Community Project: Dreams Come True

It's been a little while since I've posted anything of value. In October, my computer crashed, and I used that opportunity to get away from blogging every day. The spark had left my posts, I felt, and maybe some time away would free me from the chains I had placed on myself: publish or perish, publish or perish, publish or perish. In December I devoted myself to frantically completing my Arnold 365 on YouTube and posting those videos on Cavemen Go. I now have two copyright violation strikes against my YouTube account. If I don't remove everything that violates someone's copyright, the third strike will spell the end of my YouTube account which has a few originals that I'm proud of with a lot of hits. At the beginning of 2012, I thought I'd write more meaningful pieces. I wanted to care about what I was writing. I wanted my people to care about what I was writing about. And I wanted publishers to care about what I was writing about. But I didn't, which makes it impossible for anyone else to care.

I've spent about half of a year away from this blog, and it may continue on and off until I can get back on my feet completely. Inspired by blogs like Chad and Rodney's Political Jesus and Kristin's As Luck Would Have It, I've had my eye on ways that I can involve the community with this blog. I'm not quite ready to give up control and have guest bloggers, though I imagine that might happen in the future, but I am ready to engage the community through a series of community projects. Who wants to hear what I have to say as if I'm some sort of expert of taste, anyways? I've tried to wear that hat, and it is just full of way too much hubris. The voice that speaks as if it is the most knowledgeable is not a voice I care to listen to. I want my posts to be part of a conversation. Rather than Justin Tiemeyer as Cavemen Go, I want to be Justin Tiemeyer, part of the Cavemen Go community. And this is why I have decided to begin a series of community projects.

The first community project is titled, "Dreams Come True." The first thing my mind jumps to when I hear that title is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech, followed by some similar rhetoric that has been used by the Obama administration. I don't imagine that King's speech was actually based on an actual dream that he awoke from in a sweat, however. I imagine that he worked long hours, awake the entire time, in order to understand what needed to happen to the United States of America, to author a speech that would engage its populace, and to outline a practical guide to making this happen. A dream is both an intentional action that embodies hope and the future and an accidental event that happens while one is sleeping. I think that the "Dreams Come True" community project will embody both of these.

STEP ONE: MAKE MY DREAM COME TRUE

I had a dream the other night that my girlfriend and I visited our friends in New York City. When we were packing up to leave NYC and return to Grand Rapids I found three drawings done by my good friend Elliot Mayo of the blog Elliot Mayo among my personal items. He had apparently drawn them for me and ripped them from his sketchbook so that I could take them with me.

The first was Batman's iconic flying vehicle, the Batwing, not to be confused with the African superhero of the same name.

The second was Elliot's interpretation of the cover of the cover of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Strikes Again #1.

The third drawing was just a funny doodle, something an artist in high school might draw in a yearbook in order to prevent saying something like, "Have a great summer."

How can you make this dream come true for me? Well, if you're not artistic, I suggest going over to Elliot's blog and petitioning him to do some sketches for the "Dreams Come True" community project. If you are artistic, then by all means send me your version of these three drawings. Put your own flair on the generic descriptions and send me some pictures for the blog at cavemengoblog@gmail.com, the official e-mail of Cavemen Go. I'll be sure to feature your pictures on the blog, and maybe I can even do a feature on you some time.

STEP TWO: MAKE YOUR DREAM COME TRUE

Tell me a little about your dreams. You can leave these little tidbits either in the comments section of this post or in the blog's inbox at cavemengoblog@gmail.com. I just have a couple of qualifications. First, I would prefer if the dreams you speak of are actual dreams. You may note that Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "dream" wouldn't fit this description and that it was more than worthy of making real, and I'll agree, but that's not exactly the aim of this project. Second, I would prefer that the dreams occurred recently. Sometimes if you had a dream a long time ago you can add a whole lot of extra rational stuff to it when it was naturally kind of irrational. I want this project to capture the beauty of the irrational and unexpected nature of dreaming. And finally, I would prefer that the dreams you had seem like something that could happen in real life. We want to make those dreams come true, after all.

