Blog 20 – Be Resolute in Resolution

12/31/11

I’ll be upfront: I think the entire idea of New Years Resolutions is stupid. If you wait for an arbitrary deadline to create a list of crap to fix in your life, it’s unlikely you will. This is not me being a defeatist, perhaps a contrarian, but I am more than open to creating a list of goals for a new year in which I turn thirty. I propose a single-letter typo correction on the whole issue.

Here is my list of 2012 New Years Revolutions:

Artist's rendering of how a stroke creates lightening bolts in your hair.

1)     Don’t have another stroke

I suppose this is fairly outside of my control and relies more on the ingenuity of doctors, but as a list of goals, it behooves my arterial rebels to be reminded that blood clots are lame and should be annihilated with extreme prejudice.

It’s a funny thing. I make jokes about having one, and sometimes I feel strangely terrible about it. No one ever knows how to react, which is funny because I don’t really either. A lot of the time, I second guess myself on even tweeting something about it out of a fear that everyone is like “oh, there goes stroke-boy again, shaking the pity trees of every last leaf.” Given time, everyone around you returns to normal, sometimes even forgetting the devastation something like that left in its wake. Unfortunately, when I do forget, I wake up and have to scour my phone for who I should bother today for a ride to buy something as innocuous as groceries. I live with it, and we’re all feeling this out together. I never know how to approach any situation where I must ask for help when everyone has their own lives charting a course for a new year. I’ve actually walked to the grocery store (which is a bit over a mile away) more than a couple of times with a backpack (which I promptly fill up with IBC Black Cherry and forget everything else I was supposed to buy.)

It’s not bad; it’s just weird. The exercise is surprisingly good for my dead leg, and I enjoy the time outside, but I will need to put together a better system in the new year, which goes hand in hand with not having another one—especially not a “Crytogenic” one.

This is a panel from when my novel was still a graphic novel. Davide Fabbri is the man.

2)     Get my book published

Clearly, I’m aiming low with this list, what with two seemingly improbable goals to attend to. I have been chomping at the bit to jump in and make narrative and grammatical fixes to the seventh draft, but there has been movement down the path-to-publish that prevent me from doing this right now. Should someone pick it up, I’m sure I will get very busy quite hastily.

I actually wouldn’t mind a few more opinions on the current draft, so if you find yourself bored and want to read a novel about an eleven-year-old boy and a mysterious stranger fighting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, drop me a line at [mikeyzilla at gmail dot com] and we could probably work something out.

And then I was all, 'PEW PEW PEW,' and then were all like, 'OHNOESDEATH!!'

3)     Finish up all the craziness with Borderlands 2

Working with everyone has been a blast. Anthony Burch is a madman with a frightening ability to make you laugh in so many different ways. There’s so much amazing in this game that I can’t wait for you guys to get your hands on; I just wish I could talk more about any of it.

I will say, the intro, was an exercise in biting off far more than I could possibly chew. Love it!

4)     Finish writing my horror movie and film it

I have an entire journal of notes that I’m still in the process of turning into a workable screenplay. I’m always looking for a new and fresh angle to tell a story with. It was odd, from the outset I wanted to make an actually frightening movie—one that makes you want to walk out of the theater, but never from gross out scares or a vague and strange form of intolerance. The film is quite straightforward in plot, but I think the execution of familiar elements in refreshing ways makes it horrifying. I will never understand how every schlocky cynical cash-grab that comes out of the major studios never once considers that characters must be the central point of emotional connection to the material. Titanic, for all intents and purposes, is a horror movie—only James Cameron knew that the movie only succeeded by attaching his audience to the characters before the horror could occur.

More news as this evolves.

That concludes my list of things to accomplish in 2012. When I sat down to write this I was expecting to write a couple of goals and then make a list of increasingly silly resolutions like “clone a panda who can make me oatmeal in the morning,” but apparently I had more to get off my chest. I’ll be funny next time, I promise.

