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I remember the day kind of like it was yesterday. The news hit “that certain penguin forum we should stop comparing ourselves to” like a fat bully in the 90s hit a “nerd” for his lunch money; Disney had acquired Club Penguin and to my memory, but I may be wrong about this, New Horizons Interactive, the company that owned Club Penguin. Alas, Club Penguin changed its title to “Disney’s Club Penguin” shortly thereafter and you never heard from New Horizons again; ever. The community did not know quite how to react the fateful day Disney moved in because there hadn’t been enough time for Disney to really DO anything except get their name plastered on the front page. I wish we’d had a time machine so we could go into the future a few years, look at what is currently Club Penguin, and forewarn the community (which at the time had Club Penguin staff present), persuading the company not to sell the game. However, such a thing was not possible, and still isn’t.
Most of the community we knew back in August 2007 (and before) has moved on, and very few people can say truthfully that they were around when the “big transition” occurred. What that day was really like and what really happened to Club Penguin and its community is an arcane knowledge to most, so allow me to declare Disney’s effect on the game candidly:
shit got ruined
Read more…
Coming from the kid who said he was bisexual a month before. Smooth.
The kid who “tweeted” that shit above I have known for about five years now, and admittedly, some of those years were alright. But a year back, this kid (whose name I am not going to disclose) started classifying himself as “emo” or “scene” and became a huge embarrassment to be around. Red skinny jeans, t-shirts of bands like “Bring Me The Horizon” (amongst others), made claims of being in a different band every month or so, etc. To this day, he still does that shit.
Just this past October shit hit the fan and lots of stuff happened, and our already falling apart friendship died altogether. I’m not here to get into all of that, because it’s a long, boring and not entirely enjoyable story to cycle back through, so I’ll cut straight to the point of this article: How the hell do people change so much over short periods of time?
Valentine’s Day is that special day of the year where those of us who are lucky enough to have a significant other present him/her a declaration of our undying love by means of a $5 heart-shaped box of chocolates with disgusting toothpaste-flavored filling; and for those of us who are less fortunate… well, men have Fleshlights, women have anything phallic-shaped, and both have deep feelings of self loathing and an unabashed hatred for Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is one of the worst days of the year if not THE SHITTIEST day of the year if you’re a single somebody because no other day so forcefully reminds you of your worthless solitary existence like the unofficial Public Display of Affection Olympics. All of us have something in common, though, and that something is conversation hearts.
If disease-festering chocolate seems a little too tacky of a gift for Valentine’s Day there’s always the equally if not more inept choice of Necco Sweethearts, the popular chalk candy conversation hearts that have loving (and current) sentiments like “FAX ME” written on them. It’s worth noting that in the previous sentence either the word “chalk” or “candy” should have had quotation marks added for sarcasm but I’m just as confused as you are in determining whether or not we’re dealing with candy that has the consistency of chalk or chalk that can also be eaten without too many ill effects. Either way, Necco’s happy accident is a new form of matter.
Dating as far back as 500 B.C. Sweethearts came in six flavors: Mint, an unspecified yellow fruit, spearmint, Pepto Bismol, orange (the fruit), and purple (the color). Which ones constituted as actual candy is debatable but generally people ate the white and yellow hearts and used the others to draw dinosaurs on the sidewalk. Necco decided to change all of that this year though and completely overhauled their popular candy, dropping the white hearts for blue ones, changing all of the flavors around, and in an overly publicized non-newsworthy event added “TWEET ME” to their archaic vocabulary of love. The new 2010 flavors of Necco Sweethearts are so terrible that it’s impossible they were an accident because a screw up of this magnitude is something that requires focused effort.
Here’s six reasons why Necco ruined Valentines Day this year.
WARNING: Images in this article HAVE been censored but the content may still be considered NSFW if you’re reading this in an open environment. You have been warned.
I’ve been on the Internet a long time. I remember back when every website displayed in Times New Roman and when GeoCities websites turned up in the first pages of Google searches. The Internet was a different place back then, full of buzzing modems and ugly typewriter-looking fonts (excluding the GeoCities-made fanpage staple Comic Sans). Previously disenfranchised people such as white supremacists were able to connect with each other and talk about hating black people, hating Jews, and doubly hating Jewish black people. Social groups that were otherwise unattached with one another were given a chance to reach out and band together and one of the very first groups to do so and gain momentum was the furry fandom.
Furries claim that their fandom has been around since the eighties and even have “experts” in the fandom that agree. If “Expert of the Furry Fandom” isn’t a self-appointed title I don’t know what is, but I will say that while the tiger chick from Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like The Wolf” music video was indeed hot I find it a far stretch to say that people are dressing up like Care Bears and having sex with each other because of it. That’s like saying Richard Nixon fucked up the economy of the United States by taking us off of the gold standard in the 1960’s. It certainly wasn’t a step in the right direction but Tricky Dick isn’t responsible for toppling the economy. Dubya, his cronies, and the combined efforts of their Visas and MasterCards are. Likewise a European pop band isn’t responsible for the word “yiff”; a bunch of Asperger’s with incredibly deviant sexual desires and access to an AOL free trial CD in the early nineties were.
