“What’s That You’re Doing to Yourself in the Pouring Rain” is totally gonna be on the Prairie’s Dream soundtrack.

“a-ha – What’s That You’re Doing to Yourself in the Pouring Rain”

I was trippin’ something fierce on this song for better than 17 hours today while Prairie was watching Today’s Special in her attic room. Sebastian made a surprise visit to the meadows of her mind to let her know that it was time to go. They had to go now, like right now. She hadn’t seen that it would be Sebastian who would say when and yet, she was ready about an hour before he spoke those words. Up she sprang, flying down the stairs in the pretty, pink lolita dress she had just finished making only 62 minutes ago. The dreams had played out exactly like this, so Prairie knew there was no room for fear in her heart.

Intuition had just as randomly as casually inspired Prairie to put that key in her pocket immediately after she finished the last stitch on her dress. Although she wasn’t exactly sure which vehicle it was for, she trusted this key would fit just what was needed to do what she was about to do. The other one, her launch key, had been on the same shoelace for no less than tens of thousands of hours. Sebastian had found his just about the same time Prairie did. It just felt right to place it around her neck this morning on her way out.

Looking at her options in this field, Prairie had a fair amount of confidence that she could figure out how to make the big truck go and decided to let the magic in her mind work this out by simply not over thinking it. Instead, she playfully imagined that her 53 foot trailer was packed with top secret Care Bears prototypes and that it was her responsibility to get them to the bouncy castle down the street and around the corner. a-ha filled the cab with an unmistakable 80s sound while her imagination actively prevented her from believing for even one second that she couldn’t do this. Go, go, go and all seemed like the right thing to do so she found herself doing just that. Through the wheat field, past the apple trees and under the abandoned roller coaster and through the fence onto the residential streets. Red lights are for another day, she thought, intent to go, go, go as fast as any girl who had never driven a semi-truck before possibly could. She knew she wasn’t the right time to stop until she either reached Sebastian’s train or saw the ships dropping out of the sky, or both. Prairie supposed it was possible she may see blood all over her pretty new dress before either of those and no matter if she did. Her heart could make more, she was sure.

Go, go, go! Something about the fact that all her guages began going wonky told Prairie she was almost there. This truck, she remembered now, had been in the dream and in that dream, she made it all the way to the barn where her boyfriend built his trains and so knew that everything was exactly as it should be. Prairie could feel something come over her right before the powerful urge to look out the passenger window took hold. What she saw up there was no different than what she expected to see at precisely this moment. “Oh, my God, Sebastian, I can see them! Those are the ones,” she thought to him, “but the triangle one is gonna fall…that’s the one we’re here for!” It was then that Prairie realized why she was driving this massive truck and that this was exactly where she needed to stop. Her door was open just in time for her to run to the other side and watch this event just as she did before. There most certainly weren’t going to be any Care Bears in the back because she needed the space for all the parts that were about to be created by the triangle craft which made an eerie whiring noise just before it suddenly began dropping straight down, right on cue. “Oh! There it goes! Sebastian, do you see it? ”

It might make sense to write a book first. But then again, I firmly believe that now is an excellent time for most of us to stop making sense. Look at us now. How far did all that get us anyway? “You only talk about Prairie’s Dream when you’re drunk.” Uh… Actually, that’s technically inaccurate because I’ve been the opposite of drunk for well over 11,182 hours or something. Maths. A long fucking time by my watch and so far, this thing has continued to grow in intensity and purpose. In your defense, I’ll say that it would be more appropriate to say that sure, typically, I have talked about it more while I was less inhibited. Fair enough, but that has nothing to do with anything. If you don’t want to read it or see it, then don’t. It’s not fair of you to trivialize it when you know virtually nothing about it. No, I don’t have it completely sorted out just yet, but I am getting there. The more time goes by, the more I understand why it’s taking so long and that it had to be this way to get what we knew was possible and without comprimise. Back in Port Orchard, I used to sneak into the hall during nap time and pull myself towards the living room with my toes for a peek at the TV. Slow and steady got it done and now, while I wait for this project to become something a bit more presentable, I daydream that we’ve already reached that point. It’s not uncommon for scenes to pop into a sudden and extremely intense clarity. During those precious, epic minutes, I feel ultimately alive because in that timeless place, a magic window opens and I get to see the real universe forming in real time, right in front of me. Thoughts do become things. My wish is for everyone to know how true that is. My heart pounds furiously as all the vivid detail snaps into place and all the answers I’ll ever wish for in this lifetime are suddenly and completely comprehended, all at once in this incredible place. Always, I am thankful for these opportunities to step through the looking glass. The experience is the greatest I have enjoyed, well beyond epic. Being grateful for those short adventures where I can see and understand the future result seems to help quite a bit. Occasionally, it’s been pretty confusing and frustrating when so much of this keeps changing. The mansion series played out in the “real” world almost verbatim which fascinates me to no end. I get the feeling that what we’ll end up with is something far greater than the sum of all these amazing parts.

