I'll Need That in Triplicate | The One with all the Trilogies

Emergen-C | Mornings | Movies | Games

|The Non-Caffeinated Morning|

It's the third day of daily blogging, and as a result we're working on a series of threes, or more. As such, I will detail the three primary drinks that get me up in the morning, in particular, in this case, a more unique morning drink, Emergen-C.

This one doesn't provide me that morning dose of caffeine that I so often need to survive, but I find that either through placebo or some unknown property of Vitamin C overdose I am well sustained by the fizzy vitamin C substitute. I don't personally enjoy Emergen-C as a product of filtered water, but mixing the powder with Sprite, 7-Up or any other lemon-lime soda produces a very pleasant drink.

Ironically enough, Emergen-C can not be the only startup juice for the day, I've felt decidedly unproductive (oh boy) and so I also had a cup of Maxwell House Original in my tall Monterey souvenir cup.

To pair oh so well with this distressing lack of productivity, I burned my wife's waffles this morning, so I had my “preferred level of preparedness” waffles and she had perfectly toasted golden waffles for breakfast. I'm good at what I do when I need to be.

It's a small bit about the day's startup, but I suspect that most of these little drink tidbits, my “morning cups” will be small.

|The Three “P”s|

Productivity, Preparation and Pastimes, yes, I made up a triple threat for my mornings just so I could write about them. Sue me. (Worth noting, I have a thing for alliteration, particularly with “P”s).

These are the three things that my “morning cups” serve to help me with. Starting from left to right I suppose (though these are organized in no special way), productivity is the idea that in the mornings I need to get things done. I wake up early to do yard work and research information about my next online marketing scheme (speaking of, have you seen my Youtube channel?). This productivity needs to carry on into actual job work, at least until the afternoon, when everything kind of relaxes a bit.

Second on that list, Preparation, which is partially covered in productivity. I need to wake up and have my coffee as the first form of preparation. From there, I'll need to meditate, at least for a few minutes, on the tasks ahead of me. I find that showers are particularly useful in this aspect, as well as allowing me to physically prepare my body for the day ahead (lol or 101, whichever you prefer). I can follow this up with brainstorming some blog ideas to punch together and a handful of story ideas that may well never come to fruition, though one can always hope.

Finally, my pastimes, which partially fall under preparation for my blogging and writing, and partially are involved with keeping my ears and eyes busy while my body works through the morning motions. Let's listen to an audiobook while we work on the yard, this is only the second time I've listened to the entire Dune series after all. It's good to wake up so early, because late morning and and the afternoons are typically filled with either work, or other people's pastimes that I happen to be involved in.

|The Magic of Cinematic Trilogies|

This is a fairly simple morning, as I would hope my third day of daily blogging would be. After all, we've not run out of topics yet! Today I've just got a list of some of the trilogies that made up my childhood. Some bad, some great, it's a mixed bag, kind of like a lot of trilogies in general.

There's one particularly beloved trilogy that stands out in my mind, one that will definitely attract some disdain, and that is the Toby McGuire Spider-Man movie trilogy. This shouldn't really come as a surprise, Spider-Man is probably my favorite comic book hero—especially if one looks at my youth—and Toby was the first actor to portray him on the big screen. A lot of people give the Spider-Man trilogy, particularly the third installment, a lot of flack, and I can see the reasoning behind most of this. However, this doesn't change the lasting impact the movies have had on my cinematic history. Contrarily, many many people have told me that Tom Holland is the best incarnation of big screen Spider-Man, and while I don't doubt Tom Holland's ability to portray a role assigned to him, I severely doubt the ability of Disney/Marvel to write a big screen Spider-Man that I can appreciate. While yes I understand that Spidey is supposed to have a doctorate in witty battle banter with an emphasis on humorous comebacks, the fact is that's not the whole of his character. The arachnid avenger's sense of humor should be strongly tempered by a sense of consequence. Also, Peter Parker is neither a dumpster diver, nor so terrible a nerd that he doesn't know what the machines in Star Wars are called, and he certainly should not spend lengths of combat “fanboying” over the mechanical limbs of his adversaries. Otherwise, the Doc Ock/Spider-Man relationship would have been very different.

