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First Things First
- You're looking for the Altoids 9v USB Charger, right? (Buy it here)
- If you're wondering who I am or what's going on, this might be helpful.
I've killed. I've killed today.
Tens. Hundreds. I didn't lose count, I never counted in the first place. All of them dead.
I prefer neurotoxins. They're faster, less messy, and more economical. I'm not above less refined means to end lives. Smother, suffocate, burn, drown, or smash -- yes, smash. I will do, can do, and have done it all.
People ask what have they ever done to me to deserve to die. I say, what have they ever done for me? Nothing. They're ruthless, selfish. The world is better without them.
They'd kill me if they had the chance.
People say the first kill is the hardest. It sticks with you. Every kill after the first is a futile attempt to erase the memory from your life; your soul.
I don't even remember my first.
I remember today's, though. A quick burst of poisonous gas and the little bastard's nervous system is destroyed, he just didn't know it. It was funny, sickly satisfying the way he limped away. Taking those final steps before the legs gave out and the oxygen stopped flowing. The heart stopped pumping. Did he know? Did he know he was dying, his life was over? Were his final thoughts about his short, worthless life spent doing nothing but consuming and hoping to one-day reproduce? Or did he not know? Did he suddenly realize that, despite all odds, he was no longer alive?
I remember last night's. You can't tell me she didn't deserve it, the way she threw herself at me. Invading my space without welcome, touching my things. Her disgusting little hands dragging across the surface of the things I own. When I was done watching her with a disconnected sense of indignity, I grabbed a cloth and smothered the life out of her. Discarded her lifeless carcass just as quickly. Then, back to whatever I was reading before she sauntered into my life.
They think they can go on living without paying for the consequences, they're wrong. They think they can come into my home, my car; they think they can follow me. They think their tiny little lives matter more than mine. They don't understand that I will kill them simply because I can. Because nobody has come along to stop me.
It's not that I enjoy it. I don't crave it. The death. The killing. I do it because I need to. Because not all life is sacred. Not every living thing deserves the sanctity I reserve for myself. Some just deserve to die, and I have no problem being the force of death for these. I'm the wildfire clearing the brush from the forest, allowing for more life. Better life. Things more deserving of life. I am that force.
They are that brush.
They deserve to die.
They must die.
Damn spiders.
Posted 9:52pm Wed Aug 27, 2008 by Aaron Dunlap
If wisdom teeth are so smart, why are mine coming in sideways?
In a little under a month, I am going to be sedated and all four of my mandibular third molars are going to be yanked, nay, torn from their nesting place inside my jaws.
Wisdom teeth, as they're called, are a sort of russian-roulette entrance exam for adulthood. They're teeth that come in much later than your others, that occasionally do so without problems, but often cause havok on their way in.
I started feeling them coming in when I was about 20, so I figured I was lucky, but apparently am not. An x-ray earlier this year showed that they were coming in sideways and would either impact against my other teeth and hurt like candied death, or be just fine.
An x-ray this morning showed that from the way they're headed, it wont be long before the pain starts.
I'm always wary now when dental professionals tell me I need an expensive procedure, especially very common ones. When I was younger, my parents were duped by an orthodontist into getting me braces I really didn't need (my bite pattern is identical now to how it was before). It seems like wisdom-teeth pulling is one of those things dentists love to charge you for, like car dealerships and their underbody sealants, and when I was told the first time I should get them pulled I took a "wait and see" approach.
It's been 6 months, and I've waited and I've seed.
The path to impaction is set. Left unabated, those suckers will continue to grow sideways and will push my existing teeth into themselves. I've already got symptoms of impaction. I also have a cavity in one of the wisdom teeth, because it's impossible to get a toothbrush up there, so whenever I have anything sweet it's like a shooting gallery of pain.
Pull them out, I say.
Plus, since I'm still in my twenties I've still got young-people healing powers. If I waited until I was older and the pain really started, the extraction would put me out of commission for over a week. Now, I'm told I should be back to normal in a weekend.
There's something I like about finding something that will hurt later and removing it before it does.
