Wednesday, July 29, 2020

The Losers: More from the Cretin


What do we know about the Cretin so far? That he likes one night stands and Freddy Got Fingered? Developed characters have more than a few quirks. They have personality and a defined arc. So yes, I have my work cut out for me regarding the Cretin. In this chapter, he meets Tovia, another old friend who's quiet and reserved, despite being handy with a shotgun. Read the previous chapter here.

  “Motherfucker,” said the Cretin as the door of Preacher’s church shut in his face. He turned around and looked across the empty parking lot, the distance between the church and his house a vast expanse, a black asphalt sea of nothingness. His legs moved before his head had made a decision. It was all the goddamn cop’s fault. If he hadn’t banged on the door and shouted in his idiotic manner, then Silica would still be in his house, possibly enjoying Freddy Got Fingered while he slipped an arm around her shoulders, marveling at the miracle bestowed upon him. He hadn’t really contemplated the implications of finding a living, breathing duplicate of his sex doll; neither had he thought much more about the shimmering prison that seemed to encapsulate Hillsdale, but the Cretin was not a man prone to rigorous, deep thinking, or much thinking at all, for that matter. He was an instinctual creature who acted first and regretted later, and therefore his actions, when finding Officer Larry in his backyard with his arms around his sex doll, were much easier to understand.
  Son of a bitch,” spat the Cretin, having just clumsily climbed over his fence.
  “Who?” said Officer Larry, almost out the gate.
  The Cretin was not a violent man. He’d had a few confrontations, none of which had ended in his favor, yet at that moment he was truly capable of anything. With a bellow that sounded like the call of an asthmatic water buffalo, he charged at the much bigger and brawnier Larry, who thrust the sex doll out in front of him as a shield. The Cretin crashed on top of her, with Larry pinned beneath, his flailing blows unable to strike the policeman with much force.
  You off your rocker, you wacko?” asked Larry, who was struggling to push the Cretin and the sex doll off of himself.
  Motherfucking son of bitch goddamn idiot shithead…”
  “Tone it down, champ,” said Larry, who managed to shove the sex doll and the Cretin a considerable distance.
  I don’t wanna deck ya…”
  The Cretin’s fist connected Larry’s upper lip, bursting it open and causing blood to flow down his face and drip from his mustache. The Officer howled and threw out a blind punch, but it connected, hitting the Cretin on the right side of his temple. Instantly he fell to the earth, eyes fluttering. Larry said something else, the meaning of which was lost, yet he was dimly aware of a wad of bloody spit hitting his face. Through the haze he saw Silica being dragged through the earth, her hand still outstretched, eventually disappearing into the darkness.
  “Don’t take her away,” he managed, face full of dirt.
  “Oh I’m gonna wine and dine her, you bet, buddy. Then I’m gonna invite a couple friends over, and we’re getting freaky. Say ‘bye-bye’ to the nice asshole in the dirt, Silica. Hell, I’m changing the name. She looks like a Topanga. Hasta la vista, amigo. Eat shit.”
  The wheels of Officer Larry’s patrol cruiser burned rubber as he tore off into the night. The Cretin stood up and almost fell over. He was tired and emptied of all fight. With all of his being he hoped that Officer Larry rammed his vehicle into the shimmering barrier that encompassed the town. You don’t seem to be having that sort of luck. Wasn’t that the truth.
  He went inside, grabbed another beer, and then staggered back outside, his feet carrying him past the driveway, down his street, and then leftward toward Main. There were sons of bitches everywhere, motherfuckers, evil bastards that stole your sex doll and frightened off the real thing, dooming you forever to a lonely, desperate existence, a life of solo fornication and piss-flavored beer. How he was angry at the world at that moment, furious at whatever cruel force that had made him how he was, imperfect, flawed, incapable of not fucking up. He tripped over a bush in the front yard of a suburban ranch house, and in his inconsolable fury, he tore at the foliage, shredding leaves like a human hedge trimmer, until the front porch light flipped on and he was forced to hightail it several houses ahead, where he hid behind a brick mailbox until the light turned off. While he hid, the Cretin saw a yard gnome staring blankly at him, a cheeky grin on its rotund face. Bim-Bim, is that you? Three feet tall, forty pounds in weight, Bim-Bim was a level twenty druid who was kicked out of his ancestral home for defecating on the sleeping face of his brother, a notorious buccaneer. How many years had it been since he’d rolled the twenty-sided die? Since you, Know-it-all Nick, Gretchen, and Tovia had been friends. Were they not friends anymore? At what point did a friendship end? He didn’t know how to end anything besides female contact. A friend was someone you could count on, someone you talked to once in a while, maybe not every week, but at least once a month or two. Did he have any friends? Did Weedy Joe count? What about the other dealers? Did he have a friend in the entire Grand Argosy Casino? Friends are for pretenders. Life is quiet, brutal, and short. A loser’s maxim.
