Ambiguous

Silly old max

2011-11-20T19:25:00.003+11:00

Reaching your 21st year
You grant yourself a smile
But after 21 years of pain
You're going out of style

A million deaths await
And a billion secret pains
Uncertainty about your future
Checking twice when changing lanes

Slowing down and chilling out
Finding balance and accord
Playing safe and being smart
and getting really bored

It is all downhill from here
Full of problems to forget
Growing old is a fine foul thing
but you haven't grown old yet

So party hard and fuck the rules
return nature's push with a shove
Do it hard and do it smart
And always follow love

Occupied toilets are useless.

2011-10-31T17:29:00.004+11:00

Preoccupied space
Public land is not free
Don't pitch a tent on the bus
Sitting next to me

Taking it back?
From the wealthy hoarders?
They gave it to you
They are rich without borders

What purpose, what reason?
Are you all young James Dean?
Or worse seeking freedom;
A cause with no means.

Still you stuck with your protest
Under law well protected
Then in came the police
doing just as expected

Standing firm, yet retreating
You stuck to belief
And nobody died
Which was a relief

You do not know hunger
You are unready to die,
You know things must change
But you do not know why

Revolution changes everything;
No Ideals, No Success
Now quoting a modern philosopher
I digress:

"You say you wanted evolution
The ape was a great big hit
You say you want a revolution, man
I say that you're full of shit"

On idealism I rate you highly
On focus it's much worse
And don't get me started
On who was here first

I do not trust your cause
Sympathetic it may be
You might speak for the 99
But you can't speak for me

You can stand in the rain
With a head full of mace
While I empty my mind of
Preoccupied space

Train ride scrawl

2011-10-31T16:29:00.003+11:00

Numerical modes
Measure comparative joy

I'm talking about score
and capitalist ends
My nihilism in gameplay
enduring trends

Lesson one, pre 8-bit
on a monochrome screen
In a house with no light
and a grue left unseen

8-bit Zelda, in a cave
An old man tells the risk
'It's dangerous to go alone,
take this'

The lesson you learn
to take what you're finding
accumulate resources
to stop you from dying

Lesson two, 16-bit
Mario and Sonic
collect all the shineys
like shopping on chronic

Then if enough rings
or coins you amass
You can stave off the moment
You're pushing up grass

Sometimes hearts measure life
All the hits you can take
But this kind of symbol
seems a mistake

A heart is for passion
for fear, love and strife
Real hearts give you magic
to summon a knife

It is for this reason
I keep my eyes peeled
For things to collect
Who knows what they may yield

Lesson three, score and competing
achievements and progress
A right way to play
Causing infinite regress

Primate minds take time
To measure mine
against yours
and time taken
occupied squares
number of kills
bases left bare
destruction compared
like robots at dinner
Then the most desolate soul
is declared the winner

What I learned from these games
I have nothing to prove
When two people fight
Then two people lose.

Fourth lesson, 3D
is just a fad
Trading appearance
for the fun that you had

Fifth lesson minecraft
A game with no end
try not to die
and don't kill your friends.

Peace

Dreams

2011-10-08T12:39:00.002+11:00

I slept on my back and dreamed I was a turtle struggling to write itself into a PKD fanfic.

Supposedly I will be getting a refund for my overheating dell studio 15. I recommend it to people who use laptops in extremely cold conditions. Maybe penguins

Space and time

2011-08-23T17:17:00.002+10:00

Jeremy Camilleri has made beautiful noises. You should listen to them and download them for free. Then send him money to encourage him to make more.

I don't know if that will work, but it is awesome music all the same.

http://weareraw.bandcamp.com/album/war-order

Sleepless

Sleep
Why sleep?
Without sleep sound is soft and muted
Warm words wilt
Sweet suggestions
Fall faintly on my ear

I feel growth, a world of dreamlike statues
Impermanence and uncertainty unknown
Why worry while today becomes tomorrow
Time passes, but only when I check my phone

Then daystar bursts forth and ruins everything.
Ultraviolet burns soft seretonin, like vinegar from wine
To exhausting, exasperating, melatonin.
Then oblivion is the best peace I can find

Good night,
Foul day.

