Illegitimi non Carborundum

[Fluffy] Hello again, faithful readers! While it feels good to once again don the News hat & speak directly to the TF community through the wonder of HTML, I must admit to a slight discomfiture at my unplanned, and might I say rather inconveinient, return. "But, Fluff," I hear you say, "whatever could you mean? Do you not live soley to provide the Team Fortress community with humourous anecdotes & the occasional amusing comic pastiche?" Well, my verbose and loquacious friend, the answer to that is a qualified 'perhaps'. Allow me to adumbrate my situation thusly: I was freakin hibernating when Moriarty (pronounced Moo-ree-arr-tray) made his big freakin comeback and woke me up, dammit. Like my life isn't tough enough without some English-Lit major stickin' his big mitt down my burrow & dragging me out, demanding humor! I'll just give you a brief synopsis of the events of a few days ago and let YOU decide who is the cuddly, lovable, beset-upon part-time newsie and who is the megalomaniacal tyrant opressor news overlord:

<fade in on our hero, Fluff, sound asleep in his cozy, yet stylishly furnished bachelor burrow>

Fluff: ... Zzzzzz ... *snoOooork* ... zzzzz

Moriarty: *BANG* *SLAM* WHOOO-EEE!!! I'm HOOO-OOOME!!! Fluffy!?! Janice!?!! HELL-OOO!!!

F: *gnk* .. hrm .. zzzzzmmm ...

M: Dammit, Fluffy!! Where are you, you fuzzy SOB??

F: ..hmmm? ... zzzz ...

<A large hand, looking not unlike Elmer Fudds, is thrust through the door to the aforementioned burrow>

M: I know you're in there, damn you, now get OUT here!! We got NEWS to write!! Ah-HA! There you are!

<the hand grabs the still half-asleep Fluff & drags him out into the cold, dark Citadel offices>

F: huh? wha? wuzza?

M: You best start bein' FUNNY, boy! I only got a little while before I gotta go 'way again!

F: hmm?? Mom?

Suffice it to say the next few hours were ... ah ... 'unpleasant', and only thinly-veiled threats of a Citadel-wide Skittles blockade convinced me to rouse myself from my exquisite slumber to provide entertainment for you people. I hope you're happy - I swear, the labor conditions in this place'd make Kathie Lee blush.

Now then. With the boss' ok, we here at the Citadel are going to make a brief foray into Actual News™. Be not aghast, friends, for this will be fun. Think old Saturday Night Live Point/Counterpoint with Dan Ackroyd & Jane Curtin, but with us instead of famous TV stars and no live studio audience. And chances are, after the debate is over, the Citadel won't go to commercial then come back as Samurai Optometrist. Anyhoo, the issue we're looking at is:

