard to get really worked up about this.

Unfortunately I can’t say the same for the girlfriend.

Not necessarily used to living on the edge of desperation the way I have, for sometimes years at a time, she is, understandably, less than a happy camper about our current situation. Although to her credit, she seems more mad at the situation than she is at me, since she can understand my motivations perfectly. Last night I was telling her that it almost seems like the universe is trying to ram one last load of worry/angst/suffering down my throat as a sort of fond farewell, because this really feels like a transitional period. With the books sitting around, waiting for a publishing date, life is going to be a much simpler, more interesting affair in a few months, what with the money coming in, and then planning for the move to Vancouver (Yes, we have talked about this. Yes, she is all for it.) life is going to be a very busy experience indeed very shortly. But in the meantime, it’s back to squandering like a rat. There will be stress, there will be low periods of morale, there will probably also be me hitting up friends and begging them for money while I look for a job that never materializes until I A) stop looking in despair or B) Get the money from the book and no longer need it, though by then it’s too late, as, in desperation, I stupidly sign a 2 year contract that locks me into this island.

Life. Ya’ gotta’ love it, don’tcha’?

No Footprints On The Sand

The reason for that being the girlfriend and I were feeling slightly cabin feverish, and so went out for a walk on the beach just in time to catch the sunrise. Naturally, we intepreted it in two radically different ways. She was just happy that it was the two of us on a relatively empty beach with the sky being lit up in the rosey hues of dawn, a clean stretch of sand ahead of us with nary a footprint to be seen. I preferred to think of it as we were the last human beings on Earth, the wreckage of various freighters strewn across the water as their crew horribly died of radiation poisoning, while the sky slowly burned with the radiation of North Korean Nuclear missile attacks that had started a nuclear conflagration around the region.

When she pointed out that the freighters still had their lights happily glowing away, I wittily responded, “Shuuuuuuut uuuuuuup!”

Not my most eloquent moment, I grant you.

We also saw a huge group of elderly Chinese people out for their daily bout of Matrix Calisthenics, ie, Tai Chi. The lingering after-effects of GTA: Vice City still held a firm grip on me and I once more, ’cause this is the kind’a romantic guy I am, felt compelled to romantically declare that it would be neat to wander into the middle of them with a molotov cocktail. I love the smell of burning geriatric in the mornin’… to paraphrase Apocalypse Now.

Which led to breakfast at the golden arches, chasing after stupid cats that wouldn’t let me pet them, and finally back here, where I have put away a few more pages of Serial Jen and bumped it up to six. Not bad for a few hours work. I’m pretty pleased with that. As usual, the characters have taken a life of their own and are probably not going to do what I tell them to. One of these days I need to write a story with an S & M masochist character so at least she’ll just say to me, “Tell me what to do, Master…”

That was supposed to be whole point of being a writer, that control thing. Man, even my characters don’t give me no respect…

Bah.

The Lucia Scenario in Devil May Cry is already beaten. Shorter and easier than Dante’s Scenario, but it did unlock more costumes. I think there’s too much media crossover happening. Imagine my surprise when I read the credits and realized that the clothes were designed by none other than Diesel?!? Then when I actually checked the new costumes out, my bad ass Devil Hunter and Cajun Demon Killer looked like a couplea’ whiny models, complete with eerily vacuous expression that they usually have when staring out at the reader from magazines like ID, and Wallpaper? What’s this world coming too?!?

Novels: Out. Geek Source Material: INNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!

After a brief visit to Apple Movie Trailers, I was rather stunned when I realized that 2003 seems to be the Year Of The Geek. We’ve already had one comic movie in the form of Daredevil, with The Hulk and X-Men 2 on the way, TWO Matrix movies and of course, the conclusion of the Elven Love Fest, Lord Of The Rings. Did I blink or something? When did all this geekiness become so… profitable?

