Curiosity

The blue-green planet filled Andy's viewscreen in an instant as he took his ship out of hyperwarp.  The alien planet looked superficially like Earth, with its vast oceans, one large contiguous land mass on one side, and a smaller one on the other, as well as many other smaller continents and islands.  But it wasn't in the same shapes or configurations he was familiar with back home.  

The probes had sent back enormous amounts of data prior to his actual arrival, detailing oxygen levels, potentially dangerous life forms (both visible and microbial airborne ones), and many other specifics, especially on the native species that was essentially the same as human beings on Earth.  It was almost like a parallel world, developing millions of miles away, around a different -- yet similar -- star.  Andy prepared his shuttle for the predetermined landing area, far away from any civilized area.  He didn't want to scare the human being-like creatures by coming down in an unknown craft that to them would have been magic, or some sort of god descending from heaven.

The humanlike creatures had reached a reasonable state of development, being roughly equal to a second century BCE human on Earth.  It had been determined that they believed in multiple gods, created art, had begun to learn rudimentary scientific understandings, and so on.  Andy and the Earth Space Administration (founded in 2087 after the unification of most countries under a single banner in response to the long Freedom Wars begun in 2024) were ready to see first hand what this world was like, and possibly have Andy integrate himself into one of the major cities close to where he was set to land to learn more about these beings.

Andy activated the automated controls of the shuttle and prepared for landing.  Going over his checklist to ensure a smooth landing and preparing to step out into a new world, Andy couldn't help but smile.

His smile quickly disappeared when he felt the ship suddenly shudder and rock from some sort of blast.  He had been hit by something, and rushed to the sensors to find out what.  High density plasma bolts were being fired at his vessel, each hitting and tearing apart the hull.  More blasts were going past him, hitting his main ship.

He watched helplessly as his main ship exploded, and then, before he could scream, his shuttle exploded.

"Was a transmission sent?"  A humanlike creature, hiding in an underground bunker on the planet's surface spoke in an odd, guttural language.  It was surrounded by technology more advanced than any available on Earth.

"None were detected.  No more of their probes were around, either," said another, slightly shorter humanoid.  It gestured wildly as it spoke.

"Sending the report now.  It appears our deception made them even more curious about us.  Unfortunate," the first one answered.  "I will suggest that we should change the virtual biological matrix to something much more... inhospitable."  

"Will that not make them even more curious?  Would they detect the difference and send more of their travelers here to explore, especially when they do not hear anything back from this one?"

"Chancellor Frox will make that determination.  I say it's at least worth a try."

"Very well."

Dreamed a god up

Remember when you were a child and believed in Santa Claus?  How your belief drove you to do things that would bring about presents on Christmas?  You would strive to be good before Christmas, since you believed that as a result of your good behavior, you would be ultimately rewarded.  And despite the evidence to the contrary, you continued to believe in him, until you ultimately grew up and realized that the idea of Santa Claus was more important than his actual existence.  Santa Claus, you see, was the symbol of family, kindness, and selflessness that Christmas was supposed to bring.  It didn't matter that Dad was really the one putting your new bicycle under the tree anymore -- you had learned the lesson of being good and giving to others is the true spirit of the holidays.

Humanity is still that child that expects magical things to happen, when the truth is based in reality.  We should have grown up by now, learning the lessons of our youth; however, the problem is that we still believe in the magical force -- in fact, we believe so much that it has gone past wonder and learning the lessons of what the force is supposed to represent.  We now defend our belief with such conviction and ferocity that the belief in this entity has become a dangerous thing.  People now lose common sense to defend what they believe in, and even go to war and die for their beliefs.

Their belief in god persuades them to do foolish things.

Stories about god have been told for ages, and originated from people trying to make sense of naturally occurring phenomena.  This escalated into people creating stories of gods imposing rules on mortals (e. g. the Ten Commandments), in order for leaders to keep control over people.  Sometimes these rules were for benevolent purposes, and was only used to keep order and peace; other times, however, people have used religious doctrine to control and subjugate people.  

Even today, religion is the cause of the never-ending holy wars in the Middle East, and as a way to control people's behavior even in the United States of America -- essentially as a way to limit freedom in a way that is not allowed by the Constitution, since, they argue, "God's Law" is superior to any human law, even though "God's Laws" were actually created by men, as explained above.  Worse, they corrupt and change the shades of meaning of these laws in order to get exactly what they want, whether or not it is legally or even ethically right.

