Things They Don’t Tell You About Buying Your Own House.

It’s been two weeks since my last blog post, and while I am sorry for the delay, loyal readers, it has been because my wife and I recently bought our own home!  I’m extremely happy and absolutely love our place and am overjoyed at both the fact that we finally own our own home, however, there are a few things I have taken note of that I’d like to share with you all – if you already own your own home, you probably already know them; if you don’t already own your own home, let this be a warning to you all…

1)   You don’t get a test-drive

Most everything you can purchase these days allows some sort of trial-period in which you can use the thing you’re buying and see how well it works for you.  At the very very least you can read reviews of the product/service and see how well it’s worked out for other people.  The beauty of this digital age that we live in is that everybody can share their experiences with something specific – right down to a particular brand and size of screw that you might buy at a hardware store.

Homes, however, are completely different.

You’re allowed to tour the home, inspect the home, envision what you might do to it and picture yourself living there…  But you don’t get to move in for a week or two and see what it’s really like. 

Realtors, being human beings, keep normal human hours of operation so you’ll always go visit your prospective new home during the daylight.  Often, this means you’ll be there when the neighbors aren’t.  This also means you’ll be there during warm/comfortable temperatures.  It also means, however, that you’ll have precisely zero clue how poorly the house is insulated and how cold it gets at night.  You don’t get to hop in the shower and see what’s leaking, or if the shower head sprays water sideways out of the joint where it connects to the pipe.  You don’t get to learn that the thermostat is broken and is always on if the knob is turned to 50 degrees or greater, regardless of the actual temperature. 

When purchasing a house you only get to see it at prime-times and you only get to play with things a little bit, and listing agents do as much as they can to slap a band-aid on whatever’s really wrong so you don’t notice it when you’re taking stock of how the place looks and feels.  Which leads me to my next point…

2)   Listing agents are dicks

Not all of them, I’m sure, but given what we went through with ours, I’m comfortable calling them out on their bullshit.

Starting with the interior of the house – when we toured the place we found that there were these shitty, half-mangled, wooden blinds in every room.  They were undoubtedly Shopko specials and we assumed that they were leftovers from the previous tenant (more on them in a second), but we thought “Hey, at least there ARE blinds in every window, and we can take our time replacing them with what we really want down the road” (more on that in the next section). 

What we didn’t realize, however, was that the listing agent would sneak in after we closed on the house and remove every single one of those blinds and steal them away in the dead of night (undoubtedly) in the three days between us signing the papers and getting the keys.

And speaking of keys, the listing agent apparently decided that while he was going to go through the trouble of removing the blinds, he would NOT, in fact, remove the lock-boxes on the front door and the garage door.  We had to hassle him secondhand through our realtor (who was awesome and incredibly helpful and I will sing her praises thoroughly) until he gave up the numerical code to the padlock on the garage, allowing us to remove that one and get the spare house-key out of it.  The box on the front door, though?  That remained firmly fixed in place for an additional ten days. 

Going back to the garage for a second – when we moved in I attempted to open the garage door only to hear a sickening grinding noise and watch as the door didn’t actually open at all when I hit the button.  I immediately stopped it and went to investigate and found that there was an additional combination-padlock hooked into the garage-door track INSIDE the garage itself, rendering the door useless.  I told our realtor (may her gods bless her and her family) to tell the listing agent that if it wasn’t removed within 48 hours that we would cut it off and his response was “I don’t know about that one, it’s not mine.  Must have been left by previous tenants – go ahead and cut it off, I don’t care.”

Not exactly the answer we were hoping for.

Our realtor’s husband (may he be as blessed as she) was kind enough to actually drive out to our house (a week after we closed, mind you) and use his personal tools to cut the padlock off of the garage door.  I asked him if he could take care of the heavy blue box on the front door as well and he was understandably hesitant to do so.  I can’t hold it against him, I’m sure that those professional real-estate key-boxes are expensive, but considering it took several more days before the listing agent came by and removed it (at night, mind you – luckily we were not at home or I would have given him shit about it), part of me still wishes we had just chopped the godsdamned thing off and been done with it.

Ultimately we ended up with a pile of papers, signs, check-in lists, and the exterior garage key-box on our doorstep/porch and just left it all out there for him to collect because apparently, while it was crucial for him to reclaim his shitty blinds, he can’t be bothered to take away his advertising, signage, pamphlets, brochures, or provide us with the actual keys to our own house (or ensure that we can, y’know, open our garage door).

Which leads me to my next point…

3)   You WILL have to replace and repair things

Bill Gates has more money than god (whichever one you like – he’s got more than all of them, probably combined) and I can tell you right now, wholeheartedly, that when he had his multi-million-dollar digital-dreamworld mansion built in the hills of Redmond, within two weeks he had to call in repairmen to replace things, fix things, or he took the daring route and tried to do it himself (more on that later).

This isn’t to say that all homes are shams and that nothing is ever as good as it seems; but no matter how much you spend or what kind of home you buy or have built for you, something is already wrong with it.  Gremlins exist, of this I am now 100% certain, and once you have your keys in hand and the realtor, bank, and listing agents have all fled the scene of the crime the gremlins get to work their magic.  Wanna pull the doors off the cabinets and replace the knobs?  I promise you now that you WILL strip at least one screw/thread to the point of utter destruction (and madness).  Are you excited to try out that shower with two heads?  Surprise!  One of them doesn’t work and the other one only works when turned to the “pee on your head” setting.

