Justice.
The dust has finally settled on what has been the most epic birthday of my entire life. I am almost at a loss for words. For months I've been worrying about everything basically going to hell and yet I just got back from three days of pure awesome.
We stormed into town on Friday and spent the night with Sheri and Amy at Marie's just resting up for what we were to put our bodies through the next day. I had a suitcase full of hard liquor and Dreamcast games. There was no way this week was going to suck.
Friday: arrived at the residence of Jess and Shortmann. Attending the party: Me, Sheri, Amy, Marie, Shortmann, Jess, Erika, Crystal, Brandon, Jason, and his new lady-friend Amanda, who turned out to be really awesome. We pulled out the Dreamcast and played four-person tag-team Dead or Alive 2. I haven't done that since like sophomore year of college, seriously. Goddamn. It was good to hear the 'ol 'cast up and purring again. Honestly, considering the fact that I was an ardent Nintendo fanboy until about 2000 it's weird how much affection I have towards that little grey box. But enough of my technolust for now.
After the first round of gaming bliss, we went to the casino for Dance Dance Revolution and air hockey, then to La Senorita for dinner. I'm the muhfuggin' man because I scored reservations for 10 on Cinco de Mayo, prom night, and graduation day all at the same time. I still have no clue how I did it. I ate a wet burrito the size of my goddamn forearm and Jason told the waiter it was my birthday, instantly earning 10,000 Fucker Points. Fortunately he paid for my dinner and thus redeemed himself. Oh, and he also got me this. So I think technically I owe him now. Goddamn it.
Now I'll hope you'll forgive me, but I'm generally pretty go-with-the-flow so I excused myself this weekend to behave like a total dictator and personally I think we were all the better off because of it. Case in point: I pre-ordered Spider-Man 3 tickets and we all had a complete badass time. See? On the subject of Spidey 3, under normal circumstances I might have thought that the movie was a bit...decadent, but since I went around answering to "Emperor Caligula" all weekend it was appropriate.
After the movie, gathered the troops again, went back to Jess and Shortmann's, and began to embrace liquor heavily. After doing the ceremonial shot of straight 100-proof vodka with Amy (no chaser), I think I averaged about one shot every fifteen minutes for two hours, which kept me in a gleeful mood all night. Marie served up chocolate-dipped strawberries injected with exotic liquors, and Jess made me a cake festively emblazoned with my arcane sigil. Also I believe there may have been video games. And I was completely amazed at how everybody got along and nobody got set on fire or arrested or sent to the hospital. Stayed up until 2 a.m. screaming along to Mindless Self Indulgence and watching things on YouTube. I was completely fucking blissed out.
Sunday morning: Staggering back to consciousness. Fast food and then Jason introduced me to Settlers of Catan, a board game which plays like a combination of Risk and Monopoly, only with all the bullshit trimmed out. First of all, whereas a game of Monopoly continues for hours until your last remaining opponent yells "FUCK YOU MAN! FUCK YOU AND THIS STUPID GAME AND EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD EVER" and tosses the board to the floor, Catan is played on a points system so unless you play very poorly there's always the chance to wrestle victory from the jaws of defeat. Furthermore, resource management has a purpose: in Monopoly, if you were in a tight spot, you could offer to sell Baltic Avenue, and the other players would snicker and offer you $20 if they were feeling charitable. In Catan, resources are finite but usually the random layout of the map makes an absolute monopoly difficult, and in some cases a monopoly can be undesirable because the game smartly penalizes hoarding. It's hard to understand at first, but the game got its hooks in me something fierce, which is something no board game since HeroQuest has done.
Went back home and did the birthday redux with my parents; they gave me a ridiculous heap of media again (24 Season 3, the new NIN live DVD, the new MCR album, Galactic Pinball, LostMagic, The Red Star) and a Nerf gun that shoots 10 rounds per second.
The office arms race has officially escalated.
I really can't adequately describe it in words. This weekend was fucking incredible. Everything truly came together and I had the time of my life. My friends are absolutely amazing.
