Video Game Escapism: The best medication for Anxiety

I'm a big advocate of using video games as a coping mechanism for dealing with the stresses of real life. I usually get very ingrained in the characters lives and problems and forget all of my own stresses just for the time I am playing. I find that this is the best way for me to cope with my own anxiety and depression. When I'm having a particularly anxious spell I feel stuck in my problems, like I can't move forward or even begin to resolve them. In video games, I can see real quantifiable progress as I complete quests and gain experience.

I can play four to five hours at a time given the chance, which I know some people would find very strange or even a waste. Usually it depends on what the game is.

Since real life is so open ended, problems have no real black and white solutions and meeting objectives is usually not a linear endeavor. I enjoy the rigid black and white world of video games. Sure, the most recent generation of games is aiming to be more gray and less defined, but the very fact that someone programmed a series of choices and outcomes makes the game digital overall.

This is not a bad thing, I like the fact that video games have hard and fast rules that I can learn and use to my advantage. I like that I can't make any mistakes so bad that the world changes fundamentally and I like that at the end of the day, all of my problems are eminently solvable.

Recently, I have been playing through the Witcher 3, my console of choice is the PS4 and it has basically enslaved me for the best part of a month. This game feels different from any other I have played. Many reviewers have raved about how it has changed the landscape of RPG gaming and raised the standard of narrative and quest design. While this may be true, there are deeper implications with this change.

Being a perfectionist, I also strive to do video games correctly. I want to get the "good" ending. I want to collect everything and I want all the good characters to like me and all the bad characters get their comeuppance. If I do something wrong, I am always tempted to reload and try again rather than living with my flawed actions, I get enough of that in real life! I try to not look at guides to story line to manipulate the game to my desire and I try not to correct actions but sometimes, it is so easy to just try again when you have that conversation with an attractive female character that didn't quite turn out how you were hoping.

In the Witcher 3, it is actually quite difficult to see the puppet strings. You make decisions important to the game without even realizing it, innocuously seeming NPCs take on an entirely different and unexpected role and there is no way of knowing what the right choice even was. Consequences can happen hours after the event when you barely even remember what could have caused the outcome. The game introduces you to a vaguely familiar character or situation and says...

"Hey, remember this random thing you did that you thought I wouldn't notice? Well here's a steamy bowl of consequences, and if you don't like it then just reload back a few hours!"

...Knowing full well you have long saved over that timestamp and you couldn't bare losing the character progression. Well played Witcher 3, well played...

Well for a person like me who likes the fact that I can do everything "right" in video games and no screw up is too large. It was hard to deal with at first. I thought I had done the right thing, played by the video game rules, only to find out that what I did had done had dire consequences for the future.

*Warning* Spoilers for the Witcher 3 beyond this point!!

For example, I met a random guy tied up on a river bank by bandits... Pretty cut and dry, don't even think there was a quest, just a random event, untie him, send him on his way, he promised me a big reward when he got back to his camp...

Several hours later...

Bump into the same guy at a camp, turned out he is head of the bandits now and murdered a camp full of innocent men, women and children and is so grateful for me helping him he offered me a bunch of gold that might as well have had blood literally dripping off it... So I turned down his gold, murdered him and his friends and tried to forget that my actions got a bunch of random people killed.

Then there is Fyke isle... Long story short, no one goes there because it is terrifying as balls and haunted. I meet the ghost at the top of the tower. She tells me a heart wrenching tale about how she was eaten from the inside out by rats while in a paralytic state, able to feel the pain but not cry out. I thought that sounded pretty nasty so I agreed to help her put her spirit to rest at last. I chose to release her from the tower and.....

...she murdered her ex-boyfriend who she blamed and then disappeared into the ether to wreak havoc on more innocent lives across Novigrad. Great. Good job me, you fell for a soppy story and released an insane spirit on the innocent.

So it seems nothing is as it appears in the Witcher 3 and regular video game tropes don't seem to hold up at all. I could do nothing once I realized my mistake, other than take it and walk away. No second chances, no righting my wrongs, just live with it.

Then there's the Witcher contract to hunt a prostitute killer... I trace him to a brothel, burst in to find him about to kill a prostitute he tied to a chair, so naturally I kill him... Only to find another body much later on... apparently the guy I caught literally red handed was the wrong guy. Or at least he had an accomplice that I didn't bother asking him about as his head rolled across the floor.