It might be strange to have a doctor tell you that in 10 years your appendix will get infected and rupture, so they might as well take it out now while you're young and know you have insurance. It might sound like a sales pitch. It would be different, though, if they knew for certain.
If a doctor said there was a 70% chance that my appendix would rupture in 10 years, I probably wouldn't have the surgery now. If it was 100%, though, I'd probably just get it over with.
There is a 100% chance that my wisdom teeth are going to hurt, hurt a lot, in the next decade.
I wish there were more things that could be predicted with full certainty and removed, but wisdom teeth and appendices are really the only things you don't really need in the first place.
And tonsils.
And spleens.
Take them all out at birth, I say, them and that dreaded foreskin.
If this extraction is without immediate positive results, I should remind myself that I'll at least be getting a prescription for Vicodin out of it. Vicodin. Love it.
Posted 2:38pm Fri Aug 22, 2008 by Aaron Dunlap
I stare at the blank field, fingers poised above a keyboard too posh to be considered a writer's tool. I rack my brain for something interesting in my life to tidy up and toss into the universe-at-large.
I tell myself it'll be easier if I pretend nobody reads this. This opens me up to write things I would otherwise worry about being judged for. It also makes me wonder why I'd be writing something nobody's going to read.
Some people write in journals or diaries, if there is a difference in definition other than the typical gender of the one using either term. They pour their lives onto ink-soaked pages and lock them away in nightstand drawers, never to be read.
"It's just for me," they might tell themselves or anybody both near and interested enough to inquire.
These people are bad writers.
I give up on trying to recall a recent event worth writing about and instead try to conjure some opinion or observation salient enough to craft into a lazy essay. I pause for a moment to reflect on the word salient and wonder if it shares a root with saline and somehow means salt.
No, it comes from salire -- which I somehow know is Latin for jump.
I wonder both how and why I know so much Latin. The sheer number of Latin phrases that have snuck into common English is pretty annoying. Per se, id est (i.e.), exempli gratia (e.g.), et cetera (etc.), and e pluribus unum, ad infinitum. These are the old standbys, sure, but there's also quid pro quo, which everybody knows because of Hannibal Lecter, and things like sine qua non and post hoc, ergo proctor hoc which I would be perfectly fine with not knowing.
After, therefore, because of.
I'm not a lawyer or a constitutional scholar, I don't need all this dead language taking up valuable real estate in my brain.
I wonder if this is enough for a post. It's not much, and it's a pretty lay-person angle. I could call it something like veni vidi vici or I, vox populi. It's all about the cute titles for me. I'd be fine with a perfectly mundane story about how dogs are better than cats (they are) so long as it could be adorned with a clever title like "Reining cats and dogs." Who cares if it doesn't entirely make sense; I substituted "raining" with "reining;" I'm like a genius.
No, that's too showy. It'll come off like I just want to flaunt all the Latin I know, dressed up like a complaint. Like, oh man, what am I going to do with all this cash I have? Don't you hate it when you have SO MUCH CASH.
I wish I had as many dollars as Latin phrases I know.
I realize that most people probably don't know that the word "agenda" is a straight Latin word. It's the plural of "agendum," a task needed to be performed. I also bet most people probably don't care in the slightest. Maybe I deserve to know all this useless Latin, taking such absurd joy in it.
I decide to drop the whole idea.
Maybe I could write some kind of little story. No, I'm too wrapped up in my final-edit of Mind + Body to let more stories swim around in my head. Besides, there's no such thing as a "little" story once I have a go at it.
I remember poor Jack Gerrardo and his pending adventures in Normandy, and hope I sometime remember to put another week into that sad tale. I'll do it once I remember what the metaphor was supposed to be in the first place. I think the "falling" was supposed to represent something. Death, or life, or war, or baggy pants.
I take a few laps between the my desk and the fridge. I'm thirsty but it's too late for something heavy like juice or one of the many of man's finder brewed beverages. I consider yet again abandoning this venture, writing something on my stale website.
I could go to sleep, probably. I'm most likely tired enough by now that all the ideas, concerns, and conversations I need to have with myself wont get much traction in my brain as I lay in bed and stare into the insides of my eyelids.
