How to Please a Goth (Without Using a Choke Chain and Leather Flogger) - Part One

(The following post is in collaboration with Fiona of Scenes From the Cutting Room Floor; check her out some time, she's a'ight)

Good evening, fine readers, apologies for the late post. Seeing as tomorrow is Halloween, the one with all the spooky stuff and such, and my good friend Fiona is one of those weird Goth-types (super-effective against Fairy) I thought it might be a nice idea to amalgamate my ambivalence towards the two and collect them under a more interesting topic: video games.

Nothing brings people together like a healthy dose of asthenopia and passive aggression.

It's always interesting to see how outside parties view our favourite pastime (behind binge eating and masturbation) so I sat down with Fiona and we skimmed through the rich history of video games to find a collection of gaming gems that, through their design choices, gameplay, story or atmosphere, speak not only to our own scaly, pale, cloudy-eyed race, but theirs too.

Heck, we're only one zombie bite apart in the family tree.

This little ode to all things spooky will be split into two posts; the first focussing on the games of old, here meaning anything made before LucasArts ceased to exist, and the second on newer additions to the gaming world. Before we begin, here is a little message from our sponsor:

Film Facts 1: Amélie - Orgasms in Paris

Any good film buff has a good grasp of world cinema, even if it's only the most mainstream of those films; so long as you've seen your Pan's Labyrinth's and Oldboy's, you don't need to worry about not having seen Bombón: El Perro or I'm A Cyborg But That's OK. That said, a must for anyone willing to don the mantle of obsessive shut-in has to have seen Jeun-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie.

"Welcome to the club, make yourself at home. There's crippling anxiety on the table, next to the coffee."

What I love almost as much as watching films, though, is taking unrelated statistics and skewing them in order to come up with interesting facts about said films. And that's where Amélie comes in. There's a particular scene amongst the endless stream of utterly adorable tales that makes up the movie where Amélie is sitting on a rooftop, asking the question "How many people are having an orgasm right now?". The answer is, apparently, fifteen.

We don't ask how she knows...

Have no fear, dear reader; I am here to put your worries aside and assist in determining whether or not this claim is actually true through the power of various statistics and a very lenient grasp on basic mathematics. To do this we need the building blocks of smartness: numbers.

Carl Gauss: Knowledge Breeder

Some Guy and Some Guy in a Robot Costume

Ow. Yellow. It burns.

Who here loves South Park? High five! Yay for being another immature man-child who likes to pretend you watch it for the social commentary.

"Hehe, he's all covered in- I mean, consumerism and government and...something."

Although there should be no need for justification in bringing up such comedy genius, my question has a point. Some long-time fans may remember a certain episode featuring Cartman's AWESOM-O 4000 robot, which, to the uninitiated or those who don't click every hyperlink they see, consists of Cartman dressing up in some cardboard boxes and talking in a monotone voice to convince the town moron that he's a robot sent from Japan to be his new best friend.

*insert racist Asian joke here*

Jack Vettriano: Some Half Decent Pikchurs

I'd be sad if my thumb was that shape too.

So art is a thing apparently. With the painting and the putting things in things and giving it a completely inconsequential name. I've never really got it myself to be honest.

Damien Hirst's latest award-winning installation: "The Effervescent Tedium of a Calcified Pasty".

A Proposition

Dear Sir/Madam/Glarflak the Unamenable,

I have been blogging for a good few months now and despite a steady flow of no readers, I continue to do so indefinitely. Your continued, or new, appreciation of my inane brain farts is greatly appreciated and I think it's about time that I ask you what it is that you want from me.