Let me just say I miss blogging

I miss blogging, but sometimes life is hard to keep any modicum of control over.
I do, however, have quite a lot in the works. So bear with me.
I plan to post one for Christmas soon.
Peace.

Do I really need one more Reason to Hate Thanksgiving

When I was a kid, there were about 6 years where Thanksgiving and Christmas were these mystical days of family coming over to a place called Shady Dale and eating and kids playing. I can remember how happy I was then.

It was very much like the Norman Rockwell version, in fact, I remember my parents getting the Saturday Evening Post.

It's not so much that I hate a holiday that has become little more the symbolic for family gatherings, family infighting, obesity, overeating and resultant self-loathing. It's not so much that I hate anytime of year that reminds me how alone I really am nor how no matter how many friends I gain, at some point all of them say this to me: "sure we could hang out but you know I got a family of my own...what about yours?"
 Skip ahead several lifetimes and the family gatherings are no more and all attempts to recreate them have failed... mostly for the lack of trying. Of course, there were a few divorces and family break ups by that point. 
Life wasn't as bad as all that. In some ways it was worse.
1) By my late teens, my father had taken the Africa Option and my mother had taken the America option. Divorce happened during that period of time. 
2) Thanksgiving were more like the cartoon, uncomfortable with a blind desperation that they would be happy even if someone had to hold everyone at gunpoint to get them to sit down at the same table.
3) Somewhere, Michael was reclassified as damaged goods and my parents (who I believe loved me a lot but had trouble expressing it at times) started talking about me in third person. 
 Years passed and I found myself in college with my parents being mostly civil and even willing at times to sit at the same table. For me, nothing had changed much since the war years.
1) Thankfully I was in therapy. I just wasn't very honest about it.
2) I didn't know how to respond to Michael as damaged goods
3) There were Thanksgivings where I was glad when my father couldn't make it or if I went to my father's, everyone forgot to ask about my mother more than once. Awkward silences abounded.
4) I kept dreaming that I would meet someone from a sane family and I would go to her parents' house for thanksgiving and pretend that I would be happy without my own.

One day I woke up and realized that I was, in fact, an adult. I had hit 40 and now everyone in my family would see me as a man and not as the son with depression, sleep apnea, overweight loser with a crappy job and no future. Never again would I have to sit through discussions like "what should we (my parents together or singular) do where Michael is concerned?"
I should have known better. 
I am 44. I have a decent job that pays the bills and a little more now. I have a "house," and while it is not really a house, I own it. I have a car and while it won't get me far- it does get me far enough. I have my own life- erm, well I probably would have my own life IF I would stop letting my parents (who probably still have the best of intentions) from ruining every moment of happiness I hope to have. 
I know that they don't mean to, but seriously-
 when I tell you that it would have been nice for you to give me a heads up on Thanksgiving, that means a month's notice. 
Reasons I hate Thanksgiving for 2013.
1) When last minute airline tickets are $600 to $1000. Don't shoot me an email of Friday, November 22nd about what you are doing and how am I planning to get there.
2) When I come up with plan be don't start talking about a rental car option.
3) For the love of all that is Holy, do not involve my mother with money.
4) I am not a broken toy or autistic child. 
5) I am an adult who can drive a car and get insurance from a Rental Agent and ask logical questions like daily mileage.
6) Yes I do have Sleep Apnea. Amazingly, I learned how to deal with it the last 7 years since I was diagnosed.
and
7) Next time it comes up tell me I am adopted because feeling like this sucks.

Thanksgiving, the day of eating as much turkey as your carnivorous hearts can bear!

On the other hand, Vegetarians and Vegans must be more reasonable people.... save for the coffee cup thrower. She did have really good aim though. 

 On a lighter note (to get to the meat of the situation)- unless you are the turkey of course.
Michael top 10 Peeves about thanksgiving.

