New Music: Bad Circuitry

 

A riff-based funky rocker with me doing my best David Byrne impersonation. Another oldie that's sat on the back burner for ages. One day I will record every song I've ever written to my satisfaction.

Meet the Deplorables, The Next Generation

Pete "Pillow" Davidson, 35 years old, employed at a odor-eater distributor where he sometimes makes urinal cakes disappear into his armpits.

Current whereabouts: Staring at 45 second videos on his phone while he sits on the front porch of his trailer eating an entire bag of oatmeal creme pies.

Why he's voting for Trump: IMMIGRATION! They're coming over the boarder like zombies of death! I get tired of seein' em at the Mexican restaurant. Though I suppose they oughta have Mexicans at a Mexican restaurant. I just wanna see less of them. Also, Trump won't make me pay my child support, which I haven't been paying. When the hardworking, rural people of this country rise up, all them richies in DC and NEW YORK CITY will have to pay. WE MAKE YOUR FOOD. I MAKE YOUR URINAL CAKES. Kinda hard to pee in a toilet without a urinal cake, ain't it? FUCKING LIBTARDS WILL GET WHATS COMMING TO THEM!

Billy Richards, 49 years old, owner of a HVAC business that's constantly telling customers that their system is on the brink of irrevocable, catastrophic collapse.

Current whereabouts: Sitting at home on his couch, tweaking his Tinder profile while his wife toils in the kitchen.

Why he's voting for Trump: Look man, eggs shouldn't cost ten dollars at the grocery store. Gas shouldn't be five dollars a gallon. And frankly, I don't give a shit what happens to Ukraine. Where's that at? Fucking Asia? Americans care about meat and potatoes issues, like how many black people are allowed on the street after dusk. You think I want my daughter to get an abortion? If she gets knocked up, she's out on the street, I don't give a fuck. Tilly, where the hell's my dinner at? Jesus fucking Christ, she's getting fat. TILLY! WHERE THE FUCK IS MY DINNER?

Remy Nottingham, 28 years old, youth minster at a church where they use props like Bugs Bunny.

Current whereabouts: On his computer, spreading misinformation that he thinks is true.

Why he's voting for Trump: I don't care if Trump is racist. No one does, except for liberals. I want someone to bring back Christian values by eliminating no-fault divorce and forcing the Bible into schools. The Bible says that a woman is the property of a man, and Ray Charles says that a woman's place is in the home. Nobody knows that better than Trump. By the way, I'm well aware of the man's faults. So he likes a steak well done. Is that a crime? The Bible says "judge not, that ye be not judged." Take a look a yourselves, liberals. Abortion is a crime!

 

Glenda Delano, 25 years old, housewife and Youtuber.

Current whereabouts: Gloating on video about how her traditional role as a homekeeper makes her more money than her husband earns (which isn't true).

Why she's voting for Trump: Traditional gender roles! We want to turn back the clock to when women were women and men were men! Is it feasible for only one working parent to support a family in America? Who cares! That's how it should be! All these transgender sex change operations are destroying the family fabric of this country! Did you know Kamala has never born a child? How many children has our glorious leader sired with his fertile seed? More than you can imagine! If you've never been pregnant, you're not a woman. Trump will hurt the people who I don't like. Is there any other reason to vote for someone?

Video Game Review: Space Marine 2

 

I was fairly certain that Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 would end up being a 6 or 7 out of 10 after playing the single player campaign, but after several hours spent in its Operations multiplayer mode, I'm giving it higher marks. This is a game designed around cooperative play, and although the AI isn't terrible, you really need another human player to make it interesting. For the campaign, you play as Titus, an Ultramarine serving penance for the events of the first game, which I didn't play. Titus is called out of obscurity to help fight against a Tyrannid invasion, and the plot soon centers around a Mcguffin that Chaos forces are bent on acquiring. The only semi-interesting beat is Titus's distrust of his squadmates, who also view him with suspicion, but they all come-around in the spirit of manly fascism. Space Marine 2's bulky boys don't have any criticisms of their imperial techno-hell; they're all too-ready to sacrifice themselves for the Imperium. There's none of the underlining criticism of totalitarianism that powered Gears of War--this is a straight up power fantasy about giant space marines squashing xenomophs and demons. And that's fine, really. I don't need a whole lot in a video game story. But something a little stronger thematically might have saved Space Marine 2's campaign from being as boring as it is.

