"I feel like I'm in an Eastern European Creche"

According to Steam, I've played Team Fortress 2 for one hundred and thirty-eight hours. 

Imagine what you could do with that time. Build something, do something for someone, be creative, rescue kittens from trees; one hundred and thirty-eight hours is a lot of kittens. 

This is the price of being a gamer, I think. 

Now, don't get me wrong - that 138 hours is spread over a period of around four years, so it comes out as less than an hour a week on average - although considering that the game was uninstalled for a while there (and I only re-installed it recently because of the Steam Trading Cards hullabaloo) there's some wonky averaging going on.

I blow hot and cold when it comes to playing TF2; it tends to be either an intensely satisfying quick-play experience, or a massively frustrating fuckaround. The first of these instances comes about when you have, say, half an hour or even - gasp - a full hour to play, and you can just tool around, doing the whole boombangabang boombangabang (ooh what you do to me) thing. 

The second half tends to arise from team misbalancing, which is always slightly entertaining if you're on the overpowered end of the wonk, but if you're wonky on the underpowered team you may as well stand on top of a building hitting (g) until someone shoots you. 

This article's heading comes from a quote from yesterday's playing time. I have recently joined the 1990s by getting a headset with a microphone - soon, no doubt, I'll be getting really into Kazaa and Darude - and while the primary usage for this has been using Skype - because, hey, I'm all about the decade-old VOIP software - I've discovered, too, that you can talk to people on TF2 while you're playing.

The primary motivation for doing this is to annoy the friend I play with. 

TF2 players are an interesting bunch, because it's very rare you find a server where people are actually using the voice-chat functionality with any kind of regularity, mainly because people tend to not want their a-killing and a-capturing spoiled by listening to random voices from the ether a-chattering. 

Yesterday, however, we ended up on a server where a couple of people were back-and-forthing, and I discovered - what with my new technology and everything - that I could interject. 

Now, here's a crucial tip if you plan on doing this yourself; if you talk, don't look at the replies people type, and vice-versa. It's usually insults. Maybe one in ten is someone engaging with what people are saying, but that only makes it more confusing. 

Of course, people talking encourages more people talking, until suddenly it's just a humble-jumble of glottlestops and vowel sounds which, as my friend said, 'must be what going mad feels like'. 

Or, as an unremembered other player typed, 'like being in an Eastern European creche' (as two of the other 'voice contributors' had wild and crazy accents). 

But TF2 continues to be a source of amusement, if an occasionally frustrating one. Except now I can talk.

Tremble, world. 

HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME

I've never tried addictive narcotics. Boring, I know. 

But at the moment I kind of feel like a cold-turkey withdrawal-symptom feeling person being genially taunted. 

Which is why I'm glad I put some money into the Glitch soundtrack. 

I miss Glitch. I know I'm not alone in this - the Facebook group is comforting, in that way - and we have, apparently, just passed the six-month 'anniversary' of the decommissioning of that exotic online experience. 

When along come updates from the soundtrack, which kind of bring it all back in one handy-dandy sledgehammer between the eyes, except that it's a sledgehammer between the eyes that makes me smile. 

To adopt the Julius Caesar model of public address; I come to bury Glitch, not to praise it. 

This is not because praise is unwarranted, or unnecessary, or unneeded, because it would be all of those things. Better minds than mine eloquently express their grief about it regularly. And although Glitch was a singular experience - even if it was absolutely preposterous - it doesn't need any more praise, because the giants alone know I've already done my purple-prose emotional outburst on this blog alone back from the end of days. 

But when I say 'bury', I should clarify; all I mean is that I think it's a shame to have this blog title registered and not to be using it, so I'm going to be writing about videah gamez here for a while. 

And every now and then, I think, I'll talk about Glitch, too, because, as they say, what is not forgotten is never truly lost, don'tcha know.