11/04/2003 - Entry #78
So I've stumbled across this site. NationStates. It might be a bit old to the more net savvy amongst you, but if you haven't heard or seen it before, it's basically a funky little site that lets you create your own nation, complete with motto, currency and even national animal. Every day it presents you with an 'issue', which usually revolves around a public demonstration prompting you to pass new laws and suchlike, so your country evolves over time. The whole thing was set up by Max Barry, an Australian author, to run in conjunction with his book, Jennifer Government. All of this info can be found on the website, incidentally, but I'm just simplifying it all for you. Jennifer Government is a political-satire-cum-sci-fi book set in a future dominated by corporations. Nothing really new in the premise, but the way it's done is novel enough for me. All workers are required by law to adopt their company name as their surname, for example. Hence characters with names like Hack Nike, Buy Mitsui, the fantastic Billy NRA, and, of course, Jennifer Government. Its got a lot of nice touches, such as the police being a publicly-traded security firm and a government who only investigate crimes it can bill for, by demanding a valid credit card number to report them. Interestingly enough, the rights have already been bought by Section Eight films and the screenplay is being written as we speak. Unfortunately, Section Eight films is the company founded by George Clooney and Steven fucking "Who's hot in hollywood this week?" Soderbergh. So it'll invariably be utter shit. I'm reckoning in the end the uber-capitalist way of life wins out, and somehow everyone realises that the communists are to blame, and Brad Pitt swans off into the sunset with Jennifer Lopez as the credits roll. Man, I hate that guy. Soderbergh, that is. "Ocean's Twelve". I mean, seriously, what a fucking cunt. That's almost as bad as the SeSevenen sequel. Did I mention that? I know I meant to, but I think I forgot. They're apparently making a sequel to 'Se7en'. Guess what it's called. Go on. Guess. Ei8ht. I shit you not. But no, wait, that's not even the worst part. Supposedly, in the sequel Morgan Freeman develops psychic powers! Ho yes. Sign me up for THAT shit! Like that's a film I wanna see. But anyway, I digress. The point is, uhhh, something about Jennifer Government. Right, so it's being made into a film. A film of the book. And this is the website that runs in conjunction with the book that's being made into a film. Though, in fairness, I can see absolutely no real connection between the book and NationStates. But never mind. Either way it's a laugh. Check out my beautiful nation over here. It's actually quite surprising how the country changes over time, because you're faced with issues you simply don't really want to be faced with. I mean, the 'game' isn't really cut out for communism, for starters, what with all this talk of tax dollars and so on. But I soldiered through it, until I was asked how to deal with the burgeoning gambling problem. Some kids were seen gambling, and there was a public outcry. I only had three options: ban gambling, endorse gambling, or ignore the issue completely. Obviously in real life I'd have ignored it entirely until the Daily Mail shut up about it, just like a real government, but that's no fun in something like this. So I endorsed gambling. Suddenly I was no longer a Democratic Socialist nation, but an 'Inoffensive Centrist' one. The shame! My beautiful country, reduced to neutrality! I mean, fair do's, it turned my 'Basket case' economy into a 'Developing' one, which is an improvement, but still. So now I'm desperately trying to wend my way back to socialism. Stupid kids. The trouble they've caused me! But yeah, hop on over and make your own nations, and then gimme the links in the guestbook. I'm intrigued to see the differences between all of our countries. [UPDATE: What the fuck?! I just checked my nation and in the last few hours I've gone from being an Inoffensive Centrist Democracy to a "Capitalist Paradise"?! I was Socialist two days ago! What's happening to my glorious nation?! God damn it, stop changing! It seems everything I do shifts it further and further towards Capitalism. I'm sensing some serious bias in the mechanics of the game, here. Bah. I can't believe they're doing this to me! I wanted an authoritarian communist utopia, god damn it! We don't even have a currency, how can we be capitalist?! Grrrrr!]
This whole thing was actually one of the many game ideas I've had over the years. A proper computer game, I mean. I dunno if Mal remembers, but it's one I came up with last year, I think. It was basically gonna work in much the same way, with a whole multitude of dilemmas appearing all the time, from riots and pickets to governors demanding more funding, a la the good old days of Sim City. But, naturally, it'd be much more in depth. You'd actually be able to plan your nation, building cities and passing laws, with an enormous scope for variation. Or so went the idea, anyway. You'd even be able to make public appearances and speeches addressing the pressing issues at the time, and even have assassination attempts made on your life. I reckoned, and still do, that it'd be a fun game. Especially if you could have the degree of customisability that I'd like you to have (i.e. if you can actually fine-tune your government to work in exactly the way you want it to. Want to outlaw gay sex? Go for it. Want to create an elite police-force to raid houses of said homosexual couples? Be my guest. Really really really want to see people flying jetpacks to work? Begin the research! etc etc etc). Ahhh, there's no limit to what you can come up with when it's patently obvious the game is never actually going to get made, and I'm going to end up face down in a gutter.