Then you have the love interests, Triss and Yennifer. Naturally I assumed that no bad could come from seducing both because that's how video games work. I'm the hero so they should both be lucky to have me. I seduce both for the whole game then expect to have a grand moment of choice scene at the end and choose a winner while the other goes her separate way with absolutely no negative consequences...

Well, come the end game and things were better than I could imagine: a threesome! Just as I predicted, the hero always gets his way...

Except it was actually a trap and I ended up embarrassed, alone and tied to a bed... WTF! And that was it, I had failed and was doomed to be alone thanks to my own selfishness.

There's many more scenarios, but I think I made my point.

So what the Witcher 3 teaches us is that we should choose a partner, be faithful and spurn the advances of all others. Then we can live happily ever after. So kinda like real life then... In real life I would never act the way I made Geralt act. The worst part is that throughout the game I couldn't stand Yennifer, she acted more like my mom than a lover and I really liked Triss. Yet, when push came to shove I saw no problem in telling Triss I Geralt loved her only to go and cheat on her with Yen.

Why? Because that's the old video game rules, I can have it all! If I wanted to be monogamous and not murder everyone who looks at me funny, I'd go outside! And I was genuinely pretty disappointed that I Geralt ended up alone in the end because of my own poor choices.

I mean come on! Even Lambert ended up with Keira! And he was a total A-hole the whole game!

But there you have it, video games have changed, no longer does being the protagonist guarantee a happy ending with no consequences of your actions. and now I will have to be a lot more careful about the decisions I make.

Just on a random aside: How awesome was the 'mission' where you get drunk with your Witcher friends, dress up in Yennifer's clothes and drunk dial a random mage on the mage phone in an ill-fated attempt to invite over some hot sorceresses to the party. One of the funniest scenes in a video game of all time.

Dear Childhood Best Friend

We haven't seen each other in a very long time, and I've found myself thinking about you this past week. You moved very far away a few years ago, and I figured it was time I finally wrote to you.

You broke my heart. Not once. Not twice. Multiple times. You kept doing it and seemingly without remorse. You grew up and became a psychopath and I hope you're living a miserable life.

But I still miss you.

Not the you you are now. I miss the you I knew when we were kids. You were tons of fun. I still remember when and where we met.

I had just moved to the area and was riding a new bus. I got on for the first time, and I saw this mousy brunette sitting in the middle. There were some bitchy girls in the back and few other kids speckled around. I sat across the aisle from you. You were very quiet. Didn't look at me at all. Just read your book. So I just kept to my own business and looked out the window. The bus was almost never packed.

It would seem like you brought something new with you on the bus every day. First it was Beanie Babies. I had a pretty good collection on my own, but you had some I've never seen before. Other times, you brought these really cool animal robot toys. I saw you had this one like a lion, so I finally spoke up.

"What's that?" I asked.

"It's a Zoid," you responded.

"That's cool. What does it do?"

"It fights other Zoids. This is Liger Zero X."

And so our friendship began. I started asking my mum to buy me Zoids when we went to Walmart, but my collection was never as big as yours. It didn't matter, we shared them and made up our own stories.

We learned about our other interests like drawing, and eventually discovered anime together. We could never pass by Walden's book store in the mall without going in to look at the manga rack to see if the newest book of favorite series' were there.

Some of my favorite memories include buying random fabrics from JoAnne's and running around the woods by our houses, playing pretend. We were queens of the various animal kingdoms. We were warrior princesses of an anthropomorphic fox species. We were super saiyans. I was Sailor Jupiter and you were Sailor Uranus. We both crushed on Legolas and Aragorn, son of Arathorn.

I brought you to all of my family functions. You met my cousins, and she's just as quirky as us, so we had loads of more fun making music videos. We were so close, we promised each other that we would all be each other's Maid of Honor when we got married.

We had wondrous adventures together, but it came to an abrupt halt when we started dating boys.

I wasn't mature enough to really care. I thought boyfriends were just friends that were boys. I got a boyfriend before you, but I still made time to hang out with everyone because that's how I was. You turned into something different when you got a boyfriend.

You started to ignore me. You essentially forgot about me. Then you actively avoided me. It really sucked. It tore me up because you were my best friend. I shared all my secrets with you. When something shitty happened, you weren't there for me. I needed you.

