No Carrier

I miss my bike. In the warm moments of summer, it became a meditative oasis for me. Pumping through alleys and exploring the unexamined spaces of a huge city, I recaptured some empty part of myself. Without it, I feel a little bit lost. I detest people who profess a self-righteous affinity for biking, and maybe this post ought to inspire a bit of self-hatred. But I miss my bike.

The Fairbairn-Sykes Method

Some months ago, my sex drive spiked, attempting an asymptotic embrace with the y-axis. It was simple to write it off as an effect of  the testosterone surge from muscling up. As someone who's taken hormones on and off, it's awfully easy for me to assign an endocrine origin to my state of mind. Perhaps it was comforting to blame my feelings on some externalized internal source because of exactly how bad it got. I started thinking about fucking at unsexy times. I wasn't mentally disrobing people so much as psychically ripping their clothes off. The volume of my carnal reveries was a familiar relic of teenage boyhood, but their bestial intensity caught me off guard.

Now, my sex drive has fallen down a well. I've gone from onanizing twice/thrice a day to a single half-hearted go-round per diem. That I've even kept up at that is part habit, part addictive personality traits kicking in. Ever miss something that you just spent the last six months willing to leave? It's hypocritical to complain, but there was a vitality in that lusty tinnitus that I've been missing for a while. I don't know how to date, and every so often I lament the absence of romance in my life, soliloquizing in the small hours. Really, though, it's nobody's fault but my own. Princess Charming isn't just gonna ride up in her F-Body one day and take me away. Having a constant desire for sex has motivated me to actually try to get up with somebody.

This post will get published early Christmas morning, though I've been working on it for the past few weeks. I'm on the second year of my new Christmas tradition: watching the ultimate holiday movie, Die Hard. John McClaine is a Yuletide trinity, serving as Jesus (his stocking feet crucified on a glass floor), Santa (“Now I have a machine gun, Ho-ho-ho”), and Krampus (he kills a lot of naughty terrorists). But I'm kinda bummed, because I have no one to watch this Christmas classic with. So, next year, I will have a special someone to watch this damn movie with. Even if I have to hire them.

Live from the Lonely Moments Apartment Complex

I'm going to quit my kickboxing class. It's expensive, which is bad, but the bigger problem is that it's been leaving me feeling worn out. It's hard to do strength training and an intensive cardio activity at the same time, and I feel like it's been compromising my strength gains. Analysis aside, I'm conflicted about the decision. There's a sense of community unique to the gym, the knowledge that this person might punch you and you wouldn't even mind. That's tempered by the moments of awkward inadequacy, missing a kick over and over until somebody gives you the Check Out This Motherfucker look.  I have a relationship with my gym, and now I'm queasy about going for the breakup.

Indeed! This party DOES suck!

Every time I observe someone slightly younger than me who has all the talent I lack, it's like the pain of flossing for the first time in a month. The ache comes in waves, starting and stopping with a tempo that makes it impossible to concentrate on anything. Gore Vidal said, "Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies." It would reveal me as petty to agree wholeheartedly, but I think it's a bit late for that.

I'm gonna go ride my bike in commemoration of Halloween. Today's the 31st, so all of the good pre-moving junk is going to be out in the alleys. And, uh, even though I'd rather not admit it, I look forward to potential random encounters in the midnight hour. Not sloppy hookups behind an abandoned elementary school with sirs or madams dressed as Sexy Radiology Technicians (although I wouldn't be mad at that) - but the inexplicable stew that boils out of the pot when a city of costumed fools are let loose, sanctioned by the closest thing American culture has to Carnival. God help me, I'm itching to punch somebody.

The Promise of Roycemore

I think I have a fever.


Literature is beautiful to me because it exposes all of the paths that you could have taken but didn't, all of the people that you never had a chance to be. Or maybe that's pornography, I'm really not sure.

...

See, when your brain begins to overheat, you feel like it's making all of these brilliant new connections when, really, it's just flailing at buttons, trying to get anything to make sense.

