(a lone figure walks up to the podium in a smoky room filed with people)

"Hi, I’m DmentD."

(the crowd speaks as one)

"Hi DmentD!"

"I’m an internetaholic. I have been for so long that time is a blur. I can’t even tell you when or how it started. I’m a hopeless lost cause. You see, I didn’t come here for redemption, reform or rehabilitation. No my brothers and sisters, I came here to reaffirm my addiction – to bask in it’s soft radioactive glow."

"I love the web with all it’s useful and useless information. I relish the fact that I can shop from home, while away the hours then turn around and push a big red button that does absolutely nothing. Ahhh, bliss."

"Email is another great form of entertainment too. I can keep up with my friends, write stinging commentaries to my congressman and learn how to enlarge my penis – just like John Holmes. Spam is the greatest sometimes. Have any of you actually read some of the stupidity that hits your inbox? It’s hilarious."

"I live for filesharing – well, partaking from people who share files anyway. There are one or two really good P2P programs out there that make my life complete. I just can’t get enough of my favorite animated shows, TV series and old martial arts movies. I can collect them to watch at my leisure and trade with my friends. I won’t go into the whole music side of it."

"I’ve only just scratched the surface, my friends. You should give up this folly of giving it up and join me in my pride."

(someone approaches the podium from the darkness of the room)

"Gonzo, what are you doing here?"

"Uh, Stuff, when we say that this is an internetaholic support group, we meant that we’re helping each other to use the internet more frequently and efficiently."

"Ah, I see. So I don’t have to hand out these porn-site password leaflets then – you know, as an incentive to fall off the wagon?"

"What? Are you on crack? Of course you have to. Do you forget your audience? We’ll just call them… door-prizes."

"Solidarity, my brother."

Ok ladies and men-folk, I, like many of you who are "in the know", am a big fan of Don Hertzfeldt’s little insane animated gems such as Rejected! and Billy’s Balloon. I also like to wear t-shirts with things that strike me as amusing emblazoned upon them. Don has a line of t-shirts for sale on his site with art from the cartoons. The problem is this – Don is a decent animator and a funny guy, but can’t design a t-shirt for shit. His cartoons are simple and clean, but his t-shirts are either poorly laid-out, too cluttered or everything in-between. Trust me, I’ve done this for a living.

Here is my proposal. I am going to design a bootleg Rejected t-shirt (just one to start) for my friends, family and myself. I’ll design and execute all the artwork, printing arrangements and other fine details… all you guys have to do is give me money for them. I am not going to be making any profit off these, I’m just interested in getting a few cool shirts for my wardrobe without having to pay a fortune for them. The more I order, the better the individual price will be.

DISCLAIMER: I am not trying to take money away from Don, I just refuse to buy a product that isn’t what I want. I love his cartoons and fully intend on buying his DVD that’s coming out soon with all the cartoons collected on it. I am also not starting a wholesale Don Hertzfeldt bootleg t-shirt product line. I’m only ordering as many as I have orders for, only select people will be able to get these and no profit is generated… I’m only recouping what I’m spending on them.

Ok, now that that’s out of the way, I want to point out that this is still a hypothetical scenario. I want to gauge how many people are interested in this to see if it’s worth my time (which is at a premium these days). Also, if enough people are interested, all orders will be pre-paid – let me repeat that so I’m being very clear – all orders will be pre-paid, for a few reasons. The first reason is so I don’t get stuck paying for a handful of shirts some joker said he wanted and decided later he didn’t reeeally want. Secondly, I don’t want to have to chase anyone down and collect money from them. The third reason being that I’m not a rich man and can’t afford to bankroll this project. All in all this will prevent any hard feelings and make my life a hell of a lot simpler.

The proposed design is this:

Shirt Style: Single color print, front and back design. Black shirts with white ink and/or ash/heather shirts with black ink (with a possibility of off-color sleeves). All shirts will be 100% cotton heavyweight – I want these to last.

Shirt Front: The spoon man, all by his lonesome with only his bowl – no banana. It’ll be printed as big as I can get it -likely around 15" or so tall.

Shirt Back: The phrase "MAH SPOON IS TOO BIG!" nice and big – again, up to about 15" – in a very rough hand-written type of font, maybe tilted a bit to add to the effect.

I’m not going to pester my printer for a price until I’m sure this is a go. More than likely it’ll be comparable to a concert t-shirt price. Also, I have a few follow-up designs in mind for a future time – a banana shirt and a "I’m the Queen of France!" shirt, both in a similar style as this.

