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munnyman5

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munnyman5

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#1  Edited By munnyman5

@Oldirtybearon: I think that you and a couple other people misinterpreted what I was trying to do with my original post... which is to say, I wasn't trying to DO anything, or change anything. What I've said applies to normal IRL discourse as well as posting on message boards, and really any interactions with other people. I've mentioned in a couple places in the comments that I'm not here to change anybody's mind, I'm just laying out how my thought process about the subject has changed over time.

Now why would I go and do a thing like that? Well, old men like me - with one foot in the grave after about 21.4 years of living - sometimes just say what's on their mind. I used to say "stop getting offended at my words, you bunch of wimps," but since I realized some people can't control their reactions to some words very well, I decided to stop using them outside of very specific scenarios (ex. drinking with friends, which is one of the most sweariest activities). I found it interesting that I had changed my mind about something I once had such a hard stance on, and that is what spurred me to share it with y'all.

So I'm not trying to tell anybody what words they should or should not use, I'm just telling you folks the story about what made me change the words I use in certain situations. And hey, if it makes sense to you, great! If you disagree, that's also great, because that's the basis of civil discourse! If I replied to you in the comments, it wasn't to argue with you to try and get you to change your ways, but rather to clarify any point I had made poorly in the original post, or perhaps if a point was misinterpreted. And of course, civil discourse often sounds like an argument, but if I said "I see what you're saying, but," then it was just to present a possible counterpoint, not to point fingers and show you why you're wrong.

I'm a strong proponent of the idea that "right" and "wrong" don't have set definitions, so I'd be the last guy to tell you why you're wrong, why I'm right, or any variation thereupon. Unless I'm joking around about why you're wrong about... I don't know, not liking a certain candy bar.

So we old-ass men often don't have a solid point to what we're saying. Often, they're just stories we find interesting. As my friend said about pointless conversations whilst high on... uh... "life," shall we say... "Sometimes you need to have pointless conversations. I guess that's the point; they're useful for recreation by being useless for anything else." Pretty salient for somebody who was watching light patterns on the wall shift before their very eyes at the time.

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#2  Edited By munnyman5

@TheVideoHustler said:

@Vinny_Says said:

A lot of things besides words can trigger past emotional memories and ruin someone's day. Someone's look, their clothing, their cologne, etc. Are we just supposed to tip toe around every situation, knowing that our every action, deliberate or not, might hurt someone?

It's just to difficult to account for every persons emotion. I don't do things to cause pain, sometimes something I say may be taken as hurtful. In which case I apologize, but I don't believe I need to change myself to be kind to all of society. To many eggshells man.

Oh sorry this was posted while I was writing that last comment. So DOUBLE POST

You're right, there are hella eggshells, and you're gonna step on some no matter what. However, one can cut out a huge amount of eggshells - as this metaphor slowly breaks down - by not using the words that can offend huge amounts of people. And in terms of "changing yourself to be kind," uh... I don't think that anybody defines their personality thusly: "I'm the guy who says 'faggot' a lot! That's me! That's WHAT I DO!" so I don't think it's much of change for anybody to cut a few of the main "bad words" out of their vocabulary. But I'll be the first to say I may be wrong, and the use of these offensive words may be something very important to some people.

@pyromagnestir: Exactly! Numbers game. And I wouldn't have had the urge if you hadn't been wearing that RIDICULOUSLY SHORT (VERBAL) MINISKIRT

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#3  Edited By munnyman5

@Pezen: I absolutely agree that even if I don't get offended by these words, I do try to encourage people to use them less, to avoid reinforcing stereotypes, negative values, etc. For example, the kids of some family friends of mine are at that high school age where they're making a bunch of feminist and racist jokes (and I hesitate to call them jokes, but you know what I mean), and even though I'm not offended by the c-word, I do let them know a short, kid-focused version of basically what I've written above, to try and get them to watch their language out of compassion, and not out of fear of being reprimanded. And yes, comedy would suck if it didn't piss some people off. That's the whole bit with comedy; it always has to push the envelope in some respect, whether that's in terms of its randomness, its minuteness, its offensiveness, or any number of other characteristics.

