A waitress at a nice restaurant my wife and I like to frequent said, “No Problem,” after I thanked her for topping off our water glasses. I asked her, “what would be a problem?” She just stared at me.
I asked her, “If freshening my water isn’t a problem, would sending back my meal be a problem?”
We hadn’t been served yet, so that only confused her more. My wife interrupted and told her I was just being funny. Perhaps I was, but this waitress gave less forethought to her words then a parrot does. I know she was just using a common and well excepted version of you’re welcome, her heart was in the right place, but in this scenario, that remark does not mean the same thing as “you-are-welcome.” Left on its own, the implication is no problem this time, and even left unspoken it still rings in my ear the same way fucked rings in my ear every time I hear a newscaster or politician use the acronym SNAFU.
As a fiction writer, I work with innuendos and inferences all the time, they are the salt and pepper of suspense. But the older I get the less tolerance I have for them in real life. When that answer cropped up again a few weeks later, my wife and I agreed to just keep score. Now, rather than reprimand or ridicule, I just reduced my tip by one-percent every time they say it. We’ve saved some money, but more than that it’s taught me which waiters and waitresses not to ask for when we return. I want to be their patron, you see, not their problem.
That isn’t my only vernacular pet peeve. Another is when a stranger asks, How Are You, by way of introduction. This is the most common salutation of all, almost silent in fact, but it sounds like an invasion of privacy coming from a telemarketer or car salesman. I started having fun with these people years ago, by answering, “Sitting up and taking solids now. Thanks for asking… How are you?” Fully half just answer, “Fine,” and go right into their spiel. They don’t hear my initial comment any more than they hear their own first words. Makes me wonder what else they’re not going to hear. Another smartass answer I like is, “Unless you are my doctor or my life insurance agent, that’s none of your business!” That one they usually hear, but they still just go right into their pitch.
Another un-favorite is, Unbelievable, and it’s raising to the top of the list fast. With current events being where they are, what with real and phake news getting equal time it seems, this comment is cropping up with alarming regularity. The next time someone tells you something is unbelievable, take them for their word – don’t believe them! Instead, interrupt with, “Wait! Why do you want to tell me something you yourself don’t believe? That’s just a waste of my time, and it doubles the time you’ll waste on it.”
There are others that itch. Here are my un-favorite, irritable, ambiguous comments, and how they ring in my ear.
“No problem.” (server) Be careful what you ask for.
“How are you?” (stranger) What are you selling?
“Unbelievable.” (casual acquaintance) Are you a fool?
“Let me think about it.” (spouse or S.O.) No. And don’t ask again.
“You never know,” or, “It’s hard to say.” (boss) Oh, you know alright, you’re just not telling me.
Any double-negative, like; “I don’t know that it’s not true.” (politician) It’s a lie, and they know it.
Finally, the most eye-rolling statement of all, “Congratulations!” (stranger) You want my money.
I don’t see any damage, but I’m uncontrollably jittery. It’s a good thing I brought my journal tonight. My mocha Frappuccino will just add caffeine to my jitters, but the journal, well, that’s relaxing. I hope.
It’s an older journal, and I’m looking for something writing related. A passage caught my eye this morning, notes from my belly dancing article for U. S. 1. It draws my mind back to the interview.
Kim, my instructor, says, “I learned that I want to stay there.”
She’s talking about her time in Turkey. “It was more of a style and a feel that I learned,” she continued, discussing her dancing techniques. “Turkish feels very funky, earthy, aggressive.”
Movement draws my attention. The two chess guys have left my table, so I pop over, freeing myself from Mr. Wobbles here. I’m closer to the windows now. It’s suddenly dark outside, the dark of a storm approaching. Trees are stretching their branches in that helpless way, reaching to stop the storm, knowing they can’t. They’re victim to the tosses of storm winds.
I continue reading my notes and transcription. I might as well because I can’t find what I’m looking for.
“It confirmed a lot of things I’ve learned over the years,” Kim says.
