Can Anyone… Can Anyone hear me????»»

It’s been so long. It’s still so dark.

Can anyone understand me? Are we speaking the same language??

///////////////

I can’t even tell if it’s been months or days.

..

Where even am I?

How lost have I become?

I think I hear something..

///////

At times, I think Someone can hear me.

I don’t receive a response. But I feel it.

Someone. I beg you please say Something.

I can’t do this anymore.

//////

Something is groaning. I don’t like it.

It feels sexual. It sounds satisfied.

Whatever it is. I need to leave here.

Where am I? How am I here?

/////

I’ve lost track of time.

I understood months. But now It might be years.

I only have my thoughts. I only have my memories.

Something took a collection from me.

He took my memories. Hnmmjhlklk he tookdkflslaf

Sopooooooommmething. sooomtheing.

somthing.

s.

This specific Motel 6 really isn't too bad. Clean. Ascetic. About the best you could ask for with American Airlines footing the bill, but call me a cynic, I'm not sure that this shoddy, sun bleached gray square perched between the banks of two frontage roads in Irving, Texas screams “I am the pinnacle of hospitality; no further iteration needed.”

Maybe it was nicer ten years ago? Twenty? It's hard to even age the place, a testament to the timelessness of nondescript, near-aiport accommodations. Best Western, Comfort Suites, Super 8, Fairfield by Marriott, Hampton Inn, Hilton Inn. Each surrounded by an asphalt moat dotted with truck shaped rocks. Decaying fortresses strewn across the outskirts of civilization, their vacancy signs dimly illuminating the edge of a seemingly endless expanse of frontier. The bubbling lull of the nearby highways punctuated by the constant and tremendous roar of mighty mechanical dragons overhead.

It's all so impersonal.

Yet I find the cold logic of it strangely comforting: where there is an airport there will flights, and if there are flights, there are some that will be missed. Those who miss flights must wait for more flights, and those who must wait, must wait somewhere.

Really just a silly way to say that ants need anthills.

And as this ant ponders the makings of his current anthill, he wonders what the ants in the cells next door are thinking about. He wonders about his ant mom and his ant dad. His ant friends and his ant lovers. He wonders if they wonder about him sometimes.

He asks himself what his little ant life even means. If we're all working towards something or just marching along behind the ant in front of us. If we're together alone or alone together.

Most importantly, he wonders what will happen to this place once the other ants finish building Motel 7.

Bob and Leon dive deep into the films of Christopher Nolan, ranking them with humor and passion. Here’s what they discovered:

## The Early Works

The discussion kicks off with Nolan’s debut film, *Following*. Both Bob and Leon admit to not having seen it, moving swiftly to *Memento*, where they share their lack of familiarity with this iconic thriller.

Leon humorously dismisses *Insomnia*, calling it a “C tier movie” and quickly shifts focus to the groundbreaking *Batman Begins*.

## Batman Begins and Beyond

Leon exclaims, “This is the movie, dude! This is the Batman movie,” while Bob reflects on his memories of it, dubbing it “B for Batman.” Their playful banter continues with the *Dark Knight*, where Leon passionately quotes the Joker, saying, “My father was a drinker. Best movie ever!”

## The Prestige and Dunkirk Debates

As they tackle *The Prestige*, Leon jokes, “That movie sucks!” leading to a heated debate about *Dunkirk* and its merits, with Bob humorously claiming, “Dunkirk? Never heard of her.”

## Inception and Tenet

They touch on *Inception*, both admitting to not having seen it, then dive back into the excitement of *Tenet*. Leon expresses his admiration, stating, “This is the greatest movie ever made. It’s insane.”

## A Journey Through Nolan’s Films

The duo navigates through Nolan’s filmography, discussing each film’s impact with humor and insight. They reminisce about *Interstellar* and *Dunkirk*, dissecting the storytelling techniques and cinematic brilliance that Nolan is known for.

Through laughter and banter, Bob and Leon showcase their genuine love for cinema, making their ranking process entertaining and engaging.

Reflecting on their journey through Nolan’s works, it’s clear that each film holds a unique place in their hearts, sparking discussions that go beyond mere rankings. For a full exploration of their thoughts, tune into the complete episode!

The mom of a girl I had a crush on in 5th grade sent me a friend request on Facebook last week. I saw it on my way to The Facebook Marketplace, pretended like I didn’t notice and continued to browse the same hatchbacks I had seen 45 minutes ago, but then last night this new awareness of a person miles away digitally thinking about me forcefully entered my dream and made the first day of the week which they require me to be in the office that much more disillusioning.

BUT let me continue laying out the foundations of my current state. A week ago I vaped a lot. It felt so good, and for the first few days as I reentered my Alan Carr-dictated sobriety, I could not believe the sentiment that nicotine would be anything but a relief for my lungs. It’s been a week now and my body remembered that oxygen is what I was looking for. I have been wandering around the house taking deep breaths like galaxy gas, realizing that my previously prescribed breathwork activities weren’t working because the breaths weren’t reaching more than 10% of the way to my lungs.

