Just Another Manic Mod Chip Monday Update: Friday Edition

I met with Mod Chip Mike two weeks ago and he delivered on his promise.  We met in a parking lot, we had a brief chat about Legend of the Mystical Ninja, I gave him 50 bucks, he gave me my modded-out SNES with about 300 games, we went our separate ways.

A lot of people have asked me what Mod Chip Mike looks like, as I suspect most people envision him as some sort of cheeto-encrusted super geek, not unlike the Comic Book Store guy from The Simpsons. 

Well first off, Mod Chip Mike’s actual name is Jim.  I didn’t know his name when I wrote the first post so I made it up but I asked him his real name when we last met.  Although there are some who call him Jim, he will always be Mod Chip Mike in my heart.  And in my cell phone address book.

Secondly, he’s pretty much the most normal 30-year old guy ever.  At least the most normal 30-year old guy ever that enjoys conversating about Legend of the Mystical Ninja in an empty parking lot on a Wednesday morning.  Just a nice guy all around.  Total professional.  He's the Heisenberg of illegal mod chipping.

When I got home with my newfound prize, it was exactly what I envisioned.  So many games. Just pure gaming bliss.  At least that’s how it started.

Take Punch-Out!! for example.  It’s a true classic but just BRUTALLY hard.  Especially the boss battle with Mike Tyson at the end of the game.  It’s literally the hardest thing ever, it is SO frustrating.  I felt like Ray Liotta trying to cook that Ziti at the end of Goodfellas.  So much anger!  Don’t let the sauce stick!    

Games back then didn’t have save points, you just had to perform by trial and error, over and over again to advance through a game.  It might take months or years, if ever, to beat a game.  Since you had no money, and only got one or two games a year, you just had to make the best of it.  It was truly rewarding to actually beat one of these games.

But the NES and SNES mini’s let you save at any point in the game, up to four slots.  So you can just save at every level or before every boss and then just start over when you inevitably die 10 times before figuring out the pattern.  By this methodology, most of these games are only 30 or 40 minutes long.  I finally beat Iron Mike because I created a save point after every 10 seconds of not getting killed by him.  Which is perfect, because I don’t have time to spend hours and hours playing these games because I am an adult with a wife and kids and mortgage to pay.  But at the same time, obtaining mastery of a game was the whole appeal so what is the point of playing if you have to cheat to get through a game?

Then I started thinking about arcade economics at Showbiz Pizza.  Depending on your grades, you got anywhere between 10 and 20 tokens to spend per Showbiz session so you had to choose between conquering that kickass double-screen X-Men game or accumulating enough skee-ball tickets to win a Chinese finger trap.  You usually couldn’t do both, which made each option that much more rewarding. Victories were earned.  Opportunity costs were had.

Now I have unlimited games with unlimited saves and I could easily go to Showbiz Pizza right now and beat whatever I want because I have a job and money and basically my whole point to this post is to be careful what you wish for because you might just get it and it will ruin everything.  So don’t get older and don’t get a job.  Always think 20 quarters is a lot of money.  Rant over.

Sorry to depress the crap out of everybody.  But to end on a positive note, Dr. Mario is still fun and will always be fun.  I was at a slumber party over at Joey Daniel’s house last Thursday and we had a blast playing it.  We would have stayed up all night but Abbey made us go to bed.

 

This game was always at full capacity 24/7.  Sometimes you would have to wait hours.  Unless you wanted to play as Dazzler.  Nobody wanted to be Dazzler. 

Just Another Manic Mod Chip Monday

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One of the beautiful things about getting older and settling into a city is that you can develop a roster of go-to people for goods and services.  You develop and build these relationships over time, which saves you worry capacity over the long haul. 

Like Tom, my trustworthy mechanic.  He’s got a little private shop off of Broadway. When something goes wrong with any of my vehicles, I can count on him to fix it for a fair price.  I don’t have to worry about paying $700 for a new rotator splint or something like that.  Ditto for Justin, my insurance guy, or Mike, my mod chip guy.

Oh, I’m sorry, you don’t have a mod chip guy?  Let me explain.

Last year I lucked into one of those Mini Nintendo’s that had a limited release and were a hot present for the 2016 Christmas season.  Naturally, I was excited that I was the only one on the block with this thing, which is the whole point really, to be the coolest guy on the block.

But then I found out Jordy got a NES Mini on black market Craigslist and apparently, his unit was hacked with a mod chip that contained not only the original 30 NES classics but 400 more games.  Like every NES game ever plus a bunch of Japanese-only games and a version of Super Tecmo Bowl with updated 2016 teams and rosters.  My jealousy could not be contained.  I had to have it.

