10 Things I learned from the Free Games section at Nickel Nickel

So yesterday I went to Nickel Nickel. For those of you unfamiliar with Nickel Nickel, it is an arcade where prices that would normally be in quarters, are in nickels. Now, these places are not generally known for the quality of their games (As would be expected when paying a fifth of the usual price), but the one I went to yesterday was one of the most ghetto establishments I have ever patronized. Nearly every machine there was broken in some way, whether the grips were mssing from the joysticks, or it was just plain not working.
At the back of every Nickel Nickel is a section of free games, usually consisting of exceptionally outdated games or ones that would eat up way too many nickels to be fun. I've always figured this section was for kids at birthday parties (Nickel Nickel hosts children's parties) whose parents were too cheap to give them a lot of nickels to play while they waited for the rich kids to finish playing the good games. I found myself in this section when I ran out of nickels a half hour before the rest of my friends and I learned a few life lessons:
1. Michael Jackson was actually a powerful mage.
2. Ninja explode when they die.
3. In addition to the proton packs, the Ghostbusters also carried machine guns.
4. The speed of a bullet varies between 2 and 15 miles per hour.
5. Besides the more well known martial arts weapons, Ninja also carried cartoonishly large mallets and futuristic machine guns.
6. When Michael Jackson comes in contact with a chimpanzee, he will turn into a laser shooting robot.
7. The maximum altitude of a helicopter, is roughly 30 feet.
8. The term "cowboys" actually refers to a race of anthropomorphized cows that lived in the American southwest in the late 1800s.
9. When facing a 40 foot tall, obese conehead with rocket launchers for hands and a tank chassis instead of legs, keep in mind that his entire torso might just be a decoy to protect his real head, which is growing directly out of the tank chassis.
10. Robots are assholes. No exceptions.

How I Lost my Wallet (The Tale of the Spiderking)

So I was camping and since Monterey was only about an hour or so away I decided to go visit the aquarium. With my daughter. On a Tuesday. Unfortunately, I was warned against this by a talking squirrel. To protect his identity I shall refer to him simply as "Colonel Doogan Zanzibar of the 115th Liberian People's Militia". I would later findout he had been drinking bacon grease (which is the equivalent of 90 proof liquor to squirrels) but at the time he seemed a trustworthy rodent. He gave me $500 and told me to wait in a clearing atop a mountain. There I met a man, clad in a blood red suit of armor accesorized with pink pearl earrings who introduced himself as Rakdar of the North. He took the money the squirrel gave me and handed me a sword, whioch appeared to be glowing faintly, a sickly green color. He then led me down a winding path on the other side of the mountain into a grove of increasingly dense black trees. At the bottom of the mountainwe met another man, clad in faded linens and a simple turban. This was Al-Farid Son of the Desert Wind. He had a short conversation with Rakdar in a language I did not understand which appeared to regard a gentleman known as the Spiderking. At one point, Al-Farid gestured toward my sword, which I now realised was glowing a bright neon green. Suddenly a loud, primal scream ended their conversation and I looked up at Al-Farid just in time to see the mysterious man being lifted into the air by a pair of enormous spider legs. The legs were connected to a body nearly three feet wide, with six more legs propelling the beast into the open. However, in place of a head there was the torso of a wild looking man, bare chested and holdign a pair of curved swords. On his head was a crown woven from spider silk. Al-Farid managed to free himself and ducked away as Rakdar drew his own sword. He shouted a fierce warcry and battle was joined.After a fierce confrontation during which Rakdar took three of the beast's legs in exchange for a bloody chunk of hsi shoulder, he subdued the monster and instructed me to finish off the Spiderking with my own blade, which now glowed with an unnatural green fire in the prescence of the thing it was forged to slay. I plunged the blade into the heart of the monster's torso and he let out an earth shattering scream before dissolving in to a cloud of green mist. When the mist dissipated Rakdar, the SPiderking, and AL-Farid were gone, along with my clothes, the sword, and my wallet. It turned out that Colonel Zanzibar, Rakdar, and Al-Farid were travelling Gypsy conmen and I had fallen for one of the oldest grifts in the book.

