Crisis Deepens

I am.

I will pull through, with perhaps only anger and feelings of profound insult propelling me.

Friends have always been a blessing, especially in crazy times. Stay with me and I promise not to lose my sense of humour. <3

Being Banal (Banana)

I feel like writing today, but I don’t really have anything burning on my mind. I’m a real airhead. However, what might be enjoyable would be to write a list of points about things that are enjoyable and interesting. Maybe even intruiging. Hamm.

1. Video games that I like
First and foremost, wing commander. Observe:

Breaking Free from sprite imaging. Wing Commander: ARMADA (featuring me about to roast a kitty)

Angel, your awesome belgian pal from WC1 (by WC3 you're dating her)

WING COMMANDER 3 HAD FULL MOTION VIDEO (nothing suss)

I love these games to tears because they’re so very immersive. The whole point of them was to take you along on a white-knuckle ride through a distant future, where giant spacefaring cats (the empire of Kilrah) insist on trying to destroy us all (hence the object of the game is to fly around destroying them, how delightfully black and white).

I freely acknowledge that the premise is harebrained and borrows heavily from most sci-fi TV series and movies of the time, but that’s beside the point. In these games, you get to fly around dispatching the enemy yourself, then come back to the carrier and listen to the barman giving you tactics advice while you’re trying to flirt with the mechanic. It’s vicarious living at it’s lighthearted best.

The only problem is, when you’re not busy with onboard intruigue, the game itself, that is the flying and lasering bit, is really quite hard. I’m slowly getting better at it but it’s a lot of rough and tumble. One of the great things about the wing commander games is that you always fly in pairs. Your wingman is usually better at attacking enemies and saving your skin than you are!

Also, in Wing commander 3, you play as Mark Hamill! And the hot ship’s mechanic is played by Ginger Allen. Fans are still compulsively re-arranging the game’s cutscenes into a feature film. Awesome.

I haven’t played WC4 yet- Strange that WC3 should be so easy to find anywhere secondhand games are sold but WC4 almosr unheard of. Someone promised me they’d give it to me for my nineteenth birthday, but I think it turned out to be too much bother. If anyone wants to give me a gift at some point, that’d be cool!

As a review, this had been a bit confused, but anyway. These games are really enjoyable, and I’m sad the company that made them has gone bust.

Oh and, Katamari is a great console game. A lot of fun to play with a pal. I played it last night on a friend’s PS2 and it was cool.

2. Blah Blah Housework

It’s almost time for me to vacuum the floors and mop them. Two days ago I was visiting a friend and we cleaned up the kitchen together after dinner and I realised it was quite enjoyable in company. I get annoyed having to clean the floors here though, by myself with the stupid loud vacuum. It’s boring. It’s also almost time to do the dishes.

3. Reading

I just finished reading all the stories in burning chrome, a collection of William Gibson’s short stories. Not being much of a literary critic, I struggle to explain why I like them, and the way they are written, but here goes.
I hate to use tags like ‘cyberpunk’ because once you put SF or anything really in a narrow slot like that there’s no escape. Copycats flock to pigeonholes like ‘cyberpunk’ and ’steampunk’, producing a work that conforms to a bizzarely rigid style for a genre as imaginative as Science Fiction.

you very pretty, yes

But I digress. I liked Burning Chrome because the stories somehow tread the line between adventure stories and examinations of characters and setting. It works, somehow. I can’t enjoy most of the ‘wow, postapocalypse/dystopia/war’ novels I find in the library, because they’re so damn overwrought, or dull. What can I say, I’m a picky reader. Anyway, I like Gibson’s style because it’s the future as told by the people of the future. It doesn’t stop to whinge over teenagers having thier eyes surgically replaced with cameras and computer programs that roast people trying to hack into them because that’s part of the everyday. It’s nice to read about people getting on with thier lives, I guess.

okay forget what I said about being a picky reader

I also just finished reading ‘take it like a man, an autobiography’ by Boy George and Spencer Bright. It was quite an enjoyable read. I read it with a curious mixture of envy and releif- I wish I’d been able to sneak into a Bowie concert when I was 11, I wouldn’t mind becoming famous for singing and dressing strangely, but I’m glad I haven’t been addicted to heroin, and involved in a  long term relationship where my lover and I have punch-ups on a regular basis. Being rich would be cool though.

Next I shall read ‘Everything is illuminated’ by Johnathan Safran Foer, because Clare said it was good. Her word is good on such things.

4. Chewing gum

I like to chew gum. I like to try all the different flavours. I especially like cinnamon chewing gum, but I so rarely find it in shops, even candy-specific shops.

5.Conclusion

Well, that’s that out of my system. I hope you have enjoyed this (and are now inspired to download wing commander games) and will be back soon.

