Year of the Cock

你好, 新年快乐!

Are there other people out there who wonder when they'll forget the lyrics to Ice, Ice, Baby? Besides Robert Van Winkle.

It's one of those songs where I'll never do it for karaoke, it never comes on randomly in people's cars or on the radio, it's just a dark stain of the hip-hop boom of 1990. When MC Hammer pants and Cross-Colors were the shiz, right before Ice Cube told us we could New Jack Swing from his nuts. But really, I think that Ice, Ice, Baby only exists as bad fever dreams in the minds of white kids that love '90s hip-hop, even if its video has 151 million+ plays. After all, the man himself symbolically wrecked the tape in the presence of Janeane Garofalo, Jon Stewart, Dennis Leary, and--for some reason--Chris Kattan. No offense, Chris. Just, let's be real. Your cultural relevance in 2007 was about as strong as Vanilla Ice's, and he released a Nu Metal album

Okay, mid blog-writing I ended up in a Wikipedia hole. Did you know that Vanilla Ice is a Juggalo and signed to Psychopathic Records? He's also invited to be a part of the Juggalo March on Washington come September. Miracles, yo. Water, fire, air and dirt.

Wouldn't it be hilarious if the Juggalos are the ones that truly end up healing America? But like, hilarious in the actual way where it would make you laugh so much it would drive you almost insane. It only could take a clown to make America smile again.

"Smile!"

Aside from triggering people, I watched the animated Killing Joke last night. I'm going to be vague and assume you already know about Alan Moore's The Killing Joke in hopes that if you have no clue what I'm talking about, you'll want to experience it.

The film was great without all that pointless, winking, nodding, opening hour. Like, they even open the movie by going, "oh, bet you didn't expect it to open this way." *waggle eyebrows* *winkwinknudgenudge* *smackpunchkick* *dropanvil* DID YOU GET IT YET? THIS IS ALL NEW STUFF THAT HAS NO CONNECTION TO THE SOURCE MATERIAL! And then proceeds to have a completely separate and not even worked into the narrative hour of Batgirl/Batman erotic fan-fic. Like, it wasn't unwatchable, but it really had nothing better to do than oversexualize Barbra Gordon, and reframe the Joker's actions for a less ambiguity. Regardless of the weird overly sexual and violent criminal chase, Tara Strong is just as great as ever voicing Barbra, with emotion and that bit of cocksure swagger she has. She did amazing while working with unfortunate consequences of an ill planned stitch-job onto the beginning.

Which is really weird, because the second half, the actual comic portion of the film, was perfect. Oh sweet baby jane, it was like coming home again. Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill's performances were amazing, much as they have been. But Hamill's Joker now carries a whisp of age, and palookanishness, borrowed from John DiMaggio's work in Under the Red Hood. Much like the DC Animated The Dark Knight Returns, The Killing Joke is lovingly recreated in fluid motion on the screen in an almost shot for shot translation from the recolored version. It captures the already cinematic essence of Brian Bolland's artwork, coupled with the framing of each shot. It was just as chilling and unnerving as the comic itself. The supplemental material unfortunately recontextualizes The Killing Joke into a definite statement, instead of an ambiguous one. It takes away the mystery by giving answers. Which is bullshit, because what makes the original piece so great is that, while it overtly shows one path to madness, we peak into plenty of other doors along the way. It leaves the notion of Batman as a tool of justice or a dispenser of vengeance hanging in the air, letting the reader take their own interpretation from it with what's in their hearts.

 If Bruce Timm and Brian Azzarello wanted to make that into a stand alone, I'd watch it. It was one of those things that was well done, but just kinda enforces a Running the Asylum type of feeling to Batman. At this point, the character has no true canon outside the characters and origins. Everything that happens in between is made up on the fly within a rough context of loose Batman tags. Dresses in black, rich kid whose parents were shot in Crime Alley and it made him want to fight crime, has an invincible butler named Alfred. You can fill in the logic in between depending on which comic Age you're in. But really, this was not the worst appearance of Batgirl/woman in cinematic history (thank's, Batman + Robin. Sorry, Alicia Silverstone) and anyone who says otherwise is trolling for internet points.

