The Darkest Day of Them All

So it's a holiday, and even if I don't really do much to celebrate it, we all have to play the lazy card sometime. Here's something I wrote a little over six years ago now, in celebration of this particular time of year. 

It all began with a bump on the head. At least, that's what I tell myself, when I'm wondering just how this all came about. Makes it seem all so innocuous, just a little bump on the head. Not even a band-aid. Will they still make those, one day, do you think?

Anyway. I'm writing this now, and I'm about 97% sure that no one will ever see it. I feel bloody ridiculous, I do, but I've got to get this off my chest, to someone, even if it's the grains of graphite scratching across this old safety manual.

Because it's all. My. Fault.

That's right, it's me. I'm the one who threw the switch, I'm the one who ended it all, caused all this chaos and suffering. It's all my fault. Only, it isn't. It was an accident, and I will swear to the end of time that it was ALL AN ACCIDENT. I only bumped my head.

We had been experimenting with utilizing cheaper resources, making and distributing common goods with much lower overhead, and trying to keep schtum about it, lest it get out to public and cause a media frenzy. We really were working towards the greater good. The time of year was perfect for it, too, with everyone going into a financial crunch and looking for cheaper ways to live. I was so sure we'd planned for everything, but we hadn't planned for this.

Right on schedule, the facility went live at 06:oo hours Friday morning. This is apparently a big deal where I'm stationed, I'm not terribly familiar with the concurrent holiday, something about breaking bread with natives. Generally don't concern myself overmuch with other people's holidays.

Only, something was wrong. We opened the steel shutters seperating the operations area from the outer wall, leaving only soft-plated glass, and there they were. Hundreds of them, with dead looks in their eyes and hungry mouths. Listless and vicious, all at once. They saw the shutters go up, and they knew we were in here. As long as that glass held though, everything would be fine.

We were making final preparations, when I'd tripped over stray wire near the plate glass doors. I fell against the wall, and reached out to try and catch myself, when my head slammed into the door panels. I heard a soft sigh, as the glass parted, and it got very quiet for a moment. Then it all went bad. Horribly, horribly bad.

They were inside the facility, inside our safe haven, far before we'd planned, and farther even before we were ready for them. Immediately my friends and coworkers were swarmed, their cries of pain lost among the mindless drone of the crowds. It went on for hours, except for me, stuck in the door control booth. I considered sealing the doors, but if my friends tried to run, I didn't want to trap them. I waited it out. Finally, it was quiet. I warily left the booth, stepping over scattered papers and smashed boxes.

Let this be a lesson, I say. A $200 dollar laptop after Thanksgiving is NOT worth trampling a human being for. Try not to be a bastard this Black Friday, ok kids?

Things for which I am thankful

For ponies!  :D

That once again, no one in my family has killed anyone.

(But brace yourselves, because Christmas is coming, and that time of year is always iffy.)

That my mom managed to set off the fire alarm this year, making me feel less bad about my own kitchen misadventures. 

That my putting the turkey in the pan upside-down turned out to be a happy accident, as that allowed the (normally dry) breast to marinate in its own juices, resulting in a moister, juicier, tender-er turkey. Mom plans to cook it upside-down from now on.

That folks donated money just so that I could attend the Bidet Shoot. 

That I have awesome friends who send me awesome presents for no reason other than "We like you and want you to be happy."

That everyone accepted me wholeheartedly when I came out back in August. 

That lots of talented people donated really killer prizes to Squeak or Treat. 

That so many of you were generous enough that Squeaky made her donation goal to cover medical bills. 

That Squeaky made it safely through surgery and seems to be recovering well. 

That Oleg is going to be in Florida in December, and he wants to see me. 

That once again, I've made it through another year with my Second Amendment Rights intact.

WNW: On Moshe, on Herschel, on Schlomo...

Happy Hanukkah to all my Jewish friends! Also, may you have a tasty, tasty Thanksgivukkah tomorrow!



Hanukkah Harry Saves Christmas from David Benschlomo on Vimeo.

Glock and Pony

Since my shooting range is scheduled to (finally) open tomorrow, hopefully today will be the last Monday Gunday where I phone it in.

However, I still have no real material for today. But since many people have asked me what was in that tactically giftwrapped package -- because everyone seems to know that I have no patience whatsoever and that of course I opened it rather than wait for Christmas -- I figure I'll just show you now.

DERPY HOOVES YAAAAAAYY!!!

Now, to make this relevant to my post's title:   I have acquired some degree of fame/infamy for my pony-themed gun safety visual story "Glockenpony." I don't really know why this is so, but I'm happy to take the credit/blame for it (although, given it unexpected popularity, I now wish I had taken better quality pictures with a less crappy camera -- ah well). 

So yes, guns & ponies are basically 2/3rds of my blog content, and thus I decided that I should try to take a nicer picture of both. 

