Over the Pond

My life has become a series of disconnected moments.  Everything is nebulous, like I am never in myself.  But, I’m always here.  Even as everything in my life is smoldering and crumbling even more, I am still in stasis.

You always think that rude awakenings are supposed to jolt you back into consciousness.  You’re supposed to wake up, and look around, and do something.  But in reality, it disconnects you more.  It is a strange, musical emptiness.  It reminds me of a very dark time; a very empty time.  And, poetically, it draws me back to those moments in the most unpredictably subtle ways.  My life always leads back to this feeling, like a motif.  The strange, icy emptiness, the stoic anguish of solitude.

My time alive has been spent circumventing the feeling that I’m on my way to my own funeral.  The only happiness I ever got out of it was when I was ignorant of the truth, unknowing and blatantly wanton.  The more deliberate I became, the less I had any land around me; I now know that everyone should feel so.  Because it is the only way to see the beauty in life, even if it is chained to the lowest imaginable feelings.  When I was younger, I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t a singular, isolated person by projecting everything I could outward into other people.  Now that I have no inclination or interest to do so, it is all the more apparent that I am unhappy, and apparent that I have no will to correct myself.

In much the same way that paying any attention to politics saddens and outrages you (if you have a real mind), every step I take towards anything leaves me feeling that there is no point in it.  Some of us are so human that it hurts.

The Hell of the Spectator

I guess a lot of people know what it’s like to not make ends meet.  I guess a lot of people know what it’s like to never make ends meet, year after year.  To slowly be piling more and more debt on yourself.  To not have a way to better your situation, even when you genuinely want to.

Citizens, as voters, always are supposed to have a chance to better their surroundings, their society.  Their opportunities.  Yet, so many people are sheep, so many are led and vote against their interest, vote against their own future.  So many are so stupid and misguided that they drag down the genuine and the intelligent; they drag down the hard-working.  I think a lot of people thought that had changed when they elected Obama, but these recent elections show that it’s all bullshit.  The sheep will always outnumber the willing; it’s just that the sheep happened to be led in a positive direction for a split second, two years ago.  That’s all it will ever be.

To say that my hatred for America is stronger than ever is an understatement.  I loathe the people who direct the most powerful and influential country in the world out of their own paranoia, their own selfishness, their own childish views.  They are worth less than nothing, because they actively debase the worth of civilization.  They are a negative factor, not a non-factor.

For every dozen self-aware, compassionate, thoughtful people, there are hundreds of blind, idiotic people who follow whatever the zeitgeist narrative is.  They treat reality like a TV-show, based on political fads and tastes that are engineered by even more narrow-minded, but much more powerful, people.  Because of this, and I mean this with every ounce of its definition… they do not deserve to live.

The sad truth is that their deaths would be positive.  For anyone’s death to be a positive influence is so inane, and so morosely antithetical to life; but, it’s true.

Up the Mountain

The air stills into a crown,
pushing inward, draining distance.
It’s heavy, pulling me down.

Rage bleeds the anger;
faith reaves our anchor.
In empty extemporaneosity,
I left… to be received.

There is no sight
that deceives me;
Now, there is nothing
for me to greet.

Two Posts about Games in Tandem

First:

I've been playing two games that both got lukewarm reviews, and both have surprised me based on said reviews.

Magna Carta 2 reminds me of Secret of Mana a little bit.  And while the story is kind of hackneyed and obviously geared towards 15 year-olds, the gameplay is much more satisfying than I thought it would be.  The JRPG aspects of it are tangible, and just leveling up feels fulfilling in a way that many RPGs fail to achieve.

Nier actually blew me away.  The story is amazing and deep, the gameplay is frantic, and I'm convinced that all of the reviews saying the controls are awkward and inneffectual were written by people who didn't play the game long enough to actually get a hang of it.  It takes time and effort to put enough work into the game for it to feel natural to play (the fishing minigame, particularly), but it's a solid game, and hearkens back to the older JRPGs.

And both games just look amazing.  Maybe I'm not up to date with the common idea of what graphics should be, though.  I love any stylized, professional-looking 3d graphics.  Especially anime-inspired.

Second (about a week later):

I've played through most of Magna Carta 2 (I'm stuck at the end farming, because I'm always obsessed with game completion, and the exp system scales based on your level, which makes earning level 99 a real bitch).

But the game mechanics are really enjoyable, and even though the story is really immaturish and hackneyed (as I said earlier), the visuals and artistic themes of the game are superb and satisfying.  The combat is also pretty satisfying, even when farming for hours on end just for the sake of levelling.

I put Nier on the backburner so I could get through Magna Carta 2 first, but now that I'm at the endgame and a little bored, I am starting Final Fantasy XIII.  The old Final Fantasy games are what defined my youth, and while the system is very odd from an RPG standpoint, it seems pretty satisfying, so far.  What really got me playing beyond the first few minutes is the story.  While I heard from a lot of people that the story was kind of gay and childish, so far it seems very realistic in a theatrical sense.  But I'm barely a few hours in, so I guess I could be hugely disappointed the further I get.

--

These are two posts I wrote, but never posted.  My writing was supposed to increase in both effectiveness and quantity.  I got a new app that was supposed to be the bee’s middle leg-joints; this was untrue.  Nothing spurs me to write like a barebones app like KeyNote (which is like 10 years old, and the company went under, I believe?  Some random guy picked up the code for it).  Although, I do have to say that Windows Live Writer has helped a lot with my blogging.

Resonance

I bought Resonance of Fate today, and fired up my old Xbox 360.  I had seen a few videos about it a few months ago, and thought it looked pretty cool.

Then I start playing and watch the intro cutscene, and start playing.

Then I find out just how much customization and RPG elements there are in this game.

And the nerd in me rejoices.

Dramatica

In an effort to get my writing muscle working again, I got a piece of software called Dramatica.  It’s supposedly something like a long, exhaustive exam designed to flesh out your writing ideas for a story.  I’ve read a bunch of reviews, and some actually make me think that it will help me get started writing the story I’ve been trying to start.

So, here goes….

Life as writer’s block…

I’ve been reading a few random things that have really piqued my interest.  The first is an e-book called, “Permanent Death”, and it’s about a guy’s experiment playing through FarCry 2 (or 1, but I’m pretty sure it’s 2) on normal difficulty, but only having one life; that is, once he dies once, it’s over.  The thesis statement of this book is something I really find fascinating.  It’s about how the introduction to “multiple lives”, or even checkpoints or other forms of error-correction in playing a game serves to decouple the player from his representation (ie., his avatar).  While it’s virtually impossible to create a game that has absolutely no reliance on multiple lives in some way (even if dying to a game-over screen, and then loading the most recent save), the roguelikes are the only games that I can think of that religiously adhere to a one-life character play-model.

The second thing is a blog by a guy who is playing Minecraft, but in a very unconventional way.  He isn’t crafting, or building, or mining.  He gets up every morning, walks east as far as he can, while taking note of the landscape and whatever else he runs into, and then, at sundown, takes refuge in a makeshift shelter, creating and using only the resources absolutely necessary for survival.  He writes each day as a post, and it’s interesting, even if only for its strangeness.

I like things like this, because it highlights something I really enjoy about games.  Also, it makes a distinction between a facet of myself and something I don’t see in any of the people I know who play games.  Most of the people I know, if they don’t exclusively play only multiplayer, competitive games, play single-player games in a much different way than I do.  I play with a faint hearkening back to my childhood days of pretend.  I play with the theory of “creative play” in the back of my mind, and through this form of indulgence, I am fulfilled on an artistic level, in a way.  Also, it seems to help me focus my own artistic endeavors.  But I think it’s largely overlooked when people think of games; especially single-player games.  Games are mainly seen as ways to be competitive, ways to win, ways to accumulate and dominate, to perfect a strategy, to “hone your micro”.  I despise these forms of game-playing, because I believe it is indicative of an undeveloped mind, and indicative of a mind that is imbalanced in that social sense.

So, I like these kinds of strange, idiosyncratic experiments, and sometimes wish I were truly original enough to think of something like it on my own, or at least, to attempt something like it.

Graphic Neurosis

I have been looking at two different possibilities for creating artwork for a small, 2d game.  And, while I have gone back and forth, I have thought about what it means to use each method, and why I have chosen the one that I think is more plausible.

