Liberty or Deaf (pt. 2)

The second half of this update will further explore the incompatibility of corporations with a free market, as well as the insanity that is the Far-Right fringe in America. Also: For comedic purposes I will be posting information about Kid Rock next to a picture of a hideous abandoned chihuahua.

"Never in living memory has a single individual embodied so many negative stereotypes as Kid Rock. Kid is a perfect storm of every pro-eugenics argument."

 While these modern Libertarians often bemoan corporate regulations and taxation as redistributionist, anti-capitalist, and success punishing examples of government activism that are targeted at destroying the free market, this view ignores the major premise that corporations are, by their very nature, State-manufactured creatures. Given that the existence of corporations, artificial creatures endowed by the State with legal rights and protections, can only be possible with significant government interference in the free market to begin with, it would be nonsensical to claim a Libertarian defense with regards to their regulation after having already set an arbitrary baseline that allows for significant State interference in the market (Crane, 2005).

Additionally, the Conservative-Libertarian argument that government market regulations infringe on individual liberty relies on the selective reasoning that only the government has the ability to engage in coercion, when in reality any large concentration of power, such as an artificial entity granted exclusive power and privilege by the government, may do so (Crane, 2005). This is as true for large corporations as it is for private militia, private police forces, illegal cartels, and organized crime syndicates. The accurate Libertarian stance in all of these instances is that it is the State's almost exclusive responsibility to protect individual liberty from such coercive and authoritarian concentrations of power.

"After hearing American Bad Ass I thought 'Finally! Uneducated, violent, meth addict white supremacists have found their champion in Kid Rock!'"

The current American system of State-capitalism, or corporatism, is fundamentally authoritarian, as it funnels capital into the hands of a select few, who then use their power and influence to minimize competition and immunize themselves from failure in an increasingly exclusive and unassailable shell of corporate welfare and government protection (Goetting, 2010). This involves any number of mechanisms that either protect corporate interests at the expense of individual liberty or selectively favor certain corporations over others.

This system of corporatism, viewed from a Libertarian standpoint, is inherently flawed in that it self-corrects only where increasing profits and market dominance are concerned, the long term effects of which invariably lead to less competition, lower wages, and, once a certain level of success is reached, an ever-decreasing possibility of failure, all of which are antithetical to a free market. Such a system cannot act individually and will not act collectively to promote individual liberty (Chomsky, 2002).

This trend is not, as with authoritarian government power structures, caused by individual inequity, greed, or corruption, but is a mechanism enforced by the system itself. Individual corporate acts, undertaken by the CEO or Board of Directors, that seek to promote competition, equality or the betterment of the market or society as a whole are routinely weeded out to protect the corporation from market loss, takeover, and failure. This is accomplished by the gradual process of egalitarian management being superseded by officers that will act more in accordance with the shareholders' desires, which are collectively divorced from the well-being of society as a whole beyond the government regulations and employment laws that Right-Libertarians are currently lobbying against.

 "It's not that Kid Rock steals beats from good songs to 'sing' and 'rap' over, or that his non-retarded lyrics are just clumsy references to much better artists. It's that he sells records that are nothing but that!"



When corporate officers are allowed to continue acting for the good of society and not the good of the corporation for any length of time, then the corporation almost invariably suffers for it, and if it does not soon fail in the cutthroat market of corporatism, it will be so weakened that it will usually be either bought out or taken over by another corporation that is better able to fulfill its primary functions: to increase stakeholder profit, ensure market dominance, and minimize competition (Chomsky, 2002).

This authoritarian, coercive system masquerading in the guise and language of free market ideology is further exacerbated by the tendencies of those most opposed to such systems also being of the most politically dissatisfied and inactive socioeconomic classes, while the perception of public opinion is largely dictated by members of higher socioeconomic classes that place greater priority on the individualistic policies that most benefit themselves, than on equality-promoting policies that benefit society as a whole (Bobo, 1991). This has led to a self-perpetuating cycle in which those that stand to gain the most from a truly Libertarian market, the majority in the laboring class, become increasingly jaded and indifferent to market struggles and political representation and more acquiescent of exploitative and coercive practices, while those already benefiting the most from the current system are the most involved, have the greatest influence, routinely receive more favorable media attention, and have access to the resources necessary to influence policymakers and public opinion.

This trend does much to explain Tea Party Libertarian politicians and spokespersons that selectively defend policies that give unfair advantage to large, private concentrations of power (such as corporate person-hood and campaign contributions,) while attacking policies that protect individual liberty from those same concentrations of power (such as the calls for privatized public education and social security, or the abolition of minimum wage and child labor laws). Additionally, while the rhetoric used to defend these stances may sound like the same rhetoric used to argue for a small, limited government and to promote liberty, in practice it is merely shifting the power structure from a publicly accountable 
system to a private, unaccountable system. 

"It takes a unique kind of stupid to auto-tune yourself rapping over a country song and be proud of it. It's like a damaged toddler when they discover that feces can be used as paint."



While historically and globally Libertarianism is viewed as a Liberal political ideology, the language has been co-opted in the American political arena to be synonymous with far-Right Conservatism. This new far-Right movement has been found to be predominately composed of older, white males that largely identify as Republican or Republican-leaning (Williamson et al, 2010). Given that the Tea Party message, (contradictory claims, logical inconsistencies, and conflated terminology aside,) mirrors closely the Republican/Conservative message over the past thirty years it should come as no surprise that just beneath the free-market rhetoric and Libertarian language there exists a strong pro-corporate message. This pervasive conflation of laissez-faire free market language with corporate welfare and intervention on the behalf of big business has led to a large and increasing misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the Libertarian stance in American politics, and has rendered the true Libertarian stance effectively non-existent (Long, 2008).

The Tea Party arguments, inasmuch as they can be made sense of, seem to stem from a misunderstanding or outright perversion of the Libertarian concept of the free market, largely influenced by the writings of Adam Smith, and as such fail to account for the inevitable outcome of this form of unfettered capitalism. As Smith himself stated in 1776, when writing about the results of the division of labor in the system that would eventual become corporatism, that unless the laboring class is protected from exploitation in some way by their government, then eventually these private concentrations of wealth and power will lead to a stupid, ignorant, irrational and hopelessly corrupted laboring class.

These pro-corporatist arguments, largely made by informed politicians and pundits either intentionally misrepresenting or unintentionally misunderstanding the Libertarian stance, set the stage for far-Right Conservatism in America. These views have been reinforced in the public mind by Tea Partiers and other Conservative Libertarian groups, as well as pseudo-journalistic organizations with an unapologetically Conservative message, under even more nebulous, poorly-defined, and arbitrary concepts, such as 'freeloaders,' and 'hard-working taxpayers,' which seem to be applied based more on factors such as religion, race, nationality and physical appearance than on factors such as employment, welfare receipt, or tax bracket (Williamson et al, 2011). These beliefs, such as they are, seem to be based far more on straw-man arguments, moving goalposts, special pleading, conspiracy mongering, false dichotomies, jingoistic scapegoating, and appeals to emotion than on any sort of rational, well-reasoned, or even internally coherent and logically consistent arguments, goals, or philosophy drawn from the available facts. Given this, regardless of what individual Tea Party members may believe, as a whole the movement has been manipulated and spun, perhaps unwittingly, into the role of mouthpiece and shill for pro-corporatist, plutocratic policy hiding behind the language of small government fiscal conservatism.

While calling for a smaller and more limited government, particularly in the area of the market, these groups, although failing to address the inherent problems with corporatism as a whole, often speak out against government bailouts, such as the recent banking and auto industry crises. However, this narrow stance fails to address the more pervasive and invasive problems with the current Market/State dynamic, such as subsidies, eminent domain, grants of privilege or monopoly, selective tax breaks, excessive intellectual property laws, military intervention, and inflationary monetary policies (Long 2008). Beyond these examples of obvious government assistance, the state routinely implements prohibitive regulations, fees, and standards that have a disproportionate negative impact on smaller, less well-funded, and newer concerns than the giant, entrenched corporations that lobby for them (Long, 2008). 

 "I always wondered what the term was for a howlingly desperate and pointlessly rebellious attention whore that still manages to sound as homogenous, non-threatening, bland, and uninspired as a fast food jingle. It's 'Kid Rock' if you were curious."


Therefore, while the most likely outcome of the current corporate system, at least following the logic of the modern Conservative-Libertarian movement, would involve a smaller government, it would also be a more selective government that does less to protect individual liberty. The price for this, of course, would be greater concentrations of authoritative power and influence in the private market, hardly a favorable outcome for a group that claims to value individual liberty, self-ownership, and the level playing field of laissez-faire capitalism.

Self-sovereignty, the idea that an individual has absolute ownership of their own person, cannot be practiced in a system of hierarchical, authoritative power structures. Whether that power structure is an unaccountable government body or an unaccountable private institution that can only exist with the government's sanction is irrelevant, as the outcome invariably leads to less individual sovereignty the more exclusive and entrenched the power structure becomes.

Additionally, the principle of individual liberty, represented by voluntary association and free contract, is only possible in a non-coercive, competitive free market. This cannot be practiced in the current system of corporations, as choosing between death and sub-poverty servitude with no guarantee of security can not be said to be a decision free from coercion. Similarly, a market can only be said to be free if all participants are free to fail or succeed based on their individual merit. This is certainly not true in the current system, as evidenced by the decades long trend of corporate welfare, bailouts, and unequal tax breaks and subsidies, as well as stagnating wages for laborers, increased layoffs, rising income disparity, and the outsourcing of jobs overseas, while the management of those same companies report record profits and award seven figure bonuses to their corporate officers in a class of business that, in a market free from government interference, wouldn't exist.

Finally, while modern Tea Party Libertarians may call for smaller government, in actuality a limited, minimal governing body is antithetical to their own ideals, as those ideals rely on selectively defending policies that award unfair advantage to large, private concentrations of power at the expense of individual liberty. Similarly, while attacking policies viewed as intrusive and anti-capitalist, modern Libertarians are, in actuality, not calling for competition with the government in the fields of education and healthcare, but are rather seeking to privatize those concentrations of power through government sanctioned and protected grants of privilege and monopoly. The result of all of this, at least so far, has not been smaller government in the sense of a less powerful government accountable to a greater number of people, but a smaller government in the sense of a less accountable government controlled by fewer people that has, in effect, outsourced the public welfare to private institutions.

In conclusion, while groups such as the Tea Party Patriots and Americans For Prosperity, as well as their representatives in the public and private sectors, may use Libertarian language and free market ideology, in reality and practice this rhetoric is merely a misleading and confusing attempt on behalf of private corporations and their beneficiaries to impede the practice of such Libertarian principles as self-sovereignty, voluntary association, and a limited, minimal government

"Remember when Kid Rock's genre-bending, groundbreaking, confrontationally anti-authoritarian music galvanized a generation into social activism? Of course not. That's because Rage Against the Machine is what Kid Rock wants to be if he ever manages to learn to read."

So that's that. I'll be posting the references later if I don't lose interest.

Liberty or Deaf (pt.1)

A while back I made the claim that corporate personhood was an inherently corrupt and society-destroyingly vile institution. Since I was so obviously right I didn't bother checking the facts until recently. I say I was obviously right because anyone can usually be right by the simple practice of disagreeing with whatever claim Fox News, the Tea Party, Rush Limbaugh, and most Republicans make.

Anyway, after doing a lot of research into what, exactly, Libertarianism is, since it seems to be some magic word used by Tea Party candidates to immunize themselves from being seen as the fringe-politic lunatics they so obviously are.

What I found, of course, was a bottomless pit of information that the vast majority of Americans would rather, to quote one Facebook friend, run their genitals through a meat grinder than read.

So for that reason I'll be breaking the following protest-sign-unfriendly text dump with pictures of a cat I found outside of a homeless shelter next to information about Jason Mraz, who is an awful human being.

"After hearing Jason Mraz for the first time, my house is now surrounded by the howling ghost of every dead rape victim for 50 miles."








There has been a trend in recent years in the American political arena for certain far-Right protest groups and politicians to self-identify as Libertarian. With so much extreme, violent, incoherent, and blatantly one-sided rhetoric dressed in the banner of non-partisan Libertarianism it's no wonder that many Americans have an inaccurate idea of what Libertarianism actually means (Gerstein, 2009). With groups such as Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party, as well as politicians such as Allen West and Michelle Bachmann and media pundits such as Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin calling for contradictory, extreme, and even impossible measures, this should come as no surprise. These include demands to eliminate government debt while cutting taxes, or calling for less government interference in individual lives while simultaneously demanding increased criminalization of minor offenses, as well as marriage and reproduction restrictions (Teaparty.org, n.d.).

With such confusion and contradictions, such as criticizing government regulations of corporations as interfering with the free market while ignoring the fact that corporations are, by definition and design, government interference in the free market, it should come as no surprise that the average American citizen has no clear idea of what Libertarianism really is.It is important to begin by defining what Libertarianism is, as far as the globally and historically accepted definition of the ideology. 

Philosophically the movement began during the Enlightenment based upon the works of philosophers like Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, William Godwin, and John Locke. Libertarians believe in a limited, minimal government that concerns itself mainly with defense and protecting the individual's liberty from coercion, exploitation, tyranny, and abuse at the hands of large concentrations of power. Individual liberty includes such ideas as voluntary association, self-sovereignty, and freedom of contract. Libertarians view a laissez-faire market, free from as much government influence as possible as the best system to conduct interpersonal business. Research shows that modern American Libertarianism, as expressed by such groups as The Tea Party and Americans For Prosperity, has little in common with the globally and historically accepted ideal of the various Libertarian schools of thought, such as self-sovereignty, voluntary association, and a limited, minimal government. 

"Jason Mraz is the noise abused housewives claim to hear 24 hours a day as they slowly descend into the madness that eventually manifests with them cutting their spouse's genitals off with a steak knife."






