The Beginning (and End) of the End!

REVIEW: Well, it certainly has been an eventful few months, hasn't it? I learned so much! Actually, not that true at all. Being a rich brat who likes to read a lot, I can't say that I learned anything new or even put together new thoughts. But now the question is, how, oh how, shall I go about sharing my kernels of wisdom with the younger generations? I think a series of helpful slogans might help! Here are my ideas: Modesto (or the city of your choice) is screwed! Money is Good! But it don't matter cause no one does what they should...

Hey, I think it's catchy (and also accurately sums up my "findings").

ACT: What should the /Building Imagination Alliance tackle next? Ughhhh, I honestly have no idea. It seems like everything was already approached in the last ARG. Just changing location or context won't change the "solutions" too much. I don't know what the /BIA can do next. Maybe something incredibly controversial like religion, abortion, gay marriage... Who knows. Personally, I lack any passion for anything to think it warrants a whole ARG season.

Who would I encourage to play Season 2? Honestly? Promise you won't hate me for this? Promise? Pinky Promise? Cross your heart and hope t- ok, ok, I'll stop now. I wouldn't recommend the ARG to anyone in good conscience, season 2 or otherwise, because I wouldn't have recommended it to my past self if I had it all to do over again. I just don't particularly see it as helpful to anyone... I'm so sorry!

Oh man, how would I change the game for Season 2? Take it out of the stupid city! UGH!! I don't live in Modesto and don't give a crap about Modesto! If people are goign to be forced to participate, make it easier on their poor souls and let the missions be a little open ended so people can apply them to the places they live. All cities are connected. You need to attack the problem on all fronts, attacking it at the roots instead of chipping away at the limbs. Personally, I think if the ARG is to survive at all,it has to undergo surgery: Give the player more freedom. Let them make a blog or not. Let them make pictures of videos if they want or not. Basically, let the players dictate where the ARG goes. 

Hmm... What new tools would I want as a Super Hero...honestly, I failed to see why a super hero was needed in the first place. Human beings shouldn't use super heroes in an attempt to experience a solution to a social problem vicariously through people like me. Forget new tools, leave us poor Super Heroes out of it entirely. As if our lives aren't already busy from morning until night, but now we have to keep up a blog too? Oh god, please! Have a little mercy!

Basically, what I'm getting at is unless forced to, I'm not coming back here, no way in He... er, you get where I'm going with this, I'm sure...

IMAGINE: 

That's right y'all! My idea for Season 2's victim's is simple: The Players! Who are the players? What color are their souls? How could people change on a person level in order to be more helpful to helping their fellow human beings? Changes cannot be superficial. Human compassion is on life support. A nose job is not what the doctor ordered. What I'm talking about is Open Heart Surgery: the player has to open their hearts in order to grow as a real human being.

 

FINAL ANIMATION! That's all folks! Good night and good luck!

ART and CULTURE!! Pretty...low on my priority list...

(This is a picture of me, having accidentally walked onto the photo shoot for the poster for the Modesto Art walk. Don't be fooled by their beautiful bodies, those art mannequins or whatever are super high maintenance.)

LEARN: Modesto and art culture... Huh, that's a bit like trying to combine oil and water. By nature, based on what I've seen of Modesto thus far, it just does not seem like a city very conducive of an "artsy" culture. I mean, honestly, read back through the last, ugh, 8 posts I've done about Modesto. Considering all of the other nagging problems facing the city and its inhabitants, I doubt people who are facing foreclosures and are loosing their health insurance really care anything about art or any other kind of cultural event. And really, can you blame them?

Granted, I'm the child of people so rich they could buy all of "art culture" and use it instead of clay pigeons out on the range, but I can still sympathize. I mean, my host is totally broke. Chronically. I would say terminally, but, yeah, don't wanna be too grim. I might be a huge art fan, I certainly don't put it on par in terms of importance when compared to the basic necessities. I might be a little on the broke side, but I'm totally a heavy reader. And you know what I'm reminded of on the topic of art culture. Can I get a "MASLOW'S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS"? Oh yeah, baby.

For all you lovely folks who weren't blessed with the luxury of not being taught to tests and have no idea who idea who Abraham Maslow might be, I present to you... His wiki page on the subject. I'd normally take the time explaining it to you, I really would, but, eh there's no point. Sometimes I get the feeling few people bother to read this far anyway. I could be rambling on and on about my totally rational and very justified aversion towards all things related to marmosets, and you know what? So few people will know anyway. You know what I do know? Marmosets know military formations and don't like being shot. But whatever. What was I talking about...? Oh yeah, art.

( This is a picture of me at the Modesto Blues Festival. Probably. Like I said, I don't like going to things because they're expensive and not worth my time, but computers can change all that. Happy Memories, brought to you by Photoshop and Google Image Search.)