The first is a pixel-based approach.  Since each asset is small (usually 32x32), it is not impossibly hard to create something at least feasible to look at.  I don’t have the assumption that my graphics will look professional, or even good.  I just want them to be decent enough so as not to induce visual vomiting.

The second is a 3d-based approach; creating 3d models with basic materials, rendering them, and then cropping and scaling them down so that they fit the dimensions I need.  I thought that this would be a better method at first, because I am much more inclined toward mathematical thinking than I am the kind of spontaneous spatial reasoning that is required to compose drawings on the fly.  And, I was wrong.

For some reason, I have always thought of modeling as being a primarily mathematic activity.  You use basic shapes, think of their ratios and relationships, and develop accordingly.  But this doesn’t work without an even deeper understanding of all of the things that makes an artist an artist.  And I am definitely not a graphic artist.

So, I have decided to lower my head and power through my graphic assets on a pixel-by-pixel basis.  I don’t know if it will even be possible, but I am trying, and so far making decent progress.  I now fully understand why they call it “programmer art”.  But, in all of the things I never really thought I could accomplish (programming itself, music composition, et cetera), I am eking out my existence step by painfully slow step.

Sometimes, I just want to draw every object and character as a black square box, and just write the damned engine, and wait for the rest to be divinely manifested.

Principle.

Richard Dawkins butt-slams the pope.

I have a very deeply-rooted hatred for organized religion because of its hypocrisy and bigotry, and the way it stunts the Human soul.  It is hard to articulate just how much I despise it all.  Most people do not think such distaste is healthy, or that it is unfounded because, after all, religion is our founding basis.

And I think those people just don’t realize the true evil that beliefs can have inside of them.

The grating fear of unearthed furor…

A moment in my life that should be the epitome of relaxation, of rest and contemplation, is instead punctuated by fear and panic.

I am filled with stress.  Even though every hour is one that I can direct in any way, even though I have absolutely no obligations, no schedule, I am constantly freaking out.  My mind is always racing, and I feel as though I’m plummeting down, towards some anti-finale that threatens to disassemble any sense of sanity that I have ever been able to keep.

It doesn’t help that I’m reminded every day of the piercing obnoxiousness that is personified in my family.  Living with an annoying, retarded brother and his annoying, retarded wife (and their annoying, retarded children) grates more and more on my composure.  Every day for the last three weeks, I have woken up to a two year old screaming.  Every day I have to listen to what sounds like the lobby of an inner city McDonald’s or Wal-Mart in the background noise, while I try to keep a steady stream of audial distractions.  There is no silence, anymore; the one thing I need to maintain some semblance of calm is gone.

I am neurotic enough to be disturbed by their mere presence.  I have no solitude, anymore.  All I have is obnoxious distraction.  All I have are days when I am disturbed because someone needs a favor, or days when I cannot think to myself because of the loud white trash staying here, or days filled with anxious deliberation that leads nowhere, and is usually suffocated through a mindless activity.  It’s all I can do to keep from having a nervous breakdown.

When I decided to quit my job, I had visions of a quiet time of repose.  Of not worrying about money for a few months, for I could chip away at a sizeable nest-egg.  Of sitting in peace and working on my projects, thinking about their construction and planning their future.  All I have now is a drill, slowly splitting apart each layer of my brain, until it unearths the frustrated, panic-ridden core of my being; the thing that I have tried to sedate for so long, and was so far reasonably successful.

All I want is some peace and quiet, for a change….

Bioshock

I just finished Bioshock 1.  The series never entered my mind because I didn’t know they were ported to the PC, and hearing that they were the “spiritual successor” to the System Shock games, I was really hoping for an immersive environment, disturbing story elements and a solid ending.  For the most part, I got what I expected.

The levels are very immersive and well-detailed.  It really feels like you’re rummaging through the ruins of a large complex, and you almost always are hurting for ammo enough to appreciate finding a few rounds in a trash can or cabinet.  But, by the endgame, it' all gets kind of meaningless.  I never got completely bored playing, but by the last two levels I was hoping for something different, instead of increasingly redundant level design, with “go here, then go here, then go here” objectives.  All in all, though, it was a rewarding and interesting experience.

The ending, though, disappointed me somewhat.  I only played through the “good” ending (saving all Little Sisters), and while it made sense and everything, it was very short, with a detached narrative.  The last battle is ridiculously easy, which lent even more to the feeling of being short-changed.

I’m about to start Bioshock 2.  From 1’s ending, I doubt the stories will be continuous in any way, save for the general lore of the world in which it takes place.

Taking all of these negative comments, though… they are based on an ideal.  Compared to the stagnant, unimaginative stories of games nowadays, I guess it’s an exceptional game, and a testament to the fact that games don’t need to be “safe” or “PC” at all.  They don’t need to take on the same old archetypes.

So, all in all, I was very satisfied with the experience of Bioshock 1.  For the most part, it reminds me of the good aspects of System Shock 2.  The only downside is that the story is a little too linear, and the narrative a little too forced.  after the 3rd level or so, the element of free exploration was completely lost, and it felt as though I was just going through level by level.  And the creepiness-aspect of it all was very satisfying.  Maybe I just have too high a standard for the way stories are delivered throughout the game.

Morality in Game Storylines

I have always wished the stories in games dealt with the differences between ethical views.  It seems that most games, instead of focusing on ethical problems of any kind, merely try to end at a culturally positive moral result.  When the player helps an "evil" character, there is always a retraction; a justification for doing so.  When a player is given the option of being "evil", it is always "pure evil", without any justification beyond self-interest or greed.

Where are the games that are murky and grey in their dealings with morality and ethics?  Or at least interesting in some way?  I completely lost interest in Fallout 3 because of its ridiculously bland story.  Even the impact of detonating a nuclear warhead, leveling an entire city loses its punch when you play through it.  It’s all stupid, all laughably “evil”.

In writing for my game, I am using morals and ethics in a very personalized way.  The world is fucked up, and people do fucked up things.  Some societies are virtuous, some are empty.  Some worship greed to an alarming degree.

The people who write game storylines must be afraid to do anything really edgy, or they are just so unimaginative that they don’t know how to be.  But that is what I would like as a player.  Not the predictable good and evil, and not the 180-degree twist that ends up being ridiculously planned.  These things need to be more realistic.

The Paranoia of Gaming Corporatism

While looking at different game torrents (looking, not downloading of course), I found this except of a description from a Prince of Persia ISO:

Release Notes:
A little statement about the work involved:
To clear the minds of the individuals who think: "Game x was
done fast and this one taking ages" etc. The way the Ubisoft
DRM works, makes it so that every game is like a brand new
challenge. What it does do, is offload certain parts of the
game to a server, game then requests those things at runtime.
These parts can be anything that the developer wants. In the
case with Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, those things
were:
- Levers logic
- Door timing
- Upgrades
- Abilities
- XP & Levels
- Area codes
Every time you step on a button "in game", it sends a request
to server asking what to do. Server then sends the door code
to open, including how much time it stays open. Levers work
similarly, every time you press the "TAB" button to display
skills, game asks again server: "What skills do player have",
and so on and on.
All that stuff takes a lot of time to implement right and we
do implement it like the original do. All our doors open and
close with exact same time factors as the retail do. We just
wanted to clarify a little how the Ubisoft DRM really does
work, because a lot of those individuals we mentioned in the
beginning of this statement didn't seem to understand, yet
what kind of monster this is. It's not some simply "Values"
going around like it were with Assassin's Creed II.

The only thing more amazing to me than the painstaking efforts that pirate groups go through to deliver an authentic game to the thieving public is the ridiculous amount of effort UBISoft went through to “ensure” copy-protection of their game.  Of course, the end result is that it was pointless, and all it really did was help a bunch of game-rippers display their incredible hacking skills.

But is any of that really necessary?  As an old-school PC gamer, needing a live internet connection while playing a single-player game is ridiculous and far too intrusive.  I understand the desperation in their efforts, but when it comes to such ludicrous means, doesn’t that really just show that the financial models of computer games is archaic and ineffective?