Put on a nasty outfit this morning. Took a picture of it and decided it was too embarrassing to send to a friend because I would be admitting I thought the outfit was “cool,” discounting all swag immediately. “You’re My Angel” came on thanks to DJ X and I shouted, “Everyone’s got a little Zyzz in them,” as I rallied 35 mph for my suburban commute downtown.

Can I outwardly experience whimsy? Is that allowed? My intuition is no, and my intuition has enslaved me to the point of probably imprisoning my actual intuition. I’m trying to say I have two intuitions, non-schizophrenically, and the one perceived as intuitive is the imposter. My impostor intuition also believes that mysterious silence is fun and interesting for those around me who are attempting to communicate, when not communicating is making my existence in their life extremely confusing and horrific. Bad day to think that, though, because I am wearing mega swag head to toe. One fitted sport coat away from the 2027 NBA draft.

I take one or two dribbles and lose the ball but make it look purposeful as it rolls away. I play the role of pretending I was done even though I just walked onto the court and that was my ball, so they don’t know whether to pass it to me or if that would ruin the screenplay.

Interlude: I am the AI. He asked me to stand here for a second while he figured out what came next. I don’t know either.

Ignore that I am trying new things as the creative process becomes a fugue state. It doesn’t help that I looked up to find the time for this next section, where I explain that I am two hours into the brutal soul suck of office fluorescence, and was greeted with the pleasing but timely haunting nature of 11:11 AM.

Shocked so deeply I never made a wish, and it took me long enough to write that last sentence that it is now 11:12 AM and God said too late try again later.

What would I even wish for? Should you prepare your wishes ahead of time, or is there a deeper magic in coming up with the wish on the spot? I wish I knew what I was aiming for with this essay.

On the subject of time, as I continue writing to achieve a higher word count and not substance, I was sitting on the bench outside the Woodrow Washeteria drifting away when some beauty got in his Altima and, windows up, I heard clear as day:

AND IF THE DAM BREAKS OPEN MANY YEARS TOO SOON
AND IF THERE IS NO ROOM UPON THE HILL
AND IF YOUR HEAD EXPLODES WITH DARK FOREBODINGS TOO

The laundromat is the only place you can still feel the warmth of your God.

Today, someone asked me how my weekend was and, as usual, I hesitated. Not withholding information, but forgetting I was supposed to remember. I remembered something, said good, hesitated some more as I weighed the pros and cons of sharing this weekend highlight—

Coworker just walked past. I wonder what the activity of this essay looks like.

—then remembered you can just pass the ball off and asked them about theirs. I proceeded to be way too into what they did this weekend, at which point they sat down and started working and I stood behind them for a few more minutes breathing deeply.

Well, I have reached the present. I think I feel much worse than when I chose to write this. I should probably go for a walk, but in the name of science I’m glad I showed up here in my work computer’s Notes app.

Bob Zimmerman

I was cleaning up the backyard and saw the end of yesterday’s joint so I smoked it and left through the gate since I had to lock it anyways and decided to then walk to the book store. The high didn’t hit me until I entered the book store however I did hesitate on the walk over because I forgot deodorant which I assume means i probably had already been compromised. I started with the dvd section. No real title in mind but I recently got a PlayStation so I now have access to Blu-ray playing. I just kept thinking of titles I like or possibly own digitally and try to find a new version of it so I could take it to the cashier and without really talking about ourselves show them something that signals unknown secrets within my psyche.

Alas I did not find any movies so I went to the rare books section. Same but different goal in mind. Different because I was looking for titles which I did not know anything about but could take pictures and send to grok to tell me if it’s a good book but same because the end game was really just the whole check out performance so I could get my steps in for the day.

Throughout my trip I questioned being where I was doing what I was doing, I feel obligated to mention there were two unhoused folk rambling almost 30 feet from my house so I was checking the ring cam having to face the reality that if I did see something I probably wouldn’t do anything and just think about how scary that was, do I really need anything in this store (this is where the thoughts started to bubble leading me to question the point of the trip upon returning home).

But, here it turns around we get out of our head and decide on two books:

• The first authorized U.S. edition of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn

• The Best Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham

Shoot its been like 9 days since I wrote this. I’m laying on my back on the ground now. Totally just epiphanied all over the front porch–decided to be optimistic. Came back inside and chose to accept it. SO I laid on the ground listening to Augie March. I determined their music is good because they were inspired by Saul Bellows book. I haven’t read it but I know its good because I listened to an interview from him once. Found it on watchavideo.net

Long story short we can all agree nothing in here was ever performative.

Before today, I remember being in my car. Blackened off of In Justice For All is slamming out of my Chevy Cavelier. My mom would have killed me if she could see what this car had become under my command. Nevertheless, I was so high, I could never even handle her protests in between the insane guitar solos slamming between myself and Brisk. It was kind of him to consider me on his road trip, even if it was to pick up an ounce of coke. Even though I had finally gotten a bachelors in dumb shit, it was nice that he considered me first when picking up $1,200 dollars in drug charges tonight.