ACT: Hey, I really like that suggestion! I should go to Modesto! Do things! In Modesto! As in, get out of my car, in Modesto and breath Modesto air and walk amongst the Modesto hooligans! Oh yeah that is SO not gonna happen in this life time, bub. ;3 I don't use emoticons in this blog often, so you know I'm serious.

You know why I'm not going to Modesto unless forced against my WILL? Because I do not like GOING to cultural events. Wanna know why art and culture is so anemic in Modesto? It's cause no good jerks like me are bleeding it dry. 

I am sorry (no I'm not), but I do not handle group like situations well. I think people for the most part smell of cheetos and despair and would rather not be around them. I like being a sexy lone wolf. And I'm not talking Hollywood lone wolf where they make them team up with a dynamically opposite, often times younger and scrappier partner to show the power of partnership, friendship, blah blah. Nope, I'm talking old school Professional lone wolf. Please note, this does not mean I am a hit man or the other kind of "professional" (I'm gonna let your mind do with that what it will. Let it stew around in the membrane a bit. Took me a while to come up with that).

I just personally don't get the point of really caring about cultural events. I can barely pretend to stand most people every day. WHY would I willingly choose to subject myself to more people? I played along with this game when it came to relatively important stuff like health care and housing, but seriously? Art? Culture? Dude, come on. Again, we aren't in kindergarten anymore. We don't HAVE to do things as a "group". With the Internet and stuff, we can afford to be individuals. If people don't want huge festivals and other cultural stuff, eh, then the people of Modesto don't get it.

IMAGINE: Honestly, I don't see a problem. If the majority of people in Modesto don't care about art or culture, I don't care to force them. If the minority wants to experience things, well Modesto is close enough to other things that they can just go visit them. Honestly, art and culture should have been put up with leisure. When the necessities aren't being taken care of, believe me, no one is going to care about art adn culture. It's like covering manure in diamonds and ribbons. You've make it look pretty, but it still going to smell like sh-er, well you get it. Sorry, I just don't get the point of putting my energies in trying to push others to do stuff something I don't care about doing.
I'm mysterious, I'm cool, I'm wickedly amazing, but the one thing I don't do well is deal with people. Modestoians and the people in the world in general can do their little festival or gathering thing if they want, they can make galleries and museums if are so inclined, but if I want to stay at home, do my own thing, leave me alone. Maybe my disinterest in spending time with total strangers is just the new culture. Deal with it.

Pessimism, Thy Name is Freckles (Also, Sky Diving)

(Yes, that is a picture of a beach. Yes, those are my gorgeous, gorgeous shoes. Please stop staring. You'll cause self-esteem issues. The ocean is already pretty self conscious about her size.)

LEARN: Originally, I was going to say that people shouldn't worry about leisure when they can just go to the beautiful beach front and enjoy the surf and sand and, maybe, put a little shrimp on the barbie. Unfortunately, this was around the time my failing mark in Geography came back to bite me in several rather uncomfortable and embarrassing places. Apparently, and I'm not sure if you knew this about Modesto, it's landlocked. Yep, that means land to the left and right. And...the other left and right. Er, no wait. North, south, east and west. Also, down. Technically there isn't land up of Modesto, but that's mostly air and there isn't much to do in the air other than sky diving. Then again...

IMAGINE: I think I'm seriously onto something with this whole skydiving thing. Come on, Modesto has an airport, I think. Unless its just a poverty stricken region called Airport just for kicks. No, Modesto's got an airport and it should do something with it I think. Instead of saying something complacent like "Dur hur, well Modesto is within driving distance of all these other BETTER places", we should be highlighting that which makes Modesto a pretty rad place to live and, from what I've seen, inevitably die in.

Thus, sky diving and other air related sports. On an unrelated note, can it really be called a sport if gravity does most of the work? Just saying. Anyway, think of it this way. Instead of being a defeatist and sending people out of the city, sending upwards but still withing the city limits. PLus, its a win-win for most people invested. If the person falls and dies, the beauty of Modesto will be the last thing they see. Unless we can actually figure out a way to gently ease those falling to their deaths towards our rival cities so that they'll be known as That City where all those poor skydivers fell to their deaths. It'll be a PR nightmare for them. Not for us though. Modesto will be the city where in defiance of nature, skydivers all live. They'll land on Modesto's only mildly dirty land and after breathing in its exponentially more toxic air, will be infinitely more greatful. Plus, come on, its fun. It really puts things in perspective. I'm sure someone much better at analogies than I would even go so far as to compare it to going to the moon with the Beatles in a legit yellow submarine WITH sub sandwhiches.

