zark

At first, I was scared to do this. I feared that too many people would continue to step in and ridiculously flame me. But no, I've got to return to blogs because it's senseless to sit in the corner trying to bar myself. But first, let me state one thing.

This is not your life. This is mine.

In my last blog, some of you remember how you found out i was a lawyer's assistant, not a lawyer (after law school, of course, that will change). As repeated above, this is not your life. If you have a problem with the way I live or work or play then boo hoo, it's not my problem. It's yours. Now who cares what i drive or do or write on doomworld on? It doesn't matter. It's my life, and not yours. So don't click the post reply button if you have a problem with me. Now, onto the blog...

I've been thinking about hockey and all. Tryouts have started for my local team, and I'm trying out. I play defense, one of the toughest positions. Last year, my AAA team (not the orginization, just the level i play at) folded due to a lack of players. My team consists of a few co-workers, a few neighbors, a family member, and me. I am the captian. We play in a men's league. The coach will be my Uncle Seamus. He's went through the USA hockey levels and crap, and thanks to me, he is a level 4 coach. But i dont think that mens league coaches are required to have usa hockey thingies. But, he did coach me when i was little. My father taught him all about hockey when my dad was about 10. He heard of this great sport, and taught him. Seamus never got the chance to play. However, he is one hell of a coach.

Anyway, on to the rest of my life. I'm going to be a freshman at Harvard this year. I will major in political science. I'm hoping to have a great time at college, and from time to time, will go visit Seamus and the rest. Also, about 4 days ago my cousin Joey moved to San Diego for work. It's great to be an Alumni of my high school. I had some bad memories, but that was mostly in Senior year. I heard my house in Ireland will be taken care of by my uncle Sean. So, that's it. I returned to blogs. Now just do me a god damn favor and don't click that post reply button if you've got something nasty to say.

A fatty followed me in the supermarket today. I think he must of entered just after me, whilst I was standing checking out the papers. I turned around and saw him. He was more than fat, he had gone far beyond simple fatness into some horrible obesity where his legs and arms and head seemed merely mutant growths upon the rotund blob that was his stomach.

As soon as I saw his corpulent mass heaving into view I thought, "Oh God, I bet that guy stinks". Sure enough as I tried to quickly pass his massive bulk, which occupied almost the entire aisle, I caught a whiff of a wretched sweaty musk emanating from the direction of fatso's armpits and God knows what other areas. Fighting the urge to gag I made haste to grab the few items I needed from that aisle and move out of the blobman's vicinity and smell-range. I figured that the level of food purchase needed to sustain that awful weight would mean a slow pace around the shelves, as he stocked up on every type of food he could.

I was wrong, little sooner had I turned the corner than his giant bulk came ambling around as well. A moment of sheer horror then, as I grabbed a pack of yoghurts from the shop fridge and hastened onward. And yet I could not escape the fatso. It was as if some kind of reverse gravity was pulling his gigantic belly ever towards me. I dashed around the shop, grabbing items and quickly stuffing them into my basket. And no matter where I turned, there was fatty, seemingly always at my shoulder as I raced onward, terrified of smelling that revolting stench again. I couldn't have been in the shop more than three of four minutes, yet it seemed like an eternity of blubber filled horror.

At last though, I seemed to have lost him. I carried my filled basket to the checkout, and was relieved to find one with no queue. I swiftly placed my basket down and began to unload the items, when I spied something in the corner of my eye. It was fatso, he homed into view like an oil tanker upon a mountain stream, blotting out the sun, and making small children cry and priests renounce their faith in realisation that no benevolent God could allow such an awful thing to be. My horror redoubled, was he following me? Had he noticed my attempts to flee his rotten odour, and was now pursuing me to inflict it on me threefold? What sort of sick mind lurked behind that jelly face? I struggled to quickly bag-up my purchases as soon as the cashier scanned them, even as I noticed that fatso himself had only bought a handful of items. How so? Had he been in such a rush to follow me that even his gross appetite had been put on hold, or perhaps, I wondered in dawning terror, could something else be on the menu? Could he really be planning to eat me?

Normally I would have ridiculed such cannibal paranoia, but the events of the past few minutes, and the terrifying sight and smell of fatso had left me clinging to mere shreds of sanity. I had to escape the mad fat bastard's clutches. I raced to pay, even as the toxic stench of the blob's body invaded my nostrils and brought me feel close to fainting. Not daring even to look upon the rotund thing I grabbed my bags and shot for the door, and freedom. As I passed through the anti-theft barriers and out into the world, I fancied I felt a movement in the air just behind my head, as if giant pair of jaws had reached out to consume me, and snapped shut just a hair's breadth short. I dared not look back, and strived to swiftly put some distance between myself and the store.

