Well, not a lot. I’ve only heard like 3 Tupac songs in their entirety. But he did teach me this: We gotta start makin’ changes.
What kinds of changes? Heck, I don’t know. Get better. Do better. Eat better. Run better. Butter better. Like, I buttered some bread yesterday and did a terrible job. Only half of the bread got buttered. That’s lazy and terrible. It can be better. But it takes effort and time and patience for things to get better. And it doesn’t have to end with better butter. Better butter might be better but a better YOU is better than better butter. Make sense? Good. I thought so.
My life is completely different today than it was a month or so ago. It’s better in some ways. It sucks in a lot of ways. I would like nothing more than to just close my eyes for a second and, when I open them, a year has passed and I’m somehow a millionaire with a back yard for my crazy dog, which, in this alternate future, has robot legs and a red laser eye like Kano. That would be a cool dog. But of course none of that can happen. Wasting time and effort thinking about it is worthless. I have to keep my eyes open and do the work required. I’m game. Though I’m generally a pretty intelligent person who makes mostly rational decisions, I also accept that I’m on a slower trajectory than most of my peers. Nothin’ wrong with that. Lots of late bloomers out there. I’d rather be slow-ass me than hillbilly Tom from Ourtown, melting car parts to make meth containers or whatever it is he does. What the hell am I talking about? I apologize.
So I’m making a promise to myself and to the three of you who will read this long-dormant blog. I’m going to make the changes. It might take a while. I’ve got time. I’ve been told I’m a pretty cool dude, too, so I have that going for me. Perhaps, when I’m better, it will help the people I care about to be better as well. Everybody always says, “Work on yourself and everything else will fall into place.” I’m paraphrasing some anonymous people but they have a point. I want to improve and make those changes so I’ll be a better person. But, honestly, I’m the sort of guy who tends to put others’ aspirations ahead of my own. And you know what? Who cares? Maybe folks like me, who care about other people so much it can hurt, are necessary. And maybe it’s possible for all of us to change and get better together, without even knowing it, really. I like to think that I’ve improved the lives of my friends and family. They sure have improved mine. The future hasn’t been written yet. Movies taught me that. Movies about time travelling cars and trains. Good stuff. Anyway, thanks for reading this ramble! It got me so fired up I’m going to pass out from exhaustion, which is crazy because getting fired up usually means getting out and running a lap and high fiving your bros. It’s midnight, though, so that would be nuts.
Also, back to the subject of Tupac’s “Changes”… It’s crazy/sad/inspiring how topical that song still is. Give it a listen. Everything that sucked in the 90s about being a poor black citizen hasn’t changed. I hope we can change that in the process of changing ourselves. That would be a Win Win. (Win Win is also a good movie – no time travel cars though)
Rando Review Day is a very special day in which I choose a random object lying around my house to review. Patent pending, don’t steal my dumb idea.
The Plastic Thing
Today’s Rando Review is for this very awesome, very plastic thing. Here it is. Right here. Look.
Oooh. That’s plastic, alright.
You may be asking yourself: What is so special about this plastic thing? Well, my friend, I’m about to tell you. Settle down.
Plastic Thing is garbage. It wasn’t always so humble, though! It once rested in the bowels of a stuffed porcupine chew toy. For years Plastic Thing sat inside the porcupine, waiting to be shipped out to a Petco or Petsmart, whereupon it would hopefully find its way to a loving puppy who would chew on the porcupine, sometimes biting hard enough to squeeze Plastic Thing and produce a happy high pitched squeaky noise.
Taking Plastic Thing on a long, well-deserved walk.
Have you guessed what Plastic Thing was yet? Yep, that’s right. Plastic Thing used to be a squeaker! Amazing. There’s probably some interesting science behind Plastic Thing that I won’t get into right now. Anyway, Plastic Thing was a proud thing from a long line of proud things made in a factory somewhere. Good genes.
Porcupine carcass. NSFW
One day, not too long ago, it found an owner named Wiley the German Shepard Dog. Wiley had a sidekick named Pancake the Chewing. They were a good team. So good, in fact, that shortly after acquiring the porcupine they devised a plan to rip the spiky toy to pieces and collect those delicious innards. They were expecting mainly stuffing, and were happy to have it, but tucked away deep inside the loins of that porcupine toy they found the greatest treasure imaginable: a squeaker named Plastic Thing.