It’s different for every house, I’m sure, but don’t ever count on simply moving your stuff in, putting it away, and moving on with your life (more on that later, too).

The happy flipside to this, though, is that some things will work better than you expected and you’ll find yourself pleasantly surprised at random intervals as you adjust to your new life in your new home.  They are happy accidents that remind you as to why you bought your home in the first place; cherish them and treasure them.  Take pictures, even, so when things get bad again or something else breaks or falls down you can remind yourself of the better things in the house and the bliss and happiness that comes from the self-satisfaction of owning your own home.

4)   You don’t have enough money

I mentioned Bill Gates a moment ago, and I’ll bring him up again to point out that no matter how much money you’ve sunk into the house, or even how much you’ve budgeted and set aside to sink into your new house, it’s just not enough.  Again, I’m fairly certain that within a couple of weeks of moving into his magic-kingdom-mansion, Bill himself was looking around and asking himself “Damn, do we have enough money to fix that?”

I had a co-worker once when I was selling cars (I call that period “The Dark Time”) who told me that whenever he buys a car he always makes sure that he has an extra $500 in the bank to replace the tires, brakes, get it tuned-up, oil changed, and to take care of anything else that will inevitably be wrong with it.

I cannot recommend strongly enough that you have a reserve built-up as well for when you buy a house.

And however much you’ve set aside?  Double it.  It still won’t be enough, but it will be more.

When my wife and I bought our house we had a decent down payment, we did our finances and figured out that we could afford it, and then we realized we had some extra money left over – surely enough to make the handful of “right-away” improvements we wanted to make to the place to really cement it, once and for all, as “ours.”

We’re now out of money and haven’t fully completed a single room.

Granted, we have a couple of rooms that are now pretty damn close, but it’s going to be probably another year before we’ll be 100% satisfied with it, and then we get to start saving up money to re-do the kitchen (after which we aim to renovate/rebuild the bathrooms and possibly our back yard… We’ll have to wait and see where we’re at when that time comes).

Now this may sound very doom-and-gloom-y but I don’t mean it to be.  Quite frankly, I love my house and at least once a day I look at something and say to myself “Damn, I can’t believe this is MY place and it’s awesome.”  Just know that it’s going to happen, and that it’s cool because hey, you own this house now – it’s yours.  Unless you’re one of those psychotic house-flippers and you’re looking to earn a living by being a nomad and constantly moving from home-to-home to rebuild and resell, you’re going to be in this house for many many years.  You really do have the time to get everything done, so relax.  Don’t stress out, don’t worry about it, and just enjoy your new home.  And while you’re enjoying your new home, just remember…

5)   You don’t know nearly as much about home improvement/construction/renovations as you think you do

I worked in the shop for my theatre in college for a couple of years, and I’ve also built a number of sets and done a moderate amount of construction over the years helping other friends with their homes, projects, arts and crafts…  I know how powertools work and I’ve used just about all of them (often successfully!).

So when we moved in and made our checklist of little projects and minor improvements, I felt very confident that I could do it all myself without destroying the house itself.

I was wrong.

(but not on that grand a scale – relax.  The house is still in great shape…  We just have an extra hole or two here and there that I’ll need to patch up and repaint later)

There’s a huge difference between lending a hand to someone, and being the person needing a hand lent.  It’s one thing to say “Sure, I’ll help you take all the cabinet doors down in the kitchen, repaint, and re-mount them!” and something quite different to say “I’M going to take all the cabinet doors down in the kitchen, repaint, and re-mount them.”  One of those scenarios involves you going home at the end of the day and going to sleep.  The other one involves you living without cabinet doors for a week and afraid to fall asleep at night amidst the paint fumes for fear of not waking up in the morning. 

When it’s your home that you bought and you live in – the latter situation is your new daily life.

Now I’ll admit that we are at a bit of a disadvantage here as we haven’t yet built up relationships with our friends to the point where we can just make a handful of phone calls and have a whole team of people here willing to work for pizza and beer.  We’re daring adventurers who moved here, far away from friends and family, to build new lives for ourselves (we make Oregon Trail jokes almost non-stop).  We accept that, and I have seen the other side of the coin back in Walla Walla when friends would move across town or into a new apartment or house and simply call “the gang” and they’d have a Money Pit-style crew of ragtag roughnecks at their beck and call to help out with moving and repairs.  But ultimately, even those people go home and sleep while you’re surrounded by piles of boxes and detritus and asking yourself “Really?  ALL of this shit is MINE!?  Where the hells am I supposed to put all of this!?”

And on that note, you should also know…

6)   You have more too-damn-much stuff

Ruth and I have spent much of the past year trying to “audit” ourselves in preparation for moving and buying our own place.  We’ve made several donations to Goodwill of either clothes that don’t fit or that we don’t wear anymore or even old electronics that we’ve upgraded away from.  The details are unimportant, just know that we’ve easily removed about one-quarter of our worldly possessions from our lives in order to make moving the other 3/4^ths that much easier, and that much easier to organize and put away once we arrived.

It’s been two weeks since we got the keys and we still have a room that is almost nothing but boxes.

And I don’t even want to think about our garage.