“You learn things and you’re not really sure what their roots are.”
I spread out with room to spare and reread the U. S. 1 Philly nightlife article. I still adore the twists and turns of the language. I don’t like the attitude of the writer–she comes across as too know-it-all in-your-face–but the language is alive. “Rolling sushi with ‘frightening perfection'” is still my favorite.
Her vibrant language makes you want to keep reading to discover what she’ll describe next, and how. This is how you write Show Don’t Tell: “J. Crew crowd and martini meat market.” Her typing tongue makes some of my Singles articles pale in language comparison. But it also inspires me to write outside the box, to stretch, to compare and to create.
Back to my journal. What did Kim say next? How good was my article with the material I collected?
“I learned and loved it and wondered later, ‘where does it come from, why does it feel like this, what does it mean?’”she says, “so it brought these things home and I got my answers.”
My fiancé–oh, I just love the sound of that– just called to share warm fuzziness. He’s on his way up for the weekend, and he was thinking how he’ll only be doing this drive for a few more months–155 days, to be exact. Then I’ll be in Delaware. That made him think of the box and shopping bag of my stuff upstairs. I take a symbolic “something” every time I drive down to spend the weekend. He said he realized soon all my stuff will be in his house. Our house. We did a simultaneous awwwwww. Together.
He’s an adorable man. We are going to have a great life together.
10:15pm. I’ll be kicked out soon. That’s okay—I’m done for the night.
I’ve played dozens of different video games in my lifetime and have come to count hundreds of different characters as endearing. But there are also a handful that particularly stand out and whom I count as the most memorable. What follows is my list of the top ten characters who make me smile or laugh whenever they come to mind.
10) The Meeps (Quest for Glory)
Of the many quirky characters present in the first Quest for Glory game, these furry subterranean creatures are, in my opinion, the funniest. The player needs only to obtain a patch of green fur from them for a potion, but the game designers threw in a red herring on how to get the fur. The player has the option to try and attack them. But any attempt to do so bears a striking resemblance to a poorly-played game of Whack-A-Mole.
9) Kinzie Kensington (Saints Row 3 and 4; Saints Row: Gat out of Hell) – (spoiler alert) Saints Row is a franchise revolving around a street gang that started off serious, but each new installment has since gotten more silly and over-the-top in a good way. I never played the first two games and am not even sure what drew me to the third one. But it is a series I have grown to love due to its many colorful characters. The one I found the most quirky — at least until the fourth game was released — was paranoid cyberhacker Kinzie Kensington. Of all the characters in Saints Row 3, I find her the most eccentric and interesting. What makes her stand out the most is her dual personality. At times, she comes off sweet and someone you just want to give a hug. And on the other hand, she is feisty and has one wicked mean streak. For instance, after Kinzie delivers a vicious beating to one of the antagonists in the fourth game, she rolls off him, adopts a serene Indian-style pose, and in a bubbly tone tells her friends, “I’m done.”
8) Special Agent Tanya Adams (Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2)
What I really enjoy about the Red Alert series is it takes place in an alternate history where Hitler was assassinated, the Holocaust never happened, and Soviet Russia became a more dangerous force to be reckoned with. What I love even more is the spunky female commando Tanya Adams (portrayed in the second game’s cinematics by actress Kari Wuhrer) who acts as a frontrunner and one-woman army against Soviet soldiers. She adds a unique energy to the roleplaying strategy game, and her gleeful battle cry of “Yeah, baby!” when she prepares to take out enemy infantry or take down nuclear silos is one of the main reasons I adore this game as much as I do.
7) Simon the Killer Ewok (Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds) – (spoiler alert)
Cheat codes have been included in video games ever since the early days in the seventies and eighties, and serve as a way to win with minimal effort. But I don’t know of very many games that feature a character who is only generated through use of a cheat code. Pressing enter and typing “SimonSays” in the game, Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds will give the player control of a single Ewok called Simon who can decimate any enemy army, soldiers and vehicles alike, all by himself. Call me crazy, but the majority of my time playing this game was spent delightedly watching Simon go to town against Imperial or Rebel forces.