1. When you idiot cousin says "How was your Turkey Day?" as if it had something to do with fun.
2. Canned Cranberry sauce. I was almost permanently scarred by this sight, and would have never eaten it if it hadn't ended up on a deli sandwich. It's just so much Ew.
3. It may have started at Plymouth Rock but it wasn't about communion with the Indians. By the time Thanksgiving was made a holiday, we were already massacring and working on genocide of much of the Native American population. I hate that for the Native Americans, but Thanksgiving was never about them except in some screwed up history books and videos. If I were an Indian I would go get my gun everytime somebody came around to apologize for it.
4. Facebook. The lists of gratitude. I know that the women mean well, and that it is rewarding, but (there is always a but) some of the messages of gratitude are so wrong. My favorite one this year is about being grateful for family...I know that makes me look like an asshole, but I am part of that person's family and yet I didn't make the list. I deserved to be on that list. I hate the fact that it bothered me enough to include it in my list (I wonder if that's #5 actually). Also, some of the things would have been better to not- no never know about you being grateful for. Discretion sometimes is a lot better than honesty.
5. Having to express gratitude before you eat -should you actually get invited to a Thanksgiving meal- I probably won't. I usually sit there trying to come up with something that will make me look as genuine as Cousin Andy- that is if Andy could limit himself to one thing and not cover the entire spectrum! I wonder how I am grateful for Deadpool would sound? Probably go better than last years... note to self never bring up Grandma's china again.
6. Traveling: In the beginning Megabus was novel and uncrowded. Now it's dodge the pillow and avoid the conversation with the Hippie twins and try to limit eye contact with the girl who has decided I am her next stalker. Forget the planes, costs a fortune and the TSA always wants to stick their wand up my CPAP (look it up if you must know)- I have to breath out of that thing and I don't know or want to know where the wand has been. Trains cannot be reached without something else where I live but cost almost as much as the f**king planes. Cars are better if you like 466 mile trips in Interstate traffic and road construction and lemme tell you that the most seen scenic feature of road travel in the US of A is the construction barrel. You see one-you're going to see a million- maybe on the same road.
7. What do you mean there was a parade? It is usually cold enough on Parade day to freeze your tatas- assuming you have tatas. Try to watch it on TV and get more off the subject commentary than sportscasters on Monday Night Football. Never mind the endless runs of commercials.
8. Leftovers. If it's your house, you spend most of the meal planning on strategies for getting your guests to take home as much as they can carry. What is a good way to suggest that you help them load their car? If you are the guest, and you spot your host plotting or checking out the size of your handbag in time, you will reconsider how much you just complimented the turkey and consider escape routes from the house to your car. Sometimes "no thank you" falls on deaf ears.
9. Football. As if the parade on TV wasn't bad enough. 
10. The Turkey. Oh how many ways the turkey can co wrong, so very, very wrong. The next time your sister-in-law insists that boiling it first is the best way to get in tender enough to be juicy- lock her in the closet and feed her slices of ham shoved under the door. Dry turkey requires lots of gravy unless you stepmother bricks the gravy again. Greasy Turkey, you might ask how this is possible? Well until you have met and spoken with my nephew Jerry for five minutes- take my word for it. Greasy Turkey avoid it or die trying. And lastly still frozen turkey, yes as hard as it is to believe dad, you cannot microwave everything

So there you have it.
THANKSGIVING

Some people are lucky to have good humored families that are filled with loving thoughtful people who don't drop lines like "if you feel alone and need someone to come to your funeral- join a motorcycle club. I hear they are very loyal."
Or you luck out and marry into a family where the only football they care about it the touch football before the meal where everyone is nice and complimentary and don't shove you into Aunt Edna's roses while doing the happy dance over making a touchdown in Uncle Ross's tomato patch.
Then Thanksgiving can be yours again and you can eat to your hearts content without your mother crossing silverware and forbidding that second piece of pecan pie because it is not on the diet that you are on but that she has never even read about.
Such holidays should be cherished without your sister insisting that a 3 mile "stroll' is the best way to get a jump on losing all those calories and carbs you have just stuffed yourself with.

Here's to the three of you who have that.
Here's to the rest of us who live in dread that someone imported the family photo album to their iphone and will insist that your fiancee see each and every gluttonous picture that they have saved of you for this very occasion.

And that's Life according to Mike.

yes this is a picture of the 1621 "Thanksgiving"

notice how the Indians are mostly lower than the white peeps.

it's probably nothing but my imagination anyway.

Haters gonna Hate and other complaints

So here I am at the beginning of another blog. It's been a rough ride getting to the point where I must write again. Life is pretty good at getting in the way of writing or rather feeling like writing or creating content.

