Writer's Block: Heaven

 

Heaven

He opened his eyes and took in the blinding whiteness of eternity.

A second ago he was on his deathbed, hooked up to machines, fading slowly out of consciousness. Now he marveled at his hands, which were not ancient and lined with liver-spots, but smooth and covered with youthful flesh.

“Where am I?” he asked.

Suddenly a woman appeared to him. She was clad in a white suit, and her hair was golden. In her hands, she clutched a tablet, and she favored him with a professional smile.

“How are you, William? Much better, I presume?”

“I’m not an old man anymore,” he replied.

“Yes, that’s correct. You’ve died, and now you’re in the afterlife.”

“I didn’t really believe… why are we in an empty expanse?” he asked.

“Well, you haven’t filled it with anything. Where would you like to be?”

He thought about it for a second.

“Nineteen-ninety six. My grandparents’ farm.”

And that’s where they were. He saw the barn and silo in the background, almost swallowed by trees. Everlasting fields of corn across the road. The old house with the wrap-around porch right in front of him. He walked over and sat on the swinging bench and breathed a long, trembling sigh.

“What about people?” he asked. “Can you bring them here?”

“In a manner of speaking,” she replied. “Who would you like to see?”

“My mother,” he said.

The door to the house opened and his mother emerged. She looked to be about fifty-five, and when she saw him, she smiled and went over and embraced him.

“Mom,” he managed, a tear trickling down his cheek.

“It’s so good to see you,” she said.

“What?” he asked.

“I’ve been waiting, son. Counting the days.”

He looked past her at the women in the suit.

“What have you done to her?” he asked.

“What do you mean, William? I am here with love in my heart.”

“My mother would never say that,” he replied. “I expected you to start laying in to me for the life I lived. Frankly, I expected a slap on the face.”

“I would never do that, son. I have left all my anger and sorrow behind on the earthly plane.”

“She’s correct,” responded the woman. “There is no conflict or negative emotions here. Those are consequences of mortal existence.”

“My mother without conflict is not my mother,” he said. “I don’t want this.”

Instantly, his mother vanished.

“What about things? Can you give me anything I ask for?”

“Sure,” she replied. “What do you want?”

“I want to unwrap a brand-new Nintendo 64 and play Goldeneye 007.”

“Go in the house,” she replied.

He went inside his grandparents’ house. The kitchen was exactly how he remembered it. The island in the center, the animal tile backsplash, the cookie jars on top of the cabinets. He looked around warily to see if his grandmother was lurking in a corner, but the house seemed unoccupied, and he knew it would be unless he wished it otherwise.

There was a boxy CRT television in the living room on top of an entertainment center. He ran across the wooden floors, plopped down before it, and torn open the red box that held the Nintendo. In a few minutes he had hooked it up to the television and started playing video games just as he had as a child. He did so for about fifteen minutes before suddenly putting the awkward controller down and turning toward the woman.

“It doesn’t feel the same,” he admitted. “I was wanting that feeling I had as a kid. That sense of endless wonder and possibility. I don’t feel that at all. I feel like an old man living in the past.”

“I see,” she said. “Is there anything else?”

“Kristen Sanderson. Senior year. In her cheerleader uniform,” he said instantly.

He heard steps coming down the stairs and there was Kristen, golden hair in a pony tail, the white and blue uniform looking as vibrant as it did in his memory. She walked over to him and extended a hand and then looked behind her at the stairs, beyond where the bedroom awaited. Without a delay, he leapt to his feet and bounded up the stairs like an eager puppy. The white-suited woman waited patiently in the living room, looking down at her tablet and checking her watch ever so often. After about ten minutes William came downstairs looking dejected.

“Why is it not the same?” he asked. “I felt like I was making love to a doll.”

“Because you’re just reliving your old life. Or rather, you’re playing fantasy. You can’t really live here,” she explained. “You’ve died, after all.”

“So I’m doomed here?” he asked. “For all eternity?”

She took a minute to savor the expression of abject horror that came across his face.

“Is this really heaven?” he asked.

“What do you think?” she responded.

“Can you send me back?”

“Not as William. You already lived that life, and as you already admitted, you lived it to the disappointment of those who cared about you. They are gone, and you are gone, and now all that is left is a chance at a new beginning. It’s either that or you stay here. Or you can choose the nuclear option and just end it all for the sweet sanctity of nonexistence. The everlasting bliss of the freedom to not be.”

“Can you make me like a Senator’s son?” he asked.

“Nope. It’s purely random. You might not even return as a person. You could be an ant. Or a barnacle. Or a parasite that lives in the intestinal system of a whale.”

