PARAS!TE: FULL REV!EW.

THE ETHOS:

In the eighteenth century, during the European Enlightenment, morality plays took a turn in favour of revolutionary views, the likes of which Marx and his followers adopted to varying degrees of success and atrocious failure in the centuries that followed. Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni is a prime example of this subversive trend; the librettist who wrote those ingenious lyrics which Mozart set to music later moved to the United States. Retelling the tale of Don Juan, the four-hour epic depicts an ignoble nobleman who terrorizes peasants who are extremely civilized. (Of course, our own Slavoj Zizek might take issue with the term “civilized”, but in so doing he represents part of the problem I describe.) Admittedly, most of what Don Giovanni does throughout those four hours might even pass for admirable achievement in our present day, but only because so many men are either self-absorbed or easily pushed over. His only sins that stand the scrutiny of time are rape and murder, though one must keep in mind that, according to the old morality, the former would be hardly worse than the remainder of his lechery, since personal consent was less important, even during the Enlightenment, than conformism to standards, and even the most radical Enlightenment thinker wouldn’t have dared to suggest that chastity, as a social imperative, was simply the product of envy.

By illustrating the poor in a noble light and the noble in a poor light, the greatest dramatists of the Enlightenment managed to draw a sharp distinction between social hierarchy and moral hierarchy. Nobility was not a quality either exclusive to nor guaranteed within the Nobles, even if it was in fact the Noble Class which had produced it as a standard. So long as you could romanticize peasants as behaving like chivalrous princes, contending with a lecherous rich man, you could not only expose the corruption which wealth is heir to but also you could begin to Universalize Nobility as a standard transcending social station. The Cardinal Virtues are not simply behaviours which the Priesthood adopts because the Church can afford to sponsor them; they are archetypes that live within the very Heart of Human Nature, planted there by God, available to any thinking man. Rafael, the Angel of Forgiveness, is no different in quintessence from Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, of whom the Dalai Lama is the avatar. Goodness and Evil transcend cultural boundaries, and they are untethered by the mortal norms of class.

This flame was not so easily extinguished by modernity as we might suspect. While Breaking Bad might have set the stage for shows like Ozark, wherein every character is deplorable, its artistic achievement was twofold: that it not only presented a sympathetic villain, but it established such a stark contrast between his villainous fate and his heroic beginnings that viewers could not help but to end up blaming the same man they were rooting for. This was precisely Vince Gilligan’s goal: to teach viewers that “actions have consequences”. His genius was in creating villains so engaging that there was no sympathy left by the end; we had already expended it.

Even more successful artistically to this end, if not commercially, is the prequel Better Call Saul. As Jimmy McGill transforms into Saul Goodman, his stoic counterpart Mike becomes a hitman. The central themes are usually conveyed by Mike himself, who doubles as a Wise Old Man and as a Gatekeeper, eventually becoming a tragic hero. One of Mike’s earliest monologues, addressed to an upstart criminal named Pryce, (an I.T. specialist who decides to sell stolen pharmaceuticals for a profit,) is upon the difference between a “criminal” and a “bad guy”. “You took something that wasn’t yours, and you sold it for a profit, which now makes you a criminal. Good one? Bad one? That’s up to you.” Mike recognizes that our moral standing in Life is independent of our legal standing. It follows logically that it is also independent of our economic standing, especially if economics can be reduced to social standing in an institution such as the Law. Mike repeatedly refuses money, even when his family’s in dire straits, when he believes that he has not earned it. This sets him apart from Ignacio Varga, who can sympathize with Mike’s robbery of a drug lord’s trucks, but not with the vendetta which motivated it. Nacho Varga doesn’t have the sorts of responsibilities which Mike has, since Mike acts also as a provider for his widowed daughter-in-law and his granddaughter, whereas Nacho’s father has always planned for Nacho to inherit a thoroughly decent family business. Mike simply retains his devotion to the Spirit of the Law, even after having quit his post as a cop in an extremely corrupt precinct. Ignacio, who has chosen to defy his father’s wishes by allying himself with the Cartel, ends up fending for life, enabling a string of murders and injuries in his wake. When he receives a blood transfusion from one of a pair of iconic Cartel twins, it represents both the duality of his nature and his transformation into a drug lord.

THE PATHOS:

By far, the evilest villain in the film Parasite turns out to have been the patriarch of the parasitic family. Not only does he do nothing to stop his family from committing the original con, acting as far less than the stoic source of moral fortitude and equanimity which his initial character foil, Mr. Park, exhibits, but his profound envy for this gentleman sparks a neurosis which, over a very short time, escalates into the most senseless act of murder. It is by no mistake that the two men wear the feathers of Native Americans at the climax of the film, for what they represent is that rage which, either robbed of civilizing grace or having never seen it, lashes out with infantile destruction at the alien world of wealth and sophistication. What the patriarch of the parasitic family represents is self-entitlement, expressed as the raw will to destroy that which it desires. Mr. Kim wants to live Mr. Park’s life; he even goes so far as to covet the wife. Yet it is his negligence, his heavy-handed arrogance, one alien to seasoned criminals, (the likes of which we see in Breaking Bad, for instance, or even Death Note,) that dooms his family, for when they have the perfect opportunity to plan their grand ascension to the plane of wealth instead they waste it, pilfering the secrets of their hosts, intoxicating themselves in a manner only native to the unaristocratic. They know neither the reserve to leave the door unanswered when the old housekeeper comes to knock, nor do they feel the shame and the disgust which would in such a matter warrant sympathy for her and her husband. It is because they fail to answer for their sins against the family, creeping about within the dark, that Kim bears witness to the act of love between Park and his blushing wife. Park and his wife are also envious, their act of love modeled after some fantasy of rundown life, but it’s a fantasy that has been planted by the daughter of the Kims, and they do nothing but to act it out in what they falsely think is privacy. The Parks are kind enough to hide their civilized disgust when they discover panties in the back of their own car, and it is nothing short of this that lands the parasitic patriarch his gig at the expense of someone younger and more qualified, if not yet “needy”, so to speak. Yet how can this Mr. Kim deplore them for what they should say in privacy? It is offense to which he only walks by his own secret path, rather than a directed insult. What he hates is not what his host DOES, but rather what the host PERCEIVES, and in that rests the seeds of a psychosis, for the narcissist, refusing to perceive his own foul stench, hates most the thought that others turn their noses up at it behind his back. It is for this reason that Mr. Kim winds up living down in the crawlspace, in the place of the same maniac who nearly killed his son and stabbed the hosts nearly to death. It seems that all is lost during the struggle between the recluse and the Kims’ son, but as it turns out it’s the early victim who will live to tell the tale. At that moment when the ritual of decency is interrupted by an act of madness, Mr. Park behaves the most responsibly, lifting the car keys from beneath the carcass of the man who nearly killed his wife and child. There is no question at this moment that Park is the Better Man, but as the stench of his assailant fills his nostrils Mr. Kim is so reminded of this stark superiority between them that he is possessed, as if by Cain, to kill the father right before the wife. Kim’s wife and son survive, but at that moment the Parks’ lives are over, where before there had been yet a feeble hope at dignity and even healing. Let us not forget that all of this went on without the Park’s say-so or knowledge; they had no idea, thinking themselves kind. Their one sin was living that one life which all the others wanted; their one error was permitting others even partial access to this life. A rational man would rejoice, knowing that at least someone kindly had been able to enjoy what he was yet to know. Yet madness works in other ways. Kim’s lust for “simple” Mrs. Park is clear when he first holds her hand, and hearing Mr. Park fondle her breast and all the while denounce his stink engenders jealousy the likes of which not even I can fathom. A True Man would sooner have confessed to all his sins in that one moment than to let the ruse go on. But the coward had no recourse but to crawl back into poverty, a circumstance that would arouse our pity but not our solidarity, for in that moment it was chosen by the victim. Kim had the capacity for murder then, but he had not the plan to do so, leaving it up to his son’s device. The women in the family, by this point, came to recognize the lodgers underground as equals, where before their senseless rivalry for ample resources had doomed them nearly to exposure. Yet the lies the daughter wove came back to haunt them, for just as the ladies of the family were ready to thus offer up their peace, the lady of the Parks came carrying a cake which had been baked not just to celebrate the birthday of her son but to help him to cope with trauma, a trauma fabricated by the Kims. It’s in this moment that their son tries to murder the lodgers, all for wanting what he had, just as his father kills their host for having only what they wanted. Hence the madman becomes the latter foil for Kim.