At last I judged it safe enough to spare a glance backwards and, seeing I was not purused, slowed my pace and breathed a sigh of relief. I felt the cool, clear outdoors air fill my lungs and cleanse them of the stinking fatty-sweat infected gases, it had been a narrow escape.

Last night I couldn't sleep, so I sat down by the computer at 4 in the morning and chatted some with my neighbour. Who couldn't sleep either. And we talked about this and that, and one thing led to another and later I had calculated the budget and agreed that I could afford to buy myself a new flatscreen. :D

So I did. and now I'm waiting for it. It'll be awesome. It's a Samsung 730BT with 4ms response time. 17"

Ook. Ook. I bought a new rig a few days ago. Been trying to get the internet to work properly on it, and what do you know? It decides to work all by itself one night. At first I was like, "OMG use 7 grand and build sexy pimp machine!"

Then I decided it was way more feasible to budget myself to 2000 of those canucks bucks. Anyhoo, I ended up with

A funky chinese seethrough Xion case with blue light

Amd Athlon 64 2.2ghz processor

Asus PCI express motherboard with built in sound card

Free Half Life 2 with purchase of processor and motherboard

1gb of Ram

Nvidia Geforce 6600GT 128mb video card

200gb HD for my newfound pirate emporium

Wireless network card - it's a real tempermental cunt, but it works now.

5.1 surround sound headphones - at $57.00 cdn these things are fucking nuts, you have to set the volume VERY low, or you will lose your hearing

DVD writer - see 200gb HD

1.44mb floppy drive - yes I'm a putz

17 inch LCD monitor - no ghosting! hazzar!

Black, Joe blow Logitech Keyboard

Some crazy ass gaming Logitech mouse - ultra high sensitivity, very fun with FPS

After cursed PST - 7% Provincial Sales Tax and GST 7% Goods and Services Tax, it came out to exactly $2005.86

Now it's not one those crazy ass dual core computers with the $800 GFX card, but it's a huge step up from the Ye Olde Shitbox PII.

http://www.planetgargoyle.com/doomuc.zip \o/

ATTN: Hey everybody. I'm leavin doomworld and DooM itself for reasons that I'd like not to say. I had a good time here at doomworld and playing doom online. Its been fun and I thank you all for your help and generoucity to reply to me. Well see ya l8er. :)

I put the warning that this thread is about that damn project that spawns blazes, so if You share hatred for it, don't read this thread, altough You're missing some interesting stuff.

First of all, I plan on going completely pacifistic in this thread and inform those who're interested that the leakage is stopped.

http://forum.zdoom.org/potato.php?t=7136&start=0
Here I posted a log of chat with me and Dron that states the "leakers" will stop spreading the leaked resource and their project (Doom: Reborn, which is nomen omen a recreation of Doom's e1 .. ;) heh) has nothing to do with KDIZD.

Second of all, we know that KDIZD is not a godlike project, it's not the best one (because it's not released yet, it has potential) and all Your toughts on criticizing it is welcomed. We just want to make a project to people have fun. Not the bestest project. It took us some time to realise it, sorry, and the whole damn hype campaign.

Also I hope Nick's problem with the DW staff or whomever is resolved on a peaceful manner, and even if not, then away from KDIZD.

Consider the leak as a "demo". If You have any toughts on cricism, we're opened.
We even considered making the forum non-secret at Zdoom non-secret or at least some dev journal.

We want peace, not flaming in every KDIZD thread.

Considering Torm's "I'm leaving and not coming back!" - he never left, rl depression got to him ;)

http://darknation.mancubus.net/louisebbq/blobfrog.jpg
http://darknation.mancubus.net/louisebbq/meblob.jpg
http://darknation.mancubus.net/louisebbq/cockywhy.jpg
http://darknation.mancubus.net/louisebbq/fiona.jpg
http://darknation.mancubus.net/louisebbq/neilblob.jpg
http://darknation.mancubus.net/louisebbq/pizzaandthing.jpg
http://darknation.mancubus.net/louisebbq/roach.jpg
http://darknation.mancubus.net/louisebbq/tdsbug.jpg

And cocky will never, ever live this down. Ever.

Everything in your life has led up to The Moment.
And when your eyes close, and you struggle for that one last breath of something that thus far you had taken for granted,
It all condenses into that one point,
The center of you existence.

And you knew all along.

So I'm sitting here trying to ape the "steel and liquid" motif of popular websites nowadays, having a cigarette, and wondering if my phone is ever going to ring.