Plastic Thing enjoying a refreshing glass of pink lemonade on its day off.
Plastic Thing quickly became the life of the puppy party. It would lay everywhere! On the floor, on a bed, in the kitchen. And everywhere it lay, a dog would run along and find it, chew on it for a bit to make that satisfying squeaking noise, then mosey along because his weird dog brain would tell him he just had to be somewhere else chewing on another thing. Yessir, Plastic Thing had it made.
Pancake telling Plastic Thing to get back to work, and then proceeding to drink his lemonade. Oh, Pancake!
Until one fateful day, when a strange thing happened: Pancake the Chewing bit down on Plastic Thing hard. Harder than ever before. And… nothing happened. No sound erupted from the tiny hole that you might call its mouth. Just a weird “ppppfffffhh” noise. “Oh no!” thought Plastic Thing. (editor’s note: Plastic Thing did NOT think, because it’s not a living thing) “What has become of me? If I do not produce my beautifully annoying melody who will ever love me??”
Daily staring contest. Who will win?
It was a silly thought, it turns out, as Pancake the Chewing loved Plastic Thing even more than before! It seems the young puppy had been chewing on PT (editor’s note: from here on out Plastic Thing will be known as PT for brevity – not sure why I chose to wait until the end of the article – guess I wanted to change things up) because he was desperately trying to shut the squeaker up so he could enjoy some peace and quiet for God’s sake!
Oh happy day! PT and Pancake and Wiley were all happy after that. Until about 20 minutes ago when I turned around and Pancake had ripped PT in half and become instantly bored with him. RIP PT. You were a good man.
Pancake you sore loser! Haha!
Review:
Fun – 3/5
Usefulness – 0/5
Replay Value – 5/5
Graphics – 2/5
Sound – *0/5 (*review score changed from 5/5 due to it breaking)
Overall – 10/25 – FAIL
There you have it folks! The scores are in and PT gets an overall failing score of 10/25, or 40%. Thanks for reading my review, and you can find a PT of your very own at your local pet supply store. I dunno why you’d want it though, as it just got a 10/25 review on a website. Thanks for reading the first ever Rando Review. Let me know in the comments or on my Facebook page how much you loved it (not hated it). I’ll leave you with an IN MEMORANDUM of PT video I made. Pour one out for it.
Top 5 bands of the 90s? Alternative bands? “Emo” bands? Nerd rock bands?
I feel akin to this guy for some reason.
Weezer belongs in that conversation. Its influence still seeps into contemporary pop (basically every “rock” band one might hear on the radio today). And I feel guilty.
Guilty because I’d given up on them after almost two decades of fandom. After three seemingly disastrous albums (The Red Album, Raditude, and Hurley – and to a lesser extent Make Believe) I was convinced they were “done”. Outside of a few good tracks per album, there was a lot of bad, bad pseudo-pop and weird hip-hop stuff that didn’t work. So Weezer was dead to me.
Greatest album cover. Makes me feel EMOTIONS.
Then I heard the new previews for Everything Will Be Alright in the End and remembered why I loved Weezer in the first place. It feels energetic. And meaningful. And I’m happy to say they seem to have rediscovered the perfect guitar/synth blend that made Pinkerton so unique and everlasting.
So (tentatively) good on you, Weezer. You somehow did the impossible and reignited that old alternative flame and got my butt out of the Lazy Give-up Chair!
That’s a rock and roll star. Haha, what a culture we live in!
(bonus: we also get new Rentals and Ozma albums this year, both of which sound promising WHAT YEAR IS IT??)
A Storm of Swords is one of my favorite books. It happily sits alongside To Kill a Mockingbird, Frankenstein, Speaker for the Dead, and my other beloved novels. It’s not high art. It’s like the Pizza Hut Bigfoot or the Dominator of books. It’s slick, greasy, cheesy, meaty, and both good and terrible for you. It’s also deceptively deep and engrossing. So when HBO’s fourth season of Game of Thrones began to air, I was mighty excited.
Not the Dominator. That thing sucked.
That little fling didn’t last long. The first few episodes were fine. There were things I wasn’t happy with overall on the show, such as Jaime murdering his cousin, and HBO insisting that Shae was a sympathetic and misunderstood character. The entirety of the Ros character was a mistake too. Too much sexposition, needless boobs, Joffrey’s weird torture rape stuff. The more I think about it the more I start to loathe what the showrunners, David Benioff Daniel Weiss, have done to the source material.