Self-sovereignty, the belief that an individual has absolute ownership of their own life and body, cannot be practiced in a system of hierarchical, authoritative power structures, whether that power structure be a governing body or a State-sanctioned and protected private institution, such as a corporation. While the Tea Party Right, and Libertarian's themselves, may argue that government is inherently evil and is best kept away from the market, there is an important distinction that needs to be made between Modern Libertarian calls for the deregulation of the corporate marketplace and the Classical Libertarian stance, which would be to abolish the corporate market altogether. Claiming, as modern Right-Wing groups do, that deregulating corporations will encourage laissez-faire free market practices ignores several foundational factors of the American Market that impede upon self-ownership

For thousands of years any market interaction of individuals was relatively small in scale. Even successful merchants and trade barons were somewhat limited in scope, and labor was valuable as the pool of laborers was somewhat limited in relation to the amount of available work. This changed during the Industrial Revolution, which took place around the same time as the birth of what came to be known as Libertarianism. Just as some philosophers, economists, and political thinkers were realizing the importance of the concept of self-ownership, labor was being replaced by machinery on such a scale that the old system of labor and capital was being replaced by a system of huge industries helmed by unbelievably wealthy and powerful capitalists. As a consequence of this the value of labor plummeted to a point that labor was worth only the minimum amount necessary to keep the working class from entirely dying off (Engels, 1847).

 "If you play Jason Mraz near a sex toy it will kill its owner exactly 13 days later, and unless exorcised by a Highpriest of Dagon, will annually murder a virgin on the Winter Solstice."








As a result of this shifting dynamic the laboring class, existing under the delusion of self-sovereignty and the illusion of a fair and competitive market were, in actuality, placed in a position arguably worse than slavery. The reason for this is that while a slave or indentured servant is normally assured subsidence and some degree of security, in this new age of capitalist empire individual laborers were and are forced into competition with each other for the privilege of toiling for subsidence at the whims of the bourgeois capitalists (Engels, 1847). This system of wage-slavery survives in modern society in such areas as the misleadingly named 'at-will' employment contract, which often provides wages far below the poverty line and demands unrealistic levels of productivity from laborers, yet also denies those same laborers the security of long-term employment, liveable wages, or any mechanism for the workers to organize and petition the corporation on their own behalf, as evidenced by the levels of corporate downsizing, outsourced jobs, increasing poverty, vanishing labor unions, and large-scale layoffs throughout America in recent years, even as those same corporations report record profits for their CEO's and shareholders.

"If date rape made a noise, it would be Jason Mraz's impossibly shallow, douchey, insincere, frat boy songs written in the key of sexual assault."








True liberty, or self-sovereignty, is further curtailed in this system, as it often forces noteworthy and exceptional individuals to either accept one of the preconceived molds of this society, or to face alienation from the society as a whole (Mill, 1859). This tendency of big industry to force remarkable people into unremarkable lives through manufactured necessity or accident of birth is antithetical to the idea of self-sovereignty, and represents a tyrannical infringement on both the individual and society as a whole, not by a publicly accountable State, but by State protected private institutions in the form of corporations. This corporatism, largely ignored by self-identified Libertarians in America, cannot exist in a society that values individual liberty

Given this evidence, that post-Industrial Revolution capitalism, particularly America's system of corporatism, promotes divisiveness, class struggle, oppression, and hierarchical tyranny, it would be folly to call for an increase in unfettered corporatism as so many modern Libertarians do. Whether it takes the form of deregulation, union-busting tactics, or privatization of public institutions such as education or infrastructure, in practice these tactics lead to an increase of centralized, private power that invariably mimic liberty-eradicating systems, such as monarchies and police states (Werhane, 2000).

"If you drop a Jason Mraz CD in a garden, no vegetation will grow on that spot. Ever. The ground will periodically shriek in agony and vomit maggots, however."

 





Next: Further Findings, Conclusions, Sources, and Kid Rock

.

Why Being a Bachelor is Awesome

Spring is in the air.

That is an absolutely fucking nonsense statement. What is meant by it is that is this: Everyone I know is busy getting into dead-end, go-nowhere dysfunctional relationships, getting out of dead-end, go-nowhere dysfunctional relationships, and then doing the exact same thing again with extra desperation.

Not being able to commit or build deep, sustainable relationships is one of the areas in life where, like atheism, I feel guilty. Not because I think I'm damaged or a bad person or anything, but because I feel like I'm privy to secret information as opposed to the truth: that I simply don't really give a shit. It seems like one of those things that, if it were to spread, would cause too much happiness. The ensuing lack of stress and bickering would be catastrophic to the world at large as people would then have no choice but to get along with each other and find hobbies and better themselves.

Anyway, here's why being unattached is awesome:

No Diapers

I'm sure being a parent is as warm and fuzzy and fulfilling and etc. as everyone makes it out to be. Like, if I ever had a kid then it would just wake up some dormant part of my psyche and I'd magically turn into a Sunday School Teaching, Little League Coaching family man.

Personally, that terrifies me.

I fucking love not having to worry about kids. And given the relationships most of the people I know have with their kids, I also love not paying child support and constantly feeling guilty about being a shitty parent, because I can't imagine I wouldn't be a shitty parent.

I love that if I'm bored at 11:00 at night on a Thursday I can just leave. I don't have to find a sitter or get permission or any of the other obstacles my parent friends always seem to be navigating. And it usually involves the following conversation:

And for anyone thinking you can balance kids and the social life you had before you had kids: No. You can't.You made your goddamn choice. You can be a parent, or you can do other things. That's the way it is. If you take an 18 year long commitment to raise a human being, then guess what? No partying for 18 years.

Of course nothing's stopping you from doing that. This is pretty obvious as I came from a generation raised in single parent homes, which seems normal now, as I'm watching the next generation being raised in their grandparent's homes.

Speaking of commitments...

 Any Crash You Walk Away From

Why anyone, ever, under any circumstances, ever gets married is beyond me. You know who has a happy marriage? NO ONE!

No one has a fucking happy marriage for more than like a year. Or if they do, then they won the lottery as far as relationships. They may seem happy, sure, but I guarantee if you put a camera in their house you'd find out that they're both trapped in a loveless, sexless sham of a relationship based around fighting, resentments, lies, and fear.

And if anyone reading this thinks different: You could have the same relationship without getting married.

It's no surprise, with our current culture of overly-romanticized fucking everything, that 99.99999% of Americans think that real relationships are like movies. They're not. If Twilight was real, then Bella would be stuck in so many rebound relationships with abusive shitheads that her face would legally qualify as Table Tennis. But every girl in America thinks that real love operates like that.

And it's not just women. Plenty of guys play along. It's like The Notebook. Both of those people were awful, awful human beings. The entire film involved the guy wrecking the girl's life, repeatedly, and the girl leaving her stable, successful, loving, understanding partner to run off with the crazy, manipulative, psychotic hermit that blackmailed her into a relationship years ago. All in the name of wuv, which forgives anything, apparently.

You know what the best kind of relationship is? A casual one. No marriage, no commitments.

