We Are The Furlings

Around this time last year, I acquainted myself with a million great albums. The Seatbelts, The Contes, Yoko Kanno, Yuki Kajiura, The Tangent, Tom Waits, Roine Stolt... and a number of other things. All I did in November '08 was listen to music. And write.

This November, I've got Ali Project and Talking Heads, and I'm fucking set.

I'm actually really enjoying Stargate Universe, which just aired its seventh episode. Knowing nothing about it, I was hesitant. Now, my impression is that it's pretty much only a Stargate series in the sense that it references mythology and technology that the last fifteen seasons of Stargate already established, and even these things have only been brought up sparingly. The tone they have tried to emulate this time is pretty much Battlestar Galactica. I also think that they're recycling a Stargate Atlantis story arc, that we heard about, but which they never got to implement, because of constraint from a network that wanted more episodic content at the time.

So you've got a bunch of people on a rusty old ship, trying to get to earth—like BSG—only they have magic consciousness-teleporting stones—like Stargate—and they're having sex and stuff—like BSG—but this means the lightheartedness is more or less gone. I'm somewhat torn.

I hope that once the show settles into a good rhythm—I don't think they can stay stranded and running out of air / water / power / toilet paper etc. for more than half a season—hopefully they'll set up some sort of team and it'll get some of the usual Stargate exploration charm back. Despite saying this, I'm really interested with the way it's currently handling itself; I just think it can't stay at this pace forever given the universe it's set in, the alien races that we know exist and are still out there, for example. Or the important characters from the other shows that surely must still be up to something, off camera.

The most golden Atlantis episodes were the crossovers, although it may at first seem like an insult to Atlantis' main cast to say such a thing. But it was the interactions and partnerships that made these episodes great; Jackson and McKay; Ronon and Teal'c. If these wonderful characters are forever absent from Universe, I'll probably cry. Sheppard and Mitchell. So far, we just have O'Neill, and his presence is greatly appreciated, but it only slightly helps to have one classic character appearing, and in a role that isn't very active.

It's hard to say what'll happen, but I have high hopes. Nobody could've predicted what SG-1 would become after just the first season. There's no guarantee that all the elements of the first arc of Universe will persist. But I'd like to think it'll be a grander show than just the survival of a single ship. They'll probably reconnect with earth, just as Atlantis did after a bunch of scares (and doing the "sending off messages to loved ones" sort of stuff, too). But it won't likely happen until a bigger threat comes into play; some angry sentient alien race way the hell out there. The Furlings. I don't know. I'm allowed to dream.

Antipodes

"Apoplexy" has become one of my favorite words; I've used it on my blog, and predictably, it has already appeared in my NaNoWriMo. For those who do not share my passion for words: it is a dated medical term, and the literary meaning, the usage I always refer to, is "incapacity or speechlessness caused by extreme anger".

Why is the word so household for me? Why am I, a nineteen year old with all the free time in the universe, so reliably apoplectic? Every morning I can't go for a cup of coffee without hearing my very parents, the people who were supposed to shape my intellect, spouting some misinformed diatribe that makes me doubt the value of humanity. And they outnumber me. I realize that it's not considered constructive to surround oneself entirely with like-minds, because they reinforce all the things you already believe and thus inhibit intellectual growth. This is why I refer to the shelf by the entryway to my house, containing a sizeable collection of "Politically Incorrect Guide" books—and about ten bibles—as the "shelf of shame". But likewise and less oft-repeated is that it's unhealthy to surround yourself entirely with those who hate your opinions and everything you believe in. I'm going insane.

I'm lifting my embargo on household-drama blogging. I try to restrict the presence of my melodrama on the internet—it embarrasses me when I look back upon it—but I've made it a point since the beginning to not even reference my brothers by name. Doing a search through the 341 posts on this blog, going back over five years, I get one admissible result for the name "Simon"—a survey question, asking for the names of my siblings—and one result about Simon Belmont. Searching for "Sam", I get a few relevant hits: one being that same survey, one about a Starcraft match where omitting the name of one of the players would've been inconvenient, and one unedited MSN chat log. And of course, a few more results like "Uncle Sam" and "Sam Sholdice".

I remember that I once included in a post something nondescript like "my brother was being a dick", and my brother, who has a stunted mental growth—that's Simon, for the record—physically attacked me, saying, "That's for writing about me on The Internet" (as if that means anything).

