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Jethro starts local fundraiser to save his own life.

Everything Whatsoever resident Jethro has launched a fund raiser to help him from getting screwed. This month he has run his cell phone bill up to a ho-jillion dollars, which is worth double in cell phone “bullshit charges” capita. Jethro planned on using the ho-jillion dollars to better his education, and perhaps eat, but instead- Jethro may be standing face to face with Repo Joe.

“I never thought the day would come where my cell phone would take the clothes of my back.” Jethro commented.

When asked to comment on the complete ridiculousness in the extremity of current overuse rates (about $0.45 a minute,) Sprint CEO stated “We had no intentions of ruining this young man’s life. However, if he were to drink a glass of poison over a slightly-over-run bill, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

For now, Jethro is selling Ramen noodles downtown in a modest attempt to get his life back together.

“I was sleeping in this alley and I saw rain filling up an old pot laying near a trash can. Next to the trash can was a RamenPride wrapper, and the idea hit me like a bolt of lightning.”

Jethro was able to sell one of his kidneys to afford his initial investment into his industry of cheap noodles. While business is slow, Jethro tries to keep his chin up at all times.

“At least I have my noodles.” he concluded.

Ok, Jethro has been hounding me like the boss I don’t have in real life, so here I sit typing stuff. There is so much stuff going on in real life hard to find a jumping in point. So let’s try making this a question & answer session.
Q & A Session with Dread

Q: so Dread, have you ever written anything in one of these ‘Blogs”
A: Not really - I wrote one page in a Blog I started once, just to see how the software worked. So that doesn’t really count.

Q: So, you area basically totally unqualified to write anything, aren’t you
A: Yes

Q: What games are you playing that you might be writing about?
A: Two main ones at the moment. Raven Shield and FFXI. Both are fantastic in their own right. More later

Q: Do you like spagetti?
A: Well yes, I do, very much. Too bad this freaking diet I’m on won’t let me eat the blessed stuff. I’m on the Adkins diet, yeah I know, I could have picked a more esoteric diet, but I had to jump on the current ‘fad’ diet. Boooring. It wasn’t me, I swear, my GF started it first and in a show of support (and because frankly I need to lose like 5 times the weight she wants to lose) we decided to both go on it at the same time, together. Having the support does help, especially when my family does things like 1) my sister shopping for after-halloween candy, buying two full bags at 50-70% off, describing in gooey, vivid detail all the deliousness 2) just yesterday, my brother brings me a plate of his wifes yummy lasagna, which I totally love but alas can’t eat. I wouldn’t even look at the plate, just asked him to ‘take it away, fast”

Q: So, is the above the kind of drivel we can expect you to write about, Dread?
A: well, yeah. And thats the good stuff. It will get much worse I’m sure.

Q: So where do you know this Jethro person from, anyhow?
A: we are clan-mates in a Ravenshield team. The two best one in the clan too I might add. ( Sorry PKX if you’re reading this, but ya know its true) It’s a blast when me &* Jethro are on the same team - I kill 3-4 of the opposite team, Jethro kills me with a gernade. I kill 5 in a row of the other side, Jethro shoots me. Thats about how it goes. Actually its fun - we have a friendly rivalry going, and when we are both playing, I notice we tend to inspire the other to do well. “Grrrrr, that Jethro has 2 more kills than me, I aint letting that F*%&$r get away with that!! Buuhahahaha!!!!” Oh, and if any of you are playing any type of MMPG out there with OUT using voice comm of some type ( TeamSpeak, Ventrillo, Roger Wilco) you aren’t getting your moneys worth. Adds a whole ‘nother level to game play. So don’t be a loser and get on voice comm NOW.

Q: And what about FFXI?
A: Yes, I have him to blame for this past 3 weeks obsession. I’m an old-school online RPG player, and by old-school I mean way before most of you were born. I was there the day that online RPGs broke the 100-people-online barrier for the very first time. For you history buffs, it was the “Gemstone III” game. we’re talking 1986, folks. (Yeah, I’m an old fart, ya whippersnappers! Eat me)
Totally text-based. Sooooo, I have only dabbled in online RPGs since then. I checked out Asherons Call when it came out, dropped that. Ditto with Everquest. There was another one in there too that I forget the name of, tried it, dumped it. I must say that FFXI has been the most fun since back in the Day. Amazing graphics. Well balanced gameplay. Fun combat. Nary a bug to be found (thanks to this being out in Japan for over a year now) So I’m hooked and will play this for years, like I did with Gemstone? Ummm, not looking like it. The blush has left the rose I’m afraid. I think Jethro touched on this also - yeah its great, but after 14 levels all I see ahead is more mob-bashing ad infinitum. Sure, I’d like to see the other world areas, and use the Uber gear, but do I want to go thru the tedious hours of levelling to get there? At this point, we don’t know. More later on this. Don’t get me wrong, If you’re really into MMORPGs, this is the best of the lot.

Anyway, Q&A’s over. Fun chatting with y’all. I’ll be back. Until Jethro gets fed up & fires me.. he’s a mean boss.

