PS4 round-up

One week into the PS4. No one who bought it at our store has had any technical problems, so either 1. our customers are smarter than the average bear, 2. the failure reports are overblown, or 3. both. (We had a ton of people when the Wii U launched who turned it off while it was updating and then didn't understand why it stopped working. USER ERROR USER ERROR USER ERROR)

Friend of the blog Ms. Susan Strong picked up her PS4 at my store, but she wasn't going to be able to make it until after midnight, so in exchange for booze and eggnog, my dad took her gift cards and came in before midnight to finalize payment. He waited patiently among the mega-nerds until he reached my register, at which point he yelled:

"DO YOU HAVE ANY GAMES FOR THE ATARI 2600!?"

#shitmydadsays 

CODBLOPSBIES

In honor of Call of Duty day, here is a text conversation I had with High Maintenance Roommate last night:

An iPhone text conversation. Transcript is below.

UM, JUST KIDDING! I could NEVER get a second kitty when my first one is so cute!

A picture of Valenbaby cuddling with another kitten on the back of a chair.

Ok, yeah, my roommates have a kitten, too.

Don't worry about it.

"Lol thanks for head"

Today I reminded High Maintenance Roommate of something he had to do today. He texted me back:

"Lol thanks for head."

He obviously meant "heads up," but apparently he either wasn't aware or just forgot that "head" is a euphemism for oral sex.

WHO'S BEING AWKWARDLY SEXUAL IN THEIR NONNATIVE LANGUAGE NOW, ROOMMATES? HUH!?

Language barriers are the funniest thing.

Texts from my friends

"I had a dream last night that I worked at [Store] with you and we smoked crack in the back room and then just went back to selling video games."
- Hugh Jackman

The correct term is "played Animal Crossing," not "smoked crack."

Trade secret.

Me & My Deaf Gay Roommates

Low Maintenance Roommate, after reading my posts that mentioned her, told me I should write about what it's like to be a hearing girl living with deaf roommates, with lots of humorous anecdotes. And I was all, "Sure thing, Low Maintenance Roommate!" Because if there's one thing I excel at, it's humorous anecdotes.

I speak a lot of different languages. I used to write notes on ladyboss's Animal Crossing town's message board in German, just to be a douche. I'm no stranger to learning new words or dealing with language barriers, and let's face it, there's much less of a language barrier between me and most deaf people in the US than, say, me and a random hearing person from Kazakhstan. And it's not like I hadn't spoken to any deaf people before either, since I, you know, live in a world where deaf people exist. So, I wasn't at all nervous about not being able to communicate with my new roommates.

But when they moved in, I didn't know any sign at all.

Well, ok, that's not entirely true. I had a roommate back in the day who took a couple quarters of ASL at our community college, and she taught me how to say "I like your penis." The day my new roomies moved in, we got pizza and beer, and the three of us were sitting in the living room chatting via text. I told them about my extensive sign knowledge. They wanted to see it. I told High Maintenance Roommate that I liked his penis.

He said thank you.

For a few days there, while we were using our phones to talk about normal roommate stuff ("Help! The ceiling is caving in!"), I would try to make sign small talk by saying that I liked their stuff. I knew the words for "I like your," and then I would just point at whatever the thing was that I liked.

"I like your [car]."

"I like your [suitcase]."

"I like your [dog]."

The best moment of that phase of our cohabitation was when High Maintenance Roommate straightened his hair all fancy, and I tried to tell him I liked his hair and accidentally poked him in the forehead like a weirdo.

Once everyone was moved in and settled, we started hanging out more. A couple more verbs were added to my repertoire, and High Maintenance Roommate taught me the alphabet in exchange for cigarettes. Ladyboss knows quite a bit of ASL, so she helps me practice at work. I learn new words and whatnot on the interwebs, and from watching videos and TV shows with deaf actors (Switched at Birth, anyone?). I learned how to say "how do you say," so now I wander around the house like a really enthusiastic toddler, pointing at things and asking what they're called.

(I intentionally did not ask how to sign Call of Duty.) 

It's a work in progress.

For a while, since the only noun I knew was "penis," I tried to work it in to what I was saying as often as possible. One of the first new words I learned was "worm," for "penis worm"- because we were watching Tremors, obviously.

