Emergency Banana Productions

I’ve given this post a sensationalist title with the dual purposes of interesting those of you who are flicking randomly through the archives and in the hope that it will increase traffic to my webpage. I do not hate Sonic the Hedgehog in the sense of a deep and irreversible loathing, but I do dislike his games. And not just the gimmicky crap-arse 3D games and their infamous camera issues – I don’t like the “classic” 2D games either.

Before I continue, I have to say this in the interests of fairness; I am a bit of a Nintendo fanboy. This isn’t ye olde Sega vs. Nintendo rivalry, though, since that doesn’t really exist anymore – this is just my opinions on Sonic games, which unlike most Nintendo fanboys I intend to express eloquently.

What I do like: It would be unfair if we didn’t discuss what I do like about Sonic games before getting down to the nitty-gritty. First things first; I love Sonic games when all they’re asking me to do is hold down left on the D-pad (or forward on the control stick) and look at the pretty lights. Sonic games do this very well indeed, primarily because of the second thing which I like; graphics. The graphics in the 2D games are excellently drawn and work fluidly, and the backgrounds go well with the stage. The 3D games (when your camera isn’t stuck in the wall) are also very pretty, because they look good without looking “realistic” (a games-industry codename for “brown and grey”). Sonic Team do great cartoony-stylized graphics. The level design in Sonic games is also very good, especially the “shortcut” mechanic in all the 2D and most 3D Sonic games – it’s a nice way of giving skilled players a tangible reward for their awesomeness. There is also one (and only one) Sonic game which I think is an unappreciated masterpiece – yes, masterpiece. I’m not going to tell you what it is just yet, though, because when I do you will stop reading and pick up your guns. So now let’s get into the business of what I don’t like.

Story: The original Sonic games had a very silly story, and that’s fine. All the games from that era had ridiculous stories (a certain plumber who eats mushrooms to grow bigger and stomps on evil turtles springs to mind). However, the success of these stories lay in the fact that they didn’t try to explain themselves or take themselves seriously. Gameplay came before story.

Of course, our modern gaming world is quite heavily concerned with its storytelling. I like a game to have a good story, but I don’t really care how said story is actually told, because I’ll just read the plot summary on Wikipedia three months before it comes out in Australia. My personal favourite method of storytelling is the tried-and-true RPG method of combining dialogue, cutscenes and events into one big multilayered tapestry of a story, although I do love a good scripted scene. But Sonic is lagging at least five years behind this trend.

To clarify; there are two things that the story of a game can be – either a) silly or b) sensible. If a game is silly, then it has to “know” that it’s silly. Banjo-Kazooie had an immensely silly story, but that’s okay because it didn’t take itself too seriously – fun gameplay and joke-filled dialogue cleared that problem up. The Halo series and most other “hardcore” games take themselves very seriously, but in doing so there is a very strong sense of the life or death of the protagonist and all his friends/family/pets/acquaintances/species/enemies resting on your actions. Some games (such as my aforementioned favourite Sonic game ever) fall in between these two extremes, and they generally do so by having a sensible-ish plotline but not taking themselves too seriously. A few games are both silly and sensible (anything by Tim Schaefer, for example) but these are rare and hard to pull off.

Sonic Team have experimented with both “silly” and “sensible” in the post-3D era, and have pulled both off really badly. A lot of their games (like Sonic Heroes and Rush) have fairly silly plots, but for some reason Sonic Team feels compelled to explain, explain, explain EVERYTHING instead of just letting the gamers get on with it. Of course, some newer Sonic games (Shadow the Hedgehog, that uber-crappy 2006 360/PS3 Sonic the Hedgehog) try to have sensible storylines, but they cross the line from “sensible” into “angsty and complicated.” There are so many characters, all with complicated motivations, but it’s hard to get over the fact that you’re talking to a fox with helicopter tails. A blue hedgehog who runs at the speed of sound is silly, Sonic Team. Just admit it and get on with hiring some comedians to write your dialogue.