Play more music and fuck Jesus, be your own DJ.

Getting your first boombox is fucking epic indizeed! Smack me in the face with a dead baby if I wasn’t bumpin’ the “Never Ending Story” soundtrack like a set trippin’ banga’ during the perfunctory, seventh annual celebration of my falling out of Mom’s vag. Banging. The. Fuck. Out. Of. It. The Panasonic, not my Mom’s vag, you silly goose. My brain says there was something about cake and touchy, feely old ladies filling my nose holes with the wonky chemicals of their perfume as they kissed me all over my face. I don’t know exactly, but there can be no doubt whatsoever though that those six D-cells feeding this monster were fuckin’ dead with the quickness. That’s just how it goes when you’re the man about town with the sounds.

You know your kid’s gonna have whatever stereo they get first for a long time, so please, don’t be a dick. At least give them something with an EQ.

After about 63 months of bangin’ hard, the old Panasonic fell ill and I had to bury that ass in the backyard next to Vern’s jar of pennies. What came next would power the lightbulb I had been wearing above my head since my Mom shat me out. This new boombox had not one, but two tape decks. Not only could I now steal music 2.5x faster thanks to the magic of high-speed dubbing, but wait, there’s more! And if you act now, I’ll double your earful of nonsense about how this thing could play both decks at once! At the same volume too! Holy shit! At 13, I was one of those bedroom DJ kids dropping science as best I could with what I had. Eventually, Mom hooked me up with an old school Technics tape deck so I could record the shitty mixes no one would ever want to listen to but me. Over and over again. For hours. And then a few more times for good measure. I actually enjoyed my shit better than a lot of everything else. My brain made that stuff for my brain, so the resonance was perfect. It was crazy fun playing The KLF with Opus III or recording sound from the Back to the Future II VHS to layer over some dark & dirty beats from my Underground Rave tapes, the sick tune from the My Little Pony commercial or whatever else made cool noises like the Speak-n-Spell.

Even back then, I was beyond sick of hearing the same Led Zeppelin and Eagles songs 9 times a day for 13 years straight. That stuff made me wanna gouge my fucking eardrums out with a rusty coat hanger while kicking puppies in the dick. As it turned out, there was other music in the world. Better music. Some seriously epic tunes, actually, the kind of awesome shit that keeps my brain from shutting down in protest. Jungle, drum-n-bass, breakbeats, new wave rarities, shoegazer dreams, NES Midi themes and the sound effects from UFO documentaries all served me well. Sometimes all at once.

And then, this one time, at band camp, I mixed a track using 24 different sources that required about 5 different tapes to be swapped around. It was a fucking mess, but every bit as brilliant as those silly looking teeth you see on people in gum commercials. Before too long, I had about 150 tapes packed leader to leader with sick beats and samples that no one else was using. It turns out most people just couldn’t wrap their minds around the bulk of any of it that actually was good. Probably the same type of people who kill themselves in the subway because they just can’t take any more of Call Me Maybe or that fucking annoying whistle song. You know the one I’m talking about. Fuck that stupid song.

