The World From Monday Morning

Okay, you pig fuckers, it's Monday, I'm back.

This week in the news: Slobodan Milosevic admited that it was over, and crawled off with his tail between his legs. Word on the street is his last words were, "I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids.

In other news, syndicated comic strip Crankshaft is making a daring leap into the contraversial topic of "Teen Pregnancy". Welcome to the 80s, folks.

Lastly, I've noticed a sudden upswing in the number of young 20somethings and high school girls who have Web cams these days. Don't ask how I've noticed, you don't want to know.

That's it for this Monday. Let's see if I can keep up the momentum.

So, no shit. Mere days after I decide to bring back my World From Monday Morning, I get my first nasty email! No less, it's about something I wrote about THREE YEARS ago.

Subject: "the game" idea you had
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 10:40:12 -0400
From: daniel k innes
To: bolthy@bolthy.com

This is about "the game" idea you had, I'm pretty sure i have a better idea than a bunch of people running around killing each other, it could just be illegal to have more than so many years of welfare, such as 2 years, unless there is a reasonable excuse, i think that this idea is more humane and . . . uh. . . whats the word, oh yea, **LEGAL**, then your "game" idea, just a thought.

To which I replied:

Wow... three years and this is the first mail I've gotten over this.

My point wasn't to make something humane, legal, or reasonable. My idea was to come up with some drastic and caustic solution that I found amusing at the time. (Three years ago.) You gotta admit, though. There's a certain appeal to it. Same thing that draws people to watch the "Ultimate Fighting Championship" to get that sensation of real fighting you don't get on WWF, or the "Banned from TV" tapes you can rent at your video store to see convenience store clerks shot in front of security cameras. Whee!

Seriously, though, the idea was largely in jest. Sick jest, but still jest. If you want to be noble to someone a bit more current and serious, I suggest http://bitch.shutdown.com . I'm sure the Misanthropic Bitch would love to hear from you.

Not that I have anything against the Misanthropic Bitch. I really enjoy her site and I'm even on the mailing list. I don't always agree, but I'm always entertained. And I could never match her in terms of shock.

In other news:

Apparently there's been this big stink about the presence of an untested biotech corn. Biotech corn. I've only ever seen that word in sci-fi roleplaying games. And here it is in corn. Specifically, it has appeared in corn tortilla shells sold by Safeway and the brand of tacos marketed by Kraft Foods under the "Taco Bell" brand. I don't know about you, but I think the words "Taco Bell" and "biotech" just do not deserve to be on the same page. If you want to up the creep factor, consider this: Kraft Foods is owned by the Phillip Morris corporation, which is also the leading producer of cigarettes in the country. Taco Bell is owned by Pepsi. This is starting to sound like a bad episode of The X-Files. For the full article from the Seattle Times, click here.

This week's thing to ponder: Is the Turkish army out to kill fancy cats?

So, this isn't exactly about a current topic. This is about something that happened a couple weeks ago. Not even big news. Just a day in the life.

So, the Wizards of the Coast Game Center on University Way was having a tournament. The tournament was competition for a copy of the new Monster Manual for the highly acclaimed Dungeons and Dragon, 3rd Edition. Wahoo. The concept behind the tournament was that all the players got to play monsters using the "aleternate races" rules from the Dungeon Masters Guide, with creatures from the new Monster Manual. You all got put into a maze, and had to kill each other off. Teams of four. There were 12 teams. There was one guy running the show. It was a logistical nightmare that lasted for over 13 hours.

In the midst of this I left to go to a book reading and signing by literary great, Phillip Pullman, who was plugging his new book, The Amber Spyglass. Can I just say that Phillip Pullman is one of the most amazing people I got to listen to? I was both more inspired and more daunted in terms of continuing my writing than I have been in a long time.

Riding on this heady joy I returned to the tournament (they were a few blocks apart), and found things still plodding along. We found different ways to amuse ourselves during the continuous down time. Finally, after ten hours of sitting around, we went to sudden death where we all got teleported to the center of the maze and had a big battle royale.

