Official NaNoWriMo Announcement

It is officially September 1st, which makes it the unofficial start to Autumn with pumpkin everything, and hot, rich S'mores, but it is also my unofficial start to the NaNoWriMo season. NaNoWriMo has become a very rich and engrained tradition for me, but this year, as opposed to last year where I failed miserably, having taken an entire year of unwarranted breaks and hiatuses, this year, officially, I return to writing, and it will begin officially with writing for  NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month. Since my mother had passed so suddenly, I found it nearly impossible to write, and that's mostly because she was the rock upon which I grew my mountain of work, that feels as shallow as a molehill now that she has left this world. Now, I want to dearly honor her memory and prognosticate my writing capabilities by doing NaNoWriMo yet again, and completing an entire novel in 30 days. For those of you who have followed my NaNoWriMo past experiences, you know. That I usually go above and beyond the 50,000 words, and approximate 90,000 words or more of the total of s full-length novel. Now, I don't normally do second drafts, as I read, re-read, and ignore later flaws that can be fixed at any given time, but the first draft is typically my quasi-final draft. 

       This year is going to be big, it will be my fifth attempt st NaNoWriMo, and my fourth win if I pull it off. I was ashamed with myself for missing last year's NaNo, but this year I plan on truly captivating envy major change in my life, while also focusing greatly on character development, but making sure to build up a solid, albeit, believable story for these well-rounded characters to play in, while also not losing some of the absurdities that make my storytelling so unique. 

       October will be the month I officially sit down and start planning my NaNoWriMo story, but for now, I'm just making an official announcement that I will exorcise any past hells that have kept me from reaching my goals, and that I am coming back to write this story that needs to be told, and told by none other than me. This means I will be returning the NaNoWriMo journal where I track my progress on here day-to-day. I will also be making sure that I am active in either forums or through the website. 

  For now,  I thank everyone for reading, and I will see you all in late October. I go on vacation soon, so most of my writing will be minimal. I know I'm posting late, but it's something I felt obligated to do, in case people where wondering. If I've died or something. Thank you all again for your support. Follow me st mcasteditorisl.blogspot.com! 

I Once Was Lost, But Now I'm Found...Reaching Through the Fog.

 

    I've lost my desire to write. For years, all I did was write, on this blog, privwt oh, just typing away, and wcheiving nothing. Today, I feel broke, the enthusiasm to even type here has been lackluster. Honestly, I rather have idle hands right now, perhaps to cry into, perhaps to choke myself from this farce dream of becoming w writer. I feel lost, confused, and tired, so very tired. Like Desth reaching out to slap som esense into me, tell me I have more to live for, more time to find love, I find myself longing solitude and sperwtion from everyone and everything. 

      Writing, penning something, anything, and finishing it, would be a miracle.  As Malacast Agent, I've written a great deal for years, and I mean years. As I grow older, I don't reflect, or take anything into perspective, instead, I think, I find myself losing what I had, and that's life. I hate msture, well, I had to grow up someone quickly, and I think I'm doing what is expect of me right now. I don't feel like I'm alive, but that will just make dying easier they say. Truthfully, we are all dying, we are all missing something in our lives. 

       Maybe I'm spent, maybe I spent years of my life accomplishing nothing, and I'm okay with that, so long as I don't keep repeating the same issues. Sure, some will enjoy what I've done, some will be thankful to see me stop what I've been doing for over a decade. 

      I literally was posting a story weekly, then monthly, finally, I've not published in nearly s year. My mother dying, it hurt, it made me hurt harder than anything I've felt before, it reminded me of that death-cry I gave when I had my first splinter. As a child, that's usually the first time you ever feel true piercing pain. Losing my mother was like my first splinter, but I'll never lose another mother, so long as I live. My mother died, she's gone, likely forever, and I'll never see her again. I can come to grips with that, and some say I shouldn't think in such a way, but it's true. She's gone. I suffer, and like most men, I'm expected to suffer alone, but luckily I haven't. 

   Still, I hate feeling vulnerable, I hate asking for help, but all I ever had was help for my whole life. Even my writing, if she hadn't pushed me, if she hadn't not built up my interests, I'd likely be something far worst than what I am today. She made me come out of my cocoon of downtrodden sociopathy. Coming out as bisexual helped a bit, but I'm still learning that being truthful to myself, and to my family, it doesn't mean I'm better from everything else in my life. Perhaps every progress I make is lined with some apathetic retreat back to what I believe I should be. Little-to-no faith in myself, hence I come back to writing. It's always been the safe home, but I cannot create. Her not being here....it's blocked me, and I feel lethargy towards the whole damn process. I've written more books than most people who publish write in a lifetime. I was built to write, I was built to observe the species called man, and all his flaws, and the fairer sex that suffered for it. Men, women, and animal all suffer because we are truly the least capable animal on this planet. And yet, I admire what we do to escape reality, like our ancestors that carved mammoths from wood, and played with them like toys, we escape through world's we I wish were greater than our own. 

     Hence my reasons to reviewing games so often, and books, games before screens could be mwniullwt d, words were there to manipulate images in our mind.  So I've been gone to the world for a long time,  and I still don't know if I'll ever truly write again, albeit this is not a story, or fiction, but it's writing....I suppose. 

      I guess I'm back, I guess I'll be writing again, maybe reading again, maybe living again, piecing my world back together, but all I know is that I miss writing, I miss making up stories that hundreds of people have read, unprecedented to me, and it's a shame I didn't take off and carry forward, but I have a job, a potential career as a cashier, and that's not terrible, in-fact, it feels comfortable, and safe. As safe as a linen-lined lead casket, cemented in the earth to house me for eternity. I'm back, that's all I know, and it's as scary as my first post, it makes me think I'm no longer what I was, but that's fine, so long as I didn't loose a piece of myself somewhere in this self-proclaimed annihilation. 

I Should Be Writing: A Writer's Workshop: Exclusive Mur Lafferty Interview

      

                                        

 The incomparable Mur Lafferty has written a new novel called I Suould Be Writing. The nonfiction piece shares the same title as her world-renowned podcast about writing, and the bushels of writers she has interviewed over the past twelve years.  She is one of the rising stars in modern fiction, having written The Shambling Guides to New York City, Ghost Train to New Orleans, and Six Wakes, her most recent book. Writing s book about writing is something different for her, but with the rlease date fast approaching, I was generously awarded an audience with her via phone, and was blue to get an exclusive interview about her new book. 

     Being a fan of Mur's work, and having read Six Wakes, I knew that she was a modern authority on all things writing, working harder than most to break into the always volatile writer's market. I Should Be Writing isn't like every other style book on the market. Look elsewhere for to the likes of Strunk, or Bradbury, or even Stephen King for a discussion on such matters. Mur wanted to talk about herself,mane how she wasn't always the writer she is today,mother she wasn't always writing day-in, and day-out like some of the greats, and how she knew going in, that this wasn't going to be another book about writing, it was going to be a book about actually sitting down, and writing, and just how difficult that sometimes can be for so many "wannabe fiction writers." 

     I chatted with Mur, and asked her just what her newest book would entail. This is a transcription of our discussion. ML standing for Mur Lafferty, and MA standing for Malacast Agent:

      MA: The first question I thought of about the ISBW book that seemed obvious is how will the book differe from the podcast?  Will the information be different, or will it be taken directly from the podcast of nearly 400 episodes?

    

      ML: It's going to be very similar. It's better thought out, and I use the concept of the 'muse and the bully.' The muse being the inspiration, and the bully being the editor who sits on your shoulder and tells you your writing is crap.  I use them peppered around making little comments. Where [the book] is different is I give a lot of prompts, and s lot of writing exercises. It's part: "I Should Be Writing" in a book, but it's also part journal. There's also going to be blank pages, so you can make notes in, and write directly in the book as I understand it.

