My Fantasy LCS Picks AKA Rambling no One Else Gets or Cares About

As most of the people that read this blog know, I am pretty big into esports, particularly the League of Legends scene, and one of the things I really enjoy is the Fantasy LCS. It is essentially like Fantasy Football, but for the League of Legends Championship Series. (LCS) Players enter into a league and at the beginning of the season/split draft a team and compete with each other on a week to week basis. Each team consists of six players (one for each position in a team and an additional "Flex" pick) and one team on a starting roster and there are three sub positions available for players to draft in additional players to shore up potential weaknesses in their team. Participants in the fantasy league are also limited to picking only two players for each position since certain positions are worth more points. It would be like trying to draft a team in fantasy football made entirely of quarterbacks. It just doesn't make sense. Now that you have a general idea of what Fantasy LCS is you are ready to have my overwhelmingly intelligent picks explained to you. I'll start from the top (lol wordplay) and go down the list giving brief (hopefully) explanations of why I choose them for my team. The full team list can be found here if you want to put faces to the names I'm throwing out.

For my Top lane pick (get the wordplay thing now?) I've chosen Quas of Team Liquid. Quas is a versatile top laner who is capable of fitting into whatever role his team needs him to play. Quas can play team fight oriented mages like Lissandra, Rumble or Lulu that rack up the kills or beefy tanks such as Gnar, Renekton, and Sion that distract the opponents while his Korean carries clean up the fight. He has intelligent teleport play, but with Piglet's tendency to split push himself it shouldn't be seen as a surprise if Quas is often found grouped up with his team ready to get into the mix. I expect that for the most part Quas will be providing a healthy stream of assists to keep his fantasy score high.

Moving into the jungle I've got myself Jankos of team Roccat, who just might be the best jungler in all of Europe with Svenskernen of SK gaming being his only real competition. (Shook is simply not consistent enough to be the best.) Pair that talent with with one of the rising stars of Europe in Nukeduck and you have one of the strongest mid/jungle pairings in Europe. I expect early kills with smart snowballing from the Polish jungler.

Whether you want to admit it or not TSM fans, your team lives or dies based almost entirely on the performance of the Danish superstar Bjergsen. While this might be considered a weakness by some, I wouldn't worry to much about it yet since Bjergsen is one of, if not the best players in North America currently, and there is actually an argument to be made that he is just THE best in NA right now. The Dane is famed for his incredibly strong laning that has netted him many solo kills on his opponents and his ability to almost always get ahead of the enemy allows him to make plenty of big plays which mean plenty of fantasy points for me. Bjergsen is so good I planned my entire fantasy draft around him and Forg1ven who I will touch on next.

Forg1ven (yes it's spelt with a 1 and not an i, just pronounce it Forgiven) as I mentioned just now was a pick I planned my entire draft around. A couple of people in the draft with me suggested that this was my "Sleeper" pick. I don't really understand how anyone can really think he is a sleeper though, Forg1ven was the shining light on an otherwise dismal looking Copenhagen Wolves last year, and this year he's been put into a much better team with SK gaming. Forg1ven has just as much talent for League as Rekkles who is very often stated as being the best AD carry in all of Europe, but Forg1ven has something that Rekkles simply does not. An aggressive playstyle, and to top it all off he is now paired with one of the best minds in the game in nRated. These two together have both the brawn AND the brains to back it up. Forg1ven is going to lead the charge for both SK and myself all the way to the top of the standings.

Last year I refused to pick any players from Team Solo Mid (TSM) on the simple reason that I didn't like the team. Now that I've moved on from that childish mentality I've gone ahead and picked two players from their roster. Really that's all I have to say about Lustboy though, I picked him up pretty late into my draft, but he is a very good support player playing for what I think will be a very successful team. What could go wrong?

The sixth slot is designated for fantasy players to have a "Flex" pick where they can but a player from any position in allowing a fantasy team to play two tops, two mids etc etc. However since Mid laners and AD carries get the lions share of points almost everyone just picks one of those two to double up on. For myself this is where I've taken a bit more of a risk by picking up Keane of Gravity. Keane is a risk not because I don't know how good he is, I know that Keane is a very good player. What I don't know is if Gravity is all that good as a team and with the way fantasy points are earned you need players to be on winning teams if you want to succeed. Keane is my riskiest pick-up and even then I'm not that worried. Gravity can't fail completely can they?

