Month: September 2009

the high scores are unbelievable

Lose/Lose by Zach Gage.

Lose/Lose is a video-game with real life consequences. Each alien in the game is created based on a random file on the players computer. If the player kills the alien, the file it is based on is deleted. If the players ship is destroyed, the application itself is deleted.

Although touching aliens will cause the player to lose the game, and killing aliens awards points, the aliens will never actually fire at the player. This calls into question the player’s mission, which is never explicitly stated, only hinted at through classic game mechanics. Is the player supposed to be an aggressor? Or merely an observer, traversing through a dangerous land?

Why do we assume that because we are given a weapon an awarded for using it, that doing so is right?

By way of exploring what it means to kill in a video-game, Lose/Lose broaches bigger questions. As technology grows, our understanding of it diminishes, yet, at the same time, it becomes increasingly important in our lives. At what point does our virtual data become as important to us as physical possessions? If we have reached that point already, what real objects do we value less than our data? What implications does trusting something so important to something we understand so poorly have?

life feels longer when you give it away


where I live: my block in winter

I feel like I must be escaping a terrible plague, so many people have come down sick lately. Hacking and coughing dry lungs into sweat soggy pillows during already too hot nights, the last of summer soaking through, feverskin betrayal, exhausting, white blood cells failing, eyes yellow, not enough vitamin C, not enough B12 or energy to fight. To all of you ill, I am sorry. If it would help for me to bring you tea, please tell me when.

this makes me happy, he says, and I agree

via Doug:

The “second power” is the square of a number.
The “third power” is the cube of a number.

But what of the EIGHTH power? What’s that called?

That is called the Zenzizenzizenzic.

Zenzizenzizenzic! Zenzizenzizenzic! Zenzizenzizenzic!

We saw them through the late night window of a junk vintage shop, wandering out on a Friday looking for thumbtacks, an accidental discovery of a commercial zone corner a block away from our apartment, (a doughnut shop, a corner store, a bar, a chic asian cocktail lounge), six brushed industrial metal letters a foot high, as silver and kind as clean water, so smooth fingers might mistake them for soft, B E A U T Y.

Fourty five dollars said the bearded man in the shop, the next afternoon when we asked. We’ll think about it, we said, we’ll be back. We liked him, his enthusiasm, his pleased surprise at our esoteric knowledge of old, strange parts. The rest of the shop was trash, (minus an eau de nil electroshock machine and a modern, colourful painting of a horse made of scissors), all broken furniture and the sort of costume jewelry even hipsters wouldn’t wear. Piles stacked on other piles, used newspaper messy, nothing to invite a body in to dig.

Fourty five dollars, he said, and the next day we paid it. Sunday on our way to somewhere else, not quite almost running late. Fourty five dollars and we brought our own bag. (They sounded like a factory accident as they rubbed together, like the foley for a train crash, unexpected and intense.) Soon the letters will go above the bed, a literary headboard, both statement and fact, to remind us who we are and what we’re after, our us-against-them cure for the world.

my heart drains

And then, unexpected, the smell of cigarettes mixed with blood, as if you are beneath my window, about to throw a stone.

My belly hollows, my already pale emotions dissipate. I am caught in the intimate, unkind glare of my own sharp headlights, memories of what we’ve known, emptied, wondering when change is going to come, when I will finally begin to be free.

The generator weighs four thousand pounds and writes six hundred books a year.


Given my now regular eight hours on the bus every weekend, I’ve been reading more books a week than I have in years, (since I banned myself from libraries), as I swallow two or three whole each way. The last book I finished, China Tom Miéville’s the city & the city, was strange and fascinating, less for the content and more for how political it made me feel, how much I innately disagreed with the premise of the strange place he brilliantly created for his setting, a city that legally counts itself as two cities, invisible to each other through the sheer power of opinion, where your neighbor isn’t your neighbor unless you agree on which city you see.

give me a sentence fragment, and I’ll give you what I’m thinking

He dances for me as I leave, every time, out next to the bus as I sit inside, glued to the window, helpless but to smile. I breathe on the glass, trapped in my seat, and smear cartoon hearts in the resulting childish fog. I ADORE YOU, block letters, mirror formed, blowing kisses off my fingers, then holding my hands to my heart, messy with roughly mimed song lyrics. Bang, bang, my baby shot me dead. He runs alongside as the bus pulls out, skipping, swinging around if he can to stand on a street light like he’s singing in the rain, while I wave an invisible hanky, eyes locked on each other until we are defeated by the bus turning away.

We are reduced to texting then, once our line of sight is broken, my travel undeniable fact, snippets of poetry 160 characters long. I type awkwardly, all clumsy thumbs, until my cellular gives out by Bellingham, (Bellingham being north enough to be Canada according to the phone company). You are the answer to Samson’s riddle, I carefully type, arduously, letter by slow letter, the sweetness built inside my chest that coats my ribs in honey.

have I introduced you yet? his name is mask replica, he’s a trout

David

In an odd bit of unexpected news, a side effect of living with David is that Matthew Good has just posted/stolen (uncredited) one of my photographs from Dec. This both pleases me greatly and bothers me intensely in bemused equal parts. It’s an odd yet understandable mix of reactions, and David has promised to call him today to rectify the matter, conveying as well my gleeful shaking of a tiny fist in his general direction for his unintended rudeness. Asked where he had found the image, Matt replied, “I found it posted by some chick on the internet.” Thank you, Matt, that’s pretty damned awesome. In fact, it kind of made my night. That said, all wry appreciation aside, I truly am deeply glad of who you are and what you do. You’re one of the Good Guys. (And, yes, I’m totally digging the new album. Which you, gentle reader, may find streaming free at the top of his site.) I can’t wait until you come over for tea, if only to introduce you lovingly to my nerd-smacking fish.

as if defined only by absence

Again, the I5 has been reduced to one lane. Traffic is dismal, almost at a standstill. My bus crawls down the freeway like a wounded animal. The driver pressing brakes that sound like whimpering, the engine growling into motion like soft, tired determination, frustration gritted teeth against a broken bone. An hour late leaving the station, another hour lost to this lag, I do not get home until four in the morning, my bag a part of me, my clothes glued on. I tear into my bed, shedding my day like worn through skin, but cannot find my sleep. The bed is too still, too empty. There are no wheels underneath, no swaying highway lines. My pillows are too many. I am a ghost.