Mad World redux

Chris didn't understand Donnie Darko. I didn't expect him to. The director's cut changed it a lot.

And speaking of cuts...

We all have our forms of self-mutilation, whether on skin, on paper, or on the faces of others. I'm not sad at the moment. Not depressed at all. I'd just prefer to have my wounds where I can see them, where I know that they will heal. But the world doesn't want me to do that. It's sad; everyone wants what's best for me, regardless of whether it's right for me.

I haven't cut myself. But I'm severely tempted.

Love, Fear, Arrogance, Submission, Good, Evil, Pleasure, Pain, Joy and Despair... What does it all mean? Kefka was right. Life... hope... dreams... Where did they come from? And where are they going?

I may have found Prophet and Whisk. I don't know for sure yet. If they are real, it's really going to complicate things... I won't know what to call myself anymore. Seven won't be appropriate. Ninefold? I don't know. Seven just sounds better. But then, maybe it's time for me to move on.

Two pieces of a puzzle, together at last. A perfect fit, a perfect match, forming two halves of a person's face. It could not be better. Congratulations! Only 4998 pieces to go.

For Us the Bells Toll

There are no heroes anymore. None. There is no one left for us to look up to. The world is too large, and its people are too small. Religion is publicly denied, our leaders are hated with great malice, our wars are no longer worth fighting. In this age we have to make our own heroes. That is the answer to my question, at least for me: Who is Mantai? Mantai is my idea of a hero.

I hope we are living in the End Times. I cannot see us diminishing more than we already are. What is this we call "progress?" Right now a child is being born. Right now someone is reaching orgasm. Right now someone's life is changing forever. Right now someone is falling in love. Right now someone has finished a book. Right now someone has stepped in something sticky. Right now a cat is eating a fish. Right now someone is cradling a bleeding hand. Right now, someone is dying. Right now someone is at the point of death. Right now someone is in mortal agony. Right now someone is cutting her own wrist. Right now the world is in pain. I try not to think about it. I don't always succeed.

Time travel isn't nearly as complex as people make it out to be. We know that wormholes exist; microscopic ones are appearing constantly within the atmosphere. If we can create a stable one there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to travel between past and future. And what then? People will go back. Can history be changed? That is up to them. Let me explain. The Universe has a natural order. If someone is meant to go back in time, then they become part of the natural cycle, and whatever they may believe they are doing ultimately everything will fall into place exactly as it should be. However, if someone goes into the past and intentionally acts on their knowledge to ensure that something does not happen, creating a paradox, then the entire course of history from that point onwards will be changed. The person or people involved will continue to exist as anomalies within the timeline, ultimately becoming part of the new order. It is possible, and in fact likely, that people exist within this timeline who returned from the future and inadvertently prevented their own return, perhaps even stopping them from ever existing. Do you follow? People exist who would have been born if they had not prevented themselves from being born. Anomalies.

I can't stop comparing my life to an RPG. I've even made plans for the Sevenfold RPG, which takes place within a warped version of the Rooms. It stars the Seven (no surprise there) with some cameo appearances by the Ice Angel, Iox, and even the enigmatic Flex as the final boss. The story revolves around "World". Throughout the characters must find ways to interact, solve bizarre puzzles, and fight... things. The objective of the game seems to be to reach Haven, a mysterious Heaven-like place which may be an actual location, a state of mind, or even a concept. Most of the game revolves around swapping between the three planes of existence: the Physical world, the Conceptual world, and the Otherworld. The Physical world is "normal" in which the characters are human and comparatively uncomplicated objectives are given. The Mental world differs greatly depending on which character is in play. It shifts constantly based on a wide variety of factors. Several "mind powers" may be used, though each comes with a cost. The Mental world may be described as not what is actually there, merely what we perceive it to be. The Otherworld may be best described as a dreamlike state. Here World is actually replicated seven times and warped, twisted, and then connected to form the Rooms. The most difficult part of this switching concept is that the character still exists on all three planes at once, so anything you do on one plane will affect the other two. This is obviously extremely complex, which is the main reason I haven't finished it yet.

Chocolate and/or cheesecake... hmmm...

THIS!

IS!

SPARTAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think I'm okay.

As I expected, Chris hit the roof when he heard I'd seen Saw. He keeps making arguments about how it's not fair that I get to see it when he doesn't. Not that I would have been allowed to see it anyway... technically... but no one seems too concerned about it. I'm not exactly scarred for life. If I have nightmares now, I'll let you know.

This could be a song title

Curled up across two chairs, a pat on the head, music all around, quiet inside. I dreamed.

