The Ugly Organ is the most self-loathing album I have ever heard in my life, and I love it.

The album starts with a slide of organ keys into a carnival melody that sounds like riding a merry-go-round on the second circle of hell—“The Ugly Organist”—complete with faint screaming that builds to a shrill fever pitch before being abruptly cut off by four angry cracks of a snare drum into a burst of discordant guitars asphyxiated by an oppressive cello being bowed at breakneck speed. Within the barely two-minute runtime of “Some Red Handed Sleight of Hand,” Tim Kasher sings—atop frantic cello, organ fire, and violent drums—over 150 words comparing himself to a hypocritical reverend who “spews his sweet and salty sermon on the audience” whilst not following a single word of his own advice; Kasher then asks himself: “Why do I think I’m any different? I’ve been making money on my indifference.”

“Sing along, I'm on the ugly organ again. Sing along, I'm on the ugly organ, so let's begin.”

This is the crux of the record: a vicious attack on the self. The Ugly Organ is a record that hates itself—and I mean, really hates itself—led by a frontman who despises everything that he’s doing and more, which is namely selling his own heartache via records and show tickets, drawing inspiration from his own recent bitter divorce^#1 and sometimes just manufacturing his own misfortune, all to keep the fans screaming his band's name at shows, which makes him feel sick. And even though he hates himself for it, he keeps doing it anyway. The Ugly Organ is an exploration of the concept of selling out, told from the perspective of a self-aware sellout who wants to stop selling out but just can’t help himself. The Ugly Organ is an album about creating art not for yourself, but for others—for fame, fortune, and validation. This is a concept album through and through, written as a tragedy to be performed on a stage, with each sorry track transitioning into the next like one scene to another. But it’s not just a concept album—it's a message that any artist can relate to. It feels autobiographical. It feels deeply personal. It feels real.

“A couple hymns of confession, and songs that recognize our sick obsessions.”

“Some Red Handed Sleight of Hand” flows into “Art is Hard,” and this is where the gloves come off and all is laid bare. “Art is Hard” fully utilizes Gretta Cohn’s mastery of the cello to create a bleak baroque tragedy, like looking into a circus mirror and seeing only a twisted monster staring back—a twisted monster that claims they’re an artist but is actually a total fraud playing pretend. Kasher yells scathing rebukes in the third person, but he's not kidding anyone; he proclaims that he “falls in love to fail, to boost his CD sales” and that “the crowds may be catching on to the self-inflicted songs” and that he has to “sink to swim” and that he has to keep “regurgitating sorry tales about a boy who sells his love affairs” and that he has to “impersonate greater persons” because “we all know art is hard when we don’t know who we are,” because, at the end of the day, when you get on the stage and the crowd screams your name—“Oh, Cursive is so cool!”—it all just feels so good, and you are driven to repeat yourself over and over. This is all laced with thick irony, and wrapped in both post-punk and hardcore sensibilities with staccato cello edge and jarring, banshee-like guitar tones, amounting to a full-on attack of the senses, equal parts aural and psychic as hell. And this bitter questioning of self—this sordid tale of self-loathing and selling out—is one of the most popular songs on the record, the type of song that inspires real people in real crowds to shout “Cursive is so cool!” during the “Cursive is so cool!” part, without realizing the irony made manifest by doing the very thing that the lyrics are so contemptuous of.

“Keep churning out those hits, 'til it's all the same old shit.”

Cursive came to prominence in the early 2000s alongside groups like The Faint and the now-legendary Bright Eyes, the latter of which led by Conor Oberst, all of which were on the same label, Saddle Creek, founded by Justin Oberst—Conor’s brother—which formed a small collective of talented musicians from Omaha, Nebraska. Bright Eyes, with their soft acoustics, dubious saccharinity, and Conor’s uniquely poetic lyricism reminiscent of a drug-addled schoolboy with well-off parents who is also incurably white and very much wants to be Bob Dylan, landed Saddle Creek smack dab in Midwest Suburban Whiteboy Emo Music of Middling Quality territory, which wasn’t far from the truth at first. But after about three minutes into The Ugly Organ, anyone familiar with Cursive's previous three albums could tell something very weird was going on; we weren't in Nebraska anymore: this wasn’t the High School True Love Break Up music people had come to expect from Saddle Creek; this was Hate Myself for Singing High School True Love Break Up Music music accompanied by a crazy talented orchestra of ego-shredding strings and hellfire organs.

“Cut it out, your self-inflicted pain, is getting too routine.”

With the fourth track on the album—”The Recluse”—Tim Kasher goes right back to his old tricks, singing of the same sordid love affairs that he criticized just moments ago. “The Recluse” is a softer composition more reminiscent of what Saddle Creek listeners have come to expect, only with a jarring sparseness like that of The Cure’s “Lullaby,” with a picked guitar lead that lulls you into an intricate web and long-drawn cello notes like the theme song of the black recluse that's about to eat you. The whole thing is like being blissfully unaware that you're being devoured after being slowly swathed and made stupid with venom.

“You're in my web now. I’ve come to wrap you up tight 'til it’s time to bite down.”

I fell into the web of The Ugly Organ early in life. I was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1991, where I was surrounded by a confusing dichotomy of So So Def hip-hop and deep south country music, of which I’ve had my fill. (And decades later, these genres converged into the horrifying chimera of “country rap,” which I try to avoid like a pox.) When my mother moved closer to Florida in 2004, to a town with its own venue for hardcore shows, I fell in with the burgeoning “scene” crowd and discovered a multitude of bands I had never heard before, many of which were either too loud—Underoath, Alexisonfire, Chiodos—or too soft—Bright Eyes, Dashboard Confessional, Iron & Wine—or just too embarrassing—The Starting Line, Hawthorne Heights, Matchbook Romance—for me to truly get into. But, of course, as an impressionable thirteen-year-old kid, I pretended to like them all. I was a chameleon. I wanted to fit in so badly. I pretended so hard that I got a full-body picture of myself on a two-page spread dedicated to the “scene/emo phenomenon” in my school’s yearbook—I was the only picture—with labels and arrows pointing to my ripped-at-the-knees skinny jeans, long-in-the-front-short-in-the-back swoop haircut, patched-and-pinned messenger bag, and forlorn expression as if my still-beating heart had just been torn straight from my chest. (No, I am not making this up.) And, of course, I was embarrassed by the whole yearbook thing immediately after agreeing to do it and, as such, didn’t buy a copy; and I couldn’t find the thing online—so, unfortunately for you, dear reader, I don’t have that very mortifying picture to share with you, but the whole thing does illustrate that I had some self-awareness of my own fakery, even at a young age. But, regardless of all that, I liked to think that I was more than just some scenester, as I had a broader taste in music than the average “emo” kid, having dabbled in 80s pop and art rock for some time after a brief obsession with in-game just-driving-around-listening-to-the-very-80s-radio in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for hours while being high on child-approved amphetamines. What I’m trying to get at is: I was ripe for The Ugly Organ when it was released in 2003, but it was very much the black sheep of the emo scene at that time; everyone liked “The Recluse” and “Art is Hard,” but the rest of the album was considered kinda strange by the scenester elite, a bit too high-brow, a bit too artsy. But it wasn’t too high-brow for me—I was primed for The Ugly Organ, and it quickly became one of my favorite albums; and, at the time, I thought I understood it—the fact that Tim Kasher could point to himself and say what I heard as, “I’m a monster, haha! Look how self-aware I am! It’s cool to hate yourself!” was, to me, very cool indeed.

“They want to hear my deepest sins, the songs from The Ugly Organ.”

“Herald! Frankenstein” and “Butcher the Song” follow “The Recluse” as a return to the introspective self-loathing from earlier on the record, as if apologizing for regurgitating the same sordid-love-affair bullshit that he so strongly lambasted just minutes before. “Herald! Frankenstein” serves as the interlude to “Butcher the Song,” which is three minutes of the most woe-is-me, self-revulsion ever captured on an early 2000s emo-adjacent recording; the introduction, with cello like the stalking of a great white shark accented with echoing steel percussion, creates a harrowing atmosphere of anticipatory dread before exploding in the same dreadful cadence atop Kasher’s lyrical butcher knife that relentlessly hacks away at his own contrived persona. Before this, it could have been argued that the songs were about a character—The Ugly Organist—but this facade slips away as Kasher tears down the fourth wall and starts referring to himself directly: “So rub it in with your dumb lyrics. Yeah, that's the time and place to wring out your bullshit. And each album I'll get shit on a little more, 'Whose Tim's latest whore? Now, that's not fair—no, that's just obscene. I'll stop speaking for you if you stop speaking for me.” The veil has been lifted. The Ugly Organist is speaking directly on behalf of Tim, or vice versa—it’s impossible to tell because they’re both the same person.

“What a day to sever such ugly extremities. ‘What a lovely day,’ says the butcher as he raises his arm.”

Tim then turns around and does the exact same thing he was so critical of—again—belting out two more ballads about failed relationships. “Driftwood: A Fairy Tale” churns with the same lullaby energy as “The Recluse,” only this time comparing himself to Pinocchio in a relationship in which the spark has died, and he is now bored of his partner but insists that nothing is wrong while continuing to lie about still being in love, his nose growing each time he “proves it,” before being found out and cast out to sea as driftwood. “A Gentleman Caller” follows like a hurricane of punches to the face, the cello being bowed so aggressively that it sounds like a trumpet and the distortion on the guitar amp turned to eleven in what amounts to my favorite song on the record; a three-minute mood swing, the first half representing the visceral beginnings of a love affair both musically and literally—”You say you want to get even? You say you want to get your bad man good? Well, are you in the mood?”—where the guitar and the cello converge so well that it’s almost impossible to figure out where one ends and the other begins; and the second half representing the somber morning after, regretfully lying in bed next to the gentleman caller who just smooth-talked you into one of the biggest mistakes of your life.

“I'm not looking for a lover, all those lovers are liars…”

“A Gentleman Caller,” “Driftwood: A Fairytale,” and “The Recluse” can be taken as examples of the sellout songs Kasher bemoans on “Art is Hard”; songs about personal love affairs and misery that cash in and boost record sales, all designed to be chanted by an audience of sycophants; and considering the context these songs find themselves in bed with, it’s not a coincidence that they function in this manner. These songs were perfectly positioned to be catchy, emo-adjacent, chantable hits containing subject matter that the fans wanted, but they are positioned within such a clever milieu of self-awareness and loathing that it makes the songs feel as if they’re tongue-in-cheek and fully aware of themselves. Tim Kasher knows what he’s doing; he’s playing the audience a little bit, but he’s also using this vehicle of self-hatred to continue doing what he has always done: sing about the misery he so hates to sing about. In a way, he’s found a clever way to cheat the system. The Ugly Organ proves this out with every song; it is one of the most self-hating, woe-is-me albums ever recorded—and, in a way, one of the most self-indulgent albums ever recorded because of it. It is so steeped in Tim Kasher’s own self that, on the surface, it’s hard not to see The Ugly Organ as some sort of post hoc justification of his own bullshit. But is it really that shallow? Is it that easy to hand-wave away? Well, I’ve only covered the first half of the record—and I’m not about to come to your own conclusions for you.

“My ego's like my stomach, it keeps shitting what I feed it.”

In many ways, Cursive’s The Ugly Organ and I were made for each other. We're both unflaggingly self-aware, cynical, and critical of everything—especially ourselves. If you have read any of my previous work, you know that it's steeped in self-hatred, self-mockery, and critical—sometimes unfair—analysis of my own bullshit, while at the same time bemoaning the fact that I can’t seem to shut up about those same things; as if one of the many reasons I hate myself is because these are the only things I have to talk about, and The Ugly Organ sits in that same psychic space. The Ugly Organ and I are a match made in heaven. And when I first heard The Ugly Organ—when I was much younger—I thought I had the album all figured out. I thought it was very cool to hate myself, to point out my own flaws and revel in the fact that I was able to detest myself with such poignant clarity; in a way, I still think it’s cool: I have the utmost respect for those who are brutally honest about themselves, those who know their own bullshit and call it out, and this is certainly one of the appeals of The Ugly Organ. But simply being able to point these things out isn’t cool in and of itself—it’s only cool when you do something productive with that information. You can't wallow in self-hatred forever—you would stagnate, get nothing done, and drag everyone down around you. You have to do something with the negative energy—you have to use it to build a better you.

“The organ’s playing my song, but this song’s gone on too long.”

It tracks that the more self-aware an animal becomes, the more they tend to hate themselves. Surely, the human condition is a complicated thing, counterintuitive almost. We are born into these flesh balloons packed full of mushy organs, all working in tandem to keep us alive, but one of these organs seemingly works against our best interest, enabling us to hate ourselves, makes us want to die; that ugly organ is none other than the brain. The fact that the brain can make us loathe ourselves with every fiber of our being seems to contradict the perhaps evolutionary drive to not suck on the end of a revolver and end it all. But underneath great ugliness is often some terrible truth just waiting to be uncovered. Maybe the brain, when it tells us something horrible about ourselves, is trying to show us something, something true about ourselves, something that needs to be addressed, something that needs to be changed. Maybe the ugly organ is only ugly so that we may use that ugliness as motivation to better ourselves and the world around us.

Or maybe Cursive’s The Ugly Organ is literally just about large keyboards with pipes—who knows?

References:

#1. https://www.talkhouse.com/artist/tim-kasher/

#Music #Cursive #Autobiographical

Original Text

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Prologue

On the night of June 10th, 2024, I was on top of the world, literally amongst the clouds, on a rooftop bar, toasting a glass of cabernet to the neon below, feeling like a modern-day Dionysus – a real god of wine and whimsy and witlessness and just getting as loaded as humanly possible. And by the next morning, I was dead.

This is the story of how I died.

Chapter I: Prelude to the Sheer Excitement of Golf

“Dionysus mingles in the wine new powers, sending high adventure to the thoughts of men.” –The Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation. 1938.

Roughly nineteen hours earlier, on the tail end of June 9th, 2024, during those wee hours when the sun is barely birthed from the horizon and the dawn is covered in damp, I woke up from a half-sleep stupor wondering if I had gotten any sleep at all, as one does when they only get one hour of light sleep and absolutely no Michael Stipe^#1 sleep the night before. I had to wake up early – four-in-the-morning early – to catch a flight to the fairways^#2 of Maine; I was expected at a golf charity event the next day, for a client that I managed. At the time,^#3 I worked as a Customer Success Manager^#4 for a Contact Center as a Service^#5 company, and I managed a “portfolio of clients” (as they say in sales world), and sometimes these clients wanted me to attend their company events or travel to their headquarters to present some pretty-but-ultimately-meaningless slides or wine-and-dine them in some weird corporate courting ritual, all in an effort to convince them that they should continue to do business with us because everything they want and more is coming soon next quarter as indicated by our product roadmap on this slide but please note that the product roadmap is not set in stone as development priorities can shift due to market forces and client demand so please just renew your contract for another year or three because my job literally depends on it.

The client – Beckham, Inc., a government-funded call center supporting everything from military toilet paper recalls to passport renewals – wanted me and three of my coworkers to participate in eighteen holes of golf at their annual Beckham Golf Charity Event. The chosen few from my organization formed a foursome^#6: Anders, the Account Executive handling the overall sales relationship with Beckham, Inc.; Jordan, the Project Director overseeing a major move-to-cloud project for Beckham, Inc.; Doug, the Southeast Regional Vice President of Sales with a vested interest in maximizing profit from all clients; and myself, the Customer Success Manager responsible for securing Beckham, Inc.’s eventual two-million-dollar contract renewal.

The Beckham Golf Charity Event’s stated goal was to raise money for people with disabilities. So, on the surface, we would be golfing for a good cause. This was certainly one of the less demeaning things I had been tasked to do in the name of chasing those ever-sought-after capital-B capital-D Big Deals. However, as with any company expense, the trip was wrapped in several layers of corporate complexity that any barely tenured salesperson would pick up on immediately: not only were we golfing to raise money for people with disabilities, but also for the assurance of a multi-year contract renewal (which I was responsible for), a potential upsell of software licenses ranging somewhere within the three-million-dollar range (which Anders was responsible for), the success of an ongoing move-to-cloud project (which Jordan was responsible for), and the we-actually-love-our-customers-it’s-not-all-about-the-money brown nosing present in all vendor-client relationships (of which we were all responsible for). The people with disabilities were only a proxy for our company’s bottom line; if we refused to go to Beckham’s Golf Charity Event, we would be hearing about this refusal on every video call and in every email for the next two years, after which Beckham, Inc. would likely decline to renew their contract with us; thus losing their business, thus losing our jobs. And you can replace the words “Beckham’s Golf Charity Event” with literally any other client request, because this is the crux of all corporate relationships: the product is far less important than the asses being kissed. Sellers display faux care only for the benefit of their quarterly sales goals, and the bigger the potential deal, the more faux care they muster. This means doing whatever the client wants to secure those Big Deals. I’ve had salespeople tell me, straight up, “If a client told me they’d sign this five-million-dollar deal if I killed someone for them, I would do it no questions asked, and I’d bake the liability into the Ts and Cs.”^#7 (Whether this particular salesperson was joking or not, this writer couldn’t tell.) The point being, if you want to be a quote-unquote Good Salesperson (oxymoron), you have to demean yourself, it is quite literally baked into the role.

*golfing for people with disabilities – and money.

What this whole golf thing meant for me, having never played before in my life,^#8 was that I needed to get familiar with the sport, and fast; and the only way I knew how to do that was by playing computer games or by reading books, and the prospect of reading a book with the words “All About the Sheer Excitement of Golf!” somewhere on the cover made my stomach turn, so computer games were the only viable option.

Since the Game Boy Color was (and still is) my favorite console ever – primarily driven by 8-bit-pixel-perfect summers at grandma’s house – I naturally gravitated toward the classic Game Boy Color version of Mario Golf for my crash course in the Sheer Excitement of Golf. I downloaded the ROM file^#9 and moved it into some folder within a folder on my cheap Chinese handheld emulation device’s SD card, and just like that I was ready to learn every little technicality of this legendary Scottish pastime,^#10 and familiarize myself with all the golf lingo (I’m going with “glingo” going forward). In fact, part of the reason I didn’t get much sleep on the night of June 9th was because I was lying on a mattress in my living room playing digital golf. This living-room-mattress-computer-game dynamic was necessary so as not to wake my infant son from his precious baby sleeps when the time came for me to gather my wings and fly. Suffice it to say, the mattress was not comfortable, Michael Stipe did not visit me that night, and I didn’t learn very much about golf. I did learn, however, that Mario Golf for the Game Boy Color was developed by Camelot Software Planning (of the famed Golden Sun series); and that the game was a surprisingly competent companion to Mario 64 (which was also developed by Camelot and released earlier that same year, 1999); and that the game included a full glingo dictionary with over 50 glingos, on-point golf-ball physics with seemingly perfect gravity-wind interplay, an eminently satisfying golf-swing power bar that requires perfectly timed button presses to land those highly coveted hole-in-ones,^#11 a traversable overworld a la Japanese-role-playing games dotted with country clubs just waiting to be conquered, and (as if this run-on sentence wasn’t long enough) it played the Super Mario Bros. “Underground Theme”^#12 on potential birdie putts^#13; all this and more was wrapped in a charming pixel aesthetic that took full advantage of the Game Boy Color’s 32,768 colors in a way that was quite pleasing to my very tired eyes indeed.

Before I knew it, I had driven many a ball down many a fairway and, on one hour of sleep, it was time to drive to the Jacksonville, Florida Airport to catch my six-o’clock flight to Maine aboard an American Airlines A319 Airbus.^#14 On the flight, I started reading a collection of essays by David Foster Wallace – Consider the Lobster and Other Essays (many of these essays I had read before) – while sitting next to an older woman who kept twirling long strands of brown hair around her fingers and occasionally asking me things like, “So, are you from Jacksonville? What are you reading? What’s it about? Do you know if they serve alcohol on this flight? Do you drink?”

And while I mostly nodded and tried as politely as possible to blow her off, I wanted to say …

“Hell yeah, lady. I drink.”

Chapter II: The Software Pantheon

“The divine madness … prophetic, initiatory, poetic, erotic, having four gods presiding over them … Apollo, the second that of Dionysus, the third that of the Muses, the fourth that of Aphrodite and Eros.” –The Dialogues of Plato, 3rd ed. 1892.

II.I: Shakedown, 2022

But I really shouldn’t.