"It takes a real wildcard to come up with that."

I really don't know why I get so fired up about The Killing Joke. It's one of my favorite comics, and I've seen so many people pushing their team's agenda in arguments about it over the last few years. Internet comments sections are were dreams go to die.

So, aside from more Batman related actions, I'm reading back through To Slice The Sky now that it's complete. I'm really enjoying it. I know it's egotistical to praise your own work, but I just find it hard to believe that I wrote something so fun. To be fair, I pretty much wrote it to entertain myself. I'm halfway through reading, at chapter 19, and there's thankfully only one glaring plothole I wrote in at the end that I need to fix. Most of the stuff I want to fix is cosmetic to help with flow.

I've also been adding to my new story, tentatively titled Beta Test. Try saying that one aloud. No, really, go for it, I'll wait.

Done? Good job, gold star!

But, yeah, I know where I want to go with the story finally. Now, it's a matter of writing it. Though it feels like my memory has been slipping recently, even though no one around me seems to have noticed. I should probably get it down faster than I am.

I've also given myself a lot of extra work regarding releasing shorts and such. I'm looking into different Patreon strategies, granted that would require me to be consistent and think of realistic prizes. Now that I have access to better desktop publishing features, I'm spending this year trying to expand my brand and actually have people know who the hell I am and what I do.

All of this is guided by faithful readers like yourself, looking at the process before the product. I'm sure most of the clicks I get are from bots, but if there are for real people out there reading this, that I don't know personally, thank you. And for my friends that give me pity clicks, you're all winners in my book. No, really, you are. And no I won't pay you for likeness rights. I'm not even getting paid for your likeness.

So, after all that book and reading talk, here's what's going to earn all those hashtags when I share this post. When I was coming up with names for our heroes, I knew I was going to name a chapter this title. Part 3/4 of the thrilling climax of To Slice The Sky! On tonight's exciting episode: Tripping the Light Fantastic, Trip descends into the bowels of Roplaxive Pharmaceuticals Headquarters with naught but a bucket of tools and a trusty robot companion. Can he and Decker succeed in their plan of shutting down the Biodroid's hive mind? Continue on, dear reader, and find out!

dawg

"Won't you play with me...forever?"

Sad bastard music.

Look at me, leaving you hanging right at the end.

This week has been a struggle to get through, especially since it seems that everyone I come in contact with seems to find me distasteful just for being myself. Needless to say, it left me in a state where I very much didn't want to create content for something where all it contains is me. I'm sure everyone feels like they don't belong in the world, but I know not everyone takes it that hard.


So, yeah, I'm lonely, frustrated, and depressed. That's why I didn't post until Saturday after starting the year off OK and then some. I'll spare you from ranting about my first world problems of feeling unfulfilled in life while living in the largest major metropolitan county in the richest and most populated state in America, here's some good things that happened.

Soup inside

I made French Onion Soup for the first time, so that was cool. Granted, for my first time making it, I also didn't really make it, since I added in beef chunks and topped it with bacon. So good. It's definitely soup weather, since it's been raining non-stop. Not like California doesn't need it, but, I'm tired of being out in it.

I also made a Guinness beef pot pie, but I didn't take any pictures of it. It's a pie. Not much is photogenic about meat pie.

School's continuing to go well, now that the new semester has begun. My Short Stories class has been interesting so far. But, since it has over 60 students enrolled, it's not very engaging on a classwork level. I'm pretty much posting A level work to be ignored by goobs that get away with writing a paragraph generally with no depth or insight. And all the low hanging fruit pickers comment on those posts, lazy bastards. It's not like it's my grade that's going to suffer, but it's just another example of trying so hard, and getting so far, but in the end, it doesn't really matter.

"PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!"

Math has been insular, and mostly me just chugging through the daily work, trying to maintain as high a grade as possible. It's pretty much cheating, since I'm taking the lowest level of required Math, because of course my previous units didn't transfer. But being a basic college level math class, the other students attending it are pretty damn dumb. On the class forum, someone actually asked where the Roman numeral keys were on a keyboard. If you're also currently wondering that, there's no hope for you.

