Some dude's chest eats a shirt and his face grows hair hella fast

So if you haven't already heard, some dude's chest eats a shirt (a green shirt!) and his face grows some hair hella fast, all documented by both me and my trusty camera, Camera.

This is the soon to be consumed shirt. Green shirt!

Shortly after I told my camera, Camera, to take this picture, a mustache sprouted and his undershirt (otherwise known colloquially as a "husband beater") ate his shirt. His green shirt!

Every type of hair on the face needs a name. His 'chops are very slightly fluffed, so...Fluffchops?

So here I am, just trying to non-creepily take a picture of my good friend's face for old time's sake, when this 'stache pops up and his 'chops get fluffed and his shirt gets ate. Eaten. I considered it a fluke, until this happened:

Following the previous picture's law, I call it the Gay Sailor, or "Gaylor"

At this point, he gets all smugged out thinking he's the fly's eyes with his freshly grown handlegays and gayburns. Yea, you may be tough now, but just wait until your freakish insta-hair face decides upon the Creepstache Pedobeard! Who'll be smug then, I ask jealously? Fortunately, this is not the end of his face's shenanigans.

As per Facehair Law:  The Continental Wolverine.

Done with being upset with that fact that this amazing mutation is not happening on my face, I began to contemplate what ET just said, and I quote: "Yea, some kid slapped some other kid with his...penis?" My mind doesn't remain for long on this enigmatic sentence, however, for soon after it's uttered:

Hmmmm...The Continental Wolverine Delux, for sure.

It seems that now his hair is content to purely increase in girth, yet remain fixed in a similar style. Again, I'd be completely and blissfully happy with this, if it were only to happen to me. At this point, my own face is cursing its own hair, yelling obscenities at it through every pore in every cheek on my face. I think my face might be drunk, and my facial hair is shrinking away in fear of my belligerent face. Perhaps ET is siphoning off hair from my face instead of growing it itself? I'll ponder on this at a later date, because ET's face is doing stuff yet again:

At this point, the Delux evolved into, I dunno, a Reverse Beardhawk?

I see now that the two sides of the facial hair war that is currently waging upon ET's face are about to clash in one explosive massive chin hair battle. I'd assume that a Reverse Beardhawk would either be a finishing move tactfully carried out by a rogue mercenarial (dude, "mercenarial" should totally be an actual word) strand of gingery hair, or one of the Commanding Officers in charge of commanding officers of this epic war. The result would be this:

The aftermath of the battle. AKA The Beard.

An enormous explosion rocked me and my camera, Camera's, worlds. Neither of us could see for at least several seconds, for the air was thick with hair-debris and hair-carcasses. Finally, the hair-dust settled and there it was: The Beard. Welcome to this world, Beard, I think you'll be treated pretty well here.

A few Pokemon Pokemoning

Speaking of which, I've been involved in an extremely serious and not at all not serious survey regarding the words "few" and "several", and the numeric quantities one would assign to those woefully ambiguous words. The entire thing has broadened my perspective, and now I believe roughly 88% of everything in this world is absolutely crazy and probably mistaken, up from my previous assumption of 77%. But this be a discussion for a day when something as important as Pokemon and the various ways they go about Pokemoning is not at hand. So without further anything,

I think, judging by the electricity, this one is called Zapdos or something.

Yes, one of my favorite Pokemon. I mean, Silph Co. has an entire floor dedicated to making this dude into various somewhat useful common household appliances created out of pure energy! And has Silph Co. ever been wrong about anything? My case is resting.

And imagine, if you will, an entire house filled to the brim with these electric ghost's phantasmagorical appliances! Imagine how crowded that would be and how uncomfortable it would be to live there. BUT THEN, take out the majority of these cute little ectoplasm-trailing lawn mowers and washing machines and heaters and fans, and you'd have the most energy efficient house in town! Yep, global warming could be solved by the enslavement of ghostly transforming Pokemon. You heard it here first, people. And if you didn't, well somebody beat my brain to the punch.

