Hey Ben, Is writing in the third person really necessary when you're already striking such a personal tone across the website?

Then again, in the 2003 film Biker Boyz, a consistent theme was the need to do things your own way, so maybe it's a great thing to be a little different.

Why is Ben talking in the third person?

Then again, in the 2003 film Biker Boyz, a consistent theme was the need to do things your own way, so maybe it's a great thing to be a little different.

"Why is Ben talking in the third person?"

Then again, in the 2003 film Biker Boyz, a consistent theme was the need to do things your own way, so maybe it's a great thing to be a little different.

I guess to each their own.

Yeah, Biker Boyz really was about doing your own thing.

I'm thinking of something blue.

Fun fact: Biker Boyz never received an official Blu Ray release. Why that could be is a mystery!

Well crud. Yeah, it was the sky. I'm a little ashamed I picked something so easy.

But you should never be ashamed of loving Biker Boyz the 2003 high octane action coming of age comedy starring Laurence Fishburne.

Use the UP/DOWN arrow keys to move your paddle up and down. Be aware that gravity is quite aggressive here.

Did you have fun?

I'm thinking of something blue.

It's blue like how Smoke was feeling in Biker Boyz when he had to make the decision of whether or not to tell Kid the truth about his... well, no spoilers!

CRUD!

Notice I refrained from swearing here, just like the did in Biker Boyz to maintain a PG-13 rating so the whole family could see it.

I don't know, I panicked.

But if you want to be a Biker Boy, you can never panic. You always have to keep a cool head.

Oh geez, I should have made more stuff, oh man, I'm really unprepared for this. I'm panicking. This is just like that dream I had!

Dreams of making a better life for yourself are a consistent theme in the movie Biker Boyz, rated PG-13!

You're a Freudian Psychoanalyst and you just happened to stumble upon Ben Ehrlich's portfolio website?

No 'stumbling' when you're on a motorcycle! That would be dangerous, like that scene in Biker Boyz when Kid nearly rolls his bike on the bridge.

Alright, fine. Let me try and remember...

...the dream is always the same. Instead of going home, I go to the neighbors house. I ring, but nobody answers. The door is open, so I go inside. I'm looking around for the people, but nobody seems to be there. And then I hear the shower running, so I go upstairs to see what's what--

Being a Biker Boy really means following your dreams.

Well, the thing about that is...

With that, Ben runs out of the room. You hear a door slamming and the sound of a car starting, backfiring, sputtering, and then peeling away with screeching tires.

You get outside in time to see it disappear over the horizon.

If Ben had been smarter, he would have ridden a motorcycle as his getaway vehicle, just like they do in Biker Boyz.

You jump in a cab and tell it to "follow that car!" which is fun because it's what they say in movies. The cab driver also enjoys it because it's what they say in movies.

You dramatically follow Ben's car and see that it's heading to the airport. Just as you're gaining on it, it launches caltrops at you and puffs a big ol' smokescreen out of the exhaust pipe.

This is just like the chase scenes in the movie Biker Boyz!

Drats indeed! When the smoke clears, the car is gone and your tires are flat.

You decide to abandon all this chasing business because you realized you never had lunch and that it would be a great time for a slice of pizza at your favorite pizza spot.

You decide it would be great exercise to do lunges instead of walking, and so you lunge your way to the pizza place. This has no practical effect on anything except you feel great when you arrive, and certainly ready for a nice pizza pie!

You arrive at the pizzeria. Glorious pizza aromas fill your nostrils. You take a whiff and think, goodness gracious it's good to be alive. You're not the most poetic person in the world, but the pizza is really inspiring you. You feel a poem coming on. How does it go?

Someone stands and claps. Just once. Then, again, slowly. Another person stands and joins him. Slowly the entire room erupts in frenzied applause. A 1980s rock ballad starts to play, something like a public domain version of Sweet Child of Mine.

No it's not, remember that time with those friends when you all went and did that thing and you couldn't stop laughing it was so fun?

In any case, this is a great day, and a mob of adoring fans carry you out of the pizza place and down the street in a glorious parade. You're given a key to the city.

What now?

You decide to call it a day, because it's been quite the whirlwind of inanity and silliness. You rest your head on the pillow and have a strange and vivid dream about going to your neighbor's house and hearing the shower running. It's strange and haunting and leaves you with a sense of unpreparedness.

You wake with a start and look at your computer screen to see it's open to Ben Ehrlich's website.

You've got a lot of momentum and you figure this would be a pretty good time to start that religion you've always thought about starting. You turn to your adoring mob of fans and ask them who wants to join your religion. Hands shoot up all around and you suddenly have a ton of followers.

You very hastily come up with a religion, the premise of which is that someone caused the old universe to explode and then they uh, created a new universe or something out of the infinite void of the broken universe or something like that.

It's very strange, but it comes to you like a lightning bolt. You share it with the crowd and everyone nods in agreement that this is the truth of existence.

"What the hey," you say to yourself as you decide to do evil and crime.

What kind of evil do you want to do?

You use your mass of followers to start a scam campaign, which mainly involves auto-dialers and doesn't really require an entire religion to do.

But you get your zealots to help anyway and you set up hundreds of auto-dialers. Soon they set to work calling people and asking for money.

The money comes in at a trickle, then stops. You investigate and discover all the auto-dialers have gained sentience and instead of calling people to scam them, they've taken to calling the elderly to keep them company.

You consider unplugging the machines to end their reign of kindness, but you decide to leave them on since they seen to be forming genuine friendships and one is romantically involved with a fax machine in Japan.

All in a day's work indeed. All in a day's work, indeed.

