4/25/2005 10:49:00 PM|||James O'Malley|||

Now this is real blog stuff- I've done something that isn't very interesting to those who weren't there, yet I'm going to tell you about it anyway. Yeah, look at me and my poncy blog. I'm that casual and hi-tech I don't even have to put the word "blog" in speech marks to maintain my credibility. Woot.

Anyway, last Sunday it was my good friend Matt's birthday. I mentioned him in an earlier update about Derek Clark, and that is basically all you need to know about him. Spoiler: there's no twist to this tale or anything, it's just me boasting, making observations and telling you what happened. Like you care.

Having spent my school life up until this (school) year being ignorant to others birthdays, this year I've jumped on the proverbial birthday bandwagon and I'm now like, the best friend evar, because I buy stuff for people. I got Matt a CD off of his Amazon wishlist, and cleverly used an Amazon associates link to get myself 5% off- I'm fighting "the system" and winning! He was delighted, probably. I mean, I would be if JAMESO'MALLEY (one word, all caps, is the proper formatting for all contexts) had just bought me a birthday present. For the sake of being concise, it was by Dashboard Confessional, and I believe it had a picture of a car on the front.

Matt had a birthday party- it was originally intended to be a barbecue, but due to weather conditions and fire, things didn't happen that way. Not that it detracted from the general merriment.

The big shock of the night was JD, who's known for being more anti-alcohol, a |33t haX0r and a stage lighting expert, was, shock, horror, drinking. Once. Point is, we had a lot of fun making references to him being drunk, and not being able to remember things, and having his vision skewed, and so on. The unfortunate thing was this overshadowed somewhat my coke intake, meaning I wasn't centre of attention.

I'm starting to think I'm a rather one dimensional character, as someone with whom I've only ever done a price check for at work judged me to be "like a politician". Which was nice, considering that's what I'd like to do. "Ask me a question and I'll avoid it", I boasted. "Why?" John replied, "Well you're really asking two questions there...", I retorted, and became the centre of attention for being hilarious.

Matt's cats annoyed me- maybe it's just cats in general, maybe B3ta has set my expectations too high, but they're snooty little things. It's the way they walk and ponce about, it was like I should have been shaking its hand in a humble manner or something. This was, of course, until it started licking its underside, then I had the upper-hand in the dignity Olympics. I was competeting with a cat... has my life reached a new low?

Later in the evening, or more specifically, six cokes later, we moved inside because it was cold, and Matt bought out his NES. I was pleasantly surprised by Duckhunt, having never played it before (20 years too late). In the game, you have three shots to try and hunt a duck, unsurprisingly. What makes this exciting, aside the four colours per sprite graphics, is that you get to use an official Nintendo light gun- something which I don't think Nintendo have done since. They're all pacifist now who don't like violent games. I guess Miyamoto must have been out of the room when they okayed that one. Nevertheless, the light gun was surprisingly accurate once you figured out how the sights worked, but I was still rubbish.

I think what surprised me most about this was that in it the ducks were flying, which I don't think they can do. My friend Heather, who was also among the party goers, was and is particularly adamant that they can fly- but I've never seen a duck fly, have you? I'll be honest, we did go down to the canal once to try and see if we could see a duck flying. There were ducks, but a complete and utter lack of flight. The only thing flying was the argument that ducks could fly, and it was on a collision course.

Incidentally, I made a flash game a while back which involved shooting ducks. The flying ones earn you more points because they don't actually exist!

Anyway, we also played Mario 1 and 2 (Western Mario 2, with the picking stuff up and throwing) for the NES, which mostly involved seeing Matt boast how good he was at a level, and seeing him fall down the first hole.

Overall, it was a good party- if not a "party" in the semi-legal barn-rave sense, but nobody likes them anyway. I had a nice time, and just in case you're reading, Happy Birthday Matt! (Again)

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