NOTIONAL HEADLINE #17:

 

ALL TRAINS EVERYWHERE DERAILED AT ONCE FOREVER; BUCK PASSING RECOGNIZED AS OLYMPIC SPORT.

PEOPLE GET MAD . . . (#4)

. . . when they truly believe in something that doesn't actually exist, and then they get mad when they realize they've been living a lie.

People get mad.

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #29:

 

Don't you think Godzilla has Bette Davis Eyes?

LOADING SCREEN WISDOM #11:

ACCOMPLISH CHECKLIST GOALS AND FIND ITEMS TO EXPERIENCE FEELINGS OF SATISFACTION.

OPTIONAL RULE #7:

When playing a mech-themed tabletop role-playing game, you may, in the fullness of time, find yourself locked in a death duel with your nemesis: the ace pilot of the enemy side. To draw comparisons from mecha anime: the Char Aznable to your Amuro Ray; the Ypsilon to your Chirico Cuvie; the Alex Rosewater to your Roger Smith. You will, for drama's sake, no doubt clash with your nemesis in single combat, each of your bipedal tanks slugging and blasting and strafing it out to see who survives to tower over a war-torn galaxy buried in the twisted and fused rubble of ambition. If it's a proper close contest, you and your nemesis will bust off all of your ammunition and be forced to grapple and pummel one another hand-to-hand to settle the vendetta. During this death-clench you may stand your ground, do-or-die . . .

. . . or . . .

. . . you may avail yourself of this awesome Optional Rule: Victory By Means of Induced Vadering!

Here's what you do. When you're locked into that final death-clench, you engage your autopilot, you stealthily slip out of your cockpit, and you haul ass to the nearest spaceport. You book a spacefold to the planet where your nemesis's parents live. When you arrive planetside, you clean yourself up, and you put on your Sexy Self, 'cause you're about to seduce the silver, my friend! That's right! You use all of your wiles to seduce one or both of your nemesis's parents, and then you make sure you get your name on all the paperwork, baby! Because you're adopting your nemesis as your own child! BRILLIANT!!!

I think it's pretty slick, at any rate.

Obviously, this path favors player characters with high natural charisma stats and/or those explicitly trained in the arts of seduction. It'll also require quite a bit of research and investigation time, but that should work itself out, since you usually meet your nemesis relatively early on in your character arc, so just block out extra detective time for yourself.

If your nemesis's parents are dead, you may have to multiclass as a necromancer to pull off this particular caper. This will eat up more time. Or you could contract this out to a hired necromancer. This will eat up more money.

If your nemesis was grown in a vat or raised by a robot in an auto-creche-lotta these enemy ace types are war orphans as it turns out-then your task goes from seduction to impersonation. You basically conjure a Mother/Father/Guardian/etc from the psych profile you've compiled of your nemesis. If they're vat-grown, you may end up pulling a Frankenstein Routine-as, say, the military-industrial complex biohacker who oversaw the relevant production line of synthetics-which can be its own kind of fun, for sure!

However you do it, this all leads up to a confrontation where your nemesis comes home victorious . . . but then you jump on the scene to reveal yourself as your nemesis's Mother/Father/Creator/Bio-Vat Maintenance Technician . . . and another Final Battle ensues!

Which is neat, right?

'Cause usually it's the bad guy who gets to pull a cruel twist. But you're the good guy, and you're pulling the cruel twist. Which is a change-up, for sure.

I think it's neat.

PEOPLE GET MAD . . . (#3)

. . . when Star Trek goes away, and then they get mad when Star Trek comes back.

People get mad.

MONDAY'S THRESHOLD #1:

Below you will find a playlist of music. It is strictly a list. You will find no download links.

Some of the entries say LISTENER'S CHOICE or REDACTED. LISTENER'S CHOICE is, I presume, self-explanatory. A REDACTED song may be treated as a LISTENER'S CHOICE, or you may endeavor to find out what song has been redacted. Or you may skip LISTENER'S CHOICE and REDACTED cuts altogether. I leave it to you.

Here we go . . .

1.Konya wa Hurricane/Kinuko Omori(Bubblegum Crisis OST)

2.Who Turned You On?/Wilson Pickett

3.One Night in Neo Kobe City/Masahiro Ikariko and Motoaki Furukawa (Snatcher Sega CD OST)

4.Can You Speak This?/Henry Rollins

5.Going Under/Devo

6.REDACTED

7.LISTENER'S CHOICE

8.Good Luck/Basement Jaxx featuring Lisa Kekaula

9.Message No.9/Tomoko Tane (Gasaraki OST)

10.Obsession/Animotion

11.Explode/Tay Zonday

12.Wedding Vows in Vegas/ Was (Not Was) featuring Frank Sinatra, Jr.

