A friend of mine surreptitiously took this picture last night at a local bar. I was shown this photograph today and it made the very blood in my veins run icy as the Arctic seas. It seemed innocuous enough, just a picture of a man watching a game of darts. Only the man in the photo was me. And yet, not me. For you see, today I was provided with proof of my doppelganger and it sent a shiver of terror throughout me. What shall I make of his appearance?
German folklore would have me believe that the appearance of my doppelganger is an ill omen, forewarning of misery or death. Which of these he seeks to bring me, I do not know. Does the chosen time for his appearance have any particular meaning? Again, questions for which there can be no answer.
Thousands of horrible thoughts run through my head at a mile a minute. Could he be my long lost twin, thwarted in his attempt at devouring my fetus in the womb, come back to wreak the revenge he has so long sought? Perhaps he's a robot sent from the future to replace me, to act as my double while shadowy government organizations whisk me away to fly spaceships for Robert Preston. It's hard to say.
Should a man want to meet his twin? Should I remain terrified or should I take the opportunity to try and meet him? Perhaps we could get together and remake all of the great movies involving identical twins over the years, like Double Impact. Hell yeah! I can be the good Jean Claude van Damme and he the evil.
Regardless of his intentions, I think I will remain cautious. And by cautious I mean over reactionary. I write this from my panic room, located in my bomb shelter underneath the ocean. One can never be too careful, and if he truly IS my doppelganger, he'll be wily enough to find me.
One thing can be said though, he is one sexy bastard.
Much like cinema before them, video games have had to struggle to find their artistic voice and their means of communicating ideas. And similar to movies, various technical struggles and limitations have had to be overcome. Video games started very simply, with no more than a handful of pixels representing your on screen avatar. Couple that with limited game play and it becomes apparent that early gaming was a simple affair. But as technology progressed some companies found new ways of utilizing what was available to try and present an actual narrative with their creation. It is precisely because of the work of the early pioneers that gaming has become as engaging and involving as it has.
In the late 70's and early 80's, video gaming was nothing more than twitch based reflex gaming. Games of the time were almost all comprised of a single screen of action involving a limited degree of interaction and control choices. The home console market fared no better, with the dominant machines also having very minimal control schemes.
Enter the computer, the multifaceted tool of education, productivity and ultimately entertainment. In 1976, Will Crowther, a programmer working at Bolt, Beranek and Newman created a text based game originally intended for the entertainment of his daughter when she came to visit him at work. This game was called Colossal Cave Adventure and it signified the birth of a genre.
Whereas most early games utilized violence and combat in order for the player to achieve a higher score, Colossal Cave rewarded its players for taking the time to explore and interact with its world. Interaction was done via a text parser where the user would type in simple sentences to request that actions be performed. As a result the player was encouraged to think creatively and logically in order to solve puzzles. Since it was entirely text based, the perspective shifted from third person to first person making the player's experience much more immersive.
Colossal Cave was based on the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Utilizing a real landscape allowed for a more believable setting. (Will had spent time mapping the caves prior to the game's construction. As such, the layout of the game was directly based on his mapping of the actual cave.) Coupling that with the ability to construct sentences to interact with the game resulted in a game that felt like an actualized universe, at the same time allowing for the player to make decisions and interact with the world in a way that felt natural.
Word of the game spread and before long college campuses were abuzz with young programmers altering the game, adding new elements and improving it all around. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery and soon a team of MIT students set about to creating their own text adventure. This game ultimately became Zork and as a result of its creation Infocom was born.
In 1979, Ken Williams, founder of On-Line Systems was frequently bringing his work home with him. This involved him bringing into the house a TRS-80 onto which he had downloaded Colossal Cave Adventure. Ken's wife Roberta, at home with their new baby, came across it and played through the entire game. Having enjoyed it immensely, she sought other games of a similar nature, but they were few and far between. Instead of waiting for someone else to make the games she wanted play, she and Ken set out to make their own games, beginning with an adventure called Mystery House. What set Mystery House apart from the competition was the fact that it featured graphics to go alongside the game play. The graphics may have been primitive but they helped to illustrate the ideas of the quest and to draw the player deeper into the game.
