Creative Fridays: Enjoy the Ride (Poem)

Ever so slowly you step up,

To those burgundy turnstile gates

Pastel lights flicker the name “Life”

 

And so you step on through,

Excitement so exhilarated races toward you

Sight, sound, smell—all for the first time

 

You’re so overjoyed you charge

For the first colossal coaster you see

You know it’ll be fun—twisty, turny, oh-so large

 

But “oh no” the watcher does say,

You’re a bit too short for this ride,

And after arguments in vain, you sadly walk away

 

Soon you settle for the merry-go-round,

The same day the same way forever and more,

Then you begin to wonder why you came

 

Slowly you see—the foods are too pricey,

Slowly you see—the rides are no fun,

Slowly you see—the games are too dicey

 

And then you want to leave

Update: I’m Back

I was on vacation for the past few days, that’s why there was no updates. Well, I’m back now and the updates will continue as normal.

Personality

First of all, sorry I didn’t post anything yesterday. I’ve been going through some family stuff (not related to Monday’s post) that had to be dealt with. It’s not important.

 

Anyway, as for today. Personality is an interesting thing. Is it genetic, or does it come from the environment, or a mix of both? I personally believe the latter. Genetics are like the paints of our personality and our life experiences are the brushes controlling what to do with them, and sometimes it comes up with bizzarre and unexpected results.

 

It should be obvious to us all that our personality is basically who we are. I’ve been forced to wonder though, how much of who we are do we control? Our genetics are uncontrollable, but our choices come from our personality. Sometimes I feel that unnatural circumstances has shaped my personality in ways that I’ve never expected it to go, and certain aspects of my personality don’t allow me to change for the better. Maybe it’s just a nutcase talking, or maybe there’s an eerie truth here. I’ve just had a lot on my mind as of late, and was just wondering about things. See you tomorrow, I guess. Sorry for the short and really rather pointless philosophy, but I’ve just had a lot on my mind and I’m trying to make sense of some interesting discoveries about myself. If I feel compelled, I’ll post it. But I’m not sure if my personality will allow it.

Choices in Life

Since I was young people had always been making choices for me, telling me where to go and what to do. Even if they didn’t tell me society or the illusion of independance always chose the path. It made me feel that my life was predetermined, and safe. but now I see that the roads that others are driving me down are dead ends and the only way for me to go is to state my own course, and burn bridges that I cross every day to do so.

 

When you don’t make your own choices you don’t have a reason to live. you are just a faceless puppet in an ocean of deceit. I have decided that if I don’t make my own choices in life then my life isn’t for me. If my life isn’t for me and myself alone, then I don’t want it anymore.

 

Some people find family the most important thing in the world. I feel like I’m offending people when I say that my values lie in individuality and time. I have realized that the only thing holding me back, holding me in are the people who think they can make my choices for me: my family. Choosing between yourself and your family shouldn’t be this easy, ever. But they have made the choice painfully obvious.

 

Through my restless dreams I have seen the gates to happiness, and the only way to do so is to leave behind my tormented past and make sure I’d never want to return. The time won’t be now, but it will be soon. I cast my life into the shadows of chance. After all, even limbo is better than hell.

Creative Fridays: Rocket Man (Poem)

I’m sitting here in my rocket ship, ready to fly,

It’s finally time for the world to say good-be,

I look out the window and just can’t believe,

What my mind would soon conceive

 

Farewells are for the forgon,

I could sit here and cry, but I’d just be wrong,

I never wanted to kiss the Earth good-bye,

But it’s either leave, or die

 

One final look conceals,

Hardhsips, broken hearts, broken deals,

One final look reveals,

A sweet summer summer love,  a million delicious meals

 

Hey, I don’t want to be this rocket man

The world wants me to; I wonder if I even can

The stars above start to sing

And the countdown begins

 

Ten, and I sit up straight,

I stir a little and think it’s too late.

Nine, and I want to quit,

Feeling like I’ll miss every little bit.

 

Eight, and I think that the rocket’s going to explode!

The ground will fissure, the core will erode!

Seven, feeds the doubt that strngles me tight,

I beg it to be over, my mind puts up the fight

 

Six, and I’ve got a tear in my eye,

No matter what we do, someday we have to die.

Five, and my eyes start to close,

Just to see every flower, every last rose.