When your boyfriend dumped you and you remembered that I existed, I forgave you. I missed you. I was excited that things were going back to the way they were before. But it didn't last long. You turned into a serial dater. You forgot about me every time you had a new boyfriend, and every time, it broke me down just a little bit more.

I moved away for college and lived in my dorm in the city for a year. We barely saw each other. I had hoped you had changed because I asked you to come be my roommate in the city for our first apartment. You did. We had some fun, but it quickly deteriorated. I started to learn you weren't who I thought you were.

Not once did you get a real job when we lived together. Your job as a stripper paid well. Too well. In fact, all of your boyfriends were previous clients. You dated a 32 year old man (we were still only 19 and 20 at the time). You dated a computer savvy college student (probably your best yet). And you didn't come home a lot. Almost ever. Our apartment was more like a storage space for your shit while you slept at mens' places. I'm sorry, clients. Sure, you weren't the stereotypical stripper that got addicted to drugs. But you were the stripper that dated clients and allowed them to pay you under the table for going on dates with them like an escort. I never asked if those packages included sex because it just wasn't my business and honestly, I didn't want to know.

The biggest blow to my heart is when you started visiting my cousin without me. I thought we were best friends, only to feel betrayed when you two started hanging out behind my back. It's not like she was a short drive away. It required a lot of planning to visit each other because she lived four hours away. It also sucked because my cousin never visited me when we lived together, but she visited you after we got our own, separate apartments. She visited me for the first time just last October, and I've been living in this city since 2009.

Regardless, you chipped away at my trust in you. You're the reason why I can't stand you now.

Since we've parted ways, my cousin got married. You couldn't even be bothered to attend her wedding when she asked you to be her Maid of Honor because you'd rather take your shirt off at your job. It's okay, I attended but didn't get to be her MOH either. I'm not even mad about that. I'm mad because you blew her off.

Now I'm about to get married, and my cousin will be in my bridal party, but you won't. And that makes me happy. You moved to the Virgin Islands to live with a guy you met online when you were 15. I hope you make each other miserable. You are such a despicable person, you had the gall to accuse someone I love of raping you because you needed to pull the "victim" card to keep your relationship with that weirdo together.

You're a liar. You're a heart-breaker. You're a disgusting human being and I hope you get what you deserve, because I certainly am.

Cheers.

The Kinetic Barrier to Change

I'm not sure if I mentioned in a previous post how it came to be that I became trans-located from the UK across the pond into the US.

It started fairly easily... I wanted to live in the US!

The previous five or so years, I had become quite enamored with the American culture, I had studied American history in high school as an optional course as a change from science and it was fascinating. I had become a huge fan of football* thanks in part to happenstance and to an obsession with playing Madden with my younger brother.

Just for a bit of personal history, the first game I ever saw was Super Bowl XLI by pure chance. I was bored at home on a cold February night and randomly flipped onto the opening ceremony of the Super Bowl on C4. I watched the whole thing intently; the half time show with Prince, the endless Rex Grossman bumbling, and that was where my love started. I wanted to know more... watch more videos, play more games. 

For whatever reason, my brother also started to love football around the same time, a few years of Madden and following the NFL network later, and I was a mega fan. There is no off season to me. I watch the draft. I watch the scouting combine. I don't just blindly follow the Giants either because that was the first place I lived when I moved to America. I am a huge Giants fan, but I can talk with any fan about any team. Although I'd rather not talk to certain team fans...

The point is that I have grown closer and closer to the US culture for several years before I left. My love of football was just part of that...

In the meantime I was moving into the final year of a Ph.D. program in chemistry and wondering what I would do afterward. Most people look for a Post-Doc but I was far more interested in getting out of the lab and moving into a career.

Then one day someone, knowing how much I love America, I was asked why I don't move there...

It seemed obvious but my first thoughts were..

"How can I do that?!"

"I don't know where to start."

"It sounds expensive."

"I don't know anyone there."

But then I realized...

These were just excuses! I loved the idea of moving to the country that I loved, albeit in theory at this point. Sure, I'd visited a few times but Hawaii, Florida and New York City hardly seem like the real America. I didn't know what it would really be like.

So the next day I started looking into how I could get to America...

One solution was to do a Post-Doc... not my first choice. but by far the easiest way to get a Visa and a Post-Doc at Princeton would get my foot in the American door, and it would be great for my CV.

