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"There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity." ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When all is said and done ...
The funeral was yesterday, and I just woke up from a very exhausting day. This event was held on such short notice because my mother wished to get it over with as quickly as humanly possible. I guess she thought that if she got through the funeral it would help with her pain.
Even so, a lot of people showed up. Family, friends, the landlady, NYPD officers. I always knew that my father was well-loved, but the huge turnout surprised me. I rode with my mother and my aunt in a limo provided by the funeral home. Officers in dress uniforms flanked the front entrance, and men in uniforms stood gathered in the building among the friends and family. I met many people there whom I haven't seen in years, from distant cousins to family friends I'd grown up with who, sadly, had went their separate ways as they matured into independent adults.
It was, of course, a somber occasion, but the service was also marked by upbeat gospel singing and funny anecdotes shared by Father's loved ones. My niece, Shanti, gave a particularly wonderful speech about the time she'd spent with her grandfather. My brother Jameson read a letter, written by his wife and children, so they could express their feeling despite not being able to attend.
Father was one of the few people who believed in my abilities as a writer from the very beginning. When we first moved into this house, he introduced me to the landlord and landlady as "my son, the writer." He read my work enthusiastically, and at one point even tried to pitch it to a friend who works for the Fox network. For this reason I decided that it was only right that I put those skills to use in honoring his memory. I wrote an elegy, which was printed on the back of the funeral program, and I requested the honor of being the one to deliver his eulogy.
No one I spoke to seemed to know the difference between an elegy, a eulogy, and an obituary. For this reason the funeral director expected me to recite the poem, and instead I gave a speech. I was then called back to the podium to read the elegy as well. Anyone who knows me is aware that crowds and I don't mix. On a good day I have social anxiety and stumble when I am forced to deal with more than one or two people at once. On a bad day I am agoraphobic and don't even want to leave the house. So standing up and delivering a speech was the last thing anyone seriously expected me to do. My mother was afraid that I'd choke on stage, or get cold feet and refuse to deliver the speech.
Neither of those things happened. There is a time and a place for one's personal baggage, and my father's funeral was neither of those things. This was about him, not me. To be perfectly honest, delivering the speech was easy. It didn't matter what the audience thought because I was not talking to them. I was talking to my father, and expressing my feelings to him.
The speech and the poem went over far, far better than I expected. While speaking I got nods and a nostalgic laugh or two, followed by applause. After the services people came up to me and said that they had no idea that I was such a talented writer. Some people asked if I was a poet. I told them that I write fiction and normally don't do poetry, and they said that I should. A relative asked if, many years from now, I would eulogize at his funeral. My writing was the talk of the occasion. I know my father would have been proud.
For the first time in my entire life I was publicly acknowledged as a writer. I think this was my father's final gift to me: the validation I had always sought, even though I myself never fully realized that I was seeking it. I realize now that this isn't some farfetched dream of mine, it is reality. I am a writer, no matter what happens. This has solidified my desire to be the writer my father always knew I am. When my first book is published, it will be dedicated to him.
An NYPD color guard rendered honors and saw my father's casket to the hearse. Police cars escorted th again I rode in the limo with my mother and my aunt. We were each given a rose, with the option of keeping it as a memory or laying them on his grave. I decided to give F I do not need an object to remind me of him.
My mother wept as we returned home. My work here is not yet finished. For the past year I had been helping to take care of my dying father, and now I will be there for my mother and help her come to grips with the loss of her husband. At the same time I will continue my work, get my book published, and finally have my dream. This time I am no longer doing this only for myself.
Rest in peace, Dad.
Posted: 10/26/11 ---
My father, Walter Hill, passed away at 6:40 am this morning. May he find peace in the eternity that awaits him.
Posted: 10/21/11 ---
Why I'm not a PC Gamer.
It's rare for me to actually own a computer that can play current games. In fact, the PC I'm using now is the first one I've had in several years with that capability. There was a brief window in which I had a machine that could run the games of the time, but it became obsolete mere months after the purchase and I wasn't about to plunk down hundreds of dollars on upgrades to get what I already had on my home consoles.
