A/N: Unfortunately, this site prevents me from changing text font/color so all chat logs will have to just be in plain black :[ So sad, anyway, on with the story!

The calendar on John's wall was marked on his birthday, April thirteenth. But, there was another day marked with a large red 'X.' The ninth of April was supposed to be the arrival date for the highly touted SBURB Beta launch.

It had been three days already. It was beginning to become a sore subject with him.

The cakes which were still scattered about the bedroom were beginning to look almost appetizing to John, but there was no way he was eating any more. He was sick to death of cake! He had been eating it all day and had no intention of clogging his sylladex with it either. The cakes would remain where they were for now.

As he pushed down the thought of partaking in more birthday cake, John heard a notice from his computer. Someone was messaging him.

He sat down at his desk and pulled up his screen. This is where he spent most of his time. He had even decorated his desktop with some rather handsome Ghost Busters wallpaper which he made himself. He was really proud of it.

His desktop was also littered with various programming project files. He was so bad at programming, sometimes he wondered why he even bothered with it.

The Pesterchum application was flashing. Someone was trying to get in touch with him.

John opened the chat application to see that only one of his chums was logged in. He'd sent him a message.

- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 16:13 -

TG: hey so what sort of insane loot did you rake in today
EB: i got a little monsters poster, it's so awesome. i'm going to watch it again today, the applejuice scene was so funny.
TG: oh hell that is such a coincidence i just found an unopened container of apple juice in my closet it is like fucking christmas up in here
EB: ok thats fine, but i just have one question and then a word of caution. have you ever seen a movie called little monsters starring howie mandel and fred savage?
TG: but
TG: the seal on the bottle is unbroken
TG: are you suggesting someone put piss in my apple juice at the factory
EB: all im saying is don't you think monster howie mandel has the power to do something as simple as reseal a bottle?
EB: try using your brain numbnuts.
TG: why did the fat kid or whoever drank it know what piss tasted like
TG: i mean his reaction was nigh instantaneous
EB: it was the 15th day in a row howie mandel peed in his juice.
TG: ok i can accept that
TG: monster B-list celebrity douchebags are cunning and persistent pranksters
TG: also fred savage has a really punchable face
TG: but who cares about this lets stop talking about it
TG: did you get the beta yet
EB: no.
EB: did you?
TG: man i got two copies already
TG: but i dont care im not going to play it or anything the game sounds boring
TG: did you see how it got slammed in game bro?
EB: game bro is a joke and we both know it.
TG: yeah
TG: why dont you go check your mail maybe its there now
EB: alright.

John stood up and went to his window. From his room he could see a view of the front yard. Hanging from the tree was his tire swing. In a kid's yard, a tree without a tire swing was like a proper gentleman without a monocle. That is to say, he could hardly be considered a terribly proper gentleman at all.

And there, beside his driveway, was the mailbox. The little arm-swingy-dealy thing or whatever it's called was flipped up! (What the hell is that thing called anyway.) The red flippy-lever thing meant he had new mail, and that meant the beta might be there!

As he was about to hurry downstairs, he heard a car pull into the driveway. It looked like his Dad had returned from the grocery store. 'Oh great.' John groaned inwardly. 'He is beating me to the mail.' Forget it, he would check the mail later.

If he went downstairs to get it, Dad would likely monopolize hours of his time. So John decided to chill out up here for a while until the dust settled.

Sometimes he felt like he was trapped in his room; stuck, if you will, in a sense which possibly bordered on the titular.

John's chum was pestering him again. The clockwork of friendship turned ceaselessly, operating the swing-lever dealies of harassment in perpetuity!

Whatever. The dude could just hold his damn horses.

He walked over to the CD rack and browsed through his selection of games. He'd put countless manhours into this assortment of quality titles. But nothing was striking him at the moment.

Returning once more to his magic chest, John pulled out Colonel Sassacre's Daunting Text. He decided to consult with the Colonel's bottomless wisdom.

Good grief this thing was huge. It could kill a cat if he dropped it.

But to really dig into this hefty book, he would have to captchalogue it. He was not sure he was ready to logjam his other artifacts beneath it just yet.

Musing over the idea of taking the massive tome, in a momentary lapse of concentration, John accidentally captchalogued the fake arms again.

