Pirates and Obsolescence

There was a gap there, one of what I imagine will be many. Some of it is due to picking back up another writing project I had shelved for a bit, but if I'm being fair, it's mostly due to a lack of anything interesting to say...about, you know, this stuff anyway.

It's one of my greater rational fears, as I imagine it is with anyone who writes...let alone one who considers themselves a writer...that I'll eventually run out of BRAIN JUICE and have nothing left to talk about. This is extrapolated by the even more immense fear that one could conceivably run out of narrative about their current life situation in, I dunno'...say less than a month.

Anyway, that day has yet to come. Lucky for me.

About two nights ago I had a horrible nightmare that surrounded the idea of injecting living hornets with a massive syringe under my skin. It's interesting to note that the worst part of this was the needleitself, a medical device that despite drawing from a very large reservoir (imagine a milk jug...only full of enraged bees), was strikingly normal. Why it didn't extrude a sort of bee-paste rather than the still-living and still-quite-angry insects under my skin is just the kind of suspension of disbelief these sort of nightmares require...but nonetheless the needle itself caused me the most dire discomfort. It's worth noting that this nightmare was also brought on by my near-nightly forays into Bioshock, a game that keeps me playing despite what must surely be horribly damaging psychological backlash.

See, I fucking hate needles, and I imagine it's less than prudent to share this with the world...seeing that, if I ever find myself in an Orwellian Room 101 (a situation I increasingly consider more and more likely), it'll be sure to include needles in some capacity.

And thats exactly why the coppers will never take me alive.

...So anyway...

The other day I was getting nostalgic while listening to some music that has long sat in archives accrued from years ago, all illegitimately. Back in the day I was quite the software pirate...an idea and identity I tried my best not to take too much pride in. I always attempted to procure enough digital wealth each month to match or surpass the equivalent price of my ISP's service. In this way I had a concrete return for my internet investment, rather than the nebulous (and often traumatizing) experience that is simply surfing the web.

While this was and still is quite illegal, and having having toned it down quite a bit since, I just couldn't quite bring myself to...you know...give a shit. Since it's impossible for me to know or care how much this has truly affected the music and movie industry, my only real divining rod is when they stop making their shit. Until that day I imagine myself and every other discerning consumer will continue to procure free goodies(!!!) through the overwhelmingly powerful and completely unstoppable P2P network.

The way I see it, the entire entertainment industry should be happy and content in the fact that we still even want their crap. Oh! Speaking of which: I think it deserves note that my own waning pirate activities are due purely to disinterest and not because of any vaporous and unfounded legality threat. See, I will never give money to people who make and produce movies like The Reaping and Dumb and Dumberer...but so too will I never even bother to watch them despite them being readily available, streaming, for free.

Ultimately what it comes down to, in my eyes, is something like this: What an entertainer earns comes purely from their movie tickets sold. If their movie is good enough for me to see in the theaters (or they've fooled me into thinking it was good enough) then, by god, I'll go see it. (To date no amount of piracy can capture the magic of the big screen...just try and watch a cam and you'll see what I mean. And if a screener gets out, thats the company's own damn fault.) Anything they make after that point is a bonus they should be happy with.

I had something to close this out, but I forgot it.

Oh yeah, my brother makes movies, so uh...sorry if this offends you bro'.

Merchant of Death

Not too long ago Mr.1up laughed after overhearing a sales pitch of mine, and called me 'Worse than a drug dealer'. I laughed too.

Because, you know, it being funny and all.

But the comment stuck with me. See, what I was doing was no normal sales pitch...I was trying (and succeeding) at convincing someone to pick back up WoW. After all, there were all these new awesome inane details and shit that I'm totally just faking any interest in whatsoever!

Maybe I should have felt bad. I didn't, and don't, but I do feel a little bad about not feeling bad. Fact is, a gamer who plays WoW is about one-hujjilion times more active in their game of choice than anything even remotely similar. I'm loathe to admit it, but Blizzard's dollar is very frequently my dollar. In the bizarre nightmarescape I live in, the more people who play WoW, the better.

I imagine a darkened world, nothing more than a grassless, rainless field shadowed by a sky of perpetual thunderclouds. In this place millions of people sit obediently and quietly, shoulder to shoulder...playing World of Warcraft...stretching off to the vanishing point on all horizons. Then, using a kind of fusion, I could harness the natural energy-giving body heat of each player, thus generating enough power to sustain my synthetic race of evil robotic overlords...

