Archive for the ‘Skippy is a huge nerd’ Category

These are all quotes, involving pants, that have been actually said in my presence.

1. “Wow, your pants smell fascinating today.”

2. “Aw, lookit how cute she is. Isn’t she just adorable? Look at how AAAAAAAAUUUUGH! Get it out of my pants! Get it out of my pants!”

3. “Hey! It’s been years since I forgot to put on pants before I left the house.”

4. “Those are rather unfortunate pants.”

5. “Okay, I suppose that it makes perfect sense for you to have a pair of Spongebob pants to match your wife’s Spongebob lingerie. Now why does your wife have Spongebob lingerie?”

6. “Now that you mention it, yes. The talking pickle has been in his pants.”

7. “Are we going to label the things that have been in his pants?”
“No we are going to label the things that have not been in his pants. It’s faster.”

8. “I have to tell you something that might disturb you. Two lesbians have just had sex in your pants.”

Now many of you may be wondering why I have put up a list of strange quotes with no explanation. (Others have probably given up wondering just what the hell I’m up to.)

Well obviously this is a way of leading in to my new Pants Contest.

I mean duh, what else could it be.

I currently still have a small pile of Squid Pie t-shirts left.  And so whoever posts the best pants related quote in the comments section will get a free one sent to them. Contest ends whenever I say it does, and like all things of importance, final judgment rests with Skippy.

Furthermore I’m sure that several of you want to know what the hell happened that caused these quotes to be um… be-quoted at me in the first place.  Well I will reveal provided that I receive some reader submissions to post up on here.  The holidays are coming up and everybody is very selfishly spending them doing charity work, or spending time with their family instead of sending in content for my site.  Picking up the slack would eat into my Left4Dead time, which means you might as well just hand Riverside over to those undead flesh-hungry bastards.

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I will not try to take over the whole world.  That is just greedy, not to mention impractical.  I mean, have you ever tried to run a church group or a PTA meeting?  Well neither have I, because it looks like more work than I want to do.  Imagine how much more work trying to manage the affairs of an entire planet would be.

I will take over a modest-sized third world nation.  Most people living in developed countries won’t be able to find me on a map, let alone make any serious attempt to thwart me.

I will not pick a country with significant oil reserves.  This way no developed countries will see the need for any sort of military intervention for humanitarian reasons.

Nutrition is very important, and after all, you are what you eat.  Which is why I will eat nothing but clones of myself.  I’ll probably make a batch of them fight to the death first, and then eat the winner, making sure I only get the strongest one.  I will eat them toasted to seal in the awesome.

I will construct and wear a set of power armor that is covered by a layer of ablative orphans, thus preventing any heroes from trying to kill me.

I will not execute any minions for failing me.  Execution has been vastly overrated as an educational tool by villains throughout history.  Execution isn’t a punishment.  Execution is what happens when you are finished punishing someone.  I might make incorporate that last line into the badge of my secret police force.

I will have a giant harem made up of the most beautiful women from around the world.  No clever idea behind this one, I just figure if I’m going to be a super villain I might as well get a harem out of it.

Every super villain needs an albino cat to stroke while gloating over prisoners.  But I have noticed that the heroes frequently escape during the gloating and make an attempt at thwarting.  So my albino cat will be rigged with a tiny dynamite vest so I can fling at any inconvenient heroes as my last line of defense.  Because I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t see that one coming.

I’ll make up a fake weakness to a common non-toxic substance, and allow rumors of it to spread.  I’ll say things like, “If Captain Freedom learns that I can be melted using only silly putty, my reign of terror will surely  come to an end!”  And then when Captain Freedom shows up with some silly putty I’ll be all like, “You dipshit!  No one has a weakness to silly putty.  NOW EAT EXPLODING CAT!”

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So the other day I managed to find a new story that I just had to share with all of my regular readers.

Australia has a problem.  And a serious one at that.

Lesbian Koalas.

Because I know that your brain is probably choking on that idea I will repeat it.