Dust. A teardrop fell, falling from the heavens or so it seemed. As it landed a shockwave rose around it. So small it seemed. Then, a rush of perspectives, and I was the ant watching as all I owned was swept away. With a sigh I took out my umbrella, my lawn chair, and my clipboard. I began to sketch my new house. Then a gust of wind blew the board over, and sideways what I had drawn spelled out GOD. I sigh and look around. In the distance are other ants, forming a rough ring around me. One side gets closer and closer, while the other gets farther and farther away. I turned to the close side, shrugged, and gave them my clipboard and lawn chair. Then I plucked up my umbrella and stared at it for several seconds. With a gasp I plunge it through the middle of my body. The other ants quickly pull it away from me, snap off the pointy end, then plant it in the ground and lay me to rest in the shade. Just then a second tear drop falls and everything but the ants under the umbrella are washed away. We all looked at each other, shrugged, and left.

Argon maryth

The sign-in thing for this blog is really starting to annoy me. It keeps signing me out unexpectedly. That and no matter how many times I click the "Remember me?" button, it never does. So I have to type it all in every time. Grr.

It started with a little ache. Just a twinge on my back. Then, as I was walking along, it suddenly twisted itself into a knot. I don't know if you've ever had a knotted muscle on your back, but it's painful. I compared it at the time to having been filled with glue and left to harden. No matter how you turn it's either being compressed or stretched, and either way it's cracking. The word AGONY springs to mind. Walking was difficult. Then, unbearably slowly, the pain crawled up my back, right through my arm and onto my chest. It was like fire was moving over me... without the heat. Or the fire, for that matter. It stayed there a while, compressing my lungs, forcing me to gasp for air. Then it stabbed straight through the middle of my heart. Right now it's sort of spread out over my whole left side. Muscle spasm? Heart attack? Nanodestroyers? Demons? CIA? Mezzodrills? Or something even stranger?

I've definitely got Beast and the Harlot stuck in my head now.

Ivory in chains

I wondered to myself, What is the answer? But that, I realized, was a Deep-Thought paradox. What I should have been asking was, What is the question?

So this is what I came up with.

QUESTION NUMBER 1
What is the question?

QUESTION NUMBER 2
Why am I looking for an answer?

QUESTION NUMBER 3
Who is Mantai?

Question 1 is self-explanatory. Question 2 is difficult to answer without the answer to question 1. Question 3 is perhaps the most puzzling, but with a nudge in the right direction it might - just might - prove to be the most vital question of all.

Here is my Random Video of the week(ish).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6Dmg_4ZA2Y&NR=1

Minesweeper dreams

This is not a poem. Seriously, it's not.

A poem is what people call a collection of ideas that they don't quite understand. A poem is open to interpretation. A poem can change lives, if heard by the right person, but to most everyone else a poem is another cute little muse by some cute little author who can now be ignored. It's the only way we can rationalize so many meaningful thoughts and expressions crammed into so little space. For instance:

Why do people place so much importance on the least significant things?
Why do people blame their problems on events far away, a government they voted into office, and a God they don't believe in?
Why do we talk, talk endlessly about world issues but do nothing?
Why are we somehow unable to bring our enormous surplus of food to starving third-world countries, despite having every known means of transportation at our disposal?
Why do people lack empathy?
Why is there clearly so much work to do in the world, and yet there are so many people without jobs?
Why have we made countless movies, written endless books, based entire lives around the concept of love, and yet no one can give any explanation of what it actually is?
Why does my head itch?
Why do people claim to know what animals are thinking, and make decisions about how pets are supposed to live based off of that?
Why do children dream of going on adventures and saving the world, while capable adults with a sense of actual responsibility would run away at the first sign of danger?
Why is a twelve-page essay full of long words that, let's be honest here, no one really understands, written by some scientist-type person in a laboratory far, far away more valuable than the exact same thing explained by the guy you met at the bar in under thirty seconds?
Why does this generation believe that the less you are actually wearing, the better dressed you are?
Why are some hypothetical numbers you don't actually own on a computer in some other country that will never have any real impact on you or anyone around you more important than a human life?
Why can insignificant specks of dust inspire more fascination than the largest structures civilization has ever constructed?
Why is black the new white?
Why are people so eager to accept ill news while anything good in the world is ignored, forgotten or overlooked?
Why are bunnies cute?
Why is doing something for the very first time more worthy of celebration than the first time it is done perfectly, or, for that matter, right at all?
Why do people cause enormous amounts of devastation in foolish attempts to save time?
Why is making lots and lots of money more important than saving the environment, protecting people's lives, or even basic human happiness?
Why are you listening to me list question after question that no one really has any answer to?

Now, that is not a poem. It cannot be a poem. I REFUSE to let anyone call what I have just said a poem. Because anyone can listen to a poem. But if you listen expecting that you probably won't understand it... then you never will.

And that is all I have to say about that.

I don't know which is more insulting, that she called it a poem or that she expected me not to understand the joke.