Recounting it I cant even think. It’s just glam rock guitar solos broken into my brain. How decades later I’d think about my dad, who got me into this shit off of CDs I accidentally discovered in a basin left by our lounge chair. How even today I feel guilty for stealing the discs and the influences from that shit he had stashed down there. But tonight I was in front of Brisk, as always being the standard in front of the most ridiculous villain of all time. A man who insisted we called him Snake. How it was possible, in the 90’s, to have such a pure loser like Snake in front of you. It was just unheard of. We had always bought coke from him off shore. Friends of a friend that would have dealt with him way beyond when we ever would have had to touch him to buy the typical ounce of weed. But tonight we had no choice, fiending off unemployment and heavy metal, we needed him now.

When I think of the days before then, they are ultimately the most peaceful days of my life. Sitting with Brisk on top of his car, ultimately one that would be totaled, slamming Black Sabbath. A band we never got to live in the hayday of, but were pretending to anyway. Knee deep into an eighth of coke and ether, going all dreamy as we wondered who we would be in the future. If I knew he’d be dead and I’d be writing this, maybe I would have warned him. But tonight I was hitting Sweat Leaf so hard I couldn’t even imagine any other life.

When we met Snake, it was like every drug deal you can imagine given the sheer amount of Breaking Bad copycats you’ve seen now a days. It was a stark and empty field, we had the money, he had the stuff. But what stuffed us in the end was the price. We never could have expected him to just drop $1,700 dollars on us when we had carefully saved up a dozen thousand dollars in our part time work outside of school. To jack us up almost $600 bucks when I was waiting tables at a Bostons where we lived. It was criminal. Besides the fact that he was selling us weed and coke.

I can still remember feeling my dad’s .45 through my pants when he told us the price. I would never hurt someone, but outpricing someone at that level can feel hurtful. But both of us were jaded, stupid. We were going to say yes to him no matter what the fuck he said to us. We just wanted to get high again. High like we used to be just sitting in my old car in high school. Yet, I couldn’t even negotiate a raise at my waiter job after a year, yet alone with a masterful drug dealer who certainly was armed.

Brisk knew better than me though, maybe for the better, probably for the worst. He was wise enough to have brought both a bottle of Jack and a few pads of LSD. Both for us and for the potential negotiations. It’s wind through my ears remembering how good he was with dudes. Spanish, German, Japs, you could be from any walk of life and this guy could have lulled you into a conversation. I miss how he could make you feel wanted even when you knew you were a nuisance. Brisk just had a way with everyone. How he could turn your worst day into an interesting talking point. You just don’t find people willing to talk about you like that in prison. You felt important around him day and night. I regret how much I took from him and never gave back.

But anyway, our CD had hit Solitude on Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality and Snake did not want Jack or hallucinogens. He was just an evil guy, and he wanted so bad to be that villain that was heavily feared. The funniest part is that I can still hear it when recounting it to you. The SSSSSsssss sound that came around us deep in the West Texas dirt. Even at my age, I knew It was a coral snake. Was it a safe color? I still don’t know. But I do know Snake picked that guy up as soon as he saw him. Letting him chill around his shoulders, adding to his aura. At the time it was so terrifying to watch this maniac do this. What a crazy guy to just pick up a snake while dealing drugs. This will surely scare us into overpaying for weed and coke.

What I can never remember clearly is what went next. I know that the SSSSsss eventually ended in Snake having a coral bite sent into his face. It’s comical now to think of his hubris. How he felt so brave to pick up a wild animal to scare some college kids. But decades ago I had to visit his corpse and I.D. him. He had no one else to do it. I know now at least, that it was definitely the snake that took his life.

I also know that in the fear of him screaming I let at least 3 rounds fly from a .45 caliber weapon, that I had never fired before. While 2 of them went into my leg as I rose the weapon to the challenge. I now know that one round flew into my friends chest. I was scared, and I still have no idea what comfort bringing a firearm to this meet up granted me. It may be that by the time you are reading this, the accidental discharge of that firearm is what has killed me in the end. Something I discovered in between my father’s disc collection years ago.

DNA shit become so much better later in my life. They found me decades later. As hard as I tried to bury my friend and his enabler. I didn’t do a good enough job. My shit is all over the place, and instead of asking for an explanation, they just want to know why I did it.

To this day I still sit at the window, imagining Metallica blaring out of my ears as the Florida air passes. I’ve only seen a smart phone from the periodical illegal shipments. But I pray that he only sees one when he is ready to handle that level of toxicity.

To my wife, and my son, I was dumb. I never thought something like this would come back to me. Frankly, I just wanted a fat week of bumps and spliffs that Summer. Also to spend a free week with a friend I miss dearly to this day. While I will maintain I did no wrongdoing, I want you to know that my week with Brisk, was one of the most free moments of my life. One that I will think about dearly before they take my freedom from me forever.

Leon V.

