Saturday, August 07, 2004
The violence inherent in the system
For an awesome list of my dvds with a description of each movie, check out this link!
I knew life was absurd, when, in Holland, I saw a bank called "Robabank"
On Wednesday, Mom and I entertained a 8 year old named Michael. He's pretty cool for a kid, so we took him to go see the less-than-fabulous, but ok King Arthur. Afterwards, I had to entertain him for 30 minutes, and since I was tired of watching him play horribly at Mega Man X, I decided to play the only Gamecube game tame enough to let him have a go at:
Soul Calibur 2.
He wasn't very good, but kids have a way of forgetting the past fairly quickly. Despite trying to let him win, I was still utterly destroying me, until he finally won once, and then acted like he had been schooling me the entire time:
Michael: "Wooo! I won! Hahahaha I BEAT YOU!"
Later, we'd start a match and he'd go, "Hold on one second, I want to figure out the controls," and then he'd just charge me and attack me!"
The worst part, after I was convinced that I had chosen a tame enough game, he destroyed my character, and said, "Whoa! Cool! I just slammeda girl against a staircase!"
I responded, "Uh, no, that's not cool. You know this is just a game, right? I mean, crap. Oh crap."
I knew life was absurd, when, in Holland, I saw a bank called "Robabank"
On Wednesday, Mom and I entertained a 8 year old named Michael. He's pretty cool for a kid, so we took him to go see the less-than-fabulous, but ok King Arthur. Afterwards, I had to entertain him for 30 minutes, and since I was tired of watching him play horribly at Mega Man X, I decided to play the only Gamecube game tame enough to let him have a go at:
Soul Calibur 2.
He wasn't very good, but kids have a way of forgetting the past fairly quickly. Despite trying to let him win, I was still utterly destroying me, until he finally won once, and then acted like he had been schooling me the entire time:
Michael: "Wooo! I won! Hahahaha I BEAT YOU!"
Later, we'd start a match and he'd go, "Hold on one second, I want to figure out the controls," and then he'd just charge me and attack me!"
The worst part, after I was convinced that I had chosen a tame enough game, he destroyed my character, and said, "Whoa! Cool! I just slammeda girl against a staircase!"
I responded, "Uh, no, that's not cool. You know this is just a game, right? I mean, crap. Oh crap."
Thursday, August 05, 2004
After the nightmare ends
Last night, for the second time in my life, I dreamt that the world had come to its end. This time it wasn’t the violent work of the undead, nor any other fiery extinction that Hollywood likes to portray. It was the slow dwindling of man’s candlelight, and it disturbed me greatly.
My dream began inside a large house in a small town in England. I was working with some guy; I don’t remember the name so he’ll be known as Jeff. We stood there, looking at the bodies of scientists that patterned the floor of the living. A lot of them had been dead for quite a while.
Someone moved. Jeff and I rushed over. An older man who sounded a bit like Donald Sutherland asked for some water. I obliged. He was obviously sick with the virus, so I tried a procedure that involved chemically cleaning the scene and all of the sores in his back (a tell-tale sign of the virus). This was a long shot, really meant to ease Donald’s passing, but somehow, after a few days he recovered a good bit.
Jeff and I soon realized that we were also infected, and would be coming down with it soon. We repeated the procedures as best we could, and decided we needed to set up shop in this small town, if we were to survive. (In my dreams I named the town Walkington, after a small town 2 miles outside of Beverley, the actual town in my dreams was much bigger than reality).
The people in our town all appeared to be dead, So Jeff and I drove towards the nearest one, leaving Donald behind to watch the house. The road was smeared with black carcasses of humans and cars, long since abandoned. How long has this been going on? We arrived in a large fishing village, where a host of people were busy trying to prepare for the problems that were coming. We stopped and enquired after medicine.
I can’t remember exactly what happened in this town. It must have been something horrible, for we were happy to leave when it was all over. I remember a short, ugly troll of a woman, who pointed her finger at me. The way he eyes spoke to me was thus: you are the ones who did this to us. You are responsible. Jeff and I were still infected… had we brought this upon the rest of the world? After it was all done, Jeff and I walked along the sea, watching the frightened load up boats, and the determined catch fish. We looked around until we found our parked car, and headed back to Walkington.