Though they're supposedly working on a NationStates2, which'll add new features like war and trade, so I guess that'll do for now.
What else was there. Oh, yeah, another website I got sidetracked with for a while, before realising how utterly shit it is, was NeoPets.com. Simply put, you create and raise a Pokemon. That, in essence, is what it is. I mean, it's quite cool that it's all free and web-based, without any downloads or what have you. I think there's a hell of a lot of potential with the idea. But sadly the people there have no idea how to make a game. I mean, concepts and stuff aside, it's just not a well-made game. I play enough games to pick up the basic 'rules' and guidelines about learning curves and so on. Neopets gives you a pet and then just abandons you. It gives you a few items, but not enough to really do anything, and you're meant to work out the rest yourself. The help section tells you very little, so you're left with an admirably huge world to explore, without the first clue as to what you're meant to do. I mean, take, for example, the Battle Dome. The site mentions how you can fight other neopets there, which sounded like my kind of thing. I wanted to kick some ass with my lupine monstrosity. I clicked on the link and discovered I need a weapon and armour. Oh, okay, I thought. Well, I got a weapon at the beginning of the game, so that's alright. Now I just need armour. Where do I find armour? No mention of where to get it at all. I'll ask the help section. Search for "Armor". No, not a single reference to armor in the entire database. Aha, finally, I find a list of weapons and armour. Now to go find it. Buy it from the shops, right? Let's go looksy. I click on the Shops link. Food Shop, Book Shop, Pet Shop, Magic Shop, Disney Shop? No Armour Shop. Hmm. I'll click on More Shops. Clothing, Cards, Gardening Supplies, Bakery, Gifts, Chocolate Factory...okay, I'm getting pissed off now. Especially since all the shops are empty anyway. The Marketplace, then. Bunch of player-run shops. Sounds good. Uh huh, excellent, so this is just a page of little houses? Each house represents 10 shops, completely at random? Excellent. Well thought out. I'll try the shop wizard, then. That way I can search all the shop for the item I want, provided I know its name, which, after much searching, I do. Iron Lupe Collar, let's try that. Hey hey, lots of them! All for more than 4,000 neopet dollar type things. I don't have that many. I'll save up! So I slave away at the subgames that you need to do to earn 'neopoints'. About 3 hours later, I've got 4,000 of them, and I buy my Lupe Collar. Huzzah! Now I can go fight! I get to the battledome and enter a fight with Punchbag Bob, who seems to be the easiest opponent. At this moment in time I realise I've forgotten to equip my Iron Lupe Collar, and yet still I've managed to enter a fight. I come to the conclusion that this PIECE OF FUCKING SHIT LIED TO ME AND I JUST WASTED THE LAST THREE FUCKING HOURS PLAYING FUCKING SCRABBLE FOR NOTHING! I'm suitably pissed off, and take out my aggression on Punchbag Bob. After 5 rounds of fighting I've managed to take off 3 of the 5000 hitpoints that Punchbag Bob so audaciously flaunts in my motherfucking face. My rainbow gun is a piece of CRAP and he can't even hit me, so the Iron Lupe Collar I failed to equip is even more fucking useless than Punchbag Bob is. This isn't helping my anger! "OUCH!! Why don't you go pick on someone with weapons!!!" says Punchbag Bob. Well, Bob, perhaps it's because I'D DIE, you fucking moron. You've got 500 times the hitpoints I have, and you're still kicking my ass! Sure, you're not hurting me, but I'll die of starvation before this fight is over! Christ on a fucking pogo stick. I'm doing nothing but so-called 'Fierce Attacks' and I'm barely touching him. God knows what'd happen if I did one of these crappy 'Cautious Attacks'. Bah, this sucks, I'm out of here. Withdraw. What, where's withdraw? There isn't a withdraw option? What the fuck? I'm stuck here making pleasant conversation with Punchbag Bob while I wait for him to fucking decompose or something? You've got to be shitting me. This is going to take at least 4994 more turns. You think I'm going to sit here and refresh the page that many times? You bloodsucking shower of bastards, Neopets.com. You utter cunts. Fuck it, I'm going back to the shops. I don't care what happens. "I hate being a punchbag!!" says Bob. FUCK YOU, BOB! I hate being completely incapable of denting a punchbag, you little shit, so FUCK YOU! Okay, so I'm back at the shops. Oh, hey, it turns out the Magic Shop sells armour after all. But of course! Why wouldn't it? I mean, it says so right on the sign. Magic Shop. What else would it sell but body armour? I honestly don't know what I was thinking! It's lunacy, I tell you. Sheer lunacy. Alright, so I'll go see what's happened to my pet. Maybe he and Bob have made up and settled their differences amicably. Oh, no, apparently my pet is sitting there waiting for me as if NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENED. Thanks for telling me that AFTER I left the fight, makers of the site. That's brilliant. It's this kind of thing that reeks of bad game-making. I mean, I wonder how many poor bastards sat there fighting Punchbag Bob right down to his last motherfucking hitpoint not knowing they could just waltz out at any time. Oh well, I guess I'll try another opponent. Whatwhat? What's this? "You have not fought Punchbag Bob yet"? Are you blind? I just did it! I admit, whatever it was we just did wasn't like any kind of fighting I ever saw, but that's beside the point. I'm not trying it again. Fuck it, I'll bypass him. Who's next? "Chia Clown", apparently. Alrighty, you pantomime son of a bitch, let's dance. Oh jesus, he really is a clown, too. I fucking hate clowns. Eat rainbow, Gonzo! Ow! Motherfucker! He...tickled me? To within an inch of my life, it seems. Now he's squirting me with water. Jesus, he's kicking the fuck out of me with comic props. That's just insulting. "I love playing with you! Its so funny the way you lose so badly Tee Hee Hee !!!" Ohhh, you little shit. Right, that's it, you're going down. But I need fuckloads of money to beat him! Aww man. See, this is the other thing. Emily has played this game a lot longer than I have, and she says the only way to actually get money at a decent pace is to join a guild and essentially rip off other players. Otherwise it just takes forever to get anywhere. That really sucks. I mean, really. I'd be quite happy to work for my money, because there's no way in hell I'm going to rip off other people. It's just not in my nature. But come on, I've spent over 10 thousand neopoints on leveling up already. I've spent another 10 thousand on items for my little pet, and he still gets his ass kicked in three turns by a fucking clown. The easiest opponent in the game. I've spent a total of about 8 hours playing the same fucking subgames (scrabble, tetris, shit like that) over and over just to scrape enough money to get this far. I find it utterly ludicrous that even the earliest stages of the game are so unbelievably slow. I could understand a later stage being this languid, but right off the bat? It's pretty much a given universal law of game-making that you want to get new players into the action as soon as possible. You give them piss-easy monsters that are so easy to kill they serve absolutely no purpose other than educating the player and getting them acclimatised to the game. Neopets have clearly never heard of this concept. I mean, I'm comparing this site to the online RPG games that I sometimes play, which is a little unfair, because the latter are made by entire development teams with a budget of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and neopets clearly isn't. But still, it's just a question of basic gaming principles. I don't expect neopets to have fancy graphics or state-of-the-art gameplay, but I do expect it to obey the simple concept of getting new players hooked from the get-go, and keeping them entertained by progressively making the rewards harder to achieve. If I have to spend a total of 10 or 12 hours just to be hard enough to fight the very first opponent of the game, then they've made a serious error in designing the game. It just shouldn't be this much hard work to get started. If it gets harder from here, which I can guarantee it will, then god help me. Meh. I really don't mean to be so hard on the game. As Em pointed out, it's quite clearly aimed at younger kids, so I shouldn't be too tough on it. But I dunno. I mean, it explicitly asks you how old you are when you join up, for starters, so it's not like they couldn't adapt it accordingly. Plus it's been around for absolutely ages, so it's not like it's suffering from early release issues that haven't been ironed out yet. Meh. I guess it's disappointment more than anything. I genuinely could've got into this game, if it had just taken notice of the fundamental guidelines of every single game in existence, instead of just dumping players in this huge world without a clue where to go, and making their first steps so ludicrously hard. Oh well. I might JUST stick at it, and see if I can make any headway. But I doubt it, because I still refuse to rip off other players and ruin their enjoyment just to get some stupid 'neopoints' that are nothing more than 1s and 0s. Ah well. Let's go to Faerieland to heal my pet. Hell yeah! Fuck you man, Faerieland is the place to be. You can, like, go Poogle Racing there and everything. Ahh, who am I trying to kid. Let's just get healed and get the hell out of here. "The Water Faerie says a few magical words and Healing Potion XI appears in her hand. She hands it to you...'Use this wisely!'". Thanks, I wi...what the fuck happened to your face, dude? Your eye! It's, like, halfway down your face! That's pretty sick. Alright, back at my pad. Healing Potion XI (rare). Rare? There's some chick handing them out for free! How rare can they be? I can tell where to go if you need some? Alright, fair enough. Okay, all