THE GRABOID. Don't lie. You see it, too.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of signs involve really complicated-to-the-uninitiated hand motions. Of the signs I've learned so far, one of the hardest ones for me to do is actually "roommate," because it involves locking all your fingers together in a funny position. Whenever I try to sign with deaf customers at my job, it always goes pretty well up until they ask where I learned, and I have to fumble my way through saying, "I have deaf roommates."

Both of my roommates are really good cooks, and High Maintenance in particular makes really good breakfast food, so I asked him how to say all the breakfast foods. I didn't get the sign for "egg," which involves kind of swooping your fingers apart, so he did a really elaborate pantomime of breaking an egg open to show where it came from. I relayed that particular story to my sister, who laughed at me and said:

"See, other people are able to cook things, so they wouldn't be confused by what you do when you're cooking with eggs."

High and Low Maintenance Roommate fight over how to say things a lot (High grew up going to deaf schools, and Low went to hearing schools with formal interpreters), and sometimes, there just straight-up isn't a word in ASL for whatever I'm trying to say. I asked how to say "unicorn," and neither of them knew, so I put my hand on my forehead, with my finger out in the #1 position, to simulate a horn. They were like, "Uh, no girl, that means horny." Later on, I was telling that exact story to some hearing friends, and I got a frantic text from Low Maintenance Roommate, who was sitting on the other side of the room:

"Dude! You're telling all those people you're horny right now!"

(A silly coincidence: I made almost the exact same mistake when I was first learning German, when I looked up a word for "excited" and accidentally ended up with the one that had Sexual Implications. Why is it always so easy to tell people you're horny!? Why!?)

The roommates and I still mostly chat via text, and mostly about things that have nothing to do with ASL, but I like learning the signs because it's faster and easier. I've picked up enough that I don't need to write for most of the basic stuff, because 1. I POP LANGUAGES LIKE VALIUMS and more importantly, 2. I'm lucky to have very kind and patient teacherfriends.

Though, really, the "Me & My Hearing Roommate Who Doesn't Sign Very Well" blog would probably be way more entertaining.

"DAY 34: ANY DAY NOW, SHE'LL BE RUNNING OUT OF WAYS TO GRAMMATICALLY COMBINE THE SIX SIGNS SHE KNOWS.

MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON OUR SOULS."

I guess it made sense in cod-text

So, my store has this policy where employees can borrow used games if we have enough copies.

And as it turns out, my new roommate High Maintenance Roommate is obsessed with Call of Duty: Black Ops.

"I can't check that out! All my coworkers will make fun of me!" I complained.

And then I checked it out, and then all my coworkers made fun of me, and then this happened, in a conversation about game check-outs with my bro, Jean-Luc:

A text conversation. "I mean, it is cod. Checking that out looks fishy."

NO. GOD DAMMIT.

But seriously, we all literally call Black Ops "COD BLOPS." And then we tell those people that they should totally buy copies of Brink and The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, because fuck Call of Duty.

I recently got myself some new roommates

Regina George moved out, because my apartment is a shithole fine piece of property. And two new roommates moved in! THEY ARE GREAT! Let's call them High Maintenance Roommate and Low Maintenance Roommate. They are both gay and deaf.

Because I now live in a house with a herd o' deaf people (deaf people travel in herds), I have started to learn how to SIGN! Like a champion! Unfortunately, my new roommates are the ones who introduced me to The Walking Dead, so a good chunk of my vocabulary is limited to what's relevant in a zombie apocalypse.

THINGS I DO NOT CURRENTLY KNOW HOW TO SIGN:

"Help! I am having a medical emergency. Please take me to a hospital."

 THINGS I CURRENTLY KNOW HOW TO SIGN:

"I want a zombie to eat Rick Grimes."

Our only hope is that the writers of The Walking Dead respond to American Sign Language in a way that they do not respond to common sense and the rules of narrative writing.

As an aside, when we started watching the show, one of the first words I asked how to sign was "awkward."

I use it so often now that that's who my birthday card was addressed to.

So, Season 3 of The Walking Dead went up on Netflix today

First of all, the minute I turned the show on, my Valenbaby hopped up to the TV and started thwacking a zombie with her foot. Nice work, Val! Add my cat to the list of creatures who would be more interesting and effective protagonists than Douchebag Prime.

This post is about Lori's labor. Or "labor," as the case may be is here.

How childbirth works is not, or shouldn't be, a mystery to anyone over the age of 12. Women love The Walking Dead (Helloooo, Daryl Musclyarms Dixon!), and a good chunk of that audience group have had babies of their own. A good chunk of fathers watching the show were there for the birth of their children. And most of the rest is common sense. I mean, maybe with the slow, painful death of comprehensive sex ed in schools, "how childbirth works" isn't common knowledge, after all.

