The Onion AV Club this week had an article on 11 Of Video Gaming's Strangest Moments. Some of them weren't really moments so much as watershed instances of strangeness, and this one in particular just killed me:

4. Smoke And Mirrors (1995, unreleased)

The moment: The worst driving game ever

This unreleased, woulda-been cult classic Smoke And Mirrors brought magicians Penn & Teller to the Sega CD and 3DO. Along with cameos by Lou Reed and Debbie Harry, and an "Impossible" mode that was literally impossible to win, S&M featured an excruciatingly realistic mini-game titled Desert Bus. As Penn Jillette recently recalled, "You were driving a bus from Tucson to Las Vegas. You had a limiter on the bus, it couldn't go more than 45 mph, it pulled a little bit to the right, so you had to keep your finger on the controller, and the trip took eight full hours. And you saw nothing." You got one point for finishing the trip. The highest known score is 12.

"And you saw nothing." That, after the absurdity of the rest of it, had me laughing for like five minutes straight. And to think about Penn describing it just makes it that much more amusing. I'm guessing the fact that the game's title can be abbreviated "S&M" is no coincidence, and I'd be willing to bet the game was developed on a series of dares.

I made a fucked up computer game, for my art

Hey, so has anyone heard of or played Super Columbine Massacre RPG!? Yes, someone made a game about Columbine. You knew it would happen at some point or other. It's not what you would call a professional game, but it still looks like some effort went into making it, both from the research side and the game-making side.

I find myself wondering as to whether or not this game was created simply out of a sense of humor with a level of sickness that parallels my own, or if it was made with some genuinely laudable intentions. Or both. I'd try it out myself, but it's a Windows executable and I haven't bothered getting W2K running on my box since I upgraded it several months ago, and I'm not in the mood to fuck around with that or Wine at the moment. Basically, I'm posting this to see if anyone else has fucked around with it, and also to either get ETP to download and play with it or so that we'll think to download it sometime when we're at their place.

I think the fact that there's an exclamation point in the name of the game is pretty telling. Then there's the "artist's statement" on the game's website. First off, anyone who makes a point to call themselves an "artist" is probably an artist, alright -- a shitty one. Plus, he drones on with all this superficial, self-serving social commentary, that his statement could just be a quick attempt to cover his ass. I still figure he has several motivations, but I'll have to wait to play it myself before I can really decide. Until then, let me know if you try it out, or have tried it out. I expect it to be fucked up, but I'm curious as to the extent of that and if it has any merit or not.

And speaking of Iran, it's pretty pathetic that the country we're working so hard to demonize is the one who comes across sounding reasonable. Sure, they could just be bullshitting, but at least they're talking a good game, and they're making us look like assholes. Which we are. As usual.

Iran, he said, "needs a government that is going to recognize that part of being a great country is to be in line with your international obligations."

It's just astounding, the shit that will come out of Bush's mouth.

I think everything was really put into perspective when Ahmadinejad sent that letter to Bush a few weeks back. The letter can best be summed up with "Oooooohhhhhhhhh BURRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNNN!" Because as little as you want to admit it, Ahmadinejad makes a lot of good points (along with many not-so-good points), especially when he plays the Jesus card on Bush. It's both funny and amusing to see a guy like Ahmadinejad ripping on Bush and being right about a lot of what he has to say. If you haven't read that letter before now (as I hadn't; it's linked off that BBC article), I'd recommend giving it a read.

And, of course, our response to that letter was perfectly wrong. Look, I'm not naive enough to assume that Ahmadinejad was being completely genuine, if at all. Still, an Iranian leader sending a letter to the sitting American president is unprecedented in recent decades, so we could have at least tried to make something positive come out of that. But what did we do instead? What we always do: posture.

Since I'm sending out personal messages to foreign governments today, a note to Israel's leaders: fuck you. We probably have no clue as to how close Iran really is to having nucular nuclear weapons, but this effort to fan the flames could not be more transparent. Again, fuck you, you scumbags. In fact, I'm going to coin a new term to describe these assholes: Jewbags. Call me anti-Semitic if you want, but I'm not ripping on Jews in general (those cheap bastards), I'm ripping on their leaders.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not thrilled by the prospect of Iran having nuclear weapons. But that doesn't justify our behavior, where we're barely trying to cover up the fact that we're simply looking for a fight as opposed to progress. But that's what's so special about the Middle East; everyone involved with the various conflicts over there is a prick. The U.S., Israel, the Palestinians, the Iranians, whoever, they're all shitheads. Everyone is wrong. Some more wrong than others (depending on what side you fall on), but everyone clearly sucks.

I've had it up to here with Venezuela. I think we should just attack them and obliterate their country just to shut them up. "There, you happy now, Hugo? You were right." Dude, no one is coming after you. You don't like us, we don't like you, but we're too busy fucking up other shit at the moment to bother with you. I think Hugo is just bent that we're paying more attention to Iran and Ahmadinejad at the moment. Nothing more pathetic than a jealous world leader asshole.