Two days ago, an old friend who is no longer a business partner called me up with some news. Besides the old bullshit about sales opportunities-- the kind of which got him waning respect and a pink slip in the first place-- he gave me the usual girly gossip about how my most recent ex is doing. This is the girl whose virginity I took and who thought would marry me, given the chance; this is the girl with such high moral standings that I couldn't even live up to; this is the girl whom I left because of her fear that I'd be unfaithful. Within the past year of not answering my bi-monthly phone calls she has managed to:

- Hook up with a middle-aged junkie
- Live in a rundown rowhome three blocks away from the ghetto with said junkie
- Go see her old friends looking "strung out all the time"
- Manage to get pregnant with uncertainty of who the father is

How does this happen in a year? I can't help but feel (not personally responsible, but at least) part of the reason why this happened. She was one of the world's most dedicated potheads, but she insisted that she was incorruptibly against hard drug use. From what her old friends have noticed, that went out the window. She also gave the distinct impression, when I knew her, that she wouldn't be the type to sleep around no matter how terrible of a boyfriend she had-- that apparently is also out the window.

I have a nagging sense that being without me caused all this. It would make sense that she buried herself in her work to forget the whole thing. I can see her pulling 100-hour weeks just to occupy her time. Eventually, pot just wouldn't be enough to take the edge off at the end of the day, nevermind being enough to get her up in the morning. The rest of the story is a natural progression: her slipping morals, her lapse in judgement(or maybe she couldn't afford birth control anymore), and so on.

I have full confidence that this will come as a revelation to her, and she'll clean up her act. It's a shame that it came at the cost of her ultimate goals, though-- imagine trying to own a restaurant/bar/club/diner/whatever when you have a mouth to feed.

So-- naturally, I called her the day I found out. I got worked up over what to say just to end up getting her voicemail. Half an hour later, I left a second message to the effect of "you're probably going to disregard that last message for whatever reason, but you're going to have to make an exception this time". We'll see if she bites. If not, I can only assume that she's ashamed of what she's allowed to happen-- and that's disconcerting.

Funny thing is, I've begun talking to another ex who happens to have had a kid in the time we haven't spoken. Maybe I'm just falling behind. If I don't act soon, there won't be any women left to start a family with; I'll have to shop around for an in-progress model.

I turned down sex

turnip!

This is my “confession.” I’m sorry I took so long to write this, it’s just that I haven’t been able to find time to write it. I should have realized that the best place for me to write it was a work, so that’s what I finally did.

I am a laser technician. I got my degree at Texas State Technical College, Waco, where I lived in an apartment on campus. In the fall of 2003 I graduated, but I didn’t have a job so I had two choices: stay and learn some more pertaining to my field as well as another technology, or go back to Georgetown to bum around until I got a job. I decided to stay and take a high level course in LET, as well as some MET classes. If I got a job, I’d drop out, but learning as much as I can while I could still sounded better than doing nothing.

At the end of the semester, my roommate was sort of kicked out, and I was glad that I didn’t have to live with him anymore. I asked if I was going to be assigned a new roommate at the beginning of the semester when I went to pay my rent, and they told me no. I felt a lot better about not having a roommate, because on that campus it could have been anybody. My friend Richard had such a bad experience with roommates that he ended up taking his trailer from home and moving in to an RV park down the road from school. I guess I was lucky, since I had halfway decent ones compared to him. My last one, however, I couldn’t stand. I didn’t think I could take one much worse than him.

A rough week passed, a week of sorting out classes and going back and forth from the campus VA office to the MET and LET department offices. On Friday I went home, like I always did, because I was too bored to stay there at school and I always had the excuse that I could work on my Eagle Limited while I was in Georgetown, even though I didn’t get to mess with it much. It was a pretty average weekend, and a pretty average drive back to Waco. I pulled into the parking lot and looked up into the front window of my apartment. The lamp on the end table was on. I knew what that meant, but I didn’t know how much it would mean until later on. It was more of a beacon than a sixty watt incandescent light bulb; it was a light at the end of the tunnel. It would be a great deal of time before I finally saw it that way.

With a little reluctance I got my things and headed upstairs. I walked in and walking by the second bedroom I looked in. There was a guy sitting in the chair at the built in desk in front of his desktop computer. He was quite thin, wore small glasses, black work boots, and had long hair that had been dyed blonde at some point. We introduced ourselves and I unlocked my door and carried my stuff into my room. We talked a bit about school, I told him about my situation, and apparently he started school a week late. I gave him some pointers about how to deal with some of the aspects of the system there, and about the apartment, since I had already finished my two years there and had a lot of it down pretty well.

