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Greetings, my flotsam bunnies, my pulpy klehehbins, and my cheeky bastards.

Allow me to heap apologies like so many flowers at your feet for shirking my blogly duties. Yet again, most of my ass-sitting time has been hijacked by another video-game-and-booze binge. This time it’s straight brandy – left over from a rather disappointing hot toddy experiment – and Just Cause. This particular game has piqued my interest for a number of reasons. They include:

●The main character, Rico Rodriguez, can take approximately 10,000 bullets, in the head and chest, before expiring.

●Besides Rico’s staggering ability to take monstrous abuse, he can also perform some, well, ridiculous shit, such as jumping through the moving blades of a helicopter in flight into the cockpit, while simultaneously ejecting the pilot. He also does not require air to breathe. I know this because, unlike other video game characters, he does not die after, say, half an hour underwater.

●It takes place on San Esperito, an fictional island that, given the fact that it does not actually exist, is pretty big. 250,000 acres, to be exact. That’s slightly less than the total area of Hong Kong.

But the thing that really has me stoked is the ability I have to toss Rico out of a plane or helicopter (or occasionally off of a bridge or tower) and skydive.

Figure 1.1: Real men don’t need parachutes.

I have been skydiving myself. It’s really pretty difficult to describe the visceral, raw and awesome (in that it truly inspires awe) sensation that skydiving imprints on your consciousness. But I have to hand it to the game’s creators… they did an amazing job recreating it. I went skydiving when I was 18 years old. It was part of a comprehensive identity crisis package. These packages vary from teenager to teenager. Mine happened to include a new wardrobe, new hairstyle, my first tattoo, and my skydiving expedition. It was my understanding that these four items, in concert, would result in staggering amounts of tail. I was reasonably sure that I would have to hire a secretary to schedule all the sex that I was going to have with girls. I started drafting an application, because I knew I would need a screening process. I issued a press release that gave the location of the drop zone and the approximate time of my descent. I had naturally assumed that a tent city of several thousand hot girls with big boobies would form there, in preparation for my landing. I knew it would be a lot of work and take a serious commitment to bang them all, but damnit, that’s just the kind of walking stiffie that I was back in those days. I had grit. Determination. Spunk. Moxy. Syphilis.

As it turns out, I seem to have miscalculated the impact that my quartet of uninspired, cliché teenage reinventions would have. I scored exactly no illicit sexual encounters as a result of my hard work. I did, however, max out my credit card. I also had my skydiving adventure recorded on video.

Figure 1.2: This will have to do until a) I figure out how to do a screen capture of the video on my computer, or b) I get better at Photoshop.

Anyway, I had a real swell time. I trained all day, hopped on a plane, and jumped out of it. I jumped from about 12,000 feet, remained in freefall for about 45 seconds, then pulled the rip cord and parachuted down the remaining 3,000 feet. The best thing about the whole experience is the sensory overload that takes place during the first 20 or 30 seconds of freefall. During that time, you’re seeing the world in a way you’ve never seen it before. Even if you’ve been on a plane, it didn’t have a glass bottom – you could see out the window, sure, but you couldn’t see 360 glorious degrees of the earth yawning before you. Or rather, beneath you. It’s simply amazing. It’s so amazing, in fact, that it’s actually paralyzing. Which means you’d better come to your senses before it’s time to pull the rip cord or, ya know, you die.

Since I don’t really have the time, resources or marbles to embark upon adventure, I must adventure vicariously through Dorkipedia. I was reading the entry on skydiving when I came across the story of the craziest sumbitch that ever lived. His name is Joseph William Kittinger II, a U.S. Air Force pilot. His distinguished career is full of incredible accolades, including his record breaking manned balloon altitude record of 96,760 feet, set in 1957. As a point of reference, that 737 you took to the big Mary Kay convention in Fort Worth probably topped out around 35,000 feet. Also, it should have been diverted into the Sun, but that’s a whole other thing.