TF2 vs Tribes

I tell you, it almost hurts me to say this. If there has been someone who has loved TF with the passion normally reserved for newlyweds or bunnies, it has been me. But dammit, it's been over two freakin' YEARS, and frankly I'm tired of TF. I'm especially tired of 2forts, but that's a separate topic. Clan matches are still fun, but those are few & far between these days, and even then, it's not the love of the game that's fun - it's that I'm playing with me clannies (eXiles - a finer buncha guys you'll never find). Until a few weeks ago, I'd just considered it a condition of either me or the game and accepted it as such. Then someone brought Everquest to my attention. Now, as a TF substitute, it's pretty lame, but we were intereted in whether it could be modified like Quake2 to provide massively online clan battles (like 2-300 players per side). While the jury's still out on that issue (although if it turns out you can, I'll eat the CD EQ comes on), it got me to thinking that perhaps there might be more in the online gaming world than is known by the minds of TFS. Then along comes Tribes. I have to admit, when I first saw the avi of the game, I was unimpressed. It was neat and all with the sniper zoom from like a million miles away & stuff, but certainly nothing that TF2 hadn't promised (except for the large outdoor worlds, which at the time didn't seem so important - more on this later), so I was understandably reluctant to plunk down the cash & buy the game at a clannies recommendation. However, Endiku (the clannie in question) was a rabid fan of the game & declared outright that he would brook no gainsaying of his counsel and that he who dared ignore his injunction was in mortal peril of, as he so colorfully phrased it in the argot of the net, "gettin' straight-up, buck-nekkid 0wN3d." Well, to make a long story shot, Tribes freakin r0x. Now, I'll be the first to admit that the graphics ain't all that in software mode (it only supports Glide right now - OpenGL on the way). Also, the sound is a little off. Not bad, just not what you expect out of a game today. But it's not the tangibles that make Tribes so good - it's just to overall feel of the game that makes it so good. The feeling of jet-packing 300 feet over gaping chasms(I'll tell you - being outside after all those years stuck in the freakin ramp room ... it was like seeing the sun after a long Arctic winter), hitting the snow-covered peak on the other side with a satisfying 'crunch' and zooming your sniper scope waaaaaay in to hit targets over 3km away. The feeling of running a command view and taking over first-person control of any of several automated turrets to repel the enemy hordes. The feeling you get finding a better way to sneak into the enemy fort - not just 'do I take the bridge, balcony or water entrance' - but since the bases are assailible from 360º, there are FAR more routes of attack. The feeling of you & four buddies strapping into a flying APC, flying low to avoid eneny sensors, then cutting in the radar jammers & flying straight in, your guns blazing and their automated radar-targeting rocket launcher useless, the enemy withering underneath you.

I can't really detail all the things I like in Tribes. Many things TF2 will have. Some TF2 will not, and vice versa. But to me, the bottom line is that Tribes just seems like a lot more FUN. I'll post more in a day or two, after I've give Mr. M a chance to rebut or provide an alternate, and no doubt much lengthier, exposition. Comments? Flames? Unsolicited monetary contributions to the American Society for the Fluffae Preservation & Appreciation Society? Email me!

Naturally, since I've been back, I've been devoting almost all my brain power to discovering what is missing here at the Citadel. You may very well ask, "why not devote all your brain power to discovering what is missing?" Now it's rather likely that I might brush off your intrusive and disrespectful questioning with the customary hubris expected of a personality of my stature; but for some inexplicable reason, today I toss aside my high breeding and mingle with the bourgeois, rank-and-file boobs that make up the online world. Surely this is an injustice, an instance of pure folly on my part -- for who other than I could possibly construct such a sentence as the prior one, using no less than two foreign words, each from a different language, and both ending with the suffix -is? Would it be wise to let such a mind walk among the common folk? There would be rioting in the streets!

Nonetheless, I will forsake my own safety as well as the stability of society to answer the hypothetical question presented -- namely, why I do not devote my intellectual faculties in their entirety towards unearthing some egregious privation which happens to afflict this website. The answer is one of the most well-guarded secrets in the history of the world, and I hesitate when considering the ramifications of revealing it on the unsuspecting public. I must be strong -- for it has affected me most intimately, and profoundly. With all necessary warnings aside, I must reveal it.

It's because some men, no matter how nimble of pate, must face one pressing problem:

T H E . G R O W I N G . B A L D . S P O T

Horrible as the prospect may be, I have a body too, and it is subject to the ordinary complications of human life. It is my belief that it is beyond the power of any man to entirely empty his mind of the terrifying possibility that one day his thick, luxurious, silken mass of protein may one day be reduced to nothing more than a smudge of transparent color on a forehead which will never cease in its quest for more prime real estate of the noggin -- more specifically, that which is being stubbornly guarded by Old Man Scalp. For some that fear is groundless, but for others it is startling reality. I check my comb, and daily it seems like more and more coppery strands appear between the teeth. Each filament becomes infintely precious; delicate care is taken while grooming in the morning, lest I uproot a fully functional but weakened follicle and thus speed the inevitable process against my will. Additionally, the 'do must be firmly anchored, for running the fingers through it during the day might also destroy a weakening but strong and faithful soldier in the fight against premature baldness. Sports and computer magazines are forsaken for health pamphlets claiming the secret to "Complete Prevention and Regeneration of Hair Loss by Homoepathic Methods!" Sumbarine sandwiches and soft drinks are reluctantly abandoned, replaced by bean sprouts, supplemental vitamins, and V8.

Why have I been singled out by fate to have such burdens be imposed as penance for a sin never committed? I am but a rosy-faced 19 years old; why must I shoulder the angst of a receding hair line? This begs yet another question: should my prodigious intellect be preoccupied with such trivial matters as the continued maintenance of my body? Imagine the capacity of the human brain if it were not bound by the internal workings of a body; no circulation to regulate, no hormones to distribute, no sensory information to process? Of course, all this presupposes the existence of the immaterial soul, and there are enough materialists out there to raise a hue and cry loud enough that even my propagandists couldn't drown it out. But, as is the case of all such meandering discourses, there is a valuable lesson to be learned from all of this.

Only Moriarty could pull this much text out of such a doltish hypothetical question.

File that one away quick, kids, because I'm not going to let it sink in on its own. Next stop: Thataintfunny, Georgia!

What I was getting at in a roundabout way was what was missing here at the Citadel. I set aside as much brainpower as was humanly possible to the problem; what was nagging me? There was something that I just couldn't nail down. In my frustration, I got up and walked over to the TV and flipped it on, resigned to the grim fact that my page sucked and there was nothing I could do about it. As I rapidly surfed the six available channels, I grew even more frustrated after seeing commercial after commercial purveying its sickeningly shallow and superficial wares for the "credit card" generation that I happened to belong to. I flipped off the idiot box (with the remote control, not my centermost digit) and began to go upstairs to scrounge for some victuals.

Then it hit me. I wasn't a slave to corporate America. I was cut off from the rest of the world by my stubborn refusal to be the personal billboard for multimillion-dollar conglomerates. There was the problem! I became light-headed when the full magnitude of my folly became apparent. I nearly passed out on the floor when I realized not one single ©, ®, or TM graced the hallowed halls of The Citadel! Overjoyed at this discovery, I rushed to the computer and proceeded to type the preceeding digression for no apparent reason other than that I already had an idea ready, and if the words were flowing, I might as well save it for later and see where it goes.

Well, it was quite obvious where I was to go next. Because of my obvious distaste for paying good money to publicize someone else's logo, I decided the best way to incorporate (no pun intended) the "trademarked" symbol into the page was to use it for my own stuff. Not a bad idea -- but what for?

Ahh, yes! How about to publicize the Citadel Archives? Perfect! I could help each of my readers relive those nutty moments that they experienced so long ago, here at the Asinine Academy, by picking humorous lines from the archives and stapling them up front and center for your amusement. Meanwhile, I draw more return readers, and make use of the 1,000K+ of data that has accumlated on the PF hard drives since April, thus reducing the "work done - to - visitor" ratio! Excellent! It seemed like the perfect plan ... all in theory of course. Its success in real life implementation remains to be seen. Does it hinge on the catchy, gimmicky name? Naturally! The decision for a name came easily -- it must be Cit Bits®! Yes! It's all falling together!

I now have the perfect webpage!

Think you were safe? Think you were free? Think you would never come across a little back alley of the internet that would sting your eyes and rot your brain? Think again, pumpy.

The Professor is Back.
Just in time for Christmas.

Some say the holidays are good for enjoying the Christmas spirit, seeing the old fam again, consuming inordinate amounts of consumables, receiving booty, and in general just living like Santa Claus would if he were a hedonistic, gluttonous, alcoholic old man. I, however, being the entirely counter-culture little bacterium that I am, say NO to such evil temptations and have vowed, with pious intentions of penance and self-denial, to sit on the computer, shun any social contact whatsoever, and amaze myself with the speed at which this processor processes compared to the worthless mote of silicon residing inside my dorm room, 1500 miles thither.

Life is good, gentlemen.

