Happy Valentine's Day!

i.am.rebecca

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

Being the contrarian I was raised to be, I dislike Valentine's Day on the fact it is a card company holiday. Being the practical person my father wishes I was, I consider money spent on frivolous things like cards to be silly and I am poor. Being the tomboy I am, I dislike mushy cutsey lovely dovey stuff. On the other hand, I am a girly girl who loves stuff with hearts on it and video games.

Fortunately, Valve comes to this contradicted maiden's rescue. Portal 2 is releasing in a couple of months and they decided to celebrate today by having Valentine cards in PDF format. Nothing says "I care about you" like murderous robots and holes in space and time.

Additionally, Portal 2 dissuades you from more traditional gifts. After all, you wouldn't want a giant queen bee to kill your lover.

In the world of Team Fortress 2, today we take time to remember the unrequited love between the Heavy and the Scout:

TF2 Christmas

Something about Team Fortress 2 causes artistic bouts of insanity. This has lead to hilarious griefing, program modifications, hilarious comics, absolutely stunning artwork, and more drawn gay pornography that anyone could ever need in a lifetime.

Now, we have Christmas songs with accompanying video.





This madness will never stop until Valve, Garry's Mod, Source Filmaker, and every man between the ages of 14 and 30 are destroyed.

RAINBOWS AND UNICORNS

Like every six year old girl in the 1980's, I had this picture or something similar to it in my bedroom. My folders had unicorns and kitties. My sticker collection was 50% cats, and 45% unicorns, and 5% Hot Wheels.

Obviously I would have loved Robot Unicorn Attack as a child.

Robot Unicorn Attack is a straight forward flash game. You jump on platforms, collect fairies, dash through stars, and try not to crash or fall to your death.

The beauty is in the details. There are rainbows EVERYWHERE. You explode into robot parts when you die. Your fairies are made of rainbows. Pink dolphins appear as you build up speed. You are a robot made of unicorns and rainbows. Rainbows! And the most relaxing song ever written plays in an endless loop.

Tangentially related, it inspired one of the best/worst/most unplayable maps in Team Fortress 2.

Rainbows and koth_always make scout cry

New Week; New Wallaper - March 29

In case you have been under a rock without internet access, Lady Gaga and Beyonce released a new video. It's a mediocre dance song set to nine minute long film. If you've missed it, let me sum it up for you: Prison exploitative film meets Kill Bill meets "Thelma & Louise". And Lady Gaga shows you how she makes a sandwich.

Lady Gaga screen shot from "Telephone"
Click image for large - 1600px × 900px

Bonus Team Fortress 2 wallpaper. The Heavy loves his Sandvich. It heals him when a Medic won't stick around to protect his fat ass. Plus he goes "OMNOMNOM" when eating.

Created by Hunkabee Sting of the Something Awful forums
Click image for large - 1600px × 900px

New Week; New Wallpaper - March 1

Team Fortress 2 - "Offblast" screenshot

Created by Valve
Click image for large: 1000 px by 625 px

Valve lavishes love on game details. While two of my favorite Valve games (Portal and Team Fortress 2) seemingly have simplistic or even spartan visual designs, there are nice touches everywhere you look. For Team Fortress 2, I love the landscapes. Sure the visual motif is "desert", "industrial factory", or "factory train yard in the desert", but who cares? You have two global enemies building their secret evil rocket shooting fortresses within walking distance of each other in the middle of a big empty desert.

Then again, you don't get much of a chance to explore your environment with great attention because you're usually too busy not dying. That's what screen shots are for.

Seriously - A non-serious post

I'm sorry but I can't take you seriously.

It's not you personally. My ears are hearing smart things coming from your mouth. But I can't take you that seriously when you're dressed like that.


Your education says, "I'm ten times smarter than you." The sweatpants with the sequined word "BOOTY" written across the butt says "High school freshman taking art class so I nap for the hour."

Your political analysis tells me you're really smarter than you look. That's not hard because your giant shirt with someone's face horrifyingly air-sprayed on the front tells me that you only vote in presidential elections if you vote at all and that your candidate of choice is determined solely by their stance on marijuana.