Lesbian.

Koalas.

Before I go any further, take a moment to reflect on how unlikely you were to hear that particular phrase today.

Also, lesbian koala is really fun to say.

But it gets better.  It seems to that the lesbian behavior is triggered by being caged.  Sort of like a women behind bars flick on Cinemax.  Except with koalas.

And when they go sapphic, they don’t mess around.  They form big piles, sometimes up to five at a time.  While hanging from poles.  Which come to think of it, is still just like a Cinemax movie.

But the best part of the article is the scientists trying to figure out why they do it.

“One theory put forward by the researchers is that the females do it to attract males”

Basically a koala is just like coeds on spring break.  Except without the near toxic levels of alcohol, crippling daddy-issues, or constant threat of fraternity rape.  And they are slightly less likely to be exploited by Joe Francis.

And from an evolutionary standpoint it would explain the ears.  They’re basically furry pistol grips to stop the eater from escaping before the eatee is finished.  To understand why this might be a concern you simply need to look up the definition of koala in the dictionary.

Koala:  Noun. A tree dwelling Australian marsupial that eats bush and leaves.

Bonus points: If Joe Franics was to make a lesbian koala movie or website what would it be called?  So far I’ve come up with Hot Eucalyptus Bitches, Rug-Munching Marsupials, and Abbey Winters.

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Originally I was planning to follow up LT Ronald’s post on the election with one offering up my thoughts on how it turned out.

I was going to exaggerate the issues to make the other side look foolish.    Blindly repeat sound bites no matter how ludicrous or discredited.  Question both the intelligence and loyalty of any folks who dared to display a different set of political beliefs than me.

You know, all the stuff that passes for civilized political discourse in our country nowadays.

But instead I’ll post this video, that I ironically became aware of when one of my readers made a comment that annoyed me, and I went to look at his site. (Thanks to Phelps for the video.)

So you know what?  It’s time to put the paddle down, no matter how naughty you think the dead horse has been.  If you are happy with the outcome of the election, be magnanimous in your victory.  Remember how it felt the last time your side lost, and try not to rub it in the other guy’s face.  If you are unhappy with the outcome, rest assured that our country can survive the next four years; try to graciously accept that this time the majority disagreed with you this time around.

Also I’m very disappointed that more of you didn’t vote for me as a write in candidate.

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So a few weeks ago me and my wife went out to Gen Con. I got to meet a bunch of people who worked in the table-top game industry, and I spent way too much money on new toys.  I even got a few leads on getting a publisher for that North Pole Zombie game I made.

All-in-all it was a pretty decent trip.

But during the trip there, things went horribly awry.

First we were late getting on the road.  No big deal in and of itself, stuff came up at work, and I stayed for a few extra hours to help out, because I like to be helpful. (Stop sniggering.)

So I was late in getting home, which meant I was late in getting on the road. Not a problem, as I was letting my wife drive. She likes to drive fast. Which is fortunate because we were taking I-90 through Chicago.

If you’ve never driven on I-90 around Chicago the most important thing to remember is that people there like to drive fast. If you try driving the speed limit, you will probably cause an accident. Plus old ladies will pass you and call you names.

So my wife is driving and we had just gotten through Chicago, pretty much keeping up with the traffic around us when we see blue and red lights in the rear view mirror. Great, we were being pulled over.

No big deal. I was thinking, it’ll just be a traffic ticket. In fact it would be my wife’s first traffic ticket so I was really not too worried. We’ll just mail the fine in once we get home.

Well it turns out that they have a funny law in Illinois. If you get pulled over for speeding they take your license.

I don’t mean that they cancel it. My wife can still legally drive. I mean that they take the driver’s license card with them once they leave. Once you pay the fine or go to court they give it back. And most of the time the police officer won’t take your license, so they’ll just have you sign for the ticket. But it is an option if they so choose.