I began planning, found a flight, a place to stay, got my visa, and prepared. It didn't really dawn on me that I was really leaving my whole life behind until I was on the plane. My life was literally packed into two suitcases and I could barely breathe with anxiety and the worst heartburn of my life.

I landed into JFK airport that evening and made the huge mistake of deciding to stay in a cheap hotel in Queens before moving on to Princeton the next day. An even bigger mistake was foregoing the taxi service from JFK, and instead opting for the AirTrain to Jamaica Station followed by a five block walk... at night. This whole plan had me wondering if I'd made a HUGE mistake by coming here at all... and if I would even live to regret it.

The next day, I headed to Princeton, lugging two packed suitcases through the busy New York City and the architectural black hole that is Pennsylvania Station. I figured, how hard could it be to change trains from the Long Island Railroad to the NJ Transit... Boy was I naive!

Finally I made it to Princeton, this time opting to take a taxi to the place I'd call home for the next month, a rental house just North of the University. The family I was renting a room from was welcoming, but all I really wanted to do was decompress, so I went for a walk before even packing away my clothes.

The first time I saw Princeton town, my heartburn and anxiety evaporated immediately.

I felt like I was home, finally...

And I've felt like that ever since.

True, I've since moved to Pittsburgh, which I much prefer to Princeton, but I knew for the first time that I was on the right track. America was my home, and I knew it.

So if you've read this far, congratulations! I don't pretend that my story is exciting, or even interesting, but it is unique to me and it does hold a lesson.

You can be one of those people who just talks about "one day I'm going to do this", or "I want to do this". The word "but" usually completes the second part of those sentences. I used to do it too.

"I want to live in America, but..."

Until someone I trusted asked me why don't I? I really didn't think it was real. 

It doesn't matter what your dream is. Talk is cheap, as they say, not in money though, it's cheap in time and effort. Achieving any dream, however small, requires overcoming some barrier to happiness.

I realized while writing this story that this barrier is much like the barrier towards a chemical reaction. It's the reason why paper dreams of bursting into flames, but instead it just sits there, as a piece of paper, until it catches a spark. That spark helps the paper overcome the reaction barrier and the paper burns just as it always wanted to.

Let me explain what I mean using the diagram...

In Chemistry reactions lower energy just means something is more stable but if you trace the energy pathway from Y to X there is a high energy peak between the two. Much like life, there is always an uphill struggle if you want to make a life change to a happier state.

But notice the red line! That looks MUCH easier, I want to take the easy path to happiness!

Well you can, but that requires a catalyst. A catalyst makes that effort less and the change easier. My catalyst was my friend who basically sat me down and told me to get my head out of my ass and start doing something toward my goal or stop talking about it! 

My goal was to live in America, my barrier was the torturous journey, expenses and effort of finding a job in another country, and my catalyst was a trusted (albeit abrasive) friend... and now I'm at point X and looking for my next low energy state!

So stop reading this and figure out what you want and start working toward it!

And most importantly, find your catalyst...

*For the purposes of this and ALL future posts, 'football' refers to American football! If I mean 'soccer' I will say soccer, which I probably won't because it sucks and is boring. Very few things annoy me more than being questioned every time I say football as to whether I in fact mean 'American football' as if it is that surprising that a British person would prefer football to soccer. Just for the record, it is Americans who decided to use the same bloody word for a completely different, all be it superior sport, and thus create the confusion.

White Pride! Straight Pride! Wait, what?

I've noticed an increasingly, interesting trend happening on the internet these days, and it was a rather collective, but subtle (until recently this last week), movement I dare say: pride for the majority.

Before you angrily disagree, let me clarify what I mean when I say pride for the majority (and you're probably still going to disagree, I promise, I totally have a point after this next paragraph).

I mean the students in Ohio that celebrated a Straight Pride Week, or this website dedicated to celebrating Heterosexual Awareness Month (though I can't really tell what month they're claiming since they've marked July 6th as Straight Pride Day and July 22nd as International Day Against Heterophobia, but you can buy T-Shirts and mugs!). This forum that is for White Nationalists that say they support true diversity and a homeland for all people, but want to promote the interests, values, and heritages of the white majority simply because there's so many organizations that already do it for non-white minorities. There is this radio and billboard project that claim to be the voice of the white resistance.

