Baby Jeff got me!

Rules of the game:

Once you're tagged, you have to write a blog with 10 weird or random facts about yourself. At the end, you choose 10 people to be tagged, listing their names. Don't forget to leave a comment that says, "You're it" on their profile and asks them to read your blog. You can't tag the person who tagged you.

My 10 weird facts:

1. My eyes are blue one day, green the next. I have no control over them.

2. I haven't washed my car in three years.

3. I have a birthmarked shaped like Cuba.

4. My feet haven't grown since the 8th grade.

5. At girl scout camp I had to pee, so I pretended to see a snake so the other girls would paddle the canoe back to shore.

6. I get drunk on three beers. Actually I lied. I get drunk on two beers. I puke after three.

7. I skipped Kindergarten.

8. I had a pacifier until I was four years old.

9. I'm terrified of bees, but I've never been stung.

10. I have a Superpower. But it's too dirty to tell you.

tagged:

K Rock
Godfree
Randy
Andrasta
Gypsyfly
W1gg1n
Sara N
Extreme One360
Pxxx Elite Gamer
Love Angel PMS

It was six months ago that I posted a thread in the Xbox.com forums "Looking for Xbox GamerchiX".
 
Since then, Xbox GamerchiX has grown to a group of 750 female gamers in 18 countries. Our collective gamerscore is only a bit over 2,300,000, but what we lack in achievements we make up for in attitude, supportive advice, and a willingness to try new things even if we look goofy doing it. We've got lawyers, editors, web developers, program managers, students, nurses, teachers, soldiers, sailors, and full-time moms among us. Our youngest member is four years old—she and her mom signed up together—and our oldest member is a 75 year old grandmother.
 
I am SOOO proud to be a part of this amazing community of women. Here are my top five favorite things about the 'chiX:
 
1. Their enthusiasm for welcoming new members never fades. Six months and over 700 members later they still post "Welcome to the new girls! You'll love it here! Send me a FR!" Every time.

2. The diversity. They're all female and they're all interested in games. But we've got little girls and grandmas, Europeans and Americans, Democrats and Republicans, girls with piercings and girls with 5 kids, girls in grad school and girls in junior high. But none of them trash on each other or disrespect each other's beliefs or opinions. It's nothing short of amazing.

3. The advice. You ever read that book "The Wisdom of Crowds"? The deal is that a large diverse group of 'regular people' will way more often come up with the right answer to a question or the correct solution to a problem than the supersmarties in a think tank. GamerchiX are happy to advise each other about anything from boy trouble to sick kids to wedding planning, recipes, and technical challenges. And games of course! Advice is usually dispensed with a 'hug' emoticon and an offer to talk it out on the phone.

4. The way they've embraced the GamerchiX manifesto. These ladies take seriously the agreement to not ever talk trash about other women. And they are fully down with the 'we are not pin-ups' tenet as well.

5. They love the guy gamers. I think part of the fear generated by the whole GamerchiX thing is that the boys thought we'd hide away in some bastion of estrogen and make fun of their genitalia. We haven't. Sure we have a chuckle now and again at the dumb stuff lads do, but we laugh at ourselves far more often. We still have plenty of guys on our Friends Lists too.
 
Anyway, didn't mean to get all sappy, but these chix make me really happy. If this is who is raising the next generation, I think we're in great shape.

If you are or you know someone who'd like to join Xbox GamerchiX, send me an email at xlmail@microsoft.com. Subject should be XGX. Please include your gamertag.

 Some XGX stats:

• As of this morning there are 210 GamerchiX
• The Looking for Xbox GamerchiX thread had 54 pages of responses and 35,000 views.
• Our youngest member is 7 years old, the oldest is 56.
• We have members in six countries.
• XGX has spawned two clans: TriXies GamerChix (COD 2) and KillaChiX (Saints Row).

 Xbox MVPs PMS Kitty and DirtyDiva have tirelessly worked with me on this project from the beginning and deserve a huge thank-you for its success.

Wanna get involved? Know a fun female gamer? Drop me a line at xlmail@microsoft.com!

XGX FTW!

There's a lot of talk right now about female gamers and some clans or girls getting attention over others. Well we're starting a group (not a clan) for gamer girls of all ages, all sizes, all platforms and all skill levels. The only thing you need to get in are two X chromosomes!