    

    MA: Which company, or publisher are you working with for this book?  I know someone approached you, rather than you forming a proposal for the book and having it be accepted.

     ML:  The publisher Quarto approached me, and we got the deal made. The book will be out before school starts in August, so hopefully it will be s good gift for people on their way to college. 

    MA: Cool! So it'll be reactively soon for the book to come out then?

    ML: Yes, the book will be out on August 22. 

MA: what is going to happen to the podcast after the release of the book?  Are you going to use the book to reference the podcast, or are you going to change the formula of the podcast? 

ML:  I haven't planned on doing anything different. I do hope there's some cross pollination with my listeners that will want to get the book, and my readers would like to check out the podcast. I don't know if I should change then podcast or not, I probably should decide if I'm going to change the podcast or not. I don't see it changing too much, I do have that wider awareness of more people going no to be paying attention to it, I hope. 

MA: So you're going to stick with the old axiom for now?

ML: It's  worked for me for twelve years, so I probably shouldn't mess with it too much. Actually the book will be coming out about the twelve year anniversary of I Should be writing, I just realized that!

MA: Congratulations to that, are you thinking of doing a special episode for that then? To celebrate the anniversary of the podcast? 

ML: I always, always forget to do a special episode in ISBW, for its birthday in August, or my own personal podcasting anniversary in Decembeer. I always forget to mark them. 

MA: I'm sure that Ditch Diggers is also having it's anniversary fairly soon. It's the two-year anniversary   correct?

ML: I wanna say that we started that earlier in the year, I think we started that in January I think. [Matt Wallace and I] are on episode 44 right now, but we've only recent,y started to get a good regular biweekly schedule. 

MA: You're  about to publish two books in one year, which is difficult for any writer nowadays, so how does that impact your writing method going forward, and does this give you more leeway to try out new ideas? 

ML: Because the books were done months and months before the came out, my part was largely dine, except for promotion. I'm not big enough to send on a book tour or anything, so I don't have that distraction. I've actually been free to write lots of different stuff because I have the luxury of "not having a contract" right now. So that's both freeing and scary, because I can write whatever I want, but I have no actual work. It's nice to just try out anything, whatever comes to mind, which is what I'm trying to do.  

MA: Are you then going to try to keep pace with doing two books a year?"

ML: That's  all the decision of publishers, I don't have that much control over the books that I publish. I'm not that sure of a thing. I don't know if I send my editor a book, they're going to publish it. If I did get a book deal now, it won't likely come out until another 18 months. If I could do two a year, sure! I'm just trying to get contracts to sell. 

MA: They say by the fifth book is when you start seeing the payoff, and by all definition you have now become s sort of veteran to the publishing industry, as you say "I'm still learning" every podcast, but what will you then take, going forward that you've learned from Six Wakes, and ISBW book, how would you take that in the approach to writing your next book? How will it change the way you write going forward? 

ML: I'm going to try and have more confidence in my work because I honestly had no idea whether Six Wakes would work, or not. It's been by-and-large my most well-received book, except for one bad review from Kirkus. Overall it's been very well received,mane the book I've had the least confidence in, so I need to start trusting myself more. That would be the biggest lesson that I've learned: I may not be the best judge of my own stuff. If my agent and my editor, and my readers tell me some thing is really good, I should listen. 

MA: So it's more an internal thing, you're going to try and change that within yourself? You're going to approach it with a more opene-minded, confident approach. That will change the writing aspects of your work for the better I'm sure. 

ML: Very likely! Just having the courage to try something new is going to change things. 

MA- How will the ISBW book differ from so many current writing memoirs on the market?  How do you separate from such famous memoirs like: Bradbury's Zen and the Art of Writing, King's On Writing, and of course Strunk Jr.'s The Elements of Style?

ML: Well, On Writing was a major half writing style, half memoir book, and I don't have a long description of. Y addiction, and the intervention my family had to do to get me out of it in mine,mbut I try to bring to the book is what I bring to the podcast is honesty and vulnerability. In-fact, back in 2005 I had another nonfiction book that was about podcasting. When I tried to write about things I did incorrectly, saying "look, I tried this, and it failed I suggest you do something else. " my editor didn't like it because it made it sound like I didn't know what I was doing, when clearly I knew exactly what I was talking about, because I learned something from experience that I was trying to put on stage. But they wanted experts to always be experts I guess. I tried to show vulnerability, and show that a lot of authors go through a lot of the crap new authors go through, which can make it seem really depressing depressing, and the imposter syndrome never goes away, but it can also be comforting that every other person doing their job the same way you do inside, they're just hiding their emotions better.  I haven't read Zen in the Art of Writing in a very long time, but I'm pretty sure Bradbury didn't talk about his vulnerability and lack of condifence, and that's what I try to touch on. 

MA: I always felt Bradbury spoke almost prophetic about it,min-that you have to be vindictive in your writing, you have to write every single day, do all this, and do all that, but I feel that was him just prostrating  towards the generalization of what writing is, but I did find more his discussion of growing up in Illinois to be the better part of that book. 

ML: While being open and vulnerable is not necessarily a memoir, I just talk about years that I didn't write, and that's why I started the podcast, so other people wouldn't go through the dry spell I went to for so long. 

MA: That seems to be the differential then,mbecause most people who've written the memoirs and style books,mother tend to go straight into it,meow to do it, they don't talk about not writing as much, and so that is likely where you're going to have that sort of confidence orlack-thereof.  Now you said in a recent podcast that they're not going to do s Six Wakes  sequel for a while, it's going to be on the back burner for a while. 

ML: Right, the editor didn't want a sequel to it. It's not my call, i certainly would like to, I have an outline for it, but it's not my decision to let another publisher take it or not, that very clearly on somebody else's plate. Would I like to? Definitely! Is it going to happen? I have no idea.

MA: It's  only because it seems today that the sequels always sell the prequels, that's why I was shocked that they didn't want to do it, and that they wouldn't want to jump on the opportunity of a sequel, and feed that fire. By the time it went through production into publication, your talking already well over a year out from it even potentially getting published. I'm absolutely shock they wouldn't want to do that. 

ML: It's a weird beast. 

MA: What are your ideas for looking forward? I know you said it's not necessarily your call, and you are just going to put some ideas out there for publication, and hopefully you'll get s deal, but are you thinking of doing a fiction after this, or a nonfiction again? How do you feel you're going to approach the potentiality of getting published after the I Should Abe Writing releases?

ML: I'm definitely going to stick with fiction ISBW was specifically focused towards my podcast, and I'm not sure what other specific skills I have that I would write s while bunch of nonfiction books, and I much prefer fiction. Although I will admit the nonfiction was easy to write, I've been talking about this sort of thing for twelve years. I got s couple of books I'm working on is, throwing around ideas, focusing on Science Fiction, and humor. I have s few proposals out as well. A couple of novella ideas. I am very wide open and brainstorming a lot of stuff. 

MA: With Six Wakes, you've done a cloning facility aboard a humongous ship carrying a huge population of humanity out into the wide trek of space, and also made this huge ship seem very small by adding a locked room murder mystery aspect. This bit of maneuvering on  your  part has made crafted quite an original story. So what other genres would you like to pursue, and is there a genre outside of Sci-Fi you'd like to do something risky and unique, to perhaps "redefine" said genre so-to-say.  

ML:  Well you really like to dabble in mystery. I did a lot of mystery reading to prepare for writing it. I've been doing a lot of mystery reading in the Agatha Christie way,mane not in the modern mystery thriller way, which has a lot more weird elements going into it. I'm not saying that's a bad thing,mom just don't think I can get my mind to work that way,mbut it would be an intestine challenge to try. I also like writing humorous, contemporary women's fiction, doesn't have to be for women, but primarily stars women. That's something I wouldn't be adverse to doing in the future. 