Wall Ring

I'm writing a paper right now, or at least I should be. It's going poorly. The last few months have seen my life accumulate more responsibilities, and my ass is dragging from the weight. Every time I attempt to complain about my workload, I feel like such a shithead, probably because I am such a shithead. Nine credit hours at community college, around thirty hours a week at my fecal retail job, then another seven or eight at my martial arts class and working out. This is not a lot! And many other people have to endure much more than I do for the bare minimum of survival. I worry every day that I simply lack whatever hardiness is necessary to survive in the wild, and the constant hand-wringing is itself a kind of confirmation. Still, I can't admonish away my discomfort.

The one delight really getting me through right now is my body. After eight months of weightlifting and stretching and punching, I've finally started to become a little bit fearsome. I'm still fat, and I've only lost about ten to twenty pounds, but what lies beneath is as if hewed from stone. Probably the actual product doesn't stand up to the praise I give it, but it's my achievement. I enjoy using my new form, seeing the little ways strength and coordination ease my way through the world. Then there's the vindictive joy of slowly edging onto the cusp of conventional attractiveness. Despite the pain and inconvenience, I delight in the act of lifting the weight. It's such a private thing for me; until last month, I hadn't exercised my routine around anyone else in years. There are moments created when I lift of such austere, perfect, monastic solitude.

I read an essay by Henry Rollins where he kept lovingly referring to weights as "the Iron." He sounded like a serial killer. So I don't want to go too far out on that ledge, lest I fall into a musclebound disdain for all of the puny Micronians. But I guess I kind of understand why he gets downright religious about the topic. Unlike gender or religion or class, strength hasn't served to make me identify with others who share its marks. There's no knowing glance with the brick shithouse on the train. (Honestly, I'm always sizing them up, wondering if I could take them.) It's a private thing, a closed circuit communion with the self. Contextualize it however you want, because it's only your own experience that matters.

Punning Linguist

Crackdown 2 is on my mind, and because I crave orbs, I've been playing a lot of the mighty progenitor, Crackdown. Going through it with a more critical eye, I've realized that the combat is merely an accessory to the platforming. In the body of Crackdown's gameplay, it is the appendix. There's no end to the appeal of jumping forty feet, landing on a skyscraper, shimmying along a drainpipe, and then falling ten stories into a river. In a way, Crackdown's jumping and scaling  resembles parkour. While your avatar's movements lack grace or fluidity, there a shared idea of reducing each obstacle down to its component parts.

See, I'm never going to own a jetpack, hoverboard, or flight ring. It sounds defeatist and anti-futurist, I suppose, but this is the harsh lesson life has taught me. There is a level of human mobility that can only really be expressed through video games. Fuck, even in Ninja Gaiden, Ryu Hayabusa can make an off-the-cuff 15ft jump and, at its apogee, change his momentum 180º. As a player, I take it for granted, but it's amazing. Crackdown lets you climb a building's exterior barehanded. Samus Aran has super speed. Mario can straight up fly. I love platformers above all other genres because they encourage new methods of breaking the rules of physics.

Variations on My Summer Vacation

Summer's long. I've spent this whole time working out, lifting weights, trying to learn a little bit of martial arts. My body has become more pliant, and as its capacities expand I can work it harder and harder. Exercise has replaced videogames as my summer leisure activity, and I feel a little smug about it. But I need to remain focused on performance-related goals rather than trying to improve my appearance. That way lies a certain flavor of madness, plus a host of body-image issues I don't think I'm ready to tackle on my own. I've made it as far as I have by staring at my feet and concentrating on the ground in front me. I worry that looking to the horizon will just make me trip and fall.

---

Summer's long. The few games that interested at its outset have withered in this fucking heat. Crackdown 2 was an exquisite disappointment, true royalty among phoned-in cash-ins. It sucked. Played a little of Prince of Persia: Fuck The Reboot. It was okay, but the sort of okay where you think about playing it once every two weeks, then become bored halfway through that thought and take a nap. Tried the newly translated Tales game for the DS, but my shoulder buttons are busted, so that's out. I've been playing a whole lot of Ancient Domains of Mystery, my favorite roguelike and my ultimate fallback game. Right now, I'm playing a dark elven archer. Yeah!