Clockwise from top left – the Meeps, Paul, John Smethells, Yes Man (photo credits at end)
6) Conrad Verner (the Mass Effect trilogy)
Behind every great hero is a wannabe who strives to live up to the hero’s ideals. I’ve seen that formula used in countless stories, but the Mass Effect series puts an interesting spin on it by giving the wannabe delusions of grandeur. Conrad Verner’s antics, ranging from asking for inclusion in an elitist military unit to unwittingly promoting a terrorist organization as the “good” guys, and Shepherd’s reactions to those antics get me chuckling every time. As with many of the characters in the trilogy, his survival at certain points throughout the three games hinges on choices made by the lead protagonist, Commander Shepherd. The sci-fi video game trilogy has tons of interesting characters to interact with, but there is something about lovable loser Conrad that adds an extra special element to the overall story.
5) Potato-Glados (Portal 2) – (spoiler alert)
The basic premise of the Portal games is that you’re playing as a character being used as a proverbial guinea pig in a science facility and made to solve logistical puzzles as you wander from one testing chamber to the next. And all the while, an insane artificial intelligence (A.I.) is monitoring and trying to dictate your every move. Through all of the first game and half of the second one, that A.I. is Glados, until another A.I. called Wheatley conspires to take her place as the governing source of the facility. Though Wheatley turns evil once he has ultimate power in his grasp, he still turns the tables on Glados in a very amusing way – by attaching her CPU and voice modulator to a common potato. Potato Glados’ lack of mobility and desire to regain control causes her to team up with the protagonist she previously tried to kill. What I find most hysterical about Portal 2 is that you literally have a root vegetable as an ally for half of the game.
4) John Smethells, the “omniscient” steward (Titanic: Adventure out of Time)
I’ve seen many games offer a tutorial to give the player a sense of what buttons to use. But the way the period-piece mystery game, Titanic: Adventure out of Time, presents it is very comical. Minutes into the game, your protagonist is greeted by a steward named John Smethells inside a nicely rendered replica of one of the ship’s deluxe rooms. Answering yes to his question on whether you need help finding your way around causes him to break character and start talking about which buttons on the keyboard are needed to move, interact with other characters, or pick up important objects. What further shatters the immersive experience is he also gives you instructions on how to register the game online. The fact that all this info about computers and the Internet comes from a guy dressed like a 1912 ship steward couldn’t be more hysterical.
3) Yes Man (Fallout: New Vegas)
Of the four characters to ally with when it comes to seizing control of the casino strip in Fallout: New Vegas, Yes Man is by far my favorite. Though he is a dangerous robot called a Securitron who has been reprogrammed by the duplicitous casino kingpin Benny to stage a coup, Yes Man’s allegiance is prone to shift to anyone who interacts with him. As Yes Man cheerfully puts it when first met by the main protagonist, “I was programmed to be helpful and answer any questions I was asked. I guess no one bothered to restrict who I answer questions for. That was probably pretty dumb, huh?” The fact that he’s stuck with a permanent smiley face and sounds so cheery even when he says something particularly dark really cracks me up.
2) Muggy (Fallout: New Vegas – Old World Blues)
When the player ventures to an area called Big Mountain in the Old World Blues expansion pack, he or she find the main hub of a science facility at its core houses a number of everyday appliances given artificial intelligence and unique personalities. While other A.I.s in the hub, such as the toaster or jukebox, are entertaining, the mobile obsessive-compulsive little robot called Muggy steals the show. Like Yes Man, Muggy is a Securitron, but is much smaller than any other one found in the game. In addition to his small stature, Muggy has a permanent cartoonish teacup displayed on his face monitor. He was deliberately programmed to be obsessed with cleaning the ceramic cups and occasionally curses the scientist who made him this way. Much as he might hate his compulsion, he is doomed to drone on and on about it. Best quote: “Mugs, Mugs, Mugs. Mugs, Mugs. Mug-a-mug. Mug-a-mug. Mugs! God, why can’t I stop singing this f***ing song?!”
