Bjokas
Raquel

caicko disse...

Hoje eu quero o breu, a penumbra. Minha luz afunda
o peito e pede recolhimento. Não sussurre piedade ou compreensão. Hoje a canção
é solitária e o meu casulo muito mais denso.

16 de Agosto de 2008 23:50

Quem escreveu isso está no blog : http://caioalbergue.blogspot.com/

Y de sobrenombre, al pobre hombre, Infrahumano… desgarbado, sucio, triste, desgreñado… hace de las sobras un manjar, del alcohol un néctar, de los cigarros un remedio… es adicto a los textos, y desprecia el sexo, bebe café en taza de latón , y habita en la penumbra de una caja de cartón. Y él se cree un ermitaño en su ermita, un chamán urbano, en potencia un revolucionario, y de poeta, guarda aún un poco… ¡todos le llaman loco!

En las comisuras de sus labios, rara vez se asoma una sonrisa, y a través de la hendidura que provoca, muestra unos dorados incisivos. Y tiene manos de arcilla, piel cuan cuero, curtida por el sol y maltratada por el tiempo, progenie del polvo… soberbio marcha por veces, ataviado en escabroso gabán beige, y con sombrero negro esconde su leve calvicie.

Hijo de la sombra y de la calle, del poste de luz ha hecho psiquiatra y sustentáculo cuando pasa, que por etílicos trances para evitar caer viene y le abraza… es todo un espectáculo. Y el frío le abraza por la noche, y le come el ratón su armadura de algodón, y se bebe el gato de su vaso el último trago.

¿Dónde está tu otrora gloria, poeta? Si hoy por hoy vagas sin rumbo humillado por el mundo, hasta olvidado yaces guarecido en un fortín de sucio papelón, ¿qué pasó con tu epidémica fama? Atormentado por recuerdos decidió exiliarse en el anonimato, no exorcizó demontres humanos, otrora amadísimas musas, y le arrastraron sus displicencias a un indecente basurero. Y siendo artista fue hedonista, porque no supo ver más allá de lo mundano, y ahora agoniza el Infrahumano… por falta de fe, porque amó sin ser amado, porque aún vaga sin reparo…

Pero ayer le vi llorar, no de tristeza, sino de alegría, porque supo ver que en medio de su agonía, era más feliz que cualquier humano. En su pobreza tiene toda su riqueza, tiene un matrimonio con sus letras… ermitaño, chamán, revolucionario, loco… poeta.

This is my first book and it's writen in portuguese. The title is Sonets of Penvmbra.

If you're interested in buying it, please contact me =)

The book is composed for several sonets of a very dark/pagan nature.

[gallery] 

And I wonder. I think. I roll about the meadows of my head and lie, upon my back, upon the wildflowers, upon the top of my world and look up at the sky. The deep blue stretching beyond view. The open space that waits to be filled. 

And I fear that all there is to tell is all I’ve known and felt: discontent, apathy, the truth, fuck—I don’t know. I can’t see the future with its spires and temples and monuments. Is all I know, all I'll ever know, the pain that has dogged my heart these long years?

And yet I feel my misery is just the beginning. The road winding past discovery, knowledge, surprise, regret, mistakes and remorse. A descent followed sharp by the ascent, the raising up—the rollercoaster reversed.

But will I always fear the fall I’ve known before?

Will the change that’s come stay past the morn?

Will I ever be what I do dream?

Will you stay with me though I fear and doubt and cry out in the night? 

Hace un tiempito publiqué en la penumbra que se encuentra el residencial donde vivo. Esta es la fecha y aún no se ha resuelto ese problema. Ahora lo que me resulta ilógico, inconcebible, irracional y estúpido que mientras en mi calle tenemos que sacar bombillos por las ventanas para iluminar un poco la calle y tratar de que no se armen robos, el parque que se inauguró hace unas semanas en mi mismo sector tiene más bombillos que una extensión de 100 bombillas de navidad.

Las fotos lo dicen todo.

]]> http://smokedpilchard.wordpress.com/?p=87 Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:10:45 +0000 smokedpilchard http://smokedpilchard.wordpress.com/?p=87 I awake to find myself deep in this hole, deep in this hell that is my room, my flat, my life. This fortress, battlements built to keep in as much as out; this temple to me, to my desires and wants, debased and disgusting as they are. This temple to the perverse and useless and hopeless. This grand soulless prison of me.

