Call Of Duty Scenarios

The Videogame, "Call Of Duty" often deals with wartime scenarios, and puts the player in the first person perspective of a protagonist in these situations.  In these circumstances, the player's job is to kill people in order to accomplish a goal.  Of course, these aren't real people, but it might as well be considered as training because training simulators that the Army uses are fairly identical.

In this report, the illustrious Aaron Dykes picks up the latest copy of "Game Informer" magazine, where an article describes the kind of new plots one might expect to see from the makers of the Tom Clancy Rainbow Six series line of the first-person shooter.  Disconcerting, to say the least. 

So in this series of journalistic articles, I will attempt to describe some video game plots that I would like to see occur over the eventuality of my own lifespan.  Some of these are more like diplomacy videogames.  Others of them resemble the same kind of military operations described in Call Of Duty, except you're a medic and your goal is to save as many people as you can.

Stuff like that, know what I mean?

Egypt Revolution Scenario

Phase 1.  People get the idea somewhere that if they protest, the military might force president to step down.  Probably information from the Brotherhood of Muslims.

Phase 2.  Military takes power peacefully, changes nothing.

Phase 3.  People claim that the military is not making good with their desires.
Then they start protesting again.

The protests this time are not met with the same tenderness of the police/MP.

MUNICIPALITIES:  Do not let foreign sources fund your police brigades.

MAYORS:  Keep control of the presence of military.  Prepare for measures to remove or inconvenience or enact enforceable policy that keeps occupying military out of your city, especially for establishing permanent posts.

Fact:  That military is one of many regimes being set now into place in the Middle East.  Every country is preparing for war.

If it were me, I'd get the hell out of here.

But there's nowhere to go...
Planet Earth

FrontRunners

Imagined an event where a guy left a sign in someone's house.  She ran back crying and didn't get the joke, and said, "There's nothing worse than a house that's not a home!"  We were all perplexed why she didn't see the humor.  Apparently it wasn't bad enough that we weren't close to her in that way, because we all needed to break into her house in order to make the joke.

A few days later, an officer from the fence yard got pulled off duty.   He came in and sat down everyone that was laughing that night as she wept.  The officer took a tone which sounded like an exasperated parent, once again having to inquisition the immature children around the base.  We were all role-playing positions in our previous lives, but none of it felt real.

As fully grown men, we could only chuckle at the situation, because it seemed so insignificant.  A prank pulled on a neighbor, one we all thought was too serious.  I'm not sure if it were the original intent, but let's just say she didn't loosen up one bit.  She tightened her grip on the only thing she had left, which happened to be the imposing authorities all around us.

The guard came up early in the afternoon as people started to arrive after their work for the day.  All that they were able to do, because there was no entertainment, was literally sit in the middle of a courtyard.  Their wits were worn down to the point where they couldn't even hold conversations anymore.  All they could do was argue, and pretend that they were "leadership" and their opinions existed.  The officer guard came up to the group, and said, "Who put the sign in Miss Kiera's kitchen?"  And they all said, "No, no, I didn't do it.  We didn't touch a thing.  Then it became a forensic experiment.  "I want you all to write 'Good morning Sweetie' on a card sign.  Right now.  Do it now!" so we all wrote our separate notes on our cards.  Miss Kiera wasn't around to see any of this.  Then the officer took all the cards and said "Alright now, you're all guilty."

Old Remmy, the rambler who barely ever said a word, remarked, "But Mr. Officer Guardsman, just because we laughed doesn't mean we're guilty."  And then ToughGuy chimed in.  "Look buddy, for all we know, you could have done it."

"Let's get one thing straight, ToughGuy.  I'm the one that's playing the detective.  Not you.  You just sit around and wait until the day your number's called.  Let's see if a grand jury isn't going to believe it's a forgery if we use the one you just gave to me as evidence."

Calling numbers, nobody really knew what it meant.  Our access to information was fairly poor.  Once your number was called, they would take you away from the camp, and you'd never be heard from again.  That could either be a bad thing or a good thing.  Sometimes they told people in a pleasant manner, but other times it was more of a threatening thing to have ones' number called.  It just meant that you were leaving, but they didn't really say where.  It was still really clear that society was just too dangerous and that we'd have to stay in these detainment camps until the war was completely over.  There were reports, too, that airstrikes against the detainee camps might happen, as well.

What started as a way to get us off the streets of New York City became a nightmarish retreat into a world that looked something like Shindler's List meets Grapes of Wrath.  Morgan Freedom's voice sounds punishing, like the Old Testament, when he said, "In a world where dumb people are punished for their lack of intelligence..."

But I don't believe that it's a lack of intelligence, like many of our more fortunate friends might believe.  Or a situation of luck that could compound in complexity until they saw the very worst of luck in history.  This story is about the disconnect of one group of human beings to another group of humans, in a manner that many would say is the difference between species.

One species want to dominate the other, whom they identify as "not their kind" by their unwillingness to be cut-throat ruthless in attacking the system with the same voracity for all that it's worth.  But it's foolishness for those people for attacking a system that was set up to protect the rights of all people, because they don't know how, in the long run, they'll also be affected.  We're all part of the planet no matter what party you favor or species you decide you're in.

"Do you think they mean what they said, about throwing us all away?" said Biffer.  ToughGuy looked longingly at the ground, as if wishing to become dirt and said, "That whole prank was a bad idea."

"But we never have any fun," said Paul Ramses.  He was right, there wasn't nearly enough recreational time.  He was there because he was actually from a corporation, which is part of the reason that he didn't use a nickname.  He didn't get the #Occupy stance on nicknames.  We all had one because we were protesting our parents for bringing us into this crappy existence.  He still believed that by using his real name, there would be a coherent record of his every good deed, and that a nickname might cause him to resort to bad deeds.  Little did he know that we knew where to find people like ToughGuy every day.  We didn't need to track his banking statements and abduct him at an ATM withdrawal, as was the case with Mr. Ramses.  The pharaoh's days were over, and he could no longer be king.  The judge prosecuted him on crimes that even his honor did not understand, basing the verdict on the credit of the good name of the office that was indicting him.

What's ironic?  He was let into this camp that we consider ours, as extra punishment for this rejection by his peers, as if to say that "you're not better than them, the ones you helped us screw for all those years."  Nobody was really sure what he actually did, but it was clearly criminal in nature, based on the description we were given.  This made the situation a little more ambiguous, about whether we were in custody for crimes, or if we were just being sheltered until the Great Emergency was over.  One might even tell you...  For the things you know are all around you.  If you can't change your surroundings, then you just end up knowing less.  I realize that this place makes you dumber.  I've become aware of that to some extent, because I know that I just can't confide in anyone.  There's nobody else out in this entire place who understands me enough that I would want to believe I could confide in them.  But I also don't have the insensitivity to be a guard.  I guess I'll continue being me, and very quietly continuing.

