Ask The Tech Answer Guy About What's Real and Make Believe [ARNS]

Yo, Tech Answer Guy,

For the last couple of weeks, I have been using Google Gross^TM to play The Magistrate Regrets all over Toronto. The Magistrate Regrets is an LBG - which has nothing to do with your sexuality, unless you're playing Whose Bed is it, Anyway?, but, since most of your readers don't live in Amsterdam, it's pretty unlikely - a Location Based Game.

Here's how it works: you start by getting an email telling you to look for a giant wombat at Yonge and Dundas Square. If you go to Yonge and Dundas Square glassesless, you just see the normal, life-sized wombats. If you put on Google Gross^TM, however, a giant animated wombat projected onto your retina invites you into a world of mystery and intrigue. It's amazing how the computer generated image is integrated into the real world - I could have sworn Elsie - the giant wombat in question - was using the fountain in the square as a bidet!

And, when I say "amazing," I mean "having a certain can't look away disgustingness."

The Magistrate Regrets is your typical aliens walk among us/government cover-up/musical love story. Combining the use of Google Gross^TM with GPS - which is not the Gorgonzola Positioning System...unless you happened to miss lunch - you follow clues around real locations in the city, unravelling the mystery of the mutant marsupials, the walking dead...line and the 127 missing manhole - shouldn't that be personhole? - covers. I haven't come across any characters of a judicial nature - and, being a lower court judge myself, I think I would recognize them! Otherwise, playing the game has been a blast (and, I'm not just referring to the nuclear bomb that destroyed the Gardner Expressway - talk about ludic urban renewal!).

Or, at least, it was until a couple of days ago.

I was walking across Queen Street towards the Eaton Centre when a gargoyle flew off the side a court building and started squawking/growling (grauwkling?) about the zombie bureaucrats at City Hall who were drowning elected officials in paperwork. This clue answered a number of questions that had been nagging at me since the game began, but it also posed a problem for me because I wasn't wearing Google Gross^TM at the time!

Swearing off The Magistrate Regrets didn't help. Even without the technology I would see things like black helicopters turning into butterflies and carrying a squirrel into the sunset. Then, I saw John Grierson haunt the Scotiabank Theatre, moaning incoherently about florescent lighting, which struck me as strange considering there was a National Film Board office right across the street. In fact, just yesterday, I saw a parade of six foot tall cigarettes marching up Bay Street. I assumed it was a clever reference to The X-Files, although it could have been product placement; even though I was beginning to realize that the things I was seeing couldn't be part of the game, I wouldn't put it past marketers to insert ads into them anyway.

I'm beginning to regret that I ever started playing this game. Or, is it a game? Could the improbable conspiracy actually be real, or am I just going mad?

Yo, Zippy,

No, that's been done.

Yo, Zeppo,

Nope. Likewise. Zeppo was the most adumbrated of the Marx brothers, don't you think?

Yo, Zipfandell,

You are suffering from LBPD - which is not a novel by Haruki Murakami, the Labrador Police Department or a brand of underwear - Location Based Paranoid Delusions. Believe me, there are no hidden messages in your environment, no clues to any great mystery. And, I'm not just saying that because the NSA sent me an email telling me to!

Is there any part of the Macho Code of Manliness that you don't follow?

Yo, Mony Mony,

The Macho Code of Manliness contains all of the answers to all of the ills of the world, and it's only three pages long! Okay, 57 pages with addenda. And, 127 pages if you get the colouring book version. Still, I would rather eat Japanese bug sushi than go against the Macho Code of Manliness. It gives direction and certitude in a world of complexity and certitudelessness. I would be lost without it.

That having been said, I must admit that I have a hard time understanding the part about not wearing your underwear on your head after Labour Day.

The Tech Answer Guy

If you are a dude with a question about the latest technology, ask The Tech Answer Guy by sending it questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Just remember: I have a feeling I would be violently allergic to locusts, so if I'm willing to eat bug sushi, you know how serious I am. Although, now that you mention it, the honey caterpillar roll does look kind of tasty...