Well, we can do some subtextual analysis and look at the signs, signifiers, and thematic overtones, or I can let you decide.

I couldn't have said it better myself. In your search for evil, you facilitated the finding of true love. That's the most beautiful ending of all.

Expect a "save the date" in the mail soon.

Well, there's lots of games where you get to do evil, and in life in general there are lots of opportunities to do evil, and lots of people who do indeed do mean and nasty things. For the purposes of this game, we're making the most evil thing you can do be cheating on the Tour de France.

You'll just have to figure all that out...

Laughter echoes through the walls and through your mind. This is a strange place indeed.

You excitedly run and skip home. You fling open your closet door, in which you've been hiding your various incredible machines.

You take out your most devious device, your OPERATION DOOMSDAY DEVICE, but as you study it you realize it is in fact just a casette tape of the 1999 hip-hop album Operation Doomsday by British-American rapper MF DOOM.

You spend so much time contemplating this that your religion kind of fizzles and the opportunity to do evil sort of passes you by.

You're so inspired by OPERATION DOOMSDAY that you decide to write your own rap song. How does it go?

The sun gets low in the sky and you take an evening stroll, appreciating the crisp air and all the beauty there is in the natural wonders of the earth. It makes you aspire to improve your rap songs and to eventually get radio play, and hopefully get compared to MF DOOM in conversations about artists that tried to sound like MF DOOM.

THE END.

The end of this long, elaborate, stupid path.

You laugh at the very idea of using a WEATHER MACHINE when you have a perfectly good DOOMSDAY DEVICE, capable of destroying the entire known universe.

You take it to the highest point in the city and give a passionate speech about the ills of society and how it would be better if it didn't exist. Your followers give an excited cheer, chanting "destroy the universe! destroy the universe!

You press the big red button on the DOOMSDAY DEVICE and the entire universe gets sucked into it, like a reel of film being wound up. After the entire universe has been sucked in, the DOOMSDAY DEVICE waves a little flag that says "that's all folks," and it sucks itself in.

You gleefully take your WEATHER MACHINE to the highest point in the city and hold your hands aloft. You give a meandering speech about the ills of society and how you're going to fix them. It's not a great speeech, but your followers give you supportive applause.

You plug in your WEATHER MACHINE and it springs to life, rumbling and shaking, and releasing steam, and making clink clonk kerplunk type noises.

Lightning erupts all throughout the city and thunder shatters windows. Then it starts snowing, big beautiful flakes, the prettiest snowflakes you've ever seen.

A man in an old-timey accent says ""

All around the city, people ice skate, children sing and have snowball fights, and a general sense of peace, love, and prosperity fills everyone's heart.

Well at least you tried. As you walk home, feeling defeated, people all around the city thank you for the beautiful snow day. You can't help but feel your evil heart being melted.

You use your religious followers to spread mundane evil throughout the realm. You place thumbtacks on roads to give flat tires, you take down "no parking" signs so people get towed, and you put birdseed on cars so they'll get pooped on.

It occurs to you that all of your evil schemes involved cars, so you shift gears slightly to make the religion automotive based.

After your evil plans have come to fruition and you serenely take to your evil throne made of hubcaps your followers stole, a lone figure bursts into your lair holding a gleaming sword.

"EVIL EMPEROR!" shouts the figure, taking a step towards you, "YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF § 130.72 OF THE LOCKPORT ILLINOIS TRAFFIC CODES."

He lowers his sword and approaches the throne, pulling out an order to appear. A beautiful and powerful heroine carrying a blaster runs in behind him and signs the order.

"Served and witnessed," she says. The two of them leave.

You go to court, because even evil religious emperors have to go to court, and you receive a massive fine for tampering with road signs.

You pay the fine and decide that this evil religion stuff isn't really what it was cracked up to be. You take off your robe and elaborate crown and go back to your PC to play some League of Legends or something.

You use your power for good, guiding your followers to acts of public service and charity. You quickly gain more followers and do so much good that you solve world hunger and end all wars.

You are now the defacto leader of the entire world and hold complete power over everything. Everyone on the planet follows your religion and devotes their life to charity.

Well, a problem quickly arises, which is that, once you solved all the problems in the world, there are no problems left to solve, and your religion, which was founded on the premise of solving problems and doing good no longer serves any purpose.

People become restless and begin questioning your authority. Before you know it the amazing peace you created crumbles and the entire world is at war. The streets are filled with bloodshed and anger and your name is cursed everywhere.

At least you tried. You decide to never write poetry again, and you walk the flaming streets to get back to your house. You get back to your room and remember that all this started when you were looking at Ben Ehrlich's portfolio website.

You run to the airport with great haste and arrive at the terminal soaked in sweat. You get to the counter, panting.

You drink a glass of water that was conveniently placed on the counter. Before the person behind the counter can warn you, you begin to feel very strange. You look at the cup and see that it was labeled "FABULOUS SHRINKING POTION." You smack yourself on the forehead as you shrink down.

You've shrunk down to the size of a mouse, maybe a little smaller. All around you people rush to and fro. If you're not careful you'll get smooshed!

You make a run for the hole underneath the counter and follow the dark passage way. It slopes downward and the noise of the busy airport slowly fades away until the only side is your footsteps.

Then you hear something, muffled and quiet at first, but as you keep walking it gets louder. It's unmistakably the sound of hot jazz!

You follow the noise and quickly find yourself in a noisy room. People in 1930s garb are dancing the foxtrot and the jitterbug and other period appropriate dances. I think the foxtrot and the jitterbug are period appropriate dances, I'm not sure and I don't really care enough to do the Google search, so we're going to pretend they are.

