DooM Nexus: Ten Good Reasons

Ten Good Reasons to Stay Home and Play DooM

10. You won't get hit by a bus. Or lightning. Or a pie in the face. Or a golf ball. Or a plague of locusts. Or a falling piano. Or a runaway warthog. Or a riverboat casino. Or a lump of camel turd. Or a .....

9. It'll put hair on your chest. [Any ladies out there reading this may want to skip this paragraph. Unless you're into that sort of thing.] Scientists in Lithuania observed test subjects that were playing DooM while micro-doses of electro-shocks were simultaneously administered to the sub-cutaneous region of the gluteous maximus. Hair follicles were observed to sprout spontaneously in the clavicular (chest) area in 92% of the subjects. (The other 8%, sadly, were using cheat codes, which sometimes has a negative effect on chest-hair growth.)

8. It'll keep you out of mischief. In medieval times, Franciscan monks were shaken from bed well before dawn; made to work like dogs cleaning toilets, scrubbing livestock, and doing laundry; and finally, exhausted and sore, and very pissed off, they went to bed late at night. They called it penance (nowadays they just call it "school"), and lived by the motto "An idle mind is the Devil's Workshop". What worked for a bunch of fat friars 700 years ago still works today. If you're at home, glued to your computer and playing DooM, you're less likely to walk over to the neighborhood convenience store with a plastic gun in your pocket, and demand 14 bags of Snicker Doodles or the pimply-faced clerk gets it in the gonads.

7. You can be macho without risk of repercussions. Say you're wandering around the dodgy parts of Belgrade, pretending you're a bad-ass with your trench coat and a plastic Toys-'r-Us limited edition Mossberg Ulti-Mag pump-action 535 ATS tucked away underneath. You're itching for a fight, and your wish is granted when you're accosted by some insouciant kids who demand to see what you're hiding under your coat. You whip out the ATS and they .... burst out laughing. You hadn't realized that when you took a seat on the bus earlier, the plastic barrel had broken off. What you're holding now has the same impact as a limp penis. One of the kids whips out his little dick and pees on your shoes before darting gleefully back into the shadows. Has this ever happened to you when you tried to pick a fight in DooM? I didn't think so.

6. Getting to the toilet is easier. So, you have grand plans to travel and see the world. You board that plane for Zagreb, forgetting that the super-sized mocha flappuccino that you guzzled down while browsing the girly magazines that they only keep on the top-most shelf at the airport bookstore would eventually need to find its way back out. The plane is taxiing off the tarmac. The seat-belt sign is on. The flight attendant is cutely telling you that you may not form a line to the front lavatory. That's when you feel a gurgle in your alimentary canal. That iced coffee will not be contained, and it is not happy. You shift in your seat, cross your legs, and hum a tune, eliciting dirty looks from the other passengers. Finally, in desperation you cup your crotch and press your knees together. The passenger next to you moves away and calls you a pervert and a weirdo. The lavatory is within sight but worlds away. Would this have happened if you had listened to your mother and stayed home? And played DooM.

5. You won't get bugs in your teeth. You're done with work (or school, or math club, or goofing off) and you're trying to decide whether to stay home and play DooM or go for a jog. That nagging voice in your head is telling you that those extra thirty pounds (13.63636 kilos for our metric system brethren) of belly flab won't miraculously evaporate of their own accord. So you decide on the jog, suit up, fasten the velcro straps on your sneakers, run your hand through your hair while admiring yourself in the mirror, and head out. Your strides are long and confident, your breath strong, your arms work like pistons as you propel forward. Suddenly you see the cute neighbor girl/boy stepping out to pick up the mail. You turn and flash the biggest smile you're capable of, and .... splat! A pair of horseflies that were engaged in a mating ritual as a prelude to doing the Fandango, and as a result didn't see you looming up (what they say about love being blind must be true), are now no more than a couple of unappetizing stains on your pearly whites. You really ought to have stayed home. And played DooM.

4. You won't be the main feature in a Hitchcock film. You ever see the Hitchcock movie "Birds"? Remember the scene when a driver stops to fill his car at a gasoline station and is attacked by a flock of birds? He's knocked unconscious, and the gasoline continues to pump out onto the street. Another customer, unaware he is standing in the puddle, lights a cigar and drops the match on the ground, creating an inferno. [Much like standing next to a nukage barrel and shooting it, no?] If you listen really carefully, you can hear the guy mutter: "I really should have stayed home today and played DooM."

3. You'll never pull a "Mary Poppins". You're strolling down the street, idly gazing into shop windows (lingering too long in front of "Victoria's Secret", methinks), trying to decide if you want a vanilla chai latte or a Mountain Dew. Suddenly you are shocked out of your reverie by a loud clap of thunder, and the firmament opens up to dowse you with a drenching downpour. You fumble to get your umbrella open, and when it does you smile triumphantly at all the losers who left home unprepared and are scurrying to get out of the deluge, briefcases or newspapers over their heads. Your smile swiftly fades as a gust of wind lifts your umbrella, your grubby hands still tightly clutched to its handle. You rise higher and higher, your eyes bugging out as you see the roofs and chimneys of London sailing away beneath you. Your last conscious thought is: I really ought to have stayed home and played DooM.

2. It'll keep the aliens from finding you. It's a little-known fact that playing DooM releases a specific type of endorfin in your brain that suppresses your bio-electric signature. Everybody knows that aliens coming out of deep-space jumps are virtually blind, and rely on these digital stamps to target life forms (much like echo-location used by bats - the main difference being that bats leave behind a pile of guano that is actually helpful to humans, whereas aliens force-feed guano to humans for the sheer joy of seeing our faces when we first taste the yucky stuff). So. Play DooM at home and magically acquire the Invisibility Sphere. Or go to the Mall and spit up guano when there's no more room in your stomach for any more. The choice is yours.

And the number one reason to Stay Home and Play DooM is ...... (drum roll please) .......

1. It could make you the next computer gaming tycoon. Reliable sources from id Software have been coerced into revealing that deep in the bowels of DooM's source code lie the seeds of the next generation of computer games. Using technology code-named "Quasar", this data has been programmed for release via subliminal transmission each time DooM is played. Play it enough times, and Voila! you are transformed into a coding genius just slightly under par with John Carmack. (Either that, or it turns you into a zombie to join Carmack's vast legions in his quest for world domination! MWAHAHAHAHA!)