I read an article a while ago from the recent Game Developer’s Conference, describing Keita Takahashi’s speech about the making of Katamari Damacy, one of my favorite PS2 games. What he says about gaming in general echoes a lot of my own sentiments. Games are not “important,” but perhaps they can bring some happiness into people’s lives, if only for a short while.
Hastings = Evil
Here’s why I should not be allowed to enter Hastings. When confronted with cool designer magazines and bargain DVDs, my willpower withers like a marshmallow tossed upon flaming coals and I will gladly spend my grocery money on these “necessities”. I was doing some shopping at Hobby Lobby, you know, crafts and such. Upon exiting, I felt the magnetic pull of Hastings, right next door, as though its very structure were composed of oppositely charged Drey particles.
The design section of the magazine sector was choked with slick European graphics magazines, AKA designer porn. I feel as if the mere presence of such a magazine near my computer will substantially increase my mad skillz. And then Cinefex decided to cram Sin City, Constantine, Revenge of the Sith AND Hitchhiker’s Guide into a single issue. Bastards.
I could have just made a break for the checkout aisle, but no, I completed a circuit of the entire store. Near the home stretch they have this new section of DVDs: Buy 2, get 1 for 1 cent. When I looked down, I was somehow carrying a copy of Sideways, The Life Aquatic and House of Flying Daggers (for about $7 each!).
At the checkout counter, I avoided the cashier’s gaze. I might as well have been buying a six pack of dildos and a tub of Vaseline. I then fled the scene, lest the temptation to reserve a copy of Harry Potter overwhelmed me (besides, I already reserved it on Amazon.).
Retro Tech Dream
I was hanging out in some dusty library with two guys I didn’t know, though one resembled Bruce Sterling. They had nooks between the teetering card catalogs where they stored their collection of retro computers, which they proudly showed off to me. One computer keyboard had keys like a manual typewriter, reminding me of “Brazil” and “Max Headroom.” Another keyboard was massive, like that of a pipe organ. It was so large because certain keys were repeated. I tried out this keyboard and liked it very much. I found that commonly used combinations of letters had been grouped together, thus the repetition.
One of the guys was working away at a huge VAX terminal. I noticed changing images of the room around me appearing on a smaller monitor attached to back of the VAX. The guy explained that if he clacked the keys too loudly, the surveillance system would focus in on the source of the disturbance. Indeed, the screen flashed close-ups of his typing fingers, then his shifting eyes.
Later he brought in these massive hard drives the size of Samsonite suitcases. As he hooked them up to a computer via the parallel port I asked their capacity. 20 Gigabytes!
The Bruce Sterling look-alike demonstrated an ancient black laptop which looked like a combination of a portable DAT recorder deck and old-fashioned calculator (the kind with the spools of paper). It had such a fantastic name, but I cannot remember it exactly. It was embossed in the plastic, a cool red logo. Gralaxxon or something like that.
Then he showed me what at first appeared to be a Macintosh G5, only constructed of cheap plastic. It took a few tries to get the thing to boot up. I wasn’t impressed until he petted the front of the computer and a kind of cowl slide down, revealing the letters “C9”. Then four legs extended from the chassis and the computer began jumping about like a dog. It slowly *became* a dog. I watched it with delight, telling the man that if he ever wanted to get rid of it, I would be more than happy to take it off his hands. By the end of the dream the computer was a frisky white Shi Tzu, rolling about at his feet.
Hexile
Inexplicably, while facing a mental block with my game House of Whack, I had an idea for a new board game. Two days later I finished the prototype. It is called Hexile. It is a hexagon-based strategy game involving aspects of chess and, well, other stuff. It is still too early to describe the game easily or to make comparisons.
Basically, two players face off across a tiled board made of hexagons. Each has a tower from which they fire caroms. These caroms have to move across the board, avoiding black holes, ricocheting off repulsor fields, avoiding blockers, using teleporters, in order to hit the opponent’s tower. Players uncover various types of terrain hexes and the obstacles mentioned and try to place them strategically on the board. Certain hexes will allow players to upgrade their towers with catapults and tractor beams, and their caroms with force fields and blasters. All of this requires power, so the players need to discover power generators and claim them in order to have power to accomplish their goals each turn.