Marriages do nothing but cause bad decisions to develop undead tendencies. They take something simple, like walking away from an unhealthy situation, and multiply the complicated factor by 90. And at best a marriage adds nothing to the relationship other than a pompous ceremony and legal red tape.

Add to this the fact that people change. I mean, a person is not going to be the same person at 30 that they were at 20. Not unless something went extremely wrong, developmentally.

Humans are meant to exist in groups. Not binary sets. It takes a village to raise a child, right? Well, it also takes a village to keep two people from throttling the shit out of each other for being irritating after spending every day together for the past three years.

So that's what works. At least for me. I can totally love someone and enjoy being around them for a while, but when we grow apart, or when life happens, I don't feel like this relationship has to take precedence. When it's time to move on it's time to move on. It's just a relationship. There's no magic there.

Everyone seems to feel obligated to drag their miserable, zombie relationships through hell and back, and through the town square, and through the lives of every single one of their long-suffering friends, as if it matters. And then after it finally receives the headshot it's been begging for for years, all that's been accomplished is that instead of having two normal motherfuckers, now you have to distrustful, emotionally fucked up, codependent motherfuckers that will fall immediately into the very next awful black hole of a relationship at the very next opportunity because they can no longer function as an autonomous entity.

Jesus Christ, no one cares how much you love him/her. Just walk away. Oh, but what about the kids? Well, who the fuck thought that was a good idea? Wear a condom next time, genius.

Maybe, just maybe, if you acknowledge that the shit is not working you can stop trying to force it to work and you'll both find someone else that makes you each happy. Or maybe you just might, holy shit, get to know yourself.

And then, who knows? Maybe you'll find out that you really like knitting or writing or guitar or cross-country bear antagonism. Maybe you've always been gay or really good at math. I do know one thing: as long as people are so obsessed with the bullshit concept of finding their soul-mate and becoming spawn-points they'll never invest the time in developing a relationship with the one person they should be the most concerned with.

And if that's not enough to convince anyone, here's a list:

1. Single people can watch porn any time they want to.
2. Single people can smoke and curse in their own house.
3. They can blow money on dumb shit that they like.
4. They don't have to pay attention to anyone that they don't want to.
5. They can use their toilet however they want.
6. They always get the remote.
7. They never have to check in.
8. They can hang out with their idiot friends doing things that are fun all the time! 
9. They don't worry if they're being cheated on.
10. You know how much it costs to raise kids? I don't!
11. Single people never get ignored for a video game.
12. Single people never get guilt tripped for playing video games.
13. Single people can watch porn whenever they want!
14. Single people can toss and turn all damn night! 
15. Single people can do whatever the fuck they want with their spare bedroom.
16. You know who yells accusations at single people when they stay out til 3 AM partying? NO ONE!
17. Single people don't have to pretend to like things to avoid arguments.
18. Single people can be selfish with their free time. This is a perk.
19. For singles, clothing is optional.
20. Single people may be selfish, but they're not nearly as selfish as their coupled friend that only contacts them to ask them for things, talk about their mutant kids, and complain about their relationship.
21. Single people can watch porn whenever they want! 

Retro Retro (Demon's Souls pt. 3)

Alright, back to what's really important.

So I knew that I was fast approaching the point in the game where I would have no choice but to tackle World 5: the Valley of Defilement. For anyone over 30 you may remember World 5 as being the pain in the dick world from every Nintendo game. The same is true here.

4.2 The Same Thing. Over and Over.

Of course, instead of leaping straight to World 5 and getting it over with I decided to tackle some of the easier levels first. Since I had such an easy job of 4.1 I decided 4.2 was the next logical choice.

This level cheats like a motherfucker. And that has totally nothing to do with my ability to work the controller. Probably.

Here is a transcription of the things going through my head during the many, many times I died:

• Since when did flying Manta Rays hang out right outside the door?!
• Fuck, a grim reaper!
• Goddammit woman! Don't step forward while you're swinging! That's a cliff!
• When did gold skeletons get an aggro range of three miles?!
• I did not walk off that bridge. Musta been the controller.
• Fuck! He respawned!
• Where the fuck is the grim reaper now?!
• Fuck, another another grim reaper!
• Where the fuck is the other grim reaper?!
• Fuck, a grenade! No, fuck, a group of fucking giant attack maggots! 

After finally making it to the Boss Chamber and spending a moment recovering from the shame of how badly I had just performed, I prepared to face the Old Hero.

His special attack is swinging wildly in the wrong direction.

 The Old Hero is a lot like the Flamelurker, only slow, blind, and, well, once you factor 'can not see things' into the equation anything else becomes sorta irrelevant.

While meleeing him is probably entirely possible, the Old Hero is so asking-for-it exploitable I can't imagine why anyone would want to bother. Especially being such an easy target after such a harrowing-ass gauntlet of a level with no shortcuts. That'd be like cancelling a resort vacation you've been planning for months because the hotel accidentally booked you in a smoking room.

5.1 The City of Eyestrain and Bottomless Pits

I zoned into the first level of the Valley of Defilement. The level is a poorly lit nightmare of camouflaged goons, bottomless pits, confusing walkways, camera obstructing scenery, and fucking plague rats that are too small to hit with anything but magic provided you remembered to save some. Which I never do.

Remembering all of this I suddenly had an amazing idea.

1.3 The Brightly Lit Castle of Normal Bad Shit

I would further put off the inevitable stress headache the Valley always gives me by beating up more zombies and Fat Officials.

Level three of this World is nothing much more than a slightly more labyrinthine version of the second level with stronger goons.

Having, for once, remembered to stock up on arrows I had no real problems with this level, as this game is so damn easy, provided you don't mind sniping everything from two area codes away.

 After opening the shortcut, I backtracked and released an NPC called Biorr, a level 50 Hypersomniac that specializes in attacking the nearest foe with his face, falling asleep, and being easy to capture.

The point is that Biorr, after being rescued and taking a nap after all of the excitement of someone killing the guard and opening his cell tuckers him plumb out, helps out in the next couple of boss fights.

Speaking of Boss fights, I was now at the Boss fight.

Penetrator, most phallic among men.

The Penetrator is another big knight like the Tower Knight, only he focuses on attack as opposed to defense. This is fairly obvious as he wields a Final Fantasy sized sword.

Luckily Biorr's strategy of screaming at the Boss, being knocked down, and having 6 million hit points worked long enough to handily dispatch the boss.

5.1 For Real This Time

Remember the character Goofy from the Disney cartoons? The goons in this level look like zombied him to me for some reason.

Having said that: fuck this level. Fuck this goddamn level forever.

Aside from the already mentioned surprise enemies, holes, and eyestrain there are also giant goofy's that always end up being way harder to beat than they seem like they should be.

Also: Fucking plague rats. One bit me and I wound up dying before I could even locate my anti-plague herbs.

After a seemingly endless amount of time spent fail-spamming my way through the level I finally came to the door of the Boss Chamber. The Boss of this particular level is called the Leechmonger.

Yes, it is a shit monster made out of monster shit and leeches.