11 fun "facts" about Michael "James" Armor

Why? Because I am extremely egotistical! No, not really.I don't really believe that people are all that interested in me, but I know one perso nwho is, ME! So, really its more narcississm than egotism. No one ever bothers sending me one of those 25 facts or whatever htings, and I felt left out. Why 11? Because it's one more than ten. 1. My middle name is James. I often put it in quotes to trick people into thinking it is my nickname. If anything my nickname is either DR. THunder, Fuchismo, The Raging Potato, Gene, Armdog, or simply my last name, pronounced incorrectly. 2. I talk to myself WAY more than a normal person should. I spend roughly 80-90% of my time alone. As a result I have EXTREMELY POOR SOCIAL SKILLS. Because I am not used to talking to other, non-crazy people. 3. After midnight, anything I suggest is a bad idea. Without sleep, my body diverts energy from decision-making, to dancing. 4. If I am not interested in a conversation, I will dance to the music in my head. My head is like an iPod with a corrupted memory, and I will not hesitate to dance or sing along to the fragments of songs in there. 5. See six 6. I really enjoy texts, comments, etc. Again, I spend most of my time alone, and so any interaction with the outside world is like fucking christmas. Even if its someone I hate. So, text me sometime! It's not like I am doing anything worhtwhile. 7. MY time is basically worthless. I do nothing everyday. hell, right now, this is essentially pointless time-wasting unti lthe good tv shows come on at 10ish. 8.I am not a liar. I prefer the term "Fabricator of Extravagant Falsehoods". What's the difference? Liars expect you to believe them, I just do it for fun. 9. I am afraid of whales, Megan Fox, and sprts equipment being thrown at my head. (Thanks PE!). Fun idea: try throwing a baseball at my head and watch me cower in fear behind the nearest person or object. I can say that because I don't actually expect people to read this far through the list. 10. I like to write short stories, draw, and I have made over fifty episodes of a powerpoint animated thingy. I like showing them to people. Ask me about it. 11. My perfect job would be a puppet ruler for a secret government. All the flamboyant cosutmes with none of the responsibilities. Failing that, world famous Hollywood director would be nice... So yeah, I guess that was ten after all because five was sort of a cop-out. Well, I aint here to impress nobody god-damn it! I'M SORRY, I THOUGHT THIS WAS AMERICA! APPARENTLY A MAN CAN'T DECIDE HOW LONG HIS LIST OF FACTS SHOULD BE! APPARENTLY WE LIVE IN SOVIET GOD DAMN RUSSIA!

Unlce Archie's Meandering Tales of Dubious Coherence: Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin

So, you have a History report? I bet you’re just going to go on the computer and use the googles on the Wikipedia! You damn kids are all too reliant on the devil-boxes these days. When I was your age, we used books damn it! I didn’t fight the god damn Viet Cong so you could have a magic box tell you all the answers! And besides, you don’t need a god damn computer, you have me! I lived History, and I can tell you all you need to know about “Eli Whitney and the Invention of the Cotton Gin” I remember Eli Whitney, Bear of a Man! Fought with him in the war! We really showed Hitler what was what! No, I don’t think it’s god damn implausible that I fought in both WW 2 and ‘Nam, God damn it! Now shut up and listen! Don’t think cause we’re related that I won’t cut you! See this bayonet? I killed 14 Japs in six hours at the Battle of Normandy using this bayonet! I will kill you where you stand! Where was I? Oh yeah! Eli Whitney was born in a small mountain town in the frozen wastes of El Salvador. His Father was an Ice Fisherman, and his Mother stayed home to work on the plantation. Because back then, they had a real notion of what work was! Not like this office crap with you’re My Space and your iPods! We worked nine long hours of backbreaking work, then ate lunch, then worked another nine hours, then we got to go home to rest up for the next day and listen to Chuck Berry on the radio, now he may have been a colored man, but he could really sing, not like the god damn Soulja Boy Biggie Smalls crap you damn kids listen to! Anyways, in 1895, Eli had moved to New York to find his fortune, as you did in those days, when he was approached by a man named Nikola Tesla. Now Tesla, was developing a new Death Ray to kill Commies in Korea but he needed help defending his lab from that carpetbagger Edison! Oh that Edison was a right hoodlum! Always stealin’ ideas and corruptin’ the youth! It’s because of that bastard that we have the god damn television in the first place! Course he stole the idea from Farnsworth, like all his inventions. The man couldn’t invent his way out of a paper bag! He was just a god damn thug who stole ideas. Like this one time I came up with this idea for an electrical light bulb and that bastard just came and stole it! Claimed he came up with it too, the bastard! It was a glorious day when Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders finally took him down when they stormed his Menlo Park “laboratory”. Now Eli was one of only three men in charge of Tesla’s security, because Tesla had a thing with threes, crazy he was, but a damn genius, and so Edison always sent at least ten of his thugs in an attack, because the devious bastard didn’t believe in a god damn fair fight! Edison’s thugs came at him and the other two lads ran scared, as you would if you saw ten big jumped up hooligans coming toward you with pipes and chains and whatnot, but Eli stood his ground! He picked up a horse’s jawbone and beat em down like they were children! Of course, this was after they stopped using children as thugs in the 1870s. After the sound whuppin’ Eli gave ‘em, Edison’s boys slinked off to their master like whipped dogs and Edison threw himself a temper tantrum! What? What the hell is an “Industrial Revolution”? I’m getting to the damn Cotton Gin, god damn it! Kids today don’t know how to tell a god damn story! With their damn moving pictures, all these damn kids want is explosions and harlots! That god damn Michael Bay is a joke! D.W. Griffiths, now that was a director! So he had a few men in blackface and glorified the Klan, so what? He made some damn fine movies! Where was I? You keep interrupting me! So now Edison’s ragin’ like an Irishman and so he sends a hundred men to take out Eli and ransack Tesla’s lab. Tesla knows they’re comin’ and so he lets Eli use some of the stuff he was working on for the U.S. Army. Edison’s three-hundred men come moseying on down the street, with chains and pipes and whatnot, when they see a sight that shakes the bravest of ‘em to the bone! Eli comes stompin’ down the street in one a Tesla’s steam-powered battle suits! He wades into the crowd and starts roughin’ em up left and right, batterin’ and layin’ about with his big metal claws! He takes out five-hundred in less than an hour and the rest just ran on home. That rat bastard Edison didn’t come round Tesla’s lab after that! Now it just so happens that Teddy Roosevelt himself witnessed the fight from the observation deck of his war zeppelin. What’s that? You don’t tell me who did and didn’t have a war zeppelin! Roosevelt saw Eli’s tremendous bravery and thought that a man like this was needed on the front lines! So he recruited him right then and there to help fight the communist French! That’s where I first met him. I was in his unit when he led the charge up Jean Paul Hill and when he led the charge back down the hill right into the French capital! We showed those Krauts what they get when they mess with America! Now, after the war, came the Great Depression. Makes this silly Recession you damn kids are complaining about seem god damn prosperous in comparison! Hell, I would have given my left foot to grow up nowadays! When I was a kid, we didn’t have god damn Wal-Mart and Costco to buy food, we ate whatever the hell dad brought home, food or not! I remember one day he brought home a soiled newspaper that he had found in a puddle, and we dug in like it was a god damn thanksgiving turkey! Of course we had to save some of it, to patch the roof with, because we didn’t have Mexicans layin’ about everywhere to fix everything, we did everything ourselves, like god damn Americans should! Teddy Roosevelt got us out of the depression when the damn Viet Cong bombed Pearl Harbor and we had to go bail out the Irish again. Once again I found myself serving under the legendary Eli Whitney. We were on a commando raid, to plant one of Tesla’s lightning bombs right in the Fuhrer’s command center! Those French bastards almost got us a couple times but we planted it alright. That’s right, we took down Jean-luc Hitler himself! After the war, we went our separate ways. Eli decided to return to his roots in El Salvador to take over the family cotton plantation. It was there that he invented the cotton gin to improve the efficiency of their workforce. There! Are you happy! Tell that to your god damn Hippy teacher. I hope you learned some god damn history today you little bastard. Yes I’m sure that was how it went down! What do you mean it’s impossible for me to have fought in World War One and grown up during the Depression? I don’t need any of your god damn Sass! Now fetch me a sandwich and some whiskey!

