Christmas has never been a good experience for me. At least, not since I started paying for the presents myself. Consider my situation. I spend most of my time in a reinforced, titanium-encased bunker ten feet under my house (which is conveniently situated on a property 80km from what we call, because we don’t know any better, a town), spending all my time neck-deep in games, intelligence reports and prospective Charged™ articles.
Taking all this into account, it’s surprising how many people call up to remind me they exist when December rolls around. In deceptively sweet tones they remind me of the times we’ve spent together, the slabs we downed together, oh and do you remember when the chick in the Suzuki gave us the forks so you grabbed a cucumber and jammed it in her muffler? Yeah, yeah, good times. And then they drop it, the c-bomb. One simple query as to what you are doing around then, and you’re doomed. You may as well just flush your cash down the dunny.
There’s not much else to do except pull out your wallet, stare despondently at the meagre fare within it, and go spend it on other people. In my case, it culminated in the purchase of several copies of Left 4 Dead (for people who certainly did not deserve it), a fire hydrant, “An Explosion in Your Orifices: Recipes Designed to Make Chilli Volatile“, one metric kilogram of deodorant, rat poison, soap, a number of Valve-themed shirts, and a box of scented toothpicks (I was running low on funds, and ideas).
Stumbling, weak and penniless, from the experience, I felt in great need of some companionship, preferably with someone as poor as I’d just found myself. Thinking through the possibilities, I hastily rearranged my priorities to someone who could afford to buy me a beer, but still complain about money. With this mind I quickly nipped off down to Melbourne to see what madlep was doing on New Years.
There’s a lot to be said about madlep’s workplace, but all of it can summarised neatly into ‘Organised Chaos’. Employees strode purposefully everywhere, determined to look like they were doing something useful, with the least amount of effort possible, communicating in half-sentences and impatient gestures, eager to get this all behind them so they could quickly book their headaches in for tomorrow.
In stark contrast to this were the immobile fans. Standing stock-still in an omnipresent group, their fanatical gaze never moved from the object of their focus. The employees hardly seemed to notice them, even as they wove through them, which is understandable given the circumstances. The fans had been a prominent feature of the place for about a year. I walked up to the object of their scrutiny.
“Hey there, madlep.”
He turned around quickly from his desk, pointedly ignoring the sharp intake of breath from all the fans behind him. If he even slightly acknowledged their presence, it’s quite likely he’d never survive.
“Ballsy, fancy seeing you here.”
“Not really. You wanna head out and buy a drink?”
At this madlep’s eyes immediately narrowed. Considering it carefully, he duly noted the deliberate way I had left myself out of any possibility of purchasing, studied my expression and it’s practised way of completely ruling out any probability that I was pleading for a free drink or four. He noted this, and then he looked at the alternatives or, rather, looked past them.
“Alright, alright” he relented, “Just let me finish off, and I’ll come right over.”
He quickly checked uber and boomercharged.net, bringing a loud cheer from the ranks of fans, made a quick call, before we both sprinted to the window and jumped to the helicopter now waiting there. Scrabbling up to the seats, we looked back to the window to see the fans milling around the edge in confusion, looking at each other, at a loss for what to do next. At least they weren’t mindlessly sprinting over it.
“Well that’s good.” I remarked, “They don’t look like they’re going to follow us this time.”
“Thank god. I’d hate to see a repeat of that crap during Halloween.” a slightly American accented voice pointed out.
Shuddering at the memory, I turned away from the sight of the fans setting up camp to see the piercing gaze of clubtheseals penetrating my very being. It was a very good gaze, quite expensive, and one of the very few things club had bought at a discount. As a matter of fact, the only thing rarer than the things club had bought at a discount were the things club hadn’t bought. The last I’d heard of him he was trying to patent weather patterns. Resplendent in clothing that costed a good five-figure sum, but looked like it should cost 3 figures less, club waited for a reaction. Looking out of the corner of my eye, I saw madlep breath a sigh of relief. Someone else was going to be buying the grog.
“G’day club.” I greeted, falling back into my Aussie heritage for the sake of the tourist.
“Fancy meeting you here, General.”
“If you say so. You wanna go buy a drink mate?”
There was no hesitation. One of club’s favourite things to do is spend his money, and another was drinking.
“Sure!”
“So what the hell are you doing down here, club? I hardly ever see you in your chopper during the afternoon escape.” Madlep pointed out.
We were sitting around a table in an establishment that may once have been fine, but was now simply an establishment. Madlep liked it because the smell kept the fans away. Club had insisted on bringing along some expensive exotic beer that smelt like a bad attempt to make wine out of pineapples. It was actually pretty good, but we weren’t going to let him know that. The bartender was giving us filthy looks as we drunk it. Club himself was in the process of looking incredulously at madlep.
“To see what old friends were doing, and have some good times. What else?”
“Bullshit club. You don’t go anywhere without buying something expensive like, oh I don’t know, Sydney.”
Club tried unsuccessfully to look innocent.
“Bugger that, what have you got planned for tonight?”
“What’s happening tonight?”
“New Years Eve, club.” I piped up.
“That’s tomorrow, isn’t it?”
“No, club.”
