August 17, 2003

And after 123 nodes and 2352 XP points, it appears that I have almost spent a year on E2. I would do this writeup tomorrow, when it's my real one year anniversary, but I'll be away from then until wednesday, and I figure it's better to be early than late. Possibly.

Over the time that has passed since I first clicked "person" to enter my first writeup, I have become completely addicted to this amazing site. Hell, I'm having trouble writing this now because I keep seeing cool sounding soft links and the temptation to click on them is too great. I remember the first time I saw, for a few fleeting seconds, brackets round my Geography homework. I'm in a few Internet communities, forums, and whatever, but this is definitely the place that means the most to me.

I'd like to think my writing style has improved. I now look back on my earlier game writeups and think "Damn, how the hell is that my best rated writeup?". I think I write better stuff now than I used to, although the reputations I get don't seem to make it look quite as amazing. The C!s I get though, especially the ones from people I know well, have kept me going, because I realise that what I write will probably appeal to a small number of people. As long as what I write interests them, I'm happy.

My time on E2 hasn't been entirely smelling of roses - I introduced a couple of real life friends to E2, hoping that they would like it as much as me, but I got an abject failure, and one sort of melting away into the immensely long last-seen date syndrome. M-I-K-E thought E2 sounded like a cool idea when he saw me logging in at school, but unfortunately he only lasted a couple of days before deciding to flame people in the chatterbox, randomly insult people after seeing their home node pictures, and generally act like a prick.

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MSN Messenger log:

Mike: hahahahaha
Mike: i just sent this guy who sed summet like how is this useful? to me
Mike: i sent him a msg saying glad ive got hair
Mike: cos hes bald on his pic

Mike: look at chatterbox hahahahahahaha
Mike: called that faggot a dumass

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It appears that some people just don't get along with the idea of being nice to people you will probably never meet, simply for the sake of being nice to people. Presumably he'll grow up at some point, but I don't think he'll be returning to E2. I have to mention that wertperch contacted me shortly after M-I-K-E disappeared to ask about him, which just shows you how much the editors care about users, even if a small proportion of users are complete idiots. An example to us all.

I apologise on his behalf for anyone that was insulted by M-I-K-E (I don't know who he's talking about in the above extract) because I felt, and still feel, that it was partially my fault for introducing someone who turned out to be so immature to the site. I'm sorry.

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The second person who I brought to E2 turned out be much less of an abject failure - Kylius produced one excellent writeup, before essentially disappearing. I still see him in real life all the time, as I go to school with him, but it appears there are some people who just don't go for E2. Perhaps he will return some day.

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On another note, yesterday was my birthday. I'm now 16 (or as riverrun would say, two years from draft age), so I will be buying hundreds of cigarettes and having sex up to thirty times a day now that it's legal for me. Or possibly not.

I got plenty of mooonay to spend some time, a spanking new Nokia 3510i which was very nice, and other assorted things. In the evening we rented out and watched Bowling for Columbine, which completely blew me away. I have a few thoughts on that which probably don't make enough of a coherent interesting opinion to post in that node, so I'll put them here.

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Marilyn Manson effectively summed up everything when he said that the gun violence was caused by fear in the media, and that fear was there to make people consume. I have to say I used to think that Manson just went in the category of "Grow up and take off the mask / facepaint" alongside Slipknot, but seeing that made me wonder why I don't like his music more. He's definitely one of the most intelligent people in the rock music scene at the moment, and it's just a pity he doesn't play a style of music I find slightly better to listen to. Ah well...

As a Brit a lot of what was shown in the film was just completely crazy to me - the first five minutes in the bank just seemed like the most idiotic thing I had ever heard. Ditto for much of the rest of the film - being able to buy as much ammunition as you like just by wandering into a shop seems so completely alien to me, and I hope it will remain that way.

Hopefully Michael Moore will continue to make this kind of stuff, because I'm sure there are plenty of subjects that still require addressing by this guy. Overall, all I can say is, he really really deserved that Oscar.

