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Latest Chris & Trilby comic: #85: Revelations

7/6/05: Zombies of Wimbledon Common

You know what's great? Eternal Darkness. The Gamecube game. It's great. It's one of those games that make me wish I knew how to erase portions of my memory so I can play it for the first time and piss my trousers anew. If you're not familiar with the game, it's about a three-way superstar prize fight between three ancient demonic gods and the doomed losers who have to stop them from destroying the universe by harnessing the magical power of courier quests.

I don't usually get into survival horror. The first Resident Evil was the worst game I have ever played. The voice acting was so soul-crushingly bad that I refuse to believe that the actors genuinely believed they had put on a good performance. I theorise that there must have been some sort of disagreement between the game producers and the actor's agency, and the actors were grudgingly forced to do the work, but resolved to alternate between too much and too little enthusiasm AND emphasise the WRONG words. Also, there is enough hair gel in the intro movie to fill a moderately-sized canyon.

But Eternal Darkness is great, even if the title does sound like it came from a survival horror random name generator. What's great about it is that you can play the game three times with a different ancient demon god in the hotseat each time. Each god has their own array of monsters. There are four different delicious fruity flavours of zombie, and for want of something to write about, I'm going to try and determine which one is the best.

Let's meet the contestants!

BROWN ZOMBIE

This is kind of the pathetic zombie that all the other zombies bully. It's a skinny burnt skeleton with spindly arms and legs, the kind of zombie who, in life, had their mum cut their hair for them. That said, however, this is a brave little zombie who never says die, despite his limitations. Go ahead, lop his arm off. He'll feel around at the gushing stump where it used to be, then shrug what shoulder he has left and continue his assault. Off with the other one! He'll keep coming. He won't grow any arms back and he doesn't seem to know how to bite, so he'll just shamble up and bump into you a few times. It's cool, once you've got a throng of them with their arms off it'll look like they're giving you a little Lovecraftian group hug. Of course, they'll drop once the head's off, but they still wriggle about on the floor like they're trying to hump it.

GREEN ZOMBIE

The big selling point of the green zombie is that, if you chop off its arms, it retains phantom arms that can still slap you about. It sounds intimidating, but these jokers can't even withstand having their heads lopped off before sinking to the floor. Slackers. In the interests of game balancing, though, they do come back to life if you don't quickly chop up the corpse. Apparently it was such fun having its head lopped off the first time that it couldn't help getting up for seconds.

BLUE ZOMBIE

Okay. I know what this is. This is the result of late night brainstorming.

GARY: Right then, we don't want the zombies in our game to be carbon copies of all zombies that have ever appeared in survival horror ever. We need a fresh kind of zombie! Now, what do zombies do?
LANCE: I'll tell you right after I inject adrenaline directly into my heart. OOF. Okay. Zombies shamble around, moan, and generally hate the living.
GARY: Okay, now what have zombies NEVER done?
LANCE: They've never... fallen in love?
GARY: Hmm... that might interfere with the game's overall message. Something else.
LANCE: They've never... run for president?
GARY: Brilliant! But we'll save that for the sequel. No, I've got it. We'll make our zombies SING!
LANCE: Sing?
GARY: Sing! And when they're finished singing, they'll explode!
LANCE: You're fucking on fire, Gary!

RED ZOMBIE

The fleshiest of the zombies, judging by the sound of their thighs slapping together when they shamble. These are the big tough lads. To kill him, you usually have to completely dismember him and whack his torso a few times while he stands there wondering what his next course of action should be. And of course they regenerate all their lost limbs. If you're smart about it, a single red zombie could feed your entire household for years with cold zombie arm sandwiches. Also, judging by their colour and texture, they appear to be made from strawberry blancmange. It's the first time a zombie in a video game has ever made me hungry.

So, which one is the best? I dunno. Probably the red one. And I should probably stop writing updates first thing in the morning.

