Epiphany

I have officially come to the conclusion that when one of my friends says "Hey, there's going to be girls!" what they're really saying is one of two options:

• "They're fat and ugly and yachtless!"
• "They're okay looking, but there's only two of them, and they're already surrounded by fifteen idiots with popped collars who seem to think singing Eddie Money songs in public without musical accompaniment is a good idea, and they are too dumb to realize that the guys they're climbing all over are tools. Oh, and they don't have a boat."

I suppose that didn't really require a bulleted list.

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Dorks, losers, and recluses everywhere are saving their pennies and turning in their cans, as it's time once again for yet another round of new video game consoles.

Today, I'm going to focus on just one of these new machines, the retarded, red-headed stepchild of the console family, the Nintendo Wii (pronounce "we").

"They named it what?" you ask. The name Wii, according to Nintendo, is meant to convey a sense of welcome to people who are afraid of anything with more than two buttons (including shirts). They also claim that the letter "i" looks like their controller (which I'll get to), and putting two of them in the name implies that people will have fun playing with their friends. In related news, Nintendo's marketing department consists of five Management of Technology majors and a donkey (or, if you prefer, you can think of the department as consisting of six jackasses). The donkey was the only one who voted against the new name.

Now, on to the controller. Picture a television remote, with a directional pad and two buttons on top and a trigger button on the bottom. Kind of dumb, right? Well here's the real punchline: Nintendo's big innovation for the Wii, its selling point, the ace up its sleeve with which it intends to bust Sony and Microsoft, is motion sensitivity. Swing the controller like a racket to control a player's strokes in a tennis game. Move it like a flight stick to control an airplane. Use it in all sorts of ways that are going to scare non-players away just as quickly if not quicker than traditional controllers. The possibilities are endless!

So let's take a look at this shitbox's target audience: people who don't like the complicated mechanisms behind modern games. People like my parents, who used to spend hours on the old NES but haven't touched a console since. I suppose it's possible that they might be slightly interested in the Wii's simple layout - but the instant someone tells them they have to wave it around to make Mario jump, they'll say "Fuck that, that's stupid" and go back to playing Dr. Mario on the Game Boy. There goes the target audience.

Still, some of the games are intriguing. Here's a list of the games Nintendo has announced for the console:

• Hip Hop Concert Simulator - Featuring all your favorite dead rappers (Biggie, Tupac, the ODB), players can utilize the revolutionary controller to wave their hands like they just don't care, pass a blunt while the cops aren't looking, and smack a whack bitch.
• Super Mario Bass Fishing
• Super Mario Trout Fishing
• Luigi's Tuna Fishing Adventure
• Mike Barrett's Sing-A-Long - Pound the remote against a table in rhythm with the musical stylings of everybody's favorite drunk, creepy old man. Miss a beat, and Barrett comments on how you're the worst crowd he's ever played for. Includes special two fingered attachment for "Fuck you, you suck!"
• Super Princess Peach's Nursing Home - When she's not being kidnapped by a big ugly lizard, Princess Peach is an active volunteer in the Mushroom Kingdom Elderly Community Home. From a first person point of view, play such exciting levels as "Feed Grandma," "Change the Bedpan," and "Give Old Man O'Leary a Sponge Bath." This is the kind of realism and immersion the PS3 and the Xbox 360 can only dream of!
• Wario's Gold Rush Adventure - That cooky Wario's out for treasure again! What a greedy bastard (you can tell because his mustache is crooked)! Shake the controller to pan for gold, or swing it overhead to mine with the pick axe! And look out for those dastardly claim jumpers!
• Hot Coffee - The Grand Theft Auto sex minigame makes its natural tranistion to the Wii, where the intuitive back and forth motion of the controller will bring in a whole new audience that feared the original rythmic tapping of not one, not two, but - gasp - three different buttons! So intuitive! On a side note, Slick Willy is ecstatic about the release of this game because Hillary will finally leave the house again to go bitch at someone else.
• The Master Bater - Think you've got awesome elbow muscles? Go online and prove it against all your friends! Built in avatars include Donkey Kong, Master Gator, and Dean Dean the Wankin Machine. Turn the difficulty up to hard to experience a black screen meant to simulate blindness!
• Get that Damn Pole out of Your Ass - Don't ask. I can't believe I included this one.
• John Madden Football - In order to execute a pass play, toss the controller into the air to make the quarterback throw the ball, then run under it and catch it to have the receiver haul it in. Also new in the Wii version - touchdown dances. Move the controller in a writing motion after scoring to have your player autograph the football and hand it to his agent sitting in the stands. Or, while playing as the Minnesota Vikings, make a rowing motion to unlock the special Love Boat themed Hot Coffee ripoff minigame - and then get traded to Miami.
• Super Mario Wii - The first Mario game played completely from the first person point of view. Water the mushrooms, write your name on the wall of Koopa's castle, or give the Princess a shower - all with a suspicious looking stream of yellowish liquid. The flower power up turns the golden stream into fire.