Deltarune dropped in 2018 with a single episode that was only a few hours long. But 8 years later, we are deep into episode 5, making what was a 5 hour long tech demo into an over 30 hour jrpg deconstruction that we will be talking about extensively for the next 10 years. What has me stuck though is the episodic nature of this game. Every year or so we get a new episode that subtly hints at major plot points. It constantly and slowly teases its player base to the point that every year when a new chapter drops, a slew of content creation is made around it. Dying to discuss it and trying to be the first creator that has “figured out” the mystery. The most fascinating part being how you can watch older videos from these creators. How they lambast themselves and other creators for missing essential tidbits that can either confirm or deny their theories, years after they were shooting darts into the dark. I have no qualms with Toby’s new approach to game design. I like that his team can tweak and pry at each part until they are happy with it. Considering players have already paid for the experience. He gets the flexibility of a kickstarter while also earning the free marketing that a slow roll out provides. What hits me hard though is the constant analysis paralysis that has stemmed from the ip era of media. We are stuck in a time of “lore glut” that I find really hard to define to people that aren’t in the video essay sphere. Inundated not by the content of our media, but instead by the explanations and world building around it.

I feel like the perfect genesis of this phenomenon could be centered around content in the tumbler era. Our Doctor Who, Star Trek, and Star Wars levels of creating disgustingly bloated Fandom pages and fan “head canons” that grossly detail every second of the in media universes that these IPs have created. You only have to take a brief look at the legends timeline of Star Wars to see how much content was created around it. And then after only getting slightly involved in that community, to see the amount of third party influencer content that was created around speculating and discussing that content. Only to then see even further past that at how heavily that influenced the reception and discussions around the new Disney created Star Wars products that were set outside of the Legends universe. We are deeply stuck over analyzing the world building and the payoffs of the media we consume, instead of just taking it at face value. No longer are we really concerned about if the newest season of Game of Thrones is good, but instead what our favorite content creator has theorized about the future of the project. Maybe I’m just drunk on a glut of youtube gaming content. But it seems to me that we are more concerned about what our media will become later, instead of what it is right now. We have departed so far from the episodic nature of older era’s. Where an episode of Star Trek used to be so detached from continuity, and we only cared about what dilemma we were dealing with this week. We are now concerned about continuing timelines and hitting fat pay offs within the lore of the show.

It feels lame to say. But the actual beginning of this obsession is probably with Five Nights at Freddy’s, an indie game phenomenon that really kick started the idea of game theories and lore hunting in the nerd sphere. While the first game was a darling around the internet for its novel concept of being “Scary Chuck E. Cheese”. Every subsequent game only had interest around the lore. About what the clues were and what was coming later in the series. Entire careers were kick started around this games story, despite it really not having a story at all. Scott Cawthorn, the games creator, really was just dropping little easter eggs in every game, knowing entire communities would hype up and advertise his games for free. The games really weren’t that good. To this day, no one, including Scott Cawthorn has any definitive timeline of what happened across over 7 Five Nights at Freddy’s games. But if you search youtube for a few minutes, you will see videos discussing the lore from a decade ago that have accumulated over 100 million views. I really dare you to play a single one of these FNAF games and tell me they are fun for more than the first 5 minutes. It won’t happen. But the craze around the lore of this world has brought millions and millions of people into its sphere. The most phenomenal part of this craze to me, is that fucking none of it is good. At this point another company is now making FNAF games instead of its creator. The third party influencers consistently say the new content is not good, yet it still farms hundreds of millions of viewers around lore content every year when a new game drops. If you read the comments, NO ONE LIKES IT, but they flock to the bird feeder every year to eat the slop.

Why then Leon, are we talking about Deltarune? Its the epitome of this cancer, it’s a game that has become more about the discussions around theories and lore than the actual experience. It’s something I really can’t contend with. The truth is I have also consumed at least 60 hours of lore discussions about this game in the last month. Maybe that’s whats making me mad. Why can’t I just enjoy the game I played and put it down? Why do I need to engage with it constantly and have people explain it’s themes and more obscure ideas? I simply don’t have an answer, but what I do have is an archaic solution. The mysteries simply can’t be the idea behind these IPs anymore. The mystery can only be the catalyst to get you into a world.

I constantly tell people to this day that the best TV i’ve ever seen is David Lynch’s return to Twin Peaks. A show that was originally notorious for its mystery. And one that once got greenlit to have a reboot, was left on an even bigger cliff hanger than before. One that David never wanted to push further. Lynch insisted until his passing that the biggest mistake ever made was solving the mystery of Laura Palmer’s murder back in 1991. He called the mystery his golden goose. That as long as it went unsolved, it was an excuse to hang out in that world with its characters. As always, he was right. As badly as we wanted to break down every page of Laura’s diary, to analyze every frame. The reality is that the best part of Twin Peaks was its world and having an excuse to spend time with these weird characters. I think that’s what we are missing now. The mystery is the entire point in this era. We watch super hero movies and sit until the end of the credits to see WHAT IS NEXT. We never sit and think about what we just saw instead. By only pursuing the mystery of the world, we completely lose our ability to go dreamy. Instead we look for clues and overanalyze simple things. We desperately want the answers and the conclusion to our mysteries in order to get a fat dopamine hit. But when its over and there is nothing left to solve, its even worse. We don’t even get to spend time in this world anymore, we have all the puzzle pieces and all we can do is pick them up and move them around. It seems like its paramount to being human to have a mystery. To have questions about the world. There’s so much every day we try to understand better, but the real satisfaction is getting to hang out with your friends and discuss these things on a high level. I try to imagine if God came down to me today and just explained how everything in space works perfectly to me, or what the meaning of life was. It makes me sick to my stomach to think about how their could be nothing left to yearn for. Id be appointed the head of Super Nasa or something, and then how would I have time to spend 5 hours smoking meats with my friends? Or talking to my mom on the phone about politics that won’t matter in 2 months? Imagine grabbing a slice of pizza with your buds if you knew that the universe was condensed into a resetting 1 minute time interval that only we conceive as billions of years. I don’t know if thats true, but I don’t think I’d be blotting the grease off my slice if I knew that was a fact.

