People Watching and tangents

For the novices here who may not be familiar with my hi-jinx, I sometimes have a non-linear stream of thoughts that will have you 90 seconds later asking, “How did we get on the subject of talking about an engineered device that would allow a bear in captivity to zip-line across its environment again? Or why are you so curious about the exact figures globally of how many deaths since World War II have been directly attributed to sour cream in any capacity?”

Things just happen in my brain, (we) just deal with it and move on. Question: For those who put salt and pepper on their food…which one do you put on first? Personally I use these spices and leave it to fate to decide. If the salt is closer, it is up first. If the pepper is closer, so be it. Now you may be asking, what does salt and pepper have to do with the clear-coating layers they put on new cars? Honestly, I don’t think there is a connection but if you have some differing information, I’m all ears.

Anyway…this morning I walked into the lobby at work after stretching my patience to the very max once again by driving along highway 270 from South County to Earth City during the 8 o’clock hour. To anyone who does not have to drive on 270, first off I hate you, and second you are very fortunate…and I hate you again. Today is Thursday. The amount of accidents and police activity I have seen this week (on 270) is enough to make a sane person walk into a bar, order 80 shots of Jager and down them all with warm tap water chasers in between each. Also by the way, each shot of Jager (depending on size) is somewhere between 100-150 calories each. Oh the madness.

Now back to my initial presence in the lobby this morning. I walked in using the rear entrance with my laptop bag in hand like most of the employees of my company do each day. Entering from the front entrance, I spied a lady wearing a DuckTales t-shirt, dark yoga pants and coral-colored flip flops. Yes I said coral and not some fruity color like salmon so just chill. I know the dress code is a bit lax these days so I did not even figuratively blink an eye at her choices (in the literal sense, I’m pretty sure I blinked a few times in that span of time). Miss DuckTales just reminded me of one of my favorite pastimes: People Watching.

The building I work in used to be filled to capacity (around 700 people) but through recent cutbacks and outsourcing that number is probably around 40 percent of that original number (or less). With the reduction in available candidates to view and secretly judge, you have to be a bit more observant with the opportunities you have. There is nice suit guy with Afro whom I see at lunch frequently. There is really tall lady that I went to high school with a long time ago. There is clique of girls who coordinate their daily outfits. There is guy who appears to wear the same clothes every day (literally every single day: same pants, same shirt and same athletic shoes). There are the cafeteria ladies who laugh at me while I goofy dance in line waiting for my mushroom omelet and bacon. There is Brenda the custodial lady who just recently got married in Vegas. She is very polite when I complain about how nasty the men’s room is with urine, hair and fecal matter on the floors and toilet seats. She is very polite about my complaints considering it is her job to clean that stuff up.

Caught up in all this, I wondered: What is the origin…of the word lobby? Turns out it comes from Medieval Latin (mid 16th century) lobia meaning covered walk. Up to that point in history, people just didn’t know what to call a lobby. Also the origin of Hobby Lobby started in the 1970’s in an Oklahoma City garage of David and Barbara Green. Fascinating.

Now some of you are maybe asking to yourself or aloud if you read aloud instead of to yourself: So we know about the DuckTales lady but what are you wearing Scott? OK it’s a little creepy that you are asking me what I’m wearing but I’ll allow it. Picture me walking towards you in slow-motion with a brilliant glow of sunburst behind me…and that did not happen. I walked in hurriedly, black canvas laptop bag dangling from my right hand. Nondescript dull black dress shoes on my feet, partially covered by the cuffs of my dark-wash jeans. I’m actually wearing a belt today to try to avoid any wardrobe malfunctions so I do look a bit nicer than usual. Covering my incredibly average, non-muscular chest is a pale bluish-green polo shirt with minimal wrinkles from the seat belt crossing area. I wanted to wear a big straw hat or a retro headband like John McEnroe wore back in the day but due to my not having those items, I chose not to wear either.

Just so I do not forget, I am writing on my left ring finger to remember to record my podcast this afternoon once I hit traffic alley again. Normally I knock that out in the mornings on Thursday but today I forgot. Perhaps today will be the day that my podcast is awesome (available on the Podbean app) and causes millions of random strangers to PayPal me three dollars each so I can travel to exotic locales…and make my car payment.

