Vampire Mini Games

Let's talk about creativity for a moment. It is the desire of every artist to create something new, something original. Marketing that new idea may be more challenging when a proven path has been so profitable. When profits drive the medium, you tend to get a product that has been so watered down and recycled that it hardly resembles anything good.

Many years ago there was a good book written by Bram Stoker about unholy blood sucking undead demons called vampires. Many years later there was a less good movie called "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Some people deemed this good enough to create a less good television series by the same name. Writer Joss Whedon, in his efforts to drive some new creativity into the show, created a character to be Buffy's love interest. His name was Angel. He was a vampire with a soul. This character was so popular that he and Buffy broke up so that Angel could have his own less good spin-off show. Well this concept (a handsome vampire with a soul who doesn't want to hurt people but rather would love them while being tortured by his vampire instincts and brooding drive for redemption and love) was so popular that when a less good book came along it was received with open arms. This book was called "Twilight". It was about a girl who falls in love with a sparkling handsome vampire with a soul who doesn't want to hurt people but rather would love them while being tortured by his vampire instincts and brooding drive for redemption and love. These books were so popular that they made a less good movie based on the books. The movie was so popular that there are now two, that's right two, less good television shows about the secret lives of vampires. It turns out that these undead creatures of the night that once were feared lest they lay claim to your soul are just like you and me. They love, stay up late, go out during the day, gossip, etc. They are in essence human with a penchant for the occasional drink of blood which they are more than happy to obtain from blood banks or cattle or some other source.

Do you see how watered down the evil vampire has become through this process of regurgitated creativity? And that's what brings me to my next point: the Nintendo Wii.

The Wii was released packaged with a game called Wii Sports. It was five mini games built as an exhibition tool for the new technology. "Look at what this machine can do. Look at how intuitive the controls are. Think of the possibilities for creative control schemata," they seemed to be saying. During a war between XBox 360 and Playstation 3 over features and power and processors and graphics, Nintendo went for creativity. This creativity has been recieved well, but a majority of designers cannot look past the success of Wii Sports. So they regurgitate the mini game model. How many different games do you need in which you can bowl? The worst offenders have to be "Our House Party" and "MLB Baseball Blast".

"Our House Party" gives you such original ideas as go paint your room, hammer, saw, mow the lawn. In reality they are saying, "See how fun your chores can be." Basically you are painting a virtual room to escape the drudgery of painting your real room? Making chores fun may have worked for Tom Sawyer and Mary Poppins, but it doesn't work for me.

"MLB Baseball Blast" hosts Major League Baseball licensed teams and players. But guess what you can't do. You can't play baseball! You can do every thing but. You can play dodgeball, you can blast baseballs as canon balls at a pirate ship, but you cannot play baseball.

I get it. You can make a mini game for the Wii. Why can't you use some of that creativity and make a fully realized concept for a complete full length game. Why is it that Nintendo can do it with their licensed products (Mario, Zelda, Metroid), but all you can do is reproduce the same point and click mini games? I would rather there be fewer good games than a mountain of junk. So stop it. It's embarrassing all of us, especially those of us who wanted to be vampires for halloween and got sprinkles and an Edward Cullen wig instead.

Breakfast Cereals and the Evolutionary Imperative or How Sugary Cereal Marketing is putting our Civilization in Danger

For years humanity survived on instinctive fear of things that could kill them. This fear drove our primitive ancestors to create shelter and weapons. Over the last few years, however, man has tried his hand at mastering these things that used to threaten him. HE has tried to tame the elements and the beasts. Through various trainers we learned that even the wild beast can be brought into our homes without any danger. And what is worse, children are now being influenced to where they can think that dangerous animals are cute. This diversion from the evolutionary imperative can only be blamed on breakfast cereals.

            Tony the anthropomorphic tiger advertises his Frosted Flakes by growling the fact that “They’re Grrreat.” Proper grammar and opposable thumbs not withstanding, a tiger growling even a sales pitch should activate the fight or flight response and not hunger pangs for sugar frosted corn flakes. Children should be taught to flee the situation and not feel affection towards it. The tiger in nature thinks that the human is yummy and will not delay attack as one ponders the flavor of the contents of a box he may be situated near.

            Two other animals that should be warned against are Sonny the Cuckoo Bird and the Trix Rabbit. An animal that behaves irrationally, either in the presence of chocolaty cereals, fruity cereals, any other breakfast food, or in any other situation must be avoided.  A child should be taught to avoid such birds as they may carry disease. If any animal, especially rodentia, is behaving contrary to nature it may be carrying rabies, an infection that can be deadly in humans. These creatures as illustrated are dangerous and can be used by parents to teach their child what to avoid. “Yes,” a parent might say, ”Trix are for kids. And if a wild rabbit comes near you, call for an adult so that they might kill it in order to test for deadly diseases.” Or else, “Dear children, if you see a bird who does seem to ‘go cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs’, run and tell a grown up right away. That psychotic bird could kill you with disease.”