In the beginning things were fine. Ish. It wasn’t until Joffrey’s weird “force Ros to beat another prostitute to death” scene in season two that I started my turn. I didn’t really notice the turn happening at the time, either. I made excuses to myself in order to justify what was happening. Like they HAD to do that to Joffrey’s character, to make audiences reaaallly understand how evil he is. The problem is everybody already knew he was a terrible person. All of that other junk was added for shock value. Since coming to my full realization of how lacking the show is, not to mention how offensive it has become in comparison to the books, I decided to write up a small “WHY DID YOU CHANGE THAT SEASON 4?” blog post. I’ll try to stay away from major spoiler territory, but I will be mentioning changes from the source material which I think are significant. Don’t worry. I’ll warn you beforehand.
This is how I feel!
1. Jon heading to Craster’s Keep and almost meeting up with Bran. I understand they have to add some filler in there for pacing purposes, but this was terrible. They wasted time making that guy from the Dark Knight Rises look tough and evil. Valuable time which could’ve been spent showing us… well, anything else. Hell, why not cut to Hot Pie every once in a while and he can show us how to make proper lemon cakes? That would’ve been cooler than dumb old Craster’s stupid Keep.
He looks so friendly to be so mean. Why are you so mean, Craster??
2. Sam telling Jon he saw Bran. Alright. This might seem nitpicky but in the book (minor spoiler I suppose) Bran tells Sam to swear he won’t tell Jon about their meetup. And for good reason. Do you think Jon would be like, “Huh, weird. Oh well haha!” after hearing that his crippled little brother is alive and wandering around the North, and just keep doing his dumb wall stuff? No he would not. Unless it’s television show Jon. Then he would. And it would be dumb.
3. Brienne and Jaime being in King’s Landing for the wedding, and also that godawful rape scene. (minor book spoiler) Jaime doesn’t reach KL until after Joffrey’s death. That makes his first experience with Cersei even more powerful, and the whole “someone might see us I DONT CARE” scene would make more sense, since it’d been many months since bro and sis had seen one another. Cersei’s protests are far too vague on the show as well, leading 90% of the viewing audience to collectively mutter, “Wow, Jaime just raped Cersei.” Dumb and offensive. Good job HBO.
I’m not all all disturbed by the incest angle here anymore. Dead-kid-in-the-room sex is where I check out though.
4. No Strong Belwas. (minor book spoiler) This one isn’t a huge deal as far as telling the story goes, but Strong Belwas was a neat character to have around in the books. Just listen to his description from wiki: Belwas’s skin is nut-brown. He has gapped teeth, a gleaming bald head, the smooth cheeks of a eunuch, a huge chest, a massive belly, and Daenerys compares his arms to tree-trunks. Belwas is three times the size of Daenerys; she originally estimates Belwas to weigh 20 stone, and later 15 stone. He wears baggy pants, a yellow silk bellyband and a tiny leather vest with iron studs. This leaves his upper torso mostly bare, making visible pale old scars in his arms, chest, and belly. He is armed with a curved arakh and a small shield the size of a pie plate, which he holds with his hand rather than strapped to his forearm like a knight. Strong Belwas rules.
HELL YES
5. Arya killing Polliver. (MAJOR WINDS OF WINTER SPOILER) This one wouldn’t have bothered me if I didn’t read the WoW preview chapters. The Polliver kill almost exactly mimics Arya’s murder of Raff the Sweetling. It’s not a huge deal, but very strange that D&D decided to take a potentially cool scene from later in the series and toss it into season 4. Maybe this means show-Arya will wind up in a different place altogether? Maybe it means nothing. It probably means nothing. Ah well, I’d rather they come up with something new but what can you do?
6. “Yara’s” rescue of Theon. NO.
7. The necklace at the purple wedding. OK, this one is a little tricky. I don’t care that they (very minor book spoiler) changed the poison-jeweled hairnet to a necklace. My problem is with dumb book readers posing as show watchers and posting things like, “Wait, did the Queen of Thorns just take a jewel from Sansa’s necklace??” Literally no person on the planet who didn’t already know about the jewel would have noticed the QoT’s hand sort of grazing the necklace. These supposed book readers just wanted to, in their own little conceited way, show that they had the inside scoop. So yeah, not really a book-to-show change but something that bothered me quite a bit. BOTHERED.