Clubtheseal’s mouth dropped open in horror at this relevation while I remembered the reason I had come down.
“Well…I…uhh…” Club garbled.
“What about you?” I directed at madlep, leaving club to recover.
“Well I had something planned with family, but the fans found my last home, and now they’re all in hiding.”
“Bugger.”
“I think the helipad on the roof gave it away. Didn’t think they were smart enough logically deduce that, next thing I know they’ll start using intelligent speech.”
“What about you, General?” Club re-entered into the conversation.
“I just popped down to see what madlep was doing tonight.”
This was met with silence. Both of them were mentally calculating the statement, carefully. Club spoke first.
“You just…popped down?”
“From Queensland?” Madlep added.
“Yep.” I answered.
Club rallied himself. It was probably best not to think too much about it.
“So…uhh…so no-one’s got a plan for tonight?”
“Well, we could play Left 4 Dead.” It was going to get to that eventually, I just threw it out there in the off-chance it didn’t.
“But…shouldn’t we be getting drunk and vandalising things on New Years?” Club offered.
“Should we?”
“Well I don’t know, but it’s like, a tradition…isn’t it?”
This troubled me a bit. You shouldn’t mess with traditions, people held them as important for a reason. Just because no-one could remember the reason didn’t mean you should take them lightly. Madlep was thinking hard.
“Well.” he offered, “We kind of break things in Left 4 Dead.”
“That works for me.” Club agreed quickly.
“So we’ve got a plan?” I hoped.
“Just wait a bit.” Madlep interjected before we got too excited, “Don’t we need four pe-”
He didn’t get a chance to finish. The pub door slammed in, and a dark figure made itself known in the way cats don’t.
“LEFT 4 DEAD?!” It screamed, “DID I HEAR CORRECTLY? WHAT IS THIS MADNESS, MADLEP?! HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN YOUR ROOTS?!”
“I…uhh…I mean…what?” Madlep was in control of the situation as much as Valve were in control of release dates.
“DO YOU NOT REMEMBER WHAT YOU STARTED?! THE BEAUTIFUL SITE YOU CREATED?! TEAM FORTRESS 2, MADLEP! YOUR RISE TO FAME! THE AMOUNT OF LOVE YOU HEAPED UPON IT, THE AMOUNT OF ENTERTAINMENT IT GAVE BACK, THE RANTS, THE MACHINIMA, THE LIFE! AND YOU, YOU PATHETIC SLIP OF A MAN! YOU LEAVE THAT FOR LEFT 4 DEAD! OOH I’M BILL, A FREAKING WAR VET WHO HAS AN M16! OOH, I’M ZOEY AND I’M A CHICK! OOH, THERE’S ZOMBIES COMING TO KILL ME, OH HOW ORIGINAL! HUUUUUUUH!” he took a deep breath.
“So…did you want to join us Himmel?” I interjected quickly before he could get started again.
“YO-uh…er…huh?”
I had broken his combo. Desperately, Himmelstoss tried to regain control of the thread of conversation.
“Me?” was all he got out before he had to catch his breath again. He lost control of the thread.
“Well yeah, Himmel.” Club jumped in while he was weak, “I mean, you’re being a bit harsh on the game I’m thinking. I mean you haven’t even, you know, played it.”
“Yeah.” Madlep agreed distantly. He was still staring flabbergasted at Himmel, amazed at the outburst he witnessed. Pulling himself out of it, he realised another thing.
“Where the hell did you come from, Himmel?” he asked.
We all stared at him, realising this at the same time madlep spoke it aloud. He shifted a bit under our gaze.
Time passed.
He shifted a bit more.
I decided to throw him a bone.
“So you’re going to play with us?”
Himmel winced at the thought of actually having to play L4D, mainly because it occurred to him that it might actually be good. Disturbingly, though, he seemed to think it was preferable to the alternative. He sighed.
“I haven’t got my computer.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got three in the helicopter.” club said helpfully, with a smile that could only be called hellishly evil.
“But…shouldn’t we be pissed and breaking stuff on New Years, though?” was his last ditch effort.
I grinned.
So where is this going, you wonder?
In madlep’s latest hideout (which I’m certainly not going to make public) we set up the LAN, and hit up Death Toll. We drank enough of the pinapple stuff to get affected, but not enough to let club know we liked it. Himmelstoss complained about everything under the sun, the guns were generic, the achievements were too hard, there were zombies, the levels were too dark, there wasn’t any demoman class, and there weren’t even any taunts, to top it all off. Madlep managed to miss a boomer three times with the Auto-Shotty, club finished off a Tank with a melee, I managed to hit everyone else whenever I threw a bomb. It all culminated with the final run to the boat, and the last man making it there because the Tank punched him onto it.
In short, it was pure, unadulterated fun. A celebration of the year, shared in each other. A New Year opened as it should be, with happiness and optimism, out of the most exceptional of circumstances. So it was, so it should be, so it will be.
So get ready. Welcome 2009. It’s going to be a good year for Left 4 Dead, a good year for Valve, a great year for gaming, a good year for you. So celebrate it, friends between friends, family within family, love inside love.
Happy New Year everyone. Enjoy yourselves.
