Tired today, man. Currently supine. Battling fatigue and a stomach stuffed with staggering tumult. Am I a diarrhea that dreams it’s a man, or a man that dreams he’s merely a flesh-bag filled with diarrhea? I’m not sure, I’m not sure. What am I sure of? This week contains multitudes, multitudes of various arts and farts I’m looking forward to enjoying. These arts, these farts, they are an Existential Ripcord. I need merely let my excitement yank said cord, and rip me through the miasma of malaise my rolling tide of brown-churn and soul are currently sunk in.

It is my mandate as the curator of Monday Morning Commute to list these arts. To high-five these farts. It is your mandate as the consumer (be it by accident or be it by accentuated agency) to list what you are sweating this week in the comments section.

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CaffPow Introduction: Wracked in the Wasteland is Contingency Plan’s journal, detailing his trials and tribulations as he treks through Fallout 4 in Survival Mode. Good Sir will be posting it on our Facebook page first, which he helps maintain. And you should Like. Afterwards it will be cross-posted here for those of you who only frequent the Space-Ship proper.

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I’m going to do my best to comment on each photo as I tried to capture each interesting moment as I try to accomplish anything on Survival mode.

Overall, completing this quest was insane. It took me 10 minutes to siege Corvega just to gain entrance. I had to take the upper ramp of a highway and slowly plink away at the raiders. I was in desperate need of food and there was a fire nearby, but I couldn’t cook because I was in combat…the battle raged through the night (game time).

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I say goddamn!, I’m glad it’s the weekend!

For numerous reasons. Oh, today marks the first day out of the past eight where I’m not dealing directly with my grandmother’s day. I say goddamn!, I’m glad it’s the weekend!

Oh, it marks the beginning of my glorious Cheat Days, where I can stuff my face with catastrophic amounts of calories with no guilt.  I say goddamn!, I’m glad it’s the weekend.

Oh, it marks the beginning of a laundry list of Dope Shit I’m planning on watching, reading, playing.

I say goddamn!, I’m glad it’s the weekend!

So why don’t you join me here, at Weekend Open Bar. The column where I implore all of you denizens of the Space-Ship Omega to gather, to hang out. To share the various things that are causing you to “I say goddamn!, I’m glad it’s the weekend”, with me, comrades.

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Monday Morning Commute.

Sorry for radio silence over the weekend, comrades. Had a bit of a weekend, comrades. Early Friday morning, my Nana sloughed off the mortal coil, and transcended meat-space. At the same time, I was stricken with the most staggering stomach flu I’ve ever had. Violence, friends. Violence erupting out of both ends, friends. By the time early Saturday morning rolled around, I was down a final grandparent and a literal seven pounds of fluids.

Monday Morning Commute.

As I told you last week, comrades. We’re all riding shotgun with Entropy. Such it is for all of us, and neither my Nana nor my quivering flesh-bag could escape it. Can escape it. But she had a good run, 95 years-old. And I merely had the runs, 24 hours-long.

No matter. No worry. All flesh decays.

Monday Morning Commute.

The column wherein I enumerate the especially enlisted distractions designed to glaze the gears of the existential engine during a given week.

Join me in the comments, comrades. Partake in this parade of particularities with your own choice cuts.

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We’re all riding shotgun with Entropy.

That’s the long of it, the short of it. Celebrated the Fourth of July twice this weekend. Once at a friend’s apartment, who I consider to be family. Once at my family’s house, who I consider to be friends.

Me, my friends, my family?

We’re all riding shotgun with entropy.

The Universe wasn’t paying much attention to our celebrations. Too busy housing Everything. Too busy searching for that sweet, sugary Heat Death at the end of it all. Expanding endlessly until it won’t.

Me, my friends, my family, the Universe?

We’re all riding shotgun with entropy.

The wife I married, the dog I love, the friends I cherish, the family I belong to, the Universe that carries me.

We’re all here until we’re not.

We’re all riding shotgun with entropy.

I don’t know what to make of this, other than to appreciate my wife, walk my dog, hang out with my friends, and stare lovingly at the stars when the nights permit. This isn’t profundity and it isn’t resignation.

It’s a shrug and a smile in the face of the Absurd. What else can I do?

We’re all riding shotgun with entropy.

This is Monday Morning Commute. The column where I slather onto this particular digi–space all the items, all the miscellany, all the bullshit that I’m interfacing with on a given week. You know, when I’m not staring into the raging chasm of Void and Stars, condemning the tragic mistake that is self-awareness, while simultaneously praising the Cosmic Joke for stumbling into giving us clowns self-awareness.

It is my optimistic encouragement that you’ll share what you’re up to this week in the comments section.

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Welcome, friends. To the Extended Weekend Open Bar! Carrying us through the Fourth of July. For those of you lucky enough to have a long weekend, salutations! For those of you unlucky enough to have to work either this Weekend, or the Fourth, salutations anyways! I imagine there’s going to be some seared-flesh breath being aspirated at the computer screens and black mirrors as you folks hopefully join the Bar. Contributing to the camaraderie on the Space-Ship omega whenever you take a break from doing your duty of celebrating God’s Finest Creation, America. By consuming animals, hops, and igniting conversations at cookouts and fire-based sky sparkles.