  He’d wandered downtown, the streets deserted, the lamplight flickering with every step as though his passage were a harbinger of dysfunction. Something pulled on him, drew his attention toward the river. He’d lived next to the Ohio all of his life, but he’d never thought much about it. Its waters were muddied, polluted with trash and liquid waste, the shores littered with bottles, tires, bits of weathered plastic. It was an ugly river, a conveyor of filth, a force of nature that had been sickened by the machinations of man. How many bodies had sunk in its depths? Was the riverbed littered with bones?  What sort of life could such a ruined ecosystem support?
  When he reached the gazebo, he knew that she had been there. It had traces of her aura all over it. His hands caressed the worn wood, desperate for some reassurance that she had been real, that she hadn’t been a dream. Looking out at the river, he thought he saw something, a figure wading into shallow water, but when he blinked, there was nothing, so he turned away. She wouldn’t go there, not into the dead river. He just knew that she wouldn’t.
  An instinct made him turn around. There, at the end of Main, was a wolf sitting on its haunches, its great black head cocked sideways, amber eyes fixed firmly on the Cretin. Slowly, he felt in his pockets, searching for food, but came up empty. Jesus Christ. Every follicle was tensed with a stiffened hair; his hands, now free of pockets, began to shake. The wolf’s stare was not that of an animal’s. It looked inside him, saw the rot, saw the emptiness of purpose. This creature is my antithesis. Everything about the wolf screamed focus. When its lips parted to reveal the shiny white denture, he could swear that it was smiling at him, amused by his horror, his realization that he was soon to be steak tartare.
  Where is she?
  He heard its voice inside his head, a guttural groan unused to language.
  You smell of her, you’ve met her, you’ve touched her, you’re following her, you must tell us where she is, you must or we will remove your limbs from your torso and gnaw at the stump where your head used to be.
  The Cretin had been threatened many times during his life; he’d stared down his fair share of them, because most people were full of shit. The wolf was not full of shit. The wolf meant every single word that it had beamed directly into his head. So instead of lying or stalling, the Cretin did what he had done in the past when a threat had turned into an action—he ran for his life. With a speed he didn’t know he possessed, he cut across the street and attempted to slide across the trunk of a car. The jaws of the wolf clamped down on his shoulder, ripping and tearing, and though the Cretin screamed as the pain cut through him, he managed to pull away, leaving behind a ragged shirt sleeve and a decent amount of blood. Through an alley he went, the animal hot on his heels, his worn Converse losing traction as he scrambled, knocking trash cans behind him, seeing a fence up ahead and realizing that there was no way he could vault it. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. The Cretin despised religion, but the refrain came out of a deep place inside, the last reservoir of hope. Maybe he could make it over the fence if he were suddenly endowed with the power to jump several feet in the air. It seemed like something Jesus could do for him. He hadn’t asked Jesus for much in thirty-four years.
He had a foot to go before he reached the fence when the wolf landed on his back and knocked him to the earth. Great, slavering jaws clamped down on his throat, the canine teeth poking into his skin. Tell us, tell us, tell us. Show us, show us, show us. Then you can feed us and we will give you a quick death, a gentle twist rather than the gnawing and gnashing you will feel otherwise.
  He didn’t know what to tell the wolf. Even if he had wanted to, he didn’t think he could speak. Would anyone be able to identify him when they found his corpse? He decided that it didn’t matter. Everything would’ve been a little better had he drank a couple more beers. Being eaten alive had to be more bearable ten Natty-Lights deep instead of six beers and still able to drive.
  A shot rang out, and the Cretin felt the wolf’s body stiffen. The jaws removed themselves from his throat, but before the animal could offer a retort, its head exploded in a shower of blood and gristle. The Cretin moved his shaking hands to wipe the gore off his face, ears ringing with a sound not unlike the roar of a tornado. With blinking eyes, he turned his head and saw Tovia sitting on the trunk of her car, skinny legs covered in a pair of holy jeans, long face wearing a barely perceptible smile that made the Cretin want to kiss her face. Tovia, who changed her name from Tobias at the ripe old age of 29 and began to transition a year later. He’d said some things over the years that he wished he could take back, but Tovia wasn’t the grudge-holding sort. The twelve-gauge shotgun in his hands had been given to her by the Cretin when he had rid his house of most of his weapons for reasons that he didn’t want to share.
  “Where in the hell did you come from?” he said before he vomited all over the sidewalk.
  “I went for a walk,” said Tovia, shrugging her narrow shoulders.
  “With you shotgun?”
  “Well, I was about to go for a walk,” Tovia said, pointing at the Cutlass Supreme behind her, “when I saw you getting mauled.”
  “It was sweet of you to help me out,” the Cretin replied, staggering to his feet. “You never call.”
  “You never call anymore either. Lot of people don’t.”
  “It’s not because of you being a girl now, just so you know. I’m just shitty at keeping friends.”
  “What the fuck’s going on?” asked Tovia, inclining her head toward the dead wolf.
  Cool as a cucumber in ice, thought the Cretin.
  “There’s some weird shit going on,” replied the Cretin. He briefly considered telling her about Silica, but then reconsidered.
  “If you want to go for a drive, I’ll show you,” he explained. For a second he thought Tovia was going to deny his request because of any number of reason, the primary one being, of course, that he was covered in bits of blood and viscera, but then she nodded her head and hopped in the driver’s seat, and he sat in the front passenger seat, feeling nostalgia rearing its ugly head as the ancient fabric conformed to his body’s shape as though it had missed the touch of his degenerate flesh. There were little figures bobbing on the dashboard, bobble-head miniatures from some anime that he didn’t recognize, along with a weathered book on kendo fighting and a pair of yellowed socks. The ceiling had been recently stapled, although a tumor hung down right above his head like a scrotum. He ventured a look behind him and saw that the back seat was cluttered with detritus, mostly fast food wrappers and old clothes.
  “You live out of your car?” he asked.
  “It’s temporary,” said Tovia.
  “You get kicked out of the Shack?”
  “I left it voluntarily.”
  “Did they cut the power off?”
  “No running water. My bedroom also caved in.”
  The Shack was Tovia’s ancestral home, a sprawling mansion that had once been grand. Years of abuse by Tovia’s four half-brothers had reduced the once proud dwelling to little more than a dilapidated hovel. He had pleasant memories of sneaking over there with a twenty-two and a case of Natty Light to shoot gophers from the balcony as they popped up in the backyard. But then Tovia’s brother Remy had driven his truck into one of the supports, and the wholesome past-time of gopher shooting had been abandoned. He couldn’t even imagine what condition the place was in now.
They drove out toward Millerbrick road, the Cretin staring out the window looking for any signs of Silica. The houses were quiet, sleeping tombs, the woods a blur of darkness, the river a reflection of the moon’s light.
  “How’s Renardo Vanderbuilt doing?” he asked.
  “Still the greatest Ranger in the North. I haven’t played in a while.”
  “Neither have I, but I saw a yard gnome, and I thought of Bim-Bim.”
  “He’s a little shit. I think Renardo might decapitate him the next time he pisses in his mead.”
  They climbed the hill halfway before the Cretin told Tovia to pull over. The shimmer of the terrarium was almost invisible, but when they threw a stick at it, the border lit up with fire and pulled the branch into whatever netherworld existed on the other side.
  “How far does it extend?” asked Tovia, who kept her emotions sheathed.
  “I don’t know, but I saw it come down. I think it’s like a bowl turned upside down. Something has sealed us in.”
  “Something?” asked Tovia, raising a bushy eyebrow.
  The Cretin took a deep breath and slumped his shoulders.
  “I have a sex doll that I named Silica.”
  “I figured as much.”
  “Earlier tonight, right where we stand, I encountered a woman who looked exactly like my sex doll. What do you think her name was?”
  “Ebony? Jasmine?”
  “Silica. We didn’t talk about much. She said she was running from someone, and that she needed a place to hide. She wasn’t very communicative, said some strange things. That idiot Officer Larry scared her off when he started banging on my door.”
  “Yeah, he’s a dickhead. Gave me a ticket for sleeping in my car.”
  “What I’m thinking now though, is that maybe she’s the cause of this magma wall terrarium that’s presumably surrounding Hillsdale. That wolf that attacked me? It spoke. In my head. Said it was looking for her, and that I had her smell on me.”
  “You didn’t harass this woman, did you?” asked Tovia.
  “No! Why would you say that? I don’t know what people has said, but I am a perfect gentleman…”
  “In the few minutes that you knew her, did you ask her if she wanted to watch Freddy Got Fingered?
  “That’s not the same as assault…”
  “Some would argue it is.”
  “Jesus, Tovia, I know we haven’t been the best of friends for several years now, but you gotta believe me, hell, see it with your own eyes, weird shit is happening and we’re right in the middle of it, and if we don’t do something, God knows what fresh horrors are in store. I’m talking about talking wolves that threaten to eat you alive! Maybe everyone’s sex dolls will be replicated and there will be a whole goddamn army of plastic toys running amuck. Help me with this, will you? If don’t, I might as well run into this fire wall, because I simply can’t do something like this by myself.”
  “You blackmailing me with the guilt of your suicide?” asked Tovia.
  “Yes,” said the Cretin, falling to his knees.
  “Who have you talked to about this?” she asked, indicating the shimmering prison.
  “Not a soul,” said the Cretin.
  “Why not?”
  “Who do I have to talk to? Who should I have told? Officer Larry? Do you think he would’ve investigated?”
  “Maybe Nick and Gretchen,” said Tovia.
  “I got kicked out of Nick’s house two years ago for passing out in his tomato patch.”
  “Actually, it was for pissing in the corner of his garage,” corrected Tovia, “although I don’t think your destroying his crop helped.”
  “Fine, let’s go tell him. I don’t see how it will help anything, but the more the merrier. Do you think he’ll let me have any of his beer?”
  “No, probably not,” responded Tovia. “You should probably sober up. It’ll help your cause.”
  The Cretin rose to his feet, paused for a microsecond, and then embraced Tovia with a rather overly-enthusiastic hug. It took a few minutes for her to push him away, after which they entered the Cutlass Supreme and drove toward Dirtbag Organics.