We certainly had one thing in common, and that was computer games. During my spare time at TSTC I spent a lot of time on ZSNES and FCE Ultra, as well as Half Life, Powerslide, Interstate ’76, ’82, and Nitro Pack. His favorite SNES emulator was SNES 9X, and he showed me how you could fast forward with it in Harvest Moon. He showed me a bunch of games he had, and I showed him some stuff on Interstate. We talked about console games, and he actually played and ruled a few that we had at one point taken interest in like Goldeneye and Bomberman 64. There was one game though that I have never played, except on the SNES console one day:

Doom.

The first thing he showed me was a demo of a deathmatch that he had on Doom Legacy on the very last day of high school with seven other people.
“Man, that’s the way to do it,” I told him, “I just took some tests and left.”
He tore the people from his class up pretty bad. He then showed me a co-op he had with a couple other people on Scythe map 30, also on Doom Legacy. He told me Legacy was a source port, and ZDoom was his favorite, though it didn’t work very well online. He showed me all kinds of stuff involving Doom. Map editors, more demos, megawads, including Mock 2, which I thought was pretty funny, even though I didn’t fully understand what it was compared to all of the other wads.

Whenever I got bored, I would go into his room, sit there on the floor at the foot of the bed and he would show me stuff on his computer, which he seemed to be glad to do so. We’d talk about all kinds of stuff. He seemed to be pretty content, though emotionally detached, which made me a little worried. He didn’t seem depressed, and he performed really well in school, but I could tell that he had a rough time at some point in life.

It wasn’t until one night while watching this really tripped out art . . . thing on PBS did he tell me about how he came from a broken home. Sometimes I need to be reminded that even though I had a rough time back when I was in high school my problems are petty compared to others. At least he had a foundation to never use illegal substances from his personal experience with someone close around him. I admired his resilience, since it all didn’t seem to get to him.

One day we finally got internet access. The cost of cable internet was $15/month because of the student discount, and if I knew that I would have gotten internet a long time ago. Before that the only internet I had was at my house in Georgetown, and if I wanted to take something back to Waco I had to save it onto a floppy or burn it onto a CD. To me it wasn’t a real big deal, since a few kilobytes of ROMs could keep me entertained for a fairly long time.

Before we got internet, since we set an appointment with Road Runner Cable to come out a long time before they finally did, I bought a $60 combination hub/router so that we could share the connection. He had been complaining about not having internet, so when we finally did I joked with him about how everyone he chatted with thought he was dead for a month.

We set up a small home network and shared some files. He put some files in his directory and told me to copy them to my computer and to install some of the ports off of the internet. Then we played Doom II co-op on Legacy, and he flew ahead while I stumbled behind, since I never played it before. Of course, he got bored on map 06, as most people do in Doom II co-op so we quit. After that I started to play the Doom games in single player on ZDoom, which is how I became familiar with them.

He turned out to be the best roommate I ever had. We had fun just hanging out there in the apartment. By the time I got a job and was about to move out, I only had three real friends in the world, and I felt ready to accept him as a fourth.
- - - - -
One day he asked me if I wanted to go for a ride with him to his favorite club back in Dallas.

“Sure, why not,” I said.

We went out to the parking lot and walked out to his car, which was an old Maverick.

“Wow, I didn’t know this was your car,” I said.

I had seen it out there for a while, but every semester there’s a whole new fleet of cars in the parking lot, and by the end of the semester there’s only a handful. The car was a light blue color, and it looked a little tired, but it amazingly had all of the original hub caps.

“For some reason I always thought these were neat,” I added, “and I never knew anyone who had one. What’s funny is that they look a lot like the AMC Javelin, but I don’t know which one came first.”

“Yeah, this thing has always been kept in a garage,” he said, “It used to be my grandma’s, and she practically gave it to me for a graduation present.”

“That’s cool. My car was pretty cheap but it was really broken down when I bought it. It’s a project car, though.”

“Heh, well, let’s go.”

On the way there we didn’t talk much. Dallas was about an hour’s drive up I35 through open plains of yellow grass, but it didn’t seem that long. I noticed he had his hair in a scrunchie, which he always did, so normally I didn’t think anything of it. At that point though I thought it was a little feminine, and I remembered he was always playing with his hair while chatting on his computer, but I felt that’s who he was and he was cool all the same.

Once we got there we walked up to the front door and he told me something that I couldn’t believe.

“Okay, now before we go inside, you need to know that the people in here all think I’m a girl.”
“What?!”

“It’s not what you think . . . it’s a long story, but just try not to blow my cover.”

“Um, ok . . . lemme just wait outside for a minute.”

“Ok, well I’ll be inside.”