And I drag myself from beneath these dirty sheets and into the day. The light cascading like water into the depths as curtains are pulled back. Outside the city wakes, the noises rise as they out there crawl from their lairs and boltholes and dungeons out into the day to begin again the danse macabre that is this life.

The face in the mirror, sallow and rough, stares back a stranger, an unknown, an illegal immigrant that’s devoured my soul, crushed my heart and now inhabits the shell that’s left. And I wonder when all this happened and who let the vandal hordes tear through my life with such savage, brutal efficiency, and who, just who the fuck I am anymore. It is not me, is not a thing I recognise as me, and the tears well, bubbling up from somewhere so deep and distant that it is beyond my reach. And the sobs wrack my shoulders, shake my bones; my fingers grasp at the basin, sweep aside the solitary toothbrush—as forlorn as I there in it’s little pot—away across the tiles to clatter against the door and I crumple, descend, collapse down and pool like so much discarded bathwater in the small space between sink and toilet and there I weep, but can’t remember just what it is I’ve lost, I only know that it was dear to me.

I swing shut the door behind me, that thick piece of wood that keeps the wolves at bay each night, that keeps my tears from leaking out into the real world, and I walk down the stairs, one flight after another until I step out into the sunlight filtered through the last remaining leaves that dangle, resigned to their fate, from the spindly branches of the trees that line the path, and I walk towards the road, towards the train and towards the working day.

Tickets beep in and out of validation slots and I wish there were one into which I could dive headlong, and be either validated—all my fears and doubts, the hollowness within, the aching behind my eyes, the single serve dinners that grace my table each night, my tears, my brokenness—or ground and shredded and devoured; disintegrated never having to stand in a crowd of strangers, each alone, pressed up against each other, jostled by the clickety-clack of the tracks, squeezed evermore at each station, and yet utterly silent.

We stand, sardines bound and invisibly gagged, and no one says a word, not a fucking thing and I want to scream, want to shout that this is not normal: each and every one of them pretending as though humans do not speak, or that they are alone here. And I wonder what they see: do they see these cattle trucks filled to bursting with mournful, sad eyed, self-pitying animals bound for the grand abattoirs in the city? Do they see something else? Do their minds not let them see the bleak reality, for surely if they did, they too would wish to rail against it, scream it down, shout into the face of the abyss, the gaping chasms of the faces I see all around.

But I cannot find enough air in my lungs to raise my voice; I am crushed, pressed in on all sides, held back, down, strapped tight into this ride that surely takes us all to the very mouth of hell itself.

We pour out of the cages, jostling tight still and grind our way up from the bowels of the earth on escalators that rise a million miles and bring us from darkness into the grim light of day. And we spew forth out into the city streets like so much effluent. Like a bleak tide of bile, a cancer. A great multitude, a horrid disease, a plague of locusts swarming to devour every last drop of experience, of enjoyment, of drink and groping hands and fucking.

A horde surely, each and every one looking out for number one, to be the best, the greatest, the brightest star in a dying incomprehensible galaxy. And we will clamber over the still warm corpses of our friends and family for that promotion, a new car, designer shades, or an inch more space on the train. We will clamour and consume everything until we are admired, respected, revered, envied, desired, until we are all the same: a plastic nightmare imitation of a regurgitated non-existent dream. We will maim and kill and rape until such a time; and the day rolls on.

At my desk the papers mount, the phone rings, and the grey static descends. I am lost in this quagmire, drowning in plain sight and I cannot see the point, the urgency, the need. All is self-perpetuating, business feeding business, needless, endless, pointless, and I gag, I choke, it sticks in my throat: the fishbones of the corporate dream.

I look around and still I cannot tell if anyone else sees the lie, bold and bald before us. So barefaced, so obscene and grand that I wonder how we ever let it become so, how they do not see it, do not feel its pulsing malevolence singing on the edges of our vision, humming deep in our ears.