No? Okay, maybe thats a little too plagiarized (but then again, look at the source!). But you see what I'm getting at, right? Heaven to me is a world where everyone but me plays this damn game.

As you might have gathered, I don't dip into the WoW. Not out of elitism or some perceived high ground, but rather because man, FUCK World of Warcraft.

Sorry, sorry, that came out wrong. What I meant to say is, it's not for me. Also, due to the tragic and sordid story of my predecessor and life-long friend, it is strictly against company policy to play any MMO while at work (You always know you did a good job when you leave new rules in the vacuum of your absence!). And even outside of work it's frowned upon by the Inner Party, much like unorthodoxy.

Now, I'm not here to make judgments on the implications of addiction in any medium...be it real drugs, videogames, prescription drugs, TV, food, pornography, or snowglobes...just wild speculation.

What I've surmised is simple. Anything in extreme excess can be a damaging addiction, most things in some form of rational moderation can be ok, and a very few things are always bad regardless of the volume or circumstances (head cheese and dick-piercings, for instance).

It's more complicated though, as life always is. If videogames in general are your drugs, then maybe your favorite FPS is a good joint. If this logic holds true (and I'd like to think it does!), then World of Warcraft is crack-cocaine.

Ok, not to be unfair...not everyone who plays World of Warcraft is an addict, true. But then, if I were a gambling man (and I am!), and there was a roulette wheel filled with a random selection of truly-addicted gamers (out of any possible game), guess which game I'd bet my piece to fall on? Which would you?

I don't have to be a snide Mr.1up, linking you to dozens of different stories about how a WoW player died of malnutrition, or a couple starved their baby, or whatever. I don't prescribe to that brand of extreme, impersonal reporting. Nay, I live thirty feet from a pair of what were once human-like vegetables.

Mr. Furious, my predecessor, lost his job (one he liked quite a bit) and months of his life to the endeavor. The other, his roommate, ditched his family, friends, job, and college to live off his student loans and play WoW, all day, every day.

Mr. Furious eventually kicked his habit and even pocketed a wad of cash from selling his digital property, but this isn't reason enough to give me hope. The poor sap that coughed up the dough for the opposite side of the exchange is what's really telling.

The cycle never stops, and like the growing number of people I've gotten to re-start the habit shows...no one ever really quits.

And as Cthulhu stands in as my witness, I'll keep on selling.

The Archetypes

People frequently scoff at the difficulty (or rather, perceived ease) of my job, so I feel compelled to break it down.

In my line of work, there is a diverse menagerie...nay, bestiary, of people who transcend the normal level of awkwardness, introversion and social ineptitude that we, as a society, have come to expect and tolerate from gamers in acceptable levels.

For classification purposes, and my own entertainment, here are some of the more rare genera of the gamer biosphere.


The Announcer and the Narrator

Easily identified not by sight alone, but aurally. You can expect a high volume of high volume verbiage, extruded by voices straining on the edge of adolescence. To anyone and everyone around them they describe, in acute detail, the goings on of whatever the current game may be, regardless if it's singleplayer, multiplayer, if anyone is in the same game with them or not and even when there's not another soul within shrieking distance. This does not discourage them in the least from continuing their Villain-like monologue, even if their entire unwilling and captive audience is one poor, lone arcade manager.

What to look for: Pre-pubescent squawking and voice-cracking and/or theater majors.
Preffered Method of Dispatch: Strangulation or, if available, asphyxiation...preferably with a sound-proof bag or pillow of some kind.

The Accuser

While the Accuser could easily be mistaken with the previous species during heightened excitement, these special creatures are actually quite camouflaged until entering a multiplayer game. The moment they do, however, their normally docile tones and colors are discarded for more...vibrant trappings. The parallel world they enter upon joining a game, be it online or over the lan, is one fraught with con-men, cheaters and charlatans. Indeed, only they remain bastions of truth upon their virtual death...and like the puritans of old they scream their accusations of 'cheater!' and 'bullshit!' at the sinful masses.

What to look for: Children who come in on Sunday afternoons in nice clothes.
Preferred Method of Dispatch: Clubbing with a blasphemous book (Necronomicon?), or perhaps with a large roll of porno mags.