I haven't had the opportunity to tell this story to anybody, but Simon has been losing it completely. I wear earplugs at night to drown him out, because he doesn't sleep. He's running down a list of psych-ward cliches, checking every box from "I see bugs where there are none" to "I think the doctors are trying to poison me with syringes filled with mercury". The funny story days of Keith waking up on my couch to hear my mom yelling to Simon, "Ice cream's not for breakfast!" are over. I'm not trained to handle him, nor do I want to be, nor do I want "status quo Simon" back. I want him in an asylum, although my parents insist he's not that bad—hypocrisy, when my mom is eager to leave for work in the morning; as for my dad's strategy, phase one is to reek of weed and beer and there is no phase two. I can't exactly hate my brother for showing frightening signs of mental deterioration, but that doesn't stop my fight-or-flight response from activating when he tries to attack me, because I tell him he needs to calm down.

Would it be helpful to make a list, or is that an ill-advised form of rubbing it in? Fuck it, I'm frustrated, so I'm doing it. Simon is paranoid and delusional. As I was saying, I never received the asylum nurse training package that teaches people to have patience with mental instability, so when he comes up to me for the third time in a day hyperventilating, this time because he believes with one hundred percent certainty that he has instigated a biblical apocalypse and he's so sorry that he killed me... I tell him to fuck off. Yeah. My bad. You try living with him. So far I'm the only one who's had to hear him sobbing, because he had briefly decided that he had gone blind. That's actually harder to deal with than violent Simon is. He also thought he was deaf; I told him "You're not deaf," and he responded "Yes I am! Fuck you!". His rationale was "I can hear when people are talking but I can't hear when people are not talking." And he doesn't remember it later, so I have to listen to him rediscover that he is blind/deaf/has swine flu/caught AIDS from a bug bite/have a heart attack several times a day. And that's no worse than the false memories he routinely invents, like "Mom threw out my iPod." There's not always somebody around to tell him "No, you fucking idiot" when he gets it in his head that he should take triple his fluoxetine dose. I'm nothing more than a pro-bono nurse these days—granted, a very rude pro-bono nurse—but what's more troubling is that I am Cassandra, cursed by Apollo so that no one will ever believe my prophesying. What will it take for Simon to get locked away? Murdering me in my sleep? Because that's one of my prophesies.

He was a tangent in this post, however, and it's the unequivocally horrible political and religious stuff that drives me into a deep despondency, not Simon's melodramatic and irrational self-diagnosing. Mostly from my parents, but Simon's frequent abuse of logic extends here as well. This morning, he was loudly proclaiming (normal volume, for him) that Barack Obama's American citizenship was questionable, that we couldn't know for sure if his birth certificate was real just because liberals say it is. This sort of criminal neglect of rationality is a normal, baseline sound in my living room, so while I didn't want to completely let it go unopposed, I was content to grumble "You are the dumbest person who has ever lived," before going about frying up an egg, rather than making a futile attempt to deconstruct his argument.

Of course, then my mom has to start about how there's some prominent man who went to the University of Columbia at the same time as Obama, and gathered hundreds of students who could not remember Obama ever existing there. And how this accuser is so legitimate that he has his own Wikipedia page. I tell her, shut up. I want none of this. Keep these ridiculous accusations to yourself. Which gets me screamed at as an "Obama lover" while Simon says things about how Satan must be whispering in my ear, assuring me that I am right, so that I do not wake up to the truth. Never mind that Obama doesn't have my full support. By the way, Simon has recently converted to a non-denominational neocharismatic church, the craziest of the crazies, where people speak in tongues, and are slain in the Spirit, the whole nine yards of insanity. So he gets all bestial and in my face when I continue to imply that this hundredth email-forward Obama scare isn't even worth acknowledging. My fight-or-flight response is triggered again by Simon's threat and it's all I can do to not start punching him in the face until my hands are broken. What can I do? There's no good in fighting somebody who exhibits such strong signs of mental deterioration. But hell, even Ghandi would experience a discharge of the sympathetic nervous system if somebody punched him. Philosophy only gives a person so much control over deep-seated biological mechanisms.

But that's just another day here. Walk into my house, and discourse is dominated by the uneducated and stubborn. What do I know? I'm a smug liberal socialist atheist. When you grow up in rural Kentucky, they teach you that I am Satan incarnate. It wasn't easy to escape that closeted upbringing. It meant formative years that I put to waste. So what does my mom say, when Simon says he's going to kill me over some liberal utterance? "That would make you even worse than Zachary." Well, mom, I'm sorry that you see it that way. Your brain-damaged conservative son would have to commit fratricide, to sink past my level. My dad also sees Simon as his most politically intelligent son. But he's even harder to argue with, because he's basically Poseidon, only fatter, and Poseidon never watched Fox News or got angry about fictional stories. Or did he? If any of you know of a Greek fable where Poseidon wrecked some boats because another god had tricked him, let me know.

