XX: Pax, Videogame Metal, and Snore Wars

As of this sentence, you have been forewarned that I am currently a bubbling crock pot of resentment and crankiness.

This is due to a combination of sleep deprivation, my roommates and their uncanny ability to snore at each other, and the totally awesome PAX EAST. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Pax is a three day convention that's more or less a party for nerds thrown by the two guys from Penny Arcade. There are videogames, card games, board games, tabletop games; seriously guys, it's nuts. And to top it all off, there was videogame metal, including Metroid Metal, Arm Cannon, and Powerglove.

After two nights of crappy sleep, we get back to the hotel. At this point I had been reduced to nothing more than a shambling revenant motivated only by the pursuit of sleep. So, dear readers, I'm sure you can understand what it felt like to lie helpless while two of my friends in my hotel room had what I've playfully dubbed "Snore Wars" while I was trying to sleep.

You lie there in bed, waiting for sleep. You're truly exhausted and you can feel Somnus gently tugging your conscious into the night's Plutonian shores. Just as you're about to drift off, you're interrupted by a particularly violent snore. You stay there, motionless, hoping that the snoring passes and allows you to sleep.

In time it does indeed pass, but you're not out of the woods yet. Not even five minutes has to pass before my other housemate picks up the snoring where the first left off. This pattern continues back and forth for the good majority of the night. Honestly, it's like their unconscious psyches conspired beforehand to make me go apeshit on everyone at Pax.

So now that I have this as context, I'd just like to say that I am completely exhausted. At 8 AM in the morning, on the third day of a convention in a row. If I make it through the day without punching some uppity nerd's lights out it will be a Herculean feat.

Viva la metal, and never undervalue the precious gift of sleep.