I was one of the first to die. Suffice it to say, I had a lot more time on my hands.

In the process of waiting to see if my team would make it far enough to win something, I got attacked by what I have chosen to call a Gamer Leech.

There are a number of strange people in geek subculture, people who get a tad too obsessed with their hobbies. People who can do nothing but talk about them endlessly. Some of my friends refer to these people as "Cheeto Fingers" for a rather abstract reason, but I think they are a bit more diverse than that. The Gamer Leech is one particular subspecies to note.

The Gamer Leech seeks out one single thing in life: someone who will listen to him drone on about his characters that he's played in the past, cool things he's done in Everquest, etc, etc.

Now, this isn't to say that anyone who talks about those sorts of things are bad. On the contrary, you often find people with a sense of showmanship who can tell engaging and amusing tales about how they've spent four hours making Rat Sandwiches before being able to make Dark Elf Souflé so he could feed it to his dark elf friends. Then there are the Leeches.

The Leech has an inherent need to prove to people how cool he is. Because really, he's cool. Right? If you don't initially believe he's cool, wait till you hear what special followers his 24th level paladin has.

This particular person was playing one of the scads of pixies in the game. Pixies were insanely useful in this particular setting. Not particularly durable. But really handy from a tactical point of view.

He died pretty quick.

So then he went off about how he should have raided the stash of magic items, and that his pixie was so fast that the other people who made it there in the first round would have only seen his back. Then came the story about the neat spell his necromancer in Ravenloft made...

Of course, I was the target of all these anecdotes. Everyone else succeded in ignoring him.

My tragic flaw is that I'm "nice". I'm the guy that nods as though interested whent he really boring people start talking to him. In general I'm not that social, but I don't have the heart to just shrug people off when they want to talk to me.

And so I fall prey to the Leech.

At one point I managed to slip off when he wasn't paying attention. And then someone else was trying to shake him and shot him off in my direction. And I was trapped again. ARGH! Unfortunately, one of the people that I may be gaming with in the near future is like this. So now I'm faced with the prospect of having to become more blunt and saying, "That's great. Please stop."

I'm not sure if this is more of a rant about my own shortcomings, or about the evil people in this world. It could be that three straight days of NyQuil is fucking with my head. You make the call.

Yeah, I know, it's technically no longer morning, but it's still Monday. It's been a busy Monday.

So, I had this really funny idea about a countermeasure for Gamer Leeches, but I decided to save it for next Monday. Kinda fitting since I'm going to a four-day convention later this week.

No, instead I thought I'd talk about something a bit more personal.

This weekend I had a five hour pisswar with someone. I'd normally call this person my friend, but that implies I care a good deal about this person. I think I decidedly proved that I didn't.

There have been a couple of occasions in my life when I discovered I'd lost all respect for a person I once cared for, and subsequently didn't care if I spent a few consecutive hours being a general dick to them.

There have also been a couple of occasions where I've managed to really fuck up a friendship because I tried to cross the boundaries between "friends" and "more than friends".

I think that for both situations, I may have done it again.

This is not an event that appears in my Legend. This is something real and current and fairly personal and as such has not graduated into "History".

About six months ago, I met a girl. She wasn't the most perfect girl I'd ever laid eyes upon, but she was interesting. I didn't have a lot of respect for her at the beginning, but she managed to impress me a few times, which caught my attention eventually.

Which was about the time she broke up with her boyfriend.

I knew she wasn't looking for a relationship. I knew she wasn't attracted to me. I figured that if I didn't say anything, this would pass on like all the other girls I have a passing fancy for. Besides, the Bolthy Code of Conduct clearly stated that I just didn't want to try and impose my affections on the situation.

It was obvious that things were strained between me and her. An idiot could have told you about it. There were a few things that happened that made me fairly uncomfortable around her, in sort of that "jealous and outside of things" sort of way. I've never been fond of being on the outside looking in, and when it involves a girl I'm interested, it hurts all the more.