The Inquisitor

While the previous monsters preferred a long-distance approach, offending your senses from afar, the Inquisitor prefers to also violate your personal comfort bubble in ways that defy traditional rage. Often casually approaching to either saunter up in the seat right next to you, or better, standing with one elbow propped on the back of your chair, they then proceed into what can only be describe as a grueling gauntlet of interrogation. It doesn't matter if you're looking at pictures, reading, watching a video of someone getting hit in the balls or (and this is the worst) entrenched in your favorite game, seconds from the Big Win. It just doesn't matter. They will get their answers.

Strangely they rarely care about answer being provided as much as the answer to their next question...confusing I know. A sample might go something like this:

"Hi! Wat'cha playin'?"
"Oh, this is-"
"Ooh, whats that do?"
"That's, uh, that's-"
"Who's that!?"
"He's-"
"Why are you shooting him!?!"
"I-
"OH WHAT'S THAT!?"

And so on. Until police are called.

What to watch for: An approach vector that can not be predicted, avoided, or survived. Maybe also a spiral notebook and MiB sunglasses.
Preferred Method of Dispatch: Lethal tripwire mines between you and all other spaces.

The Beholder (Not to be mistaken with its far-more-tame D&D counterpart)

Up to this point there was still hope for a semi-normal life, but beyond there lies no hope. Only the gaze. The Beholder is a monster so vile, so repugnant that all resistance in the mind to his advances just shut down. What you're left with is a frozen shell, unable to respond or flee from the horror of the silent stare. That this thing exists is proof to me there can be no divine creator. Much like the Inquisitor they will approach you with determination and a purpose and you may even initially mistake them for the former...oh if you were only so lucky! After a few tense moments preparing for a barrage of questioning that never comes the horrid truth will slowly sink in. A Beholder has attached himself to your screen...and he ain't fuckin' goin' nowhere. The only real defense is to attempt to ignore him, or in failing this (inevitable), feigning ignoring him in the futile wish he'll lose interest.

He's not going to.

At this point you might think I'm exaggerating and I'll openly admit that all prior descriptions had a twinge of showmanship in them, but this...this is as real as it gets. There was really only one Beholder, at the start of things. While he's moved on and been replaced by (marginally) less horrid doppelgangers, he remains high-octane nightmare fuel among staff.

My mind literally shrinks in horror at the logic the brain of this pseudo-person must have gone through to find such a sequence of actions normal enough to imagine and then execute.

His method is deceptively simple: It starts long before he ever enters my arcade where, I surmise, he neglected flushing any portion of his body or clothing with soap or water for many days. Once this critical phase had been archived to his liking, he would then come in with no legal tender whatsoever. Finally, he'll place himself close enough to your person to feel his stink waves radiating outward. Then he'll continue to stare, silently and unblinking, at whatever's happening on your screen.

Perhaps the worst of all, it doesn't matter what's there, be it a game or a book or hardcore sado-masochistic pornography...it will entertain him more...and longer...than you or any sane person.

I've had to repeatedly tell him to give other customers space because, for fucks sake, he was creeping them the fuck out.

What to watch for: A face closer to your screen than your own (seriously).
Preferred Method of Dispatch: Eyegouging.

Gonna' git mah gat, gonna' bust a cap rat-a-tat-ta-a-aat

It's late, and the place is almost empty. My contact steps in through the front door, seemingly a simple patron looking for some entertainment. He slips me the 9mm auto over the counter as casually as a handful of singles, along with a clip and a whole bucket of what amounts to ammunition these days. It's an old piece but the action is clean and sharp, zee intrinsic veight ah sign uv reliability. I load it up and drop it in a cargo pocket that seem like they were made for just such an object.

Watch out punks, I'm now officially strapped.

And all for the price of three hours of game time on my machines.

If packing imitation heat has taught me anything in the last day, it's that I should never, ever, under any circumstances own a real firearm.

The temptation to brandish and fire it wantonly and without sanity or remorse into crowds of ignorant customers, broken computers and discarded soda cans is just too great. Every second I imagine the instant entertainment and gratification the look of confusion, superficial pain and sheer terror would bring me. It's almost too much for this simple arcade manager to bare.

But I remain strong. I've gone almost 24 hours in ownership of the mock-weapon and I've only shot two people, both of whom I knew, so I think that makes it OK. Also I shot myself once to make up for one of them, and gutted my big toe by wrenching the giant metal back door across it whilst running from the other, who also happened to be Mr. Ringer.

Mr. 1up, my hapless boss was the recipient of the other shot, fired at touching distance into his thigh with no warning. It's ok though, you can all rest easy knowing Mr. 1up is a complete bastard and deserved it.