Thursday, July 23, 2020

Pointless Venture's Definitive Ranking of the Star Wars Films

This is me.

I've been rewatching Star Wars with my four-year old which has led to a lot of thinking about the series and what it has meant to me over the years. Star Wars is just a bunch of movies, but it's also a fertile playground for one's imagination; I remember writing fan-fic when I was a preteen, which was some of the first writing I ever did. My son instinctively loves Star Wars, proof of its eternal appeal. When I am an old man, it is possible that Disney will still be making Star Wars movies. As awesome/appalling as that sounds, I'd like to list/mini-review all the films in the mainline saga, just because this is a blog that needs content, and who doesn't like to read some dude's opinion on Star Wars? This is the internet, people.


1. The Empire Strikes Back. No controversial opinion here--The Empire Strikes Back is more or less universally regarded as the high point of Star Wars. It's the best constructed movie--the opening is awesome, with the massive battle on the ice planet Hoth--and it ends with one of the best cliff-hangers in cinema history. Vader gets a huge build up as a franchise defining villain; contrast the cool but subservient henchman in Star Wars to the superstar destroyer commanding, Force-choking badass in Empire. The lightsaber battle is also the best of the series, constructed to show the contrast between the green but talented Luke, and the experienced but underestimating Vader. Not just the best Star Wars film, but a legitimately great film in general.

Best Scenes: Hoth battle, Vader versus Luke.

2. Star Wars (A New Hope). A New Hope is a great introduction and an amazing feat of imagination. Lucas combined all of his influences (Samurai flicks, Flash Gordon, Dune) and made something transcendental. Mark Hamil's Luke is a relatable, if sometimes annoying, protagonist, while Harrison Ford's Han Solo wooed both boys and girls with his gunslinger cool. Lucas performed a nice reversal of fantasy archetypes by making Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia as much of a badass as the boys. The final battle against the Death Star is probably my favorite space battle in the series.

Best scenes: All the aliens in Cantina, Death Star battle.

3. Return of the Jedi. Lucas started to run out of ideas with the final film in the original trilogy. Derided for the teddy bear Ewoks, the movie's greatest sins are redundancy (another Death Star, only bigger) and aimlessness (Han Solo and Leia are given nothing to do). Still, the opening at Jabba's Palace builds on the Mos Eisley Cantina's alien menagerie, while giving us cool monsters (Sarlacc, Rancor, Jabba himself) and good action. The ending is satisfying, with Luke finally defeating the Emperor and redeeming his father. Probably my favorite Star Wars film as a kid.

Best scenes: Speeder chase in Endor; Vader versus Luke 2.