MA: Going back to the book,  you give me some examples of just what readers can expect from  I Should Be Writing? 

ML: I do touch on craft, but s good deal of the book is about getting out of your own head, and understanding the publishing process. I talk about why you would make more money over three years working s minimum wage job, than a $100,000 contract over a trilogy, there's that math.  There's also the explanation of what agents  do, as m aynpeople say you don't need agents anymore, which is very damaging, especially to upcoming writers. Veteran writers say they don't need an agent, and good for them! They don't understand the industry, but there are other reasons to have an agent, especially for new writers. I talk about that, and I mainly tell people whatever they're feeling, it's okay, and it's not a reason to quit writing. Whatever they're imagining is the reason to quit writing they're likely wrong. They may be write, but they're probably wrong. 

MA: Definetely! I like that about the podcast as well, that you take everything with a grain of salt. Yeah, you're going to get a lot of rejection, a lot of returns, but that is the nature of the beast, so-to-say,as you pointed out. 

ML: Yes. 

MA: Where can people purchase the book? In what formats will it be availed?

ML: Right now, it's availed in eBook, and print versions, not sure about audiobook plans. I would love to have an audiobook planned. 

MA: You've done the audiobook for Six Wakes entirely by yourself, You've as the whole thing, correct?

ML: Yes

MA: Wow, that's a lot of work!

ML: it is a lot of work, and extraordinarily tiring. Nobody expects that just to sit and read aloud for hours and hours. It's a great deal of work. 

MA: I have recently purchased Six Wakes, and found it to have amazing dialogue, and sound, well-developed characters, and in a locked-room setting, that is crucial to the success of the story. How did you approach that, because I always found that intriguing that certain writers can almost become their characters, and others just have these swampy, salty half-written characters with little personality. 

ML: I appreciate  that, and I'm not certain I can give a solid tangible answer, it's important to make sure that every character is coming from a place of wanting things,mane they all have different reasons for what they do. It's sounds kind of elementary, but that's where I get started, where people are coming from, what they need, and what they want.  It's also important to  know how they all fit together, and how they all feel about each other. This is a trick I learned from working with Book Burners, and working with the cereal box team, it's making sure who everybody is, and how they relate to one-another. Just one person thinks they're friends, and other isn't so sure, and that can really help flesh out a character. I just try to make sure they have personalities and are relatable." 

       

MA: You speak about promotion a lot,mane how you're going to have to now go out and promote the new book I Should Be Writing, Doyle speak about promotion in the new book, or is that more a Ditch Diggers topic? 

ML: Yeah, I didn't talk about promotion much in I Should Be Writing. 

MA: I k so, that probably would be more of a Ditch Diggers concept than ISBW. Which then leads me to pose the question: would you say, in five years or so, if you're still doing it of course, be interested in doing a Ditch Diggers book?

ML: Oh I'd love to! But doing a Ditch Diggers book would require I Should Be Writing to be a success, but I would love to. I know Matt would be up for it. 

MA: I think that would be a great co-author book, you and Matt play off each other very well on the podcast, and that would translate greatly to the book format. That's why it's such a success, and Is up for a Hugo award. 

ML: Yes, it's up for a Hugo this year, voting ends soon, and we'll know the results in a month. 

 

NOTE:

As of August 15th, Ditch Diggers did not win the Hugo, but Tea and Jeopardy instead won. 

MA: Last,y, is there anything I -particular you would like to mention about the ISBW book? What would they not expect? What is in the book, without giving too much away, that people would simply not expect from a writing memoir? 

ML: The weird thing about having a twelve-year-old show is not knowing how often I had repeated myself, and so people may not know how long I've been writing,mane how long I've took a break for, I think the real surprise will be the writing prompts, as I don't do them in the show, and those kind of things. The good part of the book is dedicated to giving you new ideas to run forward with and create. 

   I have to thank Mur for her valuable time, and to say thank you for such an insightful interview into her newest book. You can preorder I Should Be Writing: A Writer's Workshop right now on Amazon.com. The book will release Tuesday, August 22nd, and already looks to be gaining some motion. I'm very interested in seeing the success of this novel, as it has a great deal of information behind it, and a treasure trove of history from the ISBW vault. 

    

 

E3 2017: The Shame of Games

Xbox E3 2017 Briefing

Revealed Scorpio to be "most powerful console, ever" and renamed the Xbox One X. 

Forza 7 racing, revealing Porsche 9-11 GT 2 RS

Game will have dynamic, living environments that change, with weather, debris, and living, moving backgrounds that change/interact properly with night and day aspects. Over 700 cars from brands like Lamborghini, Ferrari, Porsche, other large racing brands. Most technically, and comprehensive racing brand. 

XBONE-X Specs

6 teraflopGPU clocked at 1.172Ghz

12 GB of GDDR5 memory

326 GB/s of memory bandwidth 

True 4K

8million+ pixels

HDR High Definition Resolution 

Wide color gamut

Premium Dolby Atmos sound

4K UHD Blu-Ray playback

Backwards compatibility all XBONE accessories and games work on XBONE-X. 

Claims games in current library will look, and play even better. 

Uses technique called "supersampling", games rendered in 4K improves 1080p output. 

Scorpio engine most advanced console processor ever. 16 nanometer technology to build a 360 square millimeter chip with 7 billion transistors, and 384 bit wide memory bust.  Liquid-cooled vapor chamber.  Optimized power management. Smallest Xbox ever. 

Games revealed: 

Metro: Exodus

Assassin's Creed: Origins

Player Unknown's Battlegrounds major announcement/update

State of Decay 2

Major Minecraft update, and 4K resolution updates, larger in-game servers as well. 

The Darwin Project

Dragon Fighter Z 

The MMORPG: Black Desert

The Last Night

The Artful Escape

CodeVein

More gameplay and details on Sea of Thieves

Tacoma

Super Lucky's Tale November 7th

Cup head September 29th release date 

Crackdown 3 November 7th  starring Terry Crewes

Osiris: New Dawn

Raiders of the Broken Planet

Unruly Heroes

Path of Exile

Battlerite

Fable Fortune

Observer

Robocraft Infinity

Dunk Lords

Minion Masters: Forced to Duel

Brawl Out

Ooblets 

Dark and Light

Strange Brigade

Riverbond

Hello Neighbor

Shift

Conan Exiles

Ashen or Aswen

Life is Strange: Before the Strom, three episodes, EP 1 out August 31st. 

Middle-Earth Shadow of War

Ori and the will of the wisps

Expansion of backwards compatibility of Xbox original titles, all older games will look/play better on Xbox One X. 

EA's Anthem ended the show, game will release in 2018. 

There was information on Mixer, and trying to show off how it will be better than the likes of Twitch and YouTube for competitive gaming perhaps? 