Personally, I abhor any game company that manipulates the consumer so much, just to secure their profit.  In my mind, the problem isn’t that people pirate games.  A lot of game piracy comes from experienced gamers knowing that most games released are buggy, have major compatibility issues, or is only done by people who couldn’t/wouldn’t buy the game anyway.  Quality games that are made with passion are usually bought, regardless of how easy it is to pirate, because consumers actually enjoy supporting the developer.  All of the paranoia here comes from the publisher, not the developer.  In my opinion, game publishers are obsolete and unnecessary, just like recording labels.  They aren’t needed to market products like they once were, and the means of marketing a game or CD is much different (and much easier) with the internet.  Also, it is due to the exponential inflation of the costs that go into creating a game that make companies so obsessed with protecting their profits – after all, they spent millions of dollars creating the game.

Hopefully, the trend with games will be that they will become cheaper and easier to create, market, and distribute.  All of this is already possible, but because of the entrenched monopolies involved, it hasn’t really caught on in full force.  When publishers are knocked down a few pegs, and developers have more freedom and power, then maybe games will be created for the art and joy of it – instead of the possible profits of selling a “product”.

My Grand Writing Project…

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to approach my next project – even though I never formally finished my prior on (short story, “The Steel River”).  I am planning on returning to finish that in the near future, though.

The writing project I am undertaking is writing the script for a game.  Since I am working on a programming project as well (a 2D Role-Playing Game), I have been wondering on how to approach the writing for it.  While I would like to do an ultimately open-ended dungeon-crawler, I gravitated toward something else.

I grew up on the Japanese RPGs, like Final Fantasy, Secret of Mana and Xenogears.  While these were all RPGs at their core, they were different than western RPGs on a very key detail.  The storyline in most western RPGs (of course, there are exceptions)  is just a placeholder; not that it’s insignificant, but it is not the main vessel of the game.  The primary function is a means to allow exploration, and open-endedness.  Japanese RPGs are much different, because they are much more cinematic, and large portions of games are very limiting in the player’s freedom, so that a story can be told.  While this can be bad if you want an open-ended game, I really love that aspect of J-RPGs.

So, the writing for my game will basically be a script, a screenplay that will serve as my writing project.  It will be a novel, set to a game.  But more than that, it will also allow me to write extensive lore and descriptions of different characters, factions and locations in the game.  Basically, I want to create an entire world through writing, and implement it in a game.

It sounds very heady and over-ambitious, and I am somewhat remiss to lay my plans all out here, because I read something that confirmed a suspicion of mine.  People who tell others of their grand plans for the future are less likely to carry those plans out to fruition, because of a quirky aspect of the social mind. (look it up)

I have a different blog that I am keeping for this purpose, to slowly shape the fiction of this world and its characters.  I have a lot of ideas swimming around in my head, and am very anxious to get into the meat of it.  But, for some reason, I have not yet found the necessary catalyst to jump into working on it in a serious way.  I just let the ideas percolate, and to my surprise, they get better and more detailed every day.

What Fallout 3 should have been…

Randomly wandering the internet, I found a tech demo of an old engine made by the original creators of Fallouts 1 & 2.  I believe that in some parallel existence, this engine was used for Fallout 3, and the rights were never sold away.  This is why I hate the game industry:  Things that should be works of art are treated like any other product, and intellectual property trumps everything.  If only all kinds of designers had the freedom to use their resources to make the games that really should have been made….

Open-mindedness is hypocritical

I got into an argument with my mom about Obama, and whether or not he is to blame for any of the ailings of society’s latest problems.  Her defense is always the same.  When I start to berate the right-wingers, or greedy people, or stupid people, she always tells me that I should learn to see things from every side.  And my response is usually that there is no ‘other side’.  There are the greedy, stupid people, and that’s it.

I think that people who always bow in deference to fake open-mindedness are misguided.  They think that accepting all points of view raises them above everyone else.  They think that as long as we can all give room for everyone’s idiosyncratic point of view, it levels the field for everyone.  But, in reality, it invites destruction and feeble-mindedness.

For example, to give any credence to the view that deregulation is a good and vital thing for the economy, and therefore allow self-interest to be weighed more heavily than social responsibility, immediately puts selfishness first.  And, it does not add into context the way that self-interest, and more specifically deregulation, is abused by people to subvert and avoid the governmental faculties that are supposed to keep consumers safe.  So, even though all of the problems with salmonella and disgusting conditions at food processing plants are obviously a symptom of ineffective regulation, people still think that deregulation is viable because there are greedy, uneducated, short-sighted people that want it.  Because there are people who want to cripple the government, make it ineffective and therefore give themselves power to cut every corner and cost that they can… since those people exist, obviously we should take their views with just as much seriousness as responsible people who want to protect the people buying those products, right?  It’s all fucking ridiculous.

Creationism is taught in public schools alongside evolution, insulting science and scientific thought with quaint, stupid religious beliefs; gay and lesbian people can’t even get married because of xenophobic and discriminatory practices; minorities are subjugated by narrow-minded white people; poor people are forever trampled on by the rich; America endlessly pours its resources into immoral, criminal wars being waged with no clear plan or reason, which is also a factor on fueling anti-American sentiment and action; the People are turned into cattle-like slaves by the few people who want to rule over them by monetizing their daily lives, and by creating systems that literally turn the less fortunate into economic slaves; the planet heads toward cataclysmic destruction because of greedy industrialists who want to suck every last bit of commercial energy from the earth and make money off of it, and control the world through it.  All of these are obvious reasons that you can’t just accept all points of view as valid.  There are right ways of thinking about problems, and there are wrong ways.  The anger I feel towards contemporary American behavior and thought is so visceral that I don’t even have the ability to feel any sense of hope for the people anymore.  They are lost to me, because they are so ridiculously misguided.

They are faults of the most basic sense.  They are mistakes in logic, because the anti-logical thinking is supplied by those who want control.  And yet, still people believe they are valid for some reason.  I can’t even find the proper words to describe just how disappointing it is to be an American.  It’s like you found out that we are going to nuke half of the planet because God will cause it to rain gold from the skies on the surviving half.

Sometimes I get believing I'm moving past the feeling again...

It breaks my head: The rift between people. The culture of being an island turns everyone into cloned razors; it's all the same and full of aggression. And it's all ridiculous.

No one uses their mind. Even when they do, it's ridiculous. It's too conceited to really think that I'm smarter than everyone else. But I do believe that it's sad, because everyone is so much more idiotic than me. Only at the basics, that's all I care about. Everything else is periphery; tertiary. But their cores are stupid, and bland, and banal, and basic. The innermost definition of their souls are ridiculous, stupid and I can't even take it seriously. It's a bad joke. People are laughable, but depressing at the same time. Because that's how most people are, and that means that there is such a small majority of people who think like me that I will probably never meet them.

That's the most abhorred sense of loneliness. But it's the truth. I am not great in many respects; in most, actually. But I have a real mind, which is something that nearly everyone lacks. And even if I were the lowest loser in the world, I would still have that over others, which just makes it all that much worse.

Living is its own massacre...

There are two pieces of information that I have been recurrently stumbling into online:

1)Super Columbine Massacre RPG

2)An interview with Jeff Vogel about his disdain and loathing of RPGs

What these two things have in common (besides ending both with "RPGs") is somewhat idiosyncratic on my part, but I think it is telling of an aspect of video gaming culture.

Concerning #1, it's more about the reaction to it than the game itself. For some reason, I peruse the same archived comments about the game once every blue moon, and I always think of the same thing: that people do not understand what games are ideally supposed to be. #2 drives me to this very same conclusion.

It's ironic to me that an interview with someone who created (I think) the first independent PC-RPGs of decent production value, and yet does not appreciate the medium in a poetic sense. His words seem to always come down to the fiscality of creating RPGs; hence the irony.

Indie game development has always seemed to me to be like indie music. It's not a commercialized endeavor, and it isn't a focus-group alchemy project. That is, I have never associated independent games with being about trying to be catchy or kitsch. They were always about the joy of creating a game, or the personality that can be infused into sometimes very simple engines. And the idealist in me thinks that indie games should be about nothing more than artistic expression in that way.

But back to the Columbine game. 90% or more of the comments berate the maker, and talk about how it's a horrible capitalizing on violence, how it is exploiting a violent event. But these are all from people who don't know anything about the game or its creator, because it's blatantly obvious if anyone took a second to look into it that it is not about that at all. The guy made the game as a personal study of the event, to put it into some kind of context, and to delve into the motivations and horror of it all. It was an exploitation of Columbine as much as American History X was an exploitation of racism. It's just a completely ignorant and retarded point of view.