I'm already on week 3/8 for this session, and all I want is for it to be over. I want this year to be over to move on with the next one. Just hoping I can maintain my schedule of actually graduating by end of year.

My fiancée and I have officially begun wedding planning. My responsibility is looking for a DJ and catering, and all things entertainmentwise. So it's my job to make sure a party half in my honor is fun for everyone else who attends. What kind of twisted world do we live in where this has become an expected tradition? We haven't even gotten close to the nitty gritty of planning and already I'm longing for the days when marriage was little more than contract negotiations with a ceremony paid for by the father of the bride. I say nuts to this modern liberated woman business and saddle me up with 3 fatted calves and a parcel of land. If you've ever wondered why boorish and outdated modes of thought are still prevalent to this day, it's because the alternative takes too much work.

If you're confused how I can talk about being lonely when I'm also prepping to be married, let me quote OKGO's song, "The House Wins": You don't have to be alone to be lonely.

And in the best news, which will segue into our next part, I'm officially done with my draft of To Slice The Sky. Yay! 🎉🎊🎈

Now that I'm done with the novel for my second time, I'm currently giving it a read through and seeing what needs to be tightened up and fixed. The beginning needs a bit of work to catch up with the end, but it's all manageable. I was pretty surprised that it jumped in word count instead of shrinking with all the cutting I've done. There's entire chapters that were excised and changed, and whole swatches of useless first draft junk removed.

Today's chapter for TSTS picks up on Decker's side of the plan to deal with all of our problems with New America. While Trip is infiltrating Roplaxive's east coast servers, Decker is on the side of the country where the actual fighting of the clone rebellion is taking place. There, he's tasked with making sure that Gene Works Inc.'s rogue AI gets shut down before its infection spreads beyond the neuronet and into the real world. So here's part 2/4 of our climax. I posted it on New Years Eve on reddit to try and be all symbolic since the whole plan takes place on New Years Eve. However, because of that, or because this chapter sucks, or because the new title I gave it is dumb, it was wholly ignored. So... have fun!

Fat dog.

"I'm not fat. I'm just drawn that way."

The Revolution Will Be Compromised

I joked about a new Monday time slot, but, hey, third time's the charm.

I've been spending my free time sleeping, watching Top Chef, or playing Mass Effect. I just finished up another chapter on New Years Eve, and have been taking the last couple days to chill on the writing front. We'll see if I spend my time wisely tomorrow.

I have plenty of chapter work left to give, and I plan on hitting out the last two chapters of the novel before the end of the month. So, here's a dip into more serious turf after all the breeziness of the last couple chapters. Not to say that this chapter doesn't have its lighter moments, but this is the first look of the actual rebel clones that have taken up the background of this story.

The fighting is much more prevalent on the west coast than in Ocean City, where it was more of an underground movement localized in a ghetto. But now we're in full blown fighting in the streets, hit and run guerrilla tactics and trying to capture how a movement sprung from whispers in the dark. This chapter is a pay off of chapter 3's news reports of clones setting themselves on fire in protest, and a little more light gets shed on the rebellion at large that our Clonetown group has been trekking across new America to join.

Today's chapter actually almost catches us up to where I am in the rewrite progress, which means that it's also quite close to the end. We've got 5 more chapters to go before this whole preview experiment comes to a close.

It's weird thinking about how long this novel's taken to even get to this point. This whole deal started as a blurb in my notebook back in 2010 after I had a dream. I was living in apartment 211 at the inspiration for Das Komplex and I woke up alone that morning. Trying to hold onto all that I could from the dream, I opened my notebook to the first blank spot I could find and jotted down the basic premise at the core of the story. Essentially a barista hacker saving his best friend from a super mega corp. Over the years more inspirations and pieces fell into place. The clone rebellion started as a conversation over breakfast about cloned actors reshooting classic films for holovision. That added the clone angle, which isn't really a cyberpunk trope, but it's in Neuromancer. The name+number convention that I use for Brawl17 was inspired by 3Jane. I felt the number before the name didn't flow as well as the number after.

