I had a strange dream last
night. I was outside a Greek pizza shop. There were at least two other people
outside, one was male and the other female and I guess maybe they could have
been my friends, though I did not recognize them. I told these “friends” I was
going to go inside the pizza place, grab two slices and also a beer.
I went inside the pizza
place and there was a tall counter and two young Greek guys behind it. They
looked down on me and asked what I wanted. I told them I wanted two slices of
cheese pizza. The Greek guy was about to get the two slices for me, but then he
suggested I just go ahead and order a small cheese pizza because the price was
only slightly higher than getting two slices. He may have been helping me out
or he may have been upselling, but I figured he was right, so I told him to go
ahead and cook up a small cheese pizza for me.
As I was waiting for the
pizza, I said to myself, “Damn, you know what’s going to happen now, though?
I’m going to walk out with a small cheese pizza and I’m going to look like a
jerk if I don’t offer any to my friends. But if I do offer them any, I’m not
going to have enough for myself. Maybe I should have just stuck with the slices
to make things less complicated.” But then I thought I should maybe get a large
cheese pizza, even though it would cost much more money than I had originally
planned for. I figured this way I could not only look like a nice guy in giving
my friends (or whoever the people outside were) some pizza but I could also
establish dominance over them.
Wait, what?
Yes, establish dominance.
I figured if I’m the one paying for the pizza, then that will elevate me to a
position of superiority in the social order of the group. The “provider” of
food ends up getting the upper hand, the dominance over the others. If you’re
confused by this, then think about why men like to pay for a woman’s dinner
while on a date. In doing this, they look like a nice guy, yes, but they also establish
a primal-like dominance over the woman (i.e. I’m paying for YOUR dinner,
therefore I now have the dominance over you in this relationship). Now, you may
be saying that this all sounds so sexist, but we can all admit that if the
opposite happened, if the woman paid for the man’s dinner, the man would feel
emasculated. The woman would have the dominance in the relationship and the man
would feel weak and powerless.
Anyway, I woke up from the
dream around this time and thought about what it all meant. I pondered this
whole phenomenon of establishing dominance through the process of giving people
stuff or providing for people or taking care of people. You look like a nice
guy on the surface, but the ulterior motive could also be that you are
establishing dominance.
This is when I realized
that this is EXACTLY what is happening right now with our government.
In an interview last week,
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra, said, and I quote:
“The Federal Government
has spent trillions of dollars to try and keep Americans alive during this
pandemic. So it is absolutely the government’s business [to know people’s
vaccination status], it is taxpayers’ business, if we have to continue to spend
money to try and keep people from contracting COVID.”[1]
What Becerra is saying
here is that, because the government has spent so much money on people via
COVID relief, the government now has the right to know who is and isn’t
vaccinated. This means there is no privacy when it comes to the government
knowing whether you got the shot. This also means that, because the government
spent so much money on you, you are now indebted to the government and, thus, they
kind of own a part of you and you’re obligated to surrender certain rights to
them. In short: the government has established dominance over you.
Indeed, what we are witnessing in the
government today is a conscious effort to establish dominance over the
individual and they’re basically accomplishing this by providing that
individual with free money and free services. Whether it’s COVID relief checks,
unemployment checks, child tax credits aka “middle-class tax cuts”, student loan
forgiveness, free healthcare, free child care, racial “equity” or even universal
basic income (which was just made law in California), the endgame is not to
really help those in need but to establish dominance over them. This dominance,
in turn, gives the government much more power. In fact, this is the modus
operandi of an authoritarian communist regime. You give the people a bunch of
free stuff, but you indebt and, thus, enslave them to you in the process.
Therefore, what we are
witnessing today is a government trying to become authoritarian but in a sneaky
way. They’re coming off as the saviors who offer short-term help to the little
guy through free money and services, but what they are really doing in the
long-term is establishing dominance.
Now, at first thought,
people love the idea of free stuff and government assistance, but what you end
up losing in the long run is your individual freedom and, really, your soul.
This has happened time and time again in history and it’s time we wake up and
realize what is happening right before our very eyes.
Giving to people in need is, of course, a
virtuous move but not when it comes at the price of the people’s liberty!
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, also known as Zelda 64, is considered to be one of the best video games ever made. I realize a lot of gamer nerds out there would have issues with such a statement and point out all the game’s flaws, but, for its time (and despite its flaws), Ocarina of Time is an absolute masterpiece.
