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Web41Forever

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It's the second thursday of the month. Or, rather, it was yeterday.

For whatever reason, my watch reminded me that today is the second Thursday of the month. That doesn't seem that unusual, right? Every month has a second Thursday, absolutely every month does.

But what was weird, at least for me, was that the reason my watch was reminding me of that was that tonight will be. A Web414 night. And that's weird because in the last 16 years, since Web414 stopped being a thing, I don't think I've ever gotten that message before. Web414was an important thing, and it happened pretty regularly on the second Thursday of every month. But it seems really strange that it would show up in my calendar this month for some reason.

Consider this post a back-door pilot for both the never going to happen Web41Forever Podcast and the “GabeFull” Podcast. I’m not making promises, but I do like to post things sometimes.

The Parable of the Fart Suckers

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The problem, it would seem, is that everybody has their own heads up their own ass. And that’s bad for them. Especially when they forget about it. And then they try to breathe, and then end up sucking in their own farts and colon and turning themselves inside out. 
And that’s gross. And it’s embarrassing for them, so they just don’t talk about it.

Think about it. You got all these inside out people walking around with their insides tucked in and around and pulled outside in and inside out pretending that there is nothing at all wrong with them. They’re just cold and uncomfortable and have horrible breath. 

But they know. They know there is something wrong with them. They just got a mouth full of their own farts. Of course they know. And of course they don’t want to talk about it. 

But that would be bad enough, I guess. But it is a fartsucker’s nature to suck farts, I guess. 

These fart suckers are walking around out there, with their insides getting cold and their outsides getting warm, and they forget that there was ever another way. They go around and they see one or two people who either have never put their own head up their own ass, or -worse- they see people who remembered to pull their heads out of their asses before they took a deep breath. And they see these people who are not inside out fart suckers and they get snippy about it.  

"How come he doesn't have his outside on the in and his inside on the outside,” the bicker at one another. “Must be nice not to have a mouth-full of farts,” they say, forgetting entirely that it was they who put their own heads up their asses in the first place. 

So, anyway, if having a mouthful of your own farts and your asshole on the outside and your inside in your asshole is the new normal. I’m not having it. Get off my lawn. 

On Generative Music: Math is not love

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Where is the magic in spending two years in the studio creating a doomcore metal dirge song about that time I shit my pants on the way home from the fart factory?

The magic is in the studio, that's where. I reject the idea that music generated by a computer is created. It's not. It's just bot-shit. It's just math.

I hate that I really like the AI-generated music. It's good. It's supposed to be. It has to be. I mean, how else could it be? A program fed the greatest songs of all time and then instructed to catalog the resulting math based on a description of what is pleasing to humans has to be good. It's designed to be good. It's math. It's the perfect execution of the commodification of creativity. Take a good thing, strip it down to pure math, compare it to other math, and output more math.

The problem is math sucks. I don't even feel bad saying that. Math-- at least at this point-- can't compute the soul. Math is not alive. It might be the fundamental element that arranges reality, but it can't love. Math is not love.

But if one compares an otherwise delightful generative instrumental in the style of Earth to an actual instrumental in the style of Earth, one can't help but understand that the output is only math.
But you don't have to take my word for it. Here, Listen:

A great song by the band Earth:

Generative math in the style of the band Earth:

There is no artistry behind the math. It has a soul. It's all technique. Who cares if math can slap together a bunch of numbers that people think is a blistering guitar solo?

I care. A blistering guitar solo is enjoyable, but it's not something you can enjoy in your heart if you know it's math deep down. And that's my main problem with LLMs: They are Math. And Math is terrible.

Is AI putting creatives out of work? Probably. Is it making YouTube into a botshit septic tank? Yes. Can you reasonably assume that a song you hear in a commercial is not botshit? No. You can't. This is terrible.

Don't use AI-- and if you do, have the decency to be ashamed. What you are really telling people is that you value math over soul. Ultimately, that makes you a love interest in a hallmark romance-- and you're better than that. I believe in you. You're not a cartoon villain. You're a good human, capeable of growing and learning and loving things.

You are so much better than math. You are so much better than this mathmatic description in the style of dirgecore about the time I shit my pants on the way home from the fart factory. You are better than this pop-rock mathmatic expression about farting in public. You are better. You deserve more.

Narrowcasting is the new microblogging

Recently, I have been listening to the Welsch Troll that sits on my shoulder and tells me I am a failure-- actually, not listening, so much as hearing. And that's the issue. I can't remember which of those two states (listening or hearing) is the desireable state. I feel the same way about showing and telling and the one of those writers are supposed to don't. But I digress.

One of the things that the Troll enjoys beating me about the soft meats about is the fact that I haven't blogged or podcasted in a while. And while I have my reasons for publishing less often these days, I realized that I'm still blogging, it's just that the blogging I'm doing these days is private messages to my family.

VIVA LA TWITTER!

For example: Here's a status update I posed to my wife today:

It's probably stupid that I consider sending texts to my wife as a kind of microblogging, but for a very specific audience, it kind of is.

That's what's wrong with the internet these days. Sheesh. You guys aren't narrowcasting enough.

Growing things: Elderberries

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Since you can’t copywrite nutritional facts about Elderberries, I totally didn’t steal this from Wolfram Alpha.

Here’s part two of my special series on growing food and harvesting things accidentally. This time, I trash-talk elderberries. Part one is here.

Why are they called Elderberries if they age so poorly? 

The first thing to know about Elderberries is that there is a lot of hype about them.

Human beings are prone to a great deal of hyperbole. I, myself, am a human being, and I may well be one of the most hyperbolic people you will ever meet. Nobody has as much hyperbole as I do. I have profound hyperbolima. I won the Vince Lombardi Trophy on the last three Hyperbole Sundays.

