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GMGM Likes It!

I wrote a silly article called The Ballad of George McPhee a while ago, and recently published it on Capitals Outsider. Luck would have it, only a half hour or so after publishing it, my friend Mike at The Gardens Ice House pulled it up to read just as McPhee walked into the rink (presumably because his kid plays there sometimes). Mike printed it out for him and told me McPhee liked it.

I see McPhee in the press box a lot but don’t generally speak to him because he’s got more important things to deal with than me. Plus, I don’t really have anything to ask him. (I did get him to wink at me once, which he does quite a bit with people). Anyway, I didn’t have any plans to show him the ballad and didn’t think much of it. But I’m glad he saw and liked it.

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Who Would Win? Balrog vs. Rancor

It was established in a Gunaxin poll that the Star Wars AT-AT Imperial Walker would defeat the Mûmakil from Lord of the Rings in a head-to-head fight. But that fight wasn’t completely fair because the AT-AT has guns and isn’t even alive. So in this installment of SW vs. LOTR, we’ll match up Fellowship of the Ring’s Balrog with Return of the Jedi’s Rancor. First, we’ll take a glimpse at each character.

The Rancor

Wookieepedia defines the Rancor as…

Rancors were large carnivorous reptomammals originating from the planet of Dathomir.

That’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read. If it weren’t for the expanded universe nonsense, we’d know Rancors to be large carnivorous reptomammals originating from the planet of Tatooine. Not even Jabba would pay to move one of those from one planet to the next, if that were even possible. Or maybe he did. I’d ask Stew but it’s really not all that important.

Anywho, here is the Rancor scene in Return of the Jedi, using the music from Jaws.

The Rancor’s Keeper

His name is Malakili, and he takes care of the Rancor in Jabba‘s Palace. He was played by actor Paul Brooke. Apparently, Chris Farley had yet to be discovered.

Analysis of the Rancor

Pros: He’s a big devilish beast from the Star Wars universe.

Cons: He was killed rather quickly by a Jedi Knight who didn’t even use Jedi powers to kill him. It was the ole’ slam-the-door-on-his-head trick. And he died when the door fell on him. Huh? That wouldn’t have killed the Balrog.

Balrog

The One Wiki to Rule Them All talks a whole lot about Balrogs and not just the one that appears in Moria in Fellowship of the Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about several, and Peter Jackson’s version engulfs the beast in flames. So what is it, exactly? Let’s just say… it’s a demon.

Analysis of the Balrog
Pros: He’s made of flame, and has a flaming whip and sword. He has no keeper. He’s not Jabba’s pet.
Cons: Gandalf killed him pretty easily, right?

Final Analysis

This is no match. The Balrog should easily defeat the Rancor in a fight. However, Star Wars fanboys outnumber Lord of the Rings fanboys, so the Rancor may stand a chance if people stick to voting for which movie they like better, as opposed to the actual damn question.

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Best Metal of 2010

Normally I’d write something like this for Gunaxin, but considering I hardly listened to every last heavy metal album that came out in 2010, I’ll only list my favorites that I heard. If I didn’t hear it, it’s likely under the radar anyway.

Best Song

  • Nightmare – Avenged Sevenfold

Best Album

  • The Final Frontier – Iron Maiden

Best Non-Heavy Metal Album

  • Eminem – Recovery

Album of the Year Part II

  • Disturbed – Asylum

Disappointing Album of the Year But Still Okay

  • Korn – Remember Who You Are

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My Year in Review

Very rarely do I look back on a year and give myself credit for a job well done, and 2010 won’t be any different as I’m still far from accomplishing my lifelong goals. However, relative to most other years in the past decade or so, this year wasn’t so bad, but it was extremely different.

I started off with perhaps one of the most important meetings I had with Phil at Gunaxin, when he spent a day teaching me some significantly useful web skills. Had it not been for that, I wouldn’t have been able to get the wheels moving on several projects and I would’ve been further frustrated as I struggled to get answers on how to do some of this stuff.

Then I hit a snag when I lost my job at the end of January. At the time it was  traumatic, but it shouldn’t have been. I hated that place and the people who worked there, and desperately wanted gone. I also needed a long break from the B.S. of everyday life that I’d been living for the previous 12 years.

I caught a break with a few things that made it much easier to be unemployed. Also, I still had plenty to do with my time, such as playing hockey, going to karate, attending Caps games in the press box, selling stuff on Amazon and the main thing: Working on my websites.

A few weeks later, I was offered a job. It was too perfect and too typical at the same time. The quick offer made me feel great for obvious reasons, but it was also a chance to jump right back into the misery of long, awful commutes, long hours of sitting in an office, and virtually no time to enjoy the money I would be making or to spend time on my actual passions.

I almost took it, I almost went, but I knew in my heart it was the wrong decision. I couldn’t keep doing what I knew would make me miserable, though turning the job down didn’t feel good, either. It was the worst I’d felt in two years. But why, really?

You see, during this time, I had confirmed that someone who I thought was a friend had indeed abandoned me for selfish and heartless reasons. That person inched away the moment I expressed emotion over losing my job. It was utterly disgusting what that person did, and as much as I wish I could’ve put it behind me, it just doesn’t work that way sometimes. Now, I finally had something to really be upset about.