The seventh and final starting spot on a fantasy roster belongs to a team and I've picked up the boys in blue, Team Liquid. This team has an insane amount of hype around them right now, and I won't lie, I've bought right into it. Liquid looks incredibly solid with nearly every player on their roster having been a proven player in some aspect or another. The only unproven player is Fenix, their mid laner. While Fenix doesn't have too much experience on the bigger stages of play nearly every other pro in the scene has spoken highly of his skill so I wouldn't consider it anything to be worried about. Everything points to Liquid having a very successful season, and to top it all off their playstyle is very methodical taking every objective possible as to not allow an opponent they've gained an advantage over the chance to get back into the game. This play style will convert into lots of fantasy points for me. WHOOO!

This is already an incredibly long post so I'll try and get through the subs part of the team quickly. My subs are picked with the intention of being solid players that I can put in if some of my starters are facing difficult teams that particular week. Wickd of team Elements is ready to sub in for Quas and Helios of Winterfox can replace Jankos if needed. I also have team Fnatic on my bench just in case they actually turn out to be as good as they played in the first week.

I think it should go without saying that I think I've drafted a good fantasy team, and more importantly that my team is better than my opponents. My picks should show my superior knowledge of the League of Legends pro scene and I hope I win this Fantasy league convincingly. If you actually made it to the end of all this rambling let it be known that I love you and hope you had a great day today. Peace buds.

Obligatory picture of my Team Liquid shirt to show my support!

New Research Shows Fundamental Flaw in 1-10 Scaling!

Recent statistical analysis of the classic 1-10 scale of attractiveness has revealed a potentially game changing idea. Chief researcher of made up things and known truth speaker Jonathan Tollestrup made a shocking discovery while trying to pay attention to a particularly dry lecture last week. The discovery that absolutely no one uses the numbers one, two or three when asked to describe the attractiveness of a particular person. "It's baffling to think that absolutely no one seems to think of people as drop dead ugly." Eilidh Ward of shamanistic fame told The Critical Canuck. "Like come on, some people just don't got it, you know?"

With this new revelation Mr. Tollestrup has announced that a new system will be put into place to replace the fundamentally broken arbitrary system of describing attractiveness to your bros. The proposed changes would remove the numbers one, two and three from the system but leave the rest of scale intact. The alteration will take effect precisely 26 days from today in order to secure a smooth transition between the two distinctly different systems.

During an exclusive interview yesterday with the famed Chief researcher, it was revealed to The Critical Canuck that even with the delay the transition may be difficult for some. "Beginning the scale at four and ending at ten will completely alter our understanding of who is and is not a total bombshell. Those who thought they were reasonably attractive at a seven will have to learn to live with the fact that they are actually just  an average looking person now." After finishing the press conference researcher Tollestrup was greeted by hundreds of grateful people who were looking forward to being objectified in a more accurate manner.

Several critics of this new system have already noted that with these changes that there would be a forty percent decrease in available options for people to describe how good-looking another person is. Resident expert on rating people Kim Passey expressed her faith in the creative nature of those who use simple numbers to describe the attractiveness of a person. She even went on the record to state, "They are the most original and clever people I've ever met, I'm sure they will think of something. Maybe decimals?" Critics would quickly reply to Ms. Passey's comment noting how it made a lot of sense and that they had no further concerns.

Analysts of human attractiveness are anticipating a surge in reports of attractiveness as the new archaic and pointless system replaces the old archaic and pointless system.

My Night seeing Take Me to the Tempo and Going Nowhere

Last night I had the great privilege of attending a Young Single Adult (YSA) event in Edmonton which featured many talented musicians in Edmonton and I thought that I could take some time and write down my thoughts about the event. First and foremost it should be mentioned that I thoroughly enjoyed myself at this event as you can see in the picture below. There is something about going to see live music that just brings a lot more energy out of me. I don't know why I don't see more live shows or things of a similar vein because it's just so much fun! It should also be noted that all of the groups that performed were doing covers exclusively, and while I would have preferred to hear a few original pieces it isn't something one should expect when you know going in that they are cover bands.