So, on the one hand is a game that was made soulfully (albeit crappily) to raise consciousness about a school shooting, and on the other is the disappointingly pragmatic view of someone who views the indie game industry in the same light as corporate game makers. It's all about the violence, and it's all about the money.

No matter how erudite people try to be, the mass majority of them are, at their base, so pathetic in their ignorance.

The funniest parts of these two different examples sparks the same kind of disappointment in me. While people always think they are so fully versed in the ways of the world, and in the ways of gaming, they always fail to see what games are really about. But it's more than that. It isn't that people don't respect or fully understand games; they do not fully understand or appreciate the value of expression. People are just stupid, plain and simple. They lack the instruments to think about subjects in an artistic way.

So, I guess it all comes down to the masses being mindless wastes of humanity.

Ache

I want to move with the labyrinthine waves
snaking through our last days...
But I feel the ocean pulling hard
the vision through a cracking shape.
My voice is underneath the rain;
my heart is low in chains.

Pessimism.

I am not a cynic because I enjoy the empty half, or because I enjoy putting the optimistic down. But, I tend to be a realist when it comes to a subject I know enough about to be confident in making my own appraisal. And, in general, this makes me a pessimist toward those things.

I am a pessimist when it comes to the environment for the same reason that I am when it comes to sweeping political change. It's not that there is evil more powerful than any good. It's not because I choose not to see the positive aspects of Human existence, either. But, I see them as definitively Human. And, while people usually like to revel in their support for huge changes, modern culture prohibits them. We are too languid and sedentary to make huge changes. And, intellectually, we are forever paralyzed.

I put fixing the environment in the same category as something like prosecuting Bush for the many crimes he was directly and indirectly responsible for being committed during his eight years. Even if 99.99% of the public wants either of these things done, they simply will not -get- done. And they won't because of the power structure of America, and her real contemporary interests. They aren't with doling out justice or trying to re-right the harmony of our modern existence. All they exist to do is to accumulate power and money for whoever happens to temporarily be in charge of it at the time. It is an unthinking monolith with no memory whatsoever, and anyone who thinks different is deluding themselves.

Moreso, this speaks to Mankind's tendency to act the same way: without logic or memory. Western society is geared towards finding subtle ways of appealing to our basest instincts to sell products or services, or to push ideologies. Because of this, and because of how pernicious this type of appeal is, real logic does not have any power. Even after eight years of such a horrible presidency, when right-wing extremists ruled with an iron fist and did oh-so many things to undermine the rule of law and all of the ideals the country was founded on, logic never had enough power to correct any of the problems. The most that ever happened was what happened recently with the huge oil spill: there was an obligatory concession -- a purely symbolic one -- and then they moved on in a different direction, suffering no real penalties or judgment for things that were blatantly illegal. They are symbolic, half-assed gestures, meant to appease the public. And they do, because the public has become the very definition of an unthinking herd.

So, I honestly believe that, minutes before the world collapses, as volcanoes all over the planet simultaneously erupt, as the oceans turn into boiling acid, as the moon crashes into the earth and obliterates half of the globe, there will still never be more than the same half-hearted kind of concessions given. Those in the power structure are not accustomed to real guilt and real change anymore. They only know how to use different forms of public relations, or how to put their own ass-covering on the official record, even when it is a glaring lie. Then, they will duck out of view, and the few people who care on a serious level will probably -still- wonder how societies could be so blind. But, it is the essence of Human nature.

Russian Circles - Enter

This album inspires me in a very specific way. It makes me feel as if I were run down by a stampede of angry, violent, psychotic horses. And once they are upon me, they rip me to shreds.

Commerciality kills everything, it seems.

I've been reading a lot of random interviews online for the past few weeks, when I'm bored and happen to find really interesting articles. The band, Filter, Random topics by comedy writers (but with sufficient nerdiness to be idiosyncratic and educational), and all kinds of others. I was reading an interview with a game developer on IGN when my brain started to bleed.

One of the methods of the most stereotypical, standard, amateurish article writing is to enlarge a paragraph that is eye-grabbing, and putting it in the middle of the article, I suppose to pique interest for people who like to skim.

But, what it does to someone like me, someone who reads every word when interested, is something different.

Like this.

What is horrible about it is that they always use a paragraph, and put it before where it originally is in the article (like the page above). So, you're reading, you read this eye-grabber paragraph, and then you keep reading on, thinking that it was, in essence, part of your reading. Then you come across the same paragraph a few more paragraphs down.

This is really bad because it displaces the reader. But, it also basically nullifies the effect of that paragraph, because reading it in the second context (its original context) somehow undermines any meaning in it.

It's like, when you see a phrase often, and then see it where someone is genuinely using the words, and they happen to fall in the same place. The statement itself becomes a symbol of expression, of some kind of abstract marketing, and my brain doesn't absorb it as it should.

It's just another small, subtle way in which Human commerciality undermines Human nature. It's a hard thing to explain properly, but there are so many examples like this, in many different ways, that turn anything worthwhile into something that has been made part of a 'product'.

Proclamation

There are points when you meet the dual faces of honesty, and see the truer one; the dirtier one.

It is time for me to embark. And, that has never been good news.

Stop the season
Stop the sting
A plastic mic
Broken string, yeah
Infected wound from a rusted ring
So what?

Soon, you'll be there too
Soon, you'll be there too

And kissing families can recall
A program to derail us all
Forgotten prison, it's been safe 'til now
It's no wonder that we did it this way
Kept looking forward on paths sideways
It's everything that is connected and beautiful
And now I know just where I stand
Move on
Roll along
Not today
It's everything that is connected and beautiful
And now I know just where I stand
Thank God your heart is too close

This can't be the bitter end
I know it won't

Well, someone said I made a mistake
Kept looking forward on paths sideways
It's everything that is connected and beautiful
And now I know just where I stand
Seasons always shift too late
Spent too much time, now on paths sideways
Everything that is connected and beautiful
And now I know just where I stand
Thank God
It's over

Where do I turn when all hope is lost?
Where do I find forgiveness?

A pain-reflex...

I'm old enough to understand the cycles, the ephemeral aspects to my life. I approach each beginning the same, and perform the same through the duration. Somehow.

What's needed is between stomping and creeping. Floating and sinking; swimming.

Especially when you have a semblance of stability to protect.

I catch the rain that turns me to rust, I stand in the flame that turns me to dust...

When I think that I am a void, I find a wall, and space around me. When I think that I am burning, I feel the cool air of peace. When I think that I am fading, I feel the edges of my own outline.

And in these moments, I feel the hope of someone who, at the back of his mind, thinks that it is only temporary.

Legend of the Seeker Sucks Ass

What really bothers me about Legend of the Seeker is that its relationship with the Sword of Truth books is a microcosm of American culture in general.

One of the reasons the books were amazing is the style in which they were written. Every scene is laid out like a screenplay. The general information given is basic when needed, but every aspect that is integral to the story is described in a very basic, Human way. You understand each event in a linear fashion, but at the same time you understand the deeper implications alongside the aesthetic representation. It feels as if you are watching events unfold, but in a way that is as exhaustive as is possible without being boring. The war that goes on throughout the books; each character's personality and relationship with other characters; the feelings conveyed through simple dialogue and actions; these things educate the reader on Human nature in the context of the story. You learn a lot from each story arc.

The main theme of the books is very complex, but at the same time very basic. It's a story about all of the negative aspects of civilization and contemporary society, and how they are overcome. The problems that aren't overcome, though, serve to describe the sorrow and frustration of being a part of Human culture. The main protagonist is someone whose being is grounded in logic, and who has a very analytical mind. Through him, you learn what irrationality and immoral fervor do to people, and the love that grows between Richard and Kahlan is a very realistic one, but still has elements of a purity that exist only rarely in life.

While there is a main villain, the story is never really about good vs. evil. It's about the Human struggle and triumph over itself, and how deeply ingrained beliefs and destructive qualities can be defeated in a moral framework. It is as much a novel as it is a basic philosophical work.

The TV show is nothing more than a sub-par situational drama. It has the same banal humor, the overly dramatic conflicts, all of the annoying qualities of a poorly written TV show. It uses sex as a selling point instead of how it is portrayed in the books, by using as many opportunities as it can find to show the same pseudo-sexual softcore porn that most TV dramas have. All of these parts are put in because they appeal to the general viewerbase, like everything else in the show.

