Welcome to the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE – OL’s weekly show-and-tell session. I’m going to give you a peek at some of the bits of entertainment that’ll keep me from swearing off our oppressive society, giving away all my worldly possessions, and then fleeing to the wilderness so I can die in a van.

After reading about the destinations of my entertainment-excursions, you’re encouraged to hit up the comments section so you can show off your own itinerary.

Let’s rock.

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The fine folks at  Adult Swim have used an unreleased track from Mastodon’s  Crack the Skye as the soundtrack for one of the best videos I’ve seen in a long time. You’re guaranteed to love it – unless, of course, you don’t like puppets, gunshots, monsters, UFOs, robots, explosions, or metal.

And if that’s the case, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.

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Come one, come all! Join the frenzy! This is the Monday Morning Commute, the little niche I carve for myself at the beginning of the work week to tell you about my tentative plans for the next few days. After you read about the nerdcore endeavors I’ll be undertaking, hit the comments section with your own course(s) of action.

Are you going to spend every night drankin’ beers and reading Lord of the Rings? Are you going to finally apologize to the mailman for assaulting him during a caffeinated rage of blinding proportions? Are you going meet your Internet girlfriend at a shady bowling alley? Let us know.

But for now, take a peek at what I’ll be doing.

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Narrative is the most powerful tool on the planet.

From personal anecdotes to sprawling epics of adventure, storytelling is the means by which the human race has made sense of existence. Which is important, because the human condition, when one takes the time to really break it down, is nothing short of baffling. We are evolved primates, cruising around the sun on a space-rock that hits 67,000 mile per hour, using technology we don’t even understand, and participating in societies founded by our ancestors. It’s goddamn insanity.

And I love it.

But what really gets me amped is the idea that art can help dispel the notion that the universe is nothing more than a giant abyss of nothingness and meaninglessness. It might be — I don’t know, I’m neither a philosopher nor an astrophysicist. But as I get older, I can’t kill the feeling that there are greater forces at play than I can ever possibly conceptualize or articulate.

Before words are put in my mouth, let me forewarn: I’m not declaring a newfound belief in God or revelation about the afterlife or some shit. My agnosticism is strong. What I am saying is that it’s pretty heavy to think of how much our lives can be changed, directed, and enlightened by stories. And what’s even heavier is the fact that, whether by clandestine design or sheer coincidence, there are connections amongst the storytellers, the viewers, and the content.

I have ascended The Holy Mountain and can attest that it is a strange, wonderful place.

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To the two or three people who actually frequent this site/blog/source of banality and vulgarity, it may be apparent that we’ve been more quiet than usual here. With the daily LOST ramblings taking up a vast majority of my mental capacity, I’ve been shying away from my usual comic book and video game ramblings.

This is all compounded by my sorry ass starting graduate school this week. And it isn’t to say I won’t have time for OL, but rather I’ve been thrown off my schedule and I’m trying to cobble together something that approximates functionality. I’m like a tard, yes a tard. If you alter the time that I’m supposed to eat my bologna sandwich I start to freak the fuck out.

I’d like to provide some programming notes, if you will.

• Monday Morning Commute comes out every Monday. It’s where I tell you what I’m digging. theoretically, you join in the fun. It’s slop, and vapid, but what is the internet for, if for not slop and vapidity?
• Remember That Time On LOST will be ending on the first day of the new season. However, I’m going to kick off This Week on LOST, so we can all gather around after the episode and speculate and masturbate. This will be posted every Wednesday.
• Variant Covers, the weekly round-up of superhero vomit dropping onto comic book shelves will be returning next week. This will be posted every Tuesday.
• Images & Words, Pepsibones’ comic book pick of the week, is a Thursday operation. I think he didn’t post this week because he was busy sculpting animals out of body hair and paste, screaming at the sky that there is no escape, only lateral movement. This will be posted every Thursday. [Update – Pepsibones managed to stop shaking his fist & screaming at the “Bearded Sky-Man” long enough to post this week’s Images &Words]
• This Week On 24 will start today, and continue to be posted every Tuesday. This show sucks.
• Friday Brew Review still comes every Friday, because Pepsibones is an alcoholic.

Other than that, party on. I’ll still be posting general impressions and reviews of video games I’m rocking out to, references to latex tentacle porn, and immaturity. Strap-in.