First off, ‘Phil’ from Prairie Seed. I have to begin this by explaining the whole Phil thing. That wasn’t his actual name. I just called him Phil for so long that I forgot the unimportant bit of information that is his real name. Why did I call him Phil? Because of a Kids in the Hall sketch…

…and I can’t find the damn thing. Stupid Youtube! A quick summary : Loser guy known as ‘Phil from the warehouse’ who has pains that make it hard to live. From the moment that sketch was seen, every idiot that I have worked with has been known simply as Phil.

So, I’m working at a seed plant many moons ago, and it’s about as exciting a job as one would imagine. Mix seed in a hopper, pour it in to  sacks, sew those shut with a portable sewing machine, stack them on pallets. Repeat ad nauseam. After I’d been there for a little while, Phil arrived. He was the son of some higher up in the company. He was a complete moron. Yes indeed, he was too stupid to grasp working at a seed plant.

One day, I was doing the always thrilling job of stacking bags on pallets. Phil was working with the sewing machine. Imagine a tiny sewing machine with basically a pistol grip, hanging from the overall machine structure by flex cord. Something like this, only less modern looking :

Anyway, he’s using that. Now, Phil was slow as Hell to begin with, so I didn’t really take immediate notice of the fact that his productivity had dropped from ‘Sweet death will end this boredom’ to nothingness. After a few moments, though, I realized that he seemed to be fighting with the machine. I thought maybe it had run out of the string it uses, so I went to help him replace the roll. As soon as I got to him, he turned me and told me very quietly “I…I…uhhh…I think I’ve got a little problem here.”

“Okay, what’s up?” I asked him.

“I sewed my hand to the bag.”

Now, that machine pictured above is all safe and modern. There were no guards on the old school ones, and they go FAST. I asked him to repeat himself, and he told me the same thing. So I looked. He had managed to sew that chunk of flesh between the thumb and index finger to the bag. So he was stuck holding the machine, which was wedged right up against his hand, with a couple stitches attaching that hand to the bag.

After taking a moment to drink this in, I did the responsible thing that you do when some useless co-worker who you don’t like screws up…I went and told the guy running the seed hopper, giggling the whole time. He in turn went to get the warehouse manager. And it went on and on for a bit. Finally, someone freed the poor bastard from his predicament.

Now, I would normally commend Phil for not even whimpering once through what had to be a bit of a painful ordeal. However, I suspect that he was simply too dumb to register pain.

Next up isn’t really a work story. No, it is the tale of the single moist insane job interview that I’ve ever been a part of. I got in to this during one of the early Violent Aggression podcasts, but since probably nobody listens to those, I’ll repeat it here.

I honestly cannot remember the company, but I think that it was one of the approximately 7,000 divisions of Baker Hughes in Nisku at that time. I showed up for this interview at a warehouse, and ended up talking to some obviously very lonely woman. Actually, not talking…listening. And listening. And listening. After an HOUR, I was still listening.

She talked about how much she just loved some line of face cream put out by one of the original Charlie’s Angels actresses. She talked about how the guy I was interviewing to replace (I don’t know where he was…perhaps he’d made the correct decision and killed himself) would sleep in the office when the weather was too bad to drive, and that afterwards she’d find beer cans in there. She talked about the gazebo she really wanted for her back yard. She talked about the mouse problems that the warehouse had from time to time, and explained that that was the reason for the various cats walking around the complex.

During this horrific expenditure of time (I swear that time stopped at some point, because I’m certain that I spent a year or two there listening to this droning nonsense), one of the cats was always in the office. It would hop up on the big early model laser printer they had, up on the top tray where the printed pages come out, and she would shoo it off. This repeated several times. Eventually, I guess she’d had enough. She went and grabbed a lighter.

Now, even in my slumbrous state, I realized that this was a bit strange. This woman was clearly desperate. Did she have a bomb under her desk, one that she would light the fuse to now that it wouldn’t mean dying alone? Was this the end?

No. Not for me, anyway. Seeing me looking at her with what was probably an expression of alarm, she reassured me that she was going to ‘Teach this little bugger a lesson’ (while indicating the cat) by ‘giving him a hotass’. This was not reassuring in any way. She was still carrying something that produces fire, and I had no goddamn idea what in the Hell she meant by ‘a hotass’.

Everyone is familiar with a hotfoot? I’ll grab a definition :

The practical joke of lighting a match that has been secretly inserted between the sole and upper of a victim’s shoe.

So, take that basic concept, only the flame is being applied to the cat’s ass. Well, she went ahead and did so, and it worked! The cat immediately fled the printer tray.

The bad news…it’s tail/hindquarters area was on fire.