But from that dream it turned into an outline, into a first draft, and now we're here. It took six years, and we're almost at the end. It could have taken much less time, but hey, it's about the journey, not the destination, right? Whatever, I've rambled enough. Here comes the chapter. DOG!

Trading Places

Not much to talk too much, just here to give you content.

Welcome to this foul year of our lord 2017. Now I'm glad I never said I was releasing my novel in 2016, but damn, I was supposed to have released something.

I got the best rejection letter back for my piece Suicide Queen. It was deemed more poem than short story, due to my delivery and the loose narrative. That's probably the best way I could have been let down, and the first time I've actually gotten feedback from a publication, so I think that means I'm advancing in my career.

No beating around the bush, let's get down to chaptering and science fiction fun! And I mean that. This chapter started out as sort of meandering and weighty and dark night of the soul. But this is a little closer to what I wanted it to be when I wrote it. Basically when we were editing the manuscript, I just wrote at the top of this chapter, "Complete rewrite". So all but a few lines are completely gone.

Happy new year, dog.

Internet Archiving and You - The Necessary Job of Our Future To Make Today Matter

Hello world and internet archivists of the future (by me recognizing your profession, you have to save this blog's contest in the future. That's the rule here in the past. It's true, look it up. First link you'll find is this blog. Citationed). Welcome to another posting in our new weekly time slot of Monday. Maybe. Who knows. I'm trying to get myself to blog just to blog. Not really attach a day on it.

If you just randomly clicked on a link somewhere and you ended up here, and now you're all compelled because I'm talking about internet archivists and such, let me tell ya a little something about me. I tend to not do well with structure, and really prefer to do things when I do them within my ever so endless checklist of wants and needs. I have the feeling that I have an obligation to do things, and I blame it on being allowed to put things in archival lists and queues. It was just steamsale, man. I have like ten more games to play now, and I want to try and rebuild the heavy metal theme park my buddy & I built back in the day on Roller Coaster Tycoon. Why are you trying to deny me that? Anyway...

You would think that expressing myself to a potential audience as a voice shouting in the crowd would give me more drive to actually do it, but man, I got other stuff going on just like you. I have to actually do all the stuff I talk about in order to talk about it. Lest someone call me out about it in the comments one day and go, "Yo that shit's lies, man. Ya dindo shit lolfag" and then I'm the one who's the asshole. No thanks.

But to quote Stan Lee in Kevin Smith's overstated commercial flop and understated cult hit, Mallrats, "You keep reading them, I'll keep writing them."

And more refers to stinkpalms.

So, yeah, Holidays and flash flood warnings, and playing Mass Effect, and trying to find a copy of Christmas Vacation and having to settle on the edited for basic cable where they abuse the hell out of saying non-defecation, "shit," but heaven forbid you let grandpa drop that he drank to deal with Christmas going to hell. I don't really feel like going on a censorship rant for no reason, but the mood may hit me.

Habenero Hot Sauce Tamale Shooters - only @ Black Angus

I made tamales with my family. AND for my first time ever, hot sauce, from my bongwater grown habaneros. We've got the beginnings of a Mexican restaurant from the amount of friends and family asking for some, so that's cool. Ended up with 16 or so dozen out of 75lbs of masa. We ended up doing a number of variations with the fillings. That is to say, when I took over stuffing, I mixed it up with all of the ingredients and stopped being as stingy as my sisters with the filling. My mom & I had a spirited back and forth about spreading masa. She's all into the glop it on and spread method, and I'm all about the nice even layer. I feel the superior tamales were shown in the final taste test. You know what the best part of masa is? The thin little bits that get stuck on the hoja that are all crispy. All I gotta say.

In the hot sauce department, it was cool making something out of a plant that grew by complete accident. Inspiration hit in thanks to catching up on Pretty Good Cooking. As luck would have it, the latest episode at the time was Habanero Hot Sauce. My only deviation from Phil's recipe is I added garlic, substituted lemon juice for lime, and in my final blend, I added cilantro. I feel that really boosted the flavor of it, while giving it a nice look in the bottle. Your food should always be pretty. Picture up above notwithstanding.

