October 2008

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“The Bad Thing”

Wednesday, October 29, 2008 | 3 comments

That’s kind of what The Bad Thing is like at its roots. Everything in you is sick and grotesque. And since your only acquaintance with the whole world is through parts of you—like your sense organs and your mind, etc.—and since these parts are sick as hell, the whole world as you perceive it and know it and are in it comes at you through this filter of bad sickness and becomes bad. As everything becomes bad in you, all the good goes out of the world like air out of a big broken balloon. There’s nothing in this world you know but horrible rotten smells, sad and grotesque and lurid pastel sights, raucous or deadly-sad sounds, intolerable open-ended situations lined on a continuum with just no end at all…

Because the bad thing not only attacks you and makes you feel bad and puts you out of commission, it especially attacks and makes you feel bad and puts out of commission those things that are necessary in order for you to fight The Bad Thing, to maybe get better, to stay alive… The way to fight against or get away from the Bad Thing is clearly just to think differently, to reason and argue with yourself, just to change the way you’re perceiving and sensing and processing stuff. But you need your mind to do this, your brain cells with their atoms and your mental powers and all that, your self, and that’s exactly what the Bad Thing has made too sick to work right. That’s exactly what it has made sick. It’s made you sick in just such a way that you can’t get better.

—David Foster Wallace
The Planet Trillaphon As It Stands In Relation to The Bad Thing
1984

One Week

Tuesday, October 28, 2008 | No comments

This is my final post about the election until the results are in.

On November the fourth, you know what to do.

Phantasy Star

Sunday, October 26, 2008 | No comments

My newest obsession, as of yesterday, is Phantasy Star Universe for the 360. I’m a little embarrassed to say that actually. Also, it requires a little backstory and explanation.

PSU is an online massively multiplayer role-playing game in the style of a fantasy “dungeon-crawler.” Sounds super silly already, huh? It’s actually a (relatively) new game that is based on a game almost exactly like it that came out in 2001 for the Sega Dreamcast, called Phantasy Star Online. PSO was a revolutionary game (complete with ridiculous commercial) in that it was, if I’m not mistaken, the very first MMO.

The point is, PSO consumed my life for a brief period of time when I was a freshman in high school, and possibly into my sophomore year. Not to say that’s necessarily a bad thing (it is), but it really was a fantastic game and even today still retains a following on servers started up by fans after Sega’s servers were turned off in 2003.

Cut to seven years later. Every so often, I’d wonder if there were ever a remake or sequel to Phantasy Star Online. I’d find myself wanting to play it again. And then yesterday, while downloading the demo for Portal, next to it I saw a downloadable demo for Phantasy Star Universe.

Long story short, I’ve been reluctant to get into it because I feel as though it may never live up to PSO. But I can kind of sense it’s awesomeness, so I’m going to buy it and give it a more thorough go. The combat has definitely been improved upon: the fighting in PSO was clunky and the AI of enemies, nonexistent. But the music, which was absolutely amazing in the old game, has become considerably more bombastic, annoying, and dare I say, “Japanese.” I say that not as an insult, but it sounds like animé music…

Anyway, yeah. So that’s my new boom, so to speak. Commence mockery.

Just When You Thought

Friday, October 24, 2008 | No comments

That the “wassup” commercials weren’t funny anymore:

The Man

Thursday, October 23, 2008 | 4 comments

From a series of wonderful candid photos and stories from the campaign trail by Callie Shell. Rachel and I just gave Barack twenty more dollars each for him to spend on whatever he needs to get this thing done, and I politely urge you to do the same.

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I Lol’d

Tuesday, October 21, 2008 | No comments

God bless Photoshop. And John McCain for being so dreadfully awkward. Because the two have since come together with hilarious results.

My favorites are the Phantom of the Opera and Two Girls One Cup.

Plan B

Sunday, October 19, 2008 | No comments

My fifteen dollar donation to the campaign of Barack Obama was exactly 0.000009999999999999999 percent of the campaign’s record breaking September fundraising total of over $150 million.

I suppose that in a democracy such as that of the United States of America, if we the people do not have the government we want, as a last resort we will buy ourselves a new one.

McCain’s response: cry foul. He says, “Lot of strange things going on in [the Obama] campaign.” You want to know what the strange thing going on is, John? That for the first time in almost half a century, the public is inspired by someone in their government.

Fitting, Actually

Sunday, October 19, 2008 | No comments

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

If John McCain actually wins the presidency, perhaps his favorite self-qualifier would then actually have some accuracy.

Hilarity At Its Very Best

Saturday, October 18, 2008 | No comments

I know that after this dinner occurred, Barack Obama and John McCain the next day went back to slinging mud at each other. I know that a little playful roasting is not going to change the course of American politics. But when I watched these at work, I laughed so hard that I had to privately excuse myself to the office kitchen and regain my composure after Barack’s paparazzi joke. And for a moment, they made me feel a little bit better about the state of politics in the United States. Please watch these (videos below the jump):

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Lgtwgt

Friday, October 17, 2008 | No comments

I had a single white russian and now it’s 1:20am and I’m writing awful non-fiction pieces about the iniquity of Geometry Wars and listing out which female friends of mine I would feel less guilt about sleeping with a single time. What the fuck?

Perhaps six ounces of that Vikingfjord is simply too much pure five-thousand year-old glacial water for one man to absorb in a night of too much Xbox playing.

