On days like these, wallowing around my cubicle, I think of the songs that would go incredibly well with a static-y radio, a rocking chair on a porch, a pooch at my side, and a view out onto a nuclear wasteland that debris of civilization blows across the landscape in gusts of wind.
1. Crazy - Willie Nelson:
The song that inspired me to make this post, its presence in GTA: San Andreas basically catapulted my love for this song, which I already loved. Something about absolute chaos set to Willie Nelson's calm and twangy vocals make this a perfect match for letting your eyes glaze over the smoldering remains of all humans built up with such big ambitions.
2. Xzibit - Paparazzi
A straight take from Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, this song brings out the anger at everyone ruining the game with their greed and vanity, much as I would think the world would succumb to. Turn this shit up and start whittling away on that porch.
3. Texas Flood - Stevie Ray Vaughan
A given when it comes to waiting out huge disasters, whether sitting atop the roof of a house or floating around town on a door, Texas Flood will keep you company.
4. April 26, 1992 - Sublime
I can imagine people would become excellent at looting in the after-world, and why not make it a bit of fun with sweet guitar plucking?
5. Floods - Pantera
For the more volatile of after-worlds, maybe a Terminator-esque one. But God love the raining part of this song at the end, when some raw and terrifying event has passed and you're left in the rain sitting beside some corpse or wreckage.
6. Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset - Modest Mouse
Most all of Modest Mouse's songs have sort of apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, or disorder about them. Isaac Brock's voice and the endlessly repetitive guitar riffs circle round and round as I would imagine going into to a form of happy-go-lucky madness in the after-world.
7. Fade to Black - Metallica
You can't really get more scorched earth than Metallica (the earlier years), and this song epitomizes some deep, dark road you'd be traveling while clutching that flask of black liquor.
8. La Mer. - Charles Trenet
How do you sleep at night in the post-apocalypse when all hell is breaking loose? This song. Over and over. On this note, basically the whole soundtrack to The Butterfly and the Diving Bell would work for life after earth.
9. Life Goes On - 2pac
Look at that title. Listen to those lyrics. Play this when you're trudging out to find food for the day among the rubble. "Pour out some liquor, have a toast for the homies, see we both gotta die, but you chose to go before me"
10. Pay No Mind (Snoozer) - Beck
Beck needed to make this list. He would be an amazing companion in the after-world, probably the most sane out of all of us, just listen to this shit.
11. Passenger - Iggy Pop
The after-world is a world for the restless, forced to be on the move every waking day. This song defines the endless acid-trip trips through some ungodly landscape and spectacles that you'd never be able to talk about from that day on, but that will haunt you from that day on. Singing la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la...
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Is There Love After Armageddon?
Earlier in the month I wrote a post about trying to justify the present time as a post-apocalyptic setting. It started out as a way to pretty much avoid the topic, and then it slid into becoming just an extremely depressing train-wreck, which made me want to push it even farther the more I saw myself sliding out of control, because it was funny and/or extremely depressing either of which I thought were reason enough for it to be blogged. Yeah, I don't really know where I was going with that. But here's a post about the actual idea of a future post-apocalypse!
In a way I think some sort of post-apocalyptic setting would be refreshing in the same way it seems refreshing to think of jumping into the Arctic Sea and think of spending the rest of your days there. Basically, it would completely suck to live in a burned down world/one taken over by killer machine-zombie-earwigs/waterworld mostly because you would likely be separated from people you would know and like and love. I mean it would suck eeking your way to food, shelter, and water, but assuming that you were surviving in the after world then the instant you have a second to think, it would probably depress the shit out of you that anyone around you is probably miles away, and if you do find them, they'll try to kill you for food or just out of madness. There's not really any room for those people that pick you up. But maybe you could find some randos to befriend, who you'd probably never even speak to if life was the way it was. I feel like a freakish afterworld would bring a shit ton of people together actually regardless of their apparent differences.
Most appearances of the world or society rather, in the post-world show an obscenely bleak picture. This is probably true on the whole, but I almost suspect our immense loneliness and whatever compassion we'd have left at that point might cause us to seek out people after some time regardless of resources. These relationships would probably incredibly unstable because of the conditions, but sofar that people can survive I feel like they would want company at least to travel around the desolate regions with. Granted you'd have your soul-depleted loners and human-turned-animals, but on a one on one basis, if you've established that these people are not out to get you for the most part AND you're not in some sort of Andes-Mountains-people-eating-people-to-stay-alive situation, then I think there might be a chance for companionship in the after-world. If not, uh, you're fucked (I'd opt for becoming an animal-like human).
Monday, October 25, 2010
Fuck You, Animals
This is pretty much a topic of discussion and I just wanted to ask this question. What is it about intelligence that makes humans more likely to be unhappy and unsatisfied than our dimmer animal brethren? This is presuming that other animals don't feel these emotions, because maybe they do and we just don't know it. But I tend to think that humans are a lot unhappier than other species.
Is it just that our more sophisticated brains allow us to feel a wider variety of emotions than other species? If so, what is the evolutionary point of these emotions? Or does our greater intelligence allow us to see and understand more of the pain and futility of life around us? Does our greater intelligence also allow us to gain greater happiness and satisfaction than other animals?
Just some thoughts.
--Edward
Is it just that our more sophisticated brains allow us to feel a wider variety of emotions than other species? If so, what is the evolutionary point of these emotions? Or does our greater intelligence allow us to see and understand more of the pain and futility of life around us? Does our greater intelligence also allow us to gain greater happiness and satisfaction than other animals?
Just some thoughts.
--Edward
Friday, October 22, 2010
Edward's Videogame Obsession #7: Super Mario 64
I entered the world of Super Mario 64 late, but it was still waiting there for me when I got around to it--pristine, colorful, and enchanting. Enchanting in that this game made you feel like you were entering the world of childhood again. I mentioned that with Banjo-Kazooie too. Perhaps platformers uniquely have this ability to make us feel like kids again in their bright fantasy worlds, controlling characters to do acrobatic moves that we dreamed about doing as kids when we were climbing trees or jumping off walls. There is a lot of wish-fulfillment in platformers--the way they create the worlds that we fantasized about. At least for me. Perhaps shooters are wish-fulfillment for others, I don't know. But what I dreamed about as a kid was faraway worlds and fantastical creatures.
Super Mario 64 is to me the quintessential platformer just like Ocarina of Time is the quintessential adventure game. There are debatably greater ones, but this set the standard for 3D platforming games, just like the original Super Mario Bros. set the standard in its generation and still remains among the greatest videogames of all time.
Just as the gunplay in a shooter is the most important aspect of the game (and still one reason why I can't place BioShock on as high of a pedastal as others have), the most important aspect of platformers for me are the levels. Just how good are they? Banjo-Kazooie and Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy are both great to me because they create large overworlds that absorb you into the game. Mario takes a different route here. While its levels are not as big as those in Banjo, their small size allows for there to be a lot of them, and there is a wide variety in types here. It's a bit hard to describe what makes me like or dislike a level. Perhaps some of it has to do with the gameplay itself and how you can react to that level. Mario, of course, had some of the finest gameplay of all time. This was the first real game in full 3D that I remember. Nintendo must've flipped some wigs when it released this and players could long-jump Mario across bottomless caverns, have him swim to the bottom of a shimmering lake, and backflip up an ice cliff. This I truly believe to be the most influential console game of its generation, surpassing Final Fantasy VII and Zelda and all of the rest, purely becuase of its 3D gameplay and the attention that went into creating the world. These were some mindblowing graphics when it came out, but it is the simplicity of the gameplay in this new 3D world that really was the determining factor in making it great. It felt so incredibly natural and fluid to control Mario, and I can say having played it recently, the gameplay still holds up better than any other game of its generation. You could make a strong case for this being the best game on the system.
I had a lot of fun playing this for the first time when Daniel stayed at my house for a week (part of it detailed in Daniel's first story here). Again, this is one I plan to beat one day, and one of the many games that I stopped once I was on the final boss. Oh, my lack of dedication back then....
--Edward
Super Mario 64 is to me the quintessential platformer just like Ocarina of Time is the quintessential adventure game. There are debatably greater ones, but this set the standard for 3D platforming games, just like the original Super Mario Bros. set the standard in its generation and still remains among the greatest videogames of all time.
Just as the gunplay in a shooter is the most important aspect of the game (and still one reason why I can't place BioShock on as high of a pedastal as others have), the most important aspect of platformers for me are the levels. Just how good are they? Banjo-Kazooie and Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy are both great to me because they create large overworlds that absorb you into the game. Mario takes a different route here. While its levels are not as big as those in Banjo, their small size allows for there to be a lot of them, and there is a wide variety in types here. It's a bit hard to describe what makes me like or dislike a level. Perhaps some of it has to do with the gameplay itself and how you can react to that level. Mario, of course, had some of the finest gameplay of all time. This was the first real game in full 3D that I remember. Nintendo must've flipped some wigs when it released this and players could long-jump Mario across bottomless caverns, have him swim to the bottom of a shimmering lake, and backflip up an ice cliff. This I truly believe to be the most influential console game of its generation, surpassing Final Fantasy VII and Zelda and all of the rest, purely becuase of its 3D gameplay and the attention that went into creating the world. These were some mindblowing graphics when it came out, but it is the simplicity of the gameplay in this new 3D world that really was the determining factor in making it great. It felt so incredibly natural and fluid to control Mario, and I can say having played it recently, the gameplay still holds up better than any other game of its generation. You could make a strong case for this being the best game on the system.
I had a lot of fun playing this for the first time when Daniel stayed at my house for a week (part of it detailed in Daniel's first story here). Again, this is one I plan to beat one day, and one of the many games that I stopped once I was on the final boss. Oh, my lack of dedication back then....
--Edward
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Edward's Videogame Obsession #6: Half-Life
This was the first PC game I ever really got into. It fortunately came out during a period where expensive graphics cards weren't mandatory to play computer games. Somehow, my PC at the time was able to run this. This and The Ocarina of Time were the two greatest single-player experiences I've ever had. My first runthrough of this game was like a dream, because whenever I remember any specific moments from it, it brings back such a strong feeling of nostalgia and joy and also a bittersweetness that I probably won't ever have an experience like this again.
