I failed.

I mean, what the hell happened? Is this normal NT behavior? Am I wrong to feel completely and utterly betrayed? I mean, just yesterday I was wondering if taking a temporary break (read: it was an ugly, brutal one that lasted about six months) from this friendship in sophomore/junior year had done something awful... or at least that I missed six months of opportunity to have a friend and be a decent friend. And now I find this?

Oh, hell, I'm being so vague. So I'll clarify... if only to myself (it's not like anyone else reads this useless fucking stream of consciousness). It's night, I'm bored, and I go to my friend's MySpace page. My last friend, in practical, awful terms... much as I want to spend time with my other friend, I never could, because her insane family had basically put her under house arrest.

Only now, here she is, on MySpace. Commenting cheerfully on his page that no, I'm not dead, how silly, and you know I really ought to hang out with you and (Novinha) some time. I couldn't believe it was her, but I recognized her face even though I wasn't sure I'd be able to anymore, and the more I read down the page the more I recognized.

All the way down to the fact that I was nowhere to be seen. Not a picture or a word. She'd used my nickname (if I'm going to split hairs, and damn it, I'm upset enough to split hairs) on my other friend. She listed her best friends as the girl I wanted to keep in touch with but couldn't, and another girl I didn't recognize. How long has this been going on? I thought she was desperate. I thought I needed to help her get out of there. I should be glad to find out it's not the case... but...

I was the one who always tried to be there, who always tried to provide help when she needed it, the sounding board, the... best friend.

And now not only do I appear not to be her best friend, but I don't even merit a call or an email or a message passed on through my other friend. "Hey, Novinha, you can stop worrying you'll find my obituary in the paper one morning. I'm alive and happy enough not to top myself anytime soon, and do you know I just might be able to talk to you at some forseeable point without metaphorically being sent to Siberia for six months after?" Maybe it's not true, somehow. Maybe she lost everything again right after she posted that comment. Maybe...

But I'm still angry. I can't hate her, even if I try. But if I had the opportunity to get a message through to her, screw the timing, I'd do it! And if I had the courage to call her a friend even though I hadn't heard from her for months and wondered if she'd moved to another state (or just gone back to the islands), why couldn't she bloody well do it? I'm not blameless: I should have called sooner after I got back from vacation. But I was so afraid. I knew she never got any of the messages I left on the machine or with her conniving, misbegotten relatives. The futility, the chance that I'd piss off the lunatics into treating her even more harshly... it drained me. All summer, I fought: not a small thing, since I hate the phone (you wouldn't believe the ways I manage to screw up). I was just so terrified to start the cycle all over again, even though I knew I had to for her sake.

But, if she's finally free to make some of her own decisions: how dare you leave me here, trapped with myself!? It may not be very interesting to you, but I'm going CRAZY here! You knew I'd been drifting in and out of depression all year because of my loneliness (despite my efforts to make new friends... how can NTs make it sound so easy!?); how could you abandon me to it? I'm stagnant, what little social skills I have are atrophying, I'm identifying more with my crazy characters than anyone real and good. So, M, is gratitude really a disease of dogs?

No. I shouldn't be that cruel. Still...

If she's smiling again, why can't I stop crying?

If she's back from the dead, why do I feel like I've been stabbed repeatedly?

Ugh, so what if that sounds emo? It's the truth, and I refuse to atone for ANY of it.

I got a letter today from myself. Not exactly business as usual, but hardly unexpected: one of our last assignments in Government AP was to write a letter to ourselves, to be posted a year later, with the pieces of wisdom we'd want ourselves to know later.

Apparently I didn't think much of the assignment, or else I was in a remarkably rotten mood. Apparently I also need to be defended from myself. I'll quote everything but a bit in the middle, which is a bit of a cheap shot at other people.

"Hello, self.

You don't change much, I know. You get more and more like you every year. Learn more trepidation. Build more ice. Work on your mask. Really, I wish you had more guts...

So, you want my wisdom, huh? Well... never take raisins from rabbits, never spit in a man's face unless his mustache is on fire, and don't take any wooden knickers unless you've a good supply of salve.

What did you expect, sugar? Real wisdom comes only from chance.

-Me"

(Brownie points for finding the Baldur's Gate quote in the above. Then again, I think there's an obvious break in tone there, so...)