If you are interested in ordering one or several of the "Spoon Man" shirts, and have any suggestions for minor improvements you can email me here. Be sure to let me know how many you’d like so I can get a feel for what the first order will be like. Also, be sure to specify who the hell you are in your email so I won’t instantly delete it assuming you’re some random loser from the internet who I don’t know – nicknames are acceptable, considering a lot of people only know me as Stuff or DmentD. Friends and family only to make orders for these, folks.

If the response is good, I’ll move to the next stage and put together some artwork for everyone to see.

Here I am, the front man, administrator and one of four people who operate a public LANParty known as the Geek-O-Rama. I’m faced with a metric ass-ton of inner turmoil. I’m a man divided.

I’ve been doing this LANParty thing for, jeez, more years than I care to count – the last three being open to the public – each event spaced out about every two months or so. I didn’t set out to make my fortune while running these events – my greatest hope was to break even and have some extra cash left over to increase and update my networking and server equipment. Pretty much everything we have been working with is either computers and equipment I already owned or scrounged, donated for temporary use, or I had a few pennies to rub together after an event and used them to buy what I needed. We host the events at a local hotel and have never seemed to break the 40-ish person mark. My ultimate goal was to bring together and build the local gaming community and have a little fun at the same time.

Here’s my dilemma.

On the one hand…

Attendance. It’s dwindling. People are getting burnt-out on the whole dismantle-and-drag-around thing. There aren’t enough people in this city who attend LANParties to be able to have folks cycle in and out of attendance. There’s nowhere around here to really advertise the events – no real "gaming" shops aside from Babbages and Electronics Boutique, and they won’t let us post any flyers – the bastards, a sprinkling of comic shops, and the massive papering we’ve done on all the local campuses is for naught. All other efforts yield nada as well. It’s not for a lack of trying. If nobody comes to the events, we can’t pay for the events, we don’t have more events. Simple math, really.

Competition. There is one other public LANParty in town. If you’ll remember what I said above, there ain’t enough people to go around. Now, this other LANPary has a different goal than we do. They want to become the "pro-circuit" event. They want to be CPL qualifiers and have the massive tournaments and attract all the foaming-at-the-mouth über competitive gamers and blah, blah, blah. I, on the other hand want an event that attracts people that want to come and play, regardless of skill level, regardless of the game.

Attitude. I like folks that enjoy gaming for shits and grins, not merely for the dick-stroking thrill of victory and huge cash prizes. Gamers that are willing to give a new title or mod a try. Quite frankly, I’ve developed a big chip on my shoulder with regard to CounterStrike. CounterStrike is the only game that has nearly caused my attendees to come to blows. The really good players take themselves way too seriously, refuse to play anything else, and will be belligerent, rude and mope if you don’t have a tournament. If a game stops being fun, I stop running the server for it. If you can’t laugh at yourself, you don’t earn the right to laugh at others. I mean, c’mon, what’s funnier (or more pathetic) than sitting behind a monitor pretending to be the person in the game. We’re all guilty of it and we all enjoy it so damned much. Lighten up people, life’s too short to go through it without trying new things, or having a few laughs.

Weariness. Let’s face it, this shit can get old after a while. I have five computers – sometimes six – that I have to break down, load into the car, unload from the car, haul into a hotel, reassemble, run for fourteen hours, break down again, load into the car again, unload from the car again. haul back into the house and reassemble… again. Add to that list about ten containers of miscellaneous gear, a dry-erase board, prizes, a 150-pound power distribution unit and other bric-a-brac. All of this gets done by four people with the occasional help (and I thank all-that-I-don’t-believe-is-holy that I have those folks that do help). Aside from the physical aspect there is also planning the event, updating the servers (hardware, software, new games, patches and mods for the games), running the servers during the event and running the tournaments too. We really don’t have a lot of help in this department… I once had someone help me with the servers. For one event. He then got busy and distracted and I was on my own again. What I really need are people who will not only be there the one or two times, or at the beginning and end of an event, but to be there in the two or so months in-between. Dedicated folks who want to help… a lot. So far, I’ve had one offer. Not a whole lot of people standing in line to help. Boo-fucking-hoo.

Time. Two months may seem like a long time to prepare for a decent event, but between work and sleep (what little I get) it’s a hard choice to make between preparing for the event and having a real life. I forget what my friends look like after a while. It gets real hard to motivate yourself when you have little assistance and a houseful of shit to move looming in your future.

Summation: A lot of damned work, hassle, research and bullshit for very little return. Spiritually, financially or satisfactorily.

On the other hand…

When the event goes juuuust right and everything gels, it’s like magic. I feel like a wizard of the highest magnitude who just performed the spell of a lifetime. There is a full house, everyone has a great time, the tournaments go off without a hitch and all is well with the world. It makes all the pain and hassle seem worth it. Seem.