In terms of first-person shooters, this was one of the most revolutionary of all time, along with games like Doom, Goldeneye, and the first Halo. It introduced a cinematic quality to gaming that I see used in games like Far Cry, Uncharted, Killzone, and many, many others. This was one of the earliest games that really achieved this effect, and if others had attempted it before, none perfected it before the first Half-Life. This quality really drew me into the game in a way I had never been before. Something about Gordon Freeman's quest from the bowels of a top-secret science facility located far beneath the desert in the American Southwest was so intense, so cool, and so mindblowing. I loved the gradual progression from area to area in the facility, since as has often been noted before, there were no clear breaks between levels (again, this game strove for a kind of realism and immersion that was not seen earlier than this). Some of the areas will stay with me forever: the train tracks level, the giant tentacle level, the office level. Fuck, pretty much all of them, honestly. My favorite was, of course, Surface Tension (see my #7 favorite videogame moment ever here). I felt exhilaration along with Gordon Freeman at seeing the sun finally, and the vast expanses of desert, dam, and cliff spread out before me. Much has been made of the fact that Gordon Freeman remains forever silent (like Link in my other favorite game), allowing the player to insert themselves behind the mask of his special protection suit and see the world vicariously through his eyes. I'm not sure of the truth of this, but I know the way the game is created--its vast, lived-in environments; the sense that you are barely eeking your way through increasingly deadly situations in a massive world, instead of destroying swathes of armies and feeling like you are Superman in a typical shooter; the fact that the game doesn't dumb down to its audience like previous shooters had--sure made me feel like I lived insisde of this game, moreso than any game I had ever played before.
I had so much fun with this. I never wanted it to end, and was sad when it had to. The one flaw with the game is the final levels spent in the alien world, but no game is perfect. This also had a very influential multiplayer mode with the later expansions and mods Team Fortress Classic and the exceedingly popular Counter-Strike (neither of which I have much experience with, because of my lack of high-speed Internet growing up). What I think Half-Life brought to the table was an incredibly involving and exciting single-player mode, and I can see its influence in so many modern games. Even a movie like Children of Men I felt was very influenced by the visuals of Half-Life's phenomenal sequel.
--Edward
In terms of first-person shooters, this was one of the most revolutionary of all time, along with games like Doom, Goldeneye, and the first Halo. It introduced a cinematic quality to gaming that I see used in games like Far Cry, Uncharted, Killzone, and many, many others. This was one of the earliest games that really achieved this effect, and if others had attempted it before, none perfected it before the first Half-Life. This quality really drew me into the game in a way I had never been before. Something about Gordon Freeman's quest from the bowels of a top-secret science facility located far beneath the desert in the American Southwest was so intense, so cool, and so mindblowing. I loved the gradual progression from area to area in the facility, since as has often been noted before, there were no clear breaks between levels (again, this game strove for a kind of realism and immersion that was not seen earlier than this). Some of the areas will stay with me forever: the train tracks level, the giant tentacle level, the office level. Fuck, pretty much all of them, honestly. My favorite was, of course, Surface Tension (see my #7 favorite videogame moment ever here). I felt exhilaration along with Gordon Freeman at seeing the sun finally, and the vast expanses of desert, dam, and cliff spread out before me. Much has been made of the fact that Gordon Freeman remains forever silent (like Link in my other favorite game), allowing the player to insert themselves behind the mask of his special protection suit and see the world vicariously through his eyes. I'm not sure of the truth of this, but I know the way the game is created--its vast, lived-in environments; the sense that you are barely eeking your way through increasingly deadly situations in a massive world, instead of destroying swathes of armies and feeling like you are Superman in a typical shooter; the fact that the game doesn't dumb down to its audience like previous shooters had--sure made me feel like I lived insisde of this game, moreso than any game I had ever played before.
I had so much fun with this. I never wanted it to end, and was sad when it had to. The one flaw with the game is the final levels spent in the alien world, but no game is perfect. This also had a very influential multiplayer mode with the later expansions and mods Team Fortress Classic and the exceedingly popular Counter-Strike (neither of which I have much experience with, because of my lack of high-speed Internet growing up). What I think Half-Life brought to the table was an incredibly involving and exciting single-player mode, and I can see its influence in so many modern games. Even a movie like Children of Men I felt was very influenced by the visuals of Half-Life's phenomenal sequel.
--Edward
How Adult Are You?
After some early morning banter about the habits of adults and adultoids, why don't we take a look at the top ten adult habits and characteristics, and you can find out once and for all how ADULT you wound up!
10. FORMAL OUTDOOR WEAR - Are you prepared to go out on the town with a client? Or are you ready to impress your date with the job that your 6-foot long peacoat says you have? Do you find yourself in the great outdoors but still desperately afraid of getting brush and earth fodder on your garmet because you paid a shitload to look this good beyond the almost-as-great-but-not-so-great indoors?
9. OCCUPATION-BASED INTRODUCTIONS - Is it 100% likely that you're going to have to try and give a crash-course what you DO on a daily basis FOR A LIVING within the first ten seconds of an introduction to a stranger? Do you find yourself even asking other people what they do within the first ten seconds because you're scared you will be judged on not having an appropriately adult and productive conversation? Do you find yourself talking about what you do to people more than you've ever even thought to yourself about what you do? Is there inevitably an implied lead-in to whether or not you are satisfied with said work, and what you are going to do to fix that (because you won't be allowed to say you're honestly satisfied with your current work)?
8. CIGARETTES - You've already had a pot of coffee, a few beers, some non-descript pharmaceutical products, some form of sex, and you still need a buzz? Are you looking for that smoooooth, nerve-calming, stress deterent in the form of a rolled up sleeve of tobacco? Need something that goes with everything, gets you out of an awkward situation, and lets you finally occupy that fidgeting, time-ticking space that keeps reappearing in life?
7. DATES OF IMPORTANCE - Do you find yourself constantly worrying about (instead of celebrating or being indifferent to) holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and days of massive obligation? Are you stressed just thinking about days like these approaching at this moment? Are you enjoying the normal non-event days exponentially more than the days you are considered a bad person if you don't get off your ass and recognize the occasion?
6. FALLING ASLEEP ALWAYS - Is everything a yawner these days? When did 9 PM start feeling like 4 AM? Have you noticed that time has changed from being like a river into being like one big fog, and all you know is you just want to fucking sleep? Are you asleep right now?
5. BILLS/TAXES/DEBT - Has it become second-hand to stop trying to count the exact amount you owe in dollars, but in degrees of fucked-in-the-ass? Have you started to curse on a regular basis these vaguely enormous, intangible, and inevitably ambiguous entities that you owe your life's worth in dollars and change to?
4. DINNER PARTIES/ENTERTAINING GUESTS - Have various shindigs, socials, and gatherings with large amounts of loosely bound adults become your main form of social interaction? When was the last time you've learned and forgotten so many names within such a short span of time... never? Have you noticed yourself developing a sixth sense each time you enter a room for the safest corner to not be bothered, the other guy/girl who feels the same awkwardness as you, or the nearest exit/closest free beverage and/or food? Do you suddenly have the urge (read: need) to get immediately and irrevocably tanked?
3. NEWS/MORNING PAPER - Name the latest developments in Afghanistan, on Capitol Hill, the Gaza Strip, Darfur, or the condition of Haiti and New Orleans. Did you frown or show a look of stress or disgruntlement at any of these? Are these articles and large print photos the best way for you to tell the days apart? Is it the only way? Do you have personal relationships with each news anchor and notice the incoming and outgoing trends in their wardrobes? Are you salivating thinking about the overloaded, fatty weekend edition?
2. WEATHER - If everything looks bleak around you, do you just opt out of discussing anything remotely relevant to the daily grizzind and choose something so intensely and extremely mild? meaning: the weather. "Say, Fargis, it's a bit cooler this morning than the last 900 mornings, what are your thoughts on that?" "Well Don, the front's on the move and Weatherlady Kathy told me last night that we're going to be seeing a lot of that in the coming year, you know grays and blues, some blue-grays and some grayer-blues; like I tell my wife every morning, 'It's all in the Farmer's Almanac, honey.'"
1. COFFEE - Is this black liquid your lifeblood? Can you not wake up without pouring yourself a good mammoth-strength cup of Joe? Do you find yourself arguing with other coffee beaners the subtle nuances of the office kitchen's french roast? How many brands and model numbers of coffee machines can you name? Do you find yourself using the "still haven't had my coffee" excuse 3-5 times a day? Would you kill someone for a cup of coffee?
Take a tally of the ones that applied to you and throw that number out the window, because you already are an adult for reading this - the bonus #11 habit/characteristic of adults is enjoying petty humor at life's little trials (and then emailing it to your coworkers and family and friends). I hate to think what level I am for writing this.
10. FORMAL OUTDOOR WEAR - Are you prepared to go out on the town with a client? Or are you ready to impress your date with the job that your 6-foot long peacoat says you have? Do you find yourself in the great outdoors but still desperately afraid of getting brush and earth fodder on your garmet because you paid a shitload to look this good beyond the almost-as-great-but-not-so-great indoors?
9. OCCUPATION-BASED INTRODUCTIONS - Is it 100% likely that you're going to have to try and give a crash-course what you DO on a daily basis FOR A LIVING within the first ten seconds of an introduction to a stranger? Do you find yourself even asking other people what they do within the first ten seconds because you're scared you will be judged on not having an appropriately adult and productive conversation? Do you find yourself talking about what you do to people more than you've ever even thought to yourself about what you do? Is there inevitably an implied lead-in to whether or not you are satisfied with said work, and what you are going to do to fix that (because you won't be allowed to say you're honestly satisfied with your current work)?
8. CIGARETTES - You've already had a pot of coffee, a few beers, some non-descript pharmaceutical products, some form of sex, and you still need a buzz? Are you looking for that smoooooth, nerve-calming, stress deterent in the form of a rolled up sleeve of tobacco? Need something that goes with everything, gets you out of an awkward situation, and lets you finally occupy that fidgeting, time-ticking space that keeps reappearing in life?
7. DATES OF IMPORTANCE - Do you find yourself constantly worrying about (instead of celebrating or being indifferent to) holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and days of massive obligation? Are you stressed just thinking about days like these approaching at this moment? Are you enjoying the normal non-event days exponentially more than the days you are considered a bad person if you don't get off your ass and recognize the occasion?
6. FALLING ASLEEP ALWAYS - Is everything a yawner these days? When did 9 PM start feeling like 4 AM? Have you noticed that time has changed from being like a river into being like one big fog, and all you know is you just want to fucking sleep? Are you asleep right now?
5. BILLS/TAXES/DEBT - Has it become second-hand to stop trying to count the exact amount you owe in dollars, but in degrees of fucked-in-the-ass? Have you started to curse on a regular basis these vaguely enormous, intangible, and inevitably ambiguous entities that you owe your life's worth in dollars and change to?
4. DINNER PARTIES/ENTERTAINING GUESTS - Have various shindigs, socials, and gatherings with large amounts of loosely bound adults become your main form of social interaction? When was the last time you've learned and forgotten so many names within such a short span of time... never? Have you noticed yourself developing a sixth sense each time you enter a room for the safest corner to not be bothered, the other guy/girl who feels the same awkwardness as you, or the nearest exit/closest free beverage and/or food? Do you suddenly have the urge (read: need) to get immediately and irrevocably tanked?