Rings: Boy oh boy oh boy, do I despise ye olde ring system which Sonic Team feels compelled to put in every single Sonic game. A lot of old games have limited health systems, where it only takes a few hits to send you to Arcadion – Mario games and Crash Bandicoot spring to mind. A few modern games also have super-punishing health bars – play any FPS on Super-Hard Mode or equivalent and you’ll see what I mean. However, most of these games have updated their punishing health bars either by adding a) health packs b) a forgiving continue-point system or c) a Super-Hard Mode so that you’ll only be as fragile as a glass statue if you want to be. Not so with Sonic.

How many of those of you who’ve ever played a Sonic game have ever been charging along at a few thousand kilometres an hour with 99 rings before – BOOM – you go crashing into an enemy which you didn’t see until AFTER you’d hit it (see below for more on this) and you’re riiiight back to zero rings? That would be all of you, right? The rings system is obscenely punishing, because there’s no tangible difference between one ring or ten thousand, apart from those extremely hard-to-get extra lives. It makes boss battles much harder than they would otherwise be, too, especially since bosses’ health bars always reset after your death.

There are some Sonic games which do something good with their rings, my all-time favourite Sonic game and Shadow the Hedgehog among them. In these games, when you get hit, you don’t lose all of your hard-earned rings when you take a hit – you only lose, say, ten or twenty of them. This gives you a much better reason to collect rings than an ephemeral extra life, because you can stay alive for longer off more rings. Sonic Team; I want to see this system (or better yet, a health bar, but you can’t change everything at once) in ALL future Sonic games. Change with the times, guys!

Difficulty: This is a biggie, especially in the 2D games. I think that even the hardcorest Sonic fanboys would agree that Sonic games look kiddy. They’ve got lots of bright colours and are filled with anthropomorphic animals beating the crap out of evil robots – that’s about half of all kids’ TV shows in summary. However, the difficulty of Sonic games, which varies from “rather tough” to “screaming at the television” makes them inappropriate for a younger audience. I’m not asking Sonic Team to make Sonic games look less kiddy (or, Godot forbid, “realistic”), but rather using this as a critical device to frame the obscene difficulty of their games.

The number one difficulty problem in Sonic games is the rings system, as mentioned above. The instant-loss-of-all-rings-issue is especially bad when you combine it with Sonic’s trademark – his speed. Quite frequently in the 2D games, especially on small screens like the NDS screen, you’ll go crashing into an enemy or obstacle so fast that you didn’t see them until post-crash. You can’t honestly expect me to believe that a hedgehog who runs fast enough to break down giant stone walls would be knocked for six by a pathetic little robot, can you? The 3D games at least partially eliminate this difficulty thanks to the wonders of perspective, but the crappy camera angles still kind of ruin it. As far as I can work out, you can only successfully avoid all enemies and obstacles in a 2D Sonic game by either having the reflexes of a panther with ADHD (which not many of us lethargic gamers do) or by memorizing the level layouts exactly over a period of several hours. Kids don’t have that kind of patience, and nor do I.

Another problem is Sonic’s lack of traction. Okay, if he’s running at the speed of sound, I can kind of understand him skidding a bit when he wants to stop, but the 3D Sonic games have him slide around like a greased ice-skater even at low speeds. It’s bloody hard to line up jumps correctly when one mistap of the control stick can send you skidding into oblivion. On that subject, let’s talk about jump control. For some reason, whenever Sonic’s feet leave the ground, he is no longer in control of his own destiny but is instead bound to continue moving in whatever direction he happened to be travelling at the time. Yes, this is how real-world physics works, but Sonic isn’t realistic (graphics- or physics-wise); it’s cartoony and silly. In platformers we expect some control over our jumps, please. Whenever a Sonic game decides to go into “platformer mode,” you just know that thanks to your skiddiness and lack of jump control, many lives will be lost to the grim pit of death, and you’ll have to make your way back to the platforms from the continue point, which is always about six kilometres away, only to face mocking pitty oblivion once more.

Ultimately, I think that there is a way to fix Sonic games, and bring them up from “crap” to at least “average” or even slightly better. That way is this; TEST TEST TEST. A lot of Sonic games are riddled with bugs and difficulty spikes which make anyone who knows anything about the gaming industry say “Why didn’t the testers pick that one up?” Honestly, I’d swear that some Sonic games (crappy 2006 Sonic, anyone?) hadn’t been tested at all. Sonic Team: TEST YOUR GAMES. And don’t just get mad Sonic fanboys to test them – get ordinary gamers, even non-gamers. Pull folks off the street if you have to. Maybe then Sonic will turn into a game hero who is actually on par with our modern idols instead of a buggy slippery blue piece of crap.

