If We Had Forever, Would Never Be Enough

It is a little considered fact that the shadows are blackest where the light shines brightest. Logic then follows that there are darker ills in heaven than fill the deepest pits of hell.



And to think that while dying Cthulhu dreams. Though all the race of man be but a moment, and the men before, and those dread things that came even before that, the drowned god still slumbers. Can you fathom so many dreams, dreams of things before the earth itself was pressed together from shapeless mass drifting through heat and darkness? Do we dream, do you think? Perhaps all dreaming, waking and asleep, are the moments that our minds touch together with not just each other, but with the darkness that sleeps for all time. For we are never any closer to that darkness than when we sleep, or drift away, or let our attention wander away from the here and now, and close things share.

If this be the root, the heart, the start and finish of all dreams together, then the brief pieces we share one at a time across even a lifetime are but an incomplete thought. Were we to stave off death for a thousand years we may catch only a wisp, a breath, a whisper of an idea. Ideas are life and death and even something more, because ideas do not die. Empires have crumbled in the wake of the scratches made by a trembling old hand in its dying moments. Then what horrors will we wake to when we cease to dream?

We sanitize our witches with clean white rooms, and pure white coats, but they embody the same madness. Find what has never been done before, and do that next. Shine the light so bright that all the ills of the world are driven back into the tiniest holes. If they could, they would offer you eternal wakefulness in a pill, and a lifetime of mindfulness, and years innumerable at that. When dreams and death may die through sorcery or science. The means makes little difference to the ends of such things. If dreams are the burden of madness shared...



I felt like writing a little creative fiction. Had fun with several ideas that I've had independently sort of mingle all together at once. Hope everyone enjoys this little soliloquy.

The Source of Life

David Scott 06/12/12

I had a rousing debate the other night over a delicious dinner as to the state of the world. It was posed to me by two therapists that the world was in a constant worsening state of turmoil and insanity and emotional distress, and in such a debate, there is no hard evidence one way or the other, but their anecdotal evidence of their personal workload was very compelling. Certainly, if you look around the globe there is no shortage of horror stories, this year. It's as though everyone has fallen into a bit of a dark place. Race and immigration riots in Israel, killers in Canada, violent assaults across the United States. The massacres in Syria. There are economic issues in Greece, and drug wars boiling under the surface everywhere you go. And certainly any sort of feeling soul, and loving human being might ask what sort of God would allow such a world to continue to bring about such endless pain and misery.



Would it be entirely unfair to suggest a monstrous one? Would it even be possible to find evidence to refute that claim? For the sake of simplicity, assume the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible, and then ask yourself if you might compare a God who describes himself as jealous and vengeful to an abusive parent.

Now, certainly an Atheist would use this ammunition as evidence against the existence of a deity. I've heard it argued more than once that the monstrous nature of our supposed creator is evidence of non existence. That argument doesn't make any sense to me, though. It's certainly a good argument for why you would not want to believe in something, though. God is a beast of nightmares, certainly, who has visited plagues in the night on entire peoples, and delivered countless into their violent ends, and often with no warning.



Now, I don't know if I've ever shared this before, but from what I have seen and experienced in my speck of existence, what would be generous to even call a dot in all of space an time, I have seen that monsters create. Good souls empty out their hearts trying to bandage the dying, but death is everywhere, and everything is falling apart. You're born falling apart, and so is everything else.

Our sun is dying.



It always has been. Someday it will be broken and scattered and it will tear apart whatever is left behind orbiting it. What we are even at this very moment is a compilation of the remains of stars whose light will never touch us. We are the center of a universe that is expanding so fast that as long as we are limited by what we see.. we will never, ever, ever know what is beyond our event horizon. It is expanding so fast, that from far enough out, light simply cannot travel fast enough to reach us here on our isolated little spot. That there is no telling what lies beyond that horizon. Or even what stars we see now that have passed beyond it. As they hit that point, they released light that will slowly reach us for infinity, the light right at the event horizon is infinite and red.

But I digress. While people with good hearts strive endlessly to patch up the ripping apart and dying world, new things are constantly being born in the remains of the old.



