Up All Night

Some years ago, myself, my wife and our children were living with my in-laws. The house we were living in was built by my wife's grandparents at some point in the 1950s. For as long as we've been together, she would tell stories of experiences she had in the house when she was younger.

On two occasions when she was a child, my wife saw an apparition of a man. In one of the instances she saw him watching her play in her bedroom. The second time that she saw him she was practicing violin in the living room. He was standing in the hallway outside of her bedroom, watching her play. He was a well-dressed man.

A few decades later, we found ourselves living in this house. Our bedroom and the bedroom of our children was in the same hallway that the man had been seen in.

One evening, my wife and I were in our bedroom. It was in the evening, but it wasn't late, 9 or 10 PM. At this point, I will note that the floors of this house are made of solid wood and you can hear when people are walking. We are inside our bedroom and the door was closed. We both hear footsteps coming down the hallway. These were heavy footsteps, too, it sounded like the person walking was wearing boots. We immediately assumed it was my father-in-law, as he often wore heavy boots.

The footsteps approached our door and stopped. We both look at each other and expect a knock on the door from her father. There is no knock, yet, the door knob begins to rattle. It rattles as if there's someone on the other side of the door, shaking the knob, as if they were about to open it. About five seconds later, I approach the door and open it.

No one was there.

There hadn't been time for someone to approach the door, shake the knob and run away. Our children were too young to know to play a joke like this. Even if it was them, they wouldn't have been able to create the noise of such heavy footsteps.

My wife and I kind of looked at each other, as if to ensure that the other person experienced the same thing.

During our time in that house, I would often see shadows walking out of the corner of my eye. On one occasion I saw what appeared to be a white figure standing in the above mentioned hallway.

have been other stories told of experiences in that house, but they are not mine to tell. My wife's grandfather that built the house was living when she saw the man in the hallway, so it couldn't be him.

I think I suffer from adult ADHD because I can’t seem to focus on any one thing lately. I’ve bounced from pouring my time into this website, jumped to spending time working on a new setup for my computer, and playing far too much of Final Fantasy XIV over the weekend. It’s fine to jump from hobby to hobby, but I get obsessive over one thing for a period before dropping it hard and jumping to something else.

I’m trying therapy now. A first for me. I’m going to give it an honest go and see how it works for me. Despite me being in a better place mentally I’m still not quite where I want to be.

I know you’re here for the weird content, so sorry for the more traditional blog post, but I just wanted to let everyone know that I am still alive and things should get kicking again here soon.

There exists an internal Sega training video from the 1990s introducing new employees to the job of Video Game Tester that has made the rounds on several gaming/tech websites. While it is fun to admire the overwhelming 90sness of the video, I think it does something even more interesting; it shits all over the job you just got hired to do! While I've seen some argue that it is just being honest about how awful that job is, and while that is true, you've never seen a job training video tell you "You are about to hate this phase of your life" in so many ways. Time to talk about some of the wonderful/awful things in this video.

"14 hour days." "80-90 hours a week.""The past 24 hours." "I can be here 90 hours a week. 100 sometimes." One employee says he played 188 hours of Eternal Champions in a two week period after daily shifts lasting from noon to 3 AM. He said this job takes a toll on both your body and your social life. "Congratulations on your new job! Are you excited about having no work-life balance and working the most miserable hours in the country? Welcome to the Sega of America.

One of Sega's many products at the time was the Pico, a computer designed for children in the pre-K to early elementary age. When one employee is asked what is "tedious" about the job, he says that playing Pico games falls within that category. Now I can only imagine what dozens of hours spent playing Tails and the Music Maker does to ones psyche, but to go so far as to show your employees literally stomping on your product made to educate children is a little strange. Oh well, at least Soundgarden is playing in the background.

When asked by a man off camera what one employee does to relieve work-related stress, she says she goes outside to smoke. When it cuts to her smoking, it does a few slick shots like what she's doing is the coolest thing on earth. Nothing says "Welcome aboard" quite like saying "If you didn't smoke when you agreed to this job, you soon will!"

When interviewing one of the testers about what games they play at home, one of them said he sold all of his gaming machines when they took this job. Remember going into testing so you could work with what you love? Get ready to be so burned out by games after this that you'll never pay one by choice! Now, I've worked some rough jobs. I've worked at call centers, I've worked in kitchens, I've been a glorified janitor, but none of those jobs started out with the company-produced training materials telling me how bad it would be. In most places they paint the job as if it is the best thing on earth, but Sega is pretty honest about it. I guess that it is commendable to a degree, but it reinforces the idea that I never want to do this work. I'd rather not hate games just yet.

2002

On October 12, 2002, a post was published at the website “8march2003.com.” Within days, it had been shared across hundreds of message boards around the Internet.

Upon visiting the website, you are greeted by giant red text that reads:

“GLOBAL PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT”

“On this date an astounding discovery will be revealed to the world

On March 8th 2003 something extraordinary will be posted on this site

Something that could have Global implications

Something that will make you want to rethink your future…”

–

In October of 2002, I was sixteen. My friends and I loved the spooky stuff. I was obsessed with Unsolved Mysteries. I’m not kidding, either, when I say that Unsolved Mysteries was my favorite television show.

