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.

News You Can't Use: Scientists Cure Disorders in Mice by Resetting Their Brains

After damaging your brain with pinball, wacky glue, cocaine in crack format and the total and complete devastation of the normal aging process the next natural question becomes how can "science" finally pull its weight and fix the damage. Well, it looks like we're now closer than ever with various white coats solving the complex psychological problems of mice via a bunch of stuff you wouldn't understand. And since we're just glorified mice, albeit generally less likable and more prone to attempting to destroy our own kind, this cure should be easily transferred to your average television victim.

A team of scientists has cured a brain disorder in adult mice by rebooting the rodents' brains and allowing them to rewire themselves.

Take this tiny, very cute welding device and rewire your gray mass, Mickey. We'll reboot it, because the brain is a lot like a Nintendo Entertainment System, despite lacking a zapper.

The research demonstrates that certain features of young brains can be recreated in mature brains, even in parts of older brains that scientists believed were impervious to change.

"I am Tradition Man! Radiation from your yellow sun has made me impervious to change!"

It could also pave the way for treating a variety of developmental disorders that begin relatively early in life.

Soon we can use dangerous neurological interventions to finally put an end to "boys will be boys."

The brain continues to change throughout life, but it grows more and more difficult to break certain kinds of connections as time passes.

Decades of weekend alcoholism might also play a small role.

But Sunil Gandhi and his colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, have found a way to hit the reset button in certain regions of the brain even later in life, allowing the organ to rewire itself and iron out the kinks that can lead to disorders.

I imagine this failing and your brain flashing the biological version of the VCR clock 12:00 AM over and over while you become a hopeless drooling vegetable.

The research was funded by a grant from the High-Risk, High-Reward program at the National Institutes of Health.

This is the same group that funded such studies as "Stealing from drug lords" and "Expressing popular, but forbidden, political opinions."

In their study, the scientists implanted special cells into the brains of adult mice that suffered from a disease called amblyopia, sometimes called lazy eye.

Sometimes also called "You could hunt eagles and squirrels at the same time."

Amblyopia is not a problem with the eye itself, but usually results instead from a problem in the connection between the eye and the brain.

You mean it's me noggin and not me peepers?

"I have to say it was mind blowing," Gandhi said.

Not literally, one would hope.

"I began these experiments with colleagues about eight years ago, and all throughout we were subject to concern that this enterprise we were engaged in was far fetched."

I lost everything because I believed lazy eye could be cured by resetting the neocortex, but now I've been fully vindicated.

"The neuroscientist has a default expectation that it is not possible to wire in [to the neocortex] like that," Gandhi said. "It's kind of like a Black Swan phenomenon, that now that we have the evidence, a lot of people will treat it as obvious, but I can tell you that there is a long list of my senior colleagues that thought this was impossible."

Lots of old people with their time ravaged neocortexes thought it wouldn't work, but they were wrong, of course.

"With all potential therapies involving placing cells in the brain, one has to be very cautious," Gandhi said.

So please, put down that ice cream scoop and live wire.

Thank you for fixing my cross-eyes, Camille.

"But what we hope is that this study, along with many others, begins to open the door to the therapeutic viability of cell-based approaches."

As a man of science, I like to use my powerful hoping abilities. 

Full Article.

Komment Korner  

Note: will not be effective on republican cowards.

*Yawn* Another day, another incredible age reversing breakthrough in...MICE.

Mandatory brain resets for all liberals.

Walk this way. No, THIS way.

Please put some in my brain so I can see if I can learn foreign languages more easily. GIVE ME BRAIN


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

News You Can't Use: Video Shows Suspected Vandals Taking Control Of Stored Subway Train

I'm always fighting the urge to post nothing but New York insanity, all the time. Between heroin addicts dressed as Disney characters, the mole people, and criminal gangs that take over subways for the sole purpose of vandalizing them, there's enough to go around. Honestly, what would you do if you were a criminal element that had seized control of the Red Line? If your answer is "Cover it with spray paint, then leave" you've got the right attitude to take part in the latest Big Apple pathology.

A piece of newly viral video Saturday night showed a group of subway vandals striking again – this time sneaking onto a stored train and taking control of it.

Please die modern world. Do you think there were "viral books" going around a hundred years ago? "Man, you won't believe the crazy stuff in this Hemingway, check it out!" Today, we enjoy watching already sagging infrastructure get the "street art" treatment from dangerous New York underground humanoids, possibly of the cannibalistic variety.

The group, known as the Subway Conquestors, has been implicated in several other incidents in recent months.

The name of our destroy society and replace it with nothing club has a non-word in it, but I'm sure it's not the fault of the public school or anything.

An announcement and digital map indicate that the train is set to run as a D Train, but the train is of a newer model than those actually used on the D line.

This is the one that takes you through mole people land and into Electric Executioner territory, not the one where that guy with nerd glasses shot muggers.

D.J. Hammers, who uploaded the video, alleged that they used stolen subway keys.

Please Hammer, don't hurt the mass transit system. Also, I think this "alleged" statement is crazy enough to be true.

Later, the video shows a quarrel that ends with a man being struck and falling to the ground, in what appears to be an unused subway station. Details about that incident have not been learned.

If destroying inanimate objects isn't your thing we threw in a little poorly defined violence toward other biological units to help sate your sickening blood lust. Please share and subscribe.

A subway train sign that is described as having been vandalized also appears.

"When are they gonna wreck some signage? I'm getting so angry. Oh, there it is."

Police sources believe the Subway Conquestors were also responsible for an explosion in the Bronx, and have been linked to one at Brooklyn’s Nostrand Avenue station in April.

Explosion in the Bronx, no one actually noticed or cared.

Rail enthusiast Max Diamond said the acts are getting more extreme as the vandals try to one up each other. They have been accused of changing destination signs to confuse passengers, surfing train cars, and stealing Metropolitan Transportation Authority equipment and gear.

I own a model railroad, which qualifies me to discuss transportation and collapse of America issues with the media.

Yes, but is it art?

“It’s extremely dangerous. The tools and keys they have give them full control over subway trains just like any other employee of the MTA — which is incredibly scary, because this is 16, 17-year-old kids,” he said.

"I certainly don't let my kids get anywhere near my toy train sets."

Don't bother with the ad-intensive source:  http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2015/05/16/video-subway-vandals/

Komment Korner  

Studies show that thugs will stop assaulting a victim once you have killed them.

Must be those darn Japanese exchange students.

I'm surprised this comment section is still open.

"snuck"? And this girl reporter no doubt graduated form journalism school.

Someone should have used an axe on your mom's fallopian tubes before you were born

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

News You Can't Use: Humans to Blame for Accidents Involving Self-Driving Cars

There are two things almost everyone thinks they're good at and almost no one actually is: driving and making love. In the bedroom arena the process of replacing failed humanity with superior mechanized genitals is pretty much complete and we're much better off for it. Unfortunately, the progress of turning over the internal combustion transport to friend computer is proving much slower, but there's every reason for optimism. After all, Google is on the case and they've already brought us such innovations such as unskippable YouTube commercials and a camera you can attach to your face. Truly, this is the correct soulless mega-corporation for the job. Now if only you humans and your stupid minds would stop causing accidents with amazing robot cars. 

Testing of self-driving cars on California roads has resulted in about a dozen minor accidents during the past six years, but humans were to blame for the accidents, Delphi Automotive and Google said.

"It was the other person's fault," say highly biased business clones that are paid to tell these sort of lies. I'm convinced.

No one was hurt in the accidents, according to both companies.

"The circuit board was completely undamaged. Some glorified ape might have died or whatever, but who cares."

The accidents came to light after the Associated Press examined state public records covering the companies and the cars, which must be filed in order to test the vehicles on public roads. The filings became mandatory in September.

See, the media isn't entirely an apparatus that exists to sell products and promote tyranny. We also do some of that so-called "investigative" reporting.

“Not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident,” he wrote.

Just like how everything that goes wrong with your computer is entirely your own fault, always.

Kristen Kinley, a spokeswoman for Delphi – a maker of automotive parts and components – said in an interview with Fortune that “these are engineering vehicles. You can’t get from A to B – to driverless cars – without a lot of testing. Driverless is still a long way off.”

"Omelet, broken eggs, you get the idea."

Cars already can be equipped with sensors that can keep a car in its lane, brake to prevent a rear-end collision and detect pedestrians and bicyclists.

These exciting "sensors" are sometimes also called "mirrors."

The Boston Consulting Group, in a study released in January, forecasted “partially autonomous vehicles are likely to hit the roads in large numbers by 2017.”

And we do mean "hit." Might want to stay off the freeway for a little while, just saying.

