Failed environmental activist. Failed new media artist. Failed gym teacher. Failed son. Failed husband. Not failed father (thank goodness he had the sense to come into this world infertile!). Born July 1, 1998 in Oshawa, Canada. Died September 23, 2064 in New Oshawa, Same Old Canada, of complications from a smoked herring infection, aged 66.
They say in American lives there are no second acts. However, why would we want to grant anybody a second act when their first act was mediocre? Wouldn't a second act only compound the badness? And, what does any of this have to do with somebody who isn't American?
ACT ONE: a young Blini McTurbian gets a job verifying carbon emissions for the United Nations' cap and trade programme. Right off the bat, the believability of plot development in his life is called into question, given the fact that his only qualification for the position seemed to be that he had a PhD in "The Semiotics of Smoke."
Some dramatic tension did occur because of Blini's GlobboBrazilia decision. GlobboBrazilia was an oil extraction and refining company that calculated that in the normal course of its business it would lay waste to half of Latin America, making it completely uninhabitable. Lead GlobboBrazilia scientist Dmitri Popopolopopiraptor claimed that the company planned to mitigate the destruction, qualifying it for a quadrillion.34 credits (valued at three quarters.723 of a quadrillion dollars).
Even at the time, this plot development had audiences moaning incredulously. When, seven months after Blini approved the company's credit request, it was discovered that GlobboBrazilia had achieved its savings by adding a 37 cent washer to the extraction process, their worst fears were realized.
The reviews were almost unanimously negative. The New York Times called the decision "simplistic" and "untextured." Newsweek commented that "the script was weak, the characters were unlikeable and the sets were generally drab and awful." The Ain'tItTool Web site gave the decision three mutated thumbs down.
Unfortunately, the drama didn't reach a satisfying climax. GlobboBrazilia declared bankruptcy, and emerged three months later as BraziliaGlobbo. Blini was given a promotion to an administrative position where he wouldn't actually have to make any decisions.
ACT TWO: Blini McTurbian, tired of shuffling paper, takes early retirement. He dreams of becoming a jetsetting life coach. Unfortunately, this story arc does not have a happy ending: thanks to a chance encounter involving a hoot owl, 12 tubs of industrial strength sour cream and Dave Madden, Blini becomes coach of his high school football team, the Oshawa Flaming Parliamentarians.
In his undistinguished seven year tenure as coach, the team had a 3-71 record. The following exchange, captured in The Insurrectionist, the school newspaper, sums up this time in Blini's life:
BOBBY: Like, we suck, eh?
BLINI: Now, Bobby. There's no "eh" in team.
BAMBI: Actually, coach, there is.
BLINI: What?
BAMBI: There is an A in team. T-E-A-M.
BLINI: Wha - what the - are you trying to be cute with me, Sclerowski?
BAMBI: No, coach, I -
BLINI: Drop and give me 20 laps around the track!
Most of the major media outlets, having been burned in the first act of Blini's life, gave the second act a pass. This left it up to such publications as the Miners Do It In The Dark Web site to call this part of his life "vague" and "lacking context."
ACT THREE: Blini turns his inconsiderable talents to the arts. He cannot write, act, direct, set design, create costumes or do anybody's hair or makeup, so, he turns to games to help him out.
For the last two and a half decades of his life, Blini McTurbian took up the hobby of machinima, creating movies using computer games as his raw material. For the first couple of years, he toyed with the notion of remaking Peter Seller's The Party using the game Final Fantasy XII. Let us be kind and say his learning curve was steep.
The rest of his life would be devoted to making a machinima version of Krzysztof Kieslowski's The Decalogue using the game Halo as his base. Blini managed to get through three of the ten commandments, and was working on an especially tricky scene in the fourth (Anka, played by the Red Soldier, confronting Michael, played by the Blue Soldier, about the contents of the letter their father left them) when he died.
Critics were harsh, saying that the ending was either "a cop out" or that it "left unresolved the major issues that his life had introduced." But, that was just his way. Let's be honest: Blini McTurbian's life was worth, at most, one and a half stars.
But, boy, could he kiss!
Horace Q. Brees-Putt
Famed machinima reviewer Horace Q. Brees-Putt, author of the best-selling Actors are Overrated, was Blini McTurbian's long time...well...choose the euphemism you're most comfortable with for "queer fuck-bunny."