Ready. Set. Go.

Dueling Carls

If you're expecting a description of a sexual act, you will be unhappy. Dueling Carls is entirely child friendly.

The Vortex Cannon

A couple of weekends ago Amy and I enlisted the help of a few of her friends to pick up a gigantic dresser from Amy's parents' house, only to create an accidental meeting of the minds. Conversations moved fluidly from one topic to another, experiments with the creation of gun powder and thermite, burning out dead stumps and creating massive canons with high arcing flames, the sorts of things you might hear of on a televised science program.

The discussion eventually lead to something that Cliff had discovered on the internets, something called a vortex cannon which created a powerful blast - strong enough to knock stacked polystyrene cups over at a distance of thirty feet - simply using air compression in an empty cardboard box. Surely this science experiment will soon be on the docket for this intelligent group of twenty-somethings.

Perhaps we will even weaponize it in time to use it against the oncoming zombie apocalypse. Only time will tell.

I give you the vortex cannon:

Chameleon Was Frightened By iPhone

A couple of weeks ago, Amy and I went to a get together on my side of the family. If you had seen us there, surrounded by enraptured children, you'd think we were storytellers reading off lines from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol - which I found the other day at Good Will on cassette as read by Patrick Stewart - when in fact we were watching funny YouTube videos on our iPhones.

My cousin Ethan tried to carry on the tradition of showing funny videos this Easter by pulling up a video of a cat who drinks out of the toilet, uses the toilet for a bowel movement, and finally falls into the toilet while trying to escape. The bad news is that the cat was not trained to flush the toilet; the good news is that the cat was apparently trained to drink out of the toilet before taking a dump instead of after.

I digress. The following is one of the videos from the original family fun fest. I believe the title explains everything.

Crazy Cat Medley

And now something that has nothing to do with anything.

LOST Easter Eggs in Arkham City

I think the concept of "Easter eggs" first started getting popular once videos changed over from VHS tapes to DVD discs. That is the first time I remember hearing this term. And what better topic to discuss the day after Easter than the phenomenon known as Easter eggs. If you're not familiar with the term, it simply means pictures or sounds hidden within something else.

I finished the main story of Batman: Arkham City about a week ago, but decided to keep playing until I defeated the Riddler. To do so, you must hunt down four hundred Easter eggs: Riddler trophies and riddles hidden throughout the game. I finally completed that Easter morning and then moved on to killing zombies (which also seems very Easter appropriate).

I was never the type to hunt for Easter eggs until the 2004 ABC television program LOST first aired. I got sucked into all the Hurley's in the background of Jin's flashback stuff, trying so hard to find the hidden messages in the show. I recently came to find out that Paul Dini, an early story editor for LOST was responsible for writing Arkham City.

I discovered my first reference to LOST fairly early on in the game. You see, Batman can detect the chatter of bored henchmen as he flies around the rooftops, and one such bored henchman states, "Did they ever explain what the island was?" But the really big LOST reference takes place in one of the Joker's video monologues:



It was nice to see an homage to a television program that took up so many hours of my time in a video game that has taken up so many hours of my time. I wasn't sentimental enough to cry - no, I used up all of those tears watching the last few minutes of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan on Good Friday, but it was a good moment for me no less.

Arkham City Inspired Short Action Film

One of the things that inspired gamers while playing Batman: Arkham City was the fantastic fight choreography in the game. Playing as Batman or Catwoman - or as other characters assuming you've acquired the DLC - one can develop long chains involving interesting punches, kicks, and other options.

I recently stumbled across a short action film by design team Thousand Pounds Action Company in which a lone female martial artist adapts the unique fighting style from Batman: Arkham City. If you've played the game, you'll notice that the comparison is incredible. Even if you haven't, the video is stunning.

But you don't have to take my word for it.