Stuff. And Junk

Well, I've been wallowing in a failed mire of inarticulate thoughts and miserable misanthropy. Maybe that means I should write something. Anything.

I don't care if it's a random collection, but I'm going to get into these things anyway. So, here goes.

Far Cry 2

I bought this game on the recommendation that it was gorgeous and had some excellent gun-play. It is and it does, and I love it for both. However, it's very much like another game that I played. To many, that might seem like an unfair comparison, but when one leads to flashbacks of the other, I think it only right.

That's not to say the game isn't good. Both games were unexpectedly fun, and believe you me, after a long day at work, there's few things I enjoy more than shoving a Carl Gustav round into the radiator of some south-African technical. That said, the dialogue at the beginning of the game is terrible. Unsympathetic characters lambast you with egregious run-on sentences in ham-fisted accents, tossing you from job to job with little richness or care. There are exceptions, indeed.

But for a large part, I found that myself, and most players like me, actively avoid doing missions so that we can enjoy the rich visual presentation without it being marred by verbal diarrhea.

Zeno Clash

I... really don't know where to start with this one. It is a video-game, yes. But it feels a lot like I've stepped into someone else's acid-dream, and now I'm expected to fight for survival.

For being a first-person fighting game, I took to it quite handily. I mean, I've always wanted to virtually bust someone's face in. There are firearms too. Though not in the sense that you'd think of in something like Far Cry 2 or Half-Life. All of the game's weapons seem to be a mish-mash of bolts, screws, and organic components such as horns, bones, spines, and sinew. Intriguing, to say the least.

The story is convoluted, but in this case, it gets clearer as time goes on. I wouldn't have minded if it had stayed a little vague. It would've suited the bizzare artwork of the world much better. Every region you visit has a distinctive artistic flavour, both visually and psychologically.

There's so much else about this game that I like, but I'm finding that I don't have the words for. Obviously it's short, which was kind of a heartbreak, but it was neatly done up and didn't pull any stupid cliffhangers (aside from the obvious one) like some other games we know.

Phase Two: Qosmio

This one isn't a video game. It's a laptop. It's phase two in my master plan, regarding launching my own business. I'm not even sure if I should still go ahead with it. But the demand is there, and so I should probably tap into it to make a bit of money.

Because I won't be getting a bike otherwise.

I napped to these

I came home from work tonight, feeling very much like a sack of diseased shit.

So I put my headphones on, and just started the music on shuffle album.

I just woke up, and before I forget, I'm going to list it all right here:

Boards of Canada - Trans-Canada Highway

Faunts - High Expectations/Low Results

Tool - 10,000 Days

Caspian - The Four Trees

Do Make Say Think - Do Make Say Think

Mogwai - The Hawk is Howling

Radiohead - In Rainbows

I must've rolled a 20 today. Given all the potential shit it could've pulled up to play, I avoided all the detritus in my collection and just slept away with some of the best music I've got.

Lucky.

January

It was deep in the frigid grasp of January, that I learned to See in the darkest places.
In brightest sun, my memories are blazing and white-washed.
In darkest night, my sight is hazy and disturbed.
Here in this dark place, where light and dark meet. I can finally See.

Book Seven

Perhaps I was too harsh.

I'm not a politician, so it's alright to sometimes wonder if I perhaps lay too hard with the lash. I sometimes wonder though which would be a worse. A world moved to paralysis out of ignorance, or a world moved to paralysis out of apathy.

I sometimes wonder about blind faith, and how it functions in today's age. I can only imagine a certain willingness to go along with what one is told, but I can't seem to understand how that willingness is born.

Hope and sanity. Again, they seem mutually exclusive at this point. When one broaches the extreme edges of sanity and sees out across the endless plains of misery and indifference, hope - and by extension - faith, tend to spring up. Some would say they're the bridge across this blackened and lifeless field. Some would say they're a product of it. In my mind, the distinction is meaningless. Another imaginary line drawn in imaginary sand on an imaginary beach. It's almost shameful that people have died for things like this.

That in the end, the measure of all of this is only in our heads. A measure of just how far into insanity we have to go to find that one crucial thing that our emotional being craves. Whether by God or machine or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. By hand or by crook or by theft if need be. Regardless of faith, or lack of faith. Regardless of demographics or denomination.

Breaking down the walls of humanity reveals that humanity itself is a subjective term. Everything that defines us, defines our culture, is essentially a product of our own minds. Religion or not. Faith or not. The distinction is meaningless, as the pursuit is the same regardless.

But the lines are still drawn, and people are still convinced to abide by them. Willingness to submit to blind faith. Or blind lack of faith.

A miracle tube that offers no miracles

Sanity and hope seem to be mutually exclusive concepts these days.

I can't walk five steps without stepping in something, and I'm seriously questioning my own wellbeing some days when I get up and think to myself "I wonder what's going to happen today?"

The answer is, of course, nothing good.

I look out my window and see one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, on the verge of being completely paralyzed. Because... because people won't learn. Can't learn. I don't think the distinction is important. The image in my head is practically an evolutionary movie, showing the noisy little cockmonglers I grew up with, dicking around in class when they should've been paying attention. They grew into dumbass teens who couldn't get their cocks in order long enough to figure out where they're going.

And now they're confused young adults who're completely useless. Saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of debt, wracked up on credit cards and students loans pursuing degrees in drama and dumbfuckery. They can't figure a computer to save their lives, and believe it's all some conspiracy by a bunch of ivory-tower eggheads who've had it in for them since the start.

The future starts tomorrow, and I'm shocked that so few are ready for it. I'm shocked that I'm going to be saddled with all of this going into what's supposed to be the most pivotal years of my life. Cynical doesn't describe it. Misanthropy incites thoughts of a people-hater. But it's a much more sublime kind of irritation.

It's a thought that if I run away from these people fast enough, maybe, just maybe, I'm going to make it. It's a thought that I've prepared myself for practically anything, and unless I'm voted official bitch to the greater masses, that's all that matters. Everyone else can go get righteously fucked.

Killer headache

I've a head like a firebomb,
And I'd just like some water to put it out.

Would that I could dance this jig,
you'd see I'm more than just this thing.

Though perhaps that's the problem.
My fuse is lit, now it's time to run.

I'm quickly running out of this beautiful,
entrancing hallucination.

When will I see you again?
When will I see you again?

Blue

It's been four years - sixteen seasons.

Miracle Kicker

So, a CD which had ordered from stateside arrived two days ago. The ten-song album is none other than Miracle Kicker, from Dark Captain Light Captain, a little-known act out of Britain. I've been following these guys for quite some time, and it was pretty much essential that I end up importing the goods, as nobody's ever heard of them, and even if they had, there's not much they can do about the fact that Canada fucking sucks for foreign releases.

In any event, I was expecting the CD to be a collection of the three or four songs I've heard from these guys and really liked, plus a few others that might not be as good.

Turns out, the four songs I already knew were probably the worst on the CD. And I mean that in a giddy, ecstatic way. It's ten tracks of music that I'd normally have to chaff from six or seven CD's worth of garbage music to glean. There's just that much solid, respect-worthy performance put into this.

In fact, now that I think about it, I'm a little disappointed that it's only ten tracks. I want more. Much more.

I hope somebody reads this that knows somebody that knows somebody else that knows somebody in the band, so that they can, by fifth or sixth degree, know that even us hermits in Canada love their music and want them to enjoy a prolific career.

In other news, I really have nothing else to report. No news is good news, as the bad news tends to read.