Laziness Breeds Pokemon

I had a dream about posting a political entry today, but that fell through because I don't really have any insights that are current or relevant. So, here's a short story I wrote.

“Are you going to ask me how I sleep at night?” He asked. His voice sounded like an abused wife explaining a dry roast.
“Of course not, Mr. Tajiri,” I replied. I wonder it, but I dare not say it. I’d wager he has a noose hidden away somewhere in this ratty hotel room, just in case. “This is going to be very straight, just the facts, in your own words.”
He snorts in mirthless laughter. I’ve no doubt he’s heard it before, but I really have no desire to demonise him any more than the rest of the world has. The ashtray full of cigarette butts and the half-empty bottle of scotch tell me he’s not far from the end of his tether.
“Just start from the beginning.”
He sighs. A small wave of pity can’t help but wash over me as he starts to speak. “I wanted to make a game for my son to play. But you know that part. It was the marketing department at Nintendo who came up with the tag-line, but in the end it was my decision to push it the way we did. Gotta Catch ‘Em All. You have to catch them all. Just get it everywhere, get it stuck in kid’s heads.”
I scribble frantically. Of course I could have recorded this interview, but shorthand felt more appropriate. I don’t know why. Maybe I have the madness too, who can say? “So, there was every intention for the marketing to be subliminal, then?” I inquired.
“Of course not!” He replied at once, shocked. “I had no intention to mess with the kid’s heads, just to get them to buy our damn video game! It was a tag-line. Nothing more. It was meant to be Coke, Happy Meal and Pokémon.”
It’s very odd to talk to a man like Satoshi Tajiri. To the uninitiated observer, he just seems like a doddery old Japanese man. As much as he looks like a man that could be your favourite grandfather, it’s impossible to shake the sinking feeling that he’s really the single worst man in human history. Sometimes journalism deals you some very odd hands. I push on, “so, what happened next?”
His face falls. “We noticed the trend at the same time as everyone else. People think we had some tremendous insight that we just refused to share, but I assure you this wasn’t the case. Birth rates and reported STI incidents slowly climbing, and then it all comes out, a few worried kids tell their parents what was really going on.”
“And what was that?” I ask. “That kids all over the world...” He begins, before trailing off. He lights a cigarette and takes a rather heroic gulp from his glass of scotch before continuing. “That kids all over the world had been trying, literally going out of their way, to catch ‘em all. Well, it was a total disaster. Parents calling Pokémon the devil! It was just a videogame, nothing more, but the rumour was that we had brainwashed everyone born between 1989 and 1999, give or take. So, a decade of kids were having unprotected sex, getting pregnant, becoming sterile... it was awful.”
It was at this point I noticed just how slurred his speech had gotten. The steady intake of scotch will do that to you. I went to ask another question, but it proved to be unnecessary; he had gotten very chatty by this point.
“At first, we thought it would just pass, fads do that. Even at Nintendo, we didn’t expect Pokémon to last, but the plan was to make as much money as we possibly could from the project before moving on, which makes sense, right? I mean, it certainly was a PR nightmare.”
He drained the remnants of the brown liquor from the tumbler before refilling it. No ice, no water, just scotch. I tried not to resort to foot-in-the-door journalistic hounding, although the less rational part of my brain wanted to berate him and never stop. I exercised all the self control I could muster and pushed the interview further. “Did you try to do anything at all to stop it?”
He looked out of his window, to the grimy sunset glimmering behind high rise buildings just beyond the horizon. Whether her was searching for the right words or just taking in the dappled orange and grey palette, I couldn’t say. When he spoke it was barely more than a whisper.
“Donations to lots of charities, helping orphans, teen sex awareness...to be fair, a lot of it was just trying to save the company’s image. There was talk of funding research into cures for the more serious cases, but the accounting department vetoed that one, on account of it ‘not projecting enough profit to be worthwhile endeavour.’.”
“But it was your company, could you...” I began, but he cut me off. “In name only!” He said with an unusual mix of conviction and resignation. “When the TV show became a veritable printing press for money, I was ‘promoted’ to a powerless figurehead and the boardroom executives took over. As much as I wanted to do everything I possibly could to fix the problem I’d started, it was very much out of my hands by that point.”
I was in two minds as to what to make of this. On one hand, he really seemed like nothing more than a victim of fate’s cruel irony, trying to make sense of a mad world. Yet it’s very hard to shake off years of being told that he was single-handedly responsible for the downfall of mankind. I pressed on.
“This is where the reports get hazy; the stories don’t seem very consistent after the initial wave of infections.” Once again he stared out the window. The sunset had long since become a starless city night, the sickly glow of light pollution matted against the inky black of the sky. Prophetic? Who can say? “It’s almost science fiction,” he sighed. “No-one knew this kind of thing was even within the realm of possibility. For some reason, the viruses mutated, evolved if you will. They became far more potent and infectious. This new strain caused brain degeneration, but also increased violent tendencies and physical strength. The fundamentalists where calling it the end of days.
“So, the average age of the population plummets. The prior increases in birth-rates fed a population explosion, but they’re all sterile. Sterile, but still infectious. So the worst hit places, it’s just chaos... Tokyo and New York were the first to get evacuated. There was even a call to leave me and all the other Game Freak developers in the epicentre to get torn apart by the mob.”
My hand is almost cramping from how desperately I try to document everything I hear. He seems to have hit a lull. “So, then what?” I ask. Excellent journalism there, I know. He gives me a withering look. He knows as well as I do that it was the last resort of the dumbstruck. “Well, it spread, didn’t it? 7 years on and it just keeps going. You’re a lucky young man, in one of the safe zones. Thank god for Western Australia, safe from everything, even marauding plagues of syphilis-zombies.”
“But where does that leave us?” I ask. At this point the line between my journalistic integrity and my own morbid fascination has been blurred. He chuckles without happiness. “Well, we’ve got bleeding hearts still trying to find a cure, we’ve got gun nuts wanting to go on a “culling” rampage and you’ve got me being compared to Hitler. It’s the end of says, my friend. Pokémon has ushered in the apocalypse.”
That last line is the one I needed. A headline to grab attention and to ignite emotions. I stood to shake his hand, but he didn’t move, save to take a drag from his cigarette. Sheepishly I withdrew my hand. “Well, thank you, Mr. Tajiri.” I said politely. He didn’t respond, just turned his head to once again glance out the window.
As I wandered to the door, my head swimming with bizarre revelations, I heard his voice quietly mutter, “Young man...” I turned to face him. “Yes, Mr. Tajiri?”
“Always wear a condom.”