Bethesda opens up with children talking about their parents who work with Bethesda, and their affiliates. It was definitely different from most other press conferences I've seen. Bethesda E3 showcase. 'Bethesda-land'.... like an awkward Fallout 4 opening, Pete Hines, Global Vice President PR of Bethesda. There is a look back at Doom, Dishonored 2, Prey, and of course Fallout Shelter 100 million users. Fallout 4, and Skyrim:Special Edition. User mods for console players. Bethesda VR Doom V.F.R. Fallout 4 V.R. Elder Scrolls Online More than 10 million players since 2014. Morrowind new expansion. The marketing was quite impressive, rather funny with the discussion of the bear, and the guy who felt like he was fourteen again. New guilds, and old returning. Horns of the Reach. Mammoths coming soon. Clockwork City, steampunk style. The main game is available now. Elder Scrolls Online: Battlegrounds update. Mods made available to consoles last year. Big announcement on mods. Creation Club. New game content for Skyrim and fallout 4. new crafting, housing features Use credits to download, and it will instantly be inside the game. All content is made from Bethesda Softworks, so it will work with everything saved, currently on your existing game. Elder Scroll Legends. Card game based on Elder Scrolls. Elder Scroll Legends:Heroes of Skyrim 6/29/17. Skyrim coming to the Nintendo Switch, not necessarily news, but being the best example of mobile Skyrim makes the system interesting. You can add Zelda mods, which is kinda cool using Amibo. Sure this was doable with mods, but if it is Nintendo mods precisely, that's pretty impressive. Dishonored Death of the Outsider 9/15/17. New game from the Dishonored Universe. Quake Champions eSports update. Quake World Championships Quake Con August 6th in Dallas Texas. 1,000,000 prize pool. Quake.com for Beta play. Game about a guy named Sebastian who lost his daughter Lily. Game looks like a mixture of psychological thriller, horror, and noir. Kinda comes off like Death Stranding in presentation, but it's entirely different, in-that it looks cultist, and the place is a forest, instead of an oil-covered beach. lots of white paint-like stuff. The Evil Within 2. Friday the 1th October 2017. Strange old-school advertisement that looks a whole lot like a strange crossing of the sound of music and mechanics. odd. like a big machine in Liesel, and Little House on the Prairie, but it looks to be a Germany-WW2 won dystopia. A super intelligent monkey-cat. guy wakes up from a coma, named William. He and his wife are having twins. German Nazis hunting him down, KKK members there as well. Nazi soldier getting strawberry milkshake. Revolution in America. Wolfenstein 2. The New Colossus. Weird cartoon chameleon thing. Guy dropping acid while pregnant woman stabbing Nazis. Sony Press Conference EA Press Conference Battlefield 1 New Update Fifa 2018 Need For Speed Payback gameplay A Way Out Co-Op splitscreen. You have to play with a friend, or online. it forces you to play co-op. Game starts in a prison. One player can be in control while the other is in a cutscene, meaning the cutscenes run in real-time. SO it's basically a prison break that forces you into Co-Op, so good luck ever trhying to finisht he damn game. Early 2018 release date. Anthem NBA Live 18 Star Wars Battlefront 2 There will be a bunch of free games to play all the rest of week, such as Madden, Battlefront, and Garden Warfare The game will have a full offline story mode for Star Wars Battlefront II

   So I sat badk and watched the major press conferences, and also read the general consensus of the gaming community. Many saw this year's E3 as a total waste of time, and see these games, and new consoles as nothing spectacular, but barely keeping up with the times. Granted, most games aren't really even new or world premiere titles,,although many of them were fairly new to me, most were not s surprise. Ironically the biggest surprises I saw were from Nintendo, and with the announcement of a metro id Prime 7, a Rabbids and Mario crossover, also restated in the Ubisoft press conference, which I will do later, there weren't a wholelot of big winners out there. Ever conference was lackluster it seems by the general opinion, but I felt Sony's pr so conference was nice, and elegant, however, it wasn't nearly the showstopper I was hoping for the big winners of last year's press conference to do. Their biggest announcement may be that there was some expansion DLC for Horizon Zero Dawn, or Uncharted The Lost Legacy. Most of everything else shown was already old news. God of War, Detroit: Become Human,Days Gone, and even the bug Spider-Man revel wasn't all that big, as they hinted at it last year. To be fair, Spider-Man is great when you're three years old, but he's far from the best character Marvel has to offer. Still, the game looks like a more interactive version of a Tell-Twle title with about as much excitement as a ten year old's sugar high wet dream. It doesn't interest me apnearly as much as the new video of Days Gone, but Sony still hosted the best press conference, but the other guys made it very, very easy to win.  Sony literally showed the exact same line-up, added some drama, and it was still better than anything new or relatively new that Microsoft or Nintendo came up with, and if you think that Scorpio engine is anything more than outdated out of box, then you're living in a pipe dream my friend. The shadow of the colossus remake also was a bit under enthusiastic, as HD remakes came out for PS3, bundled with.Ico. 

       Sony didn't impress me that much this year, but I wasn't surprised, it's too early for big title releases, and most of the major announcement won't be until late October. Marvel Vs Capcom Infinite looked so terrible, I may just cancel my order of it, and the story mode looks so dull, filled with writing a child would call sophomoric, I may just switch over to Dragon Ball Fighter Z. 

        Overall, Sony won, but by the skin of their hypothetical teeth,  I was very unabashed by how terrible their conference was, and quite frankly, I agree that perhaps too much emphasis is out onto E3, and the fan as going to cheer for these underperforming games are just sheep with no true opinion on what they want. Even as a study sample, they fail to just boo shit that comes up on the screen. The VR stuff however, looked okay. Especially with Skyrim in VR, and Fallout 4 in VR, still seems like less for the player, as though they've all plateaued. New IPs are not coming out in AAA status, all indie games seem to be the new AAA, and that's fine to an extent, but I always state that I buy a system that is ultra powered to play the best of the best games, not some two-dimensional games that could run on my SNES. Game are ruining games, and people in the industry a sinking their own ships. It's sad to say that perhaps people should really just agree that the best years of gaming are done. Remember, Skyrim is now being remade in VR, and on the Switch, and the game is over six years old, will be seven once it reaches the new mediums on which it will be played. 

         Nintendo, which announced a new Kirby game, four player it seems, a new Yoshi's title, which does look nice visually, but introduces going behind the stage to flip it, a 2.5 D style, and the new Rabbids and Mario cross over game that is a tactical turn-based strategy, it seemed Nintendo at least has the balls Sony used to have in trees of taking risks. 

       Ubisoft is considered a strangely big indie company that most people have heard of, but also have never played one of their games. Most Americans don't do, nor care much for Ubisoft as a company. Assassin'sCreed is likely the only game franchise they know developed by Ubisoft. Maybe Rayman, but most other things go down the toilet and flushed out to Europe and Canada. Far Cry 5 is however, a more exception than rule situation. Far Cry is a u inquest shooter that tends to rely more on story, survivalist tactics, and is a staple of many gaming homes. Still, Ubisoft doesn't really I press me, not even yearly, nor with their biggest titles. Their Skull and bones concept sounds very boring, in-fact, it is a prettier version of Seaf Theives, but with less options, and more money spent on compsers than talent. Ubisoft looks to continue the dredge of what is a bad E3 year, and I think that most people are too scared toactiakky speak their minds. I know how much work goes into making games, but to call things out as poorly executed, mismanaged, and downright bad from conception to the end product is going to help games get great, not shittier as they have over the past decade. 

     Overall, the bigger announcements, like Monster Hunter, went really that big of a deal for me. I wanna see more multifaceted games, not with one major theme, but also not something that's all over the place.   Nothing really stuck oth for me, although I'm excited to see what happenes after E3, as huge announcements come out almost year-round. This was more like Pee-3 than E3, but maybe that's one me for holding it to such high expectations.  Overall, it was a shame, a very sad shame, even the Internet came together to piss all over it, as though we've all been trolled. Also, if anyone buys South Park: The Fractured But Whole ( a game supposed to be released November 2016, now posted for release October of this year.) you're part of the problem. Also, everyone should just give up on Kingdom Hearts 3, by the time it releases, it'll be as wasted an effort as The Last Guardian was, and remember, Kingdom Hearts 3 was supposed to be released nearly ten years ago, keep that in petrels five.  