Now I can’t entirely fault this topic upon us and our hoarding tendencies – it’s actually very closely tied to #4 above in that we made plans to get bookshelves and storage solutions and make frequent visits to Ikea and The Container Store…  But each visit cost more money than we anticipated, and before we got to the “Nice to have” stuff we had eaten up all of our savings on “Need to have” and “Need to replace” stuff.

In this particular instance I’m actually glad we live so far away from everybody that we know because I fear that we would have been graciously gifted with tons of stuff “for the new house” that we would have then had to either move or put away, and I’m still spending several hours a day simply trying to deal with the stuff we already have.

On the flip side, however, this kind of thing has come at quite an opportune time for us, being so close to Christmas, because in going through all of these boxes we’re finding things that we’d forgotten we owned and having fun re-discovering some really great items.  When we moved out here initially we didn’t plan on living in Salem for very long, so we never bothered unpacking most of our things – we just stored them.  We lived a pretty Spartan lifestyle, I’d say, and we didn’t even have any real decorations in our apartment because we didn’t want to be bothered with taking it all down, packing it up, and moving it again.  Since moving everything in it’s been a ton of fun, actually, to open a box and go “Holy shit!  This is awesome!  I can’t believe I have one of these!” and then try to find a place for it.  Which brings me to my final point…

7)   It’s all totally worth it

I hate moving.  I once sat down and did the math and I came to the realization that I had moved something like seventeen times by the time I graduated college.  If I include moving to college and the various changes in dorms/apartments there the number goes up to 22. 

22 moves in 22 years of life.

I had uprooted my life and changed residences once a year (on average) my entire life.

Factoring in my life above and beyond college, I have moved 29 times in the 35 years I’ve been alive – meaning I’ve moved, on average, once every 1.2 years my entire life.

I

AM

DONE.

With this in mind, I hope you’ll all forgive me the fact that when it came time to actually pack up our apartment and get it here to Tualatin I was not in the best of moods.  I don’t smoke anymore, so that avenue of sweet sweet release was no longer available to me, I just had to tuck my head and barrel forward.  My wife is a saint for putting up with me that day and I cannot ever thank her enough for marrying me and going through all this shit WITH me, but for a little while there, while we were moving, the joy of owning our own home was briefly overshadowed by the hell of having to move into it.

Of course, once we were in and I’d eaten something and had gotten the chance to sit for a few minutes and collect myself it was all back to normal and I was happy again, but the thought was there, if ever so briefly, and it was crushing.

Now, however, I wake up every morning now in a bedroom that’s painted a color we want it to be (not just the default-white that comes with renting) and I turn on a lamp that I picked out and installed myself (without destroying anything in the process) and I look around at our artistic design choices of decorations on the walls (that we were able to hang exactly where we wanted without fear of repercussion from an overbearing landlord bitching about us putting holes in the walls).  I eat breakfast in a kitchen that I painted myself (and is still missing one cabinet door because I still have to replace the hinge I destroyed, but I’m cool with it) and watch TV in a living room that I also painted myself and has the light fixtures we want, where we want them (that I also installed, thank you very much), next to our Christmas tree that we decorated IN OUR OWN HOME.

I do all of this and I smile because it’s all there, it’s all ours, and soon enough it will all be perfect.  It’s already a home that I’m actually looking forward to spending the next 10 to 20 years in (if not longer), and it’s only going to get better as we add even more personal touches that make it truly a home.

And I love every bit of it.

Look to the Nerds – the Nerds Will Save Us…

We live in an increasingly morally-gray time...

It’s no big news flash to anybody, I’m sure, and as we surge forward as a race of people upon this planet we’re discovering more and more that the more detailed something becomes, the more definite we define something, the harder it is to declare anything as entirely anything.

Some people point to Dr. Alfred Kinsey as a principal source for this dilution of absolutes when he created his “Kinsey Scale of Sexuality” that posited that nobody is 100% straight or 100% gay and instead we all have some sort of mix of sexuality.  Whether or not this is actually true is irrelevant (read: I don’t actually care), but the dissolution of absolutes is a certainty.  

This is especially prevalent in politics here in the US, where we have precisely ZERO politicians who we believe are wholly good people.  The popular saying is that we are always forced to choose between the lesser of two evils and the majority of Americans have pretty much resigned themselves to their fate of being lead by people that they don’t really believe in or like, but merely those whom they dislike the least.

            Yes, this is a very real problem.

            Yes, it can be solved.

            No, it will not be easy.

            But it will be a hell of a lot of fun - to watch and to be a part of.

            The solution, in a single word:  Nerds.

            Yes.  Nerds.  The Nerds will save us.  And they’ll be spectacularly awesome in doing so.

So lets start with the very concept that begins this piece, the concept of right and wrong and absolutes.  I put it to you, dear reader, to name me anybody who knows more about right and wrong than nerds.  The people who immerse themselves daily in morality tales – whether they’re movies, comics, novels, fan-fiction, role-playing games, or video games.  These are people who have collectively saved the multiverse an infinite number of times and continue to do so, daily.  