But if you're writing a damn script for a major TV series where a woman gives birth, you damn well better get the details right.

For one, extreme stress and running around and whatnot do not actually induce labor. I'm willing to give them a pass on that one, since they're trying (ahem) to make an exciting show, and having Lori go into labor right then causes Dramatic Tension. Ok, dudes.

Two, labor takes a long time. Whole days could pass between your first contraction and the actual birth. Yes, sometimes a woman realizes she's in labor and pops out a baby two seconds later, but those are exceptions that prove the rule. And given that Lori delivered Carl by C-section, it's unlikely that that would be typical for her. After one contraction, no woman would get down on the floor and assume a baby's about to come out.

Third, women who have C-sections can still deliver babies vaginally. Hospitals just usually recommend against it, because there's a slightly higher risk of complications, and they make more money off of an expensive surgical procedure. Not to minimize the actual risks and dangers of reality childbirth,  but women have obviously been poppin' out babies outside of hospitals for most of human history. The fact that Lori had had a C-section previously isn't a cause for panic until something in her current delivery actually goes wrong.

Fourth, a little bit of blood during childbirth is normal. That's all the placenta is, is a big ol' sack o' blood, and it's coming out with the baby. Maggie, presumably, has seen cattle or other farm critters give birth before, so she should expect the baby not to pop out clean. I understand that the sight of blood would cause someone to panic in that situation, but it's silly to infer from some bloody fingertips that Lori's hemorraghing or whatever, even though that's clearly what the writers want us to assume. Sigh.

Fifth- FIFTH!- Lori was trying to push even though she wasn't even dilated yet. Maggie says so. Girl, ain't no baby comin' out until that vaginal canal opens up! Common sense. No wonder it fucking hurts to push. The baby has nowhere to go. Stupid.

And last but not least, how long were they even in that closet? Maybe thirty minutes? An hour? The flow of time is difficult to judge on this show because everything is as slow as shit. Regardless, an hour of contractions where real labor hasn't even started yet isn't enough to judge whether you have to cut someone open and rip a baby out of their still-living body. Overkill, much? The right thing to do would be to calm Lori down, make her take some deep breaths, and have Maggie and Carl work together to fight their way back to the group. Sure, she could have died in childbirth later anyway, but "Welp, it's been an hour! Cut me open with my son's zombie-killin' knife!" is total nonsense. If they wanted to go that route, they should have created a situation where the group was separated for a day or longer.

The group should be furious with Maggie for killing Lori for no reason whatsoever, but... they're not.

In any case, what's done is done, and now the stage is set for Douchebag Prime to become newly obsessed with his wife, even though he treated her like garbage while she was alive. Wheeeeeee!!

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that this is how they handle the birth, given the fiasco that was the episode where Lori tries to give herself an abortion by overdosing on emergency contraception. Hugh Jackman's watching for the first time too, and he sent me a text while I was writing this that's just like, "And also she has to hold her belly when she's walking, because apparently babies can just fall out at any moment."

LADYPARTS: HOW DO THEY WORK?

Also: I'm glad that after two seasons of being called "T-Dog" and not getting any lines, T-Dog finally got to sacrifice himself to save a white lady. I'm sure it's what he always wanted. That, and a real name.

On parents who buy Grand Theft Auto for their tiny children

I hate Kotaku.

I hate everyone who reads Kotaku.

I hate it every time someone mentions to me something they read on Kotaku.

The Veteran is always texting me links to Kotaku articles he thinks I'll enjoy. (And, ok, I usually do enjoy them as long as there aren't any naked people, but I still hate Kotaku.) I mentioned this to Awesome Sauce, and he started sending me Kotaku links all the time, too.

So, what happens when there's some breaking video game news that I would be interested in?

The day it was announced that Tales of Xillia 2 was coming to the U.S., this is how my morning went:

First, I get a text from Awesome Sauce, saying "Hey, Tales of Xillia 2 is coming to the U.S."

About five minutes later, The Veteran texts me a link to a Kotaku article about how Tales of Xillia 2 is coming to the U.S.

I walk into work, and bossbro greets me with a "Hey, Tales of Xillia 2 is coming to the U.S.!"

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE, GENTLEMEN, BUT I THINK I CAN HANDLE IT.