One of the things humans are prone to do because of their hyperbolic nature is to prefix the word "super" with things to declare their ability to exceed expectations. Here are three examples:

  1. Superman is a fictional prescient being who lives on Earth and exceeds the standard physics that retrains the local beings. He flies, he bends steel, he is bulletproof and all that. A normal man can't do that, so one who can do this kind of stuff must be a "super" man.

  2. Supermarkets are markets that are much, much larger than traditional markets. While some markets are highly specialized, offering wide varieties of few things, other markets carry only a few varieties of many things. Supermarkets are markets that carry a wide variety of many things. Normal markets are smaller, have fewer parking lots, and are less likely to embrace anti-competitive practices on a large scale [citation needed]; hence they are "super" markets.

  3. Supervisors are managers who make more money than regular workers because they are responsible for those who work beneath them. Their job is to watch over the work of others and ensure that they don't organize in a way that would improve their quality of living. Visors are simple observational devices worn by plucky engineers on spaceships in socialist utopias and, therefore, have no interest in keeping the working man oppressed. "Super" visors are -- well, never mind, this got stupid.

The point is someone in the great marketing zeitgeist decided that people were unaware of the non-scientifically proven properties of certain types of food. To improve the margins of those who could corner the markets on those types of food, they declared them "Super" foods. 

“Elderberries have some pretty neat properties”

Elderberries are one such "superfood." While entire libraries have been written on the historical, religious, nutritional, and anthropological manifestations that have resulted in us believing one food is superior to another, we can see that Elderberries have some pretty neat properties.

First, they are tiny berries.

And second, much like people, there is significant debate on how elderberries experience gender.

Dad joke incoming: These cisplants grew up here. If they’d been moved from a previous location, they’d be transplants.

YO, DAWG? ARE YOU SAYING ELDERBERRIES PLAY WITH BARBIES?

“It’s reductive and demeaning to say that there are “boy” plants and there are “girl” plants.”

It is as if thousands of voices suddenly all cried out at once, demanding I retract the notion that elderberries experience gender. Science calls plants that house their male and female flowers on separate plants "Dioecious." Kiwis, asparagus, currents, and spinach are just some plants with male and female flowers exclusively across one plant or another. It's reductive and demeaning to say that there are "boy" plants and there are "girl" plants-- but in the case of Elderberries, most people argue that the plants are "Monocious." Monocious plants grow flowers that are both male and female. So, technically, it's reductive and demeaning to say there are "boy" flowers and "girl" flowers. Either way, the greenhouse that sold me my elderberry plants told me they were Dioecious-- a fact debated on the internet and proven incorrect by the fact that my two elderberry bushes both flower and produce fruit.

This confusion explains why, when I impulsively bought an elderberry bush to fill in the fence line between my weird neighbor's house and my garden, I ended up buying two. Well played, unnamed garden center, well played.


So why grow them at all?

So, you may ask yourself why one would even consider growing elderberries. And this is a good line of questioning. There are many folk remedies out there that tout elderberry as a healing medicine. And there is a nice, ornamental feature to the plant.

“Adding elderberries to your yard will hugely increase the number of drunk birds hanging around.”

And, a real bonus in my garden is that because Elderberries actually ferment while they hang on the vine, adding elderberries to your yard will hugely increase the number of drunk birds hanging around.

For me, it was because I didn't like the idea of filling my fence line with raspberries, which are delicious, easy to grow and harvest, but have thorns. So, when stumbling around in a daze at the local garden center, I saw an elderberry plant. Vaguely remembering that there were supposed medicinal properties in elderberries and then remembering that I like tea, I woke up from a fugue state with a pair of elderberry plants in the back of my minivan.

That happens more regularly than I care to admit, actually.

I’ve been told that I garden like Hunter S. Thompson, which I took as a compliment, even though I’ve never used that much mescaline.

Anyway, my wonton dislike of thorns manifested in purchasing a pair of elderberry plants five years ago. I am currently producing a fairly decent crop of elderberries that are markedly different from raspberries in that they are not delicious and can poison me.

“ Elderberries, if picked too soon, contain enough hydrocyanic acid to cause a decent degree of illness.”

That's right. Elderberries, if picked too soon, contain enough hydrocyanic acid to cause a decent degree of illness if eaten raw. The good news is that you aren't likely to make a pig of yourself eating at the elderberry bush because they taste gross. In fact, I prefer the taste of serviceberries when I'm looking to eat something that grows in my backyard that will make me sick. However minor the threat of poisoning may or may not be, one should pick only the ripest elderberries and clean out all the leaves and stems from your harvest before you shove them into your dehydrator.

Everybody knows that Elderberry tea is the prefered liquid of the world’s largest rodent.

The berries are easy enough to reduce to something useable and potentially less poisonous. Pick ‘em once they’re about 30 seconds from fermenting, throw ‘em in a pot, crush with enough force to extract the juice, but not so much force that you crack open the seeds and spill out their poison. Then run the whole damn thing trough a coffee filter (or mesh strainer, if you’re fancy. Cook it down until it’s thick and gooey. Good job, you just made Elderberry syrup. Dilute it in hot water and enjoy Elderberry Tea. I found that the yeild I get from two bushes at any given harvest is rarely ever more than enough to make about 4 oz. of syrup.

Learn more:

Are you looking for more concrete and helpful information about elderberries? There are lots of people who are experts on the subject of growing elderberries.

  1. The University of Vermont Extension Center for Sustainable Agriculture published an incredible report on the viability of elderberries for commercial farming in 2016. ElderberryGuideComplete.pdf (uvm.edu)

  2. The University of Wisconsin has published a similar guide:
    Growing Currants, Gooseberries, and Elderberries in Wisconsin; however, you are warned that this document is primarily concerned with terrifying descriptions of all the diseases your elderberries and currents can contract.