3. NEWS/MORNING PAPER - Name the latest developments in Afghanistan, on Capitol Hill, the Gaza Strip, Darfur, or the condition of Haiti and New Orleans. Did you frown or show a look of stress or disgruntlement at any of these? Are these articles and large print photos the best way for you to tell the days apart? Is it the only way? Do you have personal relationships with each news anchor and notice the incoming and outgoing trends in their wardrobes? Are you salivating thinking about the overloaded, fatty weekend edition?
2. WEATHER - If everything looks bleak around you, do you just opt out of discussing anything remotely relevant to the daily grizzind and choose something so intensely and extremely mild? meaning: the weather. "Say, Fargis, it's a bit cooler this morning than the last 900 mornings, what are your thoughts on that?" "Well Don, the front's on the move and Weatherlady Kathy told me last night that we're going to be seeing a lot of that in the coming year, you know grays and blues, some blue-grays and some grayer-blues; like I tell my wife every morning, 'It's all in the Farmer's Almanac, honey.'"
1. COFFEE - Is this black liquid your lifeblood? Can you not wake up without pouring yourself a good mammoth-strength cup of Joe? Do you find yourself arguing with other coffee beaners the subtle nuances of the office kitchen's french roast? How many brands and model numbers of coffee machines can you name? Do you find yourself using the "still haven't had my coffee" excuse 3-5 times a day? Would you kill someone for a cup of coffee?
Take a tally of the ones that applied to you and throw that number out the window, because you already are an adult for reading this - the bonus #11 habit/characteristic of adults is enjoying petty humor at life's little trials (and then emailing it to your coworkers and family and friends). I hate to think what level I am for writing this.
Edward's Videogame Obsession #5: Perfect Dark
Probably at about this point, we thought nothing could match our experience with Ocarina of Time, but along came a little shooter called Perfect Dark. This is one of the earliest games that I remember anticipating before it was actually released. We were looking up previews of it online, and what really blew our minds was the sheer amount of weapons in this game. Goldeneye already had a fair share of guns, from AK-47 variants to the fabled Golden Gun, but its unofficial sequel had something like 50 weapons to choose from. These really did live up to the hype. When I make my top videogame weapons of all time list, let me tell you that a shit-ton will be from this game. The most famous of these are the laptop gun and the Farsight. The laptop gun has probably already been described by Daniel somewhere in this blog, considering this gun really sums up his videogame philosophy for some reason, but basically it's a machine gun (that doubles as a laptop!) that you can set up as an automatic turret wherever you want to blast foes while you go about your daily business. The Farsight is an alien weapon that is the ultimate sniper rifle, since it allows you to see and shoot opponents through walls.
I would say out of all Nintendo 64 games, this was the most played by Daniel and me. We played this one from when we bought it until I got a PS2, which was probalby at least two years. This took Jim's love of bots to its farthest possible extent. The customization in the multiplayer was absolutely amazing. You could play with a wide range of bots, ranked by skill level or by the style of play that they exhibited. You could pick whatever weapons you wanted to use. You could pick the style of play. You could pick from a variety of great, great, great levels, including some Goldeneye sequels. You could even pick the music, which was also great. We had our own customized characters in multiplayer mode. Mine was the tall, golden, blonde Mr. Blonde, outfitted in a trenchcoat and standing at least seven feet tall by my estimates. Who did Daniel play as? I'm not sure. Perhaps he can answer.
Perfect Dark had everything we could ever ask for in multiplayer, and to this day it stands as my favorite multiplayer experience of all time. While shooters since this have perfected the gameplay aspect (especially considering shooters weren't exactly great to play on an N64 controller), no one has ever topped the customization. I will admit, the Halo and Call of Duty series have done a great job with this, but again...the lack of bots can't be stressed enough. TimeSplitters came the closest (again, this was basically an unofficial sequel of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, since it was made by a lot of the same crew), especially after TimeSplitters: Future Perfect started showing the individual scores for each player on a team instead of just grouping the team score.
Like Goldeneye, this game had a fun although ultimately unmemorable story mode. Console games had clearly not learned the lessons of Half-Life yet, but that doesn't mean I don't love the single-player campaign too. One of my ultimate goals is to eventually beat this game, since both Greg and I were stuck on the final boss. It probably wasn't that hard, but it was the fact that you had to go through the entire level each time you died on the boss that led us to give up on it (similar to me and Super Mario 64). I'd also like to beat all of the challenges (another great, great aspect of the game) with Daniel someday.
--Edward
I would say out of all Nintendo 64 games, this was the most played by Daniel and me. We played this one from when we bought it until I got a PS2, which was probalby at least two years. This took Jim's love of bots to its farthest possible extent. The customization in the multiplayer was absolutely amazing. You could play with a wide range of bots, ranked by skill level or by the style of play that they exhibited. You could pick whatever weapons you wanted to use. You could pick the style of play. You could pick from a variety of great, great, great levels, including some Goldeneye sequels. You could even pick the music, which was also great. We had our own customized characters in multiplayer mode. Mine was the tall, golden, blonde Mr. Blonde, outfitted in a trenchcoat and standing at least seven feet tall by my estimates. Who did Daniel play as? I'm not sure. Perhaps he can answer.
Perfect Dark had everything we could ever ask for in multiplayer, and to this day it stands as my favorite multiplayer experience of all time. While shooters since this have perfected the gameplay aspect (especially considering shooters weren't exactly great to play on an N64 controller), no one has ever topped the customization. I will admit, the Halo and Call of Duty series have done a great job with this, but again...the lack of bots can't be stressed enough. TimeSplitters came the closest (again, this was basically an unofficial sequel of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, since it was made by a lot of the same crew), especially after TimeSplitters: Future Perfect started showing the individual scores for each player on a team instead of just grouping the team score.
Like Goldeneye, this game had a fun although ultimately unmemorable story mode. Console games had clearly not learned the lessons of Half-Life yet, but that doesn't mean I don't love the single-player campaign too. One of my ultimate goals is to eventually beat this game, since both Greg and I were stuck on the final boss. It probably wasn't that hard, but it was the fact that you had to go through the entire level each time you died on the boss that led us to give up on it (similar to me and Super Mario 64). I'd also like to beat all of the challenges (another great, great aspect of the game) with Daniel someday.
--Edward
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Edward's Videogame Obsession #4: The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Yup, the best game of '98 was The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, much-heralded as the greatest game of all time. Looking back, Half-Life actually gives it a run for its money as the best game of '98, but since I did not play that until several years later, Ocarina took the cake.
Wow, what a game. This was the must-have title of the year for every boy, girl, or simpleton who still played videogames. I'm not sure how we heard about videogame hype back then, since as far as I know, we didn't go to Web sites like IGN or Gamespot or whatever (these might not have even existed, since the Internet for personal use was still in its infancy), but the streets were buzzing. There is the now-legendary tale of how I was supposed to keep the game a secret from Daniel, since he was getting it for Christmas and I got it several weeks/months earlier, but I will admit now that I had a large part in this. I'm not sure what exactly his parents said, but I know that I wanted to keep it a secret too, since I wanted to get as far ahead as possible before he got it, because I was a motherfucking bastard and still am. Perhaps this was because Daniel might have beaten Banjo-Kazooie first (we beat it around the same time from my memory). It's interesting how we (only me in reality) were more competitive with single-player story modes, but that we didn't really play competitive multiplayer that often, because let's face it: one-on-one gets either depressing (if you lose too much) or awkward real fast (just ask Daniel and Josh Nesbit).
Everyone in middle school at various points in time relatively close to each other all had the same experience. We opened up the box, took out the golden cartridge, and started up our soon to be all-engrossing alternate reality as young, pointy-earred Link. We all questioned what the big deal was as we climbed down the ladder out of our quaint home in the forest, learned how to wield a sword and a slingshot, and got through the first dungeon inside of a large, benevolent, and perhaps somewhat intoxicated tree. This all changed when you took your first steps into the fields of Hyrule, glimpsing the smoky peak of a volcano far in the distance, and to the left of it, the glittering spires of Hyrule Castle. While the generation before us had the collective experience of the original Super Mario Bros., we had Ocarina of Time. There are many games that define my childhood, and I'll talk about a lot of them in this series, but none meant more to me and so many others than this perfectly packaged and presented beauty of a game.
The music was great (listening to this recently on YouTube, I realized that this easily has one of the greatest videogame soundtracks of all time--check out any of the adult Link temples for some amazing music), the graphics were stunning, the gameplay was fun. But what really stuck out for me was the sheer scope of the game for that time. It just seemed so big and immersive, and for that reason, so many of us lived an alternate life inside of its bounds. The levels were quite long and difficult for that age, so it was easy to get lost inside its complexities (which probably seem minimal compared to games now). And iconic. God were those levels ever iconic.
None moreso than the infamous Water Temple, where Daniel places me as being by the time he got the game. I'm sure I was there for another few months. Even with the help of a strategy guide, that temple was a nightmare. It's funny that a temple could prove so hard that even strategy guides couldn't figure it out. It was beautiful, just like all the other temples, so all of us begrudged it with gentle good humor, but we never held it against the game. This was the last game that I ever used a strategy guide in. I always felt somewhat guilty about beating such a great game using one, but at the time, we weren't ashamed. As I hit puberty and "became a man," I learned some of the dogmatic ethics of gaming, which for me included no outside help (up to and including help from other people, which is one reason I like playing games by myself now, so they won't give me tips and make me feel guilt, followed by shame, followed by self-loating, followed by possible self-harm/destruction). This led to such fiascoes as Metal Gear Solid 2, which I had to give up playing since I was stuck on a pointless part that wasn't actually hard, but there was something subtle I had to look up, and I couldn't get over that guilt and continue playing the game. Like I said, I make it hard on myself sometimes.
I would like to play this game again sometime soon. I really think I only went through it once, that first time, which was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I think every male of our age had the same experience. I love the Castle Town. I loved the environments by temples but not actually in them, like the big volcano or Gerudo Valley. I loved the mini-bosses and the mini-dungeons (the well or inside of the big fish). I loved this game so much and I still do.
--Edward
Wow, what a game. This was the must-have title of the year for every boy, girl, or simpleton who still played videogames. I'm not sure how we heard about videogame hype back then, since as far as I know, we didn't go to Web sites like IGN or Gamespot or whatever (these might not have even existed, since the Internet for personal use was still in its infancy), but the streets were buzzing. There is the now-legendary tale of how I was supposed to keep the game a secret from Daniel, since he was getting it for Christmas and I got it several weeks/months earlier, but I will admit now that I had a large part in this. I'm not sure what exactly his parents said, but I know that I wanted to keep it a secret too, since I wanted to get as far ahead as possible before he got it, because I was a motherfucking bastard and still am. Perhaps this was because Daniel might have beaten Banjo-Kazooie first (we beat it around the same time from my memory). It's interesting how we (only me in reality) were more competitive with single-player story modes, but that we didn't really play competitive multiplayer that often, because let's face it: one-on-one gets either depressing (if you lose too much) or awkward real fast (just ask Daniel and Josh Nesbit).