Glock and Pony. 

It's not as nice a picture as Brigid or Oleg can take, and my hopes for turning it into a blog header seem dismal at best, but still -- not bad for an amateur, right?  And cute, I hope. 

Yes, yes, I know: My gun sucks and she's holding it wrong. 

Sunday, Pony Sunday: Thoughts on "Princess Twilight Sparkle"

Needless to say, there will be spoilers here. If you haven't seen the Season 4 opener yet, go and watch it now.





Now that we have that over with, some idle (bridle?) thoughts:

• I like how the writers aren't just glossing over the whole Princess thing with "Sure, she's royalty, but nothing has changed!"  Things HAVE changed for Twilight, from her duties to how her closest friends treat her. I don't know if this will be reinforced in later episodes, but it should be. I want to see a struggle between "You're a princess!" and "Yes, but I wasn't always one! I'm not used to be being treated this way!"

• Side note:  I still think Celestia is grooming Twilight to be her ultimate successor. What we are seeing here, hopefully, is the evolution of a Princess not just for the ponies, but of them as well.  From what I've seen, I get the opinion that Celestia is tired of being revered (and Luna is definitely sick of being feared), and part of that is due to the fact that the Princesses are seen as goddesses. Twilight is more like "girl next door makes it big" -- she's approachable, and while deserving of respect certainly isn't getting the same amount of awe and reverence C and L do.  Of course, given a thousand years, that's likely to change...

• Any episode involving Discord is always a good one.
  
• Did you notice how Twi used the Sombra power to transmogrify the potion?
  
• Insights into the mysterious past of Equestria are always welcome!  This is pretty clearly a Deep Mythology episode. 

• Was it just me, or did anyone else notice that when Luna became Nightmare Moon at the 20:28 mark, she looks a bit surprised? Like maybe there's a part of her that doesn't realize what's going on? Perhaps her corruption into NMM was also the result of Discord's plunder seeds.
  
• Why does NMM have a colt's square jaw in some of these shots?
  
• It's kind of funny that her voice is still Luna's, and not that of NMM from the series opener. I guess we can attribute that to "maturity of power" or something -- or perhaps the Discord-induced NMM persona grew dominant.
  
• As The_Jack pointed out, NMM's beams of destruction look a lot like the cutting beams from Babylon 5's Shadow vessels. 

• And Celestia using the Elements of Harmony looks a bit like the Excalibur. 

• The Elements of Harmony are from the Harmony Tree. This jibes nicely with my hypothesis that the Elements are semi-sentient, much like the Pattern in the Amber Chronicles.
  
• Anyone else getting a Kabbalistic Tree of Life vibe from this? No? Just me? Okay.
  
• Oh look, the symbol for All Magic matches Twilight's cutie mark. She really IS the Harry Potter of Equestria. But why were Cel and Luna's marks there, too?
  
• Why does Applejack seem to think saving a tree is weird?  She practically doted on Bloomberg.
   
• One thing I've noticed about the Everfree Forest is that lots of the creatures are very elemental. Timber Wolves are, naturally, wolves made out of (animated?) wood. And while I'm pretty sure AJ calls it a crocodile, given its coloration and the sound effects it makes, it really should be a rockadile.
  
• Speaking of this, and of Discord, does this mean all the weirdness of the Everfree Forest is the result of Discord? Considering that everything else in Equestria is tightly regulated (even the weather is made by ponies), a place where things grow wild without help is pretty chaotic.
  
• Heh. Discord did a good deed and was so subtle about it that nopony noticed. I'm taking this to mean that he really IS reformed. Well, semi-reformed. As reformed as an incarnation of chaos can be, at any rate.
  
• And now we have a MacGuffin that will require an epic quest to unlock. I bet it will take the entire season to find all six keys. So much for the original command of  "every episode needs to be able to be seen in any order," eh?  Of course that kinda went out the window with Princess Twilight.
  
• My guess? Inside the box is a seed for a new Tree.
  
• Fluttershy's raw power continues to terrify me. They've admitted to Discord  that the Elements of Harmony are gone, and that they no longer possess the power to contain an Avatar of Raw Chaos -- and yet a little yellow pony can give him the stink-eye and guilt him into helping clean up because, if he doesn't, she'll be disappointed with him.
  
• I, for one, welcome our soft-spoken, yellow-coated overlords.
  
• Huh. Twilight has a new crown.
  
• We need a name for that maneuver of hers. Twilight Sparkboom?

And that's about it. Did I miss anything noteworthy?

Tactical Giftwrapping

I just received a package in the mail from The_Jack and inside was the most delightfully wrapped present:

550 cord used instead of ribbon!  Isn't that amazing? He even managed to make it curl.  It's pretty AND it's practical.

