Fat head.

I had a fat head. For awhile. The one up there. Did I notice that I had a fat head? Not really. People every once in awhile would make some comment about me. Somebody would mention something. I didn't really notice it. But then, last year on my birthday, in an act of kindness, Liz bought me a slice of cake for my birthday. In the cake, she put a picture of my face on a stick as a joke. The picture up there. I truly hated this picture. It was a picture of me, at some damn point in time over the last few years, with a god damn salt filled head. Just a giant head. In a cake! This was horrifying to me. 

'Happy birthday!'

'Ah my GOD. THAT'S what I look like? And THAT'S what I'll continue to look like if I eat this cake?'

'Ha...ppy Birt....hda...y to....'

'No! I look like a slug in pants!' *Throws cake against wall*

'Why do you always ruin things?! Why?!"

"It's my birthday! I'll ruin it if I want to! Don't make me yell, it makes my stupid fat head jiggle!"

That picture is and has been beside me at this desk for one year. I look at it every once in awhile and think, 'Jesus. No chocolate today.'

Chocolate actually was never the issue. You know what I was addicted to? The piece of food that I probably had two pounds of a week for about four straight years? Wings. Ol' dirty wings. I LOVED wings. The sauce, the chicken, the damn blue cheese. Loved it all. I would eat these for dinner. Dinner! On just about every menu they are an appetizer. People decided years ago that these were BEFORE a meal. Maybe to split with a couple of people. But for me? No way.

'Excuse me. Would I be able to just get some bread. Like two orders of bread.'

'Of course. And for dinner?'

'Wow. Did you not hear me you? Maybe you'll hear this, garCON. BREAD. THAT is the dinner. The dinner... is.... BREAD. LOTTA balls on the french.' 

Wings were my deal. When I was about ten, my mom would take me and my brother to this bar. This bar was in a mall, and directly outside the bar was an arcade. When arcades were a thing, sick, and every game was fifty cents max. My brother and I would play games in here forever. It was great. In the bar though, we would eat chicken wings. Why? They were ten cents. Ten cents a wing! At a time when wings were a thing, but people looked way down on them. 

'We're gonna toss these in the trash. Cool?'

'I'll give you ten cents for one of them.'

'You think other people would?'

'I don't know. Can I have the one that I'm willing to pay for?'

Would eat like twenty wings here. This went on here for years. Then in high school, I used to go to this bar that had karaoke, and a wing night. Wings by this time had gone up a bit in price. This wing night was thirty cents a wing. I remembered being angry about that. 

'Thirty cents? Back in my day, you could get THREE wings for that?!'

'Nathan, you're 18.'

'Yeah, and BACK IN THE DAY, when I wasn't PAYING for them, they were cheaper.'

There was also a time years ago when I was addicted to Lime Coke and Dill Pickle chips. Loved these. One Friday after work, I bought three big bags of Dill Pickle chips and a two litre bottle of the Lime. Went home, and played Midnight Club Three: Dub Edition. Crushed two bags of those chips that night, and like half the bottle. Just stupid. The last couple years, I didn't notice too much. My last day job five years ago, I bought a can of pringles on pretty much every lunch break, and eat the whole thing! 

'Huh. Once you pop you can't stop, right Nathan?'

'What?'

'You're eating a can of pringles.'

'And? So what?'

'The chips are gone. You're just eating the can.'

'... Jesus, CHRIST. Gotta get my stuff together.'

Seeing this picture of myself in a cake is what made me get serious. That gross head, to me, made me say no cake is worth this. My birthday is next month, and I'm going near cake. Unless it's carrot. And all the cake stuff has been taken out and it's just a carrot on a plate. 

'Happy birthday, Nathan! Here is a piece of ca.....'

'Carrot? You're about to say carrot, right!? I swear to GOD if I see cake I'm flipping this place!'

'Why do you always have to ruin things?'

'It's my birthday! I'll ruin this damn thing if I wa... Oh, it's not cake. It is a carrot.'

'Ha...ppy Birth....day.... to.... oh god.'

'Don't cry. It'll make me want to eat cake and get a fat head again.'

*Note* I'm not an animal. The above will not happen. And I'll probably have cake on my birthday. But, that fat head? I CANnot again. This is my own thing. You do whatever you want. 