Ho Hum…

Another quiet lull. I always seem to have more fun when I have nothing to talk about. Finished the “Dante Scenario” of Devil May Cry 2. The game is, largely, a disappointment. While the graphics are undeniably an improvement over DMC 1, I take serious issue with the dumbed down gameplay, and the really, really bad camera control. It’s a bit annoying when 75% of your kills are done off screen and you don’t even know what you’re shooting at. Which is another big problem, the weapons; the swords aren’t quite as funky as the first game, and are largely useless anyway. Upgrading your weapons doesn’t seem to yield any vast improvement in damage. But more importantly, why the hell do I want to use swords when they give me weapons like Uzis and rocket launchers? And all the cool moves are, again, rendered largely useless by the guns. Yeah, it kicks ass that Dante can run around on walls, but since he can’t shoot or fight while he does that, and since he doesn’t run long enough to manuever around enemies (Since they’re off-screen, so you have a looooooong way to go…) what’s the point? And I miss being able to actually select which new killer features you want for your weapons as you upgrade. It’s gone, the greatness is all gone… And instead, I get what feels like a pre-quel in terms of gameplay mechanics. This is what DMC 1 should have been and it would have blown me away, then moving onto what DMC 1 actually IS would have been the evolutionary improvement. Ah, Dante… you had a good first run… maybe third time’s a charm.

I’ll see what happens in the Lucia Scenario, which I’ve read is shorter anyway.

The Writing Thing

Proceeds apace. Little bits and pieces of paragraphia are added to Serial Jen on a daily basis. So far this story is being written the way I’d hoped it would be, although it’s still pretty early in the proceedings, as I’m only a couple of pages into it. Suckage at titles also continues. Also, I got right back on the horse and sent Famine & Pestilence Go To Dinner off to a fiction website called Elysian Fiction. We’ll see what those guys think of it.

The current plan is finish off the serial killer story, then start on either my Jen n’ Suzy team up story, or else move onto the much more fun story codenamed, Young Tolkien In Love, which is my riff on this whole revisionist, “What if young artists had their works directly inspired something bizarre” tangent that’s been happening with Shakespeare and the great George Lucas short film parody. Except in this one, Tolkien as a boy meets up with his friend the Jack, and a some elves, Gail, Umber and Sang and some icky dwarves as they all go off to slay a dragon. I’m wondering whether or not I should make those two stories the last ones in the anthology, since, with the inclusion of Alicorn, the book now weighed in at 344 pages, which is pretty hefty for a collection of short stories, and I already know that YTIL is, in all likelihood, going to break 100 pages. Book 3 will most likely see completion this year…

Geek Life

On and off for the last few months, I’ve been throwing around the idea of doing for magazines what IGN, the coolest website ever, does for the internet, combine all the geeky fixations you might ever have, comics, geek movies, DVDs, games, SF/Fantasy/Horror stuff, consumer electronics like home theater set ups and DVD players and such and throw it all in one convenient, easy to read place. The mag would indeed be called Geek Life, and assuming I could keep the sassy attitude and find other writers with a similar sarcastic/funny bent to them, would just cover all the things geeks care about in order to deny the ongoing horror that is Real Life. I keep wondering if such a thing is actually doable, and people in the magazine industry here insist it is, it’s a great idea, and would probably survive for quite some time, assuming that I stick with the niche market (ie, geeks) instead of trying to be a big, accessible mainstream mag, which is usually what kills most magazines in Singapore. I still don’t know if I’m sufficiently enthused enough about this idea to pursue it (Although the prospect of all that free shit for review is tempting…), since I have no head for business, and have NO desire whatsoever to deal with clients/advertisers/what-have-ya’… but it would be fun to actually be paid to play games, watch movies, read comics and then get on my soapbox and rant about it to anyone within earshot. Hey, I do that for free as it is… Mm… being a reviewer means never having to say you’re sorry when Acclaim gives you a sucky game for free and you trash it…

Sigh…

It’s been a while, (Then again, I haven’t submitted anything short in years) but Flashquake rejected Famine & Pestilence Go To Dinner. Fortunately, they’re good enough to tell you why they rejected you and thus, gave me the voting system they used:

Here are our editors’ comments:

Ed. 5 Vote No

Ed. 5 Comments This is original but some of the prose is very awkward (e.g., “…her eyes shutting in an ecstacy of flavor”) I would like to see this again if the author revises and prunes it.

