It’s amazing how much better I sleep when no one is yelling about snipping my spine in two.

On Sunday night, our resident Angry Hobo (he is dangerously crazy and OH SO ANGRY) decided to stand on the corner I live on and yell threatening things out to the world. As strange as it may seem, it’s really no cause for alarm – he does this all the time (although usually not all bloody night long) and as far as I know he has yet to make good on any of his threats. He stomps all around our neighbourhood (and others, I’m assuming, because he’s not around all the time) ranting at the top of his lungs about everything and nothing before he comes up with the plan to snip your spine in two. He must have been really angry on Sunday, because he’d upgraded to snipping testicles while yelling all night long in one spot, instead of yelling while walking off into the distance. I was too comfortable to call the cops so I ignored him even though I was jerked awake ever half hour or so. The following morning I learned that the Spine Snipper spent the night under the awnings beneath our unit – poor lil’ guy must have tuckered himself out.

Whatever his problem, he found somewhere else to yell last night and I was able to sleep all the way through to this morning. I’m much less a zombie than I was yesterday, which is doing wonders for my productivity and mood. Sure, it only took me four hours to write one paragraph – but it’s an improvement, see. I’m working.

On Sunday, Ed was seized with the notion that we really, really needed an XBox Kinect – so he went out and got one. We’ve spent the last couple of nights doing unspeakable things in front of the TV in the name of motion gaming, and it’s pretty cool. I am seriously not crazy about the pictures the Kinect takes while you’re playing – more unflattering images of me have NEVER BEEN TAKEN – but so far it’s been fun. I’m thinking about picking up an easy dance game to try out in the dark privacy of my living room. I’d like to say “it couldn’t hurt”, but knowing me .. I’ll probably fall out of the living room window and land on the Spine Snipper, which’ll make him want to snip my spine.

In other news, I am tired of many, many things. Perhaps it is time for a change!

I will never be hip.

Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
Such a waste of pretty face but hanging in your nowhere space
I wish that you would take a look and really stop that
Top that, stop that
I don’t really give a –  about trying to top that
Top that, stop that
I wish you’d finally take a real look and really stop that

I realized (after getting some sleep – up at 7am for no reason makes me dumb) that my post below was many things, including misleading and childish and petulant – so this is a follow-up post to say I’m sorry, I’m fine, I’m PMS’ing, I’m muddled up about a bunch of trivial-ass things, I’m unable to properly articulate my feelings like an adult .. so in a last ditch attempt at making some words go, I simply farted on the internet.

Sorry about that.

You can tell I’m serious, because I DO NOT FART. Ever. It’s too close to pooping, and I don’t do that – but in this case, it honestly explains exactly what happened this morning. Frustrated farts instead of words. Oops.

Now I’m going for pizza and iron men!

Here is an adorable picture to make up for internet farts:

adorable.

Fuck you.

Yep, lots of prid here:

Happy Geek Pride Day!

The Nesting:

must .. fill .. free .. space

I’m trying to cover ALL VIDEO GAMES EVER in my space. I’ve got the aforementioned posters from Bioshock 2, posters from Space Channel 5 and Pinball of the Dead (both from the Gameboy Advance releases in 2003), a Mario hat, Beat from Jet Set Radio, a “What Would Gordon Freeman Do” bumper sticker from Half-Life 2, and my candy bowl:

no, it’s not socketed. YOU try sticking gems in tiny tiny candy.

I dug out a lot of older nerd stuff to bring in, and I know I have a lot more. Perhaps it’s time to dust off the Taiko Drum Master – nothing says “good time at work” like being loud.

Nesting is fun!

I suddenly have a LOT more wall space at work (long story slightly less long: we’re being shuffled around, and I ended up with the WORST SPOT IN THE WORLD. To give myself some semblance of privacy, I annexed some cabinets that weren’t being used and made myself a goddamn Fortress of Boobitude), so I came home with a laundry list of things I want to put up on my new walls. I’ve avoided nesting, because I know what happens when things get out of hand .. but I’ve been there for a month now, and the time for nesting has come.

Among the things I want to put on my new walls are the Rapture posters that came with the collector’s edition of Bioshock 2. I knew the posters were somewhere in my Lady Cave, but I couldn’t find them. I tore the room apart and eventually located them, but I ALSO found something I had previously dismissed as being in another place (a poster tube inside a larger poster tube). Momentarily sated but wildly curious, I pulled out the small tube and opened it up to see what was inside.

I found:

• A poster depicting the lifecycle of the Pacific Salmon
• Three rubber ducks
• Two cat-shaped swizzle sticks
• A candy necklace

WHAT THE FUCK?

