Stirge's Reviews

Review #20

Boo-fucking-yah. Who's the man? I'm the man. Why am I the man? Because I can sprint forever and never get tired. Well, in Grand Theft Auto III, anyway. Mostly this comment is meant for a specific person, although I'm sure the, what, probably at least one of you who stumbled in here because you did a search on GTA3 or something are thinking to yourselves, "Whoop-de-doo, you did all 12 levels of paramedic missions. Anyone can do that." Well, it took me a long time to be able to do it, and I'm sort of proud of myself. I guess I do get better at games after all. Well, sometimes. Maybe.

I'm not proud of myself for buying it, though. I was supposed to not buy games anymore. I subscribed to GameFly so that I wouldn't be tempted to buy games anymore. Well, console games. Computer games are still a temptation. But I was at Fred Meyer(kind of like a Wal-Mart, but not quite as evil, for those of you further east and south who've never heard of Freddy's), and I saw the double pack of 3 and VC, and I thought, you know, I really enjoyed the hell out of those games. And I considered getting it for Xbox, but a) the Xbox version was ten bucks more, and b) the PS2 controller is just so much better. I mean, I do like the shoulder triggers actually being triggers, that's cool, but the black and white buttons just do not effectively replace the extra shoulder buttons. I bought SSX3 for Xbox instead of PS2 because it would look prettier, but after having played so much Tricky on PS2, it's practically impossible for me to play 3 on Xbox.

Although mouse-and-keyboard is worse. Except for the sniper missions, where I really pine for mouse-and-keyboard. And here I'm back to talking about GTA, so you know. I mean, there could be sniper missions in SSX3, I haven't played all of it, after all, but I do sort of doubt it. (No analog movement for keyboard makes helicopters nigh onto impossible to fly, for instance.)

Now, if I could just figure out how to get all the fucking spammers to drop dead. Or, well, at least stop putting their shit on my poor little blog. And what the hell is a Trackback, anyway? And I wonder if it would be worth the trouble to try putting in some formatting. And maybe someday I could learn some basic HTML and figure out how to put in links. I should probably look at the Help thingy. I'm not going to, but I probably should.

'cause, I mean, do I care if anyone ever reads this? Am I doing it for the attention, or am I doing it because it helps to get my thoughts down in writing? I know there's only two or three people reading this, and most of them have probably stopped bothering to check this site because I update so rarely, and truth be told it's not very interesting anyway...I mean, the friend who convinced me to start this(I'm not quite sure why I refuse to refer to people by name here when pretty much everybody who reads this knows exactly who I'm talking about, but, whatever) keeps trying to convince me that I'm amusing or otherwise entertaining in some way, but I'm pretty sure that he's just being nice. Either that, or it just doesn't translate over very well.

I feel like talking right now, for some reason. There's no one around to talk to, so typing is my substitute, but it's a good one.

I have a real love/hate thing going with my job. On the one hand, I work in a comic book store, which is cool. It's fairly low-stress, the dedicated customers are pretty cool, and fairly often, the staff is reasonably cool, too. On the other hand, the casual customers are usually your normal brain-dead morons who would maybe not make the world a better place by eating a gun muzzle, but they would at least make my life a little more enjoyable by just going away. Also, sometimes the staff we get saddled with fit this bill as well. We tend to get three kinds of people: Dorks(I am proud of my dork-hood! Okay, well, no, I'm not. I'd really rather be cool. It's just that I am not cool, and I will never be cool, so I'm not even going to bother trying to pretend that I am anything other than what I am) who are into comics or games or anime or sports cards and can see no greater achievement in life than working at the store until they realize that, while relaxed we are, "working" is not just a euphemism for "standing around chatting about geekery all day getting paid". They tend to come in varying levels of intelligence, and, contrary to what I know a lot of people(especially geeks) tend to think, their geekdom does not in any way imply that they're probably toward the high end. Just 'cause you like sci-fi and computers doesn't mean you're smart. Some of the stupidest people I haven't been able to come up with excuses not to talk to have been into all the same shit I'm into. Most of them tend to quit pretty quickly. I was in this category when I first started working for the company, but I've evolved a little. And, naturally, I was at the high end of the intelligence spectrum.

Then you have the kids and other assorted losers who just want a job, any job(as long as it's not flipping burgers, although that pays better, usually). They usually know next to nothing about any of the products we carry, but feel that the week and a half they spent obsessed with the Crow after the movie came out makes them an expert on about half of the products we carry. They usually get way into collecting comics or occasionally games, put hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise on hold for themselves, then quit two weeks later and never buy any of it and never come back to the store. Mostly complete wastes of time and space, but occasionally can be unexpectedly very cool.

And last, you have the people who are kind of into one or two of our product categories, but not to the point that they're total nerds about it, and they're bored most of the time and they need a little supplemental income but not too much because their girlfriend/wife/parents/boyfriend/husband/dom/sub/other makes enough to support them, but not enough to support whatever hobbies, and anyway they usually don't have any kids or anything else to keep them occupied while the poing(to steal a word from a friend) is out earning a living, so they get a job at the ol' comic shop. These people tend to be pretty intelligent, reasonably knowledgeable, and don't have any foolish notions about all the work they're not going to be doing, but they are grateful for all the work they don't do.

Okay, after re-reading that last sentence, I've come to the conclusion that I'm nearly comatose and should sleep. I might bitch/expound about the vagaries of being a comic shop clerk some other time. Or I might forget completely and never speak of it again.

Posted by stirge at August 31, 2004 02:28 AM