Just about any time I have to hear stupid fucking songs like that in a seamless loop for months in a row, I want to be dead too. A hammer is pretty hard to come by at a subway station, but your fists will work too in an audio emergency. The trick is to keep punching until everything looks funny and your brain turns off. Then, the ugly sounds just sort of fade away. It’s quite nice. Obviously though, the more productive choice is simply to make your own sound. Fo’ sho’. Mixers are cheap and I think everybody should have one. Toying with music isn’t rocket science and there’s no accounting for taste so you can just do whatever the fuck you want with no regard whatsoever for the fragile and illegitimate feelings of other remarkably forgettable people. Well, that is unless you’re stuck in an apartment where the need for silence “just because” somehow always seems to find favor with the manager who bangs on your fucking door to bitch because it’s after 5pm and he can sort of hear some music. It’s perfectly acceptable though that those little shit kids are still smashing and banging around in the fucking hallway after 11.

The “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” PC game is the shit!

Hey there fellow Midnight Society Members. = )

I know that lots of us are looking for this game, so I decided to create this document for the group so that these links to the Orpheo’s Curse PC game will have a permanent place here, granting everyone easy access to this amazing adventure. These files are hosted at Mediafire where I’ve been a member for many years now which means these links should be good for quite some time. I intentionally kept each part at 200mb or less so that anyone can download them without wait times and without having to sign up for anything.

Once you have all three parts, simply highlight the 3 together and unzip them simultaneously.

Note, these zip files were created using 7zip. In a perfect world, any archive utility *should* be able to unpack them, but if you get errors with WinZip or WinRar, just use 7zip instead which is available free from their website at http://www.7-zip.org/ Don’t forget that you have to unzip all 3 at once; they can not be unzipped individually because it just doesn’t work that way.

Everything will unpack to a single folder titled, “Are You Afraid of the Dark (PC)”.

Inside is the game disc image file (.iso), the manual scans (.pdf) and the DosBox instructions (.txt).

Part 1:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?gdta3catypyxj1a

Part 2:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?nca3qb65a5qec5w

Part 3:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?zsnmno19w9aqnbv

Notes:

DosBox:

– Orhpeo’s Curse is a DOS based game and will not run in any version of Windows, not even in any of the compatibility modes simply because DOS is an entirely different operating system.

For this reason, you will need a free program called, “DosBox” from http://www.dosbox.com/ to play this game. DosBox is a DOS emulator that runs on any 32 or 64 bit version of Windows, including XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Note that when using the DosBox command prompt, syntax is everything. One character out of place and you will get an error message. So, follow the included instructions carefully, type slowly, and be patient. It’s well worth it!

– Two problems I’m well aware of with DosBox that both occur at startup are:

1) It may default to full screen view which in some cases may prevent you from typing what you need to type. If this happens, simply press, “ALT + Enter” to switch to Windowed view, then click anywhere in the black area to begin typing. Note that even though you’re entering text in a windowed mode, when the game starts, you will play in full-screen mode.

2) At startup, DosBox will show you a warning about how “Mounting C: drive is NOT recommended…” Fear not. You can ignore this message because as you’ll also see, it automatically corrects whatever it thinks is wrong anyway and will do so every time. If we didn’t mount C: drive, we couldn’t boot the game, so it’s just one of those wonky things that “comes with the territory” as they say. Don’t worry about it.

Burning a CD vs. Using Virtual Drive software:

– IMPORTANT: When getting ready to install the game, you must first decide if you’ll want to use a CD you burned, or if you’d rather use a virtual drive every time you play. It’s very important that you stick to your decision because whichever you use for installation is what you will have to use to play. You can not switch back and forth at random each time. To make a long story short, it just doesn’t work that way. Whichever drive you used to install the game is the one you’ll have to use to play it unless you want to completely reinstall and point the game to a different drive.

My opinion on which to choose is this – Go for the virtual drive software. Here’s why…

Burning games to CD introduces many new variables, most of which are problematic. Let’s really think about his for a minute. When burning CDs, you have to worry about the quality of the blank media, the quality of your burner, the quality, accuracy and settings of your burning software… (Most people choose or let “easy / 1-click” type software select burn rates that are way too high and then wonder why the game freezes at random or just plain doesn’t work. In addition, there’s spin up and disc access time, it’s noisy and consumes a lot of power, the disc winds up scratched, or lost… When you add it all up, what you have is ultimately just a wonky, undependable mess. The use of a virtual drive eliminates all these issues, cuts out all the variables and thus prevents so many problems so you can just play the game without headaches.

