So in place of a real post today, I’m going to post a transcript of a conversation I had with regular reader and mega fan MegaFan over Google Chat while I was at work last week. Since I have an Android phone I’m constantly logged into Google Chat by default, so when I check my email at work people try to talk to me. This is the kind of stuff I have to deal with while I’m trying to earn money to support myself and my wife. Enjoy.

Mega: Hiiiii Jow.

Damn it. Joe.

School keyboards suck.

me: Oh hey

Yeah I misspell my own name all the time on foreign keyboards.

Mega: Some douche screwed with the keys too.

So some of the letters are borked.

Mega: Finally reset my password back to one I can remember. Hooray for more active foruming!

me: Wooooooooo!

Now that I have pony emoticons.

Mega: Yonathin loves you now.

me: Ah he always did.

So do you.

SO DO ALL OF YOU

Mega: MAYBE.

MAKE A KIRBY POST.

You’ve never talked about Kirby except for them patches.

me: I don’t know much about Kirby.

Christina is the Kirby fan of the family.

Mega: Get her to make a post. Kirby is the manliest game series ever.

Screw Black Ops. They fight for a war. Kirby fights because his cake is missing.\

me: She’s playing Mass Attack right now, she likes it.

Mega: Because that’s a game for kickass people. You tap innocent critters and kirby messes them up.

TIMES TEN.

What does Kratos fight for? Revenge? To kill Zeus?

Kirby has killed Zeus twice in one weekend, just because he wanted his royal cake.

me: I’m not even going to write about Kirby, I’m just going to copy-paste this conversation as a blog post.

Mega: Then I’ll need more examples.

The only reason Prince Fluff gave Kirby an apartment is because he’s heard legends.

And he doesn’t want to miss with the Maximum Pink.

me: You mean mess.

Mega: That too.

The government trained DeDeDe to be able to take out Kirby.

His mission was to pilfer the food in Dreamland in an attempt to starve the beast.

It proved Innefective, as Kirby stormed in his castle, and retrieved the food.

me: This is like some Watergate stuff, man.

Mega: Indeed.

The reason the Squeak Squad doesn’t mess with him, and even helps him in Mass Attack is because he took the gang over, making Daroach second in command.

He simply showed up and claimed himself as the new king. They tried to repel his attacks, but we all know how that goes.

Also, I may have to leave soon. There’s like, one minute left to this class.

me: That’s fine. Can you explain Canvas Curse in that time?

Mega: I have to go.

Uhh, Canvas curse let you control a god.

That’s all, I’ll get back to you on that,

me: Sounds good to me.

Mega: Kirby was never cursed with being a small ball. He Threatened Drawcia to do it so that he could beat up innocent creatures and eat like crazy on the go.

There.

Anything Else?

me: I think I have all I need.

I read the Star Wars: The Old Republic boards pretty regularly, as I’m obsessed with the game and have more free time at work than I should. A lot of it is just people discussing the game, getting opinions on character classes and generally just passing the time until launch.

I’m mostly on the board for the Sith Warrior class, as it’s the class I’ll be playing and I like to see what other people are saying about it and keep on top of any new information. When I made the decision to play an Imperial character so I could play with friends I knew I’d be in for more than my fair share of immaturity from teenagers who are all about being GRIMDARK and listening to songs that make their mom mad, but sometimes what’s said on the boards is simply appalling.

A lot of people talk about things like how evil their character is going to be. Okay, fine. You’re playing a Sith and you want to be evil. That’s not the way I’m going with my character but you’re free to make those choices. Some of these people, though… I feel like I need to alert the authorities so they can get some help.

For example, a regular poster started a thread about “Will you be situational or absolute?” about how deciding to go completely dark or light with you choices makes for an unrealistic character. Here is the opening post in its entirety:

“As launch approaches, I expect that people (well, those who care about things) are going to begin to flesh out how exactly they plan to play their characters. A lot of us are going into this game with a set ‘idea’ of how we want our Sith to act, and obviously we all have very different approaches to the issue.

