Whore-gon Trail

As far as computer games go, I'm a big fan of strategy and historical role-playing games. Why? Because I'm a nerd, that's why. While you were out gunning people down in Half-Life, I was building Rome from fuckin' scratch, biotch!

One of my favorite HRPGs growing up (as it likely was of many from my generation) was The Oregon Trail. I spent countless hours traveling slowly and cautiously across the country, shooting myself while hunting buffalo, trying to keep the other wagon members from dying, and just generally losing. On very few occasions was I able to actually make it to Oregon without dying of hunger or dysentery or something, but it was fun anyway. Of course, that was when I was still young enough to not know when to admit defeat. Nowadays I would likely give up after a single loss, as I do with everything in life.

To the point: in order to rekindle some of those memories from long ago—and to have something somewhat interesting to write about—I've decided to play a short game of Oregon Trail (5th Edition) and describe my journey here in a number of short blurbs written while playing the game.

April 1, 1847
So I set off on April 1st, 1847 from Independence, MO, bound for Oregon City. I have two 40-year-old dudes and a 12-year-old girl with me (you know what that means, wink wink).

April 2, 1847
You son of a fuck! It said the god damn ice was frozen, so of course, taking the game in good faith, I crossed. What happens? The wagon falls through the fuckin' ice. Jane couldn't escape the wagon quickly enough, so the bitch started drowning. I should've left her in there to drown, but she clung onto the supplies I pulled from the water.

April 15, 1847
Took the ferry across the river. Ha! Those cockwads aren't going to fool me with their ford/float bullshit.

April 21, 1847
Great, the fucking oxen can't even walk across a river. I would slaughter them all, but we need them to pull us another 1,000 miles. Maybe once we get to Utah.

April 23, 1847
Henry suffered a concussion? What a pussy. Well, at least if he goes into a coma we'll have more food.

May 8, 1847
Thirst? What the fuck do they expect me to do about that? I don't see any magic fuckin' "collect water" button. The funny thing is, we're right next to a god damn river. How could they be dying of thirst?

May 16, 1847
Strangers ahead! There's no option to rob and execute them, so I'll just approach them.

Oh, it's just some Irish dude. Our dumbfuck oxen dropped all our alcohol in the river back there. Sorry, pal.

May 19, 1847
Broken yoke. This is exactly the sort of shit I knew would happen. That's why I'm a carpenter! Haha, I'll just fix this shit right up....

May 25, 1847
Another river. The piece of shit wagon tipped over this time. Seriously... god damn. I hope I die before we reach Nebraska.

Jane died! YES!!! It's about time. We just left the whore in the river for the alligators.

Oh, wonderful. A hill. No matter which option I pick, it's always the wrong one and the wagon ends up toppling back down. I almost can't take the copious fun.

May 28, 1847
Just as I expected. Shit-ass wagon tipped over on the way down the hill. There goes another 22 lbs. of bacon. We may have to eat Henry to make up for it.

June 1, 1847
Just traded some asshole a kettle for a fishing pole. What a stupid fuck he was.

Anyway, fishing in this game is ridiculously easy. Despite the rest of the journey being hard as fuck, fishing was designed to be so easy even a retard without hands or eyes could do it. You just click once to cast the line, wait til a badly-animated fish "bites," and then click again to catch it. I caught 24 lbs. of fish just doing that shit. I'll bet that fucktard with the kettle is kicking himself right now.

June 5, 1847
Too bad Jane died. I could really go for a blow right now.

Well...

I suppose we could go back and fish her out of the river.

June 11, 1847
"Very low morale." No shit. What the fuck were we supposed to bring, Bob Hope?

June 12, 1847
Switched rations to "meager." I'm sick of these gluttonous ballbrains stuffing their fat asses full of my quickly-dwindling food supply.

June 19, 1847
Visited Fort John and bought me some gunpowder! Now I can go destroy some endangered buffalo and leave 95% of the carcass to rot in the sun and prairie wind!

Fuck. I forgot I don't have bullets.

July 4, 1847
Got some bullets at the Mormon Fairy... I mean Ferry Trading Post. Now I'm going to destroy some buffalo.

Well, I got a bear, but it's better than nothing. Now I don't feel so much like massacring the other wagon train members anymore.

July 9, 1847
Great; an ox went missing. We can't fucking move now.

July 22, 1847
After more than a week, we haven't moved any. Damn ox. I'm thinking about trading for a shovel so we can dig our graves now and save other people the trouble later.

July 26, 1847
Halle-fuckin'-lujah. I had to trade for two god damn oxen just to get moving again. It's been two shitty weeks since we've gone anywhere.

July 29, 1847
Henry has a gimp shoulder. I think I'll sneak up behind him and punch it. First a concussion, now a sprained shoulder. God damn, son, grow some balls.

August 22, 1847
Lost more supplies to another cunting river. There should be a third option: "Caulk the wagons and fuck it."

August 28, 1847
I floated across Green River. John Fogerty would be proud. If he were born yet.

September 12, 1847
Injured livestock. You know what that means.... *cocks rifle*

Who's hungry?

