Sometimes I want to travel through the trees,
Flying free like so many bees.
All through the forest,
And over the seven seas.
Apparently according to who you ask there are anywhere from like 9 to 104 seas. Yahoo Answers is terrible and I’m not sure why I’m sitting here looking that up on this typical Tuesday evening of enjoying whatever time I can get on the computer in between waves of attacking foster parents.
Just because I’m merely working my girlfriend’s table at a convention this weekend doesn’t mean I can’t sneak my stuff there, ha!
So the list of keywords that the NSA is monitoring major social media sites for was released and can be found here. So the next logical step is to write a story involving as many of these words as possible which will be underlined. Turns out I’ve already hit one. Here we go!
A couple years ago I was at home on the computer when my roommate came in. With a wave he asked what I was up to. I told him I was drinking a Mudslide while playing a game and waiting for my pork to finish cooking with “PoliceCops” by Myles Deck and the Fuzz on the record player. I lamented how earlier my drink had a leak and almost ruined my USB dock in an unfortunate incident. Thankfully that disaster was averted before I got an electric shock or something.
“So what game are you playing?”
“Well, it’s this new MMORPG that had a lot of delays to some malware and DDOS attacks, but I’m glad it’s finally out of the closed beta instead of being cancelled. Probably the first MMORPG I’ve played that wasn’t made by Blizzard.” He cocked an eyebrow. “So they had a number of breaches on their server? Are you sure you should be entrusting an info with a company that has such an cyber security problem regarding their infastructure?” I shrugged. “How can I turn down a game called ‘State of Emergency: Drug wars of the MexiclesRadicals‘? It takes place in some Metro area near the MexicoBorder. Its version of the ‘Horde vs Alliance’ are the Law Enforcement Authorities and simply the ‘Gang‘. I rolled a Riot enforcer who started with some nice terror-inspiring SWAT gear.” “Neat! How’s the combat?” “Well, it’s all human-to-human so everyone looks kind of the same. It’s mostly balanced, but after a few shootouts using conventional weapons I feel like suicide bombers could use a nerf. They have a suicide attack that hits like a earthquake with all those explosions they always have. It causes so many deaths when used strategically.”
*Ding!*
“Oh hey, my swine is done! Anyway, as I was saying there’s this Agro Terror formation that my opponents were using . . . ” “Don’t you mean aggro?” “Did I say agro again? I’m a bit woozy. Anyhoo, there was just so much shooting that I can’t quite recall everything that happened during that gunfight, but before I knew it I was killed in like two minutes. It was frustrating. I like it overall. The violence is entertaining even if the plot is thin. So how was your day?”
My roommate sighed as he recounted his day. “I was at this restaurant for a meeting. I almost missed it due to the sleet and snow. Such extreme weather although you probably didn’t see it with your head in your monitor ha ha. Anyhoo I think I might have gotten food poisoning. Either that or I got some sort of infection. Or maybe I just have the flu. Hopefully that’s all it is, although it’s probably influenza or small pox somehow with my luck.” I laughed. “Or you’re bringing H1N1 back! Actually, apparently there’s a H5N1 now?” Rolling his eyes he continued on through my interruption. “Regardless, I’m sick, I failed to say anything smart during the meeting and on the way out I broke my watch on the doorframe.”
Needless to say I spent the rest of the evening making wild guesses at what virus he was carrying. I’m betting E.Coli myself.
For the first twentyish years of my life I enjoyed bacon as much as the next person. I ate platefuls of it at buffets, always had some on hand, put it on everything, etc. I even recall writing a number of stories about developing superpowers about eating the stuff on my older blogs I had as a teen.
Over the years though I just lost the taste for it somehow. Granted, a good deal of that had to do with some health scares. Being exposed to the world’s information led me to learn about the importance of managing one’s fat/sodium intake and although I’m not usually too good at looking after that stuff I generally know enough to stay away from super unhealthy foods. Like bacon. Having a heart condition is probably a good reason to care about that sort of thing.
The main thing that did it for me though was just the constant manufactured love for the stuff everywhere on the internet. Everyone just went on and on about how much they loved the stuff and how they couldn’t live without it. At first it didn’t bother me but then I talked to people I know offline who would constantly go on about all this bacon hype knowing that they rarely (if ever) actually ate the stuff. This constant repetition and false hype about a simple food item eventually just made me never want to even look at the stuff ever again. I’m not generally a fan of humor consisting of being obsessed with a simple object or phrase.
Now please excuse me while I go draw some bees.
I was too busy to draw BEES because I had to put BEE stickers on things but as you can see some of the BEES are actually BEARS.
So I’m trying to play some Tekken online with some friends the other night but my PS3 was all like “I ain’t reading your cable buddy-guy!” to which I responded “Why not and since when could you talk?”. Turns out it didn’t feel like having anything plugged into it that night so I had to play wireless but Tekken Tag Tournment 2 has slick netcode so nobody was any the wiser.
