Week of November 20, 2005

This game is called "Blackmail." For every one hundred American dollars I do
not receive, I will post the following photo with a black block removed.

Good luck:

First up, we have Listerine Mouth Spray. I'm guessing that is the name of the
product. Although, truth be told, I am not even going to look at the pictures I
took of it to correct myself. Suck on that, dear reader. I decided I am going to
run this article like a real newspaper would: no research and the assumption
that my readers are docile enough to accept anything I write as fact. Even if
the little green Listerine spray thing has a different name, the one I made up
pretty much tells you everything you need to know about it. It is a plastic
shell that has some sort of misty version of everyone's favorite liquid
tongue-scraper. However, I fear that I have once again found myself the victim
of my own experiences. All these new incarnations of that most addictive of
mouthwashes just can't hold a candle to the immense and powerful cleansing of
the old standard.

The package boasts 140 sprays (I sucked it up and actually looked at the
picture for this tidbit) but I've learned that the Listerine PocketMist (see
previous parenthetical aside) boast is completely useless. I doubt any person
would bother to use the thing past about 20 sprays. I suggest 20 because that's
about as far as I've gotten and while I generally put anything in my mouth, I
can't help but notice that this Mist does nothing but make my mouth taste sort
of Listerine-y for about fifteen seconds followed by the unpleasant taste of my
own teeth. This spray is the oral hygiene equivalent of Chicken in a Biscuit and
while nutritionally more sound is probably equally as socially detrimental if
you happen to be seen spraying some of this into your mouth.

On a side note, I have a small green pill-shaped bit of plastic filled with
mouth wash that still has about 120 sprays left in it if anyone wants it. No one
will take it off me. People see me spraying it and realize my mouth is about as
sexy as Billie Piper's accent.

Next we have GUN, the over-marketed genre-heavy 3rd-person shooter from
Activision. At least, its been released by them and if anyone else wants to line
up to get their named stamped on it I seriously doubt they have played the
finished product. I'd like to be able to say that it's not often that one gets a
PC game so under-developed and unrefined that this game is actually sort of
refreshing in its complete lack of concern for high-end video support, full
screen compatibility or sensible game-play but I can't. This sort of shit is
coming out pretty much every week. GUN (one would think that the game
development community would understand that to their entire demographic having
anything written in all capitals is perhaps the single fastest way to get
someone to think the one delivering the aforementioned message was a 12 year old
water-head crying about a girl he saw in school on a message board...but
apparently, no...this is the perfect way to get people to buy a game) is
basically a FPS with the 3rd person camera code slapped on at the end. The game
play is reminiscent of drunken masturbation with about the same payoff except
that the voice-acting in the game is slightly better than my own (my
inner-dialogue, however, is far superior.) I was sort of excited about the whole
western aspect of it and, as mentioned, it really tries to play this up as one
of the few western games. Perhaps its trying too hard.

This game pretty much falls flat on every level. It totes a big Hollywood
writer but with games like Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy in the US) developing
on the same high-concept premise and Tim Schafer still producing intelligent,
interesting genre pieces its almost impossible to take a game like GUN
seriously. After playing the finished product I'm amazed that
Randall Jahnson didn't just
opt to be credited as Alan
Smithee. You'd be better off just playing any GTA game and watching True Grit and Blazing Saddles in the background. Oh, and Kris Kristofferson shows up...but don't get excited. He
dies in the first cut-scene. A-ha! Fuck you and your spoiler warning.

I also went to a Mexican place and got 2 dollar amazing tacos. I neither
recorded the event in pictures or memory enough to write a review of the place.
I can't even remember their name. But they had fucking amazing tacos. And this:

And for all you people who think Billie Piper has a sexy accent:

No nothings for any of that shit upstairs.