Then, one night, after she and I had put away a fair amount of wine, I confessed my feelings for her. I felt like a moron. I broke the sacred rule. The eidolons of Nicole and Kate came up and took turns kicking me for being a jackass.

So, things got tense between us. I didn't know what to do. All I knew was that this thing was hanging between us. It didn't matter that I was hardly subtle in hiding my feelings and that she knew the whole time. (Never underestimate the power of delusion.) All I knew was that I fucked up. All I knew was that I was going to lose a friend just like I'd lost Nicole and Kate.

So, for a few months, this went on. Things went in cycles. Some weeks would be good weeks. Some weeks would be bad weeks. This combined with other shit that was hitting me had me crawling to my therapist every other week just to gain some degree of sanity. I bounced between loving her and being pissed off about all the stupid things that I disliked about her in the first place, most importantly her flakiness.

At one point, (after things had really blown up and she spent an hour walking home crying, as well as being up until the wee hours of the morning crying, leaving me feeling like I'd truly fucked things up... but the next day, of course, I was the one overreacting to things...) we reached a moment of safety. We managed to find even ground between us. Things were almost "fine".

Then, after a weekend which had the highlight of me being a nervous wreck after accompanying her to the emergency room regarding a "female" infection, and subsequently feeling useless and unwanted, I was invited to a birthday party. I didn't really know the person whose birthday it was that well. Some friend of hers. Yes, she was the one inviting me. I figured, "Hell, why not?"

As the evening progressed, I realized that she was more than a little close to the person whose birthday it was. Conversations after the fact revealed that, yes, they were dating.

I didn't know what to do. I was hurt and confused and felt like the world was dropping out from underneath me. I decided that I wouldn't just run away from this. I'd face it, and communicate without trying to send her on a guilt trip. I sent her a long email explaining how I felt, even though most of it was "I'm confused and hurt and I don't really know why." I tried to call her. She stopped answering email. She returned very few phone calls. Finally I just stopped trying. Everyone including my therapist thought I was being a jackass about this. My therapist felt I was trying to squeeze a relationship out of things still. I saw her infrequently due to mutual social circles, but she was caught up in her new life.

It was a month before she called me up and wanted to get together for dinner. We got together, had a few drinks. I was withdrawn but had on my "happy face". She likely did the same. Everything went relatively well. I didn't hear from her for another month and a half after that. The second occasion went slightly less well than the first, though I noticed that my discomfort around her was significantly less. I was a bit annoyed that she wouldn't admit that anything was wrong, and since I had spent so much effort trying to open communication in the past only to have her disappear, I wasn't in the mood for taking the first step again. But other than that, things went well. I just didn't seem to care any more.

And then this last Saturday happened. I started off being good natured, palling around, the usual bit of horseplay. She got a little annoyed with me. Her excuse was that she hadn't eaten. Of course, she always has some excuse for the moment. She retalliated a bit. Things escalated. Basically it became a piss war. Both of us having no patience with the other and not hiding it too well. Most of the things I said to her were answered with "Fuck you", or "You know, that's really none of your business" or the like. I'd like to think I "won" in the short term on that one, though I don't know that it's really much of a victory, in that what I said bothered her way more than anything she said to me. On the other hand, I remained in a generally pissed off mood for the next 24+ hours. Which may count as a victory for her.

So, now here I am wondering where things go from here. I've possibly destroyed a friendship once and for all. She may possibly just feel like it isn't worth worrying about and will feel just "fine" in a few days.

I guess the thing that really sticks with me though is that I don't care.

I'm pissed and a bit frustrated with her, but I frankly don't care whether she likes me or not any more. I don't really care if she thinks I'm the worst possible person ever. This whole drama has consumed six months of my life and I'm fucking tired of it.

