Manifesto

How does one change the world?

It’s a question we grapple with on a daily basis, isn’t it? Injustice surrounds us daily. The world is full of exploitation and pain and misery and most of the time it seems like there’s nothing any of us can do about it. The world is a horrible place, and it’s easy to believe that we’re powerless to change anything about it. It’s easier to believe that than to believe that we can, in any case, since it requires effort for change to happen. It requires taking a chance, being the person to step out of the line and differentiate themselves, and the risk is there that rather than making a difference we’ll just end up being the alienated and estranged and, in the end, nothing will come of it. We’ll be an object of ridicule and the world will still be the same, shitty place it’s been the whole time. So instead we play it safe. We ride along without complaint. We don’t rock the boat. We listen to what the 24 hour news cycles tell us to think rather than thinking on our own. We blame the people in charge of our government for our economic and social woes while the Senators and Congressman who we’re blaming still maintain a 90% retention rate every election because, of course, while everybody else in Congress is a crook, your guy is ok. We sit quietly while racism and prejudice spread the fruits of hate throughout the world. We condemn Arab terrorists while quietly condoning the same actions when they’re carried out by Israelis. We hustle away quickly when we hear a cry for help. We keep our heads down. We accept the shit we’re handed on a day to day basis, and we do it with a smile because “that’s just the way things work.

Well fuck that.

I’m not saying that I’m going to make a difference, or that anything I’m doing is going to change anything. I’m saying that I’m tired of standing in line. Following the rules and being a good employee has only resulted in my still having no match for Paranoia, being paired up with people I can’t stand and made to pretend that somehow it was all my idea, and ending up an object of ridicule for the completely worthless yuppie shits that have wormed their way to the top of this company despite being A) unable to complete a thought using the basic conventions of the English language and B) obviously a parasite that is simply using this company towards his own ends with no regard for anyone that is currently working here. I’m being completely misused, and I’m just done with it. So now it’s time for things to change.

You, Too Magnificent, and you’re partner were the beginning of that change. The first thing people need to understand about this brand new day is that I’m done with worthless partners. My entire goddamn career I’ve been paired up with disappointments like you and I’m through with being drug down by you. I don’t care about your problems. I don’t care what other wrestlers on the roster make you crazy. I want nothing to do with your piece-of-shit career unless you’re somehow able to do something to help progress mine. When I said I wasn’t participating in the faction cage match last week, I was serious. I want nothing to do with these clusterfuck matches going forward, and the easiest way to be rid of them is simply to be rid of partners. Putting you two Motherfuckers down last week was the exclamation point at the end of that announcement. In the future, IWC bookers, if you put me into this situation again, you should expect similar results. The first people I’ll look to take out are the partners you’ve stuck me with, and then I may simply walk away from the ring and take a count-out or something. Or not, it depends on my mood I suppose.

That’s the second thing. It’s time for this company to start to bend to my whims from time to time. I’ve nearly been back in the company for a year now and I have yet to receive even a single chance to win the World Championship. Clearly you’re just dicking me around, so now it’s time for me to do the same to you. My primary motivation from week to week, from here on out, is to do exactly what I want when I want, and nothing and nobody will stop me. If I think it’s funny to bash in the cranium of Porno Lad while he’s walking out to main event a show, I’ll do it. If I want to chase down Katelyn Buehler or that annoying backstage interview bitch, throw them over my shoulder, and drive out of the arena with them for a night of my own amusement, I’ll do it. And you know what? You won’t do a damned thing about it. Despite Orlando’s misunderstanding of the way things work around here, the reality of the IWC is that the more anarchy I cause around this place, the better ratings will be. Steve Austin didn’t revolutionize the then WWF because of his amazing in-ring technical abilities, he did it by wrecking everything going on in the backstage area and being a general pain-in-the-ass to anyone who got in his way, mainly Vince McMahon. This is what I’m here for now, to take your pretty little plans and your great big dreams, IWC, and I will turn it on itself.