None of this is new. That radio station I linked to is run by the Ku Klux Klan, and they've been around for a really long time. And that's also kind of my point. I'm a firm believer that when people don't learn their history, it's doomed to repeat itself. In this technological era, and millennials in particular, we have no real understanding of what it's like to see a repressed minority. We grew up in a world where everyone is equal on the internet (go Net Neutrality! Woo!). We asked everyone their ASL (age, sex, and location, for those older and newer folks that missed the trend before we had online profiles, and for people who don't say folks), so you could be chatting up someone of a completely different background whether that's racial, financial, sexual, religious, or something else. While you may have your personal bias of who you PM'd (private messaged), the melting pot of an open IRC chatroom did not.

This is how we used to internet. (The Fine Bros.)

So we have a generation of people coming into their twenties in America that have only experienced a world where everyone can have an opinion. Anyone can become instantly famous in 140 characters or less. We've also experienced a world where Black History Month is celebrated every February,  there are annual LGBT+ parades, and feminists can be found everywhere spreading awareness for equality between the genders both personally and professionally.

Equality.

We see that word, and we know the definition. But now we're starting to get confused. We see everyone fighting to be equal, but we forget what they're trying to be equal to. We've started to see these awesome parades and celebrations as privileges for the minorities, not as something as equal. And that's a hard thing to say. In fact, I'm kind of disgusted to say it, but I believe this trend to be true.

We watch silently as the rainbow flags wave above our heads. We diligently learn about Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream and the abolishment of slavery that followed. We learned why World War II and our own Civil War started (we briefly covered the Women's Suffrage, if at all in my school). But it all seemed so long ago. Those are just in our history books, and there are few people to recount memories of those events are alive today. In the time of the internet, those events may as well be in the Dark Ages because we move faster with the ever changing current of information available at our fingertips.

Now that we've grown up in this world, many of my generation are failing to understand why we celebrate the minorities like we do, and thus it results in my generation being led to believe that we are no longer the majority. That we no longer have these privileges that the minorities claim us to have had. That there are so many minorities banded together for equality, that we have actually become the outcasts.

And so white pride is born. Straight pride is born. We are trying to claim pride for ourselves because we're starting to feel like we're the minority.

People actually think this. I didn't just make it up. (USDemocrazy)

It simply isn't true.

Sure, you can be proud to be who you are, and you should be! But the problems begin when we start repeating history because we failed to learn it, or learn from it. I'm not saying you should be ashamed to be proud because you're heterosexual. I'm saying you should be ashamed for your ignorance when you get upset, angry, or annoyed when someone else expresses their pride for being something different.

If I were a parent of a child with a bad habit, I'd say that even though I don't agree with your choice of habit, I accept it. That's what we need to do as humans. We need to agree that we may disagree with each other's choices, whether that is who they identify as, who they choose as partners, what they choose to believe or not believe in, whatever, but we need to accept each other gracefully.

We need to tone it down with this pride for the majority stuff. We didn't have to celebrate it before because it was already known. It was already "default", if I might say it like that. What we celebrate for the minorities is because it isn't "default." We're celebrating the differences in people so that they don't feel so different after all. But now it's turning into celebrating all but one...

On the other side, Morgran doesn't want anyone to celebrate anything.

In the end, we may find ourselves on the cusp of another civil war, with businesses and buildings taking down their confederate flags because of what they may represent. Is it white history? Is it American history? Is it Southern heritage? Is it a reminder that we once coveted slavery and fought to keep it? Whatever it means, it may cause us to repeat history because we either didn't learn it or have decided to only believe the parts we want to believe.

Read a history book from England. I'm sure their take on the French and Indian War is much different than ours.


Tessa is a feminist that falls along the LGBT+ spectrum and supports equality for everyone. She believes racism and sexism are both virulent in our culture and hopes to spread the awareness. Tessa is also in support for turning our current "rape culture" into awkward conversations in order to return the value of the word to it. Yes, she will overreact to rape jokes because they're not funny. Neither are jokes founded upon mental illnesses or physical disabilities.

SPB: Vomit Chocolate

So have you always wondered why Hershey's chocolate tastes disgusting?

What's that? You like Hershey's chocolate?!

Then you must be American, because most people from outside the U.S. would agree there is just something not quite right about Hershey's.