- Yahtzee

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1/6/05: Laugh, You Bastards

I'm noticing a curious trend in Australian adverts lately. Not the fact that they're all excruciatingly lame, that's old news. I'm talking about adverts that close with the main characters bursting into completely inappropriate laughter. It's kind of like those episodes of Hanna Barbera cartoons that close with an alleged joke and the main characters engaging in awkward drawn-out laughter until you wonder if something has been slipped into their water supply. Then the voice actors go home to beat their wives.

But these adverts don't even have the excuse of having something approximating a joke to set off the actors' giggles. Let's take a look at the main culprits.

CASE STUDY 1

The Product: Philadelphia cream cheese. I may be in a minority on this one, but I always thought that stuff tasted like ass.

The Advert: Good-Looking Non-Threatening Middle-Class Professional White Chick A and Good-Looking Non-Threatening Middle-Class Professional White Chick B are in their mutual kitchen unsuccessfully trying to fix a busted coffee table when Good-Looking Non-Threatening Middle-Class Professional White Chick C comes in and hands around Philadelphia cream cheese snacks. All three of them then go through the usual motions of biting into them in slow motion with their eyes closed and making orgasm noises, kind of like Chairman Kaga with bell peppers.

The Ending: Here's a direct, completely unedited transcript of the advert's closing scene:

GLNTMCPWC C: So, how did you break your coffee table?

(GLNTMCPWC A and B stare at each other)

(all burst into laughter)

The Discussion: Wait, what? Was that supposed to be a joke? Why are my sides not splitting? Stop giggling like a trio of arch twats and resolve this final plot point. Clearly there was something about the manner in which they broke their coffee table that provoked this bizarre outburst. From the way they looked at each other and erupted into chuckles, I can only presume it was an event that was mutually embarassing. The obvious answer, then, is lesbian sex. This is not the first time I have had reason to utter that sentence.

CASE STUDY 2

The Product: Some breakfast snack bar thing

The Advert: Good-Looking Non-Threatening Middle-Class Professional White Chick visits her new age friend who offers her new age herbal tea and something called 'alfalfa soy slice'. Good-Looking Non-Threatening Middle-Class Professional White Chick then makes her excuses and repairs to her car, where she enjoys a nice breakfast bar snack, biting into it in slow motion with eyes closed etc.

The Ending: New age friend materialises at the car window with something resembling a turd wrapped in cling-film and announces "Some alfalfa soy slice! For later!" She then notices that her friend is eating something else, there is an awkward pause, and then both burst into laughter.

The Discussion: Okay, so apparently it's funny that your best friend has insulted your household and cooking skills. That said, though, the new age cunt probably deserves it. She actually ran up to her friend's car to give her more of something she turned down in the first place. I think I see how this works. The new age cunt's only friend is the GLNTMCPWC, no doubt out of pity and nothing else, and as soon as the laughter is over, she will follow her home and not leave until she is actively asked to. Then she will go and hide in the bushes and watch the bedroom windows all through the night. She'll install security cameras all over the house. She'll dress up like her friend and try to seduce her husband. Until she finally succumbs to lunatic jealous rage and they both kill each other in a stab frenzy. Ha ha ha! Actually, that is pretty funny.

CASE STUDY 3

The Product: Some shampoo crap

The Advert: Completely generic shampoo advert up until the end. Good-Looking Non-Threatening Culturally Ambiguous College-Aged White Chick walking around swishing her lovely hair about, taking a shower with limbs arranged to hide nipples and mimsy, husky male voice over making love to the microphone throughout.

The Ending: GLNTCACAWC admiring her hair in the mirror when an identical GLNTCACAWC walks in. Their dialogue goes as follows:

GLNTCACAWC B: Have you been using my shampoo?

GLNTCACAWC A: (in an 'obviously lying' tone of voice) No...

GLNTCACAWC B: That's okay. I've been using your boyfriend.