That is me drenched in sweat. NO REGRETS

The night began with a group that I never actually got the name of so I will be forced to call them Those Three Guys that did Acoustic Stuff or TTGTDA (Pronounced teh-guh-da if you wondering.) Now there is no doubt in my mind that these guys were quite good, I couldn't help but feel that their set really didn't match up with the rest of the night all that well. Even at YSA dance events were slow dancing is pretty common five songs or so straight of it doesn't really match up as well as one might hope. Their front man for all I could tell was shining though, as much as the slick pants he wore to the event I'd go as far as saying. That's really all there is to say about this group though, very talented, but might have been better suited for another event. Nothing you could really fault them for. 

Cover band Going Nowhere took the stage next and almost immediately made their mark. Fast-paced and high-energy defined most of the set list which I personally felt was the most well chosen of all the groups. Joe Kastendieck shredded the guitar throughout the set in what I thought of as one of the best performances of the night. The bands cover of Fix You by Coldplay showed some great versatility but Beverly Hills would be my personal favorite song of their set. Overall this group was fun, energetic and I hope to see many more performances from them and even though there were times I couldn't really hear the vocals over the rest of the band it didn't really matter since I was too busy having a blast to care. 

Closing out the night was Take me to the Tempo and while they kept with the high energy theme Going Nowhere brought one couldn't help but feel a bit more of a professional sense here. Coregraphed dancing from Front-woman Shawni Tolman and Zachary Ayers displayed a more invested effort and it paid off in spades. I loved the energy this group brought especially from all those they had perform with them that were not part of the core group. Special shout-out to Brother Mandin who made me deeply regret having stopped playing saxophone for a short time before getting back to the dancing. The token slow song Take me to the Tempo was Aerosmith's Don't Want to Miss a Thing, and this song might have shown just how much darn fun this group was as myself and the girl I was dancing with couldn't help but continue to belt along with the song, something that would never had happened back in the awkward days of Junior High that most people remember that song for. If I were to launch a complaint it would be that like Going Nowhere there would be occasional issues with vocals being drowned out, primarily the back up singers seemed to be largely unheard for me. That is an incredibly small smudge on a otherwise brilliant performance. 

Now it's much easier for someone to really shine when they are surrounded by performers that just aren't as talented as those around them. The real test of a performer is to shine even when you are surrounded by people who are also very talented and Kris Strangeland and Shawni Tolman passed this test with flying colours. Kris brought an superb level of play that took several of the bands numbers to the next level. Shawni brought an energy that simply would not be matched. Her presence on stage was one that was totally unafraid of what could happen on stage and that was most noticeable with the bands rendition of Jamiroquai's Canned Heat from Napoleon Dynamite fame. Jamiroquai is a voice that I would under normal circumstances advise people from trying to cover but Ms. Tolman pulled it off without a hitch and even looked like she was having more fun with it than the crowd. 

All the groups that performed gave splendid performances and I want to personally thank them for giving me one of the most fun nights I have had in quite a while. Unfortunately Going Nowhere and Take me to the Tempo do not have Social Media pages for me to link you to, but if you ever hear about these groups giving a performance somewhere make sure to do yourself a favor and check it out! Peace buds. 

Over the past few months I must say that I've grown to dislike this blog challenge more and more. There have been a bunch of times where I'll have an idea for a blog post, but not write it simply because it wasn't part of the challenge and I was already so far behind I can't possibly justify not writing a post for the challenge. This led me to also feel a need to have truly great ideas for challenge posts since I had put other ideas on hold for them so they had to be "worth" it. All in all it led to me writing nothing and that sucks. So I want this thing to end, but I am stubbornly determined to see it through. What is a man to do? My answer is to take the remaining 15 topics and just give you the speed round answers. To give some sort of flavor variant to this I'll limit myself to 140 characters for each question. Basically if I can't tweet it I have to shorten it. lets go

#15 Popular notion society has wrong. 