Next up are three handsome, basically-colored coded gentlemen with big ol' hearts hiding under an even bigger layer of armor. I present, a piece I like to call "Three Dudes Kicking It".

A giant sky dragon, an armored dinosaur and a whale walk into a bar. They get promptly thrown out for being too awesome.

The dude on the top is the cool guy, with his new hairstyle and his trimmed fingernails. The dude in the middle is the slightly chubbier guy with sweet sideburns and the rad jacket he always wears. The dude on the bottom is the pothead stonerman who cracks jokes better than a whip cracks itself. All three the best of friends, all three kicking it like dudes.

I had another thing that would be going here, but I think it got jammed up in some tubes somewhere down the line. It's pretty alright, and I guess you'll just have to take my word for it's alrightness. Out.

Hybrid Board Games part 2: Nuclear BattleRisk

Sure, discontentment with just one boring old Monopoly board and the subsequent desire to add two more boards into the mix (see Hybrid Board Games part 1) is understandable and perhaps unavoidable. But now messing with the very foundation of Battleship?! Come on, that game is as close to flawless as quick-action board games get. Except for two glaring problems: the quick-action part and the complete lack of nuclear weaponry. So what's the solution? Adding Risk to quench my thirst for drawn out prolonged games and adding nuclear weaponry to sate my hunger of, you know, nuclear weaponry. The result (which is even more rough-drafty than that smelly drunk pigeon-fighting draft of Sorry Duopoly) was this:

Yup, that's exactly what North, Central, South America and Australia look like!

Fairly self-explanatory. Instead of the typical A1 through J10 method of missile placement, there is now Latitude and Longitude. And instead of an open sea to fight on, there are now continents. And instead of ships there are armies, which consist of battalions that must be completely eliminated (battalions are forcibly clumped together in groups of various sizes that must be completely destroyed before their power fails, just like Battleship ships). And instead of plain crappy regular surface-to-surface projectiles, there are now nuclear missiles. And instead of only attacking once per turn, you can attack as many times as continents you own (owned = army battalions present on the continent). Perfectly self-explanatory, ayup.

In the near to far future I would also like to involve some naval warfare as well, because there is a significant amount of water in each map. Perhaps one less-powerful missile per group of ships? Ooh, ooh, or maybe a reconnaissance ship that can activate a radar and the other player is forced to reveal any pieces in the area you have chosen to be radar'd! Tight.

For now, however, it will remain a not particularly mystifying mystery. Until the next time I have the sudden urge to perfect an unstable prototype of a hybrid board game!

Hybrid Board Games part 1: Sorry Duopoly

There are few things in this world I enjoy more than a good old fashioned seemingly eternity lasting board game, rife with alliances, betrayals, teamwork, corruptness, money, fame, and prizes. But not being content with the usual Monopoly, what with its boring singular poly, I decided to move on to bigger and probably not better things. First was the two Monopoly boards overlapped at the GO to make a continuous figure eight, otherwise know as Duopoly. This, however, had been done to quite a large extent. At least according to the great and powerful internet, because we all know the internet never lies. So I was yet again discontented with my lack of sheer ridiculousness involving the board games at hand. Then, one day while rolling on the floor laughing my ass off out loud due to Sheldon Cooper's antics in the Big Bang Theory, it hit me: Monopoly and Sorry, combined into one glorious confusion of a game. No wait, let's make it roughly 33% more glorious and confusing:

Sorry Duopoly.

Yup, essentially three board games jammed into one silly looking mess of a piece of cardboard. I drew out the beta version immediately for fear of the design leaking out of my brain, and because of the promptness of it all it came out looking pretty rough. Well, really rough. Like, this draft is often found stumbling drunk on the ave wearing half of a trench coat alternating between singing Tom Jones songs and yelling angrily at passing pigeons. That rough. So don't judge just yet, at least not until the final board is complete.

Like I said, rough. I mean, the Jail is a single "J". And those Home Zones look like a sheriff badge drawn by a particularly untalented two year old.