So now, the cat was sprinting around the office, smoke pouring from it’s smouldering back end as it did so. And chasing behind it was this same woman, pleading with it, “Stop! I want to help you!” Not surprisingly, the cat was unconvinced of promises of aid from the person who had ignited it, so it kept running.

The stink of burnt hair was everywhere. Finally, she caught up to it and liberally sprayed it down with one of those squeeze bottles normally used to water small plants in an office. The smoke stopped, and the cat fled the office area.

She looked back at me through the slight haze that now filled the air and asked if I could just forget what had happened. I don’t remember what I said. I’m not even sure I actually said anything. I just remember getting the Hell out of there, hopping back in the car, and making it about a block and a half before I had to pull over and laugh for a good ten minutes.

Finally, I’ll recount some of the things I witnessed during my time working on the flight line at the Edmonton International Airport. Prepare to be horrified at the level of incompetence of the people responsible for getting your flights loaded and gassed up.

On at least once occasion, we learned after the fact that a flight we’d loaded the luggage on to had had to make an emergency return. The reason? Too much of the fuel was loaded in to one wing (no, we weren’t in charge of fuel). See, modern aircraft have wet wings, where the fuel tanks are actually in the wings. To put this in to perspective, everyone is incredibly conscious of weight when it comes to loading aircraft. Part of the way that different ‘pits’ are assigned to different sets of bags is to balance out the weight distribution on the plane. Now imagine what happens when one wing contains…say…7,000 pounds of gas more than the other. Also, one time the fuel guys never actually put any gas in the plane. It had to be brought back to the gate because it was way too low on fuel. A truck had been there…I guess he forgot? Another flight had to make an emergency landing in Red Deer due to, again, not actually being fuelled up.

The front cargo area of the planes we were working on is where traveling pets were kept, since it has air and heat. I have never hopped out of one so fast as the time I jumped in as usual and found myself face to face with a large dog. He wasn’t in his kennel. The morons who loaded it somehow tripped one of the latches, so he forced his way out during the flight. Turned out he was friendly but…yeah.

Over the holiday season of this particular year, the International bag room was packed with piles and piles of bags that Air Canada had sent to the wrong places. I’m talking hundreds of bags and boxes and crates (probably well over 1,000 at the peak), and there were daily lines for their baggage services counter extending to well over 100 people. Anyway, we would have to head over there to load bags we offloaded from Northwest or Horizon flights on to the belts. It began to smell a bit…funky. Now, I’m sure some of that was spoilt food. However, we also found out later that somewhere amongst that heap was a casket. It wasn’t empty. I don’t know how you accidentally unload a casket. They’re heavy, they’re bulky, they’re difficult to maneuver in and out of an aircraft. Air Canada managed to do just that, though. I’d imagine that family got themselves a sizable chunk of money.

Then there were the vehicular collisions.

The Air Canada guys had to temporarily move their break room, because someone drove a belt loader up on to the curb and smashed through one of the windows in to their existing break room.

My personal favourite involved another company’s de-icing truck. Now, these are big vehicles. The entire back of it is one enormous tank, and when it’s full of de-icer that’s a LOT of fluid weight sloshing around. So you have to do everything gradually…turning, braking, everything.

And of course, they have a boom arm that lifts someone up in a basket so that they can spray de-ice fluid on to a plane before it takes off. Well, one night a few of us were on the International side working. We heard a loud bang and went to investigate.

Imagine what happens when a de-ice truck with the boom arm elevated careens in to a bridge-way.

Now, that picture on the right isn’t 100% correct to this particular scenario. Before you get to the part that extends to the plane, there is a long, solid portion to get there. It’s covered in aluminum siding, but it’s basically cement and rebar. THAT is what this genius smashed the boom in to. And no, I have no idea why he was driving next to the terminal building with the stupid thing raised in the first place.

The result…that boom arm was smashed in about 7,354 different places. De-ice fluid was everywhere…all over the truck and splattered all over the surrounding area, meaning the whole zone had to be taped off as a toxic clean up site. The bridge siding was partially torn away, and the idiot was driving fast enough that the boom actually punched a decent sized dent/hole in to the bridge itself.

The best part? So far as I know, dude didn’t lose his job. Proof positive that ‘Phil’ is truly everywhere.

So make it count, ya punks!

If you’re like me, you’re a poor bastard with 4 fantasy baseball teams and an equal number of squads to manage in fantasy football. Now, let’s say a player suddenly gets red hot and starts putting up numbers, and you want him on as many of your squads as possible…it’s a pain in the ass to do. Scouting out players can be unbelievably awkward, involving multiple tabs splattered across the screen like blood at the site of a chainsaw triple homicide.

A short while ago, I finally totally switched up my primary browser from Firefox to Chrome. Well…to Chromium, but then it decided to crap out on me, so Chrome it is. So I was taking a look through available extensions, and came across one called Pickemfirst.

