Alienation, Part 2.

I faintly remember watching some science fiction film, then painting these. Or perhaps it was a book that I read, or a picture I saw online. I do know I was inspired by something.

These naked men don't just pop into my mind out of nowhere, you and your dirty mind.

The odd thing is, I usually forget the films that I've watched, like really fast. A week goes by, and I'll have enormous trouble trying to remember what the film was that I saw. Does that tell you something about how good my taste is when it comes to films? I should hope not.

I mean, some films are permanently burnt into my retina, e.g. the Alien films. Not to mention Star Wars. (I wish I could name a film with more intellectual weight to mention here.) But it bothers me sometimes how soon I forget about some pretty decent movies that I've seen.

The guy on the front should perhaps do some butt clenches or something. But it's me who's to blame, really. I should start using models when I try to paint human bodies. Sadly, there are no naked males available to me right at the moment.

On a side note, notice how different the first two paintings look. The first one was taken with flash, the second, without flash. In consequence, the colours are quite different. I wish I knew instinctively how to take perfect photos, since I have absolutely no interest at all in learning how to use all the functions in cameras.

But that applies to pretty much everything - I'm a lazy bastard. A luddite of the worst kind. As conservative as they come. Add to that an insatiable taste for peace and quiet in a staring-at-the-ceiling fashion. It makes me wonder how I can ever function as anything else but a parasite in this society.

I'm not beating myself up about it too hard, though. I didn't even freak out physically when I realized my brother had installed Windows Vista on our family computer. Usually when something other than the routinely thing happens, I'll go completely off my rocker.

Despite my initial reaction of shock and horror, I pulled myself together and calmly tried to figure out where the hell all my files have gone. Only to find that all my Half life 2 saves had vanished in thin air. Which made a perfect excuse to play them again! Escapism, here I come!

Actually, I may have been inspired by Half life 2 when I painted those. Now there's a surprise. There was a point where I had trouble deciding whether I liked the sense of alienation or the human companionship in the games better. I was positively an Alyx hater (a very much human character they're trying to marry to Gordon, who is the protagonist of the game, i.e. the player her/himself). Now, I'm growing to tolerate her.

What I liked about Half life in the first place, what made me fall in love with the game years back, was the sense of being completely cut off from all human interaction, being utterly alone in the midst of mutants (how cool) and monsters and black ops and commandos who kill themselves with their own grenades. The less than perfect AI helped substantiate the lack of a human connection.

But in the new, improved version, the human characters are quite lifelike. The enemies don't commit suicides anymore with their grenades, but for the love of God - now my allies do! During my occasional (read frequent) fits of frustration when trying to cooperate with my inane artificial comrades, I'll just send them off to suicide missions.

I don't do that anymore, though. Maybe I'm finally growing into a sense of moral behaviour towards my fellow human-like non-playable-characters? (Whether I am personally human-like and non-playable is a moot point.)