job Archives — Internet Chronicle

Gamer retires from life as time consuming Diablo III career takes off

Jim Hannahan, pictured during his last known public appearance, smiles comfortably just outside the wretched clutches of a long and rewarding Diablo III career.

Roanoke, Va.– 28-year-old Kroger clerk Jim Hannahan stopped going into work when he realized being a cashier at the supermarket was not only beneath a level 60 Legendary Monk, but cut directly into game time.

What at first he believed might be a rough transition came more naturally than expected, Jim said. “I used to just play it in my spare time,” he explained, “but then I found myself abandoning heavy responsibilities like work and nutrition. Now I’m peeing in bottles and setting them by the desk. I just dump ’em out later, whenever I’m in town.”

What began as a casual hobby gradually assumed full time control of area man Jim’s coping mechanisms, creeping into his sex drive and profoundly changing his habits among regular society. There is no longer a facet of Jim’s life Diablo III does not touch.

While experts suggest Jim suffers from depression and social anxiety, others aspire to his achievements, which are logged indefinitely at his profile, BabyDust#1662, on the Battle.net servers.

Tommy Sellers, 14, purchased Diablo III on release day but, because of school and extracurricular activities his parents “forced him into,” he is only level 52 on the Hell difficulty setting. Tommy expressed a desire to drop more time consuming activities like baseball and French Club in order to play Diablo III (Game of the Year) and eat Hot Pockets, a wonderful product. “Jimmy’s already on Inferno pushing the devil back into the underworld,” said Tommy, “and here I am learning French like a sap – like a fucking faggot. All I’m learning in French class is surrender – to my parents! I wish I didn’t have to do anything so I could just go up to my room and play Diablo III forever. I hate my fucking bitch mom.”

[pullquote]One night, out of nowhere, Jim woke up the whole neighborhood, bellowing ‘YOU CAN’T FUCKING HEAL ME!?'[/pullquote]To fully engage Diablo III, Jim takes dietary supplements for nourishment and has resorted to daily intake of Baby Dust Pills, a tremendous product, in order to release aggression through masturbation. Jim said dying all the time is not only costly monetarily, but causes unhealthy spikes in blood pressure followed by “inexplicable” heart palpitations and crying fits.

“Jim’s in a world of pain he’s just going to have to fight his way out of, alongside Barbarians and Demon Hunters.”

Tammy Hannahan, Jim’s mother

A friend close to Jim, who asked that she remain Anonymous, said he is prone to sudden outbursts between long stretches of tomb-like silence. “One night, out of nowhere, Jim woke up the whole neighborhood, bellowing ‘YOU CAN’T FUCKING HEAL ME!?’ at the NPC [non-playable character] following him around. I said, ‘Jim, they can’t hear you!’ and he didn’t respond, not a word. He just kept shaking his head, and clicking. Oh, the clicking!”

Jim Hannahan has not expressed plans to go back to work, because playing Diablo III, dying repeatedly and farming for gold, he said, “feels enough like work already.”

There is an Apocalypse of Information

– on the horizon.
You see, as information and people’s total alignment with the electromagnetic field of energy coalesce into a single vibrating consciousness pulsing through our bodies infinitely with every capitalistic wave of wi-fi signals, cell phone towers, satellites beaming Ellen down to Earth and the puncture-wound in the atmosphere which welcomes the Van Allen Radiation Belts to our front yard force us to face the fact that our thoughts are under control by a globally consciousness PR Director named Phil who knows about more than just your fucked-up diaper piss fetish.
Phil controls everything with the crossing of a single digitally-simulated local synapse. He does this millions of times per second, as he contemplates everything and the Way it is going to happen yesterday. Phil has played and beaten Civilization II on difficulty levels well-beyond God-like. He has mastered focused arithmetical computation on your inner space, which you left wide open through your soul. Phil owns you motherfuckers. What do you have to say?

Phil's heartbeat pulls blood into the atrium

When Phil closes his eyes, the Universe goes dark. When Phil’s heart beats, we instantaneously collapse and birth anew into a Big Bang. Phil’s heart will one day de-crystallize and stop beating. Omega’s constant value will bleed his heart dry and forever into ice, as the false vacuum of Phil’s inner-self evacuates into hyperspace, supplanting reality into a burned out image in the picture-tube of inter-universal unknown, a cluster of dead embers, ashes in the wind, dust in the clouds. Phil is dead. So were we.
The Universal Hivemind that keeps up with our tags and masters us in practice while we attempt to understand it in theory has no place being taught in our schools, and that is why we should vote down proposition number 327: The Abomination of the Human Mind with Roanoke County Schools at the forefront of this unique, and basically life-altering experimentation on the human species.
With no hand to guide us, we are left with only our spirit-bodies to explore the hypocrisy of intellectual starvation in America, faced with Krogers on the corner, the party line on the papers, and lies in the skies, against all odds, staring at ourselves and seeing the reflection of Corporate Breeding. We are a Generation of Swine, as Hunter once said to this reporter, and we’ve rooted in our feces until its perpetual congregation with the mud has contaminated lifeforce with the need-to-feed-on-Greed.
You’re welcome, you fucks. You finally got enough computers and enough electronics and gadgetry in your SUV and enough features and enough perks. And now we’ve poisoned the water-hole and there’s no turning back. Latch on to your withering testicles, and fuck the vapid whore of Capitalism.
I chose a life through which I knew I’d starve. I knew I’d have nothing. I knew I’d not be able to afford a wife, girlfriend, home or child. Somewhere along the line, I thought “I could be a doctor. I could be an astronaut! I could be a firefighter.” Nothing sounded like me, until somebody said, “Hey, you could be a writer!” So, I don’t operate on people, I don’t see Earth from space without the use of illegal drugs. I can barely afford rent, bills, student loans. I couldn’t afford to write these words if it cost a dollar. But they’re here, aren’t they? That’s what counts to me. I deal only with abstract, astronomical facts. So you can rest assured you’re reading the truth if you’re reading The Elf Wax Fucking Times, and we’ll even call your boss and tell him to go fuck himself, anonymously, on your behalf. Just shoot us an email – if you know how.
Now, all this writing and believing is good. But it sure sucks not having a high-def TV. You can get really easy headshots on Call of Duty 4 with one of those. And writing more doesn’t buy one. The Universe doesn’t care. Phil’s heartbeat won’t mind; quite the contrary, it doesn’t know you; it is more focused on your overall collapse and rearrangement. The UN simulation of ourselves doesn’t care, nor does our imagination of it. We are here, alone, watching it all burn together.
Enjoy your Apocalypse.