  3. WebMD, where semi-literate people turn to be afraid they are dying, suggests you might not want to eat elderberries so you don’t get too healthy.

I guess I’m growing things now: How do I make it a food?

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"How do I make it a food?" will be a non-fiction book about finding and creating bounty around you- specifically by growing or harvesting things you can use to improve your life.

I realize I've been doing a lot of, admittedly, half-assed research on the various things I have growing here this summer, and I could pretty quickly turn my 2 p.m. "What the hell am I going to do with these elderberries?" existential crisis into something helpful to others and myself.

The answer, by the way, is dry them-- but that's a chapter to be written later.


I guess I’m growing things now. How do I make it a food?

Great question. And it is probably something you could have considered before planting. But I get it, you know? Who knew that those elderberries would do so well? How could you be expected to know what to do with all that Lemon Balm that won’t quit cluttering your front garden? There’s so much wintergreen growing in that sandy area behind the cabin. What should you do with all this prosperity?

As tempting as it is to ask oneself to check one’s privilege, I understand if one wanted to be shamed, one would call one’s grandmother more often. The guiding principle of this book is about finding and creating bounty around you. How these things came into your life is less important than what you do with them next. If that means, in the case of cucumbers and tomatoes, for example, eating them directly off the vine without even washing them, that’s fine. (Unless you’ve used pesticides, which, let’s face it, if you’re reading this, you haven’t.)

See, there are few better things in life than a cool, wet cucumber to sate your cottonmouth after coming home late from a long night of carousing. In fact, in many ways, the fresh-of-the-vine cucumber is considerably better for you than a hastily ordered sadness pizza. (Sadness pizza is an impulsively ordered fast food pizza delivered to you in your bedroom at night. It’s not good for you, and the service will invariably screw up the order, but you’ll really just want a dopamine hit from the smell and feel of comfortable food being at your beck and call.)

Ok, frankly, a sadness cucumber is just as depressing as a sadness pizza, but at least it’s not pooped out of a dough machine when you hit the right API calls on your delivery app. You know what-- it doesn’t matter. Nobody wins a sadness contest.

The Bottom Of the Apple Barrel

I photographed these apples at some point in my life, but Meta has helpfully stripped all the meta data from the image in the process of exporting it to my collection. Thanks, Meta!

I recently shocked one of my students with the announcement and demonstration that you can simply pick an apple from a tree, bite it, and it will be delicious.

I saw a perfectly ripe Gala apple growing in the school’s orchard while the student and I were on a walk and talk, and without thinking, I plucked the apple, wiped it on my fleece, and took a bite.

As I walked on, happily munching, the student’s eyes widened, and I had to stop and ask him what was wrong.

“You’re eating an apple,” he stammered.

I nodded.

“From a tree. You just picked it from the tree and ate it.”

I nodded again. I realized he was experiencing part of the tree-to-table process he’d never considered before.

“Well,” I said, “I should probably have washed it first.”

“You can just do that?” he asked.

I looked around at the small orchard the school’s agriculture department ran. “I mean, probably not. I should probably have asked-- But the truth is, nobody is going to miss this one apple.”

To my surprise, the boy was not yet following.

“The tree just makes these?” he asked, gesturing at the apples around him. “For free?”

I nodded and took another bite. “Yeah,” I said, chewing. “You want one?”

“Sure,” he said. And he reached out and grabbed the biggest, greenest, most blighted apple in the entire orchard.

And when it was sour and unpleasant, he spit it out and demanded how to eat such garbage.

“Wrong tree,” I said. “That one’s not ripe, and because of whatever’s living in it, will need to be cut up a little.” I plucked him a gala apple from the tree I had picked mine from. “Try this one.”

The student was a little trepidatious, but he took a small bite and smiled as he chewed. “It’s tougher but sweeter,” he said.

“Then what?”

“Apples.”

“It is an apple,” I reminded him.

“I mean from a store.”

I nodded in understanding, but in actuality, I was anything but.

#

We spoke for a few more minutes, and eventually, I learned that, for this student, one only gets apples when they force them on you at McDonald’s with a Happy Meal. He’s never taken one at the lunch line and assumes the ones at grocery stores are ingredients, not food.

#

This is the state of understanding of where food comes from for many people in our country. Food comes from a store, which comes from a farm, which is a place where they have red barns and white picket fences and cows that make milk.

The idea that food could grow in your backyard, whether you’ve tended it or not, is not only an anathema for them but contrary to their sense of safety and trust. Students often say that they won’t eat home-raised eggs. They assume some level of security born of mechanical laying farming systems is not present. I try not to correct them on this because, hey, at least they eat eggs from time to time. God forbid I take these students through a mass-industrial chicken factory farm-- they’d probably stop eating forever. There’s a reason that today’s kids can’t tell the difference between Tubby Custard and raw chicken nugget slurry.

So what pisses you off today?

There are so many things, but here are the two I've been thinking about today.

  1. The American healthcare system is a predatory system that benefits from keeping people sick. It maintains its innocence by deploying deceptive billing practices and deifying medical practitioners. At least check-cashing places are honest about how they'll steal your money. Think I'm being unfair? Look at your latest explanation of benefits.

  2. Pursuing knowledge, fulfillment, exploration, and discovery has been deliberately stalled to prevent the evolution of post-scarcity humanity. To continue this stall, the cost of higher education has been inflated as a means of enslaving our children to the status quo. There is really no reason other than capitalism (a manifestation of greed) to enfranchise a financial system around a person's journey to discovery and self-fulfillment. Knowledge should never be paywalled.

The difference between this post and the rantings of a deeply disturbed person is that I haven't written it with a white marker on my car.


Do something about it!