I will become the world’s ultimate spoiler.

Whatever you think you know, however you believe this place works, I’m going to wreck it. No one is safe from me. The minute you think that I’m your friend and ally, I’m going to chokeslam you through the stage or set your dressing room on fire. I’ve had what I wanted taken away from me enough times now that it only seems right I do the same to you. If bullshit like Josh Hudson sneaking into our arena and handcuffing me to a guardrail in the middle of a match and no one on the competition committee even batted an eye, then nothing I do should meet with any sort of consequence from the main office either.

And if any of the IWC “talent” wants to get some payback, they know where to find me.

So this is where you come in, Too Mag, because ultimately people will be stupid enough to take me up on that offer. You’re living proof, after all, since as we established you officially don’t even notice when you’re outmatched and have no chance of victory, as evidenced by your insistence on facing me after I victimized you and Cagero last week. You, then, have therefore volunteered to become the first warning to the rest of the roster what’s really going to happen to people who are foolish enough to come after me. You’re going to be the head shoved onto a post outside the gates of Castle AWOL as a warning to the other peasants. I’m not going to tell you that you’ve never faced anyone as violent as me, or tough as me, or as devious as me, but what I will tell you is that you’ve never seen anyone that can do what I do because I just…don’t…care what happens to you. You could end the match in a pool of blood, neck broken, gasping your last breaths as the EMTs come down from the back in a desperate and ultimately futile attempt to save the sad fucking shell of what passes as your “life,” and I would literally feel nothing. Not happiness. Not rage. Nothing at all, and that’s the beauty of it. I’m not going to go stamping through a store screaming at the top of my lungs if you beat me, and I’m not going to exult if I defeat you. I’ll walk out of the ring to my dressing room and plan the next move I have in store for later on in the show, and I won’t give the match another thought.

You’re a violent person. You’re tough. We’ve established this, Too Mag, and it isn’t news. We’ve faced each other before and pushed each other’s limits. I’m confident this time around, however, not because I’ve improved or that now I’m especially motivated to beat you, but simply because now my limits have changed. I’ve learned that pulling punches or restraining myself just delays the amount of time I have to endure your struggling before I put you down. I’ve put you through a ring, then I put you through the roof of the Hell in a Cell and the ring, and neither of those things have managed to let me rid myself of you. Some men would be discouraged by this fact, but I am no longer one of those men.

For myself, it just means I need to find something even taller to throw you off of.

Da Thunderin' Waaaaagh!!! LBBL Ice Bowl 2010 Season Wrap Up

I've come to the conclusion that somewhere, deep in my past, I did something to anger a dice producer. I'm not certain whether I once caused the death of the parents of the CEO of Chessex, leading him to dedicate his life to a continuous quest for vengeance against me and causing him to don the apparel of a night predator to haunt my dreams, or perhaps my apartment complex is built on a forgotten Indian Burial ground and, rather than the typical Poltergeist method of persecuting me, they've elected to make it so I can't roll anything higher than a 2 when I need to, but somehow or another I just can't roll for shit. Seriously.

So the Waaagh started the season out auspiciously, with four games in a row of dice ass preventing me from picking up the ball successfully, scoring a single touchdown, or even scratching my ass without wasting a re-roll. I went through the first five weeks recording an average of one stat point per game for a single character. The only reason the entire season didn't end up in the shitter as a result of this was the league rule which allowed me to assign my MVP to a specific player rather than randomly giving it out at the end of the game. This, at least, ensured that I had a player acquiring a skill-up at the end of every game. However, the speed with which other teams advanced put the Waaagh! in a hole from the beginning which, I would discover, I could not recover from.

The turn-around came partway through the year when I got a win and followed it up with a bye the next week, resulting in all three of my black orcs having Block from that point on, an attribute that ended up being huge in the mid-stages of the league. One thing I became aware of during all of this was this realization that it's almost like certain skills have variable value as the season goes on, where Mighty Blow is huge for the early parts of a league for its ability to help you farm SPPs on your people but maybe doesn't help as much later on, whereas Guard just gradually becomes more and more important as things go along. I ended up taking tackle on a couple of my blitzers, which ended up being somewhat variable value given that a large number of the teams in the league never even looked at the dodge skill, making it an empty slot. Dauntless or some more guard for the team may have been better choices in the end.

