I love the snarky wisdom of Raylan Givens. His "Me and dead owls don't give a hoot" line always cracks me up.

I read Bridget Jone's Diary once. That's how she writes and to this day sometimes my writing will suddenly up and emulate her style.

I think I have a literary STD :(

*reads OP's rant about people who rally against hate talk and trolling

*thinks, gosh, must be an interesting story behind this. wonders if should read story or scour house for pretzels, since stomach now insists upon pretzels

*curiosity wins out over brainwashing-induced hunger and so googles for said story and gets to read these bits about the OP: banned 1 day for "ignoring admins" on TF2-Trader.com servers; multiple bans on FirePowered Gaming for "general exploit of game/map/server", spam in chat/voice, and excessive spam; permabanned for "inappropriate language" on The Retirees servers; permabanned on Mann Co. Trading for "admin disrespect and micspamming"; permabanned on Skial for evading a communications ban after posting players' personal info in the servers (not to mention having been votesilenced repeatedly for spamming/racism); banned under the alias "Jesus hates ******s" for 55 years (because why not?) from StormCraft for "disrespecting server/admins"; permabanned 3x from TF2newbs.com for "being an obnoxious and rude a**hole, slurs"; permabanned 3x from terrobang for "Nuclear douchebag" and "circumvention of the permaban(s)"; permabanned from PGC for "being a horsec*ck"; plus a few forum threads discussing OP.

*thinks self just wasted a bit of time and that story was exactly as expected until reads THIS...

• 15 January 2014 - TF2center.com posts "TF2Center is all about the community, so if you are interested in joining us to help make it a better place, we invite you to become a TF2Center Member. As a Member, you will gain direct access to the core development team where you can suggest, design and implement your ideas. We expect you to be able and willing to contribute some of your time in a specialist skill, such as programming, graphics design, [...] high level competitive league player/admin, or any other skill you feel might be useful. We also accept people who simply spend a lot of time on the site and are always open to helping others [...] Becoming a Member is the first stepping stone to becoming an administrator [...] Additional perks include Priority ban processing[...]"
  
• 20 January 2014 - OP applies to be a TF2center Member. Oddly, he inaccurately states "currently playing in Plat in UGC this season", however, given the timing of his post, it's possible he thought this was accurate at the time.
  
• 24 January 2014 - due to his strong art portfolio (it really is), TF2center approves the OP's Membership

*realizes that amount of trolling TF2center's lobbies see suddenly makes a lot more sense

*is happy to have seen some talented art but is angered by TF2center's shoddy homework/extreme leniency. decides to go find pretzels in order to calm down.

*finds only peanuts. shelled, unsalted peanuts. is now more sad than angry, but decides to share story with community so that at least everyone can laugh at terrobang and PGC's creative ban reasons.

Yup. Maybe he will learn something from this. He should also learn to stop doing these things as well:

Friending higher level players to

• Immediately ask them their age AND race
  
• Follow them uninvited into servers in order to spectate them and then harass them in chat because they aren't playing their main
  
• Challenge them to sniper v sniper mge

Sadly, he's done the above to multiple people.

Also, while we are on the subject of things not to do...Baskl, don't change your name to the name of a player on a particular team and then friend request the lot of them. Whether it's an attempt at being sneaky or is just creepy flattery it leaves a negative impression either way. If you truly, sincerely want to get better at competitive TF2 then you need to establish your own identity, do your best not to further tarnish your reputation, and *shockingly* you need to actually play the game. There are no shortcuts, so you should stop posting on the profiles of higher level players in order to ask them how they "got good". They invested time and energy and, what's more, they didn't whine about it. And why is that? What is their secret? It's probably that they remembered TF2 is just a game and their effort spent felt a lot more like...fun.

I know you can't reply to this, Baskl, and I've long since blocked you on Steam so that isn't happening, but I do hope you'll as least take my words to heart. Maybe in a year or so you'll be someone new players turn to for advice, and maybe you'll look back upon this thread with an embarrassed smile. It's up to you. It always has been.

Well-written, in-depth articles like this and the Platinum Power Rankings need more love to reward authors for their effort and their dedication to competitive TF2 (and to encourage them to continue).

Obviously, when I write "articles like this and the Platinum Power rankings" I am referring to any article that involves Argo, that elusive, articulate coquette.

(Although, seriously, without view counts or frags, comments are the only way to show that these things are appreciated. It only takes a second to type "nice post", "thanks", or "I wish I understood the joke at the end of the article" [if you don't understand it...stay in that happy place].)

For both UGC HL and ETF2L HL, which is nice.