4. The Force Awakens. An excellent reboot of Star Wars: A New Hope. Unfortunately, it follows its predecessor way too closely--did we really need another Death Star--but the new cast, led by Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver, are very likeable and charismatic. The overall story is solid, although you can tell that the writers tried to figure out how to recreate the rebel versus empire dynamic of the original trilogy. Loved the scenes in Jakku of Rey scavenging the rusting hulks of Star Destroyers. Loses points for the bad way Han Solo went out.

Best scenes: Rey and Finn escaping Jakku in the Millennium Falcon, Kylo Ren freezing Poe's blaster bolt.

5. The Last Jedi. Were it not for the beginning of the Last Jedi, it would rank much higher on this list. Rian Johnson gives Finn and Rose a prequealesque trip to a gambling planet that ends with them being doublecrossed, robbing our heroes of their very heroism by making them look like two gullible dumbasses. Poe arguably suffers worse. The movie obviously wants us to think Poe has to learn to temper his hotheadedness and trust in authority, but making him into a mutineer was a bad decision. Also, why should he trust Admiral Holdo? Despite being Leia's favorite, Poe has never heard of her. Blindly trusting in authority is what the First Order does. Nevertheless, Rey and Kylo's storyline is great, and I liked the way Luke went out. The confrontation in Snoke's throne room is the best combat sequence in the entire series. I wish Johnson had done Rise of Skywalker, because the Last Jedi set up a much better movie than what we got.

Best scenes: Luke drinking blue milk, Kylo and Rey's battle with the Praetorian guards.

Get that purple dildo outta my face!

6. Revenge of the Sith. Revenge of the Sith is a great bad movie. It's cheesy as hell, but it has all the shit you wanted to see in the prequels--the destruction of the Jedi, Anakin's duel with Obi-Wan, Yoda taking on the Emperor. There is a total of five lightsaber fights in this film, and the opening sequence's space battle is no slouch, either. However, Anakin's supposedly tragic fall from grace is a complete failure, due to Lucas's wooden dialogue and poor, miscast Hayden Christenson, whose Anakin is a whiny, entitled sociopath. I get that he might reluctantly slice Mace Windu's hand off to save the Emperor, who has promised to save Padme, but five minutes later, he's walking into the Jedi Temple to murder his former friends and younglings. Still, a good watch if you're fairly drunk.

Best scenes: Old Palps screaming "noo" and shooting out his blue fire, Yoda and the Emperor throwing hover carts at each other like video game characters.

7. The Rise of Skywalker. A film completely out of ideas. J.J. Abrams should have never finished the series. He's not a creative--he's a reboot guy, someone who'll put out a serviceable, if unimaginative movie. Despite Kylo being set up as the main bad guy in Last Jedi, J.J. puts him back in the henchman role and shoehorns in old Palps while never bothering to explain how he crawled out of the exploded reactor core of the Death Star. Plot hole after plot hole ensues, with our heroes moving from one planet to the next with no real memorable sequences. The ending is okay (turn off your lightning hands, Palps!) but it can't erase what a rush job this movie obviously was.

Best scenes: Palps shooting his blue shit into the sky, Rey battling Kylo on the wreckage of the Death Star.

8. Attack of the Clones. I think the first half of Attack of the Clones isn't too bad. From the onset, it's obvious Hayden Christensen's Anakin is not going to be a relatable protagonist (non-sociopaths don't commit genocide against Tusken Raiders), but Ewan McGregor is a good Obi-Wan, and Natalie Portman tries her best. Obi-Wan's detective work on Kamino leads to a memorable showdown with Jengo Fett, and Yoda versus Count Dooku is cool, if goofy. Still, the love scenes are so goddamn bad you can't help but skip Anakin and Padme's unconvincing love story, and the movie's CGI hasn't held up too well.

Best scenes: Yoda versus Count Dooku... Natalie Portman in a corset 

9. The Phantom Menace. You know what, I think Jar Jar Binks was fine. He at least displayed a normal emotional range, unlike any of the three human protagonists. Little Annie was the first step in destroying Darth Vader's legacy. Still, the Podrace sequence is cool, as is the lightsaber battle between Maul and the Jedi. Easily the most nonessential Star Wars movie.

Best Scenes: Mentioned them already.

Bonus rankings for Solo and Rogue One. Solo is a much better movie than the reviews suggested. I liked it a hell of a lot more than Rise of Skywalker. Rogue One has some beautiful camera work but flat characters. Could slot either film in the middle of these rankings.




