6 Funny Video Games

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The 6 Funniest Video Games (In my humble opinion):

 1. Worms Armageddon

What’s so funny about worms trying to destroy each other? What’s not funny about worms trying to destroy each other? They never bleed. They’re never fully destroyed. In the process of blasting each other, they say hilarious things, like, “Grab your pineapples and run!” You can change the worm’s accents to the voice of your choice. You can hear them with a Scottish accent, an Indian accent, or even a Cyborg accent. The weapons will make you laugh, from the Banana Bomb to the exploding Sheep. Some of the actions will make you laugh, even when your team is getting the brunt of the punishment. Worms wiggle across the screen. They fall and land face down in the dirt. They get blown up and they spin as they’re flying through the air. Their lips flap as they get blasted. And sometimess you can make them skip across water, like skipping a stone. With all the funny actions and crack-up voices, Worms is one of the funniest games ever.

 2. Crossy Road

The main fun about this one is that when you lose, you laugh. It’s funny to get run over, or blown up, which of course makes you want to play another round. When games are funny, they can be addictive. Crossy Road is my latest addiction.

 3. Rayman, Raving Rabids

It’s no coincidence that this was made by some of the same people who made Worms Armageddon. The hyperbole is strong with this game. The far-out scenarios are hilarious. It’s a fun world to enter, with rabbits that are psychotic—and there’re lots of ‘em. There are different mini-games within the game, but the really fun one is where you have to hunt the rabbbits with a plunger gun. The rabbits come out of flying saucers. They come at you dressed like super spies. They fly around dressed like Superman. They even show up as killer robots. When you shoot them, the plungers stick to their faces and blind them briefly. You end up knocking them down and they just poof and disappear. No blood. No guts. No realistic violence. These are the elements of funny video gaming.

 4. Angry Birds

Even though the unnatural physics of this game can make you angry sometimes, the idea of slinging birds at loosely constructed bricks and wood beams is fun enough to keep a person going back for more, and more, and more. I have to admit, the exploding birds are my favorite. It’s very satisfying, and funny, to watch a bird blow up in the face of a green pig.

 5. Skylanders

The makers of Skylanders, Activision, took great effort in building a world. Their efforts paid off with a variety of characters, and some great voice actors adding their voices to the game. (Patrick Warburton, Hope Levy, Laura Bailey, Richard Steven Horvitz, Courtenay Taylor, Hunter Davis, and Liam O’Brien, to name a few.) One character in particular is a young mole who reacts to all of the playable characters in funny ways. The best one is the reaction to Hex, an undead character. She prompts him and he says, “You are one scary lady…lady.”

6. Plants vs. Zombies

Throwing peas, corn, and watermelons at zombies is terribly funny. This video game came around when zombies were extremely popular in the media. And the folks at Pop Cap did zombies right. They came up with a variety of goofy zombies (that’s better than horrific, isn’t it?). They also came up with a variety of plants. The plants are the weapons. It’s an engaging game. You have to click on suns and money and plants. It starts to move really fast, but while you’re engaged by the strategy there are funny things happening. Your plants get eaten. The zombies get bigger. They start to put on armor. The zombies even dance after they’ve “died”. A cool note about this game is that it has a soundtrack that reminds me of the Love and Rockets song “Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven”.

Merry Christmas!

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I’m generally a happy person, but it makes me sad that there are people in this world who don’t enjoy the Christmas holiday. They want the days of Christmas to go by fast and be gone.

That is a sad situation.

I wonder if they’re just focusing on the wrong end of the holiday. I mean if you’re not thinking about baby Jesus, then yeah, I guess you might not enjoy the holiday. If you can’t imagine some magic around Saint Nicholas, then you might not have fun. If you can’t see the light in a child’s eyes as they imagine all the candy and toys, then you might be focused on the wrong things.

One of the best parts for me is watching my son share his toys and candy. I don’t believe I taught him this. He seems to have learned it on his own. He just takes whatever he has and gives it away. I don’t ask him to do it. I don’t prompt him. He looks at another child and says, “Do you want this?” Then he hands over whatever it is—a plastic army man, a bag of Skittles, a Lego mini-figure, or even a Hot Wheels motorcycle.

He has the same love of objects as anyone else. He has a Christmas list: a list of fun he wants wrapped up under the tree. But he gives so freely, I can’t see any selfishness in him. He doesn’t even hesitate. He loves to share.

One thing he does ask in return, to those he gives his gifts to, is that they play with him. After he gives them something, he asks, “Do you want to play with me?” That seems like a fair exchange to me. A gift of something you desire for a little bit of your time? Of course, I’m putting that in adult terms. You get the idea though. He just wants a friend. He wants a companion for play time.

And the weird thing is that sometimes the children he gives things to don’t accept his request. They take the toy and go play by themselves. It’s strange to watch that interaction. Even though it’s rare, it does happen. Sometimes I want to go talk to the kid who denies the chance to play, so I can reason with them.

“Didn’t he give you that toy? Don’t you think you owe it to him, to play with him? Don’t you feel guilty eating those Skittles?”

