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Napkin Dust

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Posts posted by Napkin Dust

  7. Posted

    I can’t remember what my grandchildren look like. I can’t remember when the Shift started. When cookies became the matter of life and death. Somehow, it began innocently. A young man came to the Valley Oaks Retirement Facility, and spoke to us about a little project of his. He asked us if we liked baking. Of course we do. We did. Each of us prepared batches for the young man, who sold them. He never told us what he did with the money. Though it became clear that it only went toward one thing, more cookies. Every dime and penny the boy earned, he turned around and put into cookies. He brought in more retirement homes. More grannies and old bluehairs with hand-me-down recipes and flour. Flour. First it came by five pound bags, then fifty, then the barrels. Then carts. Trucks. Silos. We scarcely saw the boy, after that. He zipped around, found us industrial kitchens to work in. Factories to make and package the cookies. I can only guess how many we were making. They started appearing everywhere, our cookies. In the hand of every man, woman, and child. It was a sensation, the likes of which the world had never seen. The cookies became more and more ubiquitous, and with it, the young man’s demands became more and more grueling. The world seemed far away behind the brick walls of the factories, and it seemed to be changing. The young man was getting more and more powerful. Governments bent backward to ensure that the supply of cookies would never falter, never become stagnant. The demand was there. Humanity wanted cookies. It became clearer that they had come to need the cookies. Meanwhile, we baked. We baked as Rome burned. Some of us complained of arthritis. Some that they were tired. These began disappearing. We never heard from them again. It scared us. And the women who replaced them scared us more. Wrinkled haglike women. Parodies of grandmotherhood. The mines were one of the young man’s great coups. Discovering a way to crush chalk into usable flour, coal into chocolate. The first act of the young man’s transmutation. It should have been a sign of his true nature. But the world was too mesmerized with the sweets to care. Eventually, the whole world seemed bent around the creation and consumption of cookies. There was nothing else. IT certainly seemed that way. Where before the world Outside seemed remote and vague, now it almost ceased to be. There were factories and mines and factories and mines and the grandmothers who worked them. It seemed like years since I’d even seen someone under 65. Longer since I’d seen a man. Everyone now totters stooped and near-sighted, ladeling dough onto cookie sheets and feeding them into the monstrous ovens. I cannot work any longer. I cannot shuffle mixing bowls filled to the brim with bittersweet chips like I used to. The floor-granny, a young whip at 73, has been at my heels. Others would panic. But I don’t think there is much to worry about. So I’ll go someplace else. At 95, I feel I’ve earned rest. They take the grannies too old to work to a place they call The Center. It’s a lot like a retirement home. But every once in a while, a granny you’d just been playing pinochle with would disappear. Nobody would say anything, but the disappeared would never show up in The Center again. It made some of us uneasy. The ones with dementia and the senile, I learned, they were the luckiest. No more could be done with them. They were rendered down into flour, their blood pressed to chips. We who could still bake, we were taken under the knife. Failing muscles sewn taut again, broken bones bolted back together. Organs patched. We could be immortal, but like ancient patchworked clothes. Forever shabby, forever on the edge of death. Only the cookies keep us alive. I don’t know if the young man is still organizing all this. He seems to have been swallowed up in the machine of his own devising. Perhaps he’s sublimated into the dark heart of the system. Dark like the molasses of brown sugar. Dark like the deepest brown of chocolate. New grannies, now, they have discovered a way to birth. They emerge from the womb fully aged, and pregnant with a granny who is herself pregnant. At birth, they are already aged matriarchs, ready to take up the spatula and bake for reasons that have escaped anyone. We bake because we bake. Baking bake bake. No one knows where the flour comes from, anymore. We do not think of the chocolate or the butter or the salt we use. We cover worlds now, with bakeries. Our confections reach other dimensions. We bake. We bake. We bake.

