Benedict Cumberbatch, Johnny Depp and Graham Take Otter Photos - The Gra...

oh my

This Weeks Worth of Awesome and Weird...mostly Awesome #2 later than well it should have been

To kick off my review of awesome, which is more than likely going to become more frequent than it has been (blames Fallout 4 and outdoor projects). We can start with last weeks bits of awesome. 
Starting off with the Relaunchable Rocket

I am ready for space which is to say, probably not since I am waaaay poor.
Still, I love the idea of what this presents.

Porta Estel·lar
Porta Estel·lar from Playmodes on Vimeo.
Up next is the next thing in Performance Art. I mean who wouldn't like to see this?
Unless you are me and can't get comfortable without a chair or a pillow. The outside of the fuselage video is also worth a watch.
more on this awesomeness

I love Star Wars- and I love Honest Trailers.
it's like Reese's Cups for my ego.
So this was bound to put a silly lopsided grin on my face.

#droidlivesmatter
....and while we are on the subject of Star Wars there was this bit of epicness
Star Wars Auditions - SNL

and then some music and comedy and longboards with the Force.

Now stand back!
Let's do SCIENCE! 

Now that was cool. I can see it now: a portico with flaming pillars....

well maybe not.

I love RocketJump. I like Freddie Wong, so this looks awesome, so looking forward to binge watching this.
speaking of which
it's video game showdown time.
people just keep raising the bar on what us joes can do.

and finally
this happened.
and I have to say I loved it. might even love it. I want that bunny cop.
(yes, I am a sick, sick desperately lonely man who wants a bunny cop)

and that's the past week's worth of awesome according to the bunny cop wanting man.

RocketJump: The Show - FINAL TRAILER

This Weeks Worth of Awesome and Weird...mostly Awesome #1

Welcome to my semi annual (assuming I can get around to it) Week's Worth of Awesome and Weird... mostly Awesome.

Cooper Escapes the Black Hole

insert Interstellar reference

Great Big World just released new track with lots of promise of another awesome album

And then there was this awesome, confusing fan film

How Deadpool Spent Halloween (not for the faint of heart or parents)

and then there was this

and this, I mean this was out 2 months back, but the entire album is out and I love it.

Pentatonix album at amazon or itunes

LARPS is back for season 2; again it has been out for a month but since this is my first week of A&W


Which reminds me that we just lived through a week of wickedly funny Geek & Sundry videos.
Halloweek (playlist of Awesome)

Rainy Tuesdays are my Moody Mondays

It's another Tuesday in September, It's raining. Comcast is at a dead crawl and as I sit here pondering over the pages of first world complaints and problems, I draw the inevitable conclusion that writing about it won't make it any better

or worse.

On the other hand, this kind of implies that, I won't have to take walking through the woods in such a fearful or serious manner. 

What I am trying to say is that, it's Tuesday and it's raining. Also State Farm called and they want to finalize my life insurance application with one more interview (I already had 3) so don't get impressed if we inconvenience you one more time, just in case you die.....

But I digress, after all, I can smile when it's raining. What could possibly go wrong? I mean other than the phone call about me dying.

I am throwing in the epic sunset just to throw you off your expectations since I suspect that you are here to find out how the woman inside me feels about all this. Well, she says grow up, life is seldom as simple as a sunset at sea and did you clean your room this morning and kiss your mother goodbye?

You had to ask.

It's days like these that I realize that I have listened to far too much music when almost every sentence I write is a song lyric and when I must stop to question my existence or just the mere stupidity of it all, a wierd al track will start playing in my head while I try to be serious about my life.

I am alone.

I understand it (mostly).

I try to accept it (except it bothers me).

I want to be with someone else who also doesn't want to alone.

It won't happen.

At least, I am almost never alone in my dreams.

Then I wake up in my empty bed, the remains of a poem rattling around in my head

I might have to rhyme something with dead, but will just endeavor to make this all a joke instead.

BUT I DIGRESS

It is Tuesday.

(blame it all on Loki)

or

Satan

or

Raymond.

no wait, everyone loves Raymond, except for me.

Which could explain my self-inflicted loneliness.

I do resent when friends and family offer up trite explanations (usually on Facebook) as to how this is really my fault (as if I didn't know it) or that it is so easily solved (although this usually means I need to move to another universe).

 I am now tempted to quote some REM and Dave Matthews, but I won't.
It is my fault, but only so much as to admit that I blame myself for blaming myself so much. That taking responsibility for my actions and subsequent isolation is more a result to my mishandling of social affairs rather than a direct attempt to sabotage a sense of happiness over any real empirical understanding of what I was really going to feel today.
Instead, I play Clash of Clans & Fallout Shelter & Titan Empires & Star Wars Commander and stay in bed effectively until 10 am.

