Tag Archives: gaming

Erlebe. Entdecke. Teile.

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Und lass uns wissen, wie es dir gefällt…

I guess it’s time to move back out 1000 years from now, when the reverberant effect of the Montana Freemen (not Morgan Freeman) and the “overreaching power” of Janet Reno (not Reno 911) repeat themselves ad nauseum.

As will undoubtedly play out, larger and larger groups will form to counter the perceived threat against a way of life that is neither here nor there.

Will it just be another fringe group effect, with a few people willing to die for their beliefs or, if the economy sours further, will a coalition build that has momentum bigger than the forces necessary to stop smallscale uprisings?

Little did I ever realise that I would be able to move into an area of life that is seemingly above and beyond all local calls for action.

I defend life itself, regardless of temporal politics.

My goals are to maintain a storyline that is outside one species or even one world.

Even so, I can entertain myself along the way, move a few chess pieces and watch the pond waves scatter.

Observe archetypes listening to clandestine MP3s and homemade DVDs in public carparks in preparation for personal war while legally amassing armaments and getting quartermasters to turn the other way.

It’s much more exciting to let an armed populace battle itself (e.g., Syria) than get wrapped up in an imaginary battleground of multiplayer online games.

Where is the storyline leading us today?

Hier ist dein Bamboo.

Draw me a tale, if not a tail.  Create a comic, if not a comic.  Package a graphic novel within a graphic novel with novel graphics.

When the pen and the sword are equal, the fun begins.

We don’t need alien attacks or Andromeda strains to enrich the plot.

We might as well have urban clubs where people buy fresh cadavers for the main course at dinnertime than the rare serial killer cannibal in bestseller lists.

Reality is much more interesting.

Pull my leash, it’s time to take me for a walk…

What is lambda over pi?

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In the part of the world where I burn fossil fuel to push a four-wheeled vehicle over paved roads, I often encounter math geeks proudly displaying an unusual symbol that I can only describe as lowercase lambda over pi.

These geeks refer to themselves by a moniker that makes even less sense than the symbol — the Crimson Tide — expressing their sheer delight that math equations equate to broken bodies on a field of play, preferably of young men on the other side of the line, some on “offense,” some on “defense,” and some on “special teams.”

Where did this mathematical symbol originate and what does it mean, precisely:

Beware Greeks geeks bearing gifts — that’s all I have to say!

Finally, a quiet nod to a humble man who preferred anonymity for taking one step on behalf of his species in appreciation for the math, engineering, science and technology that allowed him to put his bootprints on a natural satellite circling our planet.

Thanks to the kind folks at the Main Dish in Meridianville, Alabama, who served up a delectable meal for my wife and me and told us about a show on the tellie called Restaurant Impossible which features the family and decor changes that transformed an old ice cream parlour interiour into an elegant roadside steakhouse.  Casey — blonde hair or brunette — your service was perfect.

There once was a dog named Vetch

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While the Venezuelan government decides whether to threaten the U.S. and/or British intelligence agencies for the recent destruction of vital equipment meant to scare Central and South American countries into submission, the Association for the Assertion of Ascension assessed the accuracy of counterterrorism techniques taught in typing pools.

Very cool.

Now, a word from our sponsor:

Have you ever wanted to zoom in on your list of potential customers, getting to know not only their general habits that you’ve targeted for years but also their quirks, so you can tailor products to their needs and whims in the moment?

Well, we here at Bullseye Tech have just the service you need.

As you’re probably aware, we’ve provided surveillance data to governments around the world for years.

Why, just this week we were asked by your government to plant a person in each showing of a film about what the world will be like if your current chief executive is reelected.  These casual observers have been capturing facial snapshots of all the audience members, evaluating emotions displayed during specific scenes in the film, and recording private conversations they carry on while entering the theatre, watching the film and exiting in order to ascertain the range of voice intonations that indicate shock, surprise, agreement and/or controlled rage.

In other words, does a documentary like this simply serve to reinforce beliefs, strongly or weakly held?  Can it actually change voting patterns?

In addition, we use DMV data of the audience’s vehicles to gather property ownership, tax history and election data captured in private voting booths.

Select members of the audience were tagged with waterproof audiovisual and GPS data collection devices that send information on an hourly basis for up to 48 hours and then self-destruct, resembling bird droppings, splattered food and other innocuous substances often found on clothing and motor vehicles.

By determining the film’s effect on the actual voting and shopping behaviours of our government’s “customers,” we help keep the local economy running at its current level of inefficiency in order to destroy the economies of rival governments in other parts of the world.

As you can see, we have our fingers on the pulse and our probes on the thoughts of any and every customer you can imagine, from pet spiders to neglected great-aunts.

Give us a call today because we already know your business is about to go under due to the services we provided to your rivals who, for now, are one step ahead of you.

