"I know now that there is no one thing that is true - it is all true."

It has been a while since I fell asleep to the sound of waves breaking. I have done it many times but I don't remember it well. The last time in bright recall was in Vietnam. Before that was on the island of Malapascua in the Philippines. The Visayan Sea there rocked me to sleep many nights. I spent a few weeks there and learned to drink hard, and watch the stars. There were no tourists, really, because it was an 'undiscovered' island for tourists and also the Abu Sayyaff crisis was is full swing. I watched Philippine Navy boats park there and got drink drunk with them, night after night. We went to some small-town disco and I don't remember the rest. But I always arrived safe and sound around my hut. Several times I slept on the beach, unable to find my place or just too damn drunk.
Those mornings were hard as the sun shone fully and the waves slammed into me and the children tried to sell me plastic bottles filled with sea shells. But I remember the thunder from the waves the best.
These nights, now, I fall asleep to that sound of waves breaking. My new apartment is right next to the ocean and I spend at least an hour every day looking out the window and feeling grateful.
I can look up and into the mountains or to my left, and far out to sea. Waves.
I quit my job to ride a wave, not even a real wave, but a percieved momentum. I wanted time to pursue what I love.
I am still doing construction on the side; I love it and could never give it up entirely. Now I am just doing private renovations, etc.
Tomorrow morning I have to wipe the vodka-sleep from my eyes and finish with a basement suite. It looks nothing like a place one could live now, but it is taking shape; and that's the part I love the best.
I finished insulating the place today, and I was thinking of the future tenants and how they would never know, nor even think of the time I spent carefully making sure that they would be warm. When I was looking at the pipes that would soon be the shower and toilet I thought of a woman in her early twenties, her first rental, first place on her own. I thought of her in the shower that I was installing. If only she knew, but maybe she did already. Do women think of the nubile construction workers who installed their showers whilst they shower? They should. We think of them.

The Making of "Sack Trek: Arena"

Pardon a little fuzzy-headedness; I'm running on what amounts to two hours' sleep, and that sleep marked by dreams so vivid and involving it might as well have been wakefulness. Dreams of shifting platforms, flickering menus, pistons, gears, pulleys and explosives, and the constant cycle like a fever-vison: fuckup, undo; fuckup, undo; fuckup, undo. Welcome to the late-nite madness of LittleBigPlanet authorship.

Now, making stuff with LittleBigPlanet's creation tools is easy. Knocking together, say, a functional fire-breathing dragon – or, perhaps more amusingly and certainly more demographically likely, a giant dick on tank treads launching electrified sperms – is the work of a couple minutes. Making an actual entire level, a level more sophisticated than the thousands of worthless “steep hill with ramp” stages clogging up the LBP servers, is more arduous. When my first opus, a cutsey adventure featuring a ride on an owl and a mission to aid a group of deer-worshipping cultists, got vaporized by the close of the pre-release beta period, my heart kind of went out of it; I was content just to meander through the work of others. Yesterday, though, I was inspired to rejoin my worldwide brethren and sistren and get back into the wonder, joy and toil of creation.

Creation... otherwise known as “intellectual property infringement." Unless you move in certain subcultural online circles you may not have heard the howls, but they have been loud and echoing in the hidden chambers: LittleBigPlanet publisher/developers Sony/Media Molecule have been perceived as being hard and merciless in their moderation (i.e. deletion) of LBP levels featuring famous properties. Unfortunately, this means a Pac-Man-shaped portion of the LBP pie is living on borrowed time; seventy per cent of the “community content” – and almost all of the best stuff – has been themed on Batman, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, Grand Theft Auto, Sex and the City (?!) or some other familiar touchstone. This is natural and wholly predictable behavior for early-adopting nerds, and its censure pisses them right off. In old-school fuck-you solidarity, I abandoned my original IP, the deer-cult-owl thing, and set to work on a stage based on the original-series Star Trek episode “Arena". The one where Kirk fights a lizard man.

Sleeves rolled up and elbows-deep into the toolkit, and the depth of possibility LBP makes available becomes more apparent as every new idea becomes quick reality, even (or maybe especially) when doing the broad strokes. Hang a big black rectangle, spangle it with stars and a moon or two, and bam: Space... the final frontier. A few swipes with some grayish-white material, and there's a recognizable Enterprise. Hollow out bridge, Captain's quarters, turbolift shaft, transporter room... drop to the “planet surface," pull in the readymade Desert scenery, click three times and there's a passable ruined colony, still in flames from the Gorn (aka lizard man) attack. Bam, bam, bam. I am like unto a God, a Roddenberry in virtual styrofoam.