Next Entry


I felt very far away from the distant realm of nature.  The housing project looked on the side of a very good place.  The nurses at the station were all very much good people who wanted to help, but the rules were that you could not get pregnant, and if you were sick, there was nothing they could do for you except give you drugs.  No surgeries, no operations other than amputations.  And this was because there just weren't enough doctors to go around performing all of the operations necessary to keep us alive if something serious .  I don't want you to be afraid, but there's a fairly good chance that this could affect you for the rest of your life," a real doctor would say to you, when something was potentially wrong.  But these 'doctors' were like a bunch of clown doctors when it came to telling people what was actually wrong with them.  They too were essentially being punished by someone or something, I remember accidentally handing someone a huge check that I wrote for something else.  And the clerk went back and changed the price so that it was lower.  Time was wearing me down.

Escape!

This whole thing started like a nightmare.  It ended like a dream, when I woke up and found out that none of it was real...  at least the personal part of it.

It was early.  The two of us rose from our cells, these classrooms they gave us.  Guys were put in one, and the women stayed in the other.  They each had their own set of problems but the guards said it was to keep the population down.  They only let the ones they want to have kids actually do anything.  And they have the rest of us conduct large ceremonies, even if the people getting married have no interest in it.  They were "chosen" and by that, this meant favors.  These favors had not meant freedom, but they were worth something, just the same.

The rest of us tended to the biology labs.  They taught us all how to make bugs disappear with zappers, and told us to be ready if there were ever a big giant wave of bugs.  We thought they were kidding, but then one day a huge swarm of bugs flew our way.  And we knew exactly what to do.  They said survival of the fittest is how the Universe becomes more intelligent.  So during any of these drills, a few would perish.  But that was just the meaning behind the experience, I guess.

I kept justifying it inside of my head that everything was really supposed to happen the way that I imagined in my dreams.  This was so far from a dream, that I felt it was just beyond my control, to see the world get any better.  I knew there was a big war on the other side of the fence, and that no one was really alive, and that we were 'safe' here, they said.  But still, I wanted to go outside.  I needed to know if there really was a big war, or that I was only imagining it.  I had no idea what was in store for us next.

See, here's the thing.  We were led to this place, disbelieving the reason why we were prodded so adamantly away from our destination that day.  It was an ordinary day, when it happened.  We were just going to work.  I was walking, with my wife, and we stopped at the bus stop and waited a little.  Then, a parade of police cop cars came and arrested a whole bunch of people, including us.  It sure looked like an arrest.  There were sirens and horns and everything else.  But then when we got inside the car, we asked the officers what happened.  And they said:

"No you didn't do anything wrong."
"Well then why are you driving us away?" we asked.
"It's for your own safety," he said.  "Everyone is in great danger."

How weird, I thought.  No warning on the news.  It feels like an arrest.  But the cops keep assuring me that I did nothing wrong.  I'm wondering why that is?  I can't get mad at them, because they're cops and they're just doing their job.  I am the invader, perhaps, to any police.  Not because I live there, or it's my home, but because the officer wants to know my thoughts, and she can't have my mom," he said.

The guards all looked away.  They had enough, overhearing our lame excuse for a conversation.  We didn't make any sense to them anyways.  As long as we weren't plotting an escape, they didn't care what we talked about.  And there was a very easy way to tell what we were talking about, even to them who didn't understand us.  We'd all get quiet, and discuss the goood old days.  Then some people would start getting sore over just their loss of memory.

In my mind, I recognized that all of life is just a memory.  And memories disappear when we die.  What remains are the feelings we get when making connections.  Some feelings are passed between lives, which prove that they really exist.  I dream that when I pass in this life, my next one will be full of surprises, fulfillment, and just prizes.

I was meandering down the walkway today.  That's all we can do.  The guards are not paid, in fact they were also picked up that day that we were hauled into this kennel.  They swear allegiance to the Lord.  When people are screaming at you, do you have the sensibility to know someone?  Those were the original points of discussion for all men, at one point in time.

Theta writing (sometimes dreaming) I come across some nonlinear parts.  As the upcoming months approached, time stood still for the wanderers.

The trains ran all day and all night to the warehouse factory, where we stayed.  I'd hear them late at night.

Thoughts About Alex Jones.

The thing you have to remember is that Alex Jones has essentially pioneered the front that we now call "the infowar."  And it's a real thing, no doubt.  There is an evil force in the world that needs to hide from the truth in order to exist.  Alex made it his job to expose it.




Here's Alex, in the movie "Waking Life" (at 4:30 he appears), yelling into a bullhorn.  This was my first encounter with his personality.  You might say that he's capitalized on this notion of "Info-wars," and that might be true, depending on how much he's financially benefiting from his fame and success.

The issue with Jones, however, is that he believes that eventually people will have to fight back, and he's not really sure how to mobilize people in a positive way.  He knows that war is not the answer.  He's reported that the government has established detainee camps in the event that the civil unrest becomes beyond the power of the police to detain.  So what's the answer, Alex?

For me, he's already the answer in himself, by pointing the finger at every elephant in the room, no matter how many there are, regardless of how big.  Whether it's Gadaffi, retreating with a white flag envoy out of Sirte, getting hit by NATO en route to what he thought was his surrender.  Or the dubious explanation of the mysterious collapse of Building 7.

As he gets more frantic with every one of his transmissions, you have to wonder if he's serious or just over-reacting.  I can honestly say that "This is what...  the world really is in this position."



It's something else, to see him with the camo shirt and the goofy haircut with the public-access show studio motif still lingering in the background.  At his worst moments, he theorizes as fact, and that within itself is the real cause for why most people cannot stand listening to him for so long.  But then, if he didn't, he wouldn't be who he is:  a major general in the info war.

"I told you that the announce of a bank of the world and the global currency is the solution to the European crisis in The Obama Deception, three years ago."  I'm so used to listening to this guy that this quote actually makes sense to me.   My interest in listening to him with the frequency that I often do with other news aggregates like the Huffington Post is because it's just so freakin' entertaining that I keep on tuning in.  In that regard, Alex Jones is doing his job.  He's doing a particularly good job, especially for me, because it's difficult for most people to get my attention like this.

If you have any preconceived notions about how the world works, or if the world favors you in any particular way, then it is likely that you might subconsciously filter his information with your own defenses, because much of what he says is delivered with an increasing sense of urgency.

If I really thought he was dangerous, I would say so.  Unfortunately I don't think that he's making much of this stuff up.  I know for a fact that much of what he's saying is true.  Partially because of the documents that he presents to back up his stories, either with official documents or by news sources.  Every day he comes up with a stack of papers that he collects from these sources, so he's an active spokesperson for his own 'leaks' type organization.

He argues that the reason that these documents are not publicized are because the interests of the people who are trying to keep their information private are essentially criminal.  It's hard to be a spokesperson for justice but I have only been made aware of how difficult that position actually is through watching Alex Jones.  Here's his youtube channel.

Theta

Theta

Theta is a device which I have invented, for the purpose of establishing a connection with, what I believe, is a subconscious universe that is more challenging to understand than real life.  In that world, there are more possibilities, because none of it's happened. 

