2008-2011: The Meme Renaissance

From Matt Lubchansky.

This is one of the first props I made in high school theater. The script called for a huge catfish with a hidden pouch to pull shit out of. I was 15, had a bunch of chicken wire, a roll of gaff tape, a dream, and no idea what a catfish looks like. Busted this shit out in 30 minutes and named him Steven.

[via]

Fight locations, ranked

IHOP parking lot: ridiculous. buffoonish. 3/10 Denny’s parking lot: has a certain dionysian flair. 6/10 Dunkin Donuts parking lot: lots of regional flavor. 7/10 The woods: nice and secluded, plenty of opportunities to use the terrain to your advantage. Just make sure to bring bug spray. 8/10 Any roof: dangerous, but points for style. 5/10 The top of any mountain: much like the woods, but with far more dramatic flair. Almost byronic. Loses points for being less practical than the other locations on this list, however. 7/10 A graveyard: disrespectful to the skeletons. 0/10 An abandoned warehouse: something of a cliche. 4/10 Any liminal space: This category includes town lines, entryways, borders, and crossroads. Is this a deeply symbolic, metaphorically charged fight? If it wasn’t before, it is now. 9/10  Wal-Mart parking lot: Quick question, are you shitting me right now? This is the absolute worst fight location. If you have any respect at all for the noble art of throwing the fuck down, don’t get in a fight in a wal-mart parking lot. In fact, this also applies to wal-mart checkout lines, roofs, employee break rooms, corporate headquarters, and indeed any space at all associated with the walton family or the wal-mart corporation. Fuck wal-mart.  0/10 The parking lot of an abandoned Blockbuster Video: The cracked and faded blockbuster sign is a potent memento mori, inspiring a keen awareness of entropy and a sharp sense of loss in your opponent. As blockbuster is, so shall they one day be.  Are there weedy plants growing up through cracks in the pavement? Oh man, that’s even better. The perfect fight location. 10/10

Can we romanticize video games the way we do books?

Like you hear all these things about how you can curl up with a book on a rainy day and drink tea and smother yourself in blankets but anytime you hear things about video games it’s always about how you’re wasting your life away yelling into a headset as you play Call of Duty in a basement?

Imagine bundling yourself up on the couch, the sound of rain hitting the roof, and putting on Fable for a few hours. Or getting home after a long day of work. You make yourself a cup of cocoa, put on fuzzy pjs, and play Viva Piñata for hours not giving a second thought to the outside world. Semester just got out? Throw on some Fallout and just take a night to breathe and enjoy.

You aren’t wasting your life away, you’re enjoying it. Games can be just as much an escape as books, except you get to be part of the story.

This is surreal

Bread boy (🔊)