“Christ,” he whispered.

“I know. It’s heavy, isn’t it? Like I said, there’s always nonexistence or the simulacrum that is this place. But you know, that’s what makes life exciting. The chance. The randomness. There’s no thrill without the danger. There’s no wonder when you know every possibility.”

“Send me back,” he said. “I’ll do better this time. I’ll be a humanitarian or a pastor. I’ll do something great, something wondrous. I won’t hurt anybody or live selfishly. I promise. Just give me a fair shot.”

She smiled and shook her head.

“Alright, William, if that’s what you truly want. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” he said instantly.

She snapped her fingers and he vanished. For a while she made some notes on her tablet until a door opened in the whiteness and a figure emerged, horned, red-skinned, and toothy.

“Another one, mistress?” it asked.

“It’s amazing how little imagination they have,” she said. “He could have used the powers of this place to create a new world of sentient beings. That’s how the universe was created, after all. But they all just want to be players in a game someone created. They like being puppets on strings. Oh well. Send me the next one.”

New Music: The Machine

 

Machine Games' Dawn of the Machine expansion for Quake is one of the best games I've played all year, and so I put together this instrumental rock song based off a riff that I've had lying around for quite some time. The Big Muff, stratocaster, and mini-wah are all featured here. 

Bad Poetry: Every Apple

 

Every Apple

You must accept 

That you will not pick

Every apple

Just like you won't

Seize every day

Sometimes,

It's all a waste.

Beware

Beware the fascist light

of your inner darkness.

They will take your house,

Steal your paycheck

And shoot your dog.

And when you are alone,

Crying out

"What else could I have done?"

You will know the truth.

You should have done

The right thing.

Lyrics from the Worst Country Song in the World

Buttfucking on a Saturday night

Everything feels alright

Take that snake out of the bush

Stick that mamba in the tush

Writer's Block: The Sylph

 

The Sylph

I walk in the daylight among the rest of you, watching, slinking, moving from tree to alleyway to mailbox to parked car, weaving into the crowd every so often, anonymous, quiet, unseen. I watch people on their phones, watch as they order their coffee, watch as they run down the street. When they speak, I listen and murmur the words to myself in the darkened alcoves, letting them wash over me, the stolen sounds of another person’s mind. No one can bear to look right at me; if they stare they look over me, and so they see nothing, a tramp, perhaps, but more likely an inanimate object, a dumb thing lacking agency and life. When night falls I rummage through the garbage bins, dining on their refuse, their half-eaten sandwiches, their rotten apple cores, lapping up sour milk from grimy cartons that collapse in my hand, their outsides wet and stinking. Afterwards, I go and look into windows and observe the people as they stare at the screens, their faces hollow, their spirits draining into the ether. Sometimes I try the window latch; sometimes I turn the knob on the backdoor. I can come into a house uninvited; I am not a vampire, and the owners have little ownership over vacated space. And so I wander about, turning over couch cushions, looking under chairs, taking dropped change and little things to hide on my body and ponder in the cold loneliness of the morning, when I am away from those who cannot speak to me, who will not see me. I watch them sleep sometimes, hovering above their stretched-out forms, watching as they breathe through their mouths and choke on invisible spiders. It would be nice to sleep, to relax and forget. The little deaths that they are granted are not given to me.

I wonder often about my lot in life, and question why I am not afforded the little pleasures that others enjoy without notice. I have never felt the touch of another; I have never gazed into the eyes of a pretty person, nor have I felt an embrace. My words disappear as soon as they are spoken; my thoughts float away on the breeze, lost on the winds that spawned me. In the countless years I have spent contemplating my nature, I have concluded that I am either a sacrifice given so that others might live, or I am the future stuck in the now, a prophesy given sentience.

The living drift closer to my sphere every day. They have given up on each other; they walk alone, enshrouded in their personal cones of silence. It used to be that I fed off of their conversations, but I now I must lean over their shoulders, staring into their flickering screens, feebly attempting to obtain some nourishment from their solipsistic concerns. Perhaps they will amuse themselves to death, and they will join me as elemental spirits, and we will all walk, severed from each other, picking through the garbage of the past, as we search for some trace of former identity, some god that will tell us, finally, how to live.