(GLNTCACAWC A gasps in a manner that I can only classify as 'delighted surprise', both collapse into laughter)

The Discussion: Ha ha ha! I have abused our friendship! Ha ha ha! And your boyfriend has been unfaithful! Ha ha ha! You're taking this remarkably well! Ha ha ha! I have a strong suspicion that whoever wrote this advert gets all his knowledge of human nature from the stack of porn movies in the pungent basement in which he has exclusively spent the last twenty years of his life. No doubt in the full version of the advert the girls settled their differences by making out, and when the boyfriend came home they had a threesome so steamy that afterwards he'd need to wear an oven mitt while putting his bollocks back in his pants.

If you know of any other examples of inappropriate laughter at the ends of adverts, why not discuss it on the forum? Don't email them to me, because I stopped caring about halfway through writing this update. Ha ha ha ha ha ha! HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha (fade out)

- Yahtzee

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25/5/05: Information Superbypass

I turned 22 yesterday, if anyone's interested. Anyone at all.

The internet seems to be routinely misrepresented by Hollywood films. And that surprises me, because Hollywood is otherwise well-known for their excellent fact checking and continual portrayals of realism. Also, I have a brain tumour so big that my brain seems to have mistaken it for another brain and is trying to hump it.

I expect Hollywood to misrepresent things like how long it takes to hotwire a car or make pipebombs, because most people tend not to do this sort of thing as part of their daily routine, but the internet is something pretty much everyone walking the Earth has used at some point. I can only presume that Hollywood executives have access to some different internet, where all pages, no matter how obscure, appear on-screen instantaneously with no apparent loading time, because apparently every server on Earth is situated in the main character's basement. And let's not forget that every time you click on a link the computer makes a little tinny bleeping sound, and that mail programs come with embedded animation as standard.

One thing I also noticed is that, when logging onto the internet, the home page always seems to be set to some mythical screen on which some variation on the words "Welcome to the INTERNET!" are emblazoned in big letters. It then occurred to me, dear reader, that if new users come to the internet with this sort of expectation then they can only be completely confused before being raped by about five hundred cyber-muggers who hide behind every corner of the information superhighway. And so, because I believe in creating a firm balance between doing good and doing evil, I made a Hollywood internet home page for everyone to use.

Click here to check it out!

- Yahtzee

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18/5/05: Sarlacc? Mo' Like Barlaccs

The stupidest decision I ever made in my life was to see how long I could survive in a cave in the Antarctic. The first day wasn't so bad, but after that I had eaten all the M&Ms I had brought for sustenance and I was left having to subsist on ice and raw penguin. I was quite delirious by the time a BBC nature documentary crew arrived to take me back home, and I can no longer look at a penguin without descending into tremors and crying, even though the film crew pointed out that I had not actually been eating penguins, but lumps of ice carved painstakingly into the shape of penguins.

Anyway, I've consequently been a bit out of the loop as far as popular culture goes, which is why I was surprised to get home and discover that Star Wars Episode 3 is on the verge of release. Now, there's a certain expectation on everyone's part, particularly everyone who hangs around the likes of Chefelf, that this film is going to be yet another of George Lucas' attempts to destroy his own reputation. It's like the viewing public is a great big goblet which he filled with fine champagne, then when we'd all drunk it, he got up and filled the same glass with piss. Worst of all are the people who say "Oh, I know it's going to be bad, BUT I HAVE TO SEE IT ANYWAY." No. No, you don't. If we didn't go and see it, perhaps George Lucas will die from shame and someone else will make a better film in his wake. They can even dedicate it to his memory while the world cheers.

But it wasn't really the Phantom Menace that dragged Star Wars into the lame pit. Maybe it was the lid, and Attack of the Clones were the nails that held the lid in place, and maybe episode 3 will be the big fat man they hire to sit on the lid forever, but Star Wars entered the lame pit long before then.

Gentlemen, I give you: the Sarlacc.

