When I was 6-8 years old, my family lived in Long Island, NY. Our house had this big backyard with a strip of forested trees that my brothers and I liked to explore. We spent hours in that forest trying to find the shortcut to Narnia. We never found Narnia, but I believe some creatures from Narnia could get into our world through that door, because I’m still looking for my first baseball glove and my pair of multi-colored sneakers that were lost when wandering there. I think the Narnians have all my lost wallets too. If so, they can keep the money, but if they could return the senior pictures of the girls I had a crushes on in my senior year, that would be great.

A lot of people are like me back in the forest days in New York. They are always looking for shortcuts to fame, wealth, and Narnia. Every once in a while, and elite few are granted shortcuts to wealth by being born to parents that are wealthy, or fame because their parents are famous, or Narnia, because their parents live in Narnia. Most of us have to work for those things though. Steve Jobs, J.K. Rowling, Dolly Parton, and other really rich people started with really humble beginnings. It took them hustle, hard work and experience to be able to go to Narnia.

It was the same for me. A lot of people assume that I was born bitter, and they are right. I came out with a resting bitter face. But I didn’t become the bitterest person in the world as soon as I was born. It took a lot of hard work, impatience, frustration and practice to be the Bitterman I am today.

Most of all, it took experience. Over time, I developed my craft and learned to fail over and over and over again. When most successful people learn from all their failures and turn them into opportunities, I took failures and turned them into bitterness. That is how I became the most bitter person in the world.

Video games, movies, TV shows and books have long taken inspiration from humans and the human experience to build compelling stories. For some reason, stories always love to center themselves on humans and how they live, fail, and overcome. More than any other medium though, video games take inspiration from humans and their growth and use it in the systems and stories.

For instance, video games love to copy how we use food for energy. But they take the energy and multiply it into power. Characters like Mario, get bigger by eating a mushroom, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles gain power by eating pizza, and Donkey Kong eats bananas to stay alive. Pacman loves eating dots. (My son used to like Dots too.)

They also like to replicate how we evolve and grow. Certain Pokemon can evolve and do so by gaining experience by fighting other Pokemon. Many characters in games, especially in RPG’s have experience points (XP) that determine if they get to level up and become more powerful. They also have hit points (HP) that determine if they get to stay alive or not. Oh, and if that weren’t enough, every time they kill a monster, they get a little bit of money, better swords and shields.

The way we world works now is broken. Video games seem to have figured out how to function in our world than we have. Therefore, we need to start taking inspiration from video games. We need to earn XP, HP, money and better swords every time we slay monsters or complete side quests for people. Instead of working in offices doing spreadsheet’s and creating ads, we should be sent outside on adventures, and get paid to slay instead of being paid to stay…still.

Where are all the shopkeepers selling better swords, bombs to open cracks in walls and potions for all our burns and poisoning? And if there were a good medicine for the heartburn from eating the pizza powerup, that would be awesome too.

If we’re eating mushrooms, bananas, pizza, and flowers why aren’t we temporarily becoming 12 feet tall, or getting fireballs that we can fire at mushrooms (and at anything that is bothering us, like say our co-workers) that are trying to kill us? Why aren’t we respawning whenever we make stupid mistakes? It would be much easier to learn things if we could respawn so we could try again and again so we can figure out the right patterns of enemies. Why are we listening to our bosses at work, when we should be building up our XP and HP so we can defeat them?

The most important part about our XP and HP is that we should be able to see how much we have left. If we don’t know how much we have left, how are we going to know when to go to the Pokemon Center to heal ourselves?

Instead, we are stuck in this stupid real world where we have to figure out all these things by instinct or guessing. That is so unpredictable and inefficient. Like I said, video games have out our lives much better than we have. If we want to fix things, we need to stop studying science and biology and start studying video games.

I volunteer as tribute to be the world’s first video game scientist, to figure out how to save our world. Don’t ever say I’ve done nothing for you. Besides giving you Bitter Friday Giftures every week…this is the noblest thing I’ve ever done for humanity. You’re welcome….

My wallet, shoes and baseball glove…

I never found Narnia in our forest…

I’m going to take a trip back to NY…

If I run into some Narnians…

A few people get to use shortcuts…

But most of us…

Maybe you think I was born with it…

I earned my bitterness…

And learning…

We should learn from video games…

We should be able to get money…

And finding it on the ground…

But most importantly…

ARRRGGGHHHHHHHH

Bitter Experience Points Ben