 Then  it's time for work and you know pretty much the rest of the day is spent waiting on on that awesome Comcast upload speed. 
So, instead of finding that deeper part of my soul where in self discovery and enlightenment hide inside of, I goof off and work in between the tedium of my work life knowing that there are better places for me to be, better things for me to be doing.
Because I am so good at my job, I solve every hurdle thrown my way in a matter of minutes instead of taking all day to solve them.
I won't get a job at Comcast or ATT this way, however.

Although, I should sell myself short on the possibility that my job is not that unlike another IT crowds job (that was a reference)

Here, let me help you visualize this,

Insert, anyone of my coworkers.

(kidding)

no one will accept a I.D. 10T error anyway.
Life would be awesome if I had a cool yet grumpy socially awkward coworker to commiserate - I mean collaborate all this with.

A few final thoughts

Life is.

and 

sometimes you don't have to be humanity's last hope 

or a 

teenager

without a friend in the world

save for a 

moody old man

to get it.

and

that is life or tuesdays

according to Mike.

The Post where I "Usher" in some confessions

Right now it might help me if I was a Catholic.

On the other hand (and with apologies to the Catholics- at large), it is probably a good thing that I am not Catholic.
Herein this blog, I am going to write about things that I will not talk about, even with friends.
Since, almost no one ever really comments on Life According to Mike. I expect I won't hear much on my "confessions."
DISCLAIMER!!!! 
Don't take this as something you will see in me on a daily basis or anything that you can find elsewhere in my writing or web pages (I mean it is there, but very hard to see) Also, I am not gay, just weird/strange. Not that there is anything wrong with being gay. 
Also I am not a Pervert or a sociopath (I care) or a Psychopath or a Creeper (if you start to feel this way I recommend you go back to Twitter and look for something to preoccupy yourself with)
But I digress.

This is an awesome and wonderful game.
It made me think and realize a few things about myself that I am now going to write about.

 If I could rewind time back to the moment where my father's sperm got confused in my mother's womb and made me a male, I would throttle it into realizing that if I had to live life all over again- I would have been female. 

1. NO, I do not have a woman living inside me (as in transgender identity).
   It is harder to define than that. I only feel this way at certain times.
   Like when my Great Nephew, Connor was born. I knew I had been cheated of childbirth. I didn't really understand what that meant, but I knew it had to mean something because I felt such a loss.
   Or the fact that I tend to take to video games that have a woman character as the central character hero. Damn you Tomb Raider (and also my brother who told me to play it!).
2. 
   If you look at my World of Warcraft account, I have more female characters then I have male. It's true in borderlands, Fallout, Skyrim etc.
   I can sometimes persuade myself that I would rather look at the woman's but rather than the man's ass but at least I know I am just lying to myself.
   The rest of this will come off as corny, trite and somewhat sexist but here it is. I would probably be bisexual (mostly because I believe- without any concrete proof or empirical evidence that few people understand what it really means to be this way- including me), That I wouldn't be "girly" in western standards of behavior and still would end up being a nerd.
   I hope I would have more sense that my male alter ego and avoid cookie dough and Dr. Pepper (and food in general as a means of comfort) and not be overweight.
   and
   What does this have to do with this game, you are probably asking yourself right now?
   Maybe nothing, but more likely that I get the emotion that Max is feeling/living and that for the time I am in the game, I forget my own sense of gender and take on hers.
   (I did warn you that it would sound sexist/trite/corny)
   But as I became Max and spent time being this girl that thought that has been with me for most of my life kept creeping back into my subconscious.
3. The Last of Us.
   
   I identified more with Ellie than Joel, partly- I suspect because I am not a father nor probably ever will be. I am, however- or rather have been lost and unwanted. I understand the identity of not knowing what is going on behind the scenes yet knowing that it has something to do with me or rather having something to do with the idea that I represent.
   
   
   This game has stayed with me, for weeks (since I finished it). I got Joel, I can even understand his decisions at the end of the game, but if someone had to ask me who I felt I was in the game, it would be Ellie. What is more, I knew pretty much what Ellie was going to do each time she had a pivotal moment in the game. I didn't always see or know what Joel was going to do. 
4. The last time a game made me feel like this was 
   Beyond Good and Evil.
   I probably played this game all the way through at least 4 times. I stalled on playing it when I got it on xbox live arcade- but I will go back now- if only to see if the feeling is the same way.
5. Does this mean, I know women or how women think?
   Nope, not at all, My brain is wired like a man's, I have been sufficiently programmed to be all man and masculinity- it does not stop me from wanting to find some middle ground or at least some connection. Thankfully there are still the video games.
   