Out the windows, the city stretches away, all blocks and grasping climbing buildings, all there to serve this god of commerce that we have created. And from office tower after office tower I see the bodies fall one after another, a million steady streams, all sacrificed, cast down onto the blazing altar fire below, consumed, the acrid smoke rising up into the sky and all for what? So I can have designer sneakers? A hundred channels of advertisements? More inches? And full head of hair? A spray on tan that will surely leech in through my skin and down into my very soul?

These buildings tall, these grinning looming idols to ourselves, our imagined greatness, our hollow grandeur: they reflect our need to stroke ourselves in public, to be admired and feared, to work ourselves to orgasm unashamed and prove, beyond doubt, beyond question, beyond the shimmering lies that inhabit the flashing screens in our homes, prove our manliness, prove our courage, prove beyond all caveats our absolute inde-fucking-fatigableness.

In time the day is gone, another in a long line of the unremarkable. Like coke bottles floating in the ocean, they pass unnoticed and unloved. I drift down from the eyrie high above, down to the dirty street and am dragged along in currents of the helpless, surely, down into the holes and deeper to stand looking down at the two straight tracks. They run, utterly parallel, along this stretch, and on, through the tunnels, around the bends, out into the light and make their myriad ways across the metropolis. But always, they are there; the two of them, equidistant, one guiding the other, never alone, and I want to join them. I want to leap, before the next train, down into their dark embrace and there to lie between them and be reassured. There between them safe, knowing that they will never change, that no matter what happens, they will not move and I will no longer be chasing the horizon and never closing in.

The crowd jostles behind me, packing out the platform and I am nudged and pushed and the wind whistles down from the tunnel to the left. From the darkness the beast stirs, the wind its herald, its breath, its flaming spurting breath. And I see the shimmer of light deep in the darkness away, hear the screeching, grinding of metal, hear the rushing current of air, feel its gentle soothing caress. It plays on my face, on my hands, across my neck, it seduces me, calls to me, siren-like, calls me to join it, to ease the endless march of days and my knees go weak, my legs bend, my feet scrabble for grip and the train pulls up in front of me. Doors open and I am borne aboard.

I stop at the supermarket on my way from station to home and walk the bright harsh aisles with their million varieties. The refrigerators pump cooled air out across the tiles where it drifts under shelves and out into the world. The fruit and veg lie still in their baskets, plucked from miles away, dragged across oceans and plains and served up to me and mine. The noodles sing of culture not my own, while the pepperoni replies of yet a third. And I am lost here in this thick wooded forest. The trees hide it all from view and I cannot decide. Do not want to decide. Refuse to decide.

The choice it overwhelms and there is too much pressure. Can I be seen buying that? Will they think something of me if I buy this? What do I want? What should I have? What do I truly need?

I walk out with bread and milk and peanut butter, all the rest come with too much baggage, to much pressure, to much fucking shit. And on the way out I see a thousand others all struggling to escape, struggling to reach the surface and gulp down the fresh air.

But they will get out; we will all grow and evolve and emerge from our shiny plastic designer cocoons into the light, the cold harsh light, and we will all be the very fucking same butterfly as all the others, as was foretold in Vogue and Esquire and Hollywood.

I lock the door behind me, close out the night, out the world and I sit to eat my peanut butter sandwiches and drink my cold cold milk. The television I leave still and silent in the corner, not wishing to provoke its flashing lights and demanding tones, not willing to be devoured by those who would sell me a million more useless trinkets and the bones of small children, not willing to be consumed for there is little enough of me left now anyway.

Outside the darkness thickens; inside I fear it complete, solid and heavy. I am tired, worn down, brought low. I have no strength to raise myself from the couch and I lie there, staring across at the silent black rectangle, my head in a growing pool.

And tonight I have nothing left: I am spent. Tonight there will be no going out hunting for experience and ejaculation. There will be no desperate search for kudos and sex—for I have given up on finding a sex that fills me not empties me; a sex that is not done in a dark dirty corner, on a couch in an unknown apartment, or in an alley next to a dumpster. No foreplay that is not blindly groping on a dance floor, is not clicking from website to website searching for bigger, closer more revealing images and clutching myself, filthy and alone in this, my own darkened prison of home.

The weight of the day comes down upon me and I do not think I can recover, bounce back from this: one weight too many on the bar and I am crushed beyond repair and so I lie, still as death and empty as the grave.