The freind zone is a massively overused term that has people use to deal with rejection. 9/10 times shes just not into you. Deal.

#16 Where my name comes from

First I was ClanToll, then this blog Critical Canuck came along. 3 C's = TripleC shortened to TripGG. 

#17 Favorite movie. 

Slightly harder, usually I just say Episode 5 of Star Wars. However I'm going to go with Shawshank this time around. 

#18 What I would say to a 16 year old version of me.

Why are you so dumb? Could you just like stop for like 5 minutes? Yeah that'd be great.

#19 Death Row Meal

Big steak and peppercorn sauce, poutine with more meat on the side, ice cold cherry coke to drink. Potato skins and wings to open. No green. 

#20 My City

Edmonton is a cool place, I actually like the cold, plenty to do, public transport is nice, it is kinda far from like everything else on earth though.

#21 Three Fears
Not fulfilling potential I have. Becoming too jaded. The new Star Wars might suck.

#22 Nicknames
JJ, Jonny, Mr. JT, Papa Jon, Harry Potter, idk prob missed a few.

#23 Favourite Pizza
Homemade Pizza made by my own momma, can't beat it.

#24 What makes me Unique
Idk, I guess I'm more ok with making an idiot of myself than most people. Mostly cause I really don't care what people think.

#25 Perfect 1st Date
Prob home cooked meal at my/her place, then some activity where plenty of conversation can occur. Good conversation is very important.

#26 10 Random songs
Ok can't keep the 140 character thing here. 1. Bend and Break, Keane 2. Going to the Ceremony, Kid Cudi 3. Problem, Arianna Grande 4. Make the Money, Macklemore/Ryan Lewis 5. Bodysnatchers, Radiohead 6. Volcano, U2 7. Radioactive, Imagine Dragons. 8. Halo 3: One Final Effort, London Philarmonic Orchestra. 8. The Riders of Rohan, Howard Shore. 9. The Way I Am, Eminem. 10. B#$#%, don't kill my vibe, Kendrick Lamar. Nice.

#27 Drugs/alcohol
Don't do drugs kids, drinking and driving is bad. Don't be a moron.

#28 Process of writing
I look at the topic, take a rough idea and write a draft in my notebook and then type it up making minor revisions usually. Post when done.

#29 Being single
It's ok I guess. I'm pretty ok with it, but am ready to find a relationship. Not desperate enough yet to do anything silly.

#30 How'd the challenge go?
Awfully, see 1st paragraph.

WE'RE DONE BOYS. NEXT FEW POSTS WILL BE LAZY LISTS OF THINGS I LIKED/DISLIKED THIS YEAR. PEACE BUDS.

Five Easy ways to my Heart

Man it took way longer to get this post together than I wanted to. Freaking school and things getting in the way man. Anyways I'm going to talk about Five different ways to my heart. Now originally I had thought that I would go about this pretty much the same way I have gone about every other post here, with me going a bit more in depth about my reasoning for choosing certain things over others and not just listing a bunch of things. Today I'm going to cut back on the explanations a bit, down to like a sentence or two, but I'll also include some honorable mentions so the post won't be 1/2 a page. So let's get to it!

First off, Food! Surprise I like to eat! Just like all those other humans on the planet. Simple meals  like X with rice and a sauce are going to be the best use of time to get my attention.

Second, be funny. It's pretty cliche since everyone lists this as something they want in the a significant other, but it's because it's important! If nothing else just roll with my sarcasm and we should be just fine.

Third, try to be cool about my weird little obsession with E-sports. It's not for everyone and I know that, I love it though. If you don't automatically dismiss it I promise to not bore you to tears with 4 hour lectures on "Rotations".

I know it's not me, but I don't got time for photo shopping. 

Fourth, Since you are going to be cool with my strange hobbies, I can be cool with your strange hobbies, but first I need you to talk about them. Don't go overboard, but I can promise to never be dismissive of your hobby.

Lastly on this list I ask that you have decent taste in movies/music/TV etc. There are shows beyond One Tree Hill, music beyond Country and Pop, and movies made by companies other than Disney. Some of them are even good!