While it might seem to some that guns and arcades that rigorously tout mind-shatteringly violent and realistic videogames don't mix, it's become apparent to me how easily the two could co-exist in mutual benefit. I imagine a sort of consumers paradise, where I run the glorious mix between the arcade as it is now, and a seedy pawn shop, walls studded with every conceivable modern assault rifle and various other ballistic weapons.

I know, I know, it sounds bad at first, but just think. In the horrible, dystopic, Orwellian future we face, we would need just such an establishment, one that could both train and arm the young and still free-thinking populace, thus enabling them to overthrow the increasingly tyrannical government!

Radical? Maybe.

Crazy? Totally.

Jail-time-worthy-for-just-suggesting-it? Probably.

My Entertainment Obsession

Flash back to the morning of the 21st. It's 6:25AM, which is exactly the time of day I will never, ever be awake. If I can damn well help it.

I'm lying in bed, clutching at my abdomen. In my head dances the images of a glistening black parasitic worm, the size of a human forearm, embedded in the lining of my stomach. It's twisting in place, fighting my will for it to be gone. It feeds heartily at the expense of my suffering, and my sanity.

Right about here I wake up, but the pain in my gut remains. I do the one thing any sane person would do. I vault from my bed, sprint to my bathroom, and I pray over a toilet bowl.

Here, between the godforsaken times of 630 to 7 in the morning, I vomit the vomit of the righteous. I expel demons that once competed with the Son of God. Through numerous, heaving convolutions, I exorcise the profound affect of last nights foray into BioShock.

In retrospect I imagine a great deal of my sickness was brought on by my last night's dinner, which consisted entirely of one of every new Monster energy drink coffee flavors.

There's three. That's like a gallon of that shit.

Now to the point of my ongoing story, one which I sort of intend for a wide audience and not just the sect of society I'm immersed in from day to day. But it's inescapable for me, not to occasionally lapse back into a state of mind where I derive nigh-euphoric states of elation from certain videogames.

I try to keep this under control. I do. Some years ago I can remember busting into some hapless Wal-Mart, nearly assaulting what poor soul had been assigned to the electronics section to "go into the fucking back and get me a fucking copy of Half-Life 2, godfuckingdamnit".

Priding myself on normally being a rational human being, I told myself those days were over. And yet, just before midnight on the 20th of August, 2007, I found myself speeding down a dark highway, wad of bills clutched in my hand, my destination a shining beacon in the distance. Wal-Mart, the assholes. The only goddamn fuckers that are going to sell me BioShock at this godawful hour.

This was the end of a sad journey, a blossoming obsession in its tender youth. Up until a week previous I had been able to ignore the siren song of BioShock, knowing that it, being out of reach, would only cause me pain were I to grasp for it. Then some fucker somewhere in the country sold the game to some other fucker somewhere at a Toys-R-Us.

What the hell is a mature game doing at Toys-R-Us anyway? I mean, not that I'm not all for the corruption of the minds of the innocent as early as possible, but seriously. Toys-R-Us? They sell videogames?

But I digress. If someone was selling it somewhere, I didn't see why they shouldn't be selling it to me. So I called every goddamn place in town. And every spineless, gutless gamestop piece-of-shit clerk I came across cowered at the idea of selling me a game prior to their precious 'street date.' It didn't matter that they openly admitted to having the product sitting right in the back, a tantalizing treasure balanced on a pressure-plate just waiting for some whip-toting hero to come nab out from under the threat of countless deadly boobytraps.

Oh sure, they all cited consequences, hefty fines and other crap. Honestly, do I sound like I give a shit? After I decided they weren't going to sell to me outright, I started hatching devious plans to impersonate the manager of some other gamestop moneytrap and tell them I was short on stock, that I had to drop by and pick a few up from their shop. I had my spreadsheet of store numbers and locations and the names of managers and schedules all lined up, got my very best douche-bag manager threads together with improvised nametag and tie and everything and-

And I had to take a step back. I had to take a long, deep breath. This was crazy. I was going fucking nuts.

It was just a game, and it would be out in just a few more days, available to all. I could wait.

And so I did. Under the guise of feigned patience I waited, desperately trying to ignore that the brightest beacon on the horizon of my future, the one thing that registered as a date that promised happiness and joy and countless hours of entertainment, was a game.

So there I was, nearly midnight of the release date, my long wait at an end. I was sitting in the darkened interior of my speeding car, and I just had to question the sanity of my elation. Should I be able to procure such an emotional boost from so small a thing?