@JackSukeru: As you should! Ttyl, homie.

@Vinny_Says: I agree that that part of the issue is certainly a delicate one, and it's what I tried to address in the second-to-last big paragraph. It's easy to see that anybody could be offended by anything, but I personally believe that with something as easy to control as my own speech and wardrobe, I ought to exercise some consideration. Even though I don't use these words and don't wear overtly offensive clothing, I'll probably end up stepping on some toes with my cologne or my hairstyle or jawline or something - memory triggers can be super specific and weird - and there's no avoiding that. But the words I'm talking about here have the potential to offend large swaths of people, and that's what I try to avoid.

@darkdragonmage99: You're basically writing out my mindset during my RA training. The amount of things they said to avoid... they said we couldn't even say "crazy" because that was offensive to people who may know somebody who is mentally disabled. What? That's CRAZY! I won't go around sounding like a text-to-speech version of a textbook, because fuck that! But if I happened to know somebody who is sensitive to the word "crazy," I wouldn't use it around them. I'm not saying that using these words is the same as punching somebody in the face, but it could make their day a little (or a lot) worse, depending on the person. And as somebody who likes people in general, I take a lot of opportunities - especially the easy ones, like not saying certain words - to make people's days better (or, as in this case, avoid making them worse). You still may not give a fuck about anybody's feelings, and hey, I respect that. I'm not here to change minds, I'm just telling people what happened to change my mind, on the off chance that I might make this world a slightly less painful place for some people.

@MarkWahlberg: Ah I see, glad we cleared that up. And yes, I am munnyman5, of former QOTW "fame." Kinda crazy of you to remember that. Also, I disagree with you that my videos were funny. But I DID get a GiantBomb Assassin's Creed hoodie from one of the QOTW competitions, so that was pretty dope. It was my go-to hoodie during 1st, 2nd, and a lot of 3rd year. Now I rock an N7 hoodie, which by the way, is poorly designed; the stupid fuckin' velcro totally ripped up the stitched-in "N7" logo, and the other velcro bits are tearing up the fabric next to them and making it look all gross and fuzzy. I cut off the one next to the N7 logo without damaging the hoodie, and I'm thinking I'll do that with the other 4 velcros, too. What were we talking about?

@Morrow: To be clear, I'm about as close to emotionless as a guy can get. Like, even when I'm hammered drunk - when a lot of emotions tend to come out for a lot of people - I'm just as happy-go-lucky and funny (my friends' words, not mine) as I am sober. In fact, most people can't tell if I'm under the influence or not until they see my lanky frame try to walk a a straight line. But I am cognizant of the fact that I lie in an extreme minority, and I strive to be as nice as possible to normal people with normal feelings.

@Draugen: See what I said above, to "darkdragonmage99," for my reply to that sentiment. Again, I'm not trying to change your mind, and your ethos on this topic is a totally acceptable one. Hell, I operated like that for about 19 years and got by better than fine!

@Oldirtybearon: Hahaha, you managed to tap into a part of my personality that I deliberately tried to leave out of the original post! I fully agree that if offensive language is a main worry in your life, you should count your motherfuckin' blessings. And don't get me STARTED on complaining about your phone not working (that Louis CK "chair-in-the-sky" bit from Conan hits this right on the head). However, it's easy for a lot of people to lose that perspective when they are overwhelmed by emotion. For example, when there was a death in the family, my mom was inconsolable despite the fact that we've had conversations about how good life is, and how fortunate we are to have a nice house, food in the fridge, etc. Strong emotions have a strong tendency to shut down these higher functions - that aspect of strong emotion is better documented and supported than affect-stable/affect-intense, I think - and as such, even the best people people with a very mature perspective on their life can be overwhelmed by emotions from their past. As I said in multiple examples, these emotions often come from a specific hardship in a person's past, so I'll have to disagree with your first sentence there; for some people, the context/history of the word that they find offensive is specific to an event in their life, not from history books. Again, though, I'm not here to make you agree with me, I am just presenting my perspective to see if it makes sense to anybody else.