First off, it’s also available for IE and Firefox. Secondly, it’s goddamn awesome for fantasy sports.

First, you add the extension to your browser. Then you start up an account on the site, and plug in your teams. Currently, Pickemfirst supports football, college football, hockey, baseball and pro basketball for most of the popular league hosts (Yahoo, ESPN, etc.).

So, you add your leagues to your profile. Make sure to check that your rosters are synced with the service once the draft has happened (and that any roster changes have updated…it does happen automatically, but only so many times per day).

Now, when you added the extension to your browser, a little button with the  Pickemfirst logo showed up somewhere along the top of it. Press that button, and the various sports Pickemfirst supports appear in a drop down menu. Choose a sport on ANY page online, and give it a few seconds to sync things up with your leagues, and suddenly coloured logos start popping up beside every player’s name…like this (on the Indianapolis Colts roster page on NFL.com, and looking at a general baseball page on ESPN) :

A Blue P means that I have that guy on at least one of my teams. A green P means that player is available in at least one league. And a grey P means he’s unavailable across the board.

Okay, that’s the starting point. But it goes a lot deeper than that. Clicking on one of those little letters brings up a lot of information. Let’s use Indianapolis tight end Dallas Clark as an example here.

When you click on that little letter next to anyone, regardless of the player’s availability, you get a window open up that looks like this :

That shows me Clark’s availability in the 3 leagues (the 4th I’m in hadn’t drafted yet when I wrote this up). So I have him in the 3rd, but not in the first 2. However, every single one of those tabs along the top brings up different information. The next tab over is news on that player…game performance, injury updates and the like. Next to that is stats. Next up is stat projections for the season. All of that is pretty basic, easy to understand stuff. The next tab after that, the one that looks like (and is) a line graph gives you something a bit different…a player’s fantasy production trends against the average at his position, and the top player at his position.

So, a metric shit ton of information is available about every single guy you look up. Finally, you can look up mention of that player on most of the popular fantasy sports blogs, and his overall draft rankings, too. In the rank window, you can also access that player’s page at Rotoworld, ESPN, Yahoo and CBS Sports.

Beyond that, let’s say you find a guy that you really want. Since Pickemfirst is plugged in to your leagues, you can acquire a player directly through the little window that opens up.

Now, Clark is kind of useless to use for this example, because he isn’t available anywhere. So for this example, we’ll use his teammate : wide receiver Austin Collie. If I bring him up, he IS available in my Matrix hall of fame league. So if I bring up his window showing league availability, I can then press the section of it for that league and be taken directly to the transactions page in that Yahoo league with Collie already selected.

And even if the guy IS on another team, you can still use this ‘quick jump’ feature to try to instigate a trade.

This goddamn thing is GOLD. You can also ‘rank’ your teams in order of importance or what not, and you can do some stat selection to make sure that the stats you’re seeing are the ones that matter in your league.

Get it, love it, enjoy.

millXna_pQrple @ElCliff76 RT JXHeartattack: You’ll be ight lol RT _caLILYenteDK Dude my body is so sore // whatever!!!!!!! Lol

There was also a link at the end…somehow I fought down the desire to go to a link sent by some complete stranger possibly trying to type 16 different languages at one time.

Now, I DID look up the Twitter profile of millXna_pQrple (More weird consonants than the average Polish name). Allow me to share some of my findings.

iMDATFREAK smh that’s cus ur old lol // *hits unfollow button* <- and I’m mean? Lol

over it yet? & I agree btw=] RT Hamdanism 3ayzaAtgawez is exggerated but that’s the point of the show

I don’t know what to make of these scrawlings. Is it a foreign language? Is it EVERY foreign language mashed together? Maybe Special Needs Jimmy got his hands on the keyboard somewhere?

I feel like one of those European explorers finding an African tribe for the first time…you know, without all that ‘racism’ and ‘slavery’ nastiness. Perhaps that babbling mess is what clicks and whistles looked like when transcribed? And with that line, I think we can amend the part about without all the racism…

Even more interesting, this person follows NO ONE. Do they just randomly hurl their nonsense in to the ether of the Internet, typing up random possible Twitter names and seeing what sticks? Is it a desperate last ditch ploy for friends, but the pill bottles are sitting open and ready on the desk next to the plastic bottle of shitty whiskey to wash them down? Their only followers are someone speaking Portuguese, a spammer and someone who apparently lives in ‘bieberland’. That part doesn’t so much surprise me…after all, this poor bastard’s name is apparently Kit. Was daddy a rabid Knight Rider fan?