So no matter how far you think you’ve gotten, you always gotta’ remember two things.

1) There’s always room for improvement.

2) Not everyone is going to like your stuff.

Fortunately having been rejected by numerous women over the years, this is somewhat easier to take. “I don’t like your story” is always easier to swallow than, “I don’t like you.”

I’m going to console myself by at least remembering that they didn’t think it totally sucked. As I see it, I only got one definite “No,” two no’s with the caveat that it needs work, then they’d like it, and two maybes. So while I admit that shorts are still definitely a weak area for me, at least the writing is still sound to a certain degree. Oh well… Back to the word processor, right after I finish “Batman” it’s hunkering down with Serial Jen.

Man, I really suck at titles.

You Suck! No, You Suck! No You ALL Suck!

This is so cool!

Relive the horror of elementary school with a truly evil shockwave game called SissyFight2000! It’s a variation on paper/rock/scissors, but multiplayer online, with chat function, and the premise is you’re a snooty girl trying to humiliate the other snooty girls and become the meanest, most popular kid in the school yard! Every player starts out with 10 “self-esteem” points and you brutally, systematically eliminate other players through a selection of moves available during the 90 second countdown before the resulting mayhem is shown. Aggressive moves include “Tease”, which only works in tandem with another player, the more players teasing, the more self-esteem is lost, “Scratch”, which only takes off one point, and the passive aggressive move, “Grab” which prevents players from taking ANY action and leaves them wide open to teasing and scratching. Then there’s the super move, “Tattle,” where you snitch on EVERYONE and they all lose 3 points.

Defensive moves include “Cower”, which renders you invulnerable to attack, but if you do it too many times in a row, you humiliate yourself and lose points, and “Lick My Lollipop” which not only heals 2 points, but renders you invulnerable to “Tattle” because you’re too innocent looking at the moment. The downside is if someone decides to scratch you while licking your lolly, you choke on it and lose 2 points from burning humiliation.

The key to victory, strangely enough seems to be teamwork. If you can make friends and allies, you can double team for grab/scratch, multi-tease combos. The game makes it possible for two people to win, so partners are invaluable to success. And I love the chat function, just ’cause it makes it possible to schmooze other potential enemies if you say something mean to someone else about their mother, and the other players think it’s hilarious and decide to hook up with you just for sheer entertainment value alone.

There are many valuable real world lessons to be learned from this game…

Now Is The Time For Quick And Immediate Response

To possible latent homophobic tendencies. Or something.

A day or so ago, I read a blog by the boyfriend of a friend of mine, who, not just a few hours earlier, we had seen at his place of work while having coffee. Said boyfriend of friend is a student of human observation and thus, observed, from his own blog, this:

anyway ching yee went to spin @ hrn wif her frens wayne and charlene today. and its ironic dat someone quite the looker like wayne actually detests workin wif ppl in the media…the beautiful mtv types as he calls it. well when he came by wif his kitaro hairdo and all and i noticed a bunch of gay guys turning their heads to look at him. hey maybe he should model for gay quaterly or something. heard dey pay really well.

This caused me no end of mild (Or even wild, swinging from one end of the emotional spectrum to other) apoplectic hysteria as, contrary to numerous speculations (grudgingly, I admit, deserved by my total lack of girlfriend for decades on end…) as to my sexual preferences, I am not gay.

For the record, I am primarily straight, with possible repressed bisexual tendencies. While I do like girls, (It’s that soft n’ purty hair that I wanna’ touch that does it every time, damn them…) I would be mad to refuse A) Daniel Day Louis, B) Jude Law or C) Peter Jackson if they propositioned me. Although I have had an alarmingly high rate of unasked for success when it comes attracting the Y.M.C.A contingent.

I remember once at some gay club that no longer exists in Edmonton when I got dragged down to support a couple of friends, Valentino Wong and Michael Pylko (Hey, whatever happened to those guys anyway?) that I found myself getting hit on, in rapid succession over a matter of just a few minutes, a flurry of flabby, deep voiced and decidedly oogy guys. My only explanation for this is the whole “Delicate Flower of the Orient Thing,” since I’m slim and “oriental looking” and all that, and maybe the fact that I was the only guy not wearing shoes. Perhaps that’s cute, or some secret gay-lingo sign (Sort of like the signals hobos leave for each other to describe possible places of generosity) that indicates “I will do it without lube.”

