And On This Lazy Sunday

I ate good Turkish food at my favorite Turkish restaurant (Aerin will know the one, we took her there while she was here) and did more research on my joke article about Urban Legends. Doing the research is more fun than actually writing it, but oh well… Who would’a thunk that there was a secret sex recording briefly mixed into the end of the Beach Boy’s song, All I Want To Do, from their 1969 album 20/20?

Still More Domestic Boringness

The big highlight:

I finished Eternal Darkness for the 3rd time, finally unlocking the cool, but slightly underwhelming secret epilogue.

More Domestic Boring-ness

All I did was play Eternal Darkness and shop.

Dramatic Documentaries

It’s getting to the point where I’m absolutely convinced that channels like Discovery and National Geographics are singlehandedly responsible for giving the guys that do voice over work for movie trailers more jobs than they could ever have hoped for.

I’m not imagining this, right?

It seems like ever since Walking With Dinosaurs changed the face of documentaries by adding an element of cinematic drama to the proceedings, docos have been losing more and more substance and credibility and getting more and more “exciting” and “dramatic.”

I kind of reel in horror as I imagine how this new standard of infotainment would have affected the 80′s documentaries when they had no budget and relied on actually being full of ideas and substance to communicate to the audience. For example:

Cosmos:

Carl Sagan: I’m Carl “phasers on obliterate” Sagan and tonight we’re going into space where people DIE without the proper protection. That’s right, it’s the harshet, most dangerous environment known to man, and we’re going to explore its depths to see what happens when you puncture a guy’s space suit and time just how long it takes for explosive decompression to take place. Then, we’ll see how much suffering is experienced when an asteroid, no, a planet killer SMASHES into a world full of innocents! FORGET THE MAJESTY OF THE UNIVERSE, WE’RE HERE TO WATCH PEOPLE DIE! WE’RE TALKING BILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF DEATHS!

Any Jacques Cousteau program:

JC: We could ride on the majestic whale shark and take in the awesome profundity that is the vast, teeming environment that is the pacific ocean, or, we can see what happens when a KILLER SHARK TEARS A MAN TO PIECES! REDUCING AN AVERAGE JOE LIKE YOU OR ME INTO SO MUCH QUIVERING, SCREAMING GOO! TONIGHT, ONLY ON JACQUES COUSTEAU’S OCEAN OF DEATH.

Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins:

Marlin Perkins: Here, on the African Veldt, the cycle of hunter and hunted continues, striking a delicate balance between the herbivores and the predators that, cruel as it may seem to us, must necessarily keep the herbivore population in check. That is, until the arrival of my assistant Jim! Jim is about to enter the dangerous world of African predators, with lions that can gore and rip him to shreds in a matter of seconds! They may be fulfilling their role in nature, but more importantly, they’re fulfilling their role for our ratings as you, the viewer at home, watch savage, untamed beasts KILL A MAN BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES IN A BARBARIC DISPLAY OF SPILLED BLOOD AND GRISTLE, ONLY ON MUTUAL OF OMAHA’S KINGDOM OF SLAUGHTER, PAIN AND MASSACRE, WHERE PEOPLE DIE, AND DIE HORRIBLY!

Another Short Post

STILL have not written anything in the novel. Bah.

Have, however, purchased Marvel’s The Ultimates volume 2. And written a few more articles. I also smoked my very first cherry flavored menthol cigarette, did a little shopping with the Wife at Orchard Road and had dinner with one o’ the boys from the office. Also had an interesting discussion about local urban legends in Singapore and have found out that a) local lore has it children that went missing during the 60′s and 70′s here disappeared as a result of the need for human sacrifice in order to appease spirits before the massive urban expansionism on the island, and that a couple of missing children were rumored to have had their limbs chopped off so that they could be more effective beggars in Thailand.

Now I think it’s time for a little inspiration from the movie 40 Year Old Virgin so that I can feel a little bit reassured and not feel so alone about having never known the touch of a woman aside from bumping one by accident on the train.