Present Day

So, yeah, that's what my week was full of. And serving coffee too early in the day and trying to slang words by night. Still waiting for responses back on all of my pieces. The waiting game sucks. Just silent indifference after an autoreply@donotrespond. But it gives you the opportunity to futz about with other things, as you nervously edit everything down by self doubt, and because you realize that rough drafts are way too unimaginative and stale.

I mentioned last week I have a lot of chapters done already that I haven't posted, so today's ramble about antique computer games and a potentially current discipline within the social sciences that will preserve internet history for as far as evolutionary life will allow us to spread the past knowledge of the internet, our diligent internet archivists, leads us to one of those chapters. Those stream of consciousness, mid sentence asides, are exactly what you came for. Same with meta, fourth wall breaking nods to an audience that was never really there. That one was for the internet archivists of the future that know when I finally abandon this site. I'm really swinging for the fences in this one.

Which is just silly because the chapter today is also silly. We met Trip's trainwreck of a mother back in what was at one point chapter 9 (my novel is going through metamorphosis) and now in, for continuity's sake, chapter 21 we meet Decker's. This chapter is light and airy and still needs some work, but it's meant to be a breather chapter before everything gets all serious (well, as serious as it could be).

Decker's mother is sort of an amalgam of my Grandmother and my mother. As well as how my far more latino friends were treated by their mothers. That on and off switch of, "I love my sweet Angel, even if he is a worthless troublemaker," is what I tried to capture. I really need to work on my Spanish in between classes. Would my audience grow if I switched languages?

Is the English speaking world tired of me already? Am I over conflating the dynamics of grassroots marketing with a lazy and self-driven exploratory energy to make myself seem like, to an internet archivist of the future, on the cusp of my game, ready for a breakthrough? Probably.

I always imagined releasing this novel when I was first outlining it. I couldn't keep up with the schedule of that, so this has worked for me so far. I have until, what, February or something for it to be a year of me posting chapters? Lazily at that? I wanted to release a book online then package it at the end, and when I think about it, that's exactly what I've been doing. I thought of it more along the lines of me releasing chunks of chapters, and adding in notes and such in hyperlink, like above, to hilight where certain ideas were pulled from, in order to give a better understanding and more tangible world to the text. Since this is my first time doing something like this, it's pretty unpolished, and sorta slapdash put together since I'm learning on the fly, but like I said up at the top, I do things at my own pace and be real about it.

And that pace has ramped up to give you the chapter I've been hyping up as if to overconflate its value as a pet scene. How you feel about it may vary, but here's my pet dog in his Christmas cape.

Source: Internet Archive Photo - Dogs in clothes

Excuses to day drink and start fires

What is up my D-O-G-E's? How does you this Labor Dabor?

Blah blah, sorry missed last week, and this is a day late, blah.

Trust me, not much was missed by me not checking in. Just busy days at work, and busier times at night, learning Español and finishing up The Martian Chronicles. I also finished writing the next chapter for To Slice The Sky. It seems like Act II has mostly been revisions and full on rewrites to accommodate a slumping mid-section that didn't really rise action, and sort of meandered about without much direction.

It's been a pretty mixed bag of emotions doing rewrites for this draft of the novel. Here we are staring down at the last quarter of the year, and I'm 1 chapter away from closing up Act II. Granted, everything for the novel flows considerably better, and should just need a proofreading and slight tune-up around the newer additions to get everything uniform. So I'm sort of exasperated with myself for not being further along in the process, and that I've done such huge sweeping changes on things that weren't working. But on the bright side, I'm also realizing that since I began the outline back in Summer of 2011 that I've thankfully become a better writer during that period and can discern that what I had at first was crap, and now I'm able to craft much more coherent narratives. At least I think I can. You're more of a judge of that than I am.