Twitter @nathanmacintosh

Reasons Kanye Shouldn't perform in Canada-Ye

For the closing ceremonies of the Pan Am games in the city of Toronto, some brilliant human being had the great idea to book Kanye West. To perform. Not to just show up and say 'hello', he would ACTUALLY perform some of his huge songs to people who have heard of him. He would put on a huge show in front of people who have heard his music at parties and had a great time. That's disgusting. People DO NOT want this man to perform at the closing ceremonies, and I am one of them. Why should he perform there? Who made that ridiculous call!? Just. Terrible. Here are some reasons that Kanye should NOT close the Pan Am games. 

The Canadian Dollar Is LOW

Kanye West is a massive star. He has been making great music and giving us great entertainment for over ten years. He is paid very highly for this. Now he's supposed to make CANADIAN money? That's gross. NO ONE should be paid in Canadian money. No one. Not sure what he charges for shows, but let's say it's $300,000. He'll be paid that in CANADIAN, and when he goes home to his super mansion, that will be worth $231,000 American. $231,000! He'll go to buy his daughter a $70,000 dollar necklace, and realize that he doesn't have it. If he performs in Canada, he will be underpaid. Do we want ANYone to be underpaid? No. No we do not. 

He Doesn't Need To Go To Cold Places Anymore.

The man fought through winters in his life. Chicago is NOT messing around at all when it comes to winter. Chicago gets so cold that it actually freezes the entire state of Illinois, and makes Missouri cold. Canada is cold. Right now? Not cold, but MAN, Kanye doesn't need this. He could be on a beach, still thawing out from the winter of '96 in Chicago. Don't make this man, perform in a city of cold winters and people. Just. Don't. It's not fair. If anything, have him close out the PanAm games, but take them to Florida, or South America, or the Sun. Don't stay in cold Canada. Don't do this. 

He'll Have To Cross The Border

If Kanye closes the Pan Am games, he'll have to cross the Canadian border. THAT thing, is not the best. The border guards will look Kanye in the face, and say, 'What are you coming to Canada for?' And he will have to say, 'I'm Kanye West.' And they will say, 'Yes. But what brings you to Canada?' And he will have to say, 'I'm Kanye West. I rap. I do shows. I am Kanye West.' And they will say, 'Yes, we know all this, but what are you DOING here?' The Kanye will have to look in their eyes, look down in disbelief, think about how big you have to get before people understand why you travel, and then take a sip of espresso. Don't put this man through this. He doesn't need a border guard pushing him around. 

Toronto Can't Offer Kanye Anything To Do

'Kanye, welcome to our city! Notice that people will give you bad looks for no reason at all. But hey, no worries! We have plenty of things for you to do. You can go to Dundas Square! It's like Times Square but worse. You can go to High Park! It's a... park... thing, way over there. You can go to the CN Tower. Ooooooo. It's tall, man! We have Queen St, where you can buy clothes that you wore five years ago but only now do people here think they're cool. Yonge st! It's the longest street in the world! The downtown part of it is pretty cool, there's a big MALL on it, and if you keep walking just a little bit, it turns into a weird porn store fiasco where you can get clothes for strippers and prostitutes. But THEN, it gets good again! And then bad again. It's really long!'

Kanye can go to the Canary Islands and have margaritas shipped in from the Virgin Islands. He doesn't need to be at these PanAm games. 

If Kanye Is Performing In Canada For People That Don't Even Want Him, He Won't Be Making New Music

While Kanye is in Toronto, performing to people who are yelling, 'I signed a petition for you not to be here! I wanted Rush!', he could be in the studio making more of the great music that he makes.  He could be in a studio making music for people who actually want it, not performing to people from the woods who would rather here Kim Mitchell. Might as well go to the studio, Kanye. Nobody yells at you to leave, and people who like what you do might cry. 

Twitter @nathanmacintosh

Video Game Glitches.

I have played video games since I was a kid. A very little kid. I remember getting a Nintendo Entertainment System (just like saying the whole thing) when I was five. I LOVED playing Mario Bros. As a kid I'd move the controller to jump with Mario. My brother and I would leave the system paused for HOURS when our mom would say that we had to go out. Just. HOURS. Come back, SOMEtimes the game would still be working, other times the screen would just be blinking. Other times it would be frozen.

'Come on, Mario, you stupid piece of garbage! How did you freeze!? This is 1990! Get it together!'

