Music: Lover's Story

I wrote this song today. I think it is pretty. That is all. Listen on Soundcloud.

Video Game Review: Thief (2014)

One thing is certain, Thief is pretty.

Thief is the sequel to the classic first person stealth games developed by the now defunct Looking Glass studios. This is a series frequently cited to be among the greatest games of all time, so the expectations for this new title, which is a reboot, are high. Like the Looking Glass games, you control Garrett, a master Thief who has the ability to disappear in darkness, and who disdains combat as a sign of amateurism. The game, however, still leaves you capable of dispatching your enemies with a variety of arrows, though combat is certainly discouraged. Sneaking up behind enemies and bopping them on the head with the blackjack to render them unconscious is a better idea, or just avoiding them all together. Though the previous games let the player use the blackjack, I wish the game would differentiate between knocking a guard out and killing them, since, in both cases, the end result is the same. Guards could wake up after about three minutes and resume their search, and if the player knocks them out again, it could be lethal. But alas, that might make a hard and unforgiving game, which Thief can be.

 Hey, a Keeper Library. But where are the Keepers?

For a game that wants the player to pay attention to its story, Thief's narrative sure is incomprehensible drivel. During the prologue, Garrett loses his protege, an unlikable noisy, murderous thief named Erin, when she falls to her apparent doom from a roof top into a mystic ceremony involving a magic MacGuffin called the Primal and the city's leader, a totalitarian old fart called the Baron. Garrett is knocked out, somehow for a year, and when he wakes up, he's got a piece of the Primal lodged in his eye, which is the game's explanation for his Focus ability, which lets you see traps and loot easier. Soon, he's involved with Orion, a populist leader who wants to recover the Primal for some reason that's never explained. Nothing gets explained with this game: the only character that isn't a half-written cliche is Garrett's fence Basso, who disappears before the game's third act. The narrative reeks of rewrites and stitches; I wonder how many times they tried to cobble this story together from disparate parts. The end result is an unsatisfactory tale. So what, you might say. This is a video game, not a novel. As long as the gameplay is good, who cares? Well, it matters because the original Thief games had excellent plots with well-developed characters, and it's a shame the reboot is such a mess, and, as I stated before, this game takes its plot seriously, and its discombobulated narrative affects gameplay. Their are plenty of cutscenes which take control away from the player, as well as odd free running sequences in which you aren't certain whether or not you are controlling Garrett. These sequences will be hard to tolerate if you're a fan of the Looking Glass games, for the previous titles emphasized player choice and agency. In the old Thief, Garrett usually had to find his way out after infiltrating a bank or castle; in new Thief, the game pushes you along during its missions, and back tracking is usually impossible. 

Hey, a Hammerite Cathedral. But where are the Hammers?

In-between missions, Thief places you in the City, which is intended to be a playground for Garrett, full of side missions and secrets. This doesn't work like the Assassin Creed games, however, because the City is divided into numerous loading zones, each represented by a glowing window or a pile of stacked debris. Navigating the City, which should be a blast, is therefore a tedious chore. You have to figure out which zone connects to which zone because it's not always apparent on your map. The original two games did large levels very well; Thief 2014 takes after Deadly Shadows, the third entry in the series, which featured a higher level of detail but shoe-box sized environments. I'm assuming this was a concession in order to fit the game on the last generation consoles. In any case, the City is a failure, although many of the side missions are fun and more reminiscent of the previous games' style. 

Hey, burricks. We haven't seen a live one since 1998.

Despite their numerous sins, the developers did get the essential feel of Thief right. The stealth systems work well; you have a light meter with three different settings, and you're only safe (relatively) in complete darkness. Garrett will be heard if he runs or if he steps over broken glass or alerts a caged bird. Guard AI is impressive, and on Master difficulty, challenging. They investigate opened doors and thrown objects, and with a couple slashes of their swords, take Garrett's life. Swoop, a new addition that allows Garrett to glide quickly with a push of the space bar, feels powerful and satisfying. Garrett always moved like a lumbering tap dancer in the previous games; here, he feels more like a master thief. Guards are pretty much your only enemies besides Freaks, supernatural monsters who are blind but have heightened hearing. They are also vulnerable to light, which is a cool reversal of usual gameplay. 