I've also decided that for the omnibus version release of The Lilim Chronicles wave 1, I'm going to have to go back and do one last retouch on By Starlight as well as Urban Legends of the Future. For the release, not only will I be editing the two collections, but also making some needed changes to make the world more cohesive. They'll be getting new--unifying--covers, and I'll be rebranding myself as well.

I've been working on a writing assignment for my Spanish class, and my original topic was going to focus on Latino/a science fiction authors. I came across two major problems, 1) I needed articles in Spanish, and everything I found on the topic was in English. & 2) Every article was pretty much a repeat of, "Where are all the Latino/a science fiction authors?" A quick look at the name at the top of this website, or the name above the link you clicked to get here, probably has you wondering, "What the hell does that have to do with you, gringo?" Well, my father's European surname and Western naming conventions aside, I'm Mexican from my mother's side. I specifically made my character Decker Mexican-American because pretty much the only Latina character I've had to look up to in Science Fiction is Vasquez from Aliens, and while externally I'm a blue-eyed, lightly tanned, whiteboy I grew up with my mom's family in Los Angeles.

In my writing, I've wanted to express a lot of my frustration with being trapped between two worlds as a mixed race person in America, and try to write a lot about conflicting dichotomies, and while it's all well and good, I don't feel that my voice does anyone anywhere much justice coming from another white guy trying to tell everyone how to live. That, and my current pen name is clunky as hell, and being called, "Chris-py" my whole life is pretty old after thirty+ years. So after two paragraphs of justification, with the re-release of my wave one books, I'm going to be changing my pen name across the internet, borrowing my mother's maiden name. So, my book making moniker will be Christopher Fernandez going forth. Doesn't that just flow so much better? Say it out loud with an accent: Christopher Fernandez. ¡Muy picante!

Reconnecting to a culture that got lost in pre-civil rights era American white washing has been a thing in my adult life that I've tried to achieve, and along with learning Spanish like my aunts/uncles/mom never did, this is just one more link in that chain. Not like I'm planning on changing my actual name, but as far as pen names go, Bollweg just ain't sexy. Which is probably one of many reasons I've never heard it used during intimacy.

Aside from moral queries into what is and isn't cultural appropriation, I finished reading Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. Man, what a fantastic read. It definitely is a collection that builds upon itself and got way better with each passing story. In particular, I really loved the chapters Usher II (where a former English professor builds Poe's House of Usher on Mars, inviting all the moral watchdogs from Earth on a deadly tour through it), the highly reprinted, "There Will Come Soft Rains," (a story of an automated house when there's no more humans to automate for) and the final story, "The Million-Year Picnic". For being such a fan of poetry, I'm really surprised I wasn't ever as enthralled with the lyric delivery of Bradbury's prose back in high school. It's so flowing and evocative that pages disappeared before my eyes before I realized, "Oh, shit. I was so wrapped up in the flow, I don't know what I'm reading about." And going back, realizing all these beautiful words I'd read were about such bleak and alienating topics.

Even if the science has harshly shown everything about The Martian Chronicles to be a Space Opera fever dream from 1950, the biting satire on Cold War American life, and the destructive tendencies of well meaning Americans when faced with the consequences of our cultural lifestyle, is as fresh as it was 66 years ago. Yeah, sixty-six damn years, and we still haven't learned a damn thing, and are possibly on the verge of making all the same mistakes we've been warned about for over half a century. It's things like that that make me wonder if everything I wrote about representing the Latino-American science fiction writing population is a waste since clearly humanity has learned jack and shit from reading SciFi over the years.

But at least we have smart phones now.

Well, without further ado, here's chapter 16 from To Slice The Sky. Dog:

I'm writing the report.

Clearly my blog is less important than whatever videogame I'm playing all day.

Instead of writing yesterday, I polished off Resident Evil: Revelations 2 last night. So on the plus side, I get to mention it further down the page for your enjoyment. I spent most of last week at work and being really lazy. I tapped away at the chapter a little more, but deleted everything I added, which is something I rarely do. I at least have an outline for the action sequence coming up, but writing it is the eternal hard part. I keep prodding myself and convincing myself my deadline is a real deadline, but producing work with self prodding is left in the wake of fancy flights. And my flights of fancy? Watching TV shows and playing RTS games.