This is why the story is completely different. In the books, every facet of the storyline was interwoven with the main theme and the rest of the story, whereas in the show, it is an episodic, climax-based, ridiculously undeveloped story. The kind of people who watch shows like Xena, Hercules, and all of the terrible dramas on TV like this kind of story progression, with just enough development to make the viewers feel sophisticated, when all they are watching is trash from a pre-formulated mold.

It is a travesty to someone like me, someone who has an intellect and who appreciated the books on a very deep and personal level. I've seen a lot of people who have read the books and who still like the show, and these people must be too stupid to realize just how pointless the comparison is. Or, they dismiss the comparison alltogether, insisting that they are two different things, and should be appreciated separately. Regardless of this, I can never appreciate the show in any way because of how badly it has forsaken all of the attractive qualities of the books. And, even if I took the show on its merits alone, I would still be disappointed because it's a shitty show with a shitty, TV-grade cast, with a plot so idiotic that it defies logic as to why Terry Goodkind would have any part in it.

What really makes me angry about it, though, is that it seems like most people don't realize things like this. They don't realize just how dumbed-down TV is, and how all aspects of cultural media in America are so abhorrently reductive and bland that it insults the intelligence of anyone who sits through it. Unless, of course, they don't have an intelligence to insult.

The saddest part of watching enough of the show to analyze is understanding the formulae that is used to make American TV shows. It's all so basic that it should only appeal to slow children, and yet adults are just as entranced, if not moreso. There isn't any real depth to literature and media anymore, if there ever was. All of the things that are great are underappreciated and unknown, and when they do become mainstream, they either have to be dumbed down so much that they become worthless, or they are appreciated for the wrong reasons.

I've seen at least two or three episodes that involve Richard and Kahlan almost having sex. The way that these scenes are done is one of the things that -really- pisses me off about the show. They both paw at each other like horny teenagers, with nothing but lust and hormones in their eyes, and the scene is done in a way that is supposed to exude these things: Hormones, lust and not really 'sex'... but 'fucking'.

The characters from the books did not have the kind of personality that they were horny adolescents who wanted to get it on so badly when given the opportunity. They were adults, with sophisticated emotions and lusts. When they did have sex, it was not just... bad porn. They made love, in the corniest sense of the term, but it was special because of that, because they connected on a deeper level. But, since American sexuality is perpetually frozen in the late teenage years, and because that primal kind of lust is what is easy to sell in media, that is how it is done on the show. It seems like there is almost nothing in American culture anymore that suggests we have any sophisticated emotions, or sense of self, or sexuality. Apparently, we are all just adolescent children, slavishly guided by immature, pseudo-emotional desires. This is probably why the show is successful with a short, prepubescent-looking, brainless protagonist and why his love interest is the kind of girl you want to fuck in high school. She's not beautiful, she's 'hot'. Somehow, everyone eats it up.

All of the other parts of the story that they get wrong and change to the point of not being recognizeable at all just show how that isn't their aim; they have no interest in telling a story. They just want to reiterate the formula that will make them money. And since people are so undeveloped and mindless, they'll like the show, they'll think it has a great story and great characters, great humor, great action and great climaxes. In the end, the real problem isn't the people making the show; it's all of the idiots that genuinely like it.

Providence

My brain has become bogged down by all of the negative aspects of shallow existence. I have to become better at passing off all of those things and focusing at what I grow within myself, especially because it forsakes the shallow, even if only to myself.

I'm just getting back into all of the things that move me, and while it's not necessarily a positive move, it's more organic and feels more real when I am inside those things, when I ignore all of the pedantic things. But after so long in and out of delusion, it's hard to keep an outlook that isn't blindingly fatalistic.

A fracture line; I eat from another world,
for no reason but to cover this one.
I breathe in suffocated bursts,
a ritual to break the routine lurch.
The irony in a poisoned fang
and its filling sense of change;
a memory in my valves.

Still, her eyes are staring at me
Empty as the sky
In this moment of tranquility
I realize that this is goodbye.

In terms of my writing, I have reached a place where I only write when I somewhat force myself to. And, in that mode, I try too hard to exhaustively explain my points, I focus too much on the structure and grammatical prose of it all. What comes out later seems kind of contrived.

I've realized recently that I really need to just write and not think about the rest of it. The reason that I like my style of writing back when I was a teenager so much is because I did exactly that. I didn't think, I just expelled. And now, when I want to impose the things I've learned into the method of writing, I start to ruin it. It doesn't really matter if it's not perfect or if there are flaws. I just need to write. Period.

And beyond the method and structure, the substance also suffers. I end up spiraling into an Ouroboros of explaining explanations, defining definitions. And I lose my main point. I become aimless. This is also something I miss about my older writing: No matter how insane and scattered it ever got, there was always a point when it would all be wound together in a gestalt moment, exploding with my own vitriolic deconstructions.

It's pretty obvious in the post before this one. That is what made me realize that I need to reevaluate my own motivation (well, writing motivations, at least)...

The Problem of the Contemporary Mind

Part of our culture is based on irrationality. But it's selective; science can be derided all day, but people still believe in science when it comes to the practical things in life like technology and medical services.

The reason is that irrationality has been falsely linked to spirituality. Just like ghosts, aliens and bigfoot, people think that the ability to believe in things that have no real evidence shows that you are more open-minded, and therefore more intelligent (ironically). having the 'strength' to believe in things purely on faith is a sign of a stronger soul. And since the entertainment industry makes a lot of money capitalizing on these ideas, turning The History Channel into UFO story marathons, turning Sci Fi into the same kind of bullshit, they market to Americans' vanity in their sense of pseudo-spirituality.

Another large influence is the amalgamation of the different religious movements. They believe that logical thinking, critical thinking, and understanding of things like evolution and the debunking of religious dogma, all of these are antithetical and threatening to the existence of religion, and religious power. Part of the social control in America is based on keeping irrational thought and trust in faith alive by falsely discrediting any kind of scientific thought, at least when it is on a subject that opposes religious practice.

It is all manifest in the brain through the dichotomy of the emotional and intellectual minds. When we think based on our emotions, we block out the logical parts of thought, and vice versa. Both can not effectively coexist. But, if we have been trained at anything, it's compartmentalizing our thought and behavior. That is why people can believe that the Earth is less than 6,000 years old, and not be completely idiotic. They do not see the relatedness of things like the origin of the planet and the nature of the cosmos and things like fossil fuels. They can think that evolution is a lie, but still understand how dogs have been domesticated, or how plants are bred over time.

And, in cases like evolution, elements of social control deal with these on a case-by-case basis. Nobody in their right mind thought up the macro- vs micro-evolutionary difference. It was something created by religious thinkers who wanted a believable way to justify their dislike of Darwin and the anti-creationist sections of science.

It has degraded music also. The music industry has become a factory of overgeneralized formulae. Most popular music is based on a hip-hop beat and lyrics that have to do with basic mass-social gatherings, and emphasizes sexuality, condescension and the idea that the subject of the song is uniquely special. I think that these things, while they may seem strangely specific in that I picked them out, show the atrophy of poetic thinking in art. I believe that there is a reason that most popular music focuses on these kinds of fairy-tale story lines, or on possessing the opposite sex, or being better than 'the rest' of society, or about how life is a grander mystery that no one can ever understand. These are the most basic aspects of art, the most banal, amplified and used over and over until they become so prevalent in the way we think that it feeds on itself in a circular motion.

The conservative movement gained its power through the demonization of the elite, and the 'empowerment' of the common man. However, there was never any real empowerment, just the mirage of it; the interests that were always served gained their power through subjugating the lower classes of society, and it is in filling their minds with illusions of being greater that they did so.

The different ways that those with money exert their influence is as evil as Humans can be in society. The real problem isn't that they do it, but that Americans have learned to be so passive that they do nothing to think for themselves. All they do is zone out on their entertainment, their empty carnival-like entertainment, while they wait for the mass media to feed them the news that they are conditioned to hear, and then they form opinions on it based on what they're told to feel. Their opinions, their views and their thought processes themselves are conditioned and grown over time. It is not a conspiracy or some grand evil like the Illuminati. It's simple Human behavior, and because Americans are so complacent, even on a dying planet, even with crumbling and fracturing societies. They no longer know how to do anything other than be complacent slaves. Everything is separated to be either Progressive or Conservative, R or D, 'Liberal' or 'Responsible'.

