My first night at the Franchise, last night, since the previous Thursday night was great. Okay, some idiot drove him or herself into a ditch and fouled up what traffic there was on Paper Mill Road, and I probably lost a run from that (taking so long to get where I had to be and all), but it was an enjoyable night — steady business, lots of Zebulon bashing, good tips, and even though I get yelled at by a Marine (new coworker) over trivia (I said Ford was the only President never elected to either office, he said Washington wasn’t elected, but Wikipedia backs me up), but that’s okay because the Marine only speaks in yelling. He’s a good dude.

Anyway, towards the end of the night, I’m doing dishes and the Marine is sweeping. We’re talking about something, first person shooter games, I think, I’m trying to describe Counter-Strike to him.

Greg shouted from upfront, sort of completely randomly, “My cousin [he's in the Air Force] says we [the Air Force, I presume] escorted Santa through Iraqi airspace!”

The Marine rolled his eyes. I leaned forward and shouted to the front of the store: “Greg, breaking news: there is no Santa Clause!”

Greg’s reply: “Noooooo!”

We all cracked up.

You kinda had to be there.

I lived in Columbia, Maryland (with my parents) for about seven to eight years, from the age of twelveish to damn-near twenty-oneish (okay, nine years). I moved to Towson only a few years after the death of James Rouse, but when I return to visit my parents, I hardly recognize the area anymore.

Columbia was founded with the intent of being a balance between constructed areas and green-space, as I understand it (although I may have bought into the “myth” too much). Zoning areas were interspaced to put poor, middle-class, and wealthy residents among each other without grouping by income or social status. Divided into “villages”, each had a community shopping area, often beautifully planned with central shopping and parking areas surrounding. There were very few places in Columbia that couldn’t be accessed by a bicycle — not only did Columbia have an extensive network of bike paths and parks, but there were also bike path maps you could get!

Now, the field behind the downtown library has been taken over by condos; I’ve only been to Columbia Mall once since it got remodeled and larger and all I can say is, “Wow, I bet parking sucks so much worse.” I joke that in Columbia, any green is unsafe from being paved over, even the grass on median strips. “What? You can fit a narrow home there …”

Enroute to my parents’ place near the Columbia Mall on Christmas Day, I decided to take the long way: I drove south on Rt. 29 south of Columbia with the intention of turning onto Johns Hopkins Road (I think it’s Johns Hopkins Road, anyway), heading past the JHAPL, and coming into Columbia on Pindell School Road. It’s been years since I’ve been on those roads, and my what a change. When I first started delivering pizzas, in Columbia, JHR was a tiny bumpkin road that intersected Rt. 29 at a traffic light. Now there’s a full interchange, and it’s four lanes wide. There were housing developments that had been forest, and huge monsterous houses with narrow alleys of grass between them. Pindell no longer connects directly to Ceder Lane, and it’s impossible to escape the conclusion that Columbia is no longer trying to maintain the vision of James Rouse, rather, it has become a place to pack as many people and as many stores as possible into a small a space as possible. It’s very sad, and a lesson in why “city planning” has to take into consideration, y’know, quality of life, which means more than “Oh, there are nine new box stores half a mile down the street!”

Columbia. It was a nice place to live. Now its a big concrete slab.

It’s been reported on various news outlets that Saddam wrote a letter urging Iraqis to distinguish between the governments of country and their citizens (woah, this Natty is hitting me hard).

Saddam Hussein called on Iraqis not to hate the U.S.-led forces that invaded Iraq in 2003 in a farewell letter posted on a website Wednesday, a day after an appeals court upheld the former dictator’s death sentence and ordered him to be hanged within one month.

One of Saddam’s lawyers, Issam Ghazzawi, confirmed to The Associated Press in Jordan that the letter was authentic, saying it was written by Saddam on Nov. 5, the day he was convicted by an Iraqi tribunal for ordering the killings of scores of Shiite Muslims in the city of Dujail in 1982.

“I call on you not to hate because hate does not leave space for a person to be fair and it makes you blind and closes all doors of thinking,” the letter said.

Ghazzawi said the letter was released on Tuesday and published on Saddam’s former Baath party’s website on Wednesday.

The deposed leader said he was writing the letter because his lawyers had told him the Iraqi High Tribunal which tried his case would give him an opportunity to say a final word.

Okay, first? Natty Boh, not what to be drinking when composing a serious post. On to the post … back to the post?