Boy howdy, am I ever verbose. TL;DR I love you all, and I'm glad this hasn't turned into a hateful war between differing perspectives. I'm also amazed that it got so many comments, despite how very, very long the original post is!

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#4  Edited By munnyman5

@Spoonman671: How considerate!

@MarkWahlberg: I know it's long, man, and I wouldn't blame you if you didn't read the whole thing. And I'm not being a jerk here, I'm serious; it's quite believable that I was bad at making the point clear in some of the more rambly sections. But what I was trying to say is that for a given person, some of the "vibrations" can be much better at triggering bad memories/emotions than others. So for a gentleman I know who was beaten as an adolescent by racists who called him the n-word, the sound of that word - regardless of intent or context - can bring about those memories and negative emotions in a really big way, and it's not pleasant for him at all, needless to say. What I'm saying is, the words themselves - the literal sounds, or in some cases the sight - can be, in and of itself, offensive.

That said, I do agree with you when you say that, bad intentions or not, somebody who decides to use these words in polite company - knowing full well their connotations - is certainly being insensitive. And to be clear, I definitely am not calling people who get offended "weak-willed"; as I said in the latter half of the 1st paragraph under the 3rd bold heading, none of this is to say you're some kind of wimp if you get offended by words, but rather to say it's just a characteristic of different personalities across different people. Later on I repeat that both reactions - like you say, you could not give a fuck or you could become homicidal, depending on how affect-stable or -intense you are at the moment - are totally normal, human reactions to the situation, and one isn't better or worse than the other. Like I said, I could maybe have organized it a bit better. I just got that post in edgewise between all manner of interview preparations and studying for tests and planning lab work, etc. Sorry about that, I just saw the first opportunity I've had in months, and I TOOK IT!

@tunaburn: I used to be the same way, man. I never understood why people couldn't just deal with it, but I realize now that there are some people for whom it isn't a choice; they ARE going to get offended, because the word can bring up memories so horrible that they can't help but be disturbed when people use the word. Some people can push those feelings away, others can't. I can't say I know exactly what it's like to be unable to push away negative emotions, because I'm used to doing it constantly; however, I respect the people that cannot, and as such I refrain from using these words. Again, unless I'm around a bunch of friends who I know I can say literally anything around.

@I_smell: Yeah that was the main reason. I just didn't know if there were automatic filters on those words or not, so I decided to err on the side of caution. That said, you knew exactly what word I'm talking about, so what's the difference between saying or not? It's harder to reason out with writing, but there's definitely difference between saying "c-word" and the actual c-word aloud to somebody who is sensitive to that word (I know a couple, and they say it's the sound of the actual word itself that really hits them hard). And I certainly know people who would rather the news censor the word rape, because... well, I think you can figure it out. I mean it's not that the word was used during the assault, but in their mind, it is inextricably linked with some of the most horrible memories a person can have. Man, looking back at this I realize just how many people I've met are, to use a probably-offensive term, "damaged goods." I guess a lot of people have had bad shit happen to them. On the other hand, there was a guy who survived the holocaust as a kid by hiding in a pile of dead bodies in a dump truck - he presented in my grade 8 english class - and when the class bell rang, the first thing he did was throw up his hands and jokingly say "don't shoot!" in German. Talk about affect-stable... this guy survived one of humanity's greatest crimes against itself, and he was being flippant about it. Different people are fuckin' DIFF-ER-ENT.

@pyromagnestir: HAH! That last reply tied in to this one entirely by accident!