THE LOGOS:

One of the peculiar qualities of the Park family which is typical of underdeveloped characters (in developed countries) is just how little we truly know about them. This fact renders it impossible to blame them without making irrational inferences from outside the text, which would be a major faux pas in the Post-Derridean contemporary world. For instance, we cannot call them “capitalists” in the Marxist sense any more so than we might call Andy Bernard’s ancestors “slave owners”; though neoliberal Oscar Martinez would love to be able to prove Nellie’s inflated claims to be factual, Bernard is accurate in describing his ancestors as “moral middlemen”: conscientious, hardworking participants in a corrupt Social Order which, by a Kantian estimation, required them to conform in spite of personal reservations and subjective doubts. As far as we are aware, the Host Family in Parasite is most likely tantamount to this, only because most people in their estimated income bracket (presuming upon the quality of their luxuries) are in the same position: they are not business owners, so they are not capitalists in the Marxist sense. If they were brought up in a “bubble”, they surpass in dignity those nouveau riche who have had to “work to get there”. While it is charming and sadly endearing to hear people from the ghetto share their dreams of wealth and power (and one often does, as I have, having spent a lot of time in urban sectors and encountered many locals,) one recalls that, were they better educated, they would not speak so proudly of their entrepreneurial dreams and realities. By the most economically left-leaning, liberal definition available, the one supplied by the notorious Karl Marx, those who manage to move up the social ladder by their will and work alone are in fact MORE corrupt than those who are born into “privilege”, since such upward mobility requires them to make a PROFIT, which Marx systematically proves to be directly proportional to and, in fact, synonymous with, exploitation, selling out their fellows in the process. This process of “selling out” is precisely what the Kim family demonstrates. Conversely, the Park family exhibits behaviours which are far more emblematic of another archetype, that of the Child: Innocence. While their patriarch exhibits the stoic condescension of his station, his actual choices, though they always portend unrelenting cosmic retribution, are invariably advantageous to the Kims, whom he grows to trust as much as his childlike wife does. The Parks, though they retain internal feelings of disgust, never allow these personal biases to skew their public behaviour, extending an attitude of trusting compassion even to their hired help, except for when they are MISLED, calculatedly, to make cancellations. While this ideal is one to which we might feel rightfully entitled, it’s not a frequent fact, so we ought to be grateful to the Parks, for they exhibit all these graces willingly and willfully. To the same extent as it is “easy” for them to be good, it is just as easy for them to be evil, and their choices therefore act as the definitive arbiter in the revelation of their character. If the Kim family finds within the depths of that character a private contempt, it is only because the Kims have betrayed the trust of the Parks by creeping into their private, innermost lives. When government entities in countries purported to be Leftist behave in this manner, Snowden supporters worldwide profess that the government betrayed both the People and its own Ideals for them.

If Parasite is a metaphor, then who are we to read it just one way? Are the Kims not, in fact, more akin to the capitalists in the works of Marx than the Parks are? Foremost anti-capitalist Slavoj Zizek holds a similar interpretation of subtext in The Sound of Music, insisting that the more subtle viewer will notice extremely proto-Fascist tendencies in the villagers who serve as that film’s protagonists, whereas the Germans they defy are tantamount to a Nazi’s conception of the Jewish Elite. If we can systematically demonstrate that the Kims exhibit the violent, sociopathic, and exploitative tendencies of a nineteenth-century Industrialist, then how can we continue to sympathize with them, as liberals?

Hidden Leeches: So, Who Were the Parasites?

Of course, here the director himself offers a counterintuitive interpretation of his own work, by suggesting that the Parks were Parasites as WELL. Of course, such an observation could never absolve either party of its crimes, for crimes are often crimes not just against an “exploited party” but also against an Overlying Law; if anything, being equated with the Parks in dignity gives Mr. Kim far less excuse for envy, unless he cares nothing for dignity itself. Yet such a degree of sophistication in moral calculation is probably lost already upon any class of people that calls the Parks “parasites”.

The most narcissistic delusion is that of Godhood, and since a God can deny his own delusions from a position of Divine Authority, any man who believes himself to be a God is the most hopeless case in this regard. What is the significance of Divinity? A Deity is like a genie without the shackles; he or she can will anything into existence, at least enough so as to satisfy his or her own needs. It is only in Buddhism that the Gods are considered unhappy in direct proportion to their power, and that is only because Buddhism rejects power.

A self-made man is a God Incarnate: an entity who fashions, by his or her own volition alone, the entirety of his or her own conditions. It does not take a Freud or Jung to see this grandiosity for what it is. Yet, somehow, when we see people relying upon other people, we treat them as though they were less than human, as though human beings were Gods and Goddesses. While cooking and driving are hardly metaphysical powers, (I, myself, possess at least one of them) it’s not a mark of shame to hire a private cook or a driver. This is because human beings are communal creatures; as Alasdair MacIntyre said, (and as I quote, quite shamelessly, for I agree with him*:) we are “dependent, rational animals”. The Parks are not exploiting the Kims by providing them with a source of income in exchange for a service. While the most cursory reading of Marx would call this “exchange-value” into question, the seemingly generous NATURE of the Parks, already exposed by their willful and “easy” goodness, leaves it up to them to decide how MUCH to pay the Kims, and it leaves it up to us to infer that it’s probably a “fair amount”, hardly synonymous with exploitation.

*Not only do I quote him because I agree with him; I am also unashamed in doing so, because I agree with him that there is nothing to be ashamed of herein.

Post-Shamanic Human Beings form societies based upon the division of specialized labour, and while this division lends itself to hierarchical structures it also makes possible a state of interdependence wherein ethics and commerce, working hand in hand, ensure both the production and the distribution of resources which possess Marx’s “use-value”. Yet the lingering credibility of Marx, especially in the current Zeitgeist, is not in his depth of research into the statistics of the prior centuries, an academic rigour the likes of which we do not find in millennials. It’s rather in the shocking accounts of factory conditions that Marx sets his morality play, in terms so plain and detached that they prefigure the ominous stylings of Realism and Modernist Theatre. At first blush, the Kim family’s living circumstances seem most reminiscent of these stark conditions. Yet no tragedy is complete without a villain and a tragic hero. In the case of the Kims, they are both, because of their choices.

Since ethics remain ethics irrespective of personal conditions, and as we have demonstrated that the most liberally sound people are those who do not change social class, wherever they may be situated, it would be daft to agree with Mrs. Kim’s drunken assertion that the Park family’s kindness is inauthentic because it comes easily as a function of privileged wealth. Our only warrant would lie in an even baser presumption: that people only do good things to feel good, and only when it requires neither effort nor sacrifice. When you see how instinctive depravity is for the Kims, it’s unsurprising.

The Sins of Kim:

We know very little about the Parks, but we know almost all there is to know about the Kims. The son betrays his best friend in the first half hour of the film, if I am not mistaken, seducing a young girl whose death he eventually brings about, thinking only of his own alienation. This same son, an adolescent boy scarcely older than Yagami Light, takes it upon himself to murder a man far less fortunate than he, who in turn attempts to kill his “Gods” upstairs. The Kim family’s matriarch shows no recrimination in getting members of their fellow working class fired to make room for narcissistic dreams of upward mobility. Where is that sense of Marxist Solidarity in the Sub-basement, when for the first time the Kims have to confront the impact of their enterprise upon an even lower class? Are these the sorts of people to presume that wealth is heir to malice? If so, it’s clearly the poor characters who are living in a bubble, unaware of even themselves, for it would take just one look in the mirror (provided by the character foil of the Squatters) to see that, in this Universe, wealth is not inversely proportional to loyalty and kindness, but directly so. The poor people are the most murderous, the wealthy are the most generous, and if this were not so, we wouldn’t need to stoop to the childish claim that it’s “easy for them to be good”. Yes: it WOULD be easy, except that the Kims, simply by CONTENDING this, make no attempt to BE good, sealing by this excuse the fates of all involved. Their power is neither that of privilege nor labour, but of duplicity and ruthlessness. While it seems tautological at first to use their claims against them, since it was precisely that same claim about privileged morality that I sought to disprove, a simple accounting of willful immorality ought to expose that claim for what it is: a pragmatic LIE, one believed by the liar, as all narcissistic fantasies are. It’s iconic, therefore, that the one member of the Kim family who dies, rightfully, is the daughter, for of all of them this counterfeiter is the most blatant con artist, without whom none of the criminal enterprise would have worked. If you can be fooled into sympathizing with her family, you are among the naïve.

The Park Family is the only family which lives a Good Life, both morally and financially. Yet hundreds of years of progressive theater and Leftist economics prove that this is not always the case. Often, rich people suck, and poor people rock. Yet what you find in the Parks is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Critics who grow queasy at the sight of a Westerner interpreting Korean economics and reinterpreting Modern Korean Art would do well to recount the North Koreans who protest Modern Art; dissent can be manufactured under authoritarian regimes. While we DESERVE artistic license, Nature does not entitle us to it. By the same token, while Nature does not entitle everyone to the Good Life, financially, we all DESERVE it, insofar as we are willing to work towards it MORALLY. The Parks do not exploit anyone to get ahead, so they are not capitalists. Yet they use their wealth in a thoroughly moral fashion, suggesting, with dramatic irony, that it would be wasted upon their hired help, though they themselves never seem to believe this, even inviting their employees to their son’s birthday party. The Parks cannot be expected to give it all up to charity and to join a protest in the streets, and this is precisely BECAUSE they live in South Korea, whose closest neighbor to the North would gobble up a Leftist uprising in a jiffy. (Probably taking a full accounting of resistors to the fight, ensuring that their families would be cursed for future generations.) As a Moldovan citizen born in Moscow in 1991, believe me when I say that I am NOT just your typical white American in holding this position. The complacency of the Kims is only natural, and, in Asian fashion, they elevate Nature to an Art. If you still believe that they should be Marxists instead, consider how much sympathy the poorest of the poor characters – the Squatters – have for North Korean propaganda.

IN SUMMARY:

Bong Joon-ho’s submagnum opus Parasite is not a film about “class” any more so than the O.J. Simpson trial was about a red-handed glove. (Of course, that trial was hardly about “race” either, by the same token.) Parasite is a film about parasitism, envy, sociopathy, madness, and the murder of innocents for socioeconomic, ideological reasons. The truest tragedy is that the men who wrote and created the film don’t even seem to recognize what they have done. Mr. Kim bewails his own sin and resolves himself to his retribution. The lingering sympathy that conventional viewers apparently feel for him is symptomatic of a far more devious sociopathy.

[({Dm.A.A.||R.G.)}]

NOBLE LIMITS:

I will be remembered as a tireless lover, perpetually bringing the chalice of service to my maiden, only to have it smacked aside, tossed to the slobbering dogs, perpetually by the hand of gratelessness. Once I’ve been pushed to the brink of madness it could be no testament to my own finitude but rather to my perseverance, for those who pushed me harboured such short tempers and narrow limits that they would depend upon my patience, only to pretend I was their equal once my patience was expended. It was thus that I was blamed for my own suffering, rendered a victim of my own kindness but of an other man’s device, for my own rage was turned against me, though I only raged against those that I loved, taking my rage (towards those I hated) upon them, when they too took the same rage, and towards the same and proper targets, out on me. How depraved is he or she that blames the victim, for while I lived to believe that the one purpose driving a heart’s beat is to be harmless and to heal those that have been let down, remembering the wisdom of the sages that ensured that victims would not dwell in powerlessness, yet a class of ingrates let me down, for that same virtue whose power they fear when they fall short of it becomes their downfall, and they scorn it as though they had had no part in the infraction but had simply witnessed self-inflicted harm. I have to ask: why did they hesitate to take the harm that they deemed self-inflicted then upon themselves?? What other motive could there be except to lunge to the friend’s rescue, only to discover in the depths one’s own involvement in that same friend’s pain? Only a few times can I now recall when I had to absolve myself of that same guilt, denying to the death that I’d had any part in my friend’s injury, and that was only when the pain that I’d inflicted was my own, for I’d been pushed then to the brink that others have not seen, for they’ve not known such distant limits as were mine. If the pain inflicted was my own, for what they deemed to be betrayal (towards them) on my part was nothing but the breakthrough of my own suffering blood, my bleeding heart overflown and my own feet betraying what had been a noble stance in an ignoble public dance, then what was the failure but their own, again, to save me from the depths of drowning, as I would have plunged in to save them, had it been then THEIR breakdown and not mine?

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

A Common Purpose:

All beings strive towards a common, hidden purpose

Thinking little of themselves, for they bear too heavily

The burden of the world for such a pastime to be afforded.

It is therefore not that we are born into an absurd conflict

Of self-centred wills in whose midst the only evil agenda

Is that which supplants the autonomy of one man

For the totality of an Other,

But rather: it is that we are borne into this very striving

Which is every man and woman’s birth-right and

Responsibility, that no man might forbid his fellow

To fall short of virtue by a failure to uphold the

Common good, and so it follows that the only

Evil plan is that which puts the Self before the Other,

The former favoured at the expense of the latter.

So it is too that to come of age and manhood

Is to begin to lead as well as to follow, serving

The needs of one’s fellows even when one grows

Forgetful of their plaints, for so often they forget

In their own altruism what they need, and one

Must supplement that holy ignorance of Self.