Alright we got the main portion of this done, so let's go through a few more honorable mentions, and note that most of these will be jokes so don't get offended if I say something you don't agree with.

#1 Honorable mention! Be attractive.
#2 Don't be unattractive.
#3 Read this blog, share it with your friends!
#4 $$$$$
#5 $$$$$ family
#6 Have an uncle that works for Microsoft/Blizzard/Riot/Disney/Marvel/The President
#7 If you hate the character Tauriel because she's not in the books, go home.
#8 Like birds
#9 Know the 157th digit of Pie and not the other ones
#10 Drink Coke, not Pepsi and definitely not diet Pepsi.

I'd do more but I have class to attend now. I'll be streaming some of the new Dragon Age game and giving some of my first impressions tonight, or something along those lines. That will be at http://www.twitch.tv/tripgg and I'll be going up around 9:30 hopefully and going for a couple of hours. Come by and make fun of me! Peace buds!

My Lottery Winnings

So I sort of fell off there for a bit, but I am definitely not out of it! I've still got the need to give you something to read! (bad rhymes ho!) anyways I'm going to talk about what I would do if I won the lottery. Following some janky math I figured 35 million would be a suitable number to work with for this hypothetical. Now first things first. That is an unreal amount of money right? jeez, hard to even comprehend the idea of spending it all, but I will try for your entertainment. Also as a side note, for the sake of this post we will assume that this is AFTER TAXES pay out. Ok? ok.

The first thing to do when obtaining an massive sum of money is to make sure that you stay absurdly rich for the rest of your life. This for me would involve finding some sort of financial adviser to handle the task of investing the money I have safely and with intelligence. So I turn 30 million of my total winnings over to the task of investing and the likes. I'm not a expert but I'm pretty sure that much invested properly should keep me very rich for the rest of my life rather easily. Now we have 5 million dollars left, and I'd just one more responsible thing before I start goofing around, something simple like making sure anyone in my family has their debts taken care off, which shouldn't even put that big of a dent into my money unless there is some crazy crime debt stuff going on like on TV, but like come on, what are the odds of that? For the sake of numbers we'll say I dedicated half a million to this. I Definitely don't think I'd come even close to using all that but whatever.

What are the odds of my dad being Heisenburg? Zero, it'd be my mom obviously

It seems silly to say this, but I'd also like to move this blog onto a site of its own as opposed to being hosted here on blogger, not that I don't appreciate this service, but I'd like to have it be functioning on it's own. I'd also get some quality design people to come in and make sure it's well built looks nice. It's something that I would really like to have done.

Four and a half million dollars kicking around to just go be dumb with. (#TheDream) Even that is an absurd amount of money to spend. HOW DO RICH PEOPLE DO THIS!?!?!?! oh right yachts and things like that.. nvm figured it out. This is the part I think more people want to hear about since it we all love to indulge these fantasy fulfillment at least a little bit. First thing I would do for fun with my money would be to traveling. My plan for this would be to essentially attend a huge number of E-sports events around the world and  then spend something along the lines of a week after the event to soak in the place I am at. This gives me a solid start in destinations. Now that I'm rich I'll definitely be eating pretty good every night as well, prob not eating out every day, but being able to buy good food to cook for every day is nice. (RIP Ichiban) I'd buy a totally baller custom PC that I would probably have someone with more tech expertise than me set up just to make sure nothing is messed up. A new car would also probably be in order as well, but nothing super fancy. In fact I'd probably just stick with a Corolla, but have it be new. The last really stupid thing I would like to do would be to go to a fast food place, order so much food that they'll tell me that it's going to take like 15 minutes, and then tell them that I'll be going to another fast food joint and I'll be back. I really just want to see the looks on their face, plus with that much food I should be set up to throw a pretty nice party.

This party will require a great venue though, and I'll also want it to be my own place, so I suppose a new apartment/house will be in order. Not a bachelor pad though since I quite enjoy having roommates, I would probably still charge rent on them, but it would be at quite a discounted rate. I'm not really comfortable with just letting anyone free load off of me you know? Another aspect of a new place to live would be that I would have an office. There is something about writing in one's bedroom that I find... less than ideal. It would also give me a good space to continue to goof around and do creative things whenever I feel like it. Hold up. When did it become a priority for me to have space to be creative? I was never like that as a kid. Anyways, I'd stay in Edmonton for at least another year or so, but would be ready to move to a new city as needs be.