Some of it might but only in the form of movies.  I see things in my head which might resemble television or movies.  The message is always good, because I've tuned to a good frequency.  I keep its coordinates locked in my heart.  

This is the message of theta.  These are dreams that I've had the ability to write down.  In 2002, at the age of 22, back at my parent's house in my old bedroom from high school, I spent most of my time hiding in there, building weird machines (and then taking them apart), making weird songs (and then erasing them), and also writing lots of stuff (then burning it).  

Some of the stuff that I wrote was on the computer.  The reason is because I was able to type on the computer with my eyes closed.  My ability to create language on a typewriter developed better over time, and I practiced in my bed, while asleep.  Before I could afford a laptop, I would do this with a regular keyboard, leaving the monitor where it was.  

Theta is somewhat edited, because it has to be.  The session always ends like this: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  So I take that out, for sure.  Most of it is marginally interesting, or too personal and probably unable to be related.   That's me, falling asleep on the keys. 

Theta taught me how to let go of the constraints of my thoughts, by simultaneously teaching my fingers to do the same; to let loose on the keys.  Because it's not about the keyboard.  It's more really related to the act of translating thoughts into words, but spending more focus on seeing the thoughts.  The act of thinking, for me, is a very visual experience.  I almost can't see the world around me when I'm thinking too hard.  You might say that autistic children could be blamed for thinking too hard, and that the problems of the world have exacerbated the autistic population of the world by being just too complicated.  This isn't a child's inability to understand something.  It's that child's unwillingness to accept the irrationality of the situation.  

That's sort of related to theta, but even as I wrote those words, I could see through the eyes of an autistic child, and that's theta.  That's the ability to live through other peoples' experiences whose are not your own, and that's what the afterlife is like.  Those who are able to see into the dreamworld understand the afterlife in a little more depth than the rest of us, because the two are closely related.  The mind above us is the mind of the Globe; that is to say that our consciousness arises into the electromagnetic spectrum, quite physically this is true, as our thoughts, which are almost entirely "electronic" become released into another "sphere of influence."  That's why the only time people ever see ghosts, they're beautifully seen only as the Aurora Borealis, and nothing more, ever else.  The rest is in our imaginations, which is way more wild and crazy than our sedated, conscious lives, when we're really asleep.  

Thoughts About Gadaffi.

The one thing I got to say about Gadaffi is that his people actually really did love the guy, for the most part, and they had every reason to.  I believe his sons were good, and would have protected Libya better, had they been more prepared for the invasion.  But Libya let its guard down.  Amidst the celebration of $.17 gas prices, he could drive in the heart of downtown in a motorcade of a dozen vehicles, with his head out the sunroof like the King that he was.



But the King is dead.  That was the message from NATO.  And I'm not saying Mummar was even close to a murmur of a second away from becoming Leader of the World, let alone Best Dressed in the West.  But he's looking at us now from Space, and dead guys can do no harm, except scare you.  That's what I've learned from watching movies about ghosts.

In my belief, what's worse than what they did to the African people is what they're about to do (and perhaps have been doing for a while) to the continent of Africa.  You might even say that, if you include the Persian Gulf and the oil beneath the sands, it's been happening for a while.

So what do we do about all this?  We blog about it.  We write it so that the people in the future can look back at us and say, hey.  At least a few of them had a clue.  Because the past will not be a mystery to the people at the End of the Age.  The Occult leadership (think Bohemian Grove) get their orders from their imaginations, unlike many other people, who get their orders from them.  You might say that their imagination is the source for religion, and soon to be a pantheon of paranormal beliefs unlike that which you could imagine.  People who really believe in their religion are willing to act on their beliefs.  Most Christians are only capable of acting on behalf of their wallets, which cause them to make bad decisions. If you take apart their wallet, all they're left with are their moral values, which have been equally eroded as society quietly moves the bar for what is socially acceptable.  You might see more brothels if the economic disparity continues, because there's plenty of wealth and resources, everyone thinks.  But people are holding out because I'm not smart enough, I'm not pretty enough, some people think.  In many ways this is an incentive to go out, get on a pair of high heels and an education.



But the source of the interest is bad motivation.  Getting educated simply so that you can go on and chase down currency sounds like you missed the first lesson:  life is the persuit of happiness and liberty.  Our experiences in the education would be much different if everyone could agree on that.  If life was about the persuit of money, an end to a means of endless dreams, you might find that you are dreaming.  The realest human beings think of life as a dream, but they know that they will wake up someday.  And when they do, they'll say "Wow.  Oh wow.  Oh wow."

Reality World TV Network Program.

There once were a group of people who altogether wanted two things.  First, they wanted their own sitcom show, because they thought that they were so interesting and so clever that everyone deserved to see their every move.  But that wasn't enough.  They also wanted to be in space.

So they got the funding from a network to boost them all into space, like it were a Reality World TV Network Program.  The network gave them the green light, and they got the funding with assistance from their sister organization, the Federal Government, who handed out contracts to private Space Agencies like NASA/NBC (once Microsoft became Nasa).  It could have been a good idea, because while they were in space, Monolith was forming, and I would rather be in outer space than to witness the birth of Monolith.

So the actors got on the spaceship and went into orbit.  The show would have been better if the astronaut reality TV show cast were smart and simply orbited around the world throughout the season.  They could have guest-spots provided by Russian spacemen, aboard the International Space Station, and discuss politics on Earth to an audience of bar attendees on Sunday afternoons before the football games.  But this did not happen.  Instead, they all had secret agendas.

One guy on the show seemed pretty normal, but the whole time, he keeps trying to turn himself into a lizard.  Another one, no one is sure if she's a hologram, a reflection, or a real being.  There's one guy who thinks he controls the ship, but no one has the guts to tell him that the ship has always been on autopilot.  One person dares, and he states, "but why on earth would there be all those controls over there?"

There are several others.  The general atmosphere of the show is that they all eventually go crazy.  They all get a little too nuts.  And the farther out in space they go, the more spaced out the show.

What they also don't realize is that their selfish behavior has caused them to lose their character loyalists back at home, where everyone is supposedly watching.  When, in reality, people stopped watching a long time ago.  In the final episode, they float into the darkness of space, very much less rational and seemingly at a loss of intelligence from the initial episodes, as the world generally forgets about them, and loses interest in space travel, as a whole.

*Monolith:  alluded to in many other ways, the end-all, be-all of all combined corporate entities into one single company, with its own currency system.

**Why Space:  They thought that if the show were in space, more people would watch it because people are basically interested in Outer Space enough as it is.  Plus, the only way to justify the costs associated with being in space would be to promote the show as part social experiment, and partial lab experiment.

Top Secret Writing/Filming Project

Viewing of this project will be in two separate stages. Parts as it is filmed will be released via Youtube. A complete version later at a point called a "Node" will be turned into a movie. It will contain a collection of the best scenes from the season, and in addition an extra feature. Parts will also be released to public access networks.

