Cloud9 is going to find out the hard way

Oh, how little they realize the danger they’re in: Cloud9 secures $25M in Series A financing from various notable entities, including the WWE

In other words, the world of eSports has let the wolf known as World Wrestling Entertainment into the chicken coop.  AKA Triple H, the de facto ultimate usurper and infiltrator has found his way into the burgeoning and profitable world of eSports.

And now that his foot is in the door, it’s only a matter of time before Triple H ultimately takes over every single C9 professional team, and then it’s only a matter of another time until Triple H, and just Triple H is the champion of League of Legends, Overwatch, Counterstrike and Smash Bros.

Granted, eSports will have been systematically ruined and destroyed, but hey, it would at least be a North American champion in some of these games, for once in the history of competitive gaming.

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Life is boring lately

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but as it pertains to my want to write every now and then, it sure doesn’t help when there’s nothing to really talk about outside of sports.  Like really, I comb through news sites, and I try to watch a little bit of news here and there, but on a regular basis, it’s the same old shit that’s being driven further into the ground every single time it comes up, so there’s really nothing particularly interesting to me that gives me any inspiration to really write.

On the local level, the AJC further reinforces the notion that they’re a clown outlet, since the front page of the site has basically turned into the SEC football daily, providing links and news for not just Georgia, but just about every single SEC school’s football programs.  Granted, I guess it sure beats the alternative to the daily shootings, robberies and killings in Southwest Atlanta, but surely, surely, there has to be stuff worth reporting on aside from college football.

National and global news are more of the same crap involving sexual harassment dogpiling, talk of building a wall, and the perpetually constantly rising tensions between the United States and other countries.

Same shit, different day.

It’s no wonder why I always fall back onto sports and wrestling to talk about, because there’s not much else worth writing about that doesn’t just trigger, bother, infuriate or simply annoy.

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Money > Loyalty – The Rito Way

I was thinking recently about how interesting it is to be actively witnessing the formation and establishment of the rise of professional competitive gaming.  Obviously having been around since like the 1960s long before I, or anyone else in my generation or younger were even born, competitive entities like MLB, NFL, NBA and even the NHL have been around for decades, and had the vast majority of their rules and infrastructure already build, established and requiring no more than occasional tweaks and union-related agreements to operate smoothly on a seasonal basis.

On account of that, I’m often fascinated by the way the ever-growing professional League of Legends scene as well as other professionally played video games operate in, by comparison, some very fast, loose and always changing rules and structure.  I get that they’re the new kids on the block in professional competition, but it would be kind of nice to not have to re-read the rules and conditions of the league every single season.  In LoL alone, the format has switched from best-of-ones, to best-of-threes, and then there’s all these weird convoluted tiers when it comes to playoff seeding, and they’ve basically invalidated the entire first half of a season, by making the first half winner not a lock for Worlds, while the winner of the second half is an automatic #1 seed, which makes absolutely no fucking sense to me at all.

The global professional League scene is just now at the tail end of just their seventh year, but it’s safe to say that aside from the map they play on, it’s entirely a different game now than in which it started when Europe were kings and Korea and China hadn’t even entered the playing field.

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HBO’s The Leftovers: wtf did I just watch?

Disclaimer: I will talk about plots and mention potential spoilers, so you’re being warned.

So I just finished watching all of The Leftovers over the last three weeks.  Knee-jerk reactions:

  • What the fuck did I just watch?
  • Way more was unanswered than was answered
  • If any show required a pallet cleanser afterwards, this is it

The thing is, I’m left in this weird position where I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the series as a whole.  Initially, the show starts off pretty compelling and intriguing, an in spite of the cynical and droll nature of the subject matter, I was curious enough to continue watching the show, to see how it transpired.  However, as the series progresses, the show jumps the shark when the cast uproots and moves to Texas, and then DJ Tanner wrestlings when the obvious HBO-mandated key players all go to fucking Australia of all places.

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Writing when I’m not feeling writing

Every now and then, I’ll hit a point where I look at my docket of written things, and feel as if I haven’t written anything in a while, and then I feel anxious because I’m OCD like that and feel like I should be writing at the very least, once a week.