When we arrived in town, I noticed that there was a shopping mall there, so I decided to go have a shifty. There were others in the hall, trying to discern what would be useful in the days ahead. It was, at this point, that my perspective changed. I was no longer some man working with Jeff, helping the scientist named Donald. I was just Matthew Collin, and I was here with my father and my grandmother. We were still in a mall in England, not too far from our home in Beverley.
However, the state of the world had not changed, and we were preparing for the worst. It just so happens that the next store we stopped in was a small Blockbuster. Movies! I thought that I should grab as many as possible, as I realized that there would never be another new movie, and being a movie-holic, I knew that it would take a large quantity to satisfy my needs.
What began as careful selection turned into almost random grabbing, as there were now strangers in the store who were taking their pick. Don’t ask me how we would plan to play all of this without power, but this is how the dream led me. I leaned over and picked up a copy of something that looked interesting from afar. Upon close inspection, it turned out to be just simple pornography. I began to put it back, but then began to reconsider the magnitude of what was happening. My grandmother gave me a sharp look, but I justified the selection to myself. The end may come soon, I thought, and I may not even ever get the chance to hold a woman again. Reading back over it, it seems to be funny, but at the time there was nothing lewd about it. At that time and place, it was pure and possible necessity.
I continued to look around the store, snatching away. I was busy thinking about how I would change my laptop’s DVD player so I could play European DVDs, and how each room of our house should have a secret cubbyhole where we could hide things if (or rather, when) raiders came to take what was ours. I thought about this girl that I had made eye contact with in a nearby town. Maybe I should try and reach her, so I can at least try and kindle a flame in this great big furnace that is cooling down.
While I was pondering all these things, while ransacking a Blockbuster in a small English town on doomsday, I stopped. The magnitude of what was happening finally hit me. I would never see any of the things I wanted in life happen. As a humanist, I always believed in mankind, in his/her ability to persevere, even under the worst, because we all have some good in us that’s worth using. We’d never let ourselves dwindle like we were. The recognition of impending death is shock enough to someone my age, but it becomes something much worse when it is compounded with the end of an era.
I woke up slowly, and silently stared at the wall across the room until my ringing alarm told me that the world wasn’t ready to fall apart, yet.
My dream began inside a large house in a small town in England. I was working with some guy; I don’t remember the name so he’ll be known as Jeff. We stood there, looking at the bodies of scientists that patterned the floor of the living. A lot of them had been dead for quite a while.
Someone moved. Jeff and I rushed over. An older man who sounded a bit like Donald Sutherland asked for some water. I obliged. He was obviously sick with the virus, so I tried a procedure that involved chemically cleaning the scene and all of the sores in his back (a tell-tale sign of the virus). This was a long shot, really meant to ease Donald’s passing, but somehow, after a few days he recovered a good bit.
Jeff and I soon realized that we were also infected, and would be coming down with it soon. We repeated the procedures as best we could, and decided we needed to set up shop in this small town, if we were to survive. (In my dreams I named the town Walkington, after a small town 2 miles outside of Beverley, the actual town in my dreams was much bigger than reality).
The people in our town all appeared to be dead, So Jeff and I drove towards the nearest one, leaving Donald behind to watch the house. The road was smeared with black carcasses of humans and cars, long since abandoned. How long has this been going on? We arrived in a large fishing village, where a host of people were busy trying to prepare for the problems that were coming. We stopped and enquired after medicine.
I can’t remember exactly what happened in this town. It must have been something horrible, for we were happy to leave when it was all over. I remember a short, ugly troll of a woman, who pointed her finger at me. The way he eyes spoke to me was thus: you are the ones who did this to us. You are responsible. Jeff and I were still infected… had we brought this upon the rest of the world? After it was all done, Jeff and I walked along the sea, watching the frightened load up boats, and the determined catch fish. We looked around until we found our parked car, and headed back to Walkington.
When we arrived in town, I noticed that there was a shopping mall there, so I decided to go have a shifty. There were others in the hall, trying to discern what would be useful in the days ahead. It was, at this point, that my perspective changed. I was no longer some man working with Jeff, helping the scientist named Donald. I was just Matthew Collin, and I was here with my father and my grandmother. We were still in a mall in England, not too far from our home in Beverley.
However, the state of the world had not changed, and we were preparing for the worst. It just so happens that the next store we stopped in was a small Blockbuster. Movies! I thought that I should grab as many as possible, as I realized that there would never be another new movie, and being a movie-holic, I knew that it would take a large quantity to satisfy my needs.