For everyone who read and commented, texted, IM’d, called, etc about my Indian Ball blog piece, I humbly thank you. So far it is the second most popular piece I have written, just behind my post about NPC competitor Amy Battles and just ahead of my piece on EN-ER-GY DRINKS! Writing is a passion of mine that almost rivals my softball obsession. With softball season winding down for the year, I look to ramp up my writing frequency in various formats. Fingers crossed my laziness doesn’t clamp down on me like a bear trap on a clueless Pokemon Go wanderer.

Merry Thursday to all, and to all a good day!

Peace.

SSIBC – SouthSide Indian Ball Club – 2016 Billy Rahm HOF Edition

Hello and I hope the day brings you good tidings.

Today is Monday, August 22, 2016. I am here to talk about something that is very near and dear to my heart. Softball. Big shock there. But more specifically, Indian ball and the SSIBC (SouthSide Indian Ball Club) that I have been a part of for four and a half years. I started as a rookie in April of 2012. Being a Rookie means you have to be beer b!tch to all the senior club members as a kind of quasi-hazing. It’s not all that bad and if you aren’t particularly mouthy, you can slip under the radar and not have to do it that much.

Over the handful of years that I have been with the club, more than a few of the faces have changed significantly (figuratively and literally). Many of the guys I started playing with, including the member who recruited me (Joe “Commish” Ritrovato), are no longer active members of the club for various reasons (family obligations, health, etc.). All told I have only been semi-seriously playing softball since 2004. From the time I played my last softball game in middle school (circa 1984), I did play six or seven games at company picnics and for a work team but that was it. There were no composite bats or fielders wearing protective masks or guys my size hitting balls 350 plus feet. My last swings before the almost twenty year break were with a true aluminum bat that had a thin black electrical taped handle grip. The barrel of the bat was the light green of today’s Worth Boogers. If I had to guess, I would say it weighed about thirty ounces. On one of my last swings, the opposing team’s first baseman moved well off the first base line. I waited back and smacked a line drive about two feet fair down the first base line. The first baseman just stood there dumbfounded since most of our hitters were dead-pull hitters. I ended up with a triple and an RBI on the play. The day was hot and dusty and neither of my parents saw it happen much like most of my softball career.

So flash forward to 2012: My friend Commish, who runs the Lager Sluggers Softball Club and the annual Turkeybowl game (flag football for fun and charity) at Fenton Park, recruits me to play Indian ball. I show up to the field which at that time was off Telegraph in South County. The first game was already underway. The hitter was facing the three infielders (about 2/3 as wide as a normal softball field) and about 10-11 outfielders. It was crazy. I saw a bunch of guys I knew mostly from softball reputation and these guys could not buy a hit. Line drives, deep towering fly balls and vicious grounders – all ending up in a glove and very few hits. Unlike softball where one guy can get a hit and a (home)run instantly, this required four guys to get a hit to tally a single run before three outs were tallied. It was amazing and intense. As a regular softball player and being used to hitting with composite bats, it was a little intimidating to swing a wood bat with all those fielders in every conceivable hitting lane. I think that first season I batted about .250 and I felt pretty good about that. By contrast, in regular softball if I hit less than .600 I would feel like the biggest failure on the planet.

So now that I am in my fifth season, my perspective has changed a bit. Indian ball is played on Sunday mornings from spring until late summer. Granted there are some Sunday mornings I would rather sleep in, but getting up and heading to Santa Maria’s for Indian ball is a highlight of my week. There is a lot of new faces this year but the smack talk is still alive and kicking which I think is actually the most entertaining part.

With every swing of the bat, something happens. A squibber, a rocket, a Plinko board grounder, a guy catching a ball with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in his mouth, a line drive to your pitcher’s chest (you pitch to your own team), a driving grab, a bobbled grounder to an infielder, a tip drill catch in the outfield, a ten hopper that knocks over the foul cone, a ball the paints the “Trot-line”, a long fly ball foul, a two-handed snap off, a guy catching a ball with enough pine tar in his glove to stop a woolly mammoth and countless other scenarios. The best plays are when a guy makes a play that he would never make again in his life. That gets the peanut galley going nuts. And with each play, someone spectating has their two cents to add. It’s a great time. At the end of the games, it’s almost irrelevant who wins. Almost.