8. (major book spoiler maybe?) The absence of Kevan Lannister. I think Kevan’s shown up maybe twice in the entirety of the show, and D&D never went out of their way to explain who the heck he is. So when Tywin croaked in the final episode I read a lot of speculation about who was going to take over as Hand of the King and/or as Lord of Casterly Rock. It’s Kevan.
Keep the change.
9. Shae. Shae Shae Shae. (book spoiler) Why? She “loves” Tyrion. He sends her away. OK. But she doesn’t really go away for some reason. And in order to get back at Tyrion, WHO SHE LOVES AND WHO WAS GOING TO MAKE SURE SHE LIVED COMFORTABLY FOR THE REST OF HER DAYS, she testifies against him and subsequently has him sentenced to death. Oh, and then it turns out she’s been sleeping with Tywin but D&D don’t offer any explanation as to why, or how long they’ve been up to it. In the book it’s a great twist because we learn that Shae has been using Tyrion for his money for 3 books, and that Tywin is a big fan of the prostitutes, just like his kid (who he claims to hate, partially because of Tyrion’s love for prostitutes). Tywin sees himself in Tyrion more than he cares to admit, and he hates Tyrion for that. Ah, sidenote: Jaime should’ve fessed up to Tyrion about Tysha but I’m not super upset about that change.
10. (gigantic book spoiler) LSH. When they left out Coldhands I didn’t mind all that much. He’s an important character to be sure, raising intriguing questions about how wights and the Others work but they can explore that later hopefully. The exclusion of Lady Stoneheart, however, is a different story. I’ve read that she’s being written out of the series entirely. The explanation of this is flimsy. They don’t think fans will react positively to a character coming back to life. Which is silly considering we saw Beric and potentially the Mountain come back. Why establish those rules in the first place if you’re going to change your mind about how realistic they are a season later? Not only is LSH an intriguing character, she’s also another empowered, albeit rage-filled, female character. Plus she, along with Coldhands, raises so many great questions about the power of the Others (white walkers) and R’hllor the Red God. Such a disappointment.
11. Bonus! Not a super major terribly upsetting change but (very minor book spoiler) the guy Bran meets at the tree looks nothing like how I imagined him from the books. He doesn’t resemble his book self in any way actually, aside from being inside a tree. (ok, definite spoiler time) Having the actual tree roots growing through his legs and vines coming out of his empty eye socket would’ve been great. Make him look more like a Targaryen for God’s sake. And I can’t remember whether or not he had the raven birthmark on his face, or was missing an eye at all. It wasn’t awfully definitive so perhaps they’re going to make some changes next season. We can only hope.
Friggin’ cool. Needs more Hodor though.
Those are my general complaints. Feel free to disagree. Even with all of the screwups and changes the show is still better than most other offerings on TV. Or, at the very least, it’s popcorn-eating mindless fun. I’m curious as to how they’re going to handle season five. Of course I’ll keep watching… but a bit more dubiously. Now it’s time to fall asleep to Amadeus. What a swell movie.
I was 15 and finishing up my freshman year of high school. I was an awkward kid and felt more comfortable in front of a keyboard fiddling around with ICQ* than going to JV football games and talking to anyone of the female persuasion. My first girlfriend (from the previous year) had just been a friend who I’d hung out with dozens of times, with other dudes, and once, the first time we were ever alone, I even gave her a terrified stomach-turning peck on the lips. She wasn’t gross. I was just frozen in fear by the unknowns of maturation. After that scary peck I avoided her for a bit out of embarrassment and whimpered off to my room, tail between my legs and sure I had screwed up any and all future encounters with the opposite gender. Too darn afraid to function.
This is the face of the Internet, circa 1999
That all happened in 8th grade. For the next year I buried myself under a layer of instant messengers, rudimentary memes, and video games. I would frequent certain forums, mainly those belonging to the Battle of the Sexes Quake 2 community. For those uninitiated into nerd culture, Quake 2 was a PC shooter. And for those uninitiated in super obscure nerd culture, Battle of the Sexes was a modification for Quake 2 which turned the game into a team-based male vs. female capture the flag mash-up. In the mod, you selected a gender (males were “stronger” and bulkier, and could take more damage – females were faster and more agile, and harder to hit as their frames were smaller), a class (sniper, soldier, kamikaze, etc.), and tried to infiltrate the opposing gender’s base, stealing their flag and returning it to your own base for points. The community was close-knit and nice, so I considered them to be my friends as well.
