T.V causlity or these images with the havoc of the stray dog

"Who can make the muddy water clear?  Let it be still, and it
will gradually become clear."
"I do not know whose son it is.  It might appear to have been before God." - the tao te' ching

Boredom is both the father of greatness and devilish cartoon vilanny, bordom is the state man flow in and out of all there lives, yup, there is a vast ocean of bordom and only rarely do we find a island a sactuary from the strung out bordome that haunts and stalks in a peristent desire to drive to the void our exsistance crawled out of to prematurely return us to the void that again swallows all things. palm tree's and cocunuts, in a lawn chair staring out at that inevitble bordome, saying "haha you sumbitch you thought you had me, but only the boring are bored, and this here sanctity will not be tarneshed by you." but a state of being unboring is some form of nirvana, enlightenment us normal mortals envy on our islands staring off into to the dark clouds reflecting the sun on the horison as we well no from a exspierience a huricane of bordome is a comeing. whats a man to do but pursue new wanders and islands and return to them in there proper season, but my friends there are only shelters not homes. but final fantasy seven is one of my farvorite guns on my private wars on bordome. it is at once facinated by its own ambition, and sincere in it's selfless desire to entertain. it is one weird piece of fiction, and if nothing elsce is quite possibly the greatest mindless pleasure ever made, and all without out actually insulting the intelligence of a unstupid man, and probly raising the bar for the majority of americans. it is to video games what buckaroo bonzai is to movie novilisations, a trinkling down of postmodern literature sincere relation ship to its own artificial nature as atertainment that desire to do more then entertain, but before in my unstrained passion i swoon and swell, it should be understood it's more kurt vonegut then thomas pynchon,  and has more in comon with barthaleme then cats cradle, and has even more in comon with a r.e.m state then anything elsce. which is to say irational images swelling up and being rastionalised with as much honer and charm that may be possible with a stated goal to enteratain, because i cant enphasize enouphe finalfantasy seven dosnt wont you to do things with it but to it, it has emotional problems and just here for you baby(wink!) and if the make up is drying mud, and looks like someone one lost a fight with a peacock, and if it looks more tired then it's age would imply. and after a six hour sesion it locks its pretty ass up in the bathroom, feeling as yoused as it wants to be, the tears are sincere for whatever that worth to the unironic world of the romantic. the game wants to be yoused, it only wants you to feel comfortibly satisfied. so what if you have to tell it on ocasion your not gonna hang out with someone who gets the urge to breakdown a confesion of legitimit problems, so it neads to not drink around you, but you can crawl intot he milkeyed minder of those bambi eyes when in it's troubled state you get you upteenth backrub and had quality meals prepared so much you dont care abot those freudian complaints. because final fantasy is a disposeible as it wants to be, and is only so brialian because rarely do the ambitous submit to shwobiz glits thats all glitter and gothic forboding. final fantasy seven is a novel lenth silent film serial adaption of the kissing coising yoshiro togashi comic book's with a comentary soundtrack of tom waits at his weirdest. ...kissing cousin?...final fantasy seven is meeting the love of your life, who is game for like anything, and when you take her to meet your parents on your twenty secound birth day to tell them thre going to be grand paretns, they infor you she is a third cousin. which is to say final fantasy seven may be pretty as a doll but damned if the circumstances dosn't even it out to be ugly. but how fascinating is that game journalist now blame the mother for the inbred baby its made and take it out on the poor inocent. how was it to know it's ambition would bring the worst thing that can possibly happen to the soulfull nonsence of ambiouse entertainment, a desire for respectibillity that even that old sage(because he won a putlitser, so he must have deserved it) roger ebert, to say video games cant be art. but hte desire to be called "art" is vary difrent then the ambition to create "art" and if respectibillity means remove all aspects of the artificail from story telling, then we are doomed, for what purpose does any aethestich pleasure bring othere then a artificial since of othereness and a forced dignity that reall life cant provide. perspective comes from empathy, and the fact of the matter is the fiction that politically corect critics desire to be read wont be read by the people who ingnorance they hope correct. but is it fair to call it escapeism is it fair to say that when the work is done and were all fat and the basic steps to exsistance have effectivly been taken that is there anything wrong with day dreaming, and i think blind escape is bad, so far as mcdonalds is bad, but if two things are exactly the same then one of them is unnecsary. and if the of naturalistich literature soul purspose is to make a atrificial realty that can never reachin depth the level of the world, that when you put the controller, or the book, or the dvd away, then why let fiction get in the way, read nonfiction biograys autobiographys youl stille get your jolt of organised dignity, the practical function of the shaping satisfied. but complaining that artificial creation are self conciosly artificial. you cant complain a painting isnt a photograph, it a domcument of hunger and axiety, not of fulfilment or satisfaction. and destroying the artificial taking away the things people nead by the very desire and simple act of saying them or bringing unnecsary information to a "objective" reality that fucntions on its own logic while informing the "objective" naturalistic world, of documenting a anxiety. and now children the point, games more then any otherr media can not deny there artificial nature a inherint limitation and inabillity to be naturalistic to a standard we expect. no art is naturalistic there are no people made out of words, no sculpture is worth a human life, but the elussion are far easier to satisfy. given that games are normally based on some one taking a thousand bullets to the face and then with no damage to thus specisfied face the the health bar lower he kill as many man as bullets he was hit with. so how much of limitation to a media that its shining moment of exspresion may very well the arthouse equivalent of rambo II? is the ultimate exspresion of interactive digital media going to be not the simpleistic hide and seek murder entertaiment that are so fun you stop pusooing realistic goals in your life and are more addictive then both crak and diet mountain dew, but instead of what they signify. the realtion somehas to a game is only comparable to me to a book, neither one will finsh itself.  