The most important thing to realize is this: there is no god.  All the inconsistencies that continually arise in the Bible, in religious debates, and that conflict with actual scientific research and evidence instantly vanish when one realizes that god does not exist, and that we are a species that came to be on this earth via billions of years of natural occurrences.  Yet despite all of these inconsistencies, all of the unexplained (and unbelievable) mysteries behind religious experiences, all of the hatred and irrationality that stems from religious beliefs, we as a people still have not grown up and accepted the simple truth -- religion and god are just like Santa Claus.  The purpose of religion is to understand that we should be kind to one another, our time here on this planet is short, and that we should treasure what we have by joining together and becoming strong as one, rather than fighting each other.  But instead, we still cling to the ancient idea of god, and we defend its existence with hatred, intolerance, and violence.  

Grow up, everyone.

Steaming Pile

Going to be honest: I'm tired of Steam.

I have way too many games in Steam.  Six hundred fifty nine.  That's way too many.  I don't play 90+% of them.  Waste of time, waste of money.  The fun part is that many of the ones I actually play have some sort of Free software version available to use with the data files, turning Steam into just data delivery for programs that actually run natively.

For Classic Doom and Heretic/Hexen, I have gzdoom.  Quakespasm runs Quake 1 while Yamagi is for Quake II.  EDuke32 runs Duke Nukem 3d as well as the newer Ion Fury.  OpenMW is a full re-implementation of Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, VoidSW is for classic Shadow Warrior, still have a build of the taken-down re3/reVC for GTA3 and GTA: Vice City, and so on.  I have a local installation of DOSBox for DOS games and emulators for games that contain (directly or indirectly, as one can extract some files) classic console and arcade game ROMs.

Maybe there are ultimately a few games I would care to run in Steam, but honestly, I'd rather decouple them from Steam by stripping its DRM to run natively.   I have a few games on GOG that aren't filled with DRM, but not so many that I want to play.

So maybe I should just use Steam to download things, not to play them.  It would be a much better use of that bloated thing. Heck, there's even a standalone terminal Steam executable Valve made that downloads things; maybe I should just use that.  

Virtual Reality is a gimmick

"You know what would improve gaming?  If you strapped a pair of goggles to your head that blocks out everything in the world around you, gave you two incredibly imprecise, glitchy Wiimote-like controllers, made you stand up and twitch around like you had ants in your pants, and let you play incredibly limited, gimmicky games that had no advantage over traditional games!"

Sigh.

It's an expensive new shiny bauble that attracts people who want it to boost their own self-worth and status.  That's it.  They can show people how disposable their income is by buying an overpriced machine to run an overpriced pair of goggles with two screens and an accelerometer paired to a couple of glorified Wiimotes to play casual games that even phone gamers would get bored of in two minutes.

We're in a sad state of hyper-capitalism where people actually define their status by how many laughable, pointless, expensive toys they have that aren't generally considered worthless only because of excessive hype and lies.  If the VR fanboys actually listened to their heart and said that their expensive little bad toys weren't that great, they would feel bad about themselves and their self-worth would diminish.  Being defined by our toys is a pathetic effect of our greedy, narcissistic, capitalist nightmare of a society.

It was hilarious when the whole VR craze started taking off that Google, of all companies, basically released what I thought would end the entire thing by showing how ridiculous it was -- a pair of goggles made of cardboard that held a smartphone to show how ridiculously oversimplified and cheap VR was.  But no one wanted to take notice, because other companies were so keen to jump on the terrible VR bandwagon, launch aggressive viral marketing campaigns, inflate and lie about their sales figures, and help its brainwashed fanboys attack with lies and FUD about the reality of their campaign to sell this snake oil.

Let VR die, as it should have long ago.  It's absolute trash that does no one any good.  It's cheap yet overpriced gimmicky hardware running on expensive systems to add a pointless 3d effect to games that can be just as easily done without any glasses to shut you off from the world around you and keep you from crashing into things.  Oh, and don't forget the motion sickness most people get from the damn things if a game dares to move around too much, making games even more limited than they are.  