So this blog is about Haters and more specifically why people feel the need to be so selective in hating. No, this is not about hate crimes and racism or sexism and yet, yes, it is about all that.

everything is intermeshed after all. Often, one cannot have one level of hatred appears without the other rearing it's face to the world.

Unlikely location.

So, my semi-active XBox Live Friends (actually are friends before XBox) got me to get the beta-port of this game to XBox. So we could all "play" this game together and as usual I am the last person on and thus am regulated to the bottom rank of newb while all the veterans have been playing it for months.

So, these friends tell me to go to the forums to find all this help with the game.

So, Idiot me does so.

and...

"Haters gonna hate."

I removed the post, otherwise I would share it here. So I will paraphrase.

I asked who else was playing the port of WOT to xbox and did they see similarities between the game and other mmo's like World of Warcraft. I also talked about the overly complex currency/experience exchange.

I was told in no uncertain terms that the Xbox port was an illusion and I needed to go back to XBox and play with my dollies and get out of "their" forum. That I was less than a Neuron (EVE Online reference- apparently) and that how dare I presume to know JACKSHIT about anything and would I just go away.

There were several other insults hurled my way. Something about the purity of PC gaming over consoles and some more stupid crap like that.

I didn't go cry in the corner. I responded with a couple of insults of my own and then deleted the whole post. Didn't stop them from messaging me to inform what a newb and illiterate prick I was.

Yes, I sunk to their level.

You see I am hardly a newb at computer gaming.

This was my first computer, not only did I play games on the Apple IIe but I even learned how to program my own and did.

In the span of a few years I moved up the food chain to this

The IBM 8086 in color. 6bit or 9bit.

I played my first game of AD&D on this Gem, Commodore 64, until it's owner my roommate took it away because he needed to write papers on it.

My next Roommate had one of these, he was more grateful since I could actually fix it when it crashed. 

It was 1991 when I got my hands on the Mac Classic and my first LAN Game. "Bolo"

Without knowing it, the world changed and LANparties became a thing.

LANparties...the first true multiplayer gaming.

Courtesy of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

This is before the 2400 baud modem set the PC world free (well to BBS's anyway)

No internet yet- no World Wide Web, that is.

Finally I achieved greatness with the Edge Technology 486DX PC. (a IBM Clone)

No picture, sorry.

I killed in within 6 months and warranteed out a replacement only to kill it again 4 months later.

Why? Because I found out I could upgrade it myself.

It would only take one more try after that before I got good enough to build my own.

Been building custom builds ever since.

So, yes it is ironic for someone to call me a newb with a PC.

Also I would like to point back up to "Bolo" and restate that I have been playing computer games pretty much since their invention.

So again. The 3 jerks on the World of Tanks Forum are just ill informed twats.

  Thus I could rest my case, except that it isn't about Me. What it is about is perception.

Why do people feel the need

While this is funny and poignant, it is also an illustration of perception.

Many of you will not understand the references made here so I will explain in my on limited perception.

2 attractive females are comparing notes on Half-Life's Gordon Freeman (blonde woman) and (brunette) John the Master Chief from Halo. {ironically a PC vs. Xbox game [yes both ended up on the other platform]}

Guy walks by and they switch to what we would normally think all women talk about shoes and makeup, if you don't get the next frame, this is not the blog you were looking for.

last frame, back to mutual game lore (and before you ask- I have no clue- as far as I can tell this came from a very awesome webcomic in another language).

So, what is my point/

As appealing as the webcomic is. The women or "Gamer Girls" are can represent several interpretations, the one I am going with is thus. They are the three guys on WOT forum. 

My question is why does it have to be like this.

It starts in the school yard with the "In Crowd" and the outcasts.

Thanks to the Internet, now even the outcasts can do the same thing to everybody else.

Why is it that no one can see this?

My feeling exactly. Also I love this Gif.

So, Cliques click and then go be jerks to all non-insiders.

Why?

Probably because it gives the Cliques some level of validation, like "look at US, we are the elite (insert term here) and you are newbs and losers."

It's the snake swallowing it's on tail.

The Rule of the Jungle is thus.

In the end, most people will end up just like the people they most hate.