For example, I have talked to a significant number of players who have determined — from the outset — to choose every single dark side option presented to them, no matter how ridiculous, callous, or even stupid it is (many of these people are also extremely concerned that too mant light answers will cost them the Darth title, which I guess is fair, given how little we know).

On the opposite side of the aisle are the total lightsiders — those who plan to stack light side points whenever possible.

To be honest, while I am not going to begrudge personal choice in this, the most personal arena in TOR, I’m going to respectfully disagree with those totally devoted to either side.

What gets lost in the mix with these characters, regardless of where they stand in terms of faction and morality, is that they are people (not necessarily human, but close enough), and that even the the darkest of dark people have a lighter side. As an example, Adolf Hitler loved dogs. As much maligned as the guy was/is, he had a deep, honest soft spot for canines. Abraham Lincoln, much-beloved scion of modern America, suffered from deep depressive bouts (and, let’s face it, if your wife was a lunatic and your kids were dying, you might be depressed too) and probably could have never been elected today. These character attributes don’t serve to diminish either Hitler or Lincoln from their overall evil/good natures — they merely deepen who they were; complicated, flawed personas.

The point is, good or bad, people have their failings; their strengths, and are almost all not 100% bad or good. I’d bet money that even Darth Sidious had some attribute or another that could be labeled a positive, even if it didn’t get screen time. And when you look at the good characters in Star Wars, they’re riddled with faults. Luke caves to darkside temptations more than once, and makes out with his own sister (). Han Solo has a greedy streak that’s a mile wide. These people clearly are good guys, but they aren’t 100% good.

Personally, I’d like to be situational with my Sith, even if it costs me at the end of the road. I want to tackle each problem as it comes and develop my character through it. Her experiences with early choices will affect what she does later on. She will be merciful when she feels like it, and tyrannical when she wants to go that way. She will be devoted, violent (especially towards Vette), caring, willful — a mixed bag of emotion, compassion and rage. And I think she will be a more believable and deeper character for it.

So how do you plan to approach the game?”

This is a good post! Intelligent, well written and thought provoking. It’s the perfect way to start a good discussion.

Here is the first reply:

“I’m gonna be an evil sith bastard. I kill and spit on the corpses.”

Ugh.

Here is another choice post, from the thread “Why a Sith?”

“Why choose Darkside over Lightside?”

.-Me stares down the foolish young Apprentice. With a soft movement of my hand i reach for the lightsaber

“Because my boy, there is no place on the world for the weak. And you have just expired!”

.- With a lightning movement i pull out the lightsaber and at one swift movement i both energise it and at the same time cut down the Apprentice from waist to elbow.

The body lies in two pieces of cooked meat, and i smither:

“Hesitation proves your weakness and weakness betrays you.”

Turning around and embracing the shadows, the lightsaber retracts to itself and the shadow becomes a blot, and the blot merges the Dark.

THIS IS A PERSON WHO IS ALLOWED TO WALK AROUND IN PUBLIC. Nevermind the fact that “smither” isn’t even a fucking WORD, they clearly have issues.

I’m so, SO glad I’m playing this game with people I know and won’t be forced to PUG with people like this.

Fun fact: while Googling “Sith Lord” to find an image to use for this article I stumbled across that gem. Normally it’d be a cool costume, except he wrote his ORIGINAL CHARACTER DO NOT STEAL’s name in Aurabesh (the written language in Star Wars) on it. I don’t think “Darth Malis” (yes I translated it) would have his name in HUGE RED LETTERS on his clothes, unless Darth Mom made them for him so they wouldn’t get stolen at Sith summer camp.

So Activision is holding a Call of Duty convention this September, a festival to the cultural phenomenon that is Call of Duty. Call of Duty XP, as they’re calling it, is an opportunity for douchebags I MEAN CALL OF DUTY FANS to get together and… I dunno, talk about Call of Duty, I guess. They get to play Modern Warfare 3 early, and they’re building a life-size replica of one of the multiplayer maps, but whatever else they’re going to do is beyond me.

