A. Rose

Photo from gaiaonline.com

  A young man sat alone in a dark corner of the bar. As if in fear of its retreat, his hands were gripped tightly around a glass of brown liquor, sat atop a dining table. His appearance suggested he was a drunkard yet the glass he grasped, wet from sweat, sat shaking and untouched. Every instinct told me to stay away but my desire for answers compelled me to do otherwise. As I approached the suspect, the sounds of restless floorboards underfoot forced my breathing to betray my hazy bravado - born of caffeine and painkillers. Placing a cigarette in between my lips, I sat down in the chair across from him trying not to look terrified. His countenance now bathed in the light of my flickering lighter, revealed a man weary of his past. As I searched for words, the man’s gaze arose from his glass and met my own. Instantly I found myself robbed of speech. Red and swollen from tears, his eyes conveyed the nature of a man no more capable of doing harm than sprouting wings and taking flight. His gaze lasted but a moment but imbued my hands with the impetus to act.

  “Cigarette?” I offered, shaking a loosie from the empty pack. He made no gesture and spoke no words of contention as I returned the package and lighter to the breast pocket of my jacket still wet from the storm outside. Allowing myself to believe he wanted company I began to speak. “Do you know who I am?”

Nothing.

“Do you have any idea why I might want to speak with you?”

Still. Nothing.

  I removed the golden shield from my belt and placed it on the table hoping this would have the effect of dispelling his reticence. It was in that moment I realized my mistake. The man’s indifference gave way to panic as he lept across the table sending us both crashing to the floor.  The shot came from the heavy standing at the foot of the bar; whizzing by my left ear and striking the framed sports jersey on the wall above our table. Flinching for what seemed like an eternity, the eyes of the man atop me directed my gaze to the shooter. There he stood inebriated and blinking rapidly - apparently in disbelief of his recent miss. I recognized him right away as a local killer-for-hire and hated myself for failing to spot him when I entered. Urging me onto my feet, the man above me finally seemed to relinquish the truth as he stepped into to the path of the shooter’s second shot giving his life for my own. My heart raced as I removed my service revolver from its holster. It had been over 15 years since the academy and even then my aim had been far from true. Now at 47 and nursing a hangover, it would at last behoove me to be a straight shooter in more ways than one. I aimed down my shoulder as the bar’s patrons began to scatter and squeezed three shots. Mustering all  the strength I could to prevent my legs from giving out, I remained standing long enough to witness my handiwork dispatch first a nearby bar stool, then a bottle of scotch whiskey and finally my would-be killer. When the madness began to settle, I stood over the murder’s corpse holding what remained of my pride in the same hand as the broken bottle of whisky. “What a waste.” I whispered to myself. Discarding the bottle I returned to the stranger on the ground lying now in a pool of his own blood. His mouth hanging wide, I discovered to my horror why the man had not spoken a word this night: his tongue had been removed. Judging by the look of the scaring, it had been months since the procedure was performed. The events of the night raised more questions than they answered and I wondered now more than ever if the man who had perished saving my life was indeed the man I had been searching for these past six months. As the spirit fled his once tarnished face, I couldn’t help feeling that he had at last, in the finality of his death, found peace...

Review: Koi No Yokan

"The Deftones"

image from guitarworld.com

  Greetings! It's review time for the first time and this time it's music! The Deftones' latest studio album "Koi No Yokan" to be precise.

  It took me a while (sue me) to get my hands on this album but once I did, I didn't want to put it down. This LP is eleven tracks of harmony that are guaranteed to play in your ear buds for a very long time. If alternative metal is your thing (like it is mine) or if you simply possess a penchant for good music, then this stirring amalgamation of melodies and lasting tunes is just what your local "musicologist" (that's a thing right??) ordered!

  If you're already familiar with "The Deftones" then you'll be pleased to hear that band front man Chino Moreno croons his way to one of the best performances that I've heard in years. Unfortunately the album does not feature the musical stylings of long-time bassist Chi-Cheng as he still recovers from a near-fatal auto accident that occured back in 2008.

  Finishing on a brighter note, and seeing as this is the first time that I will be employing this review system allow me to familiarize you with it:

• The ratings are out of 3 stars
• 0 stars being the lowest and 3 being the highest with everything else crammed in between (tighter than my skills in symphonic jurisprudence...or something...)

