EXT. WAREHOUSE.

So I am going to write my own list of signs that you’re addicted to games, but the big difference with mine is that every entry will be based on my own personal experience; and since I only decided to make this list a week ago, all of the evidence will be from the last seven days. Nothing made up here; oh no. This list is going to fact the shit out of you.

You know you’re addicted to computer games when…

10. You watch a TV program about gibbons.

It is 8pm. You sit down with your burrito omelette and cheap Bohemian lager, and begin to flick idly through the channels. Nothing grabs your attention, but then who should appear but David Attenborough, swamped up to his neck in a writhing morass of gibbons! You bear a great respect for this seasoned television personality, and soon you are lost in contemplation as you gaze at African mangrove monkeys patiently tapping molluscs against tree trunks, and tiny marmosets seizing grasshoppers in the high rainforest canopy.

Feeling guilty? You should. You just proved that you’re addicted to computer games.

9. You cook food featuring harissa paste.

You’ve never bought this aromatic mix of chilli, spices and rose petals before, because each jar has a four-week edibility window and you have no idea what to do with the stuff. But this week, you bought a jar anyway. Why did you do that?

Several days later, you are reaping the dark rewards of your impulse purchase. The warm harissa and egg salad was delicious; almost too delicious. And yesterday, you roasted a chicken after stuffing its skin with harissa and crushed garlic, then your whole family sat around and ate it, like some kind of pagan eating ritual, except using plates and cutlery and basic table manners.

Is there no end to your addiction? Just sit back and think for a minute. How different would your life have been, had you never discovered harissa paste and, by extension, computer games? So different it almost sodomizes the imagination.

8. Your favourite shoes are beginning to fall apart.

This is a classic sign, but it takes a clever man to spot it. Next time you’re putting your shoes on, try turning one of them upside down. Now look at the sole. Does it seem strangely worn, as if by constant friction? I thought so. This is a very serious situation, and it could ultimately result in you throwing those shoes away. And what else will you throw away, before this is all over? The Radiohead t-shirt that shrank in the wash? A broken plate? Your life?

Yeah, it’s pretty scary when you think about it in those terms. Now step slowly back from the edge and walk away. If you don’t look back, you might still be ok.

7. You find yourself enjoying the works of Gustav Holst.

It is a quiet Sunday afternoon. You relax on your bed, the rousing strains of Jupiter circling around your head, stirring the deep pools of beauty inside your heart. Before too long, your imagination soars away from this prison of flesh we call a body, to dance alone in the great void, lit by the twinkling stars. Foolishly, you have been listening to the music of Gustav Holst, a man known almost entirely for his Planet Suite. Holst’s other works are now largely ignored, making him something of a one-hit wonder.

Do you understand now? One hit. That’s all you crave nowadays, isn’t it.

You are a disgrace to your parents.

6. There is a dramatic sea-change in your masturbation style.

It always used to be socks. But now it’s old boxer shorts. Why would you change now, man? You’ve developed a style through years of practice, and only something deeply traumatic would disrupt that. What’s wrong with socks anyway? Why don’t they caress your tender heart in the way they used to? Everyone knows boxer shorts are just cheap sluts; everyone but you, it seems. You used to be better than this. What changed?

So many unanswered questions; questions that weave around your boxer shorts like a bafflingly enigmatic spiderweb. And you know what lurks at the centre of a spider’s web, don’t you.

That’s right. Computer Games.

5. You cannot decide whether you would hump Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer if you were gay.

One is the Spanish hunk with the heart of gold. The other looks like Quentin Tarantino if he was hot and wore cardigans. Both are such fine specimens of manhood that it’s impossible to decide between them, and it’s tearing you apart. You’re not a big screaming fagmosexual, but if you were, would you spread your legs for Nadal’s raw, athletic masculinity, or be bent over by Federer’s smooth charm?

It’s a choice everyone has to make in the end, but not you. Oh no, you just sit on the fence, like you always have. This is why you’ll never find the strength in your soul to give up games.

And get that thought out of your head. You don’t deserve a gay three-way.

4. You accidentally drop your book, but pick it up on exactly the same page you were reading.

Have you ever studied the arcane art of Coincidence? Some say there is no such thing. Others say different stuff. But one thing everyone agrees on: randomly opening a book to the exact page you were just reading is definitely a coincidence. And it has just happened to you.

But there’s more. Picking up the book, you notice that you have for several weeks been reading The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean, and it dawns on you that The Orchid Thief is an anagram of something disturbingly relevant to your addiction. Just rearrange those letters a few places, and you end up with a supernaturally accurate summary of a life wasted by games. I’m sure you’ve worked out what it is by now. Ready? Ok, say it with me.