Ah, but... God's in creation, and the Devil's in the details. Two hours of tinkering to get the turbolifts a) working and b) not crushing the player against a bulkhead. Another two or three puzzling over how to create a beam-down effect before just saying Fuck It and letting gravity (and a transparent tube) handle the problem. Tinkering with the Gorn character 'til 3 a.m., first fussing over the motion of its limbs (there's a fine line between threatening and spastic) then fine-tuning the aim on the deadly boulders he's chucking. Agonizing over a spring-loaded death-contraption where Kirk has to zipline over some flaming spikes – it's not canon, but no LBP level can be called complete without flaming spikes. Now to model Kirk's improvised musket...

And that's just the mechanical stuff. What really traps you is the set decoration, the need to get everything exactly right. As long as I spent modeling the Gorn, I spent at least twice that furnishing my Enterprise. The red-alert lights, the space-plants and astro-tapestries in Kirk's Love Chamber. The bridge decor: Captain's chair, consoles, viewscreen and the alien face thereon, Spock's dialogue, background electronic ambiance. Machinery of the transporter room, Scotty's red uniform, sound effects of the beam-down...

The only way to stay sane is to stop fighting for fidelity and let yourself roll with LBP's lo-fi arts-n-crafts aesthetic – suggest, rather than simulate. A viewscreen? Here's a sticker that looks kind of like a TV; slap it up on the wall and move on. Players will get it. Here's the power and glory of theming your level on an established pop-cult property: readymade context. Build a big, urban level with lots of ziplines and pulleys and a big black hotrod... fine. Begin that exact same level with a tuxedoed gingerbread man saying “Good evening, Master Bruce!” and suddenly those clankity traverses become Bat-Ropes, that car becomes the Batmobile, a narrative is in play, and it's f'n sweeet.

I think Sony/MM will relent on their IP-infringement crackdown; I think they'll have to. Their core audience – which in the case of a crowdsourced-content game like LBP is also their core creative team – are bred-in-the bone fanboys, remixers, nostalgists and payers of homage, and those folks won't play (or make) ball if their work's a moderator's click away from becoming electron dust just because it has a picture of Mega Man in it. Meanwhile, look for “Sack Trek: Arena”, coming soon to a Planet near you... just as soon as I get those goddamned boulders right...

"Moral Aesthetics" and the bloddy quest for cute boots

Go ahead and ogle, rotate the camera for a better look, let your gaze move up from the toes in slow femme-fatale exposition: kicky pirate boots, striped breeches tucked into their turned-down tops; a heavy, dark leather duster with a face-obscuring high collar; piercing eyes; an elaborate bonnet, once the pride of a merchant-class matron, now rain-stained and battle-battered. Everything in shades of blood red over the full but firm curves of a woman of action who's not shy of calling for another plate of mutton. Sex and danger, she accessorizes with weaponry: a burnished pistol, a samurai sword.

Yeah, Fable II is the shit for dress-up-dolly.

Seriously. At this point, I'm only in it for the outfits. I've been playing this busting-at-the-seams action/RPG sequel intermittently for a few weeks now – mostly as a break from my Fallout obsession, which is problematic since Fallout's “jump” button maps to Fable's “cast magic” button and I'm constantly freaking out the townies by accidentally shooting fireballs around the pub – and nothing gives me more satisfaction than popping open a treasure chest to find the goblins gave their lives guarding a sweet hat. The other night, I played an extra three hours into the morning because I refused to rest until I'd scrounged up a decent pair of gloves. It's that kind of game.

There's more to Fable II, of course; lots more. I guess there's a crazy evil wizard-duke or something? I'm supposed to be questing for closure with that guy. But even that closure extends into the dress-up-dolly realm, into... moral aesthetics. You choices change your look. Saintly searchers for truth and justice get a glow about them, pale and bright an angelic; hell-bent reavers of bloody vengeance have their complexions veer into the dark and diabolical. My deeds so far haven't had enough ethical weight to make for much of a moral makeover; you're not really picking sides in the cosmic battle while shopping for dyes or rummaging through bookstores for dog-training manuals. All my girl's got so far is a little bit of a hollow, haunted look around the eyes, probably as a result of all the scared-shitless rubes I've left in my clumsy fireball-flinging wake. To get the real exotic smoky-eye look, she's going to have to slaughter a slave caravan, at least...

That is, if I continue playing very much longer. Fable II offers a lot to do – you can get married (even gay-married!), have kids (or not; condoms are a common treasure item), buy a house, buy a business, build a trade empire – but there's something that keeps it from becoming the oh-god-just-six-more-hours-then-I'll-save-and-quit-I-swear obsession it'd have to be to power me through all that stuff. That something is its mechanism for social interaction.