Flashback two years earlier. I was, curiously enough, on the same trip to Maine for the same annual Beckham Golf Charity Event, staying at the same luxury Marriott hotel^#15 right smack dab in the middle of downtown Maine. I was not playing golf this time, only helping the volunteers pass out drinks and snacks at hole nine. I was there with a Sales Executive, not Anders but a different guy named Jeff, and accompanying us were some other bigwig sales dudes; these guys were standoffish with several Big Deals under their belts, full of sales-snoot, and they were big into partying; I’m talking three-in-the-morning-hotel-room-balcony-cocaine-snorting-tequila-shots-flowing-hotel-security-being-called-because-people-are-trying-to-sleep partying. After dinner, Jeff and I somehow ended up in the room of one of these bigwig sales guys. I was already two glasses of cabernet in from dinner; and once I start drinking: I. Don’t. Stop. Under any circumstance, I just do not stop. So I had one or two or seven shots of tequila, passed on the cocaine because I did that once in high school and ended up wanting to throw myself off a very similar balcony to the one I found myself on in this bigwig’s hotel room. The bigwig I ended up talking to most was literally named Steven Brag, he was a Vice President of Sales of Some Sort, and his attitude fit his last name to a tee. Your not-so-humble narrator here had seven shots too many and found himself in a pretty deep conversation with this Brag guy about climbing the corporate ladder and what I described as (I’m ad-libbing a bit because the whole night was whirlwind heat and flash) “a hamster wheel with little spikes that tear away at your personality over time and leave you bitter and dead and eventually forgotten because sales doesn’t impart one goddamn meaningful thing on anybody other than the evils of the perpetuation of money as a proxy for love and an economy of suffering,” and this Brag guy looked me dead in the eye and said, “then why are you here?” And I said something like, “because my friend referred me, but I would literally work at McDonald’s if it paid enough, that’s how little this job fulfills me. This job is just a means to an end. That’s it.” And I likely went on like this for quite some time indeed before Brag – between organizing a line of cocaine with a gold-plated debit card and snorting it off the table – with a manic calm said, “Alright, then I’m going to tell David about this.” David was my boss at the time, a good guy who probably would have laughed and shrugged it off, but I thought: what if he didn’t laugh and shrug it off? I then became very nervous and quiet after it clicked that this guy could certainly get me fired if he wanted to, and Brag sensed this nervousness and doubled down; he said something like, “what, don’t you want to work at McDonald’s? It’s no different than this job, right?” This guy was trying to prove me wrong – put me in my place beneath his Louis Vuitton Men’s Designer Sneakers, and maybe he was right; maybe he called my bluff. It became clear that I had offended Mr. Brag, because after what must have been a whole three minutes of death stares and silence, he stood up, walked into the main room, and started talking to someone else. At that point, I felt it was prudent to leave, and when I passed Brag on the way out he didn’t say a word to me. I made it back to my hotel room by around four in the morning with a cloud of anxious is-this-guy-going-to-get-me-fired-what-am-I-even-doing-here-is-my-life-a-total-joke dread hanging over my head, and I had to wake up for the golf event by six, which was in two hours.

But it was OK, I could make it, I told myself. I prided myself on never having blacked out. I saw myself as a modern-day Dionysus. Yes, I could get really really wasted, but I never blacked out. Yes, I may be doing and saying incredibly questionable things, but I am in complete control, I told myself. I can be a complete wastrel whilst still attending to my adult responsibilities, I told myself.

So of course I was awakened by my wife after she had tried to reach me on my cell phone several times (which was on silent, of course) and then called the hotel I was staying at to get my room number but the hotel receptionist wouldn’t give her my room number for security reasons or something and she eventually contacted Jeff who happened to know my room number and then she was finally able to call my room directly, and I woke up to a stern, “Forrest – it’s 10 AM, aren’t you supposed to be at the charity event?” May all the gods bless her beautiful soul.

I got out of bed faster than anyone ever has, put on my stupid polo shirt and khakis, called a taxi, and made it out to that golf event several hours late faster than anyone ever has. And somehow, I wasn’t fired; there were no real lasting consequences at all. And eventually Steven Brag “moved on”^#16 from the company, so the threat of him getting me fired evaporated like the morning dew that I so irresponsibly missed that hazy golf morning. If there was any real consequence, it was that I had forgotten to take my acid reflux medication, so I had excruciating wine-induced heartburn during the entire charity event.

“Forrest was late for the golf event because he drank too much,” became a meme in both my company and within Beckham, Inc. At the time, like every other time, I told myself, “OK – that’s the last time I’m doing that, for real this time.” But I would do it again. I would rationalize myself straight into another drunken stupor weeks – sometimes days – later. Every time. And this wasn’t the only time something like this had happened. I can count at least seven other equally embarrassing drinking stories in which I was either late to a serious meeting, broke something important, said something insensitive to the wrong person, flat-out hurt myself, or did all of these things at once after imbibing one too many glasses of cabernet.

*The Fool? Nay – Dionysus.

I saw myself as a modern-day Dionysus. I was part of The Software Pantheon. People treated me like the god of revelry and ritual madness. “Forrest’s going out with us tonight – he may seem quiet now, but this guy is funny as fuck after a few drinks!” They would say. I was part of The Software Pantheon. I was no Fool. I was a real modern-day Dionysus. I could do no wrong. I was a god.

That’s what I told myself.

I guess this is the part where you want me to say something real introspective like: Hi, my name is Forrest and I am an alcoholic. I haven’t been formally diagnosed^#17 or anything, and I haven’t gone to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting; and frankly, I’m a little too proud to go to one. I don’t need this “higher power” rigmarole to abstain from drinking; I can do it through sheer force of will, I think. I am not emotionally manipulated by liquids, is what I tell myself. I know I might maybe be an alcoholic, that’s the most important thing, right? The first step: I am self-aware! I am intelligent! My brain can fight the poison! I was late for the golf event, but everyone had a good laugh and there was no real harm done. I don’t need to drink, but if I do I’ll be OK; I always have been. I have never blacked out; that’s what I told myself. Never blacked out, not even once. Yes, sometimes I slip up, but I have never blacked out – just ask Wanda.

II.II: Dionysus Rising, 2024

Wanda remembers. She was there to witness Dionysus stumble out of a golf cart into the volunteer’s booth four hours later than scheduled. In fact, days before flying out to the 2024 Beckham Golf Charity Event, she told me on a Zoom call, “Don’t forget – you actually have to golf this time. Don’t drink too much! And don’t be late!” Wanda remembers.

Wanda was an honorary member of The Software Pantheon. She was our main point of contact over at Beckham, Inc. She was^#18 a fifty-something-year-old Workforce Director with a perpetual chip on her shoulder. She enjoyed drinking Rolling Rock beer while listening to classic rock because, in her own words, “they just don’t make music like they used to,” she also enjoyed Prince’s music because, in her own words again, “I have very varied taste in obscure music.” She spoke with a gruff cigarette-stained lisp and her right eye would twitch slightly every few words. She would blow up on anyone who dared question her hyper logical but very draconian workforce edicts while simultaneously escalating even the most basic support cases because she felt Beckham, Inc. was more important than any of the other 1,000-something clients my company handled. I got the impression that she was feisty even outside of work, as her last name changed at least three times since I met her. Her raucous attitude surely contributed to the streaks of gray in her carrot-colored hair, but this was also a consequence of the endless stress that she put on herself by taking her job way too fucking seriously – and the expletive is absolutely necessary here: she literally had a cardiac arrest while presenting her 2023 Company Objective slides on a Zoom call to me and twenty other people; we all watched in horror (and myself in some sort of deranged amusement) as her second (late) husband frantically rushed through the door in the backdrop of her webcam, lifted her up from her toppled chair, and then rolled that chair – with Wanda convulsing in it – out the door and straight into an ambulance (one would hope). Needless to say, that meeting was cut short. Wanda’s doctor ordered a leave from work for three months, but Wanda returned in two weeks, nearly always faint of breath and needing constant breaks, but she would “not be stopped” (her words). She told me weeks later that both her doctor and her husband were “overreacting and it wasn’t that big of a deal, but I did stop smoking cigarettes and now I only have three glasses of wine a day instead of four – doctor’s orders.” And in this writer’s opinion, if it takes a serious heart attack to quit smoking, drink less wine, and maybe chill out a little bit – then thank god for fatty artery buildups.

I would be getting even closer with Wanda, because after I touched down in Maine on June 10th, 2024, I found out that Doug – the Vice President of Sales – couldn’t make it to the golf event, which turned our foursome into a threesome. But Wanda, despite her propensity for cardiac catastrophe, was more than willing to take Doug’s place within the marble-columned halls of The Software Pantheon.

The rest of The Software Pantheon included Anders and Jordan. Anders was an alright guy. He was on the portly side, buzzed his head because his hairline was Sahara barren (and you could tell), around fifty or something, lacked a memorable personality, and didn’t know how to hold a conversation so ended up just repeating back everything you said to him in the form of a surprised question which he must have thought was some sort of conversational momentumizer^#19 but actually came across as slightly condescending – “Do you really have two kids? What do you mean you don’t watch much TV?! How can you not like mushroom pizza?!” – and he had been divorced twice but was also a real family man, so if he were to hold a conversation, it would likely be about his kids. Jordan, on the other hand, was a bit more intriguing. Jordan was tall, like 6’5” tall, real heavy set guy, forties, decent sense of humor, and had this prankster attitude that you could tell was never corrected from childhood – granted, most of these “pranks” were just straight-up lies, literally stuff like “hey, that woman over there said she wanted to talk to you,” when no such thing occurred, all in an attempt to make a fool of the person he was pranking, which was often me; and he was quite good at this, as he was able to keep a straight face in nearly all prankster situations, making him the type of person that you can never fully trust. The most interesting thing to me about Jordan, however, was that he had an ear piercing but no earring; I could tell from the obvious hole in his ear.

Both Jordan and Anders were everyday guys with everyday interests. Their taste in music was dictated by 107.5 The Hits, their knowledge of cinema was only Disney movies that their kids wanted them to watch, and they spent all of their free time “watching the game” either on TV or in a stadium. They absolutely never played computer games and thought everyone who did was a never-grew-up person that attracted Cheeto dust like the strongest magnet attracts metal filings; and none of that stuff mattered to them much anyway, because they firmly believed that the most important thing in life is making enough money to support their families – everything else is a distraction. In short, Jordan and Anders were two of the most unpretentious people I had ever met.

There was one thing that both Jordan and Anders loved more than anything else (besides their own children, one would hope; and money, I guess), and that was drinking alcohol.

*Bacchus, oil on canvas by Caravaggio, 1596–97 + original hotel room photography; note: Bacchus is the Roman name for Dionysus.

On June 10th, 2024, when I arrived at that same Marriott hotel from two years prior – as the only and oh-so-unlikely survivor of the 2022 Beckham Golf Charity Event (considering both Jeff and Brag had “moved on” by this point) – and Jordan called me on my cell phone, asking me to meet him and Anders at the rooftop bar on the 11th floor, I just had to oblige. These were my colleagues after all, and I wouldn’t want to be seen as some pretentious weirdo, right? That could hurt my own bottom line (an irony that I am all too aware of). Knowing that I had been up for almost eighteen hours on one hour of sleep, I told myself that I would go to the rooftop bar real quick, say hi, then duck out of there and get some sleep.

In the Roman column adorned lobby of that hotel, I swear, I was not thinking about drinking – the experience in this same hotel two years prior was playing out over and over in my mind, and I truly did not want to repeat the sins of the past. I would go up to the rooftop bar, I would say hi, and then I would duck out – that’s what I told myself.

The clock read 8:30 PM. After getting checked into the hotel and settling my bags in my 9th floor room, I video called my wife to let her know that I made it and gave her my room number and made goofy faces to my infant son who was just about ready to go down for bed. I then headed up to the rooftop bar.

When I got to the bar, I went to the outside portion and looked down at the neon below. Memories from my previous 2022 dalliance started racing through my mind. I started to wonder if Steven Brag was right about everything; if he had really called my bluff; if all that working-at-McDonald’s stuff was just posturing a superficial morally superior viewpoint in some vain attempt to appear better than the salespeople I was surrounded by; I could feel Brag’s Louis Vuitton Men’s Designer Sneakers pushing into the side of my head, and the pressure was building up. I was grateful that Brag was no longer with the company because I’m pretty sure that guy hated me more than anyone has ever hated me in my entire life. Was I that contemptible? That transparent? That foolish? That hypocritical? Should I quit my job and pursue what I really love doing instead? But wouldn’t that hurt my family, who depend on me? If that’s the case, then is the accumulation of wealth the be-all and end-all goal in life? THE MOST IMPORTANT THING? After all, more money means I can buy a bigger house, put more food on the table, get a pool in the backyard, not have to worry about mortgage payments, save two shelter dogs and see the look of joy on my son’s face as I bring those pups home, and just provide an overall more comfortable life for my family in general; but if money is a proxy for well-being, why do I feel so sick chasing after it? Isn’t my family comfortable enough already? Why do we need an even bigger house, or a pool? Or is this a defeatist attitude? Why should I have to anguish over these questions at all? I didn’t choose to be born into this endless hamster wheel. Should I just jump off this balcony? I have a life insurance policy. Why am I really here? Am I a fraud? Am I Dionysus or am I The Fool? Or is it OK because compromised values are just part and parcel of the quote-unquote American Way of Life? If everyone else is compromised, maybe I shouldn’t even worry about it? But I am worrying about it. How do I stop worrying about it? And just as I was about to completely spiral out of control on my psychic bullshit, a tap on the shoulder snapped me back to reality.

It was Jordan. He was carrying a glass of deep purple; he said, “Hey man, I heard you like to party – you still drink, right?”

I wanted to make the questions go away, so I turned to him with a wide grin and said,

“Hell yeah, man. I still drink.”

Part 2

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Footnotes:

#1. Lead singer of the alternative rock band R.E.M., a guitar-pop group inspired by the accessible psychedelia of The Soft Boys and the jangling guitars of The Byrds. R.E.M. was at its peak during the mid to late ’80s and throughout the ’90s and has effectively retired as of 2011. (Per Peter Buck, lead guitarist for the band, “It was the money, the politics, having to meet new people 24 hours a day, not being in charge of my own decisions.” Thus solidifying this publication’s insistence that money corrupts with no exception.) I don’t think the band ever topped “So. Central Rain” and “Radio Free Europe,” two of their earliest singles, but they occasionally came close. The joke within the main text, at this point, should be obvious, but I feel the need to explain it for the sake of thoroughness: the band name stands for Rapid Eye Movement (sleep), which is “a sleep phase in mammals characterized by random rapid movement of the eyes which typically happens 90 minutes after you fall asleep” (per Wikipedia). On the night of June 9th (/morning of June 10th), I got less than one hour of sleep.

#2. In golf lingo (glingo?), “fairway” refers to the part of the golf course between the tee and the green. The green is the area around the actual hole – the hole that you’re supposed to hit the golf ball into: the one with the flag and whatnot. Golf courses have at least eighteen holes and follow the same general format: each hole has a tee-off location (where you put your ball on the miniature wooden stake and then whack it with a golf club); each has a long stretch of pristinely kept but incredibly artificial-looking grass (the fairway); and finally, another separate patch of fake-looking but slightly off-colored grass (to distinguish it from the fairway) around the hole (the green). Got all that?

#3. As of writing (and publishing) this piece, I still work for the same unnamed company. However, I wanted to future-proof this piece by writing most of it in the past tense. Jobs don’t last forever; I’m just a quarterly sales goal on some executive’s spreadsheet, after all – and if I don’t hit those goals, I’m gone. To be honest with you, dear reader, as of writing this, I have kinda “quiet quit” from the whole work thing (and this is expanded on in the next footnote). I would work at a McDonald’s if the pay was livable (and this is expanded on in the second chapter); homeostasis being what it is. I am thankful, however, that my current position is work-from-home, which affords me ample time to pursue my true interests (and write this massive piece). And, look, I’m not stealing from the company, I do put in effort to maintain my work, just not very much effort.

#4. The role of a Customer Success Manager (CSM) lacks a solidified job description, making it nebulous and weird across different industries. It’s somewhere between middle management and executive level; middle-middle management, if you will. CSMs are authorized to speak and act on behalf of the company when dealing with line managers, junior staff and customers. Generally, a CSM builds a trusted relationship with a customer (or “client”) after the sales process in an effort to drive retention and upsell (upsell being: selling more stuff to already existing customers). For a client, this process might look like buying software from a company, getting it implemented, and then, once everything is up and running, being handed off into a support contract that includes a dedicated CSM that tends to their every beck and call. This means that CSMs are often the closest to a company’s customers and know explicitly what those customers love about the product; and they especially know what those customers hate about the product too, as an almost mandatory CSM job requirement is the ability to Shut Up and Listen and Not Take Things Personally. In some software companies, CSMs are part of the support team: if something goes wrong with the product, the CSM is the customer’s main point of contact to escalate and resolve the issue as quickly as possible. In other companies, a CSM might function within the sales organization as a relationship builder, an arm of support, and a driver of revenue by selling add-ons and other products to the clients that they manage. This dual-sales-support approach is contradictory in nature because a CSM is often seen as the customer’s trusted friend within the company, “an extension of the client.” Sales, however, requires a level of duplicity that could potentially undermine this trusted relationship; for example, if a new product is added to the company’s software suite and this new product is still in a very-green-and-barely-functional state, the Executive Leadership Team might have a sales goal of $11 million riding on this new product, with your own yearly goal being $500,000, so you are wink-wink-nudge-nudged into selling this half-working-borderline-bait-and-switch product to clients, which means you’re not going to tell clients that it’s a half-working-borderline-bait-and-switch product to begin with, which means you are a fucking liar simply by virtue of trying to keep your job; but being a CSM, you’re expected to be the client’s trusted friend, yet you are simultaneously encouraged to lie to the client in an attempt to penny-pinch their every last cent. This causes a certain level of cognitive dissonance, anxiety, and madness in the CSM that results in one of three things: 1) The CSM embraces the corporate duplicity and revels in the sales process; in which case they were already a psychopath to begin with (psychopathy being one of the main prerequisites for being a successful salesperson); 2) The cognitive dissonance builds up to the point where the CSM is forced to accept that it’s “just business,” and, when they turn off their work computer for the day, the computer screen functions as a benign demon-summoning circle, effectively locking the corporate hellworld away until the CSM is begrudgingly forced to unlock the seal the next day to continue supporting their family while perpetuating the hellworld by allowing themselves to be one of its little demon spawn (this is where I’m at); or 3) They quit and move on to greener pastures, but only the truly privileged can do this option because it’s not as if people want to become CSMs or salespeople, they do so because (causality being what it is) their bad choices led them to these positions as the only realistic options at the moment. It’s safe to say that if someone has one of these corporate-hellworld job titles, they probably didn’t grow up telling mommy and daddy that they want to be a CSM when they grow up, and if they did then I hope I never have the displeasure of meeting that person.

#5. A “Contact Center as a Service” (or CCaaS) company is one of the many variations of the modern CaaS company (which stands for both “Content as a Service” and “Container as a Service,” and I’m sure there are other names too). The “Contact Center” bit refers to selling software specifically targeted at call centers; call centers are like the nebulous place you would reach if you called your internet provider’s customer service line; it follows that my company sells stuff like call recording, desktop monitoring, workforce management, things like that. All CaaS companies sell software that is located within what they call their “cloud”; and “cloud” is a fancy (and tricky) way of saying “physical off-site servers located in a warehouse somewhere that we may or may not rent from another company.” These CaaS companies are nearly always pay-as-you-go cloud-based services with a subscription model. Before 2010, many software solutions were “on-premises” (or “on-prem”); a company would buy software, deploy it locally with their own hardware, and maintain it locally with their own IT and support teams. Starting around 2010, the technology for putting things into “the cloud” started taking off, and seeing this as an opportunity to siphon more money out of customers, many companies that offered on-prem software solutions started moving their product to cloud-based CaaS models; this allowed the company to charge customers not only setup and integration fees but recurring subscription fees; think of it like Netflix or Spotify, but with enterprise-level software like Microsoft Office or whatever. Companies that made the switch from selling on-prem to selling cloud often pitched their new cloud service as a way to “get continuous software updates in real time” and “get 24/7 support without having to rely on a smelly IT team within your own organization” and “ditch your physical hardware and let us do all the processing for you.” But the reality is, cloud software solutions take control away from the customer and put it all in the hands of a soulless corporate entity that is governed by sketchy legal immunities and weird MSAs (Master Service Agreements) with hundreds of stipulations like, “if your data gets leaked or hacked, we are totally not liable.” It’s no mystery why every software company – including game publishers – is trying to move to cloud models: it provides them with more customer data, which allows them to more effectively advertise to you, sell you more stuff, and the subscription model is more profitable long term than selling a product that the customer can keep indefinitely. Cloud models keep you paying for the same thing over and over again while never truly owning or controlling your own data.

#6. Foursomes, also known as Alternate Shot, is a golf format where two partners play together as a team, using a single ball. In this format, the partners take turns hitting the ball on each hole, whether in match play or stroke play. HOWEVER, even though both the Beckham representatives and my own co-workers said we were “playing foursomes,” we weren’t actually playing foursomes in a strict sense; we were to play a casual version where we hit one ball after another and just kept going from the ball closest to the hole (this is explained in greater detail later in Chapter 6).

#7. “Ts and Cs” is the corporate-email-speak shortening of “Terms and Conditions,” which is a clause in a document (or an entire document itself) that outlines the contractual obligations of both the seller and buyer if the contract is signed. For example, common T&Cs verbiage on a renewal contract will state something like, “if the customer does not provide written notice of refusal to renew within 30 days of their contract end date, the contract will auto-renew with a 3% increase from the previous contract value.” Oftentimes, the important T&Cs that have far-reaching implications are buried in paragraphs of meaningless legal speak, which makes sense because companies hire lawyers to write very specific T&Cs that are often reused over and over depending on the situation. “Ts and Cs” and its variants is also fun to say, just sorta rolls off the tongue. Its pleasurable pronunciation belies its often-terrible implications.

