Saricks, Brendan J.

Perfume

The toilet seat was down…

There should be no reason for the toilet seat to be down; he certainly hadn’t put it down. He lived alone and, when you live alone you can leave the toilet seat in whatever position you see fit. There was a time when the seat was always down (unless he forgot - an act the invited extreme overreaction,) but those days had long since passed.

But the toilet seat was still down…

It must have fallen down. These things were subject to gravity just like anything else. It must have fallen down. There was no other potential explanation for it, nothing rational anyway. Gravity exerted its dominance over matter and slammed the toilet seat down. Elementary my dear Watson.

However, there is the question of the perfume… 

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The Birthday Post - Welcome to 3.0

It is currently 1:30am here in middle America. It will be significantly later by the time I finish this post, and later still by the time you actually read it, but right now its 1:30am on July 13th, 2010; my 29th birthday.

When I decided to start blogging again I wanted to avoid posts that delved into my personal life. To most, my life is as uninteresting as the guy they sit next to on the bus, and is therefore not really for public consumption. It is my opinion (I hope) that will drive readership here, and that was my intended focus.

But man, you guys would not believe what has happened to me in the last few months.

It’s my birthday and even though I’m only 2 posts in to my original content-pact, I am going to go off the reservation a little bit and talk frankly with you. I don’t want to give you too many details, I fear some situations herein are still too delicate to even be approached, let alone touched, but I want to tell you about me before, me now, and where me is going. Grammar school is not on the docket (sorry Aaron.) This will probably be scatterbrained. But come on, it’s almost 2am at this point, you would be scatterbrained too.

It’s pretty wild how far a year can take you.

A year ago, I was in the middle of Four Player Coop’s 15 minutes of fame. I remember sitting on the couch at Joe’s place (a name that means nothing to you, but means the world to me) watching G4 and seeing “Four Player Coop” scroll across the bottom of the screen in relation to a news story we had broke.

That was it kids, we had made it.

Upon reflection, all the bullshit that happened before and has happened since was insignificant to that moment. But even that moment has been upstaged by Bullshot!’s marginal success. I cannot give you the emotion I feel when it comes to finding out someone makes time to listen to your inane bullshit. It is a feeling without words. It has happened a lot of the past year, and it never gets old. I will never be able to thank you guys for that, but I will do what I can.

I cannot tell you what lay in 4pc’s future, I can only tell you that its past was a lot of fun.

I haven’t played a video game in a month. Seriously, you can check that shit. What’s worse, I haven’t enjoyed a video game in 2 months (apologies to Alan Wake and Prince of Persia - although I was still fair to both of you.) Guys, maybe you don’t understand the weight of that statement. I have not, in my 29 years on this earth, ever experienced an apathy towards video games like the one I am experiencing right now. In any other similar episode (similar in terms of feeling - not in terms of duration) I would simply chalk it up to being burnt out.

But this time feels…different

Is is permanent? (God I hope not, StarCraft 2 and Dead Rising 2 are just around the corner!) I don’t know for sure because I don’t know anything for sure right now, but it feels like its on the backburner until some other things get sorted out.

Yes there is a girl, yes there is a idea…yes, I think everything will be ok. Three topics so unrelated that the dial spins all the way back ‘round to “related.”

The bottom line is this. The last 2 months of my life have been wonderful and terrifying. I don’t know if this is the start of a mid-life crisis or if I legitimately just starting life as I will know it, but it’s pretty incredible. I don’t know what is going to happen to 4pc, I don’t know what is going to happen to me, but I know I’m going to write. I am going to write a lot and see what comes of it. Hopefully, you will stick along for the ride.

Welcome to 3.0

The Horror of Horror

This is a topic near and dear to my heart. Horror has ever been, and will continue to be, my favorite member of the genre pantheon, and I’m tired of seeing its definition and flavor watered down and applied to everything. Let me help you see the truth.

It seems to me that horror has been distilled to mean anything scary, from aliens to ax-murderers. This is incorrect. “Scary” is almost completely subjective. There are people out there terrified of cats (I know, weird right?), but I have a cat sitting right here next to me, and I do not live in a house of horrors.

Well, not for that reason anyway.

Horror does not equal scary. Horror IS scary, but it isn’t the embodiment of the word. Horror is bigger than scary. Horror is scary without explanation. But hold on, we are getting ahead of ourselves here.

The Ax-Murderer movie confuses me the most. I think this comes from the idea that an ax-murderer is horrible which, I admit, is awfully close to horror, but just because the root is the same doesn’t mean that the word means the same thing. Horticulture also shares the same root, but I don’t know how scary gardening is.

No wait, I take that back, I do.