Video Game Review: Quake: Dawn of the Machine

 

Dawn of the Machine is an official Quake expansion released by Machine Games to celebrate the thirtieth (!) anniversary of the classic shooter. It is, quite frankly, an amazing experience. Utilizing the tech that Nightdive Studios developed to remaster the original game, Dawn of the Machine features architecture that would not have been possible to design in 1996, lest your humble Pentium and 3dfx Voodoo explode. Tying together the three main thematic designs of the original game (Lovecraftian horror; dark fantasy; sci-fi shooter) while greatly expanding the scope of the levels. this is simply the best Quake has to offer. It's hard, too, people, in the way that classic shooters are hard. This expansions throws Shamblers at you like crazy, and you'll often have to manage your ammo to some degree since you'll face much bigger mobs than you did in the original episodes. But the eye candy on display just triggers my nostalgia so hard. Games don't necessarily need cutting-edge graphics when the level designers are so good at creating ambiance with basic dynamic lighting, which is added and heavily featured. Just check out some of these screenshots below. If you have any interest in classic shooters, download the remastered version of Quake (which is free for those who have purchased it in the past) and boot up Dawn of the Machine.

 

   

Video Game Reviews: Devil May Cry 5; Halo Campaign Evolved; Doom Revelations DLC

Devil May Cry 5: I've never played a Devil May Cry game, so I had little idea what was going on with the story in Devil May Cry 5. It didn't really matter, though, because this is an incredibly deep third-person beat 'em up that I never quite mastered yet thoroughly enjoyed. Switching between Nero, V, and Dante for various missions gives perhaps a little too much variety, but oh well. Nero has his chain sword, a giant revolver, and various mechanical arms that give him weapons like a rocket launcher or a whip. V relies on demon summons, and Dante has about a million different weapons and stances. It's a challenge to keep those combos going, especially with the bosses, and I never really gelled with the control scheme or the game's general feel. This is a game that's fun and that I wanted to get good at, but my lack of familiarity with the genre and the depth required for tripe S rankings defeated any intentions I had. Anyway, Devil May Cry 5 is still accessible to newcomers and worth playing even if you don't master it, and it's often available for under 10 bucks on Steam, so check it out if you're in the mood for a beat 'em up. Also, the Netflix series is pretty good.

Halo Campaign Evolved: Has any company mishandled a franchise as bad as Microsoft has mishandled Halo? After the initial positive reception of Halo Infinite degraded into negative territory due to 343 Industries inability to manage the live-service portion of the game, Microsoft reset things again, renaming the studio to Halo Studios and switching to the Unreal Engine, which powers this remaster. This is a game that's been remastered at least twice, once with the Anniversary Edition facelift and second with the original game's integration into the excellent Master Chief Collection. We probably didn't need a third remaster, even if Campaign Evolved is much more faithful to the look of the original game than the Anniversary Edition was. Coupled with a wasted console generation that's squandered years chasing the impossible dream of a profitable Game Pass, and Microsoft's recent layoffs that decimated talented studios like id Software, it's easy to see how the general mood around Campaign Evolved deteriorated, despite the fact that the game is great. I had a hell of a lot of fun exploring the ring and battling the Covenant. Although I'm generally not much of a fan of the Unreal Engine, it's put to good use here, with its ray-traced lighting and nanite texture technology. At a certain point in the game, the formerly barren Forerunner structures become overgrown with the Flood's disgusting organic matter, and it's suitably atmospheric. The Library is much improved from its original maze-like incarnation, and enemies show behaviors from other Halos, like the suicidal grunt grenade rush or Elites who'll kick you off your Ghost if they get too close. However, on Heroic, it's pretty tough, due less to the enemy AI, which I felt was worse than in the original game, and more to the sheer number of Covenant and Flood who'll rush you, sometimes endlessly. There are certainly some choke points that could use more balancing. It was also a huge missed opportunity to not include multiplayer other than online co-op. And why, Microsoft, do I have to log into my Microsoft account every fucking time I play a single-player game? I'm sure there are tons of people who didn't buy it just because of the forced log-in aspect. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I love Halo, and Campaign Evolved is a great single-player first person shooter, but Microsoft just can't return the franchise to its former glory, mostly because it's an AI-obsessed tech company unconcerned with making art or even just pleasing its customers.

