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The Glitcher

As with so many strips, this one is about a real happening that authentically occurred. Typically I can't prove it, though - not so this time. This link will deliver you unto the moment where we explored an anomalous Animus glitch in Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, and the about twenty-five minute period after where we smashed our heads against a literally impossible puzzle and then ultimately succeeded, but not because we were possessed of any profound intellectual capacity but because we turned it off and then turned it back on again. I love that this answer holds true even when you're talking about a machine that dredges up holographic, livable representations of the past from DNA.

Seven Minutes In Heaven

I was trying to get the gist of what the Ghost Rider movie was even about, and Gabriel was able to reconstruct these painful events with some difficulty. I watched a few clips online, and couldn't believe the levels of camp on display - I'm tempted to say it's just… bad, certainly that would save me a lot of cognitive resources, but it's so winky and plus Nic Cage is there that some weird, stark corner of my mind thinks you arrive at this kind of bad without a conscious effort.

Ghost Riding

Having been made to drink poison in hell with his wide eyed son, Gabriel had an opportunity to recall just how carelessly Marvel intellectual property had been scattered on the ground before it occurred to someone that they could fashion a nested modern mythology largely out of existing work and make billions. How stunted were the weird, dry fronds of the plants that once grew there. Bent shapes like symbols of agony! This is the vital portion:

Paintings for Charity

With this year's Child's Play auction going online, I decided to offer up a few special pieces. Back in 2008 I decided to try my hand at acrylic painting and I made about a dozen paintings or so of varying sizes. Four of these hang in my house, two are at the PA office and the rest were in storage. During a recent cleaning of my garage I found some of these old pieces and I've decided to donate a few of them to Child's Play in the hopes that they will help raise some money and find good homes. Here's a quick look at the three pieces I'm handing over to Child's Play this afternoon. 

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Animus (Definition One)

"Modern Day" shit in Assassin's Creed has executed at various levels of quality, and it manifests in different areas of the game - much of it through text. I know I'm not the only person who likes some of that stuff, because Gavin and I used to share entries that we liked with each other. So I'm open to the idea that it's just Gavin and I, but it's definitely not just me.

Either Orlog

Man, I already said I wasn't gonna fuck any kinda Goddamn map in Assassin's Creed: Valhalla. Not playing Valhalla enabled me to finish Lexcalibur II in record time, thirty poems I like even better than the first book, and I say this as someone who stands opposed to every syllable of my work thus far. I am its nemesis, and the work of each day is to destroy it with new work. But somehow these poems escaped!

So Many Games!

I grabbed Assassin’s Creed Valhalla on Stadia when it dropped around 9PM my time on Monday. No download required so I was able to start playing immediately which was cool. It played great and I didn’t end up getting to bed until after 1 am. I have to admit it was Orlog that kept me from getting to bed at a reasonable time. It’s a deceptively simple little dice drafting mini game that you can play all around the world similar to Gwent. After spending another day with Valhalla I am absolutely loving the game and I would pay money for an Orlog app on my phone. 

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Race Night!

I’ve spent more time with Stadia and it continues to be really impressive. Since my last post a week ago, I got a Stadia controller and put just over sixteen hours into the Division 2. I also checked out a bunch of other games like Super Hot: Mind Control Delete, Orcs Must Die 3 and an early access game called Embr. Kara and I have been killing Orcs together and having a great time with all the traps and new characters. Embr has got its hooks in my son Noah and I. This is a co-op fire fighting game with ridiculous ragdoll physics and a goofy premise. You need to work together to battle the fire and save all the people trapped inside...and also you can rob them. It’s a great game that I had never even heard of but it was included with Stadia Pro. Super Hot Mind Control Delete is also great, it takes the gameplay of the normal game and delivers it in a new almost Roguelike way. 

Hats Off

If you dig further than the initial search, you'll find other information about people who have worn this suit - people who look much, much cooler than the image you're almost certain to find first. But that doesn't mean you won't find this image first, and then become physically and spiritually hollowed out as anyone would be to learning that the icon of dangerous, mysterious cool which defined your very conceptions is actually an accountant ("Technically speaking, a comptroller,") from Scranton, PA.

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Forget-Me-Now

Something happened to Gabriel's body yesterday, we don't know what, only that any maneuver of the head and neck resulted in gruesome agony. Luckily, we were rescued by Trystan Falcone on the art side so our exegesis on the short term memory of guards in Watch Dogs (et al.) could be delivered according to the ancient, now almost twenty-two year old schedule.

The Life Aquatic

(At this point, continuing to demand that Cyberpunk get released this year is just dumb. I'd celebrate a delay if I thought it meant a material easing of the process for the people caught inside it, but the last delay certainly didn't and I don't think this one will either. When I was a new father, learning how to feed a child, I did so according to a clock that I'd set to make sure they were getting enough to eat. I was cautioned against this by the midwife, who taught me instead to be conscious of the child I was feeding instead. It seems clear now that they're feeding a clock.