A Thumb To The Eye Number 23

No I won’t do it again, I don’t want to pretend
If it can’t be like before I’ve got it let end
I don’t want what I was, I had a change of head
But maybe someday…
Yeah, maybe someday

I’ve got to let it go and leave it gone
Just walk away, stop it going on
Get too scared to jump if I want too long
But maybe someday

I’ll see you smile as you call my name
Start to feel, and it feels the same
And I know that maybe someday’s come
Maybe someday’s come…again!

So tell me someday’s come
Tell me some days come again…

No I won’t do it some more, it doesn’t make any sense
If it can’t be like it was, I’ve got to let it rest
I don’t want what I did, I had a change of tense
But maybe someday…

I’ll see you smile as you call my name
Start to feel, and it feels the same
And I know that maybe someday’s come
Maybe someday’s come…
If I could do it again
Maybe just once more
Think I could make it work like it did before
If I could try it out
If I could just be sure
That maybe someday is the last time
Yeah maybe someday is the end
Oh maybe someday is when it all stops
Or maybe someday always comes again…
-“Maybe Someday” by the Cure, off of the incredible album, Bloodflowers.
This song is dedicated to my now deceased guinea pig, Guinea Pig, Verbena to her friends. Everyone who met her was her friend. She will be missed more than even a Robert Smith song can do justice to.

I’ll be the first to admit there should have been a column last week. I wrote one. I edited it. And it sucked. So, instead of mailing one in, I took the week off. Does that make me lazy? Probably, but I made a silent oath that this edition of the Thumb was going to be nothing but quality. So, the old column goes in the file and I wrote this extra special one just for you guys, my readers. I don’t think anyone, least of all my fellow workers, the Kliq, realize what writing for this site means for me, but it is a very special part of my life. Thank you for reading and making this happen.

So, what have I been playing lately? Nothing. No video game has been played by me, save for 15 minutes of Let It Ride! on Hoyle Casino so I could remember the payout schedule before I went to work, since the 22nd of January. Egad! What is wrong with me? Nothing much, but I’ll give you guys a look at what has been going on. I’ve been reading all of Dan Brown’s books, and judging from how many empty spots there are in his section of the library, I’m not the only one. He writes about the Illuminati and evil monks, people. It’s great stuff. My Warhammer 40k Ork army welcomed an archive metal Skorcha Wartrakk into the fold this week, as I await my Stormboyz and plan the rest of my new Blood Axe army. Fun. Oh, and a little game called Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance II is on the way, so yay for me!

Then there is the Cure boxed set, Join the Dots. Sure, I had a smattering of these songs on strange European compilations of questionable origin and CD singles, but to have all of it in one place. Despite Laflin’s distaste for the Cure, I have never actually dealt with Cure fans, aside from my outwardly normal buddy Nick, so I never dreamed of emulating thier clothes and hair, although I could use a big fat Gretsch like Robert is prone to using. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t really inquire into the history of a band, specifically their social lives, and I don’t memorize lyrics. I don’t lurk in chats or any of that blather. I just buy albums and the odd T-shirt and go to shows. Is that strange? I mean, I love KMFDM, but I couldn’t tell you how old Pig is or Sascha’s favorite gum flavor.

Well, what does all of this non- game stuff have to do with you? Read on…

The following events took place between 12:00 PM and 3:00 PM on the day I was supposed to do my column. It is also going to be the longest three hours of my life.

12:05 PM

I wake up to my alarm’s fifth whole minute of ringing. My head is still swimming in last night’s Guinness Draught. Salty red eyes try to focus and see out of soggy holes, scanning past my alarm clock and wallet for my glasses. Bespectacled, watch in hand, I pull on weekend old jeans and do my stagger shuffle walk upstairs into the too white midday light coming in through blinds opened by an excessively cheery roommate. I need a drink.
Breakfast screwdriver and soggy leftover pizza lead me into my computer room. With only the light from around the curtains and half a dozen open books strewn about, my room looks like the chamber of a pop culture worshipping monk. In a way it is. I sit in the same sweaty $15 computer chair as the day before and give the mouse it’s first few clicks of a new day. To the home page I head.




It loads so slow that my pizza is gone and my screwdriver is only a slosh at the bottom of my tumbler before any progress is made. A new screwdriver is two long sips in before the page finally longs. All I can say is, Laflin better fucking rock to make this worth all this shit. There we go.

The Gamer’s Hangover
by Jeff Watson… What the fuck?

A mouthful of vodka and orange juice goes down the wrong hole. Coughing ensues.

12:35 PM

Keyboard is clean and screwdriver is out of my lungs for the most part. I slip on a Gary Numan shirt and stare in disbelief at the screen. Jeff Watson? Where the Hell is my favorite Lutheran, Cory Laflin? Seriously, I am way to hung over for all of this. A quick scroll through his column should clear all of this up.

Nintendo Launches New Pocket Poker
SEGA To Unveil Cribbage ’05
Microsoft Chess Via E-Mail 8.0 Goes Gold
Is Craps The Next Big Thing?

Poker… Cribbage… Chess… Craps… Something isn’t right here. I hit back and look for another column to read.

The Happy Gamer
by liquidcross

Tagline: Knight to C-4, Bitch!
Ruy Lopez Rocks Your Ass Once Again!