Doom: Dark Ages Revelations DLC: You know a developer that's at the top of their game and who has released banger after banger for the past ten years? That's right, id Software, who were just rewarded for their excellence by having half of their studio laid off as Microsoft "restructures" X Box. Man, those fuckers. Revelations is basically the swan song of the last ten years of Doom, and at least id goes out with a bang. After the events of the previous game, the Doom Slayer gets his ass handed to him and is banished to hell, where he must undergo trials to get his chance to escape. At least, I guess that's what the story is saying; who gives a shit about the story in a Doom game? Let me rip and tear! Revelations adds the Spear, which is probably the coolest weapon and tool in the entire series. Functioning as a grapple hook, parry method, and weapon, you can switch between the Spear and the Shield, but you'll find that the Spear is where it's at: Revelations is much harder than the base game, and you'll need to be flying around those arenas if you want to survive. If you thought Dark Ages was too easy compared to Eternal, than you'll love Revelations. It's brutal on Ultra-Violence, and big fights take some strategy and planning to survive. I'm really digging it even as it beats my ass. Definitely give it a shot.  

New Music: I'm Angry At You

 

A buddy of mine lent me his Fooly Cooly DVDs, and I finally got around to watching them, only to get in a heated argument with my son over how to spell a word. Thus, this song was born, its chord progression inspired by the menu music of Fooly Cooly, which I'm assuming was done by the Pillows, a favorite group of mine and perhaps the reason I made it through two episodes of Fooly Cooly, which is just a little too out there for me.  

A Brief Conversation with a Home Warranty Scammer

 

The Esteemed Critic Reviews The Odyssey

 

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is a brilliant reinterpretation of the ancient story. Matt Damon's Odysseus is a man haunted by his deeds in the Trojan war, whose guilt complicates his decade-long efforts to return home. Nolan's signature muted color palate and disjointed narrative feature heavily here, but it works, as we learn the story from Odysseus as he is weened off the lotus flowers that he has devoured ever since washing up on the sea nymph Calypso's shores, crewless and desperate not to remember. Zeus's hospitality--the ancient law to treat others under your roof as you would treat one of the gods--is constantly referenced. Through tricking the Trojans into thinking Athena has left them a gift, Odysseus ended the Trojan war by opening the gates of the city after exiting through the famous horse. "Ten years of rage poured into the city in one night," he confesses. One of the great twists of the movie involves the appearance of Athena (Zendaya), who periodically appears to Odysseus to represent his conscience. The whole gritty realism trend in media was started by Nolan--his version of Batman strips the character of much of the overtly fantastical--but he doesn't not necessarily do this with the Odyssey. The cyclops, giant warriors, a trip to Hades--these all appear. But the focus of the story is not on building a mythical universe. Rather, it's all about how the powerful destroy civilization by breaking down the basic hospitality that holds us together. Nolan is angry about the modern world (as am I), where the previously unthinkable seems to happen everyday. Odysseus is forced into the Trojan war by Agamemnon who towers over the rest of the Greeks in his intimidating armor. However, when Odysseus meets his king in Hades, Agamemnon tells him not to go home and expect a welcome, as he was slain by his wife for sacrificing their daughter for favorable winds for the journey to Troy. Stripped of his armor in the flashback, Agamemnon is soft, his hair billowing down to his shoulders in luscious curls. He is killed in his bed by a tiny woman, revealing his entire stature to be an illusion. This is why Nolan's Odyssey is dangerous to fascists. It's not the casting of Elliot Page as one of Odysseus's soldiers, or Lupita Nyong'o's portrayal of Helen of Troy (though it does reveal their bigotry) that really endangers them. It's the fear that the powerful will be revealed as fakes like Agamemnon. It's the idea that shame and empathy can mar the feats of a legendary warrior like Odysseus. Elon Musk has threatened to make a non-woke "historically accurate" version of the Odyssey using AI, proving once and for all that he is an absolute moron (Where are you going to find a historically accurate cyclops, Elon?). That he thinks he can surpass Nolan's artistic achievement using his plagiarizing, destructive technology shows that he is a true villain, an man who thinks the rules of civilization do not constrain him. He is Robert Pattinson's Antinous, a coward plotting to steal Odysseus's kingdom while he is away. In the Odyssey, there is a reckoning, and despite atoning for his mistakes, Odysseus goes into exile, leaving his kingdom to the next generation. Such is the way of life, no? The Odyssey is the best film of Christopher Nolan's career, a must-see movie that's about as moving as a blockbuster film can be. 

