Today I feel like this Pony, pictured above.

Call me Pendantic Penelope, but I would like to take a moment out to correct the entire planet with regards to the usage of the verb "to damn".

As previously mentioned (see sentence above), the word "damn" is a verb.

Example: Damn your eyes!

To "damn" someone is to condemn them (or in the above case, their eyes) to the fires of hell. Or at least to something unpleasant.

Its past participle, damned, may be used as an adjective for things infernal - things that are presumably already sullied by the fires of hell and are beyond redemption. In fact, damned is synonymous with the word accursed:

"Get this accursed duck out of my shed" = "Get this damned duck out of my shed"


But if I were instead to say "Get this curse duck out of my shed", would you assume that I was either a retard or a foreigner? Yes you would, and fair enough too.

And that is precisely the assumption I make when anyone uses the verb damn as if it were an adjective.

"Get this damn duck out of my shed" is a sentence that is profoundly ungrammatical. Anyone who constructs a like sentence should indeed be condemned to the fires of hell.

Follow this link for a list of organisations and individuals who are, in my opinion, unreconstructed retards.

A friend emailed me in response to my last post. He writes:

"I can't post comments on your blog, because I'm too stupid to remember my username. So I email it to you here:
http://www.xxxnightdrive.com/sites/mixwrest/"

It might not be work safe, but enjoy.

And while we're on the subject of the strange world of The Gym, I would like to make several observations.

First, the weights room of a gym is a relatively female-free zone. Being a chatty female gym n00b in such a zone has the potential to upset the testosteroney vibe.

Me: "Every time I come to the gym you're here, and when I leave you're still here. Are you addicted to weightlifting or something?"

Boy: "No no, I'm training to get stronger."

"You're already pretty damned muscle-y. Why do you need to be more muscle-y?"

"It's useful for, you know, life and stuff."

"What part of life? You work in an office, don't you?"

"Well... like moving house."

"Like moving house. Uh-huh..."


Beware the man who picks you up in a gym. It is highly likely that he is a kind of man who goes to gyms.


Boy: "So you're going back to France in June, right? In that case you'll need to practise your French. Let's go for a drink sometime, and you can practise your French on me."

Me: "OK. You'll help me practise my French. Thanks."


Never believe a French guy who says he wants to help you practice your French. Never.


Me: "We can't go back to my place tonight. Seriously, I live in a shed with ducks. Let's go back to your place instead."
Boy: "No, we can't. My place is a mess."
"Yeah maybe, but I live in a shed. With ducks."

Always believe me even when what I say seems implausible. Always.

Later:
"I don't know how you can find stuff in here."

"Hey, come on, I warned you I live in a shed, OK?"

Still later:
"Look! Look at those ducks tapping on the window and staring at us!!"

"Yup. I did say there'd be ducks."


... ...

Boy: "Why are you poking me?"

Me: "I'm trying to find some fat. It's amazing. You don't seem to have any fat anywhere on your body. It's all rock hard."

"Yeah, well I work out."

"I know, but it's weird. It's like being in bed with a surfboard."

"I've got to go now. I've got a 80km bike ride this morning."

"I can imagine. OK, have fun!"

I have been spending some time in the gym of late, in the weight-training section amidst bulbous men preening their muscles in the mirror. It has opened my eyes to a lifestyle sub-culture that has hitherto remained outside my realm of observation.

The other day I was in the gym with a friend, who was spurring me on to lift increasingly heavier weights. Her sadistic zeal was such that by the end of the session I was calling her "Mistress Moran" (her name being 'Moran'). It was then that it occurred to me that a personal trainer is not dissimilar to a dominatrix and that a gym is not unlike a torture chamber.

After all, a personal trainer is someone who is paid to induce physical discomfort in her client. Her dungeon is a gym, usually a spartan, windowless room, containing an assembly of tools and contraptions designed to inflict pain on various parts of the human body.

Many of these devices bear no small resemblance to popular torture devices.


A fully equipped gym from the 14th century


But so what?, you may ask. Well, I just wondered if there was an untapped market somewhere in our fast-paced modern world for a two-in-one sort of service. A sort of "one-stop shop" for masochism where one could get fit and get off, as it were. I'm sure this is a thoroughly unoriginal idea, and that some enterprising soul has already established such a business on the underground scene and is doing rather well from it.

Today a friend and I were having a discussion about the eternal problem of luggage. Namely the backpacks vs the suitcase. Both have their strengths and weaknesses and neither is perfect. Bugger.

