Twitter Guy + Horoscopes - April 27th, 2012

Click To Read In The Lethbridge Journal (LARGE PDF)

You guys again!

Since there was no way to know for sure who was going to win this past Alberta Election by my deadline, as a cop-out I present to you a POLITICAL MAD LIB. Bust out those grapes and elephants and start dancing!

Congratulations, (Name)! You are the (Number)st/nd/rd/th winner of the (Location) General Election for the year of (Year)! Assuming you are not later (Form of Punishment, Past Tense) for cheating your way to office, you’re in for a heck of a(n) (Unit of Time). Boy, it sure was funny when (Name) said (Hilarious Political Gaffe or Unlikely Promise) to the (Plural Voter Demographic)! That was a doozy! But what a(n) (Adjective) race, I almost didn’t think you were going to win until the end there. But you ultimately ran the (Adjective) campaign, and the (Adjective) (Noun) won. Good luck with balancing your (Noun) with all those (Plural Noun) you made! Hopefully, you’ll still lead all the (Plural Noun) of (Location) to a(n) (Adjective) tomorrow!

In local news, a Fort Macleod couple was found alive last week after vanishing during a day trip to Fernie. The couple, Anja and Jacob Oosterwijk, say they became stuck in snow after attempting to chase a mysterious white rabbit that cut them off on the highway screaming “I’m late! I’M LATE!” Friends say the two are re-integrating into modern society quickly after 72 hours away and are already remembering fragments of their former lives. “They’ve already been checking their eBay bids, and we hope to wean them onto people food as soon as they tell us they’re ready.”

Norwegian Crackpot and Mass Murderer Anders Breivik took the stand at his trial last week, hoping to vindicate his political views on immigration by explaining in cold detail how completely sane it was for him to plan for a teen massacre by playing World of Warcraft for 16 hours a day. Breivik also told the court that he trained with the popular Call of Duty game Modern Warfare 2 to get a feel for aiming using iron sights, an act equivalent with using a Need For Speed game to prepare for your Driver’s Test, or Pong to prepare for Wimbledon. Norway has been spellbound by the entire affair, and the deep damage wrought by such a deeply political assault on their youth may affect the country for years to come- and that’s no joke.

Some Thoughts On Allan Hunsperger

Prepare to get smacked in the face with my baseball bat of truth.

Here’s the pitch: A year ago a guy- who as it happens is a Pastor/Priest/Funny Hat Guy- makes a post on his blog about his feelings on homosexuals, which boil down to “If you’re gay, you’re going to spend an eternity being tortured for it in a lake of fire.” How Christian of him.

Here’s how I imagine he thinks of it:

Archangel Gabriel: “GOD! We fucked up, there’s a bug in humanity!”

God: “MOTHERFUCK. What is it this time, are they still spontaneously combusting?”

Gabe: “Well, yes, but less now. But also, a significant percentage of them have a manufacturing defect where they want to have sex with people of the same gender.”

God: “ME DAMN IT. Listen, it’s too late to fix it now, the order has already shipped. 800 billion humans are on a truck bound for Earth, so we’re going to have to think of something.”

Gabe: “What about that book you’re writing?”

God: “My novel? I guess I could Ayn Rand some shit in about these... uh... we’ll call them ‘Gays’ because this is totally gay- and hope that thousands of years from now a bunch of noble crusaders will make internet posts treating the broken ones as less than human.”

Gabe: “BRILLIANT. Now what do you want to do about those ‘Jews’?”

God: “That’s what the crazy moustache guy was for. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go send my only son to get nailed to a giant lowercase ‘t’ because I love the properly assembled humans.”

When does something become hate speech and not just free speech? When is it discrimination? Because this guy is running for public office, and while his party leader has promised they will not legislate based on social issues, he doesn’t just become a different person when he gets elected. He will make decisions based on his personal beliefs because THAT IS WHAT PEOPLE DO, and this could lead to a conflict of interest- what if a homosexual constituent needs his help? What if a homosexual’s company is bidding for a government contract?

So you believe gays should be tortured for an eternity for being gay, the same as if they were rapists and murderers? As if they were adulterers, thieves, slanderers, and liars? I believe that a ‘just’ God would throw you in with them.

