Temporary Hiatus

It's not permanent! Just switching jobs, apartments, diet, exercise regimen... A whole bunch of changes, plus I'm working on a new poetry collection. I only have so much time in the day!

Backlog Blitz: Genesis, Week Eight, "Bad Games Make Me...GROWL"

Have you ever considered that life is meaningless? Me neither. Hahaha. Let's talk about games.

Gauntlet 4

More or less it's a mediocre copy of Gauntlet. I don't think there's anything diffrerent from the original game...

Golden Axe

Well, it's better than the Master System version. But it's still pretty bad. It's just clunky, even compared to contemporary sidescrolling beatemups

Growl

Wow. This is... This is something else in terms of poor quality. A, I'm 100% sure that the main characters are all ripoffs of licensed characters like Indiana Jones. B, the enemy types make no sense--women in business suits and NINJAS? And C, it's a bad game.

Consume, the Journal of a Dreamwalker: Twelfth Dognacht and Forty-Seventh Totemphatht

TWELFTH DOGNACHT

Days pass, then weeks. I cloister myself in the garret lodging, emerging only to eat or replenish the supply of titan-self. Though magnificent vistas and glorious sights reveal themselves unto me, none are my own dreamcity of youth. 

But as time slips past, I find I no longer care whether I rediscover my childhood haunt. Rather, it seems paramount that the dead titan’s memory be recorded. I delve deeper into the titan-self, purchasing not just from the first deiphagist woman, but from many vendors in back alleys and side streets. The power of a titan sears my mind day and night. And yet. And yet, when I put pen to paper in order that the titan might be revered, all words fail. The experience of titanhood cannot be translated into mere mortal words.

FORTY-SEVENTH TOTEMPHATHT

My money runs low. Already I forgo meals for more titan-self. Try as I might, no words flow. At the same time, the memory of my dreamcity has faded until only the vaguest impression of that crystalline inverted palace remain. 

Backlog Blitz: Genesis, Week Seven, "Frog Gargoyles From Gaiares"

Yeah, I don't even have an introduction for this. Alright? Happy now? Bah. I just want to eat ice cream and garlic bread. Because food makes me happy. Food is my bestest friend. I love food. Unlike these games, which are mostly just lackluster. Seriously, Sega. Get your act together.

Consume, the Journal of a Dreamwalker: Sixty-Eighth and Seventy-Fourth Faroe

SIXTY-EIGHTH FAROE
Again and again I delve into the soul of a dead titan, searching for that elusive dreamcity I once called home. Days and nights crawl by, swifter than any bird yet never-ending as infinity. The chunk of titan-self grows small. I dread lest some other seeker find my dreamcity first and profane it with their presence. More titan-self is needed.

SEVENTY-FOURTH FAROE
Every journey to that deiphagist woman’s shop fills me with revulsion. In each passerby’s visage I see malignant marks of deiphagy. These base creatures dine on the great luminous being whose memories I have lived. Unknowing, unheeding, they desecrate a being more glorious than the sun. Knaves. After I find my dreamcity, I will preserve the life of this titan. I will write down each event, each miracle, each great feat. It will be a new epic. A new Gilgamesh, a new Iliad.

Poem Tuesday: "Mega Bloks"

Knock-off Lego:
That's how my life feels sometimes.
None of the pieces fit together quite right.

Music Roundup Monday: "The Last Trump"

So I think this might be the last MRM I post for a while. I'm scraping the bottom of my music discovery barrel at the moment, and, honestly... I'm tired. Life and depression have been beating me over the head at the moment, and while I'll be fine in the long run, I need to scale back how much energy I spend on the less-important aspects of the blog for a while. I'm thinking that I'll drop down to 2-3 longer posts a week rather than 3-4 longer posts and 3-4 shorter posts. I don't know yet, though. Anyway. Music. 

Dire Straits - "Sultans of Swing"

Mark Knopfler - "All That I Have in the World"

Children 18:3 - "Samantha"

Pink Floyd - "Time"

Judas Priest - "United"

Amon Amarth - "Tattered Banners and Bloody Flags"

Sweet - "Ballroom Blitz"

Backlog Blitz: Genesis, Week Six, "Ex-Mutants? More Like...Yeah, I Got Nothing."

It has been a hectic, tiring, ugly week. So let's talk about hectic, tiring, ugly video games! This can't possibly contribute to my spiraling depression and desire to take a long walk off a short pier! No siree! Hahahahahahahahaha ha ha... ha...... ha.......... haaaa......