Holy shit, all that was a lot funnier in my head. Still, Nintendo's new console is going to be craap. I kind of wish I was still in Computer Science, just so I could hear some loser say he was going to skip class to play with his Wii.

College Graduation Requirements

First, read this:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/05/08/time_to_sink_or_graduate/

For those of you who skipped that link (you know who you are, and I can probably guess who you are too), swimming tests became mandatory graduation requirements in most colleges following World War II. Though most schools have since dropped such tests, some prestigious universities, including MIT, still require graduating seniors to prove that they can maneuver in the water.

I suppose this is a good thing, as neither $200k a year nor stock options are going to save you should your yacht hit a reef or get torpedoed by pirates. But it got me thinking: what other non-traditional tests would make good college graduation requirements? Here's a list:

• Walking down a busy street with an iPod. Students must successfully navigate several packed city blocks while changing songs at least 10 times without bumping into anyone or almost getting run over.
• Turning on the computer. Self-explanatory. The University of Phoenix online administers this test in the second semester of sophomore year.
  
• Reciting the clip art catalogue (Management of Technology only). After all, what's a Powerpoint presentation without an overabundance of clipart that's only slightly relevant or not nearly as humorous as the presenter thought it would be? BMT graduates must be able to recite the entire Microsoft clipart library by title and category while simultaneously kissing a simulated boss's ass. Literally.
  
• Escaping from the Foggy Goggle. Talk about a survival skill. Test takers are bound, gagged, blindfolded, and left in the corner of the Goggle's lower level and are tasked with freeing themselves, avoiding the herd of buffalo women and the bathroom, eating three Foggy Doggies in a minute and a half, and then finally managing to escape out onto Boylston Street. Test takers must then write a half-assed blog about it the following morning that includes two different bulleted lists. This is the exact opposite of a graduation test used by several all girl high schools, wherein subjects must willingly enter the bar by sweet talking the bouncer and/or flashing inappropriate amounts of skin and, persuade five different men to buy them cosmos, down a fishbowl, and then throw up all over the bathroom.
  

Worst idea ever

Because I've proven so adept at keeping one blog updated, I've decided it's high time I expanded my online repertoire. After all, if the Internet is full of I Stole Your Lunch, that means there's less room in it for people who aren't entertaining to write about proper mullet grooming techniques or post pictures of of their cats because Mr. Shnooky-wookums is sooooooo cute omg and I wanted to share him with the world lol :)

The plan, then, is basically to compartmentalize the stupidity. Some examples:

• The Foggy Bloggy
• Bulleted List Enthusiast Monthly
• I Hate the T (J$'s favorite)
• Down the Crapper: A Guide to the Best and Worst of Boston's Bathrooms
• Kelly Clarkson 4EVA (or until Natasha Bedingfield is in town)
• I'm Not a Golddigger, I Just Have Needs

The list is endless (in theory)! So stay tuned...I Stole Your Lunch is going to take over the Interweb.