The difference between being Christian and Christ-like is simple: A Christian is a member of a book club, while somebody who is Christ-like actually read the book. You’re no better than the Pharisees your saviour struggled with, caught up in traps of words and morals, completely missing the messages of peace and tolerance. Turn the other cheek and accept that gays are and always have been part of the human race. We have much more important shit to deal with.

Also, I vote we start calling this kind of thing "Hunsperger Syndrome", just because.

Twitter Guy + Horoscopes - April 13th, 2012

Attention, Attention!

I’d just like to open by saying: RED DOG IS OPEN AGAIN AND NOBODY TOLD ME. I’M SO FREAKIN MAD AT YOU GUYS RIGHT NOW.

As an election rages across Alberta, innocent demographics are being caught in the crossfire. Youth voters are being bombarded with promises of lower and even non-existent tuitions, as well as highly optimistic ‘GET OUT AND VOTE’ Facebook groups. Meanwhile seniors, mankind’s most vulnerable demographic, have been lured in by traps such as lower to non-existent young people and highly optimistic ‘GET OUT AND BE ACTIVE’ tax credits. Facing an extremely difficult fight, the PCs have even resorted to promising to fix everything they broke- including but not limited to the Education system and Healthcare. The Wildrose party, knowing the fastest route to a voter’s heart is by shouting KALI MA and tearing it out, has resorted to a scandalous tour bus and promised to hand out Ralph Bucks Danielle Dollars.

One’s an innie and one’s an outie.

The Federal Conservatives have come under heavy fire following a report by Canada’s Auditor General that says the government significantly undersold the costs associated with purchasing unfinished fighter jets. Department of National Defence representative Rex Violence told reporters at a press conference last week that the original quote was “just the cost of the entry-level model”, which has a 5-speed manual transmission and lacks many key features the government was looking for. “Well first off, our guys don’t drive stick.” said Violence, “Never have, never will. Second, since Lockheed is offering 0% financing and $250,000 in free options, we opted to select the LX Package and a Block Heater because, you know, CANADA.” Though he declined to discuss the full details of the LX Package, Violence did imply that National Defence was thinking about going for the heated leather seats, larger cupholders, and an on-board Blu-Ray player instead of the chrome trim and extended cab favoured by the Americans. Opposition leader Brian Mulcair is demanding the government also add an iPod hookup “for long trips”, which Harper rejected as “we have enough CDs”, although the PM did bow to Mulcair’s request for Microsoft SYNC voice controls.

HOROSCOPES

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

Be prepared to make sacrifices to get that solid-gold toilet you’ve always dreamed of. Consider trading in your chrome-plated Dodge Grand Caravan, or at least giving it back to the rapper your stole it from. He needs to get his kids to school in style, and the Lambo is in the shop.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

With Mars in alignment and sunshine on the way, now is your chance to bust out your classic 80s leisure suit and cruise around to your collection of Miami Vice soundtrack albums. Don’t let it get too far out of hand though- the music of the show alone is enough to spontaneously start a massive shootout in any nearby warehouses, marinas, or crack dens.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20)

You need to stop telling people you would totally win at the Hunger Games, you can’t even walk to the gas station for a pack of smokes and a Red Bull without getting winded. And you live a block away from the gas station. And it’s downhill both ways. Why did we let MC Escher design your neighbourhood? I don’t know. Now take the wall stairs to your upside-down room and think about the rules of perspective.

CANCER (June 21-July 22)

You’re not the only one who cringes when you have to tell people your sign is ‘Cancer’ because the stupid disease has completely ruined your reputation. Since a Cancer Awareness benefit will just lead to misunderstandings and hurt feelings, your only options are to lie and claim you’re an Aries or rebrand your sign as CRABMEAT, the sign of the zodiac that’s great with lemon zest.

LEO (July 23-Aug 22)

You should 100% absolutely make your engagement party Lord of the Rings themed. In fact, you should dress up like Aragorn and Arwen and say the whole ‘One Ring To Rule Them All’ speech before vanishing into thin air and making off to Lothlórien (or Aruba if there are no flights to Middle Earth) with all the gifts. You’d get so much nerd cred, the internet might explode.