Mystery House was a success and the re-christened Sierra On-Line began to create more games based off a similar concept: First person adventures with primitive graphics and interesting narratives. Ultimately they caught the eye of IBM, who was looking to introduce a new computer to the market, the PC Jr. The Jr. was to be a family friendly computer with a colorful display capable of rendering (for its time) detailed graphics. IBM approached Sierra to design a game to showpiece this hardware. The end result was King's Quest.
King's Quest moved the narrative from the first person to the third person. No longer were all puzzles and obstacles happening directly to the player. Now they had direct control of Sir Graham, potential heir to the kingdom of Daventry. King's Quest combined lush, quasi 3-D graphics with immersive storytelling to create a game that immediately captured the player's imagination.
Moving the game play to the third person revolutionized the industry, and almost immediately adventure games began to make the shift. Sierra themselves managed to parlay the success of King's Quest into their own personal goldmine. King's Quest opened the door for other artists at Sierra and soon there were other series such as Space Quest, Police Quest and Quest for Glory, amongstmanyothers.
Not content to rest on their laurels, Sierra decided to pursue frontiers almost completely untouched by other developers. They created the Leisure Suit Larry series, which moved adventure games from fantasy realms to the modern world, following the sleazy adventures of a down on his luck swinger looking to bed a sexy vixen. Sex in video games, while not entirely unheard of, had rarely been explored outside of a completely vulgar context.
Realizing the importance of future technologies, Sierra continued to be a leading force, pushing development in video (bringing games into VGA), sound (they were the first company to support sound cards) and ultimately one of the first companies to attempt to have an online presence (The ImagiNation Network).
While Sierra continued creating graphical adventures, Infocom maintained their status as the kings of the text adventure. They released a great deal of games; some famous, some infamous. Because their games contained absolutely no graphics, they made sure that their writers were of the highest caliber and that their puzzles maintained a great level of difficulty.
Unbowed by Sierra's dominance of the adventure game industry, LucasArts started their own adventure division beginning with a game called Maniac Mansion. Designed by Ron Gilbert, Maniac Mansion was created with the use of a utility called SCUMM, Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion. SCUMM allowed the player to interact with the world without the need for a keyboard. All interaction was done via mouse and a selection of predefined actions (look, take, talk, etc.)
LucasArts soon differentiated themselves from the other players in the field by imbibing their games with a strong sense of humor and self reference. In a move to prevent the player from being punished they removed death penalties. Players could never die nor find themselves in a situation where the game could become unwinnable. This philosophy stuck with LucasArts until they stopped production on adventure games.
With the advent of the CD-ROM and the move to multimedia, adventure games began to move towards full voice acting instead of text. Their narratives became richer and more involving. LucasArts, in particular, flourished with CD-ROM technology, releasing Day of the Tentacle, The Curse of Monkey Island, and Sam and Max Hit the Road, all considered classics nowadays. Some games, such as Myst, sought to move the perspective back to first person and take the focus away from character driven narratives and focus more on the puzzle solving aspects of the game. Some players quickly took to this new style of gaming, while others preferred the older methods of storytelling.
Once 3-D technology became commonplace on computers, the adventure genre found itself stagnating and ultimately unable to keep up with the progress of hardware. No more were flat, 2-D environments sufficient for storytelling. Players now wanted large virtual spaces, and the old standards of "find item X and use it on item Y" began to feel stale. As a result the genre as a whole all but disappeared rather quickly.
Adventure games themselves can still be found today, though they are much fewer in number than they used to be. Many modern adventure games follow the template of Myst and its sequels to present the game through the player's eyes. The third person adventure, while not entirely dead has become quite rare.
True adventure games are a rare breed nowadays, but their influence is still felt in other genres. Adventure games were the trailblazers for helping interactive entertainment find its voice and its audience. It helped determine how to tell stories and push narrative while maintaining the interest of players.
Much like Hollywood needed the early directors to push the boundary of what film could do and how best to utilize the technology afforded them, so too did the pioneers of adventure gaming further their art, helping to bring player and game together, proving that gaming could appeal to players beyond the standard violence and twitch games so ubiquitous at the time.
It's been said by minds far more brilliant than mine that music is the soundtrack to our lives. As such, certain recordings, songs and albums have the ability to stick with us in a very tangible and meaningful way. Music is a very subjective form, and what some consider brilliant others would label as pedantic and dull. As such, there is no easy way to define what is great in the realm of music. The best that can be offered is opinion. And offer it I shall.