The show’s sense of dread washed over my entire body each time I heard the opening notes of its theme song. Its masterful use of tone was leagues ahead of anything else in the blossoming “true crime” genre. As a rule, “true crime” shows aren’t scary, but Unsolved Mysteries was different. It scared you every chance it could. Not only with its “true crime” content, but with paranormal topics such as ghosts, cryptids, and so on.

For good reason, its theme song gets a lot of praise. The music that Gary Malkin composed for the series is leagues above anything else in this genre. This show has better music than most Hollywood-produced horror films.

Now, I can see that you’re doubting that this was my favorite show. If someone didn’t love this show to their core, would they have changed their AOL Instant Messenger screen name to “RobertStackLives” in 2003 to memorialize him after his death? Because that’s what I did.

The previous year, in 2001, I got together with my friends and we began making short films. The first noteworthy film we made was called “The Yeti.” The Yeti was a mockumentary style series in which a scientist and his team hunted for this monster.

I didn’t join the series as an on-screen cast member until “The Yeti: Tape 2” was produced later in 2001. My name was “Timmy” and I was one of Doctor Jacques VanStoole’s assistants who aided him in his mission. My performance was atrocious. I couldn’t stop looking at the camera or giggling through my lines.

–

In 2002, we started growing a reputation in our community for being “those kids that make those movies.” People started asking for copies of our work, we shared things with “friends of friends.” It went from there.

We made a lot of things over a four year period, but the Yeti was first “series” that we created and it has always been special to me.

Years later, in 2017, I was active in the Neocities community. Neocities is a website where you can create any website you wish, but much of the community is focused on nostalgic, 90s style web design.

That year I participated in a Halloween website jam project called “The Tapes.” A website jam is similar to a “game jam,” which are common in the indie game development community. In a game jam or website jam, you are given a set amount of time to create a product from beginning to end and publish it.

The Tapes was an ARG I created that told the story of someone who went by the name “The Collector” that found unsettling footage on some VHS tapes he came across. I used footage from the Yeti in constructing this story that was told across multiple websites. The story wasn’t anything spectacular and after a few months I stopped updating it.

The Website

Back to the website, the author goes on to say that they will keep themselves anonymous. A few months prior, they were on an amateur photo shoot through an unnamed mountain range. On this shoot they discovered a piece of broken glass, which came from a nearby camera. Upon further inspection of the camera, he can tell that it had been burned.

He wondered if this was done by a forest fire or if someone had burned it intentionally. He opens the camera and discovers that there was still film in the camera. He takes the film home and, despite some damage to the film itself, he was able to develop several images.

The author goes on to say:

“Nearly all of the negatives were color distorted. The images on the film sent chills down my spine. When I finally developed the photos and blew them up, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It made me wonder what the hell was about to happen on the planet!”

The author goes on to say that they begin to do research on “the net.”

He says:

“I used key words in the search engine - words that exactly described the images. That’s when all hell broke loose. After a few minutes the cursor suddenly started moving by itself, followed by a ‘whirring’ noise from the hard-disk. I froze with anticipation and by the time I thought to unplug the phone line it had stopped.

I had never experienced anything like this before, but I’d been told by a friend that if the cursor ever moved by itself and there was a ‘whirring’ from the hard-drive, they were the sure signs that indicated someone was hacking into my computer.

I picked up the handset to phone my friend. I wanted to tell him what had just happened. My eyes bugged with surprise as I heard a ‘clicking’ sound. Someone was tapping my phone. My gut feeling told me to get the hell out of the house.”

The author puts the pictures and camera in a bag, and runs outside and hides in his vehicle. While hiding outside, he sees a black van with tinted windows approach his home.

A man and a woman get out, approach his door and enter his home once they realize he had left it open. The suspicious figures spend about 20 minutes inside his home. When they leave, he slowly builds up enough courage to go back into his house.

When he goes inside, he can tell that they’ve been through his belongings. He notices that they left a message on his computer.

“We need to discuss why you used particular words on the net search engine this evening.”

“They’d left a telephone number and told me to call it the moment I got in. After going through my things and not finding anything, I presumed they’d come to the conclusion that my using the words relating to the images must have been coincidental. I decided to bide my time, not to make any hasty decisions. The film I developed clearly related to a top secret of some kind. I shuddered at the thought of their response if they knew I actually had photos specifically relating to what I was searching for on the web!”

The author goes on to say that he packs his bags, gets in his vehicle and run from this situation. Not long after, though, he admits to himself that he has done nothing wrong. All he did was search for something on the Internet. Why should he hide?

Yet, on his way back to his hotel room, he sees that the same van he saw outside his house was now near his hotel.

He assumes they tracked him using his credit card and heads to the bank to withdraw cash. There he discovers that his accounts have been frozen.

“This was big!”

He closes out the post by saying he has created a new identity and has a friend supporting him. He announces that on March 8th, 2003 he is going to reveal the photos to the world.

“I am preparing for a mass release via the Internet so that it can’t be stopped. It is imperative that all people, not just those open to alternative views, are made aware of this event.

