Sierra Delta

And so it was that a great time to write a post was on a snow day. It was also evidently a good idea to begin the post as though it were a book of the Bible. Today was a snow day of sorts; not for me, because in radio, it could be snowing fireballs and the show must go on. But my roommates took the day off rather than brave the elements, and Ned is on Christmas break anyway. Unable to resist the call of AM EDH, I was roused from my slumber at 9:30. Following three games, we set out, a ragtag band of four young lads, and emerged from the fray as FIRE TEAM SIERRA DELTA: The Power Rangers of Snow Removal.

It was reminiscent of Fire Team Alpha and Fire Team Bravo, two similarly elite strike forces set out to retrieve items on a post-Hobbit excursion to Walmart on Christmas Eve. Fire Team Alpha's mission was to escort a few boxes of dishes, purchased by my dad as a Christmas gift for my mom, out to the van (Alpha for "automobile"), and I was proud to be a member alongside my dad and my brother Michael. Chris, Ned, and Mark comprised Fire Team Bravo, combing the bowels of Walmart's grocery underbelly in search of a loaf of bread (Bravo for "bread"). Both missions were successful.

As the storm beset the Capital Region in the twilight hours of 2012, we were dispatched to help shovel out our respective parents' driveways, stopping first at the abode of my progenitors, where our training was held and we acquired our weapons: snow shovels, each of a different color, to match our... well I don't know what they matched, but they were all different, like Power Rangers. Mine was black, Chris's was blue, Ned's was red, and Anthony's was green. I'm not making this up.

Following swift completion of our task, we then made the trek to Anthony's parents' residence, whereupon we, combined with his brother's silver shovel, cleared out the entire driveway in less than 15 minutes. At that point, we realized our true potential and began naming our trusty shovels. My first inspiration was Mjolnir, in honor of the mighty Thor's hammer. But I realized a more appropriate term was be Elbrus, the Binding Shovel, a homage to a legendary equipment from Magic. And then, the conversation devolved into the dorkiest exchange I've had in a long time, and we just went back and forth substituting the word "shovel" in the names of different Magic cards. For instance: Shovel, the Risen Deep. One of my personal favorites was It that Shovels, but seriously, it was nerdy to the max.

Anyway, the moral of the story is we shoveled really fast.

They Don't Know What Dope Is

In Bioshock 2 (which I recently finished), there's an audio diary recorded by a little boy named Billy Parson in Dionysus Park:



In case you've never played a Bioshock game, Little Sisters are genetically modified little girls who collect Adam (itself a substance that can modify DNA) from corpses in the undersea city of Rapture, and they have glowing yellow eyes. Most of the population of Rapture regarded the Little Sisters as monsters, deplorable abominations to be feared and avoided. But to Billy, this one particular Little Sister was no monster, she was beautiful. And in reality, she was in fact just a poor, impressionable little girl, conditioned, manipulated, and subverted by someone willing to take advantage of her. Altered, but not irredeemable.

There's indication in the game that the Little Sister Billy was in love with was Cindy, Mark Meltzer's daughter. I rescued her. Ultimately, that's the whole point of both Bioshock games: to save the Little Sisters. Unless you want the bad ending, but nobody wants the bad ending.

Billy loved this Little Sister even though he didn't know any more about her than anyone else in Rapture did. He just had a feeling, a feeling that didn't remotely touch on the possibility of her being evil or a lost cause. And she was neither of those things.

I Could Make A Demi Lovato Song Title Joke Too, Among Other Things

I've never posted a blog in December before, so here we go, forging ahead into uncharted territory. Just a heads up, this blog isn't going to be about anything in particular.

Last December, my video game of choice was Saints Row: The Third, which had, in my opinion, two of the greatest set pieces in video game history. One of those scenes featured "Holding Out For a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler, so naturally, having been reminded of that, I have to play the song now. Currently, I'm working my way through Bioshock 2, an event nearly three years in the making (since it came out in early 2010, just after I finished the first Bioshock), and the game does not disappoint. It's good to have a game in which to lose myself again; sleepless nights are much better spent with engaging activity than in the sole company of a wandering mind.

Of course, the reason I'm able to play Bioshock 2 in the first place is because Missy got it for me as a birthday present. Two years ago in December, Missy was Lauren's friend from Greene who came up to visit every so often and who then helped inspire one of the most oft-repeated lines in Highland Ave Era history: "I'M NOT DRUUUUUUNK!" At that point, I never would have imagined that someday she'd be bugging me to do the dishes all the time. I did always think you were cool though Missy, in case you're reading this. But I'm pretty sure you know that already.

And then if you go back to December three years ago, Taylor Swift was just dumping Taylor Lautner, and then she wrote a song about it, called "Back To December."  That was when I had my first designs on Bioshock, which has absolutely nothing to do with Taylor Swift (I just wanted to do the "back to December" thing). I didn't pick it up until after Christmas though, when I bought it in a two pack with Oblivion for 20 bucks. I still haven't tried Oblivion because it just doesn't interest me at all. The same goes for Skyrim.

Maybe looking back like this is my brain's way of setting itself up to finally write the all-encompassing recap of 2011. A few months ago I said I was gonna do it, and I started it, but never finished. And of course of all of these past Decembers, the one that sticks in my mind the most is 2010, probably because I was on the precipice of that life-changing perfect storm of events. Or maybe that was just a particularly awesome December. Maybe I'm wrong about everything, and we're all just bumbling through life without any particular trajectory. I can't bring myself to believe that, though.

I apologize if you read this far looking for a nugget of wisdom. Then again, I did warn you in the second sentence of the post that this wouldn't be about anything. Sometimes, I just like to write. And I'm not really the wisdom nugget authority anyway.