In Fable II, you communicate with the world's denizens through dozens of “gestures,” little animations that evoke certain responses in those near enough to see/hear them. Brandish a trophy from your exploits, and folks might clap and cheer, bumping up your level of fame. Do a little dance in the town square, people might think you're funny and nice and like you more. Blow a fart (or launch a fireball) and you're going to alienate the crowd. I see where they want to go with this – to model your social interactions more organically than might be possible with canned dialogue choices – but the result is just... well, silly.

Let me give you an example. Wandering a misty clifftop trail one moonlit evening, I encounter a ghost. This ghost, the forlorn shade of a jilted lover, charges me with a task: seduce the chump that broke her heart, then do for him as he did to her. I always do what ghosts tell me, so, OK, I head to town and find the guy. I get his attention with a little trophy-brandishing, then just start mashing the “Seduction” button. As the townsfolk look on and cheer, I blow kisses, whisper sweet nothings, wink and mince about, and eventually the guy's love-o-meter is filled and he agrees to marry me.

This takes five minutes, five whole minutes from “Yo!” to “Yes."

Granted, it may have had something to do with the fact the guy's a crummy townie and I'm a buxom samurai-sword asskickin' vixen with a crimson corset and a pouchful of sheepskin jimmy-hats and he'd be a lunatic not to jump at the chance to park his raggedy unemployed ass in my paid-for gypsy caravan, but still. The whole scene was so ludicrous, the gossamer threads suspending my disbelief all snapped in a hurry; I was out.

And yet... the clothes! They bring me back in; I still haven't found the gloves I was after, you know? I can put up with the ridiculous clowning for a while, fired by imaginings of what wonderful shirts, boots and doublets might lie farther into the mysterious reaches of the land of Albion...

I swear, to you.

This is my hammer. There are many like it, but this one is mine. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me my hammer is useless. Without my hammer, I am useless. I must swing my hammer true. I must swing straighter than the nail that is trying to defy me. I must hit it before it hits me. I will. My hammer and I know that what counts in carpentry is not the nails we use, the noise of our hit, or the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count. We will hit.

My hammer is human, even as I am human, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strengths, its parts, its weight, its head and its claw. I will keep my hammer clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other.

Before you I swear this creed. My hammer and I are the joiners of wood. We are the masters of our work. We are the builders of my life.

So be it, until construction is complete and there is no work.

To live is to hurt others, and through others, to hurt oneself. Cruel earth! How can we manage not to touch anything? To find what ultimate exile?

I cut off part of my finger today on the table-saw. It didn't hurt, it was so quick and clean. I thought it was just a nick but then I saw the blood.
After the doctor and the stitches I knew that it was true.
That metal had taken a part of me. I had sold my labour and it had cost me part of my body.
There was no blame to place but upon my own shoulders. I did it in a hurried moment, trying to be fast and correct.
It ended up as neither. It was bloody and crooked and even slow. Especially slow as we drove to the hospital and it throbbed and bled.
I passed out in the Ford F-350, bleeding and starting to shiver. I just felt cold and wanted to go home.
I suddenly missed my father and understood everything.
It wasn't as though I had lost my finger but it was enough.
I didn't cry. I kind of wanted to but I giggled instead, the way I do when I am injured. I laugh like a fool; bones broken or spirit crushed, laughing.
I lost a part of my body today and I guess I feel a little sad now about it. I miss it, it was mine and I didn't take care of it well enough.
I'll be more careful in the future, I guess.
For now, I am wounded and I feel badly.
I miss you, finger-tip. I'll think of you often and even hide my hand in my pocket, feeling shame for neglecting to care for you.
I bled today and I lost my finger-tip.
I thought of you and how I felt when I left.
I bled then, too, when I got drunk and drove and sped through those red lights in the Japanese country side, praying for a crash.
I am sorry for everything and I am sorry like I am for my finger.
It was once a part of me but through carelessness I lost it.
I miss it and it hurts.
I have 9 more, though, so fuck it.
Tomorrow is tomorrow and judge me not as I am just a man.
I will learn to respect that which is stronger than flesh, someday.

Hot document: the Dead Space memo

Dead Space
Publisher: Electronic Arts

Dear [CREWMEMBER NAME],

So, you've discovered your ship has been overrun by alien mutant space zombies. As a horror-game victim, it is your responsibility to ensure that your final hours are spent making the environment as creepy and spine-tingling as possible for those sent to investigate the carnage. To that end, a few simple rules should be followed.

