962 It Does.

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I spent part of the day today trying to fix the arm rest in my truck. I have an old Ford Ranger, I think, I always forget if it’s that or a Courrier. Anyway, it’s held together very well these many years, but the armrest was made out of the weakest materials possible. I feel like the design of that armrest was a warning sign for what was going to happen not only to Ford, but all American car manufacturing. At some point it was like people just lost their fucking minds when it came to design. Things are in weird places, made poorly, and all manner of other things. Of course I haven’t been in a new vehicle in a few years, so maybe they sorted some of that stuff out. I kind of doubt it though.

As far as this arm rest goes I’m not sure I can fix it. I might be able to make a replacement though. Honestly, if I just carved one of these things out of wood scraps it would be sturdier than this plastic piece of shit. I might even go so far as to say they intended for this thing to break. It’s so ridiculously flimsy. It’s actually a lid, because the arm rest is one of those ones that’s like a container. The latch is made from a milimeter thick lip of plastic. So it’s been broken for almost the whole time I’ve owned the truck. I’m gonna look around online the next time my net is working properly and see if this is a part I can replace. It seems like a long shot, but you never know. Doesn’t hurt to look. If I can’t find anything I think I could make a replacement in an afternoon. Maybe two if I did a really nice job. It doesn’t even need to be a complex as the actual lid is. it’s made from 3 parts, but it could have been done with 1. Maybe if they had kept it simple I wouldn’t have to be fucking with it right now…

I’ve pretty much figured out why Simcity Social is fun. (In the moments when you can actually do something, and it’s not asking you to pester people for things.) It’s basically Simcity for the SNES upgraded. In fact, it’s even less complex than Simcity SNES. You don’t have to control any of the budget, or utilities, you just make a city. The only thing that slows you down is that in order to complete most tasks you have to get help from friends, or pay an insane amount of money. It’s also difficult to remodel your city because you have to buy or beg for space, and almost every action requires “energy”. It’s really quite diabolical in its design. It’s also exactly the kind of thing I’m drawn to. Setting little things around, just so, on a playing feild. Inflicting my particular sense of order on things. Little squares, tidy rows, lots of little trees and ponds.

The evil of EA (who makes Simcity) is further enhanced by the various scammy offers you can take part in to get free game munny. Like joining the Disney video of the month club, or signing up for a Discover card, or watching a commercial. A commercial is worth 1 munny, by the way. That’s what EA values a portion of your time on Earth at. You know what you can do with 1 munny in game? DICK. It’s, like, 40 to do even simple stuff. Which really made me feel like EA doesn’t value life in any meaningful way. Still, I almost signed up for the Discover card because I don’t have a credit card, but I do buy stuff, and Discover offers points you can use towards other stuff. My mom has one and she’s very good at making use of the added value. She said that I would probably be denied anyway, which only made me more curious… I remember a time when I could stick my hand in the mailbox and throw away a stack of credit cards BEGGING me to use them. I have a hard time beliveing that enough legislation has passed to change the ease of getting credit.

Anyway I’m torn on the whole EA thing because they own Mass Effect now and it’s totally the best game that I’m thinking of right now. I guess I just have to keep supporting this evil company so I can see what Happens to Shepard. Whatevs.

21 Comments

The emotional charge of this strip is…

*goes and gets new pair of pants*

Also hearing his list Thomas is interesting. It’s sad. I don’t think Reggie’s ever had friends. The poor bastard.

Nina probably cares because this has to do with the growth that her “damage” caused her to come to terms with. (only putting that in quotes because I only have the vaguest ideas of what that is)

Quickest way to tell if you’ve got a Ranger or Courier: look at the VIN. If it begins with a 1, you’ve got a Ranger. A J means it’s a Courier.

Vehicles VINs beginning with 1 are built in the United States. J means Japan. The Ford Courier wasn’t a Ford at all. It was a Mazda B-Series built in Japan, which Ford imported and slapped their own badge on.

I could be mistaken. But I also feel sorry for Reggie here. Not because of his possible lack of friends but because he’s failing to realize the significance of the situation at hand. She is asking him some personal questions. That means it matters to her on some level. This is probably a good thing for him but he just can’t see its relevance. You don’t have to know why something is valuable to understand it has value afterall. And despite it all I think nina really does like or at least has a real soft spot for Reggie. Its just his… Ass-isms that prevent anything ever happening good for him.