By what authority then will the villain make

A villain of the leader who would lead heroic

Life towards its one fateful, common end?

By his own criteria he will deny his adversary

Any blame in dealing in superiority, for every

Act of the villain is itself the expression of the

Preference of one Self to an Other,

And if he should dare still to contest God’s Will

By force, denying that one avenue of Faith that

Would exempt him from the Scornful Public Eye,

God will remind him that such contest, which strives

Not towards common unity but rather towards

Common futility, for it makes strivance towards a

Common conversation futile,

Will meet much greater futility still

And with lesser praise. For that expression

Of the will is not abuse of will alone but

Of force too. And when one’s forced to

Deal with it one must choose force

In dealing with it, and by that point

One acquires Force but without sacrificing

Reason. Hence one can retain one’s Faith

In action and the Grace of God will shine

In the defiling of the wayward foe.

Dm.A.A.

Game Design Midterm: One Hour and a Half to Write.

The Design Document as Conceit.

Dmitry Andreyev.

Morgan.

Game Design.

The question of whether or not a Game Design Document is necessary towards the creation of a Video Game begins to find its answer in the deeper, underlying question: is it necessary for Games to be developed? All though some might want to cheat by arguing that the question of a game’s teleology is secondary to the question of its creation, the fact remains that those values that are essential to the conception of a game are ultimately decisive in its birth and development. If there is no necessity to design a game, because it serves no ultimate teleological purpose, then the manner of the game’s execution is just as arbitrary as the decision to execute it. Yet if a game MUST be made, as though some divinity had commissioned it or some internal biological function had necessitated it, then naturally the matter of development becomes grave in its playfulness. At that point, it is essential to examine the nature of every step and to ensure that it relates to the overlying purpose. As above, so below. To that same extent that we employ the extraverted intuition function in order to visualize an ultimate outcome, we must exercise the introverted intuition in order to hone in on the minute details. And this begins at the earliest step: that of the Game Design Document. In the same manner that we should ask whether or not a game NEEDS to be made, we must ask ourselves upon having resolved this former question whether or not a thorough map of its territory must be made. I will argue that because the map is not the territory, the answer is ultimately negative. Yet this does not mean that I answer arbitrarily. Rather we MUST understand that it MAY NOT BE necessary, so that we know for a fact that we are not wasting our time in pursuing it or wasting an opportunity in foregoing it.

Shigeru Miyamoto is reputed to emphasize the value of the Design Document repeatedly in seminars and interviews. The designer for Mario and other global franchises says in one interview with Vox that “early on, the people who made video games […] were technologists […] were programmers […] were hardware designers. But I wasn’t. I was a designer; I studied industrial design. I was an artist; I drew pictures.”(Miyamoto 1). When Shigeru was commissioned to design a game to replace the colossal flop that was Nintendo’s Arcade Game Radar Scope, he drew on something hitherto unheard of in video games: Pop-eye the Sailor Man. By translating the heroic machismo of the old King Features cartoon character into the format of a simple platform game with barrels, a gorilla, and a damsel in distress, Miyamoto elevated games into an art form by incorporating mythological significance from OUTSIDE THE MEDIUM ITSELF into the work. Considering that his designs were one of the earliest known instances of a character having been conceived prior to the writing of the code for his game, it is easy to jump (as though over a barrel) to the conclusion that this sort of a priori approach to game design, which relies heavily upon foregone concepts and Platonic visions, is the hallmark of true artistry, and that if games MUST be made for the same reason that a song HAS TO BE written, then they HAVE to follow this prescribed structure, which in turn prescribes a structure for the games themselves. Yet several details send this conclusion down the proverbial green tube. One salient fact is that when Miyamoto penned Mario, he knew NOTHING ABOUT VIDEO GAMES. This means that he simply envisioned what he might have LIKED to play, and he designed it by drawing (quite literally) on knowledge from Industrial Design. Yet for all his knowledge of that civil science he could not yet bring himself to avail himself of the subtle science of writing a Game Design Document, simply because no such science yet existed. Miyamoto DID pioneer the concept in later years, despite the fact that he had begun with a near-totally blank slate. Yet here an other salient fact looms: that Miyamoto Himself does NOT REGARD HIS GAMES AS WORKS OF ART. “I’m a designer. I don’t think of myself as creating works, I really think of myself as creating products for people to enjoy,” he said. “That’s why I’ve always called my games products rather than works of art.” (Miyamoto 2) Miyamoto, ever the nebulous genius, has held contradictory stances on the sophomoric debate about whether or not games are THEMSELVES an art. Put plainly, however, he can only speak for himself.

True artistry must by necessity break with tradition in order to convey a Spiritual Message. It is for this reason that artists are forever pushing the envelope, experimenting with new media, and drawing on various disciplines from outside the craft itself in order to imbue the craft with spiritual meaning, so that the created world is no longer a utilitarian “escape” but rather the expression of an internal journey that is then made external. It is for this reason that it is usually stunning for a game designer who is passionate about his work to imagine that any one would regard his brain-child as though it were merely a means to an end. The reality that we create when we develop a game is not an “escape” from “reality”; it IS a reality in and of itself!! So if an artist creates a world with that intent, and if there are some messages that cannot be conveyed as palpably in theatre or painting as they can be in an interactive game, then the video game rests outside of the domain of sports and is closer to the works of Shakespeare. If the artist must forever push the envelope in his or her choice of medium, then who is to appoint himself to denounce a medium for being new? To appeal to the authority of a man who confesses that he is a Designer does not discredit the medium; Dali himself was accused of being a Designer. To agree with Miyamoto that synthesizing elements in order to create a product for consumption is to fall short of artistry is to ignore what we know about Shakespeare: that he too played to the pit, and he managed at once to appeal to the lower class audiences as well as the expensive theatre seats by synthesizing elements that conveyed the experience of living in MULTIPLE REALITIES AT THE SAME TIME. Aldous Huxley posited that the Human Being lives in as many as twenty different universes at once, some of which are even incommensurable. He says that “we must make the best of not only BOTH worlds, because there are more than two – but of ALL the worlds we live in.” (Huxley.) It is for this reason that Huxley praised Shakespeare for Shakespeare’s PLAYFUL use of language in painting multiple narratives at once, not unlike what Jonathan Blow would later do with code in his seminal debut Braid. Huxley understood, as does Blow, a fellow Berkeley intellectual, that the simple fact that worlds are incommensurable does not mean that one is any more REAL than the Other. And this is all so apparent to any one who has had to not only create characters like Link and Mario but to oversee the production of a game that would by NECESSITY REQUIRE that it meet Huxley’s criterion for Superior Artistry in order for it to EVEN SELL. Admittedly, Miyamoto’s humility might be simply the product of upbringing in a famously stoic culture. What appeals to so many players about the original Legend of Zelda is that it was inspired by Miyamoto’s childhood (Hanson). At any rate, if we allow him to cede his authority as a Creator to the naïve public then we have all ready begun to act as designers instead of artists. Likewise, if we appeal to any elite opinion as to an ABSOLUTE authority, then we have all ready begun to target an audience, and we bite our own critique. So the matter of the Game Design Document, and of game design in general, must presuppose that the Developer is an Artist who has a Teleological Duty to entertain the public with the products of his own psyche, knowing well that he is engaged in a sacred dialogue between himself and the player, in a manner that transcends practical concerns and echoes the first attempts made by hominids to live a now-recognizably HUMAN Life.

