8-Bit Love!

Innocence is something that we all have to lose eventually. For some of us it's something as simple as finding out that Santa Claus is not real (even though he is), or it can be as horrifying as walking into your parents bedroom to show them a drawing of a war picture you just made only to discover them completely naked in a reverse cowgirl. Sweet, sweet innocence.

Once it's gone you either never notice it was there in the first place, and instantly turn to a life of deep painful maturity, or you spend the rest of your life pining over how you did lose it and end up futily trying to get it back by dressing up in costumes based on bad Japanese RPG's with giant cardboard swords and fake spiky hair at every opportunity you get where it's semi socially acceptable. Or just cross dressing.

Luckily for me I've had the wonderful joy of losing my innocence at least three times that I can recall clearly. I won't go into walking into you know who doing you know what and I'm sure you unerstand why I won't do that. Well maybe I will later, but not right now. Actually what I would like to talk about is a different kind of copulation that had affected me in my early childhood.

In one of my earlier Facts I talked about my parents not having an effing clue about buying video games. In it I made a small reference to a "poorly translated japanese action/adventure game with RPG elements". That game was Golgo-13 for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

This game was definitely different. It had things in it that I had never seen before and were completely alien to me: Cut scenes, First Person levels, Badly Translated Drama, you name it! On top of that it was painfully difficult. You had no idea what you were supposed to be doing, there were bad guys AND civilians to deal with, and on top of that electrified seaweed that could kill your ass in an instant if you weren't too careful. And don't even get me started on the mazes.

Part of me was upset because all I ever wanted out of a videogame was to shoot things, jump on mushroom creatures and save helpless maidens named after fruit. Then again getting a new video game for me was such a monumental event that I forced myself to believe that this was an awesome game. You play with what your dealt, right?

After hours of playing this torturous and confusing game that was unlike any other I finally started to enjoy it for real, but that didn't stop the game from being any less difficult. One of the 'objectives' in the game is to stop at a variety of hotels to meet 'contacts' who would provide you with 'information' that would help you progress 'forward'. Pretty heavy stuff for an eleven year old to grasp who's used to walking left to right and holding down the B button and drooling on himself.

Anyway, I get to one of the hotels to meet my 'contact' and it is nothing less than a ravishing 8-bit green haired women in a matching 8-bit green mini skirt. We talk for a bit about how I'm to acquire a variety of Scuba Gear, so that I can jump in the city river and swim around and avoid seaweed like an idiot. Suddenly this amazing 2D green headed vixen says it's such a lovely night and that no one should be alone (or something along those lines).

And then it happened.

I saw it! I saw it happen right before my own eyes! Video Game characters on my Nintendo were having sex! Two miniscule 8-bit silhouetted characters embracing in the night! They were doing it!

My first thought was 'No...Way!' This could not be happening. Video Game people don't have sex? They just go left to right, shoot, jump and die at my hands. This was real world stuff, and what the hell was it doing in my 5x6 NES cartridge? But that whole thought vanished after five seconds and was replaced by a fit of the giggles, and I promptly started showing this scene to all of my friends. They giggled too.

So why would seeing a bunch of crappy two dimensional action heroes suggestively copulate on my Nintendo cause me to lose my innocence (1 of 3 at least)? Because nothing in the video game world could ever match that moment, not one thing.

Every video game experience I had from that point on was kind of 'meh'. Hordes of demons charging me head on, exploring new worlds in true 3-D while brandishing nail guns, shooting watermelons on a countertop on an oil rig while avoiding terrorists, all of what could have been truly amazing video game experiences had been turned into merely 'meh'.

Why? Because I saw two people hump on my NES.

So it's a Fact: What could have been a life filled with wonderful, eye opening experiences of video game glory, had been lost because two horny 8-bit people decided to go at it on in front of my innocent eyes. Most likely in a reverse cowgirl too.

Bonus Fact: After they embrace, the lights go out and your life meter regenerates. If only that were true in real life.

The Geek Must Speak!

Let's spice things up a bit for this Fact, shall we? How about we get a little bit more intimate this time around. I would like to talk to you about a Fact that is more personal, yet strangely entertaining: My Geek Self.