I'd like to talk to you about Jesus

Well this is the story all about how, his life got flipped turned upside down. I'd like to take a minute (Just sit right there) to tell you all about how jesus became the King of the Jews. In West Nazareth, Born and raised, in the temple is where he spent most of his days. Chillin out, prayin, relaxin, all cool, performin some miracles outside of school, when a couple of Romans (Who were up to no good) started makin trouble in his neighborhood. He got in one little crucifixion and his dad got scared, he sadi "Yea and ye shall give thy life, and their sins shall be forgiven". He whistled for a cloud and when it came near, the license plate said FRESH and it had dice in the mirror. If anything he thought that this cloud was rare, but he thought, "Nah Forget It, yo homes, to heaven!" He pulled up to the gates around seven or eight and yelled to saint peter "yo homes, smell ya later" he looked at his kingdom, he was finally there, to sit on his throne, as the King of the Jews.

Happy Holiday!

So my favorite holiday is Leif Eriksson day. Now, when I tell most people this, they just laugh and assume I am kidding around. Well, they don't usually laugh, because, were it a joke, it would be a lame joke. Why would I choose such an obsure holiday as my favorite? Well Spongebob did it, and anything Spongebob does is okay in my book. Well, not everything. That creepy thing he does with the arms and the dancing. And the absorbency. Anyways, Spongebob is not the reason I love Leif Eriksson day.
Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter, Hanukkah these are all among people's favorite holidays. But on these days, there is so much stress, to make sure everything goes right, to live up to expectations set by holidays past. Not to mention the stress of seeing relatives who you may or may not be on good terms with. Except Halloween, I guess that only applies to theother ones.
Unless you live in a place where Leif Eriksson day is widely observed (Minnesota) there are no established traditions for celebrating it. Hell, no one is really even sure how to spell the last name correctly. As a result, there are no expectations to live up to! You can have a shitty time and it won't matter, because you don't really expect it to be different from any other day!
Now, some people might bring up some other pseudoholidays with similar properties. Memoprial day, Veterans Day, Arbor Day, MLK day. These holidays are great. Sometimes you even get to take off school. But they all have catches. It's hard to have a good time on Memorial day when yo uare supposed to be cherishing the memories of the fallen. Or caring about the planet. Or the civil rights struggle.
Sure, you can remember Leif Eriksson's brave, sort-of accomplishment. He was the first European in America, and then he left, leaving little to no lasting impact. Not much to celebrate, but not much to feel bad about. He really didn't do much, and neither should you on his day!
But what about St.Patrick's day? Most people don't even know who St.Patrick was, or what he did, they just use it as an excuse to get drunk. I suppose this is a pretty good holiday, if you like binge drinking and vomit. And there are still silly traditions like pinching people who aren't wearing green. What the hell is that about?
Don't even get me started on Valentine's day. If you are in a relationship, it is one more chance for your relationship to be disrupted if someone doesn't get a gift. If you're single, well, then it's basically an entire season devoted to making you feel like a pariah.
Plus, Leif Eriksson day is one of the few legitimate excuses to wear a Viking helmet.

Carl's Jr. and Exercise do not mix.

