De Blob: Anarchy, Art and Video Games

Fun, colorful and maybe it has a deeper message.

I don't really play newer video games, but I got the chance to try out De Blob, a Wii game that feels a bit like Mario Sunshine, Sonic the Hedgehog, Kirby and The Tick. De Blob even looks a bit like Tick, doesn't he?
I'm not saying it's original, but it's delightful. The plot is, an evil corporation called INKT has invaded Chroma City and turned the entire place to a colorless, soulless place. Your job is to maneuver De Blob to paint capsules and soak the entire town in color. You rescue citizens from their lifeless, cultureless existence and everyone cheers and music plays and it's great.
The bad guys, the Inkys, they're like Nazi's. Watching cut scenes of them are like old Nazi propaganda films and a less funny, less violent Happy Tree Friends. But it's an interesting perspective to have on fascism, at least for a video game -- that government is uncreative and soulless and the best way to fight back is ART.
There's even the Church of Inktology (which you destroy and turn into a skatepark), a thin veil for religious commentary or maybe just attacks on Scientology, but I don't see much difference.
Yes, it's a game about Anarchy and graffiti and it's marketed for kids. I think this is spectacular. My brothers and sisters who own it will maybe grow up thinking for themselves. Or maybe not. They don't read into much.
And that's half the reason I don't play newer video games -- there's nothing to read into. There were some bizarre, troubling morals in the games I played as a kid, like Majora's Mask, Link's Awakening, Metroid and Zombies Ate My Neighbors, but at least there was something. There's nothing anymore. Halo? Please. All those stupid WWII games? Yeah right, not even a "don't join the army" warning. Even the newer Zeldas and Marios are vapid.
But De Blob is an exception. A beautiful exception.

If I had a Wii, I'd buy it.

Healthcare and (hopefully) addressing real concerns.

august 30

As you know, I hate both the Left and the Right equally, so this whole healthcare debate has me aghast at both levels of stupidity.
As you know, I am against big government, so obviously, putting my health and life in the hands of a self-minded bureaucracy doesn't seem smart.
But hearing the conservatives argue against it is ludicrous! God, their petty bickering is exactly opposite of what I believe! They aren't arguing for freedom, they aren't arguing for anything but their own agenda. After all, Reagan introduced plenty of bills that made our healthcare more socialist.Bush and Bush haven't helped shit.

And yes folks, by definition this healthcare plan is socialist. Some think that's ok. "Hey, it works for Canada and Sweden." But how certain are we that it will function under OUR government, which is leaps and bounds larger and more disorganized? With the national debt reaching bazillions of dollars we think we can pay for this with 3¢ taxes on Coke? We are funding unstoppable wars that are killing innocent people, now we think we can save ourselves? This isn't about the elderly getting coverage, this is about collapsing the entire infrastructure of Capitol Hill.

I disagree that socialism -- if it works at all -- works in the long run. It may work for Canada now, but who knows? In ten years, thirty, it could fall on them. It didn't work for

I hate the argument that government health care will be run like the Post Office. It'll be way more like the DMV. Hours of waiting, go to one window to get this tag to take to this window ... while the doctors and officials try to weasel you out of coverage. Has the government ever given something away for free that wasn't dripping with reluctance? Even FEMA is haphazard and inefficient to our own "huddled, starving masses," namely, victims of hurricanes, floods and earthquakes. And I know what it's like, I've been on government healthcare before.

Did you know you have to renew it every six months? This may take six to eight weeks to process. So for a maximum of 16 weeks out of the year, don't you dare have a hospital emergency. Just try getting covered then. My sister had a fine time with that when she had appendicitis.

And I'm SO SURE if this access was mandatory to everyone it would magically improve, not deteriorate. Let's up the scale of this unreliable system to a national level!

Well, wait, this isn't about me OR you. This is about the children. They are dying in droves because Obama is not here to hand them a band-aid -- which is about all your kid with leukemia will qualify for.

But it's true. Our healthcare system blows. But isn't that because the Clintons, the Reagans and everyone since FDR have made the problems of a market a problem for the bureaucracy? What I'm saying is, when the problems get worse as the government shoves its pointed nose in deeper, is the real solution MORE of the same?

It was Benjamin Franklin that said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Strange Graves

photo by Squared

She calls me after work, carrying an orange juice box full of flowers and she says, let's go to the cemetery.

I'm reluctant. I'm slightly hungover, at the very least tired, not amused by anything. I'm overcast, like the sky.

Trudging through puddles, accumulations of soggy pine needles and dead leaves, fall feels omnipresent. Inescapable drudgery.

We place brilliantly-dyed flowers, the stems hacked off, onto any graves that look lonely. Neon green, canary yellow, periwinkle and opal white. Fake colors.

I'm ignoring any new or military graves, looking for the markers placed in Citizen's Cemetery that are for normal people, people so long dead they never knew what electricity was or chemical warfare or strip malls or nuclear holocaust or ATM's or any of this. Doesn't their pain, centuries old, long buried, seem more justified than this? Even if it's forgotten?

I yearned for causes of death, some kind of excuse, but there were none. My thoughts couldn't connect.

I searched for the graves of children, babies with the same birth and death date. I found pairs, two brothers who died before they were my age. Those tombstones for married couples, the one side already etched deep with dates, the other, empty . . . patiently waiting. Over one such couple's grave, I kissed her, long and hard.

She was crying. It was hard, raw. It could be us soon. But maybe that's just selfish thinking.

And there's a picture of our feet, the box, the tomb.

We gave the remainder of the flowers to a man bringing his kids to the cemetery.