I've never been a huge fan of Orc throwers in a starting roster, not because I have anything against them so much as the fact that Orcs have so many early advantages with the ability to stack 4 blitzers and 4 black orcs right out of the gate, and sometimes its necessary to make cuts just to have enough cash to survive. In retrospect, given the team's early abilities to acquire the ball, that sure-hands equipped player would have been invaluable if only to help me save re-rolls for later in the halves. Ultimately, the team ended up feeling a little lost on offense, which I wasn't entirely expecting given that the Orcs have a very obvious offensive play style (the cage) that the team is very much geared towards and, indeed, helped to define in the first place. However, I think the biggest issue was just the fact that the team was playing from behind in development all season long and so, perhaps not unexpectedly, when they ran into another, tougher team, the game plan fell apart and there wasn't a plan B to fall back on.

Consequently, the last three games of the season I played another Orc team that was, more or less, what my team would have been if it had started out on fire, a Norse team that had grown so far along as to protect itself from its fragility issues and could match me blow for blow, and finally the same Orc team again during the first round of the playoffs, all three resulted in losses and cursing at my relative inability to acquire and move the ball. Ultimately, it became a matter of where a few bad rolls early on causes you to get behind in a game, leading to more need for desperate risk taking, leading to more failures.

Ultimately, this team was playing from behind from the word go. There was misfortune. There was my lack of experience with them (how many squares do trolls move?), and there was some mis-building from me from the beginning. Ultimately, I'm happy to have learned what I did with them, but the Waagh's probably going to be taking some time off while I do some other things.

Brand New Day

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The Order

Facebook Status: What’s on your mind?

AWOL is angry. All the time.

***

“Look,” Maya says, walking down the hotel hallway, “I’ll talk to him, alright? I told you I would.”

She lets out an exasperated sigh, looking down at the manicured nails of her left hand, the right currently occupied with holding the cell phone to her ear. “I don’t know what you think I can do. It’s obvious he’s not in his right mind at the moment. I’m not sure how you can be surprised when he does crazy shit every week.”

She rolls her eyes, pressing the button on the elevator. Tapping her foot impatiently, she rocks her head from side to side.

“I understand how important the match is.”

Another exasperated sigh.

“Yes, but I-“

With a ding, the door slides open.

“Look, I’ll talk to him. I’m getting in the elevator. Bye.”

She gives the phone an irritated snap and closes it, stuffing it into a purse. She steps over the brass threshold and onto the maroon carpeting of the elevator, reaching behind her aimlessly to press the button corresponding to the fifteenth floor. As the doors slide shut, she leans back against the rail, a hand over her eyes. Her sigh now seems to come from the soles of her feet, and she shakes her head, clearly at her wit’s end. As the slowly scrolling numbers approach fifteen, she steps up to the door, looking her reflection over in the door. She gives her hair a perfunctory lift and adjusts her dress, pulling it down to highlight her ample chest. As the door opens, her spine straightens and she marches out, clearly on a mission.

***

Facebook Status: What’s on your mind?

AWOL doesn’t like the person/people he is facing in a match this week on Riot!/The Pay-Per-View/a house show.

***

She walks down the long hall, one heel pressing down in front of the toes, walking up to the hotel room door. She fishes around in her purse as she walks, eventually coming up with the hotel room keycard. As she finally reaches room 1527, she pauses again, taking another steadying breath, before sliding the key into the lock. As the green light comes on, she turns the handle and steps inside.