As a result, it's only within the past few years that I've had the opportunity to really play games on my computer, to actually use the much talked about mouse and keyboard controls and experience the often vaunted superior graphics and sophistication that PC gamers love to point out. Well, it's been three years and I've played many games. Frankly, I am not impressed.
One of the first things I did once I set up my then new computer and configured it to my liking was open a Steam account. A quick check of my Steam library reveals that I currently own 75 games in total. The funny part is that I probably will never play most of them. I'd bought most of those games in a kind of frenzy. Awed by the vastness of the gaming pastures that stretched out before me, and wooed by the cheap prices of Steam's holiday sales, I snatched up any game that interested me. I could not believe my good fortune. I was ready to declare, then and there, that the PC was now my platform of choice.
Then the honeymoon phase passed and I began to ask certain questions. "Sure these games are pretty," I thought to myself, "but are they $1200 worth of pretty? Would I be willing to shell out hundreds more dollars in order to maintain this relative level of prettiness in the future?" To answer this question I consulted my wallet. It stared at me with a downtrodden expression, pining for the days when I'd occasionally have money to put in it, and calmly said "ARE YOU INSANE?"
Finding myself low on funds with which to buy games while simultaneously saving for a new video card, I inevitably fell to the dark side. Thus began a whole new honeymoon phase where I pirated games. This did not last long. Eventually I had an attack of conscience when I realized that I had just been contributing to one of the negative factors of PC gaming that make it a less desirable platform in the eyes of developers. Oh, and there was that whole feeling guilty for stealing thing as well. So my Steam library grew as I began buying the games I'd stolen previously as a form of penance.
As time went on I began to wonder what exactly I was getting out of the PC gaming experience that I couldn't also get on my Xbox 360. I began looking for ways to differentiate my playing experience and came up pretty dry. Some games support mods, assuming that either the developer made modding tools available or some clever players found a way to do it on their own. The problem with mods, though, is that I hardly ever use them for anything more than cosmetic purposes on my first play through. When I first play a game like Fallout 3 I want to experience it as it is, so mods don't become relevant to me until I've already beaten the vanilla game and want to play it again. Considering all the games on my plate, I hardly have the time to replay any given game.
"But PC gaming is so much more pure!" I've been told. "The mouse and keyboard is the best g so much better than the clumsy, unintuitive, inaccurate controllers!"
I could never, for the life of me, feel comfortable playing computer games with a mouse and keyboard. I can certainly use them, but after nursing my cramped fingers after an hour or so I start yearning for the ease of a controller. In fact, if a PC game supports a controller I use that by default. I consider the wired Xbox 360 controller to be the best PC gaming purchase I've ever made. My freakishly large hands thanked me for no longer having to have their fingers cramped over the WASD keys and stretched at odd angles to perform basic actions. "Want to use that shotgun you just picked up?" my PC shooter asks me. "Well too bad because now you have enemies shooting at you and that weapon is designated to the 7 key. Good luck reaching that without getting your head blown off, you loser!"
When using a mouse and keyboard it feels less like I'm playing a game and more like I'm operating a jet fighter without having had the required training. I find myself going to the pause menu to be reminded of which key does what, and heaven help me if I stop playing a game for a month or so and come back later. While I will agree that a mouse is more accurate than an analog stick for aiming down the grey muzzle of your gun and peering through the brown landscape at generic identical bad guy clone number 476, I'm just not having any fun while doing it. I'll take a small hit to overall accuracy if it means I actually get to enjoy splattering said bad guy's brain matter all over the wall in a spray of fine red mist.
Overall it's the keyboard part of mouse and keyboard I have an issue with. That and the fact that I likes me some rumble, and they've yet to invent a vibrating keyboard. A controller is an u after a while I hardly notice it's even there. I just think about performing an action and muscle memory does the rest. With a mouse and keyboard I'm constantly reminded of the interface and have to take a split second to think about how to do what I want to do. This can be a death sentence in a heated firefight where the difference between life and death can be measured in fractions of seconds.