If you're one of the eighteen people worldwide who have never seen Return of the Jedi, the Sarlacc was the big monster thing used as a convenient plot point in the first act that Jabba the Hutt, the amazing living dog poo, would feed his victims to. All we saw of it was a big gaping toothy mouth in the desert floor surrounded by sand for miles in every direction. According to the aforesaid living dog poo, anything that tumbles down the Sarlacc's throat gets painfully digested over the next ten thousand years.

Okay, first of all, ten thousand years is a fucking long time to digest something. I'm pretty certain that AIR digests a human body faster than that. By the time you started to notice any degree of decomposition, you'd be about 100 years old with Alzheimers and you'd put it down to the invisible space goat who lives in your head. Of course, Jabba played up the whole 'painful' aspect, but then he's got an intimidating reputation to think of, and saying "I'm going to banish you to some immobile monster's tummy for the rest of your life so you can seriously think about what you did" just doesn't carry as much weight. Besides, how would ol' Jabba know that it hurts like a bitch? Has he ever been in there himself? Has he ever met anyone who has? I submit: NO. More likely some passing natural history professor told him that it has a 10000-year digestion cycle and Jabba, being a turd of the stupid variety, took his own interpretation.

If it really was 10000 years of agony in the Sarlacc, the Sarlacc's stomach would have to have mechanisms that (a) retard the food's ageing and (b) stimulate the nerve endings directly, and there would also need to be some other reason why such things are necessary to digestion, as it seems odd that a creature would evolve these things solely out of spite for its prey. So, assuming that Jabba was a big fat gitface liar, a fate in the stomach of the Sarlacc basically comes down to sitting around in a big, warm, dark, wet place for the rest of your life.

It wouldn't even be boring. Jabba chucks people down there routinely, including that life of the party Boba Fett, so we've got a righteous shindig going down inside Sarlacc's tum. You'll meet all sorts of new people, meet a nice girl, have a few dances, a bit of wine, a bit of laughter, fuck, marry, have children, divorce, then spend the rest of your lives sitting in opposite corners of the stomach not speaking to each other. What would you eat? Why, the Sarlacc's stomach walls, of course! No shortage of meat there! Cut off slices with your light sabre and have a little barbecue. Either it'll grow back, which is good, or it won't, so your food plan is simultaneously your long-term escape plan.

Before Jabba came along, and introduced the Sarlacc to the controversial 'enemies of Jabba' fad diet, I simply cannot understand how the Sarlacc could have evolved. Let's go through the most basic things a species needs to survive:

Nourishment

Before Mr. Turd met the Sarlacc, the Sarlacc's diet would have been restricted to the occasional stupid desert wanderer. And I mean REALLY, dangerously, not-allowed-out-without-government-supervision stupidity. The kind of stupidity that doesn't win a Darwin Award because the judges said "Okay, not even WE believe that anyone can be as stupid as that." This kind of person:

"Hey Tim, look at this big hole in the desert with teeth all around it that looks like a big angry mouth."

"Let's jump in!"

"Yes!"

"Wheeee!"

Actually, I could believe that if the Sarlacc lives right next to a middle school in the East Midlands, but it DOESN'T. It lives in the deserts of Tatooine where there's bugger all but sand. Even if the place swarms with little creatures just below the surface, it would be like you or I trying to get a meal by sitting in the middle of Trafalgar Square with our mouths open, waiting for unwary pigeons to fly in. I believe I said something similar about the Barnacle from Half-Life a while back, but at least they had a dangly tongue that could be mistaken for a Tarzan rope some tosser might grab to impress his girlfriend. The Sarlacc didn't even have that.

Of course, remember that the Sarlacc digests over a period of 10000 years, so it obviously exists in a state of incredibly speeded-up time. And since it never budges a fucking inch, it probably doesn't need much energy. So maybe it could get by on the one or two stupid wankers who wander alone out in to the desert and don't look where they're going long enough to avoid tumbling into a gigantic floormounted gob chute.

But then Jabba comes along, and since a guy like that has a lot of enemies, he's probably feeding the Sarlacc slightly more often than the 10000 years needed to digest the last meal. Something tells me that the Sarlacc would be gorged to death within a fortnight. That's if the prey doesn't eat their way out first.

