Why do they keep letting Keanu Reeves give people the finger in movies? He sucks at it. In The Matrix, he has this weird claw hand happening. And Constantine? Somebody must have noticed the claw from before, so they told him to keep it as straight as possible. Come on though, he’s flipping off the devil. Keanu doesn’t look like Sting, but that’s all right. They had such a good reference for the way he should have done it.  Johnny Cash? There was a man who could flip the bird with the best of them.

Here’s hoping that Klaatu doesn’t give the people of Earth a one-fingered salute when he departs. Or, if he must, maybe whatever line he delivers at the same time, won’t sound completely stupid.

Edit: The devil ain’t so bad at it either.

“Come brother. Put on your colors. It’s time to go.”

There it was. The call to arms. Green on white. Argent, a bend dexter vert. Donning the garment, we became standard bearers. A battle was scheduled and warriors were needed.

The trek to the field was short. No time to reflect on the coming struggles. Warriors streamed in, solemn and somber. Those in red went one way, green and white the other. There was no animosity between them yet. No conflict before the battle and after one is declared the winner, there will be none again. Not only did the combatants show up to do their part, but so did spectators. Streaming into the area, sitting and waiting for the war to begin.

There the participants stood, opposing each other. The men moved restlessly, waiting for the signal to start. They knew it would come shortly, but it was still and eternity. Then a shrill blast from a whistle broke through the silent air. It had begun.

Hurleys swung, sliotar flew, men clashed, titans fell. A steady rain came with the opening whistle, turning the pitch to mud.

The spectators cheered at every point and hit. Applauding for these men, who battled for their pleasure. Then, as quickly as it started, another whistle was blown and it was all over. All the men went back to their respective sides and left the field. They had won. Spectators stood up and discussed the days events with their neighbors.

At the pub, pints were raised, songs were sung and all the warriors of today’s battle were brothers in arms.

Eventually they all stumbled home. Muddy grubby jerseys were stripped off and left on the floor. It would not be until next week that they would hear that call again.

“Come. Put on your colors. It’s time to go.”

How about a magic trick?

“Don’t you think that’s sadistic?”

“What?”

“Listening to Beethoven.”

“Why would that be sadistic?”

“You’re reading A Clockwork Orange at the same time!”

“Oh. The ninth. The glorious ninth. You imply that even though Alex is just a character, it’s like rubbing it in Your Humble Narrator’s litso, during the times when he was unable to slooshy dobby old Ludwig Van.”

“… You sure are queer as one.”

“A what? A clockwork orange? It’s subtle. I’m not concerned with motive or higher ethics. I am only concerned with pleasing myself.”

“A noble goal, Dr. Brodsky.”

Horseshoes - A dart game for two players

This game is played much like a standard game of horseshoes, but rather than using horseshoes and stakes in the ground, the equipment is six darts and a dartboard.

Goal: Be the first player to score ten points without going over.

Gameplay: Points are scored by throwing your darts at various targets on a standard dartboard. Players alternate throws after every dart. Player 1 throws a dart, then player 2 throws a dart, then player 1 again. After six darts have been thrown (three by each player), the points are tallied for that round and the next round starts. The player who shot second in the previous round (and also last), shoots first in this round.

Scoring:
One point - Dark-colored field inside the treble ring
Two points - Outer bulls-eye
Three Points - Inner bulls-eye

Darts that miss the board completely, hit the border of the board, the double ring, the fields between the double and treble ring, the treble ring and darts that land in light-colored fields inside the treble ring all score zero points.

A player must tally more points than their opponent in order to score any points in a round. The number of points scored by this player is equal to the difference of the points tallied.

Winning the game:
The first player to score exactly ten points wins the game. If a players  score becomes higher than ten, that player is penalized. First the difference between their score and ten is found. That value is then subtracted from ten and that is their new score.

Example gameplay:
This game of Horse-shoes is between Jordan and Steve. They have decided that Steve will shoot first.
Round 1
Steve throws his first dart and it lands in a one point area (black field inside treble ring). Jordan then throws his first dart and hits a non-scoring field. Steve’s current tally is 1 and Jordan’s is 0. It’s Steve’s turn again. Steve throws his second dart and misses the board completely. Jordan does the same. The tally stays the same as 1-0. Steve’s third and final throw for this sound lands in another one point-field. Jordan’s throw also lands in a one-point field. The tally becomes 2 for Steve and 1 for Jordan and the round
is over. It’s now time to find the score for this round. Steve tallied more points this round, so he subtracts Jordan’s tally from his own, and the difference is added to Steves total score. In this case 2 - 1 = 1, so the
total score becomes Steve: 1, Jordan: 0.

Round 2
Since Jordan shot last in the previous round, he now shoots first. Jordan tosses his first dart and opens the round with an inner bulls-eye, tallying three. Steve throws his dart and tallies 1. They both tally zero for their next two shots. At the end, the tally for this round stands at 3 for Jordan and 1 for Steve. Jordan tallied higher and adds 2 to his total score (3-1=2). The game is now set at Steve: 1, Jordan: 2.

Jordan and Steve play some more until the scores are set at 9 for Jordan and 8 for Steve. Steve is up first. Steve misses. Jordan shoots and hits the inner bulls-eye. His tally is 3. Steve and Jordan miss their next two shots. At the end of the round, Jordan has tallied 3 and Steve, 0. Jordan then adds 3 to his total, bring him to a score of 12. This is over 10, so he subtracts 10 from 12 (12-10=2) and then subtracts that from 10 (10-2=8). Jordan’s score is now 8 and they are tied. In the next round, Steve tallies 4 with an inner bulls-eye and a black field and Jordan tallies 2 with an outer bulls-eye. Steve tallied higher, does the required calculation (4-2=2), adds 2 to his total, bringing him to 10 and wins the game.

Handgrenades

Handgrenades is a game played like Horseshoes, but with more rules that increase difficulty. The only differences lie in how various throws are scored.

Goal: See the rules of Horseshoes.

Gameplay: See the rules of Horseshoes.

Scoring: Darts that land on a dark field inside the treble ring will tally 1 point.
Darts that land in the outer bullseye tally 2 points.
Darts that land in the inner bullseye tally 3 points.
Darts that land in the double ring and in any field between the double and treble ring tally -1 point.
Darts that land outside the double ring, but still on the board tally -2 points.
Darts that land in a light field inside the treble ring, in the treble ring or strike the surface of the board but do not stick all tally 0.
Darts that that strike another surface that is not the dartboard tallies -3
points.

A player’s score cannot fall below zero.

The way to score a round is as follows:
1. Find the player’s negative tally. If they threw a mixture of negative  and positive tallying darts, then their positive darts must first be used to offset the negative.
2. If a player has positive points after offsetting all of their negative tally, that player then uses their left over positive points to then offset the opposing players positive points.
3. If a player, after offsetting both their own negative tally and the opponnets positive tally (found after the opponent has offset their own negative tally) has anymore positive points, that player then add that positive tally to their total score.

Winning the game: Same as in Horseshoes.

I’m back at RIT now and getting ready to start my second half of my first co-op. I’m living in an apartment with a few friends and things should go well. We’ll have to see if housing tries to ruins our setup or not though. I don’t have much to say about school because I’m not taking classes and I’m just living here.

One thing that I am going to comment on is my writing. Everybody seemed to enjoy the Instant Neon Garden microstory. The first part of Leaves? Not so much. I understand that Leaves doesn’t have much going on and when you read ING first and then Leaves second, you’ll probably be like “What happened to the randomness that was in ING?”. They’re different stories. With Leaves, I have more to write. I have a plan and a basic plot line figured out. I would like to work on that one more, but it’s not going to get silly. That’s not the point of it. ING came from a moment where I was laying in bed and I sat up and went, “I need paper and a pen now.” The first paragraph and the last bit about Gatsby was all I had and then I had to fill in the rest when I posted it. It was spontaneous and was created very quickly. Not too much thought went into it. Is Leaves bad though? Are the stories that I actually think about no good?

I would like to write the next part of Leaves again, revise it, then go back and revise parts one and two as a whole, before going on with the next part. I have done some revisions of part one. They’re subtle though. My revisions won’t be complete rewrites though, which is a problem. I have to be able to say to myself, “Hey, this is okay, but not good enough. Try it again”. Why don’t I do this though? Maybe I’m lazy, making I’m just too stuck in the way I written it the first time. I’m no expert. I need to pay more attention to the things I write and fix them when something isn’t right.

I’d like to get some more non writing posts up here soon though. Maybe one about work, more non writing ideas, some reviews of books or comics (I just finished His Dark Materials, so there is a possibility), more about the things that are happening with me. And photography… that’s going to be the hard one. We’ll wait and see what happens though. I have a lot of plans this year and hopefully I will accomplish at least one of them.

P.S. Did you love the Elton John pun for this posts title? I did.