The Smothering of 2023.

I recognize that this is "catastrophization" at the highest level. And, honestly, I'm writing this to help exorcise this impulse-- but if you have anxiety, love kittens, or do not want to be afraid of anything and everything all at once, probably don't read this. 

Screencap taken 9:45 a.m. on 06-28-2023 courtesy of Interactive maps (wi.gov)

With the Canadian wildfire smoke encroaching on the midwest, making my corner of Southeastern Wisconsin a national leader in air pollution, I am fighting my general belief that this experience, as all experiences are, is a harbinger of hubris-driven disaster.

I am driven to reflect on an experience only nearly remembered as a child, wherein my family attempted to "humanely" put down unwanted barn cats by putting them in a burlap sack and tying it to the exhaust pipe of a 1980 GMC Sierra. (It was blue, by the way.)

This was done once, I believe, and then never again. Because it is abhorrent, I recognize this. But humanity is not so far evolved from when this was a matter of course. We are only just learning to be better.

I, for my part, was interested in getting the experiment started. My father and I found the burlap sack; the kittens were placed inside it. It was affixed to the tailpipe, and the vehicle was started.

I recall the fear and horror sinking into my belly as I realized -- despite the suggestions made to the contrary -- that the kittens were suffering-- mewing in confusion and sickness as they became weaker and weaker. I immediately started to panic. To cry. To want to demand we stop. But I was coming to understand that there was no road back. If we stopped now, the Kittens would suffer irreversible harm because we sought to extinguish them. It would be crueler than just seeing the deed through if we stopped now.

At that moment, I wished for a way to undo what we had done. To stop, reset, and never connect that bag of kittens to that tailpipe. And yet, that is a fool's wish. These kittens were lost. The only way to honor them is never to repeat the same mistake.

Practical atmospheric effects added by Canadian Wildfires.

And so here we are today. In a smokey haze sinking from Canada. Making our Midwestern sensibilities rethink the social contract, wondering if, somehow, this isn't a symptom of some lesson unlearned.

Perhaps, from the perspective of Global climate change, it is the kitten's lesson again. People will die from this-- I hope it's not someone you know and love-- let us honor them by never repeating the same mistake.

If you can get to higher ground, now is the time. 





I, in spite of the danger, now own a wheelbarrow.

in ,

I did it.

I assembled my own wheelbarrow. My very own. That is mine. That I can keep and use. I know this is silly. That I shouldn't be feeling like I've achieved some major milestone in life because I own a wheelbarrow.

But I've always wanted to own my own wheelbarrow. And now I do.

I didn't even know I wanted one this much until I received the one I asked for on Father's Day. I can wheelbarrow around the yard now. I don't have to take five-gallon buckets around the yard, I can move stuff in 6 cubic feet of uniwheeled bliss. that's almost 50 gallons of stuff, people. I did the math. (Well. Siri did, anyway.)

Purchasing a wheelbarrow is fraught

You'd think that buying a wheelbarrow would be easy, wouldn't you? Well, let me tell you, it is not. Do you think you could do better? Tell me, then, off the top of your head, where you would get your wheelbarrow. Home Depot!? What are you a fascist? You probably eat that bullshit chicken sandwich, too. Gross.

Danger No. 1: Issues of scale.

No, if you're a good person, buying a wheelbarrow is 100% fraught with difficulties. Let’s start with this one on Amazon.com.

What's wrong with this wheelbarrel you ask? For less than $100, you can have this EVANEM wheelbarrow made of durable wood and plastic. it is also something you can use to HAVE FUN WHILE BUILDING SKILLS. But those are not the real problem with this wheelbarrow. The real problem with this wheelbarrow isn't that it's a unisex adult wheelbarrel, or that it, allegedly, has two wheels--- even though I can only see one. The real problem with this wheelbarrow is that it has a capacity of approximately .071 cubic feet. That's roughly half a gallon. That means, I'm guessing, that this wheelbarrow is at best, the size of a milk jug cut in half the long way.

Danger No. 2: Wheelbarrel death traps

I went to a semi-local chain store that sells items for both your farm and your fleet, but because I was nearby I did not go to the one I usually go to. And they had several choices, but none of them were on display. No big deal, I picked out the one I want on the kiosk. They had 25 of them. I bought and paid for it. I Everyone I talked to about it along the way reminded me to go and pick it up from the yard. I already knew that because I understand how stores work, but Ok. I appreciate the high-touch service.

And then I pulled into the yard. And the man in the box who keeps the yard free of enemies asked me what I wanted. I showed him my receipt, and he said I should hold on. He walked just out of my hearing range, where he had a conversation that I assume went something like this:

El Yardo Caminio: "This guy wants a wheelbarrow."
Radio Guy: Pulls a huge bong rip. "Oh shit. Aren't there a bunch of them right near you?"
El Yardo Camino: "I don't know."
Radio Guy: You don't know? Ok.... Um... have him pull all the way up to the back.

El Yardo Camino tells me that I should pull up to the back. So I dutifully drive up to the back. And I see a stack of rusted, rotten, damaged wheelbarrows, cracked open wheelbarrow parts, spilled wheelbarrow assembly kits, and damaged bins.

I get out of the car and start looking at them, and learn that none of the wheelbarrows are easily identifiable as the one I have purchased, so I have to wait for what comes next. It is at this point that I realize that I have no idea what comes next, as Yardo Camino offered no further instructions beyond going over there.

This is a tough moment in the retail experience. I don't want to come off as needy-- but there is no one around and no obvious next step. And, frankly, the store has my money... they don't really have any obligation to me to deliver the product now or possibly ever. I get it, I worked in retail long enough to recognize when you are caught up in a "nobody is in charge of this so it never gets done" situation.

