5 things I hate about warm weather

Now that I’m halfway over Emma, time for some good old manly complaining. As I mentioned, springtime is here, weather is getting warmer and I sooner or later I will have to deal with one or more of the following inconveniences.

1. House music blasting out of cars
Occasionally you can also see this in winter - windows open, heating system cranked up to the max, speakers blaring. As soon as it gets warm, this becomes a real pest. Younger folks prefer house music (why, people? It’s 2011), but there will always be the odd 55-year old in a convertible, struck by impotence and midlife crisis, with music that can’t be cool in anyone’s book. Look, nobody is going to envy you for your expensive stereo as long as your car is a rusty pile of scrap metal. And your music sucks hard. See that girl, there? She didn’t smile. She laughed. At you.

2. Lack of pockets
I’ll soon have to start leaving the house without a jacket in the morning. This wouldn’t be half bad if I knew where to put all my stuff. Cell phone, keys, smokes, my collection of useless business cards, intergalactic translator, hunting knife... honestly, if I get attacked by a mutant alligator between April and August, I’m pretty much fucked.

Summertime, bitches.

3. Noisy kids
They have to walk everywhere, they never shut the fuck up and they think the world is revolving around them. They don’t work or help their poor mothers in the house, so they have all the time in the world to piss you off. So, if there is some kind of open-air party or festival, they will go there before you can, annoy you at the festival by getting wasted and being unable to hold their liquor, and they will not go home before you’re already in bed. As sure as a bear craps in the woods, they will pass your house on the way home and scream about how fucking magnificient they are. Standing on the balcony all night with a replica gun in your hands doesn’t help, unless you look like Charlton Heston. I tried it.


4. Scantily clad, well built men on the streets
As a modern, cosmopolitan man (yeah right) I am not uncomfortable with male bodies. But they make me look worse in comparison, and that has to fucking stop.

5. Scantily clad, well built girls on the streets
Wait. I actually don’t have a problem with that.

Escort Mission

Last weekend, I decided to play some good old Bioshock again. I hadn’t played it for 2 years, completely forgotten about the story, but remembered it as being fun. Perfect replay value for a weekend when you’ve got nothing else to do.
Unfortunately I also forgot the part shortly before the end where you have to escort a Little Sister on your way to the final boss. Even in a great game like this, escort missions can’t be anything but annoying. So, here is a meticulous account of my descent into madness with the second last level of Bioshock.

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Brigid Tenenbaum is out of her mind. After I’ve wasted hours helping her and her precious creepy little kids, she has no moral qualms against making fun of me. This “pheromone” I had to collect and spray all over me smells like badger shit. I might as well have dipped my head into a toilet bowl on the way. She is probably laughing her ass off right now. Tenenbaum told me to flush out one of the Little Sisters by smashing my wrench on one of those ventlike metal thingies, and I almost blew my eardrums. Very funny, Brigid. Finally, to add insult to injury, she sent me the dumbest kid she could possibly find.
I’ll get her for that.

Around the corner a dead body is lying on a metal grate.
I already know what’s coming now. The little girl stabs the corpse with her supersized syringe and drains the shit out of it as if there was no tomorrow. I played over ten hours of this game to help these kids getting a normal life and now I find out I have to deal with the Rapture equivalent of a pre-school meth addict.
“Hey can you stop th-”
“Look daddy, he’s dancing!”
“God, that’s gross. I think I.. - JESUS CHRIST, DID YOU JUST DRINK THAT SHIT?”
“Unzip him, Mr. Bubbles!”
“Unzip... WHAT? Could you just for one moment try NOT to scare the living hell out of me?”
“Three too many! Three too many!”
“Listen kid, you’re supposed to open some doors for me and in return, I have your ass covered. Nobody told me I’d have to help a four-year-old support her drug habit to beat this game.”
“Hop hop, Mr. B., no time to waste!”
“You don’t even - hey, are you even listening to me, kid? I personally don’t care if the splicers get you, but if they do, I’ll catch hell from your mommy, and I don’t want that.”
No reaction.
Suddenly all hell breaks loose. Splicers come screaming and running from both directions. I open fire, the stagnant air is thick with bullets. I don’t even think about the kid. This is my ass on the line. I blast away until the metallic clicking of my empty submachine gun is the only sound resonating from the corridor walls. I lift my cramped finger off the trigger. The smoke clears.
Everybody’s dead, Dave.