Strangely enough, one of the other end-of-the-year assignments for that class was... well, let me explain it. You may have done it before (I know I did a form of it in the fourth grade), but I'm not sure there's a good name for it. What we did was take a piece of blank computer paper, write our name on the bottom, and then pass it right (or left, I honestly can't remember and it doesn't much matter). That person would write one good thing about you, then fold the paper over so their comment was hidden. I've always hated those because I don't know people well enough to know their good qualities. Most classes I barely know people's names. In this class I did... they were, at least in some cases, the smartest people in the school. But I still felt like a pariah. There were some people who actually wanted to work with me sometimes, people I won't forget because those occasions were few and far between (still are) in school. But too much of the time, it was the same old standing in the middle of the class, praying to disappear while everybody else flocks to their friends and the teacher wonders what's wrong with you.

So I'm leaving class on the day of the talk-nice assignment, feeling relatively good about myself. In the end, I was able to think of nice things to say to everyone, and in some cases got the chance to say things I knew I wouldn't have been able to otherwise (people I admired but knew I wasn't necessarily welcome to befriend). And then I unfolded my paper, and nearly fell off my seat.

Almost everyone in the class was telling me they respected me, that they thought I was brilliant, that I should speak up more. And part of me was flattered, thrilled even... but the rest was reeling. They were trying to be kind and instead managed to hurt me more than they could possibly know. How could you think of me this way and still leave me to twist in the wind? How can you respect the things I say and still allow them to be pounded down by mindless drivel just because the latter was thrown out by more popular students? If you respect me, why does it feel like you hate me?

But in the end, I'm not sure I want an answer. I can't really expect more than a convenient package of lies, or a truth as brutal and jarring as my own letter.

This must be at least the third time I've received this email from members of my family. I'm no atheist, but every time I see it I'm not inspired... I'm, at the very least, irritated. Here it is in its entirety:

This one should keep us all thinking.

I chose #2, now you pick one.

This is a true story of something that happened just a few years ago at USC.

There was a professor of philosophy there who was a deeply committed atheist.

His primary goal for one required class was to spend the entire semester to prove that God couldn't exist.

His students were always afraid to argue with him because of his impeccable logic.

Sure, some had argued in class at times, but no one had ever really gone against him because of his reputation.

At the end of every semester on the last day, he would say to his class of 300 students, "If there is anyone here who still believes in Jesus, stand up!"

In twenty years, no one had ever stood up. They knew what he was going to do next. He would say, "Because any one who believes in God is a fool".

If God existed, he could stop this piece of chalk from hitting the ground and breaking Such a simple task to prove that He is God, and yet He can't do it."

And every year, he would drop the chalk onto the tile floor of the classroom and it would shatter into a hundred pieces.

All of the students would do nothing but stop and stare.

Most of the students thought that God couldn't exist. Certainly, a number of Christians had slipped through, but! For 20 years, they had been too afraid to stand up.

Well, a few years ago there was a freshman who happened to enroll.

He was a Christian, and had heard the stories about his professor.

He was required to take the class for his major, and he was afraid.

But for three months that semester, he prayed every morning that he would have the courage to stand up no matter what the professor said, or what the class thought.

Nothing they said could ever shatter his faith...he hoped.

Finally, the day came. ! The professor said, "If there is anyone here who still believes in God, stand up!" The professor and the class of 300 people looked at him, shocked, as he stood up at the back of the classroom.

The professor shouted, "You FOOL!!! If God existed, he would keep this piece of chalk from breaking when it hit the ground!"

He proceeded to drop the chalk, but as he did, it slipped out of his fingers, off his shirt cuff, onto the pleat of his pants, down his leg, and off his shoe. As it hit the ground, it simply rolled away unbroken.

The professor's jaw dropped as he stared at the chalk. He looked up at the young man, and then ran out of the lecture hall.

The young man who had stood, proceeded to walk to the front of the room and shared his faith in Jesus for the next half hour. 300 students stayed and listened as he told of God's love for them and of His power through Jesus.

You have 2 choices:

1. Delete this and never look at it again.

2. Pass this along to your Christian and non-Christian friends, giving them encouragement we all need every day

When you choose option 2, you have chosen to STAND UP

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different:

This is not intended to be a joke, it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking..............