I Am Jack's Tremendous Disappointment.

Everyone has those "it might just be me" moments. You can have silly ones, like "it might just be me, but Nickelback doesn't totally blow" which are just you, you are a bad child and we hate you. You can have the valid ones, like "it might just be me, but the whole Charlie Sheen thing seems... well, dumb" which is valid, because who even cares any more? Although apparently one of his goddesses won an award for best anal scene. Is that a victory? I don't know. I suppose any accolade is a good one, and if you're going to use your anus for sex, and you make money as a direct result of that sex, I suppose some professional recognition is good. Where was I going with this again?
Oh, right, those moments. Yeah, I seem to be having them daily now. I can't figure out if I'm the last bastion of sense in this increasingly nonsensical world or I'm just going mad. The latter seems more likely, sure, but the first one has the word "bastion" in it, which is an awesome word. Brings to mind castles and warriors and shit. Now, as would be the case with anyone if they're prefacing a proposition with the phrase "it might just be me, but," what comes out afterwards are real thoughts of mine. They happen in my head with quite shocking regularity. So when you're greeted with blank looks and quiet acknowledgments that it is, in fact, just you, well that's worrying.
To give it context, I got this look in suggesting to someone to make their piece of writing (even) more dark and depressing in the beginning, then to use the flippant, jocular ending that they had suggested anyway, hence making the contrast deeply disturbing. This sense of disturbance, I posited, would be hilarious for the reader. Apparently none of my classmates shared this opinion, and I was greeted with a few shocked stares. Not "ooooh that was bad taste" stares, I'm talking full on "this man maaaaay be dangerous" stares. For the record, someone jumping off a building is not funny, a story wherein someone does that can be, if it's done right. I don't think I'm mad for finding the humour in the absurd and the macabre, but hey, that might just be me.
So, why the Fight Club reference as the title of this post? Number one, shame on you if you didn't get it until right now. You're a stupid person and you deserve to eat some glass. Number two, because me and a couple friends watched it last night and I never realized how funny it is. The first few times I watched it, I took it very seriously, for I am a pretentious art-school wanker. However, as is often the case, 6 beers in and suddenly the humour in everything becomes clear. Not that it's only funny when you're drunk, on reflection it has to be one of the most hilarious movies ever written. Edward Norton should do voice overs for EVERYTHING. So, the homework assignment: Go start a fight with someone and lose. Wait, no, not that. The assignment: Watch Fight Club. Even if you don't laugh out loud, if you can see the dark humour, the absurd little moments that you can't help but chuckle over, my work here is done. If you watch it from start to finish and don't find it at least a bit funny, I've got some bad news... you, my friend, are as humourless and boring as Two and a Half Men. And if you think that's a good level of humour and excitement, well then there's nothing more I can do for you. Seek help, or kill yourself in the funniest way possible.

