shooting the internets

We come across a lot of deeply troubling, weird, and magnificent stuff while shooting our friends on XBox Live: pockets of horrifying racism, humorous and inexplicable gaming tactics, and — most of all — really, really funny gamertags. Here's a sampling of the best we've found.

“The New Math.”

WHAT WE SAW:

Who the fuck knows, dude.

WHAT IT LED TO:

A discussion of Russell Crowe’s infinitely better alternate-universe band name, “30 Odd Foot of Taints.”

And the following mathematical conversation, edited and culled from memory:

BRIAN: … So—and I mean, look, I’m not gonna lie to you here, I’m completely taking a wild guess, I’ve never gone down there and measured or anything—I mean, I’m thinking an average taint is what, three inches? Four and a—

NATE: All right, look. We’re gonna need to talk about something else now.

BRIAN: DUDE, I JUST WANNA DO SOME BASIC ARITHMETIC HERE. I mean, so … look, your average taint is what, three inches? Four? Three and a half? So that’s … uh …

NATE: Well, so four taints to a foot is what you’re looking at.

BRIAN: Right! Thank you.

NATE: Incidentally, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stood there at Home Depot trying to figure out how many taints’ worth of lumber I’m gonna need.

BRIAN: No lie. Remember when the U.S. was gonna go metric, but then when we found out it’d mean we couldn’t measure things in taints anymore we trashed the whole deal?

NATE: Totally.

BRIAN: So like … hmmm. Wow! Thirty Odd Foot of Taints is like 120 people!

MAT: Give or take a few, since it’s Thirty Odd, and not just Thirty.

BRIAN: Oh, good point.

RICHARD: So I think it’s only fair to assume that Russell Crowe would have that 120 people come with him on tour, knowing that.

BRIAN: Right, exactly. They could all line up on stage at some point during the show.

RICHARD: Well, naturally I think they’d line up taint to taint.

BRIAN: Man, that would be awesome, though I think physically impossible.

RICHARD: Oh, I think not. With the taint, nothing is impossible.

— fin