I got this dude’s number and we agreed to meet at a neutral location.  I handed over my unit and he promised to install the mod chip that night for $50. I half expected him to just keep it and re-sell it on Craigslist, who would stop him?  But the next day I met him at our spot as promised and we exchanged cash for goods.

“The deal has been made.” I exclaimed to nobody as he drove off into yonder.

I nervously booted up the mini NES as soon as soon as I got home and it was more glorious than I imagined.  I was playing Blades of Steel within minutes and all the save features remained intact.  It became my new prized possession.  In the event of a fire, the following would get saved from the house in this order:  Wife & Kids, Cat, Mod Chip Mini NES, my journal from middle school, Cellphone, Wallet.

Well now I have the new mini SNES and it is pretty great but it only has 21 games, not 400. I didn’t want to badger Mod Chip Mike right away as I wanted him to work out the kinks in this new hacking project so I gave him a month to work out the wrinkles.  I couldn’t wait any longer so I texted him out of the blue last night and asked if he had the SNES hacked yet.  He said he did and so we proceeded to figure out a time to meet this week.  We were going back and forth and then I left my phone on the charger.

Jess walks by my phone and sees a strange, unlisted number pop up confirming that “let’s meet at our regular spot at 4:00 pm tomorrow”.  She nervously asked what the text was about and I told her I was meeting up with Mod Chip Mike at our regular meeting spot, which is the Taco Bell parking lot on Hwy 172 and Babcock.

Jess sighed in disbelief. I think she initially thought I was having an affair.  I think that would have been less embarrassing for her than having a husband who has a regular rendezvous point at Taco Bell with a guy that hacks Nintendo hardware for a hobby. I felt bad for her.

Any hoo, I’m meeting Mod Chip Mike tonight and I will let you know if the SNES operation is a success.  If it works as good as the hacked NES, it will definitely earn a spot on the Save in a Fire list, likely somewhere between Wife & Kids and Cat.

Trump Declares War on Roundabouts

Fake News.  I made this headline up.  Although this headline is Fake News for now, it seems like just a matter of time before Trump gets bored with the NFL and sets his sights on a new target like roundabouts.  I readily admit, this blog post title is a cheap ploy to get your attention.

But I want to talk about roundabouts for a moment because I think they perfectly encapsulate the political divide we are facing today.

First off.  I’m staunchly pro-roundabout.

Roundabouts decrease travel times, they are safer than 4-way stops, they are better for the environment, they keep super old people off the road because they are afraid of them, the list goes on and on. 

I’m listening to Yes’s Roundabout right now as I type this. 

If you wanted to nickname me Roundabout, I wouldn’t stop you.  It’s better than some of the nicknames I’ve gotten in the past.  Ben Gay.  Ben Dover.  Ben Stiller Show.  Yeah, I’d be happy as hell if Roundabout somehow became a thing.

As I whiz through these infrastructure wonderlands, I often marvel how they came about. 

I like to think there is an unsung hero at the DMV that dreamed up the idea of the roundabout in the middle of the night.   He went to a 24-hour Kinkos Jerry Maguire-style, and toiled throughout the night to present a plan to the top brass at the DMV the next day.

I wasn’t there, obviously, but I ONE THOUSAND PERCENT know that they shot the idea down right away.  With these exact words, they said “we’re going to keep building 4-way stops and traffic signals because they work and that’s the way we’ve always done it”.  I guarantee our hero heard this phrase a million times over but he persevered, maybe went over a few heads, and because of his determination, I can now hit up the Woodman's in Howard and be back to the house, door-to-door, in like 6 minutes. It’s crazy. 

We should build a monument to celebrate this DMV guy.  We can put it…wait for it...at the center of a prominent roundabout.  Everyone wins. 

To make a long-winded point, there are some people who don’t want to change or go back to the old ways of doing things and there are some people that want to tinker and try to make things better.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes the old ways are the best ways but I just no longer accept “because that’s the way we’ve always done it” as a reason to keep doing something.  The old ways should always be challenged and have to stand on their own merits when new ideas are presented. 

So now you are wondering “When did Brain Litter get so political?” 

That is a good question.  I’ve been writing this blog since 2005.  I’ve posted 193 times and racked up 19,000 hits over 12 years.  On Monday, I made a stand on the national anthem protests with post #194 and now I’m over 20,000 hits.  It is by far the most popular post I’ve ever posted and I wrote it in less than an hour on a whim.

There’s clearly demand for this kind of content and I have an established platform so I am going to explore these political topics going forward in addition to my typical rants. I am obsessed with demographics lately (millennials AMIRIGHT!?!?!) and being 36 years old is an interesting age to be at.  I am calling this stage of life SECOND PUBERTY and I have lots of future posts planned on this non-partisan topic and more.