Consume, the Journal of a Dreamwalker: Nineteenth Faroe

A deiphagist accosted me as I wandered blindly near the abattoir mines wherein the city finds its sustenance. Ducking through a beaded curtain of knucklebones, I found myself facing the first female deiphagist I had ever met. The males of the deiphagists are fish-belly pale, their faces misshapen and lopsided, and their arms stretch almost to the knee. This female, and all others I subsequently encountered, was corpse-grey, and though their facial structure is often distorted, it is not to the extent of the male deiphagists. This creature’s husband, it appeared, was one of the flesh-miners toiling not far distant. She informed me that often these miners uncovered dim chunks of some crystalline but malleable material. As the chunks were not the flesh on which they dined nor the bone with which they built, the miners ignored their discovery at first. But one enterprising worker brought out a fist-sized lump and displayed it at market, where a traveler recognized pure memory of a titan. For titans are unlike the beings which serve them. Their memories and their deeds become intrinsically part of their physical form, just as they are sustained and grow ever stronger from the offerings of their slaves.

Consume, the Journal of a Dreamwalker: Seventy-Fourth Luong

At last the labyrinth streets of Akhule Otimnhir swallowed me up with a sigh, and I walked alleys and thoroughfares as a Buddhist walks a mandala. In contemplation I sought to regain those long-dormant childhood dreamlands whence my scintillating dreamcity had come. All that lingered from those carefree days was a memory of an inverted crystalline palace, balanced on its central spire. So much I could see clearly. But remembrance is not the same as experience, and I greatly desired to dwell in that dreamcity once again.

As any Dreamer knows, all forgotten dreamworlds drift slowly into the Void-Between-Voids and rest there for eternity and a day. A dedicated explorer might step among the dusty creations of young Einstein, or wander the twisted hallways and unnatural geometry which Hitler once imagined. I had no such lofty goals. All my desire was bound up in that diamantine palace, to stand at its peak once again and look over my lands.

At times I stood in Akhule Otimnhir’s five-cornered squares watching crowds swirl by, charting patterns of infinite complexity. Exported Victorians haggled with native deiphagists, ethereal beings glided past crinoid things, all interacting in a grim pavotte orchestrated by the pipe of dreams. For even the Void-Between-Voids, the absence of all existence, is subject to the whims of the blind idiot piper. Though in many worlds Azathoth remains unknown, in the Void-Between-Voids some offer prayers and incense to deepen his slumber while others seek realms beyond all thought in hopes they will be beyond his reach. It is in the shops and libraries of such escapists I hoped to find a trace of my childhood dreamcity.

Wandery Wednesday: "Vidja"

I'm tired of video games. Not because I don't enjoy them! I loved Dark Souls III. I love Darkest Dungeon. There are so so so many games that I love. I can't even begin to list them all. But equally, there are games that I don't enjoy. That aren't fun. And I'm sick of wasting time on them. Fallout 4. I love the Fallout series. I even enjoyed Fallout 4 for a while. But I tried returning to it the other day and...it's just...eh. I've been feeling that way about games a lot lately. The most fun I've had was playing Dark Souls III co-op with coworkers and friends. I guess the social aspect is more important than it used to be? I don't know. All I know is that all I do these days is eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed, watch YouTube until I fall asleep, rinse, repeat. I should read more. Or write. Or something. I'm just...tired. Anyway. I don't know where I'm going with this. Goodbyeeeeee!

Poem: "Who Put Bella in the Wych-Elm?"

Pin an asphodel to your dress:
We'll dance together at Prospero's masque,
Gliding and wheeling
As if you were a great red bird.
And the wind in the wych-elm
Will wail and moan.
Oh Bella, give me your hand.
Oh Bella, let's go home.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

There's a story behind this poem. Not a very happy one. 

Music Roundup Monday: "I'm Good and Hostile, and I'll Make the Accusation"

Every day I read the news and see stories about rape. And it enrages me. I'm not a particularly good person. I'm creepy, prone to anger, involved in hobbies that deal with subject material that can get pretty heavy/dark. (All I'm missing is a neckbeard, fedora, and trenchcoat to round out the "generic crime show villain" checklist).  And yet, SOMEHOW, I've managed not to sexually assault anybody. That's a pretty low bar. And yet. Every day I see men who fail even that low requirement for basic human decency. And I wonder to myself if being devoured by Dread Cthulhu is be too good for these vile wastes of flesh. But you came here to listen to music. Let's do that instead. Otherwise I'm gonna want a shower and I already took one. 

Ryan Adams - "Blossom"

Bad Religion - "Voice of God is Government"

Billy Bragg and Wilco - "Eisler On the Go"

King Buzzo - "Good and Hostile"

Nico Vega - "Beast"

Ayreon - "The Accusation"

Slough Feg - "Tiger! Tiger!"

Cool Stuff Sunday: "Aulde Englishe"

It's been two days since I spilled laundry detergent and I can still smell that powdery horror on EVERYTHING. It's choking me. Agh. Anyway. You're here to hear about cool stuff on the interwebz. Let's hit it!

It's amazing how much better Dark Souls III pvp looks without lag...