Of course, if you don’t want to lose your license on the spot because, for instance, you are leaving the state and need to use it as ID, well they have a few solutions for that too. One is that you can get a bond card from your insurance company. Basically it’s like a mini-credit card, that you give over to the cop instead of your license. We had never heard of such a thing, so naturally we didn’t have one.

The other option was that we hand the police officer cash on the spot.

I learned that these were the options, because the police officer explained this to my wife and I. Repeatedly.

“I’m going to take your license as a bond, until you pay the fine or go to court.”
“But I need my license for ID.”
“Well then you need to pay the 95 dollar fine in full right now, cash only, exact change please.”
And then the officer gave us pretty much the same look that my ferrets give us when we’re eating ice cream.
The look that says, “Hey I want that. Gimmie. Plus I plan to poop in your shoe later.”

The officer, by repeating key parts of the previous conversation made it plain that we were either going to hand over a big wad of cash or my wife’s license.

So basically a cop from a small town outside of Chicago kept us on the side of the road, and shook us down. I had no idea that stuff like this was even legal in America any more. And it turns out that we didn’t have exact change, so we offered to pay 100 dollars, and let them keep the change. It turns out it’s not legal to overpay. I’m sure that this is someone’s idea of keeping the police honest. Which is laughable when they are allowed to demand cash on the spot. Since we couldn’t pay the exact way that they wanted, they took my wife’s license and sent us on our way.

And because we had to get back onto the highway from the shoulder we missed our exit, which was even more unfortunate that it sounds, because we did not notice it.

By the time we realized that that we must have missed our turn, we had wound up in what the movie Deliverance has taught me to be “Banjo Country”.

“Maybe we should pull over and ask if we missed our turn.” My wife suggested.

“Are you crazy? What if the guy we ask thinks I have a pretty mouth? I’ll get gang-raped to death, and you’ll be dragged off into the woods to be some hill-billy’s mistress. Let’s just keep driving until we run out of gas.”

Side note: this is also why I will never own a canoe.

Eventually we did find our way back to the highway we wanted. But we missed the next turn too.

And the next one.

And the next one as well.

So what should have been a three hour trip tops, turned into a six hour extravaganza.

Once we arrived in Indianapolis the fun didn’t stop however. You see we had a hotel room fairly far away from the convention. This way, we could get a nicer room, fairly cheap. It did mean that we would need to find parking closer to the site the next morning.

The next morning, we discovered something interesting about Indianapolis. They don’t seem to like the idea of people parking their cars. There were a few parking garages, but they were all full. After about 45 minutes of driving around downtown we tried the local sports stadium. I figured that had a great big empty parking lot, and would probably have some sort of paid parking available if there wasn’t a game going on. So I drove up found a spot and went into the gift shop/ticket to ask if I was allowed to stay there for the day.

The only employee present was a little dottering old man. Imagine if Joe Lieberman and Droopy Dog had an illegitimate child together. He appeared to be sorting through some paperwork, while waiting to see if he could collect the “Hellfish Bonanza”.

“Excuse me sir,” I began, “do you know if I am allowed to park in the lot out there?”
“What are you here for?”
“I’m here for the convention two blocks over.”

His eyes narrowed. His fists clenched. His jowls shook with tiny old-guy rage.

“NO! YOU CAN’T!”

“Alright, thanks anyways, do you know any places nearby where I could?”

“YOU CAN’T PARK HERE!”

“I got it. I’ll leave. But do you know-”

“I TOLD THEM THEY COULDN’T PARK HERE!”

“Right so I-”

“NO PARKING FOR THE CONVENTION!”

He then waggled his finger at me in an authoritative and dismissing way.

“Okay! I’m leaving. Calm down.”

He cocked his head, and gave me a puzzled look, as if he was working through a very difficult word problem.

After a few seconds of intense concentration, his eyes lit up, as if after a taxing mental journey he had arrived at the perfect solution to our problem.

“YOU CAN’T PARK HERE!”

And with that, we left.

We did eventually find a parking garage, quite a distance away, that had room for us. And only charged twelve dollars for all day parking.

