I got another job

I actually found out today, when they rang and asked if I could work tomorrow. It's for this events agency. I'm a steward, or a waiter, or a bus-boy, or a barman, or whatever it is they require as they require it. It's just a minimum wage shitter I can do part-time between banging your mother and my masters, and the majority of it is in the evening-to-late-night which lends itself quite well to my inverted circadian rhythm.

The lady on the phone specified that I wear black pants, black shoes and a white shirt. The thing is, I don't have black pants, or even a white shirt come to think of it. I have charcoal/almost black pants and a sort of off-white/crème shirt, so I had to go out and get some black pants and a white shirt, while resenting my employers the whole time for it.

This whole process pisses me off, not because I have to wear gay ass clothes that make me feel awkward (although that is an irritation), but because I hate going out on a limb for jobs. They impose on everything without any right to. I wrote that lunch-hour blog which covers a similar idea. They take from you more than what they pay you for, and by that I mean they make you do shit like go out in your own time to buy a load of clothes they want you to wear with your own money. They rang today asking me to work tomorrow as well. Am I meant to drop all the shit I'm doing (watching Tron) to go out and buy some clothes because they want them? God damn it. I get the job and what the fuck, I'm starting at like negative £30 and a chunk outta me-time.

All I ask is that they pay me for the work I do for them. Buying this shit counts, as it is my time and effort expended in aid of something they ask me to do. It's working for them. Unpaid, this is the overspill, and overspill can go fuck itself. They have no right to any of my time outside of work, and my money?! That's a whole other issue. I'm not their friend, I'm not doing them favours. We have a business arrangement. It's cold, yeah, but as a system the trade of labour for money is cold. I just want it to be a fair trade off, and it isn't. It's totally one sided and it's exploitative.

If the work requires a certain dress code then that's fair enough, but if they want me in a uniform they should give me a fucking uniform. Would you make a builder buy their own hard-hat? What about a police-man his own flak jacket? Those two examples have practical purposes but the arbitrary dress code is no different if it's unwavering. If it's non-negotiable, for all intents and purposes it is necessary. Mathematically speaking, they would amount to the same variable in the equation, therefore their non-negotiable dress code is as much a necessity as a flak jacket is to a police-man; one of them is just synthetic, the other organic.

Anyway, you might argue that the majority of people already own black shoes, black pants and a white shirt, so it's not such a big deal. This is true but why do you think people already own those items? Because other jobs required them to. I'm sure people who love to lounge around in suit pants and starched shirts all day exist somewhere but I defy you to find me one. As it stands I'm spending money on my employer so they look better. I'm not employing them! If I'm not a shareholder, or investor, or the owner of the company then how I look when I'm paid to represent them is their job if they want me to look a certain way, not mine.

If you think about it, it's almost like they're saying 'if you don't wear this, you won't be getting employed'. That's also known as extortion.

Is it not a reasonable request that if they require I wear a uniform, they provide one? By uniform I mean any specified dress code. If it was a dress code of jeans, t-shirts and hoodies all that would do is conveniently align the dress code with what I usually wear, but it's still a uniform, and should still be provided because it is them who require it. It is a reasonable request, it's just that the standard is otherwise. Barely anybody questions reality as they've always known it. They just accept it, literally, on face-value. You wouldn't be expected to do the shopping for some other person's household, at your own expense no less, would you? You wouldn't even do that for a friend unless they were going to reimburse you.

Jesus, you'd think I'd just be happy I got a job eh? I should work for the unions.

By the way, you do not even want to be around for the repercussions following anybody quoting that old trite idiom 'you think the world owe's you a living'. If you're thinking that right now, please know, and this is with absolute certainty, you are a moron. That's it. If you were in any doubt at all, if you are thinking of that phrase right now, rest assured you are a moron.

Good day.

Who gets smacked by a girl twice for doing nothing? This guy.

I couldn't really not blog this. This is the kind of shit this blog was made for: chronicling stupid assholes I really wish I could kick the fucking face in of.

This is one of those 'stories' I've become so versed in experiencing, those retarded and sometimes embarrassing stories I never seem to do anything to get myself into, but seem to always get into.

Last night I went to a friend's house-warming party. Now our eponymous girl was handing out hugs like hot-cakes (love that phrase) to everybody upon entry into the flat, which I thought was kind of awkward. I actually forwent my hug because I dashed off to the little girl's room and when I got back hug-time was over. Something similar happened with my tuberculosis vaccination. Long story short, I'll probably die of tuberculosis now. Anyway, everything was going as it usually does. Everyone else was talking, I was huddled in a corner.

Sometime in the night my mate challenged me to some beer pong, so we played, and I beat him. From this a horrifying, unending spiral of beer pong ensued. I wanted one god damned game but I was trapped because it was winner-stays-on. This lasted 4 rounds, a streak! In one round the only drink I drank was the one I accidentally threw into my own cup. Smooth eh? The table was like a metre and a half long, so it's easily done when going for a bounce shot, so BACK OFF.

