"Ramble On v2.0" 2002-09-02 - 1:52 a.m.

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Well, no Iggy Pop today. I'll explain that in due course. Got together with Trevor, Robyn, and *Jesus Christ I still don't remember his name*. It was fun. We improvised something awesome; jammed out on some Creedence; found out Robyn could sing. It was a good time. I wish Robyn would've improvised more, not for me or anyone else, but for her sake. I want her to have fun and I know she'd be having a lot of fun if she could just relax and be more involved. I don't know, that probably sounded wrong. Either way I found out she could sing. We were going to try and play "Bad Fish" by Sublime(the one song of theirs I've never really liked, by the way) and rather than teach her the guitar riff Trevor decided she should try and sing. She couldn't scream but I know she'll be able to with practice. And as for her singing I was blown away. I've always had a weakness for female singers, but Robyn was amazing. The only reason I don't say she should just be the singer is completely selfish; I want to sing so badly, I love it. If I had to just play bass I don't know if I'd even want to play in a band. As it is I'm more than willing to let Robyn sing on some songs while I sing on others; but it still bothers me that I have that bit of selfishness in me. The drummer, who we will now call "Drummy" because I can't remember his name, showed up about an hour and a half late, so we only had about half the time to practice as a full band that we should've. A funny anecdote though, was me trying to sing. Upon having to sing in front of Trevor, all the confidence I had earned myself dissapeared. I opened my mouth to sing "Opiate"(my warm up song) and I felt all my confidence escape me; like hot air, or something. It sucked, all of a sudden I forgot how to sing. Then later we got Robyn to sing; I can only imagine how bad that must've been. I tried to help as best I could, but I know I'm bad at that. Anyway, afterwords me and Robyn went to the mall. For some reason it seemed like it'd be fun. I had fun, but I don't know if she did, I felt bad. I got a sticker to cover up the one on my bass that I don't like. I was planning on getting an Iggy and the Stooges CD, but they didn't have any; they also didn't have my second choice of the Dead Kennedys; so I had to go buy that Ramones shirt I've wanted. I know you don't care, but it bothers me. I wanted music but got clothing; it's like Christmas. Anyway, that was my day. I'm gonna leave some space after which I'm just going to talk about Silent Hill 2; I figure most of you are sick of hearing me talk about it so I'll give you time to leave if you want. Have a nice day!

If you're still here I'm very impressed. Anyway, surprisingly the paranoia I got yesterday was gone today. Just after nightfall I booted up the game and played for about three or four hours straight. I got sucked in, couldn't stop. I just keep getting more and more impressed with that game. I have a few stories to relate about it; the first being: You get to this one building, where in the back there's a stairway leading down. It goes down pretty deep. At the end of it there's a hole. So you jump down, it's pretty deep, and somehow you find and underground prison. With an outdoor yard, no less. Anyway, to get out of the prison, you go down into its basement(!), and jump down another deep hole, then another, then another. Then after that you get to another stop on your journey to the center of the earth. Now, I know I compare this game to the Sober video alot; but I swear to God that this place is the building from the Sober video. I shit you not. It looks exactly like it, just brighter. I laughed out loud. To get out of there you jump down ANOTHER deep hole, and then walk down another long stairway, and then you walk out a door to emerge on the lakefront. I was unaware Silent Hill was on top of a large mountain. You must go down like, without exageration, at least half a mile, and you come out the other side on flat ground. Then there's the little girl, Laura, who locks you in the room in the hospital that sends you to Silent Hell. I swore to myself that the next time I saw her I was gonna shoot her in the face, but James(your character) disagreed. The next time you meet her you treat her all nice and talk to her; in addition to being a creepy little girl she sends you to hell! How much more motivation do you need to hate her? Then there's the absolute psychological ecstacy you get from this game. The fun of video games for me, has always been becoming the character, not just seeing: "player; level; puzzle; enemy" I become the character in my head. For the few hours I'm playing I'm not just playing Silent Hill 2; I'm James Saunders and I'm trapped in Silent Hill looking for my wife. And the logic of Silent Hill keeps coming back around to Pet Semetary. At first as you go into town, and you keep seeing more and more horrifying things, you push on because the ultimate goal is your wife; you will find your wife, if you can't find her there's no reason to go on; so you'll go through all the fog and mutated thingies in the world to get to her; nothing else matters. Like when Louis is taking Gage to the Mic-Mac burial ground, so what if there's all sorts of wierd plants and creatures out there in the woods, he'll deal with it, because nothing matters but having Gage back. Then later in the game, as you get to the hotel... I should explain this. See, your wife died of a disease three years prior to the game. Not long before the beginning, you receive a note from her telling you to meet her in Silent Hill(which, before whatever went wrong with it, was a quiet resort town) in your "special place". So James drives into Silent Hill, ready to go through hell or high water for the chance to see his wife one more time. The first spot he thinks of is the park, but she's not there(there's much MUCH more storyline in there, but I'm summarizing); so the next place he thinks of is a hotel, on the other side of the lake. You get there and find a map(you find a map in every building) with the room you stayed in circled with the message "I'm waiting" written on it. The hotel is completely dark, and the way to the third floor(where the room is) is locked off. Now, the absolute wonder of this is: your wife died three years ago, and now suddenly she's telling you to come find her; the city she's waiting in is some outpost of hell, to quote Jud Crandall: it's "gone sour"; the hotel she's waiting in is completely dark, the way is locked off with all sorts of puzzles for you to solve to get to her; and you have to ask: if it really is your wife up in that room, do you really believe she's going to be the same as you remember? And then another fun fact is Laura, you meet her in the hotel, and instead of shooting her on sight, as I had planned, you talk to her. Every time you meet her she talks about Mary(your wife), and then this time she gives you a letter Mary wrote her. It says stuff like: "I'm going to a quiet, beautiful place" and tells Laura to "be nice to James and the sisters" and anyone with half a brain can figure out that it's a goodbye letter, from before she died. At the end it wishes Laura a happy 8th birthday. James asks Laura "how old are you?" to which she replies: "I turned 8 last week". Now, putting two and two together; you can get that Laura was Mary's hospital mate, before she died. And because she still says she's eight(Mary died 3 years ago, remember), there's a pretty damn good chance Laura died too. Now James; who has the presence of mind to mark which doors are locked or broken or working on the maps he gets; responds to Laura's comment with: "last week? Maybe Mary's not really dead...". I'll give you a moment to let that all sink in. Now what I get from that, is that he's purposely denying it, blocking out the bad stuff. His wife is going to be perfect, just like he remembers her up in that room. In the back of his mind, Louis knows Gage is going to come back as a monster, knows he's not going to come back right, Church didn't, all the stories Jud told him back that up, and plus the whole process seems beyond unsavory; but he's going to bury him in the Mic-Mac burial ground. He's going to resurrect him, he convinces himself that Gage will come back ok, everything will be just fine. But Gage did come back as a monster, he killed Jud and Rachel and would've killed Louis. I know that whatever is up in that hotel room, is not going to be a smiling Mary saying how happy she is to see James again. But sticking with my role as James it's oooh so fun to convince myself it'll be fine, to fight off all the evidence in my brain, be James Saunders being Louis Creed all over again. It's like masturbating my brain. That's the psychological ecstacy I was talking about, that's the true addictive quality that keeps me coming back to Silent Hill. The graphics and atmosphere are added bonuses. But I've rambled long enough. I apologize to all who read this extra bit. I'm sure I'll have more tomorrow, and every day until I beat it. Sweet Dreams.

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