I’m weary. The wind is out of my sails, I’ve lost my spark and am rapidly losing my taste for it. I can’t motivate myself to think about the next possible event. We haven’t even set a date.

I’ve got a hard decision ahead of me concerning the future of the events, or the lack thereof.

*sigh*

Chalk another failed venture up on my board. Shit. I’m running out of chalk.

Mardi Gras is over and done, and for a change Nadia and I didn’t try to escape the tourons and locals alike. We used this as a prime opportunity to catch up with old friends who usually gather in one place around this time of year to party and… well, catch up with each other. Our friend Krazy is the crowned King of Mardi Gras. He is a host extraordinaire. He arranges, organizes and agonizes over the annual Mardi Gras extravaganza, ensuring that everyone keeps safe, has a place to stay, gets to the parades on time and generally has a good time. He’s very good at his job. Krazy’s apartment was the local hub of activity and general all-around meeting place – and our destination on many a night during the festivities, much to the chagrin of his neighbors. The place was jumping and filled to the rafters with people, all of us laughing, joking, drinking (of course) and, well, catching up. I’ve taken a number of fond memories away with me from this Mardi Gras, and I primarily have Krazy to thank for them.

It was also a golden opportunity to visit with Heather and Gonzo. Gonzo is Krazy’s brother and one of my many good friends who pulled up stakes and moved to California (you cowards!). Gonzo, like Phreeq and myself, is a technology fiend and aficionado of some of the finer things in life. I stocked up on some good cigars, scraped the last of my precious Dancing Bear tobacco from it’s jar (forgetting completely that Phreeq has a full jar at home) and filled an ice-chest with Guinness in anticipation of enjoying them all with Gonzo and Phreeq. I was not disappointed. The best of it all was standing on the landing, talking and smoking the twisted trio of Davidoff Special "C" cigars that I saved for the last possible moment before having to depart the night before Gonzo and Heather were to leave for home.

I am also and single-handedly responsible for planting a dangerous seed in Gonzo’s brain with regards to a certain arcade contraption of mine. That is a story for another time.

We also made a handful of other friends from out-of-town. Two more temporary immigrants from California were Andy and Dawn. Andy is a closet processed-cheese loving pervert, and Dawn had been known to kill a man over a piece of sushi. There were also some Michigan-ites in the hizouse. Trevor, Ivory and Sonic were great fun to hang out with. Greets, guys! If I forgot anyone, I apologize, my walnut sized memory can only hold so much.

The only unfulfilled wish I had for this Mardi Gras was to see two other special folks from Cali who have been known in the past to come into town for the festivities. Maybe next year. Till then, greets and love to you. Keep safe, sane and satiated.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Happy Birthday, Cuz! Snap, I don’t want to see you freebasing any of that Angelo Brocado ice cream. Pounders, me want mead!

Now to catch up on all that lost sleep.

The demons are back.

The little winged purple bastards are back, if only for a little while. They sit on my shoulders and perch on my head whispering evil things to me, strumming the invisible strings connected to by brain. Their names are Irritability, Anger, Irrationality, Moodiness… and Heartburn, oddly enough.

I am in no mood for bullshit today, and I’m doing my damnedest to not lop anyone’s head off for no reason – for the most part, they really don’t deserve it. I feel like a raw nerve being prodded by a dentist’s pick and it’s getting harder by the minute to be even a tiny bit congenial.

I don’t want to be crowded, chided, babied or concerned about. If another motherfucker listens in on my phone conversations and doesn’t have the good sense and manners just to keep the fuck quiet, instead of waiting for me to hang up and clue me in that they were eavesdropping by commenting on the fact that it sounds like I’m in a crappy mood and having a bad day, I’m going to unmercifully bludgeon them into a bloody shattered mass of loosely connected tissue and bone shards.

I woke up this morning in this mode and I have no rational explanation for why. That doesn’t make the fact that I’m in it any easier to deal with, and it doesn’t make the world piss me off any less. More than likely I’ll be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed come morning, but all I care about is the here-and-now.

The repetitive, obtuse tasks I’ve been engaged in all day have left me with too much time to think. My co-workers have taken the available opportunities to engage in a little good-natured ribbing which otherwise I would have reveled in, but only brought me closer to a homicidal episode. I was "let off the hook" for a dinner get-together that I was looking forward to, and have interpreted it as a kind and gentle blow-off. My mind’s eye isn’t seeing 20/20 today, so I might be way off base on that one. Fuck it. Don’t care. Throw it on the heap.

If I can make it home without killing anyone, it’ll be a miracle.

FUCK! Heartburn.