After every loser devoured my alcohol, I resigned as champion of the world and went back to my corner. At some point soon after, our antagonist came over and started talking to me. I don't know what she said to initiate conversation because really, how you do that is the biggest mystery of the universe. What I remember is her pointing out how I was shy and 'standoffish', in her words. What a horrible, ugly word that is. But anyway, who gives a fuck what I was doing? What, you want me to change my face bitch? Do you want me to smile like a mong all the time? If I make her uncomfortable that's her bullshit, nobody else was arsed. There could have even been a simple explanation to it: I was tired, I was sad, I was apprehensive. I mean, I wasn't, I'm just naturally quite reserved, but fuck any cunt telling me how to act or feel. Nobody has that right.

At another point I remember telling her she was being patronising, which she was, and I actually think another friend sort of ear-wigging said it to her first, but I can't remember what she said to make me think it. Probably something like 'come out of your shell'. It's actually likely it was that because when does anybody ever use any other phrase to connote what that one does? Never is when. I swear, fuck that phrase in the holy cunt of hell. Anyway, I told she was being patronising in a kind of friendly/jocular tone, not offensively, so did my friend. I actually said it in such a way to deliberately avoid causing offence because people generally consider themselves nothing at all that comments on their character negatively, ever. At this point she just turned more patronising and said shit like 'bless' and stroking my arm, almost passive-aggressively being patronising to annoy me further. She did it with a similar swagger of self-appointed, condescending superiority that lots of women seem to posses, typically mums. Why do women do that? They all seem to think they're above men, and more intelligent, and generally more worldly. What are they trying to be? Liberated women or something? Bitch please! Just because you're sarcastic doesn't mean you're a feminist. Nor does it make you interesting in the slightest. That pisses me off, when women try too hard to be too hard to talk to, as if it makes them interesting. All girls seem to do that: affect sarcasm as flirtatious banter, and guys lap it up as if it makes the girl intelligent or challenging. S'bullshit son, s'bullshit.

Anyway, this next part is where shit got real. She kept asking why I was so 'standoffish' and I actually think she said 'cold' and the whole time I was like laughing in bemusement and saying shit like 'really? I dunno, I'm fine' and at one point she was like 'I bet you were bullied', and even in a joking/banter kind of way that's a line crossed, especially when she doesn't make it evident she is just fucking around, but instead continues to insist I was bullied as a kid. Oh and for the record I hate banter. It infuriates me.

So then she started telling me I have issues. You're damn right I have issues, issues with dickheads and cretins. In seriousness though, I do have issues, everyone fucking does to some degree. The point is I don't have the ones she was accusing me of and drawing misinformed assumptions from. Her ideas were so god damned corny too. I bet she thought I was a goth once. She's there vomiting soap opera story-lines at me. Get the fuck out.

Now she was straight telling me I was bullied as a kid and I was like 'not really, not significantly or more than anyone else'. That's the truth too. Why would I lie? I'm not ashamed or anything, plus everybody was bullied; fuck, it's fashionable to have been bullied. I was just telling her it sincerely, not to deflect her argument. That one occasion with the dude with the razor blade you might think steps outside the realm of your all-purpose bullying but I didn't really see that as bullying, it was something akin to a mugging, and it wasn't ongoing as bullying is, it was just some event that really had no ultimate consequence for me. The reality is that I've always been shy; it doesn't seem to be side-effect of being negatively treated, or the result of some psychological torment, it seems to be a natural apprehension. The human condition makes me self-conscious! I'm not some oppressed, frightful, downtrodden bitch who can't stand up for themselves because they lack self-esteem; I'm just very aware.

I always bring up this example too, but even when I was 2/3, when I couldn't even comprehend the nature of shame or embarrassment I would refuse to do anything at birthday parties other than Pass the Parcel. I dreaded everything else. I've actually gotten better since then so you can imagine the tenuous strings she was clutching on to.

Anyway, we shall resume. I said she was being arrogant and dismissive during this verbal attack, at which point she took up that stance where bitches are ready to get their 'OH NO YOU DI-ENT' on. She started rambling some CV grade bullshit about how she's the most open-minded person in the world and blah blah blah. Everyone says that of themselves and everyone thinks that of themselves. Everybody that thinks or says that is usually wrong, which isn't to say they are closed-minded, just not open-minded to the vain degree they express. She's probably as open-minded as society requires, which isn't much at all. Understand a paedophile. Understand a psychopath. Also, you'd think people that actually are open-minded wouldn't be accused of not being, and when they are, be open-minded about the idea that they're closed-minded. ZING, dumbass. She was basically disproving herself as we spoke, ignoring everything I was telling her while insisting she was right, when there's a higher order of logic even before assessing whether she was right or not: how she could fucking know at all. Ugh. Enraging.

