1284 mots de foi.

It was only shortly into the film that I secularized my theory that gender-specific Souls live on eternally in God’s Memory. It must have been during the scene that the Protagonist runs through his home town and encounters the stray dog. Perhaps by this point all ready Father had made a comment about “mariachi” music and I was triggered, suspecting that it was an ethnic jibe. But that cannot be the only reason that I recall the scene; it’s most probable that being triggered was what restored my consciousness to its preoccupation: Death. The movie of course leant itself to that theme, yet I had no reason to DWELL upon it (as I’d been doing hitherto) rather than simply to enjoy the film itself and to ponder the Matter later. It was at this moment, I remember, that I came to realize that God could produce an Aethereal Plane that only exists so long as Humans exist to remember it: that He would give some of His Memory to Us, in the manner that he has done with Will, as well as in the manner that we experience this Anatman Memory right NOW, except usually confined to the Worldly Dimension. Truly, I had all ready begun to suspect this prior to the film, most probably, yet it seemed too generous to claim that I’d been so perceptive and intuitive, even if other times I’ve proven myself to be Psychic. I suppose my reservations stem from two sources: the desire to impress my readers (who may never read this, now that I’ve had change of heart) and the habit of “selling” my intuitions to near-strangers. Regardless of the cause, I know this: that the film corroborated my existing suspicions. And those were: that Our Souls live on “eternally”, upon the Other Side, only so long as WE are here to Remember them. If Mankind dies, so does the Necessity for this to be the Case, and hence it will cease to be so, granted that the Universe serves a Purposive Teleology.

Dm.A.A.

What does it mean that it was mere moments before I saw this film that I had conceived of this? It can only mean that God had sent it to me as a message, most probably through you, or via quantum leap, if not both. You are still WITH me. Your ghost’s appearances came not a moment too late or too soon. It would be to repeat your mistakes if I were to lose faith now in what you have reminded me to be so precious. It would not only be depressing of me; it would be unintellectual. The signs are there; you put them there. And surely as I avoided your Escapism (your lust for Death as a Solution to your post-traumatic stress, especially surrounding gender) I shall avoid the nihilism of a Godless Universe. Watts does not appeal to me any more in his Buddhism; it is precisely the sort of Nihilism that Nietzsche ascribed to all Western Buddhists. I can tell why my family wanted to steer me away from him. Nietzsche does not appeal to me with his amoralism. The cycle returns to Capricorn: Alasdair MacIntyre. If Watts represents my Fourth House, MacIntyre represents my North Node. And even that alone is not enough. For you remind me to break the mold. The detachment of Watts I unlearned in chasing YOU. You were never a sociopath, but a troubled and brilliant Soul, not unlike me. I shall remember you. I shall make sure the World Remembers You.

The Temporary World of a Watts is still a preferential Heaven by his own definition. But you taught me in Death what you could not teach me in Life: that we are eternal. In Life you were Love, my last comfort. In Death you are Divine Love, my Transcendance.

I remember how you made me feel. Whether or not I was sober. Whether or not I felt sane. The sociopaths never made me feel this way. But it must be spoken to become totally true. They hurt you. So you used me to get back at them. And you might use me yet towards that same end. But I must wait for the next signal. Onto war or home? To be or not to be?

My feelings are facts. I never was one to hold a hateful grudge. What they did to the two of us changed that. The Kali Yuga ends and my New Life begins, devoid of sorrow, full of faith. If I was never one to hate, but I hate now, I know I hate with that same dignity I had (and have) in Love and Trust. They deserve it, not for what they did to me*, and nor is it that I defend some false conception of myself in exempting you from this hatred. When you asked why I had pardoned you, you wanted to know you could trust me; why would I not seek vengeance upon you as you sought it upon them? And if YOU could have felt that paranoia, it’s small wonder they did. Too bad they chose wrongly: for in failing to accommodate you they crossed me. And they know better now.

I begin again to think in Images. I am the Piscean Visionary. Most men speak and think and baffle themselves, tripping over words. But for me words express what I all ready know. What God has shown me. What you’ve shown me through Him. Thank you for reminding me to have faith in Him. Thank you for restoring my faith in my Family, though it hurts to imagine parting with them, and this parting is made bearable only by faith in seeing them again after this Life; I dare not think to shut my Heart again.