Real Ideal

Dreams are immortal
Humans are not
Love will live forever
While lover's bodies rot

Ideas rob power from you
Grasp firm to what you touch
The intangible is noble
But the price is far too much

Abandon all your dreams
Or they will bleed you dry
Existing on your firm beliefs
They feed, they live, you die

Grimdark

2011-08-11T18:39:00.002+10:00

Rain fell from the sky, making things on the ground soggy.

I was on the ground, looking for something.

I looked up at the sky, not expecting to find anything but rain up there.

It was then that I saw it, the rain.

I became a cloud, floating above the cares of the person I was.

Then it was over, a ray of light pierced my chest and I was back in a soggy body, lying on the ground.

Yes, you can brownies

2011-06-06T02:07:00.002+10:00

For anyone interested in good brownies. I adapted this slightly (more cocoa) from a recipe from Amy. The 'yes, you can' refers to the capacity to produce more moist and delicious brownies than packet mix.

Since they are stupid easy to make, you should feel bad for ever using packet mix.

Cream together 1.5 cups sugar, .75 cup butter. That is, mix together until creamy.

Add dash of vanilla and a pinch of salt.

Mix in 3 eggs, do not beat.

Fold in the dry ingredients:
.75 cup flour
.75 cup cocoa
1/2 tsp baking powder

Of course you already have your oven preheated to 180 and a pan greased. So dump the mix in and bake for 45-50 mins until a skewer comes out clean.

Leave in the pan for a little while after baking to let them firm up.

Enjoy with milk unless you are lactose intolerant. If you are intolerant I wish you would learn to accept other cultures. Eat some yogurt.

I was going to take a picture, but I got drunk on the weekend with some friends and ate them all. :[

Instead here is a Bort.

Modern Warfare 11: Child Soldier

2011-05-29T03:48:00.002+10:00

I think a really well done game could have you playing as a child soldier. With the tutorial mixed into the indoctrination and regular beatings. Maybe see a friend or two get shot trying to escape or just not living up to standards.

If a stealth aspect was included it could really add a powerful element, having you train your combat skills a few times on a range and later on live villagers. Then dumping you somewhere fighting other children.

Ultimately you attempt to escape, pants shittingly tense stealth sections of breaking out of camp unarmed, then escaping across a desert, avoiding patrols, wild animals and rival warlords before finally reaching safety.

The victory scene shows you in a refugee camp, surrounded in barbed wire and armed guards. A different prison, still dreaming of freedom.

I didn't think twice about extracting organs from the little girls in bioshock

I like my arrest like my period, bloody and nonexistant

2011-05-23T16:22:00.002+10:00

How do you make drugs and drug use appeal to the demographic that thinks 'chemicals' are somehow dangerous and 'natural' is somehow healthy.

Whelp, you don't. The collective unconscious has absorbed more than 70 years of fear mongering and fear stories. Acid in your spine driving you insane? Cannabis causing schizophrenia? Acetylsalicylic acid tolerance leading to use of harder drugs?

Well the last one is true.

Medicinal use is a great argument, but ultimately avoids the important issue.

Freedom to do whatever you like with your own body.

Which we have by the by, but we don't have the ability to posses dried flowers and chemical compounds that react with our bodies. Why? I am not really sure.

Stealth legislation might work, bury it in rhetoric regarding police protection and better use of resources and you might well find yourself in luck.

If the opposition is not above point scoring, and they aren't.

Democracies are only as strong as their weakest participating member.

Reduce those participating or make them stronger then.

Hax!

2011-05-15T05:03:00.001+10:00

Hold up, I'll hook you up with a moist devil's food that is superior to packet mix.

From my dear old Aunt Eva.

