ExXception Draft

Photo: Skatastrophys 5 by TheNeonHeart.

ON BEING EXPOSED TO CONSCIOUSNESS:

RETRISTUTION

        Is not a word. You can try real hard. I’m not so sure you know what you think. I seen you believe. There is this point where you can hold on to belief, like the ground beneath your feet. And if you squat and grab below your bended knees. Do you lose the poise and balance? Do you lose the strength of length from here to your feet? Did it hurt when you fell from heaven? Growing from neanderthal, early hominid, you gathered up your face with hunter gather speed. I saw you growing that big brain since you came down from those tall trees. I saw you horde it when you it hid it from the rest of the tribe, I saw you hide it from me. And that’s the secret that you decided to keep. What’s the difference if you don’t know when we’ll meet. Again, to drink the fluorescent psychotropic candy, widens your eyes, and makes you go hunt in your sleep. We will fuck in circle, piles, groups, orgies, and each to each. Successful copulation is such a successful need. As long as we’ve got the psychic plant and desert manna left to eat.

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Skatastrophys 3 on Flickr.

REALITY OF THE VIRTUAL - 2012.8.19.

The title ‘Reality of the Virtual’ comes from the Slavoj Zizek’s lecture/documentary.

I was watching crappy movies on Netflix the other night, and came across, first

‘Love Story 2050’ which was apparently made in conjunction with a million advertisers in Australia by a bunch of Indian folks who speak English only every other sentence so there were subtitles, even in the instances when they were speaking English, and I couldn’t bear to watch more than five minutes because it was so trite it hurt.

After that I put on ‘Terminal Error’ which was described thus:

Michael Nouri stars in this high-tech thriller as Brad Weston, a digital tycoon who must fend off attacks from his former partner, who’s unleashed a computer virus onto the entire system at his firm Autocom.

And I was looking for cyberpunk stuff, maybe something with some low-life hackers doing some damage via ingenuity, so I streamed that sucker. But what I got was a movie where basically the role of haunted houses was filled in by technology… See, the story focused around a young kid, like just on the cusp of teenage I’m too-cool-for-school I hacked into the school computers to right the wrong of some kids who passed a class because they cheated?! yeah, that makes sense. A little warped on the bypass there, but close enough. And this guy’s dad owns this globotech company and he’s too wrapped up in his work, a little too-plugged-in if you know what I mean. Anyway, so, this disgruntled guy who used to work for the father (and who his son hangs out with without gnosis parentis) gives the kid a virus via an mp3, which the kid uploads onto the Dad’s computer at work, even though he was TOLD! NEVER TOUCH MY DAMN WORK COMPUTER… or something like that. Anyway, some people subsequently die in an elevator because this mp3 takes over all the computers. Oh did I mention a nuclear plant the Dad made software for blew up at the beginning because the same guy sent them an mp3 via email. But let me get to the point. The real issue is not that music has power over all aspects of people’s lives and such. We already knew that.

The thing is this virus takes over the whole building, which is perfectly conceivable, see X-Files Episode: Ghost in the Machine. But then, it emails the kid at home, and from that one email, it takes over his house, which is in no way especially wired or roboticized or automatized, except shit’s going down like the tv explodes and the lamps are all shattering and the house catches on fire from the electrical wiring. And, I thought. Well, maybe in a post-Patriot Act world, but when did this movie come out or take place or whatever?

But the weirdest shit happened next, because right after this scene came on and I was thinking about this, I happened to be in the kitchen making dinner (I have a small apartment, so I could see the tv from there) I turned around and the tv, this movie being on netflix, had gone to that screen where it says “You have been watching… ‘Terminal Error’ recommended viewing up next…” or whatever it says. So, it’s like. Well, that’s all you’re gonna get out of this movie. You know, here this technology takes over like all paranormal activity, and then my TV nods and makes a real eerie smile and is like… “yeahh… that’s right.”

So, after that I just watched some Mystery Science Theater 3000. Where the experiment is on you, freak of science. Oh, I watched half of ‘Extract’ first. It seemed alright.

CRI DE COEUR

The interest thing. In medias res. Interesting —Only if it’s not just in the middle of the ‘action’… events, events, events. But straight from the heart.
Inter-mediate.

n adjective

1 coming between two things in time, place, character, etc.

2 having more than basic knowledge or skills but not yet advanced.

n noun

1 an intermediate person or thing.

2 a chemical compound formed by one reaction and then taking part in

another.

n verb  

mediate.

DERIVATIVES
intermediacy noun
intermediately adverb
intermediation noun
intermediator noun

ORIGIN
Middle English: from medieval Latin intermediatus, from Latin intermedius, from inter- ‘between’ + medius ‘middle’.

- from Concise Oxford English Dictionary

more to come on Media, Thoughts from the Mid-Section, and Inter-Active Annexation

Skatastrophys 2 on Flickr.

The storm which had been gathering now broke.