Isn't it funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell.

Isn't it funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.

Isn't it funny how everyone wants to go to heaven provided they do not have to believe, think, say, or do anything the Bible says. Or is it scary?

Isn't it funny how someone can say "I believe in God " but still follow Satan (who, by the way, also "believes" in God ).

Isn't it funny how you can send a thousand jokes through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, But when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think
twice about sharing.

Isn't it funny how the lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but the public discussion of Jesus is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Isn't it funny how someone can be so fired up for Christ on Sunday, but be an invisible Christian the rest of the week.

Are you laughing? !

Isn't it funny how when you go to forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it to them.

Isn't it funny how I can be more worried about what other people think of me than what God thinks of me.

Will YOU pass this on? . I did .

Did you guess which part sends me over the edge? Maybe not. I'll tell you either way. It's the part that tries to put the squeeze on me. The story's just a story: just another blowhard teacher, this time thankfully getting his comeuppance whether through bad luck or divine intervention. But then they make it into the lowest, slimiest form of chain letter by telling me that if I'm not a coward, I'll pass on their beliefs, without any regard for my friends. Who, by the way, are an agnostic who doesn't want to be pushed around about it and a girl who is too busy trying to survive to read this thing. Worrying more about what people think of you than what God thinks of you... isn't that what this whole thing is? My beliefs are my personal business. Other people's beliefs are theirs. This letter only matters insofar as my family would be happy if I emailed it to every man, woman and child I know. Which, by the way, doesn't add up to much... shame that takes me over whenever they send me a chain letter. And that's pretty much all they do. Chain letters and pictures of cats. I'm not sure if I wish they would actually talk to me or not, although I do know I would prefer it to this. Well, consider it spread around, I guess. But in future, I don't care what they think; none of this will come from me. I am brave enough for that.

I'm just going to come out and admit it. This has been a bad year.

It's not really the year's fault. It's not the place I'm in or the life I'm living... I think. The fact is, I've been losing control over myself since last summer.

I was on vacation, and I got a rare chance to check my email... only to find that my best friend had tried to run away from home again (having tried it once before only a couple weeks earlier). They'd tried to reach me, but of course I hadn't been there. Later she told me that she would have committed suicide if another friend of hers hadn't found her and driven her home.

To be honest, I can't remember if it was the first or second time that had her walking along the road, weighing the decision to throw herself in front of a car. I find it ridiculous that my memory could fail me there. That doesn't change the fact that all I can remember is my reaction: that I was powerless to save her from her life, that I was traitorous for being in another state instead of next to the phone in her hour of need. And worse: I thought she was a coward, wanting nothing more than to throw away all the things she'd ever wanted for the sake of her family's idiocy (ignoring the fact that they had been wanting her to do the same for far longer), and all too willing to abandon me to a world she and I both knew didn't much want me.

It was anticlimactic. She survived... if you can call it that. Her family all but keeps her prisoner; I haven't heard from her in months. With her strange (as in "violent and control-obsessed") family, I'm terrified that one day, I'll open up the paper to see an obituary. Murder, maybe... "Savage beating leaves young woman dead." Or maybe a "fatal accident." Or maybe she'll just disappear for good. In any case, I don't know where to go or what to do.

And in any case, it's me I'm really beginning to fear for now. Selfish? Yes. But what am I supposed to think when I've been dipping in and out of depression for almost a year now? When I've gone from thinking the diet I went on was difficult to wondering if I can and should eat anything at all? When I can no longer predict my own reactions, bouncing from happy to sad without ever knowing why? When, for the last two weeks, I've cried almost every day?

I don't know what the hell is going on anymore. If this is depression, it's the worst it's ever been, and it shows no sign of letting up. I've actually been thinking of going to some professional to beg for antidepressants, even though I've been opposed to the idea all my life for fear they'll change my personality, and the only thing that's stopping me is the fact that I've known family members who ended up dependent on the medication and still sunk in misery.

I'm surrounded by people that I'm bending over backwards to make friends with even though I don't have much energy for it anymore and even though I know they can never be the friends I'm looking for. The friends I'm looking for are two in number; one is at least as busy as I am and has more (and happier. And prettier. And trendier) friends to concentrate on, and the other needs a savior I can't be. I'm clinging like crazy to anyone who can pass for a friend for a few minutes. And I think I may have forgotten how to be a friend in return.

