Sighinide

I just realized something.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been gorging on health-related supplements and boosters. I mean, I’ve been taking way, way more than the recommended dosages for some stuff… I convinced myself that I was doing it for my health but now I think I might have been self-medicating or something. Wow, imagine that. I mean… can you do that?

That’s impossible, right?

Is some of that stuff addictive? I mean, the roots and herbs and minerals and stuff. You wouldn’t think so, really, but some illegal drugs are herbs and isn’t cocaine a mineral too? It can be prepared as a salt.

I’m not saying that anything I was taking was like crack or anything- that would be nuts- but I was taking way, and I mean WAY, more stuff than I should have been, especially, now that I think about it, when I was feeling down or depressed, or stressed out at work. When I was really down I would go over by three or four times the recommended maximum dosages on the packages sometimes. Was I an addict? I mean, it wasn’t intentional that I would take the stuff just to escape from reality. So I did it without thinking. Is that addiction?

So I recently stopped ingesting all of what I was taking and I feel a lot better but I *think* I might be having some withdrawal symptoms weaning myself off of what I was taking. But that’s impossible, right? They’re just herbs and roots and minerals etc. It’s nothing illegal!

Eek. No, I’m OK. No problems here. I’m over this whole “addiction” thing. And again, nothing I was taking was illegal, so that means it wasn’t addictive anyways. So… move along, people. Nothing to see here. Nope.

I mean, I’m supposed to be some kind of genius, right? I was doing it to be healthy and I just did it wrong, but what if…

Eek.

An Open Letter to Hollywood:

If any one of you is reading this, I think I deserve an explanation.

We all know of the two police officers who were gunned down as retribution for the police actions against Eric Garner and Michael Brown. The officers were just shot down, in cold blood, while minding their own business.

Does this obvious, gross injustice not mean anything to you? Why is it that the deaths of people like Trayvon, Garner, and Brown receive your special attentions in interviews and on social media but these murders do not merit even a second glance from you? What is the reason for this double standard?

Surely it isn’t because you support the murder of these officers? I know you don’t. The old adage “silence is acceptance” does not apply to all situations. But the deafening quiet here is surprising.

I was kind of expecting at least a throwaway tweet or two saying that “we should all get along” or something similar and equally innocuous. But I- well, we- get nothing.

See, you can’t make a big deal out of the killings of one type of person and then ignore entirely the killings of others. It makes you look like you’re picking sides, and we don’t want that, right?

Right?

There are some things that even the depthless wisdom of the wizard king cannot fathom.

Those butt implants… they are big. Enormous, even.

How do they sit? Is it like sitting on a half-inflated beach ball? CAN they sit?

How do they sleep? The effect on their posture must be terrible! Imagine sleeping on your back all night with your whole body arched- your torso would be a foot higher than the rest of you!

Many questions. Few answers. Such is the fate of the eternal seeker.

I need a new chair, so I decided to head to the local OfficeMax today.

This is an annual trek for me this time of year. The trip is always interesting. I worked there in the copy center in high school, and I like to take note of what’s the same, and what isn’t, every year there.

It’s still the same. As usual. OfficeMax isn’t like those department stores that change and update periodically. The store is almost identical to the one I remember from twenty years ago. The floor is the same, except for the additional small cracks. The layout is the same, with the small difference of the copy center being at the front of the store, and not the back. Even many of the products are the same. The reams of brightly colored cardstock still catch my eye like they did back then. Seeing them always brings me back, just a bit, to how I used to watch over them to make sure they were plentiful and presentable. I checked them out when I was there today. Whomever was keeping them up was doing it well.

The employees are different, of course, but they still have the same air about them as I did back then. They were high schoolers- all of them, I think, and they reminded me of myself at that age.

I didn’t find the chair I wanted, but I did use my thieving skills to snag myself some contraband. Knowing a store well has it’s advantages. This year, I swiped 2 business card holders, a wallet, a folding business card holder, and 4 tiny plastic storage boxes. I stole it all correctly; they will never know.

I have no illusions. I do feel a twinge of regret for having done that, but only a twinge. Whatever our history, OfficeMax doesn’t care about me. They’re only another corporate conglomerate out to destroy me and my way of life. So fuck them, in the end.

