LOADING SCREEN WISDOM #45:

REMEMBER: IF YOU VOTE FOR PEOPLE WHO PROMISE TO BURN DOWN YOUR GOVERNMENT YOU WILL LIKELY HAVE A BURNING GOVERNMENT ON YOUR HANDS. CHOOSE CAREFULLY.

2025 STAFF ROLL PLAYLIST

Many roads lead to the burning house . . .

Knight Man Stage/Yuko Takehara (Mega Man 6 NES OST)

Monkey Magic/Godiego (Monkey Magic OST)

House on Fire/Girls on Film

Kevorkian/Public Enemy

This Is The Life/ “Weird Al” Yankovic

Black Inferno/Guido & Maurizio De Angelis (Raiders of Atlantis OST)

Shakedown/Bob Seeger (Beverly Hills Cop II OST)

City of Crime/Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks (Dragnet OST)

Dare To Be Stupid/ “Weird Al” Yankovic

Playin’ Dumb/Tchotchke

Dunning Kruger’s Loser Cruiser/Tropical Fuck Storm

The Big Rock Candy Mountains/Harry McClintock

Iris Out/Kenshi Yonezu (Chainsaw Man-The Movie: Reze Arc OST)

Citizens On Patrol/Michael Winslow & the L.A. Dream Team (Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol OST)

Call Any Vegetable/Frank Zappa

Sutekh’s Lair Theme/Marshall Parker (Nightshade NES OST)

Blastfighter Theme/Fabio Frizzi (Blastfighter OST)

Dance or Die/Peter Aykroyd & Pat Thrall (Dragnet OST)

It’s a Dog’s Breakfast (For LR)/The Paranoid Style

Jurassic Park/ “Weird Al” Yankovic

Muneyake Bar/Shinobu Amayake (Omega 6: The Triangle Stars OST)

The burning house leads to many roads . . .

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #94:

Does Santa Claus celebrate Christmas, or is he like, “Dude, this shit is my fucking job. I’m working. I ain’t celebrating shit!” ?

Or maybe Santa celebrates some bizarre, secret Clausian holiday that maybe only him and the elves and the reindeer and a select group of insiders know about?

Who else is in the know?

Mothman? Chupacabra? The Men in Black? The Mad Gasser of Mattoon? Spring-Heeled Jack? The Jersey Devil? Nessie? The probe-happy Greys? Mulder’n’Scully? A scholarly cartoon owl? That dude that wrote all those books about urban legends in the 1980s and 1990s? That dude who wrote that ‘End of History’ book? What about the other dude who wrote that book about Generation X with all the vocabulary words in the margins? Is the Flatwoods Monster in the know? Was the Flatwoods Monster the one who wrote that Generation X book?

Hey, I’m just one of these Inquiring Minds you hear about.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #224:

NEW RESEARCH OUT THIS WEEK SUGGESTS THAT A BADGE MAY BE A METASTATIC FORM OF A DESIRE FOR THINGS TO MAKE SENSE.

YOUR DRAWING PROMPT #90:

The air conditioning unit that’s more mold than air conditioning unit.

THAT-A-WAY!

FUN YOU CAN HAVE #17:

Go on YouTube, and start watching a full playthrough of one of these surrealistic horror video games-Silent Hill, Hollowbody, Sanitarium, Heartworm, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, The Cat Lady, Corpse Party, D2-or pick one that you prefer that isn’t listed here.

Notice how the intrusive ads become the new jumpscares.

At first, I hated it.

Now, I think these advertorial invaders should become part of horror game design best practices.

Think of it as an additional thematic concern.

A lot of these games explore identity and memory.

The advertorial invaders can weave in the concept of total corruption . . .

. . . or is it mere distraction?

Hmmm . . .

Really makes you think . . .

OCCLUSION #7:

It gets you up in the morning

It’s a kind of liquid armor

A gift that flaunts its Faustian Bargain-ness

More in the register of Goethe’s clawing, climbing, fighting towards the godhead

Than in the spirit of fuddy-duddy Marlowe’s moralism

Satan-as-aggro-life-coach

Not

Satan-as-the-burning-monster-mouth-that-swallows-you-into-the-lake-of-acid

But still

It puts its thumb in your eye jelly

You have to drink it down deep

You’ll resent it

Even though

No

It doesn’t push you, it drags you 

Which is what you chose, isn’t it

And yes

You’ll hurt if you say no

Lots of things are like that

But this one’s particularly bitter

Even as it displaces your beyond lame borderline vacation-ass self with a momentum that wears your face so well

F.A.Q. #25:

Q: What lies beyond the stygian depths where Behemoth and Leviathan dwell?

A: Some vending machines, a mobile device charging station, a waist level stand distributing a free weekly sales paper, and a hip little indie coffee shop that’ll be lucky to be in business six months from now.

THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN 89

 

THE NEW SIGNAGE #34:

CONGRATULATIONS. YOU HAVE JUST RIPPED OFF NUMBER ONE’S MASKS TO FIND YOUR OWN FACE STARING BACK AT YOU. THANK YOU.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #223:

CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT FILED ON BEHALF OF OVER TEN THOUSAND HUMAN-COUCH HYBRIDS CLAIMING DAMAGES FOR TRAUMA CAUSED BY BEING ABANDONED BY VICE PRESIDENT VANCE.

YOUR DRAWING PROMPT #89:

The redactor who redacts himself without being compelled to do so by any order from above or law of the land.

FANTASY MASHUP FORCE #26:

Silent Side Story.

This is West Side Story + Silent Hill.

You’ve got two gangs of monsters-the Nurses and the Grey Children-dance battling to see which team gets to ride in the flying saucer piloted by a dog.

Meanwhile, Pyramid Head and Officer Cybil are a mismatched pair of buddy cops looking to enforce the law upon lawless abominations.

Pyramid Head’s got lots of personal shit. He’s depressed that he’s just the manifestation of some random dude’s desire to be punished. He aspires to be so much more! He’s been taking dance lessons. He’s reading the Stoics. Even though he’s known for wielding a sword he’s been hitting the firing range to expand his repertoire to include the M-60 machine gun, the bazooka, and the person-portable railgun assault system. He sees himself as Protagonist Material, like in a Resident Evil or Doom game. He does mime. He does hosting. He does close magic. He’s working on some fucking amazing singer-songwriter shit-just, like, totally conquering the folkie scene in Silent Hill.

Cybil’s got her own Protagonist Dreams working. Although they’re kinda boring, she figures she could brush up her detective skills by starring in a few of those point-and-click mystery games. She just doesn’t want to get stuck in some godforsaken hidden object purgatory-not even once. But options are scarce these days. She’s gotten a lucrative offer to star in some cutscenes for a video pachislot thing, but that’s another purgatory she’s trying to avoid. She also finds Pyramid Head’s barista-esque pretense of saying,”Oh, but I’m really this other thing” to be incredibly tedious. But she’s also kinda in the same place as him. It’s tough.

The Nurses and the Grey Children have to dodge those trifling cops while winning dance battles to improve their techniques.

Lots of multiple endings tied to various abstruse mechanics will surely guarantee repeat box office as audiences fleeing the suffocating heat of Climate Inferno luxuriate in 4-D air conditioning effects.

Fun for the final survivors of the Human Family!

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #222:

ENORMOUS QUANTITY OF EPSTEIN FILES FOUND LINING THE INSIDE OF ELON MUSK’S SLEEPING BAG.