Relevant Links

Hello friends and followers. I’m plotting to move to Chicago in the next few months, and am currently on the job hunt. I’ll have more information about my search and an updated LinkedIn page to boot coming shortly. In the meanwhile, here are all the links to my currently relevant information, in case you want to keep up with what I’m doing.

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Shorester  (@shorester)

I am posting new chapters of my family friendly fantasy story, Spellbound Sword, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on Wattpad. Click here to read Spellbound Sword. You can also read my other posted Wattpad stories here.

I’ve started a Discord chat page. If you’d like to chat with me about my writing or other hobbies, join here. It’s just a fun place to share information and gifs and have some laughs. I’ll also be posting updates there too, but it’s a good way to talk to me directly.

I’ll probably update this post with more information soon, so please check back.

 

AT&T Fan Appreciation – Season Kickoff

I make a brief appearance in this commercial starring the guy who plays Cam on Modern Family.

New Web-Series: “The Stoned Chef!”

Here’s a new web series created by Aaron Massey and starring me as The Stoned Chef!

Game Review: Dead Space 2

Dead Space 2 is the only game I’ve ever beaten and immediately played through again. It’s something of a twisted marvel. I got the same sort of sensation that I had playing Metal Gear Solid as a kid, like I was experiencing something synonymous with a movie rather than a traditional combat-based shooter. Scary isn’t always the operative word in Dead Space 2, not to say there aren’t make-you-jump moments. The really masterful strokes in DS2’s design are found its slow-burning interaction with the human mind, something the story’s subject matter embraces with a sinister grin.

I’m not going into too many story spoilers. After all, this is a Dead Space game, and using the term story at all is loose at best. Dead Space falls into the category of games that feel like theme park rides, in this case a haunted house. The haunted house is a huge city-size complex in outer space, crawling with reanimated corpses, twisted and mangled and granted with bestial sentience. That sounds pretty scary, but the game does well to desensitize you to violence in the first few minutes, introducing you to the absolute hell you’re about to endure with one of the most shocking kills on any screen. The game is not short on gore, and those who are faint of heart should probably play Barbie’s Horse Adventures instead. I’m not one to shy away from gore (after that one scene in Hannibal where the guy eats his own brain, I’m pretty much broken as a human being), but this game made me wince from time to time. There’s a specific sequence with a horrible twisted machine in the game’s final moments that is enough to render you unconscious with either fear or disgust.

I’m going to talk about this game as an experience. As an experience, it is incredible. Fans of the Dead Space franchise will find a few improvements, like more mobility for zero-gravity monster combat, but otherwise there is a fairly standard pattern of wandering into a darkened room and waiting for something to jump out at you before you shoot it to pieces. The monsters in the game, or Groovy Ghoulies if you will, play an insidious game of hide-and-seek with the player, forcing them to tip-toe into seemingly innocuous environments with the expectation of terror. There’s a specific breed of undead creature made from dead babies that explode on proximity contact to the player. Now if you’re a parent, you might find this hilarious. But for the rest of us more even-tempered mortals, this is decidedly unsettling. The dead baby necromorph’s older cousin is something of a rambunctious ten year old, howling with delight as it and its friends tear you to pieces during recess. The game is not short on frightening material, to be sure.

Players star as the hero of Dead Space, engineer Isaac Clark. He’s picked up a few silver hairs since his last tango with the necromorphs, thanks in no small part to the designers’ ability to accurately portray human beings in virtual shells to a compelling and revolting degree. The game has a trope carried over from survival horror trend-setters like Resident Evil. When you die, you don’t simply see ‘Game Over.’ You instead watch your character, Isaac, torn to shreds during increasingly brutal depictions of monster murder. It makes you really want to stay alive.

Like the best of modern shooters, Dead Space 2 commends you for studying its opponents and devising the best strategies to pass them. In terms of design, this game is Legend of Zelda if Zelda were all dungeon. The real Zelda is packed with back-story to make the experience more epic. Dead Space 2 is packed with fear and uncertainty. This fear begets the driving force of the game: “I’ve got to find a way out of here, or else I might lose my mind!” That fear drives Isaac Clark to take incredible risks and face a surprising series of challenges along the way. He’s willing to do anything for survival, and so must the player in order to succeed.

The best portion of the game for me is the New Game +. After you complete Dead Space 2, you can start a new game with the same weapons and armor statistics from your previous game. The second play through is even more fun, because you get to absorb more of the experience and fret less about the puzzles. There are some hardships to endure, to be sure, and again, this is not for the faint of heart. But I think the marketing team made that very clear.

Botched Pick-Up Lines

Sometimes on Twitter a magical thing happens. People, unified by love for one particularly comical idea create a hashtag pitch session in which they all contribute the funniest zingers they can imagine to a particular trend or topic as annotated by the formula ‘#bullshit.’ With this in mind, I’d like to share with you my entries into the genre of #botchedpickuplines.

