Welcome to SHINFO WEEK 2K12. Tyler Bules hates frozen yogurt.

Greetings, readers, and welcome to my newest venture into the hallowed realm of fantastic ideas that will get my blog tons of views and credibility: "SHINFO Week!"

Quick lesson: the term "Shinfo" is a shortened combination of "shitty" and "info," coined by members of the band Every Time I Die to describe information that is neither helpful nor interesting.

As such, I have dubbed this week "Shinfo Week" and will be celebrating it by giving ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKS about having a target audience.  I will be posting news stories--of which I could hardly contrive for people to actually care about in the slighest--that I've uncovered and lovingly detailed with every journalistic fiber of my being.  

Are you ready to join in this incredibly fruitless journey with me, friend?  Alright, let's go.

FIRST STOP:

Tyler Bules is a second-year engineering student at the University of Cincinnati.  (NASTY NATI, AMIRIGHT?) 

Isn't he precious?

And boy, does he have a veritable treasure trove of juicy information about himself to share with us.  Below is a transcript from when I sat down with him earlier last week.

Social experiment time! Drawing cats vs. penises.

Have you ever wondered at the complex inner machinations of a college student's mind?  Have you ever wondered at said machinations and realized that they're pretty derpy as far as humans go?

Have you ever wondered what would happen if, given an optional prompt, how many people would draw a picture of a cat versus a picture of a penis on a whiteboard in a public setting?

Well, here's the social experiment that's JUST FOR YOU!  

The setting:  The hallway in my dorm which, as far as OU dorms go, is pretty nice and only admits sophomores or above.  

The tools: THE PEOPLE INVOLVED LOL.  Just kidding.  The dry erase board on the front of my door and a purple marker made readily available.  (The door, I should note, is right by a major exit from the floor that I live on, meaning it's got plenty of traffic going by it.)

The prompt:  "Social experiment time!  Every time you walk by this, draw either a cat or a dick." 

The "experiment" (I shouldn't really call it that because it's too stupid) was set to run for five days, the board being wiped at around midnight every night to allow room for the next day's shenanigans. 

See pictures and commentary of the results below the cut.

Note:  Pictures involving cat dongs, dongs that look like cats, cats that are made out of dongs, or anything else were tallied as both a cat and a penis.  DEALWITHIT.

Warning:  pictured below are stupid, harmless drawings of cats and phallic objects.  If you have any objection to either:  1) why are you reading this blog?  2) grow a friggin' sense of humor, NERD.  

"Bastion:" a ruined world, a kickass narrator and a great game.

“Proper stories are supposed to start at the beginning.... ain't so simple with this one.  Now here's a kid whose whole world got all twisted, leaving him stranded on a rock in the sky.”--Rucks, Bastion

Supergiant Games' Bastion is one of the best games I've played all year.

Since we're fast approaching the end of the year, I've been thinking back on my year spent through playing games.  There are plenty of fantastic games that I've had the privilege to play that stick out in my memory:  Portal 2, Pokemon Black, Skyrim, Dark Souls, Skyward Sword and many more.  But one of the most special to me has also been the one that I most recently finished: Bastion.

Bastion is an action-adventure game/RPG that came out earlier this year, though I didn't give myself the chance to play it until recently when it was on SUPER SALE on Steam, that most wondrous online platform of all platforms.

UPDATED 12/29/2011: MERRY CATMAS, HALF-LIFE 3 WON'T COME IF YOU'RE GOOD OR NOT

EDITS TIME, most of the rumors in this original post have been proven to be false.  Therefore, it is now a parody of itself.  Everything in bold and red below will be edits that I added after the fact.  ENJOY.

Just a quick update here on this Christmas night:

1.  Merry Christmas from all of us here at "Quest for Cats!"  (which means Merry Christmas from just me).
2.  Half-Life 3 is most likely NOT coming out sometime, hopefully next year.

Pukesgiving: obligatory picture blog of what I'm thankful for

To those that were annoyed by the whininess of my last post, I apologize.  ZEES post, however, is the yang to the last post's yin.  The catharsis that was badly needed.  The hymns of Thanksgiving in Psalms of the Hebrew bible to the Lamentations of the past (I'm not religious, but the Old Testament is badass).

Here is a list of some people and things that I really need or want to give thanks to, without whom and which I definitely would either not be here this day, or otherwise would be an entirely different or entirely douchier person.

1.  My mom.

Idn't she precious?  Ignore that weird fucker to the left.

My mom is the epitome of the term "tough old bird,"(just like her mom and my grandma Peggy, who deserves special mention here too because she's fucking awesome and crazy) and will continue to be such as life continually hands her bullshit and she throws it back in its face as much as possible.  She's gone through a lot of awful things in her life, including the events of this last year, but through it all she's kept her humor and an insane amount of compassion.

She's absolutely wonderful and the most supportive, accepting and loving person I've ever met even despite being jaded by the shit she's had to deal with.

I know I don't say it enough, mom, (if you're reading this, which I'm sure you will at some point) but I love you.  And I know I'm definitely not the best son in the world a lot of the time, and you deserve a lot more respect than you get, and so I'm sorry, too.

Thanks, mom.  You are the best.

Bitterness, melancholy and family trips.

...ohhh gawd.

Family trips are always a moderately frustrating thing for my family, mostly because we have to deal with living with each other in a vacuum for an extended period of time with no escape, especially when we're cramped in my crazy grandma Peggy's tiny trailer in depressing-ass Marion, Indiana.  Also, we're all (specifically my mom and my brother) incredibly stubborn.  Of course, though, this is nothing new.  From the dawn of time man has gotten stircrazy when in close confines with the rest of his/her family (pic above very related).

Normally, all of this is manageable.  But not this year.  As a result of a number of pretty awful circumstances this year there's one less person celebrating with us, and we're all the worse for what happened.

The amount of bitterness between all of us --especially during the holidays after the baggage of the rest of the depressing events of the last year/years--was palpable as we piled into the car after several unbearable screaming matches and almost leaving without my brother.

The bearded muse, day 5: A chronicle of No Shave November and NaNaWriMo

So I'm doing No Shave November, and I'm also attempting to do National Novel Writing Month at the same time.  Basically, this means I'm gonna be fucking nuts by the end of this month. 

Not actually, because my writing worth ethic is terrible and I'm gonna have nowhere near the huge amount of work that NaNaWriMo requires, but I decided to at least have some sort of writing piece ready every five days of this month along with a picture of the progress of my lack of shaving

Suffice it to say, the writing below is just a short story, but go ahead and take a look!  I pretty much did it all last night from like 4-6am, but whatever.

So without any further ado or bullshittin', here's a picture of the minor facial growth so far and the first thing I've written all month.  

Yarp.  Pic by my awesome friend Evan Chwalek, whose asskickin' photos can be found here and  here.