Felled Oak: a Story of the Month Exclusive from the Malacast Editorial

         Prior to my mother's passing, most who follow this blog knew I was up for having April's Story of the Month. I had just started writing this story: Felled Oak, designed to be a fantasy-driven drama. It was to be slightly like a horror story, and in many ways, horror has become a sad shadow of what it once was, and few masters still cling on today. So I was a great deal into it before my hiatus, and I've done my best to write it as intended. 

        I'm not making excuses for whether or not this story is "good"; the point is that although I'm not picking up from where I left off, I will have the scheduling  prior to when my world had personally gone to shit, I will do my best to get back on track, but I couldn't leave this story unfinished. Not that it's special, in-fact it had no real significance but to just be a story...but now, it has taken on a life in-itself, and I felt it would've been wrong to just toss it aside like some unfinished dowry of begotten memories. I hope everyone enjoys Felled Oak, which is a bit of The Secret Garden, a bit of Bradbury, and just a hint of loss. Thank you for your ever-amicable patience, it does not go unappreciated.  

       Just outside the daffodil's petal, a bee buzzed in with an onslaught of black and yellow pollen-soaked bristles. The air, it was cleaner than anything young Jillian had ever smelt, as though it was fully of fabric softened winds that cooled down the heat of the growing sunshine. Jillian had never seen a bee so full of pollen, nor smelt the pollution-free sort that the mountains spewed forth like mouths of wisdom spattering the Earth with puritanical cleanliness. 

    The world was so large in the finite perspective of the tiniest organisms, crawling, flying and swooshing about with magnetized misdirection.  Her parents figured it was time for the young girl to witness the other side of living, the rustic, rural outdoors when her great grand mother had left her parents a shaded little cottage house that looked like one of those fancy gingerbread  houses she and her mother Mary had built for the Christimas raffle at the local church last December.  She was fascinated like a babe looking off to the world again with refreshed eyes not weary of  knowledge, but ripe for sponging up the knowledge of the supple brim to the chalice of the universe itself, and she drank it all in until her eyelids squished closed full of joyous tears. 

     The suburban vehicle that father had recently purchased for the long haul trip, and to replace the family minivan that Jillian had been raised in with toys, and other play things while her favorite show had played over and over again as she went from toddler to the knowledge-thirsted child she had become the past three years. She was practically six years old, her birthday just hours away! She had been so excited as six was the year she would start big girl school: first grade, where the knowledge that simmered behind all the fabric-laced folds of both the mind, the leaves at her brow, itching he forehead, and the birds serenading with grand composition. 

    Yet, her story wasn't about great-grandma's cottage, or how she was merely a month away from the August heat to fry September leaves a bronze-like  ember of glistening sparks in the tree line. No, she had so long, so many long years to ruminate on all of those feelings. Instead she had ran out into the feed with the endless energy a child has at such a tender age, where attention spans fail before intense exhaustion, and yet, that little bright ball of questioning energy that was Jillian had stepped across the ravine, the ice-cold water and slippery, algae-covered rocks were smooth on her feet, a welcome relief that summer embraces on the soles of both the weary and the rugged. 

   The cumbersome giants loomed like hair follicles over the grassy mountainsides, hoping to stay whole for the next winter's frost. Jillian was like s wild flower sprouting legs and spreading joy throughout the forestry teeming with the sounds and scents that lit her nostrils in a fury. She had a majestic sapling spew forth natural sucrose with w splendid candied flavor flowing about the bark. There were frogs mimicking her, as they leaped from lily pad to rock, their sustenance and equally squishing slipperiness as they bounded about with refreshing attitudes. 

    She made sure not to venture too far from the sight of the tree line, as to keep the miniscuke cottage at a sprint's distance. She had noticed her father smoking his pipe on the porch, but he had then retired to unpack their week's worth of luggage from inside the house, into the vanity in their grandmother's room. She too had passed away prior too,mane she too had settled about the house with the dust of sealed doors. Jillian swore she felt her grandmother's presence bounding about the old cottage as the scent of raisin cookies had come out of cold stoves. 

     Still, she out that aside, and frolicked with rabbits, toads, and the occasional field mouse with the beauty of Eden about her gaze. Her purity was as natural and free flowing as the windswept trees had shivers,mane the rocks heat up with the shun's help. Feeling the courage that only comes with a misunderstanding of imminent danger, Jillian cent deeper into the woods, occasionally looking back to see the house growing just a smidgen smaller,mane a smidgen closer to being covered up by dark green leaves at their prime. 

       She kept on jumping and playing as she slowly begun to notice her a forest friends we're no longer around her, and the shade from the leaf-heavy maples had now shaded her more than was comfortable. Still feeling brave she slowly walked about the golden rays of the sun bursting through the forest canopy, like spotlights of gold Turing the grass a yellow star shine. 

  Nervousness kept her from turning around, for hopes that no monsters or beasts were afoul band begging to make eye contact so their prey would die with white fear in her eyes. Instead she continued just a bit further until there was a great opening where the trees had not connected. 

      In front of her was a great oak trunk, wider than their new SUV, sand etched on it was a face, something like s natural engraving caused by thousands of years of life, and the sagging of sn untimely death as the tree had looked to be downed by w lightning strike, yet how could that be? Even as a young girl, Jillian knew that sure,y a fire to erupt about such a tree would've spread outward and destroyed the very area she had walked about just now! Yet there was the half of the tree trunk toppled over, charred to the bare pulp, and still, the surrounding trees had not even a smudge of ash, or a trace of a bruise upon their bark. They stood taller, as though the tree she peered upon now as t struck down by a force of God, but assassinated and Jillian felt she had now come upon a crime scene, a dark,mane dangerous prospect that had her slowly doubling backwards from the way she came. 

       Baring the wrath of whatever monster that may have been stalking her, she turned around eyes closed,mane slowly opened to see she was just alone in the clearing.  She was about to trot back towards the house,mane think nothing else about the scene she ad u covered, but a whisper of air had almost spin her around like firm hands about her shoulder, and slowly turning her like the wind-up of a music box....a gentle song began to play in her mind. The clandestinity of the song was in and out, as though it was moving back-and-forth throughout her head. 

      "Don't go child. Stay." The voice was there,Mir spoke proper English, and it wasn't imaginary, like her best friend bob the three-headed unicorn that like mocha lattes. No, this voice was as soft and gentle as a baby bird fon a breeze leaving the nest. She wasn't sure if it was going to lift her up to the heavens, or drag her down to the rocky hell of broken wings and shattered spines. However, the voice was real. 

      She wasn't as scared as she figured she should become, but instead she prepay for another statement to carry on the wind, and so she closed her eyes, and turned back to the dead tree stump.  For a good minute, she stood looking at the strange face that leered from the stump, and could almost hear the other trees laughing, tossing back their branches in great bellyaches over the prune-like wrinkled stump. There wasn't much moss on it, but climbers that seemed to come out of the center of the hallow stump, this gave the face a more diet gunning feature of a full-fledged face like acting out the part of hair. Jillian just could not believe what she was seeing, but the face, frozen by sheer reality, had slowly begun to move. She tried her best to look away, she tried to submit her imagination to the far reaches of her deepest subconscious, but there it was, still muscling out a word. 

  "Good." 

    Now she was certain it came out of the barked lips of the tree stump. The oak had spoken to her, and Jillian now as very nervous to muster up the courage to turn about and run back home, leaving the tree to babble on without her ears to listen. But she could not turn, her fear was too great. It was rooting her feet into the soft peat moss, and she had caught her heart from fluttering out her throat when she swore that there was a sensation of her slipping down into the earth. She wasn't, thankfully, it was merely her feet being crawled upon by a regiment of ants, and she gently shooed them away with a hearty, but nurturing shake. 

