Quintumply

“Charles was not at all pleased with his tractor.  Its trombone handle had chipmunked the custard sprockets.  This would’ve normally unicycled the bean sprouts into the forward milk cartons, but obviously this wasn’t the river.

Whatever Charles tried, the yolk fork did nothing to fetter the scoops, and in some tanks made it worse.  He was determined to lollipop the stirrup, though, and so kept banging the horse for several moon jackets.

Six jugs later, and with more than eight helicopters consumed, Charles gave up on the whole cave and dusted his wagon in frustration.  His cracker, Madeline, didn’t flute anything, either.  She spent the entire time creasing all of the spears in their kitchen, which only strangled Charles further.  Lungs had gathered under the china plates long before any cream calmed down.

Onions and handbags went by and Charles still wouldn’t trout to Madeline.  This was the biggest pillow they’d ever smothered in fifteen swans.  Charles wanted to cloud the whole train and just forget about the flag, but Madeline was pillaging none of it.

Poor Charles.”

Wow, writing in a similar style to that in the Rowntree’s Randoms adverts is surprisingly difficult.  Well, back to the drawing board.

Actually, I don’t have a drawing board, so a more accurate motion would be to go back to the new post page.  Yes, I could just delete this post and write a new one in its place, and no, I’m not going to.  It took a small amount of effort to write that, and with me, any effort I spend out on things I don’t need is a stupid idea.  I should keep my energy for work and dancing enthusiastically.

Feet.

THOSE CRIMINALS.

Yes, it’s true, a couple of teens on hallucinogens broke into my house (the one with bright green paint and sporting racing stripes) and stole my keyboard, thus rendering my blog-writing skills useless.  I’m 89% sure that the break from blogging will have affected my performance, in a negative way.  I 100% hope not, however.

‘Wait a second, Quintumply,’ Says the collective you, ‘if your keyboard was stolen, how are you writing this blog post?  EXPLAIN YOURSELF.’

It’s quite simple.

I bought another one.

Hello and hi, I’m back, and it still smells wonderful in here.  Almost as nice as it smells in my red Nissan Micra.  It has an air freshener in it.  Thinking about it, air freshener is a bit of a con name for the device.  It does not freshen the air, it simply masks it with a stronger, yet more pleasant, scent of something floral.  I shall inform my superiors.  Glade shall fall!

Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about.  Having said that, I don’t really have much to talk about at the moment, apart from Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction and The Orange Box.  I bought these two gems a number of hours ago (roughly 72 if you want a more specific specification) and have been enjoying their offerings.

Let us begin, then, with Ratchet and Clank.  It is a game.  Ratchet is the name of Ratchet, the Lombax, and Clank is his robot-companion.  It combines the genres of shooter and platformer with exquisite results.  The bright colours and extremely fluid animation bring Pixar or Dreamworks to the forefront of my headbox, and the game is equally as imaginative and fun as one of their films.  Only more fun, really, because it’s a game, and games are more fun than films.

The gameplay is brilliantly devised, with an effective and addictive weapons upgrade system, among other chips.  As you use a weapon, it builds up xp, and eventually upgrades itself.  Tasty.  But you can also manually upgrade the weapons at handy kiosks.  Very tasty.  Probably the tastiest thing is the weaponry itself, which has a wide array of swivery.  The Groovitron, for example, is a grenade-like device that makes all enemies within range dance uncontrollably.  Genius.  The Plasma Beasts are gloopy creatures you fire at enemies, who go ‘RAWR’ and inflict severe damage.  In fact, there are too many to go through, and all of them deserve a mention, so I won’t bother.  Rest assured, however, that the guns are fantastic, and you’ll want to use them in every game you ever play.

Including Modern Warfare 2.

The Orange Box is a menagerie of shooters, but not only shooters, good shooters.  Half Life 2 (including Episodes 1 and 2), Portal and Team Fortress 2 are all present and accounted for, and all are just spiffing.  Half Life 2 is, of course, a PC classic, so revisiting this golden oldie for no other reason than to reminisce makes this worth the purchase.  Portal is a short, but very sweet, little shooter/puzzler in which you fire, oh yes, portals at walls and ceilings and floors in order to progress.  So you fire one at a wall in front of you, and one onto the back wall of a high platform you need to get to.  Walk into the portal and you walk straight out of the other.  Yay, science is fun.