All filming will be conducted in private and in public. To the outside world, it will appear that the action being recorded is of a reality-tv appearance. Many of the scripts will be either:

> Planned in advance in the phictioncharacters or phictionlit blog.

> improvised from a general
understanding of the behavior of their characters (and the perceived interaction that would correspond with their behavior).

Most crew involves only one or two camerapersons, and a director of sorts. Its important that the director not get too involved. It is impossible for the director to be a character, but all characters are writers. A director can be a writer, too, and often is involved in the scripting process.

Ideas for filming are listed on the blog. Skits are under skits. A separate blog entitled phictioncharacters is elsewhere, which describes each character.

Characters describe themselves
in a bio/journal meant to be written by the fictional character they pretend to be. The outside world (viewing audience) has access to this. Signed-in characters are allowed to write to their character, comment on the posts of others (in non-character as comments, to describe an interaction).

Each actor/actress is payed for each performance in a revenue-sharing scheme designed to:

> be fair to all
> encourages quality acting
> keeps everyones best interests in mind

Waiver form establishes entry onto the platform. Negotiates:

> revenue sharing formula
> hitcount/advertising platform
> terms of retraction



Writers are actors. Scenes are planned on a plot forum, which is a blogspot with permissions granted to each of its members.

Commercials in my Mind all the Time

The Apple Store opened in New Haven.  It's hideously bright at night and makes the entire block look entirely in the dark compared to its genius (bar).  They replaced the bookstore wall with a great blank slate to contemplate whenever meandering up the stairs with a book by Applegate.


In my imagination, I had a vision (while I was asleep).  In this vision, there was an Apple Store.  At this particular apple store, there were brightly lit advertisements on every wall, containing photos of objects that were large.  In the middle of the floor, there contains a wooden table, such that you'd expect at an Apple Retail Store; but only one.

At this one table, there is a singular device glowing from directly at its center.  This table is at the center of the room.  You don't enter; you just appear.  And a little gray alien stands in front of you and asks you if you would like it, without asking or moving its mouth; only with its mind.  But you can hear it saying:

"Do you like it?"

And you are perplexed, it can tell, but it can't tell why you're perplexed. So you say:

"Yeah, but where are the options?"

Now, the alien looks a bit perplexed.  Slowly looks back at you and says:

"But this is the greatest product in the universe." (insert laugh track).
"What kind of options do you need?"

Good and Well

You can't mess up the difference between "good" and "well" in front of Jonah.  If you say it wrong, he's gonna think you're up to some hi-jinx and ask you how your girl is.  Here's an example:

"Hey Jonah.  You look good."

That doesn't sound good to him, because I'm a guy and that's really the opposite of what Jonah wants to hear from me.  In this case, the opposite is well.

"Hey Jonah.  You look well."

That's much better.
from "The Greatest Mayor"

Hang On To Your Sanity, Sean Hannity!

Or hold onto your tonsils, Magic Johnson.

Imagine that Volkswagen had an image problem with being associated with the Nazis.  They would come up with a character called "Heimlich Maneuver" who would be real good at handling maneuvers, such as making tight turns and rescuing somebody.  Even at a restaurant, Heimlich (that's his first name) might save somebody choking, then run away into his Volkswagen Beatle.

He looks like an explorer from the 18th century.  Got a big safari hat on, sometimes.  At others, he's just got binoculars.  One time, he was exploring some part of Africa.  There were dinosaurs, and hidden among the overgrown shrubbery, you see the bubbly dome rooftop of a volkswagen beetle.

Him and a team of elephants pull the car out of the earth.  He and a team of monkeys examine it with hand-held magnifying glasses for detail.  Eventually he makes it home, with the car.

"Und dis where I brought das auto to da german pee-ple."

One night, he's out with his friend, the guy from the Dos Equis commercial.  The two of them have the following conversation.

Dos Equis: I'm sorry, friend.  You can't hang with me.

Mr. Maneuver (Heimlich): I make za turns eight times as you!

Equis:  I cannot let you drink.

Mr. Maneuver:Why not?

Equis: Because you have to drive home.

Heimlich: But what about you??

Dos Equis:  I live here.

Next, you'd see shows featuring the characters from company's individual commercials, together in groups..!

Greatest Love Story Ever

Greatest Love Story

I saw the greatest love story already. It was the bomb dot com.
Actually it was the GreatestLoveStoryMovie.Com

Tag line for the Trailer:
Sometimes the greatest love story
Happens every day.

Then character says:
"But how can that possibly happen every day?"

Two kids fall in love, move away, go to school, get lost, come back and find eachother again.

Sounds simple, right?

(Argument)
(Acorns tossed as little kids)

Note From Writer (Ian Applegate (or yoda).):
I have only seen the trailer, and the opening and closing scenes of this.
The rest has yet to be written completely.

Opening Scene


It's late. Sis is asleep. Everyone in the whole house is completely asleep. Even the dog is asleep.
I'm having a dream. I'm playing football in a stadium, it's dark and foggy.
Somebody snaps me the ball. I shout out the call.

There are only 12 of us on the field in an empty stadium.
All my receivers (2) are running their patterns. I can see their patterns in my mind.
And then I see them as kids, playing Xbox in my room together when we were younger.
We're playing a football game, and it's identical to the game in my dream.
The two screens run in tangent with one another, as I select a button, the pass is snapped
There is a flash of light.

It's the light from my blinking alarm clock.

I stand up, in my blue PJ's. It's summertime and the windows are open.
Haven't been to school in weeks. It's sophomore year, and I feel like my big dream will never come true.

My biggest dream, and I know it sounds lame, is to meet the right girl.
And not just meet her, but hit it off with her right off the bat.
With a great conversation, a serious look, maybe our friends could talk about it for a few days before we finally agree to meet up.

But that's not what happened at all.

I was standing by my locker, and I saw this girl walk by, and she gave me a nice look.
So I quickly put away my books and just started following her.

I didn't know where I was going, or where she was headed, but I just thought it was a harmless excuse to be late for class. I got lost.
She ends up down the other end of the same hall, at her locker. She stopped, opened the door, and then I startled her.

"What are you doing?" she asks, startled. Heck, it startled me. She caught me off guard. I guess I didn't even realize what I was doing.
So I said, "You gave me this look, over there."

"What look?"
"What do you mean 'what look'?"
"Whatever! I looked at you and smiled. That doesn't give you permission to follow me down the halls."

Just then an older gentleman wearing some oldschool vest, wearing glasses, maybe having big long dreadlocks, steps out of a classroom. "Do you have permission to be in the halls?"

In the course of that time, the two of them completely didn't notice that two bells had rung, and they were standing in the hallway by themselves.
That was the first time they met.

I'm not going to be able to withstand 3 years of this forsaken place, if a girl can give you a look like that, and get away with it, as if it doesn't mean something.
I'm not going to spend my time chasing girls like that, either. If it was meant to be, it was meant to be. And that's just how it is," he thinks in class.