First, as soon as it's clear that you're all going die and/or be space-zombified, begin covering every available surface with spooky and/or deranged graffiti. Lament your fate, give dire warnings of doom, rail against the absent, pervert God who would allow such horrors in His universe... just have fun with it! If, too late, you happen to discover the secret to destroying the space zombies, be sure to use your dying breath to scrawl this handy tip onto a wall, in your own blood if at all possible.

Second (the so-called “BioShock rule”), as the enormity of your fate, the fate of your shipmates, and the fate of all Humanity should this horror be allowed to spread begins to dawn on you, take the time to record a few audio-visual log entries. If the Internet has taught us anything, it's that no-one – not even a lone adventurer surrounded on all sides by bloodthirsty mockeries of nature -- is too busy they can't take time to catch up on other people's diaries. Sure, it might not seem to make sense to shout your final cry for help into an audio recorder, as if the tape is some kind of message in a bottle that might magically find its way to the Space Marines in time for military assistance to be dispatched, but a hysterical plea abruptly cut off by static goes a long way toward creating all-important atmosphere.

Speaking of atmosphere, remember: you're not just setting the scene for a horror-shooter, you're setting the scene for a survival-horror-shooter. As you scramble in panicked terror through the blood-drenched abattoir your ship has become, do what you can to help our hero survive! Leave your locker stocked with oxygen tanks and medical packs; strew ammunition in your path like bread crumbs as you flee the clutches of the Tentacle Thing. And, if you're called upon to go crazy and disable the ship, make sure you sabotage the systems in such a way that a single individual can bring things back on line with a few critical key-presses. Above all, leave all your cash money in plain view! Space-zombie infestation is no excuse to jam up the wheels of commerce, and a man with a zombie at his throat is the very definition of a “motivated buyer”.

Finally, the Corporation would like to thank you in advance for your hard work in turning the USG Ishimura into a first-rate madhouse of unspeakable atrocity. The decision to create a horrific mix of corporate greed, blind scientific zeal and lunatic religious fervor was not taken lightly. As you know, the Meddling With Forbidden Secrets industry is highly competitive; we're confident that the can-do spirit and attention to detail you brought to your work as a space miner will propel us to success in this grisly and lucrative new market.

Sincerely,

Management, Concordance Extraction Corporation

Big Buck Huntin'

Cold dawns in the foothills, morning mist laying over stubble and pasture, pooling thick in the low places. Bare-bone trees and leaves on the ground... I'm thinking of ear-flap caps, bright vests over camo, pickup trucks and thermoses of black coffee... the grey chill split by a crack of gunfire. Hunting season.

I've never hunted, myself, though I figure I'd have a den's worth of trophies by now if all the idle (and kind of ominous) offers to “take me out sometime” I've had over the years had been realized. Still, out here in the rural/semirural places, you can feel the excitement in the air as brief autumn winds down to early winter – here come the pleasant buddy-days afield; here comes some damned delicious eatin'. And just as the excitement of hockey season spills over into street hockey, table hockey, fantasy hockey and hockey video games, so does the excitement of hunting season spill over into gaming: in the taverns and saloons, loonies by the roll disappear ever faster into the coinslots of Big Buck Hunter cabinets.

The most present thing about Big Buck Hunter is the sound. Not the in-game audio of gunfire, running deer and flapping wings – that's usually well drowned by the jukebox, the band, or the general high-decibel rhubarb of barroom bullshitting – but the relentless plasticky clattering of the game's candy-colored shotgun controllers being pumped rapidly and relentlessly. Chakka-chakka-chakka-chakka-chakka-chakka! This virtual sportsman's paradise also offers the fantasy of hunting with unlimited Hollywood-style rapid—fire reloads.

So there's your answer to the question of why a real hunter would be into a hunting video game, especially when the season's open and the real thing is just a sick day away: because it's so fake it's awesome. It's the same reason why a musician would play Rock Band or a skateboarder would play Tony Hawk. Video games are their own thing, their priorities and prerogatives utterly unlike those of the activities whose names they appropriate. You're not “hunting” in Big Buck Hunter any more than you're “killing hookers and taking their money” in Grand Theft Auto; you're playing Big Buck Hunter.

If anything, the fantasy forests and fields here presented are even more outlandish in comparison to hunting's reality than even Guitar Hero's version of rock stardom is in comparison to the life and times of an actual touring musician. Just stand back and look at what's happening on that screen: nearly every square inch of screen space is taken up by tawny digital deerflesh, ungulates streaming through the field of vision in endless gamboling cascades, an environment so rich in targets the key challenge isn't so much to bag your bucks but to somehow avoid hitting one of the harem of does prancing around like Secret Service agents, desperate to take a bullet for their mates. Big Buck Hunter is the Big Rock Candy Mountain of hunting, all that's missing is a Bacon Tree and a creek running with hot coffee and Crown Royal.