Chase Your Ghosts

I took part in NaNoWriMo again this year—the challenge to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in the month of November—and I won. The novel, "Chase Your Ghosts", has been uploaded and is linked in the title of this blog post. The story has been concluded, but it is unedited. For now, I'll assume it is readable. If you actually read it, let me know; I'd love feedback, but I'm not going to beg anybody for it.

Without going into heavy detail, the novel is about the inventors of a drug; their lives, their fortunes, the drug itself. It's also about the sudden appearance of a large city on the surface of the Atlantic ocean; a technological marvel that makes an impact on world politics, and, more importantly, an impact on rock music. It's not a difficult tale to grasp. I'll recommend it to anybody who has nothing better to do than paint their nails.

Lastly... I wrote a novel, and all I got was this little PNG. That's fine. I'm proud to use it:


That will be all.

Cate Suraso

It's been a while. On the phone, Chris asked me what I've been up to. I actually changed the subject.

3 released a new album called Revisions, it is great. For all I knew, they would be taking their old-school classics and making them metal. But, no, thankfully not. The songs are still great, but different. An easily communicated example: instead of Joey Eppard saying "I think e's got a fever, should I get 'is mum?" in a silly accent, he delivers the line normally… but then then a second voice breathes "No…" where Joey simply said "no," in the original version, as a part of his next line. Take away something, add something; it doesn't end up any worse. "Careless Kim" is now "The Emerald Undertow"; if they felt that the original song title was a bit lazy or cheesy I can get behind the change. But if random changes are in order, I'm a bit tired of "The" songs. How about "An Emerald Undertow"? Haha, I'm just kidding, it's fine.

Come to think of it, both of these changes seem to be about a more mature, professional overhaul—more pretentious, maybe, but the changes haven't ruined the songs, so I won't complain. Perhaps this is the philosophy behind Revisions. I suppose they don't want to be the band that draws its own amateur album covers anymore. But this isn't new; it happened when they left Planet Noise Records. What's new is that they're looking back.

It's not the only great new album. The Pillows, Electric Six, Transatlantic, probably some other stuff. Did I ever mention the newest Porcupine Tree album? It is a quality experience, that album.

I grabbed a couple more Ali Project albums. Not incredibly easy to find. Their songs are fascinating. They have some wonderful song titles too, like, "A Virgin Birth, Or the Girls Take Flight Off the Bone Tower". I'm baffled by one called "Hetero Paradise Lost". Like… as opposed to the gay one, written by Milton?

Okay, okay, let's talk about me: My life is summed up by that old man in that Picnicface bingo video, who shouts "I'm confused! I hate this!". If you have no idea what I'm talking about, that's fine; it wasn't really all that compelling of a metaphor.

I read an interesting thing the other day, that when women want to change themselves, they first change their hair (this message wasn't the purpose of the text; it was being said as an example of "a superficial change that portends a deeper one"). A bit embarrassing, that I can be a woman sometimes. If changing one's hair is a part of changing oneself, shaving off one's hair is perhaps a part of... annihilating oneself. For I have turned my gaze inward, finding nothing of value. But hair grows back, it has grown back, and one cannot simply traipse into Mordor into a different personality.

I will likely spend most of today playing Fallout 3. Some time after dinner, I'll read some things on the internet that have me torn between apoplexy and despondency. Likely I won't even need the internet for that; I'll just see my dad watching Fox News, or listen to my brother speak for a moment. Then I'll go to bed, and remain awake for a while, wishing—as Chris had eloquently phrased it—that I'd spent the day whipping my body into something from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Or maybe wishing I had spent the day writing, or working on something tangible for Ownicon Beat, the kind of pursuit that could actually result in me contributing some interesting diversion to this world within my lifetime—that is, unless I don't strive far enough, and my endeavours become moribund, or I settle for less than fantasy and the end product is a joke.

Dead Reckoning

There was a time when seeing a satellite photo of my place on Google was the hottest shit. The thought of the internet scanning the world in such a way was exciting, and Maps became a big interest of mine. But this low-resolution exploration became antiquated and passe, years ago.


Google launched Street View, granting further entertainment to bored Americans, but Canada was forgotten. At some point, I guess we did get some pretty rad Bing Maps aerial photos that were a lot cooler than the straight-down satellite stuff.