Pokemon Sun and Moon yasssssss.

How far back in time could you go and still understand English? Probably about 600 years, tops.

But if you spoke Fresian, probably further.

Oh, and Shakespeare sounds a lot better in the original pronunciation.

Emilia Clarke does reggae. It's great.

Vans has a Nintendo line now. Yes please.

Wired won't get me to whitelist their ads anytime soon.

Backlog Blitz: Genesis, Week Five, "The Wrong Kind of Doom Trooper"

Well this week went better than it had the potential to. So let's talk about games that went WORSE than they had the potential to. I'm not sure that my previous two sentences actually make sense but whatever. I'm hopped up on sugar and I DON'T CAAAAAAAARE!!!!! WOO!

Consume, the Journal of a Dreamwalker: Twenty-Second Luong

Searching for that childhood dreamcity, I stepped out from the eighty-first gate of the City of Countless Doors into the Void-Between-Voids, and there I saw much which has been forgotten throughout history, and still more which was never learnt.

Cadaver-titanss wallow there, cosmic beings lost to memory before our civilizations were conceived. In the lee of such fallen titans, massless hordes ebb and flow, their cities anthills upon an elephant’s corpse. Eons flow past and yet these long-abandoned corpses linger on, ravaged but enduring. Many memories and nightmares stalk such deiphagist cities, last remnants of souls haunting those who inhabit their remains. Consuming the flesh of a titan even a dead one, is a perilous act, and to huddle in the aura of unimaginable power brings awareness of cosmic secrets vaster than living minds may safely comprehend.

For an unguessable age I wandered amongst the whiteness of the void, searching for the dreamcity of my youth. My footfalls echoed in temples built before the first human left the cradle of Africa, pleasure-palaces of beings even the most ancient of races knew not, cities which were to Olympus as Xanadu is to London, vistas of such exquisite beauty that even my  memories of mother and wife and child greyed in comparison. But still my dreamcity called to my soul and I wandered on.

Consume, the Journal of a Dreamwalker: Seventh July

As a child, I was sickly. A frail constitution, inherited from my father, plagued me into my early teens. I spent many weeks confined to my bed by racking coughs or fever or any number of other ailments. No doubt my parents worried about me a great deal.  

But early on I discovered the secret of dreaming, of stepping into worlds created by the unconscious mind and taking control. The fashion now is to refer to such a practice as lucid dreaming, but at the time I encountered the idea in a popular weird fiction magazine, it was merely known as Dreaming. The capital stood for the control one influenced over the imagined worlds. Dreaming was my escape from countless pokes and concoctions from doctors and faith healers. Indeed, I spent so much time in the lands of sleep that I constructed a city therein, a glimmering city of gold and precious jewels, inhabited by all the heroes and adventures of my waking reading. Conan the Barbarian resided there, and Tarzan, and Sherlock Holmes, all the idols of a sickly boy, alongside my sometime friends and playmates and, later, girls whom I admired from afar. 

Wandery Wednesday: "Troubleshoot"

I am a troubleshooter. I see trouble, and then I shoot it. Really, though, a large portion of my job, and IT in general, revolves around figuring out root causes. Fixing things is easy. It's figuring out what the issue is that's the hard part. Well, that's true for the most part. Our company conferences, for example. The audio quality is always abysmal. Well, the cause is obvious: We have a terrible audio provider for our remote locations. But fixing that is hard--contracts are difficult to break. Other times, the problem is weird or complex (laptops are freezing after a patch is applied) and the solution is super-simple (turn the laptop off, despite the warnings saying DON'T TURN OFF THE LAPTOP). I'm not sure what my point is here. Maybe that sometimes IT work is simple and other times it's complex? That's...a bit...obvious. Maybe life is the same? Also pretty obvious. I don't know. WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?

Poem: "We Danced"

We danced the sun-dance
In the dark of this world's moon.
We danced the death-dance
And watched your cities flourish.
We danced the harvest-dance
You turned your gaze unto the stars. 

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

I'm kind of scraping the archives a bit lately. Don't have the time, energy, or inclination to write a lot. Which is fine. It happens. Still. This poem feels vaguely Lovecraftian but I'm not sure how. 

Music Roundup Monday: "In Memorium"

Memorial Day is winding to a close. Everyone goes back to work tomorrow. Anyway, let's listen to music.

Corpo-Mente - "Arsalein"

Gorillaz - "Glitter Freeze"

Hole - "Doll Parts"

Steve Earle - "The Devil's Right Hand"

Quest For Fire - "Strange Vacation"

The Infamous Stringdusters - "When Silence is the Only Sound"

Manowar - "Manowar"

And an extra song for Memorial Day: The Dropkick Murphys - "The Green Fields of France"

Cool Stuff Sunday: "Memorandum"

Happy Memorial Day, those of you who dwell in los Estados Unidos de America. Or however you say that. Soy no hablo espanol muy bueno. Anyway. Cool stuff on the internet. Let's have at it!