Particularly the younger generation who represent the very future and survival of our world. That is why I have chosen to reveal my story and warning in such a novel way. I only use computers at Internet cafés. I do not remain in one city, state or country for any length of time.

I must keep on the move. I must not allow them to stop me or trace my whereabouts. I have set the date for the release in the future to allow time to build publicity. With the worlds full attention, these secret agencies or privately run factions cannot deny or lie to the public about what I will reveal.

I know there will be those of you who will judge this to be some sort of fantastic publicity stunt.

But remember, things are not always as they seem. Make no hasty assessment about this event until you have seen the images in the photos.

Reserve your judgment…until then…when all will be revealed. Then you can decide what is or isn’t real.

In hope for our future,HM”

Message boards around the Internet had threads dedicated to the website.

Everyone had an opinion about it. Was it real? Was it a marketing campaign for a movie? A new product? Was it written by someone suffering from mental illness? Was it a new trailer for “Matrix Reloaded?” Was it a computer game? A book? A new X-Files movie? The list goes on.

A lot of the speculation centered around the validity of this information. If some shadow government didn’t want this information to be public, they would take it down.

I was one of those people following on message boards. I didn’t know if it was real or not. I kind of hoped that there would be more to it than being some sort of publicity stunt. What I expected? I don’t know.

About one month after the initial post went live, a disclaimer was added, but we will get back to that later.

In the months between November 2002 and March 2003, things start to go all over the place. “HM” attempts to address why he is risking everything by waiting to post the pictures when he could just do that now.

He explains that he made contact with a Native American Shaman. When he goes to meet with him, the Shaman begins a prolonged series of chants. After this, he tells HM the date in which he needs to post these pictures on the Internet.

The Shaman says that the timing relates to “planetary cycles." He says that it would be his best opportunity to share this information. HM goes on to explain that he has no family in danger, as his wife died in an accident years before these events.

Things go even more wild from here. We learn that there is a “resistance group” inside of the agency that is trying to track HM down. He spends the next several weeks on the run. He goes from hotel to hotel around the country. He visits Internet cafes to keep in touch with his contacts over ICQ.

Anytime HM gets too comfortable, he realizes the agents in the black van are on his tail.

In his December 8 update, HM explains:

“There have been many questions from people asking me whether the images in the photos relate to subjects such as a meteor striking the earth, the planet X factor, the ending of a galactic cycle and the Mayan calendar, the melting of the poles, Armageddon, our solar system entering the Photon Band, a pole reversal, an axis shift and even an alien invasion.

Once the images have been released, people in high places will have to come up with some answers because it’s not something they can simply explain away and sweep under the carpet.”

HM continues to tell stories of his run-ins with the individuals in the black van. As March 8 comes closer, he starts to document the damage this is doing to his mental well-being.

“I haven’t slept much lately. I’d be in denial if I didn’t admit that this whole caper is stressing me out big time. Nightmares continue to haunt me.

Several times now, after finding enough willpower to leave my motel room, I’ve had to rush back because of panic attacks. Sometimes I find it difficult to get my breath and I break out in a cold sweat.

It’s as if I’ve developed some kind of agoraphobia. Even now, sitting here at an Internet cafe, I can feel the coolness of the beads forming on my forehead.

My hands are trembling with nervous tension. I keep looking at the entrance, expecting that crazy dark-haired woman and her bulky sidekick to burst in through the doors, ready to blow me away.”

A few minor updates are posted in the week leading up to March 8th. They don’t reveal much outside of generating excitement for the big day.

And then comes the big day, at 12:05 AM Eastern on March 8, 2003, the big reveal.

“TOP SECRET PLAN

CATACLYSMIC WORLD FLOODS EXPECTED

The photo above is from the heat damaged film of the burnt camera I found while hiking through a mountain range last year. The images are badly distorted.

This photo was clearly taken from the cockpit of a small plane. In the distance you can see pylons towering high above a forest floor in the valley between mountains.

The next shot shows some kind of gigantic ship sitting inside a steel cradle on a man-made plateau between two mountains.

"Why the hell has a secret faction built a SUPERSHIP on a man-made plateau in a mountain range high above sea level?

This could only mean one thing! They are expecting an event to take place that will cause cataclysmic global flooding.

When I first developed the photos I thought it was some kind of spacecraft. I then realized that the rail ramp construction is aimed “downward” into the valley, not “upward” to the sky. It would seem that the ship is preparing to roll down the ramp.

But Why?

This location is nowhere near the ocean. Clearly, they are expecting the seas to rise by hundreds of feet. The ramp continues down through the valley, obviously because they don’t know how high the waters will rise. That is why I am certain it is a sea faring sub-like ship.”

Unfortunately, many of the images published on this page were lost to time. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine backed up all the text on the pages. It also backed up some of the photos on the initial post. But, only one appears to have survived from the big reveal. The photos that survived do show a watercraft being built in a mountain range.

The photos are taken from an airplane that we are led to believe was shot down from the sky. HM says that the photos were found in Australia. HM ponders on what could cause this massive flood to happen:

“But what could cause this? A Meteor strike? A pole shift? An earth-crust displacement? The Earth tilting on its axis? An alien invasion? A massive solar flare? The near passing of another celestial body such as planet X?

