UFO ENCOUNTER!!

As best I can tell, the timeline goes like this:

1.) I post a passionate appreciation of the 2003 "reality" film The Real Cancun to a Facebook group called "The Real Cancun".

2.) D. Smith comes along and takes my post completely at face value; he is delighted and inspired by my enthusiasm and posts not only a rah-rah right on in response but recommends a second, "hard to find" movie called The Quest. Evidently the titular "quest" involves someone losing their virginity. Creative!

3.) D. Cowan, a friend of mine, is visibly tickled by D. Smith's tragic mistake.

4.) Smith suspects that his sincere love for the 2003 "reality" film The Real Cancun is being mocked, and visits Cowan's Facebook profile for retaliatory ammunition.

5.) Smith discovers that Cowan and I are friends and, somehow, manages to draw the correct conclusion.

6.) Smith goes completely fucking mental and suggests that Cowan and I take a trip to Cancun for the express purpose of drinking sodas and masturbating (presumably these are separate activities).

I had no idea that the 2003 "reality" film The Real Cancun inspired this sort of REAL PASSIONATE FURY in people. Clearly, the real rabbit hole of real Cancun reality goes much deeper into the real feelings of real people than I'd originally suspected. Perhaps a second Cancuncalypse is warranted.

The way the numbers indicating the points for snagging a fruit in Ms. Pac-Man are along a diagonal, and the clean little typeface they cooked up for displaying them, which to my knowledge wasn't used anywhere in a Namco game before or since. Lovely!

By way of comparison (Pac-Man is on the left, Ms. Pac-Man on the right):



While I'm on the subject of Pac-Man, the high score board for Pac-Land has one of the best titles of all time:



This is true.

The hilarious thing—well, one of them—about my dad is how squeamish he is. I mean, I've got my own little weaknesses and I wouldn't just take cheap shots at someone feeling unwell about X, Y, or Z, but you have to understand that (a) my dad is a man who takes great, arguably disproportionate pride in his military service [despite never having seen active duty, being one of that unfortunately large slice of the aging male population that was too young for Vietnam and too old for Grenada and has spent their post-soldier years rocking the solid chickenhawk vote] and (b) spends his leisure time watching cable television shows like Hitler's Greatest Bullet Holes and Secret Sinus Infections of the Third Reich. So for him to wrinkle his nose—literally, he goes into full-blown human disgust mode—at not just the words but concepts of farts and poops and boogers just tickles me to no end.

I'll give you an example. A couple of years ago, my aunt—his sister, the one you might remember that does the crazy over-the-top Halloween parties—gave my mom an egg separator as a Christmas present. Now, what makes this egg separator special is that it's a little kiln-fired cartoonish clay head: you crack the egg and empty it into this hollow head and the whites drain out the nostril(s), leaving the yolk safe and intact in the brainpan. So anyway, here's this thing, this Christmas present and kitchen gadget, and my dad sees the whites dribblin' out the nostril—again, this is a man who watches war footage on cable every night and who raised two children that were more or less chronically and graphically ill—and he goes awwwwww and turns his head and raises his hand in that very involuntary disgust reaction. Hilarious!

My mom's got a saltier tongue than he does and it drives him bananas. I was on the phone with him tonight—aha, the narrative thrust at last—and I heard a voice shouting in the background, and then that familiar awwwwww.

"Dad?"
"Your mom—your mom wants to know how your pooper is doing."

(I had been suffering from chronic constipation for a couple of weeks and my parents wouldn't have even known about it had I not gone to the doctor, whose receptionist later that very day had happened to see my mom and had told her [a] that I'd just been in and [b] that I was looking very healthy and handsome {groan, roll eyes}, so of course my mom had had to call me that very evening with a list of demands w/r/t my fiber input, lifestyle, etc etc.)

"What? Oh, my butt! Everything's normal. My... 'pooper's' fine."
"He says his pooper's fine."
"Tell her I'll crap in a baggie for the next couple days, stick it in the freezer, and bring it over for Thanksgiving."
"Awwwwww. He—he said he'll bag some and bring 'em over, frozen—"
"Yeah, she can stick 'em in the microwave real quick and then—"
"Josh—"
"—then slap 'em on the table and take a meat thermometer and take a core sample."
"Awwwwww. Okay I'm gonna let you go, you and your mom can have this—this talk about—"
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha."

If you're reading this, you probably remember that Street Fighter II on the SNES didn't, by default, allow for "mirror matches" in two-player fights. You couldn't have Ryu vs. Ryu, basically.