#8. This is not necessarily true. I have played golf before, but it was when I was nine or ten. I used to visit my grandpa’s house as a kid, and he would take me to the country club, and we’d hit balls. I hated it. According to my mom, I would refuse to get in the car whenever we were going to my grandpa’s house because I just hated golf so much. This hatred of golf is now a running joke in my family; whenever I talk to my grandpa, he says something like, “Hey, you should visit soon – I won’t force you to play golf this time, I promise!” When I told grandpa that I played golf with a client (see: this story), he sent me a huge box of golf paraphernalia (which included a putter “used by the pros” [his words]) that is now languishing in my garage. I can’t imagine the shipping he paid on that.

#9. Read-Only Memory; a ROM image, or ROM file, is a file that holds a copy of the data from a read-only memory chip (like one you would find in a Super Nintendo or Sega Mega Drive cartridge.) Emulation is then used to let you run these ROMs on modern devices, effectively mimicking the old hardware through software wizardry. I played Mario Golf on a Miyoo Mini+, a compact device designed to resemble a Game Boy Color.

#10. Boring encyclopedic stuff easily found online, but for the sake of thoroughness, here you go: “The modern game of golf originated in 15th century Scotland. The 18-hole round was created at the Old Course at St Andrews in 1764. Golf’s first major, and the world’s oldest golf tournament, is The Open Championship, also known as the British Open, which was first played in 1860 at the Prestwick Golf Club in Ayrshire, Scotland.” Per Wikipedia (lol).

#11. More glingo. A “hole-in-one” is when a golfer sinks the ball into the hole on their tee shot (the first shot); this is incredibly rare, and many professional golfers go their whole careers having never achieved this feat; I did it once in Mario Golf. More swing-related glingo: “pin high,” a shot that lands on the green from the tee; “up and down,” when a golfer gets their ball onto the green then into the hole in just two strokes. A “stroke” is the forward movement of the club made to strike the ball, or fancy glingo for “swing”; a “stiffed shot” is one that lands very close to the hole off the tee shot; “pure shot” is one that is perfectly struck with clean, solid contact (this may also be called a “flush,” which also refers to the solid contact made between a golf club’s face and the ball); and a “check up” is when a ball lands on the green but stops quickly with minimal roll, usually due to “backspin” (which is, coincidentally, another shot type in golf that makes the ball spin backward; I am entirely unsure how to achieve this and don’t really care enough to find out – if I do one day care enough, you have permission to kill me).

#12. You already know this jingle; and if you don’t, what are you even doing here?

#13. The term “birdie” refers to when a player takes one swing less to get the ball into the hole than the par of a hole itself. “Par” is the set number of strokes that a golfer, typically with a zero handicap, is expected to need to complete a hole. A “handicap” is kind of what it sounds like but is far too complicated for me to fully explain here (and I don’t want to explain it), so I’m going to point you to this article, which covers every little detail about handicaps.

#14. One of those white narrow-body, medium-range things. Airplanes look kinda like elongated diet-soda cans with poorly glued-on attachments to me – real unnatural abominations that just shouldn’t be up there in bird airspace. Some real avian heresy. It doesn’t help that American Airlines airbuses feel like they haven’t been renovated since the early ’70s; while most airlines now have little monitors on the back of the seats or maybe a USB plug or two to keep your stuff charged up, the American Airlines A319 airbus has one foot of legroom and a back-seat pouch that literally nothing can fit in except the thinnest magazine – that’s it. When the flight attendant tells you to “place your electronics in the off position and stow them away safely,” what they really mean is, “just throw that shit on the floor.” Don’t get me wrong, airplanes are technical marvels that help keep us connected to friends and loved ones, but maybe – just maybe – we wouldn’t need to take airplanes to see our friends and families if airplanes didn’t exist to take those same friends and family away from us to begin with.

#15. The hotel, including all travel and food expenses, was (is) covered by the company. If it were up to me, I’d stay in a motel – I don’t care. In fact, I find cheap motels have more character than the typical company-preferred Marriotts and Hyatts. Regardless, you best believe I splurge on junk food – pizza, sweet candy, pretzels – during these trips, and I expense every last cent of it.

#16. When someone has “moved on from the company,” this means (9 times out of 10) that they were fired. “Moved on” is clever corporate speak to cover up layoffs and keep morale up without outright lying because technically getting fired is “moving on from the company.” Example: “John has moved on from the company; yes, I know he was your boss and you talked to him every day; I know it’s weird he didn’t even say goodbye and that he just kind of vanished, but that’s because he has moved on to different opportunities. We are all sad to see him go. He was a great asset to the company.” (Note: I’ve heard people say that companies can only do this if they laid off less than 10% of the workforce; there are supposedly legal requirements for companies to announce layoffs of 10% or more, although I have never seen this claim substantiated and it probably varies from state to state.)

#17. According to the Mayo Clinic, alcoholism is: “a chronic disease characterized by uncontrolled drinking and preoccupation with alcohol.” Doctors can diagnose alcoholism (or “Alcohol Use Disorder” if we want to get technical) using diagnostic manuals like the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). But my question is, can you be diagnosed with alcoholism if you have never taken a sip of alcohol in your life? Do you just have alcoholism from genetics or whatever? Or is alcoholism more like a predisposition to a lack of impulse control, which lends itself to addiction and substance abuse of all types? Perhaps “alcoholism” is this lack of impulse control manifested through alcohol, hence the practicality of calling this particular diagnosis “alcoholism”? Ignore me. I’m not a doctor.

#18. And still is, as of the writing of this footnote. Remember, the past-tense thing?

#19. I wish I could take credit for this word, but alas … I stole it from David Foster Wallace: “The doctor’s small nods were designed to appear not as responses but as invitations to continue, what Dretske called Momentumizers.” (Infinite Jest)*

Part 2

(Originally published on 7/19/2024)

#ComputerGames #MarioGolf #Autobiographical

Original Text

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Chapter III: The Glass That Broke Dionysus

“Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.” –Aristophanes. c. 450-385 BCE.

But I really shouldn’t.

From the beginning of human civilization, people have been getting totally wasted. Even the first recorded writers were boozing it up.^#20 It all started with the domestication of cereal grains, which led to the accidental creation of beer, which led to both beer and bread becoming some of the world’s first currencies,^#21 and eventually, this turned into a whole thing with beer and rum and wine and whisky and brandy becoming the currency to trade slaves with whilst also being rations to keep those very same slaves hydrated,^#22 and it kept the slave traders themselves hydrated too, no doubt, making the slave traders slaves in their own way (to alcohol). It’s no surprise that alcohol became so popular, as humans need water to survive at far greater urgency than they need food; as such, early human civilizations always popped up around rivers and lakes,^#23 but these waters were often unsafe to drink; so, booze was safer to imbibe than local water supplies; think about Oog’s sewage system, and then think about how he didn’t actually have a sewage system at all and instead just did his business in the nearby pond, and now think about drinking water out of that nearby Oog’s-business pond; considering this, if someone came up to you and said, “hey – check out this new drink, it’s not shit water and it tastes OK.” You are going to drink it, and on the plus side, it makes you feel a little silly and helps you forget about the wolf pack that keeps eating your chickens. And this is how alcohol came to control humanity.

According to Greek legend, Dionysus fled to Greece to escape beer-loving Mesopotamia, bringing with him delicious wine.^#24 Wine, unlike beer, had a far more pleasant taste and its purple hues exude an air of royalty. When wine popped up after the accidental fermentation of fruit juice, it became the drink above all other drinks. Wine was an instant hit. People loved wine; still do. I love wine. In fact, back then, people started to perceive beer as a lowly peasant drink while wine was elevated to The Sophisticate’s Beverage; and this perception still exists to this day, considering the default beverage at any modern formal adult-oriented event (that is not a backyard cookout) is typically wine. Back in ancient times, beer and watered-down swill wine were rationed out to workers,^#25 while the primo wines were hoarded by the upper class for both everyday drinking and massive parties; for example, the Greek symposiums, which were private men-only drinking parties where the mighty menfolk discussed such things as philosophy, the arts, and which combatant was going to get their head lopped off in the upcoming arena battle.^#26 It is not an exaggeration to say that wine was the lifeblood of Greece and Rome; and if these ancient peoples survived off wine, then surely so could I.

I told myself: Alcohol is basically humanity’s best friend – who am I to deny that bond? The entire adult-industrial complex runs on beer and wine. After dark, corporate culture becomes drinking culture. I am not above it. I’ll just have one glass with Jordan and Anders, then I’ll duck out.

That night’s symposium was a glass table fit for four that overlooked the neon downtown in such a way that we looked as if we were engulfed in mystic fire. Anders was there tapping away at a glowy screen^#27 between sips of brunette foam. As I took my seat, Jordan took a long look at me then said, “You wear an earring,” followed by one of those little “huh” sounds as if verbalizing a question mark; this was my second in-person interaction with the man, outside of him handing me a drink moments earlier.

(And, yes, I wear an earring; I have had a small white-gold hoop earring in my left ear for over sixteen years; in high school, I wanted so badly to look like Johnny Marr^#28 from The Smiths that I emulated his messy Beatles-esque haircut plus single-earring aesthetic to a tee [all the coolest 90s British bands were doing this]; of course, my mom wouldn’t let me get the piercing done professionally [Southern belle energy, low-key catholic], so I resorted to having a friend force a sewing needle through my iced lobe. I don’t remember it hurting too much. The point is, yes, I wear an earring: I like both how it looks and what it symbolizes: that being my youth plus the influences that molded me into who I am today, for better or for worse. Sometimes I take the earring out to avoid awkward conversations like the one with Jordan in the previous paragraph; but also because some clients don’t want a man who wears an earring to manage their business; but they won’t outright tell you that, instead they’ll just look at you as if mentally signing cross^#29 and snub you at every opportunity; this is more common of clients located in the deep American South, which is unfortunately where I live. This is what the corporate world does to you; it chips at your youth, chisels away your individuality so that it fits handsomely into a cheap suit. No one tells you to take out the earring; instead, you are subtly cajoled by an intangible-corporate-cultural milieu into adopting the standards of the majority; this is the “Company Culture” you hear so much about in job interviews and those mind-numbing all-hands meetings; it’s an unspoken tyranny of the majority.)

Jordan didn’t push the earring thing, probably because I could see his own pierced ear just missing the actual earring, so I figured he must have been a victim of the Company Culture too. I lifted that glass of red that Jordan so generously ordered for me and considered taking a sip. The symposium would be far more bearable if I just took a sip, I thought. In fact, wouldn’t it be offensive if I didn’t take a sip at all, considering Jordan bought the glass for me? But I knew what would happen if I drank that glass of wine: I. Would. Not. Stop. So I placed the glass down on the table and refocused my attention on Jordan and Anders, who were now early into a conversation about something having to do with balls – sports or whatever. I watched like a turtle out of its shell before Jordan turned to me and said something like, “Which team are you rooting for?” And I made the standard I-obviously-don’t-give-a-shit-about-any-of-this response of, “Well, I root for whichever team is winning at the time.” And this caused some laughter which may or may not have been genuine. Without drink, my mind’s eye was rolling faster than the rock after it had crushed Sisyphus and left him nothing more than a bloody impression on the mountain.

Within ten minutes, I was wishing for Mario Golf,^#30 then sleep. I started to formulate an escape plan, but before I could do anything, Anders and Jordan launched into the inane-small-talk lightning round: how’s Beckham doing from a support perspective; do you have any plans for the upcoming July 4th weekend; do you think they will renew their contract; do you play any sports; why not; do you think there’s an opportunity to sell them our new AI software; how are the kids doing; is the one-year-old talking yet; I bet your ten-year-old daughter is becoming a real handful; what do you like to do in your spare time; have you seen Ted Lasso^#31; isn’t it amazing; it’s really the best TV show ever; that Joe Biden is sure showing his age; the weather has been really weird lately; you don’t hear much about the war in Ukraine anymore; I let my sixteen-year-old drink sometimes but only at the house and only when I’m home to supervise; how about that Covid-19; what time are you getting up in the morning; why haven’t you touched your wine.

And of course, Anders repeated back every answer as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, as is his nature. And doubly of course, I was bored out of my skull; barely responsive; “get me out of here” written all over my face; might as well have been wearing one of those THIS-IS-WHY-I-DRINK t-shirts.

*it’s true.

(I will be switching to present tense for the next few paragraphs.)

This is hard to explain, but I’m going to try my best. I do not fit in. I have never fit in. I barely even fit in with groups that hold similar interests to me, and this publication is proof of that: I tackle computer games like social and personal problems, and as a result, my writing largely doesn’t appeal to the group I find myself writing to, that being quote-unquote gamers. I don’t care about sports (other than tennis, which I still don’t care that much about), and I don’t have the attention span to learn enough about the balls or the teams or who won the game last night to carry on a conversation, because I have limited free time and I would rather spend that time doing something that I care about. I am unwaveringly in my zone and refuse to budge. I can’t even go to dinner with clients without being laughed at because my diet is such that I eat like a nine-year-old who always orders plain pasta. I am functional, but I have a number of minor quirks like the pasta-eating thing that make people tack on one of the following adjectives when referring to me: weird, eccentric, quirky, creepy, abnormal, peculiar, and sometimes (by older people, and out of earshot) queer. I realize this all sounds very high school, and the truth is I haven’t changed much since then. When I’m not with my kids, I spend my free time reading literature, taking notes, writing essays, listening to music while taking notes, occasionally playing computer games, and sometimes I’m just pacing around thinking about these things. You would think I could talk to my peers about my interests, but no; salespeople see these interests as running counter to The Grind. If a salesperson reads, they read something like QBQ! The Question Behind the Question by John G. Miller^#32; they don’t read I Am a Cat by Natsume Sōseki. If a salesperson listens to music, they listen to Tim McGraw, Guns ‘N’ Roses, and Queen (“We Will Rock You,” “We Are the Champions,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and maybe “Another One Bites the Dust”); they don’t listen to Fiona Apple, The Fall, and Pale Saints. If a salesperson plays computer games, it’s with their children between dinner and bedtime and only for thirty minutes because, to them, computer games are an unhealthy treat more akin to ice cream than broccoli. If a salesperson writes, it’s a business email with a bunch of jargon like “I’ll circle back with a touch base at the top of the hour once we have the bandwidth to support addressing these low-hanging fruits,” not a ten-thousand-word essay using the villain from Morrowind as an analogy for smartphones.33 I have nothing in common with my peers; and before you say it, I am not trying to hold myself on a pedestal above them – OK, well, maybe a little bit, but mostly not; my peers’ collective worldview produces positive outcomes for them, I recognize that; and my unorthodox worldview, coupled with my offbeat proclivities, has made socializing and even minor success more arduous than they need to be; and I do realize there are certainly those with much harder lives than myself; for example, anyone not born in a first-world country; in fact, you could only be like me if you were born in a first-world country to begin with, as anywhere else would beat the weird out of you early on. So yes, I am fully aware that I am privileged. I am fully aware that I am a bit of a navel-gazer, also. I can’t help it. I try to work within the framework handed down to me by a mixture of biology, split-custody parenting, Headmaster Ritual-like^#34 schooling, and one-summer-at-military-camp, run through a personality type consisting of unyielding contrarianism with a touch of bashfulness which creates a cognitive dissonance that settles itself somewhere between “I’m just going to fake it until I make it” and “Please kill me now.”

Adding another sprinkle of cognitive dissonance into the mixture, I can’t blame Jordan and Anders for being all about The Grind; and in some ways maybe they’re better off than I am for unflaggingly respecting it; they chase money to provide a better life for their families in the same way I do, but they don’t hate themselves for it; they see The Grind as Just How It Is, Man. I, too, see The Grind as Just How It Is, Man, but also that it doesn’t have to be this way and surely there is more to life than this. The problem is, I think too much; and it’s not a good thing. People will often try to put a positive spin on overthinking by saying something like, “Thinking too much is a superpower!” But thinking too much is not a superpower when you’re thinking yourself off a balcony. Thinking too much is not a superpower when you think yourself into repressing your identity and, as a result, no one truly understands you, not even your own family, because you can’t open up to anyone outside of writing long run-on paragraphs about your cosmic angst on the internet.

I just can’t get over myself. I’ve tried. The fact that I considered deleting this entire section because it might make me seem like an egomaniacal sociopath yet decided to leave it uncut is further proof that I just can’t get over myself. I have never belonged, and it’s my own damn fault. I have especially never belonged in the corporate world. I’m the antithesis of corporate. I hate corporate, yet I am corporate. I am a cog in the machine of my own ruin. I perpetuate my own despair. Steven Brag thinks I should quit my job, maybe he’s right.

(I am now switching back to past tense.)

So, when I raised that purple alchemy to my lips and the pungent redolence of every good time I’ve ever had whilst wasted wafted through my nostrils, how could I resist? I could make the cosmic angst go away. All I needed was one glass of ancient grapes, and I would return to my rightful place in the Software Pantheon: Dionysus.

That velvety serum spilled down my throat, coating my stomach in a thin layer of viscous violet. I took another sip; and another; and another; and another. Soon I was on my second glass. Jordan was buying. I remember his laughter. I remember bonding over tennis, coworker gossip, and the fantasy of the perfect father-son relationship; and we talked about all this for some time. Jordan said many times, “Hey – you know, despite that earring, you’re not so bad!” I remember there was a shared plate of french fries that was accidentally drenched in wine, so we ordered another plate. More laughs. At some point, I got up from the symposium and demanded a cigarette from a nearby group of young men, a cigarette that they, apparently, did not have, but I insisted that they did; “Just look at you guys, one of you has to have a cigarette – don’t tell me you all vape!” And their responses were less than kind. More laughter. Nothing mattered. Dionysus was on the rooftop.

When I returned to the symposium, literally amongst the clouds, toasting my glass of cabernet to the neon below, cigaretteless and unfettered and nearly falling over, there was a shot of tequila waiting there for me. The Software Pantheon then took a round of shots; and another; and another; and another. And the next thing I remember was that cognitive trickery when you stare at someone’s face while upside down and your brain tries to make sense of the upside-down face but only ends up morphing it into something out of a bad shrooms trip. I remember being scared. I remember saying something like, “I gotta go back to my room now – anyone know my room number?” I remember panicking. And then nothing.

That’s it – that’s all I remember.

Chapter IV: Blackout

“Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.” –“On the Orator”. Book by Marcus Tullius Cicero, I. 5, 55 BCE.

I want to use this chapter to take a break from the story and reflect on what’s happened so far. I also want to cover some scientifical and philosophical details about the number one human pastime: drinking alcohol.

There are two types of alcohol-induced blackouts. The first is called a “fragmentary blackout,” commonly referred to as a “brownout” and sometimes as a “grayout.” A person is considered to have experienced a brownout when they can recall some events from a night of drunken partying, but not all the events; a person may be prompted to remember the missing bits by verbal and situational cues. The second type of alcohol-induced blackout is referred to as an “en block blackout”; this is a true blackout in which the person experiencing the blackout cannot remember what happened during the period of intoxication and no amount of prompting can remind them. A true blackout results in permanent memory loss. Those under the effects of either type of blackout are not necessarily incapacitated; they may appear to be functional and able to complete complex tasks, they simply won’t remember doing those complex tasks. The science is still out on the exact mechanics at play here, although the general consensus is that when a person raises their alcohol level too high within a small window of time, it effectively shuts down their hippocampus, which is the region of the brain that turns short-term memories into long-term memories. However, the amount of alcohol needed for this to happen varies from person to person and can be hastened by others factors such as medication, weight, exhaustion, overheating, and lack of sleep.^#35

Forget about the physical implications of this for a second; let’s consider the philosophical stuff instead. Philosophically, alcohol-induced blackouts are tree-falls-in-the-woods levels of weird. Schrodinger’s alcoholic: If you blacked out but there were no witnesses, did you actually exist at all during that period? You could have killed someone and hidden the body really well, but you will never know unless a police officer shows up at your door: “We found the body; it has your DNA all over it.” Pretend, for a moment, that you died and no one remembered you – did you exist at all? And if you did, what would have been the point if no one remembered? Memory is one of the few things we rely on for a sense of permanence; this is partly why conditions like Alzheimer’s and anterograde amnesia are so tragic.^#36 We value a sense of continuity, and this continuity breaks when memories go missing. When we choose to drink alcohol, we willingly submit ourselves to this paradoxical missing-memory flux, the only question is: why? My slight cheekiness belies a deadly seriousness, because this is spooky stuff. If this paradoxical state of maybe-happened-maybe-not doesn’t stop someone from drinking alcohol, I have no idea what will.

But enough about the philosophical stuff, maybe you don’t care about all that and think it’s a bit eggheaded, and that’s fine. Instead, let’s talk about how alcohol impacts the sense of self and how that impacted sense of self is especially dangerous when coupled with the possibility of a blackout.

It’s said that alcohol brings out a person’s true self, but I have never subscribed to this line of thinking in a strict sense (and I’m aware that this could very well be motivated reasoning due to my possible alcoholism, but bear with me). When someone says that alcohol brings out a person’s true self, they mean something like, “you got drunk then flirted with that guy because you want to fuck that guy,” and then they draw the conclusion of “and because you want to fuck that guy, you don’t love me”; therefore, alcohol has brought out this hypothetical partner’s true self: the whore of Babylon who only wants to sleep around and is not capable of loving anyone except themselves. However, I posit that this “wanting to sleep around” just exists inside all of us by default, and when we are in our right mind, we can reason it away with logic and all-around good sense; consider this line of thinking, “I do find Person B attractive, but I am in a committed relationship with Person A whom I like very much; therefore, I will not sleep with Person B because it will damage the relationship with Person A.” I would then posit that anyone who finds this line of thinking faulty is a liar who is not ready to have honest conversations about what’s going on inside themselves.