Does that really mean I deserve this?

Who cares? I just needed to say something. Even if it's true that nobody cares, and even if I'll regret it in a few hours when the bizarre, unpredictable happiness comes again.

I just needed to ask for help for once instead of hoping I won't need it.

This is pretty much just for me, because I'm bored and I like answering questions. (And if you happen to be the one person who would know what I meant by the title... I copied the questions off your MySpace page.)

TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF - The Survey

Name: Novinha

Birthday: Early during Libra

Birthplace: A hospital

Current Location: At my desk

Eye Color: Green

Hair Color: Naturally? I don't know anymore. Some shade of blonde.

Height: Five foot eleven and some.

Right Handed or Left Handed: Technically, right, but this whole right/left thing has always been a mystery to me. I actually started out left-handed before my teachers trained me out of it. I've never been able to tell right from left to my satisfaction. And, though I can feel it more than I could as a child, I still have to look at my shoes before putting them on to see that I'm not putting them on the wrong feet; I can walk around for ages like that.

Your Heritage: European, mostly British/Welsh/Germanic

The Shoes You Wore Today: Men's work shoes. Yeah, I know, but at least they're black and not fussy.

Your Weakness: Anything social

Your Fears: Rejection, heights, and cockroaches.

Your Perfect Pizza: I know I'm the only one, but I hate pizza. My perfect pizza would be nothingness in a world where no one would try to pressure me into eating (for better or worse) like they do.

Goal You Would Like To Achieve This Year: I don't really make goals...

Your Most Overused Phrase On an instant messenger: "I meant to say . and not /"

Thoughts First Waking Up: "Oh, crap, do I really have to?"

Your Best Physical Feature: My face.

Your Bedtime: What is this "bedtime"?

Your Most Missed Memory: Late summer nights. I couldn't have slept even if I'd wanted to; I didn't of course, it was a game to me then instead of a danger, seeing how late I could stay up and congratulating myself for my victories with a late-night chocolate feast. I would listen to the radio without slagging off most every song I heard; I'd get excited at every "new sound" even if I'd heard it twelve billion times before. And then I'd put on my first Garbage CD and marvel at how different Jane Eyre seemed with different music backing it.

Pepsi or Coke: Coke; Pepsi is too sweet.

MacDonalds or Burger King: McDonald's!!!

Single or Group Dates: I really wouldn't know.

Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea: Lipton

Chocolate or Vanilla: Chocolate

Cappuccino or Coffee: Neither.

Do you Smoke: Everybody smokes in hell!

Do you Swear: Every damn day.

Do you Sing: Sure. But my voice jumps up an octave when I'm nervous.

Do you Shower Daily: More like every other day.

Have you Been in Love: Yes

Do you want to go to College: I thought I did. Now I'm just serving time, trying to get enough units to get on to better classes.

Do you want to get Married: Yes

Do you belive in yourself: Well, if I didn't, wouldn't I just vanish in a puff of logic?

Do you get Motion Sickness: Sometimes

Do you think you are Attractive: People tell me I am. For me, it depends on the day.

Are you a Health Freak: Can you hand me that bag of chips over there, please?

Do you get along with your Parents: Mostly

Do you like Thunderstorms: Like is too weak a word. I LOVE rain and especially LOVE thunderstorms.

Do you play an Instrument: I play the recorder (it's like a flute) like a flock of angry seagulls.

In the past month have you Drank Alcohol: No

In the past month have you Smoked: I wish I could get away with it. But under these laws, being dangerously asthmatic, and noting that I still seem to be alive... apparently not.

In the past month have you gone on a Date: I also think I'd have noticed.

In the past month have you gone to a Mall: No. Haven't been to the mall since the GameStop there cheated me out of my Hellgate: London preorder. Wankers.

In the past month have you eaten a box of Oreos: No... but I did eat a box of Thin Mints. Hey, can't let them go to waste!

In the past month have you eaten Sushi: No. You'd be able to tell. I'd still be vomiting.

In the past month have you been on Stage: No. I keep thinking of trying out for the musicals and stuff on campus, but then I wonder what I was thinking...