Thank you all for reading - that thing is a big, stupid essay at best - and I hope that if nothing else, you gained a bit of insight into the more psychology-based side of the issue that I just happened to link with some class material. I'm not championing the affect-stable/affect-intense theory or anything, it's more just a shorthand way of getting people to think about the reasons behind words being offensive differently than they may have before. It helped me change some bad habits, so I hope that it may work for somebody else, too.

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#5  Edited By munnyman5

Hey y'all... he says, as though anybody is going to actually read this.

So I don't know how deep or how crazy the discussion about the various language slip-ups on live streams from ages ago because, to be frank, the Internet is the last place I want to turn to see people argue. I don't like arguments even when they're appropriate, like debates or whatnot, so Internet arguments are... just the worst, man. Why I am writing this post is because after thinking about that kind of language for a long time, and learning some stuff in psychology courses, I finally realized why my hot-blooded, young-man perspective on it was so wrong (at least, the way I see it now). So, if you are anything like I was, maybe this particular set of statements will help you understand why there's a such thing as "hurtful language." But to see how I got to my current standpoint on the issue, it would help to know where I started.

My Original Viewpoint on Using Certain "Offensive" Words:

Back in the day (read: up until a few weeks ago) I used to tell people this: "If you let vibrations in the air created by somebody's mouth change your mood, you are giving that person SUPERPOWERS." The general idea there makes sense, right? I mean, if you can sit there and say/write something that changes my mood, you've effectively got the power to control my emotions, like a toned-down version of the Mule from Asimov's second "Foundation" novel. So I used to tell people to nut the fuck up, and stop being such goddamn wimps about all this shit. Words are words; they're either variations in sound wave pressure or they're lines on a surface. Either way, you're a human with the ability to reason, and you should be able to process that shit for what it is before you get all upset about it, you fucking stupid animal. I know DOGS who have a better ability to deal with strong language than you. But all that was just a viewpoint created by myself, in my own head, upon thinking about it.

Important Things I Learned:

This could be a massive list if I was speaking generally, but let's narrow it down to the soft science known as "psychology." Now I'm a microbiologist doing neuroscience research and applying to medical school; in other words, I laugh in good-natured derision at my friends majoring in psychology. I say "good-natured" because I was originally going to do a minor in psychology before I got the research position; I want to go into neurology at some point, so having some psychology background seemed like a reasonably good idea. Alas, I was accepted to do some awesome shit in a neuroscience lab, and so I am just doing those psychology courses as electives.

Amidst all the unfounded nonsense created by the likes of Freud, and all the weird theories for which the so-called "evidence" would be scoffed at by a real-ass scientist, I found the idea of "Affect-Stable vs. Affect-Intense." Basically, it's just another way to classify personalities; most people will lie somewhere on a continuum between the two personality types. As for the definitions: "affect-stable" describes people who don't feel their emotions very strongly, and "affect-intense" describes people who do. I reckon you'd be hard-pressed to find somebody who is COMPLETELY to one side or the other. An example of a fully affect-stable personality would be the "Neutrals" from that Futurama episode; you couldn't get a rise out of those folks no matter what. Affect-stable individuals are those who act pretty much the same at a totally crazy concert as they do at their dad's funeral. An example of a fully affect-intense personality could be River Tam from "Firefly," whose amygdala was stripped, and as such she felt every emotion to its fullest extent, lacking the ability to push them to the back of her mind (no info on whether that's actually what would happen if you cut out somebody's amygdala). Affect-intense individuals would be going NUTS at the aforementioned concert, and totally inconsolable at the aforementioned funeral.

I'll be the first guy to say "yeah fuckin' right, psychologist" to theories such as the "Affect-Stable vs. Affect-Intense" one. But in terms of personalities most people have encountered, you probably know people who lie near one end or the other of the spectrum, and quite a few somewhere in between. Reliable evidence or not, it's a way of looking at people that made sense to pretty much everybody in that psych class, my friends who don't do any psychology (damn few... we're rotten with soft-science hippies over here), and even my parents (psychology probably wasn't even a thing back in their schooling days in India). It's not the ONLY spectrum on which to evaluate somebody's personality traits, but rather one of the many I've learned about so far, and certainly one that I think explains people's varying opinions on the use of potentially offensive language.

