That Fucking Guy by GMort

One thing that Dethtron and I love is a close fought game between to tightly built armies.  For us, that's the essence of competitive play.  It not about clubbing baby seals or even going to tournaments.  It's just good games with good people.  Unfortunately, a big chunk of the reason the false dichotomy between 'casual' and 'competitive' exists is because of one guy.  That fucking guy, to be precise.  He's not interested in playing a game to the best of his abilities, he's interested in winning.  At all costs.  But he calls himself competitive and he has clones.  GMort has his own, personal Chaotica and humbly put forward this primer to help the world with 'That Fucking Guy".

That Fucking Guy.

We've all had games against 'That Fucking Guy' (which will be abbreviated to TFG from now on).

TFG: also known as 'dick head'

Now I'm not necessarily talking about competitive gamers who build their armies to win, carefully optimise units and know mathematically which unit should beat what as many of my regular opponents enjoy playing like that and are generally not arseholes...well, not all the time anyway ;-).

So, what puts someone into the TFG category?

The following list is by no means conclusive nor in any particular order but it does cover all the things that annoy me most.

Lantzing the Boil or Where in the World is Lantz?

On Monday, Lantz bravely - some would say, foolishly - volunteered to help us fill our holes....  ~gross...  in the posting schedule.

It turns out that his offer was genuine.  Here is Lantz from The Magnet Pro in all his glorious glory:

Lantz sez: "Me, drinking a hip apple-tini in a hip bar with assumed hip people. I'm hip."

Also, to make this as weird a scene as possible, here's a semi-related Haiku to kick off the official House of Paincakes Super Bad-ass Haiku Contest and Not-at-all Shameful Grab for Filler Content.*

The House of Paincakes

Awesomeness cuts like a knife

Old trout dies alone

So that's it for this first installment in what I hope will become a regular series here.  I think we'll learn something about life's greatest mysteries along the way.  Why does the human spirit feel the need to wander?  What is the meaning of community?  Do magnets work as explained by scientists or are those motherfuckers just lyin' and gettin' us pissed?  Why do I even have these night vision goggles?  Is plaid still hip or is it so fall 2009?

I will leave you with my own Haiku-

Dethtron's MBA

Program so boring; must go

on silk wings time flies

------[NOTES]----------
*Official rules:  your haiku most follow the 5/7/5 convention and the haiku must be, nominally, somehow related to the House of Paincakes.  Post your entry in the comments section of this post.  One entry per contestant.  No purchase necessary.  The winner(s) will be selected by the HoP admins and any agents we may designate.  The winner(s) will receive the dubious honor of having a filler post dedicated to their poem(s).

The Weekly Top X: Brent’s in Charge; Hide the Beer

This week I forced Brent at gunpoint gently encouraged Brent to be the one that chooses the the top X material.  So if you don't like it, please send all your hate mail to Brent so he can ignore it instead of us.

In all seriousness, Brent had been absolutely swamped with grad school and his busy regimen of whoring himself out across the blogosphere... wait, I said in all seriousness, didn't I?  In any case, Brent is a busy guy and fitting just one more post into a schedule was pretty hard considering all the book learnin' he's been up to lately.  I had been doing most of the legwork and I thought this week would be a great way to get Brent back into the mix as fully as possible.

So let me kick this off Brent-style:

Hello again boys and girls, Unicorns and children of all ages, Brent here bringing you the House of Paincakes Weekly Top X!

Monday is for Lovers

As the House of Paincakes continues to grow, Dethtron and I are always looking for ways to improve the way we do bid’ness. We’ve been considering quite a few things of late and a number of them have actually made their way from being a vague idea to something we can actually implement.

Here’s the latest batch:

A Posting Schedule
The HoP landing page is pretty integral to what we do here. Beyond being a place to get a logo, it’s where people can come and take a look at what the other members are up to via the blog lists and our various promotional efforts. A key factor to getting people to come here is to actually have content to trick entice them into coming back. Now, Dethtron and I have been fairly consistent on getting things posted, but we’ve decided to formalize it bit.

Generally speaking, we’re going to have a minimum of three posts a week until other new and exciting things fall into place. Then, we’ll start ramping that up. Here’s what were working with for the time being:

Monday – HoP announcement/news day. Pretty self explanatory here. We’re just going to use Monday as the day where we share info on what the HoP admins are up to. We’ll also be announcing new members who have joined up over the last week. Expect this to start next week.

Wednesday – Top X day. It’s been like this for a month, so no surprises here.

Friday – User Submission day. We’ll put something up one of the community members have sent us and let people mull over it for the weekend.

Tuesday/Thursday – Ladies’ Choice. We have some stuff in the works here, but nothing is finalized yet. These days will likely be used for all the odd-ball stuff that can come up or even for more user submissions.

This may change and/or expand in the future, but we’ll let you know on another Monday.


Blog Roll Changes
At this point, HoP membership is approaching 80 blogs. The blog lists are getting a bit big and we’re beginning to collect old posts at the bottom of them. Primarily, we need to save space on the main page so we’re going to limit the rolls to only show the first 25 most recent posts. We’d do 30-35 if we could, but blogger doesn’t have anything between 25 and 50. If you’re bummed out about being hidden at that bottom, the answer is simple: POST MORE! I mean, seriously, there are some great authors we’d love to see more from

We’re also looking into to creating a member’s list page as well, where we will collect links to EVERY member's page, regardless of post frequency. More on this as it develops.


Keep Sending In Those Article Submissions!
We’ve got a bunch backlogged, but we can always use more. Remember, the more submissions you guys submit, the more stuff you’ll all see on the site. Just keep in mind that when we say we want more submissions, we’re actually asking for more submitters. 

With that, I’m done blathering on about the House of Paincakes. Check back later this week for Brent’s handpicked Top X choices as well as some other delightful, hand-crafted treasures. Enjoy the rest of your Monday! - Lauby