I don’t imagine a long development time for Hexile. Maybe adding some more hexes and balancing the number of hexes in the deck. Tweak the rules and then it is done.
Panic
The existential dread continues to build as I pass through the dark heart of June. I sense that a single carefully placed charged of stress will be enough to bring the bridge down, cutting me off from the mainland. Hopelessness advances on all fronts, a shadow army with a goal I cannot imagine. Phone calls constantly incoming, missiles that light up my threat board. The grocery store an incomprehensible maze of choices, the cereal aisle, especially, a gallery of terror. Outside my apartment I meet a bare-chested tattooed man, breaking the cycle momentarily. He promises strangeness from the days that have become the same day. Inside there are gnats everywhere. My Inbox has been empty all day. I can hear it snoring, conserving its energy for Monday when it will rear up, unhinge its jaw and roar, furnace-like.
The Representative from Reft has the Floor
It taxes my patience to essentially live my life in the third person, a condition to be discussed, a matter for seers to ponder. And now a toll is exacted in the only currency of this country: time. Through a thick window pass the stars of another world’s night and this glimpse is meant to suffice? Tell the beggars to feed their fucking bellies with postcards of fine meals. Even as walls are soluble under the unceasing drip of water, so too do Tower walls fail when met by the constant edge of my will. And where others do fail to act, I would trod emboldened, laying waste to chaff, piercing hearts with silver.
-R
Frayed Day 1
Frayed Day 1 – Wednesday Never Put Up Much of a Fight
“In school, there were a lot of smarter kids. And when I first joined the force, they had some very clever people there. And I could tell right away that it wouldn’t be easy to make detective as long as they were around. But I figured, if I worked harder than they did, put in more time, read the books, kept my eyes open, maybe I could make it happen.”
– Columbo, The Bye-Bye Sky-High I.Q. Murder Case
As usual, it’s your bladder that wakes you up, pressing down on you like a water balloon. You swing your legs out of the fold out, scratching yourself. 1:12PM on the clock. Just some numbers that don’t mean anything anymore. You stagger past a stack of pizza boxes near the door [There aren’t enough to make a trip to the trash chute worthwhile. Better wait.] and into your tiny white bathroom. You unleash a torrent of piss into the bowl, standing there, watching some kind of beetle crawl around the cracked tile in front of you. [Oh wait, it’s a cockroach.]
You start to remember a dream you must have had before your bladder reached critical mass. It took place in a diner, a fifties style joint, the real deal by the look of it. Everything was in staticky black and white, not quite in tune, but the neon sizzled lurid pink bands of light through the scene. You were there to investigate a robbery. Someone had stolen something [No, not a *thing* per se, it was… no it’s gone.] and you were there to question the patrons. They gathered around a chrome-wrapped table: Marilyn Monroe, Benny from the academy, and some guy in a top hat and suit, looking like he stepped out of Great Expectations (the one with Michael York, not the remake with Ethan Hawke). You asked them questions, but you don’t remember what they were. Sometimes you were sitting and then suddenly you’d be leaning against the bar. Marilyn Monroe (only she denied she was Marilyn, insisting her name was actually Trudy) said “Who’s to stop anyone from taking it in the first place? Not like anyone’s paying much attention.” Benny just sat there playing with a pile of fries. The guy in the top hat just watched you go through your detective routine, a placid smile on his face. You remember realizing you were getting a hard-on and didn’t want Marilyn/Trudy to see and that’s when you woke up.
Back in the living room/bedroom/office/storage area, you flip on the TV and it starts beaming out the good word from its pulpit of plastic crates. You adjust the shades to block out the autumn-tinted daylight washing out the screen. There’s a commercial for some new kind of mop. You hear someone banging on a door in the hallway outside your apartment. [You hope they stop soon.] A commercial for McDonald’s. [The McRib is back. Might be worth a trip down there.] Finally, a show. It’s Legacy, the soap about a whole community of pseudo-Renaissance courtiers who send their personalities forward in time where they are re-enfleshed in the tight young bodies of Los Angeles’ social elite. The writers borrow heavily from Shakespearean themes, judging by the similarities to the movies you’ve seen. [Thank God for NetFlix.]