 

Four, and the engine starts to rattle,

There’s still time, my inhibitions continue the battle.

Three, and my breath is stolen from me,

And for the first time I am willing to see.

 

Two, and I look up to the sky,

This time tomorrow I’ll be up so high.

One, the countdown is done,

The rocket launches up and true life has begun

 

Now I’m controlling a damned ship that the world left behind,

Cynicism and confusion repeatedly strike my mind,

I realize that in my deepest dreams I never truly wanted to die,

But then again, I never really wanted to kiss the Earth good-bye.

Game Reviews: Humble Indie Bundle 3

I had a friend Mike who was awesome enough to buy me something called the Humble Indie Bundle 3 (HIB3), back when it had 5 games. It now has 7 more. If you don’t know what the Humble Indie Bundle is, it’s basically where you can pay whatever you want for a compilation of Indie games, and these aren’t just hobbyist creations either. I haven’t gotten into all of them either, so there’s always that. The ones I am not able to review because I haven’t gotten around to them yet are: Revenge of the Titan, Atom Zombie Smasher, Cortex Command, Hammerfight, and Steel Storm: Burning Redemption.

I’ll start off with Cogs. It’s a short simple puzzle game where you move cogs, pipes, and the like in a series of sliding puzzles. The goal in the main game is to just solve the puzzle and get the steampunk-esque machine working. Along side that there’s a mode where you try to beat every puzzle in under 30 seconds, or one where you beat every puzzle with ten moves or less (the puzzles are slightly altered to make this possible). The moves puzzles are insanely easy and the timed puzzles are insanely hard. However, the main puzzle game is pretty good. The puzzles are rarely frustrating, but incresingly get more and more difficult until they start appearing intimidating, especially when (spoiler) you start using both sides of a sliding board. I’m not much for puzzle-only games, but I haven’t had this much fun in a puzzle game since Pandora’s Box or RealMyst. I don’t know many puzzle games.

Then there’s And Yet it Moves. I never really got into it. The surreal art style actually kind of freaks me out. Despite that, the game’s main mechanic is the ability to alter gravity in any direction you wish, and you need to use this ability to navigate throughout caves. Fall too far and you obviously die. Checkpoints are silloutes of yourself. It gets stranger when these giant lizards appear and eat you unless you distract them with bats. It’s fun, but weird, and like I said, it kind of freaks me out.

In a similar vein there’s VVVVVV. In this game you also alter gravity (up and down only). Don’t let it’s simple art style throw you off. This game is incredible fun, especially if you like platformers. You will die. A lot. But it has some of the most upbeat music I’ve ever heard and that really tears the frustration apart. The story is that you are Commander Viridian stranded in some random dimension looking for his crew members in outer space. The game is half open exploration and half leveled. Each level has its own special gimmick such as trampolienes that launch you in the opposite direction uncontrollably, or a rising floor of spikes. This is one of the games that really sells Humble Inde Bundle. If you can, buy the soundtrack (PPPPPP [I don’t get it either]).

Another high selling point of the Humble Inde Bundle is Braid. I really don’t need to describe Braid, it’s just that popular and I never expected it to be in the Humble Indie Bundle. Heck, the HIB3 before Braid was in it. If you don’t know Braid is a platformer where time travel is the main theme. Each artistically drawn (the art style is the biggest feature here. The whole appearance is breathtaking) level has a different type of time travel. The story is that Tim (the protagonist) made a mistake and the love of his life had fallen victim to a monster. It does get a little more complex than that, but I don’t want to spoil anything.

Moving on, Machinarium is a point-and-click adventure game that stars a little robot in a world of junk. I haven’t played it much (at all), but it definately seems interesting. It’s actually pretty popular and well recieved. If you don’t believe me, check out YouTube. it’s another game that I was actually surprised to see on the Humble Inde Bundle.

Then there’s Crayon Physics an amazingly fun game where you draw stuff… with crayons! The goal in each level is to get a little ball to roll to a star. You do this by drawing objects, bridges, or whatever. That’s the crayon part. The physics part is that the physics in that game are sort of unique, but I won’t get into details. You’ll have to buy the HIB3 yourself to find out. This game is almost exactly like Scribblenauts, come to think of it… except you draw stuff instead of spell it, so it’s gaurenteed that the game will have the object you think of. It just won’t be as “polished.”

