Over the past six months, I have had a laptop on in my room. I’m sure that by itself isn’t a cause for alarm, so I shall continue to detail said laptop. It’s an old one. Haven’t opened it since 2014. Let me tell you a little story.
Once upon a time, I had a friend who was super into Greek mythology and shit like that. Said friend isn’t in the best of times. Said friend, let’s call him Mars just to piss him off, was attending online school when I encouraged him to make an outlet like I have here. “Build a site” I said. “It’s easy!” I said. So he did. Mars did a pretty good job setting up something under the handle “This Yellow Umbrella” which he did some publishing on back in December, I believe.
Well, going to online school, he was issued an iPad by his campus. This iPad was restricted so that it couldn’t be used for porn and crap like that. Bunch of sites that were commonly accessed were blacklisted, however. Reddit was one of them. Very soon after Mars started up his own wordpress site, wordpress as a whole was blacklisted by his school.
This upset me.
I’m not a hacktivist by any means, but I have TOR and proxies and all that kind of thing on my laptop if I ever really need to use them. I believe in net neutrality and I was happy to see SOPA get shut down when I was in high school. Even wrote a song about that with my like-minded best friend.
But, this was now a creative outlet that Mars sorely needed, keeping in mind that it was not the best of times. So I came up with a plan.
For some fucking reason, the iPad could have certain apps downloaded. Again, there was a lot blacklisted, but one of them wasn’t. TeamViewer.
TeamViewer is a program that essentially allows you to control a computer you have the information for from a mobile device. I highly suggest you get it if you’re reading this, it’s a great tool.
Thus, Operation Stim Core began planning.
I broke out an old laptop, had it hardwired in my bedroom, and instructed Mars to get TeamViewer. Bam. Free internet by proxy. He used his iPad from two states away to control my laptop, use the internet on my home’s router, and did whatever the fuck he wanted with it. It was brilliant.
The operation came to a happy conclusion when he graduated on Friday, where he not only had to turn in his iPad that day, but also received a hand-me-down laptop by his father. A laptop that had been permanently on in my bedroom for six months could be closed, silencing the fans and cooling systems I rigged up for it.
Operation Stim Core: success.
Now then, onto something else I’ve been thinking of this morning. You know Doom? That wonderful fucking piece of video game art? Where the silent protagonist communicates his motives perfectly and demons get arms ripped off and shit like that? Yeah, that one.
I fucking LOOOOOVE Doom. I love the newest release, specifically, because a lot of the plot is brilliantly laid out to compliment the gameplay in such a way that I don’t think has been so well done before.
Also, sound design. Mick Gordon, you are the man, man. I think I bought the soundtrack before the game just because I wanted to listen to Flesh & Metal on loop.
So Doom captures a feeling of incredible raw confidence by the use of violence. While violence isn’t the answer in most every situation civilized adults face in day to day life, the raw confidence and “push forward” mindset is something I take into my waking up.
I think we could all learn something from the man who rips demon’s jaws off and obtains health and armor because of it. High risk, high reward, I’m working with metaphors here, dammit!
It’s a feeling I’ve failed to capture many times in the past, but I’m happy to report that I’ve been up for three hours A) writing about my date last night, and B) watching trailers for Doom in the hopes that I’m moved to try a piece about confidence like that again. A) I have a lot of poems coming out about that date, it was fucking great. And B) I did it:
I wrote a diss track inspired by “Nobody Speak” by DJ Shadow. Which is exciting.
I’ve found as I get more and more into poetry I also somehow get more and more into rap. Some would argue it’s because rap is literally just poetry with some music in the background (if executed properly). DMX, Notorious BIG, Pink Guy, whatever it is. Some of it is a lot better at what it does than I ever will. Eminem? His internal rhyme game is mental.
Tl;dr: Operation Stim Core was a success, Doom is great, and I should come up with a mixtape to get into the rap game. It’s been a good three hours.
Good morning to my American friends, and hello to everyone else seeing this over lunch/dinner. Welcome! It’s only 8 AM in sunny Washington state at the moment. Oh! I should put up some photos I took yesterday. Yeah, I’ll do that.
Another poem and a photo maybe coming ‘atcha later on!
Consume Reality! 