Dear Dr. Ruth...

Rare is the joke or gag or schtick or whatever that makes me laugh no matter how many times I see it. I tend to think that this "letter" written to love columnist Dr. Ruth, a rough on the eyes sex therapist, is nothing but a joke. But a joke I'm not going to ever stop laughing at.

What makes this so brilliant is imagining the poor unfortunate woman as she's writing this letter. I honestly am not even sure that last sentence is supposed to be sarcastic or not. You decide.

via Reddit

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Pure epic

History is rife with examples of how two awesome things are put together to form an even more awesomer thing: peanut butter and chocolate; rock and roll; Stephen Hawking and speak-and-spells. This 2-combo bar has been the gold standard for thousands of years of human history.

Until today.

Some grand alchemist decided he would go for the impossible. He would combine not two awesome things together, but 3. Mad, is he? Sure, I'm sure he got that a lot in his quest for human combo advancement. I'm sure his kids cried little kid tears when father wouldn't come home again because he's set afire with purpose and flashes of insight.

So I humbly present to you, something unimaginably epic - a video game that combines Pheonix Wright, Elite Beat Agents, and Queen.

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The most ridiculous mashup of video games and pop culture EVER

Dear god, my head is going implode. Kinda like a reverse pinata, only instead of candy my head is full of lulz. And these lulz collapse into singularity. Which would make them more like the letter "K" if you squint really hard. That's what singularity means, right? Oh god, my brain is so bork right now.

The good news is if the Heavy Weapons Guy's career as a Billy Mays replacement doesn't pan out, you know MTV'll probably have some work for him.

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What playing football has taught me about my MBA program (and I haven't even started class yet!)

I'm currently applying for a student blogger position at Boston College's MBA website. Since I like reusing my work whenever possible, I thought I'd share the sample I sent in here. Enjoy!

I am a first year student. And at the time of this writing, I haven't spent minute one in the classroom. What I know of my upcoming academic experience has been gathered in the form of testimonials, hearsay, and grim warnings. It's a vision of first years toiling away in break out rooms and all but sleeping at Fulton Hall 5+ days a week. It demands all that you can give and then some. You will be constantly challenged throughout the year.

Having played in high school and college, I believe football is a pretty good parallel. While the games are all typical fans are exposed to, they represent only a fraction of the sweat, hard work and dedication put in by the players. There are practices, team meetings, films, off season work out routines, and grueling summer camps - a year round regime that demands all the player can give and then some. Players are constantly challenged throughout the year (though these challenges usually manifest as 260+ lb linemen).

Ray Lewis, one of the nfl all time great linebackers, represents Accounting. You don't even want to know what the metaphor for Statistics is.
I strongly suspect the solution to tackling the first year of school here at the Carrol School of Management is the same one I discovered for playing football: give it your all and have fun.

My fellow first years and I may get (figuratively) dinged up, bruised, and battered. We may all very well exhausted every night. But if we're doing it right, if we're really getting the most out of our experience here, there's no reason we can't be smiling the whole time. I know I will be.

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Holy crap you guys, I'm going to school

Shortly after the posting of this... uh, post, I'll be moving to Boston to pursue my MBA. This is a dream 3+ years in the making, having been rejected from all applied schools years earlier. I'm super excited to get into the swing of things, even though I'm woefully unprepared. I hear this experience is akin to drinking from a fire hose - so I say let 'er rip!

However, this post is also bittersweet. If you've ever drank from a fire hose, first off what the hell is wrong with you? But more importantly, you know that in the battle between your balance and the deluge of water, the water's gonna win. I honestly don't know what amount of free time I'll have, which means I don't know what ability I have to write here on The Unwind.

This blog has been a tremendous help to me as a writer, allowing me to hone my writing craft, and as a creative outlet. I do hope to continue here, but as of right now I have to put it on tentative hiatus.

In case I can't come back to it, thank you for stopping by. I hope you've had as much fun reading this blog as I did writing it.

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Do you know the number to heaven?

I saw this on the great G4 television show Web Soup, and I needed to share it here.

So imagine you got a movie contest premise. It has to be 30 seconds long, feature a monster, someone under 18 years old and the word "fantastic". What would you come up with? Go ahead, think about it. I'll be right here.

Still need a minute? No problem.

Got it now? Good. Now throw your idea away because there is no way you're on enough drugs to top this movie (you're still able to read, after all). This could quite possibly be the most WTF thing I've ever seen in my many years on the internet. Also, I love it.

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Smile, you're on camera!

Ever go to Walmart, only to see some really creepy individual shopping? Would you like to see more of him/her? How about many different versions of him/her? Now you can, delivered right to the very computer that you're using right now!

I'm talking, of course, about the website People of Walmart.

It's got your average, run-of-the-mill creepy. It's got your take-3-showers-to-feel-clean-again creepy. It's got your absurd, ridiculous and just plain "wtf". There's something here for every voyeur too lazy to go to his local Walmart.

I'm wonder just when this site will feature a naked man in a trench coat. It's this idea's logical conclusion and, quite honestly, just a matter of time.

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Peekaboo!

I know I've been talking a lot about Team Fortress 2 here. I swear I'm not a TF2 blog, it's just... well, I'm heading to grad school soon and I don't know if I'll have the time to play it. So I've been playing it more often than usual pre-emptively in case I don't have the time to be a gamer anymore.

When I saw this video, I was instantly intrigued by a new game mode someone's created called Prop Hunt. Essentially it's hide and seek, done TF2 style. Set in arena maps, the RED team has about 30 or seconds to hide from the BLU team, then the BLU team has the remaining time to go forth and slaughter. Sounds simple, right?

Nope. The BLU team, default pyro (though you can switch to heavy, another good choice), takes damage everytime they fire their weapons. So it pays to conserve instead of W+M1. Yes, you can pull the trigger so much you die. To augment this, periodically the capture point is "refreshed" and you can touch it for full health. The brilliance of this is that it takes you away from the hunt.

Oh, yeah, and it's called prop hunt. The RED team, forcibly scouts, are all turned into random map props as soon as the round begins. We're talking palm trees, buckets, doors, wood piles, hay - whatever is native to the map. Actually, the worst things to be forced to hide as are capture points (BLU always checks the point and you always look out of place anywhere else) and BLU pyros - you hold no gun and don't have the same running animations the other BLU pyros do.

The outcome of all this is interesting. RED's advantage, aside from being a prop, is its speed and mobility. I can't tell you the number of times I've spotted and lit a hider, only to have him run away from me before I could kill him. But what BLU lacks in speed, it makes up for in numbers - once a prop is out and running, you can see everyone scramble to cut off angles and kill it.

It's amazing to see what can be done with a little creativity and the patience to create a new game mode. Wholly recommended.

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8-bit tripping

Stop motion video is a medium that has always fascinates me. You set up a picture, take it, then work to set up the next picture that's only slightly different than the one before so as to create motion. Rinse and repeat. Because the effort required to produce even a small amount of video is enormous, it's almost always a labor of love. And that's usually reflected in the video itself.

Case in point, 8-bit Trip. Someone (or several someones, more likely) spent 1,500 hours assembling and disassembling Lego blocks to create some amazing 8-bit esque video. The results are stunning.

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Stop having a boring head, stop having a boring life.

Like many people, in TF2 one of the things I find most frustrating (aside from repeatedly getting schooled) is not having hats. I have one. There are a total of 30 if you count the hatless hats. Doing the math, I need some more fucking hats.

You like my hat, chuckle-nuts?
The only way to unlock them is to play TF2. Like, a lot of TF2, because hats drop about as frequently as Beastie Boys albums. But what do you do if you don't have the time to play 20 hours a day?

That's when you something like SteamStats, an idler. It allows you to be "logged into" TF2 using a fake server and just sits there. It's not nearly as computer resource intensive as just chilling in an idle server, so keeping it up and running is just a matter of not playing anything on Steam while you go about your business or just leaving your computer on.

Items drop about 5-6 times a day, and so far I've received no hats, but just the fact that I now have a greater chance to get my beloved camera beard makes this full of win. Enjoy your hats.

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Best. Cake. Ever.

This weekend brought about a going away party for me, in which a lot of my friends and family were able to make it. And while I haven't been able to fully debrief all people there, the general consensus was that it was a rip-roaring good time.

The best part of the whole thing? I got cakerolled. I know I shared this on Twitter previously, but it's so full of win (and ice cream) that I have to devote some space on this blog towards it. This post is its posthumous shrine.

My girlfriend is the best for having this made. Totally have to marry her after this.

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Dance Dance Evolution

Wikipedia defines the Lindy Hop as:

...an African American dance, based on the popular Charleston and named for Charles Lindbergh's Atlantic crossing in 1927. It evolved in New York City in the 1920s and '30s and originally evolved with the jazz music of that time. Lindy was a fusion of many dances that preceded it or were popular during its development but is mainly based on jazz, tap, breakaway and Charleston. It is frequently described as a jazz dance and is a member of the swing dance family.

I would have used the more succinct "awesome", but that's me. What about you?