The internet is a catalyst for subcultures, lowering the amount of energy needed to give something an audience. I know it's better for me to ignore it, but straight up: I'm sick of anything that calls itself 8-bit, unless it's RushJet1. I think of 8-bit anything like I think of steampunk: visually interesting in small doses, but a little goes a long-ass way. Seems more like a catch-all cash-in for late 80s nostalgia brewing in the mid-20s demographic than an actual interesting movement. Also, it gets my goat when a sprite that's clearly in an SNES/Genesis/TG16 resolution is dubbed "8-bit." Come on, do the math! 16 bits, not 8! Genesis does what Nintendon't.

Perhaps the deeper truth is that I don't like the sophisticate branch of game culture. Y'know, art platformers with a statement, zines about how Nintendo taught you what real disappointment was, and endless ruminations on the sin of reviewing a game when you could critique it. It is a fecal Ourobouros, endlessly chasing its tail down the drain.

---

Summer's long. The hours stretch on even longer when the oven's at 500º. There's nowhere in my apartment I can escape that hateful heat, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for delicious pizzas. I've been endlessly refining my technique, iterating on my sauce, and trying for the love of God to get the pizza onto the stone without fucking it up royal. My kitchen is the forge, my pizza stone is the anvil, and I am aiming to create a culinary Masamune. I'm not there yet, and I don't want to talk up my product more than it can handle, but I'm proud that I've created something tasty on my own.

---

Summer's looooooooong. I've been on a quest to get in a pool since June. I've been so sweaty, and every time I sweat I think about being underwater. Next Thursday ... WATER PARK. I'm fucking psyched.

*I was gonna format this as a numbered list, but I was worried it would be pretentious. Then I read a post on someone else's blog that did the same thing, and I hated it. I guess I'll just have to display my pretension in other ways!

Cherry Trees Blossoming in Profusion

Last week, I took a slice out of my paycheck for my new job and bought myself a Fleshlight. My god, it is the unparalleled opus of onanism! Makes me feel a bit crass to discuss it in any space, even one as discrete as this. Kevin Smith praised a high holy hymn to the fleshy implement's virtues on his podcast. While I may like to consider myself above the persuasive power of advertising, it stuck. I'd always worried that it would end up another useless implement at the back of the sex toy drawer, next to the too-pointy buttplug and the inexplicable 14" dildo. Really, all I needed was a vote of confidence that it wasn't a waste of ~$70.

And it isn't; it's the best sex I've ever had. Which isn't as much of a statement as it sounds, as I've only had two sex partners, neither of whom I successfully topped. Part of me feels creepy for enjoying it to the extent that I do. I guess I kind of worry that it's a step or two removed from knitting scarves for my RealDoll. Hell, as a transwoman I feel guilty for taking so much pleasure from sticking my dick in something. But these are reservations that enter my mind long after the deed has done, and they tend to not linger long.

Legend of the Street

When I was 14, my dad died. Each member of my family dealt with it by crumbling in his or her own special way. Mine was pot, and the dispassionate lifestyle it brings. Gravity brought me to orbit around other potheads, which is where I met Max. I was maybe 16 when I met him, having just obtained my driver's license and a clean little '89 Honda Accord that I proceeded to befoul. Max, as a 14 year old, should have been in a completely different social stratum from the burnouts I hung out with.

His equalizer was that he stole cars. He'd tap a window with a spark plug, hotwire the damn thing, and joyride. The group we were a part of was car-obsessed, and Max had not only the natural social allure of the thrillseeker but the driving skills of a god damned legend. He had this black '90 Prelude. Whenever someone spoke of their experiences in it they got a little catch in their voice and a sudden verve their eyes.

Some people cultivate tall tales, and some people slowly and quietly build a legend. Max didn't boast, at least not relative to the other teenage boys in his company. But I'm willing to do it for him. Here's the prototypical Max tale: after a long night of looting cars, he was offered a trade - his stack of purloined stereos for a mid-80's box Crown Vic with a Mustang engine. Max enthusiastically agreed, drifting around the city until the cops started chasing him. He lost them in a display of reckless skill, ditched the car, and called it a night. I wasn't there to see it, yet I believe it unquestioningly, because I myself witnessed a number of Max stories unfold. Like the time he took us drifting in an E-350 cargo van with no front brakes. In the rain. The he got his Ford Ranger, a fairly tame looking light passenger truck. He could burn the tires through any corner in that thing and make it look good. Then there was the incident with the Latin Kings ... I should stop.