Watching the Debates

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 | No comments

Here is what I am afraid is going to happen to John McCain’s head every time he begins to become animated as he speaks:

This

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 | No comments

My favorite song right now:

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Weekend

Monday, October 13, 2008 | 3 comments

I’ve been living in this apartment for almost six months now and only this weekend did I notice that there were colored lines on my sink for hot and cold.

It has been very cold lately. Colder than I remember it being last October, but perhaps the difference is that the dorm had heat that I personally did not have to pay for. Therefore, the apartment is often cold.

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My Eyes and Ears Surely Fail Me

Friday, October 10, 2008 | No comments

This is the climax of the race for the office of the President. Right now. This is it. There is not a more crucial time to begin paying attention. I don’t even know where to start. I’m so filled with a feeling of elation, but also a sense of deep sadness.

John McCain’s presidential bid is completely falling apart.

First, there were these. In case you missed it, over the past week John McCain and Sarah Palin have been whipping the Republican base at their rallies into a frenzy. So down in the polls, they had to do something, so I can understand. This, however, is the wrong something. Questioning Barack’s ties, who he is as a person, coming just shy of calling him a member of Al-Qaeda. And so the rally attendants filled in the blanks.

And I’m sure this was what the party wanted. Sadly, the plan backfired.

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Can We…

Wednesday, October 8, 2008 | No comments

…hold the election today? Please? Pretty please?

 

All The Good News I’ll Ever Need

Tuesday, October 7, 2008 | No comments

Barack won tonight’s debate. By a lot, and there you’ll also see that John McCain leaves Barack hanging afterwards. Where’s the love for a brother, Johnny? Is it that you and your party know that in 27 days this is over?

It appears that the tactic (or strategy, which is it again?) of painting him as the scary, colored terrorist is not working amongst uncommitted voters:

After their second debate, both Barack Obama and John McCain shook hands with the Nashville audience of 80 uncommitted voters. Both were well-received. But Obama stayed longer, and with McCain out of the room, the affection from the swing voters increased. He was mobbed, patted, beamed at, embraced. One woman wiggled up next to him. At one point, about 15 voters posed for a group picture like it was the last day of camp.

Racists, Rise Up

Tuesday, October 7, 2008 | No comments

I said this was happening, and I was right. And now, the McCain campaign, in a pathetic and pitiful act of desperation, are only making it obvious. Of course, no one in their camp will say the racist epithets they are thinking because that way they are able to deny that they have been injecting racism into this election all along.

I’m sorry I have to say this so bluntly, but if you vote for John McCain, by association, YOU ARE A FUCKING RACIST. I say this for two reasons. First, by the Ayers-Obama association logic, you are associated with McCain if you vote for him. Second, McCain’s platform is no longer “Country First”. It is no longer “I am a POW and therefore I have experience”. No. At this point in time, McCain’s whole platform that he is standing upon and shouting from, the platform on which his campaign now operates is thus: “Barack Obama is different from you and I am not.”

And should you support it, by extension you are supporting the racist undertones that naturally entails.

It’s Late

Monday, October 6, 2008 | No comments

Whenever I should be doing homework, my mind wanders and I have weird thoughts such as: has anybody else ever read Death Cab For Cutie’s “The Ice Is Getting Thinner” as a melancholy global warming PSA?

Speaks For Itself

Saturday, October 4, 2008 | No comments

Veep It Up

Thursday, October 2, 2008 | No comments

There’s nothing to write about the vice presidential debate that hasn’t been written already, better. Biden was more in command of the facts. Palin was more in command of doing exactly what she’s been doing for the past few weeks: supplementing (I’m reluctant to write “bolstering” there) a ticket that people could only conceivably choose based on what they believe. It’s the ticket that fails on the facts, the policies, the knowledge, and the “experience” (whatever that means) and their only strength (and I use that term loosely) is ideology. And the reason for that being that a lot of voting-age dumb-as-rocks white racist homophobe misogynists see something endearing in the sappy (though spurious) POW story, the “straight-talking” regular guy who is intellectually unchallenging, the anti-abortion old guy and his equally dumb-as-rocks good-looking (according to some; not my words) politically-helpful-but-realistically-useless female running mate.

And she sure nailed it.

In other somewhat unrelated election news, I am not actually registered to vote, though I sent my papers in over a month ago. What this means is I may need to find a way to get down to Renton so I can personally physically assault, er, hand in my registration.

Than What Came Before

Wednesday, October 1, 2008 | No comments

I just had a thought: after the election, what am I going to post about?

Am I going to have to go back to the insipid details of my life? If McCain wins, I suppose I can make the natural progression to the “I-told-you-so” shouter, bemoaning the trite, vapid details of the administration or the quotidian absurdities much like liberals have done over the past decade. If Obama wins, I don’t know what I’ll write about. I can’t really find many problems with having an inspiring, level-headed non-white non-wealthy guy run this sideshow, and it just isn’t fun not being a cynic.

Rachel told me last night that she’s come to believe that I have many more anxieties and neuroses than are generally noticeable to the casual observer. If that’s true, then that’s a fucking head trip because these are things that aren’t even clear to me. But then, what can we say is ever clear to ourselves that isn’t already clear to our observers? Alas, if only I could find a way to mine those neuroses for inspired writing or music or artistry.

Every time I see the word “casual” I see “causal”. It’s not that I usually misspell it, I just see those words as connected. If one were to misspell it, wouldn’t that have a different yet significant meaning in a sentence? It’s like that saying, “A typo can change the world, or possibly just the word.”

Hm.