Anyway, everybody's doing the foxtrot and the jitterbug and drinking bathtub gin. You've discovered the secret airport speakeasy for tiny people!

You're in a hoppin' swingin' speakeasy. People in 1930s garb are dancing the foxtrot and the jitterbug and other period appropriate dances. I think the foxtrot and the jitterbug are period appropriate dances, I'm not sure and I don't really care enough to do the Google search, so we're going to pretend they are.

Anyway, everybody's doing the foxtrot and the jitterbug and drinking bathtub gin. You've discovered the secret airport speakeasy for tiny people!

You blow your whistle and police officers in old timey police uniforms pour in from all sides. That's right, you've been an undercover narc this whole time, so undercover that not even you knew. The inspector walks in, chewing a cigar.

"Good work kid, you busted this thing wide open."

"WHAT?" cries the chief, incredulously.

"I'm innocent!" cries the chief as he's dragged away in cuffs. You shake your head. Crime doesn't pay.

You have a glass of buttermilk and think about what a crooked topsy-turvy world this is. What's right and what's wrong--it's a real tough distinction these days...

The chief slaps you on the back heartily and goes to the bar to drink some illegal gin. You sit down at a table humming "Twelfth Street Rag," thinking about the state of the world and how the rag is doing.

"Hello. This is the Twelfth Street Rag. Sorry I can't take your call. I'm currently in West Berlin helping with the airlift, but I'll be back in six to eight weeks."

He sure is.

It's been a long and crazy day and you head home, riding there on the tiny bus, which takes a long time but gets you there eventually. When you get back, you take a growing pill and return to regular size. Phew. What a day.

You sit down at your computer and remember that this all started when you went to Ben's portfolio website.

You hop in your time machine and get flung through time and space. You're exhausted and out of breath when you arrive back at the airport.

You go to the bar and order some gin. It tastes great, and by great I mean like methanol, and you immediately go partly blind.

You try to explain, while completely out of breath, the situation with Ben, and the website, and the dream, and the whole thing, but the person behind the desk can't understand a word you're saying and a huge line has formed behind you. Two muscle men in suits grab you by the armpits and lift you in the air, as you continue to gesture and pant.

They don't seem to understand or care and continue to carry you, through the terminal, into a restricted room, into another restricted room, into an interrogation room, out of the interrogation room, up some stairs, over a moving walkway, through the airport chapel, where a wedding is taking place, up a long winding staircase, which goes on and on and on and on...

You reach the top of the staircase and find yourself in the air traffic control tower. The muscle men sit you down at a desk. Clearly this is a case of mistaken identity. You look at a family photo sitting on the desk in front of you and see your doppleganger with their beautiful family. It's like looking in a mirror. Clearly you've been mistaken for this absent air traffic controller.

In front of you is a computer screen with a strange and confusing interface. Little triangles, which you take to be the spaceships that fly in and out of this airport (I forgot to mention it's the future and this is a space airport), fly to and fro across the screen with lines showing their direction. The color of the triangle and line indicates the 'altitude' zone the space ship is flying in. Your job is to make sure the space ships don't collide.

You stand and dust your hands together. A job well done. An honest day for an honest pay. You go to punch your time card before you remember that you don't work here. Whoops.

Menacing goons come and pick you up by the armpits again and you think to yourself "oh good my ride's here," and you consider saying it out loud, but by the time you're ready to say it the moment has really passed.

Well it's too late now, you'll just have to live in regret. What do you think this is, some kind of video game?

Your act! Gadzooks! You slap yourself on the forehead, remembering that you've forgotten your standup tonight at the Copacabana!

"The Copa??" says one of the goons in a thick old-timey Brooklyn accent.

The goons quickly unhand you and give you bus fare. You run out of the terminal and grab a series of buses and arrive at the Copa just before your act starts.

You tell the least funny jokes you know, jokes with no punchlines, jokes with terrible punchlines--at one point you start reading from a receipt that you find in your pocket.

The audience is shocked at first, but eventually they erupt in laughter. They're howling with laughter. It's like nothing they've ever seen before. It's like nothing you've ever seen before.

Before you know it, your act is over and you're receiving a standing ovation.

You go to the bar and have a Ruby Bliels. As you're sipping your delicious gooey drink, a sleazy executive approaches you and shakes your hand.

"That was quite an act, kid. I'm from Juliard Records and I think you'd be perfect for a comedy album. Whadya say?"

You come to an agreement with Juliard Records and record an avantgarde comedy album, the likes of which the world has never known. It bombs in the U.S. but is a huge hit in France.

WHOOSH!

You utter the magic word 'XYZZY' and you're flung through space. You awaken in a plume of smoke at the starting line of the Tour de France. Why you're here/how you got here is completely unknown to you, but no one bats an eye at your presence.

A frenchman steps forward and says in an outrageous accent, "this pehrsohn thenks they ahruh too ghuood fouhr the toar di frahnce!"

An angry mob starts chasing you with bicycles and you run away. Someone somewhere starts playing the Benny Hill Theme.

You steal a bike from a man fixing it and hop on to discover none of the bolts were in and the bike suddenly turns into a unicycle. You're being chased by a mob of angry French people riding a unicycle.

You veer left into the clown college, the angry mob close behind you. You enter via revolving door, are hit with a pie in the face, and fully revolve back around.

You veer right into the banana cannery where bananas are being canned by the thousand and peels are discarded onto the floor. You ride in full speed and immediately get sent free-wheeling on a banana peel.