I can already hear your goosebumps tingling with excitement! I know mine are.

For the vast, VAST, majority of my life I have been a geek. Not a full fledged homogenized geek to where I sleep with a lightsaber at night, but a well maintained and balanced geek. A rare breed that is able to sustain a semi-normal life, yet embrace the utter joy and bliss that is the world of the geek without being utterly consumed by it.

Contradictory? Perhaps. Is it? No.

I consider myself to having the staple geek credentials/material objects, like having an UNGODLY amount of books, films, comics, video games and the strangest collection of...paraphernalia adorning my basement, all related to various subjects in the geek realm. I enjoy, dabble, play and roll around in all of my geek things regularly, and enjoy in doing so. It's great stuff.

Being a well-balanced geek isn't easy though. There are temptations, shiny objects, that beckon your name. they call to you and beg you to become part of their brood and become one with them. I have dabbled in some of these temptations, and found that they became more like habits. Some of my geek habits have included:

• Role Playing Games - The bug hit me in Junior High. I hardly played them, but I had a shitload of them.
• Hacking - I used to be an avid to poor computer hacker and spent the majority of my life on my computer learning how not to be a hacker.
• Magic the Gathering, et al - Oh Jesus. I spent hardly any money on it, hardly played it, but somehow I had an assload of these fricking cards. UNFORTUNATELY, there was a crapload of other crappy ass card games coming out at the same that this game came out that I got into for about the length of a week. On a side note I wish this game would just die.
• Tabletop Gaming - You know those tiny little metal figurines of Orcs carrying machine guns that are painted with amazing detail? Well I gave my hand at that and couldn't cut it, as in I couldn't paint.
• Tabletop Gaming Pt. II - They were called heroclix. They were fun. They were addictive. They were expensive.
• Star Trek - I still love Star Trek, but I used to be obsessed with it. A long time ago I went through the methadone clinic for Trekkies and now I can just enjoy Star Trek when I feel like it.
• Star Wars - The less said the better.

To those of you who have never dipped their fingers in the world of geekdom I'm sure this all seems bizarre, fascinating and stupid. But to those of us you who are geeks this doesn't seem like a big deal at all, and you're saying to yourself "What's the big effing deal Bob? Who hasn't painted a miniature future Orc, and cursed George Lucas' name at the same time? I Pwn ur G3k Crdntl5!"

Fair enough, but please allow me to explain further.

The above list are all geek habits that I consider to be ones that push you over the edge. Once you embrace them to the fullest, start to kneel down and worship them and offer sacrificial ken dolls to you can rarely ever recover from their effects. I on the other hand have been very lucky to have dabbled in all of the above deadly addictions, taste their sweet nectar, and then leave them behind like Spock on the Genesis Planet.

As mentioned earlier I consider myself a geek, but a geek that is well balanced and is able to maintain a semi-normal life. I have been able to walk that fine line to where I can keep my geek credentials, yet not fall into that dismal abyss of geekdom that would require me to dress up like Prince Colwyn from Krull on a daily basis, or do something even more drastic like speak Klingon and use it to order six Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers from Wendy's for my daily life sustaining binge.

So why not give up being a geek completely, curb the habit all the way? Quite simply because I love being a geek! I love all of the crap I have, all of the useless geek knowledge I've acquired and being able to have conversations about what you would do if you had the Infinity Gauntlet. If I got rid of my geek self I would be forced to do things with my spare time like watch college football, or worry about constantly 'pimping my ride'.

No thanks, I'll stick with my useless TRON knowledge. Which is totally applicable to the real world.

So it's a Fact: If I were to give up being a geek in any way, shape or form, my life would be filled with abnormal normality. And we can't have that.

Bonus Fact: I don't speak Klingon.

Once Eaten

Some foods you just end up growing out of as a child. It's an unavoidable aspect of life that you cannot escape: one day you love it, the next day you hate it. It's just a Fact of life (ha!). Now I don't mean any genre of food per-se, as in "I loved cereal as a child, now I vomit in my bowl at the mere sight of it.", though I'm sure there are people who do that. No I am referring to specific food types.

A prime example of this would be Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches, or as they're more commonly known in the hood, PB&J sammiches. Almost everybody I have known in my life loved them, they were a staple part of their diet as a child. Then one day something just happened and they stopped being cool. Now as adults they are a reviled part of their diet and they vomit at the mere sight of them.

What is the main driver behind that sudden twist in taste? Could it be hormones? Violence? Wanting to be part of the "In Crowd"? Blossom on weeknights on NBC? If you wanted my guess (which is why you're reading this) it would be something far more complicated, like having it day-in and day-out for the vast majority of your childhood. I'm pretty sure that would have something to do with it, but hey that's just me.

For me, my love/hate relationship with food isn't quite so simple.

My food love/hate thing definitely stems from the child to adult scenario I've established, unfortunately it's not as easy to describe as "I Love Broccoli...I Hate Broccoli". Actually, the more thought I've put into this Fact-Theory hybrid the more complicated it gets for me. Would you like to know more? Of course you would!

In my youthfulness I definitely remember eating Tuna Fish sandwiches, which is funny because I hate seafood in all of it's forms (this will definitely be a future Facts, so be prepared). I can't even remember the last time I ate a tuna fish anything, whether it be a sandwich, casserole or surprise. I'm sure one or two have slipped past me and made its way into my stomach in the days that have gone by, but not because I went out of my to do so.

Tuna is just nasty: it smells funny, it's covered in water and only tastes good when bathed in mayonnaise. Not necessarily the best of combos, making a food delicious by forcing it to swim around in man made fat. Of course when you're eight years old things like that don't really cross your mind. Plus kids eat paste.

But that's where things get conflicting for me with my hate theory. I really can't put my finger on the fact whether or not I really did like Tuna in the first place as a young lad.

Like I said prior, I know I ate the crap when it was put in front of me, but I don't remember actually enjoying the process. I can't bring up any kind of emotional based memories to associate with this food whatsoever. So did I eat this food in my youth out of pleasure, or was it out of sheer obligation?

This in turns brings moral dilemma: how can I go around preaching on and on about foods one loves as a youth, but hates as an adult, and yet be morally confused about the one that I bring up as an example in my own life? Can I use the canned Tuna as an example in my Fact just because I have a memory of eating as a child, but no clear recollection of having any emotional attachment to it whatsoever? I think about this every time I see a can of Starkist or a dolphin doing tricks on television.

I feel the only way to really clear the air on this one is to just buckle down, pull $.75 out of thin air, walk down to the Dolphin Free section of the supermarket, grab a can of Charlie's favorite brand and take the plunge. That's right, take the plunge and get at least one strange pathetic theory out of the way!

If I make a Tuna Sandwich, eat it, and hate it I can stay in my unnecessary moral dilemma that bothers me only once every four years. BUT, if I eat it and like it, then I can develop a reverse theory that I did always hate Tuna, and my tastes have matured and I can write another Fact's of Bob's Life based on my adventure!

But I'm cheap, and I can't stand the smell of that crap.

So it's a Fact: Do I like Tuna? Not really. Did I ever like Tuna? I dunno. Will I ever dive head long into a fresh can of chopped fish to see if I still hate it, or if I have developed new tastes for it? No, that shit stinks.

All By Myself

Just recently I made the mistake of telling one of my original loyal fans/readers/slaves aware that I finally had this wonderful blog up and running. He was so overjoyed with rage and jealousy that he made it be known through the comments section of one of my Facts, that he decided to make his own blog, about his own life, in hopes to inspire me to write more! And so he did.

So I mosied my lazy ass over to my friend's blog to see what the Dealy-O was all about, to see what divine inspiration I could draw from his hate filled words. Instead, all I found was shear horror.

At first sight it appeared like this little blog of his was a mere copy-cat of mine: the title, format, even the goddamn ending was like mine! But that was not was what was upsetting me. Matter of fact I thought it was pretty damn funny. No, it was what was written that truly shook me to the core.

My loyal friend who wrote this blog had been playing with himself for most of his childhood.

I had no idea...I had no words to describe the shock I felt. It was almost paralyzing. It was all right there in front of me in black and white, he just flat out admitted it. To make matters worse, his parents made him do it! And in Public!! Can you imagine that?!

The only thing I could was sit there at my computer and just stare at my screen with a blank face, and just try to process this information, but I couldn't. All I could do was just offer some words of comfort in his comments: "I had no idea you played with yourself so much"

Which is what brings us to today's Fact: I too am tainted of the foul act of playing with thyself. I know, I know, it's hard to hear, but it must be heard. The Facts must be told.

Being a rabid child of the untamed wilderness, whose parents both worked tirelessly to provide simple necessities in life like liquid water, it was practically a common daily act to wander out in the woods and...amuse yourself. Sometimes it would only take an hour, other times it would take all day, but regardless it would have to be done, I would have to be amused.

The acts required to get the job done were endless, and sometimes sickening. They could be anything from the sick act of War (a lone child taking out an entire division of terrorists by himself...horrifying), Construction (giant fortresses hanging from the trees, ala Ewoks), or just silly little Reindeer Games (???). You get the hint though, I played, and played, and played with myself CONSTANTLY. Unfortunately it didn't stop there.

Playing with yourself is like a gateway drug; it gets you high, and gets you by, but only for a little while. Eventually you need to take the next step, you need to push it to the next level, and that next level is friends. You see I couldn't stave off the endless hordes of invisible enemies I established in my War game anymore. I couldn't build my Ewok-like Tree Fort palace in the trees with just my two hands. And Reindeer Games are just no fun with just one Reindeer. You need friends to keep these sick goings on going on.

Unfortunately one is just not enough. You need more, and more, and they need more too, and before you know it you have a network of friends that you don't even know! Eventually you end up getting so addicted to them, and having so many of them, that you end up being a faceless drone in a crowd of thousands and unable to accomplish any kind of playing at all. Then before you know it you find yourself in a dark basement, sitting in a corner, covered in cold sweat, getting those strange cravings to play with yourself all over again. Right back where you started.

it's just a viscous cycle that never ends. It's terrifyingly horrible. Fortunately for my friend it looked like he never reached that point of desperation, and promptly just stayed with himself (his parents gave him toys).

So to all of you out there, who had to play by/with yourselves, I say to you this: I understand, I was there, I too am one of you, and that you are not alone.

So it's a Fact: What started out as a fun way for a minion to get me motivated to write better, funnier Facts, ended up being a solemn cry for help, and a way for me to exorcise my own personal "play with myself" demons. And for that I say thank you.

BONUS FACT: To read the horrifying account of what my Friend/Original Fanboy/Underling actually went through as a child, I will have a benefit link to his first hand account up shortly. I would greatly appreciate it if you would all read it and let him know you understand of how much he truly played with himself as a child. Thank you!

Little Did They Know

Do you remember the heyday of the Nintendo era? The golden days of NES? When everything they advertised seemed like it was pure magic, regardless if it was crap! Things like ROB, the Robot Operated Buddy, who could move spinning discs right by your side. Or the sweat inducing Power Pad, that gave you the false impression that you had the control over an 8-bit Olympic athlete through the power of your feet! Perhaps the most well known, the Power Glove. A fashion accessory that wielded so much useless power no one knew what to do with it...not even it's creators. I of course only had the Power Pad, because it came in a cheap NES bundle pack that my parents could afford.

Ahhh, sweet fond memories.

But that's not what this Facts' about. No, it's about high, lofty expectations being crushed, and then forced to live with those crushed expectations for the rest of your life. And then play with them.

In keeping with the theme that I was poor as shit, my parents would very rarely go out and just buy a video game. No sir, that occasion was usually reserved for something special like Christmas, a Birthday, or if the family pet left us some money in it's will. We all knew this; it was law.

I remember having this naive idea that my parents just knew what the good ones were, that they would magically pick the best videogame of the shelf, the one that would provide only the finest entertainment; mindless hours of callous inducing, thumb numbing bliss! Unfortunately that was not the case.

For them picking videogames was allot like picking out toys. What they would do, when picking toys, is walk down the toy aisle and pick up the one that looked economically feasible yet similar to what you had originally requested. Example: If you asked for a GI Joe, you got a generic 'American Fighter Brigade' figure instead, one that looked like a GI Joe, but was a poor (shit poor) substitute.

By taking the above example into consideration, and the fact that they knew nothing about video games, how do you (the reader) think they picked out video games for us? I'll tell you: By cover art and price.

If the box looked like it might hold our interest for twenty-thirty minute intervals (dragon or spaceship) and it was $24.99 or less, then we were gonna love it...damn it. Sadly they were right.

If it wasn't for the fact that we had rarely gotten videogames, or that when we did get them it was like a holy experience, we probably would have been more picky and whiny when we got a shiny new copy of "Star Soldier" instead of "Mario Bros 3". And this is where the confliction starts to come in.


You see, on these special events (Christmas or Pet Funeral) that we were actually bestowed a slice of 8-bit heaven, you usually made a request on a list of some kind the night prior for what you wanted. So on Christmas eve you left a note for Santa begging him not to give you a shitty game, but one of grace, form and that your friend told you was awesome. It was hard to wake up the next day, unwrap a present that you KNEW was a videogame, and not be disappointed when you saw that it was not a copy of Robocop, but instead was something called Xevious (try and pronounce that).


At the same time the sheer joy and bliss of receiving a brand new game was so rare, that you forgot that you didn't get what you asked for specifically, and your disappointment disappeared. Such is the joy of being an underprivileged youth.

The funny thing is that now, being a retro gamer, and after playing these games again and again (and having no choice), they're really not that bad. Some of them were actually quite good, they were just above my head at the time. I mean you try to teach a 10 year old to appreciate the complexity of a poorly translated Japanese Action/adventure game with RPG elements. Not easy.

I still own all of those games that I received throughout my childhood (I know I said we throughout this, but I never really let my siblings play them), and I still play them from time to time. And time to time I give my parents grief for not buying me, or my siblings, the proper video games to grow up with. They understand my pain, and tell me to shut up.

So it's a Fact: My parents didn't (and don't) know shit about good videogames. But the ones they got me ended up being okay...after ten years.

Color Purple Haze

So before I get too far off on a tangent on newer Facts, I wanted to discuss a little bit more about those purple, nightmarish orbs known as
Huckleberries, and what further horrors that they had wrought on my life. Or to be more accurate what further horrors my parents cast upon me that were associated with said hellberries.

As I mentioned in the previous fact "Child Labor of Love" (already deemed a classic), in my family's futile attempt to fight the constant onslaught of poverty, my mother constructed a small business based off of tourists' lust for the disgustingly popular fruit known as Huckleberries. This small business was primarily built and sustained with my sweat, blood and tears, in an unholy mixture that could only be described as a pain cocktail. The mixture was 4:2:3 for those with the need to know.

This leaves an interesting plot hole/questionable conundrum to the whole situation: Where the eff did all those devilberries come from? They didn't just shit themselves on my mother's lap on a regular basis, ready to be squashed, cooked and sold, did they? Of course not, that's just crazy talk!

Who'd make up some crap like that!

No, my parents force marched us up to the mountains and would not let us come back home until we hand picked enough berries to sustain us for weeks on end.

It didn't start out this way, not initially. At first my parents did all of the picking, and we (siblings and whoever else was unlucky enough to tag along) were allowed to just run around in the the woods and act like little jackasses. We'd do things like play war, wake up bears, throw rocks in the air, it was fantastic. Then one day it all changed.


After realizing that having an additional several pair of small hands helping you pick Huckleberries are better than NOT having several pair of small hands pick huckleberries, my parents were quick to sever the ties to those childish games as quick as possible. No more fun games like 'running into tree as fast as possible', or 'see if this is edible'. Nope, those were all gone. From now on the only fun to be had was seeing how high we could count berries before we passed out from heat exhaustion. My personal favorite was to see how much dust you could consume from the passing vehicles on the dirt roads. I could never quite seem to record my personal best as I always seemed to cough up whatever I inhaled.


