I Live In a Giant Bucket…

January 23rd, 2008 | Posted in General | 5 Comments »

Hooeyspewer tagged me for some crazy game of naming off the things that you would like to do before you meet your eventual end. Apparently this whole thing spawns from some movie about such lists. Since I’m not exactly a television person and movies have to be very original before I pay them more than a few minutes of attention, I can honestly say I haven’t heard of this movie.

Still, Hooeyspewer did tag me me and since I do read her blog (and I think she reads mine) I feel it is the least I can do to actually participate. (Plus, this really makes a great entry for Blog365.)

So, below is the great list. Since I’m drinking the bottle of wine which my cousin gave me a couple of years ago(!!!) this list may become a little deranged the further down it goes. REMINDER: I RARELY PROOFREAD!

This list is in no special order:

* Annoy sales clerks at an expensive store. I’ve always wanted to dress like a homeless person and make an insanely large purchase. Maybe a car or something. I do intend to buy a Mac Pro later this year, and since the one I have priced out is almost $6500, it would actually be kind of sweet to walk into the Apple store dressed down as far as is legally possible and drop that kind of money in cash. This probably shouldn’t be on the list because even though I’ve never done this it is something I can very easily seeing myself doing.

* Play a perfect game of Pac-Man. 3,333,360 is the theoretical highest score possible. I aim to do it one day. My current highest score is almost 85,000. My current XBox Live score is about 40,000. I’m fairly certain I should be able to crack at least 100,000. It’s a feat almost no human can claim, but I want to die knowing that I bloody well did it.

* Publish my book. 15 years in writing. A full novel’s worth of junk (over 600k) sits in various folders spread out between my Amigas, PCs, and Mac. I hate all of it. Well, except for some of the really funny bits, but I dislike those, too. All in all the only thing I haven’t scrapped is the concept itself: Boy meets girl; Girl hates boy; Girl goes on with her mercenary lifestyle and hunts a fugitive in the past; Boy chases girl like a lovesick moron (what guy hasn’t done this?); Boy becomes fugitive and so begins the comical twisty-turny chase through timespace as a boy and a girl suffer a romantic case of Chronological Disorder. (Star Jumpers Vol 1. Chronological Disorder) One day I’ll get a flow I’m happy with. Until then I just write junk and file it away. Sometimes I might even put rejected bits up on the web for my friends to criticize.

* Create a fun video game. I’m something of a coder. I say “something of” because I’m at least usefully familiar with C and C++, as well a slew of other not-terribly-useful-for-games languages (Perl/JavaScript). I was actually pretty skilled on the Amiga using AMOS, and I was even having fun with 68k assembler when the corporate shit-scarfers Ali and Gould ass-raped the company assets and force Commodore into bankruptcy. (Why the investors didn’t have them executed I’ll never understand.) I’ve kept myself up to date by reading books and staying familiar with the modern technologies, but since my profession is not in IT my “skillz” just don’t get proper exercise. I have a few concepts for really fun-sounding arcade style action games that I would love to see come to form. One idea I have will always nag at me from the back of my mind, and perhaps one day I will have time to sit down with a few good technical manuals and hammer out loose renditions which I can then place into the opened source for the entire world to enjoy/loathe/ignore/improve.

* Visit Japan. First I want to learn Japanese. I’ve been trying. I bought a book. It isn’t much help. Maybe I should buy the Rosetta Stone Language-Into-Your-Brain-Shoehorn/Jackhammer-System. After I learn Japanese, I want to play most of the Square RPGs from the mid 80’s on up to the mid 90’s in their original Japanese forms.

* Meet my heroes. Douglas Adams and Robert Anton Wilson are both dead. That only leaves two heroes and I would love to meet either one of them. Since Douglas Hofstadter would probably consider me a mental midget unworthy of his time I will probably have to settle for meeting the truly legendary and exceptionally hilarious Pope of Comedy Music, “Weird” Al Yankovic. He’s probably really funny in person, too. If he isn’t I’m okay with assuming he is and just never meeting him to have my image remain unshattered. (I have seen him live in concert, though, so my life is ALMOST complete.)

* Insect Politics. Last on this list is marriage. Yeah, I’d like to meet a lady that isn’t all screwed up in the head and hell bent on derailing my life while she’s busy making an absolute train wreck out of her own. Cute, intelligent, and funny are a must. Native to Earth is optional (though preferred.) I could go on and on about the kind of woman I want, but there isn’t really much point. Even though I know women I consider just about perfect (or at least mostly flawless) there is that whole rule of reciprocals or something mathmatoromantic like that. The rule is this: Never develop insane crushes over women who are unavailable, uninterested, or busy crushing over someone else. Women who hate you are of course straight out.

Okay, I lied. There are other items on this list. Way too many, in fact. I’d like to eat sausage again one day, for example. The rest of the items will just have to be revealed as I do them. But now that that is out of the way I’m supposed to tag other people for having to put up with this. I’ll avoid making it too direct by saying if your name is on my blogroll you are tagged, unless you’ve already done it or just don’t want to.

The one person I will call out on this is Rachelskirts. I’m calling on you, Skirts, because you are also participating in Blog365 and this is like a totally free topic for use whenever you see fit.

So, uhm, yeah. Oh, and one other item for the list: BUNNY RANCH!