     "Dearest child, I have felled but a century ago. For generations....I've grown, to the greatest of heights, I saw the world around me for miles in all directions. If I were to have grown taller than my piqué, I would've seen the ends of the universe, and thus the beginning of everything!"

    "Oh my!"

    "So now my child, there is an offer on the table, and if you hesitate, the moment shall pass, and the opportunity will vanish like a tulip's hue in the talons of the first frost. Do you wish to hear of your destiny, or turn away as so many others have done?"

     "I'm just a little girl, I...I don't understand what destiny is...is it bad?" Jillian crossed her legs, and with a child's embarrassment blushed at her own fragile, innocent ignorance. She knew a tree shouldn't talk, but so many miracles were said to have happened, was this not one...or perhaps it was an omen, a terrible festering of evil in that tree's discordant demeanor. 

    "Destiny, my child, can be a foreboding peril, but life itself is a game of surviving the day, waking up to the first magical breath of the morning. So yes, it is bad, but unabashedly wonderful, magical, and tales are written of those whose destinies entwine with magnimity! You child! You will become a primer for all of tall tales and folklore! So will you leave the dour life of some pestilential mortality, and join the others who have sought the fantastic splendor of the forest?" 

    Jillian may not have understood all that the felled oak had said, but her tiny wisdom was enough to catch the gist of what the tree wanted, and it wanted all of her. Her youth, her life, her family, and most importantly her very existence. Why would she give up everything? Why would leave her parents? Yes, a tree spoke to her, and didn't she learn in Sunday school that the prophets spoke to burning bushes, doves, and even the forests from which they had wandered searching for divine guidance? 

   Yes, but hadn't damnation came from off the forked tongue of a snake to toss Adam and Eve from eternal Paradise? Jillian began to wonder if destiny by definition changes, and if someone, or something else bestows it upon you, is it now not destiny, but consequence? 

     "You're trying to tempt me...'lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil' is not just poetry, but a decree! Sister Margaret says so! I will not be tempted by some promise that is just a dream! You are trying to offer me something shadowy, sunny words for fiery curses!"

     "Insolent child! I offer you what I offer anyone that beheld my corpse! Plantations stem from my roots,map reading throughout the world! I can offer you only glad tidings! Joyous fulfillment that this mortal world only gives to the select few with nepotistic ties, and ghastly amounts of resources. You will suffer and struggle in the world of man, I've seen it! From my highest heights, I've seen Caligula masticate the heart of Rome, following behind him the destructor of Rome! I've seen kings slaughtered thn fiefdom in droves! Tell me: what will humanity off you as a mortal female? Will it not offer you up to indentured iTunes, always hold you as second-class, will it not stifle your very voice if you ever dare speak out of turn? These question, my dear; are rhetorical."

      Jillian understood most of what the tee was saying, in her short time on Earth she had learned a great deal of the atrocities of the animalistic nature of man, but she had also learned Beethoveen's Fifth Symphony, asserted her will in mock senates, and was read from storybooks that had transposed most of the horrors that the felled oak spoke of, and knew that humanity changes. 

     "You're wrong, Felled Oak! You have been on the forest floor for too long. Humanity changes, rights past wrongdoings. Man may be manipulative, it may be greedy, but I will learn a great deal of man's greed, and it may grow to sicken me entirely, but you too have what I've heard described as a hidden agenda as well!"

      "I cannot deny your young, passionate logic, but even so, your still ignorant of so much. Yes, life is never black-and-white, but to whom you speak now is not offering you a date with destiny for personal gain. I'm stuck here, on this mossy carpet of lichen and algae, bugs are my eternal itch from which I may never scratch. You have little to fear from a dying oak, where not even a sprout can recuperate out of that hallowed-out stump. So pick your path, young Jillian: go into the forest, and meet your fate, or go home and live the mediocrity that women of your culture will be forced into, and become a maid, where you could've been a great warrior, or an enchantress. You are only but a child for so long, the depth, the core of your life from henceforth will be determined by this very moment...good luck with the burden to which your future shall carry!" 

     A mist rolled in, and the skies darkened. Ahead of her there was a dismal path, just like the one she first entry to reach this opening in the canopies. A bright red light shined,  a lavender purple tint surrounding the nearly-tempting passage www a crystal ball. Into the depths of the foliage, she could see a strong, powerful woman riding the back of a monstrous stag. It reared up on its hind legs, as the woman charged forth with an army of forest life following behind into an evergreen hell. Wolves, bears, and giant cats clawed and scratched against demonic black forces that seemed to shimmer out of time with the rest of the natural world. Jillian saw the presumable future version of herself holding tight reins of swampy vines, a sword fashioned of slate, and s shield of oak and tree pulp binding it all into s mesmerizing sequence. 

     She knew everything in that purplish mist seen was to be taken as truth, for the forest does many things, it plays tricks, even coerces the eyes to have the mind follow the archaic magic of the wild and make the most irrational, and primal of decisions. Jillian turned her eyes away, squeezing tight the shutters so not even a peep could be seen of the growing, glowing gloss of that shrouded passage into the heart of the marshes. 

     She turned and saw a golden glisten of the natural sunlight, and there was the image of her life in the mechanical facade of man: she saw her parents, smiling, hugging her, and suddenly flashes twelve years later where she is over the coffin of her father, dead so young. Her mother a widow wrecked by the tragedy, her grandmother in tears trying to comfort them both with salty wet kisses that spewed from her pupils, the secret origin of the primal life ascending from ocean depths. 

     She sees her future all stemmed in that golden light, and notices she too is smiling at her graduation, tears impressed on her sunburst cheeks of hot ad still acknowledging the physical pain of the knowledge of her dead father.  She tries to turn away, but not until another image is seen so brightly and clear through the yellowing rays of light. 

      She is older, not matronly, but surely motherly, and she turns to see an infant in the arms, suckling greatly at her breast, covered by a self-made sling. Her mother, far more matronly than she could've imagined, comes over and there are a generation of three strong women. Two standing tall, the third receiving the strength to grow into the powerhouse she has to be, for she too, may one day be tempted by the savage wild of the forest green, and the muttering so of a quasi-magical felled oak.

      She turns back once more and the opening dressed in lavender has come upon her, or had she been walking backwards in disbelief the whole time? She had seen all she had to see, and without much effort of that temptation, broke free of the grips of the warrior enchantress of the forest, empowered by the natural order of bone and bite, and she flung herself towards the golden rays of sunshine.

     "NO! Never will I be the matron of myth! I'll never march through mires, or ride the backs of hefty stags, but I will mother, and raise a child, and suffer a great loss. I'll be a woman in the world of oppression, and dissertation of the strength of the female gender, but I will, never, ever be a tale, I will not be some folklore and daydream for men to ponder! I will etch a true path in this life, and I will grasp it by the reigns, and charge head-first, and I will make my mother proud!"

     With a lift and drag of here shoe's soles, she narrowly fell into the golden rays, and was but just on the outskirts of the forest. She saw her mother still unpacking, her father sitting on the porch, emptying a cooler to start dinner, smoking off his pipe. 

      Jillian ran towards them with open arms, and tear-filled eyes. Her mother, dropped the suitcase she was carrying, and ran to her little girl. The bees floated about with not one change in the magnetism of the circumstances. They embraced and the gentle palm on the back of her head had comforted Jillian, as the story spewed forth like a barrage of vocabulary. 

       For years afr, she would encounter the story of the felled oak, and how it tempted her to become a powerful warrior, to lead the battle against some vicious evil, but it wasn't her destiny. Perhaps the world would be destroyed because of her actions, perhaps she would never know. All she kne was she begged her father to quit smoking, but to no extent, he had died fashionably early of a contemptuous cancer that was so quickly spread, it was almost sentient in its barbaric strategy. 