   
6. Then there is Romance....or the lack of it.        Not surprisingly, I do blame Disney and the very filtered Fairy Tales and fiction that I               grew up reading. As a faithful student of the ideal, I just assumed that nature would                 follow a set course and I would get my turn at love- true love. I could be Wesley and get              my Buttercup. It didn't happen.
   
7. Instead, I grew up and became the Beast. So far, there has been no Belle, plenty of Gaston's and Maurice's and others, a few Rumplestiltskin's and a fair number of evil queens, bad fairies, idiot townspeople, a donkey called donkey, a ogre or three, some blind mice, a ginger bread man, a dragon and lots of lonely nights of self-imposed exile but no Belle has ever walked into my life. As far as I know, I have never walked into her's either.
8. 
   What happened? How did I end up this lonely monstrous being who yearns for and yet is so very, very bad at romance, love or sex- yes even sex (including bad sex) has been out of reach. The Experts weigh in.

 Mom: Well- if you just lost all that weight...

Dad: Well, son, if you found another woman who was- um, well closer to your weight, then....

The Aunt: If you would stop pretending to be gay... 

The Girl you secretly love but are friends with: Oh, (insert your name) Mike, You are so funny, there's nothing wrong with you...I mean I am just not into hairy men who act so...beastly. 

Your Sister(s): You will find someone, just quit being such a loser and stop playing video games, women don't want men who play games. 

Your Brother: Hey Bro- you just need to get laid. (f*** all that romance sh**.

 Your Friend(s): You are a great guy but you have no confidence...I mean no pickup lines...I mean you need to learn to lie better. The Evil Queen: (you know she's out there somewhere) Romance is dead, blame AIDS, Blame TV, Blame Sexism, Blame Feminism, well blame something...I mean this is really you're fault anyway- you should have been born a woman.

 Gaston: Be Gaston...no wait, I am Gaston, you're the beast, Belle is mine, go back to your hole, Disney lied, I get the girl in this fairy tale- just look at the evidence.







Me: Dammit, should have left this out of that blog.

Advice, mostly stinks and isn't helpful. 
Believe in love or don't/ (I still believe- even though I am fairly sure I will always be the beast in the high castle with his books (thousands and thousands of books)
I know what I want.

Finally (although this is by no means all)

I am a writer (I have empirical evidence to back this up)

and it is through my own pen that I can create reality to suit my needs and desires.

I can write myself as a woman (I only have to believe it and it is true)

If you haven't read Inkheart then forget all that I just wrote and go back to TMZ.

Was this ever about USHER or Confessions?
No, i just needed to say what I said and make a small spectacle of it.

For her part, I think Max would understand me.

I understand her and we are just fiction and truth

after all.

(take a selfie and ask yourself that same question)

and that is life according to Max (I mean Mike).

A Few Good Men (and Women)

Last night, I took my mother to the Rule High School 1960 Class Reunion.
I did not go to Rule, in fact, until my mother opened the Knox County Museum of Education, I did not even know that there was a school called Rule. I was woefully ignorant of all the schools in this our hometown of Knoxville. I attended Sunnyview (in North Knox County) and Doyle High School (in South Knox County). Outside of those two schools, I was only ever aware of other schools because my mother taught at them or we played them in football at Doyle. I missed a lot of things about Knoxville back then (the late 1980s).
Last night, I met, ate and was entertained and educated by some of the very best people to ever come out of this small southern town. A few of these men and women went on to fame and fortune (like so many schools over the years) but what what stands out here is that most of the people there last night settled for being the good and the few.
What I mean is there are scholars, educators, inventors, writers, doctors, and other careers that we consider to engender success but being among the few and good means far more than being famous or wealthy- neither of which make you a good person.
Last night, this wonderful group of men and women made my mother an honorary graduate of Rule High School which made for one the best moments in my mother's life. She has had honors and titles bestowed upon her over the years, her name is on a wall of Fame amongst other similar honors; but it was this simple action of good people that has made her so very proud and grateful and happy.
That is what I mean.
It's too bad that there are only a few people out there that strive for what is truly good in this life. it would make the world a much better place if more of us put aside our own ambitions or plans for personal success or wealth and took the time to make a woman feel wanted, loved and accepted.
I leave you with that thought.
Take the time, be part of something that makes the difference for just one person, because in the end, I am willing to bet, it will make the difference for many others and that includes you as well.

and that is life according to Mike.