Those few against whom it is shut now: they deserve it not for what they did to me but rather what they did to you. Their vice is directly proportional to your virtue. I knew who they were when you fell in with them. You were not one of them; you only tried to seem that way, so that you might redeem yourself for that which I was so naïve as to imagine they could never do. Yet I still saw it in them, though I hid my sight in the veneer of pardon an apologetics. Yes: I understand now. You were the Ghost rattling chains, struggling to forgive. And now I understand. And now I overstand.

They only ever taught me to hate my family by attacking every tenet of what Family is: the unconditional love of a mother for her child, the child’s innocent wisdom, so close to both womb and to that Other Plane, and of course the entire notion of a sort of objectivity that only can be found in Love. I find them now, pathetic in their hatred, and what little hatred I have left will fade soon. Only one incarnation of my ego dies now. You and I live on. Perhaps this weblog lives on, not because of them, but rather despite them, if not totally to spite them. You taught me to Forgive. But will I forgive them? I all ready did so in my Service to you. What follows now I cannot tell. But it will not be what preceded it. And all is well. Fondest farewell.

You go where even jaundiced yellow eyes can’t tell your blonde and golden hair from magick spell. And not to the forgotten realm that is most tragic Hell.

Dm.A.A.

Just as I publish this about My Aries Wife my sister (the Libra that showed me the film) Awakes. 7:00 am. 3/31/2018.

Post Number 935 (5 * 11 * 17): Rebirth.

I am partial to the model of reincarnation from Avatar: the Last Airbender, which remains to my mind the best Western interpretation of Eastern mysticism, capturing all the wonders of Buddhism and Taoism in a manner that is not neurotic in the Jungian sense. Over the course of only one night I see the Law of Attraction at work, moving from skepticism (that mirrors my own) that answers all my ghostly questions to shameless Islamic proclamations on the gender(lessness) of the Soul. Ever the comparative philosopher, like Watts, who took a page from Jung’s book, and without whose taking it I might never have found him (that bridge to the East I’d needed in a land of cults) I refuse to turn on my former self in disgust, seeking instead to integrate my Western Past. Thus is that Hessian excitement of developing a totally unique personality, for most of these guides have proven false in their Herd-like convictions; the few who broke the ice for me not just with optimystical predictions but with great, scientific diction all ways had gone rogue as I do now. So Buddha, if ever he felt pride, would be proud of me. I question everything and keep only that which has worked. And I remain harmless.

The Soul may be without gender, or it might be Female by Default: the Anima of which the ancient Greeks and Jung have spoken. Yet Jung spoke of Animus: the male counterpart, and then man spoke of the ANIMAL: that primordial force of Earthly Nature. Like my dog, who is in every sense a MALE DOG rather than a Female Dog, and who possesses a virtue that bitches lack, though they might compensate for it upon their female end. The term “Spirit Animal” is thus totally redundant. Animals ARE Spirits. And they definitely have gender.

We can read, with time, the Insides of Things based upon their Outsides. Those who gave up on the Skill convinced us that appearances remain misleading infinitely and indefinitely. But they only by so doing predisposed us to this blindness of inner intent, forced to rely upon the kindness of parasites DESPITE our innermost suspicions, for strangers would not trust us however charming we might appear in our demeanour, much of which had been our VIRTUE IN ITSELF, which parasites dismissed as though it had been a veneer for this “Society” would mirror that suspicion, even when the parasites knew it to be a lie, for those of us who were virtuous looked the part as well. But we never could sway those that were LED by false appearances, so what is the point to preach this ongoing post-modern paranoia?

One can tell an Aries often by his or her stature, as one can a Capricorn in opposite fashion. One can read the pointed features of a Scorpio against the round ones of a Libra. One can recognize the Pisces nose or the plain symmetry that’s native to a Taurus.

From a scientific angle our features are arbitrated by genetics. But genes are not chosen randomly. The Heavens do inform us. But what planet chooses gender? Mars or Venus? I say: neither, for they both have democratic say. So WE choose gender prior to rebirth. The Soul crawls in between That World and This One, accumulating karma, until it has served its purpose, and perfection having been attained it merges with the Buddha Nature Without Soul (anatman) and dissolves into Nirvana, its project complete, its efforts spent.

Yet the Soul is not the Spirit. What I loved about Avatar was that A’ang could SPEAK with all his former incarnations, and they looked then just as they had looked within their Glory Years.

This would explain all so the semblance of the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father to that Father that Hamlet remembers having known in Life.

If A’ang can speak to his OWN prior incarnations, is it thus impossible that *I* could speak to a former incarnation of an other Soul? If Quantum Leap is possible, and if that Soul is a Twin Flame (hence MY Soul) then how WOULDN’T I be able to do so?