Also, I feel like I should note her phrasing. 'The most open-minded person in the world'. That's the most God damned cliché way of putting it ever. It screams 'generally', like she hasn't thought about it, like all her cognitive ability is reductive and simplistic and relative to majority consciousness. I said to her about all of this, 'Well that's self-appointed so it doesn't really mean anything'. I don't think she heard though. I probably shouldn't say stuff like that anyway. When I do it either results in offence or I have to explain my way out of it.

Of this, her accusations resulted in a childish back and forth of 'not really', 'yeah you were', 'not really', 'yeah you were' not even in that bullshit flirtatious banter manner hoes sometimes adopt, that I covered a little bit of up there. My friend was nearby and he could see what was going on, and he inferred I didn't want to speak to her, and that she was being a dick, so he stood between me and the girl to interfere, so she might just fuck off. When she tried moving, he moved in her way and when she tried talking he shouted 'sausages!' Admittedly, that must have been annoying as hell. I was laughing too, but only at him being annoying, not like a vindictive spiteful cackle at her expense, which is about the only explanation I can think of for her behaviour. She has terrible social feelers if that was the case, not to mention deep rooted rejection and/or bullying memories to call upon. Shit, she could have been projecting her own 'issues' on me all night.

This torment culminated in the bitch flipping out like a 4 year old when they're being ignored and throwing her sippy-cup drink over my friend, and my friend consequentially throwing his drink on her, then she started shouting at him. Meanwhile, I was stood in the corner drinking my drink with a bemused sort of smile on my face, because really, what the fuck just happened? I then walk over to my friends near the door and we're sort of laughing and wondering what's going on, and she catches my eye and storms over shouting 'You! This is your fault! You were smiling!' Obviously if I wasn't smiling I was by that point, because that rationale was bat-shit ridiculous. Some dudes held her back and I went to use my phone, at which point she takes the opportunity to smack me in the face. My head turned to the right and I could be heard saying "oh my god, are you fucking kidding me?' This statement was partly due to the obscurity of getting punched, but mostly because it didn't hurt and she expected it to. It was strong enough to turn my head but for a punch it didn't hurt. I don't even have a bruise. I've given myself bruises from masturbating for fuck's sake, and I'm gentle, so getting 'punched' by this borderline mongoloid with the strength of a flabby 8 year old was really quite pathetic. The rest of the people supposedly stopping her embarrassing herself like this pulled her away again, and of course I'm smiling; this shit was funny. I was smiling harder. Smiling my ass off!

At this point I reverted back to my phone and she must have seen me smiling again because she dashed over and smacked me once more, at which point I semi-shouted at her, 'What are you doing? You think your pussy hands are going to make a difference?' Love that, 'pussy hands'. Thanks Mac. I don't really know what I meant by 'make a difference'. I guess I meant make a difference to the situation, or the horrific emotional depression she'd have you believe I'm suffering of.

The dude who's flat it was then asked me to go and sit in his room so he could defuse shit. Out of principle this was kind of unfair but I grant that it's easier to ask the reasonable party for compliance instead of the foaming-at-the-mouth retard swinging its arms around. At some point during all of this the cow lost a flip-flop (yes, a flip-flop) and my other mate watching from another area of the room picked it up and casually frizbee'd it out of the window. Class A badassery right there.

Obviously not so open minded is she? Not so open minded to... Erm... Whatever she thought I was doing or being. Introverted people? Anybody not a loud dickhead just talking to make noise? Shy people? Really? Shy people?! Surely they're the least offensive people. Anyway, open-minded people don't just smack people because their insane irrationality tells them to. Irrationality is the root to all closed-mindedness, and how somebody can prove so hard their own hypocrisy in the space of about 20 minutes is quite phenomenal. She should be a case study for bigotry.

In this other room I was sat with three girls, some dude with an afro (there was a disproportionate amount of people at this party with afros) and the sausages friend. We were discussing shit, and the dude who's flat it was kept coming in and giving us updates on what was going on. One of the girls presumed the bitch that hit me was my girlfriend, and I'd cheated on her or something, as did another dude in the other room (I heard later). Upon hearing this I became instantly terrified at the thought of everybody in the other room presuming I was her boyfriend, and deserved the smack(s). That would be some old bullshit now wouldn't it? Imagine the cold poetry of that: everybody presumes she's my girlfriend and I cheated on her because that's more plausible than her being some insane cunt that hits a stranger, when that's exactly what she is. Victim vilification. Fuck that. I think my friend put anybody thinking that straight though. Another girl, the boyfriend/cheater theorising girl's twin in fact, posited that it was all a result of sexual tension! But naw, that's not true. I told her if it was I was completely unaware and it was all on the crazy bitch's side. Maybe that's why she hit me, ha.

That's about it anyway. I went back in the main room after about half an hour and she stuck around for a while, keeping out of my way until she eventually just left. My friends have told me since that after the whole event she was trying really hard to win over the room, so I hope she didn't succeed at the foot of impressionable idiots. Slag.