For someone who desperately wished that the opposite sex would pay some attention to him and wondered why it wasn’t happening, this was a horrifying possible explanation. My friends, in true comradely fashion, left me high and dry to stutter my way through various conversations with men that 1) Immediately sat down and started stroking my forearm, B) Grabbed the fashion program out of my hand and asked me to explain it to them while their nose was 2 millimeters from my own, C) Grabbed said program out of my hands, put it on their crotch and asked me, “What does this say?”

After watching me flounder for a bit, my friends realized that there was a very real possibility that my hysterical muteness might just be taken as a sign of silent consent, and so in order to keep my virgin body cavity just that way, they finally grabbed me by the arm and literally dragged me away shouting, “THERE YOU ARE! WE’VE BEEN LOOKING ALL OVER FOR YOU, THE CAR’S PARKED OUTSIDE!” And then berating me afterwards for somehow throwing out a magnetic force that only people of a specific sexual wavelength responded to. I don’t remember her name, but some girl asked me, “It’s not FAIR! What do you have that I don’t?” And by God, I wanted to smack her somethin’ awful…

Even if I were gay, I think I would have been horrified by these come ons. Flattered, but horrified. I’m a wine and roses kind’a guy. Tell me about my eyes, say I have really deep thoughts, don’t stick your tongue down my throat on the first date, and no matter what anyone tells you, they can say “No!” even after penetration and it’s still considered rape.

In Other News

The concept proposal was favorably received with the SMS message from Nadya, and I quote:

“I love the attack of the giant squid!”

No, I am not making this up.

Yes, I managed to squeeze a giant squid attack into a concept proposal. Do not ask how, do not ask why, that is the secret of my genius.

Man. I was so sure she was going to make me take that squid part out…

I’m A Nice Guy. I Own Slaves And Abandon Wives, But Really, I’m Nice!

This is what I keep telling myself as I tackle my latest assignment. I’m supposed to do a write up for a museum here, a 1st person narrative, about 1,000 words, telling the story of a famous historical figure, in this case Ibn Battuta, who the girlfriend has christened “Batman” and which I am sticking with, ’cause it’s just easier to pronounce and doesn’t make me feel like I’m ordering the dish of the day at some Turkish restaurant.

“Hm… I’ll have the Ibn Battuta, please. And don’t cheap out on the saurkraut like you did the last time.”

Anyway, Batman was an Islamic explorer in the 14th century who ranged across Africa, central Asia, Asia and South East Asia, and is, by all accounts, a sort of Islamic Marco Polo, eventually having a record of his 24 year journey recorded for posterity.

Frankly, I just don’t like this guy.

For one thing, he easily qualifies as The Most Easily Impressed Human Being On Earth. When he visits a town, it is, “The finest town in the world, a shimmering jewel of Africa, and equalled by none other on Earth.” When he visits another town, it is, “Simply, undeniably, the greatest town of this age, and shall never be surpassed.” When he visits cities, he practically has an orgasm, and let us not even get into his opinion of the Mosques he sees. I’m sure some tenet must be deeply violated by the spasmodic rapture he expresses on them. If he were a modern guy, he’d definitely be a DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball player.

He is also, I think, what my university friends might have referred to as a Trysexual: Try dogs, cats, boys, girls, holes in trees…

Upon meeting with certain King, who was versed in poetry and composition, Batman said “This is the most beautiful human being on Earth!” and spent much time with him, doing things he refuses to get into. Hm… not too difficult to read between the lines there. However, over the course of his 24 year vacation, he laid a swathe of alimony across the world, marrying women willy nilly, leaving children behind, some of whom died before he ever met them, and purchasing numerous slave girls who were “Of undeniable beauty, undoubtededly the most charming creature the world has ever seen.”

He also got frequently beaten and robbed and left for penniless, but I figure that’s just karmic payback for all the times he was a jerk.