CHIEF HOD HITTER.

I believe this point has been made.

3. Your breakfast muesli tastes like raw porridge.

I mean, it should taste like raw porridge; after all, muesli is nothing but porridge oats with a few chunks of random miscellany hefted in. However, today, it tastes an absolute arseload like raw porridge; much more so than usual, in fact. For any sane, rational mind, this is a clear cause for panic.

Logically there can be only two explanations for this. The first is that computer games have reached their final stage of addiction and are now affecting your very taste buds, causing food to turn to ashes in your mouth. The only food you crave now is pixel food, served on an LCD plate at taste resolutions of 1280×960 upwards. Washed down with gameplay.

The second is that you have changed your brand of muesli, which is in fact what you have done. However, we can safely disregard this possibility.

2. You need a piss at 3AM.

What is it about three in the morning that activates your slash gland? Every night this week, you’ve stumbled from your bed with an awkward, ungainly boner, and sat in frustrated silence while you wait for it to subside so that you can get some blessed relief. Why is this happening? You’re not drinking any more water than usual, and you go to the toilet three times before you turn out the light anyway, though you acknowledge this is a bit weird and you should probably stop.

So why this sudden bout of erect desperation in the darkest hour of the morning? To understand, one must know a little of biology. When one is addicted to something (let’s say, for the sake of argument, computer games), one’s body simultaneously hates it and craves it. In this instance, your body is trying to flush the addiction out of your system via the medium of urine. However, it also lusts after the very same addiction, hence your vast, bulbous Game Erection.

Tragically, this problem will stay with you for the rest of your life. This may not be a comfort to you, but hopefully it will be a lesson to others.

Don’t do games, kids. They’ll only make you piss.

1. You murder more than your usual number of swans.

As you’re doubtless aware, there is only so much time in the day in which one can slaughter waterfowl. The morning is out, because you need time to get ready for work and don’t want to get blood and feathers on your uniform. After work, you just want to go home and zone out in front of the TV. So, realistically, there’s only a small window after dinner and before bedtime when you’re feeling refreshed enough for a spot of swan killing. It’s understandable that you’ll only manage eight or nine per week, and no one thinks any less of you for that.

So why, last week, did you murder over seventy-six of the buggers? Was it the massive amounts of PCP you ingested? Or was it games?

There’s no way for science to know. But your heart knows, and that is a much more reliable indicator in today’s cold modern age.

For me, this recently manifested itself in an intense hatred towards the European microstates: those pitifully tiny countries which exist only to deprive me of a 100% score in online geography quizzes.

These nations are POINTLESS and STUPID, and I am going to prove this to you, concluding each entry with a score reflecting how many of my dicks each of these idiotic principalities can, in fact, eat.

Liechtenstein

Never heard of it.

Tiny Liechtenstein forms the filling of a gay sandwich between Switzerland and Austria, and is the only remaining province of the Holy Roman Empire that once spanned The Entire Wooooooooorld*. Liechtenstein is doubly landlocked, which means that all of the countries that surround it are landlocked as well. For a Liechtensteiner, crabs and periwinkles are but the fevered dreams of a madman.

Just imagine a country where buckets and spades are never ever made of breakable yellow plastic, and all they ever shovel is earth.

I am shivering with disgust.

*this fact is bullshit.

Why I invite it to snack on my wangs

You couldn’t really get a more pointless country. It was created in 1719 solely so that the Austrian Liechtenstein family could have a seat in the Reichstag, and as an indicator of how little Jeff Liechtenstein and his descendants actually gave a poop about their beloved land, none of them even visited it for 120 years after it was created.

Liechtenstein enjoys flaunting its many dusky-eyed beauties.

How has it survived so long?

By being lucky enough not to border Germany. According to the history books, after the Holy Roman Empire collapsed, Liechtenstein avoided being integrated into the re-ordered Germany of the 1870s because “no one could be twatted with the place”.

Dickclusion

I must grudgingly admit that they’ve done one thing worth remembering. After World War II, Liechtenstein granted asylum to a contingent of Russians who had fought on the side of Germany during the war. We English, in contrast, deported all our asylum seekers to Russia, where they were promptly sent to the Gulag and killed. Go Britain.

For this reason, while it remains a howlingly pointless country, I am only going to suggest that Liechtenstein consume two of my manhoods.

San Marino

Name’s vaguely familiar…

San Marino, a minuscule mouthful of the Italian Apennine mountains in Italy, was founded in 301 AD by Saint Marinus of Rab, a Christian bishop fleeing the persecution of Rome. With God’s help, Marinus built a republic that would be an enduring bastion of inspiration to all the world’s repressed peoples. And be five miles wide.

One can only hope all the world’s repressed peoples do not attempt to move there at the same time, or none of them will be able to sit down.

In addition to creating a haven free of religious persecution, Marinus did have a slight ulterior motive for founding the country, since he was also fleeing the persecution of a woman claiming to be his wife. Christian eulogies are somewhat muted on this point.

The head of a Vileda Supermop provides surprisingly good ballistic protection.

Oh, San Marino! The place with the Grand Prix, right?

Uh… no, not really. The San Marino Grand Prix is actually held in Imola, Italy. Obviously. Just like the Indy 500 is held in Milwaukee, and the London Marathon takes place on Mars. Do you know nothing of sport?

Then you have something in common with the Sammarinese, since their national soccer team is ranked joint worst in the entire world. Their international record is one of unmitigated shitstormery, with over 70 defeats and only one victory. Their sense of taste is little better: in the most recent Eurovision Song Contest, San Marino gave its highest score to Great Britain. Which came joint last.

According to Google Image Search, this cat is from San Marino.

How has it survived so long?

Because it is so useful! After all, it pays a whopping 0.002% of UN’s annual fees: that’s £1 for every £50,000 spent. In real terms, when the UN buys a new hummer for delivering aid to war-torn cities, San Marino pays for the fluffy dice.

Speaking of war, San Marino does have one saving grace: they are the only remaining country whose army is equipped with crossbows. Fucking crossbows. Oh, and they’re the oldest uninterrupted republic in the world and have stood unconquered in the name of democracy for 1700 years and their army uses fucking crossbows.

Also, they have two heads of state. San Marino may be pissy, but at least they’ve got one more president than America.

Dickclusion

As much as this country gets on my nerves, the crossbows alone are enough to mollify two fifths of my junk. Yeah, I’m an incurable romantic.

Andorra

Isn’t that a kind of sweater?

If it were, it would be a sweater 2.5 times the size of Washington DC, with room to fit 71,000 people. In other words, the kind of sweater my grandmother would knit. This particular cosy overgarment straddles the mountainous border between France and Spain, where it tries its best to be as inaccessible as possible so that no one can be arsed invading it.

At 18 miles wide, Andorra is the least physically ridiculous of our pocket principalities, but that still doesn’t protect it from the insistent nudging of my scrota, mainly because the place is so pathetic. It’s been around since pre-Roman times and was declared a free state by Charlemagne in the 9^th century, yet it still pays a yearly feudal tribute to France and Spain. Perhaps the reason Andorra has never grown a set of balls is that there simply wouldn’t be room for them.

About.com handily provides a free blank outline of Andorra. This is possibly the most useful JPEG ever created.

Why it craves a deep-filled knob sandwich

If the world were a school, Andorra would be the Invisible Kid who says nothing, has no friends and is never remembered. When WWI ended, the Versailles treaty failed to include Andorra because everyone had forgotten it existed, with the result that Andorra tried to declare war on Germany in 1939 only to discover that it already had.

In 1957 Andorra wisely decided that its army (consisting of 10 people, with a budget of 4 dollars per year for ceremonial blanks) would not be needed by the Allies, and declared a ceasefire. The Allies were not too devastated by this, having already won the war twelve years previously.

Nowadays, Andorra relies on tourism and dirty money to survive. It has notoriously louche tax laws, making it a haven for dodgy businessmen, formula 1 racing drivers, and me when Operation Orphanage is complete.

The Andorra-style sink. The most interesting thing ever to have come out of this country.

How has it survived so long?

Because it may well be a coven of evil. Andorra has zero unemployment, which is an intensely suspicious figure, and to add to the intrigue, National Geographic lists Andorran life expectancy as “N/A”, which raises the distinct possibility that the Andorrans are all gainfully employed as vampires.

The tourism website states that ten million people visit Andorra every year. But it doesn’t say if any of them ever leave.

Yeah, it’s pretty. Pretty FULL OF VAMPIRES.

Dickclusion

I am loath to be over-critical of Andorra, for the very good reason that vampires can fucking fly, and I value my haemoglobin.

Also, you’ve got to love a country that eschews a standing army because France has guaranteed to protect it. Now that is cojones.

Monaco

Ahhhh, that ritzy bachelor pad of continental glamour!

Quite.

Monaco means “single house”, which is a fair summation of the size of the place. This miserly scrap of land hanging off the southeast coast of France is the number one destination for celebrities who need to get drunk while wearing large hats. The Grimaldi family has ruled continuously since 1292, when Francois “The Malicious” led the capture of the rock of Monaco while dressed as a Franciscan monk. His malice probably stemmed from subsequent feelings of inadequacy regarding the size of his kingdom.

Albert, Monaco’s current prince, spends the day bumming around in a nerdy fleece. HAVE SOME SELF-RESPECT, MAN.

The population of Monaco is 32,000, making it the most densely populated country in the world. However, there is surely room in there for an extra dick; perhaps even five.

Why its diet ought to be more penis-centric

The geographical pissyness of this country cannot be overstated. It’s a mere two miles long, and that’s measured from end to end. There are several points where you could walk from France, through Monaco, and right to the sea in a mere two hundred metres. And this is an independent sovereign country we’re talking about, with, like, passports and ‘ting. Plus its lack of standing army means it could be invaded by a gaggle of drunk supermodels using their hats as weapons.

How has it survived so long?

The answer, of course, is greed. Monaco is yet another tax haven, and its most successful industry is its casino, which is notorious for money laundering. Yes, it is becoming abundantly clear why these microstates are still permitted to exist, and it’s not because everyone likes small things because they’re cute.

2006: All the dirty money in Monaco is set alight at once, causing a fire bright enough to illuminate the moon.

But there is a menacing aspect to Monaco too. It’s getting bigger. In the 1970s, land reclamation caused a new province, Fontveille, to rise from the sea like some kind of Soil Kraken, and another ward is scheduled to be reclaimed in 2014. I find this deeply disturbing. Monaco may not have an army, but if it keeps spreading like bacteria across the unwashed chopping board of life, it may not need one. One day we may wake up and see Monaco all around us, beneath us, pressing against our terrified faces.

When that day comes, let us pray the Lord smites Monaco for its presumption.

Dickclusion

Despite my desire to go all-out on this ludicrous little nation, I feel it wise to keep all five of my penises in reserve, for I may one day need them to beat off the encroaching horror of the Monaco Land Mass.

Vatican City

Oh, surely the Vatican can’t be pointless?

Most of the world sees the Vatican as the throbbing nexus of Catholicism; the place where all the big decisions are made about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, whether any more could fit on if they were naked, and how we can simulate this using real women. However, most of the world is WRONG.

To understand why, one must travel back to the mid 1800’s, when Italy was nothing more than a collection of city states. The largest and most powerful of these were the Papal States, which wielded great power and encompassed much of Italy, including Rome. However, in 1870, they were dissolved by King Victor Emmanuel II, who needed more space for his whiskers.

The weight of his hair has aged Victor’s face. At the time of this picture, he is four years old.

The Pope was kept a virtual prisoner for the next 60 years, until God sent an angel to grant him a country of his own. That angel was Benito Mussolini. Not only did he create the Vatican; he also gave it the Swiss Guard, the world’s smallest and gayest military force.

“So tell me, what’s a barfingly ridiculous freak like you doing in a place like this?”

Why it needs to gorge on glans

Because it doesn’t do anything. Almost all church business is actually conducted outside the Vatican: doctrine, coordination of bishops, missionary activities and international diplomacy are all handled by institutions scattered around Rome. The Vatican itself is just a place for the Pope to chill without fools getting all up in his grill.

At 0.7 square miles, Vatican City is smaller than Central Park. Fewer than 800 people live there, and all of them work for the church, so obviously the Vatican can’t have a real economy. It’s kept alive by the donations of Catholics all around the world, and by regular guest spots on Cribs.

And as for it being an island of godliness, not quite. The Vatican has the highest crime rate per head of population anywhere in the world. An unbelievable 87.2% of the population committed civil offences last year. Some might claim this was down to pickpockets targeting tourists, but others shiver at the recollection of pissed bishops fucking shit up on a Friday night.

How has it lasted so long?

The Pope remains the only absolute monarch in Europe, and while he hides behind his wall of solid Swiss gayness, there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

The Vatican does have a few cool things going for it, though. Its national bank, for example, has the only ATM in the world whose instructions are entirely in Latin. Also, it’s quite possible that within the walls of the Vatican is a device that can see through time, although it’s equally possible that the man who claims this is a bubbling insaniac.

Dickclusion

I’m sorry, but the Vatican is without a doubt the most pointless country in the world, and neither the Time-View-O-Scope nor the contingent of flamboyantly homosexual soldiers can save it from the full fury of all five of my dicks.

If you would like to read more informative yet wobblingly hilarious historical rants, I recommend Frosty Dog, the history blog by Cracked’s own Mr Gale. This man manages the difficult feat of knowing more than I do about history without being in any way superior to me whatsoever.

I just want to reiterate this point. I am better than Gale.

This list, found at Diablofans.com, tells the story of hell in 600 installments. Intended to catalogue the signs that you are addicted to Blizzard’s popular PC role-playing game Diablo 2, it begins as a light-hearted jibe at addiction, yet quickly becomes a window into the darkness of men’s souls. If you are brave or foolish enough to stare into the abyss, then read on, friend. Read on and despair.

294. You realize that the assassin’s ass is nice

Once again, the immaturity of this list disappoints and astounds me. This is supposed to be a thoughtful and sober exploration of addiction, yet time and time again we creep sordidly back to sex. How sad. This is compounded by the fact that the assassin’s ass is actually not that nice. It’s low-resolution, there aren’t enough frames of animation, and the pallid skin tone may be to some people’s tastes, but certainly not mine.

These people need to get a life.

324. You go to your friend who is black and say “Hey Paladin” (not being racist)

Just to clarify here, the Paladin is the only black character in the game.

326. You paint a red bar on a slab of wood and when you punch someone, you paint black on it to represent a health bar.

Useful, but impractical. To replicate an enemy’s health bar in real life, you would need to hold this piece of wood directly above his head while punching him with your other hand. You would also have to pause after every punch in order to paint some more black on the piece of wood. This would have the following consequences:

• You would lose every fight you ever engaged in, and would become the laughing stock of your school or workplace, derided by all of your teachers, managers and erstwhile friends.

• You would probably get paint on your hand.

Therefore, the person who wrote this entry is either lying about having done this, or he has a really painty hand. Either way, I do not wish to know him.

390. You become president and you give all military swords and shields and make them go to Mt Everest thinking its Harrogath

Rubbish. A president would never be able to re-arm the military in such a dramatic fashion because of the vested financial interests of the arms industry. There is much less money in swords and shields than in high-tech laser bombs of the future, and in addition, it is very likely that existing arms contracts could not be cancelled until their stated tenures were fulfilled.

This entry is extremely immature and shows a disturbing ignorance of modern politics.

392. You are afraid of going outside because you are making cookies and Baal and his minions are outside wanting some

In the un-modded version of the game, Baal does not steal the player’s cookies, preferring instead to cover the world in a swathe of unimaginable evil. Therefore, even if Baal were outside your window, it is unlikely that he would intend to steal your delicious baked goods; he would probably just want to kill you and defecate on your corpse. This faulty logic is dangerous, and it’s what gives gamers a bad name.

Plus Baal doesn’t exist.

414. u drink B-52, Blue Kamikazes, Red Death’s n think your gaining life/mana (they are alcoholic drinks) :nooob

I despise this entry because it reminds me of how old I am, and how young everyone else who plays this game is.

The writer, for example, is fourteen years old, and has only ever been drunk on the contents of his parents’ liquor cabinet. Plus they caught him and grounded him for a month, during which he was unable to play Diablo 2. Two of his characters lapsed, losing him an eBOTD, a SOJ, a HOTO, a full IK, and various other acronyms that are all short for “virgin”.

There’s one upside to being so old, of course, which is that I can buy my own beer, and then I can get drunk and look at porn.

Yeah. That’s right. Not so pathetic now, am I.

421. You think a fat woman walking to the opera in a fur coat is Treehead Woodfist (Brute)

This entry isn’t too egregious on its own; after all, Treehead Woodfist is an eight-foot ogre covered in dense mats of hair, and therefore looks exactly like a fat woman walking to the opera. However, the entry is followed swiftly by this one:

424. You see Oprah Winfrey on T.V. (when she was fat) and immediately you think…She looks like Treehead Woodfist (Brute)

What the hell has this person got against opera?! Not content with dissing anyone who should choose to patronise this fine art form, he now starts laying into a celebrity just because her name sounds similar to the oeuvre he so despises. This man has some serious personal issues; issues that have nothing to do with Treehead Woodfist. Treehead is just a pawn in this sad weirdo’s personal war, and I feel bad for him.

Or is it because Oprah is black? Yeah, Paladin Guy, I know it’s you.

425. When in chemisty class you are making a green liquid and when the glass midget comes in the room you throw it at him/her hoping the liquid will explode and kill the damn fallen.

Oh, so we’re ragging on midgets now as well, are we? Is no creed or race safe from your hate? Well, buddy, I sure hope the green liquid was Créme De Menthe, otherwise you have a serious felony on your hands, and I will not be there to pull your ass out of the fire when it’s time to reap that whirlwind.

450. While riding the subway you mimic the monster sounds (Rakanishu,Brutes, Zombies etc…) and the people around you look at you like wtf is your problem. True story: I did that and this girl was laughing at me. But I got her phone number and alot more from her

Yes, you also got a generous amount of mace followed by a thoughtfully penned restraining order. Seriously, I hate it when people try to pretend as if they have had sex with women. IT IS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN.

Never.

How can you know what you’re doing wrong if they won’t tell you.

457. When you walk on to a busy interstate and say “What do I care, this life is softcore!”

There’s nothing really wrong with this one, but I thought I would mention it because “This Life Is Softcore” is a kickass name for an album.

458. When a dog comes near you and you raise your hand hoping Armegeddon comes down on him and misses you totally… yet follows you around!

Hello Mr Animal Hater, nice to have you back! I thought we’d lost you! Moved onto dogs now, have we? Because all the cows are dead or severely traumatised? Wonderful. Your continued liberty is proof that the legal system does not work.

There are people you can talk to about this, you know. Please, seek help before more innocent ruminants die at your hands.

459). When fighting your friends you say “Time To Die” instead of something childish that you would normally say.

IT IS WRONG TO FIGHT YOUR FRIENDS.

478. You kill your brother because you thought he was Fallen One when he held up his knife (true story, was on CNN few years ago)

This entry is unacceptable. You can’t just post stuff like this without sufficient corroborative evidence. At least provide a link to the CNN story plus the transcript of the court proceedings, otherwise there’s no way your claim can be independently validated.

Show a bit of responsibility here. Young, impressionable people are reading this list while searching for a direction in life.

482. When you see blond girl with big boobs, you run away jus incase they yell at you for being close to them (hence the javazons and wf zons in 1.09 in cow rooms)

Any list point that requires an explanation in parentheses is probably not going to be a success. It’s the same as telling the following joke:

A skeleton walks into a bar and says “I’d like a pint of beer please, and a mop!” He is not a janitor or anything, it’s just that when he drinks the beer, it will just pour on the floor because he has no stomach. I don’t know why he would buy the beer, maybe he was lonely and came to the pub for human interaction.

491. You develop an oblivion knight robot and a time machine, so that you can send it back to medieval times and cause melee knights to die at the hands of one of the most cheapest bastards in diablo 2

This entry is not plausible, because while magical robots are within the grasp of today’s scientists, time machines will not be invented until 2046. I’m afraid this is fact.

They will, however, be invented by an eleven-year-old who is terrified of shaving, so you have that part right.

506. You feel weriod that paladin is black (if so, ur also racist :angry)

Oh god, not Jimmy T. Blackhater again. You’re not fooling anyone, you know. Your frantic backtracking is only digging you further into the sordid rut of racism you have ploughed for yourself. Go polish your Luger, Intolerance Boy.

511. You think by smoking drugz you can increase your strength by 100

I don’t smoke drugs. I smoke FOOLS LIKE YOU.

And banana skins.

523). You think your Barb raped ur Zon.

This wouldn’t happen; although a Barbarian beats an Amazon for size and brute strength, the Amazon’s greater agility would allow her to evade his muscular, oiled grasp, leaving him howling in erect fury.

524). You want to rape ur zon.

This wouldn’t happen either; although I possess more than enough rohypnol for the job, I am unable to administer it to a computer-generated character, and Blizzard currently have no plans for a rape-based expansion pack.

525). You rape an acutal amazon.

Whooooah, Nelly! You know you’re addicted to Diablo because you go back in time and sexually abuse a member of a long-dead society? Surely there must be some other kind of indicator? Such as the fact that you play Diablo all the time?

Regardless, as I said, we all need to wait until 2046.

527) Death comes by your door and you bribe him $450 to respawn at your house

Ludicrous. Everyone knows that Death cannot be bribed. To cheat death, you must beat him at a game of skill, such as Diablo, or its popular sequel, Diablo II.

532: you wonder if the choice came and you had to fight one character class for the sake of your life, who you would choose to battle.

Oh come on. Please grow up a little.

It would obviously be the gayest character, which is the Druid.

538. You play d2 in school and library. You bet your ass I do both, not the at school thing, but my friend is trying to

I’m sorry, there appears to be some confusion in my mind as to what the word “both” means, and this is preventing me from fully understanding your entry. Perhaps you are distracted because you are too busy lying about having friends.

554. You develop a sex tab and you get a porn magazine to increase all skills in this tree (a little mature no?)

No, this is the OPPOSITE of mature.

This is UN-MATURE.

555. You think you already casted Iron Maiden on a bully so you think he will get hurt more than you!….(BIG Mistake)

It’s Poor Bullied Boy again. You never have any luck, do you. No amount of fantasising about spells and curses will mollify one iota the huge, hairy fist that slams into your nose every lunchtime, nor bring back a penny of your stolen dinner money.

If only there were a spell that lets you skip the horror of school, speeding up time until you’re at home again, with Diablo flickering on your monitor, your mug of cocoa steaming in your hands, and Patch, your little Dalmatian puppy, resting his head in your lap.

Don’t be sad, Poor Bullied Boy. Patch still loves you, even if no one else does. And while you were out, he demonstrated his love by taking a huge shit in one of your sneakers.

582. You kill your parents because they could be corrupted

…aaaaaaaaand we say goodbye to our friend, the animal-hating psychopath. After murdering the contents of several fields and lynching all of his neighbourhood pets on the same tree, he finally succumbs to the voices in his head and totals his parents with his father’s rifle before turning the gun upon himself.

You know what the saddest thing is? This was entirely due to his addiction to computer games. If he hadn’t played Diablo so goddamn much, his father wouldn’t have needed to beat him, and his mother wouldn’t have got wasted on Thunderbird every night, allowing his grades and his mental state to deteriorate to the point of disaster.

Thanks a bunch, Diablo.

And Diablofans has made me indignant – nay, ANGRY. This thread, “600 signs you’re addicted to Diablo 2“, promises to be something great, something profound, and yet in the end it comes across as nothing more than a bunch of funny stuff some schoolkids thought up during Chemistry.

The whole thing just reeks of immaturity. By entry 100, gone are the perceptive musings about wool sweaters (they’re actually a kind of aura) and shrimp (they are all thralls of the Dark Lord Duriel), and each entry becomes more and more logically inconsistent, with spelling quality crumbling to some kind of pre-mental cavetard level.

Well, I’m going to make a little list of my own. These are the entries that I find the most egregiously offensive, together with point-by-point rebuttals of their many flaws. When this list is finished, I am going to email it to every single person who contributed a sub-standard submission, in the hope that they will feel really shitty about themselves and their choices in life.

All entries are reprinted verbatim.

You know you’re addicted to Diablo when…

74. You put on various old sweatshirts, hoping one of them will be enigma.

Oh dear. We’re not off to a good start. For people who haven’t played Diablo, Enigma is a special type of armour which has runes stuck to it. Magical runes. Therefore, in real life, you wouldn’t try on a sweatshirt expecting it to be Enigma unless you could very clearly see a bunch of runes sewn into it. Wouldn’t a much more plausible entry be “you ask your mother to sew runes into your favourite sweatshirt”? Or is that too gay?

Grow up.

82. When your mom tells you to clean your room you put it all in your stash

Listen. For starters, I am thirty years old, and unlike you, I am a normal, tidy person who has no problem cleaning his room three times a night and then scrubbing himself until he bleeds. Secondly, the “stash” you mention may be a tardis-like cavern in Diablo, but that little box at the end of your bed is barely big enough to hold your stolen porn magazines and Popeye Y-fronts, never mind the entire contents of your room.

This entry is blatantly fallacious and I move to have it stricken from the list.

116: when you buy items from ebay

Oh come on. At least put some thought into the wording of your submissions rather than dashing them out mid-wank. A little more consideration would have shown you the total ambiguity of this sentence. You’re a Diablo addict because you buy stuff from eBay? What, like combs? Posters of Che Guevara with Kermit The Frog’s face? Awkward cardboard boxes full of staircase banisters? THINK. If you had simply included the word “Diablo” in that sentence, people would have been chuckling ironically to themselves and sighing “yeeaaahhh”. Instead, you have merely filled people’s minds with confusion and a deep sense of ennui.

You are a failure at life.

123. You raise bullies you have beaten to a crap from the dead and they become all black

Bizarre racist overtones aside, the most disturbing thing about this entry is the writer’s clear desperation regarding his bullying problem. Punished daily for his Gollum-esque frailty and substandard personal hygiene, this wretched child tragically dreams of exacting revenge using the powers from his favourite game. But it will never happen. He will continue to be bullied in school; he will be bullied at the office, and he will be bullied by his shrewish wife who regrets the day she ever let him touch her Joyous Cleft. And when this meek, richly-odoured lamb finally makes it to heaven, he will doubtless have his pants wedgied by Jesus while the angels stand around hi-fiving each other.

This entry is too close to home. I read this list to be amused, not to be reminded of what a worthless little crap-cannon I am.

I hate you all.

157. You get a hard on while the game loads.

Ok. No problem with this one.

160. You own Diablo 2 boxers.

Factually impossible, because there are no official Diablo boxers available for purchase. Search as hard as you like. Of course, if you’re enough of a sad loser you can try to make them yourself, but it’s probably impossible to draw a convincing hellbeast with a magic marker; and besides, you’ll end up getting a big black stain on your glans which took fucking months to go away.

161. You write songs about diablo. i did this. i wrote it to the tune of weird al’s parody the saga begins. i also did another one. yea

OH WHERE ARE THESE AURAL DELIGHTS I SIMPLY MUST HEAR THEM

168. You gamble $10,000 at a casino, and you get Ancient Armor

This is so ridiculous that it is making me salivate with disbelief.

In Diablo, you can gamble money in the hope of winning good items, such as the aforementioned armour. However, if you gamble money in real life, all you win is more money. You show me a casino in the real world that gives you ancient armour when you score at roulette, and I will show you a casino that is completely full of shit. Also, you do not have $10,000, because you spend your entire life playing a computer game.

201. You develop mana so that when you use a blowtorch, it burns with your energy power.

I… I don’t even know

210. When something bad happens, you simply say “ng” and walk away.

This entry is invalid, because I actually do this anyway. This is because I am an emotional man-child unable to deal with the problems of everyday life.

214. You jump off the grand canyon just to see if ull reapeir in town.

Those who haven’t played the game may be thinking “what is this ‘reapeir’? Some kind of spell, probably; Christ these people are geeks”. But you would be wrong, about the spell part anyway, because this person is actually attempting to type the word re-appear.

It actually dumbfounds the mind how it is possible to spell something so wrongly. Has the writer seriously never written either appear or re-appear before? I mean, he spells the rest of his sentence perfectly, other than a slight stumble over you’ll, so he’s not a total idiot. The only answer is that despite being fairly literate, there are people in the world who have never read the word re-appear before in their entire lives.

This is a troubling conundrum which I must contemplate further.

221: you run around in your city like a mad man saying diablo is gonna kill us all like he did in tristram!!

OH MAN YEAH I HAVE SEEN THIS HAPPEN SO MANY TIMES AND YOU’RE CERTAINLY NOT CRIPPLINGLY RETARDED!!

223: You invade a cow farm and kill all the cows thinking there Hell Bovine, then when a bull comes, you make a town portal because you fear that killing the bull will make the farm disappear

I’m starting to get sick of these people’s detachment from reality. Ok, so it’s theoretically possible to murder a bunch of cows, providing you’re a sick little man-monster who will get raped in prison for the rest of his adult life. However, and I must stress this again, MAGIC IS NOT REAL. Once you have concluded your horrid little killfestival, you cannot create a town portal, because town portals do not actually exist in the real world, because (at the risk of pressing a sensitive issue) MAGIC IS NOT COCKTHUMPING REAL HOLY BALLS.

No matter how addicted you are to a game, it does not give you the ability to transmogrify into a warlock. Why don’t you stop lying and go back to killing innocent animals, you sick son of a bastard.

232. Your over 30, single, working at Mc.Donalds, and live with your parents.

That’s… I’m… shut the fuck up. I live with my flatmate.

Who plays World Of Warcraft.

270. You kill yourself hoping your corpse will rise up from the dead and kill humans

Bitch, please. This one is clearly bullshit. If the writer did indeed kill himself, how the hell can he be writing this entry? Or is he just making it up? I’m getting really quite angry at people’s insincerity. Write from the heart or don’t write at all.

233. You create a shrine all about Diablo in your closet or attic or whereever.

This is pathetic. You could at least show a bit of enthusiasm for your own verbal diarrhoea. The other entries may be complete gibberish, but at least they’re spoken with conviction; this one, however, just gives up with a final desultory “wherever” that suggests the writer couldn’t even be bothered to see his own idiocy through to the end. I don’t think this man has created a shrine to Diablo at all.

238. You place remote mines into corpses and you press the detenator when someone walks by, creating a nasty corpse explosion

Where the hell do you live?! Some kind of post-apocalyptic helltown that conveniently still has electricity and a stable internet connection? Oh no, wait. You’re that cow-murdering guy again, aren’t you. And you’re writing this on your prison bunk, enjoying a few scant moments of peace while Burly Bill sleeps, satiated, on top of your corpulent buttocks.

Also, it’s “detonator”. If you’re going to slaughter innocent people and animals, at least have the courtesy to spell their death-weapons correctly.

239: You make folders of diablo and go in the city to spread them around so more people play diablo2!

Yes, that certainly is a way of making games more popular! By making folders of things and then giving them to people in cities!

Apparently by 2018, all forms of advertising will be folder-based.

54. You see evil everywhere.

I live in Salford.

Also, the numbering of this entry does not remotely correspond to its place in the list, suggesting that the writer has a total disregard for order and appropriate behaviour. Therefore, I declare his submission null, void, and stupid.

268. You tape and glue sharp glass to your body so that you can have a thorns effect on your attackers or bullies.

Although this might actually be an attractive way of defending against bullies, I can’t believe that it’s a practical solution. The amount of chafing and self-injury would make it more trouble than it’s worth, especially during gym class, where most of the bullying happens. And in the showers afterwards. Where you’re naked and helpless, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them.

Nothing at all.

I… let’s stop for a while. I need to go and do a little crying and stuff. I’ll continue this list on Thursday.