  18. Posted

    Dangan Ronpa, is it's actual name, but you will be hard pressed to find a person to actually type that/say it. It's currently a Japanese PSP game + newly started anime, but currently the Let's Play/Translation is the only way to read it in full. It's a very good read nonetheless. It's essentially a mix of Battle Royale and Ace Attorney. There is a second game, but giving you the link to it's incomplete Let's Play will only push you to despair....

  21. Posted · Edited by Napkin Dust
    thanks tumblr

    It wasn't a bad movie per say, but only good if you love action over plot.

    Summary of infinite medium level detail

    [spoiler2]Basic premise was "Okay we have these giant monster things we'll call Kaiju wrecking everything and planes and tanks take so long to kill them that it's destroyed three cities. So let's build giant robots to fight them!" Cue dual piloted robots and everything is fine for a few years. Blah, Blah, main character's brother gets killed while fighting one, love interest(who is terribly one dimensional) and replacement piot shows up, training/backstory drama, double giant monster events start happening. The other pilots are sent out to fight them, being a really awesome Russian couple with an equally awesome robot, Chinese triplets with a three armed robot, and a father and son who pilot the best/are the fastest. The Kaiju that show up have "evolved" and one takes out the both the couple and the triplets with a combination of highly acidic spit, and a prehensile, clawed, tail. The other one shuts down the father and son with a discharge of electricity, and the shock throws the father out of his seat spot thing and breaks his arm.

    The Acid Kaiju runs off into the town in search of the guy who is one of the leaders of the scientific section of the company that builds the robots, who had the bright idea of brain-linking with a part of a Kaiju's harvested brain. And with them having a hive mind, knew exactly who and where he was. Of course, we never get to see what it would have done with him after gently caressing him with it's tongue, which could have made the storyline much less typical as it would have shown how the kaiju react to someone having shared it's thoughts, and vice versa.

    Main pair show up, whoop the two Kaiju's tails into oblivion, nothing new. Plan to nuke the breach before the foretold quadruple monster events every five minutes happen is put into action. Father is unable to pilot, so son and manager of the corporation pilot the robot. Cut to them approaching the breach, and a Category 4 and a never-before seen Category 5 Kaiju show up to defend their doorway into Earth. Hammer head dog shark Kaiju and Eel Kaiju tear off the main character's robot's arm, and Eel Kaiju is killed by accidentally realizing charging into an arm mounted sword is a bad idea. Son-Manager robot duke it out with C.5 Kaiju, severely wound it, and it calls for help. Realizing that they are boned, the blow up the nuke to clear a path for the main characters, and die in the process.

    Main characters approach the breach, C.5 Kaiju survives the nuke and returns to perform a "You shall not pass!" and gets tackle-slammed and into the breach, which was revealed by the scientists to only allow Kaiju DNA to pass through, and thus the main characters get to pass though it. Main character ejects love interest, get the suit to perform and self-destruct, and ejects with 5 seconds on the timer. They both survive, the breach is destroyed as well as the aliens who engineered the Kaiju, and Earth is saved.

    [/spoiler2]

    Actual Thoughts

    [spoiler2]The movie could have been better if

    -The main characters we should cheer for weren't so bland.

    -The other pilots got more spotlight/development, hell, they would have made better main characters! (And their robots were better looking/designed)

    -Kaiju and their creators were better explained/explored.

    -Plot line was different from the average "Guy gets girl, world is saved, only minor characters die"

    Good things????

    -Glados as the AI's voice

    -A homage to Neon Genesis Evangelion in that the main character's robot was in the same pose as Lilith in it's self destruct sequence.

    -Kaiju designs were really,really, nice. They could have even made better main characters.

    -The robots were pretty hot beautifully animated.

    -First actual American Mecha movie???

    -Holy diverse cast batman

    All in all, it did what it worked itself up to do.

    [/spoiler2]

    Anyway, this was my experience, and don't let it discourage you from seeing it for yourself.

  25. Posted

    He couldnt have, like... talked with them before that?

    With how screwed up the timeline(s?) are at this point, I'm not sure. Then again with all the hype that johndave could actually be a feasible ship has gotten everyone confused and throwing out theories and false observations.
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