Joke. Kidding.

Sheesh.

The Short Post

In which a couple of reviews were written over the course of the day, I found out that in the 90′s Singapore had a seedy underbelly of youth like the 80′s movie The Warriors across the super shopping district of Orchard Road, and a surprisingly good first person shooter was played, as well as Lord of the Rings: Battle For Middle Earth, and in addition a visit to the In-Laws just before the Father-In-Law flies off to Maine in preparation for the transplant of the family to America and we received left-overs from the house-hold as the move is more imminent, said haul including old comics, a spare DVD player and weights.

Oh and I didn’t write a single word in the novel. But hey, ya’ gots yer blog entry, so that’s gotta’ count for something.

Now, it is time to watch Corpse Bride.

I Have Seen The Future Of Our Species

And it has bad posture, and laughs like it’s choking on it’s own spit while being squeezed by the scrotum.

I speak of course, of the Nerd, of which I saw many when I went to Nerd-vana, better known as Biopolis for lunch today.

In recent years, one of the things Singapore has done to try and stay relevant is diversify. One of the ways the country has done this is start pushing itself as an Intelligence Based Economy, relying on brain power rather than traditional industry to make its claim in the world market. Part of that initiative has been to have an EXTREMELY friendly policy when it comes to stem cell research, and Biopolis, a science park/campus not far from the GameAxis office, is one of these centers of research. The only reason I even went there is because one of the guys at the office suggested we eat there, it being nearby and none us ever having eaten there before, so it was a “what the hell” moment that led to me quickly being overcome by an intense feeling of being overwhelmed. I was initially confused as to what invisible force was seemingly blowing against me with torrential-like speed when I realized it was the massive collective IQ of a few thousand people several orders of magnitude smarter than anyone else within a 5000 mile radius.

Whereas the rest of us sit around at lunch and say “Yeah, how ’bout them Oscars,” these guys sit around and say, “Yeah, I sneezed and it suddenly occurred to me how we could cure cancer,” or, “Screw YOU, Captain Kirk is TEN TIMES the man Picard is, and I know because I’ve figured out how to clone a person with a fingernail, a rubber band, a petri dish, calculator and 6 ounces of uranium 238 mixed with ketchup! Plus, I TOTALLY RULE MAGIC THE GATHERING!”

These people are clear and clinching proof of the success of the nerd. Some of them still carried all the hallmarks of their youth, the gangly limbs, massive adam’s apple, glasses with lenses thick enough to stop gamma rays, short sleeved shirts with collars and bad posture, and yet, whereas their jock competitors, the ones who got all the girls in high school are now car mechanics or mid-level grunts in some office, these losers of youth with no social skills whatsoever are worth millions of dollars in Basic Patents, and are the kind of guys that those same girls that scorned them in past now desperately wish they were married to, if only to take advantage of their lack of material taste to blow their huge bank accounts on.

I stood in numb amazement as two Hot Asian Chicks sandwiched a solitary nerd who was eating lunch at his table. They laughed at his jokes, they listened with shimmering engagement to his every word, they realized that he was completely hopeless when it came to relating to other human beings, but they also realized a) he was worth tons and tons of money, and b) he was wrapped around their fingers because they were attractive girls and he was a nerd who had previously only fantasized about ever being approached by such a woman. The loneliness of the nerd, plus their incredible wealth make them easy marks for the Incredible Hotness that Asian girls can cultivate when they really set their mind to it.

But behold, this is our future. Gargantuan IQs mixed with the slinky, winsome DNA of Asian hothouse flowers. The end result? Kids that look like Keanu Reeves but think like Stephen Hawking.

Fear the future, for you cannot escape it.

It Has Begun

What will probably end up being the hardest thing I do this year.

Start a new novel. A children’s novel.

Lost in Loveless now officially has its own MS Word file, properly formatted and spaced with the opening paragraph already written and already needing work, dammit. This is probably going to take a very, very long time to write because I want to keep it short. Neil-O’s Coraline managed to weigh in at a positively anorexic 30,000+ words when he finished writing it. I figure I should try and shoot for something similar, definitely not go over 200 pages, but it’s going to be painful.