Should I seriously re-evaluate my life and try to supplant my happiness with a more worthwhile pursuit? If so, then what?

But it's too late. Midnight has passed only briefly when I find my target, a blue-vest-clad middle aged man, obviously the man charged with whatever you do as an employee in the electronics section. I do my best not to carry the harsh tones of a crack fiend when I request my game (it not being on the shelves yet) and expect a fight (this is the second Wal-Mart on my hunt, and I'm fully prepared to do the hour and a half driving that would be required to visit them all in a single night) but no...he has it right behind the counter, all neat and tidy in a single box. He offers me the product as if there was no stigma, no limitation to it...as if it had always been available, and always would be.

I could hardly contain my joy. I was holding the product on which all my dreams hinged. I told myself right then and there, that if it sucked I'd jump from a great height with a double-barrel shotgun wedged in my mouth.

I've calmed significantly on the drive home, and I'm forced to reconsider my previous assertion: that my hobby was both far beyond a hobby and at the same time, utterly reprehensible.

But then, what am I to do? If I self-condemned my own chosen medium of entertainment, wouldn't I just be uselessly damning myself? Furthermore, who's to judge the worth of anything that gives someone else joy? A hobo on the street, his mind long since destroyed in the fires of psychotropic drugs and his own madness, might find screaming incomprehensibly at passersby the most entertaining thing in the world. So why then should I feel any stigma in my own joy? To my knowledge there is no universal scale of virtue when it comes to any pastime, is there?

And it could always be worse. I could be one of those D&D losers.

Mr. Ringer and the Hunt - Aug 19th

“How's your weekend been so far?” My pseudo-co-worker, Mr. Warden, asks me.

I do the weekend shift at the arcade. Thats fourteen hours on Saturday, then twelve more on Sunday...not including opening/closing/cleaning.

But that's not on my mind.

I respond with a question. “Do you know what it's like to be hunted?”

Mr. Warden laughs, saying this is the best response to this question he's ever gotten. But no, I'm not kidding. I have literally become the prey of the illustrious Mr. Ringer.

Mr. Ringer is the genuine extrovert, in all manner and appearance a high-powered gaming frat-boy mutant hybrid of kinds. He was one of the long-time regulars, having been around and on a first-name basis since forever, eventually getting a job at the register before quitting for greener pastures (but still coming in frequently for the employee and ex-employee free time deal). He's flamboyant, easily mistaken as gay at first glance, a pretty-boy and is, of course, great with the ladies. He owns a Chihuahua, wears aviators a lot and used to drive a bright-yellow sports car.

But all this, the outside appearance, the jive and socialite-ism...it's just a cover.

A mask for the raving psychotic just underneath.

I'm one of the few living souls unlucky enough to know it. After all, Mr. Ringer and I, we're usually partners in crime whatever the case may be. As an ex-gun fanatic I am forced to live vicariously through him and giant arsenal of various shotguns and rifles. He tends to make off every few weeks to go to a professional paintball tournament of some kind, where he is both a competitor and frequently the recipient of prizes. He's also the only person I could get to agree to help me by trying out the projectile Taser I planned on buying. On me. I simply must know what it's like.

(The catch was I had to be able to use it on whoever got to use it on me. It has since occurred to me that this particular hypothetical exchange is a glorified version of trading kicks to gonads...only more painful.)

Anyway, one hot summer day some weeks ago this tenuous alliance took a dark turn. Like so many in our age bracket, Mr. Ringer was succumbing to the siren song of the Airsoft line of products. Not being blatantly illegal to wield in public (unlike his paintball guns), the nefarious cogs of his psyche started turning with an inevitable outcome.

The mock-assassination of me. I guess he had decided I was the most open-minded of his friends, the only one that would be willing to be ambushed late at night and perforated with high-speed, gas-propelled pellets when I least expected it.

Lucky me.

Being a good sport, he decided to warn me what he was planning. This was weeks and weeks ago, before I started this little log. My life hasn't been the same since.

The rules of engagement are simple, if somewhat undefined. Any time, any place, so long as nothing super-illegal takes place prior to the event (housebreaking, for instance). If I'm armed (with a weapon of similar make) I'm allowed to return fire of course.

But this is no good...the only Airsoft gun I ever owned (a frighteningly realistic, black-metal-with-no-orange, life-size, full-action Walther PPK) was confiscated from me during my arrest at a military checkpoint in some navy base hellhole in Connecticut. That's another story though. The point is I had been turned off to the whole Airsoft thing since then.