I first played Ocarina of Time waaaaaaay back in late-1998 when I was a junior in high school. This super-ambitious 3D Zelda game had only been released for a couple of months before Santa Claus gifted me with the game for Christmas. Now, this, of course, was the original version for Nintendo 64. The game was later remade (and fine-tuned) in 2011 for the Nintendo 3DS. I will talk about this latter version in a moment, but first I’d like to discuss the Nintendo 64 version, if you don’t mind…but…wait, I don’t care if you don’t mind. I mean, no offense, but this is MY blog. So I’m going to talk about it whether you like it or not. I say that with respect, by the way.
Anyway, I was super-pumped when I got Ocarina of Time for Christmas. I had heard great things about this game—basically that it was revolutionary in so many ways, the “ultimate Zelda game”—but I also didn’t know if I would get into it that easily because I had never been an RPG kind of a gamer. I was more of a linear, two-dimensional, straight-forward Super Mario Bros. kind of guy and, you know, Donkey Kong Country kind of a guy. I had always been intrigued by the idea of getting into RPG gaming, like with Final Fantasy games and what-have-you, but it just never happened. I usually only had the patience for beat-‘em-up, shoot-‘em-up kind of games. Mysteries, labyrinths and puzzles took too much brain power and too much time. I had better things to do with my life, or at least so I thought (admittedly, I really didn’t).
However, I was pleasantly surprised with Ocarina of Time. I got sucked into this game pretty much right out of the gate. I fell in love with the “open world,” even though this world is really quite closed by today’s post-Grand-Theft-Auto gaming standards. I loved the graphics, the art design and especially the music (composed by the legendary Koji Kondo who did everything from the original Super Mario Bros. to the original Legend of Zelda to Yoshi’s Island to Star Fox 64 and many more). I also loved the fact that there was no intense pressure to do anything very fast. I could kind of just hang out in this world of Hyrule, accomplish little quests here and there and move along from temple to temple when I felt like it. Overall, I suppose it was the escape into a fantasy land that I enjoyed the most.
The “open world” of Hyrule Field in Ocarina of Time
I played Ocarina of Time intensely during the first week and a half because it was Christmas break and I had the time off from school. I quickly mastered all the controls, how to aim and “lock on” to a target (aka ‘Z-targeting’), how to use special weapons like Deku Nuts and slingshots. How to light torches with Deku Sticks. How to move blocks. How to swim and dive…
All went well in the game until I got to the dreaded Water Temple where I must have literally spent hours upon hours of gaming time trying to figure out what to do in there. This was back before you could look up what to do on the Internet and, out of pride, I refused to ask anybody at school what to do, either. I don’t know how, but I eventually figured it all out on my own and beat the temple but, boy, was that a doozy. In fact, the temple boss (a giant amoeba, technically known as Morpha) was so much easier to defeat than figuring out the puzzle of the temple itself. Getting to the boss wasn’t half the battle; it was the FULL battle.
Entering the dreaded Water Temple
The introduction to Morpha in Water Temple
After the Water Temple came the Shadow Temple and this was when, for whatever reason, I stopped playing Ocarina of Time. From what I understood, I had beat most of the game at this point and that was good enough for me, I guess. I was actually surprised that I had even gotten that far to begin with. I was rarely one of those gamers who actually beat a game. In fact, with the exception of Super Mario World and maybe the very first Donkey Kong Country and, oh, also Aladdin for Super Nintendo, I had never beaten a video game. So, after I beat the Water Temple, I decided to throw in the towel. I would play Ocarina of Time here and there, mostly just to putter around and maybe do a side-quest or two, but I never got beyond the Shadow Temple.
Flash-forward to 22 whole years later.
The year was 2020, one of the worst years in the existence of mankind, the year when COVID-19 came along and there were suddenly less things to do. I hadn’t played video games in a long while and, in August 2020, I found myself having a hankering for video games. I didn’t want to pay an obscene amount of money for anything, so I decided to purchase Nintendo’s portable 2DS XL system. I saw that Walmart had a very good deal on such a system for only a hundred bucks, so I decided to give it a go. Not a bad deal at all, really, since it also came with Mario Kart 7 pre-installed onto the hard drive.
This Nintendo 2DS XL is now selling for almost $500 on Amazon
For the next few months or so, I found myself playing Mario Kart 7, New Super Mario Bros. 2, UltimateNES Remix, some Donkey Kong Country Returns as well, and it wasn’t until January 2021 that I saw on Amazon that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 3DS version, which is compatible with the 2DS) was on sale for only $20. I wasn’t sure if I was interested in playing Ocarina of Time all over again, but I decided, hey, for twenty buckaroos it would at least be fun screwing around with the game here and there, if for nothing else than solely the nostalgia factor.
Thus, I ordered Ocarina of Time, it arrived a week or so later and I didn’t begin playing it until January 20th. I know this exact date because it was the very day that Joe Biden was inaugurated as 46th president of the United States. What ensued was an epic Ocarina of Time quest that would last exactly 100 days. I did not plan for this, but I know it took me exactly 100 days because it lasted as long as Biden’s first 100 days in the White House. Most people would have beaten the game sooner, but it took me 100 days because I only played the game for about 20 minutes at night, almost every night, for a hundred days.
And, oh yes, you heard me right: I did beat the game. No stopping at the Shadow Temple this time. More about all that in a moment, though. I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself just yet.
Now, when I first began playing Ocarina of Time after 23 whole years, I wasn’t sure how long I would find the game engaging since I had already played it before. However, to my surprise, I quickly got sucked into the quest and, before long, I knew in my heart that I was going to go the distance this time around. In fact, at a certain point, I made a pact with myself. I could not give up until I beat Ganondorf. I WOULD not give up.
As I defeated the preliminary Deku Tree dungeon and then proceeded to Dodongo’s Cavern and the other temples, I quickly noticed that there was a huge difference between playing the game in 2021 and playing the game in 1998. Obviously, the biggest difference was that it was an entirely new, upgraded version of the game. The 3DS version of Ocarina of Time is known in the gaming nerdiverse to be the superior version, much more beautiful-looking and sounding, more player-friendly and also free of all the blemishes. I’m sure there are a lot of Ocarina of Time originalists out there who only play the Nintendo 64 version and refuse to play the 3DS version, but I’m not one of those people. Although the Nintendo 64 version of Ocarina of Timeis still undeniably a masterpiece notwithstanding its flaws, the 3DS version of the game is the more finely-polished masterpiece, without the kinks and free of the blemishes of the original.
Another difference worth noting between the two OOT versions is the music in the Fire Temple. In the Nintendo 64 version, there is an Islamic chant that was sampled in the temple’s soundtrack (heard in the video above). However, this chant was removed in later versions due to concerns about offending Muslims.
I, of course, appreciated Ocarina of Time for the masterpiece it was back when I played it in 1998, but I didn’t FULLY appreciate it until I was playing the game as an older, more mature gentleman in 2021. When I was young, I took most of it for granted and I’m not hard on myself about this because when you’re young, hey, you kind of just assume that somebody waves a magic wand and, abracadabra, a video game is created. However, playing the game in 2021, I was blown away by how ingenious the game truly was. “How in the world could something like this be made!?” I found myself marveling. I mean, it really is a work of absolute wonder. I can’t even imagine the passion that went into creating such a game. Think about it: not only do you have to create the overworld, all the carefully mapped-out temples, the characters, the weapons, the sound FX, the music etc., but then you have to devise all the puzzles in the game, make them interesting, make sure they actually work and you have to do all this in a seamless manner, so that there are no glitches. And it’s not like there are only a few puzzles; there are literally dozens upon dozens—hell, probably hundreds—of puzzles in this game. Combine all this with a well-written storyline and also pre-rendered cinematic sequences (you know, the non-interactive cut-scenes where you sit back and watch the game like a movie) and then add on the need to keep the game fun and entertaining and engaging, long enough to make people want to play it for dozens upon dozens of hours, and well, my mind is blown. The creators of this game, Shigeru Miyamoto et al., had to have been geniuses.