Batman: Return To Arkham is...it's quite possibly the worst remaster I have ever seen.

All of Star Wars: A New Hope in one very long picture.

Kurt Vonnegut was very real.

This Ponder playset from Magic: The Gathering is siiiiick.

Now I want to bind a book. It looks cool.

So. List of things Chris Kyle lied about: Fighting Jesse Ventura, shooting looters during Hurricane Katrina, his kill count and commendations.

BOJACK HORSEMAN SEASON THREE!

Don't forget the banana.

Yet another great Dark Souls fan comic.

History is meaningless on the internet.

1080p Star Wars Celebration poster. Aw yeah.

At this point, Windows 10 has tried to install itself on my computer at least seven times. Not cool.

Dark Souls III poster! AW YEA. Buy it here.

Some siiiiiick swordswoman tarot cards.

Backlog Blitz: Genesis, Week Four, "Oh Captain, My Captain..."

It's been a pretty good week. Not great--there are still a lot of problems in my world--but things are going well. So that means I have more time to play old games. Here are some. Only a couple are good. Unfortunately.

Worm Fodder: Rama

Rama was a mean mean man. But everyone loved him anyway. Everyone being his gnomish wife, Tink. How an 8-foot-tall tiefling convinced a gnome to marry him, don't ask me. Whether they were actually married or it was just a good scam? Don't ask me.

NAME: Anung "Rendezvous" Un-Rama

SYSTEM: D&D 5e

LIFESPAN: Nasty, Brutish, Short

ABOUT: Anung was a simple man. He liked drinking gin and punching things and also drinking gin and chopping things up with a massive sword.

NOTABLE FEATS: Being the only survivors of a death-touch demon walking along a leyline that led directly through the bar; befriending a rather dapper vampire; not being murdered by a bunch of gin-loving drow who were after the (sacred hallucinatory) gin Rama, Tink, and Barnabras stole from the bar; punching a death-touch demon; attempting to leap over a lynch mob; failing to leap over a lynch mob and killing more than a dozen with momentum; breaking his neck in the fall.

CAUSE OF DEATH: Lynch mob and a stumble.

OverAnalyzed: Mirrors and Media

Taxi Driver, Supernatural, William Wilson, Dark Souls II, The Picture of Dorian Gray: What do all of these have in common? Each one involves a tense scene involving a mirror or mirror stand-in. But why? Let us venture an exploration of various mirror scenes in media and the philosophical ramifications thereof. In particular, we will look to Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic, Lacan’s theory of the Mirror Stage, and Merleau-Ponty’s “Eye and Mind” to explain the meaning behind various famous and not-so-famous mirror scenes.

Wandery Wednesday: "Under"

I feel sub-optimal. This is alright. I've made it longer than usual without getting horribly ill. It's all I can ask for, I suppose. Learned a lot of cool things this week, out of necessity: DNS and DHCP and some random AD stuff. What do those terms mean? I barely know myself! But I know how to make a DNS A entry now, and I didn't this morning. I know how to check a DHCP server to find a specific device by MAC address, and I didn't this morning. I know more about AD than I ever wanted to know. All of that is good. Personal growth is good. It's also very stressful and tiring and now I pretty much just want to play old video games and go to sleep. Whee. One day at a time. One week at a time. And so on ad nauseum. 

Anyway. I hear that DOOM is quite good and I hear that Overwatch is quite good and I really want to play Dark Souls 3 more but I also have Salt and Sanctuary and books and all sorts of stuff. Ordered the first volume of Rat Queens and it looks amazing. Should probably read a bit more. Falling behind on that front. Finished Dan Carlin's "Blueprint for Armageddon" series the other night and that was siiiiiiiiick. WWI was terrible, y'all. 

Time to play games. Peace and love, love and peace. 

Poem: "Sub Rosa"

Though the gates of Hell stand between us,
Though the stars wink out one by one,
Though Michael's lance pierce from the heavens,
My love for you shall be more constant than the false gods
We worship in the alcoves of our hearts,
The little household idols of our souls.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Empty promises. 

Music Roundup Monday: "She just wanted him to love her but he didn't."

Well hello there! It's time to talk about music. YAY!

Sabaton - "Night Witches"

Gogol Bordello - "J.U.F."

Iggy Pop - "Miss Argentina"

Disturbed - "Indestructible"

The Lemonheads - "Confetti"

The Crimson Ghosts - "I Turned Into a Martian"

Crom Dubh - "Sailing to Byzantium"

Cool Stuff Sunday: "Comics, Schomics"

Well. It has been a week. A very interesting week. To say the least. Got through a couple major events at work successfully, so that's a plus. Anyway, this week on the internet: COMICS OF VARIOUS QUALITY. And a couple other things.

