Occam Thoughts: I Picked the Best Day to Join

Edit: I was going to post this on April 1st but somehow my lizard brain underestimated just how incredibly bizzaro world and glorious April Fool’s day would be. So I am posting it a few days later. Enjoy.


Another Occam Thoughts and I find myself a bit tired this morning. It’s April which means the goats will return soon. Goats have frog eyes. Ponder that a bit. If I ever met a person who had goat eyes I’d kick them in the crotch until my boot was slick with blood. Then I'd salt the earth around them cause goat people blood will grow sorrow trees if left to plant in the earth. Jesus, this coffee I bought at the coffee stand tastes like a funeral. So I sip my sad-tasting coffee and will try to share with you all a bit of the gasoline puddle I call my head thoughts. I hope you enjoy them.





-Anyone remember the tv show Dinosaurs? It was on for a wee bit in the 90’s. The premise was a bunch of dinosaurs (puppets made by Jim Henson studios) as a working class family in prehistoric times. It was pretty neat and a prime time tv show cast solely with puppets was a ballsy move to say the least. Of course it didn’t last too long but always stood out to me for one particular episode called I Never Ate My Father in which the teenage son, Robbie, came out to his family as a vegetarian. The whole episode was about the family accepting Robbie as a vegetarian and that struggle. I remember at the time I was like, oh hey, that’s kinda weird and neat and creative. It wasn’t until years later did the meaning of the episode hit me. Nowadays its one of my favorite tv things of all time.





-Breakfast buffets. I adore them. Shoney’s. Continental breakfasts at hotels. Random eateries with names like Slappy’s and Grill the Sky hidden on lonely stretches of highway. I am attracted to them like a chubby moth to a greasy flame. Sadly, I live in a place that is severely lacking in the breakfast buffet department. However, when I have the chance to leave this state, I take a break from screaming at white people in the parking lot of K-Marts to go to Valerie’s Comfort Hole and eye fuck a pan of buttermilk biscuits. My life is lived with tiny victories and small moments and when I am standing in line waiting for my turn at the scrambled egg pile, I am truly king of the world.





-I don’t sleep very well. My pitted hell mind does not quiet enough to sleep easily and often. However, one of the benefits to not sleeping is that I get to see the most amazing things on late night television. Infomercials. 2 AM showings of Enemy Mine. Watching the second half of Nell while drinking beer and taking Tylenol PM because you are bored. It's all part of happiness for me. However, the very best late night tv is on religious channels. TBN aka Trinity Broadcast Network is a delightful little network that sells salvation to poor minorities and passes off too much make up and silk suits as sincerity. Also, a lot of the personalities on the show sit on golden thrones when they are on the air. Seriously, golden thrones. It’s reprehensible.





My personal hatred for them aside, they did introduce me to The Donut Man. Now I don’t know how a talking donut comes into play when it comes to the love of Jesus but damned if it isn’t the most perfect fucking thing ever. It’s a gap in logic that is so wonderful and absurd that I can’t help but embrace it fully and absorb it into my skin like a full sheet of brown acid.





-I beat Dragon Age 2. That was…ok? I dunno. I keep going back and forth. Staying pretty much only in Kirkwall is lame and for such a huge city, it feels very deserted. I feel like I spent thirty or so hours just doing side quests and errands for people. I never really figured out the point of what I was doing up until the end and even then I wasn’t really impressed with the finale or resolution. However, it wasn’t all mediocrity. The combat was ace. I played as a mage (Della Reese Hawke represent!) and using her various spells and abilities was so fluid and so simple. I loved that. Apparently people thought it was dumbed down compared to the first game but that's fine with me. My tactical mind begins and ends with Zerg Rush so I work better just fighting.


The game’s biggest strength is the dialogue and character interactions. Loved the bickering and musing and joking between party members. Those little moments kept me playing when I was on my umpteenth, “oh shit! That cave is full of spiders!” quest and was burning out. I’ll say this though, fuck Fenris. He’s an emo twat of an elf. Every time I had to talk to him I would replace all his dialogue with Linkin Park lyrics in my head. Even after I helped him a bit he was still brooding and generally complaining about the sand in his angry man cunt. I ended up actively trying to make him hate me. I wish the characters had been more exotic like in the first game. Where was my Shale? I missed Shale in this game. But yeah, its worth a play through if you liked the first one but don’t go out of your way to pick it up.





-I beat Bulletstorm. It was ok. Think I spent more time analyzing skill kill scenarios than actually enjoying the ride. Though there were some really nice epic shooting moments which I enjoyed. There should be an FPS that's just a bunch of epic non sequitur events. Sky diving without a parachute while chain gunning bat people followed by piloting a giant mech on the moon to stop the moon men from taking over. Gah, I could probably make a blog of just epic fight moments in games. That's not a bad idea actually. Hmmmm... Anywho, Bulletstorm was fun but not that memorable to me. Glad I played it but didn't really sing to my heart pieces. Kinda on an FPS kick so maybe Crysis 2 next as that game looks like what I imagine kissing Marilyn Monroe would feel like.


-Finally I want to mention that April 1st was my two year anniversary of posting on the c-blogs and actually becoming a community member. Yeah, April Fool's which seems fitting. So yeah, this site is home for me. I went from trying too hard here to thriving and it is because of all of you. I didn’t come to Destructoid looking for a community. I was mostly just tired of IGN and its ilk and wasn’t getting the content I wanted. I came here for the personal style of the writers. It was so refreshing to hear a voice in the articles. What really made me love big brother was this community of intelligent people with thoughts and opinions that I respected and embraced. Comment sections were more like conversations than angry message boards. People actually apologized sometimes after an argument or did strange things like make sure no one was angry. I was amazed. The internet isn’t supposed to be like this. It’s supposed to be like that scene at the end of Lawnmower Man when all the phones are ringing and the world is filled with strangers.





But here I am, 2 years later, the picture guy who gives out decoder rings and I am part of this wonderful place filled with the most amazing people. I have made real actual friends on this site. I have talked to some of you outside the context of Destructoid. This still amazes me as making friends has never been my strong suit. Apparently comparing a vagina to the well baby Jessica fell in makes a room full of people uncomfortable. But that’s fine with me. I’m better at being awkwardly me than I have even been at pretending to be confidently someone else. Thank you for allowing me an ABC After School Special moment just then. I’d start listing names of the community members around here that butter my toast but that’s a very long list. I just know I would leave out someone and my Catholic guilt that's sewn into my skin would ruin my day. So let me say you know who you are and my shredded wheat heart swells at the thought of you existing in the same world as me. Thank you so much.


Also, I can’t mention the community without bringing up the people at Destructoid who make this place a reality. From Jonathan Holmes and his kind eyes to Max and Tara who are my own personal Regis and Kelly to Jim Sterling who I don’t always agree with but certainly respect, its just a treat to bear witness to your hard work and passion. Also, I have to mention Hamzaa and his swerve. I don't really know what swerve is but when I look at Hamzaa, my brain says swerve and I'm inclined to agree. Massive thanks to Niero for the sleepless nights and lost hours and paper work and lord knows what else has to happen to make this place shine and thrive. I’m not much of a religious man but blessed is how I would describe the feeling I get when I think about being part of this place. It has had a huge impact on my life and I will always cherish my time here. So thank all of you.





This was the day I became king of the birds.
It lasted exactly 7 minutes.


Have a great day everybody.