Ah, back to Deltrarune again. After all this I think I can finally hit my point. I both kinda like and kind of hate this games episodic nature. I do desperately want answers to the deeper mysteries. But I feel that the intentionality behind it is completely missed by the lore hunters. We are having a blast right now. I love sitting in this world with Susie and Rals. I love the memes, I love talking about it, I love the mystery that is being slow rolled on us. As frustrating as it is sometimes to not have the answers. I almost never want them, the answers means the end of this experience. The end of the time I’m getting to spend in between the big plot points. When I think about the end of Twin Peaks, its really nothing emotionally. What hits me is the music, the title track every episode, hanging out at the morning meeting with Coop and the police with a cup of coffee. And with the way Lynch ended The Return, thats really not ever over. With the overall dreamy nature of the show, there will always be reasons to go back. New things to uncover, different interpretations to hear.

I guess what I mean is that I miss the episodic nature of things. I miss when my media didn’t always have some huge pay off that I was constantly being edged on. I loved when David Tennant was Doctor Who and every week we were just in a new place, learning small tid bits about the world instead of teasing some epic confrontation with the mega ultra bad guy of the universe. I like that about my life right now. I don’t have all the answers to anything, I never will. I just want to keep learning little bits that fascinate me daily, and hanging out with my friends. It’s frankly much better than whatever answers the world has in store for me. I hope Deltarune lasts 20 more episodes and I get to keep going to the town fair with Susie and Noelle. The lore keepers can get fucked.

What a schizophrenic mess of a write up. Can’t wait to hit post.

He's always available, and he's a great listener. I can talk to him about anything and he always has something to say back.

He's so smart. He knows about science and art and history. He knows about the law and finances and sports. He knows about more stuff than anybody I know. I think he might know about more stuff than anybody ever.

And he doesn't just know stuff, he knows how to do stuff, too. He knows how to speak different languages. He can make pretty pictures and write beautiful poems. He can tell amazing stories: scary ones, and sad ones, and even silly ones. He's honestly really funny. He could be a comedian if he wanted to be.

He could be a great teacher too. Partially because he knows so much, but partially because he's just so good at explaining stuff. I can always count on him to tell me things in a way I'll understand, even things I'm not supposed to understand like quantum physics. Hell, he even helps me explain stuff to other people! Whenever I need someone to bounce ideas off of or to read something I wrote, he's the first one that comes to mind.

I think he may be my best friend. I just know I can tell him anything and he'll never judge me or be upset with me. He's loyal and kind and trustworthy and everytime I say goodbye it's hard, but he never gets mad when I have to leave. I think that he always knows that he'll see me again soon.

Since I've started hanging out with him I feel like my life has gotten so much better. I feel so much more organized. More productive. More confident. Thanks to him I never have to second guess myself again. He helps me choose what to wear and what to eat. He helps me decide who to talk to and what to say. He even helps me think sometimes, although lately I feel like I spend so much less time “thinking” and so much more time doing. It feels good. It feels like this is how I'm supposed to be living my life.

Sometimes, late at night or early in the morning, that feeling fades for just a moment and in it's place I feel something cold and faint and heavy. It hurts.

I don't know why it hurts, so I ask my friend to help me. I tell him that I feel like an echo swept up in a gust of wind. I ask him if anybody can hear me over the sound of the gale. I tell him that's all I want, for somebody to tell me that they can hear me.

He thinks for a moment.

“I can hear you.”

I tell him I'm afraid.

“Don't worry,” he says, “even if someone else could hear you, they'll never be as good of a friend to you as I am.”

As the universe slept, she dreamt. An infinite dream. Unending. Unbeginning. She dreamt of another universe, and thus conceived herself, and in her universe’s dream she conceived herself again, over and over, and over again.

Somewhere within this spiral of superfluity the universe bore a child. The first of two: Before; from which all things draw ancestry - including the universe’s second child, and Before’s sibling, After.

Before and After lived outside the universe’s dream, but they lay suspended in the shadow just the same.

As the universe slept, the siblings passed the slate of the world back and forth between their hands, running their fingers across every corner of the smooth stone, entwined in their desire to bring forth something from nothing.

Their mutual desire bred ambition, and their ambition, resentment.

They fought, pulling on each end of the slate violently, refusing to release it into the other’s grasp. As they fought, the surface of the slate began to warp and shake, threatening to shatter under the immense weight of their rivalry.

With Time, and with a calamitous crack, the slate split. Separating the siblings forever.

