more nonsense

Alright ladies and gentlemen I guess my previous joke failed and didn't strike a chord with you all. Nevermind, today I shall help to keep this blog alive. My job ended quite a while ago and I was unsuccessful in trying to extend my contract, leaving me unemployed until further notice. I think I might not be going into the army in April but even later. That sucks. I'm reduced to doing nothing much constructive at home. Anyway, there isn't much of a point in the bulk of my post today, which is as follows:

On Sunday, I happened to be in an arcade in Jurong Point and played a little bit of the Mario Kart arcade game. It wasn't very interesting until there was this small kid who went to play at the machine beside me. Still nothing interesting. And then suddenly the kid was slamming his whole body side to side. It looked pretty crazy and drew my attention, whereby what I saw made me wonder if something was wrong with the boy.

As he was trying to steer his character's vehicle (which happened to be the same character as mine, the mushroom guy named Toad), he turned the steering wheel to the fullest extent and pulled his entire body along in the opposite direction as though he was trying to rip out the steering wheel like some crazy monster caged in a dark room for a few hundred years making him grow evil and demented. Like turn left, pull yourself right. Not surprisingly, he would have to turn the other way because he made such hard turns, effectively moving in a zig-zag fashion, with himself swinging along . There were one or two other kids watching us play and I was quite sure they were more interested in watching a driver play with style. I was just a boring guy playing quietly. Luckily there was ample space between the seats or I would probably receive a nice headbutt from him.

The next thing about the boy that wasn't as crazy but somewhat affirmed my suspicions that he was slightly out of contact with planet Earth was how he reacted while playing the game. He was like thinking out loud if you know what I mean. This game, in most cases, is about luck and tyco-ness because sometimes near the end when you're winning some lucky bastard computer player obtains a killer item (maybe the computer cheats), locks on onto you and shoots, making you explode and lose the race while everyone else overtakes you, not to mention the insane aggressiveness of the computer opponents as they slam into you with every opportunity they've got. Sorry this was a bit long but if you get my drift the kid was actually playing pretty emotionally and was like, "oh no the stupid Mario shoot me", "I'm gonna win him now", "stupid wall" etc., and of course he made a brilliant finish by jumping (well you can't really jump while seated) with a "yes!" and a fist shooting into the air as he sees the word "1ST" at the end. Then looking to his left and right to see if he's impressed any onlookers. Or, the emotional loss, "oh no..." and hands covering his face as though it was a matter of life and death. And, he reads out what is shown on the screen and goes like, "Giant Mushroom YEAH!!!". And then there's this part which shows you the item to be won in the next race and he goes like, "winner's prize: Trash Can YEAHHH!" I guess we don't want to dampen his mood by telling him it's the next item up for grabs, not yours yet. The retarded part about this Mario game is the camera that by default snaps a photo of your face and uses it as your player portrait with an overlay of the character. So like if you play Mario, there would be a moustache over your photo, regardless of the position of your face. And man, the kid really tried to look his best when taking the shot. Damn charismatic, serious face. Polka dot mushroom top floating above head. Probably as serious as a doctor diagnosing some patient with a terminal illness. Well that doesn't matter much anyway.

Okay this is getting a bit long but I'm finally reaching the best part. Now the last thing that made me wonder if God made a really, really bad mistake in his design of The Modern Human Child was this. At some point in certain races the track ends and you warp to a different part, with this bworb sound and the screen has some effects to go along. What this kid did was, right as he was about to get warped, he would let go of the steering wheel. Put up his hands. Hands on both sides of head. Do the twinkle twinkle little star action. DO THE TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STAR ACTION. Resume playing when the warping animation ends. I was like, oh my God. I mean, he was by himself man! Maybe he wanted to act seh and show off to the other one or two kids behind but seriously, the last thing you want to do playing this rather brainless game is do something even more brainless. Some Malay guys playing Daytona right beside were looking at him, jaws slack and reaching the floor. I joined along.

Well, this little incident made me realise that maybe even higher order beings keep up with the times and revise their human designs. And maybe, you might want to do the freaking twinkle twinkle little star action in a similar situation, by yourself.

In the meantime, I shall go to sleep and wake up to a brand new day with no job and absolutely no idea of when I'm going in. Enjoy yourselves.

(type until forgot to put my name at the end)
- aloy