I argued that the world is continually improving. That things are better today than they ever have before. But I'm not going to recount my argument here. If you're interested, try to imagine what I argued. I'm interested in hearing posters thoughts about why I might think that the world today is an ever improving place.

Today's the Day

How Easily Love and Hate Mingle

The Blood Orange - by David Scott

Tasting of perfect essence
flowering as the surface is pierced
spritzing into the air
with an aroma which haunts the room
and the fruit is blinding in its rich color
as it dulls the rest of the world by contrast.

I can already taste it on my lips
even before I watch the first errant drops fall
though powerless to contain them
as if I would
they do not escape my eyes
as if they could.

I will always taste this,
and I will never taste it again.

Any Animal that Doesn't Need a Bath is Not of This Earth

I don't know how to feel about the fact that some of the places I shop have started thinking about my birthday even before I have. Adagio sent me a replacement filter and packed in with my order a happy birthday card and a free sample of Birthday Tea. It has sprinkles. I suppose I don't take this as a bad thing, it's not that I don't fully celebrate the amazing nature of yet another year of cherished and amazing experiences and wisdom. It's just that how I celebrate my birthday is just about a given, and what I care about most is spending time with people I consider to be family. One of my most relaxing retreats is to indulge in cooking a very nice meal. Yeah. Davidfest is just about an established tradition, and I'm looking forward to breaking out my grill in a little over a week.

So I found out about an interesting new issue that I guess makes absolutely complete sense, but at the same time kind of crept up out of nowhere. This is going to become a very serious issue if some kind of resolution isn't found. It's a little rougher than the IPv4 limits.

It has been a very big year. So many good changes, and I've grown close to so many good people. I've settled into my new house, Zac, one of my closest friends, has moved in with me. My mom started her new job, and now has a new car and fewer financial worries. My step mom retired from a job she found stressful and has started her private practice again. Lousianime has grown and even changed cities. Mike moved to Germany. Jake has moved out into his own apartment. Jackson and Marcia got married. Almost everyone I know has been promoted or otherwise grown in their chosen profession. Some days, I am simply at a genuine loss for how to feel about how much change can happen in what seems like an otherwise normal year. It's creeping in nature, one change at a time. Before my birthday I will be business partners with not just one, but two of my childhood friends. That's something that a lot of people dream about and talk about but never accomplish.

I learned how to play the song Blackbird. Almost no other song I've ever heard has played in my ears like the sweet notes of that beautiful tune. It touches every emotion in my spectrum, and I am so glad to play it, and I try to play it every single day, and it feels special every single time. I've grown as a guitarist all year long.

This year I'm also proud of how much I've grown as a chef, with how much I've learned. I've put in time and effort, and studied, and I believe that I am more capable than ever. I've made habanero jelly that is the color of sunset twice.

And, that's just off the top of my head.

In the next year I plan to:

* Draw
* Write for NaNoWriMo again
* Pass the CCNA
* Get together a brew setup at my own home
* Learn to play Stairway to Heaven
* Program a new game
* Get a new car
* Make love more passionately
* Find new things that I don't even know I want to do, yet

If you know me, and you remember something good about the last 12 months, or even any significant memory, please leave a comment. I'd like to reminisce...

My potatoes bring all the Irish to the yard,
and they're like, "That famine was hard."
Damn right, that famine was hard!
I could feed you. But you'll have to starve.

We Can't Always Wax Poetic

A beautiful painting by Rafal Olbinski.

Fragment by Amy Lowell
What is poetry? Is it a mosaic
Of coloured stones which curiously are wrought
Into a pattern? Rather glass that's taught
By patient labor any hue to take
And glowing with a sumptuous splendor, make
Beauty a thing of awe; where sunbeams caught,
Transmuted fall in sheafs of rainbows fraught
With storied meaning for religion's sake.


I think I constantly share other people's works because mine are for me. Maybe I don't feel like sharing of myself today outside of what I can find of myself in other people. Maybe that's all I am.