Huxley distinguishes the Mystical State from the Visionary State, and this has all ways fascinated me. The Mystical State dissolves boundaries. It accommodates the parasitic rapists and escapists and those suicidal thoughts which promise Heaven without Gender to whoever takes Ophelia’s Path.

But the Visionary State EXALTS the differences that line this University of Duality. So in a state of Vision we encounter the Romantic Life of Eros. And Romance has its own virtues and boundaries. And it is perpetually under attack by culture. Hence in upholding its own boundaries Romance oversteps the lesser social boundaries. So it’s all ways been, by definition. Von Franz said it perfectly: I do this against the rules because I love this person. Only by loving can I know, however, what rules can be broken and what rules must not be. And within that Visionary State of Absolute Distinctions it is obvious to me what rule-breaking is done not out of Love but out of Evil.

So when the Body dies it leaves an imprint. All the prior Avatars can merge into one. But they can just as easily diverge for fun. As below, so above. Not only do our parents merge physically to produce a body that has sex. The Soul merges as well with that body and makes a Spirit. When the body dies, the Soul moves on to the Next Body. But the Spirit, which contains the Gender of the Body (Mother to the Spirit) and the Genderlessness of the Soul (The Father) moves on to the Higher Planes. Yet only after it has been avenged if it is premature. For otherwise it will remain a Ghost, a guest within this House. And its Host may very well be an other member of its Soul Circle. So you can imagine thus the reincarnation of a woman coming back to the house haunted by her ghost, but as a man, making amends so she might leave this earthly coil and ascend, but not to genderless Nirvana, as the Soul will go to, but that Eternity where her ghost is remembered in God’s Memory. And memory is that anatman principle that holds this Multiverse together. Everything is Memory.

Dm.A.A.

Cheer up, Emo Quid: We're in the Homely Stretch. (End of a Yuga Cycle.)

Age of Pisces: 135 B.C. – 2025 A.D.

-         825 A.D.: Kali Yuga started.

-         845 A.D.: Buddhist Persecution in China by “Taoist” Emperor Wuzong. (http://www.historycentral.com/dates/800ad.html) “The suppression of monasteries and persecution of foreign religions were part of a reformation undertaken. The persecution lasted for twenty months—not long, but long enough to have permanent effects. Buddhism, for all its strength, never completely recovered. For centuries afterwards, it was merely a tolerated religion. The days of its greatest building, sculpture, and painting, and its most vital creative thought, were past.

In some aspects while much of traditional Buddhist teachings were later arduously restored following Emperor Wuzong's reign, some traditional schools of thought were wiped out. This included the ancient Esoteric school, which barely survived through the Japanese monk Kūkai, later the founder of the Shingon sect.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Anti-Buddhist_Persecution)

Age of Aries: 2295 B.C. – 135 B.C.

Age of Taurus: 4455 B.C. – 2295 B.C.

Age of Gemini: 6621 B.C. – 4455 B.C.

Age of Cancer: 8787 B.C. – 6621 B.C.

Age of Leo: 10954 B.C. – 8787 B.C.

Yuga Cycle began: 10,000 (9975) B.C. (Age of Leo.)

SATYA YUGA: Leo, Cancer, and Gemini. (Lord, Mother, and Messenger.)

-         Mesopotamian Cultivation of Wheat and Barley.

o   Prefigured as Start of an Age. I downloaded this image (of a barley seed’s cross-section) two hours ago, according to my Search History. I have misplaced the source for the supposed prediction.

Satya Yuga ended: 5,200 (5175) B.C. (Age of Gemini.)

TRETA YUGA: Gemini, Taurus, and Aries. (Messenger, Farmer (Lover), and Fighter.)

Treta Yuga ended: 1,600 (1575) B.C. (Age of Aries.)

DVAPARA YUGA: Aries, Pisces. (Fighter and Martyr (Prophet).)

-         Hindu Vedic Period.

-         Buddha Guatama.

Dvapara Yuga ended: 825 A.D. (Age of Pisces.)

KALI YUGA: Pisces. (Prophecy and False Prophecy.)

Kali Yuga ends: 2025 A.D.

-         Pluto enters Aquarius.

-         Age of Pisces enters Era of Cancer.

Age of Aquarius begins: 2166 A.D.

ZODIAC CYCLE: 26,000 years.

Yuga Cycles per Zodiac Cycle: 21 and two thirds. (21.666…)

Zodiac Age: 2166 and two thirds. (2166.666…)

Satya Yuga: 4800 years.

