fire-brandisher of blizzard of ogress of protection-moon of steed of boat-shed

Greetings, programs.

Cataclysm has breathed new live into WoW, using a metaphor that seems strange at first but reveals itself to be perfect when you stop and think about it.

The Buddhists had it wrong, you know. The concept of the Bodhisattva. It doesn't work like that, not anymore.

Know that this, this beam to you, this gold-plated record affixed to the satellite, comes via herculean effort on my part.

This is building the mental equivalent of lactic acid. Tendons are tearing.

The old saying.

Mothers, soft soccer moms, have been known to lift entire city buses to reach their crushed children.

The Ulfheðnar of Norse legend - those 'tasters of blood', those eaters of fire and metal, those consumed by berserkergang.

Was it real, you wonder.

Does that matter, I wonder.

Someone said it was so.

Note that the same attributes (see: the lifting of city buses) have also been associated with those on crack.

Note most importantly that the soccer mom story, the only modern version we have, fails to note the all-important last page of the tale - the one that gives it weight, gives it a humanconditionaftertaste.

Maybe real people can do such things. Maybe they have.
Maybe we should believe these stories again.
That's not the point.

The point is we have forgotten that berserkergang burns you up from the inside out.

We have remembered Odin's blessing, learned thermodynamics, and forgotten the cost.

Or have we embellished old stories, pasteurized them, and forgotten the meaning.

Back to the Buddhists.

The Bodhisattvas with their bodhicittas. The Wisdom-Beings with their enlightenment-wish.

Those who walked the three score miles and ten to Babylon and, and this is important, came back to tell everyone else how.

This is important because it cannot happen.
I'm pretty sure last time that happened we crowned him, nailed him to a tree and pierced his side with a spear in the proper method of sacrifice for Goði Hrafnblóts, for Hangadróttinn, for Geirlöðnir Spear-Inviter Farmr-Galga All-Father God of the Raven Offering Lord of the Hanged Blind One-Eyed Two-Eyed Trickster Mad Screamer Wōden Wôdan Wuotan Wotan Óðr.

Or perhaps not. Maybe I tell a lie. That isn't how it went.

The reason the Bodhisattva concept cannot exist is because I refuse to believe anyone would willingly turn back.

Or rather that the act of going back wouldn't require so much effort as to incinerate you from the inside out, as to consume all of your energy and convert what remaining mass you had into more energy that still wouldn't be enough.

See. It all comes together.

Soccer moms and Odin and Bodhisattvas and crackheads and Berserkers and I.

You can either have your green on this side cake slice imagehope of the way things ought to be, or you can eat your green on that side pacman restofcake reality of the way things are.

Even this reaching burns so much.

Now open it, it's not sealed.

Use like, one finger.

Come on.

Willpower!

There is a special excitement that I've felt only rarely throughout my childhood that is specific to videogames.

Pokemon, usually. Pokemon, WoW, Mass Effect.

It is the excitement before you play the game. The excitement of planning, of theorycrafting, of imagining. It is better than the real game will ever be. It is the excitement of christmas contained on a chip.
It is potential, that urgent reassurance of future greatness that seizes your breastbone and jerks it several inches out in front of you, that worms into your mind and keeps you from falling asleep.

It invariably fades. It would be impossible to live in constant childlike frenzy, and whatever you end up doing pales in comparison to what you dreamed up the night before.

You will burn out at around level 30, a scant six levels before your starter reaches its third evolution, because by then you'll be bored. Your pokemon will languish in their respective boxes until you start again.

You WILL burn out around lvl 10, lvl 30, and lvl 50 because by then you'll have trained the majority of your workhorse spells and you'll be tired of running halfway through an instance with shitty PUGs. Your new troll druid will turn out to be exactly like the last druid you tried to roll.

You will get tired running around the Citadel for those damn Keepers a second or third time. The great spinning galaxies will lose their lustre, and your Engineer+ with Sniper Rifles will become tedious.

But it's okay, because later on you'll get that old feeling again, that physical tightening around your lungs and the fire up your brain stem.

It will come again. It is cyclical.

In time you find out that most things are.

But not enlightenment. By its very design, it hates circles.




.....so how do I explain 円相?