I'll rip out your heart with love!

Speaking of RTS games, I spent a better part of this week and last trying to gain access to my copies of StarCraft and WarCraft III.
 It was me going back and forth with Blizzard's lackluster ticket system to try and get my old account info tied to my new battle.net account. All so I could use my already registered CD keys from the discs I had when people still used CD-ROM's. So after constant pestering my request was granted, and I've been beating Orcs with a 2h Warhammer, "For Honor," ever since. It's a good thing Blizzard makes incredible games, because otherwise, I wouldn't have bothered being stonewalled and just called it quits on them forever. But they make games I really really like playing, so here I am, after wasting hours and energy from my day, playing a 13 year old computer game.

In other bouts of unexpected frustration from life, apparently the TAP cards for LA Metro fares have expiration dates. Didn't know that until Friday, when I found out my card I'd been putting money on for--apparently--three years, was no longer active with a freshly loaded balance stuck on it. Of course there's no easy way of knowing this. I didn't find out until it happened and did multiple searches (after checking the not at all helpful website on the back of the card) and read an LA Weekly article. The article also confirmed my suspicion that the city of Los Angeles has no intention of me seeing the remaining balance ever again.

But you know what, I'm glad those are the most remarkable hardships I had this week. Writer's block, sloth, persuading corporate employees to do what I want for videogames, and being cheated out of bus fare by an uncaring Department of Transportation. At least I'm no longer feeling the soul crushing weight of existential worthlessness laced around every moment of my day. I could be living in one of those villages where a warlord comes and chops off body parts from people and eats them to gain their strength.

My story has built empires.

Who knows, maybe we'll all be under police state martial law this time next year and I won't even be able to write this blog without heavy [REDACTED] sections. Who knows what kind of patriotism we'll be faced with in this dystopic future scenario? Dare we hazard guesses lest we speak them into being?

Many lulz were lost in The Meme Wars.

And speaking of nightmare scenarios, I I watched the first half of Buffy season 2. Basically up to the first two parter, What's My Line. I'm not sure if I want to do another review write up of it halfway through the season. I was planning on doing a two part season review, but it's been weeks since I watched What's My Line, and the analysis would be surface level at best.

That and I've been watching other TV shows in full/finishing up shows I've been hanging on. I finished watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force in all its iterations. Analysis: It is the most consistent show at being inconsistent. Basically after the movie came out till episode 100, the show isn't even playing hit or miss anymore. Some episodes are forgettable as hell, other's are clearly violence for violence sake, and the show is always that [adult swim] brand of over the top and avant garde humor/animation. It was an experience, and I'm glad I finally finished the show. Aqua Teen Forever.

I'm now watching Invader Zim on Hulu, because Jhonen Vasquez is awesome and hilarious. I'm exactly halfway through the show (and I love that Hulu has the episodes remaining counter now) having just finished the Halloween episode before I typed this sentence. Concurrently, I'm taking advantage of Animaniacs being on Netflix. It truly is zany to the max.

So, since I'm wasting my brain watching cartoons I used to watch as a child (well, Invader Zim didn't come out until I was already a legal adult), my ability to add any intelligent discourse to the topic of popular culture is wasted on the focus of Buffy at the moment. And when I do write my Season 2 review, it will give due diligence to a slice of culture. Like anyone cares about what I have to say about Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 2 anyway. Am I going to crack open some secret gem that will make everything in the world make sense? Will I unearth some kind of metaphoric overlaying that is a reoccurring theme through all of human storytelling? Who knows, probably not. I guess we'll find out when we get there.

Oh, I kinda forgot to talk about REvelations 2.