Moral message aside, it’s now time for me to reveal my favourite Sonic game ever. Drum rolls and fanfares, please…

Sonic and the Secret Rings.

Read that again. I’ll wait.

Before you grab your torches and pitchforks, you may want to know why I like this game. You wanna know why? Because SatSR removes just about all of the problems which infest other Sonic games. Granted, it’s not without its problems – more than a few glitches slipped through the testers’ rather holey net, and the multiplayer – a cheap Mario Party rip-off – would have been much better as a multiplayer version of the single-player, with characters actually racing each other. Gameplay-wise, the reversing mechanic sucks and should have been assigned to a button, and Darkspine Sonic (this game’s equivalent of Super Sonic) is for some reason far, far worse than regular Sonic, making the real final boss battle horribly annoying and difficult. But in my opinion, SatSR fixes just about all of the problems listed above.

Basically, I think that Sonic Team were dead wrong when they decided to make their 3D Sonic games into platformers. It just doesn’t work that way. However, SatSR feels a lot more like a racing game, and this is exactly how it should be. It doesn’t over- or under-use the Wii Remote, a problem which plagues a lot of Wii games – it works just right. The RPG mechanics are great, because they’re quite simple to use but with many hidden depths to plough.

SatSR deals quite well with the problems of story. The story is fairly silly and treats itself as such in part, but also manages to get a moderately serious tone to it. The rings system only shaves off 20 rings per hit, and you can reduce it to 10 with a skill. While there’s still the odd difficulty spike, at least it’s possible to just go to another mission and try it out – something rather lacking from most Sonic games. The addition of a brake button and the ability to instantly drop down from a jump fixes up the platforming pretty well, and the Wii-remote-powered Homing Attack works a hell of a lot better than those pinpoint-timing systems found in most 3D games.

Apparently, Sonic Team is making a sequel of sorts to SatSR, called something like Sonic and the Black Knight, but they’re using more standard control-stick-based controls for it. I would love them to change it back, but I don’t think they will. So if anyone from Sonic Team reads this, then I beg this small favour of you; DON’T ASSIGN THE SWORDPLAY TO THE WII REMOTE! I’m serious. You may think “but the Wii remote is like a sword,” and it is, sort of. But try playing the Wii version of Force Unleashed, wait for your wrist to recover (you may need physiotherapy), and then try playing Suda51’s excellent Wii-only game No More Heroes. See the difference?

Peace oot,

God of Pie.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or in the United States for the past week or two, you’ll probably have heard something about the terrible bushfires in Victoria, Australia. Basically, there’s been some big fires, as in a few thousand square kilometres of forest and a large number of country towns all over the state. If you watched the Australian Open, you’ll have seen how hot it was down Victoria way; it’s that heatwave that’s caused two hundred people to have been burned to death so far, and the fire department says that it could go to three hundred. That’s quite a few when you’ve only got twenty million people in your country — by percentage of population, it’s comparable to the thousands who die in the tsunamis in Indonesia or earthquakes in China.

I must, of course, send my condolences and apologies to these people, and I think that the fires are absolutely terrible, especially when you think that some fires (unlike earthquakes and tsunamis) were deliberately lit. The morons who did that almost deserve the death penalty — almost. I don’t think that any crime deserves that much punishment, with the possible exception of genocide — and even then only really big ones. But what bothers me, and I mean really bothers me, is how I’m not connecting with this story on an emotional level.

I can use my head and send condolences to the victims and condemnation to the morons, but I just can’t feel for them. I don’t understand why. When I see news about the fires on TV, I know that I should be feeling sad — instead I’m feeling sad that I’m not feeling sad and then feeling guilty. It’s a bloody weird emotion, and an unpleasant one.

Maybe it’s just that you just can’t see an event like this as real. If twenty people die in a fire, you think “wow, that’s a lot” but when you get to two hundred the mind can’t comprehend it. The human brain is ill-equipped to deal with numbers any greater than a hundred or so (which is one of the many reasons why economics is completely and utterly insane). Or maybe it’s just a sense of distance physical and mental. I’m a city boy, sure, but I know the bush pretty well. I love a good bushwalk. On the other hand, the real sense of belonging in a country town, where you know everyone and get on with most of them, is something that a non-resident can never really understand.  Maybe it’s this feeling that I’m missing here.