Anyway, I have come up with a theory. This person isn’t even a PERSON. We are witnessing the first, fumbling attempts at contact from…

No, not weird mask-like icons…ALIENS. CLEARLY, this is the work of a space man (or space woman, I suppose. Either they existed, or Kirk was a raging homo) trying to reach out to mankind.

Normally, they would no doubt use their own advanced forms of telepathic contact, but we don’t register that properly. Oh, they no doubt tried, but it probably resulted in said contact proceeding to run around shotgunning everyone in the house and shouting something about ‘the demons in my head’. Kind of hard to say you come in peace when the results of your communication are almost always murder-suicide.

So now they’re forced to try to use our primitive means of communication. When amongst their own kind, they simply send their disturbing pornography (what do you think all those probings are about? Aliens have sicker tastes in sexual material than the Japanese!) to one another through brain waves. With us, they’re stuck using the Internet…and for talking to the fleshy bags of water that we are, that means things like Twitter. And they’re bad at it.

I mean, who to contact? They don’t know anybody here, so it must be incredibly confusing to see millions upon millions of possible options to send their messages of peace and hope and mutual prosperity…and body pain…to. So they’re trying their very best! Perhaps they assumed that I’m the leader of the free world…or maybe that’s Cockman8476?

Of course, since these creatures are online trying to make contact, it means that they see what we’re in to. That probably isn’t going to do much for intergalactic understanding.

“What in the name of Rigel 14 is a donkey double penetration?”

Or maybe they’re just Special Needs Sectoids, abandoned here by a disappointed space culture. Either way, we’re probably fucked.

We have ALL started that new job where they make you watch a goddamn training video. They’re always out of date (rotary phones? Tandy computers? REALLY?) and have worse production values than low grade amateur porn. They are also frequently unintentionally hilarious.

I don’t know who these guys are, but their parody of one of those videos is spot on.

Holy crap. If you’ve ever heard me tell the tales of ‘Phil’ from my time working at a seed plant, the new guy in this video is essentially the same guy. It wouldn’t have surprised me at all if ‘Phil’ had shown up without any shoes on. Of course, he would have stepped on the nails and tried to pull them out, then started quietly asking “Hey, uh…got a little problem here.”

Actually, he probably would have pressed the red button and asked the police to help him with his nail problem.

Oh, and he would have consumed the paint thinner.

Actually, this talk of ‘Phil’ gives me an idea for a future blog post…

I’m tired. Both days of this past weekend featured fantasy football drafts, and they drafted in the morning. Yes indeed, I was up at 9 AM on a goddamn Saturday. And there you go…I won’t get up on a weekend morning for any of you, but I will for a fantasy football draft. AHAHA…God, I’m a loser.

So yeah, up early…and of course I still stayed up late. Cause going to bed early on a weekend is crazy talk. So now I’m tired and feeling kinda frazzled and foggy and all that fun stuff. And when I get like this, I find the negatives start to jump a bit to the fore.

I don’t generally get too down or freaked out about things. I’m certainly not going to claim that I’m always Capt. Positive…Hell, I hate those people. Is there truly anything worse than being stuck near some jackass who can’t stop grinning and rambling on about how “Everything is so wonderful!” today? It’s days like that when I hope that an announcement will be made that “Hey everyone, we’ve decided to make today ‘Beat someone with a lead pipe’ day! Go right ahead and assault someone with no concern of legal repercussions!’.

I most definitely have days when the worries and the down side to things come to the fore, though, with today being a prime example. All the self doubt creeps out to the surface and all the frustration takes over. I figured maybe I’d throw some of it out here so that you can all fret and suggest I perhaps seek medication and be placed on suicide watch. And really, just in search of some basic catharsis by at least getting some of this out of my sub conscious mind so that perhaps my thoughts can move on.

Am I really a good friend, or do I get too wrapped up in my own bullshit and run away when things are ‘tough’? Have I done so for so long that people perceive me as some kind of emotionless automaton? Are they right?

Do I poke fun at people in an attempt to pull them down to where I see myself? Maybe I’m not being funny, but I’m just a callous asshole out to vindictively crush everyone else.

Is all the supposed positive growth just a facade that I’ve put up to convince myself that I’m not the same scared and pathetic little creature that I was before?

We’ll go with that and call it the ‘Fuck it all’ teaser platter. Will I feel that way tomorrow? Probably not. Will I feel that way again? Most definitely. Will I let that kind of thinking steer what way I’m heading? Not so far…

Many of you remember Jake…many of you are still owed hundreds of dollars by the guy. However, only one of you (Hey, Liam) got to experience the true privilege that was living with him, as I did. I thought I’d go a bit old school and talk some memories of life with Jake. And I’ll also get a bit in to the story of just who Jake was for those of you who don’t know. So let’s take a trip back together, shall we?