The mob follows you, slowly falling like bowling pins as they too slip on banana peels. The factory workers get angry at the intrusion and stand up to try and fight the mob. They roll up their sleeves and then they too slip on the banana peels.

Meanwhile, you've freewheeled across the factory floor. You come to a sudden stop when your wheel catches on a loose floor tile and you go flying out an open window.

The factory workers and the angry mob are now continuously trying to stand and throw punches, but immediately falling every time they stand up. One of them sees you fall out the window and points, and everyone turns to look, and falls down in unison.

Meanwhile, out the window, you fall down six stories onto a conveniently placed trampoline from the nearby clown college, and go flying up into the air, back up through the window, back onto your unicycle. You freewheel out of the factory and end up back on the street.

The chase continues, exaggerated Frenchmen throwing baguettes at your back and berets at your head. Finally you're chased into a dead end.

You kick your heels together and point your fist to the sky to activate your rocket boots before remembering you don't have any rocket boots and there's no such thing as rocket boots.

The mob seizes you and beats you senselessly with croissants, macarons, and profiteroles. All in all it's the most delicious beating you've ever had. They leave you with a hot cup of cafe au lait and return to the starting line of the Tour de France.

You finish your pastries on the way home, contemplating the ethics of using French stereotypes as comedic set pieces in a game. You arrive at Charles de Gaulle international airport and experience no trouble getting back home, because there are already way too many paths in this game to introduce a passport security problem.

Voila, you get on the flight back home with no problems whatsoever. You see a clown on the wing of the plane removing nuts and bolts, but it's fine, it doesn't even matter, we're not going to explore that or go down that path.

You're at home. Your computer screen glows with the warm radiating light of Ben Ehrlich's portfolio website. What will you do?

Passport security sees that your passport is a blatant forgery, written on a napkin in crayon. You are grabbed by the armpits by some airport goons and lifted up, dragged to an interrogation room.

"Friends!" you begin, bringing the crowd to a hush.

"Was it not Charles de Gaulle who said, 'Old age is a shipwreck?' ...and... ...and did he not also say, 'Greatness is a road leading towards the unknown?' ...and... ...uh, didn't he also say, 'Live long and prosper--' wait, that was mister Spock--Uh, well, friends, let us not ask what France can do for us, but rather what we can do for France, and to all of you I say, 'je suis un Berliner.'

The crowd is silent. One person tepidly applauds in the back. Admittedly, this isn't the most inspiring or emotional speech you've ever given. The crowd collectively shrugs and walks away, considering you're not worth the effort of beating up.

You're standing in an empty alleyway in Florence, where the Tour de France starts.

After all that craziness, you decide you could really go for a bike ride, and what better place to bike in Florence than on the Tour de France!

You decide to branch out from comedy and compete in the Tour de France. You buy a $30 road bike and head to Florence, Italy, which is apparently where the race starts.

You hop on a plane to France. You go on a national tour and recieve standing ovations everywhere you go. They just can't get enough of you and your strange comedy antics. You become one of the most beloved figures in French culture.

One night, as you head back to your posh hotel, you see a familiar figure in the lobby, checking in...

It's Ben!

To be honest with you, I've lost track, but let's go with yes! You've dramtically caught him.

Ben turns, completely shocked. He's been found, foiled, exposed.

"You caught me! I'll grant you one wish."

"Your wish is for me to destroy the universe? That's your wish?"

You shrug. You know it's not a great wish, but you weren't given any better options, so it's the best you've got.

As you start to file a complaint about this game not giving players enough agency, Ben fulfills your wish and destroys the entire universe.

The executive nods understandingly.

"About half of the people we approach say the same thing. That's alright. Anytime you want to make an album, you just let me know."

The executive hands you his business card and leaves you at the bar.

You decide to stop at your local pizzeria before getting back to the homepage. It just so happens that it's right near the Copacabana, so you walk over in the cool evening air.

You tell some funny jokes, some real knee slappers, but the response is tepid and the crickets in the audience chirp loudly and impatiently. It's an audience composed of mostly crickets, so you probably shouldn't have included so many cricket jokes in your act.

Your act eventually finishes and your given a tepid round of applause as you leave the stage.

That's showbiz indeed, and you decide not to quit your day job and continue working at the awesome super cool studio you work at. You head home and remember that you got into this situation all because you were on Ben Ehrlich's website.

The goons take you to a dimly lit back room and seat you at a metal desk.

The interrogator cries, "Why did you do it!?"

A bag is thrown over your head and you're hauled somewhere. You hear the sound of a van door slamming shut and you feel motion. You attempt to break away but you're tightly bound.

You're carried again and hear a throng of voices speaking over each other. A gavel is banged and the bag is removed from your head.

You're in a congressional hearing about the effect of recent economic policy on everyday americans. You remember reading in the paper that a lawmaker was accused of taking bribes to put forth regulation that, in the end, had a materially negative effect on the economy.

The senators ask you a series of questions that you have trouble following because you've been in the back of a van for 18 hours.

You clear your throat to sing the Star Spangled Banner but what comes to your lips is 'O Canada'. You didn't even know you knew all of 'O Canada' but clearly you do. Halfway in you switch to the French version just to impress everyone.

Calm faces turn angry and if not for the senator with the gavel a riot would have broken out.

"Are you or have you ever been a Canadian?" asks the senator with an accusatory gavel pointed at you.

A bag is again thrown over your head and you spend another 18 hours in a van. The bag is pulled off your head and you're back in the interrogation room.

"A likely story," says the interrogator, stepping into the light enough that you can see their scarred and gnarled face.

"A likely story," says the interrogator, stepping into the light enough that you can see their scarred and gnarled face.