You may laugh, and you wouldn’t be the first, but consider this:  Who would you trust to do the right thing the most often; someone who reads newspapers?  Or someone who reads Superman comics?  You’re looking at a choice between someone who lives their lives at the whim of the media and has no hard-and-fast defined moral compass and someone who worships the personification of truth and justice.  Don’t get me wrong – I’d hire newspaper guy to do my taxes and help me buy a house, but when it comes to who do I want backing me up in a fight or lending a hand in times of trouble, an kindly ear to listen to my troubles, or a shoulder to cry on – give me a Superman any day of the week.

As Terry Pratchett said in Men at Arms:

            “If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you're going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat.

            They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar.

            So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.”

The quote has always spoken to me about certainty, and it comes to mind more and more these days as we, as a race of people, are less certain of anything.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a firm believer in compromise – extremes and extremists are best viewed as cautionary examples of how horribly too-far something can be taken – but the idea, the concept of a good man knowing the difference between right and wrong and acting accordingly is an important thing to note.

And who knows right and wrong better than nerds?

But beyond the mythology and religion of nerds let’s take a second to really think about what nerds go through and survive throughout their lives...

They’re persecuted for their fandom.  

They’re made fun of by “cool” people constantly.

They’re ostracized and outcast – by their peers, their families, and society at large.

They’re misunderstood by anybody outside of their particular geekdom, and yet ANYBODY who comes to them wanting to know more is INSTANTLY welcomed.  (it’s true – if you ever want to feel like a welcome, accepted, and appreciated member of something just ask a nerd to tell you why they love what they love and you’ll become their best friend immediately).

Nerds know what it’s like to be outsiders, so they’re all-inclusive and they welcome new friends and members to their ranks.

Nerds know what it’s like to be judged, so they don’t judge others based on where their fandom or loyalties lie.  (sure, they’ll bicker amongst themselves, but no more so than any family does – and while they may disagree with each other, woe to the outsider who dares to speak against one of their own)

And, very importantly, nerds know what it’s like to share.  Hobbies and obsessions are expensive and nerds are well aware of this, which is why they’re typically all too willing to let fellow nerds use their gear/equipment/books/dice/action figures.  Hell, in The Nerd League (my cadre of friends – my second family – my brothers-in-dice), a group of about a dozen guys who have played D&D for most of our lives, we have, I think, two copies of the player’s handbook.  Mind you, this is the ONE book that is absolutely essential to play, and every time we decide to play D&D we pass it around the like the town bicycle.  The same thing goes for dice – we have, collectively, roughly 1,000 dice between the 13 of us and without fail SOMEONE forgets theirs every time we play.  Why?  Because we damn well know that there are enough to go around and we’re willing to share.

I’m getting off-track here, sorry.  Ultimately, nerds go through hell for most of their lives for simply being who they are and loving what they love and it never stops them.  Where else are you going to find that kind of strength of character?  That steadfastness?

So if you want to see change in society; if you want to see justice done, people treated fairly, everybody included and welcomed – look to nerds as your leaders.

I gave up on caring about presidential debates long ago, but I would pay hard cash to watch two presidential candidates duke it out on Starcraft.

I would commit voter fraud just so I could cast multiple votes for a candidate who can explain to me how T.H.A.C.0 works.

I guarantee you right now – you elect a nerd and you’ll see real change real fast to the greatest benefit of the most people for the greatest good.

After all, it was Spock himself who said “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…  Or the one.”   

And who knows (and lives) Star Trek quotes better than a nerd?

Playing for the Sake of Playing

NERD ALERT -- fair warning, I'm gonna get geeky in here and talk about some nerdy-ass shit like comic books and figurines and miniatures.  If you have any questions about anything talked about in here feel free to email me and I'll do my best to explain it to you.

I play Heroclix.

There, I said it.

I used to play, when the sets first came out, and then I stopped and sold 90% of my collection because the early figures were vastly unbalanced and the rules were still being re-worked and re-tooled...  I was also dealing with some rather painful personal issues; a lot of anger, a bit of self-loathing and low self-esteem coupled with my completionist attitude and desire to own all the figures lead to me spending too much money and too much time on something that ultimately enraged me and alienated me from some friends, so I quit.  Gave up playing completely and only held onto a few choice figures (my Batman and Superman figures because come on, it's freakin' Batman and Superman - they're just too cool to get rid of).

Then I found myself in my local comics shop and they asked me to play in their weekly tournaments after I'd bought a few single figures to help fill out my Batman and Superman collection.  I had no intention of playing, the wound was still sore and I was afraid to find myself getting too involved again and not enjoying it.  I came up with countless excuses to avoid playing, ultimately hoping that telling them that I didn't have the time in my schedule to play would get me off the hook.

And then they changed the time and day of their tournaments so that I could play.

Dammit.  Out of excuses.

So I wandered in one Saturday after teaching a karate class, paid my entry fee, got my booster packs (each with five random figures), built my team, and played.

And it was fun again.

The guys were cool - friends instantly - and while there were winners and losers for certain, everybody just kicked around and had fun with it.  There was no hyper-competitiveness (well, there was a little, but not enough to turn me off), nobody's feelings got hurt (that I could tell), and we were all just like-minded nerds hanging out in our little clubhouse of a comic shop making obscure pop-culture references and jokes and enjoying a Saturday afternoon.

So I kept playing.

I never did very well, but within a couple of weeks I was regularly placing in the middle of the pack.  Never winning, but I came in second once and the shop owner was awesome enough to kick in a few random booster packs for people to pick from so that everybody at least got to take home something.