There was one moment when I posted something on Facebook and my brother responded with 'This calls for a cunt punt, or punch her in the forehead so she has an obscure source of pain for the next week'. Well, me and the sausages guy were cracking up like you wouldn't believe, loud as hell too, and I swear she looked over thinking we were laughing at her. Sounds like an unresolved issue to me! Sounds like people would poke and laugh at her at school to me! Oooooh, issues. Insecure bitch.

Uhhhhh. I really don't know how her retard-mind worked in that situation. In her position, when the sausages dude was shouting 'sausages!' and boxing her out, I would think he was a dick if I didn't already know him. If she smacked him I'd get it, but I'd still think she was a dramatic mardarse for overreacting. Her beef wasn't with me at all, it was with sausages dude. The more I think about this the more incredibly dumb the whole thing becomes. I was the scapegoat. Open minded people don't blame scapegoats! Stupid, stupid fucking cunt.

That's the trouble here, and the trouble with nearly every confrontation: the enfeebled mind of your average human being. She probably thinks he was the one true dickhead of the situation for boxing her out (or shit, even me, for unknown reasons), but it never occurred to her she was agitating me and being an all around cunt, and that's the reason he stepped in. He was being a dick to her because she was being a dick to me. It's karma as realism. Be a dick to people and people will be a dick to you. Actions don't just have consequences, they beget the consequences of the actions carried out responding to them, which quite often come flying back in the instigators' faces and they rarely ascertain them to be justified. Of course, they're usually wrong about that, just too retarded and biased to know otherwise. Her ignorance can't be exonerating though, so she was wrong regardless of whether she knew it.

Fuck being at the whim of morons and their idiotic actions. That's some bullshit. Accidents I can accept but when a cretin effects me deliberately, precisely due to their being a cretin, that pisses me off and I'm just like fuck it, somebody get a brick to cave this defective creature's head in with.

I suppose I should have cunt punted her or booted her in the womb or something shouldn't I? You know, for feminism.

What a prick this guy was, eh?

What a prick this guy was actually isn't the reason I posted this video; I just wanted to point out Jerry throwing down knowledge! About 5 minutes in GG goes "it's survival of the fittest" in defence of the rape and degradation he inflicted while on stage, and Jezzer says something like "it's only because society doesn't believe that that you're protected".

Good fucking point.

Wonderful

Fucking wonderful. Do you remember that blog I wrote a while ago about my ignorance of the definition of the phrase 'la petite mort'? Well, this is another rather embarrassing story much like that one, except this one has been lying in wait for about 2 years, as I only just discovered how embarrassing it was about two minutes ago.

The setting was similar to the previous one, a university seminar. It was for a module called 'Utopias and Dystopias', which basically consisted of reading/watching/studying a shit load of culture in various forms in order to basically just discuss the concept of Utopia. Each week there tended to be a different tutor discussing something they're considered to be specialised in, and one week we got a feminist because it just wouldn't be university without a token feminist. She was discussing how Utopia and Dystopia alike are frequently tied in with Futurism. She was really tenuously linking shit back to Utopia; she was basically just talking about Science-Fiction. She came at us with a picture of the 50ft woman, from that film 'The Fifty Foot Woman'. Anyway, working that Futurist angle, she picked a 50s B-movie Science-Fiction film because the 50s are pretty famous for that shit, and because it was a time of great technological advancement, which obviously means shit is getting more utopiary. Haha, utopiary. Like the Garden of Eden eh? EH?! Anyway, I know it doesn't make sense much, I've actually been trying to figure out how she got away with chatting about what she did because in hindsight it doesn't seem terribly relevant. Fuck it anyway, it's not integral to the story. After discussing the 50ft woman, and her sexiness, and dystopianess (she was an apocalyptic event after all), she moved on to what was apparently a famous magazine at some point in time: Heavy Metal.

I should probably say at this point that this was a farce of a seminar, not because of the subject matter (although I guess I could say that), but because barely anybody turned up. People failing to turn up isn't uncommon but in a phenomenal twist of events, everybody apart from me and this dickhead I don't like failed to attend. The answer to why that happened eludes me. So it was me, señor dickhead, the tutor and her little apprentice. This I thought worth mentioning because at least there was some kind of damage limitation in place. I'm sure out of a full class (20-25 people), more of them would have picked up on my wee perverted fuck up.

Anyway, she showed us a cover from Heavy Metal which probably isn't representative of the magazine now I've researched it. It's usually some nerdy shit like this:

But this one was a portrait of female humanoid robot all in black (could have been latex if she didn't tell us it was a robot) sort of sitting back, with her plentiful bosom just well, right there. The tutor woman was relating the image back to the futurism as utopia thing her whole seminar seemed to rely on, and then she got her feminist on in way you can probably just imagine, because I forget what she actually said. At one point she asked my thoughts and I jumped right into my academic drivel. Towards the end I actually admitted to having seen the image before, and she was like "...you have?" and I said something like "Yeah, I remember it being something to do with Stephen King, but I'm not sure..."

