Eulogy for an Unknown

A friend of mine was killed in a car accident about two weeks ago. Well, I really shouldn't call him a friend because he was more of an acquaintance than anything. We had gone to middle school together for a couple years, and then when high school rolled around, he vanished from my quaint little teenage world. Whether he had dropped out or just transferred to another school is beyond me -- the point is, I knew him, and by educational means, he was connected to me.

Then, after I had graduated and began attending the nearby community college, this acquaintance of mine reappeared. I got a call one morning from my dad saying, "Your mom was in a car accident; she's okay, don't worry. She just bumped her head is all." Dad and I drove to the hospital, where Mom was recovering from a slight bruise to the head, but you could tell she was shaken up from the event. I really don't think she drives as casually as she did since then.

My mom was dropping my brothers off at school when out of the blue, this car careened into her, completely totaling the back end of our three-year old Toyota RAV4. Apparently, the guy driving his car hadn't bothered to scrape the ice off the windshield and was leaning his head out the window so he could see. Obviously, he didn't spot my mom's car in his general direction. Nobody was seriously injured, but once I found out who the driver was, I did a double take and vomited all over the floor.

Okay, so not really. My realization was relatively clean.

Yeah, it was him. The guy from school. It's rather strange having someone vanish from your world and then quickly reemerge to preform some surprising act that will forever leave an impact. Sure, it had more of an impact on my mom than anything, but it affected me, too...little though it may be.

Months later, I saw him at a popular local pizza joint. He didn't recognize me, nor did he know he had crashed into our family car. I thought I had wanted to beat the living shit out of him, but I didn't. Really, the first instinct that came to mind was to ask him, hey, man, are you stupid? Who the hell drives with an iced-over windshield? Let that shit thaw out, yo! I'd give him the run-down, he'd say he was sorry, it won't ever happen again, and we'd go our separate ways.

That didn't happen.

Instead, I avoided all eye-contact, finished my pizza, and left the restaurant a few minutes later. I didn't hear from or about him until a phone call two weeks ago. It was my dad.

"Hey, do you know a [such-and-such]?" he asked.

"Yeah. Why? That's the guy I went to school with. The guy who hit mom."

"I thought so. Well, there's a thing in the paper about him. It says he was killed in a car accident."

Huh. Really now. You don't say.

My acquaintance was twenty years old. Like some goddamned magician, he did a disappearing act two times in my life, and twice did he reappear to shock the hell out of me. He spoke a little English when I knew him, though mostly Spanish to his actual friends. He was in some of my classes; I probably lent him some pencils and paper and him the same to me. We might have even played some Four Square. And now, because I didn't give him the rundown at that pizza place or give him a fucking black eye, he's dead. Dead and gone.

I've thought about this for a while. I don't blame myself, or try not to, at least. He was speeding and wasn't wearing a seatbelt. Same old story. But you know, I could have stopped this from happening. I mean, it would have made a hell of a story in the local paper: "Kid Starts Fight With Other Kid He Knew From Middle School -- Victim of Black Eye Learns Lesson." I probably would have been banned from that pizza place and done some jail time, maybe, but it would have been worth the goddamn effort to save his life.

And lately, the food at that pizza joint hasn't tasted all that great, either. Yes, it would have been a fucking noble sacrifice.

The noblest fucking sacrifice the world ever saw.

Rest in peace, guy. Thanks for letting me borrow those pencils in middle school. I never really thanked you for that.

Yeah? Well Fuck You, Too, Blanka, You Slimy-Barrel-Rolling-Piece-of-Shit-Asshole-Sonuvabitch-Dillweed

That's right. I'm looking at you, you cute, costume-wearing Street Fighter IV Blanka.


If you're anything at all like your HD Remix counterpart, I'm gonna fucking tear you limb from limb and wear your hat as a...hat. See you in February, motherfucker.

Sincerely,
Your Friend,
Ken Masters

Pricking Needles

After I declared that the word "videogame" should be replaced with "Mother 3" in the English language, I just might want to retract my statement. Not that the game isn't absolutely brilliant, mind you -- it's just, I still haven't finished it because the last remainder of the quest isn't pulling anymore, but pushing. Honestly, I don't really care about pulling needles across the Mother 3 world; I've done this kind of quest in hundreds of other RPGs and I don't really want to do it again. And the undersea, hold-your-breath section? Don't even get me started.

It's just strange that a game that began so well and so near-literary just tapers off into a fetch quest. Sure, one could pose the argument that this actually is being satirical about the whole "going to find the eight crystals scattered about the globe" template that so many games follow, but how about developing this part of the quest in a different manner? Maybe it's more difficult than it sounds.

So, I still haven't completed it, but I hope to finish within the next ten years...and I hear that the ending is strange, funny, and heartrending. Huh.

Wait! Don't Go! You Clicked My Name Out of Pure Curiosity on Some Website, Didn't You, You Poor Bastard

You really shouldn't go around doing that. Most of the time, you'll see some unusual or interesting comment left by some random person on a message board, and you'll think, "Well, this guy's comment was pretty damn weird, so I'll just see what he's going on about at his personal website!"