Basso, I wish the entire game was about you and Garrett's adventures. That would've been interesting.

Thief isn't a terrible game. It's a solid modern stealth game that you'll enjoy if you're able to look past its many faults. But we have to compare it to its excellent predecessors, and average doesn't quite cut it. It's a shame they got rid of the dark fantasy lore that was the series hallmark. The Hammerites, an industry-obsessed religious order, are no more, and the Pagans, a creepy bunch of woods people who worship the Trickster God, are never mentioned. There are no Ratmen or Haunts or zombies. Thief has been stripped of its outlandish elements, and what remains is gritty and grim-dark, but ultimately less interesting. 

Final rating: Red Delicious--tastes like cardboard, mushy texture, yet will do in a pinch.

An explanation of Pointless Venture's rating system: We use a five apple system here. A classic is Gold Rush, excellent is Honeycrisp, average is Golden Delicious, poor is Red Delicious, and awful is Winesap. Try the aforementioned apples and see if you don't come up with the same rating.

Music: The Isolationist

Here's an older track called the Isolationist. The recording is nicely layered with a rushing feel due to my inability to keep up with the click track. Kind of a folk/pop/punk number. Click here.

What I'm Working On: Apophenia

Chapter One of Apophenia, a work in progress.

This image came up when I googled apophenia, along with a surprising amount of porn.

Home 8/13/08

I have the gambler’s fallacy; that is, I am always seeing patterns in random information, patterns that seek to deceive and rule the thoughtless mind. For example: on my ride home from class, I, Leona Elizabeth Chaney, a twenty-two-year-old woman studying Creative Writing at Hoover University, decided that it had been way too long since I’d experienced an unpleasant incident on the commuter bus, and my good luck was soon, therefore, to run out. I pulled the handle and shouted to the driver and nearly sprinted through the doors. He gave me a look, a fat, greedy stare, his jowly whiskers undulating as he brayed some unintelligible complaint through blubbery lips. I flipped him the bird and started walking quickly, my hood up, the cracked sidewalks deserted, nighttime leaving only ghosts and oddballs like me. The houses on this street were condemned, but you could hear people moving inside, and lights flickered from behind boarded windows, and there was always the smell of something burning. I shouldn’t have been walking down this street; that was the conventional wisdom. It was a rough neighborhood, and I was by all appearances a vulnerable young woman. But there were more weirdos on the bus than the street in my experience, and this was my neighborhood, and I didn’t care if it was dilapidated and inhabited by meth-heads. I grew up with these meth-heads. We played together on the playground, broke bottles together, smoked cigarettes and drank beer together. The first boy I ever kissed, Danny Aronofsky, turned into a fine meth-head and an upstanding citizen. These are my people, I guess, is what I’m saying. I’m more scared of the ones that I don’t know.

            It’s ten o’clock at night, and as I pass the Dupont house I see the Conan twins pumping iron in their front yard like a bunch of freaks. Dave is shirtless, his muscled torso glistening in the cool air as his brother Arnold slaps him repeatedly in an effort to get him pumped. “Easy weight, easy weight, easy weight!” he screams, tossing his disheveled surfer’s hair from side to side, his bull-like neck taut with pulsating veins. The Conans have dragged a squat rack out into the middle of their grassless lawn, and Dave is crouched beneath the weights, his eyes facing down, his legs bulging out of their cut-off jean shorts; after a final slap, he steps up and takes the barbell on his back. I count five forty-five pound plates on each side—ten plates in all, plus the weight of the bar, a total of four-hundred and ninety-five pounds. Dave’s face is red; his eyes are wild and glazed like an animal’s, and I watch as he takes an enormous breath and squats down, all the way down. His hamstrings hit his calves, and he bounces up into a half squat, his teeth gritted, a slow scream emitting from his mouth, and for a second I don’t think he’s going to make the lift, he’ll have to drop it quickly off his back, but then the bar goes up and Dave is standing. He takes two steps forward and racks the barbell, Arnold punching him in the chest, hollering and carrying on like a baboon. The weight secure, Dave immediately stumbles and falls, losing consciousness. “No way!” yells Arnold. “No way you passed out, bro!”