Until now that was the end of that, but for a reason that I knew about 15 minutes ago and now can't remember, I just looked up Heavy Metal to see what it actually was. Wikipedia said this:

'Heavy Metal is an American science fiction and fantasy comics magazine, known primarily for its blend of dark fantasy/science fiction and erotica.'

Hm. Erotica eh? Wonderful. I don't even know where I've seen it. I do actually think it was something to do with Stephen King, like an advert in one of his books or something. Ughhhh.

I wondered why she blanked me when she saw me at the bus stop after class. It makes sense now; because I'm basically this pathetic, misogynist nerd-fantasy cartoon fetishist to her.

I'm glad that was cleared up.

Demon's Souls is Fucking Autistic

I just put the game in for the first time after completing it the other week and attempted clearing a level I remember back to front from my time bump and grinding the shit out of it during my first play through.

So, I ran through it and died at the boss gate, then I tried it again and died, then I tried it again and basically gypped my way through the boss gate by goading the twat guarding it. I ran up to him, fired some fire balls then ran away until he lost interest, then I did it again until I killed him to death. After that I finally made my way into the boss gate. Upon entering I died instantly. 'Swell', I thought. I started the level again and did the same, before dying twice more, and then finally making some progress with the boss on the third try. The boss was going pretty well, and he had less than an eighth of health left, but oh, what's this? 'You have been signed out of the PlayStation Network. Returning to Main Menu.' Before I knew it the dickhead game had thrown me out of my own god damned offline game and brought me to the main menu, where I basically had to load my game and carry on.

This is something it did persistently during my first play through, but it dropped me back in the same footprints I left the game in, with the same variables in tact; equipment, souls, stats, enemy kills etc. It was mainly just an unnecessary irritation, but like with most things, unnecessary irritations and phenomenally bad timing can form an unholy alliance and result in the kind of cosmic shaftage that convinces a person God exists, and that he's a vindictive cunt.

Now, in my first play through these wee interruptions occurred quite frequently, but looking back, miraculously never did during a boss battle. You know what happens when they do? You load your game and you're dropped outside the boss gate with the same health, stats, souls and item usage as if you had already been through the boss gate, fought the boss for a little bit, and oh, I dunno, got them down to about and eighth or their life, except when you go back in the boss gate they're on full health again! Yay! Also, you die on your way in, then in your attempt to get back, you die on the way there, losing all the 50-odd thousand souls you'd accrued.

Fuck this game.

That was a total fucking win in the bag. I had a system going that just wouldn't have fucked up. Everything that happened after that would not have happened had the stupid asshole game not kicked me out. Yes, the dying was sort of my fault, but I wouldn't have been given the chance to die there had those total dickface developers not allowed that unfounded shit-munching, erm, thing in the game.

Why the shit does it even zap me out of my game when I get disconnected from the PSN? WHO GIVES A FUCK!? So I can see their gay little notes on the floor? Are they that important, fuck. Is it to stop people using pirate copies similar to that you-must-always-be-signed-in-and-monitored deal they have on some PC games? That might make sense if this game didn't let you play while you weren't signed in, but that's not true; it lets you play while signed in or out but if you sign out while you're already playing, fuck you. That's what it's like: 'fuck you', for no reason other than it's a cunt, and possibly autistic in the same kind of way that an autistic kid might flip out and scream like a retard if you put his beans to the right of his roast chicken as oppose to the left when it's dinner time.

I turned the machine off mid-death in the hopes that it might forget to save it. It's worked before, but I think I run the risk of shafting my entire save-file every time I do it.

But that's Demon's Souls, ahahhhhh... trails off.

Demon's Souls

A few months ago I bought this game. Today I completed it. I hadn't played it since I bought it; I actually only finished world 1, level 1 up until about a week ago. Since then I've been balls deep in it.

It is a hard game, or so professes its reputation. Its reputation isn't wrong, just kind of misleading. It doesn't have any gameplay elements to it that are particularly harder than any other game, in fact bits of the God of War games were probably harder, and were at much faster paces. You also couldn't go back to previous worlds and grind like a bitch until you can take an axe square to the face and defeat your enemy with one flick to the nipple in God of War either. In Demon's Souls you can.

In a vacuum, this game isn't hard. Demon's Souls' difficulty lies more in the fact that it's a dick, more than it is hard. It's "difficult". Difficult describes it well. It's difficult like a child can be difficult when it doesn't want to go somewhere, or difficult like walking in gale force winds, or difficult like breathing on Mars. What would otherwise be a leisurely stroll with frequent breaks is impeded by the fact the kid is winging and staging tantrums, or the cunt wind (not cunt-wind) is blowing your hair all over your face and throwing you off balance, or what would just be breathing on Earth is impeded by the fact you're on fucking Mars.