    Jillian cried as hard as she and the day she witnessed the death, and was reminded again about the  oak, she could still hear the raspy hallow voice cackling at her now, but she had chosen right, and she had felt the pain, and later the joy of motherhood, even if the father never stuck around, as few ever do. She smiled at her daughter, Millie, a beatiful girl with brazen skin as dark and beautiful as the sun-kissed calypso dancers of the Virgin Islands. 

     She lived a long, futilely life, and never regretted that day, though it seemed to continuously define her dreams, still hauntingly envisioning the face of the oak, a stump ripped up and split down by s lighting strike from the Gods themselves.  Even up until her ninetieth birthday, she would still see that face, even when most other memories have passed on to a darkened forest made of old age and settling fog. Settling down on her cerebrum, such as it did all those years ago on the agonized tree. She never did forget the tree, even on her deathbed, her last words were systematic in nature, as she spit out "Felled Oak", and passed into the morning sunshine. Worlds away, a tree toppled over in the depths of a forest, but no man, nor beast were there to hear it make a sound....but if they were, they'd have heard the faint, impossible whisper of the sailing tree say: "Jillian".  

    Thank you so much for the long wait. I am officially going to be doing short stories monthly again, and thank you for giving me the time that I needed. I suppose I'll always still be dealing with the passing of my mother for a long time, but she'd want me to keep on writing, and I'd like to say that you may start seeing less issues with misspelling and autocorrect disasters, as I'll be getting new prescription lenses fairly soon. Who knew I was as blind as a bat? Anyhow, thank you again. Since its June, by the end of this month I will have my E3 information up and out as soon as possible. I also am planning on getting Internet, so as  I promised to be posting on a nearly daily basis once I get reliable internet, you will likely see quite a bit more from the Malacast Editoiral. I also will be continuing to post until I reach the 666 post limits I set for myself over the next few years. 

      The next posts will be fairly soon, likely sometime next week, but we will have to see how well everything bodes between now and then. Thank you for the support, and yes, Story of the Month is officially back, and I will have one done for July. Have a great month! 

    

     

  

      

   

    

Why Married At First Sight is Just As Reasonable as Traditional Marriage, and the Flaws of Both Ideas

   I find human nature to be interesting, one of those things that's obervational, yet truly hinders on the psychology of the individual, despite how often we try our best to group people together, this is true in all spectrums of human thought. 

    Prognostic experts on human nature can point to the obvious mistakes the average person who is forced to subjection of a given circumstance will make in error, that the rest of us simply vie as objectively as we do the weather. The show Married at First Sight is a reality show that allegedly pits normal marriage seeking adults together on a show where they are chosen by expert sociologists, marriage counsellors, and couples therapists/psychologists in a social experiment to find them their "one true love". The show seems as fake as the brides' collective eyelashes, but the idea kept me watching. The show is already in season five, and most of the marriages, as you'd expect tend to fail at a rate of 50% just slightly above the national average.

      Most po plea would find this to be w very, very telling personality trait, but I can u detects do the fascination with wanting to marry w complete, and total stranger, especially if one is used to making brash dating decisions on their own. Many people tend to date and search for what's considered the worst dominant traits in a mate. Most also aren't monogamous beings, as humans by nature are what are consid d to be poly-monogamous, meaning they fall in "love" with multiple partners which is naturally the correct state of most higher developed apes. 

     Love is more the unambiguous explanation of w chemical reaction of a mixture of expectations, and physical attractiveness to a mate. So be it for me to make the harsh reality that most marriages fail because we want the extremes, rather than then come rationality that comes from playing it safe, though the irony is a boring marriage if taken at face value is w safe and secure marriage where the husband is w good role model to the children, and the wife is the equal partner and fulfills the equal duties of child-raising, then both couples grow stale with the lack of what is out there, or e hormones telling them by natural selection that it's time to find fresh blood to carry on the genetic makeup. Common sense dictates that man and woman,me specially woman, has a very limited amount of time to fertilize eggs, procreate, and move on to healthier stock for the best end rsults of carrying on the species. Yes, sexual activity is mostly enjoyable to 99% of the population, but the need for sex past the age of conception is also a survival mechanism, and sometimes we want the post conception sex and relationship at the same time as the conception and move toward with sexual prowess. Mostly because western culture has drilled it into the heads of men and women that if they want to be promiscuous, they are then to be slut shamed as the term goes, even though it's olde, post conception, and married people who feel this way, as though the grass is always enviously greener on the other side. 

    This is why I like the concept of this show: it works, and will usually work because experts know what makes us tick, because it's their job to see what makes us tick. Sex is a major part of a relationship, but it's about 45% of the total make-up. Sirprisngly couples have less sex than what is perceived as normal, and healthy.  Single people tend to have more sex, but married and dating couples claim to have more satisfying sex. These statistics aren't entirely accurate, even with experts spouting out the agenda-based politics behind both statements. In-truth we seek out potential mates, copulate, and hope for a good shot at the random generator of DNA and chromosomal makeup to create a healthy specimen, and then we move on because it is only natural to procreste as often and as fervently as we can in the wllot d time we are given to do-so. Granted, men can impregnate  women during any time of their lives, it's womn who are unfortunately built with a kill switch on their fertile years. 

       This show dedicates to find people who are matched by both short and long-term chargeristics, but most are peel established economically, are fairly attractive, I've yet to see an ugly pairing, or one so mismatched the other had to be rich, and they usually want children and have similar career paths so both can have certain expectancies from the other spouse. So being married to a total stranger is w bit far-fetched because most people aren't hard to read. From a sociologist perspective, there are only few personality types, and so long as there are no true aberrations, then most can be matchedd fairly easily. I look at modern dating, we trust algorithms built by experts to pair us up with the proper spouse, and we know al let too much about as person before we even meet for the first date. I think the irony is that not knowing much about a person prior to meeting gives them far more intrigue to either sex, and both men and women these days have an overly built-up amount of expectation from a potential partner, we forget that the whole purpose of dating and marrying is more a government-based tax decision than it is about "love".

     The truth is most people shouldn't marry, and quite frankly most people shouldn't have children, no matter how badly they think they want, or deserve them.  That sounds harsh but it's absolutely fair to say that a few people are truly good parents, and the rest are likely to make bad decisions, and be terrible parents. Granted the government shouldn't control the womb, and I for one cannot, and should not be giving anyone advice when it comes to parenting, as a staunch libertarian,mbut specs King on the sociology aspects of this show; and the dating processes, it's usually a 50/50 shot regardless. 

    So I'm actually okay with the concept of someone marrying a total stranger, so long as their qualities fit the others, and those ar tried and tested. Also, the major aspects have already been met: both people are dedicated to wanting legitimate spouses, both are looking for an arrangement, and most marriages ar glorified business arrangements anyhow. The whole sanctity of marriage line is horseshit, and that's the scientific term for it, because we all know that deep down men and women just want ample economical and emotional security, not some godhead playing matchmaker to the religious overtones of the whole damn thing. Still, if I were to actually want to be married, instead of being the loveable heretical harlot that you all admire,mom wouldn't mind trying it this way, but I'd have to have some pretty low self esteem not to choose someone the old fashioned way. 

       The point is just that: for a social experiment like the ones claiming to be real on shows like Married at First Sight, both people would have to want it more than anything, and likely have tried and failed in all other aspects. Pro ally I think the idea could work for a niche amount of people, most being young, established, and fairly good looking. People on the right always say that too many men are single these days, well it's a lot harder, and cost a lot more to date,mane women expect men to be far more mature and established than was needed thirty years ago. In-truth, women pressure men out of marriage more times now than men had previously back before women's independence had grown out of the fittest and sixties. Men a also to blame, as they seem to be less and less inspired by father figures, and instead fill the role with television icons, laity stars, and musicians. They have fake examples of what a man is supposed to be,mane even the few that had no fathers, tend to not like the idea of settling down, because they don't want to settle. Everyone speaks of sexual freedom and equality, but nobody these days tend to actually have sex. We live now inn a sexual drought, in-comparison to our parents' even our grandparents' age, our sexual excursions have gone down. Granted our sex is more frequent,mbut that's due to the Internet, or so they claim, but most people don't really use sites to have sex any more, it's like a wave with hills and troughs. 