And so we went to the convention, hung out, had fun, and later that night went back to the parking garage.

It was locked up.

There weren’t any signs listing hours or anything. No reasonable way to notify customers that there was a deadline to pick their car back up. But there was a giant metal gate keeping us out.

“No problem,” I thought, “We’ll just catch a cab back to our room, and then pick our car up tomorrow. We might have to pay extra or something, but this won’t be a big deal.”

And so we take a cab, and come back the next morning. It’s still locked up. And now we’re standing next to a parking garage with all of our stuff, and no way to get to our car. And I came to a realization. A parking garage that is closed on Saturday, is probably not going to be open on Sunday either. Which means that I will not be able to get my car back until Monday. Which is when I am supposed to be back at work.

Fortunately there was a number on the garage that we could call if we had an issue. Turns out that people who don’t open their parking garage on Saturday aren’t big on answering the phone either. But the helpful answering machine message did let me know that they would be back on Monday.

Eventually, I discovered that the smaller, human-scaled doors on the garage where still unlocked, even though the larger automotive scaled doors weren’t. So at the very least, I could head upstairs and put our baggage into the trunk, so that we didn’t have to carry it around all weekend.

While I was in there heading for my vehicle I ran into another driver.

“Is that your wife outside with a suitcase?” He asked.

I thought about how all things car-related had been going for me this weekend. And then I thought about my wife. Specifically, I thought about how good she is at keeping her temper when she has been under a lot of stress and frustration. I thought again about how things had been going this weekend.

“Maybe.” I answered, preparing to throw my backpack at him and run away.

“She said you were stuck in here. I have a pass card that will open the gate. I can meet you down there and let you out.”

Next year I’m going to fly.

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Regular readers may recall that I occasionally write about game mechanics as applied to large online games. I’ve gone into economics a bit, some stuff on crafting systems, and I’ve even gone into some detail on settings.

Well one setting that I think would be a really great for an online game is the universe that the Stargate franchise is set in. It’s got all manner of alien planets, ancient technology, and one of the more popular scifi story lines currently on the market.

And it turns out that I am not alone in this opinion.

Furthermore, the nice folks at Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment seem to think that I have something on the ball when it comes to making games, and have offered me a nice job there to help them finish it.

So posts might get a little sporadic for the next several weeks, as I need to pack up my house, and  move half-way across the country.

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I’m going to Gen Con this year. And I’m probably going to spend a ridiculous amount on games. And Dave Rodriguez of ShadowGirls has graciously allowed me to sell t-shirts out of his booth there. So if you are planning on attending stop by and buy something. I’ll even be signing books. I haven’t actually work on any books per se, but if you show up with one I’ll sign it.

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Normally I try not to engage in snark-fests with people who leave comments on my site. It doesn’t make me look particularly classy, and it rarely, if ever, solves anything.

But sometimes you get “one of those comments”. One of those ones that are so far out there that it is just begging for me to say something. A comment that just demands my attention, like a hot redhead in a mini-skirt wriggling coquettishly. And like a hot redhead in a mini-skirt, sometimes I just have to go “Man I’d like to get me a piece of that.”

And so I present morrogoth who responded to I’ve Been Wanting To Get This Off Of My Chest with the following:

to ward away evil summoned one must:
1. deny its exsistance, for a god is no more a god if no one believes in him any more
2. takes salt, silvers shavings and amethyst dust and create a circle and reverse that ritual, it will seal the creature again
3. dont believe that 2 con artists were able to translate texts from a people who barely left writings, into a full working spell book, and i know for fact that the rosetta stone has no sumerian text on it.
4. dont believe that 1 of said conmen mysteriously vanished leaving his house for sale to future led zepplin front man, his disappearance leads many to believe he messed with bad stuff, or he got caught in the cookie jar
5. cthulu was created when law and order seemed unbalanced, as many ancient religions. so if i recited fancy unintelligible words i can bring Sprague de Camps Conan the Cimmerian to life to pillage and loot?
or then the sexy red nails or Set?
remember my words
magic has no power over those who not give it power

Rebuttal by skippy

Thank you for you kind and timely words of advice. I do have a few issues with them that I would like to address

1. Deny the summoned evil’s existence.

This is potentially awkward, seeing as you just summoned him and all.