Then there are the other problems. Namely, the fact that when I buy a new game for my PC it's a tossup if it will even work. You have to bow your head as the game installs and offer up a prayer to the PC gaming gods that your game will function without errors when you're finally allowed to run it. I must have angered the PC gaming gods--possibly by reciting my prayer wrong or leaving an unsuitable sacrifice on their sacred altar--because half the time I find myself on the troubleshooting sections of PC gaming forums trying to figure out how to get the bloody thing to run properly. There always seems to be some bug or incompatibility that conspires to keep me from the game.
Even when the game does work a part of me is afraid it's going to crash at any given moment, because it usually does. Just a few weeks ago I was merrily playing Dragon Age 2 and it crashed several times in the space of 30 minutes, and not just a normal crash where you can simply start the game again. No, it was a system-killing crash which meant I had to reboot my machine each time it happened.
Overall I'm just not into PC gaming, regardless of how much more precise the mouse and keyboard is or how much more sophisticated the games are. Though, from my experience, I'd replace the word "precise" with "convoluted" and "sophisticated" with "needlessly obtuse".
The PC is also the only platform where I've bought a game and was told that I'm not allowed to play it because the DRM is malfunctioning and locked me and hundreds of other purchasers out of the game. Granted that was sorted out a few days later, but while that was being fixed I slinked back to my console. The simplicity and trouble-free access came as a relief. It was a breath of fresh air in a place that had previously stank of bugs, driver updates, compatibility issues, and system crashes.
Well at least I got to chuckle when I realized that I was being treated like a thief now that I was legally purchasing all my games, by a piece of anti-piracy software that the actual pirates bypass faster than a porn star's underpants.
And before anyone says I'm just being an ignorant console fanboy, I will be the first to point out that console gaming isn't without its problems either. My currently 4th Xbox 360 can attest to that while it regales you with the tales of the deaths that befell its predecessors. The first had a broken disc drive, the second had its GPU fried, and the third came down with a good old fashioned case of the Red Ring of Death. I'll give M their hardware may break down all the time, but at least it does so with some variety.
Posted: 08/18/11 ---
Humble Indie Bundle 3
The latest Humble Bundle is here, which allows you to purchase several fantastic indie games for any price you want, with the proceeds going to charity. When I say any price, I do mean ANY price. Want to pay $100? Go ahead. Want to pay only one cent? You can do that too (you monster!).
So what are you waiting for? Pay whatever you want, get some fantastic games, and support charity! Why are you still reading this? GO! BUY! NOW!
Posted: 08/05/11 ---
Xtazy Energy Drink
Taste: Depends on variety.
Strength: Strong
Active Ingredients: B2, B3, B5, B6, B12, Taurine, Guarana, Panax Ginseng, Milk Thistle, Ginkgo Biloba, L-Carnitine
Rating: 4 out of 5
Xtazy energy drink is a guarana-based energy drink which, in a decided break from energy drink conventions, comes in 3 distinct flavors instead of just one. It also utilizes some unique ingredients to further set it apart from the competition. All of the available varieties offer a smooth taste with no aftertaste to speak of.
Orange Blast is my least favorite of the three. It's surprisingly bland and flavorless, bitter, and tastes almost nothing like oranges.
Cranberry Blast is sweet and syrupy, with a pleasant touch of cranberry flavor.
Lime Blast offers a smooth citrus lime flavor reminiscent of Fresca and similar beverages. Overall, this flavor is my favorite of the three.
While by no means potent, Xtazy does provide a good boost of energy and noticeably increases focus and awareness. This is a good drink to choose if you need to write, study, or perform any task which requires focused thought.
Overall this is a good choice, both in terms of taste and effectiveness.
Posted: 06/21/06 ---
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