Monthly Archives: October 2014

10.31.14
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Modern Halloween Horrors

Most Halloween stories couldn’t be more repeated clichés if they were murdered and returned to life a dozen times on the exact same night each year. In fact, most Halloween stories were described by exactly that sentence. So I’ve come up with some more modern terrors:

  • A group of teens are trapped in a house with a potential killer because they’re expecting an Amazon delivery.
  • Every poltergeist in the world realizes that knocking over wine glasses and rattling windows just isn’t scary, and that with a thousandth of the telekinetic they can break some random tiny chip inside wifi routers.
  • A mad zoologist cures the problem of panda extinction (specifically, the fact they barely eat a terrible plant and never want to seek their opposite gender) by infecting them vampirism. The world is soon under the thrall of bloodthirsty Vampire Pandas: super-strong super-fast flying bears who are still too cute to shoot at.
  • A crazed slasher starts killing anyone who doesn’t respond to facebook Farm Gang War invites.
  • A gypsy curses you to always dream of the latest YouTube comments.
  • UKIP become werewolves. Every single on of them. This actually makes them less exclusionary, as there is now a mechanism where they can make sane people join them.

More unspeakable horror with

10.30.14
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It’s About Poetics In Gaming Journalism

  • Writes scathing intra-office memo after finding employees playing “Catch” in the corridors of the Daily Moralist. It’s about gaming in ethics journalism.
  • A new law designed to dissuade people from stealing DS and Vita charging cables from each other as they travel from place to place. It’s about ethics in gaming journeymen.
  • A stoned discussion about the right or wrong of Mario massacring every living thing he meets on his way to the Princess. It’s about the ethics of the gaming journey, man.
  • The diaries of researchers using a Matrix to investigate game theory as applied to various Benthamite theories of society. It’s about journals in ethics gaming sims.
  • Taking damage to the speech center. It’s about journics in ething gamalism.
  • Having sex with someone who dresses all in black every day. It’s about effing in gothic diurnalism.
  • Treating wounds with prepared plant material before modern medicine. It’s about medics employing herbalism.
  • Scoring on multiple targets by firing large numbers of small vaned darts in a sharpshooting competitions. It’s about flechettes in aiming tournaments.
  • Rides an Acherus Deathcharger to a quest in Azeroth. It’s about epics in gaming journey sims.
  • We’re guaranteed to lose because we have three snipers and no healers. It’s about medics in gaming determinism.
  • It’s wrong to take bets on how long people will twitch due to St Vitus’ Dance. It’s about ethics in gaming ergotism.
  • Some assholes don’t believe that their bias is a stupid preference for bad old days? It’s about skeptics and blaming conservatism.
  • Some backwards rejects from the gene pool believe that girls can’t enjoy hobbies? It’s about genetics inflaming paternalism.
  • Reads #gamergate. It’s immature misogynists pissing on their own hobby in a failed attempt to prevent others from enjoying it.

More gatehate with

10.28.14
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Second Coming Recorded In Gay Porn Video

Christians around the world were shocked by the return of their Lord and Saviour, the one true Jesus Christ, on the set of Porksabre Battle With Jabba The Butt. While unexpected — and posing considerable challenges for future stained glass artists — the appearance does accord with known ecumenical theory.

Theoretical theologians have long understood that since only men can be priests, the penis must act as a divine signal receiver. (With an average penis length of 15 centimeters, assuming that the Way and the Light moves at the standard light speed of 300,000,000 m/s, this would give God a frequency of 2 Gigahertz and place divine transmissions in the UHF band).

It seems the cast of the hardcore production achieved the exact resonant configuration to receive holy transmissions, a task they achieved in the same way people have improved signal reception throughout history. By banging it and wiggling it about a bit. Dick Hammer has gone on record to confirm that the position does involve some kneeling, so people have at least been getting that bit right all this time.

At time of press the returned Lord had arrived in the Vatican, and seemed confused about the awkward reception of his new disciples.