This can’t be good. Watson back, Laflin gone, liquid happy, and what is it with chess all of the sudden? Besides, everyone knows it’s all about the motherfucking London System. I must inquire deeper. I go to a search engine and type it in:
Cory Laflin



935 Results. Well that certainly is a spanner in the works.
Cory Laflin Wichita


67 Results. This is a little more workable.

3. Wichita Racketeer Found Dea…:

The apparent head of the Midwest’s largest gambling ring, dead at 29.

click
Needless to say, learning that Cory had been the head of an organized crime ring and was three weeks dead struck me as a little bit odd. I’m pretty sure someone must have typed up all of those Gamer’s Hangover reports. They can’t have all been Watson. Time to do more searching, but first…

1:05 PM

Pepsi and Jose meet me in the computer room. This is going to be one of those days. So, I have this to go on:

Watson works for the Mania, again
Liquidcross is happy and uses Ruy Lopez
Laflin was a crime lord
Laflin is dead
Chess and other, non- video games are VERY popular
I’m getting a little drunk for early afternoon

None of my contacts are on AIM and my mailbox is empty. Bebito, he’d have to know what’s up!
Bebito Jackson


19 Results
6. Survivor’s Sue Restaurant:
After the food poisoning death of Mr. Bebito Jackson…

Fuck. Bebito, too. According to the article, Bebs died after eating the Special at Casino City Restaurant. The owner, Mr. Suzuki, said that Bebito ordered three Specials and only had trouble with the third. Suzuki had run out of the usual ingredients for the Special, Two Tailed Fox and Echidna, and had to substitute a new meat he’d never used before: Atelerix albiventris.

Atelerix albiventris



950 Results. Atelerix albiventris is, oh no, it can’t be THAT?! Oh, the irony. Who would have guessed Bebito was going to be allergic to THAT. Poor guy.

1:32 PM

Less Pepsi and more Jose. I try to call Lucard’s home number and only get a generic answering machine message. His cell is turned off. Shit.
Fred Badlissi



7 Results. Uh- oh. This doesn’t look too good.

4. Dangers of Mushrooms:
Los Angeles man dies in bizarre mushroom accident…

From the age of five I, and most people my age, I have known not to eat tan and brown mottled mushrooms. They make you double in mass and height. Then why would Fred, who I know has played some Mario, eat an 18″ tan and brown mottled mushroom and then ride to a party in a compact car? It’s like… it’s like he never played a Mario game in his life! This calls for more tequila.

2:00 PM

A few searches on yon Internet and I am getting a little confused. Nintendo’s site lists NOTHING but card games. SEGA almost exclusively makes pinball and pachinko machines, with the world’s best selling cribbage as thier side project. Sony has NO gaming products in their line of products. Searches for Mario and Sonic produce nothing but people’s names or fast food references. GameFAQs is a chess and poker site. Then I looked up Japan…
Apparently, in 1983, aliens where staging an attack on Japan. One lone Japanese scientist had developed a space fighter capable of destroying the whole alien fleet, if a properly skilled pilot flew the ship into the heart of the enemy and took out the boss. Unfortunately, without space shooter games to hone their skills, there was no one prepared to take on wave after wave of enemies. While the youth were in much better shape, they were ill prepared for the low light, flashing video screens, and hand- eye coordination necessary to take on an alien fleet single-handedly. Japan was lost. Only with a stroke of luck was a master Battleship player able to launch the correct missile pattern to destroy the coming hordes.
My continued searches for my fellow Kliq members were equally dismal.

Bryan Berg wrote the perfect pop punk song and made millions after it became the most played song of all time. As fate would have it, Bryan was trapped in an elevator for 7 hours, forced to here a skipping Muzak version of his masterpiece. He bashed his own brains out against the elevator wall half an hour in.

Alex Williams discovered a loophole in the philosophies of the French and Nietzsche:

“One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
(I was always more partial to the less exact translation, “To live forever, one must die everyday.” I have the strangest feeling Gary Numan prefers this version since he references in his songs.)

La petit morte- French euphemism for an orgasm. Literally, “little death.”

This in mind, Alex began a regimen of constant and furious orgasming in order to die every day, in installments, so as to gain immortality. Unfortunately, dehydration was his big death.

Misha had a bad experience with an undercooked shrimp.

Chris Pankonin was a prolific cow tipper. After years of his cow tipping art, Chris started tipping other things; horses, dogs, motorcycles, people. Then, he and his cohorts got the brilliant idea to break into a zoo and tip any and everything they could. Chris went into the tiger pen and never got out.

Lee Baxley is the world’s most successful animator. Baxley Studios bought out a struggling Disney in 1991 and became the only animation company on Earth.

Then, I typed in my name. I knew this wasn’t a good idea. Yep, there I am. Dead at 24 from acute lead poisoning. Apparently my love of miniatures gaming and my oral fixation got the best of me.

That only leaves liquidcross and Lucard. I know liquid is alive and happy, a stranger fate I could not fathom, that is until I read on his blog about his love of Esquivel and Bruce Haack. Forget lead poisoning and tiger digestion, THAT is a strange turn of events. On to finding Lucard…
Alex Lucard



465 Results. This should be interesting.

1. NINJA!: A System For Motivation! And Rocking Out!
Alex Lucard presents the five ways to make your life better!

Well, I HAVE to check something that screwed up out, don’t I?

NINJA! is Alex Lucard’s system for making your life better. Follow his five rules of NINJA! and you too will be sexy, good-looking, and smell like pudding. What do you have to lose? Nothing, because you suck! So, come on in. He awaits you with FIVE secrets to make your life better!
Neatness!
Intelligence!
Nudity!
Joke!
Annhilate!
!Exclamate!

These five rules will make you a rocking party man like Alex Lucard. Let him teach you his super sexy secret tricks to a terrific time!
Why am I not surprised…

3:05 PM
I wake up to hear my alarm going off for the fifth straight minute. Wait until I tell everyone about that fucked up dream I had. HEY! Where’s my GameCube? Fuck.. this is going to be one of those days, isn’t it?

Well, I’m off to watch American Idol. Read the other guys, they are much better than me, but my breath kicks ass!

ve rules will make you a rocking party man


Posted

in

,

by

Tags:

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *