Midaregami

I’ve been playing a lot of Crimson Skies and Halo 2 lately—I have much to say about it, especially the latter. But for some inscrutable reason, I was possessed to write a Terzanelle on the subject of getting blown up in a Crimson Skies dogfight, something which happens with alarming regularity.

And now I’m going to inflict it on you.

In the crimson skies I died today
Shot down once, twice, thrice, and more
How will I live—I cannot say

Tho’ others might think me a bore
I cannot but to slow my craft
And opening fire upon the fore—

But while I slow, to my abaft
Yon ace takes steady aim with Hound
And smiles at his target daft

And then his blazing guns do pound
my hull—my engine, flaming, screams
that awful, ghastly, deathly sound

So gathered here we are, two teams
the red and blue, in mortal war
And O! my shameful failed scheme

And so it’s writ in crimson lore
In the crimson skies I died today
To land again, upon death’s shore
How will I live—I cannot say.

Attention all mewling, dimly-aware primates of Earth.

The next stage in the long, barely-begun process of your uplift from carcass-scavanging pre-rodent to full galactic citizen has arrived. I admit to thinking that this day might never come; opinions among those of my kind ran the gamut from heady optimism at your delicious home-made gumbo to sad, head-shaking resignation at your apparent love for the culinary atrocity that is fast food. But progress was steady.

なにもせず
時を過ごして
ぼっとしき
あなをかしきかな
インターネット

The dorkier among my largely imaginary readership may have noticed this Penny Arcade strip, which hilariously fictionalizes the real-world fact that both the writer and artist of that high-profile comic have just bought Macs.

The astute reader will note the absence of the term “switched,” there—both because, as high-profile gamers, they will not be constraining themselves to a platform as hilariously devoid of games as the Mac, but also because the notion that one can use one and only one operating system is pretty stupid.