I played this game with some school buddies of mine for a few years, off and on. We’d join groups known as clans (fancy names for “teams”) such as Bloodhoung Gang, WalePod, whatever. None of the clan names were particularly original or exciting. But yeah, we’d join clans and have practices and compete on certain nights. There were rankings and tournaments. It was a good time. I wasn’t the greatest player, though. The best clans around were far too good for a 9th grade little-talent kid to have a shot. I was relegated, along with the other dregs of the BotS community, to backup duty, taking a more talented player’s place if he or she couldn’t make the match that particular evening. Once called to duty, I would proceed to not know what the hell I was doing and cost whichever unfortunate team that called upon me to lose in some embarrassing way. But it was fun.
Not many quality BotS images around. Yeesh.
Meanwhile, in the real world, I wasn’t entirely unsocial. I was active in marching band and had a small group of regular friends I’d hang out with often. I mean, yeah, we had LAN parties and did the exact thing we’d been doing separately but in a bedroom with our computers all linked together. But it was more satisfying to be in someone’s physical company as opposed to miles away, plopping away at a keyboard and mouse. There’s something less “sad” about that, not that I was ever particularly sad or felt like it was a waste of time. In fact, I still don’t see it as a waste of time. I’ve had certain relatives and acquaintances over the years ask me why I wasted my time at a computer, eyes glued to a glowing screen for hours. I wish I’d had the gall or the smarts to reply, “Why do you waste your time in a tree stand all day?” Neither is a waste of time if you’re enjoying yourself and it’s not destroying your life.
Pretty much this. How clever!
Back to the original point: I was a shy kid with not-so-much real world experience or any reason to climb out of my little bubble. At 15 it doesn’t really matter how much time you waste, so long as you get your school work and chores done (I was lucky enough to not have much of either). I was happily, shyly-but-blissfully clicking the night away, especially in the summer. I’d finally finished my first years as a high school student and was undoubtedly excited at the prospect of locking myself inside, away from the sweltering heat and mosquito bites, and relaxing in front of that screen for countless hours. And I wasn’t addicted or obsessed. I could’ve pulled myself away at any moment if I’d been interested in anything else (which I did from time to time that summer, riding to movies or the mall or catching the occasional softball game to see my sister play). I wasn’t obsessed at all.
Until I got EverQuest.
Goodbye world! *snort*
I’d heard about it for a couple of months. “I’m camped outside of Freeport. You gonna be on later?” “We’re taking down Nag tonight. It took all 30 of us last time.”
My brain couldn’t comprehend such a crazy thing. In a strange way, though, it was exactly what I’d always wanted. It never ended. It was live 24 hours a day. And it was huge and open-ended. My young nerd brain wanted to explode. And then I found out about the subscription. You had to pay $60 for the initial game and month of service, and then another $15 monthly after that. There was no way I was going to get it. I didn’t have a job and had no allowance, and I was still pretty lazy, so mowing lawns and delivering papers was out of the question. In retrospect, I should’ve showed a little initiative and done either. Instead I kicked a hole in the wall.
So darn silly. (not the actual hole in the wall)
I’d finally worked up the courage to ask my folks to buy it for me. I rarely asked for such things so maybe they’d be feeling extra generous and help me out. I remember approaching them apprehensively, worried about being scolded and, even worse, guilted into getting a job. But to my surprise they thought about it and said, “Yeah, we can do that.” My little lazy heart swelled with joy! I was going to have the thing I wanted. “Oh yeah,” I muttered. “There’s also a $15 monthly subscription.”
For a mere $15 a month you can look like me!
The happiness in my gut turned to a nasty, sick feeling of disappointment when they definitively said NO. The realization that I was not going to get the thing I wanted, that it was slipping away after being so close to reality, made me snap. I proceeded to throw the biggest temper tantrum of my life. I’m ashamed of it to this day. I stormed into the living room, stomping and seething. Wanting to take my frustration out on something real I turned towards the small slab of drywall connecting the door of my bedroom to the entrance to our back hallway… and kicked the shit out of it.