And when you get there, you realize, "Oh god, what have I done? This blog of his is complete shit and absolutely incompetent compared to real, professional writing."

Believe me, I sympathize with you. Let me be the first to tell you that this blog, too, is complete shit, and I have given up updating it because -- *gasp* *big surprise* -- nobody reads it. Which, as you can see by the title, is kind of a strange, double-edged-sword-kind-of-gimmick.

Honestly, I'm just trying my best not to blend in with the crowd, that pulsating mass of "personal feelings" and "political stances" and "absolute shit" that is the Internet...again, which is a double-edged sword because everyone probably is trying to distance themselves from it, too. It's like that time when I wanted to be original, so I dyed my hair blue, carved the alphabet into my chest with a knife, and ran around singing that wondrous 80's classic, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World".

Problem was, everyone at my high school was doing the exact same thing.

Can't win 'em all.

Oh, and I'm sorry I called you a bastard. It just...slips out sometimes.

The "Mother 3" Mother 3

Once you play Mother 3, you may not need to play another videogame again. Instead, you'll probably want to read a lot of literature, smash your TV, and wish capitalism never existed -- or, at least, these are the feelings the game evokes in me after about ten hours of play time. Many people across the Wonderful World of the Internet have already posted their feelings on the new Mother 3 English patch, and I certainly don't want to add to the cesspool of opinions (though I'm certain some opinions are more thoughtful and well-written than others). So I'll try to make this addition to the cesspool short.The term "videogame" is dirty. Nintendo has been trying to distance themselves from the word since the launch of the DS and Wii, and Sony and Microsoft now would like their customers to call their wonder machines "Home Entertainment Systems". I unabashedly agree. "Videogame" conjures up images of juvenile delinquency and inadequate social skills and yellow orbs eating ghosts; this most likely will never change. However, since Mother 3 was brought out into the world, surprisingly not kicking and screaming but docile and sophisticated, I honestly would be comfortable to use "videogame" in a conversation with a normal human being. This is the direction videogames should go. Enough of the war-reenactments, the guns with knives, the Scarface wannabes -- they were fun when we were thirteen, but now we've grown up. We're mad as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore.

Mother 3 reads like a book, plays like a movie, floats like a butterfly, and stings like a bee. It never falters, never shrinks, and has balls. From the moment the game begins to the ten-hour mark, Mother 3 knows exactly where it's going and how it's going to get there. It's absolute perfection.

So, as of this moment, I propose that the term "videogame" be abolished and replaced with "Mother 3". We'll be better off for it.

No More Heroes: A World of Murderers, or, "A Review No One Will Read"

No More Heroes is a Wii game I bought because the Wii didn't have any games. When I take a glance at the case sitting on the shelf, I think of all the incredibly polished NEXT GEN GRAPHICS and REALISTIC PHYSICS ENGINES on other systems and in other software, I almost have to sigh with relief that thank God I don't have to deal with that videogame marketing shit in this game. What does the back of the box say, anyway? Here, let me read you some of the bullet-points:

1) "Slash your way to the top with your trusty beam katana."

Okay, that's true. You do hack bad guys. You also have a lightsaber. The marketing team at Ubisoft was pretty trustworthy on this one.

2) "Complete side jobs for extra cash to customize your character and weapons."

This, while knowing why undergoing side jobs should be listed as a positive bulletpoint is a joke in itself, is also true. So far, you special marketing team you, are not completely bullshitting me.

3) "Bring the pain with an arsenal of over-the-top combat moves."

Yes. Okay. But enough of that.

Like I said before, No More Heroes was a game I bought because the Wii didn't have any games. Metroid Prime 3 was dead and gone, a mere shell of what the original had been, and you can only play Wii Sports for so long before it becomes something akin to actual work. As a skinny kid pretending to be a fat kid for the sake of this blog entry, I'd like to say that, yes, Wii Sports was my weight-loss savior, but now that all the women flock to me like my old-fat-self to a Krispy Kreme donut, I really don't want to mimic swinging a tennis racket anymore. I'd also like to point out the state of our nation when people actually get tired by pretending to play a sport in front of a television set -- and doctors, for christsake, are forced to give a "scientific" name to a "disease" caused by this "exercise".

But since I'm not a fat kid anymore (or never really was -- it's your call), I guess I can sympathize.

Anyway, when the first trailer for No More Heroes was posted online, I watched it with little curiosity. The game at the time was dubbed just Heroes. The trailer starred a dude with a lightsaber named "Travis Touchdown" and another dude with a cigar and long silver hair named "Helter Skelter". Personally, I was rooting for the silver-haired dude because I was a fan of Final Fantasy, and even though I'm not gay, I would totally go for a dude that looked like a chick. Travis Touchdown looked like a Johnny Knoxville clone, and Jackass isn't all that appealing to a not-gay dude who could totally go for dudes that look like chicks.

In the end, the trailer was poorly voice-acted and honestly looked like it was destined for the bargain bin within a week after release. Plus, my effeminate-looking-cigar-smoking dude lost the duel! Not cool!

