Inexplicable Short Attention Span Adventures

In the last few nonexistent chapters our hero Josh lost his only change of clothes in the belly of a mystifying washing machine, driving him to seek out answers from a nearby midget. After putting together half of a strange jigsaw puzzle featuring a lovely underwater scene, he defended the civil liberties of a racist robot and eventually decided to rescue his clothes no matter the cost. We rejoin him as he prepares to arm himself for a great battle possibly related to the previously mentioned things.

Chapter 5
Sporting Goods in the Land of the Dead

Why must we cling to these old equations?"This bat," I asked, "should be pretty good for whacking things, right?" The sturdy aluminum baseball bat felt good in my hands, like an equalizer in an unfair world. I swung it around carelessly like a sword, causing a great sense of fear to take up residence in the face of the sporting goods clerk standing next to me.

"It's very good for hitting baseballs," said the nervous clerk who wore a tag on his chest that read "Stan."

"And ghosts as well?"

"I'm not sure about that. It's really just for baseballs. Do you want to be more careful with that?"

"Okay, Stan, let's say I encountered a ghost, okay. If I were to swing this bat at the ghost, it would definitely harm the ghost?"

"You should really just use this for baseball and not inside this store."

"Hypothetically, though, let's imagine for a moment that I am swinging at a baseball. This would hit the baseball without any trouble, right?" I then winked at him and added, "Yep, a big glowing white baseball the size and shape of a man!"

"Then I'd say you're trying to trick me into saying it will work against ghosts. Please, can you stop swinging that now?"

Batter up, ghoulface!I couldn't figure out why he was so troubled by my reckless swinging of the bat in the close quarters of the sporting goods store. It was rather neat, I thought. The bat moved so fiercely that it scratched against the fabric of reality, causing the air to bleed a whooshing sound that my vampire ears drank up with delight.

"So tell me this, Stan, if you were to die this instant and come back as a ghost, do you think I could take you down with this bat?"

There was a look of profound annoyance on Stan's face, perhaps unsettled by my relentless cunning. "Yes," he said in a dry and perturbed voice. "I think that bat could defeat any ghost, as well as fat children, elderly women, handicap people, and giant turkeys."

"Your obvious and unwarranted bigotry aside, that's all I wanted to know, good sir. I will take this bat. And also… some gum."

"We don't sell gum," said Stan, unwittingly triggering a disaster. His harrowing words denouncing the presence of gum caused my grip to loosen like grandpa's magic underpants, thus launching the bat out of my hands and through the air into the district of his face.

"Oops!" I said, absolving myself of all guilt by showing that I'm only human and therefore not responsible for the damage incurred when the bat flew into his right temple.

"Ouch!" he screamed, carelessly unaware that his loud voice was unsettling to me. "What the hell is wrong with you, you stupid little twerp?" There seemed to be a hint of anger in his voice, but knowing he wouldn't want to lose a sale as big as this one, I chalked it up to be paranoia on my part.

"Calm down, let's be diplomatic! I'm sure you didn't mean to cause me to let go of the bat. And are you sure about the gum?"

"You shut your mouth or I'll cram it shut full of pain!" he yelled, half clutching his wounded head and half advancing on me like a rabid sea tortoise in the unlikely setting of a sporting goods store.

Even when he began to attack me, I figured it was just his way of getting physical, a common practice of athletes and sport participants. Clearly he was only welcoming me into the fold. He swung his fist at me much like I swung the bat at him, hard and entirely by accident. Lacking the ability to evade confused sporting goods clerks, my face became a catcher's mitt to his fastball hand. Upon mere contact with his fist I unexpectedly fell asleep. Funny, I didn't remember ever being narcoleptic. But who cares about that, there was now a festival of lights going on inside my head. Hey, colors!!!!

Chapter 6
That's Good Insulin!

Going for a ride in the sugar factory."I think he's waking up," said the voice of a blurry white humanoid blob. Could it be a ghost or an anthropomorphic baseball? The sudden change in attitude from Stan the sporting goods clerk prevented our transaction from being completed, and now it appears he delivered me undefended into the clutches of my very enemies!

A second voice asked, "Hey, you there guy?" No, not more ghosts! This one was just as blurry, though it clearly had a mustache.

"Wah," I mumbled while rising up like a mummy being honored for a lifetime of civic involvement and for running a successful small business in an agriculture-based community. Things were still disorienting, because much like the life of the world's fastest man, everything was a blur.

"Hey buddy, you took quite a blow to the noggin!" said the blob with a mustache.