I took a long vacation. I went to Phoenix to visit my aunt and uncle, to Seattle to visit my uncle and his friends, and to Nashville to visit a friend. I finally got to go to the Grand Canyon and enjoyed a plane ride, helicopter ride and boat tour. In Phoenix I went to the best Renaissance Festival I’ve ever seen. I saw Kurt Cobain’s memorial park in Seattle, which I found oddly interesting.

When I got back, my hockey team won the championship and I was doing well with Gunaxin. I started score-keeping at the hockey rink which gave me something to do, with little time commitment and no stress.

My father and I drove down to South Carolina to visit my brother and his wife the weekend of my birthday. When I got back, I had a blank slate in front of me, but I knew I couldn’t move on without first closing a door to my past.

I did something I’m not proud of, but calculated and thought out at the same time. It was nothing illegal, nothing harmful, but something that I knew would make it known to this person how I felt. It earned a reaction, and a conversation, one that made me lose sleep and even get sick. I had exposed myself to some of the worst emotional pain I could possibly get. Had I made the mistake worse? Maybe, but at least now I knew I had confronted my problem and made my feelings known. I took the reaction like a shot to the heart, clenched up and tried to tear out the bullet, tried to accept things as they were. But there was no satisfaction, no closure, no win.

I said one last thing, pulled an Ace out of my sleeve, left it on the table and walked away. Maybe it was that, or maybe it was just a last-minute revelation, but I got two final messages from this person, one stating that she had one more thing she wanted to say. I puzzled over it and figured out what it was. I was right.

It was an apology.

Absolute sincere apologies are the most anyone can ask for after suffering great pain at the hands of someone else. It’s not what I originally expected but it’s what I got and it’s what I knew I deserved. I can’t say it’s what I really wanted, but if not that, then what else? It didn’t fully heal me and it’ll still take years for me to fully recover, but I had gotten the closure with this person that I needed. I could finally move on.

Almost immediately after this revelation, I got a job offer, and it was perfect for me. The 4-H Club needed help to relaunch its website. The commute was fine, it allowed me time to relax, it paid well, and didn’t stress me out. I spent the summer working there, and had plenty of time to enjoy the pool and play both ice and roller hockey.

In the fall, when the 4-H job came to an end, I went back to working full time on my websites, on my Amazon sales, and on score-keeping. I took a quick, fun trip to Chicago, and resumed going to Capitals games. The last few months of 2010 passed by quickly.

Considering I made significantly less money in 2010 than in previous years, I still managed to turn a profit, therefore justifying my decision not to take that full time job from a financial standpoint. From a mental health standpoint, I knew immediately it was the right decision.

Now, 2011 is on its way and initial projections tell me I ought to start worrying about a few things ahead of me. But strangely, I’m not worrying. Considering what I’ve been through the last few years, then I can face the challenges that are to come.

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My Top Article of the Year

Have you ever searched for ‘Songs About Suicide’ in Google?

You’d be surprised how many people search for it. That search query, and variations of it, is searched several hundred times a day, maybe even a thousand or more times. A couple hundred a day land on my Gunaxin article that I wrote back in March of 2009. Do the math and it’s easily my most viewed article on Gunaxin. I’m not particularly happy that an article I wrote more than a year and a half ago is my most-viewed of 2010 but it’s not the worst thing in the world.

Anyway, this article is often the second link on Google’s results when people search for this. I would like to take this opportunity to give the middle finger to anyone who thinks they’re an ‘SEO expert’ because other than writing the article and filling out the standard metadata, I did NOTHING to ‘optimize’ this article to make it second in search results. Companies blow hundreds of thousands of dollars on so-called experts to do exactly what I do with very little effort. I wrote content that people are actually looking for, using the keywords they actually use, as opposed to shoving in ‘optimized’ keywords into content that people aren’t necessarily looking for (which is par for the course for SEO ‘professionals’). If SEO folks always had their way, web pages would be filled with nonsensical words, phrases and internal links with little to no emphasis on good, useful content (aka stuff people actually want to find). The article would be first in Google results when people type those words. Then, when the user lands on the page, they’ll wonder ‘What the hell is this?’ then hastily close the page. Believe it or not, this happens, as my old company was notorious for this, and even launched pages with absolutely no quality assurance for anything other than keywords. They’re morons and failures, because ultimately, Google knew better than to allow those pages to reach the upper tiers of search results. But they did a great job purchasing keywords for Google results! Pretty sad, actually.

Moving on. Why did I wrote ‘Top Ten Songs About Suicide?’ For the same reason I wrote ‘Best Rock Songs About Bells’ and ’50 Rock Songs That Defined the 90s.’ People like reading song lists. But why such a subject? Because, there happen to be several really good songs about suicide, many of which are mainstream rock songs. Stick them on a list and read it. People would read the War and Peace if it were written in list form on the Internet.

How did I pick the songs? Some were no-brainers, others I had to research a bit. Wikipedia even keeps track of these songs. I picked, relatively speaking, the most popular.

So anyway, there you have it. My top article of 2010 was one from 2009, one that hundreds of people land on daily, particularly during the holidays.