A tournament started up soon after I started playing again, promoting the newest set of figures that had come out based on a Marvel Comics storyline that was published last year called Fear Itself.  The figures were wickedly cool, extremely detailed, and I really enjoyed the sealed tournaments (where you buy packs at the store and build your team based on the random assortment you got) because it kept things even.  Some of the more hardcore players, of course, had hundreds of figures and, given the chance, could construct some practically unbeatable teams, so the sealed events were my game of choice.

And then something strange happened last week...

I won.

The grand prize.

The ultimate, final game of the entire tournament, netting me this gorgeous figure as my prize:

I was overcome with pride and joy at actually winning, for once, as well as the incredible prize, but what really struck me the most was the reaction of the other guys.  Everybody was really happy for me; there were lots of handshakes and shoulder-pats and really kind words all around and it really got to me, making me feel really good about just playing.

Which brings me to my point.

There are a lot of people I know who insist on playing to win.  For them, the game isn't the thing, winning is.  It's only fun for them if they win.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, I think robs people of a lot of enjoyment of the fun of just playing.

Remember when you were a kid and you'd just go outside and play?  Not sports, not competitions, just whatever your imagination came up with.  There were no winners or losers, there was nothing to win or lose at.  It was just playing for the sake of playing, and it was fun.  Everybody had a good time and everybody went home happy.

It seems to me that this unfettered play is driven out of us as we grow older.  Playing "nothing," is replaced by playing sports or specific games and instead of being about just having a wild, grand old time, it becomes about winning.

Now before anybody gets all uppity and starts beating their chest and accusing me of being one of those bleeding-heart hippie liberals who things everybody deserves a trophy, just stop.  I'm not saying that.  I think we should reward winners and that everybody is not equal and that we need to take the lessons learned from failure and use them to encourage us to do better and improve ourselves.

But I don't think we need to sacrifice one type of play for the other.

Personally I like to play Roleplaying Games - like Dungeons and Dragons, RIFTS, and the like.  The great thing about those games is that it's not about winning or losing at all, it's about telling a story, and winning at an RPG means you told an awesome story that everybody enjoyed and had fun playing/telling.  It's the opposite of competition, really, as nobody wins unless everybody wins, and the prize itself is the enjoyment of the game that everybody shared with each other.

There need to be more games like that.  Or better yet, people need to play that way more often so that we get back to enjoying the simple act of playing again.

Play time is fun time, after all, and having fun is always a win.

So I challenge you, dear readers, to try it sometime.  Find a game, an activity, something with other people around you to play with and don't keep score.  Don't worry about who's winning or losing.  Ignore the rules you don't like or, better yet, make up your own.  I'll even make it easy on you -- click here and drop the $25 to get a game that guarantees so much fun for everybody who plays that I promise you won't give half a shit about winning or losing and you'll never want to stop playing.

From there I'm sure you'll find more games and have more fun all around.

Enjoy!

(and please, I invite everybody to email me or post in the comments some of your more awesome moments from playing this game - it'll only inspire others to play and try to make their own awesome combinations and we'll keep the cycle of everybody winning going on for pretty much ever)

The Benefits of Working in the Retail/Service Industry

I recently wrote an article to submit to Cracked.com and I'm having some trouble getting it published by them because it has no factual basis and isn't supported by any actual scientific studies.

I get that - I understand, and I'm not debating that with them because while there are several studies that show exactly how retail store layouts actively brainwash consumers from the second they walk through the door, there are no (or, at least, I have yet to find them) studies that scientifically show exactly how working in retail will make you a better person.  Apparently academia just doesn't give a shit about the actual people who do the job or what they gain from doing the job, science just wants to continue telling us all that major corporations are major douchebags and we're all doomed.

So, in my own little personal effort to combat negativity with humor and insight, here is the article:

6 Reasons Why Everybody Should Have to Work Retail at Some Point in Their Lives

(I know, I know, it's a long title -- shut up and read)

            Rather than spending money on self-improvement, did you know that there is a program out there right now that will improve nearly every aspect of your life and make you a better person…  that actually pays you?

            Granted, it’s minimum wage (plus spiffs/tips/commission), you'll be sexually harassed and verbally abused daily, you'll have no social life, and any romantic relationship will be strained at best, but by surviving and thriving through the hell-on-Earth that is the retail or service industry you’ll be a better person in nearly every aspect of your life.

            For example, did you know that by working retail…

6.     You’ll handle stress better.

            Retail is incredibly demanding.  You have to provide quality service to your customers, of course, but on top of that you have to receive, check-in, and put away freight; price or re-price large sections of the store; set up new displays and tear down old displays – and while you’re doing all of this you have to hit your sales goals for base-product and add-ons and service plans and in most places you have goals for convincing customers to sign up for a store credit card.

            Forget to do any one of these things and your job is in jeopardy.

            And rather than working in a state of perpetual fear, you have to plaster a friendly smile on your face and greet each customer like they’re your new favorite person in the world because a shitty attitude kills sales.

            In order to be successful (and stay sane) you develop a sense of perspective – you find yourself asking “If I don’t get these two feet of space priced properly, is anybody going to die?  Are they going to close the store?  Are they going to unleash the dickwolves upon me?  Am I really going to have to deal with anything other than a harsh talking-to from some jackass in a clip-on tie?”