They see eachother at a party, but avoid one another. It's odd, as a movie, because people might not realize this but we know eachother.
We've known eachother for years. Christ, this town only has 400 people in it. You meet the woman that serves you coffee every Sunday Morning in kindergarten.
You realize that's who she'll be in the fourth grade when you find out that her mom is the woman who fills up your mom's cup of coffee after church when you go out for brunch every Sunday.

Luckily that's Suzy Plattus, she's not the girl we're talking about here. The girl we're talking about is a tease. She's a flirt. And she's been like that since the second grade. That's the first time that I ever slowed down enough in recess to notice that she was constantly staring at me. So I start throwing acorns at her, but that doesn't work. It actually kind of seemed to piss her off a little.

But she never threw one back, and that's probably a good thing because I would have started to look for bigger acorns. Anyway I was just trying to get her attention but I didn't know any better. I wouldn't throw acorns at my mom, for example, but Ani's a different story because she can't ground me. Besides, I wanted her to notice and be aware of my superhuman aiming powers.

Now we're 16. We've never dated. We barely even speak yet we know immense levels of detail about eachother. For example, she knows that I got all my comic books stolen from me by my best friend in 7th grade and that's why we never speak to eachother, even though we're on the same team. She was there when I peed my pants in the first grade, and she knows I have a hard time sitting still because I used to squirm around on the rug when we were in kindergarten. That level of detail is alot for a fully grown woman to know about a 16 year old kid.

And believe me, she is fully grown. I was well aware of that in sixth grade when I started noticing. And I guess alot of guys started noticing because the seating arrangement in the class kind of changed after that, but I stayed in my seat because I liked my seat and I could see her just fine in all of the crazy facebook pictures she took of herself and posted online.

So one night, in the Fall of Autumn of our sophomore year, I went walking around because I couldn't sleep. I used to stay up, with my eyes closed, imagining things while I layed under the covers in bed. One night I started imagining the neighborhood, and the streets outside, and I thought, why don't I just get up and see it in real life? I'm lying awake anyway, just thinking about it. So I went for a walk by myself, out down the street and around the corner. It was about 3 Am, and nothing is really moving at that time of night. But when the moon is really bright, everything looks blue and seems like it's in slow motion, because everything is barely moving at all.

I like the way that the trees cover the road. Their long branches extend and in the fall, they create a bright red tunnel for cars to drive underneath. Some of the leaves were gone, and the moon was poking through the thinner sections of branches, and the leaves. I decided that I wanted to center myself directly into the middle of the scenery, and walk in a straight line right down the center of the road. I figured at that period of time in the middle of the night, there are no cars. So I did just that.

It was while I was in between pretending the middle of the road was a tightrope, and my following the moon through the trees, that I noticed a figure, right down the center of the horizon. My first inclination was to believe that I was still asleep. I tried imagining if I was in bed or not. The shape appeared to be a girl in a nightgown. I looked at her shape and knew it was Ani.

We walked up to eachother and there was an intense moment of suspense. We kiss... or do we? That's the thing.

"I'm not sure if this is a dream or not," I tell my friends at the lunch table.
"So wait, let me get this straight. You're out sleepwalking. Or you're asleep. And you see Ani and she's sleepwalking."
"Ronnie. You're having a dream."
"It was a dream, Ronnie. There's no way that this could possibly have been real. It sounds too made up to be real."
One of my friends, Erik, says the most common sense thing out of all of them.
"You're not going to notice unless you ask."

We walk out of the lunch room and down the hall. I think, "You know, that's going to sound like the cheesiest pickup line ever."

She looks at me like she never had before. It was partial amazement, part wonder. I knew without words the answer but I asked anyway, because I was kind of on autopilot at the moment.

Final Scene

Ronnie walks around the neighborhood, looking for some flowers to pick for Ani.
He finds a bunch that he likes, while being very selective about picking some that remind him the most of her.
When he gets to her door, the flowers planted on the porch are completely identical to the ones that he chose.

Down the street, in the middle of the street...

Educational Background

From 1985 until 1994, I spent most of my time at a small Catholic School on Whalley Avenue.  It was all I really knew of the world, aside from books and television, music and movies.  My house was only 3 blocks from the school, on Elm Street.  

I recall passing through downtown on our way to Mystic, CT, where my grandparents lived, and wondering aloud, "Why is there a castle downtown?" and they told me it was a school, but I'm not sure that I believed them fully at the time.  

My mother finished high school but never attended college.  She found work as a typist, and would obtain manuscripts and put together final proofs for academic journals.  In spite of the importance of her stage in the work, being that she was the last step in the process before things went to print, she was never paid very well but she still liked doing it.  In our first apartment, I recall her office in the attic, full of brown manilla folders on shelves surrounding an old IBM typewriter.  There was a pinball game up there, with the Christmas ornaments and boxes of clothes out of season.  I wasn't allowed to play it when she was working because it was distracting to her.  I remember the one day that Hurricane Gloria came to town, that we sat around playing cards by candle-light.  I was six.  i recall watching a person ride his bicycle down Norton Street in the howling wind and pouring rain.  I was amazed, because I knew how unlikely it would be for me to have permission to ride my bicycle at that exact moment.  

My father received a degree from SCSU for Social Work.  His first job was with the State of Connecticut, followed by a company called CCCI.  I can't remember what that stands for.  He primarily worked with the elderly, assessing their needs and getting them home care, rather than nursing homes.  During this time, he was a fairly attentive dad, got me lots of books and legos, signed me up for tee-ball, and in the process did a fairly decent job of keeping me mentally stimulated.  This only lasted for so long, though, and I can hardly remember his demeanor because it changed so quickly.  In 1992, he was hospitalized for a nonmalignant cyst in his spinal column which nearly left him paralyzed.  The steroids they gave him caused him to develop bipolar disorder, which still remains quite prevalent to this day as a part of his personality.  He never fully psychologically recovered, I don't think.  

That affected my education in such a way, because he was from that point entirely discouraging towards any type of progress that I made, academically.  When it came time to apply to colleges, I tried to encourage him to help me with my applications.  One application was for Yale, and I wanted to be in my hometown because I loved it so much here.  However, my dad threw all of the applications away to the schools that he considered too expensive to afford, disregarding any possibility that I would be eligible for financial aid.   he monopolized my choices and limited them strictly to schools that he thought were affordable.  

I settled on SUNY Purchase, a small liberal arts college in Westchester County, NY.  My father was open to the idea of it, and I felt like they had a decent enough program that I could find my way through it and be OK.  In my first year there, I had a quiet roommate who was studious and got to bed on time, kept the room neat and quiet and we were both able to concentrate and study.  I made the Dean's List those two semesters, which was great.  But I didn't make many friends, and everyone seemed really pre-occupied with their conservatories.  I wanted to be in an art conservatory there, but you were only allowed into one at a time, and unless you were in the conservatories, you weren't allowed really to take the upper level courses.  Since it was also an arts school, my interest was to be in both the music and the film conservatories, but they wouldn't allow it.  So, it was then that I decided I would just drop out completely and teach myself music and video.  It would be much less expensive, I'd be closer to home, where all my friends were, and I'd have the freedom of making my own curriculum.  