I'm more than willing to admit that I may be fucking up big time. I may be totally in the wrong and I'm likely behaving like a selfish and immature jerk. It took me a few years to really feel bad about Kate. I'll likely never feel bad about Cas.

And I really don't care what happens with this current person, and that scares me more than anything else. I care about what effect it will have on the rest of my life, but her as an individual? I'd be happier if she was gone.

What really brings a person to that point? What causes them to decide that someone who they once cared a good deal about is no longer that important? How can any person become so venomously bitter that they can have so little regard for someone. Has my general hatred in the past been mere childsplay? Is the real meaning of hatred mean that you've finally reached the point where you don't care what happens to someone else?

I don't know. Maybe I'm talking out of my ass. Maybe in a few days I'll calm down and all will be right in the world. Granted, in a few days I'll be sharing a hotel room with her boyfriend, so I may just end up writing this thing from prison, awaiting trial for murder.

I'll try and be more light hearted and cheerfully obnoxious next week. I promise.

Hello and welcome to Tuesday night!

I would have done this one yesterday, but I had just gotten home Sunday night really late, slept in till after noon on Monday, and spent the rest of the day "working" or some semblence thereof. I'm not exactly in a great mood, having just discovered that I have -$2.66 in the bank, which will probably grow in size once the overdraft charges kick in. Pig fuckers. That combined with the fact that I'm nearly out of anti-depressants and I may have made my life fairly complicated this weekend has me in a less than chipper mood.

However.

I did promise my asshole solution for dealing with Gamer Leeches, and so here it is. I realize that the build-up is not the same as the pay-off, but thems the breaks.

Your standard gamer has what you call "polyhedral dice". Polyhedral just means it has many sides. When most people mention dice, they think of the six-sided jobbies that come with most popular board games. However, years of war gamers and roleplayers have developed dice with different numbers of sides. 4-siders, 8-siders, 10-siders, 12-siders, and 20-siders are the most common of these. Standard gamer notation for these is the letter "d" followed by the number of sides. A 6-sided die is referred to generally as a "d6".

Now that we have the terminology down, let's take a specific die as an example: The illustrious d4. The d4 is arguably the most useless of dice. Most game systems use either the commonly available d6, the generally popular d10s (which you can roll two of and generate a number between 1 and 100), or the d20 which you really only see in D&D. (Hence, the d20 system.)

And really, unless you play D&D or one of a few other obscure ass games, you are never going to deal with a d4.

But, most gamers have them. It's part of the set.

Now, for those of you who aren't up on your geometry (not to mention those who didn't own a Pyraminx during the Rubik's Cube fad), a 4-sided polyhedron is a pyramid.

Which means there's a sharp pointy bit on the top that really sucks if you step on it.

Kinda like a caltrop.

Which is why I laughed pretty hard the first time I ever heard it referred to as a "Gamer Caltrop".

Now, for the dim-witted in the audience, this is my "brilliant scheme". You get a shit load of these. When you find yourself faced by a Gamer Leech, you run away and dump a bag of gamer caltrops in a wide swath between you and him. This may not stop him, but it will confuse the fuck out of him long enough for you to get away.

I can tell. You're impressed. Heh.

Tune in next week. I may be in an even shittier mood. Wahoo.

So, this week I could rant about the whole fiasco surrounding the election, but I think I'll bow out of that one. Mainly because the immediate thing that comes to mind is a discussion that was passing in front of me (I wasn't involved) between friends of mine. I think I'll resume my policy of not ranting about things too close at hand.

Instead I offer a musing.

I was invited to a fashion show at a club down in Pioneer Square by a couple friends of mine. The fashion show was apparently a "fetish fashion show", and we were going to go after a hearty bout of gaming. (What, you have a better suggestion for ways to spend a Saturday night?) Now, I don't exactly have the most extensive of wardrobes. My nicest clothes generally represent the low end of frat boy chic. I certainly don't own any goth/fashion wear. So, I just put on some black slacks, a black tshirt, and a purple sweatshirt because it was cold.

That didn't last long.