So, without further delay it is my pleasure to bestow a humble:

The Deftones : Koi No Yokan (2012)
 

2.5 out of 3 stars

image from kalahari.com

 

"The New Guy"

Pope Francis I

(pic from toledoblade.com)

  It has been a year of firsts (well, kinda) for the Roman Catholic church so far in 2013. Last month we witnessed the ressignation of a pope for the first time in over six hundred years, and now we saw on Wednesday the emergance of the first non-european ponitff since Pope Gregory III of Syria held the top spot in 731. Now that all the commotion of seletciing a leader is (thankfully) behind the church, I'd say it's time we meet "the new guy".

  So who is Franicis I? Well for staters he was born Jeorge Mario Bergoglio and up until now, he served as Archbishop of Buenos Aires since inheriting the job from his predecessor in 1998. A native of Argentina, he was ordained as a priest in 1969. Francis is both the first Jesuit and the first native of the Americas ever to be elected Pope.

  Now I'm not the religious type, but even I had to admit that is was pretty riviting bearing witness to the events of the last few days as the Cardinals, the officals responsible for eleting a pope, remained completely silent about the entire affair up until the moment Pope Benedict XVI's selector was offically ready to be named (no leaks this time).

  Being a member of the Order of Jesus or jesuits, Bergoglio is known for his promotion of social justice, his work to improve the lives of the poor, as well as his displays of poverty. A humble man, it has been reported that the new pontiff, while serving as in his capacity as Archbishop, chose to forego his stately quarters in favor of a modest apartment which he himself paid for. There have has also been stories of him opting to ride public transportaion in his native Argentina as opposed to the more commonly seen chauffered limosine.

  It is in this regard that I wish more of the worlds religious leaders, or any leader for that matter, would follow in the example of Pope Francis I and indulge us with more displays of poverty and humilty. Trust me a little bit of chastity goes a long way. As far as I can tell, such acts can only serve to boost the church's image which would be as a boon for the Vatican after all of the bad publicity it's been receiveing in the last decade or so.

  After all, Jesus never rode around in a Mercedes-Benz, with his hands and neck covered in gold and jewels.. ( right??)

"SimCity Shame"

Image courtesy of "Electronic Arts"

It's been a while (over a year!) since I've posted on this page but I feel like what better opportunity to return to form than to comment on the brand new Electronic Arts reboot of the classic "Simcity" franchise and the great big cesspool of hate and disappointment it seems to have found itself floating in since its March 5th launch.

Let me start out by saying that unlike many other blogs and posts out there I'm not here to trash EA's new release (well not exactly). I am instead concerned about some of the comments I've come across in my research of the game, especially what I've been seeing from major video game reviewers such as Gamespot and others.

Although issues with server availability, subsequent game crashes, loss of data and a prevalence of systemic bugs have reduced what is, at it's heart, a dazzling display of programming ingenuity to a galactic head shaker, is it entirely fair to summarily slap this game with a reduced rating even before experiencing all it may (one day) have to offer?

A Gamespot editor recently reviewed this game at an 5.0 out of 10 (which doesn't really shock me given his brutal review of Resident Evil 6), thousands of people who have purchased it on Amazon.com have resorted to giving the title the web site's lowest rating: 1 star out of 5, and it seems amid the chatter on "SimCity's" facebook and Twitter pages, even die hard fans of the series have forsaken the American based developer once and for all.

My opinion? I've taken to adopting the wait and see approach to many games today, and this release will be no different. In the past five years or so, I have become an avid PC gamer so it hurts me to see such ambitious efforts such as "SimCity" flounder upon it's release when it could have stood as another jewel in EA's already impressive repertoire including titles such as the "Madden" franchise, the "Dead Space" franchise, and of course, we can't forget about "The Sims"!

My advice to fans of "SimCity" whom haven't abandoned ship and still hold out hope for a day when the game (finally) achieves full functionality is to look to Diablo 3 as it too had to deal with similar lauch day issues concerning a ubiquitous Internet connection requirement and "DRM".

Amidst all of hate posts and controversy I am fairly confident this fiasco will soon find it's resolution and all in the world will be as right as rain (ahhh..).

Although, taking into account the outrage concerning a lack of offline functions coupled wih a seemigly growing facetiousness in regard to EA's tackling of the concerns coming from it's fan community, something tells me that this publisher's PR problems are far from over...