The Indian ball season is broken up into two parts: the first and second halves. There are four teams. If the respective half winners are not the same team, the two half winners square off for bragging rights and championship jackets. In 2016 with the first half winner already decided, it will come down to the last week (next week, barring bad weather) to decide the second half winner and potentially force a playoff game.

In the midst of the playoff chase for the SSIBC, the club took a moment this past Sunday at Santa Maria to honor one of the club’s greats. Billy Rahm, who had been with the club for over three decades, passed away this summer. Mr. Rahm was a huge part of the club and like Norm from Cheers, everyone knew his name. I was introduced to Billy the very first day I played Indian ball. He was a nice guy and along with Mr. H (Hastey), I think I got a handshake and how are you today from them each and every time I saw them. Between the third and fourth games of the day, all the club’s members in attendance lined up along the foul lines to have a small ceremony to present some of Billy’s family members in attendance with Billy’s Hall Of Fame plaque. When presented with the plaque, his family members spoke with choked up voices about how much Billy loved the club and how much it meant to him, even choosing Indian ball over other family events a times. It was a great moment and it gave me goosebumps to see his family choked up like that.

To share my own Billy moment I will go back a few years ago. The SSIBC hosted a tourney at Wolffs Softball Haven down in Barnhart, Missouri. I was playing on one of the two teams the club had entered. In our third game, we were already down eight runs in the fourth inning and it looked like we might get run-ruled. I came to bat with two runners on and two outs. I hit a three-run home run to the short porch in right field. The next inning we got a couple of runs closer and held the other team scoreless. I came to bat in the sixth inning again with two on and two outs. Again I drove a pitch over the short porch for another three run homer. What made this a little comical was, the right fielder immediately spiking his glove to the ground as soon as I swung the bat since the result was near identical. With a little back and forth I came up again in the extra frame with us trailing by two runs and no one out. The right fielder starts screaming at his pitcher, “Don’t do it! Don’t give him that outside pitch! He’s already hit two (expletive) bombs.” So the pitcher did nothing but throw inside pitches to which I slapped one through the third base-shortstop hole to plate a run. The rest of my guys took it from there and we went on to win by three or four runs (we were the away team). We won the next game and won the tourney. I remember Licker (his real name is Scott Litzinger) asking everyone if they were OK with giving the trophy to Billy. Of course, everyone thought that was a great idea and we presented him with the hard fought trophy. After the games, Billy came up to me and said, “You did the club proud today son.” I took that as a pretty big compliment. If memory serves me right, that was in 2014 and I think that was the year Billy lost his wife but I could be mistaken.

Anyway, I guess this piece was just my way of saying that the SSIBC has become like a family and a bunch of brothers to me. I don’t have any siblings and I haven’t really had any fatherly presence for most of my life so it’s just a nice place to go and feel like you belong. Hope you are up there or out there somewhere Billy. If so hope you are enjoying these last few weeks of Indian summer.

Peace.

Billy Rahm

 

Epilogue

Indian ball wrap up for games on 8-28-2016 with an early 8 a.m. start.

Right out of the gate, it was team #3 (my team) as the visitors versus team #1 (the would be champs). Team #3 needed to win this first game to put pressure on team #1 for the rest of the day. Without a win by team #3 in the first game, the rest of the day was meaningless in the standings but still would have batting race implications.

Team #3 (dark gray shirts) came out swinging…and mostly hitting at’em balls. First three innings for team #3 netted just a single hit and obviously no runs. Team #1 (blue shirts) immediately loaded the bases with three of their first four hitters smashing ground balls for hits but their rally stalled when the next two hitters flew out. The next two frames for them went quietly. Team #3 had an opportunity with two on and one out in the fourth inning but couldn’t muster up any more hits. Again team #1 came to bat and again they were denied in their 4-6 innings as well.

The second half of the season boiled down to our seventh-eighth-ninth innings. If we didn’t find a way to make an ugly run or two to give us a chance…the title would go to team #1 (blue). Our guys dug in and produced two hits with no outs in the eighth inning but then three straight outs dampened that flame of hope. In the ninth, the defense held us hitless and there was the season. For formality purposes we played the bottom half of the 7-8-9 frames and kept team 1 from getting the win but the tie clinched the second half title for them. Congrats to the blue team (team #1) on their first and second half wins. Fun bunch of guys and they had a great year.