Oh well, at least I’ve got most of the story already figured out. That’s a first. There’s just a few bits here and there in the in between parts that have yet to fully sort themselves out, but the majority of it–including the very, very end, but not the ending, if that makes any sense–are mostly there and waiting to be shown their rooms so they can start throwing clothes around and generally making themselves comfortable.

At least it’ll give me something to do while The Pale Summer continues to make the rounds.

Boy, I sure hope this book doesn’t suck…

Oh Those Whacky Outer Gods

I’m now finally getting around to playing with the surprisingly excellent Eternal Darkness, the best Lovecraft-ian game ever made for a console. The real tragedy of the game is that it’s made for the Nintendo GameCube and thus will never get the attention or audience it deserves, which is a shame because the game is a true freak out that gamers will talk about with each other to no end. Of particular interest are the “insanity effects”. True to the Cthulu mythos, sanity is a terribly difficult thing to hold onto once you start tearing the veil of ignorance and seeing how large, diabolical, incomprehensible and ultimately uncaring of humanity the universe and its more powerful beings are. When you go crazy in the game, all kinds of suitably insane shit happens, like entering a room and finding yourself walking on the ceiling, or hearing babies crying and women wailing, or hearing random knocks on a door just as you’re about to open it, or suddenly watching yourself sink into the ground, or watching each extremity explode one after the other until only your chest is left.

Got me to thinking though about how this whole ugly mess got started. You’d think the Elder Gods would have shown more foresight, but oh well…

Ext. Primeval Earth, South Pacific Ocean, R’lyeh. Day.

Two of the Elder Gods, NODENS and ULTHAR have finished cleaning up the mess the evil Great Old Ones made and have finally put them into an eternal slumber from which they will never wake. They are now stopping for a cigarette.

Nodens: Damn, that was irritating.

Ulthar takes a drag from his cigarette.

Ulthar: Hey, at least you get to LEAVE, I’m stuck here.

Nodens: I TOLD you not to go on reservist, they get all the shit jobs.

Ulthar: Yeah, yeah, yeah, shut up already. It’s probably not going to be that bad.

Nodens: Not going to be that bad?!? You’re holding vigil over Cthulu and all the other Great Old Ones on this stupid ball of mud to make sure they don’t arise and threaten the existence of all that is living and sane! HOW CAN THAT NOT BE THAT BAD?!?

Ulthar: I’m gonna’ take a nap.

Nodens: Er… Come again?

Ulthar: Yeah, I’ve been working pretty hard the last few epochs, I figure this is my break time.

Nodens: Which part of the job description for “guardian” were you not briefed on?

Ulthar: Hey, RELAX. Look at this place, what do we have here?

Nodens: Bipedal reptiles, mostly.

Ulthar: Right. You think they’re smart enough to do anything about Cthulu or Dagon? They can barely remember to chew.

Nodens: Yeah, exactly, that’s why we chose this remote, spitball planet.

Ulthar: Right! It’s perfectly safe, I’m just the token presence for a little peace of mind, you don’t seriously think they expect anything to happen, do they? I mean, what could? First, if Cthulu is even going to get any kind of action, he’s going to need a complex mind to manipulate.

Nodens: Well, those mammal things kind of-

Ulthar: Oh PLEASE. Those things? Yeah, I admit, they have evolutionary potential, but they’ll never get anywhere with those walking jaws running around. It would take an asteroid hitting this place to wipe out the lizards and give them even a REMOTE chance, and what are the odds of that?

Nodens: Hm… Pretty low.

Ulthar: EXACTLY. And even if that were to happen, fine, then what? They’d need to evolve to the point where they have sentience, and THEN they have to develop that sentience to the point where they have culture, and THEN they have to corrupt that culture in the service of greed and self-advancement, and NO intelligent life form has EVER done that, by virtue of being that smart, you’d NEVER act that stupid. Cthulu doesn’t have a leg to stand on, let alone a mind to prey on.