Sunday, July 19, 2020

Weightlifting: Steady Progress

The Rock has made steady progress for like forty years.

For the last three months, I've been doing block periodization based on the Juggernaut Method. This isn't the most exciting way to train, but a microcycle only lasts three weeks, so after six weeks you're hitting somewhat heavy weights again. I've hit a few PRs (Benched 225 for 12 and 240 for 9, high bar squatted 275 for 13) but most importantly, I've kept progressing while not injuring myself. In fact, this is probably the healthiest I've been in the eight or so years I've been lifting. I've learned that the squat needs to be tight all the way down and up; that the bench press demands tucked shoulder blades and a decent arch; and that deadlifting for volume brings results. My four workouts per week seldom take more than an hour, as I keep assistance work to the minimum. Rows, pullups, arms, and close grip bench press for 3 to 5 sets of ten on upper body days; high bar squats, leg raises, log lifts, and paused squats for lower body days. Log lifts are fun. We had a giant tree fall down at my work, so I sawed it up and took one of the biggest logs back to my garage gym. I weighed it at 177 lbs on a bathroom scale. Who knows how accurate that is, but I have fun picking it up and holding it for a count of ten before throwing it as far as I can. Who needs stones when you have giant logs? It feels like a front squat from the bottom, and I do it on my deadlift day. As for deadlifts, I've focused on doing a lot of sets with just double overhand grip, which has made my forearms strong as hell. After next week, I think I'll do a brief two week peak and see if I set any new one rep maxes.

In an additional note, the used weights market is ridiculous right now, due to people building their own gyms because of the coronavirus. A buddy and I went to a used sporting goods store, and there was no weights available other than brand new dumbbells marked up to exorbitant prices. I'm not saying you should join a gym right now, but if you have some weights, you might be better off doing high rep sets for a while until you can find a good deal.

Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Writer's Block: Death of a Nation


Let's go outside and breath

The ragged air

Cloth strapped to our faces

Our hands clean and pink

To burn beneath the summer sun

Every day we see the price of denial

Every day we watch as things pass

It's the easiness with which we ignore reality

That really bothers me

Everything is fine

The sky is still blue

I can still breath

At least, I can today.


What will tomorrow bring?

Will the homeless stand in the streets?

Will the jobless pay their rent ?

How many band-aids can we tape across

The bleeding arteries?


I have my routine, my circle of people

My isolationist's gift

As the months pass and the grass dries

I wonder what fresh horrors await

You can hope but time keeps no promises

There is no such thing as a sure thing

Saturday, July 11, 2020

New Video: Paul Revere




Paul Revere is my most ambitious song lyrically. It's also the longest song I've ever written. Thematically, it's about how sex is the great motivator, along with alcohol. Instrumentally, it's just guitar, bass, organ, and drum programming. Would've been great to build this one with a band, and with the right people, it could be a great ending song for a set. I think I played it live a couple of times, but my three piece wasn't right for it.

Thursday, July 9, 2020

Doom Eternal Review

This is a cool looking game.

I don't think I've ever done a complete 180 on a game like I have with Doom Eternal. I was so disappointed with my initial experience with Doom Eternal that I returned the game after two hours. I had just replayed Doom 2016, and Eternal was such a poor sequel to that game both in tone and gameplay that I perhaps overreacted. The game seemed needlessly complex and over-designed. The perfect combat loop of Doom 2016 was replaced by extraneous button-pushes and old-school platforming. Fortunately, Doom Eternal went on sale for thirty bucks a couple weeks later, and for that price I decided to give it a try. Once I got over the fact that Doom Eternal was not just more Doom 2016, I started to embrace the game on its own terms and appreciate what it was trying to do.

This is a difficult shooter that expects the player to keep track of many things at once. You have your flame belch, a flame thrower that immolates enemies who then drop armor as you damage them. The chainsaw is your main method of ammo replenishment, rather than the optional tool it was in Doom, and if you don't want to constantly run out of ammo, you have to chainsaw fodder enemies regularly. Glory kills function just like in Doom, but perform two of them and you'll have the option of performing a Blood Punch, a devastating melee attack that can severely weaken powerful monsters. You also have a recharging grenade launcher that can shoot ice grenades, which really comes in handy for crowd control when you're juggling twenty-plus enemies at once. Finally, you have enhanced movement options--in addition to your double jump from Doom, you can now perform two quick dashes as well as grab on to horizontal poles in order to swing from them like Tarzan. Add in the fact that most powerful monsters have damageable parts--you can shoot the rocket launchers off the revenant and the gun hands off the mancubus, for example--you have a game that expects quite a bit from you during a firefight. Initially, it's a little much to handle--the beginning levels throw several tutorials at you, introducing most of your new abilities in a few seconds, and then send you on your merry way to deal with arachnotrons and hell knights--but around the midgame point, you finally start to get into the combat rhythm that Doom Eternal requires of you. This is due to level design improving, as well as your arsenal, while your fingers have finally figured out which buttons to hit during what moment. The supergore nest level was when I finally mastered Doom Eternal, and it's also a wild ride through a hell and guts infested earth city.