Everything is abbreviated and mostly terrible looking, but that doesn't stop me from being stoked on playing it. "S" means the Start Zone in Sorry, "RR", "J", and "COMM CHEST" stand for Railroad, Jail, and Comm Chest respectively. And that stupid "X" marked place to put a pile of cards is absolutely nothing.

So before we continue, how the fudge do you play? Well, the rules are surprisingly simple at first. Then get increasingly complicated. You start with double the normal amount of Monopoly money (referred from here on out as Monopomoney purely because it sounds funny), with your five Sorry pieces in your start zone and your one Monopoly piece on the GO tile, facing towards the first Monopoly board (the upper left one). Then, you use a 12 sided die (if you don't have a 12 sided die then you clearly don't play enough D&D) to control both your Monopoly piece and your Sorry pieces. From here on out, the game play follows both the standard Sorry and Monopoly rules, only with a few kick ass exceptions. These are:

See? That's totally a two year old's sheriff badge up at the top there.

In case you can't read my flawless, beautiful handwriting, the exceptions are these:

- All players begin with 2x Monopomoney. As stated above.
- Rolling a 6 (six) awards a "Sorry!". This "Sorry!" acts exactly as a normal one would.
- Winner of "Sorry" receives one piece of property (chosen randomly) per "Sorry" piece not in "Safe Zone" at end of game, from all players. This means that every single Sorry piece that isn't inside those five Safe Zone squares or the Home Zone when somebody wins is a piece of property lost. Chosen randomly by covering the backs of the property cards with one hand and fanning out the rest with the other. If the player doesn't have enough pieces of property, then they haven't been buying enough crap and will have to relinquish 200 Monopomoney per sorry pieces not in the Safe or Home Zone.
- If both "Sorry" and "Monopoly" piece land on the Railroad at the same time (with the same roll), one receives an automatic "Sorry Duopoly", which can be applied as a normal Sorry in "Sorry" or a jail sentence in "Monopoly" to a player of choice. Player does not pass GO or collect 200 Monopomoney. I think an automatic jailage of somebody is far more damaging than an auto-Sorry, but we'll see.
- There are definitely doubles, in the form of rolling a 2 (two). This applies to both Monopoly and Sorry. Yes, it will get a man out of the Start Zone in Sorry, and yes you will get jailed for getting three in a row in Monopoly.

Later, after some beta testing and countless inevitable frustrations, I will add Chance and Community Chest cards that affect either Monopoly, Sorry, and/or both.

One of those up somewhat close and vaguely personal shots.

Also, I'd like to think that having two different themes for the two Monopoly boards would make things a lot simpler in the real estate area, ideally so drastically different that they would be damn near impossible to confuse. Mine are Star Wars and Scooby-Doo.

I'll be back with more on the lates, moosh! (I love Paul Rudd)

Anti-Zombie Armor Part 1

Having too much extra spare free time on my hands, I decided to pass it all by strategizing (really? Strategizing isn't a real word?) out a plan of action for when most likely eventual zombie apocalypse occurs. It began with concepts involving a shotgun filled nautical escape (thanks to my ridiculously well-equipped good friend) and a large amount of tasty tasty canned beans and Swedish Fish (because without Swedish Fish, what's worth living for?). Then the concepts graduated from their conceptual college and moved on into the real world the moment I realized you could buy stuff off Ebay, not just adjust the price setting to Highest-Lowest and giggle at the crazy listings from crazy people. I mean, an LCD Jumbotron for $50k? A single dusty video game cartridge for a quarter of a million dollars? The Shroud of Turin for a few million?!  Sorry, I digress.

Anyways, I decided to begin purchasing different pieces of Anti-Zombie "armor" (AKA AZA) from various colorful Ebay sellers, and it came together as something like this:

This is me modeling the AZA on the floor, minus me.

The real steal was the riot helmet. Or maybe it was an anti-riot helmet...Whatever, it cost me $15 and feels as safe as at least a $16 piece of head equipment!

I'm slightly scared to wonder where those visor scratches came from...

