So I moved that damn thing around the corridor with her, trying not to come across like a total pussy and she didn't even sweat. I have moved well over a dozen times and carried a lot of furniture in my life, but I have never met such a total She-Hulk before. I'm pretty sure Godzilla looks her up for handjobs. There isn't much else I can say about her, since I'm not exactly the most social type and with people moving in, on and out all the fucking time, there's very little point in trying to get to know them. A new guy has already moved in, he's Italian and that's all I know and all I'm hoping to ever know until he's gonna move again in a few months. I have lived in a house with Italians twice before and it was always... entertaining.
The first time was back in Germany, right next door to mine. I think his name was Bastardo. At least that's how his wife would address him every day, at the top of her lungs. Bastardo would sit on the porch and smoke, sometimes he'd aimlessly wander up and down the street, he never greeted anyone, never responded when I said hi. He had the saddest face I have seen in my life. He wasn't just Al Bundy "I hate my wife, my job and my whole life, but beer and tits cheer me up!" kind of sad. That guy was so sad, no amount of tits in the world could do anything to make him happy. He wasn't simply a man, who had lost the will to live. He had already died a long time ago. And whenever he came back from smoking, wandering around, delaying the inevitable, he'd shuffle back into his apartment, right next to mine, and the yelling would continue. She'd scream and shout and freak out, sometimes an elderly lady, presumably her mother, came to visit and they'd yell at him together and he never yelled back. Even the creepy Korean, who would always wait in front of my window to stare at me when I got up and got dressed for work every morning, looked sorry for poor old Bastardo whenever they started yelling next door.
Ahh yes, the Korean. Parking his car directly in front of my window, always watching, always happening to be there in the morning, whenever I got out of the shower. In his defence, I was ten years younger and probably a tad less heavy back then. And after work, he'd park right there again, in the same spot, rather than anywhere near his own damn window. I pissed on that damn car more often than I could count. Now that I think about it, I'm not even sure it would have bothered him had he known about that.
The next Italian neighbour was in aforementioned upstairs flat right here in England. He had a name so awesome, I couldn't possibly make it up: Samuel Capone. I bet he also had a kickass nickname, like, Sammy "The Knife" Capone or something. It's shit like this, which makes it so incredibly difficult to resist making smartass remarks for an invisible audience or an imaginary camera, like my life was some kind of sitcom. Capone turned his humble abode into some kind of plantation. He grew and smoked so much weed up there, the smell was everywhere! It crawled down the stairs, flooded the corridor, came into our living room, the whole damn street smelled like the Netherlands (which has also been confirmed by my Dutch neighbour).
His presence probably helped my writing a lot. Even the fucking flowers in our front yard were high. Eventually, he just disappeared after skipping the rent for three months. We took his microwave oven. Oh well. New Italian guy living upstairs now. I can't wait to see what fun new stuff I'll experience with this one. I should keep an eye out for mail in the corridor to see if he's got a cool name. Tony "Scarface" Corleone or something. I'd like that.
Also: Aliens. Not of the Colonial Marines variety, but Xcom: Enemy Unknown, half a year after it was cool. I remember friends and guild mates mysteriously disappearing when this game came out, only to emerge every once in a while in order to complain about game-breaking bugs. From what I had gathered, the game was awesome, insanely addictive and horribly bugged and broken all at the same time. So I waited for patches, updates, some DLC, you get the idea. Now I'm playing it. Fuck.
Um... yall know what the Xcom reboot is about, right? Aliens invading earth, fight back the bad guys in tactical, turn-based combat and all that?
I like that shit. Organize a squad. Micro-management. The kind of stuff no damn RPG ever does anymore these days. When played right, Xcom is so oldschool and so hardcore, it'll make you cry. I won't lie to you. I'm not playing it right.
You see, in Xcom you don't just have one of your guys running across the map all Rambo-style, ignoring cover and taking on a dozen baddies all by himself. You will die. And not just like PEW-splat-AIEEE-dead kinda die. The game will brutally murder you. The camera will zoom in on your toon as the alien impales him, rips him to shreds, blood and guts splattering all over the place as the creepy fucker starts eating the twitching mess that used to be your character a minute ago. If you fuck up, you don't just lose a small amount of hit points from some infinite, endlessly regenerating pool of health. If you're lucky, your guy will only be injured and stuck in hospital for a week (meaning he might not be available on the next mission). If you're not so lucky... well, I've explained that one already. And since dead means dead, you can kiss all of your guy's skills, abilities and levels goodbye as you replace him with a rookie. Oh joy!
Seeing as I'm both a newcomer to Xcom and terrible at handling anger and frustration, I went for normal difficulty playthrough, where undoing total disaster is as easy as loading a savegame. There is also the much more serious IRONMAN mode, where the game automatically saves after everything you do, good or bad. Screw up a mission and lose your entire squad? Here, let me save your progress for you and set your failure in stone! An entire nation depended on you successfully completing that mission and now your fuck-up caused them to stop funding your Xcom project? Why, let me save again, so you won't have the money to help upgrade the squad of rookies, who are supposed to replace your fallen A-team!
That Ironman checkbox is the Oh-Shit button minus the Oh-. I love that it's there, one day I might give it a go, just to see how far I can make it without undoing all of my mistakes, but right now the thought is still much too scary.
I didn't encounter any showstopping bugs or crashes, though the game does have a few odd quirks here and there. It's a bit sad when my sniper, who gets a 100% accuracy rating at maximum range, takes aim at an alien, which is literally two inches away from him, the camera shows him drilling the muzzle right into said alien's forehead, he squeezes the trigger and fucking MISSES! Also, character customization is rather weird.
So the game puts Mr. Carlos Hernandez on my team. I'm allowed to change his name to anything I want, I can change his face, skin-tone, turn him into an old Asian dude or a young black guy. What I can't do is change his actual nationality or his gender (neither of which serve more than a cosmetic purpose) or pick his fucking CLASS, which is chosen at random the first time he levels up.
Why can't I just create a character, let alone a whole squad? Why can't I at least assign their roles rather than let the game pick whatever it thinks is best for me? What if I don't want four heavy Cuban machine gunners and an Italian sniper?
The one and only female character the game allowed me to have was one of the poor suckers who had to die on the tutorial. What I didn't know is that they can all be saved if you just skip the whole thing. But she's pretty much decomposed by now.
Of course I'm nitpicking here and the randomly generated squaddies do have their charms. So Mr. Hernandez was the only guy to survive the tutorial. The game wanted him to be a machine gunner and when he got promoted to Captain, Xcom granted him a new nickname: Hulk. I didn't change or customise any of these details, because the game gave him a story and a bit of personality that way. I grew fond of the guy. He's a seasoned veteran now and leads my squad into every mission. Aaaand I guess Italian snipers aren't so bad. After a few hours, the game has even granted me a new pair of tits to replace the fallen tutorial ones. Another heavy gunner (duh!), no nickname yet, because she is still a rookie. Let's see if she'll live long enough to earn one.
There's also some fun news on the reptile front: Our monitor lizard has become a potential couch buddy. You can place him in your lap and, depending on his mood, he might just stay there and go to sleep. We had him out for an hour and chilled out with him. I think he'd stay even calmer if Claire wouldn't constantly pick him up, fondle him and fuss over him the whole time, but she sure as fuck knows how to tame a lizard. I'm almost disappointed it all went to quickly and easily. According to the manual and friends with monitors, it can be a painful, time-consuming and frustrating process, but our little friend has been incredibly easy thus far. I like that. He's also getting a nice new tank this Saturday, so he'll have much more space all for himself. Yay!
-Cat
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