There are two general strategies for tackling this thing. The first is to drain your own health, equip the Clever Rat Ring and Morion Sword to boost your attack while in critical health, and shoot the shit out of him from the doorway, which is just beyond his attack range.

The reason the attack boost is necessary is because the yucky motherfucker not only has regenerating armor, but regenerating health as well. I think this is because demon leeches eat waste instead of blood and he's standing at the entrance to the sewer of the world. I'm not exaggerating, this World is where all of the piss, shit, abortions, and diseased of the world drain out to.

Anyway, since by this point I had become acclimated to masochism I decided to try a direct assault against the filth spewing giant composed of shit worms. Somehow it worked.

Note to self: Somehow I'm better at bosses and worse at levels than I remember being before.

5.2 The Level Fucking No One Likes

Except for me, apparently. After the eyestrain migraines and frustration of the previous level, being constantly poisoned and slowed down was a walk in the park. It'd be suicide to move above a crawl through this level, anyway.

I had no real problems with the poison swamp itself, as halfway decent preparation takes care of 90% of the difficulty: cure poison miracle, firespray spell for mosquitoes, resist poison gear, MP potions, arrows. That's it, really.

My main gripe with this level was the second half, after the swamp. That part found me back on more goddamn confusing catwalks with more goddamn junk blocking the camera and more goddamn goofies blending into the environment.

Luckily this level also had a shortcut allowing me to bypass the swamp portion of the level so I could switch out gear before the Dirty Colossus Boss and not have to sludge through the entire level again. I did manage to fall off of the bridge though because the fucking mosquitoes got me disoriented.

This guy is...what the fuck am I looking at here?

The Dirty Colossus is a giant...something made out of elephant carcass, old barrels,  and spikes that shoots swarms of poisonous insects to augment it's normal attacks.

I think it's sort of a weird decision that FROM decides to constantly put these anti-climactic bosses at the end of fucking nightmare levels. I mean, after all of the precision gameplay and strategy and care I just spent on the swamp it was kind of disappointing facing a boss where the entire fight can be summed up as

1. Apply turpentine to weapon.
2. Wail on Boss like a motherfucker.
3. Win.

 5.3 Whoever Thought This Up Needs Counseling

I figured I might as well press on into the Plague Swamp, the most fucked up of these fucked up levels. As the name implies, it's a swamp filled with more poisonous filth than the last one. Also: Zombie aborted babies. Fucking infinity of them.

The World is lorded, well, ladyied over by Maiden Astraea, some sort of exiled apostate guilty of some crime too heinous to name (too heinous to name, mind you, in a world with waterfalls of demon sewage and animated baby corpses,) that wound up here, caring for poor, lost legions of undead babies and monster Disney characters. Which would almost be touching if it wasn't buried under such a Japanese level of Fucked Up.

The Maiden herself is guarded by her lover Garl Vinland, the real Boss of the level, as he's the one that puts up a fight. He's also one of the trickier bosses as he combines Tower Knight's defense, Penetrator's offense and Maneater's on-a-narrow-walkway-ness.

On the plus side he's really slow, as his weapon of preference is a 600 pound lump of metal bigger than he is. He's also really, really easy to kite.

After beating Garl the Maiden suicided after I talked to her, the selfish bitch.

4.3 A Clearly Impossible Creature

I know asking for realism in these kinds of games is usually a wish best left ungranted, as it usually leads to tedious shit like farming simulators, first person shooters and every EA sports game, but for some reason I just really, really, really don't buy the flying manta rays that constantly shoot bone spears.

I mean, there's nothing to indicate that they're intelligent, so the flying and the spears aren't magic. And even if they're undead, other undead animals like the face bugs and zombie dogs don't have any kind of super powers that weren't just augmented versions of their alive powers. They just don't make any sense.

I mean, they're shaped like manta rays. That is not a shape associated with the sky. So much so that in reality they are so not capable of flight that the uppest they normally get is beneath sea level.

Anyway, the Storm Castle World Boss is a giant one of these called the Storm King.

That should not fucking work! Those aren't wings! They're fins!

 The Storm King hangs out in a big field with dozens of storm...peasants? Serfs? Storm smaller manta rays, whatever their rank. He can also be an almost impossible boss if someone doesn't know what to do.

Like the Dragon God, the Storm King has decided to spend his existence hanging out 50 feet away from the one weapon guaranteed to kill it: The Storm Ruler Sword, which shoots giant, manta ray eradicating shock waves into the sky when used in this level.

So the basic strategy is this: Cast whatever they call their Protect spell, dash to the sword, dash to the safe area next to the ruined building, massacre the goons before the King shows up, massacre the King.

Here's how it went for me: Forget to cast the Protect spell, get massacred. Cast the Protect spell, dash towards the sword, impulsively chase after a lizard, get massacred. Cast Protect spell, dash to the sword, get disorientated, get massacred. Cast Protect spell, dash to safe spot, stop to breathe, get massacred because I forgot it's only a safe spot for the actual Storm King attacks. Ragequit.

Later, after calming down, I tried again and managed to take out all of the goons and the Storm King on my second try. Which now that I think about it seems really fucking unfair for the bad guys. I mean, they can kill me all day and I keep respawning every 2 minutes, and they only get to die once. Now, if this game was truly Nintendo hard, then dying more than twice would send me back to the tutorial level with zero everything.

Anyway, at this point I fucked around for a while and completed most of the world tendency events, which mostly involve killing people, suiciding a few times, and then killing their ghost.

1.4 A Random Dead Chick Murders Everyone in the World

The final level of World One is basically just a long path full of mini-bosses.

Right away I ran into the somehow human forms of Phalanx, Tower Knight and Penetrator, which would have probably wrecked my shit if I wasn't still pissed off about the Storm King and not in the mood to fuck around with melee to prove a point.

As it turns out the trio are, just like fucking everything else in the game, weak against arrows from outside their aggro range.

Past a couple of black knights I came to the second dragon which, like the first dragon, seems to spend his entire life spraying fire on bridges if anyone tries to use him. He flew off before realizing he could have easily sprayed fire into the doorway I was standing in and not be slowly plinked to death by arrows.

Past another Fat Official I came to the next bridge the dragon had decided to guard, where Biorr was fighting the dragon using the strategy of screaming, charging directly into a fireball, and then that again.

I remembered from previous playthroughs that there was a certain angle to dash through to avoid the flames. After guessing wrong and slogging back through the level I guessed right and slowly killed the dragon, which was too stubborn to adapt his strategy for a foe from a slightly different angle and too stupid to fly away when its life was in jeopardy because of that.

The final mini-boss was the black phantom of Ostrava, the prince of Boletaria. Which brought me finally to the last real Boss of the game, the False King.

Fuck this guy.

The False King is a fucking nightmare in melee. Not only does he utilize the Flamelurker approach to combat, which involves charging at and instantly vaporizing his opponent's defenses with the force of his attacks, he even has an attack that drains levels off of your character. Since I was both hungry and cranky by this point I decided to be a man and man up and approach the False King like a man and cast poison cloud on him and wander off to make a sandwich while the Boss slowly died over the course of the next several minutes.