Operations mode is a cooperative gametype where you play with two other players and accomplish objectives parallel to Titus's squad from the single player. This basically boils down to holding a point for a while while a timer ticks, although there are several boss fights that require player coordination. The Tyrannids are nasty aliens that'll swarm you, while Chaos forces have turned Space Marines as well as demonic hordes to deal with. You'll have a decent collection of bolt rifles and melee weapons to wield. The multiplayer is class-based, and the two classes I've spent time with are the Vanguard, which has a grapple hook as their special ability, allowing you to grapple onto enemies and pull yourself toward them, and the Assault marine, who specializes in melee combat utilizing jetpack-powered ground pounds. The shooting feels similar to Gears of War, whereas the melee combat is more hack and slash. Enemies can be countered, which results in either an execution or a temporarily stunned alien, lined up for an auto-aimed pistol shot. Heavier enemies like Tyrannid warriors and Chaos Space Marines will have to be countered to be killed swiftly, and the game quickly becomes complicated, with your character struggling to manage the horde while dueling with bigger threats. Average difficulty was appropriately challenging with my low-level characters. You can be revived three times before you have to wait for a respawn. You gain experience with every game, allowing to your unlock more perks for your character, as well as armor customization. It's a pretty entertaining multiplayer game, and although I don't think it'll have as much legs as Helldivers 2, developers Saber Interactive have already released a new Operations mission, bringing the total number of multiplayer maps up to seven. There's also a player-versus-player mode that I haven't tried. The single player campaign took me about ten hours to beat on Hard difficulty.

If you're looking for a good hack and slash horde shooter, you can't go wrong with Space Marine 2. Just don't expect a compelling single-player experience. One other note: this is a pretty demanding game. With settings maxed out and DLSS set to dynamic with my frame rate target being 60, Space Marine 2 keeps right around the 60 to 70 mark, with maybe a few drops into the high 50s at 1440p. I'm not sure if there's a lot of scalability, since it seems to be CPU-bound. I played at 4k a couple times and had about the same frame rate, so depending on your CPU, you probably won't get ultra-high frame times unless you're sporting a top end processor.

Screenshots:

 

Bad Poetry: Election

 

Election

Why the fuck

Do we have to go through

This shit again?

America once again has a choice

That shouldn’t be a choice at all.

On one side

With have stupidity,

Venality,

Conspiracy,

And sloth.

On the other,

We have someone

Who can speak in complete sentences

And who is promising

To continue democracy.

For nearly a decade,

I have wasted

Mental energy

Contemplating how someone

Could vote for a two-bit grifter

Who wears make up

And speaks in a vernacular

That you’d have to be an idiot

To understand.

Why is it close?

Are we as dumb

As we appear to be?

I fucking hope not.

Please, come November,

Let us have a small redemption

And vanquish the sins

Of a country.

Writer's Block: Mercy, the Waiter, and the Rabbit

 

I've written close to 8,000 words in my novel about a washed up rock star named Mercy Maddock. My method is to write at least 250 words every morning. I remember reading something where Stephen King said that if you can't sit down and write at least five pages, you'll never be a writer. Steve, I ain't got time for that! This little excerpt is about the devil that Mercy frequently hallucinates.

...

It’s 2009, and Mercy Maddock sits outside in a courtyard at the Fig Leaf, an upscale restaurant in downtown Chicago. A half a bottle of Maker’s Mark stands in the middle of the table, its bronze contents shimmering in the midday sun. He’s wearing sunglasses, and a cigarette dangles from the edge of his mouth, his cowbody hat tilted downward, as though he’s taking a siesta. The woman across from him looks like Debbie Harris in a red dress, but she’s not. Mercy mumbles something suddenly, some incantation, perhaps a half-remembered lyric, his lips parting just enough for the cigarette to fall down his barely buttoned dress shirt. Motherfucker he screams, in a voice heavy with ruin. The outburst jolts the woman awake, and her doll-like face contorts into pure contempt. You’ve fallen asleep she says while Mercy halfheartedly pats himself down, trying in vain to remove the burning cigarette. Why am I even here? He finally manages to find the cigarette, but his sunglasses have fallen to the table and his eyes, which are bloodshot and heavily bagged, are visible. He stares at the woman in confusion. What was her name? Debra? Mebra? Is Mebra even a name?