        The problem with so many single men, and what most people don't want to talk about is the economy, and the lack of jobs from growing technology. Granted, that is a constant issue, but we are also seeing the first generation with more education debt than any other in human history, and no way we all those jobs ever going to exist, so there is a ton of debt with no relief. So marrying later seems the smarter deal, seeing as a car, a house, and raising kids with insurmountable debt today is far worst than parents, or grandparents had it, and there's no way to spruce the economy to fix these problems that have grown from a system that demanded education for the masses, when clearly the masses weren't meant to be educated. 

        This, along with the issue that picking your own wife or husband is just as much a shot in the dark as walking up to some random person and asking them for their hand in marriage, it's much smarter to meet via experts, but that's only if marriage is an absolute importance in your life. Marrying is actually s very stupid idea in the current ec no if crisis. Here's why:

     Most people think of marriage as two people who fall in love, and that stupid chemistry keeps them from seeing it's a banking agreement. I don't want a joint account, I don't want my significant other to have access to my funds, nor would they in their right mind give me access to theirs. That's lunacy today! I can literally kill someone's credit just by saying the two words "I do", and that poor slob reciprocating those same vows. The pronouncement of marriage is to declare oneself an independent adult with rspnsibilities, but that's the great irony: it makes you interdependent to another person who is likely as immature as you now trying to buy a house, a car, and afford a child on a two-person income that in today's. Armed is less than one person's income fifty years ago, not to mention both people are likely in hock to debtors for schooling, credit cards buying stupid shit, and now both are likely to share these burdens, and are expect to suffer in silence.  Seems to me the old guard what the new guard to "grow up" and suffer as the have because suffering does I still growth and learning in most people, but for some, it's just a passage to even more bad decisions. Love is fine, but keep the government out of it, and why stick with one, I say be as greedy as circumstances allow. I wouldn't mind dating or fooling around with multiple partners, but not in some orgy-like fuckfest, there should always be rules to polyamory, yet those sort of relationships are seen as foolish when they are actually far more sensible. 

       Sorry, my tirade against convention marriages are that if I want  to be with more than one partner, it shouldn't be against the law, nor should I be held accountable to a victimless crime, and yes, legally speaking I can't go to jail for sodomy, or heathenism, but it is also something to be held against me and make me libel. So yes, I say marriage is a ceremonial giving away of personal finances, and we overestimate the costs of just how ludicrous weddings are.  It's literally saying to your spouse that all the legalities of getting our bank accounts merged wee great, now let's waste thousands on a wedding, and a honeymoon, which was basically designed to be a rape date too pregnant the wife and have her baring children almost immediately against her will. Wives were property prior to modern social standards. Men were property as well, and could be divorced and sued into oblivion,mbut if people went into marriage and saw it more as a business merger than some silly ceremony that has little to do with what a marriage listen every is offered as, then the world would be a better place. 

    In conclusion, the idea of being married at first sight is one that is just as logical as someone dating for sixty years and finally on their sixtieth anniversary finally tying the knot, it's just as likely have the same rate of success/failure, and time will diminish all chemical love feelings. It's best to never marry your lover, never marry for love or for security, always marry only to better each other, buil,d each other from the ground up, and most importantly: like any good business arrangement, always be willing to renegotiate the terms. 

I Will Be on Hiatus Until Further Notice

Sadly, on April 17th of this year, barely a week ago, my mother passed away at the young age of 53. She had been suffering for a long time, and though she wouldn't want me to dislodge any personal information, I would just like to say that until further notice, I will not be posting to the Malacast Editorial for some time.  Hence the reason I also missed this month's short story post. 

     I will be taking some time to myself, as I've been dealing with these sad circumstances well, but I cannot for the life of me be in the right state to be doing work for the blog for at least a few weeks. I hope to be back before June, and if not, I'll be back surely before July.  So i would like to say that this post is dedicated to my mother; perhaps one of the strongest women to ever live, and by-far the strongest woman I ever knew. 

      My mother was born on Staten Island in 1963, she was the youngest of two siblings, she is survived by her brother, and of course myself. Sadly, both her parents had also passed, my grandmother very young at-or-around the same age, and my grandfather who passed away in his seventies. Ever since the beginning she was certified firecracker, never being complacent, always defiant, always shaking foundations. She was a beautiful woman who had several wretched diseases tear through her, but never tearing her down. Diabetes, perhaps the truest culprit of her terminal illnesses, had been a part of her life longer than most. She was one of the first of the growing epidemic of juvenile diabetes sufferers, having been diagnosed at the age of seventeen, and sadly, it was the plates from which her li began to slope. 

   Like many of us, she had struggled to control her weight, her depression, and her ailments caused by the growing disease. Adding fibromyalgia, and the issues of polycystic ovary disease, which makes it even a miracle I was even conceived,melt alone birth into this world with many of my own medical issues, but overcoming a great deal, most people would think her disease would come to define her...and sadly, towards the end it may have, what with kidney dialysis being perhaps the symbolic nail that closed her coffin, but she fought against Death for many, many years, holding back the wrath of that final hammering until her life would end. 

    She was a great woman, perhaps she hadn't done everything she ever hoped to, but wanting to be a parent was the one great dream she was lucky to see fulfilled, and though I was loved, she raised me right, not ever wanting more than I needed, and always being willing to give more than take. My mother had taught me to focus gently on the skill that made me immeasurable to others, and work on them until I not only loved them, but vied to be the greatest at such held skills, but to do so honorably. She had always wanted to have my room published, not because I was her son, she would scrutinize if me with harsher anything I've written, and give little admiration to what she loved, and that's because she knew I could always be better, as did I. 

     I don't air my grievances for my own benefit,mi do it for her, and I said I would write about the woman she was to me, and the person she was, because the two are truly different, as all sons and daughters measure their parents to a higher standard than society does. She had suffered for so long, it feels almost terrible to say that perhaps she is better off, but truths, especially absolute truths, are always treacherous in their harsh accuracy.  

       My mother 

       To put it bluntly, my mother was an enigma, she kept everything in, but not to bottle it up, just not to focus on the present moment. Instead, she gathered up those emotions and replaced them with love. In-the-end, she was loved more than despised, and even those who disliked her, had very little reason to do-so, for she had a heart big enough to fit the world, and all its imperfect fools. Especially this one typing now. I can never write enough words to define. Y mother, there aren't enough words, but she may not have shined brightest to the outside world, but to those closest, she was the brightest shining star we ever saw, and now the world is but pitch darkness in her absence. 

   I would like to thank you all who come here weekly, if-not daily to read this simple blogger site. For years I've been blogging to fulfill a lifelong dream of having my work read worldwide. Perhaps the Internet has given a many the same opportunity, and for years I have been more admirable to those continually read this blog than to even coming close to having written 400 blog posts. My mother would've been proud of me, especially the accomplishments with the issues I've grown up with, and we are all dealt a difficult hand in this world, no truer cliche could ever have such truth, but I am forever thankful to those who spend their days with me here on the blog. 

     I would just like to say that I will be writing in the future, and I hope when I'm ready, many of you will be there, though I know asking that is unfair to the integrity of my readers. I promise to up my game as best as possible, and I will bring the best I can to the future of the Malacast Editorial. Thank you all again.