In the past month have you been Dumped: Can't be dumped if you can't get a damn date in the first place.

In the past month have you gone Skinny Dipping: I wish.

In the past month have you Stolen Anything: No

Ever been Drunk: No

Ever been called a Tease: No

Ever been Beaten up: No

Ever Shoplifted: No

How do you want to Die: Painlessly and at the opportune moment.

What do you want to be when you Grow Up: Novelist, poet, columnist, whatever. I enjoy writing (except for the frustrations of coming up with plots, starting and ending), and I think I'd be happiest if I didn't try to shoehorn that into something like journalism, something more accepted but less creative. And if I publish something at some point that will make me so rich I never have to work again, so much the better.

What country would you most like to Visit: Scotland. Again. Permanently.

Favourite Eye Color: Blue, gray, green

Favourite Hair Color: On a guy I prefer dark hair. Not just because I like the contrast of dark hair and light eyes, which I do, but because I don't trust blond guys. The one exception here is Daniel Craig: it doesn't matter in the least if I trust him because I'll never meet him, and I've liked him since Layer Cake.

Short or Long Hair: Short hair.

Height: Over six feet.

Weight: Neither crushing nor cadaverous. If I'm to be honest, though, I do have a preference for guys who are a little less fit than most probably think they should be. I don't want to see ribs, and I'd rather not go with someone more overweight than I am, but the whole musclebound thing doesn't interest me that much.

Best Clothing Style: I suppose I'm partial to what most would call "goth." What can I say? Black is slimming, and Anne Boleyn was a great dresser.

Number of Drugs I have taken: Does pseudoephedrine count? Yeah, it was because I had a cold, but the way it made me so much "happier" and "friendlier" I might as well have gotten my hands on some half-assed ecstasy...

Number of CDs I own: Probably a couple hundred.

Number of Piercings: Not even my ears.

Number of Tattoos: None

Number of things in my Past I Regret: More than a few. But mostly I'm too good at rationalizing to let it bother me.

They start with a sound. Doesn't have to be that loud, just loud enough for a few too many flakes of snow to come loose and bring the whole damn mountain crashing down.

So pretend you're climbing a mountain... just humor me. Pretend there's a radio someone left there playing "Enter Sandman" on repeat. Not loud enough that your eardrums shatter; just loud enough that you can hear it playing quietly no matter how far you run, and you start muttering "Can't somebody unplug that damn thing?" Then pretend that your rope snaps, and every thing you held on to to get as high as you have is gone. A few feet down, you quickly grab on to something that looks stable; the danger is passed. It's like it never even happened. But is being alive enough to forget how close you came to death (or at least injuries maybe no one would ever be able to save you from)? And did I mention that you seem to be slowing down no matter what you do, and there are a bunch of people climbing past you, telling you you should have been ahead of them, paving the way, and while they're climbing past you, the little clumps of snow they carelessly knock aside keep falling on your shoulders.

Wouldn't you be absolutely sure that it was all a few seconds away from burying you?

Just finished the first week of my second semester of my first year of college.

Still an awful lot of firsts there. I guess I can add to that "first time college hit me like a ton of bricks," at least if I don't count having to last-minute finish my research paper. Guess I should draw hope from the fact that the paper (the cultural impact of Star Wars on America, a topic I picked because I love Star Wars and I particularly liked the idea of reading the books and playing the games and stuff to get my "sources." Instead, we had to focus on periodicals... and I ended up hating myself a couple of times for picking the bloody topic) was a success. I left the class hoping the paper wouldn't drag my English grade down to a B (I ended up losing my scholarship anyway). Instead, I got an A... and when I went shopping for books for the new semester, I ran into my English teacher. I really wish I'd had a tape recorder or something... suffice to say he really, REALLY liked my paper. He even said that it was... well, too long to publish, but it was of the right caliber to publish. I'll probably post it somewhere when I can find time to get to his office and get a copy back.

Anyway, if an exhausting experience I only saw as an utter failure can turn out like THAT, by rights I should be more optimistic about this year. But as always, who am I kidding? I'm ridiculously nervous.