There are a handful of albums that I consider absolute masterpieces. Myself, I tend to find complicated music very interesting. I like a lot of different soundscapes and sounds to be thrown at me at once, and I appreciate a stylistic and thematic lyrical approach to go with that confusion. Also of great interest to me is imagery and poetry that I find applicable to my own life, whether it be from mindset, ideology or philosophy. If I had to rate one of the greatest albums on earth for matching all of the above, it would be OK Computer by Radiohead.
OK Computer is a very loose musical interpretation of 1984 by George Orwell. It lacks a cohesive, structured narrative, but builds on the idea of repression, oppression, fascism and loss of identity in the modern world. It openly expresses raw terror and feelings of disassociation without stumbling into the realms of bad poetry.
Musically it weaves a dense soundscape, filled with enough activity that even after 10 years of listening new bits are heard each time. Every song is varied, with no one style representing all that the album has to offer. OK Computer covers the entire gambit. From sonically dense songs (Airbag) to the uncomplicated (Exit Music For a Film). From a quasi-lullaby (No Surprises) to the foreboding (Climbing Up the Walls), OK Computer manages to reinvent itself on a track by track basis without ever feeling like the band is trying too hard.
Lyrically the album maintains that same lack of cohesion, with Thom Yorke's lyrics switching between oppressed and oppressor, seamlessly interweaving thoughts of terror with implied threats. Though there is no overarching narrative to the album, there is an implied story, involving the capture, re-education and rehabilitation of a disaffected citizen.
Yorke finds oppression in the modern world that many of us take for granted, feeling isolated and out of place in the most mundane of settings. (Let down and hanging around / Crushed like a bug in the ground) His lack of respect for the authority that exists culminates in his capture and ultimate re-education. (This is what you get when you mess with us) Turned into an automaton by the process, the ablum continues in a mechanical voice stating in monotone the virtues of a life lived properly. (Fitter, happier, more productive) Even this voice is ultimately decayed and destroyed as the album corrupts into its second half.
The second half of the album involves the re-emergence of Yorke, with the discovery of identity being key. Yorke's character struggles to determine just who he was prior to his capture and ultimately begins to remember, with the realization that this was a world he didn't fit into sinking in as the songs progress.
Ultimately, his fate is ambiguous. We are left believing at the end of the record that he has intentionally attempted to kill himself in a car crash. (Idiot, slow down) As the album closes you are not to know if this was successful. However, this album, much like life is cyclical and as the album re-opens his fate becomes more clear. (An airbag saved my life)
Did the events portrayed occur? Were his actions invalidated by the fact that he finds himself repeating the same destiny? Is it possible to escape the events that life has planned out for you? This album will answer none of these questions. It seeks to leave you with as many questions as it does answers and ultimately is the better for it.
I have to admit that I'm suffering from mild amusement at the moment. We're suffering through the prophecized "storm of ages" down here in Georgia at the moment. You would think from the dire predictions of both the weather stations and the news casters that temperatures should soon be approaching absolute zero and life, if not molecular activity itself may soon be coming to an end.
Why does this amuse me so? Simple. I'm a northerner. I've lived in Michigan for a large chunk of my life, so winter is not really all that big a deal to me. The first year we moved there I was horrified to find that a six inch snowfall did not qualify us for a snow day. We've had an eigth of an inch accumulation thus far and you would think that the trumpets were sounding heralding the arrival of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Lines are building at stores and the tv is letting us know which stores still have milk and bread. School closing reports HAVE ALREADY STARTED.
In all reality, this whole thing will be over by noon tomorrow. Every flake of snow will melt and we'll be back to business as normal. But for a few short hours, people here are absolutely losing their minds.
As long as I don't have to share the roads with them. (They do NOT know how to drive on snow.)
"I'm waiting for...as soon as the manager leaves, I'm going to ...uh....do it." This is the chilling introduction to the harrowing final three minutes of a young man's life. A final three minutes predicated by a slow descent into mental collapse that was meticulously documented via videotape. The final three minutes of Ricardo Lopez.