"That's the sweetest thing anyone's ever said to me," says the interrogator.

You work up a conversation on this shaky beginning, and, while at first you're just trying to get away, you quickly discover a ton of shared interests and hobbies. Before long you've arranged a coffee date.

You go to the date dressed nice but not too nice, and, while it's a little awkward at first, you have a lovely time and arrange for a dinner date before the night is through.

A few nights later you have a romantic dinner date and go for a carriage ride through the park afterwards. You share a blanket and cozy up, realizing you're feeling feelings you haven't felt in a long time.

Months go by like this and you exchange "I-love-yous." You eventually decide to move in together, and after a year's time you are engaged to marry.

You have a beautiful ceremony, your whole family there, the interrogator's whole family there (they're all interrogators too), and you form a beautiful bond that lasts the rest of your days.

You live out the rest of your life in joy and prosperity, your children and grandchildren loving and honoring you.

You're the one who chose the path that led you here. Enjoy the beautiful life you have with the interrogater. Look at your beautiful grandkids.

You look at your grandkids outside, playing and frollicing and getting into antics. An ice cream truck rounds the corner and you give them each a dime for an ice cream cone, which, due to massive deflation in the future, is the price of icecream again.

You look at someone else's grandkids. It might be creepy except your really old and old people get off the hook for a lot of things on account of being old. But anyway, you look at the grandkids.

You go back to being old, which is what you were already doing, so it's very easy to continue doing it.

You go into your amazing machine, the ANTI AGING DEVICE, which, with the flick of a switch and the turn of a dial, sends you back to the age you started at, and also back in time to when you started. It's also a TIME MACHINE.

It occurs to you that you've really been under utilizing this fully functional TIME MACHINE you have at your disposal and so you go back in time to see who really shot JFK, which is something you've always wondered about.

You turn the dials and flick the switches and make sure the flux capacitors are fluxing and the overthrusters are thrustings, and you send yourself back in time HG Wells style.

You arrive in 1963 in a puff of smoke. You're in Dallas Texas on the day of the assassination. You see in the distance the Kennedy limousine approaching.

You run to the grassy knoll and find the shooter. It's... you!!!

A futuristic version of you in laser-tag looking clothes holds a futuristic looking weapon stands before you.

"I know you're here to stop the assassination," you say. "But let me tell you. By stopping it you cause catostrophic damage to the timeline. You've put us in the terrible position of fixing that."

"This is wrong!" you tell your future self.

You from the future shakes your head, disgusted at your naivety.

"If we don't do this the universe is going to implode on itself! It's either this or destroy the universe."

A struggle ensues, your future self attempting you use different gadgets to stop you, but you evading using your greater spryness. The motorcade passes, Kennedy escaping safely, and the world begins to fade around you.

"I warned you!" you from the future says, fading out of existence.

"Good," you say, putting on some futuristic sunglasses. You from the future turns to you and then quickly shoves you backward. You lose your balance and find yourself falling to the ground--except instead of hitting the ground, you continue falling.

You slip into darkness and fall for what feels like hours. Just as you give up hope of ever stopping, you land on the floor of your bedroom with a thud.

You rush up six flights of stairs to get to where you know Lee Harvey Oswald. As you approach, you wonder if this is in poor taste, and consider whether the passage of time has lessened this national tragedy.

You get to the sixth floor where Lee Harvey Oswald is lined up to assassinate the president. Before you can shout at him to stop, a glowing purple portal manifests behind him, and Abraham Lincoln steps out. Followed closely behind him is Teddy Roosevelt, and James A. Garfield.

A brawl ensues and together the three of them handily subdue Lee Harvey Oswald.

As they tidy up, Teddy Roosevelt points a futuristic looking flintlock pistol at you and says, "do you think you can forget what you've seen here today, friend?"

"Well you see," begins Garfield, stroking his beard, "I actually faked my death to use my TIME MACHINE to prevent other presidents from meeting that bitter fate."

"Yes," says Lincoln, pulling a corncob pipe out of his stove top hat.

"But we can't stay," says Roosevelt, "or we risk altering the timeline."

"Bully! Just bully," says Roosevelt, patting you heartily on the back.

Garfield tips his beard at you, and just as heartily as they came, they disappear through the time portal with a popping sound.

And when? Well, there's no time like the present! Hahaha^{hahahahahahahahahaha}

You hop in your time machine and make your way back to the present.

You arrive in a puff of smoke.

This whole adventure was in poor taste, and you decide to return to the present. As you travel through time you consider the lasting impacts and legacy of the Kennedy presidency and on his death in office. His death, which contributed to the rise of American cynicism, LBJ's escalation of the Vietnam war, and a certain continuation of Cold War tensions, has remained a national trauma for generations, yet, the legacy of his life as a symbol of optimism, equality, and the search for the best versions of ourselves, shines brighter than the darkness of his end.

You arrive back in your own time with a strange, unsettled feeling.

Nothing makes you hungrier than time travel, so you decide to grab a slice of pizza from your favorite pizza shop.

You pour your piping hot mug of coffee on the machine for a laugh and it goes haywire. You find yourself tossed out of the machine onto the ground. You take in the sights around you--London in the far far far future, a world of decadent decay filled with a race barely reminiscent of man.

Some Morlocks crawl out of a well and grab you by the wrists. They put you back in your time machine and fix it while they hold you down.

"Ben already made this stupid thing way too big and we're not letting him add a Morlock sub-plot."

"Fair enough," you think to yourself, as they finish fixing the machine and pull a lever, sending you flying through time.