Everyone in middle school at various points in time relatively close to each other all had the same experience. We opened up the box, took out the golden cartridge, and started up our soon to be all-engrossing alternate reality as young, pointy-earred Link. We all questioned what the big deal was as we climbed down the ladder out of our quaint home in the forest, learned how to wield a sword and a slingshot, and got through the first dungeon inside of a large, benevolent, and perhaps somewhat intoxicated tree. This all changed when you took your first steps into the fields of Hyrule, glimpsing the smoky peak of a volcano far in the distance, and to the left of it, the glittering spires of Hyrule Castle. While the generation before us had the collective experience of the original Super Mario Bros., we had Ocarina of Time. There are many games that define my childhood, and I'll talk about a lot of them in this series, but none meant more to me and so many others than this perfectly packaged and presented beauty of a game.
The music was great (listening to this recently on YouTube, I realized that this easily has one of the greatest videogame soundtracks of all time--check out any of the adult Link temples for some amazing music), the graphics were stunning, the gameplay was fun. But what really stuck out for me was the sheer scope of the game for that time. It just seemed so big and immersive, and for that reason, so many of us lived an alternate life inside of its bounds. The levels were quite long and difficult for that age, so it was easy to get lost inside its complexities (which probably seem minimal compared to games now). And iconic. God were those levels ever iconic.
None moreso than the infamous Water Temple, where Daniel places me as being by the time he got the game. I'm sure I was there for another few months. Even with the help of a strategy guide, that temple was a nightmare. It's funny that a temple could prove so hard that even strategy guides couldn't figure it out. It was beautiful, just like all the other temples, so all of us begrudged it with gentle good humor, but we never held it against the game. This was the last game that I ever used a strategy guide in. I always felt somewhat guilty about beating such a great game using one, but at the time, we weren't ashamed. As I hit puberty and "became a man," I learned some of the dogmatic ethics of gaming, which for me included no outside help (up to and including help from other people, which is one reason I like playing games by myself now, so they won't give me tips and make me feel guilt, followed by shame, followed by self-loating, followed by possible self-harm/destruction). This led to such fiascoes as Metal Gear Solid 2, which I had to give up playing since I was stuck on a pointless part that wasn't actually hard, but there was something subtle I had to look up, and I couldn't get over that guilt and continue playing the game. Like I said, I make it hard on myself sometimes.
I would like to play this game again sometime soon. I really think I only went through it once, that first time, which was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I think every male of our age had the same experience. I love the Castle Town. I loved the environments by temples but not actually in them, like the big volcano or Gerudo Valley. I loved the mini-bosses and the mini-dungeons (the well or inside of the big fish). I loved this game so much and I still do.
--Edward
THE Timesplitters
This was probably the game I played the most of growing up (especially multiplayer). Timesplitters was in one word: Fun.
I'll explore its multiplayer mode first:
It was one of the few games where you could make bots- I made a crap load of them and made them dumb as rocks- - I mean what's the fun of bots ripping you to shreds? My favorite level was the Tomb. Favorite game variant capture the bag. It's really hard to talk about my favorite weapon because Timesplitters had so many good weapons (that you could dual wield- which I maintain was the sweetest thing ever). Off the top of my head, I'd say my favorite weapon was dual-wielding the chain guns....especially on the Tomb level. I used to sit on a ledge over-looking a the enemy's spawn point and just unload my chain guns with what seemed to be a never ending supply of ammo. I'd throw my prox mines on THE wall to get to my base. Throw dynamite on anything I could, and would shotgun the shit out of herds of my enemies as they bottlenecked to my base.
Correct me if I am wrong Daniel, but I'm pretty sure I never wanted to go head-to-head because it was much more fun to be on the same team and just destroy- Unlike Timesplitters II which was mainly head-to-head multi-player deathmatches.
I'd also be remiss if I didnt mention an alien level that I have a hard time remembering- though I know all the multiplayer levels were also the singleplayer story mode levels as well. but that alien one was huuuuge, and had stationary guns that were so amazing.
Single player story mode was fun, but never kept my attention much. I remembering playing through the first few levels, which I think had a Chinese restaurant (Hibachi style) or something- and that dogs could chase you. But then the game just got complicated and multiplayer had BOTS! Looking back- and knowing how my Timesplitters journey would end (a scratched disc that I literally tried EVERYTHING to get it unscratched...toothpaste, spitting on it, buying a cd scratch kit, some solutions and wipes, windex- I mean everything) I wish I would have completed the single-player mode.
There is so much Ive missed because my memory just doesnt remember video-games well- so please add your experiences with this brilliant game.
Edward's Videogame Obsession #3: Banjo-Kazooie
What can you say about this game? Pure childhood delight in its most concentrated form. This took my love for overworlds (which I suppose prefigured the complete immersion of MMORPGs and social networking games and all of those other, more modern things) to the max with one of the greatest of all time. This had some damn great levels in it. While Mario 64 probably had technically better levels, Banjo's had more charm. This game was all about crazy charm, full of loud noises and squawking, and it was pretty damn big for its time.
My favorite level was Rusty Bucket Bay, for its size and difficulty. Click Clock Wood, the final level, was ambitious enough to have four different stages corresponding to the seasons of the year. Clanker's Cavern was epic, because you could dive down seemingly hundreds of feet into the water to get to the main portion of the level, which was inside a huge mechanical fish. God, just talking about this makes me want to play it again so bad. I plan to DL this on my Xbox soon.
When talking about this game, it should be mentioned that for unknown reasons (that I'm sure could be explained if we were just a little older at this point) Daniel and I received VHS tapes about this game in the mail, which only added to its legend. I will stand by my opinion that this had the greatest platformer levels of all time. There have been more innovative ones through the years, but I haven't played many other platformers that actually made me want to live in their world.
In any normal year, this would've been the game of the year, but in '98 another game came out that would change our lives. It was....
--Edward
My favorite level was Rusty Bucket Bay, for its size and difficulty. Click Clock Wood, the final level, was ambitious enough to have four different stages corresponding to the seasons of the year. Clanker's Cavern was epic, because you could dive down seemingly hundreds of feet into the water to get to the main portion of the level, which was inside a huge mechanical fish. God, just talking about this makes me want to play it again so bad. I plan to DL this on my Xbox soon.
When talking about this game, it should be mentioned that for unknown reasons (that I'm sure could be explained if we were just a little older at this point) Daniel and I received VHS tapes about this game in the mail, which only added to its legend. I will stand by my opinion that this had the greatest platformer levels of all time. There have been more innovative ones through the years, but I haven't played many other platformers that actually made me want to live in their world.
In any normal year, this would've been the game of the year, but in '98 another game came out that would change our lives. It was....
--Edward
Edward's Videogame Obsession #2: Diddy Kong Racing
Though Mario Kart got all the press, Diddy Kong Racer was always, I felt, the finer kart racer to grace the 64. Made by Rare--which was perhaps the greatest developer on the system, debatably surpassing even Nintendo, with such games as Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Banjo-Kazooie, and all of the Donkey Kong games--what made this game different from Mario Kart 64 was the ability to drive not only a kart, but a (small) plane and a hovercraft (somehow, the turkey character, who I believe was an unlockable one, rocked the shit out of this vehicle--he was my go-to guy if I was in a hovercraft race). While the case could be made that Mario Kart had better multiplayer, I enjoyed that Diddy Kong actually attempted to have a somewhat satisfying one-player experience, which was probably a rarity in the world of kart racing games. I love any game that has an overworld, and Diddy Kong didn't disappoint. It even had an elephant genie.
I remember that Daniel and I got this game that first Christmas that we got our 64's, and we must've watched those intro videos a dozen times (for unknown reasons). I am happy to say that I eventually beat the normal game mode (you had to face Wizpig--the boss--twice, from my memory), and progressed in mirror mode (you do all the races again....but this time backwards!), although I never beat it (probably moved onto another game at this point). A staple of our childhood, and one I'd like to see brought out again. Although the battle mode was undoubtedly better in Mario Kart, I have fond memories of shooting missiles at Daniel and some bots while playing as the turkey in the ice level. I loved that there were several different areas in the overworld, and each of the levels in each area had the same theme, although they got progressively harder. There was the ancient dinosaur theme, the snow theme, the volcano theme, etc. This game seemed to borrow from platformers with these archetypal levels (makes sense, considering it was the Donkey Kong series). I've always admired that game developers have been able to wring so much from these basic ideas of levels. Look at Super Mario Galaxy for proof.
--Edward
I remember that Daniel and I got this game that first Christmas that we got our 64's, and we must've watched those intro videos a dozen times (for unknown reasons). I am happy to say that I eventually beat the normal game mode (you had to face Wizpig--the boss--twice, from my memory), and progressed in mirror mode (you do all the races again....but this time backwards!), although I never beat it (probably moved onto another game at this point). A staple of our childhood, and one I'd like to see brought out again. Although the battle mode was undoubtedly better in Mario Kart, I have fond memories of shooting missiles at Daniel and some bots while playing as the turkey in the ice level. I loved that there were several different areas in the overworld, and each of the levels in each area had the same theme, although they got progressively harder. There was the ancient dinosaur theme, the snow theme, the volcano theme, etc. This game seemed to borrow from platformers with these archetypal levels (makes sense, considering it was the Donkey Kong series). I've always admired that game developers have been able to wring so much from these basic ideas of levels. Look at Super Mario Galaxy for proof.
--Edward
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
A Smattering of Post Apocalypse Movies
Also, this is a pretty awesome list from Wikipedia of Post-Apocalyptic movies (not sure why the list above didn't include Wall-E, c'mon. The list is from a bigger post of dystopian films, which has a lot of cool categories. (1 Governmental/social; 2 Alien controlled dystopias (both governmental and societal); 3 Corporate based dystopias (nongovernmental); 4 Cyberpunk/techno; 5 Post-apocalyptic; 6 Miscellaneous)
Post-apocalyptic
Post-apocalyptic storylines take place in the aftermath of a disaster - typically nuclear holocaust, war, plague - that justifies a civilization's turn towards dystopian like behaviors. Although not a requisite, most post-apocalyptic visions have a man-made cause.