The banging in the hallway continues and now someone is yelling. [For fuck’s sake!] Ophelia just discovered that Mercutio had already asked Portia to attend the gallery opening with him, not realizing that Antonio was going to use the event to publicly embarrass Mercutio with new information about the Denmark incident. [You wonder if you have any email.] You like Mercutio because he hired a private detective in this one episode, and, well, it was cool. [You wonder if the actress who plays Ophelia is from Europe or if she is just faking an unplaceable foreign accent.]
On the screen Antonio is delivering a soliloquy as he paces alongside the billiard table in his immaculately decorated home. He holds the cue ball aloft, addressing it as though it were the head of Mercutio.
Out in the hall another voice has joined the fray. You recognize it as that of one of your next door neighbors. Brandon or something. He’s in a rock band. Sometimes they must practice in there and they are loud as fuck. You see Brandon and his roommate [John? Jim?] in the hall sometimes when you get your mail. It sounds like Brandon is trying to reassure whoever is yelling, but it doesn’t take and they keep going at it. You can even catch bits of what they are yelling: “He’s got to be in there! open the door? [If they are waiting on the landlord to get off his ass and actually do something useful in this dump they’d better pitch a tent.]
After the commercial Legacy resumes with a scene involving the two young lovers, Don Pedro and Miranda. [These two make you sick, all that fawning and going to the mall.] Don Pedro has decided to reinvent himself as a reckless bad boy by purchasing a motorcycle and cruising around town at high speed. Miranda doesn’t seem very pleased with this development.
Interview
This morning I was interviewed by Simon Toon of the Slam Idol podcast. I think the last time I was interviewed was for my high school yearbook. I found it quite enjoyable talking to someone in England via Skype. He’ll edit out all the boring bits and publish the interview as a podcast (so I hope!). Hope it turns out well.
Epic Action Dream
The dream still lingers in my memory despite the fact I didn’t write it down immediately after waking.
I and another person (my sister perhaps) were being held hostage by a gang of terrorists. They kept us under heavy guard inside a warehouse. We seemed to have freedom of movement inside the warehouse as we could wander about all we liked. I had all my cats with me and I spent a great deal of time making sure they didn’t run away. There was a young girl being held hostage as well and I hung out with her for a while. She had a pet ferret that had given birth in a hole in the wall beside one of the huge warehouse doors. I asked if perhaps I could have one of the baby ferrets. She said they’d be ready for adoption in about a year. At one point my cat Moriarty grabbed her ferret by the scruff of the neck and ran off with it. We got the ferret away unharmed. They were just playing, I guess.
The guards came to collect us and take us to a banquet hall where we would be executed by a firing squad. I stood at the head table, surrounded by men with machine guns. A huge door opened at the end of the hall and figures clad in grey camo gear walked in. One of the guards near me wondered who they were. I informed him they were ninjas armed with uzis. A battle between my captors and the ninjas ensued. I took that opportunity to slip out the back.
I found myself in the backstage area of a large theater. I ducked around crates, dangling ropes, scrims and backdrops. One of the guards was hunting me. I made my way past a very long series of backdrops and sheets, thinking my pursuer would lose track of me. I looked back to see that an opening had been blown through the scrims, making a sort of long corridor of curtains. At the far end was an immense genie with a rotund belly, lying on the ground. I realized that the genie had farted and created the corridor.
The camera then pulled out of first person to third person, revealing that I had become an animated character much like Aladdin or the Prince of Persia. I leaped out of the corridor and into the ocean where I was immediately swallowed by a fish only slightly larger than I. The fish spat me up on the shore of an island.
That’s all I remember.
Slam Idol
I can be heard performing my poem “My Girlfriend is so Fat” on the Slam Idol podcast.
It’s like a poetry slam that happens online. You listen to each performer and then vote for the one you like the best.