       Postulate: The idea that a person, in the stages of development, goes up against a large bunch of material, en masse, as a mass, and not as it stands in quantity. And it pushes against this large group, by focusing with great intensity, paradoxically, on the minutest, every basic block of information, as it pertains to present consciousness, reflecting exactly the character of the struggle against this material. The soul is forging onward. And there is a point where the struggle becomes so great and the impulse to overcome the material so great, that the wave crests, and breaks, and the one who is initiated into this search, or reading, or experience, rushes out through the text and feeling, possibly without even knowing this liminally, and from then on this experience changes.
        Because this is the same process, learning… the intellect forging itself, hardening its tools, cutting its teeth if you will, and there is movement, of what Robert M. Pirsig formulates in ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ as the dialectical knife of consciousness and focus. The mind runs in its tracks and grooves, and when you realize you have caught a wave, there is nothing to do but ride the surf and continue with the flow, knowing there was a time in the past that what you now know, what you now hold in yourself as a part of your body of knowledge, was once a wall that you pushed against. A wave you struggled to climb atop of.

- The NE<3 8.19.2012

Skatastophys 1 on Flickr.

Time to start journaling again, because I can’t even remember what I was doing last winter.. and summer is almost over again. So, I’m working on a couple projects and I work on them every day, and I’m always reading, so I’m good on that count. ExXception Draft, the video game I’m making with RPG Maker XP software is coming along, and I will probably be working on it for the next ten years. It’s something to do, and I like reading all this non-fiction I’m reading as ‘research’ for it. And it actually is that.
Currently with the ExXception Draft project, I am working on a couple of story parts for the over-arcing story.

The first part, towards the first third of the game is a group of WWII vets, Hiroshima survivors, scientists, nuclear abolitionists, etc. who are dead set on preventing more events like the double nuclear bombings at the end of WWII. So they develop a secret technology that lets them ‘time-view’ to see into the past and future, so they can supposedly see trouble coming and try to prevent it. It is basically their story of them using this power for good, and the desires of the different people in this organization, and how things go for each of them, with the perils of the technology, and the political pressure of governments who know about or are trying to prevent this technology.
It also has a lot to do with dreams, because their facility is fronted by a sleep research center which specializes in dreams, which is actually harvesting a certain type of energy from their patients that is needed for the time-viewing process (it’s supposed to be harmless for their patients).

The other story involves the development of an Artificial Intelligence system by a corporate group in Tokyo. They’ve been working on it for decades, mostly in secret, with funding from various technologies they develop along the way on this quest for a truly intelligent machine. As they approach their ultimate goal, they also create a Virtual Reality program, because the nature of A.I. is, not just being a machine that emulates human intelligence, it is also the calculus of the design of intelligent machines, a mathematical theory to describe the intelligence and actions of things (natural or man made)*. As they release this Artificial Reality program, the world is already in chaos as the millenium (2000, as it is historical fiction) approaches, and advances in technology and subcultures rising on the internet and spilling over into the streets has called into question basic assumptions about reality and the end of things (eschaton).

The V.R. machine is released with great pomp and circumstance as a great leap forward, and at first has just one program, ‘Eden’, which is a paradisical environment where the user can create any where, any when, any thing they desire and experience the interactive nature thereof.
Religious groups, mostly fringe groups with a firm grasp on theology and biblical study rebukes the creators (as opposed to the mainstream who merely senses disturbances at gut levels), on the grounds that when Fig Tree (the subsidiary of the Japanese Company which marketed ‘Eden’) released their false world onto the wayward, they were fulfilling a prophecy unto the last days. And soon, when the Son of Man arrived, the end of times will surely be upon us all.

Some members of the creation team laugh this off as just a benefit of creating an amazing new technology. But others, see their own hands as building materials in the artificial intelligence which of course could be called… The Son of Man.

Both of these stories will fit into the larger gameplay of ‘ExXception Draft’. What I really need to continue working on it is people to make sprites for me. It’d be a lot easier to build from level to level if I had all the materials for a certain level before I moved on to the next, hoping to get a drawing tablet later on at some date and learning to sprite and all that to fill in the gaps. I’m hoping someone will take interest in the project and offer to help me out. In the meantime, I’ve been writing more than designing levels and programing gameplay for the past couple weeks.

I’m using Google Drive (formerly Google Docs) to keep all my notes on the project and it’s perfect, I can link all the notes via html for each little correspondance, use pictures, and sites throughout the web. It’s pretty good, almost the perfect writing program. If they could integrate some of the features of the writing program I bought “Write It Now 4” into Google Drive, it would be amazing.
Anyway. I use it as my word processor.
I wish I played more video games. I am doing a decent job of watching movies that don’t suck, at least recently. If I could keep up a journal that’d be awesome. It doesn’t have to be anything amazing, just record what I’m doing, going through, whatever. And it helps to talk about the writing I’m working on.

*Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Philip C. Jackson, Jr

A Strip Club

The Christian Apostate Church, or, “Cult” as it might be called, where you are called by a teenage girl’s father to investigate her ‘abduction’scree