EVE University has all these rules, man. "Wartime Standard Operating Procedures" mean there are hoops I have to jump through even if all I want to do is fly between various solar systems to buy stuff. Yes, people declare war on the university. Fuck those people. Not to say I'm going to leave EVE U before extracting as much knowledge-juice as I can, though. I'ma keep my mouth to the information spout until I suck it (and this increasingly horrendous metaphor) totally dry. Well, I just grossed myself out, so how would you like to read my ballad...
"The Cat's List," I Hardly Knew Ye
I don't even know where that reference is from. And I'm not entirely sure what a ballad is. But I'm almost sure that the "hardly knew ye" thing isn't a ballad. I'm a Microbiology major, remember? You wanna hear about Listeria monocytogenes, give me a call; ballads, I'm not so hot on. But anyways, I had a destroyer-class ship that I got from the tutorial missions called "The Cat's List," because the ship's model name is "Catalyst" and I'm a fucking grade-A, world-class wordsmith that exudes raw creativity so hard that arts majors have orgasms if they walk too close to me.
I will never understand ship class designations, both in EVE and the real world (which, I should note, have not started to run into one another... yet). I mean, something called a "destroyer" sounds like the ship you'd see drop out of hyperspace to turn the tide of an enormous, raging space-battle. As it stands, it's a super-asymmetrical, slow, relatively unwieldy chunk of metal that I only used because it could fit like 8 guns on it. And it's insured (yes, there's fucking spaceship insurance). The lowest class I've flown is a "frigate." Aw, little frigates, all they can do is slow down other ships and prevent them from warping away from battle (a tactic called "tackling" which is left to "tackle frigates"). Know what else was a frigate? The motherfucking Normandy. That wonderful, notoriously phallic piece of metal saved the entire galaxy no less than [insert your number here] times!
Back to "The Cat's List," though. I flew that thing for most of my missions, until I hit this level 2 security mission that pitted my punk ass against something like 20 pirates. I could have taken them if I killed 1 or 2, then warped out and repaired myself. I took out about 5 of them that way, but my mistake was lingering around to kill that third guy one time; as my ship was getting ready to warp, somebody got in the kill shot. "The Cat's List" exploded, and my pod warped to safety. Though NPCs never kill your pod anyway, so I would've been just as safe orbiting the deadliest pirate ship there.
Luckily, the GiantBomb channel came to the rescue. "Xercodo" formed a fleet with my stupid little pod and then proceeded to fuck those pirates up with a ship that cost about 100 times as much as "The Cat's List", and that's WITHOUT factoring in the guns/drones/etc. he had fitted onto there. Then he left the loot to me! EVE Online players continue to be incredibly nice to new folks.
Livin' the Life
To ensure you (and me) that I'm not losing my mind, I'll tell you this great story from my real life:
Last Saturday, I was hanging out with a couple of friends from university. After the intake of various substances, my friend excitedly told me that his girlfriend has a roommate that he thinks I'd really like. The great part is his pitch on this girl:
"She's really pretty, she's got an A average, and she loves drugs!"
Fuckin' Dr. Hitch over here. It sounds like he found my goddamn soulmate. Well at least a crack addict will be pretty low-maintenance, as long as there's a steady crack supply, right? But seriously, folks, I think he meant pharmacology... I think. Oh god, I hope it's pharmacology, or this weekend - our projected first introduction - may be way more eventful than I hope it will be.
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