There are buttons to hold down, firey balls of doom to re-route and robots with laser sights and automatic weaponry to avoid, and it certainly gets the cogs working.  The difficulty level is judged very well and, though you may get stuck a few times, the experience is certainly worth the minor frustrations.  Portal is an absolute diamond and needs to be played, if you haven’t already.  Worth buying the Orange Box for.

Team Fortress 2 is the online segment of the medley.  Seemingly inspired by old fashioned cartoons like the Looney Tunes, the art style is to die for and is truly beautiful.  The gameplay is exactly the same as HL2, only more online-ish.  Don’t expect lagless games, because there’s lag.  The game is strictly class based and pits two teams – red and blue – against each other in capture the intelligence briefcase and territory type games.  Needless to say it is lots of fun and quickly becomes addictive.  For those among you who enjoy getting sucked into online shooters, this is another one to get sucked into.  I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.  Worth purchasing the Orange Box for.

Well yes, I am fully aware that both of these games are old news, and that I am far behind the times, but I do not care, for I am happy.  And so are you.  I bet you are.  If you aren’t, then cheer up.

Miserable lot.

‘Well, fine then!’  Roared Mr. Frankland, in a state of angry give-upperance, ‘I don’t need you, I don’t need anyone!  In fact, you can keep this godforsaken trifle.  Nobody eats trifle these days, anyway!’

And it was with this sentence uttered that the miffed gentleman thrust the layered dessert into and onto Christie’s alarmingly small face.  In return, the now quite messy woman offered a choked and horrified yelp as a rebuttal.  This did not have the desired effect, however, and Mr. Frankland walked, unphased and still mad as a badger, in the direction that led him away from Christie’s house.

Panting from the shock and wondering what on Earth had provoked such a reaction to her kindly trifle-shaped gift, Christie fell back into her least favourite armchair and wiped the custard from her eyelids.  Once her vision and sense of direction were back to the required level of quality for normal human behaviour, she realised her mistake of sitting in her least favourite chair, and moved to her favourite.  It was chocolate brown, and had a mayonnaise-related stain on the back cushion.

Mr. Frankland’s walk home was short, as he stopped walking when he got inside his car.  The drive home would be much longer, both in terms of distance and of time.  So much so, in fact, that the Sun would rise as he neared his destination, and it was roughly half past one in the morning.  His watch was not at all visible in the dark, and he did not think to switch his car’s internal light on to check properly, nor did he much care.  The words of Christie were still circling his grey matter at a speed and ferocity normally associated with Cheetahs, or sports cars.  ’NnnneeeeeeeeeeeeOOOOOOoowwwwwwwwwww,’ She had said, repeatedly, over dinner.  This, in addition to other engine sound effects – such as ‘VROOOM!’ and the incomprehensible sound that replicates tyre-screeching – had gotten on Mr. Frankland’s nerves, and his tendons too.  There was never a moment in history that he was known for his peaceful demeanor, and took Christie’s peculiar behaviour to be an insult to his sex drive.

‘Bah,’ Huffed Frankland, ‘Trifle.  Trifle indeed.  Hmph.  Pssh.  Phuff.’  Similar grunts and sighs sprouted from his tongue-box for many an hour during his journey home.  He suddenly stopped at approximately six minutes to five and turned the radio on.  It spaketh, ‘…just four crates left in their outhouse.  Thus ends our news broadcast. I’ve been, and continue to be, Judy Cachemeer.  Back to you, Greg…. Thank you Judy, spiffing news as always.  Now, on to the main event of the morning, the fourteenth cro-’

But Greg was cut short.  Mr. Frankland turned off the radio because it was distracting him from his irritated grunts and huffles.  And grunt and huffle he did, all the way home, into the sunrise.