Have you ever had a short phase where you could swear that at night you are visited by some sort of Magical Unecessary Anti-Depressant Injection Fairy? I’m talking about being perfectly normal, and then all of the sudden you are a wreck… you over-analyze things that aren’t even problems, you stay awake at night thinking about things you are thinking about too much, you can’t eat because your body is so worn out from over-reacting… and in the midst of everything, for a few moments, it’s like the drug will wear off- and you realize “What is going on with me? Am I going crazy?” Then, minutes later, it happens again.

Let me put this into a huge nerdy computer metaphor that will probably be easier to understand than whatever the hell I just said…

Over the last few days, if my brain were a computer, it would be out of resources. It would be processing the same thing over and over and over again- every other function it had would either fail to happen, or it would get stuck trying to process them. Fortunately with computers, there’s the grand reset button- which works sometimes, and fortunately when that doesnt work, there’s this wonderful thing called a power cord that you can rip out. Either way, you will restart, and everything will be back to normal. The only problem is, I didn’t have a gaddam reset button! And believe me, the situation was worse than I am describing- and not funny at all (not that anyone would find this funny.)

I say “didn’t,” because today, I think that the Magical Uncessary Anti-Depressant Injection Fairy has stopped coming to me, cause I actually feel like I’m back to normal. You’re probably wondering what happened. Well, me and the love of my life had an argument- and I blew it way out of proportion and thought things were for the worst- and my over-worriedness was only making matters worse- She hit my reset button when she told me she thinks I’m on drugs, that I’m over-thinking too much, and that I was starting to scare her. I felt much better after that. It was almost like a smack in the face without the pain-tingling, numb-faced, teary-eyed results- and I love her for it- and it appears now that things are getting back to normal.

Anyways, now that I got that out of the way, let’s (and by let’s I mean, let ME- because Dread sucks) talk a little about Final Fantasy XI. I think I’m starting to lose my enthrallment over it- (and I don’t care if “enthrallment” is a word.) I guess it just got redundat (yea Jethro, didn’t see that one coming.) Another issue for me, is that all the players are uptight. They are all focused on the one goal of leveling, instead of having fun. Let me give you an example. Say you are in a group with 5 or 6 people fighting harder monsters for more XP. Well, occasionally, with potentialy harmful fien, rather than taking the first shot with my bow (gets an extra hit in before fight starts- while provoking the monster) I will walk up to it, and do something like, say, poke it. In turn the monster gets really pissed off and I laugh. While I laugh, my group gets pissed off for not hitting it to provoke it. People need to lighten up. So what if I “smack” a Tremor Ram and then he kills me in two hits- and the rest of the group in 5 more? He called me out- I picked a fight when I shouldn’t have, these things happen in life. In general, I think people have the wrong outlook on the word “Experience.” Yeah, I may have lost 300 XP, but I gained my own experience. Just because you have ten-jillion XP doesn’t mean you really got an experience- I pity their poor souls.

You know who else I pity?

People who require one of these- whether they admit it or not.

Thanks to my buddy PKX for sending this to me at work.

Anyways, back to work.

Until next time,

-Jethro

I have found a second love in life. And it just so happens to be (surprisingly) a video game. A massive multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) and it’s called Final Fantasy XI. This deliciously addicting virtual crack rock came out last Wednesday and I’ve probably put a good 30 hours into it already. It took a good 2 or 3 hours to get the controls down (which is about how long it took for me to explain the controls to Dread the next day,) but after I was comfortable with the very basics of how the game worked, I felt this tingly feeling in my chest- some say it was a result of the 6 or 7 Dr. Peppers I drank during the 3-hour (literally) installation and updating of the game, but I for one am a believer in love at first sight.

Usually I only get a resemblance of this feeling when it’s a game I’ve anticipated for a long time (such as the release of Morrowind after waiting 2 years for it to come out) but this was a little different. My buddy Chris had told me about the game a few days before it came out and it sounded interesting. My new job is paying pretty well so I figured, what the heck, I’ll pick it up with Call of Duty and Rainbow Six 3. Yeah, it’s been five days now since I bought them and I haven’t even opened those two games yet (and those were the ones I had pre-ordered.) I know they won’t disappoint me when the time comes though.

I am playing a Warrior/Ranger character whos crafting skills are going to be Fishing and Woodcrafting (so I can make arrows.) This is one of the first MMORPGs I’ve ever played that actually makes you feel like you are a [enter job here] The system (weapon restrictions, skill bonuses, etc) was very well designed, and I think it’s the best out there. The economy- the best one I’ve seen yet. Currency (gil) actually has value, and with the unique Auction system (as well as the personal Bazaar) items’ value are set by the people (but at the same time barred by the price of items in local shops.) It’s practically a virtual mythical stock market economy. There is also a unique system where different governments can gain control of different lands (enabling more trade items to be sold at shops among other nation-wide bonuses.)

I could honestly write a good twenty pages on the systems in this game. All I can say in short is that it is the slickest MMORPG out there and it will set the standard for all others to come.

During the next few weeks, you will probably see Dread and I both posting somewhat of “game journals” witch screenshots and whatnot. We are both on the same game server so we often do adventures together. I constantly smack him in game (which is a command) to remind him who’s boss- and to kind of bring what goes on in the aspects our real-life relationship (if all-out hate is theoretically any form of a relationship) into the game.

Until next time,

-Jethro