Nostalgia has it’s limits, I guess. I only care about those who show concern for me, and they never did, in spite of my time there. So yes, fuck them.

*sigh*.

Next door to OfficeMax is a Best Buy. I went there and checked out their 3-D printer. Cool. The wave of the future! It wasn’t operational for customers, of course, and it was much too expensive to be an impulse buy, but it was cool to see it and the assortment of premade figures and such displayed next to it. Very nice.

As I browsed the store, I took a look at other things, just for curiosity’s sake. I checked out their phones, as I’m in the market for one. Nothing controversial there. The washers and dryers were interesting; our old ones are so long in the tooth and these were new. They seemed so much more user friendly, albeit too plasticy. Would these new ones last 30 years like the ones we have now? Maybe… but probably not, I’d wager.

When I browsed through the music racks, I was struck by Ariana Grande’s CD. It was a small revelation to see it there. Here was a girl I’ve known for years… back before she was famous. I still sometimes think of her as Ariana Grande, that very young, distinctly unglamorous musical theater geek that was having trouble adjusting to her role on Nick. I remember checking up on her twitter when it had around 10,000 followers, and wondering if she would ever reach 100K. Now she’s at… let’s see… 22 million! Holy crap!

Wow.

Time goes by so quick…

I sometimes forget how important it is that I do what I do. I guided Ari into her new role as a pop star, and my doing so affected tens, no hundreds, of millions of lives across the globe. God. Wow.

Lucy Hale’s new album was there, and I spent a good 5 minutes trying to decide if I should buy it or not. I didn’t- it’s 15 whole dollars- but I really should have.

The several Taylor Swift rows were empty, save for one lonely copy of Fearless. She’s like my wife at this point, right? And she’s by far the biggest pop star in the world. They can’t keep her music on the shelves, not even in these days. Again- wow.

Afterwards, I took a short drive to the local McDonald’s. They’d changed the place a few years ago. Changed it a lot.

McDonald’s where I live used to be an institution. It was, after all, born here. My dad loved McDonald’s when he was young. I mean, the original McDonald’s. The first establishment.

To hear him tell it, him and his friends were the ones that made the original restaurant so successful. After all, they might have been McDonald’s first regular customers. They were there, at least once a week, gorging on old man Kroc’s fries and hamburgers. To them, McDonald’s was a revelation- they loved it. Eating there became their most important weekly summer ritual. They were also the first restaurant employees- the original burger flippers, cashiers, and waitresses. Yes, McDonald’s originally had waitresses. On roller skates, believe it or not. And the entire operation was a tiny building with no indoor seating- just a small hut, really, with a window for ordering and paying.

It’s jarring to compare his stories of the humble first McDonald’s with what its become. It’s McDonald’s- not just the most iconic restaurant in the world, but also, something bigger- a symbol of America’s imperial influence, and possibly a symbol for America’s entire way of life. It’s become a civilization defining historical juggernaut that has affected in some way everyone on Earth.

All from that little hut with a little window, that gave out hamburgers to my dad for a dime.

Time flies…

Anyway, I digress.

The local McDonald’s here was originally built as a monument to McDonald’s roots in this area. It even had a special name – “Nostalgia McDonald’s”. It was built as a kind of love letter from the corporate headquarters to the local fifties vibe here that birthed the franchise.

It was quite an interesting restaurant; it had a fifties layout that had old fashioned booths and seats, classic paintings on the walls, and a working jukebox that played Elvis era Rock ‘n Roll. Encased behind glass in shelves recessed into the walls were assorted McDonald’s antiques, like the earliest Happy Meal toys and other cool things.

The theme even extended to the menu- every Tuesday night, the restaurant sold plain hamburgers for a dime, like they used to. For awhile, it became a weekly ritual for the kids in the area to go there, just like the old days. It was neat.

The most interesting thing about this McDonald’s to me were the programs. The TV’s that were hung from the ceiling broadcast black and white variety shows from the fifties on a constant loop throughout the day. It was very, very cool. These were shows that have, of course, been dropped down the memory hole because the fact that they aired stands in the way of “progress”. This was old comedy, the kind that’s been outlawed in today’s “open minded” America.