English class is the first one of the week. It's in a singularly grim-looking new building: cramped corridors clogged with uncomfortably waiting students, grey concrete walls with "decorative" bolt holes in them (my old English teacher described them as "bullet holes" after his tour of the new building, and I'd be inclined to agree if they weren't so evenly spaced), and oddly configured classrooms where, among other things, the projector tables are bolted down too close to the front of the room to project anything. It's a class on early English lit (early apparently qualifying as anything before Queen Victoria); one of the more intriguing-looking "we're going to make the Creative Writing majors take all this before they can take any Creative Writing courses" classes. The main focus of the class is participation, which is perfectly fine unless you're as terrible as I am at articulating your arguments. On paper, I'm fine. Speaking, unless I know what I'm doing more than usual, I'm a moronic maladroit. Or that's how I come off anyway. I'd been well-skewered by more charismatic people in every high school class that demanded "discussion."

Next up is Art. I am learing all kinds of things about art that I never knew: It's an expensive investment. To create, I mean. It requires a lot of bending over. And I'm the second or third worst artist in my class... I expected better, because I've been practicing since last December (not long but I've seen a distance), but that's not too bad. What was really weird was the reaction I got the first day I walked in. First floor of the Art Building: no one would look at me, even if I was standing in what would normally be their line of sight. I like to call it the "please don't exist" stare; I got one at the library not long ago from the woman who was checking me out. My classroom was supposed to be on the second floor; when I was looking for it I had to pass through a bit of hallway that had people on both sides. Don't think I've ever been stared at that powerfully in my life. They didn't blink, I couldn't look them in the eye. It was like I shrank as I passed between them, like parts of me were burning away. Does this sort of thing happen to me all the time? Do I just lock myself away until I forget? Anyway, I found a decent spot to sit while I waited out the time between classes. And then, just to put a cherry on top, these two giggly girls walked by, saying "There's that girl from downstairs!" Even if it wasn't me they were talking about, it was an extremely discomfiting coincedence. But at least the Art Building gives me someplace to keep my drawing board. Thank God. It's the size of a small child.

Film looks promising. Finally, there are people who actually know something about what they're doing, or are at least extremely curious about it. I'm not sure how well I'll do: we're supposed to be watching films "analytically" rather than "suspending our disbelief." Could be hard for me because I do my best to get involved in every story I look at. Also because the class meets at 7:45 in the morning and I'm a night owl. But hey, he's said that if you're particularly good at a type of assignment he'll give you some slack on the rest... I figure Little Miss Writer has a shot at that. If she can figure out what it is he wants to read.

And last (but not least; these ARE college classes) I have Biology. I don't exactly suck at science. But I'm not so great at the limited amount of math demanded by Physics and Chemistry. Besides, Biology has the largest amount of scientific stuff I'm interested in (genetics and Merck Manual stuff), so despite the fact everyone thought I was nuts for signing up for this class, I decided to use this for my science requirement. And it looks good. We have like a MONTH of genetics. What more could a girl who writes X-Men fanfiction and is strangely fascinated by Punnett squares ask for? I even have a good seat: back corner, no lab partner. Honestly, I could probably use a lab partner, I'm terrible at measuring and such, but if people are going to RUN AWAY to a much less convenient seat just to partner up with somebody else I refuse to be bothered by their absence. (After class, when we were signing up to get the seats we'd claimed during the lab permanently assigned to us, she sent her lab partner to ask if I could switch with them. I hadn't moved just so I could get stuck in another seat where I couldn't see the lectures, just so I could make some girl who didn't even have the guts to tell me her lab partner was coming back to use that seat happy. So I deflected until he gave up and went away. I guess it's the closest I've come to just saying "No way, piss off.") I learned how to use a microscope and everything. (Yes, laugh if you want. I never really understood it before, and never really tried to. But I really like being independent now.)

I've been more than a little jumpy, irritable, and otherwise hyper in a bad way since I decided "It's morning, so I'm not going to roll over and go back to sleep." As it turns out, this is a lousy reason to get up. Especially when every gram of the copious amounts of caffeine I have been ingesting this week makes the same decision. "Look alive, boys! It's WEDNESDAY MORNING, absolutely not special AT ALL. You know what that means. PARTY TIME!!!"