I don't have to be really attached to any one place since I won't have any commitments to a particular place. School would definitely become more of a hobby kind of thing, like I'd go just because I want to learn more, but only like part-time and I wouldn't be super concerned with when I graduate, since I don't really need to jump into the job field that early. I'd be there for the pursuit of knowledge and not the pursuit of a piece of paper to get me hired like university seems to be like for most people. Maybe I'd attend schools like NAIT (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology) to learn some of the ins and outs of specific jobs. Cooking classes for sure, things like that.

Lastly, I'd put money into E-sports. Most likely in the form of sponsoring a team since I don't have the know how to run a team, but I want to be involved. With the level of buying power I would have and since it would just be me sponsoring instead or a corporation that could potentially rival sponsors already in place I could probably work with any team/player I wanted to. It's not like there are teams that don't want more money to work with. Personally I'd like to put my money into two specific teams. Cloud9 for sure, I have a lot of respect for their League of Legends team and think the owner Jack Etienne is absurdly smart with how he's running the entire organization. Definitely think he would put that money to great use. I would also like to work with Axiom E-sports if given the chance. While they only operate in the StarCraft II scene, I think the team is amazingly well run and I would love it if they had the resources to expand their roster out. I think it's for the best that I would work with organizations rather than through sponsoring individual players mostly due to my previously stated lack of experience in handling business like this and I would much rather just entrust people, but I would have to go with organizations that are already established and trusted since I actually want the money to be put to good use rather than have it be used in one of those dumb scams that seems to frequent E-sports often. Plus how cool would it be to have something like a graphic for this blog up on a Cloud 9/Axiom Jersey? Only cool to me? Right. Don't care, it'd be awesome.

So try and wrap up this massive wall of text. Invest most of the money to stay rich forever, pay off family debts, buy new house/car, go to school for fun rather than constantly stressing, new place, blog on it's own site, lots of travel and my face on a Cloud 9 jersey or something like that. Peace buds. 

One of My Embarassing Moments

Well this ought to be a pretty easy post to write no? I mean the hardest part will surely be deciding which of the many embarrassing moments from my life to choose from. Just the other day even I managed to walk headfirst into a door on campus, that was awesome, really a superb display of grace and control. Anyone that has seen me play games like Just Dance/Wii Sports and such have also received a lot of first hand experience in me embarrassing myself. There is one thing that really sticks out in my mind though.

What my brain was saying, too bad I didn't listen. 

This is a story that some may have heard recently, but I don't think that they will mind hearing it again so soon. I was on a double date that my friend Brad had set up. The date had been going decently well I think. People seemed to be enjoying themselves and all was well and good until very late into the date. Then I goofed up. You see I am not that good with remembering names, and I had in fact forgotten the name of Brad's date. I had gotten by just fine the rest of the night by using general terms or addressing the entire group at once, but near the end I got cocky.

somewhere in the deep recess of my mind I had apparently remembered her name. I didn't even matter at this point since the date was practically over, and the smart thing to do would be to not take that risk, wait until Brad had dropped her off and then confirm with him, since the worst that could happen there would  be he laughs at what an idiot I am, but he already knows I'm an idiot so it doesn't matter.  I instead made the bold and idiotic choice and just asked her a simple question and addressing her with her name, Jessica. Suffice to say her name was not Jessica. Luckily for me no one got angry, rather everyone there burst out into hysterical laughter. At this point I have no real choice but to own up to my stupidity and own it. Apparently it's now a joke between us all that I just call her Jessica anyways. I'm not really all that fond of the joke to be honest, but as long as other people get a kick I guess I can keep reminding myself of what an idiot I am. It's Karma really. The moral of this story though is to laugh at your embarrassing moments and don't let them haunt you. While I might like it if everyone pretended it never happened, it's better that I do remember so I don't do it again. Hopefully... Also screw sliding doors man, those things are totally out to get us all! You have been warned!!! Peace buds.