After an emotional journey of 12 or so minutes, a man who looks more like Seth Rogan than he has any right to finally flies up to me on a forklift and says, "I think the wheelbarrows are all up front."

"What are these?" I ask him.

"Oh," he says. "I guess those are wheelbarrows."

We look each other in the eyes and both take turns waiting for the next move. I finally give in. "Are any of those the ones I bought?"

He hops off the forklift and says, "I dunno. Maybe." He starts poking at the pile of wheelbarrow parts and mumbling about UPC codes-- and finally says, "Nope. I don't think they are. "

"Ok," I say. and we're back to waiting for one of us to make the next move.

This time, he gives in. "The pre-assembled wheelbarrows are all by the front area, where you came in. "

"I did not buy a pre-assembled wheelbarrow," I say.

"They're all the same, though," he chuckles.

I step away for a second. I think I'm beaten. And then, like a beacon from heaven, a light shines down and I spot a wrapped pallet of wheelbarrows up on the top of a storage gondola.

"What about those?" I say, gesturing.

"Those are wheelbarrows," he says. Then a beat or two go buy and he realizes that I am actually asking him if he would get them down.

He eventually drives the forklift over to them, which requires he smashes his way through about a dozen plastic corrugated drainage pipes. There are two pallets of wheelbarrows stacked on top of one another on a shelf about 15 feet off the ground. He starts by trying to lift them both, but because of the drainage pipes, he can't get the right leverage or get his lift all the way under the pallet.

I am muttering a mantra of "this is not my job" repeatedly to keep me from offering help to the boy. I am convinced he is going to pull the pallet down on top of himself.

Finally, he stops, backs the forklift all the way back to me, and tells me, in a fairly polite way, that he is giving up and best of luck.

I do ask him for my receipt, and he does return it to me, seeming to remember that he was holding it at the moment I suggested he return it.

I go inside and enjoy a 10-minute conversation with the returns desk about how the boys in the yard are not really killin' it and there's only 90 minutes left until they can close and all go home.

Danger No. 3: what is a Wheelbarrow anyway?

I don’t think people really know what a wheelbarrow is. I mean, that's probably not true. And yet, as I was using a rogue AI to generate some images for this article, I came to the conclusion that the concept of "wheelbarrow" is, apparently, more fluid than I had anticipated. Enjoy this small gallery of failed AI illustrations for variations on the phrase "dangerous stack of wheelbarrows."

 
 

Session 4: Half-life let's play

I thought it would be a good idea to play Half-Life 2 on my lunch breaks at work. Only, I don’t know anything about Half-Life 2 and I don’t want to learn. So, join me in this text-only let’s play of Half-Life 2 for the PS3. Visualizations are provided by a Rogue AI.

Session 4: In which I donkey the kong.

I am alone both in the game and in my room. Nobody is here. It is a rarity that I can have the volume on. Behind me is a loading screen demon. Ahead of me is an empty corridor. I turn the volume up. I walk Gordon around the next corner.

My roommate came in, and although she didn’t say anything, it was clear she was embarrassed for me. The silence of my room is shattered with 1000 decibels of gunfire and shouting. I remember why I always play with the volume down, even when alone.

“I didn’t know there was going to be shooting,” I mumble.

“In a videogame?” She asks me pointedly.

“I didn’t want there to be shooting?” I reply.

“Ok,” she says in her way that acknowledges my stupid but doesn’t take any of it on.

I walk around in the game a bit more. I’m not feeling it. “Sorry ,Gordo,” I say. “I’m not feeling it today.”

I walk around one last corner and come up on a hallway where a jackboot tries to roll a flaming barrel at me. I laugh, I leap, and as I do, I ask the Jackboot if he knows my pal Donkey Kong. Then I trip over the flaming barrel, it explodes, and both Donkey Kong and I die. Fade to red. Loading screen. Back just outside the corner with the rolling barrel guy.

Annoyed, I take out my crowbar and run up to the barrel throwing Jackboot and trying to beat the barrel up. Explosion. Fade to Red. Loading screen. Back just outside the corner with the rolling barrel guy.

Annoyed, I switch from my crowbar to my firearm and run up to the barrel-rolling guy while shooting. The barrel explodes slightly earlier than before. Fade to Red. Loading screen. Back just outside the corner with the rolling barrel guy.

I decided that I didn’t need to deal with that guy and didn’t want to go up on his stupid barrel-rolling trip anyway. So I sprint past before he can roll the barrel at me, hide and crouch behind a wall, and wait for the barrel to move past.

But it never does.

I remember what kind of game I am playing and decided to forget about that guy and see what else is going on down the train tunnel. Then I come to one of the blue forcefields that are-- allegedly -- there to keep the trainyard secure but are there to keep the player from walking too far off the map and breaking the game.

I remember what kind of game I am playing and decided to go back and face the rolling barrel guy. Explosion. Fade to Red. Loading screen. Back just outside the corner with the rolling barrel guy.

This time, I decide to creep up to the guy and see if I can make the barrel explode before he rolls it. It doesn’t make sense if you’re playing Donkey Kong, sure. It would make a lot of sense if it were Donkey Kong. If Mario had just shot that ape dead once and for all, think about how much differently Diddy Kong racing would have been.

The sniping works. And the barrel explodes not only the barrel-rolling guy (who, I guess in this timeline, is a barrel about to roll but ultimately died before he had a chance to live guy) but also his friend, who I didn’t know about, explodes his secret, barrel too.

And there is a health charge up at the top of the barrel ramp-- which is nice because I am bad at not getting shot-- which, it turns out, seems to be a big part of this game. I quicksave at the top of the barrel ramp and spend some time experimenting with exploding barrels, learning what they can and cannot do. Explosion. Fade to Red. Loading screen. Top of the ramp.