But I personally think that the problem really lies with the news. I’m in favour of TV news for delivering news about things like politics or economics, since things like that are all about facts. But when attempting to deliver an emotional story like this one, then ultimately the emotional story is sacrificed for the factual one. Aussie news has been giving wall-to-wall coverage of these fires, by which I mean it’s the ONLY story on the news. I’m not kidding. For four days, every single story on the news has been sacrificed for more fire coverage, with each channel picking out three or four new unfortunates each week to talk to, and believe me, with thousands of people homeless there’s quite a few unfortunates around. It’s beaten the previous record set by a certain accident involving three buildings and four planes, which dominated the news for three days. I just think that when you’re hearing more or less continuous coverage of a story like this, it takes away all the emotion and just turns it into a series of… well, facts. To me, the poor buggers left homeless or orphaned by fires are just numbers. Maybe that’s the problem with the news today.

My house in the great big June 2007 storms, to take your mind off the fires.

There is something that got me angry about the media coverage. It may seem odd to you but hear me out.

The death count. They keep updating it.

I know its odd to think this way, I really do, but the reasoning is sound. If something gets worse, it’s more interesting. The media don’t spread hope, they spread news of misfortune and death. They make you FEEL how terrible the fires were, and then some.

This isn’t meant to be an evil media rant, but you really can tell that there is dramatisation involved.

As for lack of true feeling, eh. You don’t know these people. You just think that you’re supposed to feel sorry for them. It’s like whales beaching themselves, or a dead animal. They mean things to some people and others generally get the impression that they should be shockified but most people are more emotionally sound than that.

Not that that’s a bad thing, dont feel sorry about it. It’s not like you’re creating motivational pictures making light of the “tragedy” (that’s detatchment, not sarcasm), that would be “cruel” (apathy again).

So really, meh.

As a newly inaugurated Melbournean, I have understandably seen a fair bit of the media coverage of the Victorian firestorms and their distressing results. As was to be expected, a lot of people are now looking for something to blame.

One of the most popular subjects of blame was…you guessed it. Cliiimate chaaaiinge. (With a silent “anthropogenic” in front of it).

Reading The (r)Age on Monday, I was annoyed (though not exactly surprised) to see nearly the whole letters page filled with alarmist rants blaming the disaster on (anthropogenic) climate change and how it’s gonna get worse and how the government’s not doing anything about it; in short, recitals of the mainstream party line. To avoid repetition, I ain’t gonna go over my views on ACC (aka AGW) in here. To see them, go to Gorey Story.

Anyways, I personally blame 6 factors for the disaster:

1. The bleedin’ hot weather. This one’s fairly self-explanatory. It could well be due to natural climate variability; linking it to human-caused warming is wishful thinking.
2. The stupid “green” legislation preventing a proper hazard reduction program. Certain green groups feel they are doing the environment a fat lot of good by campaigning against prescription burning to rid the bush of fuel (the like of dry leaves and eucalyptus bark). These are probably the do-gooder “rainforest admirers” who obviously don’t know a lot about the long-running role of bushfire in Australia’s ecosystems. Speaking of which, I want to point out that, from personal experience, the fire-prone heathlands and woodlands contain a lot more interesting plant species per area than the dark, stuffy and wet rainforests, which displace wet sclerophyll forests when the last are not burnt frequently enough. But I digress…
3. The incompetent planning of suburbs. It goes without saying that suburbs with excessive amounts of flammable vegetation, and those encroaching into natural bushland, are extremely susceptible to fires. A buffer zone of some kind must exist around all suburbs and towns. (That said, I’m not saying people should not use native plants in their gardens. It’s just that they should be reasonably isolated from the natural bushland.)
4. The ütkrönkkëröüsly incompetent design of houses. Australia surely has some of the world’s most poorly-designed houses. Where else would you see single-layered weatherboard (styrofoam and plastic) or timber external walls with no proper thermo-insulation, and internal walls made of cardboard? Such houses are unbearable to live in, both in the Australian summer and the winter. (Trust me – I’ve done it for the past 11 years. Okay, it was a brick-outside house, but still no proper insulation). It is certain that most of the houses involved were of this highly flammable type – in fact, viewing some of the photos, one can see that the only thing left standing of many of the burnt houses was the fireplace, which was the only thing consisting of bricks. This is blatantly inappropriate for bushfire-prone areas, yet this topic (as far as I know) has received very little attention in the media.
5. Too many civil liberties and not enough early warnings. If the people in the areas known to be under threat had been made to leave as early as possible, numerous deaths would have been prevented, both in the houses and on the road. Your life should take precedence over your possessions. Speaking of which, those that left early would have had the chance to take more of their precious belongings with them than those who were forced to make a quick exit at the last minute. Logical, innit? Unfortunately, emotions often rank higher than logic in such questions.
6. Finally, Arson. There are so many reasons people can find for themselves for lighting a fire that I can’t be bothered going through them all (e.g. having fun, offsetting an inferiority complex, not caring what happens if they throw a cigarette out the car window…). One thing I will say, though, is that young, impressionable minds would be less impressed with the concept of creating a blazing inferno if they weren’t exposed so much to this phenomenon in popular action films. Censorship on my part? Maybe.
7. An interesting note on the last thing, though. In urban bushland remnants, fires lit by arsonists are often the only possibility for the ecosystem to regenerate the way it’s meant to (or approximately so); for example, if prescription burns are deemed too hazardous for nearby suburbs. So arson can be a bit of a two-sided sword.

These are the things we need to address – not ye olde speculative climate change.

Phew, that was a long rant…

Cheers from an annoyed Victorian,

Azarov98.

This was originally a comment, but it was too long and the font was too small. I shall go through Azarov’s points one at a time.

1. It’s bloody freezing in Newcastle right now, y’know. By which I mean “below 295 degrees Kelvin.” That doesn’t make sense. I don’t know if it’s anthropogenic, but I reckon that, based on anectodal evidence, the climate is becoming unstable.

2. I agree with this one. You can’t be an environmentalist without understanding the environment. Most Australian ecosystems require fire — many species of eucalypt require fire to germinate. If there isn’t a little fire every so often, you’ll get huge ones.

3 & 4. You have to take into account the cost of these things. I’ll be the first to admit that Australian housing design is stupid, mostly because of the attitude of colonists who said “well, this kind of house works fine in good old England, so let’s build one here” and then they all melted when the mercury hit 310 Kelvin. The McMansion is an especially stupid piece of design, because it lasts for only fifty years, racks up a titanic electricity bill in air-con alone, and by definition takes up the entire block on which it is situated — meaning no backyard. I love backyards. I refuse to live in a house without one. But the problem here is that the poorly-constructed houses of which you speak are CHEAP. The biggest problem of environmentalism is cost. I intend to do a little ranting later about the illogistics of the modern economy, but basically poor people can’t afford good houses and therefore are more likely to burn to death.

5. It is unfortunate that the bushfire early-warning system crashed on us just when we needed it, which is why back-up systems are important (engineers this means you). And a planned evacuation system (like what they have in countries with severe volcanoes or earthquakes) would be beautiful. Unfortunately, Aussies have a tendency to follow common sense rather than logic, which are two very different things. If you evacuated for some weak little bonfire, then the Aussies would get pissed, and when a great big 200km-long fire like this one came along, they would just stay pissed and not leave. And then they would burn to death. It’s incredibly hard to control people in situations like this unless they’ve been doing it for their whole lives, and even then you can’t control Australians. When the robots enslave us, the Aussies will be leading the revolution (although only if the invasion interrupted the cricket or the NRL grand final).

I like that term. It sounds good.

Evidently I am not as verbose as a certain pastry deity. Long post is long.

However you see, my brain. It allows me to enjoy ending a sentence like that. It bubbles and heaves with thoughts and ideas on the edge of sanity.

I’m mad and I like it.

Me, I am. Enjoying it also.

The thaumaturgic energy produced by my think blob manifests in many ways such as:

• Artistic outburts
• Brilliant ideas
• Spontaneity
• Random acts
• Shouting

Shouting is otherwise known as “loud musing”, the opposite of “quiet musing”. If “The Thinker” represents quiet musing, loud musing could be represented by a statue of someone running around, flailing their arms wildly.