healed up. I'll see if I can go on a Faerie quest (shush). I only just found out about those, y'see. Apparently they do good stuff, I think. I dunno. I don't even know what I'm meant to do on one. I guess I'll find out. Oh no, I have to find objects hidden on the site. Ugh. This is the other thing, see, they randomly hide objects on the site. You never know where they'll be, or when they'll turn up. You just have to keep browsing and browsing and browsing through all their pages. It's ridiculous. Since I've never, not even once, managed to find anything, it means I just have to buy them from other people, which means even MORE playing of the same stupid subgames. *Sigh*. Alright, I wrote that last sentence at 6:53am. It's now 9:16am, and I've JUST completed the quest. I haven't been playing constantly for those 2 hours, I sat and watched the football for at least an hour, but either way, it took TOO long. My prize, though! Whoo-ee! My pet gained ONE WHOLE HITPOINT! Oh yes. We're in the big league now. I'm comin' to get ya, 5000 hitpoints Bob! You're mine! Fucking...1 piddly little hitpoint. For an hour or so of playing the kind of games you get on a mobile phone. I really, REALLY want to like this site, because I think it's such a good idea. But god damn it, they make it so difficult!
Speaking of raising pets in games, and collecting things for them and so on and so forth, imagine my surprise and heartfelt glee to stumble across this! Probably none of you will know what the hell that is, other than Mal and possibly Emily, but probably not even her. Basically, in the game Sonic Adventure Melee Battle Super Alpha Turbo 2020 Bubblegum Plus, you had this huge and completely meaningless subworld involving little creatures called 'Chao'. It seems that when Dr. Robotnik and Sonic aren't busy destroying and/or saving the world, they like to kick back in a garden full of oddly-shaped little...things...and race them around the place. Occassionally wrestling them. I dunno. It seemed to make sense at the time. But anyway, Mal will be able to vouch that I adore any game which features the collecting and raising of pointless creatures, so I naturally took these little bleeders to my heart. Going one step further in terms of utterly pointless past-times, Team Sonic (one of the Sega teams) have inexplicably brought us a website devoted to mind-boggingly intricate origami/papercraft. I mean, it's not technically origami, is it, because you use glue? But it's close. And it's good enough for me. I totally wanna make that rabbit. Man, if I had a printer, I'd have made several, and would be racing them as we speak. Probably with little to no success, but damnit we'd look good doing it. I'm tempted to make the Chao, and then make the seal and the rabbit and the gorilla and the penguin, and see if he absorbs them into his body, literally devouring their soul and taking on their characteristics, like they do in the game. Probably not. But it's worth a try, I reckon.
Man, I love the Japanese. I swear to god they're all on crack. It's fantastic.
Oh, hey, that reminds me. Check it out: Nanites! Welcome to the future!! Okay, so they're a little bit big to go crawling around your arteries, but, well, progress is progress, and they ARE small. And they dance. Nanites don't dance. So I think it's even stevens, really.
Hmm hmm hmm, what else. Ha, this was brilliant. They put it up on March 14th, and it was rapidly taken down. I kept trying to reaccess it to show you all, but presumably some sort of editor had removed it. I guess people asked for it back or something, because sometime between now and then it got put online again. Either way, it's there now. So enjoy. It makes me chortle.
I'm sure that by now every single person on the entire internet has seen, and laughed at, the Real Doll website. Ahh, but have you seen four of them in the same room together rearranged into orgiastic positions? Well now you can! Yes, some bizarre fool has made a website to showcase his proud harem of synthetic women. I mean, I just...I don't even know where to begin, ladies and gentlemen. Where do I start? Not content with just the ONE scary looking fake woman, he decided he needed four. Y'know, for when the mood suits him. "Hmm, what do I feel like tonight. Do I go for the blonde cold, dead vacant whore, or the brunette? I just can't decide which LIFELESS GAZE turns me on the most." Freaking idiot. But never mind the implications of having four of them casts on his taste, they cost $6,000 each! I mean, jesus christ, that's $24,000 worth of merchandise he's pimping. Looking at them, completely motionless atop one another, I can't help but think it's one of the most flagrant wastes of money I've ever seen. I mean, what, did he buy one and, later that night, make tender passionate love to it before rolling over and lying awake for hours thinking "This empty, emotionless husk of a woman just isn't satisfying the longing I've felt all these years. CLEARLY I GOT THE WRONG DOLL!" I just...ugh. I'm bemused, dear readers. Bemused.
