The Year and Decade that Was

Ordinarily this would be a time of reflection on the years past, and the decade past. We could talk about the war on terror, about the market crash, about the new culture that the internet has facilitated.

But ultimately, why bother? A year is nothing more than a unit of measurement, a decade is simply ten of those. There’s no real difference between 2009 and 2010, or 2008 or 2007. There isn’t a difference between 8pm and 9pm, or 7pm. By themselves they have no meaning. Instead, we assign meaning to them.

2007 was just a year. But I graduated from high school. I got a job. My best friends moved away to far flung corners of the country. One of them fell in love. One of them got drunk all the time. I started a blog about WoW, one currently enjoyed by thousands a day. I raided, I had fun, I earned phat loots and personally wiped everyone on Solarian. I got drunk for the first time. Those two things are not related, I swear.

2008 was also just a year, but so many things happened. I lost my job. Lich King came out. I moved to expert mode on Rock Band. Getting up at 1pm was considered early. And on and on it went.

Point is, don’t define your life by the units of time you have spent alive. Instead, define your life by the events, your joys and sorrows. The year 2006 doesn’t matter, what matters is that you fell in love. You get the idea.

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This one time a spider crawled onto my keyboard while I was raiding. Unfortunately he stopped on my Arcane Blast button. I got through a full rotation before I noticed. The poor spider didn’t have a chance.

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So this one time in Alterac Valley, one player said “can we PLEASE kill some alliance so I can get my damn achievement and go play something else?” He’s talking, of course, about the Winter Veil thingy, the one where you dress up as a gnome.

I replied, “why do you want to get the achievement if you don’t even want to play WoW?” I was seriously curious. If you have no interest in the game, if you don’t want to play it, why are you forcing yourself to play for utterly meaningless achievements?

He replied, “because if I don’t, then I’d have to wait until next year to do it. Does that make sense?”

Actually… no. No it does not. Not even sort of.

Can someone explain this to me? I do miss a lot of things, especially things called “social skills” and “empathy”, so maybe there’s some sort of explanation somewhere I’m missing.

I have received clothing for christmas nearly every year. It works out well, I don’t have to buy clothes ever. If one of my t-shirts bites the dust, I just get a new one at christmas or my birthday. Whenever I receive these clothes, I always get badgered with questions like “do you like them? are they comfortable?” and so forth. I have very low standards when it comes to clothing.

For instance, take pants. Here are he questions I ask myself when judging a pair of pants:

• Do they remain near my waist when walking?
• Are they physically painful to wear?
• Do they burst into flame when worn?

If my answers are yes/no/yes, then it’s a good pair of pants. If my answers are anything else, then they have failed in their function as pants and are discarded.

So when my mom asks how they are, I say “fine”. She says “just fine?!” as if they should be excellent pants somehow. I don’t understand this at all. They prevent my buttocks and genitals from being exposed to harsh weather and mocking laughter. As far as I’m concerned, these pants have performed their assigned task adequately.

For them to be fantastic pants, excellent pants, they would need to come equipped with, oh I dunno, six hundred dollars and a fleshlight built into the crotch. Someone is going to invent just that exact thing, so just hold on guys. Relief is coming. Pun intended? You bet your ass it was.

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By the way, girls, if you’re ever stuck on what to get a dude for christmas, and giving him a sexing just isn’t viable, find out what he likes to eat or drink. I got 9 litres of Dr. Pepper and I have never been happier. Maybe you already know this. I suppose you probably do, honestly tic tac toe is more difficult to figure out then men.

Happy New Years everyone!