1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
.5 cup cocoa
1 tsp salt
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
.5 cup shortening (I use butter)
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup hot water

Mix dry except soda. Add egg, vanilla and butter. Stir through.

Pour hot water over soda, add to mixture, bake in 8x8 pan at 350f for 35'

Progression profession

2011-05-11T13:46:00.002+10:00

I like a good progress bar on games, do you?

A sense of achievement and a solid endgame to work towards are essential reinforcer in goal oriented behavior. For instance, the time it takes me to go from picking a pokeball and naming my rival 'rapist' to utterly ruining said rival's shit after the elite four when he now goes by the dubious nomenclature of 'champion rapist', is virtually identical to when I first played the game.

The markers that ticked up for me were badges and pokemon level. I was not concerned with catching them all, and I only did so once, on a particularly boring transatlantic flight. While sitting next to a lady who smoked and complained that she had to sit next to a damn kid.

She made more noise than I did! Not to mention the constant coughing and trying to subtly smoke while crammed into the window seat of economy class.

Ahem.

So Gyms, I can speed up a bit on a replay by knowing what requirements each has, making sure to pick up a Butterfree to buffer my Charmander against Brock while I am in the forest. But the intermediary time between Gyms and the travel and fetch quests between cities is held up by the need to fight anyone who looks at me. Sure I could skip them, but without leveled up pokemon, the endgame became a grind fest or a painful use of revive and repel only to reach the elite four with no hope of winning.

The only difference between my first play through and subsequent ones was my awareness of how far I had progressed. True I did things a little differently, but the outcome was a similar time.

The progress bar became visible.

Jumping over to two other classics I have replayed. Super Metroid, took 14 hours to explore fully the first time I played it, and 3 hours the second time. Internet tells me that less than 1 hour is possible.

The shortened time span works greatly in its favor, replay value is up and I felt like I was playing with fast forward held down once I knew where to go next.

The other classic, Metroid Prime, felt faster on the replay, but not the same way. It was faster, a difference of 14 hours down to 8 between first an second play through. But there was a big old percentage bar sitting there on the pause screen monitoring scanning progress and exploration. I knew how fast I was progressing the first time.

I have largely opted out of modern gaming in the era extending past the PS2 and N64. I'll get there eventually, but I suspect that achievements systems, while driving people to acquire and finish bad games, will do nothing to improve replay value.

Stupid ice shriekbat.

People to do, things to see.

2011-05-10T21:15:00.003+10:00

I'm heading out
and off
I'm headinv over the hill and around the bend
I'm heading nowhere special and noplace fast
I'm heading in and on.
I'm following the heading of my tilted head.

Curry pizza with marinated Chicken and Roast carrot.

2011-05-10T20:20:00.002+10:00

Whelp lets see, do you want to make this?

You should!

It is really tasteful.

To make the base, I used a Naan bread recipe.

Turn on your oven, 180 degrees C fan forced or whatever you feel like.

.5 cup hot water
1 tsp yeast
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt

Wait until it starts bubbling, maybe 10 minutes or less.

Add

.5 cup yogurt
1 tbs oil
2-3 tsp crushed garlic, to taste.
2-3 cups flour or enough to make it stop sticking to your hands while you kneed.
.5 tsp baking powder

Then kneed it, and leave it someplace warm to rise. This takes a while, so do something else.

Baked carrots.

Slice the carrots into pieces 1cm thick and put on a greased baking tray. Add salt, pepper and paprika, or whatever you feel goes well with carrot. Some people like honey.

Bake those suckers in the preheated oven from the first step. Aren't you glad you preheated it before making the dough?

The carrots are done when they are soft through, maybe 15 minutes or so.

Anyway, at this point in time, fire up your time machine and travel back at least 5 hours, where you will prepare.

Marinated Chickens!

Dice two pieces of thigh fillet chicken, or three or however much chicken you want on the pizza.

Mix a half a cup of yogurt, some chili powder and a bit of coriander. You can put in tomato paste if you want, but pfft, come on man.