So, back to the hunt. Knowing Mr. Ringer as I did, I laughed and took it in stride...knowing he was absolutely fucking serious about carrying out his plan. I knew also that while he didn't own a pellet-gun yet, he was in the market.

This bought me a little time. I had to start thinking about how someone would go about killing me in a surprising fashion.

As things stand it would be frighteningly easy.

Being the manager of this arcade, I'm here every weekend night past 2 am on a Saturday and past midnight on Sunday. I've kicked everyone out when it's time to close, so I am completely alone. The parking lot out front is guaranteed to be mostly abandoned and also very dark. But the front lot isn't what scares me.

It's out the back. A large metal door opens out the back of our shopping center onto a dismal, bare lot with a lone dumpster. Beyond that is the darkened suburbia, people with a higher-than-normal amount of trash strewn about their yard. The unpainted street between us is devoid of cars at most hours of the day, let alone midnight or two in the am.

If I were gonna' kill me, I'd do it when I took out the trash at night. There every night like clockwork, and guaranteed to be alone. Funny thing is I've actually expected attack during this nightly routine long before I knew I was being actively hunted, sometimes fiddling with my cellphone in one pocket, poised to dial 911.

But then the weeks pass by quietly, and other than one scare where I saw a truck similar to Mr. Ringers parked behind the store before I opened in the morning (closer investigation revealed it was not his), the issue fell off my mind. Mr. Ringer came in as often as usual and never mentioned the hunt.

And then last Saturday rolled around. It's about 130am and Mr. Ringer is trying to convince me to start closing a bit early, saying I should get things done like putting the window-blockers up (we only make the outside world visible when the sun is down) or taking out the trash.

Meh I say. He laughs and decides to take off a little while before I close. 2Am rolls around, I kick everyone out, lock the door and get to my in-store routine when Mr. Ringer calls me.

“What's going on?”

“Oh nothin'...just closing.”

“Cool, cool. You take the trash out yet?”

“N-erhm, Yeah, I took it out early.”

This is a lie. The trash is sitting there, right inside the back door.

“Oh, ok. You take the table out front in yet?”

“I will 'soon as I'm off the phone with ya.” I respond.

“Ok, well I let you go then. Have a good one.”

“You too,” I nod, uselessly.

*click*

That was weird. At this point I hadn't remembered the hunt. I get the rest of my shit done and take out the trash...all is quiet.

I've forgotten by the time I get home, it's 1am and I'm ready for some serious hay-hitting. I start pulling into my driveway, already half asleep when I see it.

Instantly my eyes are open. Cold sweat beads onto my forehead. My heart pumps audibly.

Mr. Ringers truck is parked there, outside my home in the dark patch under the trees.

This is it. The hunt is on.

I live in a dismally dark neighborhood, pretty during the day but sorely lacking in street lamps at night. My driveway is entrenched between identical duplexes, and bushes and trees abound. Sadly, neither myself or any of my neighbors decided to leave their porch light on.

But I'm still sitting there in my idling car, considering my options. Maybe he just decided to come by and visit after work. We are, after all, both night owls. With this in mind I decide to park in my normal spot, from where I can get an view into the cab to see if he's just sitting there waiting...probably texting lady-friends of his or what have you.

I come to a stop and eyeball my surroundings. The cab is dark and empty.

Yep. I'm being hunted.

My options are short. I'm safe in my car for the moment, windows up and doors locked. I consider backing out slowly and parking up some side street to stalk back to my home on foot, in the shadows. But my front door is out in the open, exposed with no real cover leading up to it. Easy to camp.

In my mind, there's really only one risky maneuver that he wouldn't expect. I know he's out there, and he knows I know...but damn if the motherfucker ain't hidden. I kill the engine and elect to sit in the dark for a few minutes, adjusting my keys so that my door key is deathgripped like a switchblade. No movement outside.

My next move is risky because I have no idea if the key I have even works on my back door. I've only lived here for a few months and I've never used it. It opens from my kitchen into the claustrophobic alley between my house and the back doors of the adjacent duplex. Useless to me...until today.

Deciding I've sat still for long enough to make him antsy, and praying he's not hiding in the bush I have to vault in order to even get into my back alley (not to mention the ten-ish yards of space to pass over before that) I spring into action.

