Hello, my name is Riley and this is my blog. I’ve got some shit on the sides here, I don’t know what it does but you can click it if you’re feeling froggy. I live in Seattle and currently work as a video game tester for Microsoft Game Studios, they pay me money to play xbox all day and report any inconsistencies I find with a game. I simulate the end user (that would be you, you sexy end user you) and so I look for things that are not supposed to be a part of your play experience with said game. This is called black box testing, which sounds much cooler than it actually is.
I grew up in Portland, and its full of “hippie scum” which is a fun thing to say. I miss Portland sometimes, but Seattle is fucking crazy awesome and there is always something to do or some dive to go and drink at. That’s not to say I do these things or drink those dives, but the option is always there, kicken rad!
I’ve been up here since August, and only last week found a place to live, thanks to all my friends who gave me couches to surf on while I adjusted. What about my place? How kind of you to ask.
I live with the super cool Jason Young in his death house . . . actually the house isn’t important, lets talk about the bees.
I was raped by bees on my first night in my new abode. Is that even possible? Yes, yes it is, and it is horrific. I had just got my bed set up and was getting ready to crash when I noticed a yellowjacket idly buzzing around the room. Odd for October but whatever, I let it slide, one bee wasn’t going to keep me from sleeping in my own room, it wasn’t until I laid down that I noticed two things. One, I left the light on. And two, the astronomical amount of bees surrounding my halogen bulb like pagans getting their freak on at some bitch goddesses orgy.
How the fuck do you dispose of that many yellow jackets at one in the morning? They seemed to be occasionally electrocuting themselves in the bulbs coils, so I did not want to shut that off, I couldn’t close the window, what if they wanted an exit after drinking in their fill of brightness? So I did what anyone face with this situation would do, wrapped myself up like a burrito and hoped for the best.
. . .
8 stinging bastard later Im standing at the edge of my room, wielding a shoe with one hand, while the other was on the door handle in case i needed to evacuate the premises with a quickness. I became the stuff of Yellow Jacket nightmares that night. With a kick in one hand and the other on the door, I slapped at those bitches one at a time before running into the living room hiding in a corner curled up into a ball, crying feverishly until I thought it was safe to take out another of those yellow bastard(s), At 4 am I gave up and moved into the living room for the remainder of the night.
The next day Jason and my buddy sam went all “war, war never changes . . .” and instigated the yellow jacket apocalypse. Two cans of bug bomb and a few hornet traps purged them from my domicile. This was not my first choice for solutions to the whole yellowgate fiasco, but it works. Personally, I thought up a series of increasingly elaborate plans to exact my revenge, three of them involved fire. The fourth and final plan involved aquiring a bee keepers suit, painting it to match the gang colors these bees were representin’. I would infiltrate their society and live among them. After this was obtained, then I would hunt them down with my switch blade stinger and murder every last yellowjacket residing in their unholy warren under my window. Being attacked by one of the buzzzing bretheren would be too much for their small insect brains to comprehend, and would be thusly defenseless.
Its been so long!!!! What have you been doing? really? sweet, well I . . . ok, uh-huh Shut up I don’t care about what your doing anymore. I’m getting paid to test video games! Alright.
I just got back from Sam and Wendy’s awesome weddingapalooza fest ‘08. It was awesome and Everyone kept asking me if I was a “Scott” which I am. Half my family grew up in Mt. Vernon (the town where the wedding was held) and apparently the entire brides half of the wedding knew my cousin. I was accosted at the bathroom by an old man asking me about my family’s heritage, very weird. I’m kind of a big deal in Mt. Vernon.
I bought comic books tonight as well! Batman: Dark Victory, and Queen and Country Volume 1, both of which Im excited about. I’ve come to realize this is a blog, and Im too busy to make epicly awesome posts all the time, so here we go trying a shorter more frequent format.
At the book store Some girl who worked there came up to the counter and started talking to me about Batman, which was awesome. She then proceeded to emasculate me about comics I haven’t read. Every book I can think of to throw in there shes already consumed. Her comic cock is huge and I concede to you Barnesand Noble girl. You will see me again, I wont be unarmed though.
Wow, this is looking shitty.
