Last Call at Christian's Bar

Well, I'm officially done with Christian's, the bar down on George Street.  I don't often go downtown, but when I do go it's usually with Ash, and when I do go we usually visit Christian's at least once, mostly because we're just amused by the irony of the name.  But it's really not worth it, all things considered.  It's a dark, small, crowded bar and everything there is way more expensive than it really ought to be.  Including forgetting your credit card, apparently.

But normal bullshit first.  For example, when I'm downtown I usually drink sourpuss in pepsi, because it tastes like candy and I am basically a child who is for some reason everyone thinks is an adult.  Every other bar on the street charges $5.25 for my usual drink.  Or at least I think they do.  Every bar I've been to and bought a drink at charges that much, at least.  Christian's, on the other hand, charges either $7.25 or $7.50, I can't remember because after the first time they told me the price I didn't buy another drink any time I went there.  I also have never used the ATM in the back of the bar, because it turns out they charge you ten fucking dollars to take money out there.  I've never seen a store's ATM charge over three dollars on the outside to use their machine, so that's just highway robbery, it's obviously just to take advantage of anyone too drunk or distracted to read the screen as they put their PIN in.  Especially since there's an ATM just a few feet from the door outside, not owned by the bar, that charges a perfectly normal small-change amount.

But still.  Even considering the complete lack of atmosphere and the naked profiteering, I'd still stop in with my friends now and then just to see if we can find a seat and hang out to talk before hitting another bar when we get thirsty again.  But after reading this news article, I'm so grossed out by the place I don't even want to do that any more.  Apparently someone left their credit card at the bar one night, and when they came back for it the next morning Christian's straight up robbed and insulted them by putting a 25% "idiot tax" on the card.  That bar officially gives zero fucks about their customers; that shit is credit card fraud at the very least, since the owner of the card obviously didn't authorize the charge, and the bar owner doesn't even act like it's a problem.  He implies that the multiple people coming forward talking about the 25% charge are lying by claiming it's a (still unauthorized, and thus thieving) 15% charge, never apologizes, and then acts like serving drinks that they pay for is some special service.  He goes on about how so many people cancel their cards so he's losing tons of money all the time over it, but like I was pointing out earlier, the bar is overcharging everything to a ridiculous degree (seriously, ten fucking bucks to use the damn atm wtf), and I haven't heard about any of the other bars (who don't act like thieving bastards and seem to get by well enough) complaining about this or charging people to get insulted for making an honest mistake.  I even asked a bartender friend whether or not this was a common thing, and he was all "Wtf no way!  That's insane, we NEVER do that, Christian's is the only place I've heard of that pulls that type of stunt."  If people cancelling their cards is such a huge problem for the bar, there's a pretty simple solution: stop accepting credit cards with open tabs!  Either it's worth it and you don't need to rip off innocent people for not pulling that shit, or it's not and why the hell would you do it.

Also dang, it has been like a whole month since my last post.  I gotta work on that.

Monster High: Ghoul Spirit Is Kind Of Shitty

While we were clearing out my grandmother's apartment after she moved into my aunt's house, I found a DS game called Monster High: Ghoul Spirit.

I know Monster High is some Bratz-style brand of sexy monster dolls for I guess the vast hordes of tween proto-goths who want sexy monster dolls?  Presumably the game belongs to one of my younger cousins, and I hung onto it so it wouldn't get lost and I could return it to her.  I got bored though, so I tried playing it.  It's...kind of shitty.  Not super-shitty, it's no E.T. The Extra Terrestrial or anything, but it has little to no value as a game.

I guess I should start with the most immediately obvious quality, the graphics: they kind of suck, even for a DS game.  I tried to find a decent screencap to show them properly, but the game is so boring and worthless nobody seems to have posted much about it.  I did nab this, which actually looks better than the game usually does:

Now, I can't really say the graphics are completely awful.  I mean, I've seen worse graphics.  Monster High: Ghoul Spirit is probably roughly on par with Nostalgia in that respect, or maybe even a little better than Nostalgia (Nostalgia was pretty bad).  But when this screencap example is the very highlight of the game's graphics, it's...not good.  There was one character who was supposed to look like a total mess, with bad frizzy hair and an ugly outfit and one of the quests was to get her looking nice again.  But I didn't realize that she was supposed to look like a mess until I finished that quest and her sprite transformed into the "pretty" version.  I don't know if it's because I never actually looked at her or if it's because all of the characters are so jagged and awkward I can't tell the difference between the ones that are supposed to be pretty and the ones that aren't.  I also don't know if it's something to blame on the graphics or something to blame on the character designs.  Maybe both.  Speaking of character designs, I just have to say something about the general look of the series.  I know it's not original and everyone has said it before me, but dang, these monster girls are freaking gangly.  And long.  You could probably have a literal skeleton as a character and she'd be able to share clothes with the rest of the characters because you physically cannot make them skinnier than this.  And I'm pretty sure they've all got horribly broken and deformed legs.  How does this poor thing walk on those twisty stilts?  Each girl is technically a different type of monster, but really they're all variations on the horrifying Lankyleg Ganglebeast

It's sad that those boots are the second most horrifying thing about her legs.

