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	[quote name="Senor Barborito"]I went to the Penny-Arcade get-together at Lanwerx in Bellevue today. For future historians, that would be the 'first' one. I say first because in a move that stands a fair shake of eclipsing the Holocaust as the worst thing a couple of humans have ever inflicted upon a culture, Tycho and Gave have decided at the time of this article being published to make this a regular event. [B&W picture of Auschwitz with starving skeletal Jews behind a barb-wired fence. Caption: "To all of you from gamers everywhere - we finally understand your pain."] Highlights: 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. He was insightful and friendly if rotund. Lowlights: 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 <a href="http://everquest.station.sony.com/">completely</a> <a href="http://www.progressquest.com/">pointless</a> in any greater sense (a point Spigot from Jerkcity illustrated <a href="http://www.leisuretown.com/library/qac/10.html">well</a>), or <a href="http://www.gopostal.com/">perhaps</a> <a href="http://www.enterthematrixgame.com/index-ghost.html">shipped</a> <a href="http://moo3.quicksilver.com/">broken</a>, or maybe just <a href="http://www.planetdaikatana.com/">poorly</a> <a href="http://www.hegemonia.info/">designed</a> <a href="http://tribes2.sierra.com/">to</a> <a href="http://shadowbane.ubisoft.com/">begin</a> <a href="http://www.the-chosen.com/">with</a>. Those failings, to an extent, are balanced out by the good (although Morrowind, for instance, would probably fall under 'shipped broken') this industry graces us with while the mainstream gaming press studiously ignores it. 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 seemingly advancing past 25, but judging from the LAN party I was just at the scent of which would best be described as 'raw human sewage', >70% of you gamers still haven't figured this out on your own. Use more deodorant 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, you goddamned pussy. 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 horribly deformed and putrid '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 ever have. The kid in college who lived three doors down and did nothing but play Diablo online all day, showering perhaps once every two or three weeks at most? The one whose door you taped a bar of soap to, then laid down a path of little duct-tape arrows on the hall floor leading towards the showers with your equally angered roommate? I had that exact kid. He didn't smell as bad as some of the people at Lanwerx today. 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 held in an all-you-can-eat pork-only restaurant. It really gives new meaning to the phrase 'family dining.' Eventually, I couldn't take the noise and the stink. I'd been in the equivalent of solitary confinement + pet gerbils & rats for four days with my fiance gone for the week on a business trip. The 100+ people and the huge crowd + noise + reeking just drove me out. In a testament to my own failings as a human being I won a shirt in my fiance'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. <a href="http://www.whotokill.com/?One=988&Two=1075">I was left with one clear conclusion from all this</a>: We all thought our destruction of the environment would eventually kill our species, and we were wrong. The polar caps melting just means more beachfront property. A new ice age just means we can safely restart slavery (easy there, I'm talking <i>white</i> slavery) as our northern neighbors - desperate from the loss of their precious Tim Horton's - come running into our happy and waiting forced labor camps. Surely our clever mammal brains could outwit any other problems of that nature. But this problem was something we were never prepared for - something far worse. Fools all of us, we should have listened to the dire proclamations of the hygiene companies as they strove in vain to combat this insidious threat that springs from deep within us all! Only now does the nature of our fate as a species become clear . . . As the Internet and gaming continue to increase in popularity, as MMORPGs progress in their transformation to eCrack, we are doomed to die a horrible choking death, drowning in our vomit at the scent of each other, stuffing our nostrils full of raw Glade plugins and finally clawing out our own noses in ceaseless agony. [picture: Arnold Schwarzenegger digging that giant red tracer ball out of his sinuses, caption: "Humanity's final hour."] To my fellow gamers everywhere: ONLY YOU CAN SAVE THE HUMAN RACE - GO TAKE A SHOWER. --SB[/quote]