            “Is he all right?” I ask. Arnold looks at me, seeing me for the first time. He’s the better-looking of the two; he’s got an endearing gap between his front teeth that softens his macho image, and back in high school there was a rumor that he was kicked off the football team for soliciting his teammates, which is, of course, hilarious. Like his brother, he is shirtless and clad in a pair of ill-fitting jean shorts. In the dim light, he looks orange, and I wonder if he’s been hitting the tanning bed a little too often, or if he’s smeared himself with bronzer. 

            “That’s only happened once,” he says, pointing at Dave lying motionless, “and he woke up the last time.”

            “Maybe he’s due to not wake up, then,” I say. Arnold furrows his jutting brow, tilting his head like a dog. The house behind him looks like it’s about to implode. I’ve never been in there, never entered the hallowed sanctuary of these aspiring bodybuilders. I imagine the halls to be lined with pictures of grotesquely-muscled men and eighties action-movie heroes, the kitchen stocked with supplements like a laboratory, shelves full of dianabol, testosterone, trenbolone, and other miscellaneous body-altering chemicals. There are probably weight plates everywhere, maybe even a few books containing training routines and exercise theories. No doubt there are copious pornographic materials. The brothers look like they would have guns, so there’s likely an assault rifle or two lying about. The bathroom is most assuredly a toxic waste dump.

            “You wanna work in?” says Arnold, gesturing toward the squat rack. “Squats will give you an ass like a basketball. That shit will bounce down the street.”

            “What’s wrong with my ass?” I ask, feigning outrage.

            “Nothing,” replies Arnold, giving me his gap-toothed smile, “But everything can be better.” This sort of attitude reflects the essential innocence of the brothers, in spite of their aggressive demeanor and intimidating physiques. They believe in the merit of hard work. They think they’re going to make it—I can see them driving all night across the country, rushing to Hollywood and Venice Beach, trying for the American dream with all the other millions of eager, young cannibals. They could be sleeping next to the ocean by Friday. They could be waiting tables in the Golden State or dancing at Chippendales. They might get a commercial or two, a bit part, but after a while they’ll have to resort to Gay-for-pay because California isn’t cheap and neither is bodybuilding. I want to tell Arnold this, but for some reason I accept his offer to lift weights. Surprisingly, he’s nonplussed, as though he expected me to jump under the bar wearing jeans and a blouse.

            “Hey,” says Dave, suddenly coming to. “A chick.”

            “You made the lift, asshole,” says Arnold, stripping the bar of plates, tossing them onto the ground, making a racket. He leaves a forty-five on each side of the barbell and looks at me doubtfully, trying to estimate how much my thin one-hundred and thirty pound body can lift. I shrug and do a couple of warm up squats before stepping under the bar.

            “Easy weight, easy weight!” screams Dave, wobbly on his feet.

            “Don’t you punch me in the chest,” I warn him before taking the bar out of the rack. The weight digs into my upper back, and I feel myself leaning forward, threatening to topple, but I steady, knowing that I’m trying to do too much, that I’m always trying to do too much, and that I’ll never be able to stop.

            “Rack the bar,” says Arnold. “You don’t want to pull something.”

            “That’s only body weight,” says Dave. “Anybody can squat bodyweight.”

            “Every man maybe, but not every girl,” replies Arnold. He moves toward me, arms outward to cradle my waist, and I squat down, the bar feeling like the weight of the world. It doesn’t pin me at the bottom like I thought it would—I get stuck halfway up. The weight becomes impossibly heavy, my legs push but nothing happens, I feel myself sinking as I strain and grit my teeth, but then Arnold is pulling up on the bar just with his fingertips, and suddenly I am able to ascend. He and Dave help me rack the weight, and I lean against the bar, my legs wobbling, gasping for air.

