There and Back Again

I have returned unscathed. Relatively unscathed. There may have been a slight bit of scathing, around the edges. If it doesn't clear up in a day or two I might go see a doctor, but for now I have an ointment for it.

Montreal was beautiful, of course. I would go into exhaustive detail, were this not a blog about video games but instead, say, on being young and in love in the springtime. What is it about the blogosphere, I wonder, that lends itself to a propagation of the former and a distinct lack of the latter? We may have to remedy this trend at some point, to ensure our survival as a species.

I was lucky enough to be paired on a panel with Bernard Perron, the mad scientist of horror games himself and the organizer of the whole shindig. I have nabbed this photo from the website, listed under the heading of "Aftermath," a word that I think sums things up perfectly.



Here I can be seen struggling to answer the age-old question that has vexed mankind for millenia:

Videogames... are they videogames?


- Rook

Loira, Morena, Ruiva

When I wrote earlier about blogging as I produced my presentation for Thinking After Dark, I had assumed it would be a gradual affair, moving through chapters in a modular essay as I've done twice previous. And it's not from lack of material that I haven't - quite the opposite, as I find myself sitting atop a heap of writing that may not be so much the basis for a 30-minute spiel as the start of a book. Let it be said that I am never accused of bringing a knife to a gunfight.

Rather, the things I've find myself drawn to write about over this last month have been all peripheral, concerning the process of writing this as opposed to the actual article. This may stem from my structuralist baggage, which leaves me with a chronic craving for metanarrative... though I prefer to think of this as a side-quest.

Always when I sit down to round up my data, I am amazed by the intricate play of facts against one another, forming patterns of data that were imperceptible until plotted. As the opposite of quantum events that collapse upon observation, these are configurations that seem to leap from the page, called into being by their very arrangement. I suspect this is a sensation that is felt in earnest by mathematicians, programmers and Spirograph-enthusiasts... where the layman sees a scrawl, the crunch-head sees patterns: blonde, brunette, redhead.

It's in this fashion that when I sit down to write, I instead catch myself writing on writing. Of course, in this case I am writing on writing on writing. You can see how quickly this becomes ridiculous. Despite everything, though I can't fault the process - it's always an unintended thrill when you set out to produce one thing, and get something entirely other instead. Ta da! Magic!

Here's to the little alchemies of our age.

- Rook

Things That Go BLEEP-BLOOP in the Night

Your humble co-narrator has been busy. Busy with video games.

It might be suspected that as far as business goes, video games might be one of the more pleasant things to be busied with. And, heck, I would have thought so too! But in playing some two dozen horror video games in rapid succession, jumping across systems and decades in a craven search for an understanding of the breadth of the matter, I fear I have begun to do immeasurable damage to my psyche.

In true Lovecraftian form, I may have unearthed secrets not fit for the gaze of man. Each of these games, after all, serves as an attack on a player’s sensibilities. To be truly afraid, something must be undone, leaving some fuse in the viewer’s lizard brain frayed and sparking. But each of these games chooses a different approach, a separate jab and feint that may be radically different from others of its kind. Put together they form a kind of onslaught upon all regions of the self, like a particularly virulent form of Neitzschean nihilism but with way way more zombies.

Like the Inuit's apocryphal hundred words for snow, I am discovering new words for FEAR.

FUN FACT: In one ten second period, Christopher Guest says "suck" four times.

These varying visions of spookiness jumble together, a melange in the slow cooker of my subconscious. These horrors take hold of me when I least expect them... I have begun to be plagued by fevered dreams! In some, I am assisted by my erstwhile companions, but often I am alone. Perhaps I am on a spaceship, or in a strange town, or confined to a mall or a haunted house. Sometimes I have a gun, or something else entirely, but often I have nothing.

In every dream I am chased by something... something inscrutiably terrible, seen only in the corners of my eyes. It looms over me, hovering, long, black finger of a forgotten god.

Is it.. Oh, God, is it? It is! IT IS!

It's an Atari 2600 Joystick!

I didn't even know they still made those.

- Rook