Lately, I have found that I pretty much LIVE for Uber-Weeks. Christmas has become petty and annoying, and I always give more than I get. Birthdays nowadays just suck a big hairy wanker. The gifts mostly stink and I get older. Nothing good there. Nope, Uber-Weeks are really my only fun, annual, outlets of wicked awesomeness.

What IS an Uber-Week, you ask? It's basically a four or five day vacation where all one does is eat pizza and junk food, and drink lots of Red Bull in order to stay up all night, every night, while playing a console Role Playing Game from start to finish. Which, as anyone who's played one lately knows, RPGs usually last between 30 to 40 hours of actual gameplay (which is what the experts would call "a shitload of time"). Über-Weeks are basically a pig-out, nocturnal gaming marathon, and my God are they fun. But, there are rules and regulations by which you must abide. There are reasons for these rules though, as they make your experience much more enjoybidible than it would have been without them. I've been having at least one Uber-Week a year since my freshman year in college, and I've come to perfect them and turn the whole idea into an art form. You must follow my prescription for maximum sticky enjoyment.

Below I will lay out the Uber-Week rules for you, and I will also let you read part of my journal of my most recent Uber-Week (aka Uber-Week 2004, #2). Follow the rules, avoid my mistakes, and you too can relish a week of pure, unadulterated RPG insanity that you probably never thought possible. Enjoy!

(Rossman note: The photos taken on this page [well, the ones obviously taken by me] were shot at around 5AM on the fourth all-nighter, with a pair of digital binoculars... Couldn't find a real camera to save my lifeless life. The fun is in trying to figure out what I was taking pictures of. Yay!)

Rule #1: Set up time for your Uber-Week

This may sound simple enough, but it does require planning. Make sure you can use vacation time, or call in sick, with no major repercussions (you don't want to get into trouble or canned over something as truly pointless as this, do you?). Base your Uber-Week around a weekend too, therefore you only need 2-3 days off from school or work. My first four Uber-Weeks all took place on either Thanksgiving week (back when my school was on quarters and we had the whole damn week off), or sometime over Christmas break. This was tough on me, since both of those breaks could have been used to get some extra Benjamins at my job at BallBuster Video. But, this is the only real sacrifice I've ever truly made for the sake of an all-out, spectacular week of sloth.

Holiday weeks are still the best time for me to plan for a Ü-W, but if you can get away with a random Thursday and Friday or a Monday and Tuesday (and, if necessary, Wednesday), you should be okay too. The double bonus of setting something like this up on or near a holiday break is two-fold (duh). First of all, your boss (or teachers) will rarely question you about your days off if you request a few days before Christmas. And secondly, the TV is usually only filled with shitty reruns, so you won't be missing much if you play on through when the newest CSI would have been on. Plus, as a bonus, all of your friends (if you actually HAVE any... Which is doubtful if you can blow 4 to 5 days by being a gaming hermit and not have anybody asking for you or wondering if you've died or anything, loser) will be busy with their "in from out of town" family and friends, and so they won't bug you to go to the strip club or play strip poker, or strip quarters with them throughout your "me time"... You don't really have any friends, do you?... God you suck. As for your OWN family through all this... Well, fuck 'em.

Rule #2: Make your home and your playing conditions comfortable before you begin

This may sound stupid and chore-ish, but it really adds to the atmosphere and feeling of the whole Ü-W. A clean house/apartment, and clean, comfortable clothes allow you to concentrate fully on the game without any distractions (your phone should already be unplugged and your friends and family should already be warned that you either don't like them, you are dead, or you are highly contagious for the next few days). And you don't have to go scrubbing the tub and hosing out the garage, you fucktard. Just vacuum and maybe dust a bit. Oh, and clean up the bathroom and especially the toilet in case you overdo Rule #4 your first time out. Everybody always overdoes Rule #4 their first time out.

Rule #3: Research and buy a good game

This isn't a chore. If you're any kind of gamer you should already have in mind the next big game you'd like to play. Now just remember, the point of an Ü-W is to complete something... To accomplish a mindblowingly grand task... To begin and end a storyline of epic proportions. RPGs are perfect for this, but a good action/adventure game (think Zelda) would fit the bill as well. Sure, playing something like HALO 2 for four to five days can be fun, but it's not very rewarding. And don't tell me that HALO 2 has a "story mode," we both know that's a lie.

So, you go online to all of your fave game sites and see what the pro and amateur reviewers have to say about the games you're interested in. The amateur ones usually see things closer to how you do, which is a LOT more than the people who get paid to bitch about playing games. Fuck them. Try to find a "game length" posting if you can. This can come back to bite you in the ass, especially if you slack off and break Rule #5.

Rule #4: Stock your place with junk food and caffeine

After the quality of the game, sustenance is the second most important part of the week that you need to plan for. Buy lots of junk food and soda, but no beer or alcohol. You're trying to play through a 30+ hour loooooong and twisty plot. You can't do that while blitzed off your balls. Trust me. Uber-Week 1998 was pretty much ruined that way.

During your Ü-W you will need to constantly gorge yourself on snacks and sweets, and you will need an ever-present Coke or Red Bull by your side. At about the third night of a flipped internal body-clock, with enough artificial stimulants to explode a healthy rhino's pancreas, you should start to see and hear things. The characters in your game will probably start to talk directly to you, and your sofa may start enticing you into resting your sagging head on its big, soft, cushy pillows, that may look like supple breasts by this point. That's when you know it's time for another shot of Jolt cola and a pr0n break (see Rule #6).

Rule #5: Sleep all day, play all night

Well, not ALL day. But the point of this exercise IS to play all night. You know, flip your internal clock on its gay little "stay awake when the sun's out" head. Ü-W's are designed to make you experience something different. Don't go nighty night like a pathetic pussy pansy penis plucker at midnight, or even 3 or 5. You MUST AT LEAST see the sun rise every morning. But don't get lazy at this point and sleep from 8AM to 8PM... Once again, you can sleep 12 hours in a row ANY weekend you want... Unless you've got kids, but then I don't think you'd have the time to pull an Uber-Week out of your ass if you had spored offspring. Well, unless you got kids but were lucky enough to NOT get them in the divorce after your trampy wife left you because of your continued tradition of putting together Uber-Weeks despite the fact that you had kids... But that's a gimme.

The first night is usually the hardest to get through, even with plenty of caffeine. This is because you've probably been up since 6 or 7 on the morning you started. Staying up 24+ hours in a row after a beatdown at the office or at school is always tough, but hang in there. It gets easier, but not by much. Remember, I said "no oversleeping" during a Ü-W. Try to only get 4-5 hours max of shut-eye per day. Trust me, it may be tough (especially after your first 24 hours awake), but the euphoric feeling you get from doing this will only heighten your experience. And it's a legal "euphoric heightening" too. And this is different from being drunk, as you'll still be able to play the RPG well, and read/understand the complex plot that is sure to spill out of the TV and all into your puffy-eyed head. With booze you just end up drunk, giggly and stupid... At least I do. If you're an angry-drunk you'll just beat the shit out of your PS2 and pee on the disc... At least Carl does. Neither is good.

Rule #6: Take breaks

No way around it, you will need breaks in your night in order to make it the whole way through. Take every opportunity to stuff your fat face with food and drink (Hey, why not? It's only once a year). And, if you need to, feel free to look up a little online pr0n to keep your mind fresh and to get your blood pumping to other parts of your body. Just don't get too caught up in what you find online. The goal of the week is not a whack-off contest, it's to finish a video game. Always keep that in mind.

You may also watch a little TV if you'd like. But nothing more than half-hour increments. You don't want to get too involved in the old boob tube... Speaking of boobs, go check out some more web sites. Thaaaaaat's a good, horny boy.