HAPPY SOULS.

Did you know Bill Gates was in a DOOM promo video once?

That Dark Souls III anti-cheating patch kind of backfired.

Also the Dark Souls comic isn't particularly accurate to the series...

Dr. Doom is terrifying.

Rob Liefeld is cancer.

Lordran and Beyond is an actually-good Dark Souls webcomic.

Backlog Blitz: Genesis, Week Three, "Bubsy-Wubsy"

Credit where it's due. The Sega Genesis has a much better library of games than the Sega Master System. Granted, this isn't hard. But still, it is an accomplishment of sorts. I suppose. Let's have a look at some decent games for once.

Semi-Timely Revue: Dark Souls III

First off, I am a huge Dark Souls fanboy, so this is totally biased. (See the blog header). Seriously--Gothic, Lovecraftian, dark fantasy action RPG? Right up my collective alleys. So let's talk about the third game in that series. (Bloodborne is technically separate).

Right away, this game is gorgeous. GORGEOUS. I'm using screenshots from it as my desktop background for the foreseeable future. Fromsoft have a dedication to little details that make their worlds feel lived-in, and that shines through. Even just the fact that your clothes and face get muddy and bloody--yes, I know, many games do that--feels...right.

Short Story: The Worms Crawl In

A man and a saddle emerged from the warm spring sunrise. Fifty miles or so back into the prairie lay what might qualify as a horse, if horses consisted of skin, bone, and bloodshot eyes. The Walking Fella treated horseflesh like his own body: As a tool. His bullets lasted longer than his horses. Some cowhands named their favorite horse. The Walking Fella struggled to remember his own name anymore. At night, he lay reciting “Ethan Walker, your name is Ethan Walker” until he could grasp his vanishing identity.

Three years awake in the darkness and dirt while maggots chewed his flesh. If the gang had finished their work, he wouldn’t be hunting them now. But they’d left him alone, alive, half-hung and gut-shot and worm-gnawed, with only fading memories to keep him company. So he would chase them down.

Wandery Wednesday: "Mammon"

Money. If you're anything at all like me, you worry about the green stuff. The moolah. The dough. The other words that sound cooler when you say them in a vaguely Irish or Italian accent and have a scar and generally are cooler than me. 

I grew up not worrying about money too much. I mean, I understood that money came in limited quantities and that was why I couldn't have EVERY Lego set I wanted. But I never felt poor. Then I got a job. Went to college. Started paying for my own stuff. And... Yeah. When it comes right down to it, I haven't been comfortable buying things for myself (or having them bought for me) for years. Probably since I was 14 or 15. As time's gone on, that feeling has only gotten stronger. Now it's to a point where I feel vaguely guilty just buying myself a burger at McDonalds.

And I don't think that's healthy. Frugality? Sure. Not being wasteful? Sure. But feeling guilty over a small little indulgence well within the budget of an introverted single dude with no real responsibilities? Probably not. I'm trying to change that. To become a little more comfortable with the occasional treat. Because after all. It's only money... 

Poem: "Like a Coastal Shelf"

Knives as long as memory
And just as sinful sharp.
We kill our dreams
And waste our lives
Longing for them back.
The blood is dark upon our hands
And gnaws upon our soul.
Our fitful dreams
And fevered days
Remind us what we lack.
Until at last we find a hole
And hide there with a mate.
Strip a child of their dreams
And give them ours instead:
Reassembled hastily with glue upon the cracks.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Buried somewhere in here is an element of "This Be the Verse" by Philip Larkin. But I'm not quite as negative as him. Maybe. I don't know. 

Music Roundup Monday: "Wonder What My Liver'd Say..."

One of these weeks I'm just going to post an entire Flogging Molly album because I really like Flogging Molly. Actually, I spent all my driving time this week listening to the Dead Maggies album Well Hanged, which is an excellent folk-punk concept album about the history of Tasmania. So there's that. Anyway. Music!

Radiohead - "15 Step"

The Dead Kennedys - "Take This Job and Shove It"

Fleetwood Mac - "Rhiannon"

Burst - "Mercy Liberation"

Philm - "Train"

Flogging Molly - "Float"

Johnny Cash - "Solitary Man"

Cool Stuff Sunday: "DOOM and Gloom"

Oh hai there. I didn't see you. *poses to better accentuate jawline* How are you? Oh. Right. You're here for cool stuff on the internet. My bad. Sorry. Ignore that.

Rumor has it that Apple will be ending music downloads "within two years." Um... Okay then.

Castle, featuring my very favorite actor Nathan Fillion, has been cancelled after co-lead Stana Katic's departure. Sadness.

Want to read a blog about the Hogwarts IT guy? I sure do!

A friend of mine is writing an excellent epistolary series about vampires. Here's part one.