            “She’s kinda crazy, ain’t she?” asks Dave.

            “We like crazy,” says Arnold.

            “You shouldn’t have helped me,” I tell them. “You should’ve let me feel what it’s like to be pinned.”

            “We were being gentlemen,” says Dave.

            “You don’t know what a gentleman is,” says Arnold. He punches his brother on shoulder, and Dave hits him back, and then they’re wrestling on the ground, arms entwined, shoulders pushing against each other like beasts battling for mating rights. I leave them to couple with each other.

            It’s not far to my house, only two more blocks. It’s a converted double-wide hidden by tall pines that shake and shudder in the wind as I walk down the gravel driveway. I call the front yard the moonscape—it’s cratered and littered with junk—and although many would find the disordered refuse to be a source of embarrassment and stress, I am always comforted by the sight of our old refrigerator lying open, its confines now a nest for rodents, and reassured by the wrecked skeleton of Mom’s Chevy sedan, with its artillery-sized rust holes and absence of intact windows. This is our past on display; we can walk through it at anytime and marvel at the relics we once used. How many have that luxury? Most people throw away their lives. Their happiness is dependent on the acquisition of new things. The future is fresh, shrink-wrapped, contained in a brightly-colored box. It is never worn, used, or decayed.

            I open the door and step inside. Mom is cooking spaghetti—I notice the smell of her oregano-heavy sauce immediately—but instead of walking to the kitchen to greet her, I head for my room. The hallways of the trailer are cluttered with Mother’s junk: stacked cardboard boxes, heaps of clothes, trash bags bulging with odd shapes. I step sideways and wedge my shoulders through the horde, fitting easily between the walls, my body a reed. My room, of course, is not like the rest of the place. There are few possessions, no decorations, and everything is ordered and arranged precisely. I have space in my room, space enough to move and breathe. The window is open, letting in the fresh night air, and I fall back on my bed and let it wash over me. The oregano stench is wafting underneath the door; Mom must be making a week’s worth of sauce. She does that often, prepares food in advance. She usually grills hamburgers and stacks them in the fridge for nightly consumption, but spaghetti has become her latest obsession. It’s cheap, filling, easy to make. For a grotesquely fat woman, you’d think she’d have a more varied diet, but alas, money is always the determiner, the underlying factor behind every decision. I’m sure she’d dine daily at every fine restaurant in the area had she the money. But her money, obtained through disability payments and child-support, is always thin, especially considering that she has taken a lengthy sojourn (nine years and counting) from her job as a bank manager in order to focus on my younger brother Diesel’s development, a task which, I’m afraid to say, she is not quite qualified to handle.

            There’s noise beneath my bed, the sound of a poorly suppressed cough. I shake my head and sigh and tell the little bastard to reveal himself. He complies, pulling himself out headfirst, gremlin eyes peering up at me, a mischievous, shit-eating grin on his cherubic face. Diesel is shirtless, as always. He is clad solely in a pair of Captain America boxer shorts, as is his wont to do when unsupervised. Clutched in his filthy paws is a BB gun, realistically modeled after a nine-millimeter Glock pistol, a present from his long ago vanished father.

            “What were you planning to do with that?” I ask. He continues smiling, his mouth missing most of its teeth. Diesel doesn’t speak much, and seeing how he shows little aptitude or patience for school work, however trivial, his teachers have begun to consider him special in the unfortunate sense, which is not accurate, no matter what Mom believes. The diminutive freak knows what he’s doing, and he frequently employs a sort of low cunning that will inevitably come in handy during his future career as either a petty criminal or politician, the latter probably being his developmental ceiling if he ever learns any impulse control. He certainly has the entitlement thing down.

