“This is my hole! It was made for me!”
– Junji Ito, The Enigma at Arigama Fault
“Why did you come? Did you come to repair the connection to yourself? Or did you come to sever that connection? Are you now severed from yourself?”
– Sion Sono, Suicide Circle
A Selection of Pinball Terms for Those Unacquainted:
Ball Save – For the majority of pinball players, the inherent ambiguity and lack of control makes the first moments of the game some of the most dangerous. Up to a third of all balls played never touch the flippers. Feels bad, man. Real cheap. As a result, to retain newer players who might not be interested in paying for a game that they didn’t get to play, most pins made in the last 40 years have featured a Ball Save, which will return your ball to the launch lane if you drain it within about five seconds, depending on how the Operator sets it (and they can turn it off, as well, those dirty sons of b-words.)
Bounce Pass/Death Flip/Death Pass – A Flipper pass where you allow a falling ball to hit a flipper without activating it, thus allowing the ball to bounce over the drain and into the other flipper lane.
Call-out – Digitized bits of dialogue, usually short and humorously recognizable, often riffing on pop culture, that the game delivers either when certain conditions are met or when the machine feels like tossing one out.
Catch State/Ball Hold – When the pinball is held by the player with a raised flipper and has stopped moving. Starting from a ball hold is much safer and more successful than playing a moving ball. Ball Hold is the universal term, but I like Catch State as a phrase so you’re just gonna have to deal with it.
Death Save – A particularly difficult move, only executable on certain tables unless you’re highly skilled. This is the one of the very few maneuvers you can perform after the ball has entered it’s “drain” state to get it back in play. When it drains down one of the outlanes, particularly the right one, there’s a moment when it transfers from the outlane to the downward plane of the drain. If you jerk the machine at just the right time, and with just the right amount of force, it will sometimes, sometimes pop back up onto the opposite flipper. Often considered more lucky than skillful, yet what is skill but repeatable luck?
DMD – Dot Matrix Display
Drain – Pinhead talk for “losing a ball.” Also, the area below the flippers where the ball slides down and disappears when it’s no longer playable.
Drop Catch – A difficult maneuver that requires strong understanding of the movement of the ball. When you Drop Catch, you are literally mimicking the velocity of the ball with the flipper, which you hold up until the slightest contact is made. Those with practiced timing can get the flipper to fall at a slightly slower rate than the ball, When done correctly, the ball comes to a halt, almost as if it’s suddenly sticking to the flipper. An extremely impressive skill when you first see someone do it.
Flow – In terms of pinball gameplay, a game with flow is one that offers a wide selection of shots, many of which return to the flippers quickly, allowing for easier chains and combos. A “flow” game’s goal is to constantly keep the ball moving and the player engaged. Antonym of “stop and go”, gameplay designed with elements that halt the actual game of pinball at a regular interval. There are a few of these that are fun, but most players will always prefer a game with quality f l o w.
English – A gentleperson’s term for nudging, an agreement between person and machine, where the person will apply a bit of physical force in altering the game’s physics, rather than playing a clean game. The machine allows for this, but only to a point, and as the rewards increase, so does the risk of tilting. Having a solid kinetic connection with the machine helps you locate the point just before it tilts.
Flipper Pass – General term for the many ways, simple and difficult, to get the ball from one flipper to the other. A major component of shot selection.
Inlane – Generally, there are two lanes on each side of the lower, flipper area of the playfield. An inlane, as opposed to an outlane, is the lane that leads to the flipper.
Kickback – In many machines, in one or both of the outlanes, there is a magnetic solenoid-powered plunger that reacts to the metal ball, “kicking” it back and saving it. Generally, once you’re saved with a kickback, you have to relight it via gameplay sequence. Most games of the modern age have one kickback, usually on the left by tradition (the thinking is it makes your game harder, as punishment for rising from the dead.)
Lit Shot – All of the lanes, ramps, orbits, and drops have a way to indicate they’re the active target, either via flashing arrows on the playfield or some sort of pulsing bulb above them. Being able to hit lit shots, especially ones that are “moving” across the playfield, with consistency is one of the more important skills in pinball.
Live Catch – The intermediate version of the Drop Catch; rather than dropping the flipper, players flip it up at the right time, so that the ball goes down the flipper and up the inlane – hopefully not fast enough to flip over to the outlane – and then using flipper technique to stop the ball’s velocity as it returns. Much easier and much more dangerous than a Drop Catch, as the propensity for fatal chaos is much higher.
Mode – The dominant form of most pinball rulesets, where the game is broken up into several mini-games that present different challenges and offer different rewards. Completing modes is usually required to access Wizard Mode. The first game considered to have a “mode” released in 1977.
Orbit – Most games have an orbit shot, which is generally a wide lane with openings on the left and the right side of the playfield. Hitting either of these lanes will cause the ball to horseshoe back around, coming out of the orbit moving toward the opposite flipper. While they’re often the easiest targets to hit because of their wide berth, they’re generally low scoring and not very useful as a one-off. But many games offer combo shots off an orbit, and some sort of extra reward for repeated orbit shots.
Outlane – Generally, there are two lanes on each side of the lower, flipper area of the playfield. An outlane, as opposed to an inlane, is the lane that leads to the drain.
Playfield – The primary gameplay space in pinball, the foundational board that everything else is built on. On many games there’s an “upper playfield” and a “lower playfield”, but the specific term playfield refers to the game’s first floor.
Post Catch – A technique for dealing with a ball coming into the inlane hot; if one immediately slams the ball into the post above the flipper and holds it, the ball will usually settle into a catch state.
Post Pass/Post Transfer – A similar technique to post catch, and is the first of the more difficult techniques that most people learn. It involves slamming a ball in catch state against the above-flipper post, holding the flipper button down while allowing the other flipper to remain inert. The ball, having nowhere else to go, will run up the flipper and into the opposite inlane. You feel really cool when you learn how to do this.
Ramp – Christ. You know what a god damn ramp is, gimme a fuckin’ break.
Rollover Lane – Once a universal mechanic of pinball, still seen in some games produced. Rollover lanes are the three to five small lanes at the top of the playfield that will light when the ball “rolls over” the switch of the lane it goes down.. Once all of the rollovers are lit, an extra shot or reward becomes available. They were simple lights in the early days, but now are often letters that spell a short word. Shooting a lit rollover lane is a common task in pinball.
Ruleset – The sum total of all modes,, programming, and progression in a given game. Ultimately, a Ruleset in the modern pinball vein is an attempt at a fun flow chart that leads to a satisfying Wizard Mode.
Saucer – The scoop’s less reliable, less enjoyable cousin, a saucer is a slight depression on the “floor” of the game. A difficult shot to get on purpose, unless the gameplay guides the ball toward it. Often saucers and scoops serve some of the same functions, but you don’t see saucers nearly as much, because even designers know they’re a pain in the ass..
Scoop Shot – Literally a metal scoop with a hole in the bottom, usually located somewhere near the lower or middle portion of the playfield. Scoops are often central to starting modes, as well as ending them. When a scoop is “lit,” that is, when there is some sort of small blinking light above it, it often indicates another mode is ready, if you’re not presently in one.
Shatz/Alley Pass – A high-level pass where the player shoots the ball backwards, up it’s own inlane, the resulting trajectory causing the ball to jump out of it and into the opposite inlane. Shatz sounds like an in-joke, and since I’ve never seen it done, I think it may be a prank on all of us lower-level players.
Shot Selection – Your ability to quickly parse gameplay, in an attempt to make any given shot on command. Minding shot selection is vital to improving, and involves more than the actual shot. Ultimately, shot selection is an attempt to min/max the game of pinball: minizine the number of times you need to touch the ball, while maximizing high-reward shots and game progression. I’ve heard this term occasionally, but you don’t see it a lot, probably because it’s mostly a high-level concept you can barely perceive even once you reach my level of mediocre.
Shooting Lane – Also sometimes called the plunger lane, this is the lane from which the ball enters play. While there are often a number of ways to return to the shooting lane, it has a one way gate on it so it will not re-enter the top of the lane during play.
Sink – General term for getting the ball in the hole it’s supposed to go in. Also, hen you feel the word ‘sink’ qualifies for a shot, it’s a firm, clean shot that goes where it’s supposed to.
Skillshot – The chance to get an extra reward by completing a given requirement at the beginning of your ball. Skillshots come in all shapes and sizes, metaphorically; the earliest Skillshots were almost exclusively lit rollover shots that focused on plunger skills, a vestigial organ from the pre-flipper days of pinball.
New York City re-legalized pinball in 1977 thanks to a called rollover shot at a committee meeting when Randall Sowerby, an investigative journalist as well as a pinball fan, called his shot on a rollover lane, proving that pinball was a game of skill and not chance, making it practically useless in large-scale gambling.(Sowerby would later claim that he did get incredibly lucky on the shot, but what is luck but the… well, you know.
Slam tilt – A particularly nasty method of tilting the machine, usually only accomplished by assholes. Slam tilts are initiated if someone hits the front of the game, hard (or sometimes is just particularly violent in a general way.) Unlike normal tilt, you don’t lose a ball; your game is over. If the operator is nearby, your access to their pinball machines is probably over, as well.
Slap Save – A solid, meaty strike on the side of the machine when the ball is heading straight down the middle, moving the playfield just enough to allow to player to make contact with the flipper.
Special – A lit shot activated by some specific, difficult sequence on the playfield. Hitting a lit Special generally scores an extra game, although other, “lesser” rewards are sometimes offered, such as extra balls. (most high-level players would prefer something that benefits them during the current game than the hypothetical next one, especially in tournament environments, where Specials are often large scoring bonuses.)
Staging/Stage Flipping – When there’s an upper flipper and a lower flipper on the same side of a game (a common situation especially in 90’s DMDs) staging involves manipulating the lower flipper by slowing the ball down without blocking the orbit with the upper flipper .
The two flippers on one side are supposed work in conjunction to hit an important combo shot, but if you hold down the button too much, the ball will swing around the orbit and then simply slide down the activated upper flipper. The goal in staging is to use flipper control to give you the best chance to make such a combo shot, especially in multiball, when the shot is usually more valuable, and it’s much easier to handle and sink multiple balls when you Stage.
SDTM – Straight down the middle, generally at a pace where any reaction would be too late. The only real way to save a ball going Straight Down the Middle is to be a Wrecker, and give the machine a hard shove to either left or right. Recall this moves the machine under the ball, so although the ball is on the same gravitational trajectory, it’s no longer headed to immediate death. Brave english players might do this, to a lesser extent, if they think they can get away with it without tilting.
Tilt – Putting too much english on the machine. Most machines, going back fifty years, have used a plumb-bob that hangs down inside of in the machine, and if that bob shakes or shudders too much, a tilt is initiated (usually with at least a warning before doing so.) If you tilt the machine, you immediately lose your ball and any potential scoring bonus, as the game will simply skip to the next ball immediately. Tilt sensitivity settings can be changed by Operators, with particularly unscrupulous ones not allowing for english at all.
TriSphere – For a long time, BobsyHewer actually held a copyright on the term “multiball.” They hadn’t patented the mode, so it was up to every other pinball manufacturer to come up with thier own name. TriSphere, for example, was Angel’s name for it.
WIZARD MODE – The final mode of the game, equivalent to “beating a video game” if you complete it. Wizard modes are generally difficult to activate, requiring at the very least completion of all modes, although some games have much more robust requirements that modes are just a portion of. Generally, the Wizard Mode offers large scoring opportunities, especially if you can complete it. Completed wizard modes give you the reward, and then the game basically resets, tempting you to do it all over again.
The newest games have multiple wizard modes, like the multiple jackpots of the 90s. You can complete the game in different ways, although there is often a final mode that will take you a long time to reach, never mind complete.
By the late 18th century, Britain’s North American colonies had reached a level of economic parity with the Crown that began to give teeth to their constant revolutionary chatter. The success of the Americas had, of course, been fueled by their brutal embrace of Mother Empire’s chattel slave economy, in a manner even more horribly efficient than the British Middle Passage.
Those Unified Colonies were now stuffed with the Crown’s plunder, refusing to pay their tribute, and come 1775, they were building a Navy, suggesting they’d been making plans during their little anti-monarchical freemason drinking binges.
The idea that the rabble of the Americas, who could barely handle a bunch of sick Indians and their fallen civilizations, might keep up with over a hundred British battalions, each broken up into ten companies of ninety well-armed, trained, and disciplined men, was ludicrous enough. But to imagine the folly that this lot was going to take on British sea power; it strained credulity past the snapping point.
The traitors’ single chance for victory required them to generate the kind of intense magical thinking that could occasionally overcome the impossible. And that was the Crown’s only true fear; that the dens of treasonous vipers filled with the idle nouveau riche, pockets stuffed with slavery profits, drunk on self-brewed booze and fantasies of power, plotting, plotting, plotting: The Free Gardeners, the Loyal Orange Order, the Junior Mechanics, all plotting against their disappointed benefactors, who had made them all so disgustingly wealthy and bored.
And as Britain’s spies began to frantically report, all of these groups were starting to fully coalesce into a larger and more coordinated conspiracy. ‘The Sons of Liberty’ had been a rumor, if not started by the Britons, then at the very least encouraged by them. It had seemed like a good idea to sow confusion and distrust amongst those who felt they weren’t being let in to the most elite conspiracies.
Or so it had seemed. But now, according to the most deeply imbedded spies, the ones who drank excessively with the real power brokers, that small tall tale was beginning to build into a raging self-fulfilling prophecy — always a real possibility when you risk rumor-mongering.
There was something especially dangerous in this new wave of monarchical resistance from the colonies, and that was some new and fiery Protestantism, almost Neo- Lutheran, that seemed to be blooming in the revolutionaries. Not only did it help fuel their vivid, pagan imaginations, but it further disconnected them from the loose but powerful Catholic empire headed in the west by the Vatican, to which Canterbury, schism or not, still belonged.
Anyway, there was a war. Not to be too terribly inner core-centric, but we all know how that one turned out.
“I think it’s fine,” she says, after pretending to think for a long time about it.
I know she’s barely paying attention, as her head is tilted in that kind of numb way people get when satisfying a Pull. I rap twice on the machine; rude but necessary, and she mumbles and waves her head around like she’s in a fucking k-hole. I snap my fingers in front of her three times, – incredibly fucking rude, but just so necessary I can’t even tell you – and her mumbles refine into a long string of “whats” and then… she’s back.
“Christ, can’t I just play my fucking game,” she says.
“You won’t even let me play a game,” I retort.
“If you had a real, strong, all-day Pull for this game burning in your soul, nothing in the world would have stopped you from getting to this machine first. It would have led you to it, and I would surely have deferred.” Picky measures out the plunger and then lets her last ball fly. She actually misses the skillshot initially, but then beats the timer and gets one on the next shot.
“But you didn’t even know where you were going,” she continues, “As you so continually love whining about. And you are famous for suddenly developing Pulls when seeing a game, then ad hoc justifying how you’ve needed to play this or that all day. But I knew where I was going and started to feel the Pull in the hallway. This is all settled law, bro.”
“Gimme a break,” I whing, watching her sink the scoop, then sink the hole two more times with no catch or bounce (that scoop hole is my goddamned mortal enemy.) This lowers THE BRIDGE one level while adding extra Freakers to the horde. “One of your least attractive manipulations is when you tell me you’re not trying to manipulate me.”
“Shit, I thought it was my most clever and undetectable one,” she replies.
“Don’t be fatuous, Jeffery.” I sigh, slumping against the KAMP HANDZY machine next to me… talk about a problematic pin. In it’s day it was simply “politically incorrect,” but today it’s obviously rape culture bullshit. Consent and age issues abound. Some of the cartoons are funny, I suppose.
A medium loud, less cheerful group of men than the ones we’d last encountered enter the hall from the opposite egress. From the look on their faces, they’re in Pull real bad. Folks down this bad aren’t going to be a problem, as long as you don’t get in the way of them. They’re the most harmless little puppycats in the world.
As long as you don’t get in the way of them.
“So we’re, what, we’re approaching the third decade of our… um… relationship?” I say, rubbing the back of my neck for some reason.. Tension? Probably that.
“It was an acquaintanceship that gradually, over decades, calcified into a relationship, I would say, and I’m not trying to be mean, that you took an especially long time to iterate into existence, so for a long time, I barely even knew you were there.
“But you’re not trying to be mean,” I frown.
“Damnit, you’re…” she sighs, and then realizes she’s still playing. and then slaps the flippers madly at the ball she probably could have saved, one half of a second ago.
“Fuck fuck fuck, god damnit…” she hollers, as the final ball drains. For maybe ten seconds she’s super pissed, breathing out of her nose like a fucking cartoon bull in the ring, and kind of shivering with anxious rage. And then she eases off the anger quickly, one of those ’tism traits we happen to share, as long as it’s over something so minor as a pinball game..
“We’re the closest of pals now, though aren’t we?” I say, stirring the shit.. “Like, I’m probably your best friend, right?”
“Ok, that’s fucking bait,” Picky winces. The game’s bonus totals up, as the grim call out notes her failure: “BRIDGE DESTROYED – HUMANITY EXTERMINATED (I told you the stakes were pretty fuckin’ high.) It was a decent score for a filthy casual, but not for a skilled player in Pull. Then again, chaos is not precisely on our side, innit.
“It’s at least somewhat correct, though,” I say, perhaps attempting to will the idea into existence. “My point, if I can remember what it was… my point, I think, was that we know each other well enough that we can have conversations that don’t take a lot of disarmament before they reach some level of genuine sincerity.”
Picky stares at me with thin eyes and a wide grin, and inhales as if to respond. “Oh! Give me your vape, dude. I’m not stoned enough for pinball, yet.” I nod my head unconsciously, then realize I’m just performing an automated response to her avoidance issues.
Still, I don’t hesitate to produce it, because I’m not a fucking creep about that kind of stuff anymore (I used to bogart the fuck out of my own shit.) I was, in so many ways, a piece of shit back then. Not certain I’ve changed that much, to be honest.
“So – I’m – Gonna – Play – again – because – you distracted me,” she says, taking little sucks in between words that add up to a large plume of vapor surrounding her head as she finishes the sentence and tosses in a token, this time with no gags,
“You’re not even gonna cut me in, best friend?”
“This is my last game, and to honor our friendship, which from my perspective is certainly within my top five -”
“Honored, ma’am,” I say, tipping the cap I’m not wearing. “As long as I’m above Etch.”
“Um, yeah, that’s the positivity I like to hear… but to be clear, all of my top five are equal.”
Bullshit! That’s just rhetoric, no two things can truly be equal, in a material sense. You totally have Etch above me on that list!”
“Honestly… I’m kinda vibing with your whole annoyed, jealous act right now,” Picky says, taking one long last suck off my own personal 2/3rds empty vape and dropping it into my jacket pocket. “So what I’m gonna do is, I’m gonna use the yoga of creative detachment, and I’ll chat shit about your shit as a sacrificial vessel to increase my chance to find real f l o w.”
“I’m honored to be the impetus for your weird Buddhist mind games,” I reply. “You know, Jainists laugh at that shit, all the games Buddhists play with themselves in their heads before they bother with enlightenment.”
“All the Jainists I know are rich assholes who politically align themselves with the Hindutvas,” Picky says.
“Great, you topped me,” I eye-roll. “I’m certain every Jainist in the world is probably rich. Now will you shoot the ball and then tell me all of the faults in my most favorite-ist sacred-ist thing in the world?” She swings her head toward me with exaggerated joy, and flashes her wry smile.
“Oh absolutely,” she grins. “And let’s start at the beginning… the thesissss…” She pulls back the plunger and lets ‘er rip. It takes a bad bounce into the pops and immediately goes SDTM.. there was zero chance to save the ball without treating the machine like a goddamn monster.
“Is that a good sign?” I ask, half seriously.
“Oh, yeah, it’s like, how you’re given your own albatross during your first equator crossing, right after the rum, sodomy and lashing. Lucky albatrosses, the sailors call them.”
“Anyway…” she continues. “We got the ball save, so no harm done. Where was I?”
“Um… the very beginning I th-”
“”The thesissssss,” she hisses again, and I’m not precisely sure why. Look, Picky’s a weird kid. “I love it.”
“You love the thesis?” I say, a little shocked, because the flowery self-satirizing bullshit seems to always make her pretty goddamn angry.
“Yeah, I really do. I love those first three lines, like a poem I can actually kind of understand. Now, do I agree, or at least find some comfort or understanding, in that thesis? And is it defended well enough in the text to be considered a fully fleshed out argument?”
“You wanna find holes, you gouge away,” I say, not helping being able to hide my delight that someone is discussing my writing with me.
“What hole I want to find right now is that fuckin’ scoop, god damnit!” She’s been dangerously repeating the scoop shot, just missing the hole, over which a small plastic Freaker with a red light in it’s belly. It’s currently blinking, indicating when the scoop is lit.
The ball bounces perilously off the scoop’s hard corner, and careens back to the flipper with intense speed. Picky catches it, swish no rim, as she has been every time she’s missed. One of the glorious and cruel aspects of pinball is that you’ll be perfect in a certain area of your game, but not the one you presently need.
“Well, as I said, love that thesis,” Picky continues, finally holding the ball in catch state and taking a break. “Not sure what it precisely means, but I think I get the general idea. The size and meter almost feels purposefully in conflict with WCW’s general thesis, as portrayed by the Red Wheelbarrow. Also, a touch of Pound?”
“Hey, don’t say that shit out loud,” I interject. “…that’s an interesting connection to Williams, though, which I assure you, was not intentional. …but I don’t think they’re in opposition at all.”
“You don’t see how the red wheelbarrow and the coin slot have significant counter-positional pressures?”
“Oh… you’re someone who thinks The Red Wheelbarrow isn’t cynical,” I reply, with a hint of unrepressed smugness. “That it’s some surface thing, with no subtext.”
“Jesus Christ, Poetry 101 fucks people up,” Picky says, turning back to the game and shooting the drop hole easily. “Turns you into stark raving contrarians. You end up thinking The Red Wheelbarrow is some metaphor for zionism, you think Frost’s second path has made no difference at all, you think Dylan is secretly trying to push people to suicide…” On the half of the DMD that’s dynamic, the name of the mode pops up in over-designed, barely readable text: SUICIDE MISSION.
Not all serendipity is pleasant. I wonder if there’s a word for, like, opposite-serendipity. Nothing rings a bell. Fuck it, I’m gonna look it up… Wow, yeah, there sure is: zemblanity. Huh. What an interesting word: “an unlucky or unwanted, but predictable, event.” Well, we all learned a new word today (I see you out there, “I-already-knew-that-word” cats, nothing but love, nothing but respect.) Doesn’t quite fit the situation though. I still think opposite-serendipity is the best description for it.
”Contrarians,” she continues, taking out the seven lit shots one by one, as little guys on the game screen pick up barrels with lit fuses and throw themselves into the Horde. “You think “Ozymandias” is a poem about building materials. You think Bukowski is a good writer. You think “My Last Duchess” is a love poem…”
“Ok, I got the gag,” I sigh. “Only the Bukoski thing landed.”
“You contrarian motherfuckers actually get so wrapped up in theory that you refuse to believe the 75% point between a monkey’s anus and scrotum doesn’t count as a measurement of time.”
“Hey, I fought back against that one,” I say. “Professor accused me of cheating, said I was writing above my level. I got a C.”
“WCW is a poet who attempts to write the subtext into the text of his scenery,” Picky says, in the professorial voice she copped from her old lady. “They don’t feel “deep” because they aren’t, except within the specific tableau he creates, which actually contains infinite information. “So much depends” is not ironic or cynical. Your thesis is slick, but that slickness leads only to annihilation. He leads to totality.”
“I can easily deconstruct and find the darkness in ‘Wheelbarrow’,” I protest. “I could write you a ten page essay in my head in the next hour, making a convincing argument as to why it’s the bleakest poem in the world.”
“You’d be making your own convincing argument to no one, although I guess the massive neolib hedge funds with small liberal arts colleges attached have always favored counterfactual bullshit. They’re contrarian-producing machines. Being contrarian leads to the illusion that one actually is an individual, which is the outlook our society demands, never mind that this cultural obstinance actually poisons society.”
She finishes the main part of the mode as she speechifies, with 7 seconds to spare, leading to a short bonus round where two little guys carry a massive fuel tank back and forth, the lit shot moving on the playing field as they do on the screen. She misses the first chance, lit orbit shot, sniffs a little, and then gets it on the ramp as the fellows walk above it. The men heave themselves and the tank over the edge of the bridge, and much of the Freaker Horde comically explodes in glorious dot matrix splotch.
“So maybe you’d get an A,” Picky concludes “And maybe you’d get a shiny star sticker, But all you actually did is weaponize rhetoric against the intent of the poem, probably via some scummy ‘death of the author’ bullshit. Your contrarian word games do not negate the clear and self-stated meaning of the poem.”
She finishes off the mode, which is incredibly high scoring if you get the bonus at the end, but which she only knows as “a fun mini-game that gives me more time at the in Wizard Mode if I suicide every man.” She especially likes the ‘ordering men to their death’ part of it.
“Okay, all right!” I throw my hands up dramatically, because sometimes it’s fun to pretend to be Italian. “Fine. You’ve eaten the plums outta my goddamn icebox, but um… can we stop pretending we know anything at all about poetry and talk about how much you love my thesis?”
“I do. I honestly do,” Picky says, doing some easy repeat loops up the right lane. “I think it’s so good that you could lose the next five paragraphs, and we’d end up in the same place.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I mean,” Picky says, here picking up her lecture. “…that the prose, while baroque, is pretty clever, but it seems to be hiding a lack of coherency that suggests you’re trying to convince yourself by repeating your thesis in different ways. You are, as usual, tautologizing yourself.”
“You sayin’ I’m a navel gazer?” I protest, for some reason, even if she’s got me dead bang.
“No, I’m saying that you’re a navel piercer, and you’ve gone so far through your tumtum that your head has popped out of your urethra.”
Wow,” I reply. “You could have just said ass…”
“The extremity of my visual conjuring at least equals the fact that you’re a navel gazing shithead who’s favorite thing is gazing into your navel.”
Look, am I a navel-gazey piece of shit? Have you been reading this shit I write? It’s not even a question. Writing hundreds of pages when Franz Fanon has already solved the Imperial Core equation in three lines does feel indulgent. But it’s not really like I write this shit because I want to. The compulsion is literally wrapped up in my being… and a vocation is often as much a curse as it is a blessing.
I see no real avenues to monetize my words, as I care to assemble them; I imagine a professional editor, upon spending any amount of time with any of my manuscripts, would tell me my writing is basically unreadable for anyone at all normal, and why am I writing about stuff everyone on the Drop already knows? “Who’s this for, anyway?” they’d demand.
Well, me, at least! And you, I suppose.
When we dig into the dirt, it turns out vocation is just a fancy word for “job you kind of like”, so I can only see a future where I’m either a failed writer or nothing at all. The latter is unacceptable to me, as someone who greatly favors absurdism over nihilism. Yet I would consider the former to be a life well lived. For me, “failed” is not the significant word in that phrase.
And yet, if we go deeper into the navel with our all-seeing gaze (and you know, we need to go deeper,) we can deconstruct that “clever” artifice: it’s a story I tell myself to feel better, to weaponize the word “failure” by setting up a game where even failure is success.
And that’s what most people’s conscious processes are set for, repeating our little stories to ourselves, trying to make sense of the trauma we’ve endured while conjuring the best version of ourselves that we can.
Anyway, before we get so deep in this fucking navel we threaten to reopen my umbilical hernia, I’ll say this: I refuse to be a pushy dick about my writing. Sometimes I wish I were moreso, that I could be like fucking Kerouac and walk into any room containing a whiff of power and hand out my book while talking about how great I was, but, unfortunately, I’m not a solipsistic egomaniac (promise!)
On the Road clocks in at about 300 pages, and you can trick any incredulous dipshit into reading 300 pages of any old slop as long as your marketing team spends the money to make them think they have to. My shit is kinda less focused, more rambling… it enjoys the full and heaping buffet of language, the kind of thing Keruoac claimed was the opposite of truth…
…I dunno, maybe I’m just succumbing, as the beats did, to the cynicism of the age, but before I start going on about how Borroughs SHOT HIS WIFE IN THE FUCKING FACE, we should probably move on, since most of this can fundamentally be traced back to my deep hatred of Karouac and all he actually stood for: the same old bullshit about why patriarchy was bad and also necessary, and “ironic” criticism of an inner core he didn’t even seem to realize he lived in (dude was pretty convinced we’d all be buddhists by now.)
But nah, there’s no way I can bother too many people with my most deeply important, identifying process. Since we’re just a series of processes ourselves, it seems unfair to exploit that dynamic.
So I don’t ask folks very often, and usually I only do so with people I have any slight trust in, because I believe I can thus trust them to say the thing I honest-to-god never mind hearing – even if I can always hear the quiet “probably not” playing it’s sad sweet lullaby in the background — some approximation of the phrase: “Sounds good, if I have the time/energy for it I’ll definitely check some out!”
Actually, this is often said in genuine sincerity, as people do excitedly overcommit to whatever contrivance they will ultimately have no time or energy for. The nice thing about the phrase is that It plays well as either a soft rejection, or as an accidental empty promise, and both of those responses feel kind to me.
The only response that truly wounds, however, and I suppose this has something strongly to do with my acute rejection sensitivity (and I’m not gonna sidetrack into that right now, go look that up if you’re curious) is the friendly “nah.” What can you do with a polite decline, but simply wallow in its dreadful, quotidian politeness?
You know what it is, right?! I’ll tell you what it is! it’s a polite pool of poison, where a part of your soul drowns!
Human decency itself requires you to reply to the rejecter as politely as you can. “Ok… thanks anyway.” To do otherwise would expose you for who you used to be, not the stories you tell yourself about who you are now.
But since they’re self-statedly never going to read this anyway, we can talk about the “no” people a bit more freely, and here I guess I’m speaking more to writers than anyone else, although those who at least pay some ritualistic fealty towards Minerva and the muses, no matter what kind of sordid blasphemy pours from their ungrateful lips, can feel included.
The polite “no” can come for anything – any artistic conceptualization that one could create, another could reject in totality. And there’s no doubt It’s a bit easier to just look at a physical piece of art – a painting, a sculpture, Serrano’s Piss Christ, (which I guess is mixed media,) and just sort of let it exist as something real and tangible, or immediately hate it, which validates its existence to an even greater degree
These bits of art demand almost nothing of your attention, unless you find that one-in-a-thousand piece that actually moves you. It’s simple courtesy that generates praise or criticism to the vast lot of what your brain mostly sees as trash and clutter.
Even in poetry’s case, it’s a bit easier to spring on others, so they can pretend to have an opinion – as long as that poem is short (I’ve noticed that, as a poem lengthens, the average reader’s hatred of poetry grows, while their ambivalence to prose always remains basically static.)
So it’s easier, and even totally fair, to say no to checking out a friendly acquaintance’s writing. There’s simply no world that exists where such an act could be criticized, except in the subjective.
Well… shit. Seems like I’ve cultivated a bit of narrative subjectivity in my late-’30s dotage, and I might as well use it.
Ok, so, “Polite no” people are the fucking worst of the worst that humanity has to offer. It’s the totality of human viciousness, hidden within a false framework where politeness is the one and only excuse needed to disengage; it’s like saying “sorry” as non-sarcastically as you can to someone dying in the gutter.
“No, I don’t want to read any significant portion of your writing” (who’s expecting anyone to read all of this shit, Jesus Christ, not my ADHD ass) is saying, clear as a, like, really really clear bell, to my wacky little brain, that, no, actually, I’m the wrong one here, i’m the one who forced the “polite” no from the person who really had no desire to show me how little they cared about myself or my existence.
It’s a rejection of being. It’s the final death of potential friendship, the baby strangled by itself in the cradle: “sorry you didn’t realize that I never wanted to be friends with you anyway.”
Poor me, right? Even writing that out feels like a real fuckboi move, a passive-aggressive settling of scores with the demons of my past that frankly do not exist. All of this needless paranoia, all in my head. When people show you how they feel so openly, earnestly, and completely, you should consider it a gift.
But what you should consider as much more than a mere gift are the people who do read your shit. And there will be some… unless you’re the deeply blessed, nightmarishly unlucky solitary writer with no real external connection to the world. (Lookin’ at you, Darger. Not looking too deeply into your books though, which seem to have a lot of CSA and fairy torture.)
Personally, I’m deeply blessed by That Thing Which Dwells Above and Beyond Mammon (sorry for including you in my maximum-death-level heresy, there) to have a couple of people who do read my stuff, namely Picky and the Kid. As the anxious axis around which this unlikely trio revolves, the fact that they bother to read my shit (and sometimes kinda like it!) makes my current life, in a way, complete.
The Kid always reads my manuscripts quickly, laughs at a few parts, and then tosses it into the heap. That’s always makes me feel kinda honored; not just any old shit goes into the Kid’s heap. His criticisms are basically the same every time. “You’re like an F. Scott FItzgerald – let me finish – if he were a mostly-talentless poor person. You’re Gatsby, only the green light is coming from the other side of the trailer park.””
His general analysis of my work is that I, like Fitzgerald, write a bunch of boring and trite gobbledygook about the rote affairs of the people of the day, but every couple of pages I’ll put together a construction of words that actually makes him laugh, or think. I appreciate his criticism, such as it is, and use him as a sort of guidepost to know I’m ultimately doing what I want to do, not what others would like me to do.
Picky, of course, gets much more into it, even though she always, always protests when I bring it up, noting that me not bugging strangers about it doesn’t make it ok to constantly bug her (fair deuce, tbh,) but she doth protest too much; she loves wheedling around in my soft, squishy brain. Or at least she’s taking this bit so far that she deserves a reward for her dedication, maybe a gold fucking star or some shit.
I might mirror this in a little in my behavior, because while I deeply appreciate getting criticism from her, and some of it is very useful… the stuff she considers too-extra-tryhard-teacher’s-pet-pseudo-academic horseshit is where I doth protest, and it’s the exact right amount. Sometimes, I do get pretty rude and grumpy about it, which delights Picky to no end.
Yes, our relationship could be construed as a sick system, but, as I said, I’m just really appreciative that she takes the time to actually study my prose. She’s got a pretty analytical mind that I can almost always trust to suss out truths behind truths. Yeah…. She’s a clever one, really has a single clue what she’s fucking talking about.
“You don’t have a single clue what you’re fucking talking about,” I blurt out reflexively.
“What?” Picky snorts. “Where did that come from?
“Useless tautology my ass,” I reply. “That shit about human reaction to second-order cybernetics and the border shit is good fucking copy, and no, it’s not just fucking repeating itself, it’s building a case that there are many borders you can only cross once.”
“I mean, I guess that makes sense,” Picky nods. “So why don’t you just say that?”
“I do say it, I say it pretty clearly, and you know what? It’s not my fucking fault that your eyes glaze over at certain parts of my writing. Do that, fine, you know it’s more than ok with me. But then don’t fucking come at me with this half-assed homework.”
“This is why I hate talking about this shit with you,” Picky says in a theatrical whine, over-egging it just a tiny, little bit.. “Your hypersensitivity is like half your personality, and it makes you fucking mean, reflexively so, which throws me off of my… game!” The ball screams toward the left flipper with the glint of murderous intent, but Picky’s already calmed down and gingerly dead catches it, then performs a very smooth post pass (she’s so much better at that than me) putting it on the right side, then hitting a couple left orbits sequentially to finish up the 8-orbit requirement to activate the trap door mode.,
Fuck, I hate everything about this mode. The eight orbit shots are simple enough,but once the trap door is activated, it swings open from the wall of the orbit, and then snaps shut after about a second. For some reason, this fucks me way more than half the time I face it, mainly because if you miss the interval the door is open, it will slap it back hard, often SDTM.
Picky, of course, has much better timing than I do, like preternatural timing, timing that can beat carny games that are, like, running strong enough to burn the town. She’s good at timing, is what I’m attempting to convey. Anyway, she easily times the shot and begins the mode: DAYTIME HUNT flashes in letters which you can kind of tell are conveying the idea that they’re on fire.
A big white moon – which I believe is supposed to be a sun but will always look to me like the fucking moon in a black sky – rises, and the horde stop attacking the base of the Bridge and start to fight lazily amongst themselves.
The machine makes a kind of low gurgle, and then comes a highly digitized call-out that seems to be attempting a Clint Eastwood/John Wayne-type movie authority: “In the daytime…, we can hunt them.” I think they were precisely going for Jesse Ventura in “Predator” but what they got was Al Lewis in anything Al Lewis was ever in. It’s pretty charming!
“Ok, sorry about that little meltdown,” I concede. “But I feel like our gyre is kind of widening, vis-à-vis the falconer doing his best to keep things focused while that asshole bird spirals any old way she wants…”
“You know, maybe Yeats kept losing birds because he was a shitty falconer,” Picky notes. “Be a better falconer.”
“Speaking of tautology, can we just… move on from this part before I succumb to Self Bullet Lust? Hey, nice shot!”
“Thanks!” Picky replies, genuinely. Daytime Hunt is a tricky mode, where you have to hit a slowly moving lit shot and then the Freaker drop hole within 3 seconds, repeating this three times, then finally putting it up the right ramp and into the “TriSphere” saucer. Picky hits the first two lit shot-Freaker combos, and then seems to lose the full f l o w of concentration.
“What I’m saying is,” Picky continues, her voice slightly strained as the ball careens around the playfield, and the pull of gravity feels as if it suddenly jumped by an order of magnitude. “Shoving all this blue-sky shit into the beginning… y’know, honestly you do really reach for the stars.”
“Finally, another positive thi–” I start, but she cuts me right off.
“But they’re dark stars, stars that whisper to you in the dead of night, stars that do not exceed your grasp, but fully inculcate you into some thick shadow that nurtures your cynicism. And if you’re going to make such a bold claim as you seem to be with this mess, you need to help reinforce and justify it by making things more clear, not less.”
“You really didn’t understand what I was trying to say at all?” I mutter, already getting into pouty-bottom lip territory.
“I get stuff, “Picky says, wounded. “Hey, I get stuff just fine, I’m not saying you were just whistlin dixie but…”
“Like,what if…” I begin, trying to catch my words up to my thoughts. “What if those repeated cries of tautology are actually a strategy you use, when you can’t fully parse out the important refinement that a complicated argument requires at its foundation.… Maybe you’re the one mistaking “thoughtful, careful incrementalism” for recursive stasis.” I give her a small raspberry, ‘cause she deserves it.
“Okay, let’s see what we’ve got here” Picky says, again just missing the lit shot/freaker combo for a third time. She live catches on the right flipper and takes an ostentatious breath, holding the flipper button firmly, indicating that she’s about to preach another sermon.
“So, look, it’s… ahhmm…. It’s like your, uh, your basic man vs. technology thing, innit, framed around the nexus point of a specific invention, the humble coin slot. And after insisting, repeatedly, that “saying things in a slightly different way” is somehow building a wall of truth, you then spend a great number of pages in a sort of ad hoc metaphysical attempt to retroactively validate all of the things you’ve already said.
All right, freeze that frame,” I say. “Can we talk about my ad hoc metaphysical attempt to… um…”
“Retro…” Picky helps.
“…to retroactively validate the shit I’ve already said, yeah, can we talk about that now?”
“Oh, you want to talk about that part now?” PIcky says. “The part where you try to hide your painful earnestness in aggressively overwrought language you think is “parody academic” when it’s really “full-grade asshole.”
“Ok, nevermind, can we go back and talk about the first part again?” I say, only mostly as a gag. You weren’t quite as cruel about that.”
“What do you want me to say?” Picky shrugs. You know what I like and I don’t like. I’m not a fan of metaphysics. It’s closer to poetry than material reality. But I know how your wobbly skull meat works, like, y’know, how it loves little spirals and borders and esoteric Jewish magicks. I can’t help but understand what you’re whinging about.”
“‘Esoteric Jewish magicks?”
“Hey, I saw an ad to learn it online after I watched that one Tony Robbins thing and all I got was scams as ads for a month,.” Picky says. “They said it was for everyone, not me!”
“Don’t suppose you want to elucidate on what you mean by they in that sentence.”
Hey, you know what?” Picky says. “I’m sick of your hasbara, and I guess I’d actually like to talk about your writing instead, so, cheers for that. But here’s the problem… I think you have some legitimate interesting writing in there, like, some really cool little bits, and I think you are so in love with baroque complications that you’ll never be able to see how simplicity would be so much better.
“Well, fuck, since I know you do hate it, I suppose you saying you understand it at least is some major accomplishment.”
“I haven’t said i hated anything, don’t put words into my mouth,” Picky says. “Look I’m sure there are a handful of people on the Drop, some of them who don’t even know you, who could kind of put together what you were attempting to say. And what you’re saying is “I’m a fucking Luddite who’s terrified of the future.”
“Ok, so, you did miss the point,” I say. Jesus, talk about putting words in someone’s mouth. “And that surprises me, because you’re a smart kid. It’s almost as if you brush over the intended satire to try and pin me with a literalism you don’t usually…
“Oy vey!” Picky says, with a bit too much Semitic spin to feel ok about it. She shoots the ball into the lit orbit and then immediately puts it into the Freaker drop. “Here we go again, you’re doing the “Desperate Housewives” guy on “Arrested Development” defense,“it’s a satire!” Hey, did he turn out to be a good guy who you could trust around women?”
“See, You couldn’t have written it wrong,” She continues, doing a flipper pass that succeeds in spite of itself. “I must be reading it wrong. And here I was stupidly taking your cute shit at face value. We’ve heard this before, haven’t we Etch?”
“I’ve no interest in what you’re talking about and am actively not participating in this conversation!” Etch replies. They are, somewhat surprisingly, playing their own game a few tables down, and the Kid is playing next to them. It’s a cute scene that kinda promotes group harmony, but trust that we’re definitely not gonna to go from enemies to lovers on this one, Etch doesn’t think of men as enemies, they think of them as barely conscious animals. I’ve never found a reason to disagree with them.
“See, Etch knows what i’m talking about,” Picky says, finishing the mode with a flourish of her hand. DAYTIME HUNTING COMPLETE. BLACKMARKET OPEN.
A sneaky little guy, totally Hamburglar coded, slinks in from the side of the screen. “Hey, lookin’ fer somethin’ extree?” The voice is trying to emulate a sneaky growl, but I swear to god it’s almost a perfect Terry Gordy impression. Then a representation of a clipboard comes on the dynamic half of the screen with the words “EXTRA” REQUISITIONS.
The “camera” pans down to show a list of prizes you can potentially win for completing the mode. It contains a mixture of gag options that never hit, like “Chicken Swarm” and “Surrender” next to the expected bonus increases, extra balls, supplementary modes, and the one that sounds like a gag but occasionally hits; Colony Drop, in which a space colony falls on the Freakers, killing all of them in the Red Zone. Kind of an impressive nerd reference since Gundam wouldn’t be on American TV until the year 2000.
This is the part of the mode that I really hate, which is kind of wild, because it’s the part where they reward you with free stuff. I loathe this randomized shit whenever it pops up, which is all the time, in a majority of the pinball games that have existed since the 80s (one might call it the Ur mode, if one were to be sassy about it.) It’s an easy thing to program, and a simple way to add value to the machine. Probably, most people find them fun.
To me? I dunno… it feels like gambling. And considering I’m a degenerate gambler, you’d figure I’d appreciate that. But I believe in two things, and two things only: keep ritual out of chaos magick, and keep gambling out of pinball.
I mean unless you’re gambling with another human on the outcome of the game, I actually highly encourage that, as a proud degenerate.
Really, though, if I get right down to it, I don’t love this mode because, in any form it comes in, it always makes me hecka anxious, as my brain automatically tries to read all of the text, while the cursor zips around the choices with an incessant beeping, and then slowing, achingly slowing, it begins it’s last, slow,cruel phase: pretending it’s gonna give you a good options and then ticking off of them onto something shitty like BONUS x2.
These asshole modes troll the fuck out of the player, as this one attempts to do right now to Picky, landing on Colony Drop, seemingly for real, and then after another second ticks by, the cursor pops off of it, and there’s the sound of digitized laughter that really boils my blood, like when the cruel Big Wheel on Price is Right when someone pops over that Dollar and into “not makin’ it to the Showcase Showdown” obscurity.
But it’s Picky who gets the last digital laugh, since her Red Zone is currently clear. the Drop would have been useless, and instead she gets what she probably wanted: LIGHT NEXT MODE. Now, instead of fucking around and hitting reqs, she can just pop it back in the hole.
“Satire is the refuge of fools and cowards,” Picky says. “Especially given that we practically live in a fucking satire, as if by goddamn design.”
“Yeah, which makes it particularly hard to write about in a full on satirical way,” I say. “And yet, I give the old grad-student try. So yeah, in a way, you got me dead bang, but the charge of cowardice…”
“You’re a famous coward.”
“…but the charge of cowardice in this specific instance is to fucking laugh. Whether or not you think it’s worth anything, I spend my whole time writing, on paper and in my head, trying to record the truth as near as I can see it, in an increasingly irrelevant art form, and I do it fearlessly, even when talking about myself.”
“…really?” Pick says, after a few beats.
“Yeah as soon as I heard the word “fearless” come out of my mouth I knew I must be bullshitting,” I shrug.
“First of all, no one can see their own braincase,” Picky chides, and because I’m also a nerd, I enjoy the reference. “Trying to write honestly about yourself is like looking into a mirror and imagining you’re seeing true verisimilitude.”
Check out the big brain on Picks,” I smile. “Breaking out those big scary academic words you claim to fear, because betas must never play with alphas.”
“Minus ten points from House Second-Wave Feminism for that ‘Picks’,” she growls, mad enough to not workshop her joke, but then quickly calls down, and refocuses. “Well, look, if either of us bullshitted our writing a little more, we could pretty easily both snag doctorates from some shit school somewhere. But you know me, I have higher standards than most of academia.”
“God, you talk so big when Mo’s not around,” I snicker.
“My ‘most’ is obviously not all-inclusive,” Picky says. “Our María de la Soledad is one of the good ones.”
There’s just… so so many wrong ways to take that. She has my vape in her mouth again… did she ever give it back in the first place, or is she showing off her mid lifting skills? As she exhales a billowing puff of my grass, she hits the flashing Freaker scoop, popping another mode off – THE BURN UNIT.
So, she has two modes totally cleared,and a third started, The Complex is ready, Bridge at Level 3, current Freaker threat at 20%, “TriSsphere” lit, Tactical Nuclear Weapon 45% complete… She’s doing pretty well for her first ball, but the tough shit is rapidly approaching.
“So, it’s a satire.” Picky says, cracking her neck in that gross way some people can manage.
“Yeah… a pseudo-satire…” I reply, “fearlessly” backing off of my enthusiasm. This makes Picky literally leap into the air, then coming down too hard on her bad knee, and she cringes and grabs at her leg.
“Bro!” she exclaims, through a wince. “Dawg! You can’ just make up a term on the spot and use it as secondary research, and don’t you dare look…”
“Sowwy daddy, already looking it up.” I scan a few pages while Picky shakes out her leg, My research doesn’t go well.
Ok, dunno if you were setting me up,” I say, smashing that window closed, metaphorically. “But hard backsies on that one – the thing that phrase is most attached to is apparently ‘South Park.”
“Ew, yeah, take back granted, but I get ten points for sure. You kinda fucked yourself with that one, buddy.” Picky puts the ball back in play, immediately heading for the pop bumpers – the focus of the mode (every three pops hit, another Freaker gets torched.). As I think I mentioned a hundred pages ago, those pops are a truly dangerous proposition, since they’re the most chaotic place on the playfield, the one area you really have no control over.
“Ok, bad term, let’s operationalize,” I say, thinking that’s the right word for it. “What I mean is, there’s, like, a purposeful tension that seeks to create a sense of discomfort, and I think you’re mistaking that purposeful alienation as some sort of hostile action.”
“Repeat that line in your head real slow…” Picky says, eyes thinning. Then they pop back open as she burns up another group of Freakers. “You know what, never mind, if you realized what you said, you’d actually find a way to justify it. Anyway, ok, so, it’s a satire. Not a satire like some deeply racist and classist shit Matt and Trey cook up, then, it’s a satire like… what? And don’t say it’s totally unique.”
“The tension I’m working to evoke here is the uncanny reality, as seen through a mirror of absurdity. Yes, the language is tweaked to “feel” academic, and I think most people who never went past undergrad’ll probably find the language…”
“Oh, dear, oh dear, oh dear…” Picky interrupts, bringing out her inner upper class British uncle, “So now we’re parsing this as a specifically elitist text, too wise and obscure for the great unwashed. Alphas shouldn’t play with betas, indeed, sir.”
“Nope, I’m…” I try to parse things carefully. She’s managed to destabilize me, and I’d better get things back on track or she’s definitely going to win the weird rhetoric game she’s playing in her head. “I wasn’t describing it as anything beyond Alice in Wonderland for the technophobic.”
“Alice…” she says, nodding and smiling. Not that I’m proud of it, but I know from experience that randomly reciting Jabberwocky in the presence of a certain type of woman sometimes leads to sex and misery.
‘Nice pull,” she capitulates. “A solid satire that people imagine is about drugs and sex, which I suppose it is, to an extent. But it’s primarily about the absurdity of rhetoric and maths. A good defense to fall back on… Thing about Carroll, though, is he’s easy enough to read for kids, and he’s really, really fun.”
“Christ I didn’t mean it was exactly like Alice in Wonderland, I just thought it was a good example of the traction I’m looking to engender.”
“You brought it up, motherfucker,” Picky says, as she ostentatiously shoots again into those vicious pops, and hits just enough to complete the mode – 30 FREAKERS BURNED – EXTRA BALL – and then the ball takes a bad bounce, coming out of the pops hard, and fast, and straight down the middle. There was no chance to save it… there were… no survivors.
“Fuck you, pinball goddess whores!” Picky yells, in a loud enough voice for people to look up from their Pulls. Giveth,Giveth, you bitches, stop takething away!”
