Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
TIMESTAMPS
The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20111222025417/http://soundlessw.com:80/
Back in 2005, when I was a mere sophomore in highschool, my friend Taylor Gruye’ and I would always sit at the same table as a group of kids who would regularly play a game of Magic: The Gathering. Most of them were our friends, or friends via association if nothing else. But Taylor and I were both amused and annoyed by these immense card games. The playing card concept seemed banal and trite to our highly advanced, creative 15-year-old minds. And so we decided to come up with our own game that would mock and satirize playing cards. We, of course, called it Nothing®. I cut a pack of 50 index cards in half, and split it between the two of us, and these were our trading cards.
One day, our friends showed up at lunch time to find me trading my Hideous Monster card for Taylor’s Washing Machine of Death card. (A far superior card, of course.) We spread our cards out on the table and began playing, like a playing card version of Calvin-ball. For a few weeks we were the talk of the lunch-room.
For a short time, I though the idea might even be marketable. This was right around the time when commercials for kids toys started to seem extremely obnoxious and stupid to me. But they inspired me. I figured, if they could sell all the crap they sell to kids now, why couldn’t I sell a pack of blank white cards? I could even sell special Premium packs, with just 7-8 “special” cards. $9.99/each. You’d buy that for your kid, wouldn’t you?
It’s a real improv game, through and through. And it really was quite a bit of fun to play. When you held the cards in your hand, you had to think totally differently about how you would use your cards because, of course, there was nothing on them, they’re blank cards. Winning and losing was something more of a mutual agreement between the players than something tangible. And in the end, we were playing more as entertainers, so we had to be able to get into one another’s minds to figure out how the game would play out.
Unfortunately, the idea was short-lived and was forgotten until just now, when I was looking through some old papers and the game instructions showed up. So, here it is for all to see.
- – -
Each Player begins with 50 Nothing® Cards
Potions-Effect foundations, actions, or animals, can only be played once, unless summoned from discard pile using a side effect.
Animals- The main cards
Effects- Change the game play
Side effect- Can be played with an effect
Actions- A battle between all animals in play for points or other
Foundation- An effect that lasts one turn can only be played once unless summoned from the discard pile using a side effect or a potion.
Armor- Protects animals.
Character- The character card is a person in real life
To Begin: After determining a point total to play to (i.e. 10 or 3.14159265), each player draws five cards, the first to finish drawing begins their turn.
Game Play: Each player must have six cards at the beginning of the turn and less than five cards a the end of their turn, if that is not so, then a card(s) must be sacrificed from the player’s hand.
Potions: Potions can be played to make simple one-turn effects that cannot affect any future plays. They are played with the card they are affecting for the turn of the effect. They are placed face down in the bottom row until used.
Effects: When an effect card is played it modifies the way both players play Nothing®. The effect lasts until a potion or a foundation is played or if another effect is played. No two effects can be in play at the same time.
Side effects: Sometimes when effects are played a player will play a side effect that is in effect as long as the effect is. It can affect animals, armor, actions, or the effect itself.
Foundations: When a foundation is played it changes the game play for one turn.
Actions: When an action card is played both players’ animals must fight each other in a battle that the Action card describes. When an action card is played, the battle must occur two turns after the action card is played, no sooner, no later. Both players must battle regardless of their situation.
Character: When a character card is played, whoever the card is, determines the players following moves for as many moves as the player decides. Any move made by a character card cannot be stopped by any card. Character cards are the rarest and most powerful cards. Each deck is only allowed one.
All cards on either side of the field affect each other. Only cards protected by another card are safe.
All plays must be spoken aloud.
No game can last under 8 minutes
To win: The first person to the total number of points determined at the beginning of the game wins. OR if one player loses all of her/his life points, they lose.
This is how I procrastinate. I have a test in Spanish on Monday. Okay, granted, I still have two whole days to study. Nevertheless, I made another song using Audiotool that I’m proud enough of to share with the world.
It utilizes two elements. One is called an LFO, short for Low-Frequency Oscillator, which creates a sweeping effect, generally, but I applied it to the filter so it ended up splitting the sound almost like a piece of glass bends light, which makes that tinkling sound at the beginning and end of the song. Then I learned how to use the amplitude envelope to give the chords in the background more of a beat and rhythm. It still isn’t that great, in fact I like my other song better, but I feel as though it’s another check-point in my progress in learning this software.
Today, poetry means nothing
as the sun sets, the day
ends, metaphors pass on
the meaning of nothing, and the
meaninglessness of grasping, of
reaching, and trying to get one’s
fingers around it.
Today, the universe is
elusive, hard to put my
finger on, like trying to find
the significance of an old
story; it disappears and
reappears like a mirage even
though, all the while, my heart is
fluttering and aching, passion
dripping from it like saliva, as
I sit, calmly perplexed by this
inner turbulence.
- – -
A poem from the day. Laced with meaning, but that wasn’t even the intention. These poems are usually meant to be more for me than anyone else.
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Over the past few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my future, and what I want to do. At this point, one thing is certain, I want to be in education. That sounds simple enough. The trouble comes when I start saying I want to jump in the sandbox and get my hands dirty and start working towards making our education system a better one. Of course, who wouldn’t say something as empty as that.
Last week I saw a movie called Waiting for Superman, a very informative documentary on the issues revolving around our Education system and education reform. But the film gave me a weird feeling about my own future. One day, years from now, I could be a talking head, in a video just like that. And I wanted to ask a favor of you, my friends, that if that happens, kill me.
The trouble is, when I look at that list, I don’t see a huge group of people working with one another to make education better. What?! You say. I know. What I see instead is a pile of football players, all clambering to get their hands on the elusive “better education.” And I’m afraid, terrified, that I’m going to end up in that same pile, come 2014.