January 14, 1996, the 21st birthday of Ricardo Lopez was the beginning of what would be his eight month spiral into the darkest depths of the mind. Already dealing with an unhealthy obsession towards Icelandic singer Bjork, Lopez decided that day to become "the angel of death for her."
So begins the 18 hours of footage detailing his plans, his actions and his motivations. It is a grim glimpse into the mind of someone who is slowly losing their touch with reality. A view of a mind that has become duplicitous, capable of interacting with other people externally in an unnoticable fashion while teeming and seething inside, burning with a desire to destroy both itself and others.
The method of this destruction was to be a bomb, disguised as a book, which he would mail to Bjork. This bomb was designed to spray Bjork in the face with a large payload of acid with the intent of either killing her outright or disfiguring her for life. He chronicled the design, testing and ultimate creation of this bomb over the coming days. The day after mailing this bomb to Bjork, he took his own life, also on camera.
The hours of tapes left by Lopez leave the viewer with a keen insight into the decaying mind of one who is slowly losing their grasp on reality. There is an intimacy to be found, as this man, damaged though he may be, is allowing you, as voyeur, to follow down the path behind him, hoping to give you as a viewer some insight into exactly what motivates him and why he has come to this decision.
These are not easy videos to watch. Reality is far scarier than fiction, and his descent only seeks to emphasize the fact that anybody has the ability to fall just as far. His tapes were created not to establish a cult of personality or to bring himself undue fame and attention. These tapes exist to serve as a warning to others who might find themselves sliding into the same trap as himself.
That he was a victim of a mind beyond his control is apparent in those last few minutes of his life. The stage was set for his actions, and the same meticuolous attention to detail was paid for the final scene. His head was shaved clean of all hair and painted in a set of crimson and green stripes. A hand written sign was placed behind him with the cryptic message "The best of me" scrawled across it. (Popular speculation is that he had intended blood and brain matter to hit the sign after the act, hence the phrase.) With a computer nearby to provide the soundtrack he makes his final statements to the world.
I just want to say, that...uh...my last words. What are my last words? Well, fuck the world, that's my last words. And, uh, fuck Bjork. Her and her nigger loving self. Um, the chances of it [the bomb] being entirely successful, like I said before, I'm not gonna count on it. But, nonetheless, it being out there, I consider it a great venture. Nonetheless, I was gonna die anyway. Not because of her, but...uh...rather because of my own reasons. Um...Let me just check one more time.
[He gets up and adjusts the camera. When the film resumes, I Remember You is playing.]
This death is for you, Bjork. No, excuse me...uh...for you to see it. In some compensation for the pain that I have caused you and or maybe will cause...uh....Everything else in my life that I've fantasized about, I've accomplished.
This is...uh...This is the last song. After this, I'm dead.
He begins to take a series of long, deep breaths, occassionally glancing back at the camera. He seems to be placing himself into a trancelike state, likely to allow his body to perform the physical actions that his mind will resist on instinct alone. After twenty or so breaths, he quickly brings the gun to his mouth, says "This is for you" and pulls the trigger. His body slumps to the floor and the soundtrack goes quiet aside from the sound of the blood leaving his head.
What purpose can this video serve, aside from the ghoulish entertainment of people that you'd rather not meet? It serves two purposes. The first is as a warning. This video allows you to see firsthand what can happen when a mind loses control and proper help is not sought. There is no doubt that Ricardo's fate would have been different, had he gotten the help he obviously needed. The other purpose is to serve as an intimate account of where the mind can go, given the freedom to do so. Ricardo ultimately takes the viewer down the darker paths of life that the majority of us would never tread. But like it or not, those paths are there. To some, it allows for an understanding of the human thought process, of motivation and of the power of the mind to act above the will of its owner.
This final link will take you to the video of Lopez's final moments. It is not excessively bloody or gruesome, but the fact remains that it is still footage of a suicide. It contains the full final three minutes and once again serves as a window into the troubled mind of a disturbed individual.
I am usually the type of person that you can share information with and expect that it will be well kept and protected from the ears that do not need to hear it. 99% of the time if you mention something in confidence I will keep it solely to myself. Even if not specifically asked to maintain a veil of secrecy, I will tend to err on the side of caution and respect and generally keep information to myself. However, every once in awhile you happen upon a goldmine of information about someone and you cannot help but share it with at least one or two of your closest friends.