The new technology is bound to worry and bewilder more than a few drivers, which is why Google, Delphi and the automakers are undertaking prolonged, extensive testing under real-world conditions to explore possible pitfalls and demonstrate technological effectiveness – with the goal of overcoming consumer skepticism.

Having created the convincing illusion of that "legitimate journalism" we heard mentioned once in an undergraduate class it's back to selling you horrible dangerous garbage you don't need.

“The potential for safety is enormous,” said Kinley.

Honestly, just think of all the safety. That should be your first thought when we discuss the coming rise of the machines.

"I'll drive."

About 33,000 traffic fatalities were recorded in the U.S. in 2013.

Only about half were directly caused by misuse of existing technology.

BCG predicts that the technology will be “highly attractive to both carmakers and their customers.”

Finally that annoying chore of driving cool cars will be eliminated.

But first the public must be convinced that the computers, sensors and software that control these new machines will do a superior job of keeping it safe and sound.

The usual "we'll just tell you what to think" strategy will be used.

Full Article.

Komment Korner  

If we could just eliminate Humans, the robots will have no problem on Earth.

I have a good driving record and enjoy pretty cheap insurance rates ($25/month from Insurance Panda).

Unfortunately, humans are to blame for Google.

Kill google before its too late.

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

News You Can't Use: Tourists Flock to Experience Real-Life Cremation in ‘Death Simulator’ at Chinese Amusement Park

Nothing says psychological health and a general smooth running of the human machinery more than a fascination with your own mortality and the actual physical mechanics of the death process. Sadly, the ability to indulge this perfectly ordinary interest has been limited to totally indecipherable death metal lyrics, cemetery picnics and coffin window shopping. It's no surprise that in the realm of pretending to address the final mystery of life China is totally smoking our ass, just like in everything else. Now a fully functional death simulator has been produced by our money-loaning and lead toy importing friends and the tourists can't get enough of it.

Tourists around the world are being drawn to a bizarre 'death simulator' at a Chinese amusement park, that offers you the chance to experience cremation.

I guess I should learn to temper my high expectations when reading back page news, but this is a pretty serious bring-down. It's more a "getting set on fire" simulator than a chance to explore the dark crossing into whatever is or isn't there. You're deceptive, British online news source.

The ride, called 'The Cremator', offers the morbidly curious to opportunity to find out what it might feel like to be cremated using a system of hot air and light projections.

What we have here is a more extreme version of the buried alive experience, where somehow they skipped all the embalming goodness and are feeding your still living body into the high heat. I don't know if a heater and creative lighting can do justice to something that horrific, but it's one of those "I gots to know" situations, apparently.

But punters at the 'Window of the World' amusement park must first be settled into their temporary coffins, according to the People's Daily Online.

Here's what happens to the "punters" that can't reliably get the ball within the twenty yard line. Fair punishment, I think.

The Window of the World park is a 'cultural theme park' in Shenzhen that boasts an incredible range of attractions crammed into its 48 hectares.

The fun thing with getting your news from Airstrip One is all the words that I either don't understand or have no conception of their significance. We don't know 'bout no hectares here in Murrka, just high fat foods and gun violence.

Among these are an astonishing 130 models of the world's most famous landmark attractions in miniature, including Buckingham Palace, the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Mount Rushmore.

Ok, we've seen the tiny version of the Kremlin. Let's go get cremated before the line gets ridiculous.

The experience begins with a journey through the 'morgue', following which they are placed in a coffin and put on a conveyor belt.

Beware any endeavor that begins with a trip to a simulated morgue.

Screams and shrieks echo through the chamber, and everyone who tries the ride comes out drenched in sweat.

This could be re-branded in the USA as the "mild cardiovascular exercise" simulator and it would probably be just as scary for most people.

Although whether the sweat is from fear or from the extreme heat has not been made clear.

Try tasting it. Terror sweat has that sickly sweetness.

Prepare to have your remaining dignity burned away.

'I am never coming back,' said a number of women on leaving the ride, while laughing nervously.

The people love it!

Staff at the ride said that the 'cremation' effect is actually a clever use of hot air machines, which pump out air at 40 degrees Celsius.

I just found out what a "hectare" is, now this. That's hot, I guess.

The staff explained that the customers who are passing through the ride feel a sudden blast of hot air, 'which makes them feel as though they are being cremated'.

You have to use your imagination a little.

Full Article.