So anyway, you might think that the 96,000+ feet balloon ride was what qualified him for my coveted craziest sumbitch award, but you’d be wrong. It was the balloon ride in 1960, at a staggering and really quite chilly 102,800 feet, that solidified his craziest sumbitch status. You might be wondering where the threshold of crazy lies between 96,000 and 102,000 feet. The threshold is the point where you jump out of the fucking balloon.

Figure 1.3: Can you fucking believe this guy?

He was in freefall for 4½ minutes, reaching speeds of 614 mph (which is mach 0.9, just shy of the speed of sound) before opening his parachute, which he affectionately called “Shooty,” which I just made up, at 18,000 feet. Keep in mind that this is 6,000 feet above where I fucking jumped from. He holds the world record for highest balloon ascent, highest parachute jump, longest freefall, fastest speed by a man through the atmosphere, and craziest motherfucker there ever was. In his memoirs he notes that the pressurization unit in his right glove malfunctioned, causing his hand to swell to ridiculous proportions. (This is true.) The radiation in the upper atmosphere infused his hand with extraordinary superpowers, which he later used to bitch slap the Bolshevism out of red spies in U.S. custody, although many of them later relapsed. (This may or may not be true.)

And he went on to score unimaginable amounts of trim, and I didn’t. Which only goes to show – if you want to get laid, you’re going to have to break some records.

Having no job has been surprisingly good to me. You may well expect an intellectual giant like me to be doing really intense things with my free time – finishing my novel, reading Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, trying to get the intermix ratio just right on my particle accelerator, etc. Alas, I must disappoint yet again. In reality, I’ve been applying for a handful of jobs, gutting my bathroom, consuming unhealthy quantities of caffeine, and playing the newest Ubisoft title, Dark Messiah: Might and Magic.

I won’t go into a lengthy review. Suffice to say, everything you’ve heard about the single player mode is true: the cutscenes are stupid, the voice acting is terrible, the story is abysmally weak and predictable, and the ending is an utter copout. The multiplayer mode, however, is extraordinarily challenging, stylish, and cool.

I know it’s unfair to make generalizations like the one I’m about to make, but I don’t care, because they’re far more fun than they are unfair. Here goes: only dudes play any type of online multiplayer game. If you ever see anything wearing a skirt in a game that takes place online, you can rest assured that the player behind the character has stubble, a wang, an Adam’s apple, a catalog of Creed CDs, an opinion on the Lord of the Rings movies, or some combination of the five.

However, most fellas – barring those looking for some extremely dubious sexual thrills – play fellas in these games. These guys would rather their character look like Jar-Jar Binks than a girl. Typically, your choice of chainmail or chiffon makes little difference, as most fantasy worlds are surprisingly equal opportunity with regard to the skills and abilities afforded both boys and girls. In Dark Messiah, however, this isn’t true.

Here are the game’s five player classes, and my amateur psychiatric assessment of those who play them:

-The Warrior, who carries a big sword, the precursor to the fast car and/or .44 Magnum that the player will buy in later life;

-The Archer, for those who are too emotionally distant to really ever get close to anyone;

-The Mage, the favorite of those who enjoy running around endlessly fondling balls (of fire and lightning);

The Assassin, who can make himself invisible, the preferred character of those who are deeply ashamed of something (probably acne) and are trying to hide; and

-The Priestess, for those manly men who are completely comfortable with their sexuality, and/or pretend to be girls in internet chat rooms.

The Priestess is a comely girl in a first season Star Trek: The Next Generation Counselor Deanna Troi outfit. I seem to be the only person in the entire universe of DM:M&M players who plays the Priestess. That being the case, I have learned a two things. First, the Priestess is the single most lethal character in the whole game, and second, no one has any clue how to defend against her attacks. Consequently, I have managed to infuriate young, sexless men in dozens of countries by humiliating them in front of their virtual peers by serving them their digital asses on a platter.

Never underestimate how much joy you can derive from mildly irritating people you will never meet in a manner that is ultimately meaningless. It’s a lot more fun than it sounds.