This began my period of self education, which lasted the next seven years of my life.  

Work Experience: Farm in Durham

There was one day I was at the Wooster Square Farmer's Market.  And I realized that I could get a job, working on a farm.  So I thought about asking every farmer if they needed help.  Then I determined that wasn't such a good idea, because what if I got hired by a bad farm?  So I would just look at everyone's food, like a customer, and see which farm I liked the most.

The one that I selected was David's.  It was called Starlight Gardens, and it was behind the Post Office next to the school fields in Durham.  We could hear the teams practice in the afternoon.  I had bought myself a pickup truck, from the Koffee Too Blackout Incident.  When I realized that I could potentially get to work outside of New Haven, I felt that a farm would really be the best place, because Dunkin Donuts are the same from here to Beijing.

Maybe someday I'll learn how to cultivate rice on the 4000 year old steppes built into the hills of Southwestern China.  In the meantime, I am experienced at the art of growing as much vegetation on an 8-acre farm as possible, and selling it all at MP to fancy restaurants at a great price.

That was the life, for my friend David. He ran a great farm, and I was sorry to leave when I did.  He barely used any petroleum equipment.  If he had oxen, he wouldn't need any.  But part of the problem with the oxen was that he didn't own the other part of the hill they could graze from, even though it was completely empty of use, aside from being his neighbor's property.

There were four greenhouses, each named after a climate.  Savannah, Tundra, Forest.  No rainforest, though.  Water was expensive.  And did you know that in the Southwest, some companies are claiming, by the power of law, that water is theirs before it ever hits the ground?  You're not allowed to save your own rainwater in some southwestern states, and that's against a person's freedom to prevent them from access to water.  That's beside the point though.

In this relative utopia of delicious greens, freshly grown and still planted into the ground, this was our procedure everyday during the peak of summer harvest.  (Other harvests, such as spring and fall, were different.  And there were growing seasons.  Some culinary techniques were designed to help preserve the food that needed to be eaten later.  Grains are a perfect example of a food that is nutritious and could be stored.

Real security is knowing that your population has a food supply that accounts for it, in the event of a petroleum shortage or lockdown.  It might be possible, in the future, for there to be a war, perpetuated by the Powers that Be.  In this future foe scenario, wouldn't you know that there'd be population reduction? In the words of David De Rothchild, nature has a way of doing that, at times.  And we can't really hold the wealthy accountable for the mistakes of an entire civilization.  Can we?

I would certainly hope not.  But I think things will change.  Not in the way that people expect, though.  We're not going to have a better iPhone next year, with more gadgets and gizmos than ever before.  The economy is in bad shape, and the forecast says it must get worse before it gets better.  How much worse is still up for grabs, but we'll know it's the end when we see signs that things are improving.

Right now, the signs are not there.  But it really doesn't matter on a farm, because all of your food is right there in front of you, and the weight of the world, not to mention the troubles of a torturous military, still spread in great numbers to regions all over the world, still exist these days.  I could say much more about war and the economy, but I will save that for another article later.

In the early morning, I cut the greens from the rows that we had planted just a couple weeks earlier.  It was still dewy out, most of the time, at that point in the morning, if it wasn't actually raining.  I timed my arrival to coincide with the moment in which I could see my hand at full length, with the change of daylight at an average of 15 minutes per 2 weeks, usually.

I cut the greens to be about 6" of clump, above the stem, mostly leaf.  We only cut back the same crop twice before plowing it down and replanting it again.  As I cut, with no more than a small knife, everyone's salad for the day, I placed it into a laundry basket until the basket reached the top.

Once the basket was full, I carried it back into the greenhouse with the sink and electricity.  There was only one, and it was located closest to the farmhouse, where Dave and his wife lived.  I would empty it out into a sink full of clean water, and swish it around in there.  Then I'll pull it all out, let it drip for a second, and dunk it into the other sink, also full of clean water.  This washed off the dirt.

Next, Dave showed me on my first day that there was a washing machine that had been converted to an electrical salad spinner.  The heat connector was off, and the wash cycle was eliminated from its functions.  All it would do was spin-dry the greens.

Once the greens were dry, I would weigh them and put them into 5 pound bags, which would then be driven to the restaurants that had bought them in advance from Dave.  He did the accounting and all of the delivery.  I got the prestigious task of tending to the crops, which by far was the task with the most responsibility, and I liked that.  I got to know the crops, and how fast they grew.  I knew when things were ready to be picked, probably a week in advance.  And I would go back to pick them when I knew they were ready, and sure enough they'd be ripe.  I memorized areas of the greenhouse and as the season progressed, the areas got more difficult to track, because some areas were re-planted and had a different timing about them.  This made picking tomatoes much quicker, knowing where to look.  It's one of the reasons that I was able to accomplish my tasks for the day in record time, compared to the other workers. It wasn't because I was stronger, or even that I knew more about farming.  I just knew where the ripe stuff was, because with my memory I was able to map it all out in my head.  Sometimes the satisfaction would come from plucking the tomato at a point where I was glad that I had waited just one more day to allow it to stay on the vine.

In the farm, there was a spider with bright yellow markers, otherwise entirely black.  I saw my first one in a greenhouse.  It scared the Bejesus out of me.  I thought it could bite me because it looked big enough to have teeth.  But I know that spiders don't eat people.  I would not know that if I watched scary movies, and probably would have reacted with more fear if my mind was subjected to the exposure to fear.   I cautiously averted making physical contact with the spider and continued picking heirlooms.

Later that day, I asked Dave what the deal was with the yellow and black spiders.
He said they were harmless.

Work Experience: The Yale Bookstore.

This is something I've been thinking about for a long time, applying to school.  I thought about it so much on the way to work everyday, at the bookstore.  Then, I started to read while I was at work.  And I thought, not only am I learning things and talking to smart kids all day.  I'm also getting paid.  And to me, that was the best thing about it.

One day I voluntarily drew a map for the general manager, who often seemed confused about where the sections of books were located.  It explained where every department of books were shelved, and I wrote it from memory, just to let him know that I was more familiar with the store than he was.

Amazing, I thought.  He actually liked the map.  Not only did she not take it personally (I believe her name was Martha MacDonald).  She took it personally to the front of the store and placed it in a case.  From that point, at the top of the stairs which led to the basement, there was a map which told everyone where the books were.  It looked like a cross between a Pirate Map, and where I buried my Legos in Edgewood Park.  I should write a song about that.

The other addition I made to the store was a website that was built into the mainframe of the computers.  When I was appearing to be shelving books, or taking down ISBN's, I was actually writing web code and saving it on floppy discs.

I never stole any books or nothing.  All I did was do what needed to be done.  The rest of the time, I would not be forced into busy work.  That was obviously a problem when the little managers started showing up.  It was their game, to make it so they had as little work to do as possible, thus delegating the majority of the responsibility of running the store to the people who were paid the least.  As you went up the pay scale, the accountability went down.