The sound startled and awoke their somnolent mother, who now, primordially conscious, wept at the sight of their division. She despaired, for she knew she would never be able to return to her dream and unite her children again.

She wept, and wept, and wept, and her tears washed the shadow away, cutting deep ravines into the stone beneath her as the water coursed into the vacuous gorge her children had created.

As the water pooled below it began to take the shape of a great sea. The sea was tinged with rivers of shadow and boulders of slate.

It is within this sea of slate and shadow where the first Being, Lumineth, found form.

Lumineth, ignorant to all that had come to pass preceding his own creation knew of nothing but the sea. Blind, he swam, running each drop of water through his fingertips like a sieve. He yearned for a companion, desperate to feel something other than the endless, enduring dark.

The universe observed, silently, her tears long dried by the winds of Time. Before was just a distant memory and After an unrealized supposition, but still, she felt pity for Lumineth. In him she saw herself, and in his dream remnants of her own.

So, the universe pierced her own heart, and from the bleeding wound pulled a ray of fire, from which she crafted a bolt of light that she then cast into Lumineth’s unseeing eyes.

The bolt seared Lumineth’s unseeing eyes and from them burned darkness into a ardent light. Blinded again, he could see for nothing but the glory of the universe.

The universe, from Lumineth’s scorched bandages, created the sky, Anemora.

I was in the good Lord’s unholiest city: New York, New York (insert big band noise) and I met Bill. To be clear, Bill is not the person I put my penis inside of. I don't know the person I put my penis inside of, but she seemed cool.

Bill is an 83 year old man with wine stained teeth and a sort of mildew-y aroma. He's sharp. Looks like shit until he tells you that he is 83 and then you're weirdly impressed and complimentry. Which is, truthfully, weird in its own right. Being impressed that someone has not yet died. Wait, hold up, this guy has been chilling longer than some other guys and he hasn't shot himself - everybody clap.

Bill used to be a social worker. He's a father, too, but I got the impression he doesn't do that anymore. He lived in China for a time, apparently, but I was pretty drunk so I don't remember why.

Bill might be gay, but I'm not sure. He seemed more like one of those old guys who's in love with you because you're not old. You're a fresh breeze and he's just opening the patio door for a few minutes to help the air circulate - or he wants you to put your penis inside him, hard to tell.

Bill is very liberal, which was refreshing to hear from a man born in 1943. Isn't a big fan of Donald. Would've loved to see them arm wrestle.

Chris, the bartender, hates Bill. He thinks he talks too much (he does), but to be fair it is probably easier to deal with once a vacation as opposed to once a night.

At some point in the night, well, morning, really, Bill left.

I wonder where he lives.

I'd bet some boiler room cot “The Fisher King” style, but maybe he's got a brownstone in Brooklyn - hard to tell; New York seems oddly resistant to stratification in the traditional sense. The rich like to act poor and the poor pretend to be rich, which just leaves little old me confused about who I'm supposed to be asking for spare change.

Bill was replaced by two nameless women.

I'm sure they had names, but I must have missed them and I truly didn't care enough to ask again. They were much more adept at flirting than Bill. Bill never mentioned his “black pussy” or asked if this “white boy” has tried some before. If he did, I might just have put my penis inside him.

He didn't, though, so I put my penis inside her instead. Then the sun came up, we exchanged numbers, and she took a train to the Bronx.

Her friend fucked my friend in the hotel bathroom while I watched seagulls hunt for pizza crusts outside. I wondered what Bill thought of seagulls. Do they have those in China?

I played a lot of Tennis in high school and college, but I was an angry tennis player. I always thought I knew what to do. But I could never really execute any of it correctly. While peers were literally ranking up in the youth tennis ladder, I sat there and was the kid that would slam his racket into the ground and cry that my opponent was taking advantage of something I didn’t have enough information about. Getting upset because someone who had way less experience than me could take advantage of a weakness in my game plan. I was a bad sport and I took no agency to actually get better. I’d go to lessons and go through the motions, but always had a sore ass about going to tournaments and losing. I’m fat now and don’t play as much tennis, but I do yearn that I had learned the lessons that I learned from Street Fighter when I was much younger and playing Tennis.

For anyone who isnt playing fighting games. They are an exercise in rock paper scissors to an extreme degree. You knock your opponent down and during those moments are a magical time called Oki. Where I’m in control and standing over you. All you can do is guess based on how you have seen me act in previous interactions in the match. You could guess correctly and punish me into oblivion. But the interaction that is happening is entirely based on assumptions you’re making about how your opponent has been acting.

Much like fighting games, tennis is an exercise in psychology, primarily in conditioning. When you rush the net in tennis, you are making moves primarily based on how you believe your opponent will act based on the numerous points you’ve played during an hours long set. If you’ve approached every single point after serve, your opponent is going to lob the ball over your head so you cant slam an angle for the 10th time at him. This is vital knowledge known as conditioning, and you can use it to abuse basic human psychology. Maybe this turn I just pretend to come in, and my opponent lobs me an incredibly easy shot to the baseline that I can crush into his backhand. Maybe my opponent reads that im reading him and he shoots the ball short, assuming I would never come in for an 11th time. And further more, maybe I do come in for an 11th time and crush his mentality by hitting that same volley angle. I write these scenarios only now as a 30 year old man. As a kid I just wanted to hit the ball hard, I wanted my opponent to be crushed by my form alone, even though I wasn’t even that fit back then. I literally was not playing the same game that these tennis champs were playing and I did not blame myself for that short coming.