The Little Sister seems to be dead, too, but her body has disappeared into thin air.
As expected, Tenenbaum chews me out.
“What are you doing? You were supposed to protect her, not kill her!”
“Look honey, this is what happens when you don’t teach a kid priorities. I told her a doz-”
“Quiet! Go back and call another Little Sister. But this time you better take care of her.”
This seems to be more than a minor annoyance to old Brigid, so I swallow the “would you kindly shut up” pun and back down for the moment.
Creepy kids and their nagging mother. Somehow Bioshock is turning into a supermarket checkout lane simulator right now.

I walk back to the beginning of the level to do the old wrench-on-metal-thingy routine.
CLUNG. CLUNG. CLUNG. My ears feel like they’re bleeding. Maybe it’s the atmospheric pressure down here. No wait, it’s the noise. I have to grab the Big Daddy helmet with both hands to keep it from vibrating. Finally a new Little Sister climbs out of the vent and takes off immediately. I follow her, thoroughly scanning the environment.
Mrs. T. still nags me about her damn kids. She has the nerve to act as if she was the protective mother of all mothers. I tell her to shut up, that it’s all her fault and that Rapture is no place to raise a child. Not even a junkie child. Then I switch off the radio until she’s calmed down some.

While we stroll along the corridors, I decide it’s time for a little Daddy-to-Sister talk.
“Kid, you don’t really think I’m your Big Daddy, do you? I mean, I smell like one and I wear this huge helmet, but even a drugged nutcase like you must notice that I have a healthy bone structure. And I understand the basic concept of verbal communication.”
“All your faces are melted.”
“Yeah I know. I’ve seen those posters - this is your brain on drugs and all this stuff - but even then you can’t be that dumb. Also, there is no point in taking care of my appearance if everybody and their mother mistakes me for a fat mindless ogre with an underwater hazmat suit."
“Scabby on my knee.”
“Sure, whatever you say. Hey, aren’t you the same kid that just disappeared in front of me? Because you sure as hell all look the same. I’m starting to think you’re playing some sick game wi-”
The little brat discovers the same already drained corpse we passed before, leaps at it like it was a free Hello Kitty lunchbox and rams her ADAM-needle into the poor dead freak.
I stare at the scene in disbelief. Not again.
“Are you kidding me? He’s dry as a martini. Besides, we don’t have any time for this shit!”
“Don't be a slowpoke Mr. B., angels don't like slowpokes.”
“You will meet some real angels if we DON’T GET MOVING!”
Too late. I can already hear them around the corner. But this time, I’ll be prepared.
I quickly hack two of the automatic turret guns for fire support, like the magnificient bastard I am. As a veteran of Company of Heroes I should be able to lure the splicers into a deadly machine gun crossfire. By now I’m so low on ammo, I need every help I can get, and I can’t see shit with this helmet on. I switch the radio back on for helpful advice, but all i get is a complaining Tenenbaum. Plus, the smell of those Big Daddy pheromones is ungodly.

Wait a second.
I shouldn’t be able to... this game is getting way too immersive.
With a girly scream I let go of the mouse and look around the room, spooked.
Frantically I dig through piles of paper on my desk in hope of finding some leftover food that could be responsible for this sudden shift into the surreal. I even check the usual suspects, my socks.
They're fine.
Just as I am finally ready to accept the fact that I’m gradually, or sense by sense, fading over into a video game world like Jeff Bridges in Tron (only with goddamn splicers), my eyes fix on a coffee mug standing behind the fucking printer.
I pick it up, sniff it and faint for a few seconds.
Instant cappuccino with whipped cream, estimated time of death: 3 weeks ago. What a relief.

But back to the game, there’s a job to do. I’m surprised to see the Little Sister still alive, although I must have been away for at least a minute. She seems to do better without me, which sheds a bad light on my babysitting skills. All the while Tenenbaum is screaming at me for being a useless peace of shit, while the hacked turret guns are joyfully tearing the attacking splicers to shreds. We’re all one happy fucking family and it’s Christmas day.
Little Miss Sunshine dances around in a hailstorm of bullets and shouts “Kill it, Mr. Bubbles! Kill it!”

This kid is hardcore. I name her Nicole, after a girl I once knew as a kid who kicked everyone’s ass on the schoolyard. After I’ve finished off the last splicer and Nicole has finished her ADAM picnic, we continue our little walk in the park.

Again, I try to start a conversation. She completely ignores my questions, incoherently stammering shit about angels, lollipops and toffees.
And then, as I feel my ears still ringing from all that gun fire and wrench-hammering, it dawns on me.
I have just discovered the terrible secret of the Little Sisters.
They’re all deaf as a post.

Damn you, Brigid Tenenbaum. Damn you.

Warning: If your daughter draws like this, she might possibly be a junkie.