Your ax-muderer isn’t a horror flick, it’s a thriller. The evil is a real, tangible thing and his motivations are real world motivations. A vengeful asshole with an ax isn’t horror, its just scary. Thrillers, however, are not the big villain here. There is a sub-genre that is mislabeled as horror more than any other.

Science-Fucking-Fiction

I love Sci-Fi, love it, but it causes me more horror-based heartbreak than any other genre (yes, I realize how ridiculous that statement is.) Without taking 20 minutes to show you every single wound this has caused me, let me save us some time and break it down quickly for you: If something that seems supernatural is then explained by science, even if its fake science, that makes it SCIENCE FICTION. I don’t care if your story has zombies, vampires, or Killer Klowns from Outer Space, if you explain their existence through science, then its Science Fiction. Please, for the love of my sanity, stop fucking this up.

So what is Horror?

Horror is the super-natural. Horror is the unexplained. Horror is ghosts, monsters, and anything that we can’t say “this is logical” or “science made this” to rationalize. There may even be a religious quality to horror (ghosts being the physical manifestation of souls for example), but the bottom line is that you cannot explain away a horror element. It exists for no rational reason, and that is why it is scary.

But, then again, this cat exists for no rational reason and I’m not really afraid of it…

Should I be?

The Line Between Fan and Fiction

I don’t know if you have seen this or not, but Blizzard is running a creative writing contest. The long and short of it is that you submit a story based on one of their universes, they read it, and if they like it YOU WIN. What you win is largely unimportant (to me anyway) but the opportunity to flex the creative muscle muscle is always appealing to me.

There are, of course, problems with this.

I am not a Blizzard Loremaster. Diablo means little to me, World of Warcraft was more about the loot than the story (even though the story, from what I gleaned of it, can be described only as thorough), and Starcraft is a Real Time Strategy game; I hate Real Time Strategy…but I loved Starcraft.

You’re confused. Hold tight, I got this.

I don’t like RTS games, but man Starcraft, fucking StarCraft. That game possessed my being for 2 or 3 years. Make no mistake, I was not the next Korean Starcraft Super-star, but I was the master of the Marine rush. The straight up, no bullshit, mother-trucking MASTER of the Marine rush.

And lets be honest with ourselves for a moment here, that game had a pretty bad ass story (40k-ites need to settle down - I get it ok?). Maybe it’s because I love a good Sci-Fi yarn, or that I could blur my eyes and see the zergs as Giger’s Alien (I love me some Alien - Aliens is number 3 on my Top 5 movies of all time), but whatever the case was, I really dug that story. I was so enamored by the story that I read the goddamned manual. Yes, Starcraft’s manual served as a prequel piece to the game’s storyline, and I read the whole thing.

But I don’t really remember anything.

I mean, I remember Xel-Naga, the zerg, the overmind (spoilers: dead), Jim Raynor, and being called a Judicator…but nothing else really stuck. So here I am, wanting to enter this contest for shits and grins, but finding that I may not be equipped to give the universe the respect it deserves.

And this, friends, is the trouble with Fan-Fiction; a trouble I am no longer concerning myself with.

I find that, in most cases, when someone releases a fan-fiction story for a franchise, it is overly wordy. Fans, for the most part, are proud creatures, and want to demonstrate their intimate understanding of the ‘verse to you. Marines don’t shoot bullets from their guns. They fire Tungsten-Carbide encased rounds made of Depleted Uranium from their T-734i Standard Issue Pulse Rifle. I’m all for being wordy, but at some point your average reader doesn’t give a shit. Sure, you will impress other fans with your technical vernacular, but a great story is a great story, blue-print analysis or not.

My understanding of the StarCraft universe is pedestrian bordering on handi-capable, so I don’t concern myself with that bullshit. My weaker understanding runs me into another problem however.

The story I’m writing for it is good (I think anyway - thanks, jerks) but is it a StarCraft story, or am I just taking a claustrophobic Sci-Fi tale and coloring it in with StarCraft crayons? Am I just pasting StarCraft construction paper onto this story and declaring it part of the ‘verse? I guess we will find out.

One thing that has always stuck with me was my buddy Hodapp’s words about the Halo Novels. He said they felt like a fan-fiction circle jerk. I think he may be kind of right. I loved the Halo novels (you noticed the past-tense too? Weird) but they skated that line between story and fan-fiction, sometimes falling into the ladder. I’m hoping I don’t fall prey to that, but I am also hoping that I manage to make a good StarCraft story.

That being said however, I suppose I would be ok with just making a good story. Maybe I’ll focus on that and see if the Xel-Naga want to play along…

Yes, We Can

My friends would never describe me as an emotional person. Irrational, Irritable, and (occasionally (maybe)) crazy but never emotional. So the revelation that I was very close to tears watching Obama’s acceptance speech tonight will probably come as a bit of a surprise. Hell, I was surprised. Love or hate Obama what you witnessed tonight is something you will tell your children about and that is an incredible thought.