Yes, I am leaning left these days as you can tell, but stay with me, I promise to call out all forms of hypocrisy when I see it.  Feathers will be ruffled going forward for sure, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have some laughs and find some common ground as we navigate these tumultuous times ahead.

Somebody please buy me this mug please.

National Anthem Protests and Raisin Booger Putty

I know everyone is sick of the subject of the NFL and National Anthem kneeling but after this weekend, it appears that this story isn’t going away any time soon so let’s get into it.

I’ve been thinking about this National Anthem kneel business a lot and with protests in general and I have an analogy that might be useful in finding common ground with friends and family on one side of this issue or the other.

I love my kids. 

I’m not going to say I love them more or less than another parent loves their kids because that argument is impossible to prove.  It is impossible to quantify and measure one’s love for somebody or something as everybody is different and expresses love in different ways. 

Let’s just say I love my kids like a typical parent loves their kids.

My son, Jackson, likes raisins.  But Jackson has this unfortunate habit of sometimes taking a raisin and just WORKING it into our shag carpet rug, fusing individual strands of carpet hairs with this unholy raisin booger putty.  It’s gross.  I stumble upon these landmines from time to time and it drives me crazy.

Jackson gets scolded for this.  Sometimes he gets a timeout.  Sometimes he gets his raisins taken away.  Sometimes we let it slide.  I don’t know the best way to eliminate these demon rug boogers.

But I still love him.   And I don’t love him more or less than his sister Addy because he works raisin devil glue into our carpet and she doesn’t.  We’re just doing our best to guide him.  Maybe there’s a better way but I don’t have all the answers.

My point is this:  You should always wear shoes when you come over to visit us.

My second point is that you can protest a cause AND still love your country.  They are not mutually exclusive.  Let’s start thinking of creative ways to solve problems together instead of fighting over who loves America more. 

That Time I Invented The Internet Meme

My wife started a blog earlier this year and she is very good at it.  If you are wondering if I am jealous of the Flipping Unbelievable blog, the answer is Not Applicable.

We have very different blogs with very different target audiences.  She traffics in offering useful information and I do not.  If she gets into the useless information game and becomes irreverent like Brain Litter, I will consider it an act of war but until then our blogs can co-exist in peaceful harmony. 

But I think she fired off a warning shot with this funny meme that she invented.

If you don’t recall, I invented the internet meme back in October 2006.  Don’t believe me?  Check it.

Happy Brett Favre Day!

OK OK, so I called them e-cards instead of memes and they are quite primitive compared to your modern-day internet meme but they are effectively the same thing.  Meme technology didn’t exist back then to transpose hilarious sentences directly on to photographs.  I had to create those beauties in PowerPoint, dink around with clunky text boxes, and save them as crushingly high-memory jpeg files.  I bet that original post took 5 seconds to load up back in the day, which is light years in internet time. 

Long story short, we live in a day and age where if you say something and believe it is true, then it is true regardless of facts.  I invented the internet meme!  What a time to be alive!

Babes, if you are going to use my technology against me, I will have to retaliate with an equally funny original meme of my own.  Behold!

Topical!  I’m also thinking this would make a great t-shirt conceptually.  Surely some hipster would gladly pay 10 bucks for this shirt after drinking one too many IPAs over there at Hinterland.

Michelle, maybe you could help me out with this?  You did a great job helping me with those Occupy Tipler hoodies I made for my deer camp way back when.  Maybe it would be funnier with some sort of Arabic font?  We’ll talk about it later.

This feels like a real solid business opportunity but I have been known to overestimate the demand for novelty t-shirts that only I think is funny.  I have a dusty old box full of shirts in the farthest nether regions of our basement to prove it.  

The shirts simply say “43,560” across the front, which is how many square feet are in an acre of land.  It is a real estate joke that I tried to profit from at a big real estate conference about ten years ago.  I made 100 of them and sold about 10.  It was a colossal mistake.

I would throw them away but the Dan and Kathy in me makes it physically impossible for me to throw away perfectly functional items no matter how outdated they are. Those t-shirts will remain in basement storage until the end of time or until I sell them.

Screw it.  I’m digging them out and putting them for sale again FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY. Sizes come in medium and large.  They are navy blue and made of 100% cotton.  $10 each or 50 for $15.

GET THEM NOW WHILE THEY LAST! 

The Happy Man And His Dump Truck

Remember when I said I wasn’t going to be writing about kid stuff?

I lied! Here is a blog about kid stuff!