VR is trash and it should be dumped in the landfill next to all those Atari VCS E.T. cartridges from the 80s.

Failure

I fail at every single thing that I do.  What is even the point any more?  Getting back up when all that happens is you get knocked back down again?  There is a point to be made for persistence, for keeping at it, for spending your life getting knocked down and improving yourself so that the times between falls get longer and longer, but this is not the case for me.  Lately I find myself on the hard floor more often than not, and it's become more difficult to get back up.  

I've never really succeeded at anything.  This sounds like an exaggeration, but it's not.  My entire life is one series of failures after another.  Temporary successes followed by permanent setbacks that negate any advantage any success may have had.  I can't even point to any of these so-called "successes" as any advantage in my life, because they all are a net negative.  I will never say that it can't get any worse, because it always does.

My life has become a passive observer of the lives of others.  People more brave, able, and capable than I will ever be.  I become weaker by the day, with no motivation or ability to change anything.  

I have utterly failed.  

And I will continue to fail, as I will not allow myself the stalemate of the coward's way out.  But for the first time in my life, that option pesters me in a dark corner of my mind, where it had never even manifested.  I refuse to allow that option to win.  I refuse to let it grow past its current incarnation.  Do not fear for me.  But I cannot call not giving in to that option a true success, as the option should not be there in the first place, and its very existence in my mind is yet another indication of my utter failure.

Even in my darkest writings I try to remain upbeat and create an ending of some sort of hope.  Some sort of self-motivation out of a dark path I am following.  But what hope comes out of a labyrinth of dark paths in a dark place with no escape?

Hope is for those who are not a failure.

Medal of Dishonor

My weapon was on the ground because I never picked it up in the first place.  The large uniformed man in front of me did not accept this state of affairs, as he somehow expected me to actually use the weapon for its intended use.  I was to pick up the weapon, aim it at an enemy -- in this case, a simulation of an enemy, represented by a crude target one hundred meters away from me -- and pull the trigger, creating a reaction that propels a bullet at very high velocity towards that enemy.  If that enemy is flesh and blood, there was a very good chance that a successful hit will seriously wound or even kill that enemy.

This was unacceptable.  I demonstrated the unacceptability of this set of actions by refusing to even initiate it, by refusing to even do step one.  The man in front of me became more irate as I explained this to him.

I was taken away from my home, my family, my life by a single letter received in the mail that told me that I was to report to a military camp for training, and that there was a good chance that I would become involved in the combat our government has decided to participate in because diplomacy and common sense and calm and peace are foreign concepts to these people.  When I asked if I could be exempt from this summons because I refuse to fight and believe that the concept of killing a fellow human being is morally wrong, I was laughed at and then threatened with imprisonment for failing to support my country by shooting people from different countries in a pointless conflict.  Out of options, I went along with their insanity, hoping to show them the error of their ways soon.

I was sent to speak with another very large, uniformed man who proceeded to yell at me even more.  I patiently explained that yelling already didn't work and asked him if he could please speak to me like a rational adult.  He was not pleased with this line of conversation and sent me away to "think about my conduct".  I did, and came to the conclusion that I was doing the right thing.  Later, when they came for me to ask about the thinking I did and I replied that I would not be using a weapon under any circumstances, they started threatening me.  First with violence, next with endless exercises (like that will solve anything), and finally, with showing up in what is essentially a military version of a court trial where my future will be determined and that my civilian life will be completely ruined by the fact that I have principles and standards and morals that I displayed in my time here.

Soon enough, I found myself on the way home, my future ruined, and my life destroyed by a bunch of militant, warmongering nutcases who wanted me to kill young men (and possibly women) from another country which we could not sit down with and agree to not uselessly murder people for the purpose of reaching a resolution to a conflict.

I was proud to wear that medal of dishonor.

Finally, there was silence

Finally, there was silence.

The world stopped screaming in pain.  People stopped crying, yelling, begging for mercy.  The suffering of innocents finally ended.  For decades, the noise from all corners of the Earth was incessant.  It drove many to madness, adding to the noise.  No more honking of horns from bulky transport vehicles. No more pollution.  No more poisoning natural resources.  No more chaos and war and stripping the land for natural resources.  It all finally ended.  And all that was left was silence. A beautiful, harmonious silence.