Carrying on, there's another trilogy that will probably meet with significantly less controversy, and that's the peak product of The Wachowskies, The Matrix Trilogy. Now, in my experience with the internet and many groups of social nerds, I understand that technically the trilogy is often seen as a bad word when concerning The Matrix, many people believe The Matrix should have been the only movie in that series. I would beg to differ, I hate to see a good thing die, if one can produce a trilogy about a compelling hero, then one should produce a trilogy. The Matrix is probably one of my three major roots to the science fiction genre, the other two being Star Wars and the Ender Saga by Orson Scott Card (yes, I hear the moans of the true nerds, where is Foundation, where is Dune, somewhere in my post-attachment history, my attachment begins with cinema and high school book sales). Whilst 12 year old me no doubt missed much of the underlying plot of The Matrix when I first viewed it, the following years of re-exposure whilst living with my father helped to develop and strengthen an understanding of the movies that will stick with me until the day I die. Follow that up with the hundred of online interpretations of various assets and theories, like Smith was actually “The One” and you have a conglomeration of nonsense that no one would bother with even if they wanted.

Finally there is the Star Wars trilogy, and ironically, despite my very classic opinion in the modern day that the original three movies (now deemed IV, V and VI) are the better and more important films, when I talk about the influential ones on my childhood, there can be no doubt that the three I'm referring to are The Phantom Menace, The Clone Wars and The Revenge of the Sith. These three movies, prequels to the original Star Wars films, have been deemed nonsense offshoots of George Lucas' desire to make money by many fans, but the fact is that these maddening movies drew in a whole new era of Star Wars fans, and helped to establish many concepts that helped the expanded universe in its development. Without the enhanced graphics and at least semi-relatable characters of the prequel trilogy, I doubt if I ever would have developed the respect that I have fort he puppets, plastic on strings, and sheer corniness that is the original trilogy. Yes, yes, midi-chlorians are bad, because they undermine the simplicity of the original concepts behind the Force. Yes, Jar-Jar Binks is an infinitely undesirable character who steals a bit of joy from die hard fans every-time they hear “Mesa name Jar-Jar Binks.” Finally, yes, the lack of clarity about some underlying plots like “Plagueis created Anakin through midi-chlorian manipulation,” is infuriating when you really just want these theories to be true. But, Star Wars is still a masterpiece, with or without hyperspace chase sequences that make no sense because they've never been a problem before and ugly annoying alien critters that are introduced purely to appeal to a young audience.

Alright, I think those are the three trilogies whose elicited feelings within me are most controversial...time to move on?

|The Final Trilogies|

Anyone who knows a bit about Final Fantasy trilogy knows that the name isn't about these games being the “final installment” or “a final event.” In fact, most Final Fantasies games end with a “And they had more adventures” tag and all except the most recent, Final Fantasy XV, have proven to in fact not be the final entry. The reason Final Fantasy was called “Final” Fantasy is because it was the last project Square Soft had on their plate to try to keep from going under. Fortunately, the fantastical Final Fantasy appealed to both Eastern and Western audience so well that not only did Square Soft avoid going under, but they produced 14 sequel-like games, with dozens more spin-off titles. There's something particularly notable about the original Final Fantasy games, the first nine to be specific, they are trilogies.

Final Fantasy through Final Fantasy III are the foundation for everything that would come after them, iconic themes like the four elemental crystals and evil empires are establish in these first three games, the job system that would make recurring appearances throughout the series was first introduced in Final Fantasy III, and all three of them were originally Nintendo exclusive titles released on the Nintendo Entertainment System. These games were fun-filled grand adventure games that saved a dying company and set the stage for a dynasty of role-playing games that may well never end.

The second “trilogy” of Final Fantasy games was, obviously, Final Fantasy IV through Final Fantasy VI. This is actually the trilogy American fans are most familiar with, because while we got Final Fantasy, our next installments—maddeningly named Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy III—were in fact Final Fantasy IV and VI. Why? Because by the time localization of the real Final Fantasy II was underway, the Super Nintendo was hitting store shelves and we couldn't draw attention away from that! In fairness, as far as I can tell, Final Fantasy II would not have been a worthwhile port, but Final Fantasy III never hitting shelves in the States is a bit upsetting (well, it didn't hit the shelves for nearly four console generations). This is also the first trilogy we sampled in full, as I noted Final Fantasy III didn't see a stateside release until the Nintendo DS, but Final Fantasy V found its way over in the Final Fantasy Anthology dual CD set for the PlayStation. This second trilogy was an affirmation of what Final Fantasy was, and drew out much of what was loved about the first three games with more defined characters, grander stories, and refined gameplay—at least, unlike in Final Fantasy, the intelligence stat meant something in these games.

