Dead Animals

A college friend of mine just had a baby. Now a big group of college friends and I are planning to take a trip down to South Carolina to visit, and she and her husband are trying to arrange a traditional celebration called Aqueeqa for the same weekend. All I really know about the ceremony is that it involves the cutting of someone's hair, and the sacrificing of a goat. Then you eat the goat.

Now, when I first heard about this, I was a little nervous. It's not that I'm an animal activist or anything; I simply have a policy about never eating anything I've met while it was still alive, especially if I'm the one who has to kill it. During a trip to Maine while I was in high school, our hosts decided it would be fun to get some lobsters and cook them alive. Everyone in my family posed smiling for the camera as they dangled a wriggling lobster over a large pot of boiling water. Everyone but me, that is. I waited outside with my hands over my ears so that I couldn't hear the lobsters "screaming."

I did kill a bird once, but it wasn't out of sport or so I could eat it. I was 16, and I was walking home from town with a friend when we got caught in a downpour with some pretty heavy winds. We ducked into a gas station and sat it, continuing once it let up to a drizzle. Pretty soon, we came across a naked baby bird lying on it's back with it's tiny wings spread out to it's side. It was barely moving, but we knew it was alive because every few seconds, it would open its beak wide as if crying out in fear.

It was clearly frightened and in pain, and leaving it to suffer on the sidewalk was too cruel. I said to my friend, "I guess we should kill it, so it's quick." I was hoping that if I suggested it, he would do it.

"I guess," he said. We both stood there for a second before I realized the coward wasn't going to be the one to pull the plug. Damn. I picked up on of the large stones that bordered the driveway of the church to our left. I held it out at arms length over the bird and let it go.

I missed.

It took a lot of will power to reach down and pick that rock up again. I was afraid of having my hand too close to the thing I was about to kill. I raised the rock up again, this time making sure that I had the right angle, and released it a second time.

Pop!

Spider-Man 2 Videogame Impressions

Last Sunday I gave into temptation and picked up Spider-Man 2 for GameCube. I've spent just about all my free time since then playing. The structured portion of the game is actually fairly short, but it still took me quite a while to beat it, because I was constantly distracted by the huge playground the designers have built. The island of Manhattan created by the designers is huge, and you can travel from one end to the other seamlessly. There's always someone nearby marked with a green question mark, who will give you some task to do, but I have a lot more fun just swinging around looking for random encounters. My favorite type is the rooftop robbery, where I like to swing in, pull an enemy to me with a webline, and throw him off the roof. Street level fights are fun too, though. I get so much satisfaction webbing up a thug's feet, then leaping to the nearest lamp post to hang him upside-down. Another favorite move involves grabbing a baddy, swinging to the top of the Empire State Building, and then performing a 100+ story pile-driver onto the street below. Amazingly, some thugs manage to survive this treatment, which is fine by me, because it means I can perform it again.

The Black Cat plays a major role in the story-line of the game. She's constantly turning up in her tight leather outfit, trying to convince Spidey to lighten-up and have a good time with her. I was watching my brother play the game when we witnessed an exchange that resembled the following:

Black Cat: Why don't you let me show you a good time?

Spidey: What did you have in mind?

Black Cat: Do you know The Shocker?

At this point, my brother burst out laughing.

Now, I've been into Spider-Man since Middle School, so of course I know that when Black Cat refers to "The Shocker," she's talking about a professional criminal who goes around dressed in a yellow quilt, and who has wristbands capable of creating powerful sonic-blasts. My brother, who is less familiar with the intricacies of the comics, instantly thought of the term's other meaning.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, please turn your attention to the following image:


The Shocker
This had to be an intentional joke. I wouldn't put it past game designers. I'm sure they are just as lonely and overworked as those perverted animators that work for Disney.

Hilarious sexual innuendo aside, I see this game as something that I'll be playing for a very long time. It's they type of game that's fun to play even without any real purpose. I spent a fucking hour just swinging around on skyscrapers last night. I've heard other people recommend the title as "Rent Only," but this is a game that I needed to own.

Bad News Hughes

I implore you all to go read Bad News Hughes. I love this guy's stories. I can't think of one time that I've visited his blog that I haven't been overcome with giddy laughter. Here's a bit of his most recent post:

I sit there for a minute or two, thinking about the situation and becoming even more enraged. I grab the phone and dial. “Chris, I’m going to beat the holy living shit out of you. You’re going to wish you had never been born. I’m not even going to give you the chance to make an excuse. I’m just going to open up and start hurting you the second I see you.” Slam!

And, predictably, a minute later I dial again. “You’re going to feel pain like you’ve never felt before, you miserable piece of shit. I’m going to break every bone in your worthless body. You’ve done a lot of crummy shit to me, but this takes the cake. I’m going to beat you, and beat you, and beat you, and there’s nothing you can do.”

This pattern repeats itself for about 15 more minutes, with my invective getting increasingly violent and detailed. “I’m going to peel your skin off, Chris. I’m going to light your fucking head on fire and piss it out, and then do it again. I’m going to rip out your right eye, but leave it attached, so I can point it at your other eye, and you can watch that eye being ripped out up close and personal.”

NJ Sneer

My brother is in a band. The band is called NJ Sneer. It's also sometimes called The NJ Sneer, but I think the former is correct. I'm not really into hardcore music, which is what they play, but I do like their songs, even if I can't understand the words, let alone tell one from the next. If you're into hardcore, check out their website (linked below) and download their album. If you're live near Northern & Central New Jersey, join their mailing list for updates on shows. If nothing else, they are great performers. They have not yet met the basement that they could not rock the shit out of. You know, except for when all their equipment breaks within 4 minutes of them going on, but that only happened once.

Edit! I checked with the band's drummer, who set me straight:

To be honest, probably one half of our sets have ended early due to equipment failure. not necessarily after four minutes, but before the end.

Click here for a glowing review of NJ Sneer (scroll about halfway down the page)

Click here to visit the Official NJ Sneer Website

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I thought that they always had been, but I guess I didn't look too closely at the settings for the blog. If you've been trying to comment on my posts but couldn't, you should be able to now.