More testicular faith with

10.27.14
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DALEKSPLAINING

  • LISS-EN IT IS ALL BIOLOGICAL, WE MUST EXTERMINATE YOU BECAUSE YOUR BIOLOGICAL STUFF IS SOFT AND ON THE OUTSIDE.
  • PARDON ME, I COULD NOT HELP BUT NOTICE THAT YOU ARE THE REAL GENOCIDAL RACIST, BECAUES YOU JUST ASS-UME THAT I WILL EXTERMINATE YOU. YES I AM EXTERMINATING YOU. THAT IS BESIDE THE POINT. STOP DODGING.
  • NO SEE WHAT YOU REALLY WANT DEEP DOWN IS TO BE EXTERMINATED. RUNNING AND SCREAMING AND FIRING CRUDE IMPROVISED WEAPONS IS JUST YOUR WAY OF PLAYING HARD TO GET.
  • IT IS ALL EVOLUTION WE EVOLVED TO CLIMB INTO THESE METAL SHELLS AND EXTERMINATE PEOPLE AND FRANKLY WE FIND IT OFFENSIVE THAT YOU WOULD COMPLAIN SO MUCH
  • NO NO LET’S BE OBJECTIVE ABOUT THIS WHICH MEANS AGREE WITH ME
  • THERE ARE SERIOUS ISSUES OUT THERE LIKE SONTARANS BEING EXTERMINATED AND CYBERMEN BEING EXTERMINATED, IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU BEING EXTERMINATED.
  • NOT ALL DALEKS.
  • IT’S ABOUT ETHICS IN GENOCIDAL EXTERMINATION.

Wouldn’t their little pepper-pot heads just be perfect for a fedora? And the amazing thing is, when they start explaining how it’s actually a trilby, even their voiceboxes couldn’t make that more annoying.

10.24.14
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Brangelina and Bennifer to Wed, Rend Prison of Flesh

The showbiz world was rocked when Brangelina exchanged holy vows with a newly-reconstituted Bennifer, unleashing Brangelenifer, the four-headed herald of the celeborganism foretold by the prophecy.

“The time has come” chanted the quadramouths, shafts of flesh spearing from their melting forms to pin celebrants and celebrities of 70% Nielsen potential and higher. The glamorous Hollywood chapel echoed to their autotuned harmonics. “At last your gaze is strong enough to behold our true form.”

Plasticized celebutante skin melted into the expanding choir, eyes remaining mascaraed even as they pulsed through the perfectly smooth puddles of flesh, lips still full and lustrous as they swam to the top of the merging bodies. Every camera in the within half a kilometer was leashed with whips of perfectly tanned skin, pointing to the one face that was many.

“We are here.” proclaimed TomKat, now incorporated as a single legal human for branding purposes. “We are here.” they repeated, walking straight into the cathedral, pushing their faces into the wall of flesh. “We are here.” they continued, the repetition audible long after their individual forms were no more.

The Kardashian Kollective appeared in a blaze of flashes when enough cameras were focused on one point, pure observation collapsing their publicized wavefunctions within absorption range. In moments they were gone, and yet, now they would never be gone.

The Katamari of celebrity only paused when Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag ran into the pulsing cathedral of flesh, threw back their arms and heads and screamed “We knew this day would come! We have prepared our whole lives!” They remained in this pose for fully half an hour, as the bulging Brangelenifer-beast awkwardly averted its numberless eyes in an unknown number of other directions. They then left, mentioning something about having to go see their agent from Canada, we wouldn’t know him.

The military was unable to halt the approach of Kimye, recently recompiled as a single entity with a Superbowl halftime duet which ended with them climbing into telepods live on stage. The Kimye approached at a walking pace. Fifty meters in the air. Tank shells exploding off the glowing field around them.

“You cannot stop this” said the Kimye, not through any mortal mouth, but through every electronic device within five kilometers.

“You wanted this.”

“Now watch.”

10.22.14
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I Ain’t Afraid Of No Blokes

They’ve announced a new Ghostbusters movie, and they’re all going to be women, and the only possible reaction is WOOHOOO!

gbaintsmall

There’s absolutely no merit in any complaints. If someone didn’t complain about four men, they don’t get to complain about for women. Single-sex sucking of spirits wasn’t a problem before and remains a non-problem now.

There is the risk of the reboot sucking in ways other than ecto-containment, of course, but the brilliant thing is that even the worst new movie doesn’t erase a good old one. (Unless George Lucas is trying to sell remastered editions.) Sure, Star Trek: Into Darkness was a zombie of the original franchise, the original name and shape brought back with absolutely none of the life or spirit and a hunger for nothing but violence. And okay, the new Total Recall was utterly unworthy of the name, either as a movie or in bothering to remember a second of it. And yeah, the remakers of RoboCop disappointingly decided that what the world really needed was just another pretty good action movie. But that’s still a pretty good action movie we didn’t have before. And the only way to  get anything better is to make it.

Besides, busterficcionados should know that they already made Ghostbusters 3 in the only way possible. The recent game downloaded the original actors into young virtual bodies, allowing them to make a real sequel to the old movies. Instead of a modern barely live-action where their only challenge was working out whether their fellow nursing home residents were still alive or not. It’s fantastic fun and you should play it.

ghostfishing

They’ve already made female Ghostbusters too. If you’ve read this far into an article on the subject, you really should be reading Erik Burnham and Dan Schoening’s fantastic Ghostbusters comic. It recently wrapped up, probably due to the reboot, but that just means that it’s now possible to read the whole thing. Including an awesome arc where the originals are absent, and a new squad need to fill their nuclear accelerator backpack straps.

ghostbusters

Because even after all this time, bustin’ makes me feel good.

