The ramshackle huts along the tropical beach might be scenic under the right conditions, but something was direly wrong. Bodies, structural damage, small fires still burning. Smell in the air, not just smoke or decay or cordite but something else, something like ozone. Hand gestures to my team: fan left, you fan right, pairs and threes only no solos, safeties off. There: someone's standing at the water's edge, lapping ankle-deep, facing inland but looking down at the sand. My flanks at four and eight, MP5s down, we step step step closer, silently. Why don't we say something? It's like I already know what's going to happen. Twenty feet, fifteen, ten: he looks up at me and grins malevolently with the half of the face that he still has. He lunges, and I can see how much of his chest is missing.
Then they're everywhere, coming out of the ruins, out of the trees, out of the water.
Flashback exposition: I was part of some sort of "globally authorized" military force - not necessarily the UN, felt more American-specific than that, but it wasn't US Armed Forces. My team was one of very many, being dropped into Haiti and the Dominican Republic to quell what was being reported as wide-spread rioting in the wake of some sort of terrorist attack. Heli-dropped on a mountainous ridge, we were to make our way down the heavily overgrown valley floor to approach Port au Prince from a "position of surprise" - who was to be surprised, unclear. The briefing sequence was gorgeous, simulated terrain fly-overs, points of interest labeled. All of this could be called up on my own eyes at any point when needed, along with satellite-downloaded updates of the overall operation in twelve-minute increments.
Fat lot of good all that was doing with us as the Dead came at us like rats, like dogs, like wasps. Hungry and mad as hell, the Dead were.
The good news is, they were relatively easy to take down. They were fast but sloppy and we were protected well enough to keep them from getting any clean bites or scratches for the most part. But the guns were useless once they closed, and they closed fast, so it was mesh-gloved fists for the most part. Their bones broke easily, their muscles were barely holding together - I grabbed one by its neck with my left hand, its shoulder with my right, and just peeled the meat off its arm, snapping the whole thing off at the finish. We polished off the whole village with no casualties, only a couple of injuries.
The injuries worried me at first, but the infection wasn't fast either. We just needed to get the wounds sterilized ASAP, some cauterizations, one quick partial amputation. The next update came from the satellites: it was all over the place, of course, everyone finding out the same thing as we closed on the cities from the outskirts. The enemy was already dead, but it was brittle and ineffective.
That changed as we closed on the towns. Out in the sticks, the Dead had not had much to feed on. They had been starved since the first outbreak and were almost already gone. In the towns, there was much more to build up with, and they'd still been gorging themselves even as we hit the ground. In the towns, they were stronger, they were more aware, they were tougher and smarter in every way.
Port au Prince was going to have the toughest and the smartest of all to be found in Haiti. We were going in as hard as we could, but I was no longer sure it would be enough.
(Near as I can tell the dream started shortly after I briefly woke around 5am; when the alarm went off at 7, what was left of my team was building a defensible rooftop nest during a break in the non-stop urban combat, setting up our heavy machine gun and waiting for the Navy to get some choppers in for rescue at sunrise. The Marine base had already been overrun; rescue would not be coming from there...)
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For consideration: probably more delayed fallout from World War Z
If there is one valuable lesson I have never managed to adequately learn, it is this:
Check to be sure there is milk in the fridge before you pour a bowl of cereal.
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For consideration: doomed to repeat it
There is no subject which cannot be explored and/or summarized with that clip from "Der Untergang" of Hitler all angry in the bunker, be it XBox Live, the compatibility problems of Vista, Second Life, or the final days of the Democratic nomination process
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For consideration: YouTube is the new Mad Libs
"Software Hero", in which you pick a classic piece of software and have to code it in real time on a simple faux computer keyboard. Can you totally shred your way through Adventure for the Atari 2600? Do you have what it takes to get VisiCalc 1.0 written on Expert mode? Grab a second controller for two-player "Pair Programming" play!