And now, with all of these anti-government factions taking shape, with all of the protest movements and ideological lines being drawn... as much as it seems that we are empowering ourselves, we are still the same sheep. the movements themselves are being built by people who want power, and even when the pitchforks come, they will be supplied by the same people. That is the biggest deception in our society: Not that we do not have opposition, but that the opposition itself is just another side of the same control.

In my view, this is all caused by our 'open-mindedness'. We are pliable because we let ourselves to be dominated by an irrational culture, because we are dominated now by religious and spirtual leaders. Our society becomes more and more ridiculously violent, for stupid reasons. Irrationality becomes more dominant, and it causes children to be raised with less and less of a mind. We become more and more primal, more idiotic. We become more worthless with every inch that we give to religion, to irrational belief, with partisan feuds.

American values are dead, not because of the reasons Conservatives give. They are not dead because we have grown away from God, not because we have lost respect for our government. They are not dead because of the effects of terrorism or anti-American movements. They are dead because we, as a people, have forsaken intellectual and emotional education. We do not raise children with common sense. We do not respect anything other than what we are told to. We use excuses and justifications to deal with our problems, rather than face them. We have become pathetic, because we are pathetic.

Feed the gods a strychnine soul...

The never-ending journey in atrophy. Time and time again, I am discouraged by it. I don't look forward in a progressive fashion, but a regressive one. Everything, no matter how slowly, crumbles.

All of the people who have a rosy perspective, who think that everything will always be wonderful and hope is its own fertilizer, these people are the ignorant ones. Cynicism is coupled with pessimism because the cynics are the realists, and the world is a decrepit place. They don't see how deeply corrupt our government is, and they don't see how they are a part of it. They don't see that they are sheep.

And even when they think they are actively taking part in the system, trying to change politics and society, they are still sheep. They are being led. There is an entire movement that is built on the same control as the rest of it, but it is disguised as being anti-authority and pro-democratic.

People think we have a democracy, and that is why there are such problems in America. But we have only fascism and social control. We have only lazy ignorance, represented by people who are too selfish and stupid to be anything but apathetic or vapidly interested. People only care about themselves and how they are viewed. This is why it all works: They use their political views as a metaphorical bumper sticker, to show the rest of society how they feel. Sometimes, I don't think there are many people left who really see it all for what it is.

They do such wildly anti-American things as pushing religion so deeply into politics that our history books are being changed, our sense of values only go as far as our religious beliefs, and the act of discrimination is widely accepted as long as there is a religious justification to it. At the root of all of America's corruption and immorality, lies religion and religious thought. Because, religious thought is just another appendage of selfish ignorance.

But, in the grander scheme of things, none of it really matters. The rest of the world is still progressing, and will move beyond even America, which was once the beacon of all progress in the world. We will fall behind and crumble, and cease to exist, or fix things and start to make real progress. It doesn't really matter. The end result will be that the Human race will eradicate ignorance, outgrow it, or fall prey to it once and for all.

I will fall in the shattering thunder of dying stars,
with one thing keeping me bound throughout it all:
the breadth of a deathly pall....

Born in the USA...

The indicative point, the most revealing characteristic of Christianity, and all monotheistic religions (and other forms of authoritarianism) is its blatant self-contradiction and hypocrisy. But, somehow, it is in these contradictions that its power lies. Something in the Human condition allows such reverse-thinking. Just as Bush's "Clear Skies Initiative" completely fucked up the environment where it was applied, just as the "Patriot Act" is a completely un-American farce, there is an entire kind of strategy-making devoted to this kind of reversed logic.

And since the public is so intellectually lazy, they believe the false presentation of things simply because they are shown as being fact. Things that take only a minimal effort in critical thinking to prove false are believed, not only because they appeal to their sensibilities (as they are designed to), but they play off of the fears that come inherent with being ignorant and xenophobic. Most of the people I know believe that minorities taking advantage of welfare is one of the largest problems in the country; that's how ridiculous public thought is.

But even when they try to think critically about something and try to form an educated opinion, they do not have the facilities to adequately do so. They have no experience in picking apart things sufficiently. They have grown too stupid to suddenly be as smart as is required to stop the country's sinking into the abyss. Nothing pisses me off more than watching idiots debate about issues that they really don't know anything about, because all they do is battle diametrically opposed emotional responses, held up by half-truths and cherry-picked data.

As long as large corporations pay to have their information spread out among the public, as long as intelligence is demonized, as long as the cattle never outgrow the killing floor, nothing will ever change.

Let me burn you down...

I'm getting too old to be paralyzed. But, I am not young enough to revile the slow movement that mental paralysis allows.

I used to be too anxious to ever sit still. The older I've gotten, the more I respect meditation-like thought; that is, thought that moves at its own pace and is not hurried along. I have grown an immeasurable amount inside, but I still balk and fluster when I talk to my father. I still hide when I talk to my mother. I still tell people whatever they want to hear. I am still the epitome of misanthropy.

I feel like my writing was more profound back then, though. I don't know why. Perhaps my ego has regrown as it was before I broke down any walls and was the self-imposed imposition. The clueless megaphone of antithetical advice. The destroyer of worlds.

But I still have the same person inside of me. It's just become much harder to find him, because I have become a ruin on the outside.

--

There's no returning
There's no returning
There is no action
No way to divide

Silence is growing
Silence is growing
Out of refraction
And way out of sight
No clear recalling
No, no clear recalling
There's no reaction
No way back to light

Turn 'round and over
Over and over
Turn 'round and over
My liquid time
My liquid time
Back to the place where you are
A new void

No more returning
No more returning
Feeling no others
But we may be blind
So long a waiting
So long a watching
There must be something moving there in the dark
No fear inside you
No, no fear inside you
No, there's no reaction
No way back to light

Turn 'round and over
Over and over
Turn 'round and over

There's no returning
See, there's no returning
There is no action
No way to divide
Something's approaching
Something's approaching
Ready to strike with every beat of your heart

Turn 'round and over
Over and over
Turn 'round and over

A new void....
=

Now that I'm out of the nut house and on my own
Having worn out my welcome in every home
I'm to blame for all of the things that went wrong
I'm just a case away from losing it all
I slip to fall

I live two minutes from where I bought medicine
Escape as the guy on my way to sober friends
I'm to blame for all of the things that I've done
I'm just a case away from losing it all
I slip to fall

Time creeps by when I'm in reality
Sometimes, my feet start walking unconsciously
I've got some time, but I've got my life to go
I wish the best for us all, but I don't know...

And with her came the birds....

I am profoundly disappointed in myself. Even though I have clear goals that I am pursuing, regardless of how pointless they may seem to be to everyone else, even though I have grown, I am still the same train wreck that I've always been. Only, now, it's much worse because I keep heading slowly, gradually downward. I'm always lower than I was before.

I don't really care about the prospects that I will or won't have when it comes to meeting people, because I have completely adopted misanthropy to such a staggering degree. I don't even think of myself as part of that species anymore, because of my own mental illnesses. This has always been the point in my life when I've started taking medication again. But this time, I won't. And that kind of frightens me, as it does even when I do end up taking something for it. I feel as though I'm on the final track, which is so different than any time before now.

I am not heading down with reckless abandon, but with careful, languid deliberation. That is what's completely terrifying about it all. I feel as though I really am rotting from the inside out, now. And while I don't think I'll ever be quite as psychotic as I have been in my life, everything feels different, now. What was once chaotic fury is now psychopathy. What was once distress and desperation is now a cold, chilling contract.

What was once hope buried under mountains of fear and pain is now... pain, masked by numbness and sadness. The kind of sadness that never truly shows itself until it's much too late.

And within this melancholy, I remember my psychic roots. It isn't sorrow for the sake of sorrow. This is my real expression. I've never been able to adequately explain that, I feel. In our culture, this kind of presentation is usually used for self-reinforcement; it's all to exercise the ego in that destructive, pointless way that only shallow people can. But that is not me. I have to write things like this for my own sanity, even when it never really feels like it helps all that much. Whenever I go back through my writing, though, I find that this is the only real beauty I've ever known: The solemn, broken structures erected out of necessity.