I wonder though, if I’m just indulging in adult interference, or actually helping the situation. I’m sure there are times when it’s right to interfere, and times when children have to learn on their own. Maybe they have to stew in their feeling of guilt long enough to recognize it. Like the person at the beginning of this topic, who doesn’t enjoy Christmas, who may or may not need my prompting to get over their seasonal depression, will they get my prompting anyway? How do you know when to share the joy you have inside? You don’t. So just do it anyway. Share it freely. Share it without hesitation. And who knows? Someone might be watching you. They might say, “Look at how selfless that one is. Now that’s Christmas spirit.”

Fake Book Titles

 

  1. Getting Married UnderwaterGMU
  2. Real Photos Taken by Real Catsrealcats
  3. Wrestling a Python
  4. Black Holes: Not Black, Not Holes
  5. Landfill Everything
  6. Global Cooling
  7. Mining for Spaghetti Oysters
  8. Sleeping with the TV on Makes You SmarterTV
  9. How to: Guess Anyone’s Weight
  10. Novelty Campism: from Elvis Impersonation to Rap Music
  11. Ving Rhames for President
  12. Buried Treasure in Alaska
  13. Teasing Your Mate, Teasing Your Hair
  14. Feeding Your Inner Beast (Psychedelic Proteins)Feeding
  15. This is not a bookspikey
  16. Recycled Clothing
  17. How to: Chocolate Coat Anything
  18. Get Rich on Minimum WageGetRich
  19. Did Taylor Swift Kill The Music Industry?
  20. 11 (uncomfirmed) Things I Might Have Done at the 7-11
  21. Authorized PlagiarismAP
  22. Frozen Pizza and Fried Ice Cream
  23. My Monkey (a memoir)
  24. Delicious Insects and Where to Find Them
  25. Polyester Man (He who lives and never dies!)
  26. Taming Your Extrovertextro

And that concludes my list of books that aren’t books, but maybe should be.

Isms

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Neoplatonism: Supposed to be new. It’s ancient. Supposed to be about Plato. He’s ancient too. An ism in antiquity. Infused with the idea that trance will connect one to a higher power. Solipsism: Selfism. Like a child who won’t share, this ism is for those who think they’re the center of the universe. Cronyism: Friend worship. That’s all really. It can be described as paying a lot of attention to friends and close relationships, but no others. It gets so deep, this attention, as to be considered worship. Socialism: Social worship. Like Cronyism, only reversed, so that the zealous attention is paid to society. Tends to screw over the individual to benefit the crowd or the state. Fascism: Sometimes a covert racism, fascism is a way for dictators to remain in power, because any voting system is abolished. Favors the state over individuals. Sadism: sexual pleasure from inflicting pain on someone else. Masochism: Sexual pleasure from being subjected to pain. Racism: Worship of the race to which you belong. All others are considered inferior. Ageism: Worship of the age group to which you belong. All others are considered inferior. Intellectualism: Worship of the idea of intelligence. It used to be a devotion to learning. This ism sacrifices wisdom for encyclopedic trivia. Organism: Not a worship. Unless you’re a weirdo. An Organism is a system, usually complex, and usually considered alive. (I threw this one in here to test the attention span of the reader.) Republican-ism: The belief that only one party can govern a political system. Democrat-ism: The belief that only one party can govern a political system. Buddhism: The belief that a steady progression through selflessness will exalt an active practitioner. Christian-ism: The belief that a steady progression through selflessness will exalt an active practitioner. Judaism: The belief that a steady progression through selflessness will exalt an active practitioner. Materialism: Worship of physical possessions. Sexism: Prejudice against the opposite gender. Audism: Prejudice against the hearing-impaired.

If you’re practicing any prejudice against others, just stop. Most of us have more in common than we have differences. Like the lizard above, we can bridge the gap!

Break Room Discovery

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The office break room is a scientific place.

Social psychology comes into play when certain people who don’t otherwise associate within the company go in there at the same time. Who sits where? Who gets the comfy chair? Who gets the microwave first? Who has to heat up their food among the drippy splatter from the previous careless user? What topics will come up in conversation? Will that one annoying guy talk about his colonoscopy again? Will the ladies discuss their pregnancies in detail? Will that guy who has too many cats in his house come in the break room and send everyone packing because he smells like his method of hygiene is to bath in a pool of one thousand cats? Will the boss come in and ruin every conversation? Will that gal with the political fetish come in and bore everyone to tears or bleeding ears? Will someone find their food has been stolen out of the refrigerator?

All of these questions will need further study. So will the unknown substance in that container on the bottom shelf at the back of the refrigerator. The container is, of course, clear. Everyone can see the stuff inside, but no one knows what it is. No one claims it. How did it get there in the first place? Did some outsider bring it in when no one was looking? Is there some serial leftover depositor out there in the city? If so, where will he strike next? In an office near you? In YOUR office? How will he ever get caught? Does he leave his fingerprints on the mysterious containers? Has he ever been caught on camera? Or is he able to avoid cameras like Bigfoot does? If Bigfoot worked in the office, would anyone know about that? Maybe he does, and he’s the one taking the lunches out of the break room fridge. The best thing to do then is set up one of those wildlife cameras and some bear traps inside some lunch sacks. Strategically placed sacks will capture either Bigfoot or the leftover depositor. Either way, scientific progress will have been made.