However, if you buy our latest technology, you’ll have a competitive edge on your rivals who were unwilling to pay for upgrades.

Don’t delay! Time is a commodity you can’t afford to lose when price is no object!

We return you to the limerick contest currently in progress:

There once was a dog named Vetch
Who played a mean game of Fetch;
His owner, though blind
Was not very kind —
Ordered his dog to catch, then retch.

Back to the storyline currently taking place in the unmapped borough of Progress, Ecuador

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An insider inside the insidious secret buildings of an unnamed organisation shared secret inside information with me secretly inside a restaurant where the old-fashioned switcherooski trick of placing a USB stick inside the secret sauce of a sweet dish delivered a soothing sensation.

In other words, I learned why children in certain neighbourhoods are encouraged to open the valves on fire hydrants.

For years, the unnamed organisation has tracked vehicles by placing pedestrian tracking devices on them — namely, fluorescent dyes and radiative markers — that allowed surveillance personnel to follow a quickly-fading trail of vehicles passing through these uncertain, certain neighbourhoods.

With GPS trackers, the ability to tail a suspect has changed.

However, the pedestrian methods still work.

So, yesterday, in cooperation with local unnamed authorities, I placed a few untraceable chemicals in my power washer fluid so that vehicles passing through my neighbourhood and driving through the liquid crossing the road in front of my house can provide backup data for the GPS trackers.

Also, some parents who have signed on for “Track my kids at any cost” program will be given the appropriate data to approach their children about their unregulated behaviour patterns.

Needless to say, military institutes for the improvement of teenagers have, as usual, tapped into the database to refine their prediction algorithms for future enrollment preparation.

Meanwhile, Central and South American countries are deciding whether to prove once and for all that the UK, with its depraved and decadent royal family members, is ripe for a full-scale invasion, aided by years of secret infiltration of British organisations through liberal immigration policies.

In the old days, invasions were carried out by a large armada.

Those days are behind us.

These days, invasions are decades-long in implementation, ensuring that the invaded country never sees what happened to it.

“Divide and conquer” is meticulously carried out in excruciating detail, through propaganda campaigns delivered by organisations within the invaded country itself, by using subliminal messaging of the highest order (disguised in the lowest common denominator).

Common courtesy requires that I tell you no more.

Besides, I accidentally swallowed the USB stick in the styrofoam container of delicious leftovers.

Nothing like a normal bodily function to delay the release of more data, such as what you were doing taking a shortcut through a specific neighbourhood and why Ecuador has more positive press than a country that should be basking in the warmth of Olympic fever but, instead, was brought to its virtual international knees by the simple act of diplomatic immunity for a simple whistleblower.

Horatio Hornblower would be proud.

When you have a whole species dangling from your fingers like marionettes on the small stage of the theatre of life, for your sole soul entertainment, life is good.

Laura lost 45 pounds and Jenn continues to celebrate her good health after a debilitating accident.  Life is better.

The Saga of the Baked Potato

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The Clinic to Free People from the Social Disease of Baldness announced their 1000th scalp transplant today, exceeding the number of face transplants, making many men and women happy, hairy customers, lining the pockets of salespeople trying to make a profit from every piece of donated bodies they have stockpiled.

The Hermaphrodite Artist Known as Unknown revealed its latest head transformation, having transplanted strips of living flesh of dead people from many races and tribes onto Unknown’s skull, thanks to the well-paid skills of the surgeons at the Clinic to Free People from the Social Disease of Baldness.  Rumours says that Benetton and Unknown are about to launch a new advert campaign together.

Stephen King and Google have signed an agreement to make a remake of a rerelease of “Christine,” with a Google autonomous vehicle assembling a stalker’s profile of certain people and following them around with a 360-degree camera, capturing WiFi data that it adds to its obsession with these people and accidentally posts to an anonymous hacker’s website occasionally out of a love/hate relationship that the vehicle is experimenting with in an emotional database it has built based on the DSM-5.

Our team of international peacekeepers tested its network of undetectable “mines” that were planted along the coastlines and in the ports of major Chinese, Russian and American cities.  The mines are actually motion-detecting, laser-guided stealth missile launchers that resemble the terrain at the bottom of oceans and bays, triggered by the movement of surface and submerged watercraft carrying military equipment.  Live demonstrations will depend on the outcome of upcoming coups and national elections in various parts of the world.

That’s all for today.  Back to contemplating life on another planet…

A Tool of the O’Tooles, the Toolmaker’s Tool, a Telling Toll of Tall Tales

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Have you ever seen your influence upon another and wondered why the brief moment in which you created a character — Peter O’Toole’s Lawrence of Arabia, for instance, “Father of the Sponge” (‘Ab al-‘Isfanjah” (أب الإسفنجة)) — had longer-lasting impact on others than on yourself, a wayward drunk or a drunkard on his way up?