If you thought the mystery was funny, you should have seen our outtakes. From before we'd learned everything. Even onstage, Jesse was still a he... sometimes. Drove us crazy. And the first time Shaun tried carrying her offstage, her skirt hitched up a bit. Well, maybe more than a bit. And the time Ellen crept off behind that kind of dividing curtain thing to change, forgetting that she was completely surrounded by windows. And Becca is still driving me CRAZY!!! because whenever she bends down, I can see down the back of her pants. There's a line of shadow where two not-exactly-unobtrusive folds of flesh meet. Need I say more? I felt like I should have told her, or something, but how? "Hey, I've been seeing down the back of your pants..." Not really going to make me popular. And I'm not staring, by the way, I just have an irritating tendency to notice things people don't want me to. So I just live with it.
In short, it was a night punctuated by girls' underwear. Bizarre. Shame about Mr. Chuckles, really.

I wonder what's going to happen to the crinkled little paper heart. Maybe it will be thumbtacked to the wall next to my business card. I'll probably never know. I'm not allowed in that room anymore.

Fifty times sharper

It started with a good mood.

People just don't understand things. If I am in a certain mood at a certain point during the day, it does not mean that that is what my character is like all the time. People always tell you how you should be feeling. If I have almost missed a bus, does that mean that I should stop being happy? Am I not allowed to be happy anymore? Does that make being happy a bad thing? Also, if a bus has been fifteen minutes late every day for the past eleven months, would it not be safe for one to assume that it will be fifteen minutes late tomorrow? And who's idea was it for me to get up at this time anyway?

And now the piling on of accusations, one after the other. It's not exactly making me feel motivated. And I, of all people, have been accused of lacking empathy! When her anger was making me clench my fists and grind my teeth in aggravation!

Well of course I'm bloody grateful, but everything loses its meaning if you're obligated to say it. I need to sleep. Not that I'm going to get any. Not tonight.

Griffin chimera perched on your shoulder

Okay, let's think about this logically here.

Picture an elephant. Picture yourself looking at the elephant. Now picture an ant. Picture yourself looking at the ant. Now picture the ant looking at the elephant. Now picture the elephant looking at the ant. Now picture the ant looking at the elephant standing on top of a skyscraper. Picture the elephant falling off of the skyscraper and getting closer and closer until it lands on top of the ant. Picture the resulting explosion. This is just a mental exercise that you're going to need to do if you want to be able to picture the diagram I'm about to illustrate.


There are two basic states of emotion, Love and Fear. There are also the sub-states, Arrogance and Submission, which rest somewhere between them and off slightly to the side. View this as a 2-dimensional figure. Now, add Good and Evil very far away from each other across the center (making it 3-dimensional). Then add Pleasure and Pain the same way. Then Joy and Despair. Yes, the figure is now 5-dimensional. I never said this would be easy.

Next, find all of your emotional extremes, as represented by colours, and place them on the diagram. For instance, Red would probably be somewhere on the Fear / Arrogance / Evil / Pleasure / Despair side, Yellow on the Love / Arrogance / Good / Pleasure / Joy side, Dark Blue on the Fear / Submission / Good / Pain / Despair side, and so forth. The exact placement of the colours depends on the person and the shade of colour chosen, but it should form a kind of 5-dimensional spiral pattern. Then locate the EXACT center of the spiral. This, on average, is who you are.

I, for the record, am fairly close to the middle, leaning towards the Fear / Arrogance / Good / Pain / Despair sides. Probably not the best combination.

More like honey than peanut butter

The missing skin on my hand is red, like an open wound. I guess it is. It would be impossible to hide now even if I wanted to. I now wear it with a hint of pride, as though it's some kind of battle scar. You can be put into therapy for self-mutilation. I'm tempted to come forth and say I knew what I was doing. Then they'd take me seriously. I stroke it from time to time, just to remind myself that it's there. Just to feel it burn.

So maybe I'm not crazy, but I definitely can't say I'm unwell. I can blame nothing for what I am. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

I can't go on living a septuple life. I know that. No one should have to. There's evil things afoot, and in the world where nothing has any meaning anymore the last thing one needs is a broken mind. I'm so tired of living a fractured life. I can never hold onto anything, never. Not a thought, not a feeling, not a memory. Not a love, not a life. Nothing. Every time I latch onto something and tell myself I'm safe I become someone else and throw it off like an old coat. I can't trust myself. I never know who I am. Religion, though, that's the big one. I'm nothing but a hypocrite. How can I bring God to other people if I only know that He's there part of the time? I can't. I can point in the right direction, but there's no guarantee I'll take it, and therein lies the absolute hopelessness of my situation. No matter what choices I make I'm guaranteed to undo them. I'm the makings of my own destruction and I know it. There's no point denying it. The worst thing you can possibly do is lie to yourself.

One more thing. Thousands of years ago, people could be possessed by Demons. Question: who's to say that isn't still happening?