For one, it has no pause button. I'm sure that morsel of information created some poignant imagery, and as far as I can fathom, this is the only reason there is no pause button - to gesticulate that this game will be a dick to you, and by virtue of that, be hard to complete. No pause button steps over the fucking line. It's effectively saying that the fact I need a piss and can't go and take one during the game contributes to how difficult the game is. That's obnoxious as hell! This is real world shit, this fucking game should know its place. And you know what it does about it? It shrugs. It shrugs while I piss my pants all in the name of proving myself to it.

Secondly, when you die you don't get a game-over screen and load it; you carry on. Due to the game never really being over in this way, any items you consume or weapons you use will remain consumed and worn, so with each death it effectively becomes harder to do what you were trying to last time. You are turned into "soul form" when you die, which basically means you get 50% health in return for +attack and -detection. You remain in soul form until you kill a boss demon. Upon dying, you lose any souls your were carrying, Sonic style. Although, they remain at the site of your death for you to reclaim rather than evaporating. But you know something? There was a reason you died where you did, and in a lot of cases reclaiming those souls is a fucking impossibility. After a while you learn to separate yourself from your instinct to hoard all your souls, and when trying to actually complete levels you forget about the souls, knowing that soul gathering is for the between times when you're grinding for them. Saying that is easier than practising that, because on one occasion I stormed through a level to its final boss and claimed about 50,000 souls (a large amount for my level) and was totally fucking shit-the-bed horrified at the thought of losing them, despite convincing myself on the way in that I could separate the hunger for souls and the need to just complete the level. The gods smiled on me that time, because I beat the boss first try.

That's another thing! The bosses on this game are really quite easy. There were a couple that I struggled with, mainly at the beginning, but almost every other boss I overestimated and they didn't take more than a couple of tries to beat. I don't know if that's deliberately something they wrote into the game or I was just overpowered from grinding, but I didn't really mind; I just didn't want to have to run through the level again to get to them.

That's my biggest beef with the game actually; that after you've collected hundreds of cure and health items indirectly from grinding, and know you don't really need the souls you're gathering when trying to complete a level (for the same reason), the only real fear from drying arises from the dreaded monotony and infuriation of having to travel through the level just to fight the boss again. I wish there was a better, or more relevant, way of making a player fear death than this.

There is no manual save function either; it saves after every action. This is presumably to stop people rewinding and overwriting their fuck-ups. Fuck-ups have no consequence if you can just load it after. Look at Red Dead Redemption - who even plays poker on that game without going all-in, and upon losing, loading the game to do it until they win? Not this guy. I suppose there's the additional difficulty of no manual saves if you consider potential corrupted save files through lack of a possible back-up to be part of the game too. I don't, because that's just retarded, but it's shit like this that makes the game difficult and uncooperative; the difference is they just happen to be deliberate.

I'm at odds with whether or not I consider this an incredible (which is to say not credible) method of altering a game's difficulty. It's like it rigs it. It's like asking you to walk down the street, then stipulates that you chop your legs off first. It's what a game would come out like if the mafia made it. It's like a cruel joke, like the developers are sat behind a one-way window laughing at the mouse trying to escape the maze when they keep fucking with the exit. You know the constraints of the game are arbitrary and it's all the more enraging because the only reason you are being punished is because the game says so, not because it makes sense. It's game-show logic. It's horrible psychological torture, but I wasn't balls deep in it for nothing. My dick was basically stuck in it. I was hooked.

However.

Did you like the pause for dramatic effect there? it didn't make grammatical sense, but it made theatrical sense so fuck you. I feel like before I continue into my explanation of why the volta in this blog decided to descend upon us at this point, I should explain another feature of the game. This being the fact that other players of the game can leave short multiple-choice formulated sentences on the floor to hint at things for other players, or help them in some way with what lies ahead. Along with this, you occasionally see apparitions of other players' final moments, so you don't do what they do and die. It's a nice idea. That is, until they fuck you over.

Here is where the however resumes. Staying true to Japanese RPG tradition - this being the absolute lack of empathy or leniency shown towards their player, gladly allowing them to play for 50 hours into a dead-end, or due to the game's own incommunication, allow the player to be shafted with no lube, right at the end of the game - I was stuck knowing I had finished it, but yet to complete the formalities. The woman told me to leave, but I hadn't really done anything. I killed some boss, but that shit was pathetic so I thought I had something else to come. Nothing was happening, and just leaving didn't make sense to me unless it triggered some arbitrary scene on my way out. I couldn't see that happening though; I was convinced it was one of those rhetorical moments in games where the characters are basically telling you to do something that you then have to not do, or do the opposite of because that's the only thing you can do and the game wants you to wrap up its story.

At this point I saw somebody's wee note on the floor. It said "Attack!". So far the notes had been helpful and it's not that this one wasn't, it just was when applied in the context of what was my opposite intention, although at the time I didn't know this, so I attacked. And so it was that I got the "bad" ending. There was no precedent for alternate endings. There was no karma system or anything that could have yielded one or the other. It was a completely superfluous choice right at the end. I thought that doing what the note said was the only option. I just figured it was some stupid twist. Gahhh. Worst of all, this choice shafted me out of a trophy.