Tar-Like and Viscous Stupidity

I've had an awful day. "What happened, O Exalted One?" I hear you ask. Well, it wasn't traffic, it wasn't a shitty commute, it wasn't the weather, it wasn't annoying people or general inconveniences. No, it was being confronted with pure and untainted stupidity twice in one day.
Every now and then, you come across something so overwhelmingly stupid it hurts you a little bit. You can feel the front of your brain eating itself out of sheer desperation to get away from the stupidity you just felt. Whelp, I got that twice. The pain is still overwhelming, no amount of King Crimson and Bob the Angry Flower can cure it. Both of those things are awesome, incidentally, ch-ch-check it out.
So, stupid incident one: Rebecca Black. Yeah, I know, how edgy am I, making fun of the latest pop princess fad thingy whatever. May as well start making fun of the beeb while all my hipster friends chuckle ironically and listen to Arcade Fire. It's not so much her song that pisses me off, mostly because I haven't heard it, it's just the nature of that song's existence. Let's break it down, shall we? So, she's 13, a product of the ARK Music Factory, singing a song (I assume) about the day of the week called Friday and the opportunities it holds. First things first, fuck ARK and bullshit mission to "make it possible for emerging independent artists from a variety of popular genres to be discovered, defined and delivered, to advance in their chosen career and be successful" (taken from their website.) Note, as anyone with half a brain has probably decoded, the carefully chosen wording that renders that entire passage meaningless. They may as well be saying "we at ARK make it our mission to autotune the shit out of stuff and then give it the stupidest video imaginable so it goes viral, ensuring us fat stacks of royalty cash." Hell, that's exactly what they're saying. So anyway, ARK are the devil.
Then, why is a 13 year old singing about Friday night? What do 13 year olds do on a friday night that's so song-worthy? Because if my assessment of pop music in general is true, it'll be something about partying and making the night last forever and all manner of stupid shit like that, which only raises further questions. You're 13! If you're driiiiiiiiiiiiiiinking and smoooooooooooooooooooooking and doing druuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugs like the true rebel you are, that's some awful songwriting, some tremendously bad parenting and some all round darwin awards level stupidity. However, should there be some degree of responsibility here (oh god what the hell am I even talking about any more?) well that's just flat out tedious. A song about 13 year olds living it up in an age appropriate way, well ain't that just dandy. God I hope she fucks a leper or something.
Stupid moment number two: Less a moment, more a maelstrom of everything everyone hates about communications students in a two hour block of stupid. Now, I'd like to specify, not everyone in this class is stupid, the tutor seems to know what's going on and most of the class aren't retarded. However, there's this one guy, this one guy... one day I'm gonna kill him. I'm gonna kill him so hard he'll die to death (thanks for that one, explosm!). I think I've covered this one before, but "well that's just your opinion" is not a valid response in an argument, especially when the thing discussed isn't even opinion in the first place! This barely functioning sack of crap must have said this about 10 times over the course of the class, at everything, including when the tutor gave us the essay question for the next assignment. He actually argued that the essay question was "just your opinion." Aaaaargh! Factor in the fact that he pronounced "fugitive" with a hard G and I was about ready to throw some chairs. Some days are so much harder than others.

I Only Eat Food That Fights Back.