9 (2009)
12 Monkeys (1995)
20 Years After (2008)
2019, After the Fall of New York (1983)
28 Days Later (2002)
28 Weeks Later (2007)
The Bed-Sitting Room (1969)
A Boy and His Dog (1974)
Blindness (2008)
The Blood of Heroes (1989)
The Book of Eli (2010)
Casshern (2004)
Cherry 2000 (1987)
Children of Men (2006)
Cyborg (1989)
Def-Con 4 (1985)
The Day of the Triffids (film) (1962)
Five (1951)
Genesis II (1973)
Hell Comes to Frogtown (1988)
I Am Legend (2007)
Le Dernier Combat (1983)
Logan's Run (1976)
The Last Man on Earth (1964)
The Noah (1975)
Mad Max (1979) and its sequels The Road Warrior (1981) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
On The Beach (1959) and its remake On the Beach (2000)
Origin: Spirits of the Past (Anime) (2006)
Panic in Year Zero! (1962)
Parasite (1982)
Planet Earth (1974)
The Postman (1997)
The Quiet Earth (1985)
Quintet (1979)
Robot Holocaust (1986)
The Road (2009)
Rock & Rule (1983)
Six-String Samurai (1998)
Tank Girl (1995)
Terminator: Salvation (2009)
Testament (1983)
Threads (1984)
Time of the Wolf (2003)
Titan A.E. (2000)
The Ultimate Warrior (1975)
Ultraviolet (2006)
Ultra Warrior (1990)
WALL-E (2008)
Waterworld (1995)
The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959)
Zardoz (1974)
Edward's Videogame Obsession #1: Goldeneye 007
In this series, I will try to document some of my various videogame phases (a la Daniel here), roughly in chronological order. I'll try to keep them pretty short, because Daniel and I got some complaints about our older videogame posts being too long.
Okay, so--at least for the moment--I'm not covering anything pre-Nintendo 64, because although I did play plenty of videogames, I wasn't really "into them," per se, just because I was too young to really fully take in and work hard at a game. Daniel and I got Nintendo 64's a year after everyone else did, because our parents were from the humble working class and were poor. That was a tough year to wait with our increasingly shoddy looking SEGA Geneses. We played a lot of Mario Kart at Josh's house to get our fix, as Daniel has mentioned before.
As the next Christmas came around, we greedily unwrapped our presents, I'm sure both of us knowing that we were getting a 64. Sure enough, there it was. I got I believe five games that first year, but easily the biggest of the lot was Goldeneye, which had just come out recently, and was the absolute shit for kids our age. Everyone played this game. It was just a given that if you went to someone's house, you were going to start up some multiplayer and blast each other with Dostoevskys and remote mines and other "eye-opening" weapons.
I don't know, for some reason I was never one to play that many FPS deathmatches. I guess I just always hated losing, so, although I played a shit-ton, I never played as much multiplayer as stalwarts like Greg Rickert and others. I do think I played a lot with Conor Duggan at this point, though.
I had a lot of respect for the single-player campaign in this game, which I always felt was unfairly neglected. The Facility topped Daniel's list of greatest videogame levels, which is a fair assessment. God, I should do a top videogame level list sometime. I don't know exactly why I loved one-player so much, because it seems pretty primitive even when compared to the original Half-Life, which came out the next year, but I had a lot of fun with it. Goldeneye should be honored as the forefather of such modern console shooter mainstays as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and the Halo series, both of which borrow quite a bit from Goldeneye when it comes to multiplayer deathmatching. I ultimately think that Goldeneye had the most influential shooter multiplayer of all time (you could make a case for the early Quakes here, but I will let someone more knowledgable argue their case), while Half-Life had the most influential single-player mode for a shooter. Those are just my thoughts.
--Edward
Okay, so--at least for the moment--I'm not covering anything pre-Nintendo 64, because although I did play plenty of videogames, I wasn't really "into them," per se, just because I was too young to really fully take in and work hard at a game. Daniel and I got Nintendo 64's a year after everyone else did, because our parents were from the humble working class and were poor. That was a tough year to wait with our increasingly shoddy looking SEGA Geneses. We played a lot of Mario Kart at Josh's house to get our fix, as Daniel has mentioned before.
As the next Christmas came around, we greedily unwrapped our presents, I'm sure both of us knowing that we were getting a 64. Sure enough, there it was. I got I believe five games that first year, but easily the biggest of the lot was Goldeneye, which had just come out recently, and was the absolute shit for kids our age. Everyone played this game. It was just a given that if you went to someone's house, you were going to start up some multiplayer and blast each other with Dostoevskys and remote mines and other "eye-opening" weapons.
I don't know, for some reason I was never one to play that many FPS deathmatches. I guess I just always hated losing, so, although I played a shit-ton, I never played as much multiplayer as stalwarts like Greg Rickert and others. I do think I played a lot with Conor Duggan at this point, though.
I had a lot of respect for the single-player campaign in this game, which I always felt was unfairly neglected. The Facility topped Daniel's list of greatest videogame levels, which is a fair assessment. God, I should do a top videogame level list sometime. I don't know exactly why I loved one-player so much, because it seems pretty primitive even when compared to the original Half-Life, which came out the next year, but I had a lot of fun with it. Goldeneye should be honored as the forefather of such modern console shooter mainstays as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and the Halo series, both of which borrow quite a bit from Goldeneye when it comes to multiplayer deathmatching. I ultimately think that Goldeneye had the most influential shooter multiplayer of all time (you could make a case for the early Quakes here, but I will let someone more knowledgable argue their case), while Half-Life had the most influential single-player mode for a shooter. Those are just my thoughts.
--Edward
very informative (please include with your zombie readiness kit)
Cross-posted from Yahoo! Movies and several sources on the web.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
It's weird, but one of the best memories of video gaming was playing this with Edward and Daniel for hours and hours. It was always the same too. We would play horse on Canada and I would always lose. It's probably because I knew Edward and Daniel played it allll the time. I can tell you that I yearned for their praise. If I could do a trick and then manual for awhile and take it into another move, I would just about go crazy with joy. Of course, they did it every single time and just about raped me (probably because I was obsessed with Christ Airs and tried to do them anytime I could).
I can still remember all the groans and yells as Edward or Daniel would jump off a ramp, manual to a rail and kick-flip up to it, grind for what seemed like an eternity, manual again, go off of another ramp and do some special move, manual again, and somehow end up in the starting point- - racking up about 100,000 points. Typically, I went off the ramp and would accidently do a kick flip and end up getting a big zero cause I didnt land it, OR getting a gentleman's 25.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Blood Simple, Part Deux
WARNING: SPOILERS
So, I finally got around to watching Blood Simple. I apologize to everyone, because I was the biggest proponent of the film club from the start, and I feel like I'm the reason it's not happening at the moment. I really do want it to happen eventually, and I definitely am not holding you guys back from starting without me, but I just feel really busy and stressed with other things at the moment. The lack of time to do what I want to do really stresses me out, and I guess I just feel full of anxiety lately.
Talking with my therapist I guess makes me have to confront a lot of things that I normally push away. Like, I know they're there, but I tend to block out a lot of things because they are just too depressing to me. Using drugs was a way of never having to confront the issues that have always bothered me as long as I can remember. Stuff like feeling my life has no meaning--no idea what I want to "do with my life." Stuff like worrying about how I will be alone the rest of my life. Just a lot of stuff that I feel like I have to confront now and deal with, like it's on some sort of checklist where I have to complete something every single day or I feel like I haven't done my job. I guess I feel a lot of pressure from recovery in this sense--that it's something I have to confront, and clearly it's important to my long-term well being, but it's like I have so many other goals that I put off for so long...my passions or just things I want to improve with, that I put off because my main focus was drugs. Like, I wish I could practice guitar so bad, but I just don't feel I have the time right now. I know, I can hear people saying now: If you really wanted to play, you would make the time. This is the truth, but I guess I prioritize other things over it. For instance, I've been abusing my body for so long that I feel like I really fucking need to get healthier and work out more and just fucking try at least, because God knows I don't try enough in life. And I want to focus on reading over music, because I just feel so insecure about being unintelligent, that that really bothers me. I hate that feeling. What can you do about it, ya know?
I guess I have this big conflict about being productive versus doing things that I care about or want to. Because, I mean, that line is a big blur, because if I ultimately follow it to its logical end, that would wind up with me doing drugs again, because what I really want to do is go out and find some crack and smack and just fucking relax. Because I guess when you've been so used to taking the easy way out, that becomes what you really want, even if your good sense tells you that isn't what you need for long-term happiness. But, like, I always feel the pull between doing things that are good for me versus doing fun, social things. I mean, I guess I can't go out drinking as much as other people my age do. This is the prime in our lives for that sort of thing. I guess other people are just different than me. That's just how I've always felt. Everyone else can go out and get fucked up and it not be a big deal. Like they don't have to worry about it. Sure, they probably worry about a hangover or whatever, but who has to worry more than that? Sometimes thoughts like that lead me into a bad headspace--like that I make everything so much harder for myself than I have to. Nothing can ever--ever--be easy for me. It's just always been like that. I mean, I don't exactly look at most others and envy them. I like being an individual. But sometimes, I just wish I could make things easier for myself. But that's the way it is. Mostly, I feel some guilt about drinking when things like NA or my therapist make it seem so bad for someone like me. I don't know. I just want to be a normal person my age sometimes. But I guess I kinda fucked that one up a while ago. I really should just think less and not stress about it. I'm young and I have a long life ahead of me. I remember that thought would have used to depress me. I am somewhat indifferent about it now.
I really do want to do movie and book clubs, but I don't really want to add that additional pressure on myself right now, because I already feel a lot of other pressures, which I don't really feel like going too much more into depth here right now, not because it's boring for me to write about, but because I feel like it'd be boring for you guys to read about. I'll get to those eventually, and music and videogames and other stuff hopefully, but I feel like I should concentrate on myself more for a while, because really that is what I've been neglecting so long. It's hard, though. I guess mostly just because it seems like I surround myself with a lot of other normal--no, not even normal...successful--people, so everyone else is pretty much living their own lives. Whatever, I'm not doing that bad. I hate that point where the motivation to quit drugs starts to shrink when you realize that you are still yourself in the same old life you were in before you started doing drugs in the first place.
Okay, onto the movie. Holy shit. What a frightening film. I wish I had been a bigger part of Coen month if they put out stuff like this a lot. Daniel is right--setting is key here. Texas. Yeah, what a frightening and alien state. I feel like out of all the contiguous states, Texas is the one that most fascinates me and scares me, because it represents something that resembles my deepest insecurities and fears. And yet I find it darkly attractive for some reason. I love whenever movies have those shots of the gigantic oil wells pumping. Large parts of this movie reminded me of The Thin Blue Line, which is a documentary about a murder in Texas. There is something about the vast landscapes there that really makes murder that much scarier, because the participants find themselves isolated through the gigantic size of the landscape. They are like insects. There is nowhere to run, because even though everything is so big, it's also so empty. Like the fucked-up PI says in the beginning, in Texas, you're on your own.