And I decided to affix a baseball bat holster to the rear of those definitely-are-not-youth-football-shoulder-pads shoulder pads for those times when you wanna machete some undead limbs off instead of baseball batting some zombified skulls.

WARNING: This device is pretty tight.

One 2" ABS coupling, one 2" ABS female adapter, two 4" zip ties and a metric ass-ton of ABS glue later and it's affixed!

Now all I have to do is wait patiently, fully AZA'd out. In my living room. Playing Zombie Apocalypse. Listening to the 28 Days Later soundtrack. And eating Swedish Fish.

Next time: pictures of me modeling said AZA on the floor. Only instead of "minus me", it'll be the opposite.

A lot of stick figures stick figuring

My dear old ma asked me once to draw as many stick figures fighting, decapitating, stabbing, shooting, exploding, jet-packing, hand-grenading, and just generally acting like your run-of-the-mill stick figures as I could on a 1' x 1' piece of lacquered wood. So naturally I said "heck yes, when do I start?" She didn't respond. All she did was hand me a piece of 1' x 1' lacquered wood and one of those fine point Sharpies I so love. So I got to work and after several hand-paining hours this was born:

I think this might be kinda blurry, but I don't know what a camera is.

The same thing only slightly closer and at an angle, as well as in the sun kind of but also a bit of a shadow:

Is this one blurry too? Damnation.

This is the one that's in the sun kind of but also in a bit of a shadow.

There are some heads floating around on this if you look hella closely and don't squint, but for every head there is a headless body acting thoroughly confused. The same goes for every rogue arm, leg, and RC plane equipped with lasers floating around. After all, you can't fly an RC plane equipped with lasers without a stereotypical bespectacled nerdy nerf-herder holding an over-sized remote control! True story, look hella closely and don't squint!

Battle of the Door Part 1

There we were, driving in the U-District minding our own pickup truck when we suddenly encountered these doors situated close to a "FREE" sign. Finding myself unable to not take them (as I often find myself when stumbling upon anything near a free sign. Er, a "FREE" sign), we took them. One nearly broke my thumb until our driver, a man with the strength of at least ten men, assisted us. I call him ET.

The discarded doors we discovered. The one laying on its side is the stupid Thumb-Breaker.

So what will we do with these fantastically ordinary doors? Send them through a wood chipper and then attempt to reassemble them a la Monsters Inc? Mostly due to our lack of wood chippers, no. Thankfully, due to our lack of lack of fine point multicolored Sharpies, I will draw on them. Actually just one of them, because Sharpies would blow on that stupid Thumb-Breaker one. So I spent a quiet afternoon beautifying that white slab of cheap wood.

In my basement, looking like a well beautified white slab of cheap wood. With a bonus doorknob! Zang.

Then came the drawing of the door (I want to call it "dooring", but that just doesn't cut it as a portmanteau). I began by creating the four factions who would be space-battling to the death. Firstly, the Anchors, A diabolical spherical corporation hellbent on out-space-battling the universe. Secondly, the Delta Fleet, the triangular good to the Anchors' roundish evil, hellbent on stopping the Anchors. Thirdly, the Broken Boxes, a technologically advanced alien race hellbent on exploding anything they don't much care for. And finally the Seekers, a band of former mercenaries joined together as a rebellious group hellbent on making some extra cash by blowing space dudes up and selling their scrap as scrap. This is how it started:

Faction colors, because I see the world as one big RTS.

And it continued the next day, all while watching a lovely collection of Mythbusters episodes.

Yea, that's a Ghettoblaster and some gold Nikes in the back. What's it to you?

And the next evening...

Yet another endless Risk game lying on the floor, just waiting for me to "accidentally" pay somebody to sabotage it.

Close up of the Anchors' mothership. Yes, I have been playing a lot of Starcraft 2 lately and yes, Protoss is still exceptionally badass.

The Delta Fleet's mothership. Yes, I do enjoy Star Wars and yes, I prefer the Old Republic to the new one.

And it shall continue until the entire door is filled to its white cheap wood brim with space battles and similar space related and/or battle related material. Stay tuned!