Hello and welcome back. I’ve been busy. In fact just a few minutes ago I became almost entirely entangled in a dusty spiderweb hanging low from my ceiling. I made it out pretty much ok though, so no need to send for the authorities, this time.
I got a job, which is awesome. As a game tester, which is awesome ^2. Actually, it’s also ironic, this is the last place I thought to mention this, weird. I’m moving to Seattle, at least for the next 3 months, which is intimidating, but whatever, I’m making the big bones now bitches. TIME FOR SHITTY QUALITY YOUTUBE VIDEO
So it is fair to say that I am, at least, familiar, with MMO’s. I have played Everquest, City of Heroes, and World of Warcraft Extensively, and in the case of EQ and WoW, I was in top tier guilds doing the hard stuff. I could write a textbook on the Planes of Power flag events, a series of incredibly difficult encounters needed to be completed by every member of your guild in order to get into the Plane of Time, a whole new series of stupidly hard encounters and boss fights. I would spend 6 hours a night with 74 other people banging my head on broken bosses and overly difficult content. I think we spent a whole month just clearing one particular zone (a 4-5 hour process itself) just to fail in 30 seconds to a giant fairy with a wand. I told you I was hardcore.
That being said, this popped out at me whilst browsing Kotaku yesterday. Guild spends 18 hours on single encounter. So apparently Square Enix has seen fit to put a boss mob in their Final Fantasy XI MMO that took, from what I understand to be a top tier guild, 18 hours of real time to fight. They didn’t even kill the motherfucker, they gave up after people started to get physically ill and puke at their computers. I can see where these dudes are coming from, you want the most powerful imaginary hat you can get and this boss drops a headband that has 5 more hit points on it and is a completely different color from the hat you have on now, I get that, but 18 hours? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me for 3/4 of a day? Shame on me. Either the developers have lost touch on what is an acceptable time sink, or this guild is actually just really fucking stupid and couldn’t figure out the ‘trick’ to beating him in a timely fashion. I have a feeling it might be a mix between the two, but it is Japanese, and it is Final Fantasy.
Actually, lets talk about that Pokemon link right above me for a second. I discovered this EV bullshit a few years ago while satisfying my fetish for useless information. I found enough information to write a thesis on the fucking thing. Effort Values, I couldn’t remember ever seeing an ev stat in any Pokemon game I’ve ever seen. That’s because its not there. It’s a hidden stat value that Nintendo won’t even admit it exists. How did we get to a point where its alright to hide that sort of information from your players? Lets be fair Nintendo, Pokemon is a spread sheet with pictures, and that’s fine. I’m a big fan of turn based tactics games. But when you go ahead and release Excel death-match battle engine and you hide information like that from your players, who all have scary OCD traits and thus WILL catch them all, you cannot expect things like “effort Values” and “individual values” to stay hidden. I just remembered that Pokemon is a game about fuzzy critters fighting for aimed at little kids, fuck it.
Final thought: I am going to put on a cape and cast some spells. watch out Cepters!
I took a walk around my yard tonight, I could hear nothing but dogs barking in the valley, which means coyotes. Scary little bastards, their young cry like human children in the dark. Wails to chill your blood and loosen your bowels.
I saw one tonight, a coyote. I took one look at him and knew his intentions in my yard were naught but evil.
“Stay away from my ducklets” I said calmly to the scraggly, beady eyed prowler.
“I know exactly how many there are in there and I swear on whatever long forgotten god your kind worships I will hunt you down if even one is missing come morning”.
It barked at me, an ancient challenge for the right to eat my baby ducks I’m sure. But I am man, and need not submit to the will of such foul creatures, so I picked up a stick.
“I have made a tool, see my terrible capacity for innovation and flee”.
This is how I defeated a coyote and saved the lives of 36 young and impressionable ducks.
Surging with adrenaline, I then turned to the heavens and dropped my pants.
Its fucking cold up here at night, no matter what time of year, but that did not stop me from exposing myself to the big dipper. I am audacious on a cosmic level.
I really should be writing Talksplosion and not this, but I have a terrible feeling that it would be work, and work is not to be trusted, not now.
I have a tale to tell. A tale of semi truck inner tubes and spray paint. A tale of poachers and white water rapids. A tale, of how I lost my Penguin T shirt.