13.Honoo no Sadame/TETSU (Armored Trooper Votoms OST)

14.Topsy Part Two/Cozy Cole

15.Six Underground/Sneaker Pimps

16.Primal Eyes (The 3rd Birthday version)/Yoko Shimomura (The 3rd Birthday OST)

17.Mr. Roboto/Styx

18.Respect(Lower East Side)/Toshihiko Sahashi (The Big O OST II)

19.Do It Again/Easy Going

20.BUDDY RICH IMPOSSIBLE DRUM SOLO/Audio From YouTube Video

21.Red Zone Fighter/Shiro Sagisu (Megazone 23 Part II OST)

22.Life Is Beautiful/Riyou Kinugasa, Takuya Kobayashi, and Hiromi Mizutani (Deadly Premonition OST)

23.REDACTED

24.Knock Off/Chu Ishikawa (Tokyo Fist OST)

25.Debbie/Architecture In Helsinki

26.LISTENER'S CHOICE

27.Pleasure of Tension/Masahiro Ikariko and Motoaki Furukawa(Snatcher Sega CD OST)

28.Land of Confusion (Extended Version)/Genesis

29.Track 07 (Gouf Custom vs. The MS Team)/Kohei Tanaka (Mobile Suit Gundam The 08th MS Team OST 3)

30.HOT (I need to be Loved, Loved, Loved, Loved)/James Brown

31.Track 08 (Gundam EZ8 vs. Apsaras III)/Kohei Tanaka (Mobile Suit Gundam The 08th MS Team OST 3)

32.End of Desire (Answer Again)/Yoshiaki Ohuchi (M.D.Geist II:Death Force OST)

33.REDACTED

34.Schwarzwald's Speech/Dialogue from The Big O

35.Tyrhung (Classic 8 Bit Version)/Kenichi Arakawa (The Dark Spire OST)

36.200 Years/Henry Gibson (Nashville OST)

37.Destiny/Garrett Morris

38.Auvers Blue/Katteni-Shiyagare (Kemonozume OST) 

39.Quick Joey Small/Kasenetz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus

40.It's My Life/Talk Talk

41.Ark de Grande City/Takehito Nakazawa and Hiroaki Kagoshima (Genocyber OST II)

42.Hurry Up Tomorrow/The Nu'rons

43.Half Truth/Chu Ishikawa (Tokyo Fist OST)

44.Rikishi's Theme/Masao Yagi (Ashita No Joe OST)

45.There's A Man Outside/Henry Rollins

46.Merciless Soldier/Hironobu Kageyama (M.D.Geist OST)

47.REDACTED

48.REDACTED

49.Invid Theme (The Flower of Life)/Michael Bradley and Steve Wittmack (Robotech OST)

50.Way Out/The Boylords

51.Fashion/David Bowie

52.Final Song and Dance/The Lower Depths(Donzoko) (1957) OST

53.Into Your Heart/Koda Kumi

54.How Far To Paradise /Derek Jackson (Area 88 OVA OST)

55.Festivo/Keiichi Suzuki (Zatoichi (2003)OST)

56.Dunbine Tobu/MIQ (Aura Battler Dunbine OST)

57.Monday Morning/Christina Aguilera

58.REDACTED

59.Pleasure of Tension/Masahiro Ikariko and Motoaki Furukawa (Snatcher Sega CD OST)

60.REDACTED

61.Violence of the Flame/Hironobu Kageyama (M.D.Geist OST)

62.Beauty in the Sleepless Forest/Saki Takaoka (Megazone 23 Part 3 OST)

63.The Fame/Lady Gaga

64.Waltz/Toru Takemitsu (The Face of Another OST)

65.The Woods and the Goddess/Riyou Kinugasa, Takuya Kobayashi, and Hiromi Mizutani (Deadly Premonition OST)

66.Fukkatsu no Ideon/Isao Taira (Space Runaway Ideon OST)

67.A Cruel Angel's Thesis/Yoko Takahashi (Neon Genesis Evangelion OST)

68.Ex Lion Tamer/Henry Rollins cover version

69.Alexandria/Takehito Nakazawa and Hiroaki Kagoshima (Genocyber OST II)

70.Confrontation/Takehito Nakazawa and Hiroaki Kagoshima (Genocyber OST II)

71.Enemy Attack/Ulpio Minucci and Arlon Ober (Robotech OST)

72.Battle Stations/Arlon Ober (Robotech OST)

73.Genocide/Takehito Nakazawa and Hiroaki Kagoshima (Genocyber OST I)

74.The Universe Spreading To Infinity/Hiroshi Miyagawa (Space Battleship Yamato OST)

75.REDACTED

76.White Storm/Masaharu Iwata,Hitoshi Sakimoto, and Hayato Matsuo (Ogre Battle SNES OST)

77.Selene/Chu Ishikawa (Tokyo Fist OST)

78.Komm, susser Tod/Shiro Sagisu and Arianne Schreiber (The End of Evangelion OST)

79.Break the Chinese Sword/Isao Tomita (Zatoichi Meets One-Armed Swordsman OST)

80.Cantata Orbis/Koichi Sugiyama (Ideon: Be Invoked OST)

81.Hyacinth House/The Doors

82.Apologize (Bleecker Street)/Toshihiko Sahashi (The Big O OST II)

83.Main Theme/Mark Morgan (Dark Seed II OST)

. . . AND NEVER STOP LOOKING FOR THE DOOR INTO MONDAY . . .

