Hi Everybody

I'm helping to organise a gaming related charity event called the Lame Game Marathon, where 3 guys play the worst games ever made for 24 hours straight in order to raise funds for the East Africa Appeal. It's happening on the 17th of September and we'd sincerely love your help to spread the word leading up to the event.

Our chosen charity is the UNHCR and our aim is to raise as much money and awareness as possible for the cause, but we need really the help of others to push the word of the charity event past our own capabilities.

We've already been promoting the marathon as much as possible through social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube), but your help to spread the message would make all the difference to how much money we can raise.

For the marathon itself, the plan is to have 3 of us play the worst games ever made on 3 different platforms, one after another, non stop over a 24 hour period. We'll post up constant updates of our progress and impressions over Twitter and Facebook, and we'll also be hosting a live stream of the full 24 hours on our website www.lamegamemarathon.com. As we play the games, we'll encourage people to donate through our website with 100% of the funds going to the UNHCR East Africa Appeal, but of course the effectiveness of the event will only depend on the amount of people that know about it, so honestly anything you can do to help spread the word would be massively appreciated.

I thought I could post the info about the event here and get you guys talking about it, engaging in some discussion and asking any questions you have.

www.lamegamemarathon.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyPdB-pn1Jo
twitter.com/LamegameUNHCR
facebook.com/LameGameMarathon

Travelling on the Brink – The Story of Winning Part 2

Do you know what happens on an aeroplane for 23 hours? I can tell you. Absolutely nothing. Well not absolutely nothing. You get a sore back, sore legs, sore neck. You get to experience the wonderful lack of sleep that comes with international air travel and you get to go slightly mad due to a combination of boredom and repeats of "Two and a Half Men". Shudder. After seeing six episodes of "that show", back to back, I am of the honest opinion that anyone can write in Hollywood. Here's my pitch.

Charlie's Brother Whatshisname: Charlie, you really shouldn't sleep with so many women

Laugh Track

Charlie: Why not?

Laugh Track

Whatshisname: It sets a bad example for my fat son.

Laugh Track

Fat Son: Don't worry Dad, Charlie already set me straight. Men are supposed to sleep with as many women as they can. It helps reinforce the misogynistic stereotype that's prevalent in television.

Laugh Track

Fat Maid: Disparaging comment about Charlie's penis.

Laugh Track with whistling

End episode.

Ugh. It's just awful. So that tripe got me from Melbourne to Broome but what was I to do for the next 10 hours in my small economy seat, trapped between a hulking, sweating blancmange of a man and an old lady with a bladder the size of a pea. No pun intended. Sleep was out of the question and I'd already grown sick of the tiny screen in the back of the chair in front of me, so instead I merely sat and waited. Sat and waited for 10 hours, the ten most boring, tiring and excruciatingly mind numbing hours of my life. Every now and then one of the cabin crew would offer me a drink or something to eat and I would graciously accept the meagre rations. When they moseyed off I would devour their offering with the veracity of a sewer rat. When I wasn't waiting for more food and water like some P.O.W., I was wiggling my toes, staring blankly at the ceiling or fighting a strong urge to pick my nose, which had become the driest place on earth. Surely someone, somewhere must have developed a way for aeroplane air conditioning to not desiccate you from the inside out. I swear that pieces of my brain had cracked off and fallen into my nasal cavity. At least I had a reason to get up and go to the toilet often, even if it was one as disgusting as picking 40kg rocks out of my nose.

Every few minutes I checked the flight guide channel on the miniscule screen in front of me.

Surely it's been an hour or so since last time, I thought. Wrong!

01.01 am – 8538km and 11 hours remaining.

Times passes…

01.13 am – 8503km and 11 hours remaining.

And it went on like this for most of the flight. No wonder I drove myself mad.

Finally and eventually we neared Dubai and I felt a huge sense of relief surge through me. Well it was either that or the blood circulating again after I'd been sat in the one spot for nigh on 6 hours.

The descent seemed to take twice as long as the flight and then we landed. And then it dawned on me. I was halfway across the planet from home. I was in the Middle East. I was, I was…DYING FOR A CIGARETTE! It had been 18 hours since my last one and I was half tempted to eat one from my pack. It didn't help matters that the airport was huge and we still hadn't reached the terminal after 15 minutes on a shuttle bus. Then came customs, then came the crowds at duty free and then came the dawning realisation that there wasn't anywhere to smoke. I walked back and forward up the terminal and saw countless prayer rooms, showers, toilets and shops, but not one place to have a quick ciggy! I found the nearest info desk and asked where I could smoke. The lady behind the counter smiled and pointed past me and said "Just near gate 121".

Can't be too far

I was at gate 237. It was pretty much a full kilometre from where I was, but I wasn't going to let a little thing like agonizing fatigue stop me from having that smoke. So I set off. Almost immediately I noticed something was not quite right.

Ow. Ouch. Ow. What the…?

