Never stopping pill popping

Nobody likes a barking dog. I say that all the time to my dog, and yet he still barks. It's a good thing he's cute.

"Bark, bark."

It's a new week, and I've got a chapter to share, since all I'm doing otherwise is waiting for dinner to finish cooking while I'm watching Top Chef. How lucky for you.

Tomorrow starts my next semester in school, and I feel like I have to ramp myself back up into scholastic mode. I'm basically getting a math credit with the easiest class I possibly could, and taking a short story literature class. It would be more fun if it was a writing class, but apparently writing stories is only in workshop classes. So, I'm going to be spending more time reading for class than reading for enjoyment, which seems to be a thing that I only do on the bus or on my breaks at work anymore.

I'm about a third into Kim Stanley Robinson's second part of the Mars Trilogy, Green Mars, and it's been slow going. Those books are dense as hell, and an awful lot of reading scientific approximations of terraforming Mars, but they're fun and engaging adventures with a strong humanistic bend to it. I really should spend a day and just read, but there's so many other things to do and experience. And I easily get distracted by pretty pictures and petty arguments.

My week hasn't been very exciting. Finished Mass Effect 1 and am just past disc 1 on Mass Effect 2.

 I've also been playing DOOM 2016, and enjoying brutalizing the legions of hell with chainsaws and shotguns.

I've upgraded to videos over screen shots since for some reason my Xbox isn't cooperating with OneDrive on screens. At least I hope I have. We'll find out when this posts if the embedding works. I could just preview this entry, but I prefer the suspense, don't you? No? Well too bad!

I've also been back to playing Civ. I still haven't bought 6, since I don't feel like buying another game to lose myself in at the moment. I just got Final Fantasy XV, and while I'm beyond excited to finally play a new Final Fantasy title, I'm holding it off until I finish the last chapter in To Slice The Sky. Why am I replaying Mass Effect, stomping through DOOM, and pretending to be the British Empire if they started out in Alaska/West Canada (which is going rather poorly)? Because I like making excuses to stop myself from doing things I want to in the face of what I should do.

Also, I'm kinda scared to crack into XV, despite everywhere I've read saying it's a keen piece of work. I was mixed on FFXIII (the combat was great, but everything else sucked), and missed out on XIV: A Realm Reborn since I don't do MMORPG's anymore, so I'm anxious as well as guarded for diving back into the series. I haven't had any issues with the main entries into the series outside of XIII, and X-2 was... well, it was a game with a lot of ideas that were better utilized elsewhere, but those were enough to give me pause, but Square-Enix has been going out of their way to publish excellent games so I'm still quite excited to play XV. I don't imagine that it'll outmaneuver VI as my favorite in the series, but I'm looking forward to playing around with Chocobos and spamming Ultima.

But speaking of To Slice The Sky, today's post is part 1/4 for our final heist. Trip's solo adventure back in Ocean City to shut down Roplaxive-Pharrel's east coast servers. I don't have much to set this up with, and it was well received so far. Welcome to the beginning of the end.

Dog Pic 2: Electric Boogaloo

"We're going on an adventure!"

Take Meta Mars

I almost didn't blog this week. You know, like last week. But I have a lot of good reasons that don't involve wasting my time playing Civilization. Well, I did that, but I finally finished my chapter, did a ton of school work, fought with financial aid, had a busy work week, and am now sitting here with my dog, ready for the attack of the blog.

So yeah, in a nut shell, I went to work and got prepped for the starting of the fall semester. I'm currently halfway through Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. I first read it half-assed when everyone else was reading along to Huck Finn in English class. I didn't really enjoy it the first time around, but I also didn't really understand McCarthyism, nor did I really pay it much attention since I had to periodically pretend that I was paying attention. Now that I'm reading it with a contemporary mind aged about 18 years, I'm noticing more to it. Also, I've never really been too stoked on Bradbury from any of the other books I've read from him (Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Illustrated Man, & Dandelion Wine) but something about this book this time around, I'm enjoying the poetry of Ray's prose. While it seems dated in some regards, particularly the romantic Mars of H.G. Wells and E.R. Burroughs, and the pre-space race knowledge of what it was like traveling to outer space, the novel has a certain charm, mingled with a 1950's paranoia and sense of blind optimism.

I don't care who you are, that's a sweet cover.

A Princess of Mars was quite a pulpy and overly dated adventure. Not like I could expect more from Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1912, but despite its shortcomings by contemporary standards, it still has plenty of things that awoke that boyhood spirit of adventure in me. Even if at it's heart it's a story about a Mary Sue former Confederate officer that basically wins everything on Mars by fortune and force of will. He teaches savage warlords how to love, he rises to the top of the civilized and technologically advanced army in one battle, he ends a bloody civil war, and beds the most beautiful and beloved princess on the red planet. All in a days work for our hero, John Carter. It's one of those stories about the white man's burden that really could be about anyone else, but because it comes from a time of social bigotry and backwards thinking, it's unfortunately really a book about systematic racism and power fantasies. However, it's also just a bad ass, ultra-violent, kinda ridiculous, tell not show, sword and sorcery romp on a dying planet, so it's technically science fiction. The main saving grace is the world building Burroughs does. The world of Barsoom and all it's rich inhabitants are just as much racial space opera expys as all the ones from Mass Effect, but I'll be damaged if they're not both dear to my heart. Speaking of Mass Effect, the Krogan are totally just shorter Tarks missing a set of arms. They even keep Caldor's, aka Varrens. Still, choice read if you don't want to think to hard and just get wrapped up in a dumb adventure story that's fun to read.