Enjoy 2012!

Blog 19 – BEST. CHRISTMAS. EVER

12/27/11

I’m sure if you’ve been following my blog/Facebook/Twitter with any degree of regularity, you know that my year shit the bed with a quiet grace often reserved by an elderly Grizzly bear that consumes a diet of exclusively Taco Bell XXL Burritos (extra guacamole.)   

But hey, we all have strokes at 29, right?

*Quiet contemplation from all participants*

I’ll take your collective silence to be one of meditation and reflection.

As you emerge from your inverted-facing-giraffe positions, I’ll move onto the meat of the story.

This year was some kind of Christmas miracle fit for a McCallister. Free Pepsi for all!

Let’s rewind to last Thursday when I went into work, as I often do, and was told that two packages had arrived during the night from none other than “Valve Software.” I paused for a moment, unsure of what trickery was afoot.

The box contained a card that read as follows:

If you want to make me cry at work, this is a good place to start.

What followed in both boxes can be summed up in the following photo, though it really doesn’t do their generosity justice.

Yes, that's a huge statue of the tank from L4D2.

 I was blown away by the gift from Valve, and they made not only my Christmas better, but a lot of people at Gearbox got a piece of Swag Mountain just in time for Christmas. Truly heartfelt thank you from a slightly broken boy to one of the classiest game companies around, and remarkably, they have never been any but. As you scrape the barrel of your eggnog dependency, please raise a half-fermented glass you probably shouldn’t drink to the men and women at Valve Software. They deserve your Christmas love.

Moving on, this one will be quick, but my laser cut Catan board you guys probably all saw on the internet months ago and didn’t move on—well, that came in and here it is! The quality is mind-blowing and a true showcase of the quality of Kickstarter to get stuff done. Big ups to the guys at Boardcrafting and should you want to research further, please check out their KS site here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sjbrown/boardcrafting

Seriously. Holy crap.

 I’ll skip forward for a moment to something many people have been asking about. A bit of background: my family (in entirety) requested that while I’m watching the medical bills pile up, I don’t buy them anything for Christmas. I can’t say I resisted, and agreed to make all the various Christmas meals (including a 9.5 pound prime rib) to make up the difference. I didn’t feel particularly great about this, but I don’t think I’ve ever been more tired in my entire life. Between medication, blood-thinners, and just being generally fatigued, I just needed some kind of break over Christmas to try and recollect myself.

But there was one present I had already started, and wanted to finish. Recently, my nephew got into Minecraft with quite the passion and my sister did not really want him searching the internet on his own to find all the recipes and ingredients (this is what’s known as: good parenting.)

But that gave me a really cool idea. What if I made him a journal that looked like an old adventurer’s journal as if he really lived in the world of Minecraft? It would come complete with thoughts, stories, tips, ink stains, burned pages from Creeper attacks… I gave it to him on Christmas Eve. Here’s some samples:

I had to dress up the bucket a bit to make it seem cooler.

Watch out for Creepers, they burn!

I felt like the raddest Uncle on Planet Rad (sounds like an 80’s movie starring Hulk Hogan doesn’t it?) 

My nephew with his favorite page: TNT and a mushroom cloud.

This blog is already pretty long, so I’ll list so cool highlights of other things that happened of equal radness:

·       Don and Stephanie came over on Christmas night around midnight with a nice bottle of wine and a version of Clue featuring The Office. Naturally, you’re on a mission to reveal the murderer of Toby Flenderson with items like Michael’s Best Boss Mug and The Bacon Grill.

Jim did it, FYI.

·       My sister bought me this cane carved out of a 200-year-old tree branch. I am now up to seven canes, should I feel the need to switch out for different days of the week.

·       My parents bought me a vintage Ghostbusters movie poster signed by the original cast (WHAT!!!)

There are probably like a millionty things I’m forgetting about this last four days and its zealot-levels of Christmas cheer. So I’ll just end with Happy Holidays and warm internet-hugs from Casa Del Mikey.