The third trilogy, and perhaps the final trilogy that actually fits this pattern, is Final Fantasy VII through Final Fantasy IX, and these games represent for many the epitome of the series. While there are and will forever be debates about the merits of Final Fantasy IV and VI's stories, and Final Fantasy VII will forever draw disdain from “true fans” as the game that hooked the “plebs” the fact of the matter is this generation of games introduced the first 3D models and drew in the largest audience. This is also the generation that saw Square Soft break free of their direct relationship with Nintendo, turning toward the CD based storage of Sony's PlayStation.

I say this is the final trilogy of this sort, because while Final Fantasy X through Final Fantasy XII were all released on the PlayStation 2, Final Fantasy XI does not exist in the same vein as its brethren, functioning as a multiplayer successor and the first Final Fantasy MMO. After XII, XIII and XV were released during different console generations, while XIV was again an MMO.

Thus ended the era of Final Fantasy trilogies.

|Th-that's All Folks|

So we are finished with the day's excitement, I think this may be the longest of my initial trilogy of blog posts! How nice. I really enjoyed writing up today's topics, regardless of how much extra time it took me to get this posted. I'm not certain what we'll do tomorrow, but I am certain that it'll be a treat.

C.W. Sherman

I Deal With a lot of Ideals

Tea | Christopher Robin | Idealism | RPGs (Final Fantasy)

|My Morning Cup|

Whilst I probably prefer coffee for my “morning cup” the fact of the matter is, at least as far as the British are concerned, the ideal “morning cup” is filled with tea. So, this morning, I grabbed by commemorative New Orleans cup, filled it with filtered water, microwaved it for 2 minutes, dropped a Twinings Irish Breakfast tea bag inside, and let it steep. 10 minutes and a teaspoon of sugar later and I'm quite satisfied with today's wake up juice.

|Silly Old Bear|

Disney has been planning a live action Winnie the Pooh for a few years now, at least, it was originally announce in April of 2015. Many people will read this and say, “Yes, another children's movie from Disney, why do you care?” I'd like to start with, while the movie is clearly going to appeal to children, because that probably will be where much of its market value comes from, I believe the movie is intended for adults.

First of all, this isn't a Winnie the Pooh movie, it's Christopher Robin, which is set to be the story of Christopher Robin as an adult as he struggles with a loss of imagination, and how some childhood friends help him cope with this. Honestly, when I first heard this, I dreamt with a—perhaps slightly demented—hopeful heart of a movie where Christopher Robin was diagnosed with Schizophrenia and we got to see Pooh and friends through the eyes of a sane on-looker, mere figments of a grown man's overactive imagination. Admittedly, this is probably going to sell more tickets than my adult-oriented Alice in Wonderland-esque monsterpiece.

Isn't this in truth something with which many adults struggle? I'm sure most won't admit it, it's in fact part of the issue with adulthood. We're told to crush our childhoods underfoot and join “the real world” and get medical degrees and join a field over-saturated with people who don't care about the work and who are just in it for the money, in this world we'll grow old and miserly with everyone else and the only things that will keep us rooted in our sanity are either drink, drugs or family, eventually we'll lose our minds in most unsettling fashions, ruin the world further, and leave that behind for our children and grandchildren. Anyone who looks at “grown-up life” like that is simply someone who hasn't “grown-up” yet, anyone who would rather make a paltry living wage doing something they enjoy and pursuing a dream simply doesn't realize how important more money than you can hope to spend is, anyone who prefers cartoons to war documentaries is clearly uneducated and doesn't know a thing about the real world. It's hard for one side to call out the other side and no 100% that they're justified, but that's what we do.