but unlike a book a good game dosnt hold your hand there is a constant question of why am i doing what im doing. hiding the eight bit grass to sneek up behind a masked soldier and whatch him jump on our msx screen as we hit the punch inspired button before flickering and disapearing. to someone who thinks and plays games as one of many islands from that demon in the grass of bordome, the symbollic relationship that the images we direct share in direct proportion to our lifes can be fascinating, more then any other mediad games can becom vessals for beliefs that are in direct contradiction witht the games own value's. and if you must look for a precident for what is the futer of story telling in this fractured age you must go back to that old baggy monster, the fisrt hyper text, or the sarcastic might say a do it yourself novel, moby dick. being passed off a bag of parts that by there scal form a galaxy for inturpitation. a rotatio that imply a mythollogy making the greatest of literary trick, diamonds and dazzling distoring the world. but since it is only a purspectice you only gain from you point it at. and the great danger of diamonds and moby dick is the best, if you get to obsessed at reaching a senter you becom lost. if the persuit of simple "meaning" becomes to much, fails at its center and collapses back on itself. then what are we left with?...Final Fantasy 7. enjoy its mindless plesuas and its well thought out ones, ignore the fact that it is a work of genies that is more then likely a fluke. that if you think to much about the story how it doesnt make no darn dear since. and if think about it even more it does but don't get hung up on how much that will piss you off.  because final fantasy 7 is unrequited love in the best of amature porn. it is that prize at the bottom of the serrial box only it was as awesome as you thought it was. it is the best escape from reality because when you come back down your surprised to find you care even more about this bogey man mess of a life. sometimes the close as we can get to love is not being able to stop thinking about the dimples on a girls ass. at the worst times the closest we can get to love is being at peace with pain. that my friends is the greatness of final fantasy 7 the strange air of peace it has over the failure of basic humanity. lets specific for a moment, clouds "angst" is the most often cited failure of the game, as if he were some twilight dweeb (pussy!) pale pretty boy wannabe. here is a many bio, as a young child cloud was a loser in the classic car kind of way, no friends not a ladies man. only his mom cared about him. he takes a stand to change his life a joins solders just so he can see like most youn men where his balls are...and he fails completely. on going back home afte beinf in service he decides to hide his identty from every person he cares about out of pure shame from his exsistance. when the girl of his dreams from his child hood is going to be killed he finally finds his balls and gets impaled, throwing the man who impaled him over  a bridge thingy. the he gets pumped full of mako loses his identy steels a better one, and has this ego driven lie reinforced by his new found strenth, so!...the fundemental friction the dramatic pool of this charicter is the fact he is everything he ever wanted to be, but every bit of it was given or stolen but one single memory where he still got his ass kicked. think about that. what if you for all intince and purposes you knew the only thing not invalidating the factual nature of your idetitty was the fact you were no longer the person you remeber being but the only reason you were not that person was because you grafted another identy onto your and it function by your abillity to reality test this identy with a the action of your streith which was aquired threw a exsternal force (hojo). but the way this goes down is what makes the thing so damn interesting, before cloud remebers who he is, he hass expserieces that invallidate his former identity so when he rembers who he used to be-by being pulled away from that from the mako streinth of hojo-he is no longer that person. this is pretty interesting dramatic pychollogy for any type of fiction but by the neon-samura-macoroni-porno--surrealistic-western that is the nature of the rest of the game, can be taken for granted. just staying on topic of the story now how many games end with the protagonist more or less resigned to the end of humanity? that all of the last disc we the gamer have no unfinished buisness like every charicer in the game but to stand at the firing wall. for what? a miracle?...life goes on.  its ambiugios to say the least but whether you save the world or not that is whats going to happen be it  here or somewhere elsce. final fantasy 7 is as plastic as the average human soul but it still somehow has relationship to the dance of life so subtle it may be abstract. it is the litteral fever dream of the twentieth centuary, so far disconected but with nothing that wasn't there before. but this rambling a about a game without any mention of the interactive nature of the exsperience just shows a failure on my part to fully apreciate the media. there are two final fantasy 7s in the game itself the story/interactive thearter of the plot which is subtle, strangly like norwegin fiction of ibsen and knut hamsun. like max ernst paintings. silent films. and the original rko king kong. if it were music it would be the tellevision albulm marquee moon or its own soundtrack. and then there is the other final fantasy 7 the "gameplay" as the kids call it. which is like jerking off whatching home movies. actually playing final fantasy 7 is like whatching die hard on basic cable with the bad brains song universal peace is being blared at higher volume then the t.v. (which is already loud) while you gertting head from the pot bellied mom of that kid you beat up in high-school. it's like collecting vintage playboys. or listening to a pink song on repeat on your way to mccdonalds. or even better its like being a powerless abused child suddenly being able to full fill his day dreams of revenge. actually playing