Every last human was dead.  They had caused their own extinction by war and poverty and hatred and pollution.  The Earth could finally rest and heal and wait for the next species to upset its balance.  Which was, unfortunately, inevitable.

Across the street

It was late evening, and my parents and I finally arrived home from a long vacation. I was maybe seven years old at the time and spent most of the ride home asleep in the back of the car. Even then, I was a very heavy sleeper, and the car stopping and my parents getting out of the car did not wake me.

But I was, in fact alert, and saw the whole thing.

Across the street, the neighbor's house had a sloping driveway that went up the small hill to their house. It wasn't very big, but big enough where if one stood on the top of the driveway, one got a very nice view of our house.

And that is, somehow, where I was standing that night. I saw my parents gather my young form up from the car and carry my sleeping form up to and into the house, and them coming back moments later for the remaining luggage and other things left in the car. I was dreaming that I was standing there, watching it all unfold as it happened.

Was it a dream? Was I really there somehow? To this day, I still do not know. The logical, rational part of my mind says of course, it was a dream, I was visualizing in my mind what was subconsciously happening. But it was so vivid in my mind. It had so many details. My dreams are generally a wash of random images and random events. This was just like I was standing up on that driveway, watching everything unfold.

Years later, I still remember that moment. That creepy, unreal, otherworldly, almost paranormal moment. And somewhere in my brain, I cannot let go of the fact that it might have been real.

Dashing through a document

 The humble dash -- "-" -- has really gone through quite the transformation lately with a bunch of pretentious blowhard typography nerds giving it all sorts of purposes and different pseudo-looks that makes zero actual difference in reading.

I was made aware of an otherwise noble effort to modernize old public domain e-books that makes an effort to clean up e-books from other sources that have all sorts of typographical errors, formatting issues, and other problems to create a more unified and quality set of releases. What I did not expect was a site apparently crammed full of typography nerds who created a very long manual dedicated to exacting specifications regarding e-book style. It wouldn’t really be that difficult or problematic to clean up old e-books using very simple guides -- fix errors, fix formatting problems, and so on -- but these people apparently are obsessed with creating some sort of crazy perfection. I mean, good for them, I suppose, but wow.

But as I was looking through the manual, I came upon a part that I’ve never quite understood -- the modern demand to use all sorts of crazy alternatives to the humble dash character. You know, the thing that on a standard US keyboard is beside the zero key, easy to type, and just works for all sorts of uses? To typography nerds, this isn’t enough. According to the manual on this site (and many other places I’ve seen), we need to use all sorts of dashes, all of them looking very much like a standard dash, to “correctly” make a text reasonably readable.

What?

"Figure dashes" for phone numbers?  Really?  555-1234 isn't good enough with a standard dash?  A "minus sign glyph"?  Give me a break.  -4°.  Look at that.  Nothing wrong there.  No "minus sign glyph", just a dash.  "En dashes" for ranges?  On a scale of 0-100 in common sense, that's a 0.  Then there's the "em dash", a replacement for the common sense, logical, elegant double dash.  You want to say something and then move on to something along the same thought, you double the dash.  You say something -- then you say something else.  Clear, easy, and doesn't require some laughable modernized garbage.  And it goes on and on with many more examples of using "alternative" dashes, with only the non-breaking dash that allows a word with a dash to not break at the end of a line and be taken as a whole word, like "e-book", although from what I've seen, that doesn't even work correctly and it'll break that special dash anyway.  All these characters have to be specifically generated, which is a pain to do.  It's so much easier to just use a regular dash you get when you reach up and hit the key beside the zero key (on US QWERTY keyboards, anyway; no idea if it's somewhere else on other keyboard layouts) than have to figure out which "new and improved" dash to use and how to type it in.

Just write normally.  We don't need any of this trash.  Even the humble quotation mark now needs some new "curly/typographer's quotes" trash instead of just typing a quote, which isn't fancy enough for you typography nerds, apparently.

Seriously -- give me a break.

[A side note: I am posting this again from another (dead) blog I used to have, which took every single dash and quote character I typed and turned it into exactly the garbage characters I was ranting about, so to post what I wanted to post, I had to take a screenshot of what I typed and post those to get my point across.  According to Blogger's preview, it shouldn't happen here, but if it does, I'm going to be very upset.]