First off, I actually don’t entirely remember how we came to meet Jake, but I believe it was on a BBS. Remember BBS’s? They were like the Internet, only more insular and less prone to pornography (photos and 14.4 modems didn’t exactly get along). Quickly, he became a part of our cadre. We spent a lot of time over at his place, since pretty much all of us were living at home at the time and goddamn, he had an apartment! We could curse and be loud and stuff!

Fast forward awhile, and as you may remember from an earlier post, I ended up moving in with him. It wasn’t so much a matter of want as a matter of necessity. Now, that’s not to say I didn’t appreciate the chance, because I did. But…yeah. Not my first choice. Still, it beat having my dad and I kick the shit out of each other.

Liam had briefly spent a stint cooped up in the storage closet in Jake’s one bedroom apartment in some crappy building in Edmonton. And as he moved out, I moved in. Yes, yes…I lived in a closet. That means I frequently came out of the closet. Hahaha. Funny. Hilarious. Get it out of your system now…

Actually, it is funny, and I would still be needling someone else about that circumstance, so I totally understand your need to mock. So go forth and demolish me with my blessing.

Now this was the arrangement for maybe a month, until he decided one day to talk to the landlord and see if there were any 2 bedroom suites available, then took one. Not a bad idea from an accommodation point of view, but a rather shitty one from the perspective that neither of us had a job. Welcome to the first lesson in the theory that has since been tagged (by myself, and I’m rather proud of it) ‘Jake-o-nomics’. Truly, it was the most unique selection of financial concepts that the world has ever seen…who cares if it made absolutely no sense at all?

How broke were we? We basically ate one giant meal a day, a meal that consisted of a lot of rice with some kind of meat, seasoned with a bunch of that dried crap they include in those packets of Ichiban-style noodles. And yes, that’s where this stuff came from. Jake was a big believer in those noodles (they weren’t actual Ichiban, that brand was far too high end) so he bought them by the case and emptied the ‘flavour packets’ in to jars. That was what passed for seasoning in our kitchen. Sometimes we’d exchange the rice for the instant noodles…lucky us.

Allow me to share the Jake grocery shopping trip. It can be sized up in two pictures.

That thing on the right is what I can only describe as a log of processed ham. I can’t call it meat…I don’t know what to refer to that monstrosity as. All that I can say for certain is that the rare time we’d have hot dogs, I felt like I was eating healthy. Occasionally we would get some ACTUAL meat, mainly from me visiting home for the weekend and loading as much frozen beef (my folks’ freezer was loaded down with a side of beef at the time) as I could stuff in to my duffel bag around the unimportant stuff like clothes.

How in the Hell we avoided rickets is beyond me. I should have had a worse case of scurvy than any pirate in the history of the Caribbean.

Beyond the diet, I think that a sizable portion of the Jake experience can be described in a single word…and that word is Braveheart. I would get up, and Jake would be on the couch watching Braveheart. I would go make some rice…and Jake was watching Braveheart. I’d go meet my girlfriend at the time…Braveheart…and it was most assuredly playing when I returned. As I went to bed, I was lilted to sleep by the faint stirrings of the score from the movie Braveheart playing down the hallway in the living room.

To call him obsessed with that goddamn movie would be the understatement of the century. And every day, there would be new observations of the cinematography or the lighting or some other technical detail…I don’t know if it was something he was interested in or he simply couldn’t help but notice these things because the damn movie was drilled in to his brain. I also don’t care. All that I know is that I HATED that goddamn movie. I STILL hate that goddamn movie. I always will hate that goddamn movie. We had other movies! I don’t know why he couldn’t mix in something else from time to time…but no, it was a 24/7 Braveheart party, and he and I were invited.

Aside from that, the only form of entertainment we had was hopping on the computer and joining in some asinine conversation on a BBS.  And I don’t necessarily mean to say that EVERY BBS conversation was asinine, but I know that the ones we were involved in most certainly were.

Every now and then, some poor bastard would take pity on us (Hi, Liam) and we’d go out to coffee…and for us, it WAS coffee…we couldn’t afford food. Nothing like sucking back the equivalent of a pot and a half of coffee with nothing in your stomach to soak it up (This is actually a disgusting tradition that continued for many moons after Jake had left our lives). Now, I’m honestly not sure if Jake had started borrowing money from people at this point (maybe some of you can clarify this in the comments), but it didn’t take long for it to happen regardless.

Now, this is where things get a bit fucked up with Jake and I. By this point, my dad and I had patched things up and figured out our problems, and I really didn’t have any ongoing interest in spending any more time living with Braveheart. I pretty much got the Hell out of there. We really didn’t talk after that, in no small part because I managed to pull off a bit of a miracle. See, Jake had started working part time at night…spending his money on ham logs and the like. I was still a bum. I actually managed to leave owing HIM money. This is actually something of a substantial achievement.