I must have some kind of hang-up that I don’t admit, even to myself. Maybe it’s not so much a hang-up, as an outlook issue. Let me see if I can work it out here in public, because my own attitude about this is starting to bother me. Let’s go for a ride, shall we?

First, let me say this: I am in no way judging anyone here, with the possible exception of myself. If a problem exists it is entirely my own to deal with, and not a reflection of anyone else.

I have friends that like to attain, shall we say, an "altered state." Now, these people are fine, upstanding folks for the most part and are as nice a bunch of guys as you’d care to meet. They’re fiercely loyal, very protective and would give you the shirt off their back, and the back to go with it if so required. Some are local residents, some are from out of town. In fact, they are from a town where partaking of a certain leafy substance is infinitely more socially acceptable than in most parts of the country – it’s the equivalent of having a cocktail.

These folks are all extremely discreet in their indulgences and quite conscientious of those of us who don’t participate. They also don’t exceed their own self-imposed and well considered limitations either. My stance on the whole issue always has, and always will be one of casual indifference. The whole thing rates on the same chart as alcohol – either substance is harmless in and of itself, can be easily abused if in the wrong hands, and if used in careful moderation can be quite enjoyable to the person "consuming" it. I don’t much care or mind what other folks do as long as they don’t hurt themselves or others, or try to force something on me. As a matter of fact, I firmly believe that the smoke is a much safer route to go than the drink. While I don’t partake myself, I don’t condemn others if they do.

So, if I’m this casual about it, why do I get so bothered when I’m around my altered friends?

Sherman, set the wayback machine. It’s time we dive briefly into my past.

Once upon a time, when I was young and impressionable, I watched a beloved sibling waste a considerable portion of his life destroying his mind with substances. This same sibling has since cleaned up, and become a productive member of society – has been for many years and I am extremely proud of him for that. Whether I consciously knew it or not, his substance usage left an indelible impression on my psyche. I have never taken drugs of the illegal variety, nor used legal ones in an unintended manner. Alcohol is the strongest modifier I indulge in, with the occasional foray into the realm of tobacco in the form of cigars and pipes.

I do not enjoy losing control. In my early adulthood, I drank enough to discover a few things. There are many levels of drunk, from mildly buzzed to blood-alcohol toxicity – I’ve traveled the lower 70% of the scale. I’ve found my comfort levels and I stick to them. I usually stay in the mildly buzzed range with the occasional shuffle into tipsy. I don’t drink that often, and when I do it’s in the company of friends and family. I don’t like the sensation of being drunk and the lack of mental and motor skills that accompany it. It just doesn’t turn me on. As I get older, I have to acknowledge the fact that my memory is iffy at best, and quite frankly my hearing isn’t what it used to be, especially in a noisy room – and I ain’t that old to begin with. I don’t need anything that’s going to prevent me from remembering events and make it harder to focus on a conversation.

Taking all these things into consideration, you can see why the herb doesn’t appeal to me. That does not mean I’m going to "tsk, tsk" and shake my head at folks for passing the peace pipe. To each their own. Quite frankly, most of these guys don’t behave markedly different after the fact.

I do.

I can’t put my finger on it. The reasons elude me. If I know the deed’s been done, I get a little weird. My brain crawls silently out of my left ear to go get a cup of coffee, leaving my mouth and feet in charge – my heart never gets to cast a vote. The problem then becomes this: the mouth is incapable of coming up with anything clever to say, if anything, the feet can’t find a spot to park for long and the heart is screaming to the rest of my body that everything is grand and groovy, these are my good friends and there is nothing to see here, move along. After a short while things get back to normal, but only after I feel a metric ass-ton of foolish. Does my brain think they aren’t the same people as before they had a smoke? Do I think their cooties will get on me and cause me to fail my next random drug test at work? Am I passing some sort of unconscious judgment? Am I worried that they’re going to burn-out a crucial part of themselves, like someone else I knew? I don’t know. It’s all an autonomic subconscious reaction, and quite disturbing to me that I can get like this. It’s some Pavlovian reflex I’ve developed out of nowhere and I wish it’d go away.

I feel like a damned hypocrite. I’ve never condemned anyone for using responsibly, but I have a hard time – briefly – dealing with people who do, most notably my friends. What the fuck is that all about?

So, I’ll continue to look off into the middle distance, rather than the eyes of the person I’m talking to after I find out what recently transpired. I’ll excuse myself and put distance between ground zero and myself. I’ll keep on feeling like a damned fool for all the other little nervous habits I suddenly develop out of thin air. I’ll also take this moment to apologize to the people I inflict my silliness on, remind them that I love them all and request that they continue to put up with me. Accept me for who and how I am, and don’t judge me for my brief regressions – I can give them up any time I like.