Long story short, the friends that invited me loaned me a shirt and a trench coat to wear.

There's two things that linger with me.

The first is that: holy shit, there are people that are the same size as me. I spent most of high school and college spending disproportionate amounts of time with people who were smaller than me. Even the larger people didn't match my girth. I just got used to the plight of being on my own in terms of clothes.

The other part is that it's always a bit odd to wear someone else's clothes out in public. The shirt was a button-up, short-sleeve affair. It was black, textured, and a little shiny. For some reason it reminds me of the pants Lucy Liu is wearing in Charlie's Angels, when she's climbing around the helicopter at the end. It's nothing like any shirt I've ever owned. And lord knows that as much as I think trenchcoats are neat, I've never owned one.

In retrospect I wish I'd looked at myself in a mirror. It didn't occur to me. The second thing that lingers is that it's just so odd to slip into someone else's clothes, walk around in their world for a little bit, and then go back to your life. While I've always liked to think of myself as "multi-faceted" (or is that just "two-faced"), and capable of appreciating any number of things, my life has gotten progressively stranger and stranger, and the circles I move in have strained my ability to blend.

As an extra feature this issue, I thought I'd include my recent strange phrases that I've been using so you can use them in your own every day dialogue. Yeah, it's all about the hubris for me.

This week's stock phrase is "No! Dance party makes [insert bad thing here] go away!" It stems from a Saturday Night Live skit with Wil Farrell as Janet Reno in "Janet Reno's Dance Party". At one point someone brings up the incident at Waco, and Janet Reno screams, "No! Dance party makes Waco go away!" So, at some point during AmberCon NW, I did that about something or other, and have continued doing so.

As a closing note: I have no idea what "Turning Japanese" by The Vapors is supposed to be about. I don't know why he's turning Japanese over his girlfriend's pictures...

So, I don't have a lot to say this week. While I'm certain I can attribute it to a number of reasons, I'm going to pin it on one poor sap: My paperboy. Or girl. Or man. Or person. Or whatever the fuck he/she/it/they/we/them/whatever may be.

The bitch has not delivered my fucking paper. I haven't gotten one in a week. I've narrowed this down to two theories. One is that some bitch is stealing my paper. The other is that some bitch ain't deliverin' my paper. Since no matter what time I get out of bed there's still no fucking paper, I'm inclined to think that it's the latter.

Heads will roll.

So, in other news: Chicks are confusing, and generally suck. If you have to ask why, then you've obviously never met a chick.

Anyway, it's late. I'm tired. I need to get the fuck out of here. Bye!

Hello, and welcome to hell. Population: me.

Put on your chin straps, folks, this one is gonna be a long one. This weekend was hell.

First up: Airborne Express. They have succeeded in heinously pissing me off. I haven't been this pissed off since my five hour piss-war from a several entries back. Rather than recount my hell, I'll just copy and paste the email I sent to them:

Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 02:17:13 -0600 (CST)
To: cac.web
Cc: bolthy@bolthy.com
From: bolthy@bolthy.com
Subject: Hi. I have a complaint.

So, on November 15, I ordered checks from my bank. I needed to pay bills, so I was in kind of a hurry. So when they offered me Airborne Express second day delivery, I jumped at it. For some reason I mistook Airborne Express for being part of the US Postal Service. This is where my hell begins.

I was told it would arrive on Monday the 20th. Not exactly two-day turn around, but thems the breaks. I was in a hurry.

On Tuesday (note that this isn't Monday), the 21st, I found the notice on my door saying that they had tried to deliver it and I wasn't home. I realized my mistake in asking for Airborne Express, and so I figured I'd just have to call Customer Service the following day to get the problem solved.

On Wednesday I call, and they tell me that they will cancel the order and redeliver it on Friday, the 24th. ie: The day after Thanksgiving. I say, "Great!" figuring, "I really need to get these bills paid." So, Friday I dutifully stay home all day waiting for the delivery to arrive. All day.