Reproduction

Assuming that the Sarlacc doesn't reproduce asexually, that somewhere there's a Mrs. Sarlacc, there needs to be a point where the two of them get together to do the nasty. Since they live in speedy-time, they wouldn't move perceptibly to beings on our sort of timeframe. To get an impression of Sarlacc sex, then, film yourself fucking your significant other while you both gaze permanently upwards with your mouths open, then replay it later and freeze-frame at any point. That's what Sarlacc sex would look like.

And this, of course, assumes that the two Sarlaccs can finish before succumbing to any of the above-discussed hazards.

And with that, I bid you good day.

- Yahtzee

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15/5/05: Sorry, sorry, sorry

Updates are going to be a bit slow at the mo. Number of other things taking priority. In the meantime, enjoy Chris & Trilby.

- Yahtzee

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8/5/05: Still Searching

Chris & Trilby is updating again, in case you didn't notice. Let's see how long I can keep it up for this time!

Gentlemen, start your engines. SEARCH engines, that is! More stupid search strings used to get to this site, because God knows the internet can never have enough of these.

5 days in a stranger

You won't believe how many combinations of 5s, 7s, days, strangers and skeptics pass through my search string list, but I have to say that this is a new one. If the person who wrote this is reading, please get in touch so I can ask permission to use this title for the porn movie version of the game. I'll need to find actors with absolutely staggering amounts of stamina, obviously. Actually, let's stop thinking about that and forget I ever brought it up.

bikini fuck

Experimentally I entered this into Google Image Search, and it produced bugger all. Then I tried again with the filters disabled, and my God did some floodgates open then. I really think there should be a cap on how many pictures of blowjobs can be allowed on the internet. They just aren't very NICE TO LOOK AT. It's like watching people chewing with their mouth open, or something. Can't we all agree that that fantastic nude picture of Marilyn Monroe in a swimming pool with her tits and mimsy strategically obscured is ten times sexier than some amateur photo of a greasy college girl gobbling knob?

Anyway, this search string becomes funnier if you add a couple of punctuation marks and assume it's being spoken by a sea captain in 1946 learning at an awkward moment where the nuclear tests are taking place.

And retaining the nautical theme:

captain birdseye

Okay, I can remain silent no longer. People have been coming here looking for Captain Birdseye ever since I began checking my search string logs. At first I didn't mention it because it wasn't that funny, but it just keeps happening, every damn month. I checked Google - there I am, number 4 for Captain Birdseye, just below what I can only presume are what official, sensible websites exist for the hoary old tart.

As everyone should know by now, people who search for odd things on Google obviously have some kind of sexual fetish. Whoever typed this is no doubt wriggling with glee at the thought of feeling the captain's salty bristles tickling their inner thighs EVEN AS WE SPEAK. Of course, I've been out of England for nigh on two years now so for all I know Captain Birdseye is being played by Melinda Messenger at present. I don't know, though. If I must play host for people looking for porn, they could at least be looking for something more traditional.

sex britney

Like that, for instance. Much better.

reading haters

Yeah, god damn reading! I hate the way it has allowed the human race to communicate ideas and language in a visible, lasting format! Why can't all those smartypants 'literate' people FUCK RIGHT OFF!

Unless they're talking about Reading the town. That's a little bit more understandable. I mean, look at it.

Grrr!

GRRRR!

- Yahtzee

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2/5/05: Bitch Bikers Bide

So, the Hitch-Hiker's Guide film, then. Not exactly a film that will hound the creators to infamy and ruin, but which nevertheless left my socks stubbornly not blown off. A lot of in-jokes are included to please the fans while, paradoxically, a lot of classic lines get butchered to piss them off. The greasy fingerprints of Hollywood's diseased digits blight the thing from beginning to end and keep it from flying to great heights. I'm not going to go into detail, because I encourage you to form your own opinion. Don't tell it to me, though, because I couldn't give a monkey's trump.