The night it fills the room, the doors and windows unable to keep it out, and I am taken. My breath spills from me—a tire burst, a man undone—and I give up. I have nothing left, nothing within or without.

I do not recognise myself anymore. I am a stranger and I fear that which I see in the mirror for it lives in me and yet I do not know it. And for help I know not where to turn for all I see around reeks of putrefaction and disease. I will have no more of it, I will be this thing I have become no more.

And so I call out into the night, out into the deep consuming black, for something, anything that is not of the corruption of this world, something that runs as unwaveringly steadfast as train tracks, for something that is beyond, bigger, greater, grander. I call out into the booming echoing space for someone or something to come and save me. Save me from this world for I have not the strength to fight anymore.

Come save me from myself.

Blood rushes in my ears and I do not know what I think.

You speak, call to me, cry across the ages and yet I do not hear.

I imagine your voice soft and soothing, swelling to engulf me, bear down on me a thousand feet of water, seep within and soak me deep.

I need your words as stones with which to build my life, to set it right,

But all I hear is the raging river of me;

The cry of my hollowness that drags me to only the shallow pools.

Speak to me,

Call my name in the night,

Sing across the crowded rooms,

Bring my heart to you. 

but there it is like a precursor or a negative image

the mist surrounding the cascading waters like a penumbra

a foreshadowing of depths yet to be plumbed or heights that having let slip one

these waters will never see again

RuneStones...

Källa: Frictional Games

Asi empieza el primero de los dos juegos que para mi personalmente ya se han convertido en juegos de culto, Penumbra: Overture y Penumbra: Black plague.

En un principio penumbra fue concebido como un juego amateur (aun asi impresionante) en la que el principal atractivo consistia en un motor fisico realista en el que se podia interactuar con todos los elementos del entorno. Fue lanzado como un juego freeware que mas tarde y debido a las buenas criticas y apoyos resulto todo en el desarrollo de una saga de pago compuesta en un principio por tres episodios, que a la larga se convirtieron en tan solo dos.

Penumbra nos pone en la piel de Philip, un hombre de 30 años cuyo padre desaparecio antes de nacer el. Ahora 30 años despues, justo cuando su madre acaba de morir recibe la carta de un muerto, su padre. La carta le empuja a descubrir los aterradores secretos sobre la muerte de su padre en un complejo subterraneo, ubicado nada menos que en Groenlandia.

El modo de juego es como meter en una batidora una aventura grafica, un survival horror y un juego de infiltracion. Vemos todo en primera persona y nos movemos con la tipica combinacion de teclas A W S D, al mismo tiempo disponemos de un cursor que nos permite interactuar con el entorno agarrando objetos, empujandolos, lanzandolos, etc y ademas un inventario para poder usar los objetos y resolver puzzles (que no son pocos, no todo iba a ser combate e infiltracion, ¿no?).

En Penumbra se juega mucho con uno de los miedos mas antiguos del hombre, el miedo a la oscuridad. Disponemos de una linterna cuyas pilas se gastan segun la usemos y de un tubito fluorescente de luz verde que no se gasta, aunque da una luz en un radio realmente pequeño. Y con estos pocos recursos nos tendremos que arreglar en la oscuridad mas absoluta.

Los enemigos son inteligentes, rapidos y muy letales. Si herimos a alguno de ellos volvera acompañado de mas y no tenemos nada mas que un pico para poder deshacernos de ellos, asi que lo mas aconsejable es movernos en modo sigilo (vamos, el boton de agachado de toda la vida) entre la oscuridad. Para conseguir que pasen de largo la mejor estrategia es mantenerse en modo sigilo en una zona bien oscura, con cualquier luz apagada y manteniendo al bicho de turno fuera de nuestro rango de vision, o Philip podria empezar a ponerse nervioso y respirar rapido alertando al bicho por el sonido.

Consejo: La estrategia de la caja
Una de las mejores estrategias para deshacerse de algunos enemigos es subirse de un salto a un cajon si lo hay disponible y tentar al bicho a que venga a mordernos el culo, entonces nos agachamos y mientras el bicho inutilmente no consigue llegar a donde estamos le arreamos con el pico hasta dejarlo KO XD. Si le arreamos una vez y trae al resto de bichos de la zona con el mejor que mejor XD.

