All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

--C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Stand by me, my apprentice. Be brave. Clench fists.

Happy Christmas from my people, the Irish

And all the romance and violence that entails.

I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be fair.

In hell, there are only two choices of games to play: Uno and, of course, Candy Land (the two games we offer to children to teach them hopelessness and their mechanistic place in a deterministic universe).

This is a strong argument against atheism. After all, what if I'm right?

I mean, Candy Land, for God's sake.

Something sweet, something inspiring

My wife says that Spring Breakers is the feminine version of A Clockwork Orange.

She is correct.

Best film of the year.

No hay banda.

Silencio.

Lamentablemente, probablemente es la verdad. Es la verded.

That kind of lux just ain't for us.

Having spent a fair amount of time with Lorde's Pure Heroine album, I'm no longer certain that I am hearing something from the millenial generation, as I am hearing something from the end of the millenials. This may be the voice of a new group altogether, one that understands want, loss, and pain.

In that sense, the album speaks in a voice of retrograde populism that is familiar to anyone growing up in the late 70s and early 80s (We of the generic products. We of the single mothers whose asshole ex-husbands rarely bothered to pay child support. We of the gas crisis. We of the layoff, the corporate buyout and sellout.). I find it interesting that those who grow up with want lean towards a more romantic philosophy (witness Stephen Crane's cruel but funny send up of the working poor's love of melodrama in Maggie, Girl of the Streets), while those that have been comfortable have this ugly tendency towards a dull, mechanical, and hopelessly inhuman realism.

Those with pain have hope. Those without pain, cry, pout, and act petulant.

Maybe we're post-millenial. Maybe its because she's from New Zealand. I haven't been there since the late 80s, so I don't know what the economy is like currently, though the more distinct and explicit class divide familiar in more Northern European culture was definitely present in the general mood of the people that I met at the time.

Whatever is the case, I hear the "fuck what you value" attitude of punk, the despairing, but desperately enduring romance of "Livin' on a Prayer" or Springsteen in Lorde, even if her style is so completely different.

There's a more pure image of and assumption of violence here in her imagery as well, one that is familiar and strangely comforting to me. I love the image of the shirtless boy grinning and laughing after having spit blood in the mirror in the "Royals" video. I've looked in that mirror before.

We mean it, but I promise we aren't mean.

Delicate in every way but one (the swordplay).
God knows we like archaic kinds of fun (the old way).
Chance is the only game I play with, baby,
We let our battles choose us.
--Lorde, "Glory and Gore"

Sometimes I almost feel just like a human being.

Pop beloved.

Punk beloved.

I'll fall apart. With all my heart.

I'll be the class clown.
You be the beauty queen
in tears. It's a new art form,
showing people how little we care.

We're so happy
even when we're smiling out of fear.

Don't you think that it's boring how people talk?

Lorde may be the wisest voice that I've heard from the millenial generation. The way she's looking at things is so refreshingly reasonable and thoughtful. "Team" pretty much describes the way that I've lived for the last two decades (maybe nearly four), and while I can't say that it has all been perfection, the priorities here are right, as is the world view.

"Tennis Court" is awfully good, too. Still listening to the full album, but I remain impressed by what she seems to be communicating.

Plus, her eye makeup is always amazing.

Gaming and Masturbating, Masturbating and Gaming

If you can't work the word sodomy into the title of an article, well, there's always masturbation.

Gaming and Masturbating, Masturbating and Gaming

If I had a gun for every ace I have thrown

Never mind.

This is actually how I feel about everything ever.

Oh, baby, look at you. Don't you look like Siouxsie Sioux?

I remember first hearing "Peek-a-Boo" when I was 14 or 15 years old and thinking that it sounded like nothing I'd ever heard. It still sounds like that to me.

I've seen her perform twice. Once with my beloved Wonderstuff, who are, of course, nothing like her at all.

Watching Siouxsie dance in "Kiss Them for Me" is a gorgeously horrific thing.

I miss you, Charlotte Devaux.

It is complete now. Two ends of time are neatly tied.

Arbitrary signification, I know. A memento of sorts.

Be anxious over nothing.

Hard Boiled Combat: Enduring the Quick Time Event

I was never the biggest kid. I was never the strongest, the fastest, the best co-ordinated. The only physical aptitude that I possess is probably not all that physical in nature at all. It's more a matter of willfulness. I could endure.

Taking a beating builds character, I guess.

Persevere, persevere, persevere.

I can bleed. I totally know how.

Hard Boiled Combat: Enduring the Quick Time Event

I am whatever you say I am.

If I wasn't, why would I say I am?

You were so cool, you could've put out Vietnam.

The contrast both aurally and visually is so achingly beautiful. The grotesque and the gorgeous.

I love you so very, very much, Shane. Oh, and you're okay too, Sinead.

Mechanizing Terror: League of Legends and Character Design

Not the most unique of observations or the most profound of pieces, but I've been driven to distraction this week. I'm half in reality and half... somewhere.

I am in the mood to eat someone's heart, though. I haven't done that for awhile.

Mechanizing Terror: League of Legends and Character Design