“Is that a mouse in your pocket, or are you just happy to be a transvestite? Either way, I’m interested and desperate.” #botchedpickuplines

“A woman is like a work of art. Inevitably, she’ll be clinging to my mudflaps.” #botchedpickuplines

“Say, who’s your fat friend over there?” #botchedpickuplines

“Are you tired? Because you’ve been running from me in my mind all day.” #botchedpickuplines

“This is the first time I’ve seen a creature as beautiful as you outside of my uncle’s barn.” #botchedpickuplines

“Top five rape fantasies! Go!” #botchedpickuplines

“You’ve never seen Eraserhead ’til you’ve seen it on Roofies.” #botchedpickuplines

“I seduce women like a dairy farmer. How appropriate! You look like a cow.” #botchedpickuplines

“Is your father a baker? Because I’m into anal beads.” #botchedpickuplines

“KNIFE to meet you!” #stab “Whoops.” #botchedpickuplines

“Let’s go see ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ together! I hear bitches like you love that shit.” #botchedpickuplines

“If you were a laser gun, you’d be set to ‘Calibrate Internal Heat Function’ for four hours.” #botchedpickuplines

“ACCEPT MY SEED.” #botchedpickuplines

“You’re the kind of girl who’d like to hear a dark secret revealed immediately after sex, I can tell. So bend over.” #botchedpickuplines

“When you walked in, the entire room lit up. And all the roaches scattered.” #botchedpickuplines

“You’re the most beautiful woman in this entire outhouse.” #botchedpickuplines

“Can I buy you a drink? You look like the kind who’d need one after whatever her father did to her.” #botchedpickuplines

“Do you come here often? To Confession, I mean.” #botchedpickuplines

“Pre-op or post-op?” #botchedpickuplines

“Of course I’m pro-choice. Pulling out is MY choice, isn’t it?” #botchedpickuplines

“Are you an orphan? Because I would kill your parents to bang you.” #botchedpickuplines

“No, I was never actually President. But I did travel around the country with a very interesting slide-show.” #botchedpickuplines

“I just saw the vagina monologues, and you’ve got something I’d like to re-reclaim.” #botchedpickuplines

“Your face reminds me of a great ‘Three Stooges.'” #botchedpickuplines

“Do you believe in love at first sight? Try making eye contact with that other chick over there…” #botchedpickuplines

“I know it seems far-fetched, but I would really like to hump you.” #botchedpickuplines

“Do you believe in soul mates? What about Sasquatch?” #botchedpickuplines

“You remind me of that one song by The Police. EEEEE-OOO-EEEE-OOO!!!” #botchedpickuplines #loudsirennoises

“Hey, you seem mentally retarded. My name is Edward Cullen.” #botchedpickuplines

“Hey there, nerd. Might I interest you in my Big Wang Theory?” #botchedpickuplines

“The only thing that could keep me away from you are the steel bars that currently are.” #botchedpickuplines

“I’m a Shakespeare scholar. Mind if I Ophelia?” #botchedpickuplines

“When I look into your eyes I see the reflection of a very handsome man staring back.” #botchedpickuplines

“You’re the reason cavemen chiseled on walls. One look at you, and you left them no escape.” #botchedpickuplines

“When I’m alone, I feel like half of a sack of shit. You complete me.” #botchedpickuplines

“Did you ever notice your deformity?” #botchedpickuplines

“Love is unpredictable. My psychic told me to tell you that.” #botchedpickuplines

“You could win a beauty pageant, even if no one else entered.” #botchedpickuplines

“What’s a White Castle parking lot like you doing around an okay-looking woman like this?” #botchedpickuplines

“Foreplay can be exciting, so long as you don’t muss my TRON bedspread.” #botchedpickuplines

“The brain is the sexiest organ. Which raises the question – your brain or mine?” #botchedpickuplines

“As long as you’re not into strength or duration, I think we could have something here.” #botchedpickuplines

“Let’s just both keep drinking ’til one of us turns pretty.” #botchedpickuplines

“Ever frenched a guy with detachable teeth?” #botchedpickuplines

“You ladies into bad boys? Hand over your purses. Now.” #botchedpickuplines

“Nice cheekbones. Only they’d look a lot better crumpled up on my bedroom floor…” #botchedpickuplines

“Bet I can guess your weight to within three hundred pounds!” #botchedpickuplines

“You remind me on an Angel. Yep, Angel “Hot Rod” Sanders, fastest dirtbike racer on the track.” #botchedpickuplines

“You’re like Danny Devito’s character in Space Jam. Unforgettable.” #botchedpickuplines

“You’re old enough to be my mother, and it never stopped me before.” #botchedpickuplines

“I couldn’t help but notice you from across the tomb.” #botchedpickuplines

“Your hair smells incredible. Even just this thick clump in my hand…Ahh…” #botchedpickuplines

“Your eyes are like the stars. The light inside them died long before they reached me here tonight.” #botchedpickuplines

“Bet I can guess your race in three gestures!” #botchedpickuplines

“You’re like the Sinead O’Connor of women.” #botchedpickuplines

“I bet you’ve never seen a car like mine before. It’s invisible. We’re in it right now.” #botchedpickuplines

“You remind me of a battleship. Tall, majestic, and soon to be covered in seamen.” #botchedpickuplines

“C’mon, Hillary. I just think after all the campaigning I did, you could wear the beret ONE time.” #botchedpickuplines

Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed them. If you’d like to Retweet any of these and share them with your followers, simply click the linked hashtags next to the joke you want to Retweet. Once you’re on the Tweet’s page you can click ‘Retweet’ from there. Let me know if you actually use any of these!