Serennia Stole my iPod (Re-Blogged)

Serennia Stole my iPod

“The boy stood up. He was the filthiest human I had ever seen. His neck was dark gray, the backs of his hands were rusty, and his fingernails were black deep into the quick.” - To Kill a Mockingbird

So I met Serennia about two months ago at a LAN down the street from my apartment in San Antonio. It was a pretty nifty coincidence because I was interested in attending MLG Dallas running DK/Lock/Druid believing (correctly, I think) that the comp would be very strong come 3.2. Provided we could get an invitation, MoB was willing to send us given the extremely low cost of travel for two people already living in Texas. Unfortunately the MLG admins decided a 5 RMP cluster**** would be more entertaining to watch and we didn’t get an invite. A couple days later a friend of mine (Shouri/Snuggleme) approached me asking if I thought Serennia would be interested in pushing for FGlad, which he obviously was, so we made a new 3’s team and started to climb the ladder.

Now despite trouncing the entire BG with a 90% win ratio, playing with Serennia was pretty unbearable. Everyone knows Serennia’s a nerd rager, but I kind of assumed most of the stories told about him were exaggerated. Let me tell you- they weren’t. After every loss he would hold down his Vent bind long enough to let out a six second exhale and then proceed to nitpick every decision that we made in the game no matter how unavoidable the loss might have been, or that we’ve been playing for hours and just don’t care nearly as much as he does. After we got to around 2700, he insisted we keep playing against 1 point teams even though a lot of them were 2400 cleaves with a realistic chance of winning at least 10% of the time (enough to make queueing a losing strategy long term) and my/Serennia’s Internet occasionally disconnecting. Unfortunately Serennia had leader of the team and we had already paid for transfers, so we didn’t really have a choice but to go along with it. He wanted to play WoW 6+ hours a day, every day, with over a month left in the season.

He also insisted that Snuggleme play 2’s with him, even though Snuggleme hates DK/Druid, just because he wanted to get the title in every bracket. After three losses to Priest/Rogue playing as Priest/Rogue’s hardest countercomp, Snuggleme made it very explicit to Serennia that he was completely done with 2’s. But for some reason Serennia was hellbent on keeping the FGlad title from anyone else, and eventually we came to a compromise where Serennia would be content if Snuggleme and I played together and made an earnest effort to get 1st. Funny enough we went 104-3, including one disconnect, basically proving that it was Serennia that was holding the team back and this fishhead was making demands of us.

So after a week of the hell that is playing with Serennia, we get 2881 in 3’s which gives us a comfortable lead to get the title. Now we just have to sit and wait, get the title, and peace out off Hyjal. We kept our intentions of transferring off hidden from Serennia because he still had team leader and is a shady nutjob with a history of arbitrarily kicking people from his teams. When I mentioned today that this was the reason we had to lie about wanting to play with him in S7, this was his response:

[17:22] serennia: name more than 1 person that ive kicked frmo a team
[17:22] serennia: ever
[17:22] serennia: tigerlady aside
[17:22] serennia: go
[17:22] Zizek: 1 is enough
[17:22] serennia: rofl
[17:22] serennia: you retard
[17:22] Zizek: thats not exactly something normal people do ever

But of course the plan wasn’t that simple. Serennia messages me one day and asks for $120 to pay for repairs on his car. I tell him no, and a couple of days later he messages me at 3 AM asking if it would be okay if he stayed in my apartment for the night. He said his apartment was closed for “renovations” and apparently when his apartment complex does “renovations” their tenants are left with nowhere to stay for days.

I have a mild case of OCD, I’m not exactly a neat freak but sharing my living quarters with someone- even for one night- makes me really uncomfortable. Moreover I have a lot of valuable electronics in my apartment and thousands in my poker account that Serennia knows about. I reluctantly agreed since he sounded really pathetic and said he had nowhere else to stay for the night.

MONDAY

When I picked up Serennia from the LAN, he smelled like living death. It was really unbearable. As if his story that his “apartment” was closed for “renovations” wasn’t implausible enough to suggest Serennia’s actually homeless, walking within five feet of him would remove all doubt. He has one set of clothes- a long-sleeve shirt with khaki pants – that he just wears all the time like Borat. If you’ve seen the YouTube video of someone throwing water on him while he was sleeping then you know what I’m talking about because they’re the exact same. His socks were jet black and the shirt had pit stains the size of his head. Needless to say when he asked to use my bed, I immediately told him no. I was preparing to move to Austin within the week and didn’t have time to delouse my mattress. He slept on the floor and then one long, uncomfortable night later, the LAN opened and I dropped him off.

TUESDAY

I spent that night playing some live poker, and 3 AM rolls around and sure enough Serennia calls me again. I know the LAN closes at 3, I know Serennia is homeless, so I already know what he’s calling about. I decide not to answer and he calls me 3 more times. I go home around 4 and see that he also frantically messaged me on Xfire like 6 times. So now I get to enjoy another uncomfortable night having it on my conscience that I basically left Serennia with nowhere to stay for the night.

WEDNESDAY

I “call him back” at 10 AM the next day and he tells me that he was trying to get a hold of me to let me know that the 2nd place team was queueing that night (they weren’t), and I apologized for “missing his calls”. Fortunately that night I had a true alibi for why he couldn’t stay in my apartment since I was going to be staying in Austin overnight to finalize my new lease and finish my registration at the University there.

THURSDAY

Serennia decides to call me at 1 AM this time, and since I was still showing activity on Xfire I knew I couldn’t get away with just ignoring his calls again. This time I make it very clear to him that I don’t want him staying in my apartment, and I ask him when the “renovations” are going to be finished. He tells me Friday, which just happens to be the same night that the LAN he spends every waking hour has extended hours. I very begrudgingly agree to let him stay since this was apparently the last night he needed somewhere to stay. Before picking him up, I Serennia-proofed my apartment. I hid the power cord to my processor so my computer would be inoperable (I planned on spending the night watching Lost) and moved some of my expensive smaller electronics into my bedroom where they would be out of sight. This included the iPod touch my parents gave to me for my birthday. I pretty much never used it, but I planned to once school started back up again.

Over the course of the night, Serennia was complaining he couldn’t really sleep in my living room so he was going to try to sleep on the floor in my bedroom. It completely slipped my mind that I left my iPod in there, and come morning I was so eager to get him out that I didn’t think to check to see if everything was still there until after I got back. Sure enough, I check the cabinet where I put the iPod and it’s missing. I realized that there was no point confronting Serennia about it because he would just claim that I misplaced it even though I never used it and explicitly remember moving it there less than 12 hours earlier.

Truthfully the cost of the iPod doesn’t really matter that much to me, I have low living expenses and make enough from playing poker online that it doesn’t really concern me. What pissed me off was that it was a birthday gift from my parents, and when they came to help me move I’m sure they probably assumed I sold it because that’s more plausible and frankly less embarrassing than the story that I let some homeless drifter spend two nights in my apartment.

So Monday night rolls around and the LAN is back to its weekday hours. Sure enough Serennia messages me again asking to stay at my apartment again, this time with a brand new story saying that his lease had expired and his old roommate decided to move to Houston so he had nowhere to stay. This is- of course- just a big coincidence that the previous week his apartments were renovating, he can’t stay in his car because it’s in the shop, and he’s been using this LAN for the last month because his computer is being repaired on warranty. This time I have no guilt telling him no, even though he was practically begging me. I told him straight up at this point that I’m not an idiot and know that he’s lying, and really has no place to live. You can read the full transcript here (http://www.geocities.com/snuff_out/serennia.txt).

Amusingly he claims he has “plenty of money” and that if he finds a place his parents will cosign for it. When I ask why he doesn’t just stay with them, he says in truly dramatic fashion that there’s no time to explain and logs off.

Fast forward to today, I confront Serennia about the missing iPod and (as predicted) he denies it.

[17:24] serennia: and then we come back to the point of who would ******* buy a used ipod with new boxing, software, or components
[17:24] serennia: no boxing*
[17:26] serennia: even a ******* pawn shop requires all packaging im pretty sure and they pay 1/3 retail value which would be an amazing $50 if you say it was worth $150

Nevermind what he’s saying is just blatantly stupid and people steal iPods all the time (Chris Hansen even did a series about it!). I made no mention the iPod was taken without the charger. He knew without me telling him even though he claims to know nothing about it. When I brought up this inconsistency his story, he went off on some ad hominem tangent about things Zecks and Ohnoes said about me two years ago (as if I would still care).

I think we all underestimated just how ****** up Serennia really is. In one of his previous blogs (http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/World-of-Ming/Proven-Fact-The-Average-WoW-Player-is-a-Complete-Scrub), he hinted that he attends school , but I don’t see any way that that’s possible considering the LAN he lives at has shown him playing HoN every hour of the day for the last two weeks. In case anyone’s wondering, you too can view the SERENNIA TRACKER here (http://www.goxgaming.com/). Click on Status and you’ll see him right there at trusty computer #1 all day, every day, no job, no school, barely living off the meager paychecks Ming sends him.