Terry's Dream He Had Last Night While Sleeping Peacefully Under the Glow of the Internet

I fell asleep on my computer last night. I woke up with a residue in my mouth and coating my teeth that can only be created from a healthy combination of Taco Bell and Mountain Dew. I typically have intense dreams as it is, but now that I'm apart of this blog I can catalog how I feel and think without taking any responsibilities for my actions.

Terry's Dream He Had Last Night While Sleeping Peacefully Under the Glow of the Internet:

I'm working on a computer at a dorm room I have never seen before. Casually comfortable in my Spongebob boxer shorts and D.A.R.E. tank-top I have had since God knows when. Abruptly a strange person walks into my room and draws a gun to my head. I do not really care what is happening nor do i even turn to see what he looks like. The trigger is pulled and the first sound I hear in the vision is the click of the barrel right before it fires.

My vision becomes fuzzy. I grip the edge of the table in front of me as the bullet exits the other side of my head. I feel myself leaning against the wall and tell myself "Stay alive. Stay alive. Stay alive.", slowly I lose control of my hand and slip off the table. Everything is happening so fast and so slowly at the same time that I forget where I am or what I am doing. All that mattered to me was staying alive.

I hope that when I do get shot in the head that it will look

like that guy from Scanners when his head explodes

I now find myself in the threshold of my dorm, and I do not even recall how I crawled across my room to get there. Some kid looks at me horrified in the hallway and dropped whatever it was they were holding in their left hand. I know what I must look like but at the time I was just trying to pull myself together. Everything was falling apart inside my head and it was too comfortable for it to be good. I feel like sleeping, my hands are numb, and my eyes are trying to force quit on me. Someone grabs ahold of my arm, I'm a little surprised by this because seconds to me are hours in reality. I assume my body is keeping itself alive through pure adrenaline. I feel like fucking Chet Chelios. Everything about me is moving so slow as I find myself laying on a gurney and being hoisted into the back of an ambulance I realize that I'm dying. "Why do they make these gurneys so comfortable?" I thought to myself, "Why the fuck would they make these things this comfortable?" I try to lift my arm and apply pressure to the side of my head and I am met with a restraint that is tied around my chest and arms. A supposed safety measure, something to comfort the patient I guess. I try not to fall asleep. Peaceful images are flashing at me forcing me to fall asleep. I'm so anesthetic ... I'ts probably because of the amphetamines that are being injected into me. Feeling futile in my efforts to stay alive, I'm trying so hard to fight this, I'm trying so hard to keep myself awake.

My eyes close and the images before me darken.

Like a reflex I open my eyes and lunge forward out of my sleep. A pain is surging through my spine, my eyes feel like they are going to explode. My hands tighten and I take the deepest breathe of my life. I hear an EKG machine beeping behind me and a defibrillator dying down infront of me alongside the glamorous chatter of the people above me. Those fuckers, why couldn't they just leave me alone. I think I have finally lost all sense in my body, but not before I lost all hope for humanity and their weakness for compassion. I try to move my hand but all I get are muscle simulations and reflexes. My parents appear above me, I can tell that they are crying but I cannot hear their voices when I see them mouth the letters and syllables that make up my name. My girlfriend is calm at my side. My sister and brother are no where to be found. I guess a year must have passed by since the incident, but to me it feels like it was only minutes ago.

Fully conscious and aware of my surroundings, my disabilities and handicaps are more and more apparent. No longer can I move my thumbs, nor can i make myself talk or control my mouth for that matter, and I cannot control my thumbs. My fingers are perfectly fine, and I feel its the only thing I have control of. I do not notice little things that happen in my life anymore. I do not know when I am being fed, I cannot remember any car rides home even though I can clearly remember the feeling that it had happen, more like a revelation than anything. Everything I try to do on my own is met with the attention of the people around me. If I move everything debates on if I'm hungry or if I need to use the bathroom. I wish I could tell them all to fuck off and leave me alone but nothing escapes my lips. All I carry with me is a blank look on my face and a growing pain inside me that is my own existence.