What it Means for the Type of Language you Choose to use:

If you're like me, you've had enough horrible language hurled at you that you've learned to deal with it. When I was an RA in my second year of university, I had some seriously hateful, racist insults yelled at me by drunk first years, and hell, I began to revel in it; I'd join in on the joke - usually about sexual intercourse with my mom, or my "Hindu girlfriend," or something about terrorism - and take it to the Nth degree, to the point where they were just astonished that I wasn't trying to murder them. One might say that, ever since I grew out of my extremely short temper, I'm about 90% affect-stable (pulled that number out of nowhere. Psychology!). So when somebody says some offensive word that reminds of some real awful stuff that's happened in my life - and it does happen, to most people, I think - I'm not fazed by it. That's not bragging, to be clear; there are just different types of people in the world, and I happen to be one who is very hard to upset. That has its ups and downs; one downside is that my calm demeanor often makes bosses/professors/lab supervisors think I'm not taking anything seriously, which REALLY sucks because I am pretty serious about what I do academically.

On the other hand, there are people who may have had some terrible shit happen to them, and when some strong language reminds them of that experience, it can ignite a whole lot of negative emotions in that person. To me, that was really enough of an argument against using words like - and please forgive me for using them here, but they tie in to a later point - the homophobic f-word, the n-word, and c-word, among many others. I mean, I've got my ass kicked by a group of guys for being brown. They called me a "sand n****r" and a "camel jockey" because... I don't know, were those used in some movie or something? We were pretty young, I wouldn't doubt they got the idea from TV. [Side note: I always felt like "sand n****r" was a lazy epithet, since you're just tagging a quick geography description onto an existing hateful word, but that's besides the point.] Anyway, I'm just saying that I understand how those memories can be brought to the forefront of your thoughts when one of those powerful trigger words is used; to me, the following thought is "huh, yeah that did happen, didn't it? Heh, that sucked. Glad I didn't get a permanent Owen Wilson nose or anything," and then I usually proceed to tell the above story. To a gay person who got their ass whooped while being called the f-word or a woman whose abusive former husband used to use the c-word, the reaction to the use of such words - in any context, even a joke - could be the same as my reaction to "sand n****r" (if they're really affect-stable), or it could be to break down into tears (affect-intense). Both are perfectly normal - and hopefully now, a bit more understandable - human reactions to painful memories.

So by now, you must know what I'm getting at, right? I mean, I'm sure some affect-intense people can develop coping mechanisms and get better at not reacting to their memories, and I encourage folks to do so if such reactions are interfering with their everyday functioning. But I think that as much as I like to cuss like a sailor, and flaunt my foul, horrible mouth - and trust me, I do - the least I can do is limit that kind of language use to when I'm around people I know very well, and not within earshot of those I don't. Unless I'm around somebody who I know really doesn't like the use of a certain word(s), in which case I tailor my language to suit that situation.

I don't think that's "cheating," because as I see it, the issue with using potentially "offensive" language is, well, that you'll offend somebody. That's not a huge leap of logic, is it? The idea behind cutting those words out of the vast majority of my life is to make sure I don't hurt anybody's feelings by bringing up painful memories. Some people can't help but feel bad if such memories arise, and using strong language is a pretty reliable way to get those memories to show up at somebody's brain-door, waiting to ruin their day. I wouldn't dare change effect somebody's emotions negatively, especially if it's just for a spot of fun with blue language.