Such was the case for myself just a couple of weeks ago. Over the Christmas holidays the Heittenflauggen clan got together and did the typical family type stuff. (A Christmas day replete with Satanic animals, a movie about a throat slasher who grinds his victims into pies, a visit to a Hindu temple and a hot dog outside a gas station.) It was during this visit from my parental unit that I was blessed with the knowledge about a certain sibling of mine that I did my best to hold in, but now find myself no longer capable of doing so.
Instead of just jumping right out and stating what it was that I learned, I'd like to take the time to savor this moment and build to it appropriately. So, let's jump into the wayback machine and head back to 1981. Raiders of the Lost Ark was leading the box office and the masses of young girls were swooning over a young Harrison Ford and a libidinous Rick Springfield.
At least, that's what MOST of the girls were swooning over. But apparently at least one young girl found her object of attraction in another man. One more mature of character and equative in stature. While others were swept away by the adventures of Indiana Jones in the Peruvian jungles, she was endeared to the struggles of a gentleman in the urban jungle.
Who was this hot object of desire? Who was it that fanned the flames of passion for my sister at that time? As I have mentioned that this gentleman was her elder, we can assume it was not a young Tom Cruise. Perhaps Paul Newman? Robert Redford? No, this icon of masculinity was none other than Mickey Rooney.
Now, I can hear you already. "Mickey Rooney? That's not SO bad." He was quite the rising star in the late 30's/early 40's when he was doing his Andy Hardy series. A young Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney set the stage on fire in the 1940's. And honestly, Mick was a bit of a looker...in 1941. But in 1981 Mickey Rooney was 61 years old. Now, I'm not inferring that this makes Mickey an old man at that time, certainly not, but I would think that it would be out of the range of a pre-teen. But even the age isn't what gets to me. The best part of the revelation is the following: Her crush on the diminuitive man was due to his perfomance in the film "Bill".
For those not in the know, "Bill" tells the story of a retarded dwarf (international sex symbol Mickey Rooney) and his struggles to survive on his own in the big city. Interestingly enough, this film also stars a young Dennis Quaid. Given my druthers, I would peg Mr. Quaid as the more attractive of the two, but after watching a few heart touching moments from the film, I can certainly see why Mickey would be the man of choice for a young girl in the 80's.
He's hard to resist in that oversized suit, ill colored and obvious hairpiece listing lazily over one eye, perhaps waiting to be thrown back in a come-hither motion. From the clip I am presenting here, we can assume that perhaps Bill was the inspiration for the modern day emo hairstyle. Perhaps sis was on to something. Perhaps "The Mickster" was a trendsetter long before the rest of the world ever realized it. Personally, I find it difficult to believe that Mickey wasn't on the cover of Tiger Beat or Bop at the time of this movie. He didn't even make the second rate mags, like Hot Dog or Pizzazz.
In retrospect, I find it hard to believe that I was unaware of this obssession in my younger years. The lifesize cardboard cutout of Mickey Rooney. Posters plastered all over the walls and ceiling. Stacks of VHS tapes containing all of his hottest roles; Bill, Bill: On His Own, The Black Stallion, Pete's Dragon and The Magic of Lassie. The flower and heart covered envelopes she would send out to his fan club. There was even a heated and emotional fight between her and my mother over a large phone bill my sister had racked up calling some kind of hotline that ultimately degraded into angry epithets being hurled back and forth regarding the relative mantacularity of Rooney and Brian Dennehy. All of these things should have been indicative of the unbreakable bond she felt with Mr. Rooney. Truthfully, I had always just assumed that she was expressing an early interest in gerontology and that she intended to go into elderly care once we had grown.
Hindsight is 20/20, as they say, and with this newfound knowledge I'm beginning to understand some of the more quizzical aspects of my sister's personality. Point in example, the wall of Mickey photos in her study that she lights candles and incense for every night before saying some whispered prayer that I've never been able to divine and the collection of Mickey Rooney shaped potato chips.
Now, before I get started, let me give the standard line that you expect to hear whenever somebody might trudge somewhat controversial ground. "I don't hate gay people, the gay lifestyle or anything to do with gays." That's the kind of shit that I'd say if I really cared all that much. But come on people, if you can't take a joke, I recommend you just stop reading now. (Seriously, though, put out the torches. I really have nothing against gays.)