It is obligatory that flying glassware be included in this statue. They have a habit of getting in my way, the scheming wine glasses.

Oh, I have another one:

• Going off on tangents

Mechannigans is the term for:

• Acts/projects which I describe on the site
• Rants
• Comments
• Things involving the site itself

which are humorous, sadistic, meaningful, provoking, annoying or particular to the point of hilarity and possibly beyond.

No harm is intended by this or following comments, no animals were harmed in the making of this post, thank you for your time and may deities have mercy on you.

Heh, as you can see, I also went for the post option rather than the comment option, in order to respond to McPieGod’s response to mua comment on – well, scroll down the page a bit and see.

1. Freezing, eh? That sounds like February last year. Note: I never denied the climate is changing; for Pie’s sake, it’s always changing. (Before any of you greenies pipe up – no, the last phrase is not a quote from the The Great Global Warming Swindle.)

2. It doesn’t just stop at the eucalypts. Some other plants depend on fire to flower properly – such as the grasstrees Xanthorrhoea and Kingia, and the rare Melaleuca deanei. Others still are killed by fires but have seeds that only germinate reliably after a fire, so require intermittent burns at regular intervals. So the trick with biodiversity is to not burn too frequently nor too rarely. Mnyeh.

3&4. I think you missed my point a bit. The houses I was talking about would scarcely do better in Britain (if only because they are useless for keeping you warm even in the Australian, let alone British, winter). And therefore, they are not the sort of houses that had existed in mother England in colonial times. As you correctly point out, though, these cereal-box houses are a cheap modern invention, to be purchased by the poorer middle and bottom classes. Well, you see, that’s the problem with capitalism. By contrast, the housing in the former Soviet Union, while far from luxury, was actually built properly to keep out the elements, and a lot more egalitarian besides (even though there was that privileged bureaucracy). Some people are indeed more equal than others, I should guess.

5.I’m not sure that what you’re referring to should be termed “common sense” – not as how I understand it, anyway. Terminological differences, damn ‘em. As for the bit about the anti-robot revolution – you do hate sport a lot, don’t you?

6.Get some exercise, like I did on me bike in Frankston yesterday!!!

Respectfully yours (but only to a point),

Azarov98.

*Oh My Non Existent God (abbrev).

Neurophagus tripidium (extinct)

N. tripidium is believed to be the oldest species of neurophage and evolutionary ancestor of all of our better-known modern species. It is believed to have fallen into extinction several hundred years ago. While some modern neurophagologists blame its extinction on its being “out-evolved” by more advanced species, it is my conviction that the substantial differences between N. tripidium and more modern species should have prevented any serious competition between them, and that it is habitat destruction by humans that caused the demise of this fascinating species.

At this time, the science of neurophagology was in its infancy, and so our knowledge of N. tripidium is extremely limited – which to my mind is a pity as it sounds a fascinating creature. Coupled with this was N. tripidium’s apparent preference for isolated and swampy areas as opposed to the primarily urban habitat preferred by modern neurophages, making observation of the species difficult.

One common note between all accounts of N. tripidium is that it would appear to be the only known domesticatable species of neurophage – all records of this species are of domesticated specimens. The secrets of domestication were held tightly by a small and exclusive religious sect (or possibly several similar sects – records are unclear on this point). A domesticated specimen is believed to have made a faithful and obedient pet as well as an excellent watch animal. Many early neurophagologists also noted that N. tripidium displayed some powers of speech. Most neurophages have limited mimicry abilities, but writings on this species suggest significantly more advanced language skills than the limited vocabulary of the modern neurophage.

The most unique behaviour displayed by N. tripidium, however, is its unusual habit of “dancing.” Individuals of the species would often acquire items of clothing (records often state that they seemed to hold a preference for top hats) and perform a lively dance, usually near the outskirts of local towns. Early neurophagologists believed that this was a mating dance, and that the items of clothing were stolen from the town as a test of bravery. However, it has since been proven that all species of neurophage reproduce asexually, and as such many modern neurophagologists have claimed that N. tripidium’s dances were territorial, performed in an attempt to scare away the humans inhabiting the town. However, it is my theory that the dances were a learned behaviour, taught to the neurophages by the bizarre religious sects responsible for taming this unusual species.