The first thing she notices is the temperature. It’s freezing cold in the room, and the air conditioner is blowing away in the background at full blast. The room is completely dark. She blinks for a moment, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the change in illumination from the hall, but in a moment one of the blinds is pushed open. A ray of moonlight drifts in from outside, falling on one half of the face of the biggest, craziest bastard in the industry, AWOL, who is staring out into the sky. The vague, faraway look is gone from his expression, however, replaced with a façade of calm that masks a vague hint of predatory intent glinting behind his eyes. As the door slams home behind Maya, his gaze turns, locking in on her.

“Damage control going well?”

You can hear the smug smile in his voice, though the calm expression on his face doesn’t match it. Maya stammers a moment, evidently caught off her guard.

“I imagine I’ve made your seat uncomfortably hot, this week,” he continues, turning to look back out through the window. “I would apologize, but considering the only reason you even have that seat is a result of exploiting my seeming ‘catatonia’ over the past month, I’m having a difficult time feeling too sorry for you.” As he spoke, he raises his hands to make the air quotation marks, an ironic smile now finally appearing on his face.

“You knew?” she finally answers, nervously shifting back to the door.

“Of course I did,” he answers, waving his hand dismissively. “It suited me to have you take over for a number of reasons. For one, given some of my old bookings, clearly my previous agent was doing a very poor job of representing me. Secondly, it suited me to have someone take care of my affairs for a time to give me time to…consider some things.”

Maya looks relieved, a hesitant smile creeping onto her face. “So, you’re happy with how I’ve done.”

“Oh no, you’re completely incompetent. God, you put me up against Craven and Evans the last two weeks. What did you have in mind for Paranoia, Dink the Clown?” He chuckles at her sudden discomfort. “Oh don’t take it so personally. I didn’t get with you for your abilities as an agent. You’re a stripper, Maya, you have one set of assets, and matchmaking isn’t one of them. I just knew that having tomato cans like I’ve been facing the past several weeks for opponents would give me the chance to work through some things on my own while only having to put out a token effort. I completely phoned it in against Evans, and I expended most of my energy with Craven beating him after the bell had rang.”

“Well, I know they weren’t the highest billings on the card, but-“

“They were shit bookings, and you know it,” he calmly cuts her off. “They were joke matches. They were mid-card filler to give the booking staff enough time to figure out what to do with me, now that Josh Hudson saw fit to remove me from the IWC world title picture because, I don’t know, he was bored or something. But really, none of those things bother me to an extreme. No, Maya, the thing I find truly bothersome is your insistence on anally fucking the memory of what was at one time the greatest stable in IWC/ULW history.”

He releases a disappointed sigh. “The motherfucking empire? Was that your idea? Or did some brain trust at the home office come up with that gem? I say once and I will not repeat myself, the Empire consists of myself and Johnny Kingdom. Now that Johnny has packed up his ball and gone home, the Empire is done. This…group you’ve stuck me with, this idiot Simon Cagero who somehow thinks he has the right to come out to the stage wearing Johnny’s tag team belt and try to lecture me…this is not the Empire. It in no way resembles it, and I am offended that it is besmirching its name. This is not the Empire. This is…the Loose Association of People Who Are Opposed to the Five Star Society and Generation Now. However the LAPWAOFSSGN is a shitty acronym, so I can see why the marketing department made the name change that they did.”

“So, um, are you going to play ball then?” she asks.

“Oh heavens no,” he laughs. He laughs uproariously. He laughs for what seems like hours, body contorting, tears streaming from his eyes, far beyond anything that should be even moderately considered appropriate for the non-joke that preceded it. Almost as quickly, however, the wave of amusement disappears and the completely expressionless calm returns. “There isn’t enough money in the world for me to participate in that abortion.”

She chews the side of her lip. AWOL seems content to stare out the window, waiting for her response, so she ventures forth with a question. “What, uh, what were you working out?”

“Oh, didn’t you know? I’m crazy now Maya. ‘Round the bend, bat-shit crazy. Crazy as a pet raccoon. You can pick your own euphemism, but I’m just completely insane. I’m not sure how you missed it. I’ve been sitting here staring off into space, drooling on myself for a month now. In the ring I’ve been brutalizing opponents, well, more so than usual. I turned on my supposed team mates last week.”