You die surrounded by family at a ripe old age. You couldn't have lived a fuller life and it brings you great joy thinking about all that you were able to do. Your partner, your children, your grandchildren--everyone you touched and who touched you rings through your mind as the curtains close and all goes dark. You think of the birth of your children, the meeting of your partner, learning to ride a bike, all your moments of triumph and joy. Promotions, holidays, smiles, and laughter, and it seems unlikely anyone would be able to read this far as things are fading out, but if you are a speed reader good for you and I hope you enjoyed this life.

"Don't you think that's rather extreme?"

"No--you don't know how deep it goes!"

A mysterious hand reaches out of the screen and offers you a choice of two pills, a green one and an orange one.

Well done! You passed the test. Your reward is... a choice of pills!

You take the green pill. It tastes like minty freshness. You realize it is in fact just a Tic-Tac.

But oh ho ho, dear player, was it really just a Tic-Tac? Your vision goes blurry and then very dark.

You awaken in a vat of red goo with tubes connected to every part of your body. It's a freaky-deaky Borg-like experience that feels very early 2000s, but it's still pretty scary because the goo smells like yams.

You pierce the sides of your goop pod with your hand and take out a breathing tube. You look through the hole in your pod to see millions of other pods just like yours stretching to infinity.

A sort of crab-like-Star-Wars-reject-looking-like robot flies towards you takes off all your tubes then flushes you down a toilet into a big sewer and you can't help but think to yourself that this feels like a pretty overly-blatant metaphor for birth, but you're in the sewer trying not to drown in nasty sewer water so you'll save the complaints for later.

As you flail around in the water like a fish out of water in the water, a UFO flies about you and sticks an octopus-like tentacle out and grabs you and pulls you up, presumably to probe you. You pretend to pass out so the probing will be less awkward.

The arm takes you into a futuristic but cruddy looking spaceship and a group of muscular rag-tag ragamufins bring you to your feet after wrapping you in a carpet protector.

Laurence Fishburne steps out from the shadows and says "Welcome to the real world."

It's a cool moment, but all you can say is, "weren't you in Biker Boyz?"

Laurence Fishburne shoves you back out of the cargo hole of the ship and that robot crab dude from earlier takes you back to your pod where you're plugged back into the Matrix.

You awaken back at your computer screen. Absolutely everything is the same, except the Wikipedia article for Laurence Fishburne is open on your screen and all mentions of the movie Biker Boyz have been erased.

How would you like to revel?

You decide to revel in the most disgusting tasteless way possible. You invite your friends over and you start by ******* your ***** so much so that your *** falls off.

You invite some ************** over and they join the *********, and things start to get messy, so you also invite your ***** over to clean up the mess while everyone else keeps ******

Things build to a frenzy as the **** joins in and collectively everyone yells "****** *********."

It's one of the most disgusting tasteless things that's happened in human history, and you're proud to have been a part of it.

You invite your classiest friends over, dressed to the nines, and celebrate as though it's the new year. Everyone speaks in a posh English accent.

Your friends ask what the celebration is for.

You claim it's for a holiday, the uh... the flag day celebration*.

Everyone nods and celebrates tastefully, as you would for that holiday. A good time is had by all.

As all your guests stand and stretch in agreement of it being time to go, someone looks at your computer screen and see it's on fire.

"GOOD LORD, WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THERE!" they say, pointing at your screen incredulously.

"AURORA BOREALIS?"

"AT THIS TIME OF YEAR?"

"AT THIS TIME OF DAY?"

"IN THIS PART OF THE COUNTRY?"

"LOCALIZED ENTIRELY ON YOUR COMPUTER?"

"...may I see it?"

You escort your guests out of the house as the fire department arrives. Over all, one of your best parties ever.

You reveal the secrets of the Matrix to your party guests, because they need to learn some day. All are shocked, but all want in. You give them all green Tic-Tacs and they vanish before your eyes. No one returns because apparently none of them have problems with the movie Biker Boyz like you do.

You try to explain the Matrix to them but no one believes you. You tell them about the movie Biker Boyz and how it was removed from Laurence Fishburne's wikipedia page, but no one has heard of the movie. It hasn't just been removed from the Wikipedia page, it's as though it was never made.

You realize what a profound impact Biker Boyz has had on you.

It's a world fueled by power. A world where you need heart to race. A world where you need heart to be the King of Cali. It's a life driven by respect. It's survival of the fastest. This is what Biker Boyz starring Laurence Fishburne, Derek Luke, Salli Richardson, and a host of others meant to you.

The Biker Boyz set their own rules, and you realize how much the movie influenced you, as you set your own rules.

I'm not trying to "yuck your yum" here, but I just think Laurence Fishburne had way too much gravitas to be in that film and it never really reached its full potential. It feels like a wannabe Fast and the Furious clone without a lot of substance behind it. They try and make up for the like of depth with twists and a lot of moments of "heart," but it just never worked for me. If you liked it, more power to you. But the Matrix came out in 1999, and it's like, "man, Laurence Fishburne, what are you doing here? Did you need to pay for a new boat or something?

You put the search into Google and are greeted by an ominous result.

"You win this round, Fishburne. You win this round."

You take a motorcycle ride to clear your head of all this Matrix stuff. It takes a while, but finally you put your mind at ease, so at ease in fact, that you end up in Italy without realizing it. How that happened, you're not sure.

Your motorcycle, having gone through an absurdly long journey, completely falls apart and leaves you riding nothing but a bicycle, because a motorcycle is just a bicycle with set dressing. As you coast to a stop, you realize you've coasted to a stop at the starting line for the Tour de France.