Venezuelan congressman Ismael Garcia, a supporter of Mr Chavez, said the computer game was preparation work for a real invasion.

"I think the US government knows how to prepare campaigns of psychological terror so they can make things happen later," he said.

Yeah, no. Out governemt is a dooshebag, but if they're going to fuck with someone, a mass-market video game is not going to figure heavily into their plans. Note to Venezuela: quit stirring up the specter of a future attack just to drum up popular support. Hmmmmm, we're have we seen that tactic before, anyway?

Oh, and Mercenaries 2: World In Flames might be one of the coolest game titles ever.

Since I mentioned freeballing at one point, I naturally get the occasional search hit for that. Last night I was looking through the Google results for one particular hit, curious as to what exact post had been run down in that search, and I found this, the official site of the Freeballers of America. By virtue of the subject it's all kinda tongue-in-cheek (seems like there's a joke in there... maybe I should say "ball-in-sack" or something), but they do still seem pretty serious about freeballing and freeballer rights. And that's... Great. Look, if you need to roll without underwear, fine, you do what you gotta do. It's not important enough that you need to announce it to everyone else in the world. Oh, and be sure to keep your nuts and ass clean if you're only allowing one layer of clothing to keep us apart from them. Even still, you're not sitting on my Pottery Barn couch or the leather in my car just for good measure.

Take a look at the tool who is the founder of their stupid-ass little club. His name's Jack. They call him "Happy Jack." Yeah, I'd be pretty happy, downright stoked, even, if I set up a club and announced to the world that I freeball, and somehow I not only still had a decent-looking girlfriend, but she would allow herself to get mired in the embarrassment as well. Man, Misty is a retard. She felt that she "needed to back Jack"? If I ever went public with my freeballing (assuming I started freeballing to begin with) and I had a girlfriend (an even bigger assumption), I would fully expect her to leave me over something like this.

Jesus fucking Christ the world is lame. I just cannot find anything that I feel like posting about, but Google and its ilk march on. So here's this.

alien monsters raping schoolgirls

The immigration debate rages on.

how much did sasha cohen weigh when she was a baby

The fact that someone was looking for that information is disturbing, and this is coming from me.

Spam:

If she says that you have a small dick, dont respond with an answer No,
@fter y0u take Penis Enlargement V1rility Patch PX she would think that she is being fucked by a horse, not human.
http://chapdismal.com/pp/?WvAkmJ

Okay, there are so many things wrong with this spam that it's hard to decide where to start. First off, "don't respond with an answer"? What else can I respond with, a walking stick? Birthday cake? What the fuck? Oh, and if a girl says you have a small dick, that's not really something she's looking for an answer to. It's a statement of fact from her point of view, and there's nothing you can say or do about it. How exactly is it that you "take" a patch? Where would one apply this patch, anyway? Do you put it on your arm like one of those smoking patches, or on your dick? Seems like it's gonna fall off easily if you put it on your dick, but then again, how's it gonna be effective if you place it anywhere else? What if you ended up with one arm that was, like, huge, and the other still scrawny? That's not gonna get you laid; you need two big arms like Ludacris. Once you're there you can get a big watch, too. Then there's the claim that she'll think she's being fucked by a horse, not a human. Most girls, I think, are going to have a problem with that. Most. And finally, I like that URL -- chapdismal.com. Because if chicks are telling you that you have a small dick, you are clearly going to be a dismal chap.

sulu hated shatner

Damn, Shatner is such a dooshebag that even the imaginary characters hated him. Either that or this person doesn't know that Sulu isn't real.

teens girls fuck big dig

Why would you be doing a search, and furthermore expecting results, for teens fucking a major Boston-area highway construction project? Jesus, assholes: SPELL CHECK YOUR FUCKING PERVERT GOOGLE SEARCHES. I'm tired of this shit.

trent reznor pretty hate machine what does it mean

It means you're an idiot. Extra points deducted because your search rhymes.

Do other cultures Mastubate

This comes across weird in two ways. One, I don't really think of masturbating as a cultural thing, and more of a "horny people thing." Second, this can come across as culture itself masturbating, which doesn't make sense either. Well, until I think about our so-called "culture" in this particular country, and yeah, that's masturbation. And not good masturbation, either, which is pathetic when you really think about it.

how to fuck a girl with a strapon

You put on a strapon... And you fuck her. It's not that difficult, professor.

how to fuck girlfriend in bathtub

God damn it; you get her in the tub, and you fuck her. If strapons and bathtubs are so complicated, I beg you, please stop having sex. And kill yourself.

honey let's fuck your friend

Yeah, I'm sure that'll go over real well.

swallowing my husband's cum improves my moods

Everybody wins! I'll bet this is actually just a husband's wishful thinking, though, and not the wife herself. Although a woman may enjoy swallowing, my guess is the main thing that would be helping to improve her mood is getting her husband to finally shut up about it.

flaming red assholes

You might wanna get that checked.