An Evening On The Holodeck

There were no perfect jokes, the gaming webcomic artist observed. Every joke asked the reader to accept some premise that was fundamentally absurd. Dear gaming webcomic artist, don't think of it as suicide. Think of it as making the ultimate sacrifice for your art. There's no denying the impact an artist's death has on the popularity of their work. This could be your shot at true immortality.

There are many parallels between writing and schizophrenia. Both have one identifying patterns and seeking out truths. Both can reshape the map of one's life, turning the familiar into the alien. If I wrote an update about my personal problems it would read like a letter to an advice columnist in Seventeen. Am I destined to spend the rest of my life trying to cope with feelings most people come to terms with as teenagers? I used to think M C Escher was a rapper.

I wanted to engage in a torrid love affair with Aphrodite. I wanted to wine and dine her and celebrate her womanhood. To me the point of writing wasn't where it was taking me but what it had gotten me through. The 10-hour shifts at Mcdonalds. The days where my every action felt like a scripted sequence.

I wondered what dogs would write if they were literate. Poetry? Lamentations on how the road to desperation was paved in frisbees, chew toys, and flea collars? "Ellie doesn't hate you." My dad would say. "She just relates to you differently. You see, to her I'm her master whereas you're just another dog in the pack."

I shouldn't have released my first Quake 2 level. Oh wretched miscarriage of my feeble imagination, you will hang over me like an albatross until the day I die. Five years of mapping and my levels still looked like blocky Tim Willits rip-offs at best. The shepherd realizes it's time to move on to pastures new.

My colleague, Dr. Boruff, had discovered that the disappearances in the Bermuda triangle exhibited the patterns of a feeding cycle. He would spend pages describing the smell of the gastric fluids the vortex queen used to digest her still living victims. So troubling was his description that I tore out the page and threw it down the nearest memory hole.

I had a hernia. Now I could tell someone I had a painful bulge above my testicles and they'd say "Hernia?" and I'd say "HURTING ME? IT'S DAMN NEAR KILLING ME!" Then I'd shoot myself.

My impending drive thru shift felt like a death sentence. Sometimes I wished I was back in high school where the rednecks could only berate me for 10 minutes in between classes. The ghastly visage of Ronald Mcdonald glared at me from the happy meal box. The destroyer. He had the power to shut the sky.

The drive thru customers hated me. Their hatred knew no words, only a revving of engines and a squealing of tires. Drive thru order #38. I greeted you with the kind of smile valium is famous for. By the way, that's me inside of you clogging your arteries and lowering your life expectancy.

Having secured the means by which to kill myself, all I needed now was a reason. I had tried calling a so-called "depression" hotline only to find that it was in fact an anti-depression hotline. "Happy 4/20." The drive thru customer said. It took me a minute to get the relevance.

My dress had a cute little frill that corkscrewed up and down it like a tendril of ivy. "Some girls dress casually and some girls dress to get noticed." C said. "I think you definitely belong in the latter category."

Our attempts at starting a band. I missed those halcyon days. The three chord symphonies that exploded into the cool New Hampshire night. The incandescent glow of sonic alchemy. Music was made up of equal parts triumph and heartbreak.

Speaking of music, I really like the midi file on this page. Listen to it and remember happier times. You were young, college bound, ready to soar on the wings of destiny. You had the invulnerability of Super Sonic and an in-your-face attitude to match.

"I'd like to help you but I am too old and weak." The balkiry said. "I doubt I could take flight holding you in my talons. Not high enough to get over the prison camp fence anyway. Why are you smiling?"

"I just thought of something." I said. "What if our gender isn't something we're born with? What if it's determined by the actions we take, the perceptions we form, and the relationships we cultivate? Maybe all that has made me more of a woman than any sex change operation ever could."

– Jedidiah (@notoriousamoeba)