I apologize to everyone everywhere

for posting this picture

The cheap mismatched ruined suit looks bad ass on Tyler Durden because, well, he's Tyler Durden. On everyone else, it is less "My views on anarchy; let me show you them" and more "My dad is a used car salesman from the 1970's who is getting rid of this suit and I thought hey a free suit!"


Look, I just think your clothes are ridiculous. You are still a pretty cool person though. Just put down the bunny ears and the orange fake tanner.

Dora the Expl- what the fuck?

I am the last person on Earth who gives a fuck about children's entertainment unless I am sitting through it. Generally this is limited to watching Disney movies during my substitute teaching job, Pixar films, and the Transformers cartoon series from the 1980's. Nonetheless, even I know about Dora the Explorer.

The other day while taking a short cut across a store through the toy section, I saw the new 'tween Dora. I did a double take, literally. Back home, I searched online and discovered I am the last person on the planet to know about this.

The market is overflowing with overly feminized toys that instill traditional woman's roles and ideals into children. That's what Barbie and Bratz dolls are for. Once in a while, it would be nice to have a female cartoon figure that doesn't have to be prettied up. Taking away the rare character who is androgynous or - dare I say - a tomboy will alienate a lot of little girls who aren't instinctively drawn to the girly-girl imagery that they are surrounded by.

The old Dora wasn't even what many would call unfeminine or tomboy-ish. She wears traditional feminine colors, wears jewelry, and she was already marketed to be performing traditional female roles. She's unfeminine; she wasn't ultra-feminine.While her old image was closer to that of a normal little girl, her new grown-up appearance appears as an idealized anime-style girly-girl caricature.

A parent quoted in this article says it best:

"One group of parents has started an online petition protesting the change. "What next? Dora the cheerleader? Dora the fashionista with stylish purse and stilettos?" the petition reads. "We can expect it all, because that's what passes as 'tween' in the toy department these days.""

Mostly though, it just feels unnecessary. Mattel has said that they are updating Dora to keep up with their growing audience, so it is a marketing decision. Yet the makeover is so radical that it appears as completely different character rather than the one that has been shaped to be loved by younger children. Why bother changing her so drastically when she is basically being replaced by someone new-


Oh. Goddamn snipers! Those cowards ruin everything.

"Thanks for standing still, wankah!"

Week gone by...

Dad... Dad, p-put Mum on the phone!

For the past week I've suffered a head cold, sore throat, and a bad case of vidya gayms. That's why I haven't been writing.

Everyone offers post-Christmas sales, including the digital game distributor Steam. As luck would have it, Team Fortress 2 was dirt cheap and... now a week has gone by and I haven't gotten any work done.


I can't help it! Team Fortress 2 feels like being a 10 year old boy on the playground, complete with an unhappy matronly teacher figure yelling at you for you failures. The game combines imaginary guns, cartoon violence, jars of pee, retro-inspired graphics, obnoxious internet memes, and the ability to be a childish dick to other players. It's like playing capture the flag in Pixar's "The Incredibles".

A pornography staring your mother is the second
worst thing to happen to you today.

The game offers a wide variety of locations and games to play. But everyone plays just for the excuse to shoot and stab each other in various classes. You can choose to play:

• The Slapchop Guy with a baseball bat. No seriously, it's Vince!
  
• Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee.
• An overweight Soviet gun fetishist.
• Backstabbing, womanizing, meme favored, cheese eating surrender monkey.
• Every Scottish stereotype joke you can remember.
• A walking flamethrower.
  
• General Patton
• A morally ambiguous Nazi doctor as The Medic
• A Texan engineer NOT in it for oil

The downside to the game is that you do play with other people. That means that unless you mute the voice chat, you will hear nothing but 13 year old boys calling each other racial and sexual slurs. Thank heavens for the mute option.

On the bonus side, Team Fortress 2 led the rediscovery of a childhood memory: Heywood Banks songs. As a kid, I got to see Heywood Banks perform a couple of times and little me loved it. Thank you, Mr. Engineer for your fitting tribute to one of Indiana's celebrities.



Bonus: How to play TF2