This got me thinking, though: how rad would it be if other companies jumped on the bandwagon and started holding their own conventions? These are just a few of my ideas on how they’d go down.

Capcon – Presented by Capcom

A celebration of all things Capcom! Come on down to immerse yourself in Capcom’s rich franchises like Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Devil May Cry, and Mega Man! Actually, no. Mega Man won’t be there. It’s all the fan’s fault, too. Did you buy your $250 tickets specifically for the Mega Man content? Sucks for you. You should have been more interested.

The whole thing will blow in Capcom’s face when two months after you buy tickets they announce ANOTHER convention to be held several months after, this time with even more guests and events than the first one. They could just have easily added them all to the first convention, but hey, it’s easier to just have another one. Already planned to go to the first one and don’t want to buy another ticket to the second? Have fun playing by yourself.

Street Fighter Expo

Street Fighter is one of Capcom’s staple franchises so of course it’d get a convention all to itself. You’d arrive ready to check out all kinds of great Street Fighter cosplay but everyone just shows up dressed as Ken.

Super Smash Bros. The Experience

No guests, no vendors, no panels, Final Destination.

Final Fantasycon

Of course Square-Enix has to get in on this action and you’d have a good time there until you realized the cute girl you’d been chatting up for fifteen minutes is actually a dude. You’d have the smug assholes who think they’re the first ones to make the joke “FINAL Fantasy? Then why are there fourteen of them DURR HURR” and of course no one running the event would actually say anything meaningful to you, it’d all be a bunch of pseudo-psychobabble and everything would be inferred by subtext alone.

The panels wouldn’t really be much fun either. Imagine having to sit through “Hero Talk: How Being a Hero Helps Me Be a Hero and How Doing Heroic Things Can Make You a Hero” hosted by Snow Villiers or “How to Cope With Loss” by Hope Estheim. There would be a whole lecture on knife safety by Aerith Gainsborough and Barrett Wallace would host a panel on racial sensitivity. You wouldn’t want to miss “How to Party With Three Chicks” by Bartz Klauser, though.

The whole thing would go south when Kefka poisons the convention center’s water supply.

EarthBound FanFest

Attendees would have the time of their lives but Nintendo wouldn’t make enough back on ticket sales to justify overspending on their marketing budget and they’d never mention it again.

The other day Christina and I were at Target, since we’re adults and sometimes have to go buy things like household cleaners and storage bins and other things that aren’t really all that fun. Still, though, we have a routine each time we go in: we get what we need, stop by the action figures, swing by the video games and DVDs, and then before we hit the registers to check out, look at the trading cards. Sometimes I’m in the mood for a pack of WoW cards to try for a loot card, or we’ll each get a pack of the new Pokémon cards, or Christina finds an interesting new unknown thing to buy.

This time, though, we found something WAY more awesome: a pack of the Animal Crossing e-Reader cards. For the GameCube game. From 2002.

The cardboard backing was a little mangled, because they looked like they had been lost in the back room for years and someone had just recently found them and, not knowing what they were, just put them with the rest of the trading cards. Of course we had to buy them.

So we’re checking out and paying for all of our stuff and just like I expected, the cards didn’t scan. The cashier tried scanning them like six or seven times, all the while Christina and I are trying to explain what the cards actually are, how old they were, and that they’re probably not in the system anymore. She asks us what they were marked over on the card rack, and we try to explain that they didn’t have a price on them, because they’re FROM 2002, WHY AREN’T YOU LISTENING, OH MY GOD. She calls her manager over and we go through the same song and dance all over again, until they finally decide to just charge us $1.99.

We haven’t opened them yet, we’re not sure if we will. How many unopened packs of these exist in the world? We’re not going to sell them, but as you know, Animal Crossing means a great deal to both of us, so they’re kinda neat to have as a souvenir from when fate decided to start its work.