Last but not least, here is my all-time favorite quirkiest video game character:
1) Paul (Saints Row 4)
Much of the plot for Saints Row 4 entails the systematic destruction of a virtual world built to enslave humanity. This task falls into the hands of the leader of a street gang. Step one: the leader must rescue his or her teammates from each one’s individual simulated hell. Of all the virtual “nightmares” encountered, the one built for Pierce Washington takes the cake. This particular simulation kicks off with a battle against human-sized energy drinks – or rather humans dressed up as purple aluminum cans. And just when you think it can’t get any crazier, in comes Paul, a gargantuan soda can that roars and has the ability to shoot laser beams from his eyes… It’s hard to find the words to do this character or battle justice, so here is a YouTube video of that, courtesy of one of my favorite gamers out there, RadBrad.
If you enjoyed this list, feel free to leave a comment below. And be sure to tune in next month for “My Top Ten Favorite Badass Video Game Characters.”
The video game franchises of Fallout and Resident Evil are among my all-time favorites, but they are far from the only series I absolutely love. I would say that what I enjoy most about story-driven video games is that they offer a departure from everyday conventional life. My adventures have ranged from uniting a dozen different alien races to combat a common threat (the Mass Effect trilogy), battling dragons, giants, and other fantasy medieval beasts while trying to prevent the end of the world (Skyrim), and finding that manipulating the fabric of time comes with a steep price (Life is Strange).
Yet there are very few video games that offer an escape from reality to the extent that the Dead Rising series does.
My first experience with this series was with the first Dead Rising for the WII system. While that version is “watered down” and doesn’t have the same amount of content as its Xbox 360 counterpart, it is still a very enjoyable game. The basic scenario is that photojournalist Frank West gets a tip that strange events taking place in a small Colorado town called Willamette. He has a friend transport him inside the town by helicopter to avoid the military barricades on the ground. When some army copters show up to chase him and his pilot out, Frank jumps onto the roof of Willamette’s shopping mall rather than lose the chance for a possible award-winning story.
Upon making it down to one of the main entrances for the mall, Frank discovers a group of survivors building a barricade to keep a horde of zombies from getting in. This plan quickly fails when one batty old woman spots her beloved poodle outside and opens the doors in an attempt to rescue her pet. How she managed this with the other survivors failing to stop her is anyone’s guess. Frank is one of the few people to escape the zombie swarm and make it to the mall’s security office before the door is welded shut by a surviving guard.
My favorite ensemble for Frank in Dead Rising 2: Off the Record
The remainder of the game entails Frank using an air duct to get back out into the mall to rescue stray survivors, battle zombies and the occasional psychopath (more on that later), and uncover the truth of what started the epidemic, or strange events, plaguing Willamette. And that’s where the real fun begins.
The primary thing that sets Dead Rising apart from other zombie apocalypse games is that the game’s emphasis is on making the overall experience more comedic than horrific. Aside from the clothing to change into and food needed to replenish health, any object that can be picked up by Frank can be used as a weapon, however unconventional. This includes — but is not limited to – guns, wooden benches, sledgehammers, trash cans, cash registers, mannequins, hangers, and a stack of CDs.
Another element that adds to the overall fun factor is that Frank can swap his own clothes for one of the many outfits available throughout the mall. The player even has the option to have him wear a woman’s dress or a banana hammock while running around killing zombies.
The third staple of the game and of the series in general, is that the player must also face off against certain people labeled psychopaths. For the most part, this means either people who are using the outbreak as an excuse to engage in criminal activity or ordinary civilians who don’t cope well with the end of the world as they know it. Most of them also add to the humor element present in the game. My personal favorite is the supermarket manager encountered early on.