“Where in the hell is the waiter?” she complains. “I need a margarita.”

What is French for waiter? Garcon? Serveur?

“Waiter-man!” he bellows, head thrown back.

The waiter is a man with a thin mustache and sallow completion. Rather than an air of servility, he conjures a mood of everlasting sullenness, as though every request compromises the integrity of his soul. He gives the couple a look of utter loathing, then asks whether he can do anything for them.

“Margarita,” says the woman, barely looking at him.

“I need an aspirin, a pot of coffee, and sure, a margarita,” says Mercy.

“Sir, aspirin is not on the menu,” says the waiter.

“The other stuff, then,” replies Mercy.

The waiter does not move immediately; instead, he gives them one more long stare before slowly turning around.

“What the fuck is that guy’s problem?” asks Mercy.

“Who cares,” says the woman. “As long as he brings us our drinks.”

Neither of them notices, but the waiter pauses and turns his right ear. He lives alone in a crummy apartment littered with half-consumed cans of diet coke. His bedroom is covered in stamps, and the whole place inexplicably smells of neoprene. No one besides himself has ever entered his apartment in the past five years, and this fact bores a holes so deep into his soul that he has fallen into said crevice, and it is unlikely he will ever be able to climb his way out. He prepares the margaritas himself, going light on the tequila, almost entirely omitting the triple sec, and overdoing the lime juice with a bottle of nearly rancid liquid. The olives that he selects are slimy things the color of rotting turtle flesh.

“Your drinks,” he says, moments later.

The margaritas resemble defiled offerings. Mercy, even in his highly-inebriated state, recognizes this.

“Mate, what the fuck is this?”

Mercy picks up a glass and twirls its contents, sloshing margarita all over the table. He takes a sniff and wrinkles his nose.

“My teetotaler mum could do a better job than whatever the fuck this is.”

The waiter replies with a reptilian stare. Mercy doesn’t look at him. He thrusts the glass in his direction.

“Take it back, garcon. Bring us something drinkable, for chrissakes.”

“Let’s just leave,” says the woman.

“No!”

Mercy slams his hand down on the table, spilling the other margarita.

“It’ll take fifteen to twenty minutes at least to go somewhere else and get a proper drink, and I’m not leaving until the man brings us something we can imbibe without immediately vomiting. I have given him a personal quest. This is now his life’s work. The question is: can he do it? I don’t know, honestly. I have my sincerest doubts. I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you a Benjamin Franklin if you bring me a drinkable margarita. It doesn’t even have to be good. Just drinkable. Do you think you can do that, mate?”

The waiter’s eyes have a sort of heat behind them, a smoldering fire that threatens to erupt from his sockets. He turns without a word and leaves. His customers are, from the viewpoint of a sad little man, everything that’s wrong with the world. They are the embodiment of the forces that depress him, that prevent his having meaningful human contact. They are evil, vile, morally deficient. The woman is a whore; the man a Lothario. The values of his youth are gone and replaced by vulgarity and consumerism. He doesn’t recognize the modern world, and he has no way of interpreting it. He will present them with poison, and they will drink it with great vigor, and then he will take their money and light it on fire before them, a futile gesture, perhaps, but one that he must do in order to feel like he is a force and not an interloper.

In the kitchen he grabs as many bottles as he can find. Some of them are full of alcohol; others are full of cleaning supplies. He pours it all together in a big bowl along with a generous quantity of the triple sec that he had originally omitted. The various liquids mix like water and motor oil—there is an iridescent sheen to the thick skin sitting on top—but he pours the concoction into a cocktail shaker and gives it a merry shake. In the margarita glasses it festers like a poison. They can choke on this and die he thinks.

When he returns, the margaritas are presented with a little flourish, as though the cocktails are the result of honest labor and expertise rather than a misguided attempt to demean two insufferable customers. The woman doesn’t even look at it—she has enough sense not to even engage the waiter at this point. Mercy’s sunglasses are back on his face but resting just on the tip of his nose, and his eyes roll upward to stare at the waiter with extreme skepticism.

“The thing about waiters, mate, is that they’re not supposed to get offended. You suffer a little abuse, and in exchange you get a nice tip. Do I look like the type to stiff you? Have I ever stiffed a waiter?”