Are local musical acts, such as Mandolin Orange and Snake Oil Medicine Show, more interesting to you than overhyped international pop stars?

Do you find yourself typing the wrong word, “that” instead of “than,” frequently?  Can you trace that habit to your first typing lessons, formal rather than self-taught?

In the transition from one storyline to another, the Committee’s influence changes drastically.

Are you prepared for the change in the influence upon you?

Can you separate fact from fiction, reality from fantasy, storytelling from history?

Let us return to this time period, where our species’ influence upon itself garners the most attention…

History a few thousand or a few million years from now has plenty of time to tell its own story!

Last link loaded too long, didn’t it?

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Here are some comic/horror book covers that don’t take long to load:

 

And one more PDF biggie that does take a long time to load:

Comic-horror-book-covers

 

 

Separating the amateurs from the pros from the cons

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Well, back to the storyline that won’t go away quietly.

Turns out the Committee has issued its final opinion to settle the debate on what separates a professional athlete from an amateur athlete and either one from a convict.

Simple: the best body modification that money can buy.

Therefore, from this day forward, all professional sports association must allow players to use as many chemical concoctions and prosthetic additions as they and/or their sponsors can afford.

Amateur athletes must continue to refrain from enhancing their bodies in any way that requires more than basic nutrition to supplement a hard exercise regimen.

Of course, this puts pressure on the professional spectacle that used to be a competition between amateur athletes called the Olympics.

Because professional athletes can participate in the Olympics, all Olympic athletes may take whatever steps they, their family, their sponsors and/or their country deems necessary to win.

Or, as they like to say in scifi, may the best cyborg crush its opponent in glorious technicolour!

The starving barbarians at the gate will still be barred from entry until such time as they prove themselves civilised enough to behave like a normal doped-up athlete in the Olympic spotlight — sorry, no more grunting in front of a microphone and camera like a tennis player on the court — you must be able to speak in sentences longer than two words, even if your opponent is bleeding to death in the arena from your crushing blow to the head.

Five Minutes Until Closing Time

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The situation is this: what do you want after the crisis in Syria is less violent in chaotic parts of that geopolitical zone?  How do you want the people suffering the worst economic conditions in the Eurozone to react?  If you don’t have to pay your medical bills, who’s going to determine if you got your money’s worth?

Tuned in to Pandora radio, picked the Soundgarden station and an advert for “Meet Singles in Your Area” popped up.  Switched to the Claire Lynch station and an advert for “Viagra” popped up.  Stayed up when Alison Kraus started playing.  Very punny.

Anyway, so we’ve got supply lines to regional energy sources which we want to stay open.

We’ve got people in the Middle East who claim that civilisation originated there.

We have people in China trying to prove the same thing.

Thing is, does it matter?

What is civilisation?  Violent suppression?  Censorship?  Surveillance?

And that’s just in the UK.

When is a revolution acceptable?

Who gets to choose when to participate in an uprising?

Is every wealthy person an “alpha?”

Is every person in a position of authority — in charge of military forces, that is — an “alpha” or a “beta?”

[Cue references to “Brave New World”]

What does it mean to be an American or a world citizen?

Can you claim membership in both groups?

I’m blending in with my surroundings, the chameleon nearly invisible, a reflection of the intersecting waves of social [in]justice, letting words, images, labels and such flow through and around me.

Some call it happiness.

I call it being me/not-me.

On Canada Day, I consider a visit to the country via Alaska, wondering if I should move to the land of depleting boreal forests, oil shale field fracking and old gold rushes.

I trust our species to use as much fossil fuel as is in-the-slightest-bit feasible to extract because alternative energy sources are expensive in comparison to…well, pick your chart, select your argument and present to a skeptical public the why’s and wherefore’s of the social/economic/ecological cost of running a modern-day civilisation.

Meanwhile, I’m slapping some money down on a trip to the land of Molson, moose and moist towelettes.

Trekking over tourist traps and snow country.

Working my network of associates and colleagues.

Wondering if monsters sleep under rusted truck cabs in desert conditions near tundras.

Or was that a deserted Tundra truck under seeping monster cabs in rusty conditions?

Maybe ol’ Dusty Rhodes’ll be singing a sad song on the way to the next WWE Hall of Fame induction.

Time for another hand-drawn animated satirical cartoon disguised as what?  The last time, a horror novel.  The next time…?

Stay tuned!

Alone on this lonesome highway, the Wandering Wonderer meditates on the universe that revolves around him solely for his lifetime entertainment, the illusions enjoyable, if tragic or funny in forgotten moments of timeless navelgazing.

This is my dream, my illusion — getting our states of energy, our living, breath bodies in one form or another, out into the solar system, not just our electronic, robotic companions escaping the heliosphere — carrying on the work of our species for millennia, using stories, humour and Earth’s resources to make my [adopted] dream a reality worth living for.