I'm reminded of my aunt again in this, much as I was previously with Kingdom Hearts, while she is definitely an adult—she has children, pays bills, lives in a house, works a full-time job, does extra work related things—she is not one of these aforementioned “grown-ups.” In fact, she may well be my inspiration in pursing my dreams and not just getting a medical degree and hating myself for the rest of my life. She's a high school math teacher, she'll never make so much money she has no idea what to do with, but she pays the bills, supports her lifestyle, is happily married, and pursues the things she loves. Unlike Christopher Robin, who I believe has become one of these “grown-ups,” my aunt is full of imaginative whimsy. She can enjoy children's cartoons and video games because she doesn't conform to some “adult” stereotype. That's very important to me I suppose.

In frankness, I'm not calling out the “grown-ups” of the world, first, if that's your intention, it is also your prerogative. If you see the world and its jobs as a means to make money, and see no point in carrying on life without making money, I'm glad you're able to pursue these modes of employment that put more cash in your pocket. Similarly, there are those who adopted the “grown-up” mentality because they fell into, between mistakes or happy accidents and the crushing oppression of thousands of years of “this is how it is” states of mind. If you are a “grown-up” because you have to be, keep doing it, it's very important I have no doubt.

That was quite the tangent, wasn't it? Maybe I should rename this section “Silly Old Grown-ups.” I won't of course, that would just be...silly. Aside from these ideas that this is an adult movie with a children's movie gloss to make it appealing to the primary Disney market, let's be real, this is part of my childhood. I grew up on Winnie the Pooh, and Tigger too. The Hundred Acre Wood is my own childhood play place, and of course it is further ingrained by its consistent appearances in the Kingdom Hearts games. I am probably more excited for this movie as a part of my childhood than I am for it as a representation of what I wish more adults were like.

|The Ridiculous Ideal|

Ironically, the above was written in advance, the morning prior if you will, of editing and publication date. So the before, also the after. But Mr. Robin got me thinking, obviously about a foolish ideal, idyllic worlds almost definitely can not exist.

One reason I started working on Carpe Mane was that I recognized a creative stint in my morning work. I wrote up a mad rant one morning about the employment situation in America and it really got me thinking, so I'm going to refer back to it a bit here. This was originally an idealist's stream of consciousness, and obviously a lot of it would not work with the systems we have in place, but arguably its a model.

There are three problems that are always talked about, sometimes as non-issues, and sometimes as major issues. Well, maybe four, but the fourth one could theoretically be resolved within these three topics: over-population, unemployment, and under-education. The fourth is the eventual destruction of Earth by its primary domineering inhabitants—humans—but again, that one is even more questionable than the others, and could be solved by the others.

I forewarn you now, I am about to casually wander into socialistic and communistic viewpoints without the slightest idea of what I'm talking about, true capitalists beware.

I ran the numbers, it was quick and simple, please pardon any absurdities in math. There are approximately one million practicing physicians in the United States, these start with family practices and pediatricians as the lowest paid members of the doctoral medical field. On average, the lower end of these professionals earn $184,000 per year, rounded down to the nearest thousand. The average monthly expenses of a four person house-hold living in New York City is $4,700, rounded up to the nearest hundred. This is $56,400 yearly to support four people as an average New York family. This is of course discounting the $3,600 for a supposedly low-end four bedroom apartment, which would raise the actual cost of living to $8,300/mo. or $99,600/yr. But, theoretically, the rent cost could be eliminated from this equation through other, temporary, government funded housing solutions.

Looking at those expenses, $56,000 to live in reasonable comfort (the estimate I looked at included 10% of meals being at restaurants, weekly entertainment excursions, and “moderate” clothing and shoes purchases) could be covered twice by a practicing pediatrician, and they would still be left with a clearly very undesirable $71,200 in funding. On the other end of this equation, according to a census in 2017, there are 554,000 homeless people in the United States. Those 554,000 people, divided up into four person family units, would spend a total $13,794,600,000 living the average, reasonably comfortable New Yorker life (according to certain estimates). If all one million practicing physicians in the U.S. were pediatricians averaging $184,000 per year, and lived that exact same lifestyle (this is assuming they had no additional income within a four-person household, and each physician individually spent the $99,600 per year from their salary) they could feed, clothe, and support the 554,000 homeless from the 2017 census and still have $70,605,400,000 left in their conjoined pockets.

