Some Disney thing or another: A young kid goes on a life-changing journey and gets home in time for dinner. This was one of the cel-animated ones no one likes. Which one was it? I don’t remember, I was farming Warrior Creeds. The villain was more entertaining than the heroes, that’s probably not narrowing it down much. Was it Hercules? It might have been Hercules.

Loud Shooty Men: A bunch of guys scream at one another for a few minutes and then the screen was covered in explosions. It was super boring.

Transformers: The Last Knight: I remembered the name of this one but it was also indescribably boring. It was Loud Shooty Men but with lots of robots whose namesakes I have strong feelings about, but the movie itself forgot about half of its cast every few minutes to the point that I had to remind myself that Hound was in this movie at all. Also the plot hates science.

Some Marvel movie or another: I clicked on this one by accident and actually forgot to pause it when I got up to get some water. It didn’t affect the plot much. At least it wasn’t Batman v. Superman.

YouTube videos about how Sherlock is a bad series: These are movie-length, right? So they count. It was interesting.

What Are You Playing: This isn’t a movie, it’s where you are now. Obviously I’ll be farming more Warrior Creeds.

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And also I saw a monkey and another monkey and a gorilla and another kind of monkey that was little that could ride on your shoulder and a big angry puppy and what I thought was another big angry puppy but was actually a bear and then a hyena which isn’t actually a kind of puppy even though it sorta looks like a puppy and a gazelle and an antelope and a mandrill which is sort of like a monkey so I should have seen it when I saw the other monkeys but I realized I had to circle back to see the mandrill and an anteater and some ants before the anteater eated them and a rhino and a hippo and a peacock and another peacock and a peahen which the zookeeper said is different and an elephant and a giraffe and an elephant Bothering a giraffe and a yak and a buffalo and the bottom of a park bench and a centipede and a python and What Are You Playing and a baboon because I missed that kind of monkey the first time and a penguin and a fox.

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You think that you’ve gotten away at long last as you get into your car, blood oozing from the wound on your leg, but as you laugh in relief you realize your error. Yes, the narrator is inside of the car! He’s narrating your actions right now! He’s sitting right here. You’re looking back at him. He’s waving. The narrator is waving at you! He doesn’t have a weapon. In fact, the look on your face indicates that this is less terrifying and more annoying.

In a panic, you very slowly pull to the side of the road and call for the police on your cellular phone. “There’s a man in my car narrating my every action,” you say before you leave the car and take the keys. Now the narrator is trying to open the doors, but you have the child locks on! The narrator cannot breathe, it is too warm in this car! You should have rolled the windows down! Please let the narrator out to enter his answers into What Are You Playing.

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Introducing the hottest toy line to debut near SDCC (not at, we don’t have money for a booth there), it’s the Not-even-good-at-one-formers! They’re less, significantly less than meets the eye! Featuring the heroic No-knee-bots against the evil forces of the Separate-parts-bolted-together-icons!

Children and adults with the minds of particularly slow children will enjoy trying to make these toys change from their default form of A Dude With Vehicle Bits On Him to A Dude With Vehicle Bits On Him Lying On His Back And With An Unconvincing Mask On! Both forms are poorly painted and feature bad paint applications, shoddy stickers, and gimmicks that snap off in your hand!

Collect all of your favorite characters like Optional Pilsner, Bormblebrew, Sideswept, Mortgage-tron, Storescam, and The Tape Deck Dude! Let us know how you’re looking forward to it down in the comments, or just let us know What Are You Playing if you’d rather.

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So as you know, last week we managed to direly offend the God of Rabbits, which is remarkable partly insofar as I had expected us to offend more deities. This is actually better than we could have hoped for. Still, the rabbit god was very mad, and he wrought a mighty curse upon us.

Except, well… it was a curse for rabbits. So, for example, the curse to have predators never fail to see you when you’re still? That part was really kind of a wash, my cats saw me then anyway. I’m not sure if the part of the curse wherein I will never enjoy the taste of clover is even working or not. And since I don’t live in a burrow, having a damp burrow doesn’t appear to have actually happened.

In short, offending the God of Rabbits has worked out pretty much fine. Let us know how any deific curses you’re working through are going in this week’s What Are You Playing, or just let us know what you’re up to for the weekend.

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New prison rule #1: No one is to use “shiv” as a verb any more. Last month there was a big debate over whether or not someone was shivved or just stabbed and we want to avoid that in the future.

New prison rule #2: Just because you’re in jail doesn’t mean that you can’t display a standard of culture, so we are instituting a new mandatory ballroom dancing class for all prisoners running for two hours. We’ll have a rotating schedule for that.

New prison rule #3: Please consult with the guards before enacting your escape plan. We’re not going to stop you, we just want to be able to time dramatically running down the hall at the last moment so that everyone is very excited.

New prison rule #4: The ballroom dancing class has been cancelled. Yeah, we realized that was never a good idea. Finishing school visiting hours are still on.

New prison rule #5: Let the guards know What Are You Playing and whether or not they will need to break up any arguments over cigarettes which may result from it. We don’t want any more arguments over cigarettes. You shouldn’t be smoking anyhow, it’s bad for you.