Yes we can my friends. Yes, we can.

Teaching Old Dogs

It’s been a while since I have actually learned something new in regards to computers. Sure, when I switched over to using a Mac almost exclusively I certainly had to adapt, but I wouldn’t call that actual learning. My brain didn’t absorb any new knowledge; it simply transformed and shaped old knowledge until it was compatible with my new platform. Nothing i do in OSX is anything new… I just do it differently.  Not since I struggled to teach myself DOS in order to play my father’s copy of Strip Poker 3 (without his knowledge of course) can I say I have felt like I was discovering something.  Mining out a new section of brain so I can later fill it with the treasures of my labor.  

Youth Movement

It’s dark in this room.  To my left I can hear Plachs snoring softly on the couch. Behind me, Chester sleeps soundly in his room (with the door locked to prevent any nutsonface attacks from Joe) and beyond that, Joe sleeps while Arrested Development plays on his TV.

Zeros And Ones

One of the things I dread in life is going to the movies.

Nightmares

The mind is a funny thing.

When you are young it’s all about what’s hiding in the dark.  Your mind is so new and unexperienced that you don’t know what is hiding where you cannot see.  Your imagination betrays you and starts concocting all manner of terrible shit that could possibly be lingering under your bed.  Then your subconscious gets in on the fun and suddenly those unimaginable beasts are given life through your dreams.  When you are a kid, that’s what nightmares are:  An inexperienced mind terrorized by an imagination.

Of course, as we get older, we know that the Beasts of the Underbed aren’t real because our mind has been educated enough to know that the boogeyman cannot exist in the real world.  So just as a child acts up when it is neglected, your imagination, once again, begins plotting against you.

I cannot speak from any experience what your imagination comes up with when you are happily married.  I imagine your spouse dying or your children in peril are right near the top of it’s list.  I can, however, tell you what it does to a single person.

It brings up the happiest moments in your life (in regards to any relationship) and plays them over and over for you.  Maybe it’s just confused and thinks you will enjoy reliving those times.  In part it’s right… Dreaming those dreams are great when you are dreaming them.  But then you wake up… and realize it was all a dream.

Or, as the day progresses, a nightmare.

I just want the boogeyman back.

New Years Resolutions…

It’s been a while since we spoke last. I will skip the pleasantries because I assume your answers will be “Fine” and “No, nothing new.” Oddly enough, those are my answers as well.

Writing you ask? Well, it’s been so long since we talked that I’m sure you are expecting my opus to be complete. Hell, I’ve had a year to complete it; surely that was enough time.

Have I mentioned I’m a terrible procrastinator?

The truth of the matter is that I have done some writing in the last 365+ days since I last posted here. I wouldn’t say it was a “substantial” amount of writing… but it was certainly “an amount.”

So why am I here? That’s a valid question and I applaud you for asking it. Writing, in general terms, is a stimulus for me. It doesn’t matter if I am writing a blog, erotic Mirrormask fan fiction (Neil Gaiman Joke!), or the project formally known as “My Opus”, as long as I am writing something. Writing is the lube that allows the cogs in my brain to continue to spin and maybe, just maybe, churn out a story or two.

The ideas are many but the motivation is little (writing faux pas) so we will see how far I get with this year’s resolution.

Something real quick

Sorry for the lack of updates - been a busy few weeks. For those of you looking for a quick update: No writing to speak of but a lot of Windwaker.

For now you should all read this. It’s one of the best articles I have read and may earn The Wiikly a spot in the links section (a true honor indeed.)

Fish Out

The Blogger Beta Is Buggy As Shit

I’m going to bed because I am tired of trying to understand the reason the blogger beta (to which my account was moved automatically this evening) insists on double and triple posting my posts even after I delete them and republish the entire blog. If there are double posts of this or any other entry you know now that it isn’t because I’m an idiot.

Maybe this is why they call it “beta”.

Edit: Oh, and comments aren’t showing up for some reason. I have a feeling that may be on my end. I’ll investigate tomorrow when I am better rested (and care more.)

It’s Long - But I Allude To Sex Twice!

I’ve never had anything good to say about the Zelda games. Since the beginning of time I have beat a total of 2 Zelda games: Zelda 2 - The Adventure of Link (mario+elves+shooting sword - who the fuck didn’t love this game) and Four Swords (had to justify the purchase of the gba link cable… and I got to call io_burn a “loot-whoring fuckwit” which is always a plus.) Every other game (yes, I own all of them) has been given the standard 3 hours of play before it is inevitably shelved. Those play-throughs are, I imagine, quite similar to spending a night in bed with me (3 hours of boredom followed by no climax.) That is until the fucking Wii showed up. But I’m getting ahead of myself… let me go back a few weeks.

