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Has it really been that long since my last post? So many viable topics that came and went, too, like Pokémon Go representing the last vestige of my interest in videogames, an administration change threatening the absurdity barrier, Iron Fist utterly disappointing, realizing that relying on running as an escape is a race I’m destined not to win, and almost logged in the other day to bitch about tampering with Claudia Cardinale’s perfection, but it’s a dream, as usual, that brings me back. Two attempts to preserve my recollection on the recording app were dreams themselves. It was a first-person flying shooter where the goal of each level was to find the exit tunnel, hindered by the psychedelic lights and color filters, not to mention the two-planed controllers like a Wii’s. The last one led to the player opening his eyes to the crooked sight of an ultramodern white door, and it took several tries to orient my perspective to approach and let it slide open. A hospital corridor stretched outside, and a nurse composed of decent CG, though the obvious product of an in-game engine, smiled as she walked by. Turns out the game had been a simulation of recovery from mental illness [see “Loving the Alien”], and the rousing score transitioned a black screen to credits like the end of a Nolan film. Five of us gathered around a coffee table sat stunned by the revelation; one said he was inspired to run for office.

The times they certainly are a-plenty of them, and I thought I might use the opportunity to implement one here, too, transferring everything to X’s beta site, but even that undertaking, involving a WordPress reinstall and possible theme re-tool, proved too much for my diminishing drive.

Oh, I’d been tempted to update, especially with developments like these——not to mention some trademark quips about the Lost finale, but forums sufficed. So let’s fire her up again, and hope that my brain doesn’t go the way of my car battery (which I wrestled with for an hour last night before giving up trying to get past the starter and left crud under my fingernails I couldn’t completely wash out to burp and change the baby; other parents want theirs to be doctors, lawyers, President, and I’d be happy with an auto mechanic).

Last week’s experience with Redbox was the last straw: $1.07 (or $1.08, depending on where the higher taxes round to now) does not factor in the drive time and mileage between locations with faulty machines, 2/3 among the nearest Albertsons. A ratio only to worsen. So 老婆, she of the torrents and myself more at home on the Amazon, we decided finally to take the plunge—see what I’m doing here with the metaphors; it’d impress in high school English—and become a Netflix couple, which is surely some salient stage of household settlement.

I moved the Xbox to the big TV from the small monitor where it’d been running FFXI, and poorly at that, though the fault there’s less in the hardware than lazy programming from SquareEnix. That the app requires paid Gold membership, however, I’m not forgiving. Fuck them, a 48-hour code from 남재 proved streaming through Live (even with DD-WRT priority over a wired connection) is no superior to just hooking up my notebook on WiFi; in fact, Ping Pong Playa jumped after a ten-minute pause into YouTube resolution …speaking of which, that Jimmy Tsai sure looks like 송강호’s son. Oh, and those two White devils? Ted & Emmett from Queer as Folk.

I thought Kirby’s Captain America collection might be my first-ever trade paperback, but it’s never returned to its low on Amazon after I wishlisted it—surely a subject of future discussion, once I’ve worked out the mechanics—so I impulse-bought the Eternals instead. The King was frighteningly prolific, and without his readers having to accuse him of being on acid. These days, of course, over-achievement mandates drug tests. Chris and I had between us at least issues #1 and #8, the latter featuring the character of the “reject” (the original artist’s depiction here), whose self-loathing super-deviant origin was, it now occurs to me, totally ripped off by Joss Whedon for his Groosalugg in Angel.

I suppose the way it works there’s only more to come. Here’s what one poster at io9 had to say about her: “And if I ever do have a computer that talks to me.. it better be with her voice because otherwise it just won’t be the future.” And the Talosian: “The female you call ‘Number One’ has the superior mind and would produce highly intelligent children. Although she seems to lack emotion, this is largely a pretense. She often has fantasies involving you.” My earliest memory of Ms. Roddenberry involves—perhaps a first comical perspective—mammaries; film night on our fall camping trip in middle school one of the proto-Trekkie teachers showed us these bloopers on 8mm:

Could’ve sworn I brought this up before, too, but I can’t seem to find a journal entry and a quick search of what old e-mail I have with me turned up no matches. Maybe it was a passing remark in rambling pre-blog website material? Anyway, I’m not sure what I was hoping to gain reading an interview of an actor from a spinoff series that failed to win my viewership (and looks to be going the way of the Trek franchise, as far as I’m interested), but this bit stopped me mid-scroll:

And I tell you never try to tie your shoes in front of an astrophysicist. What happens is they’ll tell you you’re doing it wrong.

All my life I have apparently been tying my shoelaces wrong, there is a much more mathematically beautiful way of doing it, that I was shown by Bill Nye [the Science Guy].

