Man undergoes medical procedure to look like video game avatar

"To be honest, during the procedure I was a bit worried about the whole thing. Then I saw my reflection and I was a lot worried."

Unfortunately Harvey Alderman is not a singular case. In fact, the twenty-two year old former accounting student is just one name in an every-increasing list of youths affected by the disturbing trend that is gripping the nation -- video gamers undergoing intense and often experimental cosmetic procedures as a means of making themselves look like the avatars in their video games.

Mr Alderman has had a month to reflect on the procedure he took to turn his features into those of his avatar from the game World of Warcraft (WoW) -- a level 45 spell-casting orc.

"Why? It's pretty simple really," said Mr Alderman. "I really like playing WoW, but I always felt like something was missing. After much consideration I came to the conclusion that the only way I could possibly make it better was to put myself in the game somehow. I spent weeks in the design-a-character mode trying to get my character to match my features but no matter what I did it just didn't look right. Then I though to myself -- maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. Maybe the solution isn't so much trying to make the character look like me, but maybe it should be making me look like the character."

This trail of though prompted Mr Alderman quit to his casual job, apply for a leave of absence from his studies, empty his saving account and booking himself into Third Dimension Cosmetics (a facility specialising in such procedures) ordering the works. Doctor Hermes Strauss presided over the surgery.

"Yes, yes, the orc-procedure is a very popular one. We dye the skin until it's a very healthy green, extend two of the bottom canines so they look a little more like talons, realign the skull so there is this nice protrusions then remodel the ears to give them that desirable elfish look," said Doctor Strauss. "Oh yes, we're fully accredited."

Mr Alderman claims it is too early to tell whether or not the surgery has enhanced his gaming experience.

"Well, if I'm being completely honest I'm not 100 per cent on the changes at this stage. It's pretty hard to eat, and breath and walk around anywhere. But I imagine I'll get used to them eventually."

"I don't know, I was under the impression that it'd be pretty easy to change my face back if I didn't really like the way it looked, but apparently that's not the case. Oh well. You live and learn."

LBAP

From the desk of Bruce Willis...

A lot of people wonder what a big action star like me does in his spare time. Well, when I’m not pumping iron at the gym or all up in the club watching Aston Kutcher grind dance with my ex-wife, I’m likely to be found at the local library, bashing the hell out of nerds.

There’s nothing I like more than a nerd beating – it scratches me right in the specific spot I itch – but the thing is there are some people out there who have a tendency to take it the wrong way. They say, “Bruce, you’re this big, muscular, sexy, intelligent, altruistic, all-knowing, benevolent Hollywood action man. You shouldn’t be spending all your time beating up nerds. You should be picking on people your own size, power, wealth and intelligence.”

But what it is that they’ve got to understand is that I’ve spent a career in Hollywood laying the smackdown on stuntmen of all shapes and sizes, some of them literal man-mountains, some of them just pretty tall, so it’s nice for me to get in a fight with someone that you know is going to go down when you give them a roundhouse kick to the face.

I do do most of my nerd beating at the local library. I find this is the best place to find nerds and you get a bit of variety. You get the book nerds, you get a few computer nerds, and there’s always the other nerds whose interests lie in separate area but hang around for the nerd-comradeship. This can take as little as half an hour, as long as half a day – it all depends on things like what time you show up and is it a weekday or is sunny outside or is the library even open. Most of the time there’s at least four of five nerds hanging around and it’s just a matter of flushing them out and provoking them into conflict.

Usually when I’m through with the beating I hang back for a bit. And it was doing this very thing that at the particular library I go to that let me in on this great deal that I'd like to tell you about. Get this – for a small fee, only about forty bucks, they give you this card that, so long as you eventually return them, allows you to borrow as many books as you’d like.

Think about this for a moment. Books these days are pretty damn expensive. How many times have you bought a book home, read it, and then never touched it again? All you wanted was a little something to read, but now you’ve got this big, bulky thing that you're never going to use again, that cost you about forty bucks and that you’ve now somehow got to find space for.