Or… could it be something as simple as the stupidity of Man - the polluting of the world by our unrelenting consumption of the planets resources, the burning of fossil fuels, the felling of endless forests, the putrefying of our oceans and the depletion of the ozone layer?”

In closing the big reveal, HM says that the faction chasing him has created another website. They plan to use it to discredit the story he is about to tell. He reveals that the “faction” will reveal their intentions on the date of April 15, 2003. HM also says on that SAME DAY he will reveal the exact location where he found the camera.

So, we survived the big reveal on March 8th and now it is time for another reveal on April 15th. Could this be the day that the project associated with this story is revealed? Is this story somehow true?

So, like thousands of others on this day, my friends and I headed to 8march2003.com. It was time to finally see what this was all about.

And there it is.

The image of a novel. “The Shift of the Ages: Volume 1 - At the End of Time.”

All the hype, intrigue, and mystery was a vehicle to promote a novel by author Jean Neyemeth. It wasn’t real.

Remember that disclaimer that I referenced earlier? Less than a month after the website’s launch, on November 9, 2002, this post was published to the website. It read:

“Dear reader,

I want to assure you that this site has been posted as a piece of writing with purposeful clues and discrepancies to indicate its fictitious nature leading up to the release of …

Thank you for your overwhelming positive response. I have posted some of the emails that I’ve received during the last few months for your viewing.

The purpose behind this site is to create intrigue, fascination and interest leading up to what this publicity event is about.

I trust that (like many others) you will enjoy this journey.”

HM goes on to explain that he appreciated the interest this story was receiving. Yet, he’s concerned that people were taking it far too seriously. He wanted to calm things down so that people didn’t get themselves too worked up over it.

The Shift of the Ages is described as a “gripping” novel that will “change the way you look at your future.”

The beginning of the book’s synopsis reads:

“In the final moments before the turn of the last century, the world paused, held its breath and waited for the prophecies of the ancients to come true.

But nothing happened. Only a select few knew that the Gregorian calendar was out by twelve years.

Come on a fast-paced adventure about a man who is awoken to a memory from his distant past - a past that will take him to another place and time - a past that will reveal humanities potential future.”

The story in the novel takes place in the year 2008. This is a few years after the events that were taking place in 2002 and 2003 in the story we were witness to.

Further reading indicates that a lot of elements in the story center around something that garnered a lot of attention in the early first 12 years of this century. The Mayan Calendar that indicated the end of a 26,000 year galactic cycle that ended in 2012.

If you were around at the time, you’re aware that there were many theories about this year. They centered around how a cataclysmic event would occur. Most of them lead to some “end of times” scenarios.

The website states that the novel will include characters from the 8march2003 campaign. The website also includes several quotes from readers and publications about the book. Here are some of my favorites:

“It truly is the Matrix Reloaded of contemporary literature” READER

“It has the best sex scene I have ever read – enlightening, sexy, yet tasteful, all at the same time” READER

"…an absolutely brilliant thriller. Your tongue will be hanging out waiting for Volume Two ” DIANA WHALEY 3RPP RADIO

The website for the Shift of the Ages indicates that “At the End of Time” was intended to be part one of a larger story.

I’ve been able to discover that the planned name for Volume Two was “The Nexus Factor.”

The website explains that the book isn’t the only thing you get with your purchase. You also get a CD with the book’s theme song on it, titled “At the End of Time,” performed by Nemeyeth himself. Here is a clip of the song:

"At the end of time, loves all that matters. The power of this love will set you free. At the end of time, loves all that matters. At the end of time. At the end of time. At the end of time. So hold on to the dreaming, and spread your wings and fly. And we’ll climb to eternity, where our spirits can soar, side by side. At the end of time, loves all that matters…"

The End of Time

The book was published by a company called Wakeman Publishing. Wakeman Publishing itself is a trademark of a company called Omnivisions Global. This company is based out of Southbank, a neighborhood outside Melbourne, Australia.

The only information I have been able to find about Omnivisions Global is on the Internet Archive.

Their mission statement reads:

“As our company name and logo implies, it is our intention to produce projects that will ‘embrace the bigger picture’ of all ideas, opinions, creeds and beliefs, in our desire to play a small role in uniting and opening peoples awareness to the fact that we are all connected and are all part of the same human family.

We believe that humanity is approaching a time whereby we must open our hearts and connect with one and other, and truly ‘embrace the bigger picture’ of who we are and bring our focus to our highest potential.

We are a young company with big plans for the future. We look forward to your support and patronage as we strive to create new and exciting projects.“

They planned to release several books in the coming years. The genres they plan to focus on are fiction, self help, philosophy, spiritual and new age. They plan to expand into movies and music. On top of all this, they say they’re looking to creating a non-profit foundation to assist up and coming “writers, performers, inventors, and researchers in general."

After this, I began to do research into Jean Nemeyeth, the author.

The next time Nemeyeth would resurface in the world of literature would be nearly a decade later. In 2012 he would publish the title “OMG! Why The Hell Have You Forsaken Us?: Where Angels Fear To Tread” a book that is described as a “devotional dialog.”