If you don’t know, the Weekend Open Bar is your virtual one-stop for shooting the shit during the weekend. As Head Czar of the Space-Ship, I encourage one and all to share what they’re up to. Share the animal-flesh you’re going to sear in supplication to George Washington. Share the movie you’re going to see, doing your American best to prop up our economy. Share what you’re reading at the beach. Whatever you’re doing, join in.

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How many narratives can you fit into your skull, concurrently? How many narratives can you ingest whole hog, before the sheer volume of whole hog-narratives begin to compromise your enjoyment of each one of those narratives, individually? It’s something I struggle with, if no one else does, on a daily basis. The amount of comic books that drop on a given week worth reading, just the ones you know about, are aware of, is staggering. Then combine those titles with an entire month’s. Then combine those an entire year’s. Then combine those with all the movies you watch, games you play, television you ingest. Narratives upon characters upon tropes upon motifs upon subtexts, forever and ever, twisting and writhing in on themselves until they’re one anxiety-inducing pastiche of memorable immemorable moments. Granted, that’s if you, like me, place value on doing something other than simply ingesting. If you dare yourself to pause, if you dare yourself to find the time to pause, and reflect upon what you’re consuming. Slamming shut the consumer-gullet for but a moment and attempting to dig your fingernails into the meat of the mess.

What does this have to do with comics? Comic books present the clearest ideation of this problem for me. Week after week, what should be enjoyment, presents itself as an onslaught. Eat all these narratives, Ian. Mash them in mouth, swallow them whole, then try and find the will to remember the story lines and the energy to poke around at the edges of the comic books’ themes, ideas, et cetera.

What’s the alternative? Read less, more. I suppose. But even then, the gnawing sensation that I’m missing gets me. What’s the alternative to the alternative? Consume wildly, recklessly, not pausing to appreciate, but rather viewing the Stack as something to be conquered.

All of this is to say I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed with the Comic Book World, but hey. I’m here.

This is Buy These Flippin’ Comics!!!. The (theoretically) weekly column where I list what I intend to purchase on a New Comic Book Day. Provided my anxiety can be contained, that my medicated moat staves off the Enormity of It All. Per usual, hit up the comments section with your own purchases. My list is by no means all-encompassing, or reflective of a “Best Of TheWeek”, but rather the titles I’ve stumbled across. TL;DR if this list sucks, please help me by pointing out what I missed.

Don’t know what dropped this week? Here’s the list.

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I don’t know if its a #HotTake (I’m using that ironically, but also like, not ironically, which as a Millennial means I’m leveling up and moving towards post-irony double-irony, and will soon go up in flames due to self-immolation sponsored by douchiness), but I don’t like summer. As a regressive, progressive techo-fetishist, I prefer the dim blue-wash of a computer monitor than the scorching midday sun. I prefer the blowing of an air conditioner to the blowing of dank, humid, Massachusetts air. For the most part. For the most part! But when the sun sets, and a deep blue hits the sky, I’m sold. Sold on the summer. It’s momentary, but it’s something I seize upon with dog and leash. Seize upon with foot to pavement. A nice walk. A nice night.

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Salutations, comrades. This is Monday Morning Commute by way of Tuesday Late Evening. Greetings, friends. I apologize for the tardiness, I’m just. I don’t know. Busy? Tired? Tired and Busy? Busy and Tired? Sure, sure. But if I’m being doubly honest, and let’s admit that I’ve written for nearly seven years an embarrassing amount of personal information, I’ve been a bit maudlin about OL.

Pillaging the archives makes me yearn for the days of commenters gone by, of days that were grad school, filled with too much caffeine, and a head full of ideas. I miss the folks who have drifted, I miss my own initiative.

What can you do?

Sally forth, I suppose. But it’s tinged with nostalgia when I know some of the old folk ain’t gonna comment.

What can you do?

Sally forth, I suppose. But it’s tinged with melancholy when I’m penning this shortly after grading papers for three hours, and shortly before I must slumber.

What can you do?

Sally forth, I suppose.

I’m still here, dammit.

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Western Civilization seems to be flinging itself to pieces in 2016, friends. But unfortunately, Professor Faber, we can’t stand back from the Centrifuge. We’re stuffed inside it, together. It’s hard to believe, maybe it really isn’t happening, who knows. I live a Privileged Life, stuffed in a suburb in a leafy part of the Empire. It’s easy to believe, maybe it really is happening, as I work with students whose tales make me blanch, make me grateful, make wish I could do more. I don’t know. I know few things and understand even less. What I do know, what I do believe in, are what Vonnegut urged us to create. You know, I believe him when he said that the “daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured“, and that is why Weekend Open Bar exists.

Across the two-dimensional plane of the three-dimensional Metaverse within one small speck of the omni-dimensional Universe, we can gather. Spend the Weekend together.

It’s small, and its minute, but it’s what we got. If we’re lucky.

A conjuring of a hopeful gathering sparred on by words and technologies and expressions.

It’s small, and its minute, but it’s what we got. If we’re lucky.

So join me, this Weekend, friends. Let’s shoot the shit about what we’re up to. The food we’re eating (so much goddamn pizza, so much goddamn ice cream), the games we’re playing (DOOM and The Last of Us), the books we’re reading (Nemesis Games). Anything and everything, really. Here aboard the Space-Ship Omega is an attempt at generating one of them communities. ‘Cause Space is cold, Life is Short, and it All seems to be better when spent with kind, like-minded individuals.

So join me this Weekend, friends.

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