This is also where Jake-o-nomics was truly born. A fair amount of this is stuff I’ve been told second hand, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got the basics down.

Jake would ask to borrow 50 bucks from someone, with the promise that he would then use some of that money to buy them dinner. How can turn down such a lucrative opportunity?! It’s like a free meal…but not!

At some point, he met some pregnant girl in Philly on a BBS somewhere, and racked up such a substantial phone bill that his service was actually cut off. Why let that stop you, though, when you can purchase a cell phone! He then offered to buy this girl a round trip plane ticket. I don’t know if he actually went through with it, though.

He started working on some kind of software (inventory management or something, if I remember correctly) for a guy who worked at SLH. Jake WAS employed there…unloading trucks, not programming software. This guy he was talking to probably had absolutely no ability to make a purchasing decision on a major piece of software. Still, that shouldn’t stop you from immediately budgeting massive profits and buying a better computer and God knows what else (I suspect a life size William Wallace statue, perhaps?) on credit, right?

One thing that Jake pulled off that truly IS impressive…he ripped off Amway. I don’t even know how he got hooked up in to Amway, but he was, and he started selling products to friends with a pity complex. And he would then pocket the money. I have to give the man a tip of the cap for that one. Still, he assumed a monthly profit of something like $2500, and spent accordingly.

Eventually, the various forms of credit that he had maxed out all came calling at once, and he ended up moving in with Kyle and Erron, who were so thrilled with their new house guest that Kyle ended up driving him to his grandparents’ place in Merritt, BC. So ended the Legend of Jake, though he made a brief appearance out of the blue promising to pay back the many dollars he owed several different people, only to once more vanish in to the ether.

Was he real? Who can say! His economic theory is the basis for story and song, though (or at least should be).

And since I threw a featuring bit up there for Kelly, I figure I need to spin another Jake-related yarn with him as a part of it.

Well before I moved in with him (while Liam was the roomie du jour), several of us headed over to Jake’s place one night with a lot of beer. A LOT of beer. We spent the evening just joking around and drinking a lot of beer (A LOT of beer). Finally, it came down to the few of us who still remained. Kelly was sleeping in Liam’s closet. I believe it was just myself, Atti, maybe Kyle and Jake. One of us inquired about a box in the living room. Oh, that was Liam’s stuff.

Again, for emphasis…LIAM’S STUFF.

So, someone dove in. Oh look, videos! One was played. It was porn. It was really bad porn. Liam apparently has atrocious taste in porn, or perhaps was choosing from some kind of XXX  bargain bin. But yeah, a few dudes sitting in a room, drinking beer and laughing at bad porn. Welcome to the single gayest moment of my life.

During this bad porn, one of the male leads would continually make a sound that apparently was him sharing his pleasure with the world, but it sounded like a donkey who had gotten his testicles caught in some sort of motor. It was a horrifying noise, but it was funny as Hell. Even funnier was the fact that this actually woke Kelly up, and he came stumbling in to the room all glassy eyed, probably expecting to see one of us bleeding to death and crying for help on the floor…and instead seeing several of us watching some dude bang a chick on TV.

I promised I’d mention ya, K9. You’re welcome.

I found out about it while it was in Closed Beta through…yes…GAMES. One of the people I follow on Twitter is a guy named Tom Ohle. Tom does PR for a lot of gaming companies…Paradox, BioWare, CD Projekt, etc….so that’s why I had started following him. He’s one of the many PR people and web developers who pooled up to start Empire Avenue in the first place. So when he started talking about it, I got curious and decided to sign up for an invite.

Empire Avenue is basically a new social network that lets you buy and sell people. Yes, chatting about video games AND a basic slavery business have finally come together in glorious harmony! It’s like Roots, but without all the nasty stuff and more geeks.

Every person is also a commodity…that badge in the upper left of this blog marked ‘My Worth’ is my stock value on the market. Two things can change your value. The first is trading…being bought and sold affects your share value like a real stock. The second is content. You can plug in blog feeds, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr at the moment, with all of those affecting your share price. You can also plug in other RSS feeds, though the affect of those is negligible at best. So long as you have enough control over a feed to add a verification code to it, it’s fair game. How much content you produce also affects what sort of dividends you give to your investors, so that is the driving force behind someone deciding to ‘keep’ you.

At the same time, it’s also a social network. There are various communities one can join (though you have to reach a value of 14 Eaves…that being EA’s currency…before you can join Private ones). Since everyone’s content is splashed in to their front page feed, you can see what people are in to from that as well. A lot of the people I chat with over Twitter are those who I’ve met through EA, actually…there are plenty of raging rant mongering video game nuts on there. And I’ve noticed a definite uptick in traffic on this here blog since joining, so that’s cool.