Happened to me back in college, and while I still wasn’t convinced that the single-loop knot was any superior to mine (tied correctly), it was the frightening idea that I could go that long with the mistaken impression I was right about something. Like my definition of the word “sycophant.” You know, this may be what’s hurt my confidence all my life.

And lest I forget, while we were on the subject of shoes:

Too bad Bush is on his way out. He just may have returned us to a barefoot society.

Was called a “tremendous issue” so I stopped at the local Third Planet after my haircut, and it is quite the hoot. I’m grateful to Grant for this and Superman Beyond, not only tiding me over during Final Crisis‘ erratic release schedule, but for these looks back (and sideways) at the two characters in the settings that bring out their best, the furthest reaches of space and time as only a flying man might, um, reach; and of course, Bruce’s fucked-up brain.

…That he does, and he’s beaten DeSaad before, so no worries there. Batwoman I haven’t seen since this relic from our childhood, which included a Joker story that scared the shit out of me because he specifically mentioned coming to Providence to steal a diamond. Could that have been customized for local distribution, like someone swore was the case when they said Houston was bombed at our screening of Independence Day? Seems as good a time as any to bring up a memory, going even further back to the first grade, of my very early entry into society. Our teacher announced a special story-book had been published (I like to think she used that word, but it would be a while before I’d understand the “as published in DC Comics” credits), and that one of us was the main character! Me being by far the best student, with test scores higher than my classmates’ combined, agonizing to this day over once misspelling “lemnon”, not to add the only Asian and therefore the most interesting candidate as well, I felt a shoo-in. But who should it be but bull-headed bully Melvin, in a forgettable urban adventure featuring the nondescript likeness of a little Black boy in the artwork. And still for the life of me I can’t pinpoint the exact moment in the many years since when I put it all together and realized the intentions behind their program. I can only hope that it succeeded and my suffering then listening to him struggle with each easy word paid off.

Storm. “Shockingly bad” is right. Might as well have added a buzzer-type shock to each press of the screen. Incidentally I had a dream last night of watching an old Brit comedy show with Hugh Laurie spoofing 60’s spy shows, including the Prisoner.

Cameo. I sent an image attachment via e-mail to the display model in a 3-1 employee-to-customer ratio T-Mobile store and waited for as long as I could before the sad state of tech got to me (approximately 15 minutes), and it never showed. Neither did the picture message one of their guys tested.

Animal Crossing for Wii. Another chance for Nintendo to leapfrog Sony and Microsoft with an online world for their brand, wasted.

My thumb, after dusting off the Super Famicom with the Fighting Commander, having confirmed that the PS3 supports it through the SmartJoy. I pushed the new blister through the 8-star Super Battle, but it broke at Sagat, oozing fluid onto the pad—a new, slippery sensation, to be sure, at least for someone once protected so ably by a callous there. Like a champ who completes that last mile with a torn ACL, I kept up the fireball/dragon-punch combo against M.Bison and reached those ending credits where I used to swear to my friends I saw a beer can in T.Hawk’s hand. Didn’t you get a shot of the whole cast if you completed it without a defeat?

Dunno how long NBC’ll keep it up, but not too shabby a first whole episode. Never mind the 2-fer political progressives in the cast; for me, of course, it was the reunion of three from Night Court’s. Markie Post is 58 and looks great. Didn’t John Larroquette’s Dan Fielding once say to her as (a then pregnant) Christine Sullivan, “Do those get any bigger?!” And here I still can’t recite a single line from a Supreme Court case.

Can’t be too pleased about that number, but imagine if it were McCain’s.

Pictures of young Mr. Obama always remind me of this Black kid I met in middle school, I think his name was Greg, introduced to me as the younger brother of a completely different guy named Chip (or it could have been the other way around, though this way better fits the conventions of the time), who was White, and ignoramus that I was about how awkward they looked together, had to be set straight he’d been adopted. At least now, either of them can be President.

The victory’s bittersweet, however, as it looks like the Mormons have succeeded in backspacing over California’s definition of marriage. I got into a heated debate over this at work with the Helen Lovejoys there, who really ought to be careful throwing around the fucking stupid slippery-slope argument about marrying dogs. Gays and lesbians are the new minority bitches, and shame on all of us who used to be, too, and forgotten what it’s like. And shame on those who feel they deserve to enjoy any rights they’ve helped take away from others.

[Update: (December 6, 2008) Occurred to me while driving by a Carl’s Jr. of all places that because Greg was lighter, even than our President-Elect, his hair brown & curly and his eyes unnaturally blue—for a mulatto—he might in fact have been Chip’s half-brother instead, in a scandalous family twist that his cover story effectively protected.]