settling an old score

I can't even begin to imagine the number of hours I've put into Street Fighter II during the course of my lifetime. Both at the arcade and on someone's Super Nintendo, I've mashed buttons with the fervor of a rat trained to ring a certain bell at a certain time to get rewarded with a tiny cube of cheese. But I've never defeated M. Bison.

I'm not talking about all the variations of Street Figher II like the turbo version or the extreme version or whatever others there were. I'm talking the original OG version that only had like 10 characters you could play and then three more would appear who you couldn't play, but had to beat the shit out of.

I still don't know what the game was about. There seemed to be some kind of story going on. I guess the 10 or so characters all had a beef with Bison, and from what I've been able to surmise, as I haven't read any of the manga or seen the anime, or the crappy-ass American live action movie, this Bison character wasn't the nicest of guys. I do know he held up in Thailand with his buddy Sagat, and I think it's safe to assume they were transporting or somehow manufacturing illicit substances. And from his attire, I think it's also safe to assume that Bison was some sort of "general gone rogue" and had a whole bunch of military might behind him, and since he weilded such immence force of numbers, the local goverment couldn't do anything about it, so a group of scorned individuals had to take matters into their own hands to mete out vigilante justice. The only thing that doesn't make sense is why this group decided to battle each other on their way to whooping Bison's ass instead of teaming up into one mighty force of elite warriors to crumble this villain's corrupt empire.

So I'd been working for 800 days straight, and after sending the magazine on Sunday, we had another magazine to send by Tuesday. We sent it around 6pm on Tuesday, but I still had unfinished business. My office had recently acquired a standup OG arcade version of Street Fighter II, which had been serving as a tension-breaking / procastination-enabling device over the long hours of work we'd been slogging through. With work behind me, I stood at the machine with a clear sense of purpose, and with the help of Chun Li, the strongest woman in the world, I served Bison something fierce with a series of quick flying kicks, tosses and palm thrusts. I dont' remember the last time I'd been so pleased with myself. Ms. Li had avenged the death of her father, and I had closed out a chapter of my life, albeit a pointless chapter. I threw my hands in the air, gave a hearty "woo hoo," then promptly left.

I took Wednesday off. My first day off, I think, since I got back from San Diego. I woke up with a ranging hangover, because my friend and a pregnant bartender tried to kill me. I've been going to this place way outside of the downtown metroplex that's chock-full of precarious townies, old folk and sassy bartenders. The pregnant lady took care of me though. She sent the bar back down the street to get me some Carl's Jr. because I hadn't eaten all day, and the ample supply of Jagermeister she was feeding me had taken its toll. She also gave me water, and I remember vowing, though I hope I didn't say it to her, that I was "a-gonna marry that girl." Of course, someone had already beat me to the punch and gotten to the baby-making, but I believe the vow was more out of thanks for the free booze she was giving me than some cosmic love thing.