Capital of Nasty Electronic Magazine
Volume I, Issue XXIV, Year AD MCMXCVI
Monday, December 2nd, 1996
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1.      Readers' Letters
        a. Platonic Friendships
        b. Barney Devil Proof
2.      Ten Marketer's Golden Rules
3.      The "SENSE"
4.      The meaning of life.

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1.      Readers' Letters

        A.      Platonic Friendships

Date sent:        Mon, 18 Nov 1996 00:28:28 -0800
From:             matt del vecchio <kyron@VAX2.Winona.MSUS.EDU>
Subject:          RE: Capital of Nasty, Volume I, Issue XXII, Year AD MCMXCVI
To:               "'leandro@ifront.com'" <leandro@ifront.com>

Leondro!  Letter from me, yes I really am still reading every week! ;)
Here is my response to this issue, and to joelogon's article.  

HAH!

After reading this issuse of CoN's guide to platonic friendship,
I HAD to reply.  That was BEAUTIFUL, if a male may be allowed to
say such things...grin.

I think we *all* have received those sex--SIX--devastating, earth
shattering finger nail biting, beer guzzling words, "I just want
to be friends!"

The funniest one:

>* DO  play  and replay scenarios in your mind where you  come
>  out  and  declare your true feelings to her,  whereupon  you
>  proceed directly to frenzied yet sensitive, passionate,  and
>  completely fulfilling love-making.
>* DO NOT actually  attempt this.

My problem, right there.  Whaddya guys think is worse- having this 
fun filled platonic relationship from the start, or switching to it
(or rather, her decideing she's tired of this flavor and wants another
instead, expecting you to instantly purge your system of all those
now "unappropiate" feelings for her as quickly as she did)?  

My phrase of the day-  "It's a sellers market."
And *they're* the merchants.

grin...take it easy.  Oh, and I've got a web page now! It's at
www.geocities.area51/6660, you're linked in.  


cya!
matt


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

        B. Barney Devil Proof

From:             "MarXidad" <marxidad@idirect.com>
To:               leandro@ifront.com
Date sent:        Wed, 27 Nov 1996 19:26:56 +0000
Subject:          Re: Capital of Nasty, Volume I, Issue XXIII, Illogical!
Priority:         normal


> Barney Devil Proof 
>    Here's an exercise in logic.
>            The Romans had no letter 'U', and used 'V' instead for   
>            printing, meaning the Roman representation would for   
>            Barney would be: CVTE PVRPLE DINOSAVR   
>            Extracting the Roman numerals, we have:   
>            CV    V  L  DI    V   
>            And their decimal equivalents are:   
>            100 5 5 50 500 1 5   
>            Adding those numbers produces: 666.   

 Um, no. Cvte, but if you're doing this in the name of 'logic' you 
have to include the number N, which is 5000 in Roman Numerals, 
meaning the numbers add up to 5666, which, if anything is some dumb 
UNIX port. Yay.

 MarXidad
                               /_/ /  /o / /
                              / / /  /  / /  
                             / / /) /  / / _ 
                            /  \/\  \_/\/\_X/ 

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        Okay. The game has been delayed for three years and
now its technology is out of date. The Full Motion Video sequences
make porno movies look like Best Cinematography Academy Award
winners. Programmers are secretly bad-mouthing it on the IRCs.
The beta-testers are mysteriously calling in sick a lot. The PC
game magazines rated your last six games 92%--collectively.
And it's your job to sell the latest nightmare about to lurch out
of production to a crowd that's happily playing games from
LucasArts, id, Sierra, and Electronic Arts. What do you do? 

2.      Ten Marketer's Golden Rules
        by Marco Tabini (mtabini@ifront.com)
        


1. Words-The Bigger, the Better 

Always include expressions like "The Ultimate", "Incredible",
"Absolutely Amazing" in your ads. Use hyperbolae, maximize
everything. That's what makes it a different advertisement.
That's what makes you a different advertiser. That's what makes you
the "Ultimate Dishwasher!" when you get fired because your ads don't
sell the lousy game.


2. Fake Your Technologies 

Bring your products to life by describing incredible new technological
advances your amazing development team conceived and created - without
even knowing about them. Inventions like "a new amazing technology to
control your character" (i.e. the arrow keys), "an incredible learning
technology which makes your opponents tougher and tougher" (the
TIC-TAC-TOE algorithm) and "a brand-new, real-time 3D virtual reality
rendering engine" (does the name Pacman mean anything to you?).
Besides, you can always invent the Incredible Dishwashing Engine
Version 1.01. Just move your hands faster on your next job. 


3. Give Them Unrealistic Names 

Curious acronyms always attract people. Thus, be sure to call
your latest sound engine D.E.A.F. (Decent Effects Are a Fantasy),
or your most recent 3D technology W-F.L.A.T.S. (We Figured too Late
[this should have been] A Three-dee Scene). You can also use fancy
names like M.O.R.O.N. (Musical Out-of-Reality sOuNds) and R.E.B.E.L.S.
(Really Excruciatingly Bad End-Less Songs). And don't forget the
S.O.A.P. for your next job.


4. Fake Your Screenshots 

Always remember to have your "actual" screenshots specially designed
for your ads. Use 10:1 resolution changes, multiply the number of
colours in your games by a factor of at least ten. Hire three
professional animators to create from scratch the excerpts for the
video ad--and pay them at least three times the salary of your chief
animator. Use all possible techniques--including manual cut and paste
and airbrushing--to absolutely fake your pictures. This will be useful
when pretending that you still are a marketing manager and you can't
send your mother a picture of you over the sink. Be careful not to get
any suds on the photo.


5. Design Impossible Packages 

Pyramids, cylinders, spheres, hexaflexagons, and all of the
n-dimensional shapes that the mad scientist in your package design
department can think of will make everybody happy: distributors,
who won't know how to stack them; resellers, who won't know how to
put them on the shelves without avoiding the "domino effect" (your
package falling over another and starting a chain reaction that
ultimately causes the game shop to collapse into a black hole);
and 3 year-old players, who will certainly appreciate the opportunity
of using your package's sharp angles to harm themselves in the most
irreversible ways. Or you.


6.Lie Without Remorse About The Release Date 

Tell magazines that the game will be out for Christmas (without
actually saying that it will be Christmas, A.D. 2013). Late products
always give the impression of huge workloads and accurate refinement
behind them. Lie without remorse. Nobody will blame you. When asked
about the cause of the delay, answer evasively with "We have been
experiencing slight trouble (half of the cast died and you had to
shoot all video again, programmers are on strike because you are
ridiculizing their work [see rules 3 and 4], the only things ready to
go are the name and the packaging {see Rule #5}, and you can't show
the latter), but I am positive about a speed up in the production
process." Tell people the release date is imminent right after the
production staff showed you a dummy puppet wandering around the screen
with the intelligence of a worm. Or of a dishwasher. 


7. Release Demos Of Your Games Ten Months Before It's Done And Then
Get Upset With The Production Staff Because It Causes So Many Crashes
That The Operating System Is Getting Annoyed With It And When The
User Tries To Run It Answers With A "Are You Nuts?" Dialogue Box 

Need I say more? 


8. Be As Cryptic As Possible About Your Game 

The less people know about it, the more they will talk about it.
Will it be a new Quake clone? Or will it be a new platform game,
Mario Bros. style? As long as they don't know that it is a CGA Doom
clone that runs slow on a dual-Pentium PRO 200 (see the article Game
Labels We Really Need), you can still hope to sell a couple of copies.
One to your mother, so that you can demonstrate that you still are
in marketing. The other to your employer. And one for the restaurant's
owner, of course.


9. Advertise In The Right Magazines 

You are the creative department. You decide where to put your ads. No
matter if the guys in production complain about their "creation" being
advertised in Gardening Today or Wood Carpentry Digest. They can't
understand. However, some of them can be fired. But that's another story.


10. Get Another Job 

I heard lately that restaurants are offering good job opportunities.
Guess what job? 


-Marco Tabini is a programmer, who contributes to Gamesmania in many
capacities. He is the proud owner of a dishwashing machine that gets out
those really tough, baked-on food particles. The machine used to be the
Marketing Manager for a now-defunct software development firm. 




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3.      The "SENSE"
        by Peter Sprokkelenburg (psprokk@wiznet.ca)

I started my new job last week and man has it been great. I believe
I've found a new out look on life. Everyone there really like to joke
and kid around I feel like I'm in the school we all wish we HAD
attended.

On the 27th (of November) all the people from CS (Customer Support)
had a monthly get together and drinks were paid for by the head of
department (beer!). It was great sitting around a feel as if this was
something that I was suppost to have done from the day I was born (as
if!). One of my friends Mo had invited a very good friend of his,
Jackie. Mo and I got to talking about childhood and different other
experiences, only to realize that we were in the same place at the
same time for aobut 12 of 15 events that we attended. 

Anyway... Jackie is older then I am and very down to earth and has a
very strong character and sense of who she is. We started talking and
I got this overwhelming sense that I knew her from somewhere else. I
was so strange I felt like I could talk and she would understand
exactly what I was saying. It was so werid and I don't even know how
to begin to describe it. It like asking someone who was in (or saw) a
car accident to explain what they felt at the time.

I'm going to talk to Mo and ask him more about her because now it is
beginning to bug the hell out of me. I thought that it might have been
something like infatuation but I have no really love feelings for her
as a girlfriend more as a sister. As I write this I'm still trying to
sort this out. 

I talked to a friend of mine who is a tarot card reader and kind of a
psychic and had this stund look when she saw me. She asked me "Did you
meet someone you use to know, a long time ago?" I said I didn't know.
She said that I look like I meet some I knew that was taken away from
me. I told her to slow down a bit and asked if she ment someone from a
past life. Quite firmly she replied "Yes". I left feeling even more
confused then before and now it's starting to bug the fuck out of me.

I do believe that we are all here for a purpose and whether or not
there is some connection amid all... who's to say there isn't? We can
believe anything, and I never did but this is one of those things that
can change you for good.

I hope that I know where to draw the line...


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4.      The meaning of life.
        by Bennett Kwan (janus@io.org)


 After eating, do amphibians have to wait one hour before getting out 
 of the water? 

 How can there be self-help *groups*? 

 If white wine goes with fish, do white grapes go with sushi? 

 If a mute swears, does his mother make him wash his hands with soap? 

 If someone has a mid-life crisis while playing hide & seek, does he 
 automatically lose because he can't find himself? 

 If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is 
 it considered a hostage situation? 

 Instead of talking to your plants, if you yelled at them would they 
 still grow, but only to be troubled and insecure? 

 Is there another word for synonym? 

 Isn't it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do practice? 

 Just before someone gets nervous, do they experience cocoons in 
 their stomach? 

 When sign makers go on strike, is anything written on their picket 
 signs? 

 When you open a new bag of cotton balls, is the top one meant to be 
 thrown away? 

 When your pet bird sees you reading the newspaper, does he wonder why 
 you're just sitting there, staring at carpeting? 

 Where do forest rangers go to get away from it all? 

 Why isn't there mouse-flavored cat food? 

 Why do they report power outages on TV? 

 Why are builders afraid to have a 13th floor but book publishers 
 aren't afraid to have a Chapter 11? 

 If knees were backwards, what would chairs look like? 

 If you lick the air, does it get wet? 

--Bennett Kwan is a student at UofToronto and suffers from the typical
lost mind that can be identified by the uncontrollable giggle and the
"need-for-sleep" eyes.

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