The filter that keeps us all from the bare primordial is not so apparent when those ancient, organic cries of anguish and separation bleed through.

In the air we breathe,
the fading voices, embers,
burn quietly dim.

I can't wait
to meet the one I drove away
to greet a constant state
I need it for today

No quick way
You sit and wonder, draw breath
This will not go away
The rope begins to fray

I'd set my goals aside
if I could be with you
I'd set my goals aside
if I could be with you
I'd set my goals aside
but will it get me through
I'd set my goals aside
if I could be with you

Don't make waste
I know you'll do it all again
I try to reach the point
I know you did the same

I'd set my goals aside
if I could be with you
I'd set my goals aside
if I could be with you
I'd set my goals aside
but will it get me through
I'd set my goals aside
if I could be with you

I'd set my goals aside
but will it get me through
I'd set my goals aside
if I could be with you

Ripped apart by destiny-claws...

Am I another of fate's possessions?

I have somehow felt the gestalt impact of the realization of existentialism. There is no a priori. There are no excuses. Only a chain of choices and mistakes (mostly the latter).

It's hard to discern your own mind, when you are not completely sure how much is chemical, how much is real and how much is delusion. I used to embrace all facets of it all, and embody the primevally complicated language that I still think in. But, I don't express that language anymore. And, when I try to, I realize that I don't have the ease of connection I once did.

It's a strange dilemma, because this was supposed to be my ultimate goal. I used to dread the metaphorical dimensions, and think about what life would be like with only stark realism. And, now that I'm closer than I ever have been to realism, I miss the whimsical, destructive forces that reigned for so many years. As obscure and demented as it was, it was a home to me, and it reinforced the only kind of self-confidence I ever cared about.

If it's childish to want those things, that doesn't change the fact that I still want them. There is a certain purity to expression that is based on a sense of hair's-breadth survival. The crusader; the martyr; the prisoner awaiting execution. It is still me, but I have learned to hide those things. And if anything has been detrimental to me, it is suppression and repression.

The way that my mind works, I will continue to pursue the same cognitive lines and themes until they have reached exhaustion. But, as long as there is an inexhaustible supply of exhaustible thinking, I feel like I will be able to keep my humanity, even when I tend to forget that I'm Human in my mind and body. The separation within me always tells me that I am neither parts of myself, but it is also that separation that gives birth to the crusader; the inspiration of the light-bringer.

So how should I surround you?
And how should I relax?
It's happening now
It's happening now

Mutilate

Oh,
we will stagger,
we will stagger
on and on
A simple habit --
Jump from one foot
to the other,
on and on

Chained to the laws
Chained to the laws

Oh,
let's go further,
used to reeling
on and on
A pain reflex
if mistaken
Never lose faith,
steering on

Oh,
we will stagger,
lose our bearings
on and on
Yes,
there can be no
obvious answers
as we move on

And on and on,
we must tremble,
lame and humble,
on and on

Behind the stars, beneath the walls
Below the ground, before the storm...
Below the ground, before the storm

Chained to the laws
Chained to the laws

Useless anger;
there's no answer
to be found
We will stagger,
we will falter,
stained and blackened,
on and on

Chained to the laws
Chained to the laws
You'd better know the laws

The feel of the action
is far behind
The fruit of the action
has nailed you down, dragged you down
Progress
Progress
Progress
Progress
Progress
Progress
Progress
Progress
Sealing up reaction
overwhelms the conscience,
leads to more diversion
and pulls you down
Coming to attention,
going through the tension,
praying for the sanction;
you're fading out
The feel of the action,
the seed of the action
will drag you down
Twenty fallen angels,
heading for salvation,
heading for the sanction
will soil the sky
Gain a new dimension,
take a new direction,
whirlwind of emotion;
for now's the time
Progress
Process
Protest
No rest

Going through old writing 1

Why do so many social stigmas exist? How is it that society as an organism gets to mold its own inhabitants, without even the realization? Are we existing only to fill up a larger fractal level with a bland, morose, self-centered, sexual entity?

The corrosion fills your mind. Your eyes turn to stone. A killer becomes in you; desire...

The only thing that our government can do efficiently anymore is convince people to use their more banal and basic emotions to work against their own interests. Because condescension and hatred and empty, blind bigotry are so easily cultivated in society. Sexual cues; behavioral cues based on persecution and anger; feelings of worthlessness or unattained glory directed outward and projected into their conception of others; twisted plants that have grown from a nebulous childhood trauma that everyone in America knows, a strange feeling of never being able to get what you want; when progress is made, the realization that there is no real progress worth dying for in this country, because the self is put before everything else; the ubiquitous spread of strains of religion that focus on how we are all corrupt in our cores and can only get anything positive if we admit to our own impotence, admit that we are nothing without incorporeal, otherworldly salvation that we never see in this life; all of these things are ruination to the Human soul.

I do not even care all that much whether or not religion is true. Look at what it's gotten us: absolute emptiness. And, somehow, that emptiness is glorified all the more because it really is empty. We live our lives as cattle in herd, surrendering to every hormonal and instinctual whim without real thought, without real development of our emotional state. People seem to think that those first biological inklings that enter the brain are all there is: the desire for nubile sexual attractiveness, of pageantry, of accumulation and domination. All of the things that the religions that are strangling America denounce... they are all what defines us because we ignore their effects. We think as consumers, and more than that, we think as complex systems of stimuli and reward centers. We pick and choose what we believe, regardless of what is provably true; verifiable truth itself is regarded as emptiness. It is a huge polar shift in reality, because to respect critical truth is seen as respecting decadence, rejecting 'nobility'. Nobleness and moral excellence are only seen as conceit and projecting a domineering psyche, even when real 'moral excellence' would mean just the opposite. Our views of good and evil are reversed somehow, and because of this, we see the short-sighted as being the good, we see selfishness as being grand. I say, 'we', because I would like to think that I'm speaking as a part of society... but I have no part in those kinds of behaviors. The small moral inconsistencies that everyone deals with on a daily basis are not part of the greater picture, but because people never learn to think on that larger scale, they make it all a part of the instinctual, knee-jerk thought processes.

It's the time-honored story of every archetypal civilization, boasting its glory and holding its own kingdom higher than that of the rest of the world. Everyone knows how the story always ends, to impose its moral lesson: It crumbles. It self-destructs. But because we are our own Manifest Destiny, because we are the greatest, they will never acknowledge that end coming. Which is ironic, because they would scream at the screen if it were in a movie. They would laugh and look down their noses at it if they weren't too uneducated and too ignorant and too stupefied to understand that it's happening to them. And even if they did understand it, I still believe that they would accept it anyway, because they would take that temporary, amplified pleasure, rather than the guilt they would deserve if anyone ever came to terms with the consequences of living a hubristic, arrogant life; the real irony is that they are nothing but slaves themselves.

From dereliction,
out of convalescent pain,
only down is here.

Misanthrope at best, masochist at worst...

I often think about all of the failed relationships to which I have been steward and nothing more, almost unconsciously deliberate in my antagonism. I believe a part of me always wants them to fail in their multitude of ways. A switch is activated in me which causes me to purposefully sabotage every aspect of them, turning into a purely destructive force, even to the point of dishonesty. I'm sure that it stems from my own nonexistent sense of self-worth, or rather, my sense of worthlessness in relationships. I do not put value in them because I have conditioned myself to abstain from doing so.

When I am lying down to sleep, I go through a list of phrases that I tell myself without fail: I am afraid of dying alone. I do not want to die alone. I will probably die alone.

And I think about my past relationships, and how worthless they ended up being, not because they were empty themselves, but because I deliberately emptied them, usually to my own detriment in both the image I cultivated in others and my image of myself.

But I don't think these things with pangs of guilt or sadness. I always feel the tone of solemn tranquility in my brain, as if I'm waiting for the guillotine. That is the end product of all my coping mechanisms: To wear the spirit of a man condemned to death.

I don't really have hope in other people because I have no direction for myself. I don't view the future with any sense of optimism. I only see the final chapters, falsely tainted by my own introverted fatalism.

But one thing I have learned to be true is that expressing even the most morbid things will help them, even if only in some abstract, out-of-reach way.

Nothing is the way it seems
Discerning man from machines
Dominate as to erase
Wiping man off Earth's face
Fueling engines through deceit
To eradicate humanity
Man is obsolete!
Erased, extinct!