A couple months later, a second trailer was released at the Tokyo Game Show (and this would also become the game's opening). This, however, immediately made a fan of me -- even before the game was released! I mean, here you have this satirical videogame about a guy who doesn't have any money, decides to become a serial killer to earn a living, and gradually make his way to the top of the serial killer food-chain. How could that not be appealing to anyone who plays videogames? Most games have a main objective: destroy anything that moves. See that goomba walking toward you on screen? Stomp it to bloody bits. How about those ghosts? Eat the shit out of them. And those falling bricks that threaten screen-closing demise? Line those suckers up for ultimate decimation.

Maybe the Tetris reference should be rendered moot, but my point here is that anyone who has ever picked up a videogame has probably killed something in that virtual world. That's okay -- I'm not saying this should be taken negatively; just mull it over for awhile. Destroying stuff has always been fun, like smashing an expertly-built sand castle. What's wrong with taking out a bunch of Nazi scum in Call of Duty? Nothing. But that's because it isn't real.

Silvia, your assassin boss, contacts you during your first real mission. You've already slashed about a hundred guys into fountains of blood and cash and exaggerated vocals, and now, your controller begins to vibrate. It's Silvia. You put the controller to your ear, like a cell phone. Your boss really has nothing but frenchly-accented gibberish to say, but you think it's cool anyway that the developers had the incentive to make the Wii remote into something of a phone. The only reason you are impressed by this, though, is because you've played many a videogame before.

No More Heroes was made for people like you and me, people who watched all the Star Wars movies and can quote Han Solo's script word for word; people who get excited when a new Sin and Punishment is announced; people who, when the Wii was first revealed, daydreamed during dull math lectures about pretending to be a Jedi and swinging that goddamn controller around like a lightsaber.

What do you do with a lightsaber, exactly?

Kill stuff, that's what.

We're a nation of murderers. That last sentence isn't a cut on who we are as people -- it's just simple fact. Destruction is in our nature, and by God, do we like to slash the everloving shit out of salary-men, baseball players, wannabe-superheroes, katana-wielding minors, bad girls, and most importantly, magicians. Slash left: Travis twirls his fluorescent blade and massacres a dude into a fountain of blood (bastard!). Slash down: Travis leaps into the air and slices another dude in two (my spleen!). Slash right: you get the picture.

It's like lightsaber porn, really. At the beginning of the game, we're so jazzed up by the action on screen and the motions the game demands of us, but by the end, we've killed so many guys and defeated so many bosses that becoming number one doesn't seem so glamorous anymore. Travis, too, seems more and more disgusted by the people he meets (and eventually kills) -- a trait which makes him surprisingly human.

In the end, Travis kills his father. Er, he doesn't kill his father! His sister kills his father, but then his sister, who actually is only a half-sister, reveals that the person she just killed wasn't Travis' father at all -- but she did kill his real father a few years back.

This is good, isn't it? A mish-mash of convoluted plot-lines that really don't matter in a game where all you want to do is massacre the shit out of assassins and Pizza-Butt CEO's. Or maybe, near the end, the game has affected you in such a way that you end up caring for these characters.

Or maybe not.

P.S. -- The music is awesome, bro! Let's see how far we can take this thing!

Eyes

With blood pouring down my face, I picked up the dead man's cell phone and called it in.

"It's done. You can let her go now."

"Not quite," the voice said. "You've still one more assignment."

Silence on my end.

Finally, I mustered, "Isn't there another way?"

The voice didn't reply.

Frustrated, I conceded defeat and hung up. I closed my eyes, wishing the throbbing pain in my head would fade, that the blood would stop seeping into my eyes. My sight was important. Without it, I had nothing to rely on.

How many had died for her? Ten? Twelve? Fifteen? It wasn't a staggering number, but killing anyone ripped chunks from a man's soul, to the point where that person became inhuman, a monster. Once you kill, the soul was essentially a goner, and so, too, the man with it.

Searching the ground for my sword, my head became increasingly heavy, and I collapsed to the ground. There, sticking from the corpse -- there it was. Shining blue steel, my third arm. The organization who had taken her had given it and vague instructions to me:

"Use this sword, and only this sword, to conduct your business. Then she will be set free."

That was it. I had wondered why they hadn't equipped me with a gun or some other more efficient weapon, but I found out soon enough.

It's the eyes. The eyes give it away.

When you stab a man through the heart, all the while listening to his hopeless gasps for breath, you witness a quick flash in the eyes. Brief, almost too brief. In that moment, you get to know a man better than you ever could -- you see his hopes, dreams, memories, everything, vanish into thin air. They're yours now. Absorption. However, because everything that once belonged to that man has changed ownership, you begin to lose the essence of what you call "yourself". It's unpleasant to say the least. I'm hardly me anymore.

That's why the organization equipped me with a sword instead of some other weapon -- all of this murder is beginning to kill me from within. But finally, I have only one more target to defeat. One more target.

Still lying there, blood pulsing from the head wound, I unstuck the gleaming steel from the man's corpse and brought the blade to my throat. It would only be a matter of time before they found me, and then, only then, would they let her go. Sweet release from this awful assignment.

I hope she knows what I've done for her.