So today I went to my favorite Carl's Jr. It is the one by the festival center (the place with the Target and the Chipotle) and I got the new Six-Dollar Cheeseburger, which is inaccurately named, as it was only $2.95 or something. I realize that they are not supposed to be six dollars, and it is a play on words but due to inflation, many of the Six-Dollar burgers actually cost more than Six-Dollars (if you get the combo). Anyway that is beside my point.
If you are wondering why that particualr Carl's Jr. is my favorite, well, they are friendly and have excellent service. I bet you though I had some wacky explanation for liking it didn't you? Or some profound experience that happened to me at that Carl's Jr? Perhaps some shared memories of a better time spent with forgotten friends? Well, not really, they are just very good at their jobs over there. But this is also beside my point.
My point is that the food at Carl's Jr. is not very good for me. This is pretty much common knowledge to everyone, but I just thought I'd throw it out there. The thing is, this will, in no way, stop me from eating at Carl's Jr. The food is just too damn delicious. Especially the Breakfast Burger and the Six-Dollar Cheeseburger I was talking about several paragraphs ago. Well, two paragraphs ago. It was in the first sentence. Anyways, when I am eating them, I feel great, but then, in as little as five minutes, I feel awful. People often throw around the phrase "that food item disagreed with my stomach" except replacing food item with somethign relevant. Carl's Jr. food does not disagree with my stomach. Carl's Jr. food is violently opposed to my stomach's oppressive, able to hold food, regime. When it gets down there, it is outraged that it has been consumed and vows to prevent this fate from befalling any food ever again, or at least for the next several hours.
After I ate the six-dollar cheeseburger, I made the mistake of working out (hitting the heavy bag in time to "You're the Best" by Joe Esposito). Afterwards, I got the sudden urge to simultaneously vomit and pass out that I can only assume was the culmination of a sinister terrorist plot by the Six-Dollar cheeseburger to prevent me from eating dinner and/or end my life. Well, I foiled him. I had Subway for dinner and it was delicious.

Movie Love

I love movies. But if movies have taught me anything, it has mostly been highly inaccurate. This is especially true when it comes to romance. First of all, I'm not even going to get into how ridiculously attractive every god damn person in existence is in movie world. That has been brought up many times. It makes me suspect some sort of horrifying eugenics program is going on in these versions of reality. To be fair though, there are some movies that do depict normal people or even *gasp* relatively unattractive people (though these are usually male). However, what seems to hold true in almost every movie to feature relationships (or television show for that matter) is how unbelievably easy dating is in their world.
In television shows, 90% of the women encountered are single, despite being very attractive (again, so is evewryone else). In reality I have found that the ratio seems to be nearly the opposite. Though, to be fair, this is based on the "Random Assumption" method of research, and to me, "Not paying attention to me" is the same thing as "has a boyfriend". Still, even my friends who aren't shallow, cynical, narcissists havbe trouble finding single people. In many shows, even someone who has been characterized as having an incredibly distracting or off-putting personality quirk can always manage to find a date in under 24 hours.
I realize that actually showing the main characters of shows never actually suceeding wouldn't be entertaining (well, except to me), but still, they shouldn't make it look that easy.
In movies, while the women aren't always single, the person they're with is almost always a blatant jackass who doesn't apreciate them. While I'm sure this happens in real life, I've never actually encountered it. Well, I have, but I'm not naming names. On aa semi-related note, I always sort of feel bad for the "bully" character in those movies, who has his entire life ruined by the end of the movie. Sure, he was a jerk, but still, harsh. This is especially true in sports movies, where the reigning champions, who spent a lot more time and hard work training to get to where they are, are defeated by a misfit band of underdogs who spent more time engaging in wacky hijinks then actually practicing. Sure, they were a bit arrogant, but they kind of had a right to be.
Right then, what was I talking about... dating! Another thing that seems to happen a lot is that if there is a girl, and there is a guy, even if they spent five of the six hours that consisted of their time together, filled with unrelenting hate for one another, they will end up together at the end of the film. In fact, if there are male and female secondary characters, who may have spent even less time together than the main protagonists, there's still basically a 50-50 chance of them also hooking up with each other by the end of the film. Real life doesn't work that way. You don't marry someone you have known for all of two days!
This brings us to my own problem. As some of you may know, I am not exactly a ladies man. This is because my primary source of information about relationships has been movies and television. Now, I considered myself a smart young lad, and from an early age, I wrote off movie romances as nothing but bullshit. I think that perhaps this was my problem. There probably is something useful to be learned about relationships from the media, as, after all, they are based on real life experiences. After all, everyone else grew up watching the same bullshit as me, but they learned how to form relationships and such. Unless of course, there was some sort of seminar that I missed in high school or something.
So, in conclusion, if I ever make it big in Hollywood, chances are it will not be in the romantic comedy genre.
-Michael "James" Armor