If the game MUST be made, then it is all ready like an organism. It must be nurtured, but it retains an autonomy. No developer has absolute control over his brain-children. Invariably maps are scrapped in the development of a game as development obstacles become more challenging and solutions become more rewarding. The process of game design is in ITSELF a journey and a game. This was why Marie-Louise von Franz, a Jungian Analyst operating in a school that stressed playfulness and fantasy as essential to psychological health, stressed the importance of surrendering “the utilitarian attitude of conscious planning in order to make way for the inner growth of the personality. “ (von Franz) This clinical prescription is to Jung what de Beauvoir’s Ethic of Ambiguity was to Sartre. It supplements what Jung says when he proclaims that “One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves.” (van der Post)

One critic that is notoriously opinionated on the matter of Game Design, from entertainment to ethics, is Jonathan Blow. Blow’s games are by no mistake cited in lists of arguments for the status of Games as Art; he himself cites Buckminster Fuller when he claims that “the medium is the message” (Blow). Yet Blow, whose comments have even been so diverse and controversial as to suggest, within the heated liberal climate of the Bay Area Computer Intelligentsia, that “women are biologically less interested in tech than men” (Resetera), has near to NOTHING to say about the concept of a formal document, preferring to develop his own philosophical musings into a binding Universal dogma (if I may be so bold as to criticize someone outside of myself for doing that).

It’s true that the best journeys tend to start with a map. It is by no coincidence that Tolkien’s twentieth-century faerie tale The Hobbit did so and that this same work was referenced by analogy to Roberta Williams’ early notes for King’s Quest: “For the right kind of nerd, to have her original notebooks sitting in front of you is like getting to flip through a first draft of The Hobbit.” (Kohler) Yet what was innovative when games first imported literature from a handmade medium is hardly necessary now, especially in an age when computer literacy is no longer a specialty (as it was for Roberta’s husband) but a requirement for survival itself on Planet Earth. Is it helpful to have a map? Yes. But the map is no longer the territory. And the G.D.D. is no G.O.D.

Work Cited:

Blow, Jonathan. “Game Design: the Medium is the Message”. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxFzf6yIfcc)

Hanson, Arin.  “Sequelitis - ZELDA: A Link to the Past vs. Ocarina of Time.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOC3vixnj_0)

Huxley, Aldous. “The Mike Wallace Interview.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ePNGa0m3XA)

Kohler, Chris. “Deep Inside This Museum Lies the Holy Grail of Adventure Games.” (https://www.wired.com/2013/10/kings-quest-design-documents/)

Miyamoto, Shigeru. “How the Inventor of Mario Designs a Game.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-NBcP0YUQI)

Miyamoto, Shigeru. “Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto: 'I'm a designer,' not an artist.” (https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/shigeru-miyamoto-games-not-art/)

Resetera. (https://www.resetera.com/threads/jonathan-blow-the-witness-braid-thinks-women-are-biologically-less-interested-in-tech-than-men.11742/)

Van der Post, Laurens. Jung and the Story of Our Time.

Von Franz, Marie-Louise. Man and His Symbols.

Things I Still Don’t Understand in Media:

Things I Still Don’t Understand in Media:

-          Why people dislike Kali from Stranger Things.

-          Why people dislike “Fly” from Breaking Bad.

-          Why people dislike Charles McGill.

-          Why people dislike Andy Bernard.

-          Why Wikipedia cites the protagonist of Mulholland Drive as having “failed” when she was visibly betrayed by a sociopathic lesbian lover who laughed at her misfortune.

-          Why the same protagonist commits suicide even after having secured her own Justice.

-          Why people dislike Jennifer Love Hewitt for her idealistic optimism on the Question of Technology.

-          What ever happened to Gabe from the Office.

-          Why Hollywood idealizes the Sciences but not Philosophy in general.

-          What the hell is so hard to understand about Inception?

Dm.A.A.

Dream Alpha:

Dream Alpha: Frank.

A group of us broke into the Federal Compound that housed (what we would discover was the late) Frank Pentangeli. There he lay, in his bath tub, still bleeding from fresh flesh wounds to the wrists. The water was overflowing, doused in blood, so we were stepping into a Swamp. Above him re(a)d, in blood, the epigram “ha provato troppo duro.”

I was told to pull his last trigger. I leant in to turn the water off. My superior informed me that “to turn those knobs will be to put an end to his crusade of poison.” So I did. The hot water shut off easily enough. Then I reached further, that I might cancel the cold.

I found myself alone, within a replica of this restroom. The colours had been inverted. I was in the Upside Down. Strange vegetation covered all the walls, the floor, and ceiling. Bizarre fungal germs haunted the air.

I covered my mouth and discovered that my fingers had transformed into sausages. Before me lay a skeleton, in the exact same pose as Frank had been. He was covered in moss, vines, and ooze. His mafia ring glistened on the pinky that lay upon the floor.

I moved towards the mirror. Through the grapevine I could see myself. I was Pentangeli. I returned to the corpse skeleton. Gingerly I removed the ring. I put it on.

I was in a giant court room. This was the Supreme Court Hearing. The Chief Justice asked me to identify myself. I said “Frankie Five Angels”. He asked me to produce my legal name. I gave it as Francis Pentangeli.

Time seemed to warp. Suddenly I was talking to an other Justice, further to my left hand side, but to what was the right hand side from the perspective of the Judicial Branch. I was asked if I could produce a Corporeal Patronus. I told them I could. I was commended for this and then asked for a demonstration. I told them I would need my wand. It was produced for me. Under strict surveillance, I produced an Owl. It flew around the room and then perched on my shoulder.

The Chief Justice called order in the Court. The Prosecuting Attorney asked me what the Italian phrase over my bath meant. I replied that I wrote it whilst dying, and it was about one of my rivals in the Rosado Brothers. It meant, “He tried too hard.” I explained that the Rosado brothers had infiltrated the Catholic Church and were attempting to corner the market by selling indulgences. So I did the only reasonable thing that a Scorpio could do and pinned ninety-nine* theses to their door. The Court laughed. The Chief Justice told me that while I might find it amusing that I did that, the Court does not.

*Historically, it was an act of insubordination by a Scorpio, following this exact pattern, that produced the tradition of Protestantism.

A witness was produced: my Brother. He told the Court something in Italian which was promptly translated by the Prosecutor. The Prosecutor explained that while the blood was mine, I did not write it. It was written BY one of the Rosado Brothers. As it turns out: after I murdered one of them, the other sought revenge. Finding that I had committed suicide on the advice of Tom Hagen, he wrote the epigram to describe ME.

The remaining Rosado brother was produced to the Witness stand. He spoke passionately about how Frankie had crucified his brother in a Church restroom. The motive was simple: to send a message to any one who seemed all too pious.

Tom Hagen asked if it was not possible that Frank had other motives. Was it impossible that to ascribe a vendetta to Frank that was so childish and daemonizing would in fact only evidence projection on Mister Rosado’s part? Was it not evidence for a vendetta on the ROSADO’s part, equally irrational to the SUPPOSED vendetta of which Frankie was accused, and perhaps EVEN conclusive of the fact that the Rosado brother’s story was at worst a hoax and at best an exaggeration?

Then the evidence came in. As it turned out: the nails I used to crucify the dead twin were of the same brand and make as the nails that I used to pin my theses to the Church door. Only one smith manufactured these nails, and it was an old friend of mine back in Sicily.

I awoke on the floor, dripping wet with blood and water. I could not have been out for long, because mere moments later I was hoisted by two of my comrades in the Invading Party. Very briefly I wondered, deliriously, about whether or not they had let me lay there for that long. But then I realized that they wouldn’t have allowed it on principle, and dreams (and Visions) last a lot longer in subjective time than in “real” time.

A friend of mine had done the honours of turning off the cold water. We had to escape, and quickly. But then I realized that my friends were under arrest. I HAD been out for a long time, after all; the subjective was real. I was informed that two of my comrades, only after they had identified themselves, were permitted to pick me up; the cops, being assholes, might have let me drown or choke on Frank’s Old Dirty Blood.

We were put in the back of a cop car. I was asked to identify, as we began to drive, (I would rather say “we” than “the driver”) the cause of Frank’s death. I mumbled deliriously that he had tried too hard. The officer asked if he tried hard in the right direction. I amended my original statement with a simple “No”.

A trial was held in a court that was a little smaller but yet reminiscent of the Supreme Court from my Vision. The Prosecutor, a dead ringer for the prosecutor from the Vision, announced that on MY account as a witness (I was surprised to hear my name, given lingering delirium.) Frank died by trying too hard in the Wrong Direction. The only sensible retaliation that the Law could produce would be too try even HARDER in the RIGHT direction. He slammed his fist against the podium, which was situated far from me on the right side of the Court Room (but the left side from the Judge’s perspective) on the word “Right”.

We were released from custody shortly after the Joker’s testimony.

Apparently, we were never read our Miranda rights. Our arresting officers were disarmed. We went Home.

Dm.A.A.

La Máscara del Diablo:

The Devil’s Mask:

The essential nature of evil is that it is ambivalent to human suffering. The agent of evil does not necessarily go out of its WAY to do harm; it simply allows harm to happen. Thus the hallmark of the Devil is neither aggression nor passion, but rather Apathy and Detachment. Evil brags of being remote from the consequences of its actions, and in its condemnation of those who must contend with it to set these matters right it is ruthless. Once it is met with its own ruthlessness in retaliation, it only mocks its victims by mirroring them. Hence the Devil is traditionally depicted as neither an aggressor (in the sense that political propaganda depicts opponents of its paradigm) nor a passionate and spited lover (as tends to be the media depiction of stalkers, rapists, and other people who are in romantic want). The Devil, in all known classics, is sly, and his slight is characterized by a CALCULATED apathy that misappropriates importance to things which are not intrinsically important. Hence: the Devil lives in the Details, and he is associated closely with pettiness, but not mere pettiness so much as one that makes matters of colossal consequence and import APPEAR petty. The righteous man is only calm when all is well; the Devil is calm, regardless. The nature of the trick is to persuade the docile mind that in fact good and evil are relative, by confining the distinction to a strictly personal view. But an Interpersonal View such as that which is provided by positive Religious Experience will demonstrate that in fact Harmony is a Moral Universal; any system in the Universe is either ALIGNED with God, or it is out of alignment. And all forms of pain are symptoms, even if they are necessary towards Godly ends, of misalignment. The aforementioned necessity itself draws its painful quality from the problem it aspires to resolve.

Dm.A.A.

No Team Pete.

This is ridiculous. I'm sorry but it's not Andy's fault that Erin overreacted to the thought that Andy had once been engaged to a woman over a year ago. There is absolutely no intrinsic imperative that obligates him to divulge that information, especially if the present relationship is faring so SMOOTHLY that he is likely to have put it from his mind. Erin's reaction was purely emotive and nothing more. Andy did the appropriate thing by going to pursue Erin in Florida, who after all SHOULD have told him that she was leaving permanently, because that is of CONSEQUENCE in the FUTURE, rather than a thing of the past. In the process Nellie literally USURPED HIS POSITION ILLEGITIMATELY and continued to sabotage his relationship with Erin, a very healthy one that completed both people with its fair share of sacrifice, despite the mercy that Andy showed his manipulative, nymphomaniacal rival. Andy was perhaps the only consistently MATURE character on the show, next to Michael Scott. In his absence the company thrived, and yet he was not rewarded for the decision, despite the fact that he was honouring a family tradition and taking time to find himself and TO mature instead of simply USING the Office as a stage for his own metamorphosis. Viewers sympathize with Jim because most of his struggles get on camera in a humourous light. But none of us knows what happened down in the Caribbean. We only see the horrendous aftermath. There is all so nothing intrinsically in your argument that either indicated that Erin WOULD be miserable nor that she should NOT be. Erin betrays Andy when Pete offers her Happiness. I don't know about you, but I threw my remote at the floor when I heard that. I could not believe they showed it on television. Happiness is not an incentive for mature, moral action. Respect for authority whilst trying to balance conflicting traditions in a hostile environment is veritably a test of it. Perhaps what most notably exposes YOUR immaturity is that you "just wish". No one cares what you "just wish". Wish fulfillment is for children. Erin got what she wanted without ever having to confront her deep-seated issues and underlying hypocrisy. Andy, conversely, was punished for doing Every Thing Right. It is never the mark of maturity to accommodate an other adult's immaturity. She pardoned her parents for abandoning her for decades, yet she could not see beyond her own infantile feelings of abandonment when he returned home after a MERE three months (what? Is that supposed to be a long time? How about a YEAR since he had dated Angela?) from a trip that had been ON HER SAY SO. I just finished watching the last episode hours ago and I STILL cannot get over my disappointment. The Nard Dog remains the Tragic Hero. And it's SHOCKING that he is not remembered as Michael Scott's Rightful Protégé. Dm.A.A.

The Tragedy of Andrew Bernard:

The Tragedy of Andrew Bernard:

I still don’t and will never understand why Andy Bernard does not end up marrying Erin in the ultimate episode of the Office. His romance to her is by far more relatable and beautiful and desperately nail-biting than Jim and Pam. I understand the schtick that Jim is The Guy Who Gets Away With Things Inexplicably, hence questions arise surrounding his mental health. But how is it that Jim gets away with being gone so long (pursuing a career instead of upholding a tradition or seeking enlightenment in the Caribbean Islands) in Season Nine and the Nard Dog, who is only gone for three months (DURING WHICH TIME THE COMPANY PROSPERS, BY THEIR ADMISSION, AS THE OSTENSIBLE RESULT OF HIS CHOICE) is ABANDONED by his girlfriend? I was totally unmoved when Erin’s birth parents showed up to the Seminar because it was totally devoid of meaning. Not only does the formerly perfect girl embrace them with total abandon devoid of righteous fury. Throughout the entire forty-minute finale she pays absolutely NO HEED TO HER LOVER ANDY, preferring the company of the Nameless Douchebag Alcoholic whom she ended up cheating on Andy WITH. This mystery is only seconded by the fact that all of this happens in the wake of Andy’s bold act of vulnerability going “viral”. I do not understand how it is possible that the second-most-heroic character in the series is LAMPOONED for his breakdown before the impersonal and inhuman judges, which include the grossly untalented Clay Aiken. Dave Grohl wouldn’t put up with this. Why should Andy? When I watch or read Hamlet, which the nard-dog probably has memorized, I feel every heartstring quiver with every line. And this is how I feel for Andy Bernard. And it is not just because I sympathize with him, whereas I do not remember my past lives in orphanage. Ethics are impersonal (in the positive sense of the word) and they are objectively universal to all rational beings. There is simply no Universe in this Multiverse wherein Erin can forgive her parents for having abandoned her for thirty-something years, only to take out her feelings of abandonment on a man who was coping with the disintegration of his own family. There is nothing that can really make this story sentimental or relatable. I’ve only known a few people in my entire life who wouldn’t have their heads spin at the thought of it. And all for what? For HAPPINESS? Andy honoured his Family tradition and returned a Changed Man, but no less intense is he then than when he took his leave of the Office and drove all the way down to FLORIDA to find Erin. If I wrote a sequel for the Office, it would follow the demise of Pete and of course Toby’s adventures in Europe, chasing Nellie. Andy’s respect for the traditions of a family that visibly DEPLORED him is by FAR more sympathetic a sob story than Erin’s quest for “Happiness” (Again: how do you MEASURE that? And don’t you DARE say endorphins) or her abandonment by a Mother and Father who never receive their due come-uppance. Much less comprehensible is the rise of Daryll to the top, alongside Jim, even when he CONFESSED to an aversion to Work Itself. Even less so is Toby’s being single. Even less so is Nellie’s ongoing and irrational aversion to him. Even less so is that Oscar, whose sodomistic affair (WHY DOES WORD NOT RECOGNIZE THIS WORD?!) with Angela’s Husband, by no means selfless or principled, even by his own hypocritical standards, is allowed into Public Office and even becomes GODFATHER TO ANGELA’S SON. How can the ends justify THOSE means? How is Dwight rewarded for his aggression towards Andy but Andy is only caught where he began: at Cornell University? Why is Erin’s Happiness greater than his Rights? A hero MUST uphold those same values with which he defends every woman he has ever been with and every organization that he had ever pledged his loyalty to, even if contemporary cultural complications compel him to choose love over station, tradition over love, or station over tradition, from time to time. The Underdog even had his ARSE TATTOOED, yet in the end the World won’t THROW HIM A FUCKING BONE.

If it seems like I am unraveling, I am. I might have nothing left to live for. The prosperity of every other character on this show, against all odds and decency, only makes Andy’s Tragedy that much higher when weighed on a Scale of Justice that hoists it in proportion to the weight of his adversaries. May he ascend to Heaven if he kills himself in such times as these. May the Internet forever bewail the Irony of his Loss of both Angela and Erin, to say nothing of the family name that was his birthright. May we forever remember the Tragedy of Andrew Bernard, borne pure into the only true poverty, in a wasteland that mistakes it for wealth even as it sees him as its victim and that overlooks the irony of its own envious contempt, which should be considered the first symptom of its OWN poverty. And if my own envious contempt casts doubt on my sincerity, may it be remembered that I did not deny my own poverty. Andrew Bernard is the only true hero next to Michael Scott, hence Michael bestowed upon Andy the burden of Management. Jim and Pam are nothing compared to Andy and Erin, the two lost orphans, like the Gemini twins, one of whom dies in war. Andy is not a cis-white-male. He is the only man who never played the race card and who even had the courage to defend his ancestors, who were only ever moral middle men in a slave trade that started on the African Continent. Like them, he performed his duties to the best of his worldly abilities. They simply outweighed those duties that one elects arbitrarily, as does an entrepreneuring sociopath like Jim Halpert, because he was BORNE INTO THEM, and hence they are closer to God than any career choice for which a man may be blamed. Virtue is inescapable, and Andy makes no attempt to run from it. Yet every step he takes in one righteous direction, prompted by his fellows, is mistaken for treachery, not because it does any harm to any one (which it invariably does not; even when Erin misses him to the point of fury, she has to live with having prompted him to do so) but because it is MISTAKEN FOR BEING ARBITRARY by a gang of ARBITRARY PEOPLE who feel INCONVENIENCED BY IT. At no point does the Nard Dog break a promise, violate the Categorical Imperative, create an adversarial situation, (except to spite Erin, just to prove a point, and rightfully) betray a friend, or disobey an order or social cue. (Except when he stands up to a Panel of Judges that dismiss him without cause.) Andy DOES EVERY THING RIGHT. And he is left empty-handed as all of his fellows prosper. Perhaps he NEEDS Erin in order to ground him. Perhaps Erin needs to be grounded. Pun intended. But  how many WOMEN would HONESTLY judge of a man in need that they would not themselves volunteer to help? If Woman is EQUAL to Man, is she not burdened by the same altruistic task? Is that not the life-blood of Society and Human Compassion?

When people like Andrew Bernard are condemned for doing the RIGHT thing, it only opens the floodgates for degenerate sociopaths, without either noble birth OR moral conviction, to be praised and comforted for doing the WRONG thing. Phyllis is pardoned for blackmailing Angela. Dwight is rewarded for bullying Andy. Jim is praised for hitting on Pam in spite of Roy. Etc.

What did Jim ever do right? He only PRETENDED to be AMBIVALENT to Pam when it so pleased him, rather than STANDING UP FOR HIMSELF as he ADMITS HE SHOULD HAVE. Andy is the Old Soul of the Office who, like Michael Scott, is capable of seeing the finish line before the rest of the crowd knows it is running a race. And ironically enough he is the least competitive of any of them. He only craves that which all of them receive as a reward for their own sloppiness. He is condemned only for his own cleanliness. And as Pam Beasley said: wanting things to be clean has nothing to do with being rich. Andy is the only TRULY ENTITLED character, and he KNOWS it. No one can hold a candle up to him, yet all of them enjoy the fruits of HIS labours and even the prosperity brought on by his calculated and inspired absence. HAD Jim and Pam NOT WASTED TIME that they REGRET HAVING WASTED, would they not all so have appeared self-entitled? Andy suffers not from excessive Desire but from Conviction. Yet any TRUE Drama or Comedy REWARDS that Conviction when it is properly oriented. It does not confuse it for vice as it treats actual vice as though it were virtue. So may it last of all be remembered that at no point am I opening the gates of sympathy that they might flood out the flame of justice in its persecution of the narcissist and deviant. I would rather that it buoy us up to an altitude from whence we might again recall the distinction between TRUE entitlement and the passive aggression of a silent, manipulative self-interest. There is a reason that Hamlet stabs Polonius behind a curtain. In a more decent time, Jim would have met his come-uppance, and Andy would have died a beloved Prince. The sword of discretion must again be used not to defend one’s self when one is in the wrong, but rather to segregate virtue from vice. And insofar as Andy wields it in accordance with a just assessment of his own value, his service to Humanity as an Artist, and in the overlying context of a civilized culture and rich tradition of principles, he has earned that right that Americans mistakenly consider a Universal Entitlement for which one does not have to fight: to fend for one’s own self. To defend oneself.

Dm.A.A.

DREAM SEVEN.

Strike.

Up until this point, I have been amazed by the sheer clarity and cohesion of my mo[i]st recent dreams, especially as a consistent narrative. I could only compare them in Apollonian Dignity to the series of dreams from 2013 that followed the Adventures of the Joker. About this old puzzle I wrote and raved extensively, covering not only the dream contents but its meanings, plot theories, and even its OMINOUS PARALLELS TO THE DREAMS OF MY FELLOWS, in a slew of revelation. Now this slew attains an erotic climax in the recognition of the fact that I am YET STILL DREAMING THAT STORY. The Faceless Traitor from Dream Number Fifty was of course none other than the Dog Napper that Rob and Mike had identified based on his description alone. Surely it was he who all so slashed Mike’s tires in North Korea, which I am guessing is where Rob’s Home is situated in this narrative. It is all starting to line up more neatly than a line of pawns. Some inconsistencies still nag at me, but to open discussion upon them is not only to express what might be a neurosis but it is to turn this honest record back into a philosophical forum, prone to all of the triggering distortions of an Emotive Debate League. And in the words of an old team-mate from that episode in my life: NO ONE wants Hilary for President. So I shall spare myself and others the torment of such an(al) analysis.

The dream begins where the last left off. W.K. and I had to flee our ransacked barracks. We took the Goat’s Head with us, for Good Luck, wrapping it in some old newspapers so that it would not start bleeding under the dawning Arizona (so I’m guessing: Arid Zone.) Sun.

We had to buy bicycles from the local pawnshop. As we began to peddle West, escaping the Sun that was just beginning to rise behind us, we noticed that we were being followed by a White Van. The van approached steadily and stealthily, but it was still gaining on us at a rate that was slow for a motor vehicle but much too fast for a foot-peddled bicycle. In a frantic move, the White Knight threw the Goat’s Head at the car. The truck did not just squash the head, which fell short of the windshield. It FLIPPED OVER, crashing on its roof, and guzzling fossil fuel from its dead underbelly. W.K, who mere moments ago had been playing E.T. with the Diabolical Scapegoat in his basket between his handlebars, was so shocked that he hit a fire hydrant. Before I could find my brakes, he flipped over, got curb-stomped by Gravity, and was soon covered, as far as his right-hand side was concerned, in oil. It was at this moment that the Joker emerged from the car. He was carrying a flame thrower. I screamed at the Joker not to do it. The Joker asked: do what? Don’t kill him, I replied. Don’t light him on fire, man. It was like Tarantino all over again. The Joker replied: I wasn’t about to. But now I will.

The last time that I felt this way was upon witnessing my dog’s injection in a Prior, Recent Dream. The White Knight screamed as half his face was burnt off. The Joker ambled away, content in spite. Out of the van emerged the Faceless Man. He walked through the fire like a daemon, took the White Knight’s bicycle, and then took his leave upon it, the bicycle tires having turned to flaming circles.

I was about to chase him. But then an other Beast appeared upon the scene. To my shock and awe I beheld an enormous wurm writhed now in flame and oil emerging from the midst of the flames. Upon it rode a suit of armour. The wurm plopped painlessly down, running with a hundred legs towards my comrade. The black suit of armour swept up W.K’s charred body and burst forth onto the shore of this Lake of Fire. It was at this moment that I realized several things. One was that the suit of armour was not merely black; it was BLACKENED. The Knight’s suit jacket was still white in certain places, not unlike my own suit jacket is where it brushed concrete. Yet unlike my own suit jacket in Actuality, it was not made white in those parts where it had once been black. The human zebra that now walked towards me, carrying my comrade in its arms, was once a White Knight as well, but it had turned to black. I could not see its face, for it was vizored, but I noticed that the Blackened Knight was all so short of stature. He walked in an effeminate fashion that leant new meaning to the word “gentleman”. He quivered as he carried the other White Knight, a fallen soldier, and when he whistled for his steed, who was comprised of a hundred phalluses, there was a breathiness, and really a breathlessness, in the whistle.

The steed was awkward to ride, especially with my crotch upon its flesh and only two layers of clothing segregating us. Add to that a heterosexual’s delight at riding with his burnt buddy before him, clinging to two penises for dear life, and an effeminate gentleman, my knight in shining armour, behind me. It was quite the experience.

We flew across the Sierra Nevada. My friend behind me said, in a distinctively exasperated tone prone to the occasional fit of glossolalia, but that might have been only a speech impediment heard over the sound of rushing air (as he had to shout to fight the wind and his sound waves left a wake behind us), that the Dick Centipede could only travel by night, so we would have to outfly the Sun. I asked politely, albeit shoutingly, if the beast had a scientific name. My Saviour replied, but I could not make out for certain the nature of his response. It could have been any where from “I am not an etymologist” to “I am an entomologist”. So I cut my losses.

We landed in San Diego Bay, atop the roof of Mr. A’s Restaurant. The Saviour said that this skyscraper was the safest place for us to hide and heal. He ran into the stairwell at a pace surprising for any one dressed entirely in iron, or whatever it was that had, instead of iron, kept his body from burning up like the victim of a Bronze Bull.

As the sky was just beginning to intimate a shade of indigo, I spoke to W.K. Really, he spoke to me. (Pardon the revision; I was told once by a Mystic to be more attentive to emotional detail in my dream records. My poetic style of delivery was described perhaps as being a “stream of consciousness”, though in reality those emotions that we can express outwardly are more akin to the conscious ego. The result of this was that I BEGAN TO write in a manner more AKIN to stream of consciousness, which states one thing as a fact and then quickly revised it as though it spoke too soon. No omniscient narrator would ever do that. But that’s what I get [and what YOU get, I guess, if there’s any chance a receiving end on this thing.] for trusting an old Gypsy Grifter who needs you to be “specific” (as though the Unconscious were Specific and the ego were Vague!!) so that she can “analyze” your dreams in a manner that appears to be suited to YOUR purposes.) He told me that now that his right-hand side was singed irreversibly, the right hand path was lost to him. I called him Gotham’s White Knight and gave him a Quarter. At this moment, the door of the stairwell suddenly burst open. The Blackened Knight came lumbering forth, stuttering. I could only make out this much news: that both of the White Rooks were dead. They were struck by lightning atop a tower in North Korea. Apparently, the North Korean government had learned how to manipulate the weather in order to produce political assassinations.

The Saviour Knight urged us to follow him, but I felt strongly and palpably that W.K. had to rest. As W.K. began to mutter, I leaned in, ignoring the B.K’s pleas. Gotham’s White Knight told me that he knew who the Joker was. The Joker was the Other Bishop. The Faceless Man was the White King. And both of them were working with the North Korean Government. But the Joker was betrayed by the White King, so the Joker burnt the White King’s face off. Now no one knows whether the Joker will remain loyal to the White Side or will go over to the Dark Side.

At this point, I heard two things at once, as though in symphony, but perhaps I simply lost my sense of time and everything felt like it was happening at once. I must have briefly visited the Dream Time. It was like being high at Black’s Beach that night with Rob. At once I heard the Dick Centipede Rider screaming over the sound of Thunder. It was like a piccolo playing over a dozen crash cymbals and ten timpanis. I felt water touch me. It splashed upon my comrade, as though to heal him, and he retracted from the sting of the water as though it had been a poisoned barb. I told him it was fine. I told him it was only water. But he said: it’s acid. It is poison.

Lightning struck and I woke up.

I write Goats, not Tragedies.

Dm.A.A.