DotTeeVee: Zejx's Wife Flips

Today's incredible video is the sort of thing that might be unearthed one day by alien visitors trying to understand why they've stumbled on an otherwise habitable planet completely free from even the most rudimentary signs of civilization. Well, that or just another forgettable "Look at these guys play a game!" video that has become all the rage with generation nothing because simply ruining your life with joystick time is no longer pathetic enough and we need a new sub-basement of failure where the experience is made completely passive. Stir in some unfunny jokes and a domestic conflict worthy of a Cops: Special Basement Dwelling Loser Edition and entertainment is on the way.

 Watching other people watch a loading screen. People do this. Voluntarily. 

The two court jesters of this modern era are already deep in some game, selecting from a variety of guns. Before fears that these murder simulator players might take their violence into the so-called "real world" can be fully realized one of the disheveled "gamers" lazily makes a joke about his friend having a small penis. Neither man laughs. This is great, I can see why it's so popular. Well, back to fish-eying that "please wait" alert.

There's some random clicking, uncomfortable eye contact between the gentlemen bonding over an arcade game and yet more loading bars. I'm assuming the floating gun starts soon, but it's strictly an article of faith with little to back it up. While we're waiting we get another sort of gun show as both vidiots favor us with some bicep poses for reasons unknown. Suffice it to say, progressive resistance training must be sacrificed if you want to have a career in bleep blooping for the 'tubes.

Would you believe this was obtained with no regular exercise and a diet consisting mainly of salted snacks and sugar water?

The lack of mass, hypertrophy, striation or vascularity generates a fair amount of shared mirth from our hosts and it's this hearty laughter that causes the "flip" we were promised. A woman whose vocal demeanor suggests she's our hero's mother more than his missing soul half interrupts the gaiety to declare the baby isn't sleeping and she's not happy. The door slams, we get some footage of what looks like a "You're a soldier!" bit of interactive television and some profanity is exchanged.

This guy's life is basically the cargo cult equivalent of normal adult married life. The elements that should be present are there, but they're clearly just pathetic fabrications, a feeble imitation of the real thing, an illusion with physical form. Meanwhile the failure and pathology one associates with those island cultists is present and very, very real. Insofar that we can judge society's trajectory by its dregs and outcasts, what we see here is not a good omen.

Anyway, the electronic lotus eater is all "Get off my back Mom Wife" but expresses it with misapplied sweating words. This earns him the threat of having the computer taken away. Meanwhile the virtual soldier continues to plod forward, in a strange way representing the healthy masculinity and willingness to sacrifice for a greater good that's ironically so totally absent in the human wreckage guiding this flickering puppet. 

We get the dreaded double dog dare. I can't believe she skipped right over the double dare right to the ultimate version. Yes, these are ostensibly adults. The action man on the screen finally reaches a building and is promptly killed. Rest in peace imaginary disposable hero. You deserved better. The bickering continues. 

You are an emotionally stunted man-child. Game Over.

More cursing, a "Congratulations" given out sarcastically (Yeah, just what we needed) and another slam of the door follows. We then get a debate over what's causing the "not not sleeping" which I'm pretty sure would you mean that sleeping is actually happening, what with the mangled grammar and all. The video game is loading again. Oh well, it's worth it for twenty seconds of exciting walking action, while being screamed at the entire time by reminders of my gut-shot life. 

"Look at the spam!" we are told after several seconds of dead air. Just riveting stuff. Finally the soldier character is back, apparently fully healed and ready to resume his pointless and unwinnable struggle. Huh, might be an allegory or something there. We learn the other half of our dream video game team "Doesn't have a kid" which somehow isn't the most shocking revelation. It's hard to imagine a better form of birth control than playing toy soldiers on your computer all day, everyday.  

We end with a small amount of uncomfortable self-awareness, noting "She sounded like my Mom." Yeah. I'm sure the "Did you get a job today?" nagging will resume shortly. Until then, there's a war to be won, a pixelated field to run through and an eager audience that just can't get enough.

Watch the video. 

LOL, can't wait to post this on social media.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

Twistaplot #7 The Video Avenger

Video games are the greatest human invention, ever. They transport us to wonderful worlds of fantasy and wonder, worlds rich in horrific imagery, morbid violence and shoe-horned in for no good reason sexual content. They allow ten-year-olds we've never met to yell semi-coherent profanity, improperly applied racial slurs and other assorted gibberish at us through special headsets. They encourage a culture of inactivity, social retardation and binge eating. But it's all worth it because it sure is fun to pretend to shoot stuff on the television.