But every Garden has its Serpent, right? Paradisaical as the glades and trails of Big Buck Hunter may be – and they are little paradises; you should see the Promised-Land look on a hunter's face as he pauses to gaze at the peaceful scene before the virtual twig snaps and the deer break and run – it wouldn't be a game if there weren't challenges. Now, I know that at the higher echelons of Big Buck Hunter play – like Golden Tee, the Grand Old Man of the boozecan arcade, Big Buck Hunter offers online tournaments and global leaderboards – there are some serious skill elements in the pursuit of perfection, but for most casual players the greatest challenge to overcome is the goddamn guns themselves. I have yet to play a single session where one or both of the players doesn't curse the shit-ass, broad-side-of-a-barn targeting of his chosen weapon. As a hopeless nerd, I compensate by retreating farther into fantasy, pretending I'm playing Stormtrooper Safari, TK-421 and his nearsighted buddies on a little leave from Death Star duty...

You can eventually figure out how badly fucked your aim is, of course, and adjust to compensate, but that takes time... and time costs loonies. Precious, precious loonies that might otherwise be beefing up the anemic tips you've been giving the barmaid. Better to forget precision, and revel in the manic, scattershot, let-God-sort-em-out fusillade Big Buck Hunter allows you: chakka-chakka-chakka-chakka-chakka-chakka-chakka-chakka...

"Ask the river about it, my friend! Listen to it, laugh about it!"

I am alive.

I am grateful to you all for this gift.

Thank you, my friends.

May you find it.

I love you.

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.

I offered this poster to a dear friend of mine, this poster makes me think of her. Strong and dreamy. I love you, C.H.

I bought a lotto ticket today. I don't think I will win but I like the fantasy. For $2 I can have 3 days of thinking about what I would do with $10,000,000.
That's a good deal.

The first fucking thing I would do is buy a Land Rover. Then I would drive to Mexico while wearing no pants and laughing like a monkey.

That's it. I don't know what else I would do or not do.
No idea.
At all.

"The mind has to be empty to see clearly."

I felt bad about myself for a while today. I felt as if I had made a mistake somewhere, and I couldn't see exactly where. I was trying to trace the route like a road map, except I couldn't even find the road I was on, nevermind the one I had deviated from.
I couldn't understand it and I felt badly. I felt like I had cheated myself of something but couldn't recall what it was.

I had the diamond saw this morning and was going through 1/8 inch corrugated steel. The sparks were incredible but I couldn't see and was constantly cutting wide. I rolled a cigarette and waited while the sun climbed over the mountains in the East.
Mt. Baker is imposing, even from that distance.
I was happy when the sun rose and I could see where I was cutting.
When the Fraser Valley had filled with mist and the deep chill began to lift I could see the chalk lines and paint markers for where the glue lam beams were.
I cut well and felt good. I forgot about feeling lost and the sun warmed my back there on the roof of the Hollyburn Country Club.

I worked with Lee after that and we built box-frames for concrete pads that would house air units, etc., on the roof.
Lee showed me how to build a chased-frame today, where the nailed end of each 2x4 overlapped the following 2x4; 'chasing' it.
Lee has been sober from meth and heroin and booze for two years and lives in a recovery house with 13 other men. Lee is a carpenter and the handle of his hammer is wrapped in white electrical tape. He laughs a lot.
Lee called frame-chasing "chasing the dragon". "Get to work, fuck. Chase the dragon". He would yell that with the flash of white from his hammer coming down on the 3 inch common nails he used and swore by.
"Chasing the dragon is fine, fuck, but if a big gust of wind comes along you are fucked" he said, "You wanna get the job done you use a fucking 100cc rig. You don't miss when you go for vein, fuck".
I liked that Lee told me about his fall, his bottoming-out as a man. There was no apology in his stories or his voice. He knew what had happened and he spoke freely as the judgements of others meant nothing to him. He already knew.
Lee reminded me that I felt strongest when I was picking myself up.

I liked working with Lee and he was a good teacher for me today. His words would switch between work and addiction, heroin and 2x4's, life and carpentry.
There was warmth in his voice when he told me about building frames or smoking meth; there were warnings and suggestions for both.

I forgot about feeling bad today when Lee showed me that I hadn't missed anything, I hadn't lost anything. I was where I wanted to be and I was there through pure will on my part.

“What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, 'This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!' Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, 'Never have I heard anything more divine'?”