All of the above is to highlight the extreme reluctance with which I am posting a link to a Kotaku article that was recommended to me by AsS:

I Sold Too Many Copies of GTA V to Parents who Didn't Give a Damn.

The other day I mass-texted everyone I know:

"I'm really tired of explaining to parents that Grand Theft Auto is basically softcore porn."

"Just write those exact words on a sign," my friend Wolfie* wrote back.

But seriously.


The list of warnings on the back of GTA is ridiculously long. Blood! Gore! Extreme violence! Strong language! Nudity! Strong sexual content! Mature themes! Whenever I read through it for a parent who's in the store with a ten-year-old kid, they yawn and wave me through.

"You literally torture a guy. You waterboard a guy on screen."

"He's already seen all that stuff on TV." (What the hell is your kid watching!?)

"You own and manage a strip club."

"WHAT!?"

Extreme violence hasn't fazed a single person. But the minute you mention the boobies, everyone freaks out. And even then, they still want to buy the game, so we encourage them to flip through the strategy guide and see the screenshots.

And even then, literally only one person ever has opted not to buy the game at my store since the release.

Without fail, every time I start mentioning the extreme violence and sexytimes, all of these people ask:

"They can put that stuff in a game!?"

"It's not designed for kids," I say, every time. "The average gamer is in their 30s. And the people who played the original Grand Theft Auto are in their 40s now."

I think some people hear the word "game" and immediately assume "children's toy." People who ramble about games like Grand Theft Auto V ruining kids are missing the point that there are games that are not meant to be played by children. After all, it's impossible to get access to an R-rated movie or an M-rated game without parental consent.

If you buy something that says "Strong Sexual Content" on the packaging, you should also be prepared for your child to come up and you asking what "pimps" and "hos" are.

I understand that children are different, and what's appropriate for one child might not be for another. I played Grand Theft Auto III when I was ten, and I turned out ok. It was my 17-years-old-at-the-time-now-he's-old brother's game, and I would play it when he wasn't around. I would drive around in the cars and follow traffic laws. I was a well-read child, with two older siblings, and I wasn't unaware of the existence of sex workers, nor was I ever really taught to demean or dehumanize them, so I wasn't confused or bothered by what was going on.

Extreme torture, though? That would even bother me now. There were several parts in my first playthrough of Borderlands 2, which I loved, where I had to stop playing because it was too intense. (Maybe I'll write a post about that someday.) And that's sci-fi/fantasy, not true crime. And I'm almost 25 years old.

The Grand Theft Auto franchise has been about pushing limits, both in game design and in storytelling, for years. It's supposed to be edgy and controversial. And even if you find the story trite and silly (ahem), you can't deny that GTA is a poster franchise for Games As A Grown-Up, Edgy Storytelling Medium.

Controversial entertainment isn't typically accessible or appropriate for kids.

For example, this one time, a dad and a little boy, no older than six or seven, came in looking for a game.

"He likes playing Grand Theft Auto at his uncle's house, but we don't want to buy it for him, so we're looking for something similar but not as... bad," said the dad. "He likes having a big open city to run around in."

"Ok," I said. "How about Batman: Arkham City? You have a pretty open area to explore, and it's Batman, so you still get to beat up bad guys."

"Does that sound interesting?" the dad asked the kid. And the kid immediately turned to me, and asked, with a perfectly serious face:

"Does Batman shoot cops?"

I was so taken aback by the question that I just squeaked out:

"Batman doesn't shoot anybody."

Kids who play games like Grand Theft Auto are, at best, the equivalent of a kid bragging about how he watched all the Saw movies and didn't get scared, and at worst, miniature sociopaths who like to shoot cops, with a lot of poorly delivered sex ed in between.

Please, people. Listen when some bitter, disillusioned register jockey is telling you that what you're purchasing might be a bit too much for your kid.

Because when you're furious that your 8-year-old suddenly knows the meanings and usage of a dozen different racial slurs and the term "Dirty Sanchez," well, you've got nothing to blame but your own hands-off parenting. 

*My only friend who had the decency to already have an internet alias before I started blogging. Seriously, my funny nickname muscle is tired. 

"Your world is cutthroat!"

Words typed to me by my BFF She-Ra, Princess of Power as she forwarded me a link to this story, about a guy in London who was stabbed and robbed right after buying Grand Theft Auto V. 

I personally prefer this one, about some dudes in NYC who impersonated police officers to cut the line. 