Until the code came out, of course. You had to punch it in quick—while the Capcom logo faded on and off the screen before the game booted up—and for some reason I wasn't terribly good at this, meaning that I came to associate the well-crafted, pleasant Capcom logotone with stress:



I suppose I eventually got good at it. I'd use the code even when I wasn't playing with friends, just because I liked using characters' alternate colors. I was, and am, pretty fucking girly about costumes in video games. Ask me how much time I've spent earning money for alternate Rock Band avatars just so I could dress them up just right! (Please do not actually do this.)

And you're saying to yourself, you like alternate costumes in video games; that is not a terrible confession, that is the reason people grind away for hours towards contextually meaningless in-game achievements: they want to see Raidou Kuzunoha wearing the cowboy hat and assless chaps. And oh! I know! It is not in itself terrible, and in fact it's just an ancillary detail I thought I'd mention because, well, I just wanted an excuse to talk about it. (Now, if I confessed that I was really, really into KiSS dolls for a brief period in the late 90s, I could end this entry right here, because good lord, those fucking things. Whoops!)

Something else you couldn't do in Street Fighter II was play as the bosses. This was, for a while, the Holy Fucking Grail of cheat codes. We talked about it at school, we mashed fruitlessly around on our joypads during that goddamned Capcom logotone, we sure as hell daydreamed about it, and then we ended up blowing an unreasonable amount of cash on the "Special Champion Edition" when it dropped onto the Genesis a year later.

But in the meantime, we wanted to play as the bosses so badly we could just fucking taste it—and what a letdown they finally were, eh?—and the fact that a code existed to unlock one missing piece of Street Fighter functionality existed suggested that another code was waiting in there...

And so it came to pass (and this, my precious, lovely friends, this is the confession) that I posted a message to the Prodigy online service sometime between 1992 and 1993 with the title "BOSS CODE MUST EXIST - PROOF". What followed was a post I thought to be very clever indeed, in which I did a bunch of dot-connecting between what we knew to be true about the SNES port of Street Fighter II and a bunch of posts about it I'd read. It never occurred to me, of course, that the posts I'd read—the posts that were pretty much the prime source of this PROOF—could either be (a) merely reporting interesting glitches or (b) just fucking lying. Honestly, it would be years before I hit upon the idea that some people might lie on the Internet just for fun—what would be the point of that?

With the publication of this opus, "BOSS CODE MUST EXIST - PROOF", I fully expected to shake things up. I thought I'd nailed it, and all that was left was for Capcom to come clean and release the code. "Yeah, you got us, man. Here's the code to activate a feature that we were planning on shaking you down for next year, to the tune of seventy bucks. Honey, it's me; yeah, call the swimming pool people and see if you can get our deposit back. We're totally rethinking Q4 because of some genius on the Prodigy service." Alas, I didn't get a single response, although someone else's post called "SF2 BEER DRINKERS", in which people theorized what beers and spirits their favorite characters liked, was humming along nicely. No, I wasn't jealous.

There was, in fact, no boss code for the SNES port of Street Fighter II. I was a dumb kid on the Internet before there was a World Wide Web, you guys.

Remember that time I wouldn't shut up about The Real Cancun?

( the shocking evidence under the cancut )

is HUMPIN

Josh: http://www.cafepress.com/ivan_01.108165021
Josh: that's your boyfriend
Nicole: that is my type of dude. Blue and bad.
Josh: he comes running up with a gold ring in his hand and is all OHHHHHH YEAHHHHH and your hair gets all blown around and you're like WOW WHO'S THAT??!?! <3 and he's all SONIC'S MY NAME AND SPEED IS MY GAME, BABY
Josh: GOTTA GOOOOOOO
Josh: and you're like WOW~~
Josh: NB this actually happened
Nicole: is this canon
Josh: yes
Josh: it takes place before sonic 3 but after sonic spinball
Nicole: I was 11
Josh: that is the ideal age for a lady to fall in love with Sonic the Hedgehog
Nicole: probably actually closer to 9
Josh: okay gross
Nicole: I liked Knuckles
Nicole: :(
Nicole: I wanted to marry megaman when I was 5
Josh: knuckles was all like LET'S KICK OVER THE TRASH CANS
Josh: and you're like CAN WE GET PIZZA AFTER
Josh: and he's all GRUMBLE GRUMBLE OKAY
Nicole: wai
Josh: and you're like YAY ONLY I CAN BREAK THROUGH YOUR GRUFF EXTERIOR, KNUCKLES-CHAN
Nicole: josh write fan fiction of 9 year old me and knuckles
Josh: JUST DID!!! ;D

After finding two separate bath towels with earthworms living in them (living off what? doing what all day? guys, you know we don't offer health or retirement plans, right?), I decided I couldn't let another day go by without telling Marissa. It seemed like a sign.