The End of the Game

The final level and Boss of Demon's Souls are kind of a joke. It's a corridor inside of a big tree with no enemies that leads to the Real King Allant, which turns out to be a pathetic, almost completely defenseless blob.

So that's Demon's Souls. Overall, it's a lot more challenging than most games that come out these days, but not that hard for someone raised on 8-bit systems.

Playing through it I could kind of tell that this game was made on a budget. Especially after playing through Dark Souls. Don't get me wrong, it's an excellent game, but in comparison one can almost see all of the cut corners and content that had to be jettisoned prior to and during development. And that's good, because it led to a fairly well-balanced and extremely engaging and fun game.

It's not perfect. There are parts that seem really empty, like the Latrian Prison, and parts that feel rushed and incomplete, like the lack of variety in Boletaria and some of the Bosses. And of course the Old One level, while nice to look at, had literally nothing in it. But if you have a Playstation 3 and 20 bucks and haven't played this game, then I can almost guarantee that this would be the best use of your money.

This Sweet Hereafter with Every Dead Pet

I know I'm supposed to be finishing Demon's Souls, but I was distracted by a story of Jessica "EvilLittleThing" Alquist receiving another death threat. That sidetracked me into further Christian love research.

I've added pictures of impossibly adorable animals to lighten the mood, as the tone is unremittingly violent, sadistic, intolerant, and somewhere between delusional psychosis and paranoid schizophrenia. Normal religious, in other words.

Just as a reminder: That letter was sent to a 16 year old girl whose only crime was defending her Constitutional right not to have religion shoved down her throat by her public high school. So think real fucking carefully if you choose to defend your religion at this point.

Some other examples of the all-embracing Love of Christ:

Spelling not corrected for hilarity purposes.

Guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people

If only there was a word for attempting to kill an entire subsection of humanity.

This secular country founded on the separation of Church and State!!!

Conquering a country in the name of God. Didn't that happen once?

voting rights=divorce=child murder=witchcraft=treason=gay

To be fair, this guy was just as likely to be right about God as anyone.

So that, basically, is my problem with people that believe in God, that make decisions by faith instead of reason, that pray for answers instead of asking questions, that respect magic more than logic. And as bad as all those above statements are, those that attempt to separate themselves by making excuses like "well, they're not real Christians," or "I can't believe how some people pervert the word of God," are no different. Just because a lie is nice doesn't make it true.

If there is a God, as unlikely as that is, then there is no possible way to know what He or She or It wants from us. Saying "God wants us to love each other and just be real nice all the time," is just as vapid and empty as "God demands obedience, fear and sacrifice." Hell, they're just as valid as me saying that the unicorn that lives in your septic tank will rectally impale you if you don't amputate your pinky toe. It's nonsense that goes against every law of logic and can only be maintained by constant denial of the reality of nature.

We are small, and we are weak, and we live in a big, cold, uncaring universe. And I understand how much nicer it would be if something as big and strong as the entire universe were to care about us and tell us that we are important. But it's just not true. You will not see your loved ones when they die. You will not live forever. When you die all that will remain, for better or for worse, will be the memories you left and the lives you touched and the stories you leave behind.

And while I'm as guilty as anyone of divisiveness, I would like it so very much if humanity could learn to live with itself, if we could stop seeing ourselves as collections of in-groups and out-groups, if we could all just wake up some happy day in the future and realize that we really are just one big in-group, regardless of belief or race or sexual identity or nationality or, hell, even religion.

And like I said, I'm not better. But goddammit, at least I'm willing to try to see beyond my own beliefs and superstitions and biases and ingrained bigotries and maybe catch a glimpse of the reality that we are all more the same than we are different and we are all in this together and we are all that each other has in the Universe. That is something to live for. Not fairy tales. Not crosses and holy water and the dead words of dead men. Not wishful thinking. Not some sweet Hereafter with all of your dead pets.

And I'm not gonna do any of that "Challenge to Theists" bullshit or argue that my stance is superior to anyone else's, and I'm not gonna expect anyone to give half a shit about what I say I'd like. But I have faith in humanity. Despite everything. Despite Gallileo. Despite Alquist. I have faith that we can truly be united. But not so long as grown up motherfuckers are given a pass for deluding themselves with their ridiculous, divisive fantasies.

I would never advocate killing anyone. Not for any reason. Certainly not for being different. Hell, I'm quite capable of loving people because of their differences. But I will not give bullshit a pass just because someone declares the topic off limits. Not when death threats are being mailed to teenagers because of it.

Retro Retro (Demon's Souls pt. 2)

The great thing about Demon's Souls is that once you stop sucking at it and start making progress it lights up the reward center of the brain like the Vegas Strip. For a recovering drug addict that's like a legal drug that doesn't cost any money and only results in minor consequences, like the loss of friends, lovers, weight, sleep and employment, which can all be replaced.

2-3 The Underwhelming Whelp

Usually the last level of a world is just a corridor leading to a boss fight. Since the Dragon God is by far the easiest world boss in the game I decided to prove how easy this game is in the game's one mandatory semi-stealth section.

You can't melee him. Lucky for him.

The corridor involves hiding behind pillars until the Dragon God looks in the other direction, and then running to the next pillar. Some of the pillars block the path and have to be smashed.

Side note: The Dragon God is actually the Boletarian God of Crap Security Guards. He is the patron deity of those whose jobs entail looking slowly back and forth between whichever monitor doesn't contain the ninja infiltrator.

After reaching the far ledge I used the why-is-this-here giant arrow siege engine to take off  45% of the Boss's health. Why in the fuck a Dragon God would want to spend its entire existence hanging out in a room with the only weapon that can kill it placed near the door, armed, and pointing directly at its head is a mystery I've not yet solved.

After creeping across to the siege weapon on the other side of the room, firing it, and dispatching the crippled and helpless Dragon God, I zoned out, fucked around for a while, and went back to the Castle World.

1.2 The Overwhelming Whelp

Upon zoning in, I charged forward into the next chamber and was promptly almost massacred by a herd of Phalanx goons that I swear weren't there the last time I played the game.

Being a little more fucking careful I made my way out to the bridge where I knew that the dragon that roasted me before was about to try to roast me again. He did so. Not because the game is hard or because I'm bad at it, but because I got distracted by my character's ass and timed the dash wrong. That's what happened.

After making the next dash with no problems I had further no problems for the rest of the level as it's basically just a tube with zombies in it. I decided it was time to slay another dragon.

Climbing on top of a turret thing with my bow I took aim and loosed every single arrow I had into the scaly beast's face.

I am now out of arrows and the dragon is very not dead. Fuck.

Kicking myself for forgetting to upgrade my bow and buy more arrows before doing this, I made my way back to the teleporter and totally wasn't roasted alive again when I timed the dash wrong. Again.

After grinding more money that I needed because of my repeated case of dragon breath, I upgraded my bow to a sticky bow. Which is both silly and disgusting sounding, but it's like the best weapon in the game if you're a fan of cheap bitch tactics like I am.

After finally dispatching the dragon I made my way to the Boss chamber, which was the Tower Knight.