Video games of the past had glitches for sure. Some walls weren't really there. You could jump off a cliff, not die and just be stuck in a pit. I remember once in WWF Raw for Super Nintendo Entertainment System (just keeping that up), I beat the HELL out of Yokozuna. He didn't get up. Just DIED in the corner. Match couldn't end. 

"My GAWD, Kang! Yokozuna is DEAD. Somebody stop the damn match!"

"We can't! The game didn't prepare for this! He will have to restart the system!"

".... My. GAWD. We'll have to restart Yoko's heart! Somebody, PLEASE, REstart the damn SYSTEM!"

Video games now are all on-line, which means that you are always connected to the company. In the past when you bought a game, that was it. It was yours. They could not tamper with it anymore. Now, they can add things to games whenever. You wake up, turn a game on, and those red dragons are now green, there's a bigger sword available, or the game. HAS A. GLIIIITTTCH. 

'Woa! This game worked yesterday. Now, the pitchers can't throw fastballs. That is quite interesting.'

If a company wants, they can alter the game in bad ways. And I'm positive they do. I still have a PS3. Yes, I know some people hear that and want to puke.

'But, *burp*, that thing, *agh*, came out in, *belch*, 2006! OH MY GOD. I can't. Where's your bathroo.... *throws up everywhere*'

I'd like to remind people that the PS3 still works. You can still use it. It's not at the bottom of a pyramid that needs a map to get to.

'The PS3 pyramid? That's been under sand for thousands of years now. The only way in, is to find the talisman and point it directly at the heart of a lion.'

'Where do we find the talisman?'

'Last I heard, it was inside a lion that ate the man who pointed it at it's heart. That lion died. Now? Who. Knows.'

The PS4 is out now, yes. Has been. I'm at some point going to get it. But the video game industry would like to that to happen sooner. I think this, because I swear as time goes on, the industry adds glitches to it's older games so that you move on. In NHL14 right now, (yes, again, I KNOW how old it is. Try not to puke!) there are glitches. It happened with NHL13 and 12 as well. And I swear they do this, so that you will go, 'Ah man. This game SUCKS now. I have to get the new one.' It's weird. Instead of a game being made to stand alone, the way that games were previously, you are constantly being pushed to buy upgrades, new games, and not spend too much time with these older games.

'Move on, losers! We made this game for you to like and play for ONE year. Do you hear us? ONE. The NEW one is out. BUY IT. We have moved on from this one. Can't YOU?'

Years ago if companies wanted to disrupt game they had put out, they would have to come to your house and break it in half. Since we're always connected, not needed anymore. Imagine if car companies did that? New car comes out and Toyota just cuts the breaks on your Corolla.

'Alright, kids. We're heading to the zoo, buckle up an...... OH GOD! The gas pedal has jammed down! I know I should have gotten the 2016 version, this one's almost a year old!'

'Daddy! Are we going to be okay?!'

'No! We're losers who aren't keeping up! JE-SUS!'

The video game industry seemed at one point that it wanted to make good, challenging games. It made games for people who truly like video games. Now, it seems they are just trying to make money off of EVERY little thing. The industry used to make it possible for you to unlock things in the game. 

"If you beat this game on hard, we'll give you something. Why? Because man, it's going to be hard to do. Also, thanks for buying the game. We know you didn't have to. It, is... appreciated."

It is actually IMPOSSIBLE to unlock things in most games now. Physically, game-ysically impossible. Instead, you buy the unlock able content that you used to have to earn. BUY IT. What happens when you beat the game on hard? Not a damn thing. What happens if you beat a level or something under a certain time limit? You just did that thing. That's all, dirt bag. You want that character? You want that new thing? Crack that wallet, grease pig. Thanks for buying the game, and for continuing to buy anything else we want you to buy. Just disgusting. 

"Hey, if I work hard in this class, will I get an A?"

"Nope. I don't give a damn how hard you work. But hey, you give me a couple bucks, I'll give you an A."

"What?"

"Oh yeah, daddy. Money moves things. Twenty bucks, you get that A!"

I'll get the PS4, but I'll never forget what you've decided to do, video games. I gave you a lot of my life, AND money for that matter. What you are doing, is not cool. Tampering with games to make more money is hilarious, yes, but disgusting as well. 

Twitter @nathanmacintosh