I stood there thinking about what he just said and what that could possibly mean. I didn’t know if I could go inside with that on my mind. I looked around outside. It was getting late and lonely outside. After leaning against the building for a long time I finally decided I should just go in, so I did.

The first thing I noticed is that the place was pretty old. It was dark, with hard wood floors that creaked under your feet, though it was fairly large and a very well established place to hang out. One day it looked like it was going to need to be remodeled . . . or will it? Many older things are better built, with better materials, though with older hand tools. It was almost hard to tell what was original and what had been added on since whoever made it made it blend in really well.

It was certainly popular, too. It was comfortably crowded and it didn’t take long to see who the regulars there were. I also noticed people here talked more than they drank. This was more of a pub than a bar, if anything. It was alive, alive with its own aura. This was definitely the place to be. Rather than look around for my roommate, I decided to sit down and order a drink. Once in a while I would look up, and I could see him, but he looked like he was well into it with other people so I just chilled out at the bar, trying to blend in, though in the back of my mind I knew I stood out. It didn’t bother me, though. I had another drink.

I quickly noticed how he could be mistaken for a girl. In this kind of lighting and noise level, I may have mistaken him for a girl. The only reason though would be because he’s a little soft spoken and he has sort of long hair. Heck, he may be under the pretense of a female because someone mistook him for one and he went along with it as a joke, but then became trapped in the joke through some misunderstanding. That kind of thing happens all the time, and sometimes you just have to go along with it for as long as possible so that you don’t cause any conflicts. In the back of my mind, however, I knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep up this charade forever, but it wasn’t any of my concern.

I realized that after my fourth drink I needed to slow down. I hadn’t even been there that long and I was already getting drunk. Then I made the poor decision to try to mingle with the crowd. There was a group of people that had been going on for a while and I thought I had heard the whole conversation. Apparently I didn’t, because when I made a comment about what they were all talking about one of them snapped at me for butting in without knowing what they were talking about. I was ready to punch his face right in, but I somehow caught myself and backed off, because I didn’t want to cause trouble, especially with someone who appeared to be pretty well respected. Next time, I reminded myself, don’t butt in unless you heard everything said, and especially not while you’re so drunk.

I sat back down at the bar, keeping my eyes peeled for my roommate, but I didn’t see him anywhere. I sat there and thought about how much things have changed. Graduation, moving, getting a job, a place to live, all of these were inevitable realities that I had to face, just as everyone does when they get older. The only thing that made me worried was being alone. Out of all those, that stressed me the most. I didn’t want to move very far from home, but I knew at that point I didn’t have much of a choice. Whatever job I was offered I pretty much needed to take.

“Stupid job market, stupid September 11th, stupid economy,” I vainly cursed.

I guess that’s what made me get drunk so quick. After a little while I tried to converse once again. I had better luck, thankfully, with much better reactions. I began to mingle with the crowd and a few times I put my foot in my mouth, but I just blamed it on the alcohol and moved on. Then I finally found my roommate.

“There’s this other place I like to go to,” he said, “it’s new but it’s a pretty cool place. You ready to go?”

“Well sure, uh . . . you ok to drive?”

“Oh yeah, I don’t drink a whole lot. Why, what did you have?”

“Uh, just a couple three beers.”

“Sheesh, let’s go.”

The next place wasn’t too far away, though for some reason I didn’t feel very comfortable. I guess it’s because I just get paranoid whenever I drink. It didn’t really matter, because pretty soon we were there.

This club was certainly new, and for some reason I could tell it would prosper, even if it was starting off small.

“Most of the people here are from the pub we were just at,” he told me.

As we walked in, I slowly recognized some of the people there from the place before that left earlier in the night. Some of the people there, however, I didn’t recognize. Most of these people were younger, and one of them was Chinese. He seemed to be arguing about something with a couple people, and it looked like it was only because of his language barrier. I decided it was just best to let them handle it.

Here I pretty much did the same thing I did before: order a drink, try in vain to blend in, and stay at the bar for a while. I got up and talked to some people and that’s when I noticed my roommate was missing again. I was a little annoyed, because I wouldn’t mind talking to him with other people. Then I wasn’t so sure if he felt the same way. After about forty five minutes I started to get worried. I went outside and saw that his car was gone. In a worried panic I called him up on his mobile phone.

“Hey”

“Mark! Where did you go?”

“Oh, I don’t really hang out there much anymore. I’ve just kind of moved on I guess.”

“Well, fine, I guess I’ll see you later or something.”

I thought it was weird that he would just leave like that, but for some reason I didn’t feel angry at him. I didn’t feel jilted, either, more like dropped off. I didn't worry about getting a ride. I was already home.