I Want to Grow Old and Be Childish With You

The name of this song is particularly meaningful to me. I am deeply, and magically enthralled with the idea of preserving the part of my soul that is childlike and pure. That little part of you that is so easy to allow to be crushed. That people allow themselves to stop enjoying things that are wonderful, or harden themselves so that they no longer feel fresh pains of sympathy. I think that it takes a great deal of strength to grow up and nurture that part of you such that you are able to make educated and difficult decisions, and even sacrifices, without giving up that part of yourself that feels everything intensely. Without giving up that part of yourself that afterward is able to play with legos, and be simple, and appreciate pillow forts in the living room.

I really wish to grow old and be children together with someone.

People Sometimes Hate Things

Review: The Dictator

In the past I've always had mixed reactions to movies staring Sacha Baron Cohen. For every good memory from Borat, there was a part of the movie I sort of wanted to forget. It's pretty much the definition of cutting edge of comedy, in the sense that it is definitely offensive. In his most recent film, The Dictator, he is surprisingly subdued. The movie is funny, beginning to end, with fewer out right gross assaults on the eyes like in his previous movies. The movie really aims the majority of its jokes in two directions, racist views of other countries and oppressive dictatorships and misogynist cultures. If you're prepared for some brutal and cutting dialog, then this movie delivers.

The plot is pretty straight forward, and it never really transcends cheap comedy, though. While his last two films took the form of mockumentaries, this is a more traditionally directed film. It occasionally detours from its generally direct path through the story for a scene with a punchline. Probably one of the best parts about the movie is that it delivers a lot jokes in the background instead of just in the foreground or via dialog. There really isn't much more that you can say about the movie without giving away spoilers, though. And as it's a comedy, the movie has nothing outside of that. Any details detract from the jokes and will devalue the film. I recommend it. I'd even watch it again, I think.

In Space, No One Can Hear You Clean

Gold On the Ceiling - The Black Keys

"The corrosive effect of the pipe reduces your tongue to a stub. Now you truly are tasteless." - Narrator, Space Quest IV

It appears that once again I am a backer.



When I was a young man, I used to pour over the Space Quest games endlessly with my best friend Jason Cole. I remember the time we went out of our way to make a saved game just before every possible death available in the game. The one liners for most of them had us laughing till it hurt. "As you fade permanently from the club of living organisms, you think to yourself: 'So that's what my spleen looks like!'"

I am tremendously excited to see the point and click adventure game franchise represented on Kickstarter with original content, from good developers. It really just makes me want to go back and replay the whole series over a couple of hours.

And then, there's good music:

I Think of You

Got free screener passes to see The Dictator tomorrow, which is a bit of a mixed blessing. I mean, sure it's a free movie, and it's an excuse to go adventuring down town, but... but I can't remember the last movie that really starred Sacha Baron Cohen that didn't at some point involve him flailing penis at the camera. They're generally funny movies outside of that moment, but I can't really say that any word other than "dread" applies to knowing that it is likely to happen at some point in the film and I am even sort of thinking about not going. I mean, it's a bit of the question of, "What would you let someone do to you under the pretext of that they are doing it for free?"

I mean, there is obviously some sort of demand for that sort of thing, and people pay for it, so there is an established value to having dick flopped around on a screen so large that you feel like you maybe ought to be able to shake hands with it. I mean, its projection is probably taller than I am.

Anywho, that aside, I offer this:



By the way.. Avengers was the best Marvel movie to date.

It Was A Terrible Accident

Got my tickets for tonight. Will be going to the 9:20 showing at the AMC 24. I'm pretty excited to see something like this exist.



I mean, it is a long way from the movie I'm most excited for this year. Heck, it's probably not even in the top 5. Am I more excited about seeing The Avengers than I am about the new episode of Game of Thrones on Sunday? I plead the fifth on that. They're both probably going to be good. Except that Ned Stark is dead.

It is a little sad that I missed my chance to see The Avengers for free on Monday, though. Got free passes for a screener to it in the mail, but I didn't get home from a trip till after it was already over. C'est la vi. It was worth it, I had a really good trip and enjoyed my weekend a lot.

So what movies am I excited about this year?


Because Ridley Scott.

Because Batman.

Because Simon Pegg.

With any luck, I'll be writing about how awesome The Avengers is, though, when I get home tonight.


P.S. Gnocchi. I like to melt goat cheese into the sauce for a complex tang.

