organized retardation

Yesterday around lunchtime i received a series of depressingly scary messages from the Croft. It seems she had a bit of a run-in on the bus while traveling to work. It all started innocently enough, as most things do, with hermaphrodites. After tearing through some sort of Sedaris, I recommended Croftie read Middlesex next. Dutifully she carried said novel into the public sphere where an apparently harmless looking woman engaged her in crack-pot conversation.

Turns out harmless blond woman was sexually assualted by a hermaphrodite. Who was a member of a clandestine team of 'group stalkers.' Now group stalking is one of the silliest things I've ever had the misfortune of learning about. Simply put, there are bozos out there who are neurotic enough to think they are being stalked not by one person, but an organized team of individuals who have apparently so little to occupy their time that they single out random people and systematically ruin their lives.

They move in next to you and turn their televisions up really loud, especially when you are, get this, thinking about them! They walk by you on the street and when they are very close they will do something innocuous like hold up a pen. Because if people keep holding pens up in the air next to you its obviously a malicious plan to drive you crazy. Here's the thing, if you are noticing this type of behavior, theres' a fairly good chance you are already halfway to crazy-town.

But here is where things go from garden variety to batshit crazy. Not only do these organized stalkers mess with your mail, and work their way into your friend groups turning everyone against you, but they have strange telekinetic powers of mind control. They can mind control your pet and make them afraid to get off your bed. There is also something to do with a plot to burn your infants and American Airlines is behind everything, and the number 666--also, the terrorist attack on the World Trade towers. It's all linked, and you, the victim of organized stalking, are so important that each of this seemingly endless string of retarded conclusions is a direct effort to target you. Its a global, bizarre postmodern breed of paranoia. It's also laughably funny, if it wasn't the describing the symptoms of larger, more realistic problems like clinical depression or carbon monoxide poisoning.

Countdown to Christmas #6 (December 11th)

Over the years I have become able to hide (or at least shelter) the fact that I am a complete geek with varying degrees of success. Today... is not one of those days.

Last week i stumbled upon what might be the single most nerdling thing that has ever made me laugh out loud and then follow religiously. It is something called 8-bit Theater, written by a genius named Brian Clevinger since (roughly) 2000 and now in its 900-something strip showing no signs of stopping. Let me bring you down the slippery slope. Using a rating system where 1 equals 'embarrassingly but by no means hopelessly geeky' to 10 which figures as 'appallingly apocalyptically geeky' here is how the following transition works out.

Comics (in general) = 2 (mildly geeky) ----->
Internet or 'Web' comics = 6 (outrageously geeky) ----->
Pixilated 'Sprite' Web-comics = 8 (unabashedly, you just can't believe how geeky these are)----->
Sprite Web-comics whose material is gleaned almost entirely from Final Fantasy 1 = 10 (congratulations, you cannot possibly hope to manifest your geek to a higher level)

8-bit Theater is just such a web-comic. 99% of its images are from the 1990 Nintendo video game Final fantasy 1. These images are captured screen shots, manipulated in various ways to present characters and show settings, emotions, actions, etc. The characters are all drudged from the pool of those found in the video game and spun wildly out of proportion with absurdist humor and tongue in cheek self depreciative in-jokes about the silliness of things like Dungeons and Dragons and the like. In other words, you, reader, probably just wouldn't understand how hilarious this is unless you too are a guy who entered your teens in the early 90s, played video games (and maybe, *cough* D&D as well *cough*) and have a certain knowledge of the kinda stuff that goes on in the world of people who do like this stuff.

The story follows the adventures of a motley crew of heroes, and here i use adventures and heroes in the loosest way possible. There is an astoundingly dumb warrior named Fighter (after his character class, in fact all of the characters take their names from their class) who talks constantly of swords; Black Mage, a diabolically evil little man with a short fuse and tremendous power which is always mis-used; Red Mage, one big D&D in-joke; and Thief, a guy who is taking advantage of everybody else for his own financial gain. Among others.

It's pretty much impossible for me to do this sort of thing any justice, to show you how unbelievably cool it really is without, well, reconfiguring your upbringing, but hey, if anything deserves a shout out, this sure as hell does.

where is my mind?

I'm losing it. It's gone.

The little moments that used to be 'ha-ha, isn't that funny' are now becoming 'maybe I actually do have some form of memory loss/dementia. A few days ago I attempted to do something as benign as clip my fingernails. Job accomplished, or so i presumed, I moved on to other things. Two days later i realize that I only did 60% of the job, leaving the fingernails of my right hand unclipped. 60% is telling, seeing as I actually made the mental jump and started to complete the other side of the job. I could see 50%. Maybe i just got confused and thought I'd already done righty. fine. But to stop after just beginning him? the very fingers I am typing this with are mocking me right now.

Second example. I have a friend coming in from out of town. Way out of town. England out of town. Granted, he's been stateside for a week now, and he and his girlfriend are not staying with me or anything. But I was all set to go out to eat with them both tonight. As if I'd made definitive plans to do so. But in reality I'm not even sure when he gets in. Might be 11pm for all I know. Looking back over our email correspondence there is absolutely no reference to dinner. Just which days he'd be in town and an exchange of cell phone numbers. Where did the phantom dinner plans come from? I mean, it was to the point where I was about to call and ask him where we had planned on meeting and at which time. That would have been an embarrassing phone call. But it makes for an even embarassing-er memory. Because friends can giggle and laugh it off. When I laugh to myself it just kinda dies out he he, ha ugh with a sheepish eye-roll for closure.