The first bite is tasty, sweet but then there's a sort of rotten milk aftertaste that you can't quite put your finger on. Well, being a chemist I was curious about what this might be. 

It turns out that the rotten milk aftertaste is actually.... rotten milk. Not sure why I was surprised. More specifically, it is a chemical called Butyric Acid. 

Butyric Acid is the chemical that if you ever find yourself in a chemistry lab and open the wrong fridge, it hits you in the face like a jug of milk left on the radiator for a week and makes you wish you could remove your entire olfactory system with the nearest blunt instrument.

Fun fact about Butyric Acid: it's gross!

So here is a run down of Butyric acid's close cousins:

Formic acid (C1): The shortest cousin, and the stuff that red ants inject you with that burns like a son-of-a-bitch!

Acetic acid (C2): aka Vinegar. Okay, can't fault this one, vinegar is delicious! but many people think I'm insane to think that. Sorry, it's a British thing, fish and chips need vinegar!

Propanoic Acid (C3): aka Sweat! Yes, this is the smell of BO... 'nuff said.

So Butyric acid (C4) doesn't exactly find itself in excellent company....

But, the best part about Butyric acid is that it is not only literally the chemical that gives sour milk its delicious, "oh holy god, why did I just put that into my coffee?!" morning wake dry heave taste. But also the chief ingredient of vomit. 

So why you might ask would it be in chocolate of all things!

Well that is just a byproduct of how American chocolate is made. In an attempt to increase profits, the milk used in U.S. chocolate is partially lypolyzed... 

Okay so I probably just lost most people. Let's back-up.

We all know that milk has a shelf life, and left sealed the sour taste comes from the naturally occurring lypaze enzymes in the milk breaking down fatty acids to various carboxylic acids, one of which is Butyric acid. For this reason, sour milk tastes disgusting. Certain things, like exposure to light, oxygen, or excess heat can accelerate this process. So that's why milk is stored in the fridge where it's dark and cool.

To stop this process, milk in the store is pasteurized. This exposure to high temperatures destroys the enzyme (they are very sensitive to heat... as anyone who has studied enzyme chemistry can attest) meaning the milk can no longer sour itself as quickly and has a longer shelf life. The alternative is to lypolyze the milk slightly and actually partially sour it intentionally. This reaction produces some of the bad chemicals, but prevents the milk from fully souring. This is the method the chocolate manufacturers go for in the U.S.

So in the U.S. the milk is intentionally partially soured to increase shelf life and the profit.

To a non-American this is akin to urinating on a steak to keep animals away! 

But apparently Americans just develop some kind of immunity to the taste of vomit and just don't taste it! I have even given many Americans real British chocolate, Cadbury's Dairy Milk for example, and they all like it but somehow miss that sour milk vomit taste!

What is even worse to me is that this expectation is so widespread, and America is such a large international market, that rather than just make chocolate that is profitable, it just so happens to have Butyric acid in it. Legitimate chocolate manufactures actually add Butyric acid directly to their chocolate mixture!!!

Just let that sink in....

A guy in a chocolate factory somewhere is looking into a vat of delicious molten milk chocolate, and is actively getting a jar of concentrated super vomit and pouring it into said chocolate, presumably crying in actual pain while he comes to the realization that he is destroying something beautiful and basically declaring war on Switzerland. 

Hmm... needs more vomit.

This would be much like adding a mustache to the Mona Lisa to appease the mass market.

But don't worry, America, it's not all bad, There is still Ghiradelli and in my opinion the best chocolate in the world and made right here in the United States, so next time you're in the store looking for chocolate, do yourself a favor and get some real chocolate... hold the vomit!

How to Create a Clicker Mask

My fiancé and I have an interesting way of playing games together. See, we're both very sensitive to horror genre movies and games. We often get very engaged in the story, putting ourselves in the main characters' shoes and ultimately feeling what they feel. In doing so, he'll hold the controller and play the game; I sit next to him as a backseat gamer. It comes as a comfort to him and myself because we have each other as we experience these terrifying stories.

One of our favorite games that we played together last year was The Last of Us. Living in Pittsburgh, we have an annual Zombie Walk. John decided to go as the main character, Joel, and I decided to go as one of his well known enemies, a Clicker. Now Clickers are just straight up scary. They're blind and they're fast. They will eat your face off if given the chance. Any bit of sound and they will find you. So here's how I turned myself into one.