Jackson posted up to our bed the other day with a new book in his hand. I had never seen it before but that is not unusual.  We have a cabinet full of books and I have no idea where they come from.  They multiply in there like rabbits when we are not around.

I know this because there are hundreds of books in there and I’ve only bought two children’s book in my entire life.  The first is a Frozen book which I bought to replace a library book that the kids destroyed. 

HOT PARENT TIP:  You can’t show up at the library with a destroyed book and a replacement book from Amazon.  You have to go through their channels proper.  Also, don’t try to Catch Me If You Can the bar code stickers off the destroyed book to paste it on the new book from Amazon.  The library is privy to some sort of super glue of unknown origin that makes this task impossible.  Don’t even bother.

The second book is Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes, which is great.

Spoiler Alert LOL those shoes LMAO those shoes don’t stay white for very long.

Anyways, the book in question is called the The Happy Man and His Dump Truck and it is a re-printed Golden Book originally published in 1950. 

Upon first reading, I thought it was a cute little yarn.  This guy goes around town picking up various farm animals in his truck and then they go joyriding through the countryside.  A great time was had by all.  The End.

When the story was done, Jackson beeled off to God knows where and I went about my business but something didn’t sit right with me.  I paged through the book again and gave it a real close look and then I realized what was so deeply unsettling.  

Look at some of these illustrations.

My takeaway is that the moral of the story is:  If a strange guy offers you a ride in his rusty old truck, then hop right in because you are going to have a great time.

This guy.  

 This. Freakin. Guy.

This guy looks like he is ready to go hang out with Gags and Pennywise back home at the railyard. Is he half clown half hobo?  What’s with the Mom jeans?  Nobody knows. 

Did I mention he tortures the animals?  Look at this shit.  

He opens the tailgate while going top speed down a slippery country road.  This isn’t a yarn, it is a psychological thriller.  Look at that poor dog!

Now I get that this was written back when America Was Great.  Back then you could probably hang out at a railyard for hours, maybe even all day, without getting rape killed.  It was a different time. 

But in 2017, I don’t want my kids thinking it’s cool to jump into trucks with psycho clown hobos. This book belongs in the garbage. 

Unless Jackson wants to read it again.  He can read all the psycho clown hobo stories he wants if it buys me another five minutes of peace and quiet. I better keep it just in case. Entertaining kids is hard. 

One Space Two Space Rehashed

Last week, I posted in my Facebook status about two spaces versus one space when typing sentences in a document and let me tell you, it really got me thinking about blogging again.  That post got a LOT of traction, it came scarily close to surpassing the announcement of the birth of my twins. 

It is clear that people are very passionate about this topic.  I’m pro two-space and I’m not ashamed to admit it.  I don’t want to rehash this subject and reopen old wounds but suffice to say, I think I nailed it on the head when I commented that two spaces are luxurious space cushions to give your eyes a rest between next sentences.  Mic drop.  Discussion over.

I ran into Vang and Kyle Anderson last Friday at Golomski’s induction ceremony and they told me the one space two space debate would have made a good post for Brain Droppings.  I laughed so hard because Vang called it Brain Droppings. 

In his defense, that name is WAY better than Brain Litter.

But they are not incorrect.  I had a good premise and a great one-liner.  There would have been a paragraph about two space usage being the demarcation line between Millennial and Non-Millennial.   Throw some filler sentences in there and you got yourself a kickass blog post for the week.  It was a missed opportunity.

For whatever reason, I’m very proud of the space cushions line.  It could be a top 10 and that’s ultimately what Brain Litter was all about, to have a top 10 etched on my tombstone someday to record these jokes for posterity.  My other favorites are:

1.      “These Peter Jackson cigarettes taste like Frodo’s asshole” (Inside joke, you had to be there)

2.     “Don’t worry, it’s just a matter of time before the McRib comes back around to, once again, rear its ugly head” (Again, you had to be there)

3.     The space cushions thing above

I don’t know about the next seven.  Maybe etch that map I made of where all the cool kids sat in middle school?  That was a pretty great bit.  I don’t know.  Fine, we’ll call that number four.

The reason I stopped writing in 2014 is because I thought I was getting repetitive and I didn’t want to turn into a Dave Barry dad-joke machine about kids and being married.  If there is one thing I know, it is that people don’t want blog posts about families and stuff.  They want dick and fart jokes, observational humor, and stories about being single and the sexual misfires that go along with being single (see Brain Litter 2005 - 2009).

I can deliver on the first two premises but sadly, I can no longer deliver on the third.  I am firing away on all cylinders.  I’m dangerous! 

Anyways, I am going to keep hacking away at Brain Litter again until I get a true Top 10.  I‘ll try not to get into too much Dad humor but no promises. 

Thanks for reading!