Of course it gave way easily, letting out a loud POP as my foot made contact and proceeded to slide into the wall itself. Where once there had been a smooth brown piece of painted drywall there was now a hole about a foot in diameter. I froze, paralyzed in fear of what I had done and, probably more importantly, what was about to happen to me. I’d destroyed a part of our home over a silly video game. The realization hit me hard. I remember gasping and staggering back, staring at the new addition. My parents poured into the room, wondering what in God’s name was going on. They looked at me, red with shame and anger and fear and whatever else, then turned their collective gaze to the hole. After a long minute they turned back to me. I was ready to be obliterated. Ready to be grounded or forced to pay for the hole (which I should have had to do anyway – spoiled lazy nerdy me was terrified of responsibility). Then they did something I’ll never forget.
I wish this had happened.
They laughed at me. Hard. What the heck? I thought. Why are they not killing me? Tears rolled down my dad’s cheeks. My mom struggled to breathe. Then they spoke.
“You look so scared,” my mom said, still pink in the face from laughter. My dad agreed. They told me I would, as I called it, have to fix the hole. It turns out that replacing a little drywall isn’t very difficult or expensive. They also grounded me for a week or so, as far as I can remember. But the crazy part is that shortly after that they changed their minds and let me get the game. Why? I’ve always wondered that but never asked. I think they felt like that burning, pitiful shame I felt, combined with my accompanying punishment, was a well-enough learned lesson and then some. Or maybe they’d just found an extra $75 in cash lying around and didn’t know what the hell else to do with it. Whatever the reason, I was grateful. I flew out to Wally world and picked it up, brought it home, gleefully installed it, and punched in my mom’s credit card number for the subscription.
Exciting! To me. And probably only me. Hey, that’s OK.
This is EverQuest. A little different than it was back in 1999. When I first installed it many years ago I played for two weeks straight during the summer, from 6 AM each day until 2 AM the following morning, breaking for 4 hours of sleep and the occasional food and bathroom breaks. I recently installed it again to play on a free server which emulates the game almost exactly as it was back then. Everything is dated, the graphics are old and blocky, the layout is confusing, there’s barely any tutorial, and it’s absolutely amazing. They say you can never go home again. They were stupid and wrong.
There’s a Dwarf city in there. It’s just as geeky as it sounds.
I roped my friend Chad into playing again as well. He got the game shortly after I did back in the day and ended up become more of an addict than me, getting multiple characters into the high-level end game stuff. It was impressive. This time around I’m playing a bard name Toonk. She’s a female, as I always play females in games for nefarious reasons (desperate Internet males will daunt on you and give you lots of free stuff just for being female… evil to abuse but hey, that’s fine by me). Already some high level Troll has given me 15 platinum, which is the highest form of currency in the game, sort of like a $100 bill.
Here’s Toonk. Luring dudes in with her sweet bard songs about how she’s NOT a guy in real life, no sir.
Depending on which race and class you choose in the game, things are either easier or harder for you. Good races and classes can travel mostly freely throughout the game zones and cities, trading with good-aligned characters, which far exceed evil ones. Evil races and classes have to sneak around in the shadows and find dirty dealing fences and rogues to trade with. You can, with some effort, raise your faction with the good guys as an evil character. This generally takes a ton of time to accomplish but is worth it when you can go anywhere you want. My lady bard is a good race and class, however, so I don’t have to worry about it. Chad chose to be a high elf cleric or some such. Also a lady.
Yes, hello Chad. I see you.
So yeah, that’s pretty much my EverQuest story. I just had the hankering to share the how and why of it. Whether it was interesting or not is another story but I enjoyed writing it either way. Maybe I’ll continue on and share my new experiences with it, or maybe it’ll fizzle out and I’ll get tired of it again. Perhaps I’ll choose another year and subject I find remotely interesting to share, like the time my dad got struck by lightning playing Kid Icarus on the original Nintendo. We’ll see. Thanks for reading.
*ICQ was an early chat program, similar to AIM or MSN. 21821154 was my ICQ number I think.
Oh my, I just checked and that is definitely my old ICQ number. How I still remember it and why it still exists are beyond me. (UH OH)
Tink Thinks 