As Daniel says, there are some great visuals in this. I was also really struck by the sound, and not just by the music (Four Tops FTW!). In so many scenes, there is some ominous repeating noise (whether it's a ticking alarm clock, a fan swooping on the ceiling, or water dripping). I love the line when the cuckolded husband says he's in hell. Because that's really what this movie is to me: it depicts the hell that is human existence on earth. Does anything go right in this movie? And the visuals and sound really push this point forward. Like I said, this is a fucking scary movie. It was almost like I was watching Fearfest on AMC a few weeks early. I love it for that, though, because I love horror movies.
It also reminded me of a Hitchcock movie, in that it follows a group of people ranging from morally ambiguous to pretty damn evil. I thought it went all Psycho on me and killed off the heroine in the first hour, but the Coens one-upped Hitchcock (is this possible?) and proved me wrong. But while Hitch often followed some pretty fucked-up people, his directorial style did not wallow in the darkness the way it does in this movie. The Coens seem to inhabit this world along with the characters. I love this kind of '80s movie that is almost over-stylized in its darkness. It seems like a Brian DePalma influence (Carrie is one of the earlier movies that does these kind of crazy camera shots). The 1970's was when directors really started to bring a lot of moral darkness into their films, because of the abolishment of the Hays Production Code that had for so long censored movies and because of the cultural events of the '60s and '70s, but it seems like the '80s took this nihilism and darkness to its Gothic extreme (pretty much everything seemed to be taken to the extreme in the '80s). This is a prime example. God bless '80s horror films, because this might as well be one. I want to watch Monster/Fearfest so damn bad this year.
--Edward
So, I finally got around to watching Blood Simple. I apologize to everyone, because I was the biggest proponent of the film club from the start, and I feel like I'm the reason it's not happening at the moment. I really do want it to happen eventually, and I definitely am not holding you guys back from starting without me, but I just feel really busy and stressed with other things at the moment. The lack of time to do what I want to do really stresses me out, and I guess I just feel full of anxiety lately.
Talking with my therapist I guess makes me have to confront a lot of things that I normally push away. Like, I know they're there, but I tend to block out a lot of things because they are just too depressing to me. Using drugs was a way of never having to confront the issues that have always bothered me as long as I can remember. Stuff like feeling my life has no meaning--no idea what I want to "do with my life." Stuff like worrying about how I will be alone the rest of my life. Just a lot of stuff that I feel like I have to confront now and deal with, like it's on some sort of checklist where I have to complete something every single day or I feel like I haven't done my job. I guess I feel a lot of pressure from recovery in this sense--that it's something I have to confront, and clearly it's important to my long-term well being, but it's like I have so many other goals that I put off for so long...my passions or just things I want to improve with, that I put off because my main focus was drugs. Like, I wish I could practice guitar so bad, but I just don't feel I have the time right now. I know, I can hear people saying now: If you really wanted to play, you would make the time. This is the truth, but I guess I prioritize other things over it. For instance, I've been abusing my body for so long that I feel like I really fucking need to get healthier and work out more and just fucking try at least, because God knows I don't try enough in life. And I want to focus on reading over music, because I just feel so insecure about being unintelligent, that that really bothers me. I hate that feeling. What can you do about it, ya know?
I guess I have this big conflict about being productive versus doing things that I care about or want to. Because, I mean, that line is a big blur, because if I ultimately follow it to its logical end, that would wind up with me doing drugs again, because what I really want to do is go out and find some crack and smack and just fucking relax. Because I guess when you've been so used to taking the easy way out, that becomes what you really want, even if your good sense tells you that isn't what you need for long-term happiness. But, like, I always feel the pull between doing things that are good for me versus doing fun, social things. I mean, I guess I can't go out drinking as much as other people my age do. This is the prime in our lives for that sort of thing. I guess other people are just different than me. That's just how I've always felt. Everyone else can go out and get fucked up and it not be a big deal. Like they don't have to worry about it. Sure, they probably worry about a hangover or whatever, but who has to worry more than that? Sometimes thoughts like that lead me into a bad headspace--like that I make everything so much harder for myself than I have to. Nothing can ever--ever--be easy for me. It's just always been like that. I mean, I don't exactly look at most others and envy them. I like being an individual. But sometimes, I just wish I could make things easier for myself. But that's the way it is. Mostly, I feel some guilt about drinking when things like NA or my therapist make it seem so bad for someone like me. I don't know. I just want to be a normal person my age sometimes. But I guess I kinda fucked that one up a while ago. I really should just think less and not stress about it. I'm young and I have a long life ahead of me. I remember that thought would have used to depress me. I am somewhat indifferent about it now.
I really do want to do movie and book clubs, but I don't really want to add that additional pressure on myself right now, because I already feel a lot of other pressures, which I don't really feel like going too much more into depth here right now, not because it's boring for me to write about, but because I feel like it'd be boring for you guys to read about. I'll get to those eventually, and music and videogames and other stuff hopefully, but I feel like I should concentrate on myself more for a while, because really that is what I've been neglecting so long. It's hard, though. I guess mostly just because it seems like I surround myself with a lot of other normal--no, not even normal...successful--people, so everyone else is pretty much living their own lives. Whatever, I'm not doing that bad. I hate that point where the motivation to quit drugs starts to shrink when you realize that you are still yourself in the same old life you were in before you started doing drugs in the first place.
Okay, onto the movie. Holy shit. What a frightening film. I wish I had been a bigger part of Coen month if they put out stuff like this a lot. Daniel is right--setting is key here. Texas. Yeah, what a frightening and alien state. I feel like out of all the contiguous states, Texas is the one that most fascinates me and scares me, because it represents something that resembles my deepest insecurities and fears. And yet I find it darkly attractive for some reason. I love whenever movies have those shots of the gigantic oil wells pumping. Large parts of this movie reminded me of The Thin Blue Line, which is a documentary about a murder in Texas. There is something about the vast landscapes there that really makes murder that much scarier, because the participants find themselves isolated through the gigantic size of the landscape. They are like insects. There is nowhere to run, because even though everything is so big, it's also so empty. Like the fucked-up PI says in the beginning, in Texas, you're on your own.
As Daniel says, there are some great visuals in this. I was also really struck by the sound, and not just by the music (Four Tops FTW!). In so many scenes, there is some ominous repeating noise (whether it's a ticking alarm clock, a fan swooping on the ceiling, or water dripping). I love the line when the cuckolded husband says he's in hell. Because that's really what this movie is to me: it depicts the hell that is human existence on earth. Does anything go right in this movie? And the visuals and sound really push this point forward. Like I said, this is a fucking scary movie. It was almost like I was watching Fearfest on AMC a few weeks early. I love it for that, though, because I love horror movies.
It also reminded me of a Hitchcock movie, in that it follows a group of people ranging from morally ambiguous to pretty damn evil. I thought it went all Psycho on me and killed off the heroine in the first hour, but the Coens one-upped Hitchcock (is this possible?) and proved me wrong. But while Hitch often followed some pretty fucked-up people, his directorial style did not wallow in the darkness the way it does in this movie. The Coens seem to inhabit this world along with the characters. I love this kind of '80s movie that is almost over-stylized in its darkness. It seems like a Brian DePalma influence (Carrie is one of the earlier movies that does these kind of crazy camera shots). The 1970's was when directors really started to bring a lot of moral darkness into their films, because of the abolishment of the Hays Production Code that had for so long censored movies and because of the cultural events of the '60s and '70s, but it seems like the '80s took this nihilism and darkness to its Gothic extreme (pretty much everything seemed to be taken to the extreme in the '80s). This is a prime example. God bless '80s horror films, because this might as well be one. I want to watch Monster/Fearfest so damn bad this year.
--Edward
But for real, guys.
I know you guys think this is hilarious and fun to talk about, but I am compiling my zombipocalypse kit. For the rest of you trying to prepare, I offer some helpful training tips: http://www.zombiecombatclub.com/ (The video especially.)
I don't know how many of you know this about me, but I have a very real fear of zombies. Something about the disease/helplessness/used-to-be-someone-you-knew element, I have never gotten over it, so the "New Hollywood" bullshit zombies are especially irksome to me.
The second biggest problem with the zombiepocalypse world is the issue of trust. (If I have to tell you what the first biggest problem is, we're not friends.) There's all these groups a la The Book of Eli who insist on imposing an out-dated caste-esque system because they were able to grab power/guns/food before others.
I wasn't super crazy about that movie in general, but I appreciate its take on an -ism that I have rarely seen portrayed as bringing out the worst in people, rather than the best. I know that wasn't a zombie situation, but in the undead attack, there's always the crazies who live in an old gas station and lure other survivors to them with a phony SOS for the purpose of feeding their zombie dogs in the basement.
Barring those guys, we are led to believe that the people who are still alive are not only capable, but noble (they probably go around snatching children from the drooling maws of the undead (read: Alice)). That's a nice idea, but I'm not convinced that, in the face of not only tragedy and disaster but also decomposing horror, people are going to do that thing where we all rise up to better ourselves and be greater than the sum of our parts.
Cynical? Maybe. But I'm ready.
Semi-Post Apocalyptic Video Game: Red Faction
First of all, any game with a railgun is always going to be amazing. Though, I would say the best part of Red Faction was the ability to destroy the environment completely. I used to rocket-launch the shit out of rock bridges just as my adversary was crossing them. Needless to say the rocket didn't kill them, instead it was the long plunge into oblivion. I was in love with rocket-launching the shit out of everything. There was also C-4 which was sweet cause you could stick it on people and blow the crap out of them.
My favorite guilty pleasure in that game would be to get the rocket launcher and railgun. I would find a secluded place on the map and use the rocket-launcher to burrow my way into a wall(and youd be surprised how far you could go). Id then take my railgun and just sit there and kill everybody- without fear of retaliation cause I forgot to mention the proximity mines i'd put in the tunnel.
Red Faction wasted a lot of my time while I had a PS2.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Pros and Cons: Waterworld
Post-Apocalypse Setting: Waterworld (and Zelda: Windwaker)
The ice caps have melted as the Gore-acles(!) predicted and we find ourselves floating around on scrappily constructed vessels, wary of those with motors and that fateful gasoline liquid that powers them as we pray for wind and sunshine. Various pirates of the sea, not unlike the pirates of the sand from Mad Max, rule the waters with tyrannical might. One Dennis Hopper has an eye patch, a bald head, and a lot of evil facial expressions, but you've got one Kevin Costner with webbed feet, gills behind his ears, and a noble but naive belief that this compelling post-world world you live in is compelling enough to spend a monstrous amount of money on for a film (I don't see what's so bad about it, but then again, I've only really seen the movie in parts with multiple-year increments in between my viewings).
Pro: Kevin Costner and Dennis Hopper and the only real woman I remember from the whole movie, who just happens to be a babe, are all entertaining peers in this world.
Con: There's water everywhere. I mean I like swimming as much as the next Joe, but c'mon. I'd be wearing floaties at all times I know that much.