For all the above reasons, I felt compelled to do a little research on the game’s genesis and development and I was unsurprised to learn that Ocarina of Time took about three whole years to develop (starting in 1995) and, as you can imagine, it went through many evolutions along the way. According to an interview conducted with Shigeru Miyamoto in 2008, the Zelda creator, at one point, conceived a version of the game that was in the first-person perspective (think Goldeneye 007 for Nintendo 64), but Miyamoto and the other creators soon realized that the third-person perspective worked best, especially when they introduced the concept of young and old Link.[i] Also, another early blueprint of Ocarina of Time had the entire game take place in Ganondorf’s castle, much like what we see in Super Mario 64, but that idea was eventually scrapped as well, opting for the beautifully designed Hyrule overworld instead.[ii]
So, yes, the game developers apparently spent a lot of time trying to make the ultimate Zelda game and it showed. As I played through the game during the hundred days, I noticed a lot of small details like Link’s shadow and the dust that gets kicked up from his feet when he runs through Hyrule field. I also noticed how young Link yawns when he’s standing still for a while or how older Link checks himself over and brushes dirt off his cloak. Furthermore, I noticed how the sound of his footsteps change depending on what kind of surface he walks on. I definitely didn’t notice these small details when I was younger, but they really stood out to me this time around.
Ok, so back to me beating the game…
Despite me having played Ocarina of Time back in the late-1990s, I should mention that I remembered pretty much nothing about the game, especially how to solve puzzles or how to beat dungeons or bosses etc. I was basically playing the game fresh and I got stuck here and there, but I must say that the Water Temple is much more playable in the 3DS version. Basically, this version has an added clue or two whereas in the Nintendo 64 version, you literally have to turn the temple inside out and retrace your steps probably about a hundred times—not to mention play your Ocarina dozens of times to raise and lower water levels—before you figure out how to beat the temple.
Once I got to the Shadow Temple, I was entering completely uncharted territory since I hadn’t gone beyond this part of the game when I played it in 1998. The temple itself wasn’t so bad, but the last boss—Bongo Bongo—gave me a hell of a fight. I’m not sure how many times I had to try beating him, but it was a lot and what made it even more annoying was that, each time you died, you had to start at the beginning of the temple and travel to the dungeon-master’s lair via a ghost ship and on this ghost ship there are two annoying sworded skeleton characters (named Stalfos) and battling those fiends over and over again gets old really fast. After the third or fourth time, I figured out that you didn’t need to fight them at all; nope, all’s you had to do was block their blows with your shield, then jump off the ghost ship before it sinks into an abyss at the end of the ride. The Stalfos sink along with the ship if you time it correctly and jump off the ship right before it sinks.
Fighting a Stalfo in the Shadow Temple
Now, you CAN use magic—Farore’s wind, to be exact—to create a warp point that takes Link directly to the dungeon master and, thus, avoids having to battle the annoying Stalfos over and over again, but you can only do this so many times because the warping takes too much magic and you need the magic to defeat the Bongo Bongo boss via the Lens of Truth. After about the 6th or 7th try, I did manage to beat Bongo Bongo and, oddly, by that point, I realized he wasn’t all that tough. Once you got it down to a system, he was rather easy to defeat. Basically, it’s shoot arrow to the hand. Shoot arrow to the other hand. Then, turn on the Lens of Truth and slice at the eye with your sword. Part of the reason why I had so much trouble with Bongo Bongo was that I was using the 2DS’ touch-screen controls to shoot the arrows, as opposed to the actual controller buttons. The 2DS’ touchscreen is finicky and less sensitive than the buttons, so you can’t always shoot your arrows as quickly as you’d like to. I imagine that, if I had been using the Nintendo 64 controller instead, I would not have had as much trouble with Bongo Bongo.
Link battling Bongo Bongo
From the Shadow Temple, I moved on to the very last dungeon, the Spirit Temple, which ended up being an easier dungeon than the Water Temple and the end boss—named Twinrova, comprised of two witches Koume and Kotake—was an easier boss than Shadow Temple’s Bongo Bongo. Then, it was on to Ganondorf’s castle…
Although very intimidating (I had to remind myself it’s just a game! Don’t be scared, Matt!), Ganondorf was not overly difficult and I beat him on the first try. What I didn’t know, however, was that he wasn’t the last boss you needed to battle. After running out of a burning and crumbling castle, Ganondorf turns into the demon monster Ganon and this was a battle I was not expecting. I had no idea how to beat Ganon and he absolutely destroyed me. At this point, I decided to save, shut down the game and try again the next day. What I didn’t know, however, was that beating Ganondorf does not get saved, so I had to beat that damn sorcerer all over again in order to battle Ganon again. This time around, I did not beat Ganondorf as easily; it took me a few tries and this was mostly because I made stupid mistakes.
As for Ganon? It took me at least four tries to beat him and this was tedious because, although you don’t have to beat Ganondorf again as long as you don’t shut the game down, you do have to keep running out of the burning castle, which is a timed, anxiety-ridden three-minute escape sequence and you need to defeat those pesky Stalfos in one room along the way. I finally had Ganon figured out pretty well by the fourth try, but I also realized that I was running extremely low on arrows and you need the light arrows to stun Ganon before you bash his tail in with the Megaton Hammer. I thought I was screwed when I ran out of the arrows completely and figured I would have to reset the game and restart pre-Ganondorf, just so I could stock up on arrows. What I ended up having to use instead was one of the first weapons you get in the game: simple Deku Nuts. These stun Ganon for a much shorter amount of time than the arrows, but it was long enough for me to slice away at his tail and I eventually defeated him to the point where Zelda steps in, uses magic to hold Ganon still, and then you walk up to the demon and take one final slice with your sword. That last sword slice never felt so good. Hours and hours of gaming time all leading up to that one final blow to the skull.
Ganondorf battle
Battling Ganon
The end felt poetic as well. I was so worried that I needed the fancy light arrows, but all’s I needed were simple Deku Nuts and that’s what got me to beat Ganon. I almost felt as though it was “meant” to happen that way. The seemingly most useless weapon in the game became the most essential. What irony.
And, with that, the quest was officially complete and I nearly shed tears as I heard the orchestral version of the original Legend of Zelda theme playing triumphantly over the credits, all movie-like. I felt so proud of myself. I wanted to tell everyone I knew that I beat Ocarina of Time—friends, family, random people in the street, the local librarian, the woman working behind the counter at Dunkin Donuts…but, alas, I knew nobody would care. It wasn’t like I was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize or anything. I felt like everyone should be bowing down and worshipping me, I defeated the evil that cursed Hyrule, dammit! But nobody would understand. Nobody ever gets me, man.
A screenshot I took of the End Credits when I beat Ocarina of Time. This is the only evidence I have that I beat the game.
Anyway, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time will probably go down as one of my favorite video games of all time and probably is, in fact, the best video game of all time. Playing it for the 100 days gave me so much joy…well, not THAT much joy, but it was incredibly fun. I know Zelda games have only improved since then, but I think Ocarina of Time is when the Zelda franchise peaked. The stars definitely aligned for that game and I’m not sure any other video game has ever been made with so much passion, heart and soul. In fact, I think that’s why I enjoy playing Ocarina the most. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the game itself, although it’s very fun. I think what I find most interesting about the Ocarina of Time experience is that I’m literally exploring the hearts and souls and minds of the game’s creators. After all, when you’re playing through all the various temples in the game and solving its puzzles, what you’re really doing is navigating through the genius minds of the game’s designers. After a while, you kind of learn their patterns and anticipate their moves. You’re basically reverse-engineering or maybe decoding their brains.
What now? Should I move along to Ocarina of Time: Master Quest? Master Quest, if you don’t know, is apparently an alternative version of the Ocarina of Time game but with new and harder puzzles. Or maybe I should, instead, try to do an Ocarina of Time 100% completion playthrough where I collect all the gold Skulltulas and do all the side quests? Or maybe I should do a “three-heart run” where you try to complete the game with only three hearts of energy? Or maybe I should get a life instead? Or perhaps I should move on to Ocarina’s sequel: Majora’s Mask. I’ve never played Majora’s Mask before, neither on the Nintendo 64, nor on any other Nintendo console, but I hear great things about it. Most of all, I hear it’s weird and creepy. Maybe 100 days of that game is what fate has in store for me.
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Other trending articles by Matt Burns that may be of interest to you:
For the past several months now, and especially for
the past month, all we’ve been hearing is the word ‘vaccine’ over and over
again. In fact, I’ve personally been hearing the word vaccine more than I’ve
been hearing the word ‘the’ or ‘a’ or even ‘it’. Vaccine! Vaccine! Vaccine!
Never before has there been such a massive push for all
of us as a collective to do something. It’s all over the news media. “Make sure
you get your vaccine,” they say. The insinuation is, “Get your vaccine or
you’re doomed.” The implication is also, “You’re a fool if you don’t want the
vaccine.” Then, there’s mega-star John Legend who is doing #ThisIsOurShot
commercials for Walgreens to make sure everyone gets their vaccine. Furthermore,
there are dozens of companies (e.g. Krispy Kreme, Budweiser, Nathan’s Hotdogs,
Staples, White Castle) giving away free stuff to anyone who has proof they got
their vaccine (who doesn’t like FREE STUFF?). And, just in case all else fails,
we are also being shamed and guilted into doing it. Do it to “save the life of
your grandmother, grocery store clerk and delivery person,” says Joe Biden[1].
We can’t “celebrate our independence from this virus on July 4th…until
everyone has a chance to get their shot,” also says Joe Biden[2].
I’m not sure if it’s the intention (though I would argue that it probably is),
but the consequence of all this is that anybody who does NOT want the vaccine
feels like a total alien or, hell, in some cases, like a murderer. There is so
much pressure to conform and go with the crowd. Vaccine! Vaccine! Vaccine!
Gotta get the vaccine!
Now, you may be thinking that this is going to be an
anti-vaccine blog. That is not the case at all. In fact, this blog is neither
anti nor pro-vaccine. Instead, I want to discuss two interesting phenomena I
see rearing their ugly heads from this intense #GotTheShot #ThisIsOurShot
#FauciOuchie etc. pro-vaccine campaign.
The first is narcissism.
I personally don’t know if I’ll ever get the vaccine.
I have my reasons and I won’t go into them right now. This doesn’t mean,
however, that I’m “anti-vaccine” and that I don’t think anybody should get the
vaccine. It just means that I may not ever get the vaccine—that’s all. It’s a
personal choice that I’m making based on what a little voice in my head is
guiding me to do. I have listened to outside voices like the CDC, Dr. Fauci,
the media, political figures and other medical personnel and then I’ve listened
to my inner voice and I’ve determined I’m going to wait for a while before I
get the vaccine, if I ever get it at all (and I’m somewhat doubtful I ever will,
to be honest). But, again, this doesn’t translate into me saying nobody should
get the vaccine; all it means is that I may never get it. To think that nobody
should get it just because I don’t want it would be narcissism.
Likewise, people who want the vaccine and get the
vaccine shouldn’t feel that everybody should get the vaccine. Just
because you get it and all is fine doesn’t mean that this will be the case for
everyone. To think this would be narcissism as well.
The point is that we are all individuals with personal
liberty and we all should make decisions based on what we feel is in our own best
personal interests. What is a good decision for you does not equate to a good
decision for everyone—it would be narcissism to think so. Unfortunately, it
seems like there is a lot of narcissism out there because the message in
popular culture right now is not “Get your vaccine [if you feel it’s right for
you],” it’s, instead, “Everyone should get the vaccine [period].” The
insinuation, especially in the media, is that only weirdo Trump supporters refuse
to get the vaccine or, if not Trump supporters, then super-religious conspiracy
theorists who believe the vaccine is the “mark of the beast,” some kind of microchip
injection that allows Bill Gates to spy on you while you shower. This is not
the case, but if you were to watch certain media outlets out there, they would
have you believe that this were true, that only weirdos don’t want the vaccine.
Along with narcissism (and not totally unrelated
from it), the other ugly phenomenon I see coming out of this whole get-your-vaccine
campaign is a war between the collective mind and the individual mind.
What is the old saying? “If everybody jumped off a
bridge, would you do it, too?” Right now, we are overwhelmed by a tsunami of
outside voices telling us to get our vaccine—whether it be the CDC, Dr. Fauci, other
medical doctors, political figures, mainstream media, Hollywood celebrities,
the list goes on and on. The pressure to conform and listen to these outside
voices has never been so high. And although it’s necessary to listen to these
voices—many of which are considered “experts”—at the end of the day, we must
listen to one voice and one voice only: the inner voice inside our own
individual head, because that’s the voice that knows what is in our own
personal best interest. And that inner voice, when it really comes down to it,
is the voice of God.
What I’m getting at here is that the struggle between
the inside voice and the collective outside voice is a struggle between God
and, well, the opposite of God, whatever you’d like to call that (there are
probably extreme words one could use, but I prefer ‘opposite-of-God’). Again,
you should listen to the outside and discern what is and isn’t useful, but the
inner voice should always take precedence over the outside voice. The day the
outside voice becomes your god is the day that you are essentially practicing
idolatry because what is idolatry but replacing God with another ultimate authority,
valuing the voice of an outsider (a false god) over the voice of the insider
(God). I would argue that there is a movement in the world right now to devalue
the inner voice of God inside each and every one of us. It’s essentially an
initiative to replace God with an idol. The “outside voices” collectively are
that idol; they want to usurp God and become the ultimate controlling authority
over you.
Now, this idea of “replacing God” is a very common
theme in the world today, not just with the pro-vaccine campaign, but in many
other areas of our culture. I’ve written extensively about this war against God
in previous articles. We see it with Big Tech’s authoritative attempt to
control truth and information via mass censorship (read my article Pride Comes Before the Fall). We also see it with cancel culture where the ruling
“outside voices” self-righteously cancel out voices they don’t want other
people to hear or books they don’t want other people to read (read more about
this in my article “We All Know Cancel Culture is Ridiculous”). Furthermore, we’ve seen ‘the outside’ try to take
control over science, nature, biology and even general reality (all of which
collectively comprise God when you really think about it) and this is most
apparent when they suddenly proclaim that there is no longer any biological
distinction between man and woman and if biological men want to compete in biological
women’s sports then, hey, that’s totally fair because there is no biological
difference between the two genders (read more about this in my article “It’s ok to Admit the Emperor Has No Clothes”). In all these cases, Man is essentially trying to
push God to the side—basically saying, “Get behind me, God!”—and secure itself
more control, power and authority. This “great reset” we see in our culture is an
arrogant display of hubris and I’m not sure how much longer it’s going to
sustain itself before falling on its ass completely. Pride, after all, always
comes before the Fall.
Anyway, this is all a longish way of saying that, if
you want your vaccine and you feel it’s right for you, then do get it. And if
not, that’s ok, too. Listen to the outside voices, but, at the end of the day,
listen to your inner voice above all else. Once we kill the voice within and
just adopt the outside voice as our guide, we are no longer individuals. We are
just a collective. And, honestly, I think that’s the plan by those who want the
power. A collective body of people with one collective mind is so much easier
to control. That’s what “the outside” wants more than anything else: control,
control, control and more control. At the end of the day, that’s what this
whole year-long COVID experience may be all about: CONTROL.
[1]Here is the full quote from Biden’s April 21, 2021
speech: “Vaccines can save your own life, but they can also save your
grandmother’s life, your coworker’s life, the grocery store clerk, or the delivery
person helping you and your neighbors get through the crisis.”
[2]Here is the full quote from Biden’s April 21, 2021
speech: “To celebrate our independence from this virus on July 4th
with family and friends in small groups, we still have more to do in the months
of May and June. We all need to mask up until the number of cases goes down,
until everyone has a chance to get their shot.”
It was the year 2003, which was an important
year in my life. This was the year a switch went off inside of me that changed
who I was, perhaps forever. That sounds dramatic, I know, but what I mean is I
went from being the kind of person who lacked the self-discipline needed to get
much of anything done on my own without being told by a teacher or a boss to do
it. This meant that when summer vacations rolled around, I would say to myself
that I wanted to do all these things, read this or that book, write this or
that screenplay or make this or that short film with my video camera, but what
I usually ended up doing was playing video games, watching movies, hanging out
with friends or skateboarding. I never got much of anything done…
That is, not until the
summer of 2003. I had just completed my junior year of college at BU and,
during that spring semester, I took a screenwriting class called Screenwriting
II. This was the first screenwriting class within BU’s film program where we
had to write a full-length (aka “feature-length”) screenplay. I wrote one and
it was absolutely terrible…like, really bad. So bad. Bad-to-the-thousandth-power-bad.
But the good news was that I learned what NOT to do the next time around.
That summer, I wrote a
couple short screenplays, which turned out well, and then I began writing a
second feature-length screenplay that I called WATERMELON 4032. What I didn’t
know at the time was that this project would gestate in my creative womb for over
the next 17 or 18 years and evolve into many shapes and forms and manifestations.