To recap the rest of the day, team #1 played game number two with a lot less intensity and lost on a walk-off 4-3 on a ball that slipped through a glove. My team played the third game and we also won on a walk-off 1-0 on a dropped soft liner to the middle of the outfield. Honestly I do not know who won the last game between team 2 and team 4 (orange vs light gray) because I had to scoot to get to a fantasy football draft in Columbia, Illinois. But my team got three points (when we needed four). We played pretty solid defense the last month or so of the season and just could not overcome losing the first four games of each half. Just like in baseball, all the games count the same so it’s best to try to win them all.

Hats off to the blue team and all the guys from the SSIBC. It was the most fun I’ve had in my five seasons with the club and I look forward to next year and will lobby to see if I can be a team captain.

Have a great week everyone. Peace

Banana Split

OK so here we are in the year 2016. There are what seven Star Wars movies (officially)? The Chicago Cubs are baseball’s best team (by won-loss record). Heath Ledger played a gay cowboy and also arguably the best Joker (from the Batman movies) of all-time. A pothead swimmer is an Olympic hero for the United States. Most kids today treat their parents like dirt without repercussions due to societal fear of being deemed a child abuser. And I have never had a banana split ice cream dessert. How is all this possible? It boggles the mind!

I cannot speak to most of the things in this above paragraph as they make no sense to me, but the banana split item goes like this: I have never ordered one or have had someone purchase one for me or have someone in my presence order one and offer me a bite, thus I’ve never had one. Crazy huh?

So as the other universal marvels unfold or existing apps are brought to light that accomplish the unthinkable, let’s deeply ponder on it! OK I give up. The YouTube Weird Al Yankovic playlist is keeping me entertained so I don’t really care.

Peace it up!!

Hump Hump Hump Hump Day!!!

Good morning, and in case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!

Shout out to the Jim Carey movie The Truman Show. Quick hitter: Is Truman the main character’s first or last name? No cheating, no Googling. If you said his last name….(annoying buzzer noise)…you were incorrect. Truman Burbank was the main character in a reality TV atmosphere that closely resembled wholesome goody-goodyville.

In case you needed to know where my mental frame of mind is today…that is not it. Starting off with my podcast this morning and carrying on throughout the day, I have encountered quite a bit of rudeness. Whether in a vehicle or on foot, people en mass just do not seem to give two sh!ts about anyone else. It’s very discouraging. If someone is trying to turn off the main road into a driveway or side street, is it really necessary to ride their bumper all the way through the turn? Can’t you just brake a little or ease off the gas to allow the person turning a sense that their rear bumper will not be sheared off? Or if someone is trying to go through a turnstile like device, you can wait until they have passed through it instead of flying through and having to turn sideways to avoid running into that other human? Jerkish behavior. Judge, jury and sentencer on these two counts of public a-holyness.

I had a piece already prepared to take you through my 25 years of cats but I opted to set that post aside to rant and rave a bit. Pharrell Williams is doing his best right now to try to sing me down from the ledge and lucky for him, soon I will be in a place that is like a room without a roof. I’m not saying that a corner of my soul isn’t Happy, but in addition to the traffic shenanigans and personal space invasion there was a public restroom incident which involved massive amounts of another person’s DNA and bio-hazzard that made me want to run home and shower in excessively hot water for about an hour.

OK I feel a little better having been able to purge these grievances. Now if only I will be greeted with a heaping plate of nachos and a sidecar of sour cream!

May the hump day be kind to you and help you get over the hump or just undulate in a pleasant rhythm. Cheers!

Peace!

Recycled 1996/1997 Edition

Good morning.

While getting ready for work this morning I had the brilliant idea (debatable) to dig up some of my old doodles and post them. I used to have a decent time bringing various characters to ‘life’ so here is a small sampling of one of my creations titled: The Adventures of Mummy Man. Others I drew were titled: Lockjaw, Starlight and the one I drew the most next to TAOMM was called Space Tourists.

I apologize that the copy machine may make some things too light to make out or read but here is a glimpse almost twenty years into my creative past.

Perhaps…enjoy?

Peace.

Me morbid much? Nah.

Good morning Friday the 12th goers!

OK for those who are easily offended or quick to hit the panic button, I will give you a second or two so you can navigate to another page with kittens and rainbows and cotton candy with the likeness of Jesus woven into it.

