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Welcome to weaselpedia.
A new metaphor: My subconscious mind is, actually, not a mind at all. It is a ginourmous living fractal of weasels that someone or something with an extremely strange sense of humor has trapped me in, Fantastic Voyage style. This metaphor is fractally accurate.
From inside this Fantastic Voyage submarine, I can operate two manipulator rods. One delevers a sharp spark that weasels dislike intensely. The other delivers weasel eats, which weasels love to eat. They will eat weasel eats until they're unable to eat another eats, and then cease to eat for a suitable refractory period.
During the refractory period, weasels take a nap. Next, poop off somewhere -- where, I know not. Somehow, I've never actually caught them in the act. It reminds me of the terrier mix in Cape Cod I shared a house with for nine months -- that dog was Houdini reincarnated, I swear. I never once saw him poop, the whole time.
I study the refractory facts of the fractally accurate weasel hive architecture from inside my fantastic voyage pod. The interior seems to have been designed by Alec Empire, and texture-mapped with the ridiculous amount of data I've accumulated from seeing Cube 2: Hyper Cube 2 (two) times. One was pretty intense. The other was alright
If this were a movie, it'd be like if Weird Al were commissioned to re-boot Cube 2: Hypercube as he saw fit. Script, directing. Kinda. Maybe if it was a Cybernetic Weird Al... and then Andy Kaufman was inside his mind -- physically, like the brain worms from Wrath of Khan. Then you put it in the contract that Cybernetic Weird Al has to please Steve Jobs, whose angry voice will relentlessly tear into anything that isn't such flawless elegance it leaves the consumer verklempt... finally, for the video-game tie-in (the video game about the movie), we'll get Peter Molyneux.
Peter Molyneux will gather funds for the video game via kickstarter, because this shit doesn't really pay very well. It's a rambling acid-head metaphor that iterates deeper up its own behind at an incredible rate, which is depressingly close to a rambling grandpa story that goes nowhere. At least i'm going somewhere, though, you know?
Anyways, Peter Molyneux gets funds for the game on kickstarter. The game is essentially Black and White, but with weasels, and you're in a fantastic voyage submarine (interior: Alec Empire meets the set design from Cube 2) and the plot is this: You are Ken Kesey, and you're trapped in your own plotline. You are in the psych ward -- The 'O ward. Breezin' with Nurse R. That's BIG O, and Nurse risperidone. Finding this unacceptable, you wait for a chance to bolt.
It comes. Here it is!
As you're making a bolt from the burly chaps responsible for making your existance unboltable, you spot an open door. Inside, you discover the Fantastic Voyage Submarine. Immediately, you recognize it -- Wow, heavy. Do I really want to get in that thing?
As you ponder, there are footsteps coming down the hall. This is what Homer Simpson would have referred to as a crisitunity -- A moment of choice. Do you get in the sub, or do you give up?
...oh, fuck it. Whatever this sub has in store for me, it's gotta beat playing checkers with the screaming tourettes lady, on half a lid of risperdal.
You board. Klaxons klax on; Cop lights rotate.
Your brain loads low-poly stock orderlies from Squarepusher's "Come On My Selecta" video and processes them through a Google Deep Dream photoshop filter entrained on Terminal Velocity (a DOS video game you love more than ice cream, even today).
The orderlies arrive just a moment too late to stop you. Haha, suckers! So long! But, no... something is wrong. They're calm. They're not even trying to stop you. Heck, they're smiling... shit! They planned this! This was their plan all along
The shrink-ray activates upon the sub, with you inside. You are shrunken, loaded into a hypodermic syringe, and sneeringly laughed at with audio sample data my brain has extracted from movie scenes containing smug thugs.
What's going on? What is this? What are they going to do with me?
You are a believer in self-improvement, even in grave times. Yessir. So, you reflect upon the situation: You seem to have blindly hurled yourself into the cockpit of a physically impossible submarine from a movie you saw precisely once, in seventh grade. How do we feel about this?
...oh, alright. It could be better. What else could we have done? It's not like there was a big door marked EXIT, you know? It beats helping the psych ward keep that Bristol von Meyer-Squid chap flush in dollars. While you feel proud to contribute to the vast fortunes of a pharmaceutical giant, you just wish the doctor would move you down from nine risperdals to, well, none. So, Summary: Not the psych ward; No more risperdal. This is actually an improvement. Yes; we're feeling much better.