THE NEW DREAM #11:

 

-something to do with a drunk guy

likes getting pictures of himself

gets known for his hats

like

he puts on the hat

hats, actually

'cause he's got different hats he puts on

for these pictures

things are more festive with hats

one presumes

I think also too

that this guy will spontaneously find hats

wherever he happens to be

usually in shitty, noisy local-bait restaurant-bar type establishments in Florida

like not tourist-bait

local-bait

they have that phony tourism-centric economy

but lotsa parts o'Florida ain't Disney

ain't even Universal

ain't even any malls, y'know, so the phony tourism-centric economy kinda just involutes, and has to suck in the locals with these sortsa food-as-entertainment infantilization schemes,

call it the 'Touristification' of the local genpop-

-I should probably mention hurricanes

'cause this drunk guy talked up re-initializing the hurricane season as a new form of 'immersive tourism venture' wherein people could participate in 'protracted blackout culture' 

which is a funny term for a drunk guy to use

but I think he's talking about mass outages from Category 4s and 5s and 6s and what have you

using marketing to recover opportunity from calamity

emphasizing mythologized notions of 'authenticity' and 'togetherness'

something to do with outdoor grilling

fryin' up eggs on sidewalks

never taking potable water for granted ever again

if you survive-

-at some point

our drunk guy comes to the attention of Christian moral crusader folks

who despise him for his drunkenness, accuse drunk guy of setting a bad example on social media,

gotta protect the kids,

even though this drunk guy's following mostly consists of middle aged white men who resent their wives and children but are too locked into Routine to ever really cut loose,

but then the holy rollers turn out to be molesters and tax cheats,

so the whole thing ends up as kerfuffled fiasco drizzled with bullshit-

-it should be noted

that our drunk guy

built his online following not just on his embarrassingly cringey party pics

but also his long-and-winding rants against political correctness and virtue signaling and so forth,

typical beerdrinker shit

but then the drunk guy posts a sincere one, wherein he wrote searchingly about his need to post himself, to affirm himself, to exist beyond the confines of his own skull, his loneliness, his desire to be the guy that you always remember as a laugher, who takes life as it comes, as the guy with the hats'n'shit,

but now

drunk guy was wondering

"Is that all there is to this life? Or is there something more?!"

this

of course

was prelude to a truly vomitous phase of public piety

a mixture of out-of-context Bible quotes and New Agey daily affirmation memes, with allusions to yoga-but, mercifully, no pics-and meditation,

so,

y'know,

the pseudo-rebel drunk guy

degenerating into right-wing political correctness and religiousy virtue signaling

just as one does

in the benighted state of Florida-

-but comes the turn

God

was listening

God

was

indeed

touched

by our drunk guy's social media posts

and the Lord did preserve him from cancer and heart disease and car crash

God 

for reasons only God knew

blessed our drunk guy 

with 10,000 years of life,

that's 10,000 years of social media posts of party hat pics inside shithole local-bait restaurant-bars-

-yeah,

it got super dark at the end

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #16:

 

REPUBLICANS BAN ALL LITERACY, NUMERACY, AND DISSENT IN FAVOR OF INCOHERENT HOLLERING, FARTS, SHARTS, AND CAR CRASHES.

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #28:

THROWBACK TO 2009:

So, like . . . Canzo Empyrean . . . that's just one of Destro's concussion dreams after getting injured, right? 'Cause he's got that full head, uh, metal, uh, like, all-enclosing mask-so, uh, he must've gotten knocked out in battle-'cause they fire off an unbelievable amount of ordnance on the, uh, the G.I.Joe cartoon show, but nobody ever gets killed. But people are gettin' knocked about, and banged up, so they must catch some kinda damage, right?

Or maybe it's a narcissism deal. Villains are narcissistic. Destro's a villain. Could Canzo Empyrean be fan fiction about Destro-written by Destro himself?! 'Cause he's too impatient to cultivate a proper fanbase?! He's, uh, like, inducing a fan cultural product all on his own!?!?

Dude. I think that's it. Gotta be.

PEOPLE GET MAD . . . (#2)

. . . at the status quo, and then they get mad when things change.

People get mad.

TRUE CRIME RE-ENSNACKTMENT.

 

TO SNACK AND SNACK NOT.

 

MOBY-SNACK: A SAGA OF THE SNACKY SPERMACETTY.

 

NOT ALL WHO SNACK ARE LOST.