"Don't hurt me!" I whimpered, calling upon the souls of a million dead parakeets and orphaned children to give weight to my voice. I hoped and prayed that my emotional plea and short but thorough request would convince them not to hurt me, freeing me from the threat of physical pain.

"We’re not going to hurt you," responded the first blob, now taking on the guise of a regular human. "We're EMTs, you're in an ambulance."

"Oh," said the voice inside my head. I immediately echoed my brain's thoughts aloud.

"Oh," I said aloud.

"Yes, well, you've been injured."

"Are you doctors or morticians?" I inquired in disgust. "Give me the sugar coated truth!"

"You've got a bit of a bruise on your face, but you're going to be fine," said the EMT with a mustache.

"Not sugary enough! Get me some sugar at once! It's the least you butchers can do after dumping your gloomy tales of boundless woe on me!"

"You're going to be better than fine!"

"More sugar! I need more sugar!"

"We replaced your hand with a machine that makes money!" said the first EMT, attempting to belittle my horrific injury.

"I demand a bowl of sugar!" said I, in the most grating and condescending tone I could muster. I knew my rights, I thought, and these pallbearers of good news owed me.

You could see the mustache of the second EMT curl up in panic over my request, as though it were a dandy fop that just dislodged its monocle. "What?" he asked, alarmed by my request.

Oh sugar, you know I love you."I want a bowl of sugar and I want that bowl of sugar right now."

"We can't give you a bowl of sugar," said the first EMT in a stern and commanding voice that towered like a beached whale in a sideways world.

"If you don't give me sugar I'll pout!"

"We could give him some insulin," said the mustached EMT.

"No we can't, we'd get fired!" protested the first EMT.

"I demand a bowl of insulin right now! NOW! NOW! NOW! NOW!"

"Can we just give him some damn insulin so he'll shut up?" asked my devil's advocate, the mustached EMT.

"Goddamnit! Alright, but we're not taking him back to the hospital afterwards."

"Yay!" I cheered as they poured insulin into a tub labeled "medical wastes" and handed it to me. "See, that wasn't so hard," I said to reassure them even in spite of their incompetent handling of my injury.

"Just get the hell out of our ambulance and don't ever tell anyone we fed you insulin!" Their words carried as much force as their arms, which assisted their words in pushing me out of the back of the ambulance. In spite of their hastiness I was able to keep my tub of insulin from spilling. I couldn't believe how easy to con those buffoons were. I sure got the better of them!

After I watched the ambulance speed away into the dark of night I looked at the rippling tub of insulin and decided to drink up. I began gulping this delicious liquid, which didn't taste very good but nonetheless was refreshing up until the point it made my stomach feel like the site of a holocaust. It was at that point that my stomach lodged a formal protest and ejected the insulin, causing me to vomit all over myself.

That's when I was reminded I had no change of clothes. "Shit!" I thought. "I better get back to the business of digging up Eli Whitney's grave. He'll have the answers I need!"

I hope you enjoyed these two chapters, because if not, well, I simply won't write anymore. In fact I wasn't planning on writing anymore anyway, so it looks like you win this round. But let's wrap this thing up on a positive note by keeping hope alive with the magic allure of more, more, more! Stay tuned for the follow-up chapters that probably won't ever be written!

Metal Gear Solid: Retarded Edition

Hey folks, Taylor "Psychosis" Bell here with another video entertainment trainwreck! Everyone has been yearning for a stealth action/adventure game with terrible levels and stupid enemy AI, and K. Hawk - Survival Instinct is the answer to all our prayers!

This is a perfect example of why budget companies almost always stick to first-person shooters – creating a second-rate FPS is incredibly easy. Open up Pie in the Sky, spend an hour dragging boxes next to each other, steal a few enemy models from other games or from Poser, make a few MP3s with the trial version of FruityLoops, and you’ve got another smash-hit FPS ready to send off to Valu-Soft’s pain factory. Creating a stealth game like Tenchu or Metal Gear Solid, on the other hand, requires you to spend time crafting a natural control scheme, detailed maps and most importantly, intelligent enemy AI. I really wish someone had mentioned this to the people at Similis, since their concept of a stealth FPS seems to be exactly like a normal FPS, except you can only take a few hits before you die and the enemies all have nothing better to do than patrol endlessly between two points while failing to notice when a woman loaded down with 80 pounds of weapons stumbles noisily past them while they stare intently at the wall.

The full review is all ready for you! Don't keep it waiting or it'll beat your ass. Articles I write have been known to do that.

– Josh "Livestock" Boruff (@Livestock)