Although N. tripidium has been believed to be extinct for several hundred years, it was briefly believed that living specimens had been found after a video released in December 1983 depicted a large number of them dancing. However, the neurophages in the video were soon proved to be a forgery.

Neurophagus neurophagus

The common neurophage, well known to people worldwide, is generally seen as a pest. When set loose in an urban area, this species multiplies rapidly to plague proportions – however, a number of natural predators of the neurophage family, including Vesica silva, Vesica volubilus and most members of the Diffundinflectum family, can easily be used for biological control.

Like all neurophages, N. neurophagus is a primarily carnivorous species. While they will scavenge or even resort to cannibalism when food supplies are scarce, they prefer fresh meat. An individual of N. neurophagus is a very slow and ungainly creature, so the species generally hunts as a swarm and overwhelms its prey by sheer force of numbers. This reduces the food available to each individual, but is overall better for the species as its food requirements are quite small for a creature of its size. Some neurophagologists claim that these swarm behaviours are an indication of a hive mentality, but this is doubtful given that individuals will pursue prey regardless of whether or not they are in a swarm and the general lack of communal sense between neurophages. Experiments have proven that an N. neurophagus swarm is in fact nothing more than a large number of individuals hunting the same prey.

N. neurophagus displays remarkable vitality, capable of surviving most injuries short of decapitation. It also displays limited mimicry abilities, usually limited to a few simple words.

Neurophagus ferox

This is a recently discovered form of neurophage, and as such its relation to other species is uncertain; it may be a subspecies, variation or mutation of N. neurophagus. Both species prefer urban environments and reproduce at an extremely rapid rate, reaching plague proportions in days if food supplies are abundant. N. ferox reproduces even faster than N. neurophagus, making it the fastest reproducing neurophage currently known to science.

There are several notable differences between species neurophagus and ferox, however. N. ferox is exclusively carnivorous, having never been observed scavenging or engaging in cannibalism. While individuals of N. ferox are faster than those of N. neurophagus, they do not share its durability and are much more vulnerable to predation from Vesica silva, Vesica volubilus or members of family Diffundinflectum, as well as the related family Volitalinflectum. The hunting tactics of N. ferox resemble those of N. neurophagus, but would seem to be driven by much greater communal or pack mentality. Some neurophagologists have even claimed that N. ferox has developed a primitive “hive mind.” It is certainly true that individual ferox will not attack prey, instead searching for backup and then returning to hunt. Packs of ferox are skilled at ambushing prey or isolating it from a group. N. ferox also shows a unique attraction to flashing lights and loud noises – the reason for this is unknown.

Several unusual forms of N. ferox have been observed in heavily infested areas – this is further evidence towards the “hive” concept, with many neurophagologists suggesting that these subspecies serve important roles in the ecology of the species. Neurophagus ferox glutonious stores a sticky honey within its body, believed to act as a food source for the hive when prey is scarce. Neurophagus ferox magnolacertosus is far stronger than any other neurophage, capable of lifting many times its own body weight, and serves as prime defender for the hive. Neurophagus ferox porrolingua is especially skilled at catching fast prey and holding it down while the rest of the hive attacks. Neurophagus ferox lamia is the only species of neurophage ever observed to have distinct sexual dimorphism, although whether or not these forms breed is unknown (some neurophagologists claim that the male is a separate subspecies, designated Neurophagus ferox insultus). The male form is an especially skilled hunter and can easily bring down prey with its incredible leaping ability – the female form uses advanced mimicry behaviour to lure in prey before dismembering it.

Neurophagus parasiticum

N. parasiticum consists of two forms of macroparasite, generally referred to as N. parasiticum hemipteroides and N. parasiticum brachyuroides. The classification of this species as a neurophage and the degree of similarity between the two subspecies is uncertain as no DNA analysis has yet been performed on either form. Further complicating the issue is the fact that both hemipteroides and brachyuroides seem to occur in a number of variations, each with notably different appearance and biology. They are classified here as neurophages, however, as a convenient measure, as they share a number of similar behaviours.