Intimacy

Some pictures from my excellent weekend. It's occurred to me recently how purely intimate holding hands is. I hug my friends, I kiss my parents on the cheek, but as far as public affection goes, I don't think it gets much more intimate than the prolonged contact of holding hands. It's a gesture that is at once so simple and also complex. It spreads warmth and care and thoughtfulness. Even offhandedly it shows that you are thinking about someone, whether you are looking at them, or speaking to them, or not.

Made gnocchi this weekend, and hamburgers. Studied and went to a nursery. Had monday off and got free screener passes to The Avengers for monday. Watched some anime with a friend, and made some guitar picks. Shadowrun got funded. I installed curtains in my bedroom, and got a new picture to hang on my wall. We kegged a beer on friday, and enjoyed its bounty. It has been a really, really good weekend. I hope everyone else enjoyed it as much as me.

You Feel True and Beautiful Passion

"I believe that love that is true and real creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving, or not loving well, which is the same thing. And when the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face... it is because they love with sufficient passion to push death out of their minds. Until it returns, as it does, to all men. And then you must make really good love again."

I want to play a game where you have to make terrible decisions for the whole game. All bad decisions, all tough ones. Every single decision you make means losing one thing that's vitally important to you as a person for something else that's vitally important to you as a person. You don't just get to make the decision and play on, though. The gameplay comes in making you work to make sure that the decision comes to fruition. Then... at the very, very end.. after nothing but horrible decisions and pain and loss, you get to make one that lets everybody lives and everyone goes home hoppy.

"I think the metaphor broke my spleen."

I've had a very pleasant afternoon, and the evening promises to be even better overall. Beer and good company, and lots more study. Also did some watches some dishes, and washed some movies. I wonder if you can guess what I watched. There is a cookie for anyone who can list them.

"Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off. But it's better if you do."

I'm A Backer and...

I'm a backer, and if you like good RPGs, then you should be, too. There are four days left as of this writing. And what they've accomplished so far with their funding has already been incredible. There has already been enough funding to make it a primary goal for the project to be released on PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android. With that wide of a distribution, a large gameworld, shared friend characters, and a simultaneous release of developer tools, Shadowrun Returns promises to be an explosive revisiting of a fantastic gameworld setting.

If I pass my CCNA exam this week, I'm going to up my subscription level to the 125$ level for those sweet dogtags. I think that those are an excellent way to release a game with bonus material. But every penny you put into backing this game goes to making it a bigger, better story, with more characters, more locations, and more to do, and with better music. They even just announced that the original score designer will be working on the track for the new game. I hope to see everyone who backs it in the forums later... and possibly.. on the street in a backer t-shirt.

And finally, I leave you with music. One of the best songs I've heard lately, and a good cover of a great song:


Part of me believing it was always something that I'd done
But I don't wanna live that way

Some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright.

"Get busy living, or get busy dying." - Andy Dufresne said those words during one of the more touching moments in "Shawshank Redemption 2: Shank Harder" when, because of inmate politics, he is forced to eliminate Red in Mexican prison. I shed a tear because it was so painful to watch, and beautiful at the same time. The cinematography from the very moment when he thrusts the shank in manages to capture in a real and perfectly visually symbolic way, that the shank is his penis.

I saw "John Carter" with my mom this Saturday, and it is pretty obvious why it is one of the biggest commercial failures ever. I mean, the movie wasn't that bad. The only things that were really wrong with it were the writing and the acting. You might, almost rightfully so, suggest that those are the only things about a movie, but.. you'd be wrong. First of all, the movie actually had an okay story, if the only thing you took away from a scene(that is to say, if you were able to look past the actors and the words coming out of their mouth) is the strictest view of events(such as, in this scene these characters met and did this) then the plot points are not bad. But the actors and the writers of the dialog just destroy it.

The cinematography is really beautiful, and manages to capture the emotions you're supposed to feel from every scene. It's actually kind of weird feeling something from a visual standpoint while the actors voice words that make you feel the complete opposite. And finally, from a special effects standpoint, they managed to create a pretty cool looking vision of Mars, and a cool 20's pulp sci fi world. But for real.. don't pay money to see that trash. It really could have been good, it was pretty close to it. My mom liked it,though. She claims to have just not to have seen the same bad acting or felt that the dialog were as cliched and cheap. Probably the worst written character in the movie is John Carter himself. *shrug*

Some Things are Just Simply Beautiful

It's just one of those things that lights your soul on fire. Soundwaves that make you shiver.