The last game I’m going to review is Osmos. You take control of some kind of bacterium and your goal is to move into other, smaller bacteria to make yourself bigger. If you move into bigger bacteria, you become absorbed and have to start the level over. To move you push your bacteria with the mouse, but moving causes you to shoot bacteria in the opposite direction, thus making yourself smaller and more susceptible to loss. It’s actually a lot more fun than it sounds and it gets pretty complicated after the first few levels. Unfortunately, it gets kind of overshadowed by VVVVVV and Braid.

I don’t really have much of an idea about any of the other five games because I’ve been distracted by these here. These games are all amazing and any of them makes it worth more than the price of (“pay what you want.”) If you want to buy this, then just go here: http://www.humblebundle.com/

30 Things I Learned in School

People keep asking me what I have against school, why did I always hate it so much. I never really was able to tell them because I thought I would be offending them for some odd reason, or maybe I was just shy. Who knows? I also remember back then people asking me what I learned in school, and one answer was always the right answer: nothing. Now that I’m older, I realize that’s something that just isn’t true. Some I’m going to shoot both questions down with this list of “30 Things I Learned in School.”

1. Learning happens in spite of education; not because of it.
2. You can’t choose your friends. They choose you. And they will unchoose you if you don’t do as they say.
3. Adult life will suck, and adults will repeatedly remind you that adult life will suck until child life starts to suck too.
4. If you ever finish all of your work then there’s just more work to do. So don’t finish the work until the last second, and procrastinate half the time away before you start to achieve previous said goal.
5. People are morons. It’s just human nature.
6. Every job you will ever have in your lifetime will suck entirely no matter how prestigious or well-paying it is (see future post for examples).
7. How to tune out people screaming at your face while looking totally, and utterly alert.
8. The best way to sell a crappy book: get a teacher to like it. As it becomes mandatory reading, sales just go up every year. Who cares if the book ends up in a landfill?
9. Friendships come and go. They complain that you don’t have any friends, and once you do they spend every waking moment keeping you apart.
10. When you laugh the world laughs with you. When you cry the world laughs at you.
11. You can’t please any of the people… ever.
12. How to convincingly feign being sick, and how it can solve virtually any problem.
13. You can’t rely on other people to take care of you, protect you from bullies, do their job, be sane, be competant, or be decent human beings. Expecting anything else sets you up for disappointment.
14. If there’s something you don’t understand or don’t like you can make fun of it until it goes away, or kills itself.
15. What seems petty now may traumatize you for years to come.
16. A single letter on a crumpled piece of paper put there by a person you utterly hate for reasons that you don’t care about has the power to turn the world against you.
17. Technology moves forward. Public schools don’t.
18. Proxies are the best things since sliced bread. They aren’t just for people under oppresive governments anymore.
19. Anyone who ever said that “high school is the best time of your life” should be convicted of assisting a suicide and get mental help. Immediately.
20. Anyone and their dog, and their dog’s fleas can become a substitute teacher.
21. Society doesn’t like you. It laughs at your misery. You must be a terrible person.
22. If you learn something the first time and it isn’t interesting, it won’t be interesting the next time you learn it, or the fourth time after that.
23. You are your own best friend. Loners may be freaks, but freaky is cool. And some of the sanest people I’ve ever met are loners.
24. Total strangers leave you alone. Friends are allowed to take things without permission, punch you (two for flinching), and impose. Family members are allowed to outright humiliate you because… you know, you’re family.
25. Kindergarten teachers learn from Marx. The best way to teach sharing is not taking a toy away from someone who is content and give it to the other kid who just looked at longingly.
26. Suicide prevention doesn’t do much if it relies on the person who probably doesn’t want to be stopped.
27. Everybody lies. Trust no one.
28. Just as school kills creativity, it kills logic. “Homework is to help you do well on tests. Tests determine your grade.” Acing all tests and doing no homework nets you a failing grade.
29. A private school does not mean a good school, or a safe school.
30. The human stomach is absolutely amazing considering it can digest all the crap they put in school food when it’s supposedly young, weak, and still developing.

If I ever have kids, I’m homeschooling them. Don’t tell me schools will improve because they won’t. They’re using the same outdating methods they’ve used for the past two centuries. If this sounds like satire, it isn’t. I learned a hell of a lot more from school, but I’m trying to keep this light-hearted. You don’t want my nightmares. Trust me.