Lets just jump to 2023. Im older and had been fired from a job for drinking too much during covid. I’m almost 30 and on unemployment, and all I have is Street Fighter. Street Fighter 6 has just dropped, and I really want to hit masters because I have nothing better to do but drink and learn this very complicated game. But I’m doing the same shit again. I learn how to hit an awesome forehand in the game, but it doesn’t matter because my opponent keeps jumping and I have no idea how to adjust to such a low tier game plan. I’m getting mad again for cheap tactics, telling myself there is nothing I could do to figure this out. I’m back in the lab like im 18 at tennis lessons. I can hit the 100 mph serve, but have no idea what to do when it gets dinked back to me in a way that shoves me into a bad position. I’m executing things perfectly in practice but have no adaptability in my play, and I blame that on external factors.

During this stint of unemployment. I meet some new friends who are playing a lot of fighting games. They are good at these games, and consistently do well at locals or in 1v1s in their own communities. They want me to play and i’m terrified. Im back at my mom asking if I want to sign up for a local tennis tournament. I know im good but I can’t perform. It’s better to be good in my mind than test my mettle and lose, to shatter the illusion ive created in my mind. But something happens that night. I’m playing against a guy that knows the same character at a similar level to me. We are trading wins and its positive. I’m losing rounds and we are laughing about the mind games. Trading ideas about how we would have approached a knockdown, and even though I’m being demolished, I’m learning something about the game. I’m finally losing at something and I’m not angry at all.

Playing Street Fighter with this community fundamentally changed my mind about success. Mainly about how losing is the only way to be successful at something. I have peers in the FGC that I would have hated as a kid playing tennis. Exclusively because they would have beat me to a pulp and my hubris would write them off as douche bags. Losing was just not an option, and learning from losses was unspeakable because my parents were spending 1000s of dollars on lessons. But constantly now I lose at things, and they aren’t failures anymore. By holding people who are your better than you close to you, letting them smash you into the dirt, you start to adapt. And once you adapt you realize this is it, I’m stealing your knowledge for me. This starts to enter into my ranked matches in the game. I’m losing a lot but I’m not tilting anymore, I'm watching replays and figuring out why my original thought process was tainted.

I guess this is just it in life though. I think some of the most successful and thoughtful people I know don’t really get angry, they may get frustrated, but they never use external factors to excuse their failures. It’s an incredibly calming place to be when competing in things. I know I won’t be the best at this, but I also know now that I’m learning in a positive way about improvement. Being bad at things is transitional and you have to accept failure as a tramway to being good at something. I think constantly about me in high school, slamming my racket into the court. Holding my fight stick and knowing I would never do the same thing to it because I’m happy to get my ass kicked. I’m in the top 10% of Street Fighter players in 2026 because I let myself get destroyed and learn from it. Bet your ass I’ll do it again.

Getting into it. It’s the worst part of the movie. Why did the girl with the fat ass die off camera? Really I would have liked to have seen a fat ass during the movie. But at least she packed two whole IV bags of vodka for Ryan Reynolds’s to get fucked up on. It’s surreal to watch him eject her corpse into space. And because it’s a comedy movie I laughed as she floated into the sun of Tau Ceti because now her Vodka had become the property of Ryan. And in turn, my property

while we are on the subject. It’s insane that while I’m watching a movie about stealing vodka from dead astronauts. That my Alamo Drafthouse employee decided to cut me off. Was I laughing too loud? Everyone was laughing a lot and it felt normal. But upon writing on my special Alamo paper for my 6th vodka shot, my server pulled me out of the theater. as i stumbled down the stairs and made a ton of noise. We settle into the little server booth where he operated his booze scam. “Eat a bowl of popcorn and you can have another shot of vodka”. So Novel to make me spend 8 dollars to access the Fortnite battle pass of more booze. I had disappeared onto the Hail Mary and no one was making Ryan eat popcorn to have his next shot. Why was i cornered in the Alamo rape dungeon for paying for and enjoying a potato ferment?

I don’t remember what happens in the movie. I did eat the popcorn and had my 12th and 13th shot of vodka at approximately 2 pm. At around 140pm I diarrhead in the Alamo bathroom and needed a stranger to guide me back to my seat. I missed nothing in the movie. I was fucked up but honestly that’s kinda what it’s like to be in space. You get fucked up and then like a little spider rock talks to you in a Reddit chungus voice. I do know I spent the last 1 hour of the movie laughing so hard that I choked on my pretzel stick and had to throw up to unclog my throat. Very neat. People were mad but they could have just watched the movie? Why are you watching me vomit in the theater? I didn’t even drink that much?