(If you don't think skydiving with a sub sandwich is amazing...well you're just dead to me at this point aren't you? )

ACT: Why is nothing in real life as amazing as it is in my fantasy? That's a total buzz kill. I'm just saying. In reality, I don't know if you've been to Modesto,it's a pretyt boring town. But that's kind of the norm. Most towns are boring. I mean, save for the big cities. Modesto is a big city only in terms of gross people and crime. The problem is the people. Look around most people in Modesto. They've got the energy of sloths. They don't want to bother setting up anything fun to do, so there you go, there's just no fun. Tell you what, first fix the other problems plaguing the city, get the fat residents off their ever expanding rears and go bowl. Or take up marksmanship at the range.
 
The people of Modesto lack as much passion for leisure as they do for everything else. Apathy has set in and for the most part, the people don't care for group leisure. They do their own personal thing, even if that just might be staying at home, eating artery clogging crap food and watching old reruns of Wheel of Fortune. Am I unduly harsh? No, this is how I see the world.

If the people of Modesto don't want to do anything together, you can't make them. This isn't preschool. If they want to be alone and have fun, let them. I don't even care. I've got my own thing of relaxing and that's good enough for me. I don't care if fat bobby down the street doesn't want play air guitar with me. Forget him. I'll put on the sickest reenactment of every Pink Floyd concert ever. By myself.

From Point A to Point B, Sucka

(I'm not a huge fan of Modesto, but I wish you were there anyway. You can take that to mean whatever you want, man.)

LEARN: I've only been to Modesto a handful of times, and from what I've seen, I'm thankful for that. The traffic in Modesto is ungodly and no one really seems to remember what they learned in Driver's Education. IT'S CALLED A TURN SIGNAL, YOU MANIAC! But don't worry, not everyone is out to assassinate mother nature a la toxic fumes! Some people are kind enough to use public trans! Unfortunately, the people who use the buses in Modesto must all be sharing the same sinus infection and because those places are disgusting. Just how bad have my few bus riding experiences been in Modesto? You know the saying: freaks come out at night? Well, Modesto must be the City of Perpetual Darkness because I've never managed to catch a bus without at least one or two gross freaks sticking up the communal air. Nope, that's just not for me. -shudder- 

IMAGINE: In a perfect world, technology would have gotten to the point where matter transporters would have become a reality. That means carless transportation wouldn't be just an alternative, it would be the norm! No more gross cars, driving all over the place, farting carbon monoxide and running over little old ladies and young college students with so much to live for. Nope, there'll be no cars at all. What a glorious day. Then again, like everything else, the existence of poor people is really gonna ruin everyone's fun. "Waaaaah, Freckles... what about the fringe members of society who can't afford to use teleporters?! It won't be faaaaaaair." My answer to that is "you're right. That's not fair. It's just as unfair as the current transportation system." Not everyone's got a car and it sucks to be those who don't, but what can you do? Travel is definitely not one of your rights protected by the constitution. Basically, if you can afford a bus ride now, you can afford a matter transporter ride in my awesome future scape, with the added benefit of not having to interact with your disease ridden, mouth breathing fellow passengers! Oh joy.

ACT: Unfortunately, like poor people, reality will continue to be a buzzkill. As matter transporters have yet to be invented, they're obviously out of the running for "possible solutions to Modesto's transportation problem". But you know what is definitely a possibility? Scooters. Like the almighty VESPA! They're very inexpensive, even brand spanking new, and they get like 95 miles to the gallon! They even fit up to two people! Sure, they would replace the SUV for most big families, but it'll cut down on that normal sight in Modesto: a huge god-forsaken SUV with only a tiny person driving it and maybe a base ball cap in the back seat. There are too many huge cars on the road and not enough people. Cut down on the traffic heavily by switching over to a scooter! Heck, for the cost of repairing your car's engine, you can get a whole new scooter! Think about it!

(Vespas are very near and dear to my heart. In fact, here's a picture of me from years ago when I was working as a rather successful vespa scooter model. Yeah... this was around the time I was still working at that cabaret. My scrolls were my signature as a model even back then. Good times.)

 

Home Sweet Home

LEARN: Modesto is in huge trouble! From what I've gathered, a large portion of the city is just in a huge state of disrepair. The will and the desire to fix parts of the city are there, but is the money available? All of the answers seem to indicate a resounding "NO". With so much money needed to run Modesto's size, maybe the city had just gone over its current capacity.

I mean, really, think about it. Modesto s a growing city, but the quality of life for the people there just seems to go down. Crime is high, its hard to keep your health and your home.The people moving to the city aren't engineers or marketing gurus. They're just normal, or even people with very little working potential. Modesto seems like a city spread too thinly.


ACT: With money being what is it, some projects are just going to have to be abandoned. There's only so much money allotted for city repairs. One has to look at the big picture. The amount of people a project will help needs to justify the amount of money going into it. If a city project will only help a tiny fraction of the population, but cost millions, there needs to be a very, VERY compelling reason.