Eventually, I decide it’s time to run and gun, and that’s when it clicks. That’s what this game is. You run and gun your way down a map and hope you can see where you’re allowed to go and that when you get there, you’ll remember how to crouch. After some running and gunning, I end up at the end of a hallway where my only choice is to jump into a pool of yellow water fields with crates, which I do. At the end of the river of yellow water is a ladder I can attach myself to and crawl out of the water and up into a place where it looks safe to take a minute.

That’s enough for today, I decide. I’m not sure I want to continue to play this game. It’s okay, but it is _not_ a modern game, and It’s not the kind of game I love to play.




Today, we get our pants on.

in

I thought it would be a good idea to play Half-Life 2 on my lunch breaks at work. Only, I don’t know anything about Half-Life 2 and I don’t want to learn. So, join me in this text-only let’s play of Half-Life 2 for the PS3. Visualizations are provided by a Rogue AI.

Update 3: In which we get confused by a cul-du-sac of trains and jackboots.

I wish there were more horses in Half-Life 2.

I had a helper in my lunch space today who is familiar with Half-Life 2. He likes to help me by giving me advice, but he’s not very good at letting me figure things out on my own. He likes twitch games and has a great deal of knowledge about games in general. He has minimal patience for my desire to try to break the game or pick up garbage and throw it. So the result is that I feel like I made some progress today. 

The game picks back up where I left off -- that’s how saving works -- and the guys in the room (in the game) are yelling at me to put on my suit.  

“See! They keep yelling at me to put on my pants,” I say to my helper. 

He corrects me: “Suit.” 

I correct him: “Pants.” 

He corrects me: “Suit.” 

This is how our relationship works. 

I show him how I can pick up things and throw them. He is unimpressed. I showed him how I could put something in the teleporter. He is unimpressed. I go around the room looking for new things to put in the teleporter. 

“Are you ever going to get your suit?” he asks. 

“You sound like those guys in the game.” I reply. 

“That’s because you’re not listening to them, he says, and then adding emphasis, “or me.”

I realize I do not know how to put on the suit, but it’s put on me upon approaching. With my case comes some rudimentary UI, including a health bar and an icon that indicates when I am squatting. “Crouching,” he corrects me. Eventually, I learned that I have to charge my armor, or I don’t have any and that the armor doesn’t prevent harm but does reduce it. 

If I was this horse instead of Gordon Freeman, I would no longer have any troubles.

I am informed that I should get into the teleporter. Everybody is going to evacuate from the city, and the teleporter will get us out safely. Alyx goes first, and after some fiddling with the plugs, I assume in a brilliant moment of in-game teaching about how to do upcoming puzzles, I manage to teleport Alyx off into the TV where her dad lives. 

However, when I get into the teleporter -- which, I must say, puts a bit of a sting on the first hour of the game, wherein I am tasked to walk around in a city to find this location -- why not just teleport me into the room with the suit? Why the subterfuge? Is it because I needed to learn to pick up and throw garbage? How to ‘attach’ myself to ladders? Inspect the burned-out mattresses on the apartment buildings’ floors all around me. -- it doesn’t matter. I step into the teleporter, and without fail, I’m subjected to a story bit.

This story bit is about how I’m teleporting the wrong way or something. They don’t explain it. I appear in a building, then in a barn, then back in the teleporter, and I guess I get teleported to the fence outside the window behind the teleporter? I’m not sure, but my buddy is there, and once I’m on the ground, my buddy throws me a crowbar. 

Now I can crowbar things. So I start crowbarring the fences. Nothing. I crowbar the walls. Nothing. I crowbar some garbage. Nothing. Eventually, I find some wood planks blocking a hallway, and because I’m crowbarring, I take out three of the four planks. I hope over the last one and head down the new hallway.

“Why didn’t you take out the last plank?” my helper asks. 

“I wanted to leave a survivor,” I retort. “I need them to tell my legend. To make the other boards learn to fear me.”

“I don’t think they care,” my helper says. 

We shall see, I think but don’t say. 

Gordon was supposed to be on the train, not in the train.

I end up in a cul-de-sac made of trains and people with guns shooting at me. Here’s a pro tip I picked up. If the trains have a ramp, you can go in them. Very few trains have a ramp, so you don’t get to go in many of them. Gordon is a soft jumper. Seriously-- he needs some of those crazy ass spring shoes that the girl from Portal wears-- but I digress. 

It took me longer than It should have to figure out that to progress, I needed to ignore the fact that I was getting shot at, even though the cautious, stealth player in me wanted to sneak around and not get shot; this game is not about that.  

If I were to write the walkthrough here, I’d write this.

  1. Wander around the trainyard, wishing you could kill some of those guys shooting at you. 

  2. Kill any camera things that come and try to take your picture. They power up your armor; it turns out. 

  3. Wonder why they would put guys trying to kill you outside your ability to hit them with the melee weapon they gave you.

  4. Give up and go into the one train car you can go in. 

  5. Attach yourself to the ladder and climb the train car’s roof. 

  6. Get shot in the head a whole bunch of times. 

  7. Interpret getting shot n the head many times as a signal that you’re going the wrong way.

  8. Spend a few minutes picking up garbage in the train car, the only place on the map, it seems, that magic snipers can’t hit you. 

  9. Throw the lamp out of the train. 

  10. Return to the train’s roof and get shot a few more times. 

  11. Leisurely look around up there, even though you’re getting shot. 

  12. Fall off the train.

  13. Go back into the train, look around, back up to the ladder, look around, and fall off the train again. 

  14. Walk around the trainyard to see if there is a secret, gun, or something you missed. 

  15. Consider walking, trying to time travel back to the start of the game, and talking yourself into doing something else. 