I Love it When People Say Cool Things

"Every creative act is open war against The Way It Is. What you are saying when you make something is that the universe is not sufficient, and what it really needs is more you. And it does, actually; it does. Go look outside. You can’t tell me that we are done making the world." - Jerry Holkins

Kings died, kingdoms fell.

"I don't regret the kingdoms - what sense in borders and nations and patriotism? But I miss the kings." - Maude

Really busy weekend. Painting, and having family over, and seeing Zac's mom. Got that back room all fixed up and re-painted with a little help. Lots of elbow grease and perspiration and it looks quite nice. Will have the new curtains up some time this week, soon as I get the right colors picked out. Going to put up curtains in my room too, to keep the sunlight out while I'm trying to sleep. The day star is my mortal enemy.

In other news, attempts to create an MMORPG equivalent to "Ladies Night", extra quotations around the "Ladies", are right around the corner. I, personally, predict rampant transgender roleplaying, far more so than usual. And, given the obvious intelligence and talent it takes to make a game of any caliber, I wonder how deliberate this is. Is it deliberate social engineering to assault gender identity at large? Possibly. Unlikely. Only time will tell, but if it's a crappy game, I'm not even sure anyone will give two shits if women get to play it for less money. I mean, if it's a bad game, paying less money to play it is like getting paid less money for an airplane ticket nowadays. Sure, it's cheaper for something that has a "value", but you're still paying for the privilege to have the lowest common denominator of security staff expose and observe and possibly fondle your junk in what is indistinguishable from a cattle line. So your guess is as good as mine who comes out the "winner" in that situation. Hint, it's still probably the person who paid less for that privilege.

My recommendation, just don't flirt with anyone while you play that game. No matter who you are and which way you swing. There's no winner when you don't know what you're grinding on or what is grinding against you.

More likely than not, this is just the misguided attempt to be more gender friendly in games, along with a lot of other justifications. You can't really work on something that long without thinking about it from multiple angles and justifications. But that's probably where it started. It works in bars, I suppose, but are bar settings really the direction that MMO's want to go? Even if you did, though, alcohol is a huge motivator there. And real sex. Or maybe it's a sort of genuine attempt at real gender outreach, but if it is, it's still really alienating to everyone involved, and in a community that is known for shirking the rules through fraud, gender neutrality and multi gender communities are not likely to be forthcoming, just lots and lots and lots of lonely guys pretending to be women for a discount. Trying to think of ways to hit on each other.

Posting from work today:

Light painting chronicle:

"Vice, Virtue. It's best not to be too moral. You cheat yourself out of
too much *life.* Aim above morality. If you apply that to life, then
you're bound to live life fully." - Maude

You'd See That We Should Never Be Afraid to Die

Be afraid that you will never have lived.



I really don't get the flirting that Ridley Scott is doing. He's SAID that this is NOT a prequel to Alien. I mean, you can't just unsay that after it has been said. But this movie did start out as a prequel. But does it fit into the continuity? If not, then you really should have scraped the Weyland-Yutani logos off all the props in the trailer. I think that the best possible explanation is that he imagines it as its own story, with no thematical relationship to Alien(which was, after all, a pretty straightforward film), or even direct xenomorph reference, though they occupy the same universe and story line continuity. That would make sense, in that way he would want people to not think of it as a prequel, he'd want them to see an entirely different idea.

Like how you might have a pornography convention in the same neighborhood as the open house of your kid's school, but you wouldn't want to be thinking of one while you're at the other, or vice versa. Or maybe you would. I'm not going to judge you. In a way it is probably very admirable that you are always thinking of your child's education, even while you indulge in your aberrant sexual tastes. Or, once again, vice versa.

Yesterday was pretty good. Any day you wake up like that is a good day, no matter what else happens.


This is a happy end
Cause you don't understand
Everything you have done
Why's everything so wrong