The plot continues. The orderlies pick up the syringe you're in, and walk over to an operating table. They're about to inject you into some chap, it would seem. Right, yes, that would make sense -- it's exactly how the movie went. You squint to see who you're being injected into. The guy looks really familiar... then, it dawns on you who the man on the operating table is: It's you.
"Oh, shit," you think. "It's me. It's me lying on the operating table. They're injecting me into my own brain!"
Anyways, Peter Molyneux gets funds for the game on kickstarter. The game is essentially Black and White, but with weasels, and the plot is this: You're an actively escaping psych inpatient impatiently attempting outpatient manuevers. Almost cornered, you take your one option: a Fantastic Voyage Submarine, which you've discovered within the black ops think-tank smartfarm slash secret lab the NSA has set up inside the psych ward (because, you know, it's the last place they'll look).
After climbing into the sub, you begin to reconsider. Perhaps this is ill-advised. You try to open the door... but, the door won't open. You start to mumble to yourself: "Hmm, debug... Oh, the child locks are on. Let's just switch it-- " and then a curious thing happens: instead of the word "off" coming out of your mouth, it's like some indescribable ascending FM warble (extra sass).
"I'm getting better at singing," you quip to yourself, "but... jeez, what?" Turns out it was just the noise the shrink-ray makes. The orderlies lift your needle-stuck-in-self and stick you in yourself, and you're stuck with the situation, yada yada
Anyways, Peter Molyneux gets funds for the game on kickstarter. The game is essentially Black and White, but with weasels, and the plot is this: You're a Cybernetics Researcher. You are researching Experimental Cybernetics during a thunderstorm. Not only does this provide the appropriate mad scientist atmosphere, it handles a crucial plot point: Lightning strikes the lab. Your active experiment is a plot device akin to Dougless Adams' Improbability Drive, and, improbably, instead of being injected into the expected lab rabbit (you named him Phineas) you are injected into your own brain. This has nothing to do with the lightning. Your assistant (Janine from Ghostbusters) simply walks past the rabbit, and there you are, boom, wham.
Inside your own mind, improbably, is not a brain, but a massive city of weasels. You circle it for an hour or two.
You think: "Maybe this is like Lawnmower Man, and somewhere -- in all this dark void around the weasels -- there will be something labelled 'Maintenance Line' through which I can escape this diseased mainframe; SSH to my Linux box."
I'm afraid not, Wandering Point of View. This is not Lawnmower Man at all. You just wandered into a Lawnmower Man reference while writing the part about circling the weasels.
Frustrated and bored, you take a nap. Perhaps this isn't real. Perhaps you're just having some wicked acid trip in your dorm room in 2006, and it'll wear off sooner or later.
I'm afraid not, Wandering Point of View. When you wake up, your brain has lifted yet more plot from the plot of the sci-fi mini-series "The Lost Room." The entire submarine has reset, groundhog-day style. You'll come to realize it always does this. You also don't need to eat, drink, or pee. Even though you don't need to pee, you attempt to do so anyways, simply to see what happens. "Oh, a blindingly confusing out of body experience." Perhaps this isn't real. Perhaps you're in a K-hole in your duplex in 2009, and it'll wear off sooner or later.
I'm afraid not, Wandering Point of View. A week passes. Further searching of the void around the cloud of weasels proves fruitless. You're getting bored. Oh... fuck it. You plunge into the weasels
Anyways, Peter Molyneux gets funds for the game on kickstarter. The game is essentially Black and White, but with weasels, and the plot is this: You're a Cybernetics Researcher. You are researching Experimental Cybernetics during a thunderstorm. Not only does this provide the appropriate mad scientist atmosphere, it handles a crucial plot point: Lightning strikes the lab. Via some improbable twist of fate, you find yourself being injected into your own brain. Inside your brain is an unfathomably huge city of weasels. You wander into the fray, intending to just have a peek... and are promptly unable to find your way back out. Ever.
It takes a certain sort of almost-autistic bastard to have the stones to write "Cybernetics Researcher" on your 1040 Form every year. You have to be neurotic, but not too neurotic. You make it to the lab, oh, five minutes late, dressed properly, with your socks on, and then turn into a catatonic statue reminiscent of "the thinker" (except with terrible slouching posture).
Being this sort of person, being lost in a cloud of weasels that seems endless fills you with almost as much anxiety as you experience trying to construct white lies that balance the sharp requisite for brevity with your death-grip on the urge to ensure everything you say is completely, totally accurate.