Everything else is just a game in your dreams and illusions.  I’ll play your games sometimes but I promise I soon get bored.  If the alphas and betas want to fight each other to the death, go for it — don’t let me stop your madness, battling over the same ground your ancestors wasted their time killing each other to claim again for the very first time.  If those kinds of games of yours are all there is to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then end mine here.

No?  I’m still alive?  Good!  Time to explore new fields where resources and repurposed technology may make my dream come true…

The water sprinkler in the woods

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Yes, the new leader of the Committee is right.  I moved part of the supercomputer out of the sub-sub-subbasement and into the cave network stretched across parts of north Alabama, north Georgia, southeastern Tennessee and western North Carolina.

Some of my colleagues are investigating the feasibility of extending the network to subnetworks our subcommittees set up in Kentucky and Virginia centuries ago.

Just because I’m retired doesn’t mean I’m retired.  Although I am tired and losing my ability to maintain an understanding of this symbol set — the communication method you call the language of [American] English — to record these thoughts in the second decade of the 21st century.

I still keep in touch with my associates, of course.  After all, I have to eat and feed my family.

This very morning, I looked over some data analysis reports and found this tidbit of the future interesting.

A young boy, while watching “Real Steel,” came up with the idea of merging NASCAR, “The Last Starfighter,” “Real Steel,” and Google autonomous vehicles to give underutilised racetrack owners a way to make money when they aren’t hosting main events.

Without the need for human drivers and protective cages, racecars have taken on new shapes, much more interesting than the “win on Sunday, drive on Monday” models that have dominated the sport since its infancy.

Much more fun to watch, what with people sitting at home getting their fifteen seconds of driving their favourite car around the track, randomly picked throughout the race so that no viewer with special gaming equipment at home purchased just for this type of sport can leave the screen because anyone at any time can be picked to take over his or her (or its!) favourite car.

No one knows when other popular racecars have been taken over by autonomous software routines.

Seems like we have been here before, doesn’t it?

Didn’t Formula 1 already patent the invention of the robot driver called Michael Schumacher, discovering that even automatons like Mike deteriorate when pushed to the limit race after race, becoming less efficient, less successful, eventually?

Which brings us to the Olympics.  The sentient being we created for the U.S. Swim Team, Michael Phelps, is still performing well.  The early prototypes such as Muhammad Ali, Nadia Comăneci, and Lance Armstrong gave us trouble in the long run, but we learn from our construction projects no matter what they look like at the end.

How do we create these superstars of sports?

Easy.  We listen to the ignorance of the crowd.  Where they almost hit genius moments, like this writer, Jenna Wortham, who thinks interfaces with computing devices will only take place via our five senses.

Long ago, we learned how to put enhanced computing devices inside every part of the body, making individual body parts smarter, faster, cheaper.  Chemical, organic, undetectable — microorganisms that release designer molecules (phrases like “human growth hormone” are out of fashion, don’t you know?); microorganisms that clean up waste products such as urine, feces and sweat before they’re released from the body; microorganisms that attach to specific cells of the body (muscle tissue, for instance) without flooding the bloodstream with the appearance of banned substances.

Waiting for the slow feedback loop between our sensory organs and computing devices is just a plain waste of time and effort.

For now, we’ll let the populace believe their antiquated interface devices like mobile phones and tablet PCs are somehow making them more productive busybodies — not much better in retrospective than a group of Neanderthals sitting around the person who discovered fire, asking, “Okay, fine!  But can it cut up the meat for us afterward?” — because we know they don’t know better, and are stuck in this time period.

We’ll let dilettante comedians convince their audiences that they’re one step away from the great breakthrough, as long as you pay for their humour-filled advice.

After all, those who can’t see the future have only this moment in which to live.

Well, yes, I’ve told you you also only have this moment in which to live, but then that’s what I wanted you to believe at the moment I wrote it.

How else am I supposed to show you that every moment matters because no moment matters?

Anyway, I’ve an experiment to check.

If you put a water sprinkler in the woods and nobody noticed, would the birds that sipped water from dripping tree leaves have an effect on your future?

If I don’t humour myself, who will?  If I can’t humour myself, who can?

If a movie like “Into The Wild” is probably a false retelling of history, why tell it?

How can I find out?  Use an upcoming holiday trip to test the theories that supercomputers create to entertain themselves.

Repeating thoughts and news of natural events as a form of long-distance-over-time communication is more tiring than I first thought when I was invited to lead the Committee.  They hinted but didn’t tell me that a leader never stops leading.

Lucky me!

Back to my cup of hot tea on a day when 105 deg F is no big deal, watching a tick crawl up my leg and nestle into a break in my skin, releasing chemicals into my bloodstream that affect my immediate future, much less my future 1000 years from now.