To be fair we've recently had another Penguin on our roster. Best to just view it like you're in the same club as Madonna, Beyoncé, and Raffi. Let's be honest here - who wouldn't want to be Raffi? Futhermore, why hasn't anyone named a team Baby Beluga? Because that needs to happen.

He's the bee's knees.

No, the ESEA client is not something I've ever been interested in downloading. My comment (which was partially in jest) was in regard to how the New Jersey State Legislature is choosing to divide the ESEA penalty. Less than a third for consumer privacy programs seems a bit low. What's more, I'd have liked to have seen that money earmarked for more than just consumer privacy programs. Using some of it to set up resources for people who feel their privacy agreement with an online company has been broken or exploited would be a good investment, for instance.

Also, while it is important that ESEA had to pay for their violations (and be made example of), it isn't actually restitution. Restitution would involve compensating the victims of the their actions. To my knowledge, the only way that can happen is if those affected by ESEA's "unconscionable commercial practices" file a consumer class action lawsuit. Whether or not that would be worth pursuing, however, I don't know.

Actually, his wording isn't wrong. ESEA already had to pay $125,000 and they have to pay $50,000 four times next year. If conditions aren't met over the 10 years, ESEA has to pay $1,000,000 total. The court refers to it as a $1 million settlement: "Plaintiffs and the Settling Defendants (collectively, the "Parties") have agreed to a settlement [...] in the amount of One Million and 00/100 Dollars ($1,000,000.00) ("settlement Payment")[...]From the Settlement Payment, Six Hundred Seventy-Five Thousand and 00/100 Dollars ($675,000.00) shall be suspended an automatically vacated within ten (10) years of the Effective Date ("Suspended Penalty"), provided: [lists restraints and conditions]."

Additionally, it appears as though the person responsible for the actual download of the code onto users computers must pay $60,000 scaled down to $20,000 over 5 years if the conditions and restraints placed upon him are met. He already had to pay $2,500 and must pay an additional $2,500 twice a year for the next 3 and a half years.

Interesting things to note:

[*] If the Suspended Penalties don't come into play - and after their fees and costs are deducted - the New Jersey State Legislature will receive $218,105.66. And additional $100,000 will go to the New Jersey Attorney General for "the promotion of consumer privacy programs, including the purchase of investigative tools and the retention of technologies, consultants, and experts." (OH GOOD, THE VICTIMS WILL BE COMPENSATED WITH THE SWEET KNOWLEDGE THAT NEW JERSEY WILL AVENGE THEM BY ADVOCATING THEIR PRIVACY. THAT'S A THOUGHT THAT WILL KEEP BETRAYED PLAYERS WARM THROUGHOUT THE NIGHT-NO WAIT, SORRY, THAT'S ACTUALLY THE HEAT OF THEIR MELTING GRAPHICS CARDS.)

[*] "ESEA is an online video game subscription company that sells anti-cheat services for popular video games" (MUST BE WHY THEY CATCH SO MANY HACKERS...)

[*] "ESEA end-users pay a $6.95 monthly subscription fee to play ESEA Supported Games on the Company's hosted anti-cheat game servers." (INVITE, WHAT'S INVITE?)

[*] "Once installed, the ESEA Software enables ESEA full administrative access of end-users' computers[...]defendants[...]had full administrative access to all end-users' computers. The ESEA Software enabled Defendants to not only monitor end-user computer activity but also view and upload any and all end-users' computer files[...]the ESEA Software was programmed to automatically capture screen shots of computers, track computer mouse movements, and monitor end-users' computer activities even when they were not logged onto ESEA servers." (ESEA HAS BEEN READING YOUR FANFICTION AND (SERIOUSLY) MAYBE YOUR PASSWORDS.)

I have a feeling there are more interesting things of note to the Settlement, but after a half hour of reading legalese my head hurts. Maybe some braver folks will find more and post them below.

They've reintroduced some Friday tickets into the pool. There are still some available as I write this. If you miss them, keep an eye on the page - they re-add when they cancel scalper orders.

EDIT - 20 minutes later and they are gone. Keep your eyes peeled though - I'm sure there will be more.

Meanwhile, a wild Playing Naked has appeared and seems ready to go: http://www.ugcleague.com/team_page.cfm?clan_id=4472

Maybe now there won't be any Platinum byes.

Thank you for the enjoyable write-up.

Just to update, Noko is only backing up as spy on Blunderful this summer with longtime sub Interests playing Spy main for the season. Hopefully the fall season will see Satan on pyro again, Noko on spy, and Interests and I backing up with Napalm(aka Mr.All-Class).

Shoutout to Penguin's mom.