On the nights that I don’t have to get up at the ass-crack of dawn (8:20) I sit on the couch with my roommate Aaron. We watch Music HD (in the hopeless attempt to sneak a peak at Kelly Clarkson’s midriff is that fucking incredible outfit from that video where she is singing in the forest) while we sit on our apple laptops scouring the internet for nerd news. On the night in question I stumbled upon this bad-ass scripting program that trumped Final Draft (to which I have been a slave to for years) and was free.

You see kids, I’m writing a game. Writing may not be the appropriate verb for the activity I have been spending the last 5 years doing (procrastinating may be better) but that is neither here nor there. I bought Final Draft 6 way back when I thought that I may actually finish something and, shortly there after, Final Draft 7 came out so I upgraded. I spent a lot of money. Now, years later, I stumble across Celtx. Its Final Draft on steroids and its free. THIS IS WHAT I NEED TO MOTIVATE MYSELF TO FINISH THIS GAME - I NEED TO CONVERT NOW! There is only one problem: where, in my busy schedule, will I find the time?

While the obvious answer is “during the time you are sitting in front of the tv hoping to catch some Clarkson Belly Button” but it isn’t that easy… for me. I need to set time and a goal. I also can’t set a series of goals because that becomes far too overwhelming and I will end up watching House instead. So, baby steps. Turkey day is coming and I would be at my parents house with no video games. It’s perfect. My first goal: Print out what I have written so far (about 70 pages), edit it by hand, and then begin to transcribe them. I figure I have about 5 hours between the Turkey Day Movie (For Your Consideration - for those of you interested) and the dinner itself. I should be half way done with my goal which will, in turn, motivate me to finish it and get back to writing on this new program (which, in my mind, is going to be amazing.) I spend the next week getting excited about writing again. The ideas start to flow again. The floodgates open. I start listening to new and interesting music for scene inspiration. This is going to be it. I’m going to make this fucker.

Then, the Wii launches.

Have you played this fucking thing? I have. Hell, in this house alone we have 4 of the motherfuckers. We are starting a goddamned Wii bowling league. It’s amazing. And what launched with this amazing system? A Zelda game.

Have I told you about my relationship with Zelda?

Turkey Day Eve rolls around and I head to the parents to eat dinner with the fam. It’s nice, we had take out Indian Food, it’s pretty damn good, I highly recommend it. After dinner, I don’t feel so hot. Not my stomach (fuck you Indian Food Nay-sayers) I just feel shitty. It could be the fact I was working off 4 hours of sleep but it doesn’t feel like that. So I say “I’m going to go home and take a nap, pack, feed cat, and then head back over here at some ungodly hour to sleep for a few hours before I begin the trek back to writing. After my 4 hour nap I am left with an empty house and a cat who is starved for attention. So I sit down on the couch and turn on the TV while the cat takes up residence on my lap. Of course, it being midnight, there is precisely dick on. So what is a boy to do?

Well, I could do the three hours of Zelda and get that out of the way. I figure the case will look more prestigious with dust covering it anyway and I have a sweet spot for it on my shelf (between Four Swords and Wind Waker.) I do this now and I could be asleep at my parents house by 3:30 with a full day of editing ahead of me. Fuck it. Lets strap on the Wiimote and fucking do this.

And then it was 8:30am.

How could this be? Eight and a half hours? This is a fucking Zelda game. You’ve played one, you’ve played them all. Young no name kid goes on errand only to be swept up in an epic story involving an ultimate evil who, of course, turns out to be Gannon(dorf.) Whooptie-Shit. There is a reason the 3 hour rule exists. Why, the fuck, would I go almost three times as long for this game? Is it the Wii? Is it the story? What is it?

It’s really fucking good. I’m 30 hours in standing at the gates of the 2nd to last dungeon and I couldn’t be more enthralled.

What lies in the wake of the cruel bitch named Zelda is that I missed the movie (mom said I could sleep because she loves me more than she loves Christopher Guest Comedies) and only edited about 10 pages. And I’m still not done with the game. But, goddamnit, I will be. Then, only time will tell if I get back on the horse.

I can assure you of one thing though. Regardless as to how great this game is I know there is still one truth I can hold on to. No matter how much fun I have… I’m still better than Link in the sack.

You can bank on that shit.

This is how we spend our Saturday Nights

This post has been altered because it fucked up my template.  Maybe it will return…

To Do List

1) Make sure the site is bug free.
2) Thanksgiving Day write up
3) Fanboy discussion
4) Piss people off

Stay tuned kids. This should be good.