Similar to that situation, there's three seconds of blank staring, a fumble, then an overly-complex thing that comes out wrong and you've made an ass of yourself again. Just say the shirt looks nice or something, jesus shit get it together
After that, there's panic. Your brain constructs a montage of screaming, panicing, wall-banging, etc. using a simulation that simulates the Requiem For a Dream eye-dilation montage at the tempo of a Guy Richie caper montage. Eventually, that subsides as well.
You briefly begin to consider reality again: "Well, here I am. Maybe I should do something to deal with ighsdjfgkdjgjf"
Too soon. You're panicking again
Anyways, Peter Molyneux gets funds for the game on kickstarter. The game is essentially Black and White, but with weasels, and the plot is this: You're a Cybernetics Researcher that's been injected into his own brain, which contains a vast city of weasels.
At a meeting, character design is tossed around: Cybernetics? Will people know what that is, still? Can't we just use Virtual Reality? Oh, no, we can't; Facebook (tm) trademarked that. Sure, Cybernetics, whatever. Let's go with that
As a Cybernetics Researcher, you're the sort of chap who keeps his cupboards precisely, carefully ordered. In organizing your cupboards, you display the same level of care displayed by the guy at the lourveamyd charged to staff the room in which the Mona Lisa is displayed for the enjoyment of jetlagged tourists and professional pickpockets.
The Mona Lisa is a little postage-stamp piece of shit that everyone flocks to like flies on poo. The curator tries to get the attention of museum patrons, in vain: If you'll look to the left of the Mona Lisa, there's this other painting painted by the same artist. It's huge. It's the size of a small house.
Wandering Point of View tries to interrupt -- Wandering Point of View also works in Cybernetics, and is dying to know: How did they get that painting into this room? It's six times the height of the door. Did the-
"Shush. Shush!" The Curator interrupts. "No talking! Anyways, this painting has an interesting story: It makes the Mona Lisa look completely pathetic. It dwarves it. It's right next to the Mona Lisa, yet everyone completely ignores it." At once, you feel both supremely special and completely alone. You decide to become Peter Molyneux in order to effectively channel this particular air/fuel mix of beauty and reality.
Anyways, Peter Molyneux gets funds for the game on kickstarter. The game is essentially Black and White, but with weasels, and the plot is this: You're a Cybernetics Researcher that's been injected into his own brain, which contains a vast city of weasels. It's utter chaos. It's a mess. It's total, complete weasel anarchy... and, fuck, you're stuck in there. You may as well try to tidy things up a bit, because what else is there to do? It's not like this freaking plotline submarine gets cable.
The weasels are going absolute romp-a-room. Fast Food Weasel wrestles with Self-Loathing Weasel for control over a potato chip. Self-Improvement Weasel tries to break it up and gets an elbow in the face for his troubles. His glasses fly off and his nose bleeds. He curls into an autistic ball on the ground and tries so very hard not to cry.
Bad Idea Weasel knows this is his chance. He tears out, talking mad shit about Self-Improvement Weasel. This is what he's been saying all along. It's hopeless. He mercilessly collects the dividends of all the Catch-22 I-told-Ya-so's he'd been slinging via catcall protocol as Self-Improvement Weasel attempted to argue for the rise of Good Manners Weasel. Self-Improvement Weasel starts babbling about about some Robert chap and his Rulers... but, it's no good. He can't stop you now, Bad Idea Weasel
Anyways, Peter Molyneux gets funds for the game on kickstarter. The game is essentially Black and White, but with weasels, and the plot is this: You're a Cybernetics Researcher that's been injected into his own brain, which contains a vast city of weasels, and you can't escape this plotline without being able to rally the weasels together and convince them to function as a collective machine. This collective machine is pieced together using data your brain has harvested from the children's television sow "Power Rangers," and depicted as a MegaZord made of weasels.
You must train all the weasels to self-assemble into a multitude of carefully designed sub-units. These sub-units are fractally identical to an individual weasel, and must also be trained. Many, many weasels are required -- you need at least 2^14 weasels for the Weasel MegaZord's Big Toe alone.
Eventually, theoretically... Maybe, if you're lucky... you will have enough parts (legs, arms, an energy sword as tall as a skyscraper -- You know, the basics) to form a weasel MegaZord as cheesy brass horn techno blares deafeningly. Then you've got yourself a MegaZord weasel, and, well, you've got to train that weasel too... but, this ending stage isn't terribly hard, in comparison. The weasel MegaZord simply has to cut a maintainence port in your skull for you to climb out through. Doctors will adore the mysterious, catastrophic sword injury in your skull, and will discuss writing a paper on it... but fail to notice a weasel MegaZord wandering out of the OR towards the sign marked IZLAZ.