To give you an idea of how amazingly gay the entire concept of He-Man is, check out the entry for him on Wikipedia. This is how the fans feel he is best desribed to the world: "Eternia is ruled by King Randor and Queen Marlena. Their son is Prince Adam, a cowardly blond muscleman dressed in a Cote d'Azur chemise. However, Prince Adam possesses a magic sword, and when he holds it aloft and says the magic words "By the power of Grayskull... I HAVE THE POWER!" he is transformed into He-Man, the most powerful man in the universe. He-Man is a brave blond muscleman in a baldric with a Maltese cross and loincloth."
A Cote d'Azur chemise?!?! We haven't even spent 10 seconds with "Adam" and it's already completely apparent that he has WAY TOO STRONG of a grasp on popular clothing trends in Eternia. There is more emphasis placed on his STYLE in his introduction than there is on, well, who the fuck he is!
So Adam possesses a magic sword which, when held erect, gives him the inner strength to come to terms with his true identity, that of He-Man, a muscle bound hero in an even sparser outfit than Adam. One could almost say that Adam is frightened and timid because he is afraid to share with the world his terrible secret. His terrible, masculine chiseled secret. His loincloth wearing, emancipated secret.
Once stripped of 90% of his clothing, he is surrounded by a cadre of likewise mostly naked and muscular men, many of whom have rather suggestive names or features. Let's look at a few, shall we?
First we have Man-at-Arms, mentor to both the hapless Adam and the svelte and sexy He-Man. Man-at-Arms is replete with both a phallus shaped helmet and a nice little pushbroom moustache. He carries a large sceptre-like weapon, and being a courtesan of the queen's court, no doubt offers to let He-Man "touch the royal sceptre" whenever possible. As unlikely as it seems, Man-at-Arms is not even his real name, that would be Duncan. As in "Duncan" his head in He-Man's loincloth, if you catch my drift. (Not to mention that the name Man-at-Arms is evocative of an octopus at a boner buffet.)
Mekaneck sports the ability to lengthen his neck to nearly 3-4 times it's normal length. Of course, this extended neck is covered in a thick "veiny" mechanical coating, no doubt to keep it both firm and supple. Interestingly enough, Mekaneck ALSO carries a club as a weapon, thereby bringing out the fact that He-Man and his ilk like to "beat off" their enemies whenever possible.
Third is Ram-Man. That's all I'm going to say about Ram-Man.
But even the gayest man in the universe needs some form of arch nemesis to get into sweaty tussels with, and in the world of Eternia that void is filled by none other than Skeletor.
Skeletor, in my opinion, is a tragic character. Skeletor is unable to come to grips with who he is as a person. Whereas Adam is timid until able to raise high his steely tool to bring forth the inner strength and comfort with his identity, Skeletor lacks this. Skeletor feels naked and vulnerable to the world, as he refuses to admit what everybody on Eternia knows, namely that he feels he's lacking a certain "bone" in his body.
This knowledge makes Skeletor seethe with an immutable internal rage. It tears him up that everyone knows his true secret, but as he is unable to come to grips with it, he lashes out at those living the lifestyle that he so desperately covets. Skeletor desires nothing more than to get his hands wrapped around the thick shaft of He-Man's weapon so that he too can burst forth with the power and the complete knowledge of the "secrets of Castle Grayskull".
But Skeletor's inability to come to terms with his own homosexual tendencies causes him to alienate himself from the rigidly sculptured paragons of human beauty that He-Man associates with. Instead, Skeletor is surrounded by monsters like Beast-Man, a warm, hair covered man with a slightly musky scent and a long whip for dishing out the punishment on those that have been naughty.
Also of note is Trap-Jaw, a monstrous man with a steel bear trap for a jaw, capable of ripping and tearing the fleshier parts of a man right off his body like a spurned mother in a bad Wes Craven film. I'm assuming his existence ties in with Skeletor's inner torment. If HE can't have pleasure NO ONE CAN!!!! MWA HA HA HA!!!!!
He-Man and Skeletor seem to exist in a yin-yang styled universe. For every good guy, there is a bad guy with an equal yet different power.