For example, every once in a while, you could look up when eating and see a performer in black face, entertaining his studio audience, which I thought was fascinating and different. This was history, come alive. It was TV like I’d never seen or heard of before.

But- what am I thinking? According to the regime blackface is clearly a terrible, inhuman, monstrous thing equal to any war crime. All such old shows should be hidden from the public if not outright destroyed for the good of mankind, historical value be damned.

So all that? The TV’s, the jukebox, the cool paintings, the artifacts? Today they’re gone. See, the area is more “diverse” now, which means that everything must become boring and stale. Anything that has a hint of history- of real history- must be abolished or destroyed to avoid offending somebody. Now, the restaurant is just another McDonald’s. It has the same boring walls and features as every other McDonald’s. In other words, it fucking sucks.

And while I’m typing, I won’t get into the fact that all of this area- all of the stores I visited today- were built on top of my family’s old farmland. They were the settlers here. My family made this area. Such things don’t matter, I know; we are a society with a narrow attention span that only values what’s new or “diverse”.

But it’s still important to me, however little it is to others.

Time flies…

Too fast, maybe.

A personal anecdote- this talk of “race war” from blacks reminds me of a kid I knew in high school. He was a bully, in spite of the fact that he was one of the weakest and shortest kids in school. In fact, this was his weapon. He would routinely intimidate and make fun of kids much bigger than him, comfortable in the knowledge that if any of the big kids started a fight, that it would be them that would get the punishment from the school administrators.

He continued this throughout high school with much success. Nobody touched him, in spite of his tiny size and big mouth. It ended the summer after his graduation, though. Rumors were that he cracked some fat jokes to a 300lb former classmate of his and got his head slammed repeatedly against the back of a pickup truck.

You see, school was over. He was in the real world then, and he forgot that the teachers weren’t there anymore to back him up.

I guess that some people need to learn the hard way.

Oh well. *Cracks knuckles*. Let’s get to work!

It’s a free country; anyone can say anything, provided it’s within legality. I do understand this. What I don’t understand is the willingness of so many to continually say things that put themselves in an awkward or dangerous place.

Last week saw an outbreak of celebrity tweets attacking the police over the death of Eric Garner, yet another hulking black thug who was killed after starting a fight with police officers. With predictable illogic, my celebrity “friends” then took to their bully pulpits to gush preposterous nonsense about the situation and blacks in general.

After this, the inevitable tragedies happened. Some of the “peaceful protests” that began in the wake of Garner’s death had turned violent by the end of the weekend. Of course. Yes, the mobs that coalesced under the banner of “nonviolent resistance” had begun, surprise surprise, looting businesses and attacking people. Of course.

And, of course, now many of my girlfriends look like accomplices to the mob action. Of course.

Why is it necessary, I ask, for my girlfriends to continue to offer vocal, public support for “peaceful protests” that they and everyone else knows will turn violent? Why must they continually defend thugs? Have their brains been so warped by rap music that they actually view career felons like Garner as heroes? Again, their enthusiastic identification with Garner, he of the 30 prior arrests, makes them look like accomplices to the teeming mobs at best, and criminal masterminds at worst. What are they thinking? Do they WANT violence done in their name?

Surely not, I would think, though stranger things have happened.

It’s not going to end well, is it? All of this, I mean. I mean, I know that, we all do (I think this is essay #6273 of mine on this very subject), but that doesn’t make it easier to swallow. There really is a shocking and incomprehensible ignorance at work here regarding this topic nowadays from all parts of the government’s media. At least, I *hope* it’s ignorance.

As an aside, I think that the Eric Garner situation illustrates well the difference between an A tier celebrity personality, like Taylor Swift, and the rest. Taylor dealt with the situation correctly from a career perspective by side stepping it entirely. Whatever her real feelings, she didn’t advertise something truly dumb, like the mass of B tier starlets beneath her. I chose my favorite well, I think.

Before I continue, let’s repeat the obvious reality, yet again. One more time, everyone, with resigned emphasis:

The most important social problem in the US today is the disenfranchisement of the working class white male. The most important social problem in the US today is the disenfranchisement of the working class white male. The most important social problem in the US today is the disenfranchisement of the working class white male. The most important social problem in the US today is the disenfranchisement of the working class white male. The most important social problem in the US today is the disenfranchisement of the working class white male.