This kind of thing happens at every release for every Hot New Item (just think of the moms mauling each other for Tickle Me Elmos and Zhu Zhu pets!), and probably wouldn't be national newsworthy if the title of the game weren't a felony. Nintendo actively discouraged retailers from having midnight release parties for the Wii U for this very reason.

But yes, working in a video game store is preeeetty hardcore.

"Fucking academic"

My friend Hugh Jackman* read my post on The Walking Dead.

"Why was it so long?" he asked. "Like, it was fucking academic, or something."

More quotes for the trade paperback! 

*Not that Hugh Jackman. Actually, not even named Hugh Jackman. He is small and hairy, though.

"Well written!" "I laughed!"

I asked Regina George what she thought of my blog.

"It's well written," she said. "I laughed."

Now I have my cover quotes for when I get my book deal.

BREAKING NEWS! Super Metroid still awesome

"Hey, [Roommate]," I said today. "I need you to give me an alias so I can write about you on my blog."

"Regina George," she said.

"Perf," I said.

So, yeah, I have a roommate, and her name is Regina George*, and I sorta maybe accidentally got her crazy into video games. She attacks everything in the LEGO series with a manic completionism that makes me proud. I also have this theory that if you cut all her hair off, she'd look like a British man.

Recently I bought a(nother) digital version of Super Metroid because Nintendo had it on sale on the Wii U e-shop for thirty cents. I mean, duh. And one day shortly thereafter, with no prompting from me whatsoever, I found Regina playing it.

"OMG I LOVE SUPER METROID," I said. My roommate is quite a bit less verbose than I am, so most of our conversations get a little one-sided.

"OMG IT'S SOME DEAD SCIENTISTS," I said. "OMG IT'S A METROID IN A TANK. WHAT'S GOING ON? CAN YOU PICK IT UP? WHAT'S THAT GLOWING EYEBALL DOING THERE? AAAHH IT'S RIDLEY HE KILLED YOUR PARENTS oh, by the way, you can jump and shoot at the same time."

"OMG LOOK IT'S PLANET ZEBES. OMG SPACE PIRATES."

Unfortunately, I had to work that day, but I continued my barrage via text, because I have a serious texting problem.

A one-sided text conversation where I rant about how great Super Metroid is

Luckily for everyone, Regina George did want to watch me play Super Metroid. As of this writing, I just headed into Norfair to beat up Ridley. (Maridia is still the worst, am I right, bros?) Playing old timey games on the Wii U game pad is great, except that Super Metroid uses the select button pretty heavily, and it's kind of far away from everything else. I got used to it, though, and most games don't use select at all, so I don't see it being an issue for most people.

And playing Super Metroid again gave me an excuse to tell my roommate about this guy:

The y cant metroid crawl? guy. He's my boyfriend. We're dating.

I'm not the type to whine about how games were so much harder back in the day, because most of that difficulty was artificial. As much fun as it is to talk about how back in my day we had to walk back to the castle to save and we were grateful we could save at all, updates like more save points are a good thing, because they make long, story-based, "hardcore" games more accessible to a wider variety of people. It's just funny watching people who are used to several-hours-long tutorials and insta-respawns go back and try to play games which, due to technical limitations, have a basic introductory premise of "I DUNNO, FIGURE IT OUT."

In any case, Regina had a good time dipping her toes into the lake of retro Metroid gaming, before she got stuck in a pit and gave up.

"Do you like Super Metroid?" I asked her.

"Umm, yeah, it's cool," she said. "If I had a SNES when I was younger, I probably would have played it a lot." Then she asked me if there were other old games available on the Wii U. To which I said:

"Check out my sexy Nintendo Virtual Arcade library. Pokémon Snap, anyone?"

*My roommate's name is not Regina George 

What up, Japan!

Blogger is telling me that I'm getting page views in JAPAN!

Hi, Nathan.

Badass story of badassitude

While my friend was reading this very blog, she killed a huge fucking cockroach with her bare hands. I'm gonna go ahead and say that gives me badass ranks by proxy.

My friend just got an adorable puppy

This puppy is the cutest puppy in the whole world. I decided that from now on, I'm going to substitute the adorable puppy for obnoxious customers. For example:

Yesterday, a man came into the store to return the new Tomb Raider game, because he said it was impossible to play because of the female protagonist. And then I

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The cutest puppy in the whole world. His name is Teddy Graham.]