Please tell me somebody remembered to take pictures.
We stormed into town on Friday and spent the night with Sheri and Amy at Marie's just resting up for what we were to put our bodies through the next day. I had a suitcase full of hard liquor and Dreamcast games. There was no way this week was going to suck.
Friday: arrived at the residence of Jess and Shortmann. Attending the party: Me, Sheri, Amy, Marie, Shortmann, Jess, Erika, Crystal, Brandon, Jason, and his new lady-friend Amanda, who turned out to be really awesome. We pulled out the Dreamcast and played four-person tag-team Dead or Alive 2. I haven't done that since like sophomore year of college, seriously. Goddamn. It was good to hear the 'ol 'cast up and purring again. Honestly, considering the fact that I was an ardent Nintendo fanboy until about 2000 it's weird how much affection I have towards that little grey box. But enough of my technolust for now.
After the first round of gaming bliss, we went to the casino for Dance Dance Revolution and air hockey, then to La Senorita for dinner. I'm the muhfuggin' man because I scored reservations for 10 on Cinco de Mayo, prom night, and graduation day all at the same time. I still have no clue how I did it. I ate a wet burrito the size of my goddamn forearm and Jason told the waiter it was my birthday, instantly earning 10,000 Fucker Points. Fortunately he paid for my dinner and thus redeemed himself. Oh, and he also got me this. So I think technically I owe him now. Goddamn it.
Now I'll hope you'll forgive me, but I'm generally pretty go-with-the-flow so I excused myself this weekend to behave like a total dictator and personally I think we were all the better off because of it. Case in point: I pre-ordered Spider-Man 3 tickets and we all had a complete badass time. See? On the subject of Spidey 3, under normal circumstances I might have thought that the movie was a bit...decadent, but since I went around answering to "Emperor Caligula" all weekend it was appropriate.
After the movie, gathered the troops again, went back to Jess and Shortmann's, and began to embrace liquor heavily. After doing the ceremonial shot of straight 100-proof vodka with Amy (no chaser), I think I averaged about one shot every fifteen minutes for two hours, which kept me in a gleeful mood all night. Marie served up chocolate-dipped strawberries injected with exotic liquors, and Jess made me a cake festively emblazoned with my arcane sigil. Also I believe there may have been video games. And I was completely amazed at how everybody got along and nobody got set on fire or arrested or sent to the hospital. Stayed up until 2 a.m. screaming along to Mindless Self Indulgence and watching things on YouTube. I was completely fucking blissed out.
Sunday morning: Staggering back to consciousness. Fast food and then Jason introduced me to Settlers of Catan, a board game which plays like a combination of Risk and Monopoly, only with all the bullshit trimmed out. First of all, whereas a game of Monopoly continues for hours until your last remaining opponent yells "FUCK YOU MAN! FUCK YOU AND THIS STUPID GAME AND EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD EVER" and tosses the board to the floor, Catan is played on a points system so unless you play very poorly there's always the chance to wrestle victory from the jaws of defeat. Furthermore, resource management has a purpose: in Monopoly, if you were in a tight spot, you could offer to sell Baltic Avenue, and the other players would snicker and offer you $20 if they were feeling charitable. In Catan, resources are finite but usually the random layout of the map makes an absolute monopoly difficult, and in some cases a monopoly can be undesirable because the game smartly penalizes hoarding. It's hard to understand at first, but the game got its hooks in me something fierce, which is something no board game since HeroQuest has done.
Went back home and did the birthday redux with my parents; they gave me a ridiculous heap of media again (24 Season 3, the new NIN live DVD, the new MCR album, Galactic Pinball, LostMagic, The Red Star) and a Nerf gun that shoots 10 rounds per second.
The office arms race has officially escalated.
I really can't adequately describe it in words. This weekend was fucking incredible. Everything truly came together and I had the time of my life. My friends are absolutely amazing.
Please tell me somebody remembered to take pictures.