WATERMELON 4032 was about
a punk teen who gets a summer job at a supermarket and kidnaps (in a polite
way) all the exploited immigrant employees who work there. He does this to make
a ‘punk’ statement about how dependent corporate America is on cheap immigrant
labor. This script was largely based on my experiences working in two different
supermarkets while in college.
4032 is the universal
supermarket cashier PLU code for watermelon, so the title was meant to be a metaphor
for the human brain (i.e. a melon) being programmed, or basically coded, into an
existence of slavery-like conformity, kind of like a matrix. Sounds pretty
fucking punk, right? Well, that was the point.
I started the WATERMELON
4032 screenplay in the summer of 2003, but I really only wrote the first Act or
so (the equivalent of about 25 pages) and I ended up writing the rest of it
that next fall semester for a class at BU called Screenwriting III. Although I got
an A in that class and the professor loved the story, at the end of the day,
the screenplay was very flawed and I threw it in a desk drawer for several
years.
It wasn’t until 2007 that I
finally took WATERMELON 4032 out of said drawer, gave it a read and had an
epiphany. I knew the story was missing something and what I realized was
that this ‘something’ was zombies, skateboarding and much, MUCH more punk. It
also needed a new title. From that point forward, it would be known as SUPERMARKET
ZOMBIES!
Thus, the new SUPERMARKET
ZOMBIES! screenplay, formerly known as WATERMELON 4032, was born. I kept much
of the exploited immigrant worker themes but also mixed in a lot more
wackiness. In fact, I wanted the tone to almost be post-apocalyptic—nearly
every character in the story behaves as though they’ve been exposed to some
sort of toxic radiation and is kind of whacked out of their mind. I was very
influenced by the movie Repo Man (starring Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean
Stanton, written and directed by Alex Cox), which has a similar wacked-out tone
to it.
My SUPERMARKET ZOMBIES!
screenplay turned out nice but no producer, agent or literary manager out there
ever wanted to do anything with it because they suck at life. So, around 2013,
I eventually ended up turning the SUPERMARKET ZOMBIES! screenplay into a novel,
which turned out well, but it didn’t really turn out VERY well until I completely
rewrote the manuscript in 2019 (I then spent the next two years fine-tuning it,
off and on). That’s when SUPERMARKET ZOMBIES! became something really special,
at least in my arrogant opinion.
Now, there were two big
literary influences that went into the writing of this final version of the
novel. The first was Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises, which
I read around the time that I was beginning the rewrite. What amazed me about
that book was how Hemingway somehow transported me into the experience of
bullfighting in a way that felt like I was actually there. I had never been to
a bullfight before, never had any interest in it either, but he made me feel
like I was literally in that world, going through the experience of a
bullfight. I wanted to do this exact same thing, only with skateboarding. What
I mean is that I assumed that most people reading my book would not be
skateboarders or would not particularly be interested in skateboarding. But I
wanted to literally transport them into the experience of skateboarding in a
similar way to how Hemingway made me experience bullfighting. They would have
no choice but to enjoy and appreciate and basically live the experience.
The other book that
heavily influenced the SUPERMARKET ZOMBIES! rewrite was the Beastie Boys band
memoir Beastie Boys Book. I read this book in early-2019 and I was so
impressed with how fun it was. I mean, it was just bursting at the seams with
fun energy. I don’t know how else to describe it other than to say it was full
of life, full of freedom, and full of the human spirit. I wanted to capture a
similar energy in SUPERMARKET ZOMBIES! so that’s what I set out to do.
FUN, however, is only one
layer of the SUPERMARKET ZOMBIES! story. There is a lot of deep shit going on
in SUPERMARKET ZOMBIES! … at least, I think there is. Overall, the book is
about how life tries to throw shackles on the freedom and fun of the human
spirit and usually (but unfortunately) wins. Among other things, this book is basically
about a punk who tries to fight off these shackles for as long as fucking
possible.
In a lot of ways, we’re
all slaves and we don’t even know it. I kind of just had this realization now
and I don’t even know if it’s appropriate but I wanted to state it here anyway.
Does such a statement seem out of place? It might. I don’t know.
Okay, I will not say
anything more. I’ll let the book speak for itself. Also, it’s best to shut up
and let the readers decide what my books are about because, to be honest, I
don’t even know what they’re about, at least not completely…they just come out
of me and it is what it is, I guess. Nevertheless, I wanted to give a little
story behind the story, to whet your appetite.