Of course, the part that really pissed me off was when he wrote of his yearning for home and how strongly it called to him, for nothing affects the heart as truly and deeply as one’s homeland, finally returned after 24 years, spent a week there and then went on another trip across the Sahara desert.

Jerk.

So now I find myself in the unenviable position of having to write a “Hi kids! I’m Ibn Buttata!” sort of 1,000 word essay which is supposed to leave the less savoury parts of his nature (Homosexuality, debauchery, slaving and multiple abandoned wives and children) out, while still sticking to the facts. They want historical accuracy that’s not going to disturb the innocent world view of the kiddies.

And yet, I can’t help writing this thing out, imagining that it’s all being retold by Micky Mouse with a fez on his head:

Batman: And then I went on my Haj to Mecca, and oh BOY! Was that ever fun, wasn’t it Pluto?!?

Pluto: PRAISE ALLAH!

Batman: Hawhawhaw! Right you are, Pluto! There was the Kabaa, and fasting, and reading the Koran, and I married two women, bought a really cute slave girl, then left th
em all at the harbor when someone offered me a free ride to Calcutta! What an adventure! Hawhawhaw!

As God is my witness, I’ll never, ever understand how I get roped into these things…

DOA Extreme Slut Wrestling

Having been suddenly denied my chance to play the Beach Volleyball game, my mind, after a few curious questions from the girlfriend, turned towards other topics that might also be suitable for one-handed videogame playing goodness. The most obvious one was wrestling; combining the ludicrously revealing aesthetic of bikinis and upping it a notch with a healthy dose of raunchiness and sexual/lesbian subtext, with the incredibly tactile combat of wrapping one’s body around another’s body in compromising positions, I’m convinced that if Team Ninja were to seriously pursue this goal, they would rake in the dollars faster than a pole dancer at a stag party.

All the cute/adorable, Amazonian and Cruel Mistress favorites from DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball would find a new audience of pathetic souls like me as they go through the sweaty gyrations of trying to get each other on the floor and submit to defeat. I figure the game could have various modes:

1. Story Championship Title Mode:

Each hottie, with their backstory that no one cares about, is fuelled by various reasonable motivations to vie for title of champeen, such as one of the other wrestlers burned down their house with their entire family in it (Thus, they have no recourse but to go for champ title, it just makes sense, doesn’t it?), they are training to become chief of their ninja clan, or they are dancers who feel they would learn some great moves by winning the tournament. Over a series of gruelling matches with a variety of opponents, the blonde hot chick, the Japanese hot chick, the Scottish hot chick, the Black hot chick, the 80′s Flashdance hot chick with off-shoulder shirt and of course, the leather hot chick, the participants literally wrestle with their own pointless back story motivation and the opponent before them. Because this is Story Mode, cinemas briefly introduce and conclude each match with such stirring exchanges as:

Ninja Chick: You are in my way. I have no quarrel with you, but the hot chick that burned down the house with my entire clan it is somewhere in the final matches and I must get through you to get her. Gomensai.

Scottish Chick: Och, you got such a wee skirt, what kind’a nancy girl arr yuu?

Ninja Chick: SUPER HOT CHICK ULTIMATE SLUT MOVE SCISSOR KICK! HAAAAIII!!!

(Round ends with Ninja Chick enacting finishing move of an Atomic Piledriver using only her thighs)

Scottish Chick: Ach! I canna’ believe it! Ye’ve bested me with yuir slooty ninja she-devil majik!

Ninja Chick: You fought with honor. Here is your breast back.

Scottish Chick: ACH!

2. Mud Wrestling Mode:

Since videogame consoles seem to have mastered particle physics in real time, mud wrestling seems a natural. Two hot chicks literally get down and dirty in the mud pit, slinging wet dirt and sliding all over each other like epileptic snakes at a disco boogaloo. Accompanied by hard driving techno and Gary Numan tracks.

3. Jell-O Mode:

Particle physics with transparent cubes of rainbow goodness! Referee-ed by none other than Bill Cosby himself!

Bill: Ninja slut wins! Hey, hey, hey!

Ninja Chick: I fought with honor, give me a pudding pop.