Yes, there it is. Yet again.

At this point, I am upset, yes, but I’m also bored. I’m resigned to my fate of seeing so much of what I’ve created destroyed because of the dumbness and shortsighted perspective of my “friends”.

There was a time, a couple of years ago, when it seemed that Hollywood and the rest of the government media were going to make an effort to right themselves and embrace the only correct path forward: that of holding black America accountable for it’s epidemic of violent criminality and extreme aggression against whites. This was after my tweets after Obama’s re-election, when I attacked Hollywood for its duplicity and hypocrisy regarding racial politics.

That time is long past. They’ve returned to their old ways now, and at precisely the wrong moment. They are simply determined to act foolishly, and against their own fanbase and supporters. This is suicidal. It will destroy them and their careers… but there is no stopping what must be. Not even I can do it.

You see, whites not of the 1% have no choice but to be aggressive against blacks, since they are under the constant threat of attack from them. Things like the knock-out game and polar bear hunting are not myths. They are real things that have affected many millions. All whites in the 99% know a victim, if we haven’t been one ourselves. This nonsense of blacks being “under fire” from murderous whites is preposterous fiction. In fact, it is the direct opposite of reality, and it is stunning that the government’s media is allowed to get away with such lies. That will not last forever, though.

The moment I warned about is coming. Any fool can see that the US is well on its way to a race war, if in fact we aren’t already in one. That being said, the time to take sides is NOW. It is URGENT, extremely so, to not get caught on the wrong side of the fence.

If a war does break out, and I believe that there is a very good chance that it will, Black America is going to be crushed. It’s culture will be smashed and it’s people are going to be killed, pushed out of the country, or perhaps re-enslaved. The “Civil Rights” era will with certainty be regarded as the most stupid thing ever done by America by future historians. Obama may die, and so perhaps will those seen as having supported him- i.e., my “friends” in Hollywood and the media. Yes, in a war scenario, I believe that it is likely if not certain the even Obama’s white friends will be punished as well.

At any rate, blacks aren’t going to win. Black America and it’s Jewish and liberal allies are outnumbered vastly, and their opponents have all the guns, and, crucially, control the food and water supplies. The Diversity is doomed if the situation edges even a little closer into armed conflict. The best that The Diversity could hope for in a war is a draw, like a kind of mutual destruction scenario where everyone is destroyed at the same time. That ain’t gonna happen, though.

That this is not obvious is baffling. I have to question the sanity of black commentators in the media right now, who are openly talking about race war. Excuse me, people, but don’t you see that the other side has way, way more people than you, and that they have all the weapons? And yes I mean ALL of them? Don’t you see what should be obvious to a 5 year old- that you have no chance of winning?

It is what it is, though. It is what it must be.

Que sera, sera.

Yesterday I took greedy advantage of the Autumn Steam sale and snagged all those old, kick-ass games from my youth.

I think I’m going to love them, but I hope I don’t even more. Games back then were uncompromising and difficult. These were games that you suspect actively hated you. These were games that after you spent your hard earned money on them, you considered it a privilege if they decided to actually run once you installed them.

I miss the dark era of gaming. It used to be that for a game to be considered cool at all it had to be gothic, brutal, long as hell, difficult, and grotesquely violent.

I was really lucky to have been teenaged and nerdy throughout the greatness that was the 92-98 era of PC gaming. I mean, the era that began with Wolfenstein 3-D and ended with Half-Life.

Yes, I was there. I lived it.

This was the crucible that made me, really. So many hours I spent on DOOM, hacking the game and playing the custom WADs. So many hours I spent with my friends playing Heretic and arguing about Diablo, Redneck Rampage and Carmaggedon. We were the pasty, scary geeks that others hated and feared. We were cool. Cool as hell. The coolest people on Earth.

And we knew it.

Back then it was a chore to game. You had to be smart and dedicated to do it. There were so many barriers to getting games to even run, nevermind getting them to run well or to run online with friends.

This pushed out the weak and incompetent. The unworthy. To be a serious, hardcore PC gamer as a teenager was a badge of honor. It was something that awed your classmates and intimidated your friends’ parents.