For instance, Moss Man carries with him the strong scent of pine, reminiscent of the fresh, clean aroma one could find in a well-kempt men's restroom. His evil counterpart was Stinkor, no doubt an angry manifestation of Skeletor's psyche wherein he insults all that Moss Man stands for by representing the base odor of that which Skeletor desires. Man ass. Hot, hot man ass.
Skeletor's endless quest to touch the mighty weapon of power that He-Man wields is charted over the course of episodes such as: "Evilseed", "A Friend in Need" and "Like Father, Like Daughter".
Whether I have convinced you or not, I cannot say and will likely never know. It just seems to me that it's rather obvious. If you still can't see my point, let me end with one last argument:
One of the things that has become readily apparent to me since beginning my foray into the deepest blackest depths of internet postery is the fact that this medium really seems to suit my mindset quite nicely. If you're one of those types who bothers to follow the multitude of links I provide with every post, you'll see that there are strange logical connections which can be traced with each and every link, though the underlying logic may not (or in some instances CANNOT) be apparent. The reason for this is simple, my mind was designed for hyperlinking long before teh webz were available.
To bring this discussion to a more sensible starting point, let's go with the old adage, "A good artist copies, a great artist steals". Now, right off the bat, let me express to you in earnest that I do not consider myself a "great artist". Not even a shitty one. I'm just some dude who rambles incoherently in a public forum where maybe two to three people take any interest, and I'm sure that's more out of pity than true interest. But the point I'm trying to get across is that there is a lot of inherent wisdom to be found in that quote, and I will try to blather and babble my way through an explanation.
It has long been stated by people that have associated with my closest friends and I that we speak our own language, a mish-mash of self-referential asides and endless quotes from movies and television. It is a language of shared experience and is frequently used by myself as a litmus test to determine who would interest me in a conversation.
Why bother asking what kinds of movies you like when I can simply say, "Just hang loose blood, she gonna catch up on the rebound on the medicide"? If that statement elicits laughter, then I at least have some basic semblence of the sense of humor I'm dealing with. From there I can try more esoteric fare. (My ultimate in esoteric is so obscure that, to date, ONE person has ever gotten it.) Do they like Python? Are they into absurdity, silliness, slapstick, etc. I can determine more about a person based on what they recognize than I can from 20 minutes of discussion. And luckily for someone who has this kind of mindset, I seem to have a limitless memory for this sort of information.
The human brain is designed to establish connections. That's all we do. We see something and we relate it to something else. We see ice and we think of cold. We see planes and we think of imminent and untimely death. I see ANYTHING and I relate it to The Simpsons. (That last line is no joke. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of the first 9 seasons of that show. Speak to me for more than 5 minutes and you're bound to hear the phrase, "That reminds me of something from The Simpsons...")
It's precisely these connections that make the internet such an interesting medium to work with. Everything I see, everything I hear, everything I think is being processed by a brain that works endlessly to find some way of trivializing a situation or humoring me. And, going full circle to the beginning of all this, these connections are ultimately associated by me into the links I provide with my posts.
If you're one of the three or so people that bothers to both read my posts AND follow my links, thank you. There's as much time and thought put into the links as there is the meat of the text and it is very pleasing and fulfilling to know that SOMEBODY took the time to sup on the entire stew that spews forth from my fingers.
As an aside, I apologize for the lack of links. Ironic, I know, but everybody and their brother decided that link time was the best time to chat. Hard to keep your mind focused.... :P
You know what really grinds my gears? Sound. I believe that I have mentioned in previous postings that I have a very tenuous relationship with sleep. We do not tend to get along well and as a result I tend to find myself constantly staggering around in a stupor, only semi-consciously aware of the world around me. I long ago accepted my fate and resigned myself to the fact that sleep is a commodity that will always remain elusive and valued to me.
There are multiple layers to the problems I encounter with sleep. First off there is the obvious issue with actually falling asleep in the first place. Many a night I will toss and turn relentlessly, unable to quiet my mind to the point of resting. Assuming I fall asleep to begin with, I next have to contend with my back issues which are prone to waking me up every 20 minutes or so. (REM sleep is very rare for me.) And even then, assuming I DO fall asleep and manage to STAY asleep I still have that one last thing to contend with...sound.
It's hard to believe, I'm sure, but apparently a bad place to live if you don't like extraneous background noise is across the street from a garbage rendering plant and around the corner from the railroad tracks in the industrial section of town. I know I was astonished by this revelation.