Tonally, Eternal is a departure from Doom 2016. Whereas that game seemed to be a mishmash of Doom 3's realistic spaces and horror aesthetic with the more frantic gameplay of Doom 1 and 2, Eternal goes full nostalgia. The enemies possess none of Doom 2016's grindhouse design--they look like updated renders of the original game's cartoons. The whole art style screams Heavy Metal (by which I mean the influential magazine as well as the music genre), and one of Eternal's best gags is that the Doom Slayer can find and collect records from the soundtracks of id's classic games. I don't know if I prefer the tonal changes to the style of Doom 2016, but I like what Eternal does.

So what does Eternal flub? The platforming, mainly. There are many platforming sections which serve as breathers between the combat and little else. Some require decent timing, but I can't think of a decent reason for their inclusion other than old school shooters used to have lots of platforming. Also, the new combat loop works when you are given a big enough arena in which to do battle. Several of the early levels have you in little spaces. When you get stuck in a corner, the Doom Slayer is sort of screwed, since he doesn't have the durability of previous games till later. As far as difficulty is concerned, there is a huge jump from Doom 2016 to Eternal. I played Doom on Ultra-Violence (hard), and that's what I started Eternal on, and I was getting my ass handed to me until I figured out how to play. That difficulty stems from the aforementioned weaker Doom Slayer, as well as the sheer volume of heavy hitting enemies the game thrusts on you. I got used to it, but I don't know if I prefer Eternal's combat to that of Doom's.

This son of a bitch is a chore.

If you're a fan of hardcore older shooters, then you'll probably love Eternal, with the caveat that it's not Doom 2016, which was a classic. I don't know if it is a better game that Doom 2016 (I greatly preferred Doom's wink and nod approach to story as opposed to Eternal's obsession with its boring lore), but it's already occupied 18 hours of my time, and I have several levels to go. It also caused me to abandon my playthrough of Titanfall 2, which was pretty good, so I think that speaks to Eternal's quality. So get it if you'd like to indulge in a little ultra violence.

Eat it, Mancubus.

Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Muh Freedoms!


Hello, this is Karen. I just want to tell everyone why I shouldn't have to wear a mask during a pandemic that has killed over a hundred thousand people. I have a lot of reasons, but the first and most important is the Constitution. The Constitution gives me the power to do whatever I want, even if it means hurting people with my negligence. Don't ask me for a specific Article or whatever; I don't know nothing about specifics. Specifics are for Communists and people who hate the American Dream.

Second reason is that a mask interferes with my ability to breath. It is uncomfortable to wear a mask, and I will not be inconvenienced. I don't care if your store requires a mask; once again, the Constitution gives me the Freedom to enter into any business at any time (as a white person). This is America; I don't have to do what you tell me. Wearing a mask makes my face all sweaty and I start to break out. I don't want to do it. You can't make me.

Third reason is Fuck You. Don't Trample On My Freedoms! America is about doing whatever the fuck you want, consequences be damned. America is about not giving a shit about other Americans. I'm not going to get the coronavirus; I just know I won't, and even if I do get it I'll be fine. If I will be fine, then I don't care what happens to you. Freedom to be selfish is the most important American freedom to protect. I don't care what the science says, because I don't care about science.

Does Trump wear a mask? Hell no! He's a man, and men especially shouldn't wear masks because masks trample all over their masculine virility. My husband doesn't wear a mask; he also doesn't cover his mouth when he coughs or wash his hands, because Fuck You, that's why. He also showed up to the statehouse armed with an AR-15 dressed in combat gear that barely covered his three-hundred pound bulk. He did it to protest the tyranny of caring about others. You can't make us care about you. We have Freedom on our side. What do you have on yours? Hippy bullshit and goddamn science. What a foundation on which to build a country.