But, as of yesterday, apparently, major Canadian cities have had the shit street-viewed out of them. And it is awesome. Unfortunately my place is on some unnamed non-public road or something much too cool to be photographed from land, so the entrance to my street will have to suffice:


We Canadians have now entered the twenty-first century (no, the real one, the one that has Street View in it). Of course, I probably won't be satisfied until the entire city of Toronto is playable in some kind of sandbox video game à la GTA IV, but...


...um...


...this is like finding Waldo, only... more poignant.

Arkham Asylum

I thought I'd try this a bit different. Here I give you a post about a single game, as opposed to the "abridged" rants I indulge about many games at once, posts which typically develop into what I consider, in frequent hindsight, the worst of both worlds; intimidatingly long reads that somehow fail to express issues with sufficient background and detail. Or perhaps this is merely an excuse to become somehow even less terse. We'll call it an experiment.

As you can see by the jpg that has nothing to do with Batman, strictly defining my subject matter evidently puts no constraint upon image selection.

What I like most about the new Batman game is the freedom it gives you in uncovering its secrets. It's an under-appreciated custom in the industry. Too many games have dangled a sort of catalogue or a fraction in my face, denoting the treasures I've uncovered, only to witness me losing interest in the great trial of One Hundred Percent Completion when I find out that I'd have to play again from scratch with a guide in my hands if I don't want to miss some "one-shot finds". Batman can rest assured that when he leaves a room, it won't explode irreparably behind him—allowing players such as myself to assert without anxiety, "I don't feel like combing over every tooth and nail in this building; I'll traipse around looking for secrets later." This doesn't constrain the game from implementing fun destruction, they just work around it; for example, when an elevator gets blown up, in time you'll gain access to a ventilation duct that brings you to the exact same place the elevator used to.

One could complain that finding these secrets gets too easy, and this is a complaint with merit. Easily located, in time, are treasure maps that tell you where to find everything else. This part I would not change, because the alternative way of locating things would be to rely entirely on silly Batman riddles, and I don't know any obscure Batman trivia, because the comic books I read in my childhood were weeaboo Japanese ones. The real problem is that all these "puzzles" are really the same. Break a vent open, bust a wall down—or get a stronger Bat-tool and break one of these things down later. Any secret I had difficulty finding is one I can attribute to my own stupidity—like a wall I forgot to look at—not attributable to ingenuity on the part of the development team.

It reminded me of Metroid Prime 3 quite a bit, but not quite as enjoyed overall. Prime 3 had these "one-shot finds", in the form of enemies whom Samus would only meet once, and be expected to scan. But that was secondary, and scans could carry over to a new game, which isn't quite equal to the pressures of starting from scratch. So I'd say both games would pass this sort of completion anxiety test, albeit with some headaches and a lower "score" allotted to Metroid.

Combat in Arkham Asylum varies. When you start out, it's the bee's knees. Batman weaves through crowds of thugs, breaking arms, cinematically crunching heads and crotches. Then you realize that Batman is doing all the work, and you're just pushing your left and right mouse buttons with decent timing as you watch. I'm not big on this sort of limited interactivity. Still cool as all hell to watch, but I'd rather have manual control beyond good timing. Boss fights require more effort, but are also generally boring. They consist of recycled material from every other third-person action game, material that was trite before development on Arkham Asylum even began.

I'd really only recommend it for one reason, and it's an important one: the stealth encounters, also known as rooms full of henchmen with machine guns whom you cannot simply punch to death. After all, you are Batman, and the reason Batman wins is because he's an awesome ninja dude who nobody ever sees until he has them by the throat. I wish the whole game had been this stuff; it's certainly where all the ingenuity is. You hang unsuspecting guards from a statue, screaming, to distract the others. Sometimes you can't use the ceiling because there are explosives on it, so you leap out of floor grates instead, cradling guards to sleep in your burly arms, in the sense that "cradle" means they cannot breathe any longer and thus also cannot fire guns in your face. I know I didn't discover all the tactics; certain moves only work from certain vantage points, and sometimes I wouldn't realize how I could've crushed two men under rubble by knocking a wall over until after I had finished them all off by sticking to some of the more basic tricks.

And as you do these things, you hear the remaining thugs begin to panic as their numbers dwindle, each progressing from "calm" to "terrified" in your Bat-suit's observations of their heart rates. Down below you, looking over their shoulders, they shout things, like, "I'm not scared of you, Batman! Come down and fight like a man!" But their voices are quivering. And Joker chimes in on the intercom, watching through cameras and teasing them, his own henchmen. This makes for a delicious experience.