            A fear that should be in the heart of every entomologist is the mascot of Honey Nut Cheerios, BuzzBee. With the increasing prevalence of Africanized honey bees, it is conceivable that a child would want to offer a bowl of honey sweetened  toasted whole grain oat cereal and consequently be swarmed by the dangerous bees.

            The animal mascots as presented by these manufacturers are clearly dangerous to the evolutionary imperative that is meant to protect us from the evolutionary imperatives of other wild animals.  Marketing teams for General Mills and others are psychologically depriving children from the safety that is granted by instinct. This paper is not meant to condemn all cereal mascots as Wendel the Baker of Cinnamon Toast Crunch is a good example of one we might trust in our quest for a delicious, nutritious, and safe part of this balanced breakfast.

            

Pasteurization is Actually Just Heating Food to Kill Bacteria that Could Make You Ill or Kill You.

   If you're like me, you know how brilliant I am. And if you're like me you also know the advantages of an unhealthy lifestyle. But you're not like me so you may not know one or both of these in spite of the title of title of this blog. But rather than tell you how fantastic and brilliant I am I wish to tell you how good life is now that I am living the unhealthy life.

  The inspiration for this comes from how many people are talking about the need to "detoxify". The grumpy Bill Maher, the vivacious Susan Summers, and quite possibly even you think that the fewer chemicals that enter your body the better off you are. You couldn't possibly be more wrong, (or wronger to the hippie "I don't need no prescriptivist grammar" generation).

   Lets avoid the sticky pharmaceuticals argument. Those nasty chemicals which you berate to such a high degree have saved my life, so obviously I think that aspect of the unhealthy life are beneficial without explanation. Don't tell me that a chihuahua will cure what ails me, be cause I've been around chihuahuas and I was ill all the same (if not worse because of it). Tylenol is derived from willow bark, Singulair is derived from pregnant hamster urine. What could be more natural, and gross.

   What I wish to address is food. The modern chemistry set has made such delicious things, from blue flavored beverages to Cap'n Crunch. These things are meant to bring a joy that can only come from chemistry. I have said before (in my previous blog) that my daily high school lunch consisted of PowerAde and gummy worms. This simple meal gave me all the electrolytes and empty calories I needed to last the rest of the day until I could get home and eat potato chips. My dear mother made sure I ate a nutritious meal consisting of some sort of processed cheese food and bread made with bleached and enriched white flour. Last night my sweety and I even ventured to eat pizza. After being resuscitated by homeopathic EMTs I now feel good.

   My point? I have been living the unhealthy lifestyle for twenty some odd years. I'm happy. I'm healthy. I can eat whatever the heck I want. I don't have to drink green tea. I can drink blue kool-aid. And really what can be better than that? And what's more, I feel that my unhealthy life style has done more than make me one with the universe. It has made me three, possibly four, with the universe. And that's more than you can say for your wheat grass unpasteurized milk shake (made in something other than a blender because that would be considered processing. -  Hah! Beat that semantic argument).

Bringing Down the Forum

Previous to this I had another blog to which I posted at myspace.com. But since then myspace has descended into the dark abysmal pits of pornography, logical fallacies, and Harry Potter fans. On more than one occasion I have posted a well reasoned argument in a blog and there has been a response that went as follows: yeah? well ur retarded. come see me naked @adultbimboswithlowself-esteem. com oopsee remove the space between . and com." There are at least three things wrong with the preceding statement. Capitalization, spelling, and they gave me instructions to delete a space rather than deleting it themselves (I don't think them calling me names is something wrong with the message, I just think it's a poor marketing strategy).

After the numerous offers to see some androgynous female or another naked, I began to think that maybe myspace has lost a bit of the repute that it once had. So I decided to post my ideals here at blogger.com. But why blogger.com? It seems that it is the world virtual capital of bad poetry.

Bad poetry, you see, is the mark of creativity. Anybody can write reasonable to good poetry, but you have to dig deep within the shadowed recesses of your tortured teenage soul to write bad poetry. And if those creative people are here that I must come to break it up. Myspace started falling after I joined, facebook became a giant mob war/pillow fight recruiting ring soon after I discovered it, maybe I can crush this networking site also. So beware blogger.com. You just let the most dangerous person on the internet onto your site.

And so I leave you with my ticket to blogger.com: My own bad poetry. 

Potatoes can be found in an arbitrary nature

but only when affected by the proper nomenclature

to be the one you think you ought

when afflicted by a gangster

recall the judgement as it stands was just

when it came by judicator .

oopsee remove the the space between judicator and . ... or die.