Then the next day I tried to play some Street Fighter X Tekken online because the big patch is here and I have to pretend I didn’t openly despise the game all this time for at least a couple months. My PS3 finally consented to taking the cord, but the experience was . . . Jarring to say the least. The visuals would show a hit that was actually a block, people were randomly teleporting halfway across the screen instead of jumping . . . I don’t what game this was but it wasn’t the one I signed up for!
So I hit up Skype and talked to buddy I was playing online with the other night about how I should make amends to my internet. He suggested poetry and flowers.
. . . Genius!
It took me a week to make the arrangements but I knew it would be worth it. Then the time came on a quiet Friday evening. After laying a bouquet of several dozen roses onto the modem I brought in a local barbershop quartet to sing this poem:
“Oh baby/
You’re so fine.
Now please let me/
Go online!”
Just in case that wasn’t classy enough, I also paid them to sing this haiku:
“Oh you, internet.
Please, please, please, please, please, please, please
Work for me now? Please?”
My significant other questioned how I could afford all of this, especially since I told her I was too broke to do much for Valentine’s Day. To which I told her that maybe I would pay more attention to her if she did stuff like this:
(Don’t read too much into that one, okay?)
I’d give credit, but she put her name and the inspiration right there! Plus one for my laziness! But seriously, thanks Ting Ting, you rock! :3
Growing up in a small fishing village with limited internet access, I hadn’t even really seen the internet until I started going to the library at the age of 14 at the next town over. Parental attitudes toward the whole internet thing led to our home not having any internet access until I was . . . 16? Almost 17? Point is, I didn’t grow up in any sort of online culture. As a side note the e-mail address on the right portion of this site is my very first e-mail address. Seriously, as a 25 year-old I assure you I didn’t come up with that recently ha ha.
Fast forwarding to about a couple years later I move to the Halifax region (The biggest ‘urban’ area in Nova Scotia.) to start college. With my student loan I bought my first laptop and signed up for my own internet connection. Unfiltered usage of the internet without any supervision!? It blew my small town mind! So many “artistic films” about “love” to be seen!
When I wasn’t busy boosting local Kleenex® sales (Brand is important here!) I was playing this shitty little online game called U-Dominion. It was basically a cheap MMORPG that was entirely about moving a little guy around a grid of squares, fighting enemies entirely with auto-battle and grinding out levels so you can continue doing this on different grids. The game itself was even more of a grindfest than most games in the genre but it had an always-on global chat. I’m pretty sure most people came to view it as a chat room with a simple game rather than the other way around.
Eventually I start talking to this one particular person in-game and she ask for my MSN (RIP MSN.). After adding her she starts to tell me a sob story about how shitty her life is in Russia. She seemed to require constant consolation but I was naive and felt like playing the hero so I went along with it. She (or even he, I’ll never know) eventually sent me some pictures of some Russian model and claimed it was her. Even then I knew that wasn’t the case but I felt pity that (s)he would have to lie like that for a self-esteem boost instead of suspecting that something was up.
Eventually out of the blue one day this person started going on about how they wanted to hurt him(her)self and craved physical attention. I almost, almost followed along but then stopped and thought about it for a minute. Having a sudden realization I ask if she was turned on by the thought of someone rescuing her from various crises. (S)he confirmed that was the case. Whelp, I hadn’t encountered anything like that before, and my 18 year old small village mind was blown yet again. After stating that I didn’t want anything more to do with this and that I was never talking to this person again I got all sorts of death/hacking threats.
And that’s when I learned (Surprisingly fast given my upbringing.) that I should never, ever trust anything on the Internet.
tl;dr: Stop sharing crazy factoids on Facebook without at least checking Snopes first. People lie on the internet for fun.
And now I use the internet as an excuse to draw bees on things.
Ever since I had seen that tall tree standing along in a clearing that I found in the middle of the forest as a child I knew I wanted to reach the top of it someday. After weeks of unsuccessfully trying to climb it I brought a chainsaw one day. Having cut down the tree I simply walked over to the top of it and I had finally achieved my goal. The view from there wasn’t really as good as I was hoping though.
I am the master of the 2 meter sprint. I think.
I’ve always wanted to ride a horse but I was too poor to afford proper riding lessions. So one day I worked up the nerve and rode the merry-go-round with all of my savings. Wheeee . . . ?
The pride that comes with a hard day of work done at the office.
Purchasing and eating an entire cake or tub of ice cream. An empty victory with plenty of empty calories on the side!
Winning arguments with Santabot on a regular basis. I’ve also sat through 6 1/2 hours of Leekspin. Online arguments are generally hollow victories as well. Maybe victories on the internet in general are ultimately pointless for the most part.
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All credits regarding this video’s content are in the video description.
Poorly Drawn Bees 