September 19, 1847
Ha! I died of thirst, apparently. What a shitty way to die. I could've at least gone out while boning two Indian chicks at the same time.

Where Celebrities Go to Die

Commercials. We watch hundreds—hell, thousands of them every day. Rather than get up and do something productive, like make a sandwich or spy on the kids down the street with binoculars, we sit mindlessly watching these miniature propaganda spots. There are so many of the damned things that companies are constantly looking for the key ingredient that will surpass the consumer's 3-second attention span drill their advertisement into the highest echelon of his brain's brand recognition mechanism.

Some companies, notably beer manufacturers, use humor to get their point across. Others use animation and/or cute kids to appeal to soccer moms looking for a way to facilitate their laundry-doing or dinner-cooking. (Because... you know... when was the last time you saw a man doing the cooking or cleaning in a commercial?) And yet other advertisers use no technique at all. They apparently hope the sheer pointlessness of their commercial will annoy the consumer into buying their shitty product (see: HeadOn).

One of the oldest ad techniques, though, is that of the celebrity endorsement. As the dumb curnsoomers, we're supposed to think, "Hey, that person is being paid to say something good about that product. It must be a useful and quality-made item, surely!" I suppose it's passable when the celebrities are relatively popular or... recent. But if you've ever watched network television or the Game Show Network between 9 A.M. and 3 P.M., you'll know that washed-up celebs are not quite as passable.


Lindsay Wagner
Because we loved her as... the Bionic Woman, and.... uh... the Bionic Woman... of course we'll take her word for it that the Sleep Number® bed—set to 35—has given her the best sleep of her life (even though the royalties from Jessie ain't enough to meet the month's rent payment).

Robert Wagner
Continuing the washed-up Wagner curse is Robert, who actually does have a respectable acting career spanning over half a century. Unfortunately, all that is overshadowed by his stunning, mesmerizing performances as Number Two in the Austin Powers films. And now he's doing reverse-mortgage ads. Funny how shit works out, eh?

Ed McMahon
Well, since the guy's on the verge of pulling an MC Hammer, I can understand why he'd do commercials. When you need money, you need money; and I suppose preaching the joys of motorized wheelchairs sure beats the hell out of being an 85-year-old hooker.

Betty White
I love Betty, so I won't be too harsh on her. After constantly wanting to bone her for the longest time, to the point of humping the TV whenever a Match Game or Super Password rerun came on, I couldn't possibly diss her. After all, she's just expressing her love for animals by doing 1800petmeds.com commercials. (Note well: electricity and ejaculate do not jive.)

Mickey Rooney
Ah, we finally come to poor Mickey. Would you believe that he's almost 88 years old and still acting? He's got more staying power than Keith Richards' and Bob Hope's love child. So why on earth would he and his wife be rounded up and shipped off to a cold, dark studio to do a life insurance ad chock full of horrible jokes and cookies? Beats me.


You can somewhat imagine the discussion among ad execs when they come up with these ideas:

"Listen up, men. We have no sense of humor and no money left for CGI. We need something that will appeal to these old fucks, pronto!"

"How about Lindsay Wagner, sir?"

"Lindsay who?"

"You know, Irene from Nighthawks? Susan Fields from The Paper Chase? Her."

"Huh?"

"The fucking Bionic Woman, sir."

"Oh well, we'll just hope the smelly geriatrics know her."

The Spirit of Independence

For many, Independence Day is a fun occasion. People attend backyard barbecues, consume gallons of alcohol, and eventually manage to blow their faces off with illegal fireworks. And so the fun goes. Some weirdos, like myself, stay indoors and watch the biannual Twilight Zone marathon on Sci-Fi (something I've done every year since 2002).

Thinking back 84,736 days ago, it's difficult to imagine a fledgling America trying to stand its ground against the all-powerful English rule. After all, now we're like some... super-badass motherfuckers. We could rule the whole world if we wanted, but—like Chuck Norris—we choose not to. With that in mind, it's hard to think about a loose, fearful group of rebels living under the constant threat of a redcoat invasion.

So, blah blah, Declaration of Independence, blah blah, Revolutionary War, blah blah; all that shit we learned in 8th grade history brings us to today. We now have the freedom to do more or less anything within the bounds of decency, including but limited to:

• being fat
• blowing off huge muthafuckin' fireworks
• owning huge muthafuckin' guns
• capturing insects and staging deathmatches between them
• talking loudly on cell phones to make everyone on the block aware that we do in fact have cell phones
• showering with Crisco while singing the Kinks' "You Really Got Me"
• et c.

Indeed, our freedoms are many, and normally here would be some shit about how people died for them or something. That's much too cliché pour moi, so I'll rave in a completely different direction instead.

Why is it that your masculine status is determined by the amount of car alarms you can set off within a three-hour span on the fourth of July? It seems the only way some men can compensate for a painfully small member is to detonate roughly a petagram of projectile explosives in their suburban yards. Formerly confined to the South (the Deep South), this tradition has now spread to most cities and rural areas in the North, as well.

In conclusion, don't get too drunk, don't shoot too many eyes out, and don't be too fuckin' annoying with those fireworks. And have a happy Independence Day.