Weightlifting: A Nearly 41 Year Old Man Chooses to Do the Bulgarian Method for Powerlifting

 

The Bulgarian Method was a brutal live or die weightlifting method developed by Ivan Abadjiev that led to his country competing with the Soviet Union in the 70's despite being unknown for weightlifting beforehand. The program features daily maxes on the Olympic lifts, with multiple sessions per day, all under the watchful eye of a coach while aided by a copious amounts of drugs. Powerlifter Greg Nuckols adapted the daily maxing and frequent training sessions for his own purposes, and published a manual detailing the program. I believe he published it seven years ago; I haven't heard much since about it. The lifting world is powered by Youtube bro-influencers shitting out information that's about as useful to a veteran lifter as whatever a hobo on the street will tell you about... well, anything. Anyway, in the past, I have done very well with high-intensity, high-frequency training. My most successful training block the past couple of years featured constant rep maxes and training frequencies of at least five days a week. Unfortunately, the deadlift maxing basically killed me, and I had to step away from that sort of thing for a couple of years, during which I've just been churning my gears, doing bodybuilding work. It's not satisfying training; I've always lifted for strength rather than appearance, and now, as a nearly 41 year old man, I've noticed the onset of middle age. My recovery is prolonged; I can no longer drink alcohol hardly; I'm getting lines around my eyes. I would like one final challenge, however, before I ride off into the sunset as a broken old man, and so, I'm trying Nuckols' Bulgarian strategy. Two weeks in, it's surprisingly do-able. As for how sustainable it will be, and how much success I'll have, we'll have to see. Here's what I'm doing.

Daily Maxes, all the time. In Nuckols' program, you squat and bench at least four times a week, working up to a daily max. A daily max is a heavy weight that you can hit any day of the week without psychological stress--it should be 80 to 90 percent of your true one rep max. For the squat, I've started out with 275 lbs, which I've blown past every single day so far. Yesterday, which was my third day squatting in a row, I hit 325 lbs for a smooth single. These daily maxes should increase, but every training session will not be as smooth as butter. If you hit your daily max and it feels like shit, you're supposed to take some weight off the bar and do some doubles or triples. That's the program in a nutshell. Heavy weights every session, but low daily volume. For the deadlift, you're supposed to do five to ten reps between 60 and 70 percent of your max once or twice a week. Assistance work is optional. I've been doing curls, rows, and pullups, but nothing else.

The demands of my job are brutal right now. The heat is constant, the humidity thick, and my traps are often riddled with muscle knots. I'll often do my training while washing apples. It's quick, it's low-rep, and I'm excited to do it. I woke up this morning feeling pretty good, despite squatting 325 lbs yesterday. My pecs, which were really sore early in the week, have already recovered. Perhaps I'm uniquely suited for this type of training, or maybe it's just the placebo effect of trying something new. In any case, I think I'll start posting a training log at the end of the week detailing my accomplishments. I'd like to squat 400 lbs and bench press 300 lbs again. We'll see if I can do it.  

 

The Esteemed Critic Reviews: Poor Things; High-Fidelity; The Death of Stalin

 

Poor Things: Poor Things is a feminist Frankenstein tale directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, starring Emma Stone as a woman reanimated with the brain of her unborn child inside her skull. Described by one Redditor as "If Tim Burton made a Wes Anderson film," Poor Things is animated by Stone's brilliant performance, which successfully straddles the line between daft and sophisticated. "Never go full retard," intoned Tony Stark in blackface, and while that's true most of the time, I think Poor Things makes its own logic. Mark Ruffalo also deserves praise for his foppish dandy who tries and fails to tame Stone's Bella. There's a lot of "vigorous jumping" as Bella refers to sex, and a lot of it is more grotesque than titillating, so be warned. Just an altogether brilliant movie that's like little else out there. Ten fucking stars.

High-Fidelity: I dunno about that John Cusack guy. His character in High-Fidelity is a hipster record store owner interviewing past girl friends about where it all went wrong. He reminds me greatly of Ted Mosby, the star of How I Met Your Mother, and I fucking hate Ted Mosby. The record store hipster was not a beloved creature in the nineties, and I wonder if he's gone the way of the Yeti or his North American cousin, the Sasquatch. If so, good riddance. Gate-keeping music "fans" suck. Anyways, Cusack's character is always pining for what he might have instead of appreciating what he has, and his realization of this fact is supposed to be the climax of our film. Like, why is this guy landing girls anyway? He's running a shitty record store, he has no sense of humor, and he's a perennial cheater. You know how Woody Allen was always writing himself into his films as a sex-obsessed nerd who nevertheless gets the good-looking woman despite being an obvious pervert and looking like Woody Allen? Yeah, that shit sucks. Five and a half stars out of a hypothetical ten, and Jack Black is worth most of those stars.

The Death of Stalin: Funny and terrifying at the same time, The Death of Stalin shows how a totalitarian system devoted to one man quickly crumbles into in-fighting and violent chaos when that leader bites the dust. I wonder if anybody in Trump-world has seen this film? Steve Buscemi is great as Khrushchev. Eight out of ten mangos.