friend in need

“I hate to say this but I don’t have time to help you right now,” he said, cradling his cell-phone against his ear so he could lean over and power up his gaming console. “No, friend, sorry - I’m too swamped.” It took another five minutes to boot up the system, during which time he stared at the blank television, his mind awhirl with memories of the previous day’s gaming successes. ‘I got one more percent of the game completed!’ he thought triumphantly. ‘Just 92 percent left to go...’ An update was available, and he approved it.

‘Thirty minutes!?’ he thought, dismayed, peering at the status bar that indicated how long the game’s status update would take to transfer over to his system. For a brief moment, he thought about calling his friend back and telling him he had thirty minutes to spare in which he could do the simple thing asked of him.

Part of him rebelled however, incensed that he would consider giving up even a moment of precious playtime, let alone a full thirty minutes during which he was not really playing but merely watching the slow crawl of a status bar that indicated the time he would have to wait until he could actually play. A different part of him - this one far quieter - told him that the right thing to do would be to help his friend. Like the girl who locked a kitten in a closet and listened as it mewed less and less loudly by the day until it finally died of thirst, at which point she simply threw it in the trash, the man just sat there.

And stared at the screen.

And watched the status bar inch slowly to the right.

And wasted his life waiting to waste his life some more instead of helping a friend in need.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

practicing for peace

Unlike the majority of his schoolmates and friends who received video games such as Modern Warfare or Call Of Duty for their b-days or x-mas this year, 9 year-old prissy pants Samwell Youlissees Chorrand, of Oxnard, California was elated to get as a present a copy of the first edition of Mashing Buttons 4 Peace, or MB4P. Available only in select areas and sold only to little fucking weaklings and their fucking weakling moms, MB4P is slated to underwhelm all expectations, and to sell poorly. Said a source at Electronic Arts (EA), the company that created the game, who demanded he remain anonymous so as to spare himself and his family a lifetime of public mockery, “We made MB4P because a group of parents – OK, moms – kept emailing us about the violent nature of most of our teen-oriented games, claiming they would sue if we didn't come up with something for the pre-teen and teen markets not focused on war-making, death, murder, terrorism, or the wiping out of turban-wearing baddies. MB4P is, well, it's something, but, well… fuck, man, you did promise not to print my name in this article, right?”

In Mashing Buttons 4 Peace, the player depresses various keys on a wireless controller in time to music or in synchrony with images displayed on the screen, which causes an elaborately-crafted avatar to twirl about and leap for joy in one of only a handful of locations, either in a field of golden swaying wheat, in the Great Chamber at the United Nations building in New York City, or in a sky-scape made up entirely of rainbows. (After forcing ourselves to play MB4P for long enough to reach the first save-point, it appears to us that the optimization of one's avatar for cooperative wheat-field-spinning is the game's primary purpose.) According to young Master Chorrand, the game is, “Awesome. So cool. Just look at the little guy who kinda looks like me dancing at the U.N. with all types of other avatars who have different skin-tones and different costumes. What a treat.” While looking on lovingly and filling out the insurance forms necessary to cover her son when he is beaten down and physically abused at school for being a little fucking pussy-ass bitch, Mrs. Tarranz Jaimms Chorrand, aged 42, proclaimed: “I am so very happy that EA bowed to our wishes and finally came up with a game that promotes Global Peace and that fosters peaceful coexistence between all humans, regardless of dress, religion, or choice of head-covering. The sole remaining task for us Mothers Against War-Making In Video Games, or MAWMIVG, is to convince the rest of America's parents to stop buying games that train young children in the art of making war or that convince kids it is OK to firebomb a shack filled with people, to shoot airplanes piloted by humans from the sky, or to daisy-chain claymores so as to create the most effective killing-zones. Land-sakes – we're so close, I can feel it.”

Electronic Arts initially fought demands to release a game for teens focused on practicing peace, claiming that it already produces a range of products aimed at children under the age of eight years whose tender brains and stunted views of the realities of life under American world-imperialism make them prone to cry and to wet their pants upon seeing violent images of war. Said the unnamed source at EA after he had returned from the greasy-spoon's bathroom to discover a hundred dollar bill sitting under his half-eaten plate of cheap diner food. “With none of the major television channels or news networks showing pictures of our ongoing wars of aggression or our continuing attempts to subjugate the peoples of the world to the demands of our homegrown corporate profit-mongers, it is our duty to harden the minds of our future soldiers and to get them ready for lives as hired guns in the all-volunteer Armed Forces of the United States of America.”

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit