bennybox

It’s sort of comforting. To be so sure of something in this world where almost nothing is predictable. But when you’re talking about the Toronto Raptors, and failure, it’s easy to expect them to always come short of success.

Today’s home game against the Boston Celtics is a pure example of how far the Raptors have fallen.

Since the days when Wince and friends were considered top contenders in the already weak Eastern Conference have long been forgotten, Toronto fans are thankful for how crappy other conference teams have been, which have somehow still place Toronto in the eighth and final playoff position.

Are there really any Raptor fans left in this city? Don’t let the huge number of Carter jerseys you seen on the streets fool you. You wouldn’t see any around if the jersey wasn’t the wardrobe of choice of rappers.

Back when I considered the raptors a team worth watching, attending games live was actually exciting. And if they scored 100 points or more, a ticket stub is worth a free slice at Pizza Pizza.

Times change, and so do pizza promotions.

In no better sign of the times, they now don’t pressure our multi-million earning players into scoring 100 points. The actually point value changes game to game. Today, against an equally terrible Celtics team, the Raptors needed a mere 84 points to get the 19,200 in attendence at least some pleasure.

These 84 points is actually lower than Toronto’s average for the season, 84.3 points per game. Toronto’s average for the season is actually the worst in the entire NBA. The next basket-challenged team, the Miami Heat can at least average 87.8 points per game.

How sad is that? That the new standard against which we judge the sucess of our local basketball team is score less than the worst team in the NBA’s average? Oh and by the way, the worst team is us!

Where can the Raptors look to for respect now, that they failed to reach this Pizza Promotion milestone by only scoring 82 points against the awful, awful Celtics?

Vera actually thought that we’d be getting free pizza today too. When I was unconvinced that the Raptors could ever do well, she accused me of having no faith. I now can accuse her of having too much.

When you’ve been watching the Raptors, trying to love them, for nearly eight years, you realize that having hope will ultimately just lead you to pure disappointment.

The Toronto Raptors have destroyed my positive outlook on life. I hate you all. My existence is miserable.

It’s Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras. Here are some reasons to celebrate:

- Pancakes! Every year in grade school, we’d take time from the school day to eat pancakes! Yum! Of course, the whole religous meaning of the day was lost upon we, the hungry sugar-high kids.

- TV! Stuff to watch today: American Idol, 24 and Smallville. All new episodes! The best stuff on TV these days.

Uh, I think that’s about it. What can I say? I’m easy to please.

Some webmaster housecleaning i’ve been doing shows that since November 2003, I’ve received 3300 spam emails to my hiyo.org email account… Expect a lot of files to be deleted from the server too.

It’s been a few weeks since the Bush Administration found Saddam and brought him in, in the name of US Justice.

Of course the press wants you to believe that the US went after him for fear of him using weapons of mass destruction. But we all know that the WMD never existed. Only in the past few days has the real truth been realized.

Saddam had been furiously pirating songs over the well-known P2P file-sharing program Kazaa. Under the username saddam_timberlake27, he was illegally sharing several thousand copyrighted songs. However, Saddam was able to his power as the Dictator of Iraq, to allow him and other Iraqis to download with as much bandwidth as they wished, by abolishing that dreadful copyright law. (Can you blame him? Before the iTunes Music Store, I’d have to spend at least 18 bucks to get a legal copy of Kelis’ Milkshake. Actually, 99 cents is probably still pushing it…)

The RIAA was legally unable to do anything about it, but they knew they had to act when Saddam had just gone too far. He had the audacity to create his own bootleg remix of Outkast’s insanely popular, Hey Ya! Andre 3000 and BigBoi were outraged that the Tacky Iraqi was getting more airplay than them and demanded action from George “Dubya” Bush (Jr.).

Now, we all know the Bushes haven’t been on the best of terms with Saddam. Back in the early 90’s, we know that, then President, Bush Sr., and Saddam were on the same Counter-Strike Clan. Among the best clan on the planet! But there’s just something about the game that brings out the Asshat in all of us. During an important match, Saddam thought it would be hilarious if he threw a grenade on Bush as he was defusing the bomb! Hilarity did indeed ensue, but the Bush family has been planning their revenge ever since.

The United Nations attempted to patch things up between the two parties by getting them to play together in the Worms/Scorched Earth Anime Style Hybrid game, Gunbound. But free servers means swarms of cheap skate cocky and annoying Asians who think they’re better than the rest of the universe since they spent their entire week earning money to have a nicer flag and helmet than me. (Just _try_ to be a newbie and play that game without knowing anyone to help you. The flames are unavoidable.) The lack of community in Gunbound will ultimately lead to it’s failure (not to mention it’s free service model), and made the tension between the Bush and Saddam even worse. (You should have been on the map when Saddam kamakaze’ed and launched a double boomer on his teammate Bush which sent him falling off the screen. He would have gotten a high angle bonus too, if it wasn’t his teammate. Truly NS, GG.).

As such, the Bush Administration was more than happy help Outkast and RIAA bag their public enemy number one file-swapper. The US troops stormed into Iraq, but they couldn’t find the illegal songs on a hard drive in the country. (Could US Intelligence be so off?) But alas, Saddam WAS sharing files, and the US finally found him!

How did they do it? They just looked up his IP and got a court-order to his ISP to release his contact info.

So here we are, with Saddam in US custody, his file-sharing and online gaming backstabbing days probably gone for good. It’s truly the end of an era.

Can you imagine however, if Bush and Saddam playing multiplayer games that brought people together? The truly great multiplayer games (Mario Kart: Double Dash, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Halo are among the best) I’ve found can actually make friends of enemies. Friends of people who had never met before. And the only real difference (and subsequently the key to great multiplayer gaming) is getting everyone to play in the same house, not through the anonominity of the internet.

So with hopes of world peace, I’d like to extend an invitation to Dubya, Saddam, N. Korea’s Kim Jong Il, and who ever else would want a peaceful resolution to us killing our neighbours. We’re playing mega-multiplayer Halo on four (oh yeah count’em: the dopeness of the XBOX times four baby) Xboxes, this Saturday at Fred’s house.

Check the headlines on Sunday. We should have world peace by then.

From the otto sho. I have two of these at home. Want to join in a rally race? Duuuurriffffto!
Continue reading ‘A REAL Driving Sim’

Managing my new iPod has been stealing any free hours I would normally have. Arranging playlists, ripping all my music cds, transferring files… it’s all i do now. I have to admit, iTunes with a big hard drive iPod is by far the best way to manage a large music collection. There’s just nothing that compares.

I took a break from it to play some good network X Box today. Halo with a dozen players gets pretty wild.

I’ve also have this pretty interesting mod project I’m working on… if it works I’ll post a little tutorial here.

Everyone should set their VCRs today to tape Conan this week. He’s taping in Toronto (everyone will be talking about it), and he’s even going to be on Much on Demand on Monday for some reason. He’s a funny guy.