Ultimately, of course, there will be "Software Team", where up to four players work together as Program Management, Marketing, Engineering, and Quality Assurance to ship a major commercial release. YouTube will fill with hundreds of movies of drunken friends recording their attempts at getting Microsoft Office out the door.
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For consideration: bugs in the actual game itself will be called "easter eggs" and you can "patch" them live during gameplay
Every night that work pays for dinner (which it is currently doing most evenings as we gear up for the Developer Conference), I throw a different "healthy energy bar" in with everything else. I don't eat it, I add it to a pile that's growing on my desk, a pile of healthy energy bars of different brands and types. At some point, I will eat them all as a single "meal", and then I expect to have a much-needed sick day.
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For consideration: NutriBalanceGoHealthPowerSnackEnergyBego
Look he's crawling up London's wall
Blonde and hairy, very small
Now he's over London's head
Hanging by a little thread
Borrrrrris the Mayor
Borrrrrris the Mayor
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For consideration: how can anyone who looks like a pudgy Gary Busey be all bad?
Oh, yeah: "A rising tide eventually floods most of the world's major urban areas."
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For consideration: is the ocean half empty or half full?
"Then the Cat caught a bunch of fine, fat pheasants and brought them to the King as a gift. 'These are from my Master,' the Cat said, and the King was very pleased. Of course, the Cat had poached them from the King's own private estate - I mean, come on, where else would the hunting be so good and easy? - but let's face it: Cats are excellent thieves, and I say that as a cat person."
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For consideration: "'Don't worry, Master, I have a plan,' said the Cat, and for whatever reason the youngest son's first thought wasn't HOLY SHIT MY CAT F'ING TALKS!!!"
"So the Prince told his father the King that he wanted to mount a kingdom-wide hunt for this one woman, which was going to take a tremendous amount of manpower at great expense. But the King approved the operation without hesitation, because here at least was a genuine shred of evidence that his heir apparent was not, in fact, homosexual."
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For consideration: "But, said the Magic Fairy, you have to leave by midnight, because fairy magic never lasts, and it always turns back into utter bullshit before too long."
"The woodcutter told Red Riding Hood that she should stay on the path through the forest and not leave it. The path, you see, represents the pacifying effects of civilization and, at a more practical level, was contributing to the erosion of the Wolf's natural habitat. Nowadays, there's no more path because there's no forests and no more wolves, but perhaps these days the woodcutter would tell you not to get off the expressway while crossing the southeast side. At any rate, it's important to remember that wolves were only a problem like this in Europe; even when most of North America was wooded wilderness, wolves were never a major threat and to the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever been killed by a wolf in the wild here. In Europe, though, whew, different story, and that's apparently where this story takes place."
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For consideration: "And then the Wolf dressed up as grandma, demonstrating that Hollywood hardly invented the idea of deliberately conflating non-conformist gender exploration with sexual deviancy."
A bicycle ride
through the doors of perception
sets its kickstand down.
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For consideration: one small bike ride for a man, one giant trip for mankind
I have given my wife instructions that if I ever declare some portion of our house "off limits" right around the same time that someone in the family disappears, she is to call the goddamn police.
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For consideration: "Austria: the Florida of Europe" ... "Florida: eventually going to become the Austria of America"
I find myself considering a form of synesthesia in which º and Å get switched.
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For consideration: "microclimate", har har
Chaos theory says
You can't predict the weather.
But death? That's certain.