I refuse to give into hate. Also, in my humble opinion WOT sucks mostly since it isn't all that unique or even much of a departure from the same generic games that rely on

Money (virtual or real), rankings based on complex number systems that are neither transparent nor obvious {give you a hint, if you can find the math (code) then run the numbers and I bet you they don't quite add up evenly.} 

I would like the game better if it made an attempt to not be like Evony and all the other games that rely on currency to improve your standing/gear, because in the end it will just be bought by those to lazy and rich enough to do so.

Maybe it won't change their chances but it doesn't make the game fun.

Maybe Fun is not the word anymore since PVP tends to just bring out the worst in people.

Yes, I have done this since the worst invention in Multiplayer is headsets.

Yep, I said headsets. 

They allow the jerks and assholes to let people know just how mean and petty and savage they can be.

Halo and COD Multiplayer.

This is about as ugly as it gets.

Worst news. Usually the biggest jerk in the match is also the youngest.

It has driven many people from PVP matches.

Age is not a requirement for being a jerk, but it just makes it more depressing.

Remember, one day it won't be the PC or LCD TV that gets the keyboard or controller.

I am probably old fashioned, but I really don't care for PVP. 

I would rather play with others than against them.

(Beyond Good and Evil)

I would rather have a great story than an awesome weapon.

Sometimes a game comes along that transcends it's limits.

Things happen that changes it from just another PVP and amazing (and weird) stuff happens as a result.

(Team Fortress 2) for Example.

Gary's Mod. Steam's Source Filmmaker.

So many variations of the above, sometimes we had to remind ourselves to shoot other people than try some crazy stunt instead.

Which brings me to Rocket Jumping and Grenade Jumping

Halo in many ways is the father of Rocket and Grenade Jumping

An awesome game that inspire people to try to change it and many did.

There are a ton of mods for the PC version

There is Red Vs. Blue

Which started with a bunch of guys messing with Halo and grew into a

phenomenon that has inspired a whole new pastime and filmmaking

and a company or two.

For those of you who modded the original XBox, there was even mods of Halo for that.

There is a reason that most of the popular and successful games out there

are solo experiences. after all, going it alone against an enemy who doesn't resort to middle school insults and cursing makes for a much better game experience.

personally I want to see games where people can play together without having to kill each other 

repeatedly.

Borderlands and Borderlands 2 

 

 A few final thoughts for would be haters.

Remember that you don't know to any certainty that you are about to trash a

12 year old boy or girl for asking a "stupid" question or bringing up a valid point about a game you love or think you are some kind of god in.

That newb might just be a hacker or someone who knows a hacker or

knows how to get in touch with hackers

or just a bot/front for any number of law enforcement agencies that are trolling looking

for people just like you that are filled with hatred and violence.

So, maybe you will get lucky and they won't wipe your "god" status of the web

get your xbox/ps3/steam membership revoked 

get you banned for life

smear your name all over facebook, twitter and the news.

Maybe you will get away with it

but I doubt it.

Eventually you will cross paths with someone who will take it personally 

enough to end your hate.

Then 

The "losers" and the "newbs" will applaud your shaming and eventual

downfall.

That is, if we even notice your passing.

and that, my fellow gamers,

(and the rest of you who stumbled here and bothered to read all this)

is Life according to Mike.

The last time I spent my lunch hour in Topeka, New York.

Okay, the first thing I am going to admit is that I haven't been to Topeka, New York. They tell me you just go to New York City, Hit Wall Street, take a right at Starbucks and walk until you see the sign or you find the bottom of the Bay, either way you will see about the same thing.

The point (if there is a point) is that as long as you are there or anywhere, it could be a great place to have lunch. Just grab your hat and duster and step through that doorway into the next week of your life.

Speaking of which I recommend the Coney but not the Chili (terrible gas).

Life may be getting you down and life might be getting harder. The road may be getting steeper and the days drier. But sometimes as you are slogging along through this meaningless existence, it's important to stop. 

No, it is absolutely critical to stop

and enjoy the view.

This is the universe that occurred or got created from something so immeasurably small or large that it cannot be quantified or classified or explained away in the 

obvious assumption that we will ever live long enough

to be able to do so.

It doesn't mean we should not try.

It just means that you should enjoy this lunch break.

So, I am sitting here, on my lunch break, observing the state of the world. It is about as bad as it looks. Humanity.

Destruction- willful, chaotic, unprecedented on a scale that boggles the mind and hurts the soul.

I am the bile that comes after eating bad chili as I watch our collective downward spiral into the age of hope and despair.