See how this fellow is bravely challenging the knight to a fair fight? I'm still not doing that.

The secret to a stress free existence with this Boss is to climb up the walls, murder the archers, rain arcane death on the Tower Knight when he drops his guard during his comically slow wind up animation, then take a step backwards when he shoots back.

This game is so easy. Providing you don't mind being the asshole kid that always picked Sub-Zero and relied entirely on the freezeball+uppercut stunlock to win.

3.1 The Oddly-Designed Prison of Tedious Jailbreaks

Remembering that goon-strength spikes significantly in 1.3, I decided to run through The Prison level of the Other Castle World.

The Prison of Latria has excellent atmosphere, and was really effective at making me feel filthy and hopeless and surrounded by tentacle monsters. For about ten minutes. Then it just became tedious back-and-forthing with me occasionally falling into a hole that wasn't there last time.

Whoever designed this prison does not pay his guards hourly, as they'd be well into overtime by the time they made it to the time clock, and I can't imagine a prison containing three prisoners and 70 caged zombies over the space of 950 square miles has much of an operating budget.

Halfway up the final (senselessly long,) corridor leading to the Boss chamber, I was attacked by a black phantom, which is like a goon but with high stats and better AI. I think they're supposed to simulate the random invaders that popup during online play, but I don't play online because I hate people, competition, teenagers, surprises, acknowledging the existence of people that type things like "fag nigger is fag," and being interrupted during masturbatory escapist fantasies: all of which are synonyms for online gaming.

After circling each other for fucking ages in a level that already has too much nothing happening in it, something in my brain broke off and I started flailing wildly at the phantom's shield. It was at this point that I remembered that this phantom is a stealth character, and as such is deft at executing back stabs.

After cursing my way back to the phantom and this time winning I proceeded to the boss, the Fool's Idol.

Whatever she's reading must be a goddamn good book. She doesn't stop reading even while being arrowed to death.

The Fool's Idol isn't as straightforward as most of the other Boss fights, which mostly involve either being charged by an enraged giant demon, or hiding just outside of the Boss's aggro range and plinking it with arrows or poison spells and hoping it doesn't become enraged and charge.

For the Fool's Idol, the fight mostly relies on cunning, but not very well implemented traps, such as tiles that paralyze your character while she blasts you with magic, the Idol copying herself leading the player to run around whacking dopplegangers, and the best trick: A zombie not even in the Boss's chamber casting resurrection spells on her.

These kind of fall apart, as the floor tiles are few and small, the zombie cleric is the one you probably noticed before coming into the Boss chamber, as he was the one in a magic circle surrounded by glowing light and swearing up and down and he wasn't doing anything suspicious, honest, you can trust me, guv, I'm a right ole honest undead, I am, wouldn't 'urt a flea, now would I?

As far as the Boss herself, she just sat there, facing away from the door. Literally. She seems more boreder with this level than I did.  So the entire fight involved shooting at her and ducking behind a pillar while she slowly turned around.

Returning to base, I decided to take a shot at the Ruined Castle World.

4.1 Fucking Robot Skeletons

That's what the primary goons look like in this world, anyway.

I spent quite a while running around pillaging the level for all of the awesome weaponry that, oddly, was just lying around next to goons that could have easily used them to make my life quite a bit more difficult for me.

After that I decided it was time to give The Vanguard, the Tutorial Boss from the beginning of the game, his comeuppance via my fucking sword in his fucking ankle!

See how this fellow is bravely challenging the Vanguard to single combat? SO DID I!

It went really well too, right up to the point where he somehow, perhaps by using game glitching wizardry, managed to get his gigantic axe past my defense and liquify me.

Luckily this level is reasonably sized and is made up mostly of shortcuts, so I didn't spend the next half hour inching my way back to try again. Trying again worked.

After meandering through the rest of the level and only occasionally being impaled by a spear shot out of an improbable flying manta rays, I made it to the Boss Chamber.

Really skinny goons, really fat bosses.

Luckily the Adjudicator has been ignoring his diet since the fall of the whatever kingdom this is. As a result his only real attack options involve a slow, clumsy chop at the small area in front of him that isn't stomach, and falling down, leaving his wrecked vagina of a head open for axe attacks.

If you've ever played Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, it's almost the exact same strategy used by King Hippo: 1. Make no attempt to disguise your very obvious weak spot. 2. When your weak spot is attacked, drop all defenses while your opponent hacks off a third of your health bar.

Now that I've turned myself into a walking declaration of war, it's time to switch back to the Other Castle World.

3.2 Castle In the Sky

Latria, at least those parts of it that aren't endless prison, is composed entirely of narrow walkways and bridges with no safety rails surrounding a central tower powered by a giant heart. Seriously, you can't design a castle like this and not expect it to be overrun by tentacle demons and giant scorpions with human faces.

Anyway, I remember this level being way more of a pain in the ass than it turned out to be this time. Maybe my already impossibly good video game skills have somehow gotten even better. Of course it's also possible that the 15 or so hours I spent two years ago falling into holes and being knocked off of the same three ledges by gargoyles was buried so deeply in my subconscious that I can now run this level blindfolded.

Since I have to wait until I have pure white world tendency to unlock all of the extras in this level I decided to just make a crazed dash for the Boss Chamber. Since this involves charging at full speed past giant, flying gargoyles over several miles of narrow walkways, and then charging past acid spitting face bugs in a poorly lit bog of narrow walkways there was no way in hell it could possibly work.

Except it did. But it goddamn shouldn't have. I was tempted to throw myself into a hole to see if I had somehow accidentally turned God Mode on.

Anyway, that brought me to the boss, The Maneater. Even though it's a them, and they're snakes that eat Gargoyles and wear them like suits.

Gargoyleseaters doesn't really roll off the tongue. But neither does Demon's Souls.

A fact almost as widely known as the second Maneater that swoops in halfway through the battle is that the first Maneater can be arrowed to death through the door of its chamber. However, I'd been having so much luck...I mean skill in the past few levels I decided a direct, frontal assault was called for. And on the off chance I died I could always come back and kill the motherfucker from the other side of an impassible barrier the way nature intended.

Somehow this worked too. So for anyone wondering how to win at this game: Take the most suicidal, least likely to work strategy and perform it as quickly as possible before the game realizes you're daring it to kill you.

3.3 The Curse of the Lazy Development Monks

The Final Boss of Latria is another sorta unimpressive one, as it's another black phantom. In the online mode the game actually yoinks in another player to do battle with you, but since this game's online community speaks solely in an impenetrable and terrifying language of capitalized consonants and Internet Troll involving phrases like "GW and DBS? You're worse than the uchi push lock noobs! Try HoG and CRR solo against FKA!" I'd be damned if I'm gonna try my luck against someone that takes games that seriously.

Instead I fought the AI phantom, which is like a regular goon, only he has a goofy hat and randomly shoots homing missiles that hurt like a motherfucker. I avoided these by cleverly hiding behind chairs.

The actual Boss is the robe. Immortal witch queen, gargoyle eating snake demons, and a robe.

