I've already gone over the purpose of Vacant Care as an album . Some stuff was on my mind, and I went ahead and scrapped the original plans in favor of venting. That part is easy enough to understand. The individual tracks do need further dialogue though.  Let's take a listen to the first track on that album: Action . Vacant Care by Christopher Jones Action works as an overall "go suck an egg, cuz' I heard there's a prize inside you might like" to following the path of raw anger. I've been given a fair enough shake from people I like and admire . Things for the most part have been pretty cool. If I choose to look at nothing but the positives, it's all love! That's not a skill I was ever accused of maxing out... Christopher Jones doesn't have a long standing history of looking at the positives. There's plenty of receipts that show I've disregarded such things in favor of having a long term brood session for the fuck of

Damage Control(I should have called it DMG CTRL) was the first game I released publicly to itch.io. It was a part of a game jam a few years ago. The gimmick was to use 5 colors or less, and create a gameplay loop that centered around POWER . AAAAAA So, as a guy who started gaming during the 2600 era, I immediately thought of making an Atari style game. I'm sure there's a low of other ways to meet the requirements for this challenge, but I'm also sure the best ideas aren't relevant in a situation that sees you doing things on a tight deadline.  For those who don't know, the whole game jam thing is an exercise in stress management. You have a very short time frame for creating and releasing your games. It's a concept that was thought up by a masochist and probably has led to a lot of people calling it quits on their game dev dreams. The Deciders As the always positive and never snarky at all when uncomfortable type, I simply decided to roll with the Bald Bull(shi

So, I was flipping through this deck of Magic cards that I thought I threw away years ago. Kinda glad I kept it, because some of this stuff looks pretty cool! None of it is worth anything, but I'm fine with not holding questionably valuable cardboard when the main reason I got into this game was for the old artwork.  Though I feel the game is neat, the amount of Magic I've actually played can be counted on one hand. I'm a simple man with simple needs. I like looking at art from people who's hands seem to be demons that like manipulating pencils. I'm amused by the things they draw. I have the power to take in media that I know I lack the dexterity and Patience in making myself. I still enjoy drawing, no doubt about it. The thing is, I'm never gonna try to make the art a Ron Spencer or  Mark Tedin did. I kinda understand people having hoop dreams, but nah man...I can't be out here punching above my weight class with trying to be like Mike(or, I don't wann

The Rico Files: I thought it was a NO-SPIN Zone... I sit here staring at the final Rico messages, examining my notes for this article, fingers hovering over the delete button. Her observations are neat and all, but I already know her fate. There's no real point in looking into her protips when none of them will prepare us for the impending Bunkhouse Brawl with Dark Falz. The only real revelation at this point was her latest translation: "Light makes darkness, a pair, exists, but it doesn't always exist. Reincarnation goes forever. The rule is here. It should be sealed. MUUT DITTS POUMN." I'm not even going to pretend I have a clue what 85.7% of that means. Look, I love PSO for its flashy weapons and arcade-y RPG vibes. Unraveling existential philosophy from its story isn't my jam. Kudos to the super fans who do that – I'm sure you're out there. If so, you're a different breed and I hope they feed you plenty Scooby Snacks. speaking of which: anyone

Two very different inspirations here: Memories of channel surfing on a Saturday afternoon, and uncomfortable Sundays in a stupid suit listening to some guy yell passages that don't solve the worlds issues. Only one of these activities could be considered as being somewhat pleasant in hindsight. Brownie points for whomever guesses correctly. I don't know where those points can be redeemed, unfortunately. Ask around at your local 7-11. Maybe they still have a couple of those Fox-O-Rama scratch and sniff cards waiting for ya. Doubt the 3d glasses are available. Those things were pretty fragile, and barely lasted a night full of 90s comedy related facial movements(laughing, missing your mouth when trying to drink with a straw and almost poking the red plastic lens out in the cheap paper glasses, etc). so the quick splode, ode to wrote, she all quotes. Floatry gross way more talent in they folds but they groove cool, so youth recruit who food to groots in the era of a dude to root w

I named my dragon DuGoo Da Crumb Snatcha.  Ugh, social media these days. All political flame wars and people yelling at each other in live streams like it's some kind of digital gladiatorial arena. Don't get me wrong, I hate talking politics as much as the next internet hermit crab, but I miss the good ol' days of message boards. You know, where you could actually have a decent conversation about, like, how awesome vampires are or why katanas are the coolest swords ever invented. That's why I decided to revisit Gaia Online recently. Remember that place? A million anime avatars strong, with more shops than a UFO hashtag on Twitter, and enough backstory for every NPC to be the star of their own web manga(more on that later). Talk about a creative corner of the internet! From a bah gawd bygone era. Apparently, Gaia Online survived the great forum exodus of the early 2010s. Those were dark times, my friends. A mass extinction event for digital humanity as we used to know it

The Rico Files: We Got Computers Putin'.  Welcome back to the Rico Files! In this installment, our inquisitive guide through the planet of Ragol has found herself in an odder situation than fighting a flying snake demon with death beams. that thing was super scary. How could it be any odder than that? It seems that the Mines are full of robots that shouldn't even be here unless the planet was inhabited by someone else. Maybe Pioneer 1 brought these things over? I haven't a clue because I never thought deeply into the plot of one of my favorite Dreamcast games. I'm a simple man. I like to press buttons and watch cool things happen on the television screen. I played the Ranger class because they had big cool firearms. I always saw the robots in that part of the game and thought "oh wow, slow moving targets!" Truthiness Intensifies. It's now where we see Rico in her WCW Jericho state of being a conspiracy theory nut. She goes on about secret factories, Govern