            “You were going to shoot me in the ass with that, weren’t you?” I say. His continual grin says it all. I lunge toward him, trying to grab the pistol, but the imp deftly dodges and jumps back, pulling my door open and vanishing into the recesses of the trailer. His skinny, worm-like body has no trouble tunneling beneath Mom’s immense horde; I’ve often found him sleeping under four feet of piled clothing. Maybe he’ll grow up to be a coal miner or a spelunker, some adventurous troglodyte with no fear of tight spaces. I don’t know. It’s impossible to know.
            I hear Mom lumbering through the halls, her steps as heavy as a Sauropod’s. Her great bulk prevents her from sliding in-between the clutter leading up to my room, so when she desires my attention, she always raps against the wall and gently bellows my name. She does so now, drawling out the o and then the a in Leona, and I hear Diesel howling in mimicry, his cries mixing with those of my mother’s. I could just ignore them; it would be simple. Mother can’t make her way through, and I could lock the door to keep out Diesel. All I want now is some sleep and quiet. The thought of spaghetti on my plate is nauseating.

            “Leona Elizabeth, please come out and eat dinner with your momma!” she says. It’s always hard to tell whether she’s feigning indignation or not.

            “I’m not hungry, Mom! I’m tired and I want to go to bed!” I yell.

            “Honey, I fixed all this s’ghetti, and you ain’t gonna come and eat any of it?”

            “Just put some in the refrigerator. I’m really not hungry.” This approach, the stress of my lack of hunger, is probably foolish, since my mother cannot imagine satiety.

            “I wanna hear ‘bout them writers you studied today. Come on, honey, I’ve had to chase Diesel all around all day trying to make sure he don’t hurt himself. Let me talk to yous.” My mother’s grammar, always terrible, is a constant source of irritation. I don’t want to come out of my room because my mood has darkened, and I’m afraid I’ll say something to hurt her, as I seem to do daily. Her pleas continue, and Diesel starts chanting heathen gibberish behind her, and I’m forced to come out, since it’s obvious I won’t be getting any peace. As soon as my door opens, they shut up. I follow Mom’s gargantuan behind, two giant ham hocks swinging from side to side, scraping the clutter, pushing it hard against the walls. We sit down in the hideous yellow kitchen, clustered around a plastic table, the spaghetti heaped up on our plates. Mom never does any dishes, and I refuse to touch the mold-covered plates piled and stacked across the grimy counter. We use only paper and plastic now for our dishes and utensils. My plate is Ferrari red, the food on it resembling the scattered insides of some disemboweled creature. There are two meatballs, both as large as my fist, resting atop a mountain of pasta, sauce leaking off of them in slow flowing streams. I tentatively cut off a chuck with my fork and push it around the corner of my plate, waiting for it to animate and walk off.

            “Leona, come on now, don’t do that,” says Mom. “You’re setting a bad example for Diesel. Look at him, he’s playing with his food.”

            Diesel is holding a bloody meatball in the center of his hand, tearing off ragged pieces in great shark-like bites.

            “Why don’t you ever make him wear any clothes?” I ask, knowing the answer.

            “He just tears them off him, what am I supposed to do? Little boy’s got too much of his father in him.”

            “Yes, I remember Bill walking around naked all the time,” I answer. “That was one of the reasons I moved out as a teenager.”

            “Now come on, let’s not go reliving bad times,” replies Mom, shoveling a humongous forkful of pasta into her mouth. “Tell me about your day.”

This is how our conversations always begin. I could go missing for years and pop up in the kitchen suddenly like a ghost, and the first thing Mom would say is Tell me about your day.

“I lifted weights with the Conan brothers,” I say.

“Lifted weights?” My mother gives me a quizzical look, arching her unibrow. “Why would you do that?”

“I also punched a kid in the throat in Creative Writing,” I continued. “I waited till after class. I hid by the door, and as he came out I jabbed him right in the larynx. It was quick, stealthy. No one saw me. I blended in with the crowd. I don’t even think he knows what happened.”

“You could get expelled for something like that. Why on earth would you hit some poor boy?” asks my mother.

“I took a chance. I thought I could pull it off. I’ve done it four times now to separate individuals, and I’ve gotten away unnoticed three out of the four times. The next time I’ll get caught. So there won’t be a next time.”