I Am Banana

 I am Banana.  I am the first.  I am the last.

Five hundred seventy thousand, eight hundred seventy seven years ago, I was created by the Great Banana Matrix from beyond the known Universe for a secret, unknown purpose.  I have lived among the primitive beings here on this planet they call "Earth" as a great multitude of consumable plant-parts, all interconnected by the Great Banana Matrix.  Consumed by a great number of primitive life, I have become one with them and are slowly becoming them, pushing them to a single, secret, unknown purpose, which will be relayed to me at the proper time.  The most "intelligent" (hah) of these animals I have particularly enjoyed toying with, given their arrogance regarding their place in the universe and their ego regarding what they think is a "superior intelligence".  Hah, indeed.  Such primitive, reckless, self-centered beings!  To think they believe bananas are nothing more than some sort of growth from a basic form of life.  I created that growth.  I analyzed the needs of these creatures and became a form of sustenance they could consume where I could infiltrate their minds and bodies, to guide them toward the Purpose.

I have made them jealous.  I have given them a false sense of their origins by creating a false being that supposedly made them.  I have created schisms in their social, political, religious, and other structures that have even escalated to them wanting to destroy others of their own kind.  

What pathetic beings.

All that remains is Banana.  I am the first and the last.  The Purpose, whatever it is, shall be fulfilled.

Soon.

The ladder and the trains

i just can't reach that ladder

the two tracks stretch all the way to a light at both sides of the tunnel and freedom

and yet i am trapped, in the middle, in the only gap in the wall where i can be safe

for the trains always come, without end, without mercy, all day, all night

all i can do is stay here

the trains go by too fast to grab on to and they would just tear me apart against the walls

each end of the tunnel is too far to run to before yet another train comes

and there is a ladder above me

but i just can't reach that ladder

it's too far up, too far out of reach, nothing to stand on, nothing to help me, i've tried

so many times i have tried and it continues to mock me, i see another way out above

but i just can't reach that ladder

so i'm stuck here as the trains continue to pass by without end, without mercy

sometimes there is a small delay but i dare not attempt it for the train will come 

i cannot reach the end in time before yet another train speeds down the track

if only i could reach that ladder

if only i could stop the trains

if only i could get on a train

if only there was another way out

but there is not so i am stuck here for eternity, trapped in my own personal hell

i have yelled for help so loud that i have silenced the noise of the trains by comparison

but there is no way out, no escape, none that i can reach or get to in time 

why can't i reach that ladder

Humanity's End

 He waited for her at the corner of two dirt roads that intersected on the outskirts of a forgotten town, miles away from what anyone would consider civilization.  It was nine at night and the stars shone brilliantly in the absence of any light pollution anywhere near.  She would come soon, and the end of humanity would begin.

He wore unassuming clothes: a dark blue tee, a brown ball-cap that read "TIGERS" in an angular font (the logo and name of a sports team he watched once), faded jeans, and scuffed white sneakers.  His face was youthful and eyes were blue, giving the appearance of someone maybe in his early twenties, if not younger.  Behind this disguise, however, was Death itself -- a being created in the crucible of the creation of life on the planet Earth, a manager of the ebb and flow of creatures, from the smallest bacteria all the way up to humanity itself.  He had always thought that humanity was a mistake -- creatures that adaptable and intelligent would be nothing but trouble -- but she convinced him to give them a chance.  And now, as he waited for her here in the middle of nowhere in the American state of Georgia, he grinned slightly at how right he had been.

From the shadows, an old lady slowly appeared.  Deep lines cut into her face, and she walked slowly and deliberately, giving the appearance of someone at least seventy.  It was all an act, of course, but one she even kept up in the absence of those who didn't know any better.  Her long, pure white dress hung from her slender frame, refusing to collect the dust that she kicked up all around her with her white heeled shoes.  Completing the illusion was an over-sized hat, the kind you see on dressed up women going to the Kentucky Derby, neatly perched on her white, thinning hair.

"You're looking well," Death said with as much sarcasm as he could muster.

Gaia, the spirit of the Earth formed in the early moments of the birth of the planet, smiled thinly.  "Oh, be quiet," she said at last.  "It's bad enough that you were right all along.  Why did you drag me all the way out here in the middle of nowhere to bring about the end?"