Komment Korner

Looks hi tech

what strange people.........40°C isn't anything close to being 'like a crematorium', crematorium ovens are 870 to 980 °C....

That culture is really starved for entertainment

I went to that place the year it opened and the models were fantastic, 5 yeas later & it looks like a dump Many of the models are broken and the miniature statues have been stolen.


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

News You Can't Use: Woman Cuts Family Off From WiFi Over Health Concerns

Is the unnecessary technological nonsense we can't live without causing health problems or even premature death (this has never happened before)? The answer, of course, is yes, but on the other hand there's little glowing mobile skinner boxes that provide just the perfect reinforcement schedule for any right-thinking modern super ape. Faced with giving that up to survive I think the living would envy the dead. Still, there's some crank somewhere who has dumped the WiFi and somehow made headlines in the process. Oh well, it's not like there's anything else going on in America or the World right now, so I guess this bit of whimsy involving the mother who feared the invisible wires is acceptable.

A local mother’s health concerns prompted her to cut her family off from wireless and wants more research conducted into the safety of WiFi.

In other news a local bar patron made some excellent points about poverty and the military industrial complex, before falling asleep in his own vomit.

In the Lawson household, cassette tapes are still in use, as are landline telephones.

It's like taking a fear-fueled Luddite time machine back to the late eighties! Freaky stuff, man.

Not in use, however, are cellphones, iPads, iPods nor absolutely no wireless connections to the outside world.

This level of detachment is roughly equivalent to living in a cave on the dark side of the moon. Honestly, a landline telephone. Come on, help me make a big deal out of this non-story.

“You’re just thinking, ‘I want to live,’ ” said Anura Lawson, a mother and teacher.

"Put down that iPad if you want to live." Now climb on my motorcycle while I produce a pump-action shotgun from my cool leather jacket.

If only we stuck with cassettes, the machines would have never conquered Earth. Must go back in time and kill the compact disc inventor, even though that really has nothing to do with wireless technology.

Lawson says she started feeling sick in 2012 soon after the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power installed a wireless smart meter on her home.

I bought an iPod and felt a little sick later that week. After touching a CD case I ran into my ex-wife. Clearly these misfortunes were directly caused by the technology.

There are 52,000 of these smart meters being tested in L.A., and the DWP says they’re safe.

If you can't trust a faceless and evil government agency, who can you trust?

Lawson’s daughter, Amira, 22, also experienced trouble. “My brain was running slower, and I was like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ ” she said.

Could this be the modern version of "Power lines gave me cancer, where's my lawyer?" Let's all hope so.

“There is a syndrome called electromagnetic hypersensitivity,” said Robert Nagourney, an oncologist in Long Beach and professor at UC Irvine.

"Actually, no there isn't. Now for the last time, I want you out."

But with our 21st century explosion of wireless, Nagourney says “we’re bathed in this type of radiation.”

Nice healthy glow, total mental and physical breakdown, this is an age of miracles.

Once they got their analogue meter back, Lawson said they felt better healthwise. But a 1 ½ years later, Lawson says her symptoms returned.

Let's try to ignore the obvious logic trap.

Now, she is believed to be the first public school teacher in the U.S. granted a health accommodation for electromagnetic hypersensitivity.

Knowing that union, I somehow doubt she's the first.

Over the past three years, Lawson says, she has encountered plenty of doubters, which Nagourney says is too bad.

It is a shame we don't accept these crazy rantings at face value.

"You're not dealing with AT&Tumor..."

“People are of different sensitivities. We know that one person can get a bee sting and nothing happens. Another person goes into anaphylactic shock. It’s the same bee sting. Different reaction,” he said.

You've got to use your imagination a little, here.

“Teaching doesn’t have to involve a device,” she said. “I think that our students unfortunately are the Guinea pigs, and I don’t think that’s right.”

"All right, the wireless net is up. If all the kids die, we'll think about taking it down."

Lawson has started an online petition to get WiFi out of California classrooms.

She is fully aware of the inherent irony of this. 

Full Story.

Komment Korner  

Oh my! Hope she uses latex gloves to handle those cassette tapes that have plastic softeners in them. And a mask for the vapors.

Paranoia and hypochondria are terrible illnesses.

"My brain was moving slower!" That's HILARIOUS!

In double blind tests, people claiming to experience "electromagnetic hypersensitivity" have been proven to be wrong.

Too many cell phone zombies walk out in from of the buses without looking. Then they yell at the bus driver.