At a quarter to five I call customer service, and they say, "Well, it looks like they're probably not going to make it today. We were really busy today. It will get resent on Monday, or you can come in between 10 and 2 to pick them up."

Now, let me explain a little bit about myself: I don't own a car. I don't even have a driver's license. I have to get everywhere by bus. And your customer service was quite good at informing me how I can get to their office by bus. I had to be somewhere by noon, but I figured that I could make it there and back in just enough time.

The trip by bus took over an hour. I got there just after ten to find that the doors weren't open yet. I was willing to forestall killing anyone because at 10:10 am someone did come and open the door. I gave him my airbill number, and he went in back to get my package.

It wasn't there.

After all my conversation with your customer service about how to get to the office, some helpful individual had left a note saying it had to be delivered that Saturday. So I was there, and my package wasn't.

The man was very apologetic. He said he was sorry a lot. He asked if it would be okay if it was left on my doorstep. I explained to him that my apartment building isn't the safest place to leave a package, and I could in no way hang out at my apartment waiting (again) for the delivery to come. Finally, having no other recourse (because I couldn't take Monday off to wait for the package AGAIN), and he said he couldn't have it redirected to my work, I said, "Fine, if your delivery man can get into the building, he can leave it at the door to my apartment."

Then I go out to the busstop. The next bus isn't coming for another hour, and so all I can do is stand in the cold and the rain, being very pissed off about the situation I'm in. Once the bus finally arrives, it takes me two hours for me to get to my appointment, making me an hour late.

So, I finally get home close to midnight. No checks on my doorstep. No checks outside the building. The website indicates:

Status: Delivered

I can only assume that my checks have been stolen.

I really hope that you have something more to say than, "Sorry."

Because of this little fiasco, I'm going to have to cancel these checks, order new ones, and probably use money orders to pay all my bills. I have lost 12 hours of my life waiting on your company to provide decent service. I'm now out $30 for the checks, and will likely have to pay another $20+ to get new checks ordered. Not to mention all those pesky charges for money orders.

I really hope that you have something more to say than, "Sorry."

Suffice it to say, I'll be telling everyone I can about this fiasco. Thanks to the Internet, that numbers in the hundreds. Not to mention letting my bank, and their check distributor, about this. And of course, people tell their friends about stuff like this, of for no other reason than the look of shock at how absurd this situation is.

My Airbill Number is:
17508364473

I really hope that you have something more to say than, "Sorry."

I sent that Saturday night, when I was good an pissed. Among the things I didn't note was during the hour waiting for the bus I was in a blind rage where all I could do was infrequently scream. Literally. No fucking joke. I got my bills paid, but I'm out for blood now. Sure, I'll admit that the loss of the checks is technically my fault. I'm mainly pissed about waiting a week and a half for checks that were supposed to be sent on "two day delivery". So, before I got down to writing this, I got a reply (lordy, lordy). They said, and I quote:

Please accept my sincere apologies for the frustrating experience described in your message. It appears Airborne failed to provide the level of service that you expected or needed for your shipment. Please believe that we are committed to providing our customers with the kind of service that they can rely on.

I have forwarded your message to the appropriate party for review. We appreciate that you have taken the time to bring this to our attention as your comments are very important to us. Positive or negative, they remain a crucial tool for determining the quality of our service and areas in need of improvement.

I apologize for the frustrations you have experienced with this shipment and hope that future shipping experiences you have with Airborne will meet or exceed your expectations.

Is it just me, or does this look like about 130 words more than necessary for saying, "We're sorry." Hell, this looks like a form letter. I wouldn't be surprised if some clerk has a list of pregenerated responses to copy and paste into email. I don't want a "sorry" from some random customer service guy. I want blood, goddammit! I want personalized notes written from each of the parties responsible for making me waste waaaaay too much of my time. I want heads on pikes. I want free whores. Hell, I just want something more than "Sorry." I'll take a hug from a random Airborne Express mook, for Christ's sake. Just don't give me one more of a million meaningless apologies.