VIRGO (Aug 23-Sept 22)

Your allergies will return with the advent of spring, but thankfully there’s a blue Reactine truck driving around distributing pills to people who are mildly inconvenienced by pollen and cats! If you see it, or the incredibly excited man driving it, please contact the police immediately as he is wanted for possession with intent to distribute.

LIBRA (Sept 23-Oct 22)

The answer you need for your crossword puzzle is “Nebbish”. No, wait, because then that makes 10 Across “Phlegb”. Well hold on, how is 15 Down “Antidisestablishmentarianism” if 13 Across is “Screwdriver”? What do you mean, nothing else fits? Try Cement Mixer. No? Are you sure there’s no ‘X’ in 14 Down (‘Trains’)? That’s it, I’m going to get a lighter and we’re going to finish this puzzle book the old-fashioned way. (The clue for 13 Across was ‘To Fix a Drink’)

SCORPIO (Oct 23-Nov 21)

According to your date’s Plenty Of Fish profile, they like long walks on the beach and attending white power meetings. That seems like an odd thing to advertise- Lethbridge doesn’t have any beaches! Well, I guess you could just walk around Henderson, but that’s really only for people who love the smell of algae and cigarette butts with their romantic exercise.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22-Dec 21)

The number one cause of nerd suicide is hard drive failure. Remember to back up all your genuinely important files as soon as possible, because once those lolcat photos are gone they’re gone forever. Well, unless you have enough money to have them recovered, but with 12 gigs of cats saved in “My Photos” I’m honestly surprised you even have a job.

CAPRICORN (Dec 22-Jan 19)

How many Capricorns does it take to screw in a light bulb? One, but first they have to consult their horoscope to find out if they’ll succeed or not. You will not.

AQUARIUS (Jan 20-Feb 18)

You’ll have to use your ingenuity and sense of social tact this week to tell your boss their fly is down at an important annual conference. May I suggest using a bullhorn to announce ‘XYZ- EXAMINE YOUR ZIPPER’ or the ever classy giant sign that says ‘NEXT YEAR, WEAR UNDERWEAR’. They’ll probably get the message.

PISCES (Feb 19-Mar 20)

Bring a slice of Turtles Cheesecake to the tree behind Father Leonard Van Tighem and leave it in an unmarked bag. If you do this, your next horoscope will be very, VERY good. If you don’t, you’ll probably get fleas or something. What am I, a psychic?

Birthday!

It’s your birthday, so celebrate with an erotic cake (support a local business too!).  Do you go with ‘Milky Milky Cocoa Puffs’ or ‘Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Vagina’?

(If that is too risqué, alternative is below)

Fun fact- Flammable and Inflammable mean the same thing, which is what the firefighters are going to tell you after you start filling balloons for your birthday party while smoking a cigarette. Imagine the Hindenburg, but with everybody using chipmunk voices because of the helium.

Game Review: SSX (2012)

SSX

Developer: EA Canada

Publisher: EA Sports

Released: February 28^th, 2012

PS3/XBOX360

                For me, sports games are like Guitar Hero games: I’ve played them occasionally over the years, I’ve liked some, I’ve hated some, but I’ve never personally owned one. The list of sports and sports-related games I’ve played is actually fairly substantial given the circumstances, but as a child of the 90s the ones that really made an impression were universally extreme sports games (and Mario Power Tennis). Games like the Tony Hawk series (Underground was my favourite, but Pro Skater is getting the HD treatment soon), assorted racing games in which things explode, and- stop me if I get nostalgic- 1080 Snowboarding for the Nintendo 64. Sing the character select screen music with me! “Work your body w-work your body! Work you body w-work your body! (GET DOWN!) W-w-w-w-w-w (PUSH IT OUT! WOO!)” ((A quick check of YouTube has revealed 1080 sucked, but as a kid I thought it was the shit, so shut up))

               So when I downloaded the SSX demo, it tweaked a part of my brain that has been thoroughly ignored by my normal go-to games. The path to winning in SSX isn’t over the corpses of racist teenagers, robots, dragons, or guys who look vaguely different than I do. In fact, unless somebody falls into a big hole and forgets which button rewinds time, nobody dies at all in SSX! How novel.