“Not to mention you’re talking to invisible bats that represent repressed elements of your psyche,” comes the voice of the aforementioned bat who is hanging, wings wrapped around his body, from the curtain rack.

“Good point,” AWOL says, nodding in the bat’s direction. Maya looks thoroughly confused, as the bat is clearly not actually there. “Through it all, however, I have finally come to some realizations. Clarity, that’s a word for it, clarity. I’ve found my own personal, inescapable reality. Would you like to know what it is?”

She nods, hesitantly.

“For the longest time, when I came to this place, I was burdened with a fallacious assumption about the nature of the IWC. I labored for a long time, struggling to understand the point of all the madness. Why were we here? Why were we destroying each other week in and week out? Was it for money? Fame? Glory? There are easier and more certain ways to obtain both. Was it for the title? The title is a comical joke right now. Christian Savior literally stole the thing at Two for One Special. Stole it. You understand how ridiculous that is? You do that joke of an angle with some mid-card belt, not the world title. And now they’re dragging Jake Starr here from SCW to try and save a Paranoia main event that clearly was headed for disaster. One can hardly blame them, counting on men like Zero and Porno Lad to carry the biggest show of the year, but it has none the less served only to highlight how much of a disaster the IWC main event has become, which leads one to wonder at what sort of ridiculous paper title the world championship has been allowed to become.”

He shakes his head. “But I digress. I thought it was a fight for honor. I thought for a while that this was an attempt at rescuing this place, building up a good company that would be worth being proud of. Later, I thought that I was going to destroy the IWC. But I was wrong, Maya, and I see that now. I see what this place is really all about now. I see the point. I see everything…”

His voice tails off as he blinks for a moment. Maya looks at the him, finally asking. “What is it? What’s the point?”

He turns, giving her a look as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. “There is no point. None whatsoever. That’s the point, that there isn’t one. This is anarchy, true, unadulterated anarchy. Stength, cunning, power, none of these things matter. The strongest or smartest don’t succeed here. It’s literally random who will succeed on a minute to minute basis, randomness wrapped up in the insanity that drives this place and keeps us coming back again and again when its painfully obvious to everyone who takes the time to look that it ultimately does…not…matter.”

He shakes his head ruefully. “Oh, how I railed against that notion. It’s against the human condition, Maya. We’re a species that craves, that needs order. But to know the truth, that the IWC is the ultimate expression of entropy and chaos, that is to truly invite madness into the mind. And that, that Maya, is what I’ve spent the last few weeks realizing. That is what has brought me here today, and why I feel comfortable telling the IWC management that no, as a matter of fact, I don’t care about the Riot! main event. I don’t care about a hell in a cell match against all of my ‘enemies.’ I am eager and ready to give the entire ownership group a great big middle finger, or compete, as the spirit moves me. And neither will matter to me.”

“What about your-“

“Contract? Money? Future? Don’t you see? They won’t be affected. They won’t fire me. They can’t! I’ve done a million things worse than no-showing a match and not received even a slap on the wrist.”

“So..you’re not going to compete?”

“Or I might. I don’t know. I’ll have to decide.”

He turns back to the window, staring vaguely back off into space.

“Maybe I’ll flip a coin…”

Maya stares at him. Long moments stretch out into even longer minutes, and the Big Crazy Bastard doesn’t move. Finally she turns towards the door. As she reaches for the handle, however, he turns in her direction.

“Get me my match with Generation Now, Maya. Don’t fail me again, or I’m going to have to hurt you.”

She turns, a retort on the tip of her tongue, but he’s resumed his glassy eyed vigil out the window. A moment later she turns, nodding to herself as she walks out of the room.

***

Facebook Status. What’s on your mind?

AWOL Don’t think that you know me. Don’t think that you understand me. The minute you think you’ve got me figured out? That’s the minute I have you right where I want you.