And three…two…one…

So off and on for the last thirty years, I periodically fantasize about how I would like my funeral to be. Growing up in a household with a very loving mother and a not so loving father, who both worked a full schedule, I was often times left to fend for myself for entertainment as I had no real geographically close friends. I would escape into books or go to a place on our property and hit baseballs (with a wooden bat) for hours upon hours.

Back in a time when there were no: iPads, Netflix, WiFi, Smartphones, HD TV’s, touch screens, self-parking cars, satellite radio, video chats, instant messaging and countless other technology-based things that we take for granted today – there was regular local TV channels (on TV’s with rabbit ears), books and outdoors. So until I was sixteen, I was completely dependent upon my parents to get out of the house outside of going to school. Besides the occasional jaunt over to my friend Matt’s house in Grubville (from Dittmer) or the bi-weekly shopping trip, I was at home.

In the fall of 1987 the St Louis Cardinals were in the midst of a post season run. They defeated the San Francisco Giants to advance to the World Series. Back in those days there was only the two division winners in each league that played for a chance to reach the World Series, unlike today’s format that has three division winners and two wild card entrants on each side. After defeating the Giants, the Cardinals then faced the Minnesota Twins with the Twins having home field advantage. Home field advantage was decided by the year back then (not the All-star game winner like now). Odd numbered years, the American League had home field advantage and even numbered years, the National League had the advantage. This was significant in this year as the home team won all seven games…and the Minnesota Twins ruled baseball as the champions of 1987.

During this time my brother, who was a huge Cardinals fan, was hospitalized and ultimately passed away in early October. Like many teenagers (I was fifteen), I was experiencing many emotions I was not familiar with during the past year leading up to my brother falling ill and then dying. That event plunged me down a deep, dark rabbit hole that was drowning me in despair. I often times thought about suicide and I would sit alone in my room with silent tears of pain and guilt. There was not much that alleviated the heavy, constricting feeling in my heart. I confided my feelings to a classmate (whom we will call Jessica). She, unknowingly to me, shared them with the school guidance counselor. One day after school, I was picked up at the bus stop by my mom, which was out of the norm. Usually I would walk the half mile or so from the bus stop to home by myself along the dirt road of Brook Hollow (my subdivision). Once at home, mom said we want to talk to you. I sat across the dinner table from my mother and father. The room was intense and as soon as I sat down my father growled at me that they had gotten a call from the school. He proceeded to tell me how stupid my feelings were and asked if I wanted to kill my mom, because if I killed myself that would kill her. During this verbal beat down, not once did he say he would be upset or give two shits, just that it would destroy my mother. Excellent strategy, take an emotionally distraught fifteen year old kid and beat him with the guilt shovel on top of the guilt he is already experiencing over the loss of his brother and being a social outcast from high school. Father of the year right there…

To bring things back to the point of the piece, from then until now I have been through countless bouts of depression and almost daily thoughts of suicide. True story. Now comes the really, really messed up part. To cheer myself up I would daydream about ways I would die (drowning, car accident, struck by lightning, shot by a bully at school, and about a dozen other scenarios). After these various imagined demises, there would be a funeral and remorse and revelations of nice sentiments about me. Hey I can dream can’t I? Lol.

A (self) tortured mind is a hard thing to soothe sometimes. Growing up with only myself to bounce ideas off of kind of distorts your perceptions of reality and society. This might have something to do with the frequent dreams I have where I die and watch everyone’s reaction or complete indifference to my death. This could also explain why I sleep so little, as I am afraid to acknowledge how little I truly mean to the majority of people.

So back on topic, my dream funeral: I want it to be held somewhere with fresh air flowing through it, not some place with the cooped up sickly flower smell. I would prefer it to occur in the late fall or early spring, that way some of my softball friends can attend if they so choose. A handful of years ago my friend Aaron Dunn passed away far too young. At his wake, the funeral home was inundated with his friends and family. It was immensely sad but I found it uplifting that so many people came to pay their respects. I hope to have at least half of the amount of people who showed up for him to show up to mine. That would make (ghost) me very pleased. At his wake his family hung up a few dozen of his softball and baseball jerseys. This too was a great idea and I would like to have it stolen for mine as well. If Mother Nature reads my blog, if you could make it overcast with a slight drizzle that day that would be perfect as well. Since my wish is to be cremated, maybe someone can find a decent picture of me (good luck) and have it enlarged for people to sign. If there is music, I would like to make a song request: Leave Out All the Rest by Linkin Park. If it doesn’t alienate the environmentalist people, I would also like for thirty-three blue balloons with the #33 on them (my softball number) released to the winds. Once the event is over, I would like for someone to arrange for an Elizabethtown (movie) like send off for my ashes. Preferably a road trip to Cleveland but beggars cannot be choosers, eh? Most of all I just want to be randomly remembered by people when they see something out of the ordinary or something that is super white like Elmer’s glue or copy paper or milk.