Marinate the hell out of that chicken, then spend the rest of your time busily hunting down your grandfather and killing him.

After five hours cook that chicken in a hot pan with a little oil, or a bbq if you have one. The idea is to make delicious chickens.

Take the carrots out of the time paradox or oven and leave someplace for a bit later.

Squash the naan flat then stretch it out with your hands on a floured surface. Bake on a greased pan for about 10 minutes. Then put some ghee or butter on the top, flip it and start pizza assembly.

You can put a bunch of other fresh stuff on at this stage, or cheese, a cottage cheese is probably most suitable.

I used a premade curry sauce, cause i'm kinky. But making your own is a better idea. The internet will help you since I am a curry fraud.

Curry sauce goes on the pizza, then chicken and carrot, then other stuff if you like.

Bake for another 15-23 minutes, to get everything delicious and risen. Or whatever, it depends on how you like your naan and making sure everything is heated through. If you have cheese it depends how well you want it cooked.

I really shouldn't have to tell you how to handle this. Get with it.

Some interesting titles

2011-05-09T11:48:00.007+10:00

of gaems I have played recently that were so awesome I wanted to share.

Point and click adventures

Submachine 1 The basement - and the rest of the submachine series heavily puzzle based, not much storyline.

The Dreamerz

Synapsis

Casual Gameplay Escape - Nostalgia and presuppositions, I enjoyed the introspection

Johnny Rocketfingers

Johnny Rocketfingers 2

Back to the Cubeture - for teh lulz

Belial chapter 1

Belial chapter 2

Belial chapter 2.5

Reincarnation series - the entire reincarnation series by this developer.

Atmosphere and narrative, have not played anything immersionating since thief 2

Neverending light Great narative driven gameplay

How to raise a dragon How to raise a dragon, you play the dragon raising yourself

Endeavor Shadow of the collosis may look better than 8 bit graphics, but this one got me.

No time to Explain No time to explain, just play the game.

Vox populi vox dei - A Werewolf Thriller Nice mechanics, short and snappy gameplay, beautiful atmosphere.

Mastermind World Conqueror

Text adventures, short and sweet fun.

You find yourself in a room I find myself in rooms often, it is a nifty trick I use to navigate.

Don't shit your pants Sage advice, good luck

Programming puzzle gaem, if you can describe how to adapt the behavior of making coffee to pissing and have already tried to optimize these are for you

Light bot

Lightbot 2.0 Now with vibrating wheels

Exploit If you ever wanted hacking to seem well awesome, this is with what you shall delude yourself.

Electic box Fun, but not in a having sex with robots kind of way.

Talesworth Adventure ep1

Metroidesq platformers

K.O.L.M. - kind of like metroid

Robot wants kitty - also like
metroid and duke nukem (the first and second ones) there are more in the robot wants series, robot wants ice cream was fun

Interesting duplication mechanics, especially check out company of myself for the story

Enough plumbers

Continuity

Hello Worlds

The company of myself You should be playing this, when you finish you should play it again.

Portalesq games with a hostile narrator giving you bad advice.

Shift

Shift 2

Shift 3

Shift 4

Time kufc

Portal the flash version

The understanding games series was quite interesting also

Understanding games episode 1, a new hope

And this was just weird an experiment in visual perception that makes you think funny for hours afterwards.

Z-rox

Originally sent as an email.

God of Thunder

2011-05-08T22:36:00.003+10:00

Damn this is a good game.

http://www.adeptsoftware.com/got/

The puzzles are tight, the characters are funny, the combat is nerve wracking. The difficulty curve is perfect, not just good or decent, perfect.

I still get cold sweats when I look at the D key. (Pressing it kills you).

Like all Norse gods and some plumbers, Thor dies by spinning in a circle and falling on his back. His eyes do not close, he can see forever!

There is no excuse for you not to play this, it fits on a 3.5 inch floppy. Remember those?

I told you I was hardcore.