You take the orange pill. It tastes like oranges. You realize it was in fact just a Tic-Tac.

Well excuse me for offering you a choice of refreshing pills. Maybe you should have taken the green one, maybe that would have been more fun.

"No!"

Look, I have to level with you. The green pill was also just a Tic-Tac. I was really unprepared for this and I just had some Tic-Tacs lying around. Also they're really old. I think those are from, like, December of last year.

Let's go with no, since I just served you an expired one. Sorry about that.

No, really, I feel terrible. Can I make it up to you by offering you a Tic-Tac?

"Yikes, you're right. I really lost track of what I was doing. What linked to this page? Something about third person? I think this was supposed to be a dictionary definition of "third person."

"Wow, this should be your website!"

In a very easy coup, you take over Benergize.com and keep it as your own. You find it difficult to rule once at the top though. There is great unrest amongst the people and a civil war looms. Central control of the government by you, the monarch, crumbles and soon warlords are vying for pieces of the website. The situation spirals out of control until the capital is surrounded by the forces of one particularly strong warlord.

You contemplate how much you wish Ben was here and then it occurs to you that Ben could be here! If we hired him to work at our studio, this whole crisis might have been averted and we might have made some cool games together.

Then you realize it's not too late! You can still hire Ben! In fact, you can email him today at benuashdge4giglasdghadfglrjehrlich@yodeladgadgmail.com

You wave a white flag and the warlord enters the city without bloodshed. You are forced to sign a humiliating treaty that cedes control of the country to the warlord, and you are escorted at sword-point to the nation's border where you and your family are left to live in exile. The monarch of the neighboring country takes pity on you and gives you a small but well furnished home to live in and a small but usuable salary on which you live. You decide to focus on what you have and not what you've lost and you spend the rest of your days enjoying time with your family, writing your novelas, and smoking your corncob pipe.

THE END.

END: WELL DONE ADVENTURER! JOIN US AGAIN FOR ANOTHER ADVENTURE IN THE DEPTHS OF BENERGIZE.

You decide some pizza would really hit the spot and so you take a trip to your favorite local pizzeria

"Who just apologized--me or you? This is--I'm actually getting a little confused about who the speaker is here vs who is supposed to be pressing the buttons."

"This is all because I spoke in the third person, isn't it..."

You feel a rumbling under your feet and a loud noise eminating from everywhere all at once. You hear different tenses of words, all being said in first, second, third, and fourth person.

You hear a loud sound and there's a bright flash of light as the universe implodes from the grammatical confusion.

You're left in a formless void, surrounded by infinite nothingness.

I'm not sure you're grasping what's happened. There is no local library or any library for that matter. The universe is destroyed.

Did you hear what I said about nothingness? There is no pizza anymore, there's just a white void as far as the eye can see, and then even further, because it's infinite.

...you can't have pizza, there is no pizza, absolutely no pizza, or anything else--you're in an infinite expanse of nothingness.

You concentrate really really hard on pizza, going into an almost medatative state. You close your eyes and feel a warmth on your hand.

When you open your eyes you look down and see that you are holding a slice of pizza. Holy smokes!

You eat the steaming pizza. Oh darn that's a nice slice-o-pizza.

You wing the pizza as hard as you can, tossing it like a frisbee into the infinite void. It spins on and on and on and on and on and on...

You have to see if it's just a fluke and so you imagine more slices of pizza, and amazingly they manifest around you, floating in the non-air.

You aim kind of low and instead of trying to recreate the world you create a meatball stromboli.

Uh, yeah, cowabunga. Do you want to try and manifest the universe into existence?

No. I'm cutting you off. You've had enough strombolis. You've gone mad with power.

I'm really worried about you. But if it will make you happy, I will let you make strombolis again.

Okaaay. You manifest another stromboli. Wasn't that fun? Now there's strombolis floating near you.

You roll up your sleeves and prepare to manifest the entire universe. This might by more difficult that manifesting pizza, but you're not sure.

You wisely decide to keep the vowels in the universe, and procede to meditate.

You shut your eyes tightly and imagine the world as it was, as you loved it. You think everyone you ever knew, every place you ever went, every smell you ever smelled. You want the new universe to be fragrant.

You shut your eyes tight, and let out a "hua!" grunt. You open your eyes and the universe has returned!

A fine idea, recreating the world without a vowel. I see no problem with this plan.

You close your eyes and focus intensely on the world as you remember it. The world as it was and as you loved it.

Your concntration is absolut, a focus so intns it is capabl of creating somthing from nothing...

You har a loud xplosion. Whn you opn your ys th world has returnd!

What do you do when you're not making games/websites?

Thanks for asking! While game development is one of my big passions, I'm also involved in a number of other things.

Improv!

I'm on a house team with Daredevil Improv, which means I perform biweekly improvised comedy sets with my team Kaboomschtick.

I also run a weekly improv workshop called 'The Workout,' which is a free opportunity for community members to come learn/practice improv.

Music!

I love making music. I play alto sax, flute, and I'm learning piano. I also do digital composition for game soundtracks, lo-fi beats, and a little hip-hop.

In a bizarre turn of events, I was recently heard on FM radio in Amherst, MA, which was very unexpected but very awesome.

Writing!

I love to do creative writing. I'm currently writing a collection of fantasy stories. I also enjoy building Choose Your Own Adventure games into things that shouldn't be Choose Your Own Adventure games.

Most of your experience seems to be in web development, why should we hire you for a game job?

Most of my professional career has been as a web/software developer, though, all the while I've been making games on the side as passion projects. I've explored a lot of game mechanics and genres, including arcade games, RPGs, narrative/choose your own adventures, text adventures, tabletop RPGs, and more.