What I’m trying to say is: there exists within us this ancestral being, let’s call him^#37 Oog, that wants to fuck and fight, but our higher cognitive ability can reason Oog back into his cave. We, as humans, have a higher cognitive ability than non-human animals,^#38 and this higher cognitive ability erects barriers around the Ancestral Oog. These barriers are based on both hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary biology and everyday learned experience; these barriers then form the basis of our individual personalities; not only our outward persona, but our inward ego too. So, if alcohol brings out the “true self,” then what it’s really doing, according to my possibly total bullshit theory, is tearing down the barriers that keep the Ancestral Oog in his cave. If the lesson then is, “all true self is Ancestral Oog,” then I would follow-up with this question: Is our true self defined by the primal urges we fantasize about in our minds, or by the personae we construct and strictly adhere to throughout our entire lives?

If we can agree that alcohol brings out the Ancestral Oog, then we can agree that alcohol is dangerous; and if we couple this with the fact that alcohol can turn off your memories whilst also bringing out Ancestral Ogg, then we can concede that alcohol is very dangerous; and if we concede that alcohol can do all of this whilst also being physically and psychologically addictive,^#39 manipulating a person to think about consuming alcohol and giving them the violent shakes whenever they are alcoholless, then we can concede that alcohol is very very dangerous indeed.

But, Dionysus doesn’t care about any of this. “I am not manipulated by liquids.” Dionysus tells himself.

Chapter V: The Morning After

“I have never blacked out. That’s what I told myself.” –Me (the author). Two chapters ago.

I woke to a blaring WOO-HOO! Mind swirling, lamp flickering, skin crawling, sheets drenched, head throbbing, and my hands were damp and sticky. I spun myself into an intricate web of white linens as I flailed my hands, searching for the source of Blur’s “Song 2,”^#40 which happened to be my phone’s ringtone; Graham Coxon’s rhythmic strumming and that fuzzy bass tone, mixed with the flashing lamp, were driving my headache to levels of living hell that I had not known existed; every note was a wince; every time Damon Albarn opened his very British mouth, I, too, opened my mouth: to scream expletives. I soon realized that the noise was coming from the dresser on the opposite side of the room,^#41 so I rolled myself out of bed onto my knees and crawled to the source. I must have looked like a Roman who had one too many glasses of wine at the symposium and accidentally crawled into a time portal leading to a rock concert in a seedy British pub because I was completely nude besides some linens loosely wrapped around my lower half like a makeshift toga. The lamp continued to flicker. My head continued to pound.

After crawling my way to the dresser, I slung my hand over the top, fruitlessly patting around for my phone until I forced myself to my feet to pick up the thing. I answered with a gruuhgg that sounded like hello in my mind, and I was greeted with a “Rough night last night?” It was Jordan: “I called you like ten times. You’re lucky we didn’t leave without you. Get your ass down here.” I could hear faint laughter behind the static. I said something that sounded like “Yeah, be right there” before dropping the call almost as fast as my stomach dropped.

My entire gastrointestinal tract tied itself into a constrictor knot in real time; every pull of my intestines, every twist of my stomach: felt. I deadeyed the wall as my insides rearranged themselves and I was overcome by the horror that everything was my fault. History was repeating itself: I had gotten wasted, overslept, and was going to be late for the Beckham Golf Charity Event, again.

Pushing through the horror, I resolved myself to take the blame for The Software Pantheon’s collective golf tardiness. I had never been one to lie about my behavior, and there was no opportunity to do so considering Jordan and Anders were both witnesses to my Dionysian ritual madness.

*death and his brother blackout.

Knowing that I had little time to get ready, I swiftly approached my suitcase and removed a pair of khaki shorts, some socks, and a white aloha shirt dotted with an almost-psychedelic flower pattern. Before throwing the shirt on, I relocated to the bathroom and took a look at myself in the mirror; I looked fine besides messy hair, purple lips, and sleep-crusted eyes, which I hastily fixed before brushing my teeth and gargling mouthwash. Then I noticed that the standing shower was wet and there was a goopy darkness with chunks clogging the drain, but I could not remember taking a shower the night before; and the goop: was that vomit? I threw my shirt on then headed back into the main room. I inspected the flickering lamp, the switch was in a not-fully-pressed position, and fixing that fixed the flickering, but I noticed the hard-paper lampshade was ripped and dented: was the lampshade always like this? I turned to the bed and saw streaks of purple across the sheets and mattress; I reached out to touch the streaks, to see if they could be rubbed off, but they were stained and would not even smear: was this wine? As I explored the room further, I noticed several out-of-place oddities that could not be explained: my laptop was flipped over on the small hotel desk, the mouse was missing, cards from my wallet were scattered all over the floor, the hotel mini-fridge was ajar and empty, a dry towel was draped over the flat-screen television, the television itself was tuned to a dead channel, faint purple handprints were all over the walls, and a half-eaten granola bar was on the floor near the trash can.

Surely, I was the cause of all these things, but how come I couldn’t remember any of it? Did I black out? But I have never blacked out before. How did I even get to my room last night? I remembered not knowing my room number, so who helped me into my room? Did that person enter the room with me? Did that person damage the lampshade? Did I get into a fight with that person? But I didn’t have any visible injuries. Was it a woman from the bar? Did I cheat on my wife? Did I call my wife? Maybe my wife gave me my room number? That must have been it; I must have called my wife; she must have given me the room number and then helped me get to my room.

I wanted to prove the wife theory, so I checked my phone’s call log and saw that several calls were made to my wife around 1 AM, but she didn’t answer any of them. I then opened Signal (our preferred messaging app) and found two video messages that I had sent to her: The first featured an incredibly trashed version of myself panicking about my forgotten room number: “How am I going to get back to my room? I don’t know where I am. Should I go to the front desk? Babe, are you there?” And the second was sent twenty minutes after the first; in the second recording, I could tell I was in my hotel room by the pattern on the wallpaper in the background, and I was rambling on and on about wanting to talk to someone while complaining about how sick I felt, all barely comprehensible. There was only a single message after the final video, it was from my wife: “You need to get some sleep. I hope you feel better in the morning. I love you.”

I still don’t know how I got back to my room that night, or how I’m not divorced yet.

My wife must have been worried sick; not to mention all the other times that I had done this to her. I thought of how she must have worried about me all those nights, out late on business trips, getting near blackout drunk (but never having blacked out before!) and all the possible trouble I could have been getting into – legal, romantic, or otherwise – only this time, I couldn’t remember if I had gotten into any legal-romantic-or-otherwise trouble at all. What if her fears came true? How would I even know?

I attempted to puzzle out the remainder of my drunken night with the accidental clues left behind by my stupid self, but the trail grew cold and I was forced to come to grips with the fact that I had blacked out. But I didn’t want to believe it. I had never blacked out before. I had told myself that I was immune. I had told myself that I was Dionysus.

But gods don’t black out, do they?

Part 3

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Footnotes:

#20. This isn’t a stretch, considering that the first writings were recorded in Uruk (modern-day Iraq) and date back to the 4th millennium BCE and that by the beginning of the 4th millennium BCE, wine and beer were produced in many locations in Mesopotamia.

ThoughtCo. (n.d.). History of alcohol: A timeline. Retrieved July 18, 2024, from https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-alcohol-a-timeline-170889

#21. I’m quoting the full paragraph here for the historical context, not because the passage is particularly well written or “awesome” (as the author of the article might put it) but because I want to rag on it a little bit: “As this approximately 5,000-year-old clay tablet shows, workers in ancient Mesopotamia were actually paid for their toil in daily beer rations – a form of remuneration which seems pretty awesome when you first think about it… and then just keeps on staying awesome the longer you think about it.”

I’m not sure how “awesome” getting paid in beer would be now that I think about it, considering beer slows you down and makes your work suffer; plus, as a natural diuretic, you’d be peeing all the time and might quickly become dehydrated; plus plus, I’m not sure I’d like to be out in sweltering heat with a buzz pissing all the time; the thought of that alone makes me uncomfortable. So, “beer rations” and “beer currency” were probably not awesome at all.

ScienceAlert. “This 5,000-Year-Old Clay Tablet Shows Ancient Mesopotamians Were Paid for Work in Beer.” ScienceAlert, 18 June 2020, www.sciencealert.com/this-5-000-year-old-clay-tablet-shows-ancient-mesopotamians-were-paid-for-work-in-beer.

#22. Strange, isn’t it? A whole market of slave-made rum in which that slave-made rum is then used to trade for more slaves to make more slave-made rum. Nonsensical, almost. (I’m sure some of that rum was used for other trades/purchases, which makes a little more sense.)

Got Rum?. “The Dark Side of Rum.” “Got Rum?”, https://www.gotrum.com/the-rum-university/rum-in-history/the-dark-side-of-rum/.

#23. All animals need water. Makes sense to build your mud hut near a lake or a river. All the biggest mud-hut fans were doing it, eventually forming mud-hut communities, which eventually formed mud-hut towns, mud-hut cities, mud-hut kingdoms. This all happened in an area now called “The Cradle of Civilization,” or modern-day Iraq roundabout.

Lumen Learning. “River Valley Civilizations.” “World Civilization”. SUNY, courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldcivilization/chapter/river-valley-civilizations/.

#24. The class-based associations surrounding beer and wine have existed since ancient times, and this short mythological story illustrates this long association. When Greece, and eventually Rome, emerged, Mesopotamia had a reputation for being a land full of barbarians, and since the preferred drink of Mesopotamia was beer, beer was associated with barbarians. As such, Dionysus fled Mesopotamia to escape the beer-loving barbarians and settled in Greece (and eventually Rome), bringing with him delicious, civilized wine. This association persisted through time, with wine typically being the focal beverage of formal dinners, banquets, weddings, galas, balls, etc., while beer is typically served at sporting events, barbecues, tailgate parties, and Lollapalooza. (Preemptive possible-total-bullshit warning.) Beer may have morphed into its standard can variety due to that mode of liquid transport being conducive to portability, adapting to the wild nature of the events at which it is served; whereas wine has (typically) stayed in a stemmed glass for careful sipping while sitting amidst something very fancy (or something).

“Chemistry in the Ancient World: A Brief History.” “Chemical & Engineering News”, vol. 10, no. 12, 2004, pp. 12-16. American Chemical Society, https://pubsapp.acs.org/subscribe/archive/tcaw/10/i12/html/12chemchron.html.

#25. Similar to [21], wine was frequently used as rations in the ancient world, especially in ancient Rome. There were many types of rationed wine, with most lower class people receiving watered-down swill wine; one such diluted variant was called “posca,” which was a blend of water and nearly-vinegar wine; less acidic than vinegar, it still retained some of the wine’s aroma and texture. Additionally, there is written record of Marcus Porcius Cato (or Cato the Censor or Cato the Elder, Roman senator, 234–149 BC) suggesting that slaves should receive a weekly ration of 5 liters of posca, so there is a substantial historical record of wine being used as a ration for both citizens and slaves.

Standage, Tom. “A History of the World in 6 Glasses”. Walker & Company, 2005.

Phillips, R. “A Short History of Wine”. HarperCollins, 2000, pp. 35-45. ISBN 0-06-621282-0.

#26. A symposium (sometimes “sympsion” or “symposia”) was indeed a men-only drinking party in Greece, typically taking place after a big meal. I had this idea to draw a comparison between symposiums and corporate drinking culture, the latter of which is heavily male-dominated, just as the former was. Corporate drinking culture is interesting in that women aren’t outright discouraged from participating, but women who choose to join “the boys” at the bar after working hours are typically looked down upon as loose women, the logic being, “What woman in her right mind would want to be surrounded by a bunch of drunk dudes?” This standard, of course, does not go both ways, as men who surround themselves with a lot of women are often lauded and held on a pedestal by other men. I’m sure there is something in here about “the patriarchy” and men’s unbalanced influence over history and culture (and how this is still happening to this day in sometimes equally overt ways), but that is the subject of another essay (an essay that I am not qualified to write). One could draw a comparison between golf and a symposium as well, as golf is a heavily male-dominated sport with a focus on “getting away from the wife and kids to drink on the green with the boys.” Add in the fact that old-school (and very politically incorrect) golfers consider tee boxes closer to the hole “ladies tee boxes,” and you have the whole gamut of misogyny at play (this “ladies tee box” is covered in the last chapter of this essay).

For more information on symposiums:

“Symposium.” “World History Encyclopedia”, World History Foundation, https://www.worldhistory.org/Symposium/

#27. The year is 2024 and everyone is literally looking at phones, myself included. You, reader, probably looked at your phone within the last 5 minutes; you might even be reading this on your phone. I could write a whole ten-chapter essay on phones (see [33]) and how they’re ruining our attention spans and how even though phones have given us an accessible wealth of knowledge right in our pockets we are more stupid than ever before and how The National Safety Council reports that cell phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year and how phones nowadays seem designed in such a way that babies as young as 8 months old can figure out how to swipe left and right and access YouTube and how parents are just giving children unfettered access to phones which is exposing kids to radical echo chambers thereby ensuring an early descent into partisan hackery and how work-life balance has been entirely eroded by the fact that clients/managers can just call you on your phone while you’re at the beach on a weekend. I could keep going, but I am going to leave it alone for now.

#28. This is it; you can’t get Cooler than this.

#29. The sign of the cross (sometimes called “blessing oneself” or “crossing oneself”) is a common “ritual blessing” hand gesture resembling a cross that old-school Christians do when they see something or someone that does not conform with their narrow worldview. Black clothing? Sign of the cross. Man with earrings? Sign of the cross. Baby out of wedlock? Sign of the cross. Women showing ankle? Sign of the cross. Someone uses the word “crap.” Sign of the cross. Two women holding hands? Sign of the cross. Using proper terms for anatomy instead of stuff like “dinky” and “wee wee.” Sign of the cross. (Note that they won’t sign the cross when someone pretends to eat the corpse or drink the blood of some long-dead guy.)

#30. You almost forgot, didn’t you?

#31. I have not seen Ted Lasso; my contrarian bones will not allow me to watch it due to the superabundance of praise it gets from corporate goons and other people whose personalities are just polo shirts and self-help seminars. I’ve been on corporate calls where scenes or images from Ted Lasso are incorporated into the presentations; there’s always some sort of super deep life/business/leadership lesson that Ted Lasso can impart unto you according to these guys, but it’s always some real basic stuff like “Ted makes a lot of mistakes but doesn’t dwell on the past” and “Ted is always moving forward” and “Courage isn’t fearlessness – it’s doing the things even when you’re afraid!” Ted Lasso is the type of show that sports dads let their young kids watch and spin it as a mature growing-up moment, as if 29 to 30-minute episodes of a television show can impart some grand wisdom on their children so that they (the parents) don’t have to; “Now son, this show is a little mature but I think you’re ready for it and I want you to pay close attention when Ted loses the game here.” I just can’t with Ted Lasso. Maybe it’s good, but I’ll never know. Why am I like this?

#32. This is a super specific example, isn’t it? The reason it’s included is because this book was required reading at the company I worked for when writing this. The book is very much like Ted Lasso in that it’s all basic life lessons about personal responsibility, stuff like “stop blaming everyone around you – take action instead” and “ask better questions like ‘what can I do to make this better’ instead of ‘who dropped the ball here?’” etc. etc. I actually read this entire book in one sitting (not impressive, it’s like 70 pages); it wasn’t offensive but I didn’t get much from it. I did leave one note on the author’s claim that “stress is a choice”; my note was (is): “This is true maybe 20% of the time – chemicals exist in the brain.”

#33. See: Gods Among Men and Mer or: SOTHA SIL IS DEAD

#34. “The Headmaster Ritual” is the opening track of The Smiths 1985 album Meat Is Murder. The lyrics are about the belligerent abusive ghouls that run Manchester schools. English pop star Kirsty Macoll has described the song as “probably one of the best songs about being at school that I’ve ever heard.” Trying to describe the song’s greatness would not do it justice, just listen to it here.

#35. All the information in this paragraph is captured within the following source:

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.). Interrupted memories: Alcohol-induced blackouts. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sheets/interrupted-memories-alcohol-induced-blackouts

#36. Alzheimer’s disease is a neurological disorder causing brain cells to degenerate, leading to a gradual decline in mental faculties, including the retention of memories and the ability to process information. Those impacted typically cannot function without supervision, and they will eventually forget the name of the person supervising them, which is tragic for both parties. Anterograde amnesia (or “Transient Global Amnesia”) is a special kind of memory loss where you can’t make new memories after the condition starts. You remember everything from before the amnesia kicked in, but anything new slips away almost immediately. This can happen because of brain injuries, illnesses, or even certain drugs, and it’s sometimes seen in late-stage Alzheimer’s disease.

Mayo Clinic Proceedings. “Relationship between Coffee Drinking and Risk of Colorectal Cancer: A Meta-analysis.” Mayo Clinic Proceedings, vol. 89, no. 10, 2014, pp. 1370-1381, https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(14)01077-5/fulltext

Mayo Clinic Staff. “Alzheimer’s Disease.” Mayo Clinic, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 6 July 2023, www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/alzheimers-disease/symptoms-causes/syc-20350447

#37. The use of “he/him” pronouns for Oog is deliberate (and kind of cheeky); I will let you draw your own conclusions on that.

#38. The fact that I’m writing this piece shows that I have a higher cognitive ability than a pig (for example). The reason this footnote exists, however, is for me to go on a tangent about animal suffering; or, at least, direct you to a tangent about animal suffering that I wrote almost a year before writing this piece. Some (humans) use this humans-are-more-intelligent-than-other-animals thing as a way to handwave the suffering of animals they see as “lesser” than them, mostly in an effort to justify the hotdog they’re stuffing down their throats; however, it does not follow that because we are smarter than other animals we should be able to harm other animals; it does follow, however, that we ought to use our higher intellect to minimize the suffering of animals, both human and non-human, because we are the most well-equipped to do so.

#39. People often overlook the physically addictive qualities of alcohol; long-term heavy drinking can make the body crave alcohol, as the body becomes accustomed to it, and if the drinker suddenly stops, they may experience shaking, nausea, profuse sweats and, in extreme cases, shock and/or death. Personally, I have never experienced these physical symptoms, probably because I have never imbibed enough for my body to become fully dependent on alcohol, but I have experienced the psychological recursive alcohol loops that produce endless justifications for drinking and the negative mood shifts that come with missing the habitual nightly drinks.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.-b). The cycle of alcohol addiction. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/cycle-alcohol-addiction

#40. “Song 2” starts with a four-bar drum loop that bursts into a hurricane of fuzz after Damon Albarn (singer/frontman of Blur) screams “WOO-HOO!”; reminiscent of American alternative rock of the 90s; the song is instantly memorable, alarming, and iconic; arguably Blur’s biggest hit, at least in the States. Many people in the U.S. only know Blur by this song and not their other huge U.K. hits such as “Girls & Boys,” “Beetlebum,” “Parklife,” “Popscene” (one of my personal favorites), and “Coffee & TV” (another favorite). “Song 2” sounds almost like an entirely different band when compared with Blur’s other work, the latter of which can only be described as some the most British music I have ever heard complete with pinky-finger-raising tea cups, bowler caps, cricket, Monty Python, running out of bog roll at the local pub, and fish and chips. One of the reasons for “Song 2” sounding so different is that, according to Graham Coxon (lead guitarist), the song was intended to be a prank on their record label who demanded a palatable U.S. single, so Blur wrote “a hit” in the form of a grunge parody that ended up being a true hit within the community they were parodying. Listen to the song here.

#41. I’m sure others do this too, but just as some added context: I place my phone away from the bed so that it’s out of arm’s length when I need to wake up early the next morning; this forces me to get out of bed to turn the alarm off, and the extra step of getting out of bed seems to help keep me out of bed. I only do this when the occasion is important, like the Beckham Golf Charity Event (obviously).

Part 3

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(Originally published on 7/19/2024)

#ComputerGames #MarioGolf #Autobiographical

Original Text

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Chapter VI: Dionysus Plays Golf, Dies

“A bad day at golf is still a good day of drinking.” –Ancient Golf Proverb. Unknown.

I discovered that Jordan was a kindhearted liar. By the time I was dressed and ready to go, it was only 7 AM. We had to be at the Beckham Golf Charity Event by 8:30 AM, and tee time was at 9 AM. Jordan got his morning prank in and it saved me from being late in the process, so I couldn’t be mad at him.

I met The Software Pantheon in the hotel lobby, which doubled as the breakfast lounge. I didn’t have time to sit and eat, so I took a travel mug of coffee and a bowl of cinnamon-something cereal to go in the taxi to the golf course. As I finished the bowl of cereal, leaving the hotel bowl and spoon in the taxi, my chest tightened up and I started to feel the fire traveling up my esophagus. The pain prompted me to remember that I had forgotten to take my heartburn medication and that this Beckham Golf Charity Event was shaping up to be a repeat of the first.