This book is unrelated to the Shift of the Ages series. The Amazon page for this title does state that The Shift of the Ages is set for a re-release late 2012. The page says that Jêan is developing a CD of original songs and covers.“

The last thing to note about this second book is the back cover. It reveals that Wakeman Publishing is the who released this title.

–

As can be expected from the Internet, discourse around this reveal was rough.

Everyone had concocted these grandiose ideas of what this would lead to. It wasn’t hype for the Matrix Reloaded. It wasn’t a video game. It wasn’t a revival of the X-Files. It was a novel.

There’s nothing this publisher could do would be able to follow the hype train.

In 2003, Internet users were used to pirating everything. We didn’t have services that made accessing legal content easier. We opened KaZaA and stole everything. We weren’t ready for idea of investing in something on the Internet to have to spend money at the end of it.

Today, the landscape of the Internet is different. We assume everything we come across will end with them asking for us to pay for something. Want to keep enjoying this game? Purchase the season pass. Want to watch the TV show everyone is talking about? Sign up for your 10th streaming service subscription to keep up.

To be clear, I am not arguing that we return to the days where piracy is king and creators are struggling for to be paid for their work. I’m pointing out the contrast in the tech landscape of the two periods.

Twenty years ago, the Internet was the wild west. Above all else, it stood as this remarkable thing that helped us connect with others and explore our passions. These elements exist in today’s Internet, but the content isn’t the focus it once was.

ARGs, or Alternate Reality Games, weren’t big in 2003. When they did pop up, a lot of them didn’t generate the level of discussion across the Internet that this novel did. 8march2003 wasn’t the first, but it was the first that caught my attention.

If 8march2003 was brought into existence today, what would it look like? Would it be an ARG that spawned from Reddit or YouTube? Would it be the launch of an ad campaign for a book? Or would it be like much of the cross-promotional, tech bro trash that exists out there?

8march2003 makes me think of a period when our time on the Internet was almost pure. A cool website pops up on one of your favorite forums and you spend the evening theorizing with your virtual buds about what it could be.

Today, technology is a hellscape of content that is beyond exhausting. Everything is a part of something else. Movie franchises have to be exhaustive “cinematic universes.” Video games have to have endless IP cross promotion to get you to look at them. Every company now yearns to create a variation of a “metaverse” that puts you in a virtual world that throws everything at you in a more literal sense than the constant feed of content you receive now.

Play a video game. Select a seasonal character from that movie you loved as a kid. Go to a digitized chain restaurant in the game. Get a code for something free at the meatspace restaurant. Buy a drink at that restaurant and, quote, “earn” cryptocurrency. If you’re lucky you’ll win an NFT commemorating this month’s promotional sandwich. Make it stop.

8march2003 perfectly embodies what I love about old Internet. Even though it was a vehicle to promote something else, when that something else came out, that was it. The work stood for itself and wasn’t under pressure to be something that is constant. It didn’t exist to ensure that "engagement " metrics were strong. It just was. It’s what inspired me to make the website I made back in 2017. It’s what inspired me to make it the subject of the first video on this channel.

The overarching idea behind the publisher of this website and book was a desire to build up new artists. Even though it doesn’t appear as if they were able to achieve the lofty goals they had set for themselves, their creativity in using the Internet in telling their story is something that stuck with me and inspired me, even more than 20 years later when the Internet has all but forgotten about 8march2003.com.

I had a good childhood. My parents both worked hard and ensured I was well cared for and had what I wanted and needed. But sometimes things would happen that stuck with me. Things that would burn into my brain. One of those things was the fighting of my parents.

It could get really bad at times. My dad drank a lot and sometimes things would escalate beyond just yelling. These events are things that my siblings and I have rarely spoken about as we’ve gotten older, but I believe had a pretty significant impact on who we ultimately became.

These childhood experiences were the inspiration for the album “tmnt.wav.” Made up almost entirely out of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles material, this album is about a kid who uses video tapes of his favorite TV show to try to drown out the sounds of his parents arguing. The child eventually falls asleep and his dreams are a combination of the two things, the Ninja Turtles and the fighting between his parents.

I pulled from every 80s and 90s TMNT-related thing that I could extract music from. Throughout the album things go from upbeat and fun to dark and full of pain as the sounds of the parents seeps back into focus.

What seems like it will be a pretty silly vaporwave album ends up being something that is one of the most personal things that I’ve made. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out all these years later.

My company moved into a different office space in town in January of 2019. During our first week in the new building, employees from the office across the hall came out to greet us. One of the first things they did was tell us about the man they have seen out in the hallway.

Several employees started reporting strange occurrences not long after settling in. Several employees reported hearing things when they were alone in the office. Footsteps around them. Papers shuffling in neighboring cubicles. I myself am only one of the individuals who experienced this.

One day, I was having a one-on-one meeting with a co-worker in a conference room and was discussing a routine work issue. I was sitting at the end of a long, rectangular conference cable. My co-worker was sitting next to me along one of the two longer sides of the table.

While talking, something flies between us at a very high speed. It was about eye-level with us.We both noticed it and when I got up to pick up the item, I discovered that it was a small bead. The area of the room that the bead came from had no one or anything there, it was an empty corner. We both saw the bead fly between us and had I not had a witness in there, I may have never told anyone about it.