“WHY HAVE YOU SUMMONED ME, O SMALL PINK AND TASTY ONE?”

“I don’t believe in you! Now Piss off!”

Just seems kind of rude to me. Plus I kind of suspect that the Great Lord C’thulu doesn’t particularly care if you believe in him or not. The only thing that belief changes, as far as he is concerned, is your flavor.

I think that non-believers taste like zesty ranch.

2. Salt, silver shavings, and amethyst dust?

Dude, that’s pretty much seasoning for C’thulu. You might as well just soak in a marinade and lightly sprinkle yourself with 11 herbs and spices. You’ll be tentacle-licking good.

3. This whole thing you list seems awfully specific to ward of all evil. What if you summoned something from say, the Aztec pantheon? How is disbelieving in two random dude’s translation of Sumerian going to help you there?

I don’t think that Ahuitzotl even speaks Sumerian.

4. Again, not going to list that nonsense again down here, but I rather doubt that most people here believed that in the first place. Or where aware that it was a possibility.

But if I ever find myself confronted with some form of dark and eldritch being of darkness and evil, I will definitely inform it, in no uncertain terms, that I don’t believe that the future Led Zeppelin front man disappeared as a result of supernatural shenanigans.

Because I bet that shit works like Kryptonite.

5a. I’m pretty sure C’thulu was created when Howard Phillips Lovecraft had some bad hashish.
5b. Summoning Sprague de Camp’s Conan the Cimmerian would be a neat trick. Seeing as how Conan was a Robert E. Howard character and all.
5c. I’m pretty sure that I could probably summon Conan, Red Nails, or Set by reciting fancy unintelligible words. I’m just awesome that way.

I suspect that you, however, would probably be lucky to get two Pokemons and a Snork.

I appreciate the advice, but it is clear to me that you are no higher than a 3rd level pseudo-neo-pagan. Once you get enough XP to level up you’ll gain the new class ability called Joke. I really think if you manage to get that one it will help you out a lot.

I myself am a 9th level Sarcastic Asshole. (Its a 4th Edition Prestige Class)

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Over the years I have played many online games. I have current accounts on City of Heroes and Age of Conan. I experimented with Pirates of the Burning Seas, Auto Assault, Eve, and Lord of the Rings, and D&D Online. I was on the Star Wars Galaxies and Tabula Rasa betas. I had a World of Warcraft habit that lasted for years. And in fact it was when I was introduced to Dark Age of Camelot while I was still in the Army that I decided that I want to make video games for a living.

So basically I have spent a lot of time thinking about how large scale online games are put together, and how to make them more fun.

So for this installment, I want to talk about crafting, and how I think that it could be improved.

At the moment, most crafting systems worked in one of two ways.

1) Static Recipe System

The player has access to recipes, and by providing the exact components the recipe calls for they can assemble an item that is identical to every other item created from the same recipe. This is how most of the big MMOs have handled it. It has the advantage of being very easy to understand, but it is a grind based system, which can get boring quickly.

2) Varied Recipe

The player has access to recipes, and the ability to create experiment with small parts within the formula. Star Wars Galaxies had a system like this, where there was a large variety in the stats possible when an item was generated. Various factors ranging from character skill level, the the quality of the materials, and even a certain amount of luck could effect the end product in a variety of ways. This had the advantage of being a lot more interesting for the crafter. But many players found this to be too complicated, and it was difficult to predict how any particular item would turn out. Player would frequently have to make several items in order to randomly generate an optimal one.

So the biggest complaints that I always hear is that every crafting system is either too static and simplistic to be fun, or too dynamic and complicated to be fun.

My solution is a system which I call the “Assembly” crafting system.

The idea is that the player still has recipes. But the recipes aren’t for completed items. The recipes are for the individual components that go into into a finished item.