I was highly accountable, and way underpaid.  The best part was that we were free to sign out books whenever we wanted.  I used to take things home and photocopy them.  I had an archive of a wealth of education in my room, at one point.  It was then that I began to believe that the education was in the books, and not in the discussion.

And this is true, for some, but not all.  And that's why I'm applying to school.  Because I've done the reading, and now I want the discussion.  I'm ready to have dialogue.  I want to be taken seriously.  I need to help people while there's still time, and I can't sit idly by, while the world waits in vain for Tom Waits to come back on a train.

I used to walk home in the rain, down Elm Street, back to the barn and my parent's house.  I could tell you more about the barn, but quite later.  Here's the thing that you are probably wondering, and I need you to have faith and confidence in this:  I am not criminal-minded.  What that means is that while I have done things which may be considered marginally legal (like SpacePirate, for example), the intent is never to steal.  I never tried to profit from Space Pirate.  The shows that I did were really hard work, and I did them because I was dedicated to the music of the past.  That's why it's retrospective, I would think to myself.  This was before I was even capable of making mashup music.

I had to figure that out.  So at home, when I wasn't at work, I would be making songs on Reason.  True to form, that software was copyrighted.  I thought to myself that if I ever made a million bucks, I would turn around and give Reason their money.  But the cash just wasn't there.  And the software was awesome.

It doesn't exist anymore.  My 2.5 discs were scratched or got lost on the floor of my room, maybe over at the barn.  It's hard to stay up on those things.  I used to stay up late all night, disconnected from the internet, making song after song.  Sometimes I would actually get intense feelings of elation from the music, at a point of accomplishment, where I felt like the task was finished.  It's difficult, with art, knowing when something's done. In that sense it's alot just like cooking.  But I used to make some marvelous Beat Soup.  I also used to make beats with my feets up, on the console, sometimes while eating pizza.  The pizza was from Pepe's usually, and I had a little trick about that.

It seems that if you called a number over there, they would allow you to get pick-up pies ordered.  That way, you showed up on time, walk right through the line, which at 5pm is straight out the door.  Pick up your pie, pay for it, take it over to Wooster Sq. Park and watch people play frisbee with their dogs.  Hopefully the frisbee is getting tossed the other way, and the dog doesn't mistake it for a pie.

I don't know why I think so much about the future, when life's not tough, I used to think to myself.  Why should I be concerned when I have all the pizza I need?  I have also the wealth to buy the pizza at a price that the piemaker can afford to sell it.  In that sense, I'm all set.  Right?

But we're never all set.  We're looming in debt, and looking to the people who are enslaving us to save us.  That's what we get.  We asked for it.  It took thousands of years, but they're ready to create a marvelous jail cell.  One where human beings are treated like animals, by people who consider themselves nothing more than robotic scientists.  I do not want to be involved in any of this.

But I do recommend something.  I say that the school should make available only to certain students a Biology Lab Zoo.  It creates a greater transparency in the advances of our academic industry.  I would like to see what they're doing with insects these days.

I was first exposed to the Bio Labs at the age of 12.  I took a genetics course, taught by a Yale Undergraduate named Todd, who was from down south and I considered to be someone cool except when he acted like a drippy snot.  One thing he did for us kids was take us to the Bio Lab, which is that tall building behind the Peabody.  We got to go to a floor where they were conducting the experiments he explained to us in the classroom.  Involving mixing genes, like the ones we solved with Punnet Squares.  I asked to learn something more about the technique.  And he said, sorry.  Only if you go to school here.

I remember those words.  But I have since determined that I will not be involving myself in any genetic experiments.  There is too much liability involved.  Even if you might say sorry after a supersized species of locust destroys every farm crop in the midwest, just keep this in focus:  not everyone will forgive and forget when they know it was your pet who sent theirs to the vet.  Or worse.

Tragically I could not relate to their interest in genetic experiments.  I was, however, very curious about when Todd, one day in the wintertime, said, "Kids, do you want to walk back to the classroom inside or outside?

And I was wondering what he meant by that.  "I mean, do you want to take the tunnels?"
"Todd, there is no tunnel here that can take us back to Phelps Gate."
"How do you know that?  You've probably never even seen the tunnels," he said.

So he took us all to the basement of the lab, where there was a door which looked like it was for maintenance workers.  It went down a long corridor which ran alongside large, hissing pipes.

"Those are steam pipes!"  He yelled, above the din.  "They're for heat!"
"I can tell!" I said.  There was one other kid with us.  His name was Antoine.  I don't think he was even listening to our conversation or wondering about why were in the basement.  All he used to think about was basketball.

What I learned from the experience (and this was in 1992) is that apparently the university runs on steam.  There's a place called "Power Plant" and it's not for electricity, which I thought would be crazy, as well. It's a steam generation plant, it gets its petrol directly from the New Haven Harbor, and it is responsible for the heating of the entire university.

Subsequent to that, it contains a series of tunnels which interconnect its pipelines.  They are all large enough for maintenance access, but not the most pleasant thing to walk through.  They have access doors into each of the buildings, in the event that there needs to be some kind of labor on the inside of a room, if ever the case may be.  So essentially, it's access to the entire university, and as of 2003, there was no obvious surveillance, but I'm sure this has changed since then, and I haven't been willing to try going down there, ever since they built that huge video control panel inside the main security office on Bristol Street.

Why am I telling you all of this?  Because I know!  Isn't that important, to the security of the university, that I am making this gesture to befriend it?  As if to say, hey.  I know a lot about you.  Not because I've been spying on you, or anything.  Just because we've been acquaintances for so long.  Let's be friends.

Mission Accomplished

Yeah, I did it. Put on a dark jacket over my best "go to jail" clothes: button down collar shirt under a v-neck sweater. Snug fitting jeans on top of under-armour for extra warmth. It's only a night in September, but it was all worth it.

Snuck out early. I am prone to make my own decisions. Some of these I may regret, but as long as she knows that I'm not out looking for someone else. It's a thing Im searching for. Somewhere between freedom of thought and the ability to share those thoughts, with more than just her. It's no longer meaningful to me, that I ramble to her about my political musings.

Shall I command a can? I can.
A can of spraypaint, in the pocket of my jacket. In my jeans, a ton of caps, few of which haven't been clogged.

Nothing ia quite as nerve-racking as climbing a billboard at night. The guys who get paid to put these up, they do that shit in the daytime. And even then, it's with ropes and harnesses. Climbing a new one for the first time took some mental preparing. I walked by the gas station. It's 11pm. I walk around where the car mechanics shops are. Everything is quiet except for the traffic.

I observe the distance from where cars can see me. Only in one direction, there is a road and an intersection with traffic from a highway exit ramp. The cars are sparse, but I still can't quite get up the nerve.

I decide to partially chicken out, thinking I need a beer or something to get me started. On my way back to the gas station, there is a bicycle, unlocked. I kick the tires gently: they've still got air. I don't need a bike (choice TL opportunity). I continue.