I fling my car door open and slam it shut while breaking into the best sprint I can muster wearing flipflops. In a few seconds I've smashed through one side of the bush and go pattering down my back alley...fumbling for a few seconds with the storm door before wrenching it open, slamming the key home and swirling the thing around like a fondue fork. I tackle the thing open with a crash and dive in, slamming it shut behind me. I lock that son of a bitch and take a deep breath.

I survived. I turn on my porch light as a signal of success. A few minutes later I get a knock and I answer the door by opening it the smallest crack. There he is, Mr. Ringer the hunter himself, automatic pistol on his hip. He's laughing and clapping. We laugh about the event and I congratulate myself over my own resolve and trickiness.

I've decided I'm going to make it difficult to kill me. Mr. Ringer claims he already has ideas for the next go at bagging me for the kill. We'll see. In the mean time I've decided to re-arm myself and live every day as if there's someone out to kill me.

Because there is.

Advice: Always Bad - Aug 14th

Oh, let me get off subject for just a second and say this: I hate people that give me advice. I also hate their advice.

Thats not to say, I hate friends who give me life-pertinent pearls of wisdom from time to time, or even friendly suggestions.

No, I hate people who give me advice about my arcade, how to run my arcade, and how to make my arcade better. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the validity of the advice itself, which (I imagine) ranges from 'feasibly-helpful' to 'Lewis-Black's-stick-a-spoon-up-my-own-ass-because-only-I-should-be-allowed-to-make
-myself-feel-that-much-pain'.

No, it's not the content of the advice, but the nature in which I receive it. Now it's worth pointing out that I havn't managed this place for a terribly long time, but I have been coming here pretty regularly for the duration of it being open and even worked a short stint as a cashier early on for no pay.

Yes. No pay. Thats another story, so remind me to get back to it.

But no, in that time I've either observed or been the recipient of copious amounts of poorly-delivered advice. And each time it's struck me the way people choose to inflict their insight rarely deviates from several significant factors:

Firstly: advice never, ever comes in the form of a friendly suggestion. Rather, whatever it is, it's something we should do, to go so far as to say that (in their mind) it's silly we're not doing what they said. Hell, we're idiots for not jumping up rightfuckingnow and implementing whatever the fuck they're talking about.

It doesn't matter if it'd make me a million dollars, the way you told me (or led into telling me, I'm ignoring you at this point) suggests that you think you know how to run my arcade better than I do. They're entitled to think that.

Fuck, they should start their own goddamn arcade. Please, I'd love the competition (I owe this mode of advanced thought to my zen-master head-honcho and pseudo-partner-in-crime). Furthermore if whatever you suggested in the first place works for you, and well, I'll probably steal the idea and claim I thought of it first.

Secondly, the person spouting advice is usually very new to the arcade. Often I get their advice ejaculated at me on their very first visit. This also means I try to be as accommodating as possible...I really only get away with crucifying people when they're regulars.

But I digress: they've usually got a job or a degree in the techie...ahem...genre of expertise. Maybe they're a geek-squad grade-A douche-bucket or something similar. They often like to lead in with some asinine interrogation about our system and/or way/philosophy of doing things.

I don't mean system specs (something I'm more than happy and able to spout off at a moments notice)...no, they darent be so pedestrian in their queries. No, they ask some fucking question that I can't cite, can't even paraphrase because it was so obscure and/or convoluted.

This is always entertaining to me because I'm not exactly computer illiterate. But I'm no aficionado either...the problems I run into and have to fix regularly are, by and large, a pretty small list of cookie-cutter issues.

But when they ask me questions about shit with nouns I don't recognize I just want to say get the fuck out, this is an arcade, not a firm IT department.

Call me ignorant if you want, I get to sit around all day playing videogames and get paid for it. I don't even have to write a review afterwards. Suck it.

Alternative Users - Aug 13th

I've really got to start writing earlier in the day.

Something about working here worth note, be it fortunately or unfortunately, I've had the opportunity to meet, interact and generally deal with a very broad cross-section of humanity that self-assigns the title of 'gamer'.

Gamers, in many (most) circles synonymous with geek, nerd, and poindexter, are my key beneficiaries. That in itself could be taken as a very scary thought. Really it's pretty much impossible to be one of my customers and not simultaneously be a game enthusiast.

Oh sure, there have been those few who needed to stop by for just a few minutes of Internet access or the one or two lonely college students who (for some fucking reason) shun gaming in the favor of writing a term paper. I imagine both these groups were turned off by an atmosphere thick with screams of 'headshot!' and a general cacophony of terms questioning the sexual orientation of the user said term was directed at.