Distressing Reassessing Repossessing Disposessing

2011-05-01T18:07:00.003+10:00

You can hear her coming from over a k.
Just her proximity will ruin your day.
She keeps on the dick by dressing a whore.
And the government pays her to keep spawning more.

The babies pay for the booze that keeps her placated.
Booze filled despair makes learning seem overrated.
Systematic social slavery can't make me frustrated,
Cause inarticulate whining just fills me with hatred.

I must be old, I'm scared of the youth.
Not for my life, I'm scared for the truth:
That meaning in life comes from finesse.
And mindless consumption is a worse fate than death.

I need a good beat and I might try rap, or at least beat. I have the beret and everything.

Disaster movies

2011-04-30T13:14:00.003+10:00

Michael Bay loves the military.

Michael Bay hates children.

The transformer movies are awful, for all sorts of reasons. I'm most interested in the genre to which they conform.

Sentient beings with voices are usually the main element of a photo play. Exceptions are the pets lost in the wilderness movie genre. Which often has them voiced or narrated anyway.

So the robots that transform into stuff, they talk, they have personalities, they could be the stars. Except they only spout cliche, well, everyone does, but the world remains antropocentric. The conspiracy aspect was tagged on to make this acceptable, but it isn't, it is just badly thought out.

Well, if you expected the robots to be the stars. The title was a clue. But there is a genre where the title is occupied by something that gets little screentime, but everyone goes to see.

The monster or disaster movie. Lets list a few and try to remember how often the titular agent of destruction gets screen time.

Earthquake (1974): tits and people screaming, nobody likeable and you cheer for the barely seen earthquake. Die hard without Bruce and an earthquake instead of terrorists.

Avalanche (1978): Nobody worth saving here either, just waiting for them all to slowly die one way or another.

The Poseidon Adventure (1972): I was really happy when the priest sacrificed himself. I was hoping that a giant squid would eat anyone who made it out of the boat. I pictured a sequel taking place on the rescue boat when it too was capsized.

Volcano (1997): Bah, humbug, the pulp of the 70s was diluted by the excess of the 80s to be consumed as bland drivel in the 90s. I really hoped the building exploded and killed the guy and the kid. Only interesting bit was when everyone was covered in grey face paint at the end, but you could still tell their ethnicity. Not sure what they were trying to say.

Well disaster movies were exotic snuff films with too much foreplay and very little delivery. How about the monsters?

The Toxic Avenger (1984): Monster movie done well, monster kills unsympathetic people, monster has a girlfriend, there is no third act.

Godzilla (The s/good/Japanese/ ones): The Godzilla movies were best when it the name was followed by a VS and a second monster. Humans were of little consequence the destruction and death was an afterthought. The best use of humans in a monster film can be seen by setting up a slapstick situation. Girl sees giant monster lizard battling turtle, drops her ice cream, starts to cry, is killed by falling building.

King Kong (1933): Was better as an adversary of Godzilla. Hollywood seems fixated by the boy meets girl story. Forgot that the boy in this case was a giant gorilla. Made a superfluous romance.

Frankenstein (1931): What has science done? Scary dude, fascinating story, superstitious villagers fighting that which they do not understand. We've all been there.

Jurassic park (1993): What has science done? Electric Boogaloo. Sympathetic and interesting characters get killed, stupid children survive. This is UNIX!

Godzilla (1998): Nobody died. Radioactive earthworms. Stupid annoying humans surviving in droves. Sympathetic monster with nothing to fight but millitary dudes with massive hard ons and a swarthy foreigner with a conspiracy theory (played incredibly well by Jean Reno).

Transformers (Who cares): The black robot dies. Stupid annoying humans surviving in droves. Monsters will clearly defined rivals not really having much of a chance because of CGI and the military. Swarthy blah blah blah. The only interesting thing I thought about the whole thing was 'what if all the hackers in the matrix said "oh snap"'

There was a second one too.

It seems that the makers of these photo plays have forgotten that we identify most strongly with the extremes of the monsters in these films. The different, the strange, the socially unacceptable, this is who all humans identify with inside. Not a teenager trying to get his dick wet and certainly not the military.