Until next year, friends.

Blog 18 – Baltimore, MS, and the Misuse of the FML

12/21/11

I know my updates have become sporadic at best over the last few months, but work and a fairly general lack of information have certainly slowed down the process. But I have updates!

By far the most prestigious Dairy Queen in the USA.

On January 9^th, I will be in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins to finally decide for good if I will be closing my PFO and I will be tested for MS for real this time. Pretty cool, right? If I pass the test, I get to work at Microsof-

Oh, hang on. That doesn’t stand for Microsoft!

Lemme look this up on Google real fast, brb.

*Eclectic Muzak Versions of Hanson Classics Play*

Oh, that’s far less cool. Did you guys know that MS stands for Multiple Sclerosis? I wasn’t even aware I had one, let alone multiple Sclero’s.

Now that my terribly off-putting jokes are out of the way, we can move on to the information section of this particular bloggy blog. As far as I know, at this moment I don’t actually have MS, but Johns Hopkins people are from what I understand, like Stanley Tucci in-The-Core smart when it comes to stuff like this. When I was still at UTSW, MS was pulled off the table with, I think 96% certainty, once the stroke was accounted for, and the PFO discovered, it became very unlikely that I could have MS as well. Apparently, we did not fully rule it out (though, I have no idea what kind of test that is. I’m sure it involves butt-needles.) The Neurologist at Johns combed through all of my records and was not enthused to find that the lesions on my brain were never fully explained (or explained at all.) You can actually go back through the blog, and even I bring them up and soon forget they ever existed. I FORGOT THERE WERE LESIONS. ON. MY. BRAIN.

Everyone in Baltimore has already been informed everything I say will be an Omar quote.

Right. So, what’s on the table is: I might have MS in addition to a PFO that causes strokes. I’ve decided this is fairly uncool and even Charlie Brown wouldn’t go for it. Christmas time is here, after all.

I cannot mathematically believe there is any possibility of this being accurate. No one I have told this to has reacted with anything but a joke, and went right back to work. Either I’m getting really bad at letting people know I’m not joking, or no one else thinks this is possible either.

It actually is possible.

And for the people continuing to make House MD jokes EVEN when I walk with a cane every day of my life, freaking cool it with that shit. Seriously. (But for the awesome cane donations I have gotten over the past few weeks, I love them all!)

Before I go, I did want to get one thing off of my chest that I have a certain perspective on. Stop saying FML because it makes me feel weird. You guys are free to rule in however you want here, especially if it appears that I’m over-reacting (though, in my defense, I’m under some pretty serious emotional pressures.)

If you don’t already know, FML, translated from the Latin, means, “Fuck my life.”

If there are people on your Facebook under the age of 35, this is a fairly normal thing to see posted on your homepage and is generally associated with the most miniscule of quandaries. Some of my favorite actual quotes include:

“Just found out I need a root canal FML.”

You know, not actually that bad.

“Left my shopping list at home. FML!”

Pretty sure that people are trolling me at this point. That quote should probably read, “Left my shopping list at home. WASMIFM!” (What a seemingly minor inconvenience for me.)

I’m not trying to be a party pooper on the finer points of internet meme-based ironies, but every time somebody puts an FML punctuating a sentence, I get upset. I especially get upset when the ENTIRE BODY OF THE UPDATE on Facebook or Twitter is just “FML.”

I go down this rabbit hole of invented gypsy curses where I try to concoct a scenario where I could forsee myself every actually typing out “FML” and meaning it with any degree of truth. I came up with the following:

“Gypsies turned my eyes into diuretic frogs. FML!”

I think I would mean it with that one.

And I drank a lot today.

Blog 17 FUUUUUUU--

12/09/11

I knocked my right top incisor clean out of my head this morning, I hope your hour before work was equally eventful.

It's funny until it's you. Then it's funny to everybody else.