Funny how drinking two cans of Monster (AKA "CAF-POW!!!" to whoever lives around me) a day to clear up my chronic grogginess is completely futile until I decide I'm going to take a few days off the regimen. Or maybe that's scientifically sound and I just wouldn't know it even if Albert Einstein floated down on a sparkly cloud to tell me. Both ideas work for me.

Anyway, so I'm innocently going about my day. Watching my DVD set of Wonderfalls. Taking a break to hop around a little and wonder why I'm so damn ANTSY. Trying to play Neverwinter Nights 2. Restarting several times because weirdly enough, the character creation/leveling up parts are most fun for me. (Same thing in real life. I'll make a character. Then I'll get stuck on his or her story or populate the story with too many important characters because I love every single one.) Curse at game for giving me such an ugly automatic portrait... I love the fact that if you haven't found a portrait that matches your character, you get one automatically; hate the fact that in these portraits, the characters could not look more hideous if they smacked themselves in the face repeatedly, got a nasty dye job, then got a graduate degree in Vacuous Expressions. Play game anyway, because it is still pretty cool. Curse at camera angles because if I make the trackball move even slightly it veers off in one direction... or worse, spins. And sometimes it just spins because it hates me. Continue the game, being very careful to avoid trackball like a particularly ugly, rabid rat carrying pneumonic plague. Finish first bit. Cheer... until I realize that because of some bug, the game has not noticed that I finished the first bit. I'm STUCK! STUCK IN THIS PODUNK SWAMP TOWN FOREVER!!!!!!

That was when I abandoned my computer. Only to find... the new issue of Game Informer.

Dun-dun-DUNNNNHHHH.

You may have noticed, if you've read anything I wrote before, that I have a very... interesting relationship with gaming magazines. I approach them with great enthusiasm and hope, even if (as is the case this month) it's got an angry dude on the cover in the middle of a vaguely sci-fi war. There have been at least two other covers like this in my recent memory, with variance mainly in color scheme (and probably not much more variance in the games themselves), but who knows? This could be the one. I mean, that guy's eyes look pretty orange. He could be a semi-evil pyrokinetic superspy who's just hallucinating this war.

And then I open it up. And the magazine has a tendency to laugh at me and say "Foolish mortal, do you really think there is anything coming to a PC near you that is not a shooter, expansion pack or feeble rip-off of something you have already played? Feel the despair crush you. And just in case you're not, here are some big game companies getting larger and more soulless, and here are the games you pine for NOT getting made. MUAHAHAHA!!!" At which point, I have two options: sulking, or getting so mad that I rant about it here and/or kick that magazine's sorry, glossy butt.

This time, the magazine was unusually tolerant and kind, even saying that there was a very good chance that KOTOR III would be made. Someday. Hopefully before I die of extreme old age. (Well, actually that's not any more comforting than the vague mentions that LucasArts is not abandoning the series. Just ignoring it while they collaborate with Lego. But I guess that after all the abuse I've laid on them I should give them credit for trying.) The only thing they did wrong was give a preview of The Game Those Idiots In Control Of The Star Wars License Are Working On Instead, The Force Unleashed. One guy is already listing it as one of his favorite games, so I flip madly to the back of the magazine before I'm even finished comprehending the word "Unleashed," thinking "Has it come out yet? IT BETTER BE GOOD!" I finally find a short preview of it, having left half the magazine in terrified tears with my frantic page-turning and frequent death glares when the page tries to tell me about another set of Wii party games. And... it sounds exactly like what I did in certain levels of Jedi Academy. And Jedi Knight before that. And what sets this revolutionary new style of gameplay apart? Better graphics, AI, physics, etc.. I admit it, I would be impressed by the Euphoria engine if faced by it. It might even have been enough for me to forgive the game for being a step backward from Academy's customization, for forcing me to play as a man who looks bland despite having cool yellow Sith eyes, and for forcing (as far as I know) the first ever female Imperial officer in a game to be a blonde bimbo girlfriend named JUNO ECLIPSE. But... they are not releasing it on PC. They are releasing it pretty much everywhere else, so I will be getting a copy for my PS2, but if it's not on the PS3 or Xbox 360, it doesn't get the extra flash technology that's supposed to be the big selling point. So what the hell am I spending my money for?

Still, normally these rags drop two or three of these bombshells on me. There is no reason that I should be so pissed... I'm just twitchier than normal. And I wish I knew why.