Just then a rough looking ghetto wildchild comes walking from the gas station. He sees me checking his bike and he isnt pleased. But my hands are in my pockets, and I look more curious than theif-minded. We cross paths and he takes his bike. I continue on.

After that, my mind is settled. Enough screwing around, its time to climb the damn thing. I turn around, back where the auto mechanics shops are. I hop the fence when no one is looking. No cars.

I make my ascent. The first 10 feet have no rungs, just steel to shimmy up. Once I reach it, I grab the ladder and pull myself up. Up. Up.

At the top, the catwalk is narrow. i turn around and the moon is glowing orange, behind a cloud. I climb to the top, and write F-.

Then, down I hike, desxending the ladder to the bottom portion of the billboard, where I complete the rest.

I make it dowm, once again evading the authorities. As well as, yet again, the odds of being caught, which feel as though they are always increasing. A scratch on my hand, one on my noss from a branch that scrapes me as I make my way baxk down in a hurry.

On the walk home, I feel free. I am liberated yet again, from being caught in an existence where I can think, but I can't share. In spite of the questionable legality, was it worth the risk? And the danger? At this point, all of that is irrelevant. It becomes a matter of considering if it's worth it to breathe, but not to speak. As humans, we are blessed with pur consciousness but cursed when we choose to ignore our common sense when we oppose something and we know it's wrong, and yet stay silent.

African slaves were forced to relocate, and prodded with weapons when they didn't move. We say they're free, but statistically they are still largely impoverished and imprisoned.

That's not by choice. Nor is it due to some kind of ethnic moral failing. When we allow members of society to think this way, we increase the possibility of more of those conditions to spread.

The evil of humankind is not extinct. It isn't like cavemen had slaved and we have evolved since then. Evil waits for opportunities, and when it cannot wait, it creates.

So when we continue to hold back and allow the classes to divide, we run the risk.

Becoming a have-not, living only on state assistance and otherwise deatined to starve, is not only what we risk, as those numbers grow.

We also risk being responsible for allowing this to happen, by our own stupid complacency.

I am not here to profit from these statements. I don't judge anyone for their political beleifs. All I am asking is for you to wake up, and stop believing
all of the polarizing news about politics, which keeps us from actually progressing. Don't think you are a "have" or amongst the lucky few in society, while more are impoverished, more are imprisoned, uneducated or addicted to drugs.

Most of our leaders are elected, and we chose them to be in their positions. Nobody elects TV or movie stars, I guess. But you can, now.

Vote for Stereomedia by watching it because it won't disappoint, and it will never stray from the force that has guided it since the beginning.

The end, for now.

At the end of the night, as I walked home, an asteroid burned in the upper atmosphere. They used to call that a shooting star. i still call it a sign.

I can still think of seeing that as my reward.

Believe In People: Yale Graffiti

Chap Writes:

When I first met the "Believe In People" character, my first impression was, "which people?" of course, knowing whomever I'm dealing with, I find that people who wished to be believed in are often the least deserving.  At first, his work was horrible.  Absolutely kitchy and at the same time abhorrent in its lack of any skill.  Clearly, this person was infatuated with graffiti, perhaps a particular writer, and was practicing in front of all of us at night, for us to see in the morning.

I was walking by the old Co-op behind Morse College one day and there was a raccoon who had painted a sign, which said:

Well, you can read it, since I took a picture of it with my phone.  It said "reach for the bright side" but this clearly was not a very bright individual because the "Rs" were all painted backwards, and everybody knows that's been copyrighted by Toys R Us at this point.  Then, as you look to the bottom, you realize that this is not in fact a young Yale student painting this stuff, but only a small raccoon, in clear visibility, however made out of paper.

A painting cannot paint itself, but if the other thing is made out of paper and then adhered to the wall using some kind of glue, then I suppose it's possible.

Now that's great, I would normally say.  This person is clearly an individual capable of being recognized for his talents.  Right?

Wrong.  As I said, I would say this if it were original, but the technique of having the paper things writing the painted stuff has already been patented as well.  Except not by Toys R Us, but rather by another fool across the pond.

A really simple Google Image search for this artist displays a fairly similar piece, even if it were not for the use of stencils (which is close to the black and white wheat-pasted stuff).

Now that's additionally all well and good, but then you get into the heart of the matter, which is that this guy is clearly copying that other guy's style.  Why on earth would someone go through great lengths to disguise himself as someone famous, unless...


Clearly, he wants to be famous.
So he does this.

A giant Anne Frank.

One of the hallmarks of a propaganda machine are to use ubiquitous symbols that everyone agrees with, to propose to the masses that we should essentially "obey."  That said, who on earth could possibly complain about a giant Anne Frank piece, other than me?

Possibly no one.  And I'm not saying this to be contrary, but the other remarkable thing is how precise it is.

I can knowingly say, from looking at this person's other work, that this was not done freehand.  Sorry, but it was only a few months before when I noticed more horrendous works of art made of wheat paste and other methods made popular by other artists which were falling apart, or worse, not in proportion.  I wish I had taken photographs of that crap, but now next time I see some awful piece of street art, I'll be sure to take a flick of it, just in case the guy keeps trying.  What you can't see in this picture is the proximity to the Yale Art School.

Now here's what frightens me a little.  There's this great article here which features the artist, written with exclusive permission granted to one person, a selected journalist.  That within itself is a recipe for disaster, when it comes to objectivism, because clearly they're friends.  The problem with that is if this "Believe In People" person makes more friends in the tight-knit communities around here, it's guaranteed to turn into some ugly form of propaganda that I could just see unfolding with my very eyes.

Sorry For Graffiti,
Chap (character from Phiction).

Canadian Threat

This is a story about two guys from Canada, kind of like Bob and Doug McKenzie.  They're Indian, though.  People always confuse them for muslim extremists, but they're sikh.  They're kind of tired of all the harassment, so they start developing a plot to really scare people.  They sit around in their room playing Parcheesi.  There's a huge mound of potatoes in the fridge.  Whenever one of them get hungry, they go into the fridge and carve out a huge chunk of potatoes, and go back to playing Parcheesi.

The TV is on, and they're watching rap videos.  Botties are shaking, guys teeth are blinging.  It's a parody of some kind of Mystikal / Master P type of video from the 1990s.  There's one really huge lady in the background.

One of the two Indian guys (now there are 4) says, "Why are you watching this?  We could be watching the Indian Channel."  So he changes the channel, but basically the channel doesn't change.  Just the characters on the TV all of a sudden appear slightly different.  The scene in the background goes from tenement housing projects to the Taj Mahal (green screen).

Late one night, they decide to celebrate Sikh Independence Day, which falls coincidentally on the worst of all coincidences.  They bring lots of fireworks.  They play Katy Perry.  After several minutes of loud noises, all of the people in the neighborhood are terrified.  They call the police station.

The police station doesn't know what to do.  They think it's a real actual attack, so they forward their call to the National Guard, who are busy playing cards.  The cards have little parcheesi characters on them.  At this point it's a music video (play the end of Mucky One).