We arrived at the Heron Hollow Country Club at 8:45 AM. Wanda spotted me in the crowd and gave me a big bear hug. It had been over a year since we had last seen each other in person. She commented that I hadn’t changed one bit. I commented, in my head, on how thin she had become, likely a downstream consequence of her recent heart attack, which made me want to comment on the tall glass of thick red liquid that reeked of vodka that she was holding, which was probably something she shouldn’t be drinking at all, but I held my tongue because I’m nobody’s doctor. And I couldn’t judge her for drinking because I felt my own desire to drink bubbling up again; that desire to imbibe the ancient charismatic elixir. But I thought to myself, if I drank to fit in – did I ever fit in to begin with? Did the alcoholic elixir bring out hidden aspects of myself – the social aspects – or did the alcohol actually lock those aspects away only to be unlocked when under the influence? Like a liquid crutch. At this point, I was totally zoned out, lost in a sea of existential reflection, until Wanda poked me on the nose and said, “Everything OK in there?” And Jordan responded for me with, “He’s fine. He just drank too much last night.” And this prompted Wanda to recount the time I was four hours late to the 2022 Beckham Golf Charity Event.

The volunteers at the Beckham Golf Charity Event were already handing out free Bloody Marys,^#42 a not-so-subtle admission that the sheer excitement of golf only starts getting exciting after a slight buzz, and the excitement rises in tandem with your blood alcohol level; because the whole golf thing is just not all that exciting without a drink or two. In fact, the golf thing is downright dreary. Since I didn’t bring my own clubs, I had to rent a set from the country club store; the inside of the country club was so clean that it bordered on offensive, so lacking in smell that it became a smell in and of itself, a smelly non-smell, an anti-smell that gets one acquainted with the smell of the inside of one’s own nostrils; every white wall was covered in gold plaques with some silhouetted golf man mid-swing all surrounded by green trim, and approximately zero plaques depicted women; the clothing racks were draped with the plainest polos you have ever seen and they dotted every inch of unused floor space; every shelf was covered in little rectangular boxes holding four golf balls^#43 each for $25.99 a box, and I had to buy three of those boxes (and you better believe I kept those receipts to file on my expense report). This was nothing at all like the country clubs in Mario Golf, which were vividly colored locales bursting with thematic palm trees, cactuses, and swamps all complemented by chipper but not overbearing 8-bit chiptune softly blooping in the background; there was no music playing inside the real country club at all, it was almost deadly silent, only the light scrunching of khaki pants could be heard, people walked through the polo fields but they did so with the delicateness of someone who was one wrong step away from breaking a hip, or stepping on a landmine, or alerting a hidden guerrilla soldier hiding deep inside one of the polo racks, and this tracked because the clientele were all very white very old men who may or may not have seen a thing or two and likely preferred to be called “sir.”^#44 This was a White Zone. If, without alcohol, I didn’t fit in with The Software Pantheon, I really didn’t fit in with these golf people; and this turned the volume up on alcohol’s siren song: “Just one glass and you’ll be talking Vietnam with the sirs in no time at all.”

To my surprise, after purchasing three $26 rectangles with balls inside, the man behind the counter dropped a small key into my palm and said, “Here’s your key.” I promptly responded with something like, “What for?” and he replied, “Your four-seater golf cart, sir. It’s number 26.” Then I thought to myself that these golf guys are handing out free Bloody Marys while also handing out keys to motorized vehicles, and someone thought this was a good idea, so I just went along with it, figured when in Rome, nodded as if I knew what I was doing, and walked out with my twenty-pound bag of clubs, three rectangular boxes of balls, and golf cart key dangling from my mouth because I had momentarily forgotten about pockets. It dawned on me that I must have looked like the most goofy person within a twenty-mile radius: floral-pattern aloha shirt, khaki shorts, maximum cow-licked Robert Smith hair, excessive golf paraphernalia, and a blank smile like that of a child just pushed out into the wilderness with nothing more than a Swiss Army knife, a box of matches, and a “Good luck kid, when you return: you’ll finally be a man.” And, man, at that moment, I was wishing hard for a Bloody Mary to help deal with the weird eldritch anxiety of the whole thing, but before that alcoholic wish could be granted, Wanda hurried up to me and said, “We’re going to miss tee time! Did you get the key? What about your balls? Did you get any tees? No? OK – that’s fine, I’ll let you use some of mine. Did you get yourself a Bloody Mary? No? Too bad. There’s no time! You know I’m taking Doug’s spot on your team, right?!” and then she started hacking real loud and I stared at her with a should-you-even-be-here look on my face.

*leaving the White Zone. (the kid from Mario Golf looks way more presentable than I ever did).

After I nearly crashed the golf cart into a birch and ran it off the narrow golf cart path,^#45 my foursome made it to the first hole. Anders said I was no longer allowed to drive the golf cart, and the fact that I was the only sober person didn’t seem to convince the group otherwise. Jordan then got very serious and asked each of us if we had played golf before, to which both Wanda and I replied a very quick no. Jordan explained the rules of the game: we were playing some casual version of foursomes, where each golfer hits the ball from the tee zone,^#46 and then everyone hits from the location of the best ball, which is the one closest to the green, which is the area of immaculately cut grass surrounding the actual hole marked by a flagpole.

As Jordan was explaining the rules of golf, I noticed that there was another foursome waiting behind us. The thing about golf courses is that there are often multiple teams playing at once, so you have to wait on the team ahead of you to shoot their balls before you shoot your own. What this means is that you will often find yourself waiting around for upwards of twenty minutes with nothing to do other than talk to your partners because you have to wait on the team ahead of you. Golf etiquette dictates that you allow a team to complete the entire hole before you even make your tee shot; otherwise, you run the risk of accidentally hitting the golfers ahead of you with your ball. It’s also acceptable to make a judgment call and take your shots if you feel the team ahead of you is far enough away to not get hit by your ball. This was something that Jordan explained in great detail during his golf lecture.

Jordan kept going on and on about golf, the team behind us was growing impatient, and I zoned out for a moment, taking in the scenery of the surrounding course. The golf course reminded me of a computer game, but not necessarily Mario Golf. The course we were on was reminiscent of a huge empty space in one of those SimTown or SimPark games, the moment in which you’re just starting a new game and have nothing built on your allocated flat mono-green-colored land space; it’s just flat grass for virtual miles, and you have the choice to plop down little patches of trees and bushes and ponds and marshes and maybe populate some deer and chipmunks with the animal wand all right there in the scenery UI; because that’s what flora and fauna are on a golf course: scenery for humans to feel like they’re actually in a natural green space. A golf course is a virtual reality, and it’s easy to be fooled at first, but the more you look at that little pond with the mini-waterfall, the more you start thinking something like: what the actual fuck. What I’m trying to say is, golf courses are unnatural abominations that plowed over countless gophers, snakes, and bunny rabbits to perpetuate the human desire to hit little balls around masquerading as natural green spaces.^#47 And sometimes these little aforementioned golf balls we love to hit so much hit animals outright; for example, the term “birdie” was coined after a golfer straight up knocked a bird right out of the sky with their golf ball. It follows that Golf is hostile to all life.

Jordan decided to take the first shot. He slid the driver^#48 out of his golf bag as if removing a sword from its scabbard, stepped into the tee box, pushed a little wooden stake into the grass, placed a golf ball atop the stake, then started shaking his lower half like Shakira as if preparing to get into a stance of some kind. He started calling out his actions to me like a father would his son: “Alright, Forrest, you see how I’m standing here? Pay close attention to the tips of my toes. The tips of my toes are always forming a line in the direction I want to hit the ball. Now, look at my hands. You see how my hands are in the middle of the grip? And do you see how my left hand is snug above my right hand? This is a proper golf stance. This is what the pros do.” Jordan paused, then looked over to me to make sure I was paying attention, and I was. (Mario Golf didn’t teach about stance, only hitting the ball, so this was all new to me, and I had already resolved myself to write about this experience, so any mechanical knowledge was good knowledge at this point.) Jordan continued, “I’m about to hit the ball, but before I do, I’m going to think of nothing but the ball. I am going to look at nothing but the ball. Watch as I raise the club and then…” Woosh! My head immediately turned toward the direction where the ball should have gone flying off to, but Jordan’s vocal expletive refocused my attention, and I realized that he whiffed entirely. “OK, that was just a warm-up. Watch this one.” And the second time he swung, he really did hit the ball, and it was quite a good shot indeed. Jordan was pleased with himself, and he showed this in his swagger back to the golf cart. Next up was Anders, who hit a competent if unremarkable shot. And then Wanda, who, to my confusion, traveled several yards further down the hole and started teeing off in a separate tee box. Jordan then told me that this separate tee box was called the “ladies tee box” and was located closer to the hole so that “ladies would have a better chance at winning.” I had a hard time believing something this sexist existed in today’s social climate, so I pulled out my phone as Jordan was talking to search the term and found that “ladies tee box” was now frowned-upon terminology used by old-school golfers that referred to player handicap (not specifically gender), and that the modern politically correct term was “forward tee box.” Then it dawned on me that, as everyone was in agreement that Wanda was indeed using the “ladies tee box,” including Wanda herself, they were all, in fact, old-school and archaic themselves, which wasn’t much of a surprise but did put my company in perspective and prevented me from correcting their verbiage for fear of being ridiculed as a woke liberal (which, from their perspective, I certainly am indeed).

Then it was my turn: I stepped up to the tee box with a heart full of what might as well been literal fire and placed my dimpled white ball atop my wooden tee and grabbed my breast for a moment to contain the ever-worsening burning sensation swirling in my chest before copying Jordan’s position: pointed toes, left on right, focus on ball, audible gulp of stomach acid. And then, in one smooth motion, I swung my driver’s face into the golf ball. The ball went flying. It seemed like a very good shot. I then assumed the pose of a knight observing the battlefield after a hard-fought victory, I held the club upright on the grass with the palm of my hand, leaned on it a bit, and visored my other hand above my brow, watching as the ball traveled through the air. The ball soared for some time before landing in the nearby pond with a sploosh that echoed my failure across the green. I could hear the rest of the foursome chuckling as I returned to the golf cart. I shrugged my shoulders as Jordan said something mildly insensitive like, “Hey! Better than Wanda’s shot at least!”

*pictured: yours truly (floral aloha and all), glingos.

As we reached the third shot on the first hole, a volunteer in a golf cart rolled up. “You boys want some drinks?” They had bottled water, soda, and a full assortment of alcoholic beverages on demand in a small wheeled cooler trailing behind them. I grabbed some water, gulped it down, hoping it would alleviate some of my heartburn, but it didn’t help; the pain was becoming unbearable. In the past, drinking had helped me forget about this pain (while paradoxically becoming a source of this pain later on), and I began to consider “just one drink.” That’s when Jordan turned to me with that Lokian look on his face, holding out one of those mini-bottles of wine. “It’s cabernet, your favorite.”

As I stared at the mini-bottle of wine, I started thinking to myself: A touch of wine would certainly make this whole golf thing more exciting. It would make the pain in my chest bearable, at least for now. Everyone else was drinking; Jordan and Anders were both sipping beers; Wanda was nursing her Bloody Mary. And while I was never much of a day drinker, this was a special occasion. When in Rome. The adult-industrial complex practically runs on beer and wine. Corporate drinking culture and all that; it’s part of the American Way of Life. You are expected to drink with the boys. That’s just how it is. I am Dionysus. I may have blacked out the night before, but that was only because I didn’t get enough sleep; that was an unusual circumstance, and it wouldn’t happen again. I’ll just have one drink, then I’ll stop. Just one drink.

I stood there silently staring at the mini-bottle; my mind swirling with excuses. Jordan was standing in front of me with a puzzled look on his face, mini-bottle of cabernet still outstretched. “You OK, man? Did last night freak you out or something? You’re still drinking, right?”

Dionysus overcame me. My lips curled into a grin, and I said, “Hell yeah, man – I still drink.” I snatched that mini-bottle from Jordan’s hand, enthusiastically lost in my excuses. As I twisted the bottle cap, I heard a whizzing sound, as if a fly were circling around my ear, so I turned to swat the thing, and that’s when a white blur crashed right into my forehead with a loud crack. My body launched backward. My hands flew up. The mini-bottle of cabernet went spiraling through the air, spitting a scarlet tornado on its way down, dyeing the once-green grass dark red. I landed hard on my back. Everything went black.

I haven’t heard from Dionysus since.

Epilogue

“It might sound dodgy now, but it sounds great when you’re dead.” –Hitchcock, Robyn. “Sounds Great When You’re Dead.” 1984.^#49

Before we begin, I want to try to justify the existence of this essay as something more than just an egotistical rambling about my own life and how “not like the other girls” I am. I wrote this piece not only to chronicle my own alcoholic misadventures but also in the hope that it might help someone like me – someone contrary, stubborn, and skeptical of self-help – to come to grips with their own addictions by offering a (hopefully) relatable account from a (maybe) kindred perspective.

Since I reached drinking age, I’ve made hundreds of excuses for alcohol. I’ve even reached the point of saying, “I’m never drinking again, for real this time” multiple times; this time being one of those times. But like the finest of clocks, I eventually succumb to the excuses and start drinking again. The strongest (or worst, in this context) excuse I deploy isn’t covered in the main text of this essay; hence the purpose of this epilogue. The excuse I’m referring to is most effective because it’s irrational and egocentric. It goes something like this: “I know drinking is terrible for me, but I’m a tortured artist, and drinking adds to my character, charm, and mystique. Besides, hundreds of successful artists before me were addicts.” It’s one of many variants of “I want to be Cool,” and it’s toxic as hell; and knowing that it’s toxic as hell doesn’t help, that only makes the excuse more potent.

I’ve always treated substance abuse with a problematic level of romanticism. In fact, I think Western society as a whole has romanticized substance abuse since the 1960s, making substance abuse something of a fashion statement. You frequently hear about “artistic geniuses” who were also addicts: Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Stephen King, David Foster Wallace, Hunter S. Thompson, etc. Each of these examples are now beloved cult figures, and whenever someone writes about them, the words “tortured genius” surely show up somewhere, with the very real mental health disorders underlying this tortured genius often ending up as a footnote at the end of one of many posthumous biographies. My point is, people love these tortured-artist stories, often turning the subject of these stories into near mythological gods; a celebrity pantheon of sorts; and people try to emulate their gods.

I wanted to be seen as one of these tortured artists. I wanted to be seen as someone who created great beauty whilst also being kind of ugly and broken in the most intriguing way possible; a prolific paradox; a consummate contradiction; a god in the pantheon of tortured artists; Dionysus. Even knowing that most of the aforementioned examples died by suicide or overdose, it didn’t matter to me; the flaws – the substance abuse – of these tortured artists made them more complicated, more human, more relatable, more interesting.

I wanted people to know that I wasn’t just some writer; I was a writer with problems – mental problems. And I drank. I drank a lot. But that was OK because I was still busting out hits. I was still writing those super deep and honest introspective essays. I may have been getting into all sorts of trouble and causing problems for the people around me, but one day someone (probably me) would write about that stuff in the past tense, and it would all be very Cool and interesting and just serve to add to my Dionysian mythos. “The serious mistakes that I’m making right now will make me seem more interesting later on; in hindsight, my substance abuse will add another layer of complexity to my character.” I told myself.

I wanted to be interesting, and flaws are interesting; every author knows this to be the basis for writing compelling characters in fiction. For a character to be interesting, they must have flaws. Readers need something to relate to; they need vulnerability; they need damaged characters; they want to know the dirty secrets of the characters; they crave tabloid-like scandals and dramas. This makes characters more relatable, more realistic, and sometimes more “well, at least I’m not as bad as [insert character name]!” You can’t have an interesting character without flaws. Following this logic, you can’t be a celebrity and a well-adjusted person simultaneously; this is the paradox of celebrity. Popularity is suffering. Art is difficult without trauma to fuel it. And as a writer, I must suffer for my writing to be genuine. I can’t hope to be even a mediocre writer without indulging in my flaws; that’s part of what makes me interesting. Woe is me. I suffer for my art. That is what I told myself. But I got it wrong.

We are more than our addictions. Everyone has flaws, and substance abuse doesn’t have to be one of them. I’m more than my substance abuse. I’m incredibly bubbly and unfocused; I’m dismissive and withdrawn to the people around me; I get jealous easily, especially when someone is better than me at something I pride myself on; I don’t call my family enough to tell them that I love them; I have body image issues; I don’t spend enough time with my kids; I have stupid superstitions and compulsions; I procrastinate on the important things in favor of my niche hobbies; I get highly frustrated when I can’t express myself adequately with words. I have more than enough flaws to fill a short novella. Why do I need to pile on substance abuse?

Whenever I stop drinking, this tortured-artist justification slowly creeps its way back: “Just drink! Who cares! Stephen King was an alcoholic too; he can’t even remember writing Cujo because he was so high and drunk!”^#50

Stephen King eventually got help, but those other tortured artists weren’t so lucky – they fucking died; tortured themselves to death. And while the reason for these tortured artists’ deaths cannot be solely attributed to their substance abuse, it certainly played a large role.

Maybe it’s time that I get over it before I accidentally kill myself.

After that golf ball hit me in the head, I realized that there’s nothing Cool about drinking; there’s nothing unique about it. Adults everywhere are drinking, and they’re all drinking for similar reasons (most of which are already outlined in this essay). If the status quo is that it’s cool to drink, then drinking isn’t Cool at all because “status quo” has never been Cool to begin with. If you are a natural contrarian, you owe it to your recalcitrant nature not to drink; otherwise, you are betraying yourself. Rebellion is Cool, and not drinking is rebellion. If you truly want to be capital-C Cool, one of the Coolest things you can do is swim against the current, especially when that current is literal poison.

As of writing this, it has been over a month since my last drink; this is the longest I’ve gone without drinking in over ten years.

If you happened to read all this, thank you; I hope it wasn’t a complete waste of your time. And if you also happen to struggle with addiction, know that you are not alone. But you have to get over it, or one day the blackout will never end, and you won’t be around to know just how Cool you really are.

Our addictions do not define us.

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Footnotes:

#42. A Bloody Mary (named after Queen Mary Tudor of England, supposedly) is a mix of vodka and tomato juice, spiked with a dash of hot sauce, lemon, salt, and pepper; usually topped with a stick of celery or a lemon wedge or sometimes (if you’re really unlucky) a pickle. Bloody Marys are as disgusting as they sound, believe me. They are often thought to help cure hangovers (which is not backed by any real science, of course). The Bloody Mary has become sort of a staple drink at golf events, maybe because of the anti-hangover myth, or maybe because they needed a drink as off-putting as golf itself? (Although I would say that Bloody Marys have more character than golf considering their bizarre mix of ingredients and bright red coloring, while golf is just kinda carting around from hole to hole hitting balls; in fact, people need Bloody Marys [apparently] to even get in the mood to play golf, yet another strike against the quote-unquote sport).

#43. The modern golf ball consists of three main components: the cover, the mantle, and the core. The cover is typically made from ionomer resin, which is some sort of polymer or other. The mantle and core are typically synthetic rubber infused with even more polymers. It’s pretty much polymers all the way down. You may be asking, “What about all the little dimples?” Well, I asked Jordan about that too, and he said something like: “Those little dimples help the air cling to the ball, cutting down on drag, giving it a nice backspin, and helping lift the ball higher into the air.” The Heron Hollow Country Club sold the following brands: Titleist, Callaway, TaylorMade, Bridgestone, Srixon, Ping, Wilson, Mizuno, Vice, Nitro, Snell, and Top Flite. Jordan said the best brand is Titleist; Anders said TaylorMade because, apparently, TaylorMade balls have three mantle layers instead of one, and this somehow makes the ball better or something.

#44. I shouldn’t joke about Vietnam Veterans. That’s on me. I do respect the troops (or whatever I need to say to not get backlash for this).

#45. The standard golf course is 18 holes; a typical par-4 hole is about 400 yards and will take up around 10 acres; this means that a typical 18-hole course could potentially fill 180 acres of land depending on the layout; to put that into perspective, an American football field covers approximately 1.3 acres of land; which means that the average golf course is around 138 football fields in length, which is about 8 miles or so; basically: golf courses are huge. It follows that you can’t just walk from hole to hole; you need a mode of transportation, and that mode of transportation is the golf cart. A typical four-seater golf cart is electric-powered (although some are gas) and can reach speeds of up to 14 miles per hour, and you have to drive these things on very narrow paths between holes, all while watching out for other golf carts. The golf cart paths themselves are perilous, almost hedge maze-like affairs, often unkempt, uphill, backwoods, and sometimes you have to go through the course green itself to bypass hazards such as fallen logs and holes in the path. And while I know how to drive a car, driving a golf cart on a very narrow path at 14 miles per hour because Anders keeps saying “go faster!” is a whole different story; it would be an understatement to say that I was scared shitless while driving that golf cart, and the “almost hit a tree” bit was not a one-time thing but a many-times thing, which is why the keys were taken from me (probably for the best, too).

#46. In case you forgot the contents of the second footnote, the “tee box” is the starting point of each hole. A golfer sticks a “tee” (wooden stake) into the grass and then places the ball on said tee. The golfer then hits the ball with a driver club (see [48]). Worth noting because it doesn’t come up in the story: a golfer will often hit the grass when taking a shot, and this will cause a patch of grass to dislodge from the ground; the dirty dent in the ground is called a “divot,” and “you must always cover your divots” by picking up the dislodged grass and shoving it back into the little hole you made (golfers are very concerned about the look of their artificial green space, far eclipsing the concern they have about the actual habitats that were destroyed in the making of their artificial green space; for environmental tangent, see next footnote).