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My Life is Average

No, that's not commentary on my own life (I lead an awesome life), but rather an awesome website in which people recount their tales of averageness. My Life is Average is very similar in layout and structure to FMyLife, but instead of stories of cheating and otherwise getting dumped on, MLIA's takes have an endearing childlike innocence about them. Also, they're pretty damn funny.

For example:

Today at work we got a new vacuum cleaner. It straps onto your back and has a hand-held nozzle with which to vacuum. I am officially a Ghostbuster. MLIA

It's like discovering an entire community of people that think exactly like I do. It's good to be average.

http://mylifeisaverage.com/

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Things that should not be: Poo Trap

Do you have a dog? Does it poop? Do you hate your dog? If you've answered yes to all three, then this product is for you. It's the Poo Trap, a device that catches poo that comes out of your dog. Finally, a device that strips you and your dog away from any remaining dignity.

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Long live the king! (of the hill)

So the new TF2 classless update hit last Friday, and I've had about a weekends worth of time to digest it. With it came hats, a new play mode, new ctf and arena maps, and a metric crapton of tweaks. Here's my (obligatory) two cents:

What Valve did right:
Hats. While they're a pain in the ass to get, the option to give your character a little more customization is a welcomed one (camera beard ftw) . Now if only I could get myself some of those freaking hats...

CTF_Sawmill. I never was a fan of arena Sawmill, but take out a couple of the side attack routes and it plays very nicely as a capture the flag map. Only slight niggle is that the map is so open and with plenty of water on both sides of the map, that pyros tend to be underpowered on this map.

Sandman tweaks. Un-freaking-believable what they did. Scout now can double jump with the Sandman, but can no longer stun uber-charged enemies. Also, there's a significant health penalty, dropping the Scouts health to only 95 hp. This means taking one rocket to the face, not even a crit rocket, usually means you explode. This change is amazing for 2 reasons:

• No longer are people limited to the Force-a-nature / Sandman combo. Most people (myself included) teamed the two items together to help compensate for the Sandman's lack of double jump. Now Scouts are free to choose either scattergun.
  
• The decrease in health actually forces Scouts to play as, well, Scouts. It's easier to learn how to play any class when you can vividly see your mistakes. What better way than dying just about every time you make one as a Scout? That's what the 95 hp represents - a learning tool. Jump in, deal quick damage, jump out. Learn the value of making the other team chase you and not take your objectives/engage your team.

King of the Hill - I really love this play mode. You and your team try to capture a central point and have your timer reach 0 before the other team's. Simple, yet maddeningly frustrating at times. Plus, shortly after the release the announcer kept shouting "overtime" which was hilarious. But most of all, what's great about King of the Hill is...

koth_nucleus - This map was made for King of the Hill. It's small and incredibly well balanced. The capture point is literally inaccessible until its unlocked which has the added bonus of preventing one team from camping it. There's no good place for a sentry nest, yet it doesn't preclude the engineer from setting up shop somewhere - its defenses are just not impregnable like in some other maps. So much fun to be had in this map.

What Valve did wrong:
King of the Hill nests - In koth_Viaduct, and to a lesser extent koth_Sawmill, the matches are usually won not by the team with the most skilled players, but the one that establishes its nest first. There are a few spots on these maps that are perfect for it, and that's the problem. If the other team's sentry is at level 3 and the teleporters are up, good luck turning the tide (unless the other team is really bad at protecting their stuff). Remove those nests, Valve.

Alternatively, I'd love to try Viaduct and Sawmill as-is on a server that doesn't allow engineers. THAT would be interesting.

Arena mode - It got replaced. Much like the Medic's Blutsaugher to the Syringe Gun, King of the Hill almost completely replaces it. Sure, I may indulge Arena from time to time to get a Counterstrike-esque feel, but even with the nesting problem King of the Hill is more fun than Arena.

Rocket jumping / Force-a-nature jumping - While I haven't tried these out for myself, servers chatter was alive with complaints on how Soldiers were unable to reach places they normally could with a rocket jump, or how the Scout's "triple jump" with the force-a-nature is more or less taken from them. I guess I didn't see the need for this, Valve. Why change what wasn't really broken?

Overtime! OVERTIME! overTIME! OVER time! ...overtime! OvErTiMe! oVertime! OVERTIME! OvErtImE! Come on, Valve, you didn't need to patch this shortly after the update. I may be alone in thinking it, but it was welcomed unintentional hilarity, and really gave life to the otherwise unknown Announcer.

Summary
Overall, there's a lot to be excited about in this update. While I'd always love me some new unlockables for a class (Demoman, plz), the Scout plays like a brand new class with the changes made so I can't really complain too much. Not perfect, but few things are. 9.5/10

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