A bit of background. For the last few weeks, I’ve taken more than my fair share of spills when my left leg gives out unexpectedly—the other day I had my entire leg twisted at a really strange angle and was putting all of my weight on it when it buckled and I fell down mid-conversation in my own office. I think, had I feeling in that leg, it would have been saying something like “OHDEARGODWHYOHTHEPAINHOLYSHITDUDEPLEASESTOP.” Down I went. This morning was sort of similar. I had my backpack pretty full with things I need to ship for the Desert Bus auction, and I stepped out of the car but put the weight on the wrong leg and my mouth came down on the top of the door pretty hard. I had swallowed the tooth before I realized anything had happened. I got really upset and didn’t really have anywhere for that anger to go…

I mean, I know why I’m upset. I still haven’t paid off all of my existing hospital bills, not by quite a bit actually, and my job heavily relies on my ability to market games and generally has some semblance of present-ability when talking about video games. Having been through the procedure before, I also know that getting an implant to replace the tooth will be in upwards of eight thousand dollars, and insurance doesn’t cover a whole lot of that.

So, outside of the pain of my face picking a fight with a car door, I at some point need to get this fixed so I don’t look like Stew from The Hangover (which, sidenote: I rented the Hangover II in relation to finding it funny we lost the same tooth. While slightly funny, the movie is pretty devoid of what I would refer to as “soul.” I vote: skip it.)

I’ve also decided that starting now I’m going to be using a cane to get around more easily (where “easily” is “not trying to Chris Farley everything.” Vans, rivers, sometimes they get together.) If you find a cool cane on the internet, feel free to link it in the comments of the blog and I’ll check it out.

I currently weigh less than David Spade in this photo.

So, this stroke so far has cost me: my right eye’s sight, the feeling in my left leg and arm, one of my friggin’ teeth, the ability to drive, and about thirty pounds, among many other things. Yeah, I know the ladies are lining up to get a piece of that action. Have you seen my collection of Silverhawks action figures from the mid-80’s? They’re mint!

What do Internet?

What. Do.

Blog 16 Thoughts on Occupy

I’m not entirely sure why I decided a blog about the Occupy movement was something I wanted to tackle, but here goes.

Almost all coverage of the movement has been one-sided and myopic as it tried to paint their actions into a fitting narrative. Unfortunately, the entire idea of Occupy is emotional, a reaction to the varied perceived injustices of its protestors. Some people took to the streets to speak out against Wall Street, almost as if the message was irrelevant to the movement. The outrage is real. I think if someone had started with Occupy Dairy Queen, it still would have taken off (and wouldn’t everyone be more comfortable occupying a Butterfinger Blizzard?)

But let’s rewind for a moment, to a passage of the Constitution I find relevant, but probably in a slightly different light.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This obviously goes on to explain that Free Speech is one such “unalienable” right. Without debating the difference in word choice of “unalienable” versus “inalienable,” I see a far more difficult problem. Your rights do not grant you the freedom to trample on other peoples rights. By choosing the phrase “Occupy,” and choosing to occupy parks and public spaces, you have chosen to launch an “occupation.”

Occupations are historically something predicated on removing freedoms.

That’s not to say I believe that is an objective of the movement is attempting to disrupt anyone’s rights as an American, but I do see it as an unfortunate choice of words and a depressing side effect. Which, when coupled with no clear list of demands or actions to be taken, leads to a combative atmosphere that will eventually boil over into what we see here. (Side note: the numerous and well-documented showings of Police brutality should be prosecuted to the full extend of the law on a case-by-case basis. Aggression is a foreseeable side effect to an occupation. Rise above it.)

Here’s where it gets entirely hazy. The movement brought the eyes of the world upon them, and when people started asking what they wanted to happen, everything fell apart. This is understandable, given how the movement came together in the first place, but given that they’re fighting for American freedoms, perhaps the use of a stronger democratic process can supply a concrete list of demands.