In the beginning, I got hooked on the trading aspect of it…it was primarily like a virtual game of Stock Ticker. I really didn’t chat with very many people and just used it as some sort of weird fake investment system. Then something happened…I suddenly started noticing that several people there were in to the same things I am. Actually, it was right around the time of E3, when several other people were lighting Twitter ablaze with mockery of Ubisoft’s ridiculous press event, and writing blog posts about what games were coming up.

This was around the same time that I was already starting to use Twitter a bit more and becoming fearless in who I was responding to. Celebrity? Indy games journalist whose stuff I like? Front man of a band I’m in to? Friend for the last 15 years? Who cares who it is, if you have a reply…just fucking reply. So the two events kind of smashed together and formed a gigantic super event. With lasers. And a cool guitar soundtrack that starts up whenever it arrives somewhere.

Actually, it’s only quite recently that I’ve finally started melding the investment part of EA with the community part, and focusing on ‘buying’ people whose content interests me at all. That came about after the dev team had to put in several buying and selling limits to stave off those who were artificially inflating a stock just to dump it and reap the rewards. It’s illegal on a real life stock exchange, and to do it on a virtual system with virtual money and virtual value leader lists…well, the word pathetic comes to mind. You REALLY have to be compensating for some horrible thing Uncle Creepy did to you during childhood to honestly care that much about winning a thoroughly made up exchange.

Anyway, part of the reason for nailing down limits to avoid things like that is that real life rewards systems are being started up. Right now, I can exchange 1000 Eaves (just to put this in perspective, I earn about 8,000 or so Eaves a day in dividends) for $1 off any game purchased at Beamdog, a new local digital retailer started up by a couple of ex-BioWare guys. Or, a similar investment of Eaves can get me 10% off something at Cream Junkie. And more is on the way. Eventually, they plan to allow advertisers to approach EA users to inquire about advertising on their site or blog.

It’s already huge in Chile…no, I’m serious. Apparently, some hyper popular blogger started using the closed beta and started talking about it. Now, probably 40%+ of the entire EA population is Chilean…the Chilean version of CNN did a report about it, for Chrissakes. A number of charitable groups and companies have jumped in as well, and it seems to be working quite well for them.

Anyway, if it sounds interesting, hop in. It’s in Open Beta now so you don’t even need to beg me to invite you. Or don’t. At any rate, you now know what there is to know.

Now take that familiarity away. The whole game changes.

Take someone who has been driving a stick shift all their lives, and the first time or two they drive a new manual transmission vehicle, the results are ugly. Stalls, shaky starts, sudden whiplash inducing gear changes…all because they need time to find that ‘sweet spot’ in the clutch.

Everyone has showed up late to some sort of social event, and stood in the doorway a little awestruck and intimidated by the fact that they recognize maybe 5% of the people in the room. You weren’t there for the gradual trickle in of people, so you weren’t gradually introduced to them. No no, it’s the full monty for you (hopefully without naked junk in your face…unless it’s that kind of party). You’re thrown in to a situation of ultimate discomfort.

This has long been a weakness of mine. It’s not that I go completely in to my shell and never really emerge, it’s more that it takes me awhile to get comfortable with people. Part of it is the fact that I’m A LITTLE outspoken. I tend to hold off a bit on unleashing the full Cliffy experience until I’m sure that’s going to work out okay. Sure, I pretty much have no qualms about saying anything anywhere anytime…but I also don’t want to create some horribly awkward social confrontation when I’m a guest at somebody else’s house (see? I’m not a complete jerk). So I take my time to sort of do a little subtle recon of the people, figure out who I have something in common with, and go from there.

Beyond that, it’s astounding how easy it is to become used to how a certain thing works. I got a reminder about that yesterday.

I’ve been having issues with Firefox for awhile now. Random crash problems that didn’t seem to be linked to an installed plugin. Newer versions didn’t help. Finally yesterday, the Google search bar actually stopped functioning. I could enter in a search item, and suggested searches would pop up underneath, but when I pressed Enter it just sort of sat there gazing at me. Literally nothing occurred, beyond a pop up about script errors. So yeah, a web browser with a broken search function…that’s about as useful as Lindsay Lohan as a sober living counsellor. Sure, I could try re-installing, but fuck it. I’m fickle when it comes to software and apps.

So I made the big switch to Chrome (and then Chromium). My thoughts went as follows :

“Wow, this thing really is fast!”

“Um…where the Hell is everything?”

I was completely lost on my own computer. No clue where anything was, or where to even find it. Slowly, gradually I started figuring it out. Wait…EVERYTHING is accessed by typing it in? Okay. A few extensions later, I had the major stuff nailed down…my Delicious bookmarks integrated, A Google Services setup, and something to let save a web page to Read Later. Good. Okay, a bit of comfort is setting in now.