See Jack. Didn't I tell you to avoid the Chili?

Why did I have the chili? Because destruction and desolation taste good at first like those

who revel in revenge and hatred.

It does not leave you wanting dessert.

 From

 

where I sit I can see, the modern versions of Good and Evil playing chess in the park. Checks are infrequent and Checkmates even more so, like playing poker will flying a bomber over the Atlantic looking for an Hawaiian 

  to ante up you bets by calling your hand with a pair of aces and three suicide Jacks. Yes it is a crazy metaphor for what level on the unpredictability that makes living it worthwhile.

Speaking of Jack, I am thinking of taking up running

I hear he's an expert at this kind of thing.

 I don't know much, but I suspect that Mario could give

Jack some pointers

Air Glides

I wish I had the money it would take to help out Mario.

Still if I can get a pair (and they work or kill me in the process)

I am going to take up running.

You should check them out. The Air Glides. 

In the meanwhile, I am going to undertake smarter tactics in mob control.

You know what that means?

It means it is time for me to take the Holy Hand Grenade from Turin, Yorkshire and toss it into the middle of my sedentary lifestyle.

Ed and I enjoy explosions.

The clinical psycho told me that I would need to completely change my lifestyle.

So I am. 

I will walk 500 -499 miles each day.

I will stick to my diet.

Yes, Cookie Monster, that means it's over.

Get your crumbs and start walking @ 7am each day.

It's the way of things man...I mean monster.

anyway, I am going to seize the bull by it's proverbial horns. 

Then I will be enjoying life and living like a...

Go on say it. The visuals are killing your data plan.

Well. Get over it.

I always envied R2D2. partly because he has an easy to spell name, but also for that holographic projector and memory banks. The Blaster Scoring was really sexy too.

Well. It had to happen. This lunch break is over.

I will leave you guys with the above thought and one last one I heard today.

Opinions ARE like assholes. Everyone has them and many of them stink.

BUT, Opinions differ in one aspect. They needed to be constantly scrutinized, picked apart and examined.

I will just credit this comedian who is both funny and virtually unknown except in Canada and Australia

which is pretty much the same thing (being unknown)

Tim Minchin.

Okay, now you can applaud 

no really go ahead.

If you don't I will take it that you are reading this in the presence of your wife/husband and don't wish to explain

you rapid joy at being entertained with such

quality entertainment that seeks to

not only annoy but inform the dickens and tolkien out of you.

Now go take a walk.

or not.

You might even find me slogging along @ 7 in some park.

and that is Life According to Mike

on Mondays.

It was almost like a song....actually it was a day just like a song.

So here it is Thursday. A day largely ignored by the Western World.
I need to write a blog so...
I am writing it with song.

let's start with the only song I could play well enough to annoy my family (they were not huge country music fans- okay that's not fair, they weren't country music fans period).

The one song that I could actually play on the piano without messing it up. So I played it until my brother, the ever tolerant, Stephen van Vuuren, came up stairs and begged me to learn something/anything else.
so I did.
It's funny how life forms around things that come along. I have always been very absorbent and thus much of what I am, the way I am is from a constant influx of books, movies and music.
I many ways, my early psyche was from this song. I loved long before most children ever show an interest in it, and thus the loss that comes with love came early to me. I really didn't know how to cope with it until the next song came along anyway.

When my brother realized that I could play this he probably swore off country music FOREVER. Well, it could have been that or the fact I played the Staler Brothers Greatest Hits over and over again until the nail pushed out of the hardwood floors and My brother threatened to smash the records. Then I discovered Peter, Paul and Mary.

And Here is further proof that I am solely responsible for my brother's depraved childhood...

he was so good as to remind me of the ones he despised more than the others.

Fortunately for SV2, we live in separate states and I grew a sense of humor whereas He went deaf. (it's a lie, but it is funny).

ANYWAY

moving on.

Now this would be the song I would dedicate to my exes...that is if I actually had any worth mentioning. Okay that is also mostly a lie, some of it is true, at least in the fact that I loved way more women than they loved me back. Mostly i say this to the women I flirt with one Facebook. They only know me well enough to know how truly awesome I think I am.