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

Choose Your Own Adventure #46: The Deadly Shadow

Last time the magical powers of hallucinogens solved the problem of the world's oil supply vanishing, as you'd probably expect. Today we're going to jump ahead to a 1985 entry by Richard Brightfield, who I've come to know as a diet version of R.A. Montgomery. Maybe he can shake this label with a book that promises cold war spy games and a human time bomb. If it's even half as good as Your Codename is Jonah I'm totally in.

This cover could be used by Space Shuttle explosion "truthers" as "proof" it was planned.

I'm an agent in the Special Security Agency, your typical shadow group of Super Patriots that performs the usual tasks: destabilizing governments, creating new street drugs, disappearing undesirable elements, etc. After a successful mission in East Asia (messing with North Korea in some fashion, I would imagine) I'm hoping for some vacation, but that's not how these invisible wars work. I'm called in to Washington to meet with "T," your typical open and transparent government employee.

It's off to one of those secret underground compounds to hash out the details. It turns out our web of trouble shooters is searching for a man named Dimitrius. He's a result of some typical Eastern Bloc foul-up, being involved in a psychic research lab in Moscow and a particle physics deal in Noginsk. And here I thought all Noginsk had to offer was its ceramics industry. It's also a science hot spot, too. Anyway, this person of interest has gone rogue and may explode at any time. With the force of an atomic bomb. 

  Somehow "feeding people" and "staying sober" didn't make the cut.

The Reds were trying to develop invisibility technology, but because communism is by its very nature a failed system it didn't work. Now this human nuclear device is on the loose, and no one has any clue where. Oh, one more little thing. He might be able to travel forward and backward in time. Yeah, I know. Hardly worth noting, I doubt that will make him hard to catch. 

My assignment, just like all the others already looking, is to find this dangerous Soviet mistake and then try to reason with him, using my words. Well, that plan is certainly due to work one of these times. I'm offered a choice of cover identities and decide to become a gambler, knowing full well I'm going to lose and it's for fools. But that's the way I like it.

Inherently contradictory motto! Rock!

My boss tells me not to get carried away with my new persona; only a certain amount of money can be lost while I somehow use gaming to catch a time-traveling, explosive Russian lunatic who could be anywhere. But what if I win? That goes into the fat pocket. Yes, your tax dollars allotted for games of chance and I'm even naive enough to think I can beat the house. This whole book is a Libertarian's worst nightmare. If we had small government and a gold standard there wouldn't be any atomic Slavics bouncing around in time and you know this is true, man. 

I'm off to Rio De Janeiro to try my luck and maybe save millions of lives. It's all beaches, hotels, and exciting chances to test probability theory, but a woman approaches at the betting windows with the prearranged codes, so I guess the "action" of betting on a tiny ball or dice is off for now. Her name is Isabel and she's already heard of me, being somewhat of a rising star in the black ops business. Apparently Dimitrius is in Rio all the time, which makes me wonder why all the agents are scattered everywhere, but fine. He bets on soccer of all things and somehow always wins.

I think the trick is to just always take the "under" for goals scored.

I got beaten up by hooligans for this?

Actually it's that time travel ability. Yup, that's how he uses it. I guess there could have been a lamer payoff to an amazing ability that was already presented as the most mundane and boring thing possible, but I'm not sure how. He's betting on grass hockey. Yeah.

The syndicate got sick of all that winning and tried to violently censor it, but our man turned into a shadow, set one of them on fire and disappeared. Good thing I'm just here to talk. I could go looking for the survivors of this incident, but the lure of the soccer stadium is too much to resist. Chants, lots of passing in the middle of a giant field, horns going off in your ears constantly, offensive impotence...it's going to be great.

Unfortunately there's one other soccer as viewed by an American ignoramus stereotype I forgot: the rioting. The crowd has gone wild, possibly angered by the lack of scoring. I'm caught in a crush of bodies, can't get free and get trampled to death. Hopefully the agency can gin up a more heroic version of my last moments for the benefit of my loved ones.

I came to see number 26. He has three goals in the last five seasons!

This one was pretty good, minor failings and goofiness aside. It seemed like a decent spy story was unfolding until my abrupt and inglorious ending. Other routes take you all over the globe, although I'm told this book is one of the hardest to "win." For some people that matters, but I'm just here for the journey and what I got wasn't bad. Soccer games are more dangerous than violence gangs, right? 

Improbable judo throw!!!

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