All this adoration is a bit much. Whenever I tell the tales to someone, they ask if I had a crush on this kid, but that's not it. Max was an inspiring figure. As a child, I played far too many RPGs, and was crushed when I discovered my dreams of being a lone, unconquerable hero were hopelessly out of touch with reality. There were no legendary swords for me to claim, there was no final boss for me to conquer. Knowing someone like Max gave me a bit of hope that I could be at least a little special, and that there were exceptional people lurking everywhere.

To get to a point, Max is kind of a big part of the reason I write. I want to communicate to someone else how in awe of him I was and am. There is no more exciting place I can think of being than in the passenger seat next to him. I can't immortalize him in fiction, because I'd just turn him into a Mary Sue, so this little blog post will have to do. A monument to Max, the tallest 5'8" a man could ever be.

The Castle Sengir

There was a time, in the late 90s, when I played a lot of Starcraft. If that statement called to mind build orders and Zerg rushes, please revise your expectations. I played single-player nearly exclusively, and I played with cheats on. There was an official expansion, Brood Wars, which added new units and a new campaign. Beside it on Best Buy's shelves, there were numerous other Starcraft products, making grand boasts of "900 NEW MAPS!" in generic fonts. These map packs didn't have the novelty of new units for me to click on ad nauseum or new single-player missions to play for ten minutes and then skip with a code. They just couldn't satisfy me.

Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening is an expansion pack for Dragon Age, but perhaps that's giving it a bit too much credit. It behaves more like a map pack than a Brood Wars. There are more things to kill and more XP to get and more levels to gain, but there's not truly more meat to be had here.

For the record, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening is a confoundingly mouthy title. "Dragon Age: Origins" alone gets me with its presumptuousness - it suggests not merely a predestined trilogy, but a trilogy of trilogies. It's not so much a title as a marketing plan.

Dragon Age's setting was quite often described by Bioware as "low fantasy," which seemed to be an awfully nice way of saying "generic Ren Faire." Its plot wouldn't seem out of place in a relatively unambitious NES game. But that was redeemed when you talked to your party. See, when it comes to my party members in RPGs, I always roleplay as an opportunistic schmooze. It's kind of a min/max feedback loop: I tell them what they want to hear, and the game often rewards me for it. In Dragon Age, I found myself saying kind words to these people-simulacra because I liked them and wanted them to be happy. Well, all of them except Oghren, that horrible little thug.

Awakening does away with the bulk of your interactions with party members. They have their little quests and snippets of dialog here and there, but the presence of the characters is thin. Without getting down and dirty with some dialogue trees, I didn't feel any connection to my party members, removing the part of the game I most enjoyed. All it had left was the combat, which remains satisfactory. I felt over-leveled for most of the expansion, so most fights had all the suspense of Hot Knife Vs. Butter.

The game is more than a bit glitchy. I spent a sizable amount of cash on a backpack which failed to expand my inventory. The auras projected by your character's passive abilities can kill the frame rate (I should note that I played the game on the 360,) and often make the talking-head conversation scenes unwatchable. There was a city guard mysteriously appeared next to herself when I talked to her. Perhaps this mute doppelganger held secrets to the Darkspawn invasion? She was not forthcoming on the subject.


When I started Awakening, I was surprised to find that Leliana, the woman I had fallen in love with and pledged myself to during Dragon Age, had disappeared completely, with no explanation. Maybe it's better this way; I can remember her fondly, instead of through the prism of this hatchet job.

A Lonely Place of Dying

Ah, hell. I've got a ton of things to write about, even a couple of half-finished posts, but I'm not in the mood to complete anything. I hate filler posts, but it's worth it to use that title. Fuck Jason Todd.