This is my “confession.” I’m sorry I took so long to write this, it’s just that I haven’t been able to find time to write it. I should have realized that the best place for me to write it was a work, so that’s what I finally did.

I am a laser technician. I got my degree at Texas State Technical College, Waco, where I lived in an apartment on campus. In the fall of 2003 I graduated, but I didn’t have a job so I had two choices: stay and learn some more pertaining to my field as well as another technology, or go back to Georgetown to bum around until I got a job. I decided to stay and take a high level course in LET, as well as some MET classes. If I got a job, I’d drop out, but learning as much as I can while I could still sounded better than doing nothing.

At the end of the semester, my roommate was sort of kicked out, and I was glad that I didn’t have to live with him anymore. I asked if I was going to be assigned a new roommate at the beginning of the semester when I went to pay my rent, and they told me no. I felt a lot better about not having a roommate, because on that campus it could have been anybody. My friend Richard had such a bad experience with roommates that he ended up taking his trailer from home and moving in to an RV park down the road from school. I guess I was lucky, since I had halfway decent ones compared to him. My last one, however, I couldn’t stand. I didn’t think I could take one much worse than him.

A rough week passed, a week of sorting out classes and going back and forth from the campus VA office to the MET and LET department offices. On Friday I went home, like I always did, because I was too bored to stay there at school and I always had the excuse that I could work on my Eagle Limited while I was in Georgetown, even though I didn’t get to mess with it much. It was a pretty average weekend, and a pretty average drive back to Waco. I pulled into the parking lot and looked up into the front window of my apartment. The lamp on the end table was on. I knew what that meant, but I didn’t know how much it would mean until later on. It was more of a beacon than a sixty watt incandescent light bulb; it was a light at the end of the tunnel. It would be a great deal of time before I finally saw it that way.

With a little reluctance I got my things and headed upstairs. I walked in and walking by the second bedroom I looked in. There was a guy sitting in the chair at the built in desk in front of his desktop computer. He was quite thin, wore small glasses, black work boots, and had long hair that had been dyed blonde at some point. We introduced ourselves and I unlocked my door and carried my stuff into my room. We talked a bit about school, I told him about my situation, and apparently he started school a week late. I gave him some pointers about how to deal with some of the aspects of the system there, and about the apartment, since I had already finished my two years there and had a lot of it down pretty well.

We certainly had one thing in common, and that was computer games. During my spare time at TSTC I spent a lot of time on ZSNES and FCE Ultra, as well as Half Life, Powerslide, Interstate ’76, ’82, and Nitro Pack. His favorite SNES emulator was SNES 9X, and he showed me how you could fast forward with it in Harvest Moon. He showed me a bunch of games he had, and I showed him some stuff on Interstate. We talked about console games, and he actually played and ruled a few that we had at one point taken interest in like Goldeneye and Bomberman 64. There was one game though that I have never played, except on the SNES console one day:

Doom.

The first thing he showed me was a demo of a deathmatch that he had on Doom Legacy on the very last day of high school with seven other people.
“Man, that’s the way to do it,” I told him, “I just took some tests and left.”
He tore the people from his class up pretty bad. He then showed me a co-op he had with a couple other people on Scythe map 30, also on Doom Legacy. He told me Legacy was a source port, and ZDoom was his favorite, though it didn’t work very well online. He showed me all kinds of stuff involving Doom. Map editors, more demos, megawads, including Mock 2, which I thought was pretty funny, even though I didn’t fully understand what it was compared to all of the other wads.

Whenever I got bored, I would go into his room, sit there on the floor at the foot of the bed and he would show me stuff on his computer, which he seemed to be glad to do so. We’d talk about all kinds of stuff. He seemed to be pretty content, though emotionally detached, which made me a little worried. He didn’t seem depressed, and he performed really well in school, but I could tell that he had a rough time at some point in life.

It wasn’t until one night while watching this really tripped out art . . . thing on PBS did he tell me about how he came from a broken home. Sometimes I need to be reminded that even though I had a rough time back when I was in high school my problems are petty compared to others. At least he had a foundation to never use illegal substances from his personal experience with someone close around him. I admired his resilience, since it all didn’t seem to get to him.

One day we finally got internet access. The cost of cable internet was $15/month because of the student discount, and if I knew that I would have gotten internet a long time ago. Before that the only internet I had was at my house in Georgetown, and if I wanted to take something back to Waco I had to save it onto a floppy or burn it onto a CD. To me it wasn’t a real big deal, since a few kilobytes of ROMs could keep me entertained for a fairly long time.