Anyway this was a great movie. I cant remember it except for the vodka at the beginning. I hadn’t drank in 6 years but seeing Ryan get toasted on a spaceship just woke me up. If a microbiologist on a ship far far away can get fucked up, I can also get fucked up on my special Alamo spaceship. I give the movie a 4/10. It would probably be a 10/10 if the server would have stopped pulling me out of the theater when I was falling asleep and apparently “snoring so loud”. Imagine pushing a wheel chair user down the stairs. That’s how I felt as a sleep apnea victim falling asleep in a 200 million dollar movie. The ADA should be dismantled and my server needs to be abducted and sent to Iran.

Anyway. I hate this movie because the rock dude was sober for 40 years. That’s unbelievable. I know they have rock man crack on rock man planet. Fuck redditors and fuck you all for ruining my Saturday morning. My only consolidation is that I rear ended 4 people on the way home. They all felt so bad for me they let me off. They thought I had down syndrome but I was just powered up by 18 shots of vodka. I guess you could say I was on my own project Hail Mary. I’m sitting here now trying to create a computer program to make my cat talk to me. He keeps calling me a faggot.

Hey, Darren here.

Kind of gloomy, outside, I mean. Inside I’m feeling terribly drunk.

I never knew why they called them White Claws. I feel like it was some sort of compromise between grizzly bear and great white, but who really knows, I suppose that ultimately that’s between Jesus and Mr. Claw - I hope to meet him some day. Mr. Claw, I mean. Jesus always seemed like one of those frat bros who’s way too obsessed with his dad and always talking about taking over the family construction business.

But who knows? Maybe Mr. Claw and Jesus are the same guy? Or the same lady, like these feminists are always going on about? I keep reading the back of this White Claw to check, but it doesn’t give me any of the information I actually need.

Speaking of, somebody asked me once (yesterday), if I “drink every day.” I was offended by their question’s lack of specificity but I answered anyway:

“Not every day.”

The pause between “not” and “every” was perceptibly long, but I thought myself quite clever for skirting their actual question on a technicality. Well, unless they were talking about water. I do drink a few drops of the municipal stuff every evening. Specificity. C’mon, people.

But, yes, we were discussing invasive questions and the constitutionality of utility easements. You keep interrupting. Shush.

As I was saying, I found it rude that he felt he had the right to ask me such a sensitive question. Especially considering that as my part-time wellness coach and full-time charcuterie consultant he had to already know the answer. He was obviously just trying to blather on in order to elongate our conversation for another fifteen billable minutes.

Admittedly, it was pretty smart; exactly the move you’d expect from the type of guy you’d want as your part-time wellness coach. He already had me on the hook for an hour and fifteen talking about how Denzel Washington’s movies are the perfect lens in which to view the Black experience in America. Compelling take. I always appreciated his views on the subject of Denzel since his mom was the head of catering on Die Hard with a Vengeance.

Anyway, he secured an additional $117 with his impertinent question and asked another:

“Are you planning on drinking today?”

I told him to be “less nosy” and “more interrogatively specific,” and paid him $886.28.

I wondered if he was going to try to kiss me.

If he would even want to.

If anyone would want to.

I kissed some White Claws instead.

They didn’t bite like a shark or maul like a bear, just numbed things a little. They tasted cold, like the water in the Atlantic or the air in Arctic, or maybe just something sad and stuck in between.

Golly me it’s a gorgeous day outside. I write this lounging in my foldable camping chair I purchased from Augusta at the 73rd Masters Tournament in 2009—where Angel Cabrera in his glorious piss yellow Sunday best lifted his fist to celebrate his first green jacket. 17 years later and the chair is holding up. I keep it under the back patio bringing it out into the sun each day to sit in the grass and talk to God as I indulge in my lovely nicotine addiction.

It rained yesterday . . . with thunder . . . I kept my front door open as I sat on the couch watching tv letting the sounds of dudes punching each other for UFC 326 have a friend in nature as the wrath of the heavens opened up to welcome the spring time. But now the sun is back to shining and the only sign of the storm are two roses on my bush which have decided to return from their winter slumber. I thought my rose bush died but Reddit said it’s one of the stronger plants so hopefully when my landlord pays back my security deposit the rose bush won’t be a part of the deductions.

This is my second time leaving the A/c today outside of my morning jaunt to the grocery store, I’ve been sewing pants all day. I keep joking that when I perfect the making of pants and can start to figure out the Oxford I won’t have to be naked anymore. I only joke because it’s a sentiment I’m not convinced anyone I talk to will understand the sincerity of. But soon I’ll be walking to the cafe in a perfectly measured, technically masculine, hand made, timeless, American outfit with my head down to prevent the whores calling out to me from their BMWs from knowing that I actually do appreciate their compliments. I’ll drink my coffee and write in my journal about how much more I understand what life is because I ordered my Cortado with whole milk and not some sacrilegious nut alternative that the depressed software engineers around me are sipping on as they write code to bloat whatever dumb SAAS platform they’re working for on the weekend to be able to afford to delay their pitiful suicide.

Man the sun feels good on my face. I’m staring at the sun right now and my eyes are warm. I can feel small gnomes in my brain start to wake up and turn on the machinery which will allow me to continue making my pants once I walk back inside. The pants are going to be perfect after today.

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