This might sound cruel, but those living in Modesto need to realize the farther they live in from the center, the less they're going to get. Modesto cannot afford to pay to keep its huge size going anymore. It's similar to what the British Empire was going through years ago. They had territories all over the world, but became spread too thin like not enough butter on toast. For fear of the whole kingdom crumbling, they cut away the excess areas down to the lands they could afford. I don't know if it's possible, but can a city do the same? If there are parts e living there should talk to the authorities and e living there should talk to the authorities about leaving Modesto district and forming their own city if they are particularly impatient. The simple math of it is, does it make sense to spend that much money on so few people? It becomes an example of a bridge to nowhere type of thing. It might be nice to say, clean up the Airport area, but the number of people living there might not warrant the money put in. That means the people living in the airport area can either grin and bare it or, failing that, try to separate from Modesto and become its own city.

IMAGINE: Money might not be the root of all evil, but its starting to look like the root of most problems in Modesto at least. If I had all the money in the world, people living in the often times forgotten parts of Modesto wont' have to move or declare their own city-hood. That's something! No, actually, they would. Declare city-hood that is. In fact, I would buy a whole chunk of Modesto and fix it up nice and pretty. I would buy all the houses and renovate. Then I would turn around and rent the houses back to the people. They'd get to live in a nice private city where everything looks good. They'll be happy I'm sure. Or they can leave. That's always an option, even in my power fantasies.

PICTURES COMING AS SOON AS BLOGGER LETS ME UPLOAD THEM.

Yeah Yeah, Gotta Stay Healthy!

LEARN: Wow, health is a huge problem! Not just in Modesto, not just in California, but in the whole country! And really, is there anything that can be done? After someone gets sick... not that much. At that point you're at the mercy of the doctors, assuming they've got room and you've got money. Not that great of a plan at all. But the question remains: if trying to fix your health isn't the answer, what is? 

ACT: The answer to that, very obvious, actually: Preemptive medicine. The best way to take care of an illness is to make sure you don't get it in the first place. This attention to health should not just be a personal thing, either. When people do things as a group, they have more motivation to stick with them. For instance, in Japan, they have this thing called Radio Taiso, or just Radio Calisthenics. People get together as groups (mostly companies nad schools) and do several minutes of calisthenics as a group in the mornings. This jump starts your energy for the rest of the day and lets  you know that there are other people invested in your health as well. Plus, its fun too! Wanna see just how much fun Radio Taiso is? Why not take a look yourself?

IMAGINE: In a perfect world, everyone would be exercising several times a day and would be eating all homemade foods. Not only that, but healthy living wouldn't just be something people did a few times a week. It would be a way of life. People would walk to work and school and shopping. They would spend more time around time with friends. The less people isolate themselves, the more they'll feel connected to others. When people feel connected, they feel like they have a reason to stay healthy.

 

And Now For Something Completely Differ-well, more or less the same, actually.

(Page 1)

(Page 2)

(Page 3)

 

(Page 4)

 

(Page 5, The End)

As you can tell, this week's mission was about crime. Rather than try a conventional method of preventing crime, I thought to go right to its source: children. Really, what are babies if not just little criminals. The best way to stop a crime is to stop the criminal from ever picking up a life of crime at all. 

Plus, its easy! I met the kid in the comic, Al, back during mission two when I was doing free advertising work for local businesses (you can see him in the video! he's the one playing with the purple handball). He's a real sweet kid, but sometimes he doesn't like to share what's bothering him. He's got a real Atlus complex like that, constantly feeling like he has to hold the whole world on his shoulders. 

Anyway, he and his mum got into a bit of a row one night and he thought he'd run away from home. I happened to wanted a small pick me up after a rather frightening encounter with the local crime element and he tagged along (mostly I insisted to get him out of the rain). Over burgers, we talked and he got whatever was bothering off of his chest. After several hours, he learned to see things from his mother's perspective and wasn't as angry any longer. He went home not long after and now he and his mother are getting along splendidly. I'm happy to report that young Al is no longer in any danger of being a criminal.

Yes, it is as easy as that. Just be a big brother or a big sister to kids who look like they could use a little help carrying their burdens. Their shoulders are smaller than ours, so even a little bit of our help can go a long way. 

~ANIMATION~

(Here's Part one! It is a different rendition of the above comic with Al. He looks a bit different this time around to match the darker air of the animation! The first part is the set up: Al is sad and DESPAIR is beginning to set in!)

 

(And in PART TWO, both you and I get to do something about it! Help me get rid of the DESPAIR in young Al's life so that he can be a happy kid once more! Happy kids make lousy criminals after all! No, seriously, move my hand! It's not a still image, I swear!)