But I should at least try to stick to game-specific criticisms. One thing that's definitely bad in this is the map.  The school you're in is so bland-looking that it's hard to figure out where you are just by the surroundings, so I mostly used the map to get around.  Unfortunately, the map is not actually an accurate floor-plan of the school.  The game designers thought it was more important to make the school coffin-shaped on the map rather than make a map that could accurately tell you where you are.  Or, you know, make the school actually coffin-shaped, for some reason.  If that was so important to them, I don't know why they didn't just draw the map first and then design the school to its specifications, but whatever, it's a stupid game and it's obvious that nobody actually cared.  I can't tell you how many times I went into the wrong room because the map told me I was on other side of the corridor.  The school is pretty small and bland-looking, which is kind of weird.  Not really the small part, I guess, since there's only like ten students, but you'd think a trying-to-be-coffin-shaped school of monster people would look more interesting.

So it's mediocre graphics and a shitty map.  Not a great start, but it can redeem itself with the actual gameplay, right?  Maybe it's an okay game after all!  But...no.  Sorry.  Not a chance.  The gameplay is crap.  The entire game is random fetch-quests and pointless busywork.  One particularly egregious example was the "storyline" (I guess? I wouldn't call it a story arc, but it's as close as this game managed to get) about how the zombie girl was kicked out of class for "mumbling" but the real problem was that the teacher doesn't understand zombie language.  Well, okay, I guess in that case you go to the headmistress and explain what happened and make sure that the problem gets documented and dealt with?  Nope!  You talk to the zombie girl instead and she tells you that she wants to make sure the teacher learns zombie language by reading a zombie language book.  So she sends you to her locker to get the zombie language book, then you bring the book to her so she can highlight the important parts, then you go find a custodian's outfit, then you bring it to her so she can change into her disguise, then you go to the "creepateria" to get a soda, then you bring it to her so she can explain the next step where you bring it to the classroom and pour it on the floor so she can clean it up as...a distraction, I think?  For some reason it is vitally important that you find a custodian's outfit for the zombie girl and then pour a soda on the ground.  Then you go into the empty classroom and leave the book on the desk.  That's it, right?  The end of the quest?  Nope!  Next you get a text message from somebody else, so you go find them and they tell you to go find the audiobook of the book you just left on the teacher's desk.  So you bring them the audiobook, and they tell you to go put it in the teacher's headphones.  Or mp3 player.  Apparently the two are interchangeable.  So you go do that, and wonder why you're wasting your time like this.  Then you go leave that on the teacher's desk.  But you're not done yet!  You get another text, and suddenly someone else has an idea!  You should make a potion that magically makes people understand languages!  So you go all over school collecting the potion ingredients (I think -- I vaguely remember doing something like this, but I'm not entirely sure. I tried to double-check by looking up a walkthrough, but none seem to exist, and I'm certainly not going to play the game again just to check, so let's just assume I'm remembering correctly), then you have to go to the Mad Science Lab to make some sort of potion with them, then you have to find whoever sent you on this quest so you can give them the potion so they can drug the teacher with it and the teacher will suddenly know the zombie language and everything will be solved!  For the third time!  That was very long and complicated, wasn't it?  Basically, you do a fetch-quest to fix the problem, but you're immediately sent on a second, completely unnecessary part to the fetch-quest to solve the same problem you just solved, then the final part of the fetch quest is to render the first two needlessly long fetch-quests unnecessary by using a potion to make the teacher understand zombie without needing either the book or the audiobook.  What the hell.  That was a waste of a waste of my time.

I feel like I've wasted your time just making you read that, so here is a hopefully useful "life hack" to try and make up for it.

There's a relationships element to the game, too.  I don't see the point of it, though.  You seem to max out every character's affection for you by completing the quests, and since the quests are the only things to do in the game, you don't have any other options.  You can't progress and do another quest until you've finished the one you're on (or at least I think so, this is another thing I only half-remember) and there aren't extra things to do like give gifts or anything.  So basically, play the game in the only way you can and you'll automatically max everything out and win the popularity contest at the end of the game.  Yaaaaay.  If that's how it works, why bother keeping track of affection at all?

Overall it was a tremendously dull game.  In fact, it was so boring that I forgot I was writing this post three-quarters of the way through and left it in my drafts for like, a year, until I found and finished it today.  I've since given the game back so I can't replay it to familiarize myself with it again to have anything fun to say at the end of the post.  Instead, I'll just point out how the series has desecrated The Phantom Of The Opera by having a character named Operetta, who is somehow the Phantom's teenage daughter from the Deep South, complete with a Southern American accent and obsession with .... ugh ... country music.  Not that there's anything inherently wrong with country music, until you try to mix it up with the fucking Phantom.  She is the single worst interpretation of anything related to Phantom of the Opera.  Just look at it, it's horrifying.

"AN MAH MYOOZIC CAN WHUP Y'ALL'S MYOOZIC!"

 (PLEASE PLEASE KILL ME NOW)

BREAKING news.

I know it's a dumb thing to be amused by, but I had to laugh when I saw this in my RSS reader.

"BREAKING news.  The 12-person jury in the David Folker murder trial has reached a decision at Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court."  First, it's hilarious that the BREAKINGnews. picture is so much bigger than the actual news it's breaking -- and that it's got that period at the end of news.  Breaking news -- sorry, BREAKING news is not exciting enough for an exclamation point, it must be read in perfect monotone!  I mean, perfect monotone.  And after that, you notice the second hilarious thing: there's no information here.  The jury has reached a decision!  What was the decision?  Iunno.  Does it matter what they decided, as long as they decide anything?  Aw shucks, who cares!  BREAKING NEWS what news BREAKING NEWS it was second-degree murder BREAKING NEWWWWS.

um

BREAKING! NEWS.

The words "breaking" and "news" no longer mean anything to me D:

Phoque Bardot Murder Burger

Apparently there is a restaurant (a terrible terrible restaurant of filth and hate!) in Quebec called Côté-Est that has shocked and horrified millions by - how dare they - selling a burger.  Awful, right?  I mean really!

This is such a heinous crime that of course righteous and civic-minded individuals have informed the restaurant of their opinions regarding the burger, in the form of hate mail and death threats.  Nothing extreme or anything, of course -- I mean, how else are they supposed to spread their message of love and non-violence?  The only way to share your belief that killing and eating animals is wrong is by threatening to kill humans.  For some reason, some people have been objecting to this?  I don't get it, really.  They aren't saying the restaurant owners should be eaten, like they do to those poor innocent baby seals!  Just that they should be killed!  Which, really, is a fair expectation, don't you think?

All kidding aside, why the hell are the animal rights nutjobs only now getting freaked out by this place.  It's not like they were a vegan place that started selling seal burgers in a moment of madness.  They had beef burgers before this, presumably.  They had chicken on the menu.  They have been selling meat the entire time.  Are cows worth less than seals now?  Is there a hierarchy of animals, where it becomes less and less offensive to eat them?  How come pigs are lower than seals on that hierarchy?  Pigs are adorable.  Look at this guy.  How is this little babykins worth fewer points than a boring old seal not eating ice cream.

Raise them on ice cream for extra deliciousness

Oh, wait, I figured it out!  Clearly, up until now the restaurant hasn't been selling meat made of animals.  They've been selling meat that was not made of animals.  Beef is not made of cows, it is grown on a farm somewhere, and this seal burger is the first time any animals have ever been made into meat for this restaurant.  All the rest they got was made at the supermarket, where as we all know, no animals were harmed.  It's the only thing that makes sense, really.

Dear Drunk Lady Please Don't Grab My Food

Went down to Mardi Gras on George Street the other night with Ash and Yellow Dude, and had a blast (of course).  The evening was a ton of fun.  YD's Jack Skellington costume was a hit, my Vampire Queen costume was exactly what I wanted it to be, and Ash's rocker outfit looked badass.  We heard some great music, saw some great costumes, just generally had the sort of time you'd expect from Mardi Gras.  When we got bored of the street around three thirty in the morning, we hit the Celtic Hearth for some dinner, as we usually do.  Which is where some random woman walking past leaned over my shoulder and grabbed my sandwich.

Of all the weird people on the Street, this lady was the weirdest.  Like, seriously.  I don't go downtown often, but when I do there are always weirdos, and this person was the weirdo to out-weird all weirdos.  Exactly how drunk or how stupid do you have to be to walk past a complete stranger's table in a restaurant, take a liking to their sandwich, and proceed to grab it off their plate?  I was talking about something or other to Ash and YD, and all of a sudden they just got this look of utter shock on their faces.  Ash, momentarily speechless (an oddity, to say the least) managed to point towards my plate and say, "Uh, Robin!" in a horrified tone.