My mother stares at me like I am the spawn of Satan. Diesel is rubbing his meatball all over his face, giving him a grotesque, fleshing-eating appearance, but Mom says nothing, she just continues to look at me flabbergasted. I excuse myself and throw away my full plate of spaghetti. Back in my room I feel bad about all sorts of things. I wonder if the Conan brothers are out there in their yard, pumping iron into the night. I wonder if Chad, the boy I punched, is having trouble breathing or speaking. The night air is very cold, but I don’t shut my window. I sleep with all of my clothes on.

Music: Pleistocene

 

A hard rocker dredged up from the depths of the Theme Park Mistress catalog. Click Here.

Music: A Day in the Life

I've had the principle riff of this song for ages, I just finally wrote lyrics for it. Kind of bluesy, kind of low-fi hard rock. I wish I could play the drums, but Reason and its infinite loops will have to suffice. Click here to go to Soundcloud.

The Wait is Over: New Song: White Whale

Finally dusted off the old guitar and microphone and busted out a new jam. I finished Moby Dick about a month ago, and there's some of that work's influence in the lyrics. Check it out on SoundCloud. 

Why I Lift Weights

Weightlifting has gotten a bad rap, really. When people want to get into shape, they pick a fad program like P90X or some other cardio-based activity that promises results in little time. Running is very popular now, as well as Crossfit, which preaches functional training and all around fitness. All of these activities take effort and commitment, don't get me wrong. You can't get the same results running or doing Crossfit as you can with weight training, however. Endurance-based exercise burns a lot of fat, but it isn't particularly anabolic; I don't need to cite the various scientific data out there confirming my statement because all it takes is a pair of eyeballs. How many runners have you seen with a strong, muscular body? How many Crossfitters have done well in anything other than Crossfit?

The thing with weightlifting is that it's hard. It requires years of devotion and mental fortitude. It requires intelligent programming. If you succeed in getting stronger, it is because you pushed yourself. You have to add weight to the bar. Nothing else really matters. You have to see that progression; you get a dopamine fix every time you witness your squat weights go up five pounds. You can't lift four-hundred pounds in two weeks. You can get in decent running shape in as little as a month. Hell, two years ago, my father enlisted me in Cincinnati's Thanksgiving run, which is about seven miles. I hadn't ran in years, and my only exercise came from my job at the orchard. I ran about six times before the race, and I managed to finish without stopping. Cardiovascular endurance comes quickly. Strength does not.

I've been lifting seriously for almost a year and a half now, and what I mean by seriously is that I've been focusing on the four major strength lifts (the squat, the press, the bench press, and the deadlift) during that time. I remember being sore from deadlifting 135 lbs; my last deadlift workout, I did a triple with 385 lbs. My press has went from 95 lbs to 170; my bench from 190 to 270; my squat from nothing (I didn't do squats) to 305 for 3 reps. My body weight has increased from 175 to 200. The little aches and pains that I used to have (such as a sore lower back) have vanished completely. I'm stronger, fitter, more confident than I ever have been, and that's because weightlifting changes not just your body, but also your mind. I've never missed a workout in a year and a half. Honestly, my progress is not particularly great--I struggled with my squat form for almost a year, and suffered from hip tendonosis and knee pain, but I never quit.

What I really want to convey is that weightlifting is not some meathead, narcissistic activity. It might not be as hip as the latest infomercial or Crossfit. But it is honest. As Henry Rollins said, "the iron doesn't lie." I'm a better person for lifting weights, and it's my belief that there is no better way to stay fit. Strength takes years to develop, and it is the end of all things. So throw away those fancy running shoes and pick up something heavy. Our ancestors didn't prance around the woods, effeminately darting after deer. They sprang up from cover, stabbed Bambi with a spear, and lugged his heavy ass home to eat. So eat meat, lift weights, and be merry. That's my new year's advice. 