While Frank escapes Willamette in the best possible ending out of multiple conclusions, the military fails to keep the epidemic from spilling out into the world. And that’s where the setup for the second game comes in. Dead Rising 2 takes place in the fictitious Fortune City, an area consisting largely of casinos and shopping centers. Fortune City also capitalizes on the epidemic by making zombie killing a spectator sport in a gladiator-type arena. A new outbreak occurs when someone deliberately sets loose the zombies to be used in the fights from confinement.
The most interesting thing about Dead Rising 2 is that there are two separate versions of it, each existing as its own game. This one introduces a down-on-his-luck motocross rider named Chuck Greene as the hero. The other, a spinoff subtitled Off the Record, sees the return of Frank as the lead protagonist. There are so many differences between the two that each tells a story unique to Chuck or Frank. One thing that remains the same is that each protagonist strives to expose the mastermind behind the outbreak and bring him or her to justice.
Dead Rising 2 retains all the elements that made its predecessor so humorous, but also embellishes on them. There are three times as many objects to use as a weapon than those present in the first game. And two objects can now be combined to create a more carnage-inducing, often wacky means of killing zombies, with the exception of the beer hat.
In my opinion, the psychopaths encountered in the second game are even more comical than those in the original. My personal favorite is Carl Schiff, the postal worker who is determined to deliver the mail even in light of the outbreak. His dialogue is dependent on if one is playing as Chuck or Frank, but both encounters are equally entertaining.
Dead Rising 3 brings the overall story full circle by tying up loose ends from the first and second games. The protagonist this time is a young mechanic named Nick Ramos who finds himself at the center of yet another outbreak. Nick discovers that he may hold the key to eradicating the zombie epidemic once and for all.
Like Frank and Chuck before him, Nick can change into any outfit present in the game. While Dead Rising 3 ups the fun factor by eliminating the need to create combo weapons at workbenches and introducing combo vehicles, it lacks humor in one area. I know I’m not alone based on reviews I’ve read find Dead Rising 3 psychopaths more off-putting than entertaining. There are fewer of them in this game, and most are made to represent one of the seven deadly sins. Suffice to say, the one for gluttony is particularly nasty.
The other downside, as with the first two games, is that the player is racing the clock. To get the best possible ending, the mystery behind the outbreak must be solved within a set amount of time. As much as I love the series, the games don’t allow for much wandering to your heart’s content without getting a “game over.” And with the ending of the third game having such finality about it, this seemed to be it for the franchise.
I recently heard news of a fourth game due out in December 2016, and I couldn’t be more excited. From what I’ve read, Dead Rising 4 will breathe new life into the series, no pun intended. Frank is set to return as the main character, and the franchise is literally going back to its roots. The action will take place in a rebuilt shopping mall in Willamette, introduce a new breed of zombies unrelated to the ones featured in the original trilogy, and will for once ditch the timer. The notion of having all the time in the world to explore the environment while solving the mystery at the core of the story has me anxious to begin playing this game.
As long as it retains or surpasses the hilariousness that the franchise is most famous for, all the better.
What scares you? Think beyond concrete things like losing a job, facing the death of a loved one, and worrying over an upcoming surgery. I want to know if you’re afraid of anything truly creepy. Have you ever seen a ghost? Are you haunted by something you can’t explain? Do you wake terrified from nightmares?
For some people, there’s a tendency to disregard strange phenomena as figments of the imagination. Other individuals seek greater understanding by examining evidence and drawing logical conclusions, if any can be made. And there are the many skeptics who conveniently point to dreams as the scapegoat that makes most sense of weird and mysterious events.
Before offering an alternative explanation for the bizarre things that happen in our world, I have a few peculiar stories to share. In the end, I’ll provide a solution for overcoming the dark forces that work their way into our lives.
An adolescent boy told me of a premonition that he had experienced while sleeping. He dreamt a family friend had died. When he woke, he was upset and immediately went to find his mother. He found her downstairs, sitting at the kitchen table, and crying. She had just finished a phone call in which she had been told that the woman in the boy’s dream actually had died in a tragic car accident.