So apparently Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy are a 100% confirmed ship now. I predict more fanart of them in...five minutes ago.

This Firefly comic is... *cries*

Want to know how many hours are left in your work week? Here you go.

The new DOOM soundtrack is pretty good. Here's some behind-the-scenes stuff.

Yep. It's confirmed. Poise in Dark Souls III is entirely stupid.

Ever wanted to hear "Chariots of Fire" in a minor key? Too bad.

So mods of Fallout 4 are a thing. Here are some cool ones.

Backlog Blitz: Genesis, Week Two, "It's Simple. We Kill the Batman"

Hello. Good day to you. I have junk food. Tonight I will eat cheesy garlic bread with a garlic butter dip and I will grow fat and die of a heart attack. I have accepted my fate. The neckbeard is already coming along nicely. Did you know that a lot of licensed games are terrible? Oh, you didn't? WELL THEY ARE. HERE IS PROOF. YOU WILL ACCEPT THIS PROOF OR I WILL BE VERY UPSET. UPSET, I TELL YOU.

Last Month's Books: "She Walks In Shadows, Among Flowers From the Moon and Other Lunacies"

It has been a long last few weeks. That said, things are starting to come back to a semblance of normalcy. Still, though, I'm falling behind on my reading again. These are the most recent books I've read, and they're from weeks ago. Anyway. Let's talk about them. 

Poem: "Big Hat Logan"

Bent nearly double,
He steps forth under an illusory sun.
Long dark robes,
Travel-dusted,
Are stained by foul liquids.
A wide-brimmed hat,
Puritan in style,
Hides deep-sunken eyes.
He may be powerful beyond measure,
But his mind is worn,
Ragged like his garments.
Crystal hoarfrost dots his cloak,
Spreading like poison.
In a hall filled with grimoires,
Big Hat Logan
Searches for his mind.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

I don't have any cool literary analysis this week. Here's a poem about Dark Souls. 

Wandery Wednesday: "Pokemans"

New Pokemon starters? Lissen, bub, if you tell me you're gonna pick any starter except that stylish and adorable grass owl, we can't be friends anymore. Seriously. Grass. Owl. Stylish. Adorable. Looks like Blathers from Animal Crossing. Rock on, man!

On a related note, I'm currently updating my 3DS so I can download my Darkrai. Got my shiny Xerneas at exactly 12:05 AM last night. And IT IS AWESOME. Seriously. Pokemon. If they were real, I'd be the crazy Pokemon man with an apartment full of Pokemon.

And they would all be adorable Pokemon. Yes they would.

Anyway. I'm in a better mood tonight than I have been for a while. Things... They're not exactly looking up, but they're clarifying. So I've got that going for me, which is nice.

Poem: "Bucketlist"

If you had one day left,

What would you do?

Love?

Cry?

Rage?

I'd probably just sleep.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   * 

I am always tired. It's a constant. A dragging pull that cannot be countered by caffeine. 

Music Roundup Monday: "Even Cthulhu Thinks Corporate America is Awful"

Those of you who know me know why some of the songs this week are the songs they are. Those who don't, enjoy.

Serj Tankian - "Reality TV"

Styx - "Renegade"

Breaking Benjamin - "Diary of Jane (Acoustic)"

Rage Against the Machine - "Killing in the Name"

Stone Temple Pilots - "Pretty Penny"

Owl City - "The Bird and the Worm"

Aerosmith - "Eat the Rich"

Three Days Grace - "Riot"

Cool Stuff Sunday: "Bloodborne Plagues, Cancer, and Other Fun Things"

Oh hai there. I hope you told your mom you love her. What's that? You're an orphan? That's so sad... Oh, wait, I don't care! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Let's talk about cool stuff on the internet!

This article on Bloodborne and horror is excellent, though I would have liked to see something much longer and in-depth.

Keanu Reeve's suit in The Devil's Advocate charts his moral decline.

Game of Thrones might be ending sooner than expected...

Most game lore is terrible. (I disagree with the author's opinion on The Witcher but the rest is solid).

A Punisher show is go!

What did medieval items really cost?

So...Captain America's back pay...

While I don't think that Battlefield 1 is going to be quite the big-budget trench horror game I've always longed for, with terrifying artillery bombardments, choking gas attacks, and brutal night raids, it still looks pretty darn good.

Corporate America is a plague.

George Lucas had some interesting ideas for Return of the Jedi.

Zack Snyder is a cancer upon superhero movies.

Backlog Blitz: Genesis, Week One, "Another World? Another Failure."

Why do I hate myself? Beats me. All I know is two things. One: It has been an awful week. Two: Because of said awful week, only three games from the Sega Genesis. Let's hope that the Genesis is a better than its predecessor, the Master System, which had a dearth of good games.