Dolla Dolla Bill Ya'll

As the Wutang clan put it, cash rules everything around me. Now, those who know me probably know the story of how I saved up a ridiculous sum of money throughout high school. Today I will tell you how I did it.
Contrary to popular belief, I am neither a drug dealer, nor a male prostitute. I am actually a sort of combination of the two. No, nto really, that was a lie to make myself seem more interesting. The real answer is Warhammer. What is Warhammer? Well, it is a ridiculously expensive tabletop minatures game where you build, paint , and fight with vast armies of soldiers either from a fantasy or sci fi (Warhammer 40k) setting. Now, you're probably wondering, "If they are so expensive, then how did you save up so much money?" Jesus Christ you ask a lot of questions. I am in the middle of explaining this to you, so stop interrupting me with your stupid questions. You see, by the time I entered high school, my Warhammer days had already begun to fade. Sure I still bought a platoon here and there, mostly because I enjoyed building and painting them. However, when I did play Wathammer, it taught me a valuable lesson: Money equals power.
In middle school I would have Warhammer battles against my friends quite frequently. Normally, battles are made fair by the official rules by assigning points values to each unit and setting a limit, however, we were rebels and did not use this point system, instead favoring a "field every availible unit you have" system. This made it fortuitous for me to simply buy more or better units than all of my friends. This is when I learned how to make and save money, by doing chores around the house, odd jobs, and saving all my money from birthdays and christmas. I stopped buying things that I didn't really need (ironic since I was saving up for the equivalent of plastic crack). The more money I had, the better stuff I could buy, and the more likely I was to win. I was a very competitive child. As we gradually began to have fewer and fewer battles (mostly because they became too onesided, what with the vast horde I had assembled) I stopped buying stuff, but continued to save, just in case we started up aghain or something. As a result, I made several thousand dollars by the time I graduated. All thanks to a silly little game.
Since then I have forgotten some of those frugal lessons I had learned, but these days my primary source of income (interest from lending those thousands of dollars to family members) is drying up, I must once again turn to the old ways of makign money, so that one day, I can afford to buy Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.

I Started a Blog!

This post goes out to all the people who said I couldn't do it. "Dr. Thunder, you are not nearly smart, talented, or allergic to peanuts enough to start your own blog! This sort of endeavor should be left up to professional writer-type persons and skydiving instructors, as they are the only two groups of people whose lives are interesting enough to read about." Well, hypothetical naysayer, despite your obsession with skydiving instructors and peanuts, you have some good points. However, it occurred to me that literally anyone can get a blog if they figure out how to. There's no rigorous application or training process, you just sign up and they give you one. IT is the same with radio shows at Titanradio (www.titanradio.org) They're just givin em out to anyone who shows up. So by Odin's Beard I got myself one of them. Perhaps someday people besides me will read it.
So, I now have a blog, and wil ltalk about upcoming events in Sophisticobra Productions (www.sophisticobra.tk), and, since there are never any upcoming events, random bullshit I feel like talking about. For example: Roman Numerals piss me off. If Roman numerals are so good, then why are all the Romans dead? Because they were too busy trying to figure out what XXCMLXXCVIXVMMQ means and a Visigoth came up behind them and lopped their head off with a big sword. So I say we get rid of them. If we want to use the numeric system of a dead race of people, why not use the Aztec one? It's the one with all the bars and dots. Hell, you wouldn't even have to make a new system for blind people becasue it's basically braille. Sure, it would be hard to type that on a keyboard, but I say suck it up! If Arabic numerals aren't good enough for you, you deserve to be beaten to death with a sack full of Victorian-era bicycles.