Besides my playing Civ (I managed to pull off a culture victory as Gandhi after having to eliminate Kamehameha since I didn't have enough time to wait for Polynesia to come under my influence) and reading Mars fiction, I've been overloaded with work from Spanish class. I wish I had a group of six other ethnically diverse people to form a study group and have wacky online adventures with. Maybe we'd even have a catchy theme song sung by some Alt Rock band. I would type something funny for you to toss into Google translate, but I'm sick of halbar Español for today, or however you conjugate hablar in Spanglish. I spent most of my time setting up all the ridiculous hoops one has to jump through when learning a language online for credit. The online third party site, with proprietary useless book that's a vessel for the $150 access code so you can participate in the class.

BTW, if you've been under a rock for the last few decades, higher education is a damn grift.

So, book reviews, life update, oh, right... novel chapter. So I just wrote today's chapter. This is essentially a first draft. Not really a rough draft, but definitely all new material that hasn't had much editing. This actually got an upvote on /r/cyberpunk_stories (which is standard), so I've got that going for me. We say it's not about the internet points, but how else am I supposed to gauge if I'm on the right track with the limited fanbase I'm shilling to?

So let's kick some tires and light some fires. Dog:

The First Breath After The Coma...

I feel like half the openings of my blogs are me apologizing for missing weeks.

So, yeah, I was MIA. Not like I really have much of an excuse. I was at home for a couple weeks, being lazy and lethargic, and mostly playing Civilization when I was supposed to be writing. But life has regained structure. I'm no longer just a blob of matter that likes to day drink and play turn-based strategy games, I have dusted off the ashes and am in my reborn Phoenix form, ready to punch words at you like so many concrete blocks. KIYAP!

So, like I mentioned, I've mostly been playing Civ.

To think they adopted Tit Worship so early.

I've also plowed through a few other games, particularly the original DOOM, which I haven't played... since it came out on PC and had to be started with boot discs. If you're a faithful reader (and why would you be?) you know I'm fond of playing videogames in self-constructed sequences. So, finishing off DOOM was a part of my "history of the FPS" playthrough. Next up is DOOM 2, and I've played through the first few levels of hell on earth. I've never played DOOM 2 without cheat codes, so we'll see how this goes. The first game is actual genius. While Wolfenstein 3D is intense and has some survival aspects to it that add to its difficulty, DOOM is at some points a survival horror/ platformer/ FPS. There's a reason why every FPS that came out after was called a DOOM clone. The action is intense, the enemies are tenacious and frightening, it throws curveballs at you at just the right time. It's free form in regards to how you can attack combat. There's even stealth elements to it at times, and actual tactics you can use to make the game play in your favor, which are necessary on higher difficulties, which are absolutely unforgiving. And it's ridiculously ultra-violent and as overtly satanic as Wolfenstein 3D is overtly nazi, because shock value, like the dollar, had better mileage in the '90s. If you dig retro games, or if you're old enough to where me talking about this is giving you nostalgia, fire up a copy of DOOM. If you weren't counting, including this sentence, I said DOOM seven times.

I fired up the Vault-Tec Workshop in Fallout 4. Haven't really dug too deep into it. I'm building my atrium and have to clear out the rest of the workshops in Vault 88, I've assembled four brave young souls seeking solace from surviving in the Commonwealth. I plan on shooting at least one of them out of a canon into a rock outcropping. There's a lot of space to play with, so we'll see what kind of trouble I can get into as I become the ultimate overseer.

So I started up at the office last week and am acclimating to that environment. I feel it's going well, and everyone around me seems cool. But I always have that sneaking suspicion of paranoia that everyone is merely tolerating my presence while talking shit behind my back. Living in LA definitely breeds that into you. Every social circle is like a house in the great game of acquaintances. Because in the game of acquaintances, you win, or I am like totally calling everyone I know right now. Did you see her shoes?

So far I've gotten mostly compliments on my desk decorum.

Roll for initiative.

It's in its larval stage, and I imagine it will evolve into a sprawl of kitschy gifts and posters I'll receive on birthdays and end of year gift exchanges. Much like my fy-ance made the mistake of becoming a teacher, and as such will receive teacher memorabilia for her desk till the end of time. Gift giving is such a weird thing, as is nesting.

So, I kicked around a bit, avoided my blog for two weeks, started a new job, played some videogames, I watched the first half of Buffy Season 2 and will do my write up of it next week. In all of my confessed sloth, I've also been busy on rewrites for To Slice The Sky. I'm currently working on the subterranean fight scene I've been excited for/dreading. So far it's a lot of talking in the dark, but I'm right on the cusp of the climactic moment where all the world building and heavy handed class war metaphors pay off with a distraction moment. I should be working more on it, but I'm procrastinating with other duties at the moment. What that means for you? Well, the chapter I'm writing now comes after the one I just finished. So today is new chapter day! Yay!

Today's chapter is very heavily edited from it's original version. It didn't play too well when I posted on r/cyberpunk_stories either. But I'll let you decide how you feel about today's offering, after the dog pic.

80% of my life is spent sleeping in weird positions.