Worm Fodder: Kaathe Sturmhammer

Ah, Kaathe. Who would have thought that playing a character with 100% random stats and 100% random character traits would be so fun? Let alone a low DEX, low STR dwarf blacksmith with ridiculous INT scores. I loved Kaathe.

NAME: Kaathe Sturmhammer

SYSTEM: Dungeon Crawl Classics

LIFESPAN: Long enough.

ABOUT: Kaathe was entirely created through random generation of both stats and character background. This led to some fortuitous coincidences. Like the fact that he had sub-par STR and DEX and also an association with the plague. Hence, he had Dorf Polio. Oh, and he was a blacksmith, and his motivation was finding something lost. Like, say, lost smithing techniques. Fortuitous, I tell you.

NOTABLE FEATS: Managed to anger the parsnip spirits (yes, this was a thing) by his flippant disregard for parsnip etiquette (also a thing); faced down a dragon-sized tiger, and got an adorable stone-eating babby dragon out of the deal; robbed a jeweler looking for food for the baby dragon; was implicated in the killings of several political candidates both real and imagined.

CAUSE OF DEATH: Lived happily ever after. Shockingly.

Story: "Nameless, Timeless"

"A temple to the faceless god lies within those sands, and with this map I will find it!"

Edgar Hamilton carried himself in that cocksure way only men who know the whole world adores them can. Given his recent discovery of an ancient map, perhaps the world did. However, I hated him, and his awful rose-scented cologne, and his Souvarov moustache. What my brother saw in him, I do not know.

Edgar and Roger--my brother--possessed a shared obsession with ancient religion. Roger lectured on the historical occult at Miskatonic, while Edgar traveled far afield in search of ruined temples. Perhaps this is what Roger admired in that loathsome man. But many  men were archaeologists and also not Edgar Hamilton.

At some point in his friendship with Roger, Edgar mistook my polite dislike for coyness. Since then, I have been quite unable to halt his unctuous attentions.

Wandery Wednesday: "Diversify"

I am writing a story. This should come as no surprise. It is a story featuring Lovecraftian themes. This too should not be startling. The protagonist is female. That's where it gets unusual. I'll be the first one to admit I'm probably not the best person to write from a female perspective. Just as I'm probably not the best person to write from a black perspective, or a gay perspective. I'm a straight white male from a nuclear family in the Upper Midwest. The worst part of my life is depression, and it's not like that's anything new for writers. But I at least like to try. To make a good-faith effort to diversify the protagonists/narrators of my writing away from thinly-veiled versions of myself. Maybe I fail horribly every time. I certainly hope not. But I guess we'll find out tomorrow, huh? (Assuming I get the story finished by then). 

Still though, it brings me back to a semi-rhetorical question I wrote in my notebook once: Is it worse to write diverse characters poorly, or to not write them at all? I don't know the answer to that. 

Poem: "In the End"

The skein of fate stretches thin beneath us;
Our universe unravels into specks of kaleidoscopic light.
Soon all will tumble into the formless void
Which laps at the feet of God.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Do I know what it means? Nah, but it sounds pretty. 

Music Roundup Monday:

I already started planning my next Dark Souls III character. I am a sick, sick man. Help me. No wait, don't. I like it here. Anyway. Music. Music is a thing. 

Broken Social Scene - "Anthems for a Seventeen-Year Old Girl"

Kanye West and Jay-Z - "No Church in the Wild"

Motoi Sakuraba - "Gwyn, Lord of Cinder"

The Used - "The Bird and the Worm"

Loverboy - "Working For the Weekend"

Iron Maiden - "To Tame a Land"

Vicetone and Nico Vega - "Beast"

Cool Stuff Sunday: "Dark Souls III and Other Less Important Things"

So I achieved 100% completion of Dark Souls III about twenty minutes ago. While I'm still riding the high, let's talk about cool stuff on the internet.

The average web page is now larger than Doom.

Heavy metal t-shirts for inoffensive pop stars are hilarious.

Dark Souls III is going to be the last game in the series. :(

Want to troll some low-level players? Of course you do!

Pokemon Go beta gameplay footage has surfaced. Looks...good?

As much as I love Dark Souls III, it has some flaws. Including hackers on PC. Beware.

An interesting uniform detail on a First Order trooper.

This poor guy was really struggling to figure out how to progress in Dark Souls III...

Imperial Star Destroyers? Awesome. Out of Lego? Awesomer. Gigantic? Awesomist!

Quickstep is OP.

Need some weird/random titles for in-game texts? Here you go.

Backlog Blitz: Master System, Week Ten, "A Lackluster Finish"

FINALLY. I'm finally done. No more Master System games. Thank you! THANK YOU! PRAISE THE INCANDESCENT SUN! OH IT'S GOOD TO BE FREE. FREE AT LAST! FREE AT LAST! (No, I am not comparing playing the Sega Master System to slavery and the civil rights movement). 