IN OTHER NEWS

there has been an outbreak of Baha in my life a time or two, fortunately I mostly live alone. There's a cat, and while he finds me mildly amusing. he does leave the house when I play:

These days songs and music take me to many places, as often as my moods take me. When playing World of Warcraft, one gets tired of the music loop after about an hour (with every patch/expansion it gets shorter)

So I took to listening to my music collection (at 1 time it was 250 GB of music I had ripped/torrented/found/bought/borrowed. It was enough to last over a year nonstop) then the drive died before I had backed it up and it was gone, all gone. The irony is that I had stopped listening to it by that point.  Pandora  had come along and changed the way I listened to music.

Then along came Spotify and changed it again, so now I am rebuilding that 250GB music collection playlist by playlist.

Now I will take a brief excursion down memory lane with the odd music I listened while playing various Video Games.

Castle Wolfenstein was first.

This wasn't hard since the sound track wore really then after 3 levels (I was playing the first 100 when I knew something had to give) Thus enter the CD player.

Irony: It was American GI vs. Nazi zombies and SS chain gunners with Restless Heart playing in the background. Now I can't play the original Wolfenstein without hearing the songs in the back of my mind.  I would just put the CDs on repeat. Sawyer Brown was in there somewhere with some Kate Bush and Queen.

By the time DOOM had rolled around, soundtracks had improved.

 The Soundtrack was Rockin' for 2 games, but by Doom 3 it was getting old. At that point Internet Radio had first surfaced. Slacker Radio came along, there were other but by then I was with them. So i was rocker my shotgun frenzies to the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers:

I also listened to Faith no More (Epic) and the like

Then After Doom had shot out it's last bullet, It was time for Quake II, I had already been playing Quake (1) but it did not grab me like Quake II did. 

 I came late to Quake II. One thing was that the original Quake did not appeal to me at all. It was this weird mish mash of guns/scifi/fantasy/horror and annoyance.  When I like a Video game i will play it death. I played QII to death. Also the music go old too.

Quake II music (via youtube)

so I found suitable songs to listen too.

I ran this back to back with some NIN, Monster Magnet and the like. But it was "Save Yourself" that would become my theme song for QII.

Somewhere in the midst of this I got Tomb Raider. 

The music is quite staid and soft, even the boss battle stuff is mild compared to other things. So I had to kick it up with something (we are talking playing the game straight for hours and hours) (yes I played through it several times). So I cast about and ended up with. I kind of went on this Hip-hop rap outshoot

and before you know it I was Crunking it and listening to stuff that got me kicked out of the white boys fan clubs. Not that they would let me in the Crunk ones either. I guess I couldn't get low enough. I was on a ninja roll by then. 

The point is until Pandora came along I was more about listening to a song over and over again than fleshing out to listen to new stuff (at least while playing video games.) I did explore around the wide world of music doing other things.

My music was fairly random at the best of times anyway. 

After I gave up on Pirate Bay (music) thanks to the RIAA witch hunts and the Public Library crazy mish mash of CDs. I let Pandora's algorithm roll me around some but then spotify came along and has since brought me back to finding music that not only suits my needs but often suits the video games I play once the soundtracks wear thin.

Now when I am out in the Borderlands, I can get as much   and 

And there you have it. At least for today. 

Life According to Mike.

I just need a theme song to go with that....

just some random songs I found while writing this blog:

enjoy:

Wow, time flies when you are having fun.

 The world continues to spin and orbit and somehow stay attractive to the sun. Time continues to appear linear to us. Days come and go, hours and minutes turn like gears around life's clockwork masterpiece.
I find myself wondering how I found myself standing on a street wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and holding an Auggie machine gun.
Then I remembered that the world ended yesterday.

 

 That's right, mostly, except it wasn't yesterday exactly, it was long enough ago that there is grass growing in Times Square. 
You might ask me, "How could it come to this?" but you are dead, so you can't.
You might ask me, "how do you know I am dead? Who's holding the camera?" 
"Well, I can tell you that it's not you. She is much better looking."
I would be lying of course, she is also were a mask. A Harlequin to be exact. 