#47. Golf courses are not environmentally friendly, although the United States Golf Association will tell you otherwise. I took the time to tackle each eco-friendly argument they (USGA) made in an article on their website titled, “The Environmental Benefits of Golf Courses.” (Obviously not a conflict of interest at all.)

Claim 1: “The total land area devoted to golf in the U.S. is relatively small, but courses can offer substantial environmental benefits – especially in developed areas where green space is increasingly limited.”

Counter: Rewording the claim makes it sound ridiculous (which it is): “Golf provides a small patch of much-needed artificial green over land that would otherwise be a concrete parking lot.” Or: “Golf courses suck, but at least it’s not cement, right?”

Claim 2: “Turfgrass and other vegetation on a golf course help cool highly developed areas during hot weather.”

Counter: So would natural woodlands and fields – why not just leave those? Oh, that’s right: you want to hit balls around.

Claim 3: “Golf courses provide important habitats for native wildlife and vegetation and can help support threatened species.”

Counter: “In case you needed another source, this claim is also backed by Golfweek!” In truth, this claim is a huge stretch at best and entirely dubious at worst; the USGA seems to hinge all their points on, “If a golf course wasn’t here, this land would be a parking lot!” and that’s fair, but this is like saying, “Hey – you think me stabbing you in the leg is bad? Well, that guy over there would be stabbing you in the gut!” Additionally, the placement of turfgrass destroys the natural habitat that was already there to begin with, such as woodlands, marshes, prairies, etc. You may see chipmunks, hamsters, squirrels, snakes, some deer, and birds on a golf course, but these animals are only using the turfgrass as a crosswalk into the sparse trees and bushes that the golf course overlords so generously left as decoration for humans. The fact is, placing turfgrass destroys the robust natural habitats that were there first and replaces them with unlivable turfgrass crosswalks.

Claim 4: “Golf courses can help manage stormwater runoff, aiding in flood prevention. They also recharge groundwater supplies and filter surface runoff.”

Counter: Huge stretch, and the use of the word “can” instead of just “golf courses help …” is telling. Note that across the US, golf courses use 1.5 billion gallons of water daily, so if they “aid in flood prevention” it’s really only by aiding in drought promotion.

Claim 5: “The vegetation on golf courses sequesters atmospheric carbon and helps improve air quality, especially in urban areas.”

Counter: Another if-we-didn’t-put-up-a-golf-course-this-land-would-be-a-parking-lot argument. Same thing applies: the natural habitat that the golf course destroyed would have been better at sequestering atmospheric carbon and improving air quality than some turfgrass.

#48. To understand how golf clubs work, you have to understand lofts; loft is the angle of the clubface that controls the trajectory and affects the distance of the shot; higher lofts create higher/shorter shots, while lower lofts produce lower/longer shots. (Note that the number before the iron is not necessarily the loft angle indication; instead, the 9 in the name “9-iron” refers to the club’s position in the set of irons. The 9 does indicate a higher loft angle, and therefore a shorter distance compared to clubs with lower numbers, but the 9 does not indicate “9 degrees” or anything like that. To make matters worse, loft numbers can be hidden; a driver has a loft angle but there is no number before the name of the driver to indicate its loft angle—you’re just expected to know that a driver has a lower loft angle, which produces a longer shot). As for the different clubs: Drivers are used for long-distance shots off the tee, with a loft of 8 to 12 degrees. Irons are numbered 1 to 9, with lower numbers (1-4) for long shots and higher numbers (5-9) for shorter, more precise shots. Wedges (e.g., sand and lob wedges) have higher lofts for short, accurate shots around the green. Hybrids combine the features of woods and irons, useful for long approach shots. Putters are used on the green to roll the ball into the hole. I learned all this not from Jordan or Anders, but from Mario Golf, which has an excellent interface showing you the different clubs and their lofts, all accompanied by a dotted line showing the distance the ball will travel; this was an excellent tool to come to grips with which clubs work for longer/shorter shots and how the numbers (which can seem kind of counterintuitive) work in reference to those longer/shorter shots.

#49. One of my favorite songs ever (not exaggerating).

#50. “There’s one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing at all. I don’t say that with pride or shame, only with a vague sense of sorrow and loss. I like that book. I wish I could remember enjoying the good parts as I put them down on the page.”

King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Scribner, 2000. ↩︎

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(Originally published on 7/19/2024)

#ComputerGames #MarioGolf #Autobiographical

It was October 2001, and a twelve-year-old boy, after incessant pestering, had just received the newest giant-robot game for the PlayStation 2 as an early Christmas gift from his mother. This annoyed The Boy’s father, who never saw eye-to-eye with his ex-wife and preferred his son to stay focused on the three S’s: school, sports, and socializing; so it follows that The Boy lived two lives, switching back and forth monthly between his mother and father’s house. It was always autumnal during these split-custody blues.

Nearly ten months prior, in December 2000, Bandai released its first game for the PlayStation 2, Mobile Suit Gundam: Journey to Jaburo. The game is largely a retelling of the first half of the classic 1979 anime Mobile Suit Gundam. It follows the crew of the White Base – a military vessel of the Earth Federation – in their nigh-hopeless battle against the Principality of Zeon, a nation of space-Nazis that will do anything to achieve their fascist goals, notably: dropping populated space colonies on Earth thereby killing millions. Bright Noa, captain of the White Base, chances upon a special boy named Amuro Ray, who happens to be a natural when it comes to piloting the Earth Federation’s new experimental giant robot: The Gundam. These events kick off Amuro’s coming-of-age story as he finds himself in a tough-love father-son relationship with Bright Noa and develops a sibling-like rivalry with a Zeon commander as equally talented as he is effortlessly cool and mysterious and handsome and blonde: Char Aznable.

Childhood is wanting to be Char; adulthood is wanting to be Char, also. Which brings us to The Boy; and, of course, The Boy in this story wanted to be Char, but he was more of an Amuro-type: geeky, angsty, obsessive. The Boy’s father was most certainly a Bright Noa-type, both in his disciplinary approach, which leaned heavily towards mild forms of corporal punishment, and in his no-nonsense haircut. And the father just purchased a new home, which he treated like his own White Base.

The new White Base was as tall as a Gundam made of bricks with four exact ninety-degree angles, wearing a pyramid like a paper hat with such perfect folds that it must have been crafted by an origami master who knew all the ancient tricks but lacked any creativity whatsoever. The front door was mathematically placed in the precise middle of the home and was surrounded by exactly nine windows; this made the house appear as some sort of eldritch wall-of-eyes and simply walking by the place evoked an intense feeling of being-watched. The house had a modest front yard dotted with thin maples and, during these autumnal months, the lack of chlorophyll caused the decaying leaves to float down from the hormonal trees and blanket the yard in death both fragrant and fugacious. When the breeze came, the naked trees appeared like skeletal fingers casting curses upon the very land they sprouted from. This eyeball-window-skeleton-hand-tree dynamic caused the local kids to describe the home as a haunted painting of some long-dead person whose eyes actually followed you instead of fake followed you; The Boy just described the home as prison.

For reference, the original Gundam stood eighteen meters tall or fifty-nine feet high or ten-people-standing-on-each-other’s-shoulders, and weighed sixty metric tons or one-hundred-twenty-thousand pounds or half of a blue whale, which aligned closely with a standard-three-story-middle-class home built in the eighties but renovated and sold in the turn of the new millennium; the same type of home The Boy found himself living in every-other month after both his mom and dad and the child therapist told him that it was not his fault and that mommy and daddy just don’t love each other anymore and that, on the bright side, he might have two Christmases from now on.

*eyeball-window-skeleton-hand-tree dynamic with The Boy and The Father and The Gundam

The Boy’s father saw the new home as his own White Base to lead his family into a better life, only with a four-thousand-dollar-a-month price tag; but to The Boy, the new home meant sitting on a hardwood chair with approximately zero lumbar support at the kitchen table all afternoon because he had to finish his homework before he could do anything else and he didn’t know how to do the assignments because he didn’t pay attention in class and he was too ashamed to ask for help so he would only sit there doodling pictures of giant robots in the margins of his worksheets between poking small holes in the fruit placed in the decorative bowl at the middle of the glass table at which he sat for hours. And this infuriated The Boy’s father, who made The Boy sit there until the work was done and then went behind The Boy to check his accuracy, and if it was not correct – which it rarely ever was – he would make The Boy do it all over again. It was tough love for the greater good of the White Base; some real Bright Noa Stuff was going on in that kitchen with the glass table and the uncomfortable chairs. The Father, like all fathers, wanted his son to have a better life than he did – he didn’t want his son stuck in a dead-end sales job at forty, like he was – and this meant perfect grades and sports three days a week and absolutely no distractions.

Directly below The Boy’s cramp-inducing chair, in the basement, was the PlayStation 2; it was hooked up to a television set about the size of a Jackson Pollock canvas, which painted pictures of giant robots upon The Boy’s adolescent brain. Mobile Suit Gundam: Journey to Jaburo was down there in the basement, snapped into the disc tray like the neurons that snapped robots into The Boy’s mind at all hours of the day. The Boy had Gundams on the brain while he was in the classroom staring at the circle that ticked time in slow motion; during every breezy autumn Sunday when raking leaves into piles that were then tossed into metal garbage cans to be burned days later; when he was in the field during recess just-kind-of-wandering-around-looking-at-stuff while the other kids played kickball; during the basketball practices when The Father would desperately encourage him to put-in-even-the-smallest-amount-of-effort; and definitely during that time he was in the outfield when the pop fly crashed into his head like a small meteorite rendering him unconscious for several minutes; and especially while he was wide-eyed in bed, staring into darkness because the child-therapist-prescribed ADHD medication gave him robot-inspired bouts of insomnia.

Every night during these split-custody blues, The Boy would slink out of his bedroom, tiptoe down two flights of stairs, and plop himself on the couch in the basement, where he covered himself in the glow of Mobile Suit Gundam: Journey to Jaburo. There, The Boy would control The Gundam: a glistening white 18-meter-tall Minovsky-Ultracompact Fusion Reactor-powered robot with a state-of-the-art rocket-thruster backpack module that provided a maximum speed of 165 km/h, sporting an incredible 5700 meter sensor range, and boasting a swift 180-degree turning time of 1.1 seconds. It was armed with two gatling guns mounted in its kabuto-shaped head, alongside handheld armaments including a beam rifle, a 380mm hyper bazooka, something resembling a riot shield, and two beam sabers.

The Boy’s wishes were only one pink flash of a beam saber away from being fulfilled. He felt powerful, clever, needed, and completely understood when he climbed into the cockpit of that virtual Gundam. His real father didn’t get it, but Bright Noa did. Bright Noa pushed The Boy to be the best damn Gundam pilot there ever was, while his real father only pushed him to be a healthy, productive member of society – something as far from the mind of a twelve-year-old boy as Mercury is from Mars.

The Gundam, with its shogun-like presence, demanded respect, much like the controls of the game, which – being Bandai’s first game for the PlayStation 2 and their first three-dimensional game ever – were clunky, archaic, obtuse, and reminiscent of an airplane cockpit with lots of unlabeled buttons and switches. Considering the PlayStation 2 DualShock controller with its two analog sticks, d-pad, four face buttons – ECKS, OH, TRIANGLE, SQUARE – two right triggers, two left triggers, start and select, and two secret buttons in the clicking-in of either analog stick, one would assume that The Gundam is moved with the left analog stick while the right analog stick controls the camera, but this is not the case; instead, up and down on the d-pad move The Gundam forward and backward while left and right turn The Gundam left and right; the word “turn” is important here; note that the word is not “move” or “strafe,” because the left and right triggers strafe The Gundam left and right instead. As such, if one wanted to move The Gundam in a diagonal direction, they would need to hold both up on the d-pad and either the left or the right trigger. If one wanted to turn The Gundam 360 degrees, they would need to hold left or right on the d-pad for ten whole seconds while the robot awkwardly stomped around in a circle, which left the clumsy metal giant wide open to enemy attack. This resulted in something akin to piloting a bipedal tank with a Tonka-truck controller.

In Bandai’s three-dimensional naivety, they had accidentally created a control scheme that mirrored what it may actually feel like to control The Gundam: clunky, archaic, obtuse; as if the PlayStation 2 controller was an actual Gundam cockpit. Every button on the DualShock was utilized in some way. The difficulty of the controls made pulling off even basic feats feel like mastering advanced Taekwondo techniques.

Amuro may have read the manual before jumping into the cockpit of The Gundam, but The Boy did not. At first, The Boy was hopelessly wrecked by Zeon mobile suits, but as the nights passed and the homework piled up, he became more dexterous and more dangerous, and soon he was controlling The Gundam like a seasoned veteran. The Gundam became an extension of The Boy, and whenever The Boy successfully slashed through an enemy robot with a well-timed dash attack or boosted out of the way of oncoming bazooka fire, he felt immensely satisfied in a way that The Father’s three S’s could never provide.

*the cockpit of The Gundam

On the seventh night of basement slinking, The Boy had reached the last story-mode mission. The story mode included a meager nine missions, covering the first twenty-nine episodes of the anime, and culminated in a final showdown with Char Aznable at the Earth Federation military base of Jaburo. The final mission consisted of a sortie with several mobile suits before Char entered the fray; and as the game lacked ways to repair The Gundam mid-sortie, The Boy had to carefully eliminate each mobile suit without taking damage. Otherwise, he would have no health left for the showdown with Char, who piloted a deadly amphibious mobile suit painted red – the Z’Gok Commander Type – equipped with sharp claws that could be pointed into metal-piercing spikes or splayed like a starfish to reveal devastating laser cannons. Throughout the first half of the mission, the regiment of Zeon mobile suits – mostly Zakus of green coloring and shoulder pads that looked like something a post-apocalyptic biker gang would require their members to wear (spikes and all) – would extract a great toll on The Gundam’s armor. When Char appeared, The Boy would be easily defeated. It didn’t help that the stagger animation of The Gundam was such that it was far too easy to get caught in an endless loop of laser-beam stagger locks; this stun-lock effect drove The Boy to the edge of madness.

After multiple failed attempts at defeating Char, The Boy lost all pretense of being twelve-years-old and needing-to-be-quiet: he howled as if he was the one getting hurt instead of the facsimilized samurai robot behind the phosphor. Each time The Boy failed the mission, he had to start over from the beginning; this improved his ability to complete the first-half of the sortie – battling over ten Zakus while not getting hit a single time – but ultimately resulted in CONTINUE? when Char locked The Boy in another laser-loop lock of death.

The Boy’s howling traveled through the home’s ductwork and echoed out of the ventilation shafts, alerting The Father, who was reading a Civil War novel in the spare bedroom, as he was prone to do every night. The Father promptly got out of bed, discovered The Boy’s empty room, and made his way down the many flights of stairs into the basement. His fists clenched in paternal frustration as he considered all the ways he would discipline his son. Bright Noa would often slap Amuro right on the face, but The Father preferred the buttocks as it was more socially acceptable. He mentally prepared himself to deliver this proper spanking, preemptively erecting mental bulwarks to deal with The Boy’s inevitable tears.

It was at this time that The Boy really wanted to be Char Aznable. He placed the DualShock on the coffee table in front of him, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath; he imagined that the air he was inhaling was actually the comet trail left by the Red Comet himself. Now serene – and very stubborn – The Boy picked up the controller and became one with The Gundam; he precisely maneuvered his way through the military base of Jaburo, slicing through Zakus as if he were practicing iaijutsu in a bamboo forest. The Boy had mastered the first half of the mission, but it was still not enough. When Char showed up in his crimson robot, The Boy was abruptly snapped back to reality with another CONTINUE? But The Boy was nonplussed. In his channeling of fictitious masked anti-heroes, he had become zen with calm determination, and it showed on his smiling face, all aglow with Mobile Suit Gundam: Journey to Jaburo.

*Char and his crimson Z’gok

The Father silently stood behind the basement couch for minutes, watching his son. At first, The Father was angry; after all, The Boy was sneaking downstairs, breaking the household rules, and it was clear that he had been doing this for a while, as he lacked the nervousness typically associated with burgeoning troublemakers. The Father had tried his damnedest to make The Boy a better version of himself; he had visions of his son becoming a star athlete: tennis and basketball and football and baseball. He even coached The Boy’s sports teams himself. But The Boy was clumsy, uninterested, and unhappy with everything that was thrust upon him. The Father had forgotten what The Boy’s smile looked like during these split-custody blues.

The Boy, now beaming with a huge smile on his face as he edged closer to victory, reloaded the mission once more full of confidence and verve. The screen went black for several seconds while the PlayStation 2 whirred and read the disc; and just as the screen went black, The Boy caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure in the reflection of the television’s leaded glass. The Boy’s stomach dropped and an audible gulp could be heard as he turned to face his father.

But The Father lacked his typical scowl; instead, there was a single hot tear rolling down his cheek. In the reflection of the television screen, The Father had seen his son’s smile for the first time since the divorce, and suddenly, everything made sense. He wiped the tear from his face and sat on the couch next to The Boy.

The Boy trembled in fear. He thought he was surely going to be punished for this transgression and had already started formulating some sort of lie in his head about how this was the first time he had ever come down here and how he might have sleepwalked or how he heard something weird and had to investigate; but The Father, as if reading The Boy’s mind, let out a light chuckle before placing his large hand on his son’s shoulder.

“What are you playing, son?”

The Boy, amidst a sea of stuttering, uttered something that sounded like the word Gundam being fired from a machine gun.

“Mind if I try?”

The Boy responded by staring at his father through dilated pupils swirling with confusion and faint computer-game photons. Then, suddenly, something clicked. The Boy’s lips curved like a rainbow turning upside as he relinquished control of the DualShock controller. The Father eyed the boomerang-like device in his hands, twisted and turned it, and then pressed all the wrong buttons, causing the television screen to go wild with menus and laser beams. This only caused The Boy’s smile to widen – and this smile was like a golden contagion, as The Father could not help but smile himself.

The Boy laughed a cherub’s laugh, placed his hand on his father’s, and spoke without a single stutter,

“No, Dad, not that way. Here, let me show you.”

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(Originally published on 7/7/2024)

#ComputerGames #MobileSuitGundamJourneyToJaburo #Autobiographical #ShortStory

Behold: a tubby nine-year-old boy obsessed with computer games and cheese pizza; absentminded, shy, and prone to angry outbursts; selfish, hyperactive, and if he didn’t find immediate joy in a task – he didn’t do that task. He would skip homework because “my dog ate it!” and couldn’t be bothered to come up with a more original excuse because The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Transformers cartoons lived eternal in his mind. These antisocial proclivities landed The Boy in “special education” classes, but the more The Boy was treated as “special,” the worse his behavior became, and he retreated ever deeper into computer games.

The Boy’s Mom didn’t know what to do with him. She noticed The Boy’s digital obsessions and that they were violent; after all, Zelda featured a young boy that slayed monsters with swords. The Mom thought that if she replaced the violence with educational games that this would not only improve The Boy’s behavior – turning him boastworthy for soccer-mom-watercooler-confab – but also show that she cared about his interests, because above all else: she truly loved her son.

The Mom took The Boy to the local electronics store and told him to pick two computer games from the educational section. It was the year 2000 and stores were packed with computer games containing the prefix “Sim’” and the suffix “Tycoon”; these morphemical games were baby’s-first-capitalism; business simulators wrapped in graphical-interfaces targeted toward children. The Boy immediately gravitated to the vibrant theme park packaging of RollerCoaster Tycoon. He quickly dismissed the dated graphics of DinoPark Tycoon. SimCity 3000 was also considered but it intimidated The Boy with its technicalities. And just when The Boy was about to call-it-quits, he noticed a glimmering jewel calling out to him from the discount pile. The jewel was an Italian caricature sporting a floppy chef’s hat and a white apron stained with what was hopefully pizza sauce; he sported a mustache even more extravagant than Freddie Mercury’s during the recording of Queen’s 1980 album “The Game” and was grinning into the camera while holding a pizza-with-the-works as if breaking the fourth wall to summon The Boy into a universe of freshly cooked pizza pies forever. Not only was pizza The Boy’s favorite food, but Queen was also his favorite band – and by this logic: Fast Food Tycoon was bound to be his favorite game.

After The Boy came home and ate a few slices of pizza for dinner, he slid the pizza-shaped disc into the tray of the Windows 98 computer in Dad’s office and clicked through the many prompts of the installer. Upon boot, the words “Fast Food Tycoon, Eat Here” flashed in cold cathode above a seedy street corner that was positioned between a club and a pizza joint; the club was red carpet, and the pizza joint was a money-laundering scheme; both owned by the same organization. The Boy was about to learn many important life lessons.