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For consideration: climate is what you expect, mortality is what you get
Lucasfilm and LEGO building blocks have released a couple of videogame adaptations of the STAR WARS films for the various consoles and desktop systems. Despite having a Playstation 2 (a gift from my brother) I never really felt like cracking it out for use until these happened, at which point I played the crap out of them. Now they're releasing the Indiana Jones films in the same vein and I am, of course, very excited. I can only hope that all the other films that I have loved in my life, that have shaped my worldview, are made into LEGO games for my Playstation. Consider the fun to be had with such greats as:
- LEGO ALIEN & ALIENS
- LEGO BLADERUNNER
- LEGO THE BLUES BROTHERS
- LEGO BUCKAROO BANZAI
- LEGO FARGO
- LEGO FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF
- LEGO GHOSTBUSTERS
- LEGO HIGHLANDER
- LEGO HUDSON HAWK
- LEGO LOGAN'S RUN
- LEGO LORD OF THE RINGS
- LEGO MEMENTO
- LEGO THE PRISONER
- LEGO REPO MAN
- LEGO SOYLENT GREEN
- LEGO STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN
There are some great combo-packs that suggest themselves as well:
- LEGO 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY / A CLOCKWORK ORANGE / DR. STRANGELOVE (the Kubrick Collection)
- LEGO ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK / THE THING / BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (the Carpenter/Russell Box Set)
- LEGO HARD BOILED / THE KILLER / A BETTER TOMORROW (the John Wood/Chow Yun-Fat Pack)
- LEGO BRAZIL / BARON MUNCHAUSEN / TIME BANDITS (a Gilliam set that will probably never get released)
- LEGO NORTH BY NORTHWEST / NOTORIOUS / VERTIGO (a Taste of Hitchcock)
And why stop at just the films that *I* love so much? Why not include Hollywood greats and Oscar winners that everyone cherishes?
- LEGO CHINATOWN
- LEGO THE WIZARD OF OZ
- LEGO THE GODFATHER & THE GODFATHER PART II
- LEGO THE THIRD MAN
- LEGO ANNIE HALL
- LEGO IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
- LEGO THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
- LEGO TOUCH OF EVIL
- LEGO THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING
- LEGO SCHINDLER'S LIST
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For consideration: seriously, you know you'd play a bunch of these too
She noticed that it was gradual at first: Pushed into a corner in restaurants, then out of restaurants entirely. Out of public buildings, frozen out of the daily discourse of society. Finally, kicked out of bars even, out onto the street, into the cold to stare at her friends in bewilderment. Then the change accelerated, came for her in the workplace, in the street, even in her own home, seeking to take from her that which was most precious: her Smokes.
On all sides, the Nons pressed in, their ranks growing as one by one the Smokers fell, lost the will to puff, gave it up, went inside into the warmth and the laughter and the food and the honest work, to join the Nons with their so-called "health". There was no escaping it. There was no sidewalk corner far enough away that someone wouldn't come out to tell her to stop. There was no park where someone didn't point disapprovingly at children playing ball-games in the distance. There was no private room or open space where one could light up in peace. It looked... like the end.
But then, a word of hope in her ear: Raleigh. This is where the tobacco comes from. This is where it will make its stand. The Smokers retreated, taking a smoke here or there as they could - refugees from the shattered remains of their former lives, falling back into the welcoming arms of Sir Walter's Burg. The walls began to rise and the dome began to take shape overhead, keeping in the precious smoke. She signed up for the militia the day she arrived: the Black Tar Brigade would hold the walls at any cost. The Nons' laws had no meaning and their attempts to enforce would be met with artillery.
Inside, they would smoke and smoke and smoke and the guns would never stop firing.
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For consideration: huff and puff and blow your house down, just as soon as I stop coughing
I found a really cheap method for bottling irony as a liquid but it didn't sell. Turns out it's free and everywhere already.
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For consideration: silver lining, though, I was able to dump the whole inventory on Alanis Morrisette
"If you are calling because you hate our shitty customer service, please press whichever button hangs up your phone."
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For consideration: "If you would like to hear a synthetically-generated beep loudly in your ear, press any button now."
If I am ever called upon to develop a chemical weapon of mass-destruction, it will smell like over-microwaved popcorn.
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For consideration: the antidote will taste like fresh-baked bread
Which is less real, a future that you cannot predict or a past that you cannot recall?
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For consideration: would you want to be able to predict the future if it meant you could never remember the past?
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