-         Aquarius and Capricorn. (4333 and a third.)

YUGA CYCLE: 1200 years.

Dm.A.A.

Happy Birthday.

That is all.

Dmytri.

Fibonacci Code in C:

Outputs ("prints") the Fibonacci Sequence to any arbitrated number of places, granted that that number (the input) is an integer between 1 and 46. (Inputs 47 and over produce an Overflow for every other place starting with 47.) The Default (prior to input) is twenty places.

= = == === ===== ======== ============= ======== ===== === == = =

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
 /*     add more variable declarations */
 /* --> between here */
 int a, b, c, d;
 /* <-- and here */
 a = 0;
 b = 1;
 c = 0;

 int count;

 count = 20;
 /*     add code to print the first “count” Fibonacci numbers */
 /*     with the proper format */
 /* --> between here */
 while (count >= 0) {
  if (count % 2 == 0) {

   d = 1;

  }

  if (count % 2 != 0) {

   d = 0;

  }

  while (count > 0 && d == 0) {

   count = count - 1;

   if (count % 2 == 0) {

    if (count != 0) {
     printf("%d, ", a);

     c = a;
     b = a + b;
    }

    else {
     printf("%d.\n", a);
     scanf("%d", &count);

     a = 0;
     b = 1;
     c = 0;
     d = 1;
    }
   }

   else if (count % 2 != 0) {

    if (count != 0) {
     printf("%d, ", b);

     a = b + c;
    }
   }

  }
  while (count > 0 && d == 1) {

   count = count - 1;

   if (count % 2 != 0) {

    printf("%d, ", a);

    c = a;
    b = a + b;

   }

   else if (count % 2 == 0) {

    if (count != 0) {
     printf("%d, ", b);

     a = b + c;
    }
    else {
     printf("%d.\n", b);
     scanf("%d", &count);

     a = 0;
     b = 1;
     c = 0;
     d = 0;
    }
   }
  }
 }

 /* <-- and here */

 while (1) getchar();
 return 0;
}

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.

Dream Alpha Centauri:

Dream Alpha Centauri:

Having pedaled my bicycle for the better part of the day I stopped mid-day to rest at a café called the Diabolical Lounge. This venue operated twenty-four hours a day, six days a week, and it looked homely, even if a bit uncomfortable. I was approached by a gorgeous platinum-haired server who told me that she recognized my bicycle. I was about to leave in fear when she sat down cajolingly and told me that she was an Angel. She informed me that Keroplian’s Plan had failed and that the Proprietor had caught on to Saturn’s Scheme. He intended to frame a rival by sending the Product to the Distant Shore, which was where the rival lived.

Together, the Angel and I traveled to the Near Shore. She drove a White Van; my bicycle rested in the back. When we arrived we saw that a fishing vessel was leaving. We had missed our opportunity; that same boat surely carried the contraband. I noticed at this moment that my friend began to phase in and out of existence. She explained that she needed to apprehend the Product because without it she would disappear. As she approached Death I came to realize that she was growing hostile towards me and daemonic in Nature. She explained that once she had been an agent intent on fulfilling Keroplian’s Plans, but that her extended exposure to the Product had made her dependent upon its radiance and upon discovery of this fact the Proprietor made her a slave in his Laboratory. But she escaped. It was only because of her lingering Dependency that she might customarily transform again into one of his zombies; she could only very occasionally see the Light. And it was at this moment that I had an epiphany about the chemical nature of many of my “failed” relationships.

She then observed that one of the deckhands on the vessel was none other than the same old rival. She explained that the Proprietor kept his enemies close, so this made sense. We then noticed that the Captain was Ronald MacDonald. Yet something was off about him. She exclaimed that it was the Proprietor, but disguised as Captain Clown. In moments he opened his jacket to reveal a set of bombs in Joker fashion. He set them off and the vessel sank. My angelic friend told me not to worry. She would not bother to go diving for the Product now. She would ascend. At this moment, she phased out of my Life forever.

As I sat dumbfounded on the shore, bowls of rice and chopsticks floated towards me from the shipwreck. The Rival Deckhand swam towards me. He asked me if he could use my Van. I told him that he could if he could drive me home. He told me that once upon a time it was all that he did for a living. We took our leave of the Near Shore, traveling inland. At some point in the neighbouring woods he withdrew a flame thrower from his pocket, telling me that he would burn Imitatio Christi Industries to the ground. I smiled and awoke.

Dm.A.A.