Kids in cereal commercials are the shittiest people in the world. If they are an indicator of who will be leading our country in 50 years, we are all doomed.

We spend all this time and energy trying to teach kids how to share, and then they can’t even let the Trix rabbit have a bowl of his own cereal. “Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!” Shut up and go to jail, you little shit. It’s his cereal. His face is on the box. How DARE you take it from him.

What kid needs an entire box of cereal to himself? How come these kids can’t give the Trix rabbit ONE bowl of cereal? It’s not like he’s asking for much. He just wants to hang out and have a bowl of sweetened corn cereal. He even seems like a cool guy! But no. These kids have to come along, steal his cereal, and then on top of it all, they have to rub his nose in it with that stupid catchphrase.

I feel so bad for the poor rabbit. If I could, I’d share my cereal with him. You know how when rappers have a friend that died, they pour some of their booze on the ground, to “pour one for their homies?” Every time I sit down to have a bowl of Trix, I pour some on the ground for my homie (who is the Trix rabbit).

It’s not like Lucky, who likes to share his Lucky Charms, or Captain Crunch, whose job it is to distribute his namesake breakfast cereal. The Trix rabbit is just a poor guy who loves Trix, but a whole generation of asshole children won’t give him that. FOR SHAME.

It was a Christmas morning that at first seemed like any other. I was overjoyed to receive all of the action figures and sports equipment I had asked for, just like every year. Santa was very good to my sister and I, rarely leaving our wishes unfulfilled.

This year, though, something WAS missing, something which I yearned for with my entire being. The fibers of my very soul all called out in unison, hoping desperately to receive the one item that would sate my deepest desires.

My mom was filming us again, which I never understood. She labored so much to record every minute of every birthday, Christmas and school function and never watched the videos afterwards. I figured she recorded everything in search of that one elusive moment, that one instance in time that would define a very specific point in our lives.

She was lucky the camera was rolling that morning.

“You have another present, son,” my mom said, pointing to a box from behind her video camera. I hadn’t noticed; in the storm of ripped wrapping paper being flung this way and that it must have slipped out of my mind.

I silently analyzed the box as I slid it across the floor to the designated unwrapping area in front of the video camera. It was the right size, and it felt heavy enough. It couldn’t be… could it? Did Santa actually pull it off?

Unable to contain myself, I ripped off the paper in what seemed like one piece. The rectangular box stood bare on front of me, like some kind of monolith, a monument of how much Santa fucking loved me.

“NINTENDO SIXTY-FOOOOOOOOOUR!” The words lept from my throat at a volume I didn’t know I was capable of producing. “OH MY GOD!”

“Thank you Santa!” my sister said calmly as I tossed a stray bit of paper aside. How could she be so calm? Did she realize what lay on the floor in front of us? It was a literal FUN FACTORY. This was a device that, when plugged into the television, was capable of producing nothing short of PURE JOY as long as it was powered on.

My stupid, short-sighted sister thanked Santa again as I turned the box over and over in my arms, trying to see everything it had to offer all at one time while some primal force inside me continued to scream some kind of euphoric battle cry. Yes, Santa was who had delivered this immeasurable bounty, but I was the one who had earned it.

I lay the box flat on the floor and placed both hands firmly on the top for a reason I to this day do not understand. Was I afraid it would run away? I must have been, because I lowered my face to within an inch of the printed cardboard – God, it smelled so good – and screamed again, a kind of dominating scream as if to say “YOU BELONG TO ME! I AM YOUR MASTER AND YOU WILL SERVE ME!”

I began pawing at the box, my tiny hands desperate to unearth the treasure that lay inside. By this time my sister had began to try to copy what I was doing, you know, like little sisters do, but I paid her little mind. She would get hers later. This moment… this moment was mine and I would be damned if I let her or anyone else take it from me.

Standing the box upright again, I pumped my fist toward the heavens, confident my joyous cries would reach the mythical realm above me. “YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!” My stupid sister did it along with me. Ugh.