finalfantasy 7 is like that moment we all have while playing god-hand where we realise we are paying more attention then the game-maker intended. final fantasy 7 as a game is shallow as it is shiny, as selfish as suiced and pure as you can get without over-dosing. there isnt much to say but its the perfect counter part to the story by providing a completly unique exsperiece that works as a compltly sepperate mode of reprisentation of reality while informing the actual narative. think about it, it's like reading gravitys rainbow but every time someone got in a minor conflict you  would be handed a comic book with a over the top reprisentation of that same conflict. for me there are are ownly two fundemental genras of game design 1 action games 2 rolplaying games. they have a relation to one another like the theater has to novels. the two theorys of game design go like thus. action games provide a context for the player to exspress himself threw the interaction of his avitar to the inviroment. while rolplaying games have relation in form at least to the old tridition of literature so far as the context of the players action, aka the story is more or less the substance of the exsperiece. while the actual interactive part of the exsperiece is the reading equivlen of getting up to strech you legs. in action games the players is a active perticipan, even if it is destruction it is creative destruction. while with role playing games he takes the "role" of avitar at moments we me while reading a book day dream about  acting out ourselves. the main difrince between the two is role playing games by there very spicific context restric the player more or less to the equivlent of flipping a switch, the task mus be performed to coninue the substance of the exspeience. while with actions games the interaction is the substance of the exsperience. but forms can be miss leading to me the best action games are pokemon silver and godhand, while the greatest roleplaying games are ico and final fantasy 7. gears of war is facinating because it is a role playing game where streching your legs is the meat and potatoes and while being the futer of game design it has the depth of a tramsformers movie.... any-way playing final fantasy 7 is more or less pushing buttons to see fireworks. the battles are effective without being to dificult to pull you out of the story while the only real mindless pleasure of of the over all exsperiece. before the battles the charicters are strange little puppets with a surprising depth, during the battles they are action figures that more or less wil cut down everything before them there distraction and fantasy cloud is as a badass, a blue eyed a badass that is it, tifa id a couple of big jugs with a love of short shorts. while aeris is the only charicter retaining in of there depth outside of the narative every other charicter is a bad-ass or a piece of ass. it wirks as collective exspierice but there is no way around the fact by itslef playing final fantasy 7 is more or less light fire works and the more time s you don'ts get you fingers blown off you get to light more and bigger fire works thats it, it is the pulp in the metaphysical-pulp-fiction that is more or less the collective exspierince.but it does do strange things by neading to provide the plaer with more fire-works  to light it actually forced the design of the narative to become weirder possibly being the most potent example of litteral symbols since the original godzilla or that other big-baggy monster moby-dick, also...king konk. but lets save that for later. lets talk about a cave. what cave? you may ask, well the one under the water fall. interactive narative even if primarilly linear in finalfantasy 7 case still provied enouph formal structer to have the over all effect that is equivelent to litterature (in theroy at least.) they can also do things books just cant and trust me they have tried and more or less failed. most of the modernist trends in novels of the early twentieth centuary were more or less atempts at indirectly and with little effort to break form atempts to make hyper text, of wich there have so far been only two gloryies examples 1 moby-dick 2 everthing thomas pynchon ever wrote. but back to that cave, inside there is a lady you never have to meet, if i remeber right you never have to even know she exsists. unless you open a coffin in the basement of a mansion in a abandoned town. the substance of this lady as narative piece is not what we are going to discus, it is the abillity to design a dish that functions with or without a specific spice. narative structer in role playing games is much like ordering a sandwhich at subway, there is a fundemental integrity of design that alows for variation in the exspierince. to me meeting this lady is a very fundemental exspierce in my over all feelings of this game but how many people have beet it and forgotten about without ever meeting her? games alow for us to alow us something up until has been with heald asthetic exspierince the am biguos lonliness that is the full glory of waking up under the sun. in life you can deside not to hit on that person, or fuck up hitting on that person who would other wise be your soulmate and never see them again (sad.. :{ ..) but in games under controlled circumstances we are allowed the freedom of missing out.... if there is one thing that bothers me about the futer a game design, by increasing the freedom of the player to expsress himself in a role playing game you have much more litteral (at least in game terms) with the rerisentation of combat which limits the creactivity of the narative. but since we are singing the glory of something awesome lets stick to the mellody. one of the strongest memories of my child hood was when i was three possibly four staringat the back box to the nintendo we got on sale. they had adds for the games you could buy little two inch screen shots. we only owned three gmaes super mario bros/duck hunt. super mario bros 3 and a simpson game that was it. the fondest memories i have of that nintendo is staring at that red haired guy staning in frount some kind of giants. now what does that say other then i was a pretty stupid little snot nosed kid? who the hell knows it is the job of the current us to make since of the mess we used to be, but that little bastered was on to something even if he puped his pants for longer then was psychologically healthy. another strong memory was seeing the commercial to final fantasy 7 i immeditly  said after seeing that "dad i want that game." my older sister said "it wont work on our consel stupid!" i was thourly tramtised.