Even for ME, that’s really fucking weird. Unsettling weird. Creepy, smiling-old-man-rubbing-his-hands-together-and-drooling-slightly-as-he-stares-vacantly-at-fabric-softener weird.

I am afraid of myself.

Ultimately, I failed at my (rather audacious) goal: complete Diablo 3 over the long weekend. I failed because I was weak; needing sleep and human companionship and groceries and a Mexican Scramble from Deacon’s Corner. Still, between Friday and Monday evening I managed to log an impressive (and somewhat disgusting) 23 hours and 16 minutes of game time even while having a semblance of a real life and a nasty migraine to deal with. I haven’t done a marathon gaming session in years, which is why I needed to take an occasional break now and again – but I managed to make it to the final boss before I grew tired of having my ass handed to me repeatedly, and I gave up my weekend quest. I could have kept going and probably eventually beaten the game, but it was hard enough to get moving this morning – I can’t imagine how late I would have been for work if I continued to make my way through the Corrupted Gates of Anguish and Despair.

For a short while, I thought the game ended after Act III. I had forgotten the extremely linear Rules of Diablo: there are always four acts, and each act will always take place in these environments in this order:

• Act I is in a backwoods town surrounded by fields and some distance away from a cathedral or sprawling estate on top of dungeons of a surprising depth
• Act II is in the desert where the Big City is, and will alternate between said desert and the sewers of the Big City
• Act III is at a perpetually snowy keep that doubles as a battlefield swarming with demons
• Act IV is in an alternate dimension: space, heaven, your mind’s eye, etc.

Given my history of hating sequels, I was pleasantly surprised that the basic mechanics and feel of D3 had not changed, or changed for the better. I appreciate that enemies can drop health – no more surviving battles by sheer mashing of your potion slot alone – and the triumphant, if short lived, return of the Butcher (the only Diablo character to ever give me the wiggins). You’re no longer reliant on scrolls for identifying items or returning to town, and mana (sorry, “arcane power”) regenerates itself at a healthy rate; blue potions are a thing of the past. When you die (at least on normal), you don’t lose all your gold and gear (I used to have full on foaming rage fits at dying mid-battle then having to wade back into the fray basically naked to retrieve my weapons and armour) but rather take a 10% hit on the durability of your stuff; easily repaired at any merchant. It makes it a little easier for the novice to deal with – and if it’s too easy, then play on Nightmare or Hell or Hardcore mode.

I am pleased at an entire weekend spent being unkempt and nerdy!

I could use another four showers, though.

And um I promise this will be my last post about Diablo 3 for a while, okay?

The house is an unmitigated disaster, we’re out of food (both cat and human), my sleep patterns are completely fucked up and most of my last half dozen meals have come out of a bag, BUT: Diablo 3 is *awesome*.

I am really, really glad this is a long weekend.

Add me: DeeAy#1420 !

We’ve placed an actual moratorium on any gaming today until the house is in order and we have food again, so I better go get started so I can spend the evening happily skipping my way through the Halls of Unending Agony and Suffering.

Hey, people of Tristram: Diablo is much less likely to unleash cataclysmic evil upon you if you stopped naming things like “Fields of Misery” and “City of the Damned”. You’d also likely rake in more tourist dollars if you went with “Field of Sunshine and Kittens” as opposed to “Tortured Swamp of Kicks in the Balls” and “Den of Stubbed Toes”. Do you really think anyone would waste time sending leagues of demons to “The Rainbow Lollipop Church of Hugs and Puppies” or “Happy Time Cheerful Inn”? Think about it, and maybe hire some PR for crying out loud. I am tired of shooting hell bats in the “Misty Crotch of Andora’s Anguish”. Just once I’d like to save the world by fetching a comfortable pillow from a candy story owned by playful butterflies.

Right. Errands. I’m off (to the Tormented Pet Store of Discomfort and High Prices)!

It took me a lot of convincing to get Ed to join the social media party, but like with everything, as soon as he starts he’s immediately BETTER AT IT THAN I AM.

Tony Hawk held an Instagram contest, asking his followers to caption this photo:

i am good at sports, so i know this is a skating board.

Out of the 4200+ comments, Tony Hawk liked Ed’s comment the best:

yay for ed!

He wins the signed skateboard from Tony Hawk, which is pretty fucking awesome. Also, the skateboard has Justin Bieber’s fingerprints on it:

ed peed himself with glee when he realized the implications of this photo

This isn’t the first time Ed has won at social media: within his first month or so on Twitter, he won an autographed Edler jersey.

Ed is good at winning!