Caltrops - Rants

Forum Overview :: Rants

by Senor Barborito 06/24/2003, 1:47am PDT

Went to the Penny-Arcade get-together at Lanwerx today. Thanks to my arriving at 11AM when it started, I actually managed to shake hands with Tycho and chat with him for about 10 minutes regarding MMORPGs.

The rest of the time, outside of a few cool people on my Battlefield 1942 team I was just trying to cope with being trapped in that small of a space with 100 ugly, incredibly smelly people. Never, not once, have I hated this hobby so much. It has nothing to do with the games frequently being completely pointless in any greater sense (a point Spigot from Jerkcity illustrated well), or perhaps shipped broken, or maybe just poorly designed to begin with. Those failings, to an extent, are balanced out by the good (although Morrowind, for instance, would probably fall under 'shipped broken').

No, this problem was one of basic hygiene, and it was serious.

If you are a gamer, do the following:

1) Shave every goddamned morning and cut your hair/fingernails short. Trade in those glasses for contacts if you possibly can. Trust me.
2) Shower every morning as well - why do you need to be told this?
3) When you shower, always shampoo and soap down your entire body including your well-used and purple anal crevice for God's sake - you shouldn't need to be told this with most of you advancing past 25, but judging from the LAN party I was just at >70% of you still haven't figured this out on your own. Use more deoderant than you think is necessary (hint: 3-4 clicks of the gel shit), and do not use 'musk'. You've got enough of that naturally.
4) If you find yourself with even a bit of pudge anywhere on your body (can you grip or see any flab on your stomach?), start doing as many situps and pushups as you can before that shower (so the sweat gets washed off) and before you go to bed every goddamned day. How many? Do as many of each as you can until you literally cannot do another one no matter how hard you try. Do not 'cheat', either - real situps, not crunches, with your hands folded behind your head and until your elbows touch your knees. When you do push-ups, make sure your body is completely flat and not bent at the waist - go all the way down until your chest touches the floor, then slowly raise yourself back up. If you can't do one, just hold yourself up for as long as possible until you can.
5) Eat less - I don't care who you are or if you're on hunger strike or if you look like Calista Flockhart in her skeletal phase. You are eating too much right now, I promise you.
Lastly, but not least:
6) BRUSH YOUR GODDAMNED TEETH 3 TIMES A DAY. IF YOU SNACK, EAT A GODDAMNED BREATH MINT AFTERWARDS. JESUS CHRIST WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?

If the people at that convention had followed these simple rules, not only would I be happier not having to look at/smell the most incredibly ugly and smelly people I have ever interacted with - and this includes the street bums I used to serve meals to at the mission as a kid - but most of you could probably also score a girlfriend of some kind, which clearly none of you have.

Jesus Christ I swear to God today was enough to put me off LAN parties forever. I can't count the number of times I nearly threw up just from someone walking past me at more than 6 feet away. What the hell? What the fucking hell? Did these people not have parents? I mean, I can understand a few, but the overwhelming majority of the populace there was giving off an unbearable fucking stench and looking like they'd just come from an incest convention.

Eventually, I couldn't take the noise. I'd been in the equivalent of solitary confinement + gerbils & rats for four days with V gone (trip to the mall for a few hours excepted) and the 100+ people and the huge crowd + noise + smell just drove me out. I won a shirt in V's size from some PA trivia contest, and I wasn't playing in the Soul Calibur 2 tourney so there wasn't much left for me. As for Tycho and Gabe - I barely said a word to Gabe, and the poor guy's agoraphobia was very visibly acting up something awful. You could just tell he wanted to dive out the nearest window and run straight home. Felt bad for him. Tycho reminds me of, well, some weird combination of Stepto and myself. Definitely a fatty fish, but a nice guy with more taste in gaming than most people (MOO3 excepted *shudder*). Having seen their pictures beforehand from caoine.org (Rands from Jerkcity's webcam is there as well if you're interested - and he is one sexy motherfucker) they were exactly what I was expecting.

--SB