the first time i played final fantasy 7 was a year or two later my uncle had bought the system and the game from a women who had won it at a krogers or something like that. i glowed like a little mutant with that game, i didnt save biggs at had to admedeidly start over, but that was cool. this thing was worthy of getting back up from the failures. no, unlike you nerds i did not cry when aeris died. but i was pissed in quiet way. yup that phoeninx down bull-shit. but like every one elsce i kept playing, i didn't beat final fantasy 7 fast. it wasnt till i was in high school actually, not that the game was hard i just have always been more drawn to my own thoughts or the internet rather then moving forward even with things i nothing but adore.
but final fantasy 7 was something hard for me to exsplain even to myself all i knew at the time  was that i kept coming back to it. even now i don't like to think about who i used to be in a passed tense but still what did eight year old pick up on how did i know this mess was for me?, i cant document my old feelings for the game if they were difrent i think they were wrong. but i will say there is something very strange about final fantas 7 and that know matter how much time i spend with it it never seems familliar.
it's a disposble piece of intertainment that means more to the people who exsperiace it then is normal.   it mean more to me then but for a double handful
of books, movies and records. a personal mythollgy of my ego's atempt
solidy the illusion of this thing i call me. is it the citizen kane of games? i doubt it. but it may very well be the king kong of games. it may very well have a relationship to the video game orson wells what that rko callic had on citesan kane. for me the key scene in the game was when cloud and aeris are sitting in the abandoned playground what were they talking about? i cant remember but i think aeris says something like "i can't beleive this place is still here."  or something like that and then we see tifa in a chokobo pulled kart being pulled off to god knows where. now that is the game, we will never know whos aeris friends were we will never know now much that place meant to her and we don't even have to know that tifa is going to be used in ways we would like reseve for ourselves, or that we are going to have to cross dress to stop  that from happening, much less how confused we get when we kinda wish we could stay in the dress. spirit of this exspression is that the past is alive but only in the pressent. the reason the plot seams more hectic then it is is because we are always distracted by the task at hand that is also shifting the over all context of that action. on pure breath the world of final fantasy 7 can accomodate quite a few of the dualism of the universe without letting go, we can imagine on the streets of midgar hearing both the ghost face killah song all i got is you, as well as minor threaght song straight edge. it a strange world very self concise of its duty to act out what it feels but it never goes overboard, it never loses it's dignity (cait sith does not count!).  the lifestream and the relation ship of the past to the present thats final fantasy 7. the lifestream is a litteral symbol of the movement that is life, and a plain old symbol of the karmic power of cause and effect. it is the sensitivity of understanding that the past is only rellavent to the pressent, that we have woke up and already let go a long time ago. i had a dream the other day, i was hanging out with daved johansen out side of a tai food resturant after a pleasent dinner, he was whering a pink shirt under some kind of nice jacket of a more reserved tone telling me about some guy he said was the "michael jackson of nineteenth centuary hindu phillosophy." i was all like "thats cool man." and then it donned on me i couldnt be talking to david johansen unless i was asleep. there are those dreams you have when letting things go out of controll is right, you can both be scared and do scary things. this game means so much to me because it's a fever that's at peace with pain. clouds story is a parable, a understanding that tifa spit wouldnt taste any better if she cared about the loser he used to be, more then anything tho its that feeling when you know goodbye is the only way to make your problems go away or the strange nostalgia i always get when i think about that kid who first saw the comercial, that kid does not exist any more. but i do wish he was able to understand why the phonex down could bring every one back but aeris.