Pro: You can try out your Wave Race 64 jetskiing skills in real life or for a more up to date reference, practice imitating Kenny Powers moves throwing loose women from the back of them as the asshole that he is.
Con: Your hands will be forever pruny.
Pro: You'll become proficient in spearing things.
Con: You'll probably end up imprisoned on Hopper's wildly big tanker and will have to work the engine room until you die.
Pro: Going on underwater looting sessions of the sunken big apple in a large bag of air pulled by Costner.
Con: There's water everywhere.
The ice caps have melted as the Gore-acles(!) predicted and we find ourselves floating around on scrappily constructed vessels, wary of those with motors and that fateful gasoline liquid that powers them as we pray for wind and sunshine. Various pirates of the sea, not unlike the pirates of the sand from Mad Max, rule the waters with tyrannical might. One Dennis Hopper has an eye patch, a bald head, and a lot of evil facial expressions, but you've got one Kevin Costner with webbed feet, gills behind his ears, and a noble but naive belief that this compelling post-world world you live in is compelling enough to spend a monstrous amount of money on for a film (I don't see what's so bad about it, but then again, I've only really seen the movie in parts with multiple-year increments in between my viewings).
Pro: Kevin Costner and Dennis Hopper and the only real woman I remember from the whole movie, who just happens to be a babe, are all entertaining peers in this world.
Con: There's water everywhere. I mean I like swimming as much as the next Joe, but c'mon. I'd be wearing floaties at all times I know that much.
Pro: You can try out your Wave Race 64 jetskiing skills in real life or for a more up to date reference, practice imitating Kenny Powers moves throwing loose women from the back of them as the asshole that he is.
Con: Your hands will be forever pruny.
Pro: You'll become proficient in spearing things.
Con: You'll probably end up imprisoned on Hopper's wildly big tanker and will have to work the engine room until you die.
Pro: Going on underwater looting sessions of the sunken big apple in a large bag of air pulled by Costner.
Con: There's water everywhere.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Pros and Cons of a Given Post-World World: Mad Max Desert Land
To aid in some decision-making when the time comes, I'm gonna try and outline some positives and negatives having to do with a variety of game-over-but-still-going scenarios.
Mad Max Post-Apocalypse:
For those who haven't seen these movies, I believe (from my faint memories of these movies at the Nesbit household what seems like thirty years ago) that the world consisted of a lot of really 80's hair-y people riding around on motorcycles, motorized tricycles, four-wheelers, and whatever other number of wheels you can hook up comfortable to a gasoline-powered engine, harrassing whatever creatures they found into giving them their random shit, and searching for what? more gasoline for more driving? water? I kind of forget. But basically if you want to be apart of a motorcycle/four wheeler gang and dress up like the Little Giants, then this afterworld life is probably for you. Let's dish out some pros/cons:
Pro: Mel Gibson's craziness is finally at peace with the just-as-crazy-if-not-more people surrounding him. Society don't give too much a damn about what someone says when they're drunk and being arrested when most problems are solved in a fucking Thunderdome (two men enter, one man leaves - someone call Joe Riedel!).
Con: It's dry as hell. If you need moisturizer in this currently serenely humid earth climate (it's still green and blue from far away, not tan and orange), then this will most definitely suck for you. Also, get yoself some frickin' goggles cuz the sands be a flyin'!
Pro: You get drive around like the biggest game of Road Rash ever made, popping off jumps, firing automatic weaponry that's been mounted on your vehicles, and quenching your thirst for speed day in and day out.
Con: This life will inevitably grow tiresome, and it doesn't appear that these savages will care too much to settle down and write poetry or make music or something deeper. But hey, didn't stop 'em from making a shit ton of sequels!
Mad Max Post-Apocalypse:
For those who haven't seen these movies, I believe (from my faint memories of these movies at the Nesbit household what seems like thirty years ago) that the world consisted of a lot of really 80's hair-y people riding around on motorcycles, motorized tricycles, four-wheelers, and whatever other number of wheels you can hook up comfortable to a gasoline-powered engine, harrassing whatever creatures they found into giving them their random shit, and searching for what? more gasoline for more driving? water? I kind of forget. But basically if you want to be apart of a motorcycle/four wheeler gang and dress up like the Little Giants, then this afterworld life is probably for you. Let's dish out some pros/cons:
Pro: Mel Gibson's craziness is finally at peace with the just-as-crazy-if-not-more people surrounding him. Society don't give too much a damn about what someone says when they're drunk and being arrested when most problems are solved in a fucking Thunderdome (two men enter, one man leaves - someone call Joe Riedel!).
Con: It's dry as hell. If you need moisturizer in this currently serenely humid earth climate (it's still green and blue from far away, not tan and orange), then this will most definitely suck for you. Also, get yoself some frickin' goggles cuz the sands be a flyin'!
Pro: You get drive around like the biggest game of Road Rash ever made, popping off jumps, firing automatic weaponry that's been mounted on your vehicles, and quenching your thirst for speed day in and day out.
Con: This life will inevitably grow tiresome, and it doesn't appear that these savages will care too much to settle down and write poetry or make music or something deeper. But hey, didn't stop 'em from making a shit ton of sequels!
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Post-Apocalypse Now
I don't know why everyone's so quick to assume that the apocalypse is somewhere in the future, when it very well has already happened, and not just once. Welcome to the post-apocalyptic world number 456*. No one ever said it had to be some distinguished war or incredible disaster. What if it was a slow and gradual process that inevitably let our abilities and ambitions and dellusions take over our lives and in a sense, ended the world that once was?
The world has already ended, and we're just waiting out the days in our various online, wired, hooked in purgatories. Days stretch on for miles, and subcultures not possible before have now taken over lingo, habits, and insecurities. Everything's awash with speed, super-saturated images, and constant noise. Innocence is a joke, if not a fetish or a myth. Awkwardness has become mainstream so that we can no longer distinguish discomfort from being cool. We hurtle through space while remaining planted at a computer for 95% of the day waiting to hit a wall somewhere, but all we find is more slippery mediums to slide faster through. Anything that can be built or crafted doesn't merit approval from us until it hits 1 million views, at the minimum. Death doesn't really exist, but then again neither does life.
In fact, how many times has a the world ended in some respect for some species or way of life? I feel like with each major technological advancement, we entered a new world while simultaneously ending an old one. But in terms of our present post-apocalyptic world, I'd like to take a look at the what we're facing in a completely new conceptualization of the end of the world.
We no longer occupy ourselves with the space outside our screens, TV, phones, and computers. Our wasteland is paved, out poisonous gases are the heavily monitored and circulated fresh air. We have at least two or three layers separating us at all times from the world that was - screens, earphones, phones, music, emails, text, cubicles, elevators, cars, and other living body bags**. The nutrients we get come from laboratories, our exercise comes from stationary machines, and our thoughts come from fictional characters, who we take for a slightly exaggerated but mostly real reflection of what normal people are. We've created a self-existing existence so we don't have to do shit.
The world has already ended, and we're just waiting out the days in our various online, wired, hooked in purgatories. Days stretch on for miles, and subcultures not possible before have now taken over lingo, habits, and insecurities. Everything's awash with speed, super-saturated images, and constant noise. Innocence is a joke, if not a fetish or a myth. Awkwardness has become mainstream so that we can no longer distinguish discomfort from being cool. We hurtle through space while remaining planted at a computer for 95% of the day waiting to hit a wall somewhere, but all we find is more slippery mediums to slide faster through. Anything that can be built or crafted doesn't merit approval from us until it hits 1 million views, at the minimum. Death doesn't really exist, but then again neither does life.
And the scariest part of the present post apocalyptic world? It is how strange this world would be if everyone didn't always act so damn unfazed by it all.
*This number is a completely arbitrary number
**A little over the top? Perhaps.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Reading List: Post-Apocalyptic/Disaster/Dystopia/Zombies
Three Books to Help You Enjoy the Apocalypse (from NPR): http://n.pr/cbgzcF
I haven't read any of the suggestions from NPR, but I'm going to add them to my list. I recently read The Road, and I can't say enough about that book. The following are a few more books within the genre I plan to read in the near future.
Oryx and Crake (Atwood)
I Am Legend (Matheson)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Grahame-Smith)
I need more suggestions.
I haven't read any of the suggestions from NPR, but I'm going to add them to my list. I recently read The Road, and I can't say enough about that book. The following are a few more books within the genre I plan to read in the near future.
Oryx and Crake (Atwood)
I Am Legend (Matheson)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Grahame-Smith)
I need more suggestions.
Monday, October 4, 2010
post-apocalyptic readiness
This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I have been spending a lot of time thinking about what I would do in worst-case scenarios: chemical, biological, nuclear, and terror attacks; "fire sale" scenarios; burning, looting, rioting in the streets; severe, climate change-fueled weather events; and the like. Some are more realistic than others, but in the words of one of my favorite McDonald's ad campaigns, "Hey, it could happen."
I am not usually a nut about these things, but I do think it makes sense to have a plan. Therefore, I am asking the following rhetorical questions:
1. Who would you most want to be stuck in a crowded, dark, and hot subway car with when the train derails during an earthquake? (Can be anyone, alive or deceased, fictitious or real).
2. You are in DC walking on the National Mall near the WWII memorial when you hear a massive explosion, shaking the ground violently. You turn around to see a giant ball of fire and smoke rising from the Capitol dome. What do you do next?
3. The City of New York has just ordered a mandatory evacuation of all five boroughs due to a projected category 5 hurricane, which will make landfall in 36 hours. You have decided to hunker down and wait out the storm in your midtown apartment. You take the shopping cart you stole from ShopRite to go pick up supplies, amidst streets jam packed with cars and frantic city residents. What do you fill the cart with?
My initial responses are as follows, though I reserve the right to edit later:
1. Casey Ryback from the Under Seige series. SEAL commando turned chef with top training in special-weapons and counter-terrorism. Not only would he be able to engineer our way out of the subway car to safety, but he could protect the citizens from mal-intended foes and probably prepare food for the group if we were stranded for many days and able to catch rats or other rodents in the tunnels.
2. I would immediately sprint north up 17th, stopping by the White House to see if there was any activity of note, then directly toward GW's campus on H street, knowing that the university has its own police force and highly developed disaster readiness plans. If I had time, and depending on the severity of the attack, I would proceed to my house up in Mount Pleasant (about 2 miles north of the National Mall) load up my backpack with water, flashlights, and powerbars. If it was best to leave my house , I would get on my bike and listen for the advice of federal officials over radio.
3. I would put a change of clothes, a blanket and a flashlight in the cart before I left, just in case I wasn't able to make it back. I would probably go to the local bodega, not a supermarket, to load up on a few gallons of water, canned soup, and other non-perishables. I would also try to get in touch with close friends to see if they wanted to combine forces and stay in the same house/apartment, especially if they are better prepared than I am. Gotta mooch where it's wise.
