Seems Legit

So I was derping about on the Xbox Live Marketplace the other night, when I nearly got conned by a cunning and wily trickster:

Oh-ho! I'm not falling for that one! Only Nigerian finance ministers have the savvy and capital to make such audacious financial claims!

What game was this for, you ask? Surely, it must be some truly mind bending, life altering, stunning epic of a game to warrant such a ludicrous price tag?

Actually it was Flo's Diner Dash.

This is Flo. Source.

Wait, no, this game wasn't for me. It's something Mrs. Cranface was interested in. But as wonderful as she is (Mrs. Cranface, not Flo) I am not spending 4.2 cranzillion Microsoft credits on this game.

And besides, 'waiter simulation' is stretching the truth a little. In fact, there is no way Flo should be smiling the way she is. The game essentially puts you in control of our overworked and underpaid heroine Flo, as she rushes around seating diners, taking their orders, bringing their food and clearing away their mess. Diners who, after a mere microsecond of waiting, bang their fists on the tables in anger at such appalling service. These diners are human beings, not mayfly, they do not have to eat, fuck and birth babies all in a day just to ensure their very survival.

Poor Flo is the only one serving these impatient arseholes, who are tighter with their tips than Scrooge during a recession and her main reward for earning any money is the opportunity to add more tables to the diner - thus increasing her never ending cycle of dystopian servitude. Show this game to a Communist and he'll be hurling his copy of the Manifesto straight at the TV.

'Before playing Flo's Diner Dash, I only had a small moustache and hunted peasants for sport'. Source.

If this slave-labour simulator is what the youth are playing today, what does this mean for the future of gaming?

The 12 isn't how old you need to be to play the game, it's the average age of the work force.

I would imagine Victorian Workforce Simulator would make full use of the Kinect's capabilities. Perhaps there would be a mini-game where you have to catch gruel in your small wooden bowl before dinner time is over. Not only that, but there would be two modes, Simulation and Career. In Simulation, you train and develop a team of starved, cheap labour, until you were running the most cruelly efficient workhouse in all of foggy London town. You could have Barney Buggerthumb as a level 2 shoe shine, and Maude Millertuggins as a level 3 matchstick girl. In Career mode, you take on the role of one these Dickensian raggamuffins, working your way up the ranks from measly chimney sweep, to a world renowned picker of pockets. But be careful of the old bill, if they find you, they'll be bashing your noggin in, and it's off to the workhouse for you, young Timothy Bumblesniff!

What I like most about the front cover of Victorian Workforce Simulator is that one of the pictures looks like a man crawling up a bum hole. 

Award-face

Boom! I got one of them there award thingies from Shockgrubz:

Shockgrubz keeps two very good blogs - The Randoom blog and Newstuff. If you don't already, I suggest you ingest his words with your eyes.

Now the rules of the Liebster award stipulate that I need to nominate 5 others who are also deserving of this badge of honour, but in true Cranface tradition, I will completely disregard the rules of the award game and go my own way like the crazy renegade I am. Without further ado, I present The Second Totally Made Up Cranface Blog Award Extravaganza. Three awards for three different blogs, and the winners are:

1) Ashley and Stephanie at A Tale of Two Continents, who receive the prestigious 'Unlike Cranface's Hair, Your Blog is Awesome' award for having a blog that is indeed the polar opposite of my rag-tag hair do and is every bit as awesome as my award implies:

What an accolade!

2) The second award of the day goes to Steve at From the Mind of a Mad Man. For all his brilliant insanity, he earns himself the dubiously named but extremely prestigious 'Packed Tight With Great Content - Like Wearing Cycling Tights' award. Because his blog, just like wearing cycling tights, is packed so tightly with great content, that whatever position you stand in, it's fit to bursting with win.

Because when the content is this good, it would be a travesty not to show it off.

3) The final award of the day goes to JOutlaw for his Let's Just Rant blog, where he rants about various topics with a wonderful level of eloquence and charm. Because he has perfected the art of the rant with such a gentlemanly swagger, it seemed only fitting that he receive the 'The Indubitable Blogging Gentleman' award.

JOutlaw - the main attraction at any dinner party.

So there we go, another crudely composed lovely set of awards created by own infantile brilliant mind. The recipients are free to do what they like with their award - display it with pride on your blog, or just back away slowly, chuckling nervously and making excuses about a very important appointment they have right at this very moment.

So my great grandmother was 100 yesterday...

For serious.

Unbelievably awesome.

Let's consider this for a moment. My nan was born the same year the Titanic sank. She was born when movies were silent, you could buy a car in any colour as long as it was black and great empires spanned the globe. Had she been old enough, my nan wouldn't have been allowed to vote. She was born in a Britain that used an utterly different type of currency to what we're used to, consisting not only of pennies and pounds, but farthings, shillings, and crowns. If you wanted to make a phone call, you might do so on something like this. Nobody knew what a world war was, let alone that there might be two of them. If you wanted to visit the other side of the world, you'd need to take a boat. If you wanted to write to somebody on the other side of the world, your letter would probably be on that same boat. You might be lucky if you got a reply within a few weeks, if not months. 

Instead of trash:

Jersey Shore - nobody in 1912 could have imagined such horror.  Source.

You had class:

Windsor Shore - following a morning of croquet, the reality stars then retired for a lunch of tea and crumpets.  Source.

There was no internet, there were no mobile phones, instead you had a global telegram network. Tweet, blog and frape weren't words, they were noises. 

On Tuesday, she joined the estimated 455,000 (according to Wikipedia) other centenarians around the globe.

One of the great things about having a centennial nan is that she is a treasure trove of tales, some of them epic and unimaginable to my age group, some small and familiar. Here are just a few:

We all call her nana Lou, but when she was little she was called Louisa. The boys would tease her and sing 'Louisa Louisa, we're going to hug and squeeze her', so she started calling herself Louise. But the boys just sang 'Louise, Louise, we're still gonna give you a hug and squeeze!' What you have to appreciate, is that prior to the 1960's, talk like this was just as outrageous as showing your bum to the queen.

During World War 2, her children were evacuated to Derby (find a map - it's a long way from Southend), and like countless other parents, she suffered the heartache and insecurity that it brought. Luckily, she was able to visit her children throughout the war - this sadly wasn't always the case for evacuee children.

While the war was ongoing, she worked in a restaurant by day, while at night, she was enlisted as an ARP (Air Raid Precaution) officer, ensuring everybody adhered to total blackouts so that they wouldn't be targeted for German bombing raids. My great granddad also worked as an ARP. One of the stories my nan told involved him going to a house where a bomb had fallen. It hadn't exploded, but instead fell through the roof and wedged itself into the stairs. My granddad arrived to find the owner of the house trying to remove the bomb - by hitting it with a hammer. My nan told me about another occasion when, during an air raid, she was found hiding under a bed by my great granddad, with her feet sticking out the end. Despite the planes flying overhead and everything going on around them, they were able to see the funny side of moments like that.

My dad told me once, years later when the war was over, that they were all out in my great granddads Mini, with my nan sat in the back seat behind my granddad who was driving. The accelerator got stuck and my nan thought my granddad was just driving too fast, so she started whacking him round the back of the head and told him off for his 'reckless' driving. Luckily that situation came to a safe end and is a brilliant example of real life slapstick comedy.

So here's to you nan - a truly remarkable achievement, and I'm honoured to have such an awesome great grandmother!

A Gentleman's Stand-off

A Brief History of Cranface: Part Three - The Arrival

Across the cosmos sped the spacetube carrying Cran-el and his faithful donk-servant Archibald. For how long they travelled, they couldn't tell, because the cryogenic sleeping system was engaged. Archibald was dreaming about carrots, or whatever it is donkeys like to eat. In this frozen, sleepy state they travelled, until eventually, they chanced upon a small, blue planet in a strange and unknown solar system.

Now, what sci fi has taught us about cryogenic sleeping systems is this:

a) they will fail and kill everybody on board;
b) they will partially fail and only one person will survive;
c) they will work perfectly but, during the time the crew spent frozen in a long term sleep, something quite nasty has snuck on board.

Luckily for Cran-el and Archibald, none of these things happened. Through some mystery of Cranderian space science, the cryogenic sleep system was disengaged, and the precious cargo on board the spacetube rose from their age-long slumber. Disorientated and sluggish, there was little Archibald could do as the ship plummeted towards this planet. Plus, he only had hooves and no opposable thumbs. These things weren't really designed for humanoid donkeys. Out of control and facing real disaster, the ship rocketed towards a tiny island on this small, blue planet, and split into two.

Separated, Cran-el and Archibald crash landed on different sides of Britain.

Somewhere in Cornwall, a field of donkeys were enjoying yet another day spent chewing grass and generally moping around. They were less than impressed to find that there day was about to be interrupted by the sudden and unwanted arrival of a heap of metal from space. This annoyance turned into surprise, however, when out of the wreckage stepped a donkey, like them - albeit he was standing upright on his hind legs, wearing a tux and smoking a pipe. After a few minutes of mutual bewilderment, the head of the donkeys trotted forward:

So Archibald learned the ways of these strange, foreign donkeys, and cast off his pipe, his vino, his hat, his bow tie and all his fancy attire, and joined them in their simple, socialist donkey commune. However, he vowed that one day, once he had learnt all he could about the world from these simple, yet wise creatures, that he would find Cran-el. He just hoped that in the meantime, the last remaining member of the Cranderian royal family was safe.

But what of the evil Lord Phobe? Well, he too had followed Archibald and Cran-el to this small, blue planet, on the other side of the cosmos. He knew that they had both crashed somewhere on this tiny island called Britain, and to find them and have his revenge, he would need to integrate himself into their society, become one of them, and use this as cover to carry out his dastardly plan. Perhaps, once the deed was done, he would make himself Lord of this planet, now that Crandera was gone.

He studied their ways and took on the form of a common sub species of human that he felt a familiarity with, that of the right wing taxi driver. However, his disguise needed work, and there were a few scary moments when he thought he might be discovered as 'not of this world':

But he soon perfected his role, and bided his time until he knew the whereabouts of last remaining Cranderian, Cran-el.

And what of Cran-el? He was discovered by a young married couple, who, unsure what to do with this strange baby from space, took him home for safety. 'Why, look' they remarked, 'he has a cran for a face. We shall call him, Cranface...'

Disclaimer: There are some parts of this story that, while surprising, are in fact fictional. This isn't meant to be taken as some kind of metaphor for my adoption, it's a nonsense story for the purposes of nonsense only. My parents are wholly responsible for creating me. Thanks parents!

A Brief History of Cranface: Part Two - The Beginning

Far across the universe, over countless millions of light years, in a galaxy not unlike our own, there is a planet, a planet full of natural wonder and beauty, of wisdom and learning, compassion and peace. To those who lived there, it was paradise, and its inhabitants were ever grateful to call it home.

In the galaxy next door to that used to be the planet of Crandera, home of the Thundercrans.

The Thundercrans were a race of bounders and scallywags, thieves and rogues, cheats and liars. Their leader was the dastardly Lord Phobe, homophobe, xenophobe and misogynist.

But it wasn't always like this.

Once upon a time, Crandera, for the most part, was a happy planet, and people like Lord Phobe were frowned upon. In his lowly, early days, he had worked as a ferryman, taking passengers along the vast River of Cran that divided the single Cranderian continent in two. During these times, he would regale his passengers with his views on those he perceived to be lesser breeds of Thundercran, male Thundercrans who liked to do the sausage tango with other male Thundercrans, and female Thundercrans, who he said should never be allowed to man the oars of a Cranderian water vessel.

Somehow, through the twisty, turny, twiddling talons of time, Crandera and its people fell on hard times, and the continuing devaluation of the Cranderian Space Zloty soon led to planet-wide civil unrest. Through a series of unlikely and improbable events, this simple ferryman soon rose to be the leader of the Right Wing Bastard Crew and conned the population into supporting the overthrow and execution of the Cranderan royal family.

And thus he rose to power and named himself Lord Phobe, and the planet of Crandera fell into disrepute.

But not all was lost! For the last remaining member of the Cranderan royal family was smuggled to safety, by his loyal and faithful servant, Archibald:

The name of the last surviving member of the royal line was Cran-el, full title Cran-el Diablo von Tallywhacker Pontificate Cabbage Wrangler Ernest Kipling Alakazam Mindy Tickletits Bushy Minge Nob Stopper Dave Rumpus Pumper the Twenty Twelfth.

But even in hiding it wasn't safe for the infant Cran-el and Archibald. There was a bounty set on both their heads by Lord Phobe, but this wasn't all - Crandera itself was threatened. Lord Phobe had ravaged the planet by aggressively mining away the very thing that sustained its existence - the sacred Egg Beans. Mined in moderation, Egg Beans were an extremely versatile and energy rich resource. But every last drop of Egg Bean had been used up by Lord Phobe and his energy conglomerate, Phobe Petroleum (PP), and the planet was dying.

So, as the planet began to fall apart around them, Archibald boarded an intergalactic space tube and took with him the infant Cran-el. He knew not where they were to go, but he set a course for the  heavens, engaged the cryogenic systems, and fired them off into the great unknown.

This escape didn't go unnoticed, and Lord Phobe, enraged, boarded the final space tube that remained on the planet and gave chase. Crandera and the Thundercrans were lost, but at least he would be able to get some satisfaction by hunting down and destroying Cran-el.

A Brief History of Cranface: Part One - What is a Cranface?

Unfortunately, somebody was under the impression that the donkey was me. The donkey was originally just a place holder for the first entry in this blog. I then made him the unofficial mascot. He pops up in my badly drawn Paint comics as a friend to Cranface, who was in fact the very unimaginatively drawn Paint figure who appeared multiple times.

So, who/what is Cranface? This is Cranface:

Beautiful, right?