Okay, so you buy a bookshelf. But what happens when you fill that bookshelf with books? You buy another bookshelf. But what happens when you fill that bookshelf with books? Don’t you see how you’re falling into this vicious cycle in which there’s no way that you can wind up as the winner, in which there’s no way you’ll have a wall in your house that isn’t covered from floor to ceiling with bookshelves full of books, in which you feel like killing your wife, your friends, your children, anyone – whose death can make the pain go away.

That’s where the library comes in. You go in there, you show your card, and you're allowed to get as many books as you like. You don’t keep these books – once you’re done reading you return them. But, if you want to grab some more, you're allowed to grab some more. They’ll tell you how long you have the book for and you have to return it in the allotted time, but if you haven’t had a chance to finish don't worry. Often, so long as no one else is after that book you're reading they’ll let you renew your loan so you have a bit more time. So long as you keep abiding by the rules they’ll keep letting you borrow.

All you need is a little area to be your sort of temporary book space. I’ve taped off a section of the den, next to my trophy cabinet. And it means I don’t have to build fifty different bookshelves and I don’t have to make that annoying trip down to the bookstore and I’m saving a tonne of money.

There aren't a lot of things in life that I’m entirely sure about. But I am sure that this really is a great deal, and I encourage all of you to at least give it a go. Yippee ki-yay motherfuckers.

Yours sincerely,

Bruce Willis

Square Dance A Success: Organisers

Waterloo - Organisers of the fifteenth annual Sydney City Square Dance Collective Square Dance have touted the event a rousing success, despite a bout of food poisoning claiming the lives of 28 attendees.

"Seriously, how many square dances have you been to without a body count?" said SCSDC director Morris Wellborne. "That's right, not too many. It all comes with the territory. This shit is real. Why do you think it's always such a struggle for us to get people to show up to these things?"

The food poisoning has been traced back to a batch of undercooked fish sticks that were being served as appetisers. Chief executive offer of Fishy Pete's Seafood Stix (sic) Hershel Hetherington refused to accept blame when confronted by the press with news of the tragedy.

"What the hell is the SCSDC? Square dancing? Okay, and so they ate some of our fish sticks that were undercooked, is that what went wrong? Christ...fucking journos...you know I'm a busy man. I really don't have time for this sort of thing."

Mr Wellborne responded to these comments by flagging his intention to take Fishy Pete's to court.

"I'll tell you one thing, this is the last time I let Fishy Pete ruin one of my square dances," said Mr Wellborne. "He's going to pay alright, especially for what he did to my dog, Grover. Poor little guy, ate one of those poisonous fish sticks and it made him so sick and insensible and disorientated that he couldn't even notice my car reversing into him."

Grover was unavailable for comment.

LBAP

Drunken student gets Julia Gillard tattoo on forehead, disappointed

Ultimo, NSW – Student and young man Steve Wilson got a little more than he bargained for when he walked into his local tattoo parlour last Saturday night. He attributes the likeness of Julia Gillard that now sits on his forehead to a combination of grave misjudgement and liquor.

“I don’t know why I was there. I was drunk,” the twenty one year old law student claimed. “I remember telling the tattoo guy to do it as a joke. He didn’t laugh. Then he tattooed my head and made me pay for it.”

Wilson claims the impact this new tattoo has had on his life has been “noticeable”. After being fired from his casual job at the local supermarket, Wilson was disowned by his family and cast out onto the street.

“My boss votes Labour, same as my family,” says Wilson. “So I don’t think that was really the issue here. I think it had more to do with the nature of the tattoo." (The Prime Minister was depicted as wearing nothing but a strategically placed boa constrictor) "They weren’t quite ready for that one. But in fairness there was a significant divergence between the final image and the tattoo I had originally asked for.”

Wilson considered suing the parlour for improper conduct, but has since decided his energies could be better focused on other activities such as finding a place to sleep.

“Of course I’m disappointed. I’ve got no job, no home and this big tattoo of Julia Gillard on my forehead. What happens if she goes and loses the next election? I’m screwed.”

“The worse part is trying to score with chicks with this tattoo. Chicks seem to like tattoos. But this…chicks don’t like this.”

LBAP