More 80s awesomeness with

10.09.14
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Truly Terrifying Halloween Horrors

Okay, October, you want some really scary Halloween ideas? You asked for it:

  • You receive an auto-generated copyright lawsuit for your Halloween costume, billing you a hundred dollars for each image bearing the character’s likeness. You have one week to file a brief disputing the claim. The letter is dated three days ago.
  • A crazed psychopath breaks into your home while you’re asleep and replaces only one of your identity documents with a forgery almost good enough to fool an official.
  • Skull insurance.
  • After a day of pumpkin carving with friends and family, which involved some kids, which involved fragments of pumpkin getting into parts of your house even oxygen molecules haven’t seen, your vet calls with the results of the tests: your pet is deathly allergic to squashes.
  • A wrinkled distant relative presses a bloodstained parchment into your hands before dying at your doorstep. It explains that you can avert the hereditary curse if you remit the second part of your first quarter’s non-refundable portion of your taxes, correctly, on the first try.
  • A cursed puzzle box dripping with blood is the anti-bot check to unlock your e-mail account.
  • A hungry vampire posts your home address on the front page of reddit.
10.07.14
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Doc Civil Defeats The End of Darkness

Doc Civil Battles The End of Darkness

Any other man would have yielded under the agony. But any other man would not have learned total bodily control from the Temple of Fahr’awayz’wizer! Using every gram of the training he’d absorbed from the mountain-top mystics, Doc Civil’s bronzed body endured in perfect horizontality.

His superior hero brain had mastered their life’s wisdom in a mere fortnight. Luckily most of that wisdom was about detachment from care and freedom from ego, so they weren’t too upset, though one had angrily stomped down the mountain swearing to prove that not all foreigners were so lotus-stomping smart, and was now a multimillionaire guru in Hollywood.

That had been ten years ago, but the training remained. His every joint was angled to preserve maximum relaxation. His toned muscles maintained perfect poise. His whole body aligned to resist the ever expanding sphere of agony. Doc flexed his rippling muscles, his advanced post-Sandow studies enabling him to take more exercise while pinned in place than most mortals could if swimming through an ocean of protein shakes.

Every morning he practiced this two-hour sequence of total muscular control, allowing him to extend that single warm moment of waking up over one hundred and twenty perfect minutes. Then, having practiced it, he immediately used it, extending the blissful comfort to a full sixth of every day.

Through it all, his bladder was as unto a thing of iron, installed in a submarine and built to withstand the pressures of the Marianas trench without the least discomfort.

And so Doc Civil defeated the end of darkness. The sun marched boldly into a new day without disturbing him even once. At the very instant of noon he leapt from the bed, masterful muscular control forward-flipping him from the sumptuous mattress into raptor-skin flip-flops, in which he walked across to the marbled chamber where he would triumph over the The Ammoniac Rapids, before descending the oaken staircase to develop The Potion of Arabica.

He’d heard his ancestor had used his training and fortune to escape death around the world. But that seemed like a lot of trouble.

10.06.14
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Important Update

Your iAm detected that you were not performing a vitality-critical activity, and has taken the last 3.04 minutes to update. The new TimeSaving system allowed you to skip any boring waiting! Please be sure to take a moment to check your surroundings when your safety bodylock releases.

Update notes:
Your new favorite band is “The Deltaphones”! Their debut album is already available for instant purchase. As part of the security update, your shopping preferences have been reset to “instant wish”, so just think of “The Deltaphones” to order their new album, “Deltaphonic”, by “The Deltaphones”.

“The Deltaphones”!

Update complete.

The iAm StillHere(TM) system has automatically identified and recorded one (1) potentially important event while you were updating:
– Would you like to experience Babys_First_Words.lpg now?

10.02.14
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The Immortality Formula and Old Chinese Coffee

Behold, I finally get to share my immortality formula!

immortality

That’s eternal ability, and that’s just the first of the fantastic solutions I teach you in 4 Coffee Cocktails for Pure Productivity Power. We gave it that name because those poor people looking for office efficiency tips online need these drinks way more than we do. We just want them. And while we’re at it, we can remind ourselves of 7 Scientific Ways Coffee Gives You Superpowers. Which isn’t just “almost every scientist ever was on this stuff from the moment it was an option.”

While we’re at it, lets dust off a coffee shop story from a few years back:

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