Before we got internet, since we set an appointment with Road Runner Cable to come out a long time before they finally did, I bought a $60 combination hub/router so that we could share the connection. He had been complaining about not having internet, so when we finally did I joked with him about how everyone he chatted with thought he was dead for a month.

We set up a small home network and shared some files. He put some files in his directory and told me to copy them to my computer and to install some of the ports off of the internet. Then we played Doom II co-op on Legacy, and he flew ahead while I stumbled behind, since I never played it before. Of course, he got bored on map 06, as most people do in Doom II co-op so we quit. After that I started to play the Doom games in single player on ZDoom, which is how I became familiar with them.

He turned out to be the best roommate I ever had. We had fun just hanging out there in the apartment. By the time I got a job and was about to move out, I only had three real friends in the world, and I felt ready to accept him as a fourth.
- - - - -
One day he asked me if I wanted to go for a ride with him to his favorite club back in Dallas.

“Sure, why not,” I said.

We went out to the parking lot and walked out to his car, which was an old Maverick.

“Wow, I didn’t know this was your car,” I said.

I had seen it out there for a while, but every semester there’s a whole new fleet of cars in the parking lot, and by the end of the semester there’s only a handful. The car was a light blue color, and it looked a little tired, but it amazingly had all of the original hub caps.

“For some reason I always thought these were neat,” I added, “and I never knew anyone who had one. What’s funny is that they look a lot like the AMC Javelin, but I don’t know which one came first.”

“Yeah, this thing has always been kept in a garage,” he said, “It used to be my grandma’s, and she practically gave it to me for a graduation present.”

“That’s cool. My car was pretty cheap but it was really broken down when I bought it. It’s a project car, though.”

“Heh, well, let’s go.”

On the way there we didn’t talk much. Dallas was about an hour’s drive up I35 through open plains of yellow grass, but it didn’t seem that long. I noticed he had his hair in a scrunchie, which he always did, so normally I didn’t think anything of it. At that point though I thought it was a little feminine, and I remembered he was always playing with his hair while chatting on his computer, but I felt that’s who he was and he was cool all the same.

Once we got there we walked up to the front door and he told me something that I couldn’t believe.

“Okay, now before we go inside, you need to know that the people in here all think I’m a girl.”
“What?!”

“It’s not what you think . . . it’s a long story, but just try not to blow my cover.”

“Um, ok . . . lemme just wait outside for a minute.”

“Ok, well I’ll be inside.”

I stood there thinking about what he just said and what that could possibly mean. I didn’t know if I could go inside with that on my mind. I looked around outside. It was getting late and lonely outside. After leaning against the building for a long time I finally decided I should just go in, so I did.

The first thing I noticed is that the place was pretty old. It was dark, with hard wood floors that creaked under your feet, though it was fairly large and a very well established place to hang out. One day it looked like it was going to need to be remodeled . . . or will it? Many older things are better built, with better materials, though with older hand tools. It was almost hard to tell what was original and what had been added on since whoever made it made it blend in really well.

It was certainly popular, too. It was comfortably crowded and it didn’t take long to see who the regulars there were. I also noticed people here talked more than they drank. This was more of a pub than a bar, if anything. It was alive, alive with its own aura. This was definitely the place to be. Rather than look around for my roommate, I decided to sit down and order a drink. Once in a while I would look up, and I could see him, but he looked like he was well into it with other people so I just chilled out at the bar, trying to blend in, though in the back of my mind I knew I stood out. It didn’t bother me, though. I had another drink.

I quickly noticed how he could be mistaken for a girl. In this kind of lighting and noise level, I may have mistaken him for a girl. The only reason though would be because he’s a little soft spoken and he has sort of long hair. Heck, he may be under the pretense of a female because someone mistook him for one and he went along with it as a joke, but then became trapped in the joke through some misunderstanding. That kind of thing happens all the time, and sometimes you just have to go along with it for as long as possible so that you don’t cause any conflicts. In the back of my mind, however, I knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep up this charade forever, but it wasn’t any of my concern.

I realized that after my fourth drink I needed to slow down. I hadn’t even been there that long and I was already getting drunk. Then I made the poor decision to try to mingle with the crowd. There was a group of people that had been going on for a while and I thought I had heard the whole conversation. Apparently I didn’t, because when I made a comment about what they were all talking about one of them snapped at me for butting in without knowing what they were talking about. I was ready to punch his face right in, but I somehow caught myself and backed off, because I didn’t want to cause trouble, especially with someone who appeared to be pretty well respected. Next time, I reminded myself, don’t butt in unless you heard everything said, and especially not while you’re so drunk.