La banda sonora es muy buena pese a tener muy pocas canciones, pero lo compensa de sobra con la musica ambiental que nos sumerge de manera muy efectiva en el juego, poniendonos los pelos de punta en mas de una ocasion.

Los graficos son modestos para lo que son ya las nuevas generaciones, pero cumplen de sobra su funcion y no son malos en absoluto. Los efectos para suavizar la camara cuando la giramos y cuando nuestro personaje se le nubla la vista o se pone nervioso me han gustado bastante, aunque tienen un gran impacto en la tasa de frames y en algunas escenas del juego en las que prima la rapidez pueden suponer mas un escoyo que otra cosa.

En conclusion, Penumbra: Overture y Penumbra: Black plague son dos de los mejores juegos de terror que he jugado, son muy dignos de pasar a mi panteon particular de juegos.

Nota: 8.5 (Quiero un tubito fluorescente)

Requerimientos minimos:
Procesador: 1 GHZ
Memoria: 256 MB
Espacio en disco: 1 GB
Tarjeta de video: Radeon 8500/GeForce 3 (GeForce4MX no soportada)

Wednesday night a spectacular and beautiful total lunar eclipse took place, visible to most of the North American continent. It was, unsurprisingly, a very popular topic on blogs throughout the blogosphere yesterday, with lots of people posting photos of the event. Well, I might as well add my voice to the fray, and my photos, too, even though they're pretty similar to just about everyone else's.

I'm pretty sure this is the first lunar eclipse I can remember watching. I may have seen one or two before, perhaps when growing up, and have simply forgotten. In any case, I'd been thinking I should go out to watch it, but, ironically, it had slipped my mind that it was Wednesday night, caught up in a drawing I was working on. I was only reminded of it when my mom came and told me it was happening. So I missed out on the first part of the eclipse, and caught it midway through.

It was a pretty cool show. When I first stepped out it was glowing a reddish orange, with just the bottom "corner" outside the shadow. The last time I looked at it the eclipse was nearly done. It's a shame it was so cold out, it really discouraged spending a lot of time watching if you didn't have a good view through a window. It took me a while to get my camera setup right for long-exposure shots of a bright object. The tricky bit was figuring out how to get the mirror to lock up (the setting was buried in a second tier of the menu). I had the camera mounted on a tripod, and I'd recently bought a remote shutter release (the geek in me was excited about that purchase), but even just the slight shake as the mirror flipped up to take the photo was enough to create a blur in the image. Once I figured that out I was good to go.

I saw a lot of photos on the web, but very little explanation of what was going on as this show progressed, so I did a bit of poking around and found this informative site, which I'll summarize. NASA also has a good page about the recent eclipse.

A lunar eclipse is caused by the moon (which has no light of its own, so simply reflects the light of the sun) passing through the earth's shadow. The earth has two shadows, one from the sun's direct rays, and then "thinner" shadows where the sun's rays hit it at an angle (since the sun casts light from all points of its disc in all directions, the "lower" edge of the sun will cast light in the direction of the "upper" edge of the earth). The main shadow, from the direct rays, is called the "umbra", and the "thinner" halo shadow surrounding it is called the "penumbra". The penumbral eclipse is very difficult to discern with the naked eye, so all the photos and etc that you see online pretty much deal with the umbral eclipse.

The moon shows up reddish during an eclipse because the small portion of light that gets to it around the sides of the earth is bent and refracted and filtered through earth's atmosphere, which results in only the red wavelengths hitting the moon. It's this refraction that allows the moon to be visible during an eclipse; if earth had no atmosphere the moon would be black.

An eclipse can only occur during a full moon. It can also only occur when the moon passes directly behind the earth. Because of the way the moon orbits the earth, it's usually offset enough that it passes above or below the earth's umbral shadow when its orbit takes it behind the planet. This is why eclipses are so infrequent. Total eclipses, where the whole of the moon passes through the umbral shadow, are very rare, and partial eclipses, where just a portion is in shadow, are only slightly more common. Partial eclipses outnumber total eclipses 7 to 6 (not a big margin, is it?).

