I ran across this little blurb taken from glamour while I was trying to figure out what the hell the chick dj on the radio was saying.  (Incidentally she was saying vlogger not blogger... and yeah vlogger is just... one of those WHY??? things)

Anyway.  I read this and it sort of tickled me since I'd just done The Man FAQ. 

7-things MEN have always wanted to know

1. How do you feel after a one night stand?

2. Why do you take so long to get ready?

3. Do you ever get used to wearing a thong?

4. Are you a feminist when the bill comes?

5. Will something from Tiffany's solve everything?

6. Do you watch porn?

7. How often do you think about sex

ahem.

1)  Like crap actually, which is why I don't do it.  I ran through that phase REALLY fast.

2)  I don't actually.  I don't like doing my hair and I hate wearing makeup.  I tend to want comfy clothes vs sexy clothes and all too often the two are mutually exclusive.  (Course this could also be why I'm single.)

3)  Yup.  Thongs are actually very comfy.  Plus, no panty line.

4)  I'm assuming that means, do I want to pay my own way.  Yes.  More often than not, I'll fight for the bill because I don't like the idea that someone will ever feel like they are obligated to pay for me.  Especially if I'm the one who has done the inviting out.

5)  No... It's actually more likely to start a fight.  Now... hit me up with a video game I want or a new computer part and we'll get on to the making up.

6)  Not really.  I never actually "got" porn.  Until very recently I just thought it was all ridiculous and pointless.

7)  More often than you do.

Might be time to come up with 7 things that women have always wanted to know...

So, I meant to do this the other day, but silly things like not existing in the work computers because HR got a wild hair up its butt and decided to terminate me, my permadeath contest over at zam (and my super uber screw up!), and having to drive to dallas for the kiddo's karate tourney kind of got in the way of blogging goodness.

On the other hand, I did manage to pull off the MMO Player's FAQ which just made me giggle like an idiot (sidebar: richard cheese's version of enter sandman is funny as shit go listen to it).

So I figured it was time to get my woman card revoked :)  Go me right?  I can always use more hate anyway.

The Woman FAQ

(At first I was just going to go with questions that are asked of us and to which we respond, but that just was too limiting... so now I've expanded it to questions we also ask and the answers we expect and all the neurotic shit that goes along with our reasons for asking in the first place.  Also, please note that this is deliberately and very tongue-in-cheekishly skewed to sound as bitter as humanly possible, because that's actually how it sounds in our heads while we're silently hating you.)

Q:  What's wrong?

A:  Nothing.  Of course something really is wrong, but I'm saying nothing for one of several reasons.  I might not be ready to talk about what's bothering me yet because it's still too fresh in my mind and therefore I know that I'm upset but not really why I'm upset and until I figure out what about it actually made me upset in the first place it's pointless for me to try to explain to you cause you'll just make it worse by trying to fix it instead of understanding and trying to help me get to the root of what's bugging me. 

Of course, I also could know exactly what's wrong but I don't want to talk to you about it because you're what's wrong and it's something I've talked to you about so many times now that I'm just frustrated and pissed off that you don't seem to care enough about me to remember that what you just did upsets me and that leads into a whole other seething cauldron of emotions because if you don't care enough about me to remember that one little thing do you really care about me at all and now I'm having to deal with all these questions about our relationship.

Then there's always the fact that I've already told you what was wrong and you either ignored me or didn't care enough to remember what was wrong and while I'm wanting comfort and to talk about it you were off involved in your own little piddly shit while I've been suffering so now on top of being uspet about whatever was originally wrong, now I'm mad at you because you let me down.  Again.

Q:  Does this make me look fat?

A:  There is no correct answer to this.  No matter how you answer it will be wrong.  It's really just a test to see what you think of us.  See, we already think we look fat in everything.  Even if we're 95 pounds soaking wet, we still think we look fat because society has conditioned us to think that we can only be attractive if we look like anorexic crack whores and of course since you're a man and you think with your dangly bits you buy into all that crap and stare at girls who look like something we couldn't look like even with the help of the best plastic surgeon on the face of the planet.  So really all this is, is our way of getting back at you for being a pig cause we get to ream you and be angry at you for however you answer this.  So just suck it up.  Btw...  without hesitation saying "Of course, not.  You're perfect and beautiful."  will ameliorate your suffering just a little.  You don't want to know what happens if you're stupid enough to hesitate or tell the truth...

Q:  Do you think she's pretty?