Graceful Reprieve

The standardized unit of measurement for nakedness is the nude (abbreviated as ñ.) The scale is measured as follows:

0ñ:   a winter jacket, snow pants, and an unattractive scarf
0.25ñ:   taking your shoes off in someone else's house
2ñ:   taking a shirt off in public and your belly kinda flops out for a second
5ñ:   wearing a bathing suit
10ñ:   plumber's crack
30ñ:   wearing one of those paper smocks while sitting in a doctor's office
45ñ:   being pantsed in front of a boy/girl you previously thought you had a shot with
100ñ:   sharking
3000ñ:   naked open casket funeral

Hopefully this has given you a greater understanding how to measure your nudity and that of others.

That Terrible Strength

There used to be this website, Dammit.com. It was some guy's dream journal, mostly. Not just the usual chronicle of non sequitirs and places that are someplace but also someplace else, it gave an outline of the writer's life until that point. A cycle of regrets and fears and people who he'd never meet again but still existed as shades on the shores of his subconscious. Am I projecting?

6 jul... Long, sad dream about pam. Laying in bed together, talking. Catching up. "do you still smoke? Do you run? Oh you get cramps and have to poop? Hahahahaha. Do you still drink? Oh I stopped two months ago." Just knowing that I love her, and that nothing feels any different than it did years ago. She gets out of bed and goes in another room. My sister comes in and climbs into bed with me, and asks me if I am upset. "what do you think?"

Going back through his archived website, I found out this guy's name. Which is awful. It spoils the spell cast by his words. Once he has a name, he's just another person I'll never know. Some things need to remain ineffable.

4 Jun... A girl is reading a newspaper, seated with long legs crossed. The headline is something like, "2ND CHANCE STILL TO COME!" 

In 2000 or so, when I was reading this for the first time, I was rushing into the bigger part of teenagehood. It felt like my third eye was opening wider every day, like there was this world beneath the world that I was sinking into. I'd watch episodes of Saved by the Bell and cry because of the weird 80's-ness I'd missed out on. The cliché is that it's like you're experiencing all these new, strange feelings, right? They're still new and strange to me. I still don't understand them.

30 May... A long coversation with pam. She has left her boyfriend and says she regrets leaving me. She loves me, she says. I am tortured by her. As we kiss she asks me, "did you really think I was pretty?" and I tell her that in my eyes she was truly beautiful. I am happy to be in bed with her, but I am ambivalent as well. I don't want to be hurt by her again. And even as we are going at it, I remember that sex was never the biggest thing in our relationship. In fact, this whole thing is kind of grossing me out. I pull back from her embrace, and she gets up and begins compulsively cleaning. She is on some new anti-depressant and it is making her manic. 

I tried keeping a dream journal once, but it didn't take. The only thing I remember is: Bruce Willis and I are in bed, and I love him deeply. We're playing a biographical version of Street Fighter based on my life, and something in it hurts his feelings. I try to explain it away, but he turns into a priest. See? Dreams are terrible. I'd like to tie this all together by weaving some message about the universality of the unwaking realm, but that's just sweet-smelling shit. I like sad stories, and something about Dammit.com just makes me feel so sad.

A Speck in a Sphere

Some kind of illness is creeping up on me. A generic coldfluspiratoryinfection, probably; nothing heavy-duty enough to merit a doctor's visit, but just enough of a nuisance to slow a week down to a crawl. It's not a good time for a leukocytic showdown. I picked up another job doing short-term government work. It pays well, but it's grinding me down pretty awful. It coexists in my schedule along with my sadly extant retail job and a single college class. By the numbers, it's really not that much of a commitment, so I don't understand why it's kicking my ass so unequivocally.

Whenever I get a new job, there's always a period of panicked scrambling to get into some sort of equilibrium. I'm flailing wildly to catch my balance at the moment, and it's stressing me out mentally and physically. Thus, the illness. I wonder sometimes if I'm made of the proper stuff to do the 40-hours-a-week life, if I can hack the basic requirements of anything beyond a marginal existence. What confidence I had that self-reliance was within my abilities is eroding. Things would be easier if I had some overriding goal that propelled me or some gift that I could rely on, but if it's there, I haven't identified it. I don't write out of passion, but because I need to.