To demonstrate I have made this quick example, using a retro sci-fi theme

Each ray gun is made up of three components. A Firing Mechanism, A Power Supply, and an Emitter.

Each component has a variety of ways that it effects the stats of the final weapon.

Firing Mechanism
Repeater – The pistol gets an increased rate of fire, but reduced accuracy and damage.
Charger – The pistol gets an increased damage, but reduced range and accuracy
Phaser – The pistol gets an increased range, but reduced rate of attack and damage

Power Supply
Heat Bank- Weapon does 5 points of heat damage per shot
Atomic Battery- Weapon does 5 points of Atomic damage per shot
Neutron Compiler- Weapon does 5 points of Neutron damage per shot

Emitter
Beam- Weapon gets increased range and armor penetration, but reduced damage
Blast – Weapon gets an increase to damage, but a decrease to accuracy
Ray – Weapon has severely reduced range, but gains area of effect attack

A player would be able to make 27 different weapons from the sample components I’ve shown so far. And in each case the weapon would be significantly different, both in game use and appearance. So if we had an expanded list of components, say 20 in each category, we’d have 8000 possible combinations. This would give the players who want to craft more than enough options to be able to make weapons optimized for the needs of any other player. And it has the added effect that players can also craft to get a specific desired appearance, in case they are more into the role-playing and dress up elements of the game.

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Recently I acquired the Age of Conan. This has turned out to be a pretty good MMO, and will probably replace City of Heroes in my gaming rotation.

So now after a week of running amok in a low-fantasy world I decided to pull out my old 80’s sword and sorcery movies. The perfect kind of movie to watch as long as you can just shut your brain off and ignore the horrible dialog, cheap rubber monsters, and plot holes that you could drive a cement mixer through.

One movie in particular caught my attention.

The Beastmaster.

Now the Beastmaster actually stands up pretty well, as far as bad 80’s movies goes. Its cheesy as all hell, but its still fun in pretty much the same way that Xena was. But I did notice a small issue with the ferrets.

You see, I saw this movie when I was a child, and it convinced me that I wanted a pet ferret. This same movie convinced my parents that no such thing was going to happen. In fact, due to a variety of reasons I had been unable to get a pet ferret until about four years ago. And last week was the first time that I have seen this movie since acquiring a set of the furry little kleptomaniacs.

For those of you unfamiliar with this movie, the main character, a young man named Dar, fights against the forces of evil with the help of his animal companions. He communicates with them telepathically and they help him in a wide variety of ways during his adventures.

Amongst his animal companions are two ferrets named Podo and Kodo. These critters are portrayed as a couple from their first scene. In fact by the end of the movie they are shown to have children together.

The only problem is that they are both boy ferrets.

This is will actually be fairly obvious to anyone who owns ferrets as the females are about half the size of the males with these animals, plus they have pointier faces.

So basically I immediately recognize that these are boys and that they appear to be in a gay relationship. So I paid more attention and noticed a few other details that supported my new theory.

One of the ferrets can be seen with a litter of babies near the end of the film. Now there is no way that those two reproduced in any traditional way. So clearly they have taken the adoption route. Most likely from China.

Their primary enemy is a priest. An evil priest who practices human sacrifice, but a priest none-the-less. So just like in real life the gays find themselves being opposed by a member of the clergy. No doubt he seized power by pandering to the “anti-gay ferret adoption” values voter.

“Sure, I’m against his whole ‘Hurl our infants into the sacrificial flame’ policy. But we have to protect marriage from the evils of gay ferrets.”

Lastly, there is their primary means of transportation. Kodo and Podo travel in a purse. A purse that is carried by a half-naked well muscled blond man. Specifically, they are kind of snuggled up into the vicinity of his crotch reason.

So to recap:

1) Both boys

2) Hated by the clergy

3) Travel via man-purse, which is strapped to a dude’s crotch.

Yeah, these ferrets are gayer than a dick with sequins.

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