Patrick R

CLOP is animal. QWOP is game. PAUL is dead. Miss him. Miss him.

I don't even understand how "real life" could possibly fail the Bechdel test. There aren't really "unnamed characters" in real life, and there is no woman whose entire verbal life has been focused on men. Even as a thought experiment, it just doesn't translate for me. Also, I realized today that Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-A-Lot almost passes the Bechdel test. The only problem is that the narrator isn't named, while her silent friend Becky is.

Are germs animals?

I even like a lot of the maligned tracks on Tha Carter III (and even one on Rebirth, if you can believe that), but I find most people who don't like Lil Wayne really have no awareness of him pre-Lollipop. They aren't aware that he's this crazy child prodigy of rap who's been incredible since before he could legally drive.

The problem with the forums is you can't cut someone off with a "Videooo gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaameeeesssss".

I haven't found a single maintenance tool 2.5 hours in, so I'm not really concerned about them.

I'm not even that panicked, because the med tables are super cheap to use. It comes down to being cheaper to use a wrench and then go back and heal myself with one of those instead of using my guns and risking breaking them. It's more annoying than scary.

Will there ever be a point in this game where I'm not afraid to use my guns? Between the way every gun in this game just falls apart and the limited ammo, I've been a wrench maniac for about 2.5 hours now. Also, how the hell does that hacking/repair minigame work? I always just press random squares and explode everything.

QUICK, TALK ABOUT YOUR JUNK.

I instantly imagined the platypus would sound like a PUFFIN.

Doing my best to nip at everyone's heels before I'm permanently snuffed out.

Hannibal should have been titled "Florence Is Gorgeous And Also Hannibal".

If you listen to Lil Wayne up to Tha Carter II, you have nothing to worry about. Dude was something special. I've made plenty of friends online. It's hard to meet people in real life. But whoever mentioned the avatar thing is totally right. It can be so weird to assume for years that someone is black because they have a Geordi LaForge next to all their posts. Part of the reason my avatar is just my picture.

I feel like gamer is a weird term because there really isn't a comparable word for someone who merely participates in or appreciates another activity or artform. Like, "gamer" doesn't really mean the same thing as "cinephile". There's not really an implied knowledge base or expertise with "gamer". Like, I am fascinated by video games and love reading about them and their history and playing them from time to time, but keeping up to date on the latest games or sinking a lot of time into any one game has never been my bag. I mostly like thinking about them and experimenting (there's a reason I never post in the "Completed Games" thread). Also, I'm not at all competitive and am technically really unskilled. I don't feel like a gamer. It's like calling someone who loves baseball and gets super into the season every year a baseball player. There should be different terms for enthusiasts and serious players.

The Gap Band are maybe the most underrated group ever. That little laugh before the drums on You Dropped a Bomb On Me kick in is so perfect.

Labels can be empowering, though. Especially for trans people, for whom their very identity is taken for granted every day. I think it's easy to say "who needs labels" but with labels can also come community, and that sort of thing can be VITAL. Self-identifying as something can be a way to combat the very strong feeling of "otherness" that can occur if you're in a minority group, whether that means being comfortable calling yourself queer or being comfortable calling yourself fat. In a perfect world none of this would be needed ever, but since we aren't in a perfect world, it's still useful. Or as James Brown put it:

Chance the Rapper is the best.

I'm pretty sure I've plugged my podcast here before, but for Mother's Day I recorded a commentary track for Friday the 13th with my mom (a wonderful 55 year old Catholic woman who has not seen a horror movie since she was 15 years old) and I am very proud of the result. Obviously, since it's a commentary track, you have to own Friday the 13th to get the full effect, but I thought I'd plug it here anyway. Listening to me try to explain the rules of slasher movies without saying the word "sex" in front of my mom is pretty damned cute, if I do say so myself.

If you get hit by the "*" you get transported back to the start of the screen. You gotta rush through it as fast as you can. Berzerk potions are especially helpful. I got burnt out on the RPG stuff before I got to the dragon, but I really love this game as an examination of upgrade-based flash games and the like. I've never been more acutely aware of my reaction to something as simple as a number going up. And the way your relationship to candies and lollipops change throughout the game is pretty great.

Also "What, no love for Dad?" is the logline for It's A Wonderful Life.

As the Thumbs mentioned, the discovery is a lot of the fun, but I also just found the way it toyed with my lizard brain really fascinating. Like, I wanted to see numbers go up, and then I wanted to see those other numbers go up, and then there was this feedback loop of lollipops, and suddenly what seemed like really high numbers were really low numbers. It's very weird and made me question why I play a lot of the upgrade based Flash games I play online. I often think about Godard's "In order to criticize a movie, you have to make another movie." quote, and I think the same would apply here. And I've never heard JJ Abrams. Apparently me + mascara (why my eyes pop so much in that picture) = creator of Lost. I can dig that.

How does System Shock 2 need 2 GB of hard drive space (as per the specs listed on Steam)? Surely it wasn't that large back in 1999, right? Did it come on 3 CD's? EDIT: Well I just bought it and when I went to install it it was only 540 MB. So I guess the specs are wrong.

I really love how having no idea what anything is supposed to be for affects the economy of the game. Eventually you will be generating 100 lollipops a second, and it won't be enough and will be way less valuable than candy.

Yeah, I don't want to be the Polyamory-Is-Natural-We're-All-Actually-Polyamorous-You're-Living-A-Lie-Guy, nor the Can't-Stop-Talking-About-All-The-Sex-He's-Having-Guy. It's just a thing I'm doing right now that someone asked about. My random thought right now is that there is a wikipedia page for puddles, and I can't read it without hearing it in the voice of a kindly old British man. "A puddle is generally small enough for an adult to step over, shallow enough to walk through, and too small to traverse in a boat or raft. Puddles can be a source of fascination for children. Small wildlife may be attracted to puddles."