So the next time you call security to pull me out of the entryway of a Whole Foods, think about how you're violating my Freedom to be as big an asshole as I want to be. We won't put up with it. God Bless America.

Saturday, July 4, 2020

The Losers: The Small Town Streets of Hillsdale, Indiana


A short chapter from the Losers, written in the present tense. I like writing in the present tense, but most people are used to novels being written in the past tense. Still, it's nice to shake things up a bit. Silica is going to be a real challenge. She's an alien that's transitioning into becoming human. There's a lot a writer can do with that, but it'll take some skill and thought. I'll try my best to pull it off.


The Small Town Streets of Hillsdale, Indiana
Main Street, lamp-lit, quiet other than a car passing on Walnut, heading for the highway. The sidewalks are nice and in fine condition. The buildings are vintage, home to little shops selling knickknacks to no one. There’s a harp store, a diner, a coffee shop that will go out of business. The street goes down to a pavilion from which one can stare at the muddy polluted waters of the Ohio river. At this moment the moon is shining distorted on the waters, painting a spectral image, ghost lights that beckon and call to the mutated fish swimming in the depths. A little park extends past the pavilion, and underneath the playground equipment a teenager is dabbling in some hard drugs. The humidity has set in, carrying with it the sticky sweats of summer, mosquitoes hatching in stagnant pools. Nobody sees the woman darting in between the lights, hiding in the shadows like a vampire. She sees things and tries to understand them but it is a nightmare to her, a world that makes sense until it doesn’t. In the glass windows of the coffee shop she sees herself and stares at this new body she’s created, this identity she’s inhabited, and wonders how she can fill this flesh and make a person from the fantastical reaches of a perverted mind. How many people know how to make a person? Most of us stumble into who we are through happenstance and genetics. Silica doesn’t have any genes; her genetic history is as fresh as her identity. She can’t look back at her father and see the same nose, the same quick temper. What she has is true freedom and it is terrifying. Bemoan the deterministic circumstances of life at your own risk. Evolution has given something to you which may prove useful.
   She finally makes it to the pavilion, where she pauses and stares at the moonglow. The teenager in the playground coughs loudly, causing her to duck down and huddle beneath the railings. Every once in a while she gets an image in her mind’s eye so terrible that she almost freezes in place like a deer caught in the headlights, staring in amazement at its own approaching doom. A mosquito lands on her arm and sticks its proboscis into her flesh to extract the life-giving blood within. Have a drink, she thinks. Where she comes from, there are no insects. The brilliant ecological web that humanity takes for granted does not exist elsewhere. Wraiths pass through matter while dead oceans bubble up steaming into the sky, the searing heat unimaginable to a terrestrial creature. To walk and to fill one’s lungs with air, to taste and feel and hear, it is all a marvel to Silica.
   There is Kentucky across the water, its shores verdant and sparsely inhabited. The vastness of the power plant is a grand disfigurement, but people have done worse things with the land. A fish jumps out of the water to swallow a dragonfly. It is unimaginable how much suffering is occurring in the natural world at any given moment. The kid coughs again, the smoke burning his lungs, and through his haze he sees Silica looking over the railing, her eyes like two moons. He has a vision of himself as a child running through his grandmother’s backyard with two sticks in each hand, a brown-headed little boy playing swords, swinging through the air at imaginary enemies. Those enemies have strange names, like depression, anxiety, anger, disappointment. They crawl out of the darkness and walk in the broad daylight, sucking at his soul, devouring any promise he had. What is left when all the happiness and hope have been drained from your body? He sees her eyes and thinks that she understand, but she doesn’t. All Silica sees is a juvenile male hiding underneath a playset cradling a smoking object in his hands.
  She rises and takes a tentative step into the light of Main. The blood pumping through her veins has resumed its normal velocity; a wave of calm has materialized, for no other reason than fatigue. It is exhausting to run always, and sometimes the will to survive dissolves suddenly, without warning. In those terrible moments, death often comes, by way of jaws on the throat or claws in the back, but Silica remains unharmed. She stretches out a hand, raises it open palmed, because the voice in her head has told her that this is a human greeting, a gesture of welcome and peace. The teenager does likewise. They stand that way for a long time, contemplating the silence between them, the tenuous connection that neither wants to break. And then she’s off, back into the night, looking for another place to hide. The teenager wonders whether he witnessed a ghost or a hallucination, or even a sign from God.

New Music: Firefly

  A twelve-year old song that I wrote in Cincinnati. I don't believe it was ever played live, which is a shame, since it's a nice li...