I'm the Clicker, and John is Joel. We're hunting each other.

Step 1: Shape the Frame to Fit your Head

I started molding with aluminum foil and masking tape. I used aluminum foil to make a good helmet shape, and then the masking tape to hold it together when I liked it. I've got to say, I'll probably use this method for making other helmets because I totally thought it could've been a viking helmet from Skyrim. You want to make sure it's a little lose because it may get smaller throughout the process.

I WILL KILL YOU!!

More like a cap than a protective helmet.

Actually, I think I'm going to make a viking helmet someday for no other reason than because I can.

Step 2: Strengthen the Frame

So now that you have an awesome cowl, it's time to make it stronger to hold the weight of your soon-to-be mushroom face. To do this, I used papier-mâché. Papier-mâché is incredibly easy to make. I just used a mixture of warm water and flour. You can use old newspapers, but I just bought a tablet of blank newspaper. I prepared the area with a large square of plastic since the mixture can get a bit drippy. I also used gloves because I didn't want to get it on my hands. However, it is perfectly safe to touch with your skin.

Cut or rip the newspaper into strips. With every strip, soak it in the mixture and then lay it flat on your frame. Make sure it's nice and gooey all over, and also make sure the aluminum foil and masking tape are totally covered. Don't forget to cover the inside as well.

My mask covered in papier-mâché.

Once you're done, let it sit somewhere safe to dry completely. While the newspaper looks a bit dark and transparent when wet, it will come out opaque and lighter. You'll know if it isn't completely dry by the visibly darker wet spots.

I obviously didn't leave it in a safe spot. My cat decided to taste it while it dried overnight.

Once it's totally dry, try it on your head. It's still a bit flexible, so if you need to bend some bits, definitely do it now. Your frame should be strong enough for the next step.

Step 3: Create the Mushroom Pieces

Now this part was pretty fun, but safety first! You'll want to be in a well ventilated area (I was out on the porch), with protective glasses and gloves. You'll be working with expanding foam, and stuff can be pretty toxic if used incorrectly.

Did you know I like glasses? I put glasses in my glasses.

The expanding foam I used can be found in the insulation aisle at any hardware store.

Firstly, you want to cover your cowl with the expanding foam. And I mean cover it. Make it as blobby as possible. It'll be gross, gruesome, and totally better with the more goop you can pile onto it. As I did with the papier-mâché, I set plastic down on the table to make it easier to clean up after.

Once you've used plenty on the headpiece itself, you'll want to create puddles of the stuff. I found a good technique is to not move the nozzle, but just pour it out into once place, and it settles along the edges more than the center, giving it that flowering mushroomy look.

I tried moving the nozzle in a circle while spraying some puddles, and it looked more like a pile of poop.

I did this during the late morning, and it was dried before bed. However, check the label on your can of expanding foam for drying times.

Step 4: Carve and Assemble for a Final Shape

I can't stress it to you enough to try it on after everything is dried. If you plan on wearing this for an entire day, you want to be comfortable in it. If you're trying to be authentic in emulating the Clicker's movements, you also want to make sure it's tight enough to not fall of your head as you run to chase strangers for photos.

I can't really see out of it. How authentic!

Be careful, but use a sharp knife to help carve out pieces on the inside so your head still fits. Mine caved in a little in the back from the expanding foam's weight when wet, so I just cut it down from the inside. There was at least two inches of expanding foam on top, so I wasn't worried that it was going to pierce through. Also, I didn't care if I exposed some of the aluminum foil on the inside because nobody was going to see it. Just be careful to not cut yourself. Always cut away from you and never toward you.

This next part requires some creativity. You'll want to cut up the top so you can have room to place mushroom pieces around the top. I used a lot of mushroom images and Clicker images for reference. From what I've seen, most of them had a big gash along the top, and then flowered out and around. So that's what I tried to carve it to be like.

The eye holes were just big enough so I could stare at the floor and not run into anyone directly in front of me.

I also cut up the little poop shapes I made so they were flat or wedges on one end to be fitted onto the mask, and still gross and bubbly on the other end.

I actually spent days avoiding this part because I thought I'd screw it up.
However, it's your interpretation of the Clicker. So it doesn't have
to look exactly like mine, or the video game character's, or anyone else's.
This is your mask. Be proud of it.