            The answer to all of these questions, of course, is “no.” 

            And once you learn that the results aren’t all that dire, you relax and get to work (because it is your job, after all, and if you just fucked it off you would be fired).  And when customers come in you’re able to put down what you’re doing and help them, politely, with a friendly attitude, offer them everything under the sun, and when they’re out the door again you can get back to work until someone else interrupts you with a request for help.

            And those constant interruptions?  Those just mean…

           

5.     You’ll learn patience

            We all know someone who goes to bars and clubs and propositions pretty much everybody in the room, regardless of how many rejections they get.

            And when you ask them why they’re such outrageous douchebags, they always say the same thing:  “If only one in a hundred chicks will sleep with me, how am I ever going to find her if I don't ask a hundred chicks?”

            Chances are they learned that technique through working retail.

            While hooking up with customers for one-night-stands is fun, I'm actually talking about that "Keep trying until you succeed" attitude.  The one that prompts store managers to hang up posters of Michael Jordan saying "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" and repeatedly tell you that Babe Ruth struck out 60% of the time in between sessions of furrowing their brow and asking you bullshit questions like “Why didn’t you offer that person the service plan?  Why didn’t they buy two packs of batteries with their purchase?  Why didn’t they want to save money by signing up for a store credit card?”

            To get your manager to shut the hell up you take to offering everything to every customer…  And getting turned down upwards of fifty or sixty times in a row.

            But sometimes, someone comes in with the perfect attitude and money to burn that makes them the perfect customer. 

            This is the person you have been waiting for.

            If you’d given up out of frustration from rejection, you’d never have hit up this person who, amazingly, actually does want a store credit card and does have a bedside drawer full of "appliances" or "massagers" that need batteries and really could use that service plan because they stripped the gears on their last three "massagers" (or dropped them in the shower).

            Once you have a few tastes of success at work by sticking to it even after you’ve been maced, slapped, kicked in the junk, and rejected hundreds of times, you’ll carry that same perseverance and patience into your real life.

            It’s a the difference between fear of failure and fear of success; if the consequences of failure are negligible, why wouldn’t you take the chance?  At worst nothing happens, and at best you succeed.

            And of course, you’ll only succeed more when…

4.     You learn to communicate better

            Working in retail/service exposes you to the widest cross-section of humanity possible.  You’ll enjoy the company and patronage of both the smartest people on the planet (because even doctors and astrophysicists need to buy toilet paper) and the dumbest people imaginable (the ones who actually eat toilet paper).

            And you need to be able to communicate with every single one of them them, along with everybody in between, effectively and successfully.

            Working in retail teaches you the invaluable skill of being able to look at a person, and within five seconds of them opening their mouth you’re able to mimic their speech patterns, cadence, tone, and vocabulary in order to make a personal connection with them and convince them to buy stuff from you.

            Outside of work you’ll find yourself doing the same thing in your personal interactions with friends and family, and you’ll forge stronger connections with them because they suddenly think you really get them.  You listen better, and more, which helps you translate the half-truths people tell each other every day and you’ll find yourself not just talking, but actually communicating more truly and more deeply than before.

            You’ll make friends faster and more easily because that’s your job, and taking it outside of the store just makes the rest of your life easier.

            And when communication fails and everything goes to hell, you’ll still handle it well because in working retail…

3.     You’ll learn self-control

            If a child wandered into your house and pooped on your home entertainment system, you’d be perfectly within your rights to drop-kick them straight through your bay window.

            But in retail you get to watch the little-abortion-that-wasn’t ruin hundreds of dollars of merchandise and do nothing.

            Then you get to go clean it up for them.

            Outside of a retail/service environment this behavior would be considered ludicrous, but at work it’s par for the course.  You don’t get to do so much as throw a nasty look at people who literally come into your place of business and try to start a fight with you because they’re upset and want someone, anyone, to take it out on.

            Success in retail largely depends on your ability to remain patient and in control as you watch someone break something, then ask for a discount because it’s broken. 

            Finding proper, constructive outlets for your pent-up rage and frustration serves your everyday life in obvious ways; you’ll live longer and healthier by having reasonable responses stored up in your system for when something pushes you towards the edge of stabbing someone in the eye with a spork.  Where other people would break and go on a seven-state-killing-spree, you will simply take a deep breath, maybe have a 10 minute break to go smoke or watch cat videos and let the anger subside so you can get back to work.

            This level of self-control also means…

2.     You’ll be cleaner and more organized

             Working retail is a paradox – you have to keep everything neat, tidy and put away; lined up and priced properly at all times (this is called "fronting" and is named such because you have to literally pull merchandise to the front of the display); and customers are constantly digging through your clean and organized piles of merchandise hoping to find one with an incorrect price tag or a scuff mark on the packaging so they can rip you off.  Once they leave the store you get to work cleaning and organizing again, only to have the very next customer come in and let their hellspawn children pee on the home theatre display (I have actually seen this happen). 
             You don’t get to close down the store just to clean up, so you learn quick and easy ways to straighten up one little bit at a time so that over the course of the day you end up with a store that’s relatively as clean and neat and tidy as it was when you opened. 
               After doing it at work for long enough, you'll start doing it at home as well.
               Don’t like cleaning the bathroom?  Don’t.  Just take a minute between rounds of Call of Duty to go clean the toilet.  After a few more rounds, go run a magic-eraser sponge over the sink and counter.  When you rage-quit for the third time because some cocksucker is using a lag switch and you swear to gods that he’s following you from room to room just so he can stab you in the back and laugh at your corpse…take five minutes to regain your sanity and go wash the tub. 
               Any one of those activities takes maybe two to three minutes each to accomplish, but doing them all at once is a pain in the ass.  Doing them one at a time is so easy it hardly counts as “work,” and when you space it out like that it’s not a chore at all.  Soon you’ll find yourself handling all of your housework this way, taking care of all your chores just a little bit at a time and finding that you actually get far more done this way.