For three precious weeks, I have been granted respite from the arduous labors inflicted by Euclid, Herodotus, Plato, Sophocles, Aristotle, and other such rank obscenities which pollute the annals of Hellenic history, in that order. No, not really -- I've been loving school, I had the time of my life, but I think my already feeble intelligence has been worked to the point of implosion. I've got these guys coming out my nose ... and there's nothing like a smelly, bearded Greek man being forced through a personal orfice barely large enough to admit my index finger to hurt my outlook on ancient philosophy. I dunno.

It's good to be back, anyhow. Letterman chortling in the background ... my trusty Acer monitor beaming happily near my face, irradiating my countenance with carcinogenic rays ... Dave Matthews' acoustic solos sending shivers down my spine ... checking my 8 MB download every three hours ... forearms and fingers alike sore from a marathon gaming session. Some things have changed, no doubt -- but gosh darnit, the more things change, the more things stay the same. I return, and woe is me! The once peaceful gaming community is now embroiled over the traitorious actions of TFS towards us! I remember the days when we went hours without getting all riled up over nothing. One day it's a clan match, another it's a certain style of webpage, and the next it's about the weather (we were getting a lot of Rain those days, so understandably we were cranky after being cooped up inside for so long). I shudder to think of all the interesting, well-thought-out, rational and friendly debates which I've missed during my hiatus. Think of the horrors! I've been cooped up in an institution* all this time, my mind distended with such trivia as the genealogy of Pelops and the meaning of the universe, while debates of Copernican magnitude clash beyond my ken!

Nevertheless, large amounts of home cooking and a smattering here and there of "blubber rich" foods have restored the ichor to my veins, and I'm off and running. Christmas shopping was done before I even came home -- a couple of sweatshirts with the school logo, a burned CD or two for sister, and I'm set. Of course, my Christmas present to you all was a little harder to do, mostly because I had to put some thought into it. The sad thing is, the most I could come up with was ... me. Pathetic as that is, it's all my pauper-esque financial backing could deal with. And what's more, I couldn't even give it on time. Just to make you feel really bad, here's a list of potential gifts I had thought of giving:

• Get about 50,000 t-shirts all sweaty and distribute them as once worn by Billings, the sex symbol of TF (if you didn't want it, you could always give it to your Hanson-loving little sister)
• Nerf sharpshooter guns autographed by Bundy (makes no sense putting an artificial hip in danger)
• Charging 300 kegs of Foster's to Robin's expense account at Valve
• A framed photograph of the picture at right, signed by Kinlord (thanks for passing that on, Bündermeister)
• Falsely admitting myself to be PhD for 3 days and then making a fake post, claiming "i woud neber be as gay an stupid as taht fag morifarty!!!!!!~!~!!!!!!!!@!!!!! an if i was i woud neber admiit it................. tanku bery much"
• $.03 gift certificate to Babbage's
• Official Half-Life corn skewers
• Free MP3s from "Blitzcreed", an hip new internet band on its way to the top of the charts
• Fluffae on a stick

Of course, that last one was in a delirious dream; I woke up a raving lunatic and vomited for six hours straight. Sorry, little buddy. That was out of line.

To jump back to an earlier topic, how about a little commentary on current events to make sure the evil corporate lawyers for Planetfortress don't get on my case for not talking about TF? Certainly. I got a scoop from Valve earlier today, and I thought I might pass it on. Please ignore the buttocks on the right; the close proximity of this article and the Scot's tush was by no means intentional.

VALVE L.L.C. TO GIVE AWAY FREE SEX
Sierra Studios to Release Free Sex Upgrade to Half-Life
E3, Atlanta, GA (AP) - Valve L.L.C., developer of the incredibly successful Half-Life, announced today their plans to release a free upgrade to Half-Life that would give the user access to Free Sex.

Half-Life is a first person action game that's revolutionising the genre, with its tight blend of action, story, and advanced technology. Players become Gordon Freeman, a research physicist in the anomalous materials department in the Black Mesa Research Facility. Gordon finds himself in the middle of a disastrous experiment gone horribly wrong, and must use his brain and his brawn to keep himself alive. Half-Life has been hailed by critics worldwide with Computer Gaming World calling it "A dizzying marriage of non-stop action and narrative.", and Avault summing it up with a simple "Oh. My. God!".

