Welcome, Ladies and Gentlefolk, to the home of all things Wet and Towely. Here you will find an answer to all your Wet Towel needs, such as "What are 'Wet Towels'?", "What difference would having a Wet Towel make in my life?" and "What the hell are you talking about?" So please, make yourself at home. Stick your feet up on the coffee table, and puruse our blogs, check out the latest and most accurate news stories from around the world, read over the philosophies of Wet Towels, have your problems solved by our Agony Uncle at Colm's Column, and chat with like-minded psychopaths in our forums. Oh, and keep your hands off the silverware!
News
MONDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2008
Possibly the Best News Ever?
At The Wet Towels we see it as our duty to bring you the biggest news, as it happens.To this end we have a gnome stashed in the Reuters Newsroom who intercepts and forwards to us every story which he thinks may be of interest to our many dedicated readers.Very recently we were forwarded the following story:
“Jack Thompson, a well known Florida attorney, has been disbarred from practicing law again by the Florida Bar.
Having brought several cases against the Bar since 1992, and many others against various media products ranging from Comedy Central’s South Park to the Grand Theft Auto cases for which he became so notorious, Jack Thompson has finally been taken to account for behaving in an unprofessional manner.Several complaints were made against him from various individuals representing many unrelated cases, thirty of which were listed in the judgement against him.In a damning statement, the presiding Judge Dava Tunis said of the case:
Over a very extended period of time involving a number of totally unrelated cases and individuals, [r]espondent has demonstrated a pattern of conduct to strike out harshly, extensively, repeatedly and willfully to simply try to bring as much difficulty, distraction and anguish to those he considers in opposition to his causes. He does not proceed within the guidelines of appropriate professional behavior, but rather uses other means available to intimidate, harass, or bring public disrepute to those whom he perceives oppose him.
Jack Thompson, who had been named “Art Censor of the Year” by the American Civil Liberties Union for his case against the Miami Film Festival and their showing of “pornographic material”, has responded by denying the validity of the court and claiming that the “pro-gay, humanist, liberal” Bar has a vendetta against him because of his Christian beliefs.Calling it a “Kangeroo Court”, he outlined his view that it was merely an attempt by the court to stop him filing complaints against several of the Florida Justices, and claimed that “this should be fun, starting now”.In addition to his disbarment, Mr. Thompson has been fined €32,166.9."
Now, The Wet Towels are hardly vindictive people. We’re a pretty friendly bunch of folks who will happily help you out in any way we can, and are not in the habit of laughing at other people’s misfortune. However, we’re also all gamers, and we’ve all felt to a greater or lesser degree the corrosive effect which Jack Thompson has had on the gaming industry, and suffered in small ways from the bad name which he has helped brand us. So no, we do not normally take joy in another’s suffering, but when the person suffering is someone who has spent all his career bullying those around him so he can better fulfil his own delusions of grandeur, or whatever it could possibly have been which drove Jack Thompson to act the way he did, do not expect us to feel in the least bit sorry that the legal system has come full circle to bite in the ass someone who has for more than a decade manipulated it for his own means. There isn’t enough bile in our collective bodies to express how we feel about Jack Thompson, so I skip over the venom spitting vitriol, and get on to our reaction when we heard the news. “Jack Thompson has been disbarred!!!!!!” “OMFG!! THANK GOD!!!” “We need to celebrate” “But how? How can you celebrate something THIS big?” “Hmm...” “Hmm...” “...” “...” “... Cinema?” “Perfect!” “Oh, and we need a cake!” “PERFECT!!!” And so that weekend we met up to get nerdy with it and celebrate the gaming community’s good fortune.
I arrived first (as Jiggs will confirm, I always do), and set about buying a cake, only marginally hampered by the fact that I had no idea what kind of cake the others liked. I tried to call Jiggs, who was driving up with several other human beings, but wasn’t able to get him until he’d actually arrived (making some pathetic excuse about not being able to talk on the phone while driving) and we went en mass to assault the shelves of cake. At that stage we were still one Wet Towel short, with Grimson coming on his own (... nah, too easy...), but we made up for it by having imported a gamer from Germany, a friend of Jiggs’s who for the sake of anonymity we shall call “Pierre”, along with Mikha, Jiggs, and the ever wise Colm. After much discussion (Nuckpang: “I like this cake”. Jiggs: “It looks yummy”. All: “Hurrah!”) It was decided that we should have a chocolate fudge cake, although there was some debate over the size. You see, there was a perfectly reasonable sized six inch cake there which would do us perfectly well, in fact it would split pretty much exactly into six perfectly sized slices. However, I had a hunger, and the only cure was a ridiculously large amount of cake. “There’s a 9 inch one here!” “... Nucky, we’re never going to be able to eat all that” “No, but look at it! Isn’t it just so perfect looking? Look how beautifully round it is!” “The other one is the same-“ “Perfect!! I’m glad we’re all agreed” “Meh, if you want to pay more for it...” “You’re just lucky I’m letting you have any at all!” And so we retired to a nearby McDonald’s, where those who wanted food could get it, and we could wait for Grimson to join us. While we waited we pondered how we could possibly sum up our joy at the events in Florida using mere words, and after some bandying around with ideas someone came up with “Game Over JT”. Despite my concerns that this would be confused with “Game Over, Jethro Tull”, a communiqué I would truly hate to have to deliver, Lisa started carving this into the cake, but with her writing being so very petite we managed to actually fit Jack Thompson’s full name on there, and probably could have fit the first chapter of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe in there too if she’d been so inclined. In the end it worked out very well, with a beautifully crafted cake and photographs galore, even if the strange woman sitting beside me did decide to start asking favours of us at EXACTLY the wrong time...
After some more fun and frolics which involved photographing the cake from every possible angle we reached the stage where attempts to get in touch with Grimson had been so fruitless that we decided to start eating regardless, and tucked into one of the most deliciously justice-infused cakes ever known to man. After much gluttony, pride and sodom- I mean sloth, on our part, Grimson arrived citing car trouble (a well known excuse for sloth- I mean sodo- oh never mind...), and joined in the merry making.
It became quickly apparent that none of us had the iron clad hydraulic powered stomachs necessary to deal with such an enormous influx of chocolate sponge and fudge, so we packed away what was left and departed for the cinema, with me proudly carrying the cake. It was pointed out that food wasn’t generally allowed in the cinema unless you bought it there, but my logic was that if anyone tried to take that cake from me they were going to end up with some small plastic forks stuck in their eyes and their eyes stuck in cocktail glasses several metres away from the rest of their bodies, so good luck to them. As it happened a quick “yes, I’m carrying a cake, what of it?” smile was all that was required to get past the ticket checkers (I doubt €8 an hour was pay enough to question the manic look in my eyes), and we all wandered in to watch Tropic Thunder. I hadn’t got high expectations going into the film, which might have been why I was so surprised when I found it hilariously funny. The humour was just the right balance of lowbrow taste, cutting satire and insane off the wall weirdness, with an award deserving performance from Robert Downy Jr., and some beautiful cinematography to deliver the perfect film for that night out.
And afterwards we went our separate ways, Mikha, Pierre and Jiggs heading off in one direction, Colm going in another, and Grimson, myself and the cake blazing our own trail out into the wilderness. When I got home I offered the cake a drink, and we stayed up for a while talking about what was going on in our lives, having a few drinks more, and... eh... Well, I can’t really remember what happened after that...
Possibly the Best News Ever?