I'm not quite sure how many years this went on, seeing as this primarily went on through the summer months and only every few days. And to be fair, my mother did occasionally buy those purple bastard berries from a local fool, but as I pointed out in my previous Fact, child-slave labor is so much more affordable.

So it's a Fact: Free fruit is never truly free.

Child Labor of Love!

One of the many recurring themes that you're going to end up hearing throughout these documented facts of my life is how shit poor I was as a child in the harsh tundra known as Priest Lake, Idaho. My Father worked tirelessly as a Police Officer, my Mother had an endless string of odd jobs as well as ran a day care, and to top it all off my parents both enforced rudimentary child-slave labor on me.

That's right, slave labor. Now I don't mean whiny bitch slave labor, as in "my mom made me do dishes and now I have prune hands" kind of labor, oh no. I mean true blue hard-core slave labor, where it almost qualified to have been sweat shop work. Actually the only thing missing was an hourly wage of five cents. The one thing I have to blame for all of this, aside from my parents and their social standing, is Huckleberries.

For those of you who don't know what the hell a Huckleberry is, it is a berry that grows in the Pacific Northwest region of America, it tastes like a sour blueberry injected with rubbing alcohol, and the mere mention of it gets most tourists absolutely wet with excitement.

My Mother saw the possibility for some capital gain in this cursed fruit, and decided to take a risk by starting a Huckleberry Chocolate business. It would end up staying around for some years and apparently be able to provide for frivolous things for our family like clothes and food.

Do you know how? With my sweat!

That's right, for days on end I was shackled to our kitchen counter, forced to wrap chocolate, after chocolate into purple tin wrappers, slicing my hands to hapless ribbons. Hours of mindless wrapping went by, piles of chocolates mounding up so that they could be put into little wooden boxes to be sold to unsuspecting tourists and afficiondos. But those boxes don't build themselves, do they? After nearly passing out from chocolate fumes it was then time to move on to the next station and create the boxes.

On to the next station I moved, where my delicate little child hands were forced to perform the duties of men. Tiny hands holding tinier nails, pounding constantly to create hideous boxes for disgusting chocolates. And when my hands were trembling with numbness from the hours of hammering it was still not over; the lids had to be made. The evil overlords that were my parents threw shards of wood in my face, along with a hot glue gun, with the only encouraging words being "work". More time passed, and the only way to gauge it was by the amount of blisters I got on my fingertips from the hot glue that poured out of the gun to make the lids for these chocolate coffins.

When that was all through all I could do was pass out on the floor, exhausted from days of work with no rest and the only food to eat being huckleberries, but it was still not over. The only real rest came when one of the two parents strode up and pointed at all of the completed boxes and said "Wrap". From there I had to take cellophane wrapper and an iron and wrap those bastard creations until they were all complete. This is the only point where I got any true rest, I could work half asleep here: ironing plastic in a daze.

After that it's pretty much a haze. I would just wake up in my room all of a sudden, my hands bandaged up, and a bowl of warm water for dinner waiting for me on the floor. There would be a note next to the bowl with a date letting me know how much time had passed while I was working. For years that was how I spent my summer. I really can't complain THAT much though, apparently it's the only way that I got new clothes for the school year, and fresh glue sticks to burn my hands with each week.

I bring these memories up to my parents on a regular basis, always pointing out how horrible it was to spend the vast majority of my summers with my hands covered in slivers and glue blisters. Summers that could have been spent creating happy memories instead, things like dry humping young women on the beach, which probably would have happened so nobody burst my bubble. Instead they always try to say it was never that bad, that I never went through all of those horrible ordeals, and that we had both cold and warm running water. No matter how hard they try they can never deny the child-slave labor that was enforced upon me, since I have my brother and sister to back my story up. My parents forced them to watch me work, yelling at them the whole time telling them that this is what happens when you don't behave. When these facts are forced into their face all they can say is "It paid for your school clothes".

So it's a Fact: Not only was I put through the basics of slavery as a child, but I also paid for my own school clothes.