**I apologize for my atrocious grammar and sentence structure. I should have payed more attention in High School.**

I love yet hate you all,

*782*

EGM and Finals

I swear, finals these days must take steroids. It's not even the tests or such, just the projects and the time consuming, life sucking toll they have attached to them. I'm not surprised nor shocked that I made it through. I'm just shocked at the fact that I managed to do something I set out to do, rather than conform.

Oh and I'm now 22 year's old according to my birth certificate, driver's license and social security. Kind of sucks, I know that there's less of a point in celebrating birthdays but ultimately I can't quite say I'm willing to give up on celebrating them. Granted by 30 I'm sure no one will care but honestly? I can't justify not celebrating my friends birthdays in the same style as mine. Getting something you REALLY want and bang on one day out of the year you actually have something like that com true? Pretty sweet stuff if you ask me.

Granted I do want to take a moment to talk about Electronic Gaming Monthly. The magazine has been relaunched. From a stand point of a gamer, the magazine hits on all relative subjects and managed to actually have the big stories for the month. From a journalistic stand point, this magazine is a Picasso on display in a children's museum. The quality of this magazine is far beyond any expectation I've ever held to something in print. It has quite literally thrown down a gauntlet for magazines that cover videogames in general. It does what it does, but it does it so well that you question what you were reading before you picked it up. Oddly enough, I get a sense of this being much like Playboy Magazine, without the boobs and such.

It's composed much like Playboy. It has interviews with game developers, black and quite photos included of the conversations in progress, much like Playboy. It has the reviews after the cover story and before the interviews. Again like Playboy. The only thing I notice is that this magazine really does show quality. I must have flipped through it and read it cover to cover several times by now and yet I keep going back and referencing the whole thing over and over.

I know, I got an story from when I was younger for just about anything. However, digging through my old stash of Magazines I did uncover a very old, (199-) EGM with Pikachu on the front. I basically flashed back to the exact moment. My Dad was in Florida, gearing up to send me back to my mom. He bought the magazine for me to read on the flight home. I remember digging into it and the first thing that caught me was Hsu and Chan and their plan to make a Radioactive Pokemon called Chernobylchu or something. Back then I was laughing so hard at the concept I didn't bother to look at the subtly of it. Now I read it and I laugh more at the written jokes rather than the visual ones.

EGM seemed to be a gaming staple and their absence I think was noticeable. I had notable respect for Dan "Shoe" Hsu for grilling Microsoft on their retarded backwards compatibility with the Xbox 360. I also loved the fact that EGM was extremely thick and made sure to have as much information on it as possible without becoming a phone book every month. I kick myself in the butt for NOT buying them or subscribing. Course, I look back now and know I wouldn't be helping anything and would probably have several issues of Maxim thanks to the publisher killing it off.

My friend Kyle, he told me the magazine died and I had a mild moment of pause. I realized that something must be wrong with that statement. EGM had been around about as long as I had. Christ, Nintendo Power was founded the year I was born for pity's sake. Starting in 1989, EGM basically just did its thing but like all magazines, I guess Street Fighter impacted it. The more I read into videogame history, the more and more I see connections to popular franchises like Street Fighter, Megaman, Mario, Final Fantasy. Magazines like EGM really hit their stride when they focus on making sure everything for a super popular game is correct. That doesn't happen as much now thanks to the internet and message boards like Shoryuken and Dustloop but it doesn't mean that magazines can't lean to a genre of videogames.

The Highscore itself is mostly a directionless but tightly knit group of people whom focus on their own favorite genre of games and continue to make notes and thoughts as such documented when they post. My Editor for Popzara tells me I need an editor really badly for this blog and I do agree that I'm not the prettiest thing to read or the most verbose or kind, I try at least to be entertaining and fair as possible to most of the stuff I talk about. I think the word I'm looking for is real. I try to be 'real' with everything I talk about because bullshitting and lying isn't going to do me or you any good, especially if someone is trying to actually read this stuff for an honest opinion.

For now though, I'll just continue this blog, updating when I can while trying to bring on friends and talent I think might be cool enough to contribute something to it. I'm not sacrificing anything here really, nor am I really screwing myself over by writing out my thoughts and opinions. So long as I don't readily whore myself out for money without reasons for doing so, I guess.