So, start with Wall Street.

Demand: All bank leadership that can be proven to have misled the American people with subprime mortgages to pay their own bonuses. That’s stealing. Jail.

Demand: All bank management that purposely misused the bank bailout to pay out multi-million dollar bonuses to themselves and their friends. Still stealing. Jail.

Demand: All congressional members and Executive branch staff that brought about the bank bailout, this part is important, that supplied a piece of legislation that did not supply accountability for how that money would be divided TO PROTECT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. Fire every last one of them. Get their name out, scream it on every hastily purchased Walgreens poster board you have. They stole from you. Make them pay for it.

Solidify the message.

The Civil Rights movement was successful because their message was clear as day, and eventually everyone had to pay attention. It could be boiled down to: “Hey stop being dicks and give use the freedoms granted to us by the Constitution.”

The Occupy movement is more difficult for the average American, someone who might only catch glimpses of coverage a few times, to regurgitate to someone else. “Hey stop being dicks, because, uh—hey! Just stop being dicks, okay?”

I cherish Wheaton’s Law as much as the next guy, but they need to focus in a core list of needs, inarguable injustices that everyone will get behind.

They stole from us and got away with it.

Go get ‘em.

Blog 15 Like Columbus Before Me

Whoa Chris, kinda givin' away the whole neckline there--save something for the New World.

              

I have made a fantastic discovery that threatens the very fabric of reality, you know what I’m talking about, it’s that one textile in the back of the fabric store composed of irregular shapes and polyesters that elicits a vomitory reaction in humans. My discovery just made pants out of that fabric and I’m doing the Hammer dance in ‘em.

Are you buckled in? Here goes:

Talking to Doctors will increases your depression.

As long as I don’t know something, generally supplying yourself with ignorance to your own situation is found in 1) beer 2) ice cream or 3) fast food, which leaves the aforementioned human with a sweaty feeling of temporary elation.

When I have to talk to someone that will explain to me that, not only do I not know (solved with exhibits 1-3,) but they also don’t know in addition to myself. This is the something that leads you down a rabbit hole in Hammer pants.

I just got off the phone with one of my many doctors; I suppose that is probably obvious to the reader. I think he was just as surprised as myself to learn it’s been well over a month since I left the hospital. My eye has not really changed, though the eye patch is no longer necessary, and I get rides to work every day from my friend Steve, because my leg and arm are still crap. The prognosis has not really evolved beyond “well, you had a WTF stroke,” (sure, they call it “crytogenic,” but I think my description is equally, if not more, apt.) They can put umbrellas in my heart that “could possibly stop another stroke,” and it’s probable “insurance won’t cover it.” Did Shadow Stevens just show up, because I feel like the prettiest winner on Hollywood Squares.

I’m doing the cathartic equal to punching a wall right now. I’ve decided I did a fair amount of damage to my walls during Anthony Saves the World (which you should watch, if you haven’t,) so I will be text-punching my walls for the immediate future.

Remember that time we did sword-fighting on the internet? Ah, good times.

I was seriously going to write a blog today about why Desert Bus and Child’s Play are the awesomest things ever, but I seem to have gone off track in a hazy salsa-filled binge.

I haven’t written anything of merit in this blog for a while because this is the feeling that has so desperately wanted to wriggle out through my brain and mash the keys on the keyboard. I can’t imagine anyone wants to read that, but I think I need to hit the release valve every once in a while to maintain a certain “Mikeyness” through my actions and words. I’m generally not regarded as someone who mopes around a lot, but it does get lonely around here, which is self-inflicted through hubris. There is a line between honesty and the internet, and I’ve no idea how much to share or talk about. It seemed that this blog was born from a Chik-Fil-A sandwich filled with rage all the way back at the beginning.

I already feel better. The anger has subsided, and I can go back to writing things that don’t wallow in 90’s hip-hop begging a simple tool not to hurt somebody.