A:  Whilst this seems like a perfectly innocent question, any man with any experience at all will immediately hit the ejector seat button and run for safety.  This is another one with no right answer.  You're boned no  matter what you say.  Cause see, we saw you watching her.  And no you didn't just glance, assclown.  You gave yourself whiplash you watched her so hard.  So obviously you think she's pretty and you'd do her in a heartbeat.  What we really want to know is if you think she's prettier than us.  But of course you do because you're a man and you think you can get any hot chick out there even if you yourself are only barely presentable and should really be down on your knees thanking all the gods that ever existed or were worshipped that we are with you in the first place.  But because of the genetic drive to sow your seed everywhere you can, you are also blessed with the delusion that every woman in the world wants you.  We don't get this.  So now you have to suffer.

Q:  Is it okay if I go out with the guys?

A:  Sure.  Go.  See that right there?  Any guy with any experience would immediately call the guys and say "Dude... I can't.  I just screwed up huge and need to do major damage control."  Most guys, however, can't recognize the tell tale signs of danger.  We really need to come with rattles in our asses like snakes...  I think it'd be safer all around.  See, that answer right there?  What that really translates to is something along the lines of:  Sure... go out with your friends you jerk.  I hate you anyway.  Go get drunk and look at other women.  Course the sexy lingere that I bought to surprise you with tonight and the 62" TV that I got you for our ANNIVERSARY are going in the trash.  And while you're out ogling strippers I'll be out with the girls having sex with some random guy or maybe even GUYS because you are a total creep and couldn't be bothered to remember that we've been together for 10 years now.  So rather than waste any more time on your inconsiderate non-commital ass, when you do finally get home, all your shit will be on the lawn and the locks will be changed.  Go sleep on Bambi's couch you jerk.  No, really... she likes you for you.  Never mind that she's a stripper and the nicer she is to you the more money you give her.  You stupid piece of crap.

Q:  What do you want for (your birthday, our anniversary, christmas... whatever)?

A:  Oh, I don't want anything.  What this really means is that I don't want to have to tell you what to get me you lazy jerk.  You should be sitting there all year long thinking about me and what you can do to show me you really care and planning out some thoughtful gift.  That's what I do for you.  I'm sick and fucking tired of having you wait til the last minute and having to go out and get my own damn gift and wrap it and give it to myself for you because you can't be bothered to drag yourself away from that oh so much more important model airplane to think for a second about all the things that I do for you all damn year and you can't spend 10 freaking minutes to observe that I nearly creamed my jeans over the new video card or quad core processor?  The least you can do is watch a commercial and be lame and go with the generic jewelry thing if you can't exercise a whole damn brain cell to think about me or anything.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Are we getting the general idea here?  Everything we say or think ends up having at least 800 other hidden meanings somewhere in there.  Course everything YOU say also ends up having at least 800 other meanings and our minds are constantly racing.

Some women are cool enough to spell it out for you.  These are women who have had a lot of experience.  Been married, been in a long relationship... whatever.  They've learned.  Make it simple.  Make them go back and repeat it back to you to make sure it stuck...  You know.  Like you're talking to a five year old.

The rest of the time is spent in a morass of self doubt and total frustration...  And people wonder why there are communication issues lol.

So.  I was talking to Radar this morning (which is basically a weekday ritual since the asshat doesn't play freaking EQ2 anymore and I hardly get to hang out with him anymore, this is how we keep in touch).  We were going through our usual random list of topics and touched on the typical rhetorical questions that I ask him on a fairly regular basis.  "Did you even f***ing READ it?" "What the hell were you THINKING?" "Why are you being such a... MAN???"

The usual.  This led to a fit of giggles (and lemme tell ya ladies, his giggle is all kinds of cute and girlish, you just don't hear it in the podcast all that much cause he edits out all the parts that make him sound less than manly).  Out of this the concept of The Man FAQ was born.  Naturally, since I'm totally fair, there will follow The Woman FAQ.

So, without further ado (yes, it's further ADO not adieu cause that's goodbye in frelling french you uneducated twits, nor is it adue so for the love of god if you're gonna use a goddamned term use it right or don't do it at all cause you just make yourself look stupid... er) I bring you...

The Man FAQ 

Q:  Are you listening to me? 

A:  Actually no I'm not.  I tuned out somewhere after the tenth straight minute of your babbling cause you're talking about something completely not interesting to me and I'm really just hoping you get to the point soon so I can go back to my video game/comic book/tv show/mowing the lawn/or any of the other thousand things I'd rather be doing than listen to you blather.  But since I can't tell you the truth without this turning into a four hour tirade about your feelings and crap, I'm just going to nod and smile and say:  Of course I'm listening, please go on.  After which I'll tune back out until you ask again. 

Q:  Did you even READ that?

A:  Yes, I read it.  But I didn't read it carefully because I wasn't paying very close attention to what we were talking about and I'm a very poor multi-tasker.  So right now while you're getting annoyed because I've changed my position on this discussion three times now and finally just repeated back to you what you said to start with and you clearly know I wasn't really reading or comprehending, I'm just going to say that I was just agreeing with you all along.  Yes we both know it's BS, but you'll let it go because you know that this is how I always am. 