Story

I’m sure it plays better if you’ve been a fan since the first SSX came out in 2000, but the gist of the story is as follows: Team SSX (Snowboarding, Surfing, and Motocross, if memory serves) has fallen on hard times. Former friend Griff Simmons has left the team and taken most of their sponsors with him, forcing them to turn to their fans for support. SSX co-founder Zoe Payne has a plan though: the team is going to travel to 9 mountain ranges around the world and conquer the unconquerable ‘Deadly Descent’ at each one, broadcasting the feats online to pump up their fans and outshine Griff. The only problem is, Griff has the same idea and he’s already one step ahead...

The story isn’t going to win any awards, but the presentation sure might. As you enter each region, Zoe will introduce you to the hazards you’ll face and which SSX member you’ll be facing them with. The videos do a great job of capturing the scale and feel of each mountain range, and the final reveal of what makes each descent so darn deadly is always cool. Less successful are the motion comics that you unlock with each new SSX boarder. While they’re meant to fill out the backstory on each character, they mostly boil down to well-drawn rehashes of the same two or three character types. This guy needs to see how far he can push himself (the way to find out, the comic suggests, is by wrapping yourself in body armor and getting hit by a semi truck), that girl loves extreme sports but snowboarding is the best, this girl is bubbly and loves danger, etc... They’re not bad, just not quite as interesting as they think they are.

Gameplay

                The game locks off all the good stuff until you’ve done two short-ish tutorials, the first of which throws you out of a helicopter thousands of metres above a mountain range to teach you how to dougie get you acquainted with the air controls. You can opt to use either buttons or the right thumbstick to start various grabs, and the game will ask which you’d prefer to see prompts for during the tutorial. Personally I went for the face buttons, as I tried the whole ‘stick’ control scheme with Skate 3 and my guy ate a lot of pavement. A medically unsafe amount of pavement. But that’s because I suck, not because the controls don’t work, so pick your poison I guess and try them both to see what works for you. Both control sets are always available so there’s no digging through menus to swap them out, you can just yell at the buttons and leave them for the thumbstick halfway down a mountain. After the air tutorial you get a quick ground run to try out your new moves and then it’s off to wreck up some powder. If you really want something different, you CAN go digging in some menus and set the control scheme to ‘Classic’. I didn’t take to them personally as I have no allegiance to ‘tradition’ in gaming, but if you liked it the old way then SSX has you covered.

               In addition to your movement and trick buttons, you get a few other abilities: You can hold down the left trigger to grind environmental hazards such as trees and ridges, you hold the right trigger to use your boost, and you can rewind time if you fling yourself off a cliff by holding the left bumper/L1 button. Rewinding time costs you valuable points and doesn’t stop the clock during races, so use it sparingly. In addition, while doing tricks you can hold down the right trigger to ‘Tweak’ them, which makes you pull cooler moves and nets you tons of points. Whenever you fill your boost gauge you enter ‘Tricky’ mode, which gives you infinite boost and allows you to pull EVEN MORE SICK MOVES. Hold down the left and right trigger while doing a grab in Tricky mode to pull the most insane stuff you’ve ever seen- and if you fill your Tricky bar you’ll enter Super Tricky. Pulling both triggers while busting a grab in Super Tricky will perform your ‘Signature Move’, which I’m sure I don’t need to tell you is worth more points than you thought possible. You’ll see.

                Each character has a set of stat bonuses that affect their Speed, Boost, Tricks, and effectiveness with particular kinds of gear. Each Deadly Descent will require a specific piece of equipment to properly survive, such as the wingsuit, O2 tank, armor, and pulse goggles. In World Tour mode you’ll automatically acquire the necessary gear, but you can buy better pieces with the credits you earn for finishing runs and pulling tricks. You can also buy ‘Mods’ to increase your speed, boost, and more. Each mod lasts for as long as you remain on the same run, even through multiple restarts and finishes, and you can change your equipment at any time before you start moving down the slopes.

                I’ll get right to the nut though, so here goes: I love how this game plays. The controls are tight, responsive, and it feels good to hold a trick until the last minute without bailing. Grinding is satisfying, the air is awesome, what more do you want?