While brachyuroides is capable of independent movement without a host, hemipteroides travels as spores and will die if isolated from the host once mature. Neither species is especially discriminating about their hosts and will infect many warm-blooded and some cold-blooded species. Once infected, the host will display behaviour typical of neurophages, including extreme predatory nature and slow movement. All of the typical predators of neurophages will attack a host infested with N. parasiticum if no other food is available, although oddly enough Corvus talea shows an preference for subspecies brachyuroides.

Neurophagus archaedes

The rarest modern species of neurophage, only one specimen of Neurophagus achaedes has ever been observed. It was captured after having somehow infiltrating the depths of a secret government facility using only a cardboard box as camouflage. Once placed in captivity, the specimen showed an unusual interest in the internet, occasionally visiting www.emergencybananaproductions.com and posting slightly bizarre comments. It’s okay though, because he’s pretty cool. Even if he does like the 360.

This is a theory which came to me while I was at Hunter Singers camp a couple of weeks ago. I’ve only recently been able to piece it all together.

The genesis of this theory came at breakfast. I served myself an inordinate amount of bacon, as one does. But I noticed that the girls at my table (Mechlord leaving Singers has led to a mysterious boost to my social life), where they had chosen bacon, had only acquired a small amount, while the guys had all gotten several pig’s worth. This phenomenon repeated itself at every table. Further questioning revealed that while the girls invariably thought that bacon was “alright,” the guys all thought that it was “excellent” or merely shouted “BAAAAACON!!!” (Some people of both genders started to sing the McDonalds jingle from a few years ago advertising their bacon-containing foodlike substances, which managed to defy Western poetic conventions in new and glorious ways by rhyming “bacon” with “bacon,” but that’s neither here nor there). Idly contemplating this (while eating my bacon), a thought came to me; bacon isn’t actually that tasty. I love it, but it really doesn’t taste that good. How does this work? And then the theory hit me.

The males of some species of pigs are attracted to truffles, because they smell like a female pig on heat. I think that male cats are attracted to catnip for the same reason. I’m willing to bet that men are attracted to bacon because it smells like human female pheromones.

But you may say, “But O Great and Alpieghty God of Pie, humans are not pheromonic creatures, O Great One.” (Hopefully it’ll be a little more sycophantic, but you get the idea). But therein lies the solution! While humans do use pheromones occasionally, it’s mostly become redundant because of the wonders of intelligence. Nowadays, sex is decided primarily by one’s seductive abilities, not by the smells that one produces. I’m generalising a bit, but you get my point. Maybe, once pheromones became redundant, human females stopped producing them in such great quantities — but men are still just as susceptible to them as they were a million years ago. Maybe bacon emits a far larger amount of pheromones than women!

My argument here may be convoluted and ultimately stupid, but there is still some sense behind it.

This explains a few other things as well. Based on personal experience, there are a lot more women who are vegetarians than there are men. If women are immune to bacon, then any woman who believes that meat is murder/cruelty to animals/not very nice can be a vegetarian. But with men, it’s possible for us to think that meat is cruel while still enjoying it, all because of bacon. I know this because I think that meat is cruel, and I would be a vegetarian, were it not for my unreasonable love of bacon. (And chicken. And ham. And… okay, I love all meat. But especially bacon). In order to be a vegetarian, a man must be both against meat in principle, and immune to bacon. (I’m not saying anything against men who are immune to bacon here. Some cats are immune to catnip, after all — it’s just a hereditary thing. I will, however, say “you poor bastards, you don’t know what you’re missing”).

I may be wrong. I may be a bloody moron. In fact, I am a bloody moron. But I challenge you to name one woman who can hold a conversation of any length consisting exclusively of the word “Bacon,” especially when there is no bacon to be found. That is something that only a MANLY man can do*.

Peace oot,

God of Pie.

*Chuck Norris once went for an entire year saying nothing but “bacon.” That’s how MANLY he is.

Stop. Just stop, okay? You’re not fooling anyone. You’ve sent us almost 200 near-identical messages and NONE OF THEM HAVE MADE IT THROUGH. All you’ve done is wasted a few seconds of our precious time by forcing us to manually sort your spam (since a certain overlord who shall remain nameless has yet to set up our filter). So shut up and STOP SPAMMING US.