Q:  Was that even English? 

A:  Well, now that I look back at it, no it really wasn't.  However, since we've already established that I can't multi-task for poo and that I rarely read things all the way through and stop to make sure I comprehend before I respond, are you really surprised?  Besides, I'm a product of the public school system, I live in (in Radar's case Florida and is therefore an inbred hillbilly) some state that can be ragged on for having backwoods people and I'm going to use that to my advantage now to make you laugh as I poke fun at whatever demographic is funniest in this case, oh and it isn't like some major network of fan sites pays me to write or anything, so get over it. 

Q:  What were you THINKING??? 

A:  Truthfully?  I really wasn't.  There were boobs. 

Q:  Why do you have to be such a f***ing MAN?!?!?! 

A:  Ummm... 

Q:  Well?  Aren't you going to say you're SORRY??? 

A:  Of course I'm going to say that I'm sorry.  Because it's obvious that this is the only way to get you to shut up about whatever it is you're yapping about this time.  I don't know what I did and I'm pretty sure that I didn't actually DO anything but for some reason you're annoyed with me and saying that I'm sorry is the only way out even if I don't mean it...  

I'll add to this when I find more.  Stay tuned for tomorrow and The Woman FAQ!

As if there was anyone out there who didn't already know this.

It's funny how time tends to make all things look better with this haze of selective memory.  I find myself looking fondly back on high school days when all I had to worry about was doing well in school and avoiding the various cliques that defined the school.  What's so funny about that?  Well, high school sucked.  I hated it.  I couldn't wait to get out.  I was miserable and frustrated with the banal crap all around me.  So what makes it all so attractive?

I had TIME.  I had time to do whatever I wanted.  I didn't work 16 hour days.  I didn't have to worry about paying the bills or anything.  It was all take care of for me.  I had it pretty good as a teenager.  Yeah the usual things sucked, but I was fairly pampered materially.  It's a sharp contrast to the way things are now.  And in all honesty I wouldn't trade it for anything, because I like my life.

But I do still miss the days when I didn't have to worry about work.  I could just kick back and play all the video games I wanted, or read all day.  I miss the days when I had time to write all day if I wanted to or the muse hit me.

Now I have to schedule everything into my day, all the way down to eating and when I forget to schedule in eating?  Trust me it doesn't happen.  Not that I can't afford to miss a few meals, lol.  But it's still kind of a pain in the arse to have myself so regimented.  I don't know when I stopped being a free spirited, fly by the seat of my pants girl, but somewhere I lost that.  Now I need to strictly monitor every second of my day.  I find myself wondering where I'm going to fit in the 30 mins a day I need to work out cause my ass is getting fat, or where I'm going to carve out an hour a day to write for real and not a blog (although that really needs some doing too, so there's another 15 mins a day) and not writing for Zam. 

It makes me want to run away and join the circus sometimes.  Then I remember that I'm terrified of clowns and so incredibly clumsy the only thing I'd be good for is mucking out animal cages... Then I decide that working isn't that bad after all.  * gag *  I've mucked animal stalls.  It's smelly and dirty.  And since I tend to get cranky if my hotel doesn't have room service... I'm thinking that smelly and dirty isn't something I'd be happy with on a daily basis.

What the hell does this have to do with anything even remotely important?

Not a whole lot really.  Just something that was poking around in my mind and I felt like jotting down.  It's also part of my resolution to really update this damned thing on a regular basis. 

I'm going to go try and figure out how to subsist on like four hours of sleep a night...  Maybe that'll help me squeeze everything in!

I'm exhausted, but gods it was well worth it.

I've been in a frantic tizzy the last few weeks, trying to catch up and prepare for SOE's Winter Summit. I know, right? They invited me?

There's obviously a lot of things I can't talk about what with signing away Radar's soul in the NDA and all that, but nonetheless there was some seriously groovy stuff that went down.

We got to talk to the Customer Service peeps. That was nice. A couple of my pet issues with CS were covered. Namely: Gold sellers and all that entails. While we all know that they work on it, it's hard to remember this when we don't see a whole lot of flag waving from them about it.

And now I know why. It seems more than 30% of what they deal with everyday is in relation to finding gold sellers and tracking through all the contacts they make with people to get rid of as many accounts as they can. We're talking tens of thousands a week.

Those are some serious numbers. As much as I'd love for them to shove numbers in our faces every week with how many of these folks they've gotten rid of, I'm content without that now. The CS team did say they were going to try and post more frequent updates on the Station Blogs about these issues, so keep an eye out!

We got to see a lot of future plans for expanding our community and player base. Can't really say a whole lot about that, other than I think it's an incredible idea and should really see some great returns.