A revelation struck me: If Santa came through with a gift this big, there would be no more than one game that would accompany the new console. However, just down the street, there was a veritable treasure trove, a palace that contained multiple copies of every game I could ever hope to play. “Now we can order games from Blockbuster!”

My mom called my name, snapping me away from the best moment in my life. I had another present, apparently. I don’t know why Santa would even bother. Nothing could top this. Nothing. No moment would ever come close for my entire life. When I graduate college? Psssh. My wedding day? Gross, girls have cooties. This… this was what it was all about.

I pulled the paper away on the smaller box, still unable to take my eyes off of the relic that had been bestowed upon me. “Nintendo 64 remote control car!” I said, trying to sound excited. A nice gesture, fat man, but if you already gave me filet mignon, why bother throwing in a pound of ground beef?

Still… he had done it. “Thank you, Santa!”

So I was browsing Joystiq today and they linked to a story posted on Creepy + Pasta about a supposedly haunted copy of Majora’s Mask for the Nintendo 64. I won’t go into details because I don’t want to spoil it. The story, while (very likely) fake, is very engaging and absolutely creepy as hell. My skin crawled as I read it. The videos that went with it made it that much more intense.

I LOVE reading creepy pasta, especially ones about video games. There’s a million stories out there about haunted or posessed versions of Pokémon games and some of them are really, REALLY creepy. I poked around Creepy + Pasta a bit more and while most of the other stories are lame, there are a few good ones out there.

I’ve lost HOURS reading urban legends on Snopes. I don’t know why I love this stuff… I don’t really like horror movies or anything. Please share links to any good creepy pasta in the comments section!

Megafan, who is one of the first readers I ever got, is a super awesome kid. I’ve been saying this for a while. His latest post on the forums, however, has provided him a meteoric rise to superstardom, resulting in this blog post. Yeah!

The above picture is just super awesome. I think the best part is making “Game Fuel” the favorite food, considering I’ve never even mentioned how much I love it, it’s just the alt text of my picture on the “About” page.

The next picture is even better. I’m posting it after the jump for suspense and maximim hilarious effect!

This is so freaking awesome. Me vs. my arch nemesis!

Megafan, thanks for being so rad and for hanging around so long. I tell Christina all the time that the best thing about doing this blog was the handful of people I’ve met through it, and this is just proof of that. Thanks!

So the other night Christina and I went to go see Toy Story 3 (bring a tissue, folks) and I was thinking about all the toys I loved as a kid. My favorites were my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures, which I collected since they first hit the market through the better part of my elementary school life.

Whenever I’d move and consolidate my posessions, my Ninja Turtles always came with me. When I lived with my roommates and was planning my move to Boston, though, I knew they couldn’t make the trip. I barely had enough money to ship my necessary stuff across the country, and as much as I hated the idea, I left them behind. My roommate’s parents, who owned the house we rented, said to just leave whatever I wasn’t taking with me in the garage and they’d take it to the dump.

I remember looking back at the garage as I left the house for the last time, and a part of my childhood died that day.

But literally the next day after seeing Toy Story 3, I got a text from my old roommate’s wife (who was also my roommate, the story is complicated when I haven’t bothered to give everyone’s name) saying “Hey Joe, we found some old boxes of your Ninja Turtle toys in the garage of the old house. You want them?”

Hah. Do I want them. OF COURSE I DO!

So now my Ninja Turtle figures, which I thought were long lost to the abyss, are on their way home. I couldn’t be more excited.

Isn’t the timing on that weird?

I just saw this over on Kotaku and I thought it was really neat. The fine folks over at GameTrailers have tackled the decades-old myth, confirming once and for all that Mario can indeed jump over the flagpole in Super Mario Bros. for the NES. I remember attempting this many times as a kid, but never quite making it.

I heard my share of rumors of things hidden in Super Mario Bros. way back when, none of which ever panned out because little kids are liars and I should have known that none of the kids in my kindergarten class had relatives who worked at Nintendo. Live and learn, I suppose!