So, I guess the moral of the story is that you shouldn’t be afraid to try new things. Hell, doing so BEFORE you have to is probably a good idea to avoid feeling like you’re drowning in the unfamiliar when the inevitable need for an alternative arises.

And in the bigger picture view, getting out of the comfort zone every once in awhile is a good thing…if you don’t, you aren’t experiencing anything new. It doesn’t require a massive shift in your lifestyle…try a new book, a new kind of music, a movie beyond the usual “Pew pew blow shit up!” kind of thing, whatever. Just stretch out your horizons every now and then. Sure, the results will sometimes suck, but it’s probably worth rolling the dice now and again.

Does that poster appeal to you? No? What’s wrong with you!

If you do find yourself intrigued by a tale of undead Nazis living in the mountains of Norway, you will LOVE this movie.

It will definitely be coming along to the next cheezy movie night, along with Black Dynamite.

I found myself essentially live tweeting my thoughts while watching this fine epic, so I figure I’ll share those. It hadn’t been my intention to do so, but it was fun. Actually, a little side conversation started up with others who had seen the flick. Hell, I GAINED a new follower!

So, I’m just going to re-share my Twitter comments since they pretty much tell the tale without spoiling all of the sheer glory that this thing of beauty contains. Also, because I’m lazy. And no, this isn’t my ‘official’ blog entry for the day…that’s coming later.

Now watching Dead Snow. How the Hell did a Nazi zombie get THAT CLOSE without this idiot hearing them? Who cares. Go Undead Reich!

2 minutes of watching a bunch of Norwegians talk about avalanches. I want the dead to feast upon them all. Mission accomplished, director!

“Do you think there’s any chance to slam it in her number 2.” Norway, you are goddamn awesome.

A shout out to Evil Dead 1 and 2?! Sweet! Ten minutes in, this movie’s awesome. And that fat dude is gonna be a goose stepper buffet.

That’s it…waste all your fuel…make escape impossible…

A ‘joking suffocation with a pillow’…weirdest way ever to explain that a character is claustrophobic.

Yeah, cause when you hear something shuffling around you in the woods, the best plan is to wander the darkness shouting “Hello?”

Lemme guess…the wizened old Slav will now tell them about the ‘Legend of the Undead Fascists’…

Well, that was…disappointing. I wanted tales of Nazis summoning Satan! BOOO! BOO HISS!

“And what if you’re holding in your intestines…what then? What if your limbs are torn off?” This guy is the worst conversationalist EVER.

So, he knows about the evil in the mountains, but still camps out there in a tent shouting “Hello?” in to the night? Brilliant.

Nothing DEMANDS a heavy metal backdrop like future zombie food riding a GT Snow Racer.

Hey, what’s this mysterious box that was in the house the whole time? Oh hey, Nazi gold! lol

Uh oh…UH OH…youth drinking in a cabin in the middle of nowhere? With pre-marital sex on the way? This can’t end well.

So, the hottest girl in the group is banging the fat guy while he’s in the process of taking a shit. EAT THEM! EAT THEM NOW!

And now she’s on the crapper. Is that how it works in Norway? To get toilet time you screw the person using it?

Goddamn! Nazi zombies make panthers look slow and noncommittal.

Who knew that the zombies could smash through windows to get in…who knew? lol

Wait…don’t zombies eat brains? They just dumped the fat guy’s all over the floor! No wonder the Germans lost the war!

Did the zombies wait to emerge until after he found the Nazi flag? I respect their attention to dramatic detail!

Nothing says “It’s over.” like finding your girlfriend’s head on a shelf. Also, that zombie just punched dude! Sweet!

Yes, continue splitting up in to bite sized segments of stupidity. Woohoo!

Hanging over a cliff by a dead man’s entrails. This might be the greatest thing ever.

Don’t mind us, we’re just eating you. That is some impressive level of shock.

Oh, good. Light your shelter ablaze and call the fire department…and tell them you’re under Nazi zombie siege. Genius.

Seriously, WHY BOTHER WITH THE FIRE? Dumbest horror movie characters EVAR, and that’s saying something.

Wow. Sewing closed your own zombie induced bite wound with fishing gear. This guy is the Rambo of stupid kids.

Two guys facing down an onrushing squad of undead German soldiers with chainsaw and sledgehammer with musical accompaniment. Glorious.

Honey…I…I didn’t MEAN to drive a knife through your throat…I….uhhh…oh.

You can’t be a Nazi zombie! Your grandfather is a Jew! LOLZ

He’s amazingly spry for a man who just lost half an arm…

Damn…DO NOT steal from Nazis. Probably didn’t need to be told that, but it’s certainly been drummed home.