Nodens: You make a good case.

Ulthar: I’m just stating the facts buddy. Absolutely, positively, no way in the cosmos would a race smart enough to have technology but greedy enough to want power would EVER develop here. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a nap. See ya’ at the next cosmic alignment…

Carpe Geek-um

Well that was a weird day.

The afternoon was spent at a talk given by all sorts of official government types who had invited the various journalists of different tech-centric organizations to bask in the announcement that Singapore was once again reaffirming its ambition to become an important digital hub with a burgeoning gaming industry. To prove their point, they had all sorts of wonderful charts citing the amazing new advances they were making to technological infrastructure, once again completely missing the point they consistently fail to understand year in year out; tools are nothing without talent. In the same way they believed having SGI machines would miraculously allow locals to churn out dinosaurs just like Jurassic Park, they are now proudly beating their chest over the fact that they have a wonderful digital infrastructure in mind to start cranking out Kingdom Hearts and Shadow of the Colossus, this despite the fact that so far they have failed to produce even one person in public awareness even capable of having such ideas.

Weirdest moment of the event; someone came up to me and asked, “Are you Wayne Santos? The writer of 9 Lives?”

“Uh… yeeeeeeah… why?”

“It’s an honor to meet you!”

Right. Okay. That was officially freaky.

The late afternoon and early evening was spent at the Nanyang Technological University, where the Bastards At GameAxis had “volunteered” me to speak to a bunch of disinterested students about the gaming industry. Unfortunately, they had decided to put me in dead last, and so I sat through some lectures on new graphics engines that allowed 3D graphics on portable technologies like phones, and an introduction to a wonderful new for of Java code that made no sense to me whatsoever. By the time I was up, I was thoroughly bored and just about didn’t care what I said. My talk was about non-programming jobs in the gaming industry. Here are a few choice quotes during the course of the talk:

At the Intro:

“I hope that made sense to you guys, ’cause I’m an idiot and didn’t understand a word of it.”

“Show of hands, is there anyone here NOT taking a degree in Rocket Science?”

“This is the first time in my life that I’ve ever used Powerpoint. My wife put it together, and this guy over here has to get it running for me. Toldja’ I was an idiot.”

“I’m a game journalist. That means I spend my day playing video games, and then I write about it and say whether it rocks or sucks, and people actually give me money for this. No, that’s not fair, but then it’s an imperfect world we live in. Deal with it.”

On Directors:

“That picture there is Hideo Kojima, the creator of Metal Gear Solid. He’s living proof that you can be a nerd and still make a huge amount of money and get revenge on the jocks that pushed you around in highschool. Be strong and hold out, that could be you someday.”

On Producers:

“Can I swear? I’m only going to use the one swear and I promise no more. The producer is the Shit Shield. He’s the guy that stands between the creators and the business people at the publisher and development house, and tells the business people “Give them more time,” and tells the developers, “We don’t have 5 million dollars to do that. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

On Lawyers:

“Yeah, they’re scum sucking, amoral bottom feeders, but they’re coming pretty handy with this whole ‘games are evil let’s ban them’ hoopla going on in America right now.”

On the games industry in Singapore:

“The guys in charge have no clue. I’ll level with you. They see how big games are around the rest of the world and they want a piece of that action, but they know NOTHING about games, and they’re not even talking to gamers about it. If there’s going to be any kind of change, that’s where you guys come in, so my advice to you? CARE. GIVE A DAMN. The only way Singapore is ever going to produce a good game is if people stop talking the talk and actually MAKE something good. Only you guys can do that, ’cause the government doesn’t know what the hell is going on, all they see are the dollar signs and the new stories about games being popular.”

At the end of talk, I actually got applause. That was cool. I’ll probably never be asked to speak again, since I could see the people at the school blanching every time I made a “the government is ignorant” statement, but then that’s what you get for asking a geek, I guess.

Speaking of geek, time for more games. Yee haw.