Fast Food Tycoon – or Pizza Syndicate, as it’s known in Europe – is a business simulator centered around managing your own pizza franchise, created by the German developer Software 2000 and published by Activision in North America in November 2000. When the game starts, you are given the option to make your own pizza person, choosing their picture from a premade selection of Italian caricatures, selecting their name, and adjusting their starting stats from a long list that rivals the most complicated of role-playing computer games. Once your character is created, you are thrown into the sleazy world of pizza and quickly realize that you are smack-dab in the middle of an all-out pizza war between ancient crime families. And there’s no hope of survival unless you sell your soul to the mafia for better ingredients, better pizza, and guaranteed protection from getting whacked by Papa John. Once you become a made man in the dark underworld of pizza, you crawl your way up the pizza chain from Chuck E. Cheese Capo to Don of Domino’s and, if you’re lucky, to The Godfather of Pizza.

*The Boss evaluates your Pizza Performance; he is not impressed.

Fast Food Tycoon is as much about making the tastiest pizza as it is about sending armed goombahs to rival pizza joints; bursting with such depth as “goths like meat on their pizza” to “should I poison the food at Mario’s Pizza Palace or should I just plant a bomb instead?” to “which style of music should I play to attract the correct demographic?” to “should I bribe the mayor or just save the money for more machine guns?” All the while fudging numbers and trying to make the perfect pizza pies only to perpetuate The Great Pizza Wars – an endless cycle of pizza-funded violence.

Fast Food Tycoon teaches children many valuable lessons about the stygian horrors of not only pizza but also business and humanity as a whole. It teaches children that bribing the mayor has massive perks in the form of blind-eyes and tax-exemptions. It teaches that if you plant rats in a restaurant, the Department of Public Health will shut down that restaurant. It teaches that pizza joints are a surprisingly efficient way to launder stolen bank money. It teaches that fear is one of our most powerful motivators. And above all else, it teaches that pizza is very serious business.

Of course, The Mom had no clue that Fast Food Tycoon bestowed these valuable life lessons upon The Boy. To her, Fast Food Tycoon was just another educational business game for her son to level up his business acumen and help on his path to becoming a fitter, happier, and more productive human being. When she watched The Boy play, he was simply managing ledgers and decorating restaurants and there was nothing to be concerned about. The Mom was so impressed by Fast Food Tycoon’s ability to engage The Boy that she recommended her neighbors buy the game for their children, and thus, the ancient cycle of pizza violence continues to this day – The Great Pizza Wars rage on.

When The Boy looked back, he realized that Fast Food Tycoon was not prescriptive; instead, it was a warning – a commentary on the dangers of unregulated capitalism, the prominence of quid pro quo in the private and public sectors, and that, while fear and violence may rule humanity, the golden rule always kicks in and you will eventually reap what you sow; be that in the form of delicious pizza pies or a bag over your head in Papa John’s basement.

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(Originally published on 4/8/2024)

#ComputerGames #FastFoodTycoon #Autobiographical #Review

As I write this piece on The Powerpuff Girls: Bad Mojo Jojo for the Game Boy Color, I am completely shitfaced and drunk and stoned and very deep into adulthood; at this moment, I am the exact opposite demographic from the one that the developers at Sennari Interactive intended for this game; that demographic being: kids who begged their parents to take them to Toys “R” Us after school to buy some Crazy Bones and happened to wander into the computer games aisle only to find their favorite Cartoon Network cartoon wrapped in Game Boy Color packaging with a $50 price tag stamped on it – in 2000.

Yes, Game Boy Color games cost $50, even in the year 2000. I remember. I was there. I was that kid.

The bottom line is this: if Cartoon Network executives knew that a drunk man in his thirties would be writing a piece containing the words “shitfaced,” “drunk,” or “stoned” for their beloved The Powerpuff Girls: Bad Mojo Jojo and releasing that piece in a highly esteemed computer games magazine, those executives would be sending their goon squad to that man’s office to cut off his fingers, thereby ensuring that he neverever puts digital pen to paper again. And I imagine that goon squad would look very much like villains from The Powerpuff Girls.

The Rowdyruff Boys could be descending upon my location at this very moment.

It’s well known that the 2000s Cartoon Network-branded Game Boy Color games are merely palette swaps with different intellectual property names slapped-on, but The Powerpuff Girls: Bad Mojo Jojo has a unique twist: it’s the first in the mythical The Powerpuff Girls Game Boy Color Trilogy; the other two games being: The Powerpuff Girls: Paint the Townsville Green and The Powerpuff Girls: Battle HIM. Each game allows you to play as one of three prepubescent Chemical-Xers: Blossom, Buttercup, or Bubbles; and has you fighting a different group of villains in each title.

Cartoon Network executives clearly wanted to capitalize on mom’s hard-earned-waitressing-money by coming up with diabolical ways to get children to buy the same game three times. When we were children, being unknowingly taken advantage of by corporate goons was fun; as adults, it’s just another boring day in Townsville. I guess we can blame Pokémon for the Mephistophelian trend of let’s-release-the-same-game-with-minor-differences-as-an-entirely-separate-game-at-full-price-and-incentivize-children-to-buy-them-through-playground-shame-and-ridicule.

The Powerpuff Girls was created by cartoonist Craig Douglas McCracken in 1998; he also helped direct Dexter’s Laboratory, which released around the same time and had a strikingly similar artistic style, albeit Dexter’s Laboratory was created by the legendary Genndy Tartakovsky, known for creating the truly mythical Samurai Jack and Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoons. Don’t get these cartoonists confused; one created the greatest thing in the Star Wars extended universe, and another created a cartoon featuring a very irresponsible father who uses his three genetically engineered children for casual vigilantism.

That’s not a crack on Craig – I am getting wasted and writing about someone else’s creations for a zero-reader computer games blog while he’s had more success doing what he loves than I could ever dream of.

While The Powerpuff Girls was never one of my favorite cartoons as a kid, the significance of one of the villains spitting blood whilst being kicked in the mouth by Buttercup during the opening was not lost on me; being one of the few times blood was shown in a children’s show – and that’s special because this violence inspired me to become that 2000s Toys “R” Us kid who begged his grandma to buy the The Powerpuff Girls: Bad Mojo Jojo during one fateful 2000s summer. My friend also had the game and I wanted to battle him because we both knew all three games had link-cable-functionality but we soon found out that the link-cable-functionality was only for trading collectibles found in the game’s levels and the collectibles were nothing more than blurry pixel art and we were sorely disappointed but we played and beat our respective versions regardless because back then you got a new game once in a blue moon and you savored every moment with those blue-moon games because they were all you had until the next cerulean satellite.

*something resembling an oval with pink eyes rams a man wearing a prison jumper

I asked that same friend if he remembered playing The Powerpuff Girls on Game Boy Color with me during that warm 2000s Charleston summer and he stared at me with a dumbfounded look on his face, indicating that this stuff is far more important to me than it is to him. And that’s probably a bad thing for me; a sign that I shouldn’t be waxing nostalgic on childhood frivolities so often; perhaps my brain power could be put to better use than writing over 1000 words on games that no one has thought about in over two decades and that are clearly targeted toward children?

No – it is he who is wrong, not I.

But I have been waxing far too long; you’re here for the riveting gameplay review, of course – so it’s time to start waning.

The Powerpuff Girls: Bad Mojo Jojo and its two sisters are side-scrolling beat-em-ups with controls as slippery as four glasses of wine at a dive bar after getting into a big fight with your girlfriend; all you can do is punch, kick, and fire some special-liquid-attack provided you have enough Chemical X in your bloodstream. There is no jump button, but holding up on the directional pad makes your character fly for a brief period, which never feels quite right. The levels range from The Professor’s Laboratory to Townsville Rooftops to Pokey Oaks School Playground to The Mouth of a Volcano and they all contain a non-zero-number of barely-hidden collectibles meant to be traded with friends using the link-cable-functionality. The enemies are mostly big dudes in prison jumpers with large muscles and guns; attacking said prison people is a combination of very-specific-angles and luck and always-taking-damage because you got too close to the enemy in the process of attacking. The bosses are just more-dangerous versions of prison dudes and there is no real strategy involved in anything and it’s about as entertaining as playing tic-tac-toe with a six-year-old who cheats.

The Powerpuff Girls Trilogy is an uninspired palette-swap cash-grab meant to encourage kids to trade in-game collectibles with their friends or – for those with no friends – buy all three versions and trade the collectibles with themselves in what amounts to the ultimate foreshadowing of lifelong depression. Of course, kids never did either of these things because the collectibles are lame and the game just isn’t fun to play. Cartoon Network tried to take advantage of children by tricking them into buying their insipid shovelware cash-grab games like Professor Utonium took advantage of three small children to fight crime in Townsville.

Except, Cartoon Network failed. The Powerpuff Girls Trilogy bombed commercially upon release and some Cartoon Network executive somewhere probably got fired for pitching the idea.

Instead of Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice; The Powerpuff Girls trilogy is Exploitation, Corporatism, and Everything Wrong With the Licensed Games Industry. And, as a result, I am full of artificial sweeteners, sarcasm, and lots and lots of cynicism – thanks Cartoon Network.

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(Originally published on 4/8/2024)

#ComputerGames #PowerpuffGirls #Autobiographical #Review

I remember it as if it were last night. My cat – a strapping lad of gray shorthair named Digit – jumped through the open ground-floor apartment window onto my lap while I was sitting on the couch playing computer games with my roommate. The window was open not only to allow Digit free passage outside but also to filter the tobacco smoke that stained our lungs and jaundiced the light-colored walls. My roommate and I had Dreamcast controllers in hand and lit cigarettes dangling from our mouths and subtle glowers on our faces as we sat brand-new-to-adulthood and transfixed by the massive widescreen firing off psychedelic lightshows. The blues of hadoukens and the purples of reppukens flashed about inside puffs of cigarette smoke like ball lightning within the clouds of an alien planet. And although the room was loud, there was silence between us, for we were engaged in the digital-equivalent of a samurai honor duel and we were both great pretenders; pretending like we were engaged in just another friendly game of Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 for the Sega Dreamcast; when, in reality, there was an intense clash of personalities playing out between the sounds of button mashing and pixelated fighters yelling the names of their ridiculous special-attacks and Satoshi Ise’s electro-infused drum-and-bass stage music.

Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 was originally developed and released by Capcom in August 2000 for the arcades; it was later released on Dreamcast in North America on November 8th, 2000. The origin story – the myth – is that the magazine Arcadia featured a cover with both The King of Fighters ‘98 and Street Fighter Alpha 3 titles a little too close together and readers misread this thinking it was “KOF vs. SF”; when this imaginary game didn’t manifest, fans of both series went unhinged with hate mail and thus: Capcom vs. SNK was born – or something. And while it wasn’t the first crossover between Capcom and SNK, it was the first to reach a wide audience outside of Japan, as the previous title – SNK vs. Capcom: The Match of the Millennium – was only released for the Neo Geo Pocket Color; a handheld console that was poorly adopted in the West where Street Fighter and Pokemon infected the minds of young computer gamers like brain-eating amoebas. An updated version of this game, Capcom vs. SNK Pro, was released a year later – and the concept was so popular that it would eventually spawn a sequel, Capcom vs. SNK 2, which built upon the hip-hop back-alley beat-down eclecticism of Millennium Fight 2000 and further reinforced Capcom and SNK as the premier 2D-fighting game developers.

My roommate and I were on our centesimal round of Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 and I had not won a single match. I played Iori and Sakura; he played Ken and Yuri. I must have smoked half-a-pack of cigarettes because I was getting my ass handed to me on a very dirty ashtray. I persisted in total silence with a look of unbothered determination on my face; this faux-stoicism belied the fact that I was a raging storm inside. I could have stopped playing; I could have called it quits after the nth loss; but something like pride compelled me to keep going, and as I kept going, my playing got worse and the hole grew deeper until it was quickly approaching Hell. My roommate’s faux-stoicism was much simpler; with every knock-out: his confidence grew and his gamer-cred multiplied, and he would always have this over me because computer games were very serious back then and he dared not speak a word lest the fisticuffs escape the television-set and stain the shag carpet with blood. The digital-equivalent of the samurai honor duel was about to end in seppuku.

Capcom vs. SNK was revolutionary as it combined characters from rival developers and introduced the lesser-known SNK fighting games to a wider western audience initially put off by SNK’s realistic-yet-very-anime art style, especially when compared to Capcom’s more western-palatable cartoon-like aesthetics. Both art styles exist in this game, with characters drawn in either style depending on which “groove” was selected before character-selection. The crossover makes perfect sense as SNK’s fighting games were directly inspired by Capcom; SNK’s Fatal Fury: King of Fighters was designed by Takashi Nishiyama, the director of Street Fighter, and was envisioned as a spiritual successor to that game. The two companies often parodied each other; Dan from Street Fighter, a parody of Ryo from SNK’s Art of Fighting, who himself was a homage to Capcom’s Ryu. And while Dan may not be in Millennium Fight 2000, the game does include a roster of over 20 characters from each series. As with most 2D fighters, the controls are obtuse to newbies but intuitive to those familiar with the genre; players are encouraged to use an arcade stick or learn to slide their thumb in circles, half circles, and quarter circles on very-small-directional-pads to execute special-attacks. Both series use this input method so there’s nothing to learn coming from one or the other; thus, combining Capcom and SNK characters into a single game was a no-brainer.

*Iori rushes Ken in the digital equivalent of a samurai honor duel

Patience and practice of the key fundamentals are important with all 2D-fighting games and this is especially true for Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000; its 4-button control scheme, lack of true combos, and smaller skill list compared to the series it pulled from, make mastering the key fundamentals – footsies, blocking, looking for openings, and punishing – extremely important. You could master all a character’s inputs, learn all their moves and perform them perfectly, but if you didn’t time these moves correctly or space them out properly, you would fail every time. For example, Iori Yagami – my main character of choice in most SNK titles – has a super-special-attack called “Ura 108 Shiki: Ya Sakazuki” which can stun and heavily damage the opponent, but it’s blockable so throwing it out in a battle without respect to the opponent’s actions will result in the opponent blocking the attack and punishing you. In fact, one could bait these types of attacks and punish them with a simple low kick, and entire matches could be won doing this.

Even the most fancy quarter-circle-back-half-circle-forward-punch special-attack won’t save you if the opponent sees it coming

And that was why I failed to win a single match that dark night on that alien planet. I knew the cool moves but I didn’t know how to properly use them. I would fire a burning projectile, but my roommate would jump-kick over it. I would use a rush-down attack but my opponent would only block and punish me with a low-kick. I was bound for the floor. I realized what was happening early on but I couldn’t adapt to it because I was too focused on quarter-circle back and quarter-circle forward and getting those flashy special-attack kills. My roommate patiently punished every attack with normal punches and kicks while I was performing complicated inputs for cool-points from the gamer gods who never answered my prayers.

Several hours passed in silence. We both had to work in the morning and at a certain point it became too irresponsible to continue getting my ass beat. I said something like, “I have to get some sleep” and my roommate nodded and we went our separate ways without another word between us. We both knew what happened.

When the door closed behind him, only the miasma of angst and an embarrassed man-child were left behind. I stood silently as the Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 title screen flashed before my eyes, and my hands were trembling, feeling a wail building up inside me. My failures replayed over and over again in my head; over fifty rounds and no wins; my opponent didn’t perform a single special attack but still managed to defeat me. And all my quarter-circle forwards and half-circle backs only resulted in a full-blown quarter-circle meltdown. The Dreamcast controller I was holding dropped to the floor, and I fell to my knees with my face buried in my hands. As I was doing this, my roommate walked in to grab the lighter he left on the couch but, upon seeing my crumpled form, immediately turned around and left the room.

We never played Capcom vs. SNK again.

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(Originally published on 4/8/2024)

#ComputerGames #Autobiographical #CapcomVsSNK #ShortStory

Listen to the audio version here.

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I: Et in Arcadia Ego

“The passing of time, and all of its crimes, is making me sad again.” – Rubber Ring by The Smiths, Louder Than Bombs (1987)^#1

I.I: Summer in Arcadia

Betwixt red maple and palm sat Arcadian youth transfixed by dancing light.

Two boys sat on a small bed and another on the floor nearby. They were crammed in a tiny porch remodeled into a makeshift bedroom; the walls were windows and a sliding glass door revealed the living room while a patio door revealed the backyard and anything even resembling glass was covered by thick blackout curtains. The sun set, but the room was kept aglow by the epileptic flashing of a gray Magnavox cathode-ray tube actively working hypnotism upon the boys. Wires sprawled across the room like laser trip-mines while sounds of fiction and war – consecutive booming, warp and whoosh, ringing shrapnel, and screaming, both human and extraterrestrial – were occasionally drowned out by the uncontrollable laughter and expletive-ridden taunting of Arcadian youth.

All was well because school was out forever, and the extra-large thin-crust pepperoni pizza had just arrived. The boys had just torn into a new case of Diet Cherry Coke, and the only thing that mattered in that tiny pocket of the universe was dual-wielding pop and Xbox controllers, and, of course, the score in the Halo 2 deathmatch playing out on split-screens reflected in the eyes of Arcadian youth.

When the blue splashed into view and the guitar rang out like an engine’s rev before a Slash solo,^#2 every teenage trouble melted away like ice on a warm summer day and the boys were transfixed and true. The boys would then proceed to argue over who received the prestigious title of player-one; a luxury typically afforded to the home team, which bestowed the advantage of a larger screen-slice for the cutthroat deathmatches so seriously considered by these Arcadian youth.

Lockout was the go-to fan-favorite map: a blue-gray maze of open steel pathways mysteriously suspended midair. Lockout devolved into a race of who-gets-the-shotgun-and-sword-first, culminating in one player dominating the match by camping the central gravity-lift for easy kills – a tactic the boys called “hoarding the power weapons,” which was ridiculed severely, yet the lust for winning was so strong that they continued to do it despite the shame.

Ivory Tower was another popular choice, a tropical multi-leveled indoor jungle park with plenty of places to play hide-and-seek; the game-mode of choice was something the boys called “GoldenEye,” in which shields would be disabled and only magnums could be used; this resulted in a one-shot-instant-kill playstyle that relied on reaction-time and skill rather than hoarding power weapons. GoldenEye was very serious business often used to settle insipid disputes and one of the boys would usually end up stomping home in a huff afterwards.

Every flaw; every virtue; every vulnerability; every strength; every weakness – all would be revealed when dancing light reflected in the eyes of Arcadian youth.

*Lockout on the cathode-ray tube.

When the last slice of pizza was eaten and the bodies stopped respawning, and the boys got bored, they sneaked out of the backyard gate and walked to the neighborhood pool – which had closed hours ago. They swam chaotic before the neighbors called the police for noise ordinance violations, and when the police arrived, all they found were unused towels and a green shirt adorned with the words “The Smiths” – the only evidence left behind at the scene of the crime of Arcadian youth.

This was summer break in Arcadia between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. This was before cigarettes, before drugs, before alcohol, before nine-to-five, and before bills.

This was my time in Arcadia – my golden years.

I.II: The Arcadian Tribunal

Miles was a local youth of Arcadia and he was exalted.

Miles, also known as TauntButton, was younger than your not-so-humble narrator by only months. He lived three yards behind my grandma’s Arcadian summer-home. We met when I was ten years old; I ventured to the fishing pond behind grandma’s house and there he was sitting on a big rock with his tackle box: fishing.^#3 I asked if he wanted to play Super Smash Bros. and it was instant kinship.

Miles was of average height and had hair like a sifting pan full of gold with most of the dirt filtered out. His favorite song was “Helicopter” by Bloc Party.^#4 He was the most popular boy within a fifty-mile radius and seemed to be friends with the entire county and then-some. Lithe and handsome, Miles was built like a triathlon wonderkin. He could run up a tree without his hands and dunk a basketball with such force that the ball would burst at the seams. Late at night, when we played cops-and-robbers with the other neighborhood youth, Miles would hide in tall trees and never be found; I would lambaste this behavior, but he kept doing it out of pure contrarianism. He was charming and defiant in his own way. He had type-2 diabetes – the doctors said it was genetic – and he would prick himself with an insulin pen every few hours to charge up like a Sangheili energy shield; we would joke that he was shooting up heroin and this was peak comedy when sneaking-the-joke on those not-in-the-know.

Miles had a keen interest in computer games, but his parents were strict on the when-and-what; his mom wouldn’t let him play Super Smash Bros. because she believed it gave him nightmares; so he used my grandma’s house as a safe haven from his parents’ prying eyes. Miles’ parents would go on to claim that I corrupted him with rebellion and computer games, but our relationship was much deeper than that. I was different from his neighborhood friends, who were more interested in sports tournaments and fishing, and I was exotic by virtue of being a cynical nerd full of computer-game-and-anime knowledge. I had just enough charm to be intriguing instead of creepy.

Miles was practical, outdoorsy, and naive but very curious. I was isolated, reclusive, cynical, and a know-it-all-while-knowing-very-little. Miles and I were opposite and magnetic, but we had one thing in common: we were contrary to the core, very competitive, and, most importantly, we were obsessed with each other.

*Arcadian fishing pond.

The third of the Arcadian Tribunal was Matt, also known as SupaSmallSlice.

Matt’s house shared a yard with my grandma’s summer home, a fact unknown until Miles and I stumbled upon him at the pond; he was fishing by himself, and – just like Miles – I asked him if he wanted to play computer games and it was instant kinship.

Matt was different; he was far less youthful than the rest of us, being four years older. Matt’s old age combined with his adamantine meekness gelled into a predatory aura that neither Miles nor myself picked up on immediately. Our youthful naivety paid off because Matt’s predatory aura never materialized into anything other than a very tall, slightly awkward-looking older boy just sort of standing there silently waiting for you to tell him what to do. Being alone with Matt was like playing host to a forever-bored-and-undecided person that would not leave because they were too coy to speak up; this was the primary reason I strived never to be alone with him.