The games themselves reflected this. Across the board, PC games were all, I mean 95%, dedicated to us, the special few that could manage them. Excepting the odd kid’s game, there were no games for women or girls. At all. And there were precious few for those of either sex older than 35.

Gaming was our thing. And make no mistake, we were powerful. So much so that Microsoft made Windows 95 with DOOM availability in mind.

God, I *loved* DOOM. It was chaos and carnage, but so perfectly executed. The levels were so clever and insidious. It rocked. It was almost addictive. No, it was addictive. DOOM was one of those games that pushed the “fight or flight” response expertly over and over again. You became hooked on the adrenalin rush like a junky. It was glorious.

And, truth be told, DOOM and it’s brethren were more respectable than games today, which seem to be insecure and frankly childish. Why do games today feel the need to award me “achievements” and “badges” for easy, meaningless things? Why do they always include a hand-holding tutorial? Why do games today, even the so-called “dark” ones, inundate me with flashy, candy colored special effects? Why are games today so simple? So short? So easy?

Fuck off, modern games. Give me something worthy or go home.

That the dark era came to an end when I left for college is fitting for me, I think. In a way it bookended my junior high / high school career. Wolfenstein was how I bonded with friends in Junior High, and Jeff Vogel’s extremely superlative Exile series was my own, personal Catcher in the Rye. Finding the rare Hellfire expansion to Diablo was my first great consumer accomplishment, and ownership of Quake was the passcode for entering my circle of friends in high school.

I remember with a heavy heart when I saw the era die in college. It was my Freshman year, and I was playing Half-Life for the first time. The opening scene… it was amazing. Perhaps the best intro in video games up to that point. It was then that I knew it was over. This was something different, and great in it’s own way. This was a game that had one hand in the dark age, but another pointing towards the future. With that scene, the dark era had passed. It’s a good thing that Diablo II and Lord of Destruction managed to sneak by before the door closed entirely.

And then came Bejeweled and Halo, and the accompanying influx of old women and average ten year olds. Yuck; that sucked, because gaming has become infantilized in their wake. Games today must appeal to everyone, even the immature, old, and impatient. Hence the need for constant “achievements”, extreme linearity, and cartoony splashes of color everywhere.

Well, it was fun while it lasted. This weekend, I’m going to pop open a ginger ale, spin South of Heaven, and boot up Blood.

Just for old times’ sake.

FUCK. YES.

Am I the only one who is completely underwhelmed by this game? It just isn’t very good, IMHO. My qualms:

1) No freckles. I have freckles. Why can I not add freckles to my model? I have yet to find a game, ANY game, that features a customizable character that can look like me because of the APPALLING lack of freckle related options in these games. We exist, people!

2) It is unstable. It keeps crashing and crashing! I despise this more than anything. The game’s instability offends me massively. The average independent iOS game seems more stable and efficient in code than this multi-million dollar monstrosity. Honestly, I couldn’t get a solid five minutes of play out of this thing.

3) It’s been done. The graphics and sound are dated and the game itself doesn’t break much if any new ground in terms of gameplay dynamics and interactivity. I do understand the need for a big-budget game to have low system requirements, as they need to be installed on as many devices as possible, but do the graphics need to be *this* bland? Does the gameplay need to be *this* basic?

Ah, well. I have fond memories of the Crowdstar games, and I was kind of hoping that this would be a more modern, up-to date version of their classics. I was wrong. Even though the early Crowdstar games were more basic than this one, they still seemed to have more to offer in terms of style and enjoyability, IMHO. Whatever.

I do realize that I’m not the target audience here, but I don’t care. My 2 cents are worth at least a dollar.

I just watched both of Abigail Breslin’s music videos, “You Suck” and “Christmas in New York”, again. I liked them both very much, but what happened?

Wasn’t Abigail a kid just yesterday? I seem to remember very recently reading the Fanning / Breslin wars on the Fametracker message boards. It was Abigail vs. Dakota, with Elle as a possible wild card, for child actor VIP of America… I remember this like it was yesterday.

And it was yesterday. I’m sure of it… only it wasn’t. It was ten years ago, wasn’t it?

Oh, sorry, it was 12 years ago.

Wow…