I don’t hate furries, really. Dracophile is a friend of mine, and I suppose Payton is as well by proxy now that we write for the same site, and both of them are moderately sane and decent people if not a little eccentric at times. The only thing I have a problem with, honestly, is all of the people from the furry fandom who are so disconnected with the world and oblivious to how fucking retarded they are that they unknowingly put on a show for the masses as they haul their Baconator-loving masses around inside of an otter fursuit in the middle of an upscale hotel. For some furries their interests are mundane and they’re only in it to draw a few pictures and make some friends and I commend them for that, even if you have to stoop as low as to draw porn of Street Sharks at least you’re making an effort to make friends. Then there are those who live and breathe furrydom like an obsession and claim that their “fursona” is a representation of who they are on the inside (“halp imma aminal trapped in a hyooman bodyyy!!!”). This article is meant to take a look at the most popular fursonas in the fandom, what their subscribers think it means, and what it actually means.
As most of you probably know, I have always liked to make fun of things in Club Penguin. There are just so many things that can be made fun of, you know? Back in the summer when this site was announced, and the writers were all waiting for development to be finished, I called dibs on a Club Penguin article. Well as it just so happens I find that there is a bit too much for me to talk about on that subject, what with Disney acquiring the game (and making it look even worse to play) for $700,000,000.00, the roleplaying some of the players do, and on and on. So, allow me to introduce a new series, The Best of Club Penguin! Fasten your seat belts ladies and gentleman, for it is time to depart, and venture into a world of little kids taking on the identity of colorful penguins wearing silver and red wigs.
Yes children, adopt them.
(Portions of this article are taken from the article “Boom Adapter” from RFSHQ.com’s content line-up on May 13th, 2007.)
My job as a game columnist is to be able to play games, take screenshots or other footage of said games, and then blast the holy hell out of them. This is incredibly easy to do when it comes to using console emulators on a computer, and the first time I was made aware of them in middle school started a fire that’ll likely burn the rest of my life. Emulation is a godsend for those of us who want to play classic video games but either A) cannot afford to spend $50 for The Legend of Zelda on eBay, B) don’t feel like blowing into a cartridge ten times, or C) both A and B except instead of Zelda the game is Action 52. My answer choice is C. There is a certain threshold, though, wherein at some point playing console games with a QWERTY keyboard becomes cumbersome and difficult and the Nintendo 64 marked this point by featuring a controller with an analog stick, a D-pad, a trigger, two shoulder buttons, and six face buttons all wrapped up in a design that required at least three hands to hold.
Recently (as in last night) I decided to e-mail Westboro Baptist Church, requesting an interview with them for my “middle school class,” claiming that I would put the answers in my “Christian podcast.” Maybe my sarcastic tone drifts throughout the digital world like it does in the real world (Huh? What’s that? All I know is my internet.) or maybe these guys just don’t trust anyone and have some kind of disorder that puts them in a constantly angry mood. Whatever the case is, I knew without a doubt that I’d be getting a funny reply, because after all, this IS Westboro Baptist Church. So without further adieu, here is my *still expanding* e-mail conversation with Westboro’s buffoons.
YouTube Bargain Bin is a side project that I’ve been toying with and working on erratically. I’ve pieced together some various footage and clips here and there from things we’ve recorded in the past and made a sample episode out of it all. It’s admittedly not really original and has been done before, but the videos are easy to make and are kind of fun.
- Dracophile
This game, which is probably not meant for anyone above the age of seven, was given to me this past Christmas as a joke, because I really like cats. Hell, I have bonded with all of the cats in my house (and one of them is sitting right next to me as I type this). Petz: Catz 2 would seem like the ideal game for me, being able to raise a cat all the way from a kitten, just like Nintendogs let players do … only Nintendogs had dogs.
However, upon playing this game for a good twenty minutes I realized that this was not the game I had been hoping for. I should have taken the horrible storm outside as a warning sign, but brave old me just doesn’t like to listen to God when danger is about to leap out and attack. No. My name means “village warrior,” and I have to live up to that – but that doesn’t mean I’m going to complete my mission successfully.
First off, some news about GatorAIDS. The site is showing no promises of opening up officially under Dracophile’s holy wings any time soon, so I felt like I would step in and help out. Back in 2009 when I got an e-mail from Mr. Bardin saying that I was invited to be a GatorAIDS writer, I got excited and took that job, and by god I am going to make fun of some video games.
So, now onto the actual article…
This past Christmas, my sisters got a Nintendo Wii game titled “My Baby: First Steps.” At first glance, I thought it was pretty damn stupid. I mean, just look at this box art.
GIVE ME YOUR SOUL