There are so many problems with this equation that its not even funny, for starters, why should these 554,000 homeless (who, regardless of their actual situations, are viewed as lazy bums leaching off of society) benefit from the hard work of medical professionals? Then, who is paying for all of these doctors' educations? Information and years of schooling aren't free. There's one other, very important question here, why are these 554,000 people supposedly unemployed and homeless, when there are 6.7 million unfilled job openings according to an Economic News Release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on June 5, 2018.

A small portion of the answer is insufficient education for many of those seeking employment. Another small part of the problem no doubt is the employers themselves declining to even look at the applications of many would-be employees based on any number of stereotypes.

The aforementioned doctors might well be able to accomplish the support of 554,000 homeless, if they weren't plagued by their own outstanding bills, the educational costs of not only getting themselves through medical school, but trying to make sure their children can get through whatever schooling they want or need as well. You can't simply say, “Education should be free,” because then how do these educators get paid. This is where so many refuse to see the dark side of capitalism, the system that supposedly benefits the hard working, crushes underfoot the poor but capable. When you have to work a full-time job straight out of high school to pay bills, you lose time to pursue an education, or you may choose to lose yourself in favor of full-time school and work. Then, when it can be so difficult to even obtain full-time work, even if you were willing to lose a part of yourself in favor of a brighter tomorrow, will you even have the opportunity? The 6.6 million people unemployed as of June according the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the face of 6.7 million jobs that they can not obtain, would argue that no, many will not have that opportunity.

I can't say whether socialism would be a good or a bad change for this country. So many times have we seen socialism fail or corrupt until it's a naughty word, tossed around like a rightfully used slur. In the eyes of the past-centric baby-boomer, the forward-thinking millenial is just another new-age slacker, so it's no surprise that I innately think, as I write these words out, that many people will claim I know nothing, while some others will rally behind the madness of my drivel.

That's all it is though, just ramblings, idealist non-sense. Even in the ideal situation where we put 6.6 million people into most of those unfilled 6.7 million jobs and the government funds it all in favor of a brighter future and we get 554,000 homeless off the streets and we stop charging an arm and a leg to learn how to cure illnesses, creating a need to charge an arm and a leg to provide said cures, then what? Then we have all these past generations, these people already in these high cost to enter fields, who spent their lives paying bills, who would then look at the next generation as nothing but undeserving slackers.

“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” I think I read that off a Wheaties box. -Unknowing Communist Propagandist

|The Progression Problem|

As long as we're talking about ideals, we may as well look at my favorite genre of ideals, video game ideals. Over the last six months I've been playing the original Final Fantasy games, I've finished Final Fantasy 1 and 2 and have just started on 3 last week. Ideally, by the end of the year, I'll have completed Final Fantasy 3 at least and be on to the Super Nintendo line of games next. But, that's not the ideal I'm talking about.

Final Fantasy has a problem that should be corrected, in a perfect world, the random encounters, the minions of the various bosses, feel important to a degree, but then they fall to the wayside. During my play-throughs of Final Fantasy 1 and 2, I found quite the opposite revelation. The thousands of random enemies strewn about boss dungeons were forever troublesome, with little means to deal with them all except for escaping, and in the second installment escape seemed to be a very rare treat.

Meanwhile, once I had run from or mass murdered my way through all of the goblins, cockatrices and evil wizards between my party and the dungeon bosses, I would often find that the bosses themselves were...lacking. Many boss fights would end in two turns, less than most random encounters, and these bosses would present no meaningful abilities except for instant KO moves, which feel like a copout in the first place, especially when you consider that every group of Cockatrice has the same one-hit one-kill ability.

I suspect that it is extremely difficult to strike a fair balance between meaningful random encounters and powerful bosses. Quest 64 came close, until you reached the point that you could make yourself immune to damage every other turn. The random encounters in Quest 64 aren't quite as threatening as a slough of cockatrices or basilisks, but the creatures were basically the only means of advancing your elemental prowess, and sometimes they could become quite dangerous. The fact that you could simply walk away from every encounter without a care in the world was a bit troublesome. The bosses in Quest 64 on the other hand, prior to mastering the Earth element and gaining immunity to magic, could be quite powerful. These monstrous men and women wield that have near 100% chances to hit and dish out a quarter or so of the main character's health with each blow, combined with health bars that normally were eight times the size of the hero's, or more, and the fact that the most powerful Earth spell was 100% random in its accuracy, the bosses in Quest 64 could be overbearing, not just hard.