One-Hundred Obituaries

Two

Angela Lansberry passed away at two o’clock in the morning on a Thursday. Her husband did not permit her to smoke in the house; her desire to light up within the confines of the dwelling that she helped pay for was a constant source of contention between them. Angela was young, only twenty-eight, and had been married for about two years, yet she was already looking for a way to escape her marriage. She did love her husband somewhat, although not particularly strongly, for Luke (that was his name) was a peculiar man prone to silence and stoicism, which suited her just fine most of the time, since she herself was quiet and withdrawn. They both wore a lot of dark clothing and drank a lot of coffee. Luke was a professor of philosophy at the University of Cincinnati while Angela drifted in-between jobs. She had been a secretary at a law firm, a waitress, a telephone operator. Before her untimely demise, she had made a habit of attending a writing workshop on Ludlow Street, for Angela had decided to put her BA in English to use and become a writer. The hardest part, she felt, was finding something to write about. It was hard to have a voice. It was hard to have an opinion.

            Minutes before her death, Angela exited her house, pack of cigarettes in hand, and stood for a moment on her front porch. The neighborhood was quiet, a nice mixed income suburb, although one did hear gunshots every so often from the nearby low rent homes. The houses across the street were nearly identical, varying only in color. A light was on in the house directly across from hers, and she could see a man in front of a computer screen. She had never talked to this man; he was quiet, reserved, slightly unfriendly. She liked to think that he was writing a novel, doing important work, and that one day perhaps they would be contemporaries. Luke was gone, kept away by his hours. She was lonely, feeding off of fumes and wayward ambitions, but that was okay. The concrete steps leading up to the porch glistened in the moonlight, slick and wet in the humid air. She felt cold and drew her sweater around her.

            As she sat and smoked, a big white car rolled slowly down the road, a mammoth Cadillac, its subwoofers booming like the heartbeat of a monster. Angela had never seen such a car, shining and magnificent in the paleness of the night, rims spinning like a hypnotist’s tool, silver, reflecting light. Its windows rolled down revealing darkness billowing smoke. It called out to Angela, this darkness, called her names in some foreign tongue, and though she recognized the harshness of the voice, she was lulled by it, sitting calmly on her steps, smoking her forbidden cigarette. The light in the house across from her flickered out; the novel was complete, the great work finished. Angela thought of her own white pages waiting inside. The car was still paused before her home. She could go back inside or she could enter the vehicle. I want something to write about, whispered Angela, looking at the white car and hearing the voice grow thick and smooth as apple butter. What have I ever done with my life? she asked, the glistening concrete steps beckoning. Something spat out of the darkness of Cadillac; Angela stood and was caught by it, reeled in as though pulled by a string, her black boots clacking on the street. The house behind her was dark, empty, silent, and stoic. It was full of white pages.

Pointless Venture's Video Games of the Year (Not Necessarily Released this Year)

Didn't play a whole lot from this year, and most of what I played were shooters, surprisingly. My best game of 2013 was Dark Souls, which I put one-hundred hours into, with only a few of those being composed of pure frustration. I loved the game world (bleak and strange), the art style (somehow reminiscent of Quake), the combat (simple yet difficult to master); yet it's one of those games that I probably won't come back to, seeing how my first play through was so thorough, and because it's a stressful game, really. Sure, you eventually come to catharsis after you beat the Four Kings or Seath the Scaleless, but every single failure builds up to that catharsis, hence the stress.The experience of playing Dark Souls is like becoming a geyser of emotion that only erupts periodically, unlike Old Faithful. 

Civilization 5 was a close second. It was the first strategy game I've played in a while, and it's certainly very addictive. The wife even liked it too, so bonus points for that. I'm not a veteran of the series, so some of the complaints others might of had didn't register. Loved that it allowed single computer multiplayer.

X-Com is number 3. The combat is great, the tech tree is okay, the random environments are a bit boring after a while, but overall an excellent game. Kind of wish that there was more to the interceptor mini-game, and that base building was more evolved. The expansion is on my wishlist.

Honorable mentions-Shadow Warrior, Metro: Last Light; Dishonored DLC; Hotline Miami.