1.      You’ll be a better customer

            Like walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, you gain a whole new respect for the people on the other side of the counter (or on the other end of the phone) once you’ve been that person.

            Once you’ve had someone bitch at you about putting onions on their burger when they specifically said NO ONIONS, you find yourself that much more willing to forgive the waitress (and cook) who make a mistake with your order.

            After having a complete stranger call and yell at you because their kid downloaded a terabyte of porn then DEMAND you take the charge off of their cell-phone bill, you’re more willing to be patient with the customer service operator while they look up your account and figure out whether or  they’re allowed to credit your account when you have an issue.

            Nobody knows who started the bullshit rumor that you have to be an asshole to get what you want, but anybody who works retail will tell you in no uncertain terms that the worse you behave as a customer, the worse service you’re going to receive.  But if you’re nice?  If you’re polite and treat the employees with respect and courtesy?  You’ll get everything you want, and more, because they’ll be that much more willing to work with you.

            It’s like those scenes in movies when some big-spending, high-rolling regular customer walks into a store or restaurant and gets the red-carpet treatment.  It starts with the customer – if you're good to the employees, they’ll bend over backwards to give you anything and everything they can get away with.

            And who doesn’t want to be that guy?

Reviews From a Guy Who Likes Everything

So I'm back after a long long hiatus (not that anybody was reading this anyway) to say I'm back and will be writing regularly from now on (or Becky will beat me senseless) and to introduce a new feature:  Reviews From a Guy Who Likes Everything.

This week's review:  Batman - Arkham Origins for Xbox 360.

So to begin with, I just gotta get it outta the way and say Holy shit you're Batman!  Like seriously, BATMAN.  Grapple-gunning across rooftops and crippling thugs from the shadows and solving crimes and murder mysteries!  BAT-FUCKING-MAN!!

Whew.  Okay.  I'm good now.

So for those of you who don't play video games or know what video games are or live in a cave (or are Amish -- in which case, why are you reading this?); Batman - Arkham Origins is the third in the series from WB Games.  Arkham Asylum came first, followed by a hugely popular and successful Arkham City; in which some irreversible stuff happened that forced the developers to go backwards and create a third game that's a prequel to the other two. 

Short version:  The third game is a prequel to the other two.

If you've never played the other two games you'll be in great shape as the game acts as an introduction to the entire Batman universe.  It introduces the villains who are central to the other two games and has some really nice character development throughout - specifically the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Alfred, his ever-faithful butler, and the story of The Joker - arguably the most recognizable, iconic villain in the history of fiction.

If you have played the other two games, you'll be giggling with excitement as you zipline around Old Gotham while it's still a thriving, live city, and seeing the iconic landmarks from Arkham City before everything went to hell and it was turned into a prison (a-la Escape From New York). 

Short version:  Whether or not you've played the other two games, this one is cool and fun.

The Awesome:
The graphics and animation just get better and better with each iteration of the franchise, and this one is easily the best yet.  Realistic battle-damage appears on your costume and armor as you progress through the game (something they've done in all three games now), and the costume itself actually looks like something you'd find a real-life vigilante wearing.  A combination of armor and padding that's been put together and decorated into a uniform style with a dedicated theme -- not very different from the armored SWAT guys you'll be fighting throughout the game (early Gotham City cops were largely crooked, so you don't feel bad knocking their teeth out), but with a cowl and cape instead of a helmet.

The fighting (when it works - more on that later) flows very naturally and the animation is absolutely GORGEOUS.  As someone who practices and studies martial arts myself, I can say that a good chunk of the fight animation is impressively realistic (which is extremely rare in video games) and it also captures the spirit of Batman incredibly well.  Bones are shattered, jaws are dislocated, joints are popped out and twisted, and general maiming all around make it fun to kick the ever-loving shit out of baddies from start to finish.

Outside of fighting, the controls are the exact same as in the previous two games and there are plenty of in-game tutorials and hints so even if you've never played the series at all, you'll be flinging Batarangs and grapple-gunning rather effortlessly in no time.

What's most impressive to me so far is the sheer SIZE of the game.  I've put in at good, solid 15 hours of gameplay already and I'm only 30% complete.  Granted, the completion percentage takes into account all of the side missions and hidden treasures, but still - 15 hours to get 1/3rd of the way through bodes VERY well for playability.  The side-quests are challenging, but not frustratingly so, and the primary storyline has some very nice twists and turns that surprised even me, and I consider myself a pretty die-hard Batman fan and nerd - so surprising me with a story element is hard to do.