"I love you. I mean, I still do. Never stopped."
"Well, that's disruptive." Not even a moment's hesitation.
"Disruptive?" I raised my palms like a pair of scales. "You recorded a video about how UFOs can affect the immune system—which you then charge people to rent. You rub crystals on people to make them feel better."

She had stiffened on the words UFOs, immune, crystals, and feel. Now she was frozen nougat.

"I mean you must have people all the time telling you they love you. Once a day probably in fact, people coming in, weirdos falling in love with you. Giving you poetry they wrote on pages they tore outta the phone book—"

She would have smiled at that, once.

"I don't see how you can feel that way about my life's work and still"—air quotes, even—"love me."
"I do because all these things are you, you, you, you understand? I love you because of these things I love because they're you."
"Look around you," she said, this time raising her arms like the scales, and I couldn't tell from her face if she was mocking my gesture or if she'd picked it up unconsciously or if I was even in there in any meaningful way, really, "you see all this? This is all mine. I worked my ass off for all this. Having this shop was, no, no it is, is my dream—"
"No, it's nice—"
"No, and you know what? I worked my ass off for this and there hasn't been a day that's gone by that I haven't thought that I wanted that life I was gonna have with you instead. You broke my fucking heart and you know it's never really gotten better?"
"I wanted you to be happy."
"That's what you said, yeah. Like I didn't know how to do it myself, so you were gonna make the decision for me. A grown woman and you break her heart for her because she doesn't know she's not happy, right?"

I wanted to put my hands on her shoulders and say but I love you and then I realized I'd been beginning too many sentences with I wanted. I put my hands into my pockets so I wouldn't be tempted and immediately realized it looked like a deliberately aloof response to what she'd just said, like raising my eyebrows or curling my lip or a thousand other wrong things, so I took them back out. I knitted my fingers and caught myself shaking.

Dennis: You can have sex with animals in Dragon Age.
Dennis: I wonder if I can get an achievement for that.
Josh: Render Unto Cesar (10G)

Speaking of libraries, last night I dreamt up one—a new one! sort of a refreshing, if jarring, change of pace to have a vivid dream not set in one of the stock locations I've been dreaming for years—with a feature worth remembering.

You've probably seen a coin vortex funnel before; they've been around for years. They're usually situated in a public place, collecting coins for a charitable cause, and the basic idea is that you release a coin on its edge into the funnel, and the coin spins round and round the inside of the funnel until eventually draining out the hole at the bottom. They're quite compelling!



So, this imaginary library had a large, circular common area: mostly empty space, relatively dimly lit, with curved white vinyl couches around its perimeter. The ceiling above was the underside of one of these coin funnels, glossy black featureless plastic, but when someone dropped a coin into the funnel, a map of the stars in the universe would light up along the coin's path. When viewed from the common area, you couldn't see the coin itself, but you'd hear it faintly and you'd see the stars blaze to life in its wake. It was fantastic.

* * *

Before that, though, I dreamt that I had received a letter—I knew in my heart and my gut that it was a love letter, that it was full of romantic confession and revelation—and I was trembling with anticipation... and frustration, since I could not get a single moment alone in which to read it. When I did snatch a few seconds' privacy, I opened the envelope to discover that it had been written in the margins and empty spaces of construction paper junk mail flyers, bright green advertisements for petsitting and boiling red solicitations for charity and yellow-on-blue notices of Garage Sale. It would take time and concentration to follow the weaving thread of ballpoint words through and around the clipart and commercial mess, and when I finally did get that time, at the expense of alienating my friends and family, I woke up before I got to actually read a single word of it.

Right, like someone already feeling unwell is going to make the effort to drive out to the library to check her MySpace and play Yahoo! Games for three hours and then suddenly suffer an attack of social conscience at the door.

It's a nice thought, though, I guess.

"I always do the wrong thing. I do the wrong thing so much that the times I actually do the right thing stand out so brightly in my memory that I forget I always do the wrong thing."
—Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs

I've been reading a lot of her fiction lately, mostly the short stories. She is a goddamn great writer.

Just a wig and makeup can turn a pasty redhead into a strong, independent black woman!

I think you have a little too much faith in consumer goods, LongLiveOlmec.

Hot Dog King, also known as Hotdogs Hotgals and Hot Dogs Hot Girls in Europe because Europe, was once described by an Italian eBay seller as pc giochi fast food SEXUAL. I couldn't have said it better myself.