Backpack
Pros: Can be carried up stairs. Can be used as a makeshift pillow.
Cons: The amount of stuff you need to pack to go traveling for more than a weekend is cripplingly heavy to carry on one's back.

Suitcase
Pros: So what if it's heavy? It has wheels.
Cons: Try getting those wheels up stairs and over curbs in a place like Mexico City.

So we were discussing the suitcase-backpack dichotomy as described above, and my companion bemoaned the fact that there was no such thing as an all-terrain, four wheel drive suitcase.

It occurred to me that what one needs is a sort of dog-robot-suitcase with hybrid wheel-legs like the Mars Rover.




You'd push and pull the Suitcase Rover along on a stiff leash, like you do with a normal suitcase with wheels. When you tried to pull it up stairs or over any obstacle like a street curb or a small street urchin it would use its clever robotic wheel-legs to negotiate its way up and over.

Today I feel like these Ponies, featured above.

(Are these marketing meanies trying to mock our magnum opus? Oh well, I suppose they're just jealous...)

David Perry keeps trying to friend me up on LinkedIn.

For a while I thought this was odd (not being a friend, ex-colleague or even an admirer of ex-Shiny boss David Perry), but then a friend told me he'd received a similarly bizarre request. We concluded that David Perry is currently on a linking spree, attempting to link to pretty much everyone in the games industry. So chances are if you read this blog, you're being friended up by David Perry. Fairly creepy, wouldn't you say?

David Perry (for those outside of the game industry) is known for founding the studio that created games such as Messiah and Earthworm Jim, and abandoning this same studio after burning his team into the ground to create such over-hyped mediocre shite as Enter the Matrix (a game made in collaboration with the Wachowski Brothers, in the proud tradition of film directors who have tried to "write" games and failed dismally).

Now David Perry seems to be some sort of one-man brand (see www.dpfiles.com and www.dperry.com) spreading his David Perry wisdom around the gaming world as a consultant.


"Link me baby, link me..."

David Perry is one of many industry "personalities" around whom adoring hoards of hungry young game design wannabes flock, clamouring to be told the magic formula to "breaking in" to the game industry.

My favourite bit of advice about getting into the industry is probably Chris Crawford's essay,"The Education of a Game Designer". Crawford advises maturity, indie projects and a well-rounded education. I think it's pretty sensible advice.

But sensible is boring; let us return to David Perry and his advice. Namely, the David Perry Challenge!

Recently I came across a clamouring hoard ("plz plz i would do anything to break into teh game industry") who proudly asserted that he had embarked upon this "David Perry Challenge". Complete the challenge (or all 3 challenges, because reportedly there are of these challenges, though I haven't seen any details of the other two yet) , and you will be royally dubbed worthy of becoming a game designer by the great David Perry.

The challenge is a "test" whereby Perry will measure your worthiness by the amount of "passion" you demonstrate.

"I keep getting asked how to be a game designer... Many people don't realize just how much passion it takes. [...]

"I'm going to issue THREE MAJOR CHALLENGES to you all one by one. It's a PASSION test..."

And how is your PASSION tested? By playing the top-rated 100 games and documenting and reviewing them according to the David Perry formula.

That's a lot of PASSION.*

So there you are, wannabe game designers. Play and review 100 games, eat 100 pies, slay 100 dragons... or something. You will thereby demonstrate sufficient PASSION to be certified by the David Perry system for spotting game design talent.**

The really excellent thing about his Challenge is that if you spend 1,000 hours and $ to complete the Challenge, and submit the resulting doctoral thesis-length tome of a document (the quality of your analysis doesn't seem to matter - it's all about showing PASSION through doing it), David Perry promises to "put you at the top of [his] personal list for hiring".

And this inspires me (arguably a much lesser game designer than David Perry, but then again where would the future of the world's leading Pony game franchise be without the genius of moi) to launch the Kipper Challenge.

The challenge is this: adopt a developmentally disabled orangutan and groom it for hiring by David Perry.

And actually, the hardest bit about this would be finding the orangutan because orangutans are a protected species only to be found in the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra. I could've made it easy and specified a hearing-impaired cocker-spaniel, but procuring such an animal wouldn't require as much PASSION.

So I call upon wannabe game designers the world over, complete my Challenge and I will dub thee - with my mighty sword-come-pen - worthy of becoming a game designer. Once your urangutan is hired by David Perry you will sky-rocket to the top of my personal list for hiring. I will even add you on LinkedIn!

* One could view that as a PASSION test, sure. But it may equally be classified as an AUTISM test.

**Or, looking it at another way, you will demonstrate sufficient PASSION to be certified insane by the Kipper system for diagnosing Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.