Once I found and carved the shapes I liked, I used a little mini-gun of superglue to glue them to the mask. I had also carved a few, unseen holes in the back to pull my hair through. Unfortunately, I didn't actually carve them big enough to get my fingers through and pull any hair through, so... that was a bust.

Step 5: Painting It

I like to paint in my spare time (when I have any), so I really enjoyed this part of the craft. Again, I used references of the Clicker and actual mushrooms to decide on colors to use. I had showed a picture of it to a co-worker who said it looked like a delicious turkey, so I brushed on some more black along the top of it to make it more gruesome.

The first step though, was using a white Gesso all over it. Gesso is helpful because acrylic paint doesn't stick well to the smooth surface of the foam. It also allowed me to fill in gaps and give texture to some of the more bland sections.

Once the Gesso was dried, I used reds, oranges, and greens to paint the top. I took care to avoid some white parts in the middle to make it seem more gross. As I mentioned earlier, I also dry-brushed the top's edges with black to avoid making it look like some delicious, meaty meal and more like a disgusting, overgrown mushroom growing out of my head.

The painting got tedious. It took a few weekends to get it to my liking, and even then, there is just so much surface area to paint by hand. After I applied these colors, I used black spray paint and sprayed it upward to fill in any spots I missed by hand. When using the spray paint, I used the safety glasses, gloves, and a face mask to protect myself. I also used a bit of excess expanding foam to test the spray paint on because I wasn't entirely sure it wouldn't melt right through it.

After meticulously painting it with acrylic paint, I used black spray paint to fill in any places I missed and make it gross and not food-like.

When everything was all done and dry, I used clear spray to give the entire thing a disgusting, glossy finish. It also protected it because it was one of those finishers you can spray on paintings to keep them safe from dust and fading.

I got to wear my mask for a few occasions. I wore it to Pittsburgh's annual Zombie Fest and to work at Brunner because we were having a costume contest.

Working my desk job with a half infected face.

Posing for the Brunner costume contest

Unrelated to this tutorial, but my fiancé is hella fine with his "older man" makeup on.

Posing before heading out to the Zombie Walk.

So I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial and I'm excited to see all the wonderful masks you make!

Surprise Peanut Butter: An American Culture Shock

When you move from the UK to the US, most people would expect the degree of culture shock to be minimal. To a certain extent they are right. But the fact that you don't expect it makes those little things all the more surprising!

Early on in my American adventure I suffered from such a shock that I like to call Surprise Peanut Butter. 

Let me set the scene. In universities, most students are pretty poor so any promise of free food is likely to draw quite a crowd; that's basically the only sure fire way to guarantee a full auditorium of participants at a potentially very boring science lecture. So at my first such science talk, we were treated to a full spread of cookies and coffee (Princeton Chemistry department is certainly not shy about putting money into free food). I grabbed a plate of cookies and headed into the venue. I had grabbed a few of my favorites, oatmeal raisin included, as well as some unidentified plain cookies.

Getting the cookies I didn't fully understand was a huge mistake, but I figured, "How wrong can this go?" Apparently... very. The first bite was...

 SURPRISE! Peanut Butter!

To Americans, this occurrence is nothing strange but I'm sure my British kin can attest that biting into a cookie or biscuit from a varied platter and discovering peanut butter is very jarring. Not only is nut allergies a real possibility, and the tray was not labelled with a warning, but peanut butter seems to be one of those things that you either love or you hate...

I personally hate it!

So my delicious plate of sugary treats was turned to disappointment and broken dreams, and there was not enough coffee in the pot to drown out that flavor. 

Needless to say, I won't be diving into any unknown cookie trays from now on.

As a bonus feature, this is not an isolated incident.....

Everyone knows, at least in England, that purple is the best flavor. Loosely based on the concept of blackcurrant (although a poor imitation) in a mixture of colored treats, always choose purple, closely followed by red.

So imagine my surprise when in the US, purple means GRAPE!

What the hell is that all about! Grapes barely have a flavor anyway! why the hell would that even be a flavor, and why would anyone want to choose it on purpose! Needless to say, that candy ended up in the trash! And the candy based disappointment is continued.

Yet another jarring flavor experience, like when you are the passenger in a car and know where you're driving to, then the driver decides to take a different route and at a T-junction takes a left turn, when your whole body was expecting a right. It's unsettling.