“Onslaught's attempts at
narrative (cyborg insects emerge from a downed research ship!) and emotional
dialogue between anonymous, look-a-like armored soldiers are best ignored, as
the game’s strengths lie solely in the appeal of blasting hordes of goo-splattering
creatures. Whether it's packs of sluggish caterpillars or flying bugs that
explode when shot, you'll find plenty of fodder with which to decorate the
walls of the bland caverns and valleys you'll traverse.”
- Gamesradar.com, Review of “Onslaught”
Disclosure: the above quote
is not related to the post below in any way that I know of. I just found the
quote a tiny bit mind blowing because it is a message from an alternative universe
that apparently I have inhabit with a species of homo gamer evolved beside me a
while back.
I’ve been gymming lately. I
can’t do cardio, so I can’t lose weight, but I’m able to squat like a teenager
and my knees don’t crinkle when I move. I spend a mile or two strolling on the
treadmill, often between guys on either side of me who speak Arabic over me
like I wasn’t there. One day, I sensed they were talking about me and I glared
at the one who was smiling and burned a microscopic hole in the back of his
skull and said “La, habbibi” and they both shut the fuck up. So pretty sure I
was right. Smug kids with their incline about 90 degrees. Time’s a bitch, baby.
Before I walk I stretch and
do some pathetic weight lifting lunges with the cute little pink 2.5 lb
barbells that nobody else touches. There is a long row of padded floor adjacent
to the free weights and whatever those straps are that people hold onto when
they do pushups without getting on the floor. I spend a half hour there; mostly
stretching and I even use the straps enough to actually break a sweat. The
baggy flab under my upper arm is still there but no longer loose and heavy
enough for me to swing and hit you upside the head.
The other day, I asked the
young hunky guy stretching next to me if I could admire his tattoo sleeve. It
included a peacock, but it was somehow not girly and looked like the dark and
richly colored kind of peacock you wouldn’t want to meet wandering through the
palace gardens. I told him it was adorable. He winced. Then, I remembered my
nephew’s admonition that you never call a guy’s ink “adorable” and I apologized
and said it was a seriously bad-ass bird and I was rewarded with a sweet smile.
I’m sure he went home and told his girlfriend that an old lady hit on him in
the gym. He was adorable.
This has become increasingly
important to me because I no longer have roommates or even somebody to have the
mostly incoherent and occasionally hilarious text conversations with. So most
of my conversations these days are all inside my head, except when I’m talking
to my cat bobbing gently around in my increasingly sluggish stream of
consciousness.
Sometimes, covens of two or
more SAHMs warm up on the pads together while waiting for their Zumba class to
begin. These cougars annoy the fuck out of me – something always does of course
– because they spend as much time talking and taking up too much room as they
do touching the toes of their $300 designer shoes. But when I can score an
adjacent spot to do my warm up, I am often rewarded with tidbits of
conversation worth hearing.
The SAHMs usually say words
like farm to table and local and organic - incorrectly. These ladies are, as,
Terry Hatchet said, a species of “urban humans whose only connection with the
cycles of nature is that their Volvo once ran over a sheep.” Entertaining, but
nothing to blog about. Today there were three of them. Today, it was more
disturbing.
SAHM 1: … so I told him that wasn’t
happening and we didn’t speak for the rest of the evening.
SAHM 2: A bonus.
SAHM 3 (texting) What the
fuck was he thinking? (There
is a rule that at least one of a group of men or women chatting must also be
texting or otherwise using their phone.)
SAHM 2: It’s not
like he can afford child support.
SAHM 1: Let alone
spousal support.
I forget who said what next but the next line was something
about the investment in her lawyer for the prenup is gonna pay off like a win
for the hare. There was something about whether a bear that shits in the woods uses
toilet paper, only more succinct.
What happened next inside my head wasn’t an articulate
paragraph of words about the first world problems I am blissfully spared. It was more like a small
mushroom cloud of wordless gratitude at this lesson in comparative despair.
And then, in a moment of sublime clarity, I realized they
were talking about anal sex. (There is some serious body language to read on
people almost correctly doing yoga poses.) Then, I thought who puts an anal sex clause involving a big payoff in a prenuptial agreement? These
women have no souls.
My mind exploded and covered these women with the metaphorical
gooey splatter of exploded flying bugs. First its the gamers. Now another life form now inhabits the universe
I thought I knew.
Have these Others always been here? Suddenly, everywhere I
look I’m finding how pervasively hilariously pathetic all our lives are. I had thought
it was just people I conversed with. Now
I see it’s everywhere. It's the human feckn' condition. Homo sapiens is the only species who employ so much of our
time hiring assholes, marrying assholes, thinking and arguing about assholes
and generally being assholes. What other god known monstrous goo spattering species surround me?
And just like that, I had my joy back. I no longer need to
have internal dialogue editorializing on asshole theme in all their allegorical,
Freudian, and mutually passive aggressive grandeur.
My joy is from my gratitude that I don’t have to suffer
assholes any more.
Then I thought about renewing my attorney license. Imagine the conversations I could have in my head with assholes. I guess I kinda miss it.