“I don’t care,” says the woman.

“It was more a rhetorical question,” says Mercy. “I’m gonna be honest with you, mate. This doesn’t look like a drink. It looks like a glass of bullshit. So that makes this the second glass of bullshit you’ve served me today. What am I to do, eh? I’ve made a solemn vow to not leave this establishment until I get a proper drink, but you don’t want to play along. Who is at fault here? Have you not violated the sacred code of the waiter? There is no honest desire to serve the customer. The customer is an object of contempt and ridicule. That’s fine, mate—go back and joke with the boys at my expense—but serve me with a smile on your face, or at least an expression of professional neutrality. You aren’t playing the game, mate, and while as a rock star I respect that, as a customer I am incensed. So what is the proper reaction?”

What is the proper reaction to a life of endless petty humiliation? The waiter says nothing. He has nothing to say.

Mercy is about to get up and kick the table over in an act of adolescent rebellion—adolescent in spirit if not actuality for a man pushing thirty—when he sees him cavorting down the courtyard. Six feet tall, with ears dangling, his cheap fur costume a mottled shade of pink. He smiles as he approaches, revealing large brown teeth stained from years of cigarette smoke. It’s the eyes that really get Mercy—they’re the brightest blue he’s ever seen, and all the mirth they hold has a meanness to it, as though he can only laugh at you, you stupid motherfucker. The man in the bunny suit stands right behind the waiter and leans his head on his left shoulder and grits his teeth. Suddenly a rancid carrot appears, dangling in between those grimy chompers, and Mercy feels his libido draining away along with all of his zest for life. He hasn’t seen this bastard since the Summer Fest ‘02 when the crowd parted like the Red Sea and the pink rabbit waltzed toward the stage, resulting in his forgetting of the lyrics and subsequent stage fright. Mercy doesn’t know what he is—a demon, Satan, a harbinger of doom—but the fact that he has appeared now to perch on the shoulder of this rebellious waiter can only mean that disaster is coming, and he won’t be able to stop it.

“Fuckin’ blimey,” whispers Mercy. “I see it. Do you see it?”

“Just get us the check, please,” says the woman.

Mercy grabs his large cellular phone and pulls his arm backward. He feels that throwing the phone at the bunny would be like pelting a lion with a pebble, but he has always been a believer in action over impotency, and he feels strongly that demons must be cast out rather than fled from, lest they realize that they have the upper hand.

“Do it,” says the rabbit. “You’ve always been a pussy shit fuck. I know singers with more talent at the local bordello. Your mother’s got the highest pitched voice I’ve ever heard.”

The rabbit has a five o’clock shadow that appears impenetrable. There are cigarette burn marks on his pink suit.

Meanwhile, the waiter has realized that this situation has gone amiss. There is fear now in Mercy’s eyes, an emotion that seems inappropriate, and he’s holding a cellular phone like a bludgeon. He takes a step back, but there’s something behind him, some heavy, dark force, and it pushes him forward, causing him to stumble into the table, upsetting the margaritas and spilling their contents all over the dress of the woman. Mercy screams—a yell of primal horror—and all of a sudden the waiter sees stars dancing in the sky as he lies prostrate on the concrete, blood trickling from his forehead. Why is he here? Why do we do the things that we do? Is there any sense in it all? He finds no answers as he loses consciousness.

New Music: Time

 

I've had the chord progression for Time for ages. E to F#minor; C#minor to G#minor; G#m to Gm to F# minor; then A to B to resolve on the E for the verse.For the chorus, I'm moving a second inversion triad (the E major figure on guitar) from G to F# to A to E while the top E and B strings drone on. To finish the progression, I walk the G figure down chromatically to an F/G before resolving. Not super complex, but maybe a little more sophisticated than your typical rock song. As for the time signature, I believe it is in 11/8, or 5.5/4. It's a Bo Diddly beat, or something like it, but to program it into a drum machine, I had to utilize 22 bars, which would break down to 11/8. For the arrangement, I leaned into the clean tones of my stratocaster, which is just the perfect rhythm guitar, especially when set to the neck and middle pickup. The bass line is a little busy, but with guitar and bass panned to the right and left channels, they compliment each other nicely. This was a fun song to work on, and I think it sounds pretty sick.