They showed us gameplay footage from Free Realms. I'll be throwing up a write up about that on Zam.

I wish I could talk about The Agency. All I can say is that it looks like it's going to be REALLY FUCKING COOL!!!!

In the end, I just really wish that everyone could experience quality time with the entire team. Devs, Community, CS... Everyone. I think it'd really give people a hell of an appreciation for what really goes into making these games we love to play.

More when I've slept!

Whilst I have not yet finished the migration of posts over to the new blog, it's time to start posting again.  Mostly because it's my way of pretending that I'm not really as busy as I am.

Beyond the obvious of working and trying to wrestle in the time to finish moving posts, there's the whole poking poor Ariven and going wow, I'd like this and this and this and some of this for the blog!!!  And him just sort of looking at me... 

At any rate, today's rant is on a subject most definitely not appropriate for posting on the official job related writing platform.  The other day, Coyote did an article about why he doesn't like "gamer gurlz."  There was a lot of hubbub about it, but really?  He was right.  The "gurlz" from the site he used as an example emerged en masse to defend themselves, but they really kind of missed the point.

See, the thing is, there really isn't as much of the whole "boys club" in games as people like to think.  Chances are, if you're running into issues as a female in a game, it's cause you're running around cramming your tits down everyone's throat and demanding to be treated specially cause you're "Zomgz!! A real life FEMALE!!"  Which is frankly the biggest crock of shit I've ever heard in my life.  Because the same people who demand to be treated differently cause they're different sit there and bitch when they get treated differently cause they're "just as good as the guy gamers and should be treated the same way." 

There's no winning with these stupid bints.  Trust me honey, if you're having problems in game, it isn't cause you're a chick.  It's cause you're a frelling moron.

I confess to being a total flake now and then and getting a little too caught up in the movie I'm watching and thereby inadvertently playing the tank in the red game, but I'm actually a damn good player.  Not cause I have tits, but just cause I'm good at my class.

The very idea of segregating women onto their own little girl power sites just exacerbates things.  You don't want to be discriminated against?  Then stop holding yourself separate and demanding that people cater to you because you're different.  You want to be part of the gang?  BE part of the gang.  Get involved with sites that cater to GAMERS.  Just gamers. 

It's the internet.  No one cares if you're female, male, black, yellow, orange, or missing body parts.  They care that you play the game well or not.  They care if you act like a twit or like a human being.  Holding yourself apart and telling people to treat you like everyone else cause you're a girl is ridiculous.  The very act of holding yourself separate and declaring your gender automagically belies your assertion you want to be just another gamer.  Cause if you did, you wouldn't feel the need to slap people in the face with your mammaries.

That's something I've really never understood.  Maybe I'm a really bad feminist.  I have no idea.  But here's the thing.  Men and women ARE different.  Men can do things women can't.  Women can do things men can't.  We're not equal.  I couldn't lead a raid to save my life.  Not cause I don't have the skill, but because I'd just get bored trying to herd that many cats.  I'd get pissed off at everyone running around with their thumbs up their butts.  So let a guy who has the desire to do it knock himself out.  Or a chick.  I don't care who, as long as they do it well.  And that right there, is the beauty of gaming.  Cause a huge portion of the people you run into are going to feel the same way.  If you do it well they'll respect you for it.  If you're a giant spaz, they're gonna mock you til you cry.

I don't make a big deal out of the fact that I'm female.  I do my thing and if it comes up it does.  It inevitably does cause I'm myself and that ends up being fairly on the girlie side...  But I accept that.  I don't try to be other than who and what I am.  That doesn't mean I haven't had my share of creeps on the internet, but then that's everywhere.  It isn't a matter of my being female and people knowing.  It's a matter of people are jerks and there are some severely lonely people out there with no people skills.  You put them in their places, kindly if possible and brutally if not.  Then you move on.

We don't NEED to have sites set up just for us to usher us into the gaming world.  We don't need to be coddled and have our hands held.  A good many of us find it offensive.  I feel like it's a bunch of women shoving me back 10 steps for every 3 I take forward.  Cause yeah, the gaming industry is predominately male.  But it's changing.  And it isn't changing cause we shove our boobs in their faces and make them treat us specially... It's changing cause we're earning respect for what we can do, not what we have.  The more women out there making a big deal out of it causes those of us who aren't making a big deal out of it to be viewed differently, though. 

That being said... I can see the side of the women who think they need support from their sisters.  And good for you... But don't even pretend that it's a way to forward a cause.  It isn't.  It's just another way to segregate yourselves and draw attention away from ability and take it right back to boobs.  It's about attention. 

You're on the ultimate equalizer.  People can't see you, they can only see what you can do.  Why the hell would you shoot yourself in the foot by bringing sex or race or anything else into it?  Shine on your own abilities.