On that note, I was going to make a joke about returning soldiers with acquired brain impairment or severed limbs as a result of transformer related injuries, then not having government assistance because once you can't protect your country from giant robots anymore you are useless and the government would prefer you die. But that is way too depressing to work into something funny, and it is true.

Now a third one is coming out. Don't see it. Rent a good horror movie instead.

I wrote some words for some reason

2011-04-20T02:31:00.003+10:00

Oh internet

Disruptive middle distance
A place twixt here and now
Deceptive misanthropic grunts
To read you use a plow

Discordant social morays
Strong opinions court regret
If you have a moral hide it
Ethics were made to be upset

Obsession is the future
Apathy the way
We can fight about tomorrow
And not care about today

The watering can feels like death

Help plants to live and grow
Gardens breathe subtle warmth
As I watch a leaf gently wilt
I briefly feel the throb of life

Homeostasis is balance
Living well and dying slow
An osmotic balance
Of ideas and salt

RIP ED

Complex motivations and mediums of expression

2011-04-17T15:36:00.003+10:00

The devil's advocate advocates for the devil, a creature known in myth to be eloquent and able even to twist god's words to mean anything or nothing. (Which is not that big a stretch, holy books are full of holes). That the devil has any use for an advocate implies other speaking arrangements. The implication being that the advocate for the devil will adequately fill the role of the devil in any discussion.

A troll provides a similar service. In rare cases even illuminating new areas of intellectual ground over which to be fought.

Motivation is irrelevant, in these situations the only way to differentiate an advocate of the devil from a mere troll is via aesthetic.

Thus in attempting to distinguish a troll from an advocate of the devil, we are left with the tricky Latin phrase: De gustibus non est disputandum.

And a picture of my brother graduating.

Mobile

2011-03-22T04:08:00.001+11:00

The phones, they are controllers that need a large screen with which to interface.

Then everybody is playing gaem.

Anaracetam

Electrocutor

2011-03-08T13:17:00.002+11:00

Mass media and instant gratification form the ice pick that is lobotomizing our collective unconscious.

Followed fast and followed faster

2011-03-01T12:28:00.002+11:00

The thrill found in speeding is not a celebration of mechanical performance over pragmatism.

It is found in pushing ones self to the limits of what is considered safe, sensible or moral.

By stripping away the sense and logic that overlay our most primitive functions, we may experience unparalleled joys.

The cost is nothing more than our humanity.

And a tree taken before its time.

Bad bad bad

2011-02-22T17:17:00.004+11:00

I move that the 2009 movie Bad Lieutenant take on a cult role similar to that of fear and loathing and that Nicholas Cage become the next Johnny Depp.

Without all that pirate bullshit of course, of course.

Dead Kennedys Australia

2011-02-14T04:04:00.004+11:00

Draw the line, a government website and obscure ad campaign featuring squiggles acting vaguely offending by innuendo, has launched.

Since kongregate is allowing any riff raff to advertise over the top of their free or nearly free games, I have endured several iterations of this farce.

My curiosity piqued, I investigated. I was led to a .gov.au site too bland to be worth linking.

To sum it up, be abrasive and have a moral standpoint, draw a line and act confrontational if anyone insults the your creative talent in the field of unnecessary rules, laws and self righteousness.

The unwashed masses are already too confrontational and unpleasant to be around without inciting moralist bukkake; this will serve only to expedite the renovation of my ivory tower to include a library of ways a person can be indignant, self assured and wrong.

Why are you doing this to me government?

The awesome, the meh and the litigious

2011-02-13T01:03:00.002+11:00

Close listening to Queen Bitch, by David Bowie reveals startling similarities to Mr. Brightside by The Killers.

I certainly hope nobody starts suing over wholesale theft of lyrics, baseline, melody, phrasing, lyrics again.

Of course, I wonder if it may just be an homage.

RiP