Gentlemen, if you have a tactical lady in your life, do this for her. She'll be impressed. Likewise, ladies, do this for your menfolk: they'll appreciate the practical nature of it and you'll have less garbage to throw away afterwards!

I'm More of a Team Player than You'd Think

The buzzing of the overhead lights is a persistent bug in my ear, and rather a bit of a distraction. My two mates share a nervous glance, and check their gear. DJ Scully adjusts that ridiculous balaclava and checks the tank on the flamethrower he salvaged from the last outbreak site, and Foster strings a crossbow bolt with shaking fingers. Two of our number dead in the last encounter, one before that. Who knows how many elsewhere in London falling every minute, torn to shreds and eaten by these cannibalistic monstrosities. I thumb a few shells into my shotgun and check the sights.

And then they're on us. Scully and I working as one: him setting the little fleshy ones ablaze, weakening their stretched flesh as the buckshot tears gaping holes in them two and three at a time. They keep coming, and we keep mowing them down, almost in a bloody trance, a dance of carnage. Then my heart drops, and the spell is broken, as I hear the roar of a chainsaw and a sick chuckle just underneath it. One of the big, nasty ones has gotten loose. A Scrake. Chainsaw for a hand, and looking for all the world like Hell's own surgeon general. Foster takes one look and cracks. He loses it and sprays the Scrake down with flames. It laughs from behind that stained surgical mask and charges him. The chainsaw bites deep and comes out the other side. Foster's screaming through his gas mask until he goes limp. The monster lowers his arm, shaking him off the chainsaw. We make eye contact, and I swear my heart stops.

The air rushes past my ear with a loud, low THWUP as the crossbow bolt connects, splitting the Scrake's head open. He drops to his knees, the chainsaw chewing its way through two of the little ones before choking to a stop. I nod at Foster, slip another few shells in, and bring the shotgun up again.

"F-MINUS SO FAR, FREAKS! TRY HARDER!"

     So sometime in the last week, the latest Call of Duty game came out, and I completely cannot be arsed to worry about it. 100,000 12 year olds are questioning the virtue of each others mums and each others sexualities as they quickscope and noscope and other such abuses of perfectly good marksman's rifles. The series has become so popular that in some circles it's not even considered gaming anymore, it's become its own thing. So I'm not going to spend any more time on that topic. I think there's enough I could probably write another entire essay reflecting on the good times I've had earlier on in the series.

     Instead, I'm going to offer a different point of view on online shooters and a recommendation. I really hate competitive shooters. Sometimes I'm really good at them, sometimes I'm really bad at them, but after an hour or two I'm just not having fun anymore. Even the ones that I know are really good, like Team Fortress 2, just get old and frustrating quickly for me. Cooperative modes, though, that's what I really enjoy. Be it a cooperative campaign like Left 4 Dead or Borderlands, or a horde mode like Mass Effect 3's or the Transformers: Cybertron series are just loads of fun for me.

     The one I'm going to recommend today has probably gotten more hours out of me than any multiplayer game to date. Killing Floor, from Tripwire Interactive, is a PC-exclusive game built on an aging version of the Unreal Engine, on a shoestring budget, with little to no publicity. What it does have is a lot of imagination, a dedicated development team, and a lot of love crafted into it. The guys making this game are the type to go to a gun range and know a weapon inside and out before crafting a digital representation of it.

     Killing Floor was released way back in 2009 as on official version of a much older mod for Unreal Tournament 2004. The development team has periodically released more content by way of maps, characters, and weapons, each time making sure not to release something that would split the community like the map packs that Call of Duty releases for almost as much as this game costs at full price. And the community has rewarded them. Over 3 years later (which is an eternity in multiplayer games), the community is still strong and surprisingly friendly. For the most part, new players are even welcome, as long as they're willing to learn how to overcome that early learning curve.

     It's a deceptively simple formula. You pick a character, join a server, select a specialization (perk), and kill monsters. Between each wave you hit up a trader who sells you weapons, armor, and ammo, and after the final wave you face a big, badass monster. The storyline is one sentence long. Horzine's medical experiments have gone horribly wrong and overrun London. Slow moving hordes of disgusting creatures come at you relentlessly until they're all dead or you've been overrun. It sounds dumb. It sounds simple. It sounds shallow and not terribly immersive but Steam tells me I've done this for 614 hours, and I picked this game up on sale for $5 I can't remember how long ago.

     Next time you think about jumping into one of those big, crowded, hostile online environments full of screaming teenagers, take a step back and try something different. You might find a long-term investment in a game like this. Gunnies especially will enjoy this, as you'll be hard-pressed to find a game that has better gunplay (without going into Tripwire's other major release, WWII sim Red Orchestra 2).

Killing Floor is available on Steam, and for shamefully cheap during their upcoming holiday sales.