So as you move along and encounter a dead bird or bug on the sidewalk with a trail of ants slowly dismembering their carcasses, maybe you will stop and see something amusing in the morbid too.

Have a great Friday and may your weekend be experienced in low humidity.

Peace.

Memes say so much (Like Sad Songs)

Memes spelled backwards is semem which is really close in spelling to something gross to get on your hand or window blinds and phonetically sounding like a building material.

If you have a social media account or do not reside in Amish country, then you are probably quite familiar with memes. So for a lazy time today below are ten completely random memes:

Happy Hump Daaaaaaaay!

Peace.

Taking a look around

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.”
~~ Ferris Bueller ~~

Obviously I have grabbed a pretty famous quote from the 1986 cult classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. These 103 minutes of comedy put Matthew Broderick on the pop culture map forever much same way the movie Breakfast Club put Judd Nelson on the map as a jerk hero. But back to the quote above.

So many of us have a repetitious schedules and spend about 70% or more of our month doing the same things with very little recharge time. With all these dominoes falling, we speed through the week and when there’s a break in the action things have changed. They invariably do. Did someone you know get a hair cut? Are there more dead bugs on your windshield? Did one of your friends get a new pet? Is the band Winger still touring in support of their 2014 album Better Days Comin? If/when the newest Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) becomes a movie, who will be cast to play Severus Snape since the actor who played the character (Alan Rickman) in the movies passed away this year?

Sometimes the changes are subtle and you just feel annoyed that you cannot put your finger on them immediately. Some changes are a physical knock you back out of your footwear type.

Around my apartment complex, I have noticed that the two remaining white ducks have started hanging out with a group of the recently newborn brown ducks since the passing of their comrade the third white duck. Within the confines of my work’s office building, the first floor toilet was replaced. Instead of having a two button flushing option (one button for minimal flush to save water or the second button to send Niagara Falls to expedite the watery deportation of your toilet waste) the new model only has a single button. Is this new oblong button a moderate flush or a vortex whirlpool like from the movie Castaway when Tom Hank’s plane crashes into the ocean? Someday soon I intend to find out.

What have you noticed recently?

Thank you for reading and may the Tuesday mojo work positive things in your life.

Peace.

Today’s Podcast – via Podbean App

Check out my latest podcast – it’s only about 20 minutes.

http://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-uuiy7-61857a

Peace.

Darksiders 3!!!! (PlayStation Perspective)

Happy clean up day! What? Why the perplexed look? If Wednesday is Hump Day, then the next day needs to be the clean up day correct? OK I will go back to the drawing board for something else catchy and clever. 🙂

So I stumbled across some exciting news (for me at least). I blogged awhile back about my favorite video game series. I mentioned Castlevania, God of War, Dead Space and Darksiders. I own multiple titles in each franchise for my PS3. GOW has since started producing new games for the PS4 which is not backwards compatible (enter unhappy emoji here). The other franchises pretty much have stopped at the line in the sand (PS3 to PS4). But that has recently changed on the Darksiders front.

The first two games were produced on the PS3 platform. Then the company producing them (THQ) experienced financial instability. A new player stepped in and bought the rights to the Darksiders franchise (implied fist pump to the sky!)

The new company driving the Darksiders’ Batmobile is Nordic Games. Out of the gate, they remastered Darksiders II for the PS4 platform and announced an October 2016 release date for the original Darksiders Warmastered Edition. These two developments are reason to be excited, even though I do not have a PS4. But with the proposed late December 2016 release of the third title in the series…?! Are you kidding me? I am a huge fan of the play-ability and story of the first two games. Slight preference to the first game for linear story and character voice but love both games.