Here's the GamerchiX manifesto (yes, I wrote it in a shack in the woods)
 
If you play games, youre a gamer chick. Whether youre an Xbox Halo 2 Champ, play RPGs on the PC or Mah Jong Tiles on MSN Games, youre a gamer chick.

Xbox GamerchiX dont talk trash about other women. Ever. When women stop hating on each other...we will rule the world!

Xbox GamerchiX support each other.

Xbox GamerchiX are good role models for young gamer girls.

Xbox GamerchiX are not pin-ups. We're all hot in our own unique way, but it's about the games and the companionship, not T&A.

Does this sound like you? Want to get involved? Shoot me an email at xlmail@microsoft.com. You can be a member of any clan or group, but while you're part of GamerchiX, you don't talk trash about other gamers.

 
Yes, there is a XGX forum icon that I'd love to bestow on thousands of awesome, smart, fun, and supportive chiX.

Matisyahu is the Artist of the Month for June
When I first saw this dude I thought it was an SNL skit. Bad TriXie.
 
GamerSpeak: Game with Fame
Xbox Live community speaks out on playing with Jenny McCarthy, Rihanna and Method Man.
 
Best of the E3 Bloggers
Ooooh... who came out as the fan favorite? I know you're on the edge of your seat.
 
Gamer Spotlight on QuantumMischief
I spelled his gamertag wrong all through this interview. Read it and mock me.
 
Game Detail Page for Marvel: Ultimate AllianceCool games still rolling out for your original Xbox, baby!
 
GTTV's Best of E3 video
I can't understand why Major and I are completely absent from this highlight video.

Coming next week... Play Table Tennis with PMS Mary Jane three Tuesday nights in June!

At first I thought the two things I wanted to talk about were unrelated... but they're actually completely related.

The first is the movie The Da Vinci Code. Yes, it got bad reviews, but I enjoyed it. The wrong things were wrong in the book too from what I recall. i.e. why would a Frenchman leave clues for his French granddaughter in English (pomme would have worked as well as apple).
 
The other thing is that once again the haters are bagging on the PMS clan. This time on Digg.com. I actually got a heads-up on this thread from none other than my matron saint OGHC who told me; "don't worry about it. F*** 'em."
 
Here's how the Da Vinci Code and PMS bashing are related: They're both about women being kept out of power. In gaming as in the church and in politics and in society as a whole. Apparently we're supposed to look pretty and shut the hell up. We need to know our place! how dare we attempt to play with the boys?
 
Here's the logic of these people: 'The PMS clan only gets attention because they're hot.' 'The PMS girls are not hot.' Oookay, so then why are they getting attention? Could it be because they're a huge sisterhood of gamers?
 
The problem is that there are a lot of gamers out there who think they should be plucked from obscurity on the basis that they own MS stock, or they've been playing games since they were five. YES, these gamers are important to us, and YES I have featured over 150 of them on Xbox.com. I don't understand why people get up in arms over the 'attention' that these girls get.
 
You know what? In over 4 years at Xbox.com I have gotten complaints about ONE male gamer I profiled. But EVERY time I publish a story on a female gamer I get flame mail about how I only interviewed such and such gamer because she's a girl. Go look at my Gamer Spotlight archive and count how many girls have been featured. Go ahead, I'll wait. You can start with Esinrada--she was the first. And I believe the latest one was LuLu.
 
I don't understand why the gaming community is so threatened by women. It's not that they're afraid to get beat by them--they say over and over girls don't play as well. And don't even talk to me about how it's just PMS they object to, because it's not. It's women. And it bums me out. We may not be getting burned at the stake anymore, and hooray for us now we can do all the housework PLUS work 60 hours a week in the office. But damn, when I was a little girl my mom assured me that when I was a grown up a woman would be president and girls would be able to do anything.
 
Okay boys, commence flaming.
 

Get your browser pointed to Xbox.com where tomorrow you can register to win tickets to Xbox 360: Zero Hour! What is Zero Hour? It's a thirty-hour launch party with hundreds of gaming stations with hi-def monitors, digital sound, and the entire Xbox 360 launch lineup! You can even play upcoming games from your favorite publishers. What else? Live music, J Allard and Peter Moore, exclusive giveaways, and the chance to buy your Xbox 360, games, and accessories on-site. We don't need no stinkin' midnight madness... we're partying in the Mojave desert!

Check it out!