  16. Go look up to the top of the one train you can climb, and this time, see the apparent train next door that you can quickly jump over to, which gives you access to a whole section of the map you didn’t see before. 

  17. Fall off the train, trying to make the easy jump over. 

  18. Go back up the train again, make the easy jump, and land in the new area. 

Hooray! I defeated Gabe Newell’s train puzzle! Down the new hall, a bit is a health charge-up station, a dead guy, two guards, and a lady. I tire iron the guys, and I have a gun now!  

Down the hall is a loading screen, so our time here is done. 

END PART THREE.

Update No. 2: In which I wander around a city being punched in the face. 

I thought it would be fun to log playing the seminal game “Half-Life 2.”  I have never played it, have only a passing familiarity with it through my experience playing the portal games, and have no idea what kind of a game it is. I’m only going to look things up if I get hopelessly stuck, and because I’m playing it on the PlayStation 3, I can’t stream it or take screen captures. So I’ll use AI to generate the supporting artwork for this walkthrough. Oh, and one last thing: I’m playing it on my lunch break, so I only get 30-minute increments, and I get interrupted regularly. 

An update in which I wander around a city being punched in the face. 

I was confused upon relaunching the game this lunchtime. I had started up “Half-life 2 Episode One,” which, I guess, is not the same thing as “Half-Life 2.” So, for clarity, I want to state that, without doing any research, I will declare myself as playing Half-Life 2: Episode 0. I’m not sure I understand the numbering structure, Valve, but whatever. Is that lady I met at the mid-point of today’s play session the titular Half-Life Alex? I have an Oculus. Will that work? It doesn’t matter because I said I wouldn’t do any research, and I won’t do any research. 

So, eventually, I loaded up the suitable game and found my save file from yesterday-- when it all came flooding back to me. The pickup up of garbage. The walking around. The walking around clicking on doors, some of which, I discovered today, have what look like cameras on them and make a harsh clicking noise that I was unable to discern whether it meant something or is just the noise those make when you click on them. 

Occasionally, as I walked around the square, a flying camera robot drone (or whatever) would hover over me and appear to take my picture. Also, so many guys in riot gear occasionally would punch me in the face that I would whiteout and wake up a few feet away from where the guys who were punching me were. I think that was probably me dying in the tutorial-- but there was no reason to believe that was the case, as it never said. “You died.” or “HA HA HA! I Punch You To Death.” or anything useful.

So, after two laps around the automatic doors that yell at you if you approach them, and several ineffective conversations with the NPCs walking around outside-- (“If we’re seen talking, there will be trouble,”), I wondered if I was done. Was this game, this critical darling, this beloved franchise, going to defeat me? Was this all the further my Half-Life 2 journey was going to go?

All exits appeared to be barred... Throwing cans at the riot troupers only agitated them if I got too close. Trying to bum-rush the riot guys standing by a half-open door only got me punched in the face until I whited out. I tried throwing shopping baskets at those guys—the same results. I remembered seeing a box by a trash bin, so I walked over, grabbed it, and tried throwing it at various NPCs. 

I began to doubt myself.  

And it was as I was walking back over to the trash bins that I saw a ladder. And when I pointed my eyes at it, a pop-up menu appeared and told me to press ◼️ to attach it to the ladder-- just like in real life. 

Ideas snapped together like magnets, and it all came into focus. I jumped up the ladder and started running across the ceilings. It was amazing. I have found the game! There is a game here! I climbed up a ladder. On the roofs of the buildings were many more cans for picking up and throwing. And then I started getting shot at. The riot-suit guys, who, until I attached myself to that ladder, were content to punch me repeatedly with their spark sticks, suddenly had automatic weapons they were willing to shoot at me. 

Fortunately, they could have been better shots. Or maybe I’m just that good at extreme roof-walking. My notes get a little hazy here, but I eventually end up in a couple of hallways of what appear to be tenement buildings, decorated only with the simplest of furniture. 

Listen, I know I have no perspective on this, but I have to question the world-building here. What's with all the first-person shooters with fully decked-out bathrooms connected to bedrooms that just have old mattresses thrown on the floor?  Every building has at least three rooms with an old mattress rotting on the floor. Who lives like this? Am I supposed to feel empathy for these people?  This proliferation of floor mattresses says more about the general demographic of video game developers than it does bout the NPCs, but I digress. 

I don’t know. Suddenly there was a lot of running and apartments with multiple entrances, and there was one part where I got confused about my orientation and had to walk through the loading screen _four times._   FOUR TIMES.

The Alyx shows up. She makes me follow her. I end up in a room with a wacky scientist and story points. I was distracted by the Garbage teleporter in the corner of the room.    The story in the middle of the room wanted me to get into my Gordon suit or whatever, so I saved my file. We’ll see what happens next. 




END SESSION  2.





“This is not a very good garbage-picking-up game.”

An Update in which I play Half-Life 2 in 30-minute increments. 

I thought it would be fun to log playing the seminal game “Half-Life 2.”  I have never played it, have only a passing familiarity with it through my experience playing the portal games, and have no idea what kind of a game it is. I’m only going to look things up if I get hopelessly stuck, and because I’m playing it on the PlayStation 3, I can’t stream it or take screen captures. So I’ll use AI to generate the supporting artwork for this walkthrough. Oh, and one last thing: I’m playing it on my lunch break, so I only get 30-minute increments, and I get interrupted regularly. 

Update 1

A Single Line Drawing of "THE GUY NAMED GORDON" from Half-life, generated by Dall-e 2

The game starts with a tutorial on how to use the square button. To be fair, it’s probably with doing some kind of mention that you’re going to be mashing on the square for this game since, by this point in the PlayStation existence, even Square-Enix has given up the non-standard locations for the default action button. 