Ok, so I can’t even think of a scenario where my trip with good friends at SEA ORG to Estacada to go tubing down the sandy river ends up being dramatic as that. Safe to say it was awesome, a good time was had by all, and I really did lose my penguin T shirt. And we could have been fined like 300 bucks a pop for not wearing life jackets, or so the dude gutting fish into the fucking river said. He had a definite look of methyness about him though, so I think he was just trying to steal our shoes for his next fix.
RIP heart fishing penguin 2006-2008
firstly, I am now on the bookface. here is a song that is both a song and also awesome.
I spent all day cowering in fear of real life and its sneering and slathering responsibilities. I washed myself in breakup songs and songs about moving to the pacific northwest and songs about fucking. Then I wrote a paragraph. Then I knew no fear.
I am now something greater than the sum of my parts. I am raw and jagged. I have horns and the ringed snout of a bull. I will stomp and snort and stampede through your Internet, crashing into your favorite sites, leaving nothing but broken glass and explosive cow semen in my wake. My teeth are grenades, I will headbutt through your monitor and grin a pin lined smirk of enamel disasters. I don’t even open doors anymore, I kick them until they fall off or break. Your portals are just a means to an end for me. I threw my keyboard away. It was broken by my pounding fists. I don’t even need it, I punch the monitor and words appear.
I am a mask of cynicism and apathetic rage. These are the end times, who’s with me?
Also, my buddy Jason helped to make this pretty nifty video, we are proud of him.
I am supposed to write about video games, particularly E3. So that will happen at some point, but for now I am going outside to deal with this son of a bitch tree that keeps blowing in the breeze. I am going to shout and scream at that mother fucker until its nothing but a fear and urine soaked twig. This is how things are going to be from now on.
final thought: I will eat your babies.
Last night I decided that enough was enough. If I didn’t get laid that night I would look it up online and donate my junkleberries to scientific research. So I did what anyone would do in a last ditch effort for sexual intercourse, I made my hands into fists, and spun my arms around me really fast.
Two police cruisers and a restraining order later there I was, filling out the form to donate my bone flute and 2 Mox Pearls to government testing. Within the hour four black sedans pulled into my driveway along with an old ambulance straight out of Ghostbusters. These certified Johnson removers didn’t even bother with the front door, instead preferring to blitzkrieg the side of my house with harpoons and shaped charges.
It only took me about 30 seconds to run downstairs and out the front door, but it was more than enough time for my sponsored dong poachers to blast their “Ghostie the Wang” logo into my home with explosives. Now, normally I would be apprehensive about giving up my Pump Action and spare rounds to people with harpoons and vaguely SS’ish uniforms, and this was no exception. They had this Russian chick sit me in a chair and yell at me in her half english half summoning ritual dialect. I won’t lie to you, I cried a bit, alottabit.
The actual process of being depenised was pretty quick and painless, they even had cool carrying case with molded foam to put it in. It even was labeled with my name and everything “Riley’s Maverick and Wingmen”. The Russian necromancer lady gave me a 4 inch thick 3-ring binder with information about getting my bits and pieces back.
After I settled in for my first night as a eunuch I had a terrible nightmare. I don’t remember much, just a building marked Warehouse 23.
Thing’s aren’t all bad though, I don’t even miss my boner.
Ok, I totally Miss my boner, things don’t look good.
Final thought: I really love this band. And my Boner.
I’m sitting on my bed with all the pieces spread out around me. I’ve polished each one, made sure that they all fit where they are supposed to. Though no matter how many ways I try to put myself together I keep running into the same problem. An oddly familiar hole. I don’t even know what the fuck goes there, but no matter how many times I try to jiggle and jam the pieces together in new ways, its always there. This fucking hole.
It’s not like I can check the directions, I already looked, they are written in some kind of picture language that’s not to be trusted under any circumstances. I tried looking it up online, but apparently this generation of models is plagued with missing pieces. Ok I gotta stop with the robot thing.
So i don’t really know what the fuck is up with me, but I do know that it can’t be fixed by my normal means. Listening to death metal in the car didn’t do it for me. I absolutely crushed myself into a pulp working out tonight but that didn’t even do it for me, which creeps me out. I’m usually too exhausted to feel anything but apathy and bask in the warmth of what promises to be sore muscles. I haven’t even felt like shooting people in the head on my seXbox. I still do mind you, but my heart really isn’t into it. I guess its the old standby again. drunk pornography review!
