lim*bo | limbo {noun} – an uncertain period of awaiting a decision or resolution; an intermediate state or condition

It is a place many of us learned to fear as children, never truly knowing why. Now we think of limbo as a dark place that is quiet and forever. Everything happens in limbo, but nothing changes. It is the worst state of mind. It is the worst place to ever be. But now, Playdead is sending you there.

I started playing Limbo on xBox with my buddy Matt. It’s an excellent co-operative game experience. When I take a wrong turn and get crushed, Matt takes over. While he’s in control making evolved versions of my own mistakes, I’m free to observe and develop my next strategy. Puzzles, it turns out, are what this game is all about. But they are dark and cryptically evil. And they are not easy.

There are a few traps in the beginning. Not an incredibly high learning curve. The game tricks you into thinking it’s going to be an easy ride. Just don’t fall for it. Pay attention. Keep your eyes open and be precise. You can be as smart as you like (and you’ll need to be) but if you have slow fingers, you’re out.

The game frankly gives me chills. It frustrates me to no end, but I find myself addicted anyway. Would I play alone? – Not a chance. Would I play again – Well, I’m practically playing right now.

-lex

2010 WWDC Conference

-Lex

I guess I’ll just have to get used to it. But seriously Google… W T F ?

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=wtf+happened+to+google

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
–David Foster Wallace

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Something to think about. Thanks Matt for passing this along.

-Lex

If you find him, please call me immediately.

-Lex

Little known fact - Some might say I have dark sensibilities.

Thinking seriously about it, I’ve been that way since childhood. When I was five or six, my parents bought me the Childcraft Encyclopedia set. By the time I was seven I had read the entire set, some volumes more than once. But one segment in particular stuck with me. It stuck with me so significantly that I had an aggressive impulse to share it with my kindergarten class for show and tell. Most adults would find this amusing, had my shared subject not been about the death of our sun and the end of life as we knew it.

I began by explaining that our solar system’s sun was a medium star and depending on the size of the star, its inevitable death would come about accordingly. Small or dwarf stars, as I had recently learned, would just fizzle out and collapse. Large stars would explode into super novas, destroying everything in their wake. Our sun, a medium star, would swell so large that it would engulf Mercury and Venus before shrinking into nothing. As for our Earth — it would survive, but life on this planet surely would not.

I then went into detail explaining how the sun’s incredible growth would scorch the planet until every living thing ceased to exist. And if, by chance, anything on Earth did survive the heat wave (understatement), it would then be subject to an unyielding winter. Once the sun dies, there’s no more heat. No more energy. No more anything.

Now — as a kid, my sense of time was a bit distorted and I was under the impression that this was all going to happen very, very soon. My concept of 3 billion years could easily have been confused with end of the week. So naturally, I was alarmed and I made it a point to make sure everyone I knew shared my extreme panic.

“And this is all going to happen…tomorrow!”

Needless to say, none of my Catholic school teachers were very impressed. I had basically read the Book of Revelations to a class full of six year olds. And ever since then, I’ve always been “that guy”.

-Lex

-Lex

But I have come across a bit of a gold-mine within the art of comic book reading. A few months ago I stumbled upon The Astonishing X-Men which was — in part — written by Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I read the first few issues 1-32 and couldn’t stop, so leapt to the Hope Trilogy: “Messiah Complex”, “Messiah War” and “The Second Coming” (not yet released). As I read through them all, I only played two albums: “The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place” & “The Rescue” by Explosions In the Sky.

Call it cheesy, but adding an instrumental soundtrack like that to an already epic, heart-wrenching apocalyptic storyline changes the entire experience. I’m not as big on music as I am on story, but the two combined –astonishingly– force each other to translate so much more clearly. Seeing Kitty Pryde ripped away from Peter (twice), just makes more emotional sense with “First Breath After Coma” or “Day Six” in the background. I can’t listen to any song on those albums — even without a comic in my hands –without feeling a sense of love and doom all at the same time.

Giving context to music with a great story or giving context to a great story with good music makes all the difference in the world. It is also incredibly therapeutic and could save you a trip to your psychologist.

Just my $.02
-Lex

P.S. …
The Astonishing X-Men

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astonishing_X-Men

Explosions In the Sky

http://www.explosionsinthesky.com