 Sunsets are a lot nice in the city than they used to be. There is not many people left. Those who survive had to go back to farming and gathering and hunting. A real Fight Club Future it is.
Unlike the other possibilities that could have happened. But I am getting ahead of myself.
How did it come to this?
There is quite a story in this..
Unfortunately for most of you 90% of human population perished in the chaos that consumed all the world we thought we knew. There wasn't a zombie apocalypse with hordes of zombie monsters consuming all they could find. Actually, I am lying there was a "zombie" apocalypse but instead of rotting monsters roaming the streets- there were humans who had dehumanized themselves into a sort of cannibalistic mass consumer who wasted all the planets resources until all that was left was this nightmare city. Then the world rebelled and as the monsters consumed themselves having nothing left raw unmade material to produce and waste, nature rose up in the vacuum of reason and struck down the masses in droves until only the enlightened remained. These days there are only the memories of those monsters to haunt us in the empty fields between the remains of buildings. 

You might ask what led to this downfall?

Ignorance.

In a word, a relative flash of a few hundred years, humanity surrendered all traces of intelligence to collective thought, following whomever would lead never questioning the fact that the leaders had even less judgement than those who promoted them to become thus. At first, the sides of the war used words like socialism, communism, capitalism, republicanism, democratism and tyranny. In the end it did not really matter, because the words had become meaningless as had any concept of individualism. In the end, the mass of humanity looked only for the next entertainment, the next meal, the next gadget that would simplify their already meaningless lives even as the few cried in the wilderness that devastation was setting in.

In the end, only the few who would see the coming days, did anything to save themselves.

The rest of mankind went to their dooms, smartphones in hand believing that everything would be okay and that the world was really doing fine.

 A lot of it is unclear, but one thing is clear. 

It's my dream.

It's my nightmare.

I am Sarah Connors looking into the unavoidable date with destiny

Then I woke up and saw that the world was still around me. That there was still a future.
That Ignorance has not yet won.

All is still right under God's Universe.

There only a few things worth fighting for.

There is still time to find some small happiness in a little bit of tenderness
Like this picture, even if it is only in your imagination.
We can all dream of love and passion


So here I will leave you with words of hope and inspiration
of
the world's greatest slam poet.

William Shatner.

Live life
Live life like you're gonna die
Becasue you're gonna
I hate to be the bearer of bad news
But you're gonna die

Maybe not today or even next year
But before you know it you'll be saying
"Is this all there was?
What was all the fuss?
Why did I bother?"

Now, maybe you won't suffer maybe it's quick
But you'll have time to think
Why did I waste it?
Why didn't I taste it?
You'll have time
Because you're gonna die.

Yes it's gonna happen because it's happened to a lot of people I know
My mother, my father, my loves
The president, the kings and the pope
They all had hope

And they muttered just before they went
Maybe, I won't let go
Live life like you're gonna die
Because you are

Maybe you won't suffer maybe it's quick
But you'll have time to think
Why did I waste it?
Why didn't I taste it?
You'll have time
'Cause you're gonna die

I tell you who else left us
Passed on down to heaven no longer with us
Johnny Cash, JFK, that guy in the Stones
Lou Gehrig, Einstein, and Joey Ramone
Have I convinced you?
Do you read my lips?
This may come as news but it's time
You're gonna die
You're gonna die

By the time you hear this I may well be dead
And you my friend might be next
'Cause we're all gonna die

Yeah, oh maybe you won't suffer and maybe it's quick
But you'll have time to think
Why did I waste it?
Why didn't I taste it?
You'll have time
You'll have time cause you're gonna die
Yes, you're gonna die
You're gonna die, I tell you
You're gonna die
You are gonna die

'Cause maybe you won't suffer maybe it's quick
But you have time to think
Why did I waste it?
Why didn't I taste it?
You'll have time 'cause you're gonna die

Live Life
Life life like you're gonna die
Because you're going to
Oh yes
I hate to be the beater of bad news
But you're gonna die

Maybe not today or even next year
But before you know it you'll be saying
"Is this all there was?
What was all the fuss?
Why did I bother?
Why did I waste it?
Why didn't I taste it?"
You'll have time, baby
You'll have time
'Cause you're gonna die
You are gonna die
Oh yeah

(the sung part in the background)
Y-O-U-apostrophe-R-E-G-O-double-N-A-DIE Die!
You are gonna diiiiiie
Lung cancer, heart attack, diabetes, drug overdose
Choke on a chicken bone
Hit by a lightning bolt
Spider bite
Airplane crash
Car wreck

And that is Life According to

Mike...

and probably

William Tell

Shatner.