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I had hoped to make level 4 by now, but alas, time, GCSEs and a heap of other events conspired against me. I'm only 10 writeups away, but inevitably each time I post one my merit goes down so that I'm still ten writeups away the next day... Still, GCSE results on this coming thursday, which could be an excuse for a good party. Or not.

I'll finish this excessively long winded daylog by saying thank you to all the people who have been kind to me on this site and made me want to stay as long as I have. Whoever first typed or uttered those famous memes, Everything is a Community and Everything is a Family, was absolutely right. Thankyou very much to the following people:

• Servo5678, for being a great friend, and an excellent noder. He has offered me great encouragement and heaps of C!s over my first year, which went a long way to keeping me from straying away and never bothering to log in.
• yerricde for giving me some tips on how to get started programming, and making some amazing free games!
• The rest of the VideoGames crew for filling my inbox with messages worth reading. Especially the following people: TheBooBooKitty, fondue, amib, jasonm, TehBesto, and nanashi.
• All the gods and all the editors, especially the ones who have ever bothered to comment on my work. Thanks to riverrun, iceowl, liveforever, wertperch, and the rest of you who've answered a question or helped me out. Even the ones who nuked my stuff - looking at my node heaven, there isn't really a single thing there that didn't deserve to be deleted.
• Lastly, anyone who has ever just told my they liked a writeup I did. That keeps me going just as much as all the people I talk with here every day, knowing that my video game related ramblings actually arouse some sort of interest in people I have never met. Thank you all.
• Lastly, thank you to the original team who put this crazy place together, and keep it going - nate, CmdrTaco, dem bones, hemos, and the rest of them. You have truly touched countless people, and provided me with a really cool place to browse while I should have been working on my GCSEs.

Sometimes you try to do too much.

Sometimes I forget what "Give everything you can to everyone you know" really means.

I am sorry. At one time I lost the road.

At one time I knew a beautiful young woman who needed my help to get where she wanted to go. She was cute and funny and had big dreams. I wanted to help her to reach her goals and realize those dreams. The only way I could do that was by marrying her. We knew each other for four months when we got married. That was a mistake, but you had no other option and I wanted to help. It didn't help that I was thirteen years older than she was.

Had I not abandoned the road at the time of my marriage, I never would have gotten married. The signs were right in front of my face. On the drive to the church, it began to rain so hard that the roads became impossible to navigate, making my best man and I an hour late for the ceremony. Then the bishop who presided over the marriage only spoke Spanish, so the vows I agreed to were asked in a language I do not understand.

Marrying someone you barely know is a terrible mistake. There are times when it comes together, but most of the time your hasty actions cause an unravelling. That is what happened in my situation. I only know that I wanted to help her and that I loved her, but that love was not the kind that validates a concept like marriage. We grew apart daily. She surrendered her independent spirit in order to lean on me and become too dependent upon me, changing her from a fiery young woman filled with hopes and dreams to someone who too easily accepted defeat. We have almost nothing in common and don't relate to each other. We became two strangers who occupy the same space.

I have left her and that is all there is to it. I will continue to try to help her and try to be her friend, but getting married was a mistake. Then again, there are no mistakes as long as we learn something from them, and I have.

END TRANSMISSION.

Why is it that kids always grow up to think that they can raise their kids better than their parents did? It's as if parenting is this grand equation and generation by generation we are solving for variables. Every generation has been able to observe their parents and see what variable they attempted to solve and the outcome, either a success or a failure-and granted, if the variable is found, there are infinite solutions to the other, innumerable, variables. There is never a solution to the parenting equation, but why does each generation believe that some how they will be able to magically solve this equation in one shot?

Do people actually learn from their parents' mistakes and take their actions and advice into consideration when raising their own children? Do they automatically think, "well, I didn't turn out right, so my parents must have done it wrong"?

Or do people take into consideration the variables previous generations have solved, and work with them until something decent arrives from their offspring?