The voice of the first anti-hero War in Darksiders (Wrath of War) was Liam O’Brian and his IMDB page is like a mile long with his credits for games along with animated series and movies. The voice of Death in the second Darksiders game is voiced by Michael Wincott whom I recognized from his roles in the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and also from the 1994 film: The Crow. In both of these films Wincott played a villain character. His gravelly voice works for the character of Death but, in my opinion, it is not as natural as War’s in the first game.

There has been little published about the forthcoming third game installment which has naturally led to internet speculation about features requested by gamers that were missing from the first two games. Also with the lore surrounding the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, there is some uncertainty about the lead in the third installment. With the bullets of War and Death spent, will the third game feature Fury or Strife or both or all four? What story will they follow? In the first game, War is caught in the middle of an epic struggle between Heaven and Hell and trying to undo the end of mankind which he is blamed for maliciously. The second game allegedly takes place concurrently with the first game but in different realms than (the ruined) Earth as Death tries to aid his brother War. So where does that leave the other two horsemen? Possible time travel? Again since not much has been publicly stated about the game, it lets a bit of cyber frenzy build and run amok.

New world backdrops, abilities, weapons, companion animals, monsters, quests and frustrations. I added the last because in addition to all the good stuff, every game has a part or two that stymies even the best gamer. Essentially a five month wait to find these things out first-hand but sometimes anticipation (read foreplay) can be a good thing.

Hope your pre-Friday is going well. Thank you for your literacy and may no one discard a previously used condom on your exposed neck.

Peace.

What do you think about at 3 a.m.?

Good morning. For most of you the above answer is probably null because you perhaps have a normal sleep routine and you are not awake at that time unless the universe leaned on your bladder.

So usually around 3 a.m. I blink awake and start thinking things like, I wonder if so-and-so is awake? Nah, probably not. Then from there I start thinking about my last conversation with that person. Was it via text? IM? In person? What was the season? Did it rain that day or was it really hot? Did I initiate that conversation? Who ended the conversation? Was there a fishing line in the water for a follow up conversation or get together later on? What was the genesis of our first meeting? Do I know their favorite color? How many family members have they told me about? Are they a better softball player than me (most people are)? Are they asleep because they have to get up super early because of work or family obligations? How many common acquaintances do we share? I wonder if they have any food allergies? If I share with them that I dislike coffee and tea just on the smell of each one, will they stop talking to me because they really like those beverages? Are they a cat person? A dog person? Or neither but a baby-baby person? Are they one of those people who gets offended when people call their pets their babies? If I make sarcastic comments, will they first off get the reference and second will they be offended?

Depending on the duration of the ‘friendship’ there may be a few dozen more questions or associations questioned. Also depending on the sex of the person, my mind may wander to wondering about their relationship status, length of relationship, previous relationships, type of car they drive, children, favorite comic book (if any), alcohol lover or abstainer, country music lover or hater and of course cultural heritage origins to contemplate.

From there it’s onto the next person with much of the same mental Q&A. After a handful of people thought about, I will invariably look over and see that time has jitterbugged ahead and it’s almost 5 a.m. or perhaps later. Then it becomes a matter of managing the next 15-20 minutes before my alarm, to ‘get up’ for work, goes off. So I will find my phone and scroll through the trending topics on Twitter and think if any of them appeal enough to me to add my extraneous two cents worth or just catch up on who followed me or retweeted me or sent me Direct Messages.

It may sound like I don’t manage my 2-3 hours of sleep per night that well but I think the edge of exhaustion makes those hours focused, like concentrated laundry soap. It does the work of the cheaper, thinner soaps with a smaller amount than those 8-10 hours I could somehow get when I was in my teens.

Occasionally I will mix things up and think about my bills or when I will need new tires or getting Sadie a furry little friend but this is a pretty common nocturnal pattern. My brain does not like going into standby mode for very long. Throw in bouts of depression and the dissection of a lifetime of failures and it’s amazing I sleep at all.

But each morning “the daylight chases the ghost”. A thank you to the country trio of sisters known as Shedaisy for those lyrics. Each morning, tired but not the least bit sleepy, I get up and spend some time with my ball of attitude Sadie. She is so cute and getting a little fat but that’s OK so am I. She doesn’t hold my morning appearance against me or my breath for that matter. She just wants my attention, to bite my fingers and to have a drink from the sink and she is content. That right there is enough to lift the invisible weights from my shoulders and I can face my day.

So what to think about tonight? LOL

Hope everyone is well rested and having a great day.

Peace.