I suppose it troubles me that this blog has become a bit of a Livejournal, but I suppose it's a bit more acceptable considering that no one really reads it anyway. In high school, I'd check the Diaryland and Livejournal accounts of my classmates more often than necessary, searching for mentions of myself. Some proof that I was central to somebody else's life. I think maybe only one person ever mentioned me. (Thanks, Magda!) It's good, though, to have a secret public journal. I try to discuss what I'm feeling with my friends, but I never really feel like I'm getting through. There's a catharsis to this sort of confession, I think. It's a prayer addressed to the void; whether it gets answered is immaterial.

Mucho Dollar Care a Junk CIA

I want to write something, and I've got a couple topics lined up, but my heart's just not in it right now. Consider this an IOU.

An Eternity in an Eternal Place

I was playing cards at a friend's house when I got a call from work. They offered an extra shift tomorrow morning, and I said yes. Now, I've gotta finish baking a cake for another friend's birthday, take a shower, and get some mediocre sleep before I go to work and start the cycle anew. I get all pissy when I feel I haven't enough time to myself in a day, such as this one. I don't necessarily want to relax, I just don't want to be around other people.

In a day, I'm sure I'll be in a completely different place, but that's no reason to deny what I'm feeling right now. It's all sour in my mouth.

Alodia Gosiengfiao

I ride public transit here in Chicago. Often enough, I get in confrontations with people who have some sort of problem with me. One time, some random, crazy-eyed guy screamed "DONUTS!" and punched me in the face. I responded by telling him to get off the train until the security guy hustled him out. Still, for months afterward, I'd replay the scene in my head, my reaction growing more and more violent. At the apogee of my fantasies, bits of the guy's skull were in my hair. My brother is the sort of person who will take brutal umbrage at an insult, and when I told him the story, his first response was, "Why didn't you punch his ass out?" It was a difficult question to answer. The best I could come up with was a partial truth: I didn't feel it was worth getting kicked off the train, and possibly crossing paths with the police. And the truth is, getting punched in the face by an amateur doesn't hurt.

But there's more to it than that. I'm a big person, and rather strong for it. Should I truly need to, I'm well convinced that I could disassemble anyone below the 90th percentile of ass-kicking ability. If I uncorked my violence on someone, I'm not sure I'd stop before they were meat on the floor. Beyond that, I'm a calm person nearly full-time. Not quite a pacifist, but I try. It'd feel like I was betraying that aspect of myself if I allowed some fool to make me lose my cool.

I don't want to paint my dilemma as anything high-minded. It's the classic struggle of Id vs. Ego, with Superego throwing in a few words every so often. The primal reaction I feel precludes all of this reasoning (and, perhaps, rationalization.) Today on the bus, some teenagers were talking shit about my attire. Homo/transphobic stuff, enough to get me riled. My fists clenched, my heart raced, and I couldn't decide what to do. Looking back, I feel I should've cussed their asses out, but at the time I couldn't see that ending in anything but blood. Which wouldn't have proven anything . . . but maybe made me feel better.

I always feel diminished after getting into a confrontation with somebody. My father tried to instill in me a sort of manly martial pride, and chastised me when I didn't return measure for measure. It didn't really land for me, but sometimes the teachings we reject stay with us. He died when I was 14, far before the revelation of my ladyness. And now his voice is the one I hear chastising whenever I find myself lacking in some masculine virtue. Most of the time it doesn't bug me, but there's always a pressure. To, y'know, Be A Man.

Power is not evil, but it tempts one to use it. That temptation scares me as much as it elates me.

Horrid Tropical Paradise

Many weightlifting techniques sound like sex acts, specifically the sort of imagined deeds contrived by eleven-year-olds at the tail end of a slumber party. Bent-Knee Good Morning? One Arm Pushdown? The Seated Underhand Row? It goes the other way, too. Tell me true, can't you imagine a personal trainer recommending five sets of Donkey Punches to energize your core?

Gespenst

I've got a vague sick thing going on right now, some sort of sneezing sore throat fevery thing. It's not super terrible, but the weird thing is I've started to zone out completely. I'll kind of stare at the computer screen, and then ten seconds have passed without my recognition or consent. It's kind of disconcerting, but I also appreciate that it skips over some of the boredom produced by convalescence. Really, I want this to be over so I can get back to my exercise regimen, which had kinda gotten on a roll. Soon enough, I suppose.