But that aside, we’re treated to some weird agenda and content (“something, something wrong man at the right time”), given a reference to an “insertion point,’ and then forced to walk around in a train car where we literally can’t do anything.

This frustration continued as I stepped out of the train car and was immediately prevented from going anywhere other than where the map wanted me to. Open world, this is not. 

I found a revolving gate puzzling, but I somehow managed to push my first person through the spinning gate and continued walking along an empty hallway, searching for anything to click on. 

A guard, who turned out to be someone who knew me, presented me with non-interesting background information. I learned my name is Gordon. Then I moved some boxes around and fell out a window. I guess I should have paid more attention. 

Standing in a tall three-story courtyard, I tried to figure out what I needed to do next. There were some bricks I could kick around (but not pick up, as near as I could tell), and there was a half-open door, but I could not shove through it. 

I am 20 minutes into this game, and I'm flummoxed by the puzzle of the bricks and the somewhat open door. Turns out, unlike the rotating gate, you have to click on the door to get the loading screen to go. Ahh, Playstation. You got me! 

Eventually, I got to a part of the game where a guard yelled at me to pick up some garbage. Then the game yelled at me to throw things I picked up using a button. So I threw the can. And I missed the garbage. So the guard who yelled at me beat me up. So I went and picked up the can and threw it at the guard. He chased me but stopped after I got too far away. And that’s how I learned how to throw a can.  This started me on a five-minute course of picking up all sorts of garbage and throwing it at the guard. I don't know how to tell what garbage is pickupable and what is not. 

In real life, a freshman girl in the room asked me if there would be any guns in the game. I said I didn’t know. She went back to clicking on her phone. 

At this point, I realized this game was a terrible garbage-picking-up simulator and decided to try to advance the plot. I wandered through halls and corridors until I realized that other doors might be openable. Some of them were not. Some of them were. Not sure how I’m ever going to tell the difference. Eventually, I found enough clickable doors to wander the street. Proud of my stellar door-clicking skills, I crouched by a fountain and saved my game. 

End of the first 30 minutes of gameplay. 

Falling out of Fallout

I completed my fourth, and likely final “season” of Fallout 76. It was a great season, and it was super fun. I think.

I don’t know— there’s no way to be sure. Like any Stockholm syndrome survivor, I have learned to love my captor. Here is a photo of where I will be in Appalachia 76 for the next few weeks at least; sitting in this hot tub, waiting for the sun to set, and wondering what the next season will bring.


I asked an AI to sue Darth Vader on behalf of Dark Helmet.

I asked an AI to write me a legal breif as if Dark Helmet was suing Darth Vader for copyright infringement and it brought me joy.



ChatGPT Internet Court

Complaint

Subject: Infringement of Copyright belonging to Dark Helmet from the Spaceballs fleet

Plaintiff: Spaceballs Corporation

Defendant: Darth Vader

Facts:

  1. The Spaceballs Corporation holds the copyright for the character of Dark Helmet from the 1987 comedy film, "Spaceballs".

  2. Darth Vader, a character from the Star Wars franchise, is depicted wearing a similar-looking helmet that bears striking similarities to Dark Helmet.

  3. The defendant's use of this similar-looking helmet in public appearances, merchandise, and media has resulted in confusion among the public, who often associate Darth Vader's helmet with Dark Helmet.

Argument:

  1. The defendant's use of the similar-looking helmet constitutes copyright infringement under 17 U.S.C. § 106 of the Copyright Act.

  2. The defendant's use of the similar-looking helmet creates confusion among the public, who may believe that the defendant is officially associated with the Spaceballs franchise and its characters, including Dark Helmet.

  3. The defendant's use of the similar-looking helmet dilutes the distinctiveness of the Spaceballs franchise and its characters, including Dark Helmet, and harms the plaintiff's commercial interests.

Conclusion:

The defendant is therefore requested to cease and desist from using the similar-looking helmet in any manner that constitutes copyright infringement. Failure to do so may result in further legal action, including monetary damages and injunctive relief.



I asked an AI merge Pokemon and To Kill a Mockingbird

I asked an AI to tell me a story about what would happen if there had been Pokemon in To Kill a Mockingbird. I don’t know what you people are getting all bent out of shape about this for. This is what fucking computers are for!

A cute, bird like pokemon in the shape of Atticus Finch as portrayed by Gregory Peck.

Once upon a time, in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama, there lived a young girl named Scout Finch. She lived with her brother Jem, her father Atticus, and their maid Calpurnia. Scout and Jem loved to play and explore the woods behind their house, and one day, they stumbled upon a strange creature hiding in the bushes.

The creature was small and had big, round eyes and fluffy ears. Scout and Jem had never seen anything like it before, but they soon learned that it was a Pokemon, a creature from a different world. The Pokemon, a Pikachu, was lost and alone, and Scout and Jem decided to take it under their care.

They named the Pikachu Sparky, and soon became the best of friends. Scout and Jem taught Sparky how to navigate the town and helped it find its way back home. Along the way, they encountered many challenges and obstacles, but they always stuck together, just like the Pokemon motto said "Gotta catch 'em all!"

As they journeyed through Maycomb, they encountered many people, some friendly and some not so friendly. Scout and Jem's father Atticus, a lawyer, was in the middle of a case defending a black man Tom Robinson, who had been falsely accused of raping a white woman. Scout and Jem were determined to prove Tom's innocence, with the help of Sparky and its special powers.

In the end, Tom was acquitted, thanks in part to the testimony of Sparky, who had uncovered evidence that cleared Tom's name. Scout and Jem were overjoyed and Sparky was able to return home, but not before promising to come back and visit them. From then on, Scout and Jem's lives were forever changed by their adventure with Sparky the Pikachu. They learned that true friends come in all shapes and sizes, and that standing up for what is right is always the right thing to do.