Last Month's Games: "Killer Is Dead, Gods Will Be Watching, and the Devil May Cry"

I said it once, and I'll say it again. Next month, my game reviews are going to be Saint's Row IV and Dark Souls III. Nothing else. I may have a slight obsession. (I'm on NG++ already)... But for this month, here you go...

OverAnalyzed: Dark Souls as a Gothic Text

Creeping shadows in the corner of the eye, or piles of corpses littering a dungeon? Gothic literature is divided into two main categories: Terror and Horror. Terror Gothic is exemplified by Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, wherein feelings of helplessness and fear are cultivated by protagonist Emily’s helplessness against the schemes of rapacious Count Montoni and her own uncertain mental state. By contrast, Horror Gothic is found in books such as Matthew Lewis’ The Monk, which evokes feelings of shock and disgust through the violence and transgressive sexuality presented within. Elements of both Terror and Horror Gothic can be found within video games such as the Silent Hill, Castlevania, and Resident Evil series, Alien: Isolation, and the dark-fantasy role-playing series Dark Souls. In particular, the Souls series combines Terror and Horror Gothic to create a new style within Gothic media. Additionally, the Souls games’ use of video game mechanics allow for a deeper experience of the game as a whole.

Wandery Wednesday: "Motivation"

I'll be honest. I don't want to write anything today. This counts, right? Close enough? I'm tired and feel burnt out. I'm NOT burnt out, but I feel that way. I don't know. Food will make everything better... Food won't make everything feel better. This happens on occasion. (The burnout, not the food thing). It's a part of life. I wouldn't mind nearly as much if it didn't feel so terrifyingly close to depression. In part, I'm genuinely tired and burnt out. (I know I said otherwise a few sentences ago. I lied). But it's also just part of who I am. I cycle through enthusiasm and ennui. Whatever. This has no point. 

Poem: "Absentia"

Your absence
Is the unscratchable itch
On the sole of my foot.
I would flense off my skin
To remove that itch.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

I'm so romantic. 

Music Roundup Monday: "Black Coffee, Help a Fella..."

I am tired. I am always tired. This is no doubt exacerbated by the fact that I've been working two jobs for the last two weeks. During the day, I work at my IT job. At night, I play Dark Souls III. (I did the math. In two weeks, I've put 70 hours into the game. That's a nearly full-time job). And I wouldn't have it any other way. Let's listen to music.

The B-52s - "Rock Lobster"

Tyr - "By the Sword in My Hand"

Weddings, Parties, Anything - "A Tale They Won't Believe"

Paramore - "The Only Exception"

Blue Oyster Cult - "Burnin' For You"

The Careless Lovers - "Black Coffee"

The Moody Blues - "Nights in White Satin"

Worm Fodder: Sean Felair

Sean is another character who didn't live as long as he deserved. It's the problem with collaborative games--no matter how invested you are in a character, if the other players (or the GM) decide that they don't want to continue... Well, the effort you put in is gone. Of course, the reward is worth it. But sometimes it's still discouraging. At any rate. 

NAME: Sean Felair

SYSTEM: D20 Homebrew

LIFESPAN: One session

ABOUT: Sean was a joint creation between myself and the GM. At one point in his life, he was a high-ranking government official, But greed got the best of him and he began selling state secrets. Until he was betrayed. At which point, "Escaping the city through the sewers, you set off to Archmouth with only two pennies in your pocket, desperate to salvage your life. That was five years ago. You have made some progress. You had two pennies. Now you have seven."

NOTABLE FEATS: Sean wound up indentured to a very angry dwarf commander; tried to rob said dwarf; stormed a giant walking statue; dueled a shape-shifting mage; shut down the walking statue via jamming gubbins in gears; was killed by the statue's sudden deceleration and thunderous collapse. 

CAUSE OF DEATH: Game--Gravity; Reality--Time constraints. 

Backlog Blitz: Master System, Week Nine, "Sanic"

Oh, praise be. We're almost done with the Master System. Praise the sun. Praise the gloriously incandescent sun. (And that reminds me I want to play Dark Souls III, so let's get these games over with, eh?)

Last Month's Books: "Once There Was a Blogger Who Tried to Write a Book"

So I finally got around to writing reviews for my recent lunchtime reads. Let's run through some of them (I always leave a backlog because I'm not stupid). Also, I don't know exactly what's in a Dark and Stormy but it tastes delish. So I'd better hurry before my words go all skrownky. 

Story: "The Last Immurement"

Long ago in the time of kings, many dark and bloody superstitions flourished. The Bleis Lavaret, the wolf-in-men's-flesh of France. The Chorazos Cult, reviled throughout England and Scotland for their outlandish practices. The Cult of the Bloody Tongue. Scaphism. Human sacrifice. And immurement--the walling up of the living inside some structure, whether as punishment or as a guardian for the construction.