This site has done the rounds lately too. Again, like most of these things, I'm probably behind the times. But not to worry. I wouldn't read it if you're exceptionally squeamish, by the way. I mean, it's not really bad at all. I wouldn't worry. But on the off-chance you're STUPIDLY squeamish, then, y'know, don't read it. But if you're that squeamish you should probably just kill yourself anyway, cos you'll only piss people off by shrieking at stuff in the middle of films, and hiding your face behind pillows and things, and demanding people get rid of the absolute tiniest of spiders and all that stuff. But anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. So, the site. Yeah, basically, when I was little I had gross-overcrowding. My teeth, that is. I don't think you can really get overcrowding anywhere else on your body, but I'm not sure. Anyway, so my baby teeth just plain refused to drop out, and my adult teeth were coming through. This led to lots of pain and wonky teeth. The dentist ripped 16 of my fricking teeth out, leaving me spitting blood for about 2 hours, and constantly drooling down my face because my entire lower jaw was so numb it just drooped open. It was a lot of fun. Happiest years of my life. But this chick, on this site...what a crazy fool. She had the same problem as me, with a baby tooth refusing to drop out, but instead of seeing a dentist, she decided to rip it out of her skull with a pair of pliers. Good plan! She had to the foresight to film the whole thing on her webcam, though, so kudos to her for that one. I'm sure every one of us knows how painful having a tooth pulled out is, and to do it yourself with a pair of fucking pliers...ouch. That's just insane.
On a totally unrelated note, here you can find the entire first issue of Action Comic, featuring Superman's first ever appearance. I have no idea why I'm linking to it. I hate Superman. A lot. I always thought he was just outdated these days, like Captain America and so on. But no, turns he out he's always been the shittest superhero ever.
Now, I know you'll laugh at me, but I think I've fallen madly in love with this man. No, but seriously, I love that guy! I love people like that. I love these quintessential English dads, who have intricate model trainsets and still run outside whenever Concorde flies over. I don't know why it is, but I love it. I remember my mum and dad combining forces to make me a birthday cake for my.....somethingth birthday. A long time ago. When they were still together, for starters, so it must've been before I was 5. But anyway, normally it'd just be a job for my mum, to make the cake, but no no, not this year. This year my dad joined in. Together they created this elaborate NASA spacerocket birthday cake. My mum made this big cake in the shape of the rocket, and my dad constructed this big scaffold structure out of lego. It was the coolest thing ever. I mean, looking back on it, it was probably really crap. Y'know, the memory of a 5 year old can be easily clouded, so in reality I bet it was a real mess, you know? But at the TIME! It rocked so hard. Possibly even cooler though, was our next door neighbour's project. They had two sons, slightly older than me and my brother, and I think one of them had been given a school project to make some landmark out of meccano. Being a quintessential English dad, Bill (the neighbour) took it as some kind of personal challenge, and elected himself chief architect of the program. It worked, though, because in the end they ended up with a working model of London Tower Bridge. He must have slaved away at that thing for weeks and weeks. It was awesome. I mean, when you pressed the button to raise the bridge, these little gates would drop down either side and flash lights to show the bridge was going up. It was all timed to perfection. It was brilliant. Fantastically sad and geeky, but brilliant! I can't help but love that kind of thing. It just makes me smile. The fact this guy is called Nigel is just the icing on the cake. That just rounds the whole thing off to perfection. People like Nigel make me genuinely proud. *sniffle*
And, to a much lesser extent, this guy. He got bored and built a boat entirely out of twigs, which is to be applauded, I think. I like that kind of ingenuity. But not for long, it has to be said. Still, the ill-fated river trip is worth looking at, if only because Trumpington sounds like such a fantastic place to live. But not for long, it has to be said.
This intrigued me as well. American journalist sacked for using photoshop. I honestly wouldn't have thought they'd care all that much, especially since the photo in question really isn't that different from either of the originals, but apparently they do. Perhaps I'm too hard on journalists, and even the media in general. But then again, maybe I'm not. And by maybe, I mean I'm not. But it's still an interesting case, I think. Also, is it just me, or can nobody else spot these "residents on the left side of the blended photo [being] visible twice"? I really can't see anyone appearing twice. They must have much better eyes than me (not difficult).
God I'm tired. I think I'm gonna go to bed soon. Ish. Maybe. 11:37am. Mehh. Sorry this was such a crap update.
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