I really should write something, though. Maybe some kind of reminder that M+B will be finished and published soon. No, they're probably tired of me stringing that one out. I don't want to be like Chinese Democracy or Duke Nukem Forever.
I wonder for a moment if the ever-pending Chinese Democracy album is some kind of... statement. Like, there will never be democracy in China, so there'll never be that album. I stop, though, because I know so little about music that when I try to analyze it I only embarrass myself. Duke Nukem, however, I can speak with all kinds of authority on.
I retreat to my closet where my libations are stored, stare blankly at my collection of booze from when I'd turned 21 and decided that if I was going to drink at all I'd have to be an expert at it. The hobby was quickly abandoned on account of such little payoff, but it always bothers me that I've got this fancy liquor that I never use. I've had this bottle of Glenlivet for over a year and I bet plenty of pennyless alcoholics would rape a goat to get a hold of such a drink.
I smile at myself and the goat phrase, knowing I could never use such a thing on my site because of my imaginary audience of 11-year-olds and stubborn, middle-age prudes.
I pop the corked cap from the bottle of Glenlivet and take a small swig, for old time's sake. It's pleasant at first, I don't grimace uncontrollably like I did when I first tried whiskey. I detect the subtle, woody notes and, like always, wonder if there's just a hint of apple in the recipe. Just as quickly, though, I remember why I always regret scotch. As it goes down, there's that burning sensation down my throat that is far too reminiscent of the feeling of having very recently vomited. Perhaps this is the fault of my spectacular sense-memory, or perhaps I just have a certain distaste for vomit that I don't share with the average drinker.
Back to my chair, fingers over the keyboard once more, I am completely out of ideas.
I sigh a slow, deliberate sigh. An actor's sigh. A stage sigh, like a stage whisper. Not for my benefit, but to let anybody who might be watching know that I'm hopeless.
I resign myself another no-post day for me-dot-com. I close the tab and scour the internet, looking for some kind of distraction.
Posted 2:06am Sun Aug 10, 2008 by Aaron Dunlap
But this advertisement I keep seeing on TV offends me in many unusual ways:
It's not a joke, sadly. Witness the penultimation in taste and tact.
Posted 11:58pm Sat Jul 26, 2008 by Aaron Dunlap
E3 starts tomorrow, and astute observers might notice that I am not currently in LA.
This will be the first time since 2004, the first year I was old enough to get in, that I wont be attending E3. Also, neither will any of my colleagues from whatever gaming site I happen to work for at the moment (GameBump still).
The reasons for this are purely financial, as I (for once) don't have $planeticket and $hotelroomforaweek lying around in petty cash. Right now, even the thought of $gastogetoairport seems pretty steep.
If any cool people ask, though, I'm not going because E3 is totallu dead etc etc. Last year was pretty much a nightmare for me, and if this year were organized the same I wouldn't even want to go, but it's back at the LA Convention Center and not at a thousand hotels across Santa Monica. Whatever, nobody cares about my coverage anyway.
In leiu...loue....loo...lieu of actually going to E3, I made this new site called e3Feed...
The short of it is that it uses RSS feeds to automatically slurp all the content from over a dozen gaming news sites, swishes it around in its digital mouth, and spits out only the E3 stories. Users can then select the sources they want to see stuff from and search for specific words/games/etc. It's entirely automated, I just set it and forget it.
This is the first full-production site I've done entirely on my own (usually I have someon else (John) do the graphic design), and it's the first time I've made really heavy use of AJAX (if you don't know what that is, consider yourself lucky) so I'm sort of both unusually proud and secretly ashamed of it simultaneously.
Ever since RSS feeds came around I've wanted to do some kind of... thing to merge multiple sites' content automatically and this is the first time I've gotten to play around with the concept. The idea can be expanded beyond just E3 news, and I eventually want to get into some kind of smart analysis of link maps (site A links to site B report about site C's coverage of story X) and site ranks (therefore site C must be better).
At this point, I really have no idea how many websites I currently own and operate.
Posted 5:46pm Sun Jul 13, 2008 by Aaron Dunlap
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