Another incident that occurred in the office involved two of my co-workers. They were the last two in the office one evening and were on opposite ends of the office space. One of them approached the other and asked if they were playing music. They told them that they were not and said they thought the other person was playing music. They both walked around the office and went into a large conference room. While standing in there they both heard faint music that was coming from this room. There were no devices in the room that music could be playing from. They couldn't identify what the music was, as it sounded muffled and distant.

The most recent time I had forgotten to submit a report and my boss sent me a text message reminding me that it was due. At around 9 PM that night I drove to my office to complete this report and get it submitted. Not long after completing the report I went back out to my car to drive home. I started driving down the hill by the office. Suddenly, a white figure is RUNNING from the side of the road and is going out into the road in front of my car.

I don't know if you've ever had the unfortunate experience of an animal running out in front of your car. If you have then you know the feeling of clenching up and preparing to hear a thud when you come in contact with it. I slammed my brakes and clinched up, preparing to hit it and when it reached my hood it disappeared.

I have had a handful of paranormal experiences in my life. This was the single most vivid and terrifying experience I've ever had. I have no doubt in my mind that there was an adult, human-like figure running towards the road that night. I had to drive to a nearby store parking lot to sit and collect myself before driving home.

The building that our office is in is only about 20 years old. It's near a shopping complex that was built in my small town only 30 or so years ago. Prior to this plaza existing, this area was almost only uninhabited forests. I am unsure if at some point in the more distant past there were people who may have lived on the land.

If you lived through the 1980s or 1990s in the United States, there's almost no chance you made it through that time period without hearing about the "Just Say No" anti-drug campaign. It was a huge PR move from the federal government at the time and it eventually became a phrase you couldn't escape. When you went to school there would be "Just Say No" flyers everywhere, when you went home you'd see public service announcements and TV specials involving your favorite cartoon characters repeating it ad nauseam. Your parents were saying it, your teachers were saying it, the President and First Lady of the United States were saying it. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Muppet Babies were saying it, the Flintstone Kids with popstar Michael Jackstone were saying it. Wherever you went, you'd find someone there to tell you not to smoke crack. There's a lot to be said about the Just Say No campaign, but I basically just wanted to use this as a preface to share a very short PSA from a person who played a video game character on TV.

Captain Lou Albano, who became famous for being a professional wrestler turned ringside manager throughout the 1970s and 1980s, did the voice work and acted as Mario in the 1980s cartoon "Super Mario Bros. Super Show." The show was primarily an animated one, but throughout the course of the episode you'd get live action segments featuring Albano as Mario and Danny Wells as Luigi. The show was what you'd expect from most late 80s cartoons more or less, except with a lot more Italian stereotypes. At some point during the show's run, Albano was asked to do a PSA following along with the theme of the "Just Say No" campaign. The 20 second spot looks like it was done in one take inside of a broom closet. My guess is that some producer at a TV station caught Captain Lou in a hallway and asked him to say whatever he wanted about drugs. He's wearing an ugly Mario hat and normal clothes. It starts out innocently enough, watch the video here:

The first half of the video says the usual stuff, people who do drugs aren't your friends, talk to a grown-up, etc. but with the last line it takes a very grim turn. "And if you do drugs, you go to hell before you die. Please." What. I personally don't know how you go to hell before you die, but jeez that sure is a heavy statement to throw at children from a character who uses leaves and mushrooms to enhance his performance. From what I can find, this was a promo done for a Philadelphia affiliate station so it likely didn't have to go through many hands to make it to air. They were likely just glad they got something using the star of one of the station's shows. No way in hell (pun intended) this would make it to air nationally. Long story short: if you have never done drugs in your life, you're good. If you have, though, enjoy spending the rest of eternity burning for your sin, you godless heathen!

Sometime in the late 1990s, my neighbor came over to our house and told us that Ames was on fire. They were a couple years older than I was and could drive and asked if I wanted to ride with them to watch it burn down. How could I refuse?

Ames was a regional department store that grew to prominence during the 20th century. With the bulk of its stores in the Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States, it’s possible that you may not have come across one unless you spent time in that part of the country. It was “the” store in my community for much of the 90s, until, inevitably, Walmart came to town. It wasn’t long after this happened that the fire occurred.

I spent a lot of time in Ames as a kid, mostly with my mom. She would take me there and let me buy an album on audio cassette. Even though it wasn’t much different from any other department store of its time, it was mine and I developed a fondness for it.

It’s probably why I enjoyed finding employee training videos from the store. I don’t think it exists anymore, but at one point there was a small “Ames Fan Club” online and they collected ephemera from the store such as this.

It was this community that actually inspired me to try my hand at making vaporwave music, leading to my first album titled “New Hire Orientation.” There are audio snippets from some of the recordings archived by this community used on the album.

Not only that, but the cover art for the album is a screenshot of the Google Street View outside of the former Ames corporate headquarters. It’s far and away the sloppiest work I’ve ever done in terms of production, but it got the job done and it got me into making music. I’m happy I made it.