I look over and see some random person's hand clawed around my sandwich and from behind me I hear some woman say, "Oh, can I have this?"  Without thinking, I knock her hand away and hunch protectively over my plate, my hands belatedly forming a shield over my poor groped food and saying, "Um, NO!"  I never did see her face, but Ash and YD told me later that her expression was really offended, and I hear her go "Awww!" in a disappointed tone as she leaves the restaurant.  Maybe she thought that by getting her hands all over my meal I'd be too disgusted to keep it and she'd get away with the bounty or something.  Clearly she has no idea how possessive I get over my food.  Back off, lady.  I'll fuckin' bite.

Happy Turkey Day!

Or for freaks like me who don't like turkey, happy whatever you are eating day!  Or just Thanksgiving, if you aren't hungry.  I hope everybody who is getting one enjoys their long weekend!

Fuck This Fucking Bullshit

Look at this crap.  This guy raped a twelve year old kid and gets off easy because the judge "could not prove the girl did not consent to it."  This is directly from CBC's report:

The victim was in Grade 6 when the two began a sexual relationship.

In court, the girl said that Louvelle got her pregnant, and that on four separate occasions he jumped on her stomach in an effort to terminate the pregnancy. 

Justice Alan Seaborn wrote in his decision that he believed the girl's claims to be true, but he was unable to find Louvelle guilty of assault because he could not prove the girl did not consent to it. 

The kid was TWELVE.  A twelve year old child cannot consent to sex with a twenty-one year old man. Full stop, no exceptions.  She most certainly can't consent to a grown man jumping on her stomach because he had sex with her and got her knocked up.  What the hell is wrong with this fucking dipshit judge if he thinks a little kid can consent to sex and assault?  That's not even how the law works!  That's statutory rape, even if she said yes she still wasn't consenting because a) a kid doesn't have the knowledge, experience or physical development to fully consent to something like that and b) IT IS AGAINST THE LAW TO HAVE SEX WITH A KID EVEN IF THE KID SAYS YES, BECAUSE KIDS CANNOT CONSENT TO SEX.  Also, kids can't consent to getting jumped on to terminate a pregnancy.  Jesus fucking christ.  I can't fucking believe this fucker is in charge of judge stuff, since he is clearly incompetent.  I mean, I could understand if he went down the "we don't have proof it happened" road, but this whole consent bullshit, are you kidding me?

Lay's Grilled Cheese & Ketchup Chips

Okay, apparently I'm going to blog all the new Lay's chip flavours.  I can deal with this, presuming I find the last one, which isn't in the store by my house.

As soon as you open the bag you'll find that these smell exactly the same as their regular Ketchup chips.  They're a little milder in flavour and you can sort of taste the cheese, if you squint and imagine and forget what cheese tastes like.  So they are at least a (mostly) original flavour, compared to the Caesar dressing chips which were just Sour Cream and Onion.  They're not that great, though.  Well, they're okay, they're certainly better than Maple Moose, but if I wanted Ketchup I'd go buy Ketchup.  The bag ended up going stale before we finished it, so we threw it out half-full.  Hopefully soon I can check out those Perogi Platter ones and they will do better than the competition (not that that'd be difficult, looking at the competition).

Anybody want to buy a snowboard?

Because I'm selling this one.

It Menaces With Spikes Of Llama Wool

I've been playing Dwarf Fortress a lot lately, and last night one of my dwarves was overtaken by a strange mood and claimed a metalsmith's forge, and ended up creating this thing:

It reads, "Udnair, 'Willrhymed', a trifle pewter right gauntlet.  This is a trifle pewter right gauntlet.  All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality.  It is studded with trifle pewter and encircled with bands of white stork bone.  This object menaces with spikes of llama wool.  On the item is an image of forgotten beasts in white stork leather.  On the item is an image of Willrhymed the trifle pewter right gauntlet in ash."

I love how the dwarf who created it engraved an image of it on itself, "in ash."  I don't even know what that means, I didn't know ash was a thing you could engrave.  It's not wood from an ash tree, because that would be called ashen, I'm told.  Maybe he glued the ash on like an arts-and-crafts project and then carved it in?  Alternate theory, it is not an image of the glove, in ash.  It is an image of the glove in ash.  As in, the dwarf created a really spectacular gauntlet, then decided he had to carve onto the side an image of that gauntlet lying in a pile of ash, presumably because the world burned around it and the gauntlet is the only remaining sign of anyone having lived and fought and died there.  Dwarves are real downers.

I wonder if the image of the gauntlet on the gauntlet is also engraved with an image of the image of the gauntlet on the image of the gauntlet on the gauntlet.  And that image has an image of the image on the gauntlet on the image of the gauntlet on the image of the gauntlet on the gauntlet.  Dwarves, man.