bleemcast!

I have never been a blogger before, and I never planned to be a blogger. Two months ago you couldn't have paid me to blog, anything less than $5 a word. Now, I'm doing it for free. I don't know if this will last because I don't know if it will be interesting to you, unless you're bored or my mother. Hell, the real reason I'm even doing this is because I'm bored; so, pull your self-esteem up by your bootstraps, take a deep breath and realize that you are nothing to me. If I had something better to do I'd do it; believe me. If I looked down at my black leather shoes and noticed a slight blemish anywhere on them, I swear I'd drop this keyboard right now and run to the nearest mother-figure in my life, and ask her to do something about it.


But as I said I'm bored. Today is Friday, and for most people who work full-time in typical American office settings, Friday is an exciting day for obvious reasons. Here in the newsroom at Learfield Communications in Jefferson City, Missouri, however, the boredom is excruciating. I have literally run out of websites to surf; which brings me here. I am so bored I will now create new websites for me to surf. Even the reporters, here in the newsroom, are running out of work to do. As Greg Sceviour well knows, Jefferson City is the capital of Missouri, which is why this newsroom exists. The reporters here run a radio broadcasting service called Missourinet, which broadcasts the news three times every hour from 6-6 to all of its radio station affiliates across Missouri, which is around 60. They cover the legislature at the capital. Today, unfortunately, the house and the senate are not in session; so, the reporters spend their Fridays trying to scrape stories together for the weekend for whoever is broadcasting. Steve Walsh, one of the reporters, has now come over to my desk, hit me in the back and is attempting to insult me because he's bored. Maybe that's a sign. Steve Walsh is attempting to communicate with whoever will listen, out of boredom (he is now harassing the other reporters). Am I not doing the same thing? Is that what "reporter-types" do? Maybe I'm a "reporter-type." Then again Steve Walsh continually recycles this joke whenever he beckons someone to follow him: "Walk this way. If I (now out of the corner of his mouth) had to walk this way, I wouldn't need the corn starch," followed by laughter (his). I've never seen any one show any signs of understanding this joke, and I am confident I never will; though not for lack of opportunity.


This day is possibly so excruciatingly boring only because it's contrasted by two news-filled days preceding it. I attended no less than four press conferences (starring the likes of the Governor (pictured right, peeking in) and the US Secretary of Education) the last two days and shot tons of photos and video, which I edited and posted onto the stories on the Missourinet website. On the other hand, today I searched the web for rumors concerning the next Superman movie and became so enraged at a comment some dude made suggesting Michael Bay direct it and The Rock play Superman that I actually commented.


I guess those of you who have read this far are wondering what the hell bleeming is. Well, this story begins on 9.9.99, the fall of my sophomore year of high school. I walked out the front door of Norfolk Christian High (or summer camp) thinking about only one thing: Sega Dreamcast. It was a Thursday, the day before my annual sleep-over birthday party and Dreamcast was being released. I wasn't going to have mine until the next day, as a birthday gift, which was just in time for the sleep-over. I imagined all my friends would sit in awe as we all took turns duking it out in Ready2Rumble Boxing at 4am, hopped up on Mountain Dew and onion dip. The reality was slightly different: Gabe Cohen tripped on the power chord, ruining my copy of Hydro Thunder, followed by Bryce Vitasek kicking me in the ribs for beating him in some fighting game. But back to Thursday; My mom sidled up to the curb that Thursday in her 1993 tan Aerostar and as the door slid back, I spotted it; my Dreamcast, a day early! What started that day was a three year dedication to video games. I was a gamer before, but not like this. Dreamcast was my life. Sheldon Vanauken claims we all search for timelessness in life; well, let’s just say when I was playing Dreamcast the only way I knew the time was if my Dreamcast told me so (it would decorate certain games at certain times of the year).


Fast-forward a couple years. Things weren't looking so good for the Dreamcast; PS2 and XBOX had come out and were quickly stealing its customers. Sega tried dropping the price lower and lower, but while more people bought Dreamcasts, Sega lost money. In the Dreamcast's waning days, bleemcast! (the exclamation point is actually part of the title) was released. Bleemcast! allowed Dreamcast systems to play certain Playstation games like Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo. I immediately knew this was a bad sign for the Dreamcast. If a video game system offers a way for gamers to play another system's games, that's the sweaty towel being thrown in the ring; and it hurt. I truly loved my Dreamcast; the last time I would ever love a video game system. Hell, maybe if Dreamcast was still around I'd be gaming today.

I call this blog Internal Bleeming because I feel a little bit like my Dreamcast when bleemcast! came out. All that little, loud, white system wanted to do was make kids happy. All of a sudden those kids are jamming Playstation games into its mouth expecting it to help them kill Revolver Ocelot. The 128-bit processor wasn’t good enough for you? Power Stone wasn’t good enough? Not even the VMU?
I feel a little strange out here in Jefferson City, like someone is jamming mach3 razors and ties down my throat; and while I don’t think my fate will be that of my Dreamcast, which only gets to see the light of day a couple times a year, things are changing.


At this point, you’ve probably checked to make sure this isn’t actually a Live Journal (or Dead). Maybe it is. Just remember to put on Juliana Theory's Understand This is a Dream album the next time you read this and if the CD doesn't already have enough stars on it for you, draw some.