Dinner At Chronic's House - Where's Max?

I grab a longer, sharper looking french fry and impale it into another ketchup soaked fry which looks a bit too slippery to be manhandled. I could use the chopsticks that are sitting in my plate of creamed spinach, but everyone knows eating french fries with chopsitcks is passe, including my cat Spooky, who is eying my burger with great interest to see if I finish it. "Damn ye, ye yellow-bellied sapsuckers! I'm a better man than all ye milksops put together!" I cry out in my best Captain Blackbeard impression as I down the impaled fry and skewer another. Sometimes Im a Pirate when I eat, other times, a Ninja, or possibly a drunken Russian sailor. The fries almost always get finished by the pirate, the creamed spinach and burger, its like 50-50. The Ninja goes right for the burger, but he wasnt around tonight, he was out chopping peoples heads off and flipping out. I eat this meal quite often, as its both satisfying and incredibly easy to both cook and consume quickly. The secret is, I buy a pound and a half of fresh ground beef, and make 3-4 burgers out of it but freeze all except one Im eating right then and there.

Sometimes I run out of buns, and thats when I resort to English Muffins, the authenticity of which is highly dubious ever since I ran the concept past my dear British friend and Catan Grandmaster Mr. Bendypants (umopapisdnpuaq). According to Bender, British people do indeed eat muffins quite regularly but they are not of a national mold, that is to say, there is no one true archetypal "English Muffin" that is consumed by everyone, but rather a variety of muffins and scones and biscuits and tea cookies and sweetbreads. So really, its all a ruse. I should have known when I inspected the packaging, which contains a drawing of a two-horse cart being driven by 3 men in top hats, one of which is playing a trumpet, presumably delivering the morning crumpets. What a steaming load of bull honkey, but of course Americans bought into it hook line and sinker as they are one of the most popular breakfast foods. They dont really go stale, they just kinda go soggy, which Bender says is reason enough to be wary of them and just eat a bagel instead, which he says dont really exist over there in proper form.

I tried watching TV after the Yankees game was over, but the news networks here in NYC are just running endless loops of footage from a huge crane collapse on the Upper East Side. Tiring of that I flipped to the one channel that wasn't covering the collapse, and it was coverage of the Sex And The City movie thats about to come out. How a movie based on a show that was really big like 10 years ago, and is supposedly about sex, but prominently features 4 actresses that when taken out of their makeup and designer clothes look like librarians from Tuscaloosa is news, is beyond my limited comprehension. Turn that crap off.

Whos on Xbox Live? Its freaking Firday man. This is the day to play on Live. James Bond 007 and I tried some ranked Virtua Tennis 3 doubles earlier but it was so painful, the first match lagged out and froze and we got in a waiting match with the other 2 guys, finally they left and immediately we got matched up with kaci smith and Cal1mero. These guys are really, really good, especially kaci smith who is probably the best Tim Henman in Virtua Tennis on XBL. Super agressive at the net, while almost never making an error, he is as tough as it gets. But even as good as he is the guy simply cannot resist using the "glitch shot" during the match, which is an exploit that when executed properly produces a winner a high enough percentage of the time that its quite often the difference between winning and losing a close match.

But, this match wasnt close. I was super hung over, not warmed up and hadnt eaten or smoked anything. I should have known it would be a recipie for disaster and it was. I played terribly, Bond kept us in the game but after winning the first point we pretty much got smoked. In the rematch, they did 2-3 glitch shots in a row and I just let the last few balls go past me, I was so frustrated. Its hard to be a good sport when your opponents insist on nickle and diming you with cheap exploit shots. Virtua Tennis is an amazing game but I have to say Im not having as much fun with it as I used to. When the right people are on the competition is incredible and the level of play is really fantastic and its one of the best games on XBL, but it seems the best players are on less and less now, some gave up on ranked doubles all together because of the rampant lag-cheating and exploit usage, and often the players that are still on insist on using unsportsmanlike techniques to win. Playing people worse than us is worse than not playing at all, and most of the few people we can find that are on or above our play level use the stupid exploit shot, so finding a good clean match is really hard. The French guys we had The Rivalry with rarely get on anymore (they're on our friends list now). Its almost to the level of Burnout 3 where you just have to bring 4-8 of your own people to get it going, and I think Im probably going to start playing ranked less now as well.

But what to play tongight? In cant just write in this damn blog all night. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, aka as Evil Max? As much NOT FUN getting our lunch handed to us by a couple of glitching punks was, tonight I want to have FUN on Xbox Live. Thats what the whole point of the system is. It is to get on and have fun. Nobody gets this better than Evil Max. The man works 117 hours a week so the only night he can get on is Fridays, but he has been absent the last two Fridays in a row. Dont think we didnt miss you buddy. If Max was on, I wouldnt be writing in this blog, we'd be playing Assault Heroes 2 and doing shots of tequila faster than that guy on Kotaku. Yeah, I could go play Age of Conan with FurryPuddle and Ajax999, but they are already so much higher level than me its basically pointless. Im trying to finish the single player aspects of that game before really playing with them much anyway, but I fear deeply that by the time I hit level 20 they will already be at the level cap. Oh well, at least that will give them an excuse to make a new character and start all over again, maybe I can catch up on the second lap, thats usually where I get my business done in Burnout. Anyway, this has gone on long enough and its time to play some GTA. San Andreas, that is. Just kidding.