As it wanders out the door, the weasel MegaZord is heard mumbling: "Shit, that was it. I shouldn't have gone left into the Submarine Lab. I should have gone right. Izlaz means stairs. Remember Izlaz means stairs." You vaguely recall this being a screencap from the James Bond film "Casino Royale."
Anyways, Peter Molyneux gets funds for the game on kickstarter. The game is essentially Black and White, but with weasels, and the plot is this: You're a Cybernetics Researcher that's been injected into his own brain, which contains a vast city of weasels, and you can't escape this plotline without training all the weasels to dance.
At your disposal, you have:
- Two (2) operant condipmulator arms designed by your friend and collegue B. F. Skinner. One delevers a sharp spark that weasels dislike intensely. The other delivers weasel eats, which weasels love to eat. Weasels will eat weasel eats until they're unable to eat another eats, and then cease to eat for a suitable refractory period.
- One (1) massive sound system. Weasels hear it for miles. Or, well, what subjectively appears to be miles, from your shrunken perspective. It's hard to peg distances with this much space dilation. The weasels are sometimes curious about the music, but in general, they pay it little mind, unless it's loud. Then it scares them, or annoys them, or both.
- One (1) ship's computer of sufficient power to simulate a Wandering Point of View attempting to simulate a Wandering Point of View writing a Wandering Plotline.
- One (1) internet connection, providing pirated MP3s and wikipedia, except on the NPR pledge drive days when Jimmy's feeling skint.
- One (1) color selecta pen. It is vastly out of place; totally incongruent with the way a simulated Alec Empire designs submarine interiors. You suspect it was left here by mistake. You are extremely grateful for its presence, however, because it allows you to turn the stark white walls into an evolving canvas of bullet-point lists and mushroom phone doodles which you refer to as "WeaselPedia."
- One (1) Wandering Point of View with which to implement a weasel MegaZord capable of escaping a re-boot of Cube 2 written and directed by a Cyberized Weird Al.
Anyways, Peter Molyneux gets funds for the game on kickstarter. The game is essentially Black and White, but with weasels, and the plot is this: You're a Cybernetics Researcher that's been injected into his own brain, which contains a vast city of weasels, and you can't escape this plotline without training all the weasels to form a structured society.
The game is delayed. The kickstarter comments become impatient, then dejected... and, finally -- inevitably -- a troll constructs his bestest, most high-poly simulate of a butthurt True Fan. This simulated True Fan has put up with this mess for long enough, darn it. He's put up with this mess like only a man who lives in his Mom's basement can, and now he's lost his religion. Peter, will this game ever be done?
The troll sparks a feedback loop, and all the comments become angry. However, Peter Molyneux fails to notice, because he's convinced he's found the new tetris. The game is delayed because it's freakin' owsum and he can't stop playing it, even to check on the kickstarter comments.
Finally, miraculously, two years later, the game comes out. Peter has attached a post-it note: "Yes, there's some mind-blowingly deep math in there, and it turns out 2/3 of the features I promised in the kickstarter are impossible to implement without a quantum computer with an O(n) greater than 2^14 cube hits. I am so terribly sorry... but, it's still a great game!"
While "Weasel & Dynamics" is next-tetris to Peter Molyneux -- so addictive he almost never finished never finishing it -- it makes absolutely no sense to anyone else.
Peter Molyneux caves, and tweets out a hint on his twitters: "The first thing you have to do is teach the weasels rhythm. Without that, you're fucked. You're welcome guys. Good luck!"
This briefly renews hope. Straight off the bat, a few people manage to get a weasel to tap its foot in time... but, then, progress halts. Frustration sinks in. Depression takes over. The non-autistic are weeded out from the crop of people still attempting to beat the game.
Six months later, one of the few die-hard fans left standing has trained nine weasels to dance. This is like a nine cube-hit supercomputer. Quantum? Sure, yes, absolutely. Useful? Fuck No.
Steam quietly de-lists the game.
Finally, the stack returns. Peter Molyneux licks his wounds and returns to the internet with a plan he believes in solidly:
"I've heard your feedback on my game, and I get it. It's fun, sure, but it's not quite challenging enough. So, I'm founding a quantum computer company to build hardware capable of running the game I envisioned the first time around. I believe I can, you know, do it properly. Trust me, you guys will love it. But, hey -- I need funding, so please donate to my kickstarter!"
