This is all very well, but I had specifically asked for the Nobel!

I have the best idea ever.

But I am still too darned lazy to do anything about it. Also, if you have noticed, different people tend to have the same great idea around roughly the same time period. Which is why you have this debate over who actually invented or discovered what.

Anyway, the best idea ever is to write a Wolverine-Aliens crossover widescreen graphic novel.

Why would that make such a great idea - you might ask.

Well, with Wolverine's accelerated healing, you can pencil some really awesome scenes where a chestburster blasts right through him and he heals back up. W could even make him stab himself in an effort to kill it while it's in him, only the acid blood melts through him. However, because Aliens assume the characteristics of their hosts, these ones have awesome healing too.

So there they are, both slicing away at each other and melting and regenerating. Then who should we have come in? Weapon X! Alien gets captured by them and it too is grafted an adamantium skeleton, okay in their case an adamantium exoskeleton.

I will make no money at all from my great idea. But remember you saw it first here.

Nighttime Daydreamer

This is how I have spent my nights.

Stripped of all context. A singular screen with moving images that twist to the whims of my fingers. That is the singular ability true to all video games - Amplification of Input, the translation of a simple input into complex output: I press one button and a whole new range of options become available to me; I pull this trigger and that car explodes. The idea is not to exactly replicate the input required to achieve the desired output; the chain of causality from action to consequence is often long and complicated, one single action rarely leads to a complex output without a myriad other factors.

The base aim of all games is the codification and abstraction of complex life-like ideas and situations into ones over which it’s easier to obtain competence in, and eventually the mastery of.

Through mastery comes insight, understanding, and an appreciation of the complexity of the original situation. In order to achieve this insight, this appreciation, the simplification and abstraction of the original situation must be achieved in such a manner that the simplified version is easier to master but that the lessons learned from this simplified form are still applicable to the original.

The closer games move to complete 1:1 replication of input to output, the smaller this amplification effect becomes until the gap between the skills required for a video game version of Golf and an actual game of Golf start to disappear.

Is this really a problem? Well I did not turn on Burnout Paradise in order to crash my car at 180 mph, I did so in order to play a video game representation of some rash driving.

The appeal of the representation is different to the appeal of the reality. When will everyone get it.

The Good, the Bad and the fault with everything

I know...I didn't stick at it to the end. I guess I feel like I've heard you say all those things before...all the reasons why things are so difficult now.

Trust me, I know them. I also know that the course we took was probably...maybe..not the best one to take at the time, but I'm still not sure. I still know I'd do it all differently if I had it over again, but you know that, too.

I've been thinking about you a lot lately; this past weekend I couldn't think of much else, and I had to stop myself & shake myself back into reality a couple of times. I'm not saying that to scare you & I hope it doesn't, but I guess it just says a lot...how difficult it is to stop you from occupying my thoughts.

The last time I saw you...I really, really tried to take it all as some kind of sign...that I was going to be ok & that life goes on. After all, I kind of ensure that I still was there till the terminal at 6 in the morning... I remember hearing your voice while I was out in the cold, and knowing you were holding back tears every time you turned to look around.... And I remember exactly what you looked like, and how I stood there with my hands in my pockets trying sheepishly to cover where I'd sloshed a little juice on the side but I didn't want to wipe it up & I hoped you wouldn't notice. I remember you seemed like you were disappointed in me for what we spoke the previous night, and how much it still stung me to know that I was somehow making you unhappy with yet another of my actions. And I remember leaving that day & telling myself that it was some sort of final test that the universe was putting me through, to see if I was man enough to go do what I needed to do to follow my dreams....until I remembered later that I don't believe in that kind of stuff. or maybe I do... I no longer know.

I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say now, I guess I'm just trying to put everything in your perspective. I don't have any idea what your day-to-day life is like or how you're getting along with it, but I'm hard-pressed to argue with anything that's made it easier for us to talk to each other

In any case, I'm just really glad that I've been able to communicate with you again. I have no idea what the future holds, but I'd like the present to hold the promise of us at least letting some of our guard down & accepting the fact that we are still important to each other....to say the least. I don't care how it sounds, but there's always a hole in my life when you're not in it. I've tried to get used to it before, but it's always there...unless you're here. I could write & write to you all night, but I think I'll stop now....I'm getting better at quitting while I'm ahead.

Like explaining heaven to sheep

I have never been successful in love. Why is it that I cannot distinguish between what I want and what is actually good for me. My romantic escapades have always been a build-up to the same moment - I’m sitting alone in a corner of my room, staring at my knees, scribbling on pieces of paper, wondering how I went wrong, replaying conversations and songs on loop.

This isn't my first adult relationship but I would have died a happy man if it had been my last. It changed me for sure. It challenged me to stray away from the spiral I had created for myself. What I have wasn't trivial, not fleeting, not something I can replace easily. It wasn’t the kind I read in novels, more the kind that probably won’t ever fade away, even if we were to never meet again.

Sometimes you have this unnatural premonition that something awful was about to happen, that it was gonna hurt real bad, and that you want nothing more than to stop it - if you knew what to stop. But, somehow, events just keep happening around you - swirling you around, the unstoppable tide, like an ant on your sink - you can try hanging on to the ceramic with all your strength but there is just too much water and flows are just so divergent enough for you to not account for them all.

You feel yourself go in.

At first it hurts a lot, the stifling forces stuffing the air out of your lungs, the currents jostling you against the walls as they hurry along, then the pent-up adrenaline kicks in and you feel nothing. Then, after all that wears off, the pain returns, except it's worse than it was before, deeper, more complicated, shredding you from the inside out. You look down and realize this shit has happened to you, and it's irreversible, and you will have a scar forever, and you just scream and scream, but the maelstrom will win.

The crowning part is that I have to smile through my days.

Of failed epics and absentee heroes

On the other side of pain is a new place. The past wakes up with a vividness and you feel conversations are useless and the pain you have caused is something you fear will happen again. You feel misunderstood and want to provide clarity, give responses that will clear her head and stop the pain. You want, need the other person to understand that you hurt so much but the more you try to give an explanation, the more strained it gets, till the point where you feel like giving up.

The doomsday clocks have all run down.

The prophecies have all been proven false.

My wishes drown at the well's bottom.

The forecast calls for perpetual rain.