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11:43 (User NVT): Team on-site and beginning inspection.
11:44 (User JPE): Taking half of the team for upper floors.
11:44 (User TTB): JPE is reminded that there are three of us and she does not “count twice.”
11:50 (User JPE): Upper floor appear to be infested with some sort of beetle.
11:58 (User NVT): Basement appears fine. Aside from the flooding. Attempting to identify source of water.
12:03 (User TTB): Ground floor seems fine thus far.
12:12 (User JPE): Upper floor definitely infested with beetles. Curious to see how the beetles react to fire.
12:14 (User JPE): Beetles do not like fire. Neither does exposed wood.
12:21 (User NVT): Cause of flooding appears to be the enormous faucet dispensing water into the basement.
12:30 (User TTB): Ground floor is now flooding. What the hey, NVT?
12:31 (User NVT): All I did was turn off the faucet flooding the basement.
12:31 (User TTB): Found the source of the water that had been shunted into the basement, there appears to be a portal to the middle of the ocean in a parallel world.
12:33 (User JPE): Upper floor appears to be infested with some sort of fire.
12:24 (User TTB): If you think about it, the upper floors and lower floors should cancel each other out.
12:27 (User NVT): Team departing house to answer What Are You Playing and produce a clean bill of health for the premises.

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So actual dates are stupid and gross, right? Not necessarily! You can trick your date into having a great experience when the whole night just consists of you sitting in your car for four hours! Here’s how to probably make that happen, why not, it could happen.

• Remove any vermin from the car before the date. Look, if you’re just driving to the restaurant, she might not notice the cockroach fighting with the rat in the backseat. But if you’re in the car the whole time? Ask the roach and rat to leave until the date is over. Drop them off someplace nice.
• Say “this is nice, huh?” every fifteen minutes. Your date will not think it’s remotely nice, but contradicting you would be rude.
• Have a minimum of two bottles of Snapple in the glove compartment. You don’t want your date to think you’re just avoiding actually going somewhere, so having a full cooler is right out. A couple of beverages, though, help speed the time away.
• You can get away with making three “wrong turns” that result in 10-minute long detours. Any more than that and your date will suspect you intend to drive toward the nearest pier, jam down the accelerator, and then leap from the moving vehicle whilst shouting the name of a professional wrestler.
• Do not drive toward the nearest pier, jam down the accelerator, and then leap from the moving vehicle whilst shouting the name of a professional wrestler. Doing this can ruin your chances of getting an OBE.

If this process worked, please don’t tell us about it in What Are You Playing. Just let us know what you’re playing this weekend. That’s what the name means.

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Sometimes, our work chat is mature and productive and focuses on useful things. Sometimes I just use it to come up with creative burns. These are all things I typed on Friday and they’re funny. Names omitted, though! Guess the person.

He looks like someone stretched a human skin on an animatronic frog’s body from a children’s musical show. At six years old, his mother sent out invitations to birthday gatherings because he was never going to a party. He has a great personality in the same way that a blank notebook has a great plot. He looks how ordering a two-liter soda for yourself feels. If he were Native American, his spirit animal would be an empty manilla folder. In high school his list of “character concepts” for D&D looked like his algebra homework.

Have fun speculating or just reusing these in the comments of What Are You Playing! Or just let us know what you’re playing this weekend. That’s fun too.

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We sent this message back in time from 2056 in the hopes that someone could avert this horrifying future. E3 grew so slowly almost no one realized what was happening until it was too late. E3 2049 started in June of 2050, because E3 2048 lasted the whole of that year and well into 2049. It’s been raging for six years now. Six years of unplayable demos, promises about titles that will radically change before launch, plastic smiles on presenters, and hideous, unconscionable attempts at being hip.

And Nintendo is still promising things that aren’t going to actually come out for half a decade. Their fans insist that they’re doing well.

You can change this now. You can stop the spread of E3 as it keeps covering more days. Stop it before we are all lost in this barren wasteland. Also, make sure to take part in What Are You Playing, because that’s how the aliens decide who get the laser eyes. Yeah, that’s 2033. That year was pretty wild anyway.

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If the dragon has four legs and two wings, it’s a dragon. If it has two rear legs and wings instead of front legs, it’s a wyvern. If it has four legs and no wings, but a long curving body, it’s an Eastern dragon. If it has no wings and no legs, it’s a wyrm. If it has four legs and four wings, it’s two wyverns glued together frantically struggling to separate themselves. If it has four wings and no legs, it’s a boss in a Final Fantasy game. Probably. There has to be something like that in one game or another, right?

If it has four legs, no wings, and a normal body, it’s a drake. If it has two legs, two arms, and was born in Canada in 1986, it’s Drake. If it has four wheels and is made of metal, it’s a car. If it has four legs and two wings and converts into a robot, it’s Megatron. If it has four wings where legs should be and two legs where wings should be, it is a crime against nature. If it has lots of heads it is a hydra. If it has no head it is a corpse. If it is What Are You Playing you should tell us your weekend plans in the comments.

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Let me tell you something, you young’uns, everything you do these days is different from how it was when I was your age. Based on my hazy half-remembered childhood from some 70 years ago, keeping in mind that my memory is doubtful in its accuracy because I argued with you for a quarter of an hour that the host of Jeopardy was named Alan Trebek, everything was better when the only place you could play as a kid after school let out was the city dump. Back in my day, the dump was dangerous! And we liked it!

There were old fridges that could lock you inside if you climbed into them and some of your friends shut the door! There were dogs, I assumed! There were… did I mention the fridges? There were fridges! But these days, you all sanitize your dumps by encouraging children not to play in them! What with your video games and your rock music and your video games about rock music and your What Are You Playing and your rock music about video games and your Internet comics about rock music…

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