Overtime I think that Final Fantasy has both rectified the boss to minion ratio, and possibly nullified it further. For instance, with the HD re-release of Final Fantasy X and X-2, players gained the ability to have random encounters occur never, or every other step. Making early game grinding incredibly simple, and those long treks to bosses cakewalks.

|TTFN|

That's it for my idealistic rambling today, we started out soft with a cup of tea, hit hard evolving from sacrificed childhood whimsy to ridiculous employment rates, and finally mellowed back out with some idle chatter about role-playing games. I for one am excited to see where we'll go tomorrow.

Until then, TTFN.

C.W. Sherman

My Morning Cup and Other Introductions

A blog about a bit of everything, written and edited from 6 AM to 8 AM every morning. About me and my life, about the world surrounding me, about whatever comes to mind in the wee light of the morning sun.

Coffee | Morning Work | Steve Ditko | Kingdom Hearts

|My Morning Cup|

I wake up early, I have to and I want to. Waking up earlier than necessary brings with it a lot of benefits, but it brings with it a particular problem: energy. I don't go to sleep early enough—and often not well enough—to wake up with any degree of productivity. Fortunately 15^th centuries Yemen monasteries have brought forth a miracle solution to such a problem, the fabled bean of everlasting energy: coffee.

Obviously coffee isn't the be all-end all to waking up and being productive, in fact running on caffeine alone has negative side effects I'm sure—like how cranky I become when I don't have it—but it's the easiest way to get up. A Hamilton Beach Flexbrew basket full of Maxwell House Original ground, an unmeasured amount of water from my favorite California originating coffee mug, fondly nicknamed the “No Good for Nobody” mug, two teaspoons of sugar, and enough milk to turn the coffee to a tan color similar to my wife's skin is literally all it takes to give me the energy to make it through to lunch time. Again, definitely not healthy, but workable.

A sweet aside, the original name of this blog was intended to be “The Morning Cup.” Fortunately for me, before I wasted anytime making a series of posts and then realized the name was already taken on multiple accounts, I decided to Google (yes, that linguistic nightmare that is technically a real term) the terminology. The Morning Cup appears to be any number of blogs, podcasts, talk shows, monthly newsletters, and serial books. Probably best that I don't name my blog after them all. The current name, Carpe Mane, is obviously a cruel mutilation of the Latin phrase Carpe Diem, but the actual idea for the name “seize the morning” originates from a ridiculous business idea never spawned during communication between myself and a few friends: carpe nocturne, a late night coffee bar.

|The Madrugada|

Yes, I just Googled alternative terms to “early morning” and found a word of Spanish origin that I fancied, and slapped it on this section header, so sue me. The gray dawn, the twilight hours, daybreak, this is a time most valuable to the yard worker who dreads the heat of yard work. He who awakes at 5 AM finds himself with time to tend the fields before the sun might tend his skin, feel free to quote me on that, I might make it more poetic in the shower some day.

The problem with Summer is, at least in the southern states, it becomes too hot by midday to do anything outside until the evening, and by then there are mosquitoes, horseflies, and God knows what else buzzing about for a drop of sweet human nectar. But there's this sweet period, between 4:30 AM and 7 AM, when most of the bugs are inactive and the sun is not yet high enough to scorch the skin off your body like a zombie in the Sahara. This is when we make the most of the day, we weed-eat and mow and pluck weeds and stomp down molehills. Also, rake, when you have a magnolia tree it becomes important that you rake frequently, or else you find millions of huge leaves in your yard, and all of your neighbor's yards.

I have come to value “the Madrugada” more and more over the last several months, not just for the economy of working before the sun starts working, but also for its solitude—this is a time to listen to audiobooks, to busy the hands, and yes, with Carpe Mane now on my mind, to employ the fingertips.

|The Strange Amazing Artist Laid to Rest|

I'm not a particularly good socialite, I don't follow trends, I don't keep track of current events, and sadly enough I don't know when my favorite people die—heck, I don't know who some of my favorite people are. So it is with delayed sorrow that I recognize the passing of a great man who created much of what I love in the comic book world, Steve Ditko.