What I'm trying to say is...they call each other gay a lot.

I allow this, to some degree, when it's between friends, as I imagine in their youth they are still homophobic to some degree. I allow it, because I enjoy the irony.

I'm not about to turn down the noise for the sake of those few alternate users, thats for damn sure. Because even if they're dressed sharper, smell better, and probably have/make more money than my gamers, they're not my beneficiaries.

So fuck 'em.

But I got off track...I wanted to talk about gamers, not non-gamers, so I'll get back to this in a part two of sorts.

Cumulative Hours - Aug 12th

Sometimes it bothers me to think that all the cumulative hours I've spent throughout these two decades plus of life playing video games must certainly be every second of time I'd have needed to perfect any art. Thats no compliment to my own supposed savant-ism.

What I'm trying to say is I've played a lotta' fuckin' videogames.

I just have to imagine what sort of person I'd be if I never picked up a Nintendo controller all those years ago. Better fit, I'd imagine.

Then again, maybe not. A hypothetical life without my preferred medium of entertainment doesn't necessarily facilitate some other productive use of all that time. It could have just as easily been TV or, God forbid, church activities.

I did do a lot of drawing, still occasionally do. I do a peck of writing, still occasionally do. I even played the violin for a few years...the fact that I stopped, lost interest, does that mean I failed at that?

Does losing interest in personal-betterment denote failure?

But it's two in the AM. Time to kick all my customer out.

Disapointed? Nah. - Originally Written Aug 11th

It's fifteen after midnight on a Friday...or rather, a Saturday, and I see the name of a stranger that spent a few hours earlier in the day stabbing me to death pop up on my screen.

But here that's ok. That's ok because I spent most of that time perforating him with bullets in return. This isn't my average Friday...but thats only 'cus I get Friday's off mostly. Any other day, you'll catch sight of rampant homicide like this ranging every region of the globe, through every conceivable conflict and era, fabricated and real, passing through various renditions of reality that get farther from fiction just about every day.

This is a computer arcade. An arcade for the modern world. The kind of place William Gibson tried to imagine without the benefit of perspective, two-ish decades ago.

And I am an action hero. Or rather, I run the place, to the best of my ability. On paper I might seem like the most overqualified arcade manager conceivable. After running a car dealerships entire web and photography department while still in highschool, I went on to drop out of college in favor of military service (in the purpose sense, not the no-other-choice sense). After settling on the Navy I ended up getting into advanced nuclear engineering and qualification...but then somewhere in there I went a little crazy.

I guess that last part is really what qualifies me for this job.

I've worked a number of shifts in my life, many less glamorous than the ones previously cited. But now I'm stuck on something I love so much I want to get an irritating girlfriend just to provide an excuse to go to work during off hours.

Of course when it comes right down to it, I don't really need an excuse at all. It could be as simple as the choice between choosing to stay home alone and drink, or come into work and load up on caffeine. I'm scheduled for only a little over forty hours in a week during the summer but I average something closer to sixty or seventy. Other than the Navy this is the first job that doesn't pay by the hour anyway, so overtime doesn't really exist anymore in the classical sense.

But things need fixing. Computers need updating. Games need installing and patching and rigorous testing. Punks need killings. Luckily for me all that's in the job description, and more.

But the real reason I love my work so much is because when I'm here, I don't think about anything else. It's me and the business. In many ways it depends on me for success (at the very least it needs me to maintain the arcade in a state of which it is then capable of generating success)...but as time goes by the relationship has become more symbiotic.

This place needs me as much as I need it...possibly to the point that it could be my whole reason for day-to-day existence.

A few years ago that might have bothered me. But then the prospect of becoming a workaholic has become more and more acceptable in my increasingly-hatched-together life plan. Looking at the advantages – almost guaranteed financial success, a sense of progress and a good way to spend quality hobby time – it doesn't seem half bad.

But then again, with the proper perspective and a dash of healthy cynicism it could easily be the last bastion of a life with hypothetically-limitless potential falling into the nigh-inevitable mold of mediocrity. (Whew...that last bit was like a Charleston Chew of syllables, innit?)

I once heard someone say that years 18 to 21 is the dark age of our lives, a limbo where people suddenly have no place or purpose outside of what they inflict upon themselves. Now I've found myself just a few months out the other side, seemingly settled into something like a career.

Four years ago I can remember vehemently wanting to go to art school. I wasn't even half bad.

So how did I get here? And should I be disappointed?