Pour Painting

My wife has started making "pour paintings".  These are beautiful works of abstract art, made by pouring layers of paint onto a canvas.  You can see some of her work here:

https://www.deviantart.com/thecraftykj

And as long as you're looking at DeviantArt pages, I've got one of my own as well.  Mine's mostly cat pictures, but I've also uploaded a few of my bad drawings.  Here's the link:

https://www.deviantart.com/xinefury

Video Game Dream

Last night I dreamed I was playing a video game.  The graphics reminded me of “No More Heroes”, and the gameplay consisted of a variety of mini-games with different controls and rules.  The overall theme was very Japanese, the kind of game that rarely gets exported to the states.  I don’t remember the title.

At the beginning of the game, your best friend is murdered by the CEO of a major corporation.  The opening has your character visiting your friend’s grave, then performing some sort of mystic ritual to guarantee the friend gets his revenge.  Then, believing yourself to be the instrument of your friend’s revenge, you enter the CEO’s downtown skyscraper and try to make your way to the top.  Your intention is to confront the CEO and challenge him to a duel.

Your character is tall and thin, wears a business suit, and carries a sword.  However, you never use the sword until the very end of the game.  The building has 100 floors.  You have to complete one encounter on each floor.  After each encounter, your character runs up a flight of stairs to the next floor.  Apparently there are no elevators, or maybe they require keycards. 

Your character doesn’t want to hurt anyone but the CEO, so the encounters don’t involve combat.  Instead, each floor is its own minigame, with a bizarre and eclectic mix of puzzles and stealth.  On one level, you might avoid employees by hiding behind potted plants and support columns.  On another, you might have to talk your way past a security guard by picking the right dialogue choices, or by doing a short fetch quest for them.  Some of the levels were really bizarre, like having you compete in a Parappa-style rap battle with a security guard. 

It was one of those games where weird things happen for weird reasons, like “Feel the Magic: XX/XY” or “Incredible Crisis”.  Some of the mini-games would repeat themselves, with harder versions occurring at higher floors.  You never had to go back down a floor; everything you need to complete a floor was found on the floor itself.

When you finally reach level 100, the CEO accepts your challenge and you fight.  It doesn’t control like a fighting game, instead being more of a drawn out quicktime event.  However, it is impossible to win regardless of how well you perform.  If you do poorly, he kills you.  If you gain the advantage, he cheats by having a henchman grab you, and then he kills you.

You are buried next to your best friend.  The ending shows the CEO standing over your grave, making a villain speech about how he always wins.  Then, thanks to the ritual you performed at the beginning of the game, your friend’s animated corpse bursts out of his grave and drags the CEO underground.  So you were the instrument of revenge after all – your death was the only reason the CEO ended up standing so close to your friend’s grave.

Dinner With Dorks

My wife has started a YouTube series called "Dinner with Dorks".  In each episode, she and I make dinner, play a video game, and watch a movie, usually sticking to a specific theme.

You can find the playlist here.

I Just Got It!

From "Star Trek Generations":

Data: (laughing) I get it! I get it! When you said "The clown can stay, but the Ferengi in the gorilla suit has to go!"
Geordi: Data, what are you talking about?
Data: During the Farpoint mission; we were on the bridge, you told a joke, that was the punchline!
Geordi: The Farpoint mission? Data, that was seven years ago.
Data: I know! I just got it! Very funny!

Anyway, I just got a joke a friend made 27 years ago.  I drew a lot of sci-fi comic books in high school.  In one issue, several of the characters go to an intergalactic carnival.  One of the rides was called "Bump -N- Hover".  When my friend Bryan got to that page, he started singing "Bump... and Hover" over and over in a sing-song voice.  Honestly I just thought he was making up a tune as he went along, and I laughed.

Today I was browsing YouTube and came across an old "Duck and Cover" PSA.  I immediately recognized the tune as the one Bryan had been singing.

The whole thing reminds me of an old comedian who compared his jokes to grenades.  You pull the pin, toss it to your audience, and wait for them to get it.  Sometimes they take longer to detonate.  In this case, decades.

This Didn’t Happen Either

One time, back in the 80s, a friend and I decided to go to a costume party.  We agreed not to tell each other what costumes we were going to wear, so it would be a surprise when we met there.  We arrived separately, and I looked around until I finally spotted my friend.  Imagine our delight when we discovered that we’d both worn the same costume: a California Raisin.

I guess grape mimes think alike.