What began as careful selection turned into almost random grabbing, as there were now strangers in the store who were taking their pick. Don’t ask me how we would plan to play all of this without power, but this is how the dream led me. I leaned over and picked up a copy of something that looked interesting from afar. Upon close inspection, it turned out to be just simple pornography. I began to put it back, but then began to reconsider the magnitude of what was happening. My grandmother gave me a sharp look, but I justified the selection to myself. The end may come soon, I thought, and I may not even ever get the chance to hold a woman again. Reading back over it, it seems to be funny, but at the time there was nothing lewd about it. At that time and place, it was pure and possible necessity.
I continued to look around the store, snatching away. I was busy thinking about how I would change my laptop’s DVD player so I could play European DVDs, and how each room of our house should have a secret cubbyhole where we could hide things if (or rather, when) raiders came to take what was ours. I thought about this girl that I had made eye contact with in a nearby town. Maybe I should try and reach her, so I can at least try and kindle a flame in this great big furnace that is cooling down.
While I was pondering all these things, while ransacking a Blockbuster in a small English town on doomsday, I stopped. The magnitude of what was happening finally hit me. I would never see any of the things I wanted in life happen. As a humanist, I always believed in mankind, in his/her ability to persevere, even under the worst, because we all have some good in us that’s worth using. We’d never let ourselves dwindle like we were. The recognition of impending death is shock enough to someone my age, but it becomes something much worse when it is compounded with the end of an era.
I woke up slowly, and silently stared at the wall across the room until my ringing alarm told me that the world wasn’t ready to fall apart, yet.
Monday, August 02, 2004
God's worst attempt ever
When I woke up this morning and looked out the window, I saw not what I expected to see; I saw a lovely moist South Carolina morning. What I didn't see was the four horsemen of the apocalypse riding in on the winds of Tropical Storm Alex as the Weather Channel would have me believe.
Yes, after careening towards the Carolina coast, with Myrtle Beach marked within that red area that designates the possible ground zero, tropical storm Alex should be giving us hell right now. Instead, the poor man's hurricane has parked his tired ass just off of our coast, and is sitting there, giving us the evil eye.
The Weather Channel is, as usual, trying to make the storm look like the antichrist. I'm suprised the Bush administration hasn't jumped on the bandwagon and proclaimed Alex to be an Iraqi weapon of mass destruction. The number one danger, according to the bright young people at the Weather Channel, is the prevalence of riptides. Yes, if you are swimming out in the ocean when there's a tropical storm nearby, you too may be carried out to sea by one of these dangerous currents. So please, wait until Alex is looking the other way before you dive into the Atlantic. If you do get carried out to sea, don't bother screaming, you're only going to carry more of the lemming-like tourists out there with you.
Am I that worried about Alex? I mean, couldn't it wreck ultimate destruction upon my home, and therefore my desktop? In comparison to some of the hurricane jocks we've seen on the Carolina coast, Alex is nothing more than a 98 pound weakling. If the Weather Channel hadn't treated it like it was the first chapter in the Left Behind series, then the locals probably would have just shrugged it off as a bad set of thunderstorms and wind.
I guess we've all been a little numb to these things since hurricane Hugo hit in 89'. That royal heavyweight ploughed right into South Carolina. Even the locals in Clemson probably remember feeling that one. The area around my house and the local university's campus lost about 50% of its trees. I slept through it, much to my disgust the next morning. All I got to enjoy was four days without power, during a typical SC summer.
Hurricanes really haven't been a big deal ever since, except for the severe flooding we had after... Fran? Floyd? I can't remember the horrible names we hand out. Every year the rest of the country crosses their fingers that the little embarassment called South Carolina will be obliterated, so I often go out and shoot hoops in our drive way as the hurricane passes overhead. Sure, some shots go a little wide, but it still makes for a fun game.
At least we get some good news coverage when we do get slammed, right? Unfortunately, whatever hurricane destroys Myrtle Beach will also take out a few towns in North Carolina, which always gets more airtime than South Carolina. We're the annoying brother that is kept in the back of the house, while NC is shown off to the guests. I guess that's explains the behavior of people from Fort Mill:
"Where are you from?"
"Oh, I'm from Charlotte.."
"What part?"
"Fort Mill"
"That's a different fucking state!"
"So? It's close enough.."
"Poor excuse! No matter how close you are to North Carolina, you're a South Carolinian, so live with it!"