I would like to discuss two problems Hollywood has which the film illustrates.

1. Remakes and sequels

I know I haven't lived as long as some of you wrinkley pensioners, but I am pretty certain that the mainstream film industry has never had as big a problem with remake and sequel glut as it has now. It's like every last ounce of originality in that wretched Californian suburb has been dripped away, with the desperate execs wringing aching teats with white-knuckled hands while the cash cows moos with pain and distress. Just looking at the current IMDB front page, three of the top five box office films are remakes or sequels, and the other two have such fucking generic-sounding plotlines they might as well be.

It really isn't that difficult to come up with a filmable story. Check it out, I'm going to set myself a little task now and write five film plots right off the top of my head.

PLOT ONE: A young man finds himself magically transported to an alternative universe where cows eat human flesh and the last remaining outposts of humanity cower behind their city walls, besieged by cud-chewing horror.

PLOT TWO: An alien from space falls to Earth and, demonstrating an ability to bring women to multiple orgasm without the need for intercourse or even physical contact, undermines all the world's men. It later transpires he is the spearhead for an invasion fleet scheduled for a few generations down the line, attempting to stop human reproduction.

PLOT THREE: A film depicting an average day in the life of a man who has angry dogs instead of hands.

PLOT FOUR: A go-getting young adventurer washes up on a desert island where a group of evil pirates have captured a group of accountants and forced them to work out a comprehensive investment plan for the next financial year.

PLOT FIVE: A lone hero with a crippling personal problem must overcome adversity to achieve their goal, while being hounded by a larger or more powerful antagonist. On the way he is joined by a beautiful woman and a comic relief sidekick, and eventually overcomes his crippling personal problem at a convenient moment.

My second problem with Hollywood is this:

2. Token love interest subplots

At the risk of blowing my own trumpet, just for once I'd like to see, in a major film, something like the end of Articulate Jim, where the hero nuts his primary love interest Glaswegian-style and runs away.

I really think it's about time there was a renaissance in the entertainment industry, where everyone can sit down together and decide that maybe a film can still be valid without a love interest. I know, back in the day, the practise of having a love interest subplot in EVERY FUCKING FILM IN EVERY GENRE EVER was probably just implemented for broader market appeal, but these days it feels more like they're doing it out of tradition more than anything else. What on earth are they thinking? "Here's a film about an oily muscular man gunning down five million arabs with a gun mounted to the end of his cock. Let's throw in a female character for him to put his mouth on at the end." And then, in order to justify this stupid idea, the speaker adds "THIS WILL MAKE WOMEN WANT TO SEE THE FILM." And all his film executive friends nod their heads and agree, instead of tactfully having security show him out.

To illustrate my point, let's go on a magical journey through the power of our imaginations. Let's pretend that we're on a female-dominated parallel Earth. For centuries men have been downtrodden, but in recent years the masculinist movement has brought something approximating to equality. In the alternative Hollywood, the big fat cigar-chomping women sitting around the meeting table are allowing a young writer to pitch her idea for a summer blockbuster.

"Here's the idea," says she. "It's a two hour film about a joyless professional woman discovering the importance of spending time with her stay-at-home husband and children, with lots of romance, kissing, and serious discussion about menstruation."

"Sounds good to me," says one of the execs. "But stick a gunfight in somewhere, SO THAT MEN WILL WANT TO SEE IT."

It's a stupid idea, isn't it? It's not only stupid, it's extremely patronising to think that women will flock to theatres to sit through two hours of violence just to see hunky Brad Pitt stick his tongue in some broad for two seconds at the end. Women are smarter than that; they have to be, in order to work their ladyshave products properly. If you ask me, we should say bollocks to the delusion of broader market appeal and keep our target audiences narrow and realistic. Political incorrectness is a small price to pay for two hours of violence or nerd humour unmolested by snogging.

- Yahtzee

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