Well, I definitely haven't cursed at the television like that in a while. The game's concept of difficulty fluctuates between overloading you with too much ammo that you can never conceivably carry with no enemies, and then waves of shooting gallery style moments where you have no resources whatsoever. While it encourages one to use resources available to you in the area, it leads more to headbanging do-overs because of bad misses at critical moments, or the trademark weak controls that has plagued the series since the original. Well, to be fair, Resident Evil: Revelations 2 has really smooth combat controls for a resident evil game (which is needed since combat is intense and plentiful) but the contextual controls are wretched. Particularly near ledges, and any time you have to manipulate boxes for simple puzzles. Apparently the Revelations series is supposed to bring back the feel of  classic Survival Horror Resident Evil gameplay, and it has that in some regards. But both the first one, and the sequel still lack the atmospheric tension of the original that the REmakes hold onto. It relies more on the, "How the hell am I going to get out of this?" style gameplay, which has its fun and merits, but when I'm just trying to breeze through a game to see the convoluted story arc play out, dying a lot just keeps the ending away from me.

Anyway, here's a dog picture.

I get the feeling we've been here before.

"I may be dead, but I'm still pretty."

Alright, let's try this again.

So yesterday I had to format my computer and restore from back ups, all from a virus I got back in April from a bad link in my French New Wave Film class. Had I done that from the getgo, I'm sure the issue would have been resolved easier than what it turned into. But the important part is I'm back online and ready to serve up blogoriffic action.

I haven't written much since the 2-fer last week, and that's mostly from a cavalcade of events that sprung up last week. My life has been event and milestone filled for the last couple of months, and the general shape of things makes me look like I'm doing things right. I finally secured a, "real job", and don't have to languish in a retail environment anymore. I just got engaged to my girlfriend of 6 and a half years. No date set, but everyone has ideas for plans. One of those things I suppose comes with the turf.

Where everything is colorful and fabulous.

I just got back from Palm Springs. We were celebrating my fiance's birthday, and graduation with her Masters in Education. I guess our engagement as well. As for my own schooling, I'm between sessions. Fall starts up middle of next month, and I have a stack of Martian fiction to read for a Science Fiction studies class. I've made a lifestyle out of reading and studying the shape and flow of science fiction over the years and now I'm finally getting some credit for it.

Now Kith.

In gaming news, I'm taking a break from Fallout 4 until the Vault-Tec Workshop DLC is released. I need to go farming to build my conveyor belt musical apparatus anyway, and that's more work than I feel like putting into a videogame all for the novelty of composing a song in the most complicated manner possible. If I understood Logic gates, I'm sure I could make a much crazier one than the one in my head. It's going to take an awful lot of time, patience, and copper. And I still have my "Machete" playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas I started now that it's backwards compatible.

Machete doesn't do rides. 

So in lieu of playing Fallout, I'm playing another Post-Apocalyptic FPS. I'm in the last third of Metro 2033, which I've been meaning to play for a while but kept buying other games first. I was doing a Fallout 1 playthrough, but with having to reformat, I have to redownload it from Steam, so until then, I'm getting my irradiated Russian mutant killing ya-ya's out. It's a pretty fun game, nothing ground

Moscow in 17 years.

breaking. I like the mix of FPS with survival horror where you really need to resource manage, and the staggering difficulty comparison between fighting humans and mutants is a great way to show narrative through gameplay. It's not the best game I've ever played, but I can see why it warranted a sequel (which I may play next).

In case you were wondering about my abandoned Resident Evil playthrough, I'm stalled out on REvelations 2. The game really does a great job of bringing the series back to its survival horror roots, but it also means I'm constantly out of ammo and healing supplies. Until I get better with the dodge and melee mechanics, I can see myself cursing at the TV much more next time I fire it up. I'm only halfway through episode 2. I still have episode 3 and the two DLC episodes to play. On top of RE6, which I've still yet to play more than Leon's opening missions. And now Resident Evil 7 is on the horizon, and the trailer looks pretty freaky.

For writing, I'm staring down the barrel of a fun car chase scene, and a complete scene rewrite/addition. It's been daunting, but during the rewrite process I've taken to rewatching one of my favorite shows of all time, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And with this in mind, I'd like to invite you to follow me past the dog picture and page jump and I'll let you in on the results of the start of this rewatch.

You like what you see?