Wednesday, 3:41 p.m., Pacific Standard Time:

I just went over to Stosh’s desk and asked him to take the Fyreball's logo for tonight’s Humpday and create a Top News Image of the lil Burning stick figure having something done to him to indicate pain, suffering or humiliation. The image he produced ultimately wasn’t work safe and looked like, well, things we’re not allowed to talk about here on Bungie.net.

This week we’re playing a bunch of ex-Bungie dudes and assorted other Skittles from one of those new fandangled start-ups on the Internet, Fyreball.

What is Fyreball? In their own words: “Fyreball is a fun alternative to email to share rich content from the internet with your friends.”

No but seriously, what is it? The bookmarklet app, which you need to register at Fyreball to access (go here, to do it), essentially takes whatever page you’re looking at, creates a message with that page’s content and then zips it off to your Fyreball friends list or you can make it Public and viewable by the entire Internet.

A series of complicated, long, old-fashioned ASCII  pre-game internal mails went around with the guys playing on the side of glory and truth. The ones that are safe for work and won’t compromise anyone’s integrity or relationship with their significant other I’ve posted below.

Luke Smith
Sent: Wed., 2/27/08 2:57 p.m.
To: Eamon, Joe, Jon, Frank, Lars
Subject: Humpday against Fyreball

They have an OKish, but partially crap-filled team.

Pete Parsons
Kathleen
Michel
Michael Evans
Jeremiah
Senator Mike
Deacon
Ian

Joe Tung
Sent: Wed., 2/27/08 2:58 p.m.
To: Eamon, Luke, Frankie, Lars, Jon
Subject: RE: Humpday Against Fyreball

LOL Michel and pete HAHA HA this is gonna be awesome

Frank O’Connor
Sent: Wed., 2/27/08 2:58 p.m.
To: Eamon, Luke, Joe, Lars, Jon
Subject: RE: Humpday Against Fyreball

 Explaining that Michel is MUCH better than Pete will be sort of meaningless.

Joe Tung
Sent: Wed., 2/27/08 2:58 p.m.
To: Eamon, Luke, Lars, Jon, Frank
Subject: RE: Humpday Against Fyreball

I’m going to hump Michel’s sweet, white -blam-

Frank O’Connor
Sent: Wed., 2/27/08 3:01 p.m.
To: Eamon, Luke, Lars, Jon, Joe
Subject: RE: Humpday Against Fyreball

I would hit it so hard, that whosoever could pull me out of it would be declared the rightful King of England.*

Eamon McKenzie
Sent: Wed., 2/27/08 3:05 p.m.
To: Frank, Luke, Lars, Jon, Joe
Subject: RE: Humpday Against Fyreball

Well, I guess Jon will continue his unbeaten streak. I can’t even think up a proper analogy for what it would be like for them to beat us. Neither Pats vs. Giants nor miracle on ice begins to describe the skill disparity.

Frank O’Connor
Sent: Wed., 2/27/08 3:05 p.m.
To: Joe, Lars, Jon, Eamon, Luke
Subject: RE: Humpday Against Fyreball

 Jeremiah is good.

Joseph Tung
Sent: Wed., 2/27/08 3:06 p.m.
To: Frank, Lars, Jon, Eamon, Luke
Subject: RE: Humpday Against Fyreball

Err. Maybe if he’s standing next to you.

http://www.bungie.net/stats/PlayerStatsHalo3.aspx?player=Ninja%200n%20Fire

Frank O’Connor
Sent: Wed., 2/27/08 3:13 p.m.
To: Joe, Lars, Jon, Eamon, Luke
Subject: RE: Humpday Against Fyreball

 a) shut your whore mouth, or I will sew it shut with your own pubes.

b) Yeah, he just fully admitted that he can’t play for -blam!- and he’s been too busy leveling his WoW character.

c) Cookiecups is allegedly their best player, period.

Luke Smith
Sent: Wed., 2/27/08 3:14 p.m.
To: Frank, Joe, Lars, Jon, Eamon
Subject: RE: Humpday Against Fyreball

No mercy.

Frank O’Connor
Sent: Wed., 2/27/08 3:14 p.m.
To: Luke, Joe, Lars, Jon, Eamon
Subject: RE: Humpday Against Fyreball

Game 1

Team Slayer, Valhalla, No Tanks
Tone of Game: Suspicious

“Uh, we don’t really know what we want to pick.”

Up until the moment when those words were uttered, Frank and I believed there was going to be foul play. There was play and at times it certainly was foul. Someone from the Fyreball side selected Team Slayer on Valhalla. The tanks are pretty appropriate in full big Team games, but this was just 12-person Halo so we left the Wraiths in the garage.

Knowing that Michel and Michael Evans were playing seemed to give Joe Tung an almost super human burst of confidence. It was like he got an injection of HGH when it was supposed to be a shot of Lidocaine.  

Final Score: 50-17 (Bungie Wins)
Film is here in slot 19

Game 2

MLG TS v3, MLG The Pit v3
Tone of Game: Humpy

The HGH from last game carried into this game. The morning after the Challenge Frank talked about how it was a more relaxing Humpday “because our competition was so bad, you could just run into battle without thinking and probably win.” Those are the kind of matches where we’re most successful and apparently, where Joe Tung is most successful.

There’s some old, trite cliché about Bulls in a China shop, but that’s more or less what Joe did in this game. After the game he was sure he’d burned out the left click on his 360 controller because of all of the Humping he did. Seriously. He could not keep his crotch off of Michel’s face – that’s been a recurring problem of Joe’s at the office of late.

Final Score: 100-58 (Bungie wins)
Film is here (slot 15)
Joe’s Killtacular is here (slot 20)

Game 3

Nades N Spades, Foundry
Tone of Game: Gettin’ Better All the Time

As the gametypes strayed further and further from standard Halo 3 fare the Fyreballers got better and better. It was sort of like that time we picked totally ridiculous and wonky gametypes to beat SGB Clan, except we didn’t choke like they did!

Nades N Spades is a gametype where you only get points for melee kills or sticking someone with a grenade. Players are constantly regenerating grenades so there’s no weapons to control, nothing to worry about, just running amok, throwing grenades desperately and swinging fists.

The Fyreballers had a lead through most of the game, despite our reliance on Frank’s bizarre skillset – generally the rule with Frank is “the weirder the game, the better he does.” You should see him at SWAT. Maybe someday.

Final Score: 50-47 (Bungie Wins)
Film is here (slot 21)

Check out Fyreball’s side of the story at this public Fyreball, which gives a solid taste of some of the Fyreball featureset. And remember, if you register there, you can do all that with literally one click of a mouse and separate all your hilarious YouTubes, Halo screenshots, Match results, game types, Cat Memes, -blam!- and more from your legitimate emails about werk.

And no, we don’t do “trivia.”

WANT RECON? CODA: Of the folks who register and demonstrate quality participation over at Fyreball via this link, one of them will be randomly selected to receive Recon.

* © Robt McLees