Next Up: I Tackle the Levels That Really Are Hard

Retro Retro (Demon's Souls pt. 1)

It was just announced that Dark Souls will be released as a PC port this summer. Dark souls was the not-sequel to Demon's Souls, the 17th best game ever made according to the arbitrary list that lives in my brain and changes constantly depending on my mood and if it was a game I only played as a child and/or while drunk and may be way better or worser than I remember.

Yes, dragons and wizards and shit.

Demon's Souls, despite being a pain in the ass to enunciate, became a huge sleeper hit, largely because of it's difficulty. Words like 'punishing,' and 'brutal,' and 'fuck you, this game sucks,' were constantly paraded around in reviews, despite the game not being that hard.

Sure, it was a lot harder than most games from the last five years, but most modern games are way easy. So much so that most strategy guides are a single page that reads:

1. Turn power on.
2. Have eyeballs.
3. Have thumbs.
4. Be awake.
5. Congratulations!

And Demon's Souls was a nice break from that, even though it was not nearly as hard as it was made out to be, and certainly not Nintendo Hard. Play Friday the 13th or Ghosts 'n Goblins and you'll see what I mean. The only reason those games weren't half an hour long was because instead of padding the story out with bullshit, the developers chose the easy route of killing the player repeatedly and gleefully, then sending him to the beginning of the game until he stopped sniveling and memorized the exact sequence of 73 timed jumps and 94 attack patterns needed to finish the zone like a big boy.

Tiny naked man vs. giant armored punch monsters? That's balanced gameplay!

Demon's Souls wasn't that hard. But it did follow the same Bizzaro logic that asked players to learn how to push buttons effectively and remember where the bad guys are.

Just to prove what a not-hard game it was and how superior my opinion of myself is I decided to give it another playthrough. Here's what happened.

1.1 This Shit is SO Easy

After mowing through the first few zombie guards, and feeling very proud of myself for being so awesome at parrying after only playing the game for about 150 hours when it came out, I fell into a hole while performing a flawless roll to avoid an arrow.

Seeing as the hole clearly wasn't my fault as I didn't give it permission to be bottomless OR to even be there in the first place, I tested my prowess on an even field with a black knight guarding a mausoleum. Despite my peerless strategy of creeping forward, panicking and fleeing out of aggro range when he spotted me, almost damaging him, and fleeing again I somehow died.

Next, I was roasted by a dragon that I knew was there! Clearly the game must have auto-updated when I wasn't looking to patch 1.Harder.

Having finally come to the boss fight I proved to myself and the world just how easy this game is by not dying at the boss which, to be fair, is one of the easiest things in the level, if not the game. The boss, Phalanx, incorporates a strategy of being completely defenseless and unable to attack once his slow-moving, move-telegraphing goons are dispatched. The goons are also weak to fire, magic, all weapons, and being slowly walked away from.

Boss Strategy: Attack him. That's it, really.

2.1 In the Mines of Cheap Bitch Fireball Throwing Fat Guys

I decided to switch to the mine level since the game flows sorta horizontally. Plus you have to beat world 2.2 to unlock the good weapon upgrades. Not that I need good weapons, as I could no doubt beat the game on level 1, naked, armed with nothing but brass knuckles and throwing daggers if I wanted to. It just so happens that I don't want to.

After immediately falling off of a cliff that I swear moved towards me while failing to kill a cowardly lizard, I made my way into the mine where I activated the first elevator, which I rode up to meet the first bitch-ass, laughing-ass, pain-in-the-ass-ass Fat Official, who I bested readily despite nearly dying when I forgot that he could throw fireballs, and then almost dying again when I immediately forgot that he could throw fireballs.

I managed to not nearly perish again until yards later while trying to fight off the lungey, jumpy fucking zombie dog enemies that shouldn't be allowed to attack in packs like that.

After opening the gate, which is sort of the first check point in this level, I was snuck attacked by fire lizards that I could have sworn were supposed to flee from my towering femininity.

I should probably mention that I always try to play a female in these games, because if I'm going to be staring at cartoon ass for 70 hours, it had damn well better be girl cartoon ass. Plus girls have access to the cool looking armor.

After carefully retracing my steps, I made it marginally further into the corridor where, doubtless because of the mystery patch, I was ambushed by a group of deceptively fast slow-moving lizard men that were cunningly hiding in plain sight directly in front of me.

After carefully retracing my steps again, I managed to activate the second elevator, which shortcut back tot he beginning of the level and opens up the blacksmith's shop.

Side note: all of the merchants in this game are assholes.

Returning to the main path I fell in battle while valiantly slaughtering two of the 90 lizard folk that shouldn't have been able to be that quiet while hiding around a corner.

After carefully retracing my steps again again, I vanquished the horde of lizard men by using the tactic of sneaking across the building above them and running away. This soon led me to the Boss fight.

The Armor Spider is, as the name would suggest, a spider that is armored. He also attacks by shooting webs and flaming somethings in a pattern that can best be summed up as fucking haywire. Calling on my inner knighthood-dom-ness I bravely charged halfway up the corridor leading to his chamber, hid nobly hid behind a corpse, and threw shit at him until he stopped moving. Told you I was good at this game.

See how this fellow is bravely challenging the spider to a fair fight? That's not what I did at all.

2.2 The Bad Guys are Now Much More Stronger Than Me

After soldiering onward and promptly being exploded by a mine cart, I realized that my current weaponry would be no match for the powered-up fatasses, lizard miners, rock tentacles, exploding lava cockroaches, and on-fire everything in the upcoming level.

At this point I went back to 1.1 to farm upgrade stones and grab an anti-fire spell..

Returning to 2.2 I was, in quick succession, almost pickaxed to death by a miner, exploded by a second cart, and almost fireballed to death by another Fat Official. After weighing my options and deciding 'fuck this,' I decided to backtrack and take the short cut.

The short cut involves dropping down a succession of inexplicably placed bridges in a shaft to bypass the level. After only plummeting to my death a dozen times I decided to cheat and watch a YouTube video to help jog my memory of the correct sequence.

The correct sequence, it turns out, is one I could have sworn I had tried, only it worked somehow this time. Which only proves that the game was cheating, so that made things even between us.

I realized that I was probably no match for the Flamelurker Boss. Not because I wasn't a total badass at this game but because I had, objectively, shit gear, low levels, and a habit of panicking when things that are on fire punch at me.

The Flamelurker, by the way, is a giant fire monster that attacks using fire, punches, lunges and fucking lunacy. Then he aggros further when his health hits a certain point, upping his overall dangerousness to offshore oil refinery levels.

Still, after casting water veil, entering the chamber, and praying to Richard Dawkins, I some-fucking-how managed to win out in melee combat on the first attempt.

Not pictured: Me, crying in the next room.

At this point, gloating to my pet plastic cacti (that I named God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit to avoid arguments with mouthbreathing rednecks,) about how fucking great I am and how kinda easy this game is, I turned the Boss soul into the blacksmith to unlock better weapon upgrades and decided to take a break.

Next Time: I'm Still Awesome and All Deaths Are Well Within The Margin of Error