But infrequent is definitely a relative term. We don't get a lunar eclipse every full moon, but it's estimated that between 2000BC and 3000AD (a very long time-span, I'll admit, at 5000 years and certainly outside of most people's frame of reference), 7,718 eclipses (both partial and total) will take place. That's about three every two years (1.5 a year). It's possible to have up to three take place in a year. The last time that happened was in 1982.

The next total eclipse won't happen until December of 2010. However, there will be a partial eclipse this August. Unfortunately, the Americas won't be able to see it because it will take place while the moon is below our horizon. The next one the Americas will get to view will in fact be the 2010 total eclipse (western America will get to see a partial one earlier that year, as well). We'll be treated to two total eclipses in both 2014 and 2015. Other parts of the world will see some that we won't in the time in between.

Visible near the moon during this eclipse were two bright points of light. The one on the left, to the east, is Saturn, while the one to the upper right, to the west, is the bright star Regulus. I could see with my eye, but not capture with the camera, that the moon was sitting in the constellation Leo during the eclipse. The little blue crescent in the images I think is some sort of reflection or refraction from the glass of my lens. I kind of liked the effect it created, so left it in.

While I was out there messing around with long exposures and night sky shots, I tried playing with a long exposure of the stars. The length of exposure on this shot was 240 seconds, or 4 minutes. It was taken with my long lens on the camera, at about 200mm (I think). The long streaks of the stars were actually created by the earth's rotation, you can see a bit of a branch that's stationary. I was surprised that they would be so pronounced with such a (relatively) short exposure!

The second shot shows the moon just before the edge of the umbral shadow covers the moon entirely. Now the colors in the penumbral area are much clearer. I've brought Saturn and Regulus into the shot ... they weren't that close in real life.

Release Dates  - 02/12/2008 Digital Download - 02/12/2008

 Intl - 02/15/2008

Official Game Website

Penumbra: Black Plague is a creepy and dark psychological horror experience featuring the adventures of Philip as he sets of in search of his dead father.

Surrounded by enemies and assaulted by terror from all sides, Philip must collect clues and solve vexing puzzles while combating the gnawing psychological terrors that assail his mind and threaten to strip him of his sanity.

KEY FEATURES

- Compelling and detailed story

Finding the answers to questions of the mystery of Philip's lost father throughout the game, with new explanations and a complete storyline wrap up.

- Highly interactive environments

You can interact with any object not nailed to the ground! Focus on, pick up and move around objects through a simple drag and drop interface.

- Environmental sounds system

The sounds of the different environments are contributing to the atmosphere and give the player scaring hints of dangers.

- Puzzle solving challenges

Horror adventure game in puzzle-like style with bonuses and incentives to challenge the player throughout the game.

Penumbra: Black Plague is the final chapter and sequel to the critically acclaimed Penumbra: Overture, which has been acknowledged as one of the most terrifying horror titles of 2007.

Read more about Penumbra: Overture

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

• OS: Windows 2000/XP
• Processor: 1Ghz
• Memory: 256MB
• Video Card: Radeon 8500/GeForce 3 (GeForce4MX not supported)

[F]ewer than 5 percent of stroke sufferers get TPA, because they don't get specialized care in time. And of those treated, it only helps about 30 percent, because the clot is often too big or tough for TPA to bust.

Enter Penumbra, an option for patients who miss out on early care — it can be tried up to eight hours after a stroke strikes — or if standard TPA treatment fails.

Specialists thread a tiny tube inside a blood vessel at the groin and push it up the body and into the brain until it reaches the clog. Just like a vacuum cleaner, it sucks up the clot bit by bit to restore blood flow.

For the right patient, Penumbra can produce dramatic help, says Dr. Demetrius Lopes of Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, one of two dozen hospitals that tested the device in 125 severe stroke patients.

This treatment sounds extremely promising, and hopefully it will help save many lives which would otherwise either be lost, or irrevocably altered.

Read the entire article here.

Ocaso permanente, reina la penumbra.
Ojos que no ven,
Corazones sin latir.
Es densa la bruma.

Letras olvidadas por memorias desmemoriadas,
Acuarelas sin brillo,
Conciencias sin voz,
Oídos sordos.

Héroes podridos,
Rosas marchitas,
Tierra árida.
Es un cementerio en ruinas.