Bill: Got’cher pudding pop right here… [ZIIIIP]

Ninja Chick: EH?!? NANDAIO?!?

Bill: It’s chocolate, baby. Your favorite.

4. Wet T-Shirt Mode:

Not exactly a wet t-shirt match the whole way through, instead our hot slut wrestlers duke it out in t-shirts that cover their bodies for the most part, with the loser being subjected to the most heinous punishment of getting dunked. The conundrum for game designers will be trying to circumvent the intentional lameness of players who are determined that their girl shall lose the fight and get dunked. Instead of the usual victory pose, they cut to the “defeat cinema” where the POV shot of the water racing towards the girl clearly conveys her Hentai-esque fear of her fate, cutting to a Matrix style slo-mo rotation as the water hits her body and humiliates her by plastering the soaked cotten across her nubile form. 235 possible camera angles are already in position for players to conveniently jump to, with a replay and record mode for those exceptionally “bad” defeats. Perverted Gamers Monthly gives this feature 5 tissue wads out of 5!

5. Cat Fight Mode:

Two opponents square off in cute little full body, nylon/lycra cat suits, complete with tails and ears. Then proceed to beat the living hell out of each other. As the match ensues, the various grabs and holds take large, large chunks of material off the combatants’ bodies, as they meow and claw their way to victory. Special moves gained from the suit include the Super Fuzzy Vibrating Tail attack, and the dreaded Lycra Strangle Hold. If both opponents are rendered completely naked, it’s considered a Double Victory, and the audience wins!

6. The Pole Match Mode:

The combatants face each other down in a ring with no ropes or buckles, only two poles suspended between a disco ball. Utilizing balloons, stiletto heels and fluffy bunny tails and ears, the vicious opponents swing, slide, and thrust themselves from the poles, losing many articles of clothing in the process and occasionally receiving help from the crowd in the form of $20 bills folded like shuriken that they toss at their opponent. When a combatant’s power meter reaches “Full,” a super bonus attack is made available, randomly selected and tossed out by the crowd as either a banana or a ping pong ball that is hurled, cannon-like, at lethal velocities from the genitalia. Should an opponent be finished by this move, a slow motion defeat cinema is shown, followed by the coveted “Me Love You Long Time” victory cinema.

Man, I’m a genius…

Oogh

Last night I made the girlfriend cry. It was not for a good reason, and it wasn’t even for a bad reason, it’s just one of those things that seems to evolve naturally from a seemingly innocent point of conversation and suddenly starts opening up doors in the heart that should stay closed until a more approriate time.

Of late I have been waxing rebellious over at the William Gibson blog forum, because some local there, calling himself Big.Brother, started up a thread claiming to be an inhabitant of what Gibson, in an essay for Wired magazine called, Disneyland With A Death Penalty. Basically Wired gave him a free trip here about ten years ago, just to get his written impressions of the place. Since this Big.Brother seemed to have no compunction about blasting the place, I gleefully joined in. In a–in retrospect anyway, at the time I was totally caught off guard–not so surprising twist of fate, it turns out that the guy I attended film studies with at the U of A, who got me here and who I consequently stopped speaking to a couple of years later, was also tooling around on the forum (He’s a big Gibson fan himself and, like me, is very influenced by his writing, though I was influenced by it at 14, he was influenced by it at 28 or something), and started to take issue with all the slamming, though he responded to Big.Brother’s posts, not mine. I didn’t want to get into a flame war, and so never directly responded to his posts either, but the gist of it is, since he came here with useless history degree, white skin and the usual attitude that locals come to expect from caucasians, he found paradise. He called himself a writer, and thus instantly became one here, found a nice Chinese girl that gave him none of the attitude of the girls back home, and found a job and a people more willing to accept his genius than he ever could back home. So he was mighty offended with people who actually picked holes at what he referred to as his “private utopia”.

This, to say the least, invoked the wrath of Big.Brother who called his posts deluded and myopic, but then he doesn’t know the guy is white. Since then, a flame-war has been simmering between the two as Big.Brother and “Ebo” (The name of the main character from his first abandoned novel, actually it’s Eboman) started trading posts and snippets from other websites either praising or damning Singapore, proving that other countries have the same problems that Singapore does, so leave this island paradise alone.