If virtual drive software is new to you, I know it can be a bit scary at first trying new programs like this, but I assure you, it’s easier than you may think! Have a look at my first choice called, “Daemon Tools Lite” here: http://www.daemon-tools.cc/eng/products/dtLite

Although there is a paid version, the free version is all you’ll ever need. If you don’t find it rather intuitive and the text instructions aren’t quite enough, there are plenty of YouTube videos up that can actually show you how it works and how easy it really is when you learn the basics. Even if it all seems weird and confusing to you now, I assure you, you’ll thank me later and be glad you dumped that old-school CD.

However, if you’re digging your heels in and really just want to burn a CD, here are some things to consider in order to ensure the best results:

1) Understand that not all blank CDs are the same. The integrity of manufacturing processes differ greatly and more expensive does NOT equal higher quality or better dependability. In fact, it’s interesting to note that the brand name you see on the package is not necessarily the manufacturer that actually produced them. I have burned thousands upon thousands of discs in many, many different burners and when asked, can say from personal experience that among the more readily available brands who produce their own product such as “Ritek” and “TDK” are fantastic, generating maybe 2-3 coasters per 100. On the other hand, Memorex, one of the companies that employs third parties to create their blank discs, usually the lowest bidder which can change from batch to batch is to be avoided at all costs due to complete lack of consistency and a failure rate of 15% or higher. Again, I speak of my own experiences and am simply offering a bit of advice based on that.

2) Use a well respected and trusted burning software like IMGburn from http://www.imgburn.com/ that offers the correct options and be willing to use them to obtain quality results. Even though it’s free, it beats the heck out of many paid programs. There is no need to waste your money on inferior software and it’s very important to have control over the burning process where the settings should be adjusted based on what you’re burning. More on this in #3 below.

3) Burn SLOWLY and make use of the “verify” option! I can’t stress this enough. I know we all want it yesterday, but when burning software CDs and DVDs, you’ve got to slow it down or you’ll basically just be making coasters. Sure, maybe it seems to work at first but then…surprise! You have to remember that playing games from optical media is very different and far more demanding on hardware than playing music and movies. With games, the laser has to dart around everywhere since the data it needs is always changing at random and is accessed from all over the surface of the disc. In contrast, playing music and movies is like playing a record where the needle, or laser in this case, just moves slowly and lazily in a spiral along the track in what can basically be considered a straight and simple line. Most burners offer 48x standard now which can be acceptable for music, but speeds less than half that such as 16x and even 8x are just too fast when the data needs to be truly and totally accurate as is the case with games.

Choose the 2.4x burn rate and allow the software to use it’s “verify” function if you expect your disc to work properly. Yeah, it takes a lot longer, but spending the extra few minutes during the burn process to ensure accuracy will save you hours of headaches later when you can’t figure out why your CD doesn’t work and your game keeps crashing.

4) Please, avoid those stick-on labels! Those do make your media look pretty, but the tradeoff is that they seriously change the balance and weight of your disc which is critical for accurate reading. Of course, some drives are more forgiving with this kind of thing, but when you want to be sure that your CD will work properly in as many drives as possible, stick with a Sharpie and just say no to sticky labels, that is unless you could use a few new coasters. ; )

Other notes on running the game:

– It’s important to remember too that this is a “disc in” game meaning that during installation, although some files are transferred to your hard drive, it will not transfer all of them, nor is there any option to do so – You will still have to have a CD in the drive (or the .iso file mounted in virtual drive software) every time you wish to play. Note: If you’re using a virtual drive to mount the game, it does not matter where you keep your .iso file. It can be on your hard disk, on a USB drive, or even on an external drive because no matter where it comes from, the drive letter assigned by Windows to your virtual drive remains the same.

If you still find yourself confused and disoriented by all these new-fangled moving parts, but still wanna play this game hella bad, you can send the electronic mails to my interwebs machine. Cute girls in the soft, fuzzy sweaters and anyone looking to part with keys to the DeLorean will be helped with the swiftnesses. If you need the helps, but recently discovered that you aren’t a cute girl in the soft, fuzzy sweaters and are also lacking DeLorean keys, send the sugar cookies to ensure some of the speedy helps. I fucking love those things.

peace, = )