Past Traditions

With the holidays being over, and me finally coming out of my recovery period of said holidays, I now find myself in the appropriate frame of mind to write a well written Fact of Bob's Life.  A release of which I know the world hinges upon.

During the holiday season I was constantly reminded by several family members (mother and father) about old family traditions that are no longer done by the family.  Either because we all became too old or the traditions themselves were just stupid to begin with.  Things like reading Christmas stories before bedtime on Christmas Eve, or laying out snares on the roof for Santa's Reindeer.  This got me to thinking about traditions that were lost in my own personal life.  Not Christmas traditions, just ritualistic things I used to do every day that I no longer can do because of outside circumstances.

Let's travel into the past together for a moment so that we can explore this subject further!

Whilst in the Army I was lucky enough to get my veiny little hands on an old Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).  This provided me with hours upon hours of mind numbing entertainment to distract me from the fact that I just got done spending hours upon hours of my day in a mind numbing job.  Whenever I got the chance I brought all of my old Nintendo games from home right back to the Army with me.  One of those games was the glorious Xevious (pictured below).

One day my best friend Jones came into my room and saw me playing Xevious and he couldn't believe his eyes.  Neither of us could believe that the other knew that the game existed, since we both believed that we were the only people on planet Earth that had even heard of it.  Immediately we began to play...for three hours.

It became a ritual actually.  We would play the game in two player mode, see who would get the highest score and how far we would get, and completely over analyze the complexity of the game.  This went on for about two and a half years on a fairly daily basis.  Xevious is one of those games that as simple as it is, it constantly changes and is relentless at kicking your ass.  One minute you think you have submitted the game into licking the heel of your boot, and then a second later, some strange alien craft that looks like something out of Salvador Dali's toilet comes out of nowhere and annihilates you without mercy.  It's painful.

But we didn't just play Xevious mind you, we had to create an environment to play Xevious.  We almost always had a fresh pot of coffee from my perfect Coffee Maker that I mentioned in a previous Facts.  Also, we always, ALWAYS had Type O Negative playing on the stereo.  If I remember correctly it was mainly the "Bloody Kisses" album if I remember correctly, but sometimes we'd throw in a little "October Rust".  Normally I am a big advocate of just listening to the actual music in a videogame instead of outside music (I find it distracting), but the music in Xevious sounds exactly like a toddler walking on a casio keyboard.  Which is basically the Demo Track that comes installed with said keyboard.

Eventually my friend Jones ended up getting deployed to Iraq.  From there the Xevious Tradition ended.  I never played Xevious again.  Every time I tried to I felt like I was doing something wrong, like there was something missing.  It was only until just recently that I decided to put aside my emotions, go ahead and pick it up and play.  The whole time I felt like I needed somebody to talk to about what I was going through, about all the crazy psychadelic spacecraft that were trying to take my life, but even if I did I knew that there would only be one person that would truly get what I was trying to say.

So until I'm somehow magically able to get in touch with my friend Jones and get his ass up here to play Xevious, I'm probably just going to have to just leave the game on the shelf for now.  Besides when I last played, I sucked ass to an almost epic proportion.

So it's a Fact: I need a Goose for my Maverick when I play Xevious.  And no, there is no subtext to that.