Portrait of a Prick
May 31For starters, the guy’s choosen nickname means, to paraphrase the Urban Dictionary, a socially unskilled, heavy-handed, self-important prick.
His involvement with WoW suggests that it is his entire life, as evidenced by his character and that he sells items on eBay. Everything about his account suggests that he does not play the game for any sense of wonder, or thrill of the gameplay. Everything points to a drive for in-game status.
And a guy like that will always hate someone else having something he can’t and a guy like that will always beak off when a normal human would know to keep their mouth shut, assuming they actually felt it important to have an opinion on the wishes of a dying kid in the first place.
I’m with Matt – see you in hell, you malignant knob.
[UPDATE] Blizzard just deleted his posts. Five bucks says he’ll beak off over that now.
Nerf Assholes
May 31When I read the nice little story about the dying kid who received a highly coveted mount in World of Warcraft as part of his Make-A-Wish experience, I first felt a little glow. Gosh, that’s neat, I thought.
Then, recalling my own brief time spent in WoW and the horrifying human beings I encountered on Blizzard’s official boards, I wondered how long it would take for some prick online to pervert the gesture. I quickly found out: Twelve posts.
Touching story and all but I must point out the glaring differance between in-game and real life:
In-game: Phoenix mount, woot, I fly fast! Phoenix rises from the ashes when it dies.
Real life: This kid is worm food.
He should have wished for something that mattered, way to blow a wish douche bag.
Touching, indeed. When this fucker burns in the firepits of hell for all eternity, I hope that’s what his own personal demon keeps shouting in his ear, or writing on his penis with a hot poker, over and over: “Way to blow a wish, douche bag.”
Harry Potter and the Sweaty, Piggish Tourists
May 31I kid, I kid.
Universal Resorts out here Orlando way announced this morning that they will be bringing a themed section of Islands of Adventure to life as “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.”
In other words, it’s Universal and not Disney who has landed the fattest golden goose on the market, maybe in the history of theme parks.
I don’t think you can possibly discount the significant impact this development will have on the action here in Central Florida. One would assume Disney has to be kicking themselves in the mouse ass after this one, since the clout of Harry Potter could quickly and easily eclipse the allure of any of their existing intellectual properties and/or attractions.
One would also assume that Disney already has some fairly beefy contingency plans in the works to bring new rides and lands to their parks in an effort to combat the Potter allure.
Then again, Disney often makes incredibly short-sighted and stupid decisions, so it’s possible their plan is simply to release a limited-edition pin and be done with it.
Anyway, I’m excited. Islands of Adventure is a vastly-underrated theme park, assembled by former Disney Imagineers with an incredibly high level of detail and theming. It’s got great rides and immersive lands. So Hogsmeade, Hogwarts, and the rest should be in very good hands.
More ASS, Some LoSH
May 30There’s something bittersweet at the heart of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman, a pang of regret mixed with that ugly beast known as “reality”–as if the characters somehow know that their world, their adventures, all that they hold dear is too wondrous and sparkling to last forever.
In a sense, it’s almost a parable for today’s geek–the twenty- or thirty- or forty- or whatever-something, struggling to stay in touch with the stuff they love while juggling assorted “real-life” responsibilities like babies, house payments, laundry, and so on. Or maybe it’s just me–I wonder sometimes. Can I remain in this slightly arrested state forever, where I spend most of my days living as a perfectly “normal” adult in the perfectly “normal” world and sit down before bed each night to paw through moldy superhero comics that are more than two decades old?
Those comics, the Legion of Super-Heroes (Levitz/Giffen era), seem to have a comment to make too–they’re the ultimate Mary Sue concoction, at least they seem that way. It’s a relatively insular superhero and sci-fi mash-up universe, set in the distant future of a definitely insular superhero universe (the DCU, natch). It’s consistently fueled by its own arcane, obscure history and culture, redefining what it means to be an anal-retentive obsessive nerd.
And yet, for a nerd, what a place to go. Everyone’s friends, you know them better than they know themselves, and loyalty rules above all. Even better, there’s some SERIOUS action happening–sex and love aplenty. A pre-teen kid growing up in the sixties through the eighties could do far worse than to aspire to becoming a member of the Legion, and as that kid became a young adult and then adult geek, there must have been tremendous comfort in being able to escape into this elaborate fantasy world every month.
One comic mourning the loss of childhood playthings; another that enshrines them in never-changing amber.
Dumb Dora said, "Goodbye, Charles, you _____."
May 29It’s safe to say that the death of Charles Nelson Reilly at the age of 76 affects me more than most thirtysomethings. Not because I was his illegitimate love child with Brett Somers, but because I was a genuine, unabashed fan–both for his supreme kitsch value in the pantheon of pop culture, and for his exceptional wit and style.
This piece I wrote for a zine several years ago pretty much says it all. It has absolutely nothing to do with geeky pursuits whatsoever, unless you find a straight white male’s love for CNR to be somehow “geeky.” It probably is.
During the summer of 1989, two things fascinated me. One was QVC. The other was Match Game.