Matt was the ultimate third wheel, someone for Miles and I to direct our adolescent rage and mockery toward. Whenever we wanted a third player in a computer game, we would get his attention by throwing rocks at his upstairs windows because we were scared of his father – a short, bulging man with a toad-like face that possessed the charisma of a goblin – opening the front door and killing us. Miles and I would secretly team up against Matt in Halo 2, and if Matt noticed, his meekness prevented him from telling us. If the tables turned and Miles or Myself teamed up with Matt: it was a good sign that some deeply extrasensory interpersonal angst was bubbling up in Arcadia.

Miles and I were unfair and cruel to Matt; we never treated him with the respect he deserved, something I regret because we were Matt’s only friends. Matt introduced us to Japanese Role-Playing Games, starting with Final Fantasy VIII, which threw us down a path of geekdom that we still travel to this day. Matt was always nice and polite and would do anything we asked of him; drive us to Wendy’s late at night or to the computer game store or the movie theater. Matt was forever eager to please, and perhaps this was due to the eldritch weirdness which prevented him from making friends his own age.

To these Arcadian youth, Matt was a sideshow, a freak, a weirdo; but he was our friend. And after years of friendship, my aunt – who eventually moved into my grandma’s home – would frequently ask Matt to babysit her teenage son.

And that completed the Arcadian Tribunal: Miles, Matt, and Myself.

But there was a fourth Arcadian youth, my aunt’s teenage son; my cousin.

Jake.

II: Et in Arcadia Insciens

“Drowning here in summer’s cauldron.” – Summer’s Cauldron by XTC, Skylarking (1986)^#5

II.I: Jake, Pongo, and Perdita

His life up until this point had been Pongo and Perdita, and when it flashed before his eyes he remained instinctual and unawares.

Every Tuesday night betwixt red maple and palm, Matt babysat Jake at my grandma’s Arcadian summer home. My aunt had just divorced and moved in with my grandma, bringing along her son, Jake; and since I only lived there during summers and Jake was now a permanent resident, my room was given to Jake, and I was moved to the porch. The porch had recently been remodeled into a makeshift bedroom, now covered in blackout curtains and the epileptic flashing of a Magnavox cathode-ray tube and the sounds of The Smiths’ “Louder Than Bombs” and occasionally John Mayer’s “Room for Squares” and The Strokes’ “Is This It?”

My aunt didn’t trust me to watch Jake, so she chose Matt instead – the older and more outwardly mature of the Arcadian Tribunal – and he was paid handsomely for his services. Miles and I sat in front of the Magnavox transfixed by dancing light while Matt was off making sure Jake wasn’t hurting himself with kitchen utensils or breaking glass on his head or smearing feces on the walls or urinating in grandma’s bed or wandering outside into oncoming traffic or removing his dirty diaper before hiding it somewhere that wouldn’t be discovered until weeks after it had permanently stunkified the house – which was already stunkified and only getting more stunkified by the day. The sounds of clapping, screaming, banging on the walls, and door slamming were cacophonous during these babysitting sessions as Jake made it clear he did not like being away from his mama.

The doctors said Jake was autistic; they said he had always been this way, but his mom insisted otherwise: “He was a normal baby before the vaccines – he was even saying words like ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ before those damn shots.”

Explaining Jake through vaccine conspiracy was easier to process than the truth, and in the end: it doesn’t even matter.^#6 Jake was Jake; he yelled, moaned, clapped, and enjoyed watching Disney films – and only Disney films – on repeat. There was nothing behind his eyes except complacency and primal rage in cycles, and if you handed him an Xbox controller, he would likely swing it – hard – into your face before clapping loudly and wandering off. Jake couldn’t speak a word, yet he was older than me by a year, incredibly handsome with a distinct pudginess to his face, blue-eyes-to-die-for, and dark waves of hair. Jake was the apple of many eyes – until he started screaming and taking his diaper off.

Jake was Arcadian and kin but impossible to connect with. The thought often crossed my mind: in an alternate universe, Jake would have been hoarding power weapons with us on Lockout, but instead: One Hundred and One Dalmatians one hundred and one times and counting.

*Pongo, Perdita, and pups transfixed by dancing light.

Jake lived in Arcadia unawares – but, maybe, we all did.

One thing was certain: this was it for Jake – all he would ever know. I accepted this about Jake; Miles accepted it; Matt accepted it. This acceptance brought us closer together. We were comfortable being around someone who smeared feces on walls; acceptance of this mental handicap was the measure-of-a-man in our Arcadia. The Arcadian Tribunal protected Jake; we loved Jake and he was exalted. And if Jake was too much for a person to handle: that person had a ways to go before they were allowed into our Arcadia – they were not even willing to step through the front door to begin with.

And on the topic of front doors …

II.II: Diaper Pyre

Jake would often open the front door and wander around lost in Arcadia, and because of this: his mom installed a second door ahead of the front door. The second door’s knob was installed backward, the locking mechanism was on the outside facing the elements, preventing Jake from unlocking the door from the inside and thus escaping into the Arcadian wilds. The Trick Door – as we would come to call it – would require some arm-contortionism to lock from the outside after you had already entered the home but before the door fully closed; this was followed by a quick twist on the doorknob from the inside to make sure it locked properly. This Trick Door Lock Procedure was a crucial courtesy when entering the home; a life-or-death version of taking your shoes off.

One warm Arcadian summer night, my aunt and grandma left the house – dancing – and Matt was babysitting Jake. Miles and I were tagging along, playing Halo 2, until Jake started slapping himself on the legs and moaning as a wet gurgling emanated from his lower half.

This was a portent; the warm summer night was about to become much warmer.

Jake had diarrhea – bad diarrhea – and it would not stop. Jake was flowing foul for what seemed like forever; diaper after diaper after diaper of filth. We started to panic as the three of us repeatedly exited the front door to dispose of diapers in the garbage and the trash cans were nearing maximum capacity and the smell – my god, the smell.

The Arcadian Tribunal was defeated – we didn’t know what to do.

Fifteen years old and full of foolish ideas: I suggested we burn the diapers in the backyard. This idea was met with great fanfare; like most jaded millennials, we had pyromaniacal urges that were waiting to be fulfilled, and this was the perfect excuse to fulfill them. We secured a lighter and some gasoline from the backyard and this was how we started down the path of flame.

We piled the dung-drenched Depends^#7 atop stray wood, poured gasoline all over, and tossed a burning piece of paper onto the uncontained pile of incredibly stupid ideas. The diapers burst into flames like the flared farts of a burning man. Stool flavored shit smoke escaped the confines of the backyard and spread a putridity so potent that it was a pox upon the entire neighborhood.

*Jackals and grunts huddle around bonfire of questionable origin.

The diapers burned in effigy to our intoxicating Arcadian innocence but, like youth, they didn’t burn for long; the gasoline and wood did most of the burning, and we quickly learned that diapers are mostly fireproof – most of the fecal matter burned away, the absorbent turned to mush, and the outer material had charred to black. We ended up exactly where we started, only now with a big ball of rancid goop.

Crickets and crackling were the only sounds penetrating the now-much-warmer Arcadian summer night.

Until Miles spoke up: “Where’s Jake?”

II.III: Wandering Around Lost

There was a boy drowning in emotions beyond his understanding; water filled his lungs while he flailed wildly in the ankle-deep waters of a kiddie pool.

I could see a nervous smile forming on Matt’s face – it dawned on him that he had defaulted on babysitting duties in pursuit of pyromania and he was visibly distraught behind his eldritch weirdness. “I’ll go check on him,” Matt said as he stood from his chair and made a beeline for the patio door.

My mind was preoccupied with figuring out how to explain the rat-king of warm diaper goop to my grandma and aunt, but also with Miles’ simple question repeating in my mind. And due to a certain incident involving girls in middle school, I had developed a sixth sense for calamity that was often way-off-the-mark,^#8 but I was feeling it now and it felt like bullseye. The gastrointestinal black hole, reminiscent of a trust-fall with someone you wouldn’t trust at all, grew as I watched Miles prod charred fecal matter with a stick. The feeling of doom grew so strong that I stood up and followed Matt into the house to check on Jake myself.

As I entered the back porch, Halo 2 was idling on the campaign section we had left idle in favor of pyrotechnics and a soldier kept repeating, “At this rate, we’re never gonna win this war!” and this transfixed me briefly until Matt approached me with a look of Holy Terror painted across his face. He said two words: “Jake’s gone.”

My transfixation broken – “What do you mean, he’s gone?”

Matt’s timbre trembled in barely-contained panic, “The door’s unlocked. I checked everywhere.”

My aunt’s worst fear was becoming reality; Jake was wandering around lost in the Arcadian wilds. My eyes grew wide at the very thought, “Who was the last to go out the front door?” My teenage brain instantly jumped to the blame-game as to proactively deflect punishment from myself when my aunt arrived home and realized her son was missing.

Then Miles walked in – looking smooth as always – only to see us standing there arguing about who left the door unlocked. “What’s up?” Miles said, only to be met with the faces of the might-as-well-be-dead. “Jake’s gone, isn’t he?” He said without a shred of fear in his voice, “well he couldn’t have made it far, let’s go look for him.”

My aunt and grandma wouldn’t get home for another hour, so maybe we could fix this before anyone noticed – maybe we could find Jake ourselves.

We wouldn’t bother to check the neighborhood pool because it was locked at eight o’clock and would require Jake to climb over a fence to get in – something he couldn’t do. And it was doubtful that Jake would get hit by a car, as it was late and there weren’t many cars out at this time of night. The worst possibility was that Jake fell into the pond and drowned, but the pond was shallow, and if he had fallen in, we should be able to drag him out before he hurt himself – if the neighborhood crocodile didn’t get to him first.

We decided to take a three-pronged approach. Miles would check the fishing pond; if Jake fell in, Miles was the most well equipped to get him out. Matt would rev up his Toyota Celica and drive every side-street and cul-de-sac; if Jake was wandering the roads, Matt would find him. I would go through a side-path near the house that led to a playground; Jake loved going there so maybe he wandered there instinctively.

*Night; Arbiter searches the Arcadian fishing pond; clubhouse and pool seen in the distance.

But it was hopeless – each path was a dead end, and Jake was nowhere to be found.

The Arcadian Tribunal came full circle and regrouped betwixt red maple and palm; defeated and dejected. The soldier on the Magnavox repeated the words, “At this rate, we’re never gonna win this war!” before I forcefully silenced him by kicking the power button on the Xbox – the games were over, and my aunt would be home any minute now, and then my life would be over too. I would be banished from Arcadia forever.

Matt suggested we call the police. The police would illuminate Arcadia with flashlights and find the missing boy within minutes but then our paradise would crumble and the game would truly be over.

As if living in a ‘90s slasher-film, I decided for us: we would not be calling the police, at least not yet. “I’m going to check the pool,” I said after a round of thoughtful pacing – my words were deflated and blue but belayed a sense of seriousness that was rare in these parts of Arcadia.

“Matt, stay here – if they get home before us, try to keep them distracted; say Jake’s asleep in his room or something.” I said as I scoured for a flashlight in a nearby cabinet. Matt’s eldritch awkwardness would deflect any suspicion as it made him impossible to read even when lying, and he was immediately amiable – as always.

“Miles, come with me; I’m going to need you to jump the fence and unlock the gate.” Miles was contrary as usual, “What’s the point? The gate’s locked – no way Jake could climb that fence.” I found the flashlight then glared at him with a graveness he had never seen from me before, and as I made my way toward the patio door, Miles followed suit without a word.

Spontaneously, the plan had taken form, and I strode out of the backyard with a feigned confidence so convincing that I appeared like the leader of an Arcadian Battle Regiment or: The Arcadian Youth League.

Miles and I had to travel through four yards, around the rim of the fishing pond, and over a fence to get to the clubhouse pool. I flicked on my flashlight as we crept through the verdant alley between my grandma’s house and Matt’s house. A black cat ran from one bush to the next. It looked like Chips, my grandma’s rescue, but I couldn’t be sure. Through our creeping, we made it beyond the second yard, but the third house had an open yard with a dog pacing back and forth. I took a gamble and bolted across the edge. The yard was on the border of the fishing pond, and I was so focused on not falling into the water that my foot snagged a root, and my flashlight went flying into the air, and my face went headfirst into the dog’s dominion.

Miles yelled something out as he caught up with me and grabbed at my shirt, but it was too late; the dog had arrived. There was no barking, no snarling, only wetness on my cheek followed by a thick layer of slobber. The dog was licking my face and wagging their tail. I got to my knees and cupped the dog’s head in my hands; it looked like a Golden Retriever in the summer moonlight, and I pet the dog’s head before nudging them away. The dog sauntered off into a nearby shadow and returned with something thick in their mouth – a bone? No, it was my flashlight; the glass was broken, and the switch was in the off position, but it still turned on when flicked, albeit with the flashlight equivalent of a whimper: a flicker. I pointed the cone of light at the dog – a Golden Retriever, confirmed – and then to Miles, who was standing there with a blank look on his face: “Are you the dog whisperer or something?”

*Jake’s home in Arcadia.

We took the incident with the dog as a sign of good fortune and crept with newfound confidence through the final yard. We made it to the clubhouse and walked toward the pool courtyard gate. I felt a nudge on my leg and looked down; it was the dog. They followed us. I patted the dog on the head and gave them a “Good dog” and then placed my hand on the top of the gate. “Alright, Miles, go ahead and –” I paused as the gate slowly opened with just a gentle touch.

Miles and I looked at each other, our eyes widening in revelation. Someone forgot to lock the gate – just like we forgot to lock the Trick Door.

All three of us rushed into the poolside courtyard and looked around frantically. I circled the edge of the pool, shining my flashlight into the water, but there was nothing except pennies and pool toys. Then the dog raised their wet nose to the sky and sniffed with purpose before bolting off into a corner of the courtyard consumed by dense shadow.

Miles and I followed the dog with purpose. The flashlight was dimming but still caused shadows to shiver and flee with some hesitation. Once we got close enough, we saw the dog standing on the edge of a kiddie pool, extending their head over the water as if signaling at something with their nose. I pointed my flashlight beyond the dog’s snout, and that’s when I saw it.

Jake’s body; floating; eyes closed and moonward. He was naked, and a diaper was floating near his head. The leaked contents of the diaper contaminated the waters around him. There was a gloom in the gravity so powerful that it stopped the Earth’s rotation.

The dog whimpered. Miles was staring at the frozen Earth beneath him. There were no words. He slowly removed his phone from his pocket and handed it to me – “you do it.” Neither of us knew CPR, so it was the only option. I nodded solemnly and started dialing the three numbers we had been avoiding this whole time.

But just then, there was a cough. I stopped dialing and looked over to Miles. “Are you fucking with me?” I glowered. But no, there was another cough, the sound of disturbed waters, and a moan like the moan of a boy obsessed with Pongo and Perdita. I swung the flashlight toward the kiddie pool, and there he was in all his naked glory.

He clapped loudly while walking circles in the ankle-deep waters of the kiddie pool, and his manhood swung wild like the wind. Jake was alive. Miles and I turned to each other, both stupefied, and we started laughing louder than we had ever laughed before.

When the laughter stopped, I grabbed Jake’s wrist and led him out of the courtyard. Before exiting through the gate, Miles turned to me and said, “hey, where did that dog go?”

The dog was gone, and as we returned home through the yards of Arcadia, the Golden Retriever was nowhere to be found.

III. Mea Aurea Annos

“The only thing true is nothing can last.” – My Golden Years by The Lemon Twigs, A Dream Is All We Know (2024)^#9

Betwixt red maple and palm sits a man in his thirties transfixed by dancing light.

When I decided to replay Halo 2 in January of 2024, it was because I wanted to prove to Miles – and my younger self – that I could beat the game on Legendary difficulty – something I was never able to do during My Time in Arcadia. And when the marine in Chapter 1 said, “standard formation – little bastards up front, big ones in back”,^#10 I knew I was in for a ride, and for a moment, I was fifteen again.

I soon found out that Halo 2 on Legendary difficulty is an ouroboros affair of trial-and-error and pure rage. Every encounter is death, and every respawn only takes you a centimeter closer to victory. If it had bonfires, character builds, and a third-person perspective, it would be Dark Souls – just far more frustrating and tedious and just not fun at all. Halo 2 on Legendary difficulty is only two weapons – the Plasma Pistol and the Battle Rifle – because everything else is a pea-shooter that doesn’t do sufficient shield damage; without the Plasma Pistol, every enemy turns into a minute-long bullet-sponge demonspawn that actively casts hair-loss magic on the player through the monitor; and since the Plasma Pistol can’t actually kill anything, the Battle Rifle has to be on swap to finish the job. Halo 2 on Legendary is why male-pattern baldness exists. Halo 2 on Legendary is why I pray for early onset Alzheimer’s so I can forget about all the time I wasted charging up Plasma Pistols and game-overing to grunts because every enemy has perfect aim and the jackals – my god – the jackals.

Alzheimer’s – that’s a strange thing, isn’t it? Just forgetting. Arcadia, lost…

If I were a masochist, I would consider Halo 2 on Legendary difficulty to be the greatest computer game of all time.

I did complete Halo 2 on Legendary, but I had no fun doing it – so why did I actually do it?

The truth is: when I decided to replay Halo 2 in January of 2024, it was because I wanted to be on the porch-turned-bedroom in front of the Magnavox. I wanted to hear my autistic cousin clapping and groaning behind the sounds of warp and whoosh. I wanted Miles and Matt to walk through my office door and sit down next to me as if no time had passed at all. I wanted to see the fishing pond through the eyes of fifteen-years-old. I wanted to return to Arcadia – my golden years.

It’s not just me – I see it everywhere. The computer game community, especially, is full of people just like me, obsessed with their youth – ignoring the present.

Nostalgia trespasses our minds like children with flashlights; highlighting the good, leaving the bad covered in shadow. So many of my preferences are formed from nostalgia’s sweet embrace, and I can point to the exact moment that I am trying to recreate each time. The existence of this essay is evidence of the fact that I am obsessed with the past; I could have written about my daughter, or my son, or my wife, but no – it’s not nostalgic enough yet. They say midlife crisis kicks in between the ages of forty and sixty, but it feels like I have a midlife crisis every day. And every time I try to recreate these treasured experiences, the magic becomes less potent – the feeling slips further away, and the thing is a little more bastardized than it once was.

My childhood is wandering around lost, and I am in the dark with a dying flashlight looking for Jake.

*Master Chief overlooks fading Arcadia.

Miles went to college for mechanical engineering. He works in an automobile factory now. Occasionally, I still play computer games with him online, and we talk on Discord. He’s still into anime and computer games – maybe because of my influence. We live multiple states apart, and our friendship isn’t nearly as strong, but every time we talk, one of the stories in this essay inevitably comes up. I went to his wedding back in 2018. I don’t think his wife has ever liked me.

Matt moved back in with his parents; the same house in the same room with the same window we used to throw rocks at. Matt hasn’t changed much, if anything: his weirdness is even more eldritch than ever before. He’s gone from ultra-fit to mirroring his father to somewhere in-between, and he’s still as meek as ever. It seems like I’m still his only friend, as every time I visit my grandma’s house, he’s up there in his room. I’m not scared of his dad anymore. I walk right in and go upstairs, and there’s Matt: sitting in front of a few computer monitors playing old episodes of Quantum Leap while peculiar new-age music plays softly in the background and incense form a thick smoke throughout the room. It’s all very Lovecraftian, but my aunt still trusts him enough to let him drive my grandma to her ballroom dancing every Tuesday night.

My grandma can’t drive anymore – she has Alzheimer’s disease now.

And Jake, he still lives in Arcadia unawares. Clapping, moaning, taking his diaper off, and watching Pongo and Perdita. But one day, he too will change just like the rest of us. The doctors say his condition will only get worse – he’ll start forgetting; one day, he won’t even know who his mama is. But that’s not so different from everyone else – is it? Alzheimer’s: Arcadia just slipping away.

Some say the only thing true is nothing can last; everything fades away and nothing is forever. If the only thing true is nothing can last – then maybe we should treat every year like our golden years; maybe we should live in the moment.

This essay exists not only to wallow in nostalgia, but also to chronicle my life – in case I forget.

This essay will function as a Golden Retriever in the dark.

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Footnotes:

#1. https://youtu.be/GG1ZYByvfqQ #2. https://youtu.be/4bMoHIllZOc #3. https://howdoyouspell.cool/forrest/tactics-ogre-reborn-ruminations-on-resentment-regret-and-retribution #4. https://youtu.be/2R6S5CJWlco #5. https://youtu.be/3DRUnkkjkds #6. https://youtu.be/eVTXPUF4Oz4 #7. https://www.depend.com/en-us/incontinence-products/protection-with-tabs #8. https://howdoyouspell.cool/forrest/no-disc-1998-seatbelts #9. https://youtu.be/jnylB5ylyw4 #10. https://halo.bungie.org/misc/h2dialogue/marines/cairo_littlebastards.mp3

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(Originally published on 2/11/2024)

#ComputerGames #Autobiographical #Halo2 #ShortStory