How did this room get so white?

Nothing makes a person feel crazier than the belief of having corrosive insight into just about everything, and it's magnified infinitely by the knowledge of how everything can be dissected.

The world itself is ironically shallow; ironic because of how deep everything else is traveling. We can understand the code of life itself, pick apart any academic idea or theory. And yet, when it comes to the most important things, the personified aspects of symbolism, everything becomes more shallow than anything imagined.

The isolation of a schizoid reality splits it all down the middle, and is upheld by blaring contrast: On one side, the emotive nature of the possibilities in Human behavior, and on the other, complete idolatry of the most banal concepts. Actually, they aren't even worthy of being called 'banal', because even those things hold more meaning than the largest, most influential parts of society.

I find the strangest examples of this chasm. And what disturbs me is that it doesn't even matter what angle it comes from: Youtube videos teaching people how to French kiss; the way Presidential terms define our culture and the value put in those representations; the majority of the programming on The History Channel; the spectacle of pole-dancing that live music performances have become; Americanized dubs of anime; the whole internet-dating-site 'construct' (read: business model); the ridiculous disregard for safety in the world of prescription drugs (and the ridiculous lack of any kind of responsibility for them) and, conversely, the other side reflected through illegal drugs; the idiocy of reality TV; the same reaction to public acts of violence over and over and over; the very concept of having a Dept. of Homeland Security in a country like the U.S.; the way that gaming culture has been twisted into a G4-esque, anti-intellectual entertainment industry; people anywhere listening to anything the Pope says and -not- laughing with derision; our symbiotic (read: parasitic) existence with forms of transportation that are slowly killing us; the over-glamorization of musicians into deities of self-indulgence and primal pseudo-royalty status; our (un)justified fear of profanity; the empty pleasure in all things forbidden for the sake of it; the dais that the Lowest Common Denominator (tm) rests on; egomania's status as exempt from real criticism or destruction; the blending of nobility and infamy into some amorphous thing that defines social status; the irrational love of controversy, especially when it holds an antithetical, anti-humane effigy as an idol; the laughable contradiction of all dogma; the people's ardent love for such dogma (read: evil).

They are all pieces of the same pitiful thing: The lack of Nature in Humanness. I am convinced that if I did not have the intellect that I do, I would not have been able to survive at all. The weight of it all overshadows the purer sense of hope for the future, and makes such a feeling more and more ideological by the day; more ideological and more illusory.

You will never sleep at night...

When the mind of the crowd comes forward
to strip my time to bare
with urgency and grievance,
I lose sight of ataraxy.

Greet Death

Somehow, I have become a machine that is in constant entropy. I only feel like myself after I've whittled everything down for so long that, when I finally let myself, I sleep for an ungodly length. Then, for a few hours after I wake up, I feel like my brain will share some of its electricity with me.

A worm thriving in seas of disgust; I'm common...

Every conception is wrong. Every single one I see in American culture.

Even the points that were made in history to educate those who came after. They were twisted, misinterpreted, lost in ignorance. There is no philosophy in our philosophy, because we do not know what the study of wisdom is; we do not have any wisdom.

We are the spoiled brats of sacrificial men. We think we can argue forever, compromise forever without taking a concrete stand. Slavery would probably still be here if it weren't for outside influences and the relentless beating of a minority opinion. And still, it took too long. We respect those who act immorally because we want to be viewed as fair, and in doing so, we are unjustly punishing our own fates. It is reprehensible; a word that can fill anyone's vocabulary when they look at the history of a supposedly free nation.

What was once a moral stance has been skewed so that it became moral presentation. My brother holds fast to the idea that we are nothing but sheep now, on a never-ending decline into oblivion. But, the ironic thing is that this is exactly what any religious fundamentalist, any Neo-Conservative, any leftist or anyone else with a strong social moral stance will tell you. It is a fallacy.

In the same vein of the 'reality' problem that Creationists pose to Darwinists, the solution is obvious. It goes something like, "How can something like reality, something so beautifully complex and amazing exist without some intelligent creator?" And the Evolution-believer will say: It exists because it's here. If reality wasn't the way it was... it wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be here." To exist is not an explanation for anything, because the nature of existence itself is self-explanatory. There can't be anything like that deduced from it.

If there are Humans who understand the world for what it really is, then that means that all Humans aren't ignorant, selfish worms. If there is one tiny spark of realization, as with the beginning of the 20th Century with The Enlightenment; if one mote of meta-knowledge is present, it will try and try to replicate until it finally does, or is extinguished. As long as there is one person living somewhere who understands this, then Humans are not completely lost. Even if it does feel completely hopeless.

I believe that everything can be explained by philosophy, and if not, then by psychology. If I am the only person on the planet who believes in the slow accumulation of knowledge and application of severely critical thinking, then that means that those ideas have at least some root in humanity. Although I am much too cynical to think that it will really change, I do not believe it will never change.

I don't think many people thought slavery would ever end (which goes back far behind America). I don't think anyone envisioned any of the things that the present generations take for granted, and I don't think anyone alive today can foresee what the world will be like, even in a decade. The Human mind is way too short-sighted and, by default, selfish to dream about the future in any cogent sense.

Back to America specifically, the only thing that has really set us apart is that no one can control it all for an extended period of time. Even when it seems that the masters are pulling our strings, those masters are not the same people, or of even the same lineage as those who once did. And when the people regain their taste for violent upheaval, things will change. Far more people today know the hypocrisy of organized religion than did a hundred years ago, and that means that the world can only become more intellectual. I think that the more global societies get, as well, will mean that selfishness and greed (two totally different organs) will have a higher chance of being obliterated.

Not that it would ever happen, but if every child born from today onward was properly educated and taught about the evils of Man in the realer senses, the world would completely change forever. All of Man will die in pitiful anguish, no matter how powerful they are now. And that is the only consolation that one can give to their children. I think that people take for granted that calling someone a nigger is frowned upon and seen as abhorrant nowadays, when even twenty years ago, it was not nearly as much so. It is a relatively small example, but exemplifies the lurching, sporadic nature of progress.

We like to think that history is linear, and that the future will also be, but neither is. It was and will be a happenstance chain of cause-and-effect, of unintended consequence and the struggle of evil and good (with the former usually winning in secret). Nationalistic history is linear because it needs to be propagandized in certain ways, and it needs to be so because that is the only way people grasp it. In a lot of ways, ancient Rome was more forward-thinking than America is today; that is the simplicity of Humans as animals. Despite what external influences exist, there is a basic nature in Man that always seeks to put itself forward. While most people think that this is the evil of Man and his proud nature, I do not believe so. All psychology and philosophy I have read has led me to think that basic Human nature is much more altruistic and benevolent than it would seem. It is only opportunistic tendencies and the most basic seeds of things like misogyny and domineering cultures that shapes society for the worse. And all of those things are in the process of dying, even when it doesn't seem like it.

I have a morbid kind of hope for Man, because I know that if such basic things aren't solved, then we will commit suicide as a whole. Even though I will not be alive to witness it, I take pride in knowing that such negative processes will be brutally extinguished, and either give way for real positivity, or end in darkness. Man will either fix things and deserve his space, or will fail and die pitifully, and let the universe wait for the next, better creature. All Humans can do is relentlessly push the truth forward, and hammer it into place until it sticks. A child is the definitive vessel for either progress or obliteration.

New Macabre

It takes more effort than I would admit to express myself these days. It wasn't like that when I was still an incision within society; now, I feel more like a scar. Healed, but not quite original.

In reading Jung, I am learning more about a very nuanced view of neurosis and schizophrenia. It agrees not only with my intuition, but with what I know first-hand. And it gives me reason to believe that there are ways of overcoming even the most abstract pain and suffering.

Stare long into the mouth of abandonment...

When the rift is really greatest, albeit arbitrary.

Not larger, or wider, or longer; more defined. But, you can still crawl through.

So, that is paramount. It doesn't really matter what's there, but for its existence in the spectrum of travel. I never got the hang of being ambitious. I never really kicked the habit(s). I still don't believe in spirits. But I did reignite the spark of curiosity towards knowledge.

And that's good enough for me. We are the creatures of muscular, organic, neurotic learning. Nobody thinks that way anymore; at least, nobody I've ever met... but I still do.