Part of me says, “This is nice of him.”

Part of me says, “Pft. He’s trying to save his neck.”

I think “saving his neck” wins out on this one.

I’d been trying to describe to my new coworker, the Marine, my favorite first person shooter of all time: the HalfLife mod Counter-Strike. This touched off some memories, fond ones, if you can believe, of a game that is for me the game all others of its kind will be judged against.

Counter-Strike was a modern-day set first person “shooter”, except the objective of the game wasn’t to kill your opponents. I mean, don’t get me wrong, killing your opponents while achieving the round goals was permitted, it was theoretically possible for no one to die at the end of the round and have one team win. It was this style of play, which forced player cooperation over kill-whoring, which made the game great for me. What made the game memorable was the clan I began playing with, [EGBT] was their tag, Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow the server, and the rules were simply put and violently enforced by the all-seeing and all-powerful server admins: Pursue the Objective!

Camping was strongly discouraged (unless, say, you were a terrorist on a CS map guarding your hostages), and gameplay was mercilessly short and violently bloodly. Ten seconds into a map, with the Terrorist team racing towards bomb-site B and the Counter-Terrorists rushing from the opposite direction, a hail of grenades from both teams and a flury of gunfire would leave the majority of both teams slaughtered, with the few who remained aware that a moment’s hesitation in finding the bomb or rescuing the hostages could be met with an admin_kick command, forcing a player from the almost-always packed server.

[EGBT] wasn’t a clan concerned with stats. What didn’t matter was your kill to death ratio: if it had, I would never have worn the tag. As a gameplayer, I was frequently deceased in the opening seconds of combat. There was no limit on the number of members we could have — probably at least a hundred people wore the tag, and in the Counter-Strike community there was sort of the unspoken recognition that those who wore it were aggressive as hell, possibly to the point of being short some brain cells. We even had forums (down now, but they were at egbt.us).

Sure, I had my moments of glory, such as one game on CS_Estate, where I bum-rushed the CTs and took out four of ‘em with my pump-action shotgun. Or on DE_Train, where as the only surviving member of my team, outnumbered five to one, and armed only with thirty-rounds in my MP5, I eliminated all terrorists and won the game. Mostly, however, I just played aggressively, guarding the bomb to the last as the timer ticked towards detonation, and, as the sole surviving counter-terrorists on CS_Office, charging my opponents in a hopeless attempt to win the round (there, I failed). More than once, [EGBT] Mikuru and I would rush the sloping-alley on DE_Inferno with our Para Machine Guns, blasting into the oncoming terrorists as the rest of our team took advantage of our sacrifice to take-up excellent defensive positions and shred those we didn’t get. I keenly remember a game on that same map, on that same alley, where [EGBT] Sue Aside warned everyone that friendly fire was on, and we should watch our fire. A second later, she dropped her grenade and killed not only herself but two others on our team (and both [EGBT] members). The surviving members of our team were so overcome by laughter the T’s cut us to shreds.

I last played Counter-Strike shortly before launching this blog. By that time, the [EGBT] server had been overcome by technical issues, and newer games were taking many people’s interest away from Counter-Strike. I can never escape Counter-Strike, nor do I think would I want to. Tron, who is the technical genius who built this blog for me (first on Moveable Type, then making the move to Word Press), and a blogger too, met me first on the battle zones of Counter-Strike, where he played as [EGBT] Harpoon. We met for the first time in person earlier this year. I remain in contact with [EGBT] Mikuru, who I would make suicide runs with. [EGBT] Lucifex, who I first met when I tried para-sniping a couple of T’s and wound up team-killing him (an offense for which he admin_slayed me, thinking I reckless, as I’d accidently wounded another teammate earlier the same round) is another clan member I remain in contact with.

It’s been years since I’ve played any first person shooter online. But when I have — Battlefield 1942 and Vietnam — I’ve played with the [EGBT] tag. Aggressive. Relentless. Team player. Maybe not the best shot, but dammit, I can ask, “WHO THE FUCK THROUGH THAT FLASH?!” with the best of ‘em.

(I found this, a list of quotes from [EGBT] members compiled by C Sitter. Was that [EGBT] Centurius? I don’t remember … no, had to be one of the twins … Chad? Who was he again? [EGBT] Damage Case?)

UPDATE:

Man, this looks strange yet good: [EGBT] Malnurtured Snay. I gotta get back into FPS. Does Counter-Strike still exist? Do people still play?