I'm gonna give them a few days before sending off letters (with stamps and everything) to them, my bank, and the company that delivers the checks.

I was going to bitch about my credit card company, but I have no fucking clue what's up with that. I'm gonna be scrutinizing my next statement.

Just to add to your feeling of holiday joy, I got a charming anecdote from a friend of mine. I have to leave out a number of details about his specific circumstances because he doesn't want the towing company tracking him down.

Anyway, he and some friends had gone up to Edmonds to catch a ferry across the Puget Sound. Rather than go through the hell of driving onto the ferry, they decided to park the car and walk on, getting picked up on the other side by family and relations.

Unfortunately, the reserved spot they had planned on parking in was occupied by some other bastard, so they parked across the street at the local mall. They figured, "Hell, it's Thanksgiving, who's going to ticket or tow a car on Thanksgiving? It's not like the mall's open or anything."

In the tradition of Arlo Guthrie, they had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, hopped on the ferry to go back home and discovered that the local towing company had come along and cleared the parking lot. As I hear it, no one called them in, they just went and started towing cars.

Something like 40 cars were towed that fine Thanksgiving day, many of them belonging to families that had gone across the Puget Sound to visit relatives on the holidays. The cost to get their car out of the vehicular hoosegow was a tidy $200. Multiply that times 40 and you get a hefty $8,000.

Were they justified in towing the cars? Sure. Those 40 people had parked illegally in a mall parking lot. Was it a lame ass thing to do on Thanksgiving? Yeah. It was. Towing companies aren't law enforcement. They don't do this to enforce parking regulations designed to ease traffic and prevent safety hazards. They do it because they have some sort of agreement with the mall, and they get paid $200 for each car they nail. The cost for the towing company's soul appears to be about eight grand.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Grinch. It's name is Mary's Towing, and you can call them at (206) 743-5800. Reports are that they're going to be fairly apathetic to any commentary you could make, though.

On a lighter note, the most colorful image from my Thanksgiving consisted of looking into a kitchen to see a goth in full regalia using a hand-held electric beater to mash the potatoes. That just amused me to no end. Tragically hip domesticity...? I'm gonna have to rehash my ideas for a Nine Inch Nails Christmas special.

Oh, and I actually played in another D&D tournament this weekend. Got third place, and it ran much smoother. Had about a tenth of the people from the previous one. Note to self: Seriously consider stocking up on gamer caltrops.

On a random side note, the quality of my paper service has gone up significantly now that all those people working for the Seattle Times are on strike. What's up with that?

This week's neat word is "booty". As it "butt". My usage involves, "They did what sort of bullshit? Dude, that's just booty." I picked it up from Blacky, I think. That combined with the Beastie Boys song of the same name.

Okay, yeah, I know. It's Wednesday. I said I'd have something on Monday. And what's worse, next Monday is Christmas and I won't be having any net access for a few days. I may write something before getting on the plan on New Years Day, but otherwise, look for me the following Tuesday as I lounge about my apartment recovering from a week and a half of vacation.

So, the reason for the month-long hiatus on The World from Monday Morning is that there was this security breach on the server where all the personal sites are hosted at where I work. (Yes, bolthy.com is currently hosted through work.) And so they shut off all access to it. I finally have access back. Yay for me.

The reason for the two day delay in me getting off my ass and writing this on Monday is that after a couple weeks of having absolutely nothing to do at work, when I could have been feverishly cooking up rants, we had our copy meeting for the company newsletter I work on and I have stuff to do now. Plus, on Monday, I discovered that I'm going to have to make extensive changes to the corporate site, which will be horribly lame and time consuming. But, I'm feeling lazy today. I'm going on vacation starting tomorrow, and it's hard to get particularly motivated for anything.

So, anyway, here's me being a ranting git.

