Be Excellent To Each Other

In Leeds last week, I walked past 3 branches of GAME in 5 minutes, and also 2 CEX's. They must love their gaming.

There are 3 "Game" stores and 1 "Gamestation" (same company) within easy walking distance in the centre of Southampton

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/derb ... 538106.stm

"Lara Croft Way"

I used to work in the Merry Hill centre which wasn't massive by any stretch..

We had 2 proper Game stores and 1 in Debenhams. That was overkill!

You could walk to the other store faster than they could answer the phone.

Watford has Game, Gamestation over the road, and another Game in the shopping centre behind Gamestation. There must be 50 yards between the Games.

I was on Hackney Marshes last sunday, and where I was stood, I could see 6 Games.

The Watford Gamestation has a virtually derelict two-story flat above it, which I got to have a poke around whilst I was working for the company. It's exactly like the sort of thing you'd expect to see in a Resident Evil/Silent Hill game, creepy as fuck, and oddly appropriate for a videogame shop.

There's at least 3 or 4 game/gamestations in close vicinity around the bullring.

And out of them all the tiny Gamestation in The Pallasades is the best. And also the one the dozy pratts will probably close down.

There's always the incredibly overpriced GameStop opposite Games Workshop too. I actually saw someone buy something from there once!

My old student house was a huge old 3 storey house. The lower 2 floors were fine, if a little old fashioned, but when we moved in the landlord warned us...

"Don't go to the top floor!"

...and didn't say why. The carpet stopped at the bottom of the second flight of stairs, there were no lightbulbs up there and, looking from the outside, the windows were painted black.

Naturally, we went up there. After the turn in the stairs, all of the steps were missing, so you had to shimmy up on the bannister which rocked alarmingly. The first door you saw was all peeling paint and rusty hinges, but hid nothing but an empty cupboard. The second door led to a huge bedroom with many, many missing floorboards and piles of random junk, mainly belonging to the landlord, judging by the photos.

The third door though... that's different.

Imagine, if you would, 5 young men, with a fair amount of beer in their bellies, none of whom are wearing proper shoes, gathered around a single mini-maglite torch, slowly pushing open a classic clichéd squeaky door to reveal pitch darkness. The torch beam crosses the cracked and broken floor and falls upon...

... a cradle. A creepy fucking baby's cradle. Right out of fucking Silent Hill. I swear there was clap of thunder as we all saw it, shit our pants and steamed, Ghostbusters style back to the safety of the first floor.

Oh how we laughed.

I meant to post this earlier but forgot. Anyone who has Jen as an XBL friend-'Jen2502'. She has changed her gamertag to solve the barrage of abuse she has received recently for having an obviously female name. She is now 'HaudYerWheesht'.

Which makes no sense what so ever!!!

It's really quite amazing how backwards Live is. It's a hotbed of racist, homophobic, xenophobic and now sexist cunts.

It means 'be quiet'

Not really amazing.

It's what you expect given the anominity of the internet.

Not I. I expect people to act respectfully and am thus constantly disappointed.

It's still mostly children, though isn't it?

Merkans

I've heard just as much abuse coming out of British accented gobs as I have 'merican ones.

As much as it pains me to say it

Yes there are whiney American kids , but there are also plenty of ones with 'british' accents.

Ok, maybe it's because I never play during the day

The kids in NJ (even the teens) were the most polite I have seen anywhere.

Noo Joyzee or Nerejhenge?

As soon as 99% or merkans hear the english accent you get them shouting
"OMG YOU BRITISH FAG, GO DRINK SOME TEA AND GET YOUR TEETH SORTED, FUKKIN BRITISH FAG, GO HAVE CRUMPETS WITH THE QUEEN, FAG."

Etc...

Yeah... I don't tend to have the voices on unless it's people I know..

Anyway, would our friends list update automatically to accomodate Jens new name or do we have to add her again?

I know that whilst I worked there, the hooge-ish Gamestation in New Street (I'm thinking of the right place, yes?) operated at a massive loss. The company simply wanted to be able to say that they owned the largest videogames store in Europe... except last time I went there they were only still using 1 of it's 3 floors, leading me to suspect that it's now no bigger than most game shops.

Nah, it's updated. It was just in case your wondered who this new person was.

It's the internet. It's not really a regional thing it's more of an age thing.

They used to have the basement as the Retro and magazine section and it was great then. Then all of a sudden they shut the basement down and moved everything on to the main floor. Very silly.

It's the only Gamertag sillier than ApplePieOfDoom

Didn't that start out as an HMV Games specialist originally?

Like when suddenly you see "Applepieofdoom" has logged on

I rarely find a British person on there I would speak to, but have often had very friendly with Americans.

No idea. They did that huge re-building of that section of New Street (simultaneously getting rid of Burger King there) and it spranged up then, as far as I'm aware.

Birmingham is full of such ridiculouses though. The Wetherspoons on Corporation Street (Square peg?) also operated at a huge loss for years, as they bought the whole ground floor of the building just so that they could have the longest bar in the world

It were nice in there at Chrimbo. I had wondered why I had to walk so far with a cup of coffee for Jazzy.

I like Birmingham.

I do however need to find a job here rather quickly.

I have none of those qualifications

I heard about that. I always wanted to go and check it out, but never got the chance while that was in place. T' was a real shame as I'd imagine they had much better retro stuff than the two tonnes of shit that would get traded in my little Hemel store. Although I did blag a PC Engine off of one of my patrons, so I can't complain too much.

Crumbs, what levels of certification do you really need to fill a skip? There's really only so many ways to go about it.

Blame the immigrants.

it's just that every single job, no matter what it is requires experience. How can you get experience if no-one will hire without experience

It'll be all the Health and safety card bollocks won't it.

A brief google suggests so. This has done nothing to improve my mood, now that I actually *know* I'm not even qualified to fill a fucking skip, but i've been inside all day doing accounts.

It's a little known fact that competition in the Indian Takeaway/restaurant world is incredibly fierce. Basically it's quite common for what were once amazing places to drop off in quality quite suddenly for the very simple reason the head chef usually gets headhunted. Quite often within six months of the restaurant opening.

But even great restaurants fluctuate depending on what day of the week you're ordering food. Basically Thurs/Fri/Sat are their busiest times and the ones they prep the food for.

What with lice and other shit I suspect quite a few people had short hair. When were wigs big in Europe? Was that >C16th?