"When we looked around at the community, and how much they seemed to be enjoying Half-Life," said Valve's Managing Director, Gabe Newell, "we decided we wanted to give them something back. We did some thinking, and realised the most super-obvious thing in the world ... gamers, like everyone else, just want to get laid!"

"Even with our resources, it'll take us 6 months to deliver our promise of Free Sex." added Jay 'sus' Stelly, Valve's resident codemaster. "But if you buy the game now, you'll get the Free Sex upgrade as soon as it's ready!"

"That's right. It's vitally important players get Half-Life now, and be prepared for Free Sex when it comes out.", said Mike Harrington, Valve co-founder. "Even if they have utterly no interest in Half-Life, they should buy it for the Free Sex."

Sierra Studios and Valve announced the Free Sex upgrade would be freely downloadable from the internet. Valve has kept the technical details quiet so far, but guarantees that all owners of Half-Life and the Free Sex add-on will get to have sex in their lives.

"They may just have to wait a bit.", pointed out John 'Choryoth' Guthrie, Valve's expert level designer, "But they'd better be sure and buy Half-Life now. Myself, I'd hate to miss out on Free Sex!"

More details on the Free Sex upgrade will be forthcoming.

Half-Life: Free Sex is scheduled to be out in Summer 1999 and will be available at most web pages, as well as through Sierra Direct at (800) FREE-SEX.

Founded in 1996, Valve develops games software. Based in Kirkland, Washington, the company consists of more than 20 leading artists, game designers and programmers. More information about Valve is available through the company's web site at www.valvesoftware.com.

Sierra Studios, a member of the Sierra family and a brand division of parent company Cendant Software, is dedicated to bringing to market computer game entertainment software that reflects a commitment to established game brands, quality gameplay and represents a move to bring new and innovative experiences to gamers. Encompassing the creation, progress and advancement of the computer gaming industry, Sierra Studios embodies the new era of entertainment software excellence. Sierra is part of Cendant Software, one of the largest PC consumer software groups in the world, and a leader in entertainment and educational software. Cendant Software consolidates the sales, manufacturing, finance, accounting and management of Cendant Corporation's software divisions, including Sierra, Knowledge Adventure, Davidson & Associates, Inc. and Blizzard Entertainment. Cendant Corporation is the result of the December 1997 merger between CUC International and HFS Incorporated, creating a business and consumer services company focused on real estate, travel and membership.

Something you might want to think about looking into.

Well, that's about all the interesting content I have, now for a little reflection on the site.

I would really like a redesign -- most of the stuff here now is way too outdated, and the bulletin board is no longer functional (Mythias died, I think). Ideally, I'd like to keep is the news, archives, and library, scrapping the rest. Most likely, things will happen when I return for summer vacation; if I could hook up with a real sponsor and get some returns on this investment, I'd probaby work on it in addition to a summer job. So, basically, I don't plan to close the site down, ever. It might not always be active but it will be here as long as PF lets me continue to impinge on their hospitality over the school year when I'm not doing a spittin' thing. I will be able to keep in touch over the school year (my failproof, indestructable, eternal email address is [email protected]), so if you'd like to contribute or have some ideas for the renovation / resurrection of this page come June 16, no one's stopping you. Redesign will hinge on outside support, unless I pull some strings on my own. And we all know that's a bad thing.

Being home has made me realize how fun this page has been over the months that it's been around. Reflecting on the solace and satisfaction it has brought me is most definitely a good thing; I'd also like to think that it's helped me to discern what I really enjoy doing now, and might consider doing for a living in the future -- writing about what I want to write.

I've been reading through the page archives -- enjoying the stories of the past, seeing how I have improved and catered more to the interests of the readers. In addition to realizing that a searchable interface would be great, I also came to the conclusion that I am one batty sonovabitch ...

* Of higher learning