First off, I've noticed something. I've noticed that people give me their left-overs. Left-over booze. Left-over lunch. Whatever, I get it. The CEO of my company, a company which boasts over 300 employees in its Seattle office alone, sought me out because he didn't want the rest of his sandwich. ... the hell...?

Why do they do this? Well, because they know I'll eat it. I didn't get up to 265 pounds living off of air, y'know.

But it's still insulting.

Next on my shit list: The Wizards of the Coast Game Center no longer gives out free refills on their sodas.

See, here's the deal. The WotC Game Center is located on University Way in Seattle. University Way is basically the main drag next to the University of Washington, affectionately known by the thousands of students and faculty, plus most of the city of Seattle, as "The Ave". It's been known as the Ave for decades. I'm guessing it's because the bordering streets are "Avenues", but not University Way. The truth, though, is lost in the mists of time. The Ave boasts a sizable homeless population, the most notable of which are teens known as "Ave Rats". Basically they're either run-aways or kids with nothing better to do, so they hang out all day on University Way, beg for change, make general pests of themselves, and seem to be able to afford dyed hair and body piercings despite the fact that they're "homeless". Some of them have been there for years. There's even a van that comes around and gives them hot soup in the evening.

There are laws against loitering in the city of Seattle. Basically you can't sit or lie down on sidewalks in front of businesses. So they stand there. With their friends, and their dogs, and they beg for money. I remember one occasion when there were so many hanging out in front of Taco Bell that people were scared to go in.

Ave Rats are the reason behind there no longer being free refills on sodas at the WotC Game Center.

See, the WotC Game Center has a restaurant attatched to it called "Dalmuti's". People down in the basement of the Game Center in a Magic tournament or playing roleplaying games have long had the honor of being able to go upstairs all day and get a free refill from Dalmuti's. Bottomless Mountain Dew is a beautiful thing. Since I'm playing in both a D&D game and an L5R game that meet there, I spend anywhere from 6 to 12 hours at WotC, and I have come to enjoy the fact that I can drink all the sugar and caffeine I can bear.

Unfortunately, the Ave Rats have also taken to doing that. They hang out in Dalmuti's drinking their free pop all day, and sometimes pass their cup on to their friends so they can get refills also.

So the WotC staff put the smack down and there are no longer any refills. Because of the Ave Rats.

Fuckers.

I swear, the Ave Rats just stroll through and, like an anti-Midas, everything they touch turns to shit. There's no longer a McDonald's on the Ave. Why? Because of Ave Rats. They fill the local Taco Bell, and people are generally too afraid to do extensive shopping on the Ave because of the Ave Rats.

I don't know where I came upon this great dislike of Ave Rats. I used to work at the Jack in the Box on the Ave, and a number of the regs were Ave Rats. Now I just can't stand the filthy mother fuckers.

Next on the shitlist, more Gamer Leech anecdotes.

So, there I am, sitting at the Ultimate Gaming Table (yes, they really call it that) at the Game Center. I'm two hours early for my game so I'm just flipping through some library books, killing time. The place is packed with people playing the Legend of the Five Rings collectible card game, and so a bunch of people hang out at the table we'll be gaming at later. Blacky and Kai apparently knew them. I didn't. All I knew was that they were annoying.

The story I've received is that they were LARPers. They apparently played a lot of Vampire: The Masquerade. So for two hours I got to listen to asinine anecdotes about how cool their characters in Vampire were. I couldn't go anywhere. There was no where else to sit. If I wanted to go somewhere else I'd have to leave the downstairs entirely, and I wasn't sure what their intentions were with the table. Since we had it reserved, I didn't want to just abandon it to some random gamers. So, I suffered. Blah!

Last note is about a review I read for the Dungeons and Dragons movie posted on IMDB. The opening line says it all. "The following comments are being written by me, but in character as my wizardly alter ego—"

Weep for the future.

© 2000 Jeremy Zimmerman, unless where noted. All rights reserved. Comments, complaints, death threats, and flaming chickens may be sent to bolthy@bolthy.com.