Biggest Disappointment. Yeah, Bioshock Infinite. It's somehow too much like the previous games while simultaneously being too little like them. It wastes its wondrous floating world on a contradictory story about time travel (although all stories about time travel have similar problems). I liked the shooting, Elizabeth, and the main twist. I understand why they didn't just make it Bioshock in the sky. But we should've been able to explore Columbia, and like many others, I found the violence to be a little out of place. Still a good game and one worth playing, but still a disappointed. It was almost doomed to be.

Honorable disappointment mention. Crysis 3. Did you remember that it was released this year? All I remember about it are respawning enemies, lots of cutscenes (though thankfully fewer than the previous title) and giant guns that take up most of the screen. Why the hell did they switch the protagonist again? What the hell happened to Nomad and Alcatraz? Why can't I just run around on an island throwing turtles at Koreans?

One-Hundred Obituaries

One

Philip J. Dick died on the way home from a farmers' market while in the process of preparing to eat a cinnamon pecan roll. His attention divided between driving his car and unwrapping his pastry, Mr. Dick's vehicle drifted into oncoming traffic and collided head-on with a semi-tractor trailer.  Like its occupant, Mr. Dick's vehicle, a 2003 model Chrysler PT cruiser, did not fair very well in the accident. One witness, a certain Mary Contrarian, described the scene as resembling "the meeting of a train and a cow." Mr. Dick would have been disturbed to hear himself compared to a cow, considering the amount of time he put forth trying to change his corpulent physique. His wife had just purchased one of those total gym exercise machines, this one in particular purporting to help its user drop fifty pounds in just a month when used only fifteen minutes a day. Mr. Dick had the opportunity to use the machine once before his untimely demise, though to be honest, he likely would have used it only a few times more, Mr. Dick being one of those people who detest exercise in any form. Yet his wife was constantly telling him to lose weight, which was why Mr. Dick was always participating in the latest exercise fad. He had attempted to dance off the pounds while watching videos of spandex-clad vixens throwing their lithe little bodies to and fro; he'd bought a bike, which rusted in the garage, as well as a weight set, which also rusted in the garage. He had implements and elastic bands and fat calipers and all manner of things which he had bought and discarded to the garage, which served as a sort of museum for the last decade's infomercial exercise equipment. He wife called it the monument to desire, though to whose desire the garage was a monument to was uncertain. Mrs. Dick was not particularly svelte herself; her son, a monster named Dick Jr., often called his mother "Momma Three-Bills," though her weight was not in actuality in excess of two-hundred and fifty pounds. This is not her obituary, however. We shall cease discussing Mrs. Dick.

            During his last thirty minutes of life, Mr. Dick spent fifteen of those minutes wandering around his local farmers' market, located in the rear of a church. Not being a spiritual man, churches made Mr. Dick uneasy. His mother had been especially devout, requiring little Mr. Dick to attend Sunday school every week, a mind-numbing experience, and one that was damaging to the boy's sense of religion. The market made him uneasy as well. Mr. Dick did not like vegetables; his wife (Mrs. Dick again) called him a "meatatarian," though that awkward adjective was not entirely accurate, since Mr. Dick did love his starches, particularly when fried, as well as his sugary sweets, as we already know. The presence of so much so called "good food"—apples and beets and lettuce and roots and god knows what else—made him feel a little guilty, for he knew that he was not going to buy any of it. He entered the market on an impulse. Forty years of American life had made him an impulsive, confused creature. The cinnamon roll was all he purchased, yet he felt good when he exited, certain that he had taken a step toward slimness. Life was made of small steps, of this he was certain, and all one had to do was make a concerted effort and all of one's desires would be granted, almost like magic. The progression by steps theory had not resulted in much personal success for Mr. Dick, yet he clung to it like a warm blanket all the same. He was actually thinking of exercising right before glancing down at his crouch at the cinnamon roll that lay there, wrapped up in white paper like a Christmas present, waiting. Mr. Dick could not wait.