Also, while I'm talking about the story, I want to mention the cinematics.  ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS.  Seriously, whoever worked on the cinematics needs to make feature-length films or something because the animation is mind-blowingly beautiful.  I can't mention specific ones without spoiling the storylines, but trust me - they're all worth reaching and seeing and you'll wish you could watch them more (which I suppose you can by hitting up YouTube, but it's just not the same).

All in all, I'm looking forward to finishing out the myriad storylines and seeing it all come to fruition and getting to the end-game cinematic...  Then loading it back up and playing through challenges and just dicking around the city in different costumes or as different characters. 

Short version:  It's fucking Batman and it's fucking RAD.

The Not-So-Awesome:
As my wife will no doubt attest to (after hearing me rage at the screen), the controls mid-fight are...  Well, they vary.  Sometimes they're great and everything works perfectly.  Sometimes it feels like someone re-wired your controller so that every button corresponds to something else.  Your quickfire gadgets are iffy and require incredibly precise controls to use properly with any kind of consistency and, as such, I find myself somehow using the wrong gadgets or the right gadgets at the wrong time in almost every big brawl I get into. 

Then there's the boss fights....

So on the one hand, I gotta hand it to the producers for what I call the "throwback" system where they drop you in a room with the boss and they tell you precisely FUCK ALL on how to beat the guy.  It's like the old NES days when you'd get into a boss fight and die, repeatedly, hundreds of times before you figure out that you have to dick-punch the boss when he's facing North and the traffic signals outside the window all have green lights.

That's not as big an exaggeration as you might think.

So while I admit that I spent more time than I probably should have yelling at the screen and calling Deathstroke a cocksucker, ultimately I applaud the developers for having the balls to actually make the players WORK for their godsdamned rewards.

That being said, I must also point out that the difficulty level of the average thugs jumps up exponentially at about 20% completion.  One minute you have guys with baseball bats and knives, maybe one or two guys in armor, and you're fighting groups of five or six at a time, tops; then you finish a story element mission and when you get back on the streets the rooftops are lined with snipers and 65% of the random thugs on the street have guns while the other 35% are either armored or carrying riot shields, and you're fighting 10 to 15 of them at a time.  Within the span of an hour of gameplay I went from playing Batman as "I'm your worst nightmare" to Batman as "Um, maybe I'll just sit this one out and let them rob that hobo after all..."

The difficulty level of the game itself also causes concern when you consider that the whole "mystery solving" aspect of the game consists of you panning around the area until you see a big red arrow pointing at what you need to look at, then looking at it, then finding the next big red arrow pointing at the next clue.  It's a strange dichotomy to try and work into a game - on the one hand, you have Batman: The World's Greatest Detective.  On the other hand you have the players: people who may or may not think that putting their cat in the microwave is a good way to dry him off after a bath.  So you can't make the puzzles and mysteries too hard to solve or they'd never get it...  But just giving up the goods?  I'm not cool with that either.  Sure, I've sexed some easy/loose women in the past, but they weren't the ones I kept around or introduced to my friends or family.  Bottom line - if you want to make that part of the game worth playing or even worth talking about, make us earn it.

There was also one bit of contention with the characterization of Batman and his relationship with Alfred...  In the comics it is sometimes touched upon, especially in the "early days" stories, where Alfred has to stand up to Bruce and try to reign him in, lest he work himself to death as Batman.  Now in the comics it usually goes:  Bruce pushes himself too hard, but refuses to quit; Alfred tells him to knock it the fuck off; Bruce bitches about how he can't; Alfred brings up Bruce's parents and his promise to take care of little baby Bruce; Bruce backs off and realizes that Alfred is the only parent and family he has, and he really does have his best interests in mind.

In the game, however, there was a scene that didn't quite play out that way and it didn't sit right with me.  Ultimately Bruce (in not so many words) told Alfred to fuck off and went back out on the streets again to kick the shit outta more bad guys.  Not a grievous error, and certainly each iteration of Batman is open to the interpretation of the writers for that project, but this one wasn't right to me.

Short version:  Fights get really hard really fast and the controls can suck ass sometimes.

The Final Verdict:
Without inheriting billions of dollars after watching your parents get murdered and then spending two decades mastering every martial art and science known to man, there is no better way to become Batman than by playing these games. 

(Say...  Is anybody keeping an eye on Bill Gates' children?  'Cause they're halfway there already with their parentage...)

If you're a fan of Batman you simply must play them - they really are that good.  Everything you know and love about Batman is there and it's cranked up to 11.  It is incredibly exciting to play and live the experience and it is pants-shittingly terrifying at times as well (after all, Batman does have mind-bending bad guys to contend with who will try to break your brain more than once).  Being Batman is fun, pure and simple.  The bad guys are BAD, so there's no moral grey-area to contend with, and in this game your one-man-war-on-crime is made so much more intense because, as a prequel, you're being hunted by the cops on top of your regular rogue's gallery.

On a scale of 1 to 5 stars, I give it a 4.5 because of the controls and because of the steep learning curve/difficulty level.  Nothing that I found wrong with the game would ever make me stop playing it, no matter how frustrated I got, because everything else is just so much more awesome that you immediately forget about the bad shit as soon as it's gone.

Short version:  Seriously, it's fucking BATMAN and it's AWESOME.  Go buy it, or at the very least rent it for a long long time (GameFly is a great resource if you're low on cash but want to play games).  You won't be disappointed.