I sat back down at the bar, keeping my eyes peeled for my roommate, but I didn’t see him anywhere. I sat there and thought about how much things have changed. Graduation, moving, getting a job, a place to live, all of these were inevitable realities that I had to face, just as everyone does when they get older. The only thing that made me worried was being alone. Out of all those, that stressed me the most. I didn’t want to move very far from home, but I knew at that point I didn’t have much of a choice. Whatever job I was offered I pretty much needed to take.

“Stupid job market, stupid September 11th, stupid economy,” I vainly cursed.

I guess that’s what made me get drunk so quick. After a little while I tried to converse once again. I had better luck, thankfully, with much better reactions. I began to mingle with the crowd and a few times I put my foot in my mouth, but I just blamed it on the alcohol and moved on. Then I finally found my roommate.

“There’s this other place I like to go to,” he said, “it’s new but it’s a pretty cool place. You ready to go?”

“Well sure, uh . . . you ok to drive?”

“Oh yeah, I don’t drink a whole lot. Why, what did you have?”

“Uh, just a couple three beers.”

“Sheesh, let’s go.”

The next place wasn’t too far away, though for some reason I didn’t feel very comfortable. I guess it’s because I just get paranoid whenever I drink. It didn’t really matter, because pretty soon we were there.

This club was certainly new, and for some reason I could tell it would prosper, even if it was starting off small.

“Most of the people here are from the pub we were just at,” he told me.

As we walked in, I slowly recognized some of the people there from the place before that left earlier in the night. Some of the people there, however, I didn’t recognize. Most of these people were younger, and one of them was Chinese. He seemed to be arguing about something with a couple people, and it looked like it was only because of his language barrier. I decided it was just best to let them handle it.

Here I pretty much did the same thing I did before: order a drink, try in vain to blend in, and stay at the bar for a while. I got up and talked to some people and that’s when I noticed my roommate was missing again. I was a little annoyed, because I wouldn’t mind talking to him with other people. Then I wasn’t so sure if he felt the same way. After about forty five minutes I started to get worried. I went outside and saw that his car was gone. In a worried panic I called him up on his mobile phone.

“Hey”

“Mark! Where did you go?”

“Oh, I don’t really hang out there much anymore. I’ve just kind of moved on I guess.”

“Well, fine, I guess I’ll see you later or something.”

I thought it was weird that he would just leave like that, but for some reason I didn’t feel angry at him. I didn’t feel jilted, either, more like dropped off. I didn't worry about getting a ride. I was already home.

So I got off work early after my 8 hours, at 10:30 pm. Usually we don't get off until 2 am, but that's changed since they put me in Grocery and gave me a power jack. I walked 10 blocks to the neerest bus stop, debating weather to run over to the other route across the street.

I got on, and they got on in Ogden. They interupted me listening to my pretentious electronic music to ask me if I knew the bus routes well. I did, and we kept asking each other questions. They were new to town, from Montreal, and they wanted to meet their friend at one of the most popular bars in the city.

We talked and talked and talked, about how shitty Calgary is, about how we were all insane, about the flooding. I took them there, bought them drinks, got quite drunk, and out came the drunken flirting.

It didn't go anywhere, to answer your first question. She was just passing through town, going west to the mountains on Monday. They both kissed me on the cheeks, in that French way, when we parted paths.

:'(

Yup, I don't have to deal with that shit anymore. So i give it my final flip off and fuck off. So who else is graduating from High School this year?

2 year anaversery!

is that an impressive ammount to accumulate in a 2 year span? It seems pretty normal to me.

its cool, but I cant tell.. is it a joke on my stupidity or just a new title in the ranks?

Congratulations, Fredrik!
Your IQ score is 142

http://web.tickle.com/tests/uiq/?test=uiqogt

Congratulations, Fredrik!
Your IQ score is 142

http://web.tickle.com/tests/uiq/?test=uiqogt

yyaaayy!! lets set a date and time and do this thing together!

so whos in?

Janderson, I ignored your advice and behaved like a dick. I am sorry for the way I treated you and argued with you. We have started off on the wrong foot but not all hope is lost. I am really 17 but I don't seem to have such a great understanding of sarcasm. And you are right. I do take things too literally. I made a fool out of myself and I kept making an even bigger fool out of myself. I behaved like a 9 year old. I hope, and I'm sure that nothing like this will happen again in the future.

Janderson, I ignored your advice and behaved like a dick. I am sorry for the way I treated you and argued with you. We have started off on the wrong foot but not all hope is lost. I am really 17 but I don't seem to have such a great understanding of sarcasm. And you are right. I do take things too literally. I made a fool out of myself and I kept making an even bigger fool out of myself. I behaved like a 9 year old. I hope, and I'm sure that nothing like this will happen again in the future.