I like trophies; they're like check-lists. Not having that trophy checked off really fucking twists the knife in the side of my relative perfectionism. It makes everything feel incomplete and disorganised. I hate it. It happened with Bioshock 2. I didn't use the camera for the end of like one level, and completely shafted myself out of that "all enemies photographed to max XP" trophy because the one enemy I hadn't done fully only spawned on that level, and the game doesn't let you go back. I only realised this after it was too late to load it.

This is why you need manual saves, Demon's Souls, not so I can abuse it, but just to cover your fucking ignorance towards me. I talked about fuck-ups earlier, but this was meant to be a conscious decision, not an accident. This wasn't my fuck-up, it was you being too cool and vague that led me to fuck up. But, would you consider that part of the game's difficulty? I think to an extent I would, but when it causes shit like this it's just unreasonable. If you're a dick that doesn't tell people stuff of course you're going to be difficult to interact with.

Now I have to complete the game in the "New Game+" mode, which is basically a mode that carries over your stats and equipment, only 40% harder, however it is that they quantify that. I wouldn't mind as much if there was an equal trophy for the "bad" ending. That would be tidy; that would be how it goes. There isn't though; it's like I never completed it at all. I haven't been pissed off at a game like this since Fallout 3 locked me in a room after I finished the final mission, and made me pay £8 to get out of it a year and a half later.

WUT WUTTTTTTTTT... eh

Well hello there. It's been a bit of a while. I don't really have an explanation for that.

If you're a girl aged between 14 and 24 with an inclination towards the emo and/or pseudo punk aesthetic, contrived and convoluted mannerisms, 'alternative' interests, more mascara than Batman, small conical shaped pre-teen tits and a YouTube account where you post videos of your face talking about bullshit nobody cares about, GET THE FUCK OFF THE INTERNET.

As cute as you all affect to be, I'd probably straight puke in your mouth if it came to it.

You know the kind. They're practically an internet archetype, as are their fans: sad assholes who trawl through their object of lust's Amazon wish-lists and buy them Hello Kitty bed covers in return for some cutesie shout out in web-translation Japanese and culturally insulting pronunciation, or some Juno-esque gang signs and ironic ebonics.

Sweet Jesus, I am sick of these bitches. Go get a boyfriend if you want compliments. Go get some self-esteem through healthier means, like self-respect, not disposable fixes of egotism from pathetic bull-dog looking dudes on the internet.

Uhhhhhhhh.

People are corny as shit.

Dub

I keep reading and hearing Dubstep referred to as "Dub". Dub is something different. I'm sure Dubstep has some etymological association with Dub but there's a reason they're separate: because they're different.

Anyway, I'm calling this now so anybody passing through here can all awe at my prediction when it comes true in a few years: if this fast and loose usage of the word "Dub"continues, it will go the way of the word "Indie" in the sense that Indie in mainstream consciousness doesn't at all describe what it actually is, only the appropriated, customised definition.

Ughhhhhhhhhh. Gimme something to talk about, shit.

Doppleganger

What, what is this?

Chamillionaire and... and Ugly Betty?!

They... they look so alike!

Sweet Jesus.

Gratitude

This is one of the trickier social customs.

Personally, I'm not very good at communicating my gratitude to people. There's a certain degree of acting involved that I'm just not willing to comply with, so I fear people think me ungrateful. I always think of it as an ultimate gratitude though, like one that even if the person that gave me the thing doesn't know about, still exists, so at least I know it does actually exist even if my physical participation in the expected fanfare is lacking. Knowing this, I tend to get all ironic and obvious about the fact I can't express my gratitude as well as I'd like, but that the gift-giver should rest assured that I am very, very grateful. That's how I say thanks. I say hello to people I don't know very well similarly, that's if I don't pretend to have a text when they walk past, or rub my eyes, or cross the street, or turn around and run away.