Or i could be wrong. Its just speculations.

it could be that Nina saw her old self reflected in Reggie’s attitude toward others, and it could be that Reggie is friend-poor because of his own poor definition of a friend, and Nina might feel that if she changed for the good, then there may be hope for him.

Who knows how much future pain and suffering will be averted by her act of kindness?

It’s like Nina is post-Vader…if he had lived. She is seeing another Anakin heading down the same path and trying to get a sense of how far down the path he is.
Obviously not as dark and severe, but you get the idea.

Okay, so i kinda really relate with reggie here. Nina’s kinda being an ass. For all we know reggie just isn’t on friend terms with his coworkers. I’m like that too, and i have a comfortable number of friends outside of work. There’s just something about people who i don’t have a choice about being around that prevents me from wanting to form attachments with them. Reggie also strikes me as someone who’s secretly in constant fear of losing his job, and that’s where all the “best employee ever” bluster comes from. The fact that Nina is antagonizing him about not being friends with his coworkers doesn’t seem like it would be doing him any good either.

On the subject of mass effect, I’m really torn. I love the writing of the game (even the end to a certain extent) as a writer, but as a gamer, the endings cause terrible rage in me. I’m hoping that eventually we get a DLC with a “good ending” because right now they’re all “kinda sorta good” “not SO bad” or “oh fuck, everything’s fucked”. Also Screw EA, Origin pisses me off to no end.

I can really relate to where Reggie is at in this, being as I have reached 48 and STILL do not have much of anybody I call “friend”. There is my best friend for the last 37 years, there is my wife, that just about does it, and nobody I work with/for. Work is not for socializing with. Work is WORK. I go there to earn the money to support my family and try to make life suck less. I don’t know the people there, and don’t want to. After work, because I HAVE to work, I am too tired for anything else.

@Crave,
Yeah, i feel the same way. I’m torn because EA owns bioware now and unfortunately that means they control how the new bioware games come out. I love Bioware, they’ve made great games for almost a decade now, but EA is a bunch of shady, I.P. hoarding, corporate whores. So on one hand i want to keep getting the bioware franchises because they are usually good, but as long as EA owns Bioware the glory days of Bioware are gone.

Don’t think they’ve made a Courier since the early eighties. They were made by Mazda, and some of them (don’t know if any of the ones sold by Ford) had rotary engines and four barrel carburetors. So four barrels and no pistons.
I have an old 73 HiBoy 4×4. It’s monstrous. Sits up higher than a lot of the new Super Dutys. Didn’t get very far in the last mud bog though……

Reminds me of those story battles in Final Fantasy 10, where when you chat with the boss during the battle, you get stat bonuses afterward just for wasting a turn yammering. Well worth it.
Nina just went up in Attack Power (ATP), as well as attack accuracy (ATA).

Wait I just realized…. why am I comparing it to Final Fantasy, but using the stats from Phantasy Star Online?
Gods I play too many games. Everything’s jumbled up… Ah well, back to Kid Icarus: Uprising. I just beat Medusa! :D

I Think Reggie is just saying that about Wes. He would consider Thomas his friend mostly because he feels Thomas hasn’t gotten him fired yet when he clearly burns things down..

I am pretty stand-offish with people. I have few friends but those I do have, have kept up with me over the years. We can reconnect as if nary a day has gone by I also trust them.

I do little games with people on their level of trust I can put into them. Being friendly to me goes a long way. I will bend over backwards for people, I don’t expect the same but I do expect people to stick up for me when necessary. It comes back to me so it works out.

So, I can feel where Reggie is coming from, if not completely.

Calling what Reggie’s got going on with his co-workers “friendship” kind of devalues the term. More like they trust each other (Reggie vs. everyone else) not to cross the line between average dickishness and plain nastiness.

Also, hasn’t Wesley been working there for like, less than a week?

From my perspective, it sounds like he truly doesn’t know who is his friends and hopes that others might like him.

Years from now, Reggie will look back at this moment and realize this this is when he truly lost, without a single shot being fired.

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