14 hours squirming in my seat while wearing jeans had left me with the worse chafe of my life. Every step was like someone was running a belt sander on my inner thighs. But still I was undeterred. I set off down the terminal like some deranged cowboy, wincing and cursing the whole time. After about 20 minutes I reached the tiny, cramped and smoke filled room where smoking was allowed. The door was propped open, entirely defeating the point and people were huddled round like hobos over a drum fire.

This is so sad I thought as I gleefully took my first drag in almost 20 hours.

Look at these poor fools, trying to get in a quick smoke before their flights,

Deep drag in

You really must be desperate

Big breath out.

My smoke was finished in record time and I thought about having another but decided against it as I only had an hour or so before my flight and I wanted to have a quick shower. All of my clothes and toiletries were in my checked luggage but I had my wallet and was in the hugest duty free shopping centre I'd ever seen.

I spotted a chemist first and went in to buy soap and deodorant.

What the hell? How much is 30 in Australian money?

Dejected I walked out of the chemist and prepared to stink my way from Dubai to London. But wait! I had my phone in my pocket. I dialled my best mate… come on… pick up…

Hello.

Hey man, can you tell me what 30 Dubai moneys is in Australian? He just laughed.

What's their currency?

How the hell should I know? I'm at the airport and need to buy some crap can you tell me or not?

Aw nah man, I'm at uni, I'm not even near a computer, so how was your…click!

Useless.

I tried my next trustiest number

Brrrp. Brrrp.

Hello?

Hey Dad, can you tell me what the conversion between Australian and Dubai money is?

Hold on a sec…okay basically it's a third. So whatever it costs, divide it by three and that's the Australian equivalent.

Thanks Dad. Bye. Click.

So armed with this new knowledge I set out to by the essentials for my shower. At the chemist I bought, deodorant and soap. At a clothing store I bought socks, underpants and a t-shirt. I headed back towards the gate our flight was from and found the nearest shower block.

Great! I have an hour still before my flight. This is going to be awesome

Or so I thought. Once again, fate had conspired against me. In the shower block there were 5 cubicles, yet only 2 were operating. I was 4th in line to use one of them. For twenty minutes or so, nobody went in and nobody came out. Then finally, at almost the same time two guys came out and two more went in. Leaving me clear to go next. Another twenty five minutes passed and on the inside I was raging.

Who the F### takes this long when they know there is a line out here. Motherf@#kin , inconsiderate pieces of sh!#.

I was very, very cranky.

I was doing my very best to keep calm, relax and wait my turn and was just about to lose the battle when the cubicles became free again.

I practically ran into my cubicle and was almost naked before I opened the door. I didn't care; I wanted this shower more than I wanted the smoke. And there was no way I was missing my flight. So I stripped down and soaped up and I have to say that there has never been a more luxurious shower than that scummy, lime scaled and low water pressure cubicle in Dubai airport, terminal 232.

I showered as quickly as I could, because I am considerate and then turned the water off.

Now where's that towel? Wait a minute. What towel?! I don't have a towel and I didn't buy a towel! FUUUUUUUUU…..

I was running out of time and I couldn't miss my flight, but if I didn't dry myself I was going to spend the next 7 hours, wet, uncomfortable and chafed. I grabbed my dirty t-shirt and removed as much water from my body as I could before the shirt was sopping and useless. My sweaty and frankly gnarly under pants came next. I used the outside of them as best I could. They took up approximately 30ml of water before they became useless. Then came my socks. They fared better than the undies, but not by much.

Great! I had a shower and now I smell of feet, sweaty balls and BO.

It wasn't quite that bad, but I did feel as though the point of the shower had been defeated. My hair was dripping, my skin was only half dry and the clean clothes I bought were clinging to me. I was uncomfortable and unhappy. And it was time to board the flight to London.

This was going to suck.

So it was with anxious and nervous excitement that I sat in my tiny, almost windowless office one fateful Thursday afternoon. Entries for the competition had closed the previous day and I had a sneaking suspicion that the organisers would be calling the winners that day. Not really expecting to win, but hoping against hope I was struggling to complete any real work and found myself staring at my phone to once again check and recheck that the battery still had charge and that signal was still being received. And like the 19 previous times I'd checked, both battery and signal were strong.

I needed a distraction, something, anything to take my mind off waiting for a phone call that would probably never come. So I attempted to do some real work. I failed. No sooner had I opened a report to start work on it did my right hand, as if I had developed alien hand syndrome, move the mouse over to my web browser and open my favourite gaming website. I perused the forums, replying to a few posts and for a while I was distracted. However; the distraction didn't last and gradually, that itching, clawing sensation in my stomach, less like butterflies and more like ravenous porcupines, came roaring back with a vengeance. This was getting ridiculous.

A cigarette would calm my shaky nerves I thought. So I grabbed my phone and a smoke and headed outside to carcinogenically calm myself. The smoke was gone in less than two minutes as I tried to inhale the whole thing in one fell swoop. Damn! It hadn't really worked. Now, not only did I have rabid porcupines in my stomach, my head was lighter than a feather and the world was spinning around me. This can't go on, I thought. If I didn't hear something soon, I was going to end up in the E.R. Making my way back to my desk, dizzy and somewhat nauseas I checked my phone once again. No miraculously missed calls, no emails, no texts. What is this! Not only have I not heard any news about the competition, but now I find that no one loves me.