Man, it seems like more than a week since I updated, but the numbers don't lie. I'm gonna put it down to uni dragging time on. It'll do that to you.
So, why are Australian diners so fussy? I don't understand it. You live in a country with more multicultural influence than any other and yet people's horizons seem just so narrow. To give some context, I have friends that, up until recently, had never eaten Chinese food. And I don't mean proper Chinese food, I mean the sweet and sour deep fried food colouring stuff that is literally everywhere. How do you through your life without experiencing greasy take-away at least once? Haven't you ever been hung over? I understand that having sampled a $7.50 lunch special honey chicken and fried rice doesn't constitute a cosmopolitan broadening of horizons, but it could a gateway food maybe? I don't know.
An island nation, surrounded by vast and plentiful oceans, and yet people are such seafood wusses. "Oh but it looks gross" I hear you cry on the subject of mussels (fact: chilli mussels are one of the best foods ever). Have you ever looked at a cheeseburger, i mean really looked at one? Next time you're sober and within striking distance of a McDonald's cheeseburger, have a good look at it and tell me what you think? Is it really that tasty looking? Because to me, it looks a lot like a part of the human anatomy in clown makeup weeping grease. I'm not going to specify which part, but if you can't summon up at least one to mind, there's something wrong with you.
Seafood is the shit, it tastes awesome, it's good for you, you can eat a whole family of creatures at one time and it goes really well with chilli, yet another food avoided by the perpetually wussy. What's the issue here? Is McDonald's and KFC so easy to obtain that we forget that good food exists? Are we so hopelessly allergic to flavour we think that all problems can be solved with more salt and sugar? I can safely say that I know far to many boring food-weaklings that it's less of a joke and more a point of contention. I have contended with people on this, I will continue to contend and contentions will happen in the future. You have been warned.
On the topic: Anyone who puts coke in good scotch deserves every STD all at once at the same time.

Super Good Job Well Done!

The last post was my sixtieth! I'm gonna get wasted! Listen to Milk Lizard!

Leather-Clad Whale Tails.

Soundwave festival: Probably the most metal day that Perth sees. Partly because it's a heavy metal festival, but mostly because nothing else particularly metal happens here. Bleeding laziness, here's my play by play roundup of said festival:
Best Show: Foxy Shazam
Best Song: Welcome Home by Coheed and Cambria
Best Moment: Tie between Eric Sean Nally eating 4 cigarettes during the Fozy Shazam set (and then continuing to sing!) and Rody Walker from Protest the Hero declaring that he'd rather "shoot himself than go back to Toronto" and that he'd stay in Australia by "shaving apples into my likeness and selling them on the beach."
Worst Show: Slash. Just straight up disappointing.
Worst Song: Some nondescript thing by Stone Sour, I don't know the name. God damn they're a shitty band.
Worst Moment: Corey Taylor saying "fuck" as every second word when addressing the crowd. There's a few good ways to engage an audience but SWEARING IN A LOUD VOICE would only impress 13 year olds.
My standard festival observations apply here: condom balloons are silly, most young people are tremendously annoying and young girls should really wear more clothes. It's particularly weird at a thing like Soundwave, though, considering it's a festival that plays music traditionally associated with misfits and the terminally uncool. I'm well aware that not every girl wants to put on nipple pasties and dance for all the boys (they're so cute! Tee-hee!) but I've noticed this really bizarre dichotomy among girls who belong to, shall we say, alternative cliques, namely that they'll dress and act like they're rejecting all that pop-princess, high school stupidity, and yet at the same time still wear barely anything and basically act like bait, rather than real people.
I've said it once and I'll say it again: the wisdom of wearing a lacy g-string to an all day festival is lost on me. The wisdom of wearing one underneath goth pants, or hot pants made out of cut off goth pants, or one of those black and purple tartan skirts-meets-tutu, whatever they're called, is doubly lost. It's like, you're rejecting the popular take on beauty but still perpetuating a stereotype that girls should be sexy and enticing at all times? Wouldn't it make your point a little better if you just, oh, I don't know... did something different to all those popular, tarty blondes you so despise? I'm projecting, of course, wear whatever the hell you want.
I suppose I'm not the best person to ask about this argument, I'm the kind of guy that thinks girls look better without make-up, hair dye or basically anything to make you look different to how you do normally. Sure, some girls can pull off a bit of make-up tastefully, but the majority just glob it on and it just looks terrible. I'm sorry. I suppose this ties all in to my "nice girls date jerks because of poor self esteem and the wussiness of nice guys in general" stance, but when you're interested in girls with an actual personality, watching girls wear leather pants and a ridiculous amount of eyeliner then proceed to act like every 15 year old high-school waste of space that you see every day... man that's disheartening. For the record, my girlfriend rarely wears makeup and has called me a "dirty socialist" on a few separate occasions, so I'm all good. Smug face.