Honestly, I don't know much about the comic creation process, I know that I like Marvel more than D.C., and I know that Stan Lee's name goes on basically everything Marvel does. I only even know that Steve Ditko, the original artist for Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, passed because Twitter told me so last night. Shamefully enough, when I first saw Marvel's Tweet bidding the genius a fond farewell, referencing him only as “Steve” I too fell into the modern movie-goer trap of thinking they were killing of Steve Rogers—Captain America. I was, of course, quick to reconcile this by Googling “Steve Death” and finding that Mr. Ditko died. I recognized his name immediately, though I wasn't entirely certain why.

The fact of the matter is, I don't know who drew The Hulk, Ant-Man, Captain America or Iron-Man. Well, I know who wrote at least one line of Iron-Man comics, because Orson Scott Card dipped his quill in there, and I know my authors fairly well. It's not until a man like Steve Ditko dies that I recognize him as the originator, at least graphically, of two of my favorite comic book heroes—Dr. Stephen Strange and not-so-doctor-until-recently Peter Parker. I'm sad to know that Mr. Ditko has left this world, however I'm glad to know that he had the impact that he had, regardless of the fact that he left Marvel for Detective Comics Comics (that's not a typo, it's stylized D.C. Comics and the “C.” stands for Comics, I will likely always refer to them as such).

|A Kingdom for my Child's Heart|

This probably wouldn't be on my mind so heavily if it weren't for a nice four hour visit I enjoyed with my sister and aunt last night. My aunts (plural because I have three, although we are technically only referring to one in this recollection) have often been my favorites in my family. This isn't to say that I don't appreciate most of the raising my parents did—a long tangent for another time—nor the influence my grandparents had, it's just that my aunts have always been the...doting types? I suppose that may be right in some cases and wrong in the others.

Maybe what familiarizes me most with my mother's sister (she only has one, my father has two) is her fondness for modern entertainment mediums—yes, I refer to video games—a hobby not entirely shared with my father's sisters. If there's anyone I have fond early childhood gaming memories with its her, she beat Super Mario 64, read stupid long non-voice-acted text bubbles, and helped me understand controls. So its no surprise to me that when we have a chance to catch up one of the topics on her lips is the revitalization of my favorite childhood franchise: Kingdom Hearts.

This child of Square Enix and Disney was probably my first true foray into a role-playing game (I had played Quest 64 for the Nintendo 64, but that hardly counts, I didn't know what was happening) and probably served to spark my interest in that particular genre. Of course, I wasn't such a dolt that I didn't recognize the faces of Final Fantasy characters, though admittedly I wasn't certain until a few years later that the original characters were in fact originals—I was fairly certain for a time that Ansem was a secret boss from the original Final Fantasy, how precious. What was delightful about this conversation though was the topic that always comes to mind whenever someone tells me “Kingdom Hearts 3 comes out next year.”

It was supposed to come out 10-12 years ago! I realize of course that a portion of this thought is my adolescent brain assuming there was little work involved in a game's sequel coming to fruition, but let's be real, these guys had, at the time, 13 full-length RPGs under their belts at least (Kingdom Hearts 2 released in 2005, shortly before Final Fantasy 12 in 2006, so I could count 11 Final Fantasys and two Kingdom Hearts), so surely a 14^th one couldn't be far behind. To further mislead my simple mind, Tetsuya Nomura(at least I believe it was this absolute genius) had stated in an interview that Kingdom Hearts 3 was in production, and while the PlayStation 3 was on the horizon, he hoped to release the game on the PlayStation 2, for the sake of the audience already following along. Skip ahead 14 years and approximately 11 sequels or remakes (it's a bit hard to count given the sheer number of times some of these games have been “remastered”) and we finally have Kingdom Hearts 3, the long-awaited third entry in the trilogy, releasing on January 25, 2019...on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

I'm not upset, just disappointed.

|Farewell|

That's it for today's Carpe Mane entry, thank you so much for reading and I plan to be back tomorrow morning, maybe with significantly less to talk about, four total topics (as anyone would know from my complaints about writing a weekly business column for the Commercial Dispath) is a lot to come up with on a regular basis, but maybe we can pull off three tomorrow, with a bonus nudge toward the day's breakfast drink of choice. Maybe we'll have an Irish Breakfast tea, or an Earl Grey? Who can tell.

Here's a little teaser for one topic tomorrow, in my signing off:

T-T-F-N, ta-ta for now!

C.W. Sherman