However, admittedly a lot of it has to do with the fact that I’ve been feeling like the world around me is in this stagnant state where on any given point, it feels like the world’s primary topics of discussion are encapsulated in these really small capsules as of late, and it’s like the same things are discussed and rehashed 50,000 times before the next thing that should probably be taking a back seat to larger things emerges and the cycle repeats itself.

Like, for example, it seems like the only things being talked about in the world are:

  • Sexual harassment that stemmed from Harvey Weinstein
  • Gun control that stemmed from the Las Vegas shootings
  • Kneeling during the National Anthem that stemmed from Colin Kaepernick
  • Football

Despite the fact that there are vastly bigger issues in the world currently such as:

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Being right vs. the Yankees

Ever since the Braves decided that they would suck again, I’ve often been forced to gravitate to other teams to try and derive some enjoyment out of the game.  I haven’t hidden my temporary allegiances to teams like the Royals and the Marlins, and I’ve been capable of finding some horse to root for while the Braves not-so deliberately tanked in order to clear payroll and improve draft positioning.

Prior to the start of the 2017 season, I remember seeing news about former Brave, Brian McCann getting traded to the Houston Astros from the New York Yankees.  This was a move that seemed inevitable, due to the rise of now-starting catcher Gary Sanchez, and it wasn’t so much a question of if, but when it was going to happen, and to whom it was going to be to.  My initial reactions were that Houston was kind of a non-contender (despite the fact that they had just made the playoffs), but also the irony of McCann being reunited with another former Brave teammate, Evan Gattis, yet another guy that put his job in jeopardy on a previous club.

And then not long afterward, the Astros announced that they had signed Carlos Beltran to a one-year deal.  Returning to the team where his career took off, the prodigal son had returned.  This is a guy that went off on the Braves and Cardinals in the playoffs in 2004 years before hitting free agency and bounced around the rest of the league making money.  However, the elusive championship remained a pipedream for him, as he was on the Giants on an odd-numbered year, and his closest call ended in 2013 ended with defeat in the World Series.

Regardless, I looked at the acquisition of Carlos Beltran as a perfect piece for a team like the Astros who were brimming with young talent, many of whom were Latino, and would probably benefit greatly from an accomplished Latino veteran like him.

Needless to say, I picked the Astros as my World Series favorites prior to start of the season, because I felt like the veteran leadership added with guys like Carlos Beltran and Brian McCann were the components that could really push the Astros over the top, because their pitching was already solid and practically unchanged from the years prior when they were already knocking on the door.

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The death of an era

Pour one out soon: AOL Instant Messenger announces it will shut down permanently in December after 20 years of being the penultimate forefront of instant messaging over the internet

Honestly, I don’t think anyone is really ever going to fully understand the importance of AIM in my life, or that I am going to be legitimately sad when it logs off for good on December 15th.  And this isn’t so much of just another “something from Danny’s childhood is vanishing for good” kind of emo as much as it is a genuinely true passing on of something that was very integral to my daily living for nearly two full decades.

I still have my original screen name for when I was even still an AOL subscriber for $19.99 a month, and I logged on through their software on a 2400 baud then eventually a 33.6 kbps modem, and have been using it as recently as 2015.  Back when I originally made it, I didn’t even grasp what an ISP was, and didn’t realize internet access even existed outside of AOL.  I also remember knowing it tied up phone lines and made accessing my house over the phone nearly impossible for whenever my sister and I weren’t fighting over computer time and someone was parked at it, chatting away on the world wide web.

Through AOL did I come and go through my tremendous anime weeb phase of my life, but along the way I made lots of internet friends whom I’d shared countless hours and nights chatting away with and role-playing Ranma 1/2 characters in cleverly-named Members chat rooms.  I had like two different internet girlfriends at various points, one of whom I’d actually met in person once at an Anime Expo which was a completely different rabbit hole, but the point is, I learned it was entirely possible to meet, make and maintain real human relationships over the internet in spite of all the endless skepticisms that it was full of creepy terrible predators.

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