I've been a late night person since childhood and anyone who routinely watches cable TV between the hours of midnight and 4 AM knows that full-length, 30 minute commercials for shady products are going to be on somewhere. Food preparation devices, cultlery, exercise equipment, cleaning devices, decorative items, etc. are among the products that you'd see people trying to push on you.

To talk about the art of the infomercial I have to acknowledge the very first pitch man that made me fall in love with watching these things…

Ron Popeil is a legend in the TV advertising world. His company has released a bunch of various products that remain on shelves in stores to this day. When I was younger, the most popular infomercial at the time was the program on the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie Grill & BBQ.

With it's use of catchphrases, throwing up large text to reinforce what they're talking about on screen "STICK TO THE DIET" "ABOUT THE SIZE OF A TOASTER OVEN” and an emphasis on just how easssssssy the 4 payments of $19.95 were, it's hard for me not to get caught up in it's hokey charm.

It also follows a staple of the infomercial format...not revealing the cost until about halfway through the show. It spends the first half convincing you that you absolutely cannot live without this product so that by the time you have bought in you don't really care about the cost and are dialing the 1-800 number.

They're always filled with awful and hilarious overacting and are generally pretty hilarious. I don't know what it is about them, but I've never been able to shake just how much I enjoy them. If I'm having a hard time falling asleep I can flip to a channel that is airing them and it'll lull me to sleep in no time.

After school I got a ride to my friend Will’s house. It is cold inside of his family’s single wide trailer. We went into his bedroom, which was near the front door of the home. Inside, Will is sitting with his legs crossed on his bed. He had been waiting on us to arrive.

A few months before this we had started our senior year of high school. It was November 2004.

He inserted the disc for Halo 2 into the Xbox that’s connected to a 19-inch CRT television. The disc tray closes and we arrive at the game’s title screen.

Will doesn’t rush through to the game’s start menu. He instead lets the title screen run for a few uninterrupted minutes. During this, tears begin to fill his eyes. The experience of turning the game on was so visceral for him that it brought him to tears. This didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I understand that he’s excited about this game, but I could not share in his joy.

The one time that being in the presence of a video game brought me to tears was Christmas Eve 1992. I was at my grandparent’s home and my family was exchanging gifts. I was six. My aunt handed me a Christmas present. I opened the gift and saw a copy of Darkwing Duck for the Nintendo Entertainment System. I lost all control of my emotions. My legs began to buckle and I sobbed as tears of joy flowed down my goofy little boy cheeks.

Halo was a game that I only experienced in group settings when I would visit friends who owned an Xbox. I would play a few rounds of split-screen deathmatch before my attention would wander. It was fine.

Before this, Will had written a story that my friends and I adapted into an artsy short film. I grew apart with Will not long after this. He started calling himself a “history buff,” except he focused on Nazis. He would brag about reading Mein Kampf to anyone who would listen.

–

Sixteen years later, I purchased my first Xbox. I decided to play the campaign of Halo: Combat Evolved for the first time. This time I wanted to play the campaign without having to also entertain others around me.

I’m glad I did, because this game is good. It is snappy, responsive, and feels as good as a modern shooter. Most of the time I play video games when my wife and kids are asleep, i.e. late at night or early mornings. I have conditioned myself to not value sound design much. I always play on low volume so I didn’t wake anyone up with my games. After purchasing a decent set of headphones, this is now my preferred way to play games.

For a game that is old enough to vote, Halo has excellent sound design and sounds alive in a pair of headphones. The game gives the player a strong sense of spacial awareness. It is pretty fantastic at playing music in the right moments to make you feel like a big deal. The game knows exactly where and when to play an orchestral banger. In turn, you feel like you’re doing the most important thing in the world. The music, in conjunction with the dialogue happening around you, elevates this experience. Everything clicks and feels full of life. It goes beyond telling you what to do and makes you want to do the next thing.

GB Burford’s take on combat in Halo sums it up better than I could:

“Halo has, for lack of a better word, a dance. There’s a specific rhythm, a unique cadence to Halo’s combat encounters missing from a lot of games. The combat arena in Halo is a dance floor, and the short range of your assault rifle is an invitation to get up there and dance your heart out.”

–

As the multiplayer for Halo 2 grew in popularity, my interest in the series waned further. I began to associate the series with the “bro” crowd. When imagining a 2004 bro a certain image comes to mind. I picture someone with spiked hair, a T-shirt with a tribal symbol on it and a burned CD filled with Seether songs. My emo ass didn’t have time for bros- I was busy writing for my LiveJournal and playing F-Zero GX. During this period I would tag along to Halo 2 LAN parties. Each time I was very much put off by the house full of 16–19 year old dudes that were playing Halo on many televisions. Thinking about it, could you even set up more than one Xbox to play together on the same local network? Should they have even described this event as a “LAN party” at all?