I have a lot of ideas, and a little bit of a plan. Right now, this very minute, I want to be a fly on the wall of the Ed Department of U, where they are currently doing studies and discussing education reform. I want to be contributing to discussions, offering my opinion, actually doing studies of my own, and writing grants, and lobbying, and organizing, and having meetings with heads of unions, and congressmen and women, and doing press conferences. I want to have that Masters in Education and have a book published about how terrible things are, how we need to do something about it. And goddammit, I will not give up, I will not give in to pressure from any side.
All those foundations I named up there are awesome, amazing, incredible organizations that are doing really good, important things for our country. I wont deny that, but I’m still seeing a complete lack of competence and efficacy here in the real world. I will be writing more about my own stand on this issue in the following year and so on. But until then, I’m imagining myself, 10 years from now, like so many before me, at a town-hall meeting, or a board meeting, or a union meeting. And I’m sitting there, silently, as people talk bull-shit and banter, and I can see it happening, right there. My heart breaks and falls in a pile of mush on the varnished wood floor, and suddenly, from there on out, the fire in my eyes is gone, my words sound empty, the machinations of a forgotten dream.
And if that happens, please, break into my house, put duct-tape over my mouth, drag me to the basement of some dark, far away, abandoned house, and tie me to a chair, and leave me to die.
I’ve always wanted to write a never-ending story, but I never have, so here is my own version of one. I feel like it says some very interesting things about the nature of writing and the nature of life itself. At a certain point in writing this, I realized that the only thing that could allow the story to be never-ending was by forcing the character to make that decision. Certain loops can be forced into a story by means of extraneous information, but if the character himself decides to go through the whole thing again, even if he made the decision unwittingly or forcefully, I feel like the story carries much more weight. Poor Adam, unfortunately for him, he cannot write his own story. He is a slave to my pen. Perhaps we are all just slaves to some mysterious hand’s pen. Or perhaps we really do control our fate. Regardless, it certainly is eery when things start to repeat themselves…
You can technically begin the story anywhere and just scroll back up to the top when you reach the bottom, I decided to start it at the same place I started writing the story. What do you think, is there a better place to start the story? Does it even matter?
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I am a cyborg attached
to a computer by a thick cord
that comes out of my wrist.
I can feel the metal in my arm,
the little divots
that allow it to bend freely
as I twist and move. Inside the cord,
wires spiral into me, around my spine
and into my stomach.
I feel like a rebellious zombie, in
the way I smile
whole-heartedly
at the kids in the stroller,
and the old lady
reaching for two pennies in her purse.
Soup, they all seem to be making,
but I’m just standing here
punching in numbers and
asking the same questions, wondering
whether the universe needs the receipt
or if I should recycle it.
- – -
I wrote this about a year ago, as I was getting settled into working at the Coop. Much of it still has meaning. Though, I assure any wandering eyes that I have no mal intent for the wonderful place I work, and the wonderful people that I work with. I think just being a cashier necessitates a degree of derision.
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So, in the interest of keeping track of my progress, and encouraging myself to continue working on this project. Here is an update on “the soundlessw book” as it’s being called right now. I’ve started to track a lot more info about my progress, word counts and such. And I want to have a decent balance between male and female protagonists as well. Clearly, I’ve gotten some work done, but I’ve also added more work to my plate. I don’t have any timeline right now, but I’m working on another poem about the size of The Navy Blue Forest (about 5 pages), so that counts as something. The Navy Blue Forest is sort of about my descension into being really closed off from the rest of the world, and hiding who I really am from the rest of the world. So I want to write a poem that describes my ascension out of that dark place. So that’ll be fun.
I’m still not sure if I’m going to be having each of these stories as separate, individual stories, or if it will be one whole idea. I’m not sure, though I’m beginning to feel more and more okay if it ends up as the latter. I think for a while I was half-avoiding that possible future, but in the end I don’t think it would ruin the book.
I wont be releasing The Navy Blue Forest to be read until I publish my book. However, you can see me perform it at the Acadia next month for Anthology of Interest, November 16th, 9:00 pm, I’ll be there.
Arthur hated words, he despised them. Not every word, mind you, but certain words made him sick, just the thought of them. Sometimes he even hated entire categories of words, like names of countries, or adverbs that don’t end in “ly.” One of the first words he started hating was the word “it.” He couldn’t stand it, not for a second. He would turn his paper in to the teacher and get marked for redundancy, be he didn’t care, the word was simply too foul, awful, it put a bad taste in his mouth.
But it didn’t end there. As he got older, Arthur began to discover that he had begun to loathe more and more words every month. His essays began to get more difficult to write.
It wasn’t like he was deliberately hating words. In fact the whole situation bothered him a great deal. Sort of like when his parents made pea-soup for dinner one night and it made him nauseous. He had never even considered the possibility of pea-soup before that night, but when he smelled it, tasted it, the texture, it was no good. He was really sorry, it almost brought him to tears but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t -want- to hate it, he just did.
But this hatred for words was beginning to get tedious for Arthur, not to mention frustrating. It was taking him all night to write a simple two page paper. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do when the use of numbers in sentences started making him sick and he had to write that science report. His paper was full of “seventy-eight thousand two-hundred ninety-three meters”, and so on. He even got marked down for it, but there was nothing he could do. He was helpless. His teachers were already extremely concerned, especially after the use of pronouns dropped entirely from his writing. But they figured if they marked him down for it, then it would stop. They didn’t realize the severity of Arthur’s situation, this was something beyond his control.
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