"A NEW blog post you say?! WHAAAAA -" Autumn edition.

Yes, I have a new blog post. It's been a long time coming, as I'm sure many of my die-hard blog-fans were eagerly awaiting what wonders I have been up to during my Summer months off from uni (all two of you). 
In fact, it's been so long my laptop has forgotten what my default text style and size is for my blogger account... (and ergo, so did I). BUT YES! Here goes: a new chapter in my blogging "career".
To start with, a picture of a cat: 

Now that that's out of the way, I'll update you on how I spent the majority of my summer - (If you'll refer back to my earlier blog post entitled: "Summer - Not all sugar and rainbows..." you'll know I endeavoured to accomplish an exhaustive list of non-stop summer activities - three in total...).

So, appropriately, I realised three things:

This is how I imagine I'd look in my superhero costume - 
saving lesser beings from campers. 

1) I am awesome at COD: Not even in a way that most teenage boys can show off to uninterested girlfriends - not least of all because I'm neither a teenager, nor do I have a girlfriend - but in a way that means I fight with a degree of honour and righteousness (like a modern day superhero, trolling Xbox Live... THAT'S what I am...). My good friend Sebalicious can attest to my superiority on COD - I have no need to prove my point via a one-sided blogpost. 

This is how I felt when it happened...
I also tried growing my hair out for the summer. 

2) Pianos break. I don't know how it happened, either through overuse or intense use - but two of my keys are broken; namely the G# and A an octave above middle C. Weirdly enough, it started with the F# and G a tone below, but mysteriously "spread" to the aforementioned keys. Like some weird... piano breaking virus. On the subject, the neighbours decided to launch an official complaint regarding my "excessive" piano playing. I didn't realise 8:00 on  a Saturday morning would be a problem, but these neighbours are in a league of their own. The word on the street (literally; from our curtain-twitching busy-bodied neighbour Karen) is that they do drugs and all have ASBO's... so I'm guessing they were hungover and/or high on that particular Saturday morning (or planning their role in the London riots) Ahhh good ole' St. Albans... :') 

This is how I was. 100% accurate, even down
to the bloodshot eyes and blue-tinted skin tone. 

3) Blogging over summer is surprisingly difficult. Not because I didn't have a particularly uneventful one, but it quickly became tiresome and contrived. Moreover, it feels like the stuff that happens to me when I get back to uni is more blogworthy than telling strangers on the internet how I just owned several other strangers on the internet, via the medium of COD. There's only so many times you can brag about your incomparable K/D ratio, or that you've just covered that new Rihanna song on piano. 

BUT - with a new year at uni ahead of me, I'm more than confident that I'll devote myself more fully to blogging. After all - It is my duty to keep strangers on the internet informed of the happenings in my life. FOR THAT IS MY TRUE PURPOSE! XboxMan - AWAY! 

The COD effect. I hate it.

Sadly, this is NOT the type of camping I'm talking about... 

Preach. 

This blog update features a very specific topic in mind. Whilst I have previously mentioned my adoration (bordering "obsession" some would say...) for video game, I must reference my fondness for one such particular brand of game:

CoD... *dun dun dun* o.O

It's prevalence amongst gamers today is second-to-none. Mentioning "CoD" to most people over the age of say... 30,  they would probably expect you to be talking about a species of fish. However, to many people under 30 (if we're talking about the key demographic of 18-30 year-old males), their reaction may vary from: mouth-frothing, increased heart-rate, profuse sweating and indeed... an urge to "eliminate the opposition." 


In fact, as previously mentioned in my "Summer - not all sugar and rainbows..." blog, I myself am a CoD fan. Black Ops was the game in question that I looked forward to as being an unashamedly enormous time-sink for my Summer holidays. However, the excitement soon wore off. The thrill of killing anonymous online Xbox Live users was short-lived. I realised that COD, as a franchise, manages to both encapsulate and frustrate it's audience - including myself - in equal measures.

I'm not an angry person, by nature... Playing CoD has given me a chance at self-reflection. I'm a much more terrible person than I thought... D: 

This is me in Hulk-Cat Hybrid form. 

I find myself having to take breaks from CoD (or rather... play it in intermittent bursts... the first one made it seem like my entire summer was devoted to CoD - which would only be half right...), for fear of developing some adverse side-effects - like turning green and feeling unexplained urges to "smash." (for the astute comic book fans, I was likening myself to the Hulk... :| but... whatever...) 


A "game" should be fun... it shouldn't have the ability to elicit any negativity. But maybe that's what make me more... bloodthirsty?! 

This makes me sick... It requires no skill...! D:

... bastard. 

When a game harbours elements that frustrate me, such as so-called "camping", (whereby a player sits in a corner of a room, using equipment such as a motion sensor, or claymore to defend themselves...), I feel like it's such an injustice. Like the whole ethos of CoD multiplayer has been made of mockery of.  Is there any justice in "camping?" (I talk about "justice" as if there's a higher power of CoD police who could deal with such players... sadly - there is not). 


I then realise something else... these campers don't care how annoyed I get. And indeed, if we were in real modern warfare, you would use whatever so-called "dirty" tactics you could to survive... 


Still... It doesn't annoy me any less.