. . . I'm not much for praying.
But recently I started praying to Fred Rogers and Lain Iwakura to rain down flavorful herbs and spices to put some taste on all this frying meat.
You know.
'Cause of the global warming.
. . .
I'm a hit at the open mic.
now look
if you play Faxanadu
you will find
that it contains neither a fax machine
nor any trace of a ‘can-do’ attitude
despite the title
which clearly promises some combination of these two elements
I would have even settled
for the two promised elements presented all on their own,
serially,
with no hint of combination or collaboration between the two promised elements
nothing doing
you really gotta wonder
‘bout the people
who worked so hard
coming up with such a clever title
that clearly promises a fax machine and a ‘can-do’ attitude
most likely in some form of combination
the very title
Faxanadu
is so clearly a combination of the two elements under discussion
and we have a game that does not live up to the title
what we get is a cryptic fantasy medievalist wander-maze full of hostility and occulted paths forward,
just try to advance in a speedy fashion,
don’t even bother calling ahead because you can’t,
everything’s in-person,
no communications network,
items and information must be sought out, obtained, and delivered laboriously,
and one can argue that “Hey, there’s your can-do attitude!”
but such an outlook is surely ground down to nothing by the damned wandering tedium,
I disdain every last bit of this,
and I can only wonder
at the depths of disillusionment
those who created the title
must feel
for surely
if it had been up to them
the game would’ve lived up to its title
but no
not a bit
and so we continue to live in a world of shit
-July 2021
I’m after the Red Falcon, right?
Not much context, no cut scenes to glaze me with that sweet, sweet exposition head-to-toe.
Am I even a soldier?
I kinda think-just based on the kinda jaunty way I run-that I must’ve been a-what do you call it? One of those guys who goes running across the football field naked-
-a streaker!
Yeah.
‘Cause the guy, the little guy on the screen-
-the player character?
-like, the little guy . . . he’s just got that obvious confidence, you know?
-lotta people disdain a streaker, but, and this has been born out in various research studies, but your average streaker . . . they actually have above average confidence,
which is interesting.
Anyways.
That’s just me gettin’ a read on the basic body language, tho’, you don’t have to be too impressed with that.
And we have
uh
We just have machines merged with monsters
You got, like, an alien monster sorta built into the military hardsite.
Or maybe-I dunno-maybe the Red Falcon’s critters
maybe they just
like
grow all of their weapons and infrastructure and supply lines right outta their bodies.
Like imagine if you had animals
like cows or horses or chickens or what have you
and you could get ‘em to birth, um, automated gun emplacements and, um, rockets,
you would maybe need a rhinoceros or an elephant to birth a tank or an armored personnel carrier-for the really big things you’d need big animals-
-but we have these, uh, these looming-huge extraterrestrial beasties
-they just, I guess, up and stole all of H.R. Giger’s shit, this, uh, this whole biomechanical grisly abomination routine
-fuck, dude, you can flog any damn thing into a cliche, can’t you?
Yeah . . .
But, um . . .
-oh, so . . . I guess when we get deeper into it
I guess these could be ultratech facilities for vatgrown organic entities, they just grow their personnel, then, okay, that’s probably what I would do
-I think, uh, I think that’s a steal, as well,
wasn’t that in Neuromancer? With the vat-grown ninja?
-and Aliens with the huge queen alien squeezing out her whole operation, which is a pretty awesome path for evolution to take, I think,
I wish,
Uh,
I wish cosmic evolution
would shape my ass
so that I could just secrete or birth or shit or whatever
an entire occupation military force
-for that . . . I would definitely trade the carefree life of a streaker.
Depend upon it, dude!
I’d take over the whole operation.
But, okay . . . this is the really weird part.
You get your power-ups for your gun from those capsules that sort of fly through the air-
-so . . . you just . . . why would Red Falcon do that? Just allow such open access to the arsenal like that?
-’cause the weapons capsules are clearly, uh, they’re just very clearly branded with that Red Falcon logo-maybe I’m not supposed to have access to those-but you just shoot ‘em and they drop whatever kinda weapons-
-seems like a serious security lapse-
-but, maybe, I dunno.
Maybe ex-streaker dude is, uh, is a disgruntled member of the Red Falcon army, and so this whole game is about a former cog in the machine deciding to strip some fuckin’ gears, y’know?