I know a woman, too, who was plagued by disturbing events that began after she had fallen asleep. She would be very glad to blame the strange incidents on awful and vivid nightmares. But what she went through felt as real to her as the premonition was for the boy in the above story.
As a young, married mother, the woman heard a noise—outside her bedroom window—that caused her to wake from sleep. She called out to her husband, who was lying beside her, but he wouldn’t stir. The woman was paralyzed and helpless during the events that unfolded. Her experience was typical to that of other people who claim to have been kidnapped, taken aboard an alien spacecraft, and subjected to invasive experimentation. After being returned to her bedroom, the terrified woman was then able to wake her husband. He tried to console her and reasoned that she must have been dreaming. In the days that followed, however, his wife’s arms erupted in strange rashes that doctors couldn’t diagnose and adequately treat.
What do you believe in?
The assault was the second time the woman had felt like she had lived through a close encounter. The first occurred when she was a child. She remembered waking to alien creatures peering at her. Frantic and scared, the girl ran to her parents for help, but they dismissed the sighting by saying “it was probably nothing more than a dream.”
Nothing more than a dream . . . reassuring words perhaps, and yet we don’t fully understand our dreams. They’re the focus of great speculation. What are their purpose? What do they mean?
If you’re like me and have woken to your own scream during an all-too-intense and seemingly real nightmare, you may agree that dreaming of an evil, unearthly presence leaves you feeling more powerless than if you had been confronted by a human villain. At least we have some ability to fight a delusional person, like a lunatic wielding an axe. But how can we avoid ghosts that haunt us, combat aliens that control our bodies, and escape malevolent forces that take advantage of our minds when we’re supposed to be resting peacefully?
The first step is to examine what our beliefs are about nonhuman, intelligent, supernatural entities.
When people of faith talk about God and His angels, it’s easily accepted that these highly regarded spiritual entities exist and influence our lives for the better. The conversation doesn’t spur sideways glances and raised eyebrows from friends and relatives. They don’t flinch and wonder whether or not we’re losing our rationality. Instead, we collectively hold to endearing thoughts and feelings about our all-powerful God and His heavenly host. But by believing in these good and protective entities, we would be hard-pressed not to also believe in the sinister angels—Satan and his demonic brethren—who defy God.
According to the Bible, God created the angels to have freewill—the liberty to choose right from wrong, to love and obey God or not. One of God’s angels became selfish and rebellious. He convinced a third of the other angels to fight with him in an effort to dethrone God, but that devil and his evil bunch lost. They were cast out of heaven and roam throughout the earth.
Since the Bible doesn’t mention how to deal with extraterrestrial beings, and I’ve never seen one myself, I’m not sure that I believe they are what many people think they are: life forms from another planet or galaxy. I’m more inclined to think that they’re a trick of the devil. Sensational spectacles that Satan orchestrates in order to divert our attention away from God. While we’re reading the latest conspiracy theory and arguing amongst ourselves about whether aliens exist or not, the one thing we’re not doing is worshipping and glorifying our Lord and Savior.
The devil will get what’s coming to him. Don’t let him drag you down along his way.
Fortunately, ghosts have steered clear of me too. A sighting would absolutely freak me out, because I believe ghosts are manifestations of evil. Ephesians 6:11 (NIV) tells us “Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
The spirit world is real, and it’s divided between good and evil. You may as well paint a bullseye on your chest and get ready to fight for your everlasting life. You are targeted by the devil. His arsenal is full of ways to tempt and deceive you. Sometimes he’s brazen enough to make a personal appearance. Often, he’s more subtle and fills your mind with negative thoughts. His goal is to steal you from God.
In this battle, let’s remember that God loves us most. We can defend ourselves against the tricks that the devil employs when he’s “looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Evil spirits, aliens, internalized whispers of self-doubt and hopelessness lose their power over us when we open the Bible and study the Word of God–when we learn for ourselves how to recognize truth and how to dispel lies.