The basic idea is that you're managing these fast food franchises, and the twist—because of course there's a twist, because this is budget-priced PC gaming—is that the food is not so much the draw as your employees, all of whom are hateful gynoids fresh from the Uncanny Valley decked out in the finest of SlutWear. According to the official website, these women hold no illusions about the seedy nature of the industry or what their job exactly entails, and they are willing to do just that. Classy!

The game starts you off small: in the beginning, your employee is standing there all alone in a bikini or whatever, selling microwaved hot dogs and openly hating life.



Don't worry, though! Just like in real life, an unhappy female's jangled nerves can be soothed with expensive jewelry.

Pete Sellers of the now-defunct Deeko.com had this to say about Hot Dog King:

The different models used in the game are top notch, as well, with the ladies standing out above all else. Though they whine and cry a lot, they're still a feast for the eyes and are perhaps the best model the game has to offer, especially when you compare then to the customers. I'm not trying to be a pig here; I'm simply stating the facts when I say that these gals are pretty good looking.

Attaboy!

This game is actually worse than Left Behind: Eternal Forces, but every now and then, I'll get this idea that I'm going to play Hot Dog King and be really good at it and really experience this perpetually unfolding terrible idea to its fullest. And then I install it, play it for about fifteen minutes, and remember that it is unplayable. I never get past microwaving hot dogs and feeling like my time would be better spent (a) playing a fun game, (b) eating actual food, or (c) viewing actual pornography.

Maybe there are people somewhere for whom the combination of business management and women doing menial tasks in impractical outfits is the realization of their heart's most desperate fantasy and absolutely worth the slog through a "game" that was probably funded with the proceeds of Actual Murders. And have I got a game for them.

Oh, and the theme song is really, really stupid. It's some sort of sub-Spice Girls bit of crap pop, revolving around the refrain "love is just a big illusion", because you know, hot dogs. The thing is, there's this voice that keeps saying "it's hot hot", and so you're kind of strung along, thinking that any minute now they're going to bring it back around and actually start singing about selling hot dogs, which would take this song from irritating to magnificent, but no dice. At about two minutes in, I am so eager for them to fulfill the promise of, you know, being a theme song for a game about selling fast food, that I begin to interpret the lyrics in this really abstract, ridiculous way to make them about food. Try it yourself!



I'm not done there, though. No, see, once upon a time the guy who got contracted to make the music for this game had the above track in his online portfolio... along with the N-Jekted Remix!!!

Yeah, I'm not making that name up.

This video sets you up with some pretty unrealistic expectations for garbage.

Can someone who gives a shit about Facebook explain this to me?



—because it seems like just the saddest idea for a game ever, pretty much.

A video game based on stealing change from those sad-eyed plastic bloodhound coin banks that collect money for animal shelters would be marginally less sad than this. Because that would be pretend.

When I was a kid, I was a Cub Scout, and I did a lot of the boilerplate Cub Scout stuff. In case you don't know, one of the big things that Cub Scouts do is go on behind-the-scenes tours of places—these are places that are actually quite banal but, to a kid, are full of mystery and magic and authority. Going through a door that says "Employees Only" when you are a child is a thrill like unto none other, after all. So yeah, going to the big bakery or into the workroom at the public library or behind the counter at Domino's Pizza, you're all the while being told How It All Works but of course you're not really listening, because your ears are stuffed full of the forbidden glamour of the place, and your eyes are taking in all these weird little human details that are levelling but still, somehow, unreachably adult. Take a look around your workspace: all the little notes and knickknacks and mementos are, to a kid, the Voynich Manuscript.

Anyway.

The big banana was, of course, the Coca-Cola bottling plant. Coca-Cola is a big deal, right? And of course everyone loves Coke and you're going to where it's made (not exactly true, of course, but there's a certain operating assumption about the concept of a "factory" or "plant" in play at that age; the workers might as well be spinning the stuff into existence from stray molecules)? Fantastic.

At some point, the tour guide showed us a film about the history of Coca-Cola, and the film made much of the mysterious Merchandise 7X, the big-shot secret ingredient that has been kept secret since forever blah blah kept in a huge vault blah blah no two people who know the recipe are allowed on a plane together, etc etc.

At the end of the film, I put my hand up. The tour guide called on me.

"I know what 7X is," I said confidently.
"You do?" she said? I'm sure there was a note of amusement in her voice I was not equipped to detect.
"Yes. It's caffeine," I said.

So there you go, folks, I cracked the case wide open.

Colonel Lockpick's Fine Periwigs, Custom-Crafted For The Male Infant.

Fitted Fontanelle Guards for the Christian and Heathen Child Alike are Available in Copper, Tin, and Bronze.