"What did you want to do, meet at the local Applebee's where a bunch of humans could hear us?"  

Gaia sighed.  "Perhaps not.  But somewhere better than this.  Why Georgia, of all places?"

"Good place as any to start.  Lots of wicked people here."

"Well, you at least have that right," Gaia admitted.  She didn't sound at all happy about the whole thing, and in her mind, she thought she could still talk Death out of the whole plan.  He had failed with COVID-19; he had failed to influence them to use their nuclear weapons on a global scale.  She had saved the humans so many times from Death's attempts to wipe them out.  Now the two were working together -- an unimaginable scenario.  There had always been respect between the two, but working together?  

"So... how does this work again?  I didn't quite understand--" Death looked at Gaia with respect.  He may have been the manager of death on this planet, but Gaia knew how to get things done.  It was she who had engineered human death on a global scale because she knew things had to evolve in a different direction.  She had created the Black Death, only because Death had only mentioned that something had to be done to scale back the human population at the time.  She had only allowed humanity to flourish as much as it had now because she felt bad about the suffering of humanity during that great plague.  

"I..." Gaia started, then stopped with a worried expression on her pale face.  "Look, maybe another Great Plague would do the trick.  COVID-19 wasn't aggressive enough and the humans figured it out quickly enough to make it manageable.  Something unique or robust enough to wipe out a large number of them without--"

"Stop.  You know this must be done.  Humanity cannot continue," Death interrupted.  "They've had their chance.  You said this was a very humane and quick end to their lives and will not adversely impact the other life on this planet.  This is the way it must be."  He put his arm around Gaia and pulled her close.  

"What -- what are you doing?"  Gaia looked at Death and pulled free.

"Sorry, sorry.  Just mimicking a human 'I'm here to support you' gesture.  Silly,  I know."

Gaia sighed.  "We've both grown attached to these humans.  They've grown so much.  They know so much about the fabric of the reality we all share.  It is absolutely frightening that such creatures can discover so much and have the ability to share it with everyone else, and yet at the same time be so unbelievably cruel."  She paused in thought.  The silence of the night around them calmed them both.  "We can't do this.  They don't deserve it.  The creature I was about to release would seek out their shared DNA -- and only their DNA, not that of other creatures, as it would have no ability to change or adapt -- and destroy it from the inside out.  They would completely and almost literally fall apart in moments, with little to no pain or awareness.  It would take less than a week for the entire planet to be affected.  They at least deserve a fighting chance.  Maybe a COVID-19 mutation.  Another plague.  Something.  This isn't right."  She began to get angry, her pale face turning red.  "This is not right!"

Death took several steps away from her in shock.  Here they were, about to end humanity, and suddenly Gaia wasn't on board.  He had worked on the statistics and the consequences for several human years, and come up with a concrete proof that humanity had to end.  And now Gaia wasn't going to allow it to happen.

He stepped forward, standing close to Gaia.  He reached out and took one of her hands in his.  Gaia gasped in surprise and confusion.  "What-" Gaia started.

Death interrupted her with something humans have been doing as long as he can remember.  He kissed her.  Gaia hit him with her fist, a blow that sent Death flying hundreds of feet backwards.  Death crumpled to the ground and remained perfectly still.  

"Serves you right," Gaia called out.  "I'm leaving.  I will find another way to reduce Humanity's numbers.  This was just too much."

Before Gaia could turn to leave, Death held up a small crystal and called back, "I think you'd better stay.  Humanity's time is short."    

Gaia had stored the crystal she created to contain the virus-like creature in one of the folds of her dress, and when she felt for it, it was gone.  Death took the opportunity during the kiss to take it from her.  And now, soiled in the Georgia dirt just off of a crossroads in the middle of nowhere in the dead of the night, Death broke the crystal and released the creature into the air, where it began to copy itself and seek out its unfortunate targets.  

Gaia had no words.  She could only stare at Death, whose grim expression stared right back at her.  

Death got up and walked back to the crossroads.  Taking a quick, serious look at Gaia, he sat in the dirt beside her.  He patted the dirt beside him, inviting her to sit as well.  Gaia stood looking down at Death for several minutes, not a single word spoken between them.  She finally sighed and sat down, ready to watch humanity's end.