Every morning around 4:30 or 5:00, the daily noises kick in. The lovely sounds of machinery, garbage crushing, trucks dispensing their entire payload 100 yards from my door. A cacaphonous din of scraping metal, pounding machinery and rustling garbage is a fine way to begin every morning, usually 3 or so hours before the alarm begins its toll. When it's MY alarm I hear, that is.
I am fortunate enough to have a roommate that seems to have a superhuman ability to ignore alarm clocks in his sleep. Without even stretching the truth I can name multiple times that I have heard his clock going off for MORE THAN 3 HOURS without him noticing. And without noticing the pounding on his door or my plaintive cries for mercy.
It's no normal alarm clock noise, either, it's a clock radio, which means that I'm treated to either shitty country or shitty "classic rock". I like classic rock, just not at four in the morning. You've never noticed the epic scale and length of "Shout" by Tears For Fears until you've heard it while fighting back the tears of frustration because you JUST WANT TO SLEEP. These are the things I can do without, indeed.
For fear of this missive turning into some sort of scathing, angry piece about how much everyone and everything pisses me off, I'll throw in two little fun tidbits from the last 24 hours.
First off, I'll give you a premise, you tell me if you think that this will end "well" or "poorly" for me. Here's the situation:
Upon nosing through the various sundries in my kitchen last night, I became keenly aware of the presence of Swiss Miss hot chocolate in my cupboard. I am not one normally taken to imbibing in such treats, but last night that interest was piqued. So I placed a kettle to boil on the stove and began the preparations for the chocolate itself. The directions on the packet indicated that one packet = one cup of hot chocolate. However, I was feeling a tad more Epicurean than that and decided to break form by adding TWO packets into a single mug. Scandalous! So, with my now doubly imbued instant chocolate drink packets sitting in the mug in anticipation of consumption, I proceeded to add the scalding water and mix the concoction into a dark brown and rather rich looking beverage.
However, this libation was still much too hot for consumption, so in the interest of letting it cool, I placed it ever so carefully on the wide armrest of the downstairs futon and proceeded to turn on the Wii for a little bit of Metroidaction. (For those not in the know, the Nintendo Wii is a game console with a rather revolutionary means of control wherein you are provided with a little remote and "nunchuk" which allow direct control of the on screen action.)
Herein lies your challenge. Was the placement of a scalding hot and dark brown liquid on the armrest of my sofa a reasonable choice of containment prior to the playing of an excitable, motion-based video game?
Although I'm certain you've all guessed that the answer is a resounding "YES! Of COURSE that's a good idea!", you might be shocked to discover that it's not, as evidenced by the scald marks on my right ass cheek and the apparent shat stain that spreads across my futon and downstairs carpet.
As a secondary humorous tale to end things off with, one of my comrades was tasked with the setup of a laptop for a mutual friend here at the office. This friend has been experiencing what you might term "bad computer karma" this week, and has had hardware failures and system crashes left and right. (It happens to us all!) Anyways, he spent the better part of a day trying to get this laptop to function, but to no avail. He could load the Operating System, but then it would fail to install any security updates. In frustration, he brought the machine to me and asked me to take a few to work with it. I managed to get the OS installed and was also able to get the updates to apply. Hey, no big deal. Again, sometimes machines just get persnickety.
This is where the tale gets amusing. After getting the updates applied, I handed the laptop back over. The second that machine entered his office, it got obstinate once again. It REFUSED to talk to our network. It would see the connection but would not accept any packets. We tried three different cables, pulling connections off of working machines. No dice. I tried monkeying around with drivers and various settings, again, it wasn't working. In pure frustration I offered once again to take possession of the machine.
I took it back to my office, plugged it in, and it's working fine. It's right here next to me and it won't be going ANYWHERE NEAR the "other" until it is 100% done.
A friend of mine surreptitiously took this picture last night at a local bar. I was shown this photograph today and it made the very blood in my veins run icy as the Arctic seas. It seemed innocuous enough, just a picture of a man watching a game of darts. Only the man in the photo was me. And yet, not me. For you see, today I was provided with proof of my doppelganger and it sent a shiver of terror throughout me. What shall I make of his appearance? 
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