5/30/2007

Vampire Blues

So I should probably update my handful of readers on what happened to me last week. If you're feeling squeamish you should probably NOT read this, as it was traumatic enough to keep me away from my apartment for a week.

Basically, I woke up at 6 am a little stressed about things, a little bored with my job. You know, the usual deep thoughts you try to block out of your head. Well, before I could change my thought process, it was 6 or 7 at night and people were all in my room giving me medicine.

My back hurt like hell from twisting or falling, my teeth were a little cracked from falling or biting too hard, and my tongue was chewed to the point where I was on top of a bloody, puke covered pillowcase.

I thought I was pretty healthy before this, and before the last one I was even convinced I was somehow healing (see this). So it was a pretty big bummer, physical annoyances aside. Now I'm scheduled in to have my teeth fixed, my tongue is almost done itching as it regrows, and even my back might be ready for the co-ed soccer game on Sunday.



I decided to take a few positives from this, and one is that I need to be more social, I need to get out and maybe even consider a career change eventually. I lined up the GRE a couple Fridays from now. And I even decided that I don't have epilepsy that bad... so I jumped on the Epilepsy Foundation's website and figured maybe I could have something to offer people, and in the process maybe get something out of it myself.

One other thing- I finally got around to uploading the video of my "typical" seizure on to YouTube. So, if you're wondering, 0:17 - 0:11 is when it occurs, and I just keep looping through consciousness/unconsciousness. That is what wasn't treated with a little bottle of liquid last week. It evolved into something more major, and my memory is then wiped clean.

5/17/2007

The Past is the Future Now

I've always liked Russian literature. Maybe it's because people in college used to say I look Russian. Maybe it's because I took a semester of Russian in night school when I was a senior in high school. Maybe it's just because of that whole thing where, being born into the excesses of the 80's, I'm intrigued by the rigid order of Communism (Hipsters have embraced this irony).



I noticed it first when I read a few short stories by Chekhov, then picked up a copy of "First Love" by Turgenev. It was reading that novella that I put it together. First of all, in old Russian lit, everyone is a Prince, Princess, Duke, etc. This echoes in modern times, where everywhere you look there's a new celebrity with their parabolic fame. Just think of the former Real World stars now doing everything from bar events to hosting Girls Gone Wild videos to appearing in reunion shows. In Russian literature, it always seems like someone famous is passing through town to a great hubub. When Jessica Alba came to town to film a movie, it seemed as though everyone had gotten a glimpse of her, or had been near her at some point during the day.



There's something else, though. Both the Russian Revolution's coming and its aftermath show a country in a time of disarray. The USA right now is dealing with war, terrorism, global warming, energy crises, education problems, religious problems, and on and on.

I recently started reading The Brothers Karamazov- a book about the relationship of morality and religion, first and foremost. And it just shows how the debate of the effect of religion on human interaction will take place as long as man can speak. Just look at this:



Thanks for making me want to read the book, Bill O'Reilly!

5/07/2007

The Running of the Tourists

Awhile back, I decided rather than blowing all my time playing video games, I should try to create one or two. Well, it's pretty easy if you know where to start, and I downloaded something called XNA. It basically allows you to throw a bunch of stuff on the computer and using a little bit of computer programming, it can all turn pretty fancy quickly.

Well I'm not a great programmer, but I consider myself a decent idea man. I drew some inspiration from Bullfight, my favorite underappreciated game of all time, and decided to make a game based on the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain. The original plan was to have you control the guy running from the bulls, in all of his red handkerchiefed glory.




After talking to people about this, I stumbled upon an idea. What if you could control the bull, too? Like, pick your side at the start and if you're the bull, you have to run around other bulls to impale runners. Maybe you have to impale tourists and avoid little Spanish babies wandering across the screen. What happened was the more I thought about this scenario, the more I realized that I should probably just focus on the bull aspect and forget about the runners. I haven't touched the thing in months, because I was frustrated a simple game wouldn't run on my laptop. Maybe they ironed that out in the past few months. And I can finally make it happen.