-or, it could be the case . . . that just the way the Red Falcon is running this whole place is just . . . I don’t even know . . . just super irresponsible-just, like, making lethal military grade weapons not just available, okay, but the guy-this Red Falcon guy-he’s literally sending his killing implements flying out and among the population-his own people-and saying, “Here you go, have fun!” Which sorta sounds like a-like the NRA’s Ultimate Dick-Beating fantasy-is that what’s going on with Red Falcon? I dunno. Could just be that he’s a-uh-that he’s just a deeply troubled person with too many death-toys, y’know? I dunno . . .
. . . wait-a-minute.
Maybe
What this is
Is the Red Falcon
Has a death wish
He’s sending out the hardware
In the hopes that someone will load up on the toys
And bring down the house
‘Cause Red Falcon can’t bring himself to do himself
There’s still some residual survival instinct
And so that’s where the ex-streaker enters the death picture
‘Cause this whole system is just crazy-fucked
Anybody who would run their world like this
Must be on a death-trip-to-the-max
Maybe
Maybe we could’ve worked things out with Red Falcon
Maybe it didn’t have to be this way
Just a little bit of arms control
Could’ve gone a long way
Y’know?
Well.
I feel kinda bad for Red Falcon, now.
The Guy was just trying to make sense of his shit.
All he had to go on was power, right?
The pursuit of power.
Who doesn’t want some power?
Red Falcon just took it over the top.
I pity this guy.
Clearly . . . he wanted power, and he thought it probably would make him look cool if he copped all his style and his, uh, all his accessorizations from that freaky H.R. Giger shit and Soldier of Fortune magazine and, uh, and the scary matte black tactical end of the cyberpunk shit and, you know, I get it-you gotta live your inner vision. But this is just, uh, this is just incredibly dysfunctional.
And so goddamn rigid, too.
You play this game enough times, and all of the Red Falcon’s shit-his whole operation-it just has these repetitious patterns to it-everything has a schedule. Red Falcon is clearly an authoritarian efficiency and routinization nut. The dude has no give in his, uh, his whole existence. But there’s a fatal flaw in that-’cause once you know the patterns, the routines, the rigid over-and-over-and-over-againness of it all-
-ah, man, I just-
-if only someone could’ve talked to Red Falcon-
-but would he have listened?
Guys like Red Falcon . . . they don’t listen to anybody.
They listen to someone . . . they think they’re being weak.
But we all need a little, uh, a little friendly advice along the way.
Fuck, dude.
The Red Falcon’s . . . uh . . . it’s like he had an auto-destruct fate inside him.
It’s a downer to come up against that one.
But when the war is done . . . I guess my onscreen dude can go back to being a streaker. Strips off his clothes and runs jauntily into the horizon.
John Wayne never did that. If John Wayne had tried to strip off at the end of The Searchers? Where he’s all forlorn and cast out of the space of domesticity and he’s babying his arm-the guy, like, he would’ve been forty-five minutes just trying to get out of that fuckin’ girdle he wore to control his huge-ass gut. So no stripping off for that guy.
But we can do it.
We’re quick and leanly pixeled and done with all the bullshit.
It’s time to run naked and free into horizons of glory.
And as we run, we shake off the ashes of auto-destruct Red Falcon.
Maybe end up as the player character of some obscure adults only game where no one’ll be freaked out by our streaker routine.
Maintain that confidence.
We’ll find home.
Or home’ll find us.
-July 2021
. . . I think I'm being sneaky
then a security asset looms pale before me
my head implodes
I have to start over
the wages of slickness, I suppose
the world demands a certain narrow path of traversal, a certain set of tasks, all in a certain order
to circumvent,
to sequence break,
all that gets you
is a certain and familiar doom
but you can get used to the imploded head routine
it gets into this thing where it's a live joke you can also record and share
like ejecting from your cockpit over and over again in Wing Commander 'til they bust your ass outta the Space Force
failure's the only option
if you would find the walls of this or that world
'cause the walls'll find you in any event
hardwired fuck-up destiny and all that entails
ah, to be so sure and so doomed
docile and omnipotent, or omni-impotent as a noted restroom stall philosopher long wrote down
it's a crisis in the news I hear . . .
looms pale before me . . .
. . . The Eroticism of the Armadillo.
Go ahead.
Look it up.
Or better yet: try to get a book deal off of this title.
Let me know how it works out for you.
I'll wait.