Of course, this can be taken to a ridiculous degree, ex. "I found out my grandma died while I was playing Halo, could you please never talk about Halo ever again," or "I was brutally beaten by a guy wearing a shirt that said 'CHINA DON'T CARE' on it, could we please never talk about China ever again?" I mean, sure, there may be people who can never look at a pink shirt ever again without having a full nervous breakdown. But the real "Bad Words" mentioned above are categorized as such because they can elicit those emotions in a WHOLE BUNCH of people. I mean, check out the stats for the percentage of girls/women who were sexually assaulted at some point in their lives, for example. Spoiler alert: it's disgustingly high. I mean, even ONE sexual assault is a disgustingly high number of sexual assaults, but now just imagine the number of people who could have those terrible memories resurface if somebody walking by on the street was talking about "that c*** that turned me down at the club last night."

And THAT, dear friends, is why I changed my way of thinking about "offensive language."

TL;DR

Some words can trigger bad memories - and, possibly, correspondingly bad emotions - in a lot of people. If you must use these words, be careful who you use them around, as you never know who was beaten, molested, etc. and will have their day (or more, or less) ruined by your use of these words. The context means nothing, as often just the sound of the word just has a hard mental connection with a memory. Ask me, I've felt it work in my own head; I just don't care. But I DO care about not hurting people's feelings for fun, so I barely ever use these words (that I once loved to use) today.

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#6  Edited By munnyman5

I'm awful with art, but here's an idea: a Brad silhouette wearing that white-and-blue typical Brad shirt, holding a lowered, smoking rifle with a guy dead on the floor in front of him. On the wall, it says "SECTOR 1-ALPHA," and beneath that, the giant TEAM BRAD (with "TEAM" atop "BRAD," of course).

But why would anyone turn my mental image into a shirt? Oh right; you guys are crazy. I forgot.

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#7  Edited By munnyman5

This is amazing.

I think Brad's chin is a bit big, but everybody else says he's perfect, so... all it really tells me is that I am intimately familiar with the faces of like 5 or 6 dudes from the Internet who I've met in person for a grand total of maybe an hour.

I'm a GiantBomb fan, and that fact is fucked up.

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#8  Edited By munnyman5

I just finished playing MGS4 for the first time like 2 days ago, and I knew that it was something crazy/special; even if a good deal of the references were lost on me (I haven't played any other Metal Gear game), I still laughed heartily and more often than I expected.

When I finished playing Journey, I found out that I had played with ONE other person the whole way through (though I didn't know it until the end), and it left such an impression on me that just I have remembered his/her PlayStation Network username off the top of my head ever since. I even sent a friend request immediately after with the attached message "That. Was. Amazing." which I also remember. Why? Because emotionally charged memories are more strongly stored in memory. Why? Because the amygdala is very close to the hippocampus. Look it up.

And dude, straight up, Saints Row: The Third blew my goddamn mind out the back of my fuckin' head. I mean I visit GiantBomb.com, so I am probably the kind of person who would obviously dig that game, but let me hit you with this: my friend is a brash young bon-vivant that drinks a lot, has a lot of sex, and barely plays video games. He also happens to be a supremely cool guy (no, not because of the drinking, sex, etc.) with a pretty keen sense of humor. He'd boot up GTA:SA every so often to put in a bunch of cheats and beat the Christ out of cops for a half hour to unwind, but that was about it. But one fine day, I lent him my 360 and Saints Row: The Third, and it was literally the first video game this marvelous motherfucker had ever played from start to finish. He did the missions and everything - a concept he had never even considered in other games - and we even talked about how crazy the TRON level etc. were. I think that if SR3 can draw in a dude who could scarcely give less of a fuck about games, it's something special, too.

So that was 3 answers. Sorry.

EDIT: Fuck, Red Dead Redemption was super great as well. I barely even have emotions; the kind of guy who is pretty much always kinda happy-go-lucky and not a whole lot else. But Red Dead made me shed 2 tears at the end. Yo, I NEVER cry, hear me? That's 4 answers. Once again, my apologies.

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#9  Edited By munnyman5

@Chumm: She got sick! Just my luck. And here I was hoping for a good old-fashioned cocaine bender of a first date.

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#10  Edited By munnyman5

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.