That's all I've got for now. I don't really know what the "right" thing to do is during these types of situations, but I think that's the point. We don't really think about getting sprayed until the shit actually hits the fan.
My next planned post: The Bicycle: Is there a better form post-apocalyptic transportation?
I am not usually a nut about these things, but I do think it makes sense to have a plan. Therefore, I am asking the following rhetorical questions:
1. Who would you most want to be stuck in a crowded, dark, and hot subway car with when the train derails during an earthquake? (Can be anyone, alive or deceased, fictitious or real).
2. You are in DC walking on the National Mall near the WWII memorial when you hear a massive explosion, shaking the ground violently. You turn around to see a giant ball of fire and smoke rising from the Capitol dome. What do you do next?
3. The City of New York has just ordered a mandatory evacuation of all five boroughs due to a projected category 5 hurricane, which will make landfall in 36 hours. You have decided to hunker down and wait out the storm in your midtown apartment. You take the shopping cart you stole from ShopRite to go pick up supplies, amidst streets jam packed with cars and frantic city residents. What do you fill the cart with?
My initial responses are as follows, though I reserve the right to edit later:
1. Casey Ryback from the Under Seige series. SEAL commando turned chef with top training in special-weapons and counter-terrorism. Not only would he be able to engineer our way out of the subway car to safety, but he could protect the citizens from mal-intended foes and probably prepare food for the group if we were stranded for many days and able to catch rats or other rodents in the tunnels.
2. I would immediately sprint north up 17th, stopping by the White House to see if there was any activity of note, then directly toward GW's campus on H street, knowing that the university has its own police force and highly developed disaster readiness plans. If I had time, and depending on the severity of the attack, I would proceed to my house up in Mount Pleasant (about 2 miles north of the National Mall) load up my backpack with water, flashlights, and powerbars. If it was best to leave my house , I would get on my bike and listen for the advice of federal officials over radio.
3. I would put a change of clothes, a blanket and a flashlight in the cart before I left, just in case I wasn't able to make it back. I would probably go to the local bodega, not a supermarket, to load up on a few gallons of water, canned soup, and other non-perishables. I would also try to get in touch with close friends to see if they wanted to combine forces and stay in the same house/apartment, especially if they are better prepared than I am. Gotta mooch where it's wise.
That's all I've got for now. I don't really know what the "right" thing to do is during these types of situations, but I think that's the point. We don't really think about getting sprayed until the shit actually hits the fan.
My next planned post: The Bicycle: Is there a better form post-apocalyptic transportation?
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Friday, October 1, 2010
The Analogy Will Set You Free
A quote from an oft-forgotten but too-quickly-spoken-about-once-remembered movie, Road Trip, goes along something to the likes of (thank you IMDb), "Yeah, I can teach Japanese to a monkey in 46 hours. They key is just finding a way to relate to the material." The pronounced pothead character of the movie teaches the main guy ancient philosophy by relating all of the figures and philosophies to WWF wrestling and the characters and plotlines therein. I always liked the idea of this but was basically too lazy or a little suspicious that the tactic might make me have to do extra work to learn the material at hand. Either way, most of my material-learning days are over for now, and I'm thinking of using a similary method for a separate purpose, that of getting through the day in a completely mundane and yet-to-have-an-anlogy-applied-to-it-to-make-it-more-interesting environment.
Today I am Batman. I am Bruce Wayne and I am Batman. Danny Elfman tells me this, and Hans Zimmer tell me this. My cubicle = my mansion. The bathroom stall = the batcave. Matt, the guy two cubes over is Robin, and we take on the scum that thrive in the system of ENERGY STAR for Buildings. Each building is a criminal with a record, which we review, and every once in a while release from Arkham Asylum (the On-Hold folders) into the world once rehabilitated - not that I do that task all that much, that's more for the police (the rest of Cadmus on ENERGY STAR team). But when they try to slip applications by us and cheat justice, we slam down on the on-hold applications and lock them the hell up.
Soundtracks are key in immersing yourself in a fantasy at work. Labeling people as characters works really well too. Coming up with a good and evil always helps tear up the gray areas of the office life. I'm going deep in on this one, see you guys when I wake up.
Today I am Batman. I am Bruce Wayne and I am Batman. Danny Elfman tells me this, and Hans Zimmer tell me this. My cubicle = my mansion. The bathroom stall = the batcave. Matt, the guy two cubes over is Robin, and we take on the scum that thrive in the system of ENERGY STAR for Buildings. Each building is a criminal with a record, which we review, and every once in a while release from Arkham Asylum (the On-Hold folders) into the world once rehabilitated - not that I do that task all that much, that's more for the police (the rest of Cadmus on ENERGY STAR team). But when they try to slip applications by us and cheat justice, we slam down on the on-hold applications and lock them the hell up.
Soundtracks are key in immersing yourself in a fantasy at work. Labeling people as characters works really well too. Coming up with a good and evil always helps tear up the gray areas of the office life. I'm going deep in on this one, see you guys when I wake up.
Childhood Saga Month Poll Closed: Dodgeball Wins
A real close battle between recess activites with a whopping 8 votes total to determine the winner of this poll (allowing people to select more than one activity), I think dodgeball proved itself by way of half our writers being from Waterford Elementary where dodgeball was the main event every day. It seemed to capture so many elements in one ruthless, wild game. I'm not sure how other people interpret "Dodgeball" in terms of rules of play, but our game was not like the one made semi-famous for a few months after the movie Dodgeball came out where there are multiple balls and if you're out you sit on the sideline hoping to get caught back in. We played what I've heard some times to be called "prison dodgeball" where the people who get out have to go to the other side of the opposing team, where it almost benefits them because then they can just play catch with their remaining teammates while the opponent dances in the middle.
This form of dodgeball brought on many elements, which I'd consider better than the one-hit-you're-out dodgeball. The pickle was a strange fascination, or even obsession I'd say among kids back then (probably influenced heavily by the Sandlot or the game with two bases, which was literally one giant game of pickle that was popular then), and having people in a jail behind who you were throwing at allowed for some pretty intense games of pickle. It also bred the need for "launching" the ball, the one thing I could ever claim I was good at and even cool for a few minutes for - that is until I lost the softball throwing contest to Josh Nesbit on Field Day of 5th grade, and I knew my place (what an epic event for a field day, a marfuggin throwing contest for distance!).
Various other characters were born from Dodgeball, like the girl who no one thought to throw at for the first half of the game until finally we realized she was the only one left, and we questioned deep down whether it meant she was in some way better than us even though the rest of us were risking our necks grabbing the ball and getting caught out or just drawing attention to ourselves in a ny way. This girl was your Camilla Nusbaum or possibly even Erica Strahin (some might also throw in a Julie Costantino). They were essential though, as they were your team's lifeline and could sometime figure out a way to get the ball to you in jail, allowing you a shot at redemption (note that those in jail could get back to their side by throwing someone out).
Other characters such as David Levernz, the sort of Leonardo (of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mind you) of Dodgeball, throwing with two hands with a look on his face more Far East than Wild West. Marquis was basically Waterford's only black kid for a good five years it seemed like, and he also was the most goddamn intimidating player ever to chuck a big red dodgeball - not to mention he was something like three or more years older than us. We feared for our lives because he could throw missles, that hurt, a lot.
Steven Jackson is basically the only real person though that should get credit for such a post, because God knows we would've all just as well tossed aside most of these memories of this game if it weren't for this ferverent righteous disciple of the game. The most defining move he brought to the table was running outside before anyone else could even get the door open (not possible? it happened), and screaming to the powers that be in the sky, "DOOOODDDDDDDDGGGGGEEEEEBBBBBBAAAAAAALLLLLLL!!!!!!!" like we were playing for the delight of those on Mt. Olympus, praying not to be smited (smoten? smote?) for an errant throw or a false moment of hesitation at deciding whether to catch or dodge. He was the flag-waver, the torch-bearer, the cheerleader, and the prophet for the game. And he wasn't even that good, which made his obsession that much better. He threw in this big goalie-esque chucking motion because, most understandably, the kid was so tiny any other throw was guaranteed to get caught because it would be so weak. Steven had heart though, and that was rare in the realm of the blacktop where egos raged and reputations were born. Dodgeball was recess.
This form of dodgeball brought on many elements, which I'd consider better than the one-hit-you're-out dodgeball. The pickle was a strange fascination, or even obsession I'd say among kids back then (probably influenced heavily by the Sandlot or the game with two bases, which was literally one giant game of pickle that was popular then), and having people in a jail behind who you were throwing at allowed for some pretty intense games of pickle. It also bred the need for "launching" the ball, the one thing I could ever claim I was good at and even cool for a few minutes for - that is until I lost the softball throwing contest to Josh Nesbit on Field Day of 5th grade, and I knew my place (what an epic event for a field day, a marfuggin throwing contest for distance!).
Various other characters were born from Dodgeball, like the girl who no one thought to throw at for the first half of the game until finally we realized she was the only one left, and we questioned deep down whether it meant she was in some way better than us even though the rest of us were risking our necks grabbing the ball and getting caught out or just drawing attention to ourselves in a ny way. This girl was your Camilla Nusbaum or possibly even Erica Strahin (some might also throw in a Julie Costantino). They were essential though, as they were your team's lifeline and could sometime figure out a way to get the ball to you in jail, allowing you a shot at redemption (note that those in jail could get back to their side by throwing someone out).
Other characters such as David Levernz, the sort of Leonardo (of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mind you) of Dodgeball, throwing with two hands with a look on his face more Far East than Wild West. Marquis was basically Waterford's only black kid for a good five years it seemed like, and he also was the most goddamn intimidating player ever to chuck a big red dodgeball - not to mention he was something like three or more years older than us. We feared for our lives because he could throw missles, that hurt, a lot.
Steven Jackson is basically the only real person though that should get credit for such a post, because God knows we would've all just as well tossed aside most of these memories of this game if it weren't for this ferverent righteous disciple of the game. The most defining move he brought to the table was running outside before anyone else could even get the door open (not possible? it happened), and screaming to the powers that be in the sky, "DOOOODDDDDDDDGGGGGEEEEEBBBBBBAAAAAAALLLLLLL!!!!!!!" like we were playing for the delight of those on Mt. Olympus, praying not to be smited (smoten? smote?) for an errant throw or a false moment of hesitation at deciding whether to catch or dodge. He was the flag-waver, the torch-bearer, the cheerleader, and the prophet for the game. And he wasn't even that good, which made his obsession that much better. He threw in this big goalie-esque chucking motion because, most understandably, the kid was so tiny any other throw was guaranteed to get caught because it would be so weak. Steven had heart though, and that was rare in the realm of the blacktop where egos raged and reputations were born. Dodgeball was recess.
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