Comment, lest I be made to feel unloved

Oh will you look at that!

I’m sorry, but is that a pubic hair I see stuck in my keyboard?

Mysterious! It’s long and thick and jet black, so I can’t have been from anywhere on me.

Looks like it was pulled out from the root.

I don’t remember anyone coming into my room and moulting on my laptop during the night, but maybe I need to sleep lighter!

I will catch you!

Crazy!

I will

reap my own bitter harvest

(This year, and always)

It Only Hurts When I’m Laughing

I know most of you don’t share my enthusiasm for Australian new wave music, But I’m going to put it there anyway. Find a good device to listen to it with, like proper speakers or a headset, and press play.

It has loud bits, and quiet bits! It’s a revolution in popular songwriting! Be floored (or at least not bored)!

Perhaps it is too personal or too posey to say that it struck a chord with me.

In other music news, I now prefer John Foxx to Midge Ure (Both were singers for the band Ultravox at different times), and I can’t beleive people are still arguing about it.There is an Ultravox record literally stuck on my stereo, so I’m listening to that at the expense of the rest of my collection. Unless I were to listen to a CD or computer recording, how wiley of me.

Anyway, what am I saying? This is Mi-Sex’s post. Listen, and enjoy.

My life, I’m a fool for you

Sometimes I just get this wonderful feeling, like wings are about to spring from my back and I will run up to one of the railings at uni, vault over it and take flight.

I crave freedom of movement- like skating everywhere with some sort of grace. Sometimes I feel a bit unweildy, like I’m too unco and topheavy. Again, sometimes I daydream about getting up from my seat and skating around (the floor turns to ice, you see)

And then I think about what would happen after that, and the daydreams start to come apart at the seams. Happiness requires concentration, in this case.

I always have some song or another playing in my head, which is handy because I’m always forgetting the headset that attaches to my mobile phone, allowing me to use it as a radio. The bus rattles all the way home and I haven’t got much to do except play the same song over in my head. It turns into a 12″ mix from hell, the chorus repeats endlessly until I get home, humming the coda as I walk down the road to my house.

I bop along to the music in my seat.When this man catches me doing that, he makes fun of me. He can be mean, but he’s darkly hilarious and cool somehow compelling.

Strange how I seem to end up friends with people upon whom I make a terrible first impression. I think I could say that of a lot of my pals.

Sometimes, I can see it, I can smell it. Trouble and sadness coming our way.

And yet, bizzarely, there is so much beauty out there. So many (mostly silly) things to fascinate a weary mind.

Colour and motion

An astonishingly beautiful day today. Lovely light hanging around lovely people like some sort of poorly thought-out poetic metaphor.

I got given a little green bracelet that says ‘integrity’ on it, so just as an excercise I’m going to try and display that as a quality for the next however long.

I had intended to put up more pictures, but I have spent ages scanning and resizing them that I no longer think I could do a good entry about them. Sorry for not putting up as many drawings lately. I like this one.

My love to you, oh reader

Radio Maudlin

Alone in the dark?

It’s harder to feel lonely listening to the radio, I find. When I feel a bit depressed i listen to 5EBI fm, which is a bizzare, cheery multicultural station that plays a lot of oom-pah-pah music. Well, when you tune in at the right moment. I like radio adelaide and cruise 1213 for similar reasons- it sounds like someone is talking (and playing oom-pah-pah) to you. I like it. It feels like company.

When I had a job the radio always had to be on a certain commercial station, or the football match if that was on. I didn’t like that, the deejays are usually tossers, although ‘Day ‘N Nite’ by Kid Cudi became my late night solo work anthem.

Anyway, a few nights ago I was at my desk with the radio on and a pencil and a black pen. I did several drawings which were surprisingly impressive, to me at least, and finished with this one:It’s the ugliest, but oh well. Such is life.

The (ambiguous) diary of Hortensia Adam Buck-Arkey, 2008

Is she an obscenity or just a childish prank?

Is she more real than she looks?

Is she a girl, even?

And where do these disturbing dreams come from?

ONE

(any day)

Uh…my name is Hortie, obviously, and this is one of a long line of swiftly-abandoned blogs. I expect it’ll last a month, maybe more?

I’m only doing this because I feel like I need to vent, plus a sister is nagging me to write about my ‘crazy’ life. You know who you are.

I am a happy man

I finished uni at 18:00 today and dragged my bag (and self) off to the bus stop.

The Obahn bus on the way home was fairly full. I looked around at the other people on the bus. I noticed in my reflection in the bus window that my skin is rather pink.

At the very back was a Chinese high school kid pulling faces at and giggling with his girlfriend. He had a large mouth. I happened to glance up at the very moment when he pulled the most amazing kind smile, like a statue of the buddha.

I thought that was nice.