This wasn’t the only Halo 2 event in my life, either. I wrote a blog post on November 17, 2004 titled “Cause feelings mean nothing now.” In the post, I wrote “Tomorrow is our Halo 2 party, as well. That should be…interesting. There will probably be a person or two I really really don’t want to be there that are.” I do not remember who I was referring to in this vague post. Earlier in this entry I wrote about picking up my Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater pre-order. The post dated for the next day, titled “You’re still miles away,” noted that I was unable to attend this Halo 2 party. I skipped this event to play Snake Eater, which in hindsight was the right decision. The next fall I moved away and went to college. There was a guy in my dorms that embodied the definition of a Halo bro (Hay-bro? No? Okay, I’ll stop). We’ll call him Kyle. Kyle seemed like a nice enough guy on the surface, but over time he made me uncomfortable. The first thing about him that you should know is that Kyle was a racist heap of garbage. He was far more comfortable using the N-word out loud than someone in 2005 on a college campus should have been. He was someone that claimed to be interested in Nazis because he was a “World War II buff,” but anytime he would talk about this war he would only reference Nazi Germany and was super into Nazi imagery (What is it with Halo and Nazis in this story?). Kyle had a degree of confidence about him that was never warranted.

Years later I moved to a different town while still pursuing my Bachelor’s degree. I was working in a pizza chain restaurant. Kyle walks in the door to pick up an order and it is the first time we have seen each other in 4 or 5 years. He has an arrogant look on his face as he asked “You’re still not finished with your Bachelor’s degree?” He then informed me that he was in graduate school at the local university. He grinned as he carried his shitty pizza out the door. A few years after this, I saw him post on social media noting that he had been unemployed for over a year. To preface what I’m about to say, understand that I do not take joy in the misfortunes of others. You’d think that someone as smart as Kyle would have known the reality of how useful a Master of Arts in History is.

At his core, though, liking Halo was his personality. It was all he talked about. He would play it every available moment. To this day, he still posts Master Chief fan art to his social media profiles. Of course, those posts are mixed in with shitty right-wing memes challenging you to come and take his guns.

As the fall of 2005 progressed, I continued to distance myself from the series. I no longer feigned interest when the subject of video games came up and people gushed about how sweet Halo 2 is. I still did not own an Xbox at this point. Even as the launch of the Xbox 360 approached I still have no interest in owning an Xbox console. Despite this, on November 22, 2005 I waited in line for 12 hours inside of a Walmart with a friend when he bought one. No one seemed to understand why I did that since I got nothing from my time spent there. When we were finished we went to my friend’s house and had his sister transport his girlfriend home. We did this so that we could play multiplayer Perfect Dark Zero. I have not played that video game since that night. The following fall, I would spend even more time in line at the same Walmart waiting for a Nintendo Wii. While in line, we fantasized about how realistic it will be when I finally get to play Red Steel. I spent that night in 2006 playing Wii Sports until the early hours of the morning. I loved every game within Wii Sports outside of the boxing game.

–

Some environments in the game are very repetitive. You will see the same gray room that has a circular hallway around it far too many times in the second half of the game. It wouldn’t stand out as much if they put a bit more effort into making the rooms look different.

I love that the game forces you to be mindful of your ammo. It even has plenty of instances where you have to juggle weapons you find laying around to get through an area. It gives you just enough to get through most encounters. The downside to this is that the Covenant’s weapons suck. This has less to do with the weapons themselves and more to do with the fact that I don’t enjoy using “alien” weapons. Real world guns feel far more enjoyable to use over something like a laser assault rifle. My brain writes off “futuristic” guns as children’s toys that you would find in a dollar store. The shotgun in this game owns, though.

The worst part of this game is “The Library.” Research into criticism of Halo indicates that this level is infamous for being way too difficult. The level has Master Chief following a robot guide to your end destination. The problem is that there is a never-ending flow of enemies trying to murder you. The checkpoints in this area are ill-placed and unforgiving. Why do Flood monsters have damned rocket launchers? Can zombie-like creatures even operate a rocket launcher? Every time I saw a rocket launcher I quoted Metal Slug. The game’s difficulty ramps up at a natural pace, but this level sucks. I do think that part of my initial disinterest for the series comes from being familiar with PC shooters. Part of what made this game feel special was that it was a good first person shooter on a console. The touchstone console FPS games of the time were GoldenEye and Perfect Dark. These were good games, but they didn’t have the precision controls of a keyboard and mouse. The visuals were very muddy and had poor frame rates. I had played games like Half-Life, Quake III and Unreal at this point. These were games with precise controls, high frame rates and great graphics. There were solid FPS ports on the Dreamcast at this point, but the controls weren’t quite there yet.

I wasn’t the only one to have these feelings, either. Eurogamer’s review of the game from 2002 comments on some quality of life features as well:

“For starters, those of us weened on PC shooters may find it a little frustrating that you can only carry two guns at a time. As the game uses a checkpoint-based autosave system, if you find you have the wrong weapon for the job your only choices are either to run back to wherever you dropped the gun you really need now, or to muddle through as best you can. This was a specific design choice that would force you to be strategic and mindful in how you use your weapons. It wasn’t due to the lack of keys 1 through 9.”

–

When I transferred to a different university for my sophomore year, my contact with the Halo series died off. I wasn’t around people who continued to play games in the franchise. Many of the Halo fans that I knew in real life were edgelords, so I wrote off the series as something I would never like.

There are much better first person shooters to play in 2020, but this campaign is still worth your time. I am taking the narrative I had written about this franchise out of the hands of people like Will and Kyle. It is not a game for shitty bros; it is something that my melancholic self can enjoy.