I make a point of discussing this because at work on Wednesday this girl brought in like thirty French strawberry dessert things for everyone. Her mum had made them for us. I was like WHAT THE FUCK, HOW DO I REACT TO THIS, THAT'S SO GOD DAMNED NICE OF HER. It was too nice, to the point where I resented her for it. It meant it put me in a position where I had to effectively communicate my gratitude, which I know I can't do very well. The interesting thing was I think that she sensed that. As in, I think she knew I would be too 'polite' to take one, and you know what, I probably would have been if it wasn't for the fact it would be really obvious if I didn't take one. She was sat next to me and they were right in front of me. Also, I was kind of thrust into participating because the dude to my right was like "can you pass me one of those please?" and I went to grab them to pass them to him and realised as I did it I was initiating their consumption! I shat myself and blurted out that it was for the other dude, all amidst flamboyant hand-gestures signalling that it was for him, and not me. She said something like "yeah, take one, everyone, just grab one" and then she turned to me and was like "seriously Mr. Pseudonym, have one, really" in like a sympathetic tone. I think directly addressing me sealed it. If she didn't, I probably wouldn't have had one. A girl the week before made brownies for everyone and I didn't take one because I knew I could get away with it. I was sat on a corner, slightly facing away from the table, but still at it. It's my natural reaction to distance myself from that type of thing, and just kind of view everybody else participating. I don't know why. I mean, I can identify all the reasons I don't, but not why it's instinctual for me to do that. I never played musical chairs at parties when I was a kid either, or anything similar. I only played pass the parcel and would cry if somebody made me do anything else. I always say no when people offer me stuff like chewing gum too, even if I kind of want it. I know part of the reason I say no is because I know everybody else will say yes, so I remove myself from being responsible for the fact that now three-quarter's of this dude's Tic Tacs are gone, but at least I know I saved him one more. But, that's not the main reason; I don't know what is.

My workplace is a fucking horrifying body-snatchers type universe for 'common' courtesy though. There's nothing common about that shit. It's very, very uncommon. Bordering on grotesque courtesy. Let me explain.

It's nuts how far people go above and beyond the call of duty when holding doors open for people at work. In public general protocol is that you hold the door open for as long as it takes you to walk through it, and as long as your arms can reach as you move further from it, then, if nobody is there to grab it before your distance from the door surpasses the length of your arm, tough shit. Sometimes you can wait, but never longer than 2 seconds. 2 seconds is pushing it. 2 seconds becomes awkward. At work people will gladly hold the door for like 10 straight seconds. Seriously, they do that shit from like 50 paces away, and wait the whole time. That puts me in an awkward position, literally; I have to then do a gay little jog to get the door in order to reciprocate their courtesy and express my gratitude. It's bad when you go through four sets of doors with the same dude in front too, holding it each time. That's four thank yous in the space of like 20 seconds. Any idea how retarded you think you sound saying thank you that often? You try and vary the way you say it but there aren't that many ways to switch it up. You have "thanks" and "cheers" and that's about it. I said "thanks again" once and did a little chuckle to break it up, but the dude didn't laugh. Fuck him.

Anyway, people kept making a point of thanking the girl for her desserts, and I kept kind of jumping on the tail-end of their thanks with shit like "yeah, that's really nice of you" hoping she might hear and know I'm not some ungrateful twat that eats her mum's desserts and doesn't say thank you.

I'm just some ultra self-aware twat that can't say thank you.

You Got Me

Last week, or some time in the not so distant past, I bought some beer with a friend. I think the whole ordeal set the high score for most face-palm worthy embarrassment in my mate's house.

Here's a pictorial overview of what happened. We saw this:

When it was actually this:

Smooth, eh? It's okay, it's not like they dedicated a third of the entire packaging to clearly advertise the fact it is non-alcoholic is it?

Grumble.

What's smoother is that we didn't realise for a whole 30 minutes after buying it. And we were off chuckling at our other friend because he dropped his beer at the counter. At least he bought alcoholic beer. What's smoother still is the fact that the fucking cash register lady asked us for ID and was stifling her laughter the whole time. This I personally didn't realise until my mate told me. What she was laughing at didn't click at the time. She must have known and was silently owning us all to all hell, the cackling harpy! Well lady, you know what? I hope that all you ever wanted was a baby and you get OVARIAN CANCER. MUHAHAA. As for Tesco, fuck Tesco. I'm not buying from Tesco again, and I will get my £3 back someday, even if I have to steal it in grapes over a 20 year period.

The price should have informed us there was something non-alcoholy about it all. It's not so out of the realms of possibility though. It could have been those shitty stubby bottles, or old stock, or some dodgy version of Becks, or plainly, just some major sale. I guess not though.

The worst part of all of this is that once we got back to my mate's house, we were actually leaving for the bar 2 minutes later; we never needed pre-drink alcohol to begin with!

Mind blown

Am I the only person that always thought these things were meant to be shaped like hand grenades? I remember them from when I was like 5, and even then those bastards were hand-grenades to me. Always were.

I just realised they're barrels.

Newsflash!

Cancer doesn't give a fuck if you're running for it.

Paid Lunch Breaks!

Turns out I get these. All is well, then. However, I still feel it is an injustice, only one that I now don't give as much of a fuck about due to the fact it doesn't affect me.

:)

Thought #65 - The System

Some corny people always go on about not wanting to work for "the man" or be a part of "the system". Did these people ever consider being an active saboteur within the system and basically just making it less efficient by doing the jobs, but very slowly and ineffectually? There will always be some eager chump ready to take your place and complete the job to its expected level so you may as well occupy their potential position and do it worse than they would! That would hurt the system, not just ignore it!

Come on guys. Retire the passive conscientious objector role and start that revolution you're always talking about, instead of redecorating your bathroom with posters of random Egyptians you saw on the news.

OH.