Will Riley fill his hole? What about Jessica’s baby with Trent? How many dead prostitutes can you fit in a Ford Focus? Stay tuned for more!
To start things off: here is a video I didn’t know existed for an awesome song, Thom Yorke wilting on an U.N.K.L.E Track. Rabbit in your headlights!
So, that was awesome, no? That video is really, really hard to watch the first time. I spent 4:49 convinced I was only going to watch that video once, and the resulting 24 hours since first watching it thinking to myself ‘clever’!
I went commando today, but in the interest of keeping lady juices from flooding everywhere I kept this to myself for most of the afternoon. It was an exhilarating experience, my pants are much looser than they used to be. If you ever wanted to spend some time playing an awesome, sexy, potentially warrant issuing game, try reverse hot potato, where the potato is your tackle, and instead of throwing your ‘potato’ at friends, you’re trying not to get nailed for indecent exposure in the deli of a New Seasons.
Speaking of pant sizes, check this out!
Here I am at Christmas 2007 (protip: I’m the boy in this picture)
Wow, that picture was big!
And here I am at my 4th of July fiesta, circa 4th of July 2008
not pictured: The rest of me. Due to some creative refocusing at the macro organizational level, large portions of my bodyfat have been given 6 months to pack their shit and leave.
Looking in the mirror is like watching a wax statue of a fat dude slowly melt into a hot piece of bitch I call me.
So I’m not going to be sleeping much tonight, I am about half a step away from a job in Seattle, which is awesome for everyone in Seattle. I’ve been cultivating this new Riley by a window in my room. His leaves are vibrant and full with a waxyness you can only get from happy Riley’s. Seattle’s the garden where I’m looking to plant this new Riley and see if he grows. It was really hard not to make an erection joke right there.
I am so god damned lonely, time to go punish myself and my pillow for half an hour.
Final Note; I’m pretty sure I’ve got enough indian in me to legally do peyote on the rez. on an unrelated note: I’ve been reading alot of Hunter S. Thompson. You should be pretty nervous right about now.
I’ve conquered vast amounts of my very own personal neuroses(?) today. I have realized that I am pretty fucking awesome, and that I have no reason to hate myself, so i pretty much broke a 23 year streak with that one and I think its time to celebrate. Who wants to fuck me?
Are you rad? Do you enjoy oral sex with your video games? Are you into grenade play*? If you answered yes to all of these and your idea of a good time is me doing lines of Viagra off your ass before we fire up the compressor and put on our catchers masks for a night of Battle Star Galactica and 911 calls then you are the next lucky contestant in the Thunder Dome! I am Young and I have a cock and goddamnit I am fierce.
God This is the best apart about the Internet, zero accountability. Because I can hide behind this all governing mask of anonymity I don’t have to take responsibility for anything I say. All I have to do is say something like:
“Alcohol bottles are much bigger than they used to be, huh?”
BAM! Instant deniability. I want to fuck my ex girlfriend, I want to do things to her that would make rest area prostitues blush. Neighbors would get scared and call an exorcist, I don’t even know what, but it would involve body paint and tax returns. When we are done, and that bull has left the china shop and I’ve fucked her out of my head, I’ll clear away the police tape at the door, she’ll give me a highfive like its going out of style and that will be that.
Yeah, that felt good, getting that out. Oh yeah, this is wholly a work of fiction and has no basis in reality. Ha ha, I fucking beat you again Internet.
Here I am, mounting this tired old whore we call creativity. Grabbing a handful of her greasy bus station hair and leaning in to whisper into her scabbed and bruised ear before we grudge fuck something contagious into one another.
“Do that thing thats funny”
I’ve rediscovered myself and I am full of cum and liquor with a hard on so violent it feels like i gave blood. I would suggest all of you pray for your souls. However I grant you temporary respite while I jack off to pictures of your girlfriends.
final note: watch the fuck out Seattle, I’m coming for you and your daughters. Lower your masts, unload your shot, The Harbor is Mine!
*Non-Negotiable