That's when I felt it. The initial vibration of the handset before the ringtone can begin. Buzz. Buzz. Buzzzzzzzzzz. It was like Ambrosia. I looked at the screen as my ringtone finally started. The theme song from "Dexter". There was no name on screen, only 10 digits. The final 8 don't really matter, only the first two.

(02).

A zero and then a two. This meant that the call was coming from New South Wales. I knew the offices of the company running the competition were in New South Wales. I don't know anyone else in New South Wales do I? Could this be it? A full moon must have risen in my stomach as the porcupines were now were-porcupines, gnashing and tearing and ripping my insides to shreds. With shaky hands I hit receive.

"Hello, Leo speaking"

"Hi Leo. We're just calling to tell you that we think you have the goods and want you to travel to London with us to play in the Brink tournament"

Silence

"Are you ***ink kidding me! Oh *** sorry! Oh man that's not better"

My hands were shaking. My knees were weak and I felt nauseas again, but in a good way.

"Of course we are serious! You're going to London!"

"HOLY CRAP!!! Thank you so much, this is insane! Oh my god!"

The voices on the other end explained that I would receive an email later on in the day and that they required some information to organise the trip but by then I was only half listening. My mind was racing with fantastical images.

Me riding on the top of a double decker.

Me standing in front of Buckingham Palace in a bearskin hat.

Me being knighted by Her Majesty the Queen.

Each successive thought became more outrageous and outlandish. In my mind I was already going to usurp the throne and become the next King of England. At least that's how amazing I felt after hearing the good news.

The phone call ended and I was shaking and spent. It was surreal and suddenly the volume of the world got turned turn down to about half. There was a buzzing in my head that was deafening and drowning out real life. Stomach Van Helsing must have arrived as my insides were quieted. I put my phone back on my desk and once again attempted to get some work done.

Once again. I failed.

Hey there,

So while I'm in London I decided I'll keep a mini blog of each day and I'll do a full expanded blog detailing pretty much everything when I get back. So update on whats happened so far;

I got to Melbourne Airport around 6 on Monday night, checked in to the flight and then hung round waiting to meet up with doolies. Once we met up we dicovered that despite our best efforts to check in online with seats next to each other we were sitting miles apart. Luckily neither of us were seated next to any massive, sweating blobs. Although the people next to me wernt so lucky J

Once on board we the flight took off without incident and with a generally smooth flight we touched down in Dubai 14.5 hours later. 5AM Dubai time, 11am Australian. The airport is so huge in Dubai that we had to be bussed from the plane to the terminal. 15 minutes later we arrived. This place was massive! Over a kilometre of duty free, shops as far as the eye could see! They also had only one smoking room, a full 20 minute walk from our gate.

I walked as fast as I could to the smoking room and charged down my first cigarette in about 15-16 hours. I wanted to have a shower as well but all my stuff was in my main luggage which was being transported to my next flight. So I quickly bought some essential shower stuff, power walked back to our gate and had a shower in the nearby facility.

We boarded our next flight, Dubai to London, at 7am Dubai time and let me tell you the A380 is pretty epic.

Mostly another uneventful flight except that we discovered Koz and EvilFKing were on the same flight having flown in to Dubai from Sydney together.

7 hours, a few free budweisers and a couple of movies later we touched down in Heathrow. Finally made it through customs and found a guy standing near the exit holding a sign with my name on it! I must be the coolest one…

We were then driven to Bromley where we checked into our Hotel and got a free feed. Met the PR dude from Bethesda and eventually got driven to the offices of Splash Damage where we got our hands on Brink for about two hours.

After the practice session we headed back to the hotel for dinner, went out for a couple of drinks in a nearby pub and then headed to bed with jetlag finally winning the battle.

Tomorrow is the tourney. Let's hope we can do it!

The debut EP by Verses All is now available on Bandcamp. Preview in full every song before you download and if you like you can D/L in any format you want! And because we like you so much you set the cost of your D/L, even $0. It doesnt bother us what you pay so long as the music gets out there!

You can of course sling a couple of bucks our way if you are so inclined. Just follow the link and check it out.

http://versesall.bandcamp.com/

That is the number of years I have been alive today. Going to a Japanese resturaunt in the city tonight with a bunch of friends. Should be fun. Although I am working tomorrow. That's not going to be fun.

Have you seen him? :D

Two new songs up on http://www.myspace.com/versesallband

The two songs are featured on the soon to be available Embrace the Upgrade EP

If you like melodic thrash metal you should definitely check it out.

Tell your friends

Here endeth the lesson

Eb is having a mad monday sale coming up. check it out here

http://www.ebgames.com.au/madmonday/?utm_source=490&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=mad_monday_army

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Win PRIZES by spreading the word go to http://bit.ly/EBARMY