Frustrated with his mistake, John sat at his computer and pulled up Pesterchum. He felt that the client should reflect his mood change in some way. He didn't think the situation was quite dire enough to go all the way to "RANCOROUS", so "BULLY" would have to do he guessed, clicking on the button to change his mood display.

At the bottom of the screen the flashing icon indicated that someone was still pestering him. He had forgotten. John figured he may as well answer him.

TG: is it there
TG: plz say yes
TG: maybe you can play with TT shes been pestering me all day about it
TG: shes mackin on me so hard all the time i start to feel embarrassed for her
TG: i mean not that i can blame her or anything
EB: yes, it is understandable because you are really attractive. i am attracted to you.
TG: thank you
EB: jk haha.
EB: no, i don't have it yet.
EB: my dad has the mail and i guess i have to go get it from him and see if it's there.
EB: and i've been busy spending all afternoon shitting around with my stupid sylladex.
EB: it's so frustrating.
TG: whats your modus
EB: what?
TG: how do you retrieve artifacts from it
EB: oh. like one at a time i guess. and if i put too much in, something falls out.
TG: stack? hahahahahaha
EB: what is yours?
TG: hash map
TG: my bro taught me a few tricks he basically knows everything and is awesome
EB: what the hell is that?
TG: you should probably brush up on your data structures
EB: i guess.
TG: did you at least allocate your strife specibus
EB: no.
TG: it could free up a card for you
TG: plus let you attack stuff whenever things get too hot to handle
TG: which is never
TG: what have you got
EB: well, i've got a hammer but it's trapped under some arms.
TG: wow you really suck at this dont you
TG: just get rid of the arms and then allocate the hammer to the specibus
EB: how?
TG: i dont know just use the arms on any old thing and see if it works

John got up and figured he would give his friend's advice a shot. He stuck the fake arms in the cake that was sitting on his bed. This definitely made the cake at least 300% more hilarious. He was sure Colonel Sassacre would know the precise index of elevated hilarity.

He then checked the back of his strife specibus for the kind abstratus he had in mind for it.

After allocating his strife specibus with the HAMMERKIND abstratus, he moved the hammer from his captchalogue deck to his strife deck.

EB: ok, i did it.
TG: hammerkind?
EB: yeah.
TG: ok that will be the permanent allocation for your specibus
TG: i guess i should have mentioned that
EB: uh...
TG: hope you like hammers dude!
EB: yeah, that's fine i guess. i can't imagine it's going to be all that relevant.

Now that John had some space in his sylladex to work with, he figured he might as well start squandering it immediately.

Ordinarily, Sassacre's ridiculous book would be way too heavy to carry around in any practical way. He guessed maybe this was one respect in which the cards presented some convenience.

Lying on his desk was John's copy of GameBro magazine. The cover featured the SBURB logo with the caption, "Why the 'Game of the Year' or whatever isn't as good as some other stuff I like that's better."

He flipped open to the feature article on the much anticipated game.

So ok.

SBURB is this game that a lot of cats seem hella pumped of. And this beta is sitting on my desk for review, so I'm like, yeah man I'll write something.

But I don't know. I'm like so this is about houses or some noise? That's fine, I'm sure that's like fucking dynamite in a handbag for some brosephs. But all I'm saying is, when do you get to thrash anything? While you're playing house or some shit, are you ever in jeopardy of getting mud on your doll's dress or whatever from busting out, and I quote, "the mad stunts all wicked up-ins?"

Know what I'm saying, Bro-Yo Ma? I didn't actually play this game, but I gave it 1.5 hats out of 5 hats to keep it real.

At this point I'd like to give a shout out to my boy Denis who was over the other day. We were going to chill in front of The Dark Knight and he was so psyched of it y'all.

So this one time he was leaning against the screen door and the shit popped open, and the back deck was wet and he slipped down the steps and broke his thumb on the lawn. It wasn't a long fall, but hey I guess a thumb bone wasn't made for supporting the brunt of a huge useless tool against wet grass. We never did watch Dark Knight on account of Ron trucking his bawling candy-ass girth to the hospital.

But it's cool, I still got another watch in me Brotel Rwanda.

Rolling his eyes, John shut the magazine and captchalogued it. It might come in handy if he ever needed something that burned easily.