Multiplayer

                In addition to the ‘World Tour’ mode you also get ‘Explore’ mode. In Explore you can race or trick every drop in the game, although some courses you will have to pay to unlock using your hard-earned credits. As you post times and high scores, your friends can challenge your ‘Ghost’ to try and set the new record. The ghost is a recording of their best run, or your personal best if you’re top dog, and it leaves a glowing trail down the mountain so you can see which way your friend went. You’ll receive a decent amount of cash for beating a friend on a run, and even more if they fail to beat you later. The ghost system is an excellent example of asynchronous multiplayer and already I’ve dumped hours of my life into topping a buddy’s time. (As of this writing, I beat his last time by 7 hundredths of a second and it’s already an incredibly fast run at a minute and seventeen seconds. He’s going to KILL me.) This is supplemented by ‘SSX Radio’, which is in essence a ‘Cross-Match Voice Chat’ for groups of friends, like a Ventrilo server for snowboarders. This means you can talk shit to your friends when you’re both playing SSX, even if (and here comes the elephant in the room) you can’t actually directly play competitive multiplayer with each other.

                Yeah, it sucks. You can’t set up a private run with just you and your buddies, you have to race their ghost. No choice, no option, nothing. You cannot both be in the same race at the same time against each other. It’s a big omission, nearly a deal breaker, but believe me when I say that the Explore mode and the RiderNet system do an incredible job of making it up to you. You won’t really miss it in the end, at least not as much as you might think. Would it still be nice? Yeah. But you can’t have everything. Speaking of RiderNet, it’s basically the AutoLog from Need For Speed rebranded and cleaned up. It tracks all of your friends and keeps you updated on their progress in Explore, letting you know when and where you got your butt whooped and how much you’ll get for going back and setting the record straight. RiderNet is one of those features you didn’t know you wanted until you got it, and you found out what you were missing.

                Finally, there are Global Events. Global Events are large time-sensitive competitions bearing huge prize pools with thousands upon thousands of players competing for a piece of the action. The credits you can win are determined by how well you do: if you score high enough you’ll be placed in specific ‘brackets’ that are awarded a percentage of the money. The bar for entry into the highest brackets is typically unreasonable, but that’s what it takes to score millions on a single run. The events with the most tempting honey pots typically charge a large fee for entering, so take care and make sure you’re not about to blow 200k on a race you can’t win.

Graphics

                This game is gorgeous. If it were a lady, all the boy games would fall over themselves to court her. Every run has a distinct look and feel, the atmosphere of each mountain range is spot-on, and there is basically nowhere on these courses you can’t go. When somebody says they want to see a classic they loved brought into the HD generation, they don’t mean ‘Slap some Anti-Aliasing on it and clean up two or three textures’, they mean SSX. It’s sharp, quick, varied, and full of personality. The frame rate is smooth as silk as well with not even a hint of slowdown when things get hairy. Seriously, this game is phenomenally put together.

Sound

                As a direct result of this soundtrack I am now a fan of like eight bands/artists I didn’t listen to before. It’s got upbeat, fun tracks, and it’s got some great moody material for the night-time runs through Siberia and a live volcano inside Kilimanjaro. Everything is crisp, it sounds amaaaaazing in surround sound, and the effects are killer. The game remixes the music based on your performance, dropping it out when you hit big air and throwing in ‘It’s Tricky’ when you hit Tricky mode. You can customize the soundtrack to your liking, and even add your own music to races and menus. It’s hard to describe it without hearing it, but they’ve done a top-notch job here. Just... make sure you can at least tolerate dubstep first, because there’s a lot of it. A lot, a lot.

Wrap-Up

                As somebody who wasn’t really a fan of this kind of game until SSX, I’ve been hard-pressed to explain what drew me to it. Ultimately, I believe the quality of the presentation is what sold me on the game, and the robust multiplayer options overcome the lack of direct competition to keep the game in rotation long after many others have fallen. I myself balked considerably at paying $60 for it, given the odds of a price drop sometime in the future, but ultimately it’s well worth the price of admission with the replay and production value EA Canada has built in. And guys, if this hits even $50, pick it up, it’s a load of fun.