What does all this have to do with the girlfriend?

What started it all was when Ebo made an effort to play peacemaker and said something to the effect of, “The only problem that Singapore has is rude cellular phone users.”

In retaliation, Big.Brother posted a hot spanking new story (Still, unsurprisingly, not covered by the press) about 6 protesters being arrested by the police for attempting an anti-war demonstration. In addition, they were interrogated and it was found that the source of their motivation was an SMS message urging people to demonstrate. Doubtless whoever made that initial SMS is already detained. Here’s the story.

I mentioned this to the girlfriend and she was quite incensed. So incensed in fact, that she needed to rant about it on her own blog. Then she read Gibson’s article, and she got very upset indeed.

I have always hated this place from the perspective of someone who is used to a certain vibrancy, texture and freedom, who is pissed that I am denied that here. I’d never really come face to face with someone who’s emotions equalled my own, but came from being intelligent enough to realize that she’d never even had a taste of what I had enjoyed and was incensed about no longer having.

I really got a sense of just how much she hates this place tonight. She said a lot of striking things, the most memorable images for me all centering around her feelings of betrayal about this place. She grew up here, constantly being fed by the propaganda machine of how important, worldly and sophisticated Singapore is. And she was really disheartened when reality set in. She likened it a couple of ways. Like when you’re one of the rich kids at schools, and all the other kids say stuff like, “My dad comes from a family of 6 generations of weatlh.” “My dad made his money as high powered lawyer, putting criminals away in celebrated cases.” “My dad is the CEO of a company that produces polymers found in every electrical appliance.” And when it’s your turn, you say, “My dad won the lottery.”

But what really drove the point home for her was when she had a chance to travel and found herself away from the machine for a while. All that talk of Singapore’s significance in the region and in the world evaporated in the face of real places that were more concerned with things other than having a World Class Airport. No one cared whether an airport was world class or not, and if it was, they didn’t see why it should be important. All the reassurances of the importance of Singapore were suddenly, acutely absent and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. She said it was like having a braggart father, that was always coming home talking about how important his job was, what a contribution he made to the company that day, how it was so tough being the head of his division, and when she finally got out of the house and visited the office, he was just a pencil-pushing, mid-level bureaucrat with a cubicle by the watercooler, occasionally mentioned whenever more toner was needed for the photocpy machine.

It bothers her that Singapore needs to praise itself so ardently because it really just emphasizes to her how insecure it is. And it really bugs her that she’s from this country and that stigma will always follow her to some degree, that she’s from a country that is in love with its own airport.

So she was talking about all this, pausing, starting, and having to stop again when the tears came. I think I watched decades of frustration just come pouring out tonight, and for her, this attempt to snuff out freedom of expression is just one more nail in the coffin, since it runs counter to Singapore’s sudden need to have radical, innovative thinkers… provided they don’t shake things up and just make lots of money. The fact that Ebo actually defends this point of view and deems it necessary for order (He ascribes to the As Long As The Electricity Works and The Streets Are Clean, I’ll Tolerate Anything ethos) is just another signal to her that people are essentially materialist animals that will do anything as long you keep their bellies full and give them a compliant, adoring, warm body to fuck. Well, that and she’s even less impressed with white people than she was before. A guy that couldn’t hack it in the Real World and retreated here to let his skin do all the talking rates very low in her estimation. The fact that her own country eagerly embraces such individuals and rewards them for their “cheat,” just downright depresses her.

But it was still an enlightening and even kind of touching experience to see just how deeply she feels about all this. If I respected her before, it’s just gone up a couple of orders of magnitude after last night’s conversation.

Alas

Bouncing virtual breasts did not, repeat not happen. Due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, (I’m assuming a very important dinner for the family, one that it would have been in extremely poor taste to bail out from) the deliverer of the X-Box and its breasty polygonal miracle wasn’t able to get away until roughly 2 a.m., and thus the breast parade was called off on account of dark. This is really too bad, as I had been counting on playing the game for three reasons:

1) The left breast

2) The right breast

3) Both breasts bouncing in tandem

Oh well… perhaps another day…