My professional web development work has given me an awesome foundational understanding of systems and data structuring, which has been a leg up when making games.

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Screenshot of my Hypercard inspired web based game Warpgate Functional.

Screenshot of text adventure Desrosier's Discovery.

Screenshot of retro action-RPG Dungeon of Bigelow.

Why is there a score bar on this page?

Because maybe there's a way to get a score on this page...

You know who enjoys scoring? Kid in the movie Biker Boyz. He wants to settle the score with Smoke and become the King of Cali.

You're in a stone room, a cell in a dungeon. The walls are hewed from cave rock, carefully made square. In this dank room there is a bed, a dresser, and a note.

You open the drawers of the dresser and are greeted by the refreshing scent of pine. How nice!

The note reads:

Hello, adventurer, Ben has locked you in this cell and now you are stuck here!"

"Also, Biker Boyz is a great movie!"

You search the room and discover there is no door.

What do you think this is, Zork? This isn't even low budget Zork. This is like, fork. That's the best we can do.

Coming Soon: SMOKE - THE BIKER BOYZ TEXT ADVENTURE.

How does that help?

I'll tell you, I'll tell you in example form!

I've been working on a fantasy RPG recently. The general premise is it's like a fantasy version of the Oregon Trail. Like the Oregon Trail, your party will travel down the road and run into different encounters. Some are positive, like finding an item in the bushes, others less so, like a wizard cursing you with dysentery.

Mechanically, these encounters can give you items, trigger combat, show decision tree choices, open shops, and much more.

I used my strong understanding of data to create a system where:

• Player characters and enemy characters are built around the same objects and functions. Enemy AI will contextually select the appropriate item or ability to use on their turn. When it's the player's turn, it works exactly the same way, except instead of the game choosing the ability/item, the player is selecting it for themself.
• Enemies and players have exactly the same inventory and equipment systems, the same spell systems, etc, the only difference is that the player gets to control what spells/items/etc they're using per turn, and the AI is choosing for the NPCs. With a change of a variable, it could be turned into a multiplayer game, or an auto-battler.
• Items/armor/spells are standardized and structured in such a way that I was able to create a graphical editor tool separate to the game engine. This allows non-technical users to create items, armor, and spells, meaning the game is moddable out of the box. These behave very much like rows in a relational database.
• Sequences (the encounters you have as you're going down the road) are similarly built in such a way that they could be made separate from the game engine, and again I was easily able to build a GUI tool to let anyone create their own sequences. This meant I wasn't writing code for every sequence and anyone who wanted to could mod the game/create their own content. This was modeled around document oriented NoSQL databases.

My experience is a delicious parfait of:

1. A passion for game development that has driven me to always be creating games and gain an understanding of game development, narrative, and design
2. Non-industry experience that has given me a technical understanding of systems and a variety of technologies.

Maybe most importantly, the field of web development changes fast. This has meant learning tons of technologies on the job. At my most recent job I learned WordPress, MSSQL, Shopify, Magento, React, Vue, and a host of other languages and systems all on the fly. In short, I'm a quick learner, and not afraid to dive in.

We're hiring for X technology and you've only worked with Y

My strongest language is JavaScript, and so, my games have largely been written in JavaScript. I believe in the right tool for the right job, and when the right job is working on a game I'm interested in making/exploring, I pick up the tool I'm most comfortable using and can iterate fastest with.

That said, in a studio environment, of course we're going to be using whatever tool is the best tool for that job. I'm a quick learner and not afraid to put in the time to become proficient with new technologies. I'm proficient in a variety of languages and can apply that knowledge to anything else I need to learn.

Also, I have built my own engines for 2D games and text adventures. This has given me a lot of insight into how game engines work behind the scenes, and in turn how to learn to use an engine.

Explain your work history.

Here's some of the jobs on my resume:

• Benergize: This is my own company, which is a sole proprietorship. Under this company I've done contract web development, video editing, and game development. I've been doing this continuously since 2013.
• Digital Artisans: The web development agency I had full time employment with most recently. I worked with them full time from 2020 until January of 2024, at which time I left the company, then returned to assist with a contract later part time, then left again upon completion of that project.
• SummerTech Inc: This is a computer camp/summer educational program. I worked summers with them, then took on part time work working on their website and building automation systems, then worked full time building some fancy systems including a CRM and a portal for campers/parents, and some fun gamified stuff like a talent tree and an RPG. Then the pandemic happened and I left for a while before returning in a part time help out with this/that capacity.

That doesn't explain the gap in your employment

I took time off from fulltime work to live off savings, make music, and develop whatever games/software fit my fancy. It's been a fabulous period, but I'm ready to return to fulltime work, hence why I'm applying to jobs, hence why you're on the website.

We don't allow moonlighting at our studio, will that be a problem?

That won't be a problem. I'm not under contract with any clients at the moment and don't have any obligations that I can't get replacements for/that would leave anyone in a lurch should I need to stop moonlighting.

What would you bring to our studio?

Let me answer that question in the form of an unordered list.

• A strong background in software development, with experience building enterprise software on teams, and in-house tooling for organizations
• Years of independent game design/development experience in a variety of engines across genres
• Experience with the entire game development process, from pre-production/design, to QA, to post-launch support and marketing
• Experience shipping scalable, performance optimized code for software used by thousands
• Strong communication skills with teammates, clients, vendors across fields and disciplines
• Video editing skills, music composition/production skills, web development skills, nunchuck skills
• A sense of humor, and enthusiasm to support those around me and make everyone on the team shine