I'm an old school gamer at heart, cutting my teeth on cigarette-burned Ms. Pac Man cabinets at the local bowling alley. Back then home consoles were crude and unimpressive, so the action was out in what today's gamer fearfully calls "the real world." It was even kind of edgy, in an awesome "falling in with the bad people" way instead of the pathetic "sat in own waste in front of television for 72 hours" malfunction now associated with joy-sticking. Back then we could only dream of somehow taking the magic of the arcade into our own house, possibly via some sort of super-computer. Well, today's subject is all about that idea and how it goes horribly wrong. We're about to unlock an achievement: getting trapped inside awesome video games!

 I like the "avenger" part, as if you're seeking bloody retribution against the Space Invaders.

We start with trademark Twist-A-Plot snark. I've won a "super-smart" MEE-II (get it?) computer from the local Burger Bomb. "Those 4,789 cheeseburgers you ate paid off!" I'm told. Yup, that sounds like your typical video gamer. Surprisingly, in the accompanying illustration the "you" avatar is thin, which suggests that either there's some sort of super-metabolism going on here, that childhood obesity did not exist yet in 1983 America so the illustrator couldn't even imagine what it would look like, or I'm on the old scarf 'n' barf diet.

Another "Mallet University" Snob. I'd love to take that Beaver League stuffed shirt down a few pegs!

What would you do with a super-powerful, self-aware computer? Make a fortune from insider trading? Conquer the world? Create the world's most comprehensive pornography collection? Obviously, none of the above. No, it's time to play some Death-Beam Dinosaurs. Yes, this came out in 1983, why do you ask? Anyway, there's no controller, but The Computer gets all televangelist on you and wants you to touch the screen. As you would assume, this immediately sucks you into the game.

I just had a word of knowledge...someone is struggling with death-beam dinosaurs.

The computer explains that if I die in the game I'll die for real and is all "good luck!" I'm in a spaceship being menaced by a seven-headed dinosaur, presumably a dinosaur of the death-beam variety. In fine "Defender" tradition I hit the hyperspace button. This takes me to the "inner circuits," which, as you might expect, is a giant landing strip for video game space ships. After landing I follow a "strange woman" because why wouldn't you?

This leads to falling down a "long black hole," but it's not nearly as righteous as I accidentally made it sound. Instead I meet a sort of computerized La Resistance that are hiding out in "a forgotten packet of circuitry," presumably the circuits that are used for running that financial program that comes packed in. I'm told some of these digitized partisans helped to build the computer. Whoa. That's some good irony, dude. They're all "join us!" 

Are you bad enough to select O RLY?

Without any better options, I agree to join. The plan is to have a gamer "distract" the computer with their leet Space Invaders SkIlLz while they shut the computer down. Yes, the computer knows they're going to try to do this, but is so overconfident that it doesn't stop it. Yeah, good plan. They immediately start proposing the I be the "human sacrifice." (!!!) Yup, I know how to pick 'em. Unsurprisingly, I opt out for a "better idea" without even knowing what it is yet. 

The other plan involves challenging the computer to a game and then "playing dumb" which will somehow trick an emotionless, super-intelligent machine. I think the mystery of how all these people got trapped in here has been solved. We go round and round a bit more. Man, this book has turned into "The Local City Council Meeting Avenger." Anyway, I get randomly assigned my "game assignment," I guess like those Chinese political prisoners that are forced to play online games all day. 

Action! Adventure! Plans! Negotiation! 

I'm led to a darkened room where an object that looks a little like a flashlight (just a little?) is on the floor. I'm supposed to use it for the game. It's some sort of laser, but I'm getting rushed by "hairy lumps." Yes, I'm battling Critters. As I start fighting I realize what game I'm in: "Last Stand in Space." Everything was space in the eighties. Also this is bad news because it's "the hardest video game of all." No one has ever defeated the "Mad Munchers" (!) and I'm no exception, being devoured in fairly short order. Game over.

The real "last stand" video game.

This one was all right. It benefited from having fewer self-aware jokes than the last Twist-A-Plot book I read, which helped a pretty risible plot line. The idea of "trapped in the computer" wasn't really mined for all the bizarre weirdness it could have generated, at least in my play-through. Instead the bulk of the story revolved around listening to horrible plans and rejecting them. I guess C-SPAN wouldn't make a very good video game.

Aaron Zehner's first novel The Foolchild Invention is available in e-book format at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.