I've got that overheated-brain feeling right now, the notion that any idea that hits my mind is a fragment of cosmic genius. Drugs are usually my source for such imagined grandeur, so it's strange to experience that elevated self-estimation from a simple fever.

Dead Man's Notes

This Valentine's Day, I'm going to be at home, with my cat, baking a cheesecake. I guess my life is a Cathy strip now.

Recently, my capacity to play games increased dramatically. Before, I would rarely be able to keep up with the larger ongoing conversation about games. The gaming media predominantly focuses on the most recent thing, which is lost on the value-conscious/broke. Maybe I'd rent a new release the week it came out, but most games crossed my palm once they'd hit the twenty dollar sweet spot.

Now, I'm trampling my way through Mass Effect 2 along with the rest of the gaming biosphere. It's a curious feeling, to be on the cutting edge. Without financial limitations, I don't feel any desire to play games that don't land completely true on my mesolimbic pathway. If a game doesn't demand my attention, I let it slide. Assassin's Creed 2 is on the shelf right now, barely played - good, but not quite good enough. It's no tragic alteration to my pattern of play, but it's awfully strange to switch from quiet serial monogamist to globetrotting, lackadaisical Lothario.

I've been trying to work out a bit. There is an awesome, narcotic feeling that comes with the mastery of one's body, and I want that feeling back. From the cradle, I was a pudgy little fuck. Everyone looks at you differently for it, though I'd hesitate to say that fat's among life's greater burdens. When I was a senior in high school, I took a weightlifting class, catapulting me to the best shape I had and have ever been in my life. Before, I had been three hundred thirty pounds of bubbling disdain. After the class was over, I was a smug two hundred twenty pounds. Everyone outside of my inner circle seemed to treat me differently, and it made me happy, because now I had a chance to spurn them.

Valentine's makes me reflect on these things. I'm alone and still a bit afraid to admit that I'm lonely. Right now, I carry three hundred pounds of undead fury. But if I lost the weight, if I passed properly, if I got my stuff in order, would I like my choices any better? Would I just use it as an excuse to revel in the power of rejecting others? God, I really want to draw a parallel between this and my mostly-virgin copy of Assassin's Creed 2, but I'm drawing a blank. That really would finished this post off spectacularly. Well, at least I got something out of Valentine's Day.

Horseshoe Crab Blood Purity Test

I get sick a lot in the winter. This year, I didn't. Four months into the season and still going strong! But now I'm paranoid that I'll get sick, and so I see every sniffle as an indisputable diagnosis of some new animal flu. Winter gets under my skin.

Be the Beat

I just spent a little under an hour obtaining and fiddling with an erotic text adventure from my youth. It's called A Night With Troi, and you cannot fathom how embarrassed I am for admitting this. I put up a good facade of solidarity with my fellow nerds, but I have a threshold where my racial memory of swirlies and anti-proms kicks in and I start backpedaling so as not to be one of them. A pornographic (text!) game based on Star Trek (:TNG!) is far beyond that gentle Rubicon.

And it's not even good! Imagine: your partner disrobes, pecs/breasts almost glowing in the soft light. You embrace, the only thing separating the two of you a layer of glistening sweat. You whisper in his/her ear: "I love you." S/he stiffens, and says, monotone, "I don't understand the word 'love' as a noun." A tin-eared text parser sucks all the sexy out of the room. Getting the game to recognize your words is an awkward struggle, and even then it may deny you for reasons that aren't clear.

But because it's so clumsy and frustrating, there's an inestimable feeling of reward when you finally consummate your keyboard-clacking coitus. Around ten or twelve, when I was reaching the age of sexual immaturity, a I'd play strip poker games on my 133Mhz Compaq. No matter what Microsoft does, there is no Achievement that can truly capture the accomplishment of spending two hours at bad video poker just to see a boob.

A Night with Troi is some tedious smut, but its antique presentation and straight-up oddness really endear it to me.

Addendum: Actual gameplay footage!
>replicate lube_
The harmonics of the replicator play briefly, and the tube of lubricant you asked for appears.  You pick it up and nod in approval.